XXIV
The Peredonov’s cat acted wildly, snarled and refused to come when called—it had become quite incorrigible. The animal alarmed Peredonov. He sometimes pronounced exorcisms over it.
“I wonder whether it will help,” he thought. “There’s strong electricity in a cat’s fur. That’s where the trouble is.”
Once the idea came into his mind to have the cat shorn. No sooner thought of than done. Varvara was not at home. She had gone to Grushina’s, after having put a bottle of cherry brandy into her pocket. There was no one to hinder her. Peredonov tied the cat on a cord—he had made a collar out of a pocket handkerchief—and led the animal to the hairdresser. The cat mewed wildly, and struggled. Sometimes it threw itself in desperation at Peredonov—but Peredonov kept it at a distance with his stick. A crowd of small boys ran behind him, hooting and laughing. Passersby paused to look. People looked out of their windows to see what the noise was about. Peredonov morosely dragged the cat along on the cord without the least embarrassment.
He succeeded in getting the cat to the hairdresser and said:
“Shave the cat, barber, the closer the better.”
The small boys crowded at the shop door, roaring with laughter and making faces. The hairdresser felt offended and grew red. He said in a slightly trembling voice:
“I beg your pardon, sir, we don’t undertake such jobs. And who ever heard of a shaved cat? It must be the very latest fashion which hasn’t reached us yet.”
Peredonov listened to him with stupefied disappointment. He shouted:
“You’d better admit that you can’t do it, incompetent!”
And he walked away, dragging after him the cat, which mewed continuously. On the way he thought dejectedly that everywhere and always everyone laughed at him and no one wanted to help him. His sadness oppressed his heart.
Peredonov went with Volodin and Routilov to the Summer-garden to play billiards. The marker said to them with embarrassment:
“I’m sorry, gentlemen, you can’t play today.”
“Why not?” asked Peredonov irritatedly.
“Well, I’m sorry to say there are no billiard balls,” replied the marker.
“Someone pinched them when he wasn’t looking,” said the bartender sternly, leaning across the counter.
The marker trembled and suddenly twitched his reddened ears, as a hare does, and whispered:
“They were stolen.”
Peredonov exclaimed in a frightened voice:
“Good Lord! Who stole them?”
“It’s not known,” said the marker; “no one seemed to have been here, and then when I went to look for the balls they weren’t there.”
Routilov sniggered and exclaimed:
“What a funny thing!”
Volodin assumed an injured look and scolded the marker:
“If you allow the billiard balls to be stolen when you are somewhere else and the billiard balls disappear, then you ought to have provided others for us to have something to play with. We come here and want to play, and if there are no billiard balls, how can we play?”
“Don’t whine, Pavloushka,” said Peredonov, “it’s bad enough without you. Now, marker, you go and look for those balls, we must play—but meanwhile bring us a couple of beers.”
They began to drink the beer. But it was tedious. The billiard balls could not be found. They wrangled with one another and they cursed the marker. The latter felt guilty and said nothing.
Peredonov detected in this theft a new intrigue, hostile to himself.
“Why?” he thought dejectedly, and could not understand.
He went into the garden, sat down on a bench near the pond—he had never sat there before—and fixed his eyes dully on the weed-clogged water.
Volodin sat down beside him and shared his grief, looking also at the pond with his sheepish eyes.
“Why is there such a dirty mirror here, Pavloushka,” said Peredonov, pointing at the pond with his stick.
Volodin smiled and replied:
“It’s not a mirror, Ardasha, it’s a pond. And as there’s no breeze just now the trees are reflected in it as if in a mirror.”
Peredonov looked up; a fence on the other side of the pond separated the garden from the street. Peredonov asked:
“Why is the cat on that fence?”
Volodin looked in the same direction and said with a snigger:
“It was there, but it’s gone.”
There really had been no cat—it was an illusion of Peredonov’s—a cat with wide green eyes, his cunning, tireless enemy.
Peredonov began to think about the billiard balls:
“Who needed them? Has the nedotikomka devoured them? Perhaps that’s why I haven’t seen it today,” thought Peredonov. “It must have gorged itself and be asleep somewhere now.”
Peredonov went home dejectedly.
The sunset was fading. A small cloud was wandering across the sky. She moved stealthily on her soft shoes, and peeped out at him. On her dark edges a reflection smiled enigmatically.
Above the stream, which flowed between the garden and the town, the shadows of the houses and the bushes wavered, whispered to each other, and seemed to be searching for someone.
