Fifty-Two Stories

ENEMIES

TOWARDS TEN O’CLOCK on a dark September evening, the only son of the district doctor Kirilov, six-year-old Andrei, died of diphtheria. Just as the doctor’s wife sank to her knees before the dead child’s little bed and was overcome by the first onslaught of despair, the doorbell in the front hall rang out sharply.

On account of the diphtheria, all the servants had been sent away in the morning. Kirilov, just as he was, without his frock coat and with an unbuttoned waistcoat, not wiping his wet face and his hands scalded with carbolic acid, went to open the door himself. It was dark in the front hall, and all that could be seen of the man coming in was his medium height, his white scarf, and his large, extremely pale face, so pale that its appearance seemed to make the front hall lighter…

“Is the doctor at home?” the man asked quickly.

“Yes, I am,” Kirilov replied. “What can I do for you?”

“Ah, it’s you? I’m very glad!” the man said happily and began feeling in the dark for the doctor’s hand, found it, and pressed it firmly in his own. “Very…very glad! We know each other!…I’m Abogin…had the pleasure of meeting you last summer at the Gnuchevs’. I’m very glad to find you at home…For God’s sake, don’t refuse to come with me now…My wife is dangerously ill…I have a carriage with me…”

From the man’s voice and movements it was evident that he was in an extremely agitated state. As if frightened by a fire or a rabid dog, he could barely control his rapid breathing and spoke quickly, in a trembling voice, and something unfeignedly candid, something childishly fearful sounded in his speech. Like all frightened and stunned people, he spoke in short, abrupt sentences and used many unnecessary, totally irrelevant words.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t find you at home,” he went on. “My soul suffered so much on the way here…Get dressed and let’s go, for God’s sake…It happened like this. Papchinsky, Alexander Semyonovich, whom you know, comes to see me…We talked…then sat down to tea; suddenly my wife cries out, puts her hand to her heart, and falls back in her chair. We carried her to her bed and…I rubbed her temples with sal-ammoniac, sprinkled her with water…she lay as if dead…I’m afraid it’s an aneurysm…Let’s go…Her father also died of an aneurysm…”

Kirilov listened and said nothing, as if he did not understand Russian.

When Abogin again referred to Papchinsky and to his wife’s father and again began searching for his hand in the darkness, the doctor shook his head and said, apathetically drawing out each word:

“Forgive me, I can’t go…Five minutes ago…my son died…”

“Can it be?” Abogin whispered, taking a step back. “My God, what an evil hour I’ve hit on! An amazingly unfortunate day…amazingly! What a coincidence…as if on purpose!”

Abogin took hold of the door handle and hung his head, pondering. He evidently hesitated, not knowing what to do: to leave or to go on entreating the doctor.

“Listen,” he said heatedly, catching Kirilov by the sleeve, “I understand your position perfectly! God knows, I’m ashamed to be trying to hold your attention at such a moment, but what can I do? Judge for yourself, who can I go to? Besides you, there’s no other doctor here. Come, for God’s sake! I’m not asking for myself…It’s not me who’s sick!”

Silence ensued. Kirilov turned his back to Abogin, stood for a moment, and slowly went from the front hall to the drawing room. Judging by his uncertain, mechanical gait, by the attention with which, on coming to the drawing room, he straightened the fringed lampshade on an unlit lamp and glanced into a fat book lying on the table, in those moments he had neither intentions nor wishes, was not thinking about anything, and probably no longer remembered that a stranger was standing in his front hall. The darkness and quietness of the room apparently intensified his derangement. Going from the drawing room to his study, he raised his right foot higher than necessary, feeling with his hands for the door frames, and all the while there was a sense of some sort of perplexity in his whole figure, as if he found himself in unfamiliar quarters or had gotten drunk for the first time in his life and now yielded with perplexity to this new sensation. A wide strip of light stretched across the bookcases on one wall of the study; along with the heavy, stale smell of carbolic acid and ether, this light came from the slightly ajar door that led from the study to the bedroom…The doctor sank into the armchair in front of the desk; for a moment he gazed sleepily at the lighted books, then got up and went to the bedroom.

