‘‘You’ll come with us, I hope?’’ asked von Koren.
‘‘No, God forbid, I’m worn out as it is. Ustimovich will come in my place. I’ve already talked with him.’’
Far across the sea, lightning flashed, and there was a muffled roll of thunder.
‘‘How stifling it is before a storm!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘I’ll bet you’ve already been to Laevsky’s and wept on his bosom.’’
‘‘Why should I go to him?’’ the doctor said, embarrassed. ‘‘What an idea!’’
Before sunset he had walked several times up and down the boulevard and the street, hoping to meet Laevsky. He was ashamed of his outburst and of the sudden kindly impulse that had followed the outburst. He wanted to apologize to Laevsky in jocular tones, to chide him, to placate him, and tell him that dueling was a leftover of medieval barbarism, but that providence itself had pointed them to a duel as a means of reconciliation: tomorrow the two of them, most excellent people, of the greatest intelligence, would exchange shots, appreciate each other’s nobility, and become friends. But he never once met Laevsky.
‘‘Why should I go to him?’’ Samoilenko repeated. ‘‘I didn’t offend him, he offended me. Tell me, for mercy’s sake, why did he fall upon me? Did I do anything bad to him? I come into the drawing room and suddenly, for no reason: spy! Take that! Tell me, how did it start between you? What did you tell him?’’
‘‘I told him that his situation was hopeless. And I was right. Only honest people and crooks can find a way out of any situation, but somebody who wants to be an honest man and a crook at the same time has no way out. However, it’s already eleven o’clock, gentlemen, and we have to get up early tomorrow.’’
There was a sudden gust of wind; it raised the dust on the embankment, whirled it around, roared, and drowned out the sound of the sea.
‘‘A squall!’’ said the deacon. ‘‘We must go, we’re getting dust in our eyes.’’
As they left, Samoilenko sighed and said, holding on to his cap:
‘‘Most likely I won’t sleep tonight.’’
‘‘Don’t worry,’’ the zoologist laughed. ‘‘You can rest easy, the duel will end in nothing. Laevsky will magnanimously fire into the air, he can’t do anything else, and most likely I won’t fire at all. Ending up in court on account of Laevsky, losing time—the game’s not worth the candle. By the way, what’s the legal responsibility for dueling?’’
‘‘Arrest, and in case of the adversary’s death, imprisonment in the fortress for up to three years.’’
‘‘The Peter-and-Paul fortress?’’30
‘‘No, a military one, I think.’’
‘‘I ought to teach that fellow a lesson, though!’’
Behind them, lightning flashed over the sea and momentarily lit up the rooftops and mountains. Near the boulevard, the friends went different ways. As the doctor disappeared into the darkness and his footsteps were already dying away, von Koren shouted to him:
‘‘The weather may hinder us tomorrow!’’
‘‘It may well! And God grant it!’’
‘‘Good night!’’
‘‘What—night? What did you say?’’
It was hard to hear because of the noise of the wind and the sea and the rolling thunder.
‘‘Never mind!’’ shouted the zoologist, and he hurried home.
XVII
. . . in my mind, oppressed by anguish, Crowds an excess of heavy thoughts; Remembrance speechlessly unrolls Its lengthy scroll before me; And, reading through my life with loathing, I tremble, curse, and bitterly complain, And bitter tears pour from my eyes, But the sad lines are not washed away.
—Pushkin31
Whether they killed him tomorrow morning or made a laughingstock of him, that is, left him to this life, in any case he was lost. Whether this disgraced woman killed herself in despair and shame or dragged out her pitiful existence, in any case she was lost . . .
So thought Laevsky, sitting at the table late at night and still rubbing his hands. The window suddenly opened with a bang, a strong wind burst into the room, and papers flew off the table. Laevsky closed the window and bent down to pick up the papers from the floor. He felt something new in his body, some sort of awkwardness that had not been there before, and he did not recognize his own movements; he walked warily, sticking out his elbows and jerking his shoulders, and when he sat down at the table, he again began rubbing his hands. His body had lost its suppleness.
On the eve of death, one must write to one’s family. Laevsky remembered that. He took up a pen and wrote in a shaky hand:
‘‘Dear Mother!’’
He wanted to write to his mother that, in the name of the merciful God in whom she believed, she should give shelter and the warmth of her tenderness to the unfortunate woman he had dishonored, lonely, poor, and weak; that she should forgive and forget everything, everything, everything, and with her sacrifice at least partially redeem her son’s terrible sin; but he remembered how his mother, a stout, heavy old woman in a lace cap, went out to the garden in the morning, followed by a companion with a lapdog, how his mother shouted in a commanding voice at the gardener, at the servants, and how proud and arrogant her face was—he remembered it and crossed out the words he had written.
Lightning flashed brightly in all three windows, followed by a deafening, rolling clap of thunder, first muted, then rumbling and cracking, and so strong that the glass in the windows rattled. Laevsky got up, went to the window, and leaned his forehead against the glass. Outside there was a heavy, beautiful thunderstorm. On the horizon, lightning ceaselessly hurled itself in white ribbons from the clouds into the sea and lit up the high black waves far in the distance. Lightning flashed to right and left, and probably directly over the house as well.
‘‘A thunderstorm!’’ whispered Laevsky; he felt a desire to pray to someone or something, if only to the lightning or the clouds. ‘‘Dear thunderstorm!’’
He remembered how, in childhood, he had always run out to the garden bareheaded when there was a thunderstorm, and two fair-haired, blue-eyed little girls would chase after him, and the rain would drench them; they would laugh with delight, but when a strong clap of thunder rang out, the girls would press themselves trustfully to the boy, and he would cross himself and hasten to recite: ‘‘Holy, holy, holy . . .’’ Oh, where have you gone, in what sea have you drowned, you germs of a beautiful, pure life? He was no longer afraid of thunderstorms, did not love nature, had no God, all the trustful girls he had ever known had already been ruined by him or his peers, he had never planted a single tree in his own garden, nor grown a single blade of grass, and, living amidst the living, had never saved a single fly, but had only destroyed, ruined, and lied, lied . . .
‘‘What in my past is not vice?’’ he kept asking himself, trying to clutch at some bright memory, as someone falling into an abyss clutches at a bush.
School? University? But that was a sham. He had been a poor student and had forgotten what he was taught. Serving society? That was also a sham, because he did nothing at work, received a salary gratis, and his service was a vile embezzlement for which one was not taken to court.
He had no need of the truth, and he was not seeking it; his conscience, beguiled by vice and lies, slept or was silent; like a foreigner, or an alien from another planet, he took no part in the common life of people, was indifferent to their sufferings, ideas, religions, knowledge, quests, struggles; he had not a single kind word for people, had never written a single useful, nonbanal line, had never done a groat’s worth of anything for people, but only ate their bread, drank their wine, took away their wives, lived by their thoughts, and, to justify his contemptible, parasitic life before them and before himself, had always tried to make himself look higher and better than them... Lies, lies, lies...