With the exception of his mother, he had no family or friends; but how could his mother help him? And where was she? He wanted to run to Nadezhda Fyodorovna, and drop at her feet, kiss her hands and feet, beg her forgiveness, but she was his victim, and he feared her, as though she were dead.
This life is dead! he muttered, rubbing his hands together. But why am I still among the living, my God! …
He had knocked his fading star from the heavens, it tumbled, and its afterglow meshed with the murk of the night; it would not appear again in the sky, because life is granted but once and cannot be repeated. If it were possible to get back the last days and years, he would exchange the lies they contained for truth, the idleness for effort, the ennui for joy, he would return purity to those from whom he had taken it, he would find God and justice—but this was as impossible as returning a tumbled star to the heavens. And because this was impossible, he fell into despair.
When the storm had passed, he sat at the open window and calmly thought about what would become of him. Von Koren would most likely kill him. This man’s lucid, cold worldview permitted the annihilation of the stunted and useless; if it were to change at the decisive moment, then he would be encouraged by the hatred and feelings of revulsion that Laevsky inspired in him. If he should miss, or, for the purpose of mocking his hated opponent, would just wound him, or shot into the sky, then what was to be done? Where could he go?
Travel to Petersburg? Laevsky asked himself. But that would mean starting my old life all over again, the one that I’m denouncing. For whoever seeks salvation in a change of place, like a migrating bird, won’t find anything new, because for him the earth is one and the same everywhere. Seek out salvation in people? In whom should he seek it and how? The kindness and magnanimity Samoylenko offered was as little salvation, as the deacon’s humor or Von Koren’s hatred. Salvation can only be sought out in one’s self, and if it cannot be found, then why waste time, you must kill yourself, that’s all there is …
The sound of a coach was heard. It was already light out. The carriage passed nearby, turned and stopped near the house, its wheels crunching through the wet sand. Two sat in the carriage.
“Wait, I’ll only be a moment!” Laevsky said to them through the window. “I haven’t slept. Is it really time already?”
“Yes. Four o’clock. By the time we get there …”
Laevsky put on his coat and service cap, placed cigarettes in his pocket and paused, lost in thought; it seemed to him that he was supposed to do something else. His seconds spoke softly on the street and the horses snorted, and these sounds in the early moist morning, while everyone else slept and dawn was just breaking, filled Laevsky’s soul with despondency, which resembled a sinister foreboding. He stood lost in thought a bit longer and proceeded to the bedroom.
Nadezhda Fyodorovna was lying in her bed, stretched out, cocooned with her head in the plaid blanket; she did not move and resembled, especially her head, an Egyptian mummy. Looking at her silently, in his thoughts Laevsky asked for her forgiveness, that if the heavens aren’t empty and in actuality do contain a God, then He will protect her; and if there is no God, then let her perish, as she has nothing to live for.
She suddenly lurched and sat up in bed. Raising her pale face and looking in horror at Laevsky, she asked:
“Is that you? Has the storm passed?”
“It’s passed.”
Then she remembered, placed both hands on her head and her entire body shuddered.
“It’s so difficult for me!” she uttered. “If only you knew how difficult it is for me! I waited,” she continued, narrowing her eyes, “for you to kill me or chase me out of the house into the rain and storm, but you delay … delay …”
He abruptly and tightly embraced her, sprinkled kisses about her knees and face, then, when she’d murmured something to him and winced in recollection, he smoothed her hair and, scrutinizing her face, understood that this miserable, defiled woman was the only near, dear and irreplaceable person that he had.
When he walked out of the house and took a seat in the carriage, he wanted to return home alive.
XVIII
The deacon rose, dressed, took his thick knotty walking stick and quietly exited the house. It was dark, and in the first few minutes that he walked along the street, the deacon couldn’t see even his white walking stick; there was not a single star in the sky, and it seemed as though it would rain again. It smelled of wet sand and the sea.
“Hopefully, I won’t get attacked by Chechens,” the deacon thought, listening to the manner in which his walking stick knocked along the roadway and how that knock emanated, resonate and lonesome, through the night’s silence.
Leaving the town, he began to see both the road and his walking stick; here and there in the black sky, murky spots appeared and soon a solitary star peered out and bashfully began to blink its single eye. The deacon walked along a high, rocky precipice, but the sea was not visible to him; it slept below him, and its invisible waves lazily, heavily broke against the shore and pointedly exhaled: oof! And how slowly! As one wave broke, the Deacon had time to count eight steps, then another broke; after six steps, a third. As before, absolutely nothing was visible, and the lazy, sleepy roar of the sea could be heard in the darkness; it was the sound of infinitely distant, inconceivable time, when God bore through chaos.
The deacon felt macabre. He thought of whether God would punish him for his keeping company with nonbelievers and even going to watch their duel. The duel would be a trifle, bloodless, laughable; however, regardless of whether that was the case, it was a heathen ceremony and for a holy man to show his face there was not proper. Stopping, he thought: Should I go back? But a strong, disquieting curiosity rose above his doubt, and he continued onward.
Even though they’re nonbelievers, they are good people and will find salvation, he comforted himself. “They’ll absolutely find salvation!” he said aloud, lighting up a cigarette.
By what measure do we gauge the virtue of people, so as to judge them fairly? The deacon recalled his enemy, a proctor at divinity school who believed in God, and never fought in duels, and lived chastely, but who at some point had fed the deacon bread with sand and had once nearly ripped his ear off. If the corporeal life really played out so inanely, that everyone at divinity school respected and prayed for the health and salvation of this harsh and unfair proctor who plundered government-issue flour, then how can it really be just to shun people like Von Koren and Laevsky only because they’re nonbelievers? The deacon began to resolve this question, but he recalled what a strange state Samoylenko had been in the previous day, and that broke his train of thought. There will be so much laughter tomorrow! The deacon imagined how he would sit behind a bush and observe, so that when Von Koren began to boast at dinner tomorrow, then he, the deacon, would mirthfully describe all the details of the duel to him.
“How do you know all of this?” the zoologist would ask.
“That’s just the way it is. I sat at home, but I know.”
It would be good to write of the duel in a humorous light. His father-in-law would read it and laugh; his father-in-law won’t eat the kasha, but just you tell or write to him of an amusing story.
The Yellow River Valley opened before him. The river had become wider and crueler from the rain and did not rumble now, as before, but roared. Dawn was breaking. A gray lusterless morning, and the clouds fleeing westward to overtake a thundercloud, and the mountains, encased in fog, and the wet trees—all this appeared to be ugly and sinister to the deacon. He washed his face in the stream, performed his morning prayers, and had a hankering for tea and a hot bun with sour cream, the kind that was served every morning at his father-in-law’s table. He recalled the deaconess and “Irrevocable,” which she played on the fortepiano. What kind of woman was she? The deacon had been introduced, engaged and married to her in the course of a week; he had lived with her for less than a month before being commandeered here, so even now he had no idea of the kind of person she was. In spite of that, it was still a bit boring without her.