The Petty Demon (41 page)

“Yes, there’s more than a few sincere fellows that are feeding the lice around our jails,” Sharik said.

Turgenev started to preach:

“Russia doesn’t have any of the essential characteristics of European statehood: the freedom of conscience, the freedom of
the press, the sanctity of the individual, the freedom of movement without a passport.”

At this moment Peredonov produced a totally unexpected and very loud yawn.

The writers didn’t care for this in the least. They exchanged an irate look.

“Only Russians can yawn and sleep under a cloud,” Turgenev said.

“Some snore, some roar,” Sharik remarked sternly.

“But, nevertheless, our incident was exceptionally distressing,” Turgenev said fervently. “Recently arrived men Of letters,
the cream of the intelligentsia, with the famous Sharik at their head, are doing honor to the town by paying it a visit. They
ought to be regarded as respected guests, whereas the gendarmes go dragging them off to the lockup! Even Siberia is too good
for people who do that. It is totally unacceptable that any policeman be ignorant of literature.”

“That kind of villainy couldn’t happen in the European countries,” Sharik said with certainty.

Turgenev sighed, flashed his little eyes like a serpent and hissed:

“This incident will pass over into eternity! Some future day in the history of Russia my memoirs will appear. All of this
will be told then.”

“Well I’m not going to wait for posterity,” Sharik declared. “I’ll write a letter to a German or a Swedish newspaper.”

“Won’t you get in trouble for that?” Rutilov inquired timidly.

“No, it’s possible to do it abroad, they don’t pay attention to that sort of thing.”

“It’s pretty important business to be locked up at the police station,” Murin said.

“And have you ever been locked up there?” Sharik asked with a quick burst of temper.

“Well, really, why would I have been there!” Murin replied, offended.

“Then you can’t judge what it means to spend a night in prison,” Turgenev began with feeling. “The damp gloom, the bare walls,
the poisonous, stifling stench. On the other side of the wall a clanking of shackles, the fierce cries of sullen guards and
someone’s heartrending moans. Exhausted by this whole terror, you lie down on your cruel pallet—and suddenly the bedbugs,
the lice, the fleas, the cockroaches and the tarantulas attack you and sting and sting you unbearably. You leap up, you want
to get out, you bash against the doors in righteous indignation. But the ferocious roar of the drunken Cutthroat, armed with
our own native and universally renowned whip, brings you instantly back to submission. You collapse on the damp, filthy floor,
you become oblivious for half a minute and you start dreaming—oh, those horrible, delirious prison dreams! Horrible, horrible,
thrice horrible! Ignominy, ignominy, a hundred times over, ignominy! Despicable Russia.”

“Incidentally, speaking of dreams,” Peredonov said, “last night I had a dream too. It was terrible! Supposedly I had robbed
Marta, bumped her off and then dragged her off to the rubbish heap.”

Varvara started to giggle and said:

“And she deserves it, the bitch.”

Turgenev looked on with perplexity and annoyance. No one had been struck by the force of his words. It was just as though
a gnat had buzzed. Turning to Sharik he grumbled:

“A benighted simplemindedness.”

“Mind-boggling!” Sharik muttered in response.

(h) They were inhibited by the presence of the new guests, the writers. For their part, the writers were smiling condescendingly
and mockingly. Seeing that the ladies were looking at them at Grushina’s party, Sharik said:

“What vulgar dreams there are gadding about in this town! Turgenev, tell them your dream about the avenue of omniscient birds.
The atmosphere in it will take your breath away.”

Turgenev smiled dreamily, raised his eyes to the ceiling and started to talk in a languid voice:

“It was a long avenue, an endless avenue. All the trees had their branches chopped off. A mystical fire blossomed between
each pair of trees. And on each tree sat an omniscient bird, an owl
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, blinking its eyes. A splendid atmosphere! But no, my friend, Sharik,” he said, growing faint from languor, “they won’t understand.
They cannot understand it!”

“Amen, amen, be gone evil spirit!” Peredonov whispered.

Sharik envied Turgenev his dream. He was trying to think up a dream of his own that would eclipse all the other ones that
had been described earlier—it was a dream that was obviously unlikely, with a multitude of details. It included a mighty-winged
eagle (Sharik himself), a serpent, a crow and bloody-mouthed tulips. But Rutilov interrupted his story.

