Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (485 page)

This was my last conversation with Urbenin. I never spoke to him again, if I do not count the two or three answers I gave to the questions he put to me when he was seated in the dock.

CHAPTER XXXII

I have said that my novel is a story of crime, and now, when the case of the murder of Olga Urbenin has been complicated by another murder, in many ways mysterious and incomprehensible, the reader is entitled to expect that the novel will enter upon its most interesting and exciting phase. The discovery of the criminal, and the reasons for his crime, offer a wide field for the display of ingenuity and sharp-wittedness. Here evil will and cunning are at war with knowledge and skill, a war that is interesting in all its manifestations...

I was the general leading the battle, and the reader has the right to expect me to describe the means that led to my victory. Doubtless he is expecting all sorts of detective finesses such as adorn the novels of Gaboriau and our Shklyarevsky; and I am ready to satisfy his expectations, but... one of the chief characters leaves the field of battle without waiting for the end of the combat - he is not made a participator in the victory; all that he has done so far is lost for him - he goes over into the crowd of spectators. That character in the drama is your humble servant. On the day following the above conversation with Urbenin I received an invitation, or, more correctly speaking, an order to hand in my resignation. The tittle-tattle and talk of our district gossips had done its work... The murder in the guard-house, the evidence that the Assistant Prosecutor had collected, unknown to me, from the servants, and, if the reader still remembers it, the blow I had dealt a muzhik on the head with an oar on the occasion of one of our former revels, had all greatly contributed to my dismissal. The muzhik started the case. All sorts of charges were made. In the course of two days I had to hand over the investigation to the magistrate in charge of specially important cases.

Thanks to the talk and the newspaper reports, the Prosecutor became absorbed in the affair. He came in person to the Count’s estate every other day and assisted at the examinations. The official reports of our doctors were sent to the medical board, and higher. There was even a question of exhuming the bodies and making a fresh post-mortem examination, which, by the way, would have led to nothing.

Urbenin was taken a couple of times to the chief town of the district to have his mental capacities tested, and both times was found quite normal. I was given the part of witness. The new examining magistrates were so carried away by their zeal that even my Polycarp was called as a witness.

A year after my resignation, when I was living in Moscow, I received a summons to appear at Urbenin’s trial. I was glad of the opportunity of seeing again the places to which I was drawn by habit, and I went. The Count, who was residing in Petersburg, did not attend, but sent a medical certificate instead.

The case was tried in our district town in a division of the Court of Justice. Polugradov — that same Polugradov who cleaned his teeth four times a day with red powder - conducted the prosecution; a certain Smirnyaev, a tall, lean, fair-haired man with a sentimental face and long straight hair, acted for the defence. The jury was exclusively composed of shopkeepers and peasants, of whom only four could read and write; the others, when they were given Urbenin’s letters to his wife to read, sweated and got confused. The chief juryman was Ivan Dem’yanych, the shopkeeper from my village, after whom my late parrot had been named.

When I came into the court I did not recognize Urbenin; he had become quite grey, and looked twenty years older. I had expected to read on his face apathy, and indifference to his fate, but I was mistaken. Urbenin was deeply interested in the trial; he raised objections to three of the jurymen, gave long explanations, and questioned the witnesses; he absolutely denied any guilt, and questioned all the witnesses who did not give evidence in his favour, very minutely.

The witness Pshekhotsky deposed that I had had a connection with the late Olga.

‘That’s a lie!’ Urbenin shouted. ‘He lies! I don’t trust my wife, but I trust him!’

When I gave my evidence the counsel for the defence asked me in what relation I stood to Olga, and told me of the evidence Pshekhotsky, whose unwelcome applause I had once earned, had presented. To have spoken the truth would have been to give evidence in favour of the accused. The more depraved the wife, the more lenient the jury is towards the Othello-husband. I understood this... On the other hand, if I spoke the truth I would have wounded Urbenin... in hearing it he would have felt an incurable pain... I thought it better to lie.

