“No, but please, go on.”
“We were abused terribly by Ivan Vasilievich, very much so. He forced us into poverty, for we even lost our house. If it were not for him, do you think I would be out here in the freezing cold with my complexion and weakness? Huh! No. I would stay in my hometown.”
“Oh, these are the chimes of morning vespers! That reminds me. I want to pray to God that my uncle will pay for what he has done to us. No, let God forgive him! I will endure this!”
“To the side entrance.”
“Yes, as you say. We have arrived. And for my story you can pay five kopecks.”
Kotlov took a coin from his pocket and gave it to Ivan.
“Can you spare more?”
“No, that’s enough.”
The Commerce Councilor rang the bell and after a moment disappeared behind the thick carved wooden door into the building.
The cabman jumped back into place and slowly turned his carriage. A cold wind blew. Ivan wrinkled his face, tucking his cold hands into his worn-out sleeves. The cabdriver had not gotten used to the weather conditions, nor was he likely to, as he had been too spoiled as a child.
PERPETUAL MOBILE
The court detective Grishutkin, an old man who started his career a very long time ago, and Dr. Svintsitsky, a melancholy gentleman, headed off together to perform an autopsy.
It was autumn. They took a carriage along the country roads. It was pitch dark, and pouring rain.
“What kind of nasty place are we in?” mumbled the detective. “It is not civilized, nor does it have a good climate around here. What kind of country is this! Do you think we can call this part of the world Europe? Look at it this way—it is really bad. Hey, you, man,” he cried to the groom. “Go faster, or I’m going to beat you.”
“It is very strange, Agei Alexeevich,” said the doctor with a sigh, pressing deeper into his fur coat. “But I do not notice this weather. I am obsessed by a strange premonition. I feel like misfortune is going to come to me in the near future. As I believe in omens, I know that anything can happen … an infection during an autopsy from a dead body, a death of a beloved creature—anything of this sort.”
“You should be ashamed to talk about the premonitions in the groom’s presence. You’re behaving like a grumpy old woman. Do you actually think that life can get worse than it is now? Look at this rain—can it be worse than this? You know what? I cannot travel like this, in this weather. You can kill me if you like, but sorry, I can’t go any farther. We should spend the night somewhere. Do you know anyone who lives around here?” the detective inquired of the groom.
“Ivan Ivanovich Ezhov,” said Mishka the groom. “Right there, on the other side of that forest. All we have to do is to cross this small bridge.”
“Ezhov? Let’s pay him a visit. I have not seen him for a long time, that old dog.”
They crossed the forest and the bridge, turned to the left and then to the right, and entered the large yard belonging to retired Major-General Ezhov.
“He is at home,” said Grishutkin, getting out of the carriage, and looking toward the lit windows. “It is good that he’s at home. We will have something to eat, to drink, and a good sleep. He is not a very nice man, but he is hospitable, I must admit.”
Mr. Ezhov met them in the entrance hall. He was a small wrinkled man with a face gathered in a small ball of wrinkled flesh.
“You came just in time, just in time, gentlemen!” he said. “We just sat down to supper and have only just finished the ham. I have a guest, you know, a prosecutor’s assistant. Thank him for coming. He is such a nice guy. Tomorrow, we will have a conference, thirty-three at once.”
Grishutkin and the doctor entered the living room with a big table covered with meals and drinks. Nadezhda Ivanovna, the owner’s daughter, dressed in black due to mourning for her deceased husband, sat at one of the table settings. Next to her sat Mr. Tulpansky, the prosecutor’s assistant, a young man with whiskers and many small blue veins on his face.
“Do you know each other?” asked Ezhov, indicating each of them with his finger. “This is the prosecutor, and this is my daughter.”
The brunette closed her eyes for a second and then stretched her hand to the guests for a handshake.
“Now, let us have a drink,” said Ezhov, pouring three shots. “To our guests! You are God’s people, and I will drink to keep you company. Thirty-three at once. To your health.”
They had a drink. Grishutkin chose a pickle and started eating ham. The doctor drank, and sighed. Mr. Tulpansky smoked a cigar, after first asking for permission from the lady, and when he smiled, everyone saw that he had all thirty-three teeth in his mouth.
“Now what, gentlemen? Your shots are empty, and we cannot wait. Doctor, let’s have a drink to medicine. I love medicine. And in general, I love you people, thirty-three at once. No matter what you say, the young generation still walks in front of the others. To your health!”
They began a conversation. All were talking at once, except for the prosecutor, who sat in silence, blowing the cigar smoke through his nostrils. It was obvious he considered himself a nobleman, and despised both the doctor and the detective.
After the supper, Grishutkin, the host, and the prosecutor sat down to play cards. The doctor and Nadezhda Ivanovna sat near the grand piano and continued talking.
“Are you going to perform an autopsy?” the young, pretty widow said. “An autopsy on a dead body? Wow. What will power that would require! An iron will. To take a knife, and without a hesitation, to stab it into the body of a breathless man. You know, I adore doctors. They are very special people, I think doctors are saints. But doctor, why do you look so sad?” she asked.
“I have a premonition, a bad feeling, like I am going to lose a member of my family, or a close relative.”
“Are you married, doctor? Do you have a family?”
“Not a single soul. I am single, and I don’t even have friends. Tell me lady, do you believe in premonitions?”
“Oh yes, I believe …”
While the doctor and the lady talked about the premonitions, Grishutkin and the prosecutor were playing cards, returning to the table with food and having another drink from time to time.
At 2 a.m. Ezhov, who was losing money in the game, suddenly remembering the conference he had to attend later that day, slapped his forehead, and said, “Oh my God, what are we doing up so late? We are violating the law. Tomorrow, we should be leaving for this early conference, and we are still up playing cards. So let’s all go to bed. Thirty-three at once! Nadezhda, please go to bed. I pronounce our meeting over.”
“You are lucky, doctor, that you can fall asleep at night,” whispered Nadezhda Ivanovna when she said good-bye to the doctor. “I cannot sleep when the rain is hitting the window and my pine trees rustle outside. I will head to my room, and I will be bored reading a book. I cannot fall asleep now. And in general, if a lamp in front of my door in the corridor is lit, it means that I cannot sleep and that I am very bored.”
The doctor and Mr. Grishutkin found two huge beds in their rooms, made from mattresses put on the floor. The doctor undressed and lay down on his mattress, covering himself completely with a blanket, even his head. The detective also undressed and lay down, but then he jumped back up and started pacing the room, from one corner to another. He was an easily excited man.
“I am thinking about the landlord’s daughter, the young widow. Such a beautiful, refined young woman. I would have given anything to have had a woman such as her—her eyes, her shoulders, and her feet in those purple stockings. This woman has set me on fire. And she would belong to God knows whom—to a judicial civil servant, a prosecutor! He is a fool and he looks like an Englishman! I hate those legal people. When you spoke to her about premonition, she blushed, and he almost burst into pieces from jealousy. What can I say—a luxuriously beautiful woman. A wonderful woman! One of nature’s wonders.”
“Yes, she is a nice, respected lady,” said th
e doctor, talking from under the blanket. “She is sensitive, nervous, responsive, and a very easily excited person. We can fall asleep in an instant, but she cannot. Her nerves cannot stand this stormy night. She told me that all night—through the whole night—she would be bored, and would be reading a book. Poor woman, I pity her. Probably her lamp is on right now.”
“What lamp?
“She told me that if the lamp in front of her door is on, it means that she is not asleep.”
“Did she tell you this?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Then, I don’t understand you. If she told you this, then you are the happiest of men—what a man. Congratulations. I am jealous of you, of course, but anyway—congratulations! I am happy not only for you, but I am happy to see that scoundrel, that legal young man to be defeated. I am happy that you would lock horns with him. Now get dressed and go.”
Grishutkin, when drunk, becomes too relaxed at times. “You are joking, of course. God only knows what you are telling me,” said the doctor, embarrassed.
“Now, don’t talk, doctor. Get dressed, and go to her. Now, as they sing in the opera, ‘A Life for the King.’ ‘We should pick up the flowers of love every day.’ Get dressed, brother. Faster, faster.”
“But …”
“Faster, you animal.”
“Excuse me, but I don’t understand you.”
“What is there to understand? It’s quite clear. Is this astronomy or what? Just get dressed and go to the lamp.”
“I am surprised that you have such a low opinion about that person and me.”
“Stop your stupidity!!!” Grishutkin began to get angry. “How can you behave like this, so cynical?”
He tried for a long time to convince the doctor to go. He kneeled in front of him, and finished his plea by shouting, and swearing with filthy language, even jumping on his bed. He went to lie down, but fifteen minutes later, he jumped up and woke the doctor up.
“Listen,” he said, “do you refuse to see her? Are you positive?” he asked in a strict tone of voice. “Yes, why should you go? You are so easily excited. It is so hard to go to autopsies with you. I am no worse than that lawyer, the womanizer, or you womanish doctor. I will go by myself.”
He got dressed very quickly and headed for the door. The doctor looked at him with surprise, stood up, and walked over to lock the door.
“I think you are joking, sir,” the doctor said.
“I don’t have time to talk to you right now. Let me out.”
“No, I will not let you go. Go back to bed. You are drunk.”
“What right do you have not to let me go, doctor?”
“I have the right to do it, as a noble and honest man, who wants to defend an honest woman. Think about your actions. You are sixty-four.”
“You say that I am a nobleman. Who is that scoundrel who told you that I am old?”
“Agei Alexeevich, you are drunk and excited. Don’t forget, you are a human being, not an animal. An animal would act as you are trying to, guided by instinct. But you—you are a human being, the king over nature.”
The detective stuck his hands in his pockets. “I am asking you for the last time, will you let me go out or not,” he cried in a very piercing voice, as if outdoors. When he finally realized that the answer was no, he yelled, “You scoundrel!”
But then he backed away from the door. He was drunk, but he nevertheless understood that his piercing cry had probably woken everyone up in the house.
After a brief period of silence, the doctor came to him and touched him on the shoulder. The doctor’s eyes were red, and his cheeks were burning.
“Agei Alexeevich,” he said in a trembling voice. “After all those rude words, after you forgot about respect and called me a scoundrel, you should agree that we cannot stay together under the same roof. You treated me terribly. Let’s assume that I am guilty, but what exactly am I guilty of? She is an honest and noble lady, but all of a sudden you allow yourself these words. Excuse me, but we cannot be friends anymore.”
“All right, I don’t need such a friend.”
“I am leaving this instant. I will not stay here with you any longer. I hope that we will not meet again.”
“How are you leaving?”
“I will take my horses.”
“And then how will I leave? What did you think? Why are you being so mean? You brought me here with your horses, and you must take me with you when you go.”
“I will bring you, but I am leaving now. I am sorry, but I will not stay here any longer.”
The doctor and Grishutkin got dressed in silence and went out into the backyard. They awoke the groom, climbed into the carriage, and left.
“You are so comical,” the detective mumbled all the way. “If you don’t know how to treat an honest woman, you should not visit a house where a woman lives.” It was hard to know whether he was addressing himself or the doctor.
When the carriage pulled in at the front of his apartment building, the doctor jumped from the carriage and said, before he closed the door behind him, “I don’t want to know you any longer, or have anything in common with you.”
Three days passed.
One day, the doctor had finished his visits and was relaxing on his couch, killing time by looking through “The Doctor’s Calendar.” He read the list of family names of the doctors in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He tried to find a beautiful and nice-sounding name. He had a very good, pleasant feeling in his soul, as if he looked into the sky, with a lark in the middle. He had this nice feeling, as he seen a fire in his dream the night before, which meant happiness. Suddenly he heard the noise of an approaching sleigh, as snow had recently fallen.
