Fathers and Sons Page 6

  This happened in 1848, at the very time when Nikolay Petrovich, having lost his wife, was coming to St Petersburg. Pavel Petrovich had hardly seen his brother since he’d been living in the country: Nikolay Petrovich’s marriage coincided with the very first days of Pavel Petrovich’s relationship with the princess. When he came back from abroad, Pavel Petrovich went to his brother’s with the intention of staying with him a couple of months, to enjoy his happiness, but he only lasted a week with him. The difference in the two brothers’ situation was too great. In 1848 this difference became less: Nikolay Petrovich had lost his wife, Pavel Petrovich had lost his memories; after the princess’s death he tried not to think of her. But Nikolay had the consciousness of a well-spent life, he could watch his son growing up. Pavel on the other hand was a lonely bachelor and was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come.

  This time was even more difficult for Pavel Petrovich than for others: in losing his past, he had lost everything.

  ‘I am not asking you now to Marino,’ Nikolay Petrovich once said to him (he had called his property by that name in honour of his wife),3 ‘even when my wife was alive you were bored there, and now I think you’d die there of boredom.’

  ‘I was still foolish then, and restless,’ answered Pavel Petrovich, ‘I’ve settled down since then even if I haven’t grown wiser. But now, if you’ll let me, I’m ready to come and live with you for good.’

  Instead of answering, Nikolay Petrovich embraced him; but more than six months went by after this conversation before Pavel Petrovich decided to make good his intention. However, once having settled in the country, he didn’t again leave it, not even in those three winters which Nikolay Petrovich spent in Petersburg with his son. He began to read, mostly in English; generally speaking, he organized his whole life in the English manner; he saw little of the neighbours and only went out to attend the elections, during which he usually said nothing, just occasionally scaring landowners of the old sort with his liberal sallies, without getting closer to the representatives of the new generation. Both parties found him arrogant; and both respected him for his fine aristocratic manners and for his rumoured conquests; they respected him because he dressed beautifully and always stayed in the best room of the best hotel; because he generally dined well and had even once dined with Wellington at the table of King Louis-Philippe;4 because he always travelled with a sterling silver dressing-case and a portable campaign bath; because he always smelt of an unusual, strikingly ‘noble’ scent; because he played a masterly game of whist and always lost; finally they respected him too for his irreproachable honesty. The ladies found him a charming melancholic, but he had nothing to do with the ladies…

  ‘So you see, Yevgeny,’ said Arkady, finishing his story, ‘your view of my uncle is quite unfair! I’m not mentioning that he has several times got my father out of difficulties and given him all his money – perhaps you don’t know, their estate isn’t divided5 – but he is ready to help anyone, and by the way he always speaks up for the peasants; it’s true, when he talks to them he wrinkles his nose and sniffs eau-de-cologne…’

  ‘It’s quite obvious: a case of nerves,’ Bazarov interrupted.

  ‘Maybe, only he has a very kind heart. And he’s far from stupid. He has given me really useful advice… especially… especially about relationships with women.’

  ‘Aha! He’s burnt himself on hot milk and now blows on other people’s water. An old story.’

  ‘Well, in a word,’ Arkady went on, ‘he is deeply unhappy, believe me; it’s wrong to despise him.’

  ‘Who is despising him?’ Bazarov countered. ‘But I’ll still say that an individual who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman’s love, who, when he’s lost that card, collapses and lets himself go so he’s no good for anything, isn’t a man, isn’t a male. You say he’s unhappy: you know best; but all the nonsense hasn’t been knocked out of him. I am certain he seriously imagines himself to be an intelligent man because he reads old Galignani6 and once a month gets a peasant off a flogging.’

  ‘And remember his education, and the period when he lived,’ Arkady commented.

  ‘His education?’ Bazarov continued. ‘Every man should educate himself – like me, for example… And the period – why should I depend on a period? It can depend on me. No, my friend, it’s nothing but decadence and frivolity! And what of those mysterious relations between man and woman? We physiologists know all about those relations. Just go and study the anatomy of the eye: where does that enigmatic gaze you’re talking about come from? It’s all romanticism, nonsense, decay, artist’s trickery. Better come and look at a beetle.’

  And the two friends went off to Bazarov’s room, which had already developed a kind of surgical smell, mixed with that of cheap tobacco.

  VIII

  Pavel Petrovich didn’t stay very long during his brother’s conversation with the bailiff. The bailiff, a tall, thin man with a saccharine, feeble voice and dishonest eyes, answered all Nikolay Petrovich’s remarks with ‘Most certainly, sir, that’s no news to me, sir,’ and tried to cast the peasants as drunkards and thieves. The estate, which had recently been put on the new basis, squeaked liked a wheel that hadn’t been oiled, cracked like home-made furniture made of unseasoned wood. Nikolay Petrovich didn’t lose heart but quite often would sigh and get abstracted in thought: he felt that things wouldn’t work without money, but he had almost run out of funds. Arkady had been telling the truth: Pavel Petrovich had more than once helped his brother; more than once, seeing how he was struggling and racking his brain for a way out, Pavel Petrovich slowly went up to a window and, putting his hands in his pockets, muttered through his teeth: ‘Mais je puis te donner de l’argent’1 – and gave money to him; but on this particular day he himself didn’t have any and he thought it better to remove himself. Domestic unpleasantness made him feel depressed; he also very often thought that Nikolay Petrovich, for all his keenness and diligence, didn’t have the right approach to things, though he couldn’t have pointed out where Nikolay Petrovich was making mistakes. ‘My brother isn’t practical enough,’ he used to say to himself, ‘people cheat him.’ On the other hand Nikolay Petrovich had a high opinion of Pavel Petrovich’s practical sense and always asked his advice. ‘I am soft and weak, I’ve lived all my life in the sticks,’ he used to say, ‘but you’ve lived a lot among people, and it shows, you know them well: you have an eagle’s gaze.’ In response to these words Pavel Petrovich only turned away, but he didn’t disabuse his brother.

  He left Nikolay Petrovich in his study and walked along the corridor which divided the front part of the house from the back. When he got to a low door he hesitated and stopped, tugged his moustache and knocked.

  ‘Who is that? Come in.’ It was Fenechka’s voice.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Pavel Petrovich and opened the door.

  Fenechka jumped quickly off the chair on which she had been sitting with the baby and, handing him to a girl, who at once carried him out of the room, she hastily adjusted her kerchief.

  ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ Pavel Petrovich began, not looking at her. ‘I just wanted to ask you… I think they’re sending to town today… Could you ask them to buy me some green tea?’

  ‘Of course,’ answered Fenechka. ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘I suppose half a pound will be enough. But I see you’ve had changes here,’ he added, with a quick look round the room, which also took in Fenechka’s face. ‘These curtains,’ he said, seeing she didn’t understand him.

  ‘Yes, the curtains. Nikolay Petrovich gave them to us. They’ve been up a while.’

  ‘But it’s a long time since I’ve been in your room. It’s very nice here now.’

  ‘Thanks to Nikolay Petrovich,’ Fenechka whispered.

  ‘Are you more comfortable here than in the wing where you were?’ asked Pavel Petrovich politely, but
without a trace of a smile.

  ‘Of course we’re more comfortable.’

  ‘Who’s been put there now instead of you?’

  ‘The laundrywomen are there now.’

  ‘Ah!’

  Pavel Petrovich fell silent. ‘Now he’ll go away,’ thought Fenechka, but he didn’t, and she stood stock-still in front of him, slightly moving her fingers.

  ‘Why did you have your little boy taken out?’ Pavel Petrovich said eventually. ‘I love children. Do show him to me.’

  Fenechka blushed with embarrassment and pleasure. She was frightened of Pavel Petrovich: he hardly ever spoke to her.

  ‘Dunyasha,’ she called, ‘please bring Mitya in.’ (Fenechka used the polite form of address2 to everyone in the house.) ‘But no, wait. We must put some clothes on him.’

  Fenechka moved to the door.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘It won’t take me a minute,’ answered Fenechka and rushed out.

  Pavel Petrovich was alone and this time he looked round with particular attention. The small, low-ceilinged room in which he was standing was very clean and comfortable. It smelt of new varnish on the floor, of camomile and lemon balm. Chairs with lyre-shaped backs stood along the walls; they had been bought by the late general in Poland, during the campaign against Napoleon. In one corner rose a bed under a muslin curtain, next to an iron-bound trunk with a domed lid. In the opposite corner a lamp was burning in front of a big dark icon of St Nicholas the Thaumaturge;3 a tiny china egg hung on the saint’s breast, attached to his halo by a red ribbon. On the window-sills stood glass jars of last year’s jam, green and translucent, and carefully sealed; Fenechka herself had written ‘goozberry’ in big letters on their paper covers; it was Nikolay Petrovich’s favourite jam. A cage with a short-tailed siskin hung from the ceiling; the bird never stopped hopping and twittering, and the cage never stopped shaking and trembling; seeds of hemp pattered on the floor. Between the windows, above a small chest of drawers, hung some rather poor photographic portraits of Nikolay Petrovich in various poses, taken by an itinerant photographer; there too hung a photograph of Fenechka herself, which was extremely unsuccessful: a face with no eyes giving a strained smile in a dark frame – that was all one could make out. Above Fenechka, Yermolov4 in a Circassian cloak was frowning menacingly at the distant mountains of the Caucasus, glaring from under a silk pin-holder that had slipped right down his forehead.

  Five minutes went by. There was rustling and whispering from the next room. Pavel Petrovich picked up a well-thumbed book from the chest of drawers, an odd volume of Masalsky’s Streltsy,5 and turned over a few pages… The door opened, and Fenechka came in with Mitya in her arms. She had put on him a little red shirt with braid on the collar, had brushed his hair and wiped his face. He was breathing noisily, jerking his whole body about and moving his little hands to and fro as all healthy babies do. But his smart shirt clearly had had an effect on him: his whole plump little face radiated pleasure. Fenechka had tidied her own hair and put on a better kerchief, but she could have stayed as she was. And indeed is there anything in the world more delightful than a beautiful young mother with a healthy baby in her arms?

