The Duel Read Online Free Page B

microbe,” continued Von Koren. “To drown him would be a service.”
    “You’re not winning accolades by venting like that about your fellow man. Tell me: why do you hate him?”
    “Don’t talk nonsense, Doctor. To hate and feel contempt for a microbe is foolish, but to consider it a fellow man, refusing to distinguish between anyone and everyone that you meet no matter what—that, with all due respect, shows a lack of judgment, and a refusal to relate with people in a fair-minded manner, to wash your hands of it, so to speak. I consider your Laevsky to be a miscreant, I don’t hide it and I treat him as I would a miscreant, in all my good conscience. Yet you consider him to be a fellow man—greeting him with a kiss. To consider him a fellow man means that you treat him the same as you would myself and the deacon. That is unacceptable. You make no distinction in your feelings toward anyone.”
    “To call a man a miscreant,” muttered Samoylenko, cringing disdainfully, “is so absolutely wrong, that I can’t even begin to explain to you how wrong it is!”
    “People are judged by their deeds,” continued Von Koren. “So, Deacon, judge for yourself … I’m talking to you now, Deacon. Mr. Laevsky’s actions have candidly been laid out before you, like a long Chinese scroll, and you may read it from beginning to end. What’s he done in the two years since he’s been living here? Let’s use our fingers to count. First of all, he’s taught the residents of the town to play Vint; two years ago the game was unknown here, but now everyone plays Vint from morning to night, even the women andadolescents. Second, he’s taught the locals to drink beer, which was also unknown here. The locals are also obliged to him for their knowledge of different types of vodka, so that they can now distinguish between Kosheleva and Smirnov No. 21 blindfolded. Third, in the past living with another man’s wife was a covert affair here, for the same motives that thieves steal covertly and not overtly. Adultery was considered the sort of thing that was shameful to display in public. Laevsky’s attitude toward all this is a schoolboy’s. He openly lives with another man’s wife. Fourth …
    Von Koren quickly ate his okroshka and handed his plate over to the valet.
    “I understood Laevsky from the very first month of our acquaintance,” he continued, addressing the deacon. “We arrived here at the same time. People like him love to make friends, establish intimacy, solidarity and the like, because they always need company for Vint, drinks and a bite to eat. What’s more, they’re garrulous and they require listeners. We became friends; that is, he would hang around my place every day, disturbing my work and confiding way too much about his concubine. In the beginning, I was dumbstruck by his extraordinary mendacity, which I found simply nauseating. In my capacity as a friend, I scolded him about his way of life, about how he drinks too much, how he does not live according to his means and incurs debts, how he has done nothing and has read nothing, how he is so uncultured and knows so little—and in reply to all of my questions he would smile bitterly, sigh and say, ‘I’m a good-for-nothing, a superfluous man,’ or ‘What do you, old chap, want fromthe splinters of serfdom?’ or ‘We are degenerating …’ Or he would begin to wax on about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov, of whom he would say: ‘These are our fathers in flesh and in spirit.’ Meaning something along the lines of: it’s not he that is guilty of letting bureaucratic packets lie unopened for weeks or that he himself drinks, and gets others drunk, but that Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev are to blame for creating the good-for-nothing and the superfluous man. The principle cause for this lack of discipline and grace isn’t with him, you see, but somewhere out there, in the periphery. And what’s more—here’s a good joke for you!—it’s