Forty Stories

The Malefactor

THE tiny and extraordinarily skinny peasant, wearing patched drawers and a shirt of striped linen, stood facing the investigating magistrate. His hairy face was pitted with smallpox, and his eyes, scarcely visible under thick overhanging brows, conveyed an expression of sullen resentment. He wore his hair in a tangled unkempt thatch which somehow emphasized his sullen spiderlike character. He was barefoot.

“Denis Grigoryev!” the magistrate began. “Step closer, and answer my questions. On the morning of July 7 the linesman Ivan Semyonov Akinfov, while performing the duty of examining the tracks, found you in proximity to the one-hundred-and-forty-first mile post unscrewing one of the nuts from the bolt securing the rail to the tie. The nut is here. He thereupon arrested you with the nut in your possession. Do you testify to the truth of this statement?”

“Wha-at?”

“Did all this happen as stated by Akinfov?”

“Sure—yes, it did.”

“Excellent. Now why were you unscrewing the nut?”

“Wha-at?”

“Stop saying what’ and answer the question! Why were you unscrewing the nut?”

“I wouldn’t have unscrewed it, would I, if I hadn’t wanted it?” Denis said hoarsely, squinting up at the ceiling.

“What on earth was the good of the nut to you?”

“The nut, eh? Well, we make sinkers out of ’em.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“We—the people in the village. The peasants of Klimovo.…”

“Listen, fellow. Don’t play the fool with me. Learn to talk sense. Don’t tell me any lies about sinkers!”

“Me, tell lies? All my life I haven’t told any lies, and now …” Denis muttered, his eyes blinking. “Your Honor, I ask you, what can you do without sinkers? Now, if you put live worms on the hook, how do you think it touches bottom without a sinker? So I’m lying, am I?” he smirked. “Then what is the good of live bait floating on the surface? The perch and pike and eelpout always go along the bottom, while if the bait floats on the surface there’s only the snapper will bite, and that doesn’t happen often.… And there are no snappers in our part of the country.… Our fish like a lot of space.…”

“What’s all this talk about snappers?”

“Wha-at? Why, you asked me that yourself! I’m telling how the gentry catch fish, but the very stupidest child wouldn’t try to catch anything without a sinker. Maybe a man without a brain in his head might try to catch a fish without a sinker, but there’s no accounting for people like that!”

“According to you, the nut was unscrewed so you could use it as a sinker. Is that right?”

“Well, it couldn’t be anything else, could it? I wasn’t playing knucklebones with it, was I?”

“Instead of a nut, you could have used a bit of lead or a bullet—perhaps a nail would have served the same purpose?”

“Well, Your Honor, as for that, you don’t find lead lying about in the street, and it has to be paid for, and a nail—a nail’s no use at all. There’s nothing better than a nut.… It is heavy, and has a hole in it.…”

“The witness is determined to convince us he is out of his wits—pretends he was born yesterday or fell out of the sky! Really, you miserable blockhead, don’t you understand what happens when you unscrew these nuts? If the linesman had not seen you at work, the train could have gone off the rails, people could have been killed, and the responsibility for killing them would have been yours!”

“Oh, God forbid, Your Honor! No! Why should I kill anybody! Do you think we are criminals or heathen, eh? Ah, good gentlemen, we thank God we have lived our lives without ever letting such an idea as killing people enter our heads! Save us and have mercy on us, Queen of Heaven! What were you saying, sir?”

“How do you suppose train wrecks happen? Doesn’t it occur to you that if a few nuts are unscrewed, you can have a train wreck?”

Denis smirked and screwed up his eyes incredulously at the magistrate.

“Why, Your Honor, we peasants have been unscrewing nuts for a good many years now, and the good Lord has protected us, and as for a train wreck and killing people, why, nothing at all.… Now, if I took up a whole rail or put a big balk of timber across the track, maybe I could smash up a train.… But just an ordinary nut, pfui!…”

“Can you get it into your head that the nut holds the rail to the tie?”

