Fathers and Sons (22 page)

Arkady lowered his eyes.

‘You don’t know your mother, Yevgeny. She’s not just an excellent woman, she’s really very intelligent. This morning she chatted
to me for half an hour, and was so sensible and interesting.’

‘I suppose she went on about me.’

‘We didn’t only talk about you.’

‘Maybe you’re right. You’re an outsider and can see more. If a woman can keep a conversation going for half an hour, that’s
a really good sign. But I’m still leaving.’

‘It won’t be easy for you to break that news to them. They’re busy discussing what we’re going to be doing in two weeks’ time.’

‘Yes, it won’t be easy. Today the devil tempted me to tease my father. The other day he had one of his quit-rent muzhiks flogged
– and he was absolutely right. Don’t look at me with such horror, he was absolutely right, because the man was a terrible
thief and drunk. Only my father was certainly not expecting me to be “apprised” of this, as they say. He was very embarrassed,
and now on top of that I’m going to hurt him… It doesn’t matter! He’ll get over it.’

Bazarov had said, ‘It doesn’t matter!’ – but the whole day went by before he could bring himself to tell Vasily Ivanovich
of his plans. Eventually, having already said goodnight to him in the study, he said with a forced yawn:

‘Yes… I almost forgot to tell you…Can you have them send a change of horses over to Fedot’s?’

Vasily Ivanovich showed his shock.

‘Is Mr Kirsanov leaving us?’

‘Yes. And I’m going with him.’

Vasily Ivanovich staggered on his feet.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Yes… I have to. Please tell them about the horses.’

‘Very well,’ the old man stammered. ‘A change of horses… very well… only… only… Why are you leaving?’

‘I have to go and stay with him a short time. Then I’ll come back here.’

‘Right! A short time… Very well.’ Vasily Ivanovich took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, bending down almost to the
ground. ‘So. That… that’ll be it. I thought you’d be with us… a bit longer. Three days… After three years. That’s… that’s
not very long. Not very long, Yevgeny!’

‘But I’ve told you I’m coming back soon. I absolutely have to go.’

‘You absolutely have to… Well then. Duty comes first. So you want me to send the horses? Very well. Of course that’s not what
Arina and I were expecting. She’s just gone and asked our neighbour for flowers to decorate your room.’ (Vasily Ivanovich
didn’t mention that every morning, at first light, standing barefoot in his slippers, he conferred with Timofeich and, pulling
out one torn banknote after another, gave him various commissions, with special emphasis on provisions and on red wine, which,
as far as he could see, the young men very much liked.) ‘The most important thing is liberty. That’s my rule… no constraints…
no…’

He suddenly stopped and went to the door.

‘Father, we’ll see each other again soon, we will.’

But Vasily Ivanovich just waved his hand without turning round and went out. Returning to his bedroom, he found his wife in
bed and began to pray in a whisper so as not to wake her. But she woke up.

‘Is that you, Vasily Ivanych?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Mother, it is!’

‘Have you come from Yenyusha? Do you know, I worry whether he’s comfortable sleeping on the couch. I told Anfisushka to give
him your army mattress and new pillows. I’d have given him our feather mattress but I remember he doesn’t like his bed to
be too soft.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Mother, don’t worry. He’s fine. Lord, have mercy on us sinners,’ he continued, praying in a low voice.
Vasily Ivanovich felt sorry for his old woman. He didn’t want to tell her of the sorrow that awaited her last thing at night.

Bazarov and Arkady left the next day. From the morning on a gloom came over everyone. Anfisushka dropped dishes. Even Fedka
was thrown by events and ended up by taking off his boots. Vasily Ivanovich fussed about more than ever. He was clearly trying
to be brave, talking in a loud voice and stamping his feet, but he had a long face and kept avoiding his son’s eyes. Arina
Vlasyevna cried gently. She would have completely gone to pieces and lost control if early in the morning her husband hadn’t
lectured her for a whole two hours. When Bazarov, after repeated promises to come back no later than in a month’s time, finally
tore himself from her clinging embraces and got into the
tarantas
; when the horses started and the harness bell rang and the wheels began to turn; when there was no longer any point in looking
after them, and the dust had settled, and Timofeich had scuttled back into his little room, all hunched and stumbling as he
went; when the old people were alone in their house which also seemed suddenly to have become shrunken and dilapidated – Vasily
Ivanovich, who a few moments before had been bravely waving his handkerchief on the porch, fell into a chair and dropped his
head.

