The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  “Well, even if you are stronger, what of it? It’s a matter of agility.”

  “I’m agile too!” Sasha boasted.

  “Away with you, agile!” Lyudmila cried in a teasing voice.

  They argued for a long while. Finally Lyudmila suggested:

  “Come on, let’s fight then.”

  Sasha laughed and said provocatively:

  “You won’t be able to manage me!”

  Lyudmila started to tickle him.

  “Oh, you!” he cried with laughter, turned around and seized her about the waist.

  A tussle began. Lyudmila saw immediately that Sasha was stronger. She couldn’t win by strength, so, cunning as she was, she waited for the right moment and tripped up Sasha. He fell and pulled Lyudmila down with him. Lyudmila twisted around agilely and pinned him to the floor. Sasha cried desperately:

  “That’s not fair!”

  Lyudmila planted her knees on his stomach and pinned him to the floor with her hands. Sasha struggled desperately to break loose. Lyudmila started to tickle him again. Sasha’s ringing laughter mixed with hers. Laughter finally forced her to release Sasha. Laughing, she fell to the floor. Sasha leapt to his feet. He was red and piqued.

  “Rusalka!*” he cried.

  But the rusalka just lay on the floor and laughed.

  Lyudmila sat Sasha on her knees. Tired after their struggle they gazed intently and cheerfully into each other’s eyes and smiled.

  “I’m too heavy for you,” Sasha said. “I’ll crush your knees, you’d better let me go.”

  “It doesn’t matter, just sit there,” Lyudmila replied affectionately. “You yourself said you liked to cuddle, you know.”

  She stroked his head. He pressed tenderly against her. She said:

  “How handsome you are, Sasha.”

  Sasha blushed and laughed.

  “You’re just making it up!” he said.

  Conversations and thoughts about beauty dismayed him for some reason when they were applied to him. Never before had he been curious enough to find out whether people found him attractive or ugly.

  Lyudmila pinched Sasha’s cheek. Sasha smiled. The cheek turned red at the spot. It was attractive. Lyudmila pinched the other cheek as well. Sasha didn’t resist. He simply took her hand, kissed it and said:

  “Enough pinching, it hurts, you know, and besides you’ll get callouses on your fingers.”

  “Away with you,” Lyudmila said. “It’s not painful and some flatterer you’ve become.”

  “I don’t have any time, I’ve got a lot of lessons to do. Cuddle me just a little more, for good luck, so that I’ll get a five on my Greek.”

  “Sending me packing!” Lyudmila said.

  She grabbed him by the arm and raised his sleeve above his elbow.

  “Are you going to wallop me?” Sasha asked, embarrassed and blushing guiltily.

  But Lyudmila was admiring his arm, turning it this way and that.

  “You have such beautiful arms!” she said loudly and joyfully and suddenly kissed him near the elbow.

  Sasha reddened, tried to pull his arm free, but Lyudmila held on to it and kissed it several times more. Sasha grew calm, languid, and a strange expression settled on his brilliant half-opened lips. And beneath the curtain of his thick eyelashes his torrid cheeks started to pale.

  They parted. Sasha accompanied Lyudmila to the gate. He would have gone farther, but she didn’t bid him to do so. He stopped by the gate and said:

  “Come more often, my dearest, bring me some sweeter spice cakes.”

  This was the first time that he had addressed her in the familiar fashion and for Lyudmila it had the echo of a tender caress. She abruptly embraced him, kissed him and ran off. Sasha stood like one who was stunned.

  Sasha had promised to come. The appointed hour came and went—and there was no Sasha. Lyudmila waited impatiently. She was casting about, fretting and looking out the window. As soon as steps could be heard in the street she would peer outside. The sisters were chuckling. She said angrily and excitedly:

  “Enough, you! Stop!”

  Then she attacked them with stormy reproaches, whereupon they laughed. By then it was obvious that Sasha was not coming. Lyudmila began to weep from annoyance and grief.

  “Oh boo-hoo-hoo! Poor, poor little old me!” Darya teased her.

  Lyudmila, in a burst of grief forgetting to get angry over the fact that she was being teased, said softly and sobbingly:

  “The disgusting old hag wouldn’t let him go, she keeps him tied to her apron strings so that he’ll study his Greeks.”

