The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  “How can we guess what your news is,” she said and was silent for a while. “Let me divine it for you from the cards. Marta, bring the cards from the room.”

  Marta stood up, but Peredonov stopped her angrily:

  “Sit, don’t bother, I don’t want them. You guess yourselves, but leave me alone. You’re not going to stump me with your fortune-telling. Here I’m going to show you something that will make you gape.”

  Peredonov smartly pulled his wallet out of his pocket, fetched the letter out with its envelope and showed it to Vershina without letting go of it.

  “You see,” he said, “an envelope. And here’s the letter.”

  He pulled out the letter and read it slowly, with a dull expression of satisfied malice in his eyes. Vershina was taken aback. Up until the final moment she had never believed in the Princess, but now she understood that the business with Marta was totally lost. She grinned with an annoyed, crooked expression and said:

  “Well, really, congratulations.”

  Marta was sitting there with a surprised and frightened look on her face and smiling distractedly.

  “What do you think of that?” Peredonov said maliciously. “You took me for a fool, but I’ve turned out to be smarter than you. You were talking about the envelope, well there’s your envelope. This business of mine is certain now.”

  He banged his fist on the table, not hard and not loudly, and this motion and the sound of his words remained somehow indifferent, as though he were alien to and far removed from his affairs.

  Vershina and Marta exchanged looks that were distastefully perplexed.

  “What are you exchanging looks for!” Peredonov said rudely. “There’s nothing to exchange looks for: now everything is settled, I’m marrying Varvara. There were a lot of young ladies here who were trying to catch me.”

  Vershina sent Marta off for cigarettes and Marta ran joyfully out of the summer house. Out on the sandy paths, which were brilliantly colored with faded leaves, she felt free and easy. She met the barefooted Vladya near the house and she felt even more cheerful and joyful.

  “He’s marrying Varvara, it’s decided,” she said animatedly, lowering her voice and drawing her brother into the house.

  Meanwhile, Peredonov suddenly started to say goodbye without waiting for Marta.

  “I don’t have any time,” he said. “Getting married is no sewing bee.”

  Vershina didn’t try to detain him and parted coldly with him.13 She was terribly annoyed: up until this time she had still had a feeble hope of fixing Marta up with Peredonov, while she herself would take Murin. But now the final hope had faded.

  And Marta would be in for it that day! She would have to shed some tears.

  Peredonov left Vershina’s and had an urge to smoke. He suddenly caught sight of a policeman—he was standing by himself on a corner and cracking sunflower seeds. Peredonov had a melancholy feeling.

  “Another spy,” he thought. “They keep looking to find fault with something.”

  He didn’t dare light up the cigarette he had pulled out. He went up to the policeman and asked timidly:

  “Mister policeman, is it allowed to smoke here?”

  The policeman made a salute and inquired respectfully:

  “Excuse me, sir, what do you mean?”

  “A cigarette,” Peredonov explained, “Am I allowed to smoke just this one cigarette?”

  “An order hasn’t been issued on this matter,” the policeman replied evasively.

  “There hasn’t?” Peredonov asked again with melancholy in his voice.

  “None whatsoever. So, no order has been received to stop gentlemen from smoking, but I cannot say whether specific information has been issued on the matter.”

  “If there wasn’t anything, then’, I won’t do it,” Peredonov said submissively. “I am a loyal person. I’ll even throw the cigarette away. I’m a State Councillor you know.”

  Peredonov crushed the cigarette, threw it on the ground, and already fearing that he might have said something superfluous, hastily went home. The policeman watched him go in perplexity, and finally decided that the gentelman had had a few “for the road”, and satisfied by that, he started once more to peacefully crack his sunflower seeds.(a)

  “The street is getting its back up,” Peredonov muttered.

  The street rose to a low hill and then descended on the other side, and the bend in the street between two hovels was etched against a sky that was blue, mournful and turning to evening. This quiet district of miserable life was shut up in itself and deep in sorrow and languor. The trees spread their branches over the fence and scrutinized and prevented people from passing. Their whisperings were scornful and threatening. A sheep stood at the crossroads and gazed dully at Peredonov.

  Suddenly a bleating laughter game from around the corner—Volodin emerged into sight and came up to say hello. Peredonov looked at him gloomily and thought about the sheep that had just been standing there and suddenly had disappeared.

  “That means of course,” he thought, “that Volodin has turned into a sheep. It isn’t by chance that he resembles a Sheep so much and it’s impossible to distinguish whether he’s laughing or bleating.”

  He was so preoccupied by these thoughts that he didn’t hear in the least what Volodin said by way of greeting.

  “What are you kicking about, Pavlyushka!” he said with melancholy. Volodin bared his teeth, bleated and protested:

  “I’m not kicking, Ardalyon Borisych, but greeting you with a handshake. Perhaps where you come from people kick with their hands, but where I come from people kick with their feet, and it’s not people that do it, if I may say so, but horses.”

  “I expect you’ll be butting next,” Peredonov said with a grumble. Volodin was offended and in a reverberating voice said:

  “Ardalyon Borisych, as of yet I haven’t grown any horns, but perhaps you might grow horns before I do.”

  “You have a long tongue, it’s always babbling something it shouldn’t,” Peredonov said angrily.

  “If that’s what you think, Ardalyon Borisych,” Volodin immediately objected, “then I might as well be silent.”

  And his face assumed an utterly sorrowful expression, while his lips were all puffed out. However, he walked on alongside Peredonov—he still hadn’t eaten dinner and was counting on dining at Peredonov’s that day. He had been invited that morning to his joy at morning mass.

  An important piece of news was awaiting Peredonov at home. While still in the entry way it was possible to guess that something extraordinary had happened—a commotion and frightened exclamations could be heard from the other rooms. Peredonov thought that things weren’t ready for dinner yet, but they had seen him coming, had become frightened and were hurrying. He felt good—about the way they were afraid of him! But it turned out that something else had happened. Varvara ran out into the front hall and cried:

  “They brought the cat back!”

  Frightened, she didn’t notice Volodin right off. As usual, her dress was slovenly: a greasy blouse over a gray filthy skirt and battered shoes. Her hair was uncombed and dishevelled. She said excitedly to Peredonov:

  “It’s that Irishka! Out of spite she’s come up with a fresh trick. A boy ran up again, brought the cat and dumped it. And the cat had rattles on its tail and it’s making a racket. The cat’s crawled under the divan and won’t come out.

  Peredonov felt terrified.(b)

  “What should we do now?” he asked.

  “Pavel Vasilyevich,” Varvara asked, “you’re younger, chase him out from under the divan,”(c)

  “We’ll chase him out, yes we will,” Volodin said with a giggle and went into the front room.

  Somehow or other they dragged the cat out and removed the rattles from its tail. Peredonov searched for some burdocks and once more started to stick them on the cat. The cat hissed ferociously and ran off into the kitchen.(d) Tired from the commotion over the cat, Peredonov sat down in his usual pose: elbows o
n the arms of an easy chair, fingers intertwined, one leg crossed over the other, his face impassive and sullen.(e)

  Peredonov guarded the second letter from the Princess more zealously than the first. He always carried it around with himself in his wallet, but he showed it to everyone and assumed a mysterious look when he did so. He watched, sharp-eyed, to see whether anyone was about to take the letter away and he wouldn’t hand i over to anyone. After each showing he would hide it in his wallet, stuff his wallet into his jacket, in the inner side pocket, button up his jacket and sternly and significantly regard his companions.

  “Why are you running around with it like that?” Rutilov once asked with a laugh.

  “Just in case,” Peredonov explained sullenly. “Who knows what you’ll do! You might try and snatch it.”

  “This business of yours is pure Siberia,” Rutilov said, roared with laughter and slapped Peredonov on the back.

  But Peredonov preserved an imperturbable pompousness. In general he had begun of late to act more pompously than was customary. He frequently boasted:

  “I’m going to be an inspector. The rest of you here will be rotting away, but I’ll have two regions under my authority. Or even three. Oh-ho-ho!”