‘No,’ I said.

In his speech the Public Prosecutor described Olga’s murder in vivid colours and drew especial attention to the brutality of the murderer, to his malignancy... ‘An old, worn-out voluptuary saw a girl, young and pretty. Knowing the whole horror of her position in the house of her mad father, he enticed her to come to him by offering her board and lodging, and a few bright-coloured rags... She agreed. An old, well-to-do husband is more easily endured than a mad father and poverty. But she was young, and youth, gentlemen of the jury, possesses its own inalienable rights... A girl brought up on novels, in the midst of nature, sooner or later was bound to fall in love...’ And so on in the same style. It finished up with ‘He who had not given her anything more than his age and a few bright-coloured rags, seeing his prize slipping away from him, becomes as furious as an animal newly branded. He had loved her like an animal and must hate like an animal,’ etc., etc.

In charging Urbenin with Kuz’ma’s murder, Polugradov drew special attention to the stealthy processes, well thought out and weighed, that accompanied the murder of a ‘sleeping man who the day before had had the imprudence to give testimony against him’. ‘I suppose you cannot doubt that Kuz’ma wanted to tell the Public Prosecutor something specially concerning him.’

The counsel for the defence, Smirnyaev, did not deny Urbenin’s guilt; he only begged them to admit that Urbenin had acted under the influence of a state of temporary insanity, and to have indulgence for him. When describing how painful the feelings of jealousy are, he cited as an example Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’. He looked at that ‘universal human figure’ from every side, giving extracts from various critics, and became so confused that the presiding judge had to stop him with the remark that ‘a knowledge of foreign literature was not obligatory for the jurymen’.

Taking advantage of having the last word, Urbenin called God to witness that he was not guilty either in deed or thought.

‘It is all the same to me where I am - in this district where everything reminds me of my unmerited shame and of my wife, or in penal servitude; but it is the fate of my children that is troubling me.’

And, turning to the public, Urbenin began to cry, and begged that his children might be cared for.

‘Take them. The Count will not lose the opportunity of vaunting his generosity, but I have already warned the children; they will not accept a crumb from him.’

Then, noticing me among the public, he looked at me with suppliant eyes and said:

‘Defend my children from the Count’s favours!’

He apparently had quite forgotten the impending verdict, and his thoughts were only centred on his children. He talked about them until he was stopped by the presiding judge.

The jury were not long in consultation. Urbenin was found guilty, without extenuating circumstances on any count.

He was condemned to the loss of all civil rights, transportation and hard labour for fifteen years.

So dearly had he to pay for his having met on a fine May morning the poetical girl in red.

More than eight years have passed since the events described above happened. Some of the actors in the drama are dead and buried, others are bearing the punishment of their sins, others still are wearily dragging on their lives, struggling with boredom and awaiting death from day to day.

Much is changed during these eight years... Count Karnéev, who has never ceased to entertain the sincerest friendship for me, has sunk into utter drunkenness. His estate which was the scene of the drama has passed from him into the hands of his wife and Pshekhotsky. He is now poor, and is supported by me. Sometimes of an evening, lying on the sofa in my room in the boarding-house, he likes to remember the good old times.

‘It would be fine to listen to the gipsies now!’ he murmurs. ‘Serezha, send for some cognac!’

I am also changed. My strength is gradually deserting me, and I feel youth and health leaving my body. I no longer possess the same physical strength, I have not the same alertness, the same endurance which I was proud of displaying formerly, when I could carouse night after night and could drink quantities which now I could hardly lift.

Wrinkles are appearing on my face one after the other; my hair is getting thin, my voice is becoming coarse and less strong... Life is finished.

I remember the past as if it were yesterday. I see places and people’s faces as if in a mist. I have not the power to regard them impartially; I love and hate them with all my former intensity, and never a day passes that I, being filled with feelings of indignation or hatred, do not hold my head in my hands. As formerly, I consider the Count odious, Olga infamous, Kalinin ludicrous owing to his stupid presumption. Evil I hold to be evil, sin to be sin.

But not infrequently there are moments when, looking intently at a portrait that is standing on my writing-table, I feel an irresistible desire to walk with the girl in red through the forest, under the sounds of the tall pines, and to press her to my breast regardless of everything. In such moments I forgive the lies, the fall into the abyss, I am ready to forgive everything, if only a small part of the past could be repeated once more... Wearied of the dullness of town, I want to hear once again the sound of the giant lake and gallop along its banks on my Zorka... I would forgive and forget everything if I could once again go along the road to Tenevo and meet the gardener Franz with his vodka barrel and jockey-cap... There are moments when I am even ready to press the blood-stained hand of good-natured Pëtr Egorych, and talk with him about religion, the harvest, and the enlightenment of the people... I would like to meet ‘Screw’ and his Nadenka again...

Life is mad, licentious, turbulent - like a lake on an August night... Many victims have disappeared for ever beneath its dark waves... They lie, like sediment in wine, at its bottom.

But why, at certain moments, do I love it? Why do I forgive it, and in my soul hurry towards it like an affectionate son, like a bird released from a cage?

At this moment the life I see from the window of my room in these chambers reminds me of a grey circle; it is grey in colour without any light or shade...

But, if I close my eyes and remember the past, I see a rainbow formed by the sun’s spectrum... Yes, it is stormy there, but it is lighter too...

S. ZINOV’EV.

THE END

POSTSCRIPT

At the bottom of the manuscript there is written:

To THE EDITOR

Dear Sir, — I beg you to publish the novel (or story, if you prefer it) which I submit to you herewith, as far as possible, in its entirety, without abridgment, cuts or additions. However, changes can be made with the consent of the author. In case you find it unsuitable I beg you to keep the MSS. to be returned. My address (temporary) in Moscow is the Anglia Chambers, on the Tverskoy.

IVAN PETROVICH KAMYSHEV.

P.S. - The fee is at the discretion of the Editor. Year and date.

Now that the reader has become acquainted with Kamyshev’s novel I will continue my interrupted talk with him. First of all, I must inform the reader that the promise I made to him at the start of this novel has not been kept: Kamyshev’s novel has not been printed without omissions, not in toto, as I promised, but considerably shortened. The fact is, that ‘The Shooting Party’ could not be printed in the newspaper which was mentioned in the first chapter of this work, because the newspaper ceased to exist just when the manuscript was sent to press. The present editorial board, in accepting Kamyshev’s novel, found it impossible to publish it without cuts. During the time it was appearing, every chapter that was sent to me in proof was accompanied by an editorial request to ‘make changes’. However, not wishing to take on my soul the sin of changing another man’s work, I found it better and more profitable to leave out whole passages rather than make possibly unsuitable changes. With my assent the editor left out many passages that shocked by their cynicism, or were too long, or were abominably careless in style. These omissions and cuts demanded both care and time, which is the cause that many chapters were late. Among other passages we left out two descriptions of nocturnal orgies. One of these orgies took place in the Count’s house, the other on the lake. We also left out a description of Poly carp’s library and of the original manner in which he read; this passage was found over-extended and exaggerated.

The chapter I was most anxious to retain and which the editor chiefly disliked, was one in which the desperate card gambling that was the rage among the Count’s servants was minutely described. The most passionate gamblers were the gardener Franz and the old woman nicknamed the Scops-Owl. While Kamyshev was conducting the investigations he passed by one of the summer-houses, and looking in he saw mad play going on; the players were the Scops-Owl, Franz and - Pshekhotsky. They were playing ‘Stukolka’, at twenty kopeck points and with a fine that reached thirty roubles. Kamyshev joined the players and ‘cleared them out’ as if they had been partridges. Franz, who had lost everything but wished to continue, went to the island where he had hidden his money. Kamyshev followed him, marked where he had concealed his money, and afterwards robbed the gardener, not leaving a kopeck in his hoard. The money he had taken he gave to the fisherman Mikhey. Such strange charity admirably characterizes this hare-brained magistrate, but the chapter was written so carelessly and the conversation of the gamblers glittered with such pearls of obscenity that the editor would not consent to its inclusion even after alterations had been made.

The description of certain meetings of Olga and Kamyshev are omitted; an explanation between him and Nadenka Kalinin, etc., etc., are also left out. But I think what is printed is sufficient to characterize my hero. Sapienti sat....

Exactly three months later the door-keeper Andrey announced the arrival of the gentleman ‘with the cockade’.

‘Ask him in!’ I said.

Kamyshev entered, the same rosy-cheeked, handsome and healthy man he had been three months before. His steps, as formerly, were noiseless... He put down his hat on the window with so much care that one might have imagined that he had deposited something heavy... Out of his eyes there shone, as before, something childlike and infinitely good-natured.

‘I am troubling you again!’ he began smiling, and he sat down carefully. ‘I beg you, forgive me! Well, what? What sentence has been passed on my manuscript?’

‘Guilty, but deserving of indulgence,’ I replied.

Kamyshev laughed and blew his nose in a scented handkerchief.

‘Consequently, banishment into the flames of the fireplace?’ he asked.

‘No, why be so savage? It does not merit punitive measures; we will employ a corrective treatment.’

‘Must it be corrected?’

‘Yes, certain things must be omitted... By mutual consent...

We were silent for a quarter of a minute. I had terrible palpitations of the heart and my temples throbbed, but showed no outward sign of agitation.

‘By mutual consent,’ I repeated. ‘Last time you told me that you had taken the subject of your novel from real life.’

‘Yes, and I am ready to confirm it now. If you have read my novel, may I have the honour of introducing myself as Zinov’ev.’

‘So it was you who were best man at Olga Nikolaevna’s wedding.’

‘Both best man and friend of the house. Do I not come out of this story well?’ Kamyshev laughed, stroked his knees and got very red. ‘A fine fellow, eh? I ought to have been flogged, but there was nobody to do it.’

‘So, sir... I liked your story: it is better and more interesting than most crime novels. Only you and I must agree together on certain radical changes to be made.’

‘That’s possible. What do you want to change?’

‘The very habitus of the novel, its character. It has, as in all novels treating of crimes, everything: crime, evidence, an inquest, even fifteen years’ penal servitude as a climax, but the most essential thing is lacking.’

‘What is that?’

‘The real culprit does not appear....’

Kamyshev opened his eyes wide and rose.

‘To be frank, I don’t understand you,’ he said after a short pause. ‘If you do not consider the man who commits murder and strangles to be a real culprit, then I don’t know who can be considered so. Criminals are, of course, the product of society, and society is guilty, but... if one is to devote oneself to the higher considerations one must cease writing novels and write reports.’

‘Ach, what sort of higher considerations are there here! It was not Urbenin who committed the murder!’

‘How so?’ Kamyshev asked, approaching nearer to me.

‘Not Urbenin!’

‘Perhaps. Errare humanum est - and magistrates are not perfect: there are often errors of justice under the moon. You consider that we were mistaken?’

‘No, you did not make a mistake; you wished to make a mistake.’

‘Forgive me, I again do not understand,’ and Kamyshev smiled. ‘If you find that the inquest led to a mistake, and even, if I understand you right, to a premeditated mistake, it would be interesting to know your point of view. Who was the murderer in your opinion?’

‘You!’

Kamyshev looked at me with astonishment, almost with terror, grew very red and stepped back. Then turning away, he went to the window and began to laugh.

‘Here’s a nice go!’ he muttered, breathing on the glass and nervously drawing figures on it.

I watched his hand as he drew, and it appeared to me that I recognized in it the iron, muscular hand that, with a single effort, would have been able to strangle the sleeping Kuz’ma, or mangle Olga’s frail body. The thought that I saw before me a murderer filled my soul with unwonted feelings of horror and fear... not for myself — no! - but for him, for this handsome and graceful giant... and for mankind in general....

‘You murdered them!’ I repeated.

‘If you are not joking, allow me to congratulate you on the discovery,’ Kamyshev said laughing, but still not looking at me.

‘However, judging by your trembling voice, and your pallor, it is difficult to suppose that you are joking. What a nervous man you are!’

Kamyshev turned his flushed face towards me and, forcing himself to smile, he continued:

‘I should like to know how such an idea could have come into your head! Have I written something like that in my novel? By God, that’s interesting... Tell me, please! I should like, just once in a lifetime, to know what it feels like to be looked upon as a murderer.’

‘You are a murderer,’ I said, ‘and you are not able to hide it. In the novel you lied, and now you are proving yourself a poor actor.’

‘This is really quite interesting; upon my word, it would be curious to hear....’

‘If you are curious, then listen.’

I jumped up and began walking about the room in great agitation. Kamyshev looked out of the door and closed it tight. By this precaution he gave himself away.

‘What are you afraid of?’ I asked.

Kamyshev became confused, coughed and shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’m not afraid of anything, I only... only looked - looked out of the door. Well, now tell me!’

‘May I ask you some questions?’

‘As many as you like.’

‘I warn you that I am no magistrate, and no master in cross-examination; do not expect order or system, and so don’t try to disconcert or puzzle me. First tell me where you disappeared after you had left the clearing in which the shooting party was feasting?’

‘In the novel it is mentioned: I went home.’

‘In the novel the description of the way you went is carefully effaced. Did you not go through the forest?’

‘Yes.’

‘Consequently, you could have met Olga?’

‘Yes, I could,’ Kamyshev said smiling.

‘And you met her.’

‘No, I did not meet her.’

‘In your investigations you forgot to question one very important witness, and that was yourself... Did you hear the shriek of the victim?’

‘No... Well, baten’ka, you don’t know how to cross-examine at all.’

This familiar ‘baten’ka’ jarred on me; it accorded ill with the apologies and the embarrassment Kamyshev had shown when conversation began. Soon I noticed that he looked upon me with condescension, and almost with admiration of the determination I showed in questioning him.

‘Let us admit that you did not meet Olga in the forest,’ I continued, ‘though it was more difficult for Urbenin to meet her than for you, as Urbenin did not know she was in the forest, and therefore did not look for her, while you, being flushed with drink, would have been more likely to do so. You certainly did look for her, otherwise what would be your object in going home through the forest instead of by the road?... But let us admit that you did not meet her... How is your gloomy, your almost mad frame of mind, in the evening of the fatal day, to be explained? What induced you to kill the parrot as it cried out about the husband who killed his wife? I think he reminded you of your own evil deed. That night you were summoned to the Count’s house, and instead of beginning your investigations at once, you delayed until the police arrived almost twenty-four hours later. Perhaps you yourself did not notice this... But only a magistrate who already knew the criminal’s identity would have delayed... Further, Olga did not mention the name of the murderer because he was dear to her... If her husband had been the murderer she would have named him. Since she was capable of informing against him to her lover the Count, it would not have cost her anything to accuse him of murder: she did not love him, and he was not dear to her... She loved you, and you were the only person dear to her... she wanted to spare you... Allow me to ask, why did you delay asking her a straight question when she regained consciousness for a moment? Why did you ask her all sorts of questions that had nothing to do with the matter? I suggest that you did this only to mark time, in order to prevent her from naming you. Then Olga dies... In your novel you do not say a word about the impression that her death made on you... In this I see caution: you do not forget to write about the number of glasses you emptied, but such an important event as the death of “the girl in red” is passed over in the novel without the slightest mention... Why?’