Chapter XXXII

I have said that my novel is a story of crime, and now, when the case of the murder of Olga Urbenin is complicated by another murder, in many ways mysterious and incomprehensible, the reader is entitled to expect that the novel will enter upon its most interesting and exciting phase. The discovery of the criminal, and the reasons for his crime, offer a wide field for the display of ingenuity and sharp-wittedness. Here evil will and cunning are at war with knowledge and skill, a war that is interesting in all its manifestations. . . .

I led the war and the reader has the right to expect me to describe the means that led to my victory, and he is doubtless expecting all sorts of detective finesses such as shine in the novels of Gaboriau and our Shklyarevsky; and I am ready to satisfy the reader's expectations, but . . . one of the chief characters leaves the field of battle without waiting for the end of the combat—he is not made a participator in the victory; all that he had done so far was lost for him—and he goes over into the crowd of spectators. That character in the drama is your humble servant. On the day following the above conversation with Urbenin I received an invitation, or, more correctly speaking, an order to hand in my resignation. The tittle-tattle and talk of our district gossips had done its work. . . . The murder in the guard-house, the evidence that the Assistant Prosecutor had collected, unknown to me, from the servants, and, if the reader still remembers it, the blow I had dealt a muzhik on the head with an oar on the occasion of one of our former revels, had all greatly contributed to my dismissal. The muzhik started the case. All sorts of alterations took place. In the course of two days I had to hand over the case of the murder to the magistrate for specially important affairs.

Thanks to the talk and the newspaper reports, the entire attention of the Prosecutor was aroused. The Prosecutor himself came to the Count's estate every other day and assisted at the examinations. The official reports of our doctors were sent to the medical board and higher. There was even a question of having the bodies exhumed and having a fresh post-mortem examination, which, by the way, would have led to nothing.

Urbenin was taken a couple of times to the chief town of the government to have his mental capacities tested, and both times he was found quite normal. I was given the part of witness.* The new examining magistrates were so carried away by their zeal that even my Polycarp was called up as witness.

* A part that was certainly better suited to M. Kamyshev than the
part of examining magistrate: in the Urbenin case he could not be
examining magistrate.—A. Ch.

A year after my resignation, when I was living in Moscow, I received a summons to appear at the trial of the Urbenin case. I was glad of the opportunity of seeing again the places to which I was drawn by habit, and I went. The Count, who was residing in Petersburg, did not go there, but sent a medical certificate instead.

The case was tried in our district town in a division of the Court of Justice. Polugradov—that same Polugradov who cleaned his teeth four times a day with red powder—conducted the prosecution; a certain Smirnyaev, a tall, lean, fair-haired man with a sentimental face and long straight hair, acted for the defence. The jury was exclusively composed of shopkeepers and peasants, of whom only four could read and write; the others, when they were given to read Urbenin's letters to his wife, sweated and got confused. The chief juryman was Ivan Dem'yanych, the shopkeeper from my village, after whom my late parrot had been named.

When I came into the court I did not recognize Urbenin; he had become quite grey, and his body had grown twenty years older. I had expected to read on his face indifference for his fate and apathy, but I was mistaken. Urbenin was deeply interested in the trial; he brought in an exception against three of the jurymen, gave long explanations, and questioned the witnesses; he absolutely denied any guilt, and he questioned all the witnesses, who did not give evidence in his favour, very minutely.

The witness Pshekhotsky deposed that I had had a connexion with the late Olga.

“That's a lie!” Urbenin shouted. “He lies! I don't trust my wife, but I trust him!”

When I gave my evidence the counsel for the defence asked me in what relations I stood to Olga, and informed me of the evidence that Pshekhotsky, who had on one occasion applauded me, had given. To have spoken the truth would have been to give evidence in favour of the accused. The more depraved the wife, the more lenient the jury is towards the Othello-husband. I understood this. . . . On the other hand, if I spoke the truth I would have wounded Urbenin. . . . in hearing it he would have felt an incurable pain. . . . I thought it better to lie.

