The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  But no one opened the window. And in the morning … The gate and the fence by the garden and the yard were criss-crossed with the yellowish brown traces of tar. Rude words were written in tar on the gate. Passers-by oh’ed and ah’ed and laughed. The word spread and the curious came.

  Vershina was walking quickly about in the garden, smoking, smiling even more crookedly than usual and muttering angry words. Marta did not even come out of the house and was crying bitterly. The servant, Marya, was trying to wash the tar away and exchanged spiteful curses, with the curious people who were gawking, laughing and causing a ruckus.

  On the very same day Cherepnin told Volodin who had done it. Volodin immediately passed it on to Peredonov. Both of them knew the two lads who were famous for their insolent pranks.

  On his way to billiards, Peredonov dropped in on Vershina. It was cloudy. Vershina and Marta were sitting in the living room.

  “Your gate was smeared with tar,” Peredonov said.

  Marta blushed. Vershina quickly told the story of how they had gotten up and saw that people were laughing at their fence and how Marya had been trying to wash the tar off the fence. Peredonov said:

  “I know who did it.”

  Vershina gave Peredonov a startled look.

  “But how did you find out?” she asked.

  “I just found out.”

  “Who is it, tell me,” Marta said angrily.

  She had become quite unattractive because now her eyes were angry and tear-stained and her eyelids were red and puffy. Peredonov replied:

  “I’ll tell you, of course, that’s why I came. These scoundrels have to be taught a lesson. Only you must promise that you won’t tell anyone who told you.”

  “But why, Ardalyon Borisych?” Vershina asked in amazement.

  Peredonov produced a significant silence and then he said by way of explanation:

  “These are the kind of troublemakers who could bash your head in if they found out who betrayed them.”

  Vershina promised to keep quiet.

  “And don’t you tell that I was the one who told you,” Peredonov turned to Marta.

  “Fine, I won’t tell,” Marta quickly agreed because she wanted to find out the names of the guilty ones as soon as possible.

  It seemed to her that they had to be subjected to a painful and shameful punishment.

  “No, better you swear an oath,” Peredonov said cautiously.

  “Well, then, I swear to God that I won’t tell anyone,” Marta assured him. “Only tell me quickly.”

  Vladya was listening behind the door. He was glad that he had had the foresight not to go into the living room. He would not be forced to give his promise and he could tell whomever he wanted to. And he smiled with the happy thought that he would take revenge on Peredonov.

  “Yesterday I was returning home along your street just after midnight,” Peredonov related. “Suddenly I heard someone moving around near your gate. At first I thought that it was thieves. I tried to think what to do. Suddenly I heard them running and right in my direction. I crouched against the wall and they didn’t see me, but I recognized them. One of them had a brush and the other a bucket. They were well-known scoundrels, the sons of the locksmith Avdeev. They were running along, and the one said to the other that they hadn’t wasted the night, they had earned fifty-five kopecks. I wanted to grab one of them but I was afraid I might get my face smeared, and besides, I had a new coat on.”

  Peredonov had barely left when Vershina set out for the chief of police with her complaint.

  Chief of police Minchukov sent a policeman for Avdeev and his sons.

  The boys were bold when they arrived, they thought that they were suspected of previous pranks. Avdeev, a despondent, tall old man, was, on the contrary, completely convinced that his sons had once again committed some vile trick. The chief of police told Avdeev what his sons were accused of. Avdeev muttered:

  “I can’t manage them. Do what you want with them, I’ve already worn myself out thrashing them.”

  “It’s none of our doing,” declared Nil, the elder brother, a tousled boy with ginger hair.

  “We get blamed for whatever anyone else does,” said Ilya, the younger brother, also tousled but white-haired, in a whining voice.” Just because we once played a trick, now it means we have to answer for everything.”

  Minchukov smiled sweetly, shook his head and said:

  “Better you make a clean breast of it.”

  “There’s nothing to confess,” Nil said rudely.

  “Nothing? What about the fifty-five kopecks someone gave you for the work, eh?”

  Judging from the momentary dismay of the boys that they were guilty, Minchukov said to Vershina:

  “Well it’s obvious that they’re the ones.”

  The boys began to deny it once more. They were taken off into the wood shed—to be whipped. They couldn’t bear the pain and they admitted their guilt. But even though they confessed they weren’t about to say who had given them the money to do it.

  “We did it on our own.”

  They were whipped in turn, without hurrying, until they said that Cherepnin had bribed them. The boys were handed over to the father. The chief of police said to Vershina:

  “Well, there you go, we’ve punished them, that is, the father has punished them, and you know who did it to you.”

  “I’m not going to let this Cherepnin off like that,” Vershina said. “I’m going to bring him to court.”

  “I don’t advise that, Natalya Afanasyevna,” Minchukov said briefly. “Better to forget about it.”

  “How can you let these good-for-nothings get away with it? Not on your life!” Vershina exclaimed.

  “The main thing is that there isn’t any evidence,” the chief of police said calmly.

  “What do you mean, no evidence, if the boys admitted it themselves?”

  “It doesn’t matter that they’ve admitted it, but once they’re in front of the court they’ll deny it, they won’t be giving them a whipping there.”

  “What do you mean, deny it? The policemen are witnesses,” Vershina said with less conviction now.

  “What kind of witnesses would they be? If you flay the skin off a fellow then he’ll admit anything even if it isn’t true. Of course they’re scoundrels, they got what was coming to them, but you won’t get anything out of them in court.”

  Minchukov smiled sweetly and gazed calmly at Vershina.

  Vershina was very dissatisfied when she left the chief of police, but after thinking it over, she agreed that it would be difficult to convict Cherepnin and the only thing that could come of it would be unnecessary scandal and disgrace.

  XIII

  As evening set in Peredonov showed up at the headmaster’s—to have a serious discussion.

  The headmaster, Nikolai Vlasyevich Khripach, possessed a certain set of rules which applied to life so comfortably that it was not burdensome in the least to adhere to them. At work he calmly fulfilled everything that was required by the laws or the directions of the authorities, as well as the rules of a generally accepted moderate liberalism. For that reason, the authorities, parents and students were all equally satisfied with the headmaster. He was a stranger to dubious circumstances, indecisiveness and vacillations, and who needed them anyway? One could always find support either in a resolution of the pedagogical council or in the instructions of the authorities. He was just as correct and calm in his personal dealings. His external appearance revealed an air of good-naturedness and steadfastness. Of medium height, solid, agile, with energetic eyes and a confident manner of speaking, he seemed to be a person who had found a good position for himself and intended to do even better. A great many books stood on the shelves in his study. He was making excerpts out of them. When the excerpts had piled up to a sufficient degree, he would put them in order and render them in his own words—and thus, a book would be composed, printed and sold out. Not the way the books of Ushinsky* or Evtushevsky** were sold out, but
nevertheless they did quite well. Sometimes it was from foreign books that he would put together a compendium that was respected and which no one needed and it would be printed in a journal that was also respected and which no one needed as well. He had a lot of children and all of them, both boys and girls, had already manifested embryonic talents of the most diverse nature: one wrote verses, another sketched, yet another was having rapid success in music.

  Peredonov said sullenly:

  “You’re always attacking me, Nikolai Vlasyevich. Perhaps people have been slandering me to you, but I haven’t done anything of the sort.”

  “Excuse me,” the headmaster interrupted, “I cannot comprehend what slander you are being so good as to indicate. In the administration of the gymnasium which has been entrusted to me, I, am guided by my very own observations and I dare to hope that my official experience is sufficient to enable me to evaluate what I see and hear with the requisite precision, and, moreover, to maintain the attentive attitude to work that I adopt for myself as an invariable rule,” Khripach said quickly and distinctly, and his voice had a dry clear ring to it like the crackling sound of zinc bars when they’re being bent. “As far as my personal opinion of your is concerned, I still continue to think that distressing flaws are manifesting themselves in your official activity.”

  “Yes,” Peredonov said sullenly, “you have gotten it into your head that I’m not good for anything, yet I am constantly concerned for the gymnasium.”

  Khripach raised his eyebrows in amazement and gave Peredonov a questioning look.

  “You haven’t noticed,” Peredonov continued, “that a scandal could break out in our gymnasium. No one has noticed, only I have kept an eye out.”

  “What scandal?” Khripach asked with a dry chuckle and started to pace nimbly around the study. “You intrigue me although I must say frankly that I have little faith in the possibility of a scandal in our gymnasium.”

  “You see, you don’t know whom you’ve recently accepted,” Peredonov said with such malice that Khripach came to a halt and stared attentively at him.

  “All the newly accepted students have been examined,” he said drily. “Moreover, the ones accepted into the first form haven’t been rejected by another gymnasium, whereas the single student who joined the fifth form came to us with the kind of recommendations that would exclude the possibility of any unflattering suppositions.”

  “Yes, only he shouldn’t have been sent to us, but to another institution,” Peredonov muttered sullenly, almost unwillingly.

  “Explain yourself, Ardalyon Borisych, I beg you,” Khripach said. “I hope that you are not wanting to say that Pylnikov ought to be sent to a colony for juvenile delinquents.”

  “No, this creature should have been sent to a boarding school where they don’t teach classical languages,” Peredonov said maliciously, and his eyes glittered with spite.

  Khripach, sticking his hands into the pockets of his short smoking jacket, looked at Peredonov with extraordinary amazement.

  “What kind of boarding school?” he asked. “Are you aware of what institutions have that kind of name? And if you are aware, then why were you determined to make such an indecent comparison?”

  Khripach blushed deeply and his voice had an even drier and more distinct ring. At another time these signs of the headmaster’s wrath would have caused Peredonov great dismay. But now he wasn’t embarrassed.

  “You all think that it’s a boy,” he said, screwing up his eyes sardonically, “but it’s no boy, it’s a girl, and some girl she is!”

  Khripach gave a dry and brief laugh, almost an affected laugh that was clear and distinct—that was the way he always laughed.

  “Ha-ha-ha!” he laughed distinctly, and when he finished laughing he sat down in his armchair and threw back his head as though dying from laughter. “You have astounded me, my respected Ardalyon Borisych! Ha-ha-ha! Be so kind as to tell me what you base your proposition on, if the premises which have led you to this conclusion are not a secret! Ha-ha-ha!”

  Peredonov related everything that he had heard from Varvara and at the same time enlarged upon the bad qualities of Kokovkina. Khripach listened, bursting forth into a dry, distant laughter from time to time.

  “My dear Ardalyon Borisych, your imagination is playing tricks on you,” he said, stood up and clapped Peredonov on the arm. “Many of my esteemed colleagues, as is the case with myself, have their own children, we weren’t born yesterday and do you really think that we could take a disguised girl for a boy?”

  “If that’s going to be your attitude, who’ll be to blame if something happens?” Peredonov asked.

  “Ha-ha-ha!” Khripach laughed. “What consequences are you afraid of?”

  “There’ll be depravity starting in the gymnasium,” Peredonov said.

  Khripach frowned and said:

  “You’re going too far. Everything that you’ve told me until now does not give me the least cause to share your suspicions.”

  That same evening Peredonov hastily made the rounds of all his colleagues, from the inspector to the class prefects and he told all of them that Pylnikov was a girl in disguise. Everyone laughed and they wouldn’t believe him, but after he left they were overcome with doubt. Almost to a person the wives of the teachers believed it at once.

  By the following morning many arrived at classes with the thought that perhaps Peredonov was right. They didn’t say so openly, but they no longer argued with Peredonov and restricted themselves to indecisive and ambiguous responses. Each was afraid that he would be thought silly if he started to argue and then suddenly it transpired that it had been true. Many wanted to hear what the headmaster would say about it, but the headmaster, contrary to habit, did not leave his apartment at all on that day. He merely passed by, quite late for his one lesson that day in the sixth form, stayed on an extra five minutes there and then left directly for his own quarters without showing himself to anyone.

  Finally, before the fourth lesson, the gray-headed teacher of religion and two other teachers went to the headmaster’s study under the pretext of some business or other and the old fellow cautiously brought the conversation around to Pylnikov. But the headmaster laughed so confidently and innocently that all three were overwhelmed at once with the assurance that it was nothing but rubbish. Then the headmaster quickly switched to different topics, related the latest town news, complained of an extremely bad headache and said that, apparently, he would have to call the gymnasium doctor, Evgeniy Ivanovich. Then, in a very good-natured tone he told of how the lesson that day had made his headache even worse, because Peredonov had happened to be in the neighboring classroom and the students there for some reason were often laughing unusually loud. Laughing his dry laugh, Khripach said:

  “Fate has been unkind to me this year, three times a week I have to sit beside a classroom where Ardalyon Borisych is teaching and just imagine, nothing but laughter and I do mean laughter. It would appear that Ardalyon Borisych is not a humorous person, but he really does seem to provoke constant glee!”

  And without giving anyone the opportunity to say something in this regard, Khripach quickly switched to another topic.

  In Peredonov’s classes people had truly been laughing a great deal lately —and not because he enjoyed it. On the contrary, Peredonov was irritated by children’s laughter. But he couldn’t restrain himself from saying something superfluous or indecent. First he would tell a silly anecdote, then he would start to mildly tease someone. In a class one could always find those who were happy for the opportunity to create disorder, and they would produce a furious bout of laughter at every trick of Peredonov’s.

  Towards the end of the lessons Khripach sent for the doctor while he himself took his hat and went off into the garden which lay between the gymnasium and the bank of the river. The garden was extensive and shady. The young students loved it. They could run about without restriction during the recesses. For that reason the class prefects didn’t like the garden. They w
ere afraid that something would happen to the boys. But Khripach required the boys to be there during the recesses. He needed it for aesthetic reasons in his reports.

  Passing along the corridor, Khripach stopped by the open door leading into the gymnastics room. He stood there for a while, his head lowered, and then entered. Everyone already knew from his cheerless face and slow walk that he had a headache.

  The fifth form had gathered there for gymnastics. They were arranged in a single file and the teacher of gymnastics, a lieutenant from the local reserve battalion, was about to give the command for something, but seeing the headmaster, he went up to greet him. The headmaster shook his hand, gave a distracted look at the students and asked:

  “Are you satisfied with them? How are they doing, are they trying hard? They’re not getting too tired?”

  In his heart the lieutenant deeply despised the students who, in his opinion, neither had nor ever could have any military bearing. If they had been cadets, then he would have said outright what he thought of them. But there was no point in telling the person upon whom his lessons depended what he thought of the bumpkins.

  And smiling pleasantly with his thin lips and giving the director an amiable and cheerful look, he said:

  “Oh, yes, they’re fine lads.”

  The director took several steps along the front, turned towards the exit and suddenly stopped, as though he remembered something.

  “What about our new student, are you satisfied with him? How is he doing, is he making an effort? He’s not getting too tired?” he asked sluggishly with a frown and put his hand to his forehead.

  For the sake of variety and thinking that after all it was a new student from elsewhere, the lieutenant said:

  “A little listless and he quickly tires.”

  But the director wasn’t listening to him any more and left the room.

  Apparently the air outside did little to refresh Khripach. He returned after half an hour and once again, standing by the door for half a minute, dropped in on the lesson. Exercises were underway on the atheletic equipment. Two or three students, who weren’t involved for the moment and who didn’t notice the headmaster, were standing about leaning on the wall, making use of the fact that the lieutenant wasn’t looking at them. Khripach went up to them.