This unexpected eruption of one-eyed Kuz'ma into the almost finished
romance produced an entanglement that it was scarcely possible to
unravel. I was quite bewildered, and did not know how I was to
understand Kuz'ma. He denied positively any guilt; besides, the
preliminary investigations were against his guilt. Olga had been
murdered not from motives of greed, according to the doctors “it was
probable” that no attempt against her honour had been made; it was
only possible to admit that Kuz'ma had killed her and had not availed
himself of one of these reasons because he was very drunk and had lost
his reasoning powers. All this did not tally with the setting of the
murder.
But if Kuz'ma was not guilty, why had he not explained the presence of
blood on his poddevka, and why had he invented dreams and
hallucinations? Why had he implicated this gentleman, whom he had seen
and heard, but had forgotten so entirely that he could not even
remember the colour of his clothes?
Polugradov hurried back post haste.
“Now you see, sir!” he said, “if you had examined the scene of the
crime at once, believe me all would have been plain now, as plain as a
pikestaff! If you had examined all the servants at once, we could then
have known who had carried Olga Nikolaevna and who had not. And now we
can't even find out at what distance from the scene of the crime this
drunkard was lying!”
He cross-questioned Kuz'ma for about two hours, but could get nothing
new out of him; he only said that while half asleep he had seen a
gentleman, that the gentleman had wiped his hands on the skirts of his
poddevka and had sworn at him as a “drunken swine,” but he could not
say who this gentleman was, nor what his face and clothes were like.
“How much cognac did you drink?”
“I finished half a bottle.”
“Perhaps it was not cognac?”
“No, sir, it was real fine champagne.”
“So you even know the names of wines!” the Assistant Prosecutor said,
laughing.
“How should I not know them? I've served these masters for more than
thirty years, thank God! I've had time to learn. . . .”
For some reason the Assistant Prosecutor required that Kuz'ma should
be confronted with Urbenin. . . . Kuz'ma looked for a long time at
Urbenin, shook his head and said:
“No, I can't remember . . . perhaps it was Pëtr Egorych, perhaps it
was not. . . . Who can say?”
Polugradov shrugged his shoulders and drove away, leaving me to choose
which was the right one of the two murderers.
The investigations were protracted. . . . Urbenin and Kuz'ma were
imprisoned in the guard-house of the village in which I lived. Poor
Pëtr Egorych lost courage very much; he grew thin and grey and fell
into a religious mood; two or three times he sent to beg me to let him
see the laws about punishments; it was evident he was interested in
the extent of the punishment that awaited him.
“What will become of my children?” he asked me at one of the
examinations. “If I were alone your mistake would not grieve me very
much; but I must live . . . live for the children! They will perish
without me. Besides, I . . . I am not able to part from them! What
are you doing with me?”
When the guards said “thou” to him, and when he had to go a couple of
times, from my village to the town and back on foot under escort, in
the sight of all the people who knew him, he became despondent and
nervous.
“These are not jurists,” he cried so that he was heard in the whole of
the guard-house. “They are nothing but cruel, heartless boys, without
mercy either for people or truth! I know why I am confined here, I
know it! By casting the blame on me they want to hide the real
culprit! The Count killed her; and if it was not the Count, it was his
hireling!”
When he heard that Kuz'ma had been arrested, he was at first very
pleased.
“Now the hireling has been found!” he said to me. “Now he's been
found!”
But soon, when he saw he was not released and when he was informed of
Kuz'ma's testimony, he again became depressed.
“Now I'm lost,” he said, “definitely lost. In order to get out of
prison this one-eyed devil will be sure sooner or later to name me and
say it was I who wiped my hands in his skirts. But you yourself saw
that my hands had not been wiped!”
Sooner or later our suspicions would have to be elucidated.
About the end of November of that year, when snow began to drift
before my windows and the lake looked like an endless white desert,
Kuz'ma wanted to see me; he sent the guard to me to say he had
“bethought himself.” I ordered him to be brought to me.
“I am very pleased that you have at last bethought yourself,” I
greeted him. “It is high time to finish with this dissembling and this
leading us all by the nose like little children. Well, of what have
you bethought yourself?”
Kuz'ma did not answer; he stood in the middle of my room in silence,
staring at me without winking. . . . Fright shone in his eyes; his
whole person showed signs of great fright; he was pale and trembling,
and a cold perspiration poured down his face.
“Well, speak! What have you remembered?” I asked again.
“Something, so extraordinary, that nothing can be more wonderful,” he
said. “Yesterday I remembered what sort of a tie that gentleman was
wearing, and this night I was thinking and remembered his face.”
“Then who was it?”
“I'm afraid to say, your Honour; allow me not to speak: it's too
strange and wonderful; I think I must have dreamt it or imagined
it. . . .”
“Well, what have you imagined?”
“No, allow me not to speak. If I tell you, you'll condemn me. . . .
Allow me to think, and I'll tell you to-morrow. Fearful!”
“Pshaw!” I began to get angry. “Why did you trouble me if you can't
speak? Why did you come here?”
“I thought I would tell you, but now I'm afraid. No, your Honour,
please let me go. . . . I'd better tell you to-morrow. . . . If I tell
you, you'll get so angry that I'd sooner go to Siberia—you'll condemn
me. . . .”
I got angry and ordered Kuz'ma* to be taken away. In the evening of
that very day, in order not to lose time and to put an end to this
tiresome “case about the murder,” I went to the guard-house and
cheated Urbenin by telling him that Kuz'ma had named him as the
murderer.
* A fine examining magistrate! Instead of continuing the
examination and extorting the necessary evidence, he gets angry—an
occupation that does not enter into the duties of an official.
