Fifty-Two Stories

CORPORAL WHOMPOV

“CORPORAL WHOMPOV! You are accused of insulting, on the third of September instant, by word and deed, the village constable Zhigin, the parish elder Alyapov, the local militiaman Efimov, the witnesses Ivanov and Gavrilov, and another six peasants—the first three being subjected to your insults while in performance of their duties. Do you acknowledge your guilt?”

Whompov, a wrinkled corporal with a prickly face, stands at attention and answers in a hoarse, stifled voice, rapping out each word as if giving a command:

“Your Honor, Mister Justice of the Peace! It transpires that, by all the articles of the law, there is the following reason for attesting to each circumstance in its reciprocity. The guilty party is not me, but all the others. This whole business occurred on account of a dead corpse—may he rest in peace. Two days ago I was walking with my wife Anfisa, quietly, honorably, I see—there’s a heap of various folk standing on the riverbank. By what full right have these folk gathered here? I ask. How come? Does the law say folk come in herds? I shouted: ‘Break it up!’ I started pushing the folk so they’d go to their homes, ordered the militiaman to drive them away…”

“Excuse me, but you’re not a policeman or a headman—what business have you got dispersing folk?”

“None! None!” Voices are heard from various corners of the courtroom. “There’s no living with him, Y’ronor! Fifteen years we’ve suffered from him! Ever since he got back from the army, we’ve felt like fleeing the village. He torments everybody!”

“Exactly right, Y’ronor!” testifies the village headman. “We’re all complaining. It’s impossible to live with him! We’re carrying icons, or there’s a wedding, or, say, some other occasion, everywhere he’s shouting, clamoring, demanding order all the time. He boxes the children’s ears, keeps an eye on the women like a father-in-law, lest there be some mischief…The other day he went around the cottages, giving orders not to sing songs or burn candles. There’s no law, he says, that allows you to sing songs.”

“Wait, you’ll have your chance to give evidence,” says the justice of the peace. “Now let Whompov continue. Continue, Whompov!”

“Yes, sir,” croaks the corporal. “You, Your Honor, are pleased to say I have no business dispersing folk…Very well, sir…But if there’s disorder? Can folk be allowed to act outrageously? Is it written somewhere in the law that folk can do as they like? I can’t allow it, sir. If I don’t disperse them and punish them, who will? Nobody in the whole village knows about real order except me alone, you might say, Your Honor, I know how to deal with people of lower rank, and, Your Honor, I can understand it all. I’m not a peasant, I’m a corporal, a retired quartermaster, I served in Warsaw, at headquarters, sir, and after that, if you care to know, in civilian life, I became a fireman, sir, and after that, weakened by illness, I left the fire department and for two years worked in a boys’ classical primary school as a porter…I know all about order, sir. But your peasant is a simple man, he understands nothing and has to obey me, because—it’s for his own good. Take this case, for example…I disperse the folk, and there on the bank in the sand lies the drowned corpse of a dead man. On what possible grounds, I ask you, is he lying there? Is there any order in that? Where is the constable looking? ‘Why is it, constable,’ I say, ‘that you don’t inform the authorities? Maybe this drowned dead man drowned on his own, and maybe it has a whiff of Siberia. Maybe it’s a criminal homicide…’ But Constable Zhigin pays no attention, he just smokes his cigarette.

“ ‘Who have we got giving orders here?’ he says. ‘Where,’ he says, ‘did he come from? Don’t we know,’ he says, ‘how to behave without him?’ ‘Meaning you don’t know, fool that you are,’ I say, ‘since you’re standing here paying no attention.’ ‘I,’ he says, ‘already informed the district superintendent yesterday.’ ‘Why the district superintendent?’ I ask. ‘By what article of the legal code? In such a case, when there’s a drowning or a hanging or the like—in such a case, what can the superintendent do? Here,’ I say, ‘we have a criminal case, a civil case…Here,’ I say, ‘you must quickly pass the torch to the honorable prosecutors and judges, sir. And first of all,’ I say, ‘you must draw up a report and send it to the honorable justice of the peace.’ But he, the constable, listens to it all and laughs. And the peasants, too. They all laughed, Your Honor. I’ll testify to it under oath. This one laughed, and that one laughed, and Zhigin laughed. ‘Why bare your teeth?’ I say. And the constable says, ‘The justice of the peace,’ he says, ‘doesn’t judge such cases.’ At those words I even broke into a sweat. Didn’t you say that, Constable?” The corporal turned to Constable Zhigin.

“I did.”

“Everybody heard you say in front of all those simple folk: ‘The justice of the peace doesn’t judge such cases.’ Everybody heard you say that…I broke out in a sweat, Your Honor, I even got all scared. ‘Repeat,’ I say, ‘you this-and-that, repeat what you said!’ Again he says the same words…I say to him: ‘How can you speak that way about an honorable justice of the peace? You, a police officer, are against the authorities? Eh? Do you know,’ I say, ‘that for such talk the honorable justice of the peace, if he’s of a mind to, can pack you off to the provincial police department on account of your untrustworthy behavior? Do you know,’ I say, ‘where the honorable justice of the peace can send you for such political talk?’ And the elder says: ‘The justice,’ he says, ‘can’t stake out anything beyond his boundaries. He only has jurisdiction over minor offenses.’ That’s what he said, everybody heard it…‘How dare you,’ I say, ‘belittle the authorities? You, brother,’ I say, ‘don’t start joking with me, or things will go badly for you.’ In Warsaw, or when I was a porter in the boys’ primary school, whenever I’d hear such inappropriate talk, I’d look around for a policeman: ‘Come here, officer,’ I’d say—and report it all to him. But here in the village, who can I tell?…I flew into a rage. It upsets me that folk nowadays are sunk in willfulness and disobedience. I took a swing and…not hard, of course, but just right, lightly, so that he wouldn’t dare say such words about Your Honor…The constable stood up for the elder. So I gave it to the constable, too…And so it went…I lost my temper, Your Honor, but, well, it’s really impossible without a beating. If a stupid man doesn’t get a beating, the sin’s on your soul. Especially if there’s something up…some disorder…”

“I beg your pardon! There are people who look out for disorder. That’s why we have the constable, the headman, the militiaman…”

“A constable can’t look out for everything, and a constable doesn’t understand what I understand…”

“But don’t you see that it’s none of your business?”

“What’s that, sir? How is it not mine? Strange, sir…People behave outrageously and it’s none of my business! Should I praise them, then, or what? So they complain to you that I forbid singing songs…What’s the good of songs? Instead of taking up some kind of work, they sing songs…and they’ve also made it a fashion to sit in the evening with candles burning. They should go to bed, but they’re talking and laughing. I’ve got it written down, sir!”

“What have you got written down?”

“Who sits with candles burning.”

Whompov pulls a greasy scrap of paper from his pocket, puts on his spectacles, and reads:

“Peasants who sit with candles burning: Ivan Prokhorov, Savva Mikiforov, Pyotr Petrov. The soldier’s widow Shrustrova lives in depraved lawlessness with Semyon Kislov. Ignat Sverchok is taken up with magic and his wife Mavra is a witch, who goes by night to milk other people’s cows.”

“Enough!” says the justice, and he starts to interrogate the witnesses.

Corporal Whompov raises his spectacles on his brow and looks in astonishment at the justice, who is obviously not on his side. His popping eyes flash, his nose turns bright red. He stares at the justice, at the witnesses, and simply cannot understand what makes this justice so flustered, and why whispering and restrained laughter are heard from all corners of the courtroom. He also cannot understand the sentence: a month in jail!

“What for?!” he says, spreading his arms in bewilderment. “By what law?”

And it is clear to him that the world has changed and that living in it is no longer possible. Gloomy, dismal thoughts come over him. But, leaving the courtroom and seeing the peasants crowding around and talking about something, he, by force of a habit he can no longer control, stands at attention and shouts in a hoarse, angry voice:

“Brea-a-ak it up! Don’t cr-r-rowd around! Go home!”

1885