At the bottom of the manuscript there is written:
Dear Sir, Mr. Editor! I beg you to publish the novel (or story, if
you prefer it) which I submit to you herewith, as far as possible,
in its entirety, without abridgment, cuts or additions. However,
changes can be made with the consent of the author. In case you find
it unsuitable I beg you to keep the MSS. to be returned. My address
(temporary) is Moscow in the Anglia Chambers, on the Tverskoy Ivan
Petrovich Kamyshev. P.S.—The fee is at the discretion of the Editor.
Year and date.
Now that the reader has become acquainted with Kamyshev's novel I will
continue my interrupted talk with him. First of all, I must inform the
reader that the promise I made to him in the beginning of this novel
has not been kept: Kamyshev's novel has not been printed without
omissions, not _in toto_, as I promised, but it is considerably
shortened. The fact is, that the “Shooting Party” could not be printed
in the newspaper which was mentioned in the first chapter of this
work, the newspaper ceased to exist when the manuscript was sent to
press. The present editorial board, in accepting Kamyshev's novel,
found it impossible to publish it without cuts. During the time it was
appearing, every chapter that was sent to me in proof was accompanied
by the request to “make changes.” However, not wishing to take on my
soul the sin of changing another man's work, I found it better and
more profitable to leave out whole passages rather than to make
changes of unsuitable places. With my assent the editor left out many
places that shocked by their cynicism, length, or the carelessness of
their literary style. These omissions and cuts demanded both care and
time, which is the cause that many chapters were late. Among other
passages we left out two descriptions of nocturnal orgies. One of
these orgies took place in the Count's house, the other on the lake.
We also left out a description of Polycarp's library and of the
original manner in which he read; this passage was found too much
drawn out and exaggerated.
The chapter I stood up for most of all and which the editor chiefly
disliked was one in which the desperate card gambling that was the
rage among the Count's servants was minutely described. The most
passionate gamblers were the gardener Franz and the old woman
nicknamed the Scops-Owl. While Kamyshev was conducting the
investigations he passed by one of the summer-houses, and looking in
he saw mad play going on; the players were the Scops-Owl, Franz
and—Pshekhotsky. They were playing “Stukolka,” at twenty kopeck points
and a fine that reached thirty roubles. Kamyshev joined the players
and “cleared them out” as if they had been partridges. Franz, who had
lost everything but wished to continue, went to the island where he
had hidden his money. Kamyshev followed him, marked where he had
concealed his money, and afterwards robbed the gardener, not leaving a
kopeck in his hoard. The money he had taken he gave to the fisherman
Mikhey. This strange charity admirably characterizes this hare-brained
magistrate, but it is written so carelessly and the conversation of
the gamblers glitters with such pearls of obscenity that the editor
would not even consent to have alterations made.
The description of certain meetings of Olga and Kamyshev are omitted;
an explanation between him and Nadenka Kalinin, etc., etc., are also
left out. But I think what is printed is sufficient to characterize my
hero. _Sapienti sat_. . . .
Exactly three months later the door-keeper Andrey announced the
arrival of the gentleman “with the cockade.”
“Ask him in!” I said.
Kamyshev entered, the same rosy-cheeked, handsome and healthy man he
had been three months before. His steps, as formerly, were
noiseless. . . . He put down his hat on the window with so much care
that one might have imagined that he had deposited something
heavy. . . . Out of his eyes there shone, as before, something
childlike and infinitely good-natured.
“I am again troubling you!” he began smiling, and he sat down
carefully. “For God's sake, forgive me! Well, what? What sentence has
been passed on my manuscript?”
“Guilty, but deserving of indulgence,” I replied.
Kamyshev laughed and blew his nose in a scented handkerchief.
“Consequently, banishment into the flames of the fireplace?” he asked.
“No, why such strictness? It does not merit punitive measures; we will
employ a corrective treatment.”
“Must it be corrected?”
“Yes, certain things. . . . By mutual consent. . . .”
We were silent for a quarter of a minute. I had terrible palpitations
of the heart and my temples throbbed, but to show that I was agitated
did not enter into my plans.
“By mutual consent,” I repeated. “Last time you told me that you had
taken the subject of your novel from real occurrences.”
“Yes, and I am ready to confirm it now. If you have read my novel, may
I have the honour of introducing myself as Zinov'ev.”
“Consequently, you were best-man at Olga Nikolaevna's wedding.”
“Both best-man and friend of the house. Am I not sympathetic in this
manuscript?” Kamyshev laughed, stroked his knees and got very red. “A
fine fellow, eh? I ought to have been flogged, but there was nobody to
do it.”