Here, in the bedroom, a dead silence reigned. Everything to the smallest detail spoke of the recently endured storm, of fatigue, and everything was resting. A candle, which stood on a stool amid a dense crowd of vials, boxes, and jars, and a big lamp on a chest of drawers brightly lit the whole room. On the bed just by the window lay a boy with open eyes and an astonished look on his face. He did not move, but his open eyes seemed to be growing darker and sinking into his skull with every moment. His mother was kneeling beside the bed, her arms lying on his body, her face hidden in the folds of the sheets. Like the boy, she was motionless, but how much living movement could be felt in the curves of her body and in her arms! She pressed herself to the bed with all her being, with force and greed, as if fearing to disturb the calm and comfortable pose she had finally found for her weary body. Blankets, rags, basins, puddles on the floor, brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle with lime water, the very air, stifling and heavy—it was all still and seemed immersed in calm.

The doctor stopped beside his wife, put his hands into his trouser pockets, and, inclining his head to the side, turned his gaze to his son. His face expressed indifference, and only by the drops glistening on his beard could one tell that he had recently wept.

That repulsive horror which people think about when speaking of death was absent from the room. In the general stupor, the mother’s pose, the indifference of the doctor’s face, lay something attractive, touching the heart, precisely that fine, barely perceptible beauty of human grief, which people will not soon learn to understand and describe, and which only music seems able to convey. Beauty could also be felt in the somber silence; Kirilov and his wife were quiet, they did not weep, as if, besides the heaviness of the loss, they were also conscious of the lyrical side of their situation: as once, in its time, their youth had gone, so now, together with this boy, their right to have children had gone forever into eternity! The doctor was forty-four, he was already gray-haired and looked like an old man; his faded and ailing wife was thirty-five. Andrei had been not just their only one, but also their last.

In contrast to his wife, the doctor belonged by nature to those who, at a time of inner pain, feel the need to move. Having stood by his wife for some five minutes, he walked, raising his right foot high, from the bedroom to a small room, half of which was taken up by a big, wide couch; from there he went on to the kitchen. After lingering briefly around the stove and the cook’s bed, he bent down and passed through a small door into the front hall.

Here he again saw the white scarf and the pale face.

“At last!” Abogin sighed, taking hold of the door handle. “Let’s go, please!”

The doctor gave a start, looked at him, and remembered…

“Listen, I already told you that I can’t go!” he said, rousing himself. “How strange!”

“Doctor, I’m not a block of wood, I understand your situation very well…I feel for you!” Abogin said in a pleading voice, putting his hand to his scarf. “But I’m not asking for myself…My wife is dying! If you had heard that scream, seen her face, you’d understand my insistence! My God, I was already thinking you went to get dressed! Doctor, time is precious! Let’s go, I beg you!”

“I cannot go!” Kirilov said in a measured tone and stepped into the drawing room.

Abogin followed him and grabbed him by the sleeve.

“You’re in grief, I understand that, but I’m not inviting you to treat a toothache or give a diagnosis, but to save a human life!” he went on pleading like a beggar. “That life is higher than any personal grief! So, I’m asking for courage, a brave deed! For the love of humanity!”

“The love of humanity is a stick with two ends,” Kirilov said irritably. “I beg you in the name of that same love of humanity not to take me away. And it’s so strange, by God! I can barely keep my feet, and you frighten me with the love of humanity! I’m good for nothing now…I won’t go with you for anything, and who will I leave my wife with? No, no…”

Kirilov waved his hands and took several steps back.

“And…and don’t ask!” he went on in fright. “Excuse me…According to volume thirteen of the law, it’s my duty to go, and you have the right to drag me by the scruff of the neck…All right, drag me, but…I’m no good…I can’t even speak…Excuse me…”

“There’s no point talking to me in that tone, doctor!” Abogin said, again taking the doctor by the sleeve. “Never mind about volume thirteen! I have no right to force your will. If you want to come, come; if you don’t—God help you, but I’m not appealing to your will, but to your feelings. A young woman is dying! You told me your son just died—who can understand my horror if not you?”

