and moral squalor, is possible only for a vain, mean, and vile brute.’’
‘‘I don’t know what you want from him, Kolya,’’ said Samoilenko, looking at the zoologist now not with anger but guiltily. ‘‘He’s the same as everybody. Of course, he’s not without weaknesses, but he stands on the level of modern ideas, he serves, he’s useful to his fatherland. Ten years ago an old man served as an agent here, a man of the greatest intelligence... He used to say . . .’
‘‘Come, come!’’ the zoologist interrupted. ‘‘You say he serves. But how does he serve? Have the ways here become better and the officials more efficient, more honest and polite, because he appeared? On the contrary, by his authority as an intellectual, university man, he only sanctions their indiscipline. He’s usually efficient only on the twentieth, when he receives his salary, and on the other days he only shuffles around the house in slippers and tries to make it look as if he’s doing the Russian government a great favor by living in the Caucasus. No, Alexander Davidych, don’t defend him. You’re insincere from start to finish. If you actually loved him and considered him your neighbor, first of all you wouldn’t be indifferent to his weaknesses, you wouldn’t indulge them, but would try, for his own good, to render him harmless.’’
‘‘That is?’’
‘‘Render him harmless. Since he’s incorrigible, there’s only one way he can be rendered harmless...’
Von Koren drew a finger across his neck.
‘‘Or drown him, maybe...’ he added. ‘‘In the interests of mankind and in their own interests, such people should be destroyed. Without fail.’’
‘‘What are you saying?’’ Samoilenko murmured, getting up and looking with astonishment at the zoologist’s calm, cold face. ‘‘Deacon, what is he saying? Are you in your right mind?’’
‘‘I don’t insist on the death penalty,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If that has been proved harmful, think up something else. It’s impossible to destroy Laevsky—well, then isolate him, depersonalize him, send him to common labor...’
‘‘What are you saying?’’ Samoilenko was horrified. ‘‘With pepper, with pepper!’’ he shouted in a desperate voice, noticing that the deacon was eating his stuffed zucchini without pepper. ‘‘You, a man of the greatest intelligence, what are you saying?! To send our friend, a proud man, an intellectual, to common labor!!’’
‘‘And if he’s proud and starts to resist—clap him in irons!’’
Samoilenko could no longer utter a single word and only twisted his fingers; the deacon looked at his stunned, truly ridiculous face and burst out laughing.
‘‘Let’s stop talking about it,’’ the zoologist said. ‘‘Remember only one thing, Alexander Davidych, that primitive mankind was protected from the likes of Laevsky by the struggle for existence and selection; but nowadays our culture has considerably weakened the struggle and the selection, and we ourselves must take care of destroying the feeble and unfit, or else, as the Laevskys multiply, civilization will perish and mankind will become totally degenerate. It will be our fault.’’
‘‘If it comes to drowning and hanging people,’’ said Samoilenko, ‘‘then to hell with your civilization, to hell with mankind! To hell! I’ll tell you this: you’re a man of the greatest learning and intelligence, and the pride of our fatherland, but you’ve been spoiled by the Germans. Yes, the Germans! The Germans!’’
Since leaving Dorpat,11 where he had studied medicine, Samoilenko had seldom seen Germans and had not read a single German book, but in his opinion, all the evil in politics and science proceeded from the Germans. Where he had acquired such an opinion, he himself was unable to say, but he held fast to it.
‘‘Yes, the Germans!’’ he repeated once more. ‘‘Let’s go and have tea.’’
The three men got up, put on their hats, went to the front garden, and sat down there under the shade of pale maples, pear trees, and a chestnut. The zoologist and the deacon sat on a bench near a little table, and Samoilenko lowered himself into a wicker chair with a broad, sloping back. The orderly brought tea, preserves, and a bottle of syrup.
It was very hot, about ninety-two in the shade. The torrid air congealed, unmoving, and a long spiderweb, dangling from the chestnut to the ground, hung slackly and did not stir.
The deacon took up the guitar that always lay on the ground by the table, tuned it, and began to sing in a soft, thin little voice: ‘‘ ‘Seminary youths stood nigh the pot-house ...’ ’ but at once fell silent from the heat, wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked up at the hot blue sky. Samoilenko dozed off; the torrid heat, the silence, and the sweet after-dinner drowsiness that quickly came over all his members left him weak and drunk; his arms hung down, his eyes grew small, his head lolled on his chest. He looked at von Koren and the deacon with tearful tenderness and murmured:
‘‘The younger generation . .. A star of science and a luminary of the Church... This long-skirted alleluia may someday pop up as a metropolitan, 12 for all I know, I may have to kiss his hand... So what... God grant it...’
Soon snoring was heard. Von Koren and the deacon finished their tea and went out to the street.
‘‘Going back to the pier to fish for bullheads?’’ asked the zoologist.
‘‘No, it’s too hot.’’
‘‘Let’s go to my place. You can wrap a parcel for me and do some copying. Incidentally, we can discuss what you’re going to do with yourself. You must work, Deacon. It’s impossible like this.’’
‘‘Your words are just and logical,’’ said the deacon, ‘‘but my laziness finds its excuse in the circumstances of my present life. You know yourself that an uncertainty of position contributes significantly to people’s apathy. God alone knows whether I’ve been sent here for a time or forever; I live here in uncertainty, while my wife languishes at her father’s and misses me. And, I confess, my brains have melted from the heat.’’
‘‘That’s all nonsense,’’ said the zoologist. ‘‘You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without a wife. It won’t do to pamper yourself. You must keep yourself in hand.’’
V
NADEZHDA FYODOROVNA WAS going to swim in the morning, followed by her kitchen maid, Olga, who was carrying a jug, a copper basin, towels, and a sponge. Two unfamiliar steamships with dirty white stacks stood at anchor in the roads, evidently foreign freighters. Some men in white, with white shoes, were walking about the pier and shouting loudly in French, and answering calls came from the ships. The bells were ringing briskly in the small town church.
‘‘Today is Sunday!’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna recalled with pleasure.
