A Night in the Cemetery

MISFORTUNE

The director of the town bank, Peter Semenych, the accountant, his assistant, and two members of the board were sent to prison in the night. The day after the turmoil, the merchant Avdeyev, a member of the bank’s auditing committee, was sitting in his shop with his friends, saying:

“So it must be God’s will. There’s no way to escape your destiny. Today we eat caviar, and tomorrow—beware of that—it can be prison, poverty, or even death. Things happen. Take Peter Semenych, for example …”

He was talking, narrowing his tipsy eyes, while his friends went on drinking and eating caviar, and listened to him. Having described the disgrace and helplessness of Peter Semenych, who just a day before was powerful and generally respected, Avdeyev went on with a sigh:

“If you steal money, beware of the sting. Serves them right, the swindlers! They knew how to steal, filthy scum, now time for them to answer!”

“Look out, Ivan Danilych, that you don’t catch it, too!” one of his friends observed.

“What has it to do with me?”

“Well, they were stealing, and where was the auditing committee looking? You must have been signing the reports.”

“Yeah, it’s easily said,” Avdeyev grinned. “See, I signed them! They used to bring the reports to my shop, and so I signed them. As if I understood it! I’ll scribble my name on whatever I get. If you wrote I murdered someone, I’d sign that, too. I don’t have time to make it out; besides, I can’t see without my glasses.”

Having discussed the ruin of the bank and the destiny of Peter Semenych, Avdeyev and his friends went to an acquaintance whose wife celebrated her birthday with a party. At the birthday party everyone was discussing nothing but the bank ruin. Avdeyev was excited more than anyone else and assured everyone that he had had a presentiment long before that the bank would soon be ruined, and as long as two years ago he knew there were big problems at the bank. While they were eating the pie, he described a dozen illegal operations that were known to him.

“If you knew it, why didn’t you report on them?” an officer who was present at the party asked him.

“It wasn’t just me who knew it: the whole town knew it …” Avdeyev grinned. “Besides, I have no time to waste in courts, to hell with them!”

He had a rest after the pie, then had dinner, and had another rest, and then went to his church, where he was a warden; after the vespers he went back to the birthday party and played Preference till midnight. Everything seemed all right.

But when Avdeyev returned home after midnight, the lady cook, who opened the door for him, was pale and trembling so much that she could not utter a word. His wife, Elizabeth Trofimovna, a well-fed, flabby woman, was sitting on the couch in the drawing room, her gray hair hanging loose. She trembled with her entire body and, like a drunk, rolled her eyes senselessly. Her oldest son, Vassiliy, a schoolboy, as pale as she was and extremely agitated, was fussing around her with a glass of water.

“What is it?” asked Avdeyev, and looked angrily at the stove (his family was often poisoned by its fumes).

“The investigator and the police have just been here,” answered Vassiliy. “They’ve made a search.”

Avdeyev looked around him. The cupboards, the chests, the tables—traces of the recent search could be seen everywhere. For a minute, Avdeyev stood still, not understanding a thing, then his whole inside quivered and grew heavy, his left leg went numb, and, unable to endure the trembling, he lay prone on the couch. He felt his insides were turning over and his left leg, which he could not control, was tapping against the back of the couch.

In the course of just two or three minutes he recalled the whole of his past but could not remember any guilt that would deserve the attention of judicial authority.

“It’s simply nonsense,” he said, rising. “They must have slandered me. Tomorrow I’ll file a complaint so that they don’t dare … you know.”

Next morning after a sleepless night Avdeyev, as always, went to his shop. His customers told him that during the night the prosecutor also sent to prison a friend of the bank director and the chief clerk of the bank. This news did not upset Avdeyev. He was sure he had been slandered, and that if he filed a complaint today, then the investigator would get into trouble for yesterday’s search.

After nine o’clock he rushed to the town council to see the secretary, the only educated person there.

“Vladimir Stepanych, what’s it all about?” he said, bending down to the secretary’s ear. “People have been stealing, and what have I to do with it? How come? My dear fellow,” he whispered, “my house was searched last night! Indeed! Have they gone crazy? Why would they bother me?”

“Because you shouldn’t be a muttonhead,” the secretary answered calmly. “Before signing the papers you should’ve looked at them.”

“Look at what? Even if I looked for a thousand years at those reports I wouldn’t understand a thing! It’s all Greek to me! I am no accountant. They used to bring them to me and I signed them.”

“Excuse me. Apart from signing the papers, you—as well as all your committee—are seriously compromised. You borrowed nineteen thousand from the bank on no security.”

“Oh goodness!” exclaimed Avdeyev, surprised. “Am I the only one who owes money to the bank? The whole town owes it. I pay the interest and will repay the debt. I assure you! And besides, to be honest with you, was it me who borrowed the money? It was actually Petr Semenych who made me take it. ‘Take it,’ he said, ‘take it. If you don’t take it,’ he said, ‘it means you don’t trust us and remain an outsider. You take it,’ he said, ‘and build your father a mill.’ So I took it.”

“Well, you see, who else could reason like that but children or muttonheads. In any case, signor, you shouldn’t worry about it. You won’t escape trial, of course, but, very likely, they’ll discharge you.”

The secretary’s indifference and calm tone set Avdeyev’s mind at ease. Having returned to his shop and seeing his acquaintances there, he again drank, ate caviar, and philosophized. He almost forgot the search, and there was only one thing that troubled him that he could not help noticing: his left leg strangely grew numb and his stomach for some reason did not work properly.

That evening destiny fired another deafening shot into Avdeyev: at an extraordinary session of the town council, all the members of the bank’s board, Avdeyev among them, were fired from the board, as they were on trial. In the morning he received a paper requesting him to give up immediately his duties as a churchwarden.