“Of course, Your Honor. We understand that. That’s why we don’t unscrew all of them. We leave some of them. We’ve got heads on our shoulders.… We know what’s what.…”

Denis yawned and made the sign of the cross over his mouth.

“Last year a train went off the rails here,” the magistrate said. “Now we know how it happened.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I said, now we know why the train went off the rails last year. It’s all clear now.”

“Good kind gentlemen, God gave you understanding, and He gives it to whom He pleases. You know about things, how it happened, what happened, and all, but the linesman, he was a peasant, too, not a man with an education, and he took me by the collar and carted me off! He ought to know about things before dragging people off! A peasant has the brains of a peasant—that’s what they say. And write down, too, Your Honor, that he hit me twice—once in the jaw and once in the chest.”

“Listen, when they searched your place, they found another nut.… Now, where and when was that one unscrewed?”

“You mean the one they found under the little red chest?”

“I don’t know anything about where it was. I only know they found it. When did you unscrew that one?”

“I didn’t unscrew it. It was given to me by Ignashka, the son of one-eyed Semyon. I’m talking about the one under the chest. The one they found in the yard, on the sleigh—that one was unscrewed by Mitrofan and me.”

“Which Mitrofan?”

“Mitrofan Petrov. Do you mean to say you’ve never heard of him? He’s the one who makes nets in our village and sells them to the gentry. He needs a lot of nuts. Every net, I reckon, must have about ten nuts.”

“Listen. According to Article 1081 of the Penal Code, every willful act leading to the damage of a railroad and calculated to jeopardize the passage of trains, shall, if the perpetrator knows the act will cause an accident—knows, you understand?—and for that matter you couldn’t help knowing the consequences of unscrewing the nut—such a man is liable to exile with hard labor.…”

“Oh, well, you know best. We ignorant people, we don’t know anything.…”

“You do know! You’re lying and shamming ignorance!”

“Why should I lie? Ask in the village if you don’t believe me! Only the bleak fish can be caught without a sinker, that’s true! There’s no fish worse than a gudgeon, and even he won’t bite without a sinker.”

“You’ll be talking about snappers next,” the magistrate smiled.

“I told you, we don’t have snappers in our part of the country.… Now, if we cast our lines on the surface without a sinker, with a butterfly for bait, we might maybe catch a mullet, but it don’t happen often.”

“Shut up!”

Then there was silence, while Denis shifted from one foot to the other, stared at the table covered with a green cloth, and violently blinked his eyes. He was like someone gazing, not at the green cloth, but at the sun. The magistrate was writing rapidly.

“May I be getting along now?” Denis asked a moment later.

“No, you’ll be kept in custody and sent to prison.”

Denis stopped blinking. Raising his thick eyebrows, he looked inquiringly in the direction of the magistrate.

“What do you mean, prison? Your Honor, I haven’t the time for prison! I’ve got to go to the fair—there’s Yegor, who owes me three rubles for the lard he …”

“Keep your mouth shut, and don’t disturb me!”

“Prison, eh? Now, listen. If I’d done anything wrong, then I’d go … but there’s neither rhyme nor reason in sending me … What for should I go to prison? I haven’t stolen anything so far as I know. I haven’t been fighting.… If there’s any question in your mind about the arrears, well, Your Honor, you shouldn’t believe the village elder.… Ask the permanent member of the board.… The elder, he hasn’t been baptized.…”

“Silence!”

“All right, I’ll be silent,” Denis murmured. “But I’ll take my oath the elder lied about the assessment. There are three of us brothers—Kuzma Grigoryev, then Yegor Grigoryev, and then Denis Grigoryev …”

“You’re a nuisance,” the magistrate shouted. “Hey, Semyon! Take him away!”

“We’re three brothers,” Denis went on muttering, while two husky soldiers took hold of him and led him out of the room. “A brother doesn’t have to answer for a brother, does he? Kuzma won’t pay. So it’s up to you, Denis.… Judges, indeed! Our late master, the general, is dead, may God rest his soul, or he would have shown you what’s what.… You ought to judge sensibly, not in a cockeyed way.… Flog a man, you understand, but only when he deserves it.… Understand?…”

July 1885