However, in order to put an end to the silly gossip and to protect Lyudmila from an unpleasant business, all the Rutilovs and their numerous friends, relatives and relations took energetic action against Peredonov and tried to prove that all these stories were just the fantasy of a madman. Peredonov’s wild antics forced many people to believe the explanations.
At the same time the district educational trustee was beset by denunciations against Peredonov. An inquiry was sent to the headmaster from the district officials. Khripach referred to his previous reports and added that Peredonov’s continuing presence in the gymnasium was becoming positively dangerous inasmuch as his mental illness was noticeably progressing.
By now Peredonov was totally in the power of his wild notions. Spectres had divorced Peredonov from the world. His eyes, crazed and dull, wandered without pausing on objects, just as though he were constantly seeking to look beyond them, beyond the objective world, and was searching for the apertures.
When he was left on his own he would talk to himself, shouting out senseless threats at someone:
“I’ll kill you! I’ll slit your throat! I’ll caulk you up!”
Varvara would listen and smirk.
“Go ahead and fly into a rage!” she thought maliciously.
It seemed to her that it was only anger because he had guessed that he had been deceived and was furious. He wasn’t losing his mind, a fool had nothing to lose. And if he were to lose his mind, what did it matter? Madness cheers up the stupid!
“You know, Ardalyon Borisych,” Khripach once said, “You look very unhealthy.”
“I have a headache,” Peredonov said sullenly.
“You know, my esteemed sir,” Khripach continued in a cautious voice, “I would advise you not to come to the gymnasium for the time being. You ought to recuperate, take care of your nerves which, apparently, are really rather disturbed.”
“Not go to the gymnasium! Of course,” thought Peredonov. “That would be the best thing. Why didn’t I think of it earlier! Pretend to be sick, sit at home, watch and see what comes of this.”
“Yes, yes, I won’t come. I’m sick,” he said joyfully to Khripach.
Meanwhile, the director wrote once more to the district officials and was waiting from one day to the next for them to appoint the doctors who would carry out the examination. But the officials were in no hurry. That was why they were officials.
Peredonov didn’t go to the gymnasium and was also waiting for something. Lately he had been sticking to Volodin, It was frightening to let him out of his sight—he might do some harm. From the morning on, as soon as he awoke, Peredonov would think of Volodin with a melancholy feeling. Where was he then? What was he doing? Sometimes he fancied that he was seeing Volodin: the clouds flying through the skies like a flock of sheep and Volodin was running along in their midst with his bowler hat on his head and producing his bleating laughter; or sometimes he would fly swiftly past, in the smoke rising out of chimneys, making grotesque faces and leaping up and down in the air.
Volodin thought, and related to everyone with pride, that Peredonov loved him a great deal—he simply couldn’t live without him.
“Varvara has tricked him,” Volodin said, “and he sees that I’m his only true friend and that’s why he’s sticking to me.”
Peredonov would be coming out of the house to go and see Volodin, but the latter would already be coming to greet him, wearing a bowler hat, carrying a walking stick, springing cheerfully up and down and happily bursting with his bleating laughter.
“What are you wearing a bowler for?” Peredonov once asked him.
“Why shouldn’t I wear a bowler, Ardalyon Borisych?” Volodin replied cheerfully and reasonably. “It’s modest and proper enough. I’m not supposed to wear an official cap with a cockade, and as far as a top hat is concerned, let the aristocrats indulge in that practice, it doesn’t suit us.”
“You’ll boil in that pot,” Peredonov said sullenly.
Volodin giggled.
They went to Peredonov’s.
“What a lot of walking to do,” Peredonov said angrily.
“Ardalyon Borisych, it’s beneficial to get yourself moving,” Volodin tried to convince him. “You work a little, walk a little, eat a little—and you’ll be healthy.”
“Sure,” Peredonov objected. “You think that in two or three hundred years people will be working?”
“What else? If you don’t work, then you won’t eat. You get bread for money and you have to work for money.”
