A Night in the Cemetery

EVILDOER

A short and very thin farmer, dressed in a bright-colored shirt and torn pants, stands before the court investigator. The farmer has a pock-marked and excessively hairy face. His eyes can hardly be seen from under his thick eyebrows, which give him an evil and morose look. His huge pile of messy and tangled hair completes his gloomy, spiderlike appearance.

“Your name is Dennis Grigoriev,” the interrogator begins. “Please step closer to me and answer my questions. On July seventh of this year, you were observed by the railway security guard, Mr. Ivan Akintov, while walking along the seventy-sixth kilometer of the railway to be unscrewing the nuts that fix the rails to the railway ties. Here is his deposition. He caught you while you were holding this iron nut in your hands. Is this true?”

“What did you say?”

“Did it happen in the way Mr. Akintov explained it?”

“Sure, it is true.”

“Well then, why did you unscrew this nut?”

“What? What’s up?”

“Stop asking questions. Tell me why and how you unscrewed this iron nut from the railway tracks.”

“If I did not need it, I would not have done it,” Dennis answers in a very hoarse voice, looking up at a spot somewhere high up on the ceiling.

“Then why did you take this nut?”

“Why did I take the nut? With these nuts, we make plummets for the fishing rods.”

“What do you mean by ‘we’?”

“‘We’—means common people, the folks from the Klimov village, that’s who I mean.

“Listen to me, man. Do not pretend to be an idiot. Tell me straight, why are you telling me these lies about fishing rods and plummets?”

“I have never lied in my whole life, and now you say that I am lying?” Denis winks with his eye. “Your honor, do you think that I can go fishing without a plummet? If I go fishing with live bait, how can it get to the bottom of the river without a plummet? You think I am lying.” Dennis gave a short subdued laugh. “What would happen to the live bait if it flowed on the surface of the water? All the big fish worth catching, whether perch or pike, always live near the bottom. And if the bait only floats on the surface, then only small fish are caught, like baby perch or trout. But we do not have trout, for it likes big spaces.”

“Why do you tell me stories about the lake trout?”

“Because all of the gentlemen who come to our river all fish in the same way; even the youngest boys never go fishing without a plummet. Only people who do not know anything about fishing can go without it. You can always find a stupid guy who does this.”

“Let me see if I understand you correctly. Are you telling me that you unscrewed this nut for the sole purpose of making a plummet?”

“Yes, what else? I was not going to play knuckle-bones.”

“But you can get lead for the plummet, using a bullet or a big nail of some kind.”

“You cannot just find a piece of lead on the road, you have to buy it, and the nail won’t do the trick. You cannot find anything better than the nut from the railway track, for it is heavy and already has a hole.”

“It seems to me that you are pretending to be a fool—as if you were born yesterday, or you just fell from the sky. Do not you understand what could have happened as a result of unscrewing those nuts? If the railway guard had not noticed you, then the train could have gone off its rails, causing an accident where people could have been killed. You could have killed many!”

“God save me from this, your honor. Why would I kill? Do you think that we do not believe in God, or that we are some sort of criminals? Thank God, I have lived a long life and have never killed anyone, but I never even had thoughts about doing so. Help us, holy mother; what are you talking about, dear sir?”

“Why do you think that train accidents happen on the railway? After you unscrew a couple of nuts, the rail won’t hold in its place, and an accident can occur.”

Dennis smiles as he squints his eyes at the interrogator in disbelief. “Don’t tell me this! All the guys in our village have been unscrewing nuts for years. Only now has anyone mentioned train accidents and people being killed. You would unscrew a whole section, carry the rail away, or cut a tree and put a huge log across the railway—then maybe the train would have an accident, but in this case—this is nothing, it’s just a trifle, just a nut!”

“Do you not understand that these nuts are attaching the rails to the railway ties?

“We understand this, for we do not unscrew all the nuts. We take just some, here and there, and we try to calculate how we do it, logically. We do understand.”

“About a year ago, a train fell off its rails at this location,” the interrogator comments. “ Now I understand why it happened.”

“What did you say, sir?” asks Dennis.

“Now I understand why that train had its accident.”

“You are an educated person, and so you understand everything, your honor. God gave you this understanding. But we know that the security guard is one of us, just a peasant, but he showed me no respect. He grabbed me roughly by my shirt collar and dragged me before the police. First you should talk to people, and then take action. Yes, he is a peasant with a peasant mind. You should make note, sir, that he hit me right on my jaw, and then my chest.”

“When they were searching your house, they found another nut. Where did you unscrew it from and when did you do it?”

“Are you talking about the nut that was lying under my little red chest?”

“I don’t know exactly in what part of your house it was hidden, but they found it. When did you unscrew this nut?”

“I did not unscrew it. It was John, the son of the lame Sam, who gave it to me.”

“I am talking about the second nut, the one we found in the front yard in the carriage, that we have linked to Dimitry.”

“What nut are you talking about? Who’s Dimitry? The only other place anyone can get nuts from is Mat Petrov. He makes fishing nets and sells them to the landlords. He gets lots of nuts like this every year. For each fishing net, he needs at least ten of them.”

“Listen to me. Paragraph 1081 of the criminal code says that for any damage done with malicious intent to the railway, which endangers the railway train while moving on its particular railway track, which leads to the possibility of a train accident, should be punished. You should have known about the possibility of an accident, and the punishment is that this person is to be sentenced to prison.”

“You know better, your honor. We are uneducated people. I cannot even read. How can I understand what you are talking about?”

“You understand everything. You are lying to me, you pretender.”

“How can I pretend or lie? Ask anyone in the village if you do not believe me. Without the plummet, you can go fishing only for the perch or small trout, which are worse than gudgeon, and even then you cannot catch it with the fishing rod without a plummet.”

“Then tell me more about the trout.”

“They cannot have much trout there. Sometimes we go fishing with fishing rods using butterfly as bait, then you can catch some salmon. But this rarely happens.”

Several moments of silence follow this conversation. Dennis shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He squints at the interrogator, who is quickly writing something down.

“Can I go now?” Dennis asks after a period of silence.

“No, I have to take you into custody and send you to prison.”

Dennis lifts his glance to the investigator, and says, “What do you mean you are sending me to prison? Your honor! I do not have time. I have to go to the market. I have to pay three rubles to George for the meat he took from the butcher.”

“Keep silent! Do not interfere with my work.”

“How can you take me to prison? If only I did something bad, but—for this, over nothing? I did not steal anything, and I did not beat anyone. If it’s about my not paying my debts, your honor, please do not listen to the city hall clerk. He does not know what he is talking about.

“Keep quiet.”

“I am keeping quiet.”

“Stop talking.”

Dennis mumbles under his breath, “The city hall clerk was lying in his report. There are three brothers in the family—Koozma, then George, and then me, Dennis.”

“You are interfering with my work!! Officer,” the interrogator cries out on the hall. “Take him into custody right away and deliver him to his cell.”

“There are three brothers, three of us,” Dennis mumbles as two big strong officers take him by the arm and bring his to a cell. “A brother should not be responsible for his brother’s actions. If he does not pay taxes, why should I be responsible for his actions? Hey, judge, too bad the general has died; he was a great man who would have told you how to deal with this properly. You can flog me, or beat me up, at least that way I get what I deserve for what I have done.”