Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

The next day he walked back to the district town, and overheard Mariya Semyonovna’s conversation with the teacher while he was walking down the street. He was frightened by the way she had stared at him, nevertheless he decided to break into her house and take the money which she had drawn. When night came he broke the lock and went upstairs into a bedroom. The first person to hear him was the younger, married daughter. She cried out. Stepan immediately cut her throat. The son-in-law woke up and grappled with him. He got hold of Stepan by the throat and struggled with him for quite some time, but Stepan was too strong for him. Having finished off the son-in-law Stepan, now in a state of some agitation and excited by the struggle, went behind a partition. On the other side of the partition Mariya Semyonovna was lying in bed. She raised herself on the bed and looked at Stepan with gentle, frightened eyes and crossed herself. Once again her look frightened Stepan. He lowered his gaze.

‘Where’s the money?’ he asked without looking up.

She did not answer.

‘Where’s the money?’ said Stepan, showing her the knife.

‘What are you doing? You can’t do this,’ she said.

‘Oh yes I can, and I will.’

Stepan moved nearer, intending to seize her arms so that she could not stop him doing what he intended to do, but she did not raise her hands, did not resist, but simply pressed her hands to her bosom, sighed heavily and repeated:

‘Oh, what a great sin. What are you doing? Have pity on yourself. You think you are destroying others, but it’s your own soul you are destroying. Oh, oh!’ she screamed.

Stepan could not stand her voice or the look on her face any longer, and he slashed the knife right across her throat. – ‘I haven’t got time to waste chatting with you.’ – She slumped back on to the pillows and began to wheeze, soaking one of the pillows with her blood. He turned away and walked through the bedrooms, collecting things as he went. When he had gathered up everything he wanted Stepan lit a cigarette, sat down for a moment, brushed down his clothes and then went out. He had thought he would get away with this murder just as easily as he had done with the previous ones, but even before he had reached the place where he planned to stay the night he suddenly felt so weary that he could hardly move a limb. He lay down in a ditch and stayed there for the rest of that night, the whole of the next day and the night that followed.

Part Two

I

As he lay there in the ditch Stepan kept seeing before him Mariya Semyonovna’s thin, meek, terrified face and hearing her voice: ‘You can’t do this,’ her peculiar lisping, pathetic voice kept on repeating. And Stepan kept reliving over again everything he had done to her. He began to feel really frightened, and he shut his eyes, swaying his shaggy head from side to side in an attempt to shake these thoughts and memories out of it. And for a moment he managed to free himself from his memories, but in their place appeared first one black devil, then another, and after them still other black devils with red eyes, all pulling hideous faces and all saying the same thing: ‘You did away with her – now do away with yourself, or we won’t give you any peace.’ And he would open his eyes and once again see her and hear her voice, and he was filled with pity for her, and with fear and loathing towards himself. And he would shut his eyes again, and again the black devils would be there.

Towards the evening of the second day he got to his feet and walked to the tavern nearby. Reaching the tavern with a great effort, he began drinking. Yet however much he drank, he was quite unable to get drunk. He sat silently at a table, downing one glass after another. Then into the tavern walked the village constable.

‘And who might you be then?’ enquired the constable.

‘I’m the one who cut all those people’s throats at the Dobrotvorovs’ house the other night.’

They bound him, and after holding him for a day at the district police station, sent him off to the main town of the province. The warden of the prison, recognizing him as a former prisoner and a trouble-maker who had now done something really bad, gave him a stern reception.

‘You’d best get it into your head that you won’t be pulling any tricks with me in charge,’ said the warden in a hoarse wheezing voice, frowning and sticking out his lower jaw. ‘And if I see you trying anything, I’ll have you flogged. And you won’t be escaping from this prison.’

‘Why would I be escaping?’ answered Stepan, looking at the ground. ‘I gave myself up of my own accord.’

‘That’s enough back-chat from you. And when a superior is talking to you, look him in the eye,’ shouted the warden, giving him a punch on the jaw.

At that moment Stepan was again seeing Mariya Semyonovna and hearing her voice. He heard nothing of what the warden had just been saying.

‘What?’ he asked, coming to his senses as he felt the blow on his chin.

‘Come on, come on now – forward march, and none of your funny business.’