The Little Demon by Fyodor Sologub (reading e books .TXT) 📕

“Why?” asked Marta.

“Because you’re Sonya34 and not Marta.”

Peredonov sat down on the bench beside Marta and said:

“I have a very important piece of news.”

“What sort of news can you have?” said Vershina. “Share it with us.”

And Marta immediately envied Vershina because she had such a vast number of words to express the simple question: “What is it?”

“Guess!” said Peredonov in a morose, solemn voice.

“How can I guess what sort of news you have?” replied Vershina. “You tell us, and then we shall know what your news is.”

Peredonov felt unhappy because they did not want to try and guess his news. He sat there silently, hunched up awkwardly, dull and heavy, and looked motionlessly before him. Vershina smoked and smiled wryly, showing her dark yellow teeth.

“Why should I guess your news this way?” she said after a short silence. “Let me find it out in the cards. Marta, bring the cards here.”

Marta rose but Peredonov gruffly stopped her:

“Sit still, I don’t want them. Find out without them, but don’t bother me with the cards. But now you can’t do it at my expense. I’ll show you a trick that’ll make you open your mouths wide.”

Peredonov took his wallet quickly from his pocket and showed Vershina a letter in an envelope, without letting it go from his hands.

“Do you see?” he said. “Here’s the envelope. And here’s the letter.”

He took out the letter and read it slowly with a dull expression of gratified spite in his eyes. Vershina was dumbfounded. To the very last she had not believed in the Princess, but now she understood that the affair with Marta was conclusively off. She smiled wryly and said:

“Well, you’re in luck.”

Marta with an astonished and frightened face, smiled in a flustered way.

“Well, what do you think now?” said Peredonov maliciously. “You thought I was a fool, but I’ve come out best. You spoke about the envelope. Well, here’s the envelope. No, there’s no mistake about it.”

He hit the table with his fist, neither violently nor loudly⁠—and his movement and the sound of his words remained somehow strangely distant, as if he were foreign and indifferent to his own affairs.

Vershina and Marta exchanged glances in a perplexed way.

“Why are you looking at each other?” said Peredonov crossly. “There’s nothing for you to look at each other about: everything’s settled now and I shall marry Varvara. There were a lot of little girls trying to catch me here.”

Vershina sent Marta for cigarettes and Marta gladly ran from the summerhouse. She felt herself free and light-spirited as she went over the little sandy paths strewn with the bright-coloured autumn leaves. Near the house she met Vladya barefoot⁠—and she felt even gayer and more cheerful.

“He’s going to marry Varvara, that’s decided,” she said happily in a low voice as she drew her brother into the house.

In the meantime Peredonov, without waiting for Marta, abruptly took his leave.

“I have no time,” he said, “getting married is not making a pair of lapti.”35

Vershina did not detain him and said goodbye to him coldly. She was intensely vexed: until now she still had kept the frail hope that she would marry Marta to Peredonov and keep Mourin for herself. And now the last hope had vanished.

Marta caught it hot that day! That made her cry.

Peredonov left Vershina and thought he would like to smoke. He suddenly saw a policeman⁠—standing in the corner of the street, shelling dry sunflower seeds.36 Peredonov felt depressed.

“Another spy,” he thought, “they’re watching so as to have some excuse for finding fault with me.”

He did not dare to light the cigarette which he had taken from his pocket, but walked up to the policeman and asked timidly:

“Mr. Policeman, is one allowed to smoke here?”

The policeman touched his cap and inquired respectfully:

“Why do you ask me, sir?”

“A cigarette,” explained Peredonov, “may one smoke a cigarette here?”

“There’s been no law about it,” replied the policeman evasively.

“There hasn’t been any?” repeated Peredonov in a depressed voice.

“No, there hasn’t been any. We aren’t ordered to stop gentlemen from smoking, and if such a rule has been passed I don’t know about it.”

“If there hasn’t been any, then I won’t begin,” said Peredonov humbly, “I am a law-abiding person. I will even throw the cigarette away. After all, I’m a State Councillor.”

Peredonov crumpled up the cigarette and threw it on the ground, and already began to fear that he had said something inadvised, and walked rapidly home. The policeman looked after him in perplexity and at last decided that the gentleman “had had a drop too much,” and, comforted by this, recommenced his peaceful shelling of sunflower seeds.

“The street is standing up on end,” muttered Peredonov. The hill ran up a not very steep incline and then went down abruptly on the other side. At the crest of the street between two hovels was a sharp outline against the blue, melancholy evening sky. Poor life seemed to have shut herself in within these quiet narrow limits and suffered keen torments. The trees thrust their branches over the fences, they peered over and obstructed the way, and there was a taunt and menace in their whispering. A ram stood at the crossroads and looked dully at Peredonov. Suddenly the sound of bleating laughter came from round a corner; Volodin appeared and went to greet Peredonov. Peredonov looked at him gloomily and thought of the ram which had been there a moment ago and had now disappeared.

“That,” he thought, “is certainly because Volodin can turn himself into a ram. He doesn’t resemble a ram for nothing, and it’s difficult to tell whether he’s laughing or bleating.”

These thoughts so preoccupied him that he did not hear what Volodin was saying to him.

“Why are you kicking me, Pavloushka?” he said dejectedly.

Volodin smiled and said bleatingly:

“I’m not kicking you, Ardalyon Borisitch, I’m shaking hands with you. It’s possible that in your village they kick with their hands, but in my