Fathers and Sons (20 page)

Arina Vlasyevna was a true Russian gentlewoman of olden time. She should have lived two hundred years before, in the days
of old Muscovy. She was extremely devout and sensitive, believed in all kinds of portents, fortune-telling, spells and dreams.
She believed in holy idiots,
¹⁹
house spirits, wood goblins, unlucky encounters, the evil eye, folk medicines, Maundy Thursday salt,
²⁰
and in the imminence of the world’s end. She believed that if the candles at the Easter midnight service didn’t go out, then
there’d be a good crop of buckwheat, and that mushrooms stop growing if seen by a human eye. She believed the devil likes
being where there is water and that every Jew bears a blood-red mark on his breast. She was afraid of mice, grass-snakes,
frogs, sparrows, leeches, thunder, cold water, draughts, horses, billy goats, redheads and black cats, and thought crickets
and dogs unclean creatures. She didn’t eat veal or pigeon or crab or cheese or asparagus or Jerusalem artichokes or rabbits
or watermelons (because a cut-open watermelon reminds one of the head of John the Baptist), and she only mentioned oysters
with a shudder. She liked her food – and kept strict fasts. She slept ten hours out of the twenty-four – and didn’t go to
bed at all if Vasily Ivanovich had a headache. She hadn’t read a single book except
Alexis, or The Cottage in the Wood
,
²¹
wrote one or at most two letters a year and had a good understanding of housekeeping, of drying
food and making preserves, although she touched nothing with her own hands and generally didn’t like to move from her seat.

Arina Vlasyevna was very kind-hearted and in her own way not at all stupid. She knew that in the world there are the masters,
who have to give orders, and the ordinary people, who have to serve – and so she wasn’t offended by obsequiousness or bows
to the ground;
²²
but she treated the lower orders kindly and gently, she let no beggar go by without a donation and never condemned anyone,
though she did sometimes gossip. In her youth she had been very pretty, she played the clavichord and could speak a little
French; but in the course of many moves of house with her husband (whom she had married against her will) she had lost her
figure and forgotten her music and French. She loved her son and was unutterably frightened of him. She had given over the
management of the estate to Vasily Ivanovich – and now had nothing to do with any of it. She cried out, fanned herself with
her handkerchief and raised her eyebrows higher and higher in alarm as soon as the old man began to explain about the coming
changes and his plans. She was suspicious, was always expecting some great disaster and immediately cried as soon as she thought
of something sad. Women like that are now a dying breed. God knows whether one should rejoice at that!

Having got out of bed, Arkady opened the window – and the first thing he saw was Vasily Ivanovich. In a Bukharan dressing-gown
held together with a handkerchief, the old man was digging hard in the vegetable garden. He noticed his young guest and, leaning
on his spade, called out:

‘Your very good health! How did you sleep?’

‘Really well,’ Arkady answered.

‘And here I am as you can see, like a modern Cincinnatus,
¹
digging a bed for late turnips. The time has now come – and
thank God for that! – when everyone must earn his substance with his own hands. It’s no use relying on others: one must work
oneself. After all Jean-Jacques Rousseau
²
was right. Half an hour ago, my dear sir, you would have seen me in a quite different position, I had a peasant woman complaining
of the cramps – that’s what they call it, but in our terms dysentery – and I… how shall I say it?… I gave her some opium.
And I took out another woman’s tooth. I offered to give her ether… but she refused. All this I do gratis –
en amateur.
³
However, there’s nothing extraordinary in my doing this. Because I’m a plebeian, a
homo novus
⁴
–
I’m not a noble with a family tree, like my good lady… But why don’t you come here into the shade and breathe in the morning
cool before we have our tea?’

Arkady went and joined him.

‘Once more, welcome!’ Vasily Ivanovich exclaimed, raising his hand in a military salute to the greasy skull-cap which covered
his head. ‘I know you’re accustomed to luxury and pleasure, but even the great of this world don’t scorn a little while spent
under a cottage roof.’

‘Excuse me,’ cried Arkady, ‘what sort of a great man am I? And I’m not accustomed to luxury.’

