The Petty Demon
Page 25
He pulled a hundred rouble note out of his wallet, laid it on the table in front of Marta, slapped his palm on it and cried:
“If you please! No one will take that away.”
Marta was on the verge of rejoicing, but then she turned a brilliant crimson and said with embarrassment:
“Ah, really, now, Vladimir Ivanovich, I just couldn’t! I won’t take it, goodness, really I can’t!”
“No, now if you please, don’t be offended,” Murin said, chuckling but not withdrawing the money. “Go ahead, it means that your dream has come true.”
“No, really, I’m ashamed, I couldn’t take it for anything,” Marta kept making excuses while gazing at the hundred rouble note with greedy eyes.
“Why kick up such a fuss if someone’s giving it to you,” Vitkevich said. “Here’s good luck falling right into a person’s lap,” he said with an envious sigh.
Murin stood up in front of Marta and exclaimed in a persuasive voice:
“My dear Marta Stanislavovna, believe me, I mean it from the bottom of my heart, take it, please! And if you can’t just accept it for nothing, then it’s for looking after my Vanyushka. What Natalya Afanasyevna and I agreed on, that still stands, but this would be for you, for supervising him.”
“But really, it’s so much,” Marta said indecisively.
“For the first half year,” Murin said and bowed to Marta from the waist. “Now, don’t be offended, just take it and you can take the place of an older sister for my Vanyushka.”
“Well, go on, Marta, take it,” Vershina said. “Thank Vladimir Ivanovich.”
Blushing with shame and joy, Marta took the money. Murin started to thank her warmly.
“Make a marriage proposal right away, it’ll be cheaper,” Peredonov said wrathfully. “What a fuss you’ve made!”
Vitkevich roared with laughter, while the rest of them pretended not to hear. Vershina was about to give an account of her dream, but Peredonov didn’t let her finish and stood up to say goodbye. Murin invited him to come to his place for the evening.
“I have to go to vespers,” Peredonov said.
“Since when has Ardalyon Borisych become such a zealous churchgoer,” Vershina said with a dry and quick chuckle.
“I always have been,” he replied. “I believe in God, not like other people. Perhaps I’m the only one in the gymnasium like that. That’s why I’m being persecuted. The director is an atheist.”
“When you’re free, then you name the time,” Murin said.
Cramming his cap on, Peredonov said:
“I don’t have time to go visiting.”
But almost immediately he recalled that Murin always fed people well and gave them good things to drink, and he said:
“Well, I could come on Monday.”
Murin was ecstatic and started to invite Vershina and Marta. But Peredonov said:
“No, we don’t need the ladies. Otherwise people will get tight and just blurt something out without any precautionary censorship, so it’s awkward with ladies present.”
When Peredonov left, Vershina grinned ironically and said:
“Ardalyon Borisych is being eccentric. He very much wants to be an inspector, but Varvara must be leading him around by the nose. Look at the way he’s acting up.”
Vladya, who had been hiding away during Peredonov’s visit, came out and said with a malicious grin:
“The locksmith’s sons found out from someone that it was Peredonov who turned them in.”
“They’ll break his windows!” Vitkevich exclaimed with a joyful roar of laughter.
Out on the street everything seemed hostile and ominous to Peredonov. A sheep was standing at the crossroads and gazing dully at Peredonov. This sheep was so reminiscent of Volodin that Peredonov took fright. He thought that perhaps Volodin had turned himself into a sheep in order to follow Peredonov.
“How do we know,” he thought, “perhaps it is possible. Science hasn’t gotten that far yet, but maybe someone already knows how. After all, there you have the French, an educated people, yet magicians and magic established themselves in Paris,” Peredonov thought. And he felt terrified. “What if this sheep starts to kick,” he thought.
The sheep bleated and it resembled Volodin’s laugh, sharp, penetrating and unpleasant.
Once again he ran into the police staff officer. Peredonov went up to him and said in a whisper:
“You’d better get on the trail of Adamenko. She’s corresponding with socialists and she’s one herself.”
