Whenever Varvara happened to meet any of her friends, they made it perfectly clear by the way they winked and by the obscene jokes they made that they knew all about the forgery. She would smile at them brazenly and would neither confirm nor deny it, not wishing to get into an argument with them.
Others, however, gave Grushina to understand that they knew about her part in the forgery. She was very alarmed at this and told Varvara off for having let the cat out of the bag. Varvara only grinned and reassured her. ‘Don’t be so silly! As if I would tell anyone!’
‘Well, how does the whole world know about it?’ Grushina said excitedly. ‘I wouldn’t be so silly as to tell anyone.’
‘And I didn’t tell anyone,’ Varvara protested.
‘You’d better give me the letter,’ Grushina insisted. ‘He might examine it more carefully this time and then he’d see it’s a forgery from the writing.’
‘Let him find out!’ Varvara snapped. ‘I’d like to see the expression on that idiot’s face!’
At this point Grushina’s different-sized eyes flashed and she shouted, ‘It’s all right for you to talk, you’ve got what you wanted, while I’ll end up in prison because of you! No, do whatever else you like, but give me that letter. Peredonov could get a divorce with it, you know.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ Varvara exclaimed, standing before her quite brazenly with hands on hips. ‘Even if you shout it in the market, nothing can break up our marriage.’
‘It isn’t nonsense!’ cried Grushina. ‘There’s no law that says you can marry by false pretences. If he takes it to the authorities, it would go to the Senate, and they’d grant him a divorce.’
Varvara was frightened at this and said, ‘Don’t lose your temper, I’ll give you the letter. Don’t be scared – I won’t give you away. Do you think I’d be such a bitch? I have a soul too!’
‘What’s it got to do with souls?’ Grushina rudely replied. ‘There’s no such thing, anyway. Whether you’re a dog or man, you only have breath, but no soul. You live your life and that’s that!’
Varvara decided that she would have to steal the letter, although this would be difficult. But Grushina kept pressing her. There was only one hope: to catch Peredonov the next time he was drunk and steal it then. He’d been drinking a lot recently and often turned up inebriated at school, where he said such shameless things that even the worst boys were disgusted.
One day Peredonov returned from the billiard-rooms more drunk than usual: they had been toasting the new balls. But not once did he let the letter out of his sight, and after somehow managing to undress he stuffed it under his pillow.
He slept fitfully but deeply, and in his delirium talked aloud about something terrible and monstrous that scared the wits out of Varvara. She comforted herself with the thought that she was safe as long as he didn’t wake up. She then tried to see if nudging would wake him but he only muttered something unintelligible, cursed violently but didn’t wake up. She lit a candle and carefully placed it where the light would not fall on his eyes. Numb with terror, she got out of bed and slowly inched her hand under Peredonov’s pillow. The wallet wasn’t very far away, but for a long time it kept slipping out of her fingers. The candle burned dimly and flickered, casting frightening shadows over the walls and the bed – they darted about like murderous little devils. The air was heavy with the smell of stale vodka and the whole room was filled with snoring and the sound of drunken delirium. That place was the very incarnation of a nightmare.
With trembling hands she pulled the letter out and replaced the wallet. When Peredonov woke up in the morning he automatically felt for the letter and when he discovered that it was gone he cried out in horror, ‘Varvara, where’s the letter?’
Varvara was terribly frightened but concealed her terror and told him, ‘How do you expect me to know, Ardalyon? You keep showing it to everyone, so you must have dropped it somewhere. Or perhaps one of those friends you go carousing with at night has stolen it?’ Peredonov was certain one of his enemies was the thief, most likely Volodin. Now he had the letter all the official papers would fall into his clutches, he would be appointed inspector in his place – and Peredonov would be left a penniless dupe.
So he decided to defend himself. Every day he drew up a report about his enemies: Vershina, the Rutilovs, Volodin and his fellow teachers, all of whom were after the same job it seemed. In the evenings he took these reports to Rubovsky.
The police officer lived quite close to the school in an open place by the square. Many people could see Peredonov going up to the house from their windows, but he was sure he wouldn’t be noticed if he crept up by the back door with his notebook under his coat. Anyone could see at once that he was hiding something. If he had to shake hands with someone he kept hold of the papers under his coat with his left hand. He was sure no one would guess he was hiding anything and if anyone asked where he was going he told some clumsy lie which satisfied only himself.
‘They’re all traitors,’ he explained to Rubovsky. ‘They pretend to be friends so they’ll have a better chance of betraying me. But what they don’t know is that I have sufficient information to have them all sent to Siberia.’
Rubovsky listened without saying a word. He sent the first denunciation, which was obviously quite absurd, to the headmaster. He did the same with some later ones, but others he kept back just in case he should need them later. The headmaster then wrote to the director of national schools that Peredonov was showing unmistakable signs of severe mental disturbance.
At home Peredonov constantly heard rustlings – unbroken, tiresome, mocking. Mournfully he complained to Varvara, ‘Someone’s walking around on tiptoe, this house is swarming with spies. You’re not taking proper care of me, Varvara!’
Varvara didn’t understand one word of Peredonov’s ravings. She sometimes taunted him and sometimes felt terribly scared. ‘God knows what you can see when you’re drunk,’ she said spitefully and apprehensively.
The door into the hall seemed particularly suspicious: it did not shut tightly and the little gap seemed to hint that something was lurking there, hiding. Could it be the jack of clubs spying on him? An eye gleamed there, evil and piercing.
The cat followed him everywhere with its staring green eyes. Now and then it winked and then mewed terrifyingly. Obviously it was just waiting for the chance to catch Peredonov off guard, but so far it hadn’t succeeded and was venting its anger. He tried to ward it off by spitting, but still it followed him.
The little demon ran squeaking under the chairs and into every corner. It was filthy, repulsive, evil-smelling and terrifying. There was no doubt that it was Peredonov’s mortal enemy and had appeared on the scene just for him: it had never even existed before. It had been created and then a spell had been cast over it. And there it was, a fantastic creature which could take many shapes and which was born to terrify and destroy him.
It followed him everywhere, deceiving and mocking him. It would roll over the floor or turn into a rag, a ribbon, a twig, a flag, a small cloud, a dog, a cloud of dust in the street. Everywhere it crawled or ran after him to weary and exhaust him with its quaking dance. If only someone could rid him of it with a magic charm or deal it a swingeing blow to the head. But he had no friends here, no one would come to his rescue. He must find a way before that evil creature destroyed him.
And at last he thought of a way: he smeared the whole floor with glue so that the demon would get stuck. Unfortunately all that did stick were the soles of Varvara’s shoes and the hems of her dresses, and the demon gaily rolled on, shrilly laughing. Varvara cursed him to high heaven.
Peredonov was gradually being worn down by his constant dread of persecution and he became more and more submerged in a wildly illusory world. One could see it in his face, which had become as immobile as a mask, with horror written all over it.
He no longer went to play billiards in the evenings. After dinner he would shut himself in the bedroom and barricade the door with chairs
and tables, and he would try and ward off evil by repeating exorcisms and crossing himself. Then he would sit down and write reports about anyone he could think of. He wrote denunciations not only of people, but of the four queens in the pack of cards. As soon as he had finished he would take his reports straight to the district police officer. All his evenings were spent in this way.
Everywhere he looked he could see kings, queens and jacks strutting about like real people. Even the humbler cards took to parading themselves. They were people with bright buttons – schoolboys and policemen. Then there was the fat ace of spades, so fat it seemed all belly. Sometimes the cards turned into people he knew, and sometimes living people mingled with these weird spectres.
Peredonov was convinced that the jack of clubs was hiding behind the door and that it had the power and authority of a policeman and could whisk him away somewhere, perhaps to some grim gaol. And beneath the table sat the little demon. Peredonov was too scared to look there – or behind the door …
The elusive boyish eights in the pack mocked him – they were really schoolboys who had turned into playing-cards. They raised their legs with strange lifeless movements, like the arms of a pair of dividers, only their legs were covered with hair and for feet they had hoofs. In place of tails they had birch twigs and each time they swished them they whistled and shrieked out loud. The demon grunted from under the table, highly amused at their antics.
It infuriated Peredonov to think that the demon wouldn’t have dared enter the house of a more important official. It wouldn’t be allowed past the front door, he thought enviously. The footmen would have driven it off with mops.
At last Peredonov could stand the demon’s evil, shrill, mocking laugh no longer. He fetched a chopper from the kitchen and with one mighty blow split the table in half. The demon squealed pitifully and malevolently, rushed out and rolled away. A shiver ran down Peredonov’s spine. It might bite me, he thought. He shrieked with terror and sat down. The little demon had peacefully disappeared – but not for long …
Sometimes Peredonov would take the cards and savagely poke out the heads of the court cards with a penknife – the queens in particular. Whilst decapitating the kings he would keep looking round, in case someone saw him and charged him with treason. But even these purges didn’t help for long. Guests brought new packs, which once more became a hiding-place for evil spies.
Peredonov had already convinced himself that he was a deadly enemy of the State. Indeed, he imagined that he had been under police surveillance from his student days. This was why they were still following him and this both horrified him and made him feel important.
The wind suddenly rustled the wallpaper. It flapped with a quiet, sinister sound and dim half-shadows crept over its bright patterns. There’s a spy hiding there, behind the paper, he thought dejectedly. What wicked people! That explains why they hung the paper so loosely, so that some wafer-thin, cunning, patient spy would have room to hide. It’s an old trick. He had dim recollections about someone who had got what he deserved for hiding behind wallpaper – he had been stabbed with a dagger – or was it an awl?
He immediately went out to buy an awl. When he returned, the wallpaper was still stirring and flapping in the wind – perhaps that spy was trying to creep further into the wall as he sensed the danger. A shadow jumped up to the ceiling and danced about menacingly.
Boiling with rage, Peredonov made a swift thrust at the paper with the awl. A shudder ran all along the wall. He gave a howl of triumph and started dancing about the room, waving the awl.
Then Varvara came in. ‘What’s this, dancing on your own, Ardalyon?’ she asked with her usual stupid brazen grin.
‘I’ve killed a beetle,’ Peredonov gloomily explained.
His eyes shone in wild triumph. Only one thing troubled him: the terrible smell. It was the executed spy stinking behind the wallpaper as he rotted away. He trembled with fear and exultation: he had killed his enemy! With this murder his heart was hardened beyond redemption. It wasn’t a murder but to Peredonov it seemed so. Mad terror had forged in him a readiness to commit crime. And now the deep, unconscious notion of some future crime that lurked in the lower strata of his spiritual life, a tormenting urge to commit murder, oppressed his depraved will. This urge, still alive many generations after Cain of old, found satisfaction in smashing and ruining things, in chopping with an axe, in cutting with a knife, in felling trees in the garden to prevent spies from peering out from behind them. And that ancient demon, the spirit of primeval chaos and confusion, rejoiced in the destruction of things, while a lunatic’s wild eyes reflected the horror of some monstrous death agonies.
Again and again the same illusions returned to torment him. Varvara, enjoying her fun at Peredonov’s expense, would sometimes creep up to the room where Peredonov was sitting and whisper through the keyhole in some disguised voice. Peredonov would be scared stiff and tiptoe to the door to catch the enemy, only to find Varvara.
‘Who were you whispering to?’ he would ask miserably.
‘Why, you’re imagining things, Ardalyon,’ she would reply with a grin.
‘Not everything is imaginary,’ he would wearily mutter. ‘There is some truth in this world.’
Yes, even Peredonov was striving towards the truth, according to the universal law of all conscious life, and the effort exhausted him. He himself didn’t realize that he was seeking the truth, like everyone else, therefore he was plagued with fear and anxiety. He couldn’t find the truth for himself and so he was becoming caught in the toils – and perishing.
Even Peredonov’s friends now began to laugh at him for being taken in as he had been.
People often spoke about the deception to his face, with that cruelty towards the weak so typical of this town. Mrs Prepolovensky, for example, asked with a crafty smile, ‘How is it you haven’t taken up your new appointment yet, Mr Peredonov?’
Varvara, suppressing her anger, would answer for him, ‘The moment we receive the confirmation you won’t see us for dust.’
Questions like these only depressed Peredonov. Life just won’t be worth living if I don’t get that job, he thought.
And he kept devising new ways of defending himself from his enemies. He stole the chopper from the kitchen and hid it under his bed. Then he bought a very sharp clasp-knife, which he always kept in his pocket. Constantly he locked himself up in his room. At night he surrounded the house with traps and even put some in the rooms. In the morning he examined each one. Needless to say, these traps were so clumsily constructed that no one could possibly get caught in them. They gripped but they did not hold, and it was the easiest thing to shake them off. Peredonov was hopeless with his hands and he had no brains either. Every morning, when he saw that no one had been caught, he concluded that his enemies had wrecked his traps. This terrified him even more.
Peredonov was now keeping a particularly close watch on Volodin. More than once he went to his house when he knew he wouldn’t be in and rummaged among his papers to see if he had stolen any important documents from him.
Peredonov began to suspect that the princess wanted him to become her lover again. But he thought she was old and repulsive. She’s a hundred and fifty years old, he thought spitefully. But despite her age, she’s very influential. And his repulsion mingled with feelings of desire. She’s barely warm and smells like a corpse, Peredonov imagined, and a feeling of wild lust made him feel quite faint. Perhaps I could bring myself to sleep with her and then she might relent. What if I wrote to her?
And this time, without more ado, he sat down and wrote a letter to the princess as follows: I love you because you are cold and remote. Varvara sweats too much and it’s like an oven in bed with her. I want a cold, distant mistress. Come then, and let us share our love.
As soon as he had posted the letter he was sorry. What’s going to happen now? he thought. Perhaps it was quite the wrong thing to do. I should have waited for her to come of her own accord.
He had bee
n the victim, as in most of what he did, of a sudden impulse. He was like a corpse brought to life at times by strange powers which, it seemed, couldn’t be bothered with him for long: one of them would play with him for a while and then abandon him to another.
The little demon soon reappeared and for hours it would roll around Peredonov as if it were on a lasso, constantly teasing him. Now it made no noise and could laugh only by trembling all over. Then it would flare up with a shower of faint golden sparks and threaten him, evil and shameless, glowing in its triumph, and this he found insufferable. And the cat threatened him too, with its evil glinting eyes, mewing insolently, terrifyingly. What are they all so pleased about? he sadly wondered and suddenly realized that the end was approaching, that the princess was already with him, close, quite close. Perhaps in that pack of cards.
Yes, there was no doubt about it, the princess was either the queen of spades or hearts. Perhaps she was hiding in another pack, or behind some other cards? But he had no idea what she was really like. The trouble was he had never set eyes on her. It was no good asking Varvara, she would only tell him some lie.
Finally he decided to consign the whole pack to the flames. Let them all burn. If any of his enemies had crept into the packs to spite him it would be their own fault.
Peredonov waited for the right moment – when Varvara was out and the living-room stove was blazing away – and threw the whole pack into it. The cards crackled and went black at the edges as they burned. Mysterious, strangely beautiful pale red flowers unfurled. Peredonov looked at these fiery blossoms in horror.
The Little Demon Page 27