“I don’t want bread.”
“There won’t be any rolls or pies either,” Volodin said with a giggle. “And you won’t be able to buy vodka and there won’t be anything to make brandy out of.”
“No, people won’t be doing the work themselves,” Peredonov said. “There’ll be machines for everything: you turn a handle, like the hand organ, and it’s ready. But it’ll be boring to turn the handle for long.”
Volodin grew pensive, bowed his head, puffed out his lips and said musingly:
“Yes, that will be very good. Only we won’t be there any more.”
Peredonov gave him a spiteful look and grumbled:
“You won’t be there, but I’ll live that long.”
“God willing,” Volodin said cheerfully. “May you live two hundred years and crawl around on all fours for three hundred years.”
Peredonov no longer pronounced his counter-spells—let come what may. He would conquer everyone, he only had to keep his eyes peeled and not give in.
At home, sitting in the dining room and drinking with Volodin, Peredonov told him about the Princess. In Peredonov’s imagination there wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t grow even more decrepit and even more terrible: yellow, wrinkled, hunched over, long in the tooth and wicked—that was how Peredonov invariably fancied he saw her.
“She’s two hundred years old,” Peredonov said and stared straight ahead in a strange and melancholy fashion. “And she wants us to get cozy with each other again. Until then she doesn’t want to give me the post.”
“You don’t say, the things she wants!” Volodin said, shaking his head. “What an old matriarch!”
The murder was making Peredonov rave. He said to Volodin, knitting his brows ferociously:
“There’s already one hidden there behind my wallpaper. And there’s another one I’m going to clobber under the floor.”
But Volodin wasn’t afraid and giggled.
“Do you smell it behind the wallpaper?” Peredonov asked.
“No, I don’t,” Volodin said, giggling and clowning.
“Your nose is stuffed,” Peredonov said. “It’s no coincidence that your nose has turned red. It’s rotting over there behind the wallpaper.”
“The bedbug!” Varvara cried and burst into laughter. Peredonov looked on, dully and gravely.
Plunging ever deeper into his derangement, Peredonov began to write denunciations: against the figures in the playing cards; against the nedotykomka; and against the sheep who was an imposter and who was pretending to be Volodin and was aiming to get a high position, but in fact was just a sheep; against the wood-poachers—they had chopped down all the birch, there was nothing left for the steam baths and it was difficult to educate the children, but they had left the aspen and what good was the aspen?
When he met students from the gymnasium on the street Peredonov would terrify the younger ones and amuse the older ones with his shameless and absurd words. The older ones would walk in a crowd behind him, scattering whenever they caught sight of any other teacher. But the younger ones would run away from him of their own accord.
Peredonov fancied he saw spells and enchantments in everything. He was terrified by his hallucinations and they wrung an insane howling and shrieking out of his breast. The nedotykomka would appear before him bloody at one moment and fiery the next. It would moan and howl and its howling made Peredonov’s head burst with an unbearable pain. The cat grew to frightening proportions, s
tomped around in boots and pretended to be a grown man with a red moustache.
XXVIII
SASHA LEFT AFTER dinner and didn’t return at the appointed time: by seven o’clock. Kokovkina grew worried. God forfend that he should run into any of the teachers on the street at the forbidden time. They would punish him and it would be awkward for her. She had always had modest boys living with her, they didn’t roam around at night. Kokovkina went to look for Sasha. Naturally enough, where else should she go than to the Rutilovs.
As bad luck would have it, Lyudmila had forgotten to lock the door that day. Kokovkina entered and what did she see? Sasha was standing in front of a mirror in a woman’s dress and fanning himself. Lyudmila was roaring with laughter and straightening the ribbons on his brightly colored sash.
“Ach, goodness gracious me!” Kokovkina exclaimed in horror. “What is going on! I’m worrying and looking while he’s here clowning about. For shame, he’s outfitted himself in a dress! And you, Lyudmila Platonovna, you should be ashamed!”
