Fathers and Sons
sit in a Kalmuck shanty. 'A force,' forsooth! Good and 'forceful' sirs,
I beg to tell you that you number but four men and a boy, whereas those
others number millions, and are folk of the kind who will not permit
such as _you_ to trample upon their sacred beliefs, but will first
trample upon your worthy selves."
"Let them trample upon us," retorted Bazarov. "We are more in number
than you think."
"What? You really believe that you will succeed in inoculating the
nation as a whole?"
"From a little candle," replied Bazarov, "there arose, as you know, the
conflagration of Moscow."[4]
"A pride almost Satanic in its nature, and then banter! And thus you
would seek to attract our youth, _thus_ you would attempt to win the
inexperienced hearts of our boys! For sitting beside you is one of
those very boys, and he is absolutely worshipping you!" (Upon this
Arkady knit his brows, and averted his head a little.) "Yes, the
canker has spread far already. For instance, they tell me that in Rome
our artists decline to enter the Vatican, and look upon Raphael as
next-door to a fool, just because he is an 'authority'! Yet those very
artists are themselves so barren and impotent that their fancy cannot
rise above 'Girls at Fountains,' and so forth, villainously executed!
And such artists you account fine fellows, I presume?"
"Like those artists," said Bazarov, "I consider Raphael to be worth not
a copper groat. And as for the artists themselves, I appraise them at
about a similar sum."
"Bravo, bravo!" cried Paul Petrovitch. "Listen, O Arkady--listen to
the way in which the young men of the present day ought to express
themselves! Surely our youth will now rally to your side? For once upon
a time they had to go to school, since they did not like to be taken
for dunces, and therefore worked at their studies; but now they have
but to say: 'Everything in the world is rubbish,' and, behold! the
trick is done. They consider that delightful--and naturally! In other
words, the blockheads of former days are become the Nihilists of the
present."
"Your self-sufficiency--I mean, your self-respect--is carrying you
away," Bazarov remarked nonchalantly (as for Arkady, his eyes had
flashed, and his whole form was quivering with indignation). "But our
dispute has gone far enough. Let us end it. Whenever you may feel that
you can point out to me a single institution in our family or our
public life which does not call for complete and unsparing rejection, I
shall be pleased to accept your view."
"Of institutions of that kind I could cite you millions," exclaimed
Paul Petrovitch. "For example, take the village commune."
Bazarov's lips twisted themselves into a contemptuous smile.
"The village commune," said he, "is a subject which you would do better
to discuss with your brother, since he is learning by experience the
meaning of that commune, and of its circular guarantee, and of its
enforced sobriety and other contrivances."
"Take the family, then--yes, take the family, since at least among the
peasantry it is still a surviving institution."
"And that question, too, I should imagine were best not dissected by
you in detail. But see here, Paul Petrovitch. Allow yourself a minimum
of two days to think over these things (you will need quite that amount
of time to do so); and cite to yourself in succession our various
social conditions, and give them your best attention. Meanwhile Arkady
and myself will go and----"
"Go and make sport of everything, I presume?"
"No, go and dissect frogs. Come, Arkady! _Au revoir_, gentlemen."
And the two friends departed. Left alone, the brothers looked at one
another.
"So," at last said Paul Petrovitch, "you see the young men of the
day--you see our successors!"
"Our successors--yes," re-echoed Nikolai Petrovitch despondently.
Throughout the conversation he had been sitting simply on pins and
needles; throughout it he had dared do no more than throw an occasional
pained glance at Arkady. "My brother, there came to me just now a
curious reminiscence. It was of a quarrel which once I had with my
mother. During the contest she raised a great outcry, and refused to
listen to a single word I said; until at length I told her that for
her to understand me was impossible, seeing that she and I came of
different generations. Of course this angered her yet more, but I
thought to myself: 'What else could I do? The pill must have been a
bitter one, but it was necessary that she should swallow it.' And now
_our_ turn is come; now is it for _us_ to be told by our heirs that we
come of a different generation from theirs, and must kindly swallow the
pill."
"You are too magnanimous and retiring," expostulated Paul Petrovitch.
"For my part, I feel sure that we are more in the right than these
two youngsters, even though we may express ourselves in old-fashioned
terms, and lack their daring self-sufficiency. Indeed, what a puffed-up
crowd is the youth of to-day! Should you ask one of them whether he
will take white wine or red, he will reply, in a bass voice, and with
a face as though the whole universe were looking at him: 'Red is my
customary rule.'"
"Should you like some more tea?" interrupted Thenichka, who had been
peeping through the doorway, but had not dared to enter during the
progress of the dispute.
"No," was Nikolai Petrovitch's reply as he rose to meet her. "So you
can order the _samovar_ to be removed."
Meanwhile, with a brief "_Bon soir_," Paul Petrovitch betook himself to
his study.
[1] Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899), German physician and materialist
philosopher.
[2] _i.e._ the census-taking of the serf population.
[3] Scribbler.
[4] In 1812.
XI
Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovitch sought his favourite arbour.
