The Petty Demon (16 page)

“I said
to her, look out, Olga Vasilyevna, they might have slipped you a girl instead of a boy.”

“And what did she say?”

“Well, she thought that I was making a joke and she laughed. Then I said more seriously, Olga Vasilyevna, sweetheart, you
know, really, people are saying that this is a girl. But she wouldn’t believe it. Rubbish, she said, what kind of girl could
it be. I’m not blind, you know …”

Varvara was struck by the story. She completely believed that it was all true and that a fresh assault from a different direction
was being prepared against her future husband. She had to unmask the disguised girl as quickly as possible. They consulted
together for a long while on how to do it, but for the time being they couldn’t come up with any idea.

At home Varvara was even more upset over the disappearance of the raisins.

When Peredonov returned home, Varvara hurriedly and excitedly told him that Klavdiya had done something with the pound of
raisins and wouldn’t admit it.

“And on top of it she made up the story,” Varvara said in an irritated voice, “that perhaps it was the master who had eaten
them. She said that he had gone into the kitchen for something when she was washing the floors and according to her had spent
a long while there.”

“It wasn’t long at all,” Peredonov said with a frown. “I only washed my hands and I didn’t even see the raisins there.”

“Klavdyushka, Klavdyushka!” Varvara shouted. “The master here says that he didn’t even see the raisins and so it means that
you had already hidden them by that time.”

Klavdiya poked a reddened face, puffy from tears, out of the kitchen.

“I didn’t take your raisins,” she cried in a sobbing voice. “I’ll pay you back for them, only I didn’t take your raisins!”

“You’ll pay it back, you certainly will!” Varvara said angrily. “I’m not obliged to feed you on raisins.”

Peredonov guffawed and shouted:

“Piggy swiped a pound of raisins!”

“Bullies!” Klavdiya shouted and slammed the door.

At dinner Varvara couldn’t restrain herself from passing on what she had heard about Pylnikov. She wasn’t thinking of whether
it would be harmful or beneficial to her, depending on how Peredonov reacted to it. She was simply talking out of spite.

Peredonov tried to recall Pylnikov, but for some reason he couldn’t clearly imagine who the boy was. Up until then he had
paid little attention to this new student and despised him because he was good-looking and clean, and furthermore because
he acted modestly, studied well and was the youngest in age of all the students in the fifth form. But now Varvara’s story
ignited a lecherous curiosity in him. Immodest thoughts slowly began to stir in his murky head …

“I ought to go to vespers,” he thought, “to have a look at this girl in disguise.”

Suddenly Klavdiya came running in, and rejoicing, threw the crushed blue wrapper on the table and cried:

“You were blaming me for eating the raisins, and what’s that? A lot I need your raisins.”

Peredonov guessed what was up. He had forgotten to throw the wrapper out on the street and now Klavdiya had found it in the
pocket of his coat.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed.

“What’s that, where’d it come from?” Varvara cried.

“I found it in Ardalyon Borisych’s pocket,” Klavdiya replied maliciously.
“He ate them himself and tried to put the blame on me. You know that Ardalyon has a big sweet tooth, but why blame others
when he himself …”

“Well, that’s a good one,” Peredonov said angrily. You just keep lying. You put it in my pocket, I didn’t
take anything.”

“Why should I do that? Really, God help you!” Klavdiya said distractedly.

“How dare you go sneaking about in his pockets!” Varvara replied. “Were you looking for money there?”

“I wasn’t sneaking about his pockets,” Klavdiya said rudely. “I took his coat to clean it, it was all muddy.”

“And why did
you go into his pockets?”

“It fell out of his pocket. Why should I go sneaking around in his pockets?” Klavdiy tried to justify
herself.

“You’re lying, piggy,” Peredonov said.

“Why are you calling me a piggy, really, what tormentors they are!” Klavdiya
cried. “To hell with you, I’ll pay you back for your raisins and may you choke on them. You guzzled them yourself and I have
to pay for them! Well I’ll pay, apparently you don’t have any conscience. There’s no shame in your eyes, and still you call
yourself a gentleman!”

Klavdiya went off into the kitchen, crying and cursing. Peredonov laughed fitfully and said:

“She’s
really got her back up.”

“Let her pay for them,” Varvara said. “If you let them get away with anything, they’ll be prepared
to gobble everything up, the greedy devils.”

For a long while afterward they both teased Klavdiya with the fact that she had
eaten a pound of raisins. The money for the raisins was deducted from her pay and all the guests were told about the raisins.

