A Night in the Cemetery

A CRIME: A DOUBLE MURDER CASE

A terrible crime was committed over there, in that ravine behind the woods.

It happened on the day when my father had to deliver a large amount of money to the landlord; he had fifty thousand rubles on him. Several of the local farmers were tenants, and my father had to collect and deliver the payment for their leases of this land for the last six months.

He was a God-fearing man who respected the law, never stole so much as a kopeck in his life, and never cheated anyone. So, everyone knew that he was an honest man, and the local farmers always sent him as their representative whenever anyone had to send something into the city: money, documents, whatever.

However, my father did have one weakness—he liked to drink, and every time he saw a pub or a tavern, he could not pass it by without stopping for a glass of wine. He was aware of this weakness of his, and so, whenever he had to carry other people’s money, he used to take a companion with him—either me or my little sister Anna.

To tell you the truth, this habit runs in our family. People say that vodka is the blood of Satan. Look at me—my face is always red from my own constant drinking, and I slur my words, and even though I had a pretty decent education, I have to work as a cabbie, like some sort of ignoramus.

So, my dad carried the money and my little sister Anna went with him, sitting beside him in his cart. She was seven or eight years old at the time, and she was very short and not all that bright. They got about halfway to the city without any difficulty, but as soon as he spotted Moses’ Pub, he dropped in, had a few glasses of wine, got himself drunk, and started to brag:

“Hey, you guys, look at me! I’m just a little guy, a nothing farmer, but I have a ton of money with me—all in cash. If I wanted to, I could buy this whole tavern, including Moses, his wife and kids, and the cat. I can buy anything with this money, you name it!”

He made all kinds of jokes, boasting about the money he had, and at the end he complained,

“Listen boys, it’s not so easy being rich. If you have no money, you have nothing to worry about. But if you have a lot of money, you have to take care of it, and you’ve got to be careful that nobody steals it from you.”

The pub was filled with people at the time, and most of them were drunk, but they all heard what he said. There were all kinds of people, including bums, tramps, and robbers, in this pub on that highway. All of a sudden, my dad realized that he had said too much, and he got scared. He left the pub in a hurry and went on his way. As he was reaching the forest, he could hear the sounds of a chase—several horses were galloping behind him.

“They’re after me,” my dad said to little Anna. “I should have held my tongue in that pub. I think I’m in trouble.”

He thought for a while and then he said, “They are definitely after me, that’s for sure. Here dear, Anna, take this bundle with the money and go hide in the bush. If something bad happens to me, give this money to your mother, and tell her to give it back to the farmers. Go, child, go, right across the forest, and don’t talk to anybody.”

So he gave her the money, and she hid herself in a thick bush. She saw that shortly, three riders came to her dad. One of them was a big-faced tall man in a red silk shirt, and the other two were day laborers from the railroad, the local bandits. They stopped their horses, and spoke roughly to my dad:

“Hey you, wait! Where’s the money?”

“What are you talking about? What money? Let me go!”

“The money that you’re bringing to your landlord for the leases. Give us the money, or we’re going to kill you!”

And so they started tormenting my father, and instead of asking for mercy, he was laughing and mocking them,

“Hey, you bums, get out of here! You’re a bad lot. You don’t deserve any money, just a good beating, enough to make your back ache for the next three years. Let me go, or I’ll defend myself. I have a revolver in my pocket!”

The robbers lost their patience when he said this, and they started beating him as hard as they could.

They searched him and the whole carriage, and they even took his boots; when my father went on scolding them after this, they started to torture him in other ways. Little Anna was so scared that she ran away through the thick forest. She ran for several hours, and it got dark. All by herself, deep in the forest, she was very frightened.

Suddenly she saw a little light in the distance. She went closer and saw that it was a forest ranger’s hut. She knocked at the door, and a woman opened it and let her in.

Little Anna gave her the money to keep and told her the whole story.

The old woman put her to bed to sleep.

In the middle of the night, a man came into the house.

