Fathers and Sons
but even found that it interested her and eventually softened her--a
consummation which brought both relief and regret.
"Bazarov was right," she reflected. "It was mere curiosity, mere love
of ease, mere egoism, mere----"
"Children, is love an empirical sentiment?" once she asked of Arkady
and Katia: but neither of the pair understood her meaning. Moreover,
they were fighting a little shy of her, since they could not altogether
forget the conversation which they had involuntarily overheard; but in
time Anna Sergievna succeeded in overcoming also this timidity, and
found the task the more easy to perform in that she had succeeded also
in overcoming her disappointment.
[1] A small squire.
XXVII
The old Bazarovs' delight at their son's return was the greater in
that the event was so unexpected. To such an extent did Anna Vlasievna
fuss and flounce about the house that Vasili Ivanitch likened her to a
hen partridge (no doubt the short tail of her blouse _did_ impart to
her rather a bird-like aspect); while, as regards Vasili himself, he
grunted, and sucked the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, and, grasping the
shank, inverted the bowl as though to make sure that it was secure,
and, finally, parted his capacious lips, and gave vent to a noiseless
chuckle.
"I am going to spend with you six whole weeks," said Bazarov. "But I
desire to work, and therefore must not be disturbed."
"Before we will disturb you, you shall forget what my face looks like,"
replied Vasili Ivanitch.
And he kept his word; for, after allotting his son the study, he not
only remained completely out of sight, but even prevented his wife from
manifesting the least sign of tenderness.
"When Evgenii last visited us," he said to her, "you and I proved a
little wearisome; so this time we must be more discreet."
Anna Vlasievna agreed, much as she lost by the arrangement, seeing that
now she beheld her son only at meal times, and feared, even then, to
speak to him.
"Eniushenka," she would begin--then, before he had had time to raise
his eyes, pluck nervously at the strings of her cap, and whisper: "Oh
no; it was nothing," and address herself, instead, to Vasili Ivanitch;
saying, for instance (with cheek on hand as usual): "My dear, which
would our darling Eniusha prefer for dinner--cabbage soup or beef with
horse-radish?" And when Vasili Ivanitch would reply: "Why should you
not ask him yourself?" she would exclaim: "Oh no, for that might vex
him."
But eventually Bazarov ceased to closet himself, in that there came an
abatement of the work fever, and to it succeeded fits of depression,
_ennui_, and an inordinate restlessness. In his every movement there
began to loom a strange discontent, from his gait there disappeared
its old firm, active self-confidence, and, ceasing to indulge in
solitary rambles, he took to cultivating society, to attending tea in
the drawing-room, to pacing the kitchen garden, and to joining Vasili
Ivanitch in a silent smoking of pipes. Nay, on one occasion he even
paid Father Alexis a visit!
At first the new order of things rejoiced Vasili Ivanitch's heart: but
that joy proved short-lived.
"Though I could not say why, Eniusha makes me anxious," he confided to
his spouse. "Not that he is discontented or ill-tempered--such things
would not have mattered: rather, it is that he is sad and brooding,
and never opens his lips. Would that he would curse you and me, for
instance! Also, he is thinner; nor do I like the colour of his face."
"O God!" whispered the old woman. "Yet I may not even put my arms
around his neck!"
From that time onwards Vasili Ivanitch began to make cautious attempts
to question Bazarov concerning his work, his health, and his friend
Arkady; but always Bazarov returned reluctant, indifferent replies, and
once, when his father was for introducing the foregoing topics, said
irritably:
"Why are you for ever tiptoeing around me? Your present manner is even
worse than your former one."
"There, there--I did not mean anything," was poor Vasili Ivanitch's
reply.
Political allusions proved equally fruitless. For instance, when Vasili
Ivanitch was seeking to engage his son's interest on the score of the
impending emancipation of the serfs and progress in general, the other
muttered carelessly:
"Yesterday, when passing through the courtyard, I heard some peasant
lads singing, not one of the good old songs, but I The age of truth is
coming in, when hearts shall glow with love.' There's progress for you!"
Occasionally Bazarov would repair to the village, and, in his usual
bantering fashion, enter into conversation with some peasant.
"Well," he said to a _muzhik_, "pray expound to me your views on life.
For they tell me that in you lie the whole strength and the whole
future of Russia--that you are going to begin a new epoch in our
history, and to give us both a real language and new laws."
The peasant made no reply at the moment. Then he said:
"We might do all that if first we had a new chapel here."
"Tell me something, though, about the world in general," Bazarov
interrupted. "The world stands on three fishes, does it not?"
"It does that, _batiushka_," the peasant replied with the quiet,
good-humoured sweetness of the patriarchal age. "But above it stands
the will of the masters. The _baré_ are our fathers, and the harder the
_barin_ drives, the better for the _muzhik_."
Shrugging his shoulders contemptuously at this statement, Bazarov
turned away, while the peasant slunk off homewards.
"What did he say?" asked a sullen-looking, middle-aged peasant who
had been standing at the door of his hut during the course of the
foregoing colloquy. "Was he talking of arrears of taxes?"
