The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  “I know what your tastes are,” Sofiya said. “You don’t care for those skinny ones. You have to choose a suitable person for yourself, a girl with substance.”

  Peredonov was afraid to speak—they might be baiting him. And he kept glancing in angry silence at Sofiya.

  3. On the way Peredonov told Volodin that Zhenya, Sofiya’s cousin, was Prepolovensky’s lover.

  Volodin immediately believed it: he was angry at Zhenya who had turned him down long ago.

  “She ought to be reported to the ecclesiastical council,” Peredonov said. “After all, she comes from a church background, she’s a bishop’s daughter.”

  They ought to denounce her so that they’d send her off to a convent to do penance and they’d whip her there!

  Volodin was wondering whether to denounce her. But he decided to be gracious—and forget about her. Otherwise he could be drawn into it and they’d tell him to prove it.

  4. In the midst of conversations of this sort they arrived in the village. The house where the lessee lived, Marta’s and Vladya’s father, was low and wide, with a high gray roof and carved shutters on the window. It wasn’t new, but it was solid, and hiding behind a row of birch trees it seemed comfortable and nice—at least it seemed that way to Vladya and Marta. But Peredonov didn’t like the birch trees in front of the house. He would have chopped them down or had them broken off.

  Running out with cries of joy to greet the arrivals were three barefooted children from about eight to ten: a girl and two boys, blue-eyed and freckle-faced. The host, a broad-shouldered, powerful and big Pole with a long graying moustache and an angular face, greeted the guests at the threshold. The face was reminscent of one of those composite photographs where several similar faces were printed at once on a single plate. All the particular features of a single person were lost in photographs of this sort and only the general aspect remained, namely, what was common to all or many faces. Thus it seemed that in Nartanovich’s face there weren’t any particular features, but merely what existed in every Polish face. For this reason one of the town wits had nicknamed Nartanovich the four-and-forty Pole. Nartanovich behaved in keeping with this: he was polite, even too polite in his manner of address, never losing the sense of his honor as a Polish gentleman and saying only the most essential things, as though afraid of revealing by way of frivolous conversation anything that pertained only to himself.

  Obviously he was happy for the guest and greeted him with village extravagance. When he spoke, his voice boomed with sudden loudness, as though it meant to contend with the noise of the wind. It deafened everything that had just been uttered, and then abruptly broke off and fell. And afterwards, the voices of other people seemed weak and pitiful.

  In one of the rooms, which were rather dark and low, where the host could easily have touched the roof with his hand, a table was quickly laid out. A spritely wench brought different kinds of vodka and zakuski.

  Vershina particularly liked Marta and Vladya for the reason that she could give them orders, grumble at them and sometimes punish them. Vershina loved power and she was very flattered when Marta, after committing some fault, would unquestioningly get down on her knees at Vershina’s order.

  Peredonov quickly drank some vodka, had a bite to eat and started to complain about Vladya. Nartanovich looked fiercely at his son, kept offering food and drink laconically but insistently to Peredonov. However, Peredonov determinedly refused to eat anything more.

  “No,” he said. “I came to see you on business. You listen to me first.”

  “Ah, on business,” the host cried. “You mean a reason.”

  Peredonov started to blacken Vladya from all sides. The father grew more and more furious.

  “Aha, the sluggard!” he exclaimed slowly and with impressive accents. “You need your hide tanned. I’ll give you a lashing. You’re going to get a hundred hot ones.”

  Vladya started to cry.

  “I promised him,” Peredonov said, “that I would come on purpose to see you so that you would punish him in my presence.”

  “I am grateful to you for that,” Nartanovich said. “I’ll give the lazybones such a licking with the rod that he’ll certainly remember it, the sluggard!”

  Gazing fiercely at Vladya, Nartanovich got up—and it seemed to Vladya that he was enormous and had forced all the air out of the room. He grabbed Vladya by the shoulder and dragged him off to the kitchen. The children huddled against Marta and looked in terror at the sobbing Vladya. Peredonov followed Nartanovich.