And on the earth, in this dark and eternally hostile town, all the people he met were evil and malicious. Everything became mingled in a general ill-will towards Peredonov, the dogs laughed at him and the people barked at him.
The ladies of the town began to visit Varvara. Some of them with an eager curiosity had managed to pay a visit on the second or third day, to see how Varvara looked at home. Others delayed a week or more. And still others did not come at all—as, for instance, Vershina.
The Peredonovs awaited return visits every day with anxious impatience; they counted up those who had not yet come. They awaited the Headmaster and his wife with special impatience. They waited and were immensely agitated for fear that the Khripatches should suddenly arrive.
A week had passed. The Khripatches had not yet come. Varvara had got into a temper and began to pour out abuse. This waiting plunged Peredonov into a deeply depressed state of mind. Peredonov’s eyes became entirely vacant. It was as if they were becoming extinguished, and sometimes they seemed like the eyes of a dead man. Absurd fears tormented him. Without any visible cause he began to be afraid of one or another object. An idea somehow came into his head—and tormented him for several days—that they would cut his throat; he was afraid of everything sharp and hid the knives and the forks.
“Perhaps,” he thought, “they’ve been bewitched by whispered spells. It might happen that I might cut myself with them.”
“Why are there knives?” he asked Varvara. “Chinamen eat with chopsticks.”
For a whole week after this they did not cook any meat, but lived on cabbage-soup and gruel.
Varvara, to get even with Peredonov for the troubles he had caused her before their wedding, sometimes agreed with him and encouraged him to think that his fancies and superstitions had a basis in reality. She told him that he had many enemies and that they had every reason to envy him. More than once she told Peredonov tauntingly that he had been informed against and slandered to the authorities and the Princess. And she rejoiced at his visible fear.
It seemed clear to Peredonov that the Princess was dissatisfied with him. Why couldn’t she have sent him for his wedding an icon or cake. He thought: Oughtn’t he to earn her favour? But how? By falsehood? Should he slander someone, calumniate someone, inform against someone? He knew that all women love tittle-tattle—and so couldn’t he invent something, something pleasant and risqué about Varvara and write it to the Princess? She would laugh and give him the place.
But Peredonov was not able to write the letter, and felt apprehensive about writing to a Princess. And later he forgot all about this scheme.
Peredonov gave ordinary visitors vodka and the cheapest port-wine. But he bought a three-rouble bottle of Madeira for the Headmaster. He considered this wine extremely expensive, kept it in his bedroom and showed it to his visitors, saying:
“It’s for the Headmaster!”
Routilov and Volodin were once sitting at Peredonov’s. Peredonov showed them the Madeira.
“What’s the good of looking at the outside, it doesn’t taste well,” said Routilov with a snigger, “you might treat us to some of your expensive Madeira.”
“What an idea!” exclaimed Peredonov angrily. “What should I give the Headmaster?”
“The Headmaster could drink a glass of vodka,” said Routilov.
“Headmasters don’t drink vodka, they have to drink Madeira,” said Peredonov reasonably.
“But suppose he likes vodka?” persisted Routilov.
“Good heavens! You don’t suppose a general would like vodka!” said Peredonov with conviction.
“All the same you’d better give us some of it,” insisted Routilov.
But Peredonov quickly took away the bottle and they heard the click of the lock on the little cupboard in which he kept the wine. When he came back to his guests he began to talk about the Princess to change the conversation. He said quite gravely:
“The Princess! Why she sold rotten apples in the market and managed to get hold of a Prince.”
Routilov burst out laughing and shouted:
“Do Princes walk about markets?”
“Oh, she knew how to entice him in,” said Peredonov.
“You’re making it up, Ardalyon Borisitch, it’s a cock-and-bull story,” argued Routilov. “The Princess is a born lady.”
Peredonov looked at him malignantly and thought:
“He’s defending her. That means he’s siding with the Princess. It’s clear that she’s bewitched him although she lives at a distance.”
And the nedotikomka wriggled about him, laughed noiselessly and shook all over with laughter. It reminded Peredonov of various dreadful circumstances. He looked around timidly and whispered:
“In every town there’s a sergeant of the gendarmes in the secret service. He wears civilian clothes, sometimes he’s in the civil service, sometimes he’s a tradesman, or he does something else, but at night when everyone is asleep he puts on his blue uniform and suddenly becomes a sergeant of the gendarmes.”
