The Petty Demon (24 page)

“Well, go on, Marta, take it,” Vershina said. “Thank Vladimir Ivanovich.”

Blushing with shame and joy, Marta took the money. Murin started to thank her warmly.

“Make a marriage proposal right away, it’ll be cheaper,” Peredonov said wrathfully. “What a fuss you’ve made!”

Vitkevich roared
with laughter, while the rest of them pretended not to hear. Vershina was about to give an account of her dream, but Peredonov
didn’t let her finish and stood up to say goodbye. Murin invited him to come to his place for the evening.

“I have to go to
vespers,” Peredonov said.

“Since when has Ardalyon Borisych become such a zealous churchgoer,” Vershina said with a dry and
quick chuckle.

“I always have been,” he replied. “I believe in God, not like other people. Perhaps I’m the only one in the
gymnasium like that. That’s why I’m being persecuted. The director is an atheist.”

“When you’re free, then you name the time,”
Murin said.

Cramming his cap on, Peredonov said:

“I don’t have time to go visiting.”

But almost immediately he recalled that
Murin always fed people well and gave them good things to drink, and he said:

“Well, I could come on Monday.”

Murin was ecstatic
and started to invite Vershina and Marta. But Peredonov said:

“No, we don’t need the ladies. Otherwise people will get tight
and just blurt something out without any precautionary censorship, so it’s awkward with ladies present.”

When Peredonov left,
Vershina grinned ironically and said:

“Ardalyon Borisych is being eccentric. He very much wants to be an inspector, but Varvara
must be leading him around by the nose. Look at the way he’s acting up.”

Vladya, who had been hiding away during Peredonov’s
visit, came out and said with a malicious grin:

“The locksmith’s sons found out from someone that it was Peredonov who turned
them in.”

“They’ll break his windows!” Vitkevich exclaimed with a joyful roar of laughter.

Out on the street everything seemed hostile and ominous to Peredonov. A sheep was standing at the crossroads and gazing dully
at Peredonov. This sheep was so reminiscent of Volodin that Peredonov took fright. He thought that perhaps Volodin had turned
himself into a sheep in order to follow Peredonov.

“How do we know,” he thought, “perhaps it is possible. Science hasn’t gotten that far yet, but maybe someone already knows
how. After all, there you have the French, an educated people, yet magicians and magic established themselves in Paris,” Peredonov
thought. And he felt terrified. “What if this sheep starts to kick,” he thought.

The sheep bleated and it resembled Volodin’s laugh, sharp, penetrating and unpleasant.

Once again he ran into the police staff officer. Peredonov went up to him and said in a whisper:

“You’d better get on the trail of Adamenko. She’s corresponding with socialists and she’s one herself.”

Rubovsky gave him a silent and surprised look. Peredonov went on and thought with melancholy:

“Why does he keep turning up? He keeps following me and has stationed policemen everywhere.”

The muddy streets, the overcast sky, the miserable little houses, the ragged dispirited children—they all had an air of melancholy,
barbarity and ineradicable sorrow.

“It’s not a good city,” Peredonov thought. “And the people here are wicked and vile. I ought to move to another city as soon
as possible where all the teachers will bow down low and all the school children will be afraid and whisper in terror: the
inspector is coming. Yes, authorities live completely differently in the world.”

“Mister Inspector of the second district of the Ruban Guberniya,” he muttered to himself under his breath. “His grace, State
Councillor Peredonov. That’s the way! Recognition! His excellency, mister director of public schools of the Ruban Guberniya,
Actual State Councillor, Peredonov. Hats off! Hand in your resignation! You, leave! I’ll straighten you out!”

Peredonov’s face grew haughty; in his impoverished imagination he was receiving his share of power.

When Peredonov arrived home, he heard, while removing his coat, a sharp sound carrying from the dining room—it was Volodin
laughing. Peredonov’s heart fell.

“He’s already managed to run over here,” he thought. “Perhaps he and Varvara are hatching some plot on how to make a dunce
out of me. That’s why he’s laughing, he’s happy that Varvara is on his side.”

Melancholy and spiteful he went into the dining room. It was already laid out for dinner. Varvara greeted Peredonov with a
concerned face.

“Ardalyon Borisych!” she exclaimed, “We’ve had a real adventure! The cat has run off.”