  “What are you standing there for?” he said to Marta. “You go on too, have a look and help, you’ll have your own children one day.”

  Marta flared up and, gathering all three children in her arms, she nimbly ran off with them out of the house, as far as possible so that they wouldn’t hear what was going to happen in the kitchen.

  When Peredonov went into the kitchen, Vladya was undressing. The father was standing in front of him and slowly uttering threatening words:

  “Lay down on the bench,” he said when Vladya had completely undressed.

  Vladya obeyed. Tears were streaming out of his eyes, but he tried to restrain himself. His father didn’t like any cries of entreaty. It would be worse if he cried out. Peredonov looked at Vladya, at his father; examined the kitchen and started to worry when he didn’t see any whipping rods anywhere. Could Nartanovich really be doing it just for show: he would frighten his son and then let him go unpunished. It was not by chance that Vladya was acting strangely, not at all as Peredonov had expected. He wasn’t rushing about, sobbing, bowing down at his father’s feet (all Poles were grovellers) begging for forgiveness, running to Peredonov with his entreaties. Had Peredonov come all this way just to watch the preparations for punishment?

  Meanwhile, Nartanovich, taking his time, tied his son to the bench. He fastened the hands over his head with a belt, each foot was fastened separately to the bench with a rope, with the feet spread out, one on one side of the bench, the other on the other side. And he also tied him down around the waist. Now Vladya couldn’t even move and he lay there, trembling with terror, certain that his father would whip him half to death, since earlier he had punished him for small transgressions without tying him up.

  Completing this business, Nartanovich said:

  “Now, to break off some switches and whip the sluggard if the gentleman won’t find it repulsive to watch your hide getting whipped.”

  Nartanovich gave a sidelong glance at the sullen Peredonov, grinned, stroked his long moustache and went to the window. A birch tree grew under the window.

  “No need even to go out,” Nartanovich said, breaking off some stocks.

  Vladya closed his eyes. It seemed to him that he was going to faint right away.

  “Give a listen, you lazybones,” his father shouted in a frightening voice over his head. “For doing it the first time this year I’ll give you twenty and the next time you’ll get more.”

  Vladya felt relieved—that was the least number that his father recognized and Vladya didn’t find that kind of punishment unusual.

  The father started to whip him with long and strong switches. Vladya clenched his teeth and didn’t cry out. The blood showed through in drops as delicate as dew.

  “Now that’s fine,” the father said, completing the punishment. “A firm lad!”

  And he started to untie his son. It seemed to Peredonov that it hadn’t been very painful to Vladya.

  “It was hardly worthwhile tying him up for that,” he said angrily. “For him it was like water off a duck’s back.”

  Nartanovich looked at Peredonov with his calm blue eyes and said:

  “The next time, thank you very much, he’ll get more. But that’s enough for today.”

  Vladya put on his shirt and, crying, kissed his father’s hand.

  “Kiss the switch, you blackamoor,” the father cried. “And get dressed.”

  Vladya got dressed and ran barefoot off into the garden—to cry his
heart out in peace.

  Nartanovich took Peredonov around the house and the buildings to show him the farm. Peredonov didn’t find it in the least engrossing. Although he often thought that he would save his money and buy himself an estate, now, when he was looking at everything that was being shown to him, he saw only rough and untidy objects, he had no feeling for their life and did not understand their connection and meaning for the farm.

  They sat down to supper after half an hour. Vladya was called as well. Peredonov made up jokes at Vladya’s expense. They seemed vulgar and stupid. Vladya blushed and practically cried, but the others didn’t laugh and that distressed Peredonov. And he was annoyed that Vladya hadn’t cried out earlier. It must have been painful for him. The blood hadn’t spurted for nothing. But he had been silent, the little brat. “The inveterate Polish brat!” Peredonov thought. And by then he was beginning to think that it hadn’t been worth the trip.