I said “No.”

In his speech the Public Prosecutor described Olga's murder in vivid colours and drew especial attention to the brutality of the murderer, to his malignancy. . . . “An old, worn-out voluptuary saw a girl, young and pretty. Knowing the whole horror of her position in the house of her mad father, he enticed her to come to him by a bit of bread, a dwelling, and some bright-coloured rags. . . . She agreed. An old, well-to-do husband is easier to be borne than a mad father and poverty. But she was young, and youth, gentlemen of the jury, possesses its own inalienable rights. . . . A girl brought up on novels, in the midst of nature, sooner or later was bound to fall in love. . . .” And so on in the same style. It finished up with “He who had not given her anything more than his age and bright coloured rags, seeing his prize slipping away from him, falls into the fury of a brute, to whose nose a red-hot iron had been applied. He had loved in a brutish way and he must hate in a brutish way,” etc., etc.

In charging Urbenin with Kuz'ma's murder, Polugradov drew special attention to those thief-like processes, well thought out and weighed, that accompanied the murder of a “sleeping man who the day before had had the imprudence to give testimony against him.” “I suppose you cannot doubt that Kuz'ma wanted to tell the Public Prosecutor something specially concerning him.”

The counsel for the defence, Smirnyaev, did not deny Urbenin's guilt; he only begged them to admit that Urbenin had acted under the influence of a state of temporary insanity, and to have indulgence for him. When describing how painful the feelings of jealousy are, he cited as an example Shakespeare's “Othello.” He looked at that “all-human type” from every side, giving extracts from various critics, and got into such a maze that the presiding judge had to stop him with the remark that “a knowledge of foreign literature was not obligatory for the jurymen.”

Taking advantage of having the last word, Urbenin called God to witness that he was not guilty either in deed or thought.

“It is all the same to me where I am—in this district where everything reminds me of my unmerited shame and of my wife, or in penal servitude; but it is the fate of my children that is troubling me.”

And, turning to the public, Urbenin began to cry, and begged that his children might be cared for.

“Take them. The Count will not lose the opportunity of vaunting his generosity, but I have already warned the children; they will not accept a crumb from him.”

Then, noticing me among the public, he looked at me with suppliant eyes and said:

“Defend my children from the Count's favours!”

He apparently had quite forgotten the impending verdict, and his thoughts were only centred on his children. He talked about them until he was stopped by the presiding judge.

The jury were not long in consultation. Urbenin was found guilty, without extenuating circumstances on any count.

He was condemned to the loss of all civil rights, transportation and hard labour for fifteen years.

So dearly had he to pay for his having met on a fine May morning the poetical “girl in red.”

More than eight years have passed since the events described above happened. Some of the actors in the drama are dead and decomposed, others are bearing the punishment of their sins, others are wearily dragging on life, struggling with dullness and awaiting death from day to day.

Much is changed during these eight years. . . . Count Karnéev, who has never ceased to entertain the sincerest friendship for me, has sunk into utter drunkenness. His estate which was the scene of the drama has passed from him into the hands of his wife and Pshekhotsky. He is now poor, and is supported by me. Sometimes of an evening, lying on the sofa in my room in the boarding-house, he likes to remember the good old times.

“It would be fine to listen to the gipsies now!” he murmurs. “Serezha, send for some cognac!”

I am also changed. My strength is gradually deserting me, and I feel youth and health leaving my body. I no longer possess the same physical strength, I have not the same alertness, the same endurance which I was proud of displaying formerly, when I could carouse night after night and could drink quantities which now I could hardly lift.

Wrinkles are appearing on my face one after the other; my hair is getting thin, my voice is becoming coarse and less strong. . . . Life is finished.

I remember the past as if it were yesterday. I see places and people's faces as if in a mist. I have not the power to regard them impartially; I love and hate them with the former intensity, and never a day passes that I, being filled with feelings of indignation or hatred, do not seize hold of my head. As formerly, I consider the Count odious, Olga infamous, Kalinin ludicrous owing to his stupid presumption. Evil I hold to be evil, sin to be sin.