“So, sir. . . . I liked your novel: it is better and more interesting
than most novels of crimes. Only by mutual consent you and I must make
some essential changes in it.”
“That's possible. For example, what do you consider requires change?”
“The very _habitus_ of the novel, its character. It has, as in all
novels treating of crimes, everything: crime, evidence, an inquest,
even fifteen years' penal servitude as a dessert, but the most
essential thing is lacking.”
“What is that?”
“The real culprit is not in it. . . .”
Kamyshev made large eyes and rose.
“Candidly speaking, I don't understand you,” he said after a short
pause. “If you do not consider the man who commits murder and
strangles a real culprit, then. . . . I don't know who ought to be
considered culpable. Criminals are, of course, the product of society,
and society is guilty, but. . . . if one is to devote oneself to the
higher considerations one must cease writing novels and write
reports.”
“Akh, what sort of higher considerations are there here! It was not
Urbenin who committed the murder!”
“How so?” Kamyshev asked, approaching nearer to me.
“Not Urbenin!”
“Perhaps. _Errare humanum est_—and magistrates are not perfect: there
are often errors of justice under the moon. You consider that we were
mistaken?”
“No, you did not make a mistake; you wished to make a mistake.”
“Forgive me, I again do not understand,” and Kamyshev smiled: “If you
find that the inquest led to a mistake, and even, if I understand you
right, to a premeditated mistake, it would be interesting to know your
point of view. Who was the murderer in your opinion?”
“You!”
Kamyshev looked at me with astonishment, almost with terror, grew very
red and stepped back. Then turning away, he went to the window and
began to laugh.
“Here's a nice go!” he muttered, breathing on the glass and nervously
drawing figures on it.
I watched his hand as he drew, and it appeared to me that I recognized
in it the only iron, muscular hand that, with a single effort, would
have been able to strangle sleeping Kuz'ma, or mangle Olga's frail
body. The thought that I saw before me a murderer filled my soul with
unwonted feelings of horror and fear. . . . not for myself—no!—but for
him, for this handsome and graceful giant. . . . in general for
man. . . .
“You murdered them!” I repeated.
“If you are not joking, allow me to congratulate you on the
discovery,” Kamyshev said laughing, but still not looking at me:
“However, judging by your trembling voice, and your paleness, it is
difficult to suppose that you are joking. What a nervous man you are!”
Kamyshev turned his flushed face towards me and, forcing himself to
smile, he continued:
“It is interesting how such an idea could have come into your head!
Have I written something like that in my novel? By God, that's
interesting. . . . Tell me, please! It really is interesting once in a
lifetime to try what it feels like to be looked upon as a murderer.”
“You are a murderer,” I said, “and you are not able to hide it. In the
novel you lied, and now you are proving yourself but a poor actor.”
“This is really quite interesting; upon my word, it would be curious
to hear. . . .”
“If you are curious, then listen.”
I jumped up and began walking about the room in great agitation.
Kamyshev looked out of the door and closed it tight. By this
precaution he gave himself away.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
Kamyshev became confused, coughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“I'm not afraid of anything, I only. . . . only looked—looked out of
the door. So you wanted this too! Well, now tell me!”
“May I put you some questions?”
“As many as you like.”
“I warn you that I am no magistrate, and I am no master in
cross-examination; do not expect order or system, and therefore please
do not disconcert or puzzle me. First tell me where you disappeared
after you had left the clearing on which the shooting party was
feasting?”
“In the novel it is mentioned: I went home.”
“In the novel the description of the way you went is carefully
effaced. Did you not go through the forest?”
“Yes.”
“Consequently, you could have met Olga?”
“Yes, I could,” Kamyshev said smiling.
“And you met her.”
“No, I did not meet her.”
“In your investigations you forgot to question one very important
witness, and that was yourself. . . . Did you hear the shriek of the
victim?”
“No. . . . Well, baten'ka,* you don't know how to cross-examine at
all.”
* The diminutive of otets—father, a very familiar form of address.
This familiar baten'ka jarred on me; it accorded but ill with the
apologies and the disconcertion with which our conversation had begun.
Soon I noticed that Kamyshev looked upon me with condescension,—from
above—and almost with admiration of my inexperience in extricating
myself from the number of questions that were troubling me.
