The Duel

III

To keep from getting bored and to accommodate the basic needs of new arrivals and those without families who had nowhere to dine due to the lack of hotels in town, Dr. Samoylenko held a kind of table d’hote at his home. At the time this was written, he had only two diners: the young zoologist Von Koren, who had traveled to the Black Sea this summer to study the embryology of jellyfish; and Deacon Pobedov, recently released from seminary and assigned to town to carry out the duties of an elderly deacon who had left to pursue medical treatment. They both paid twelve rubles per month for dinner, and Samoylenko had made them give their word of honor that they would report for dinner precisely at two o’clock.

Von Koren was typically the first to arrive. He would silently have a seat in the drawing room, and taking an album from the table, would begin to attentively survey the faded photographs of certain unidentified men in wide pants and top hats and ladies in crinoline and bonnets. Samoylenko remembered only a few of them by name, but of those he had forgotten he would sigh and say: “A splendiferous man, of superior intellect!” Having finished with the album, Von Koren would take a pistol from the shelf-stand and, squinting his left eye, aim it at a portrait of Prince Vorontsov for a long time, or he would stand before the mirror surveying his own swarthy complexion, his large forehead and his hair, black and woolly as a Negro’s, and his shirt of lackluster chintz with blossoming flowers that resembled a Persian rug, and the wide leather belt he wore instead of a waistcoat. He derived nearly as much satisfaction from scrutinizing himself as looking over the photographs or the pistol in its expensive case. He was not only very happy with his face but also with his attractively trimmed facial hair, and his broad shoulders that clearly served as a visible declaration of his good health and his solid build. He was happy with his dandyish outfit, beginning with the necktie, picked to match the color of his shirt and ending in his yellow booties.

As he was surveying the album and standing in front of the mirror, Samoylenko was in the kitchen and the vestibule beside it all the while, with no frock-coat or waistcoat on, his chest bared, worrying and drenched in sweat, fussing near the tables, preparing the salad, or some sort of sauce, or meat, cucumbers and onion for the okroshka, and still managing to angrily glare at the assisting valet and brandishing either a knife or a spoon at him.

“Bring the vinegar!” he ordered. “Or, I mean, not vinegar, olive oil!” he yelled, stomping his feet. “Where are you going, you swine?”

“For the oil, Your Excellency,” said the dumbfounded valet in a cracked tenor.

“Hurry! It’s in the cupboard! Yes, and tell Darya to add dill to the jar of pickles! Dill! Cover the sour cream, you scatterbrain, or flies will get into it!”

It seemed that the whole house shook when he yelled. When there were only ten or fifteen minutes remaining before two o’clock, the deacon would arrive, a young man, around twenty-two years of age, lanky, long-haired, sans beard and with barely detectable whiskers. Entering the drawing room he crossed himself before the icon, and then, smiling, extended his hand to Von Koren.

“Hello,” the zoologist coldly replied. “Where have you been?”

“Fishing for gobies on the pier.”

“Well, of course … From the look of it, Deacon, you’re never going to get to work.”

“Why say that? Work’s not a bear, it won’t wander off into the woods,” said the deacon, smiling and inserting his hands into the deep pockets of his white cassock.

“There’s no one here to whip you!” sighed the zoologist.

Another fifteen to twenty minutes passed, but dinner had still not been served, they could hear the valet running from the hall to the kitchen and back, his boots knocking as Samoylenko yelled:

“Put it on the table! Where are you sticking it? Go wash it first.”

The deacon’s and Von Koren’s hunger growing, they began to knock their heels on the floor, expressing their impatience as audience members in a theater box would. Finally, the door opened and the tortured valet announced: “Food’s ready!” They were met in the dining room by an angry Samoylenko, who was scarlet and had been thoroughly steamed by the stifling kitchen. He glared at them furiously and with an expression of horror on his face lifted the soup tureen from the pot of soup and poured them each a bowl, and only when he was certain that they were eating heartily, and that the food was to their liking, did he sigh relief and sit down in his own deep armchair. His face became languid, buttery … Not rushing, he poured himself a small glass of vodka and said:

“To the health of the younger generation.”

