The Little Demon

by Fyodor Sologub

  Skuchayev enumerated several diocesan and suffragan bishops.

  ‘No, I don’t want to take holy orders,’ Peredonov replied. ‘I’m scared of the incense. It makes me feel sick and gives me a headache.’

  ‘In that case, the police would be a good idea. You might become a district commissioner. If I may ask, what rank do you hold in the civil service as a teacher?’

  ‘I’m a State councillor,’ Peredonov said pompously.

  ‘Go on!’ Skuchayev exclaimed. ‘Teachers certainly reach high rank these days. And all for teaching young boys! Well now, education must be really something! However, although it has its critics, it’s true you can’t go far without it. I myself only went to a district school, but I’m sending my son to university. I have to help him through school almost by force, you know, but once he’s at university he won’t need any pushing. Not that I ever thrash him. Only when he’s lazy or misbehaves, I take him over to the window and say, “Do you see those birches over there?” and he replies, “Oh yes, Papa, I can see them. I’ll behave in future.” It really does work and the lad turns over a new leaf, just as if he’d been given a good hiding. Oh, children, children!’ Skuchayev concluded with a sigh.

  Peredonov stayed about two hours at the mayor’s. When the business was finished refreshments in abundance were served.

  Skuchayev was the most solemn of hosts and, as in everything he did, entertained his guest as if conducting some very serious business. All the same, he liked to introduce a few artful little tricks.

  Mulled wine would be served in large glasses, just like coffee. The vodka glasses had been broken off and rounded at the stem so it was impossible to put them down on the table.

  Another visitor arrived, Tishkov the merchant. He was small, grey-haired, very lively for his age, and wore a long frock-coat and boots like large bottles. He drank a great deal of vodka, kept rattling off nonsense rhymes and was evidently very satisfied with himself.

  Peredonov at last decided that it was time to leave and rose from his chair.

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry,’ the host said. ‘Stay a while.’

  ‘Please stay here and keep good cheer,’ rhymed Tishkov.

  ‘No, it’s time I went,’ Peredonov replied anxiously.

  ‘Time to leave or his “cousin” will grieve,’ Tishkov said, winking at Skuchayev.

  ‘I’ve things to see to,’ Peredonov said.

  ‘A busy chap we can only clap,’ Tishkov instantly replied.

  Skuchayev accompanied Peredonov to the hall. They embraced as they parted. Peredonov was pleased with the visit. The mayor’s on my side, he confidently thought.

  Returning to Tishkov, Skuchayev said, ‘It’s all idle chatter about that man.’

  ‘It’s idle chatter and the truth doesn’t matter,’ Tishkov immediately caught up, pouring himself a glass of English bitters. Clearly, he never paid attention to the meaning of what people said to him but was only interested in words that he could rhyme.

  ‘He’s all right, a good fellow and an expert tippler,’ Skuchayev continued, filling his glass and ignoring Tishkov’s rhyming.

  ‘If he’s a good toper he can’t be a moper!’ Tishkov cried as he emptied his glass.

  ‘And what if he is larking about with a mam’selle!’ Skuchayev said.

  ‘From a mam’selle’s head you get bugs in your bed!’ Tishkov replied.

  ‘He who hasn’t sinned against God is not responsible to the Tsar.’

  ‘All of us transgress for one sweet caress.’

  ‘But he wants to conceal his sin under the altar.’

  ‘Hiding sin under a wedding wreath leads to fighting and gnashing of teeth.’

  Tishkov always spoke like this if the conversation didn’t concern him. He would have bored everyone to death but they were used to him and ignored his rapidly delivered tongue-twisters. Only now and then did they let him loose on a stranger. But Tishkov could not care less whether they listened or not. He just couldn’t resist picking up words other people said and rhyming them, and he functioned with the unwavering efficiency of a cunningly devised boredom machine. Looking at his brisk, precise movements for long might make one think that this was no living person, that he had died or had never even lived, was blind to the real world and heard nothing but words with a deathly ring to them.