Grishutkin knocked at his door and entered. The doctor stood up, and looked at the visitor with a mix of emotions and fear.
Grishutkin lowered his eyes, and slowly moved in the direction of the sofa. “I came to ask you for your forgiveness, Ilia Vasilievich. It was not nice and polite of me, and it seems that I said some unpleasant words to you. You should understand my excitement, and the amount of alcohol that we drank with that scoundrel, and I am here to apologize for what I did.”
The doctor jumped up from his place, with tears in his eyes, and stretched out his hand to the one reaching for his.
“Hey, please forgive me, too.”
“Mary,” he called out to his servant. “Bring me tea, please.”
“No, I don’t want tea. I am too busy. Instead of tea, I would prefer kvass. Let me drink the kvass and go to the autopsy of the next dead body.”
“What dead body?”
“The same dead body of the sergeant that we were going to perform together, but did not.”
Grishutkin and the doctor dressed in their outerwear and left to perform the autopsy.
“Certainly, I will have to apologize,” repeated the detective on the way. “And it’s a pity that you do not intend to lock horns with that prosecutor, that scoundrel.”
When they were going through the Alimonovo estate, they saw the Ezhovs’ troika.
“Look, Ezhov is here,” said Grishutkin. “Look, those are his horses. Let’s go in and say hello. We will drink soda water, and just look at this woman, she is so beautiful, this lady. One of nature’s wonders.”
The travelers got out of the sleigh and entered the tavern. They saw Mr. Ezhov and Mr. Tulpansky sitting at a table drinking herbal tea.
“Where are you off to?” Ezhov addressed them with surprise.
“We are heading to the autopsy. A dead body has been found at the crime scene. But we cannot seem to get there. It appears we are in a magic circle, and we cannot get out. Where are you going?”
“To a conference.”
“Why so often? You went there three days ago.”
“Yes, we did, however, the prosecutor had a toothache, and I also did not feel well those days. Have a drink? Take a seat, thirty-three at once. What kind of beer would you like? Hey, waitress, please bring us each both vodka a
nd a beer. What a nice woman!”
“Yes, a pretty woman, this waitress!” the detective agreed. “A wonderful, nice-looking woman. Well.”
Two hours later, the groom left the tavern and told the general’s groom to unharness the horses. The men began a card game, and the landlord waved his hand in the air to let them know that the chief of police was coming
“Now, we will wait here until tomorrow. Look, the chief is coming,” the detective explained.
The police chief’s carriage arrived at the tavern. He recognized the Ezhovs’ horses, smiled to himself, and ran up the stairs.
EVILDOER
A short and very thin farmer, dressed in a bright-colored shirt and torn pants, stands before the court investigator. The farmer has a pock-marked and excessively hairy face. His eyes can hardly be seen from under his thick eyebrows, which give him an evil and morose look. His huge pile of messy and tangled hair completes his gloomy, spiderlike appearance.
“Your name is Dennis Grigoriev,” the interrogator begins. “Please step closer to me and answer my questions. On July seventh of this year, you were observed by the railway security guard, Mr. Ivan Akintov, while walking along the seventy-sixth kilometer of the railway to be unscrewing the nuts that fix the rails to the railway ties. Here is his deposition. He caught you while you were holding this iron nut in your hands. Is this true?”
“What did you say?”
“Did it happen in the way Mr. Akintov explained it?”
“Sure, it is true.”
“Well then, why did you unscrew this nut?”
“What? What’s up?”
“Stop asking questions. Tell me why and how you unscrewed this iron nut from the railway tracks.”
“If I did not need it, I would not have done it,” Dennis answers in a very hoarse voice, looking up at a spot somewhere high up on the ceiling.
“Then why did you take this nut?”
“Why did I take the nut? With these nuts, we make plummets for the fishing rods.”