Fathers and Sons (6 page)

‘Your uncle’s a strange creature,’ said Bazarov to Arkady, sitting by his bed and sucking on a small pipe. ‘Such exquisite
clothes out here in the sticks, imagine! And his nails – you could send them to an exhibition!’

‘But there’s something you don’t know,’ Arkady answered. ‘He was a real social lion in his day. Some time I’ll tell you his
story. He was extremely good-looking and turned women’s heads.’

‘So that’s why! It’s all for old times’ sake. It’s a pity there are no hearts to conquer here. I kept looking at him. His
astonishing collar, like a piece of sculpture, and that beautifully shaven chin. Arkady Nikolaich, isn’t he ridiculous?’

‘I suppose he is. But, you know, he’s a good man.’

‘An archaic phenomenon! But your father’s a decent fellow. His quoting poetry isn’t up to much and he doesn’t understand a
great deal about estate management but he’s a good sort.’

‘My father’s pure gold.’

‘Have you noticed how shy he is?’

Arkady shook his head, as if he weren’t shy himself.

‘These antique romantics are amazing,’ Bazarov went on, ‘they work up their nerves till they get irritable… then their equilibrium’s
all gone. Anyway, goodnight! My room has an English wash-stand but the door won’t shut. Still we must be encouraging… English
wash-stands are progress!’

Bazarov went out, and Arkady was overcome by a feeling of happiness. It was so good to sleep in his own home, in a familiar
bed, under a blanket worked by beloved hands, maybe his nanny’s, tender, kind, untiring hands. Arkady thought of Yegorovna
and gave a sigh and said a prayer for her to enter the kingdom of heaven… He didn’t pray for himself.

Both he and Bazarov were soon asleep, but others in the house were awake for a long time. Nikolay Petrovich was disturbed
by his son’s return. He got into bed but didn’t put out the candle and, leaning his head on his hand, he was lost in his thoughts.
His brother sat up well after midnight in his study in his Gambs
⁴
easy chair, before the feebly burning coals of a fire. Pavel Petrovich didn’t undress, only replaced his patent leather boots
with backless red Chinese slippers. He held the latest issue of
Galignani
⁵
but he didn’t read. He gazed fixedly into the fire, where a bluish flame trembled, dying down, then flaring up… God knows
where his thoughts wandered but they weren’t only in the past. His expression was set and grim, not like that of a man just
thinking of his memories.

And in a small back room a young woman sat on a big trunk, wearing a blue jacket with a white kerchief covering her dark hair.
Fenechka listened and dozed and watched the open door, through which she could see a cot and hear the regular breathing of
a sleeping baby.

Next morning Bazarov was the first to wake and went out of the house. ‘Oh ho!’ he thought, looking around him. ‘This place
isn’t much to look at.’ When Nikolay Petrovich had settled boundaries
¹
with his peasants, he had to make his new house and grounds out of ten acres of completely flat, bare land. He built a house,
service buildings and farmhouse, laid out a garden, dug a lake and two wells; but the young trees didn’t take well, the lake
held little water and the wells had a brackish taste. Only an arbour of lilac and acacia thrived, where they sometimes had
tea or dinner. In a few minutes Bazarov had been round all the paths of the garden, visited cattle yard and stable and come
across two farm boys with whom he quickly made friends. He went off frog-hunting with them to a small swamp half a mile or
so from the house.

‘What d’you need the frogs for, sir?’ one of the boys asked him.

‘This is why,’ Bazarov answered him. He had a special ability
to inspire in himself the trust of the humblest people, although he never pandered to them and was quite offhand with them.
‘I cut up a frog and have a look at what’s going on inside it, and as you and I are just like frogs, except that we walk on
two legs, I’ll then know what goes on inside us.’

‘Why d’you want to?’

‘So as not to make a mistake if you become ill and I have to look after you.’

‘Are you are a
dokhtoor
then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Vaska, do you hear that, the gentleman says you and me are just like frogs. That’s funny!’

‘I’m scared of frogs,’ commented Vaska, a boy of about seven with hair white as flax, barefoot and wearing a grey smock with
a standing-up collar.

‘What’s there to be scared of? They don’t bite.’

‘Come on, philosophers, get in the water,’ said Bazarov.

Meanwhile Nikolay Petrovich too had woken and went in to Arkady, whom he found dressed. Father and son went out on to the
terrace covered by an awning. The samovar was already going, set on a table by the balustrade, between big bouquets of lilac.
A small girl appeared, the same one who had been the first to greet the arrivals on the porch, and announced in a little voice:

‘Fedosya Nikolayevna isn’t feeling very well and can’t come to the table. She’s told me to ask you, will you pour the tea
yourselves or shall she send Dunyasha?’

‘I’ll do it, I’ll pour myself,’ Nikolay Petrovich said hurriedly. ‘Arkady, how do you take your tea, with cream or with lemon?’

‘With cream,’ Arkady replied and after a short silence said in an inquiring tone, ‘Papa?’

Nikolay Petrovich looked embarrassedly at his son.

‘What is it?’ he said.

Arkady lowered his eyes.

‘Papa,’ he began, ‘I’m sorry if you find my question out of place, but with your own frankness yesterday you yourself prompt
me to be frank… you’re not cross?…’

‘Go on.’

‘You give me the courage to ask you… Isn’t Fen… isn’t my being here the reason for her not coming to pour the tea?’

Nikolay Petrovich turned away a little.

‘Maybe,’ he said eventually, ‘she supposes… she feels ashamed…’

Arkady quickly looked at his father.

‘She’s wrong to feel ashamed. Firstly, you know my way of thinking,’ (it gave Arkady great pleasure to utter these words)
‘and secondly, why would I want to constrain your life and habits one jot? Furthermore, I am certain you couldn’t make a bad
choice. If you’ve let her live with you under one roof, she must deserve it. Anyway, a son doesn’t sit in judgement on his
father, particularly a father like you who has never constrained my freedom in any way.’

At first Arkady’s voice had trembled: he felt himself being magnanimous, yet at the same time he realized he was more or less
giving his father a lecture. But a man is strongly affected by the sound of his own speeches, and Arkady spoke these words
firmly, even dramatically.

‘Thank you, Arkasha,’ said Nikolay Petrovich in an indistinct voice, and his fingers again went to his eyebrows and forehead.
‘Your assumptions are quite correct. Of course if the girl didn’t deserve… It’s not a passing fancy. I feel awkward talking
to you about it. But you understand that it was difficult for her to come in when you’re here, especially on the first day
of your visit.’

‘In that case I’ll go and see her myself,’ exclaimed Arkady with a new onrush of generous feelings and jumped up from his
chair. ‘I’ll explain to her that she has no reason to be ashamed in front of me.’

Nikolay Petrovich also got up.

‘Arkady,’ he began, ‘please… how can you… there… I didn’t warn you…’

But Arkady no longer heard him and ran from the terrace. Nikolay Petrovich looked after him and sank into his chair embarrassed.
His heart began to beat faster… Did he see at that moment the inevitable strangeness of future relations between
him and his son, did he recognize that his son might have shown him more respect if he had completely avoided the subject,
did he blame himself for being weak – it’s difficult to say. He had all these feelings – but they were just sensations, and
muddled ones. He continued to blush, and his heart was beating.

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 Hegelists
⁴
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.