III

For the sake of sociability and from sympathy for the hard plight

of newcomers without families, who, as there was not an hotel in

the town, had nowhere to dine, Dr. Samoylenko kept a sort of table

d'hôte. At this time there were only two men who habitually dined

with him: a young zoologist called Von Koren, who had come for the

summer to the Black Sea to study the embryology of the medusa, and

a deacon called Pobyedov, who had only just left the seminary and

been sent to the town to take the duty of the old deacon who had

gone away for a cure. Each of them paid twelve roubles a month for

their dinner and supper, and Samoylenko made them promise to turn

up at two o'clock punctually.

Von Koren was usually the first to appear. He sat down in the

drawing-room in silence, and taking an album from the table, began

attentively scrutinising the faded photographs of unknown men in

full trousers and top-hats, and ladies in crinolines and caps.

Samoylenko only remembered a few of them by name, and of those whom

he had forgotten he said with a sigh: "A very fine fellow, remarkably

intelligent!" When he had finished with the album, Von Koren took

a pistol from the whatnot, and screwing up his left eye, took

deliberate aim at the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, or stood still

at the looking-glass and gazed a long time at his swarthy face, his

big forehead, and his black hair, which curled like a negro's, and

his shirt of dull-coloured cotton with big flowers on it like a

Persian rug, and the broad leather belt he wore instead of a

waistcoat. The contemplation of his own image seemed to afford him

almost more satisfaction than looking at photographs or playing

with the pistols. He was very well satisfied with his face, and his

becomingly clipped beard, and the broad shoulders, which were

unmistakable evidence of his excellent health and physical strength.

He was satisfied, too, with his stylish get-up, from the cravat,

which matched the colour of his shirt, down to his brown boots.

While he was looking at the album and standing before the glass,

at that moment, in the kitchen and in the passage near, Samoylenko,

without his coat and waistcoat, with his neck bare, excited and

bathed in perspiration, was bustling about the tables, mixing the

salad, or making some sauce, or preparing meat, cucumbers, and onion

for the cold soup, while he glared fiercely at the orderly who was

helping him, and brandished first a knife and then a spoon at him.

"Give me the vinegar!" he said. "That's not the vinegar--it's the

salad oil!" he shouted, stamping. "Where are you off to, you brute?"

"To get the butter, Your Excellency," answered the flustered orderly

in a cracked voice.

"Make haste; it's in the cupboard! And tell Daria to put some fennel

in the jar with the cucumbers! Fennel! Cover the cream up, gaping

laggard, or the flies will get into it!"

And the whole house seemed resounding with his shouts. When it was

ten or fifteen minutes to two the deacon would come in; he was a

lanky young man of twenty-two, with long hair, with no beard and a

hardly perceptible moustache. Going into the drawing-room, he crossed

himself before the ikon, smiled, and held out his hand to Von Koren.

"Good-morning," the zoologist said coldly. "Where have you been?"

"I've been catching sea-gudgeon in the harbour."

"Oh, of course. . . . Evidently, deacon, you will never be busy

with work."

"Why not? Work is not like a bear; it doesn't run off into the

woods," said the deacon, smiling and thrusting his hands into the

very deep pockets of his white cassock.

"There's no one to whip you!" sighed the zoologist.

Another fifteen or twenty minutes passed and they were not called

to dinner, and they could still hear the orderly running into the

kitchen and back again, noisily treading with his boots, and

Samoylenko shouting:

"Put it on the table! Where are your wits? Wash it first."

The famished deacon and Von Koren began tapping on the floor with

their heels, expressing in this way their impatience like the

audience at a theatre. At last the door opened and the harassed

orderly announced that dinner was ready! In the dining-room they

were met by Samoylenko, crimson in the face, wrathful, perspiring

from the heat of the kitchen; he looked at them furiously, and with

an expression of horror, took the lid off the soup tureen and helped

each of them to a plateful; and only when he was convinced that

they were eating it with relish and liked it, he gave a sigh of

relief and settled himself in his deep arm-chair. His face looked

blissful and his eyes grew moist. . . . He deliberately poured

himself out a glass of vodka and said:

"To the health of the younger generation."

After his conversation with Laevsky, from early morning till dinner

Samoylenko had been conscious of a load at his heart, although he

was in the best of humours; he felt sorry for Laevsky and wanted

to help him. After drinking a glass of vodka before the soup, he

heaved a sigh and said:

"I saw Vanya Laevsky to-day. He is having a hard time of it, poor

fellow! The material side of life is not encouraging for him, and

the worst of it is all this psychology is too much for him. I'm

sorry for the lad."