After his conversation with Laevsky, Samoylenko constantly felt something weighing in the depths of his soul, from morning right up to dinner, regardless of his excellent mood. He felt sorry for Laevsky and wanted to help him. Drinking his small glass of vodka before having the soup, he sighed and said:

“I saw Vanya Laevsky today. The man’s having a hard time of it. The material half of his life doesn’t bode well, but more importantly his psychological state is getting the best of him. I feel sorry for the fellow.”

“If there’s anyone that I don’t pity!” said Von Koren. “If that gentle man were drowning, I’d get a stick to help him along: drown, brother, drown …”

“Not true. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Why do you think I wouldn’t?” The zoologist shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just as capable of doing a good deed as you are.”

“And drowning a man is a good deed?” the deacon asked, laughing.

“If it’s Laevsky? Yes.”

“I think the okroshka is missing something …” said Samoylenko, trying to change the subject.

“Words can’t describe how malevolent Laevsky is, he’s as malevolent to society as the cholera microbe,” continued Von Koren. “To drown him would be a service.”

“You’re not winning accolades by venting like that about your fellow man. Tell me: why do you hate him?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Doctor. To hate and feel contempt for a microbe is foolish, but to consider it a fellow man, refusing to distinguish between anyone and everyone that you meet no matter what—that, with all due respect, shows a lack of judgment, and a refusal to relate with people in a fair-minded manner, to wash your hands of it, so to speak. I consider your Laevsky to be a miscreant, I don’t hide it and I treat him as I would a miscreant, in all my good conscience. Yet you consider him to be a fellow man—greeting him with a kiss. To consider him a fellow man means that you treat him the same as you would myself and the deacon. That is unacceptable. You make no distinction in your feelings toward anyone.”

“To call a man a miscreant,” muttered Samoylenko, cringing disdainfully, “is so absolutely wrong, that I can’t even begin to explain to you how wrong it is!”

“People are judged by their deeds,” continued Von Koren. “So, Deacon, judge for yourself … I’m talking to you now, Deacon. Mr. Laevsky’s actions have candidly been laid out before you, like a long Chinese scroll, and you may read it from beginning to end. What’s he done in the two years since he’s been living here? Let’s use our fingers to count. First of all, he’s taught the residents of the town to play Vint; two years ago the game was unknown here, but now everyone plays Vint from morning to night, even the women and adolescents. Second, he’s taught the locals to drink beer, which was also unknown here. The locals are also obliged to him for their knowledge of different types of vodka, so that they can now distinguish between Kosheleva and Smirnov No. 21 blindfolded. Third, in the past living with another man’s wife was a covert affair here, for the same motives that thieves steal covertly and not overtly. Adultery was considered the sort of thing that was shameful to display in public. Laevsky’s attitude toward all this is a schoolboy’s. He openly lives with another man’s wife. Fourth …

Von Koren quickly ate his okroshka and handed his plate over to the valet.

“I understood Laevsky from the very first month of our acquaintance,” he continued, addressing the deacon. “We arrived here at the same time. People like him love to make friends, establish intimacy, solidarity and the like, because they always need company for Vint, drinks and a bite to eat. What’s more, they’re garrulous and they require listeners. We became friends; that is, he would hang around my place every day, disturbing my work and confiding way too much about his concubine. In the beginning, I was dumbstruck by his extraordinary mendacity, which I found simply nauseating. In my capacity as a friend, I scolded him about his way of life, about how he drinks too much, how he does not live according to his means and incurs debts, how he has done nothing and has read nothing, how he is so uncultured and knows so little—and in reply to all of my questions he would smile bitterly, sigh and say, ‘I’m a good-for-nothing, a superfluous man,’ or ‘What do you, old chap, want from the splinters of serfdom?’ or ‘We are degenerating …’ Or he would begin to wax on about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov, of whom he would say: ‘These are our fathers in flesh and in spirit.’ Meaning something along the lines of: it’s not he that is guilty of letting bureaucratic packets lie unopened for weeks or that he himself drinks, and gets others drunk, but that Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev are to blame for creating the good-for-nothing and the superfluous man. The principle cause for this lack of discipline and grace isn’t with him, you see, but somewhere out there, in the periphery. And what’s more—here’s a good joke for you!—it’s not him alone that’s guilty of being licentious, mendacious and vile but all of us … ‘We are people of the eighties. We are the inert, neurotic offspring of the age of serfdom. We have been crippled by civilization.’ In a word, we are expected to understand that a great man like Laevsky is also great in his collapse; that his debauchery, ignorance and defilement are a naturally occurring phenomena based in history, consecrated by necessity, the cause of which is global, spontaneous; and that we should hang a sconce before Laevsky, since he is the victim of the times, the spirit of the times, our inheritance and so forth. All the civil servants and ladies who listened to him, all oohed and aahed, but for the longest time I couldn’t understand whom I was dealing with: a cynic or a skilled mazurka dancer? Subjects such as he, who have the appearance of intelligence, are a tad well-mannered and drone on about their own honorable pedigrees, are capable of pretending to have unusually complicated natures.”

