‘Hush, Yevgeny ... if one listened to you to - day one would be driven to agreeing with those who reproach us for want of principles.’
‘You talk like your uncle. There are no general principles — you’ve not made out that even yet! There are feelings. Everything depends on them.’
‘How so?’
‘Why, I, for instance, take up a negative attitude, by virtue of my sensations; I like to deny — my brain’s made on that plan, and that’s all about it! Why do I like chemistry? Why do you like apples? — by virtue of our sensations. It’s all the same thing. Deeper than that men will never penetrate. Not every one will tell you that, and, in fact, I shan’t tell you so another time.’
‘What? and is honesty a matter of the senses?’
‘I should rather think so.’
‘Yevgeny!’ Arkady was beginning in a dejected voice ...
‘Well? What? Isn’t it to your taste?’ broke in Bazarov. ‘No, brother. If you’ve made up your mind to mow down everything, don’t spare your own legs. But we’ve talked enough metaphysics. “Nature breathes the silence of sleep,” said Pushkin.’
‘He never said anything of the sort,’ protested Arkady.
‘Well, if he didn’t, as a poet he might have — and ought to have said it. By the way, he must have been a military man.’
‘Pushkin never was a military man!’
‘Why, on every page of him there’s, “To arms! to arms! for Russia’s honour!”‘
‘Why, what stories you invent! I declare, it’s positive calumny.’
‘Calumny? That’s a mighty matter! What a word he’s found to frighten me with! Whatever charge you make against a man, you may be certain he deserves twenty times worse than that in reality.’
‘We had better go to sleep,’ said Arkady, in a tone of vexation.
‘With the greatest pleasure,’ answered Bazarov. But neither of them slept. A feeling almost of hostility had come over both the young men. Five minutes later, they opened their eyes and glanced at one another in silence.
‘Look,’ said Arkady suddenly, ‘a dry maple leaf has come off and is falling to the earth; its movement is exactly like a butterfly’s flight. Isn’t it strange? Gloom and decay — like brightness and life.’
‘Oh, my friend, Arkady Nikolaitch!’ cried Bazarov, ‘one thing I entreat of you; no fine talk.’
‘I talk as best I can.... And, I declare, its perfect despotism. An idea came into my head; why shouldn’t I utter it?’
‘Yes; and why shouldn’t I utter my ideas? I think that fine talk’s positively indecent.’
‘And what is decent? Abuse?’
‘Ha! ha! you really do intend, I see, to walk in your uncle’s footsteps. How pleased that worthy imbecile would have been if he had heard you!’
‘What did you call Pavel Petrovitch?’
‘I called him, very justly, an imbecile.’
‘But this is unbearable!’ cried Arkady.
‘Aha! family feeling spoke there,’ Bazarov commented coolly. ‘I’ve noticed how obstinately it sticks to people. A man’s ready to give up everything and break with every prejudice; but to admit that his brother, for instance, who steals handkerchiefs, is a thief — that’s too much for him. And when one comes to think of it: my brother, mine — and no genius ... that’s an idea no one can swallow.’
‘It was a simple sense of justice spoke in me and not in the least family feeling,’ retorted Arkady passionately. ‘But since that’s a sense you don’t understand, since you haven’t that sensation, you can’t judge of it.’
‘In other words, Arkady Kirsanov is too exalted for my comprehension. I bow down before him and say no more.’
‘Don’t, please, Yevgeny; we shall really quarrel at last.’
‘Ah, Arkady! do me a kindness. I entreat you, let us quarrel for once in earnest....’
‘But then perhaps we should end by ...’
‘Fighting?’ put in Bazarov. ‘Well? Here, on the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men, it wouldn’t matter. But you’d be no match for me. I’ll have you by the throat in a minute.’
Bazarov spread out his long, cruel fingers.... Arkady turned round and prepared, as though in jest, to resist.... But his friend’s face struck him as so vindictive — there was such menace in grim earnest in the smile that distorted his lips, and in his glittering eyes, that he felt instinctively afraid.
‘Ah! so this is where you have got to!’ the voice of Vassily Ivanovitch was heard saying at that instant, and the old army - doctor appeared before the young men, garbed in a home - made linen pea - jacket, with a straw hat, also home - made, on his head. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.... Well, you’ve picked out a capital place, and you’re excellently employed. Lying on the “earth, gazing up to heaven.” Do you know, there’s a special significance in that?’