The cat, as though attracted by the shouting, came out of the kitchen, crept along the walls and crouched near Peredonov,
peering at him with greedy and wicked eyes. Peredonov bent over to pick it up. The cat hissed ferociously, scratched Peredonov’s
hand, ran away and hid under the cupboard. It peeked out from there and its narrow green pupils glittered.

“Just like a changeling,”
Peredonov thought with fear.

Meanwhile, still thinking about Pylnikov, Varvara said:

“Instead of going to play billiards every
evening, you ought to drop in on the students at their lodgings sometimes. They know that teachers rarely look in on them
and they don’t expect the inspector to come more than once a year, so all kinds of disgraceful things go on there, like card-playing
and drunkenness. You ought to drop in on this girl in disguise. Go a little later when they’re getting ready for bed. It wouldn’t
take much to catch her out or embarrass her.”

Peredonov thought about it and guffawed.

“Varvara is a cunning rascal,” he thought.
“She knows a thing or two.”

P
EREDONOV WENT OFF
to vespers in the gymnasium church. There he stood behind the students and kept an attentive eye on how they behaved. Several
of them, it seemed to him, were being naughty, poking each other, whispering and laughing. He took note of who they were and
tried to memorize their names. There were a lot of them and he was annoyed with himself because he hadn’t thought to take
some paper and a pencil from home to write it down. He felt sad that the students were behaving themselves poorly and that
no one was paying any attention to that although the headmaster and the inspector were both standing right there in the church
with their wives and children.

In actual fact the students were standing there in a well-behaved and modest manner. Some were unconsciously making the sign
of the cross, others were thinking about something unconnected with the church and yet others were praying assiduously. Very
rarely did anyone whisper something to his neighbor, only two or three words without turning his head, and the other would
reply just as briefly and quietly, or even with just a quick movement, a glance, a shrugging of shoulders or a smile. But
these small movements, which went unnoticed by the senior class prefect, produced an illusion of extreme disorderliness on
the anxiety-ridden, but dull sensibilities of Peredonov. Even in a calm state Peredonov, like all vulgar people, was incapable
of precisely evaluating minor events. Either he did not notice them, or he exaggerated their significance. But now, when he
was upset by expectations and fears, his sensibilities served him even more poorly and little by little before his very eyes
all of reality was becoming enshrouded in a mist of repulsive and wicked illusions.

Besides, what had the students meant to Peredonov even earlier? Had they performed any other function than dragging pen and
ink across paper and retelling in stilted language what at one time had been said in a human language! In all of his pedagogical
activity Peredonov had sincerely not understood or thought about the fact that the students were just like people, just like
adults. Only the bearded students at the gymnasium, with their awakening attraction to women, had suddenly become equals in
his eyes.

Having stood in the back for a while and accumulated enough melancholy impressions, Peredonov moved forward to the middle
rows. There on
the right, at the end of one of the rows, stood Sasha Pylnikov. He was praying modestly and frequently knelt down. Peredonov
kept glancing at him and it was particularly pleasant for him to see Sasha on his knees, like someone being punished, and
gazing directly in front towards the gleaming altar doors with an anxious and pleading expression on his face, with prayerfulness
and sorrow in the dark eyes that were overshadowed with long, almost bluish-black lashes. He was swarthy and shapely and this
was particularly noticeable when he was on his knees, calm and erect, as though beneath someone’s stern and observing eye.
With his high and broad chest, as far as Peredonov was concerned, he looked completely like a girl.

Peredonov firmly decided now to pay him a visit at his lodgings that very evening after vespers.

People started to leave the
church. They noticed that Peredonov wasn’t wearing his ordinary hat, as he always had done before, but rather his official
cap with the cockade. Rutilov asked with a laugh:

“What’s this, Ardalyon Borisych, now you’re showing off in fancy dress with
your cockade? That’s what it means when a person is aiming for an inspectorship.”

“Will soldiers have to salute you now?”
Valeriya asked with affected naiveté.

“Come now, what silliness!” Peredonov said angrily.

“You don’t understand anything, Valerochka,” Darya said. “Soldiers have nothing to do with it! It’s only from the gymnasium
students that Ardalyon Borisych will get much more respect than before.”

Lyudmila laughed. Peredonov hastened to say his farewells
to them in order to escape their sarcasm.

