The Petty Demon (36 page)

The persuasive falsehood of the Rutilovs and Sasha gained support in a short while by a terrible occurrence in the home of
the Peredonovs. Once and for all it convinced the townspeople that all the rumors about Sasha and the Rutilov girls had been
the ravings of a madman.

I
T WAS AN OVERCAST,
cold day. Peredonov was returning from Volodin’s. Melancholy oppressed him. Vershina lured Peredonov into her garden. He
submitted once more to her spellbinding summons. Together they walked to the summer house along the damp footpaths that were
covered with dark, rotting, fallen leaves. There was a smell of despondent dampness in the summer house. The house, with closed
up windows, was visible beyond the bare trees.

“I want to reveal the truth to you,” Vershina muttered, quickly glancing at Peredonov and again averting her black eyes.

She was wrapped in a black jacket, wound up in a black shawl and was exhaling thick clouds of black smoke through lips that
were clamped on a cigarette holder and blue from the cold.

“I don’t give a damn for your truth,” Peredonov replied. “I don’t give the slightest damn.”

Vershina smiled crookedly and objected:

“Don’t say that! I feel terribly sorry for you, you’ve been deceived!”

There was the sound of malice in her voice. Spiteful words spewed from her mouth. She said:

“You were hoping for protection, only you acted too trustfully. You were deceived and you believed it so easily. It’s easy
for anyone to write a letter. You ought to have known whom you were dealing with. Your spouse is an unscrupulous person.”

Peredonov had difficulty understanding Vershina’s mumbling speech. For him there was hardly any discernible sense in her circumlocution.
Vershina was afraid to speak loudly and clearly: if she spoke loudly, someone might overhear, it would be passed on to Varvara
and troubles could ensue. Varvara wouldn’t be loathe to create a scandal. If she spoke clearly, then Peredonov himself might
get angry. He might even strike her. She had to make hints so that he himself would guess. But Peredonov couldn’t guess. It
had been the case even earlier that he had been told straight to his face that he was being deceived, but he was totally incapable
of taking the hint that the letters had been forged and he kept thinking that it was the Princess herself who was deceiving
him, leading him around by the nose.

Finally, Vershina said straight out:

“Do you believe that the Princess wrote those letters herself? By now the entire town knows that Grushina fabricated them
on the request of your spouse. The Princess doesn’t know a thing. Ask whomever you wish, everyone knows. They let it out of
the bag themselves. Then later Varvara Dmitrievna filched the letters from you and burned them so there wouldn’t be any trace.”

Ponderous, dark thoughts were churning about in Peredonov’s brain. He understood one thing: he had been deceived. But the
fact that the Princess supposedly didn’t know—no, she certainly knew. It wasn’t by chance that she had gotten out of the fire
alive.

“You’re lying about the Princess,” he said. “I burnt the Princess, but I didn’t finish the job and she thumbed her nose at
me.”

Suddenly Peredonov was seized with an insane frenzy. They had deceived him! He struck the table ferociously with his fist,
tore away from the spot and without taking leave of Vershina quickly went home. Vershina joyfully watched him go and the black
clouds of smoke flew quickly out of her dark mouth and were borne away and shredded on the wind.

Peredonov was being consumed with frenzy. But when he caught sight of Varvara, a tormenting fear took hold of him and wouldn’t
let him say a word.

First thing in the morning the following day Peredonov got a knife ready, a small one in a leather sheath, and he carried
it around cautiously in his pocket. He sat through the entire morning, right up until his lunchtime, at Volodin’s. Gazing
at his work, he made ridiculous remarks. Volodin was happy as before that Peredonov was spending time with him and his stupidities
seemed amusing to Volodin.

The whole day long the
nedotykomka
bustled around Peredonov. It wouldn’t let him fall asleep after lunch. It completely exhausted him. By the time it was getting
on to evening, he was on the verge of falling asleep when some crazy wench from God knows where woke him up. She was stub-nosed
and ugly, and she came up to his bed and mumbled:

“The kvass needs pressing, the pies filling and the roast roasting.”

She had dark cheeks, whereas her teeth glistened.

“Go to hell!” Peredonov cried.

The snub-nosed wench disappeared just as though she had never existed.

Evening set in. A mournful wind wailed in the chimney. A placid rain pattered softly and insistently at the windows. It was
quite dark on the other side of the windows. Volodin was at the Peredonovs’. Earlier in the morning Peredonov had invited
him for tea.