‘I never gaze up to heaven except when I want to sneeze,’ growled Bazarov, and turning to Arkady he added in an undertone. ‘Pity he interrupted us.’
‘Come, hush!’ whispered Arkady, and he secretly squeezed his friend’s hand. But no friendship can long stand such shocks.
‘I look at you, my youthful friends,’ Vassily Ivanovitch was saying meantime, shaking his head, and leaning his folded arms on a rather cunningly bent stick of his own carving, with a Turk’s figure for a top, — ’I look, and I cannot refrain from admiration. You have so much strength, such youth and bloom, such abilities, such talents! Positively, a Castor and Pollux!’
‘Get along with you — going off into mythology!’ commented Bazarov. ‘You can see at once that he was a great Latinist in his day! Why, I seem to remember, you gained the silver medal for Latin prose — didn’t you?’
‘The Dioscuri, the Dioscuri!’ repeated Vassily Ivanovitch.
‘Come, shut up, father; don’t show off.’
‘Once in a way it’s surely permissible,’ murmured the old man. ‘However, I have not been seeking for you, gentlemen, to pay you compliments; but with the object, in the first place, of announcing to you that we shall soon be dining; and secondly, I wanted to prepare you, Yevgeny.... You are a sensible man, you know the world, and you know what women are, and consequently you will excuse.... Your mother wished to have a Te Deum sung on the occasion of your arrival. You must not imagine that I am inviting you to attend this thanksgiving — it is over indeed now; but Father Alexey ...’
‘The village parson?’
‘Well, yes, the priest; he ... is to dine ... with us.... I did not anticipate this, and did not even approve of it ... but it somehow came about ... he did not understand me.... And, well ... Arina Vlasyevna ... Besides, he’s a worthy, reasonable man.’
‘He won’t eat my share at dinner, I suppose?’ queried Bazarov.
Vassily Ivanovitch laughed. ‘How you talk!’
‘Well, that’s all I ask. I’m ready to sit down to table with any man.’
Vassily Ivanovitch set his hat straight. ‘I was certain before I spoke,’ he said, ‘that you were above any kind of prejudice. Here am I, an old man at sixty - two, and I have none.’ (Vassily Ivanovitch did not dare to confess that he had himself desired the thanksgiving service. He was no less religious than his wife.) ‘And Father Alexey very much wanted to make your acquaintance. You will like him, you’ll see. He’s no objection even to cards, and he sometimes — but this is between ourselves ... positively smokes a pipe.’
‘All right. We’ll have a round of whist after dinner, and I’ll clean him out.’
‘He! he! he! We shall see! That remains to be seen.’
‘I know you’re an old hand,’ said Bazarov, with a peculiar emphasis.
Vassily Ivanovitch’s bronzed cheeks were suffused with an uneasy flush.
‘For shame, Yevgeny.... Let bygones be bygones. Well, I’m ready to acknowledge before this gentleman I had that passion in my youth; and I have paid for it too! How hot it is, though! Let me sit down with you. I shan’t be in your w
ay, I hope?’
‘Oh, not at all,’ answered Arkady.
Vassily Ivanovitch lowered himself, sighing, into the hay. ‘Your present quarters remind me, my dear sirs,’ he began, ‘of my military bivouacking existence, the ambulance halts, somewhere like this under a haystack, and even for that we were thankful.’ He sighed. ‘I had many, many experiences in my life. For example, if you will allow me, I will tell you a curious episode of the plague in Bessarabia.’
‘For which you got the Vladimir cross?’ put in Bazarov. ‘We know, we know.... By the way, why is it you’re not wearing it?’
‘Why, I told you that I have no prejudices,’ muttered Vassily Ivanovitch (he had only the evening before had the red ribbon unpicked off his coat), and he proceeded to relate the episode of the plague. ‘Why, he’s fallen asleep,’ he whispered all at once to Arkady, pointing to Yevgeny, and winking good - naturedly. ‘Yevgeny! get up,’ he went on aloud. ‘Let’s go in to dinner.’
Father Alexey, a good - looking stout man with thick, carefully - combed hair, with an embroidered girdle round his lilac silk cassock, appeared to be a man of much tact and adaptability. He made haste to be the first to offer his hand to Arkady and Bazarov, as though understanding beforehand that they did not want his blessing, and he behaved himself in general without constraint. He neither derogated from his own dignity, nor gave offence to others; he vouchsafed a passing smile at the seminary Latin, and stood up for his bishop; drank two small glasses of wine, but refused a third; accepted a cigar from Arkady, but did not proceed to smoke it, saying he would take it home with him. The only thing not quite agreeable about him was a way he had of constantly raising his hand with care and deliberation to catch the flies on his face, sometimes succeeding in smashing them. He took his seat at the green table, expressing his satisfaction at so doing in measured terms, and ended by winning from Bazarov two roubles and a half in paper money; they had no idea of even reckoning in silver in the house of Arina Vlasyevna.... She was sitting, as before, near her son (she did not play cards), her cheek, as before, propped on her little fist; she only got up to order some new dainty to be served. She was afraid to caress Bazarov, and he gave her no encouragement, he did not invite her caresses; and besides, Vassily Ivanovitch had advised her not to ‘worry’ him too much. ‘Young men are not fond of that sort of thing,’ he declared to her. (It’s needless to say what the dinner was like that day; Timofeitch in person had galloped off at early dawn for beef; the bailiff had gone off in another direction for turbot, gremille, and crayfish; for mushrooms alone forty - two farthings had been paid the peasant women in copper); but Arina Vlasyevna’s eyes, bent steadfastly on Bazarov, did not express only devotion and tenderness; in them was to be seen sorrow also, mingled with awe and curiosity; there was to be seen too a sort of humble reproachfulness.
Bazarov, however, was not in a humour to analyse the exact expression of his mother’s eyes; he seldom turned to her, and then only with some short question. Once he asked her for her hand ‘for luck’; she gently laid her soft, little hand on his rough, broad palm.
‘Well,’ she asked, after waiting a little, ‘has it been any use?’
‘Worse luck than ever,’ he answered, with a careless laugh.
‘He plays too rashly,’ pronounced Father Alexey, as it were compassionately, and he stroked his beard.
‘Napoleon’s rule, good Father, Napoleon’s rule,’ put in Vassily Ivanovitch, leading an ace.
‘It brought him to St. Helena, though,’ observed Father Alexey, as he trumped the ace.
‘Wouldn’t you like some currant tea, Enyusha?’ inquired Arina Vlasyevna.
Bazarov merely shrugged his shoulders.
‘No!’ he said to Arkady the next day. I’m off from here to - morrow. I’m bored; I want to work, but I can’t work here. I will come to your place again; I’ve left all my apparatus there too. In your house one can at any rate shut oneself up. While here my father repeats to me, “My study is at your disposal — nobody shall interfere with you,” and all the time he himself is never a yard away. And I’m ashamed somehow to shut myself away from him. It’s the same thing too with mother. I hear her sighing the other side of the wall, and if one goes in to her, one’s nothing to say to her.’
‘She will be very much grieved,’ observed Arkady, ‘and so will he.’
‘I shall come back again to them.’
‘When?’
‘Why, when on my way to Petersburg.’
‘I feel sorry for your mother particularly.’
‘Why’s that? Has she won your heart with strawberries, or what?’
Arkady dropped his eyes. ‘You don’t understand your mother, Yevgeny. She’s not only a very good woman, she’s very clever really. This morning she talked to me for half - an - hour, and so sensibly, interestingly.’
‘I suppose she was expatiating upon me all the while?’
‘We didn’t talk only about you.’
‘Perhaps; lookers - on see most. If a woman can keep up half - an - hour’s conversation, it’s always a hopeful sign. But I’m going, all the same.’
‘It won’t be very easy for you to break it to them. They are always making plans for what we are to do in a fortnight’s time.’
‘No; it won’t be easy. Some demon drove me to tease my father to - day; he had one of his rent - paying peasants flogged the other day, and quite right too — yes, yes, you needn’t look at me in such horror — he did quite right, because he’s an awful thief and drunkard; only my father had no idea that I, as they say, was cognisant of the facts. He was greatly perturbed, and now I shall have to upset him more than ever.... Never mind! Never say die! He’ll get over it!’