Abogin’s voice trembled with agitation; in that tremor and in that tone there was far more persuasiveness than in his words. Abogin was sincere, but, remarkably, no matter what phrases he spoke, they all came out stiff, soulless, inappropriately florid, and even seemed to insult both the air in the doctor’s quarters and the woman who was dying somewhere. He felt it himself, and therefore, afraid he would not be understood, he tried as hard as he could to give his voice softness and tenderness, so as to prevail, if not by words, then at least by sincerity of tone. Generally a phrase, however beautiful and profound, affects only the indifferent, but cannot always satisfy the happy or the unhappy; therefore the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness turns out most often to be silence; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and an ardent, passionate speech made over a grave moves only the outsiders, while the widow and children of the deceased find it cold and insignificant.

Kirilov stood and was silent. When Abogin said a few more phrases about the high calling of a doctor, about self-sacrifice and so on, the doctor asked sullenly:

“Is it far?”

“Something like nine or ten miles. I’ve got excellent horses, doctor! On my word of honor, I’ll get you there and back in one hour. Just one hour!”

These last words affected the doctor more strongly than the references to the love of humanity or a doctor’s vocation. He thought a little and said with a sigh:

“All right, let’s go!”

He went quickly, and now with a sure step, to his office and came back a little later in a long frock coat. Mincing and shuffling around him, the cheered-up Abogin helped him into his overcoat and they left together.

Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the front hall. In the darkness, the doctor’s tall, stooping figure, his long, narrow beard and aquiline nose, were clearly outlined. Abogin, it could now be seen, besides his pale face, also had a big head and a small visored cap that barely covered the top of it. The white scarf showed only in front, being hidden in back by his long hair.

“Believe me, I’ll know how to appreciate your generosity,” Abogin muttered, helping the doctor into the carriage. “We’ll be there in no time. Luka, my dear fellow, drive as fast as you can! Please!”

The coachman drove quickly. First they went past a row of nondescript buildings that stood along the hospital yard; it was dark everywhere, only from someone’s window in the depth of the yard a bright light shone through the front garden, and three windows on the upper floor of the hospital building looked paler than the air. Then the carriage drove into dense darkness; here there was a smell of mushroomy dampness and the whispering of the trees could be heard; crows, awakened by the rumbling of the wheels, stirred in the foliage and raised an anxious, plaintive cawing, as if they knew that the doctor’s son had died and Abogin’s wife was sick. But now separate trees and bushes flitted by, a pond on which big black shadows slept flashed sullenly—and the carriage rolled over a level plain. The cawing of the crows sounded faintly, far behind, and soon died away completely.

Kirilov and Abogin made almost the whole journey in silence. Only once Abogin sighed deeply and murmured:

“What a painful state! You never love your own so much as at the moment when you risk losing them!”

And when the carriage was slowly crossing the river, Kirilov suddenly roused himself, as if frightened by the splashing, and began to stir.

“Listen, let me go back,” he said with anguish. “I’ll come to you later. I just want to send my assistant to my wife. She’s there alone!”

Abogin was silent. The carriage, rocking and clattering over the stones, drove up the sandy bank and rolled on. Kirilov twisted in anguish and looked around. Behind, through the scant light of the stars, the road and the willows on the riverbank could be seen, merging with the darkness. To the right lay the plain, as level and boundless as the sky; on it here and there, in the distance, probably on the peat bogs, dim lights were burning. To the left, parallel to the road, stretched a hill, all curly with small shrubs, and above the hill a big half-moon hung motionless, red, slightly veiled with mist, and surrounded by small clouds, which seemed to be watching it from all sides and keeping it from going away.

