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. . . .