The Petty Demon (27 page)

Volodin went strolling through the rooms, shaking his forehead, puffing out his lips and bleating. The guests laughed. Volodin
sat down on the spot, gazed blissfully at everyone, screwed up his eyes with pleasure and then he gave his sheeplike bleating
laugh.

“Well, what happened next?” Grushina asked, winking at the guests.

“Well, nothing but sheep and more sheep, and at that point I woke up,” Volodin concluded.

“Sheep dreams for a sheep,” Peredonov grumbled. “Big deal being king of the sheep.”

“I had a dream,” Varvara said with an insolent grin. “But I can’t tell it in front of men, I’ll tell it to you alone.”

“Ach, my dear Varvara Dmitrievna, in a word the same thing happened to me,” Grushina replied, giggling and winking at everyone.

“Tell us, we’re modest men, sort of like women,” Rutilov said.

The rest of the men begged Varvara and Grushina to tell their dreams. But the latter exchanged looks, laughed foully and wouldn’t
tell.(h)

They sat down to play cards. Rutilov assured Peredonov that he was playing excellently. Peredonov believed him. But that day,
as usual, he was losing. Rutilov was winning. That made him extremely happy and he talked with greater animation than usual.

The
nedotykomka
was teasing Peredonov. It was hiding somewhere close by. It would show itself at times, popping out from behind the table
or from behind someone’s back and then hiding again. It seemed as though it were waiting for something. It was frightening.
The very look of the cards frightened Peredonov. There were two queens together on each card.

“But where’s the third one?” Peredonov wondered.

He dully examined the queen of spades, then he turned it over—may be the third one was hiding on the back.

Rutilov said:

“Ardalyon Borisych is looking at the backside of his queen.”

Everyone burst into laughter.

Meanwhile, two young police officials were playing skat off to the side. They played their hands in a lively fashion. The
one who won laughed with joy and made a long nose at the other. The loser got angry.

It began to smell of food. Grushina invited the guests into the dining room. Everyone went, jostling one another and affecting
civilized manners. They distributed themselves at the table in a haphazard fashion.(i)

“Eat, ladies and gentlemen,” Grushina invited. “Eat, my friends, stuff yourselves from nose to toes.”

“If you fill your plate, the hostess feels great,” Murin cried joyfully. It made him cheerful to look at the vodka and think
that he was winning.

Volodin and the two young officials helped themselves more zealously than all the rest. They selected the better and more
expensive items and devoured the caviar greedily. Grushina said with a strained laugh:

“Our Pavel Vasilyevich is sharp-eyed and high—straight past the bread and directly to the pie.”

She hadn’t bought the caviar for him! And under the pretext of serving the ladies, she moved all the better things away from
him. But Volodin didn’t lose heart and satisfied himself with what was left. He had already managed to eat many of the good
things at the very start and now it made no difference to him.

Peredonov gazed at the people chewing and it seemed to him that they were all laughing at him. Why? What for? He ate everything
that came his way with a frenzy, he ate slovenly and greedily.(j)

After supper they played cards again, But soon Peredonov got fed up. He threw his cards down and said:

“To hell with you! No luck. I’m fed up! Varvara, let’s go home.” The other guests followed suit.

In the entry way Volodin saw that Peredonov had a new walking stick. Grinning, he turned it around for examination and asked:

“Ardasha, why are the fingers curled up here? What does it mean?”

Peredonov angrily took the stick out of his hand, raised the knob with its carved depiction of a rude gesture in dark wood
to Volodin’s nose and said:

“A fig to you with butter on it.”

Volodin produced an offended expression.

“If you please, Ardalyon Borisych,” he said, “I eat my bread with butter and I don’t wish to eat a fig with butter.”

Without listening to him, Peredonov was assiduously wrapping his neck up in his scarf and buttoning his coat up with all the
buttons. Rutilov said laughingly:

“What are you wrapping yourself up for, Ardalyon Borisych? It’s warm.” “Health is the most precious thing of all,” Peredonov
replied.

Out on the street it was quiet. The street had settled down in the gloom
and was softly snoring. It was dark, melancholoy and damp. Heavy clouds were wandering overhead. Peredonov grumbled:

“Why has it turned dark?”

But he wasn’t afraid now—he was walking with Varvara and wasn’t alone.

Soon it started to rain, a fine, rapid and prolonged rain. Everything had turned still and only the rain was babbling something
that was insistent, rapid and breathless—inaudible, monotonous and melancholy words.

Peredonov sensed the reflection Of his melancholy and fear in the guise of nature’s hostility towards him. But that interior
life in nature that defied exterior definition, that life which alone could create genuine relations, profound and manifest,
between man and nature—no, he had no sense whatsoever of that kind of life. For that reason, all of nature seemed to him to
be replete with petty human emotions. Blinded by the delusions of the individual and of separate being, he did not comprehend
the Dionysian elemental ecstasies that were exultant and rampant in nature. He was blind and pitiful, like many of us.

