The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  “No, Your Excellency,” Peredonov said with embarrassment. “I never had the time, there’s a great deal of work in the gymnasium. But I will read it.”

  “Well, it isn’t so essential,” Veriga said with a polite smile, as though he were giving Peredonov permission not to read the book. “Well then, this Mrs. Shteven relates with great indignation about how two of her pupils, young fellows close to seventeen, were sentenced by the rural court to be whipped. They were arrogant, you see, these young fellows, and we, you understand, were all suffering torments as long as the shameful sentence hung over their heads. It was later repealed. But I’ll say to you that in place of Mrs. Shteven I would have been ashamed to spread this story all over Russia. After all, if you can imagine, they were sentenced for the theft of apples. I beg you to note—for theft! On top of it she writes that these were her best pupils. Nevertheless, they stole the apples! So much for education! All that’s left is to frankly admit that we are refuting the right of ownership.”

  In his excitement Veriga had risen from his seat, and taken two steps forward, but he immediately regained possession of himself and sat down again.

  “If I become an inspector of public schools I’ll conduct matters differently,” Peredonov said.

  “Ah, you have prospects?” Veriga asked.

  “Yes, Princess Volchanskaya has promised me.”

  Veriga assumed a pleased look.

  “I shall be pleased to offer my congratulations. I have no doubt that in your hands matters will improve.”

  “But the thing is, Your Excellency, people are spreading various bits of nonsense in the town. Furthermore it could happen that someone will make a denunciation to the district authorities and interfere with my appointment, and yet I’m innocent.”

  “Whom do you suspect of spreading false rumors?” Veriga asked.

  Peredonov grew distracted and muttered:

  “Whom do I suspect? I don’t know. People. I’m concerned because it can do me harm in my career.”

  Veriga thought that there was no need for him to know who exactly was responsible. After all he wasn’t the governor yet. He once again assumed the role of marshal of the nobility and delivered a speech which Peredonov listened to with fear and melancholy:

  “I thank you for the trust which you have rendered to me in seeking recourse to my (here Veriga wanted to say ‘patronage’, but restrained himself) mediation between you and the society wherein, according to your information, rumors are circulating which are unfavorable to you. These rumors have not reached me and you may console yourself with the fact that the calumny, which is being spread at your expense, does not dare to rise out of the depths of the town’s society and, So to speak, is cringing in darkness and secrecy. But I am very pleased that while serving in your appointed position, nevertheless, you value simultaneously the importance of public opinion and the dignity of the position that you occupy in the capacity of an educator of youth, one of those to whose enlightened charge, we, the parents, entrust our most precious property, our children. As an official you have your superior in the person of your exceedingly respected headmaster, but as a member of society and a member of the gentry you always have the right to count on the … good offices of the marshal of the nobility in questions concerning your honor, your dignity as a person and as a member of the gentry.”

  Continuing to speak, Veriga stood up, and balancing himself with the fingers of his right hand on the edge of the desk, looked at Peredonov with that neutrally polite and attentive expression with which people look at a crowd as they pronounce their benevolently overbearing speeches. Peredonov stood up as well and crossing his hands over his stomach, stared sullenly at the carpet under his host’s feet. Veriga was saying:

  “I am happy that you have turned to me for the further reason that in our time it is particularly useful for the members of the leading class everywhere and always to remember above all that they are members of the gentry, to treasure their membership in this class, not only because of the rights, but also because of the obligations and honor of the gentry. The gentry in Russia, as you of course know, represent what is primarily a service class. Strictly speaking, all civil positions, with the exception of the lowest ones, of course, must be in the hands of the gentry. The presence of the raznochintsy* in the civil service represents, of course, one of the reasons for the kind of undesirable manifestations which have disturbed your tranquillity. Calumny and defamation are the weapons of people of a lower order who have not been bred in the beneficial traditions of the gentry. But I hope that public opinion will speak out clearly and loudly in your favor and you can count entirely upon all my good offices in this regard.”

  “I humbly thank you, Your Excellency,” Peredonov said. “I shall rely upon it.”

  Veriga smiled politely and did not sit down, thereby indicating that the conversation was concluded. Having uttered his speech, he suddenly had the feeling that it had ended up by being entirely irrelevant and that Peredonov was nothing other than some coward seeking a good position, haunting doorsteps in search of patronage. He dismissed Peredonov with a chilly condescension which he had become accustomed to feeling towards him for his dishonorable life.

  Putting his coat on with the help of a lackey in the front hall and hearing the sounds of a piano coming from somewhere afar, Peredonov was thinking that arrogant people were living the aristocratic life in that home and that they had a high opinion of themselves. “He’s aiming for a governorship,” Peredonov thought in respectful and envious wonder.

  On the stairs he was met by the two young sons of the marshal of the nobility who were returning from a walk with their tutor. Peredonov gave them a look of somber curiosity.

  “They’re real clean ones,” he thought. “Not even a speck of dust in their ears. And so energetic and, likely, self-disciplined. They keep to the straight and narrow. No doubt,” he thought, “they’re never whipped.”

  Peredonov stared angrily after them as they quickly went upstairs, chatting happily. And the thing that amazed Peredonov was that their tutor treated them as his equals and didn’t scowl and didn’t shout at them.

  When Peredonov returned home he found Varvara in the kitchen with a book in her hands, something that rarely happened. Varvara was reading a cookbook—the only kind of book that she ever opened. The book was an old and tattered one, in a black binding. Peredonov was struck by the black binding and it made him despondent.

  “What are you reading, Varvara?” he asked angrily.

  “What? You know what, a cookbook,” Varvara replied. “I haven’t got time to read silly things.”

  “Why a cookbook?” Peredonov asked with horror.

  “What do you mean, why? So I’ll be able to prepare your food, you’re always so finicky,” Varvara explained, grinning with self-satisfaction and arrogance.

  “I’m not going to eat anything that comes out of a black book!” Peredonov declared resolutely, seized the book quickly out of Varvara’s hands and carried it off to the bedroom.

  “A black book! Just imagine, making dinners out of it!” he thought fearfully. “That was all he needed, namely, to have people trying to openly torment him with black book sorcery! It’s essential to destroy this terrible book,” he thought, paying no attention to Varvara’s noisy grumbling.9

  On Friday Peredonov was at the home of the president of the district rural council.

  Everything in this house spoke of the desire to live simply and well and to work for the common good. The eye was struck by many objects that were reminiscent of country life and simplicity: an armchair with a shaft-bow for the back and axe-handles for arm rests; and inkstand in the form of a horseshoe; a bast shoe for an ashtray. There were a large number of measuring devices in the room—on the walls, tables and floor—with samples of various kinds of grain. And here and there were pieces of “famine bread”: nasty blocks resembling peat moss. Drawings and models of agricultural implements hung in the living room. The study was piled high
with shelves of books on agricultural and school matters. On the desk were papers, printed reports, boxes with cards of varying size. A lot of dust and not a single picture.

  The host, Ivan Stepanovich Kirillov, seemingly, was very anxious on the one hand to be polite, or polite in the European manner, but on the other hand, not to ignore his dignified position as president in the district. He was an entirely strange and contradictory person, as though soldered of two halves. From his surroundings one could see that he worked hard and sensibly. But if you looked at the man himself, then it seemed that all this rural council activity was merely a pastime for him and he was only temporarily engaged in it, whereas his genuine concerns lay in some future direction where his eyes—energetic but seemingly lifeless with a pewter gleam—would focus from time to time. It was as though someone had removed his living soul and put it away on the shelf and then replaced it with a lifeless but agile dynamo.

  He wasn’t large in stature, but thin and youngish—so youngish and ruddy-faced that at times he looked like a boy who had pasted a beard on and had rather successfully adopted the ways of adults. His movements were precise and quick. Exchanging greetings, he would nimbly bow and shuffle his feet and slide about on the soles of his stylish boots. His clothing might have been called a kind of suit: a gray jacket, an unstarched loose shirt of linen with a turned down collar, a string-like blue tie, narrow trousers and gray socks. And his conversation, always impeccably courteous, seemed likewise ambiguous in nature: he might be talking away gravely—and suddenly he would have a childishly naive smile, a kind of boyish manner. But a moment later you would look—once again he had calmed down and assumed a dignified air. His wife, a quiet and grave woman who seemed older than her husband, came into the study several times while Peredonov was there and each time she would ask her husband for some specific information on district affairs.

  Their own household affairs in town were in a confused state. People were constantly coming and going on business and constantly drinking tea. No sooner had he sat down then Peredonov too was brought a glass of lukewarm tea and a roll on a plate.

  Another guest had been sitting there before Peredonov. Peredonov knew him. Indeed, who doesn’t know whom in our town? Everyone knows one another. It’s just that some have broken off acquaintanceships after a falling-out.

  It was the rural council doctor, Georgiy Semyonovich Trepetov, a small man (even smaller than Kirillov) with a blotchy face that was pinched and insignificant. He wore blue spectacles and he was always looking down or into a corner as though he found it an effort to look at the person he was talking to. He was unusually honorable and never gave up a single kopeck of his for the good of someone else, He deeply despised everyone working in the civil service—he would still offer his hand on meeting, but he would stubbornly decline to take part in conversation. For this reason he had the reputation of being a lucid mind, as did Kirillov, although he knew little and was a poor doctor. He was always on the verge of living like the ordinary people and to that end he would observe the way peasants blew their noses, scratched the backs of their heads, wiped their lips with the palm of their hands, and he himself would sometimes imitate them in private. But he kept putting off the simple life of the people until the following year.

  Here, too, Peredonov repeated all his usual complaints of recent days against town slander and the envious people who wanted to interfere with him getting his inspector’s post. Kirillov at first felt flattered by this appeal. He exclaimed:

  “Now do you see what a provincial milieu it is? I always said that the sole salvation for thinking people was to rally together and I am delighted that you have come to that very same conviction.”

  Trepetov gave a grudging and angry snort. Kirillov looked at him fearfully. Trepetov said scornfully:

  “Thinking people!” and he snorted again.

