“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Now, I said, I see why a train went off the rails last year … I understand!”
“That’s what you get educated for, so you’ll understand, most merciful judges … The Lord knew who to give understanding to … And here you’ve considered how and what, but a watchman’s the same as a peasant, he’s got no understanding, he just grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags you off… Reason first, and then drag! Like they say—peasant head, peasant thoughts … Write this down, too, Your Honor, that he hit me twice in the teeth and the chest.”
“When they searched your place, they found a second nut … When and where did you unscrew it?”
“You mean the one that was under the little red trunk?”
“I don’t know where it was, I only know they found it. When did you unscrew it?”
“I didn’t unscrew it, it was Ignashka, the son of one-eyed Semyon, gave it to me. I mean the one that was under the little trunk, and the one that was in the sledge in the yard I unscrewed along with Mitrofan.”
“Which Mitrofan?”
“Mitrofan Petrov … You’ve never heard of him? He makes nets and sells them to the gentry. He needs a lot of these same nuts. Reckon maybe a dozen for each net …”
“Listen … Article one thousand and eighty-one of the Criminal Code says that any deliberate damage to the railways, in case it endangers the transport availing itself of those railways, and with the perpetrator’s knowledge that the consequences thereof will be an accident—understand? knowledge! And you couldn’t help knowing what this unscrewing would lead to—will be punishable by a term at hard labor.”
“Of course, you know best … We’re ignorant folk … what do we understand?”
“You understand everything! You’re lying and dissembling!”
“Why lie? Ask in the village, if you don’t believe me … Without a sinker you only get bleak. You won’t even get gudgeon, the worst of the lot, without a sinker.”
“Next you’ll be talking about gobies again!” the magistrate smiles.
“We’ve got no gobies here … If we fish on top without a sinker, using butterflies for bait, we get chub, and even that’s rare.”
“Well, be quiet …”
Silence ensues. Denis shifts from one foot to the other, stares at the table covered with green baize, and blinks his eyes strenuously, as if what he sees before him is not baize but the sun. The magistrate is writing rapidly.
“Can I go?” asks Denis, after some silence.
“No. I must put you under arrest and send you to prison.”
Denis stops blinking and, raising his thick eyebrows, looks questioningly at the official.
“That is, how do you mean—to prison? Your Honor! I haven’t got time, I have to go to the fair, and also get three roubles from Yegor for the lard …”
“Quiet, don’t disturb me …”
“To prison … If it was for something, I’d go, but like this … for a fleabite … Why? Seems I didn’t steal, I didn’t fight … And if you’ve got doubts about the arrears, Your Honor, don’t believe the headman … Better ask mister permanent member … An ungodly fellow, that headman …”
“Quiet!”
“I’m quiet as it is …” mutters Denis. “I’ll swear an oath the headman’s accounts are a pack of lies … We’re three brothers: Kuzma Grigoriev, that is, and Yegor Grigoriev, and me, Denis Grigoriev…”
“You’re disturbing me … Hey, Semyon!” shouts the magistrate. “Take him away!”
“We’re three brothers,” mutters Denis, as two stalwart soldiers take him and lead him from the chamber. “Brother’s not answerable for brother. Kuzma doesn’t pay and you, Denis, have to answer … Judges! Our late master, the general, died, may he rest in peace, otherwise he’d show you judges something … You’ve got to judge knowingly, not just anyhow… Give a whipping, even, but so as it’s for a reason, in all fairness …”
JULY 1885
PANIKHIDA
In the church of the Mother of God Hodigitria,1 the one in the village of Verkhnie Zaprudy, the morning liturgy has just ended. People have begun moving and pouring out of the church. The only one who does not stir is the shopkeeper Andrei Andreich, the Verkhnie Zaprudy intellectual and old-timer. He leans his elbow on the railing of the choir to the right and waits. His clean-shaven, fat face, bumpy from former pimples, on this occasion expresses two opposite feelings: humility before inscrutable destiny, and a dumb, boundless haughtiness before all those passing kaftans and motley kerchiefs. He is smartly dressed for Sunday. He is wearing a flannel coat with yellow ivory buttons, dark blue, straight-legged trousers, and stout galoshes, the same huge, clumsy galoshes that are met with only on the feet of people who are positive, sensible, and have firm religious convictions.
His swollen, lazy eyes are turned to the iconostasis.2 He sees the long-familiar faces of the saints, the caretaker Matvei puffing his cheeks to blow out the candles, the darkened icon stands, the worn rug, the beadle Lopukhov, who rushes from the sanctuary and brings the warden a prosphora3 … All this he has seen over and over again, like his own five fingers … One thing, however, is somewhat strange and unusual: Father Grigory is standing by the north door, still in his vestments, blinking angrily with his thick eyebrows.
“Who is he blinking at, God be with him?” thinks the shopkeeper. “Ah, now he’s beckoning with his finger! And, mercy me, stamping his foot … Holy Mother, what a thing! Who is it at?”
Andrei Andreich turns around and sees that the church is already quite empty There are about a dozen people
