The local police department was not very skilful in tracking down
thieves and murderers. And it did not occupy itself much with this
ungrateful business. It had other things to think of in those
turbulent days. Instead, it turned its ill-disposed attention to
Trirodov’s educational colony--thanks to the efforts of Ostrov and his
friends and patrons.
The neighbourhood of Trirodov’s estate began to teem with detectives.
They assumed various guises, and though they employed all their
cunning to escape observation they did not succeed in fooling any one.
Of limited intelligence, they fulfilled their duties without
inspiration, tediously, greyly, and dully.
Soon the children learned to recognize the detectives. Even at a
distance they would say at the sight of a suspicious character:
“There goes a detective!”
Upon seeing him again they would say:
“There goes our detective!”
Of the uniformed police the first to make inquiries at Trirodov’s
colony was a sergeant. He was fairly drunk It happened on the same day
that Egorka returned home to his mother.
The sergeant entered the outer courtyard, the gates of which happened
to have been left open by chance. A strong smell of vodka came from
him. With the suspicious eye of an inexperienced spy he examined the
barns, the ice-cellar, and the kitchen. He wondered stupidly at the
cleanliness of the yard and the tidiness of the new buildings.
The sergeant was about to enter the kitchen in order to talk with some
one about the business on which he had been sent, when quite suddenly
he saw a young girl, one of the instructresses, Zinaida. She walked
without haste in the yard, in a white-blue costume that reached to her
knees. Zinaida had a cheerful, simple, sunburnt face. Her strong, bare
arms swung lightly as she walked. It seemed as if the graceful girl
were carried upon the earth without visible effort.
The chaste openness of her chaste body naturally aroused hideous
thoughts in the half-drunken idiot. And was it possible to be
otherwise in our dark days? Even in the tale of a poet in love with
beauty, the nudity of a chaste body calls out the judgment of
hypocrites and the rage of people with perverted imaginations, as if
it were the arrogant nudity of a prostitute. The austere virtue of
these people is attached to them externally. It cannot withstand any
kind of temptation or enticement. They know this, and cautiously guard
themselves from seduction. But in secret they console their miserable
imaginations with unclean pictures of back-street lewdness, cheap, and
regulated, and almost undangerous for their health and the welfare of
their families.
The police sergeant, upon seeing the young girl, so lightly dressed,
gave a lewd smile. His unclean desire stirred in his coarse body under
its slovenly sweaty dress. He beckoned Zinaida to him with his crooked
dirty finger and gave an idiotic laugh. He pushed his faded cap down
to the back of his head.
The young girl walked up to the police sergeant with a light easy
gait. Thus walk queens of beloved free lands, barefoot virgins crowned
with white flowers, queens of lands of which our too Parisian age does
not know.
The police sergeant whiffed his shag, vodka, and garlic at Zinaida,
and smiling lasciviously, so that the green and the yellow of his
crooked teeth showed conspicuously, he said:
“Look-a-here, my pretty girl--d’ye live here?”
Zinaida ingenuously marvelled at his red, dirty hands, at his red,
provokingly perspiring face, his big, heavy, mud-bedraggled boots, and
all those external tokens of the deformity of our poor, coarse life.
They so quickly became unused to this deformity here in the valley of
their beloved, innocent, tranquil life.
Zinaida replied with an involuntary smile:
“Yes, I live here in this colony.”
The police sergeant asked:
“Are you the cook? Or the laundress? What a nice piece of sugar-candy
you are!”
He burst into a shrill, neighing laugh, and was about to begin his
offensively affectionate tactics--he lifted his open, tawny hand, and
aimed his forefinger with a black border on a thick yellow finger-nail
towards a place where he might jab, pinch, or tickle the barefoot,
bare-armed girl. But Zinaida, smiling and frowning at the same time,
edged away from him and answered:
“I’m an instructress in this school--Zinaida Ouzlova.”
The sergeant drawled out:
“An instructress! You are fibbing!”
He did not believe at first that she was an instructress. He thought
that she was the cook, or the washerwoman, who had tucked up her dress
in order to wash, scour, or cook more conveniently; and that she was
joking with him. But after he had scrutinized her face more intently,
a face such as a cook does not have, and her hands, such as a
washerwoman does not have--he suddenly believed.
With astonishment and curiosity Zinaida eyed this strange, coarse,
offensively affectionate creature with the heavy sabre in a black
sheath dangling about his legs, and asked:
“And who are you?”
The sergeant replied with a very important air:
“I am the local police sergeant.”
He tried to look dignified.
“What is it you want here?” asked Zinaida.
The sergeant turned to her with a wink and asked:
“Now tell me, my beauty, have you a runaway boy from town here? His
mother is looking for him, and she’s notified the police. If he’s here
with you, we’ve got to return him to town.”
“Yes,” said Zinaida. “A town boy did spend a week with us here. We
sent him home only to-day. He’s very likely with his mother now.”
The sergeant smiled incredulously, and asked:
“You’re not fibbing?”
Zinaida shrugged her shoulders. She looked sternly at the man, and
said in astonishment:
“What are you saying? How is it possible to tell an untruth? And why
should I tell you an untruth?”
“How is one to tell?” growled the sergeant. “Once I begin to believe
you there are lots of things you might say.”
“I’ve told you the truth,” asserted Zinaida once more.
“Well, just be careful,” said the sergeant with dignity. “We’ll find
out all the same. You are sure you’ve returned him home?”
“Yes, home to his mother,” replied Zinaida.