Despondent thoughts were thronging through his brain, for the rift
between himself and his son was only too evident. Also, he knew that
that rift would widen from day to day. For nothing had he spent whole
days, during those winters in St. Petersburg, in the perusal of modern
works! For nothing had he listened to the young men's discourses! For
nothing had he been delighted when he had been able to interpolate a
word into their tempestuous debates!
"My brother says that we are more in the right than they," he
reflected. "And certainly I too can say without vanity that I believe
these young fellows to stand at a greater distance from the truth than
ourselves. Yet also I believe that they have in them something which
we lack--something which gives them an advantage over us. What is that
something? Is it youth? No, it is not youth alone. Is it that there
hovers about them less of the _barin_ than hovers about ourselves?
Possibly!"
Bending his head, he passed his hand over his face.
"Yet to reject poetry!" he muttered. "To fail to sympathise with art
and nature!"
And he gazed around as though he were trying to understand how any
one could be out of sympathy with the natural world. Evening was just
closing in, and the sun sinking behind a small aspen copse which,
situated half a verst from the garden, was trailing long shadows over
the motionless fields. Along the narrow, dark track beside the copse
a peasant on a white pony was trotting; and though the pair were
overshadowed by the trees, the rider was as clearly visible, even to a
patch on his shoulder, as the twinkling legs of his steed. Piercing
the tangled aspens, the sun's beams were bathing the trunks in so
brilliant a glow that trunks and beams were one bright mass, and only
the foliage on the boughs above formed a dusky blur against the lighter
tints of the flame-coloured sky. Overhead bats were whirling; the wind
had sunk to rest; a few late-homing bees were buzzing somnolently,
sluggishly amid the lilac blossoms; and a pillared swarm of gnats was
dancing over a projecting bough.
"O God, how fair!" was Nikolai's involuntary thought as his lips
breathed a favourite couplet.
Suddenly he remembered Arkady and _Stoff und Kraft_; and though
he continued to sit where he was, he quoted poetry no more, but
surrendered his mind wholly to the play of his lonely, irregular,
mournful thoughts. At all times he was a man fond of dreaming; and
to this tendency his life in the country had added confirmation. To
think of what only a short while ago he had been dreaming as he waited
for his son on the post-house verandah! For since that hour a change
had come about, and in the vague relations between himself and his
son there had dawned a more definite phase. Next, he saw before him
his dead wife. Yet he saw her, not as she had appeared to him during
the later years of her life--that is to say, as a kindly, thrifty
_châtelaine_--but as a young girl slim of figure and innocently
inquiring of eye. Yes, there flitted before his vision a picture only
of neatly plaited tresses falling over a childish neck. And he thought
of his first meeting with her when, as a student, he had encountered
her on the staircase leading to his suite of rooms. He remembered how,
having accidentally brushed against her, he had stopped to apologise,
but had only succeeded in muttering "Pardon, _monsieur_"; where-upon
she had bowed, and smiled, and fled as in sudden alarm--but only
to turn, the next moment, at the bend of the staircase, to look
swiftly back, and then, as swiftly, to blush, and assume a more demure
demeanour. Ah, those first timid meetings, those half-spoken words,
those bashful smiles, those alternate fits of rapture and despair, that
courtship that was destined to be crowned with swooning joy! Whither
was it all fled? True, she had become his wife, and had conferred upon
him such happiness as falls to the lot of few men on earth; but ever
the thought recurred to him, and recurred again: "Why could those days
of sweetness not have lasted for ever, so that we might have lived a
life which should never have known death?"
He made no attempt to co-ordinate his thoughts. The predominant feeling
in his mind was that he would give worlds to be able to connect himself
with those blessed days by something stronger than the mere power of
memory. He wanted to feel his Maria near him once more, to scent her
dear breath. A curious mood had him in its grip.
"Nikolai Petrovitch!" came the voice of Thenichka from a spot somewhere
in the vicinity. "Where are you?"
As he heard the call, a feeling that was neither vexation nor shame
passed over him. No comparison between his dead wife and Thenichka was
possible, yet he gave a start, and felt a passing regret that Thenichka
had seized _that_ moment to seek him. For in some way did the sound
of her voice bring back to him his grey hairs, his old age, all that
constituted the present. So for an instant the enchanted world which
he had just entered, and which he had just seen emerge from the misty
waves of the past, quivered--then disappeared.
"I am here, Thenichka," he called. "Please go away. I will come
presently."
"Another reminder that I am a _barin_," he reflected.
Thenichka retired, and suddenly he became aware of the fact that since
the moment when he had sunk into a reverie nightfall had come. Yes,
all around him there lay a motionless obscurity, with, gleaming amid
it, as a small, pale blur, Thenichka's face. Rising, he started to
return to the house, but his unstrung nerves could not calm themselves,
and, glancing now at the ground, now towards the heavens where there
swarmed myriads of twinkling stars, he fell to pacing the garden. He
continued this pacing until he was almost worn out; for still did the
vague, despondent, insistent sense of agitation refuse to leave his
breast. Could Bazarov have divined his thoughts, how the Nihilist would
have laughed! And even Arkady would have condemned him. For from the