“Well!” Peredonov cried
with an expression of terror on his face. “Why did you let it go?”

“What am I supposed to do, sew it by the tail to my skirt?”
Varvara asked with annoyance.

Volodin giggled. Peredonov thought that perhaps the cat had gone off to the police station and
was purring everything out that it knew about Peredonov and about why and where Peredonov went out at night. It would reveal
everything and on top of it it would miaow about things that weren’t true. Nothing but trouble! Peredonov sat down on a chair
at the table, lowered his head and while kneading the edge of the tablecloth, fell into sorrowful contemplation.

“Cats always
run off to their old homes,” Volodin said, “because cats get accustomed to a place and not to their master. You have to turn
a cat in circles when you take it to a new apartment and not show it the way, otherwise it’ll run away for sure.”

Peredonov
was relieved.

“So you think, Pavlushka, that he ran off to the old apartment?” he asked.

“For certain, Ardasha,” Volodin replied.

Peredonov stood up and cried:

“Well, let’s drink to it, Pavlushka!”

Volodin giggled.

“Don’t mind if I do, Ardasha,” he said.
“I don’t mind having a drink any time at all.”

“We have to get the cat back from there!” Peredonov decided.

“A real treasure!” Varvara replied with a smirk. “I’ll send Klavdyushka
after dinner.”

They sat down to eat. Volodin was cheerful, rambled on and laughed. For Peredonov his laughter sounded like
the bleating of the sheep on the street.

“What evil plot is he hatching?” Peredonov thought. “Does he need a plot?”

And Peredonov
was thinking that perhaps he might succeed in gaining Volodin’s favor.

“Listen, Pavlushka,” he said. “If you won’t go and
do me any harm, then I’ll buy you a pound of fruit drops every week, the very best sort and you can suck away on them to my
health.”

Volodin laughed, but immediately assumed an offended expression and said:

“Ardalyon Borisych, I am agreed not to do you any harm, only I don’t need any fruit drops because I don’t like them.”

Peredonov was dejected. Varvara said with a smirk:

“Enough of your tomfoolery, Ardalyon Borisych. How could he do you any
harm?”

“Any fool can ruin things,” Peredonov said dejectedly.

Offended, Volodin puffed out his lips, shook his head and said:

“Ardalyon Borisych, if that’s the way you feel about me, then there’s only one thing I can say: I thank you humbly. If that’s
what you feel about me, then what am I supposed to do after this? How am I supposed to understand this, in what sense?”

“Drink up your vodka, Pavlushka, and pour me one,” Peredonov said.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Pavel Vasilyevich,” Varvara tried to console Volodin. “You know he just talks that way, his
heart doesn’t know what his tongue is babbling.”

Volodin fell silent, and preserving his offended look, started to pour vodka from the decanter into the glasses. Varvara said
with a smirk:

“What’s this, Ardalyon Borisych, you’re not afraid to drink vodka from him? He might have put a curse on it, look at him moving
his lips.”

Terror formed on Peredonov’s face. He grabbed the glass that Volodin had filled, tossed the vodka out of it on to the floor
and cried:

“Fend, forfend, fend, forfend. Plot upon the plotter, let his tongue wither, let his black eye burst. Death upon the offender.
Fend, forfend, fend, forfend.”

Then he turned to Volodin with a malicious face and thumbed his nose at him and said:

“There you go, try your teeth on that. You’re cunning, but I’m even more cunning.”

Varvara roared with laughter. Volodin said in an offended reverberating voice just as though he were bleating:

“You’re the one, Ardalyon Borisych, that knows all kinds of magic words and pronounces them, whereas I have never, if you
please, been involved in magic. I am not giving my consent to putting a curse on your vodka or anything else, whereas, perhaps
you are the one who is bewitching all my prospective wives away from me.”

“That’s a good one!” Peredonov said angrily. “A lot I need your prospective wives. I can find better ones myself.”

“You uttered a curse so that my eye would burst,” Volodin continued. “Only just beware that your own spectacles don’t burst
first.”

Peredonov made a frightened grab for his spectacles.

“What are you trying to stir up!” he grumbled. “You’ve got a tongue like a broom.”

