The Duel. Александр Куприн
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Biek-Agamalov. For Hainán and two of his fellow-countrymen a particular and highly original form had been authorized. The three soldiers were ordered to march in turn up to the Adjutant of the regiment, and from the point of the sabre held towards them they were required to bite off, with deep reverence, a piece of bread that had been dipped in salt. Under no circumstances was the bread to be touched by their hands. The symbolism of this curious ceremony was as follows: When the Circassian had eaten his lord’s – the Tsar’s – bread and salt in this peculiar way he was ruthlessly condemned to die by the sword if he ever failed in loyalty and obedience. Hainán was evidently very proud of having thus taken his oath of allegiance to the Tsar, and he never got tired of relating the circumstance; but as every time he told his story he adorned it with fresh inventions and absurdities, it became at last a veritable Münchausen affair, which was always received with Homeric laughter by Romashov and his guests.
Hainán now thought that his master would start his usual questions about gods and Adjutants, and stood ready to begin with a cunning smile on his face, when Romashov said —
“That will do; you can go.”
“Shall I not lay out your Honour’s new uniform?” asked the ever-attentive Hainán.
Romashov was silent and pondered. First he would say “Yes,” then “No,” and again “Yes.” At last, after a long, deep sigh, uttered in the descending scale, he replied in a tone of resignation —
“No, Hainán, never mind about that – get the samovar ready and then run off to the mess for my supper.”
“I will stay away to-day,” whispered he to himself. “It doesn’t do to bore people to death by calling on them like that every day. And, besides, it is plain I am not a man people long for.”
His resolution to stay at home that evening seemed fixed enough, and yet an inner voice told him that even to-day, as on most other days during the past three months, he would go to the Nikoläievs’. Every time he bade these friends of his good-bye at midnight, he had, with shame and indignation at his own weakness and lack of character, sworn to himself on his honour that he would not pay another call there for two or three weeks. Nay, he had even made up his mind to give up altogether these uncalled-for visits. And all the while he was on his way home, whilst he was undressing, ah! even up to the moment he fell asleep, he believed it would be an easy matter for him to keep his resolution. The night went by, the morning dawned, and the day dragged on slowly and unwillingly, evening came, and once more an irresistible force drew him to this handsome and elegant abode, with its warm, well-lighted, comfortable rooms, where peace, harmony, cheerful and confidential conversation, and, above all, the delightful enchantment of feminine beauty awaited him.
Romashov sat on the edge of his bed. It was already dark, but he could, nevertheless, easily discern the various objects in his room. Oh, how he loathed day by day his mean, gloomy dwelling, with its trumpery, tasteless furniture! His lamp, with its ugly shade that resembled a night-cap, on the inconvenient, rickety writing-table, looked haughtily down on the nerve-torturing alarm-clock and the dirty, vulgar inkstand that had the shape of a badly modelled pug-dog. Over his head something intended to represent a wall decoration – a piece of felt on which had been embroidered a terrible tiger and a still more terrible Arab riding on horseback, armed with a spear. In one corner a tumbledown bookstand, in the other the fantastic silhouette of a hideous violoncello case. Over the only window the room could boast a curtain of plaited straw rolled up into a tube. Behind the door a clothes-stand concealed by a sheet that had been white in prehistoric times. Every unmarried subaltern officer had the same articles about him, with the exception of the violoncello which Romashov had borrowed from the band attached to the regiment – in which it was completely unnecessary – with the intention of developing on it his musical talent. But as soon as he had tried in vain to teach himself the C major scale, he tired of the thing altogether, and the ‘cello had now stood for more than a year, dusty and forgotten, in its dark corner.
More than a year ago Romashov, who had just left the military college, had taken both pride and joy in furnishing his modest lodgings. To have a room of his own, his own things, to choose and buy household furniture according to his own liking, to arrange everything according to his own consummate taste – all that highly flattered the amour propre of that young man of two-and-twenty. It seemed only yesterday that he sat on the school form, or marched in rank and file with his comrades off to the general mess-room to eat, at the word of command, his frugal breakfast. To-day he was his own master. And how many hopes and plans sprang into his brain in the course of those never-to-be-forgotten days when he furnished and “adorned” his new home! What a severe programme he composed for his future! The first two years were to be devoted chiefly to a thorough study of classical literature, French and German, and also music. After that, a serious preparation for entering the Staff College was to follow. It was necessary to study sociology and society life, and to be abreast of modern science and literature. Romashov therefore felt himself bound at least to subscribe to a newspaper and to take in a popular monthly magazine. The bookstand was adorned with Wundt’s Psychology, Lewes’s Physiology, and Smiles’s Self-Help, etc., etc.
But for nine long months have the books lain undisturbed on their shelves, forgotten by Hainán, whose business it is to dust them. Heaps of newspapers, not even stripped of their wrappers, lie cast in a pile beneath the writing-table, and the æsthetic magazine to which we just referred has ceased to reach Romashov on account of repeated “irregularities” with regard to the half-yearly payment. Sub-Lieutenant Romashov drinks a good deal of vodka at mess; he has a tedious and loathsome liaison with a married woman belonging to the regiment, whose consumptive and jealous husband he deceives in strict accordance with all the rules of art; he plays schtoss,4 and more and more frequently comes into unpleasant collisions both in the service and also in the circles of his friends and acquaintances.
“Pardon me, your Honour,” shouted his servant, entering the room noisily. Then he added in a friendly, simple, good-natured tone: “I forgot to mention that a letter has come from Mrs. Peterson. The orderly who brought it is waiting for an answer.”
Romashov frowned, took the letter, tore open a long, slender, rose-coloured envelope, in a corner of which fluttered a dove with a letter in its beak.
“Light the lamp, Hainán,” said he to his servant.
MY DEAR DARLING IRRESISTIBLE LITTLE GEORGI (read Romashov in the sloping, crooked lines he knew so well), – For a whole week you have not been to see me, and yesterday I was so miserable without you that I lay and wept the whole night. Remember that if you fool me or deceive me I shall not survive it. One single drop of poison and I shall be freed from my tortures for ever; but, as for you, conscience shall gnaw you for ever and ever. You must – must come to me to-night at half-past seven. He is not at home, he is somewhere – on tactical duty or whatever it is called. Do come! I kiss you a thousand thousand times.
P.S. —
Have you forgotten the river fast rushing,
Under the willow-boughs wending its way,
Kisses you gave me, dear, burning and crushing,
When in your strong arms I tremblingly lay?
P.SS. – You must absolutely attend the soirée next Saturday at the officers’ mess. I will give you the third quadrille. You understand.
A long way down on the fourth page lay written —
I have kissed here.
This delightful epistle wafted the familiar perfume of Persian lilac, and drops of that essence had, here and there, left yellow stains behind them on the letter, in which the characters had run apart in different directions. This stale scent, combined with the tasteless, absurdly sentimental tone throughout this letter from a little, immoral, red-haired woman, excited in Romashov an intolerable feeling of disgust. With a sort of grim delight he first tore the letter into two parts, laid them carefully together, tore them up again, laid the bits of paper once more together, and tore them again into little bits till his fingers got numb, and