"Well, that is a person I am not sorry for," said Von Koren. "If

that charming individual were drowning, I would push him under with

a stick and say, 'Drown, brother, drown away.' . . ."

"That's untrue. You wouldn't do it."

"Why do you think that?" The zoologist shrugged his shoulders. "I'm

just as capable of a good action as you are."

"Is drowning a man a good action?" asked the deacon, and he laughed.

"Laevsky? Yes."

"I think there is something amiss with the soup . . ." said Samoylenko,

anxious to change the conversation.

"Laevsky is absolutely pernicious and is as dangerous to society

as the cholera microbe," Von Koren went on. "To drown him would be

a service."

"It does not do you credit to talk like that about your neighbour.

Tell us: what do you hate him for?"

"Don't talk nonsense, doctor. To hate and despise a microbe is

stupid, but to look upon everybody one meets without distinction

as one's neighbour, whatever happens--thanks very much, that is

equivalent to giving up criticism, renouncing a straightforward

attitude to people, washing one's hands of responsibility, in fact!

I consider your Laevsky a blackguard; I do not conceal it, and I

am perfectly conscientious in treating him as such. Well, you look

upon him as your neighbour--and you may kiss him if you like: you

look upon him as your neighbour, and that means that your attitude

to him is the same as to me and to the deacon; that is no attitude

at all. You are equally indifferent to all."

"To call a man a blackguard!" muttered Samoylenko, frowning with

distaste--"that is so wrong that I can't find words for it!"

"People are judged by their actions," Von Koren continued. "Now you

decide, deacon. . . . I am going to talk to you, deacon. Mr. Laevsky's

career lies open before you, like a long Chinese puzzle, and you

can read it from beginning to end. What has he been doing these two

years that he has been living here? We will reckon his doings on

our fingers. First, he has taught the inhabitants of the town to

play _vint_: two years ago that game was unknown here; now they all

play it from morning till late at night, even the women and the

boys. Secondly, he has taught the residents to drink beer, which

was not known here either; the inhabitants are indebted to him for

the knowledge of various sorts of spirits, so that now they can

distinguish Kospelov's vodka from Smirnov's No. 21, blindfold.

Thirdly, in former days, people here made love to other men's wives

in secret, from the same motives as thieves steal in secret and not

openly; adultery was considered something they were ashamed to make

a public display of. Laevsky has come as a pioneer in that line;

he lives with another man's wife openly. . . . Fourthly . . ."

Von Koren hurriedly ate up his soup and gave his plate to the

orderly.

"I understood Laevsky from the first month of our acquaintance,"

he went on, addressing the deacon. "We arrived here at the same

time. Men like him are very fond of friendship, intimacy, solidarity,

and all the rest of it, because they always want company for _vint_,

drinking, and eating; besides, they are talkative and must have

listeners. We made friends--that is, he turned up every day,

hindered me working, and indulged in confidences in regard to his

mistress. From the first he struck me by his exceptional falsity,

which simply made me sick. As a friend I pitched into him, asking

him why he drank too much, why he lived beyond his means and got

into debt, why he did nothing and read nothing, why he had so little

culture and so little knowledge; and in answer to all my questions

he used to smile bitterly, sigh, and say: 'I am a failure, a

superfluous man'; or: 'What do you expect, my dear fellow, from us,

the debris of the serf-owning class?' or: 'We are degenerate. . . .'

Or he would begin a long rigmarole about Onyegin, Petchorin,

Byron's Cain, and Bazarov, of whom he would say: 'They are our

fathers in flesh and in spirit.' So we are to understand that it

was not his fault that Government envelopes lay unopened in his

office for weeks together, and that he drank and taught others to

drink, but Onyegin, Petchorin, and Turgenev, who had invented the

failure and the superfluous man, were responsible for it. The cause

of his extreme dissoluteness and unseemliness lies, do you see, not

in himself, but somewhere outside in space. And so--an ingenious

idea!--it is not only he who is dissolute, false, and disgusting,

but we . . . 'we men of the eighties,' 'we the spiritless, nervous

offspring of the serf-owning class'; 'civilisation has crippled us'

. . . in fact, we are to understand that such a great man as Laevsky

is great even in his fall: that his dissoluteness, his lack of

culture and of moral purity, is a phenomenon of natural history,

sanctified by inevitability; that the causes of it are world-wide,

elemental; and that we ought to hang up a lamp before Laevsky, since

he is the fated victim of the age, of influences, of heredity, and

so on. All the officials and their ladies were in ecstasies when

they listened to him, and I could not make out for a long time what

sort of man I had to deal with, a cynic or a clever rogue. Such

types as he, on the surface intellectual with a smattering of

education and a great deal of talk about their own nobility, are

very clever in posing as exceptionally complex natures."