“Don’t let anyone in. Do you hear, Klavdyushka?” Peredonov cried.

Varvara smirked. Peredonov muttered:

“There are some kind of wenches hanging around here. Have to keep an eye out. One of them forced her way into my bedroom,
looking for work as a cook. What do I need a snub-nosed cook for?”

Volodin laughed just as though he were bleating and said:

“Idaresay that wenches go walking along the street, but they don’t have any business to do with us and we won’t let them sit
at our table.”

The three of them sat down at the table. They started to drink vodka and eat small meat-pies. They drank more than they ate.
Peredonov was gloomy. By now everything seemed like a delirium to him, senseless, disconnected and surprising. He had a torturous
headache. One notion kept repeating itself with persistence—the one about Volodin as an enemy. It alternated with oppressive
fits in which he was assailed by the insistent idea that he had to kill Pavlushka before it was too late. Then all the enemy’s
ruses would be laid bare. Meanwhile, Volodin quickly got drunk and was babbling something incoherent to Varvara’s amusement.

Peredonov was alarmed. He muttered:

“Someone’s coming. Don’t let anyone in. Tell them that I’ve gone off to pray at the Cockroach Monastery.”

He was afraid that any guests would interfere. Volodin and Varvara found it funny—they thought that he was just drunk. They
kept exchanging winks, going off one at a time, knocking at the door and speaking in different voices:

“Is General Peredonov at home?”

“I have a diamond-studded star for General Peredonov.”

But Peredonov wasn’t tempted by the diamond-studded star that day. He cried:

“Don’t let them in! Throw them out by the collar. Let them bring it in the morning. This isn’t the time now.

“No,” he thought, “today I have to be firm.” Today everything would be revealed, but meanwhile his enemies were still prepared
to assail him with all sorts of things so as to ruin him more assuredly.

“Well, we chased them off, they’ll bring it tomorrow morning,” Volodin said, sitting down once more at the table.

Peredonov fixed his murky eyes on him and asked:

“Are you my friend or an enemy?”

“A friend, a friend, Ardasha!” Volodin replied.

“A friend from the heart is like a cockroach at the hearth,” Varvara said.

“Not a cockroach, but a sheep,” Peredonov corrected her. “Well, you and I are going to drink, Pavlushka, just the two of us.
And Varvara, you drink—the two of us will drink all together.”

Volodin, giggling, said:

“If Varvara Dmitrievna drinks with us, then there won’t be two of us drinking, but three.”

“The two of us,” Peredonov repeated sullenly.

“A man and his woman are like a single demon,” Varvara said and roared with laughter.

Up until the very last moment Volodin did not suspect that Peredonov wanted to slit his throat. He bleated, played the fool,
uttered stupidities,
amused Varvara. But Peredonov spent the whole evening thinking about his knife. When Volodin or Varvara approached from the
side where the knife was hidden, Peredonov would cry fiercely for them to go away. Sometimes he would point to his pocket
and say:

“Right here, brother, I have a little something that’ll make you croak, Pavlushka.”

Varvara and Volodin laughed.

“Croak, Ardasha, I can always, do that,” Volodin said. “Cro-o-ak, cro-o-ak. It’s even quite simple.”

Red-faced, and dazed from the vodka, Volodin kept croaking and puffing out his lips. He grew even more insolent with Peredonov.

“You were made a fool of, Ardasha,” he said with disdainful sympathy.

“I’ll make a fool of you!” Peredonov snarled ferociously.

Volodin seemed frightening and threatening to him. He had to defend himself. Peredonov quickly pulled the knife out, flung
himself on Volodin and slit his throat. The blood spurted out in a stream.

Peredonov took fright. The knife dropped out of his hand. Volodin kept bleating and trying to clutch at his throat with his
hands. It was obvious that he was mortally frightened, growing weaker and unable to lift his hands to his throat. Suddenly
he stiffened and tumbled over on Peredonov. He emitted a gasping whine—just as though he had choked—and then fell silent.
Peredonov was screeching in terror as well, and Varvara followed suit.

Peredonov shoved Volodin away. Volodin slumped heavily onto the floor. He wheezed, moved his legs and soon died. His opened
eyes turned glassy and stared straight upwards. The cat came out of the neighboring room, smelled the blood and miaowed wickedly.
Varvara stood there as though frozen. Klavdiya came running in response to the noise.

