The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  “Yes,” Peredonov replied. “And the boys and girls should be whipped and as often as possible, and as painfully as possible so that they’ll squeal like little piggies.”

  “Why?” Turgenev asked with a painful grimace.

  “So they won’t laugh, otherwise they’ll be laughing in their sleep,” Peredonov replied sullenly.

  “You hear!” Sharik exclaimed ecstatically. “So they won’t laugh! There’s something demonic in that! To banish that vulgar, animal laughter out of that vulgar childhood!”

  “Yes, that is repulsively beautiful,” Turgenev said, out of diffidence to both Peredonov and himself.

  “Yes,” Sharik rejoined, “or exquisitely vile. But Turgenev hit it right on the head: repulsively beautiful! My friend Turgenev—there’s none wittier than he in Russia.”

  “And just remark on his marvellous aphorism: exquisitely vile,” Turgenev said. “Marvellously said! O, my friend Sharik knows how to find amazing words. Russia will be hearing about him.”

  Excerpts from the speech which he had prepared long ago to deliver at Sharik’s graveside were activated in his mind.

  They went on several paces in silence, smiling joyfully, each delighted with his intelligence and brilliance. Vitkevich walked alongside them with mincing steps and kept peering exultantly into their blissful faces.

  “It’s turned out just famously that we came to this backwash,” Sharik said. His thoughts were on that remarkable person, Peredonov.

  “There’s nothing good here,” Peredonov said sullenly.

  “But there’s you!” Turgenev exclaimed and gazed fondly into Peredonov’s dull eyes.

  “I’m all there is!” Peredonov said mournfully. “And I’ll be leaving soon. I’m going to be an inspector, make the rounds of the schools and whip the boys and girls.”

  “What melancholy in these benighted lands!” Turgenev exclaimed.

  “And what power!” Sharik rejoined. “This is greater than Foma Gordeyev.”*

  “A million times greater,” Turgenev agreed.

  These writers loved to compare and they always rejoiced if it were possible to exaggerate their praise of one person while simultaneously knocking someone else.

  “There’s no Foma Gordeyev here,” Peredonov said. “But there is a Nikolai Gordeyev. He’s good at chewing up bread and sticking spitballs on the ceiling.”

  “He’s mad, isn’t he, Turgenev?”

  “Yes,” agreed Turgenev. “But it’s a profound madness.”

  “And Pylnikov is a scoundrel, but she didn’t want to give him a whipping, his landlady,” Peredonov said.

  “Who are these people?” Sharik inquired.

  “There’s this gymnasium student here, a lodger at this landlady’s. Kokovkina is a widow. He’s a little sweetheart. People say he’s a girl in disguise, looking to catch a husband. I went to his place and questioned him but Sasha wouldn’t admit it. He ought to have been given a good thrashing. But she, the old lady, didn’t want to. Now there’s one you ought to castigate in print, the old bitch.”

  “Yes,” Sharik agreed. “Bourgeois-liberal vulgarity has to be overthrown by all possible means. The vulgar bourgeois has to be shocked so that his eyes bulge out. With a fist right to his belly.”

  He suddenly thrust forward his right foot and poked Turgenev in the side with his fist. Turgenev exclaimed:

  “Easy! You’ll kill me like that. Don’t forget that I’m Turgenev.”

  “Sergei, but not Ivan,” Sharik declared meaningfully and grinned sarcastically.*

  Turgenev frowned and said:

  “Well, that’s beside the point, but the only thing I want to say to you, Mr. Peredonov, is that it’s impossible to print the fact that this lady protested. It all has to be depicted symbolically, that is, the other way around. We’ll print that she performed the punishment on her own initiative, on the basis of her unbridled, Asiatic despotism. Reproducing the incident in this fashion will correspond to the humane principles of our press.”

  Peredonov gave a loud yawn and said:

  “The street is getting its back up.”

  The street rose to a small hill and then descended once more on the other side. A bend in the street between two miserable hovels was etched against a blue, sorrowful sky that was turning to evening. This quiet region of impoverished life was shut up in itself and languished in deep mourning. Even the writers grew mournful, the way it sometimes happens suddenly with children who are weak and tired out of boredom.

