Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

So Proshka still refused to say where he had been on the night of the raid, but the reason for his obstinacy was that he had spent the night with his girlfriend Parasha and he had promised not to give her away, so he did not do so. But there was no evidence. Proshka was released again. However, Pyotr Nikolayevich was sure that the raid had been wholly the work of this Prokofy Nikolayev, and from that time on he began to hate him. One day when Pyotr Nikolayevich had taken him out with him as coachman, he sent him off to the posting station to fetch the horses some fodder. Proshka, as was his custom, bought two measures of oats at a coaching inn. He fed one-and-a-half measures to the horses and exchanged the remaining half-measure for vodka. Pyotr Nikolayevich found out about this and informed the local justice of the peace. The justice of the peace sentenced Proshka to three months in gaol. Prokofy was a man with a good opinion of himself. He considered himself superior to others and was proud of it. Being in prison was a humiliating experience for him. He could no longer give himself airs among his fellow men, and he fell at once into a gloomy state of mind.

Proshka returned home from gaol embittered, not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich, as against the world in general. As everyone said, after his time in prison Prokofy lost heart, and he took to drinking, was soon caught stealing clothes from a tradesman’s wife, and again landed up in gaol.

Meanwhile all that Pyotr Nikolayevich could discover about the horses was that someone had come across the hide of a chestnut gelding, and Pyotr Nikolayevich identified it as Beauty’s. And the impunity of these thieves came to exasperate Pyotr Nikolayevich more and more. Now he could not set eyes on muzhiks or even talk about them without being filled with anger, and whenever he had the chance he came down on them as hard as possible.

XII

Although, once he had passed on the coupon, Yevgeny Mikhailovich had stopped thinking about it, his wife Mariya Vasilyevna was unable to forgive either herself for having been duped, or her husband for the cruel things he had said to her, or – and this was the main thing – those two young villains for having taken her in so cleverly.

From the day of the deception onwards she began to look very closely at any grammar-school boys she encountered. Once she actually met Makhin but did not recognize him because he saw her first and contorted his features so effectively that it completely altered his face. But when two weeks later she came face to face with Mitya Smokovnikov on the pavement, she recognized him at once. She let him go by, then turned on her heel and walked after him. On reaching the flat where he lived she made enquiries and found out whose son he was, and the next day she went to the grammar school, where in the entrance hall she met Mikhail Vvedensky, the scripture teacher. He enquired what he could do for her. She replied that she wanted to see the headmaster.

‘Unfortunately the headmaster is not here – he is unwell; but perhaps I can help you, or take a message for him.’

Mariya Vasilyevna decided to tell the scripture teacher everything.

Father Vvedensky was a widower, a graduate from the theological academy, and a man of considerable self-esteem. The previous year he had come across Smokovnikov senior at a society meeting in the course of a discussion about religious belief, in which Smokovnikov had soundly trounced him on all points and exposed him to ridicule. As a result Vvedensky had resolved to keep a watchful eye on the son, and having detected in him the same indifference to the Divine Law that his unbelieving father had displayed, he began to persecute him, and even failed him in an examination.

Having found out from Mariya Vasilyevna about young Smokovnikov’s escapade, Vvedensky could not help feeling a certain satisfaction, seeing in this incident a confirmation of his own prejudices concerning those immoral people who lacked the guidance of the Church, and he decided to make use of the incident in order, as he tried to assure himself, to reveal the dangers threatening all those who abandoned the Church and her ways – but in the depths of his soul he simply wanted to get his own back on a proud and self-confident atheist.

‘Yes, it is very sad, very sad,’ said Father Vvedensky, stroking the smooth edges of his pectoral cross. ‘I am so glad you have entrusted this matter to me: as a servant of the Church I shall naturally try to make sure that the young man is not left without moral guidance, but I shall also do my best to make his edification as gentle as possible.’

‘Yes, I shall act in a way which befits my calling,’ said Father Vvedensky to himself, thinking that he had now quite forgotten the father’s hostility towards him and that he desired nothing but the moral good and salvation of the boy.