  Peredonov got up early in the morning and said that he was leaving immediately. They tried in vain to persuade him to be their guest for another day. He refused with determination.

  “I only came on business,” he said sullenly.

  Nartanovich grinned slightly, stroking his long graying moustache, and he said in a stentorian voice:

  “What a pity, what a pity!”

  Peredonov started to tease Vladya again on several occasions. But Vladya was happy that Peredonov was leaving. Now, after the punishment of the evening before, he knew that he could do what he wanted to at home and father wouldn’t scold him. He would have responded willingly with some impertinence to Peredonov’s pestering. But lately Vershina had repeated to him more than once that if he wanted to do good for Marta, then he ought not to anger Peredonov. And so he took zealous pains to seat Peredonov even more comfortably than the evening before.

  Peredonov regarded the troubles taken by Vladya while standing on the porch and questioned him:

  “Well, brother, was it hot enough for you?”

  “Yes it was,” Vladya replied, smiling shamefully.

  “You won’t forget it till the next thrashing?”

  “No I won’t.”

  “Was it a good whipping?”

  “Very good.”

  And the conversation went on in that vein all the while the cart was being hitched up. Vladya was already starting to think that it wasn’t always possible to be completely polite. But Peredonov left—and Vladya breathed freely.

  Today his father treated him as though nothing had happened the evening before. Vladya’s day passed happily.

  At dinner Nartanovich said to Marta:

  “That teacher of theirs is stupid. He doesn’t have any children of his own and he travels around giving whippings to other people’s. The tyrant!”

  “There was no need to whip him this first time,” Marta said.

  Nartanovich gave her a stern look and said imperiously:

  “It’s not out of place at all to give a whipping to a person at your age. Bear that in mind. Besides, he deserved it.”

  Marta blushed … Vladya said with a restrained smile:

  “It’ll heal in time for my wedding.”

  “As for you Marta,” Nartanovich said, “after dinner you’ll get a hiding. Don’t try and teach your father. I’ll give you twenty hot ones.”

  5. Peredonov walked quickly, almost ran. He was annoyed by all the policemen he met and frightened by them. “What did they want!” he thought. “Just like spies.”

  6. He knew an amazing lot about the townspeople. And actually, if every illegal trick could have been exposed with sufficient clarity for communication to the courts, then the town would have had the opportunity to see the kind of people on trial who enjoyed general respect. Several of the court cases would have been curious ones at that!

  7. In the entire gymnasium there were now 177 students: 28 from the petty bourgeoisie, 8 from the peasantry, and only 105 from the gentry and civil servants.

  8. “So you mean that now you’re not a liberal, but a conservative?” “A conservative, Your Excellency.”

  9. When Peredonov returned home, he found Varvara in the dining room with a book in her hands, something that rarely happened. Varvara was reading a cookbook, the only one that she ever opened.

  There was a great deal in the book that she didn’t understand, and everything that she read out of it and attempted to adopt met with failure. It was impossible for her to come to terms with the relative amounts of the constituent parts of the dishes, because the amounts in the book were given for 6 or 12 people, whereas she had to prepare them for two or three people, rarely more. But nevertheless she still made dishes from time to time out of the book. The book was an old one, tattered and in a black cover. The black cover immediately leapt to Peredonov’s eyes and drove him to despondency.

  “What are you reading, Varvara?” he asked angrily.

  “What? You know what, a cookbook,” Varvara replied. “I haven’t time to read stupid books.”

  “Why a cookbook?” Peredonov asked in terror.

  “What do you mean, why? I’m going to prepare a dish, for you, you’re always so finicky,” Varvara explained, grinning with a haughty and self-satisfied expression.

  “I’m not going to eat anything out of a black book!” Peredonov declared determinedly, quickly seizing the book out of Varvara’s hands and carrying if off into the bedroom.

  “A black book! And on top of it all, making meals out of it!” he thought with fear. All he needed was for them to try and do him in openly with black magic! It was essential to destroy the book, he thought, not paying any attention to the reverberating complaints of Varvara.

