The Petty Demon (18 page)

“I didn’t summon you here to lecture you but to clarify … Never mind, just sit down, Pylnikov, I see that you’re tired.”

Sasha hastily wiped his damp eyes with a handkerchief and said:

“I’m not tired at all.”

“Sit down, sit down,” Khripach said and pushed a chair up to Sasha.

“Really, I’m not tired, Nikolai Vlasyevich,” Sasha tried to assure him.

Khripach took him by the shoulders, sat him down,
and then sat down opposite him and said:

“Let’s have a calm talk, Pylnikov. You yourself can’t know the genuine state of your health. You’re a diligent boy and fine
in all respects, therefore it’s completely understandable to me that you wouldn’t want to ask to be dismissed from gymnastics
lessons. Incidentally, I have asked Evgeniy Ivanovich to come and see me today because I’m not feeling well. He can have a
look at you while he’s here. I hope that you don’t have anything against it?”

Khripach glanced at his watch and without waiting for a response started to talk to Sasha about how he had spent the summer.

Evgeniy Ivanovich Surovtsev soon appeared. He was the gymnasium doctor, a small man, dark, spritely, who loved conversations
on politics and the news. He didn’t possess a great deal of expertise but he exercised an attentive attitude towards his patients,
preferring diet and hygiene to medications and for that reason he was successful in his treatments.

Sasha was ordered to undress. Surovtsev examined him carefully and found no defect, but Khripach had been convinced that Sasha
wasn’t a girl. Even though he had been certain of that earlier, nevertheless he considered it useful so that if he had to
respond to inquiries from the district authorities, the gymnasium doctor as a consequence would have the opportunity to certify
the fact without any further examinations.

Dismissing Sasha, Khripach said to him affectionately:

“Now that we know that you’re healthy, I’ll tell Alexei Alexeevich that he’s not to spare you.”

Peredonov had no doubt that the discovery of a girl in one of the gymnasium students would bring the attention of the authorities
to him and that, in addition to promotion, he would be given a medal. That encouraged him to keep a vigilant eye on the behavior
of the students. Moreover, for a few days in a row the weather had been cloudy and cold and few people gathered for billiards.
All that was left to do was to walk about the town and visit the students who were in lodgings as well as those who were living
with their parents.

Peredonov selected parents who were less worldly. He would arrive, complain about the boy, he would be whipped—and Peredonov
would be satisfied. That was how he complained most of all about losif Kramarenko to his father who owned a beer factory in
the town. He said that losif was being naughty in church. The father believed him and punished his son. Subsequently the very
same fate befell several more students. Peredonov didn’t go to the ones who might have interceded on behalf of their sons—they
might complain to the district authorities.

Every day he visited at least one student in his lodgings. There he acted in an
authoritative fashion: he administered scoldings, gave orders and made threats. But the students who were in lodgings felt
more independent and at times they teased Peredonov. However, Flavitskaya, an energetic woman who was tall and clear-voiced,
painfully whipped her little lodger, Vladimir Bultyakov, at the request of Peredonov.

Peredonov told about his feats the following
day in class. He didn’t mention the names, but the victims gave themselves away with their embarrassment.

T
HE RUMORS ABOUT
Pylnikov being a girl in disguise spread quickly through the town. The Rutilovs were among the first to find out. Lyudmila,
always curious, was constantly trying to see anything new with her own eyes. She was consumed with a burning curiosity about
Pylnikov. Naturally she had to take a look at this masked rogue. She was even acquainted with Kokovkina. And so, one day towards
evening, Lyudmila said to her sisters:

“I’m going to have a look at this girl.”

“Busybody!” Darya shouted angrily.

“She’s all dressed up,” Valeriya noted, with a restrained snigger.

They were annoyed because they hadn’t thought of going—it would be too awkward for the three of them to go. Lyudmila had gotten
more dressed up than usual. She herself didn’t know why. In any event she liked to get dressed up and usually dressed in a
more revealing fashion than her sisters: there was more naked arm and shoulder, her skirt was shorter, the shoes lighter,
stockings thinner, more transparent and flesh-colored. At home she liked to go around in just a skirt and barefoot, and to
wear shoes without any stockings. Moreover, her blouse and skirt were always too dressy.