Anna saw that this was the same tall robber in the red shirt. He said,

“Listen, wife, I think that we killed a man needlessly. We murdered him, but there was no money on him.”

My sister understood that the man in the red shirt was the forest ranger, and the woman was his wife.

“We just killed a man for nothing,” his two rugged friends said. “We have sinned, killing that guy for no reason at all.”

The forest ranger’s wife looked at them and smiled.

“Why are you laughing, you stupid old woman?”

“I’m laughing because I have not sinned, and I have not killed anyone, and yet I got all the money.”

“What money? You are a liar!”

“Look here, and then you can say whether I am a liar or not.”

The woman untied the bundle, and showed them the money, and then she told them how little Anna came to her, and what she said and all that. The killers got happy and started arguing about how to share the money; they almost started a fight, but then they sat down at the table to eat.

Little Anna lay in bed. She heard everything that they said to each other, and she was very scared. What could she do? She had learned from their conversation that her father was already dead; he was lying in the middle of the road, and she imagined that the wolves and wild dogs were eating him, and that their only horse had escaped far into the forest and was also being eaten by the wolves, and that she too would be punished and beaten by the police because she did not save the money.

When the robbers finished eating, they sent the woman for vodka and wine. They had a lot of money now, and they could afford it. So they drank and sang songs and then they sent the woman for more wine. One of them said,

“We can drink all night, until morning. We have lots of money now, and we don’t have to count our kopecks. Go ahead, drink like a fish!”

By midnight, they were thoroughly trashed. The woman had just been sent to fetch more wine, for the third time. The forest ranger stood up and paced across the room, trying to keep his balance.

“Listen, boys, we have to deal with that little girl somehow. We’ve got to get rid of her. If we leave her here, she’ll be the first one to turn us in.”

Their discussion was short. Anna could not be allowed to live. She should be stabbed. And yet, it is not so easy to take a butcher knife to a sleeping child—only a drunk or a madman can do this. The argument about who should kill her lasted for almost an hour. They almost started another fight; no one would agree to do it, and they ended up casting lots. It fell to the forest ranger. He downed another glass of vodka, heaved a deep sigh, stood up, and went outside to find his axe.

But little Anna was not so stupid. Maybe she was a bit slow at that age, but this time she did a smart thing. Maybe it was God who gave her this idea, or maybe you just get smart if your life depends on it.

She stood up quietly from the bed, took the fur coat that the forest ranger’s wife had given to her, and covered their daughter who lay next to her on the bed with this coat. Quietly, she took the other girl’s cardigan and put it on. Then, she pulled the hood over her head and face and walked across the room, past the two drunken labourers, and outside. They thought that she was the forest ranger’s daughter and they never gave her a second glance. She was lucky that the woman was out at the moment—she had gone for more wine; she would have known whether it was her daughter or not.

As soon as little Anna got outside, she started running as fast as she could into the forest. She wandered all night, but in the dawn’s gray twilight, she found the highway and started running along the edge.

She was lucky this time—George, the town clerk, God bless his soul, was going fishing, walking the other way with his fishing rods. Anna told him everything that she had seen that night. Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned around and ran back to the village. He gathered a group of farmers, and they hurried to the forest ranger’s hut.

When they got there, they found all four of them passed out drunk, lying on the floor asleep, including the woman. First, the farmers searched them all and retrieved the money—but when they looked at the little bed behind the fireplace—oh, Holy God!

The forest ranger’s daughter was lying there on the wooden cot, covered with a fur coat, but her head was splattered with blood—they had killed her with an axe. The farmers woke up the three drunken men and the woman, tied their hands behind them, and brought them to the police station.

The woman was crying out loud and moaning, and the forest ranger’s head was nodding and bobbing wildly; he kept saying,

“What a hangover, boys! Can I have a drink? I have a headache.”

There was on open court session in town, and they all got heavy sentences, exactly what they deserved, according to the law.

That is the story of what happened in the ravine behind that forest. You can hardly see the spot now, with the sun going down.