others were ashamed in his presence. "Fancy such a thing happening," he
said, sitting down. "I was sitting here, and all of a sudden, do you
know, I felt a terrible piercing pain in my side . . . unendurable, my
nerves could not stand it, and . . . and it led to this silly
performance. This is the age of nerves; there is no help for it."
At supper he drank some wine, and, from time to time, with an abrupt
sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still felt the pain.
And no one, except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, believed him, and he saw that.
After nine o'clock they went for a walk on the boulevard. Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna, afraid that Kirilin would speak to her, did her best to keep
all the time beside Marya Konstantinovna and the children. She felt weak
with fear and misery, and felt she was going to be feverish; she was
exhausted and her legs would hardly move, but she did not go home,
because she felt sure that she would be followed by Kirilin or
Atchmianov or both at once. Kirilin walked behind her with Nikodim
Alexandritch, and kept humming in an undertone:
"I don't al-low people to play with me! I don't al-low it."
From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked along the
beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the water.
Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent. XIV
"It's time I went to my vint. . . . They will be waiting for me," said
Laevsky. "Good-bye, my friends."
"I'll come with you; wait a minute," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she
took his arm.
They said good-bye to the company and went away. Kirilin took leave too,
and saying that he was going the same way, went along beside them.
"What will be, will be," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "So be it. . . ."
And it seemed to her that all the evil memories in her head had taken
shape and were walking beside her in the darkness, breathing heavily,
while she, like a fly that had fallen into the inkpot, was crawling
painfully along the pavement and smirching Laevsky's side and arm with
blackness.
If Kirilin should do anything horrid, she thought, not he but she would
be to blame for it. There was a time when no man would have talked to
her as Kirilin had done, and she had torn up her security like a thread
and destroyed it irrevocably--who was to blame for it? Intoxicated by her
passions she had smiled at a complete stranger, probably just because he
was tall and a fine figure. After two meetings she was weary of him, had
thrown him over, and did not that, she thought now, give him the right
to treat her as he chose?
"Here I'll say good-bye to you, darling," said Laevsky. "Ilya Mihalitch
will see you home."
He nodded to Kirilin, and, quickly crossing the boulevard, walked along
the street to Sheshkovsky's, where there were lights in the windows, and
then they heard the gate bang as he went in.
"Allow me to have an explanation with you," said Kirilin. "I'm not a
boy, not some Atchkasov or Latchkasov, Zatchkasov. . . . I demand
serious attention."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's heart began beating violently. She made no reply.
"The abrupt change in your behaviour to me I put down at first to
coquetry," Kirilin went on; "now I see that you don't know how to behave
with gentlemanly people. You simply wanted to play with me, as you are
playing with that wretched Armenian boy; but I'm a gentleman and I
insist on being treated like a gentleman. And so I am at your service. .
. ."
"I'm miserable," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna beginning to cry, and to hide
her tears she turned away.
"I'm miserable too," said Kirilin, "but what of that?"
Kirilin was silent for a space, then he said distinctly and
emphatically:
"I repeat, madam, that if you do not give me an interview this evening,
I'll make a scandal this very evening."
"Let me off this evening," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she did not
recognise her own voice, it was so weak and pitiful.
"I must give you a lesson. . . . Excuse me for the roughness of my tone,
but it's necessary to give you a lesson. Yes, I regret to say I must
give you a lesson. I insist on two interviews--to-day and to-morrow.
After to-morrow you are perfectly free and can go wherever you like with
any one you choose. To-day and to-morrow."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.
"Let me go," she murmured, trembling all over and seeing nothing before
her in the darkness but his white tunic. "You're right: I'm a horrible
woman. . . . I'm to blame, but let me go . . . I beg you." She touched
his cold hand and shuddered. "I beseech you. . . ."
"Alas!" sighed Kirilin, "alas! it's not part of my plan to let you go; I
only mean to give you a lesson and make you realise. And what's more,
madam, I've too little faith in women."
"I'm miserable. . . ."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna listened to the even splash of the sea, looked at
the sky studded with stars, and longed to make haste and end it all, and
get away from the cursed sensation of life, with its sea, stars, men,
fever.
"Only not in my home," she said coldly. "Take me somewhere else."
"Come to Muridov's. That's better."
"Where's that?"
"Near the old wall."
She walked quickly along the street and then turned into the side-street
that led towards the mountains. It was dark. There were pale streaks of
light here and there on the pavement, from the lighted windows, and it
seemed to her that, like a fly, she kept falling into the ink and
crawling out into the light again. At one point he stumbled, almost fell
down and burst out laughing.
"He's drunk," thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. "Never mind. . . . Never
mind. . . . So be it."
Atchmianov, too, soon took leave of the party and followed Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna to ask her to go for a row. He went to her house and looked
over the fence: the windows were wide open, there were no lights.
"Nadyezhda Fyodorovna!" he called.
A moment passed, he called again.
"Who's there?" he heard Olga's voice.
"Is Nadyezhda Fyodorovna at home?"
"No, she has not come in yet."
"Strange . . . very strange," thought Atchmianov, feeling very uneasy.
"She went home. . . ."
He walked along the boulevard, then along the street, and glanced in at
the windows of Sheshkovsky's. Laevsky was sitting at the table without
his coat on, looking attentively at his cards.
"Strange, strange," muttered Atchmianov, and remembering Laevsky's
hysterics, he felt ashamed. "If she is not at home, where is she?"
He went to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's lodgings again, and looked at the dark
windows.
"It's a cheat, a cheat . . ." he thought, remembering that, meeting him
at midday at Marya Konstantinovna's, she had promised to go in a boat
with him that evening.
The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and there was a
policeman sitting asleep on a little bench at the gate. Everything was
clear to Atchmianov when he looked at the windows and the policeman. He
made up his mind to go home, and set off in that direction, but somehow
found himself near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's lodgings again. He sat down on
the bench near the gate and took off his hat, feeling that his head was
burning with jealousy and resentment.
The clock in the town church only struck twice in the twenty-four
hours--at midday and midnight. Soon after it struck midnight he heard
hurried footsteps.
"To-morrow evening, then, again at Muridov's," Atchmianov heard, and he
recognised Kirilin's voice. "At eight o'clock; good-bye!"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna made her appearance near the garden. Without
noticing that Atchmianov was sitting on the bench, she passed beside him
like a shadow, opened the gate, and leaving it open, went into the
house. In her own room she lighted the candle and quickly undressed, but
instead of getting into bed, she sank on her knees before a chair, flung
her arms round it, and rested her head on it.
It was past two when Laevsky came home. XV
Having made up his mind to lie, not all at once but piecemeal, Laevsky
went soon after one o'clock next day to Samoylenko to ask for the money
that he might be sure to get off on Saturday. After his hysterical
attack, which had added an acute feeling of shame to his depressed state
of mind, it was unthinkable to remain in the town. If Samoylenko should
insist on his conditions, he thought it would be possible to agree to
them and take the money, and next day, just as he was starting, to say
that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna refused to go. He would be able to persuade
her that evening that the whole arrangement would be for her benefit. If
Samoylenko, who was obviously under the influence of Von Koren, should
refuse the money altogether or make fresh conditions, then he, Laevsky,
would go off that very evening in a cargo vessel, or even in a sailing-
boat, to Novy Athon or Novorossiisk, would send from there an
humiliating telegram, and would stay there till his mother sent him the
money for the journey.
When he went into Samoylenko's, he found Von Koren in the drawing-room.
The zoologist had just arrived for dinner, and, as usual, was turning
over the album and scrutinising the gentlemen in top-hats and the ladies
in caps.
"How very unlucky!" thought Laevsky, seeing him. "He may be in the way.
Good-morning."
"Good-morning," answered Von Koren, without looking at him.
"Is Alexandr Daviditch at home?"
"Yes, in the kitchen."
Laevsky went into the kitchen, but seeing from the door that Samoylenko
was busy over the salad, he went back into the drawing-room and sat
down. He always had a feeling of awkwardness in the zoologist's
presence, and now he was afraid there would be talk about his attack of
hysterics. There was more than a minute of silence. Von Koren suddenly
raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:
"How do you feel after yesterday?"
"Very well indeed," said Laevsky, flushing. "It really was nothing much.