“I never have any dreams,” Rutilov said. “And even if I do, then I forget them immediately. It’s worth remembering them, truly!”

Rutilov wanted to uphold his dignity as an educated person in the eyes of the writers.

“What for?” Turgenev asked, shrugging his shoulders.

“I don’t believe in dreams,” Rutilov said. “We might be living in the provinces, but that doesn’t mean we’ve become savages.”

Sergei Turgenev gave him a condescending reply:

“Naturally, it’s not every being who has the opportunity to come into contact with the eternal problems of reality.”

Feeling wounded by the words of the writer, Rutilov said:

“Only the peasantry believe in dreams. It’s not becoming to educated people.”

Sharik smiled sarcastically.

“Such sophistication!” He said spitefully.

Pleased with the fact that he had related his dream, Turgenev was smug. He passed a hand through his hair and said:

“No, I’m not laughing at folk superstitions. I have a lot of sympathy for folk
traditions. I’m the grandson of the common folk, I’m the nephew of prophesying woe. My cradle was fanned by prophetic dreams.
My heart believes in all these tales—oh, I am a madman! Last night I also dreamed, there in the prison, that I was the Tsarevitch,
handsome and youthful; My eyes were radiant like stars, my curls were spilling over my shoulders in a golden cascade, roses
blossomed on my lips and exquisite maidens were kissing my white hand with lips as gentle as a dream.”

Peredonov once again produced a sudden and loud yawn, and furtively made the sign of the cross over his mouth so that no one
would see.

(i) There was the smell of food. Grushina summoned the guests to the dining room. Everyone set out, jostling one another and
affecting politeness. They sat down haphazardly.

“Help yourself. What do you desire?” Grushina regaled the writers who had sat down side by side.

Turgenev produced a melancholy smile, assumed an inspired look and said:

“Desires? But my desires are insatiable. I would desire to take wing and fly and fly …”

“And I would desire,” Sharik declared sullenly, “to give some scoundrel a punch in the mug.”

Turgenev objected:

“No, I want to have a woman who is as mad as I am! With reddish hair, with eyes that are green and wild, a woman who is long
and supple like a serpent, and just as slender and wicked.”

(j) The very same fancy simultaneously entered the minds of both writers. They exchanged winks, stood up from supper, went
off to the side and started a heated conversation. They were trying to convince each other to marry Grushina.

“There’s something bacchic in her,” Turgenev said.

“Really, I wouldn’t be at all opposed,” replied Sharik, “but she suits you more.”

And each of them tried to outdo the other in singing her praises: each was thinking of ruining his friend with this marriage.

(k) It was Murin, Sharik in a loose peasant shirt, Turgenev in a light-colored, light-weight suit with a pink tie, and their
friends.

“Ah, the supermen!” Rutilov said with a giggle as he caught sight of the writers.

The writers took this salutation at face value and laughed.

(l) “Really, mam’selle, don’t you find it drafty down below?” Turgenev asked, as he sat Varvara in the carriage.

“I’m no mam’selle now, I’m a madame and I’ll give you one right in the kisser.”

“Aha, how stern!” Turgenev burst into laughter.

Sofiya was secretly rejoicing at the fact that the wedding was being marred. Her keen eyes were screwed up and glistening
with pleasure and her thin lips were compressed in malice. But her movements were just as flowing and restrained as usual
and her speech was just as unctuous and patronizing.

(m) The writers, Sharik and Turgenev, were already visiting the Khripaches that day. They were studying the local manners
and for that reason made an
effort to go everywhere. They started to talk about the latest town news, about Peredonov’s marriage and his eccentricities
in general.

“By the way,” Lyudmila said, “what a handsome boy you have in the gymnasium, a Sasha Pylnikov—a picture of good looks.”

Varvara Nikolaevna was amazed. It seemed to her that it was not in the least being mentioned “by the way.” But the switch
from Peredonov to the cute boy was incomprehensible to her and for that reason appeared even somewhat unseemly. She said:

“Actually, I don’t know them, any of them. There are so many of them and I don’t have anything to do with them.”

“He’s a new student of yours,” Lyudmila said.

