The Duel and Other Stories
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