It was still early to go to Pylnikov’s and he didn’t feel like going home. Peredonov
walked along the dark streets, trying to think of where he could spend an hour. There were a lot of houses, lights were burning
in many of the windows and at times voices could be heard through opened windows. People who were coming from church walked
along the streets and there was the sound of gates and doors being opened and closed. People who were alien and hostile to
Peredonov lived everywhere and some of them even now might be plotting ill against him. Perhaps someone was already wondering
why Peredonov was alone at that late hour and where he was going. It seemed to Peredonov that someone was trailing him and
lurking behind him. He felt melancholy. He hurried along without any purpose.

He was thinking that every house contained its
deceased. And all the people who had lived in these old houses about fifty years before, they had all died. He could still
remember some of the deceased.

“When a person dies, the house should be burned,” Peredonov thought with melancholy. “Otherwise
it’s very frightening.”

Olga Vasilyevna Kokovkina, with whom the gymnasium student Sasha Pylnikov lived, was the widow of
a treasury official. Her husband had left her a pension and a small house in which she had enough space that she was able
to set aside two or three rooms for lodgers. But she preferred gymnasium students. She was lucky in that she was always given
the most modest students
who studied properly and finished the gymnasium. In other lodgings a significant portion were made up of those students who
wandered from one educational institution to the other and ended up as students with a smattering of subjects.

Olga Vasilyevna, a skinny old woman, tall and erect, with a kind face that she nevertheless tried to make appear stern, and
Sasha Pylnikov, who had been well-fed and sternly controlled by hid aunt, were sitting at tea. It was Sasha’s turn today to
provide the jam from the country and for that reason he felt like the host and he was ceremoniously serving Olga Vasilyevna
and his dark eyes were gleaming.

There was a ring, and following that, Peredonov appeared in the dining room. Kokovkina was amazed at such a late visit.

“I’ve come to have a look at our student,” he said. “To see how he’s getting on here.”

Kokovkina tried to offer Peredonov some hospitality, but he refused. He wanted them to finish their tea as quickly as possible
so that he could be alone with the student. They finished their tea and went to Sasha’s room, but Kokovkina wouldn’t leave
them alone and she kept chattering on endlessly. Peredonov looked sullenly at Sasha, and the latter was bashfully silent.

“Nothing will come of this visit,” Peredonov thought with annoyance.

The maid called Kokovkina for Something. She left. With a melancholy feeling Sasha watched her leave. His eyes lost their
glitter and were partially screened by his eyelashes and it seemed as though these eyelashes, overly long, cast a shadow over
his entire face which was swarthy but had suddenly turned pale. He felt awkward in the presence of this sullen person. Peredonov
sat down beside him, put his arm clumsily around him and without altering the impassive expression on his face, asked:

“Well, Sashenka, did you pray to God nicely?”

Sasha glanced at Peredonov with shame, and fear, then blushed and was silent.

“Well? What about it? Did you?” Peredonov questioned.

“I did,” Sasha said finally.

“Goodness, just look at the blush on those cheeks,” Peredonov said. “Admit it now, you’re really a girl? A girl, you rascal!”

“No I’m not a girl,” Sasha said and suddenly, getting angry with himself because of his bashfulness, he asked in a ringing
voice: “Why do you say I look like a girl? It’s those students of yours at the gymnasium who’ve thought it up in order to
tease me because I’m afraid of bad words. I’m not accustomed to saying them and I won’t say them for anything. Besides why
should I say such vile things?”

“Will your mama punish you?” Peredonov asked.

“I don’t have a mother,” Sasha said. “Mama died a long time ago. I have an aunt.”

“Well then, will your aunt punish you?”

“Of course she would if I started to say vile things. What’s so nice about that?”

“But how will your aunt find out?”

“I don’t want to say them myself,” Sasha said calmly. “My aunt could hardly find out.
Perhaps I would tell on myself.”

“Who of your comrades says bad words?” Peredonov asked.

Sasha blushed again and was silent.

“Come now, tell me,” Peredonov insisted. “You are obliged to tell me, you mustn’t hide it.”

“No one says them,” Sasha said
with embarrassment.

“But you yourself were just complaining.”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

“Why are you denying it?” Peredonov
said angrily.

Sasha felt caught in some kind of miserable trap. He said:

“I was just explaining to you why some of my comrades
tease me like a girl. But I don’t want to tattle on them.”

“Now is that really the reason?” Peredonov asked spitefully.

“It’s not nice,” Sasha said with vexed grin.

“Well I’ll tell the headmaster so that they’ll make you tell,” Peredonov said maliciously.

Sasha looked at Peredonov with
angrily blazing eyes.

“No! Please don’t tell, Ardalyon Borisych,” he begged. And it was audible from the impetuous sound of
his voice that he was making an effort to beg and that he wanted instead to shout words that were bold and threatening.