Rubovsky gave him a silent and surprised look. Peredonov went on and thought with melancholy:
“Why does he keep turning up? He keeps following me and has stationed policemen everywhere.”
The muddy streets, the overcast sky, the miserable little houses, the ragged dispirited children—they all had an air of melancholy, barbarity and ineradicable sorrow.
“It’s not a good city,” Peredonov thought. “And the people here are wicked and vile. I ought to move to another city as soon as possible where all the teachers will bow down low and all the school children will be afraid and whisper in terror: the inspector is coming. Yes, authorities live completely differently in the world.”
“Mister Inspector of the second district of the Ruban Guberniya,” he muttered to himself under his breath. “His grace, State Councillor Peredonov. That’s the way! Recognition! His excellency, mister director of public schools of the Ruban Guberniya, Actual State Councillor, Peredonov. Hats off! Hand in your resignation! You, leave! I’ll straighten you out!”
Peredonov’s face grew haughty; in his impoverished imagination he was receiving his share of power.
When Peredonov arrived home, he heard, while removing his coat, a sharp sound carrying from the dining room—it was Volodin laughing. Peredonov’s heart fell.
“He’s already managed to run over here,” he thought. “Perhaps he and Varvara are hatching some plot on how to make a dunce out of me. That’s why he’s laughing, he’s happy that Varvara is on his side.”
Melancholy and spiteful he went into the dining room. It was already laid out for dinner. Varvara greeted Peredonov with a concerned face.
“Ardalyon Borisych!” she exclaimed, “We’ve had a real adventure! The cat has run off.”
“Well!” Peredonov cried with an expression of terror on his face. “Why did you let it go?”
“What am I supposed to do, sew it by the tail to my skirt?” Varvara asked with annoyance.
Volodin giggled. Peredonov thought that perhaps the cat had gone off to the police station and was purring everything out that it knew about Peredonov and about why and where Peredonov went out at night. It would reveal everything and on top of it it would miaow about things that weren’t true. Nothing but trouble! Peredonov sat down on a chair at the table, lowered his head and while kneading the edge of the tablecloth, fell into sorrowful contemplation.
“Cats always run off to their old homes,” Volodin said, “because cats get accustomed to a place and not to their master. You have to turn a cat in circles when you take it to a new apartment and not show it the way, otherwise it’ll run away for sure.”
Peredonov was relieved.
“So you think, Pavlushka, that he ran off to the old apartment?” he asked.
“For certain, Ardasha,” Volodin replied.
Peredonov stood up and cried:
“Well, let’s drink to it, Pavlushka!”
Volodin giggled.
“Don’t mind if I do, Ardasha,” he said. “I don’t mind having a drink any time at all.”
“We have to get the cat back from there!” Peredonov decided.
“A real treasure!” Varvara replied with a smirk. “I’ll send Klavdyushka after dinner.”
They sat down to eat. Volodin was cheerful, rambled on and laughed. For Peredonov his laughter sounded like the bleating of the sheep on the street.
“What evil plot is he hatching?” Peredonov thought. “Does he need a plot?”
“Listen, Pavlushka,” he said. “If you won’t go and do me any harm, then I’ll buy you a pound of fruit drops every week, the very best sort and you can suck away on them to my health.”
Volodin laughed, but immediately assumed an offended expression and said:
“Ardalyon Borisych, I am agreed not to do you any harm, only I don’t need any fruit drops because I don’t like them.”
Peredonov was dejected. Varvara said with a smirk:
“Enough of your tomfoolery, Ardalyon Borisych. How could he do you any harm?”
“Any fool can ruin things,” Peredonov said dejectedly.
Offended, Volodin puffed out his lips, shook his head and said:
“Ardalyon Borisych, if that’s the way you feel about me, then there’s only one thing I can say: I thank you humbly. If that’s what you feel about me, then what am I supposed to do after this? How am I supposed to understand this, in what sense?”
