Enemies

At ten o’clock of a dark September evening, the only son of Dr. Kirilov, the zemstvo physician, six-year-old Andrey, died of diphtheria. Just as the doctor’s wife sank to her knees before the little bed of the dead child, and the first onslaught of despair took hold of her, a bell rang sharply in the front hall.

On account of the diphtheria, all the servants had been sent out of the house since morning. Kirilov, just as he was, without his coat, in an unbuttoned waistcoat, his face and hands wet and still burning from carbolic, went himself to open the door. The hall was dark, and in the man who entered one could make out only a middling height, a white muffler, and a large, extremely pale face – so pale that it seemed the hall grew brighter for its appearing.

“Is the doctor at home?” the man who had entered asked quickly.

“I am at home,” Kirilov answered. “What do you want?”

“Ah, it’s you? Very glad!” the newcomer rejoiced, and began groping in the dark for the doctor’s hand, found it, and pressed it hard in his own. “Very – very glad! We’re acquainted!.. I am Abogin... I had the pleasure of seeing you this summer at Gnuchev’s. Very glad I caught you at home... For God’s sake, don’t refuse to come with me at once... My wife has fallen dangerously ill... And I have a carriage with me...”

By his voice and movements one could tell that the man who had come in was in a state of strong agitation. As though frightened by a fire or a mad dog, he could barely hold back his rapid breathing, and spoke quickly, in a trembling voice, and something genuinely sincere, childishly faint-hearted, sounded in his speech. Like all who are frightened and stunned, he spoke in short, jerky phrases, and uttered many superfluous words that had nothing to do with the matter.

“I was afraid of not finding you in,” he went on. “All the way here my soul has been in torment... Get dressed, and let us go, for God’s sake... It happened like this. Papchinsky, Alexander Semyonovich, whom you know, came to see me... We talked... then we sat down to tea; suddenly my wife cries out, clutches at her heart, and falls back against the chair. We carried her to bed and... I’ve already been rubbing her temples with ammonia and sprinkling her with water... she lies there like a dead woman... I’m afraid it’s an aneurysm... Let us go... Her own father died of an aneurysm...”

Kirilov listened and was silent, as though he did not understand Russian speech.

When Abogin mentioned Papchinsky once more, and his wife’s father, and once more began groping in the dark for the doctor’s hand, the doctor shook his head and said, apathetically drawing out each word:

“Forgive me, I cannot come... Five minutes ago my son... died.”

“Can it be?” Abogin whispered, stepping back. “My God, what an unlucky hour I have chanced upon! Astonishingly unfortunate a day... astonishing! What a coincidence... as if on purpose!”

Abogin took hold of the door handle and bowed his head in thought. He plainly hesitated, not knowing what to do: whether to go, or to go on entreating the doctor.

“Listen,” he said hotly, seizing Kirilov by the sleeve, “I understand your position perfectly! God is my witness, I am ashamed that I should try to claim your attention at such a moment, but what am I to do? Judge for yourself, to whom else should I go? There is no other doctor here besides you. Come, for God’s sake! It is not for myself I ask... It is not I who am ill!”

There was a silence. Kirilov turned his back on Abogin, stood a moment, and walked slowly out of the hall into the drawing room. Judging by his unsteady, mechanical gait, and by the attention with which, once in the drawing room, he straightened the shaggy shade on the unlit lamp and peered into the thick book lying on the table, at that moment he had neither intentions nor desires, was thinking of nothing at all, and had probably already forgotten that a stranger was standing in his hall. The dusk and stillness of the drawing room seemed to deepen his stupor. Going from the drawing room to his study, he lifted his right foot higher than was needed, groped with his hands for the doorposts, and the whole time his figure conveyed a kind of bewilderment, as though he had wandered into someone else’s flat, or had got drunk for the first time in his life and now, in bewilderment, was surrendering to the new sensation. A wide band of light stretched along one wall of the study, through the bookcases; together with the heavy, stifling smell of carbolic and ether, this light came from a door standing slightly ajar, leading from the study into the bedroom... The doctor sank into the armchair before the desk; for a minute he gazed drowsily at his lit-up books, then rose and went into the bedroom.

