Fifty-Two Stories

Olga Mikhailovna knew that her husband was pleasing to women, and—did not like to see him with them. There was nothing special about Pyotr Dmitrich lazily raking up hay so as to sit on it with Lyubochka and chat about trifles; there was nothing special about pretty Lyubochka looking meekly at him; and yet Olga Mikhailovna was annoyed with her husband, and felt frightened and pleased to be able to eavesdrop now.

“Sit down, enchantress,” said Pyotr Dmitrich, lowering himself onto the hay and stretching. “That’s right. Well, so tell me something.”

“Oh, yes! I’ll start telling, and you’ll fall asleep.”

“Me fall asleep? Allah kerim!² Could I fall asleep when such pretty eyes are looking at me?”

Neither in her husband’s words, nor in his sprawling with his hat pushed back in the presence of a guest, was there anything unusual. He was spoiled by women, knew that they liked him, and adopted a special tone in dealing with them, which everyone said was becoming to him. With Lyubochka he was behaving just as he did with all women. But Olga Mikhailovna was still jealous.

“Tell me, please,” Lyubochka began after a brief silence, “is it true what they say about you being taken to court?”

“Me? Yes, it’s true…I’ve been numbered among the transgressors,³ my sweet.”

“But what for?”

“For nothing, just…more from politics,” Pyotr Dmitrich yawned. “The struggle between left and right. I, an obscurantist and routineer, dared to use expressions in official papers that were insulting to such infallible Gladstones⁴ as Vladimir Pavlovich Vladimirov and our local justice of the peace, Kuzma Grigoryevich Vostryakov.”

Pyotr Dmitrich yawned again and went on:

“The way things are with us, you can speak disapprovingly about the sun, the moon, anything you like, but God forbid you touch the liberals! God forbid! A liberal is the same as one of those nasty dry toadstools that, if you accidentally touch it with your finger, showers you with a cloud of dust.”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing special. The whole to-do flared up over a mere trifle. Some teacher, a runty fellow with a churchy background, addressed Vostryakov with a complaint against a tavernkeeper, accusing him of offensive words and acts in a public place. By all tokens, both the teacher and the tavernkeeper were drunk as fish, and both behaved themselves equally badly. If there was an offense, in any case it was mutual. Vostryakov should have fined them both for disturbing the peace and kicked them out of court—that’s all. But how is it with us? With us what always comes first is not the person, the fact, but the trademark and the label. A teacher, no matter how rascally he is, is always right, because he’s a teacher; a tavernkeeper is always guilty, because he’s a tavernkeeper and a moneygrubber. Vostryakov sentenced the tavernkeeper to jail, so the man turned to the appellate court. The appellate court solemnly confirmed Vostryakov’s sentence. Well, I stuck to my own opinion…Got a little worked up…That’s all.”

Pyotr Dmitrich spoke calmly, with casual irony. In fact, the impending trial worried him greatly. Olga Mikhailovna remembered how, on returning from the ill-fated appellate court, he had tried his best to conceal from the family how hard it was for him and how displeased he was with himself. As an intelligent man, he could not help feeling that he had gone too far in his own opinion, and how much deception he needed to hide this feeling from himself and from other people! So many unnecessary conversations, so much grumbling and insincere laughter at something that was not funny! Having learned that he was being taken to court, he suddenly felt tired and lost heart, slept poorly, stood at the window more often than usual and drummed on the glass with his fingers. And he was ashamed to admit to his wife that it was hard for him, and that annoyed her…

“They say you were in Poltava province?” asked Lyubochka.

“Yes, I was,” replied Pyotr Dmitrich. “I came back two days ago.”

“It must be nice there?”