The Petty Demon (20 page)

“It seems very strange to me, Nadezhda Vasilyevna,
that you’re acting in this manner,” Volodin said. “I am greatly disposed to you and one might even say passionately so, whereas,
among other things, you are doing it because of your brother. If you’re doing it now because of your brother, another one
will be pleased to do so because of a cousin, a third because of a nephew, and there would even be someone doing it for some
relative or other, and in that way no one would ever get married, with the result that the human race would come to a complete
end.”

“Don’t be worried about that, Pavel Vasilyevich,” Nadezhda said. “For the time being the world isn’t being threatened
by that kind of danger. I do not want to get married without Misha’s consent, and he, as you heard, does not agree. And it’s
understandable, you’re promising to give him a whipping right off. You might give me a beating as well.”

“For goodness sake,
Nadezhda Vasilyevna, do you really think that I would allow myself that kind of ignorance!” Volodin exclaimed in despair.

Nadezhda smiled.

“I myself do not have any wish to get married,” she said.

“Perhaps you want to become a nun?” Volodin asked in an offended
voice.

“Join the Tolstoyans and their sect,” Peredonov added, “and manure the ground.”

“Why do I have to go anywhere?” Nadezhda
asked sternly, getting up from her spot. “I like it just fine here.”

Volodin also got up, puffed out his lips offendedly and
said:

“After this, if Mishenka displays those kind of feelings towards me, and if things turn out like this when you ask him,
then I ought to decline to do the lessons because how can I come now if Mishenka feels like that towards me?”

“But why ever
for?” Nadezhda protested. “That’s something completely separate.”

Peredonov thought that they ought to keep trying to persuade
the young lady—perhaps she might agree. He said to her gloomily:

“Nadezhda Vasilyevna, now just think it over well. Why are you acting without rhyme or reason? He’s a fine fellow. He’s my
friend.”

“No,” Nadezhda said. “There’s nothing to think about! I thank Pavel Vasilyevich very much for the honor, but I can’t.”

Peredonov
glanced angrily at Volodin and stood up. He thought that
Volodin was a fool. He wasn’t even capable of making the young lady fall in love with him.

Volodin was standing by his chair, his head downcast. He asked in a reproachful voice:

“So that means it’s final, Nadezhda Vasilyevna? E-ech! A fellow loved a girl but she didn’t love him. God’s my witness! Well,
then, I’ll have a cry and that’s that.”

“You’re scorning a fine fellow, and who knows the kind that might turn up next,” Peredonov said insistently.

“E-ech!” Volodin exclaimed once more and was about to head for the door. But suddenly he decided to be magnanimous and returned—to
offer his hand by way of farewell to both the young lady and even that offender, Misha.

Out on the street Peredonov was grumbling angrily. Volodin was discussing it the whole way in an offended squealing voice
just as though he were bleating.

“Why did you give up the lessons?” Peredonov grumbled. “A real rich man!”

“Ardalyon Borisych, I merely said that if such was the case then I ought to give them up, but she was pleased to say that
it wasn’t necessary to do so, and since I was pleased not to answer, then it ended up with her begging me. So now it depends
upon me: if I wish to, I can refuse; if I wish to, I can continue.”

“Why refuse?” Peredonov said. “Just continue as though nothing had happened.”

“He may as well make the best of it there,” Peredonov thought. “He’ll be less envious.”

There was a melancholy feeling in Peredonov’s heart. Volodin still wasn’t fixed up—he’d better keep an eye on both of them
so that Volodin wouldn’t go and conspire with Varvara. What was more, Adamenko might be angry with him because he had tried
to propose Volodin as a husband. She had relatives in Petersburg. She might write them and it could do him harm.

And the weather was unpleasant. The sky was frowning, crows were flying about and cawing. They were cawing right over Peredonov’s
head, just as though they were teasing him and prophesying fresh and even more terrible troubles. Peredonov wrapped his neck
up in his scarf and thought that it wouldn’t be difficult to catch a cold in that kind of weather.

“What kind of plant is that, Pavlushka?” he asked, showing Volodin a plant with berries by the fence in someone’s garden.

“That’s deadly nightshade, Ardasha,” Volodin replied mournfully.