T
HE
P
REPOLOVENSKYS ASSUMED
the responsibility for organizing the wedding. They decided to have the marriage in a village about six versts from the town—it
was awkward for Varvara to appear before the altar in the town after they had been living together for so many years and pretending
to be relatives. They concealed the date the wedding was set for. The Prepolovenskys circulated the rumor that the wedding
was taking place on a Friday, but in actual fact the wedding was to be on a Wednesday afternoon. They did this so that the
curious would not show up from town. More than once Varvara repeated to Peredonov:

“Ardalyon Borisych, don’t you go blabbing when the wedding’s to take place, otherwise people will get in the way.”

Peredonov unwillingly produced the money for the wedding expenses, making fun of Varvara. Sometimes he would bring his walking
stick with the rude gesture on the knob and say to Varvara:

“Kiss my fig and I’ll give you the money, if you don’t, then I won’t.”

Varvara would kiss the fig.

“So what, my lips won’t split from it,” she would say.

They kept the date of the wedding secret even from the ushers right up until the very day so that they wouldn’t go blabbing
it. First they invited Rutilov and Volodin to be ushers. Both agreed willingly: Rutilov was anticipating an amusing story;
Volodin was flattered to play such an important part in such an outstanding event in the life of such a respected person.
Then Peredonov got it into his head that he needed another usher. He said:

“You’ll have one, Varvara, but I need two, one isn’t enough. It’ll be difficult to hold the wreath over my head, I’m a tall
person.”

And Peredonov invited Falastov to be his second usher. Varvara grumbled:

“Why the devil him, there are two already, why another one?”

“He’s got golden spectacles, it’ll look more important with him there,” Peredonov said.

The morning of the wedding day, Peredonov washed in warm water, as always, so that he wouldn’t catch cold and then he asked
for some rouge, explaining:

“Now I have to do myself up every day, otherwise people will think that I’m decrepit and I won’t be appointed inspector.”

Varvara begrudged her rouge, but she had to give way. And Peredonov rouged his cheeks. He muttered:

“Veriga himself puts rouge on so that he’ll seem younger. I can’t get married with white cheeks.”

Afterwards, when he had locked himself in the bedroom, he determined to mark himself up so that Volodin couldn’t change places
with him. He smeared the letter “P” in ink on his chest, his stomach, his elbows and on various other parts.

“I ought to have marked up Volodin as well, but how could I do it? If he saw it he’d wipe it off,” Peredonov thought with
melancholy.

Then the thought entered his head that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put on a corset, otherwise he might be taken for an old
man if by chance he had to bend over. He asked Varvara for a corset. But Varvara’s corsets proved to be too tight, no one
would do up.

“Should have bought one earlier,” he grumbled angrily. “No one thinks of anything.”

“What men wear corsets?” Varvara protested. “No one does.”

“Veriga wears one,” Peredonov said.

“So Veriga is an old man, whereas you, Ardalyon Borisych, are a man in his prime, thank God.”

Peredonov smiled with self-satisfaction, looked in the mirror and said:

“Of course, I’ll live for another hundred and fifty years.”

The cat sneezed under the bed. Varvara said with a smirk:

“There’s the cat sneezing, it means it’s true.”

But Peredonov suddenly frowned. He had already grown frightened of the cat and its sneezing seemed a wicked ruse to him.

“It’ll go sneezing out something here it shouldn’t,” he thought, crawled under the bed and started to chase the cat. The cat
miaowed frantically, crouched against the wall and suddenly with a loud and sharp miaow, darted through Peredonov’s hands
and scampered out of the room.

“The Dutch devil!” Peredonov cursed it angrily.

“It certainly is a devil,” Varvara agreed, “That cat has become completely wild, it won’t let you stroke it, just as though
the devil has settled in it.”

The Prepolovenskys sent for the ushers early in the morning. Around about ten o’clock everyone had gathered at Peredonov’s.
Grushina came with Sofiya and her husband. Vodka and snacks were served. Peredonov didn’t eat much and was thinking with melancholy
of how he could differentiate himself even more from Volodin.

“He’s curled his hair like a sheep,” he thought spitefully and suddenly had the idea that he could comb his hair in a special
way. He got up from the table and said:

“You go ahead and eat and drink, I don’t begrudge it, but I’m going to the hairdresser’s to get a Spanish hairdo.”

“What’s a Spanish hairdo?” Rutilov asked.

“Just wait, you’ll see.”

When Peredonov had gone to have his hair cut, Varvara said:

“He’s always thinking up all kinds of fresh tricks. He fancies he’s seeing devils all the time. He ought to be knocking back
less raw brandy, the damned sponge!”

Prepolovenskaya said with a cunning grin:

“Soon as you get married, Ardalyon Borisych will get his post and he’ll calm down.”

Grushina giggled. She was amused by the secretiveness of this marriage and she was incited by an urge to arrange some kind
of shameful spectacle, but to do it in a way so that she wouldn’t be implicated. The evening before she had told some of her
friends on the sly about the time and place of the wedding. This morning she had summoned the younger of the locksmith’s sons,
given him five kopecks and had put him up to waiting outside town for the arrival of the newlyweds towards evening so that
rubbish and paper could be thrown into their carriage. The locksmith’s son agreed happily and gave a solemn oath not to betray
her. Grushina reminded him:

“But you betrayed Cherepnin as soon as they started to whip you.”