. . ."
"Until yesterday I thought it was only ladies who had hysterics, and so
at first I thought you had St. Vitus's dance."
Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly, and thought:
"How indelicate on his part! He knows quite well how unpleasant it is
for me. . . ."
"Yes, it was a ridiculous performance," he said, still smiling. "I've
been laughing over it the whole morning. What's so curious in an attack
of hysterics is that you know it is absurd, and are laughing at it in
your heart, and at the same time you sob. In our neurotic age we are the
slaves of our nerves; they are our masters and do as they like with us.
Civilisation has done us a bad turn in that way. . . ."
As Laevsky talked, he felt it disagreeable that Von Koren listened to
him gravely, and looked at him steadily and attentively as though
studying him; and he was vexed with himself that in spite of his dislike
of Von Koren, he could not banish the ingratiating smile from his face.
"I must admit, though," he added, "that there were immediate causes for
the attack, and quite sufficient ones too. My health has been terribly
shaky of late. To which one must add boredom, constantly being hard up .
. . the absence of people and general interests . . . . My position is
worse than a governor's."
"Yes, your position is a hopeless one," answered Von Koren.
These calm, cold words, implying something between a jeer and an
uninvited prediction, offended Laevsky. He recalled the zoologist's eyes
the evening before, full of mockery and disgust. He was silent for a
space and then asked, no longer smiling:
"How do you know anything of my position?"
"You were only just speaking of it yourself. Besides, your friends take
such a warm interest in you, that I am hearing about you all day long."
"What friends? Samoylenko, I suppose?"
"Yes, he too."
"I would ask Alexandr Daviditch and my friends in general not to trouble
so much about me."
"Here is Samoylenko; you had better ask him not to trouble so much about
you."
"I don't understand your tone," Laevsky muttered, suddenly feeling as
though he had only just realised that the zoologist hated and despised
him, and was jeering at him, and was his bitterest and most inveterate
enemy.
"Keep that tone for some one else," he said softly, unable to speak
aloud for the hatred with which his chest and throat were choking, as
they had been the night before with laughter.
Samoylenko came in in his shirt-sleeves, crimson and perspiring from the
stifling kitchen.
"Ah, you here?" he said. "Good-morning, my dear boy. Have you had
dinner? Don't stand on ceremony. Have you had dinner?"
"Alexandr Daviditch," said Laevsky, standing up, "though I did appeal to
you to help me in a private matter, it did not follow that I released
you from the obligation of discretion and respect for other people's
private affairs."
"What's this?" asked Samoylenko, in astonishment.
"If you have no money," Laevsky went on, raising his voice and shifting
from one foot to the other in his excitement, "don't give it; refuse it.
But why spread abroad in every back street that my position is hopeless,
and all the rest of it? I can't endure such benevolence and friend's
assistance where there's a shilling-worth of talk for a ha'p'orth of
help! You can boast of your benevolence as much as you please, but no
one has given you the right to gossip about my private affairs!"
"What private affairs?" asked Samoylenko, puzzled and beginning to be
angry. "If you've come here to be abusive, you had better clear out. You
can come again afterwards!"
He remembered the rule that when one is angry with one's neighbour, one
must begin to count a hundred, and one will grow calm again; and he
began rapidly counting.
"I beg you not to trouble yourself about me," Laevsky went on. "Don't
pay any attention to me, and whose business is it what I do and how I
live? Yes, I want to go away. Yes, I get into debt, I drink, I am living
with another man's wife, I'm hysterical, I'm ordinary. I am not so
profound as some people, but whose business is that? Respect other
people's privacy."
"Excuse me, brother," said Samoylenko, who had counted up to thirty-
five, "but . . ."
"Respect other people's individuality!" interrupted Laevsky. "This
continual gossip about other people's affairs, this sighing and groaning
and everlasting prying, this eavesdropping, this friendly sympathy . . .
damn it all! They lend me money and make conditions as though I were a
schoolboy! I am treated as the devil knows what! I don't want anything,"
shouted Laevsky, staggering with excitement and afraid that it might end
in another attack of hysterics. "I shan't get away on Saturday, then,"
flashed through his mind. "I want nothing. All I ask of you is to spare
me your protecting care. I'm not a boy, and I'm not mad, and I beg you
to leave off looking after me."
