On an April day of the year 1880 the doorkeeper Andrey came into my
private room and told me in a mysterious whisper that a gentleman had
come to the editorial office and demanded insistently to see the
editor.
“He appears to be a chinovnik,”* Andrey added. “He has a
cockade. . . .”
* A government official.
“Ask him to come another time,” I said, “I am busy to-day. Tell him
the editor only receives on Saturdays.”
“He was here the day before yesterday and asked for you. He says his
business is urgent. He begs, almost with tears in his eyes, to see
you. He says he is not free on Saturday. . . . Will you receive him?”
I sighed, laid down my pen, and settled myself in my chair to receive
the gentleman with the cockade. Young authors, and in general
everybody who is not initiated into the secrets of the profession, are
generally so overcome by holy awe at the words “editorial office” that
they make you wait a considerable time for them. After the editor's
“Show him in,” they cough and blow their noses for a long time, open
the door very slowly, come into the room still more slowly, and thus
rob you of no little time. The gentleman with the cockade did not make
me wait. The door had scarcely had time to close after Andrey before I
saw in my office a tall, broad-shouldered man holding a paper parcel
in one hand and a cap with a cockade in the other.
This man, who had succeeded in obtaining an interview with me, plays a
very prominent part in my story. It is necessary to describe his
appearance.
He was, as I have already said, tall and broad-shouldered and as
vigorous as a fine cart horse. His whole body seemed to exhale health
and strength. His face was rosy, his hands large, his chest broad and
as muscular as a strong boy's. He was over forty. He was dressed with
taste, according to the last fashion, in a new tweed suit, evidently
just come from the tailor's. A thick gold watch-chain with breloques
hung across his chest, and on his little finger a diamond ring
sparkled with brilliant tiny stars. But, what is most important, and
so essential to the hero of a novel or story, with the slightest
pretension to respectability, is that he was extremely handsome. I am
neither a woman nor an artist. I have but little understanding of
manly beauty, but the appearance of the gentleman with the cockade
made an impression on me. His large muscular face remained for ever
impressed on my memory. On that face you could see a real Greek nose
with a slight hook, thin lips and nice blue eyes from which shone
goodness and something else, for which it is difficult to find an
appropriate name. That “something” can be seen in the eyes of little
animals when they are sad or ill. Something imploring, childish,
resignedly suffering. . . . Cunning or very clever people never have
such eyes.
His whole face seemed to breathe candour, a broad, simple nature, and
truth. . . . If it be not a falsehood that the face is the mirror of
the soul, I could have sworn from the very first day of my
acquaintance with the gentleman with the cockade that he was unable to
lie. I might even have betted that he could not lie. Whether I should
have lost my bet or not, the reader will see further on.
His chestnut hair and beard were thick and soft as silk. It is often
said that soft hair is the sign of a sweet, sensitive, “silken” soul.
Criminals and wicked obstinate characters have, in most cases, harsh
hair. If this be true or not the reader will also see further on.
Neither the expression of his face, nor the softness of his beard was
as soft and delicate in this gentleman with the cockade as the
movements of his huge form. These movements seemed to denote
education, lightness, grace, and if you will forgive the expression,
something womanly. It would cause my hero but a slight effort to bend
a horseshoe or to flatten out a tin sardine box, with his fist and at
the same time not one of his movements showed his physical strength.
He took hold of the door handle or of his hat, as if they were
butterflies—delicately, carefully, hardly touching them with his
fingers. He walked noiselessly, he pressed my hand feebly. When
looking at him you forgot that he was as strong as Goliath, and that
he could lift with one hand weights that five men like our office
servant Andrey could not have moved. Looking at his light movements,
it was impossible to believe that he was strong and heavy. Spencer
might have called him a model of grace.
When he entered my office he became confused. His delicate, sensitive
nature was probably shocked by my frowning, dissatisfied face.
“For God's sake forgive me!” he began in a soft, mellow baritone
voice. “I have broken in upon you not at the appointed time, and I
have forced you to make an exception for me. You are very busy! But,
Mr. Editor, you see, this is how the case stands. To-morrow I must
start for Odessa on very important business. . . . If I had been able
to put off this journey till Saturday, I can assure you I would not
have asked you to make this exception for me. I submit to rules
because I love order. . . .”
“How much he talks!” I thought as I stretched out my hand towards the
pen, showing by this movement I was pressed for time. (I was terribly
bored by visitors just then.)
“I will only take up a moment of your time,” my hero continued in an
apologetic tone. “But first allow me to introduce myself. . . . Ivan
Petrovich Kamyshev, Bachelor of Law and former examining magistrate. I
have not the honour of belonging to the fellowship of authors,
nevertheless I appear before you from motives that are purely those of
a writer. Notwithstanding his forty years, you have before you a man
who wishes to be a beginner. . . . Better late than never!”
