The Duel

XIII

Laevsky received two notes; he unfolded one and read: “Don’t go, my good man.”

Who could have written that? he thought. Certainly not Samoylenko … And not the deacon, seeing as he doesn’t know I want to leave. Could it be Von Koren, then?

The zoologist sat hunched over the table drawing a pyramid. It seemed to Laevsky that his eyes were smiling.

Doubtless, Samoylenko has blabbed …, Laevsky thought.

On the other note, in that same kinked penmanship with long tails and flourishes, was written:

“Someone’s not leaving on Saturday.”

A foolish mockery, Laevsky thought. Friday, Friday …

Something caught in his throat. He touched his collar and coughed, but instead of a cough, a laugh escaped.

“Ha—ha—ha!” he burst out laughing. “Ha—ha—ha!” What am I doing? he thought. “Ha—ha—ha!”

He tried to contain himself, covering his mouth with his hand, but the laughter pressed against his chest and neck, and his hand couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Really, how foolish this is! he thought, roaring with laughter. Have I lost my mind, is that it?

The laughter rose higher and higher and turned into something resembling the yapping of a lapdog. Laevsky wanted to rise from the table but his legs would not respond, and for some strange reason his right hand bounced around the table out of his control, fitfully snatching at pieces of paper and crumbling them. He saw the astonished looks, Samoylenko’s serious startled face and the zoologist’s glare, filled with cold mockery and revulsion, and he understood that he was in a state of hysteria.

What a scandal, what shame, he thought, feeling the warmth of tears on his face … Oh, oh, what a disgrace! This has never happened to me before …

Now they bore him by the arms and, supporting his head, led him away somewhere; now a glass flashed before his eyes and knocked against his teeth, and water spilled over his chest; now a small room, two beds close together in the middle, covered with clean blankets as white as snow. He fell onto one of the beds and burst out sobbing.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing …” Samoylenko said. “It happens … It happens …”

Chilled by fear, her entire body shaking and sensing something terrible, Nadezhda Fyodorovna stood beside the bed and asked:

“What’s wrong with you? What? For God’s sake, speak …”

Could Kirilin have written something to him? she thought.

“It’s nothing …” Laevsky said, laughing and crying. “Leave here … my dove.”

His face expressed neither hatred nor disgust: which meant he knew nothing. Nadezhda Fyodorovna calmed down a bit and returned to the drawing room.

“Don’t worry, darling!” Maria Konstantinovna said to her, sitting down beside her and taking her by the hand. “This shall pass. Men are just as weak as we are sinful. It’s understood … that right now you both are going through a crisis! Well, darling, I expect an answer. Let’s go have a talk.”

“No, we will not talk …” Nadezhda Fyodorovna said, heeding Laevsky’s sobs. “I’ve melancholy … Please, allow me to leave.”

“What’s this? What’s this, darling?” Maria Konstantinovna distressed. “Did you really think that I would let you go without supper? Have a bite, then go with the lord.”

“I’ve melancholy …” whispered Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and, so as not to fall, gripped the armrests of the armchair in both hands.

“He’s having convulsions!” said Von Koren cheerfully, entering the drawing room, but upon seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna grew embarrassed and left the room.

When the hysterics had finished, Laevsky sat on the stranger’s bed and thought:

What a disgrace, I bawled, like a girl! Most assuredly, I’m a laughingstock and abominable. I’ll have to exit through a pitch-black passage. However, that would mean, that I am attributing serious meaning to my hysterics. It would follow, that I should play it off as a joke …

He looked himself over in the mirror, sat for a bit and walked into the drawing room.

“Well, here I am!” he said, smiling; he was tortuously embarrassed, and he sensed that others were embarrassed by his very presence. “These things do happen,” he said, taking a seat. “I was just sitting here, and suddenly, wouldn’t you know, I felt a frightful stitch in my side … unbearable, my nerves could not withstand it and … and this foolish thing came out. Our nerve-racking era, there’s not a thing to do about it!”

He drank wine with his supper, conversed and, on occasion, would jerkily gasp, gently stroking his side, as though demonstrating that the pain was still felt. And there was no one, except Nadezhda Fyodorovna, who believed him, and he saw this.

In the tenth hour they went for a walk along the boulevard. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, fearing that Kirilin would try to strike up a conversation with her, tried to stay close to Maria Konstantinovna and the children the whole time. She had been weakened by fear and melancholy, and, with the presentiment of fever, languished and was barely able to move her legs, but she would not go home, such that she was certain she would be followed either by Kirilin or Achmianov, or both. Kirilin walked behind, alongside Nikodim Aleksandrich, and hummed in a low voice:

“I won’t allo-ow myself to be to-oyed with! I won’t allow it!”

They turned off the boulevard toward the pavilion and walked along the embankment, and for a long time looked out at the phosphorescence of the sea. Von Koren began explaining what makes it phosphorescent.