He had a rest after the pie, then had dinner, and had another rest, and then went to his church, where he was a warden; after the vespers he went back to the birthday party and played Preference till midnight. Everything seemed all right.
But when Avdeyev returned home after midnight, the lady cook, who opened the door for him, was pale and trembling so much that she could not utter a word. His wife, Elizabeth Trofimovna, a well-fed, flabby woman, was sitting on the couch in the drawing room, her gray hair hanging loose. She trembled with her entire body and, like a drunk, rolled her eyes senselessly. Her oldest son, Vassiliy, a schoolboy, as pale as she was and extremely agitated, was fussing around her with a glass of water.
“What is it?” asked Avdeyev, and looked angrily at the stove (his family was often poisoned by its fumes).
“The investigator and the police have just been here,” answered Vassiliy. “They’ve made a search.”
Avdeyev looked around him. The cupboards, the chests, the tables—traces of the recent search could be seen everywhere. For a minute, Avdeyev stood still, not understanding a thing, then his whole inside quivered and grew heavy, his left leg went numb, and, unable to endure the trembling, he lay prone on the couch. He felt his insides were turning over and his left leg, which he could not control, was tapping against the back of the couch.
In the course of just two or three minutes he recalled the whole of his past but could not remember any guilt that would deserve the attention of judicial authority.
“It’s simply nonsense,” he said, rising. “They must have slandered me. Tomorrow I’ll file a complaint so that they don’t dare … you know.”
Next morning after a sleepless night Avdeyev, as always, went to his shop. His customers told him that during the night the prosecutor also sent to prison a friend of the bank director and the chief clerk of the bank. This news did not upset Avdeyev. He was sure he had been slandered, and that if he filed a complaint today, then the investigator would get into trouble for yesterday’s search.
After nine o’clock he rushed to the town council to see the secretary, the only educated person there.
“Vladimir Stepanych, what’s it all about?” he said, bending down to the secretary’s ear. “People have been stealing, and what have I to do with it? How come? My dear fellow,” he whispered, “my house was searched last night! Indeed! Have they gone crazy? Why would they bother me?”
“Because you shouldn’t be a muttonhead,” the secretary answered calmly. “Before signing the papers you should’ve looked at them.”
“Look at what? Even if I looked for a thousand years at those reports I wouldn’t understand a thing! It’s all Greek to me! I am no accountant. They used to bring them to me and I signed them.”
“Excuse me. Apart from signing the papers, you—as well as all your committee—are seriously compromised. You borrowed nineteen thousand from the bank on no security.”
“Oh goodness!” exclaimed Avdeyev, surprised. “Am I the only one who owes money to the bank? The whole town owes it. I pay the interest and will repay the debt. I assure you! And besides, to be honest with you, was it me who borrowed the money? It was actually Petr Semenych who made me take it. ‘Take it,’ he said, ‘take it. If you don’t take it,’ he said, ‘it means you don’t trust us and remain an outsider. You take it,’ he said, ‘and build your father a mill.’ So I took it.”
“Well, you see, who else could reason like that but children or muttonheads. In any case, signor, you shouldn’t worry about it. You won’t escape trial, of course, but, very likely, they’ll discharge you.”
The secretary’s indifference and calm tone set Avdeyev’s mind at ease. Having returned to his shop and seeing his acquaintances there, he again drank, ate caviar, and philosophized. He almost forgot the search, and there was only one thing that troubled him that he could not help noticing: his left leg strangely grew numb and his stomach for some reason did not work properly.
That evening destiny fired another deafening shot into Avdeyev: at an extraordinary session of the town council, all the members of the bank’s board, Avdeyev among them, were fired from the board, as they were on trial. In the morning he received a paper requesting him to give up immediately his duties as a churchwarden.
After that, Avdeyev lost count of the shots fired by destiny into him. Strange days flashed rapidly by, one after another, each bringing an experience he had never known and some new unexpected surprise. Incidentally, the investigator sent him a summons, and he returned home after the interrogation insulted and red-faced.
“He bothered me like hell with that question of his: ‘Why did you sign it?’ I did sign it and that’s it. I didn’t do it on purpose. They brought the papers to the shop and I signed them. To tell the truth, I’m no great reader of those written things.”
Some young people with indifferent faces sealed up the shop, and made an inventory of all the furniture in the house. Suspecting there was some intrigue behind these actions and, as before, feeling no guilt whatsoever, the insulted Avdeyev started to run to different authorities and institutions filing complaints. He waited in the lobbies for hours on end, he composed long petitions, he wept, he swore. The prosecutor and investigator replied to his complaints in an indifferent, rational way: “Come here when you are summoned: now we have no time for you.” Others said: “It’s not our business.”
The secretary, an educated man, who—as it seemed to Avdeyev—could help him, merely shrugged his shoulders and said:
“It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have been a muttonhead.”
The old man bustled about, while his leg continued to grow numb and his stomach functioned even worse than before. When he got tired of being idle and poverty was at the door, he decided to go to his father’s mill, or to his brother to start a flour business, but he was not allowed out of town. His family went to his father’s and he was left alone.
The days flashed by, one after another. Left without his family, without his shop and money, the former churchwarden, an honored and respected man, spent whole days wandering about his friends’ shops. He drank, ate, and listened to advice. Every morning and evening he went to church to kill time. Looking at the icons for hours, he did not pray but reflected. His conscience was clear, and he thought of his current situation as being a mistake and a misunderstanding. In his opinion, this all happened only because the investigators and officers were too young and inexperienced; he believed that if he managed to talk to some elderly judge openheartedly and in detail, everything would be set right again. He did not understand his judges, and he believed that his judges did not understand him.
The days rushed by one after another, and finally, after a long and tedious protraction, came the day of the trial. Avdeyev borrowed fifty rubles, made sure he had some alcohol for his leg and herbs for his stomach, and set off for the town where the court chamber was located.
The trial went on for a week and a half. During the court hearings, Avdeyev remained among his fellow sufferers, listened attentively, but did not understand a word. As it becomes a respectable man and an innocent victim, he maintained corresponding dignity and self-worth. He was in a hostile mood. He was angry that he was detained in the court for so long, that he could not get any vegetarian food, that his lawyer did not understand him and, it seemed to him, was saying everything wrong. He believed the judges were not judging the way they should. They took hardly any notice of Avdeyev, addressed him once in three days, and the questions they asked were such that every time he answered them, Avdeyev made the audience laugh. As soon as he tried to speak of the losses he had suffered and of his wish to recover the court costs, his lawyer turned around and made a strange grimace, the public laughed, and the court president declared strictly that it had nothing to do with the case. In his last statement, he was not talking of the things his lawyer taught him but of something completely different, which, too, raised a laugh in the courtroom.
During the terrible hours when the jury was deliberating i
n its room, he sat angrily in the bar and did not for a minute think of them. He did not understand why they were deliberating for so long when everything was absolutely clear, and what they wanted of him.
As he grew hungry, he asked the waiter to bring him something cheap and vegetarian. He brought him some cold fish with carrots for forty kopecks. Avdeyev ate it and at once felt the fish falling into his stomach like a heavy lump; then followed belching, heartburn, and pain.
Later, as he listened to the foreman of the jury reading out the questions point by point, his entrails were turning over, his whole body was covered with a cold sweat, his left leg grew numb; he did not listen, he understood nothing, and suffered to the utmost because he could not sit or lie down while listening. Finally, when he and the other accused were allowed to sit down, the prosecutor of the court chamber got up and said something incomprehensible. At the same moment, as if out of nowhere, there appeared some policemen with bared swords and surrounded the accused. Avdeyev was ordered to get up and go.
Now he realized he had been found guilty and was placed under guard, but he was not scared nor surprised; there was such a revolution going on in his stomach that he could not care less about the guard.
“So we won’t be allowed back to the hotel?” he asked one of his companions. “And I have three rubles and some untouched tea left in my room.”
He spent the night at a private house; the whole night he felt disgusted by the fish and thought of his three rubles and the tea. Early in the morning, as the sky began to get blue, he was ordered to dress and go out. Two soldiers with bayonets took him to prison. Never before had the streets of the town seemed to him so long and endless. He did not walk on the sidewalk but in the middle of the street covered with the melting dirty snow. His insides were still fighting with the fish, his left leg was numb; he had forgotten his rubber boots either in the court or in the private house, and now his feet were cold.
Five days later all the accused were brought to court again to hear the sentence. Avdeyev learnt that he was sentenced to exile in Siberia, in the province of Tobolsk. And that did not scare nor surprise him. Somehow it seemed to him that the trial was not over yet, that the protraction still went on, and the real decision had not been made so far. He lived in prison and waited for the real decision every day.
Only six months later, when his wife and son Vassily came into prison to say good-bye to him, and when he hardly recognized his once well-fed and stout Elizabeth Trofimovna in this thin woman dressed as a beggar, and when he saw his son wearing a short, shabby jacket and light cotton trousers instead of his school uniform, only then did he realize that his fate was already decided, and that whatever new “decision” there might be, he would never be able to return to his past. And for the first time since the trial and imprisonment, he wiped the angry expression off his face and wept bitterly.
THE MAN WHO WANTED REVENGE
Fyodor Fyodorovich Sigaev—shortly after he’d caught his wife “in flagrante delicto”—was standing at the counter of the Shmuck and Co. gun store, choosing a handgun suitable for his needs. His face expressed anger, woe, sadness, and absolute resolution.
“I know what I must do,” he thought. “The foundations of my family life are shattered, virtue has been ground into the dirt, and vice rejoices. As an honest citizen and a decent man, I must have revenge. First, I will kill her and her lover, and then I will kill myself.”
He has not picked up any of the guns, and he has not yet killed anyone—not yet; but his imagination already pictures three bloodied corpses, the skulls blown to pieces, the splashing brains, the excitement of the crowd, the group of passersby watching the scene, and the autopsies to follow.
With all the joy of the offended innocent who achieves justice, he imagines the horror of the public, the terror of the insulting and annoying woman who’d cheated on him, and in his imagination he reads already the editorial article about the shattered foundations of his family.
The French shop assistant, who makes a comically odd figure with a small potbelly and a white vest, is placing various handguns before him on the counter, smiling respectfully and rubbing his hands.
“I must recommend to you, my dear sir, this wonderful handgun made by the company Smith and Wesson. This is the finest achievement of the handgun industry. It has three different switches, an extractor for the next cartridge; it can hit any target from six hundred paces, and it is very easy to aim. I would like to draw your attention, my dear sir, to the beautiful and very clean finish of this particular piece. This is the most fashionable handgun nowadays. Every day, we sell at least ten of them to robbers, wolves, and lovers. It has a very powerful and precise performance, and uncompromising quality. With one shot you can kill both your wife and her lover, and for suicides, I do not know of a better system.”
The shop assistant touched the triggers and breathed on the barrels, evincing an attitude of complete immersion in delight and joy. Looking at his face, so filled with admiration, one might imagine that he would gladly have put a bullet in the middle of his own forehead, if only he could be the owner of the handgun made by the wonderful Smith and Wesson company.
“And what is the price?” Mr. Sigaev asked.
“Forty-five rubles, sir.”
“Well, this is kind of expensive for me.”
“Then, my dear sir, I will show you a handgun made by another company, a bit cheaper. Let me see—we have a wonderful selection here, all different price ranges. For example, this handgun made by the Laforchet Company costs only eighteen rubles, but (the shop assistant wrinkled his face in disgust) this system is so old-fashioned for today. Only complete losers or psychopathic ladies buy this one. To kill your wife with a Laforchet is such bad taste. Good taste and good manners are only for the guns made by Smith and Wesson.”
“I am not going to shoot anyone or commit suicide,” Mr. Sigaev lied gloomily. “This is for my summer cottage, to scare off thieves.”
“We do not ask why our customers wish to purchase a handgun,” the shop assistant said humbly, lowering his glance. “If we were to ask why people bought guns, we would soon go out of business. But with the Laforchet gun you cannot even scare a crow, because when it shoots, it makes only a very quiet, subdued little pop. Instead, I will recommend to you another line of nice guns made by the Mortimer Company. Here it is, these are called duel guns.”
“Should I challenge him to a duel?” a quick thought appeared in Mr. Sigaev’s head. “But this is too much honor for him. People like him should be killed like animals, like the rats they are.”
The shop assistant turned to another counter with a few mincing steps, and talking and smiling nonstop, placed another pile of handguns before him. The Smith and Wesson guns looked the most appealing and respectable. Mr. Sigaev picked up one of the revolvers made by this company, looked at it dully, and was lost in his thoughts again.
In his imagination, he pictured how he would smash their skulls, how the blood would flow in a river on the area rugs and the parquetry tiles, and how the legs of his cheating wife would twitch as she died.
But this was not enough for his indignant soul. He was trying to find something more terrible.
“I’ve got it—I will kill only him and myself,” he decided. “And I will leave her to live. Let her be destroyed by her conscience and by the contempt of her neighbors. For a woman as nervous and sensitive as she is, this would be far more torture than a quick death.”
And then he imagined his funeral. Hurt feelings and all, he would lie in a coffin, with a humble smile on his lips, and like Niobe in the ancient Greek stories, she would be tortured by her conscience, and she would not know where to hide herself from the scornful glances of the indignant crowd.
“I can see sir, that you do like the guns by Smith and Wesson,” the shop assistant interrupted his dreams. “If you think that they are too expensive, I can come down by five rubles. But we also have guns made by other companies, a bit cheaper.”
&n
bsp; The graceful French figure of the shop assistant turned, and he pulled out another dozen handguns in their boxes.
“Here, my dear sir, this goes for just thirty rubles. The foreign currency exchange rate has fallen again, and the customs taxes are going up, dear sir, up every hour. I swear to God, my dear man, I am not a conservative man, but even I become angry with all this. You see, these exchange rates and these customs taxes put us in such a crazy situation that a good gun can only be bought by a rich man. Poor guys can only buy these locally made guns from Tula, and sulfur matches, but these local guns are a complete disaster. When you attempt to shoot your wife with one of these, you hit your own shoulder blade.”
Suddenly it occurred to Mr. Sigaev that if he were dead, he would not be able to witness the torment of the woman who had cheated on him. Revenge is only sweet when you can taste its fruits. And what would the point of all this be, if he were lying in a coffin, unable to see or hear anything?
“Or should I do it this way?” he thought. “I will kill him and then stay for his funeral and see everything, and then afterward I will kill myself, too. But no, they would arrest me and take away my gun.
“Then, I should kill him, and leave her alive. I would not kill myself for some time, so I could watch how things develop. First, I would be arrested. Later on, I would have enough time to commit suicide. The arrest is good, because during the preliminary investigation, I would have plenty of opportunity to reveal to the police and society all those cheap, rotten things that she did. And if I did kill myself, she would accuse me of everything, with her ability to tell a low and dirty lie, and people’s opinion would excuse her actions and they would probably laugh at me, unless I were to stay alive …”
In a minute he considered her again.
“Yes, if I kill myself, they will believe her and her dirty lies. Why should I kill myself at all? This is one good reason not to. But secondly, to kill oneself is the act of a coward. Therefore, I must kill him, and would leave her to try to lie her way out, and as for me—I shall go to court. There will be a trial, and she will be called to the witness stand. She will be so embarrassed when my lawyer interrogates her in front of the crowd. The judge, the public, and everyone present will sympathize with me!”