'I don't know what you want out of him, Nicholas,' said Samoy- lenko, now looking at the zoologist more guiltily chan in anger. 'He's just like anyone else. He has his faults, of course, but he is abreast of the times, he does do a job, and he's a useful citizen. Ten years ago we had an old shipping-agent here, a highly intellectual chap. Well, he used to say '
'Oh, come off it, really!' the zoologist broke in. 'You say he does a job. But how does he do it? Has his arrival on the scene improved things? Has it made officials more punctilious, honest and courteous? Far from that, Layevsky has only sanctioned their slovenliness with the authority of an intellectual, a university man. Only on the twentieth of the month, when he collects his salary, is he punctual. On other days he merely shuffles about in his slippers at home and cultivates the expression ofone conferring a great favour on the Russian government by residing in the Caucasus. No, Alexander, don't you stick up for him. You're insincere all the way through. The great thing is this— if you really liked him and considered him your neighbour, you wouldn't be so lukewarm about his faults. You wouldn't be so lenient towards them, you'd try to render him harmless for his own good.'
'Meaning what?'
'Neutralize him. Since he's incurable, there's only one way to do that.'
And Von Koren drew a finger across his throat.
'Or else one might dro^ him,' he added. 'For humanity's sake— and for their o^ sake too—such people should be exterminated, make no mistake about it.'
'What talk is this ?' muttered Samoylenko, standing up and gaping at the zoologist's calm, cold face. 'What is he saying, Deacon? Are you in your right mind?'
'I won't insist on the death penalty,' said Von Koren. 'If that's been discredited, devise something else. If Layevsky can't be exterminated, then isolate him, deprive him of his individuality, put him to work for the community.'
'What talk is this?' Samoylenko was outraged. 'With pepper, with pepper!' he shouted desperately, seeing that the deacon was eating his stuffed marrows without pepper. 'You're a highly intelligent chap, but what are you saying? This is our friend, a proud man, an intellectu.il, and you want to make him do forced labour!'
'Yes, and ifhe's so proud that he won't knuckle under, then throw him in irons.'
Samoylenko was past all speech, and could only twiddle his fingers. Glancing at his bewildered face, which certainly did look funny, the deacon burst out laughing.
'Let's change the subject,' said the zoologist. 'But just bear one thing in mind, Alexander—primitive man was protected from types like Layevsky by the struggle for existence and by natural selection. Now that modern civilization has rendered the struggle and the natural selection process considerably less intense, we must attend to the exter- mination of the sickly and unfit ourselves. Otherwise, once the Layevskys multiply, civilization will perish, mankind will degenerate utterly—and it will all be our fault.'
'If we're going to drown and hang pcople, then to blazes with your civilization, and to blazes with mankind!' said Samoylenko. 'To hell with them! You're a highly learned, highly intelligent chap, and your country can be proud of you, but you've been ruined by Germans, I'd have you know. Dy Germans, sir, by Germans!'
Since leaving Dorpat, where he had studied medicine, Samoylenko had rarely set eyes on a German and had not read a single Gcrman book. Yet Germany was the root of all evil in politics and science, to his way of thinking. Even he couldn't say where he had picked up the idea, but he held it tenaciously.
'Yes indeed, Germans!' he repeated. 'Come and have tea.'
The three men stood up, put on their hats, went into the little garden and sat down in the shade of some pale maples, pear-trees and a chesmut. Zoologist .ind deacon took a bench near the table, while Samoylcnko sank into a wicker arm-chair with a wide, sloping back. The orderly served tea, preserves and a bottle of syrup.
It was very hot, about ninety in the shade. The air was sweltering, stagnant, sluggish. From the chestnut a long spider's \veb hung to the ground, drooping limp and inert.
The deacon picked up a guitar—always to be found on the ground near the table—and tuned it.
'Around ye olde hostelry Did stand ye college lads,'
—he began singing in a soft, reedy voice.
But it was so hot that he stopped at once, mopped his brow and glanced up at the blazing blue sky.
Samoylenko dozed off. He felt weak and drunk from the heat, the quiet and the sweet afternoon drowsiness which rapidly overpowered all his limbs. His arms dangled, his eyes grew small, his head sank on his chest, and he gazed at Von Koren and the deacon with maudlin sentimentality.
'The younger generation,' he muttered. 'A scientific notability and an ecclesiastical luminary. This long-skirted hierophant will very likely shoot up to become metropolitan, and we'll have to kiss his hand. And why not? Good luck to '
Soon he was heard snoring. Von Koren and the deacon finished their tca and went out in the street.
'Going back to the harbour to catch gobies ?' asked the zoologist.
'No, it's on the hot side.'
'Come round to my place then. You can make up a parcel for me, copy one or two things. And we can discuss what you might be doing while we're about it. You must work, Deacon, this will never do.'
'That's very fair and reasonable,' said the deacon. 'But my sloth ĥnds its justification in my present" l iving conditions. As you know, unce^ ainty about one's situation does much to promote a state of apathy. Am I here temporarily? Or for ever? God alone knows. I live here in ignorance, while my wife pines away at her father's, feeling lonely. And this heat has addled my brain, I must admit.'
'Rubbish,' said the zoologist. 'You can get used to the heat and to living without your lady deacon. Don't be so spoilt—you must take yourself in hand.'
v
Nadezhda went for a morning bathe, followed by her cook Olga who carried a jug, a copper bowl, towels and a sponge. Two strange steamers with dirty white smoke-stacks were anchored in the roads— foreign freighters, obviously. Some men in white, wearing white boots, were walking on the quay, shouting loudly in French, and people were shouting back from the steamers. From the town's small church came a brisk peal of bells.
'It's Sunday,' Nadezhda remembered delightedly.
She felt very healthy, and was in gay, festive mood, thinking herself most fetching in her loose new dress of coarse tussore and large straw hat with its brim bent sharp forward over her ears, so that her face seemed to peep out of a little box. There was only one young, beautiful, intellectual woman in the town, she refi.ected—herself. She alone had the knack of dressing inexpensively, elegantly and tastefully. This dress, for instance, had cost only twenty-two roubles, yet it was charming. She was the one attractive woman in a town full of men, so they were all bound to envy Layevsky, like it or not.
She was glad that Layevsky had been cold and icily polite to her of late—and at times brusque and rough, even. Her response to his out- bursts and cold, contemptuous—or odd and mysterious—glances would once have been tcars, reproaches and threats to leave him or starve herself to death. But now she only reacted by blushing, looking guilty and welcoming his lack of aficction. Had he sworn at her, threatened her—that would havc becn even bctter, even more delightful, for where he was concerncd she felt herself hopelessly in the wrong. In the first place, it was hcr fault, shc felt, that she lackcd sympathy for his dreams about a life of toil—dreams which had made him give up St. Pctersburg and come out here to the Caucasus. This was the real reason why hc had been so angry with her lately, she was sure of that. On hcr way out to the Caucasus she had felt certain of discovering some secluded seaside spot on her vcry first day there—some cosy, shady, little gardcn with birds and brooks, where you could plant flowers and vegctables, keep ducks and chickens, ask the ncighbours in, dose poor pcasants and give them books to read. But the Caucasus turned out to consist of bald mountains, forests and huge valleys—a place where you must be forever making choices, stirring things up, building things. There itvre no neighbours, it was all very hot, you were liable to be burgled. Layevsky had been in no hurry to acquire his plot of land, and she was glad of that—there might have been an unspoken pact betwecn them never to mention that life of honest toil. He said nothing ofit—in other words, he was angry with hcr for s.aying nothing of i t, shc thought.