“No,
I will tell him. Then you’ll see what you get for covering up vile things. You ought to have complained right away. Just you
wait, you’ll get it.”

Sasha stood up and started to twist his belt in his dismay. Kokovkina came.

“A fine one your goody-goody is, what can I say,” Peredonov said spitefully.

Kokovkina was frightened. She went hastily up to Sasha, sat down beside him.
Her legs always gave way in the midst of excitement. She asked timidly:

“But what is it, Ardalyon Borisych? What has he done?”

“Why don’t you ask him,” Peredonov replied with sullen spite.

“What is it, Sasha, what did you do wrong?” Kokovkina asked, touching Sasha’s elbow.

“I don’t know,” Sasha said and burst into tears.

“But what is it, what’s the matter with you that you’re crying?” Kokovkina
asked.

She laid her hands on the boy’s shoulders, pulled him over towards herself and didn’t notice that he felt awkward.
He stood up, hunched over and covered his eyes with a handkerchief. Peredonov explained:

“They’re teaching him bad words in
the gymnasium, but he doesn’t want to say who’s doing it. He mustn’t hide it. Otherwise he’ll learn vile things himself and
conceal the others.”

“Oh, Sashenka, Sashenka, how could you do that! It’s not possible! Aren’t you ashamed!” Kokovkina said
in dismay as she released Sasha.

“I didn’t do anything,” Sasha said, weeping. “I didn’t do anything bad. They tease me because I can’t say bad words.”

“Who’s saying bad words?” Peredonov asked again.

“No one is saying them,” Sasha exclaimed desperately.

“You see how he’s lying,” Peredonov said. “He ought to be properly punished. He should be punished so that he’ll reveal who
is saying vile things, otherwise our gymnasium will be censured and we won’t be able to do anything.”

“But you must forgive him, Ardalyon Borisych!” Kokovkina said. “How can he tell on his comrades? They won’t leave him in peace
afterwards.”

“He is obliged to tell,” Peredonov said angrily. “It can only do him good. We will take measures to punish them.”

“But they’ll beat him up!” Kokovkina said uncertainly.

“They won’t dare. If he’s afraid then let him tell in secret.”

“Well, Sashenka, tell him in secret. No one will find out that you did.”

Sasha wept in silence. Kokovkina drew him to herself, embraced him and for a long while whispered something in his ear. He
shook his head negatively.

“He doesn’t want to,” said Kokovkina.

“When he’s reprimanded with a birch rod then he’ll start to talk,” Peredonov said fiercely. “Bring me a rod and I’ll make
him talk.”

“Olga Vasilyevna, what for?” Sasha exclaimed.

Kokovkina stood up and embraced him.

“Enough bawling now,” she said tenderly and sternly. “No one’s going to touch you.”

“As you like,” Peredonov said. “But in that case I’ll have to tell the headmaster. I was thinking it would be better for
him to keep it within the family. Perhaps your little Sashenka is the rascal. We still don’t know why they tease him like
a girl. Perhaps it’s for a different reason. Perhaps they’re not the ones teaching him but he’s the one who is perverting
the others.”

Peredonov left the room angrily. Kokovkina followed him out. She said reproachfully:

“Ardalyon Borisych, how can you upset the boy so much for goodness knows what! It’s a good thing that he still doesn’t understand
what you’re saying.”

“Well, goodbye,” Peredonov said angrily. “Only I will tell the headmaster. This must be investigated.”

He left. Kokovkina went to console Sasha. Sasha was sitting sadly by they window and was looking at the starry sky. His dark
eyes were already calm and strangely melancholy. Kokovkina silently caressed him on the head.

“I’m to blame myself,” he said. “I let it slip why I was being teased and he kept on at me. He’s the most vulgar one. None
of the students like him.”

The following day Peredonov and Varvara were finally moving to a new apartment. Ershova was standing in the gateway and exchanging
furious insults with Varvara. Peredonov hid from her behind the carts.

They held a church service immediately in the new apartment. According to Peredonov’s calculations it was essential to show
that he was
a religious man. During the service the fragrance of the incense made him dizzy and induced an obscure mood in him that was
almost prayerful.

He was dismayed by one strange circumstance. A small creature of indeterminate profile came running out from somewhere: a
small, gray spritely
nedotykomka
. It was tittering, quivering, and twirling around Peredonov. But when he reached his hand out to it, it quickly slipped away,
ran off behind the door or under the cupboard, but a minute later it would reappear—and gray, faceless and spritely, it quivered
and teased.