The Duel (12 page)

“Strange, strange …” muttered Achmianov, and faced with the recollection of the hysterics that had occurred with
Laevsky, he became embarrassed. “If she’s not home, then where is she?”

He once again returned to Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s chambers and looked at the dark windows.

This is deceit, deceit
 …, he thought, remembering that she herself had met him at noon that day at Bityugov’s and had promised that they would take a boat ride together in the evening.

The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and at the gateway a policeman sat on a little bench and slept. Everything became clear to Achmianov when he looked at the windows and the policeman. He decided to go home, and went on his way, but again wound up near the chambers of Nadezhda Fyodorovna. He sat down on a little bench there and removed his hat, feeling that his head was aflame with jealousy and hurt.

The town church bells rung the time only twice in the twenty-four-hour cycle: at noon and at midnight. Right after they’d tolled midnight, hastened steps could be heard.

“This means once again tomorrow evening at Muridov’s!” Achmianov heard, and recognized Kirilin’s voice. “At eight o’clock. Goodbye, milady!”

Nadezhda Fyodorovna appeared near the little front garden. Not noticing that Achmianov sat on the bench, she passed him as a shadow, opened the little gate and, leaving it unlatched, entered her home. She lit a candle in her room, quickly undressed, but did not get into bed,
instead got down on her knees before a chair, embraced it and pressed her forehead against it.

Laevsky returned home in the third hour.

Having decided not to lie all at once, but in parts, the next day in the second hour, Laevsky went to Samoylenko to ask for the money, so that Saturday he may leave without fail. After yesterday’s hysterics, which added a sense of biting shame to the already heavy state his soul was in, staying in town was unthinkable. If Samoylenko would insist on his conditions, he thought, perhaps it would be possible to agree to them and take the money, but tomorrow, minutes before his departure, say that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had refused to go; from this evening on it could be possible to convince her that everything was being done for her own good. But if Samoylenko, finding himself blatantly under Von Koren’s influence, completely refused the money or requested some new condition, then he, Laevsky, would set off on a cargo ship that very day, or even a sailing vessel, to New Athos or Novorossiysk, and from there he would send his mother a self-effacing telegram and then live there for as long as it took his mother to dispatch money for the road.

Arriving at Samoylenko’s, he found Von Koren in the drawing room. The zoologist had only just arrived for dinner and, according to habit, having opened the album, scrutinized the men in top hats and ladies in bonnets.

How inopportune
, Laevsky thought, seeing him.
He may interfere
. “Hello!”

“Hello,” Von Koren answered, without looking up at him.

“Is Alexander Davidich home?”

“Yes. In the kitchen.”

Laevsky proceeded to the kitchen, but at the door, seeing that Samoylenko was busy with the salad, returned to the drawing room and sat down. He always felt awkward in the presence of the zoologist, and now he feared that he would have to talk about his hysterics. Over a minute passed in silence. Suddenly, Von Koren raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:

“How are you feeling after yesterday?”

“Superb,” Laevsky answered, reddening. “In actuality, it was really nothing out of the ordinary …”

“Until yesterday I had understood that hysteria only occurred with the ladies; that’s why I initially thought that you were doing the dance of Saint Vitus.”

Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly and thought:

How indelicate he’s being for his part. He knows perfectly well that I’m going through a difficult time
 … “Yes, it was a funny affair,” he said, continuing to smile. “I laughed about it the entire morning today. It’s curious that in the throes of a hysterical fit, what you know becomes absurd, and you laugh at it from your soul while crying at the same time. In our nerve-racking era we are slaves to our nerves; they are our masters and do with us what they please. Civilization has proven to be a bearish hindrance, in this case …”

Laevsky spoke, and he found it unpleasant that Von Koren was seriously and attentively listening to him and attentively watching him, unblinking, indeed studying him; and he felt annoyed at himself that, not taking into account his lack of love for Von Koren, he just couldn’t rid his face of that ingratiating smile.

“Still, I must confess,” he continued, “there were more immediate reasons for the fit and rather sound ones. Recently my health has been seriously shaken. Add to that the ennui, a perpetual lack of money … the absence of likeminded people … I’m in a governor’s predicament.”

“Yes, there’s no way out of your predicament,” Von Koren said.

