IX
The next day Peredonov went to see the District Attorney Avinovitsky.
Again it was a gloomy day. The wind came in violent blasts, and whirled clouds of dust before it. The evening was coming on, and everything was permeated with the dead melancholy light of bleak skies. A depressing silence filled the streets, and it seemed as if all these pitiful houses had sprung up to no purpose, as if these hopelessly decayed structures timidly hinted at the poor tedious life that lurked within their walls. A few people walked in the streets—and they walked slowly, as if they barely conquered the drowsiness that inclined them to repose. Only children, eternal, unwearying vessels of divine joy, were lively, and ran about and played—but even they showed signs of inertia, and some sort of ugly, hidden monster, nestling behind their shoulders, looked out now and then with eyes full of menace upon their suddenly dulled faces.
In the midst of the depression of these streets and houses, under estranged skies, upon the unclean and impotent earth, walked Peredonov, tormented by confused fears—there was no comfort for him in the heights and no consolation upon the earth, because now, as before, he looked upon the world with dead eyes, like some demon who, in his dismal loneliness, despaired with fear and with yearning.
His feelings were dull, and his consciousness was a corrupting and deadening apparatus. All that reached his consciousness became transformed into abomination and filth. All objects revealed their imperfections to him and their imperfections gave him pleasure. When he walked past an erect and clean column, he had a desire to make it crooked and to bespatter it with filth. He laughed with joy when something was being besmirched in his presence. He detested very clean schoolboys, and persecuted them. He called them “the skin scrubbers.” He comprehended the slovenly ones more easily. There were neither beloved objects for him, nor beloved people—and this made it possible for nature to act upon his feelings only one-sidedly, as an irritant. The same was true of his meetings with people. Especially with strangers and new acquaintances, to whom it was not possible to be impolite. Happiness for him was to do nothing, and, shutting himself in from the world, to gratify his belly.
“And now I must go against my will,” he thought, “and explain matters.” What a burden! What a bore! If he had an opportunity at least of besmirching the place he was about to visit—but even this consolation was denied to him.
The District Attorney’s house only intensified Peredonov’s feeling of grim apprehension. And really, this house had an angry, evil look. The high roof descended gloomily upon the windows which came in contact with the ground. And its wooden border, and the roof itself had at one time been painted gaily and brightly, but time and the rains had turned the colouring gloomy and grey. The huge ponderous gates, towering above the house, and fitted as it were to repel hostile attacks, were always bolted. Behind them rattled a chain and a huge dog howled in a hoarse bass at every passerby.
All around were uncultivated spots, vegetable gardens and hovels which stood awry. In front of the District Attorney’s house, was a long hexagonal space, the middle of which, somewhat deeper than the rest, was all unpaved, and overgrown with grass. At the house itself stood a lamppost, the only one to be seen.
Peredonov slowly and unwillingly ascended the four high steps leading to the porch which was covered with a double-sloped roof, and pulled the begrimed handle of the bell. The bell resounded quite close to him, with a sharp and continuous tinkle. Soon stealthy footsteps were heard. Someone seemed to approach the door on tiptoes, and then remained standing there intensely still. Very likely someone was looking at him through some invisible crevice. Then there was the creak of iron hinges, and the door opened—a gloomy, black-haired, freckled girl stood on the threshold and looked at him with eyes full of suspicious scrutiny.
“Whom do you want?” she asked.
Peredonov said that he had come to see Aleksandr Alekseyevitch on business. The girl let him in. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than he made haste to pronounce a charm. And it was well that he did so: he had not yet had time to take off his coat when he heard Avinovitsky’s sharp, angry voice coming from the drawing-room. There was always something terrifying in the District Attorney’s voice—he could not speak otherwise. So even now he was already shouting in the drawing-room in his angry and abusive voice a greeting of welcome and joy that Peredonov had at last thought of coming to him.
Aleksandr Alekseyevitch Avinovitsky was a man of gloomy appearance; and seemed by nature fitted to reprimand and overbear others. A man of impeccable health—he bathed from ice to ice—he appeared nevertheless lean because of his shaggy, overgrown black beard, with a tinge of blue in it. He brought uneasiness if not fear upon everyone, because he incessantly shouted at someone, and threatened someone with hard labour in Siberia.
“I’ve come on business,” said Peredonov confusedly.
“Have you come with a confession? Have you killed a man? Have you committed arson? Have you robbed the post?” asked Avinovitsky angrily as he admitted Peredonov into the drawing-room. “Or have you been the victim of a crime yourself, which is more possible in our town. Ours is a filthy town and its police is even worse. I’m astonished that you don’t find dead bodies every morning lying about the place. Well, sit down. What is your business? Are you the criminal or the victim?”
