Fathers and Sons Read online

  ‘Good evening,’ she whispered, staying behind her barrier.

  She was gradually becoming used to him, though she was still shy in his presence, when her mother Arina suddenly died from cholera. Where was Fenechka to go? She had inherited her mother’s love of order, her good sense and her reserve; but she was so young, so alone; Nikolay Petrovich himself was so kind and gentle… There is no need to finish the story…

  ‘So my brother came in to see you?’ Nikolay Petrovich asked her. ‘He just knocked and came in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. Let me give Mitya a rock.’

  And Nikolay Petrovich began to toss him almost up to the ceiling, to the baby’s great pleasure and to the no small anxiety of his mother, who at every toss stretched out her arms towards his bare legs.

  But Pavel Petrovich went back to his elegant study, with its walls, papered in a handsome dark grey, displaying weapons hung on a multicoloured Persian rug, with its walnut furniture upholstered in dark-green velveteen, a ‘Renaissance’ bookcase of old black oak and bronze statuettes on a magnificent writing table, with its fireplace6… He threw himself on a couch, put his hands behind his head and remained motionless, staring at the ceiling almost in desperation. Did he want to conceal the expression on his face from the very walls, or was there another reason? He got up, opened the heavy curtains at the windows and again threw himself down on the couch.

  IX

  Bazarov too met Fenechka that same day. He and Arkady were walking in the garden, and he was explaining to him why some young trees hadn’t rooted, especially the oaks.

  ‘You ought to be planting more silver poplars here, and firs, and limes, I suppose, and putting in some good topsoil. Now that arbour has taken well,’ he added, ‘because acacia and lilac are good children, they don’t need any care. Look, someone’s there.’

  Fenechka was sitting in the arbour with Dunyasha and Mitya. Bazarov stopped, and Arkady nodded to Fenechka like an old friend.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Bazarov asked him as soon as they had gone past. ‘She’s so pretty!’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘It’s obvious. There’s only one pretty one.’

  Now without embarrassment Arkady explained to him in a few words who Fenechka was.

  ‘Aha!’ said Bazarov. ‘Your father knows what’s good for him. I like your father, I really do! Good for him. But I should meet her,’ he added and walked back to the arbour.

  ‘Yevgeny!’ Arkady shouted after him in a fright. ‘For God’s sake be careful.’

  ‘Don’t be so worried,’ said Bazarov. ‘I’ve been around, I’ve lived in cities.’

  When he came up to Fenechka he took off his cap.

  ‘May I introduce myself,’ he began, bowing politely, ‘I’m a friend of Arkady Nikolaich – and a peaceable fellow.’

  Fenechka got up from the bench and looked at him silently.

  ‘What a splendid little boy!’ Bazarov went on. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t yet brought bad luck1 to anyone. Why are his cheeks so red? Is he teething?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fenechka, ‘four teeth have come through, and now his gums are swollen again.’

  ‘Show me… don’t be scared, I’m a doctor.’

  Bazarov took the baby in his arms, and to the amazement of both Fenechka and Dunyasha Mitya offered no resistance and wasn’t frightened.

  ‘I see, I see… It’s fine, all’s well. He’ll have a good mouth of teeth. Tell me if anything happens. And is your own health good?’

  ‘Yes, thank God.’

  ‘Thank God indeed, that’s the best thing. And how’s yours?’

  Dunyasha, a girl who was very prim in the house but full of fun once outside the gates, just answered him with a snort of laughter.

  ‘Excellent. Here’s your champion back.’

  Fenechka took the baby into her arms.

  ‘He was so quiet with you,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘All children are with me,’ answered Bazarov, ‘I have a secret.’

  ‘Children know who loves them,’ remarked Dunyasha.

  ‘They do,’ Fenechka added. ‘Now Mitya just won’t go into some people’s arms.’

  ‘Will he come to me?’ asked Arkady who, having stood at a distance for a while, now had come up to the arbour.

  He beckoned to Mitya, but Mitya threw back his head and began to cry, to Fenechka’s great embarrassment.

  ‘Another time, when he’s got used to me,’ Arkady said indulgently, and the two friends went off.

  ‘What’s her name?’ asked Bazarov.

  ‘Fenechka… Fedosya,’ answered Arkady.

  ‘And her father’s? One should know that too.’

  ‘Nikolayevna.’

  ‘Bene.2 I like her for not being too embarrassed. I suppose some people would have criticized her for that. What nonsense! What’s there to be embarrassed about? She’s a mother – and she’s right.’

  ‘She is right,’ said Arkady, ‘but my father…’

  ‘He’s right too,’ Bazarov interrupted.

  ‘No, I don’t find that.’

  ‘You obviously don’t like there being another little heir.’

  ‘You ought to be ashamed to think I’d have such thoughts!’ Arkady answered angrily. ‘I don’t find my father wrong from that point of view; I consider he should marry her.’

  ‘Oh-ho!’ Bazarov said calmly. ‘What nobility of spirit! You still attach some significance to marriage. I didn’t expect that from you.’

  The friends took several steps in silence.

  ‘I’ve seen your father’s whole set-up,’ Bazarov began again. ‘The cattle are poor, and the horses in bad shape. The buildings too aren’t up to much, and the labourers look complete and utter idlers; and the bailiff is either a fool or a rogue: which – I haven’t yet worked out properly.’

  ‘You’re being severe today, Yevgeny Vasilyevich.’

  ‘And the good muzhiks will absolutely swindle your father. You know the proverb “The Russian muzhik will have God himself for his breakfast.”’

  ‘I’m beginning to agree with my uncle,’ said Arkady. ‘You have a decidedly poor opinion of Russians.’

  ‘Who cares! The Russian’s sole virtue lies in his having a very low opinion of himself. The important thing is that twice two makes four, and everything else is a load of nonsense.’

  ‘And is nature a load of nonsense?’ said Arkady, looking pensively into the distance at the many colours of the fields in the mellow and beautiful light of the sun, which was now low in the sky.

  ‘Nature too is nonsense – in your meaning of the word nature. Nature isn’t a temple but a workshop, and man is a workman in it.’

  At that very moment the lingering notes of a cello came to them. Someone was playing Schubert’s Erwartung,3 with feeling if with a hand that lacked practice, and the sweet melody filled the air like the smell of honey.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Bazarov with surprise.

  ‘It’s my father.’

  ‘Your father plays the cello?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old is your father?’

  ‘Forty-four.’

  Bazarov suddenly roared with laughter.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘For pity’s sake! A man of forty-four, a pater familias,4 living in the province of *** – and he plays the cello.’

  Bazarov went on laughing, but Arkady, for all the reverence he bore his master, this time didn’t even smile.

  X

  About two weeks went by. Life at Marino followed its regular pattern: Arkady relaxed, and Bazarov worked. Everyone in the house had become used to him, to his informal manners, to his brusque and laconic way of speaking. Fenechka in particular felt so much at ease with him that one night she had him woken: Mitya had convulsions, and Bazarov came and in his usual way, laughing a bit, yawning a bit, sat in her room for a couple of hours and helped the little boy. Pavel Petrovich on the other hand grew to ha
te Bazarov with a passion: he thought him arrogant, insolent, cynical, vulgar; he suspected Bazarov had no respect for him, almost despised him – him, Pavel Kirsanov! Nikolay Petrovich was a bit scared of the young ‘nihilist’ and wondered whether he had a good influence on Arkady; but he found pleasure in listening to him and being present at his physics and chemistry experiments. Bazarov had brought a microscope with him and fiddled about with it for hours. The servants too had become attached to him although he teased them: they still felt he was one of them and not a ‘master’. Dunyasha was happy to giggle with him and surreptitiously gave him significant glances as she ran past him like a little quail. Pyotr, an extraordinarily conceited and stupid fellow, always anxiously wrinkling up his forehead, whose entire virtue lay in an obsequious manner, in being able to spell out his words and in frequently brushing his coat – he too smirked and beamed if ever Bazarov paid him any attention. The farm boys ran after the ‘dokhtoor’ like puppies. Only old Prokofyich didn’t like him, serving him his food at table with a gloomy face. He called him a ‘horse-knacker’ and a ‘crook’, and said that Bazarov with his side whiskers looked a real pig in a bush. Prokofyich in his own way was just as much an aristocrat as Pavel Petrovich.

  Now came the best days in the year – the first days of June. The weather was lovely. It’s true there was another threat of cholera in the distance, but the people of the province of *** were already used to its visits. Bazarov would get up very early and go off a mile or two away, not for a walk – he couldn’t abide walks without a purpose – but to collect grasses and insects. He sometimes took Arkady with him. On the way back they usually argued, and Arkady was usually the loser although he spoke more than his friend.

  Once for some reason they were late back. Nikolay Petrovich went out into the garden to meet them and when he got as far as the arbour he suddenly heard the quick footsteps and voices of the two young men. They were walking on the other side of the arbour and couldn’t see him.

  ‘You don’t know my father well enough,’ said Arkady.

  Nikolay Petrovich concealed himself.

  ‘Your father’s a good fellow,’ said Bazarov, ‘but he’s a pensioner from another age, he’s had his day.’

  Nikolay Petrovich listened carefully… Arkady made no reply.

  ‘The pensioner’ stood motionless for a couple of minutes and went off home.

  ‘The other day I saw he was reading Pushkin,’ Bazarov meanwhile went on. ‘Do please explain to him that that’s no good. He isn’t a boy. It’s time he gave up that nonsense. And what a thing to be a romantic in this day and age! Give him something sensible to read.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Arkady.

  ‘Well, first, I think, Büchner’s Stoff und Kraft.’1

  ‘I quite agree,’ Arkady said approvingly. ‘Stoff und Kraft is popularly written…’

  ‘So you and I’ve become “pensioners”,’ Nikolay Petrovich said to his brother that day after dinner as they sat in Pavel Petrovich’s study. ‘We’ve had our day. In the end maybe Bazarov’s right. But I have to say I find one thing painful: I had hoped that Arkady and I would find ourselves getting closer and fonder of each other, but it appears I’ve got left behind, he’s gone off ahead of me, and we can’t understand each other.’

  ‘But why has he got ahead? And what sets him so far apart from us?’ Pavel Petrovich exclaimed impatiently. ‘All this has been knocked into his head by this signor, this nihilist. I loathe the little quack. In my opinion he’s just a charlatan. I am sure that for all his frogs he hasn’t progressed very far even in physics.’

  ‘No, dear Brother, don’t say that. Bazarov is a clever man and knows a lot.’

  ‘And that repellent self-esteem,’ Pavel Petrovich interrupted again.

  ‘Yes,’ Nikolay Petrovich remarked, ‘self-esteem he does have. But it seems one can’t do without it. Only this is what I don’t understand. I think I do everything to keep up with the times. I’ve settled my peasants, set up a farm so I am even known as a “red” all over the province. I read, I study, I generally try to be up to the demands made on me by the modern world – and they say I’ve had my day. So, Brother, I myself am beginning to think I may well have done.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is why. Today I was sitting and reading Pushkin… I remember, my eye had been caught by “The Gypsies”2… Suddenly Arkady came up to me and without a word, with an expression of tender compassion, he gently removed my book, as one does to a child, and put in front of me another book, a German one… he smiled and went off, taking Pushkin.’

  ‘Really! What book did he give you?’

  ‘This one.’

  And Nikolay Petrovich took out of the back pocket of his coat the ninth edition of Büchner’s famous pamphlet.

  Pavel Petrovich turned over some pages.

  ‘Hm!’ he grunted. ‘Arkady Nikolayevich is bothering about your education. So have you tried to read it?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘Either I’m stupid or it’s all nonsense. It must be I’m stupid.’

  ‘But you haven’t forgotten your German?’ Pavel Petrovich asked.

  ‘I understand German.’

  Pavel Petrovich again turned over some pages and looked at his brother with a frown. Neither of them said anything.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Nikolay Petrovich began again, clearly wanting to change the subject of conversation. ‘I had a letter from Kolyazin.’

  ‘Matvey Ilyich?’

  ‘Yes. He’s come to *** to do an inspection of the province.3 He’s become a bigwig now and writes to me that as a relation he wants to see us and invites us both with Arkady to town.’

