Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883). Fathers and Children.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.
Chapter XI
H
Nikolai Petrovitch’s head sank despondently, and he passed his hand over his face.
‘But to renounce poetry?’ he thought again; ‘to have no feeling for art, for nature …’
And he looked round, as though trying to understand how it was possible to have no feeling for nature. It was already evening; the sun was hidden behind a small copse of aspens which lay a quarter of a mile from the garden; its shadow stretched indefinitely across the still fields. A peasant on a white nag went at a trot along the dark, narrow path close beside the copse; his whole figure was clearly visible even to the patch on his shoulder, in spite of his being in the shade; the horse’s hoofs flew along bravely. The sun’s rays from the farther side fell full on the copse, and piercing through its thickets, threw such a warm light on the aspen trunks that they looked like pines, and their leaves were almost a dark blue, while above them rose a pale blue sky, faintly tinged by the glow of sunset. The swallows flew high; the wind had quite died away, belated bees hummed slowly and drowsily among the lilac blossom; a swarm of midges hung like a cloud over a solitary branch which stood out against the sky. ‘How beautiful, my God!’ thought Nikolai Petrovitch, and his favourite verses were almost on his lips; he remembered Arkady’s Stoff und Kraft—and was silent, but still he sat there, still he gave himself up to the sorrowful consolation of solitary thought. He was fond of dreaming; his country life had developed the tendency in him. How short a time ago, he had been dreaming like this, waiting for his son at the posting station, and what a change already since that day; their relations that were then undefined, were defined now—and how defined! Again his dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to apologise, and could only mutter, ‘Pardon, monsieur,’ while she bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the half-words, the half-smiles, and embarrassment; and melancholy, and yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.… Where had it all vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are happy.… ‘But,’ he mused, ‘these sweet first moments, why could one not live an eternal, undying life in them?’
He did not try to make his thought clear to himself; but he felt that he longed to keep that blissful time by something stronger than memory; he longed to feel his Marya near him again to have the sense of her warmth and breathing, and already he could fancy that over him.…
‘Nikolai Petrovitch,’ came the sound of Fenitchka’s voice close by him; ‘where are you?’
He started. He felt no pang, no shame. He never even admitted the possibility of comparison between his wife and Fenitchka, but he was sorry she had thought of coming to look for him. Her voice had brought back to him at once his grey hairs, his age, his reality.…
The enchanted world into which he was just stepping, which was just rising out of the dim mists of the past, was shaken—and vanished.
‘I’m here,’ he answered; ‘I’m coming, run along.’ ‘There it is, the traces of the slave owner,’ flashed through his mind. Fenitchka peeped into the arbour at him without speaking, and disappeared; while he noticed with astonishment that the night had come on while he had been dreaming. Everything around was dark and hushed. Fenitchka’s face had glimmered so pale and slight before him. He got up, and was about to go home; but the emotion stirred in his heart could not be soothed at once, and he began slowly walking about the garden, sometimes looking at the ground at his feet, and then raising his eyes towards the sky where swarms of stars were twinkling. He walked a great deal, till he was almost tired out, while the restlessness within him, a kind of yearning, vague, melancholy restlessness, still was not appeased. Oh, how Bazarov would have laughed at him, if he had known what was passing within him then! Arkady himself would have condemned him. He, a man forty-four years old, an agriculturist and a farmer, was shedding tears, causeless tears; this was a hundred times worse than the violoncello.
Nikolai Petrovitch continued walking, and could not make up his mind to go into the house, into the snug peaceful nest, which looked out at him so hospitably from all its lighted windows; he had not the force to tear himself away from the darkness, the garden, the sense of the fresh air in his face, from that melancholy, that restless craving.
At a turn in the path, he was met by Pavel Petrovitch. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked Nikolai Petrovitch; ‘you are as white as a ghost; you are not well; why don’t you go to bed?’
Nikolai Petrovitch explained to him briefly his state of feeling and moved away. Pavel Petrovitch went to the end of the garden, and he too grew thoughtful, and he too raised his eyes toward the heavens. But in his beautiful dark eyes, nothing was reflected but the light of the stars. He was not born an idealist, and his fastidiously dry and sensuous soul, with its French tinge of cynicism was not capable of dreaming.…
‘Do you know what?’ Bazarov was saying to Arkady the same night. ‘I’ve got a splendid idea. Your father was saying to-day that he’d had an invitation from your illustrious relative. Your father’s not going; let us be off to X——; you know the worthy man invites you too. You see what fine weather it is; we’ll stroll about and look at the town. We’ll have five or six days’ outing, and enjoy ourselves.’
‘And you’ll come back here again?’
‘No; I must go to my father’s. You know, he lives about twenty-five miles from X——. I’ve not seen him for a long while, and my mother too; I must cheer the old people up. They’ve been good to me, especially my father; he’s awfully funny. I’m their only one too.’
‘And will you be long with them?’
‘I don’t suppose so. It will be dull, of course.’
‘And you’ll come to us on your way back?’
‘I don’t know … I’ll see. Well, what do you say? Shall we go?’
‘If you like,’ observed Arkady languidly.
In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend’s suggestion, but he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for nothing!
The next day he set off with Bazarov to X——. The younger part of the household at Maryino were sorry at their going; Dunyasha even cried … but the old folks breathed more easily.