At first Lyudmila was dismayed at the surprise, but she quickly regained her senses. With a cheerful laugh, embracing Kokovkina and sitting her down in a chair, she told her a story that she made up on the spot:
“We want to put on a play at home. I’ll be the boy and he’ll be the girl, and it’ll be terribly amusing.”
Sasha stood there all red, frightened, with tears in his eyes.
“I never heard of such nonsense!” Kokovkina said angrily. “He has to do his lessons and not perform plays. A fine idea! Pray, get dressed immediately, Alexander, and march straight home with me.”
Lyudmila’s laughter was cheerful and ringing. She kept kissing Kokovkina—and the old woman was thinking that this cheerful girl was acting just like a child whereas Sasha, out of stupidity, was happy to carry out all her ventures. Lyudmila’s cheerful laughter made the incident look like a simple childish prank which only demanded a proper rebuke from her. And she grumbled, putting on an angry face, but already her heart was at ease.
Sasha nimbly changed behind the screen where Lyudmila’s bed stood. Kokovkina took him away and scolded him the entire way back. Sasha, ashamed and frightened, didn’t even try to excuse himself. “What else is going to happen at home?” he wondered timidly.
But at home Kokovkina started off by treating him sternly and ordering him to stand on his knees. Sasha was barely on his knees for a few minutes when she let him go, disarmed by his guilty face and his silent tears. She said grumpily:
“A fine dandy you are, you smell of perfume a mile away!”
Sasha deftly scraped his feet, kissed her hand—and she was even more touched by the politeness of the boy who had been punished.
Meanwhile a storm was gathering over Sasha. Varvara and Grushina wrote an anonymous letter to Khripach which said that the student Pylnikov had been enticed by a Rutilov girl and was spending entire evenings with her and indulging in depravity. Khripach recalled a recent conversation. A few days before at a reception at the home of the marshal of the nobility, someone had made an allusion which escaped everyone about a young woman who had fallen in love with a juvenile. The conversation immediately went on to other matters: everyone, by virtue of the unspoken accord of people who were accustomed to better society, considered this an entirely awkward topic for conversation in Khripach’s presence and pretended that the conversation was unsuitable for ladies and that the subject itself was insignificant and unlikely. Naturally, Khripach noted all of this, but he was not so naive as to ask anyone. He was utterly certain that he would soon find out everything, that all the news would arrive of its own accord, one way or another, and would always do so with proper timeliness. This very letter was in fact the piece of news he had been expecting.
Not for a moment did Khripach believe in Pylnikov’s depravity or that his acquaintance with Lyudmila possessed any unseemly aspects. “This,” he thought, “is all the result of that same stupid fiction of Peredonov’s and is being nourished by the jealous spitefulness of Grushina. But this letter,” he thought, “shows that undesirable rumors are circulating which might cast a shadow on the dignity of the gymnasium which has been entrusted to me.” And for that reason it behove him to take measures.
First of all, Khripach invited Kokovkina in order to discuss with her the circumstances which might have given rise to the undesirable rumors.
Kokovkina already knew what it was about. People had informed her in even plainer terms than they had the headmaster. Grushina had been lying in wait for her on the street and had started up a conversation and said that Lyudmila had already completely corrupted Sasha. Kokovkina was stunned. At home she showered reproach on Sasha. She was all the more annoyed because it had been taking place almost before her eyes and Sasha had been going to the Rutilovs with her consent. Sasha pretended that he understood nothing and asked:
“But what have I done that’s bad?”
Kokovkina faltered.
“What do you mean, bad? You don’t know yourself? Was it that long ago I found you in a skirt? Have you forgotten, you shameless boy?”
“You found me like that, but what was particularly bad about that? Anyway you punished me for that! What’s the matter, you’d think I had put on a stolen skirt!”
“My goodness, the way he reasons!” Kokovkina said distractedly. “I punished you, but obviously it wasn’t enough.”