But not infrequently there are moments when, looking intently at a portrait that is standing on my writing-table, feel an irresistible desire to walk with the “girl in red” through the forest, under the sounds of the tall pines, and to press her to my breast regardless of everything. In such moments I forgive the lies, the fall into the dirty abyss, I am ready to forgive everything, if only a small part of the past could be repeated once more. . . . Wearied of the dullness of town, I want to hear once again the roar of the giant lake and gallop along its banks on my Zorka. . . . I would forgive and forget everything if I could once again go along the road to Tenevo and meet the gardener Franz with his vodka barrel and jockey-cap. . . . There are moments when I am even ready to press the blood-stained hand of good-natured Pëtr Egorych, and talk with him about religion, the harvest and the enlightenment of the people. . . . I would like to meet “Screw” and his Nadenka again. . . .

Life is mad, licentious, turbulent—like a lake on an August night. . . . Many victims have disappeared for ever beneath its dark waves . . . Heavy dregs lie at the bottom.

But why, at certain moments, do I love it? Why do I forgive it, and in my soul hurry towards it like an affectionate son, like a bird released from a cage?

At this moment the life I see from the window of my room in these chambers reminds me of a grey circle; it is grey in colour without any light or shade. . . .

But, if I close my eyes and remember the past, I see a rainbow formed by the sun's spectrum. . . . Yes, it is stormy there, but it is lighter too. . . .

S. Zinov'ev.

The End

Postscript

At the bottom of the manuscript there is written:

Dear Sir, Mr. Editor! I beg you to publish the novel (or story, if
you prefer it) which I submit to you herewith, as far as possible,
in its entirety, without abridgment, cuts or additions. However,
changes can be made with the consent of the author. In case you find
it unsuitable I beg you to keep the MSS. to be returned. My address
(temporary) is Moscow in the Anglia Chambers, on the Tverskoy Ivan
Petrovich Kamyshev. P.S.—The fee is at the discretion of the Editor.

Year and date.

Now that the reader has become acquainted with Kamyshev's novel I will continue my interrupted talk with him. First of all, I must inform the reader that the promise I made to him in the beginning of this novel has not been kept: Kamyshev's novel has not been printed without omissions, not _in toto_, as I promised, but it is considerably shortened. The fact is, that the “Shooting Party” could not be printed in the newspaper which was mentioned in the first chapter of this work, the newspaper ceased to exist when the manuscript was sent to press. The present editorial board, in accepting Kamyshev's novel, found it impossible to publish it without cuts. During the time it was appearing, every chapter that was sent to me in proof was accompanied by the request to “make changes.” However, not wishing to take on my soul the sin of changing another man's work, I found it better and more profitable to leave out whole passages rather than to make changes of unsuitable places. With my assent the editor left out many places that shocked by their cynicism, length, or the carelessness of their literary style. These omissions and cuts demanded both care and time, which is the cause that many chapters were late. Among other passages we left out two descriptions of nocturnal orgies. One of these orgies took place in the Count's house, the other on the lake. We also left out a description of Polycarp's library and of the original manner in which he read; this passage was found too much drawn out and exaggerated.

The chapter I stood up for most of all and which the editor chiefly disliked was one in which the desperate card gambling that was the rage among the Count's servants was minutely described. The most passionate gamblers were the gardener Franz and the old woman nicknamed the Scops-Owl. While Kamyshev was conducting the investigations he passed by one of the summer-houses, and looking in he saw mad play going on; the players were the Scops-Owl, Franz and—Pshekhotsky. They were playing “Stukolka,” at twenty kopeck points and a fine that reached thirty roubles. Kamyshev joined the players and “cleared them out” as if they had been partridges. Franz, who had lost everything but wished to continue, went to the island where he had hidden his money. Kamyshev followed him, marked where he had concealed his money, and afterwards robbed the gardener, not leaving a kopeck in his hoard. The money he had taken he gave to the fisherman Mikhey. This strange charity admirably characterizes this hare-brained magistrate, but it is written so carelessly and the conversation of the gamblers glitters with such pearls of obscenity that the editor would not even consent to have alterations made.

