A.P. Chekhov
- The Duel
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Laevsky received two notes; he opened one and
read: "Don't go away, my darling."
"Who could have written that?" he thought. "Not Samoylenko, of
course. And not the deacon, for he doesn't know I want to go
away. Von Koren, perhaps?"
The zoologist bent over the table and drew a pyramid. Laevsky
fancied that his eyes were smiling.
"Most likely Samoylenko . . . has been gossiping," thought
Laevsky.
In the other note, in the same disguised angular handwriting
with long tails to the letters, was written: "Somebody won't go
away on Saturday."
"A stupid gibe," thought Laevsky. "Friday, Friday. . . ."
Something rose in his throat. He touched his collar and coughed,
but instead of a cough a laugh broke from his throat.
"Ha-ha-ha!" he laughed. "Ha-ha-ha! What am I laughing at?
Ha-ha-ha!"
He tried to restrain himself, covered his mouth with his hand,
but the laugh choked his chest and throat, and his hand could
not cover his mouth.
"How stupid it is!" he thought, rolling with laughter. "Have I
gone out of my mind?"
The laugh grew shriller and shriller, and became something like
the bark of a lap-dog. Laevsky tried to get up from the table,
but his legs would not obey him and his right hand was
strangely, without his volition, dancing on the table,
convulsively clutching and crumpling up the bits of paper. He
saw looks of wonder, Samoylenko's grave, frightened face, and
the eyes of the zoologist full of cold irony and disgust, and
realised that he was in hysterics.
"How hideous, how shameful!" he thought, feeling the warmth of
tears on his face. ". . . Oh, oh, what a disgrace! It has never
happened to me. . . ."
They took him under his arms, and supporting his head from
behind, led him away; a glass gleamed before his eyes and
knocked against his teeth, and the water was spilt on his
breast; he was in a little room, with two beds in the middle,
side by side, covered by two snow-white quilts. He dropped on
one of the beds and sobbed.
"It's nothing, it's nothing," Samoylenko kept saying; "it does
happen . . . it does happen. . . ."
Chill with horror, trembling all over and dreading something
awful, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna stood by the bedside and kept
asking:
"What is it? What is it? For God's sake, tell me."
"Can Kirilin have written him something?" she thought.
"It's nothing," said Laevsky, laughing and crying; "go away,
darling."
His face expressed neither hatred nor repulsion: so he knew
nothing; Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was somewhat reassured, and she
went into the drawing-room.
"Don't agitate yourself, my dear!" said Marya Konstantinovna,
sitting down beside her and taking her hand. "It will pass. Men
are just as weak as we poor sinners. You are both going through
a crisis. . . . One can so well understand it! Well, my dear, I
am waiting for an answer. Let us have a little talk."
"No, we are not going to talk," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
listening to Laevsky's sobs. "I feel depressed. . . . You must
allow me to go home."
"What do you mean, what do you mean, my dear?" cried Marya
Konstantinovna in alarm. "Do you think I could let you go
without supper? We will have something to eat, and then you may
go with my blessing."
"I feel miserable . . ." whispered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she
caught at the arm of the chair with both hands to avoid falling.
"He's got a touch of hysterics," said Von Koren gaily, coming
into the drawing-room, but seeing Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he was
taken aback and retreated.
When the attack was over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and
thought.
"Disgraceful! I've been howling like some wretched girl! I must
have been absurd and disgusting. I will go away by the back
stairs. . . . But that would seem as though I took my hysterics
too seriously. I ought to take it as a joke. . . ."
He looked in the looking-glass, sat there for some time, and
went back into the drawing-room.
"Here I am," he said, smiling; he felt agonisingly ashamed, and
he felt others were ashamed in his presence. "Fancy such a thing
happening," he said, sitting down. "I was sitting here, and all
of a sudden, do you know, I felt a terrible piercing pain in my
side . . . unendurable, my nerves could not stand it, and . . .
and it led to this silly performance. This is the age of nerves;
there is no help for it."
At supper he drank some wine, and, from time to time, with an
abrupt sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still
felt the pain. And no one, except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, believed
him, and he saw that.
After nine o'clock they went for a walk on the boulevard.
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, afraid that Kirilin would speak to her,
did her best to keep all the time beside Marya Konstantinovna
and the children. She felt weak with fear and misery, and felt
she was going to be feverish; she was exhausted and her legs
would hardly move, but she did not go home, because she felt
sure that she would be followed by Kirilin or Atchmianov or both
at once. Kirilin walked behind her with Nikodim Alexandritch,
and kept humming in an undertone:
"I don't al-low people to play with me! I don't al-low it."
From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked
along the beach, and looked for a long time at the
phosphorescence on the water. Von Koren began telling them why
it looked phosphorescent.
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