“Well, punish me some more,” Sasha said obstinately, with a look of someone who is being unjustly offended. “You yourself forgave me then, but now it’s not good enough. I didn’t beg your forgiveness then, I would even have stayed on my knees the whole evening. Otherwise, why do you keep reproaching me!”
“Dear father, they’re already talking about you and your Lyudmila in town,” Kokovkina said.
“What are they saying?” Sasha asked in an innocently curious voice.
Kokovkina faltered again.
“What are they saying—you know what! You know yourself what people might say about you. They won’t be saying much that’s good. You’re getting into a lot of mischief with your Lyudmila, that’s what they’re saying.”
“Well, I won’t get into mischief,” Sasha promised as calmly as though the conversation concerned a game of tag.
He put on an innocent face, but his heart was heavy. He kept asking Kokovkina what people were saying and he was afraid of hearing any vulgar words. What could they say about them? The windows in Lyudmila’s room look out on the garden, there was nothing visible from the street and Lyudmila always lowered the curtains. But if someone had been spying, then what could they have said about that? Perhaps their words only expressed annoyance and insult? Or were they only talking about the fact that he frequently went there?
Then on the following day Kokovkina received an invitation to see the headmaster. The old lady was completely unnerved by it. She didn’t say anything to Sasha, quietly got ready and set out at the appointed time. Khripach politely and gently informed her about the letter he had received. She started to weep.
“Calm yourself, we aren’t blaming you,” Khripach said. “We know you well. Of course, you’ll have to keep a closer eye on him. But now you just tell me what in fact happened.”
Kokovkina came home from the director with fresh reproaches for Sasha.
“I’ll write your aunt,” she said, weeping.
“I’m not guilty of anything, let my aunt come, I’m not afraid,” Sasha said and also cried.
The following day Khripach invited Sasha to his office and questioned him dryly and sternly:
“I wish to know which acquaintances you’ve taken up in the town.”
Sasha gazed at the headmaster with his falsely innocent and calm eyes.
“What acquaintances?” he said. “Olga Vasilyevna knows that I only go to my schoolmates and to the Rutilovs.”
“Yes, precisely,” Khripach continued his interrogation. “What do you do at the Rutilovs?”
“Nothing in particular, just things,” S
asha replied with the same innocent look. “Mainly we read. The Rutilov ladies like poetry very much. And I’m always home by seven o’clock.”
“Perhaps not always?” Khripach asked, fastening on Sasha a gaze which he tried to make penetrating.
“Yes, I was late once,” Sasha said with the calm frankness of an innocent boy. “But I caught it from Olga Vasilyevna and then I was never late.”
Khripach was silent. Sasha’s calm replies had put him in a dilemma. In any case he would have to administer an admonition, a reprimand, but how and why? In order not to put any bad ideas (which Khripach believed hadn’t been there earlier) into his head, and in order not to offend the boy and in order to eliminate those troubles which might occur in the future because of this acquaintance. Khripach thought that the work of the pedagogue was a difficult and responsible work, particularly if one had the honor of presiding over an educational institution. The difficult and responsible work of the pedagogue! This banal definition gave wings to Khripach’s thoughts that were on the verge of becoming paralyzed. He started to speak—quickly, distinctly and casually. Sasha listened with half an ear:
“… your first obligation as a student is to study … you mustn’t get carried away with the company of others even though it may be pleasant and completely irreproachable … in any event, it must be said that the company of boys your own age is much more beneficial for you … You must value both your own reputation and that of the educational institution … Finally—and I’ll say it to you outright—I have reason to believe that your relations with the young ladies possess a loose nature that is inadmissible at your age, and completely inappropriate with the generally accepted rules of seemliness.”
Sasha started to weep. He felt sorry that people could talk about his dear Lyudmilochka as about a person with whom it was possible to act in a loose and unseemly fashion.
“Word of honor, there wasn’t anything bad,” he tried to convince him. “We only read, went for walks and played—well, ran around a bit—there was nothing loose.”
The Petty Demon Page 33