  “Yes, a real pit,” Sharik said and whistled.

  Sergei Turgenev was silent, his head bowed listlessly. He was thinking that his sorrow was the sorrow of a great spirit that was languishing in the miserable bonds of false existence, and he was proud of his sorrow.

  (b) “To begin with,” Turgenev replied, “be so good as to introduce us to your spouse.”

  Since Peredonov stood there motionlessly, goggling at the writers with his dull eyes, Turgenev thereupon stepped forward to Varvara with a gallant motion, scraped his foot, seized himself by the tie and gave his name:

  “Allow me to introduce myself: Sergei Turgenev, man of letters. I beg your magnanimous forgiveness for intruding on your familial hearth at a time that is perhaps unfitting.”

  Varvara produced a smirk, offered the man of letters a sweaty hand that was dirty from fussing with the cat and said: “Pleased to meet you. Only forgive me that I’m in this work dress. I was just busy with all the housework here.”

  Sharik stepped forward as well, cleared his throat and said in a loud voice:

  “The writer Skvortsov. Sharik. All Russia knows Sharik.”

  Varvara smirked at him as well and shook his hand too. But all the while she was thinking about the cat and couldn’t comprehend what Sharik the guest was talking about.

  (c) “We’ll get him out, Auntie, don’t you worry,” Vitkevich said, winked at Varvara and as he stepped past her, gave her a nudge with his elbow as though by chance.

  The writers exchanged glances. Sharik produced a soft whistle. Vitkevich’s words and behavior gave them to understand immediately how they were supposed to act with Varvara.

  (d) The writers laughed. They saw the cat as being symbolic. It was precisely the way a Peredonov cat should be.

  (e) Dreamily, Turgenev raised his gray eyes to the ceiling that was pasted over with paper and said:

  “Green-eyed cats that love to miaow on roofs over the human abode—now that is the prototype of the superman.”

  Sharik grinned scornfully.

  “Well, what’s your opinion then?” Turgenev asked.

  “Sharik grew thoughtful, made a circular motion with his right hand, brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead and said:

  “See here, I’m not denying the beauty of your definition. Generally, you’re a master of spouting out that kind of poetic verbiage where there’s more poetry than truth—and, basically I say to hell with the truth! Truth is a horrible petit bourgeoise, a rumor-monger and a fool. But this time I am defintiely not in agreement with you. It seems to me that there’s another hitch here.”

  Sergei Turgenev, turning red from the praise and from the fact that he disagreed with what Sharik was saying, asked:

  “And just what is the hitch?”

  “You see, pessimism …” Sharik was about to begin. But Sergei Turgenev sharply and scornfully interrupted him:

  “Well, sir, you’re wrong, forgive me, pessimism is a dog, a bitch.”

  Sharik was struck.

  “Well, you’re right, of course,” he said. “But what I wanted to say was: are cats wise or not?”

  Sergei Turgenev replied determinedly:

  “They are.”

  “Then note,” Sharik continued, “I am speaking only about cats and not felines. But what I mean to say is that when cats make love they produce agonizing cries. Why? Suffering lurks at the very source of life. And bitter suffering miaows on all the streets and courtyards of the soul, on all the roofs of life. The mor
e mournful and the more terrible the miaowing, the more fiery the striving for the ideal. The winged song of the poet slinks timidly among the cats wandering over the roofs.”

  Sergei Turgenev exclaimed ecstatically:

  “Marvellously put! It miaows! What a symbolic word!”

  Peredonov suddenly yawned and in the process his face was momentarily illuminated with an expression of pleasure—how sweet he found that yawn!

  “What a demonic yawn he has!” Sergei Turgenev said pensively. “How profoundly symbolic is this yawning reaction against the banal tedium of vulgar life!”

  Varvara suddenly exploded in reverberating laughter and said:

  “Well, enough of your tomfoolery. Here, you’d better eat the cherries.”

  “Who cares about cherries!” Volodin objected. “Varvara Dmitrievna, don’t go interfering with our conversation. We don’t go into your kitchen when you’re getting something ready for us to eat, so don’t you interfere with us hearing about learned subjects.”

