Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev Page A

shoulders. She carried a
     big cup of cocoa and as she put it in front of Pavel Petrovich, she was overcome with confusion; a hot red flush came up underneath
     the tender skin of her pretty face. She lowered her eyes and stopped at the table, just leaning on the very tips of her fingers.
     It was as if she was ashamed of having come but also as if she felt she had the right to come.
    Pavel Petrovich frowned sternly, and Nikolay Petrovich was embarrassed.
    ‘Good morning, Fenechka,’ he muttered.
    ‘Good morning,’ she answered in a low but audible voice and with a sideways look at Arkady, who gave her a friendly smile,
     she quietly left. She swayed a little as she walked, but it suited her.
    Silence reigned on the terrace for a few minutes. Pavel Petrovich sipped his cocoa and suddenly raised his head.
    ‘Here’s Mr Nihilist coming to join us,’ he said in an under-tone.
    Indeed Bazarov was coming through the garden, stepping over the flowerbeds. His canvas coat and trousers were spattered with
     mud. There was a clinging marsh plant round the crown of his old round hat. In his right hand he held a small
bag, and in the bag something live was moving. He quickly came up to the terrace and said with a nod of his head:
    ‘Good morning, gentlemen. I’m sorry I’m late for tea, I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to find a place for my prisoners.’
    ‘What have you got there, leeches?’ asked Pavel Petrovich.
    ‘No, frogs.’
    ‘Do you eat them or breed them?’
    ‘They’re for experiments,’ Bazarov said calmly and went into the house.
    ‘He’s going to dissect them,’ commented Pavel Petrovich. ‘He doesn’t believe in principles but he does believe in frogs.’
    Arkady gave his uncle a pitying look, and Nikolay Petrovich furtively shrugged a shoulder. Pavel Petrovich himself sensed
     his joke had fallen flat and began to talk of farming and the new bailiff who had come to him the day before to complain of
     Foma, one of the workmen, for his ‘deboshery’ and impossible behaviour. ‘He’s such an old Aesop,’ 5 he’d said among other things, ‘going around everywhere proclaiming his wickedness. He’ll live a fool and die a fool.’

VI
    Bazarov came back, sat down at the table and quickly began to drink his tea. Both brothers watched him in silence while Arkady
     stealthily glanced at his father and his uncle.
    ‘Did you walk a long way from here?’ Nikolay Petrovich eventually asked.
    ‘You’ve got a little swamp here, by the aspen copse. I put up five or six snipe there. You can go and kill them, Arkady.’
    ‘Don’t you shoot?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Are you actually studying physics?’ asked Pavel Petrovich in his turn.
    ‘Yes, physics. And the natural sciences in general.’
    ‘People say the Teutons have recently had a lot of success in that field.’

    ‘Yes, the Germans are our teachers there,’ Bazarov said casually.
    Pavel Petrovich used the word Teutons instead of Germans ironically, but nobody noticed.
    ‘Do you have such a high opinion of the Germans?’ Pavel Petrovich said with extreme politeness. He was beginning to feel a
     secret irritation. His aristocratic nature was offended by Bazarov’s complete relaxedness. This doctor’s son not only displayed
     no shyness, he even answered curtly and unwillingly, and there was something coarse, almost impertinent, in the tone of his
     voice.
    ‘The scientists over there are a clever lot.’
    ‘Really, really. Well, you probably don’t have such a favourable opinion of Russian scientists, do you?’
    ‘I suppose not.’
    ‘That is very laudable self-denial,’ said Pavel Petrovich, straightening his posture and putting his head back. ‘But how is
     it that Arkady Nikolaich was telling us just now that you don’t recognize any authorities? Don’t you believe in them?’
    ‘Why should I start recognizing them? And what should I believe in? If people talk sense to me, I agree with them, that’s
     all there is to