The Devil (7 page)

At the end of August Liza gave birth to a beautiful, healthy daughter, and her confinement was unexpectedly easy.

In September they returned home, the four of them, including the baby and its wet-nurse, as Liza was unable to nurse it herself. Yevgeny returned home entirely free
from the former horrors and quite a new and happy man. Having gone through all that a husband goes through when his wife bears a child, he loved her more than ever. His feeling for the child when he took it in his arms was a funny, new, very pleasant and, as it were, a tickling feeling. Another new thing in his life now was that, besides his occupation with the estate, thanks to his acquaintance with Dumchin (the ex-marshal) a new interest occupied his mind, that of the
zemstvo—
partly an ambitious interest, partly a feeling of duty. In October there was to be a special Assembly, at which he was to be elected. After arriving home he drove once to town and another time to Dumchin.

Of the torments of his temptation and struggle he had forgotten even to think, and could with difficulty recall them to mind. It seemed to him something like an attack of insanity he had undergone.

To such an extent did he now feel free from it that he was not even afraid to make inquiries on the first occasion when he remained alone with the steward. As he had previously spoken to him about the matter he was not ashamed to ask.

“Well, and is Sidor Pechnikov still away from home?” he inquired.

“Yes, he is still in town.”

“And his wife?”

“Oh, she is a worthless woman. She is now carrying on with Zinovey. She has gone quite on the loose.”

“Well, that is all right,” thought Yevgeny. “How wonderfully indifferent to it I am! How I have changed.”

All that Yevgeny had wished had been realized. He had obtained the property, the factory was working successfully, the beet-crops were excellent, and he expected a large income; his wife had borne a child satisfactorily, his mother-in-law had left, and he had been unanimously elected to the
zemstvo
.

He was returning home from town after the election. He had been congratulated and had had to return thanks. He had had dinner and had drunk some five glasses of champagne. Quite new plans of life now presented themselves to him, and he was thinking about these as he drove home. It was the Indian summer: an excellent road and a hot sun. As he approached his home Yevgeny was thinking of how, as a result of this election, he would occupy among the people the position he had always dreamed of; that is to say, one in which he would be able to serve them not only by production, which gave employment, but also by direct influence. He imagined what his own and the other peasants would think of him in three years’ time. “For instance this one,” he thought, drifting just then through the village and glancing at a peasant who with a peasant woman was crossing the street in front of him carrying a full water-tub. They stopped to let his carriage pass. The peasant was old Pechnikov, and the woman was Stepanida. Yevgeny looked at her, recognized her, and was glad to feel that he remained quite tranquil. She was
still as good looking as ever, but this did not touch him at all. He drove home.

“Well, may we congratulate you?” said his uncle.

“Yes, I was elected.”

“Capital! We must drink to it!”

Next day Yevgeny drove about to see to the farming which he had been neglecting. At the outlying farmstead a new threshing machine was at work. While watching it Yevgeny stepped among the women, trying not to take notice of them; but try as he would he once or twice noticed the black eyes and red kerchief of Stepanida, who was carrying away the straw. Once or twice he glanced sideways at her and felt that something was happening, but could not account for it to himself. Only next day, when he again drove to the threshing floor and spent two hours there quite unnecessarily, without ceasing to caress with his eyes the familiar, handsome figure of the young woman, did he feel that he was lost, irremediably lost. Again those torments! Again all that horror and fear, and there was no saving himself.

What he expected happened to him. The evening of the next day, without knowing how, he found himself at her back yard, by her hay shed, where in autumn they had once had a meeting. As though having a stroll, he stopped there lighting a cigarette. A neighbouring peasant-woman saw him, and as he turned back he heard her say to someone: “Go, he is waiting for you—on my dying word he is standing there. Go, you fool!”

He saw how a woman—she—ran to the hay shed; but as a peasant had met him it was no longer possible for him to turn back, and so he went home.

