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

all is, about these mysterious relations between a man and woman? We physiologists know what these relations are. You study the anatomy of the eye; where does the enigmatical glance you talk about come in there? That’s all romantic, nonsensical, aesthetic rot. We had much better go and look at the beetle.”

And the two friends went off to Bazarov’s room, which was already pervaded by a sort of medico-surgical odour, mingled with the smell of cheap tobacco.

VIII

Pavel Petrovitch did not long remain present at his brother’s interview with his bailiff, a tall, thin man with a sweet consumptive voice and knavish eyes, who to all Nikolai Petrovitch’s remarks answered, “Certainly, sir,” and tried to make the peasants out to be thieves and drunkards. The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed system, and the new mechanism worked, creaking like an ungreased wheel, warping and cracking like homemade furniture of unseasoned wood. Nikolai Petrovitch did not lose heart, but often he sighed, and was gloomy; he felt that the thing could not go on without money, and his money was almost all spent. Arkady had spoken the truth; Pavel Petrovitch had more than once helped his brother; more than once, seeing him struggling and cudgelling his brains, at a loss which way to turn, Pavel Petrovitch moved deliberately to the window, and with his hands thrust into his pockets, muttered between his teeth, “mais je puis vous de l’argent,” and gave him money; but today he had none himself, and he preferred to go away. The petty details of agricultural management worried him; besides, it constantly struck him that Nikolai Petrovitch, for all his zeal and industry, did not set about things in the right way, though he would not have been able to point out precisely where Nikolai Petrovitch’s mistake lay. “My brother’s not practical enough,” he reasoned to himself; “they impose upon him.” Nikolai Petrovitch, on the other hand, had the highest opinion of Pavel Petrovitch’s practical ability, and always asked his advice. “I’m a soft, weak fellow, I’ve spent my life in the wilds,” he used to say; “while you haven’t seen so much of the world for nothing, you see through people; you have an eagle eye.” In answer to which Pavel Petrovitch only turned away, but did not contradict his brother.

Leaving Nikolai Petrovitch in his study, he walked along the corridor, which separated the front part of the house from the back; when he had reached a low door, he stopped in hesitation, then pulling his moustaches, he knocked at it.

“Who’s there? Come in,” sounded Fenitchka’s voice.

“It’s I,” said Pavel Petrovitch, and he opened the door.

Fenitchka jumped up from the chair on which she was sitting with her baby, and giving him into the arms of a girl, who at once carried him out of the room, she put straight her kerchief hastily.

“Pardon me, if I disturb you,” began Pavel Petrovitch, not looking at her; “I only wanted to ask you⁠ ⁠… they are sending into the town today, I think⁠ ⁠… please let them buy me some green tea.”

“Certainly,” answered Fenitchka; “how much do you desire them to buy?”

“Oh, half a pound will be enough, I imagine. You have made a change here, I see,” he added, with a rapid glance round him, which glided over Fenitchka’s face too. “The curtains here,” he explained, seeing she did not understand him.

“Oh, yes, the curtains; Nikolai Petrovitch was so good as to make me a present of them; but they have been put up a long while now.”

“Yes, and it’s a long while since I have been to see you. Now it is very nice here.”

“Thanks to Nikolai Petrovitch’s kindness,” murmured Fenitchka.

“You are more comfortable here than in the little lodge you used to have?” inquired Pavel Petrovitch urbanely, but without the slightest smile.

“Certainly, it’s more comfortable.”

“Who has been put in your place now?”

“The laundry-maids are there now.”

“Ah!”

Pavel Petrovitch was silent. “Now he is going,” thought Fenitchka; but he did not go, and she stood before him motionless.

“What did you send your little one away for?” said Pavel Petrovitch at last. “I love children; let me see him.”

Fenitchka blushed all over with confusion and delight. She was afraid of Pavel Petrovitch; he had scarcely ever spoken to her.

“Dunyasha,” she called; “will you bring Mitya, please.” (Fenitchka did not treat anyone in the house familiarly.) “But wait a minute, he must have a frock on,” Fenitchka was going towards the door.

“That doesn’t matter,” remarked Pavel Petrovitch.

“I will be back directly,” answered Fenitchka, and she went out quickly.

Pavel Petrovitch was left alone, and he looked round this time with special attention. The small low-pitched room in which he found himself was very clean and snug. It smelt of the freshly painted floor and of camomile. Along the walls stood chairs with lyre-shaped backs, bought by the late general on his campaign in Poland; in one corner was a little bedstead under a muslin canopy beside an iron-clamped chest with a convex lid. In the opposite corner a little lamp was burning before a big dark picture of St. Nikolai the wonder-worker; a tiny porcelain egg hung by a red ribbon from the protruding gold halo down to the saint’s breast; by the windows greenish glass jars of last year’s jam carefully tied down could be seen; on their paper covers Fenitchka herself had written in big letters “Gooseberry”; Nikolai Petrovitch was particularly fond of that preserve. On a long cord from the ceiling a cage hung with a short-tailed siskin in it; he was constantly chirping and hopping about, the cage was constantly shaking and swinging, while hempseeds fell with a light tap on to the floor. On the wall just above a small chest of drawers hung some rather bad photographs of Nikolai Petrovitch in various attitudes, taken by an itinerant photographer; there too hung a photograph of Fenitchka herself, which was an absolute failure; it was an eyeless