There were a lot of plants like that in their own garden, Peredonov recalled. And what a terrible name they had! Perhaps they
were poisonous. Suppose Varvara took them, broke off an entire bunch, brewed them up instead of tea and poisoned him, yes,
poisoned him when the paper came so that Volodin could take his place. Perhaps they had already agreed to do
so. It was hardly a coincidence that Volodin knew what the plant was called.

Volodin said:

“God’s her judge! Why did she have to offend me? She’s expecting an aristocrat, but she doesn’t realize that
there are all kinds of aristocrats and she’ll have her share of troubles with someone else. But a simple fine fellow might
be able to make her happy. Well, I’m going to church, I’ll light a candle for her health and I’ll pray that God grant her
a drunkard for a husband so that he’ll beat her, so that he’ll squander his money and make a beggar out of her. Then she’ll
remember me, but it’ll be too late by then. She’ll be wiping away her tears with her fist and saying: ‘What a fool I was that
I turned Pavel Vasilyevich down, no one would have beaten me, he was a fine man.’ ”

Moved by his own words, Volodin’s eyes
filled with tears and he wiped the tears from his bulging, sheeplike eyes with his hands.

“You ought to break her windows
at night,” Peredonov advised.

“Well, God help her,” Volodin said sorrowfully. “Suppose I get caught. No, but what a boy he
is! My goodness gracious, what did I do to him to make him want to harm me? Wasn’t I trying to help him, but just look, if
you please, at how he was plotting against me. What kind of a child is that, what will become of him, my goodness, tell me
then?”

“Yes,” Peredonov said angrily. “You can’t even manage with a little boy. E-ech! Some prospective husband you are!”

“Come now,” Volodin protested. “Of course I’m a prospective husband. I’ll find another. She shouldn’t think that anyone’s
going to shed tears over her.”

“E-ech, some prospective husband!” Peredonov teased him. “You even put a necktie on. How did
you think you were going to get into society lane with that ugly mug of yours? Some prospective husband!”

“Well, I am a prospective
husband, whereas you, Ardasha, are the marriage-broker,” Volodin said soberly. “You yourself gave me reason to hope, but you
were incapable of making a successful match. E-ech, some marriage-broke; you are!”

And they started to tease each other diligently,
squabbling for a long while with the appearance of people who might have been consulting over a business matter.

After she
saw her guests out, Nadezhda returned to the sitting room. Misha was lying on the divan and laughing. His sister pulled him
off the divan by the shoulder and said:

“And you have forgotten that you are not supposed to eavesdrop.”

She raised her hands and wanted to join her baby fingers together, but suddenly she started to laugh and the baby fingers
never joined. Misha rushed to her—they embraced and laughed for a long while.

“Nevertheless,” she said, “into the corner for eavesdropping.”

“Don’t,” Misha said, “I saved you from a prospective husband and you ought to be grateful to me.”

“Who saved whom! You heard how they were getting ready to whip you with the rod. Off you go into the corner.”

“It’d be better if I stood here like this for a while,” Misha said.

He got down on his knees at his sister’s feet and laid his head on her knees. She cuddled and tickled him. Misha laughed,
crawling about the floor on his knees. Suddenly the sister pushed him away and changed seats to the divan. Misha was left
alone. He stood for a while on his knees, looking questioningly at his sister. She seated herself more comfortably, took a
book as though she were going to read, but kept looking at her brother.

“Well, I’m tired now,” he said plaintively.

“I’m not keeping you, you did it yourself,” his sister said, smiling from behind her book.

“Well, I’ve been punished now, let me go,” Misha begged.

“Was I the one who made you get down on your knees?” Nadezhda asked in a voice that feigned indifference. “Why are you pestering
me!”

“I won’t get up until you forgive me.”

Nadezhda laughed, put her book aside and pulled Misha to herself by the shoulder. He shrieked and rushed to embrace her, exclaiming:

“Pavlusha’s fiancée!”

T
HE DARK-EYED BOY
filled all of Lyudmila’s thoughts. She frequently talked about him with her own family and with acquaintances, at times quite
irrelevantly. She saw him in her dreams almost every night, sometimes modest and ordinary, but more frequently in some wild
or magical setting. The stories of these dreams became quite a habit with her so that soon the other sisters themselves started
to ask her first thing in the morning how she had dreamt of Sasha that night. Her daydreams about him occupied all her spare
time.

On Sunday Lyudmila persuaded her sisters to invite Kokovkina over after mass and to keep her there as long as possible.
She wanted to get Sasha alone at home. She didn’t go to church herself. She instructed her sisters:

“Tell her that I slept in.”

The sisters laughed at her plot but, of course, they agreed. They lived together very amiably. And it suited them just
fine: Lyudmila would be busying herself with a young boy, thus she’d be leaving the real prospective husbands for them. They
did as they promised and invited Kokovkina over after mass.

Meanwhile, Lyudmila got herself ready to go. She had dressed up in a cheerful and attractive fashion, perfumed herself with
a soft, delicate Atkinson syringe, put a small atomizer and an unopened bottle of perfume into a beaded bag and concealed
herself by the window behind the curtain in the sitting room, so that from this place of ambush she could see in time whether
Kokovkina was coming. She had thought of taking the perfume with her earlier—to perfume the gymnasium student so that he wouldn’t
smell of his repulsive Latin, ink and boyishness. Lyudmila loved perfume, ordered it from St. Petersburg and used up a great
deal of it. She loved aromatic flowers. Her room was always fragrant with something: flowers, perfume, pine, fresh branches
of birch in the springtime.

There were her sisters and Kokovkina was with them. Lyudmila ran joyfully through the kitchen, across the orchard, through
the gate and along the alleyway so that she wouldn’t come face to face with Kokovkina. She was smiling cheerfully, walking
quickly towards Kokovkina’s house and playfully twirling her white bag and white umbrella. The warm autumn day made her
happy and it seemed as though she were bearing her own characteristic spirit of cheerfulness with herself and spreading it
all around.

At Kokovkina’s the servant told her that the lady was not at home. Lyudmila laughed noisily and joked with the red-cheeked
girl who had opened the door for her.

“Maybe you’re fooling me,” she said. “Maybe your mistress is hiding from me.”

“Hee-hee, why would she be hiding!” the servant answered with a laugh. “Go and take a look for yourself in the rooms if you
don’t believe me.”

Lyudmila peeked into the sitting room and cried out playfully:

“Is anyone alive here? Aha, the student!”

Sasha had glanced out of his room, caught sight of Lyudmila and was overjoyed, and Lyudmila grew even more cheerful at the
sight of his joyful eyes. She asked:

“But where is Olga Vasilyevna?”

“She’s not home,” Sasha replied. She hasn’t come back yet. She went somewhere from church. When I got back she wasn’t here
yet.”

Lyudmila pretended that she was surprised. She waved her umbrella and said with annoyance:

“Really, but everyone has come home from church. Everyone is sitting at home, but, how do you like that, there’s no one here.
Is it you, my young classman, who causes such a ruckus that the old lady can’t sit at home?”

Sasha smiled silently. Lyudmila’s voice and Lyudmila’s ringing laughter made him happy. He was trying to think up some way
whereby he could cleverly volunteer to accompany her home, so that he could spend at least a few minutes more with her, to
look at her and listen to her.

But Lyudmila had no intentions of going. She gave Sasha a crafty grin and said:

“Well, aren’t you going to ask me to sit down a while, my dear young fellow? I say, I am tired! Let me have a little rest
at least.”

Chuckling, she went into the sitting room, caressing Sasha with her quick, tender eyes. Sasha was embarrassed, blushed and
rejoiced—she would be with him for a while!

“Do you want me to atomize you?” Lyudmila asked in a lively tone. “Do you want me to?”

“You’re a fine one!” Sasha said “Right away you want to atomize me! What did I do to deserve such cruelty?”

Lyudmila burst into ringing laughter and threw herself against the back of the chair.

Atomize!” she exclaimed. “Silly! You misunderstood me. I want to atomize you with perfume.”

Sasha said with amusement:

“Ah, with perfume! Well, that’s a different matter.”

Lyudmila took the atomizer out of her purse, and twirled a handsome vessel of dark-red and gold-patterned glass with a gutta-percha
bulb and bronze fittings in front of Sasha’s eyes, and said:

“You see, yesterday I bought a new atomizer and I went and forgot it in my bag.”

