The Duel Read online

  “So that’s what you’re made of!” the deacon laughed. “If you don’t believe in Christ, why is it you refer to Him so often?”

  “No, I believe. But only, of course, in my own way, and not in yours. Oh, Deacon, Deacon!” The zoologist began to laugh; he took the deacon by the waist and said cheerfully: “Well, what, then? Shall we go to the duel tomorrow?”

  “My order doesn’t allow it, or else I’d go.”

  “What does that mean—your order?”

  “I’m ordained. I’ve received grace.”

  “Oh, Deacon, Deacon,” Von Koren repeated, laughing. “I love talking with you.”

  “You say you have faith,” the Deacon said. “What kind of faith is it? Why, I’ve got an uncle who’s a priest, and he’s got such faith that during times of drought as the plains beg for rain, he brings an umbrella out with him and a leather coat so that he won’t get soaking wet on the way back. That there is faith! When he speaks of Christ, he exudes such radiance that all the ladies and gents cry in ecstasy. He could even stop that storm cloud and send that power of yours running. Yes … Faith can move mountains.”

  Laughing, the deacon slapped the zoologist’s shoulder.

  “So, then …” he continued. “Here you teach all that you can, penetrate the abyss of the sea, separate the weak from the strong, write books and challenge others to duels—yet everything remains in its place. But mind you, any random decrepit old man prattling one and the same word over and over about the holy spirit or a new Mohammed with a saber galloping on horseback from Arabia, everything will go flying head over heels for you, and in Europe there won’t be a single stone left standing on any other.”

  “Well, Deacon, that’s written in the sky with pitchforks!”

  “Faith, if it hath not works, is dead. But works without faith—that’s worse, that’s just a waste of time and nothing more.”

  The doctor appeared on the embankment. Seeing the Deacon and the zoologist, he approached them.

  “It seems everything is ready,” he said, out of breath. “Govorovsky and Boyko will be seconds. They’ll arrive tomorrow at five in the morning. Everything’s been stood on its head!” he said, looking up at the sky. “There’s nothing to see. It’s going to rain.”

  “You, I’m assuming, will ride with us?” Von Koren asked.

  “No, God help me, I’ve suffered enough. Ustimovich will go in my place. I’ve already spoken with him.”

  Lightning flashed far out at sea, and the vague roll of thunder could be heard.

  “How stuffy it is before a storm!” Von Koren said. “I’m willing to wager that you’ve already been to Laevsky’s and cried on his shoulder.”

  “Why would I go to him?” the doctor answered, perplexed. “That’s all I need!”

  Before sunset he had walked the boulevard and the street several times, in the hopes of running into Laevsky. He felt embarrassed by his earlier outburst and for the sudden break in good will that had followed the outburst. He wanted to apologize to Laevsky in a joking tone, scold him, calm him and tell him that the duel is a remnant of the barbarianism of the Middle Ages but that providence was guiding them to the duel as a means of reconciliation: tomorrow they will both, splendiferous people with superior intellects, exchange gunshots, appraise one another’s nobility and become friends. However, not once did he encounter Laevsky.

  “Why would I call on him?” Samoylenko repeated. “It is not I who insulted him, he insulted me. Kindly tell me, why did he tear into me? What bad thing did I do to him? I walk into the drawing room and all of a sudden, ain’t life grand: I’m a spy! There it is for you! You tell me: how did it start? What did you say to him?”

  “I told him there is no way out of his predicament. And I was right. Only honest men or cheats could find their way out of any predicament, but one who wants to be both an honest man and a cheat at the same time has no way out. Will you look, gentlemen, it’s already eleven o’clock, and tomorrow we must rise early.”

  There was a sudden gust of wind; it lifted the dust along the embankment, spun it around in a whirlwind, howled and drowned out the noise of the sea.

  “Squall!” the deacon said. “We must go, or else the dust will get in our eyes.”

  When they’d set off, Samoylenko sighed and said, holding on to his service cap:

  “As it stands, I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

  “Don’t you worry,” the zoologist laughed. “You can rest assured, the duel won’t end in anything. Laevsky will magnanimously shoot into the air, he’s incapable of doing otherwise, and I, in all likelihood, won’t shoot at all. To find myself in court over Laevsky, to waste time, the game’s not worth the candle. By the way, what are the legal ramifications of dueling?”

  “Arrest, but in the event of an opponent’s death, incarceration in a fortress for up to three years.”

  “In Petropavlovsk?

  “No, in a military fortress, I think.”

  “I really should teach that fine young man a lesson!”

  Lightning flashed over the sea behind them and illuminated the rooftops and mountains for an instance. The friends parted company near the boulevard. When the doctor had disappeared into the darkness and the sound of his footsteps were already fading, Von Koren shouted out to him:

  “The weather may impede us tomorrow!”

  “That would be good! God willing!”

  “Have a goodnight!”

  “What—night? What are you saying?”

  It was difficult to hear due to the noise of the wind and sea and the clap of thunder.

  “Nothing!” the zoologist shouted, and hurried home.

  XVII

  … in my mind, oppressed by melancholy,

  Cluster an abundance of burdensome thoughts;

  Before me reminiscence mutely

  Unfurls her long scroll;

  And reading of my life with revulsion,

  I quiver and I curse,

  And bitterly bemoan, and shed bitter tears,

  But I cannot wash away this woeful verse.

  —Pushkin

  Whether they killed him tomorrow morning or made a mockery of him, that is, sparing him his life, he was still done for. Whether this fallen woman killed herself in despair and shame or eked out her sorry existence, she was still done for …

  This is what Laevsky thought, sitting at the table late in the evening and even now continuing to rub his hands. The window was thrown open suddenly with a bang, a strong wind tore into the room, and sheets of paper flew from the desk. Laevsky locked the window and bent down to pick the pages up off the floor. He felt something new in his body, a certain clumsiness, that had not been there prior, and he didn’t recognize his own movements, he walked about timidly, his elbows sticking out at his sides and jerking his shoulders, and when he sat down at the table, he again began rubbing his hands together. His body had lost dexterity.

  On the eve of death it is necessary to write to loved ones. Laevsky remembered this. He picked up a pen and wrote in a shaking script:

  “My Dear Mother!”

  He wanted to write to his mother, so that in the name of the merciful God, in which she believed, she would shelter and grant tender warmth to the miserable woman he had dishonored, lonely, indigent and weak, that she should forget and forgive everything, everything, everything, and through her sacrifice at least partially redeem the frightful sins of her son; but he remembered the way his mother, a full-figured, unwieldy old woman, in a lace cap, walked out of the house each morning into the garden, as a concomitant with a lapdog trailed behind, the way Mother yelled in an imperious tone at the gardener and the servants and how proud and arrogant her face was—he remembered these things and scratched out the words he had written.

  Lightning flashed brightly in all three windows, and on its heels the deafening, resounding clap of thunder was heard, muffled at first, but then roaring and with a crack, and so strong that the glass rattled in the windows. Laevsky stood, approached th
e window and pressed his forehead to the glass. There was an intense, beautiful thunderstorm beyond the yard. On the horizon white ribbons of lightning threw themselves uninterrupted from the darkness onto the sea and illuminated tall black waves along a broad expanse. And to the right, and to the left, and, most likely, above their home, lightning was flashing the same way.

  “Thunderstorm!” Laevsky whispered; he felt the desire to pray to someone or something, at the very least to the lightning or stormclouds. “Dear thunderstorm!”

  He remembered how as a child during a storm he would run out into the garden, his head uncovered, while two white-blond girls with blue eyes raced behind him, and the rain soaked them; they laughed in delight, but when a strong thunderclap was doled out, the girls would trustingly press against the boy, he would make the sign of the cross and quickly recite: “Holy, holy, holy …” Oh, where did you go, what sea did you drown in, vestiges of a beautiful pure life? He had no fear of thunderstorms and no love of nature, he had no God, all the unsuspecting girls that he’d once known had already been ruined by him and his peers, in his familial garden he had not planted one sapling in his entire life nor had he raised one shrub, as for being alive amongst the living, he had never rescued even a fly, but had only destroyed, ruined and lied, lied …

  “What in my past isn’t vice?” he asked himself, trying to grab on to any bright memory at all, as a man falling from a precipice grasps at underbrush.

  School? University? But that was deceit. He learned remedially and forgot what he was taught. Civil service? That too was deceit, because during his service he didn’t do a thing, the salary he received was wasted on him, and his service was an odious embezzlement of public funds, for which he hadn’t been brought before a court of law.

  He had no use for the truth, and he did not seek it out, his reason, bewitched by wickedness and lies, either slept or kept silent; like an outsider or an alien from another planet, he did not participate in the collective life of people, was apathetic to their sufferings, ideas, religions, knowledge, pursuits, struggles, he never spoke one kind word to people, he’d never written one benevolent and non-vulgar line, he never contributed even a half-kopeck to anyone, but only ate their bread, drank their wine, swept away their wives, lived according to their impressions of him and, so as to justify his despicable, parasitic life to them and to himself, always attempted to graft onto himself the appearance that he was loftier and superior to them. A lie, a lie and a lie …

  He remembered distinctly what he’d seen that evening in the home of Muridov, and he felt unbearably macabre from self-loathing and melancholy. Kirilin and Achmianov were repulsive, but it seemed they’d continued what he’d started; they were his accomplices and pupils. He’d taken a husband, a social circle and a homeland away from a weak, young woman, who’d trusted him more than she would have a brother, and brought her here—to heat, to fever and to ennui; day in and day out she, like a mirror, was expected to reflect his idleness, depravity and lie—and this, and only this, had filled her weak, languid, pathetic life; when he’d been satiated by her, he’d grown to hate her, but was not man enough to leave her, and tried to ensnare her ever tighter in more lies, as in a spider’s web … The rest was brought to fruition by those people.

  Laevsky either sat down at the table, or again walked over to the window; he either extinguished the candle, or lit it again. He cursed himself aloud, wept, complained, asked forgiveness; in despair he ran over to the table several times and wrote: “My Dear Mother!”

  With the exception of his mother, he had no family or friends; but how could his mother help him? And where was she? He wanted to run to Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and drop at her feet, kiss her hands and feet, beg her forgiveness, but she was his victim, and he feared her, as though she were dead.

  This life is dead! he muttered, rubbing his hands together. But why am I still among the living, my God! …

  He had knocked his fading star from the heavens, it tumbled, and its afterglow meshed with the murk of the night; it would not appear again in the sky, because life is granted but once and cannot be repeated. If it were possible to get back the last days and years, he would exchange the lies they contained for truth, the idleness for effort, the ennui for joy, he would return purity to those from whom he had taken it, he would find God and justice—but this was as impossible as returning a tumbled star to the heavens. And because this was impossible, he fell into despair.

  When the storm had passed, he sat at the open window and calmly thought about what would become of him. Von Koren would most likely kill him. This man’s lucid, cold worldview permitted the annihilation of the stunted and useless; if it were to change at the decisive moment, then he would be encouraged by the hatred and feelings of revulsion that Laevsky inspired in him. If he should miss, or, for the purpose of mocking his hated opponent, would just wound him, or shot into the sky, then what was to be done? Where could he go?

  Travel to Petersburg? Laevsky asked himself. But that would mean starting my old life all over again, the one that I’m denouncing. For whoever seeks salvation in a change of place, like a migrating bird, won’t find anything new, because for him the earth is one and the same everywhere. Seek out salvation in people? In whom should he seek it and how? The kindness and magnanimity Samoylenko offered was as little salvation, as the deacon’s humor or Von Koren’s hatred. Salvation can only be sought out in one’s self, and if it cannot be found, then why waste time, you must kill yourself, that’s all there is …

  The sound of a coach was heard. It was already light out. The carriage passed nearby, turned and stopped near the house, its wheels crunching through the wet sand. Two sat in the carriage.

  “Wait, I’ll only be a moment!” Laevsky said to them through the window. “I haven’t slept. Is it really time already?”

  “Yes. Four o’clock. By the time we get there …”

  Laevsky put on his coat and service cap, placed cigarettes in his pocket and paused, lost in thought; it seemed to him that he was supposed to do something else. His seconds spoke softly on the street and the horses snorted, and these sounds in the early moist morning, while everyone else slept and dawn was just breaking, filled Laevsky’s soul with despondency, which resembled a sinister foreboding. He stood lost in thought a bit longer and proceeded to the bedroom.

  Nadezhda Fyodorovna was lying in her bed, stretched out, cocooned with her head in the plaid blanket; she did not move and resembled, especially her head, an Egyptian mummy. Looking at her silently, in his thoughts Laevsky asked for her forgiveness, that if the heavens aren’t empty and in actuality do contain a God, then He will protect her; and if there is no God, then let her perish, as she has nothing to live for.

  She suddenly lurched and sat up in bed. Raising her pale face and looking in horror at Laevsky, she asked:

  “Is that you? Has the storm passed?”

  “It’s passed.”

  Then she remembered, placed both hands on her head and her entire body shuddered.

  “It’s so difficult for me!” she uttered. “If only you knew how difficult it is for me! I waited,” she continued, narrowing her eyes, “for you to kill me or chase me out of the house into the rain and storm, but you delay … delay …”

  He abruptly and tightly embraced her, sprinkled kisses about her knees and face, then, when she’d murmured something to him and winced in recollection, he smoothed her hair and, scrutinizing her face, understood that this miserable, defiled woman was the only near, dear and irreplaceable person that he had.

  When he walked out of the house and took a seat in the carriage, he wanted to return home alive.

  XVIII

  The deacon rose, dressed, took his thick knotty walking stick and quietly exited the house. It was dark, and in the first few minutes that he walked along the street, the deacon couldn’t see even his white walking stick; there was not a single star in the sky, and it seemed as though it would rain again. It smelled of wet sand and the sea.
/>   “Hopefully, I won’t get attacked by Chechens,” the deacon thought, listening to the manner in which his walking stick knocked along the roadway and how that knock emanated, resonate and lonesome, through the night’s silence.

  Leaving the town, he began to see both the road and his walking stick; here and there in the black sky, murky spots appeared and soon a solitary star peered out and bashfully began to blink its single eye. The deacon walked along a high, rocky precipice, but the sea was not visible to him; it slept below him, and its invisible waves lazily, heavily broke against the shore and pointedly exhaled: oof! And how slowly! As one wave broke, the Deacon had time to count eight steps, then another broke; after six steps, a third. As before, absolutely nothing was visible, and the lazy, sleepy roar of the sea could be heard in the darkness; it was the sound of infinitely distant, inconceivable time, when God bore through chaos.

  The deacon felt macabre. He thought of whether God would punish him for his keeping company with nonbelievers and even going to watch their duel. The duel would be a trifle, bloodless, laughable; however, regardless of whether that was the case, it was a heathen ceremony and for a holy man to show his face there was not proper. Stopping, he thought: Should I go back? But a strong, disquieting curiosity rose above his doubt, and he continued onward.

  Even though they’re nonbelievers, they are good people and will find salvation, he comforted himself. “They’ll absolutely find salvation!” he said aloud, lighting up a cigarette.

  By what measure do we gauge the virtue of people, so as to judge them fairly? The deacon recalled his enemy, a proctor at divinity school who believed in God, and never fought in duels, and lived chastely, but who at some point had fed the deacon bread with sand and had once nearly ripped his ear off. If the corporeal life really played out so inanely, that everyone at divinity school respected and prayed for the health and salvation of this harsh and unfair proctor who plundered government-issue flour, then how can it really be just to shun people like Von Koren and Laevsky only because they’re nonbelievers? The deacon began to resolve this question, but he recalled what a strange state Samoylenko had been in the previous day, and that broke his train of thought. There will be so much laughter tomorrow! The deacon imagined how he would sit behind a bush and observe, so that when Von Koren began to boast at dinner tomorrow, then he, the deacon, would mirthfully describe all the details of the duel to him.