  Then, after a short silence, he said in a thin, grudging voice:

  “I don’t know how thinking people can serve such a musty classicism!”

  Kirillov said irresolutely:

  “But, Georgiy Semyonovich, you are not taking into account that not every person is in a position to choose his occupation.”

  Trepetov snorted contemptuously and thereby conclusively cut down the polite Kirillov. Then he plunged into a deep silence.

  Kirillov turned to Peredonov. When he heard the latter speak about an inspector’s post, Kirillov grew anxious. It seemed to him that Peredonov wanted to be the inspector in our district. But at the district rural council a proposal was forthcoming to establish the post of their own inspector of schools, who would be selected by the rural council and confirmed by the education authorities.

  Then, inspector Bogdanov, who had the schools of three districts under his authority, would move to one of the neighboring towns and the schools in our district would be transferred to the new inspector. The members of the rural council already had their eye on a person for this post, an instructor from the teachers’ seminary in the nearby town of Safata.

  “I have patronage there,” Peredonov said. “The only thing is that the headmaster and others, too, are up to some nasty tricks here. They’re spreading all sorts of rubbish. So, in case there are any inquiries about me I just wanted to forewarn you that it’s all nonsense what people are saying about me. Don’t you believe these people.”

  Kirillov replied quickly and energetically:

  “Ardalyon Borisych, I don’t have the time to particularly involve myself in town relationships and rumors. I am up to my chin in work. If my wife didn’t help me, I wouldn’t know how to manage. I never go anywhere, see anyone, hear anything. But I am utterly certain that I have not heard all these things that people are saying about you, word of honor. I fully believe that all of this is nonsense. But the position doesn’t depend on me alone.”

  “You might be asked,” Peredonov said.

  Kirillov looked at him in amazement and said:

  “How could they not ask? Of course, they’ll ask. But the thing is, we have in mind …”

  At that moment Mrs. Kirillova appeared in the doorway and said:

  “Ivan Stepanovich, just for a moment.”

  The husband left. Worriedly she said:

  “I think that it’s better not to tell this character that we have Krasilnikov in mind. This character seems suspicious to me. He could do something nasty to Krasilnikov.”

  “You think so?” Kirillov whispered quickly. “Yes, yes, it’s likely. That wouldn’t be nice.”

  He clutched his head. His wife looked at him with businesslike sympathy and said:

  “Best of all is to say absolutely nothing to him about it, just as though there weren’t any position.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right,” Kirillov whispered. “But I have to run. It’s awkward.”

  He ran into the study and there he started to shuffle his feet earnestly and to inundate Peredonov with polite words.

  “So, if you could …” Peredonov began.

  “Rest assured, rest assured, I shall bear it in mind,” Kirillov said quickly. “We haven’t completely decided on it yet, this question.”

  Peredonov didn’t understand what question Kirillov was talking about and he had a fearful and melancholy feeling. Kirillov said:

  “We are organizing a school network. We wrote for a specialist from Petersburg. We worked the whole summer. It cost us nine hundred roubles. An amazingly painstaking work. All the distances were calculated and all the school sites indicated.”

  In a detailed and protracted fashion Kirillov gave an account of the school network, that is, of the divison of the district into the kind of smaller sections where each section would have its own school that would not be far from any village. Peredonov understood nothing and became entangled by the tight thinking in the verbal loops of the network that Kirillov was spinning so energetically and dexterously before him.

  Finally he said goodbye and left, with a melancholy feeling of hopelessness. In that home, he thought, n
o one wanted to understand him or even hear him out. The host was talking some kind of nonsense. Trepetov kept snorting for some reason, the wife came, wasted no time on formalities and then departed. Strange people were living in that house, Peredonov thought. A wasted day!

  XI

  ON THE SATURDAY Peredonov intended to go to the district cheif of police. Although he wasn’t bigwig like the marshal of the nobility, the rest; but if he wanted to, then he could also be a help with his testimonial before the authorities. The police was a serious business.

  Peredonov took his official cap with its cockade out of the box. He had decided that he would wear only it from that day on. It was fine for the director to wear an ordinary hat—he was on good terms with the authorities. But Peredonov still had to get his inspector’s post. He couldn’t rely on patronage alone, he himself had to show his best side. That had been on his mind even a few days back, before he had embarked on his tour of the authorities, but it had always been his ordinary hat that had come to hand. But now Peredonov organized things differently. He flung the ordinary hat up on the stove—to be more certain that it would be harder to come by.

  Varvara wasn’t at home. Klavdiya was washing the floors in the rooms. Peredonov went into the kitchen to wash his hands. On the table he saw a package of blue paper and a few raisins had spilled out of it. It was a pound of raisins which had been bought for making tea buns (they were baked at home). Peredonov started to eat the raisins, just the way they were, unwashed and uncleaned, and he ate the entire pound quickly and greedily, standing by the table while looking around at the door so that Klavdiya didn’t come in unexpectedly. Then he painstakingly rolled up the thick blue wrapper, carried it out into the front hall under his jacket and there he put it into his coat pocket so that once he was out on the street he could throw it away and thereby destroy the evidence.