In the whole of nature there was a feeling of something hopeless, sick; the earth, like a fallen woman who sits alone in a dark room trying not to think about her past, languished in memories of spring and summer and waited apathetically for the inevitable winter. Wherever you looked, nature seemed like a dark, infinitely deep and cold pit, from which neither Kirilov nor Abogin nor the red half-moon would ever get out…

The closer the carriage came to its goal, the more impatient Abogin grew. He fidgeted, jumped up, peered over the coachman’s shoulder. And when the carriage finally stopped by the porch, prettily draped in striped canvas, and he looked at the lighted windows on the first floor, one could hear how his breath quavered.

“If something happens…I won’t survive it,” he said, going into the front hall with the doctor and nervously rubbing his hands. “But I don’t hear any commotion, meaning so far everything’s all right,” he added, listening to the stillness.

In the front hall no sound of voices or footsteps could be heard, and the whole house seemed asleep, despite the bright lights. Now the doctor and Abogin, who until then had been in the dark, could see each other. The doctor was tall, stooped-shouldered, slovenly dressed, and had an unattractive face. Something unpleasantly sharp, unfriendly, and severe was expressed by his lips, thick as a Negro’s, his aquiline nose, and his sluggish, indifferent gaze. His disheveled head, sunken temples, the premature gray in his long, narrow beard, through which his chin showed, the pale gray color of his skin, and his careless, awkward manners—the callousness of it all suggested the notion of years of poverty, ill luck, weariness of life and people. Looking at his whole dry figure, it was hard to believe that this man had a wife, that he could weep over a child. Abogin embodied something else. He was a thickset, sturdy blond man, with a big head and large but soft facial features, elegantly dressed in the latest fashion. In his bearing, his tightly buttoned frock coat, his mane, and his face one could sense something noble, leonine; he walked with his head erect and his chest thrust out, spoke in a pleasant baritone, and the way he took off his scarf or touched his hair betrayed a fine, almost feminine elegance. Even his pallor and the childlike fear with which he kept glancing up the stairs as he took his coat off, did not harm his bearing or diminish the satiety, healthiness, and aplomb which his whole figure breathed.

“There’s nobody, not a sound,” he said, going up the stairs. “No commotion. God grant…!”

He led the doctor through the front hall into the big drawing room, where a black grand piano was darkly outlined and a chandelier hung in a white dust cover; from there the two went on to a small, very snug and pretty sitting room, filled with a pleasant rosy half-light.

“Well, you sit here, doctor,” said Abogin, “and I…right away. I’ll go have a look and let them know.”

Kirilov remained alone. The luxury of the sitting room, the pleasant half-light, and the very fact of his presence in a stranger’s unfamiliar house, which had the character of an adventure, evidently did not move him. He sat in an armchair and examined his hands burnt by carbolic acid. He looked only fleetingly at the bright red lampshade, the cello case, and, leaning towards the side where the clock was ticking, noticed a stuffed wolf as sturdy and sated as Abogin himself.

It was quiet…Somewhere far away in the adjoining rooms someone loudly uttered the sound “Ah!” and there was the clinking of a glass door, probably of a cupboard, and everything became quiet again. Having waited for about five minutes, Kirilov stopped studying his hands and raised his eyes to the door behind which Abogin had disappeared.

On the threshold of that door stood Abogin, but not the one who had gone out. His expression of satiety and refined elegance had vanished; his face, his hands, and his posture were distorted by a repulsive expression of something like horror or a tormenting physical pain. His nose, lips, moustache, all his features were moving and seemed to be trying to detach themselves from his face, while his eyes were as if laughing from pain…

Abogin stepped with heavy, long strides to the middle of the sitting room, bent over, groaned, and shook his fists.

“She deceived me!” he cried, heavily emphasizing the syllable “-cei-”. “Deceived me! Left! Fell ill and sent me for a doctor only so as to run off with that buffoon Papchinsky! My God!”

Abogin strode heavily towards the doctor, brought his soft white fists close to the doctor’s face, and, shaking them, went on yelling:

“She left! Deceived me! What need was there for this lie?! My God! My God! Why this dirty, swindling trick, this devilish, viperish game? What did I do to her? She left!”