“Dear father, they’ve slit his throat!” she wailed.

Varvara came to her senses and with a screech ran out of the dining room together with Klavdiya.

The news of the occurrence spread rapidly. Neighbors gathered in the street and in the yard. Some of the more courageous entered
the house. They couldn’t bring themselves to enter the dining room for a long while. They kept peeking in and exchanging whispers.
Peredonov gazed with insane eyes at the corpse and listened to the whisperings on the other side of the door … A dull melancholy
oppressed him. He had no thoughts.

Finally, the people gathered their courage and entered. Peredonov was sitting downcast and mumbling something incoherent and
senseless.

June
19, 1902

T
HE FIRST SET
of textual variants which follow are numbered with Arabic numerals. These variants were first published after Sologub’s death
when they were appended to the edition of
The Petty Demon
issued by “ACADEMIA” (Moscow-Leningrad) in 1933. These thirteen variants are reproduced in the Bradda Books edition of
The Petty Demon
(1966).

A second set of textual variants, listed alphabetically, follows the first. This second set represents a more or less unified
episode which has not been published, to our knowledge, since 1912 and has not appeared in any edition of Sologub’s novel
either in the original or in translation. These latter fragments are preceded by a more detailed explanation which has been
provided by Stanley Rabinowitz who very kindly brought them to the attention of the translator.

—S.D.C.

1. Natashka, in fact, did want to steal a sweet pastry and eat it in secret, but it was impossible. First of all, Varvara
was hovering around her and she couldn’t get rid of her for anything. Secondly, even if she did leave and a pastry was removed
from the pan, then she would count them up afterwards from the traces left on the pan—and there would be fewer pastries than
required. So it was impossible to steal even one. Nata[shka] was angry. Meanwhile, Varvara, in her customary fashion, was
cursing and pestering the servant for various acts of carelessness and for what she considered to be her lack of efficiency.
On a wrinkled yellow face that preserved some traces of a former attractiveness lay a querulously voracious expression.

“You lazy creature,” Varvara shouted, in her reverberating voice. “Have you lost your wits, or something, Natashka! You’ve
barely started and already you hardly want to do anything. You vile sluggard!”

“And who can live with you?” Natasha replied rudely.

It was true. A servant never lasted long at Varvara’s: Varvara fed her servants poorly, cursed them ceaselessly, tried to
delay paying them, and if she came across one that wasn’t very alert, then she would push her around, pinch her and slap her
on the cheeks.

“Shut up, you bitch!” Varvara cried.

“Why should I shut up, everyone knows that nobody will live with you, Madame, you don’t think anyone’s good enough. Well,
you’re not all that wonderful yourself. You’re a fine one to be finicky.”

“How dare you, you beast!”

“Well I’m saying it. And who could live with a harpy like you, who’d want to!”

Varvara grew furious, started to scream and stamp her feet. Natashka didn’t give way. A furious shouting match ensued.

“You hardly feed me and you demand work,” she cried.

“There’s not enough trash in a rubbish dump to satisfy you,” Varvara replied.

“You know who else is a rubbish dump. That’s where all the filth belongs …”

“I may be filth, but I’m from the gentry, whereas you’re my servant. What a bitch! Here, I’ll give you a poke in the kisser,”
Varvara cried.

“I can deal it out myself!” Natashka replied rudely, looking scornfully down at little Varvara from the height of her size.
“In your kisser! It’s that master of yours that goes around whacking you in the kisser. I’m not his mistress and no one’s
going to yank me by the ears.”

Meanwhile, a woman’s noisome and drunken voice was heard coming from the yard through the open window:

“Hey, you, Madame! Hey, young lady, or something! What am I supposed to call you anyway? Where’s your beau?”

“And what business is it of yours, you frenzy?” Varvara shouted, running to the window.

Down below stood the owner of the house, Irinya Stepanovna, a cobbler’s wife, bare-headed, and in a filthy cotton dress. She
and her husband lived in an annex in the yard and rented out the house. Lately Varvara had frequently been getting into arguing
matches with her—the landlady kept appearing half-drunk and pestering Varvara because she had the idea that they wanted to
move out.

Now they launched into a fresh swearing match. The landlady was calmer whereas Varvara was beside herself. Finally the landlady
turned her back to Varvara and raised her skirt. Varvara immediately responded in kind.

