Fathers and Sons Read online

  There was the sound of hurried steps, and Arkady came on to the terrace.

  ‘We’ve introduced ourselves, Father!’ he exclaimed with an expression on his face of affectionate and good-natured triumph. ‘Fedosya Nikolayevna is really not feeling very well, and she’ll come a little later. But why didn’t you tell me I have a brother? Yesterday I would have covered him with kisses as I did just now.’

  Nikolay Petrovich wanted to say something, he wanted to get up and open his arms and hug Arkady… Arkady flung his arms round his neck.

  ‘What’s this? Embracing again?’ Pavel Petrovich’s voice came from behind them.

  Father and son were both equally pleased at his appearing at that moment. There are emotional situations which one wants to escape as quickly as possible.

  ‘Why are you surprised?’ Nikolay Petrovich said merrily. ‘I’ve been waiting for Arkasha for such an age… I haven’t yet looked enough at him since yesterday.’

  ‘I’m not surprised at all,’ said Pavel Petrovich, ‘I’m not even against embracing him myself.’

  Arkady went to his uncle and again felt on his cheeks the brush of his scented moustache. Pavel Petrovich sat down at the table. He was wearing an elegant morning suit, in the English taste; his head was decked with a little fez. The fez and his carelessly knotted necktie alluded to the freedom of country life, but the tight collar of his shirt – not a white one, it’s true, but multicoloured, as befits a morning toilette – held in his well-shaven chin, relentless as ever.

  ‘Where’s your new friend?’ he asked Arkady.

  ‘He’s not in the house. He usually gets up early and goes off somewhere. The main thing is, you mustn’t pay him any attention: he doesn’t like ceremony.’

  ‘Yes, one can see that.’ Pavel Petrovich began unhurriedly to spread butter on his bread. ‘Will he be staying with us long?’

  ‘It depends. He’s stopped here on his way to his father’s.’

  ‘And where does his father live?’

  ‘In our province, fifty miles from here. He has a little estate there. He used to be a regimental doctor.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes… I’ve been wondering, where have I heard that name, Bazarov?… Nikolay, do you remember, wasn’t there a Doctor Bazarov in Papa’s army division?

  ‘I think there was.’

  ‘Precisely. So that doctor is his father. Hm!’ Pavel Petrovich twitched his moustache. ‘Well, and what exactly is Mr Bazarov?’ he asked in a deliberate tone.

  ‘What is Bazarov?’ Arkady grinned. ‘Uncle dear, do you want me to tell you what he really is?’

  ‘Please, dear nephew.’

  ‘He’s a nihilist.’

  ‘What?’ asked Nikolay Petrovich while Pavel Petrovich raised his knife with a bit of butter on the end of the blade and didn’t move.

  ‘He’s a nihilist,’ repeated Arkady.

  ‘A nihilist,’ pronounced Nikolay Petrovich. ‘That comes from the Latin nihil, nothing, in so far as I can make out. So the word must mean a man who… who acknowledges nothing, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Say rather, a man who respects nothing,’ interrupted Pavel Petrovich and returned to the butter.

  ‘Who approaches everything from a critical point of view,’ commented Arkady.

  ‘But isn’t that just the same?’ asked Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘No, it isn’t just the same. The nihilist is a man who bows down to no authority, who takes no single principle on trust, however much respect be attached to that principle.’

  ‘And so, is that a good thing?’ interrupted Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘It depends from whose point of view, Uncle. For some it’s good, for others very bad.’

  ‘Really. Well, I can see it’s not for us. We, the older generation, think that without principles,’ (Pavel Petrovich pronounced the word princípes, in the soft French way, while Arkady on the contrary pronounced it ‘príntsiple’, stressing the first syllable) ‘without principes, taken on trust, as you say, we can’t move one step forward or breathe. Vous avez changé tout cela,2 God grant you good health and a general’s rank,3 and we will just gaze at you, gentlemen… what do you call yourselves?’

  ‘Nihilists,’ Arkady said very clearly.

  ‘Yes. Once there were Hegelists4 and now there are nihilists. We’ll see how you’ll manage to exist in a void, in space without air. And now, brother Nikolay Petrovich, please ring, it’s time for me to have my cocoa.’

  Nikolay Petrovich rang and called ‘Dunyasha!’ But instead of Dunyasha Fenechka herself came out on the terrace. She was a young woman of about twenty-three, all white and soft, with dark hair and dark eyes, with red, full lips like a child’s and delicate hands. She wore a neat cotton printed dress and a new pale blue scarf lay on her rounded shoulders. She carried a big cup of cocoa and as she put it in front of Pavel Petrovich, she was overcome with confusion; a hot red flush came up underneath the tender skin of her pretty face. She lowered her eyes and stopped at the table, just leaning on the very tips of her fingers. It was as if she was ashamed of having come but also as if she felt she had the right to come.

  Pavel Petrovich frowned sternly, and Nikolay Petrovich was embarrassed.

  ‘Good morning, Fenechka,’ he muttered.

  ‘Good morning,’ she answered in a low but audible voice and with a sideways look at Arkady, who gave her a friendly smile, she quietly left. She swayed a little as she walked, but it suited her.

  Silence reigned on the terrace for a few minutes. Pavel Petrovich sipped his cocoa and suddenly raised his head.

  ‘Here’s Mr Nihilist coming to join us,’ he said in an under-tone.

  Indeed Bazarov was coming through the garden, stepping over the flowerbeds. His canvas coat and trousers were spattered with mud. There was a clinging marsh plant round the crown of his old round hat. In his right hand he held a small bag, and in the bag something live was moving. He quickly came up to the terrace and said with a nod of his head:

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen. I’m sorry I’m late for tea, I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to find a place for my prisoners.’

  ‘What have you got there, leeches?’ asked Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘No, frogs.’

  ‘Do you eat them or breed them?’

  ‘They’re for experiments,’ Bazarov said calmly and went into the house.

  ‘He’s going to dissect them,’ commented Pavel Petrovich. ‘He doesn’t believe in principles but he does believe in frogs.’

  Arkady gave his uncle a pitying look, and Nikolay Petrovich furtively shrugged a shoulder. Pavel Petrovich himself sensed his joke had fallen flat and began to talk of farming and the new bailiff who had come to him the day before to complain of Foma, one of the workmen, for his ‘deboshery’ and impossible behaviour. ‘He’s such an old Aesop,’5 he’d said among other things, ‘going around everywhere proclaiming his wickedness. He’ll live a fool and die a fool.’

  VI

  Bazarov came back, sat down at the table and quickly began to drink his tea. Both brothers watched him in silence while Arkady stealthily glanced at his father and his uncle.

  ‘Did you walk a long way from here?’ Nikolay Petrovich eventually asked.

  ‘You’ve got a little swamp here, by the aspen copse. I put up five or six snipe there. You can go and kill them, Arkady.’

  ‘Don’t you shoot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you actually studying physics?’ asked Pavel Petrovich in his turn.

  ‘Yes, physics. And the natural sciences in general.’

  ‘People say the Teutons have recently had a lot of success in that field.’

  ‘Yes, the Germans are our teachers there,’ Bazarov said casually.

  Pavel Petrovich used the word Teutons instead of Germans ironically, but nobody noticed.

  ‘Do you have such a high opinion of the Germans?’ Pavel Petrovich said with extreme politeness. He was beginning to feel a secret irritation. His aristocratic nature was offended by Bazarov’s
complete relaxedness. This doctor’s son not only displayed no shyness, he even answered curtly and unwillingly, and there was something coarse, almost impertinent, in the tone of his voice.

  ‘The scientists over there are a clever lot.’

  ‘Really, really. Well, you probably don’t have such a favourable opinion of Russian scientists, do you?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘That is very laudable self-denial,’ said Pavel Petrovich, straightening his posture and putting his head back. ‘But how is it that Arkady Nikolaich was telling us just now that you don’t recognize any authorities? Don’t you believe in them?’

  ‘Why should I start recognizing them? And what should I believe in? If people talk sense to me, I agree with them, that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘And do Germans always talk sense?’ said Pavel Petrovich, and his face took on a detached and distant expression as if he had gone off to some empyrean height.

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Bazarov with a small yawn; he clearly did not want to continue the conversation.

  Pavel Petrovich gave Arkady a look, as if wanting to say to him: ‘Your friend’s polite, you must admit.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ he began again, not without some effort, ‘I for my sins am not too keen on the Germans. I’m not talking now of the Russian Germans: we know what kind of beast they are. But I don’t care for the German Germans. In the past they weren’t so bad; they then had – well, Schiller, or Goethe… My brother here is particularly fond of him… But they’re now nothing but chemists and materialists…’

  ‘A decent chemist is worth twenty times any poet,’ interrupted Bazarov.

