Suddenly, Kleem stopped the cab, jumped out of it, and ran on all fours into the forest.
“Help,” he cried out at the top of his voice, “Help! He is trying to kill me! Help!”
The land surveyor heard his fast footsteps, the cracking of the dry wood in the forest, and then everything grew eerily still. The land surveyor, who had not expected such a turn of events, first made sure that the cab was parked. He then sat back down on his seat and started thinking, “He ran away, scared. I am a complete fool. What should I do now? I cannot keep driving as I don’t know where we are headed, and besides, everyone will think I stole the cab. What should I do?”
He cried out, “Kleem, Kleem! Where are you, Kleem?”
The echo replied, “Kleem!”
At the thought of sitting here in this dark cold forest for the whole night, listening to the wild animals and the echoes of his voice, the land surveyor felt shivers run down his spine, as if someone had poured a glass of ice water down his collar.
“Kleem! Hey, buddy!” he cried out loudly. “Where are you, Kleem?”
For two hours, the surveyor kept calling the cab driver. Then, when his voice had gotten hoarse, and he couldn’t take another minute of thinking he would be here all night, a light wind brought him someone’s moan.
“Kleem, is it you, my friend? Let us go!”
“You are going to kill me!”
“I was only joking, Kleem! Look at me! I do not have any hand guns! I was lying to you because I was so scared. Please, let us go. I am asking you! I am really getting cold. It is freezing cold out here. Please, Kleem!”
Kleem probably understood that a real robber would have long disappeared with the cab by this time. He stepped out of the forest, and warily ventured over to his passenger.
“And why was I so stupid that I got scared of you? You made a joke and I got scared! All right, let’s get back in the cab. Well, well,” Kleem mumbled sitting down in the cab. “If I knew all this, I would never have brought you with me, even for one thousand rubles. I almost died of fear.”
Kleem started the cab. It trembled and shook without starting. Kleem started it again and again it shook, making a strange noise. After the fourth attempt, it started moving, slowly rolling down the road. The land surveyor moved up the collar of his overcoat, covering his ears, and was soon lost deep in his thoughts. The rest of the trip he spent in silence. Both the road and the driver did not seem as dangerous as they had before.
CONVERSATION OF A DRUNKEN MAN WITH A SOBER DEVIL
A retired office worker, Mr. Scruffy (Lakhmatov in Russian) sat at his dinner table, drinking his sixteenth shot of vodka while meditating on equality and liberty. Suddenly, a devil looked out at him from behind a table lamp. Now do not be afraid, dear reader. Do you know what a devil is?
This one was a young, well-dressed man with an ugly face as black as a chimney and red, expressive eyes. Even if he is not married, a devil has a pair of horns on his head. His body is covered with green hair and has a doglike smell. Under his back hangs a tail ending in a pointing arrow head. He has claws instead of fingers and horse’s hooves instead of feet. Mr. Scruffy grew a little confused after noticing the devil, but then he remembered that green devils tend to appear to all who are drunk, and so he grew calmer.
“With whom do I have the honor?” he addressed the uninvited guest.
The devil grew confused and lowered his eyes.
“Please, do not be shy,” continued Mr. Scruffy. “Come closer, please. I am a man without prejudice. You can speak frankly with me, without holding back. Who are you?”
The devil cautiously walked over to Mr. Scruffy, and tucking his tail under him, bowed with respect. “I am a devil,” he introduced himself. “I work as a special envoy under the leadership of His Honor, the director of the Administration of Hell, Mr. Satan.”
“I have heard of him. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Take a seat. Would you like a shot of vodka? What is your occupation?”
The devil grew even more confused.
“Frankly speaking, I am not employed at the moment,” he answered, coughing in embarrassment and wiping his nose. “I did have a job some time ago. We were tempting people, seducing them from the path of goodness. Between us, this occupation is not worth a penny. There is no path of good—it does not exist anymore among humans, and so there is nothing to seduce people away from. Besides, people have now become smarter than we are. How can you possibly seduce a person who graduated from college and has seen so much in this world? How can I teach someone how to steal a penny if he, without my help, has already stolen thousands, or even millions?”
