A Night in the Cemetery

THE DRAMA AT THE HUNT

From the Notes of a Police Detective

(Abridged)

CHAPTER ONE MY FIRST MEETING WITH OLGA

Early in the morning, whistling happily and hitting the tops of cobblestones with my walking stick, I was on the way to the village of Tenev, where there was supposed to be a county fair.

What a beautiful morning! It seemed that happiness itself was floating over the earth, reflected in the diamondlike dewdrops that beguiled the traveler. At this early hour, the forest was quiet and motionless, as if it were listening to my steps. The chirping of little birds was inviting. The whole air was filled with the greenery of spring. I was breathing the fresh morning air and listening to the songs of the insects and the whispering of the wind in young birch trees and the grass.

In an hour, I was walking among the kiosks of the Tenev county fair. There were many sounds—the neighing of horses, the mooing of cows, children tooting on toy trumpets, carousel music, and the babble of many conversations. So many new different types of people, so much beauty and movement in this crowd, dressed in bright colors, made luminous by the morning sun. This was an amazing picture! (… )

Soon I was on my way back home from the town of Tenev. I ran into Olga, who was heading home in her heavy, old-fashioned cart.

“Please, can you give me a lift?” I cried.

“She is really nice-looking,” I thought, observing her soft round neck and the curve of her cheek.

Olga had been shopping. She had several pieces of nice fabric, and an assortment of packages and bags.

“You’ve been on a spree,” I said. “Why do you need so much fabric?”

“I will need even more,” Olga answered. “What I’ve bought is only the tip of the iceberg. You cannot imagine how much trouble I’ve had with all this shopping. Today I spent an hour walking across the county fair and selecting stuff, and tomorrow I will have to go to the city to do some serious shopping for the whole day! And then we will have to sew all this to make a dress. You don’t know of a good seamstress, do you?”

“I don’t know anyone who does that. But why so much shopping? Why do you need a new dress? Your family is pretty small—just the two of you, as far as I know.”

“You men are such strange creatures! You don’t understand anything! Now, when it’s your wedding day, you’ll be the first to get angry if your wife turns up the next morning without a nice, fresh trousseau. I know that Peter Erogovich doesn’t need the money, but I have no desire to show myself as a bad housewife from the very beginning.”

“What does Peter Erogovich have to do with it?”

“Hm, you’re being a tease, acting as if you don’t know anything,” Olga said, blushing a little.

“My dear young lady, you are speaking in riddles.”

“Hadn’t you heard? I am going to marry Peter Egorovich!”

“Married?” I was startled. My eyes must have popped open. “To Peter Egorovich?”

“Oh, my! No, excuse me, that’s Mr. Urbenin.”

I looked at her smiling, flushed face.

“You … getting married? To Mr. Urbenin? You must be joking!”

“I am not joking at all … This is not the least bit funny.”

“You are getting married … to Mr. Urbenin?” I mumbled, getting pale for no reason. “If this is not a joke, then what is this?”

“What are you talking about—this is not funny! There is nothing unusual or strange in it,” Olga said, pursing her little lips.

Several moments passed in silence. I looked at this beautiful young woman, at her fresh, almost childish face, and I was surprised that she could make such a terrible joke. For a moment, I imagined myself in the place of the old, decrepit Mr. Urbenin, with his huge pendulous ears and cracked, prickly skin, the mere touch of which would scratch this young and delicate female body. The picture frightened me!

“Yes, he is a little bit too old for me, he is over fifty.” Olga sighed. “But he loves me anyway. His love is reliable.”

“It is not that important to have a reliable partner, but it is important to have happiness.”

“Well, well, he has enough money, he’s no pauper, and he has some good connections. I am certainly not in love with him, but is happiness restricted to people who are madly in love? I know what these love matches can become!”

“My dear child!” I looked into her blue eyes, frightened and bewildered. “When did you manage to stuff your little head with all this terrible common sense? I’d rather believe that you are making jokes at my expense, but where did you learn to joke this way?”

Olga looked at me with surprise.

“I don’t see what the problem is. It displeases you that a young woman should marry an older man. Is that it?”

Olga suddenly flushed, clenched her lower jaw, and didn’t wait for my answer. The words all came in a rush:

“If you can’t deal with this, then you go live deep in the forest in a hut with your crazed father, and you wait for a young man to come and marry you! Can you imagine those long winter nights when you pray for death to come and take you, can you imagine what it feels like, this horror in the middle of the forest?”

“This all is not sensible, my dear Olga. This is not mature, this is all foolish and wrong. If you are joking, I don’t know what to say. You’d be better to be quiet, just stop talking now, don’t pollute the air with your silly words. In your place, I would keep silent.”

“At least he can afford to buy medicine for my father and take care of him,” she whispered.

“How much money do you need to take care of your father?” I cried out. “Here, take the money from me! A hundred? Two? A thousand? You’re lying to me, Olga. You’re not marrying him to take care of your father.”

The girl in red moved a little closer to me, and for an instant we were illuminated by dazzling white light. There was a huge crack somewhere above, and it seemed to us that something big and heavy fell from with a huge noise from the sky down to the earth. There was a crash.

“Are you afraid of thunderstorms?” I asked Olga.

She lowered her cheek to her shoulder and looked at me trustingly, like a child.

“Yes, I hate them,” she whispered, thinking for a while. “My mother was struck by lightning. They even wrote about it in the newspaper. She was walking across a field, crying. Her life was very hard in this world…. God took pity on her and killed her with His heavenly electricity.”

“How do you know what electricity is?”

“I studied it at school. You know that people who die during a thunderstorm or at war, and those who die during giving birth, they all go to heaven. This is not written in the Bible, but it’s true. One day I’ll be killed by a thunderstorm, and I will go to heaven. Are you an educated man?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll probably laugh at me. Here’s how I want to die. I want to get dressed up in the most expensive and fashionable dress, the one I saw on Lady Sheffer. Then I will stand on top of the mountain, and let the lightning kill me, so everyone will see. A terrible thunderstorm, you know, and then the end.”

“What a wild fantasy.” I smiled, looking into her eyes filled with the sacred horror of an effective death. “And you don’t wish to die in an ordinary dress?”

“No,” Olga shook her head decisively, “And I want everyone to see me go.”

“The dress you’re wearing is better that all those expensive gowns. It suits you very well. You look like a red flower in a green forest.”

“No that’s not true, this is a cheap one. This dress is no good,” Olga sighed.

I was so excited by Olga’s news that I did not notice that we’d arrived in the front entrance area of the count’s mansion and stopped in front of the manager’s door. When I saw the manager, Mr. Urbenin, run out with his children joining him to help Olga with her purchases, I headed for the mansion’s main entrance, without saying good-bye to her or greeting him.

CHAPTER TWO THE WEDDING

I was sitting at the table, hating the crowd of guests who gazed with curiosity and admiration at the vast, corrupt decadence of Count Korneev’s inherited wealth. The walls were covered with rich mosaics, the rooms had sculptured ceilings, and the luxurious Persian rugs and Louis XIV–style rococo furniture aroused everyone’s esteem.

A perpetual vain smile covered the count’s mustachioed face. He accepted his guests’ approbation as his due, but he’d never made the slightest effort to accumulate these riches; instead, he deserved scorn and opprobrium for his indifference to the riches created by his father, his grandfathers, and his great-grandfathers over many generations.

Many in the crowd were sufficiently rich and independent that they could afford to judge objectively, but no one said a single critical word—all admired and smiled at the Count.

Mr. Urbenin was smiling, too, but he had his own reasons for doing so. He wore the grin of a happy child, talking about his young wife and asking questions like these:

“Who’d have thought that a young beauty like this could fall in love with an old man like me, three times her age? Couldn’t she find someone younger and better-looking? There’s no understanding women’s hearts!”

He even turned to me and remarked in passing,

“We’re living in strange times. Ha-ha! An old man like me steals a fairy-tale creature right out from under the nose of a young man like you! What were you waiting for? Ha! Young men these days—they’re not like we used to be.”

Gratitude swelled his huge chest as he spoke, and he bowed and raised his wineglass to the Count:

“You know my feelings toward you, my lord. You have done so much for me—all your attention. Only aristocrats and oligarchs could celebrate a wedding in this fashion. All this luxury, and all these famous guests—what can I say? This is the happiest day of my life!” And he went on like this.

Olga, however, disliked his obsequious speeches; she forced a smile at the Count’s jokes and left the delicacies on her plate untouched. As Mr. Peter Egorovich Urbenin became drunker and happier, she grew more and more unhappy.

During the second course of the banquet, I looked at her and was so surprised that my heart beat faster. She pressed a napkin to her mouth, almost crying. She glanced around, frightened that someone might notice that she was nearly in tears.

“Why are you so sour today, Olga?” the Count asked. “Peter Egorovich, you’re to blame. You haven’t pleased your wife. Ladies and gentlemen, let the groom kiss the bride! Yes, I demand a kiss. Not that she should kiss me—ha-ha-ha, no, they should kiss each other!”

“Let them kiss each other!” the judge Kalinin repeated.

Forced by the cheers of the guests, Olga rose. Mr. Urbenin also stood, listing a bit to one side. She turned her cold, motionless lips to him. He kissed her, and she quickly turned away and tightened her mouth into a line so that he could not kiss her again.

I watched her carefully. She could not stand my glance. She put a napkin to her face, slipped away from the table, and ran out of the living room into the back garden.

“Olga has a headache,” I tried to explain. “She complained to me about it earlier this morning.”

“Listen, brother,” the Count joked. “Headache has nothing to do with it. It’s that kiss that did it, and she’s all confused. I may have to give a verbal reprimand to this groom. He hasn’t broken his wife in to his kissing yet. Ha-ha-ha!”

The guests enjoyed the joke and laughed uproariously. But they should not have been laughing. Five minutes passed, and then ten, but she did not return. Silence fell. The jokes stopped. Her absence was profound because she had not excused herself as she left. She had simply stood up, right after the kiss, as if she were angry that they had forced her to kiss her husband. She did not seem to be confused, because one can only be confused for a moment; this was different—the bride stood up, walked out. It was a nice plot twist for a comedy of manners.

Mr. Urbenin glanced around nervously.

“My friends,” he mumbled, “maybe something in her gown has come undone. It’s a woman thing.” But several more minutes passed, and he gazed at me with such unhappiness in his eyes that I decided to enter the scene.

I met his eyes. “Maybe you can find her and get me out of this spot. You’re the best man here,” his eyes said.

I decided to respond to his desperate need and to come to the rescue.

“Where’s Olga?” I asked the waiter who was serving the salad.

“She’s gone into the garden,” he said.

“The bride has left us and my wine grows sour,” I addressed the ladies at the table. “I must go and search for her, and bring her back even if all her teeth are aching. I am the best man at this wedding, and I have duties to fulfill.

I stood up, walked past the applauding count, and went out into the garden.

I looked in side alleys, little caves and gazebos.

Suddenly, off to the right, I heard someone either laughing or crying. I found the bride in a little grotto. She was leaning on a moss-covered wooden column and her face was shining with tears, as though a new spring had burst forth from the earth.

“What have I done? What have I done!” she cried.

“Yes, Olga, what have you done?” I said as she flung her head on my chest.

“Where were my eyes, where was my head?”

“Yes, Olga, this is a good question.” I told her, “I can’t explain this as just being spoiled.”

“And now everything is ruined and there’s no going back. Everything! I could have married the man I love, the man who loves me!”

“Who could you have married? Who is this man, Olga?” I asked.

“It’s you!” she said, looking directly into my eyes. “I was so stupid! You’re clever, you’re noble, and you’re young … You’re rich, too—you seemed to me—so far from me.”

“Stop it, Olga,” I said. “Wipe your eyes, stop crying, stop it! Stop this, my dear, you’ve made a silly mistake and now you have to face it. Calm down; calm down, please!”

“You are such a nice man, such a beautiful man. Yes?”

“Let it go, my dear,” I said, noticing to my terrible surprise that I was kissing her forehead, that I held her slender waist, that she was leaning on my neck. “Stop it, please!”

Five minutes later, tired by new impressions, I carried her out of the cave in my arms.

A short distance away, I saw the Count’s manager Mr. Kazimir applauding quietly as he watched us go.

