table to fetch it, and each time stayed under the table for a long while, probably studying Egorushka’s legs. And Egorushka listened drowsily and studied the old woman’s face, her wart with hairs on it, the streaks of her tears... And he felt sad, very sad! His bed was made up on a trunk, and he was informed that if he wanted to eat during the night, he should go out to the corridor and take some of the chicken that was there on the windowsill, covered with a plate.
The next morning Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor came to say good-bye. Nastasya Petrovna was glad and wanted to prepare the samovar, but Ivan Ivanych, who was in a great hurry, waved his hand and said:
‘‘We have no time for any teas and sugars! We’re about to leave.’’
Before saying good-bye, they all sat down and were silent for a moment. Nastasya Petrovna sighed deeply and looked at the icons with tearful eyes.
‘‘Well,’’ Ivan Ivanych began, getting up, ‘‘so you’re staying...’
The businesslike dryness suddenly left his face, he turned a little red, smiled sadly, and said:
‘‘See that you study... Don’t forget your mother and listen to Nastasya Petrovna... If you study well, Egor, I won’t abandon you.’’
He took a purse from his pocket, turned his back to Egorushka, rummaged for a long time among the small change, and, finding a ten-kopeck piece, gave it to the boy. Father Khristofor sighed and unhurriedly blessed Egorushka.
‘‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit... Study,’’ he said. ‘‘Work hard, old boy... If I die, remember me. Here’s ten kopecks from me, too...’
Egorushka kissed his hand and wept. Something in his soul whispered to him that he would never see the old man again.
‘‘I’ve already applied to the school, Nastasya Petrovna,’’ Ivan Ivanych said in such a voice as if there was a dead person laid out in the parlor. ‘‘On the seventh of August you’ll take him to the examination... Well, good-bye! May God be with you. Good-bye, Egor!’’
‘‘You should at least have some tea!’’ Nastasya Petrovna groaned.
Through the tears that clouded his eyes, Egorushka did not see his uncle and Father Khristofor leave. He rushed to the window, but they were no longer in the yard, and the ginger dog, just done barking, trotted back from the gate with a look of duty fulfilled. Egorushka, not knowing why himself, tore from his place and went flying out of the house. When he came running through the gate, Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor, the one swinging his curved-handled stick, the other his staff, were just turning the corner. Egorushka felt that with these people, everything he had lived through up to then had vanished forever, like smoke; he sank wearily onto a bench and with bitter tears greeted the new, unknown life that was now beginning for him...
What sort of life would it be?
1888
THE DUEL
I
IT WAS EIGHT o’clock in the morning—the time when officers, officials, and visitors, after a hot, sultry night, usually took a swim in the sea and then went to the pavilion for coffee or tea. Ivan Andreich Laevsky, a young man about twenty-eight years old, a lean blond, in the peaked cap of the finance ministry1 and slippers, having come to swim, found many acquaintances on the shore, and among them his friend the army doctor Samoilenko.
With a large, cropped head, neckless, red, big-nosed, with bushy black eyebrows and gray side-whiskers, fat, flabby, and with a hoarse military bass to boot, this Samoilenko made the unpleasant impression of a bully and a blusterer on every newcomer, but two or three days would go by after this first acquaintance, and his face would begin to seem remarkably kind, nice, and even handsome. Despite his clumsiness and slightly rude tone, he was a peaceable man, infinitely kind, good-natured, and responsible. He was on familiar terms with everybody in town, lent money to everybody, treated everybody, made matches, made peace, organized picnics, at which he cooked shashlik and prepared a very tasty mullet soup; he was always soliciting and interceding for someone and always rejoicing over something. According to general opinion, he was sinless and was known to have only two weaknesses: first, he was ashamed of his kindness and tried to mask it with a stern gaze and an assumed rudeness; and second, he liked it when medical assistants and soldiers called him ‘‘Your Excellency,’’ though he was only a state councillor.2
‘‘Answer me one question, Alexander Davidych,’’ Laevsky began, when the two of them, he and Samoilenko, had gone into the water up to their shoulders. ‘‘Let’s say you fell in love with a woman and became intimate with her; you lived with her, let’s say, for more than two years, and then, as it happens, you fell out of love and began to feel she was a stranger to you. How would you behave in such a case?’’
‘‘Very simple. Go, dearie, wherever the wind takes you— and no more talk.’’
‘‘That’s easy to say! But what if she has nowhere to go? She’s alone, no family, not a cent, unable to work...’
‘‘What, then? Fork her out five hundred, or twenty-five a month—and that’s it. Very simple.’’
‘‘Suppose you’ve got both the five hundred and the twenty-five a month, but the woman I’m talking about is intelligent and proud. Can you possibly bring yourself to offer her money? And in what form?’’
Samoilenko was about to say something, but just then a big wave covered them both, then broke on the shore and noisily rolled back over the small pebbles. The friends went ashore and began to dress.
‘‘Of course, it’s tricky living with a woman if you don’t love her,’’ Samoilenko said, shaking sand from his boot. ‘‘But Vanya, you’ve got to reason like a human being. If it happened to me, I wouldn’t let it show that I’d fallen out of love, I’d live with her till I died.’’
He suddenly felt ashamed of his words. He caught himself and said:
‘‘Though, for my part, there’s no need for women at all. To the hairy devil with them!’’
The friends got dressed and went to the pavilion. Here Samoilenko was his own man, and they even reserved a special place for him. Each morning a cup of coffee, a tall cut glass of ice water, and a shot of brandy were served to him on a tray. First he drank the brandy, then the hot coffee, then the ice water, and all that must have been very tasty, because after he drank it, his eyes became unctuous, he smoothed his side-whiskers with both hands, and said, looking at the sea:
