AT the district town of N. in the cinnamon-coloured government house
in which the Zemstvo, the sessional meetings of the justices of the
peace, the Rural Board, the Liquor Board, the Military Board, and
many others sit by turns, the Circuit Court was in session on one
of the dull days of autumn. Of the above-mentioned cinnamon-coloured
house a local official had wittily observed:
"Here is Justitia, here is Policia, here is Militia--a regular
boarding school of high-born young ladies."
But, as the saying is, "Too many cooks spoil the broth," and probably
that is why the house strikes, oppresses, and overwhelms a fresh
unofficial visitor with its dismal barrack-like appearance, its
decrepit condition, and the complete absence of any kind of comfort,
external or internal. Even on the brightest spring days it seems
wrapped in a dense shade, and on clear moonlight nights, when the
trees and the little dwelling-houses merged in one blur of shadow
seem plunged in quiet slumber, it alone absurdly and inappropriately
towers, an oppressive mass of stone, above the modest landscape,
spoils the general harmony, and keeps sleepless vigil as though it
could not escape from burdensome memories of past unforgiven sins.
Inside it is like a barn and extremely unattractive. It is strange
to see how readily these elegant lawyers, members of committees,
and marshals of nobility, who in their own homes will make a scene
over the slightest fume from the stove, or stain on the floor,
resign themselves here to whirring ventilation wheels, the disgusting
smell of fumigating candles, and the filthy, forever perspiring
walls.
The sitting of the circuit court began between nine and ten. The
programme of the day was promptly entered upon, with noticeable
haste. The cases came on one after another and ended quickly, like
a church service without a choir, so that no mind could form a
complete picture of all this parti-coloured mass of faces, movements,
words, misfortunes, true sayings and lies, all racing by like a
river in flood. . . . By two o'clock a great deal had been done:
two prisoners had been sentenced to service in convict battalions,
one of the privileged class had been sentenced to deprivation of
rights and imprisonment, one had been acquitted, one case had been
adjourned.
At precisely two o'clock the presiding judge announced that the
case "of the peasant Nikolay Harlamov, charged with the murder of
his wife," would next be heard. The composition of the court remained
the same as it had been for the preceding case, except that the
place of the defending counsel was filled by a new personage, a
beardless young graduate in a coat with bright buttons. The president
gave the order--"Bring in the prisoner!"
But the prisoner, who had been got ready beforehand, was already
walking to his bench. He was a tall, thick-set peasant of about
fifty-five, completely bald, with an apathetic, hairy face and a
big red beard. He was followed by a frail-looking little soldier
with a gun.
Just as he was reaching the bench the escort had a trifling mishap.
He stumbled and dropped the gun out of his hands, but caught it at
once before it touched the ground, knocking his knee violently
against the butt end as he did so. A faint laugh was audible in the
audience. Either from the pain or perhaps from shame at his awkwardness
the soldier flushed a dark red.
After the customary questions to the prisoner, the shuffling of the
jury, the calling over and swearing in of the witnesses, the reading
of the charge began. The narrow-chested, pale-faced secretary, far
too thin for his uniform, and with sticking plaster on his check,
read it in a low, thick bass, rapidly like a sacristan, without
raising or dropping his voice, as though afraid of exerting his
lungs; he was seconded by the ventilation wheel whirring indefatigably
behind the judge's table, and the result was a sound that gave a
drowsy, narcotic character to the stillness of the hall.
The president, a short-sighted man, not old but with an extremely
exhausted face, sat in his armchair without stirring and held his
open hand near his brow as though screening his eyes from the sun.
To the droning of the ventilation wheel and the secretary he
meditated. When the secretary paused for an instant to take breath
on beginning a new page, he suddenly started and looked round at
the court with lustreless eyes, then bent down to the ear of the
judge next to him and asked with a sigh:
"Are you putting up at Demyanov's, Matvey Petrovitch?"
"Yes, at Demyanov's," answered the other, starting too.
"Next time I shall probably put up there too. It's really impossible
to put up at Tipyakov's! There's noise and uproar all night! Knocking,
coughing, children crying. . . . It's impossible!"
The assistant prosecutor, a fat, well-nourished, dark man with gold
spectacles, with a handsome, well-groomed beard, sat motionless as
a statue, with his cheek propped on his fist, reading Byron's "Cain."
