Fathers and Sons (12 page)

There comes a very polite reply: ‘Today is Friday, Your Excellenc-c-c-cy.’

‘Eh? What? What’s that? What did you say?’ the dignitary repeats nervously.

‘Today is Friday, Your Excellenc-c-cy.’

‘What? What? What’s Friday? What Friday?’

‘Friday, Your Excellenc-ccc-ccc-cy, the day of the week.’

‘Come now, are you trying to teach me?’

For all his liberal reputation Matvey Ilyich remained a high-ranking official.

‘I advise you, my friend, to go and call on the governor,’ he said to Arkady. ‘You must understand I’m not giving you this
advice out of any adherence to old-fashioned ideas about the need to go and pay court to the powers that be, but simply
because the governor is a decent fellow. Also you probably want to get to know local society… you’re not, I hope, going to
be a recluse. And he’s giving a big ball the day after tomorrow.’

‘Will you be at the ball?’ Arkady asked.

‘He’s giving it for me,’ Matvey Ilyich said almost regretfully. ‘Do you dance?’

‘I do, only badly.’

‘That doesn’t matter. There are some pretty girls here, and a young man should be ashamed of not dancing. Again I don’t say
this out of any old-fashioned ideas. I absolutely don’t think the seat of the brain has to lie in the feet, but Byronism is
comical,
il a fait son temps.
’
⁸

‘But, Uncle, it’s not out of any Byronism that I don’t…’

‘I’ll introduce you to the local young ladies, I’ll take you under my wing,’ Matvey Ilyich interrupted and gave a complacent
laugh. ‘You’ll be at home there, won’t you?’

A manservant came in and announced the arrival of the president of the revenue department, an old gentleman with sugary eyes
and wrinkled lips, who had an extraordinary love of nature, especially on a summer’s day, when, in his words, ‘every little
bee takes a bribe from every little flower…’ Arkady went away.

He found Bazarov at the inn where they were staying and spent a long time persuading him to go to the governor’s. ‘It can’t
be helped,’ Bazarov said finally. ‘I’ve started something and I have to carry it through! We came to look at the gentry –
so let’s do that!’ The governor received the young men affably but he didn’t ask them to sit down nor did he sit himself.
He was always in a hurry and bustling about. In the morning he put on his close-fitting uniform and a very tightly tied cravat,
he didn’t give himself time to finish food or drink, he was always ‘the man in charge’. In the province he had the nickname
of Bourdaloue
⁹
– the reference wasn’t to the famous French preacher but to
burdá
, hogwash. He invited Arkady and Bazarov to his ball and two minutes later invited them a second time, thinking now they were
brothers and calling them Kaysarov.

They were walking home from the governor’s when suddenly a shortish man, in a Slavophile’s
¹⁰
Hungarian jacket, leapt out of a passing droshky and rushed up to Bazarov with a cry of ‘Yevgeny Vasilyich!’

‘Aha, it’s you, Herr Sitnikov,’ said Bazarov, continuing to walk along the pavement. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Imagine, it’s just by chance,’ he answered and, turning to the droshky, waved an arm five times and shouted, ‘Follow us,
you follow us! My father has some business here,’ he went on, jumping over a gutter, ‘so he asked me to… I heard today you
were here and I’ve already been to your place…’ (Indeed the friends, on returning to their room, had found there a visiting
card with the corners turned down
¹¹
and with Sitnikov’s name on one side in French, on the other in Slavonic script.) ‘I hope you’re not coming from the governor’s.’

‘Don’t say that, we’ve just left him.’

‘Ah! In that case I too will go and see him… Yevgeny Vasilyich, do introduce me to your… to him…’

‘Sitnikov, Kirsanov,’ Bazarov muttered, without stopping walking.

‘Most gratifying,’ Sitnikov began, smirking and walking sideways and quickly pulling off his extremely elegant gloves. ‘I’ve
heard so much… I’m an old friend of Yevgeny Vasilyich’s and can even say his pupil. I owe him my regeneration…’

Arkady looked at Bazarov’s pupil. A worried and vacant expression came over the small if perfectly pleasant features of his
well-groomed head; his little eyes, which looked as if they’d been stuck into his head, had a fixed and anxious stare, and
he had an anxious laugh, short and wooden.

‘Believe me,’ he went on, ‘when I first heard Yevgeny Vasilyich say one shouldn’t recognize any authority, I felt such ecstasy…
as if I’d seen the light!’ “Here,” I thought, “at last I’ve found a man!” Now, Yevgeny Vasilyich, you’ve absolutely got to
go and see a lady here – she’s wholly capable of understanding you, and a visit from you will be a real treat for her. I think
you may have heard of her.’

