The Duel by Aleksandr Kuprin (notion reading list .TXT) 📕
Description
At the young age of twenty-two Sublieutenant Romashov has become an officer, but he’s already disillusioned with army life in the middle of nowhere, and the brutish and blood-thirsty natures of his commanders and peers. The only thing keeping him from outright depression is his growing infatuation with the wife of a fellow officer; an infatuation which, half-returned, leads inevitably towards the titular subject.
The Duel is regarded as the highlight of Kuprin’s bibliography and was praised by famous Russian authors of the period including Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin and Tolstoy. It was published in 1905 in the middle of the failure of the Russian army in the Russo-Japanese war and widespread social unrest. Kuprin himself had military experience as a lieutenant, which shines through in the novel’s vivid depictions of the minutiae of officer life. The Duel was later adapted for both film and television in Russia. This edition is based on the 1916 translation.
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- Author: Aleksandr Kuprin
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Romashov, who no longer walked but ran, gesticulating wildly, at last stopped and gradually became himself again. It seemed to him as if someone with fingers cold as ice had suddenly passed them over his back, arms, and legs, his hair bristled, and his strong excitement had brought tears to his eyes. He had no notion how he suddenly found himself near his quarters, and, as he recovered from his mad fancies, he gazed with astonishment at the street door he knew so well, at the neglected fruit-garden within which stood the little whitewashed wing where he lodged.
“How does all this nonsense get into my head?” said he, with a sense of shame and a shrug of his shoulders in self-contempt.
IIIWhen Romashov reached his room he threw himself, just as he was, with cap and sabre, on his bed, and for a long time he lay there motionless, staring up at the ceiling. His head burned, his back ached; and he suffered from a vacuum within him as profound as if his mind was incapable of harbouring a feeling, a memory, or a thought. He felt neither irritation nor sadness, but he was sensible of a suffocating weight on his heart, of darkness and indifference.
The shades of a balmy April night fell. He heard his servant quietly occupied with some metal object in the hall.
“Curiously enough,” said he to himself, “I have read somewhere or other that one cannot live a single second without thinking. But here I lie and think about absolutely nothing. Isn’t that so? Perhaps it is just this: I am thinking that I am thinking about nothing. It even seems as if a tiny wheel in my brain is in motion. And see here a new reflection, an objective introspection—I am also thinking of—”
He lay so long and tortured himself with such forced mental images that returned in an eternal circle that it finally became physically repulsive to him. It was just as if a great loathsome spider, from which he could not extricate himself, was softly groping about under his brain. At last he raised his head from the pillows and called out—
“Hainán.”
At that very moment was heard a tremendous crash of something falling and rolling on the floor. It was probably the funnel belonging to the samovar which had dropped. The door was opened hastily and shut again with a loud bang. The servant burst into the room, making as much noise in opening and shutting the door as if we were running away from someone.
“It is I, your Honour,” shrieked Hainán in a fear-stricken voice.
“Has there been any message from Lieutenant Nikoläiev?”
“No, your Excellency,” replied Hainán in the same shrieking tone.
Between the officer and his servant there existed a certain simple, sincere, affectionately familiar relationship. When the question only required the usual stereotyped, official answer, e.g. “Yes, your Excellency,” “No, your Excellency,” etc., then Hainán shrieked the words in the same wooden, soulless, and unnatural way as soldiers always do in the case of their officers, and which, from their first days in the recruit school, becomes ineradicably ingrained in them as long as they live.
Hainán was by birth a Circassian, and by religion an idolater. This latter circumstance gave great satisfaction to Romashov, because among the young officers of the regiment the silly and boyish custom prevailed of training their respective servants to be something unique, or of teaching them certain semi-idiotic answers and phrases.
For instance, when his friends paid him a visit, Viätkin used to say to his orderly, a Moldavian, “Busioskul, have we any champagne in the cellar?” And Busioskul would answer with imperturbable gravity, “No, your Excellency. Last night you were pleased to drink up the last dozen.” Another officer, Sublieutenant Epifanov, amused himself by putting to his servant learned and difficult questions which he himself could hardly answer. “Listen, my friend, what are your views on the restoration of the monarchy in France at the present day?” The servant answers, “Your Honour, it will, I think, succeed.” Lieutenant Bobetinski had written down a whole catechism for his flunkey, and the latter trained genius replied frankly and unhesitatingly to the most absurd questions, e.g. “Why is this important for the third?” Answer—“For the third this is not important.” “What is Holy Church’s opinion about it?” Answer—“Holy Church has no opinion about it.” The same servant would declaim, with the quaintest, semi-tragical gestures, Pinen’s role in Boris-Gudunov. It was also usual and much appreciated to make him express himself in French: “Bong shure, musseur. Bon nuite, moussier. Vulley vous du tay, musseur?” etc. etc., in that style. All these follies naturally arose from the dullness of that little garrison town, and the narrowness of a life from which all interests were excluded except those belonging to the service.
Romashov often talked to Hainán about his gods—about whom the Circassian had only dim and meagre ideas; but it amused him greatly to make Hainán tell the story of how he took the oath of allegiance to the Tsar and Russia—a story well worth hearing now and then. At that time the oath of allegiance was, for the Orthodox, administered by a priest of the Greek Church; for Catholics, by the ksends;3 for Protestants, when a Lutheran pastor was not available, by Staff-Captain
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