The weather was cold and windy, fallen leaves were floating on rippling puddles. Lyudmila walked quickly and she hardly felt
cold at all under her thick cloak.

Kokovkina and Sasha were drinking tea. Lyudmila took them in with her perceptive eyes. There was nothing amiss, they were
modestly drinking their tea, eating rolls and chatting. Lyudmila exchanged kisses with the landlady and said:

“I’ve come to you on a business matter, dear Olga Vasilyevna. But I’ll tell you later. In the meantime warm me up with some
of your tea. Goodness, just look at the lad sitting here with you!”

Sasha blushed and made an awkward bow. Kokovkina told her guest Sasha’s name. Lyudmila sat down at the table and started to
give a lively account of the news. The townsfolk loved to have her as a guest because she knew everything and knew how to
tell stories nicely and unpretentiously. Kokovkina, a stay-at-home, was unabashedly happy to see her and greeted her
with warm hospitality. Lyudmila babbled away cheerfully, laughed, jumped up from her place to mimic someone and kept brushing
against Sasha. She said:

“You must be bored, my dear, what are you doing sitting at home all the time with this sour little student. You ought to look
in on us sometime.”

“But how can I?” Kokovkina replied. “I’m too old to go out visiting.”

“What do you mean, go out visiting!” Lyudmila objected affectionately. “You come and make yourself right at home and that’s
all there is to it. There’s no need to swaddle this baby.”

Sasha assumed an offended look and blushed.

“What a spoiled one
he is!” Lyudmila said provocatively, and started to poke Sasha. “Come now talk with your guests.”

“He’s still young,” Kokovkina
said. “He’s my modest little boy.”

Lyudmila looked at him with a grin and said:

“I’m modest too.”

Sasha laughed and protested naively:

“That’s a good one! Are you really modest?”

Lyudmila burst into laughter.
Her laughter, as always, seemed to be fraught of a mirthfulness both sweet and sensuous. As she laughed she blushed deeply
and her eyes assumed a roguishly guilty look and avoided her companions. Sasha was embarrassed, suddenly caught himself and
started to justify himself:

“What I really wanted to say was that you’re very lively and not modest and not that you’re immodest.”

But sensing that it wasn’t being made as clear in his words as it might in writing, he grew confused and blushed.

“The impudent
things he’s saying!” Lyudmila cried, laughing and blushing. “It’s simply delightful, that’s what it is!”

“You’ve got my little
Sasha all flustered,” Kokovkina said, gazing affectionately both at Lyudmila and Sasha.

Bending in a feline motion Lyudmila
stroked Sasha on the head. He burst into shy and ringing laughter, twisted away from under her hand and ran off to his room.

“Sweetheart, find someone to marry me,” Lyudmila said immediately without any transition.

“Really, I’m no matchmaker!” Kokovkina
replied with a smile. But it was apparent from her face that she would assume the role of matchmaker with pleasure.

“You can
be a matchmaker now, can’t you?” Lyudmila protested. “And aren’t I a good enough bride? You won’t have to be ashamed of finding
a match for me.”

Lyudmila put her hands on her hips and started to dance in front of the landlady.

“Just look at you!” Kokovkina
said. “What a flirt you are.”

Lyudmila said laughingly:

“Do it at least for the fun of it.”

“What kind of husband do you want?” Kokovkina said with a smile.

“Let him have, yes, let him have brown hair, dearie, brown hair without fail,” Lyudmila said quickly. “Dark brown hair. Dark
like a pit. And here’s a model for you: like your gymnasium student, with the same dark brows and languishing eyes and dark
hair with a blue sheen, and ever so thick eyelashes, bluish-black eyelashes. You have a real handsome fellow here, truly,
a handsome fellow! That’s the kind I want.”

Soon Lyudmila was ready to leave. It had already become dark. Sasha went to accompany her.

