The Duel and Other Stories
"That's not the point. . . . I only hope these rascals won't upset
you. You ought to have crossed in the agent's sloop. Where's the
agent's sloop?" he shouted to the boatmen.
"It has gone, Your Excellency."
"And the Customs-house boat?"
"That's gone, too."
"Why didn't you let us know," said Samoylenko angrily. "You dolts!"
"It's all the same, don't worry yourself . . ." said Von Koren.
"Well, good-bye. God keep you."
Samoylenko embraced Von Koren and made the sign of the cross over
him three times.
"Don't forget us, Kolya. . . . Write. . . . We shall look out for
you next spring."
"Good-bye, deacon," said Von Koren, shaking hands with the deacon.
"Thank you for your company and for your pleasant conversation.
Think about the expedition."
"Oh Lord, yes! to the ends of the earth," laughed the deacon. "I've
nothing against it."
Von Koren recognised Laevsky in the darkness, and held out his hand
without speaking. The boatmen were by now below, holding the boat,
which was beating against the piles, though the breakwater screened
it from the breakers. Von Koren went down the ladder, jumped into
the boat, and sat at the helm.
"Write!" Samoylenko shouted to him. "Take care of yourself."
"No one knows the real truth," thought Laevsky, turning up the
collar of his coat and thrusting his hands into his sleeves.
The boat turned briskly out of the harbour into the open sea. It
vanished in the waves, but at once from a deep hollow glided up
onto a high breaker, so that they could distinguish the men and
even the oars. The boat moved three yards forward and was sucked
two yards back.
"Write!" shouted Samoylenko; "it's devilish weather for you to go
in."
"Yes, no one knows the real truth . . ." thought Laevsky, looking
wearily at the dark, restless sea.
"It flings the boat back," he thought; "she makes two steps forward
and one step back; but the boatmen are stubborn, they work the oars
unceasingly, and are not afraid of the high waves. The boat goes
on and on. Now she is out of sight, but in half an hour the boatmen
will see the steamer lights distinctly, and within an hour they
will be by the steamer ladder. So it is in life. . . . In the search
for truth man makes two steps forward and one step back. Suffering,
mistakes, and weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst
for truth and stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows?
Perhaps they will reach the real truth at last."
"Go--o--od-by--e," shouted Samoylenko.
"There's no sight or sound of them," said the deacon. "Good luck
on the journey!"
It began to spot with rain.
EXCELLENT PEOPLE
ONCE upon a time there lived in Moscow a man called Vladimir
Semyonitch Liadovsky. He took his degree at the university in the
faculty of law and had a post on the board of management of some
railway; but if you had asked him what his work was, he would look
candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his
gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone:
"My work is literature."
After completing his course at the university, Vladimir Semyonitch
had had a paragraph of theatrical criticism accepted by a newspaper.
From this paragraph he passed on to reviewing, and a year later he
had advanced to writing a weekly article on literary matters for
the same paper. But it does not follow from these facts that he was
an amateur, that his literary work was of an ephemeral, haphazard
character. Whenever I saw his neat spare figure, his high forehead
and long mane of hair, when I listened to his speeches, it always
seemed to me that his writing, quite apart from what and how he
wrote, was something organically part of him, like the beating of
his heart, and that his whole literary programme must have been an
integral part of his brain while he was a baby in his mother's womb.
Even in his walk, his gestures, his manner of shaking off the ash
from his cigarette, I could read this whole programme from A to Z,
with all its claptrap, dulness, and honourable sentiments. He was
a literary man all over when with an inspired face he laid a wreath
on the coffin of some celebrity, or with a grave and solemn face
collected signatures for some address; his passion for making the
acquaintance of distinguished literary men, his faculty for finding
talent even where it was absent, his perpetual enthusiasm, his pulse
that went at one hundred and twenty a minute, his ignorance of life,
the genuinely feminine flutter with which he threw himself into
concerts and literary evenings for the benefit of destitute students,
the way in which he gravitated towards the young--all this would
have created for him the reputation of a writer even if he had not
written his articles.
He was one of those writers to whom phrases like, "We are but few,"
or "What would life be without strife? Forward!" were pre-eminently
becoming, though he never strove with any one and never did go
forward. It did not even sound mawkish when he fell to discoursing
of ideals. Every anniversary of the university, on St. Tatiana's
Day, he got drunk, chanted _Gaudeamus_ out of tune, and his beaming
and perspiring countenance seemed to say: "See, I'm drunk; I'm
keeping it up!" But even that suited him.
Vladimir Semyonitch had genuine faith in his literary vocation and
his whole programme. He had no doubts, and was evidently very well
pleased with himself. Only one thing grieved him--the paper for
which he worked had a limited circulation and was not very influential.
But Vladimir Semyonitch believed that sooner or later he would
succeed in getting on to a solid magazine where he would have scope
and could display himself--and what little distress he felt on
this score was pale beside the brilliance of his hopes.
Visiting this charming man, I made the acquaintance of his sister,
Vera Semyonovna, a woman doctor. At first sight, what struck me
about this woman was her look of exhaustion and extreme ill-health.
