‘‘Give me the vinegar!’’ he ordered. ‘‘I mean, not the vinegar but the olive oil!’’ he shouted, stamping his feet. ‘‘Where are you going, you brute?’’
‘‘For the oil, Your Excellency,’’ the nonplussed orderly said in a cracked tenor.
‘‘Be quick! It’s in the cupboard! And tell Darya to add some dill to the jar of pickles! Dill! Cover the sour cream, you gawk, or the flies will get into it!’’
The whole house seemed to resound with his voice. When it was ten or fifteen minutes before two, the deacon would come, a young man of about twenty-two, lean, long-haired, beardless, and with a barely noticeable mustache. Coming into the drawing room, he would cross himself in front of the icon, smile, and offer von Koren his hand.
‘‘Greetings,’’ the zoologist would say coldly. ‘‘Where have you been?’’
‘‘On the pier fishing for bullheads.’’
‘‘Well, of course... Apparently, Deacon, you’re never going to take up any work.’’
‘‘Why so? Work’s not a bear, it won’t run off to the woods,’’ the deacon would say, smiling and putting his hands into the deep pockets of his cassock.
‘‘Beating’s too good for you!’’ the zoologist would sigh.
Another fifteen or twenty minutes would go by, but dinner was not announced, and they could still hear the orderly, his boots stomping, running from the hall to the kitchen and back, and Samoilenko shouting:
‘‘Put it on the table! Where are you shoving it? Wash it first!’’
Hungry by now, the deacon and von Koren would start drumming their heels on the floor, expressing their impatience, like spectators in the gallery of a theater. At last the door would open, and the exhausted orderly would announce: ‘‘Dinner’s ready!’’ In the dining room they were met by the crimson and irate Samoilenko, stewed in the stifling kitchen. He looked at them spitefully and, with an expression of terror on his face, lifted the lid of the soup tureen and poured them each a plateful, and only when he had made sure that they were eating with appetite and liked the food did he sigh with relief and sit down in his deep armchair. His face became languid, unctuous... He unhurriedly poured himself a glass of vodka and said:
‘‘To the health of the younger generation!’’
After his conversation with Laevsky, all the time from morning till dinner, despite his excellent spirits, Samoilenko felt a slight oppression in the depths of his soul. He felt sorry for Laevsky and wanted to help him. Having drunk a glass of vodka before the soup, he sighed and said:
‘‘I saw Vanya Laevsky today. The fellow’s having a hard time of it. The material side of his life is inauspicious, but above all, he’s beset by psychology. I feel sorry for the lad.’’
‘‘There’s one person I don’t feel sorry for!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If the dear chap were drowning, I’d help him along with a stick: drown, brother, drown...’
‘‘Not true. You wouldn’t do that.’’
‘‘Why don’t you think so?’’ the zoologist shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘I’m as capable of a good deed as you are.’’
‘‘Is drowning a man a good deed?’’ the deacon asked and laughed.
‘‘Laevsky? Yes.’’
‘‘This kvass soup seems to lack something ...’ said Samoilenko, wishing to change the subject.
‘‘Laevsky is unquestionably harmful and as dangerous for society as the cholera microbe,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘Drowning him would be meritorious.’’
‘‘It’s no credit to you that you speak that way of your neighbor. Tell me, what makes you hate him?’’
‘‘Don’t talk nonsense, Doctor. To hate and despise a microbe is stupid, but to consider anyone who comes along without discrimination as your neighbor—that, I humbly thank you, that means not to reason, to renounce a just attitude towards people, to wash your hands, in short. I consider your Laevsky a scoundrel, I don’t conceal it, and I treat him like a scoundrel in good conscience. Well, but you consider him your neighbor—so go and kiss him; you consider him your neighbor, and that means you have the same relation to him as to me and the deacon—that is, none at all. You’re equally indifferent to everybody.’’
‘‘To call a man a scoundrel!’’ Samoilenko murmured, wincing scornfully. ‘‘That’s so wrong, I can’t even tell you!’’
‘‘One judges people by their actions,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘So judge now, Deacon... I shall talk to you, Deacon. The activity of Mr. Laevsky is openly unrolled before you like a long Chinese scroll, and you can read it from beginning to end. What has he done in the two years he’s been living here? Let’s count on our fingers. First, he has taught the town inhabitants to play vint; two years ago the game was unknown here, but now everybody plays vint from morning till night, even women and adolescents; second, he has taught the townspeople to drink beer, which was also unknown here; to him they also owe a knowledge of various kinds of vodka, so that they can now tell Koshelev’s from Smirnov’s No. 21 blindfolded. Third, before, they lived with other men’s wives here secretly, for the same motives that thieves steal secretly and not openly; adultery was considered something that it was shameful to expose to general view; Laevsky appears to be a pioneer in that respect: he lives openly with another man’s wife. Fourth...’
Von Koren quickly ate his kvass soup and handed the plate to the orderly.
‘‘I understood Laevsky in the very first month of our acquaintance,’’ he went on, addressing the deacon. ‘‘We arrived here at the same time. People like him are very fond of friendship, intimacy, solidarity, and the like, because they always need company for vint, drinking, and eating; besides, they’re babblers and need an audience. We became friends, that is, he loafed about my place every day, preventing me from working and indulging in confidences about his kept woman. From the very first, he struck me with his extraordinary falseness, which simply made me sick. In the quality of a friend, I chided him, asking why he drank so much, why he lived beyond his means and ran up debts, 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 would smile bitterly, sigh, and say: ‘I’m a luckless fellow, a superfluous man,’ or ‘What do you want, old boy, from us remnants of serfdom,’ or ‘We’re degenerating...’ Or he would start pouring out some lengthy drivel about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov,9 of whom he said: ‘They are our fathers in flesh and spirit.’ Meaning he is not to blame that official packets lie unopened for weeks and that he