CHAPTER THREE HORSEBACK RIDING

On a beautiful evening in June, when the sun had already set, but the wide orange line still covered the faraway west, I went to Mr. Urbenin’s house.

I found Mr. Urbenin himself there, sitting on the steps of his porch with his chin resting in both hands, looking away into the distance. He was very gloomy; his small talk came only unwillingly, so I chatted instead with his daughter, Alexandra.

“Where is your new mother?” I asked her.

“She went horseback riding with the Count. She rides with him every day.”

“Every day,” mumbled Mr. Urbenin with a sigh.

There was a lot in his sigh. Olga’s conscience was clouded, but I could not understand what was going on as I looked into her guilty eyes when she came secretly to see me, twice during the past week.

“I hope that your new mother is in good health?” I asked Alexandra.

“Yes, she is,” answered the little girl. “But last night she had a toothache, and she was crying.”

“She was crying?” Mr. Urbenin asked, puzzled. “You saw it? Well, you must have dreamed it, my dear.”

I knew that Olga’s teeth were fine. If she’d been crying, it was from something else.

I wanted to talk to Alexandra a bit more, but we heard galloping hooves, and we saw two figures, an awkward male rider and a graceful Amazon. I lifted Alexandra into my arms, trying to hide my happiness at seeing Olga, caressed her blond curly hair with my fingers, and kissed the little girl on her head.

“You’re such a pretty girl, Alexandra,” I said, “You have such lovely curls!”

Olga looked at me briefly, nodded politely, and, holding the Count by the elbow, went into the mansion. Mr. Urbenin stood up and followed her. A few minutes later, the Count stepped out. His face looked fresh, and he was joyful in a way I’d never seen before.

“Please congratulate me, my friend,” he said taking my arm under the elbow.

“What for?”

“A victory!”

“One more ride like that, and I will—I swear it on the dust of my noble ancestors—I will pluck the petals from this flower!”

“You haven’t picked them yet?” I asked.

“Not yet, but I’m almost there,” the Count said. “Wait, my dear—will you have a swig of vodka? My throat is very dry.”

I asked the butler to bring the vodka. The Count drank two shots in quick succession, sat down on the couch, and continued his chatter.

“You know, I’ve just spent some time with Olga, and I am starting to hate this Mr. Urbenin! This means that I am beginning to like Olga, you know I do. She’s a damned attractive woman. I’m going make some serious advances before long.”

“You should never touch a married woman.” I sighed.

“Well, yes, but Peter Egorovich is an old man, and it’s not such a sin to amuse his wife a bit. She’s no match for him. He’s a dog in the manger—he won’t eat it himself, and he won’t let any one else near it either. The campaign will begin later today, and I’m not going to take no for an answer. She is such a woman, I’m telling you! This is first-class, brother. You’re going to love hearing about it.”

The Count downed a third shot of vodka, and continued,

“You know what? I’m going to throw a party. We’ll have music, amateur theater, and literature—all for her, to invite her in and make it with her there. As for today, well, Olga and I were just out riding, and you know what? It was for ten minutes”—and then the Count started singing, ‘Your hand was in my hand’—“and she didn’t even try to take her little hand away. I kissed it everywhere. But just wait until tomorrow, and for now let’s go in. They’re waiting for me. Oh, yes! I need to talk to you, my good man, about one thing. Tell me, please, is it true what people are saying about you—that you have intentions for Nadine Kalinina, the daughter of the old judge?”

“What if it is?”

“Well, if this is true, then I won’t get in your way. To be a rival in such affairs—this is not my game. But if you have no special interest in her, then it’s different!”

“I have no plans for her.”

“Merci, my dear friend!”

The count wanted to kill two sparrows with one stone, thinking that he would do this with ease. In the end, he did kill two sparrows, but he didn’t get the feathers, nor the skin.

(…)

I saw how the Count secretly tried to take Olga’s hand when she entered, and greeted him with a friendly smile. Then, to show that he had no secrets from me, he kissed her hand wetly in front of me.

“What a fool!” she whispered in my ear, wiping her wet hand with disgust.

“Listen Olga,” I said as soon we were alone. “It seems to me that you’d like to tell me something. Am I right?”

I looked questioningly into her face. She blushed and started blinking her eyes, as frightened as a cat caught lapping the cream.

“Yes, I would like to tell you something,” she whispered, pressing my hand. “I love you, I cannot live without you … but you mustn’t try to visit me anymore, my darling. You must not love me anymore, and you cannot address me as a familiar. I can’t go on like this anymore. We cannot do this. You must not even show that you love me.”

“But why?”

“I want it to be this way. You don’t need to know the reasons, and I’m not going to tell you. Well, for what it’s worth, if I hadn’t married Mr. Urbenin, I could’ve married the Count by now. And then the Count and I would live together in the capital, and you could pay us visits. Hush! They’re coming. Step back from me.”

I did not step back, I was furious; so she had to do it to stop our conversation. Then she took her husband by the hand as he passed, and with a hypocritical smile, she nodded her head to me and left.

CHAPTER FOUR AT THE COUNT’S HOUSE

Late at night I was sitting at the Count’s house, drinking. I was a bit drunk myself, but the Count was deeply intoxicated.

“Today, I was allowed to touch her waist in passing.” The Count was mumbling. “Today, we will keep on moving even further.”

“How about the other girl, Nadine? What about her?” I asked.

“We are moving along nicely with her as well. We are at the stage of conversation of our eyes at the moment. And my dear, I would like to read more in her dark, sad eyes. There is something there that you cannot express with words. You have to understand this with your soul. Will you have a drink?”

“So she must like you, if you can talk to her for hours. And how about her father, old judge Kalinin? Does he also like you?”

“Her father? You are talking about that stupid old man? Ha-ha-ha. This idiot presumes that my intentions are honest.”

The Count coughed and had another drink.

“Do you think that I’m going to marry her? First, I cannot marry anyone at this point. And what’s more, I honestly think that it’s much more honest to just seduce the young lady than to marry her. Imagine her terrible eternal life with an old drunk like me, constantly coughing. She would either die or run away the next day. And—what is this noise—listen!”

We jumped to our feet. Several doors slammed loudly, and then Olga ran into our room. She was pale and out of breath, trembling like the string of a guitar that has been struck rather than plucked. Her hair was loose and uncombed, and her eyes were wide open. Her fingers fiddled nervously with her nightgown on her breast.

“What’s happened to you?” I asked, totally bewildered, and took her by the hand. Perhaps the Count was surprised by this level of intimacy between us but he showed no signs of it. He sighed, and turned a questioning look at Olga, as though he were seeing a ghost.

“What’s happened?” I repeated.

“He’s beating me!” she said with a sob, as she fell into an armchair.

“Who is?”

“My husband! I can’t live with him anymore! I’ve decided to run away.”

“This is terrible!” the Count said, hitting the table with his fist. “He has no legal right to do this. This is tyranny. This is God knows what! To beat your wife—for what?”

“For nothing,” Olga said, wiping her tears. “I took a handkerchief out of my pocket, and that little envelope with the letter that you wrote to me yesterday also fell out. He jumped toward me, snatched it up from the floor, read it, and started beating me up. He held me by the wrist—look—he held me so hard that I still have a bruise here—look, and then he asked for an explanation. And instead of giving an explanation, I ran here. I need your support and defense. He cannot treat me like this. I’m not his servant, I’m his wife.”

The Count started pacing the room, mumbling some words that if you could translate them into the speech of a sober person would be “About the situation of women in Russia.”

“This is wild—he is behaving like a barbarian! This is not New Zealand or those islands where they eat people alive. He thinks that his wife should be butchered during his funeral. You know, people in some countries, those savages—when they die they also take their wives with them.”

As for me, I asked her no questions but tried to calm her down, and offered her a glass of wine.

“I was mistaken; I was mistaken,” she continued, talking to me, as she took a sip of wine. “And you—you are such a quiet man; I thought that you were an angel, not a man.”

“And did you think that he would like that letter?” I asked her, but the Count interrupted me.

“This is mean, this is really nasty. You do not treat women like this! I will beat him up, I will challenge him to a duel, I will have a talk with him. Look, dear Olga, he won’t go unpunished.”

The Count spoke like a bantam cock. I thought to myself that no one had asked him to interfere in the relationship of Olga and her husband, and I knew that nothing would happen except for a lot of talk.

“I will smash him into the dirt. I’ll do it tomorrow, first thing tomorrow!” So spoke the perfect gentle knight. As he was talking, he invited her to dinner, and in a mechanical way, without thinking, she picked up a fork and knife and started eating. In another few minutes her fear had entirely dissipated, and there were no signs of what had happened beyond her red eyes and loose hair. In a while she was laughing like a little child who’d forgotten all about a recent tumble. The Count was laughing, too.

“You know what I’ve decided? he said, sitting closer to her. “We’ll stage a nice little play with some good roles for women. What do you think?”

The time was passing. She was sitting and talking to the Count.

“It’s getting late. It’s time for me to go, dear Olga,” I said.

“Where should I go?” she asked. “I cannot go to him.”

“Yes, yes, you cannot go to him; he would beat you up again,” I said as I paced the room.

There was silence. Olga and the Count exchanged glances, and I understood everything. I took my hat and put in on the table.

“Well, well,” the Count mumbled, rubbing his hands impatiently. Then he stood up, drew me close to him, and whispered in my ear.

“Listen, Sergey, you have to understand the situation, and these things.”

“Cut to the chase. You can skip the introductory matter.”

“You know what, my dear friend, you should go home. She will stay with me at my place.”

“Excuse me, but you’re the one who doesn’t understand,” I said as I came to her.

“Should I leave now?” I asked, waiting for her answer. “Yes? Should I go?”

With a tiny movement of her eyes she answered “yes.”

I said nothing more to her. What was left to say? I took my hat, and without saying good-bye I left the room.

CHAPTER FIVE THE MURDER

When I arrived at the scene of the crime, my friend Count Korneyev related the following:

“We were in the middle of our picnic, and we heard a terrifying, heart-piercing cry; it just froze the blood. It came from the forest, and the echo repeated it four times. It was so unearthly that everyone got up from the grass, the dogs started barking, and the horses pricked their ears. It was the cry of a woman in terrible, mortal danger. A group of servants ran off into the forest to see what happened.

“The old butler Elias was the bearer of bad tidings. He ran back to the edge of the forest, out of breath, and said,

‘The young lady has been killed!’

‘Which lady?’ ‘Who killed her?’ But Elias did not answer these questions.

“The second messenger was the one person whom we did not expect. This was Mr. Peter Egorovich Urbenin, my ex-manager, and Olga’s husband. First, we heard heavy footsteps in the forest, and the cracking of dry branches. We thought that perhaps a bear would emerge from the dark trees. As he appeared from the bush, he saw us; he took a step back and froze for a moment. His hair was stuck to his forehead and temples. His face, usually red, was extremely pale; his eyes were wide, and he looked a bit crazy. His lips and hands were trembling.

“Yet what caught our attention and what shocked us all were his hands: they were covered with blood. Both hands and shirt sleeves were thickly coated with blood, as if he had just washed them in a blood bath.

“After standing motionless for a long moment, Mr. Urbenin collapsed onto the grass and began to moan. Some of our dogs sensed that something was wrong, and they circled him, barking.

“Casting a dim, sidelong glance at us, Urbenin covered his face with his hands and froze again.

‘Olga, Olga, what have you done!’ he moaned.

“Suppressed sobs rushed from his throat, and his huge shoulders shook as he wept. When he dropped his hands from his face, we all saw the bloody handprints impressed on his face; his cheeks were covered with blood.”

At this point, my friend the Count stopped, shrugged, downed a shot of vodka, and continued,

“After that, I do not really remember in detail what happened next—I was so shattered by these events that I had lost the ability to think logically. I remember only that some men brought a body dressed in torn clothes completely covered with blood out of the forest, and I could not stand the sight. They put the body on a carriage and left. I did not hear the moans and the crying of the others.

“They say she was stabbed repeatedly in the chest, between the ribs, with a hunting knife. She always carried it on her; I remember I gave it to her as a gift.

“It was as blunt as the edge of this shot glass. How in the world could anyone have stabbed her with it?”

