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A.P. Chekhov
- The Duel
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The deacon got up, dressed, took his thick,
gnarled stick and slipped quietly out of the house. It was dark,
and for the first minute when he went into the street, he could
not even see his white stick. There was not a single star in the
sky, and it looked as though there would be rain again. There
was a smell of wet sand and sea.
"It's to be hoped that the mountaineers won't attack us,"
thought the deacon, hearing the tap of the stick on the
pavement, and noticing how loud and lonely the taps sounded in
the stillness of the night.
When he got out of town, he began to see both the road and his
stick. Here and there in the black sky there were dark cloudy
patches, and soon a star peeped out and timidly blinked its one
eye. The deacon walked along the high rocky coast and did not
see the sea; it was slumbering below, and its unseen waves broke
languidly and heavily on the shore, as though sighing "Ouf!" and
how slowly! One wave broke -- the deacon had time to count eight
steps; then another broke, and six steps; later a third. As
before, nothing could be seen, and in the darkness one could
hear the languid, drowsy drone of the sea. One could hear the
infinitely faraway, inconceivable time when God moved above
chaos.
The deacon felt uncanny. He hoped God would not punish him for
keeping company with infidels, and even going to look at their
duels. The duel would be nonsensical, bloodless, absurd, but
however that might be, it was a heathen spectacle, and it was
altogether unseemly for an ecclesiastical person to be present
at it. He stopped and wondered -- should he go back? But an
intense, restless curiosity triumphed over his doubts, and he
went on.
"Though they are infidels they are good people, and will be
saved," he assured himself. "They are sure to be saved," he said
aloud, lighting a cigarette.
By what standard must one measure men's qualities, to judge
rightly of them? The deacon remembered his enemy, the inspector
of the clerical school, who believed in God, lived in chastity,
and did not fight duels; but he used to feed the deacon on bread
with sand in it, and on one occasion almost pulled off the
deacon's ear. If human life was so artlessly constructed that
every one respected this cruel and dishonest inspector who stole
the Government flour, and his health and salvation were prayed
for in the schools, was it just to shun such men as Von Koren
and Laevsky, simply because they were unbelievers? The deacon
was weighing this question, but he recalled how absurd
Samoylenko had looked yesterday, and that broke the thread of
his ideas. What fun they would have next day! The deacon
imagined how he would sit under a bush and look on, and when Von
Koren began boasting next day at dinner, he, the deacon, would
begin laughing and telling him all the details of the duel.
"How do you know all about it?" the zoologist would ask.
"Well, there you are! I stayed at home, but I know all about
it."
It would be nice to write a comic description of the duel. His
father-in-law would read it and laugh. A good story, told or
written, was more than meat and drink to his father-in-law.
The valley of the Yellow River opened before him. The stream was
broader and fiercer for the rain, and instead of murmuring as
before, it was raging. It began to get light. The grey, dingy
morning, and the clouds racing towards the west to overtake the
storm-clouds, the mountains girt with mist, and the wet trees,
all struck the deacon as ugly and sinister. He washed at the
brook, repeated his morning prayer, and felt a longing for tea
and hot rolls, with sour cream, which were served every morning
at his father-in-law's. He remembered his wife and the "Days
past Recall," which she played on the piano. What sort of woman
was she? His wife had been introduced, betrothed, and married to
him all in one week: he had lived with her less than a month
when he was ordered here, so that he had not had time to find
out what she was like. All the same, he rather missed her.
"I must write her a nice letter . . ." he thought. The flag on
the duhan hung limp, soaked by the rain, and the duhan itself
with its wet roof seemed darker and lower than it had been
before. Near the door was standing a cart; Kerbalay, with two
mountaineers and a young Tatar woman in trousers -- no doubt
Kerbalay's wife or daughter -- were bringing sacks of something
out of the duhan, and putting them on maize straw in the cart.
Near the cart stood a pair of asses hanging their heads. When
they had put in all the sacks, the mountaineers and the Tatar
woman began covering them over with straw, while Kerbalay began
hurriedly harnessing the asses.
"Smuggling, perhaps," thought the deacon.
Here was the fallen tree with the dried pine-needles, here was
the blackened patch from the fire. He remembered the picnic and
all its incidents, the fire, the singing of the mountaineers,
his sweet dreams of becoming a bishop, and of the Church
procession. . . . The Black River had grown blacker and broader
with the rain. The deacon walked cautiously over the narrow
bridge, which by now was reached by the topmost crests of the
dirty water, and went up through the little copse to the
drying-shed.
"A splendid head," he thought, stretching himself on the straw,
and thinking of Von Koren. "A fine head -- God grant him health;
only there is cruelty in him. . . ."
Why did he hate Laevsky and Laevsky hate him? Why were they
going to fight a duel? If from their childhood they had known
poverty as the deacon had; if they had been brought up among
ignorant, hard-hearted, grasping, coarse and ill-mannered people
who grudged you a crust of bread, who spat on the floor and
hiccoughed at dinner and at prayers; if they had not been spoilt
from childhood by the pleasant surroundings and the select
circle of friends they lived in -- how they would have rushed at
each other, how readily they would have overlooked each other's
shortcomings and would have prized each other's strong points!
Why, how few even outwardly decent people there were in the
world! It was true that Laevsky was flighty, dissipated, queer,
but he did not steal, did not spit loudly on the floor; he did
not abuse his wife and say, "You'll eat till you burst, but you
don't want to work;" he would not beat a child with reins, or
give his servants stinking meat to eat -- surely this was reason
enough to be indulgent to him? Besides, he was the chief
sufferer from his failings, like a sick man from his sores.
Instead of being led by boredom and some sort of
misunderstanding to look for degeneracy, extinction, heredity,
and other such incomprehensible things in each other, would they
not do better to stoop a little lower and turn their hatred and
anger where whole streets resounded with moanings from coarse
ignorance, greed, scolding, impurity, swearing, the shrieks of
women. . . .
The sound of a carriage interrupted the deacon's thoughts. He
glanced out of the door and saw a carriage and in it three
persons: Laevsky, Sheshkovsky, and the superintendent of the
post-office.
"Stop!" said Sheshkovsky.
All three got out of the carriage and looked at one another.
"They are not here yet," said Sheshkovsky, shaking the mud off.
"Well? Till the show begins, let us go and find a suitable spot;
there's not room to turn round here."
They went further up the river and soon vanished from sight. The
Tatar driver sat in the carriage with his head resting on his
shoulder and fell asleep. After waiting ten minutes the deacon
came out of the drying-shed, and taking off his black hat that
he might not be noticed, he began threading his way among the
bushes and strips of maize along the bank, crouching and looking
about him. The grass and maize were wet, and big drops fell on
his head from the trees and bushes. "Disgraceful!" he muttered,
picking up his wet and muddy skirt. "Had I realised it, I would
not have come."
Soon he heard voices and caught sight of them. Laevsky was
walking rapidly to and fro in the small glade with bowed back
and hands thrust in his sleeves; his seconds were standing at
the water's edge, rolling cigarettes.
"Strange," thought the deacon, not recognising Laevsky's walk;
"he looks like an old man. . . ."
"How rude it is of them!" said the superintendent of the
post-office, looking at his watch. "It may be learned manners to
be late, but to my thinking it's hoggish."
Sheshkovsky, a stout man with a black beard, listened and said:
"They're coming!"
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