‘‘Your God and my God are all the same,’’ said Kerbalai, not understanding him. ‘‘God is one for everybody, only people are different. Some are Russian, some are Turks, or some are English—there are many kinds of people, but God is one.’’
‘‘Very good, sir. If all people worship one God, why do you Muslims look upon Christians as your eternal enemies?’’
‘‘Why get angry?’’ said Kerbalai, clasping his stomach with both hands. ‘‘You’re a pope, I’m a Muslim, you say you want to eat, I give . . . Only the rich man sorts out which God is yours, which is mine, but for a poor man, it’s all the same. Eat, please.’’
While a theological discussion was going on in the dukhan, Laevsky drove home and remembered how eerie it had been to drive out at dawn, when the road, the cliffs, and the mountains were wet and dark and the unknown future seemed as frightening as an abyss with no bottom to be seen, while now the raindrops hanging on the grass and rocks sparkled in the sun like diamonds, nature smiled joyfully, and the frightening future was left behind. He kept glancing at the sullen, tear-stained face of Sheshkovsky and ahead at the two carriages in which von Koren, his seconds, and the doctor rode, and it seemed to him as though they were all coming back from a cemetery where they had just buried a difficult, unbearable man who had interfered with all their lives.
‘‘It’s all over,’’ he thought about his past, carefully stroking his neck with his fingers.
On the right side of his neck, near the collar, he had a small swelling, as long and thick as a little finger, and he felt pain, as if someone had passed a hot iron over his neck. It was a contusion from a bullet.
Then, when he got home, a long, strange day, sweet and foggy as oblivion, wore on for him. Like a man released from prison or the hospital, he peered at long-familiar objects and was surprised that the tables, the windows, the chairs, the light and the sea aroused a living, childlike joy in him, such as he had not experienced for a long, long time. Nadezhda Fyodorovna, pale and grown very thin, did not understand his meek voice and strange gait; she hurriedly told him everything that had happened to her... It seemed to her that he probably listened poorly and did not understand her, and that if he learned everything, he would curse and kill her, yet he listened to her, stroked her face and hair, looked into her eyes, and said:
‘‘I have no one but you...’’
Then they sat for a long time in the front garden, pressed to each other, and said nothing, or else, dreaming aloud of their happy future life, they uttered short, abrupt phrases, and it seemed to him that he had never spoken so lengthily and beautifully.
XXI
A LITTLE MORE than three months went by.
The day von Koren had appointed for his departure came. Cold rain had been falling in big drops since early morning, a northeast wind was blowing, and the sea churned itself up in big waves. People said that in such weather the steamer could hardly put into the roads. According to the schedule, it should have come after nine, but von Koren, who went out to the embankment at noon and after dinner, saw nothing through his binoculars but gray waves and rain obscuring the horizon.
Towards the end of the day, the rain stopped, and the wind began to drop noticeably. Von Koren was already reconciled with the thought that he was not to leave that day, and he sat down to play chess with Samoilenko; but when it grew dark, the orderly reported that lights had appeared on the sea and a rocket had been seen.
Von Koren began to hurry. He shouldered a bag, kissed Samoilenko and then the deacon, went around all the rooms quite needlessly, said good-bye to the orderly and the cook, and went out feeling as though he had forgotten something at the doctor’s or at his own place. He went down the street side by side with Samoilenko, followed by the deacon with a box, and behind them all came the orderly with two suitcases. Only Samoilenko and the orderly could make out the dim lights on the sea; the others looked into the darkness and saw nothing. The steamer had stopped far from shore.
‘‘Quick, quick,’’ von Koren urged. ‘‘I’m afraid it will leave!’’
Passing by the three-windowed little house Laevsky had moved into soon after the duel, von Koren could not help looking in the window. Laevsky, bent over, was sitting at a desk, his back to the window, and writing.
‘‘I’m astonished,’’ the zoologist said softly. ‘‘How he’s put the screws to himself !’’
‘‘Yes, it’s worthy of astonishment,’’ sighed Samoilenko. ‘‘He sits like that from morning till evening, sits and works.
He wants to pay his debts. And brother, he lives worse than a beggar!’’
Half a minute passed in silence. The zoologist, the doctor, and the deacon stood by the window, and they all looked at Laevsky.
‘‘So he never left here, poor fellow,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘Remember how he fussed about?’’
‘‘Yes, he’s really put the screws to himself,’’ repeated von Koren. ‘‘His marriage, this all-day work for a crust of bread, some new expression in his face, and even his gait—it’s all extraordinary to such a degree that I don’t even know what to call it.’’ The zoologist took Samoilenko by the sleeve and went on with agitation in his voice: ‘‘Tell him and his wife that I was astonished at them as I was leaving, wished them well . . . and ask him, if it’s possible, not to think ill of me. He knows me. He knows that if I could have foreseen this change then, I might have become his best friend.’’
‘‘Go in to him, say good-bye.’’
‘‘No. It’s awkward.’’
‘‘Why? God knows, maybe you’ll never see him again.’’
The zoologist thought a little and said:
‘‘That’s true.’’
Samoilenko tapped softly on the window with his finger. Laevsky gave a start and turned to look.
‘‘Vanya, Nikolai Vassilyich wishes to say good-bye to you,’’ said Samoilenko. ‘‘He’s just leaving.’’
Laevsky got up from the desk and went to the front hall to open the door. Samoilenko, von Koren, and the deacon came in.