Varvara gave Volodin a look of caution and said angrily:

“Don’t be so malicious with your tongue, Pavel Vasilyevich. Eat your soup or it’ll get cold. Goodness, what a viper!”

She was thinking that quite likely Ardalyon Borisych had pronounced this counter-spell without meaning it. Volodin started
to eat his soup. Everyone was silent for a while and then Volodin said in an offended voice:

“It’s no coincidence that in a dream I had last night I was being smeared with honey. You were trying to smear me, Ardalyon
Borisych.”

“That’s not the way you should be smeared,” Varvara said angrily.

“What for, may I ask? It seems that I haven’t done anything,” Volodin said.

“Because you have a vile tongue,” Varvara explained. “You shouldn’t blab everything that comes into your head—there’s a right
time for everything.
^”12

I
N THE EVENING
Peredonov went to the club—he had been invited to play cards. The notary, Gudaevsky, was there as well. Peredonov took fright
when he saw him. But Gudaevsky was acting peacefully and Peredonov relaxed.

They played for a long while and drank a great
deal. Late at night in the buffet Gudaevsky suddenly leaped at Peredonov, struck him in the face several times without any
explanation, smashed his glasses and briskly left the club. Peredonov didn’t put up any resistance, pretended to be drunk,
collapsed on the floor and started to snore. They shook him awake and took him home.

Everyone in town was talking about the
fight the following day.

That evening Varvara found the opportunity to steal the first forged letter back from Peredonov.
It was essential for her to do so—as Grushina had stipulated—so that subsequently if the two forgeries were compared, no difference
would be noted. Peredonov usually carried this letter around with himself, but on that day for some reason he accidentally
left it at home. When he was changing from his official uniform into his jacket, he took it out of his pocket, stuck it under
a textbook on the commode and forgot it there. Varvara burned it with a candle at Grushina’s.

Late that night, when Peredonov
returned home and Varvara saw his broken glasses, he told her that they had burst on their own. She believed him and decided
that Volodin’s wicked tongue had been to blame. Peredonov himself believed that it had been his wicked tongue. In any event,
the following day Grushina gave Varvara a detailed account of the fight in the club.

In the morning when he was getting dressed,
Peredonov missed the letter, couldn’t find it anywhere and was terrified. He started to shout in a wild voice:

“Varvara, where’s
the letter?”

Varvara was flustered.

“What letter?” she asked looking at Peredonov with her frightened, wicked eyes.

“The letter
from the Princess!” Peredonov cried.

Somehow or other Varvara plucked up her courage. With an insolent smirk she said:

“How should I know where it is! You must have thrown it among your waste paper and Klavdyushka burned it. Look in your room
and see if it’s still around.”

Peredonov left for the gymnasium in a gloomy mood. He recalled the troubles of the day before. He was thinking about Kramarenko:
what had made that vile boy decide to call him a scoundrel? It meant that he wasn’t afraid of Peredonov. Maybe he already
knew something about Peredonov? He knew something and wanted to denounce him.

In class Kramarenko kept staring at Peredonov and smiling and that frightened Peredonov even more.

During the third recess Peredonov was once more invited to the director’s office. He went with the vague apprehension of something
unpleasant.

Rumors about Peredonov’s feats were coming to Khripach from all directions. That morning he had been told about the episode
the day before in the club. Volodya Bultyakov, who had been punished by his landlady a few days before on the basis of Peredonov’s
complaints, put in an appearance before Khripach after classes the day before as well. Fearing a second visit from Peredonov
with the same consequences, the boy had made a complaint to the headmaster.

In a dry, sharp voice Khripach communicated to Peredonov the rumors that had reached him—from reliable sources, he added—about
how Peredonov was visiting students in their lodgings and communicating incorrect information about the achievements and behavior
of the children to either the parents or guardians and demanding that the boys be whipped, in consequence of which enormous
troubles were provoked among the parents at times, such as, for example, the evening before in the club with the notary, Gudaevsky.

Peredonov listened, resentful and cowardly. Khripach fell silent.

“Really now,” Peredonov said angrily, “he’s the one who’s picking a fight and is that actually allowed? He had no right whatsoever
to let me have it in the face. He doesn’t go to church, he worships a monkey and is corrupting his son into the same sect.
He ought to be denounced, he’s a socialist.”

