The Duel by Anton Chekhov (read out loud books txt) 📕

“Here is Samoylenko; you had better ask him not to trouble so much about you.”

“I don’t understand your tone,” Laevsky muttered, suddenly feeling as though he had only just realised that the zoologist hated and despised him, and was jeering at him, and was his bitterest and most inveterate enemy.

“Keep that tone for someone else,” he said softly, unable to speak aloud for the hatred with which his chest and throat were choking, as they had been the night before with laughter.

Samoylenko came in in his shirtsleeves, crimson and perspiring from the stifling kitchen.

“Ah, you here?” he said. “Good morning, my dear boy. Have you had dinner? Don’t stand on ceremony. Have you had dinner?”

“Alexandr Daviditch,” said Laevsky, standing up, “though I did appeal to you to help me in a private matter, it did not follow that I released you from the obligation of discretion and respect for other people’s private affairs.”

“What’s this?” asked Samoylenko, in astonishment.

“If you have no money,” Laevsky went on, raising his voice and shifting from one foot to the other in his excitement, “don’t give it; refuse it. But why spread abroad in every back street that my position is hopeless, and all the rest of it? I can’t endure such benevolence and friend’s assistance where there’s a shilling-worth of talk for a ha’p’orth of help! You can boast of your benevolence as much as you please, but no one has given you the right to gossip about my private affairs!”

“What private affairs?” asked Samoylenko, puzzled and beginning to be angry. “If you’ve come here to be abusive, you had better clear out. You can come again afterwards!”

He remembered the rule that when one is angry with one’s neighbour, one must begin to count a hundred, and one will grow calm again; and he began rapidly counting.

“I beg you not to trouble yourself about me,” Laevsky went on. “Don’t pay any attention to me, and whose business is it what I do and how I live? Yes, I want to go away. Yes, I get into debt, I drink, I am living with another man’s wife, I’m hysterical, I’m ordinary. I am not so profound as some people, but whose business is that? Respect other people’s privacy.”

“Excuse me, brother,” said Samoylenko, who had counted up to thirty-five, “but⁠ ⁠…”

“Respect other people’s individuality!” interrupted Laevsky. “This continual gossip about other people’s affairs, this sighing and groaning and everlasting prying, this eavesdropping, this friendly sympathy⁠ ⁠… damn it all! They lend me money and make conditions as though I were a schoolboy! I am treated as the devil knows what! I don’t want anything,” shouted Laevsky, staggering with excitement and afraid that it might end in another attack of hysterics. “I shan’t get away on Saturday, then,” flashed through his mind. “I want nothing. All I ask of you is to spare me your protecting care. I’m not a boy, and I’m not mad, and I beg you to leave off looking after me.”

The deacon came in, and seeing Laevsky pale and gesticulating, addressing his strange speech to the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, stood still by the door as though petrified.

“This continual prying into my soul,” Laevsky went on, “is insulting to my human dignity, and I beg these volunteer detectives to give up their spying! Enough!”

“What’s that⁠ ⁠… what did you say?” said Samoylenko, who had counted up to a hundred. He turned crimson and went up to Laevsky.

“It’s enough,” said Laevsky, breathing hard and snatching up his cap.

“I’m a Russian doctor, a nobleman by birth, and a civil councillor,” said Samoylenko emphatically. “I’ve never been a spy, and I allow no one to insult me!” he shouted in a breaking voice, emphasising the last word. “Hold your tongue!”

The deacon, who had never seen the doctor so majestic, so swelling with dignity, so crimson and so ferocious, shut his mouth, ran out into the entry and there exploded with laughter.

As though through a fog, Laevsky saw Von Koren get up and, putting his hands in his trouser-pockets, stand still in an attitude of expectancy, as though waiting to see what would happen. This calm attitude struck Laevsky as insolent and insulting to the last degree.

“Kindly take back your words,” shouted Samoylenko.

Laevsky, who did not by now remember what his words were, answered:

“Leave me alone! I ask for nothing. All I ask is that you and German upstarts of Jewish origin should let me alone! Or I shall take steps to make you! I will fight you!”

“Now we understand,” said Von Koren, coming from behind the table. “Mr. Laevsky wants to amuse himself with a duel before he goes away. I can give him that pleasure. Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge.”

“A challenge,” said Laevsky, in a low voice, going up to the zoologist and looking with hatred at his swarthy brow and curly hair. “A challenge? By all means! I hate you! I hate you!”

“Delighted. Tomorrow morning early near Kerbalay’s. I leave all details to your taste. And now, clear out!”

“I hate you,” Laevsky said softly, breathing hard. “I have hated you a long while! A duel! Yes!”

“Get rid of him, Alexandr Daviditch, or else I’m going,” said Von Koren. “He’ll bite me.”

Von Koren’s cool tone calmed the doctor; he seemed suddenly to come to himself, to recover his reason; he put both arms round Laevsky’s waist, and, leading him away from the zoologist, muttered in a friendly voice that shook with emotion:

“My friends⁠ ⁠… dear, good⁠ ⁠… you’ve lost your tempers and that’s enough⁠ ⁠… and that’s enough, my friends.”

Hearing his soft, friendly voice, Laevsky felt that something unheard of, monstrous, had just happened to him, as though he had been nearly run over by a train; he almost burst into tears, waved his hand, and ran out of the room.

“To feel that one is hated, to expose oneself before the man who hates one, in the most pitiful, contemptible, helpless state. My God, how hard it is!” he thought a little while