Vassilyevitch's. He tried to cry out ... no sound came. He tried
again, did his very utmost ... there was the sound of a feeble moan
quavering under his nose. He heard heavy footsteps and a sinewy hand
parted the bed curtains. A grey-headed pensioner in a patched military
overcoat stood gazing at him.... And he gazed at the pensioner. A big
tin mug was put to Kuzma Vassilyevitch's lips. He greedily drank some
cold water. His tongue was loosened. "Where am I?" The pensioner
glanced at him once more, went away and came back with another man in
a dark uniform. "Where am I?" repeated Kuzma Vassilyevitch. "Well, he
will live now," said the man in the dark uniform. "You are in the
hospital," he added aloud, "but you must go to sleep. It is bad for
you to talk." Kuzma Vassilyevitch began to feel surprised, but sank
into forgetfulness again....
Next morning the doctor appeared. Kuzma Vassilyevitch came to himself.
The doctor congratulated him on his recovery and ordered the bandages
round his head to be changed.
"What? My head? Why, am I ..."
"You mustn't talk, you mustn't excite yourself," the doctor
interrupted. "Lie still and thank the Almighty. Where are the
compresses, Poplyovkin?"
"But where is the money ... the government money ..."
"There! He is lightheaded again. Some more ice, Poplyovkin."
XXIV
Another week passed. Kuzma Vassilyevitch was so much better that the
doctors found it possible to tell him what had happened to him. This
is what he learned.
At seven o'clock in the evening on the 16th of June he had visited the
house of Madame Fritsche for the last time and on the 17th of June at
dinner time, that is, nearly twenty-four hours later, a shepherd had
found him in a ravine near the Herson high road, a mile and a half
from Nikolaev, with a broken head and crimson bruises on his neck. His
uniform and waistcoat had been unbuttoned, all his pockets turned
inside out, his cap and cutlass were not to be found, nor his leather
money belt. From the trampled grass, from the broad track upon the
grass and the clay, it could be inferred that the luckless lieutenant
had been dragged to the bottom of the ravine and only there had been
gashed on his head, not with an axe but with a sabre--probably his own
cutlass: there were no traces of blood on his track from the high road
while there was a perfect pool of blood round his head. There could be
no doubt that his assailants had first drugged him, then tried to
strangle him and, taking him out of the town by night, had dragged him
to the ravine and there given him the final blow. It was only thanks
to his truly iron constitution that Kuzma Vassilyevitch had not died.
He had returned to consciousness on July 22nd, that is, five weeks
later.
XXV
Kuzma Vassilyevitch immediately informed the authorities of the
misfortune that had happened to him; he stated all the circumstances of
the case verbally and in writing and gave the address of Madame
Fritsche. The police raided the house but they found no one there; the
birds had flown. They got hold of the owner of the house. But they
could not get much sense out of the latter, a very old and deaf
workman. He lived in a different part of the town and all he knew was
that four months before he had let his house to a Jewess with a
passport, whose name was Schmul or Schmulke, which he had immediately
registered at the police station. She had been joined by another woman,
not know; and whether they had other people living with them had not
heard and did not know; the lad whom he used to keep as porter or
watchman in the house had gone away to Odessa or Petersburg, and the
new porter had only lately come, on the 1st of July.
Inquiries were made at the police station and in the neighbourhood; it
appeared that Madame Schmulke, together with her companion, whose real
name was Frederika Bengel, had left Nikolaev about the 20th of June,
but where they had gone was unknown. The mysterious man with a gipsy
face and three buttons on his cuff and the dark-skinned foreign girl
with an immense mass of hair, no one had seen. As soon as Kuzma
Vassilyevitch was discharged from the hospital, he visited the house
that had been so fateful for him. In the little room where he had
talked to Colibri and where there was still a smell of musk, there was
a second secret door; the sofa had been moved in front of it on his
second visit and through it no doubt the murderer had come and seized
him from behind. Kuzma Vassilyevitch lodged a formal complaint;
proceedings were taken. Several numbered reports and instructions were
dispatched in various directions; the appropriate acknowledgments and
replies followed in due course.... There the incident closed. The
suspicious characters had disappeared completely and with them the
stolen government money had vanished, too, one thousand, nine hundred
and seventeen roubles and some kopecks, in paper and gold. Not an
inconsiderable sum in those days! Kuzma Vassilyevitch was paying back
instalments for ten years, when, fortunately for him, an act of
clemency from the Throne cancelled the debt.