  He was completely convinced that in the very shortest time he would get an inspector’s post. He said more than once to the teacher, Falastov:

  “I’ll get you out of here, brother.”

  And the teacher, Falastov, became very respectful in the way he treated Peredonov.

  XXII

  PEREDONOV STARTED TO attend church regularly. He would stand in an obvious spot and either cross himself more often than necessary, or suddenly grow rigid as a post and gaze dully in front of himself. It seemed to him that some spies were hiding behind the columns, peeking out from there and trying to make him laugh. But he didn’t give in.

  Laughter, with quiet chuckling, giggling and whispering from the Rutilov girls, rang in Peredonov’s ears, growing at times to extraordinary proportions. It was just as though those sly girls were laughing right in his ears so that they would make him laugh and ruin him. But Peredonov didn’t give in.

  The nedotykomka, smoky and bluish, would appear from time to time amid the puffs of incense smoke. The little eyes gleamed with fires and it sometimes floated around through the air, but not for long. Most frequently it scurried about at the feet of the parishioners, making fun of Peredonov and tormenting him relentlessly. Of course, it wanted to frighten Peredonov so that he would leave the church before the end of mass. But he realized what its devious plan was and didn’t submit.

  The church service, not in its words and rites, but in its innermost movement which was so dear to such a multitude of people, was incomprehensible to Peredonov and therefore frightened him. The swinging of the censers terrified him like superstitious spells.

  “What’s he swinging it around for?” he thought.

  The priests’ attire seemed like coarse, annoyingly colorful rags, and when he looked at a priest in his sacerdotal robes he felt like tearing up the robes and smashing the holy vessels. He imagined the rites and mysteries of the church to be a wicked form of sorcery that was directed towards the enslavement of the simple folk.

  “He dropped crumbs from the holy wafer into the wine,” he thought angrily of the priest. “It’s the cheapest wine and they turn the heads of the people so that they bring more money for the offerings.”

  The mystery of the eternal transformation of impotent matter into a force that annulled the bonds of death was forever veiled from him. A walking corpse! He was possessed of an incongruous combination of non-belief in the living God and Christ with a belief in sorcery!

  People started to leave the church. The village teacher, Machigin, an unassuming young man, went up to the girls, smiled and chatted energetically. Peredonov thought that it was unseemly of him to act so freely in front of a future inspector. Machigin was wearing a straw hat. But Peredonov recalled that at some time during the summer he had seen him outside the town wearing an official cap with a cockade. Peredonov decided to complain. In the event, inspector Bogdanov was there as well. Peredonov went up to him and said:

  “Your Machigin wears a cap with a cockade. He’s playing the aristocrat.”

  Bogdanov was frightened, started to tremble, and shook his grayish little beard.

  “He has no right, no right whatsoever does he have,” he said with concern, blinking his little red eyes.

  “He doesn’t have the right, but he wears one,” Peredonov complained. “They have to be reined in, I’ve told you that long ago. Otherwise any uncouth peasant will start wearing a cockade and then what’ll happen!”

  Bogdanov, who had already been frightened by Peredonov earlier, became even more overwrought.

  “How could he dare to do it, eh?” he said in a whining voice. “I shall summon him immediately, immediately I say, and I shall forbid it most sternly.”

  He took leave of Peredonov and hastily trotted off home.

  Volodin walked alongside Peredonov and said in a reproachfully bleating voice:

  “He’s wearing a cockade. Do tell, for goodness sake! As though he’s been awarded ranks! How could it be!”

  “Neither are you allowed to wear a cockade,” Peredonov said.

  “Not allowed and not necessary,” Volodin protested. “Only sometimes I too put a cockade on—but I alone know where and when it’s allowed. If I go off by myself outside the city then I put it on there. It gives me a lot of pleasure and no one would forbid it. If you run into a peasant, all the same there’s more respect.”

  “A cockade doesn’t suit your mug, Pavlushka,” Peredonov said. “And move away from me—you’re getting me dusty with your hooves.”