  ‘Will you go?’ asked Pavel Petrovich.

  ‘No. And will you?’

  ‘I won’t either. That’s all I need – to traipse thirty miles for a glass of something. Mathieu wants to show off to us in all his glory. To hell with him! He’ll get enough provincial flattery and will survive without ours. What’s so great about Privy Councillor!4 If I’d gone on in that stupid service career I’d have been a general aide-de-camp by now.5 And then you and I are pensioners.’

  ‘Yes, dear Brother. I can see it’s time to order our coffins and cross our arms over our breast,’ Nikolay Petrovich said with a sigh.

  ‘Well, I won’t give in so quickly,’ his brother muttered. ‘That medical person and I will have another set-to, I foresee it.’

  The set-to occurred that very evening over tea. Pavel Petrovich had come into the drawing room all ready for the fray, in a decisive and irritable mood. He was just looking for a pretext to attack the enemy; but the pretext was long in coming. Bazarov generally didn’t talk much in front of the ‘Kirsanov old gentlemen’ (as he called the two brothers), and that evening he was feeling out of sorts and drank cup after cup in silence. Pavel Petrovich was all on fire with impatience; at last his desires were fulfilled.

  The name of a neighbouring landowner came up. ‘Useless creature, aristocratic trash,’ calmly commented Bazarov, who had come across him in St Petersburg.

  ‘May I ask you a question?’ Pavel Petrovich began, and his lips began to tremble. ‘By your way of thinking do the words “useless creature” and “aristocrat” mean one and the same thing?’

  ‘I said “aristocratic trash”,’ said Bazarov, lazily taking a sip of tea.

  ‘You did indeed. But I assume that you have the same opinion of aristocrats as you have of aristocratic trash. I feel it my duty to inform you that I do not share that opinion. I venture to say that everyone knows me to be a liberal man, a lover of progress; but that is precisely why I respect aristocrats – real aristocrats. Remember, my dear sir,’ (at these words Bazarov looked up at Pavel Petrovich) ‘remember my dear sir,’ he repeated acidly ‘the aristocrats of England. They do not give up one iota of their rights, and that is why they respect the rights of others; they demand what is due to them, and that is why they themselves perform what is due from them. Th
e aristocracy gave England freedom and maintains it.’

  ‘We’ve heard that old story many times,’ Bazarov countered, ‘but what do you want to demonstrate by that?’

  ‘By thert, my dear sir, I want to demonstrate,’ (Pavel Petrovich when he got angry deliberately mispronounced that in an affected way although he knew very well that proper usage didn’t admit it. This idiosyncrasy was the remnant of traditions going back to the time of Alexander I. The great men of the day, on the rare occasions when they spoke their mother tongue, would use such corruptions of language to show we are Russians through and through, at the same time we are noblemen who are licensed to ignore school rules) ‘by thert I want to demonstrate that, without a sense of one’s own dignity, without self-respect – and in the aristocrat these feelings are highly developed – there is no solid foundation for the public… for the bien public,6 for the edifice of society. Character, my dear sir, is the key; man’s character must be firm as a rock, because on it everything is built. I know very well, for example, that you see fit to ridicule my habits, my clothes, even my personal fastidiousness – but all this comes from a sense of self-respect, from a sense of duty, yes, sir, yes, duty. I live in the country, in the back of beyond, but I don’t let myself go, I have respect for the human being I am.’

  ‘Excuse me, Pavel Petrovich,’ said Bazarov, ‘there you are respecting yourself and sitting with your arms folded. What does that do for the bien public? Without self-respect you’d be doing exactly the same.’

  Pavel Petrovich went pale.

  ‘That’s a quite different question. It certainly doesn’t suit me to explain to you now why I’m sitting with my arms folded, to use your phrase. I want only to say that aristocracy is a principle, and in our day and age only amoral and worthless people can live without principles. I said that to Arkady the day after he came here and I say it again now to you. Don’t you think so, Nikolay?’

  Nikolay Petrovich nodded in assent.

  ‘Aristocracy, liberalism, progress, principles,’ Bazarov was saying meanwhile, ‘goodness, what a lot of foreign… and useless words! A Russian doesn’t need them, even if they come free.’