  ‘Really,’ said Pavel Petrovich and slightly raised his eyebrows as if he felt sleepy. ‘So you don’t acknowledge art?’

  ‘The art of making money or getting rid of piles?’ exclaimed Bazarov with a scornful smile.

  ‘Well, well. That’s your little joke. So you must reject everything? Let’s assume that. That means, you only believe in science?’

  ‘I’ve already told you I don’t believe in anything. And what is science – science in general? There are sciences, as there are trades and professions; but science in general terms doesn’t exist at all.’

  ‘Very good. And do you have such a negative attitude to the other rules accepted in human society?’

  ‘What is this, a cross-examination?’ asked Bazarov.

  Pavel Petrovich went slightly pale… Nikolay Petrovich thought he should enter the conversation.

  ‘One day we’ll talk to you about this in a bit more detail, dear Yevgeny Vasilyich. We’ll learn what you think and tell you what we think. For my part I’m very pleased you’re studying the natural sciences. I’ve heard Liebig1 has made amazing discoveries about the fertilizing of fields. You can help me in my agricultural work: you can give me some useful advice.’

  ‘I’m at your service, Nikolay Petrovich. But we’ve a long way to get to Liebig! We need first to learn the alphabet and then tackle a book. But we haven’t yet got to A.’

  ‘Yes, I see you really are a nihilist,’ thought Nikolay Petrovich. ‘All the same, do let me come to you if I need to,’ he added aloud. ‘But now, Brother, I think it’s time for us to go and talk to the bailiff.’

  Pavel Petrovich got up from his chair.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, not looking at anyone, ‘it’s a pity to have been living like this for five years in the country, far away from great minds! You just become an utter fool. You try not to forget what you’ve been taught, and then – whoosh! – it turns out that it’s all nonsense and you’re told that sensible people don’t bother any more with such rubbish and that you’re just a backward idiot. What can one do! The young are clearly cleverer than we are.’

  Pavel Petrovich slowly turned on his heels and slowly went away. Nikolay Petrovich went off after him.

  ‘Is he always like that?’ Bazarov coolly asked Arkady as soon as the door had closed behind the two brothers.

  ‘Look, Yevgeny, you really were too rough with him,’ said Arkady. ‘You insulted him.’

  ‘So, why should I indulge these provincial aristocrats! It’s all just vanity, dandyism, the little ways of a society lion. Well, he should have continued his service career in Petersburg, if that’s what he wanted… Anyway, let’s not bother with him! Do you know, I’ve discovered a quite rare specimen of water beetle, Dytiscus marginatus. I’ll show it to you.’

  ‘I promised I’d tell you his story,’ Arkady began.

  ‘The story of the beetle?’

  ‘Stop it, Yevgeny. My uncle’s story. You’ll see he’s not the man you think him. He deserves sympathy rather than ridicule.’

  ‘I’m sure he does. But why are you going on about him?’

  ‘One ought to be fair, Yevgeny.’

  ‘How does that follow?’

  ‘No, listen…’

  And Arkady told him his uncle’s story. The reader will find it in the next chapter.

  VII

  Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov was educated first at home, like his younger brother Nikolay, then at the Corps des Pages.1 Since childhood he had been exceptionally good-looking; furthermore he had self-confidence, and a slightly mocking and sardonic wit – he couldn’t fail to please. He began to be seen everywhere as soon as he was commissioned an officer. He was made a fuss of and he indulged himself, he even played the fool and put on airs; but that too suited him. Women went mad over him, men called him a fop and secretly envied him. As has been said, he shared an apartment with his brother, whom he loved sincerely, although they were quite different. Nikolay Petrovich had a slight limp, small features, attractive but slightly sad, small, black eyes and soft, fine hair. He was happy doing nothing but he was also happy reading, and he was frightened of society. Pavel Petrovich never spent an evening at home, he was known for his courage and agility (he started to create a vogue for gymnastics among young men of fashion) and had read only five or six French books. At the age of twenty-eight he was already a captain. A glittering career awaited him. Suddenly everything changed.

