Fathers and Children Part 41

'Don't be angry, please, Yevgeny,' continued Va.s.sily 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 Va.s.sily Ivanovitch went into the next room and clutched at his hair in silent desperation.

Bazarov did not get up again that day, and pa.s.sed 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 Va.s.sily Ivanovitch. She could see nothing but his motionless bent back, but even that afforded her some faint consolation. In the morning Bazarov tried to get up; he was seized with giddiness, his nose began to bleed; he lay down again. Va.s.sily Ivanovitch waited on him in silence; Arina Vlasyevna went in to him and asked him how he was feeling. He answered, 'Better,' and turned to the wall. Va.s.sily Ivanovitch gesticulated at his wife with both hands; she bit her lips so as not to cry, and went away. The whole house seemed suddenly darkened; every one looked gloomy; there was a strange hush; a shrill c.o.c.k was carried away from the yard to the village, unable to comprehend why he should be treated so. Bazarov still lay, turned to the wall. Va.s.sily Ivanovitch tried to address him with various questions, but they fatigued Bazarov, and the old man sank into his armchair, motionless, only cracking his finger-joints now and then. He went for a few minutes into the garden, stood there like a statue, as though overwhelmed with unutterable bewilderment (the expression of amazement never left his face all through), and went back again to his son, trying to avoid his wife's questions. She caught him by the arm at last and pa.s.sionately, almost menacingly, said, 'What is wrong with him?' Then he came to himself, and forced himself to smile at her in reply; but to his own horror, instead of a smile, he found himself taken somehow by a fit of laughter. He had sent at daybreak for a doctor. He thought it necessary to inform his son of this, for fear he should be angry. Bazarov suddenly turned over on the sofa, bent a fixed dull look on his father, and asked for drink.

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch gave him some water, and as he did so felt his forehead. It seemed on fire.

'Governor,' began Bazarov, in a slow, drowsy voice; 'I'm in a bad way; I've got the infection, and in a few days you'll have to bury me.'

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch staggered back, as though some one had aimed a blow at his legs.

'Yevgeny!' he faltered; 'what do you mean!... G.o.d have mercy on you!

You've caught cold!'

'Hush!' Bazarov interposed deliberately. 'A doctor can't be allowed to talk like that. There's every symptom of infection; you know yourself.'

'Where are the symptoms ... of infection Yevgeny?... Good Heavens!'

'What's this?' said Bazarov, and, pulling up his shirtsleeve, he showed his father the ominous red patches coming out on his arm.

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch was shaking and chill with terror.

'Supposing,' he said at last, 'even supposing ... if even there's something like ... infection ...'

'Pyaemia,' put in his son.

'Well, well ... something of the epidemic ...'

'Pyaemia,' Bazarov repeated sharply and distinctly; 'have you forgotten your text-books?'

'Well, well--as you like.... Anyway, we will cure you!'

'Come, that's humbug. But that's not the point. I didn't expect to die so soon; it's a most unpleasant incident, to tell the truth. You and mother ought to make the most of your strong religious belief; now's the time to put it to the test.' He drank off a little water. 'I want to ask you about one thing ... while my head is still under my control.

To-morrow or next day my brain, you know, will send in its resignation.

I'm not quite certain even now whether I'm expressing myself clearly.

While I've been lying here, I've kept fancying red dogs were running round me, while you were making them point at me, as if I were a woodc.o.c.k. Just as if I were drunk. Do you understand me all right?'

'I a.s.sure you, Yevgeny, you are talking perfectly correctly.'

'All the better. You told me you'd sent for the doctor. You did that to comfort yourself ... comfort me too; send a messenger ...'

'To Arkady Nikolaitch?' put in the old man.

'Who's Arkady Nikolaitch?' said Bazarov, as though in doubt.... 'Oh, yes! that chicken! No, let him alone; he's turned jackdaw now. Don't be surprised; that's not delirium yet. You send a messenger to Madame Odintsov, Anna Sergyevna; she's a lady with an estate.... Do you know?'