‘Now, now,’ Vasily Ivanovich objected with a friendly grin, ‘although I’ve now been put on the archive shelf, I too have been
around in the world, rubbing along – I can tell a bird by the way it flies. And in my own way I am a psychologist and physiognomist.
If I didn’t have that, let me call it talent, I’d have gone to the wall long ago, as a little man I’d have been quite rubbed
out. Without wanting to compliment you, I’ll say this – the friendship I observe between you and my son makes me truly happy.
I met him just now. In his usual way, which you probably know, he jumped out of bed very early and has gone off somewhere
in the locality. May I be inquisitive – how long have you known my Yevgeny?’

‘Since last winter.’

‘Really. And may I ask you something else – but let’s sit down – may I ask you, speaking as a father, to tell me frankly –
what do you think of my Yevgeny?’

‘Your son is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met,’ Arkady answered animatedly.

Vasily Ivanovich’s eyes opened wider, and his cheeks flushed slightly. The spade fell from his hands.

‘So you think…’ he began.

‘I am convinced,’ Arkady went on, ‘that a great future is waiting for your son, that he’ll make your name famous. I’ve been
convinced of that since our very first meeting.’

‘How… how was that?’ Vasily Ivanovich barely managed to get the words out. His lips were parted in an ecstatic smile, which
didn’t leave them.

‘Do you mean, how did we meet?’

‘Yes… and generally…’

Arkady began to recount and to speak of Bazarov with even greater passion and enthusiasm than on the evening when he danced
the mazurka with Odintsova.

Vasily Ivanovich listened and listened, he blew his nose, rolled his handkerchief between both hands, coughed, passed his
hands through his hair – and finally couldn’t contain himself: he leant over to Arkady and kissed him on the shoulder.
⁵

‘You have made me completely happy,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I must tell you that I… worship my son. I won’t mention my old
lady – of course she has a mother’s feelings! But I don’t dare to speak out what I feel in front of him because he doesn’t
like that. He is the enemy of all emotional talk. There are many who criticize him for hardness and see in that a sign of
pride and insensitivity; but people like him can’t be measured by the normal rule, can they? For example, someone else in
his situation would have gone on taking from his parents. But can you imagine, he hasn’t taken a spare penny from us in his
life, as God’s my witness!’

‘He is a selfless, honourable man,’ said Arkady.

‘Selfless indeed. And, Arkady Nikolaich, I not only worship him, I am proud of him, and all my vanity lies in the hope that
some day his biography will contain the following words: “The son of a simple army doctor, who early saw his true nature and
spared nothing for his education…”’ The old man’s voice broke.

Arkady pressed his hand.

‘What do you think?’ Vasily Ivanovich asked after a moment of silence. ‘He won’t win that fame you forecast for him in the
field of medicine, will he?’

‘No, of course not in medicine, though in that respect he’ll be one of our leading scientists.’

‘Then in what, Arkady Nikolaich?’

‘It’s difficult to say now, but he will be famous.’

‘He will be famous!’ the old man repeated and became absorbed in his thoughts.

‘Arina Vlasyevna has told me to ask you to come and have tea,’ announced Anfisushka, passing by with a huge dish of fresh
raspberries.

Vasily Ivanovich roused himself.

‘And will there be chilled cream with the raspberries?’

‘Yes, sir, there will.’

‘Make sure it is chilled! Don’t be polite, Arkady Nikolaich, take more of them. Why hasn’t Yevgeny come?’

‘I’m here.’ Bazarov’s voice came from Arkady’s room.

Vasily Ivanovich turned round.

‘Aha! You wanted to visit your friend, but you were late,
amice
,
⁶
and he and I have already had a long conversation. Now we must go and have tea, your mother’s calling. By the by, I must
have a word with you.’

‘What about?’

‘There’s a little muzhik here, he’s suffering from icterus.’

‘You mean jaundice?’

‘Yes, a chronic and very resistant icterus. I’ve prescribed him centaury and St John’s wort, I’ve made him eat carrots and
given him soda. But all these are just
palliatives
, one needs something more effective. Though you mock medicine, I am sure you can give me some useful advice. But we’ll talk
about this later. Now let’s go and have tea.’

Vasily Ivanovich got up nimbly from the bench and sang the following lines from
Robert le Diable
:
⁷

‘It is our rule, my friends, it is our rule –

To live by joy, by jo-o-oy alone!’

‘He is full of beans!’ Bazarov remarked, moving from the window.