“Yes, I agree with that. However, do you do anything special at all?”
“Yes, I do. My old position is mainly a symbolic one. Yet, we do some work. We tempt female junior school teachers, entice the youth to write poetry, and lure young businessmen to break mirrors and windows in public after their parties. I must share that we have not interfered in politics, literature, or science for a long time. We do not understand anything in those areas anymore. Despite this, many of us are working as journalists, and some guys quit working full time in hell and are undercover as humans. Those are the retired devils with different professions—some are lawyers, some are editors and publishers—all very solid, clever, and well-respected people.”
“Can you excuse my very personal question—what kind of salary do you get at present?”
“We receive the same as before. Nothing has changed with our pay arrangements. All our expenses, such as lodging, food, and utilities, are paid by the company. However, we are not paid in cash, as we are considered volunteers. You see, a devil is an honorary position. To tell you the truth, our life is hard, and sometimes I feel as if I am a pauper asking for small change. Thanks to humans, we have learned to take bribes. Otherwise, we would have died out a long time ago. So, we live on our small income—giving some supplies and food to the sinners and earning funds via bribes. You see, Satan is getting older, and often hits the nightclubs to see the exotic dancers, and is not taking the time to do proper bookkeeping.”
Mr. Scruffy poured another shot of vodka for the devil. He swiftly drank it and grew more talkative. He shared all the secrets of hell, unburdened his heart, and cried for quite a while. Mr. Scruffy liked him so much that he invited him to spend the night as his guest at his place.
The devil accepted. He slept next to the heater, the whole time talking in his sleep as he experienced nightmares. By dawn, he had disappeared.
PSYCHOPATHS
The clerk Semyon Alekseevich Nianin, who served his entire career as an assistant secretary in the local county court, and his son George, an utterly colorless retired sergeant who still lives at home, are having dinner together in one of George’s small rooms.
As usual, George drinks one glass of wine after another and talks nonstop. His father is pale, and with an expression of deep worry and faint surprise, he looks timidly into his son’s eyes and freezes, caught by an inexplicable feeling that reminds him of fear.
“Bulgaria and Romania—this is just the beginning,” says George, picking some food from between his teeth with a fork. “You should read what the papers are saying about Greece and Serbia, and what people are saying about England! Greece and Serbia will be the first to start a conflict, then the Turks will join them, and then England will jump in to defend Turkey.”
“And France, too. France would never sit out such a conflict.” Mr. Nianin remarks, somewhat indecisively.
“Oh my God, you’re talking politics again!” Their tenant, Fyodor Fedorovich, is coughing in the next room, clearing his throat. “Have some compassion for a sick man.”
“Yes, and France would not stop at this, it would join the fight,” George says to his father, ignoring the tenant’s cough and remark. “France never forgot about those five billion they lost. You know, my dear, the French know what they are doing! They are just waiting for their chance to have revenge on the Germans and rub
salt in their wounds.”
“Yes, true. And if the French join the fight, the Germans won’t stay back. ‘Kommen sie hier, Ivan Andreevich! Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ Ha-ha-ha! And then Austria would join the Germans, and then Spain would make advances. Then, China will march into Mongolia. Here you are! Things will happen, my father, that you would never have dreamed of. Just mark my words! You won’t believe your eyes.”
Mr. Nianin, the older man, is suspicious of everything; ever frightened and distrustful, he stops eating and becomes even more pale. George also stops eating. The father and the son are both cowards, alike in their fear of everything. They are filled with some undefined, inexplicable fear; it comes to them irregularly from nowhere, from beyond measurable time and space. What will become of them? But what exactly will happen, when and where, neither the son, nor the father knows. The old man usually gets scared sitting quietly, without talking; but George cannot live without constantly chattering and irritating both himself and his father with lengthy, wordy conversations. He cannot calm down until he has worked himself into a state of complete terror.
