Fathers and Children, Ivan Turgenev [best book reader .TXT] 📗

to get a good look at him since yesterday.”

“I’m not at all surprised,” observed Pavel Petrovitch; “I feel not indisposed to be embracing him myself.”

Arkady went up to his uncle, and again felt his cheeks caressed by his perfumed moustache. Pavel Petrovitch sat down to the table. He wore an elegant morning suit in the English style, and a gay little fez on his head. This fez and the carelessly tied little cravat carried a suggestion of the freedom of country life, but the stiff collars of his shirt⁠—not white, it is true, but striped, as is correct in morning dress⁠—stood up as inexorably as ever against his well-shaved chin.

“Where’s your new friend?” he asked Arkady.

“He’s not in the house; he usually gets up early and goes off somewhere. The great thing is, we mustn’t pay any attention to him; he doesn’t like ceremony.”

“Yes, that’s obvious.” Pavel Petrovitch began deliberately spreading butter on his bread. “Is he going to stay long with us?”

“Perhaps. He came here on the way to his father’s.”

“And where does his father live?”

“In our province, sixty-four miles from here. He has a small property there. He was formerly an army doctor.”

“Tut, tut, tut! To be sure, I kept asking myself, ‘Where have I heard that name, Bazarov?’ Nikolai, do you remember, in our father’s division there was a surgeon Bazarov?”

“I believe there was.”

“Yes, yes, to be sure. So that surgeon was his father. Hm!” Pavel Petrovitch pulled his moustaches. “Well, and what is Mr. Bazarov himself?” he asked, deliberately.

“What is Bazarov?” Arkady smiled. “Would you like me, uncle, to tell you what he really is?”

“If you will be so good, nephew.”

“He’s a nihilist.”

“Eh?” inquired Nikolai Petrovitch, while Pavel Petrovitch lilted a knife in the air with a small piece of butter on its tip, and remained motionless.

“He’s a nihilist,” repeated Arkady.

“A nihilist,” said Nikolai Petrovitch. “That’s from the Latin, nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who⁠ ⁠… who accepts nothing?”

“Say, ‘who respects nothing,’ ” put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to work on the butter again.

“Who regards everything from the critical point of view,” observed Arkady.

“Isn’t that just the same thing?” inquired Pavel Petrovitch.

“No, it’s not the same thing. A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.”

“Well, and is that good?” interrupted Pavel Petrovitch.

“That depends, uncle. Some people it will do good to, but some people will suffer for it.”

“Indeed. Well, I see it’s not in our line. We are old-fashioned people; we imagine that without principles, taken as you say on faith, there’s no taking a step, no breathing. Vous avez changé tout cela. God give you good health and the rank of a general, while we will be content to look on and admire, worthy⁠ ⁠… what was it?”

“Nihilists,” Arkady said, speaking very distinctly.

“Yes. There used to be Hegelists, and now there are nihilists. We shall see how you will exist in void, in vacuum; and now ring, please, brother Nikolai Petrovitch; it’s time I had my cocoa.”

Nikolai Petrovitch rang the bell and called, “Dunyasha!” But instead of Dunyasha, Fenitchka herself came on to the terrace. She was a young woman about three-and-twenty, with a white soft skin, dark hair and eyes, red, childishly-pouting lips, and little delicate hands. She wore a neat print dress; a new blue kerchief lay lightly on her plump shoulders. She carried a large cup of cocoa, and setting it down before Pavel Petrovitch, she was overwhelmed with confusion: the hot blood rushed in a wave of crimson over the delicate skin of her pretty face. She dropped her eyes, and stood at the table, leaning a little on the very tips of her fingers. It seemed as though she were ashamed of having come in, and at the same time felt that she had a right to come.

Pavel Petrovitch knitted his brows severely, while Nikolai Petrovitch looked embarrassed.

“Good morning, Fenitchka,” he muttered through his teeth.

“Good morning,” she replied in a voice not loud but resonant, and with a sidelong glance at Arkady, who gave her a friendly smile, she went gently away. She walked with a slightly rolling gait, but even that suited her.

For some minutes silence reigned on the terrace. Pavel Petrovitch sipped his cocoa; suddenly he raised his head. “Here is Sir Nihilist coming towards us,” he said in an undertone.

Bazarov was in fact approaching through the garden, stepping over the flowerbeds. His linen coat and trousers were besmeared with mud; clinging marsh weed was twined round the crown of his old round hat; in his right hand he held a small bag; in the bag something alive was moving. He quickly drew near the terrace, and said with a nod, “Good morning, gentlemen; sorry I was late for tea; I’ll be back directly; I must just put these captives away.”

“What have you there⁠—leeches?” asked Pavel Petrovitch.

“No, frogs.”

“Do you eat them⁠—or keep them?”

“For experiment,” said Bazarov indifferently, and he went off into the house.

“So he’s going to cut them up,” observed Pavel Petrovitch. “He has no faith in principles, but he has faith in frogs.”

Arkady looked compassionately at his uncle; Nikolai Petrovitch shrugged his shoulders stealthily. Pavel Petrovitch himself felt that his epigram was unsuccessful, and began to talk about husbandry and the new bailiff, who had come to him the evening before to complain that a labourer, Foma, “was deboshed,” and quite unmanageable. “He’s such an Aesop,” he said among other things; “in all places he has protested himself a worthless fellow; he’s not a man to keep his place; he’ll walk off in a huff like a fool.”

VI

Bazarov came back, sat down to the table, and began hastily drinking tea. The two brothers looked at him in silence, while Arkady stealthily watched first his father and then his uncle.

“Did you walk far from here?” Nikolai Petrovitch asked at