The description of certain meetings of Olga and Kamyshev are omitted; an explanation between him and Nadenka Kalinin, etc., etc., are also left out. But I think what is printed is sufficient to characterize my hero. _Sapienti sat_. . . .

Exactly three months later the door-keeper Andrey announced the arrival of the gentleman “with the cockade.”

“Ask him in!” I said.

Kamyshev entered, the same rosy-cheeked, handsome and healthy man he had been three months before. His steps, as formerly, were noiseless. . . . He put down his hat on the window with so much care that one might have imagined that he had deposited something heavy. . . . Out of his eyes there shone, as before, something childlike and infinitely good-natured.

“I am again troubling you!” he began smiling, and he sat down carefully. “For God's sake, forgive me! Well, what? What sentence has been passed on my manuscript?”

“Guilty, but deserving of indulgence,” I replied.

Kamyshev laughed and blew his nose in a scented handkerchief.

“Consequently, banishment into the flames of the fireplace?” he asked.

“No, why such strictness? It does not merit punitive measures; we will employ a corrective treatment.”

“Must it be corrected?”

“Yes, certain things. . . . By mutual consent. . . .”

We were silent for a quarter of a minute. I had terrible palpitations of the heart and my temples throbbed, but to show that I was agitated did not enter into my plans.

“By mutual consent,” I repeated. “Last time you told me that you had taken the subject of your novel from real occurrences.”

“Yes, and I am ready to confirm it now. If you have read my novel, may I have the honour of introducing myself as Zinov'ev.”

“Consequently, you were best-man at Olga Nikolaevna's wedding.”

“Both best-man and friend of the house. Am I not sympathetic in this manuscript?” Kamyshev laughed, stroked his knees and got very red. “A fine fellow, eh? I ought to have been flogged, but there was nobody to do it.”

“So, sir. . . . I liked your novel: it is better and more interesting than most novels of crimes. Only by mutual consent you and I must make some essential changes in it.”

“That's possible. For example, what do you consider requires change?”

“The very _habitus_ of the novel, its character. It has, as in all novels treating of crimes, everything: crime, evidence, an inquest, even fifteen years' penal servitude as a dessert, but the most essential thing is lacking.”

“What is that?”

“The real culprit is not in it. . . .”

Kamyshev made large eyes and rose.

“Candidly speaking, I don't understand you,” he said after a short pause. “If you do not consider the man who commits murder and strangles a real culprit, then. . . . I don't know who ought to be considered culpable. Criminals are, of course, the product of society, and society is guilty, but. . . . if one is to devote oneself to the higher considerations one must cease writing novels and write reports.”

“Akh, what sort of higher considerations are there here! It was not Urbenin who committed the murder!”

“How so?” Kamyshev asked, approaching nearer to me.

“Not Urbenin!”

“Perhaps. _Errare humanum est_—and magistrates are not perfect: there are often errors of justice under the moon. You consider that we were mistaken?”

“No, you did not make a mistake; you wished to make a mistake.”

“Forgive me, I again do not understand,” and Kamyshev smiled: “If you find that the inquest led to a mistake, and even, if I understand you right, to a premeditated mistake, it would be interesting to know your point of view. Who was the murderer in your opinion?”

“You!”

Kamyshev looked at me with astonishment, almost with terror, grew very red and stepped back. Then turning away, he went to the window and began to laugh.

“Here's a nice go!” he muttered, breathing on the glass and nervously drawing figures on it.

I watched his hand as he drew, and it appeared to me that I recognized in it the only iron, muscular hand that, with a single effort, would have been able to strangle sleeping Kuz'ma, or mangle Olga's frail body. The thought that I saw before me a murderer filled my soul with unwonted feelings of horror and fear. . . . not for myself—no!—but for him, for this handsome and graceful giant. . . . in general for man. . . .

