Fifty-Two Stories

“Everybody heard you say in front of all those simple folk: ‘The justice of the peace doesn’t judge such cases.’ Everybody heard you say that…I broke out in a sweat, Your Honor, I even got all scared. ‘Repeat,’ I say, ‘you this-and-that, repeat what you said!’ Again he says the same words…I say to him: ‘How can you speak that way about an honorable justice of the peace? You, a police officer, are against the authorities? Eh? Do you know,’ I say, ‘that for such talk the honorable justice of the peace, if he’s of a mind to, can pack you off to the provincial police department on account of your untrustworthy behavior? Do you know,’ I say, ‘where the honorable justice of the peace can send you for such political talk?’ And the elder says: ‘The justice,’ he says, ‘can’t stake out anything beyond his boundaries. He only has jurisdiction over minor offenses.’ That’s what he said, everybody heard it…‘How dare you,’ I say, ‘belittle the authorities? You, brother,’ I say, ‘don’t start joking with me, or things will go badly for you.’ In Warsaw, or when I was a porter in the boys’ primary school, whenever I’d hear such inappropriate talk, I’d look around for a policeman: ‘Come here, officer,’ I’d say—and report it all to him. But here in the village, who can I tell?…I flew into a rage. It upsets me that folk nowadays are sunk in willfulness and disobedience. I took a swing and…not hard, of course, but just right, lightly, so that he wouldn’t dare say such words about Your Honor…The constable stood up for the elder. So I gave it to the constable, too…And so it went…I lost my temper, Your Honor, but, well, it’s really impossible without a beating. If a stupid man doesn’t get a beating, the sin’s on your soul. Especially if there’s something up…some disorder…”

“I beg your pardon! There are people who look out for disorder. That’s why we have the constable, the headman, the militiaman…”

“A constable can’t look out for everything, and a constable doesn’t understand what I understand…”

“But don’t you see that it’s none of your business?”

“What’s that, sir? How is it not mine? Strange, sir…People behave outrageously and it’s none of my business! Should I praise them, then, or what? So they complain to you that I forbid singing songs…What’s the good of songs? Instead of taking up some kind of work, they sing songs…and they’ve also made it a fashion to sit in the evening with candles burning. They should go to bed, but they’re talking and laughing. I’ve got it written down, sir!”

“What have you got written down?”

“Who sits with candles burning.”

Whompov pulls a greasy scrap of paper from his pocket, puts on his spectacles, and reads:

“Peasants who sit with candles burning: Ivan Prokhorov, Savva Mikiforov, Pyotr Petrov. The soldier’s widow Shrustrova lives in depraved lawlessness with Semyon Kislov. Ignat Sverchok is taken up with magic and his wife Mavra is a witch, who goes by night to milk other people’s cows.”

“Enough!” says the justice, and he starts to interrogate the witnesses.

Corporal Whompov raises his spectacles on his brow and looks in astonishment at the justice, who is obviously not on his side. His popping eyes flash, his nose turns bright red. He stares at the justice, at the witnesses, and simply cannot understand what makes this justice so flustered, and why whispering and restrained laughter are heard from all corners of the courtroom. He also cannot understand the sentence: a month in jail!

“What for?!” he says, spreading his arms in bewilderment. “By what law?”

And it is clear to him that the world has changed and that living in it is no longer possible. Gloomy, dismal thoughts come over him. But, leaving the courtroom and seeing the peasants crowding around and talking about something, he, by force of a habit he can no longer control, stands at attention and shouts in a hoarse, angry voice:

“Brea-a-ak it up! Don’t cr-r-rowd around! Go home!”

1885

GRIEF

THE WOODTURNER Grigori Petrov, long known as an excellent craftsman and at the same time as the most good-for-nothing peasant in the whole Galchinsky district, is taking his sick old wife to the local hospital. He has to drive some twenty miles, and moreover the road is terrible, hard enough for a government postman to deal with, not to mention such a lazybones as the woodturner Grigori. A sharp, cold wind blows right in his face. In the air, wherever you look, big clouds of snowflakes whirl, so that it is hard to tell whether the snow is coming from the sky or from the earth. Neither the fields, nor the telegraph poles, nor the forest can be seen through the snowy mist, and when an especially strong gust of wind hits Grigori, he cannot even see the shaft bow. The decrepit, feeble little nag barely trudges along. All her energy is spent on pulling her legs out of the deep snow and tossing her head. The woodturner is in a hurry. He fidgets restlessly on the box and keeps whipping the horse’s back.