  With a rather vulgar feeling of sympathy Darya said:

  “He must be some kind of lout, doesn’t even know how to get away.”

  “You’ve got yourself involved with a wee babe,” Valeriya said scornfully.

  Although both sisters were chuckling, nevertheless they felt sorry for Lyudmila. They all loved one another, with a love that was tender, but not strong—and a tender love is a superficial love! Darya said:

  “What are you crying for, bawling your eyes out for a babe-in-arms? Must have been the devil that got you mixed up with a kid.”

  “What devil are you talking about?” Lyudmila cried vehemently and turned a deep crimson all over.

  “Well, old girl,” Darya replied calmly, “you might be young, but still …”

  Darya didn’t finish to the end and gave a piercing whistle.

  “Nonsense!” Lyudmila said in a strangely ringing voice.

  A strange and cruel smile illuminated her face through the tears, just the way a brilliantly flaming ray of light shines through the final downpour of an exhausted rain at sunset.

  Darya asked her with annoyance:

  “Well what’s so interesting about him anyway, if you don’t mind telling me, please?”

  Still wearing the same amazing smile Lyudmila replied pensively and slowly:

  “How handsome he is! And how many inexhaustible possibilities he possesses!”

  “Well, that’s cheap to come by,” Darya said conclusively. “All little boys have that.”

  “No, it isn’t cheap to come by,” Lyudmila replied with annoyance. “There are vile ones as well.”

  “And what’s he, pure?” Valeriya asked. She drawled out the word “pure” in a scornful fashion.

  “A lot you understand!” Lyudmila cried, but she immediately began to talk gently and dreamily: “He’s innocent.”

  “That’s a good one!” Darya said sarcastically.

  “The very best age for boys,” Lyudmila said, “is from fourteen to fifteen. He still can’t do anything and doesn’t understand in a genuine way, but he’s already beginning to have premonitions of everything, definitely of everything. And he hasn’t a disgusting beard.”

  “Some satisfaction that is!” Valeriya said with a disdainful grimace.

  She was sad. It seemed to her that she was small, weak, fragile, and she envied her sisters: Darya for her cheerful laughter and even Lyudmila with her weeping. Lyudmila said once more:

  “You don’t understand anything. I don’t love him at all in the way you think I do. It’s better to love a boy than to fall in love with a vulgar phiz with a moustache. I love him in an innocent way. I don’t want anything from him.”

  “If you don’t want anything from him then why do you keep pestering him?” Darya protested coarsely.

  Lyudmila blushed and a guilty expression settled heavily over her face. Darya felt sorry, she went up to Lyudmila, put her arms around her and said:

  “Don’t get upset, we’re not trying to be spiteful.”

  Lyudmila started to cry again, pressed against Darya’s shoulder and said bitterly:

  “I know there’s nothing to hope for here, but all I want is for him to caress me a little, any old way.”

  “There’s your melancholy for you!” Darya said with annoyance, turned away from Lyudmila, put her hands on her hips and burst into clear song:

  My lover I would lea
ve

  To go to bed every eve.

  Valeriya dissolved in a fragile ringing laughter. And Lyudmila’s eyes grew cheerful and lascivious. She abruptly went off into her room, sprayed herself with corylopsis—and the fragrance, spicy, sweet and lascivious, put her in the grip of an insinuating seductiveness. She went out on to the street all dressed up, excited, and emanating the immodest delight of that seductiveness.

  “Maybe I’ll meet him,” she thought.

  And she did.

  “A fine one!” she cried both joyfully and reproachfully.

  Sasha felt both dismay and joy.

  “I didn’t have the time,” he said with embarrassment. “Nothing but lessons, I had to study all the while, truly, I had no time.”

  “You’re lying, my dear, let’s go right now.”

  He tried to excuse himself, chuckling, but it was obvious that he was happy that Lyudmila was taking him. Lyudmila brought him home.

  “I brought him!” she cried triumphantly to her sisters and guided him by the shoulder off to her own room.

  “Just you wait, I’m going to get even with you,” she threatened and bolted the door shut. “Now no one will be able to protect you.”

