The Petty Demon (15 page)

The host, Ivan Stepanovich Kirillov, seemingly, was very anxious on the one hand to be polite, or polite in the European manner,
but on the other hand, not to ignore his dignified position as president in the district. He was an entirely strange and contradictory
person, as though soldered of two halves. From his surroundings one could see that he worked hard and sensibly. But if you
looked at the man himself, then it seemed that all this rural council activity was merely a pastime for him and he was only
temporarily engaged in it, whereas his genuine concerns lay in some future direction where his eyes—energetic but seemingly
lifeless with a pewter gleam—would focus from time to time. It was as though someone had removed his living soul and put it
away on the shelf and then replaced it with a lifeless but agile dynamo.

He wasn’t large in stature, but thin and youngish—so youngish and ruddy-faced that at times he looked like a boy who had pasted
a beard on and had rather successfully adopted the ways of adults. His movements were precise and quick. Exchanging greetings,
he would nimbly bow and shuffle his feet and slide about on the soles of his stylish boots. His clothing might have been called
a kind of suit: a gray jacket, an unstarched loose shirt of linen with a turned down collar, a string-like blue tie, narrow
trousers and gray socks. And his conversation, always impeccably courteous, seemed likewise ambiguous in nature: he might
be talking away gravely—and suddenly he would have a childishly naive smile, a kind of boyish manner. But a moment later you
would look—once again he had calmed down and assumed a dignified air. His wife, a quiet and grave woman who seemed older than
her husband, came into the study several times while Peredonov was there and each time she would ask her husband for some
specific information on district affairs.

Their own household affairs in town were in a confused state. People were constantly coming and going on business and constantly
drinking tea. No sooner had he sat down then Peredonov too was brought a glass of lukewarm tea and a roll on a plate.

Another guest had been sitting there before Peredonov. Peredonov knew him. Indeed, who doesn’t know whom in our town? Everyone
knows one another. It’s just that some have broken off acquaintanceships after a falling-out.

It was the rural council doctor, Georgiy Semyonovich Trepetov, a small man (even smaller than Kirillov) with a blotchy face
that was pinched and insignificant. He wore blue spectacles and he was always looking down or into a corner as though he found
it an effort to look at the person he was talking to. He was unusually honorable and never gave up a single kopeck of his
for the good of someone else, He deeply despised everyone working in the civil service—he would still offer his hand on meeting,
but he would stubbornly decline to take part in conversation. For this reason he had the reputation of being a lucid mind,
as did Kirillov, although he knew little
and was a poor doctor. He was always on the verge of living like the ordinary people and to that end he would observe the
way peasants blew their noses, scratched the backs of their heads, wiped their lips with the palm of their hands, and he himself
would sometimes imitate them in private. But he kept putting off the simple life of the people until the following year.

Here, too, Peredonov repeated all his usual complaints of recent days against town slander and the envious people who wanted
to interfere with him getting his inspector’s post. Kirillov at first felt flattered by this appeal. He exclaimed:

“Now do
you see what a provincial milieu it is? I always said that the sole salvation for thinking people was to rally together and
I am delighted that you have come to that very same conviction.”

Trepetov gave a grudging and angry snort. Kirillov looked
at him fearfully. Trepetov said scornfully:

“Thinking people!” and he snorted again.

Then, after a short silence, he said
in a thin, grudging voice:

“I don’t know how thinking people can serve such a musty classicism!”

Kirillov said irresolutely:

“But, Georgiy Semyonovich, you are not taking into account that not every person is in a position to choose his occupation.”

Trepetov snorted contemptuously and thereby conclusively cut down the polite Kirillov. Then he plunged into a deep silence.

Kirillov turned to Peredonov. When he heard the latter speak about an inspector’s post, Kirillov grew anxious. It seemed to
him that Peredonov wanted to be the inspector in our district. But at the district rural council a proposal was forthcoming
to establish the post of their own inspector of schools, who would be selected by the rural council and confirmed by the education
authorities.

Then, inspector Bogdanov, who had the schools of three districts under his authority, would move to one of the
neighboring towns and the schools in our district would be transferred to the new inspector. The members of the rural council
already had their eye on a person for this post, an instructor from the teachers’ seminary in the nearby town of Safata.

“I
have patronage there,” Peredonov said. “The only thing is that the headmaster and others, too, are up to some nasty tricks
here. They’re spreading all sorts of rubbish. So, in case there are any inquiries about me I just wanted to forewarn you that
it’s all nonsense what people are saying about me. Don’t you believe these people.”

