Fathers and Sons

"Come, come!" Madame exclaimed. "What does all this mean?"

But Arina Vlasievna was deaf to everything, and Vasili Ivanitch too could only continue repeating:

"There is an angel come to us from Heaven! There is an angel come to us from Heaven! There is an angel come to us from Heaven!"

"Wo ist der Kranke? (Where is the patient)?" asked the doctor with a touch of impatience.

This restored Vasili Ivanitch to his senses.

"Come this way, come this way," he said. "Yes, pray follow me, Werthester Herr Kollega" (titles based upon the strength of bygone memories).

For answer the German exclaimed "Eh?", and pulled a not very gracious smirk.

Vasili Ivanitch led the way to the study.

"Here is the doctor brought by Madame Anna Sergievna Odintsov," he said as he bent over his son.

"She herself too is here."

Bazarov opened his eyes with a start.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"I say that Madame Anna Sergievna Odintsov is here, and that she has brought with her this good doctor."

Bazarov peered around.

"Where is Anna Sergievna?" he murmured. "Do you say that she is here? Then I wish to see her."

"You shall see her, Evgenii; but first of all I must have a chat with this gentleman, and tell him the story of your illness: for Sidor Sidorovitch" (that was the name of the district physician) "has gone home, and a short consultation must be held."

Bazarov eyed the German.

"All right," he said. "Hold your consultation as soon as you like. Only, do not speak in Latin, for I know the meaning of the words Jam moritur."

"Der Herr scheint des Deutschen mächtig zu sein," the newly-arrived disciple of Æsculapius remarked to Vasili Ivanitch.

"Ich habe– " the old man began; then added: "But perhaps we had better speak in Russian, my dear sir?"

And the consultation followed.

Half an hour later Vasili Ivanitch conducted Anna Sergievna into the study. As the doctor passed out he whispered to her that recovery was hopeless.

She glanced at Bazarov, and halted as though petrified, so striking was the bloodshot, deathlike face, with the dim eyes turned so yearningly in her direction. Nevertheless her feeling was one merely of chill, oppressive terror, while at the same moment there flashed through her brain the thought that, if she had loved him, no such feeling could now have been present.

"I thank you," he said with an effort. "I had not expected this, and you have done a kind act in coming. So we meet once more, even as you foretold!"

"Has not Madame Anna Sergievna indeed been kind?" put in Vasili Ivanitch.

"Father, pray leave us," said Bazarov. "I know, Anna Sergievna, that you will excuse him. For at such a time as this – " And he nodded towards his weak, prostrate form.

Vasili Ivanitch left the room.

"A second time I thank you," continued Bazarov. "To have acted so is worthy of the Tsars. For they say that even the Sovereign visits a deathbed when requested."

"Evgenii Vasilitch, I hope that – "

"Let us speak plainly. My course is run. I am under the wheel, and we need not think of the future. Yet how curious it is that to each individual human being death, old though it is as an institution, comes as a novelty!.. Nevertheless, it shall not make me quail: and then there will fall the curtain, and then – well, then they will write Fuit." There followed a feeble gesture. "But what did I want to say to you? That I have loved you? There was a time when the phrase 'I love' had for me no meaning; and now it will have less than ever, seeing that love is a form, and that my particular embodiment of it is fast lapsing towards dissolution. It Ah, how perfect you are! You stand there as beautiful as – "

There passed over Anna Sergievna an involuntary shudder.

"Nay," he said. You need not be afraid. "But will you not sit down? Seat yourself near me, but not too near, for my malady is infectious."

She crossed the room with a rapid step, and seated herself beside the sofa on which he was lying.

"O woman of kind heart!" he whispered. "And to think that you are beside me once more! To think that you, so pure and fresh and young, are in this sorry room! Well, good-bye, and may you live long, and enjoy your time while you may. Of all things in this world long life is the most desirable: yet you can see for yourself what an ugly spectacle I, a half-crushed, but still wriggling, worm, am now become. There was a time when I used to say: 'I will do many things in life, and refuse to die before I have completed those tasks, for I am a giant': but now I have indeed a giant's task in hand – the task of dying as though death were nothing to me… No matter. I am not going to put my tail between my legs."

He broke off, and groped for his tumbler. She handed it him without drawing off her glove. Her breath was coming in jerks.

"It will not be long before you will have forgotten me," he went on. "For a dead mortal is no companion for a living one. I daresay that my father will tell you what a man is being lost to Russia; but that is all rubbish. Nevertheless, do not undeceive him, for he is old, old. Rather, comfort him as you would comfort a child, and also be kind to my mother. Two such mortals as them you will not find in all your great world – no, not though you search for them with a candle by daylight… Russia needs me, indeed! Evidently she does not need me. Whom, then, does she need? She needs shoemakers, tailors, butchers… What does a butcher sell? He sells meat, does he not?.. I think that I am wandering – I seem to see before me a forest…"

He pressed his hand to his forehead, and Anna Sergievna bent over him.

"Evgenii Vasilitch," she said, "I am here."

With a combined movement he took her hand and raised himself a little.

"Good-bye," he said with a sudden spasm of energy and a last flash of his eyes. "Good-bye… I kissed you that time, did I not, when, when – ?.. Ah, breathe now upon the expiring lamp, that it may go out in peace."

She pressed her lips gently to his forehead.

"Enough," he murmured as he sank back upon the pillow. "Now let there come – darkness."

She left the room quietly.

"Well?" whispered Vasili Ivanitch.

"He has gone to sleep," she replied in a voice that was scarcely audible.

But Bazarov was not fated to go to sleep. Rather, as night approached he sank into a state of coma, and, on the following day, expired. Father Alexis performed over him the last rites of religion, and at the moment when Extreme Unction was being administered, and the holy oil touched his breast, one of the dying man's eyelids raised itself, and over the face there seemed to flit something like an expression of distaste at the sight of the priest in his vestments, the smoking censer, and the candles before the ikon.

Finally, when Bazarov's last breath had been drawn, and there had arisen in the house the sound of "the general lamentation," something akin to frenzy came upon Vasili Ivanitch.

"I declare that I protest!" he cried with his face blazing and quivering with fury, and his fist beating the air as in menace of some one. "I declare that I protest, that I protest, that I protest!"

Upon that old Arina Vlasievna, suffused in tears, laid her arms around his neck, and the two sank forward upon the floor. Said Anfisushka later, when relating the story in the servants' quarters: "There they knelt together – side by side, their heads drooping like those of two sheep at midday."

Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary and the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.