XXVI
He was himself at first firmly convinced that Emilie, his treacherous
Zuckerpüppchen, was to blame for all his trouble and had originated
the plot. He remembered how on the last day he had seen her he had
incautiously dropped asleep on the sofa and how when he woke he had
found her on her knees beside him and how confused she had been, and
how he had found a hole in his belt that evening--a hole evidently
made by her scissors. "She saw the money," thought Kuzma
Vassilyevitch, "she told the old hag and those other two devils, she
entrapped me by writing me that letter ... and so they cleaned me out.
But who could have expected it of her!" He pictured the pretty,
good-natured face of Emilie, her clear eyes.... "Women! women!" he
repeated, gnashing his teeth, "brood of crocodiles!" But when he had
finally left the hospital and gone home, he learned one circumstance
which perplexed and nonplussed him. On the very day when he was
brought half dead to the town, a girl whose description corresponded
exactly to that of Emilie had rushed to his lodging with tear-stained
face and dishevelled hair and inquiring about him from his orderly,
had dashed off like mad to the hospital. At the hospital she had been
told that Kuzma Vassilyevitch would certainly die and she had at once
disappeared, wringing her hands with a look of despair on her face. It
was evident that she had not foreseen, had not expected the murder. Or
perhaps she had herself been deceived and had not received her
promised share? Had she been overwhelmed by sudden remorse? And yet
she had left Nikolaev afterwards with that loathsome old woman who had
certainly known all about it. Kuzma Vassilyevitch was lost in
conjecture and bored his orderly a good deal by making him continually
describe over and over again the appearance of the girl and repeat her
words.
XXVII
A year and a half later Kuzma Vassilyevitch received a letter in
German from Emilie, alias Frederika Bengel, which he promptly
had translated for him and showed us more than once in later days. It
was full of mistakes in spelling and exclamation marks; the postmark
on the envelope was Breslau. Here is the translation, as correct as
may be, of the letter:
"My precious, unforgettable and incomparable Florestan! Mr. Lieutenant
Yergenhof!
"How often I felt impelled to write to you! And I have always
unfortunately put it off, though the thought that you may regard me as
having had a hand in that awful crime has always been the most
appalling thought to me! Oh, dear Mr. Lieutenant! Believe me, the day
when I learnt that you were alive and well, was the happiest day of my
life! But I do not mean to justify myself altogether! I will not tell
a lie! I was the first to discover your habit of carrying your money
round your waist! (Though indeed in our part of the world all the
butchers and meat salesmen do the same!) And I was so incautious as to
let drop a word about it! I even said in joke that it wouldn't be bad
to take a little of your money! But the old wretch (Mr. Florestan! she
was not my aunt) plotted with that godless monster Luigi and
his accomplice! I swear by my mother's tomb, I don't know to this day
who those people were! I only know that his name was Luigi and that
they both came from Bucharest and were certainly great criminals and
were hiding from the police and had money and precious things! Luigi
was a dreadful individual (ein schröckliches Subject), to kill
a fellow-man (einen Mitmenschen) meant nothing at all to him!