“Let us admit that you did not meet Olga in the forest,” I continued,
“though it was more difficult for Urbenin to meet Olga than for you,
as Urbenin did not know she was in the forest, and, therefore, did not
look for her, while you, being drunk and maddened would probably have
looked for her. You certainly did look for her, otherwise what would
be your object in going home through the forest instead of by the
road? . . . But let us admit that you did not meet her. . . . How is
your gloomy, your almost mad frame of mind, in the evening of the
ill-fated day, to be explained? What induced you to kill the parrot,
who cried out about the husband who killed his wife? I think he
reminded you of your own evil deed. That night you were summoned to
the Count's house, and instead of beginning your investigations at
once, you delayed until the police arrived almost four and twenty
hours later, and you yourself probably never noticed it. . . . Only
those magistrates who already know who the criminal is can delay in
that way. . . . The criminal was known to you. . . . Further,—Olga did
not mention the name of the murderer because he was dear to her. . . .
If her husband had been the murderer she would have named him. If she
had been capable of informing against him to her lover the Count, it
would not have cost her anything to accuse him of murder: she did not
love him, and he was not dear to her. . . . She loved you, and it was
just you, who were dear to her . . . she wanted to spare you. . . .
Allow me to ask why did you delay asking her a straight question when
she regained consciousness for a moment? Why did you ask her all sorts
of questions that had nothing to do with the matter? Allow me to think
you did this only to mark time, in order to prevent her from naming
you. Then Olga dies. . . . In your novel you do not say a word about
the impression that her death made on you . . . In this I see
caution: you do not forget to write about the number of glasses you
emptied, but such an important event as the death of “the girl in red”
passes in the novel without leaving any traces. . . . Why?”
“Go on, go on. . . .”
“You made all your investigations in a most slovenly way. . . . It is
hard to admit, that you, a clever and very cunning man, did not do so
purposely. All your investigations remind one of a letter that is
purposely written with grammatical errors. The exaggeration gives you
away. . . . Why did you not examine the scene of the crime? Not
because you forgot to do so, or considered it unimportant, but because
you waited for the rain to wash away your traces. You write little
about the examination of the servants. Consequently, Kuz'ma was not
examined by you until he was caught washing his poddevka. . . . You
evidently had no cause to mix him up in the affair. Why did you not
question any of the guests, who had been feasting with you on the
clearing? They had seen the blood stains on Urbenin, and had heard
Olga's shriek,—they ought to have been examined. But you did not do
it, because one of them might have remembered at his examination, that
shortly before the murder you had suddenly gone into the forest and
been lost. Afterwards they probably were questioned, but this
circumstance had already been forgotten by them. . . .”
“Cute!” Kamyshev said, rubbing his hands; “go on, go on!”
“Is it possible that what has already been said is not enough for you?
To prove conclusively that Olga was murdered by you, and no other, I
must remind you that you were her lover, whom she had jilted for a man
you despised! A husband can kill from jealousy. I presume a lover can
do so, too. . . . Now let us advert to Kuz'ma. . . . To judge by his
last interrogation, that took place on the eve of his death, he had
you in his mind; you had wiped your hands on his poddevka, and you had
called him a swine. . . . If it had not been you, why did you
interrupt your examination at the most interesting point? Why did you
not ask about the colour of the murderer's necktie, when Kuz'ma had
informed you he had remembered what the colour of the necktie was? Why
did you give Urbenin liberty just when Kuz'ma remembered the name of
the murderer? Why not before or after? It was evident you required a
man who might walk about the corridors at night. . . . And so you
killed Kuz'ma, fearing that he would denounce you.”
“Well, enough!” Kamyshev said laughing. “That will do! You are in such
a passion, and have grown so pale that it seems as if at any moment
you might faint. Do not continue. You are right. I really did kill
them.”
This was followed by a silence. I paced the room from corner to
corner. Kamyshev did the same.
“I killed them!” Kamyshev continued. “You have caught the secret by
the tail,—it's your good luck. Not many will have that success. Most
of your readers will abuse Urbenin, and be amazed at my magisterial
cleverness and acumen.”
At that moment my assistant came into my office and interrupted our
conversation. Noticing that I was occupied and excited he hovered for
a moment around my writing-table, looked at Kamyshev, and left the
room. When he had gone Kamyshev went to the window and began to
breathe on the glass.