‘He’s, he’s deserted us,’ he stammered, ‘deserted us. He got bored here with us. I’m all alone in the world, like this finger,
all alone!’ he repeated several times and each time held out his hand in front of him, sticking out his index finger. Then
Arina Vlasyevna came next to him and, laying her grey head by his,
said, ‘What can we do, Vasya! Our son has left the nest. Like a falcon he came to us when he wanted to, and when he wanted
to he flew off. And you and I sit side by side and can’t move, like mushrooms on a hollow tree. Only I’ll be your true one
for ever and you’ll be mine.’

Vasily Ivanovich took his hands from his face and put his arms round his wife, his helpmeet, in a firm embrace – he hadn’t
embraced her like that when they were young. She brought him comfort in his grief.

Our friends travelled to Fedot’s in silence, only occasionally exchanging some words of no consequence. Bazarov wasn’t altogether
pleased with himself. Arkady certainly was not pleased with him. Also he felt in his heart that melancholy which comes on
for no reason and which is only known to the very young. The coachman changed the horses, got up on the box and asked, ‘Right
or left?’

Arkady shivered. The road to the right led to the town, and from there to home, the road to the left led to Odintsova’s.

He gave Bazarov a look.

‘Yevgeny,’ he asked, ‘shall we go to the left?’

Bazarov turned away.

‘What kind of folly is this?’ he mumbled.

‘I know it’s folly,’ Arkady answered. ‘But what’s the harm? It’s not our first time, is it?’

Bazarov pulled his cap down over his forehead.

‘You know best,’ he said eventually.

‘Left!’ cried Arkady.

The
tarantas
rolled off in the direction of Nikolskoye. But, having decided on ‘folly’, the friends maintained a yet more stubborn silence
and even seemed angry.

From the very way the butler greeted them on the porch of Anna Sergeyevna’s house the friends could have guessed that they
had acted stupidly in giving in to a passing whim. They
obviously weren’t expected. For a longish time they sat in the drawing room, looking quite silly. Finally Anna Sergeyevna
came out to them. She greeted them in her normal amiable way but expressed her surprise at their return after such a short
time and, in so far as one could judge by the languidness of her speech and movements, was none too pleased by it. They hastened
to make it plain that they had only dropped in on their way and after four hours or so would be leaving for town. She confined
herself to a mild protest, asked Arkady to give his father her regards, and sent for her aunt. The princess appeared looking
very sleepy, which made her wrinkled old face look even crosser than usual. Katya wasn’t feeling well and didn’t come out
of her room. Arkady suddenly felt that he at any rate wanted to see Katya as much as Anna Sergeyevna herself. The four hours
went by in trivial talk about this and that; Anna Sergeyevna both talked and listened without a smile. It was only when she
actually said goodbye that her earlier friendliness seemed to stir within her.

‘I’m feeling out of sorts at present,’ she said, ‘but pay no attention to that and come again soon – I’m saying that to both
of you.’

Both Bazarov and Arkady responded to her with a silent bow, got into the carriage and set off for home without making any
further stops. They successfully reached Marino on the evening of the next day. During the whole journey neither one of them
as much as mentioned Odintsova’s name. Bazarov in particular didn’t open his mouth and kept looking sideways, away from the
road, with a kind of furious concentration.

Everyone at Marino was overjoyed to see them. His son’s prolonged absence was beginning to worry Nikolay Petrovich. He shouted,
stamped his feet and bounced up and down on the sofa when Fenechka ran into his room with shining eyes and announced the arrival
of the ‘young gentlemen’. Pavel Petrovich himself felt some pleasurable excitement and gave a condescending smile as he shook
the hands of the returning wanderers. The talk and questions began. Arkady spoke most, especially over dinner, which went
on long past midnight. Nikolay Petrovich had served several bottles of porter, which had just been
brought from Moscow, and drank quite a bit himself so that his cheeks turned the colour of raspberries and he went on laughing
with a kind of half-childish, half-nervous laugh. The general animation infected the servants as well. Dunyasha ran to and
fro like a madwoman and kept slamming doors, while even after two in the morning Pyotr was still trying to play a Cossack
waltz on the guitar. The strings made a pleasant plaintive sound in the still air, but the cultured valet couldn’t produce
anything beyond a brief opening trill. Nature had denied him musical talent, like all others.

