‘Hi! watchman! Come here!’ shouted Egór Mikháylovich from the porch of the office.
Efím replied to him.
‘Who was that other peasant standing with you?’
‘Dútlov.’
‘Ah! and you too, Semën! Come here!’
Having drawn near, Dútlov, by the light of a lantern the coachman was carrying, recognized Egór Mikháylovich and a short man with a cockade on his cap, dressed in a long uniform overcoat. This was the police-constable.
‘Here, this old man will come with us too,’ said Egór Mikháylovich on seeing him.
The old man felt a bit uncomfortable, but there was no getting out of it.
‘And you, Efím – you’re a bold lad! Run up into the loft where he’s hanged himself, and set the ladder straight for his honour to mount.’
Efím, who had declared that he would not go near the loft for anything in the world, now ran towards it, clattering with his bast shoes as if they were logs.
The police-officer struck a light and lit a pipe. He lived about a mile and a half off, and having just been severely reprimanded for drunkenness by his superior, was in a zealous mood. Having arrived at ten o’clock at night, he wished to view the corpse at once. Egór Mikháylovich asked Dútlov how he came to be there. On the way Dútlov told the steward about the money he had found and what the lady had done, and said he was coming to ask Egór Mikháylovich’s sanction. To Dútlov’s horror the steward asked for the envelope and examined it. The police-constable even took the envelope in his hand and briefly and dryly asked the details.
‘Oh dear, the money is gone!’ thought Dútlov, and began justifying himself. But the police-constable handed him back the money.
‘What a piece of luck for the clodhopper!’ he said.
‘It comes handy for him,’ said Egór Mikháylovich. ‘He’s just been taking his nephew to be conscripted, and now he’ll buy him out.’
‘Ah!’ said the policeman, and went on in front.
‘Will you buy him off – Elijah, I mean?’ asked Egór Mikháylovich.
‘How am I to buy him off? Will there be money enough? And perhaps it’s too late …’
‘Well, you know best,’ said the steward, and they both followed the police-constable.
They approached the serfs’ house, where the ill-smelling watchmen stood waiting in the passage with a lantern. Dútlov followed them. The watchmen looked guilty, perhaps because of the smell they were spreading, for they had done nothing wrong. All were silent.
‘Where is he?’ asked the police-constable.
‘Here,’ said Egór Mikháylovich in a whisper. ‘Efím,’ he added, ‘you’re a bold lad, go on in front with the lantern.’
Efím had already put a plank straight at the top of the ladder, and seemed to have lost all fear. Taking two or three steps at a time, he clambered up with a cheerful look, only turning round to light the way for the police-constable. The constable was followed by Egór Mikháylovich. When they had disappeared above, Dútlov, with one foot on the bottom step, sighed and stopped. Two or three minutes passed. The footsteps in the loft were no longer heard; they had no doubt reached the body.
‘Daddy, they want you,’ Efím called down through the opening.
Dútlov began going up. The light of the lantern showed only the upper part of the bodies of the police-constable and of Egór Mikháylovich beyond the rafters. Beyond them again someone else was standing with his back turned. It was Polikéy. Dútlov climbed over a rafter and stopped, crossing himself.
‘Turn him round, lads!’ said the police-constable.
No one stirred.
‘Efím, you’re a bold lad,’ said Egór Mikháylovich.
The ‘bold lad’ stepped across a rafter, turned Polikéy round, and stood beside him, looking with a most cheerful face now at Polikéy now at the constable, as a showman exhibiting an albino or Julia Pastrana8 looks now at the public and now at what he is exhibiting, ready to do anything the spectators may wish.
‘Turn him round again.’
Polikéy was turned round, his arms slightly swaying and his feet dragging in the sand on the floor.
‘Catch hold, and take him down.’
‘Shall we cut the rope through, your honour?’ asked Egór Mikháylovich. ‘Hand us an axe, lads!’
