The Duel: Pushkin’s Favorite Topic in Fiction and Cause of His Fatal Wound

We fought a duel.
BARATYNSKY[1]

I swore I would shoot him by the rules of dueling (I had not yet taken my shot at him).
An Evening at Bivouac[2]

We were stationed in the small town of * * *. Everyone is familiar with the life of an army officer. In the morning, drill and riding practice; dinner at the regimental commander’s or in a Jewish tavern; in the evening, punch and cards. There was not a single open house in * * *, not a single marriageable girl; we gathered in one another’s rooms, where there was nothing to be seen but our uniforms.

Only one man belonging to our group was not military. He was about thirty-five, and for that we considered him an old man. Experience gave him many advantages over us; besides that, his habitual sullenness, tough character, and wicked tongue had a strong influence on our young minds. Some mysteriousness surrounded his fate; he seemed Russian, but had a foreign name. He had once served in the hussars, and even successfully; no one knew what motive had prompted him to retire and settle in a poor little town, where he lived both poorly and extravagantly: he always went about on foot, in a shabby black frock coat, yet he kept open house for all the officers of our regiment. True, his dinners consisted of two or three dishes prepared by a retired soldier, but then the champagne flowed in streams. No one knew his fortune, or his income, and no one dared to ask him about it. He had some books, mostly military, but also novels. He willingly lent them out, and never asked for them back; then, too, he never returned a borrowed book to its owner. His main exercise consisted in shooting pistols. The walls of his room were all riddled with bullet holes like a honeycomb. A fine collection of pistols was the only luxury in the poor clay-and-wattle hovel he lived in. The skill he had achieved was unbelievable, and if he had volunteered to knock a pear off of somebody’s cap with a bullet, no one in our regiment would have hesitated to offer him his head. The conversation among us often touched upon duels; Silvio (as I shall call him) never mixed into it. To the question of whether he had ever fought a duel, he replied drily that he had, but did not go into the details, and it was clear that such questions displeased him. We supposed that some unfortunate victim of his terrible skill lay on his conscience. However, it never entered our heads to suspect him of anything like cowardice. There are people whose appearance alone removes such suspicions. An unexpected incident amazed us all.

“Precisely so: I have no right to risk my life. Six years ago I was slapped in the face, and my enemy is still alive.”

My curiosity was greatly aroused.

“You didn’t fight with him?” I asked. “Circumstances must have separated you?”

“I did fight with him,” Silvio replied, “and here is a souvenir of our duel.”

Silvio stood up and took from a box a red cap with a gold tassel and galloon (what the French call a bonnet de police). He put it on. There was a bullet hole about two inches above the brow.

“You know,” Silvio went on, “that I served in the * * * hussar regiment. My character is familiar to you: I am accustomed to taking first place, but in my youth it was my passion. In our time rowdiness was in fashion: I was the foremost rowdy in the army. We boasted of our drunkenness: I outdrank the famous Burtsov, whose praises were sung by Denis Davydov.[3] Duels went on constantly in our regiment: I was in all of them, either as a second or as a participant. My comrades adored me, and the regimental commanders, who were constantly being replaced, looked upon me as a necessary evil.

“I was quietly (or not so quietly) enjoying my reputation, when a young man from a rich and noble family joined our regiment (I don’t want to say his name). Never in all my born days had I met a more fortunate and brilliant fellow! Picture to yourself youth, intelligence, good looks, the wildest gaiety, the most carefree courage, a big name, money that he didn’t bother to count and that never came to an end, and imagine the effect he was bound to make among us. My primacy was shaken. Enticed by my reputation, he began to seek my friendship; but I received him coldly, and he drew away from me without any regret. I came to hate him. His successes in the regiment and in the society of women drove me to utter despair. I began to seek a quarrel with him. To my epigrams he responded with epigrams which always seemed to me more unexpected and witty than mine, and which were certainly more amusing: he joked, while I was malicious. Once, finally, at a Polish landowner’s ball, seeing him the object of attention of all the ladies, and especially of the hostess, with whom I had a liaison, I spoke some crude banality into his ear. He flared up and slapped me. We rushed for our swords; the ladies all swooned; we were dragged apart, and that same night we went out to fight a duel.

“It was at dawn. I stood at the appointed place with my three seconds. With indescribable impatience, I awaited my opponent. The spring sun rose, and its heat could already be felt. I saw him in the distance. He was coming on foot, his jacket hung on his sword, accompanied by one second. We went to meet him. He approached, holding his cap, which was full of cherries. The seconds measured out twelve paces for us. I was supposed to shoot first: but my spiteful agitation was so strong that I could not count on the steadiness of my hand, and, to give myself time to cool off, I offered him the first shot. My opponent did not accept. We decided to draw lots: the first number went to him, the eternal favorite of fortune. He aimed and shot a hole in my cap. It was my turn. His life was finally in my hands; I looked at him greedily, trying to catch at least a trace of uneasiness. He stood facing my pistol, picking ripe cherries from his cap and spitting out the stones, which landed at my feet. His indifference infuriated me. What’s the use of taking his life, I thought, if he doesn’t value it at all? A malicious thought flashed through my mind. I lowered the pistol.