The Count stopped, poured another shot of vodka, and continued,

“Listen, shouldn’t this Urbenin stab me as well, since we were lovers?”

“How can you be sure that it was he who stabbed Olga?” I asked.

“Of course he did it! But what I do not understand is how he found her in the forest! He was not with our picnic party, so how could he have known about that particular spot, which I chose for the picnic at the last moment? How could he have known that she would be walking right there in the forest, all by herself?”

“You don’t know anything about this,” I said, “So please, if I take up this case as a local investigator, you must not give me your advice, or your ideas, but only answer my questions. Do you understand?”

I left the Count and went into the room where they had brought Olga.

A small blue lamp was lit, and it barely illuminated the faces of the people in the room. It was so dark that you could neither read nor write. Olga lay on her bed. Her breasts were naked, because they were applying ice to her wounds, trying to stop the bleeding.

Two doctors were in attendance. As I came in, the first doctor, Pavel Ivanovich, who had been in the picnic party, was listening to her heart, his eyes twinkling, his lips pursed. The second doctor, who was from the local village, looked extremely tired and sick; he sat in an armchair next to her bed, lost in his thoughts, pretending to take her pulse.

I looked in the corner—Mr. Urbenin sat there on a small stool. I hardly recognized him; he had changed so much recently. The poor man sat motionless, his head cupped in both hands, without averting his glance from the bed. His hands and his face were still covered with blood. It had not yet occurred to him to wash himself. At that moment, I realized that I could not believe Olga, when she had told me earlier that her jealous husband was capable of murder.

“Was it him or not?” I asked myself as I looked at his unhappy face. And I did not know the answer to this question, in spite of the Count’s direct accusations and the blood covering the man’s face.

“If he had killed her, he should have washed off the blood a long time ago,” I thought. I remembered a phrase that one of my colleagues, a criminal detective, had taught me: “Murderers can’t bear the sight of their victims’ blood.”

In an hour, a male nurse came from the faraway hospital and brought all the necessary things. They gave her an injection.

“It is highly unlikely that she will come to her senses,” Pavel Ivanovich said with a deep sigh. “She has lost a lot of blood, and she was hit on the head with a heavy blunt object, which has probably caused a concussion.”

I don’t know if there was a concussion or not, but she opened her eyes and said that she was thirsty. She began to speak in a muffled, weak voice, and the doctor said that she could not talk for long, just for a few more moments.

Olga was lying on the couch, with a big wound in her right side. She came to her senses and opened her eyes.

“You can ask her whatever you want now,” Pavel Ivanovich pushed my elbow. “Quickly now.”

I came to her bedside. Olga’s eyes focused on me.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Olga,” I began. “Do you remember me?”

Olga looked at me for a second and closed her eyes.

“Yes,” she moaned, “Yes!”

“My name is Mr. Zinoviev. I am a police detective. I met you earlier, I was best man at your wedding.”

“Oh, it’s you, my dear,” she whispered.

“She is delirious,” muttered the doctor.

“My name is Zinoviev,” I repeated, “I am a police officer. I was present at the hunting party and the picnic that followed. How do you feel?”

“Get to the point.” the doctor said. “I cannot promise you that she will be conscious much longer in her condition.”

“Please, do not lecture me, dear sir,” I said. “I know what to say and what questions to ask. Olga, please try to remember the events of the preceding day. You were at a hunting party. Then a picnic. Do you remember?”

“And you … and you … killed,” she said.

“The crow?” I asked. “Yes, after I killed the crow, you were upset, left the picnic, and went for a walk in the forest. Someone attacked you there. I am asking you as a police officer, who was it?”

Olga opened her eyes and looked at me.

“There are three people in this room besides me,” I said. She negatively shook her head.

“You have to tell me his name. He will be persecuted and will be sentenced to hard labor in prison. I am waiting. Tell us the name!”

Olga smiled again but did not say a word. The rest of my interrogation did not bring any results. She did not say another word, and she did not move. At quarter to five in the morning, she died.

At seven a.m., the witnesses I had requested from the village finally arrived. It was impossible to go to the crime scene; last night’s rain was falling heavily. Little puddles had become lakes. It was of no use, because all traces of the crime, such as bloodstains, footsteps, etc., were most likely washed away by the night’s rain. Even so, I was formally required to examine the crime scene; however, I postponed the trip until the other police officers arrived.

In the meantime, I set about writing the crime report, and I interrogated other witnesses.

I do not enclose here the complete report and interrogation from the police investigation. It would be too lengthy, and I have forgotten many of the details. However, I will tell you briefly the crime, as I understand it.

Her clothing gave us plenty of evidence. Her upper cloak, made of velvet, with a silk lining underneath, was still completely soaked with fresh blood. The right side had a large hole made by the dagger and lots of clots of blood. The left side of the cloak was also covered with blood. The left sleeve was torn in two places—at the shoulder and at the cuff. Her belt and the pockets of her pants were bloodstained. Her handkerchief and her glove were turned into two small red rags. Her entire skirt was covered with blood spots of various sizes and colors.

The personal belongings of Olga—her big gold and diamond brooch and a massive golden chain—were intact. It was clear that the killer did not do it with the motive of robbing her.

The doctors concluded that she died from a severe hemorrhage and, as a consequence, a considerable loss of blood. It was a complete shock for the doctors that she had not died immediately at the crime scene. However, I digress, and I do not want to postpone the picture of the murder as I saw it, which I will present to you, the reader.

Olga separated from the hunting party while they were having a picnic, and headed off for a walk in the forest. Lost in her thoughts, she ventured deep into the thick forest. There, she met her murderer. While she stood pondering under a tree, the man came to her and began the conversation. She was familiar with this person and was not suspicious of him; otherwise, she would have cried for help. After they had spoken for a while, the killer snatched her by her left arm so hard that he tore her upper clothes and left four of his fingerprints on her upper arm. It was most likely then that she made that terrifying cry from pain, the one that everyone had heard when she realized his intent.

To prevent her from further shouts for help, possibly in a fit of anger, he seized her by her collar, the evidence of which is supported by the two torn upper buttons on her upper dress and the red line across her neck. The killer pulled at the golden chain around her neck, which tightened and made another thin line. After this, the killer dealt a strong blow to her head with a blunt object, probably with a stick or the handle of the dagger that Olga always had on her belt. In his rage, he decided that this one wound was not enough, and so he pulled her dagger from its sheath and stabbed her in her side with a very fierce blow—I say fierce, since the dagger was so blunt.