Khripach looked attentively at Peredonov and said in an imposing voice:

“All of that does not concern us and I am completely at a loss to understand what you comprehend with the original expression
of ‘he worships a monkey.’ In my opinion there is no reason to enrich the history of religion with newly invented cults. As
regards the insult which has been perpetrated against you, you ought to bring him before the courts. But the best thing for
you would be to leave our gymnasium. That would be the very best expedient for both you personally and for the gymnasium.”

“I’m going to be an inspector,” Peredonov protested angrily.

“Until that time,” Khripach continued, “you ought to refrain from
these strange escapades. You yourself must agree that such behavior is unseemly for a pedagogue and lowers the dignity of
a teacher in the eyes of his pupils. Going around houses to whip boys—that, you must admit yourself …”

Khripach didn’t finish and shrugged his shoulders.

“Really,” Peredonov protested again, “I was doing it for their own good.”

“Please, we will not argue,” Khripach interrupted sharply. “In the most resolute fashion I am demanding that you not repeat
any of this in the future.”

Peredonov looked angrily at the director.

That evening they decided to hold a housewarming. They
invited all their acquaintances. Peredonov walked around the rooms and looked to see that everything was in order and to make
certain there wasn’t anything people could denounce him for. He was thinking:

“Well, everything seems fine. No forbidden books
to be seen, the icon lamps are lit, the royal portraits are hanging on the wall in the place of honor.”

Suddenly Mickiewicz
winked at Peredonov from the wall.

“He’s going to play tricks on me,” Peredonov thought with fear, quickly took the portrait
down and dragged it off to the outhouse to change places with Pushkin and to hang Pushkin back up.

“All the same, Pushkin
was a courtier,” he thought, hanging him on the wall in the living room.

Then he remembered that they were going to play cards
that evening and he decided to examine the cards. He took an unsealed deck which had only been used once and started to sort
through the cards as though he were looking for something in them. He didn’t like the expressions on the face cards: they
were so goggle-eyed.

Lately while playing cards it had always seemed to him that the cards were smirking like Varvara. Even
the six of spades displayed an insolent appearance and wobbled about obscenely.

Peredonov gathered up all the cards there
were and with the sharp ends of the scissors pricked through the eyes of the face cards so they couldn’t spy. At first he
did it with the used cards, but then he unsealed new decks as well. He did all of this while looking over his shoulder, as
though fearing that someone would catch him. To his good luck Varvara was busy in the kitchen and didn’t peek into the other
rooms—besides, how could she leave unguarded such an abundance of food supplies—Klavdiya had come in handy at that particular
moment. When she needed something in the other rooms, she would send Klavdiya there. Every time Klavdiya entered, Peredonov
would shudder, hide the scissors in his pocket and pretend that he was laying out the cards for solitaire.

While Peredonov
was thus depriving the kings and queens of any possibility
of annoying him with their spying, trouble was approaching him from a different direction. The hat, which Peredonov had thrown
on top of the stove in the other apartment so that it wouldn’t come so easily to hand, was discovered by Ershova.

She reckoned that the hat had not been left behind accidentally. Her archenemies—the tenants who had moved out—very likely,
thought Ershova, had cast a spell in the hat out of spite so that no one would rent the apartment afterwards. In fear and
annoyance she took the hat to a wise woman. The latter examined the hat, sternly and mysteriously made whispering sounds over
it, spat in all four directions and said to Ershova:

“They tried to play a dirty trick on you, but you can turn the trick against them. A powerful wizard has cast a spell, but
I am more cunning: I will cast a counter-spell against him so that he himself will be crushed.”

And for a long while she worked a spell over the hat, and after receiving generous gifts from Ershova, she ordered her to
give the hat to a red-haired fellow so that he would take the hat back to Peredonov, give it to the first person he met there
and then run away without looking back.

It transpired that the first red-headed fellow that Ershova met was one of the locksmith’s sons who were furious with Peredonov
for revealing their nocturnal prank. He agreed with pleasure to fulfill the commission for five kopecks and on the way kept
spitting into the hat on his own behalf. At Peredonov’s apartment, he ran smack into Varvara in the dark entry way, slipped
her the hat and ran away so nimbly that Varvara didn’t manage to make out who it was.