These kinds of scenes and the eternal screaming matches caused Varvara to suffer from migraines afterwards, but she had already
grown accustomed to a disorderly and vulgar life and couldn’t restrain herself from indecent escapades. She had long since
ceased to have any respect for herself or for others.

2. The following day, after dinner, while Peredonov was still asleep, Varvara went off to the Prepolovenskys. She had sent
off an entire bundle of nettles earlier with her new servant, Klavdiya. It was frightening, but nevertheless Varvara went.

Sitting in a circle around the oval coffee table in Prepolovenskys’ dining room were Varvara, the hostess and her cousin Zhenya,
a tall, plump and redcheeked girl with indolent movements and deceptively innocent eyes.

“Here, you see what a ruddy-faced fatty of ours she is,” said Sofiya. “It’s all because her mother used to whip her with nettles.
And I whip her too.”

Zhenya turned a deep crimson and laughed.

“Yes,” she said in a lazy, low voice, “as soon as I start to get thin, I’m treated to a good stinging right away and I fill
out once more.”

“But isn’t it painful for you?” Varvara asked with cautious surprise.

“So what if it hurts, it’s still healthy,” Zhenya replied. “We’ve gotten used to it. Even my younger sister was whipped when
she was still a girl.”

“But aren’t you afraid?” Varvara asked.

“What can you do, no one asks me,” Zhenya replied clamly. “They just whip me and I don’t notice it for long. It’s not my idea.”

Sofiya said quickly and persuasively:

“What’s there to be afraid of, it’s not all that painful. I know from myself.”

“And does it work well?” Varvara asked once more.

“Really now,” Sofiya said with annoyance. “Can’t you see, you’ve got a living example right before your eyes. First you lose
a bit of weight, but the very next day you start to put on weight.”

Finally the assurances and persuasive efforts of the two cousins overcame Varvara’s final doubts.

“Well, alright,” she said with a smirk. “Go ahead. Let’s see what happens. No one will see?”

“There’s no one to see, all the servants have been sent off,” Sofiya said.

They led Varvara to the bedroom. She was about to waver at the threshold, but Zhenya gave her a shove in—she was a strong
girl—and locked the door.

The curtains were lowered and it was semi-dark in the bedroom. Not a sound could be heard from there. On two chairs lay several
bundles of nettles, the sterns wrapped up in handkerchiefs so that the person holding them wouldn’t get stung.

Varvara took fright.

“Perhaps not,” she began indecisively. “My head seems to be aching, better tomorrow …”

But Sofiya raised her voice:

“Come on, get undressed quickly, there’s nothing to be finicky about.”

Varvara dallied and started to back towards the door. The cousins flung themselves on her and undressed her by force. She
didn’t have time to regain her senses before she was lying in nothing more than her chemise on the bed. Zhenya grabbed both
her hands in her one powerful hand and with the other she took the bundle of nettles from Sofiya and started to whip Varvara
with them. Sofiya held Varvara’s feet firmly and kept repeating:

“Stop squirming—what a squirmer you are!”

Varvara couldn’t hold out for long—and she started to screech with pain. Zhenya gave her a long and powerful whipping, replacing
the bundles several times. So that Varvara’s sceeching couldn’t be heard far away she pushed her head into the pillows with
her elbow.

Finally they let Varvara go. She stood up, sobbing with the pain. The cousins started to console her. Sofiya said:

“Well, what are you bellowing about? It’s hardly anything to speak of. It’ll just smart a little and then stop. It’s hardly
anything yet, it should be repeated in several days.”

“Oi, sweetheart, are you serious!” Varvara exclaimed dolefully. “Being tortured once is enough.”

“Come now, how were you being tortured,” Sofiya soothed her. “Of course, it ought to be repeated from time to time. Both of
us were whipped from childhood, and more than once. Otherwise it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Cream-puff nettles!” Zhenya said, chuckling.

Having had a sleep after dinner, Peredonov set out for the Summer Gardens to play billiards in the restaurant. He met Prepolovenskaya
on the street. After having walked Varvara home, she was going off to her friend, Vershina, to tell her secretly about the
adventure. They were going in the same direction and they walked together. At the same time Peredonov invited her and her
husband to play cards for low stakes in the evening.

Sofiya brought the conversation around to why he wasn’t getting married. Peredonov was sullenly silent. Sofiya made allusions
to her cousin—after all, Ardalyon Borisych liked those kind of amply endowed girls. It seemed to her
that he agreed with her: he looked just as gloomy as usual and didn’t argue.

