The Duel

XX

A little while later Von Koren and the deacon met up near a little bridge. The deacon was anxious, breathed heavily and avoided making eye contact. He was embarrassed not only by his fear but by his dirty, wet clothes.

“It seemed to me that you wanted to kill him …” he muttered. “How repugnant to human nature that is. What an absolute aberration it is!”

“By the way, how did you get here?” the zoologist inquired.

“Don’t ask!” The deacon waved him off. “The tainted one led me astray: go on, yes, go on … Well, I went, and nearly died in the corn from fear. But now, by the grace of God, the grace of God … I am rather pleased with you,” muttered the deacon. “And our old man the tarantula will be pleased … We’ll laugh and laugh! Only, I ask of you in all sincerity, tell no one that I was here, or else, I’m afraid, the higher-ups will have my hide. They’ll say: the deacon was a second.”

“Gentlemen!” Von Koren said. “The deacon requests that you tell no one that you saw him here. It may cause trouble.”

“How repugnant to human nature this is!” the Deacon sighed. Please magnanimously forgive me, but you had such an expression on your face that I thought you would kill him without fail.”

“I was tempted to finish that miscreant off,” Von Koren said, “but your cry threw off my aim, and I missed. These proceedings have been, simultaneously, repulsive in that I’m not accustomed to them and exhausting to me, Deacon. I feel terribly weak. Let’s go …”

“No, allow me to walk back. I need to dry off, I’m soaked and feel chilly.”

“Well, you know best,” the drained zoologist said in a languorous voice, taking a seat in the carriage and closing his eyes. “You know best …”

As they walked about the carriage situating themselves, Kerbalay stood by the road and, taking his belly in both hands, bowed low and revealed his teeth; he thought that the gentlemen had arrived to enjoy the natural world and drink tea, and he could not understand why they were taking their seats in the carriage. All were silent as the train left the station, and the deacon alone was left standing near the dukhan.

“I go dukhan, drink tea,” he said to Kerbalay. “Me want eat.”

Kerbalay spoke Russian well, but the deacon thought that the Tartar would understand him better if he spoke to him in broken Russian.

“Fry omelet, give cheese …”

“Go on, go on, Pope,” Kerbalay said, bowing in greeting. “I’ll serve up anything you want … We have cheese, we have wine … Eat up, whatever you want.”

“What is ‘God’ in Tartar?” the deacon asked, entering the dukhan.

“Your God, my God, it’s all the same,” Kerbalay said, not understanding him. “Everyone has the same God, it’s the people who are different. Some are Russian, some are Turks, while others are English—there are many kinds of people, but only one God.”

“All right, sir. If all nationalities worship the same one God, then why do you Muslims see Christians as your eternal enemies?”

“Why are you getting upset?” Kerbalay said, grabbing his belly with both hands. “You’re a pope, I’m a Muslim, you said you were hungry, I’m about to serve you … Only the wealthy sort out which God is yours, and which is mine, but for the poor, it’s all the same. Please, eat.”

While conversations about divinity were taking place at the dukhan, Laevsky was on his way home and suddenly remembered how macabre he had felt traveling at daybreak, when the road, the cliffs and mountains were wet and dark and the unknown future seemed frightening like an abyss, the bottom of which could not be seen, but now the rain drops, suspended from the grass and the rocks, sparkled in the sun like diamonds, nature joyfully smiled, and the frightful past was left behind. He gazed upon the sullen, lachrymose face of Sheshkovsky and ahead at the two carriages, where Von Koren, his seconds and the doctor sat, and it seemed to him that they were all returning from a cemetery, where they had just buried an onerous, unbearable man who had complicated all of their lives.

It’s over, he thought of his recent past, carefully stroking his fingers along his neck.

On the right side of his neck, near his collar, a small lesion was swelling, about the length and width of his little finger, and he felt pain, as though someone had dragged an iron across his neck. This was a contusion from the bullet.

That’s why, when he arrived home, his day unfurled before him long, strange, sweet, misty, as a half dream. Like someone just released from prison or hospital, he gazed upon long familiar objects and was amazed that the tables, windows, chairs, the light and the sea aroused an animate, child-like joy in him, a kind that he had not experienced in a very, very long time. The pale Nadezhda Fyodorovna, now grown gaunt, could not understand his meek voice and strange mannerisms; she rushed to tell him everything that had happened to her … It seemed to her that he very likely was hard of hearing and could not understand her and that if he’d find everything out for himself, then he would curse her and kill her, but he listened to her, smoothing her face and hair, looked into her eyes and said:

“I have no one but you …”

Later they sat in the small front garden, pressed against one another, and were silent, or would think aloud of their future happy life, speaking in short, abrupt phrases, and it seemed to him that he had never spoken so extensively or eloquently before.