On getting up, Arkady opened the window, and the first object which met his eyes was Vassily Ivanovich. In a Turkish dressing gown tied round the waist with a pocket handkerchief, the old man was zealously digging his kitchen garden. He noticed his young visitor and leaning on his spade he called out, “Good health to you! How did you sleep?”

“Splendidly,” answered Arkady.

“And here I am, as you see, like some Cincinnatus, preparing a bed for late turnips. The time has come now — and thank God for it! — when everyone should secure his sustenance by the work of his own hands: it is useless to rely on others; one must labor oneself. So it turns out that Jean Jacques Rousseau is right. Half an hour ago, my dear young sir, you could have seen me in an entirely different position. One peasant woman, who complained of looseness — that’s how they express it, but in our language, dysentery — I— how shall I express it? I injected her with opium; and for another I extracted a tooth. I offered her an anesthetic, but she refused. I do all that gratis — anamatyer. However, I’m used to it; you see I’m a plebeian, homo nous — not one of the old stock, not like my wife . . . But wouldn’t you like to come over here in the shade and breathe the morning freshness before having tea?”

Arkady went out to him.

“Welcome once more!” said Vassily Ivanovich, raising his hand in a military salute to the greasy skullcap which covered his head. “You, I know, are accustomed to luxury and pleasures, but even the great ones of this world do not disdain to spend a brief time under a cottage roof.”

“Gracious heavens,” protested Arkady, “as if I were a great one of this world! And I’m not accustomed to luxury either.”

“Pardon me, pardon me,” replied Vassily Ivanovich with an amiable grimace. “Though I am a back number now, I also have knocked about the world — I know a bird by its flight. I am something of a psychologist in my way, and a physiognomist. If I had not, I venture to say, been granted that gift, I should have come to grief long ago; a little man like me would have been blotted out. I must tell you without flattery, the friendship I observe between you and my son sincerely delights me. I have just seen him; he got up very early as he habitually does — you probably know that — and ran off for a ramble in the neighborhood. Permit me to be so inquisitive — have you known my Evgeny long?”

“Since last winter.”

“Indeed. And permit me to question you further — but why shouldn’t we sit down? Permit me as a father to ask you frankly: what is your opinion of my Evgeny?”

“Your son is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met,” answered Arkady emphatically.

Vassily Ivanovich’s eyes suddenly opened wide, and a slight flush suffused his cheeks. The spade dropped from his hand.

“And so you expect . . .,” he began.

“I’m convinced,” interrupted Arkady, “that your son has a great future before him, that he will do honor to your name. I’ve felt sure of that ever since I met him.”

“How — how did it happen?” articulated Vassily Ivanovich with some effort. An enthusiastic smile parted his broad lips and would not leave them.

“Would you like me to tell you how we met?”

“Yes . . . and all about it — ”

Arkady began his story and spoke of Bazarov with even greater warmth, even greater enthusiasm than he had done on that evening when he danced a mazurka with Madame Odintsov.

Vassily Ivanovich listened and listened, blew his nose, rolled his handkerchief up into a ball with both hands, cleared his throat, ruffled up his hair — and at length could contain himself no longer; he bent down to Arkady and kissed him on the shoulder. “You have made me perfectly happy,” he said, without ceasing to smile. “I ought to tell you, I . . . idolize my son; I won’t even speak of my old wife — naturally, a mother — but I dare not show my feelings in front of him, because he disapproves of that. He is opposed to every demonstration of emotion; many people even find fault with him for such strength of character, and take it for a sign of pride or lack of feeling; but people like him ought not to be judged by any ordinary standards, ought they? Look at this, for example; others in his place would have been a constant drag on their parents; but he — would you believe it? — from the day he was born he has never taken a farthing more than he could help, that’s God’s truth.”

“He is a disinterested, honest man,” remarked Arkady.

“Exactly so, disinterested. And I not only idolize him, Arkady Nikolaich, I am proud of him, and the height of my only ambition is that some day there will be the following words in his biography: ‘The son of an ordinary army doctor, who was able, however, to recognize his talent early and spared no pains for his education . . .’” The old man’s voice broke.

Arkady pressed his hand.

“What do you think?” inquired Vassily Ivanovich after a short silence, “surely he will not attain in the sphere of medicine the celebrity which you prophesy for him?”

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

“In what then, Arkady Nikolaich?”