“Drink up your vodka, Pavlushka, and pour me one,” Peredonov said.
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Pavel Vasilyevich,” Varvara tried to console Volodin. “You know he just talks that way, his heart doesn’t know what his tongue is babbling.”
Volodin fell silent, and preserving his offended look, started to pour vodka from the decanter into the glasses. Varvara said with a smirk:
“What’s this, Ardalyon Borisych, you’re not afraid to drink vodka from him? He might have put a curse on it, look at him moving his lips.”
Terror formed on Peredonov’s face. He grabbed the glass that Volodin had filled, tossed the vodka out of it on to the floor and cried:
“Fend, forfend, fend, forfend. Plot upon the plotter, let his tongue wither, let his black eye burst. Death upon the offender. Fend, forfend, fend, forfend.”
Then he turned to Volodin with a malicious face and thumbed his nose at him and said:
“There you go, try your teeth on that. You’re cunning, but I’m even more cunning.”
Varvara roared with laughter. Volodin said in an offended reverberating voice just as though he were bleating:
“You’re the one, Ardalyon Borisych, that knows all kinds of magic words and pronounces them, whereas I have never, if you please, been involved in magic. I am not giving my consent to putting a curse on your vodka or anything else, whereas, perhaps you are the one who is bewitching all my prospective wives away from me.”
“That’s a good one!” Peredonov said angrily. “A lot I need your prospective wives. I can find better ones myself.”
“You uttered a curse so that my eye would burst,” Volodin continued. “Only just beware that your own spectacles don’t burst first.”
Peredonov made a frightened grab for his spectacles.
“What are you trying to stir up!” he grumbled. “You’ve got a tongue like a broom.”
Varvara gave Volodin a look of caution and said angrily:
“Don’t be so malicious with your tongue, Pavel Vasilyevich. Eat your soup or it’ll get cold. Goodness, what a viper!”
She was thinking that quite likely Ardalyon Borisych had pronounced this counter-spell without meaning it. Volodin started to eat his soup. Everyone was silent for a while and then Volodin said in an offended voice:
“It’s no coincidence that in a dream I had last night I was being smeared with honey. You were trying to smear me, Ardalyon Borisych.”
“That’s not the way you should be smeared,” Varvara said angrily.
“What for, may I ask? It seems that I haven’t done anything,” Volodin said.
“Because you have a vile tongue,” Varvara explained. “You shouldn’t blab everything that comes into your head—there’s a right time for everything.”12
XX
IN THE EVENING Peredonov went to the club—he had been invited to play cards. The notary, Gudaevsky, was there as well. Peredonov took fright when he saw him. But Gudaevsky was acting peacefully and Peredonov relaxed.
They played for a long while and drank a great deal. Late at night in the buffet Gudaevsky suddenly leaped at Peredonov, struck him in the face several times without any explanation, smashed his glasses and briskly left the club. Peredonov didn’t put up any resistance, pretended to be drunk, collapsed on the floor and started to snore. They shook him awake and took him home.
Everyone in town was talking about the fight the following day.
That evening Varvara found the opportunity to steal the first forged letter back from Peredonov. It was essential for her to do so—as Grushina had stipulated—so that subsequently if the two forgeries were compared, no difference would be noted. Peredonov usually carried this letter around with himself, but on that day for some reason he accidentally left it at home. When he was changing from his official uniform into his jacket, he took it out of his pocket, stuck it under a textbook on the commode and forgot it there. Varvara burned it with a candle at Grushina’s.
Late that night, when Peredonov returned home and Varvara saw his broken glasses, he told her that they had burst on their own. She believed him and decided that Volodin’s wicked tongue had been to blame. Peredonov himself believed that it had been his wicked tongue. In any event, the following day Grushina gave Varvara a detailed account of the fight in the club.
In the morning when he was getting dressed, Peredonov missed the letter, couldn’t find it anywhere and was terrified. He started to shout in a wild voice:
“Varvara, where’s the letter?”