“Eight years have passed since then,” he began again, after a short
silence, “and for eight years I have borne this secret within me. But
such a secret and live blood are incompatible in the same organism; it
is impossible to know without punishment what the rest of mankind does
not know. For all these eight years I have felt myself a martyr. It
was not my conscience that tormented me, no! Conscience is a thing
apart . . . and I don't pay much attention to it. It can easily be
stifled by reasoning about its expansibility. When reason does not
work, I smother it with wine and women. With women I have my former
success,—this I only mention by the way. But I was tormented by
something else. The whole time I thought it strange that people should
look upon me as an ordinary man. During all these eight years not a
single living soul has looked at me searchingly; it appeared strange
to me that I had not to hide. A terrible secret is concealed in me,
and still I walk about the streets. I go to dinner-parties. I flirt
with women! For a criminal man such a position is unnatural and
painful. I would not be tormented if I had to hide and dissemble.
Psychosis, baten'ka! At last I was seized by a kind of passion. . . .
I suddenly wanted to pour myself out in some way on everybody, to
shout my secret at them all, though nobody is worth a sneeze . . . to
do something like that . . . something extraordinary. And so I wrote
this novel—indictment, in which only the witless will have any
difficulty in recognizing me as a man with a secret. . . . There is
not a page that does not give the key to the puzzle. Is that not true?
You doubtless understood it at once. When I wrote it I took into
consideration the standard of the average reader. . . .”
We were again disturbed. Andrey entered the room bringing two glasses
of tea on a tray. . . . I hastened to send him away.
“Now it appears to be easier for me,” Kamyshev said smiling, “now you
look upon me not as an ordinary man, but as a man with a secret,—and I
feel myself in a natural position. . . . But. . . . However, it is
already three o'clock, and somebody is waiting for me in the
cab . . .”
“Stay, put down your hat. . . . You have told me what made you take up
authorship, now tell me how you murdered.”
“Do you want to know that as a supplement of what you have read? Very
well. I killed in a state of aberration. Nowadays people even smoke
and drink tea under the influence of aberration. In your excitement
you have taken up my glass instead of your own, and you smoke more
than usual. . . . Life is all aberration . . . so it appears to
me. . . . When I went into the wood my thoughts were far away from
murder; I went there with only one object: to find Olga and to
continue to sting her. . . . When I am drunk I always feel the
necessity to sting. . . . I met her about two hundred paces from the
clearing. . . . She was standing under a tree and looking pensively at
the sky. . . . I called to her. . . . When she saw me she smiled and
stretched out her arms to me. . . .
“Don't scold me, I'm so unhappy!” she said.
That evening she looked so beautiful, that I, drunk as I was, forgot
everything in the world and pressed her in my arms. . . . She swore to
me that she had never loved anybody but me . . . and that was true
. . . she really loved me . . . and in the very midst of her
assurances she suddenly took it into her head to say a horrible
phrase: “How unhappy I am! If I had not got married to Urbenin, I
might now have married the Count!” This phrase was like a pail of cold
water for me. . . . All that was boiling in my breast bubbled over. I
seized the vile little creature by the shoulder and threw her to the
ground as you throw a ball. My rage reached its maximum. . . .
Well. . . . I finished her. . . . I just finished her. . . . Kuz'ma's
case, you understand. . . .”
I glanced at Kamyshev. On his face I could neither read repentance nor
regret. “I just finished her” was said as easily as “I just had a
smoke.” In my turn I also experienced a feeling of wrath and
loathing. . . . I turned away.
“And Urbenin is in penal servitude?” I asked quietly.
“Yes. . . . I heard he had died on the way, but that is not
certain. . . . What then?”
“What then? An innocent man is suffering and you ask ‘What then?’”
“But what am I to do? To go and confess?”
“I should think so.”
“Well, let us suppose it! . . . I have nothing against taking
Urbenin's place, but I won't yield without a fight. . . . Let them
take me if they want, but I won't go to them. Why did they not take me
when I was in their hands? At Olga's funeral I squalled so long, and
had such hysterics that even the blind must have seen the truth. . . .
It's not my fault that they are stupid.”
“You are odious to me,” I said.
“That is natural. . . . I am odious to myself. . . .”
There was silence again. . . . I opened the cash-book and began
mechanically to count up the numbers. . . . Kamyshev took up his hat.
“I see you are stifled while I am here,” he said. “By-the-by, don't
you want to see Count Karnéev. There he is sitting in the cab!”
I went up to the window and glanced at him. . . . Sitting in the cab
with his back towards us sat a small stooping figure, in a shabby hat
and a faded collar. It was difficult to recognize in him one of the
actors of the drama!
“I heard that Urbenin's son is living here in Moscow in the Andréev
Chambers,” Kamyshev said. “I want to arrange that the Count should
receive alms from him. . . . Let at least one be punished! However, I
must say adieu!”
Kamyshev nodded and hastened out of the room. I sat down at the table
and gave myself up to bitter thoughts.