Besides, I put little trust in all this. . . . Even if M. Kamyshev
cared so little about his duties, simple, human curiosity ought to
have obliged him to continue the examination.—A. Ch.
“I expected it,” Urbenin said with a wave of his hand. “It's all one
to me. . . .”
Solitary confinement had greatly affected Urbenin's health; he had
grown yellow and had lost almost half his weight. I promised him to
order the guards to allow him to walk about the corridors in the day
and even in the night.
“There's no fear of your trying to escape,” I said.
Urbenin thanked me, and after my departure he walked about the
corridor; his door was no longer kept locked.
On leaving him I knocked at the door behind which Kuz'ma was seated.
“Well, have you bethought yourself yet?” I asked.
“No, sir,” a weak voice answered. “Let the Prosecutor come; I will
tell him, but I won't tell you.”
“As you like!”
The next morning all was settled.
The watchman Egor came running to me and informed me that one-eyed
Kuz'ma had been found in his bed dead. I hastened to the guard-house
to assure myself of the fact. The strong, big muzhik, who but the day
before was full of health and in order to get free had invented all
sorts of tales, was as stark and cold as a stone. . . . I will not
stop to describe the horror the guards and I felt; it will be
understood by the reader. Kuz'ma was precious for me both as accuser
and as witness, for the warders he was a prisoner for whose death or
flight they would be severely punished. . . . Our horror was only
increased when at the post-mortem examination it was discovered that
he had died a violent death. . . . Kuz'ma had died from
suffocation. . . . Once convinced that he had been suffocated, I began
to search for the culprit, and I had not to search long. . . . He was
near. . . .
“You scoundrel! It was not enough for you to kill your wife,” I said,
“but you must take the life of the man who convicted you! And you
continue to act your dirty, roguish comedy!”
Urbenin grew deadly pale and began to shake. . . .
“You lie!” he cried, striking himself on the breast with his fist.
“I do not lie! You shed crocodile tears at our evidence and made game
of it. . . . There were moments when I almost wished to believe you
more than our evidence. . . . Oh, you are a good actor! . . . But now
I won't believe you, even should blood flow from your eyes instead of
these play-actor's false tears! Say that you killed Kuz'ma!”
“You are either drunk or are laughing at me! Sergei Petrovich, all
patience and submissiveness has its limits; I can bear this no
longer!”
And Urbenin, with flashing eyes, struck the table with his clenched
fist.
“Yesterday I had the imprudence to give you more liberty,” I
continued, “by allowing you that which no other prisoner is allowed,
to walk about the corridors. And now it appears, out of gratitude you
went to the door of that unfortunate Kuz'ma and suffocated a sleeping
man! Do you know that you have destroyed not only Kuz'ma; the warders
will also be ruined on your account.”
“What have I done, good God?” Urbenin said, seizing hold of his head.
“Do you want the proofs? I will give them. . . . By my orders your
door was left open. . . . The foolish warders opened the door and
forgot to hide the lock. . . . All the cells are opened with the same
key. . . . In the night you took your key and going into the corridor,
you opened your neighbour's door with it. . . . Having smothered him,
you locked the door and put the key into your own lock.”
“Why should I smother him? Why?”
“Because he denounced you. . . . If yesterday I had not given you this
news, he would have been alive now. . . . It is sinful and shameful,
Pëtr Egorych!”
“Sergei Petrovich, young man,” the murderer suddenly said in a soft,
tender voice, seizing me by the hand, “you are an honest and
respectable man! Do not ruin and stain yourself with false suspicions
and over-hasty accusations! You cannot understand how cruelly and
painfully you have wounded me by casting upon my soul, which is in no
way guilty, a new accusation. . . . I am a martyr, Sergei Petrovich!
Fear to wrong a martyr! The time will come when you will have to beg
my pardon, and that time will be soon. . . . You can't really want to
accuse me! But this pardon will not satisfy you. . . . Instead of
assailing me so terribly with insults, it would have been better if in
a humane—I will not say a friendly—way (you have already renounced all
friendly relations) you had questioned me. . . . As a witness and your
assistant, I would have brought more profit to justice than in the
role of the accused. If we even take this new accusation . . . I
could tell you much. I did not sleep last night, and heard
everything.”
“What did you hear?”
“Last night, at about two o'clock . . . all was dark. . . . I heard
somebody walking about the corridor very gently, and constantly
touching my door . . . he walked and walked, and then opened my door
and came in.”
“Who was it?”
“I don't know; it was dark—I did not see. . . . He stood for about a
minute and went away again . . . exactly as you said. . . . He took
the key out of my door and opened the next cell. Two minutes later I
heard a guttural sound and then a bustle. I thought it was the warder
walking about and bustling, and the sounds I took for snores,
otherwise I would have made a noise.”
“Fables,” I said. “There was nobody here but you who could have killed
Kuz'ma. The warders were all asleep. The wife of one of them, who
could not sleep the whole night, has given evidence that all three
warders slept like dead men all the night and never left their beds
for a minute; the poor fellows did not know that such brutes could be
found in this miserable guard-house. They have been serving here for
more than twenty years, and during all that time they have never had a
single case of a prisoner having escaped, to say nothing of such an
abomination as a murder. Now, thanks to you, their life has been
turned upside down; I, too, will have to suffer on your account
because I did not send you to the town prison, and even gave you the
liberty of walking about the corridors. Thank you!”
This was my last conversation with Urbenin. I never spoke to him
again, if I do not count the two or three answers I gave to the
questions he put to me when he was seated in the dock.