‘Who’s that?’ Bazarov said reluctantly.

‘Kukshina, Eudoxie, Yevdoksiya Kukshina. She’s a remarkable
character,
émancipée
¹²
in the true meaning of the word, a progressive woman. Do you know what? Let’s go now and see her together. She lives two
steps from here. We’ll have lunch there. Have you had lunch yet?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Very good then. You must understand she’s separated from her husband, she isn’t attached to anyone.’

‘Is she attractive?’ asked Bazarov.

‘N… no, I can’t say that.’

‘So why the devil are you inviting us to go and see her?’

‘Always making a joke… She’ll give us a bottle of champagne.’

‘So that’s the point! Now one can see a practical man. By the by, is your pa still in the state liquor business?’
¹³

‘Yes, he is,’ Sitnikov said hurriedly and gave a shrill laugh. ‘So, do we have a deal?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘You wanted to look at people, so go,’ Arkady said in a low voice.

‘And what about you, Mr Kirsanov?’ Sitnikov went on. ‘You must come too, we can’t go without you.’

‘How can we all barge in together?’

‘It doesn’t matter! Kukshina is a wonderful woman.’

‘Will there be a bottle of champagne?’ asked Bazarov.

‘There’ll be three bottles!’ cried Sitnikov. ‘I’ll guarantee that.’

‘What with?’

‘My own head.’

‘I’d rather have your pa’s wallet. Anyway, let’s go.’

Avdotya Nikitishna (or Yevdoksiya) Kukshina lived in a small gentry house, like one in Moscow, in a street of the town of
*** that had recently burnt down. We know our provincial towns have a fire every five years. By the door, above a crookedly
pinned-up visiting card, was a bell handle, and the visitors were met in the hall by a woman in a cap, half maidservant, half
lady companion – a clear sign of the progressive aspirations of the hostess. Sitnikov asked if Avdotya Nikitishna was at home.

‘Is that you,
Victor
?’ came a high-pitched voice from the adjoining room. ‘Come in.’

The woman in the cap vanished at once.

‘I’m not alone,’ said Sitnikov and, jauntily throwing off his topcoat – beneath it he had on a kind of old Russian-style loose
jacket – he gave a cocky glance at Arkady and Bazarov.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ the voice answered. ‘
Entrez.
’
¹

The young men went in. The room into which they came was more like a study than a drawing room. Dusty tables were piled with
papers, letters and fat Russian journals (mostly uncut). There were white cigarette ends scattered all over the place. Half
reclining on a sofa was a lady. She was still young, fair-haired and a bit dishevelled, and wore a rather untidy silk dress.
She had big bracelets on her short little arms and a lace scarf on her head. She got up from the sofa and, loosely pulling
over her shoulders a velvet coat lined with yellowing ermine, she drawled out, ‘Good morning, Victor,’ and shook Sitnikov’s
hand.

‘Bazarov, Kirsanov,’ he said curtly, imitating Bazarov’s introduction.

‘Welcome,’ answered Kukshina and, fixing her round eyes on Bazarov – between them was a poor little red turned-up nose – she
added, ‘I know you,’ and shook hands with him as well.

Bazarov frowned. Though there was nothing especially repellent in the emancipated woman’s plain little figure, the expression
of her face made an unpleasant impression on the viewer. It made you want to ask her, ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you
hungry? Or bored? Or shy? Why are you so tense?’ Something inside was always nagging away at her, as it was with Sitnikov.
Her speech and her movements were very fluent and at the same time clumsy. She clearly thought of herself as a good-natured
and simple being, but, whatever she
might be doing, she always seemed to want to be doing something else. Everything about her came over as ‘done on purpose’,
as children say – i.e. as affected and artificial.

‘Yes, yes, I know you, Bazarov,’ she repeated. (She had the habit, characteristic of provincial and Moscow ladies, of calling
men by their surnames from the first day she met them.) ‘Would you like a cigar?’

‘A cigar’s all very well,’ Sitnikov interrupted. He was already sprawled in an armchair with his leg in the air. ‘But give
us some lunch, we’re terribly hungry. And tell her to open a bottle of champagne for us.’

‘You sybarite,’ said Yevdoksiya and laughed. (When she laughed, her top gums showed above her teeth.) ‘Bazarov, don’t you
think he’s a sybarite?’

‘I like the comforts of life,’ Sitnikov said pompously. ‘That doesn’t stop me being a liberal.’

