The Duel

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 the 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.