  With his hands stuck in his belt, Sasha stood awkwardly in the middle of her room. He had a pleasurable but eerie feeling. There was the festive and sweet scent of some new perfume, but something in the scent affected and set his nerves on edge, like the touch of joyful, spritely, rough-skinned little serpents.

  XVIII

  PEREDONOV WAS RETURNING home from one of the students’ lodgings. Suddenly he was caught in a fine shower. He started to ponder where he could stop by so that he wouldn’t spoil his new silk umbrella in the rain. Across the road, on a separate, two-storied stone building, he saw a sign: “Office of Notary Gudaevsky.” The notary’s son was studying in the second form at the gymnasium. Perdonov decided to go in. At the same time he could complain about the student.

  He found both the mother and father at home. They greeted him with a fuss. Everything here was done in this fashion.

  Nikolai Mikhailovich Gudaevsky was a medium-sized man, solid, dark-haired, balding and with a long beard. His movements were always impetuous and surprising. It was as though he didn’t walk but fluttered like a sparrow and it was always impossible to tell from his face and position what he was going to do a moment later. In the midst of a businesslike conversation he would suddenly shoot his knee out, which, rather than seeming ridiculous, would seem perplexing because of any lack of motivation. Whether at home or visiting he might just be sitting there when suddenly he would leap up and without any apparent necessity quickly begin to pace about the room, shouting and banging. On the street he would be walking along and suddenly he would stop, do a squat or make a lunge or some other gymnastic exercise, and then continue on his way. On documents which he drew up or witnessed, Gudaevsky loved to make funny remarks. For example, instead of writing about Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov living on Market Square, in the home of Ermilova, he would write about Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov living on Market Square in the block where it was impossible to breath because of the stench, and so forth. He would even make mention at times of the number of chickens and geese owned by the person whose signature he was witnessing.

  For all the dissimilarity in shape, Yuliya Gudaevskaya, a passionate, tall, slender, cruelly sentimental and dry woman, resembled her husband in her manners: she had the same impetuous movements, the same complete disparity with the movements of others. She dressed in a gaudy and youthful fashion and because of her quick movements was constantly fluttering off in all directions with her long variegated ribbons with which she loved to decorate both her dress and hairdo abundantly.

  Antosha, a slender, spritely boy, was scraping his feet courteously. Peredonov was seated in the sitting room and he immediately began to complain about Antosha: he was lazy, inattentive, didn’t listen in class, talked, laughed and played pranks during recesses. Antosha was amazed—he didn’t know that he had turned out to be that bad. He started to defend himself hotly. Both parents were upset.

  “Please,” the father cried, “tell me precisely what his pranks consist of?”

  “Nika, don’t defend him,” the mother cried, “He mustn’t play pranks.”

  “Well, what pranks?” the father questioned, running around on his short legs just like he was, rolling.

  “Just pranks in general, romping around, fighting,” Peredonov said sullenly. “He’s constantly playing pranks.”

  “I don’t fight,” Antosha exclaimed with a protest. “Ask whom you like, I’ve never fought with anyone.”

  “He’s always pestering people,” Peredonov said.

  “Fine, I’ll go to the gymnasium myself and I’ll find out from the inspector” Gudaevsky said with determination.

  “Nika, Nika, why don’t you believe him!” Yuliya cried; “Do you want Antosha to end up as a good-for-nothing? He must be whipped.”

  “Rubbish! Rubbish!” the father cried.

  “I’ll whip him, I’ll whip him for sure!” the mother cried, seized her son by the shoulder and started to drag him off into the kitchen, “Antosha,” she cried, “let’s go, sweetheart, I’m going to whip you.”

  “I won’t let you!” the father cried, tearing his son away.

  The mother wouldn’t give in, Antosha was crying desperately and the parents were shoving each other.

  “Help me, Ardalyon Borisych,” Yuliya cried. “Hold this monster while I settle things with Antosha.”

  Peredonov went to her aid. But Gudaevsky tore his son free, pushed his wife away, leapt at Peredonov and cried:

  “Stay out of it! When two dogs have a bone to pick, a third one doesn’t try to butt in! I’ll fix you!”