  But how to destroy it? Burn it? But it’s apt to go ahead and start a fire. Drown it? Of course it would come back to the surface and fall in someone else’s hands! Throw it away? It would be found. No, the best thing would be to rip a page out at a time and quietly sneak off with it as occasion dictated, and then later, when it was all finished, burn the black cover. With this in mind he relaxed. But what to do about Varvara? She’d produce a fresh book of sorcery. No, Varvara had to be properly punished.

  Peredonov went off into the garden, broke off some birch switches there and, glancing sullenly at the windows, brought them into the bedroom. Then he shouted into the kitchen through partially opened door:

  “Klavdyushka, call the lady into the bedroom and you come yourself.”

  Varvara and Klavdiya soon came. Klavdiya was the first to catch sight of the whipping rods and started to giggle.

  “Lie down, Varvara!” Peredonov ordered.

  Varvara gave a squeal and dashed for the door.

  “Hold her, Klavdyushka!” Peredonov shouted.

  The two of them laid Varvara out on the bed. Klavdiya held her while Peredonov thrashed her. Varvara wept desperately and begged forgiveness.

  10. There was the soft sound of children’s voices behind the door and Liza’s silvery laugh could be heard.

  Gudaevskaya whispered:

  “You stand here for the moment, behind the door, so he won’t know you’re here yet.”

  Peredonov stepped into the far end of the corridor and pressed against the wall. Gudaevskaya flung the door open impetuously and entered the nursery. Through the narrow crack in the door frame, Peredonov saw Antosha sitting at a table with his back to the door, beside a little girl in a white frock. Her curls were touching his cheek and seemed dark because Peredonov was seeing only the side of her that was in the shadow. Her hand was lying on Antosha’s shoulder. Antosha was cutting something out of paper for her and Liza was laughing with joy. Peredonov was annoyed that people were laughing here: the lad ought to be thrashed but there he was amusing his sister instead of being penitent and crying. Then he was seized with a feeling of malice: “You’ll be howling in just a moment,” he thought about Antosha and was consoled.

  Antosha and Liza turned around at the sound of the door opening. From his hiding place Peredonov caught sight of Liza’s rosy cheek and
stubby little nose underneath the long and straight strands of hair. He also saw the look of ingenuous surprise on Antosha’s face.

  The mother walked impetuously up to Antosha, tenderly embraced him around his little shoulders and said in a brisk and determined voice:

  “Antosha, darling, let’s go. Maryushka, you stay with Liza,” she said, turning to the nurse whom Peredonov couldn’t see.

  Antosha stood up unwillingly, while Liza started to snivel that he hadn’t finished yet.

  “Afterwards, he’ll cut them out for you afterwards,” her mother said to her and she led her son out of the room, holding on to his shoulders all the while.

  Antosha still didn’t know what was up, but his mother’s determined look had already frightened him and made him suspect something terrible.

  When they came out into the corridor and Gudaevskaya had closed the door, Antosha caught sight of Peredonov, took fright and tried to dash back. But his mother seized him firmly by the hand and quickly dragged him down the corridor, repeating all the while:

  “Let’s go, let’s go, darling, I’ll give you some nice little whipping rods. Your father the tyrant isn’t at home and I’m going to punish you with some nice little whipping rods, sweetheart, it’ll be good for you, darling.”

  Antosha started to weep and cried out:

  “But I didn’t get into mischief, what are you punishing me for!”

  “Quiet, quiet, darling!” the mother said, slapped him with her hand on the back of his head and shoved him into the bedroom.

  Peredonov followed them, muttering something quietly and angrily.

  In the bedroom the whipping rods were lying ready. Peredonov didn’t like the fact that they were thick and short.

  “Whipping rods for ladies,” he thought angrily.

  The mother quickly sat down on a chair, stood Antosha in front of herself and started to undo his buttons. All red, his face covered in tears, Antosha cried out as he twisted about in her hands and kicked with his feet: