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

spared nothing for his education⁠ ⁠…’ ” The old man’s voice broke.

Arkady pressed his hand.

“What do you think,” inquired Vassily Ivanovitch, after a short silence, “will it be in the career of medicine that he will attain the celebrity you anticipate for him?”

“Of course, not in medicine, though even in that department he will be one of the leading scientific men.”

“In what then, Arkady Nikolaitch?”

“It would he hard to say now, but he will be famous.”

“He will be famous!” repeated the old man, and he sank into a reverie.

“Arina Vlasyevna sent me to call you in to tea,” announced Anfisushka, coming by with an immense dish of ripe raspberries.

Vassily Ivanovitch started. “And will there be cooled cream for the raspberries?”

“Yes.”

“Cold now, mind! Don’t stand on ceremony, Arkady Nikolaitch; take some more. How is it Yevgeny doesn’t come?”

“I’m here,” was heard Bazarov’s voice from Arkady’s room.

Vassily Ivanovitch turned round quickly. “Aha! you wanted to pay a visit to your friend; but you were too late, amice, and we have already had a long conversation with him. Now we must go in to tea, mother summons us. By the way, I want to have a little talk with you.”

“What about?”

“There’s a peasant here; he’s suffering from icterus.⁠ ⁠…

“You mean jaundice?”

“Yes, a chronic and very obstinate case of icterus. I have prescribed him centaury and St. John’s wort, ordered him to eat carrots, given him soda; but all that’s merely palliative measures; we want some more decided treatment. Though you do laugh at medicine, I am certain you can give me practical advice. But we will talk of that later. Now come in to tea.”

Vassily Ivanovitch jumped up briskly from the garden seat, and hummed from Robert le Diable⁠—

“The rule, the rule we set ourselves,
To live, to live for pleasure!”

“Singular vitality!” observed Bazarov, going away from the window.

It was midday. The sun was burning hot behind a thin veil of unbroken whitish clouds. Everything was hushed; there was no sound but the cocks crowing irritably at one another in the village, producing in everyone who heard them a strange sense of drowsiness and ennui; and somewhere, high up in a treetop, the incessant plaintive cheep of a young hawk. Arkady and Bazarov lay in the shade of a small haystack, putting under themselves two armfuls of dry and rustling, but still greenish and fragrant grass.

“That aspen-tree,” began Bazarov, “reminds me of my childhood; it grows at the edge of the clay-pits where the bricks were dug, and in those days I believed firmly that that clay-pit and aspen-tree possessed a peculiar talismanic power; I never felt dull near them. I did not understand then that I was not dull, because I was a child. Well, now I’m grown up, the talisman’s lost its power.”

“How long did you live here altogether?” asked Arkady.

“Two years on end; then we travelled about. We led a roving life, wandering from town to town for the most part.”

“And has this house been standing long?”

“Yes. My grandfather built it⁠—my mother’s father.”

“Who was he⁠—your grandfather?”

“Devil knows. Some second-major. He served with Suvorov, and was always telling stories about the crossing of the Alps⁠—inventions probably.”

“You have a portrait of Suvorov hanging in the drawing-room. I like these dear little houses like yours; they’re so warm and old-fashioned; and there’s always a special sort of scent about them.”

“A smell of lamp-oil and clover,” Bazarov remarked, yawning. “And the flies in those dear little houses.⁠ ⁠… Faugh!”

“Tell me,” began Arkady, after a brief pause, “were they strict with you when you were a child?”

“You can see what my parents are like. They’re not a severe sort.”

“Are you fond of them, Yevgeny?”

“I am, Arkady.”

“How fond they are of you!”

Bazarov was silent for a little. “Do you know what I’m thinking about?” he brought out at last, clasping his hands behind his head.

“No. What is it?”

“I’m thinking life is a happy thing for my parents. My father at sixty is fussing around, talking about ‘palliative’ measures, doctoring people, playing the bountiful master with the peasants⁠—having a festive time, in fact; and my mother’s happy too; her day’s so chockful of duties of all sorts, and sighs and groans that she’s no time even to think of herself; while I⁠ ⁠…”

“While you?”

“I think; here I lie under a haystack.⁠ ⁠… The tiny space I occupy is so infinitely small in comparison with the rest of space, in which I am not, and which has nothing to do with me; and the period of time in which it is my lot to live is so petty beside the eternity in which I have not been, and shall not be.⁠ ⁠… And in this atom, this mathematical point, the blood is circulating, the brain is working and wanting something.⁠ ⁠… Isn’t it loathsome? Isn’t it petty?”

“Allow me to remark that what you’re saying applies to men in general.”

“You are right,” Bazarov cut in. “I was going to say that they now⁠—my parents, I mean⁠—are absorbed and don’t trouble themselves about their own nothingness; it doesn’t sicken them⁠ ⁠… while I⁠ ⁠… I feel nothing but weariness and anger.”

“Anger? why anger?”

“Why? How can you ask why? Have you forgotten?”

“I remember everything, but still I don’t admit that you have any right to be angry. You’re unlucky, I’ll allow, but⁠ ⁠…”

“Pooh! then you, Arkady Nikolaevitch, I can see, regard love like all modern young men; cluck, cluck, cluck you call to the hen, but if the hen comes near you, you run away. I’m not like that. But that’s enough of that. What can’t be helped, it’s shameful to talk about.” He turned over on his side. “Aha! there goes a valiant ant dragging off a half-dead fly. Take her, brother, take her! Don’t pay attention to her resistance; it’s your privilege as an animal to be free from the sentiment of pity⁠—make the most of it⁠—not like us conscientious self-destructive animals!”

“You shouldn’t say that, Yevgeny! When have you destroyed yourself?”

Bazarov raised his head. “That’s the only thing I pride myself on. I haven’t crushed myself, so a