Bazarov said, ‘Never mind’; but the whole day passed before he could make up his mind to inform Vassily Ivanovitch of his intentions. At last, when he was just saying good - night to him in the study, he observed, with a feigned yawn —
‘Oh ... I was almost forgetting to tell you.... Send to Fedot’s for our horses to - morrow.’
Vassily Ivanovitch was dumbfounded. ‘Is Mr. Kirsanov leaving us, then?’
‘Yes; and I’m going with him.’
Vassily Ivanovitch positively reeled. ‘You are going?’
‘Yes ... I must. Make the arrangements about the horses, please.’
‘Very good....’ faltered the old man; ‘to Fedot’s ... very good ... only ... only.... How is it?’
‘I must go to stay with him for a little time. I will come back again later.’
‘Ah! For a little time ... very good.’ Vassily Ivanovitch drew out his handkerchief, and, blowing his nose, doubled up almost to the ground. ‘Well ... everything shall be done. I had thought you were to be with us ... a little longer. Three days.... After three years, it’s rather little; rather little, Yevgeny!’
‘But, I tell you, I’m coming back directly. It’s necessary for me to go.’
‘Necessary.... Well! Duty before everything. So the horses shall be in readiness. Very good. Arina and I, of course, did not anticipate this. She has just begged some flowers from a neighbour; she meant to decorate the room for you.’ (Vassily Ivanovitch did not even mention that every morning almost at dawn he took counsel with Timofeitch, standing with his bare feet in his slippers, and pulling out with trembling fingers one dog’s - eared rouble note after another, charged him with various purchases, with special reference to good things to eat, and to red wine, which, as far as he could observe, the young men liked extremely.) ‘Liberty ... is the great thing; that’s my rule.... I don’t want to hamper you ... not ...’
He suddenly ceased, and made for the door.
‘We shall soon see each other again, father, really.’
But Vassily Ivanovitch, without turning round, merely waved his hand and was gone. When he got back to his bedroom he found his wife in bed, and began to say his prayers in a whisper, so as not to wake her up. She woke, however. ‘Is that you, Vassily Ivanovitch?’ she asked.
‘Yes,
mother.’
‘Have you come from Enyusha? Do you know, I’m afraid of his not being comfortable on that sofa. I told Anfisushka to put him on your travelling mattress and the new pillows; I should have given him our feather - bed, but I seem to remember he doesn’t like too soft a bed....’
‘Never mind, mother; don’t worry yourself. He’s all right. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,’ he went on with his prayer in a low voice. Vassily Ivanovitch was sorry for his old wife; he did not mean to tell her over night what a sorrow there was in store for her.
Bazarov and Arkady set off the next day. From early morning all was dejection in the house; Anfisushka let the tray slip out of her hands; even Fedka was bewildered, and was reduced to taking off his boots. Vassily Ivanitch was more fussy than ever; he was obviously trying to put a good face on it, talked loudly, and stamped with his feet, but his face looked haggard, and his eyes were continually avoiding his son. Arina Vlasyevna was crying quietly; she was utterly crushed, and could not have controlled herself at all if her husband had not spent two whole hours early in the morning exhorting her. When Bazarov, after repeated promises to come back certainly not later than in a month’s time, tore himself at last from the embraces detaining him, and took his seat in the coach; when the horses had started, the bell was ringing, and the wheels were turning round, and when it was no longer any good to look after them, and the dust had settled, and Timofeitch, all bent and tottering as he walked, had crept back to his little room; when the old people were left alone in their little house, which seemed suddenly to have grown shrunken and decrepit too, Vassily Ivanovitch, after a few more moments of hearty waving of his handkerchief on the steps, sank into a chair, and his head dropped on to his breast. ‘He has cast us off; he has forsaken us,’ he faltered; ‘forsaken us; he was dull with us. Alone, alone!’ he repeated several times. Then Arina Vlasyevna went up to him, and, leaning her grey head against his grey head, said, ‘There’s no help for it, Vasya! A son is a separate piece cut off. He’s like the falcon that flies home and flies away at his pleasure; while you and I are like funguses in the hollow of a tree, we sit side by side, and don’t move from our place. Only I am left you unchanged for ever, as you for me.’
A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1 Page 68