Then she pulled out a large bottle of perfume with a dark, variegated label—Pao-Rosa by Guerlain of Paris. Sasha said:

“What a deep bag you have!”

Lyudmila replied cheerfully:

“Well, don’t expect anything more, I didn’t bring you any spice cakes.”

“Spice cakes,” Sasha repeated with amusement.

He watched with curiosity when Lyudmila uncorked the perfume and asked:

“How are you going to pour it in there without a funnel?”

Lyudmila said cheerfully:

“You’ll give me a funnel.”

“But I don’t have one,” Sasha said with dismay.

“As you like, but you’ll still give me a funnel,”
Lyudmila insisted with a chuckle.

“I’d get one from Malanya, but she uses it for kerosene,” Sasha said.

Lyudmila burst into cheerful laughter.

“Ah, what a slow-witted young fellow you are! Give me a piece of paper, if you don’t mind—and there’s our
funnel.”

“Ah, of course!” Sasha exclaimed joyfully. “We can roll one out of paper. I’ll bring some right away.”

Sasha ran off
into his room.

“Will it do from a notebook?” he shouted from there.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lyudmila answered cheerfully. “Even
tear it out of a school book, from your Latin Grammar, I don’t mind.”

Sasha laughed and shouted:

“No, I’d better take it from
a notebook.”

He found a clean notebook, tore out the middle sheet and was about to run into the sitting room, but Lyudmila
was already standing in the doorway.

“May I come into the host’s room?” she asked playfully.

“Yes, please do!” Sasha cried cheerfully.

Lyudmila sat down at his table, rolled a funnel out of paper and with a businesslike
face started to pour the perfume from the bottle into the atomizer. The paper funnel grew wet and darkened at the bottom and
along the side where the rivulet flowed. The aromatic liquid settled in the funnel and drained slowly downwards. A warm, sweet
fragrance of roses, mingling with a penetrating smell of alcohol, wafted through the air. Lyudmila poured half of the perfume
from the bottle into the atomizer and said:

“Well, that’s enough.”

And she started to screw on the atomizer. Then she crumpled
up the damp paper into a ball and rubbed it between her palms.

“Smell,” she said to Sasha and lifted a palm to his face.

Sasha bent over, half closed his eyes and inhaled. Lyudmila laughed, slapped him gently on the lips with her palm and held her hand
to his mouth. Sasha reddened and kissed her warm fragrant palm with the delicate
touch of his trembling lips. Lyudmila sighed and a rapturous expression passed over her attractive face and once again was
replaced with her customary expression of happy cheerfulness. She said:

“Now just hold still while I spray you!”

And she pressed the gutta-percha bulb. A fragrant mist spurted out, vaporized and diffused through the air onto Sasha’s shirt.
Sasha laughed and turned around obediently as Lyudmila nudged him.

“Smells nice, eh?” she asked.

“Very nice,” Sasha replied cheerfully. “What is it called?”

“Some baby you are! Read the label and you’ll see,” she said in a teasing voice.

Sasha read and then said:

“It smells kind of like rose oil.”

“Oil!” Lyudmila said reproachfully and gently slapped Sasha on the back.

Sasha laughed with a squeal and stuck out the tip of his tongue rolled up into a tube. Lyudmila stood up and started to look
through Sasha’s school texts and notebooks.

“May I look?” she asked.

“Please do,” Sasha said.

“Where are your ones and zeroes,
^*
show them to me.”

“So far I haven’t had anything so delightful,” Sasha replied in an offended voice.

“You’re telling lies, now,” Lyudmila said decidedly. “You’re the kind of person who would get bad marks. I imagine you’ve
hidden them.”

Sasha smiled silently.

“You’re fed up with Latin and Greek I suppose.”

“Not really,” Sasha replied, but it was apparent that he would be overcome with the usual boredom when the conversation turned
to school texts alone. “It’s rather boring cramming all the time,” he admitted. “But I don’t mind, I have a good memory. But
I do like to solve problems.”

“Come to my place tomorrow after dinner,” Lyudmila said.

“Thank you, I will come,” Sasha said, blushing.

He felt pleased that Lyudmila had invited him.

Lyudmila asked:

“Do you know where I live? Will you come?”

“I know. Alright, I’ll come,” Sasha said happily.

