“And to keep him from being stubborn,” hothead Prokopov continued, “we’ll remove the temporary cross from his grave. The one who dares to do it will bring the cross here as proof of his bravery.”
Laughter, even louder, exploded in the attic.
They just lacked a daredevil.
“I’ll do it,” said Lapin, “I’ll go and invite him, but I won’t take the cross; that would insult the deceased.”
“What will be the proof of your invitation then?” shouted his comrades.
“Someone should come with me, and he can be the witness.”
“All right,” said tall dark-bearded Smygin, the grimmest and strongest of them all. “I’ll go.”
Accompanied by the laughter of their comrades, the two left the room, swaying.
When they got downstairs and came outside, the wind practically knocked them off their feet. But that did not stop them at all; determination was more intoxicating than beer and vodka.
They reached the cemetery through viscous mud and ravines.
The moon, melting in swift cloudy flight, glimmered from afar. Flattening wind gusts dusted the air with drizzling rain.
This was the hour when the Flying Dutchman sails on the Northern Sea.
After lengthy searching, they at last found the professor’s fresh grave and his white birch cross. Lapin took off his hat.
“Esteemed scholar,” he said, addressing the grave, “your entire life was devoted to easing the sorrow of others. You saved a thousand lives from death, illness, and misery. Now, when you have received just reprieve from your labors, I invite you to share the company of your former students; I’m assuming that you have some free time behind the coffin boards.”
Lapin wanted to put his cap back on, but the wind tore it from his hands, raised it above the cross, and carried it off.
At that same moment, Smygin grabbed the cross with both hands and wrenched it out of the ground.
“Don’t you dare!” Lapin shouted.
But it was too late: the friable soil easily gave way.
When they returned to the attic and Smygin showed them the professor’s white cross, there was no end to the comrades’ delight.
Only Lapin, suddenly sagging, muttered, “Forgive us, we have insulted you.”
The party was coming to an end: the last of the drink was poured and consumed. And soon everyone fell asleep.
Lapin went to bed, too.
But he could not sleep. He was falling into a floating abyss and in horror he turned over onto his other side, and then he was being swayed and everything beneath swayed without any support.
And so he got up.
Leaving the room, he forgot why he had gotten up, went down to the yard and found himself on the street.
Here he noticed that the weather had changed: the full moon glowed clearly and it was very calm. His legs carried him to the cemetery. He found the familiar grave without difficulty and fell down helplessly.
“Forgive me, we insulted you!” he muttered, face down in the torn-up, sticky earth.
And, as if in reply, gold-rimmed spectacles, a bald pate, and reddish beard sparkled before him.
“You did not insult me, Lapin,” the professor said clearly and distinctly. “I remember you and I know how diligent you are. But you are a mediocrity: your mind and your heart are useless.”
Beyond that Lapin saw nothing and heard nothing.
When he awoke, it turned out he had slept on the floor right at the door and very uncomfortably.
The traces of yesterday’s party and his comrades spread out every which way seemed extremely repulsive, and he hurried outside.
Walking through the courtyard, Lapin was surprised to see his cap hanging on a nail outside the janitor’s room.
No, he wasn’t mistaken, it was his peaked cap.
He took it, stood there, and understanding nothing, quietly went back up.
He must have stood in the courtyard a long while: his comrades were no longer in his room and the professor’s white cross was gone.
Maybe it was only a hangover?
Maybe nothing had happened at all: well, all right, they had been drinking, here are the bottles, but the cross and the professor …
Calmed by the idea of a hangover, Lapin cleaned up the room and sat down to work, as usual.
And life went on.
About three days later, all memory of the name day party was squeezed out of his head, and everything was forgotten.
2
With his attention concentrated, Lapin sat behind a pile of books, like the most diligent of students.
The wind howled outside the window, and Sashenka snored lightly behind the curtain.