Kirillov replied quickly and energetically:

“Ardalyon Borisych, I don’t have the time to particularly involve myself in town relationships and rumors. I am up to my chin
in work. If my wife didn’t help me, I wouldn’t know how to manage. I never go anywhere, see anyone, hear anything. But I am
utterly certain that I have not heard all these things that people are saying about you, word of honor. I fully believe that
all of this is nonsense. But the position doesn’t depend on me alone.”

“You might be asked,” Peredonov said.

Kirillov looked at him in amazement and said:

“How could they not ask? Of course, they’ll ask. But the thing is, we have in mind …”

At that moment Mrs. Kirillova appeared in the doorway and said:

“Ivan Stepanovich, just for a moment.”

The husband left. Worriedly she said:

“I think that it’s better not to tell this character that we have Krasilnikov in mind. This character seems suspicious to
me. He could do something nasty to Krasilnikov.”

“You think so?” Kirillov whispered quickly. “Yes, yes, it’s likely. That wouldn’t be nice.”

He clutched his head. His wife looked at him with businesslike sympathy and said:

“Best of all is to say absolutely nothing to him about it, just as though there weren’t any position.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” Kirillov whispered. “But I have to run. It’s awkward.”

He ran into the study and there he started to shuffle his feet earnestly and to inundate Peredonov with polite words.

“So, if you could …” Peredonov began.

“Rest assured, rest assured, I shall bear it in mind,” Kirillov said quickly. “We haven’t completely decided on it yet, this
question.”

Peredonov didn’t understand what question Kirillov was talking about and he had a fearful and melancholy feeling. Kirillov
said:

“We are organizing a school network. We wrote for a specialist from Petersburg. We worked the whole summer. It cost us nine
hundred roubles. An amazingly painstaking work. All the distances were calculated and all the school sites indicated.”

In a detailed and protracted fashion Kirillov gave an account of the school network, that is, of the divison of the district
into the kind of smaller sections where each section would have its own school that would not be far from any village. Peredonov
understood nothing and became entangled by the tight thinking in the verbal loops of the network that Kirillov was spinning
so energetically and dexterously before him.

Finally he said goodbye and left, with a melancholy feeling of hopelessness. In that home, he thought, no one wanted to understand
him or even hear him out. The host was talking some kind of nonsense. Trepetov kept snorting for some reason, the wife came,
wasted no time on formalities and then departed. Strange people were living in that house, Peredonov thought. A wasted day!

O
N THE
S
ATURDAY
Peredonov intended to go to the district cheif of police. Although he wasn’t bigwig like the marshal of the nobility, the
rest; but if he wanted to, then he could also be a help with his testimonial before the authorities. The police was a serious
business.

Peredonov took his official cap with its cockade out of the box. He had decided that he would wear only it from that day on.
It was fine for the director to wear an ordinary hat—he was on good terms with the authorities. But Peredonov still had to
get his inspector’s post. He couldn’t rely on patronage alone, he himself had to show his best side. That had been on his
mind even a few days back, before he had embarked on his tour of the authorities, but it had always been his ordinary hat
that had come to hand. But now Peredonov organized things differently. He flung the ordinary hat up on the stove—to be more
certain that it would be harder to come by.

Varvara wasn’t at home. Klavdiya was washing the floors in the rooms. Peredonov went into the kitchen to wash his hands. On
the table he saw a package of blue paper and a few raisins had spilled out of it. It was a pound of raisins which had been
bought for making tea buns (they were baked at home). Peredonov started to eat the raisins, just the way they were, unwashed
and uncleaned, and he ate the entire pound quickly and greedily, standing by the table while looking around at the door so
that Klavdiya didn’t come in unexpectedly. Then he painstakingly rolled up the thick blue wrapper, carried it out into the
front hall under his jacket and there he put it into his coat pocket so that once he was out on the street he could throw
it away and thereby destroy the evidence.

He left. Klavdiya soon noticed the absence of the raisins, became frightened and started to search for them, but couldn’t
find them. Varvara returned, found out about the disappearance of the raisins and let loose with abuse against Klavdiya. She
was certain that Klavdiya had eaten the raisins.

It was windy and quiet on the street. Only occasional clouds gathered. The puddles had dried up. The sky rejoiced pallidly.
But Peredonov felt melancholy at heart.

Along the way he stopped by the tailor’s to hurry him up. He wanted him to make as quickly as possible the new uniform that
he had ordered two days before.

Passing by the church, Peredonov took off his cap and crossed himself three times, vehemently and vigorously, so that everyone
who caught sight of the future inspector passing by the church might see. Earlier he had never done so, but now he had to
be on his guard. Perhaps some spy was stealthily trailing him from behind, or someone was lurking behind a tree and observing.