His eyes were full of eager attention and his eyebrows rose higher
and higher with wonder. . . . From time to time he dropped back in
his chair, gazed without interest straight before him for a minute,
and then buried himself in his reading again. The council for the
defence moved the blunt end of his pencil about the table and mused
with his head on one side. . . . His youthful face expressed nothing
but the frigid, immovable boredom which is commonly seen on the
face of schoolboys and men on duty who are forced from day to day
to sit in the same place, to see the same faces, the same walls.
He felt no excitement about the speech he was to make, and indeed
what did that speech amount to? On instructions from his superiors
in accordance with long-established routine he would fire it off
before the jurymen, without passion or ardour, feeling that it was
colourless and boring, and then--gallop through the mud and the
rain to the station, thence to the town, shortly to receive
instructions to go off again to some district to deliver another
speech. . . . It was a bore!
At first the prisoner turned pale and coughed nervously into his
sleeve, but soon the stillness, the general monotony and boredom
infected him too. He looked with dull-witted respectfulness at the
judges' uniforms, at the weary faces of the jurymen, and blinked
calmly. The surroundings and procedure of the court, the expectation
of which had so weighed on his soul while he was awaiting them in
prison, now had the most soothing effect on him. What he met here
was not at all what he could have expected. The charge of murder
hung over him, and yet here he met with neither threatening faces
nor indignant looks nor loud phrases about retribution nor sympathy
for his extraordinary fate; not one of those who were judging him
looked at him with interest or for long. . . . The dingy windows
and walls, the voice of the secretary, the attitude of the prosecutor
were all saturated with official indifference and produced an
atmosphere of frigidity, as though the murderer were simply an
official property, or as though he were not being judged by living
men, but by some unseen machine, set going, goodness knows how or
by whom. . . .
The peasant, reassured, did not understand that the men here were
as accustomed to the dramas and tragedies of life and were as blunted
by the sight of them as hospital attendants are at the sight of
death, and that the whole horror and hopelessness of his position
lay just in this mechanical indifference. It seemed that if he were
not to sit quietly but to get up and begin beseeching, appealing
with tears for their mercy, bitterly repenting, that if he were to
die of despair--it would all be shattered against blunted nerves
and the callousness of custom, like waves against a rock.
When the secretary finished, the president for some reason passed
his hands over the table before him, looked for some time with his
eyes screwed up towards the prisoner, and then asked, speaking
languidly:
"Prisoner at the bar, do you plead guilty to having murdered your
wife on the evening of the ninth of June?"
"No, sir," answered the prisoner, getting up and holding his gown
over his chest.
After this the court proceeded hurriedly to the examination of
witnesses. Two peasant women and five men and the village policeman
who had made the enquiry were questioned. All of them, mud-bespattered,
exhausted with their long walk and waiting in the witnesses' room,
gloomy and dispirited, gave the same evidence. They testified that
Harlamov lived "well" with his old woman, like anyone else; that
he never beat her except when he had had a drop; that on the ninth
of June when the sun was setting the old woman had been found in
the porch with her skull broken; that beside her in a pool of blood
lay an axe. When they looked for Nikolay to tell him of the calamity
he was not in his hut or in the streets. They ran all over the
village, looking for him. They went to all the pothouses and huts,
but could not find him. He had disappeared, and two days later came
of his own accord to the police office, pale, with his clothes torn,
trembling all over. He was bound and put in the lock-up.
"Prisoner," said the president, addressing Harlamov, "cannot you
explain to the court where you were during the three days following
the murder?"
"I was wandering about the fields. . . . Neither eating nor drinking
. . . ."
"Why did you hide yourself, if it was not you that committed the
murder?"
"I was frightened. . . . I was afraid I might be judged guilty. . . ."
"Aha! . . . Good, sit down!"
The last to be examined was the district doctor who had made a
post-mortem on the old woman. He told the court all that he remembered
of his report at the post-mortem and all that he had succeeded in
thinking of on his way to the court that morning. The president
screwed up his eyes at his new glossy black suit, at his foppish
cravat, at his moving lips; he listened and in his mind the languid
thought seemed to spring up of itself:
"Everyone wears a short jacket nowadays, why has he had his made
long? Why long and not short?"
The circumspect creak of boots was audible behind the president's
back. It was the assistant prosecutor going up to the table to take
some papers.
