Short Stories by Chekhov
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