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

were anxiously watching this scene from outside also realized in what deadly danger he stood. Out in the yard and by the open windows there brooded such a hush and quiet that, all of a sudden, a nightingale a few paces off began to trill her joyous lay.

“Let me go,” came at last like a hoarse whisper from Biek-Agamalov’s bitten lips.

“Biek, you must never strike a woman,” replied Romashov calmly. “You would blush for it as long as you lived.”

The last sparks of rage and madness now died out in Agamalov’s eyes. Romashov drew a deep breath as if from a long swoon. His heart beat irregularly and quick, and his head was again heavy and feverishly hot.

“Let me go!” shrieked Biek-Agamalov once more in a fierce tone, and tried to release himself. Romashov felt he would no longer be able to keep his hold of him; but he had no further dread of his wrath. He said in a caressing brotherly tone, as he laid his hand on his comrade’s shoulder⁠—

“Forgive me, Biek, but I know that a day will come when you will thank me for this.”

Biek-Agamalov with a loud snap stuck his sabre into its sheath.

“All right, confound you!” he screamed in an angry tone, in which, however, there was a note of shame and confusion. “We’ll settle this matter afterwards. But what right have you⁠—?”

The valiant crowd in the yard now understood that all danger was over for the present. With loud, but not quite natural, peals of laughter, the lot now rushed into the room. But he now seemed extinguished, his strength exhausted, and there was something apathetic and ironically contemptuous about him.

Now Madame Schleyfer herself⁠—a massive lady with a hard look, small dark pouches under her eyes, disappearing eyelashes, and great layers of fat on her neck and bosom⁠—entered the room. She attacked first one and then the other of the officers; took tight hold of one by a button, of another by a sleeve, and howled to each of them who could stand and listen her everlasting song⁠—

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, who will make good all this? Who will pay for the mirror, the furniture, the bottles, the girls?”

All this meanwhile was settled to the satisfaction of the authorities by the same mysterious “benefactor” who had provided for everything else in the course of this memorable excursion. The officers left the room in groups. Every one of them inhaled with delight the mild, pure air of the May night. Romashov felt all his being thrilled with a certain joyous agitation. It seemed to him as if all traces of the day’s orgies had vanished from his brain, as if a pair of innocent fresh lips had repurified and refreshed him by a soft kiss on his brow.

Biek-Agamalov came up to him, took his hand, and said⁠—

“Romashov, come and ride in my carriage. I wish you to do so.”

And when Romashov, on one occasion during the journey home, turned towards the right to observe the awkward gallop of the horses, Biek-Agamalov seized his hand and pressed it for a long time warmly⁠—nay, so hard that it almost caused pain. Not a word, however, passed between the two officers during the whole way.

XIX

The violent emotion felt by every member of the company during the wild scene we have just depicted found expression in a nervous irritability which, on their return to the mess-room, took the form of reckless arrogance and gross misbehaviour to all who happened to come across the officers on their way home. A poor Jew coming along was stopped and deprived of his cap. Olisár got up in the carriage, and insulted, in the outskirts of the town, in the middle of the street, all passersby in a manner which cannot be decently described. Bobetinski whipped his coachman for no reason whatever. The others sang and bawled with all their might; only Biek-Agamalov, who rode beside Romashov, sat all the time angry, silent, and taciturn.

Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the mess-rooms were brilliantly illuminated and full of people. In the card and billiard-rooms and at the buffet creatures with unbuttoned coats, flaming faces, vacantly staring eyes and of uncertain gait, helplessly collided with each other, heavily fuddled by the fumes of wine and tobacco smoke. Romashov, who was walking about and nodding to several of the officers, also found among them, to his great astonishment, Nikoläiev. He was sitting by Osadchi, red in face and intoxicated, but holding himself upright. On seeing Romashov approaching he eyed him sharply for a few seconds, but afterwards turned abruptly aside, so as to avoid holding out his hand to the latter, meanwhile conversing with his neighbour with increased interest.

“Viätkin, come here and sing,” bellowed Osadchi over the heads of the rest.

“Yes, come let us sing,” chanted Viätkin, in reply, parodying, imitating, and caricaturing a melody from the Church ritual⁠—

“Three small boys found lurching
Got an awful birching
At the parson’s stile.”

Viätkin imitated in quick succession and in the same tone the strophes recited in the remainder of the antiphon at Mass⁠—

“Sexton, parson, and his clerk
Thought the smacking quite a lark.
Then the beadle said, ‘By hell,
Nikifor, you smack right well.’ ”

“Nikifor, you smack right well!”

answered pianissimo in complete harmony the hastily improvised choir of drunken officers, seconded by Osadchi’s softly rumbling bass voice.

Viätkin conducted the singing, standing on a table in the middle of the room, whilst stretching his arms in an attitude of benediction over the heads of the “congregation.” Now his eyes flashed terrifying glances of threat and condemnation; at another time they were raised to heaven with a languishing expression of infinite beatitude; then he hissed with rage at those who sang out of tune; again he stopped in time by a scarcely perceptible tremolo of the palm of his hand a run to a misplaced crescendo.

“Staff-Captain Lieschtschenko, you’re singing damnably. Damn it, what a wretched ear!” roared Osadchi. “Keep quiet in the room, gentlemen. No noise, please,