And thus, Peredonov had barely had time to blind the final jack when Varvara, amazed and even frightened, entered the room
and said in a voice trembling with agitation:

“Ardalyon Borisych, have a look at this.”

Peredonov looked and almost fainted from terror. That very same hat that he had tried to get rid of was now in Varvara’s hands,
crumpled, covered in dust and barely preserving the traces of its former magnificence. He asked, choking with terror:

“Where, where did it come from?”

Varvara told him in a frightened voice how she had gotten the hat from a spritely boy who almost seemed to have risen up out
of the ground before her eyes, only then seemingly to be swallowed up by the ground again. She said:

“It couldn’t be anyone but that old hag Ershova. She’s the one who put a spell in the hat, that’s for certain.”

Peredonov muttered something indistinct and his teeth were chattering with fear. Gloomy fears and apprehensions were tormenting
him. He walked around frowning, while the gray
nedotykomka
ran about under the chairs and giggled.

The guests came early. They brought a lot of pies, apples and pears to the housewarming. Varvara accepted it all joyfully,
and kept repeating for the sake of decorum:

“Goodness, why did you bother? You needn’t have bothered yourself for nothing.”

But if it seemed to her that people brought
something cheap or bad, then she became angry. Nor did she like it if two guests brought the same thing.

Losing no time they
sat down to play cards. They played cards at two tables.

“Ah, goodness gracious!” Grushina exclaimed. “What’s this, my king
is blind!”

“My queen hasn’t any eyes either,” Prepolovenskaya said, examining her cards. “And the jack as well.”

Laughing,
the guests started to examine the cards.

Prepolovensky said:

“Well, well, there I was thinking what the matter was, the cards
seem rough—and that’s why. I kept fingering them all the while, thinking what’s wrong, the back is kind of rough, but then
it turns out that it’s because of these holes. Well-well, it’s the back of the card and it’s rough.”

Everyone was laughing,
only Peredonov alone was sullen. Varvara, smirking, said:

“You know how eccentric my Ardalyon Borisych is always acting. He’s
always coming up with fresh tricks.”

“Why did you do it?” Rutilov asked with a loud burst of laughter.

“What do they need eyes for?” Peredonov said sullenly. “They don’t have to look.”

Everyone roared with laughter while Peredonov remained sullen and taciturn. It seemed to him that the blinded figures were
making faces, smirking and winking at him with the gaping holes in their eyes.

“Perhaps,” Peredonov thought, “they’ve contrived
some way to look with their noses now.”

As was almost always the case he was unlucky and he imagined an expression of ridicule
and malice on the faces of the kings, queens and jacks. The queen of spades was even grinding her teeth, apparently furious
at the fact that she had been blinded. Finally, after one enormous loss, Peredonov grabbed the pack of cards and furiously
started to tear them to pieces. The guests roared with laughter. Smirking, Varvara said:

“That’s the way my fellow is all
the time—he has a drink and starts to act strange.”

“When he’s drunk, you mean?” Prepolovenskaya said poisonously. “Ardalyon
Borisych, do you hear what your cousin thinks about you?”

Varvara blushed and said angrily:

“What are you doing pouncing on my words?”

Prepolovenskaya smiled and was silent.

They took a fresh deck of cards in place
of the torn one and continued the game.

Suddenly a crash was heard—the glass window was smashed and a stone fell on the floor
near the table where Peredonov was sitting. Under
the window they could hear someone softly talking, laughter, then the sound of feet disappearing quickly into the distance.
Everyone leapt up from their places in great commotion. The women, as usual, started to shriek. They picked up the stone,
examined it fearfully, but no one could make up their mind to go to the window. First they sent Klavdiya out on the street
and only after she had reported that it was deserted outside did they begin to examine the shattered window.

Volodin concluded that students from the gymnasium had thrown the stone. The conjecture seemed likely and everyone gave Peredonov
a significant look. Peredonov frowned and muttered something unintelligible. The guests started to talk about what brazen
and illdisciplined boys there were.

Of course it hadn’t been students from the gymnasium but the sons of the locksmith.

“It’s the headmaster who put the students up to it,” Peredonov suddenly declared. “He keeps finding fault with me, he doesn’t
know how to get at me and so he thought this up.”

“Some trick he’s pulled!” Rutiltov cried with laughter.