The Duel, Anton Chekhov [most interesting books to read TXT] 📗

worst of it is all this psychology is too much for him. I’m sorry for the lad.”

“Well, that is a person I am not sorry for,” said Von Koren. “If that charming individual were drowning, I would push him under with a stick and say, ‘Drown, brother, drown away.’⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s untrue. You wouldn’t do it.”

“Why do you think that?” The zoologist shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just as capable of a good action as you are.”

“Is drowning a man a good action?” asked the deacon, and he laughed.

“Laevsky? Yes.”

“I think there is something amiss with the soup⁠ ⁠…” said Samoylenko, anxious to change the conversation.

“Laevsky is absolutely pernicious and is as dangerous to society as the cholera microbe,” Von Koren went on. “To drown him would be a service.”

“It does not do you credit to talk like that about your neighbour. Tell us: what do you hate him for?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, doctor. To hate and despise a microbe is stupid, but to look upon everybody one meets without distinction as one’s neighbour, whatever happens⁠—thanks very much, that is equivalent to giving up criticism, renouncing a straightforward attitude to people, washing one’s hands of responsibility, in fact! I consider your Laevsky a blackguard; I do not conceal it, and I am perfectly conscientious in treating him as such. Well, you look upon him as your neighbour⁠—and you may kiss him if you like: you look upon him as your neighbour, and that means that your attitude to him is the same as to me and to the deacon; that is no attitude at all. You are equally indifferent to all.”

“To call a man a blackguard!” muttered Samoylenko, frowning with distaste⁠—“that is so wrong that I can’t find words for it!”

“People are judged by their actions,” Von Koren continued. “Now you decide, deacon.⁠ ⁠… I am going to talk to you, deacon. Mr. Laevsky’s career lies open before you, like a long Chinese puzzle, and you can read it from beginning to end. What has he been doing these two years that he has been living here? We will reckon his doings on our fingers. First, he has taught the inhabitants of the town to play Vint: two years ago that game was unknown here; now they all play it from morning till late at night, even the women and the boys. Secondly, he has taught the residents to drink beer, which was not known here either; the inhabitants are indebted to him for the knowledge of various sorts of spirits, so that now they can distinguish Kospelov’s vodka from Smirnov’s No. 21, blindfold. Thirdly, in former days, people here made love to other men’s wives in secret, from the same motives as thieves steal in secret and not openly; adultery was considered something they were ashamed to make a public display of. Laevsky has come as a pioneer in that line; he lives with another man’s wife openly.⁠ ⁠… Fourthly⁠ ⁠…”

Von Koren hurriedly ate up his soup and gave his plate to the orderly.

“I understood Laevsky from the first month of our acquaintance,” he went on, addressing the deacon. “We arrived here at the same time. Men like him are very fond of friendship, intimacy, solidarity, and all the rest of it, because they always want company for Vint, drinking, and eating; besides, they are talkative and must have listeners. We made friends⁠—that is, he turned up every day, hindered me working, and indulged in confidences in regard to his mistress. From the first he struck me by his exceptional falsity, which simply made me sick. As a friend I pitched into him, asking him why he drank too much, why he lived beyond his means and got into debt, why he did nothing and read nothing, why he had so little culture and so little knowledge; and in answer to all my questions he used to smile bitterly, sigh, and say: ‘I am a failure, a superfluous man’; or: ‘What do you expect, my dear fellow, from us, the debris of the serf-owning class?’ or: ‘We are degenerate.⁠ ⁠…’ Or he would begin a long rigmarole about Onyegin, Petchorin, Byron’s Cain, and Bazarov, of whom he would say: ‘They are our fathers in flesh and in spirit.’ So we are to understand that it was not his fault that government envelopes lay unopened in his office for weeks together, and that he drank and taught others to drink, but Onyegin, Petchorin, and Turgenev, who had invented the failure and the superfluous man, were responsible for it. The cause of his extreme dissoluteness and unseemliness lies, do you see, not in himself, but somewhere outside in space. And so⁠—an ingenious idea!⁠—it is not only he who is dissolute, false, and disgusting, but we⁠ ⁠… ‘we men of the eighties,’ ‘we the spiritless, nervous offspring of the serf-owning class’; ‘civilisation has crippled us’⁠ ⁠… in fact, we are to understand that such a great man as Laevsky is great even in his fall: that his dissoluteness, his lack of culture and of moral purity, is a phenomenon of natural history, sanctified by inevitability; that the causes of it are worldwide, elemental; and that we ought to hang up a lamp before Laevsky, since he is the fated victim of the age, of influences, of heredity, and so on. All the officials and their ladies were in ecstasies when they listened to him, and I could not make out for a long time what sort of man I had to deal with, a cynic or a clever rogue. Such types as he, on the surface intellectual with a smattering of education and a great deal of talk about their own nobility, are very clever in posing as exceptionally complex natures.”

“Hold your tongue!” Samoylenko flared up. “I will not allow a splendid fellow to be spoken ill of in my presence!”

“Don’t interrupt, Alexandr Daviditch,” said Von Koren coldly; “I am just finishing. Laevsky is by no means a complex organism. Here is his moral skeleton: in the morning, slippers, a bathe, and coffee; then till