“Only until we find a cab driver!” Lyudmila grew boisterous once more and started to question Sasha.

“Well, now, are you learning all your lessons? Are you reading any books?”

“I’m reading books,” Sasha replied. “I like to read.”

“Andersen’s fairy tales?”

“Hardly fairy tales, but all kinds of books, I like history and poetry.

“Well, well, poetry. And who is your favorite poet?” Lyudmila asked sternly.

“Nadson,
^*
of course,” Sasha replied with the deep conviction that precluded the possibility of any other answer.

“Well, well,” Lyudmila said encouragingly. “I like Nadson too, but only in the morning, whereas in the evening, my dear, I
like to get all dressed up. And what do you like to do?”

Sasha glanced at her with affectionate dark eyes—and they suddenly grew moist. He said softly:

“I like to cuddle.”

“Oh you’re an amorous one, you are,” Lyudmila said and hugged him around the shoulders. “So you like to cuddle. And do you
like to puddle about as well?”

Sasha giggled. Lyudmila questioned him:

“In nice warm water?”

“Both in warm and in cold,” the boy said shamefully.

“And what kind of soap do you like?”

“Glycerin.”

“And do you like syrup?”

Sasha laughed.

“You’re a funny one! They’re different things but you’re saying words that sound the same. Only you won’t fool me.”

“As though I needed to fool you!” Lyudmila said, chuckling.

“I already know that you like to make fun of people.”

“Where did you get that from?”

“Everybody says so,” Sasha said.

“Do tell, what a slanderer he is!” Lyudmila said, pretending to be stern.

Sasha blushed.

“Well, there’s a cab drivel Cab driver!” Lyudmila shouted.

“Cab driver!” Sasha cried as well.

With a clatter the driver rode up in his clumsy cab, Lyudmila told him where to go. He thought for a moment and then asked
for forty kopecks. Lyudmila said:

“Come now, sweetheart, is it that far? You certainly don’t know the way.”

“How much will you pay?” the driver asked.

“Take either half of the whole.”

Sasha laughed.

“A cheerful young lady,” the driver said with a grin. “Add another five kopecks anyway.”

“Thank you for accompanying me, my
dear,” Lyudmila said, firmly shaking Sasha’s hand and then she climbed into the cab.

Sasha ran home, thinking cheerful thoughts
about this cheerful girl.

A cheerful Lyudmila returned home, smiling and dreaming about something amusing. Her sisters were
waiting for her. They were sitting in the dining room at the round table which was illuminated by a hanging lamp. A brown
bottle with Copenhagen sherry-brandy stood on a cheerful white table cloth and the wrapping which had stuck to the edges of
the bottle-neck glittered brightly. It was surrounded by plates with apples, nuts and halvah.

Darya was intoxicated. Red-faced,
dishevelled, half-dressed, she was singing loudly. Lyudmila had already caught the second-to-last stanza of a familiar song.

O where the dress, O where the pipes!

He drags her naked to the heights.

Fears exile shame, shame exiles fears.

Our shepherdess
bewails in tears:

Forget the things you’ve seen!

Larisa was there as well, all dressed up, quietly and cheerfully eating an apple which she was slicing up with a knife and
chuckling.

“Well, then,” she asked, “did you see him?”

Darya fell silent and looked at Lyudmila. Valeriya leaned on an elbow, put out
her little finger and tilted her head, mimicking Larisa with a smile. But she was slender, fragile and her smile was restless.
Lyudmila poured some of the cherry-red liqueur into a glass and said:

“Nonsense! It’s a lad, the genuine variety and very
likeable. With dark brown hair and shining eyes and he’s young and innocent.”

And suddenly she burst into a ringing laughter Gaping at her, all the Sisters started to laugh.

“Well, what can you say, it’s
all that Peredonov rubbish,” Darya said, waving her hand and then she grew thoughtful for a moment, leaning with her elbows
on the table and her head bowed over. “Better to sing,” she said and started up with a piercing loudness.

