“Oh my God.” Fyodor Fedorovich, their tenant, is still coughing behind the thin wall. “You have not only let your secondhand smoke go into my room, and mixed it with alcohol fumes, but you also want to kill me with your conversation!”
“Tell me please, dear sir, why don’t you like our conversation?” Gregory asks, raising his voice.
“Because I do not like ignorance. I think what you say is disgusting!”
“If it is disgusting to you, then do not listen. So, my dear father, many things will happen, I am telling you. You will shrug your shoulders in disbelief. But it will be too late. And over here, people are stealing money from the banks, from their offices, and from City Hall. Here you can see, someone has stolen a million here, and a hundred thousand there, and at some other place just a thousand. And this happens every day. Yes, every single day there is a bookkeeper or a cashier running down the street in a hurry!”
“So what?” the father asks.
“What do you mean by ‘so what?’ One day you will look out of the window and will see that there is nothing there—everything has been stolen! You’ll look around, and see accountants scurrying all over the city—they are running away with your own money. You’ll get alarmed, and try to get dressed—but you won’t find your pants, because they have been stolen! Here is what will happen—and you ask me ‘so what?’”
In the end, Gregory talks about the famous Mironovich case that has been making headlines in all the newspapers. The murdered body of a teenage girl was found under a bridge, and now several famous lawyers are working on this case.
“Don’t even dream about an easy life,” George says to his father. “This case won’t end for ages. Even if they find the accused guilty, and read out the verdict—my dear, this does not mean anything at all. No matter what the sentence may be—it is all seen ‘darkly through a glass.’ Imagine that Madam Semenova is guilty—then where would you put the evidence that speaks against Mironovich? Or imagine that Mironovich is guilty—then how can you acquit Semenova and Bezak? Everything is in fog, my dear.”
“It is all so mysterious and undefined that even after they read out the sentence, people will be talking about this case for decades! It is like asking—‘What is the end of the world?’ Does it exist? Yes, it exists. And what will happen after the end of the world? Another end. And what would happen after the second end? Etc. etc. That’s what this case is like. They will close the case, then reopen it and then reopen it twenty more times, but they would not find the solution but only add some more fog and mystery. Madam Semenova admitted her guilt, but tomorrow she will deny her deposition and say, ‘I do not know anything at all.’
“Then Kabichevsky, the prosecutor, would continue his efforts, he would find another dozen assistants and they would be searching, making circles around the city blocks.”
“What do you mean by ‘making circles’?”
“I mean they will continue the investigation, and finally they will wind up under the Tuchkov Bridge. And then, Mr. Oshanin, the judge, would write an official letter of inquiry asking, ‘Have you found the weights?’ and Kabichevsky would answer that they could not find the weights since they do not have good divers and a good submarine. Then they would bring in really good divers from England and a good submarine from New York. And during the search of the river bottom, they would be bugging all kinds of experts, and the experts would be making more circles around the city blocks, talking to people. The chief prosecutor would not agree with Mr. Engard, and Kabichevsky would not agree with Mr. Sorokin, and this will go on and on.
“Then they will invite a world-famous expert, Dr. Charcot, from France. He would come to the scene of the murder and say at once, ‘I cannot give you an expert opinion because I did not examine properly the spine marrow of the victim. Open up the grave and examine her, and do another autopsy,’ he would say. Then, look at the hair! This hair could not just grow on the floor by itself! They have other people’s hair. Then they would ask the expert hairdressers to come in. Then they would find out that it does not look like Mr. Monbanzon’s hair. Then things would develop faster and faster. The British divers would find not one weight, but five weights from the City Fitness Club in the Neva River. Then they would find another ten weights. They would start examining the weights, and the first question would be, where did they buy the weights? They bought them at Mr. Skokov’s hardware store. Come over and make a deposition from the store owner. They will ask, ‘Who bought the weights from you?’ He would say, ‘I do not remember.’ ‘Then, give us the list of your customers.’ The store owner would start remembering and then it would dawn upon him that one day YOU bought something from him, and he would say ‘These and these people bought some stuff from me.’ And then, among other things, there was an office worker, Mr. Semen Nianin.
“‘Then, take in Mr. Nianin into custody. Invite him for interrogation.’ There you are, dear dad, they will come and arrest you—there you are.”
The father stands up from the table, completely pale, and starts nervously pacing around the room.
“Well, well,” he says, “only God knows what you are talking about.”
“Yes, invite Mr. Nianin here, with the full subpoena. You would come there, and then Mr. Kabichevsky would pierce you through with his terrible hypnotic glance. He would pierce you through. He would ask you, ‘Where were you during the night, on that particular date?’ Then, they would compare your hair with that hair. They would invite Mr. Ivanovsky the expert—and then—there you are, you would be accused of murder!”
“But how can you say this? Everybody knows that I did not kill!”
“Everyone knows! Ha-ha! That makes no difference at all. It does not matter that you did not kill. They will start making circles around you, setting their nets around you, and you will kneel before them and make a complete deposition and say, ‘Yes, I have killed!’ There you are!
“Well, well, this is just an example, take it easy. As for me, I am not married, so if I want, tomorrow, I can go to America. And then, Mr. Kabichevsky would not find me there. Try and find me there!”
“Oh my God!” Fyodor Fedorovich is moaning from behind the wall. “I wish that they would be quiet. Hey you, devils, can you shut the hell up?”
Nianin and Gregory fall silent. The dinner is over, and they lie down on their beds. They are both scared, and thinking and rethinking about it all. Both go to bed, excited and terrified.
ASSIGNMENT
As Pavel Sergeevich recalled his promise to the editor of the weekly magazine to write “a scary Halloween story,” he sat at his desk with his eyes focused on the ceiling. Several possible ideas were brewing in his mind. After a few minutes lost in thought, accompanied by frequent forehead rubbing, he finally chose one of his ideas, a story that had happened ten years ago in the city where he was born and went to school. He stared at his desk, inhaled deeply, moved closer, and began to write.
That day, he had a few guests sitting on the couch in the room next to his study—two ladies and a university student.
The writer’s wife, Sofia Vasilievna, sat at the grand piano, shuffling musical score papers, and playing a few random chords.
“Ladies, who will accompany me on the piano?” she inquired in a complaining voice. “Nadya, will you please play for me as I sing?”
“Oh my dear, I have not played the piano for three months.”
“Oh my God, why are you so picky? If you will not play, then I will not sing! Please play, this is an easy piece!”
After a long dispute, one lady moved to sit at the piano. She hit the keys as Pavel’s wife started singing the popular song “Why Don’t You Tell Me That You Love Me?”