The Duel (8 page)

“Oh, my God, my God! …” Samoylenko exhaled, scratching himself. “I fall asleep to the sound of a whistle blowing, the arrival of a liner, and then you … Do you need much?”

“At the very least, about three hundred rubles. I need to leave her a hundred and I need two hundred for the road … I already owe you nearly four hundred, but I’ll send it all to you … everything …”

Samoylenko, taking hold of both side-whiskers in one hand, planted both feet and began to think.

“Now, then …” he muttered, lost in thought. “Three hundred … Yes … But I don’t have that much. I’ll have to borrow it from someone.”

“Borrow, for the love of God!” Laevsky said, seeing from Samoylenko’s face that he not only wanted to give him the money but certainly would. “Borrow, and I’ll certainly pay you back. I’ll dispatch it from Petersburg as soon as I arrive. Rest assured. Here’s what we’ll do, Sasha,” he said, feeling revived, “let’s have some wine!”

“Sure … We can even have wine.”

They both went to the dining room.

“What will become of Nadezhda Fyodorovna?” Samoylenko asked, placing three bottles on the table and a plate of peaches. “Will she really stay here?”

“I’ll arrange everything, everything …” Laevsky said, feeling an unexpected surge of happiness. “I’ll send her money later, and she’ll come to me … And then we can sort out our relationship there. To your health, my friend.”

“Wait a second!” Samoylenko said. “Drink this first … 
It’s from my vineyard. This here bottle is from the Navaridez vineyard, and this one is from Akhatulov … Try all three of them, then tell me in all honesty … Mine seem to have acid. Well? Do you taste them?”

“Yes. You’ve calmed me, Alexander Davidich. Thank you … I’ve been revived.”

“Because of the tannins?”

“The devil only knows, I don’t know. But you are a magnificent and wonderful man!”

Looking at his pale, anxious, kind face, Samoylenko remembered the opinions of Von Koren, that people like him must be annihilated, and Laevsky seemed weak to him, a defenseless child that anything could harm or destroy.

“Oh, and once you’ve set off, make amends with your mother,” he said. “It’s not good as it stands.”

“Yes, yes, certainly.”

They were silent for a while. When they had finished drinking the first bottle, Samoylenko said:

“Why don’t you make peace with Von Koren. You are both splendiferous, knowledgeable people, but you glare at one another like wolves.”

“Yes, he’s a splendiferous, knowledgeable man,” agreed Laevsky, prepared to praise and forgive everyone. “He’s a remarkable man, but it’s impossible for me to reconcile with him. No! Our natures are too different. I am inert by nature, weak, submissive; maybe during one of my better moments I’d extend a hand to him, but he’d turn away from me … with contempt.”

Laevsky gulped his wine, crossed the room from one
corner to the other and, standing in the center of the room, continued:

“I understand Von Koren perfectly. His nature is rigid, strong, despotic. You’ve heard how he’s perpetually speaking of the expedition, and these aren’t empty words. He requires a wasteland, a moon-filled night: all around him, his hungry and his sick, tormented by difficult crossings, asleep in tents and under the open sky—Cossacks, guides, porters, the doctor, the priest, but he alone does not sleep; like Stanley, he sits on a folding chair and perceives himself to be Tsar of the wasteland and master of these people. He persists, and persists, and persists to someplace, his people groan and die one after the other, but he persists and persists, until the very end when he himself perishes, nevertheless remaining despot and Tsar of the wasteland, just as the cross above his grave lords over the wasteland as it’s seen by caravans for thirty to forty miles away. How I pity that such a man isn’t in military service. He’d reveal himself to be a superb, ingenious commander. One who’d know how to drown his own cavalry in a river and build bridges using their corpses, this sort of boldness is paramount to any fortification or strategy in wartime. Oh, I understand him perfectly well! Tell me: why is he corroding here? What does he expect to gain?”

“He is researching marine fauna.”

“No. No, brother, no!” sighed Laevsky. “On the liner to here, a passenger who was a man of science told me that the Black Sea is fauna poor and that its depths, thanks to the abundance of hydrogen sulfide, are inhospitable to organic
life. All serious zoologists work at biological research in Naples or Villefranche. But Von Koren is independent and pigheaded: he must work on the Black Sea, because there is no one else working here; he’s severed ties with the university, he doesn’t want to associate with scientists or his colleagues, because first and foremost he is a despot, then he is a zoologist. You’ll see that something will come of him yet. Right now, he’s dreaming of returning from the expedition, he’ll rid our universities of intrigue and mediocrity, replacing them with scientists who knuckle under. Despotism is as prevalent in science as it is in war. This is the second summer that he’s lived in this stinking boondock because it’s better to be first in the village than second in the city. Here, he’s both king and eagle; he pigeonholes all who reside here, oppressing them with his authority. He’s got his hands in everything, involves himself in the affairs of others, he finds a use for everyone and everyone fears him. I’ve slipped from his grasp, he senses this and hates me for it. Hasn’t he told you that I should either be annihilated or sent to hard labor?”

“Yes,” Samoylenko said, beginning to laugh.

Laevsky also began to laugh and took a drink of wine.

“His ideals are despotic as well,” he said, still laughing and took the peach. “All ordinary mortals, if their profession benefits the common good, keep their fellow man in their sights: myself, yourself—in a word, all people. But for Von Koren, people are puppies and nominal, too irrelevant to comprise the whole of his life. He works, he’ll go on his expedition and he’ll break his own neck there, not for love
of his fellow man, but in the name of abstractions such as humanity, progeny, an ideal race of people. He fusses over the improvement of the human race. In these terms we are nothing but slaves to him, cannon fodder, beasts of burden; some he’d annihilate or stick in hard labor, others he’d put to the screws of discipline, and as Arakcheyev forcing them to rise and retire to the beat of a drum, he’d station eunuchs to guard our chastity and morality, ordering anyone that falls outside the narrow circle of our conservative morals to be shot, and all this in the name of improving the human race … And what is the human race anyway … An illusion, a mirage … Despots have always been illusionists. I understand him perfectly, brother. I appreciate and do not refute his significance; the world is upheld by those like him, and if the world were left in our hands, then we, for all our kindness and good intentions, would do the very same thing to it as those flies have to that painting. Yes.”

Laevsky sat close to Samoylenko and aflame with sincerity said:

“I am an empty, insignificant, fallen man! The air that I breathe is made up of wine, of love, in a word my life up to now has been the purchasing of over-priced nothingness, merriment and cowardice. Up to now I have deceived other people and myself, I have suffered as a result of this, and my sufferings have been cheap and vulgar. I bend over cowering before Von Koren’s hatred because there are times when I hold myself in contempt and hate myself.”

In his excitement, Laevsky once again crossed the room from one corner to the other and said:

“I am happy, that I clearly see my shortcomings and own up to them. It will help me to be reborn and to become a different man. My good man, if you only knew how passionately and with what despondence I thirst for my renewal. And I swear to you, that I will become a real man! I will! I don’t know if it’s the wine talking or if it’s just the way things are, but it seems to me that it has been a long time since I have experienced such bright, pure moments as I have here with you.”

“It’s time for bed, little brother,” Samoylenko said.

“Yes, yes. Pardon me. I’ll go now.”

Laevsky began to fumble about near the furniture and the window, in search of his service-cap.

“Thank you …” he muttered, sighing. “Thank you … for the generosity and the kind words. You have revived me.”

He located his service-cap, stood still for a moment and looked at Samoylenko guiltily.

“Alexander Davidich!” he said in a pleading voice.

“What?”

“Will you, my good man, permit me to stay here the night?”

“For goodness sake … you needn’t ask.”

Though Laevsky lay down on the divan to sleep, his conversation with the doctor continued for a long time.

Three days or so after the picnic, Nadezhda Fyodorovna received an unexpected visit from Maria Konstantinovna, who, without a greeting, without removing her hat, grabbed her by both hands, pressed them to her breast and said in a great state of alarm:

“My dear, I’m terribly worried, stupefied. Yesterday, our sweet and sympathetic doctor relayed to my husband, Nikodim Aleksandrich, that it seems your husband has met his end. Tell me, my dear … Tell me, is this true?”

“Yes, it’s true, he’s died,” answered Nadezhda Fyodorovna.