But meanwhile life at Marino wasn’t going too well, and poor Nikolay Petrovich was having a hard time.
¹
Troubles with the farm – depressing, stupid troubles – grew daily. Problems with the hired labourers were becoming intolerable.
Some were demanding settlements or increases, others left after getting an advance on their wages. Horses went sick and harnesses
fell to pieces. Work was carried out sloppily. A threshing machine that had been ordered from Moscow turned out to be useless
because of its weight. Another one broke the first time it was used. Half of the cattle byre burnt down because a blind old
woman, one of the house serfs, tried to fumigate her cow with a live coal… it’s true the old woman averred the whole trouble
had come about because the master had had the idea of making some extraordinary cheeses and dairy products. The steward became
lazy and even started to become fat, as every Russian man does when he starts getting ‘free rations’. When he saw Nikolay
Petrovich in the distance, to demonstrate his keenness he would throw a stick at a passing piglet or swear at a half-naked
urchin, but otherwise he spent most of his time asleep. Peasants who had been put on quit-rent didn’t pay on time and stole
wood. Almost every night the watchmen caught peasants’ horses on the meadows of the ‘farm’ and sometimes impounded them forcibly.
Nikolay Petrovich would impose a fine for the damage to his crops, but matters usually ended with the horses being returned
to their owners after a day or two on the master’s fodder.

To crown everything the peasants were beginning to quarrel among themselves: brothers demanded a division of property;
their wives couldn’t get on together in one house. A fight would flare up, and everyone would suddenly be on their feet as
if at an order and rush to the porch of the estate office and get at the master – often with black eyes and drunk – demanding
justice and punishment. There was noise and screaming, the snivelling wails of women alternating with the curses of men. Nikolay
Petrovich had to sort out the warring parties and shout himself hoarse, knowing in advance that it was still impossible to
reach a fair settlement. There weren’t enough hands for the harvest. A neighbouring smallholder, looking ever so reasonable,
bargained to provide reapers for two roubles a
desyatina
²
and cheated in the most shameless way. Nikolay Petrovich’s own women were asking absurd rates and meanwhile the corn went
to seed. One day the mowing wasn’t being done, another day the Council of Trustees
³
was threatening and demanding immediate payment of interest in full…

‘I’m at the end of my tether!’ Nikolay Petrovich several times cried out in despair. ‘I can’t fight myself, my principles
don’t allow me to send for the local constable, and without the fear of punishment one won’t achieve anything!’

‘
Du calme
,
du calme
,’
⁴
was Pavel Petrovich’s comment on this while he himself hummed, frowned and pulled at his moustache.

Bazarov held himself apart from these petty problems, and indeed as a guest it wasn’t his role to get involved in other people’s
business. The day after their arrival at Marino he applied himself to his frogs, his infusoria microscopic specimens and his
chemical compounds and kept himself busy with them. Arkady, on the contrary, thought it his duty, if not to help his father,
at least to look as if he was prepared to help him. He patiently heard him out and on one occasion gave him some advice, not
for it to be followed but to demonstrate his involvement. He felt no antipathy to estate management; he even used to dream
about farming activity with pleasure, but then other thoughts began to swarm in his head. To his own surprise Arkady kept
constantly thinking of Nikolskoye. Previously he would only have shrugged his shoulders if anyone had said to him that he
could get bored under the same
roof as Bazarov – and his father’s roof at that! – but he actually was bored and longed to be somewhere else. He had the notion
of walking till he was exhausted, but even that didn’t help.

Talking to his father one day, he learnt that Nikolay Petrovich had a number of quite interesting letters which Odintsova’s
mother had written some time previously to his late wife, and he gave him no peace until he had got those letters, looking
for which Nikolay Petrovich had to rummage in twenty different boxes and trunks. Once he had these semi-decayed papers in
his possession, Arkady seemed to calm down, as if he had seen in front of him the goal to which he must go. ‘I am saying this
to both of you,’ he kept whispering – ‘she said that herself at the end. I’ll go, I’ll go, what the devil!’ But he remembered
the last visit, the cold welcome and his former awkwardness, and shyness overcame him. The ‘why not’ of youth, the secret
desire to know his luck, to try his strength all on his own without the support of another, eventually won through. Ten days
hadn’t passed since his return to Marino before he was again galloping off to town on the pretext of studying the organization
of Sunday schools
⁵
and from there to Nikolskoye. He nagged the driver continuously and drove there like a young officer into battle: he was
both scared and full of cheer, breathless with impatience. ‘The main thing is not to think,’ he kept repeating to himself.
He had got a driver who was quite a lad – he stopped at every tavern, saying, ‘I need a quick one’ or ‘Time for a quick one?’;
but, having had his quick one, he didn’t spare the horses.