The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  He left. Klavdiya soon noticed the absence of the raisins, became frightened and started to search for them, but couldn’t find them. Varvara returned, found out about the disappearance of the raisins and let loose with abuse against Klavdiya. She was certain that Klavdiya had eaten the raisins.

  It was windy and quiet on the street. Only occasional clouds gathered. The puddles had dried up. The sky rejoiced pallidly. But Peredonov felt melancholy at heart.

  Along the way he stopped by the tailor’s to hurry him up. He wanted him to make as quickly as possible the new uniform that he had ordered two days before.

  Passing by the church, Peredonov took off his cap and crossed himself three times, vehemently and vigorously, so that everyone who caught sight of the future inspector passing by the church might see. Earlier he had never done so, but now he had to be on his guard. Perhaps some spy was stealthily trailing him from behind, or someone was lurking behind a tree and observing.

  The chief of police lived in one of the distant streets of the town. Peredonov ran into a policeman at the gates which were wide open. This was the kind of meeting which left him feeling despondent of late. In the courtyard several peasants were to be seen, but not the kind one saw everywhere. These were some kind of special, unusually peaceful and taciturn ones. It was muddy in the courtyard. Carts covered with bast matting stood around.

  In the dark entry way Peredonov ran into yet another policeman, a short, emaciated man with a diligent but nevertheless despondent look about him. He was standing there motionlessly and holding a book in a black leather binding under his arm. A ragged barefoot girl came running out of a side door, pulled Peredonov’s coat off and guided him into the sitting room, repeating several times:

  “Please, Semyon Grigoryevich will be out in a moment.”

  The ceiling was low in the sitting room. It weighed down on Peredonov. The furniture was pressed tightly to the wall. Hemp matting lay on the floor. Both to the left and the right whispering and rustling could be heard through the walls. Pale women and scrofulous boys, all of them with hungry gleaming eyes, kept peeking out of doors. Sometimes questions and answers emerged more distinctly out of the whispering:

  “I brought it …”

  “Where should I take it?”

  “Where would you like me to put it?”

  “From Ermoshkin, Sidor Petrovich.”

  The chief of police soon emerged. He was buttoning up his uniform jacket and smiling sweetly.

  “Forgive me for keeping you,” he said, squeezing Peredonov’s hand in his two large and clutching hands. “We had various visitors on business there. Our work is such that it won’t tolerate procrastination.”

  Semyon Grigoryevich Minchukov, a tall solid man, dark-haired with sparse patches in the center of his head, held himself slightly stooped, his hands extended downwards with predatory fingers. He frequently smiled with the kind of expression as though he had just eaten something forbidden but pleasant and was now licking his lips. His lips were a brilliant red and thick, his nose was fleshy, his face lustful, zealous and stupid.

  Peredonov was dismayed by everything he heard and saw here. He muttered disconnected words and while sitting in his chair tried to hold his cap so that the chief of police could see the cockade. Minchukov was sitting opposite him, on the other side of the table and his clutching hands were gently moving on his knees, clenching and unclenching.

  “People are spreading goodness knows what gossip,” Peredonov said. “Things that aren’t true. I myself could make a denunciation. I haven’t done anything of the sort, but I know what they’ve done. Only I don’t want to. They say all kinds of rubbish behind my back and laugh to my face. You must agree yourself that in my situation it’s a ticklish business. I have patronage, but they are playing nasty tricks. They are following me around for absolutely nothing, they’re wasting their time but they’re embarrassing me. Wherever you go everyone already knows all over the town. So I’m hoping that I will have your support in whatever the case might be.”

  “But of course, of course, for goodness sake, with the greatest pleasure,” Minchukov said, pushing his wide palms forward. “Of course, we the police have to know if there is anything suspect or not about someone.”

  “I don’t give a damn, of course,” Peredonov said angrily. “Let them gossip, but I’m just afraid that they’ll play dirty tricks on me at work. They’re cunning. You don’t see the kind of gossip that goes on there, even Rutilov for example. For all you know he could be undermining the State Treasury. And that’s why he’s trying to switch the blame to someone who’s innocent.”

  At first Minchukov thought that Peredonov had been drinking and was just spinning tales. Then, after listening carefully he concluded that Peredonov was complaining about someone who was slandering him and was asking him to take some kind of action.

  “The young people,” Peredonov continued, thinking of Volodin, “think highly of themselves. They plot against others, but they themselves are not without blame. As you know, the young people get carried away. Some of them are even working as police and are poking their noses in there as well.”

  He talked about young people for a long while, but for some reason he didn’t want to name Volodin. Peredonov mentioned the young people in the police just in case, so that Minchukov would understand that he possessed a few bits of unfavorable information in regard to the people serving in the police. Minchukov concluded that Peredonov was alluding to two young officials in the police force—they were young, always laughing and chasing after young ladies. Involuntarily, Minchukov felt infected by Peredonov’s obvious fear and dismay.

  “I shall investigate,” he said worriedly, hesitated for a moment and again began to smile sweetly. “I have some young officials who are still wet behind the ears, Believe it or not, his mother made one of them stand in the corner, swear to God.”