“No,” said Peredonov, “I haven’t done anything of the kind. Now there’s the Headmaster who’d undoubtedly like to settle my hash for me, but I haven’t any such thing in mind.”
“So you haven’t come with a confession?” asked Avinovitsky.
“No, I can’t say that I have,” mumbled Peredonov timidly.
“Well, if that’s the case,” said the District Attorney with savage emphasis, “then let me offer you something.”
He picked up a small handbell from the table and rang it. No one came. Avinovitsky took the handbell in both hands, raised a furious racket, then threw the bell on the floor, stamped his feet and shouted in a savage voice:
“Malanya! Malanya! Devils! Beasts! Demons!”
Unhurried footsteps were heard and a schoolboy came in, Avinovitsky’s son, a stubby, black-haired boy of about thirteen years of age with an air of confidence and self-assurance. He greeted Peredonov, picked up the bell, put in on the table and said quietly:
“Malanya is in the vegetable garden.”
Avinovitsky recovered his calm for a moment, and looking at his son with a tenderness that did not altogether become his overgrown and angry face, he said:
“Now run along, sonny, and tell her to bring us something to drink and some zakouska.”
The boy leisurely walked out of the room. His father looked after him with a pleased and proud smile. But while the boy was still on the threshold Avinovitsky suddenly frowned savagely and shouted in his terrible voice which made Peredonov tremble:
“Look alive!”
The schoolboy began to run and they could hear how impetuously he slammed the doors. Avinovitsky, smiling with his heavy red lips, again renewed his angry-sounding conversation:
“My heir—not bad, eh? What’s he going to turn out like? What do you say? He may become a fool, but a knave, a coward or a rag—never!”
“Well—a—” mumbled Peredonov.
“People are trivial nowadays—they’re a parody of the human race!” roared Avinovitsky. “They consider health a trifle. Some German invented under-waistcoats. Now I would have sent that German to hard labour. Imagine my Vladimir suddenly in an under-waistcoat! Why all summer he walked about in the village without once putting his boots on, and then think of him in an under-waistcoat! Why, he even gets out of his bath and runs naked in a frost and rolls in the snow—think of him in an under-waistcoat. A hundred lashes for the accursed German!”
Avinovitsky passed from the German who invented under-waistcoats to other criminals.
“Capital punishment, my dear sir, is not barbarism!” he shouted. “Science admits that there are born criminals. There’s nothing to be said for them, my friend. They ought to be destroyed and not supported by the State. A man’s a scoundrel—and they give him a warm corner in a convict prison. He’s a murderer, an incendiary, a seducer, but the taxpayer must support him out of his pocket. No-o! It’s much juster and cheaper to hang them.”
The round table in the dining-room was covered with a white tablecloth with a red border, and upon it were distributed plates with fat sausages and other salted, smoked, and pickled eatables, and decanters and bottles of various sizes and forms, containing all sorts of vodkas, brandies and liqueurs. Everything was to Peredonov’s taste, and even the slight carelessness of their arrangement pleased him.
The host continued to shout. Apropos of the food, he began to abuse the shopkeepers, and then for some reason began to talk about ancestry.
“Ancestry is a big thing,” he shouted savagely, “for the muzhiks to enter the aristocracy is stupid, absurd, impractical and immoral. The soil is getting poorer and the cities are filled with unemployed. Then there are bad harvests, idleness and suicides—how does that please you? You may teach the muzhik as much as you like but don’t give him any rank—it makes a peasantry lose its best members and it always remains rabble and cattle. And the gentry also suffer detriment from the influx of uncultured elements. In his own village he was better than others, but when he gets into a higher rank he brings into it something coarse, unknightly and plebeian. In the first case the most important things are gain and his stomach. No-o, my dear fellow, the castes were a wise institution.”
“Here, for instance, our Headmaster lets all sorts of riffraff into the school,” said Peredonov angrily. “There are even peasant children there and many commoners’ children.”
“Fine doings, I must say!” shouted the host.
“There’s a circular saying that we shouldn’t admit all kinds of riffraff, but he does as he likes,” complained Peredonov. “He refuses hardly anyone. Life is rather poorish in our town, he says, and there are too few pupils as it is. What does he mean by few? It would be better if there were less. It’s all we can do to correct the exercise-books alone. There’s no time to read the schoolbooks. They purposely write dubious words in their compositions—you have to look in Grote to see how they’re spelled.”
“Have some brandy,” suggested Avinovitsky. “Well, what is your business with me?”
“I have enemies,” growled Peredonov, as he looked dejectedly into his glass of yellow vodka before drinking it.
“There was once a pig who lived without enemies,” said Avinovitsky, “and he also was slaughtered. Have a bit—it was a very good pig.”
Peredonov took a slice of ham and said: “They’re spreading all sorts of scandal about me.”
