Fathers and Sons (21 page)

‘One must organize one’s life so every moment in it has significance,’ Arkady stated thoughtfully.

‘Who’s talking? Significance, even if it’s false, is very nice, and you can make do even with insignificance… but petty little
problems… they’re the trouble.’

‘Petty problems needn’t exist for anyone, provided he refuses to admit them.’

‘Hm… you’re stating an inverted commonplace.’

‘What? What do you mean by that term?’

‘I mean this. You say, for example, that education is useful. That’s a commonplace. But if you say that education is harmful,
that’s an inverted commonplace. It’s a bit flashier, but really it’s the same.’

‘Where is the truth then, on which side?’

‘Where? I’ll answer you like an echo – where?’

‘You are in a depressed mood today, Yevgeny.’

‘Really? I must have caught the sun and I shouldn’t eat so many raspberries.’

‘In that case it might be a good idea to have a nap,’ Arkady remarked.

‘Right, only don’t look at me. Everyone looks stupid when he’s asleep.’

‘But what does it matter to you what people think of you?’

‘I don’t know how to answer you. A real man oughtn’t to
care about that. You don’t think about a real man, he’s to be obeyed or loathed.’

‘That’s odd! I don’t loathe anyone,’ Arkady said, having thought a moment.

‘But I loathe so many. You’re so gentle, a softy, you’re not going to loathe anybody!… You’re shy, you lack self-esteem…’

Arkady interrupted: ‘So you do have self-esteem, do you? You have such a high opinion of yourself.’

Bazarov paused.

‘When I do meet a man who can hold his own with me,’ he said deliberately, ‘then I’ll change my opinion of myself. As for
loathing… ! For example, today you said as we walked past the cottage of our village headman Filip, that nice white one –
“There,” you said, “Russia will come to a perfect state when every last muzhik has a house like that, and every one of us
must try and bring that about…” But I conceived a loathing for that last muzhik, Filip or Sidor, for whom I must work myself
to the bone and who won’t even say thank you to me… and what do I need his thank you for? Well, he’ll be living in a white
cottage while I’ll be pushing up the daisies. So, next point?’

‘Yevgeny… I’ve had enough of listening to you today. Willy-nilly it makes one agree with those who criticize you for lack
of principles.’

‘You’re talking like your uncle. Principles don’t exist – you haven’t grasped that yet! – but sensations do. Everything derives
from sensations.’

‘How is that?’

‘Like this. Take me, for example. I advocate a negative attitude – by virtue of a sensation. I like negatives, my brain’s
made that way – and that’s all it is! Why do I like chemistry? Why do you like apples – also by virtue of a sensation. It’s
all one and the same. People won’t ever penetrate deeper than that. Not everyone will tell you this, and I won’t tell it to
you another time.’

‘So – honesty is a sensation?’

‘Of course!’

‘Yevgeny!’ Arkady began in a sad voice.

‘What? You don’t like it?’ Bazarov interrupted him. ‘No, my friend! Once you decide to bring down everything, you cut yourself
down as well!… But we’ve talked enough philosophy. “Nature brings on the silence of sleep,” as Pushkin said.’

‘He never said anything of the kind,’ said Arkady.

‘Well, if he didn’t say it, he could and should have done, as a poet. By the way, Pushkin must have served in the army.’

‘Pushkin never was a soldier.’

‘Excuse me, he has it on every page – to arms, to arms, for the honour of Russia!’

‘What nonsense you’re inventing! It’s actually slanderous.’

‘Slanderous? You are being pompous! What a word you’ve dug up to scare me with! However much you may slander someone, in reality
he deserves something twenty times worse.’

‘We’d better have some sleep!’ Arkady said crossly.

‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ answered Bazarov. But neither of them felt like sleeping. Something like hostility had come
over the two young men. Five minutes later they opened their eyes and looked at one another in silence.

‘Look at that,’ Arkady said suddenly. ‘There’s a maple leaf which has come off and is falling to the ground. Its movements
are just like the flight of a butterfly. Isn’t that odd? That something so melancholy and dead should be like something so
happy and alive.’

‘Oh, Arkady Nikolaich, my friend!’ exclaimed Bazarov. ‘I ask one thing of you: no fine language.’

‘I talk as best I can… Actually this is tyranny. I have a thought, why can’t I say it?’

‘Quite so. But why shouldn’t I say mine too? I find fine language obscene.’

‘So what isn’t obscene – abuse?’

‘Hey! I see you are really set on following in your uncle’s footsteps. How pleased that idiot would be if he heard you!’