“You murdered them!” I repeated.

“If you are not joking, allow me to congratulate you on the discovery,” Kamyshev said laughing, but still not looking at me: “However, judging by your trembling voice, and your paleness, it is difficult to suppose that you are joking. What a nervous man you are!”

Kamyshev turned his flushed face towards me and, forcing himself to smile, he continued:

“It is interesting how such an idea could have come into your head! Have I written something like that in my novel? By God, that's interesting. . . . Tell me, please! It really is interesting once in a lifetime to try what it feels like to be looked upon as a murderer.”

“You are a murderer,” I said, “and you are not able to hide it. In the novel you lied, and now you are proving yourself but a poor actor.”

“This is really quite interesting; upon my word, it would be curious to hear. . . .”

“If you are curious, then listen.”

I jumped up and began walking about the room in great agitation. Kamyshev looked out of the door and closed it tight. By this precaution he gave himself away.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked.

Kamyshev became confused, coughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“I'm not afraid of anything, I only. . . . only looked—looked out of the door. So you wanted this too! Well, now tell me!”

“May I put you some questions?”

“As many as you like.”

“I warn you that I am no magistrate, and I am no master in cross-examination; do not expect order or system, and therefore please do not disconcert or puzzle me. First tell me where you disappeared after you had left the clearing on which the shooting party was feasting?”

“In the novel it is mentioned: I went home.”

“In the novel the description of the way you went is carefully effaced. Did you not go through the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Consequently, you could have met Olga?”

“Yes, I could,” Kamyshev said smiling.

“And you met her.”

“No, I did not meet her.”

“In your investigations you forgot to question one very important witness, and that was yourself. . . . Did you hear the shriek of the victim?”

“No. . . . Well, baten'ka,* you don't know how to cross-examine at all.”

* The diminutive of otets—father, a very familiar form of address.

This familiar baten'ka jarred on me; it accorded but ill with the apologies and the disconcertion with which our conversation had begun. Soon I noticed that Kamyshev looked upon me with condescension,—from above—and almost with admiration of my inexperience in extricating myself from the number of questions that were troubling me.

“Let us admit that you did not meet Olga in the forest,” I continued, “though it was more difficult for Urbenin to meet Olga than for you, as Urbenin did not know she was in the forest, and, therefore, did not look for her, while you, being drunk and maddened would probably have looked for her. You certainly did look for her, otherwise what would be your object in going home through the forest instead of by the road? . . . But let us admit that you did not meet her. . . . How is your gloomy, your almost mad frame of mind, in the evening of the ill-fated day, to be explained? What induced you to kill the parrot, who cried out about the husband who killed his wife? I think he reminded you of your own evil deed. That night you were summoned to the Count's house, and instead of beginning your investigations at once, you delayed until the police arrived almost four and twenty hours later, and you yourself probably never noticed it. . . . Only those magistrates who already know who the criminal is can delay in that way. . . . The criminal was known to you. . . . Further,—Olga did not mention the name of the murderer because he was dear to her. . . . If her husband had been the murderer she would have named him. If she had been capable of informing against him to her lover the Count, it would not have cost her anything to accuse him of murder: she did not love him, and he was not dear to her. . . . She loved you, and it was just you, who were dear to her . . . she wanted to spare you. . . . Allow me to ask why did you delay asking her a straight question when she regained consciousness for a moment? Why did you ask her all sorts of questions that had nothing to do with the matter? Allow me to think you did this only to mark time, in order to prevent her from naming you. Then Olga dies. . . . In your novel you do not say a word about the impression that her death made on you . . . In this I see caution: you do not forget to write about the number of glasses you emptied, but such an important event as the death of “the girl in red” passes in the novel without leaving any traces. . . . Why?”

“Go on, go on. . . .”

