Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

Pyotr Nikolayevich’s sturdy, attractive wife, ever placid, childless, plump, like a barren cow, watched from the window as the peasants murdered her husband and dragged his body away somewhere into the fields. The sensation of terror which Natalya Ivanovna (such was the name of Sventitsky’s widow) experienced at the sight of this slaughter was – as is always the case – so powerful that it stifled all her other emotions. However, when the crowd of peasants had gone out of sight behind the garden fence and the hubbub of their voices had died away, and the barefooted girl Malanya, who worked for them, came running in wide-eyed as if to announce some glad tidings, with the news that they had murdered Pyotr Nikolayevich and thrown his body into the ravine, Natalya Ivanovna’s initial feeling of terror began to be mingled with something different: a feeling of joy at her liberation from the despot, eyes hidden behind his tinted spectacles, who had kept her in slavery these past nineteen years. She was horrified at this feeling and did not even acknowledge it to herself, but tried all the more not to let anyone else know about it. When they washed his yellow, mutilated, hairy corpse and dressed it and placed it in the coffin she was overcome with horror, and she wept and sobbed. When the examining magistrate responsible for serious crimes came down and questioned her as a witness, she saw before her, right there in the investigator’s office, the two peasants now in fetters who had been identified as the principal culprits. One of them was quite an old man, with a long, wavy white beard and a calm, sternly handsome face; the other looked like a gypsy, a youngish man with shining dark eyes and curly, tousled hair. She testified that as far as she knew these were the very same men who had been the first to seize Pyotr Nikolayevich by the arms, and despite the fact that the gypsy-like peasant turned his flashing eyes under his contorted brow directly upon her and said reproachfully ‘It’s a sin, lady! Ah, we shall all have to die one day’ – in spite of that she felt no pity whatever for them. On the contrary, as the investigation went on there arose within her a feeling of hostility and a desire to revenge herself on her husband’s murderers.

But when a month later the case, which had been transferred to a military tribunal, ended with eight men being condemned to penal servitude and the two men – the white-bearded old man and the dark-skinned ‘gypsy lad’, as they called him – being sentenced to be hanged, she experienced a most disagreeable feeling. But this disagreeable feeling of doubt was now quickly dissipated under the influence of the solemn ritual of the courtroom. If the higher authorities considered this to be necessary, then it must all be for the best.

The executions were to be carried out in the village. And returning from mass one Sunday in her new dress and new shoes, Malanya informed her mistress that they were putting up a gallows, that an executioner was expected to arrive from Moscow by Wednesday, and that the two men’s relatives were wailing without ceasing, so that you could hear them all over the village.

Natalya Ivanovna stayed indoors so as not to see the gallows or the local people, and her only wish was that what must be done should soon be over. She thought solely of herself, and not at all about the condemned men and their families.

XI

On the Tuesday Natalya Ivanovna received a visit from the district superintendent, a friend of hers. Natalya Ivanovna entertained him with vodka and mushrooms she had pickled herself. The district superintendent drank his vodka and enjoyed some of the snacks, and then informed her that the executions would not be taking place tomorrow.

‘What? How is that?’

‘It’s an extraordinary story. They have been unable to supply an executioner. There was one in Moscow but he, so my son tells me, got to reading the Gospels, and now he says that he can’t kill anybody. He himself was condemned to hard labour for murder, but now all of a sudden – he can’t kill someone even if it’s legal. They told him he would be flogged. Flog me, he says, but I still can’t do it.’

Natalya Ivanovna suddenly went red, and actually began to perspire because of what she was thinking.

‘But would it be impossible to pardon them now?’

‘How can they be pardoned when they have been sentenced by the court? Only the Tsar can grant pardons.’

‘But how would the Tsar ever find out about them?’

‘They have the right to appeal for mercy.’

‘But it’s on my account that they’re being executed,’ said Natalya Ivanovna, who was not very intelligent. ‘And I forgive them.’

The district superintendent burst out laughing.

‘Well then, why don’t you lodge an appeal?’

‘Can I do that?’

‘Certainly you can.’

‘But won’t it be too late to get it to him now?’

‘You could send it by telegram.’

‘To the Tsar?’

‘Of course, you can send a telegram even to the Tsar.’