He spoke every language--and it was he who that time got our
things back from the cook! Don't ask how! He was capable of anything,
he was an awful man! He assured the old woman that he would only drug
you a little and then take you out of town and put you down somewhere
and would say that he knew nothing about it but that it was your
fault--that you had taken too much wine somewhere! But even then the
wretch had it in his mind that it would be better to kill you so that
there would be no one to tell the tale! He wrote you that letter,
signed with my name and the old woman got me away by craft! I
suspected nothing and I was awfully afraid of Luigi! He used to say to
me, 'I'll cut your throat, I'll cut your throat like a chicken's!' And
he used to twitch his moustache so horribly as he said it! And they
dragged me into a bad company, too.... I am very much ashamed, Mr.
Lieutenant! And even now I shed bitter tears at these memories! ... It
seems to me ... ah! I was not born for such doings.... But there is no
help for it; and this is how it all happened! Afterwards I was
horribly frightened and could not help going away, for if the police
had found us, what would have happened to us then? That accursed Luigi
fled at once as soon as he heard that you were alive. But I soon
parted from them all and though now I am often without a crust of
bread, my heart is at peace! You will ask me perhaps why I came to
Nikolaev? But I can give you no answer! I have sworn! I will finish by
asking of you a favour, a very, very important one: whenever you
remember your little friend Emilie, do not think of her as a
black-hearted criminal! The eternal God sees my heart. I have a bad
morality (Ich habe eine schlechte moralität) and I am
feather-headed, but I am not a criminal. And I shall always love and
remember you, my incomparable Florestan, and shall always wish you
everything good on this earthly globe (auf diesem Erdenrund!).
I don't know whether my letter will reach you, but if it does, write me
a few lines that I may see you have received it. Thereby you will make
very happy your ever-devoted Emilie.
"P. S. Write to F. E. poste restante, Breslau, Silesia.
"P. S. S. I have written to you in German; I could not express my
feelings otherwise; but you write to me in Russian."
XXVIII
"Well, did you answer her?" we asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch.
"I meant to, I meant to many times. But how was I to write? I don't
know German ... and in Russian, who would have translated it? And so I
did not write."
And always as he finished his story, Kuzma Vassilyevitch sighed, shook
his head and said, "that's what it is to be young!" And if among his
audience was some new person who was hearing the famous story for the
first time, he would take his hand, lay it on his skull and make him
feel the scar of the wound.... It really was a fearful wound and the
scar reached from one ear to the other.
1867.
THE DOG
"But if one admits the possibility of the supernatural, the
possibility of its participation in real life, then allow me to ask
what becomes of common sense?" Anton Stepanitch pronounced and he
folded his arms over his stomach.
Anton Stepanitch had the grade of a civil councillor, served in some
incomprehensible department and, speaking emphatically and stiffly in
a bass voice, enjoyed universal respect. He had not long before, in
the words of those who envied him, "had the Stanislav stuck on to
him."
"That's perfectly true," observed Skvorevitch.
"No one will dispute that," added Kinarevitch.
"I am of the same opinion," the master of the house, Finoplentov,
chimed in from the corner in falsetto.
"Well, I must confess, I cannot agree, for something supernatural has
happened to me myself," said a bald, corpulent middle-aged gentleman
of medium height, who had till then sat silent behind the stove. The
eyes of all in the room turned to him with curiosity and surprise, and
there was a silence.
The man was a Kaluga landowner of small means who had lately come to
Petersburg. He had once served in the Hussars, had lost money at
cards, had resigned his commission and had settled in the country. The
recent economic reforms had reduced his income and he had come to the
capital to look out for a suitable berth. He had no qualifications and
no connections, but he confidently relied on the friendship of an old
comrade who had suddenly, for no visible reason, become a person of
importance, and whom he had once helped in thrashing a card sharper.
Moreover, he reckoned on his luck--and it did not fail him: a few days
after his arrival in town he received the post of superintendent of
government warehouses, a profitable and even honourable position,
which did not call for conspicuous abilities: the warehouses
themselves had only a hypothetical existence and indeed it was not
very precisely known with what they were to be filled--but they had
been invented with a view to government economy.
Anton Stepanitch was the first to break the silence.
"What, my dear sir," he began, "do you seriously maintain that