It was evident that Olga did not name the killer because she knew him and because somehow he was still precious enough to her to make her want to save him from his punishment.

Among such people were her insane father, the husband she did not love but felt guilty about, and the count that she felt obliged to for his financial support. Her father, as the servants later witnessed, was at home writing a letter to the police to punish the imaginary thieves that were surrounding his house. The Count, before and during the time of murder, was with the hunting party; which left only one person—Mr. Urbenin. His sudden appearance from the forest and his strange behavior supported this theory.

If that were not enough, it appeared that Olga’s life had become a complete romance novel that included a loving old husband, jealousy, beating, escape to her rich count/lover. If the beautiful protagonist of such a novel is killed, then you should not be looking for thieves, but rather study the principal characters of the novel.

Thus, Mr. Urbenin, the husband, was the main suspect from any point of view.

I had to begin the interrogation.

[Translator’s Note: A lengthy interrogation of Urbenin and further investigation were complicated by the murder of a farmer who was the key witness and who was killed in his prison cell. Mr. Urbenin, whose cell was in the same hall, is accused in the second murder. The investigation becomes a well-known case across the country. The detective is forced to retire after a fight with one of the minor witnesses.]

I performed the preliminary investigation in the living room of Urbenin’s house, where I once sat on the couch courting the local ladies. Urbenin was the first person whom I interrogated. They brought him to me from the Olga’s room, where he had remained, sitting and staring at the empty bed

For a minute or so, he stood before me in silence, but then he understood that I meant to speak to him in my official capacity as a police detective, and he finally broke the silence and said rather tiredly,

“Please, Sergei Petrovich, could you interrogate other witnesses first. I cannot talk now.”

At that moment, he still considered himself to be a witness, or at least he thought that we considered him a witness.

“No, I have to interrogate you at once,” I said. “Can you please sit down.”

He testified that he was Peter Egorovich Urbenin, fifty years old, and that he was the formerly the manager of the Count’s estate. When he spoke about his marriage with the nineteen-year-old Olga, he said that he loved her madly, and that he knew that she had married him without love, and that he had decided to be satisfied with her friendship and loyalty.

When he mentioned his disappointment in life and his gray hair, he stopped, and then asked not to talk about this aspect of things for the moment.

“I can’t. It is too hard for me now. You know.”

“All right, let us leave this for later. Tell me, it is true that you used to hit your wife? They say that you beat her when you found a note from the Count.”

“This is not true. I just took her by her hand, and then at once she burst out crying.”

“Did you know about her relationship with the Count?”

“I have asked you to postpone this conversation. And why should we talk about this at all?”

“All right, let us talk about this the next time. Now, can you explain to me how you found yourself in the forest where Olga was killed? You said that you were in the city. How did you wind up in the forest?”

“Yes, I had been staying with my sister in the city since I’d lost my position. I was keeping myself busy by seeking another position, and I was drinking, upset by my misfortune. That last week I was drinking nonstop, and I do not remember anything. I was lost.”

“You were going to tell me how you ended up in the forest.”

“Yes, I woke up late. It was a sunny day, and I decided to go and see her, maybe for the last time. I was going to the Count’s place. I wanted to return the hundred rubles that he had loaned to me. I went through the forest, which I knew so well.”

“So, you did not expect to meet your wife there?”

Urbenin looked at me with surprise, thought for a little while, and answered,

“Sorry, but this is a strange question. You cannot foretell your meeting with a wolf in the forest, and meeting a terrible misfortune, this is even more unpredictable. Look at this terrible case. I was crossing the aspen forest, and suddenly I heard that strange cry. It was so sharp that it seemed to hit me right in the ear.”

His mouth was deformed by a grimace, and his chin trembled. He blinked his eyes and began to cry.

“I ran in the direction of the cry and I saw—I saw Olga lying on the grass. Her hair and forehead were covered with blood, and her face looked terrible. I cried, called her by her name. She did not move. I kissed her, lifted her in my hands.”

Urbenin stopped and mopped the tears from his face with his sleeve. In a minute he continued.

“I did not see the scoundrel. When I ran to her, I heard someone’s distant steps. Probably, he was running away.”

“This story of yours is wonderfully invented whole,” I said, “but you know—the police detectives do not believe in the sort of coincidence that would bring you by chance to the scene of the murder that coincided with your random walk in the forest.”

“What do you mean it is invented?” Urbenin asked me. “I did not invent it at all.”

Urbenin suddenly blushed and stood up.

“It seems that you suspect me of something,” he said. “Well, you can suspect everyone, but Sergey Petrovich, you have known me for a long time.”

“I know, but this is not personal at all. Police investigators must take the circumstances into consideration, and there are a lot of circumstances in this case that tell against you, Peter Egorovich.”

Mr. Urbenin looked at me with horror, shrugged his shoulders, and said,

“But—no matter the circumstances, you should understand that I could not do this. How could I? To kill a quail or a crow is one thing—it is possible, but to kill a person, a person who is more precious to me than my own life. The mere thought of Olga was like sunshine for me. And suddenly you suspect me. And you say this—you whom I have known for many years, Sergey Petrovich. Please, let me go.”

“Yes, we can stop for now. I will continue the interrogation tomorrow, but for now, Peter Egorovich, I have to arrest you. I hope that tomorrow you will understand the importance of all of the insinuating circumstances against you that we possess, and stop wasting time and make a confession. As for me, personally I am sure that it was you who killed Olga. I cannot tell you anything more today. You can go for now.”

At the interrogation was finished. Urbenin was put under guard and placed in one of the Count’s buildings.

On the second or third day, the deputy prosecutor Mr. Polugradov arrived from the city, a man whom I cannot remember without disgust. Imagine for yourself a tall, thin man around thirty, nicely shaved, with curly hair resembling that of a sheep and very smartly dressed. His face was thin and expressionless, so that looking at him you could see only the emptiness of a fop; he spoke with a very soft, sweet, insincere, and repulsively polite voice.