“Well, as for gossip I can assure you that no town is worse,” shouted the host. “What a town! No matter what you do, all the pigs begin to grunt at you at once.”
“Princess Volchanskaya has promised to get me an inspector’s job, and suddenly they all begin to gossip. This might hurt my prospects. It all comes from envy. Now there’s the Headmaster, he’s corrupted the entire school—the schoolboys, who live in apartments, smoke, drink and run after girls and even the town-boys are no better. He’s done all the corrupting himself and now he persecutes me. It’s likely that someone’s carried tales to him about me. And then it goes still farther. It might reach the Princess.”
Peredonov dwelt long and incoherently on his apprehensions. Avinovitsky listened with an angry countenance and punctuated his discourse with exclamations:
“Villains! Scamps! Children of Herod!”
“What sort of Nihilist am I?” said Peredonov. “It’s ridiculous. I have an official cap with a badge, but I don’t always wear it—and I sometimes wear a bowler. As for the fact that Mickiewicz hangs on my wall, I put him there because of his poetry and not because he was a rebel. I haven’t even read his Kolokol.”16
“Well, you’ve caught that from another opera,” said Avinovitsky unceremoniously. “Herzen published it and not Mickiewicz.”
“That was another Kolokol,” said Peredonov. “Mickiewicz also published a Kolokol.”
“I didn’t know it—you’d better publish the fact. It would be a great discovery. You’d become celebrated.”
“It’s forbidden to publish it,” said Peredonov angrily; “I’m not allowed to read forbidden books. And I never read them. I’m a patriot.”
After lengthy lamentations in which Peredonov poured himself out, Avinovitsky concluded that someone was trying to blackmail Peredonov, and with this purpose in view was spreading rumours about him in order to frighten him and to prepare a basis for a sudden demand for money. That these rumours did not reach him, Avinovitsky explained by the fact that the blackmailer was acting skilfully upon Peredonov’s immediate circle—because it was only necessary to frighten Peredonov. Avinovitsky asked:
“Whom do you suspect?”
Peredonov fell into thought. Quite by chance Grushina came into his mind, he recalled confusedly the recent conversation with her, during which he interrupted her by a threat of informing against her. The fact that it was he who had threatened to inform against Grushina became in his mind a vague idea of informing in general. Whether he was to inform against someone or whether they were to inform against him was not clear, and Peredonov had no desire to exert himself to recall the matter precisely—one thing was clear, that Grushina was an enemy. And what was worse she had seen where he hid Pisarev. He would have to hide the books somewhere else.
Peredonov said at last:
“Well, there’s Grushina.”
“Yes, I know, she’s a first class rogue,” said Avinovitsky sharply.
“She’s always coming to our house,” complained Peredonov. “And always nosing around. She’s very grasping—she takes all she can get. It’s possible that she wants money from me in order to keep her from reporting that I once had Pisarev. Or perhaps she wants to marry me. But I don’t want to pay her. And I have someone else I want to marry—let her inform against me—I’m not guilty. Only it’s unpleasant to me to have this gossip as it might prevent my appointment.”
“She’s a well-known charlatan,” said the District Attorney. “She wanted to take up fortune-telling by cards here, and to get money out of fools. But I asked the police to stop it. At that time they were sensible and did what I told them.”
“Even now she tells fortunes,” said Peredonov. “She spread out the cards for me and she always saw a long journey and an official letter for me.”
“She knows what to say to everybody. Just wait, she’ll set a trap for you and then she’ll try and extort money from you. Then you come to me and I’ll give her a hundred of the hottest lashes,” said Avinovitsky, using his favourite expression.
This expression was not to be taken literally, it merely meant an ordinary rebuke.
Thus Avinovitsky promised his protection to Peredonov, but Peredonov left him agitated by vague fears inspired by Avinovitsky’s loud, stern speeches.
In this manner Peredonov made a single visit every day before dinner—he could not manage more than one because everywhere he had to make circumstantial explanations. In the evening, as was his custom, he went to play billiards.
As before, Vershina enticed him in by her witching invitations, as before Routilov praised his sisters to him. At home Varvara used her persuasive powers to make him marry her sooner—but he came to no resolution. He indeed thought sometimes that to marry Varvara would be the best thing he could do—but suppose the Princess should deceive him? He would become the laughingstock of the town, and this possibility made him pause.
The pursuit of him by would-be brides, the envy of his comrades, more often the product of his imagination than an actual fact, all sorts of suspected snares—all this made his life wearisome and unhappy, like the weather which for several successive days had been bleak, and often resolved itself into slow and scant, but cold and prolonged rains. Peredonov felt that life was becoming a detestable thing—but he thought that he would soon become an inspector, and then everything would take a turn for the better.