"Of arrears of taxes!" retorted the first peasant, his tone now
containing not a trace of its late patriarchal sweetness, but, rather,
a note of purely dry contempt. "He was chattering just for chattering's
sake--he likes to hear his own tongue wag. Do not all of us know what a
_barin_ and the likes of him are good for?"
"Aye," agreed the second peasant; whereafter, with much nodding of
caps and gesticulating of fists, they fell to discussing their own
affairs and requirements. So alas for Bazarov's scornful shrug of the
shoulders! And alas for that knowledge of the way in which the peasant
should be talked to whereof the young Nihilist had made such boast when
disputing with Paul Petrovitch! In fact, never had it dawned upon the
mind of the self-confident Bazarov that, in the eyes of the _muzhik_,
he was no better than a pease-pudding.
However, he succeeded in discovering for himself an occupation. This
was when, in bandaging a peasant's leg, Vasili Ivanitch's hands shook
a little through senility, and his son hastened to his assistance: and
from that time forth Bazarov acted as Vasili Ivanitch's partner, even
though he maintained unabated his ridicule both of the remedies which
he himself advised and of the father who hastened to put them into
practice. Yet in no way did his son's raillery annoy Vasili Ivanitch:
rather, it heartened the old man. Smoking his pipe, and drawing his
dirty overall in to his waist with both thumbs, he would listen
delightedly to the scoffer, and chuckle, and show his blackened teeth
the more in proportion as the sallies contained a greater measure of
venom. Nay, stupid or simply senseless as many of these witticisms
were, he would frequently catch them up, and repeat them. To take one
instance, he, for several days in succession, kept assuring every one
in the village and in the town that "we call this the nine o'clock
office"--the sole basis being the fact that once, on learning of his
(Vasili Ivanitch's) habit of attending Matins, Bazarov had made use of
the phrase in question.
"Thank God, Evgenii has ceased to mope," he confided in a whisper to
his wife. "In fact, you should have heard him rating me to-day!"
Also, the thought that he had such an assistant in his labours filled
the old man with pride.
"Yes, yes," he would say as he handed some peasant woman in a man's
jacket a phial of medicinal water or a pot of cold cream, "you ought
daily to thank God that my son happens to be staying with me, since
otherwise you could not possibly have been treated according to the
latest and most scientific methods. Do you understand? I say that even
Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, has not at his disposal a better
physician than my son."
And the peasant woman (who had come, it may be, to complain of "a
lifting with the gripes"--an expression which probably she herself
could not have explained) would bow, then proffer the three or four
eggs which would be tied up in a corner of her neckcloth.
Also, when Bazarov extracted a tooth from the jaw of a travelling
pedlar, Vasili Ivanitch could not allow even the very ordinary
character of the tooth to prevent him from preserving it as a rarity,
and showing it to Father Alexis.
"See what a fang!" he said. "And to think of the strength which Evgenii
must possess! He lifted the pedlar clean from the ground! It was like
uprooting an oak tree!"
"Splendid!" was Father Alexis' comment--he knew not what else to say,
nor, for that matter, how else to get rid of the enthusiastic veteran.
Lastly, there was an occasion when a peasant from a neighbouring
village brought his brother to be treated. Suffering from typhus,
the patient was lying face downwards on the straw in the cart, and
had reached the last stage, since already his body was covered with
spots of a hectic nature, and he had long lost consciousness. To an
expression of regret that resort had not sooner been had to medical
aid, Vasili Ivanitch could add no more than an intimation that no
hope was left: nor was he wrong, seeing that even before the peasant
succeeded in conveying his brother back to the village, the sick man
had breathed his last.
Three days later Bazarov entered his father's room with an inquiry for
some hell-stone.
"I have some," said Vasili Ivanitch; "but what do you want it for?"
"For the cauterisation of a wound."
"A wound on whom?"
"A wound on myself."
"On yourself? Let me see the place. Where is it?"
"There--on that finger. To-day I went to the village whence they
brought the typhus patient the other day; and though they tried to
conceal the body, I succeeded in discovering it. Not for a long time
had I had a chance of doing that sort of work."
"Yes?"
"And the sequel was that I cut myself, and, on repairing to the
district physician, found that he did not possess what I wanted."
Vasili Ivanitch went white to the lips. Hurrying, without a word, into
his study, he returned thence with some hell-stone. Bazarov was for
carrying it away forthwith.
"No, no!" cried Vasili Ivanitch. "For God's sake allow me to see to
this in person."
Bazarov smiled.
"You are indeed a keen practitioner," he commented.
"Do not jest, I beg of you. Show me the finger. No, it is not a large
wound. Am I hurting it at all?"
"Not in the least. Have no fear. You can press it harder still if you
like."
Vasili Ivanitch paused.
"Do you not think," he said, "that it would be better to cauterise the
finger with an iron?"
"No, I do not. Moreover, that ought, in any case, to have been done
sooner; whereas by now even the hell-stone is unlikely to prove
effectual, seeing that, as you know, once absorbed into the system, the
germ renders all remedies too late."
"How 'too late'?" gasped Vasili Ivanitch.
"What I say. Four hours have elapsed since the injury."
Vasili Ivanitch gave the wound a further cauterisation. "So the
district physician had no hell-stone?" he queried.
"None."
"God in heaven! To think of that man calling himself a doctor, yet
being without such an indispensable remedy!"