  NINE

  Next day Peredonov went to see the district attorney, Avinovitsky. Once again the weather was miserable. A blustery wind whirled clouds of dust before it. Evening was drawing in and everything was suffused with a melancholy light that filtered through a thick haze and didn’t seem to come from the sun at all. A deathly silence hung over the streets. The wretched, hopelessly tumbledown houses seemed to have been built for no purpose at all beyond that of creating a soulless uniformity and drabness and timidly hinted at the dreary, miserable lives dragging on within their walls.

  People walked along the streets slowly, aimlessly, as if weighed down by a lethargy they had no desire to shake off. Only children, those eternal tireless vessels of divine joy on earth, showed any life as they ran and played – but they were already showing signs of being afflicted with inertia. Some faceless and invisible monster seemed to be perched on their shoulders, peering every now and then into their blank faces with eyes full of menace.

  Tormented by vague fears, Peredonov walked amidst all this squalor and depression, over an earth that seemed alienated from heaven, impure and impotent. The lofty gave him no comfort, the earthly brought him no joy, and now, as always, he looked on the world with lifeless eyes, like some solitary demon consumed by fear and dejection.

  Sluggish in perception, his squalid mind contaminated every sensation, transforming it into something obscene and loathsome. He delighted in seeing imperfection in everything. Whenever he passed an upright, freshly painted column or pillar he felt a savage desire to break it or cover it with filth. He loved to see objects soiled in his presence and would laugh for joy. Well-scrubbed schoolboys were anathema to him and he would persecute them, calling them ‘soap addicts’ – the slovenly, scruffy ones he understood much better. He loved nothing and no one, and as a result the real world could only have a depressing effect on him. And so it was whenever he met people, especially strangers and people he didn’t know and to whom it was impossible to be rude. Happiness consisted in doing absolutely nothing, in cutting himself off from the world and in pampering his stomach.

  And now he had to face the utter vexation of actually having to go and talk to someone whether he liked it or not. How tiresome! Even the consolation of being able to daub the walls of the attorney’s house would be denied him. The house itself only strengthened and gave definite form to his feeling of oppression and fear. Indeed, it had an evil, angry look. The high roof seemed to frown over the windows, forcing them down onto the ground. The weatherboards and roof had once been painted a bright, cheerful colour, but time and the elements had turned them a dreary grey. The huge, heavy iron gates, higher than the house itself and apparently built to resist attackers, were kept constantly locked and behind them a mastiff rattled its chain and growled at every passer-by.

  All around was a wilderness – waste ground, overgrown kitchen gardens and ramshackle huts. Opposite the house was an unpaved square where rank grass grew around a small hollow in the middle. The only lamp there was the one outside the attorney’s house. Slowly and reluctantly Peredonov climbed the four steep steps up to the porch with its sloping roof and pulled the blackened copper bell-handle. A sharp continuous tinkling could be heard just inside. Soon there was a sound of muffled footsteps. Someone tiptoed to the door and stood there very quietly, probably looking at him through a hidden chink. Then an iron bolt rattled and the door opened to reveal a scowling, black-haired, pock-marked girl who stared at him with the utmost suspicion.

  ‘Who do you want?’ she asked.

  Peredonov replied that he had come to see Mr Avinovitsky on important business. As soon as he was in the hall Peredonov recit
ed a magic charm. And only just in time too, he thought. Before he’d had time to remove his coat Avinovitsky’s strident, angry voice echoed from the drawing-room. It was absolutely terrifying – but he could never speak any other way – and in this angry, thunderous voice he now bellowed a welcome to Peredonov, showing how pleased he was that at last he’d come to see him.

  Aleksandr Avinovitsky, a grim-looking man, seemed to have been born to reprimand and bully others. He enjoyed superb health and went swimming the whole year round. But his thick black beard, tinged with blue, had grown so large that it made the rest of him look thin. If he didn’t frighten people with his continual shouting, he certainly intimidated them, constantly fulminating and issuing threats of hard labour in Siberia.*

  ‘I’ve come to see you on business,’ Peredonov said, rather confused.

  ‘Have you brought your confession with you? Is it murder, arson or mail-robbery?’ Avinovitsky angrily asked as he showed Peredonov into the drawing-room. ‘Or perhaps you yourself have been the victim of a crime, which is more than possible in this town. It’s an iniquitous place and the police are even worse. It makes me wonder why dead bodies aren’t found every morning out there on the square! Please sit yourself down. Now, what can I do for you? Are you the criminal or the victim?’

