The Duel

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.

“How do you know all of this?” the zoologist would ask.

“That’s just the way it is. I sat at home, but I know.”

It would be good to write of the duel in a humorous light. His father-in-law would read it and laugh; his father-in-law won’t eat the kasha, but just you tell or write to him of an amusing story.

The Yellow River Valley opened before him. The river had become wider and crueler from the rain and did not rumble now, as before, but roared. Dawn was breaking. A gray lusterless morning, and the clouds fleeing westward to overtake a thundercloud, and the mountains, encased in fog, and the wet trees—all this appeared to be ugly and sinister to the deacon. He washed his face in the stream, performed his morning prayers, and had a hankering for tea and a hot bun with sour cream, the kind that was served every morning at his father-in-law’s table. He recalled the deaconess and “Irrevocable,” which she played on the fortepiano. What kind of woman was she? The deacon had been introduced, engaged and married to her in the course of a week; he had lived with her for less than a month before being commandeered here, so even now he had no idea of the kind of person she was. In spite of that, it was still a bit boring without her.

I’ll have to write her a little letter …, he thought.

The flag above the dukhan was wet from the rain and drooped, and with its roof wet the dukhan itself seemed darker and lower than it had been before. An arba stood near the door; Kerbalay, two Abkhazian strangers and a young Tartar woman in wide pants, probably the wife or daughter of Kerbalay, were carrying sacks filled with something from out of the dukhan and placing them onto corn straw in the arba. A pair of donkeys stood to the right of the arba with their heads lowered. Having positioned the sacks, the Abkhazians and the Tartar woman began covering them with straw as Kerbalay took to the task of quickly harnessing the oxen. Contraband, I suppose, thought the deacon.

Here is the fallen tree with the dried pineneedles, there the black burn mark left by the campfire. The memory of the picnic came back to him in all its detail, the fire, the singing of the Abkhazians, the sweet aspirations of clerical promotion and of the church procession … The small Black River had become even blacker and wider from the rain. The deacon carefully crossed the small wet bridge, already overtaken by a mane of soot-filled waves, and climbed up the little ladder to the drying shed.

What a glorious head! he thought, stretching out on the straw and recollecting Von Koren. A good head; God willing, sound. Only there is cruelty in him …

What reason does he have for hating Laevsky, and vice versa? What are they fighting a duel for? If they had known privation, such as the deacon had since childhood, if they had been raised amongst the ignorant, the hard-hearted, those greedy for gain, who would begrudge you a piece of bread, the vulgar and ill mannered, who spat on the floor and belched during dinner and in the middle of prayer, if they hadn’t been coddled since childhood by good domestic surroundings and an elite circle of people, then they would grab hold of one another, would readily forgive mutual shortcomings and would value that which each one had in him. But even superficially decent people are lacking in this world! It’s true, Laevsky is loony, undisciplined, strange, but it seemed that he would never steal, would never spit on the floor loudly, would never reproach his wife with, “You scarf it down, but you won’t work,” would never beat his child with reins or feed his servants putrid cured beef—is this really not reason enough to treat him with indulgence? What’s more, he’s the first to suffer from his own shortcomings, as a sick man suffers from his sores. Instead of seeking out degeneration, extinction, heredity and whatever else in one another as a result of ennui and some sort of misunderstanding which, incidentally, no one else can follow, wouldn’t it be better for them to descend a bit and direct their hatred and wrath to where entire streets buzz with the groans of vulgar ignorance, greed, reproach, filth, profanity, the cries of women …

A coach was heard knocking about and interrupted the deacon’s thoughts. He peeked out through the door and saw the carriage contained three: Laevsky, Sheshkovsky and the master of the postal and telegraph office.

“Stop!” Sheshkovsky said.

All three climbed out of the carriage and looked at one another.

“They’re not here yet,” Sheshkovsky said, dusting himself off. “What say, before the trial gets under way, we go and find a comfortable place. There’s no space to move about here.”

They walked further upland along the river and were soon hidden from view. A Tartar driver sat in the carriage, rested his head on his shoulder and slept. Having waited about ten minutes, the deacon exited the drying shed and, removing his black hat, so that he would not be noticed, crouching and looking all around, made his way along the shore between the bushes and the strips of corn stalks; fat droplets of water sprinkled on him from the trees and the bushes, the grass and the corn stalks were wet.

“Shameful!” he muttered, gathering up his wet and dirty frock. “Had I known, I wouldn’t have come.”

Soon he heard voices and saw people. Laevsky, his hands thrust in his sleeves and hunched over, quickly paced to and fro along the smallish clearing; his seconds stood at the edge of the bank and rolled cigarettes.

How strange …, the Deacon thought, unfamiliar with Laevsky’s gait. I would have thought him to be an old man.

“How impolite this is on their part!” the postmaster said, looking at his watch. “Perhaps, in the ways of the learned, it’s good to be late, but in my opinion, it’s swinish.”

Sheshkovsky, a fat man with a black beard, paid heed and said:

“They’re coming!”