It was midday. The sun was hot, and there was just a thin veil over the sky of whitish clouds. Everything was quiet, only
the village cocks gaily crowed to one another, inspiring in everyone who heard them a strange feeling of sleepiness and languor;
and from somewhere high in the crown of the trees came the plaintive call of a young hawk, on and on. Arkady and Bazarov were
lying in the shade of a small haystack, having spread out beneath them a couple of armfuls of crackling-dry but still green
and fragrant hay.

‘That aspen,’ said Bazarov, ‘reminds me of my childhood. It grows on the edge of a pit, all that remains from a brick shed,
and I was convinced then that the pit and the aspen possessed a special magic talisman. I was never bored when I was by them.
I didn’t understand then that the reason I wasn’t bored was that I was a child. Well, now I’m a grown man and the talisman
doesn’t work.’

‘How much time in all did you spend here?’ Arkady asked.

‘Two years at a go. After that we came for short visits. We led a wandering existence – usually trailing from town to town.’

‘And has this house been standing long?’

‘Yes. It was built by my grandfather, that is my mother’s father.’

‘What was your grandfather?’

‘The devil only knows. Some of kind of major adjutant. He served with Suvorov
⁸
and always used to tell stories about crossing the Alps. All lies, I should think.’

‘So that’s why you have a portrait of Suvorov hanging in the drawing room. I love little houses like yours, that are old and
warm and have a kind of special smell to them.’

‘Yes, of lamp oil and sweet clover,’ Bazarov pronounced with a yawn. ‘And the flies in these dear little houses… Pfui!’

‘Tell me,’ Arkady began after a short silence, ‘they weren’t hard on you as a child, were they?’

‘You can see what kind of people my parents are. They’re not very strict.’

‘Do you love them, Yevgeny?’

‘Yes, Arkady, I do!’

Bazarov was silent for a moment.

‘Do you know what I am thinking about?’ he said eventually, putting his arms behind his head.

‘No. What?’

‘I am thinking what a good life my parents have on this earth. My father at sixty fusses about, talks of “palliatives”, treats
his patients, is all magnanimous with his peasants – in short he has a ball. And my mother too has a good time, her day is
so crammed with all kinds of things to do, with ohs and ahs, that she has no time to think. While I…’

‘While you?’

‘While I think that here I am lying under a haystack… The tiny area I occupy is so minute by comparison with the rest of space,
where I don’t exist, which doesn’t bother with me. And the span of time I’ll be able to live out is so insignificant before
the eternity where I haven’t been and where I will not be… Yet in this atom, in this mathematical dot blood is circulating,
a brain is functioning and wanting something too… What a monstrous state of affairs! What nonsense!’

‘Can I say something to you – what you are saying applies in general to everyone…’

‘You’re right,’ Bazarov went on. ‘I meant that they, that is my parents, are busy and don’t worry about their own insignificance,
they don’t find it’s obnoxious… while I just feel bored and angry.’

‘Angry? Why angry?’

‘Why? What do you mean why? Have you forgotten?’

‘I remember it all, but still I don’t think you have the right to be angry. You’re unhappy, I agree, but…’

‘Ah, I see, Arkady Nikolayevich, your understanding of love is like all modern young people’s: cluck, cluck, cluck, little
chick, but as soon as the chick begins to get close, you’re off! I’m not like that. But that’s enough on that subject. What
can’t be helped, one should be ashamed of talking about.’ He turned on to his side. ‘Hey! Here’s a splendid ant dragging along
a half-dead fly. Go on, boy, go on! Ignore its struggles, take advantage of your right as an animal not to feel any sympathy
with it – not like self-destructive creatures like us!’

‘You oughtn’t to say that, Yevgeny! When did you destroy yourself?’

Bazarov lifted his head.

‘That’s the one thing I’m proud of. I didn’t destroy myself, and a woman isn’t going to destroy me. Amen! That’s the end of
that! You won’t hear another word from me about this.’

The two friends lay a while in silence.

‘Yes,’ Bazarov began, ‘man’s a strange being. When you look at a quiet, dull life, like my good parents’ life here, cursorily
or from a distance, you think – what could be better? Eat, drink and know you’re acting in the most correct, most sensible
way. But that’s not how it is. Boredom descends. You want to engage with people, even if just to shout at them, but still
engage with them.’