“Hold your tongue!” flared Samoylenko. “I won’t allow such foolish talk about an honorable man in my presence!”

“Don’t interrupt, Alexander Davidich,” Von Koren coldly said. “I’m almost finished. Laevsky is not a complicated organism, for the most part. Here is his moral framework: in the morning, shoes, a swim and coffee; then until dinner, shoes, calisthenics and conversation; at two o’clock, shoes, dinner and wine; at five o’clock, a swim, tea and wine; after that, Vint and slander; at ten o’clock, supper and wine; and after midnight, dreams and la femme. His existence is locked into this narrow program like an egg in its shell. Whether he goes about, sits around, grows angry, writes or expresses joy—everything comes back to wine, cards, shoes and women. Women have played a disastrous, crushing role in his life. He’ll tell you himself that he fell in love at the age of thirteen. As a student, during his first semester he lived with a lady who had a patron-like attitude toward him and whom he is indebted to for his knowledge of music. In his second semester he bought, outright, a prostitute from a public house and raised her to his own status, that is, he made a concubine of her, but she only lived with him for half a year before she ran back to her madam, and this abandonment caused him more than a little heartache. See, he’s suffered so much, that he couldn’t help but to leave the university and spend two years living at home without a thing to do. But that’s still not the worst part. At home he took up with a certain widow, who suggested that he leave the legal department and enroll in the philological. He did just that. Finishing the semester, he fell passionately in love with his current one … what’s her name? … the married one … and was compelled to run off with her here, to the Caucasus, chasing after a would-be ideal … Either today or tomorrow he’ll fall out of love with her and will go running back to Petersburg, chasing his ideals.”

“And why do you know all this?” grumbled Samoylenko, glaring angrily at the zoologist. “It’d be better if you just ate.”

Stewed gray mullet with Polish sauce was served. Samoylenko placed a whole fish before each diner and poured the sauce himself by hand. A minute or two passed in silence.

“Women play an essential role in the lives of every man,” said the deacon. “There’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Yes, but to what extent? A woman is a mother, a sister, a wife, a friend for each of us, but Laevsky only has her—that’s all, and she’s nothing more than a lover at that. She—that is, cohabitation with her is the joy and entirety of his life. He is happy, sad, bored, disappointed—all because of women. Life is vexing—a woman is to blame. The dawn of a new life is fading, ideals are discovered—you’ll find a woman here as well. He is only satisfied by stories or paintings in which you can find women. In his opinion, our era is bad and worse than the forties and sixties only because we don’t know how to give ourselves over to the ecstasy and passion of love with abandon. These sensualists must have some extra lining in their brains akin to sarcoma that puts pressure on the brain and regulates all pathologies. Observe Laevsky, when he is out sitting in society. You’ll notice, when some random question is raised in his presence, for instance, about the cell or instincts, he’ll sit to the side, stay shut and not listen. He’ll have a languid and disappointed look to him, there’s nothing of interest for him, everything is banal and insignificant, but as soon as you turn the conversation to females and males, about, for instance, how female spiders will eat the males of the species after fertilization, his eyes light up with curiosity, his face is invigorated, and the man fills with life all because of one word. All of his thoughts, no matter how honorable, esteemable or indifferent they may be, always gather at one and the same place. If you’re walking down the street with him and you happen to come across a jackass, for instance … ‘Please tell me, if you don’t mind,’ he’ll say, ‘what would be the product of a jenny bred with a camel?’ And his dreams! Has he told you about his dreams? They’re incredible! Either he dreams that he’s married the moon or that he’s been called in by the police and mandated to live with a guitar …”

The deacon burst into uproarious laughter. Samoylenko scowled, furrowing his brows angrily, so as not to laugh, but couldn’t contain himself and burst into laughter.

“And he lies about everything!” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “My God, he lies!”