The deacon came in, and seeing Laevsky pale and gesticulating,
addressing his strange speech to the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, stood
still by the door as though petrified.
"This continual prying into my soul," Laevsky went on, "is insulting to
my human dignity, and I beg these volunteer detectives to give up their
spying! Enough!"
"What's that . . . what did you say?" said Samoylenko, who had counted
up to a hundred. He turned crimson and went up to Laevsky.
"It's enough," said Laevsky, breathing hard and snatching up his cap.
"I'm a Russian doctor, a nobleman by birth, and a civil councillor,"
said Samoylenko emphatically. "I've never been a spy, and I allow no one
to insult me!" he shouted in a breaking voice, emphasising the last
word. "Hold your tongue!"
The deacon, who had never seen the doctor so majestic, so swelling with
dignity, so crimson and so ferocious, shut his mouth, ran out into the
entry and there exploded with laughter.
As though through a fog, Laevsky saw Von Koren get up and, putting his
hands in his trouser-pockets, stand still in an attitude of expectancy,
as though waiting to see what would happen. This calm attitude struck
Laevsky as insolent and insulting to the last degree.
"Kindly take back your words," shouted Samoylenko.
Laevsky, who did not by now remember what his words were, answered:
"Leave me alone! I ask for nothing. All I ask is that you and German
upstarts of Jewish origin should let me alone! Or I shall take steps to
make you! I will fight you!"
"Now we understand," said Von Koren, coming from behind the table. "Mr.
Laevsky wants to amuse himself with a duel before he goes away. I can
give him that pleasure. Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge."
"A challenge," said Laevsky, in a low voice, going up to the zoologist
and looking with hatred at his swarthy brow and curly hair. "A
challenge? By all means! I hate you! I hate you!"
"Delighted. To-morrow morning early near Kerbalay's. I leave all details
to your taste. And now, clear out!"
"I hate you," Laevsky said softly, breathing hard. "I have hated you a
long while! A duel! Yes!"
"Get rid of him, Alexandr Daviditch, or else I'm going," said Von Koren.
"He'll bite me."
Von Koren's cool tone calmed the doctor; he seemed suddenly to come to
himself, to recover his reason; he put both arms round Laevsky's waist,
and, leading him away from the zoologist, muttered in a friendly voice
that shook with emotion:
"My friends . . . dear, good . . . you've lost your tempers and that's
enough . . . and that's enough, my friends."
Hearing his soft, friendly voice, Laevsky felt that something unheard
of, monstrous, had just happened to him, as though he had been nearly
run over by a train; he almost burst into tears, waved his hand, and ran
out of the room.
"To feel that one is hated, to expose oneself before the man who hates
one, in the most pitiful, contemptible, helpless state. My God, how hard
it is!" he thought a little while afterwards as he sat in the pavilion,
feeling as though his body were scarred by the hatred of which he had
just been the object.
"How coarse it is, my God!"
Cold water with brandy in it revived him. He vividly pictured Von
Koren's calm, haughty face; his eyes the day before, his shirt like a
rug, his voice, his white hand; and heavy, passionate, hungry hatred
rankled in his breast and clamoured for satisfaction. In his thoughts he
felled Von Koren to the ground, and trampled him underfoot. He
remembered to the minutest detail all that had happened, and wondered
how he could have smiled ingratiatingly to that insignificant man, and
how he could care for the opinion of wretched petty people whom nobody
knew, living in a miserable little town which was not, it seemed, even
on the map, and of which not one decent person in Petersburg had heard.
If this wretched little town suddenly fell into ruins or caught fire,
the telegram with the news would be read in Russia with no more interest
than an advertisement of the sale of second-hand furniture. Whether he
killed Von Koren next day or left him alive, it would be just the same,
equally useless and uninteresting. Better to shoot him in the leg or
hand, wound him, then laugh at him, and let him, like an insect with a
broken leg lost in the grass--let him be lost with his obscure sufferings
in the crowd of insignificant people like himself.