About a year after my retirement, when I was living in Moscow, I received an invitation summons to be present at the court sitting of the Urbenin case. I was glad to visit the places in the countryside, which I liked, and the case gave me a reason to go there. The Count, who was then living in St. Petersburg, did not go, and sent instead a medical certificate outlining his bad health.

The case was to be heard in the local county court. The prosecutor was Mr. Polugradov, who cleaned his teeth five times a day with red English toothpaste; the defense lawyer was a certain Mr. Smirnaev, a tall and thin blond, with a sentimental face and long straight hair. The jury was drawn almost exclusively from the local farmers and residents of the town; only four of them could read, and the rest looked very confused when they were given Urbenin’s letters to his wife as evidence.

As I entered the court building, I did not recognize Mr. Urbenin; his hair had turned completely gray, and he had aged twenty years. I had expected his face to show only apathy and indifference to his fate, but I was wrong. Mr. Urbenin was passionate during the trial; he rejected three members of the jury; he gave lengthy and emotional explanations; he interrogated the witnesses; and he denied his guilt, and asked numerous questions of the witnesses who testified against him.

The witness Mr. KazimirPoshekosky testified that I had been intimate with Olga, the victim in this case.

“It’s a lie,” Mr. Urbenin cried out from his bench. “I do not trust my wife, but him I do trust!”

When I testified, the defense lawyer asked me what sort of relationship I had had with Olga, and presented the testimony of Mr. Kazimir Poshekosky, who had apprehended me in the garden pavilion. To tell the truth (that I had made love to Olga) would be to support the accused; the more dissipated the wife, the more sympathy you must have for Othello-the-husband, I understood this. On the other hand, if I were to tell the truth, I would hurt Mr. Urbenin, and he would be in terrible pain. I decided to lie.

“No,” I said. “I was not in a relationship with her.”

The prosecutor’s darkly colored description of Olga’s murder stressed the anger and hatred of the killer. “That old, worn-out dissipated man met an innocent, very young, and beautiful woman. He lured her from the path of virtue with the promise of luxury. She was young and she had grown up reading romantic novels, and sooner or later she had to fall in love. He reacted like a wild animal that sees his prey slipping out of his claws. He was enraged, like a beast whose nose is singed by a burning coal.” The prosecutor ended with the words, “She brought out the animal in him, and he treated her like a dog.”

The defense lawyer did not deny that Urbenin was guilty but asked the jury to take into consideration that he was in the state of maximum excitement, and to soften his sentence. He noted that the feeling of jealousy could torture people, and referred to the all-too-human Othello, and then went into such great detail about the play that the judge had to interrupt him to remark that “it is not necessary for the jury to know that classic piece of literature.”

The last word went to Urbenin, who swore that was not guilty: neither in deed nor in thought. He finished with the words,

“I no longer care about my own fate. But I am worried about the fate of my two little children.” He turned to the public, started to cry, and asked the public to take care of his little children. He had probably forgotten that the verdict was still forthcoming, being completely immersed in thoughts of his children.

The jury took very little time to reach a verdict. He was found guilty on all counts, lost all his rights and his estate, and he was immediately sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.

That was the price he had to pay for his meeting with a “young woman in red,” on a May morning a few years ago.

About eight years have passed since these events. Some of the players in this drama have died; some are serving sentences for their crimes, and some simply go on living their miserable lives, waiting for death.

CHAPTER SIX THE TRUTH IS REVEALED

It was three months after the day when Mr. Kamyshev brought me the manuscript. My secretary announced that there was a gentleman in uniform waiting for me outside. Mr. Kamyshev came in.

“Sorry for bothering you, for heaven’s sake. Have you read my manuscript? What is your decision?”

“You’ll have to make some changes to it, I hope with our mutual agreement.” We waited for a few moments in silence. I was very excited; my heart was beating and my temples were pulsating. But I did not want to show my guest that I was agitated. I continued, “Yes, according to our agreement. You told me that your novel is based on a real story.”

“Yes, and I am ready to affirm this. I can introduce myself, I am Mr. Sergey Zinoviev.”

“Do you want to say that you were the best man at Olga’s wedding?”

“Yes, the best man and a friend of the household. Do you think that I am a sympathetic character in the story?” Mr. Kamyshev smiled, teasing his knee and blushing. “Is it so?”

“Yes. I like your novel; it’s better than many other crime stories. But we should make some serious changes to it.”

“What would you like to change?”

“First and foremost, you never do tell the reader who is guilty, who committed the crime.”

Kamyshev’s eyes widened and he stood up and said, “If you really think that you know the person who stabbed his wife and then strangled the only witness, then I don’t know what to tell you, nor what should we do next.”

“But Mr. Urbenin did not kill.”

“Then who did?”

“It wasn’t Urbenin!”

“Maybe you’re right. Humanum est errare. Even criminal investigators are not perfect. Judicial mistakes do get made in this world. Do you think we made a judicial mistake?”

“No, what I think is that you didn’t just make a mistake; you made a mistake on purpose. If a criminal investigator makes a mistake, it’s not an accident.”

“Then who was the killer in this case?”

“You!!”

Mr. Kamyshev looked at me in surprise mixed with horror.

“So this is it.” He went to the window.

“Sir, what kind of joke is this story,” he mumbled. He breathed nervously at the window, trying to draw something in the condensation with his finger.

I looked at his hand, a very muscular, iron-hard hand, and imagined how he had strangled the servant in the prison cell, and how he had destroyed Olga’s tender body. The figure of a murderer standing right in front of me filled me with horror. Not for myself, but for this giant, and in general for all mankind.

“You killed her!” I said.

“Then I can congratulate you with your discovery,” he said. “How did you come to this conclusion, please tell me.”

“Yes, you are the murderer.” I said. “And you can’t even hide it. It’s between the lines in your novel, and you’re a lousy actor, trying to act in front of me now. You might as well go ahead and tell me the truth—this is all very interesting, and I’d be very curious to know.”

I jumped up and started pacing the room.

Mr. Kamyshev went to the door, looked outside, and closed it very securely. This precaution gave him away.

“Why did you close the door?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. I just thought that there might be someone behind the open door.”

