The Duel and Other Stories
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. . . .
XVI
"The 'humane studies' of which you speak will only satisfy human
thought when, as they advance, they meet the exact sciences and
progress side by side with them. Whether they will meet under a new
microscope, or in the monologues of a new Hamlet, or in a new
religion, I do not know, but I expect the earth will be covered
with a crust of ice before it comes to pass. Of all humane learning
the most durable and living is, of course, the teaching of Christ;
but look how differently even that is interpreted! Some teach that
we must love all our neighbours but make an exception of soldiers,
criminals, and lunatics. They allow the first to be killed in war,
the second to be isolated or executed, and the third they forbid
to marry. Other interpreters teach that we must love all our
neighbours without exception, with no distinction of _plus_ or
_minus_. According to their teaching, if a consumptive or a murderer
or an epileptic asks your daughter in marriage, you must let him
have her. If _crêtins_ go to war against the physically and mentally
healthy, don't defend yourselves. This advocacy of love for love's
sake, like art for art's sake, if it could have power, would bring
mankind in the long run to complete extinction, and so would become
the vastest crime that has ever been committed upon earth. There
are very many interpretations, and since there are many of them,
serious thought is not satisfied by any one of them, and hastens
to add its own individual interpretation to the mass. For that
reason you should never put a question on a philosophical or so-called
Christian basis; by so doing you only remove the question further
from solution."
The deacon listened to the zoologist attentively, thought a little,
and asked:
"Have the philosophers invented the moral law which is innate in
every man, or did God create it together with the body?"
"I don't know. But that law is so universal among all peoples and
all ages that I fancy we ought to recognise it as organically
connected with man. It is not invented, but exists and will exist.
I don't tell you that one day it will be seen under the microscope,
but its organic connection is shown, indeed, by evidence: serious
affections of the brain and all so-called mental diseases, to the
best of my belief, show themselves first of all in the perversion
of the moral law."
"Good. So then, just as our stomach bids us eat, our moral sense
bids us love our neighbours. Is that it? But our natural man through
self-love opposes the voice of conscience and reason, and this gives
rise to many brain-racking questions. To whom ought we to turn for
the solution of those questions if you forbid us to put them on the
philosophic basis?"
"Turn to what little exact science we have. Trust to evidence and
the logic of facts. It is true it is but little, but, on the other
hand, it is less fluid and shifting than philosophy. The moral law,
let us suppose, demands that you love your neighbour. Well? Love
ought to show itself in the removal of everything which in one way
or another is injurious to men and threatens them with danger in
the present or in the future. Our knowledge and the evidence tells
us that the morally and physically abnormal are a menace to humanity.
If so you must struggle against the abnormal; if you are not able
to raise them to the normal standard you must have strength and
ability to render them harmless--that is, to destroy them."
"So love consists in the strong overcoming the weak."
"Undoubtedly."
"But you know the strong crucified our Lord Jesus Christ," said the
deacon hotly.
"The fact is that those who crucified Him were not the strong but
the weak. Human culture weakens and strives to nullify the struggle
for existence and natural selection; hence the rapid advancement
of the weak and their predominance over the strong. Imagine that
you succeeded in instilling into bees humanitarian ideas in their
crude and elementary form. What would come of it? The drones who
ought to be killed would remain alive, would devour the honey, would
corrupt and stifle the bees, resulting in the predominance of the
weak over the strong and the degeneration of the latter. The same
process is taking place now with humanity; the weak are oppressing
the strong. Among savages untouched by civilisation the strongest,
cleverest, and most moral takes the lead; he is the chief and the
master. But we civilised men have crucified Christ, and we go on
crucifying Him, so there is something lacking in us. . . . And that
something one ought to raise up in ourselves, or there will be no
end to these errors."
"But what criterion have you to distinguish the strong from the
weak?"
"Knowledge and evidence. The tuberculous and the scrofulous are
recognised by their diseases, and the insane and the immoral by
their actions."
"But mistakes may be made!"
"Yes, but it's no use to be afraid of getting your feet wet when
you are threatened with the deluge!"
"That's philosophy," laughed the deacon.
"Not a bit of it. You are so corrupted by your seminary philosophy
that you want to see nothing but fog in everything. The abstract
studies with which your youthful head is stuffed are called abstract
just because they abstract your minds from what is obvious. Look
the devil straight in the eye, and if he's the devil, tell him he's
the devil, and don't go calling to Kant or Hegel for explanations."
The zoologist paused and went on:
"Twice two's four, and a stone's a stone. Here to-morrow we have a
duel. You and I will say it's stupid and absurd, that the duel is
out of date, that there is no real difference between the aristocratic
duel and the drunken brawl in the pot-house, and yet we shall not
stop, we shall go there and fight. So there is some force stronger
than our reasoning. We shout that war is plunder, robbery, atrocity,
fratricide; we cannot look upon blood without fainting; but the
French or the Germans have only to insult us for us to feel at once
an exaltation of spirit; in the most genuine way we shout 'Hurrah!'
and rush to attack the foe. You will invoke the blessing of God on
our weapons, and our valour will arouse universal and general
enthusiasm. Again it follows that there is a force, if not higher,
at any rate stronger, than us and our philosophy. We can no more
stop it than that cloud which is moving upwards over the sea. Don't
be hypocritical, don't make a long nose at it on the sly; and don't
say, 'Ah, old-fashioned, stupid! Ah, it's inconsistent with Scripture!'
but look it straight in the face, recognise its rational lawfulness,
and when, for instance, it wants to destroy a rotten, scrofulous,
corrupt race, don't hinder it with your pilules and misunderstood
quotations from the Gospel. Leskov has a story of a conscientious
Danila who found a leper outside the town, and fed and warmed him
in the name of love and of Christ. If that Danila had really loved
humanity, he would have dragged the leper as far as possible from
the town, and would have flung him in a pit, and would have gone
to save the healthy. Christ, I hope, taught us a rational, intelligent,
practical love."
"What a fellow you are!" laughed the deacon. "You don't believe in
Christ. Why do you mention His name so often?"
"Yes, I do believe in Him. Only, of course, in my own way, not in
yours. Oh, deacon, deacon!" laughed the zoologist; he put his arm
round the deacon's waist, and said gaily: "Well? Are you coming
with us to the duel to-morrow?"
"My orders don't allow it, or else I should come."
"What do you mean by 'orders'?"
"I have been consecrated. I am in a state of grace."
"Oh, deacon, deacon," repeated Von Koren, laughing, "I love talking
to you."
"You say you have faith," said the deacon. "What sort of faith is
it? Why, I have an uncle, a priest, and he believes so that when
in time of drought he goes out into the fields to pray for rain,
he takes his umbrella and leather overcoat for fear of getting wet
through on his way home. That's faith! When he speaks of Christ,
his face is full of radiance, and all the peasants, men and women,