While he examined the album and stood in front of the mirror,
Samoylenko was busy in kitchen and pantry. Wearing neither coat nor waistcoat, much excited and bathed in sweat, he was fussing about the tables—preparing salad, a sauce, meat, gherkins and onions for cold soup, while angrily glaring at the orderly who was helping, and brandishing a knife or spoon at him from time to time.
'Vinegar!' he ordered. 'No, not vinegar, I meant salad oiU' he shouted, stamping his feet. 'And where d() you think you're going, you swine?'
'For butter, General,' quavered the disconcerted orderly in a high- pitched voice.
'Then hurry up! It's in the cupbonrd. And tell Darya to put more dill in the gherkin jar. Dill, I say! And cover up that sour cream, you cretin, or the flies will get it.'
The whole house seemed to buzz with his shouts. At ten or fifteen minutes to two, the deacon arrived—a young man of about twenty- two, thin, long-haired and clean-shaven but for a barely formed moustache. Going into the drawihg-room, he crossed himself before the icon, smiled, and held out his hand to Von Koren.
'Good day,' the zoologist said coldly. 'Where have you been?'
'Fishing for gobies in the harbour.'
'I might have -kno\wn it. Obviously you'll never get downwn to a real job of work, Deacon.'
'I don't see why not. It's never too late to put your nose to the grindstone,' said the deacon, smiling and thrusting his hands into the deep pockets of his white cassock.
'You're incorrigible,' the zoologist sighed.
Fifteen or twenty minutes passed without lunch being announced, and the orderly could still be heard scurrying back and forth from pantry to kitchen with a clnttering of boots.
'Put it on the table!' Samoylenko shouted. 'What are you up to? Wash it first!'
Both famished, the deacon and Von Koren began stamping their heels on the floor to show impatience, like a gallery audience in the theatre. At last the door opened and the anguished orderly announced lunch. Crimson in the face, practically steam-cooked by the heat of his kitchen, an incensed Samoylenko greeted them, glared at them, out- rage written on his face, and raised the lid of the soup tureen to serve each a bowl. Only when he was sure that they were eating with relish and enjoying their meal did he utter a faint sigh and sit downwn in his deep arm-chair. His face looked rclnxcd and oily.
He slowly poured himself a glass of vodka.
'To the younger generation,' he said.
After his talk with Layevsky, Samoylenko had spent the whole morning in a fundamentally depressed state despite his high spirits. Sorry for Layevsky, wanting to help him, he gulped down his glass of vodka before the soup and sighed.
'I saw Ivan Layevsky today,' he said. 'Poor chap's rather up against it. Things aren't too good on the material side, but what's got him down is psychological, mainly. I'm sorry for the lad.'
'Now, there's someone I'm not sorry for,' said Von Koren. 'If that charming fellow was drovvning, I'd take a stick and give him an extra shove. "Go ahead and drown, dear boy," I'd say.'
'Oh no you wouldn't.'
'Think not?' the zoologist shrugged. 'You aren't the only one who can do a good deed.'
'Drowning someone a good deed?' the deacon laughed.
'In Layevsky's case—yes.'
'I think I left something out of the soup,' said Samoylenko, wishing to change the subject.
'Layevsky's a downright pest, he's as great a threat to society as the cholera microbe,' Von Koren went on. 'Drowning him would be a public service.'
'It's no credit to you to speak of your neighbour like that. Why do you hate him then?'
'Don't talk rubbish, Doctor. To hate and despise a microbe would be idiotic, while to believe that every chance acquaintance must needs be one's neighbour, and no two ways about it—well, I'm very sorry, but that means refusing to think, refusing to take a reasonable line on people It's washing your hands of them in fact. To my mind friend Layevsky's a bastard. I make no bones about it, and I treat him as such with a completely clear conscience. You consider him your neighbour—all right, slobber over him for all I care. But considering him your neigh- bour means you must have the same attitude to him as to me arid the deacon—you haven't any attitude at all, in other wnrds. You're equally indifferent to everyone.'
'To call the man a bastard!' Samoylenko muttererl, frowning fastidiously. 'That's so shocking—well, words fail me!' '
'One is judged by one's acts,' went on Von Koren. 'Now, judge for yourself, Deacon. I shall address myself to you, Deacon. Mr. Layevsky's activities are openly unrolled before our eyes like a long Chinese scroll, they're an open book from beginning to end. What has he achieved in two years' residencc here? Let's tick it off point by point. Firstly, he's taught the townsfolk to play bridge—the game was unkno^ here two years ago, but now everyone plays it morning noon and night, even women and adolescents. Secondly, he's taught the locals to drink beer, which was also ^^eard ofhere. They're further indebted to him for information on different brands of vodka, with the result that they can now tell a Koshelev from a Smirnov Number Twenty-one with their eyes blindfolded. Thirdly, men used to sleep with other people's wives surreptitiously from the same motive which makes burglars operate furtively and by stealth. It wasn't the thing to flaunt adultery, they'd have been ashamed to. But Layevsky has pioneered this practice by living openly with another man's wife. Fourthlv '
Quickly finishing his cold soup, Von Koren gave the orderly his bowl.
'I rumbled Layevsky's game before I'd known him a month,' he went on, addressing the deacon. 'We arrived here at the same time. His sort are great on friendship, intimacy, solidarity and all that stuff because they always need someone to make up a rubber of bridge, or join them in a drink and a snack. Being talkative, what's more, they need listeners. We became friendly—in other words, he'd slope along to my place every day, interrupt my work and unburden himself on the subject of his concubine. He was so bogus, he simply made me sick— that's what struck me first. Being his "friend", I nagged him. Why did he drink too much? Live above his means? Fall into debt? Why didn't he do anything? Or read anything? Why was he so uncultured, such an ignoramus? At every question I asked he would give a bitter smile and sigh. "I'm a failurc," he'd say. ''I'm a Superfluous Man." Or "What else do you c.vpect from us, old boy, when wc're the waste products of the serf system?" Or: "We're going to sccJ." Or he'd embark on some great palaver about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron's Cain and Bazarov. "Our fathers in flesh and spirit," he'd call them. Do you catch his drift? It's no fault of his, see, if officia! packages lie around unopened for weeks, and if he drinks and gets ochcrs drunk. It's all because of Onegin and Pechorin—and Turgenev for inventing failures and the Superfluous Man. Why is he so utterly degeneratc, so repulsive ? The reason isn't in himself, see—it's somewhere outside lŭm in space. And chcn—and this is the cunning of it—he's not the only one who's debauched, bogus and odious. There is always We. "We men of the eighties." "We, the debilitated, neurotic offspring of the serf system." "Civilization has crippled us."