“We were fools,” the locksmith’s son said. “But now even if they hanged us it wouldn’t matter.”

And by way of sealing his oath, the locksmith’s son ate a fistful of earth. Grushina gave him a further three kopecks for
that.

At the hairdresser’s Peredonov asked for the owner himself. The owner, a young man who had finished the town school not long
before and who had read books from the rural council library, was just finishing some landowner whom Peredonov didn’t know.
He soon finished and came up to Peredonov.

“First let him go,” Peredonov said angrily.

The landowner paid up and left. Peredonov sat down in front of the mirror.

“I need a haircut and I want my hair styled,” he said. “I have some important business today, very special business, so I
want you to give me a Spanish hairdo.”

A youthful apprentice standing by the door snorted in amusement. The owner gave him a stern look. He had never been obliged
to give a Spanish hairdo, and he didn’t know what a Spanish hairdo was or even if there were such a hairdo. But if the gentleman
was asking for one, then one had to suppose that he knew what he wanted. The young hairdresser did not wish to reveal his
ignorance. He said respectfully:

“It’s quite impossible to do so with your hair, sir.”

“And why can’t you?” Peredonov asked in an offended voice.

“You have poorly nourished hair,” the hairdresser explained.

“What should I do, soak it in beer or something?” Peredonov grumbled.

“Gracious me, why beer!” the hairdresser replied politely with a smile. “The only thing is that bearing in mind that a sparse
area is already showing
up on your head, if any amount is cut off, then there just wouldn’t be sufficient left for a Spanish hairdo.”

Peredonov felt defeated by the impossibility of having a Spanish haircut. He said despondently:

“Well, cut it as you will.”

“They’ve probably already bribed this hairdresser,” he thought, “so that he wouldn’t give me a distinctive haircut. I shouldn’t
have said anything at home.” Obviously, while Peredonov was walking properly and gravely along the streets, Volodin had run
through the back alleys and connived with the hairdresser.

“May I spray your hair?” the hairdresser asked after he had finished his work.

“Spray me with mignonette, and plenty of it,” Peredonov demanded. “Since you’ve gone and chopped up my hair in any old fashion,
at least spice it up with mignonette.”

“Forgive me, we don’t keep mignonette,” the hairdresser said with embarrassment. “Would you care for some balsam?”

“You can’t do anything right,” Peredonov said woefully. “Go ahead and spray with what you have.”

He returned home annoyed. The day had become windy. The wind was causing the gates to bang, hang gaping and laugh. Peredonov
looked at them with melancholy. How were they supposed to get there? But everything took care of itself.

Three large carriages had been provided—they just had to get in and go, otherwise the carriages would attract attention and
the curious would gather. People might ride up or come running to have a look at the wedding. They arranged themselves in
the seats and departed: Peredonov with Varvara, the Prepolovenskys with Rutilov, and Grushina with the rest of the ushers.

Dust rose on the square. Peredonov could hear the pounding of axes. Barely visible through the dust, a wooden wall rose and
grew erect. They were hewing out a fortress. There were glimpses of fierce, taciturn peasants in their red shirts.

The carriages rolled past—the frightening vision flashed for a moment and then disappeared. Peredonov looked around in terror,
but nothing could be seen now and he determined to tell no one about his vision.

Peredonov was tormented by sorrow the whole day. Everything gazed at him with hostility, threatening omens emanated from everything.
The sky was frowning. The wind blew directly into their faces and moaned about something. The trees were unwilling to provide
shade—they had gathered it all in for themselves. The dust rose up in a long transparently gray serpent behind them. For some
reason the sun kept hiding behind the clouds. Was it spying on him?

The road was like a camel’s back. Bushes, groves, fields, streams beneath the hollow-sounding wooden tunnel bridges would
suddenly arise unexpectedly from behind the low hills.

“An eyebird flew past,” Peredonov said sullenly, peering into the misty off-white depths of the sky. “One eye and two wings,
nothing else.”

Varvara grinned. She thought that Peredonov was drunk from the morning. But she wasn’t arguing with him—otherwise, she thought,
he might get angry and refuse to go through with the wedding ceremony.

All four Rutilov sisters were already at the church, standing in a corner, hiding behind a column. Peredonov didn’t see them
at first, but later, during the actual ceremony itself when they came out of their place of ambush and moved forward, he caught
sight of them and took fright. In any event they didn’t do anything bad, and—what he had feared at first—they didn’t demand
that he get rid of Varvara and marry one of them. All they did was laugh the whole while. And their laughter, which at first
was quiet, resounded more and more loudly and wickedly in his ears, like the laughter of the implacable Furies.

There were almost no outsiders in the church, only two or three old ladies who had appeared from somewhere. And a good thing
too because Peredonov behaved stupidly and strangely. He gawked, grumbled, nudged Varvara, complained that it reeked of incense,
wax and peasantry.