A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail IUr'evich Lermontov [77]
“Very good, doctor, come here.”
The doctor approached. The poor doctor! He was paler than Grushnitsky had been ten or so minutes ago.
I pronounced the following words purposefully, with pauses, loudly and distinctly, just as they pronounce death sentences:
“Doctor, these gentlemen, likely in haste, have forgotten to put a bullet in my pistol. I ask you to load it again—and well!”
“It’s not possible!” cried the captain. “It’s not possible! I loaded both pistols. Unless, perhaps the ball rolled out of yours . . . and that’s not my fault! But you don’t have the right to reload . . . no right . . . this is completely against the rules, and I don’t allow it . . .”
“Good!” I said to the captain, “if that is so, then you and I will shoot under the very same conditions . . .” He stopped short.
Grushnitsky stood, having lowered his head onto his breast, embarrassed and dismal.
“Let them!” he said finally to the captain, who wanted to pull my pistol from the doctor’s hands . . . “You know yourself that they are right.”
In vain, the captain was making various signals to him—and Grushnitsky didn’t want to look.
In the meantime, the doctor had loaded the pistol and given it to me. Having seen this, the captain spat and stamped his foot.
“You are such a fool, brother,” he said. “A vulgar fool! . . . Since you put yourself in my hands you should listen to me in everything . . . It serves you right! Die, like a fly . . .”
He turned and walked off, muttering, “And anyway, this is completely against the rules.”
“Grushnitsky!” I said. “There is still time. Retract your slander, and I will forgive you everything. You didn’t succeed in fooling me, and my vanity is satisfied—remember, we were once friends . . .”
His face flared up, his eyes sparkled.
“Shoot!” he answered. “I despise myself, and I hate you. If you don’t kill me, I will stab you from around a corner one night. There isn’t room on this earth for both of us . . .”
I shot . . .
When the smoke had dissipated, there was no Grushnitsky on the platform. Only a light pillar of dust still curled up at the edge of the precipice.
Everyone cried out in one voice.
“É finita la commedia!”21 I said to the doctor.
He didn’t reply and turned away in horror.
I shrugged my shoulders and exchanged bows with Grushnitsky’s seconds.
Going down the path, I noticed Grushnitsky’s bloody corpse between fissures in the rock. I couldn’t help closing my eyes . . . Leading my horse away, I set off for home at a walking pace. There was a stone in my heart. The sun seemed dim to me, its rays didn’t warm me.
Before reaching the slobodka, I turned right along the gully. The sight of another person would have been distressing to me. I wanted to be alone. Having let go of the reins and lowered my head onto my breast, I rode for a long time, and finally found myself in a place that was entirely unknown to me. I turned the horse around and started to search for the road. The sun was already setting when I rode up toward Kislovodsk, worn out, on a worn-out horse.
My lackey told me that Werner had come by and delivered two notes. One from him, the other . . . from Vera.
I unsealed the first, and it had the following contents:
Everything was arranged as best as it could have been. The body has been brought back, disfigured, the bullet pulled from its breast. Everyone is convinced that the cause of his death was an unfortunate accident. The commandant, to whom our disagreement is probably known, only shook his head but didn’t say anything. There is no evidence of any kind against you, and you can sleep peacefully . . . If you are able . . . Farewell . . .
I took a long time in deciding to open the second note . . . What could she have written to me? . . . A heavy foreboding worried my soul.
This is it, the letter, of which each word is indelibly marked onto my memory:
I am writing to you in the full certainty that we will never see each other again. I thought