“I know what your tastes are,” Sofiya said. “You don’t care for those skinny ones. You have to choose a suitable person for
yourself, a girl with substance.”

Peredonov was afraid to speak—they might be baiting him. And he kept glancing in angry silence at Sofiya.

3. On the way Peredonov told Volodin that Zhenya, Sofiya’s cousin, was Prepolovensky’s lover.

Volodin immediately believed it: he was angry at Zhenya who had turned him down long ago.

“She ought to be reported to the ecclesiastical council,” Peredonov said. “After all, she comes from a church background,
she’s a bishop’s daughter.”

They ought to denounce her so that they’d send her off to a convent to do penance and they’d whip her there!

Volodin was wondering whether to denounce her. But he decided to be gracious—and forget about her. Otherwise he could be drawn
into it and they’d tell him to prove it.

4. In the midst of conversations of this sort they arrived in the village. The house where the lessee lived, Marta’s and Vladya’s
father, was low and wide, with a high gray roof and carved shutters on the window. It wasn’t new, but it was solid, and hiding
behind a row of birch trees it seemed comfortable and nice—at least it seemed that way to Vladya and Marta. But Peredonov
didn’t like the birch trees in front of the house. He would have chopped them down or had them broken off.

Running out with cries of joy to greet the arrivals were three barefooted children from about eight to ten: a girl and two
boys, blue-eyed and freckle-faced. The host, a broad-shouldered, powerful and big Pole with a long graying moustache and an
angular face, greeted the guests at the threshold. The face was reminscent of one of those composite photographs where several
similar faces were printed at once on a single plate. All the particular features of a single person were lost in photographs
of this sort and only the general aspect remained, namely, what was common to all or many faces. Thus it seemed that in Nartanovich’s
face there weren’t any particular features, but merely what existed in every Polish face. For this reason one of the town
wits had nicknamed Nartanovich the four-and-forty Pole. Nartanovich behaved in keeping with this: he was polite, even too
polite in his manner of address, never losing the sense of his honor as a Polish gentleman and saying only the most essential
things, as though afraid of revealing by way of frivolous conversation anything that pertained only to himself.

Obviously he was happy for the guest and greeted him with village extravagance. When he spoke, his voice boomed with sudden
loudness, as though it meant to contend with the noise of the wind. It deafened everything that had just been uttered, and
then abruptly broke off and fell. And afterwards, the voices of other people seemed weak and pitiful.

In one of the rooms, which were rather dark and low, where the host could easily have touched the roof with his hand, a table
was quickly laid out. A spritely wench brought different kinds of vodka and
zakuski
.

Vershina particularly liked Marta and Vladya for the reason that she could give them orders, grumble at them and sometimes
punish them. Vershina loved power and she was very flattered when Marta, after committing some fault, would unquestioningly
get down on her knees at Vershina’s order.

Peredonov quickly drank some vodka, had a bite to eat and started to complain about Vladya. Nartanovich looked fiercely at
his son, kept offering food and drink laconically but insistently to Peredonov. However, Peredonov determinedly refused to
eat anything more.

“No,” he said. “I came to see you on business. You listen to me first.”

“Ah, on business,” the host cried. “You mean a reason.”

Peredonov started to blacken Vladya from all sides. The father grew more and more furious.

“Aha, the sluggard!” he exclaimed slowly and with impressive accents. “You need your hide tanned. I’ll give you a lashing.
You’re going to get a hundred hot ones.”

Vladya started to cry.

“I promised him,” Peredonov said, “that I would come on purpose to see you so that you would punish him in my presence.”

“I am grateful to you for that,” Nartanovich said. “I’ll give the lazybones such a licking with the rod that he’ll certainly
remember it, the sluggard!”

Gazing fiercely at Vladya, Nartanovich got up—and it seemed to Vladya that he was enormous and had forced all the air out
of the room. He grabbed Vladya by the shoulder and dragged him off to the kitchen. The children huddled against Marta and
looked in terror at the sobbing Vladya. Peredonov followed Nartanovich.

“What are you standing there for?” he said to Marta. “You go on too, have a look and help, you’ll have your own children one
day.”

Marta flared up and, gathering all three children in her arms, she nimbly ran off with them out of the house, as far as possible
so that they wouldn’t hear what was going to happen in the kitchen.