  Volodin fell into an offended silence, but continued to walk alongside. Peredonov said with concern:

  “Those Rutilov girls still ought to be reported. They only go to church to gossip and laugh. They powder themselves up, get all dressed up and off they go. But they’re stealing the incense and making perfume out of it—they always reek of it.”

  “Do tell, for goodness sake!” Volodin said, shaking his head and rolling his dull eyes.

  A shadow from a cloud crept swiftly over the ground and provoked an attack of fear in Peredonov. The gray nedotykomka flitted from time to time through the puffs of dust in the air. If the grass started to rustle in the wind, it would seem to Peredonov as though the nedotykomka was running around in it, biting it and eating its fill.

  “Why do they have grass in the town?” he thought. “A disgrace! It ought to be pulled out.”

  A branch on a tree started to rustle, shrank into itself, turned black, cawed and flew off into the distance. Peredonov shuddered, cried wildly and ran off home. Volodin trotted along behind him anxiously with a perplexed expression in his goggling eyes, holding his bowler hat on his head and waving his stick.

  On that very same day Bogdanov summoned Machigin. Before entering the inspector’s apartment, Machigin stood in the street with his back to the sun, removed his hat and used his shadow to comb his hair with his fingers.

  “What are you up to, young man, eh? What’s this you’ve contrived, eh?” Bogdanov let loose at Machigin.

  “What’s the matter?” Machigin asked in an unduly free manner, playing with his straw hat and shuffling his left foot.

  Bogdanov didn’t sit him down, because he intended to give him a tongue-lashing.

  “What are you up to, what’s this you’re up to, young man, wearing a cockade, eh? How could you bring yourself to commit such an infringement, eh?” he asked, assuming an air of severity and vehemently shaking his little gray beard.

  Machigin blushed, but he replied pertly:

  “What’s wrong, am I not in the right?”

  “Well are you really an official, eh? An official?” Bogdanov grew more agitated. “What kind of official are you, eh? An ABC registrar, eh?”

  “It’s a sign of the teaching profession,” Machigin said
pertly and suddenly smiled sweetly, recollecting the importance of his teaching profession.

  “You carry a stick in your hands, a stick, that’s your sign of the teaching profession,” Bogdanov advised, shaking his head.

  “For goodness sake, Sergei Potapovich.” Machigin said with injury in his voice. “What good is a stick! Anyone can carry a stick, but a cockade is for prestige.”

  “For what kind of prestige, eh? For what kind of prestige, what kind?” Bogdanov flew at the young man. “What kind of prestige do you require, eh? Are you one of the authorities?”

  “For goodness sake, Sergei Potapovich,” Machigin attempted to prove in a reasonable fashion, “in the uncultured peasant class it immediately arouses a wave of respect—this year they’re bowing down much lower.”

  Machigin smoothed his reddish moustache with self-satisfaction.

  “It’s not allowed, young man, not allowed at all,” Bogdanov said, dolefully shaking his head.

  “For goodness sake, Sergei Potapovich, a teacher without a cockade is the same as the British lion without a tail,” Machigin sought to persuade him. “Nothing but a caricature.”

  “What’s a tail got to do with this, eh? What’s this about a tail, eh?” Bogdanov said with agitation. “Why are you starting up on politics, eh? Is it any of your affair to start making judgments on politics, eh? No, you be so kind as to take that cockade off, young man. It’s not allowed, how could you! Heaven forfend, the number of people that could find out!”

  Machigin shrugged his shoulders, wanted to protest further, but Bogdanov interrupted him. What he considered to be a brilliant idea had flashed through his mind.

  “Here you’ve come to see me without a cockade, eh? Without a cockade? You yourself feel that it isn’t allowed.”

  Machigin almost faltered, but this time he found a reason for protest:

  “Because we’re country teachers, we need a country privilege, whereas in the town we’re considered to be second-class members of the intelligentsia.”

  “No, just you understand, young man,” Bogdanov said angrily, “that is not allowed and if I hear once more of this, then we’ll dismiss you.”