"Well, there you are! I stayed at home, but I know all about it."
It would be nice to write a comic description of the duel. His father-
in-law would read it and laugh. A good story, told or written, was more
than meat and drink to his father-in-law.
The valley of the Yellow River opened before him. The stream was broader
and fiercer for the rain, and instead of murmuring as before, it was
raging. It began to get light. The grey, dingy morning, and the clouds
racing towards the west to overtake the storm-clouds, the mountains girt
with mist, and the wet trees, all struck the deacon as ugly and
sinister. He washed at the brook, repeated his morning prayer, and felt
a longing for tea and hot rolls, with sour cream, which were served
every morning at his father-in-law's. He remembered his wife and the
"Days past Recall," which she played on the piano. What sort of woman
was she? His wife had been introduced, betrothed, and married to him all
in one week: he had lived with her less than a month when he was ordered
here, so that he had not had time to find out what she was like. All the
same, he rather missed her.
"I must write her a nice letter . . ." he thought. The flag on the duhan
hung limp, soaked by the rain, and the duhan itself with its wet roof
seemed darker and lower than it had been before. Near the door was
standing a cart; Kerbalay, with two mountaineers and a young Tatar woman
in trousers--no doubt Kerbalay's wife or daughter--were bringing sacks of
something out of the duhan, and putting them on maize straw in the cart.
Near the cart stood a pair of asses hanging their heads. When they had
put in all the sacks, the mountaineers and the Tatar woman began
covering them over with straw, while Kerbalay began hurriedly harnessing
the asses.
"Smuggling, perhaps," thought the deacon.
Here was the fallen tree with the dried pine-needles, here was the
blackened patch from the fire. He remembered the picnic and all its
incidents, the fire, the singing of the mountaineers, his sweet dreams
of becoming a bishop, and of the Church procession. . . . The Black
River had grown blacker and broader with the rain. The deacon walked
cautiously over the narrow bridge, which by now was reached by the
topmost crests of the dirty water, and went up through the little copse
to the drying-shed.
"A splendid head," he thought, stretching himself on the straw, and
thinking of Von Koren. "A fine head--God grant him health; only there is
cruelty in him. . . ."
Why did he hate Laevsky and Laevsky hate him? Why were they going to
fight a duel? If from their childhood they had known poverty as the
deacon had; if they had been brought up among ignorant, hard-hearted,
grasping, coarse and ill-mannered people who grudged you a crust of
bread, who spat on the floor and hiccoughed at dinner and at prayers; if
they had not been spoilt from childhood by the pleasant surroundings and
the select circle of friends they lived in--how they would have rushed at
each other, how readily they would have overlooked each other's
shortcomings and would have prized each other's strong points! Why, how
few even outwardly decent people there were in the world! It was true
that Laevsky was flighty, dissipated, queer, but he did not steal, did
not spit loudly on the floor; he did not abuse his wife and say, "You'll
eat till you burst, but you don't want to work;" he would not beat a
child with reins, or give his servants stinking meat to eat-- surely this
was reason enough to be indulgent to him? Besides, he was the chief
sufferer from his failings, like a sick man from his sores. Instead of
being led by boredom and some sort of misunderstanding to look for
degeneracy, extinction, heredity, and other such incomprehensible things
in each other, would they not do better to stoop a little lower and turn
their hatred and anger where whole streets resounded with moanings from
coarse ignorance, greed, scolding, impurity, swearing, the shrieks of
women. . . .
The sound of a carriage interrupted the deacon's thoughts. He glanced
out of the door and saw a carriage and in it three persons: Laevsky,
Sheshkovsky, and the superintendent of the post-office.
"Stop!" said Sheshkovsky.
All three got out of the carriage and looked at one another.
"They are not here yet," said Sheshkovsky, shaking the mud off. "Well?
Till the show begins, let us go and find a suitable spot; there's not
room to turn round here."
They went further up the river and soon vanished from sight. The Tatar
driver sat in the carriage with his head resting on his shoulder and
fell asleep. After waiting ten minutes the deacon came out of the
drying-shed, and taking off his black hat that he might not be noticed,
he began threading his way among the bushes and strips of maize along
the bank, crouching and looking about him. The grass and maize were wet,
and big drops fell on his head from the trees and bushes. "Disgraceful!"
he muttered, picking up his wet and muddy skirt. "Had I realised it, I
would not have come."
Soon he heard voices and caught sight of them. Laevsky was walking
rapidly to and fro in the small glade with bowed back and hands thrust
in his sleeves; his seconds were standing at the water's edge, rolling
cigarettes.
"Strange," thought the deacon, not recognising Laevsky's walk; "he looks
like an old man. . . ."
"How rude it is of them!" said the superintendent of the post-office,
looking at his watch. "It may be learned manners to be late, but to my
thinking it's hoggish."
Sheshkovsky, a stout man with a black beard, listened and said:
"They're coming!" XIX
"It's the first time in my life I've seen it! How glorious!" said Von
Koren, pointing to the glade and stretching out his hands to the east.
"Look: green rays!"
In the east behind the mountains rose two green streaks of light, and it
really was beautiful. The sun was rising.
"Good-morning!" the zoologist went on, nodding to Laevsky's seconds.
"I'm not late, am I?"
He was followed by his seconds, Boyko and Govorovsky, two very young
officers of the same height, wearing white tunics, and Ustimovitch, the
thin, unsociable doctor; in one hand he had a bag of some sort, and in
the other hand, as usual, a cane which he held behind him. Laying the
bag on the ground and greeting no one, he put the other hand, too,
behind his back and began pacing up and down the glade.
Laevsky felt the exhaustion and awkwardness of a man who is soon perhaps
to die, and is for that reason an object of general attention. He wanted
to be killed as soon as possible or taken home. He saw the sunrise now
for the first time in his life; the early morning, the green rays of
light, the dampness, and the men in wet boots, seemed to him to have
nothing to do with his life, to be superfluous and embarrassing. All
this had no connection with the night he had been through, with his
thoughts and his feeling of guilt, and so he would have gladly gone away
without waiting for the duel.
Von Koren was noticeably excited and tried to conceal it, pretending
that he was more interested in the green light than anything. The
seconds were confused, and looked at one another as though wondering why
they were here and what they were to do.
"I imagine, gentlemen, there is no need for us to go further," said
Sheshkovsky. "This place will do."
"Yes, of course," Von Koren agreed.
A silence followed. Ustimovitch, pacing to and fro, suddenly turned
sharply to Laevsky and said in a low voice, breathing into his face:
"They have very likely not told you my terms yet. Each side is to pay me
fifteen roubles, and in the case of the death of one party, the survivor
is to pay thirty."
Laevsky was already acquainted with the man, but now for the first time
he had a distinct view of his lustreless eyes, his stiff moustaches, and
wasted, consumptive neck; he was a money-grubber, not a doctor; his
breath had an unpleasant smell of beef.
"What people there are in the world!" thought Laevsky, and answered:
"Very good."
The doctor nodded and began pacing to and fro again, and it was evident
he did not need the money at all, but simply asked for it from hatred.
Every one felt it was time to begin, or to end what had been begun, but
instead of beginning or ending, they stood about, moved to and fro and
smoked. The young officers, who were present at a duel for the first
time in their lives, and even now hardly believed in this civilian and,
to their thinking, unnecessary duel, looked critically at their tunics
and stroked their sleeves. Sheshkovsky went up to them and said softly:
"Gentlemen, we must use every effort to prevent this duel; they ought to
be reconciled."
He flushed crimson and added:
"Kirilin was at my rooms last night complaining that Laevsky had found
him with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and all that sort of thing."
"Yes, we know that too," said Boyko.
"Well, you see, then . . . Laevsky's hands are trembling and all that
sort of thing . . . he can scarcely hold a pistol now. To fight with him
is as inhuman as to fight a man who is drunk or who has typhoid. If a
reconciliation cannot be arranged, we ought to put off the duel,
gentlemen, or something. . . . It's such a sickening business, I can't
bear to see it."
"Talk to Von Koren."
"I don't know the rules of duelling, damnation take them, and I don't
want to either; perhaps he'll imagine Laevsky funks it and has sent me
to him, but he can think what he likes--I'll speak to him."
Sheshkovsky hesitatingly walked up to Von Koren with a slight limp, as
though his leg had gone to sleep; and as he went towards him, clearing
his throat, his whole figure was a picture of indolence.
"There's something I must say to you, sir," he began, carefully
scrutinising the flowers on the zoologist's shirt. "It's confidential. I
don't know the rules of duelling, damnation take them, and I don't want
to, and I look on the matter not as a second and that sort of thing, but
as a man, and that's all about it."
"Yes. Well?"
"When seconds suggest reconciliation they are usually not listened to;
it is looked upon as a formality. Amour propre and all that. But I
humbly beg you to look carefully at Ivan Andreitch. He's not in a normal
state, so to speak, to-day--not in his right mind, and a pitiable object.
He has had a misfortune. I can't endure gossip. . . ."
Sheshkovsky flushed crimson and looked round.
"But in view of the duel, I think it necessary to inform you, Laevsky
found his madam last night at Muridov's with . . . another gentleman."
"How disgusting!" muttered the zoologist; he turned pale, frowned, and
spat loudly. "Tfoo!"
His lower lip quivered, he walked away from Sheshkovsky, unwilling to
hear more, and as though he had accidentally tasted something bitter,
spat loudly again, and for the first time that morning looked with
hatred at Laevsky. His excitement and awkwardness passed off; he tossed
his head and said aloud:
"Gentlemen, what are we waiting for, I should like to know? Why don't we
begin?"
Sheshkovsky glanced at the officers and shrugged his shoulders.
"Gentlemen," he said aloud, addressing no one in particular. "Gentlemen,
we propose that you should be reconciled."
"Let us make haste and get the formalities over," said Von Koren.
"Reconciliation has been discussed already. What is the next formality?
Make haste, gentlemen, time won't wait for us."
"But we insist on reconciliation all the same," said Sheshkovsky in a
guilty voice, as a man compelled to interfere in another man's business;
he flushed, laid his hand on his heart, and went on: "Gentlemen, we see
no grounds for associating the offence with the duel. There's nothing in
common between duelling and offences against one another of which we are
sometimes guilty through human weakness. You are university men and men
of culture, and no doubt you see in the duel nothing but a foolish and
out-of-date formality, and all that sort of thing. That's how we look at
it ourselves, or we shouldn't have come, for we cannot allow that in our
presence men should fire at one another, and all that." Sheshkovsky
wiped the perspiration off his face and went on: "Make an end to your
misunderstanding, gentlemen; shake hands, and let us go home and drink
to peace. Upon my honour, gentlemen!"
Von Koren did not speak. Laevsky, seeing that they were looking at him,
said:
"I have nothing against Nikolay Vassilitch; if he considers I'm to
blame, I'm ready to apologise to him."
Von Koren was offended.
"It is evident, gentlemen," he said, "you want Mr. Laevsky to return
home a magnanimous and chivalrous figure, but I cannot give you and him
that satisfaction. And there was no need to get up early and drive eight
miles out of town simply to drink to peace, to have breakfast, and to
explain to me that the duel is an out-of-date formality. A duel is a
duel, and there is no need to make it more false and stupid than it is
in reality. I want to fight!"
A silence followed. Boyko took a pair of pistols out of a box; one was
given to Von Koren and one to Laevsky, and then there followed a
difficulty which afforded a brief amusement to the zoologist and the
seconds. It appeared that of all the people present not one had ever in
his life been at a duel, and no one knew precisely how they ought to
stand, and what the seconds ought to say and do. But then Boyko
remembered and began, with a smile, to explain.
"Gentlemen, who remembers the description in Lermontov?" asked Von
Koren, laughing. "In Turgenev, too, Bazarov had a duel with some one. .
. ."
"There's no need to remember," said Ustimovitch impatiently. "Measure
the distance, that's all."
And he took three steps as though to show how to measure it. Boyko
counted out the steps while his companion drew his sabre and scratched
the earth at the extreme points to mark the barrier. In complete silence
the opponents took their places.
"Moles," the deacon thought, sitting in the bushes.
Sheshkovsky said something, Boyko explained something again, but Laevsky
did not hear--or rather heard, but did not understand. He cocked his
pistol when the time came to do so, and raised the cold, heavy weapon
with the barrel upwards. He forgot to unbutton his overcoat, and it felt
very tight over his shoulder and under his arm, and his arm rose as
awkwardly as though the sleeve had been cut out of tin. He remembered
the hatred he had felt the night before for the swarthy brow and curly
hair, and felt that even yesterday at the moment of intense hatred and
anger he could not have shot a man. Fearing that the bullet might
somehow hit Von Koren by accident, he raised the pistol higher and
higher, and felt that this too obvious magnanimity was indelicate and
anything but magnanimous, but he did not know how else to do and could
do nothing else. Looking at the pale, ironically smiling face of Von
Koren, who evidently had been convinced from the beginning that his
opponent would fire in the air, Laevsky thought that, thank God,
everything would be over directly, and all that he had to do was to
press the trigger rather hard. . . .
He felt a violent shock on the shoulder; there was the sound of a shot
and an answering echo in the mountains: ping-ting!
Von Koren cocked his pistol and looked at Ustimovitch, who was pacing as
before with his hands behind his back, taking no notice of any one.
"Doctor," said the zoologist, "be so good as not to move to and fro like
a pendulum. You make me dizzy."
The doctor stood still. Von Koren began to take aim at Laevsky.
"It's all over!" thought Laevsky.
The barrel of the pistol aimed straight at his face, the expression of
hatred and contempt in Von Koren's attitude and whole figure, and the
murder just about to be committed by a decent man in broad daylight, in
the presence of decent men, and the stillness and the unknown force that
compelled Laevsky to stand still and not to run --how mysterious it all
was, how incomprehensible and terrible!
The moment while Von Koren was taking aim seemed to Laevsky longer than
a night: he glanced imploringly at the seconds; they were pale and did
not stir.
"Make haste and fire," thought Laevsky, and felt that his pale,
quivering, and pitiful face must arouse even greater hatred in Von
Koren.
"I'll kill him directly," thought Von Koren, aiming at his forehead,
with his finger already on the catch. "Yes, of course I'll kill him."
"He'll kill him!" A despairing shout was suddenly heard somewhere very
close at hand.
A shot rang out at once. Seeing that Laevsky remained standing where he
was and did not fall, they all looked in the direction from which the
shout had come, and saw the deacon. With pale face and wet hair sticking
to his forehead and his cheeks, wet through and muddy, he was standing
in the maize on the further bank, smiling rather queerly and waving his
wet hat. Sheshkovsky laughed with joy, burst into tears, and moved away.
. . . XX
A little while afterwards, Von Koren and the deacon met near the little
bridge. The deacon was excited; he breathed hard, and avoided looking in
people's faces. He felt ashamed both of his terror and his muddy, wet
garments.
"I thought you meant to kill him . . ." he muttered. "How contrary to
human nature it is! How utterly unnatural it is!"
"But how did you come here?" asked the zoologist.
"Don't ask," said the deacon, waving his hand. "The evil one tempted me,
saying: 'Go, go. . . .' So I went and almost died of fright in the
maize. But now, thank God, thank God. . . . I am awfully pleased with
you," muttered the deacon. "Old Grandad Tarantula will be glad . . . .
It's funny, it's too funny! Only I beg of you most earnestly don't tell
anybody I was there, or I may get into hot water with the authorities.
They will say: 'The deacon was a second.'"
"Gentlemen," said Von Koren, "the deacon asks you not to tell any one
you've seen him here. He might get into trouble."
"How contrary to human nature it is!" sighed the deacon. "Excuse my
saying so, but your face was so dreadful that I thought you were going
to kill him."
"I was very much tempted to put an end to that scoundrel," said Von
Koren, "but you shouted close by, and I missed my aim. The whole
procedure is revolting to any one who is not used to it, and it has
exhausted me, deacon. I feel awfully tired. Come along. . . ."
"No, you must let me walk back. I must get dry, for I am wet and cold."
"Well, as you like," said the zoologist, in a weary tone, feeling
dispirited, and, getting into the carriage, he closed his eyes. "As you
like. . . ."
While they were moving about the carriages and taking their seats,
Kerbalay stood in the road, and, laying his hands on his stomach, he
bowed low, showing his teeth; he imagined that the gentry had come to
enjoy the beauties of nature and drink tea, and could not understand why
they were getting into the carriages. The party set off in complete
silence and only the deacon was left by the duhan.
"Come to the duhan, drink tea," he said to Kerbalay. "Me wants to eat."
Kerbalay spoke good Russian, but the deacon imagined that the Tatar
would understand him better if he talked to him in broken Russian. "Cook
omelette, give cheese. . . ."
"Come, come, father," said Kerbalay, bowing. "I'll give you everything .
. . . I've cheese and wine. . . . Eat what you like."
"What is 'God' in Tatar?" asked the deacon, going into the duhan.
"Your God and my God are the same," said Kerbalay, not understanding
him. "God is the same for all men, only men are different. Some are
Russian, some are Turks, some are English--there are many sorts of men,
but God is one."
"Very good. If all men worship the same God, why do you Mohammedans look
upon Christians as your everlasting enemies?"
"Why are you angry?" said Kerbalay, laying both hands on his stomach.
"You are a priest; I am a Mussulman: you say, 'I want to eat'--I give it
you. . . . Only the rich man distinguishes your God from my God; for the
poor man it is all the same. If you please, it is ready."
While this theological conversation was taking place at the duhan,
Laevsky was driving home thinking how dreadful it had been driving there
at daybreak, when the roads, the rocks, and the mountains were wet and
dark, and the uncertain future seemed like a terrible abyss, of which
one could not see the bottom; while now the raindrops hanging on the
grass and on the stones were sparkling in the sun like diamonds, nature
was smiling joyfully, and the terrible future was left behind. He looked
at Sheshkovsky's sullen, tear-stained face, and at the two carriages
ahead of them in which Von Koren, his seconds, and the doctor were
sitting, and it seemed to him as though they were all coming back from a
graveyard in which a wearisome, insufferable man who was a burden to
others had just been buried.
"Everything is over," he thought of his past, cautiously touching his
neck with his fingers.
On the right side of his neck was a small swelling, of the length and
breadth of his little finger, and he felt a pain, as though some one had
passed a hot iron over his neck. The bullet had bruised it.
Afterwards, when he got home, a strange, long, sweet day began for him,
misty as forgetfulness. Like a man released from prison or from
hospital, he stared at the long-familiar objects and wondered that the
tables, the windows, the chairs, the light, and the sea stirred in him a
keen, childish delight such as he had not known for long, long years.
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, pale and haggard, could not understand his gentle
voice and strange movements; she made haste to tell him everything that
had happened to her. . . . It seemed to her that very likely he scarcely
heard and did not understand her, and that if he did know everything he
would curse her and kill her, but he listened to her, stroked her face
and hair, looked into her eyes and said:
"I have nobody but you. . . ."
Then they sat a long while in the garden, huddled close together, saying
nothing, or dreaming aloud of their happy life in the future, in brief,
broken sentences, while it seemed to him that he had never spoken at
such length or so eloquently. XXI
More than three months had passed.
The day came that Von Koren had fixed on for his departure. A cold,
heavy rain had been falling from early morning, a north-east wind was
blowing, and the waves were high on the sea. It was said that the
steamer would hardly be able to come into the harbour in such weather.
By the time-table it should have arrived at ten o'clock in the morning,
but Von Koren, who had gone on to the sea-front at midday and again
after dinner, could see nothing through the field-glass but grey waves
and rain covering the horizon.
Towards the end of the day the rain ceased and the wind began to drop
perceptibly. Von Koren had already made up his mind that he would not be
able to get off that day, and had settled down to play chess with
Samoylenko; but after dark the orderly announced that there were lights
on the sea and that a rocket had been seen.
Von Koren made haste. He put his satchel over his shoulder, and kissed
Samoylenko and the deacon. Though there was not the slightest necessity,
he went through the rooms again, said good-bye to the orderly and the
cook, and went out into the street, feeling that he had left something
behind, either at the doctor's or his lodging. In the street he walked
beside Samoylenko, behind them came the deacon with a box, and last of
all the orderly with two portmanteaus. Only Samoylenko and the orderly
could distinguish the dim lights on the sea. The others gazed into the
darkness and saw nothing. The steamer had stopped a long way from the
coast.
"Make haste, make haste," Von Koren hurried them. "I am afraid it will
set off."
As they passed the little house with three windows, into which Laevsky
had moved soon after the duel, Von Koren could not resist peeping in at
the window. Laevsky was sitting, writing, bent over the table, with his
back to the window.
"I wonder at him!" said the zoologist softly. "What a screw he has put
on himself!"
"Yes, one may well wonder," said Samoylenko. "He sits from morning till
night, he's always at work. He works to pay off his debts. And he lives,
brother, worse than a beggar!"
Half a minute of silence followed. The zoologist, the doctor, and the
deacon stood at the window and went on looking at Laevsky.
"So he didn't get away from here, poor fellow," said Samoylenko. "Do you
remember how hard he tried?"