She was young, with a good figure and regular, rather large features,
but in comparison with her agile, elegant, and talkative brother
she seemed angular, listless, slovenly, and sullen. There was
something strained, cold, apathetic in her movements, smiles, and
words; she was not liked, and was thought proud and not very
intelligent.
In reality, I fancy, she was resting.
"My dear friend," her brother would often say to me, sighing and
flinging back his hair in his picturesque literary way, "one must
never judge by appearances! Look at this book: it has long ago been
read. It is warped, tattered, and lies in the dust uncared for; but
open it, and it will make you weep and turn pale. My sister is like
that book. Lift the cover and peep into her soul, and you will be
horror-stricken. Vera passed in some three months through experiences
that would have been ample for a whole lifetime!"
Vladimir Semyonitch looked round him, took me by the sleeve, and
began to whisper:
"You know, after taking her degree she married, for love, an
architect. It's a complete tragedy! They had hardly been married a
month when--whew--her husband died of typhus. But that was not
all. She caught typhus from him, and when, on her recovery, she
learnt that her Ivan was dead, she took a good dose of morphia. If
it had not been for vigorous measures taken by her friends, my Vera
would have been by now in Paradise. Tell me, isn't it a tragedy?
And is not my sister like an _ingénue_, who has played already all
the five acts of her life? The audience may stay for the farce, but
the _ingénue_ must go home to rest."
After three months of misery Vera Semyonovna had come to live with
her brother. She was not fitted for the practice of medicine, which
exhausted her and did not satisfy her; she did not give one the
impression of knowing her subject, and I never once heard her say
anything referring to her medical studies.
She gave up medicine, and, silent and unoccupied, as though she
were a prisoner, spent the remainder of her youth in colourless
apathy, with bowed head and hanging hands. The only thing to which
she was not completely indifferent, and which brought some brightness
into the twilight of her life, was the presence of her brother,
whom she loved. She loved him himself and his programme, she was
full of reverence for his articles; and when she was asked what her
brother was doing, she would answer in a subdued voice as though
afraid of waking or distracting him: "He is writing. . . ." Usually
when he was at his work she used to sit beside him, her eyes fixed
on his writing hand. She used at such moments to look like a sick
animal warming itself in the sun. . . .
One winter evening Vladimir Semyonitch was sitting at his table
writing a critical article for his newspaper: Vera Semyonovna was
sitting beside him, staring as usual at his writing hand. The critic
wrote rapidly, without erasures or corrections. The pen scratched
and squeaked. On the table near the writing hand there lay open a
freshly-cut volume of a thick magazine, containing a story of peasant
life, signed with two initials. Vladimir Semyonitch was enthusiastic;
he thought the author was admirable in his handling of the subject,
suggested Turgenev in his descriptions of nature, was truthful, and
had an excellent knowledge of the life of the peasantry. The critic
himself knew nothing of peasant life except from books and hearsay,
but his feelings and his inner convictions forced him to believe
the story. He foretold a brilliant future for the author, assured
him he should await the conclusion of the story with great impatience,
and so on.
"Fine story!" he said, flinging himself back in his chair and closing
his eyes with pleasure. "The tone is extremely good."
Vera Semyonovna looked at him, yawned aloud, and suddenly asked an
unexpected question. In the evening she had a habit of yawning
nervously and asking short, abrupt questions, not always relevant.
"Volodya," she asked, "what is the meaning of non-resistance to
evil?"
"Non-resistance to evil!" repeated her brother, opening his eyes.
"Yes. What do you understand by it?"
"You see, my dear, imagine that thieves or brigands attack you, and
you, instead of . . ."
"No, give me a logical definition."
"A logical definition? Um! Well." Vladimir Semyonitch pondered.
"Non-resistance to evil means an attitude of non-interference with
regard to all that in the sphere of mortality is called evil."
Saying this, Vladimir Semyonitch bent over the table and took up a
novel. This novel, written by a woman, dealt with the painfulness
of the irregular position of a society lady who was living under
the same roof with her lover and her illegitimate child. Vladimir
Semyonitch was pleased with the excellent tendency of the story,
the plot and the presentation of it. Making a brief summary of the
novel, he selected the best passages and added to them in his
account: "How true to reality, how living, how picturesque! The
author is not merely an artist; he is also a subtle psychologist
who can see into the hearts of his characters. Take, for example,
this vivid description of the emotions of the heroine on meeting
her husband," and so on.
"Volodya," Vera Semyonovna interrupted his critical effusions, "I've
been haunted by a strange idea since yesterday. I keep wondering
where we should all be if human life were ordered on the basis of
non-resistance to evil?"
"In all probability, nowhere. Non-resistance to evil would give the
full rein to the criminal will, and, to say nothing of civilisation,
this would leave not one stone standing upon another anywhere on
earth."
"What would be left?"
"Bashi-Bazouke and brothels. In my next article I'll talk about
that perhaps. Thank you for reminding me."