“You made all your investigations in a most slovenly way. . . . It is hard to admit, that you, a clever and very cunning man, did not do so purposely. All your investigations remind one of a letter that is purposely written with grammatical errors. The exaggeration gives you away. . . . Why did you not examine the scene of the crime? Not because you forgot to do so, or considered it unimportant, but because you waited for the rain to wash away your traces. You write little about the examination of the servants. Consequently, Kuz'ma was not examined by you until he was caught washing his poddevka. . . . You evidently had no cause to mix him up in the affair. Why did you not question any of the guests, who had been feasting with you on the clearing? They had seen the blood stains on Urbenin, and had heard Olga's shriek,—they ought to have been examined. But you did not do it, because one of them might have remembered at his examination, that shortly before the murder you had suddenly gone into the forest and been lost. Afterwards they probably were questioned, but this circumstance had already been forgotten by them. . . .”

“Cute!” Kamyshev said, rubbing his hands; “go on, go on!”

“Is it possible that what has already been said is not enough for you? To prove conclusively that Olga was murdered by you, and no other, I must remind you that you were her lover, whom she had jilted for a man you despised! A husband can kill from jealousy. I presume a lover can do so, too. . . . Now let us advert to Kuz'ma. . . . To judge by his last interrogation, that took place on the eve of his death, he had you in his mind; you had wiped your hands on his poddevka, and you had called him a swine. . . . If it had not been you, why did you interrupt your examination at the most interesting point? Why did you not ask about the colour of the murderer's necktie, when Kuz'ma had informed you he had remembered what the colour of the necktie was? Why did you give Urbenin liberty just when Kuz'ma remembered the name of the murderer? Why not before or after? It was evident you required a man who might walk about the corridors at night. . . . And so you killed Kuz'ma, fearing that he would denounce you.”

“Well, enough!” Kamyshev said laughing. “That will do! You are in such a passion, and have grown so pale that it seems as if at any moment you might faint. Do not continue. You are right. I really did kill them.”

This was followed by a silence. I paced the room from corner to corner. Kamyshev did the same.

“I killed them!” Kamyshev continued. “You have caught the secret by the tail,—it's your good luck. Not many will have that success. Most of your readers will abuse Urbenin, and be amazed at my magisterial cleverness and acumen.”

At that moment my assistant came into my office and interrupted our conversation. Noticing that I was occupied and excited he hovered for a moment around my writing-table, looked at Kamyshev, and left the room. When he had gone Kamyshev went to the window and began to breathe on the glass.

“Eight years have passed since then,” he began again, after a short silence, “and for eight years I have borne this secret within me. But such a secret and live blood are incompatible in the same organism; it is impossible to know without punishment what the rest of mankind does not know. For all these eight years I have felt myself a martyr. It was not my conscience that tormented me, no! Conscience is a thing apart . . . and I don't pay much attention to it. It can easily be stifled by reasoning about its expansibility. When reason does not work, I smother it with wine and women. With women I have my former success,—this I only mention by the way. But I was tormented by something else. The whole time I thought it strange that people should look upon me as an ordinary man. During all these eight years not a single living soul has looked at me searchingly; it appeared strange to me that I had not to hide. A terrible secret is concealed in me, and still I walk about the streets. I go to dinner-parties. I flirt with women! For a criminal man such a position is unnatural and painful. I would not be tormented if I had to hide and dissemble. Psychosis, baten'ka! At last I was seized by a kind of passion. . . . I suddenly wanted to pour myself out in some way on everybody, to shout my secret at them all, though nobody is worth a sneeze . . . to do something like that . . . something extraordinary. And so I wrote this novel—indictment, in which only the witless will have any difficulty in recognizing me as a man with a secret. . . . There is not a page that does not give the key to the puzzle. Is that not true? You doubtless understood it at once. When I wrote it I took into consideration the standard of the average reader. . . .”

We were again disturbed. Andrey entered the room bringing two glasses of tea on a tray. . . . I hastened to send him away.