Tears gushed from his eyes. He turned on one foot and began to pace the sitting room. Now, in his short frock coat and fashionably narrow trousers, which made his legs look too thin for his body, with his big head and mane, he very much resembled a lion. The doctor’s indifferent face brightened with curiosity. He stood up and looked at Abogin.

“Excuse me, but where is the sick woman?” he asked.

“The sick woman! The sick woman!” Abogin shouted, laughing, crying, and still shaking his fists. “She’s not sick, she’s accursed! Meanness! Vileness, nastier than anything Satan himself could think up! She sent me away so as to run off, run off with a buffoon, a stupid clown, an Alphonse!¹ Oh, God, it would be better if she’d died! I can’t bear it! Can’t bear it!”

The doctor straightened up. His eyes blinked, filled with tears, his narrow beard moved right and left together with his jaw.

“Excuse me, but how is that?” he asked, looking around with curiosity. “My child died, my wife is alone in the house, in anguish…I myself can barely stand on my feet, I haven’t slept for three nights…and what then? I’ve been forced to play in some sort of banal comedy, to play the role of a stage prop! I…I don’t understand!”

Abogin opened one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor and stepped on it, as if it was an insect he wanted to squash.

“And I didn’t see…didn’t understand!” He spoke through clenched teeth, shaking one fist next to his face, and with such an expression as if someone had stepped on his callus. “I didn’t notice that he came every day, didn’t notice that today he came in a carriage! Why in a carriage? And I didn’t see! Dunce!”

“I…I don’t understand!” muttered the doctor. “What is all this! It’s a mockery of a living person, a jeering at human suffering! It’s something impossible…the first time in my life I’ve seen it!”

With the dull astonishment of a man who has just begun to realize that he has been deeply insulted, the doctor shrugged his shoulders, spread his arms, and, not knowing what to say or do, sank exhaustedly into the armchair.

“So, you fell out of love, fell in love with someone else—God help you, but why this deceit, why this vile, treacherous stunt?” Abogin was saying in a tearful voice. “How come? And what for? What did I do to you? Listen, doctor,” he said hotly, going up to Kirilov. “You’ve been an involuntary witness to my misfortune, and I won’t conceal the truth from you. I swear to you that I loved this woman, loved her devotedly, like a slave! I sacrificed everything for her: quarreled with my relations, abandoned my work and music, forgave her things I wouldn’t have been able to forgive my mother or my sister…Never once did I look askance at her…never gave her any reason! So why this lie? I don’t insist on love, but why this vile deception? If you don’t love me, say so outright, honestly, the more so as you know my views in that regard…”

With tears in his eyes, trembling all over, Abogin sincerely poured out his soul before the doctor. He spoke fervently, pressing both hands to his heart, exposed his family secrets without any hesitation, and was even as if glad that these secrets had finally burst from his soul. If he had spoken like that for an hour, two hours, pouring out his soul, he would undoubtedly have felt better. Who knows, if the doctor had heard him out, shown friendly compassion, perhaps, as often happens, he would have been reconciled to his loss without protest, without any unnecessary foolishness…But something else happened. As Abogin spoke, the insulted doctor changed noticeably. The indifference and astonishment on his face gradually gave way to an expression of bitter offense, indignation, and wrath. The features of his face became still sharper, harder, and more unpleasant. When Abogin placed before his eyes the photograph of a young woman with a beautiful, but dry and expressionless face, like a nun’s, and asked whether it was possible, looking at that face, to allow that it was capable of expressing a lie, the doctor suddenly jumped up, flashed his eyes, and said, rudely rapping out each word:

“Why are you telling me all this? I have no wish to hear it! No wish!” he shouted and banged his fist on the table. “I don’t need to know your banal secrets, devil take them! Don’t you dare tell me these banalities! Do you think I haven’t been insulted enough already? That I’m a lackey who can be insulted endlessly? Eh?”

Abogin backed away from Kirilov and stared at him in astonishment.

“Why did you bring me here?” the doctor went on, his beard shaking. “You go crazy from your fat life and act out melodramas, but why bring me into it? What have I got to do with your love affairs? Leave me alone! Exercise your noble eccentricity, flaunt your humane ideas, play”—the doctor cast a sidelong glance at the cello case—“play your double basses and trombones, fatten up like capons, but don’t you dare jeer at a human being! If you can’t respect me, at least spare me your attention!”

“Excuse me, but what’s the meaning of all this?” Abogin asked, turning red.

“It means that it’s base and vile to play with people like that! I’m a doctor, and you consider doctors and workers in general, who don’t smell of perfume and prostitution, as your lackeys and in mauvais ton²—well, go ahead, but no one gave you the right to turn a suffering man into a stage prop!”

“How dare you say that to me?” Abogin asked softly, and his face began to twitch again, this time clearly from wrath.

“No, knowing that I’m in grief, how could you dare bring me here to listen to banalities?” the doctor shouted, and again banged his fist on the table. “Who gave you the right to mock another man’s grief like this?”

“You’re out of your mind!” shouted Abogin. “That’s not magnanimous! I’m profoundly unhappy myself and…and…”

“Unhappy,” the doctor smirked contemptuously. “Don’t touch that word, it doesn’t concern you. A good-for-nothing who can’t pay off his debts also calls himself unhappy, a capon that suffocates from too much fat is also unhappy. Worthless people!”

“My dear sir, you are forgetting yourself!” shrieked Abogin. “Such words…call for a beating! Understand?”

Abogin hurriedly went to his side pocket, took out his wallet, and pulling two notes from it, flung them on the table.

“That’s for your visit!” he said, his nostrils twitching. “You’ve been paid!”

“Don’t you dare offer me money!” the doctor shouted and swept the notes from the table. “An insult isn’t paid for with money!”

Abogin and the doctor stood face to face and went on angrily hurling undeserved insults at each other. It seems that never in their lives, even in delirium, had they said so much that was unfair, cruel, and preposterous. In both men the egotism of the unhappy showed strongly. The unhappy are egotistic, spiteful, unfair, cruel, and less capable than the stupid of understanding each other. Unhappiness does not unite but divides people, and even where it seems that people should be united by the similarity of their grief, there is much more unfairness and cruelty done than in a comparatively contented milieu.

“Kindly send me home!” the doctor shouted, suffocating.

Abogin rang brusquely. When no one appeared at his call, he rang again and angrily threw the bell on the floor; it hit the rug dully and let out a plaintive, as if dying moan. A lackey appeared.

“Where are you all hiding, devil take you?!” The master fell upon him with clenched fists. “Where were you just now? Go, tell them to bring the carriage for this gentleman, and order the coach harnessed for me! Wait!” he shouted, when the lackey turned to go. “Let there not be a single traitor left in the house by tomorrow! Away with all of you! I’ll hire new ones. Vermin!”

While waiting for their vehicles, Abogin and the doctor were silent. To the first an expression of satiety and refined elegance had already returned. He paced the sitting room, gracefully shaking his head and obviously planning something. His wrath had not yet cooled down, but he tried to pretend that he did not notice his enemy…The doctor stood, holding the edge of the table with one hand and looking at Abogin with that profound, somewhat cynical and unattractive contempt which only grief and misery can express when faced with satiety and elegance.

When, a little later, the doctor got into the carriage and went off, his eyes still had a contemptuous look. It was dark, much darker than an hour earlier. The red half-moon had already gone behind a hill, and the clouds that had watched over it lay in dark spots near the stars. A coach with red lights rumbled down the road and overtook the doctor. It was Abogin going to protest and do stupid things…

All the way the doctor thought not about his wife, not about Andrei, but about Abogin and the people who lived in the house he had just left. His thoughts were unjust and inhumanly cruel. He judged Abogin and his wife, and Papchinsky, and all those who live in rosy half-light and the smell of perfume, and all the way he hated them and despised them until his heart ached. And in his mind a firm conviction about these people was formed.

Time will pass, and Kirilov’s grief will pass, but this conviction, unjust, unworthy of the human heart, will not pass but will remain in the doctor’s mind to the grave.

1887