‘‘I saw Vanya Laevsky today. The fellow’s having a hard time of it. The material side of his life is inauspicious, but above all, he’s beset by psychology. I feel sorry for the lad.’’
‘‘There’s one person I don’t feel sorry for!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If the dear chap were drowning, I’d help him along with a stick: drown, brother, drown...’
‘‘Not true. You wouldn’t do that.’’
‘‘Why don’t you think so?’’ the zoologist shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘I’m as capable of a good deed as you are.’’
‘‘Is drowning a man a good deed?’’ the deacon asked and laughed.
‘‘Laevsky? Yes.’’
‘‘This kvass soup seems to lack something ...’ said Samoilenko, wishing to change the subject.
‘‘Laevsky is unquestionably harmful and as dangerous for society as the cholera microbe,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘Drowning him would be meritorious.’’
‘‘It’s no credit to you that you speak that way of your neighbor. Tell me, what makes you hate him?’’
‘‘Don’t talk nonsense, Doctor. To hate and despise a microbe is stupid, but to consider anyone who comes along without discrimination as your neighbor—that, I humbly thank you, that means not to reason, to renounce a just attitude towards people, to wash your hands, in short. I consider your Laevsky a scoundrel, I don’t conceal it, and I treat him like a scoundrel in good conscience. Well, but you consider him your neighbor—so go and kiss him; you consider him your neighbor, and that means you have the same relation to him as to me and the deacon—that is, none at all. You’re equally indifferent to everybody.’’
‘‘To call a man a scoundrel!’’ Samoilenko murmured, wincing scornfully. ‘‘That’s so wrong, I can’t even tell you!’’
‘‘One judges people by their actions,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘So judge now, Deacon... I shall talk to you, Deacon. The activity of Mr. Laevsky is openly unrolled before you like a long Chinese scroll, and you can read it from beginning to end. What has he done in the two years he’s been living here? Let’s count on our fingers. First, he has taught the town inhabitants to play vint; two years ago the game was unknown here, but now everybody plays vint from morning till night, even women and adolescents; second, he has taught the townspeople to drink beer, which was also unknown here; to him they also owe a knowledge of various kinds of vodka, so that they can now tell Koshelev’s from Smirnov’s No. 21 blindfolded. Third, before, they lived with other men’s wives here secretly, for the same motives that thieves steal secretly and not openly; adultery was considered something that it was shameful to expose to general view; Laevsky appears to be a pioneer in that respect: he lives openly with another man’s wife. Fourth...’
Von Koren quickly ate his kvass soup and handed the plate to the orderly.
‘‘I understood Laevsky in the very first month of our acquaintance,’’ he went on, addressing the deacon. ‘‘We arrived here at the same time. People like him are very fond of friendship, intimacy, solidarity, and the like, because they always need company for vint, drinking, and eating; besides, they’re babblers and need an audience. We became friends, that is, he loafed about my place every day, preventing me from working and indulging in confidences about his kept woman. From the very first, he struck me with his extraordinary falseness, which simply made me sick. In the quality of a friend, I chided him, asking why he drank so much, why he lived beyond his means and ran up debts, why he did nothing and read nothing, why he had so little culture and so little knowledge, and in answer to all my questions, he would smile bitterly, sigh, and say: ‘I’m a luckless fellow, a superfluous man,’ or ‘What do you want, old boy, from us remnants of serfdom,’ or ‘We’re degenerating...’ Or he would start pouring out some lengthy drivel about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov,9 of whom he said: ‘They are our fathers in flesh and spirit.’ Meaning he is not to blame that official packets lie unopened for weeks and that he drinks and gets others to drink, but the blame goes to Onegin, Pechorin, and Turgenev, who invented the luckless fellow and the superfluous man. The cause of extreme licentiousness and outrageousness, as you see, lies not in him but somewhere outside, in space. And besides—clever trick!— it’s not he alone who is dissolute, false, and vile, but we... ‘we, the people of the eighties,’ ‘we, the sluggish and nervous spawn of serfdom,’ ‘civilization has crippled us...’ In short, we should understand that such a great man as Laevsky is also great in his fall; that his dissoluteness, ignorance, and unscrupulousness constitute a natural-historical phenomenon, sanctified by necessity; that the causes here are cosmic, elemental, and Laevsky should have an icon lamp hung before him, because he is a fatal victim of the times, the trends, heredity, and the rest. All the officials and ladies oh’d and ah’d, listening to him, but I couldn’t understand for a long time whom I was dealing with: a cynic or a clever huckster. Subjects like him, who look intelligent, are slightly educated, and talk a lot about their own nobility, can pretend to be extraordinarily complex natures.’’
