The Shooting Party

by Anton Chekhov

  ‘I’m delighted that you’ve finally had a “good think”,’ I said, greeting him. ‘It’s high time you stopped being so secretive and trying to make fools of us, as if we were little children. So, what have you had a good think about?’

  Kuzma didn’t reply. He stood in the middle of my room, looking at me without blinking or saying a word. And he really did have the look of someone scared out of his wits. He was pale and trembling and a cold sweat streamed down his face.

  ‘Well, tell me what you’ve had a good think about,’ I repeated.

  ‘About things more weird and wonderful than you could ever imagine,’ he said. ‘Yesterday I remembers the colours of tie that gent was wearing and last night I thinks ’ard about it and I remembers ’is face.’

  ‘So, who was it?’

  Kuzma produced a sickly smile and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  ‘It’s too terrible to tell, yer ’onner, please allow me not to say. It was all so weird and wonderful that I thinks I must ’ave been dreaming – or I imagined it all!’

  ‘Well, who did you imagine you saw?’

  ‘Please allow me not to say! If I do you’ll convict me. Let me ’ave a good think and I’ll tell you tomorrow. Cor, I’m scared stiff!’

  ‘Pah!’ I exclaimed, getting angry. ‘Why are you bothering me like this if you don’t want to tell me? Why did you come here?’

  ‘I thought of telling you, like, but now I’m afraid. No, yer ’onner, please let me go now. I’d better tell you tomorrow… You’d get so mad if I told you, I’d be better off in Siberia… you’d convict me.’

  I lost my temper and ordered Kuzma to be taken away.*

  That same evening, in order not to waste time and to have done once and for all with that tiresome murder case, I went to the cells and fooled Urbenin by telling him that Kuzma had named him as the murderer.

  ‘I was expecting that,’ Urbenin said, waving his hand. ‘It’s all the same to me now…’

  Solitary confinement had had a terrible effect on Urbenin’s robust health. He had turned yellowish and lost almost half his weight. I promised him that I would instruct the warders to let him walk up and down the corridors during the day – and even at night.

  ‘We’re not worried that you might try and escape,’ I said.

  Urbenin thanked me and after I had gone he was already strolling down the corridor. His door was no longer kept locked.

  After leaving him I knocked at the door of Kuzma’s cell.

  ‘Well, have you had a good think?’

  ‘No, sir,’ a feeble voice replied. ‘Let Mr Prosecutor come – I’ll tell ‘im. But I’m not telling you!’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Next morning everything was decided.

  Warder Yegor came running to tell me that one-eyed Kuzma had been found dead in his bed. I went off to the prison and convinced myself that this was the case. That sturdy, strapping peasant, who only the day before had radiated health and had invented various fairy tales to obtain his release, was as still and cold as a stone. I shall not begin to describe the warder’s and my own horror: the reader will understand. Kuzma was valuable to me as defendant or witness, but for the warders he was a prisoner, for whose death or escape they would have to pay dearly. Our horror was all the greater when the subsequent autopsy confirmed a violent death. Kuzma died from asphyxiation. Convinced that he had been strangled, I started searching for the culprit and it did not take me long to find him… he was close at hand.

  I went to Urbenin’s cell. Unable to restrain myself, and forgetting that I was an investigator, I named him as the murderer, in the harshest possible terms.

  ‘You scoundrel! You weren’t satisfied with killing your poor wife,’ I said. ‘On top of that you had to kill someone who had discovered your guilt. And still you persist with your filthy, villainous play-acting!’

  Urbenin turned terribly pale and staggered.

  ‘You’re lying!’ he shouted, beating his breast with his fist.

  ‘It’s not me who’s lying! You shed crocodile tears at our evidence, you mocked it. There were moments when I wanted to believe you rather than the evidence itself… Oh, you’re such a fine actor! But now I wouldn’t believe you even if blood flowed from your eyes instead of those false, theatrical tears. Tell me – you did kill Kuzma, didn’t you?’

  ‘You’re either drunk or making fun of me, Sergey Petrovich. There are limits to a man’s patience and subservience. I can’t take any more of this!’

  With flashing eyes Urbenin banged his fist on the table.

  ‘Yesterday I was rash enough to allow you some freedom,’ I continued. ‘I allowed you what no other inmate is allowed – to walk down the corridors. And now, as a token of gratitude, you went to that unfortunate Kuzma’s cell during the night and strangled a sleeping man. Do you realize it’s not only Kuzma whom you’ve destroyed – because of you, all the warders will be ruined.’

  ‘But what in heaven’s name have I done?’ Urbenin asked, clutching his head.

  ‘Do you want me to prove it? Let me explain. On my orders your door was left unlocked. Those idiotic warders opened the door and forgot to hide the padlock – all the cells are locked with the same key. During the night you took the key, went out into the corridor and unlocked your neighbour’s door. After strangling him you locked the door and put the key back in the lock.’

  ‘But why should I want to strangle him? Why?’

  ‘Because he named you as the murderer. If I hadn’t told you this yesterday he’d still be alive. It’s sinful and shameful, Pyotr Yegorych!’

  ‘Sergey Petrovich! You’re a young man!’ the murderer suddenly said in a soft and gentle voice, grasping my hand. ‘You’re an honest, respectable person… don’t ruin me and don’t sully yourself with unfounded suspicions and over-hasty accusations. You’ve no idea how cruelly and painfully you’ve insulted me by foisting a new accusation on my soul, which is guilty of absolutely nothing! I’m a martyr, Sergey Petrovich! You should be ashamed of wronging a martyr! The time will come when you’ll have to apologize to me – and that time’s not far off. I haven’t been formally charged yet, but my defence will not satisfy you. Rather than attacking and insulting me so horribly, you’d do better if you questioned me humanely – I won’t say as a friend – you’ve already washed your hands of our friendship! I would have been more useful to you in the cause of justice as witness and assistant than in the role of accused. Take for example this new accusation – I could have told you a great deal: last night I didn’t sleep and I could hear everything that was going on.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Last night, at about two o’clock, it was very dark… I heard someone walking ever so quietly down the corridor and constantly trying my door. He kept walking and walking – and then he opened my door and came in.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know – it was too dark to see. He stood for about a minute in my cell, then he left. And just as you said, he took the key out of my door and unlocked the door to the next cell. For about two minutes I heard hoarse breathing, then a scuffle. I thought that it was the warder fussing about and I took the noise to be nothing else than snoring, otherwise I would have raised the alarm.’

  ‘Fairy tales!’ I said. ‘There was no one here except you who could have killed Kuzma. The duty warders were asleep. One of their wives, who didn’t sleep all night, testified that all three warders had slept like logs the whole night and never left their beds for one minute. The poor devils didn’t know that such brutes could be knocking around in this wretched prison. They’ve been employed here for more than twenty years and all that time there hasn’t been one escape, not to mention such abominations as murder. Now, thanks to you, their lives have been turned upside down. And I’ll catch it too for not sending you to the main prison and for giving you freedom to stroll down the corridors. Thank you very much!’

  That was my last conversation with Urbenin. I never had occ
asion to talk to him again – apart from replying to two or three questions he put to me, as if I were a witness being questioned in the dock.

  XXVIII

  I have called my novel the story of a crime and now, when ‘The Case of Olga Urbenin’s Murder’ has become complicated by yet another murder – hard to comprehend and mysterious in many respects – the reader is entitled to expect the novel to enter its most interesting and lively phase. The discovery of the criminal and his motives offers a wide field for a display of mental agility and acumen. Here an evil will and cunning wage war with forensic knowledge and skill – a war that is fascinating in every aspect.

  I waged war – and the reader is entitled to expect me to describe the way victory became mine: he will surely expect all manner of investigatory subtleties, such as those that lend sparkle to the thrillers of Gaboriau and our own Shklyarevsky,54 and I’m ready to justify the reader’s expectations. However, one of the main characters leaves the battlefield without waiting for the end of the conflict – he’s not allowed to enjoy victory. All that he has done so far comes to naught and he joins the ranks of the spectators. This particular character in the drama is ‘Yours Truly’. The day after the above conversation with Urbenin I received an invitation – an order, rather – to resign. The tittle-tattle and idle gossip of our local scandalmongers had done their work. The murder in the prison, statements taken from the servants without my knowledge by the deputy prosecutor, and – if the reader still remembers – the blow I had dealt that peasant on the head with an oar during a nocturnal orgy of the past – all this made a substantial contribution to my dismissal. That peasant really set the ball rolling: there was a massive shake-up. After about two days I was ordered to hand over the murder case to the investigator of serious crimes.

  Thanks to rumours and newspaper reports, the entire Directorate of Public Prosecutions was stirred into action. Every other day the prosecutor himself rode over to the Count’s estate and took part in the questioning. Our doctors’ official reports were sent to the Medical Board – even higher up. There was even talk of exhuming the bodies and holding fresh post-mortems, which, incidentally, would have led nowhere.

  Twice Urbenin was dragged off to the county town to have his mental faculties examined and on both occasions he was found to be normal. I began to figure as witness.* The new investigators became so carried away that even my Polikarp was called upon to testify.

  A year after my retirement, when I was living in Moscow, I received a summons to attend the Urbenin trial. I was glad of the opportunity to see once more those places to which I was drawn by habit – and off I went. The Count, who was living in St Petersburg at the time, did not attend and sent in a doctor’s certificate instead.

  The case was tried in our county town, at the local assizes. The public prosecutor was Polugradov, that same individual who cleaned his teeth four times a day with red powder. Acting for the defence was a certain Smirnyaev, a tall, thin, fair-haired man with a sentimental expression and long, straight hair. The jury consisted entirely of shopkeepers and peasants, only four of whom were literate, and the rest, when they were given Urbenin’s letters to his wife to read, broke into a sweat and became confused. The foreman of the jury was the shopkeeper Ivan Demyanych, the same person from whom my late parrot got its name.

  When I entered the courtroom I didn’t recognize Urbenin: he had gone completely grey and had aged about twenty years. I had expected to read on his face indifference to his fate, and apathy, but I was wrong: Urbenin took a passionate interest in the proceedings. He challenged three of the jurors, embarked on lengthy explanations and questioned witnesses. He categorically denied his guilt and spent ages questioning every witness who did not testify in his favour.

  The witness Pshekhotsky testified that I had been living with the late Olga.

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Urbenin shouted. ‘He’s a liar! I don’t trust my own wife, but I do trust him!’

  When I was giving evidence the counsel for the defence questioned me as to my relationship with Olga and acquainted me with evidence given by Pshekhotsky, who had once applauded me. To have told the truth would have amounted to testifying in favour of the accused. The more depraved a wife, the more lenient juries tend to be towards an Othello-husband – that I understood very well. On the other hand, my telling the truth would have deeply wounded Urbenin – on hearing it he would have suffered incurable pain. I thought it best to tell a lie.

  ‘No!’ I said.

  Describing Olga’s murder in the most lurid colours, the public prosecutor paid particular attention in his speech to the murderer’s brutality, his wickedness. ‘An old roué sees a pretty, young girl. Aware of the whole horror of her situation in her insane father’s house, he tempts her with food, lodgings and brightly decorated rooms. She agrees: an elderly husband of means is easier to bear than a mad father and poverty. But she was young – and youth, gentlemen of the jury, has its own inalienable rights. A girl who has been weaned on novels, brought up in the midst of Nature, is bound to fall in love sooner or later…’ The upshot of all this was:

  ‘He, having given her nothing but his age and brightly coloured dresses and seeing his booty slipping away from him, became as frenzied as an animal that has had a red-hot iron applied to its snout. He loved like an animal, therefore he must have hated like one’, and so on.

  When he accused Urbenin of Kuzma’s murder, Polugradov singled out ‘those villainous tricks, so cleverly devised and calculated, that accompanied the murder of a sleeping man who had been imprudent enough the day before to testify against him. I assume that there is no doubt in your minds that Kuzma wanted to tell the prosecutor something that directly concerned him.’

  Smirnyaev, counsel for the defence, did not deny Urbenin’s guilt: he only asked that the fact that Urbenin had acted under the influence of temporary insanity should be taken into account and that therefore they should be lenient. Describing how painful feelings of jealousy can be, he alluded to Shakespeare’s Othello as evidence for his deposition. He examined this ‘universal type’ from all aspects, quoting from various critics, and he got himself in such a muddle that the presiding judge was obliged to stop him by remarking that ‘a knowledge of foreign literature was not obligatory for jurors’.

  Taking advantage of this last statement, Urbenin called on God to witness that he was guilty in neither word nor deed.

  ‘Personally, it’s all the same where I end up – in this district where everything reminds me of my undeserved disgrace and my wife, or in a penal colony. But I’m deeply concerned about my children’s fate.’

  Turning to the public he burst into tears and begged for his children to be taken into care:

  ‘Take them! Of course, the Count won’t miss the opportunity of flaunting his magnanimity. But I’ve already warned the children and they won’t accept one crumb from him.’

  When he noticed me among the public he glanced at me imploringly. ‘Please protect my children from the Count’s good deeds,’ he said.

  Evidently he had forgotten all about the impending verdict and his thoughts were completely taken up with his children. He kept talking about them until he was stopped by the presiding judge.

  The jury did not take long to reach a verdict. Urbenin was found guilty unconditionally and was not recommended for leniency on a single count. He was sentenced to loss of all civil rights and fifteen years’ hard labour.

  So dearly did that meeting on a May morning with the romantic ‘girl in red’ cost him.

  More than eight years have passed since the events described above. Some of the actors in the drama have departed this world and have already rotted away, others are suffering punishment for their sins, others are dragging out their lives, struggling with the tedium of a pedestrian existence and expecting death from day to day.

  Much has changed during eight years. Count Karneyev, who never stopped entertaining the most sincere friendship for me, has finally become a hopeless drunkard. His es
tate – the scene of the crime – has passed from his hands into those of his wife and Pshekhotsky. He’s poor now and I support him. Some evenings, when he’s lying on the sofa in my flat, he loves to reminisce about the old times.

  ‘It would be nice to listen to the gipsies now,’ he mutters. ‘Send for some brandy, Seryozha!’

  I too have changed. My strength is gradually deserting me and I feel that my health and youth are abandoning my body. No longer do I have the physical strength, the agility, the stamina that I took so much pride in flaunting at one time, when I didn’t go to bed for several nights running and drank quantities of alcohol that I could barely cope with now.

  One after the other, wrinkles are appearing, my hair is going thin, my voice is growing coarser and weaker… Life is over…

  I remember the past as if it were yesterday. I see places and have visions of people as if they were in a mist. I do not have the strength to view them impartially: I love and hate them as violently, as intensely as before, and not a day passes without my clutching my head in a fit of indignation or hatred. For me, the Count is as loathsome as ever, Olga revolting, Kalinin plain ridiculous with his stupid conceit. Evil I consider evil, sin I consider sin.

  Yet there are often moments when I stare at the portrait that stands on my writing table and I feel an irresistible urge to go walking with the ‘girl in red’ in the forest, to the murmur of lofty pines, and to press her to my breast, despite everything. At these moments I forgive both her lies and that decline into the murky abyss: I am ready in forgive everything – if only a tiny fragment of the past could be repeated. Wearied by the boredom of the town, I would like to listen once more to the roar of the giant lake and gallop along its banks on my Zorka. I would forgive and forget everything if I could once again stroll along the road to Tenevo and meet Franz the gardener with his vodka barrel and jockey cap. There are moments when I’m even ready to shake that hand which is crimson with blood, discuss religion, the harvest, popular education with that good-natured Pyotr Yegorych. I would like to meet Screwy and his Nadenka again.