Laevsky went to Sheshkovsky, told him all about it, and asked him to be
his second; then they both went to the superintendent of the postal
telegraph department, and asked him, too, to be a second, and stayed to
dinner with him. At dinner there was a great deal of joking and
laughing. Laevsky made jests at his own expense, saying he hardly knew
how to fire off a pistol, calling himself a royal archer and William
Tell.
"We must give this gentleman a lesson . . ." he said.
After dinner they sat down to cards. Laevsky played, drank wine, and
thought that duelling was stupid and senseless, as it did not decide the
question but only complicated it, but that it was sometimes impossible
to get on without it. In the given case, for instance, one could not, of
course, bring an action against Von Koren. And this duel was so far good
in that it made it impossible for Laevsky to remain in the town
afterwards. He got a little drunk and interested in the game, and felt
at ease.
But when the sun had set and it grew dark, he was possessed by a feeling
of uneasiness. It was not fear at the thought of death, because while he
was dining and playing cards, he had for some reason a confident belief
that the duel would end in nothing; it was dread at the thought of
something unknown which was to happen next morning for the first time in
his life, and dread of the coming night. . . . He knew that the night
would be long and sleepless, and that he would have to think not only of
Von Koren and his hatred, but also of the mountain of lies which he had
to get through, and which he had not strength or ability to dispense
with. It was as though he had been taken suddenly ill; all at once he
lost all interest in the cards and in people, grew restless, and began
asking them to let him go home. He was eager to get into bed, to lie
without moving, and to prepare his thoughts for the night. Sheshkovsky
and the postal superintendent saw him home and went on to Von Koren's to
arrange about the duel.
Near his lodgings Laevsky met Atchmianov. The young man was breathless
and excited.
"I am looking for you, Ivan Andreitch," he said. "I beg you to come
quickly. . . ."
"Where?"
"Some one wants to see you, some one you don't know, about very
important business; he earnestly begs you to come for a minute. He wants
to speak to you of something. . . . For him it's a question of life and
death. . . ." In his excitement Atchmianov spoke in a strong Armenian
accent.
"Who is it?" asked Laevsky.
"He asked me not to tell you his name."
"Tell him I'm busy; to-morrow, if he likes. . . ."
"How can you!" Atchmianov was aghast. "He wants to tell you something
very important for you . . . very important! If you don't come,
something dreadful will happen."
"Strange . . ." muttered Laevsky, unable to understand why Atchmianov
was so excited and what mysteries there could be in this dull, useless
little town.
"Strange," he repeated in hesitation. "Come along, though; I don't
care."
Atchmianov walked rapidly on ahead and Laevsky followed him. They walked
down a street, then turned into an alley.
"What a bore this is!" said Laevsky.
"One minute, one minute . . . it's near."
Near the old rampart they went down a narrow alley between two empty
enclosures, then they came into a sort of large yard and went towards a
small house.
"That's Muridov's, isn't it?" asked Laevsky.
"Yes."
"But why we've come by the back yards I don't understand. We might have
come by the street; it's nearer. . . ."
"Never mind, never mind. . . ."
It struck Laevsky as strange, too, that Atchmianov led him to a back
entrance, and motioned to him as though bidding him go quietly and hold
his tongue.
"This way, this way . . ." said Atchmianov, cautiously opening the door
and going into the passage on tiptoe. "Quietly, quietly, I beg you . . .
they may hear."
He listened, drew a deep breath and said in a whisper:
"Open that door, and go in . . . don't be afraid."
Laevsky, puzzled, opened the door and went into a room with a low
ceiling and curtained windows.
There was a candle on the table.
"What do you want?" asked some one in the next room. "Is it you,
Muridov?"
Laevsky turned into that room and saw Kirilin, and beside him Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna.
He didn't hear what was said to him; he staggered back, and did not know
how he found himself in the street. His hatred for Von Koren and his
uneasiness--all had vanished from his soul. As he went home he waved his
right arm awkwardly and looked carefully at the ground under his feet,
trying to step where it was smooth. At home in his study he walked
backwards and forwards, rubbing his hands, and awkwardly shrugging his
shoulders and neck, as though his jacket and shirt were too tight; then
he lighted a candle and sat down to the table. . . . XVI