After leaving tovm, he found that he could, see his path and his stick. Blurred patches appeared here and there in the black sky, and soon a single star peeped out and timidly winked. The deacon was walking along a high, rocky cliff from which he could not see the sea drowsing below as its unseen waves broke, lazily ponderous—and with sighs, as it seemed—on the beach. How slow they were. After one wave had broken, the deacon counted eight paces before the next. Then came a third, six paces later. It must have beenjust like this when God floated over chaos—no visibility, the lazy, sleepy sound of the sea in the darkness, a sense of time immemorially remote and unimagin- able.
The deacon felt uneasy, believing that God might puri.ish him for consorting with unbelievers, and even going to watch them fight a duel. The duel would be a trivial, bloodless, farcical affair. Still, it was a pagan spectacle all the same, and for it to be graced by a member of the clergy was quite unseemly. He stopped and thought of going back, but a powerful, restless curiosity overcame his doubts and he went on.
'Unbelievers they may be, but they're good people, and they'll be saved,' he consoled himself.
'They'll definitely be saved,' he said aloud, lighting a cigarette.
By what standard should one measure people's virtues? Ho.w does one assess them rightly? The deacon remembered his old enemy, the inspector at his old school—an institution for clergy's sons—a believer in God, no duellist, and a man of chaste life, but one who had fed the deacon on bread mixed with sand, and had once come near to pulling his ear off. If human life had assumed so foolish a shape that this cruel, dishonest inspector, this stealer of government-issue flour, enjoyed general respect, while prayers were said at school for his health and salvation—could it really be right to shun men like Von Koren and Layevsky solely because they were unbelievers? The deacon tried to resolve this question, but then remembered how funny Samoylenko had looked on the previous day—which broke his flow of thought. What a good laugh they would have later in the day! The deacon pictured himself hiding under a bush and watching. Then, at lunch, when Von Koren started boasting, he, the deacon, would laugh and tell him every detail of the duel.
'How can you know all that?' the zoologist would inquire.
'Well may you ask. I stayed at home, but I know all the same.'
It would be nice to do a comic description of the duel. It would amuse his father-in-law, who was ready to forgo food and drink so long as someone told or wrote him funny stories.
Yellow Brook Valley opened up ahead. The rain had made the stream wider and angrier—it no longer grumbled, as before, but roared. Dawn began to break—a dull, grey morning with clouds scurrying westwards in the wakc of the thunderheads, mountains ringed with mist, damp trees, all seeming ugly and bad-tempered to the deacon. He washed in the stream, said his morning prayers, and longed for tea and hot rolls with sour cream, the regular breakfast at his father-in-law's. He thought of his wife, remembered her playing Gone Beyoud Recall on the piano. What sort of woman was she? The deacon had been introduced, engaged and married to her all in one week, and he had lived with her less than a month before being trans- ferred to his present post, so that he had not yet discovered what she was like. He did rather miss her, though.
'Must write her a long letter,' he thought.
The flag on the inn was rain-soaked and hung limp, while the inn itself looked darker and lower than before with its wet roof. Near the door stood a native cart. Kerbalay, a couple of Abkhazians and a Tatar girl in baggy trousers—she must be Kerbalay's wife or daughter— were carrying full sacks out of the inn and packing them on maize straw in the cart. Near the cart stood a pair of donkeys with lowered heads. After loading the sacks, the Abkhazians and the Tatar girl began pntting straw on top) and Kerbalay hurried to harness the donkeys to the cart.
'Smuggling, perhaps,' thought the deacon.
Now he came to the fallen tree with its dry needles, and over there was the black patch from the bonfire. He remembered rhe picnic in every detail—the fire, the Abkhazians singing, his sweet dreams about being a bishop and about the church procession.
The rain had made Black Brook blacker and broader. The deacon circumspectly crossed by the rickety bridge, now lapped by dirty wave-crests, and climbed the ladder into the drying-barn.
'He has a good head on his shoulders,' he thought, stretching om on the straw and thinking of Von Koren. 'A fine brain, that—and bcst of luck to him! But there is this cruelty about him '
Why did Von Koren hate Layevsky? Why did Layevsky hate Von Koren? Why were they fighting this duel? Unlike the deacon, they had not suffered dire penury from their earliest years. Nor had they been brought up by a lot of thick-skinned, money-grubbing oafs who grudged them evcry mouthful of food—rough-mannered louu who spat on the floor and belched after dinner or during prayers. They had been spoilt from boyhood onwards by living among an clite in a good environment. Had this been othcrwise, how they would now cleave to each other! How gladly they would forgive each other's faults and prize each other's good qualities! Why, there are so few people in this world who evcn have decent manners! Layevsky was mischievous, dissolute, eccentric—true. But at least he wouldn't steal, spit loudly on the floor or curse his wife. ('Guzzles her food, but not a hand's tum will she do!') He wouldn't whip a child with harness reins, or fecd his servants putrid salt beef. Surely these things entitled him to some consideration ? Moreover, was he not hi^^lf his own worst enemy? Did he not suffer—as an injured man suffers from his wounds? Instead of such ^»ple giving way to boredom and mistakenly inspecting each other for of degeneracy, decline and bad breeding, which made precious little sense, would they not do better to stoop lower? Why not vent their hatred and anger on whole streeu where the welkin groaru with barbarism, ignorance, greed, quarrels, filth, foul oaths and women's screams ?
The deacon's thoughts were interrupted by the clatter of a carriage. Pecping through the door, he saw three men in the vehicle—Layevsk:y, Sh^^ovsk:y and the postmaster.
'^^t !' said Sh^^ovsky.
AU threc climbed down and looked at each other.
'They're not here yet,' Sheshkovsky said, shaking off the dust. Ah, well. Lct'» look for a rite while we're waiting for proceedings to begin. There's no room to move here.'
They went off up-stream and soon vanished from view. The Tatar coach^^ climbed iruide the carriage, laid his head on his shoulder and feU a.s.leep. The deacon waited ten minutes, then came out of the barn, removing hi.s black lut to ^ke himself inconspicuous. Crouching and looking around him, he threaded his way along the bank among bushes and strips of maize while heavy drops fell on him from trees and bushes. G^m and maize were wet.
'Scandalow,' he muttered, gathering up his. wet, muddy skirts. 'I'd never have come if I'd k:nown.'
Soon he heard voices and saw people. :Uyevsky lud his luni iruide his sleeves, and was rapidly pacing back and forth in a small clearing, his head bowed. Near the b^i st^^ his seconds, rolling agar^to.
'How odd,' the deacon thought, not rccognizing Layevsky's walk. 'He looks positively senile.'
'Most discourteous of them,' said the postal official, glancing at his watch. 'These ac:idcmics may think it good form to turn up late, but it's danrn bad manncrs if you ask me.'
Sheshkovsky, a fat man with a black beard, prickcd up his ears. 'Here they arc.'
XIX
'I've never seen anything like it—how fabulous!' said Von Koren, appearing in the glade and holding out both hands to the east. 'Look— green light!'