Here, in the bedroom, a deathly stillness reigned. Everything, down to the smallest trifle, spoke eloquently of the storm just lived through, of exhaustion, and everything was resting. A candle, standing on a stool amid a crowded throng of little bottles, boxes, and jars, and a large lamp on the chest of drawers, brightly lit the whole room. On the bed, close by the window, lay a boy with open eyes and an expression of astonishment on his face. He did not move, but his open eyes seemed with every instant to grow darker and to sink further back into the skull. Laying her hands upon his body and hiding her face in the folds of the bedclothes, the mother knelt before the bed. Like the boy, she did not stir, and yet how much living movement could be felt in the curve of her body and in her hands! She clung to the bed with her whole being, with force and greediness, as though afraid of disturbing the peaceful, comfortable pose which she had found at last for her exhausted body. Blankets, rags, basins, puddles on the floor, small brushes and spoons scattered everywhere, a white bottle of lime-water, the very air, stifling and heavy – everything had gone still and seemed sunk in repose.

The doctor stopped beside his wife, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, and, tilting his head to one side, fixed his gaze on his son. His face expressed indifference; only by the little drops glistening on his beard could one tell that he had lately been weeping.

That repellent horror which people think of when they speak of death was absent from the bedroom. In the general numbness, in the mother’s pose, in the indifference of the doctor’s face, there lay something that drew one in, that touched the heart – precisely that fine, barely perceptible beauty of human grief which men will not soon learn to understand and describe, and which, it seems, only music knows how to convey. This beauty was felt too in the sullen stillness; Kirilov and his wife were silent, did not weep, as though, besides the weight of their loss, they were conscious also of the whole lyric quality of their position: just as their youth had once, in its time, passed away, so now, together with this boy, their right to have children was passing forever into eternity. The doctor was forty-four years old, already gray and looking an old man; his faded and sickly wife was thirty-five. Andrey had been not only their only child, but their last.

Unlike his wife, the doctor belonged to that class of natures which, in times of spiritual pain, feel a need for movement. Having stood by his wife some five minutes, lifting his right foot high, he went from the bedroom into a small room half taken up by a wide couch; from there he went on into the kitchen. Having wandered a while about the stove and the cook’s bed, he stooped and went out through a small door into the hall.

Here he again saw the white muffler and the pale face.

“At last!” Abogin sighed, taking hold of the door handle. “Let us go, please!”

The doctor started, looked at him, and remembered...

“Listen, I have already told you that I cannot go!” he said, coming to life. “How strange!”

“Doctor, I am not a block of wood, I understand your position perfectly... I sympathize with you!” Abogin said in an imploring voice, pressing a hand to his muffler. “But it is not for myself I ask... My wife is dying! If you had heard that cry, seen her face, you would understand my insistence! My God, and here I thought you had gone to dress! Doctor, time is precious! Let us go, I beg you!”

“I cannot go!” Kirilov said with deliberation, and stepped into the drawing room.

Abogin went after him and caught him by the sleeve.

“You have a grief, I understand, but I am not inviting you to treat a toothache, not to give expert testimony, but to save a human life!” he went on entreating, like a beggar. “This life is above any personal grief! Come, I am asking for courage, for a feat of heroism! In the name of love of mankind!”

“Love of mankind is a stick with two ends!” Kirilov said irritably. “In the name of that same love of mankind I ask you not to carry me off. And how strange, by God! I can scarcely stand on my feet, and you frighten me with love of mankind! I am fit for nothing just now... I won’t go for anything, and besides, on whom shall I leave my wife? No, no...”

Kirilov waved his hands and stepped back.

“And... don’t ask me!” he went on in fright. “Forgive me... By Volume Thirteen of the Statutes I am bound to go, and you have the right to drag me off by the collar... Very well, drag me, but... I am fit for nothing... I’m not even able to speak... Forgive me...”

“You are wrong, doctor, to speak to me in that tone!” Abogin said, again taking the doctor by the sleeve. “To the devil with Volume Thirteen! I have no right whatever to force your will. If you wish, come; if you do not, God be with you, but it is not to your will I am appealing, but to your feeling. A young woman is dying! You say your son has just died – who if not you should understand my horror?”

Abogin’s voice trembled with emotion; in that trembling and in the tone there was far more persuasiveness than in the words themselves. Abogin was sincere, but it was remarkable that whatever phrases he uttered, they all came out of him stilted, soulless, unsuitably flowery, and seemed almost to insult both the air of the doctor’s flat and the woman dying somewhere far off. He felt this himself, and therefore, fearing to be misunderstood, tried with all his might to give his voice softness and tenderness, so as to prevail, if not by his words, then at least by the sincerity of his tone. In general a phrase, however beautiful and profound, acts only upon the indifferent, and cannot always satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness is most often silence; lovers understand one another better when they are silent, and a hot, passionate speech delivered over a grave touches only bystanders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and insignificant.

Kirilov stood and was silent. When Abogin had said a few more phrases about the lofty calling of a physician, about self-sacrifice, and so forth, the doctor asked sullenly:

“Is it far to go?”

“Something like thirteen or fourteen versts. I have excellent horses, doctor! I give you my word of honor that I will bring you there and back in one hour. Only one hour!”

These last words acted upon the doctor more strongly than the appeals to love of mankind or to a physician’s calling. He thought a moment and said with a sigh:

“Very well, let us go!”

He walked quickly, now with a steady gait, to his study, and a little later returned in a long frock coat. Mincing beside him with small steps and shuffling his feet, the overjoyed Abogin helped him into his overcoat and went out of the house together with him.

Out in the yard it was dark, but lighter than in the hall. In the darkness the doctor’s tall, stooping figure, with its long, narrow beard and aquiline nose, was already clearly outlined. Besides his pale face, one could now also see Abogin’s large head and small student’s cap, which scarcely covered the crown of his head. The muffler showed white only in front; behind, it was hidden behind his long hair.

“Believe me, I shall know how to value your generosity,” Abogin muttered, helping the doctor into the carriage. “We shall get there in no time. And you, Luka, my dear fellow, drive as fast as you can! Please!”

The coachman drove fast. First there stretched a row of nondescript buildings standing along the hospital yard; everywhere it was dark, only deep in the yard, out of someone’s window, through a garden fence, there broke a bright light, and three windows on the upper floor of the hospital building seemed paler than the air. Then the carriage drove into thick darkness; here there was a smell of mushroom dampness, and a whispering of trees could be heard; the crows, wakened by the noise of the wheels, stirred in the foliage and raised an anxious, plaintive cry, as though they knew that the doctor’s son had died, and Abogin’s wife was ill. But now separate trees, bushes, flashed by; a pond gleamed sullenly, on which great black shadows lay asleep – and the carriage rolled out onto a smooth plain. The crows’ cry was heard now only dully, far behind, and soon died away altogether.

For almost the whole way Kirilov and Abogin were silent. Only once Abogin sighed deeply and muttered:

“It is a tormenting state. One never loves those close to one so much as when one risks losing them.”

And when the carriage was slowly crossing the river, Kirilov suddenly started, as though the splash of the water had frightened him, and began to stir.

“Listen, let me go,” he said miserably. “I will come to you afterward. I only need to send the feldsher to my wife. After all, she is alone!”

Abogin was silent. The carriage, swaying and jolting over the stones, drove across a sandy bank and rolled on further. Kirilov tossed about in anguish and looked around him. Behind, through the meager starlight, the road was visible, and the willows on the bank vanishing into the dark. To the right lay the plain, as level and boundless as the sky; far off upon it, here and there, dim lights burned, probably over peat bogs. To the left, running parallel with the road, stretched a hill, curly with low bushes, and above the hill stood motionless a great half-moon, red, faintly veiled in mist, and surrounded by small clouds which seemed to be watching it on every side and keeping guard lest it should slip away.

Everything in nature seemed hopeless and sick; the earth, like a fallen woman who sits alone in a dark room and tries not to think of the past, languished with memories of spring and summer and apathetically awaited the inevitable winter. Wherever one looked, nature seemed everywhere a dark, boundlessly deep and cold pit, out of which neither Kirilov, nor Abogin, nor the red half-moon could ever climb.

The nearer the carriage came to its goal, the more impatient Abogin grew. He kept moving, jumping up, peering forward over the coachman’s shoulder. And when at last the carriage stopped before a porch handsomely draped with striped canvas, and when he glanced up at the lighted windows of the second floor, one could hear how his breath trembled.

“If anything has happened, then... I shall not survive it,” he said, going into the hall with the doctor and rubbing his hands in agitation. “But there’s no sound of commotion, so it’s still all right, for the time being,” he added, listening to the silence.

In the hall neither voices nor footsteps could be heard, and the whole house seemed asleep, despite its bright lighting. Now the doctor and Abogin, who till then had been in the dark, could make each other out. The doctor was tall, stooping, carelessly dressed, and had an unhandsome face. Something unpleasantly harsh, unkind, and severe was expressed by his thick, negroid lips, his aquiline nose, and his listless, indifferent gaze. His unkempt head, his sunken temples, the premature gray in his long, narrow beard, through which his chin showed, his pale, gray complexion, and his careless, angular manners – all this, with its hardness, suggested thoughts of privation once endured, of hard fortune, of weariness with life and with people. Looking at his whole dry figure, one could hardly believe that this man had a wife, that he could weep over a child. Abogin, on the other hand, presented something quite different. He was a stout, solidly built blond man, with a large head and large but soft features, dressed elegantly, in the very latest fashion. In his bearing, in his tightly buttoned frock coat, in his mane of hair and his face, there was felt something noble, leonine; he walked holding his head straight and his chest thrown forward, spoke in a pleasant baritone, and in the manner in which he removed his muffler or smoothed the hair on his head there showed through a delicate, almost feminine elegance. Even the pallor and the childish fear with which, as he undressed, he glanced up the staircase, did not spoil his bearing or diminish the well-fed health and self-assurance that breathed from his whole figure.

“No one about and nothing to be heard,” he said, going up the staircase. “No commotion. God grant it stays so!”

He led the doctor through the hall into a large drawing room, where a black grand piano showed dark and a chandelier hung in a white cover; from there the two of them passed into a small, very cozy and handsome sitting room, full of a pleasant rosy half-light.

“Well, sit here a moment, doctor,” said Abogin, “and I... at once. I’ll go and see, and give warning.”

Kirilov was left alone. The luxury of the sitting room, the pleasant half-light, and even his own presence in a strange, unfamiliar house, which had the character of an adventure, apparently did not touch him. He sat in the armchair and examined his hands, burnt from the carbolic. Only in passing did he catch sight of a bright red lampshade, a cello case, and, glancing sidelong toward where a clock was ticking, he noticed a stuffed wolf, as solid and well-fed as Abogin himself.

It was quiet... Somewhere far off, in the neighboring rooms, someone loudly uttered the sound “Ah!”, a glass door – of a cupboard, probably – rang out, and again all was still. Having waited some five minutes, Kirilov stopped examining his hands and raised his eyes to the door behind which Abogin had disappeared.

At the threshold of that door stood Abogin, but not the same man who had gone out. The expression of well-fed comfort and delicate elegance had vanished from him; his face, his hands, his whole pose were twisted by a hideous expression of something between horror and agonizing physical pain. His nose, lips, mustache, every feature was moving, and seemed to be trying to tear itself away from his face, while his eyes seemed to be laughing from pain...

Abogin took a heavy, wide step into the middle of the sitting room, bent double, groaned, and shook his fists.

“She deceived me!” he cried, bearing hard on the word deceived. “Deceived me! Gone! She fell ill and sent me for the doctor only in order to run off with that buffoon Papchinsky! My God!”

Abogin took a heavy step toward the doctor, stretched his soft white fists toward his face, and, shaking them, went on shrieking:

“Gone! Deceived me! But what was the need of this lie?! My God! My God! What was the need of this filthy, swindler’s trick, this devilish, serpentine game? What did I do to her? Gone!”

Tears burst from his eyes. He spun round on one foot and began pacing the sitting room. Now, in his short frock coat, in his fashionable narrow trousers, in which his legs looked too thin for his body, with his large head and mane of hair, he looked exceedingly like a lion. On the doctor’s indifferent face there kindled a look of curiosity. He rose and looked Abogin over.

“Excuse me, but where is the sick woman?” he asked.

“Sick! Sick!” Abogin cried, laughing, weeping, and still shaking his fists. “She is not sick, she is accursed! Vileness! Baseness, filthier than anything even Satan himself could devise! Sent me away only to run off, to run off with a buffoon, a dull-witted clown, a kept man’s kept man! Oh God, better she had died! I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!”

The doctor drew himself up straight. His eyes blinked and filled with tears, his narrow beard moved right and left together with his jaw.

“Excuse me, but how is this?” he asked, looking about him with curiosity. “My child has died, my wife is in anguish, alone in the whole house... I myself can scarcely stand on my feet, I haven’t slept for three nights... and what happens? I am made to play a part in some vulgar comedy, to play the role of a stage prop! I... I don’t understand!”

Abogin unclenched one fist, flung a crumpled note onto the floor, and trod on it as on some insect one wants to crush.

“And I did not see... did not understand!” he was saying through clenched teeth, shaking one fist near his own face, with an expression as though someone had trodden on his corn. “I did not notice that he came here every day, did not notice that he came today in a closed carriage! Why in a closed carriage? And I did not see it! What a fool!”

“I... I don’t understand!” the doctor muttered. “Why, what is this, after all! This is a mockery of a man, a jeering at human suffering! This is something impossible... I see it for the first time in my life!”

With the dull astonishment of a man who has only just begun to understand that he has been grievously insulted, the doctor shrugged his shoulders, spread his hands, and, not knowing what to say or do, sank into the armchair in exhaustion.

“Well, if you have fallen out of love and fallen in love with another – God be with you, but why the deceit, why this base, treacherous trick?” Abogin said in a tearful voice. “What was it for? And for what? What did I do to you? Listen, doctor,” he said hotly, coming up to Kirilov. “You have been an unwilling witness of my misfortune, and I will not hide the truth from you. I swear to you that I loved this woman, loved her devoutly, like a slave! For her sake I sacrificed everything: quarreled with my family, gave up the civil service and music, forgave her what I could not have forgiven in a mother or a sister... Not once did I look at her askance... gave her no cause whatever! Why, then, this lie? I do not demand love, but why this vile deceit? If you don’t love me, say so plainly, honestly, all the more since you know my views on the matter...”

With tears in his eyes, trembling all over, Abogin sincerely poured out his soul before the doctor. He spoke fervently, pressing both hands to his heart, laying bare his family secrets without the slightest hesitation, and seemed even glad that at last these secrets had broken free out of his breast. Had he gone on speaking in this way for an hour, for two, had he poured out his whole soul, he would no doubt have felt the easier for it. Who knows – had the doctor heard him out, sympathized with him in a friendly way, perhaps he, as so often happens, would have made his peace with his grief without protest, without committing any needless follies... But it fell out otherwise. While Abogin talked, the doctor, feeling himself insulted, was visibly changing. The indifference and astonishment on his face gave way, little by little, to an expression of bitter resentment, indignation, and anger. His features grew still sharper, harsher, more unpleasant. When Abogin held up before his eyes a photograph of a young woman with a handsome but dry and inexpressive, nun-like face, and asked whether, looking at that face, one could suppose it capable of expressing a lie, the doctor suddenly leapt up, his eyes flashed, and he said, roughly biting off each word:

“Why are you telling me all this? I do not wish to hear it! I do not wish to!” he cried, and struck the table with his fist. “I have no need of your vulgar secrets, the devil take them! You have no right to say such vulgarities to me! Or do you think I have not yet been insulted enough? That I am some lackey who may be insulted to the end? Eh?”

Abogin drew back from Kirilov and stared at him in amazement.

“Why did you bring me here?” the doctor went on, shaking his beard. “If out of sheer excess you marry, out of sheer excess you rage, and act out your melodramas, what is that to me? What have I in common with your love affairs? Leave me in peace! Practice your noble fisticuffs, strike poses of humane ideas, play” (the doctor glanced sideways at the cello case) – “play on your double-basses and trombones, grow fat like capons, but do not dare to jeer at another human being! If you do not know how to respect a person, then at least spare him your attention!”

“Excuse me, what does all this mean?” Abogin asked, flushing.

“It means that it is base and vile to play with people so! I am a physician; you regard physicians, and workingmen in general, who do not smell of perfume and prostitution, as your lackeys and your moveton Here: people of bad tone (French mauvais ton)., well, regard us so if you like, but no one gave you the right to make a stage prop out of a man who is suffering!”

“How dare you say this to me?” Abogin asked quietly, and his face again began to twitch, and this time plainly from anger.

“No, how dared you, knowing that I had a grief, bring me here to listen to vulgarities?” the doctor cried, and again struck the table with his fist. “Who gave you the right to mock at another man’s grief in this way?”

“You have lost your mind!” Abogin cried. “This is not generous of you! I myself am deeply unhappy and... and...”

“Unhappy,” the doctor sneered contemptuously. “Do not touch that word, it does not concern you. Wastrels who cannot find money to meet a promissory note also call themselves unhappy. A capon, pressed down by its own excess fat, is unhappy too. Worthless people!”

“My dear sir, you forget yourself!” Abogin shrieked. “For such words... one is struck! Do you understand?”

Abogin hurriedly thrust his hand into his side pocket, pulled out a wallet, and, taking out two notes, flung them onto the table.

“There, for your visit!” he said, his nostrils quivering. “You have been paid!”

“You dare not offer me money!” the doctor cried, and swept the notes off the table onto the floor. “One does not pay for an insult with money!”

Abogin and the doctor stood face to face, and in their anger went on hurling undeserved insults at each other. It seems that never in their lives, even in delirium, had they spoken so much that was unjust, cruel, and absurd. In both of them the egoism of the unhappy showed itself strongly. The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less able than fools to understand one another. Misfortune does not unite people but divides them, and even where, one would think, people ought to be bound together by a common kind of grief, far more injustice and cruelty is practiced than among those who are comparatively content.

“Kindly have me sent home!” the doctor cried, gasping for breath.

Abogin rang sharply. When no one came at his call, he rang once more and, angrily, flung the bell to the floor; it struck dully against the carpet and gave out a plaintive sound, like a dying groan. A footman appeared.

“Where have you all hidden yourselves, devil take you?!” the master pounced on him, clenching his fists. “Where were you just now? Go, tell them to bring the carriage round for this gentleman, and have my own carriage harnessed! Wait!” he cried, as the footman turned to go. “By tomorrow let there not be one traitor left in this house! Out with all of them! I’ll hire new ones! Vermin!”

While waiting for the carriages, Abogin and the doctor were silent. The former had already recovered his look of well-fed comfort and delicate elegance. He paced the sitting room, tossing his head elegantly, and was evidently plotting something. His anger had not yet cooled, but he tried to show that he did not notice his enemy... The doctor, meanwhile, stood holding the edge of the table with one hand, and looked at Abogin with that deep, somewhat cynical and unlovely contempt with which only grief and misfortune know how to look, when they see before them well-fed comfort and elegance.

When, a little later, the doctor got into the carriage and drove off, his eyes still went on looking contemptuous. It was dark, far darker than an hour before. The red half-moon had already gone down behind the hill, and the clouds that had kept watch over it lay in dark patches among the stars. A carriage with red lights clattered along the road and overtook the doctor. It was Abogin, driving off to protest, to do something foolish...

All the way the doctor thought not of his wife, not of Andrey, but of Abogin and the people living in the house he had just left. His thoughts were unjust and inhumanly cruel. He condemned Abogin, and his wife, and Papchinsky, and all who live in a rosy half-light and smell of perfume, and all the way he hated and despised them to the point of an ache in his heart. And in his mind there took shape a firm conviction about such people.

Time will pass, and Kirilov’s grief will pass too, but this conviction, unjust and unworthy of a human heart, will not pass, and will remain in the doctor’s mind until the grave.