  Peredonov gave a fitful laugh.

  Meanwhile, Varvara was passing the time at Grushina’s where she found out some staggering news.

  “Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart,” Grushina said hurriedly, no sooner had Varvara crossed the threshold of her house. “You’ll just die when you hear the news I’m going to tell you.”

  “Well, what’s the news?” Varvara asked with a smirk.

  “No, just imagine the kind of base people there are in the world! The things they won’t do in order to get what they want!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, just you wait, I’ll tell you.”

  But the cunning Grushina treated Varvara to coffee beforehand and then chased her kids out of the house, whereupon the eldest daughter turned stubborn and wouldn’t go.

  “Oh, you good-for-nothing scum!” Grushina screamed at her.

  “You’re scum yourself,” the impudent daughter replied and stamped her feet at her mother.

  Grushina grabbed her daughter by the hair and threw her out of the house into the yard and locked the door.

  “The spoiled creature,” she complained to Varvara. “It’s nothing but trouble with these children. I’m alone and there’s no one to manage them. They ought to have a father.”

  “If you got married, they’d have a father,” Varvara said.

  “You just don’t know what’ll come your way, Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart. Someone else might start to play the tyrant with them.”

  At that moment the daughter came running up from the street, threw a fistful of sand through the window and hit her mother all over her head and dress. Grushina stuck her head out the window and screamed:

  “You scum, you, I’ll thrash you, just you wait till you get home, I’ll give it to you, you mangy scum!”

  “You’re scum yourself, a wicked old fool!” the daughter shouted on the street, jumping up and down on one foot and shaking her filthy little fists at her mother.

  Grushina screamed at her daughter:

  “Just you wait! You’ll get it from me!”

  And she closed the window. Then s
he sat down calmly as though nothing had happened and said:

  “I wanted to tell you the news but I hardly know how. You, Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, don’t you get upset, they won’t get away with it.”

  “What do you mean?” Varvara asked fearfully and the saucer filled with coffee started to tremble in her hands.

  “You see, the other day a student, by the name of Pylnikov and supposedly from Ruban, entered directly into the fifth form because his aunt bought an estate in our district.”

  “I know,” Varvara said. “I saw him pass by with his aunt, such a cute fellow, looks just like a girl and is always blushing.”

  “Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, how could not he look like a girl—after all, he is really a young girl in disguise!”

  “Come now!” Varvara exclaimed.

  “They came up with the idea on purpose in order to catch Ardalyon Borisych,” Grushina said hurriedly waving her hands about and getting happily excited because she was passing on such important news. “You see, this young lady has a cousin who is an orphan and he was going to school in Ruban, so the mother of this young lady took him out of the gymnasium and using his papers the young lady has entered school here. And take note that he was put in lodgings where there aren’t any other students. He’s there alone so that everything would stay hugger-mugger, so they thought.”

  “But how did you find out?” Varvara asked mistrustfully.

  “Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, the ground has ears. Everything became suspicious immediately. All the boys act like boys, but this one just walks gingerly around as though on eggs. One look at the face and you’d think it ought to be a nice-looking lad, rosy-cheeked and big-chested. And so modest, as his classmates found out—barely say a word to him and he blushes. They tease him for being like a girl. Only they think they’re doing it just to make fun of him and they don’t know that it’s true. And just imagine how cunning they are—not even the landlady knows anything.”

  “But how did you find out?” Varvara repeated.

  “Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, what don’t I find out! I know everyone in the district. Really, everyone knows that they still have a boy living at home the same age as this one. Why didn’t they send them both off to the gymnasium? They say that he was sick in the summer, so he has to recuperate for one year and then he’ll go to the gymnasium. But that’s all nonsense. The real boy is already in a gymnasium. And again, everyone knows that they had a young girl, but they said that she had gotten married and moved to the Caucasus. Once again they’re lying, she did nothing of the sort and she’s living here disguised as a boy.”

  “But why are they doing it?” Varvara asked.

  “What do you mean, why?” Grushina said animatedly. “She’ll snatch one of the teachers. We’ve got few enough bachelors, or any other men for that matter. Disguised as a boy she can even come to the apartment and there’s hardly anything she couldn’t do.”

  Varvara said fearfully:

  “Such a cute girl.”

  “You’re right there, a real picture of beauty,” Grushina agreed. “She’s only being modest now, but just you wait, she’ll get used to it, let herself go and then she’ll have everyone spinning here in town. And just imagine how cunning they are. No sooner did I find out about this business then I immediately tried to meet his landlady, or her landlady—you hardly know what to say any more.”

  “Phew, a real changeling, God forgive me!” Varvara said.

  “I went to vespers in their parish on St. Pantaleimon’s Day and she was very devout. I said to her, Olga Vasilyevna, why do you only have one boy from the gymnasium living with you now? It’s not very profitable for you, I said. But she said, what do I need more for? There’s a lot of bother with them. So I said, other years you always had two or three. But she said—just imagine, Varvara Dmitrievna—she said that they had made it a condition that Sashenka be the only one living with her. She said that they weren’t poor people and they would pay more, otherwise they were afraid that he would be corrupted living with other boys. Who do they mean?”

