rumbled as before, but roared. Dawn was breaking. The gray, dull morning, and the clouds racing westward to catch up with the thunderhead, and the mountains girded with mist, and the wet trees—it all seemed ugly and angry to the deacon. He washed in a brook, recited his morning prayers, and wished he could have some tea and the hot puffs with sour cream served every morning at his father-in-law’s table. He thought of his deaconess and ‘‘The Irretrievable,’’ which she played on the piano. What sort of woman was she? They had introduced the deacon to her, arranged things, and married him to her in a week; he had lived with her for less than a month and had been ordered here, so that he had not yet figured out what kind of person she was. But all the same, he was slightly bored without her.
‘‘I must write her a little letter . . .’’ he thought.
The flag on the dukhan was rain-soaked and drooping, and the dukhan itself, with its wet roof, seemed darker and lower than it had before. A cart stood by the door. Kerbalai, a couple of Abkhazians, and a young Tartar woman in balloon trousers, probably Kerbalai’s wife or daughter, were bringing sacks of something out of the dukhan and putting them in the cart on cornhusks. By the cart stood a pair of oxen, their heads lowered. After loading the sacks, the Abkhazians and the Tartar woman began covering them with straw, and Kerbalai hastily began hitching up the donkeys.
‘‘Contraband, probably,’’ thought the deacon.
Here was the fallen tree with its dried needles, here was the black spot from the fire. He recalled the picnic in all its details, the fire, the singing of the Abkhazians, the sweet dreams of a bishopric and a procession with the cross...The Black River had grown blacker and wider from the rain. The deacon cautiously crossed the flimsy bridge, which the muddy waves already reached with their crests, and climbed the ladder into the drying shed.
‘‘A fine head!’’ he thought, stretching out on the straw and recalling von Koren. ‘‘A good head, God grant him health. Only there’s cruelty in him . . .’’
Why did he hate Laevsky, and Laevsky him? Why were they going to fight a duel? If they had known the same poverty as the deacon had known since childhood, if they had been raised in the midst of ignorant, hard-hearted people, greedy for gain, who reproached you for a crust of bread, coarse and uncouth of behavior, who spat on the floor and belched over dinner and during prayers, if they had not been spoiled since childhood by good surroundings and a select circle of people, how they would cling to each other, how eagerly they would forgive each other’s shortcomings and value what each of them did have. For there are so few even outwardly decent people in the world! True, Laevsky was crackbrained, dissolute, strange, but he wouldn’t steal, wouldn’t spit loudly on the floor, wouldn’t reproach his wife: ‘‘You stuff yourself, but you don’t want to work,’’ wouldn’t beat a child with a harness strap or feed his servants putrid salt beef—wasn’t that enough for him to be treated with tolerance? Besides, he was the first to suffer from his own shortcomings, like a sick man from his sores. Instead of seeking, out of boredom or some sort of misunderstanding, for degeneracy, extinction, heredity, and other incomprehensible things in each other, wouldn’t it be better for them to descend a little lower and direct their hatred and wrath to where whole streets resound with the groans of coarse ignorance, greed, reproach, impurity, curses, female shrieks...
There was the sound of an equipage, and it interrupted the deacon’s thoughts. He peeked out the door and saw a carriage, and in it three people: Laevsky, Sheshkovsky, and the head of the post and telegraph office.
‘‘Stop!’’ said Sheshkovsky.
All three got out of the carriage and looked at each other.
‘‘They’re not here yet,’’ said Sheshkovsky, shaking mud off himself. ‘‘So, then! While the jury’s still out, let’s go and find a suitable spot. There’s hardly room enough to turn around here.’’
They went further up the river and soon disappeared from sight. The Tartar coachman got into the carriage, lolled his head on his shoulder, and fell asleep. Having waited for about ten minutes, the deacon came out of the drying shed and, taking off his black hat so as not to be noticed, cowering and glancing around, began to make his way along the bank among the bushes and strips of corn; big drops fell on him from the trees and bushes, the grass and corn were wet.
‘‘What a shame!’’ he muttered, hitching up his wet and dirty skirts. ‘‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.’’
Soon he heard voices and saw people. Laevsky, hunched over, his hands tucked into his sleeves, was rapidly pacing up and down a small clearing; his seconds stood just by the bank and rolled cigarettes.
‘‘Strange . . .’’ thought the deacon, not recognizing Laevsky’s gait. ‘‘Looks like an old man.’’
‘‘How impolite on their part!’’ said the postal official, looking at his watch. ‘‘Maybe for a learned man it’s a fine thing to be late, but in my opinion it’s swinishness.’’
Sheshkovsky, a fat man with a black beard, listened and said:
‘‘They’re coming.’’
XIX
‘‘THE FIRST TIME in my life I’ve seen it! How nice!’’ said von Koren, emerging into the clearing and holding out both arms to the east. ‘‘Look: green rays!’’
Two green rays stretched out from behind the mountains in the east, and it was indeed beautiful. The sun was rising.
‘‘Good morning!’’ the zoologist went on, nodding to Laevsky’s seconds. ‘‘I’m not late?’’
Behind him came his seconds, two very young officers of the same height, Boiko and Govorovsky, in white tunics, and the lean, unsociable Dr. Ustimovich, who was carrying a bundle of something in one hand and put the other behind him; as usual, he was holding his cane up along his spine. Setting the bundle on the ground and not greeting anyone, he sent his other hand behind his back and began pacing out the clearing.
Laevsky felt the weariness and awkwardness of a man who might die soon and therefore attracted general attention. He would have liked to be killed quickly or else taken home. He was now seeing a sunrise for the first time in his life; this early morning, the green rays, the dampness, and the people in wet boots seemed extraneous to his life, unnecessary, and they embarrassed him; all this had no connection with the night he had lived through, with his thoughts, and with the feeling of guilt, and therefore he would gladly have left without waiting for the duel.
Von Koren was noticeably agitated and tried to conceal it, pretending that he was interested most of all in the green rays. The seconds were confused and kept glancing at each other as if asking why they were there and what they were to do.
‘‘I suppose, gentlemen, that there’s no need to go further,’’ said Sheshkovsky. ‘‘Here is all right.’’