‘Yes, it does, it does!’ cried Yevdoksiya. However, she told her handmaiden to produce lunch and the champagne. ‘What’s your
opinion about this?’ she added, turning to Bazarov. ‘I’m sure you share my view.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Bazarov countered, ‘a bit of meat is better than a bit of bread, even from the point of view of chemical analysis.’

‘Do you study chemistry? It’s my passion. I’ve even invented a plastic myself.’

‘You’ve invented a plastic?’

‘Yes, me. Do you know what for? To make dolls, so their heads don’t break. I’m a practical woman too, you know. But it’s not
quite ready yet. I still must read a bit of Liebig. By the way have you read Kislyakov’s article on women’s work in
Moskovskiye vedomosti
?
²
Do please read it. You must be interested in the question of women? What about schools? What does your friend do? What’s
his name?’

Mrs Kukshina let fall her questions one after the other with an affected carelessness and didn’t wait for an answer. Spoilt
children talk like that to their nannies.

‘My name is Arkady Nikolaich Kirsanov,’ said Arkady, ‘and I don’t do anything.’

Yevdoksiya burst out laughing.

‘That’s so charming! Why aren’t you smoking? Victor, you know I’m cross with you.’

‘Why?’

‘Someone told me you’d again started to speak well of George Sand.
³
How can you compare her to Emerson?
⁴
She has no ideas about education or about physiology or about anything. I’m sure she hasn’t even heard of embryology, and
in this day and age how can you do without it?’ (At this juncture Yevdoksiya even gestured with her hands apart.) ‘Oh what
an amazing article Yelisevich
⁵
wrote about that! That gentleman’s a genius.’ (Yevdoksiya constantly used the word ‘gentleman’ for ‘man’.) ‘Bazarov, come
and sit next to me on the sofa. Perhaps you don’t know it, but I’m terribly scared of you.’

‘Why is that? I’m curious to know.’

‘You’re a dangerous gentleman, you’re so critical. My God! It’s ridiculous, I’m talking like some lady landowner in the sticks.
By the way, I really am a landowner. I look after my estate myself, and just imagine, my steward Yerofey is an amazing type,
Fenimore Cooper’s Pathfinder
⁶
in the flesh. There’s something so spontaneous in him! I have settled here for good. The town’s unbearable, isn’t it? But
what can one do?’

‘It’s just a town,’ said Bazarov coolly.

‘Everyone’s interests are so petty, that’s what’s so terrible! I used to spend the winters in Moscow… but now my revered spouse,
Monsieur Kukshin, lives there. And Moscow now… I don’t know… isn’t the same. I am thinking of travelling abroad. Last year
I was all ready to go.’

‘To Paris, I imagine?’ asked Bazarov.

‘To Paris and to Heidelberg.’

‘Why Heidelberg?’

‘Heavens above, Bunsen’s
⁷
there.’

Bazarov couldn’t find an answer to that.

‘Pierre Sapozhnikov… do you know him?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Heavens, Pierre Sapozhnikov… he’s still always at Lidiya Khostatova’s.’

‘I don’t know her either.’

‘Well, he was going to be my escort. Thank God, I am free, I have no children… What am I saying –
Thank God!
But it hardly matters.’

Yevdoksiya rolled a cigarette in her fingers that were stained yellow from tobacco, licked it with her tongue, sucked it and
lit up. The maid came in with a tray.

‘Ah, here’s lunch. Will you have something first? Victor, uncork the bottle. That’s your specialty.’

‘It is, it is,’ Sitnikov muttered and again gave his shrill laugh.

‘Are there any attractive women here?’ Bazarov asked, drinking down his third glass.

‘There are,’ Yevdoksiya answered, ‘but they’re all so empty-headed. For example,
mon amie
⁸
Odintsova isn’t bad. A pity her reputation is a bit… However, it wouldn’t matter, but there is no freedom of opinion, no
breadth, none… of that kind of thing. We’ve got to change the whole system of education. I’ve already been thinking about
that. Our women are very badly educated.’

‘You won’t be able to do anything with them,’ said Sitnikov. ‘One should despise them, and I do despise them, utterly and
completely!’ (The ability to despise and to voice that scorn Sitnikov found a most agreeable feeling; he was given to attacking
women in particular, without suspecting that in a few months his fate would be to crawl before his wife just because she had
been born a Princess Durdoleosova.) ‘There’s not one who would be capable of understanding our conversation. There’s not one
worthy of being the subject of discussion by serious men like us!’