Samoylenko entered without his frockcoat, sweaty and scarlet from the sweltering kitchen.
“Well, look who’s here?” he said. “Hello, my good man. Have you had dinner? Don’t stand on ceremony, answer me: have you dined?”
“Alexander Davidich,” Laevsky said, rising, “if I turn to you with an intimate request, that does not mean that I’ve freed you from the responsibility of discretion and respect for another’s secret.”
“What’s the matter?” Samoylenko said, taken aback.
“If you don’t have the money,” Laevsky continued, raising his voice and shifting from one leg to the other in agitation, “then don’t give it, refuse, but why preach at every intersection that there is no way out of my predicament, and the like? I can’t stand this benevolence or friendly favors that are a kopeck’s worth of doing, at a ruble’s worth of talk! You can boast of your benevolence however much you choose, but no one has given you the right to reveal my secrets!”
“What secrets?” Samoylenko asked, uncomprehending and growing angry. “If you’ve come here to swear, then leave. Come back when you’re over it!”
He remembered a rule, that when enraged by one near and dear, mentally count to one hundred and calm will resume; and he began counting quickly.
“I’m asking you not to concern yourself with me!” Laevsky continued. “Don’t pay attention to me. And whose business is it anyway how I live and how I conduct my life? Yes, I want to leave! Yes, I’m in debt, I drink, I live with another man’s wife, I have hysteria, I’m crass, not as introspective as some others, but whose business is any of this? Respect my individuality!”
“You, brother, will pardon me,” Samoylenko, said reaching thirty-five, “but …”
“Respect my individuality!” Laevsky cut him off. “These perpetual conversations at the cost of another, the ohs and ahs, the perpetual monitoring, eavesdropping, these intimations of friendship … the devil take them! I’m being loaned money and given conditions, like a little boy! I’m being degraded, the devil only knows how! I wish for nothing!” Laevsky shouted, staggering from agitation and fearful that he should be once again seized by hysteria. This means I won’t be leaving on Saturday flashed through his thoughts. “I wish for nothing! I only ask, please, spare me this patronage. I’m not a little boy and I’m not crazy and I’m asking that you remove this surveillance from me!”
The deacon walked in and, seeing Laevsky, pale, gesticulating his arms and directing his strange speech to a portrait of Prince Vorontsov, stopped short at the door as though embedded.
“This perpetual prying into my soul,” Laevsky continued, “is insulting to my human dignity, and I ask the gratuitous detectives to cease their spying! Enough!”
“What did you … What are you saying?” Samoylenko asked, having counted to one hundred, flushing crimson and approaching Laevsky.
“Enough!” Laevsky repeated, gasping and retrieving his service cap.
“I am a Russian doctor, a nobleman and a Councilor of State!” Samoylenko said, measuring his words. “I have never been a spy, and I will not allow myself to be insulted by anyone!” he shouted in a rattling voice, placing the stress on the last word. “Shut your mouth!”
The deacon, having never before witnessed the doctor so imposing, inflated, crimson and frightening, covered his mouth, ran out into the front drawing room and fell over laughing. As though in a haze, Laevsky saw Von Koren rise and, placing his hands in his pants’ pockets, strike a pose, as though he were awaiting what would follow; this calm pose seemed extremely insolent and insulting to Laevsky.
“Kindly take back your words!” Samoylenko shouted.
Laevsky, already having no recollection of what words he had spoken, answered:
“Leave me in peace! I want for nothing! I only want that you and this German son of Yids leave me in peace! Otherwise I will take measures! I will fight!”
“Now I understand,” Von Koren said, walking around from behind the table. “Mr. Laevsky would like to entertain himself prior to his departure with a duel. I can grant him the satisfaction. Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge.”
“Challenge?” Laevsky quietly repeated, approaching the zoologist and staring in hatred at his swarthy brow and kinky hair. “Challenge? With pleasure! I hate you! Hate you!”
“Oh, joy. Tomorrow morning, the earlier the better, by Kerbalay’s place, with all the details in keeping to your tastes. And now get out.”
“Hate you!” Laevsky said quietly, breathing heavily. “I’ve hated you a long time! A duel! Yes!”
“Get him out of here, Alexander Davidich, or else I’ll have to leave,” Von Koren said. “He’s about to take a bite out of me.”
Von Koren’s calm tone cooled the doctor down: somehow or other he was suddenly himself again, came to his senses, took Laevsky by the waist with both his hands, led him away from the zoologist, muttering soothingly, in a voice shaking with intensity:
“My friends … My good, my kind … Got themselves worked up into a heated state and are going to … and are going to … My friends …”
Hearing the soft, friendly voice, Laevsky felt that something unprecedented had just occurred in his life, something beastly, as though he had very nearly been hit by a train; he barely kept from crying, waved them off with his hand and ran from the room.
To experience another’s hatred directed at you, to display yourself before the man who hates you in a most pitiful, despicable, helpless state—my God, how burdensome! he thought, sitting in the pavilion a while later and indeed feeling corrosion cover his body from having just experienced another’s hatred. My God, how vulgar it all is!
Cold water with cognac invigorated him. He lucidly envisioned Von Koren’s calm, arrogant face, the look he had in his eyes yesterday, his shirt, which resembled a rug, his voice, his white hands, and intense hatred, ardent, hungry, began to churn in his chest and to demand satisfaction. In his mind he threw Von Koren to the ground and stomped on him. He remembered in the minutest detail all that had occurred and was astonished by how he could have ingratiatingly smiled at such an insignificant man and generally held in high esteem nominal, little people who are of no value to anyone, who live in an insignificant little town, which seemingly doesn’t even show up on a map and which not one decent person in Petersburg had ever heard of. If this boondock suddenly met its downfall or burned to the ground, then the telegram delivering the news would be read in Russia with the same kind of boredom as an advertisement for secondhand furniture up for sale. To kill Von Koren tomorrow or to leave him among the living—it was all the same, equally pointless and uninteresting. To shoot him in the leg or the arm, wound him, then laugh at him, and like an insect with a severed limb that loses itself in the grass, so let him take his muted sufferings and lose himself afterwards in a crowd of other such insignificant people as himself.
Laevsky went to Sheshkovsky, told him everything and invited him to be his second; then both set off to find the master of the postal-telegraph office, invited him to second also and stayed for dinner with him. During dinner they joked and laughed much; Laevsky poked fun at the fact that he barely knew how to shoot at all, and referred to himself as a royal rifleman and Wilhelm Tell.
“We’ll have to teach this gentleman a thing or two …” he said.
After dinner they sat down to a game of cards. Laevsky played, drank wine and thought that the duel was basically foolish and pointless, as it does not resolve the question but only complicates it further; however, such things are unavoidable at times. For instance, in this particular case: he couldn’t bring action against Von Koren in a court of law! And the impending duel was also good in that, afterwards, he would be unable to stay in town. He grew somewhat drunk, enjoyed his game of cards and felt good.