  At that time there occasionally used to appear in Petersburg society a woman who is remembered to this day, Princess R. She had a husband, well educated and respectable if a bit of a fool; they had no children. She would suddenly go off abroad and as suddenly come back to Russia; she generally led an odd life. She had the reputation of being a giddy flirt, gave herself enthusiastically to all kinds of pleasures, danced till she dropped, laughed and joked with the young men to whom she was at home before dinner in the dim light of her drawing room. But at night she would weep and pray – she could find no peace anywhere and often used to walk up and down her room till morning, wringing her hands in misery, or she would sit, all pale and chilled, over her prayer book. Day broke, and again she was transformed into the society lady, again she would go out, laugh, chatter and virtually throw herself at anything that could afford her the slightest distraction. Her body was amazing; her plait of hair, golden in colour and heavy as gold, fell below her knees; but no one would call her a beauty; her face’s only good feature was her eyes, and not really her actual eyes – which were small and grey – but their gaze, swift and deep, carefree to foolhardiness and pensive to desperation, their enigmatic gaze. Something unusual shone there even when her tongue was babbling the most vacuous of speeches. She dressed exquisitely.

  Pavel Petrovich met her at a ball, danced with her the whole mazurka, during which she uttered not a single word of sense, and fell passionately in love with her. Accustomed to conquests, here too he quickly achieved his goal; but the ease of his triumph did not cool his ardour. On the contrary: he became ever more painfully, ever more strongly attracted to this woman, who, even at the moment when she irrevocably surrendered herself, kept secret and inaccessible a place where none could penetrate. What lay enshrined in that soul – God knows! She seemed at the mercy of some secret powers, powers she herself was unaware of; they played with her as they chose; her small min
d could not cope with their whims. Her whole behaviour displayed a series of contradictions; the only letters which could have aroused her husband’s justifiable suspicion she wrote to a man who was practically a stranger, and her love showed itself as melancholy; she didn’t really laugh and joke with the man she had chosen, whom she would listen to and watch with bewilderment. Sometimes, usually quite suddenly, that bewilderment became cold terror; her face assumed a deathly, wild expression; she would lock herself in her bedroom, and her maid, putting her ear to the keyhole, could hear her muffled sobs. Several times, returning home after a lovers’ meeting, Kirsanov felt in his heart that shattering and bitter disappointment that rises in the heart after a decisive failure. ‘What more do I want?’ he asked himself, but his heart went on aching. Once he gave her a ring with a sphinx engraved on its stone.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘A sphinx?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘and that sphinx is you.’

  ‘Is it really me?’ she asked and slowly raised her enigmatic gaze towards him. ‘Do you know, that’s very flattering?’ she added with a slight smile, but her eyes still had that strange look.

  It was painful for Pavel Petrovich even while Princess R. loved him; but when she became indifferent to him, and that happened quite soon, he nearly went mad. He was racked with jealousy; he gave her no peace and trailed everywhere after her; his persistent pursuit of her got on her nerves and she went abroad. He resigned his commission, in spite of the pleas of his friends and the exhortations of his superiors, and went off after the princess. He spent four years in foreign climes, sometimes pursuing her, sometimes deliberately losing sight of her. He was ashamed of himself, he was angry at his cowardice… but nothing helped. Her image, that mysterious, almost meaningless but spell-binding image, had entered too deep into his soul.

  Once in Baden2 they renewed their former relationship; it seemed she had never loved him so passionately… but in a month it was all over: the flame flared up for the last time and was extinguished for ever. Foreseeing the inevitable parting, he wanted at least to remain friends with her, as if friendship with such a woman was possible… She quietly left Baden and thenceforth consistently avoided Kirsanov. He returned to Russia and tried to live the life he had before, but he couldn’t settle into his old routine. Like a man with poison in him, he roamed from place to place; he still went out, he kept all the habits of a man of the world; he could boast of two or three new conquests; but he no longer expected anything very much either of himself or of others, and he undertook nothing new. He aged and went grey; evenings in his club, a sardonic ennui, dispassionate arguments in male society became necessities for him – a bad sign, as we know. Of course he didn’t even consider marriage. He spent ten years in this way, sterile, dull years which went by quickly, terrifyingly quickly. Nowhere does time fly as in Russia; they say, it goes quicker in prison. One day at dinner in his club Pavel Petrovich learnt of the death of Princess R. She had died in Paris in a state very close to insanity. He got up from the table and for a long time walked through the rooms of the club, standing by the card players as if rooted to the ground, but he didn’t go back home any earlier than usual. In a short while he received a parcel addressed to him; it contained the ring he had given the princess. She had drawn a cross on the sphinx and sent him a message that the cross was the solution to the riddle.