  ‘Big boy,’ Pavel Petrovich said condescendingly and tickled Mitya’s double chin with the tip of the long nail of his index finger; the baby stared at the bird and laughed.

  ‘That’s Uncle,’ said Fenechka, bending her head towards him and rocking him a little while Dunyasha surreptitiously put a lit scented candle on the window-sill and stood it on a coin.

  ‘How old is he, then?’ asked Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘Six months. Seven very soon, on the eleventh.’

  ‘Won’t it be eight, Fedosya Nikolayevna?’ Dunyasha shyly ventured.

  ‘No, of course it’s seven!’ The baby laughed again, stared at the trunk and suddenly grabbed at his mother’s nose and lips with his whole hand. ‘Naughty boy,’ said Fenechka, without moving her face away from his grasp.

  ‘He looks like my brother,’ Pavel Petrovich observed.

  ‘Who else could he look like?’ thought Fenechka.

  ‘Yes,’ Pavel Petrovich went on as if talking to himself, ‘a definite likeness.’ He looked at Fenechka attentively, almost sadly.

  ‘That’s Uncle,’ she repeated, now in a whisper.

  ‘Ah! Pavel! That’s where you are!’ There suddenly came the voice of Nikolay Petrovich.

  Pavel Petrovich hastily turned round and frowned; but his brother gave him a look of such joy and gratitude that he could only respond with a smile.

  ‘You’ve a splendid little chap,’ he said and looked at his watch. ‘I came in here about my tea…’

  And resuming his expression of indifference, Pavel Petrovich now left the room.

  ‘Did he come in just like that?’ Nikolay Petrovich asked Fenechka.

  ‘Yes, just like that. He knocked and came in.’

  ‘Hm. And has Arkasha been to see you again?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t. Nikolay Petrovich, shouldn’t I move into the wing?’

  ‘Why should you?’

  ‘I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for a while.’

  ‘N… no,’ Nikolay Petrovich stuttered and rubbed his forehead. ‘It’s too late… Good morning, baby,’ he said with sudden animation and he went up to the little boy and kissed him on the cheek. Then he bowed slightly and put his lips to Fenechka’s hand, lying white as milk on Mitya’s red shirt.

  ‘Nikolay Petrovich! What are you doing?’ she murmured and lowered her eyes, then gently raised them again… The expression in her eyes was charming as she looked up from under her brows, with a loving, slightly foolish laugh.

  Nikolay Petrovich had got to know Fenechka in the following way. Once, three years previously, he had had to spend the night in an inn in a distant district town. He had been pleasantly impressed by the cleanliness of the room he was given and the freshness of the bed linen. ‘I wonder if the landlady isn’t German,’ he had thought. But she turned out to be Russian, a woman of about fifty, neatly dressed, with an attractive, intelligent face and a reserved way of speaking. He started talking to her over tea. He liked her very much. Nikolay Petrovich at that time had just moved into his new home and, not wishing to use serfs, was looking for free servants to hire. The landlady for her part was complaining about how few visitors came to the town and about times being difficult. He offered her the job of housekeeper in his house; she agreed. Her husband had died long ago, leaving her just one daughter, Fenechka. A couple of weeks later Arina Savishna (that was the new housekeeper’s name) and her daughter arrived at Marino and were lodged in the wing. Nikolay Petrovich had made a successful choice. No one talked much about Fenechka, who was already seventeen, and she was hardly seen ; she led a quiet, retiring existence, and it was only on Sundays that Nikolay Petrovich noticed her delicate profile and white face in a corner of the parish church. More than a year went by like this.

  One morning Arina came into his study and, bowing low, as she usually did, asked if he could do something to help her daughter, who had had a spark from the stove in her eye. Nikolay Petrovich, like all landowners living on their estates, dabbled in medicine and had even ordered a homoeopathic medicine chest. He at once told Arina to bring in the patient. When she learnt the master had summoned her, Fenechka was very scared but still she followed her mother in. Nikolay Petrovich took her up to the window and held her head in both his hands. Having carefully examined her red and inflamed eye, he prescribed an eyewash, which he made up himself then and there, and, ripping up his handkerchief, he showed her how to soak the compress. When he had finished, Fenechka was about to leave. ‘Kiss the master’s hand, you stupid girl,’ Arina said to her. Nikolay Petrovich wouldn’t give her his hand and, embarrassed himself, kissed her on the parting of her bowed head. Fenechka’s eye soon mended, but the impression she had made on Nikolay Petrovich didn’t pass so quickly. He kept seeing that pure, delicate, timidly raised face. He felt that
soft hair under the palms of his hands, saw those innocent, slightly open lips, showing pearly teeth gleaming moistly in the sun. He started looking closely at her in church and tried to engage her in conversation. At first she was shy of him, and one evening, seeing him coming towards her on a narrow footpath people had trampled through a rye field, she went and hid in the tall, thick rye, full of wormwood and cornflowers, so he shouldn’t catch sight of her. He could see her head behind the golden lattice of heads of rye, through which she looked out like a little wild animal, and he shouted to her in a friendly voice:

  ‘Good evening, Fenechka! I don’t bite.’