When he entered the drawing-room everything seemed strange and unnatural to him. He had risen that morning vigorous, determined to fling it all aside, to forget it and not allow himself to think about it. But without noticing how it occurred he had all the morning not merely not interested himself in the work, but tried to avoid it. What had formerly cheered him and been important was now insignificant. Unconsciously he tried to free himself from business. It seemed to him that he had to do so in order to think and to plan. And he freed himself and remained alone. But as soon as he was alone he began to wander about in the garden and the forest. And all those spots were besmirched in his recollection by memories that gripped him. He felt that he was walking in the garden and pretending to himself that he was thinking out something, but that really he was not thinking out anything, but insanely and unreasonably expecting her; expecting that by some miracle she would be aware that he was expecting her, and would come here at once and go somewhere where no one would see them, or would come at night when there would be no moon, and no one, not even she herself, would see—on such a night she would come and he would touch her body.…

“There now, talking of breaking off when I wish to,” he said to himself. “Yes, and that is having a clean healthy woman for one’s health sake! No, it seems one can’t play with her like that. I thought I had taken her,
but it was she who took me; took me and does not let me go. Why, I thought I was free, but I was not free and was deceiving myself when I married. It was all nonsense—fraud. From the time I had her I experienced a new feeling, the real feeling of a husband. Yes, I ought to have lived with her.

“One of two lives is possible for me: that which I began with Liza: service, estate management, the child, and people’s respect. If that is life, it is necessary that she, Stepanida, should not be there. She must be sent away, as I said, or destroyed so that she shall not exist. And the other life—is this: For me to take her away from her husband, pay him money, disregard the shame and disgrace, and live with her. But in that case it is necessary that Liza should not exist, nor Mimi (the baby). No, that is not so, the baby does not matter, but it is necessary that there should be no Liza—that she should go away—that she should know, curse me, and go away. That she should know that I have exchanged her for a peasant woman, that I am a deceiver and a scoundrel!—No, that is too terrible! It is impossible. But it might happen,” he went on thinking—“it might happen that Liza might fall ill and die. Die, and then everything would be capital.

“Capital! Oh, scoundrel! No, if someone must die it should be Stepanida. If she were to die, how good it would be.

“Yes, that is how men come to poison or kill their
wives or lovers. Take a revolver and go and call her, and instead of embracing her, shoot her in the breast and have done with it.

“Really she is—a devil. Simply a devil. She has possessed herself of me against my own will.

“Kill? Yes. There are only two ways out: to kill my wife or her. For it is impossible to live like this.

[At this place the alternative ending, printed at the end of the story, begins.]

“It is impossible! I must consider the matter and look ahead. If things remain as they are what will happen? I shall again be saying to myself that I do not wish it and that I will throw her off, but it will be merely words; in the evening I shall be at her back yard, and she will know it and will come out. And if people know of it and tell my wife, or if I tell her myself—for I can’t lie —I shall not be able to live so. I cannot! People will know. They will all know—Parasha and the blacksmith. Well, is it possible to live so?

“Impossible! There are only two ways out: to kill my wife, or to kill her. yes, or else … Ah, yes, there is a third way: to kill myself,” said he softly, and suddenly a shudder ran over his skin. “Yes, kill myself, then I shall not need to kill them.” He became frightened, for he felt that only that way was possible. He had a revolver. “Shall I really kill myself? It is something I never thought of—how strange it will be …”

He returned to his study and at once opened the
cupboard where the revolver lay, but before he had taken it out of its case his wife entered the room.

He threw a newspaper over the revolver.

“Again the same!” said she aghast when she had looked at him.

“What is the same?”

“The same terrible expression that you had before and would not explain to me. Zhenya, dear one, tell me about it. I see that you are suffering. Tell me and you will feel easier. Whatever it may be, it will be better than for you to suffer so. Don’t I know that it is nothing bad?”

“You know? While …”

“Tell me, tell me, tell me. I won’t let you go.”