“And why do you need this? Tell me. Can I start an interrogation? I should warn you that I’m not a police detective and I may get tangled up in the interrogation, and mix up some things. But in any case, first of all—where did you disappear to, after you said good-bye to your friends, when the picnic was over?”

“I just went home.”

“You know, in your manuscript, the description of your route was crossed out. Did you walk across the same forest?”

“Yes.”

“And could you have met her?”

“Yes, I could.”

“And did you meet her?”

“No, I did not.”

“In the course of your investigation, you forgot to interrogate one important witness, namely, yourself. Did you meet the victim?”

“No. There you are, my friend,” he said. “You are not an expert interrogator.” At this moment I noticed that Mr. Kamyshev was smiling at me in a patronizing way, enjoying my inability to find the answers to the questions that were torturing me.

“All right then, you did not meet her in the forest. But it would have been even more difficult for Mr. Urbenin to have found her in the forest. He wasn’t seeking her there, but you—on the contrary—being drunk and excited and angry with her—you could not escape looking for her. And why did you go through the forest and not along the country road?”

“Let us imagine that what you say is true,” he admitted.

“How can we explain your crazy state of mind on the night of the event? It seems to me that it was connected with the crime that you committed earlier that day. Then, after coming to the Count’s house, instead of asking the question directly, you waited for a whole night and a day until the police arrived. This can only be explained by the fact that the victim knew the murderer, and you were the murderer.

“Further, Olga did not name her murderer because she loved him. If it were her husband, she would have told you the name at once. She did not love him; she didn’t even care about him, but she loved you and she wanted to save your life.

“And therefore, when she came to consciousness for a few moments, why did you procrastinate instead of asking her the one question that mattered, wasting her last few minutes with secondary questions that were not connected with the event? You were dragging the time out, because you did not want her to name you as the murderer. Also, you wrote in detail about the numerous shots of vodka that you drank, but the death of “the woman in red” is never described. Why?”

“Continue, continue.”

“You didn’t study the scene of the crime on the first day; you waited for the next day to come. Why? Because the night rain would wash away all your steps in the forest. Then you don’t mention interrogating the caterers and the guests who were present at the picnic. They heard Olga yelling, and you should have interrogated them, but you didn’t, because at least one of them would have remembered that you yourself had disappeared into the forest. They were interrogated eventually, but by then they would have forgotten all the details concerning you.”

“You are smart,” Mr. Kamyshev said, rubbing his hands. “Do go on.”

“Isn’t this enough? And to prove that you killed Olga, I must remind you that you were her lover: the lover whom she traded for a man she despised, the Count. If the husband could kill from jealousy, then the lover could just as easily have done it for the same reason.

“That’s enough,” Kamyshev said, laughing. “Enough. You look so pale and excited that you don’t have to continue. But you’re right. I did kill her.”

There was silence. I paced the room and he did the same.

“Very few people could have done this; most readers would not come to this conclusion. They’re not as smart as you.”

At that moment, one of my workers from the editorial board came to my study, looked carefully at Mr. Kamyshev, put some materials on my desk, and then left. Kamyshev came to the window.

“It has been about eight years, and I am still tortured by the weight of bearing this mystery. Not by my conscience. The conscience by itself is nothing—it can be dulled by logical explanations. But when logic fails, I try to kill it with wine and women. And I am still popular among women, by the way. It surprises me that for eight years, not a single person had the slightest idea that I bore this terrible secret. So I wanted to tell people about this secret of mine in a special way—can you believe it?—I did so in the form of a book. When I wrote this novel, I thought only a few people would discover the truth. Every page has a clue to the mystery, but I was writing it for an average reader.”

My secretary Andrew came in and brought two glasses of tea.

“You are looking at me as a man of mystery, and now it’s three o’clock and it is time for me to go.”

“Stop. You haven’t told me how you killed her.”

“What else do you want to know? You know what? I killed her in a state of extreme stress; I was overcome with emotion.”

“People smoke and drink when they’re stressed. Right now, you have just seized my cup of tea instead of yours, and you smoke more often because of stress. Life is stressful.”

“I did not intend to kill her as I was walking through the forest. I was only going to find Olga and tell her that she was behaving badly. But sometimes when I’m drunk, I can get aggressive. I saw her about two hundred steps from the edge of the forest. She was standing in front of a big tree looking into the sky. I called her name, and she stretched her hands out toward me. ‘Please do not scold me, I am so unhappy,’ she told me. I was drunk and I forgave her, and we embraced. She told me that she’d never loved anyone but me all her life. Then, in the middle of all this, she said the most dreadful thing: ‘I am so unhappy,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t married Mr. Urbenin, then I could have married the Count. And we could meet secretly.’ It was like a bucket of cold water. I was filled with disgust. I took this little creature by the shoulders and threw her on the ground, as you throw a ball in a game. And then, I was in a rage at that moment. I threw her on the ground, and then I killed her; yes, I killed her, I finished her off.”

I looked at Mr. Kamyshev and saw that there was no shame on his face. His lips spoke the words ‘I killed her, I finished her off’ with no more expression than if he’d said ‘I smoked a cigarette.’ I had a feeling of disgust toward him.

“And how about Mr. Peter Urbenin? What happened to him?”

“They say that he died on his way to prison, but this is not known for sure, and how and why.”

“What do you mean by ‘and how and why’? An innocent person was suffering, and you are asking me ‘and how and why.’”

“What was I supposed to do—go to the police and make a confession? They would like to me to do this—but they are all stupid.”

“You are disgusting.”

“And I am disgusting to myself. Perhaps I should go.”

“And Count Korneev? Where is he?”

“He is my chauffeur and personal assistant now. Mr. Kazimir—his ex-wife took his estate from him, and became rich. Look outside, you can see him! Over there.”

I looked outside and saw a small figure with a curved back, dressed in a worn-out hat and a shabby overcoat of no particular color. It was difficult to see the protagonist of the drama in this old man.

“I found out that Urbenin’s son lives in the Andreev Hotel. I would like to make a set-up so that the Count could take some money from the son of Mr. Urbenin. Thus, he would be avenged. I really must say good-bye. Adieu!”

Kamyshev bowed his head and walked out the door. I stared at my desk, lost in thought.

I did not have enough air to breathe.