The Duel - Aleksandr Kuprin (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📗

For some time past there had been a keen rivalry amongst the latter to display their acquaintance with the demands of fashion, according to which it was incumbent on a lady with pretensions to elegance scrupulously to avoid being among the first to reach the ballroom. The musicians were already in their places in a sort of gallery that was connected with the room by means of a large window composed of many panes of glass. Three-branched candelabra on the pillars between the windows shed their radiance, and lamps were suspended from the roof. The bright illumination on the scanty furniture, consisting only of Viennese chairs, the bare walls, and the common white muslin window-curtains, gave the somewhat spacious room a very empty and deserted air.

In the billiard-room the two Adjutants of the battalion, Biek-Agamalov and Olisár⁠—the only count in the regiment⁠—were engaged in a game of “Carolina.” The stakes were only ale. Olisár⁠—tall, gaunt, sleek, and pomaded⁠—an “old, young man” with wrinkled face and bald crown, scattered freely billiard-room jests and slang. Biek-Agamalov lost both his game and his temper in consequence. In the seat by the window sat Staff-Captain Lieschtschenko⁠—a melancholy individual of forty-five, an altogether miserable figure, the mere sight of which could bore people to death⁠—watching the game. His whole appearance gave the impression of hopeless melancholy. Everything about him was limp: his long, fleshy, wrinkled red nose; his dim, dark-brown threadlike moustache that reached down below his chin. His eyebrows, which grew a good way down to the bridge of his nose, made his eyes look as if he were just about to weep, and his thin, lean body with his sunken chest and sloping shoulders looked like a clotheshorse in its worn and shiny uniform. Lieschtschenko neither smoked, drank, nor played; but he found a strange pleasure in looking at the cards from behind the players’ backs, and in following the movements of the balls in the billiard-room. He likewise delighted in listening, huddled up in a dining-room window, to the row and vulgarities of the wildest drinking-bouts. He could thus sit, for hours at a time, motionless as a stone statue, and without uttering a single word. All the officers were so accustomed to this that they almost regarded the silent Lieschtschenko as one of the inevitable fixtures of a normal gambling or drinking bout.

After saluting the three officers, Romashov sat down by Lieschtschenko, who courteously made room for him, as with a deep sigh he fixed his sorrowful and friendly, doglike eyes on him.

“How is Maria Viktorovna?” asked Romashov in the careless and intentionally loud voice which is generally employed in conversation with deaf or rather stupid people, and which all the regiment (including the ensigns) used when they happened to address Lieschtschenko.

“Quite well, thanks,” replied Lieschtschenko with a still deeper sigh. “You understand⁠—her nerves; but, you know, at this time of year⁠—”

“But why did she not come with you? But perhaps Maria Viktorovna is not coming to the soirée tonight?”

“What do you mean? of course she’s coming; but you see, my dear fellow, there was no room for me in the cab. She and Raisa Peterson took a trap between them, and as you’ll understand, my dear fellow, they said to me, ‘Don’t come here with your dirty, rough boots, they simply ruin our clothes.’ ”

“Croisez in the middle⁠—a nice ‘kiss.’ Pick up the ball, Biek,” cried Olisár.

“I am not a lackey. Do you think I’ll pick up your balls?” replied Biek-Agamalov in a furious tone.

Lieschtschenko caught in his mouth the tips of his long moustaches, and thereupon began sucking and chewing them with an extremely thoughtful and troubled air.

“Yuri Alexievich, my dear fellow, I have a favour to ask you,” he blurted out at last in a shy and deprecating tone. “You lead the dance tonight, eh?”

“Yes, damn it all! They have so arranged it among themselves. I did try to get off it, kowtowed to the Adjutant⁠—ah, pretty nearly reported myself ill. ‘In that case,’ said he, ‘you must be good enough to hand in a medical certificate.’ ”

“This is what I want you to do for me,” Lieschtschenko went on in the same humble voice. “For God’s sake see that she does not have to sit out many dances.”

“Maria Viktorovna?”

“Yes, please⁠—”

“Double with the yellow in the corner,” said Biek-Agamalov, indicating the stroke he intended to make. Being short, he often found billiards very troublesome. To reach the ball now he was obliged to lie lengthways on the table. He became quite red in the face through the effort, and two veins in his forehead swelled to such an extent that they converged at the top of his nose like the letter V.13

“What a conjurer!” said Olisár in a jeering, ironical tone. “I could not do that.”

Agamalov’s cue touched the ball with a dry, scraping sound. The ball did not move from its place.

“Miss!” cried Olisár jubilantly, as he danced a cancan round the billiard table. “Do you snore when you sleep, my pretty creature?”

Agamalov banged the thick end of his cue on the floor.

“If you ever again speak when I am making a stroke,” he roared, his black eyes glittering, “I’ll throw up the game.”

“Don’t, whatever you do, get excited. It’s so bad for your health. Now it’s my turn.”

Just at that moment in rushed one of the soldiers stationed in the hall for the service of the ladies, and came to attention in front of Romashov.

“Your Honour, the ladies would like you to come into the ballroom.”

Three ladies who had just arrived were already pacing up and down the ballroom. They were none of them exactly young; the eldest of them, the wife of the Club President⁠—Anna Ivanovna Migunov⁠—turned to Romashov and exclaimed in a prim, affected tone, drawling out the words and tossing her head:

“Sublieutenant Romashov, please order the band to play something whilst we are waiting.”

“With pleasure, ladies,” replied Romashov with a polite bow. He then went up to the orchestra and