Varvara was flustered.
“What letter?” she asked looking at Peredonov with her frightened, wicked eyes.
“The letter from the Princess!” Peredonov cried.
Somehow or other Varvara plucked up her courage. With an insolent smirk she said:
“How should I know where it is! You must have thrown it among your waste paper and Klavdyushka burned it. Look in your room and see if it’s still around.”
Peredonov left for the gymnasium in a gloomy mood. He recalled the troubles of the day before. He was thinking about Kramarenko: what had made that vile boy decide to call him a scoundrel? It meant that he wasn’t afraid of Peredonov. Maybe he already knew something about Peredonov? He knew something and wanted to denounce him.
In class Kramarenko kept staring at Peredonov and smiling and that frightened Peredonov even more.
During the third recess Peredonov was once more invited to the director’s office. He went with the vague apprehension of something unpleasant.
Rumors about Peredonov’s feats were coming to Khripach from all directions. That morning he had been told about the episode the day before in the club. Volodya Bultyakov, who had been punished by his landlady a few days before on the basis of Peredonov’s complaints, put in an appearance before Khripach after classes the day before as well. Fearing a second visit from Peredonov with the same consequences, the boy had made a complaint to the headmaster.
In a dry, sharp voice Khripach communicated to Peredonov the rumors that had reached him—from reliable sources, he added—about how Peredonov was visiting students in their lodgings and communicating incorrect information about the achievements and behavior of the children to either the parents or guardians and demanding that the boys be whipped, in consequence of which enormous troubles were provoked among the parents at times, such as, for example, the evening before in the club with the notary, Gudaevsky.
Peredonov listened, resentful and cowardly. Khripach fell silent.
“Really now,” Peredonov said angrily, “he’s the one who’s picking a fight and is that actually allowed? He had no right whatsoever to let me have it in the face. He doesn’t go to church, he worships a monkey and is corrupting his son into the same sect. He ought to be denounced, he’s a socialist.”
Khripach looked attentively at Peredonov and said in an imposing voice:
“All of that does not concern us and I am completely at a loss to understand
what you comprehend with the original expression of ‘he worships a monkey.’ In my opinion there is no reason to enrich the history of religion with newly invented cults. As regards the insult which has been perpetrated against you, you ought to bring him before the courts. But the best thing for you would be to leave our gymnasium. That would be the very best expedient for both you personally and for the gymnasium.”
“I’m going to be an inspector,” Peredonov protested angrily.
“Until that time,” Khripach continued, “you ought to refrain from these strange escapades. You yourself must agree that such behavior is unseemly for a pedagogue and lowers the dignity of a teacher in the eyes of his pupils. Going around houses to whip boys—that, you must admit yourself …”
Khripach didn’t finish and shrugged his shoulders.
“Really,” Peredonov protested again, “I was doing it for their own good.”
“Please, we will not argue,” Khripach interrupted sharply. “In the most resolute fashion I am demanding that you not repeat any of this in the future.”
Peredonov looked angrily at the director.
That evening they decided to hold a housewarming. They invited all their acquaintances. Peredonov walked around the rooms and looked to see that everything was in order and to make certain there wasn’t anything people could denounce him for. He was thinking:
“Well, everything seems fine. No forbidden books to be seen, the icon lamps are lit, the royal portraits are hanging on the wall in the place of honor.”
Suddenly Mickiewicz winked at Peredonov from the wall.
“He’s going to play tricks on me,” Peredonov thought with fear, quickly took the portrait down and dragged it off to the outhouse to change places with Pushkin and to hang Pushkin back up.
“All the same, Pushkin was a courtier,” he thought, hanging him on the wall in the living room.
Then he remembered that they were going to play cards that evening and he decided to examine the cards. He took an unsealed deck which had only been used once and started to sort through the cards as though he were looking for something in them. He didn’t like the expressions on the face cards: they were so goggle-eyed.