The Duel (2 page)

Samoylenko felt embarrassed.

“You, Vanya, aren’t in high spirits today,” he said. “You didn’t sleep, that must be it.”

“Yes, I slept badly … In general, brother, I feel rotten. Empty headed, heavy hearted, there’s a kind of weakness … I must run!”

“Where?”

“Over there, to the north. To the pines, to mushrooms, to people, to ideas … I would give up half my life, to be in some Moscow province right now or one in Tula, swimming in a river, getting a chill, you know? Then to wander
around for at least three hours with the worst possible little student and to blab and blab … Oh, and how it smells of hay! Do you remember? And in the evenings, as you walk through the garden, the sound of a grand piano wafts from the house, you can hear the passing of a train …”

Laevsky began laughing from pleasure. Tears came to his eyes, and to conceal them he reached over to the neighboring table for matches without rising from his seat.

“I haven’t been to Russia in eighteen years,” said Samoylenko. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like there. In my opinion, there’s no outskirt more magnificent than the Caucasus.”

“There’s a painting by Vereshchagin where those destined for death languish at the bottom of the deepest well. Your magnificent Caucasus appear to be exactly that kind of a well to me. If only I were given the choice between the two, being a chimney sweep in Petersburg or being a duke in these parts, I would definitely take being a chimney sweep.”

Laevsky lost himself in thought. To look at his body slumped over, at his eyes fixed on one point, at his pale, perspiring face and furrowed brow, at his gnawed fingernails and at his shoe, which hung off his heel revealing a haplessly stitched stocking, imbued Samoylenko with pity and, possibly because Laevsky reminded him of a helpless child, he asked:

“Is your mother alive?”

“Yes, but we’ve had a falling-out. She could not forgive me for this relationship.”

Samoylenko loved his friend. In Laevsky he saw a good-natured fellow, a student, a straightforward man whom he could drink with, and laugh with and soul search with. What he understood of him, he disliked extremely. Laevsky drank too much and, at inappropriate times, played cards, held his work in contempt, lived beyond his means, often used profane expressions in conversation, walked the streets in shoes and publicly fought with Nadezhda Fyodorovna—and Samoylenko disliked that. But then again, Laevsky had once been enrolled in the philology department of a university, he now subscribed to two fat journals, often spoke so astutely that only a handful of people could understand him, lived with an intelligent woman—Samoylenko understood none of this, and it appealed to him, and he considered Laevsky better than himself and respected him.

“There’s one more detail,” Laevsky said, shaking his head. “But this is just between us. I’ve been keeping it from Nadezhda Fyodorovna so far, so don’t let it slip in front of her … A couple of days ago I received a letter that her husband had died from a softening of the brain.”

“Kingdom of heaven …” sighed Samoylenko. “Why are you hiding this from her?”

“To show her this letter would mean: Please come right this way to the church and let’s get married. First, we must determine what our relationship is. When she is convinced that we can no longer live together, then I’ll show her the letter. It’ll be safe then.”

“You know what, Vanya?” said Samoylenko, and his face suddenly took on a sad and pleading expression, as though he
were preparing to ask for something very sweet and feared that he would be refused. “Get married, my good man!”

“What for?”

“Fulfill your obligation to this beautiful woman! Her husband has died, and that is providence itself telling you what you must do!”

“Just understand, my eccentric friend, that it’s not possible. To marry without love is as foolish and worthless a thing for a man to do, as for a non-believer to enter into the service of God.”

“But you’re obliged!”

“Why am I obliged?” Laevsky asked with irritation.

“Because by sweeping her away from her husband you took responsibility for her.”

“But I’m telling you in plain Russian:
I don’t love her
!”

“Well, so there’s no love. Honor her, indulge her …”

“Honor, indulge …” mocked Laevsky. “Sure, she’s a regular mother superior … You’re a bad psychologist and physiologist if you think that life with a woman can coast on nothing but honor and respect. First and foremost, a woman requires a bedroom.”

“Vanya, Vanya …” Samoylenko became embarrassed.

“You’re an old child, a theoretician, but I’m a young old man, a pragmatist, and we’ll never understand one another. We’d better end this conversation. Mustafa,” Laevsky called out to the man, “what do we owe?”

“No, no …” the doctor panicked, grabbing Laevsky by the arm. “I’ll pay for this. I ordered it. Put it on my tab!” he called out to Mustafa.

The friends rose and silently proceeded along the embankment. They stopped where the boulevard began and parted with a handshake.

“You’re really very spoiled, gentleman!” sighed Samoylenko. “Fate has sent you a young, attractive, educated woman—and you refuse it all. If God would send me even a hump-backed old woman, as long as she’s tender and kind, I would be, oh, so very happy! I’d live with her on my vineyard and …”

Suddenly remembering himself, Samoylenko said:

“And I’d let that old witch set up the samovar there, all by herself.” Having said goodbye to Laevsky, he proceeded along the boulevard. At those times when he—massive, majestic, with an austere expression on his face, in his lilywhite service jacket and his fabulously polished boots, his chest puffed out, regaled with the Order of Vladimir with a ribbon—walked along the boulevard he liked himself tremendously, and it seemed to him that the entire world was smiling upon him. He looked from one side to the other without turning his head and found the boulevard was abundantly landscaped with young cypresses, eucalyptus and that even the unattractive, anemic palms were indeed attractive and would provide broad shade with time, that the Circassians were an honest and hospitable people.
It’s strange that the Caucasus don’t appeal to Laevsky
, he thought,
very strange
. He encountered five armed soldiers who saluted him. A civil servant’s wife and her school-aged son passed along the sidewalk on the right side of the boulevard.

“Maria Konstantinovna, good morning!” Samoylenko
called out to her, smiling pleasantly. “Have you been for a swim? Ha-ha-ha … My regards to Nikodim Aleksandrich!”

And he went on, continuing to smile pleasantly, until, seeing that he was about to encounter an approaching military medical assistant, suddenly scowled, stopped him and inquired:

“Is there anyone at the infirmary?”

“No one, Your Excellency.”

“What’s that?”

“No one, Your Excellency.”

“Very good, carry on …”

Majestically swaggering, he turned in the direction of a lemonade stand, where an old, buxom Jewess passing herself off as a Georgian sat behind the counter and said to her loudly, as though commanding a regiment:

“Please be a dear, give me a soda water!”

Laevsky’s lack of love for Nadezhda Fyodorovna manifested itself mainly in that everything she said and did seemed a lie to him, or something resembling a lie, and everything that he read disparaging of women and love seemed as though it couldn’t apply better to himself, to Nadezhda Fyodorovna and to her husband. When he returned home she was sitting at the window, already dressed and coiffed, drinking coffee with an anxious expression on her face and flipping through the pages of a fat journal, and he thought to
himself that the act of drinking coffee is not such a stupendous event that it should merit an anxious expression, and that she had wasted time in vain on a fashionable hairstyle, as no one here appreciated it and it was all for nothing. And in the pages of the journal he saw a lie. He thought that just as she dressed and coiffed so that she would appear pretty, she read so that she would appear smart.

“Would it be all right if I went swimming today?” she asked.

“What? You’ll go or you won’t go, it’s not an earth-shattering event either way, I suppose …”

“No, that’s why I’m asking, I wouldn’t want the doctor to be upset with me.”

“Well, go ask the doctor, then. I’m not a doctor.”

This time what Laevsky disliked most of all about Nadezhda Fyodorovna was her white, exposed neck and the curls of hair on the nape of her neck, and he remembered that when Anna Karenina had fallen out of love with her husband, she began to dislike his ears above all else, and he thought to himself:
How true it is! How true!
Feeling weak and empty headed, he went into his study, lay down on the divan and covered his face with a handkerchief, so that the flies would not irritate him. Languid, torpid thoughts all about one and the same thing stretched out through his brain like a long wagon train in foul autumnal weather and he fell into a drowsy, dejected state. It seemed to him that he was culpable before Nadezhda Fyodorovna and before her husband, and that her husband’s death had been all his fault. It seemed to him that he was culpable before his
life, which he’d ruined, before the world of grand ideas, knowledge and labor, and he imagined that wonder-filled world to be possible and to exist not here on this shore, where hungry Turks and lazy Abkhazians wandered about, but there to the north, where there is opera, theater, newspapers and all sorts of cerebral labor. To be honest, smart, outspoken and pure was only possible there, not here. He blamed himself for not having ideals or a master plan in life, as he dimly realized now what this meant. Two years earlier, when he had fallen in love with Nadezhda Fyodorovna, he had been convinced that all he had to do was run off with Nadezhda Fyodorovna and to set off with her for the Caucasus, thus he would be spared the banality and emptiness of life; he was now equally convinced that all he had to do was cast off Nadezhda Fyodorovna and set off for Petersburg, thereby attaining all that he required.

“Run!” he muttered to himself, sitting and gnawing his nails. “Run!”

His imagination unfurled: there he is boarding a steamship and then sitting down to breakfast, drinking cold beer, chatting with the ladies on deck, then in Sevastopol boarding a train and traveling. Hello, freedom! The stations flicker past one after the other, the air becomes ever colder and harsher, now birch and spruce trees, now Kursk, Moscow … Shchi in the buffets, lamb with kasha, sturgeon, beer—in a word, not the Asiatic, but Russia, the real Russia. The passengers on the train speak of trade, the latest singers, of Franco-Russian affinity; everywhere the feeling of animated, cultured, intelligent, exhilarating life … Faster, faster! Here,
at last, is Nevsky, Bolshaya Morskaya, and there’s Kovensky Lane, where he had once lived among students, there’s the dear, gray sky, misty rain, wet coach-drivers …

“Ivan Andreich!” someone called out from the neighboring room. “Are you home?”

“I’m here!” Laevsky answered. “What do you need?”

“Papers.”

Laevsky rose lazily, with a feeling of dizziness and, yawning, his shoes smacking the floor, went to the neighboring room. There in the street, in front of the open window, stood one of his young colleagues, who laid official papers out on the windowsill.

“Just a minute, my good man,” Laevsky said softly, and went to find pen and ink. Returning to the window, he signed the papers without reading them and said: “It’s hot!”

“Yes sir. Are you coming in today?”

“Unlikely … I think I’m coming down with something … My good man, tell Sheshkovsky that I’ll come see him after dinner.”

The clerk left. Laevsky lay down on the divan in his room again and began to think:

Now then, it’s necessary to weigh all the factors and to figure this out. Before leaving this place, I must pay my debts. I owe nearly two thousand rubles. I have no money … This, of course, isn’t important. I’ll pay half now somehow, and the other half I’ll send from Petersburg. Most important is Nadezhda Fyodorovna … First and foremost, we must determine what our relationship is … Yes
.

A little later on, he thought:
Wouldn’t it be better to go to Samoylenko for advice?

It’s easy enough to go
, he thought,
but what’s the use of it? I’d just start telling him malapropos about the boudoir, about women, about what is or isn’t fair. Damn it, how can there be any question of what is or isn’t fair, when my life requires saving, and fast, when I’m suffocating in this damned captivity and killing myself? … It must, finally, be understood, that to continue a life like mine is underhanded and unrelenting, in the face of which all else is petty and insignificant. Run!
he muttered, sitting down.
Run!

The emptiness of the seashore, the insatiable swelter and the monotony of the dusky, lilac mountains, eternally the same and silent, eternally lonely, bore on his melancholy and, seemingly, sedated and looted him. It may well have been that he was a very smart, talented, remarkable straight-shooter; it may well have been that were he not surrounded by sea and mountains on all sides, a first-class regional director, a government man, an orator, a public figure, an ascetic would have emerged from within him. Who knows! What if a gifted and industrious man—a musician or an artist, for instance—were to escape captivity by tearing down a wall and tricking his jailers, isn’t it foolish to then expound on what’s fair and what’s not? In such a situation, everything that man does is fair.

At two o’clock Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna sat down to dinner. When the scullery maid had served them rice soup with tomatoes, Laevsky said:

“It’s the same thing every day. Is there any reason why we can’t have shchi?”

“There’s no cabbage.”

“Strange. If they cook shchi with cabbage at Samoylenko’s, and there’s shchi at Maria Konstantinovna’s, it must just be me that’s supposed to eat this sweetish slop for some reason. This isn’t right, my dove.”

As is the case among the vast majority of married couples, before neither Laevsky nor Nadezhda Fyodorovna could get through a dinner without caprices and a scene, but since Laevsky decided that he no longer loved her, he tried to yield to Nadezhda Fyodorovna in all matters, speaking to her gently and politely, smiling at her, and calling her a dove.