Part 19

“Yesterday I had the imprudence to give you more liberty,” I continued, “by allowing you that which no other prisoner is allowed, to walk about the corridors. And now it appears, out of gratitude you went to the door of that unfortunate Kuz'ma and suffocated a sleeping man! Do you know that you have destroyed not only Kuz'ma; the warders will also be ruined on your account.”

“What have I done, good God?” Urbenin said, seizing hold of his head.

“Do you want the proofs? I will give them. . . . By my orders your door was left open. . . . The foolish warders opened the door and forgot to hide the lock. . . . All the cells are opened with the same key. . . . In the night you took your key and going into the corridor, you opened your neighbour's door with it. . . . Having smothered him, you locked the door and put the key into your own lock.”

“Why should I smother him? Why?”

“Because he denounced you. . . . If yesterday I had not given you this news, he would have been alive now. . . . It is sinful and shameful, Pëtr Egorych!”

“Sergei Petrovich, young man,” the murderer suddenly said in a soft, tender voice, seizing me by the hand, “you are an honest and respectable man! Do not ruin and stain yourself with false suspicions and over-hasty accusations! You cannot understand how cruelly and painfully you have wounded me by casting upon my soul, which is in no way guilty, a new accusation. . . . I am a martyr, Sergei Petrovich! Fear to wrong a martyr! The time will come when you will have to beg my pardon, and that time will be soon. . . . You can't really want to accuse me! But this pardon will not satisfy you. . . . Instead of assailing me so terribly with insults, it would have been better if in a humane—I will not say a friendly—way (you have already renounced all friendly relations) you had questioned me. . . . As a witness and your assistant, I would have brought more profit to justice than in the role of the accused. If we even take this new accusation . . . I could tell you much. I did not sleep last night, and heard everything.”

“What did you hear?”

“Last night, at about two o'clock . . . all was dark. . . . I heard somebody walking about the corridor very gently, and constantly touching my door . . . he walked and walked, and then opened my door and came in.”

“Who was it?”

“I don't know; it was dark—I did not see. . . . He stood for about a minute and went away again . . . exactly as you said. . . . He took the key out of my door and opened the next cell. Two minutes later I heard a guttural sound and then a bustle. I thought it was the warder walking about and bustling, and the sounds I took for snores, otherwise I would have made a noise.”

“Fables,” I said. “There was nobody here but you who could have killed Kuz'ma. The warders were all asleep. The wife of one of them, who could not sleep the whole night, has given evidence that all three warders slept like dead men all the night and never left their beds for a minute; the poor fellows did not know that such brutes could be found in this miserable guard-house. They have been serving here for more than twenty years, and during all that time they have never had a single case of a prisoner having escaped, to say nothing of such an abomination as a murder. Now, thanks to you, their life has been turned upside down; I, too, will have to suffer on your account because I did not send you to the town prison, and even gave you the liberty of walking about the corridors. Thank you!”

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.

XXXII

I have said that my novel is a story of crime, and now, when the case of the murder of Olga Urbenin is 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 led the war and the reader has the right to expect me to describe the means that led to my victory, and he is doubtless expecting all sorts of detective finesses such as shine in the novels of Gaboriau and our Shklyarevsky; and I am ready to satisfy the reader's 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 had done so far was lost for him—and 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 alterations took place. In the course of two days I had to hand over the case of the murder to the magistrate for specially important affairs.

Thanks to the talk and the newspaper reports, the entire attention of the Prosecutor was aroused. The Prosecutor himself came 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 having the bodies exhumed and having 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 government to have his mental capacities tested, and both times he 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 up as witness.

* A part that was certainly better suited to M. Kamyshev than the part of examining magistrate: in the Urbenin case he could not be examining magistrate.—A. Ch.

A year after my resignation, when I was living in Moscow, I received a summons to appear at the trial of the Urbenin case. 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 go there, 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 to read Urbenin's letters to his wife, 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 his body had grown twenty years older. I had expected to read on his face indifference for his fate and apathy, but I was mistaken. Urbenin was deeply interested in the trial; he brought in an exception against three of the jurymen, gave long explanations, and questioned the witnesses; he absolutely denied any guilt, and he questioned all the witnesses, who did not give evidence in his favour, very minutely.

The witness Pshekhotsky deposed that I had had a connexion 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 relations I stood to Olga, and informed me of the evidence that Pshekhotsky, who had on one occasion applauded me, had given. 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.

I said “No.”

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 a bit of bread, a dwelling, and some bright-coloured rags. . . . She agreed. An old, well-to-do husband is easier to be borne 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 bright coloured rags, seeing his prize slipping away from him, falls into the fury of a brute, to whose nose a red-hot iron had been applied. He had loved in a brutish way and he must hate in a brutish way,” etc., etc.

In charging Urbenin with Kuz'ma's murder, Polugradov drew special attention to those thief-like 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 “all-human type” from every side, giving extracts from various critics, and got into such a maze 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 decomposed, others are bearing the punishment of their sins, others are wearily dragging on life, struggling with dullness 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 the former intensity, and never a day passes that I, being filled with feelings of indignation or hatred, do not seize hold of my head. 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, 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 dirty 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 roar 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 . . . Heavy dregs lie at the 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:

Dear Sir, Mr. Editor! 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) is Moscow in 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 in the beginning of this novel has not been kept: Kamyshev's novel has not been printed without omissions, not _in toto_, as I promised, but it is 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, the newspaper ceased to exist 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 the 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 to make changes of unsuitable places. With my assent the editor left out many places that shocked by their cynicism, length, or the carelessness of their literary 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 Polycarp's library and of the original manner in which he read; this passage was found too much drawn out and exaggerated.

The chapter I stood up for most of all 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 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. This strange charity admirably characterizes this hare-brained magistrate, but it is written so carelessly and the conversation of the gamblers glitters with such pearls of obscenity that the editor would not even consent to have alterations 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 again troubling you!” he began smiling, and he sat down carefully. “For God's sake, 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 such strictness? It does not merit punitive measures; we will employ a corrective treatment.”

“Must it be corrected?”

“Yes, certain things. . . . By mutual consent. . . .”

We were silent for a quarter of a minute. I had terrible palpitations of the heart and my temples throbbed, but to show that I was agitated did not enter into my plans.

“By mutual consent,” I repeated. “Last time you told me that you had taken the subject of your novel from real occurrences.”

“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.”

“Consequently, you were best-man at Olga Nikolaevna's wedding.”

“Both best-man and friend of the house. Am I not sympathetic in this manuscript?” 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 novel: it is better and more interesting than most novels of crimes. Only by mutual consent you and I must make some essential changes in it.”

“That's possible. For example, what do you consider requires 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 dessert, but the most essential thing is lacking.”

“What is that?”

“The real culprit is not in it. . . .”

Kamyshev made large eyes and rose.

“Candidly speaking, I don't understand you,” he said after a short pause. “If you do not consider the man who commits murder and strangles a real culprit, then. . . . I don't know who ought to be considered culpable. 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.”

“Akh, 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.”