The watchmen and Dútlov had to be told twice before they set to, but the ‘bold lad’ handled Polikéy as he would have handled a sheep’s carcass. At last the rope was cut through and the body taken down and covered up. The police-constable said that the doctor would come next day, and dismissed them all.
XV
DÚTLOV went homeward, still moving his lips. At first he had an uncanny feeling, but it passed as he drew nearer home, and a feeling of gladness gradually penetrated his heart. In the village he heard songs and drunken voices. Dútlov never drank, and this time too he went straight home. It was late when he entered his hut. His old wife was asleep. His eldest son and grandsons were asleep on the stove, and his second son in the store-room. Elijah’s wife alone was awake, and sat on the bench bare-headed, in a dirty, working-day smock, wailing. She did not come out to meet her uncle, but only sobbed louder, lamenting her fate, when he entered. According to the old woman, she ‘lamented’ very fluently and well, taking into consideration the fact that at her age she could not have had much practice.
The old woman rose and got supper for her husband. Dútlov turned Elijah’s wife away from the table, saying: ‘That’s enough, that’s enough!’ Aksínya went away, and lying down on a bench continued to lament. The old woman put the supper on the table and afterwards silently cleared it away again. The old man did not speak either. When he had said grace he hiccuped, washed his hands, took the counting-frame from a nail in the wall, and went into the store-room. There he and the old woman spoke in whispers for a little while, and then, after she had gone away, he began counting on the frame, making the beads click. Finally he banged the lid of the chest standing there, and clambered into the space under the floor. For a long time he went on bustling about in the room and in the space below. When he came back to the living-room it was dark in the hut. The wooden splint that served for a candle had gone out. His old woman, quiet and silent in the daytime, had rolled herself up on the sleeping-bunk and filled the hut with her snoring. Elijah’s noisy young wife was also asleep, breathing quietly. She lay on the bench dressed just as she had been, and with nothing under her head for a pillow. Dútlov began to pray, then looked at Elijah’s wife, shook his head, put out the light, hiccuped again, and climbed up on the stove, where he lay down beside his little grandson. He threw down his plaited bast shoes from the stove in the dark, and lay on his back looking up at the rafter which was hardly discernible just over his head above the stove, and listening to the sounds of the cockroaches swarming along the walls, and to the sighs, the snoring, the rubbing of one foot against another, and the noise made by the cattle outside. It was a long time before he could sleep. The moon rose. It grew lighter in the hut. He could see Aksínya in her corner and something he could not make out: was it a coat his son had forgotten, or a tub the women had put there, or a man standing there? Perhaps he was drowsing, perhaps not: anyhow he began to peer into the darkness. Evidently that evil spirit who had led Polikéy to commit his awful deed and whose presence was felt that night by all the house-serfs, had stretched out his wing and reached across the village to the house in which lay the money that he had used to ruin Polikéy. At least, Dútlov felt his presence and was ill at ease. He could neither sleep nor get up. After noticing the something he could not make out, he remembered Elijah with his arms bound, and Aksínya’s face and her eloquent lamentations; and he recalled Polikéy with his swaying hands. Suddenly it seemed to the old man that someone passed by the window. ‘Who was that? Could it be the village elder coming so early with a notice?’ thought he. ‘How did he open the door?’ thought the old man, hearing a step in the passage. ‘Had the old woman not put up the bar when she went out into the passage?’ The dog began to howl in the yard and he came stepping along the passage, so the old man related afterwards, as though he were trying to find the door, then passed on and began groping along the wall, stumbled over a tub and made it clatter, and again began groping as if feeling for the latch. Now he had hold of the latch. A shiver ran down the old man’s body. Now he pulled the latch and entered in the shape of a man. Dútlov knew it was he. He wished to cross himself, but could not. He went up to the table which was covered with a cloth, and, pulling it off, threw it on the floor and began climbing onto the stove. The old man knew that he had taken the shape of Polikéy. He was showing his teeth and his hands were swinging about. He climbed up, fell on the old man’s chest, and began to strangle him.