“Really? But I don’t even know the old ones, let alone the new,” Varvara Nikolaevna protested.

“It’s that same boy that Peredonov thinks is a girl,” Lyudmila explained.

“Ah, so that’s it! Yes, I did hear something,” the headmaster’s wife drawled unwillingly.

Turgenev smiled craftily.

“Your Peredonov,” he said, “has expressed this fact somewhat crudely. The hypothesis that a girl in disguise has entered the
gymnasium, naturally, wouldn’t bear any scrutiny. But, nevertheless, you do know who he is.”

The headmaster’s wife smiled benevolently. She was expecting that the writer would say something witty and amusing.

“So, he’s nothing more than a young lad,” Darya said. “Only he’s cute.”

“It’s not quite like that,” Turgenev insisted.

“Well, who is he then?” Lyudmila inquired.

“A hermaphrodite!” Turgenev exclaimed and for some reason raised his eyes to the ceiling.

There was a general confusion—the ladies didn’t know that sort of word. Sharik translated:

“A boy-girl.”

“But what’s that supposed to mean?” a curious Lyudmila asked.

“How can I tell you!” Turgenev said. “If you like, it’s a higher being. In him we find a self-fulfillment, a harmonious combination
of the active and passive elements in the human spirit and nature. And, actually, not simply a combination, but rather a synthesis
of these two elements. Each of us represents a kind of disunited being. But the perfect person is not a man, not a woman,
nor even a man and a woman together, and is neither man nor woman. These two elements are united in him chemically, so-to-speak,
in a supernatural process, so that the usual physiological path is abolished as being superfluous and leading nowhere. We
are all either fertile or procreative, whereas he already represents the self-wrought fruit.”

He would have gone on speaking for a long while, but Lyudmila suddenly burst into laughter. The headmaster’s wife gave a restrained
smile: she couldn’t make out whether the writer was joking or speaking in earnest, and for that reason she had a smile on
her lips whereas her eyes expressed something akin to pensive consideration of this eccentricity. Khripach had listened attentively
and then he said:

“This is rather clever and perhaps in the abstract it is feasible as some specific hope, although at present it is only vaguely
expressed in other trends that have come to pass. But in regard to the given individual case it has been exaggerated. Moreover,
the path which you have indicated, whether supernatural
or superhuman, is essentially the path of the Antichrist and the originator of that path, that is, the Antichrist, cannot,
in any event (here Khripach smiled ironically) be a pupil at a state educational institution.”

Turgenev had been offended by Lyudmila’s laughter, all the more so because at first she had apparently been listening sympathetically.
“A crafty wench,” he thought and said as he shrugged his shoulders:

“If no one here cares for my hypothesis, then you are simply being deprived of one clear and elevated point of view of the
subject.”

(n) The writers, Sharik and Sergei Turgenev, were at the masquerade as well. On their way back to the capital they had once
again stopped off in our town. Dissipated and jaundiced from hard drinking, they nevertheless still appeared quite the young
fellows. They had strong constitutions although they were always assuring their trusting friends that they suffered from the
ailment of “the great Nadson.”
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As always, Sharik wore his loose peasant shirt.

“This is the international costume,” he explained to Volodin. “All intellectuals should be wearing it.”

On his face he preserved an exaggeratedly disdainful and sullen expression. He despised this merry crowd. Turgenev was more
polite. He had a condescending expression.

“There’s something intoxicating in the banal and stupid merrymaking of the crowd,” he said to Sharik. “You have exactly the
same kind of impression as though you were taking a mud bath.”

“Proto-banal!” Sharik muttered angrily.,

“Yes, all this glitter bores me, like other people’s joy,” Turgenev said. “Listen, Sharik, how do you like this comparison:
boring, like other people’s joy? I am going to insert it in my new novella.”

“Marvellous,” Sharik offered his praise. “A perfect fit. Really, other people’s joy is a spectacle that is fairly loathesome.”

Turgenev and Sharik went off to the buffet to drink tea.

“I drafted a critical study today, Sharik explained. “You’ll be interested in the content.”

“Naturally,” Turgenev said. “What you wrote can’t be other than interesting.”

“Yes, of course,” Sharik agreed. “So here’s my theme: Nekrasov and Minaev.”
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