‘What did you call Pavel Petrovich?’

‘I called him what he should be called – an idiot!’

‘But you’re being intolerable!’ cried Arkady.

‘Aha! Family feeling speaks,’ Bazarov said calmly. ‘I’ve noticed it’s very persistent in people. A man is ready to give up
everything, to renounce every prejudice, but to admit, e.g., that his brother, who steals people’s handkerchiefs, is a thief
– is quite beyond him. That’s what it is:
my
brother,
mine
– isn’t a genius. How can that be?’

‘It was only a feeling of fairness in me, not any kind of family feeling,’ Arkady retorted angrily. ‘But since you don’t have
that feeling, that
sensation
, you can’t pronounce judgement.’

‘In other words: Arkady Kirsanov is too elevated for anyone to understand him – I bow down and am silent.’

‘Yevgeny, stop it, please. Otherwise we’re going to quarrel.’

‘Oh, Arkady, do me a favour, do let us for once have a really good quarrel – no holds barred, to the death.’

‘But if we do, it’ll end in…’

‘Blows?’ Bazarov continued. ‘What if it does? Here, in the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the
eyes of men – it doesn’t matter. But you won’t beat me. I’m going to take you now by the throat…’

Bazarov spread his long, hard fingers… Arkady turned and got ready to resist, as if in play… But his friend’s expression seemed
so full of menace, he saw such a very real threat in the twisted smile on Bazarov’s lips and in his angry eyes that in spite
of himself he felt afraid…

‘Ah, that’s where you’ve got to!’ At that moment they heard the voice of Vasily Ivanovich, and the old army doctor appeared
before the young men, wearing a home-made canvas jacket and a straw hat, also home-made, on his head. ‘I’ve been looking and
looking for you… But you’ve chosen an excellent spot and a wonderful pastime. To lie on “mother earth” and look at “the heavens”…
You know, that has special significance!’

‘I look at the heavens only when I want to sneeze,’ Bazarov muttered and, turning to Arkady, said in a low voice, ‘What a
pity he stopped us.’

‘Shut up,’ Arkady whispered and surreptitiously shook his friend’s hand. But no friendship can long stand collisions like
that.

‘I look at you, my young symposiasts,’ Vasily Ivanovich was saying meanwhile, shaking his head and leaning, hands crossed,
on an ingeniously turned cane (of his own manufacture) with the figure of a Turk as a handle, ‘I look at you – and I have
to admire you. You have such strength, such perfect youth, ability, talents! You’re just… Castor and Pollux!’
⁹

‘He’s now gone off into mythology,’ said Bazarov. ‘You can see at once he was a fine Latinist in his day! I seem to remember,
you got a silver medal for composition, didn’t you?’

‘Dioscuri, Dioscuri!’
¹⁰

‘Now Father, shut up, don’t be silly.’

‘Once in a while that’s allowed,’ the old man stammered. ‘But I didn’t look for you, gentlemen, in order to pay you compliments;
but first to tell you that soon we’ll be having dinner, and second I wanted to warn you, Yevgeny… You’re a clever man, you
know people, and you know women, and so you’ll excuse it… Your mother wanted a service held for your coming here. Don’t think
I’m asking you to attend the service. It’s over. But Father Aleksey…’

‘The reverend?’

‘Yes, the priest. He’s going to… eat with us… I wasn’t expecting that and even advised against it… but it happened… he didn’t
understand me… Well, and Arina Vlasyevna… But he’s a very good and sensible man.’

‘So he won’t eat my share of dinner?’ Bazarov asked.

Vasily Ivanovich laughed.

‘Yevgeny, stop it!’

‘That’s all I ask. I’m prepared to sit down at table with any man.’

Vasily Ivanovich straightened his hat.

‘I knew beforehand,’ he said, ‘that you were above all prejudice. Here I am, an old man, I’m sixty-one, I don’t have any prejudices
either.’ (Vasily Ivanovich didn’t admit that he himself had wanted a service… He was no less devout than his wife.) ‘And Father
Aleksey very much wanted to meet you. You’ll like him, you’ll see. He doesn’t mind a game of cards and he even – but that’s
between us – smokes a pipe.’

‘Why not? After dinner we’ll get down to whist, and I’ll thrash him.’

‘Ha ha ha, we’ll see! Don’t be too sure.’

‘So are you up to your old tricks?’ Bazarov said with particular emphasis.

A dark flush came over Vasily Ivanovich’s bronzed cheeks.

‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Yevgeny?… That’s over and done with. Yes, I’m ready to confess in front of your friend, I
did have that passion when I was young – I did. And I’ve paid for it! May I sit down with you? I’m not in the way, am I?’

‘Not at all,’ answered Arkady.

Vasily Ivanovich lowered himself on to the hay with a painful grunt.

‘Your present abode, gentlemen, reminds me of my army camp life, of dressing stations – they too were somewhere like this,
by a haystack – and we were thankful to have that.’ He sighed. ‘What a lot I’ve been through in my time. For example, if you’ll
allow me, I’ll tell you a curious story about the plague in Bessarabia.’

‘For which you got your Vladimir,’
¹¹
Bazarov interrupted. ‘We know, we know… By the by, why aren’t you wearing it?’

‘I told you, I don’t go for conventions,’ Vasily Ivanovich muttered (he had had the red ribbon cut off his coat only the day
before) and began to tell the story about the plague. ‘Look, he’s gone to sleep,’ he whispered suddenly to Arkady with a friendly
wink, pointing at Bazarov. ‘Yevgeny, get up!’ he added. ‘Let’s go and have dinner…’

Father Aleksey, a handsome large figure of a man, with thick, carefully combed hair, wearing an embroidered belt over a lilac
silk cassock, turned out to be very clever and quick-witted. He was quick to take the initiative and give Arkady and Bazarov
a handshake
¹²
as if he already understood that they didn’t need his blessing, and in general he was completely at ease. He didn’t let himself
down, nor did he offend others. He laughed at seminarian Latin and stood up for his bishop. He drank two small glasses of
wine and refused a third. He accepted a cigar from Arkady but didn’t start smoking it, saying he would take it home. The only
not quite pleasant thing about him was that from time to time he would slowly and carefully bring up his
hand to catch flies on his face and sometimes would actually squash them. He sat down at the green baize card table with a
mild expression of pleasure and eventually beat Bazarov soundly, winning off him two and a half roubles in paper money: in
Arina Vlasyevna’s house they wouldn’t dream of keeping a tally in silver
¹³
… She sat by her son as before, leaning her chin on her hand, and only got up to tell them to serve some new delicacy. She
was nervous of showing affection to Bazarov, and he didn’t give her any encouragement, he didn’t invite her caresses. And
Vasily Ivanovich had warned her not to ‘bother’ him too much. ‘Young men don’t like it,’ he repeated to her.

(There’s no need to say what kind of dinner was served that day: Timofeich in person had trotted off at daybreak to fetch
some special Circassian beef; the bailiff had driven in another direction in quest of burbot, ruff and crayfish; for the mushrooms
alone the peasant women were paid 42 copper copecks.)

But Arina Vlasyevna’s eyes, which were fixed on Bazarov without moving, didn’t just show devotion and tenderness, they showed
sorrow too, mixed with curiosity and fear, and also meek reproach.

However, Bazarov didn’t bother with working out exactly what lay in the expression of his mother’s eyes. He seldom turned
towards her, and then only to put a brief question. Once he asked her to give him her hand ‘for luck’. She quietly placed
her soft hand on his hard, broad palm.

‘Well,’ she asked after a pause, ‘did it help?’

‘It was even worse,’ he answered with a casual smile.

‘He’s taking big risks,’ Father Aleksey stated, almost with sympathy, stroking his fine beard.

‘Napoleon’s first rule, Father, Napoleon’s first rule,’ said Vasily Ivanovich and led an ace.

‘That took him to the island of St Helena,’ said Father Aleksey and took his ace with a trump.

‘Yenyushechka, would you like some blackcurrant drink?’ said Arina Vlasyevna.

Bazarov shrugged his shoulders.

‘No,’ he said the next day to Arkady, ‘I’m leaving here tomorrow. It’s so dull. I want to work but here I can’t. I’ll go again
to your place. I’ve left all my experimental stuff there. At least in your house I can shut my door, whereas here my father
keeps on saying to me, “My study is at your service – no one is going to bother you,” but he himself sticks to me like glue.
And I feel a bit ashamed of shutting the door on him. My mother’s the same. I can hear her sighing on the other side of the
wall, but if I go out to her, I haven’t anything to say to her.’

‘She’ll be very sad,’ said Arkady, ‘and he will too.’

‘I’ll come back to them.’

‘When?’ ‘When I go to St Petersburg.’

‘I feel especially sorry for your mother.’

‘Why? Did she give you some nice berries or something?’