  Sharik and Sergei Turgenev started to talk to Varvara and in the process they clowned about, being immediately infected with the lack of respect shown her. It was the first time they had seen her, but she reminded them of something familiar and cheap.

  Sharik indicated Varvara with a wink to Turgenev and asked him:

  “She resembles Emma there at the ‘Vixens’,* doesn’t she?”

  Without the least embarrassment Turgenev gave Varvara the once-over and said:

  “Yes, but she’s even more like Zhenya in ‘Old Japan’.”*

  “Well, I was never there,” Sharik replied condescendingly.

  Varvara smirked.

  “What Emmas and Zhenyas are you talking about?” she asked. “Are they friends or something?”

  “Yes, sort of like friends,” Sharik said, smirking with particular significance.

  “Girls,” Turgenev said dreamily and then added tenderly: “Poor girls!”

  “Why do you have such poor friends?” Varvara asked with a smirk.

  “You see, Auntie, we ourselves don’t have two kopecks to rub together,” Sharik said with undue familiarity.

  “What do you mean calling me Auntie!” Varvara said in an offended voice. “Do you really take me for an old woman?”

  “Quite the contrary, my respected matron,” Turgenev replied chivalrously. “It was only out of respect.”

  “Bust my gut, Mummy, if it wasn’t out of respect,” Sharik added as well.

  “A lot I need your respect, just imagine, what next!” Varvara replied with a roar of laughter.

  Vitkevich jumped into the conversation as well.

  “Anyone finds respect flattering, Granny,” he said impertinently.

  But Varvara immediately cut him off:

  “You’re just trying the same, you little milksop.”

  Sergei Turgenev, smiling and rolling his glazed little eyes upwards, broke into a pleasant tenor:

  Emilia so marvellous,

  The friend I held in high esteem,

  A love that was miraculous,

  You were my lifelong, perfect dream.

  His cunning gray eyes expressed something between pleasure and scornfulness.

  Sharik listened with a condescending smile and finally broke into an unnatural laughter that was exaggeratedly loud:

  “No, really, I find it even touching,” Turgenev said. “There’s something here that’s so naive, so primitive—in ‘short, almost Pre-Raphaelite.”

  Sharik grew pensive.

  “Yes, quite likely,” he agreed. “but still, pretty dumb.”

  “Of course!” Turgenev exclaimed. “Essentially, it’s idiotically silly, but even that’s what’s good about it. We copied it down here in the cemetery,” he explained to Peredonov. “And generally you’ve got a lot of amusing signs in the town. I wrote a few of them down. Here, I’ll read them to you.”

  He pulled a soiled and tattered notebook out of a side pocket and started to read some extracts:

  “Cookhouse For Twenty-Four Horses.”

  “School For Boys And Girls Of Roth Sexes.”

  “Floor-Polisher And Electrician For Cheap Enlightenment.”

  “Male Trousers For Men.”

  “Musical Grand Pianos.”

  “Fine Wines and Biers.”

  Sergei Turgenev suddenly turned serious and said to Sharik:

  “You know what? I’m going to insert this epitaph into my poem.”

  “Yes, it’ll fit, go right ahead,” Sharik agreed. “You know, ladies and gentlemen, Turgenev has decided to rattle off a poem. It’s going to be something terrific!”

  “Yes, if I manage to express what I want to,” Sergei Turgenev said modestly. Sharik said hastily:

  “Of course you’ll manage! Just imagine, it’ll be a really great mystical thing, and there won’t be any Demon or Satan there. Who gives a damn about the devil! Rubbish, nonsense, a lot of big-sounding nothing! No, instead, that mighty spirit that is alien to everything ideal and which Turgenev has called ‘The Banal.’ Ah, what a name!”

  Sergei Turgenev smiled modestly, the way a genius would smile who is confident of the greatness of his conception.

  “Yes,” he said bashfully, “it’s a creation that is interesting and profound in its conception. I have already dedicated it to eternity and posterity. It will be a genuine chef d’oeuvre.”

  Peredonov suddenly burst into laughter. Sergei Turgenev shuddered and gave Peredonov a hateful look.

  (f) Now she imagined that she could entice one of the writers who were getting intoxicated in their wanderings hither and yon and get married to him. She invited them to a party together with her customary table companions: Peredonov and Varvara, Falastov, Volodin, Rutilov, the Prepolovenskys and a few other young officials.

  The guests arrived early. Only the writers were missing for the time being.

  (g) However strange it might have seemed, Rutilov still hadn’t lost hope of marrying off one of his sisters to Peredonov. For that reason he didn’t care for any talk about Peredonov marrying Varvara and in order to change the conversation to something different, he started to talk about the writers’ adventure the evening before. After a real drinking bout at Murin’s, the the drunken writers had wandered about the streets and caused an uproar. The police had escorted them to the police-station. Since the chief of police was away on a trip that day and the assistant chief of police was passing the time at the home of the cathedral archpriest’s, there was no one to handle the case of the writers and they had to spend the night in the “flea-bin” (the local name for the room at the police station where arrestees were detained by the police). They let them out the next morning and even apologized to them.

  It turned out that everyone knew about the adventure. Nevertheless, they started to talk about it enthusiastically, laughing all the while, and they traded details that were obviously improbable with one another.

  It was precisely at that time that the writers arrived. Turgenev was wearing a light-colored jacket and a string tie—he was trying to appear sophisticated and sensitive. Sharik was wearing a loose peasant shirt and affected exaggeratedly peasant manners.

  They were showered with questions. Was it true that they had spent the night in the lockup? Was it true that the police had flogged them? Was it true that they had put their stamp on the wall? The writers gave an ecstatic and embittered account of their adventure.

  Turgenev said with a bitter smile:

  “It’s only one out of a mass of similar deplorable facts from Russian reality. Regardless of where you look you find nothing but Russian stupidity, Russian insipidness and Russian dumbfoundedness!” he said with bitter scorn as he pronounced the word ‘Russian.”

  “Old Russia is the celebration of drink,” Murin said with a laugh of approval.

  The writers gave him an angry look and Sharik replied with rudeness:

  “What you’re spouting has absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  Turgenev added his su
pport:

  “Completely sober intellectuals are ending up in the flea-begin quite apart from the drunks. But there are masses of precedent for that in our judicial history. Our ‘Rooshian’ police—well, now, who doesn’t know about them!”

  “Yes, there’s more than a few sincere fellows that are feeding the lice around our jails,” Sharik said.

  Turgenev started to preach:

  “Russia doesn’t have any of the essential characteristics of European statehood: the freedom of conscience, the freedom of the press, the sanctity of the individual, the freedom of movement without a passport.”

  At this moment Peredonov produced a totally unexpected and very loud yawn.

  The writers didn’t care for this in the least. They exchanged an irate look.

  “Only Russians can yawn and sleep under a cloud,” Turgenev said.

  “Some snore, some roar,” Sharik remarked sternly.

  “But, nevertheless, our incident was exceptionally distressing,” Turgenev said fervently. “Recently arrived men Of letters, the cream of the intelligentsia, with the famous Sharik at their head, are doing honor to the town by paying it a visit. They ought to be regarded as respected guests, whereas the gendarmes go dragging them off to the lockup! Even Siberia is too good for people who do that. It is totally unacceptable that any policeman be ignorant of literature.”

  “That kind of villainy couldn’t happen in the European countries,” Sharik said with certainty.

  Turgenev sighed, flashed his little eyes like a serpent and hissed:

  “This incident will pass over into eternity! Some future day in the history of Russia my memoirs will appear. All of this will be told then.”

  “Well I’m not going to wait for posterity,” Sharik declared. “I’ll write a letter to a German or a Swedish newspaper.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble for that?” Rutilov inquired timidly.

  “No, it’s possible to do it abroad, they don’t pay attention to that sort of thing.”

  “It’s pretty important business to be locked up at the police station,” Murin said.

  “And have you ever been locked up there?” Sharik asked with a quick burst of temper.

  “Well, really, why would I have been there!” Murin replied, offended.