A strained, sullen fervor echoed in her wailings. If a corpse had been released from the grave for the sole purpose of singing,
then that phantom would have sung in that manner. Rut the sisters had already long since grown accustomed to Darya’s intoxicated
bawling and from time to time they would join in with her, making their voices wail on purpose.

“Now she’s really let loose with the howling,” Lyudmila said with a snicker.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the singing, but she would have preferred to give her account and have the sisters listen.
Darya cried angrily, interrupting the song in the middle of a line:

“What do you care, I’m not bothering you!”

And starting exactly where she had left off, she began to sing once more. Larisa said affectionately:

“Let her sing.”

Poor homeless thing am I,

Nowhere to stay I’ll find, —

Darya sang in a wail, distorting the sounds and inserting syllables the way the simple folk singers did for greater sentimentality.
It sounded something like this, for example: “Poor-o-poor ho-o-meless thing-oh, am I-I.”

When she did it, the unaccented sounds were extended in a particularly unpleasant fashion. One had the extreme impression
that this kind of singing could provoke a deathly melancholy in an unjaded person …

O, deathly melancholy, resounding over fields and villages, over the broad expanses of our native land! A melancholy embodied
in a frenzied din, a melancholy that devours the living word in a corruptive flame, debasing what was once a living song to
an insane wail! O, deathly melancholy! O, sweet old Russian song, or are you truly dying? …

Suddenly Darya leaped up, put her hands on her hips and started to screech out a merry ditty while she danced and snapped
her fingers:

Darya sang and danced and the motionless eyes in her face revolved with her gyrations like the revolutions of a dead moon.
Lyudmila was laughing loudly and her heart palpitated gently and contracted from a combination of cheerful joy and the cherry-sweet,
terrible sherry–brandy. Valeriya was laughing softly, a glassy ringing laugh, and looking enviously at her sisters: she would
have liked to feel that kind of cheerfulness, but for some reason she couldn’t. She was thinking that she was the final one,
the “leftover” and for that reason she was the weak and unfortunate one. And she was laughing just as though she would burst
into tears at any moment.

Larisa glanced at her, winked at her and suddenly Valeriya felt cheerful
and full of fun. Larisa stood up, shook her shoulders—and in an instant all four sisters were whirling around in a frenzied
celebration, suddenly seized by an infectious madness, bawling after Darya the stupid words of more and more ditties, each
one more absurd and boisterous than the last. The sisters were young, attractive and their voices had a clear and wild ring
to them—the witches on Bald Mountain would have been envious of their ritual dance.

All night long Lyudmila dreamt such sultry, African dreams! First she dreamt that she was lying in a stuffy overheated room
and the blanket was slipping off her and baring her hot body—and there was a scaly, ringed serpent who had come crawling into
her bedchamber and, raising itself, was creeping along the trunk and the branches of her beautiful legs …

Then she dreamt
of a lake and a torrid summer evening, beneath the ponderous accumulation of threatening clouds—and there she was lying on
the shore, naked, with a smooth golden crown on her head. There was a smell of tepid stagnant water and mire, and the grass
wilting from the sultry heat. Over the water, dark and ominously calm, a white swan came swimming, strong, majestically grand.
It beat its wings noisily against the water and with a loud hissing sound, drew nearer and embraced her—it grew dark and eerie …

It was Sasha’s face in both the serpent and the swan bending over Lyudmila, a face that was almost bluish in its pallor,
with dark, mysteriously sorrowful eyes. And the bluish-black eyelashes, jealously concealing their spellbinding gaze, sank
heavily and frighteningly.

Then Lyudmila dreamt of a magnificent chamber with low, heavy vaults—and thronging with naked,
strong and beautiful young boys. And the most beautiful of all was Sasha. She was sitting up high and the naked youths were
taking turns whipping one another before her. And when they put Sasha down on the floor, facing Lyudmila, and were whipping
him while he laughed and wept in a clear voice, she was laughing the way people laugh at times in their sleep when the heart
starts to pound forcefully, laughing for a long while, unrestrainedly, with the laughter of self-obliviousness and death …