IVAN MIRONOV’S murderers were brought to trial, Stepan Pelageushkine
among them. He had a heavier charge to answer than the others, all the
witnesses having stated that it was he who had smashed Ivan Mironov’s
head with a stone. Stepan concealed nothing when in court. He contented
himself with explaining that, having been robbed of his two last horses,
he had informed the police. Now it was comparatively easy at that time
to trace the horses with the help of professional thieves among the
gipsies. But the police officer would not even permit him, and no search
had been ordered.
“Nothing else could be done with such a man. He has ruined us all.”
“But why did not the others attack him. It was you alone who broke his
head open.”
“That is false. We all fell upon him. The village agreed to kill him.
I only gave the final stroke. What is the use of inflicting unnecessary
sufferings on a man?”
The judges were astonished at Stepan’s wonderful coolness in narrating
the story of his crime--how the peasants fell upon Ivan Mironov, and
how he had given the final stroke. Stepan actually did not see anything
particularly revolting in this murder. During his military service
he had been ordered on one occasion to shoot a soldier, and, now with
regard to Ivan Mironov, he saw nothing loathsome in it. “A man shot is
a dead man--that’s all. It was him to-day, it might be me to-morrow,” he
thought. Stepan was only sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, which was
a mild punishment for what he had done. His peasant’s dress was taken
away from him and put in the prison stores, and he had a prison suit and
felt boots given to him instead. Stepan had never had much respect for
the authorities, but now he became quite convinced that all the chiefs,
all the fine folk, all except the Czar--who alone had pity on the
peasants and was just--all were robbers who suck blood out of the
people. All he heard from the deported convicts, and those sentenced to
hard labour, with whom he had made friends in prisons, confirmed him
in his views. One man had been sentenced to hard labour for having
convicted his superiors of a theft; another for having struck an
official who had unjustly confiscated the property of a peasant; a third
because he forged bank notes. The well-to-do-people, the merchants,
might do whatever they chose and come to no harm; but a poor peasant,
for a trumpery reason or for none at all, was sent to prison to become
food for vermin.
He had visits from his wife while in prison. Her life without him was
miserable enough, when, to make it worse, her cottage was destroyed by
fire. She was completely ruined, and had to take to begging with her
children. His wife’s misery embittered Stepan still more. He got on very
badly with all the people in the prison; was rude to every one; and
one day he nearly killed the cook with an axe, and therefore got an
additional year in prison. In the course of that year he received the
news that his wife was dead, and that he had no longer a home.
When Stepan had finished his time in prison, he was taken to the prison
stores, and his own dress was taken down from the shelf and handed to
him.
“Where am I to go now?” he asked the prison officer, putting on his old
dress.
“Why, home.”
“I have no home. I shall have to go on the road. Robbery will not be a
pleasant occupation.”
“In that case you will soon be back here.”
“I am not so sure of that.”
And Stepan left the prison. Nevertheless he took the road to his own
place. He had nowhere else to turn.
On his way he stopped for a night’s rest in an inn that had a public bar
attached to it. The inn was kept by a fat man from the town, Vladimir,
and he knew Stepan. He knew that Stepan had been put into prison through
ill luck, and did not mind giving him shelter for the night. He was a
rich man, and had persuaded his neighbour’s wife to leave her husband
and come to live with him. She lived in his house as his wife, and
helped him in his business as well.
Stepan knew all about the innkeeper’s affairs--how he had wronged the
peasant, and how the woman who was living with him had left her husband.
He saw her now sitting at the table in a rich dress, and looking very
hot as she drank her tea. With great condescension she asked Stepan to
have tea with her. No other travellers were stopping in the inn that
night. Stepan was given a place in the kitchen where he might sleep.
Matrena--that was the woman’s name--cleared the table and went to her
room. Stepan went to lie down on the large stove in the kitchen, but
he could not sleep, and the wood splinters put on the stove to dry were
crackling under him, as he tossed from side to side. He could not help
thinking of his host’s fat paunch protruding under the belt of his
shirt, which had lost its colour from having been washed ever so many
times. Would not it be a good thing to make a good clean incision in
that paunch. And that woman, too, he thought.
One moment he would say to himself, “I had better go from here
to-morrow, bother them all!” But then again Ivan Mironov came back
to his mind, and he went on thinking of the innkeeper’s paunch and
Matrena’s white throat bathed in perspiration. “Kill I must, and it must
be both!”
He heard the cock crow for the second time.
“I must do it at once, or dawn will be here.” He had seen in the evening
before he went to bed a knife and an axe. He crawled down from the
stove, took the knife and axe, and went out of the kitchen door. At that
very moment he heard the lock of the entrance door open. The innkeeper
was going out of the house to the courtyard. It all turned out contrary
to what Stepan desired. He had no opportunity of using the knife;
he just swung the axe and split the innkeeper’s head in two. The man
tumbled down on the threshold of the door, then on the ground.
Stepan stepped into the bedroom. Matrena jumped out of bed, and remained
standing by its side. With the same axe Stepan killed her also.
Then he lighted the candle, took the money out of the desk, and left the
house.