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

“He will be famous,” repeated the old man, and he relapsed into thought.

“Arina Vlasyevna sent me to call you in to tea,” announced Anfisushka, passing by with a huge dish of ripe raspberries.

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

“Yes.”

“Be sure it is cold! Don’t stand on ceremony. Arkady Nikolaich — take some more. How is it Evgeny doesn’t come back?”

“I’m here,” called Bazarov’s voice from inside Arkady’s room.

Vassily Ivanovich 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. Now we must go in to tea; mother has sent for us. By the way, I want to have a 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, told him to eat carrots, given him soda; but all those are palliative measures; we need some more radical treatment. Although you laugh at medicine, I’m sure you can give me some practical advice. But we will talk about that later. Now let us go and drink tea.”

Vassily Ivanovich jumped up briskly from the garden seat and hummed the air from Robert le Diable.

“The law, the law we set ourselves,
To live, to live, for pleasure.”

“Astonishing vitality,” observed Bazarov, moving away from the window.

Midday arrived. The sun was burning from under a thin veil of unbroken whitish clouds. All was still; only the cocks in the village broke the silence by their vigorous crowing, which produced in everyone who heard it a strange sense of drowsiness and tedium; and from somewhere high up in a treetop sounded the plaintive and persistent chirp of a young hawk. Arkady and Bazarov lay in the shade of a small haystack, and put under themselves two armfuls of rustling dry but still green and fragrant grass.

“That poplar tree,” began Bazarov, “reminds me of my childhood; it grows on the edge of the pit where the brick shed used to be, and in those days I firmly believed that the poplar and the pit possessed the peculiar power of a talisman; I never felt dull when I was near them. I did not understand then that I was not dull just because I was a child. Well, now I’m grown up, the talisman no longer works.”

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

“Two years on end; after that we traveled about. We led a roving life, chiefly wandering from town to town.”

“And has this house been standing long?”

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

“Who was he, your grandfather?”

“The devil knows — some kind of second-major. He served under Suvorov and always told stories about marching across the Alps — inventions probably.”

“You have a portrait of Suvorov hanging in the drawing room. I like such little houses as yours, old-fashioned and warm; and they always have a special kind of scent about them.”

“A smell of lamp oil and clover,” remarked Bazarov, yawning. “And the flies in these dear little houses . . . fugh!”

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

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

“Are you fond of them, Evgeny?”

“I am, Arkady.”

“How they adore you!”

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

“No. What is it?”

“I’m thinking how happy life is for my parents! My father at the age of sixty can fuss around, chat about ‘palliative measures,’ heal people; he plays the magnanimous master with the peasants — has a gay time in fact; and my mother is happy too; her day is so crammed with all sorts of jobs, with sighs and groans, that she hasn’t a moment to think about herself; while I . . .”

“While you?”

“While I think; here I lie under a haystack . . . The tiny narrow space I occupy is so minutely small in comparison with the rest of space where I am not and which has nothing to do with me; and the portion of time in which it is my lot to live is so insignificant beside the eternity where I have not been and will not be . . . And in this atom, in this mathematical point, the blood circulates, the brain works and wants something . . . how disgusting! how petty!”

“Allow me to point out that what you say applies generally to everyone.”

“You’re right,” interrupted Bazarov. “I wanted to say that they, my parents I mean, are occupied and don’t worry about their own nothingness; it doesn’t sicken them . . . while I . . . I feel nothing but boredom and anger.”

“Anger? Why anger?”

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

“I remember everything, but still I can’t agree that you have any right to be angry. You’re unhappy, I realize, but . . .”

“Ugh! I can see, Arkady Nikolaich, that you regard love like all modern young men; cluck, cluck, cluck, you call to the hen, and the moment the hen comes near, off you run! I’m not like that. But enough of it all. It’s a shame to talk about what can’t be helped.” He turned over on his side. “Ah, there goes a brave ant dragging along a half-dead fly. Take her away, brother, take her! Don’t pay any attention to her resistance; take full advantage of your animal privilege to be without pity — not like us self-destructive creatures!”

“What are you talking about, Evgeny? When did you destroy yourself?”

Bazarov raised his head.

“That’s the only thing I’m proud of. I have not crushed myself, so a little woman can’t crush me. Amen! It’s all over. You won’t hear another word from me about it.”

Both friends lay for a time in silence.