"Hold your tongue!" Samoylenko flared up. "I will not allow a

splendid fellow to be spoken ill of in my presence!"

"Don't interrupt, Alexandr Daviditch," said Von Koren coldly; "I

am just finishing. Laevsky is by no means a complex organism. Here

is his moral skeleton: in the morning, slippers, a bathe, and coffee;

then till dinner-time, slippers, a constitutional, and conversation;

at two o'clock slippers, dinner, and wine; at five o'clock a bathe,

tea and wine, then _vint_ and lying; at ten o'clock supper and wine;

and after midnight sleep and _la femme_. His existence is confined

within this narrow programme like an egg within its shell. Whether

he walks or sits, is angry, writes, rejoices, it may all be reduced

to wine, cards, slippers, and women. Woman plays a fatal, overwhelming

part in his life. He tells us himself that at thirteen he was in

love; that when he was a student in his first year he was living

with a lady who had a good influence over him, and to whom he was

indebted for his musical education. In his second year he bought a

prostitute from a brothel and raised her to his level--that is,

took her as his kept mistress, and she lived with him for six months

and then ran away back to the brothel-keeper, and her flight caused

him much spiritual suffering. Alas! his sufferings were so great

that he had to leave the university and spend two years at home

doing nothing. But this was all for the best. At home he made friends

with a widow who advised him to leave the Faculty of Jurisprudence

and go into the Faculty of Arts. And so he did. When he had taken

his degree, he fell passionately in love with his present . . .

what's her name? . . . married lady, and was obliged to flee with

her here to the Caucasus for the sake of his ideals, he would have

us believe, seeing that . . . to-morrow, if not to-day, he will be

tired of her and flee back again to Petersburg, and that, too, will

be for the sake of his ideals."

"How do you know?" growled Samoylenko, looking angrily at the

zoologist. "You had better eat your dinner."

The next course consisted of boiled mullet with Polish sauce.

Samoylenko helped each of his companions to a whole mullet and

poured out the sauce with his own hand. Two minutes passed in

silence.

"Woman plays an essential part in the life of every man," said the

deacon. "You can't help that."

"Yes, but to what degree? For each of us woman means mother, sister,

wife, friend. To Laevsky she is everything, and at the same time

nothing but a mistress. She--that is, cohabitation with her--

is the happiness and object of his life; he is gay, sad, bored,

disenchanted--on account of woman; his life grows disagreeable

--woman is to blame; the dawn of a new life begins to glow, ideals

turn up--and again look for the woman. . . . He only derives

enjoyment from books and pictures in which there is woman. Our age

is, to his thinking, poor and inferior to the forties and the sixties

only because we do not know how to abandon ourselves obviously to

the passion and ecstasy of love. These voluptuaries must have in

their brains a special growth of the nature of sarcoma, which stifles

the brain and directs their whole psychology. Watch Laevsky when

he is sitting anywhere in company. You notice: when one raises any

general question in his presence, for instance, about the cell or

instinct, he sits apart, and neither speaks nor listens; he looks

languid and disillusioned; nothing has any interest for him,

everything is vulgar and trivial. But as soon as you speak of male

and female--for instance, of the fact that the female spider,

after fertilisation, devours the male--his eyes glow with curiosity,

his face brightens, and the man revives, in fact. All his thoughts,

however noble, lofty, or neutral they may be, they all have one

point of resemblance. You walk along the street with him and meet

a donkey, for instance. . . . 'Tell me, please,' he asks, 'what

would happen if you mated a donkey with a camel?' And his dreams!

Has he told you of his dreams? It is magnificent! First, he dreams

that he is married to the moon, then that he is summoned before the

police and ordered to live with a guitar . . ."

The deacon burst into resounding laughter; Samoylenko frowned and

wrinkled up his face angrily so as not to laugh, but could not

restrain himself, and laughed.

"And it's all nonsense!" he said, wiping his tears. "Yes, by Jove,

it's nonsense!"