Those calm, cold words, embodying not just mockery, not just a gratuitous prediction, were insulting to Laevsky. He remembered the expression on the zoologist’s face yesterday, full of mockery and revulsion, and didn’t stay quiet for long and, no longer smiling, asked:

“And how is it that you are aware of my predicament?”

“You were just speaking of it yourself, yes, and your friends take such a burning interest in you that all day long, all one hears is what’s going on with you.”

“What friends? You mean Samoylenko?”

“Yes, him too.”

“I should really ask Alexander Davidich and my friends in general to talk less about me.”

“Here comes Samoylenko; why don’t you ask him to be less concerned with you.”

“I don’t understand your tone …” Laevsky muttered;
he was seized by the sensation that he only just now realized that the zoologist hated him, found him contemptible and sought to humiliate him and that the zoologist was his bitterest and most uncompromising enemy. “Save that tone for someone else,” he said quietly, not having the energy to speak louder from the hatred that now kneaded at his chest and neck, as the desire to laugh had yesterday.

Samoylenko entered without his frockcoat, sweaty and scarlet from the sweltering kitchen.

“Well, look who’s here?” he said. “Hello, my good man. Have you had dinner? Don’t stand on ceremony, answer me: have you dined?”

“Alexander Davidich,” Laevsky said, rising, “if I turn to you with an intimate request, that does not mean that I’ve freed you from the responsibility of discretion and respect for another’s secret.”

“What’s the matter?” Samoylenko said, taken aback.

“If you don’t have the money,” Laevsky continued, raising his voice and shifting from one leg to the other in agitation, “then don’t give it, refuse, but why preach at every intersection that there is no way out of my predicament, and the like? I can’t stand this benevolence or friendly favors that are a kopeck’s worth of doing, at a ruble’s worth of talk! You can boast of your benevolence however much you choose, but no one has given you the right to reveal my secrets!”

“What secrets?” Samoylenko asked, uncomprehending and growing angry. “If you’ve come here to swear, then leave. Come back when you’re over it!”

He remembered a rule, that when enraged by one near and dear, mentally count to one hundred and calm will resume; and he began counting quickly.

“I’m asking you not to concern yourself with me!” Laevsky continued. “Don’t pay attention to me. And whose business is it anyway how I live and how I conduct my life? Yes, I want to leave! Yes, I’m in debt, I drink, I live with another man’s wife, I have hysteria, I’m crass, not as introspective as some others, but whose business is any of this? Respect my individuality!”

“You, brother, will pardon me,” Samoylenko, said reaching thirty-five, “but …”

“Respect my individuality!” Laevsky cut him off. “These perpetual conversations at the cost of another, the ohs and ahs, the perpetual monitoring, eavesdropping, these intimations of friendship … the devil take them! I’m being loaned money and given conditions, like a little boy! I’m being degraded, the devil only knows how! I wish for nothing!” Laevsky shouted, staggering from agitation and fearful that he should be once again seized by hysteria.
This means I won’t be leaving on Saturday
flashed through his thoughts. “I wish for nothing! I only ask, please, spare me this patronage. I’m not a little boy and I’m not crazy and I’m asking that you remove this surveillance from me!”

The deacon walked in and, seeing Laevsky, pale, gesticulating his arms and directing his strange speech to a portrait of Prince Vorontsov, stopped short at the door as though embedded.

“This perpetual prying into my soul,” Laevsky
continued, “is insulting to my human dignity, and I ask the gratuitous detectives to cease their spying! Enough!”

“What did you … What are you saying?” Samoylenko asked, having counted to one hundred, flushing crimson and approaching Laevsky.

“Enough!” Laevsky repeated, gasping and retrieving his service cap.

“I am a Russian doctor, a nobleman and a Councilor of State!” Samoylenko said, measuring his words. “I have never been a spy, and I will not allow myself to be insulted by anyone!” he shouted in a rattling voice, placing the stress on the last word. “Shut your mouth!”

The deacon, having never before witnessed the doctor so imposing, inflated, crimson and frightening, covered his mouth, ran out into the front drawing room and fell over laughing. As though in a haze, Laevsky saw Von Koren rise and, placing his hands in his pants’ pockets, strike a pose, as though he were awaiting what would follow; this calm pose seemed extremely insolent and insulting to Laevsky.

“Kindly take back your words!” Samoylenko shouted.

Laevsky, already having no recollection of what words he had spoken, answered:

“Leave me in peace! I want for nothing! I only want that you and this German son of Yids leave me in peace! Otherwise I will take measures! I will fight!”