He smiled a piteous smile.

“Shall I?—No, it is impossible. And there is nothing to tell.”

Perhaps he might have told her, but at that moment the wet-nurse entered to ask if she should go for a walk. Liza went out to dress the baby.

“Then you will tell me? I will be back directly.”

“Yes, perhaps …”

She never could forget the piteous smile with which he said this. She went out.

Hurriedly, stealthily like a robber, he seized the revolver and took it out of its case. It was loaded, yes, but long ago, and one cartridge was missing.

“Well, how will it be?” He put it to his temple and hesitated a little, but as soon as he remembered Stepanida—his decision not to see her, his struggle, temptation, fall,
and renewed struggle—he shuddered with horror. “No, this is better,” and he pulled the trigger …

When Liza ran into the room—she had only had time to step down from the balcony—he was lying face downwards on the floor: black, warm blood was gushing from the wound, and his corpse was twitching.

There was an inquest. No one could understand or explain the suicide. It never even entered his uncle’s head that its cause could be anything in common with the confession Yevgeny had made to him two months previously.

Varvara Alexeevna assured them that she had always foreseen it. It had been evident from his way of disputing. Neither Liza nor Marya Pavlovna could at all understand why it had happened, but still they did not believe what the doctors said, namely, that he was mentally deranged—a psychopath. They were quite unable to accept this, for they knew he was saner than hundreds of their acquaintances.

And indeed if Yevgeny Irtenev was mentally deranged everyone is in the same case; the most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

“To kill, yes. There are only two ways out: to kill my wife, or to kill her. For it is impossible to live like this,” said he to himself, and going up to the table he took from it a revolver and, having examined it—one cartridge was wanting—he put it in his trouser pocket.

“My God! What am I doing?” he suddenly exclaimed, and folding his hands he began to pray.

“O God, help me and deliver me! Thou knowest that I do not desire evil, but by myself am powerless. Help me,” said he, making the sign of the cross on his breast before the icon.

“Yes, I can control myself. I will go out, walk about and think things over.”

He went to the entrance-hall, put on his overcoat and went out onto the porch. Unconsciously his steps took him past the garden along the field path to the outlying farmstead. There the threshing machine was still droning and the cries of the driver lads were heard. He entered the barn. She was there. He saw her at once. She was raking up the corn, and on seeing him she ran briskly and merrily about, with laughing eyes, raking up the scattered corn with agility. Yevgeny could not help watching her though he did not wish to do so. He only recollected himself when she was no longer in sight. The clerk informed him that they were now finishing threshing the corn that had been beaten down—that was why it was going slower and the output was less. Yevgeny went up to the drum, which occasionally gave a
knock as sheaves not evenly fed in passed under it, and he asked the clerk if there were many such sheaves of beaten-down corn.

“There will be five cartloads of it.”

“Then look here …” began Yevgeny, but he did not finish the sentence. She had gone close up to the drum and was raking the corn from under it, and she scorched him with her laughing eyes. That look spoke of a merry, careless love between them, of the fact that she knew he wanted her and had come to her shed, and that she as always was ready to live and be merry with him regardless of all conditions or consequences. Yevgeny felt himself to be in her power but did not wish to yield.

He remembered his prayer and tried to repeat it. He began saying it to himself, but at once felt that it was useless. A single thought now engrossed him entirely: how to arrange a meeting with her so that the others should not notice it.

“If we finish this lot today, are we to start on a fresh stack or leave it till tomorrow?” asked the clerk.

“Yes, yes,” replied Yevgeny, involuntarily following her to the heap to which with the other women she was raking the corn.

“But can I really not master myself?” said he to himself. “Have I really perished? O God! But there is not God. There is only a devil. And it is she. She has possessed me. But I won’t, I won’t! A devil, yes, a devil.”

Again he went up to her, drew the revolver from his
pocket and shot her, once, twice, thrice, in the back. She ran a few steps and fell on the heap of corn.