(Va.s.sily Ivanovitch nodded.) 'Yevgeny Bazarov, say, sends his greetings, and sends word he is dying. Will you do that?'

'Yes, I will do it.... But is it a possible thing for you to die, Yevgeny?... Think only! Where would divine justice be after that?'

'I know nothing about that; only you send the messenger.'

'I'll send this minute, and I'll write a letter myself.'

'No, why? Say I sent greetings; nothing more is necessary. And now I'll go back to my dogs. Strange! I want to fix my thoughts on death, and nothing comes of it. I see a kind of blur ... and nothing more.'

He turned painfully back to the wall again; while Va.s.sily Ivanovitch went out of the study, and struggling as far as his wife's bedroom, simply dropped down on to his knees before the holy pictures.

'Pray, Arina, pray for us!' he moaned; 'our son is dying.'

The doctor, the same district doctor who had had no caustic, arrived, and after looking at the patient, advised them to persevere with a cooling treatment, and at that point said a few words of the chance of recovery.

'Have you ever chanced to see people in my state _not_ set off for Elysium?' asked Bazarov, and suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hing the leg of a heavy table that stood near his sofa, he swung it round, and pushed it away.

'There's strength, there's strength,' he murmured; 'everything's here still, and I must die!... An old man at least has time to be weaned from life, but I ... Well, go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that's all! Who's crying there?' he added, after a short pause--'Mother? Poor thing! Whom will she feed now with her exquisite beetroot-soup? You, Va.s.sily Ivanovitch, whimpering too, I do believe! Why, if Christianity's no help to you, be a philosopher, a Stoic, or what not! Why, didn't you boast you were a philosopher?'

'Me a philosopher!' wailed Va.s.sily Ivanovitch, while the tears fairly streamed down his cheeks.

Bazarov got worse every hour; the progress of the disease was rapid, as is usually the way in cases of surgical poisoning. He still had not lost consciousness, and understood what was said to him; he was still struggling. 'I don't want to lose my wits,' he muttered, clenching his fists; 'what rot it all is!' And at once he would say, 'Come, take ten from eight, what remains?' Va.s.sily Ivanovitch wandered about like one possessed, proposed first one remedy, then another, and ended by doing nothing but cover up his son's feet. 'Try cold pack ... emetic ...

mustard plasters on the stomach ... bleeding,' he would murmur with an effort. The doctor, whom he had entreated to remain, agreed with him, ordered the patient lemonade to drink, and for himself asked for a pipe and something 'warming and strengthening'--that's to say, brandy. Arina Vlasyevna sat on a low stool near the door, and only went out from time to time to pray. A few days before, a looking-gla.s.s had slipped out of her hands and been broken, and this she had always considered an omen of evil; even Anfisushka could say nothing to her. Timofeitch had gone off to Madame Odintsov's.

The night pa.s.sed badly for Bazarov.... He was in the agonies of high fever. Towards morning he was a little easier. He asked for Arina Vlasyevna to comb his hair, kissed her hand, and swallowed two gulps of tea. Va.s.sily Ivanovitch revived a little.

'Thank G.o.d!' he kept declaring; 'the crisis is coming, the crisis is at hand!'

'There, to think now!' murmured Bazarov; 'what a word can do! He's found it; he's said "crisis," and is comforted. It's an astounding thing how man believes in words. If he's told he's a fool, for instance, though he's not thrashed, he'll be wretched; call him a clever fellow, and he'll be delighted if you go off without paying him.'

This little speech of Bazarov's, recalling his old retorts, moved Va.s.sily Ivanovitch greatly.

'Bravo! well said, very good!' he cried, making as though he were clapping his hands.

Bazarov smiled mournfully.

'So what do you think,' he said; 'is the crisis over, or coming?'

'You are better, that's what I see, that's what rejoices me,' answered Va.s.sily Ivanovitch.

'Well, that's good; rejoicings never come amiss. And to her, do you remember? did you send?'

'To be sure I did.'