“Now I understand,” Von Koren said, walking around from behind the table. “Mr. Laevsky would like to entertain himself prior to his departure with a duel. I can grant him the satisfaction. Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge.”

“Challenge?” Laevsky quietly repeated, approaching the zoologist and staring in hatred at his swarthy brow and kinky hair. “Challenge? With pleasure! I hate you! Hate you!”

“Oh, joy. Tomorrow morning, the earlier the better, by Kerbalay’s place, with all the details in keeping to your tastes. And now get out.”

“Hate you!” Laevsky said quietly, breathing heavily. “I’ve hated you a long time! A duel! Yes!”

“Get him out of here, Alexander Davidich, or else I’ll have to leave,” Von Koren said. “He’s about to take a bite out of me.”

Von Koren’s calm tone cooled the doctor down: somehow or other he was suddenly himself again, came to his senses, took Laevsky by the waist with both his hands, led him away from the zoologist, muttering soothingly, in a voice shaking with intensity:

“My friends … My good, my kind … Got themselves worked up into a heated state and are going to … and are going to … My friends …”

Hearing the soft, friendly voice, Laevsky felt that something unprecedented had just occurred in his life, something beastly, as though he had very nearly been hit by a train; he barely kept from crying, waved them off with his hand and ran from the room.

To experience another’s hatred directed at you, to display yourself before the man who hates you in a most pitiful, despicable, helpless state—my God, how burdensome!
he thought, sitting in the pavilion a while later and indeed feeling
corrosion cover his body from having just experienced another’s hatred.
My God, how vulgar it all is!

Cold water with cognac invigorated him. He lucidly envisioned Von Koren’s calm, arrogant face, the look he had in his eyes yesterday, his shirt, which resembled a rug, his voice, his white hands, and intense hatred, ardent, hungry, began to churn in his chest and to demand satisfaction. In his mind he threw Von Koren to the ground and stomped on him. He remembered in the minutest detail all that had occurred and was astonished by how he could have ingratiatingly smiled at such an insignificant man and generally held in high esteem nominal, little people who are of no value to anyone, who live in an insignificant little town, which seemingly doesn’t even show up on a map and which not one decent person in Petersburg had ever heard of. If this boondock suddenly met its downfall or burned to the ground, then the telegram delivering the news would be read in Russia with the same kind of boredom as an advertisement for secondhand furniture up for sale. To kill Von Koren tomorrow or to leave him among the living—it was all the same, equally pointless and uninteresting. To shoot him in the leg or the arm, wound him, then laugh at him, and like an insect with a severed limb that loses itself in the grass, so let him take his muted sufferings and lose himself afterwards in a crowd of other such insignificant people as himself.

Laevsky went to Sheshkovsky, told him everything and invited him to be his second; then both set off to find the master of the postal-telegraph office, invited him to second
also and stayed for dinner with him. During dinner they joked and laughed much; Laevsky poked fun at the fact that he barely knew how to shoot at all, and referred to himself as a royal rifleman and Wilhelm Tell.

“We’ll have to teach this gentleman a thing or two …” he said.

After dinner they sat down to a game of cards. Laevsky played, drank wine and thought that the duel was basically foolish and pointless, as it does not resolve the question but only complicates it further; however, such things are unavoidable at times. For instance, in this particular case: he couldn’t bring action against Von Koren in a court of law! And the impending duel was also good in that, afterwards, he would be unable to stay in town. He grew somewhat drunk, enjoyed his game of cards and felt good.

But when the sun set and it grew dark, he was overcome by unease. It was not fear of impending death because a certainty nested in it, as he dined and played cards, that the duel would end in nothing: this was a fear of the unknown, that which was to occur tomorrow morning for the first time in his life, and a fear of the approaching night … He knew that the night would be long, sleepless, and that he’d be forced to think not only of Von Koren and his hatred, but of that mountain of lies, which lay ahead of him to cross and for which he had neither the strength nor the know-how. It was as though he’d unexpectedly fallen ill; he’d suddenly lost all interest in both cards and people, beginning to fuss about he stood and asked to be excused so that he may go home. He wanted to lie down in bed as soon as possible,
to be still and prepare his thoughts for the night. Sheshkovsky and the postmaster saw him home then set off for Von Koren’s to discuss the duel.