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

“My dear sir,” said the old lady through her tears, “your name and your father’s I haven’t the honour of knowing.⁠ ⁠…”

“Arkady Nikolaitch,” put in Vassily Ivanitch solemnly, in a low voice.

“You must excuse a silly old woman like me.” The old woman blew her nose, and bending her head to right and to left, carefully wiped one eye after the other. “You must excuse me. You see, I thought I should die, that I should not live to see my da⁠ ⁠… arling.”

“Well, here we have lived to see him, madam,” put in Vassily Ivanovitch. “Tanyushka,” he turned to a barelegged little girl of thirteen in a bright red cotton dress, who was timidly peeping in at the door, “bring your mistress a glass of water⁠—on a tray, do you hear?⁠—and you, gentlemen,” he added, with a kind of old-fashioned playfulness, “let me ask you into the study of a retired old veteran.”

“Just once more let me embrace you, Enyusha,” moaned Arina Vlasyevna. Bazarov bent down to her. “Why, what a handsome fellow you have grown!”

“Well, I don’t know about being handsome,” remarked Vassily Ivanovitch, “but he’s a man, as the saying is, ommfay. And now I hope, Arina Vlasyevna, that having satisfied your maternal heart, you will turn your thoughts to satisfying the appetites of our dear guests, because, as you’re aware, even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.”

The old lady got up from her chair. “This minute, Vassily Ivanovitch, the table shall be laid. I will run myself to the kitchen and order the samovar to be brought in; everything shall be ready, everything. Why, I have not seen him, not given him food or drink these three years; is that nothing?”

“There, mind, good mother, bustle about; don’t put us to shame; while you, gentlemen, I beg you to follow me. Here’s Timofeitch come to pay his respects to you, Yevgeny. He, too, I daresay, is delighted, the old dog. Eh, aren’t you delighted, old dog? Be so good as to follow me.”

And Vassily Ivanovitch went bustling forward, scraping and flapping with his slippers trodden down at heel.

His whole house consisted of six tiny rooms. One of them⁠—the one to which he led our friends⁠—was called the study. A thick-legged table, littered over with papers black with the accumulation of ancient dust as though they had been smoked, occupied all the space between the two windows; on the walls hung Turkish firearms, whips, a sabre, two maps, some anatomical diagrams, a portrait of Hoffland, a monogram woven in hair in a blackened frame, and a diploma under glass; a leather sofa, torn and worn into hollows in parts, was placed between two huge cupboards of birch-wood; on the shelves books, boxes, stuffed birds, jars, and phials were huddled together in confusion; in one corner stood a broken galvanic battery.

“I warned you, my dear Arkady Nikolaitch,” began Vassily Ivanitch, “that we live, so to say, bivouacking.⁠ ⁠…”

“There, stop that, what are you apologising for?” Bazarov interrupted. “Kirsanov knows very well we’re not Croesuses, and that you have no butler. Where are we going to put him, that’s the question?”

“To be sure, Yevgeny; I have a capital room there in the little lodge; he will be very comfortable there.”

“Have you had a lodge put up then?”

“Why, where the bathhouse is,” put in Timofeitch.

“That is next to the bathroom,” Vassily Ivanitch added hurriedly. “It’s summer now⁠ ⁠… I will run over there at once, and make arrangements; and you, Timofeitch, meanwhile bring in their things. You, Yevgeny, I shall of course offer my study. Suum cuique.”

“There you have him! A comical old chap, and very good-natured,” remarked Bazarov, directly Vassily Ivanitch had gone. “Just such a queer fish as yours, only in another way. He chatters too much.”

“And your mother seems an awfully nice woman,” observed Arkady.

“Yes, there’s no humbug about her. You’ll see what a dinner she’ll give us.”

“They didn’t expect you today, sir; they’ve not brought any beef?” observed Timofeitch, who was just dragging in Bazarov’s box.

“We shall get on very well without beef. It’s no use crying for the moon. Poverty, they say, is no vice.”

“How many serfs has your father?” Arkady asked suddenly.

“The estate’s not his, but mother’s; there are fifteen serfs, if I remember.”

“Twenty-two in all,” Timofeitch added, with an air of displeasure.

The flapping of slippers was heard, and Vassily Ivanovitch reappeared. “In a few minutes your room will be ready to receive you,” he cried triumphantly. “Arkady⁠ ⁠… Nikolaitch? I think that is right? And here is your attendant,” he added, indicating a short-cropped boy, who had come in with him in a blue full-skirted coat with ragged elbows and a pair of boots which did not belong to him. “His name is Fedka. Again, I repeat, even though my son tells me not to, you mustn’t expect great things. He knows how to fill a pipe, though. You smoke, of course?”

“I generally smoke cigars,” answered Arkady.

“And you do very sensibly. I myself give the preference to cigars, but in these solitudes it is exceedingly difficult to obtain them.”

“There, that’s enough humble pie,” Bazarov interrupted again. “You’d much better sit here on the sofa and let us have a look at you.”

Vassily Ivanovitch laughed and sat down. He was very like his son in face, only his brow was lower and narrower, and his mouth rather wider, and he was forever restless, shrugging up his shoulder as though his coat cut him under the armpits, blinking, clearing his throat, and gesticulating with his fingers, while his son was distinguished by a kind of nonchalant immobility.

“Humble-pie!” repeated Vassily Ivanovitch. “You must not imagine, Yevgeny, I want to appeal, so to speak, to our guest’s sympathies by making out we live in such a wilderness. Quite the contrary, I maintain that for a thinking man nothing is a wilderness. At least, I try as far as possible not to get rusty, so to speak, not to fall behind the age.”

Vassily Ivanovitch drew out of his pocket a new