“You come for certain now,” Lyudmila repeated sternly. “I’ll be expecting you, you hear!”

“What if I have a lot of lessons?” Sasha said, more from a sense of conscientiousness than from the actual thought that he
wouldn’t come because of his lessons.

“Come now, that’s nonsense, you just come all the same,” Lyudmila insisted. “Or you’ll be impaled on a stake.”

“But what for?” Sasha asked with a chuckle.

“Just because you deserve it. You come and I’ll tell you something and show you
something,” Lyudmila said, skipping, humming and tugging at her skirt and spreading her rosy fingers. “You just come now,
my dear, silver, golden boy.”

Sasha laughed.

“Tell me what it is today,” Sasha begged her.

“I can’t today. And how could I
tell you today? You wouldn’t come tomorrow then and you’d say what’s the point of going.”

“Well, alright, I’ll come if they
let me.”

“What else now, of course they’ll let you! You’re hardly being kept on a chain.”

Saying goodbye, Lyudmila kissed
Sasha on the forehead and raised her hand to Sasha’s lips—he was obliged to kiss it. And it was pleasant for Sasha to kiss
that white tender hand once more. Yet it was almost shameful at the same time. How could he not help but blush! As she walked
away, Lyudmila kept giving him a sly but tender smile. And she turned around several times.

“How sweet she is!” Sasha thought.

He was left alone.

“How quickly she left!” he thought. “She suddenly made up her mind and gave me no chance to come to my
senses before she had already left!” Sasha thought. And he felt ashamed because he had forgotten to volunteer to accompany
her.

“I ought to have gone part of the way with her!” Sasha was lost in reverie. “Maybe I could catch up to her? Has she gone
far? If I run quickly I could catch her up smartly.”

“Is she likely to laugh?” thought Sasha. “Or perhaps I’d just be getting
in her way.”

Thus he decided not to run after her. He felt somehow bored and at a loss. That tender sensation from the kiss
still lingered faintly on his lips and her kiss burned his forehead.

“How tenderly she kisses!” Sasha reminisced dreamily.
“Just like a dear sister.”

Sasha’s cheeks were burning. He had a pleasurable and shameful feeling. Nebulous dreams were being
born.

“If she were my sister!” Sasha was daydreaming blissfully, “I could go up to her, embrace her and say something tender
to her. I could say to her: Lyudmilochka, my dearest! Or I could use some quite special name for her—Tinkle or Dragonfly.
And she would answer me. That would really be happiness.”

“But she’s a stranger, a dear one, but a stranger. She came and left
and I daresay she’s not even thinking about me now. All she left behind was the fragrance of lilac and roses and the sensation
of two tender kisses—and a vague excitement in my heart that gives birth to a sweet daydream, just as the wave gave birth
to Aphrodite.”

Kokovkina returned shortly.

“Phew, you smell so strongly!” she said.

Sasha blushed.

“Lyudmilochka was here,” he said, “but you weren’t at home and she sat for a while, put perfume on me and then left.”

“Such tender ways,” the old lady said. “You’re already calling her Lyudmilochka.”

Sasha laughed in embarrassment and ran off to his room. Meanwhile Kokovkina was thinking that those Rutilov sisters were cheerful
and affectionate girls—they knew how to flatter both the old and the young with their affection.

From the morning on the following day Sasha felt cheerful to think that he had been invited. He waited impatiently for dinner
at home. After dinner, blushing all over from embarrassment, he asked Kokovkina’s permission to go off to the Rutilovs’ until
seven o’clock. Kokovkina was amazed but she let him go. Sasha ran off cheerfully after painstakingly combing and even pomading
his hair. He was rejoicing and was slightly excited as though in anticipation of something nice and important. And he was
pleased to think that he would arrive, kiss Lyudmila’s hand and she would kiss him on the forehead. And later, when he would
be leaving, again the same kisses. He dreamt pleasurably about Lyudmila’s white tender hand.

All three sisters greeted Sasha while he was still in the front hall. They loved to sit by the window looking out on the street
and for that reason had caught sight of him from afar. Cheerful, dressed up and twittering brightly, they surrounded him with
their effervescent blizzard of cheerfulness—and he immediately felt pleasant and relaxed with them.