  ‘No,’ Peredonov said, ‘I haven’t committed a crime. I know that the headmaster would love to have me hauled off to court but I haven’t done anything wrong, absolutely nothing.’

  ‘So you haven’t come here to confess?’ Avinovitsky asked.

  ‘No, nothing of the sort,’ Peredonov replied in a trembling voice.

  ‘If that’s the case,’ the attorney said, fiercely stressing every syllable, ‘then we can proceed to other matters.’

  He took a handbell from the table and rang it. No one came. Then he took the bell in both hands, shook it furiously, flung it onto the floor, stamped his feet and wildly shouted, ‘Malanya! Where the devil are you!’

  There was a sound of hurried footsteps and a schoolboy entered. It was Avinovitsky’s son, a stocky dark-haired lad of about thirteen with an air of supreme self-confidence. Unruffled, he bowed to Peredonov, put the bell back on the table and said, ‘Malanya’s in the kitchen garden.’

  Avinovitsky calmed down for a moment. He looked at his son with a tenderness that was foreign to such a fierce, rugged face and said, ‘Run along and tell Malanya to bring us some food and drink, there’s a good boy.’

  The obedient son ambled out of the room, watched by his proudly smiling father. He got no further than the door, however, when his father suddenly frowned and shouted in such a terrifying voice that Peredonov almost jumped out of his skin, ‘And don’t take all day about it!’

  The boy ran off and they could hear one door after the other being slammed. Avinovitsky listened, smiled with his thick red lips and then said in the same angry voice, ‘My sole heir. Not a bad boy, eh? I wonder how he’ll turn out. What do you think? He may turn out a complete idiot, but a scoundrel, coward or milksop – never!’

  ‘Of course—’ mumbled Peredonov.

  ‘People nowadays are travesties of the human race,’ he thundered on. ‘They think that health is something to be sneered at. If I had my way I would have sentenced the German who invented the undervest to hard labour. Just the very thought of my Vladimir wearing one! All last summer in the country he went around without any shoes – and to think of him in a thick woollen vest! Why, when he’s had a bath he runs naked in the freezing cold and rolls in the snow. My son in an undervest – I ask you! That damned German should be given a hundred lashes!’

  After the unfortunate inventor of the undervest other transgressors came in for abuse.

  ‘The death penalty, my dear sir, is not in the least inhuman. Science now tells us that people are born criminals. Then they should be exterminated! It’s the State that has to feed them. With the law as it is, a man who’s an inveterate murderer, an arsonist, a sex maniac, is given a nice warm cell in a penal settlement and has nothing to worry about for the rest of his life. The taxpayer has to foot the bill. If you ask me, it’s cheaper – and more just – to hang them straight away. Yes, that just about sums it up!’

  The round table in the dining-room was covered with a white cloth with a red border, on which were laid plates of fat sausages of every variety, pickles, smoked herring and all sorts of cured fish. Interspersed with the plates were decanters and bottles of various shapes and sizes containing different kinds of vodkas, brandies and liqueurs. All this was very much to Peredonov’s taste; even the slight disorderliness in the appointments pleased him. The host continued his diatribe. The presence of food turned his thoughts to shopkeepers and then he changed his attack to ancestry, for no apparent reason.

  ‘The importance of ancestry and breeding shouldn’t be overlooked!’ he furiously shouted. ‘It’s stupid, ludicrous and immoral that peasants can enter the landowning class. The soil is getting poorer, the towns are filling with tramps, harvests are bad, illiteracy is rampant, the suicide rate goes up. Is that something to be pleased about? Educate a peasant if you like but don’t give him any status. Otherwise the peasantry itself will become impoverished and will always remain riff-raff, cattle. And the landowning gentry itself suffers from this influx of uncouth rabble. A peasant may well stand out amongst his own people in a village, but once he moves into higher circles he brings something coarse, uncouth and ignoble with him. He’s really only interested in earning enough to live on and stuffing his belly. No, sir, castes were a wise institution.’

  ‘And that headmaster of ours allows all kinds of scum into the school,’ Peredonov said angrily. ‘There are even peasant boys – and quite a few shopkeepers’ children.’*

  ‘A fine state of affairs I must say!’ shouted the attorney.

  ‘A Government paper† was recently published, stating that such riff-raff shouldn’t be admitted, but Khripach goes his own sweet way and almost never refuses anyone,’ complained Peredonov. ‘He says that life is poor in this town and there are so few high-school students as it is. What does he mean, too few? It would be better if there were even fewer! But it’s as much as we can do to mark their work, let alone do any reading. And they deliberately use dubious words in their essays so that you have to keep checking them in the dictionary.’

  ‘Drink some herb vodka,’ Avinovitsky suggested. ‘You still haven’t told me why you’ve come.’

  ‘I have enemies,’ Peredonov muttered and he mournfully peered into his glass of yellow vodka before drinking it.

  ‘There once was a pig that had no enemies,’ Avinovitsky replied, ‘but they still slaughtered it. Have a slice, will you? – a very good pig it was too.’

  Peredonov took a slice of ham and said, ‘Some people are spreading malicious lies about me.’

  ‘Yes, I think I’m right in saying there’s no worse town than this when it comes to slander!’ Avinovitsky fiercely shouted. ‘What a town! The moment you put a foot wrong those pigs start grunting about it.’

  ‘Princess Volchansky promised me an inspector’s post and that’s set them all talking. It could really harm my prospects. And it’s all out of jealousy. And the headmaster’s let the whole school go to rack and ruin. The boys who live out smoke, drink and run after the girls. And local boys do the same. Khripach has let things go to the dogs and now he’s persecuting me. I bet someone’s been trumping up ridiculous stories about me and told him. It could go even further and reach the princess!’

  Peredonov proceeded to give a lengthy and confused description of everything he felt he had reason to fear. Avinovitsky listened angrily and from time to time interrupted by shouting furiously, ‘The swine! Bastards! Scum!’

  ‘And to say I’m a nihilist!’ said Peredonov. ‘It’s really quite funny. I have an official cap with a badge,* although I don’t always wear it and sometimes wear a hat. And as for the portrait of Mickiewicz in my room, I hang it there because of his poetry, not because he was a rebel. What’s mor
e, I’ve never even read The Bell.’†

  ‘You’re getting your journals mixed up,’ Avinovitsky said unceremoniously. ‘The Bell was published by Herzen, not Mickiewicz.’

  ‘You must be thinking of another Bell. Mickiewicz also published one.’

  ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Why don’t you have it published – it would be a major discovery. You’ll be famous!’

  ‘I can’t possibly publish it,’ Peredonov crossly retorted. ‘I’m not allowed to read banned books. I never read them – I’m a patriot!’

  After these lengthy complaints that Peredonov poured out Avinovitsky came to the conclusion that someone was trying to blackmail Peredonov and was spreading rumours to frighten him, thus preparing the ground for a sudden demand for money. That he himself hadn’t heard anything yet he attributed to the skill of the blackmailer, who was obviously operating in Peredonov’s immediate circle – after all, it was only Peredonov he had to work on.

  ‘Whom do you suspect?’ asked Avinovitsky.

  Peredonov reflected for a moment. The name of Grushina happened to spring to mind first and he had a vague recollection of their recent conversation during the course of which he had interrupted her and threatened to inform on her. Or had he? Whether he had been doing the informing or whether someone had been informing on him wasn’t clear. The idea that he’d threatened to inform on Grushina became indissolubly linked in his mind with the concept of informing in general. One thing was clear, however: Grushina was an enemy. And, worst of all, she had seen him hide the Pisarev. He must find another place at once.

  ‘There’s that Grushina woman,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know. A bitch of the first order,’ Avinovitsky summed her up.

  ‘She’s always coming to our place and nosing around,’ Peredonov complained. ‘Never satisfied with what she can get. Perhaps she wants to blackmail me with the Pisarev? Or perhaps she wants me to marry her. She won’t get any money out of me, and I already have a fiancée. Let her inform – the police will find nothing. Only it could all be very unpleasant for me if there were a scandal – it could damage my promotion prospects.’