The Duel

by Anton Chekhov

  VI

  TWO fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world. “Three, seven, ace,” soon drove out of Hermann’s mind the thought of the dead Countess. “Three, seven, ace,” were perpetually running through his head and continually being repeated by his lips. If he saw a young girl, he would say: “How slender she is! quite like the three of hearts.” If anybody asked: “What is the time?” he would reply: “Five minutes to seven.” Every stout man that he saw reminded him of the ace. “Three, seven, ace” haunted him in his sleep, and assumed all possible shapes. The threes bloomed before him in the forms of magnificent flowers, the sevens were represented by Gothic portals, and the aces became transformed into gigantic spiders. One thought alone occupied his whole mind—to make a profitable use of the secret which he had purchased so dearly. He thought of applying for a furlough so as to travel abroad. He wanted to go to Paris and tempt fortune in some of the public gambling-houses that abounded there. Chance spared him all this trouble.

  There was in Moscow a society of rich gamesters, presided over by the celebrated Chekalinsky, who had passed all his life at the card-table and had amassed millions, accepting bills of exchange for his winnings and paying his losses in ready money. His long experience secured for him the confidence of his companions, and his open house, his famous cook, and his agreeable and fascinating manners gained for him the respect of the public. He came to St. Petersburg. The young men of the capital flocked to his rooms, forgetting balls for cards, and preferring the emotions of faro to the seductions of flirting. Narumov conducted Hermann to Chekalinsky’s residence.

  They passed through a suite of magnificent rooms, filled with attentive domestics. The place was crowded. Generals and Privy Counsellors were playing at whist; young men were lolling carelessly upon the velvet-covered sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes. In the drawing-room, at the head of a long table, around which were assembled about a score of players, sat the master of the house keeping the bank. He was a man of about sixty years of age, of a very dignified appearance; his head was covered with silvery-white hair; his full, florid countenance expressed good-nature, and his eyes twinkled with a perpetual smile. Narumov introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook him by the hand in a friendly manner, requested him not to stand on ceremony, and then went on dealing.

  The game occupied some time. On the table lay more than thirty cards. Chekalinsky paused after each throw, in order to give the players time to arrange their cards and note down their losses, listened politely to their requests, and more politely still, put straight the corners of cards that some player’s hand had chanced to bend. At last the game was finished. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards and prepared to deal again.

  “Will you allow me to take a card?” said Hermann, stretching out his hand from behind a stout gentleman who was punting.

  Chekalinsky smiled and bowed silently, as a sign of acquiescence. Narumov laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and wished him a lucky beginning.

  “Stake!” said Hermann, writing some figures with chalk on the back of his card.

  “How much?” asked the banker, contracting the muscles of his eyes; “excuse me, I cannot see quite clearly.”

  “Forty-seven thousand rubles,” replied Hermann.

  At these words every head in the room turned suddenly round, and all eyes were fixed upon Hermann.

  “He has taken leave of his senses!” thought Narumov.

  “Allow me to inform you,” said Chekalinsky, with his eternal smile, “that you are playing very high; nobody here has ever staked more than two hundred and seventy-five rubles at once.”

  “Very well,” replied Hermann; “but do you accept my card or not?”

  Chekalinsky bowed in token of consent.

  “I only wish to observe,” said he, “that although I have the greatest confidence in my friends, I can only play against ready money. For my own part, I am quite convinced that your word is sufficient, but for the sake of the order of the game, and to facilitate the reckoning up, I must ask you to put the money on your card.”

  Hermann drew from his pocket a bank-note and handed it to Chekalinsky, who, after examining it in a cursory manner, placed it on Hermann’s card.

  He began to deal. On the right a nine turned up, and on the left a three.

  “I have won!” said Hermann, showing his card.

  A murmur of astonishment arose among the players. Chekalinsky frowned, but the smile quickly returned to his face.

  “Do you wish me to settle with you?” he said to Hermann.

  “If you please,” replied the latter.

  Chekalinsky drew from his pocket a number of banknotes and paid at once. Hermann took up his money and left the table. Narumov could not recover from his astonishment. Hermann drank a glass of lemonade and returned home.

  The next evening he again repaired to Chekalinsky’s. The host was dealing. Hermann walked up to the table; the punters immediately made room for him. Chekalinsky greeted him with a gracious bow.

  Hermann waited for the next deal, took a card and placed upon it his forty-seven thousand roubles, together with his winnings of the previous evening.

  Chekalinsky began to deal. A knave turned up on the right, a seven on the left.

  Hermann showed his seven.

  There was a general exclamation. Chekalinsky was evidently ill at ease, but he counted out the ninety-four thousand rubles and handed them over to Hermann, who pocketed them in the coolest manner possible and immediately left the house.

  The next evening Hermann appeared again at the table. Every one was expecting him. The generals and Privy Counsellors left their whist in order to watch such extraordinary play. The young officers quitted their sofas, and even the servants crowded into the room. All pressed round Hermann. The other players left off punting, impatient to see how it would end. Hermann stood at the table and prepared to play alone against the pale, but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each opened a pack of cards. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann took a card and covered it with a pile of bank-notes. It was like a duel. Deep silence reigned around.

  Chekalinsky began to deal; his hands trembled. On the right a queen turned up, and on the left an ace.

  “Ace has won!” cried Hermann, showing his card.

  “Your queen has lost,” said Chekalinsky, politely.

  Hermann started; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of spades! He could not believe his eyes, nor could he understand how he had made such a mistake.

  At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled ironically and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable resemblance.

  “The old Countess!” he exclaimed, seized with terror.

  Chekalinsky gathered up his winnings. For some time, Hermann remained perfectly motionless. When at last he left the table, there was a general commotion in the room.

  “Splendidly punted!” said the players. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards afresh, and the game went on as usual.

  Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of the Obukhov Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: “Three, seven, ace!” “Three, seven, queen!”

  Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very amiable young man, a son of the former steward of the old Countess. He is in the service of the State somewhere, and is in receipt of a good income. Lizaveta is also supporting a poor relative.

  Tomsky has been promoted to the rank of captain, and has become the husband of the Princess Pauline.

  First published in 1834, Alexander Pushkin’s The Queen Of Spades is considered one of his finest prose pieces and a definitive example of the rakish brand of antihero that came to define Russian literary fiction. A milieu of dissipation, gambling, misogyny and criminal activities all became hallmarks of Russian social fiction of the 19th cen
tury, due largely to works like Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin.

  “The Tavern Scene” by William Hogarth (1697–1764). This is the third in Hogarth’s eight painting cycle, The Rake’s Progress. It portrays the downfall of a young man of extravagant tastes, from his liberal education to his excessive drinking and carousing, to his eventual demise in an insane asylum.

  Von Koren, Superman

  Von Koren thins the herd

  “I don’t understand, Kolya, what it is that you hope to gain from him,” said Samoylenko, no longer looking at the zoologist in anger but guiltily. “He’s the same kind of man, as everyone else. Of course, he’s not without his weaknesses, but he’s abreast of contemporary thought, he serves, benefits his motherland. Ten years ago, there was a little old envoy stationed here with us, a person of superior intellect. Here’s what he used to say …”

  “Enough, enough!” the zoologist interrupted. “You say he serves. Well how does he serve? As a result of his appearance here, have things started running more smoothly or has the efficiency, integrity and politeness among functionaries improved? It’s just the opposite, with the authority of an intelligent, university educated man he has only sanctioned their libertine behavior. There are times when he’s industrious, such as the twentieth of the month when he receives his salary, every other day he drags his shoes around the house and tries his best to impart onto himself the illusion that he’s doing the Russian government a tremendous favor by living in the Caucasus. No, Alexander Davidich, don’t stand up for him. You have not been earnest from beginning to end. If you really did love him and considered him a close friend, there would be no way that you could be so apathetic about his weaknesses, you wouldn’t kowtow to them, you would try to neutralize him for his own good.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Neutralize him. But since he is incorrigible, there’s only one way of neutralizing him …”

  Von Koren drew a finger across his throat.

  “Or we can drown him, perhaps.” he continued. “For the good of all mankind and in their own respective interests, such people must be annihilated. It’s necessary.”

  “What are you saying?!” muttered Samoylenko, rising and casting his shocked expression on the calm, cold face of the zoologist. “Deacon, what is he saying? Are you out of your mind?”

  “I don’t stand firm on capital punishment.” Von Koren said. “If it’s been proven to be harmful, then come up with something else. Since we can’t annihilate Laevsky, then let’s quarantine him, disenfranchise him, send him to hard labor …”

  “What are you saying?” Samoylenko recoiled. “With pepper, with pepper!” he shouted in a desperate voice noticing that the Deacon was eating stuffed squash without pepper. “You’re a man of superior intellect, what are you saying?! You want to give our friend, a proud, intelligent man, over to hard labor?!”

  “If he’s proud, then he’ll resist—they’ll have to shackle him!”

  Samoylenko could not say a single word, all he could do was fidget his fingers, the Deacon took one look at his dumbfounded and in all actuality, funny face and burst into laughter.

  “We can stop talking about this,” the zoologist said. “But remember one thing, Alexander Davidich, primitive mankind was protected from the likes of Laevsky by the battle for survival and natural selection; now our culture has significantly weakened the battle and natural selection and we ourselves must take on the responsibility of annihilating the weak and the worthless, or else, when Laevsky reproduces, civilization will collapse, and mankind will completely deteriorate. We will be to blame.”

  “If it is people who are doing the drowning and the hanging,” Samoylenko said, “then to hell with your civilization, to hell with mankind! To hell with it! Here’s what I’d like to say to you: you are well-educated, a man of superior intellect and the pride of your motherland, but the Germans ruined you. Yes, the Germans! The Germans!

  Ever since he’d left Dorpat1 where he was educated in medicine Samoylenko rarely saw Germans, nor had he read a single German book but in his opinion, all the vice in politics and science transpired as a result of the Germans. He, himself, couldn’t explain where he’d gotten this idea from, but he held onto it dearly.

  “Yes, the Germans!” he repeated one more time. “Let’s go have tea.”

  —from The Duel by Anton Chekhov. Von Koren’s philosophy of Social Darwinism and his belief that man is weakened by a naïve, coddling society, clash violently with Laevsky’s lazy egoism. Laevsky and Von Koren trade slanders via their proxy Samoylenko. Their words serve as an accelerant to their mutual dislike, creating a parallel duel to the one they actually fight.

  The Survival of The Fittest

  Yet a further origin of moral dictates is to be recognized as having arisen simultaneously. Habits of conformity to rules of conduct have generated sentiments adjusted to such rules. The discipline of social life has produced in men conceptions and emotions which, irrespective of supposed divine commands, and irrespective of observed consequences, issue in certain degrees of liking for conduct favouring social welfare and aversion to conduct at variance with it. Manifestly such a moulding of human nature has been furthered by survival of the fittest; since groups of men having feelings least adapted to social requirements must, other things equal, have tended to disappear before groups of men having feelings most adapted to them.

  The effects of moral sentiments thus arising are shown among races partially civilized. Cook says:—

  The Otaheitans “have a knowledge of right and wrong from the mere dictates of natural conscience; and involuntarily condemn themselves when they do that to others, which they would condemn others for doing to them.”

  So too that moral sentiments were influential during early stages of some civilized races, proof is yielded by ancient Indian books. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi complains of the hard lot of her righteous husband, and charges the Deity with injustice; but is answered by Yudishthira:—

  “Thou utterest infidel sentiments. I do not act from a desire to gain the recompense of my works. I give what I ought to give … Whether reward accrues to me or not, I do to the best of my power what a man should do.… It is on duty alone that my thoughts are fixed, and this, too, naturally. The man who seeks to make of righteousness a gainful merchandise, is low. The man who seeks to milk righteousness does not obtain its reward.… Do not doubt about righteousness he who does so is on the way to be a born brute.”

  And similarly, in another of these ancient books, the Ramayana, we read:—

  “Virtue is a service man owes himself, and though there were no Heaven, nor any God to rule the world, it were not less the binding law of life. It is man’s privilege to know the Right and follow it.”

  In like manner, according to Edkins, conscience is regarded among the Chinese as the supreme authority. He says:—

  “When the evidence of a new religion is presented to them they at once refer it to a moral standard, and give their approval with the utmost readiness, if it passes the test. They do not ask whether it is Divine, but whether it is good.”

  And elsewhere he remarks that sin, according to the Confucian moral standard, “becomes an act which robs a man of his self-respect, and offends his sense of right,” and is not regarded as a transgression of God’s law.”

  Of modern writers who, asserting the existence of a moral sense, consider the intuitions it yields as guides to conduct, we may distinguish two classes. There are those who, taking a view like that of Confucius just indicated, hold that the dicta of conscience are authoritative, irrespective of alleged divine commands; and, indeed, furnish a test by which commands may be known as not divine if they do not withstand it. On the other hand there are those who regard the authority of conscience as second to that of commands which they accept as divine, and as having for its function to prompt obedience to such commands. But the two are at one in so far as they place the dicta of conscience above considerations of expediency; an
d also in so far as they tacitly regard conscience as having a supernatural origin. To which add that while alike in recognizing the moral sentiment as innate, and in accepting the ordinary dogma that human nature is everywhere the same, they are, by implication, alike in supposing that the moral sentiment is identical in all men.

  But, as the beginning of this section shows, it is possible to agree with moralists of the intuitive school respecting the existence of a moral sense, while differing from them respecting its origin. I have contended in the foregoing division of this work, and elsewhere, that though there exist feelings of the kind alleged, they are not of supernatural origin but of natural origin; that, being generated by the discipline of the social activities, internal and external, they are not alike in all men, but differ more or less everywhere in proportion as the social activities differ; and that, in virtue of their mode of genesis, they have a co-ordinate authority with the inductions of utility.

  Before going further it will be well to sum up these various detailed statements, changing somewhat the order and point of view.

  Survival of the fittest insures that the faculties of every species of creature tend to adapt themselves to its mode of life. It must be so with man. From the earliest times groups of men whose feelings and conceptions were congruous with the conditions they lived under, must, other things equal, have spread and replaced those whose feelings and conceptions were incongruous with their conditions.

  —from The Principles Of Ethics by Herbert Spencer. Spencer (1829–1903) was an English philosopher, biologist and seminal figure in sociology. He was heavily influenced by the work of Charles Darwin. Herbert Spencer is credited with coining the expression, “the survival of the fittest” and whether intentional or not, Spencer is considered the founder of the line of thought known as Social-Darwinism. Spencer’s theories were influential in the late 19th century through the early 20th century.