“But why the uniform?” inquired Volodin reasonably.
“Because no one dares to appear before the authorities without a uniform. You might get beaten for doing it.”
Volodin sniggered. Peredonov bent over him closer and whispered:
“Sometimes he even lives in the shape of a werewolf. You may think it’s simply a cat, but that’s an error, it’s really a gendarme running about. No one hides from a cat, and he listens to everything that’s said.”
At last, after a week and a half, the Headmaster’s wife paid a visit to Varvara. She arrived with her husband on a weekday at four o’clock, all dressed up, attractive-looking, bringing a perfume of violets with her—altogether unexpectedly for the Peredonovs, who for some reason had expected the Khripatches on a Sunday, earlier in the day. They were dumbfounded. Varvara was in the kitchen half-dressed and dirty. She rushed away to get dressed and Peredonov received the visitors, looking as if he had been just awakened.
“Varvara will be here immediately,” he mumbled, “she’s dressing herself. She was working—we have a new servant who doesn’t understand our ways. She’s a hopeless fool.”
Soon Varvara came in, dressed somehow, with a flushed, frightened face. She extended to her visitors a dirty, damp hand, and said in a voice trembling with agitation:
“You must forgive me for keeping you waiting—we didn’t expect you on a weekday.”
“I seldom go out on a Sunday,” said Madame Khripatch. “There are drunkards in the street. I let my servant-maid have her day out.”
The conversation somehow started, and the kindness of the Headmaster’s wife somewhat encouraged Varvara. Madame Khripatch treated Varvara with a slight contemptuousness, but graciously—as with a repented sinner who had to be treated kindly but who might still soil one’s hands. She gave Varvara several hints, as if incidentally, about clothes and housekeeping.
Varvara tried to please the Headmaster’s wife, but her red hands and chapped lips still trembled with fear. This embarrassed Madame Khripatch. She tried to be even more gracious, but an involuntary fastidiousness overcame her. By her whole attitude she showed Varvara that there could never be a close acquaintance between them. But she did this so graciously that Varvara did not understand, and imagined that she and Madame Khripatch would become great friends.
Khripatch had the look of a man out of his element, but he concealed the fact skilfully and manfully. He refused the Madeira on the ground that he was not used to drinking wine at that hour of the day. He talked about the local news, about the approaching changes in the composition of the district court. But it was very noticeable that he and Peredonov moved in different circles of local society.
They did not make a long visit. Varvara was glad when they left; they just came and went. She said with relief as she took off her clothes:
“Well, thank God they’ve gone. I didn’t know what to talk to them about. When you don’t know people you can’t tell how to get at them.”
Suddenly she remembered that when the Khripatches left they had not invited her to their house. This distressed her at first, but afterwards she thought:
“They’ll send a card with a note when to come. Gentry like them have a time for everything. I suppose I ought to have a go at French. I can’t even say ‘Pa’ and ‘Ma’ in French.”
When they got home the Headmaster’s wife said to her husband:
“She’s simply pitiful, and hopelessly vulgar; it’s utterly impossible to be on equal terms with her. There’s nothing in her to correspond with her position.”
Khripatch replied:
“She fully corresponds with her husband. I’m impatiently waiting for them to take him away from us.”
After the wedding Varvara began to drink now and then—most frequently with Grushina. Once when she was a little tipsy Prepolovenskaya was at her house and Varvara blabbed about the letter. She didn’t tell everything but she hinted sufficiently clearly. This was enough for the cunning Sofya—it was a sudden revelation to her.
“But why didn’t I guess it at once,” she mentally reproached herself. She told Vershina in confidence about the forged letters—and from her it spread all over the town.
Prepolovenskaya could not help laughing at Peredonov’s credulousness whenever she met him.
She said to him:
“You’re very simple, Ardalyon Borisitch.”
“I’m not simple at all,” he replied, “I’m a graduate of a University.”
“You may be a graduate, but anyone who wants to can take you in.”
“I can take in everyone myself,” argued Peredonov.
Prepolovenskaya smiled slyly and left him. Peredonov was dully perplexed.
“What does she mean? It’s out of spite,” he thought. “Everyone’s my enemy.”
And he made a Koukish after her.
“You’ll get nothing out of me,” he thought, consoling himself, but he was tormented by dread.
Her hints did not seem very satisfactory to Prepolovenskaya. But she did not want to tell him everything in plain words. Why should she quarrel with Varvara? From time to time she sent Peredonov anonymous letters in which the hints were clearer. But Peredonov misunderstood them.
Sofya once wrote him:
“You had better see whether that Princess, who wrote you the letter, doesn’t live here.”
Peredonov thought that perhaps the Princess had really come to the town to watch his movements.
“It’s obvious,” he thought, “that she’s in love with me and wants to get me away from Varvara.”
And these letters both frightened and angered him. He kept asking Varvara:
“Where is the Princess? I hear that she has come to the town.”
Varvara, to get even with him for what had happened before the marriage, tormented him with vague hints, taunts and half-timid, malignant insinuations. She smiled insolently, and said to him in that strained voice which is usually heard from a person who lies knowingly without the hope of being believed:
“How should I know where the Princess lives now?”
“You’re lying—you do know!” said Peredonov in terror.
He did not know what to believe—the meaning of her words, or the lie betrayed in the sound of her voice—and this, like everything he did not understand, terrified him. Varvara retorted:
“What an idea! Perhaps she left Peter for somewhere else. She doesn’t have to ask me when she goes away.”
“But perhaps she really has come here?” asked Peredonov timidly.
“Perhaps she really has come here!” Varvara mimicked him. “She’s smitten with you and she’s come here to see you.”
“You’re a liar! Is it likely that she’d fall in love with me?”
Varvara laughed spitefully.
From that time Peredonov began to look about attentively for the Princess. Sometimes it seemed to him that she was looking in at the window, through the door, eavesdropping, and whispering with Varvara.
Time passed by and the paper, announcing his appointment as inspector, so eagerly expected day after day, still did not come. He had no private information of the situation. Peredonov did not dare to find out from the Princess herself—Varvara constantly frightened him by saying that the Princess was a very great lady, and he thought that if he wrote to her it might cause him extreme unpleasantness. He did not know precisely what they could do to him if the Princess complained of him, but this made him think of dreadful possibilities. Varvara said to him:
“Don’t you know aristocrats? You must wait until they act of themselves. But once you remind them, they get offended, and it’ll be the worse for you. They’re so touchy. They’re proud, and they like to be taken at their word.”
And Peredonov was still credulous. But he got angry with the Princess. Sometimes he even thought that the Princess would inform against him in order to rid herself of her obligations to him. Or else she would inform against him because he had married Varvara when perhaps she herself was in love with him. That was why she had surrounded him with spies, he thought, who kept an eye on him everywhere. They had so hemmed him in that he had no air to breathe, no light. She was not an eminent lady for nothing. She could do whatever she liked. From spite he invented most unlikely stories about the Princess. He told Routilov and Volodin that he had formerly been her lover and that she had given him large sums of money.
“But I’ve drunk it all away,” he said. “Why the devil should I save it! She also promised me a pension for life, but she took me in over that.”
“And would you have accepted it?” asked Routilov with a snigger.
Peredonov was silent. He did not understand the question. But Volodin answered for him gravely and judiciously:
“Why not accept it, if she’s rich? She’s gratified herself with pleasures and she ought to pay for them.”
“If she were at least a beauty,” said Peredonov mournfully. “She’s freckled and pug-nosed. She paid very well, otherwise I wouldn’t even want to spit at the hag! She must attend to my request.”
“You’re a liar, Ardalyon Borisitch,” said Routilov.
“A liar! What an idea! Do you suppose she paid me for nothing? She’s jealous of Varvara, and that’s why she doesn’t give me the job at once.”
Peredonov did not feel any shame when he said that the Princess paid him. Volodin was a credulous listener, and did not notice the absurdities and contradictions in his stories. Routilov protested, but thought that without fire there can be no smoke. He thought there must have been something between Peredonov and the Princess.
“She’s older than the priest’s dog,”40 said Peredonov convincingly, as if it were to the point; “but see that you don’t blab about it, because it might come to her ears and do no good. She paints herself, and she tries to make herself as young as a sucking-pig by injecting things in her veins. And you know that she’s old. She’s really a hundred.”
Volodin nodded his head and clicked his tongue affirmatively. He believed it all.
It so happened that on the day after this conversation Peredonov read Krilov’s fable, The Liar. And for several days afterwards he was afraid to go over the bridge, but crossed the river in a boat, for fear that the bridge should tumble down.41
He explained to Volodin:
“What I said about the Princess was the truth, only the bridge might take a sudden notion not to believe my story, and tumble down to the devil.”