Fathers and Sons Ch. 1: A Father's Anxious Wait

Summary

The speckled hen is already a sign that the morning will not hurry for him. It tap-taps up the old verandah steps on splayed yellow legs, and a fastidious cat watches from the balustrade as if the hen had no right to be there. Nikolai Petrovitch Kirsanov, hatless, in a dusty jacket over tweed, has asked his servant Peter whether anyone is in sight. Peter, turquoise ear-ring and pomaded hair, the walk of a man who knows he belongs to the rising generation, says no. Then he takes himself off to the gates to light a pipe. The master sits with his knees drawn under him. It is the 20th day of May, 1859, and the wait is long enough for a life to be told in it.

He was born to follow his brother Paul into the army. Their father had commanded a division after 1812. On the day Nikolai's commission arrived, he broke his leg, and after two months in bed he was lame for good. University replaced the regiment. In 1835 he took his degree, and as soon as mourning allowed he married the landlord's daughter, a comely girl called advanced because she sometimes read a science article in the papers. They left his post, played duets, kept a poultry-yard, and had a son, Arkady. Ten quiet years ended in 1847. The husband's hair went grey in a few weeks. He tried travel, came home, took up industrial reform, and in 1855 sent Arkady to St Petersburg to become a graduate in his own footsteps. This fourth winter he could not go to the capital. So he waits, grey, a little bent, wholly middle-aged.

Hot rye straw smells from a dark granary. The same words keep circling: his son Arkady a graduate. He tries to think of something else. The words return, and then they become his dead wife. A fat blue pigeon drinks from a pool by the well. Wheels sound in the same moment. Peter says he thinks they are coming. Nikolai springs up. A tarantass, three stagehorses, the band of a student's cap, a face he loves. He runs with his arms waving. His lips meet a sun-tanned, dusty, hairless cheek.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Name Who the Wait Is For

When you are waiting for someone you love, who else arrives in the wait before they do? At the posting-house a speckled hen climbs the steps while Nikolai lets the words 'my son Arkady a graduate' circle until they become his wife, dead since 1847.

Before the next reunion you have been rehearsing, write the sentence you keep repeating, and beside it the name that sentence is actually about.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Peter

Peter looks down the high road with a supercilious air, turquoise in his ear and pomade on his hair, and can only say he cannot see them yet. The modern young man this house fears disappointing is already on the verandah, in a servant's body. He offers the wait nothing but a manner, worn early, in case the real son finds the old life shabby.

Continue this thoughtThe Sentence That Stays Inside

Coming Up in Chapter 2

Next comes First Impressions and Social Masks: "To think that you are now a graduate and home again! The quiet country routine will not survive what that episode forces into the open. Watch who performs certainty and who pays for the performance.

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Original text

1,420 wordscomplete

Chapter 01

A Father's Anxious Wait

"Well, Peter? Cannot you see them yet?" asked a barin[1] of about forty who, hatless, and clad in a dusty jacket over a pair of tweed breeches, stepped on to the verandah of a posting-house on the 20th day of May, 1859. The person addressed was the barin's servant—a round-cheeked young fellow with small, dull eyes and a chin adorned with a tuft of pale-coloured down. Glancing along the high road in a supercilious manner, the servant (in whom everything, from the turquoise ear-ring to the dyed, pomaded hair and the mincing gait, revealed the modern, the rising generation) replied:…

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A Father's Anxious Wait

Summary

Why This Matters