After that, Avdeyev lost count of the shots fired by destiny into him. Strange days flashed rapidly by, one after another, each bringing an experience he had never known and some new unexpected surprise. Incidentally, the investigator sent him a summons, and he returned home after the interrogation insulted and red-faced.

“He bothered me like hell with that question of his: ‘Why did you sign it?’ I did sign it and that’s it. I didn’t do it on purpose. They brought the papers to the shop and I signed them. To tell the truth, I’m no great reader of those written things.”

Some young people with indifferent faces sealed up the shop, and made an inventory of all the furniture in the house. Suspecting there was some intrigue behind these actions and, as before, feeling no guilt whatsoever, the insulted Avdeyev started to run to different authorities and institutions filing complaints. He waited in the lobbies for hours on end, he composed long petitions, he wept, he swore. The prosecutor and investigator replied to his complaints in an indifferent, rational way: “Come here when you are summoned: now we have no time for you.” Others said: “It’s not our business.”

The secretary, an educated man, who—as it seemed to Avdeyev—could help him, merely shrugged his shoulders and said:

“It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have been a muttonhead.”

The old man bustled about, while his leg continued to grow numb and his stomach functioned even worse than before. When he got tired of being idle and poverty was at the door, he decided to go to his father’s mill, or to his brother to start a flour business, but he was not allowed out of town. His family went to his father’s and he was left alone.

The days flashed by, one after another. Left without his family, without his shop and money, the former churchwarden, an honored and respected man, spent whole days wandering about his friends’ shops. He drank, ate, and listened to advice. Every morning and evening he went to church to kill time. Looking at the icons for hours, he did not pray but reflected. His conscience was clear, and he thought of his current situation as being a mistake and a misunderstanding. In his opinion, this all happened only because the investigators and officers were too young and inexperienced; he believed that if he managed to talk to some elderly judge openheartedly and in detail, everything would be set right again. He did not understand his judges, and he believed that his judges did not understand him.

The days rushed by one after another, and finally, after a long and tedious protraction, came the day of the trial. Avdeyev borrowed fifty rubles, made sure he had some alcohol for his leg and herbs for his stomach, and set off for the town where the court chamber was located.

The trial went on for a week and a half. During the court hearings, Avdeyev remained among his fellow sufferers, listened attentively, but did not understand a word. As it becomes a respectable man and an innocent victim, he maintained corresponding dignity and self-worth. He was in a hostile mood. He was angry that he was detained in the court for so long, that he could not get any vegetarian food, that his lawyer did not understand him and, it seemed to him, was saying everything wrong. He believed the judges were not judging the way they should. They took hardly any notice of Avdeyev, addressed him once in three days, and the questions they asked were such that every time he answered them, Avdeyev made the audience laugh. As soon as he tried to speak of the losses he had suffered and of his wish to recover the court costs, his lawyer turned around and made a strange grimace, the public laughed, and the court president declared strictly that it had nothing to do with the case. In his last statement, he was not talking of the things his lawyer taught him but of something completely different, which, too, raised a laugh in the courtroom.

During the terrible hours when the jury was deliberating in its room, he sat angrily in the bar and did not for a minute think of them. He did not understand why they were deliberating for so long when everything was absolutely clear, and what they wanted of him.

As he grew hungry, he asked the waiter to bring him something cheap and vegetarian. He brought him some cold fish with carrots for forty kopecks. Avdeyev ate it and at once felt the fish falling into his stomach like a heavy lump; then followed belching, heartburn, and pain.

Later, as he listened to the foreman of the jury reading out the questions point by point, his entrails were turning over, his whole body was covered with a cold sweat, his left leg grew numb; he did not listen, he understood nothing, and suffered to the utmost because he could not sit or lie down while listening. Finally, when he and the other accused were allowed to sit down, the prosecutor of the court chamber got up and said something incomprehensible. At the same moment, as if out of nowhere, there appeared some policemen with bared swords and surrounded the accused. Avdeyev was ordered to get up and go.

Now he realized he had been found guilty and was placed under guard, but he was not scared nor surprised; there was such a revolution going on in his stomach that he could not care less about the guard.

“So we won’t be allowed back to the hotel?” he asked one of his companions. “And I have three rubles and some untouched tea left in my room.”

He spent the night at a private house; the whole night he felt disgusted by the fish and thought of his three rubles and the tea. Early in the morning, as the sky began to get blue, he was ordered to dress and go out. Two soldiers with bayonets took him to prison. Never before had the streets of the town seemed to him so long and endless. He did not walk on the sidewalk but in the middle of the street covered with the melting dirty snow. His insides were still fighting with the fish, his left leg was numb; he had forgotten his rubber boots either in the court or in the private house, and now his feet were cold.

Five days later all the accused were brought to court again to hear the sentence. Avdeyev learnt that he was sentenced to exile in Siberia, in the province of Tobolsk. And that did not scare nor surprise him. Somehow it seemed to him that the trial was not over yet, that the protraction still went on, and the real decision had not been made so far. He lived in prison and waited for the real decision every day.

Only six months later, when his wife and son Vassily came into prison to say good-bye to him, and when he hardly recognized his once well-fed and stout Elizabeth Trofimovna in this thin woman dressed as a beggar, and when he saw his son wearing a short, shabby jacket and light cotton trousers instead of his school uniform, only then did he realize that his fate was already decided, and that whatever new “decision” there might be, he would never be able to return to his past. And for the first time since the trial and imprisonment, he wiped the angry expression off his face and wept bitterly.