‘‘Quiet!’’ Samoilenko flared up. ‘‘I won’t allow bad things to be said in my presence about a very noble man!’’
‘‘Don’t interrupt, Alexander Davidych,’’ von Koren said coldly. ‘‘I’ll finish presently. Laevsky is a rather uncomplicated organism. Here is his moral structure: in the morning, slippers, bathing, and coffee; then up till dinner, slippers, constitutional, and talk; at two o’clock, slippers, dinner, and drink; at five o’clock, bathing, tea, and drink, then vint and lying; at ten o’clock, supper and drink; and after midnight, sleep and la femme. His existence is confined within this tight program like an egg in its shell. Whether he walks, sits, gets angry, writes, rejoices—everything comes down to drink, cards, slippers, and women. Women play a fatal, overwhelming role in his life. He himself tells us that at the age of thirteen, he was already in love; when he was a first-year student, he lived with a lady who had a beneficial influence on him and to whom he owes his musical education. In his second year, he bought out a prostitute from a brothel and raised her to his level—that is, kept her—but she lived with him for about half a year and fled back to her madam, and this flight caused him no little mental suffering. Alas, he suffered so much that he had to leave the university and live at home for two years, doing nothing. But that was for the better. At home he got involved with a widow who advised him to leave the law department and study philology. And so he did. On finishing his studies, he fell passionately in love with his present... what’s her name? ... the married one, and had to run away with her here to the Caucasus, supposedly in pursuit of ideals... Any day now he’ll fall out of love with her and flee back to Petersburg, also in pursuit of ideals.’’
‘‘How do you know?’’ Samoilenko growled, looking at the zoologist with spite. ‘‘Better just eat.’’
Poached mullet with Polish sauce was served. Samoilenko placed a whole mullet on each of his boarders’ plates and poured the sauce over it with his own hands. A couple of minutes passed in silence.
‘‘Women play an essential role in every man’s life,’’ said the deacon. ‘‘There’s nothing to be done about it.’’
‘‘Yes, but to what degree? For each of us, woman is a mother, a sister, a wife, a friend, but for Laevsky, she is all that—and at the same time only a mistress. She—that is, cohabiting with her—is the happiness and goal of his life; he is merry, sad, dull, disappointed—on account of a woman; he’s sick of his life—it’s the woman’s fault; the dawn of a new life breaks, ideals are found—look for a woman here as well... He’s only satisfied by those writings or paintings that have a woman in them. Our age, in his opinion, is bad and worse than the forties and the sixties only because we are unable to give ourselves with self-abandon to amorous ecstasy and passion. These sensualists must have a special growth in their brain, like a sarcoma, that presses on the brain and controls their whole psychology. Try observing Laevsky when he’s sitting somewhere in society. You’ll notice that when, in his presence, you raise some general question, for instance about cells or instincts, he sits to one side, doesn’t speak or listen; he has a languid, disappointed air, nothing interests him, it’s all banal and worthless; but as soon as you start talking about males and females, about the fact, for instance, that the female spider eats the male after fertilization, his eyes light up with curiosity, his face brightens, and, in short, the man revives! All his thoughts, however noble, lofty, or disinterested, always have one and the same point of common convergence. You walk down the street with him and meet, say, a donkey... ‘Tell me, please,’ he asks, ‘what would happen if a female donkey was coupled with a camel?’ And his dreams! Has he told you his dreams? It’s magnificent! Now he dreams he’s marrying the moon, then that he’s summoned by the police, and there they order him to live with a guitar...’