IV.--The Passing of Bazaroff
Bazaroff's old parents were all the more overjoyed at their son's arrival, as it was quite unexpected. His mother was greatly excited and his father, touching his neck with his fingers, turned his head round as though he were trying whether it were properly screwed on, and then, all at once, he opened his wide mouth and went off into a perfectly noiseless chuckle.
"I've come to you for six whole weeks, governor," Bazaroff said to him. "I want to work, so please don't hinder me now."
But though his father and mother almost effaced themselves, scarcely daring to ask him a question, even to discover what he would like for dinner, the fever of work fell away. It was replaced by dreary boredom or vague restlessness. He began to seek the society of his father and to smoke with him in silence. Now and again he even assisted at some of the medical operations which his father conducted as a charity. Once he pulled a tooth out from a pedlar's head, and Vassily Ivanovitch never ceased boasting about the extraordinary feat.
One day in a neighbouring village, the news was brought them that a peasant had died of typhus. Three days later Bazaroff came into his father's room and asked him if he had any caustic to burn a cut in his finger.
"What sort of a cut? where is it?"
"Here, on my finger. I have been dissecting that peasant who died of typhus fever."
Vassily Ivanovitch suddenly turned quite white. All that day he watched his son's face stealthily. On the third day Bazaroff could not touch his food.
"Have you no appetite? And your head?" he at last asked, timidly; "does it ache?"
"Yes, of course it aches."