Deciphering the learned work with difficulty, right after the midnight chimes Lapin heard someone speaking behind him: “You are a mediocrity: your mind and your heart are useless. But I will change your heart and mind, because you were kind to people.”
Lapin shuddered and turned in his chair: before him stood the late professor: gold-rimmed spectacles, bald pate, and reddish beard sparkled as they had in the fog; he was wearing a white coat and a scalpel gleamed in his hand. He imperiously indicated the cot.
Lapin, frozen in fear, obediently rose from the chair and lay down.
The professor raised the scalpel above him and in a single sweep cut his chest and belly in a Greek tau, then cut out his heart and spleen, got replacements from a plate on the table, inserted the new heart and the new spleen, sewed it up, and bandaged it.
“Lie still till morning!”
In horror, Lapin held his breath and shut his eyes.
In the morning, awakening on the cot, he saw that his jacket was unbuttoned, his shirt torn and showing drops of blood, and on his chest there was a thin bloody scar like a shoelace—tau.
He immediately awakened Sashenka and showed her his carved-up chest.
Even though she looked closely, Sashenka, understood nothing, and if she did have any thoughts, they were about their extreme poverty when there was no money to repair the shirt.
That same evening Lapin noticed that the work was very easy for him. Where previously he could barely master ten pages of it over an entire evening, the learned book was his in a single session.
Now he had time to rest and he no longer suffered the exhaustion that he usually felt falling into bed barely conscious. And once he glanced at Sashenka, he was struck for the first time by her ugliness—everything was so tiny and insignificant, and those milky gray eyes, spread out nose, nothing remarkable at all.
“Lord,” he thought for the first time, “what did I ever see in her?”
There was no end to his sorrow.
And only meek Sashenka’s willingness to serve and acquiesce, her care and coddling made him accept his cruel fate.
His studies were going well. When the examinations started, they did not remind him of his previous suffering at all. The final paper, recognized as brilliant, wrote itself.
Lapin felt like a different man—with great knowledge, equilibrium, and not without imagination.
He got through the exams better than everyone else.
3
After the last examination, Lapin came home late.
Carefully putting away his books, he sat on the cot and suddenly saw the professor sitting bent over the table.
With a gentle smile and sly wink, the professor offered his hand and said, “Well, Lapin, are you pleased?”
“I never even dreamed of such success, but, honored professor,” Lapin spoke not without a swagger, “couldn’t we make my Sashenka a little prettier?”
“With your mind and abilities,” the professor chuckled, “beauty is a snap!”
Before Lapin realized what was happening, the professor stepped behind the curtain and with a sure movement of the scalpel cut off Sashenka’s head completely; tossing it over his shoulder he took another head from the plate on the table and attached it to the body.
“This one will be pretty,
the brains unchanged.”
When she awoke, Sashenka out of habit reached for the thin braid that hung down to her shoulder, and suddenly her hand bumped into thick luxurious hair. In disbelief, she raised both arms to undo her hair, and instead of the washed-out blond, golden-red tresses snaked around her shoulders. She cried out in horror.
Lapin rushed in and, seeing the head of an antique goddess from the Hermitage on Sashenka’s body, he remembered last night and mentally thanked the professor gratefully.
The new head spoke with Sashenka’s tongue, and everything was very well attached; only there seemed to be a thin shoelace showing red on her neck.
When Sashenka went downstairs to go the market, there was no end to the oohs and aahs of the residents of the Eremeyev house.
The next day the kids from the whole neighborhood shouted after her: “Switched skull!”
If any of them had been a little sharper, they would have shouted the same at Lapin, but Lapin’s change was not noticeable even to the most vigilant eye.
The mockery made Sashenka weep and they had to move to another apartment.
4
On the Seventh Line in the Makarov house, where Lapin and Sashenka moved, a horrible event had taken place a week before their arrival: the landlord Makarov’s daughter was violently killed—robbers burst in, and, having finished off the maid, cut off Nyuta’s head and carried it away with them.
Old Makarov, grief-stricken, was extremely outraged: Nyuta wore a pearl pin in her glorious braids, and they could have pulled the pin out of her hair without cutting off her head, and now he couldn’t bury her with dignity—how can a headless woman receive final kisses?
The policeman Erast Apolinarievich told the old man to make an arrangement with the aunt of the murdered maid Marisha, cut off her head and put it in the coffin of Anna Vasilyevna.
The old man might have done it, but his wife wouldn’t hear of it.
“I don’t,” she said, “want to kiss the maid Marishka.”
And so they buried her.
Soon after the funeral, old Makarov went outside and froze on the spot: right in front of his own house his late daughter, Nyuta, stood hand in hand with a student.
There could be no doubt—it was the living Nyuta!—and to the great surprise of Lapin and Sashenka, the old man shouted: Help!
A minute later they were all at the precinct, where the old man told the bailiff himself, pointing at Lapin, “He stole my late daughter’s head and attached it to this girl!”
The bailiff, who knew the old man was respectable, commented carefully: “Vasily Alexeyevich, why would they need someone’s head? The young lady has her own. Don’t be upset, this is impossible.”
And when Sashenka spoke and the old man saw that Nyuta’s head spoke in a completely different voice, he had to let it drop.
And so they separated.
The old man spent the night in tears, and when he started to sleep he suddenly saw Nyuta, as if alive.
“Father,” Nyuta said, “my head was chopped off by the hooligan Yashka, and the late famous professor and surgeon Petrov took my head and attached it to the young lady you saw at the police station. I am not completely gone from this world. Part of my soul is connected to this young lady, and you must love her like a daughter and not think any bad thoughts about her. I will defend her like myself.”
Fear made it difficult to find the door: he wanted to tell his wife right away. But she was already coming to him and didn’t let him speak; she had just seen Nyuta in a dream and repeated his dream word for word.
“Nyuta’s will is inviolable!” the old couple decided.
The old man found Lapin through the house register, adopted Sashenka. And the Lapins got married.
They lived without need as if with their own parents, everything supplied.
The old couple adored Sashenka.
The time came for the final exams.
Things were going better than ever. Lapin was considered one of the best students at the Academy. The professors were proud of him.
After receiving his degree, Lapin started dreaming about the future as he was preparing for bed. His dreams were so heated that he didn’t even notice the appearance of the professor and it was only the familiar voice that brought him back to reality.
“I can do much for you, but not everything,” the professor said. “Destiny is irresistible. You will not achieve fame in science, but you will be an average scientist. Don’t strive higher! We will meet again, for the last time.”
5
The days of Professor Lapin passed smoothly and tranquilly.
He lived in a distant university, universally respected and esteemed. He had his own clinic, where he gave lectures and saw patients.
He never complained about his fate.
The past had moved so far back that even if he recalled anything, it was light and happy, like a marvelous dream.
Lapin considered himself a lucky man.
On a rainy autumn evening, when it’s good to read in the lamplight at the table, Lapin leafed through the journal with the latest news that had just come in the mail, listening to his tranquil thoughts, which calmly repeated the same thing, like wind in the chimney.
And at the quiet hour, the door opened softly and someone came in. Lapin, not letting go of the book, tensed, waiting for the stranger to come out of the shadows.
Suddenly he felt his heart beating for some reason.
“Professor Petrov,” the words sounded clearly and distinctly, and the gold-rimmed spectacles, bald pate, and reddish beard flashed in the section of light.
“Professor Lapin,” he replied, and stood up, tensely regarding his guest, and suddenly he really felt that he couldn’t breathe, and, unconsciously opening his mouth, he tried to catch some air.
“The final journey,” the familiar voice said clearly and distinctly. “Fate is irresistible. You received everything a man can have; you enjoyed happiness and tranquility. Let’s go, don’t be afraid! And there you will continue—”
Lapin moved toward his guest: did he want to ask a question or had he already agreed?
“You will continue the very same life.”
The scythe cut, and, suffocating, Lapin dropped his face onto the table—it was over.
09
THE VENERABLE LIS
THE STORY IS SET IN A REMOTE MEDIEVAL RUSSIAN MONASTERY. THE MONKS’ NAMES ARE VERY ARCHAIC AND UNFAMILIAR TO MODERN SPEAKERS, INCLUDING THOSE OF REMIZOV’S GENERATION. NOT AN ALEXANDER, VLADIMIR, OR DMITRY, VERY COMMON NAMES OF RUSSIAN SAINTS, ARE AMONG THEM. THE PROTAGONIST’S NAME, LISII, SOUNDS LIKE “LIS,” WHICH IS “FOX” IN RUSSIAN.
1
Tikhonov Monastery, its name dear to every pilgrim, lay in a low valley, hemmed in on all sides by forests, and its white walls and towers were barely visible because of the trees. Pilgrims wended their way to the monastery along a crooked narrow bridge consisting of three logs and no handrails. The peals of the monastery bell rang thinly in the damp smoky air.
Crossing the bridge they first ended up beneath the low vault of the gates, and then came out into a courtyard overgrown with burdock, where a small stone church stood on the highest spot.
The brothers’ cells and the services were hidden behind stands of birches.
The pilgrims approached in bunches.
A handsome monk, neither old nor young, ageless, met them under the vaults and questioned each one.
It was to this gatekeeper monk that a thin, sharp-nosed and bundled up monk appealed.
“Ah! To Father Superior!” said the little monk happily. “Right away!” And had him follow.
They crossed the courtyard through long passages among the birches and, passing the church, came to a small stone house. The dirty door, from which came the odor of Lenten life, opened with difficulty, and in the semidarkness they went up rickety stairs that led them to a narrow and cramped entry with a threadbare rug.
The visitor took off his excess rags and turned ou
t to be an ordinary middle-aged monk. But his colorless face with its long, thin nose and strangely receding chin, and the thin reddish sideburns and long thin hair immediately called to mind a bird or a fox.
Squinting curiously at the monk, the little monk led him into the reception room.
Habitually, in accordance with the rules, the monk bowed and took out a packet of dirty papers from inside his robe, and as he handed them to the abbot spoke in a babbling voice, incidentally quite appropriate to his unusual appearance, either avian or vulpine, asking for permission to stay at the monastery.
“All right,” said the abbot. “Stay a while and we’ll see.”
The monk bowed humbly.
“Give him,” the abbot said to the little monk, “the cell where Father Iegudiil had lived! What’s your name?”
“Lisii, venerable father, named on Mount Athos.”
“Lisii?” Probably only now seeing that avian or vulpine aspect, the abbot squinted like the little monk, and drawled not indifferently: “Well, all right.”
2
A low white room, a semicircular casemate window, a bench for sleeping, table, stool, and rug on the floor.
Lisii liked it. Since he liked order, he first of all swept and cleaned up the cell and set things out once and for all.
He quickly figured out all the aspects of the regulations in church and fit in without difficulty with the brotherhood.
At first they all looked askance at him, his vulpine or avian aspect seemed odd, but then they got used to it.
Only the elders were suspicious: his excessive gentleness and rule-following repulsed such pillars as Fathers Mardarii and Siluyan. The hermit from the apiary, Father Varakii, who had grown two-inch nails, declared that Lisii wasn’t human at all, but was born out of frog slime and it was a sin to consider him a person.
The silent ones, Germogen and Amfilokhii, dispassionately repeated but one phrase: “Judge not!”
And really, Lisii was a monk like any other, and besides which he was hardy and gifted, so even if there was something foxy about him, well, what of it, you can’t go against nature and especially since it was so harmless.
The Little Devil and Other Stories Page 16