“You will see it all for yourself,” he continues. “You will not have enough time to blink, and the whole of Europe will become a boiling pot. There will be a lot of noise and then a great battle—I am telling you! For you it is all the same, you couldn’t care less. But for me—they will say, ‘Report for duty, please, come and get yourself enrolled in the army!’ But I don’t care, I would sign up with pleasure.”
After scaring himself with politics, George turns to the cholera epidemic.
“During the plague, my dear, they won’t even bother to check whether you are living or dead. They will throw you on the cart for the corpses and carry you out of the city! There you will lie among the dead! No one will have time for you, to see if you are sick or if you have actually died.”
“Oh my God.” Fyodor Fedorovich, their tenant, is still coughing behind the thin wall. “You have not only let your secondhand smoke go into my room, and mixed it with alcohol fumes, but you also want to kill me with your conversation!”
“Tell me please, dear sir, why don’t you like our conversation?” Gregory asks, raising his voice.
“Because I do not like ignorance. I think what you say is disgusting!”
“If it is disgusting to you, then do not listen. So, my dear father, many things will happen, I am telling you. You will shrug your shoulders in disbelief. But it will be too late. And over here, people are stealing money from the banks, from their offices, and from City Hall. Here you can see, someone has stolen a million here, and a hundred thousand there, and at some other place just a thousand. And this happens every day. Yes, every single day there is a bookkeeper or a cashier running down the street in a hurry!”
“So what?” the father asks.
“What do you mean by ‘so what?’ One day you will look out of the window and will see that there is nothing there—everything has been stolen! You’ll look around, and see accountants scurrying all over the city—they are running away with your own money. You’ll get alarmed, and try to get dressed—but you won’t find your pants, because they have been stolen! Here is what will happen—and you ask me ‘so what?’”
In the end, Gregory talks about the famous Mironovich case that has been making headlines in all the newspapers. The murdered body of a teenage girl was found under a bridge, and now several famous lawyers are working on this case.
“Don’t even dream about an easy life,” George says to his father. “This case won’t end for ages. Even if they find the accused guilty, and read out the verdict—my dear, this does not mean anything at all. No matter what the sentence may be—it is all seen ‘darkly through a glass.’ Imagine that Madam Semenova is guilty—then where would you put the evidence that speaks against Mironovich? Or imagine that Mironovich is guilty—then how can you acquit Semenova and Bezak? Everything is in fog, my dear.”
“It is all so mysterious and undefined that even after they read out the sentence, people will be talking about this case for decades! It is like asking—‘What is the end of the world?’ Does it exist? Yes, it exists. And what will happen after the end of the world? Another end. And what would happen after the second end? Etc. etc. That’s what this case is like. They will close the case, then reopen it and then reopen it twenty more times, but they would not find the solution but only add some more fog and mystery. Madam Semenova admitted her guilt, but tomorrow she will deny her deposition and say, ‘I do not know anything at all.’
“Then Kabichevsky, the prosecutor, would continue his efforts, he would find another dozen assistants and they would be searching, making circles around the city blocks.”
“What do you mean by ‘making circles’?”
“I mean they will continue the investigation, and finally they will wind up under the Tuchkov Bridge. And then, Mr. Oshanin, the judge, would write an official letter of inquiry asking, ‘Have you found the weights?’ and Kabichevsky would answer that they could not find the weights since they do not have good divers and a good submarine. Then they would bring in really good divers from England and a good submarine from New York. And during the search of the river bottom, they would be bugging all kinds of experts, and the experts would be making more circles around the city blocks, talking to people. The chief prosecutor would not agree with Mr. Engard, and Kabichevsky would not agree with Mr. Sorokin, and this will go on and on.