“Very well, I shall report that to the Captain of the police.” He told
a lie for dignity’s sake. It was the Commissary of the police who sent
him here, and not the Captain. But it was all the same to Zinaida. She
had got quite accustomed to thinking mostly about the children and her
work. The stern reference to the police authorities did not impress
her very much.
The police sergeant left. He kept up his broad smile. He looked back
several times at the instructress. He was gay and flustered all the
way to town. His thoughts were coarse and detestable. Such are the
thoughts of the savages who take shelter in the grey expanses of our
towns--savages who hide under all sorts of masks, and who strut about
in all sorts of clothes.
Zinaida looked sadly after the police sergeant. Coarse recollections
of former days revived in her soul, now full of delicious soothings of
a different, blessed existence created by Trirodov in the quiet
coolness of the beloved wood. Then Zinaida sighed as if awakened from
a midday nightmare. She went quietly her own way.
In the course of several days Trirodov’s colony was visited by the
Commissary of the police. He comprehended and considered the chaste
world of the Prosianiya Meadows in the same way as the illiterate
sergeant. Only this consideration expressed itself in a milder form.
The Commissary of the police tried to be very amiable. He paid awkward
compliments to Trirodov and his instructresses. But when he looked at
the instructresses the Commissary smiled as detestably as the
sergeant. His small, narrow eyes, which resembled those of a Kalmyk,
became oily with pleasure. His cheeks became covered with a brick-red
ruddiness.
When the girls walked off to one side he gave a wink at Trirodov in
their direction, and said in a _sotto voce_:
“A flower garden, eh?”
Trirodov looked severely at the Commissary, who became flustered and
rather angry. He said:
“I have come to you, I’m sorry to say, on unpleasant business.”
Indeed, he came under the pretext of discussing the arrangements of
Egorka’s position. Incidentally, he hinted that the illegal opening of
Egorka’s grave might give cause to an official investigation. Trirodov
gave the Commissary a bribe and treated him to lunch. The Commissary
of the police left in high spirits.
At last Trirodov had a visit from the Captain of the police. He had a
gloomy, inaccessible look. He began quite bluntly about the illegal
digging up of Egorka’s grave. Trirodov said:
“Surely it was impossible to leave a live boy to suffocate in a
grave.”
The Captain replied in a rather austere voice:
“You should have notified the Prior of the cemetery church of your
suspicions. He would have done all there was to be done.”
“But think how much time would have been lost in going after the
priest,” said Trirodov.
The Captain, without listening, replied:
“It’s irregular. What would become of us if every one should take it
into his head to open up graves! A chap might do it to steal
something, and when he’s caught he might say that he’s heard the
corpse was alive and turning in its grave.”
“You know very well,” retorted Trirodov, “that we didn’t go there with
the object of robbery.”
But the Captain reiterated harshly and sternly:
“It’s irregular.”
Trirodov invited the Captain to dinner. The Captain’s bribe was, of
course, considerably larger than the Commissary’s. After a sumptuous
dinner and drinks, and the bribe, the Captain suddenly became softer
than wax. He began to dwell on the difficulties and annoyances of his
position. Then Trirodov mentioned the search that had been made
lately, and the beating the instructress Maria received at the police
station. The Captain flushed with embarrassment and said with some
warmth:
“Upon my honour, it didn’t depend upon me. I must follow orders. Our
new Vice-Governor--forgive the expression--is a regular butcher.
That’s how he’s made his career.”
“Is it possible to make one’s career by such means?” asked Trirodov.
The Captain spoke animatedly--and it was evident that the career of
the new Vice-Governor agitated his official heart considerably.
“The facts must be familiar to you,” he said. “He killed his friend
when he was drunk, was confined in a lunatic asylum, and how he ever
got out is beyond comprehension. With the help of patronage he was
given a position in the District Government and showed himself to be
such an asp that every one marvelled. He quickly galloped into a
councillorship. He subdued the peasants. Of course you must have heard
about it?”
“Who hasn’t heard about it?” asked Trirodov quietly.
“The newspapers have certainly published enough about him,” the
Captain continued. “Sometimes they added a trifle, but this was to his
good. It turned every one’s attention to him. He was made
Vice-Governor, and now he has redoubled his efforts, and is trying to
distinguish himself further. He has an eye on the governorship. He is
sure to go a long way. Our own Governor is on his guard on his
account. I need not tell you what a powerful arm our Governor has in
Petersburg. Nevertheless he can’t decide to thwart Ardalyon
Borisovitch.[28]”
“And yet in spite of that you....”
“Do please consider what a time we are living in,” said the Captain.
“There never was anything like it. There is such an unrest among the
peasants that may God have mercy on us. Only the other day they played
the deuce on Khavriukin’s farm. They carried away everything that
could be carried away. The muzhiks even took away all the live stock.
A pitiful case. Khavriukin is considered among the better masters in
our government. He held the peasants in the palm of his hand. And now
they’ve paid him back!”
“Howsoever it may have happened,” said Trirodov, “still you did whip
my instructress. That was rather shocking.”
“Please!” exclaimed the Captain. “I will personally ask her pardon.
Like an honest man.”
Trirodov sent for Maria. Maria came. The Captain of the police poured
out his apologies before her, and covered her sunburnt hands with
kisses. Maria was silent. Her face was pale, and her eyes were aflame
with anger.
The Captain thought cautiously:
“Such a woman would not stop at murder.”
He made haste to take his leave.