The chief of police lived in one of the distant streets of the town. Peredonov ran into a policeman at the gates which were
wide open. This was the kind of meeting which left him feeling despondent of late. In the courtyard several peasants were
to be seen, but not the kind one saw everywhere. These were some kind of special, unusually peaceful and taciturn ones. It
was muddy in the courtyard. Carts covered with bast matting stood around.

In the dark entry way Peredonov ran into yet another policeman, a short, emaciated man with a diligent but nevertheless despondent
look about him. He was standing there motionlessly and holding a book in a black leather binding under his arm. A ragged barefoot
girl came running out of a side door, pulled Peredonov’s coat off and guided him into the sitting room, repeating several
times:

“Please, Semyon Grigoryevich will be out in a moment.”

The ceiling was low in the sitting room. It weighed down on Peredonov. The furniture was pressed tightly to the wall. Hemp
matting lay on the floor. Both to the left and the right whispering and rustling could be heard through the walls. Pale women
and scrofulous boys, all of them with hungry gleaming eyes, kept peeking out of doors. Sometimes questions and answers emerged
more distinctly out of the whispering:

“I brought it …”

“Where should I take it?”

“Where would you like me to put it?”

“From Ermoshkin, Sidor Petrovich.”

The chief of police soon emerged. He was buttoning up his uniform jacket and smiling sweetly.

“Forgive me for keeping you,” he said, squeezing Peredonov’s hand in his two large and clutching hands. “We had various visitors
on business there. Our work is such that it won’t tolerate procrastination.”

Semyon Grigoryevich Minchukov, a tall solid man, dark-haired with sparse patches in the center of his head, held himself slightly
stooped, his hands extended downwards with predatory fingers. He frequently smiled with the kind of expression as though he
had just eaten something forbidden but pleasant and was now licking his lips. His lips were a brilliant red and thick, his
nose was fleshy, his face lustful, zealous and stupid.

Peredonov was dismayed by everything he heard and saw here. He muttered disconnected words and while sitting in his chair
tried to hold his cap so that the chief of police could see the cockade. Minchukov was sitting opposite him, on the other
side of the table and his clutching hands were gently moving on his knees, clenching and unclenching.

“People are spreading goodness knows what gossip,” Peredonov said. “Things that aren’t true. I myself could make a denunciation.
I haven’t
done anything of the sort, but I know what they’ve done. Only I don’t want to. They say all kinds of rubbish behind my back
and laugh to my face. You must agree yourself that in my situation it’s a ticklish business. I have patronage, but they are
playing nasty tricks. They are following me around for absolutely nothing, they’re wasting their time but they’re embarrassing
me. Wherever you go everyone already knows all over the town. So I’m hoping that I will have your support in whatever the
case might be.”

“But of course, of course, for goodness sake, with the greatest pleasure,” Minchukov said, pushing his wide palms forward.
“Of course, we the police have to know if there is anything suspect or not about someone.”

“I don’t give a damn, of course,”
Peredonov said angrily. “Let them gossip, but I’m just afraid that they’ll play dirty tricks on me at work. They’re cunning.
You don’t see the kind of gossip that goes on there, even Rutilov for example. For all you know he could be undermining the
State Treasury. And that’s why he’s trying to switch the blame to someone who’s innocent.”

At first Minchukov thought that
Peredonov had been drinking and was just spinning tales. Then, after listening carefully he concluded that Peredonov was complaining
about someone who was slandering him and was asking him to take some kind of action.

“The young people,” Peredonov continued,
thinking of Volodin, “think highly of themselves. They plot against others, but they themselves are not without blame. As
you know, the young people get carried away. Some of them are even working as police and are poking their noses in there as
well.”

He talked about young people for a long while, but for some reason he didn’t want to name Volodin. Peredonov mentioned
the young people in the police just in case, so that Minchukov would understand that he possessed a few bits of unfavorable
information in regard to the people serving in the police. Minchukov concluded that Peredonov was alluding to two young officials
in the police force—they were young, always laughing and chasing after young ladies. Involuntarily, Minchukov felt infected
by Peredonov’s obvious fear and dismay.

“I shall investigate,” he said worriedly, hesitated for a moment and again began to
smile sweetly. “I have some young officials who are still wet behind the ears, Believe it or not, his mother made one of them
stand in the corner, swear to God.”

Peredonov gave a fitful laugh.

Meanwhile, Varvara was passing the time at Grushina’s where
she found out some staggering news.

“Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart,” Grushina said hurriedly, no sooner had Varvara crossed
the threshold of her house. “You’ll just die when you hear the news I’m going to tell you.”

“Well, what’s the news?” Varvara
asked with a smirk.

“No, just imagine the kind of base people there are in the world! The things they won’t do in order to
get what they want!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, just you wait, I’ll tell you.”

But the cunning Grushina treated Varvara to coffee beforehand and then chased her kids out of the house, whereupon the eldest
daughter turned stubborn and wouldn’t go.

