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

to some peasant woman in a man’s cloak, and a cap shaped like a horn, as he handed her a bottle of Goulard’s extract or a box of white ointment, “you ought to be thanking God, my good woman, every minute that my son is staying with me; you will be treated now by the most scientific, most modern method. Do you know what that means? The Emperor of the French, Napoleon, even, has no better doctor.” And the peasant woman, who had come to complain that she felt so sort of queer all over (the exact meaning of these words she was not able, however, herself to explain), merely bowed low and rummaged in her bosom, where four eggs lay tied up in the corner of a towel.

Bazarov once even pulled out a tooth for a passing pedlar of cloth; and though this tooth was an average specimen, Vassily Ivanovitch preserved it as a curiosity, and incessantly repeated, as he showed it to Father Alexey, “Just look, what a fang! The force Yevgeny has! The pedlar seemed to leap into the air. If it had been an oak, he’d have rooted it up!”

“Most promising!” Father Alexey would comment at last, not knowing what answer to make, and how to get rid of the ecstatic old man.

One day a peasant from a neighbouring village brought his brother to Vassily Ivanovitch, ill with typhus. The unhappy man, lying flat on a truss of straw, was dying; his body was covered with dark patches, he had long ago lost consciousness. Vassily Ivanovitch expressed his regret that no one had taken steps to procure medical aid sooner, and declared there was no hope. And, in fact, the peasant did not get his brother home again; he died in the cart.

Three days later Bazarov came into his father’s room and asked him if he had any caustic.

“Yes; what do you want it for?”

“I must have some⁠ ⁠… to burn a cut.”

“For whom?”

“For myself.”

“What, yourself? Why is that? What sort of a cut? Where is it?”

“Look here, on my finger. I went today to the village, you know, where they brought that peasant with typhus fever. They were just going to open the body for some reason or other, and I’ve had no practice of that sort for a long while.”

“Well?”

“Well, so I asked the district doctor about it; and so I dissected it.”

Vassily Ivanovitch all at once turned quite white, and, without uttering a word, rushed to his study, from which he returned at once with a bit of caustic in his hand. Bazarov was about to take it and go away.

“For mercy’s sake,” said Vassily Ivanovitch, “let me do it myself.”

Bazarov smiled. “What a devoted practitioner!”

“Don’t laugh, please. Show me your finger. The cut is not a large one. Do I hurt?”

“Press harder; don’t be afraid.”

Vassily Ivanovitch stopped. “What do you think, Yevgeny; wouldn’t it be better to burn it with hot iron?”

“That ought to have been done sooner; the caustic even is useless, really, now. If I’ve taken the infection, it’s too late now.”

“How⁠ ⁠… too late⁠ ⁠…” Vassily Ivanovitch could scarcely articulate the words.

“I should think so! It’s more than four hours ago.”

Vassily Ivanovitch burnt the cut a little more. “But had the district doctor no caustic?”

“No.”

“How was that, good Heavens? A doctor not have such an indispensable thing as that!”

“You should have seen his lancets,” observed Bazarov as he walked away.

Up till late that evening, and all the following day, Vassily Ivanovitch kept catching at every possible excuse to go into his son’s room; and though far from referring to the cut⁠—he even tried to talk about the most irrelevant subjects⁠—he looked so persistently into his face, and watched him in such trepidation, that Bazarov lost patience and threatened to go away. Vassily Ivanovitch gave him a promise not to bother him, the more readily as Arina Vlasyevna, from whom, of course, he kept it all secret, was beginning to worry him as to why he did not sleep, and what had come over him. For two whole days he held himself in, though he did not at all like the look of his son, whom he kept watching stealthily,⁠ ⁠… but on the third day, at dinner, he could bear it no longer. Bazarov sat with downcast looks, and had not touched a single dish.

“Why don’t you eat, Yevgeny?” he inquired, putting on an expression of the most perfect carelessness. “The food, I think, is very nicely cooked.”

“I don’t want anything, so I don’t eat.”

“Have you no appetite? And your head?” he added timidly; “does it ache?”

“Yes. Of course, it aches.”

Arina Vlasyevna sat up and was all alert.

“Don’t be angry, please, Yevgeny,” continued Vassily Ivanovitch; “won’t you let me feel your pulse?”

Bazarov got up. “I can tell you without feeling my pulse; I’m feverish.”

“Has there been any shivering?”

“Yes, there has been shivering too. I’ll go and lie down, and you can send me some lime-flower tea. I must have caught cold.”

“To be sure, I heard you coughing last night,” observed Arina Vlasyevna.

“I’ve caught cold,” repeated Bazarov, and he went away.

Arina Vlasyevna busied herself about the preparation of the decoction of lime-flowers, while Vassily Ivanovitch went into the next room and clutched at his hair in silent desperation.

Bazarov did not get up again that day, and passed the whole night in heavy, half-unconscious torpor. At one o’clock in the morning, opening his eyes with an effort, he saw by the light of a lamp his father’s pale face bending over him, and told him to go away. The old man begged his pardon, but he quickly came back on tiptoe, and half-hidden by the cupboard door, he gazed persistently at his son. Arina Vlasyevna did not go to bed either, and leaving the study door just open a very little, she kept coming up to it to listen “how Enyusha was breathing,” and to look at Vassily Ivanovitch. She could see nothing but his motionless bent back, but even that afforded her some faint