“Very pleased. . . . What can I do for you?”
The man wishing to be a beginner sat down and continued, looking at
the floor with his imploring eyes:
“I have brought you a short story which I would like to see published
in your journal. Mr. Editor, I will tell you quite candidly I have not
written this story to attain an author's celebrity, nor for the sake
of sweet-sounding words. I am too old for these good things. I venture
on the writer's path from purely commercial motives. . . . I want to
earn something. . . . At the present moment I have absolutely no
occupation. I was a magistrate in the S—— district for more than five
years, but I did not make a fortune, nor did I keep my innocence
either. . . .”
Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes and laughed gently.
“Service is tiresome. . . . I served and served till I was quite fed
up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing
to eat. . . . If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story,
you will do me more than a great favour. . . . You will help me. . . .
A journal is not an alms-house, nor an old-age asylum. . . . I know
that, but . . . won't you be so kind. . . .”
“He is lying,” I thought.
The breloques and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his
having written for the sake of a piece of bread. Besides, a slight
cloud passed over Kamyshev's face such as only an experienced eye can
trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.
“What is the subject of your story?” I asked.
“The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new. . . . Love
and murder. . . . But read it, you will see. . . . ‘From the Notes of
an Examining Magistrate.’ . . .”
I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to
blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:
“My story is written in the conventional style of former examining
magistrates, but . . . you will find in it facts, the truth. . . .
All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my
eyes. . . . Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.”
“The truth does not matter. . . . It is not absolutely necessary to
see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor
readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky.* They
are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the
detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining
magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of
the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?”
* A. A. Shklyarevsky was a well-known Russian author who wrote a
number of novels and tales on criminal and detective subjects in
the years 1860–80.—A. Ch.
“The Shooting Party.”
“Hm! . . . That's not serious, you know. . . . And, to be quite frank
with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite
impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.”
“Pray accept my work, . . . You say it is not serious, but . . . it
is difficult to give a title to a thing before you have seen it. . . .
Besides, is it possible you cannot admit that an examining magistrate
can write serious works?”
All this Kamyshev said stammeringly, twisting a pencil about between
his fingers and looking at his feet. He finished by blinking his eyes
and becoming exceedingly confused. I was sorry for him.
“All right, leave it,” I said. “But I can't promise that your story
will be read very soon. You will have to wait. . . .”
“How long?”
“I don't know. Look in . . . in about two to three months. . . .”
“That's pretty long. . . . But I dare not insist. . . . Let it be as
you say. . . .”
Kamyshev rose and took up his cap.
“Thank you for the audience,” he said. “I will now go home and dwell
in hope. Three months of hope! However, I am boring you. I have the
honour to bid you good-bye!”
“One word more, please,” I said as I turned over the pages of his
thick copy-book, which were written in a very small handwriting. “You
write here in the first person. . . . You therefore mean the examining
magistrate to be yourself?”
“Yes, but under another name. The part I play in this story is
somewhat scandalous. . . . It would have been awkward to give my own
name. . . . In three months, then?”
“Yes, not earlier, please. . . . Good-bye!”
The former examining magistrate bowed gallantly, turned the door
handle gingerly, and disappeared, leaving his work on my writing
table. I took up the copy-book and put it away in the table drawer.
Handsome Kamyshev's story reposed in my table drawer for two months.
One day, when leaving my office to go to the country, I remembered it
and took it with me.
When I was seated in the railway coach I opened the copy-book and
began to read from the middle. The middle interested me. That same
evening, notwithstanding my want of leisure, I read the whole story
from the beginning to the words “The End,” which were written with a
great flourish. That night I read the whole story through again, and
at sunrise I was walking about the terrace from corner to corner,
rubbing my temples as if I wanted to rub out of my head some new and
painful thoughts that had suddenly entered my mind. . . . The thoughts
were really painful, unbearably sharp. It appeared to me that I,
neither an examining magistrate nor even a psychological juryman, had
discovered the terrible secret of a man, a secret that did not concern
me in the slightest degree. I paced the terrace and tried to persuade
myself not to believe in my discovery. . . .
Kamyshev's story did not appear in my newspaper for reasons that I
will explain at the end of my talk with the reader. I shall meet the
reader once again. Now, when I am leaving him for a long time, I offer
Kamyshev's story for his perusal.
This story is not remarkable in any way. It has many lengthy passages
and many inequalities. . . . The author is too fond of effects and
strong expressions. . . . It is evident that he is writing for the
first time, his hand is unaccustomed, uneducated. Nevertheless his
narrative reads easily. There is a plot, a meaning, too, and what is
most important, it is original, very characteristic and what may be
called _sui generis_. It also possesses certain literary qualities. It
is worth reading. Here it is.