‘It’s all right, darling,’ his mother replied. ‘Come on now, let’s get you undressed. It’ll be very good for you. Now, there’s nothing to worry about, it’ll heal in no time,’ she said, consoling him as she nimbly undressed him. The half-undressed Antosha kept putting up a fight, kicking out and shouting.
‘Help me, Mr Peredonov,’ Julia Gudayevsky said in a loud whisper. ‘He’s such a little ruffian. I knew all along that I wouldn’t be able to manage on my own.’
Peredonov took hold of Antosha by the feet while Mrs Gudayevsky started thrashing him.
‘Don’t be lazy, don’t be lazy!’ she repeated again and again.
‘Don’t kick! Don’t kick!’ Peredonov repeated in turn.
‘Oooh! I won’t do it again. Oooh, I won’t!’ cried Antosha.
Mrs Gudayevsky worked so zealously that she soon grew tired. ‘That’s enough for now, darling,’ she said, letting Antosha go. ‘That’s enough, I can’t manage any more. I’m absolutely exhausted.’
‘If you’re so tired I could take over,’ Peredonov suggested.
‘Antosha! Thank the gentleman,’ Mrs Gudayevsky said. ‘Thank him and click your heels. Mr Peredonov’s going to whip you just a little bit more with the rods. Lie over my knees, darling.’
She handed Peredonov a bundle of rods, pulled Antosha to her again and pushed his head between her knees. Peredonov suddenly became frightened: he felt that Antosha might break free and bite him. ‘That’s enough for now,’ he said.
‘Antosha! Did you hear?’ Mrs Gudayevsky asked, lifting him by his ears. ‘Mr Peredonov is forgiving you. Now thank him and click your heels. Click them and get dressed.’
Sobbing, Antosha clicked his heels and got dressed. His mother led him by the hand out into the corridor.
‘Just a minute,’ she whispered to Peredonov, ‘there’s something else I have to say.’
She took Antosha into the nursery where the nanny was putting Liza to bed and told him to go to bed. Then she returned to the bedroom. Peredonov was gloomily sitting on a chair in the middle of the room.
‘I’m so grateful,’ Mrs Gudayevsky began. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful. You acted so nobly, so very nobly. My husband should have taken care of this, but you took his place. He deserves to be cuckolded – if he lets others assume his responsibilities then others should enjoy his privileges too.’
Impulsively she threw herself around Peredonov’s neck and whispered, ‘Fondle me, darling!’
Then she spoke a few words that cannot be printed here. Peredonov was filled with blank astonishment, but he flung his arms around her waist and kissed her on the lips. She pressed hers firmly to his, in a long greedy kiss. Then she broke away from his embrace, dashed to the door, locked it and quickly began to undress.
11. Antosha was already asleep when his father returned from the club. In the mornings, when Antosha left for school, his father would still be sleeping and he saw him only in the afternoons. He sneaked quietly away from his mother into the study and complained about the thrashing. Mr Gudayevsky flew into a rage and ran around the study. He threw a pile of books on to the floor from his desk and shouted in a terrifying voice, ‘That’s vile, disgusting, despicable, disgraceful! Damn and blast! Call the police!’
Then he rushed over to Antosha, pulled his trousers down, inspected his slim little body that was marked all over with narrow pink stripes and shouted in a piercing voice, ‘Map of Europe, seventeenth edition!’ He caught Antosha up in his arms and ran to his wife. Antosha felt both awkward and ashamed and whined pitifully.
Julia Gudayevsky was deep in a novel. When she heard her husband shouting in the distance she guessed what had happened, leaped up, threw the book on to the floor and ran around the room, her dry fists clenched and her brightly coloured ribbons streaming behind her.
Mr Gudayevsky charged into the room, kicking the door open with his foot. ‘What’s this?’ he roared, setting Antosha down and showing her his naked body. ‘How did this landscape get there?’
Julia Gudayevsky trembled with rage and stamped her feet. ‘I thrashed him!’ she shouted. ‘I did it!’
‘Vile! Most vile! Hellishly vile!’ Mr Gudayevsky shouted. ‘How dare you do this without my consent!’
‘And I’d do it again. I’ll thrash him just to spite you!’ Mrs Gudayevsky screamed. ‘I’ll thrash him every day.’
Antosha struggled free and fled, buttoning himself as he ran and leaving his parents to hurl abuse at each other.
Mr Gudayevsky dashed over to his wife and gave her a hard slap on the face.
She screamed, burst into tears and shouted, ‘Monster! Scum of the earth! You want to drive me into the grave!’ She smartly rushed at her husband and slapped his cheek.
‘Mutiny! Treason! Call the police!’ Gudayevsky shouted.
For a long time they fought, flying at each other again and again. Finally they grew tired. Mrs Gudayevsky sat on the floor, crying. ‘You scoundrel! You’ve ruined my youth!’ she wailed in a plaintive, dragging voice.
Gudayevsky stood before her and was just about to give her another slap when he changed his mind, sat on the floor opposite his wife and shouted, ‘You Fury! Harridan! Tailless witch! You’ve made my life sheer hell!’
‘I’m going to Mother’s,’ Mrs Gudayevsky whined.
‘Go then,’ Gudayevsky angrily replied. ‘Nothing would give me more pleasure. I’d even take you myself. I’ll make music on a frying-pan, play a Persian march on my lips!’ He trumpeted a wild harsh tune through his fist.
‘And I’ll take the children!’ shouted Mrs Gudayevsky.
‘I won’t let you!’ shouted Mr Gudayevsky.
Simultaneously they leaped to their feet and carried on shouting, wildly gesticulating.
‘I won’t let you have Antosha!’ shouted the wife.
‘And I won’t let you have him!’ shouted the husband.
‘I’m taking him!’
‘I won’t let you!’
‘You’ll corrupt the boy, mollycoddle him, ruin him!’
‘And you’ll tyrannize him!’
They clenched their fists, threatened one another and ran off in opposite directions – she to the bedroom, he to his study. The sound of the two doors being slammed echoed throughout the house.
Antosha was sitting in his father’s study, as this seemed the most convenient, safest place. Gudayevsky ran around repeating, ‘I won’t let your mother have you, Antosha, I won’t!’
‘Let her have Liza,’ advised Antosha.
Gudayevsky stopped in his tracks, slapped his forehead and cried, ‘That’s a good idea!’
He ran out of the study. Antosha gingerly glanced into the corridor and saw him running into the nursery. From there he could hear Liza crying and the frightened voice of the nanny. Gudayevsky pulled the violently sobbing, terrified Liza out of the nursery by the hand, took her into the bedroom, threw her at her mother and shouted, ‘Here’s your little girl! Take her, but my son stays with me, on the basis of the seven articles of the seven sections of the Code of Codes!’ And with that he ran back into his study, exclaiming, ‘What a joke! Now try and be satisfied with just a little, and only give her gentle thrashings! Ho, ho!’
Mrs Gudayevsky grabbed her daughter, sat her on her lap and started comforting her. Then she suddenly leaped up, took Liza’s hand and swiftly led her to her father. Once again Liza burst into tears.
From the study father and son could hear Liza howling down the corridor and they looked at each other in amazement.
‘What is she up to?’ whispered the father. ‘She doesn’t want her – she’s coming for you!’
Antosha crawled under the writing-table. But just then Mrs Gudayevsky ran into the study, threw Liza to her father, dragged her son from under the table and struck him on the cheek. Then she grabbed his hand and hauled him along the corridor after her, crying. ‘Let’s go, darling. That father of yours is such a tyrant!’
And now the father suddenly pulled himself togeth
er, grabbed the boy by his other hand, struck him on the other cheek and cried, ‘Don’t be scared, my boy, I shan’t let anyone have you.’
Father and mother tugged Antosha in opposite directions whilst they ran around him. Antosha spun like a top between them and cried out in terror, ‘Let go of me, let go! You’ll tear my arms off!’
Somehow he managed to free his arms, so that mother and father were left holding only his jacket sleeves. But they were oblivious of this and continued circling Antosha in a wild frenzy. Antosha cried out desperately, ‘You’re tearing me apart! My shoulders are cracking. Oh, oh, you’re tearing me in half. You’ve torn me in half!’
And in fact mother and father suddenly fell on to the floor on either side of him, each holding a sleeve of Antosha’s jacket. Antosha ran off with a desperate cry, ‘You’ve torn me in half, that’s what you’ve done!’
Both father and mother imagined that they had ripped off Antosha’s arms. They lay on the floor howling in terror. ‘We’ve torn our little Antosha in half!’ they cried.
Then they jumped up and waved the empty sleeves at one another, each trying to shout louder than the other: ‘Send for a doctor! He’s run away! Where are his arms? Look for his arms!!’
They both crawled around the floor, but they found no arms. Then they sat facing one another. Howling with fear and with pity for Antosha, they set about lashing each other with the empty sleeves, after which they rolled around the floor, locked in combat. The maid and nanny came running in and separated the master and mistress.
12. After dinner Peredonov went straight to bed, which he always did when he wasn’t playing billiards. He dreamed of nothing but sheep and cats, which walked around him, bleating and mewing quite distinctly words that were really obscene. Everything they did was shameless.
After his nap he went to see the merchant Tvorozhkov, father of two boys at the school, to complain about them. The success of two previous visits had tickled his palate and he felt that here too he would be successful. Tvorozhkov was a simple, straightforward person, educated on a pittance and now very prosperous. He had a forbidding appearance, said very little and conducted himself sternly and solemnly. His sons, Vasya and Volodya, feared him like the plague. Of course, he was the kind of man who would give them a thrashing that would turn the very devil’s stomach.
When he saw how solemnly and silently Tvorozhkov was listening to his complaints, Peredonov felt all the more confident that his assumptions were correct. The boys, fourteen-year-old Vasya and twelve-year-old Volodya, stood stiffly to attention before their father, like little soldiers, but Peredonov was surprised and annoyed to see how calm their faces were, without a trace of fear. When Peredonov had finished and was quiet, Tvorozhkov looked carefully at his sons. They stiffened up even more and looked straight back at him. ‘You can go now,’ Tvorozhkov said. The boys bowed to Peredonov and left. Tvorozhkov turned to Peredonov.
‘It’s a great honour for me, my dear sir,’ he said, ‘that you are so concerned about my sons. It has just come to my notice, however, that you are in the habit of making similar visits, insisting that parents thrash their sons. Is it really possible that boys have suddenly got so out of hand that there’s no other way of controlling them? Everything used to run nice and smoothly, but all of a sudden there’s just one thrashing after the other.’
‘But if they misbehave,’ Peredonov muttered, rather taken aback.
‘They do misbehave,’ said Tvorozhkov. ‘Everyone knows that. When they misbehave they’re punished. But what surprises me very much – please forgive me, dear sir, if I’m saying the wrong thing – what really surprises me is the fact that you alone, of all the teachers, have seen fit to burden yourself with such – if I may use the expression – unbecoming activities. Of course, if a father thrashes his son, well, that’s only right and proper – if that’s what the son deserves. But spying on other people’s sons would appear to be overstepping the mark in your case.’
‘But it’s for their own good,’ Peredonov angrily replied.
‘We are quite familiar with the correct procedure in such cases,’ Tvorozhkov immediately retorted, not allowing Peredonov to continue. ‘If a pupil misbehaves, then he’s punished at school, according to the rules and regulations. If he persists, the parents are notified, or are asked to come to school and then the form master or an inspector will tell them what the offence was. And as for dealing with boys in their homes, it goes without saying that the parents will know what to do, depending on the kind of boy and the seriousness of the offence. But there is absolutely no precedent where a teacher takes the law into his own hands and goes round to boys’ homes demanding that they are thrashed. One day you might go to a certain house, then someone else might go there the next, then a third the day after that. Am I supposed to thrash my sons after each of these three visits? No, thank you very much, sir, it’s quite unacceptable and you should be ashamed of concerning yourself with such absurdities. Ashamed, sir!’ Tvorozhkov stood up and added, ‘I don’t think there’s anything more to discuss.’
‘Is that all you have to say on the subject?’ Peredonov said gloomily, getting up from his chair in great confusion.
‘Yes, I think so,’ Tvorozhkov replied. ‘Now will you please excuse me?’
‘So you want to breed nihilists,’ Peredonov said maliciously as he clumsily backed towards the door. ‘I should report you to the police for that.’
‘If it comes to it, I can do my share of reporting,’ Tvorozhkov calmly replied.
This reply shocked Peredonov to the core: what was Tvorozhkov going to report him for? It’s possible, he thought, that I said something I shouldn’t have, gave something away during the conversation, and he’s made a mental note of it. Perhaps he has a special machine hidden under the couch that records dangerous words. Peredonov took a terrified look under the couch – and there something seemed to move – it was small, greyish, pulsating, shaking all over with mocking laughter. Peredonov shuddered. I mustn’t give myself away, whatever happens, flashed through his mind.
‘You won’t catch me out – not if I know it!’ he shouted to Tvorozhkov and hastily left the room.
13. Of course, Peredonov hadn’t noticed this. He was too absorbed in his own happiness.
Marta returned to the summer-house when Peredonov had already left. She entered it rather apprehensively: Vershina might have something to say to her.
In fact Vershina was extremely annoyed. Up to now she still hadn’t lost all hope of pairing Marta off with Peredonov and marrying Murin herself. And now everything was in ruins. Quickly and softly she showered her with reproaches as she briskly puffed clouds of cigarette smoke and glared at her.
Vershina loved to have a good grumble. Her vague whims, her fading, languid desires lent support to this feeling of dull discontent and this was expressed most conveniently by grumbling. If she had said it out loud, this would have resulted in sheer nonsense. But if she grumbled, any absurdities would simply slip off her tongue so that neither she herself nor others would notice the incoherence, the contradictions or pointlessness of all those words.
Perhaps it was only now that Marta realized how repulsive she found Peredonov, after all that had happened with him and because of him. Marta never gave much thought to love. She was always dreaming of marrying and keeping a good household. Of course, to do this she needed someone to fall in love with her. Although this was a pleasant thought, at the same time it wasn’t the most important thing.
Whenever Marta dreamed about her household, she imagined that she would have exactly the same kind of house, orchard and kitchen garden as Vershina. Sometimes she had sweet dreams that Vershina would make her a present of all this and that Vershina would stay on there to live with her, to smoke her cigarettes and rebuke her for her laziness.
‘You just didn’t know how to get him interested,’ Vershina said quickly and angrily. ‘You were always sitting there like a lump on a log. What more could you have wanted? A fine young man
, the very picture of health. All I do is worry myself over you and try my very best for you. You could at least have appreciated, understood that. After all, it was for you. So you, for your part, might have tried to attract him in some way.’
‘But how could I have forced myself upon him?’ Marta said softly, ‘I’m not like those Rutilov sisters.’
‘They’re so conceited, these poverty-stricken Polish gentry!’ Vershina grumbled.
‘I’m afraid of him. I’d better marry Murin,’ said Marta.
‘Murin! You don’t say! You’ve a pretty high opinion of yourself! Murin! As if he’d have you. He may have whispered some sweet nothings, but it’s obvious they weren’t intended for you at all. You don’t deserve a husband like him, such a sound, steady, respectable man. You like stuffing yourself, but thinking just gives you a headache!’
Marta blushed bright crimson. She really did like her food and would eat frequently – and a great deal. As she had been brought up on country air, and was used to simple rough work, Marta considered plentiful nourishing food one of the principal conditions for a person’s well-being.
Vershina suddenly dashed over to Marta, struck her cheek with her small dry hand and shouted, ‘On your knees, you lazy bitch!’
Quietly sobbing, Marta went down on her knees and said, ‘Forgive me, N[atalya] A[fanasyevna].’
‘I’ll make you stay there all day!’ Vershina cried. ‘And mind you don’t fray your dress, it cost money. Now stay on your bare knees, lift your dress and take your shoes off. Think you’re a fine lady, do you?! You wait, I’m still going to give you a thrashing with birch-rods.’
Marta obediently sat on the edge of the bench, hurriedly took her shoes off, bared her knees and knelt on the bare boards. It was as if she wanted to subjugate herself and to know that her involvement in this distressing affair was coming to an end. She would be punished, kept on her knees, even thrashed perhaps – and it was all going to happen very soon, that same day. Vershina kept walking back and forth past the meekly kneeling Marta: she felt sorry for her, yet offended that she wanted to marry Murin. It would have been much more agreeable if she could have married Marta off to Peredonov, or someone else, taking Murin for herself. Murin had such a strong appeal for her – he was big, fat, kind and very attractive. Vershina thought that she would have suited Murin far more than Marta. The fact that Murin had become so taken with Marta and was so tempted by her would soon be a thing of the past. But now Vershina understood that Murin would insist on Marta marrying him and she had no wish to interfere. It was as though she were possessed by some kind of maternal compassion and tenderness towards the girl and that she was contemplating sacrificing herself and surrendering Murin to Marta. This compassion for Marta made her feel noble and very proud, while at the same time the heartache brought about by the loss of all hope of marrying Murin inflamed her heart with the desire to make Marta feel the full force of her anger, to make her fully appreciate how kind she’d been to her – and to make her acknowledge that she was the guilty one.
The Little Demon Page 35