Chapter 14 "Duel" Thirteen

Thirteen Laevsky received two small notes.He opened one of them and it said: "Don't go, my dear." "Who could have written this?" he thought to himself. "Of course not Samoylenko. ...and not the deacon, because he doesn't know I'm leaving.Could it be von Koren? " The zoologist leaned his head down to the table and was drawing a pyramid.It seemed to Laevsky that there was a smile in his eyes. "Probably rumors of Samoylenko have gone, . . . " thought Laevsky. Another note, in the same crooked handwriting, with long tails and little hooks behind the letters, read: "Someone can't leave on Saturday."

"Stupid mockery," thought Laevsky. "Friday, Friday..." Something rose in his throat.He pulled his collar and coughed, but what came out of his throat was not a cough, but a laugh. "Hahaha!" He laughed. "Hahaha!" "What am I laughing at?" he thought to himself. "Hahaha!" He tried his best to control himself and covered his mouth with his hand, but the laughter weighed on his chest and neck, and his hand couldn't seal his mouth. "Oh, how stupid that is!" he thought, laughing uncontrollably. "Am I crazy or something?"

The laughter grew louder and became barking like a poodle.Laevsky tried to get up from the table, but his legs would not work, and his right hand was a little strange, and he danced on the table involuntarily, scratching at the pieces of paper and squeezing them in the palm of his hand. He saw people's amazed eyes, Samoylenko's stern and terrified face, and the zoologist's eyes full of cruel ridicule and disgust, and only then did he realize that he was hysterical. "What a disgrace, what a disgrace," he thought, feeling tears streaming down his cheeks. . . . "Oh, oh, what a downfall! It never happened to me.

..." At that moment they took him by the arms, held his head behind him, and carried him to nowhere.Then a glass flashed before his eyes, hitting his teeth and splashing water on his chest.It was a small room with two beds side by side in the center, covered with clean, snow-white sheets.He fell on a bed and wept bitterly. "Never mind, never mind . . . " said Samoylenko. "It happens all the time. . . . It happens all the time. . . . " Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was shaking with terror, feeling something terrible about to happen, and she Standing by the bed, she asked, "What's the matter with you? What's the matter? For God's sake, tell me. . . . " "Could it be that Kirilin wrote him something?" she thought to herself.

"Nothing, . . . " said Laevsky, laughing and weeping. "Go away, . . . honey." There was neither hatred nor disgust on his face, which showed that he knew nothing.Somewhat relieved, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went into the drawing room. "Don't get excited, my dear!" Marya Konstantinovna said to her, sitting down next to her, and taking her by the hand. "This will pass. Men are as weak as us sinners. You two are going through a serious moment, . .” "No, let's not talk about it . . . " said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, listening to Laevsky's cries. "I'm sorry. . . . Let me go."

"What are you talking about, my dear, what are you talking about!" said Marya Konstantinovna in horror. "Do you think I can let you go without supper? Wait until you have finished your meal." "I'm sorry..." whispered Nadezhda Fyodorovna, who grasped the arms of the armchair with both hands in fear of falling. "He has a convulsion!" said von Koren cheerfully, and came into the drawing-room, but at the sight of Nadezhda Fyodorovna, he was alarmed and left the drawing-room. When the hysteria was over, Laevsky sat on someone else's bed and thought to himself: "Shame, crying like a little girl! I must be ridiculous and disgusting like that. I'll go out the back door.  … But in this way, I took my hysteria too seriously. It should be treated as a joke and perfunctory.

..." He looked in the mirror, sat for a while, and then went to the living room. "I'm coming!" he said with a smile.He was terribly ashamed, and felt that others were ashamed to see him. "That's what happens," he said, sitting down. "I was sitting there, but all of a sudden, guess what, I felt a sharp pain in both sides of my chest, . In these tense times, there is no way around it!" At the dinner table, he drank wine, chatted, occasionally sighed suddenly, and rubbed the sides of his chest, as if the pain had not subsided.Nobody believed him except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and he saw it himself.

After nine o'clock, people went for a walk on the boulevard.Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was afraid that Kirilin would try to talk to her, and she kept trying to stay close to Marya Konstantinovna and the children.Fear and depression made her limbs weak, and she had a premonition of a fever attack, so she was so tired that she could barely move her legs.But she did not go home, because she believed that Kirilin or Atchmianov would follow her, or both would come to her together.Kirilin was now behind her, walking side by side with Nikodim Alexandritch, humming in a singing voice: "I won't let people play with me! I won't let people play with me!"

They turned a corner from the avenue and headed for the kiosk.They walked along the shore, watching for a long time the phosphorescence of the sea.Von Koren began to explain how phosphorescence is produced on the surface of the sea.