“This is horrible! Horrible, my dear! But you can’t have the good without the bad. Your husband must certainly have been a delightful, wondrous, godly person, indeed those are needed in heaven more than on earth.”

All the tiny lines and tiny dots of Maria Konstantinovna’s face were aquiver, as though tiny needles were vibrating beneath her skin. She gave an almond-infused smile and said enthusiastically, panting:

“And so, you are free, my dear. You can hold your head up high now and boldly look people in the eye. From now on, God and man will bless your union with Ivan Andreich. It’s enchanting. I’m trembling from joy, I can’t find the words. Darling, I shall be your marriage-broker … Nikodim Aleksandrich and I have loved you so much, will you permit us to bless your lawful, pure union. When, when do you think you’ll be married?”

“I haven’t even thought of it,” Nadezhda Fyodorovna said, freeing her hands.

“That’s not possible, darling. You’ve thought of it. You’ve thought of it!”

“For God’s sake, I haven’t thought of it,” Nadezhda Fyodorovna said, laughing. “What do we have to get married for? I don’t see any need for it. We’ll go on living, just as we’ve been living.”

“What are you saying!” Maria Konstantinovna was aghast. “For the love of God, what are you saying!”

“Our getting married won’t make things any better. The opposite, it will just make things worse. We’ll lose our freedom.”

“Darling! Darling, what are you saying!” shrieked Maria Konstantinovna, taking a step back and flapping her hands. “You’re being extravagant! Come to your senses! Settle down!”

“That’s just it, how can I settle down? I haven’t yet begun to live, and you would have me—settle down!”

Nadezhda Fyodorovna remembered that in fact she had not yet begun to live. Having completed a course at the institute she’d married a man she did not love and then run off with Laevsky, and all the while that she’d lived with him in this boring wasteland of a coastline she was in anticipation of something better. Was this really life?

It would follow that we marry …
, she thought, then, remembering Kirilin and Achmianov, reddened and said:

“No, it’s impossible. Even if Ivan Andreich were to get down on his knee and ask me, I would still refuse him.”

Maria Konstantinovna silently sat on the divan for a minute, saddened, serious and staring at a single focal point, then rose and coldly uttered:

“Farewell, darling! Pardon me for having troubled you. Though it isn’t easy for me, I must tell you that from this day on, everything is over between us and, putting aside my deep respect for Ivan Andreich, the door of my home is closed to you both.”

She’d spoken this with austerity, and she herself felt disheartened by her own austere tone; her face was again aquiver then took on a soft, almond-infused expression, and she extended both her hands to the startled, befuddled Nadezhda Fyodorovna and imploringly said:

“My darling, allow me to act as your mother or older sister for only just one moment! I will be honest with you, as a mother would be.”

Nadezhda Fyodorovna felt such warmth, happiness and solace filling her chest that it was as though her mother had, in actuality, been resurrected and was standing before her. She spastically embraced Maria Konstantinovna and nestled face first into her shoulder. Both of them began to cry. They sat down on the divan and sobbed for several minutes, without looking at one another, neither having the strength to utter a single word.

“Darling, child of mine,” began Maria Konstantinovna, “I’m going to tell you the blistery truth, without sparing you.”

“For God’s sake, for God’s sake!”

“Give credence to what I say, darling. I want you to
remember that of all the local ladies, I alone would receive you. You horrified me from day one, but I didn’t have the strength to treat you with scorn as everyone else had. I agonized over gentle, kind Ivan Andreich as I would over my own son. A young man on foreign shores, inexperienced, weak, motherless, and I was tormented, tormented … My husband was against forming an acquaintanceship with him, but I persuaded him … I persevered … We began receiving Ivan Andreich, and with him, of course, came you, otherwise he would have been insulted. I have a daughter, a son … You understand, the impressionable child’s mind, the pure heart … 
for whosoever shall offend one of these little ones
 … I received you and trembled for my children. Oh, when you become a mother, you’ll understand my fear. Everyone was astounded that I’d received you, you’ll forgive me for saying as a respectable woman, they looked sideways at me … Well, of course there was gossip, speculation … In the depths of my soul I had condemned you, but you were miserable, pathetic, extravagant, and I was wracked with compassion.”

“But why? Why?” Nadezhda Fyodorovna asked, her whole body trembling. “What have I done to anyone?”