‘‘Shoot quickly!’’ thought Laevsky, and felt that his pale, quivering, pitiful face must arouse still greater hatred in von Koren.
‘‘Now I’ll kill him,’’ thought von Koren, aiming at the forehead and already feeling the trigger with his finger. ‘‘Yes, of course, I’ll kill him . . .’’
‘‘He’ll kill him!’’ a desperate cry was suddenly heard somewhere very nearby.
Just then the shot rang out. Seeing that Laevsky was standing in the same place and did not fall, everyone looked in the direction the cry had come from, and saw the deacon. Pale, his wet hair stuck to his forehead and cheeks, all wet and dirty, he was standing on the other bank in the corn, smiling somehow strangely and waving his wet hat. Sheshkovsky laughed with joy, burst into tears, and walked away...
XX
A LITTLE LATER, von Koren and the deacon came together at the little bridge. The deacon was agitated, breathed heavily, and avoided looking him in the eye. He was ashamed both of his fear and of his dirty, wet clothes.
‘‘It seemed to me that you wanted to kill him . . .’’ he mumbled. ‘‘How contrary it is to human nature! Unnatural to such a degree!’’
‘‘How did you get here, though?’’ asked the zoologist.
‘‘Don’t ask!’’ the deacon waved his hand. ‘‘The unclean one led me astray: go, yes, go . . . So I went and almost died of fright in the corn. But now, thank God, thank God...I’m quite pleased with you,’’ the deacon went on mumbling. ‘‘And our grandpa tarantula will be pleased...Funny, so funny! Only I beg you insistently not to tell anyone I was here, or else I may get it in the neck from my superiors. They’ll say: the deacon acted as a second.’’
‘‘Gentlemen!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘The deacon asks you not to tell anybody you saw him here. He may get in trouble.’’
‘‘How contrary it is to human nature!’’ sighed the deacon. ‘‘Forgive me magnanimously, but you had such a look on your face that I thought you were certainly going to kill him.’’
‘‘I was strongly tempted to finish the scoundrel off,’’ said von Koren, ‘‘but you shouted right then, and I missed. However, this whole procedure is revolting to someone unaccustomed to it, and it’s made me tired, Deacon. I feel terribly weak. Let’s go . . .’’
‘‘No, kindly allow me to go on foot. I’ve got to dry out, I’m all wet and chilly.’’
‘‘Well, you know best,’’ the weakened zoologist said in a weary voice, getting into the carriage and closing his eyes. ‘‘You know best . . .’’
While they were walking around the carriages and getting into them, Kerbalai stood by the road and, holding his stomach with both hands, kept bowing low and showing his teeth; he thought the gentlemen had come to enjoy nature and drink tea, and did not understand why they were getting into the carriages. In the general silence, the train started, and the only one left by the dukhan was the deacon.
‘‘Went dukhan, drank tea,’’ he said to Kerbalai. ‘‘Mine wants eat.’’
Kerbalai spoke Russian well, but the deacon thought the Tartar would understand him better if he spoke to him in broken Russian.
‘‘Fried eggs, gave cheese . . .’’
‘‘Come in, come in, pope,’’ Kerbalai said, bowing, ‘‘I’ll give you everything . . . There’s cheese, there’s wine . . . Eat whatever you like.’’
‘‘What’s God in Tartar?’’ the deacon asked as he went into the dukhan.
‘‘Your God and my God are all the same,’’ said Kerbalai, not understanding him. ‘‘God is one for everybody, only people are different. Some are Russian, some are Turks, or some are English—there are many kinds of people, but God is one.’’
‘‘Very good, sir. If all people worship one God, why do you Muslims look upon Christians as your eternal enemies?’’
‘‘Why get angry?’’ said Kerbalai, clasping his stomach with both hands. ‘‘You’re a pope, I’m a Muslim, you say you want to eat, I give . . . Only the rich man sorts out which God is yours, which is mine, but for a poor man, it’s all the same. Eat, please.’’
While a theological discussion was going on in the dukhan, Laevsky drove home and remembered how eerie it had been to drive out at dawn, when the road, the cliffs, and the mountains were wet and dark and the unknown future seemed as frightening as an abyss with no bottom to be seen, while now the raindrops hanging on the grass and rocks sparkled in the sun like diamonds, nature smiled joyfully, and the frightening future was left behind. He kept glancing at the sullen, tear-stained face of Sheshkovsky and ahead at the two carriages in which von Koren, his seconds, and the doctor rode, and it seemed to him as though they were all coming back from a cemetery where they had just buried a difficult, unbearable man who had interfered with all their lives.
‘‘It’s all over,’’ he thought about his past, carefully stroking his neck with his fingers.
On the right side of his neck, near the collar, he had a small swelling, as long and thick as a little finger, and he felt pain, as if someone had passed a hot iron over his neck. It was a contusion from a bullet.
Then, when he got home, a long, strange day, sweet and foggy as oblivion, wore on for him. Like a man released from prison or the hospital, he peered at long-familiar objects and was surprised that the tables, the windows, the chairs, the light and the sea aroused a living, childlike joy in him, such as he had not experienced for a long, long time. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, pale and grown very thin, did not understand his meek voice and strange gait; she hurriedly told him everything that had happened to her... It seemed to her that he probably listened poorly and did not understand her, and that if he learned everything, he would curse and kill her, yet he listened to her, stroked her face and hair, looked into her eyes, and said:
‘‘I have no one but you...’’
Then they sat for a long time in the front garden, pressed to each other, and said nothing, or else, dreaming aloud of their happy future life, they uttered short, abrupt phrases, and it seemed to him that he had never spoken so lengthily and beautifully.
XXI
A LITTLE MORE than three months went by.
The day von Koren had appointed for his departure came. Cold rain had been falling in big drops since early morning, a northeast wind was blowing, and the sea churned itself up in big waves. People said that in such weather the steamer could hardly put into the roads. According to the schedule, it should have come after nine, but von Koren, who went out to the embankment at noon and after dinner, saw nothing through his binoculars but gray waves and rain obscuring the horizon.
Towards the end of the day, the rain stopped, and the wind began to drop noticeably. Von Koren was already reconciled with the thought that he was not to leave that day, and he sat down to play chess with Samoilenko; but when it grew dark, the orderly reported that lights had appeared on the sea and a rocket had been seen.
Von Koren began to hurry. He shouldered a bag, kissed Samoilenko and then the deacon, went around all the rooms quite needlessly, said good-bye to the orderly and the cook, and went out feeling as though he had forgotten something at the doctor’s or at his own place. He went down the street side by side with Samoilenko, followed by the deacon with a box, and behind them all came the orderly with two suitcases. Only Samoilenko and the orderly could make out the dim lights on the sea; the others looked into the darkness and saw nothing. The steamer had stopped far from shore.
‘‘Quick, quick,’’ von Koren urged. ‘‘I’m afraid it will leave!’’
Passing by the three-windowed little house Laevsky had moved into soon after the duel, von Koren could not help looking in the window. Laevsky, bent over, was sitting at a desk, his back to the window, and writing.