“Yes,” began Bazarov, “man is a strange animal. When one gets a side view from a distance of the dumb life our ‘fathers’ lead here, one thinks: what could be better? You eat and drink and know you are acting in the most righteous and sensible way. If not, you’re devoured by the tedium of it. One wants to have dealings with people even if it’s only to abuse them.”

“One ought to arrange one’s life so that every moment of it becomes significant,” remarked Arkady thoughtfully.

“I dare say. The significant may be deceptive but sweet, though it’s even quite possible to put up with the insignificant . . . But petty squabbles, petty squabbles . . . that’s a misery.”

“Petty squabbles don’t exist for the man who refuses to recognize them as such.”

“Hm . . . what you have said is a commonplace turned upside-down.”

“What? What do you mean by that phrase?”

“I’ll explain; to say for instance that education is beneficial, that’s a commonplace, but to say that education is harmful is a commonplace turned upside-down. It sounds more stylish, but fundamentally it’s one and the same thing!”

“But where is the truth — on which side?”

“Where? I answer you like an echo; where?”

“You’re in a melancholy mood today, Evgeny.”

“Really? The sun must have melted my brain and I ought not to have eaten so many raspberries either.”

“In that case it wouldn’t be a bad plan to doze a bit,” remarked Arkady.

“Certainly. Only don’t look at me; everyone has a stupid face when he’s asleep.”

“But isn’t it all the same to you what people think of you?”

“I don’t quite know how to answer you. A real man ought not to worry about such things; a real man is not meant to be thought about, but is someone who must be either obeyed or hated.”

“It’s odd! I don’t hate anyone,” observed Arkady after a pause.

“And I hate so many. You’re a tenderhearted listless creature; how could you hate anyone . . .? You’re timid, you haven’t much self-reliance.”

“And you,” interrupted Arkady, “do you rely on yourself? Have you a high opinion of yourself?”

Bazarov paused. “When I meet a man who can hold his own beside me,” he said with slow deliberation, “then I’ll change my opinion of myself. Hatred! You said, for instance, today as we passed the cottage of our bailiff Philip — the one that’s so neat and clean — well, you said, Russia will achieve perfection when the poorest peasant has a house like that, and every one of us ought to help to bring it about . . . And I felt such a hatred for this poorest peasant, this Philip or Sidor, for whom I have to be ready to sacrifice my skin and who won’t even thank me for it — and why should he thank me? Well, suppose he lives in a clean house, while weeds grow out of me — so, what next?”

“That’s enough, Evgeny . . . listening to you today one would be driven to agree with those who reproach us for absence of principles.”

“You talk like your uncle. Principles don’t exist in general — you haven’t yet managed to understand even that much! — but there are sensations. Everything depends on them.”

“How is that?”

“Well, take me for instance; I adopt a negative attitude by virtue of my sensations; I like to deny, my brain is made like that — and there’s nothing more to it. Why does chemistry appeal to me? Why do you like apples? — also by virtue of our sensations. It’s all the same thing. People will never penetrate deeper than that. Not everyone would tell you so, and another time I shouldn’t tell you so myself.”

“What, and is honesty also — a sensation?”

“I should think so.”

“Evgeny . . .!” began Arkady in a dejected tone.

“Well? What? That’s not to your taste?” broke in Bazarov. “No, brother. If you’ve made up your mind to mow down everything — don’t spare your own legs . . .! But we’ve philosophized enough. ‘Nature heaps up the silence of sleep,’ said Pushkin.”

“He never said anything of the kind,” retorted Arkady.

“Well, if he didn’t, he might have and ought to have said it as a poet. By the way, he must have served in the army.”

“Pushkin was never in the army!”

“Why, on every page of his one reads, to arms! to arms! for Russia’s honor!”

“What legends you invent! Really, it’s positive slander.”

“Slander? There’s a weighty matter. He’s found a solemn word to frighten me with. Whatever slander you may utter against a man, you may be sure he deserves twenty times worse than that in reality.”

“We had better go to sleep,” said Arkady with vexation.

“With the greatest of pleasure,” answered Bazarov.

But neither of them slept. Some kind of almost hostile feeling had taken hold of both young men. Five minutes later, they opened their eyes and glanced at each other in silence.

“Look,” said Arkady suddenly, “a dry maple leaf has broken off and is falling to the ground; its movements are exactly like a butterfly’s flight. Isn’t it strange? Such a gloomy dead thing so like the most care-free and lively one.”

............