"Mihail Vladimirovitch," said the assistant prosecutor, bending
down to the president's ear, "amazingly slovenly the way that
Koreisky conducted the investigation. The prisoner's brother was
not examined, the village elder was not examined, there's no making
anything out of his description of the hut. . . ."
"It can't be helped, it can't be helped," said the president, sinking
back in his chair. "He's a wreck . . . dropping to bits!"
"By the way," whispered the assistant prosecutor, "look at the
audience, in the front row, the third from the right . . . a face
like an actor's . . . that's the local Croesus. He has a fortune
of something like fifty thousand."
"Really? You wouldn't guess it from his appearance. . . . Well,
dear boy, shouldn't we have a break?"
"We will finish the case for the prosecution, and then. . . ."
"As you think best. . . . Well?" the president raised his eyes to
the doctor. "So you consider that death was instantaneous?"
"Yes, in consequence of the extent of the injury to the brain
substance. . . ."
When the doctor had finished, the president gazed into the space
between the prosecutor and the counsel for the defence and suggested:
"Have you any questions to ask?"
The assistant prosecutor shook his head negatively, without lifting
his eyes from "Cain"; the counsel for the defence unexpectedly
stirred and, clearing his throat, asked:
"Tell me, doctor, can you from the dimensions of the wound form any
theory as to . . . as to the mental condition of the criminal? That
is, I mean, does the extent of the injury justify the supposition
that the accused was suffering from temporary aberration?"
The president raised his drowsy indifferent eyes to the counsel for
the defence. The assistant prosecutor tore himself from "Cain," and
looked at the president. They merely looked, but there was no smile,
no surprise, no perplexity--their faces expressed nothing.
"Perhaps," the doctor hesitated, "if one considers the force with
which . . . er--er--er . . . the criminal strikes the blow. . . .
However, excuse me, I don't quite understand your question. . . ."
The counsel for the defence did not get an answer to his question,
and indeed he did not feel the necessity of one. It was clear even
to himself that that question had strayed into his mind and found
utterance simply through the effect of the stillness, the boredom,
the whirring ventilator wheels.
When they had got rid of the doctor the court rose to examine the
"material evidences." The first thing examined was the full-skirted
coat, upon the sleeve of which there was a dark brownish stain of
blood. Harlamov on being questioned as to the origin of the stain
stated:
"Three days before my old woman's death Penkov bled his horse. I
was there; I was helping to be sure, and . . . and got smeared with
it. . . ."
"But Penkov has just given evidence that he does not remember that
you were present at the bleeding. . . ."
"I can't tell about that."
"Sit down."
They proceeded to examine the axe with which the old woman had been
murdered.
"That's not my axe," the prisoner declared.
"Whose is it, then?"
"I can't tell . . . I hadn't an axe. . . ."
"A peasant can't get on for a day without an axe. And your neighbour
Ivan Timofeyitch, with whom you mended a sledge, has given evidence
that it is your axe. . . ."
"I can't say about that, but I swear before God (Harlamov held out
his hand before him and spread out the fingers), before the living
God. And I don't remember how long it is since I did have an axe
of my own. I did have one like that only a bit smaller, but my son
Prohor lost it. Two years before he went into the army, he drove
off to fetch wood, got drinking with the fellows, and lost it. . . ."
"Good, sit down."
This systematic distrust and disinclination to hear him probably
irritated and offended Harlamov. He blinked and red patches came
out on his cheekbones.
"I swear in the sight of God," he went on, craning his neck forward.
"If you don't believe me, be pleased to ask my son Prohor. Proshka,
what did you do with the axe?" he suddenly asked in a rough voice,
turning abruptly to the soldier escorting him. "Where is it?"
It was a painful moment! Everyone seemed to wince and as it were
shrink together. The same fearful, incredible thought flashed like
lightning through every head in the court, the thought of possibly
fatal coincidence, and not one person in the court dared to look
at the soldier's face. Everyone refused to trust his thought and
believed that he had heard wrong.
"Prisoner, conversation with the guards is forbidden . . ." the
president made haste to say.
No one saw the escort's face, and horror passed over the hall unseen
as in a mask. The usher of the court got up quietly from his place
and tiptoeing with his hand held out to balance himself went out
of the court. Half a minute later there came the muffled sounds and
footsteps that accompany the change of guard.
All raised their heads and, trying to look as though nothing had
happened, went on with their work. . . .