“Now it appears to be easier for me,” Kamyshev said smiling, “now you look upon me not as an ordinary man, but as a man with a secret,—and I feel myself in a natural position. . . . But. . . . However, it is already three o'clock, and somebody is waiting for me in the cab . . .”

“Stay, put down your hat. . . . You have told me what made you take up authorship, now tell me how you murdered.”

“Do you want to know that as a supplement of what you have read? Very well. I killed in a state of aberration. Nowadays people even smoke and drink tea under the influence of aberration. In your excitement you have taken up my glass instead of your own, and you smoke more than usual. . . . Life is all aberration . . . so it appears to me. . . . When I went into the wood my thoughts were far away from murder; I went there with only one object: to find Olga and to continue to sting her. . . . When I am drunk I always feel the necessity to sting. . . . I met her about two hundred paces from the clearing. . . . She was standing under a tree and looking pensively at the sky. . . . I called to her. . . . When she saw me she smiled and stretched out her arms to me. . . .

“Don't scold me, I'm so unhappy!” she said.

That evening she looked so beautiful, that I, drunk as I was, forgot everything in the world and pressed her in my arms. . . . She swore to me that she had never loved anybody but me . . . and that was true . . . she really loved me . . . and in the very midst of her assurances she suddenly took it into her head to say a horrible phrase: “How unhappy I am! If I had not got married to Urbenin, I might now have married the Count!” This phrase was like a pail of cold water for me. . . . All that was boiling in my breast bubbled over. I seized the vile little creature by the shoulder and threw her to the ground as you throw a ball. My rage reached its maximum. . . . Well. . . . I finished her. . . . I just finished her. . . . Kuz'ma's case, you understand. . . .”

I glanced at Kamyshev. On his face I could neither read repentance nor regret. “I just finished her” was said as easily as “I just had a smoke.” In my turn I also experienced a feeling of wrath and loathing. . . . I turned away.

“And Urbenin is in penal servitude?” I asked quietly.

“Yes. . . . I heard he had died on the way, but that is not certain. . . . What then?”

“What then? An innocent man is suffering and you ask ‘What then?’”

“But what am I to do? To go and confess?”

“I should think so.”

“Well, let us suppose it! . . . I have nothing against taking Urbenin's place, but I won't yield without a fight. . . . Let them take me if they want, but I won't go to them. Why did they not take me when I was in their hands? At Olga's funeral I squalled so long, and had such hysterics that even the blind must have seen the truth. . . . It's not my fault that they are stupid.”

“You are odious to me,” I said.

“That is natural. . . . I am odious to myself. . . .”

There was silence again. . . . I opened the cash-book and began mechanically to count up the numbers. . . . Kamyshev took up his hat.

“I see you are stifled while I am here,” he said. “By-the-by, don't you want to see Count Karnéev. There he is sitting in the cab!”

I went up to the window and glanced at him. . . . Sitting in the cab with his back towards us sat a small stooping figure, in a shabby hat and a faded collar. It was difficult to recognize in him one of the actors of the drama!

“I heard that Urbenin's son is living here in Moscow in the Andréev Chambers,” Kamyshev said. “I want to arrange that the Count should receive alms from him. . . . Let at least one be punished! However, I must say adieu!”

Kamyshev nodded and hastened out of the room. I sat down at the table and gave myself up to bitter thoughts.

I felt stifled.

Transcriber’s Note

This transcription follows the text of the English translation published in 1926 by Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd. (The original novel was published serially in 1884 under the title “Драма на охоте”.) The following alterations have been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous printer’s errors.

* “household gods” has been changed to “household goods” (Ch. I). * “The doctor, loved her” has been changed to “The doctor loved her” (Ch. VIII). * “Federovich” has been changed to “Fedorovich” (Ch. X). * “necesary” has been changed to “necessary” (Ch. XVI).

Additionally, nine cases of unmatched quotation marks have been restored. All other seeming errors have been left unchanged.