  “What sly foxes!” Varvara said maliciously. “What did you say to her, that this was a girl?”

  “I said to her, look out, Olga Vasilyevna, they might have slipped you a girl instead of a boy.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Well, she thought that I was making a joke and she laughed. Then I said more seriously, Olga Vasilyevna, sweetheart, you know, really, people are saying that this is a girl. But she wouldn’t believe it. Rubbish, she said, what kind of girl could it be. I’m not blind, you know …”

  Varvara was struck by the story. She completely believed that it was all true and that a fresh assault from a different direction was being prepared against her future husband. She had to unmask the disguised girl as quickly as possible. They consulted together for a long while on how to do it, but for the time being they couldn’t come up with any idea.

  At home Varvara was even more upset over the disappearance of the raisins.

  When Peredonov returned home, Varvara hurriedly and excitedly told him that Klavdiya had done something with the pound of raisins and wouldn’t admit it.

  “And on top of it she made up the story,” Varvara said in an irritated voice, “that perhaps it was the master who had eaten them. She said that he had gone into the kitchen for something when she was washing the floors and according to her had spent a long while there.”

  “It wasn’t long at all,” Peredonov said with a frown. “I only washed my hands and I didn’t even see the raisins there.”

  “Klavdyushka, Klavdyushka!” Varvara shouted. “The master here says that he didn’t even see the raisins and so it means that you had already hidden them by that time.”

  Klavdiya poked a reddened face, puffy from tears, out of the kitchen.

  “I didn’t take your raisins,” she cried in a sobbing voice. “I’ll pay you back for them, only I didn’t take your raisins!”

  “You’ll pay it back, you certainly will!” Varvara said angrily. “I’m not obliged to feed you on raisins.”

  Peredonov guffawed and shouted:

  “Piggy swiped a pound of raisins!”

  “Bullies!” Klavdiya shouted and slammed the door.

  At dinner Varvara couldn’t restrain herself from passing on what she had heard about Pylnikov. She wasn’t thinking of whether it would be harmful or beneficial to her, depending on how Peredonov reacted to it. She was simply talking out of spite.

  Peredonov tried to recall Pylnikov, but for some reason he couldn’t clearly imagine who the boy was. Up until then he had paid little attention to this new student and despised him because he was good-looking and clean, and furthermore because he acted modestly, studied well and was the youngest in age of all the students in the fifth form. But now Varvara’s story ignited a lecherous curiosity in him. Immodest thoughts slowly began to stir in his murky head …

  “I ought to go to vespers,” he thought, “to have a look at this girl in disguise.”

  Suddenly Klavdiya came running in, and rejoicing, threw the crushed blue wrapper on the table and cried:

  “You were blaming me for eating the raisins, and what’s that? A lot I need your raisins.”

  Peredonov guessed what was up. He had forgotten to throw the wrapper out on the street and now Klavdiya had found it in the pocket of his coat.

  “Damn it!” he exclaimed.

  “What’s that, where’d it come from?” Varvara cried.

  “I found it in Ardalyon Borisych’s pocket,” Klavdiya replied maliciously. “He ate them himself and tried to put the blame on me. You know that Ardalyon has a big sweet tooth, but why blame others when he himself …”

  “Well, that’s a good one,” Peredonov said angrily. You just keep lying. You put it in my pocket, I didn’t take anything.”

  “Why should I do that? Really, God help you!” Klavdiya said distractedly.

  “How dare you go sneaking about in his pockets!” Va
rvara replied. “Were you looking for money there?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking about his pockets,” Klavdiya said rudely. “I took his coat to clean it, it was all muddy.”

  “And why did you go into his pockets?”

  “It fell out of his pocket. Why should I go sneaking around in his pockets?” Klavdiy tried to justify herself.

  “You’re lying, piggy,” Peredonov said.

  “Why are you calling me a piggy, really, what tormentors they are!” Klavdiya cried. “To hell with you, I’ll pay you back for your raisins and may you choke on them. You guzzled them yourself and I have to pay for them! Well I’ll pay, apparently you don’t have any conscience. There’s no shame in your eyes, and still you call yourself a gentleman!”

  Klavdiya went off into the kitchen, crying and cursing. Peredonov laughed fitfully and said:

  “She’s really got her back up.”

  “Let her pay for them,” Varvara said. “If you let them get away with anything, they’ll be prepared to gobble everything up, the greedy devils.”

  For a long while afterward they both teased Klavdiya with the fact that she had eaten a pound of raisins. The money for the raisins was deducted from her pay and all the guests were told about the raisins.

  The cat, as though attracted by the shouting, came out of the kitchen, crept along the walls and crouched near Peredonov, peering at him with greedy and wicked eyes. Peredonov bent over to pick it up. The cat hissed ferociously, scratched Peredonov’s hand, ran away and hid under the cupboard. It peeked out from there and its narrow green pupils glittered.

  “Just like a changeling,” Peredonov thought with fear.