“Then they will invite a world-famous expert, Dr. Charcot, from France. He would come to the scene of the murder and say at once, ‘I cannot give you an expert opinion because I did not examine properly the spine marrow of the victim. Open up the grave and examine her, and do another autopsy,’ he would say. Then, look at the hair! This hair could not just grow on the floor by itself! They have other people’s hair. Then they would ask the expert hairdressers to come in. Then they would find out that it does not look like Mr. Monbanzon’s hair. Then things would develop faster and faster. The British divers would find not one weight, but five weights from the City Fitness Club in the Neva River. Then they would find another ten weights. They would start examining the weights, and the first question would be, where did they buy the weights? They bought them at Mr. Skokov’s hardware store. Come over and make a deposition from the store owner. They will ask, ‘Who bought the weights from you?’ He would say, ‘I do not remember.’ ‘Then, give us the list of your customers.’ The store owner would start remembering and then it would dawn upon him that one day YOU bought something from him, and he would say ‘These and these people bought some stuff from me.’ And then, among other things, there was an office worker, Mr. Semen Nianin.
“‘Then, take in Mr. Nianin into custody. Invite him for interrogation.’ There you are, dear dad, they will come and arrest you—there you are.”
The father stands up from the table, completely pale, and starts nervously pacing around the room.
“Well, well,” he says, “only God knows what you are talking about.”
“Yes, invite Mr. Nianin here, with the full subpoena. You would come there, and then Mr. Kabichevsky would pierce you through with his terrible hypnotic glance. He would pierce you through. He would ask you, ‘Where were you during the night, on that particular date?’ Then, they would compare your hair with that hair. They would invite Mr. Ivanovsky the expert—and then—there you are, you would be accused of murder!”
“But how can you say this? Everybody knows that I did not kill!”
“Everyone knows! Ha-ha! That makes no difference at all. It does not matter that you did not kill. They will start making circles around you, setting their nets around you, and you will kneel before them and make a complete deposition and say, ‘Yes, I have killed!’ There you are!
“Well, well, this is just an example, take it easy. As for me, I am not married, so if I want, tomorrow, I can go to America. And then, Mr. Kabichevsky would not find me there. Try and find me there!”
“Oh my God!” Fyodor Fe
dorovich is moaning from behind the wall. “I wish that they would be quiet. Hey you, devils, can you shut the hell up?”
Nianin and Gregory fall silent. The dinner is over, and they lie down on their beds. They are both scared, and thinking and rethinking about it all. Both go to bed, excited and terrified.
ASSIGNMENT
As Pavel Sergeevich recalled his promise to the editor of the weekly magazine to write “a scary Halloween story,” he sat at his desk with his eyes focused on the ceiling. Several possible ideas were brewing in his mind. After a few minutes lost in thought, accompanied by frequent forehead rubbing, he finally chose one of his ideas, a story that had happened ten years ago in the city where he was born and went to school. He stared at his desk, inhaled deeply, moved closer, and began to write.
That day, he had a few guests sitting on the couch in the room next to his study—two ladies and a university student.
The writer’s wife, Sofia Vasilievna, sat at the grand piano, shuffling musical score papers, and playing a few random chords.
“Ladies, who will accompany me on the piano?” she inquired in a complaining voice. “Nadya, will you please play for me as I sing?”
“Oh my dear, I have not played the piano for three months.”
“Oh my God, why are you so picky? If you will not play, then I will not sing! Please play, this is an easy piece!”
After a long dispute, one lady moved to sit at the piano. She hit the keys as Pavel’s wife started singing the popular song “Why Don’t You Tell Me That You Love Me?”
Pavel wrinkled his forehead and put away his pen. He listened for a while, wrinkled his face again, jumped up from his chair, and strode to his door.
“Sofia,” he cried out loud. “You are not singing properly. You hit the wrong note with that high one. And you Nadya,” he addressed the lady played the piano, “you are constantly playing as if you are in a hurry, as if someone is pulling you by your fingers. It should be played trum-trum-trum.”