“Oh, you good-for-nothing scum!” Grushina screamed at her.

“You’re scum yourself,” the impudent daughter replied and stamped her feet at her mother.

Grushina grabbed her daughter by the hair and threw her out of the house into the yard and locked the door.

“The spoiled creature,” she complained to Varvara. “It’s nothing but trouble with these children. I’m alone and there’s no
one to manage them. They ought to have a father.”

“If you got married, they’d have a father,” Varvara said.

“You just don’t know what’ll come your way, Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart. Someone else might start to play the tyrant with
them.”

At that moment the daughter came running up from the street, threw a fistful of sand through the window and hit her mother
all over her head and dress. Grushina stuck her head out the window and screamed:

“You scum, you, I’ll thrash you, just you wait till you get home, I’ll give it to you, you mangy scum!”

“You’re scum yourself, a wicked old fool!” the daughter shouted on the street, jumping up and down on one foot and shaking
her filthy little fists at her mother.

Grushina screamed at her daughter:

“Just you wait! You’ll get it from me!”

And she closed the window. Then she sat down calmly as though nothing had happened and said:

“I wanted to tell you the news but I hardly know how. You, Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, don’t you get upset, they won’t
get away with it.”

“What do you mean?” Varvara asked fearfully and the saucer filled with coffee started to tremble in her hands.

“You see, the other day a student, by the name of Pylnikov and supposedly from Ruban, entered directly into the fifth form
because his aunt bought an estate in our district.”

“I know,” Varvara said. “I saw him pass by with his aunt, such a cute fellow, looks just like a girl and is always blushing.”

“Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, how could not he look like a girl—after all, he is really a young girl in disguise!”

“Come now!” Varvara exclaimed.

“They came up with the idea on purpose in order to catch Ardalyon Borisych,” Grushina said hurriedly waving her hands about
and getting happily excited because she was passing on such important news. “You see, this young lady has a cousin who is
an orphan and he was going to school in Ruban, so the mother of this young lady took him out of the gymnasium and using his
papers the young lady has entered school here. And take note that he was put in lodgings where there aren’t any other students.
He’s there alone so that everything would stay hugger-mugger, so they thought.”

“But how did you find out?” Varvara asked mistrustfully.

“Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, the ground has ears. Everything
became suspicious immediately. All the boys act like boys, but this one just walks gingerly around as though on eggs. One
look at the face and you’d think it ought to be a nice-looking lad, rosy-cheeked and big-chested. And so modest, as his classmates
found out—barely say a word to him and he blushes. They tease him for being like a girl. Only they think they’re doing it
just to make fun of him and they don’t know that it’s true. And just imagine how cunning they are—not even the landlady knows
anything.”

“But how did you find out?” Varvara repeated.

“Varvara Dmitrievna, sweetheart, what don’t I find out! I know everyone
in the district. Really, everyone knows that they still have a boy living at home the same age as this one. Why didn’t they
send them both off to the gymnasium? They say that he was sick in the summer, so he has to recuperate for one year and then
he’ll go to the gymnasium. But that’s all nonsense. The real boy is already in a gymnasium. And again, everyone knows that
they had a young girl, but they said that she had gotten married and moved to the Caucasus. Once again they’re lying, she
did nothing of the sort and she’s living here disguised as a boy.”

“But why are they doing it?” Varvara asked.

“What do you
mean, why?” Grushina said animatedly. “She’ll snatch one of the teachers. We’ve got few enough bachelors, or any other men
for that matter. Disguised as a boy she can even come to the apartment and there’s hardly anything she couldn’t do.”

Varvara
said fearfully:

“Such a cute girl.”

“You’re right there, a real picture of beauty,” Grushina agreed. “She’s only being modest
now, but just you wait, she’ll get used to it, let herself go and then she’ll have everyone spinning here in town. And just
imagine how cunning they are. No sooner did I find out about this business then I immediately tried to meet his landlady,
or her landlady—you hardly know what to say any more.”

“Phew, a real changeling, God forgive me!” Varvara said.

“I went to
vespers in their parish on St. Pantaleimon’s Day and she was very devout. I said to her, Olga Vasilyevna, why do you only
have one boy from the gymnasium living with you now? It’s not very profitable for you, I said. But she said, what do I need
more for? There’s a lot of bother with them. So I said, other years you always had two or three. But she said—just imagine,
Varvara Dmitrievna—she said that they had made it a condition that Sashenka be the only one living with her. She said that
they weren’t poor people and they would pay more, otherwise they were afraid that he would be corrupted living with other
boys. Who do they mean?”

“What sly foxes!” Varvara said maliciously. “What did you say to her, that this was a girl?”