"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. . . .