The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  “Whom do you want?” she asked.

  Peredonov said that he had come to see Alexander Alexeevich on business. The girl let him in. Peredonov muttered a counter-spell under his breath as he crossed the threshold. And a good thing that he was quick about it—he hadn’t managed to take his coat off before Avinovitsky’s sharp, angry voice sounded in the living room. The public prosecutor’s voice had always been frightening—he never spoke any differently. Such was the case now when from the sitting room in an argumentative and angry voice he shouted out words of greeting and his expression of pleasure that Peredonov had finally come to visit him.

  Alexander Alexeevich Avinovitsky was a man of a gloomy exterior, as though he had already been adapted from nature to administer a proper scolding and dressing-down. He was a man of invincible health—he went from one ice-cold bath to the next. However, he seemed rather lean given the fact that he had such a vigorous black beard with a bluish hue. He inspired at the very least a feeling of awkwardness, if not outright fear in everyone because he was tirelessly fulminating against someone or threatening someone with Siberia and penal servitude.6

  “I’ve come on business,” Peredonov said with embarrassment.

  “With a confession? Did you kill a person? Commit arson? Rob the post office?” Avinovitsky shouted angrily, guiding Peredonov into the sitting room. “Or have you yourself become a victim of persecution, which is more than likely in our town? Our town is vile and the police here are even worse. I’m still amazed that dead bodies aren’t lying all about on this square every morning. Well, sir, I beg you to sit down. So what is your business? Are you a criminal or a victim?”

  “No,” said Peredonov, “I haven’t done anything of the sort. It’s the headmaster who would be happy to put me on trial, but I haven’t done anything of that sort.”

  “So you haven’t brought me a confession?” Avinovitsky asked.

  “No, nothing of the sort,” Peredonov muttered fearfully.

  “Well, if you haven’t done anything of the sort,” the procurator said with fierce stress on the words, “then I can offer you something.”

  He took a bell from the table and rang. No one came. Avinovitsky grabbed the bell in both hands, raised a furious pealing, then threw the bell on the floor, started to stamp his feet and shout in a wild voice.

  “Malanya! Malanya! The devils, the demons, the goblins!”

  Unhurried steps were heard and a student from the gymnasium, the son of Avinovitsky, entered, He was a dark-haired, thickset boy of about thirteen with a completely confident and independent manner. He bowed to Peredonov, picked up the bell, put it on the table and only then did he say calmly:

  “Malanya has gone to the garden.”

  Avinovitsky relaxed instantly and looking at his son with an affection that did not in the least suit his heavily bearded and angry face, said:

  “Well, my son, you run out to her and tell her to get something for us to eat and drink.”

  The boy left the room without haste. The father watched him go with a proud and joyful smile. But when the boy had reached the doorway, Avinovitsky suddenly frowned fiercely and shouted in a frightening voice that made Peredonov start:

  “And quick!”

  The gymnasium student ran off and they could then hear the impetuous opening and slamming of doors. The father listened for a bit, smiled happily with his thick red lips and then once more said in an angry voice:

  “My heir. Good, eh? What will become of him, eh? What do you think? A fool, perhaps, but a scoundrel, a coward or a milksop—never!”

  “Of course,” Peredonov muttered.

  “Nowadays people are a parody of the human race,” Avinovitsky thundered. “They think that health is a trivial matter. A German devised the undershirt. I would have sent that German off to penal labor. Just imagine an undershirt on my Vladimir! He never once put any boots on the whole summertime at my place in the country, and him in an undershirt! A hundred lashes for that accursed German!”

  Avinovitsky switched from the German who had devised the undershirt to other criminals.

  “The death sentence, my kind sir, is no barbarity!” he shouted. “Science has recognized the existence of born criminals. And that, old boy, says all. They must be exterminated and not fed at the expense of the state. Here he is a malefactor, yet he will be provided with a warm corner in a penal institution for his entire life. He has committed murder, arson, rape, yet the taxpayer is answerable with his pocket for his upkeep. No sir, hanging is much more fair and inexpensive.”

  The table was laid in the dining room with a red-bordered white table-cloth and plates with fat sausages and other foods, pickled, smoked and marinaded, as well as decanters and bottles of various sizes and forms with all manner of vodkas, liqueurs and brandies. Everything was to Peredonov’s liking and he even found it appealing that there was a certain amount of disorder in the furnishings.

  The host continued to fulminate, Using the food as a pretext he attacked the shopkeepers and then started for some reason to talk about heredity.

  “Heredity is a marvellous business!” he cried fiercely. “To turn the peasants into aristocracy is stupid, ridiculous, wasteful and immoral. The land is growing impoverished, the towns are filling up with vagrants, there are crop failures, ignorance, suicide—do you like all of that? Teach the peasant as much as you want but don’t award him any rank for that. Otherwise the peasantry will lose the best of its members and remain rabble and boodle forever, while the gentry will also suffer damage from the influx of uncultured elements. In his own village he was better than the rest, whereas he is introducing something vulgar, unchivalrous and ignoble into the gentry class. Profit and his own belly occupy the foreground for the peasant. No, sir, old boy, the castes were a clever arrangement.”

  “In our gymnasium the headmaster is letting all kinds of rabble in,” Peredonov said angrily. “Even the Children of peasants are there, and there are even a lot of the petite bourgeoisie.”7

  “A fine thing, what can you say!” the host cried.

  “There’s a circular saying that just any riff-raff shouldn’t be allowed in, but he goes his own way,” Peredonov complained. “He refuses almost no one. He says that people don’t have much money in our town and there are so few students for the gymnasium. What does he mean, so few? He should be letting in even fewer. Otherwise you don’t have time to correct some notebooks. And there’s no time to read any books. And the students purposely use dubious words in their compositions and you have to keep referring to the dictionary.”

  “Drink some flavored vodka,” Avinovitsky offered. “What’s your business with me?”

  “I have enemies,” muttered Peredonov, despondently examining the glass with yellow vodka before drinking it.

  “The pig lived without any enemies,” Avinovitsky replied, “and still they went and slaughtered him. Have some, it was a fine pig.”

  Peredonov took a slice of ham and said:

  “People are spreading all sorts of rubbish about me.”

  “Well, I can certainly say that as far as slander is concerned there is no town worse!” the host cried fiercely. “What a town! Regardless of whatever foul thing is committed, all the pigs immediately start oinking about it.”

  “Princess Volchanskaya promised to help secure me an inspector’s post, and now suddenly everyone is gossiping. It could be harmful to me. And it’s all out of jealousy. The headmaster as well has corrupted the gymnasium: the students who live in outside quarters smoke, drink and chase after the girl students. And there are locals who do the same. He himself corrupted them, but here he’s persecuting me. Perhaps people have been spreading slander about me to him. And they’ll go and spread it further. It’ll reach the Princess.”

  Peredonov’s account about his fears was long and incoherent. Avinovitsky listened angrily and exclaimed wrathfully from time to time:

  “Scoundrels! Rogues! Herod’s offspring!”

  “What kind of nihilist am
I?” Peredonov said. “That’s ridiculous. I have an official cap with a cockade, only I don’t always wear it, whereas he only wears an ordinary hat. And if Mickiewicz is hanging on my wall, then it’s because of his verses that I put him there and not because he was a revolutionary. I haven’t even read his work The Bell.*

  “Well, you’ve got your stories mixed up there,” Avinovitsky said unceremoniously. “The Bell was published by Herzen and not Mickiewicz.”

  “Then it’s a different The Bell,” Peredonov said. “Mickiewicz also published something called The Bell.”

  “I don’t know about that. You ought to publish that. A scientific discovery. You’ll be famous.”

  “It’s impossible to publish that,” Peredonov said angrily. “I’m not allowed to read forbidden books. Furthermore, I don’t read them. I am a patriot.”

  After protracted lamentations in which Peredonov poured out his soul, Avinovitsky concluded that someone was trying to blackmail Peredonov and to that end was spreading rumors about him with the purpose of frightening him and thereby preparing the groundwork for the sudden demand of money. Avinovitsky explained the fact that these rumors hadn’t reached him because the blackmailer very cleverly was operating in the closest proximity to Peredonov, so all Avinovitsky had to do was to bring some influence to bear on Peredonov. Avinovitsky asked:

  “Whom do you suspect?”

  Peredonov grew thoughtful. By chance, Grushina came to mind because he vaguely recalled the recent conversation with her when he had interrupted her story by threatening to denounce her. The fact that he had threatened Grushina with a denunciation became confused in his mind with a murky conception of denunciation in general. Whether he would carry out the denunciation or whether he himself would be denounced—that was unclear and Peredonov had no wish to make the effort to recall precisely. The one thing that was clear was that Grushina was an enemy. And, what was worst of all, she had seen where he had hidden the Pisarev. He would have to change the hiding place.

  Peredonov said:

  “There’s this person by the name of Grushina here.”

  “I know, a first-rate rascal,” Avinovitsky concluded briefly.

  “She’s always coming to our place,” Peredonov complained. “And she’s always trying to sniff things out. She’s greedy and she always wants you to give her something. Perhaps she wants me to pay her money so she won’t denounce me for having Pisarev. Or perhaps she wants to marry me. But I don’t want to pay and I have another fiancée. Let her denounce me, I’m not guilty. Only it would be unpleasant for me if the story became known and that could harm my appointment.”

  “She is a well-known charlatan,” the procurator said. “She wanted to deal in fortune-telling here, she was turning the heads of fools and I told the police that it had to be halted. They were smart that time and obeyed.”

  “She’s still telling fortunes now,” Peredonov said. “She read my fortune in the cards and it always came out the same: a long journey and an official letter.”

  “She knows what to say and to whom. Just wait, she’ll be casting her nooses and then she’ll go and try to extort money. At that point you come straight to me. I’ll deal her a hundred hot ones,” Avinovitsky pronounced his favorite saying.

  One wasn’t supposed to take it literally, it meant simply a proper tongue-lashing.

  This was how Avinovitsky promised his protection to Peredonov. But Peredonov was still upset with vague fears when he left. Avinovitsky’s threatening talk had strengthened those fears in Peredonov.

  Each day Peredonov carried out one visit in this manner before dinner. He couldn’t manage more than one because he had to conduct lengthy explanations everywhere he went. As was his habit he would go off to play billiards in the evening.

  Vershina went on luring him with her spell-binding invitations. Rutilov went on singing the praises of his sisters. At home Varvara tried to talk him into getting married as quickly as possible, but he made no decision. “Of course,” he thought at times, “marrying Varvara would bring the greatest advantage to me, but what if suddenly I find out she’s deceiving me? People in town would start to laugh at me.” And that would stop him.

  The pursuit by prospective wives, the jealousy of his colleagues (more a product of his own imagination than actual fact), the suspected intrigues of others—all that made his life monotonous and mournful like the weather which had been gloomy for several days in a row and frequently culminated in a gentle, monotonous but long and cold rain. Life was taking a vile turn, Peredonov felt, but he thought that soon he would become an inspector and then everything would take a turn for the better.

  X

  ON THE THURSDAY, Peredonov made his way to the marshal of the nobility.

  The marshal’s home was reminiscent of a roomy summer home somewhere in Pavlosk or Tsarskoe Selo* that was entirely suitable for winter living. One wasn’t struck by any luxury, but the newness of many things seemed exaggerated and superfluous, Alexander Mikhaylovich Veriga was waiting for Peredonov in his study. He pretended that he was supposedly bestirring himself to greet his guest and only by chance hadn’t managed to do so earlier.

  Veriga held himself extraordinarily erect even for a retired cavalry officer. People said that he wore a corsette. His face, smoothly shaven, was uniformly ruddy as though it had been rouged. His hair had been clipped with an instrument that cut hair very closely—a device that was convenient for minimizing his bald patch. His eyes were gray, polite and cold. He was extremely polite in his treatment of everyone and in his views he was firm and stern. A fine military bearing was apparent in all his movements and at times one had a glimpse of the manners of a future governor.

  Peredonov, sitting opposite him at a carved oak table, started to explain:

  “There are all sorts of rumors about me afoot, and so, as a member of the gentry, I am turning to you. People are saying all sorts of nonsense about me, Your Excellency. Things that aren’t true.”

  “I have heard nothing,” Veriga replied and smiling expectantly and politely, fixed his gray attentive eyes on Peredonov.

  Peredonov peered stubbornly into a corner and said:

  “I was never a socialist and the fact that at some other time a person might have said something superfluous, well then, who doesn’t get a bit excited in their younger years. But now I have none of those thoughts whatsoever.”

  “So you were really a great liberal?” Veriga asked with a polite smile. “You wanted a constitution, isn’t that right? In our youth we all wanted a constitution. Would you care for one?”

  Veriga moved a box of cigars towards Peredonov. Peredonov was afraid to take one and declined. Veriga lit one.

  “Of course, Your Excellency,” Peredonov admitted, “at university I, and at the time I alone, wanted a different kind of constitution than the others.”

  “And precisely what kind was that?” Veriga asked with a hint of incipient displeasure in his voice.

  “I wanted a constitution, only one without a parliament, “Peredonov said. “Otherwise they’d only be wrangling in parliament.”

  Veriga’s gray eyes glittered with quiet rapture.

  “A constitution without a parliament!” he said dreamily. “You know, that would be practical.”

  “But that was a long while ago,” Peredonov said. “Now I think nothing of the sort.”8

  He looked hopefully at Veriga. Veriga emitted a slender filament of smoke from his mouth, was silent for a while and then said slowly:

  “Now you’re a pedagogue and given my position in the district I am obliged to come into contact with schools as well. From your point of view, be so good as to tell me which schools you would give your preference to, the church-run parochial schools or these so-called rural council schools?”*.

  Veriga knocked the ash off his cigar and stared directly at Peredonov with his polite but all-too-attentive eyes. Peredonov frowned, glanced about the corners and said:

  “The rural council schools have to
be tightened up.”

  “Tightened up,” Veriga repeated in a vague tone of voice. “I see.”

  And he lowered his eyes to his smouldering cigar as though he were preparing himself to listen to long explanations.

  “The teachers there are nihilists,” Peredonov said. “And the female teachers don’t believe in God. They stand in church and blow their noses.”

  Veriga glanced quickly at Peredonov, smiled and said:

  “Well, you know, it is essential, sometimes.”

  “Yes, but she blows her nose just like a horn so that the singers laugh,” Peredonov said angrily. “She does it on purpose. There’s this woman by the name of Skobochkina.”

  “No, that’s not nice,” Veriga said. “But with Skobochkina it’s more a matter of the lack of breeding. She’s a girl who’s utterly without manners, but still a conscientious teacher. But in any event, it’s not nice. She should be told.”

  “She goes around in a red blouse. And sometimes she even goes barefoot and wears a sarafan. She plays skittles with the young boys. Things are very free in their schools,” Peredonov continued. “There’s no discipline. They don’t want to use any punishment at all. But you can’t do that with the children of peasants the way you can with those of the gentry. They have to be whipped.”

  Veriga gazed calmly at Peredonov. Then, as though experiencing some awkwardness over the absence of tact he had just witnessed, he lowered his eyes and said in a chilly tone almost reminiscent of a governor:

  “I must say that I have observed many fine qualities in the pupils of the country schools. There is no doubt that in the vast majority of instances they have a completely conscientious attitude to their work. Naturally, as is the case everywhere with children, offences are committed. As a result of poor breeding in the local milieu these offences can assume rather vulgar forms, all the more so because the sentiments of duty, honor and a respect for the property of others are generally poorly developed in the rural population of Russia. The school is obliged to treat these kinds of offences in an earnest and strict fashion. If all measures of reprimand are exhausted or if the offence is great, then, naturally, it would be necessary to seek recourse to extreme measures to avoid dismissing the pupil. Incidentally, this would apply to all children, even to those of the gentry. But in general I am agreed with you that education in this type of school is not organized in an entirely satisfactory manner. Mrs. Shteven, in her really quite interesting book … have you, pray, read it?”