  Red, dishevelled, perspiring, he shook his fist in the air. Peredonov retreated, muttering something indistinctly. Yuliya was running around her husband, trying to snatch Antosha away. The father hid him behind his back, dragging him by the hand first to the right and then to the left. Yuliya’s eyes were flashing and she cried:

  “He’s raising a brigand! He’ll get a prison term! He’ll end up doing penal servitude!”

  “A plague on you for saying such things!” Gudaevsky cried. “Shut up, you wicked fool!”

  “Ah, you tyrant!” Yuliya screeched, leapt at her husband, struck him in the back with her fist and dashed impetuously out of the sitting room. Gudaevsky clenched his fists and leapt at Peredonov.

  “You came to stir things up!” he cried. “Antosha is playing pranks? You’re lying, he’s not playing any pranks. If he had been, I would have known about it without you coming and I don’t wish to talk to you. You’re going around the town, deceiving fools, whipping young boys. You want to get a diploma as a master of the whipping trade. Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. My gracious sir, I request you to remove yourself!”

  Saying that he leapt at Peredonov and forced him into a corner. Peredonov was frightened and was happy to flee, but Gudaevsky hadn’t noticed, in the heat of his exasperation, that he was blocking off the exit. Antosha grabbed his father from behind by his coattails and pulled him towards himself. The father angrily tried to hush him and kicked out at him. Antosha adroitly jumped to the side, but wouldn’t release his father’s coat.

  “Hush!” Gudaevsky shouted. “Antosha, mind yourself.”

  “Papa,” Antosha cried, continuing to pull his father back. “You’re preventing Ardalyon Borisych from getting by.”

  Gudaevsky quickly leapt back. Antosha barely had a chance to get out of the way.

  “Excuse me,” Gudaevsky said and showed him the door. “Here’s the way out, I wouldn’t presume to detain you.”

  Peredonov left the sitting room hastily. Gudaevsky cocked a snook with his long fingers and then he jerked his knee up in the air as though he were kicking his guest out. Antosha started to giggle. Gudaevsky cried angrily at him:

  “Antosha, mind yourself! Beware, tomorrow I’m going to the gymnasium
and if it turns out to be true, I’ll hand you over to your mother to be disciplined.”

  “I didn’t play any pranks, he’s lying,” Antosha said in a plaintive and squeaking voice.

  “Antosha, mind yourself!” the father cried, “You mustn’t say he’s lying, but that he’s mistaken. Only young people lie, whereas adults are mistaken.”

  Meanwhile, Peredonov had made his way into the semi-darkness of the entry way, somehow found his coat and started to put it on. He couldn’t get his arms into the sleeves from fear and excitement. No one came to help him. Suddenly Yuliya came running from somewhere out of a side door, rustling her fluttering ribbons, and she heatedly whispered something, waving her hands and jumping up and down on her toes. Peredonov couldn’t understand right away.

  “I’m so grateful to you,” he finally made out. “It was so noble on your part, so noble, such concern. Everyone is so indifferent, but you understand the role of a poor mother. It’s so difficult to raise children, so difficult, you can’t imagine. I have two and it Makes my head spin. My husband is a tyrant, he’s a terrible, terrible man, isn’t he? You saw for yourself.”

  “Yes,” Peredonov muttered. “Your husband … how could he, he shouldn’t do that, I am concerned, whereas he …”

  “Ah, don’t say it,” Yuliya whispered, “He’s a terrible man. He’ll drive me to my grave and be glad of it, and he’ll pervert my children, my little Antosha. But I am a mother, I won’t let him, I’ll give him a whipping in any case.”

  “He won’t let you,” Peredonov said and nodded his head in the direction of the other rooms.

  “When he goes off to the club. He won’t take Antosha with him! He’ll go off and until then I’ll keep silent as though I agreed with him. But as soon as he goes, I’ll give him a whipping and you’ll help me. You will help me, won’t you?”

  Peredonov thought for a moment and then said:

  “Fine, only how will I know?”

  “I’ll send for you, I will,” Yuliya whispered joyfully. “You be waiting. As soon as he goes off to the club, then I’ll send for you.”

  In the evening Peredonov received a note from Gudaevskaya. He read: