The Shooting Party

The Shooting Party

THE SHOOTING PARTY

(A True Event)

One April afternoon in 1880 Andrey the janitor came into my room and announced in hushed tones that a certain gentleman had turned up at the editorial offices and was persistently requesting an interview with the Editor.

‘A civil servant, by the look of him, sir,’ added Andrey, ‘with a badge in his cap.’

‘Ask him to call some other time,’ I said. ‘I’m really tied up today. Tell him that the Editor sees visitors on Saturdays only.’

‘But he came asking for you the day before yesterday too. It’s most important, he says. Keeps on and on, he does, and he’s close to tears! Says he’s not free on Saturdays. Shall I ask him to come in?’

I sighed, put down my pen and settled myself to wait for the gentleman with the badge. Writers who are mere beginners, and everyone, in fact, who hasn’t yet been initiated into the secrets of publishing and who is overcome with fear and trembling at the words ‘Editor’s Office’, keep you waiting for ages. After the Editor’s ‘show him in’, they’re inclined to cough and blow their noses interminably, after which they slowly open the door and enter even more slowly, consequently wasting a lot of your time. But this gentleman with the badge didn’t keep me waiting. Hardly had the door closed behind Andrey than I saw in my office a tall, broad-shouldered man with a bundle of papers in one hand and a cap with a badge in the other.

This gentleman, who had thus managed to grab an interview with me, plays a leading part in my story, so I must describe his appearance.

As I have said already, he was tall, broad-shouldered, and as solidly built as a handsome carthorse. His whole body radiated health and strength. His face was rosy, his hands large, his chest broad and muscular, his hair as thick and curly as a young healthy boy’s. He was about forty, tastefully dressed in the latest fashion, in a tweed suit fresh from the tailor’s. Across his chest was a large gold chain with charms dangling from it; a diamond ring sparkled with tiny flashing stars on his little finger. And – what is essential, what is most important of all for the hero of any novel or short story who is in the slightest degree respectable – he was extraordinarily handsome. I am neither woman nor artist, I don’t have much idea about male beauty, but the appearance of that gentleman with the badge in his cap really impressed me. His large, muscular face has remained forever engraved on my memory. In that face you could see a truly Grecian, slightly hooked nose, fine lips and handsome blue eyes that glowed with kindness – and with something else for which it is hard to find a suitable name. This ‘something’ is noticeable in the eyes of small animals when they are miserable or feeling pain – it is something imploring, childlike, silently suffering. Cunning and very clever people don’t have such eyes.

His entire face simply radiated ingenuousness, an expansive, simple character, truth. If it isn’t a lie that the face is the mirror of the soul, I could have sworn from the very first day of my meeting with the gentleman with the badge that he was incapable of lying. I might even have laid a bet on it. Whether I would have lost or won the reader will discover later.

His chestnut hair and beard were thick and as soft as silk. They say that soft hair is a sign of a gentle, sensitive, ‘meek and mild’ soul: criminals and evil desperadoes tend to have wiry hair. Whether that’s true or not the reader will in any event find out later. But neither his facial expression nor his beard – nothing about that gentleman with the badge was so gentle and delicate as the movements of his huge, heavy body. In those movements you could detect good breeding, ease, grace and even – forgive the expression – a certain effeminacy. It would have cost my hero only a slight effort to bend a horseshoe or crush a sardine tin in his fist. However, not one movement revealed any sign of physical strength. He grasped the door handle or his cap as if they were butterflies – delicately, carefully, barely touching them with his fingers. His steps were noiseless, his handshake feeble. Looking at him you forgot he was as strong as Goliath and that with one hand he could lift what five editorial Andreys could never have budged. As I watched his delicate movements it was hard to believe that he was so strong and heavily built. Spencer¹ would have hailed him as the very model of grace.

When he entered my office he became confused. Most likely my sullen, disgruntled look came as a shock to his gentle, sensitive nature.

‘Heavens, I’m sorry!’ he began in a soft, rich baritone. ‘Seems I’ve chosen a rotten time to come barging in here and forcing you to make an exception in my case. I can see you’re up to your eyes! Well now, this is what I’ve come about, Mr Editor. Tomorrow I have to go to Odessa on a very important business matter. Had I been able to postpone my trip until Saturday then, believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you to make an exception in my case. Normally I abide by the rules, because I like to do things the right way…’

‘God, how he goes on and on!’ I thought, stretching my hand towards my pen to show that I was terribly busy. At such times visitors really got on my nerves!

‘I’ll take only one minute of your time,’ my hero continued in an apologetic tone. ‘But first allow me to introduce myself… Ivan Petrovich Kamyshev, LL.B, former investigating magistrate. I don’t have the honour of belonging to the writing fraternity. All the same, my purpose in coming here is purely literary. Before you there stands a person who wants to make a start, despite his forty-odd years. Better late than never!’

‘Delighted… How can I help you?’

The gentleman who wanted to make a start sat down and gazed at the floor with imploring eyes.

‘I’ve brought you a little story,’ he continued, ‘which I’d like you to print in your paper. I’m telling you quite frankly, Mr Editor, I haven’t written this story either for literary fame or to express “sweet sounds” in words.² I’m too old now for admirable things like that. No, I’m setting out on the writer’s path for purely commercial considerations… I want to earn some money… At the moment I’m completely unemployed. You know, I was investigating magistrate in S— district. I worked there for just over five years, but I didn’t make much money – nor did I preserve my innocence.’

Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes.

‘The work there was a real bore,’ he added, softly laughing. ‘I simply slaved away until I called it a day and left. Now I’m out of a job and just about broke. If you published my story, regardless of any merits it may have, you’d be doing me more than a favour – you’d be helping me. I’m well aware that a newspaper isn’t a charitable institution, nor an old people’s home, but… if you’d be good enough to…’

‘You’re lying,’ I thought.

Those little trinkets and that diamond ring on his little finger didn’t tally at all with having to write for a living. What’s more, a barely perceptible cloud – something that the experienced eye can detect on the faces of those who only rarely lie – passed over Kamyshev’s face.

‘What’s the subject of your story?’ I asked.

‘Subject? What can I say? It’s nothing new… it’s about love, murder. Read it and you’ll see. It’s called From the Memoirs of an Investigating Magistrate.’

I probably frowned, as Kamyshev blinked in embarrassment, gave a start and quickly added:

‘My story’s written in the hackneyed style of previous investigating magistrates but… you’ll find facts in it… the truth. Everything that’s depicted in it, from start to finish, happened before my eyes… I was both eyewitness and even an active participant.’

‘It’s not a question of truth… You don’t necessarily have to see something in order to describe it – that’s not important. The point is, for far too long now our poor readers have had their teeth set on edge by Gaboriau³ and Shklyarevsky.⁴ They’re sick and tired of all these mysterious murders, these detectives’ artful ruses, the phenomenal quick-wittedness of investigating magistrates. Of course, there are different kinds of public, but I’m talking about the public that reads my paper. What’s your story called?’

‘The Shooting Party.’

‘Hmm, doesn’t sound much. And to be quite honest with you I’m so piled up with stuff here at the moment that it’s impossible to take on anything new, even if its merits cannot be questioned.’

‘But please take my story… please. You say it’s nothing much, but you can’t condemn something out of hand without even having seen it! Surely you must admit that even investigating magistrates are capable of writing seriously?’

Kamyshev said all this with a stutter, twiddling his pencil between his fingers and gazing at his feet. Finally he became extremely flustered and couldn’t stop blinking. I felt quite sorry for him.

‘All right, leave it here,’ I said. ‘But I can’t promise that your story will be read soon. You’ll have to wait.’

‘For very long?’

‘I can’t say… come back in a month… or two… or three.’

‘That’s absolutely ages! But I dare not insist. You must do as you please.’ Kamyshev stood up and reached for his cap. ‘Thanks for the audience,’ he said. ‘I’m off home now and I’ll feed myself on hope. Three months of hoping! But I can see that you’ve had enough of me. I wish you good day, sir!’

‘Just one more word, if you don’t mind,’ I said, turning the pages of his thick notebook that were filled with very small handwriting. ‘You write here in the first person… So, by investigating magistrate I take it you mean yourself?’

‘Yes, but under a different name. My part in the story is rather scandalous… it would have been awkward to use my real name. Well then, in three months?’

‘Perhaps… but not earlier.’

The former investigating magistrate bowed gallantly, gingerly grasped the door handle and vanished, leaving his story on my desk. I took the notebook and put it away in the table drawer.

That handsome Kamyshev’s story reposed in my drawer for two months. One day, as I was leaving the office for my summer villa, I remembered it and took it with me.

After taking my seat in the railway compartment I opened the notebook and started reading from the middle: it excited my curiosity. That same evening, although I didn’t really have the time, I read the story from the beginning to the words ‘The End’, written with a flourish. That night I read the story right through again and when dawn came I was pacing my veranda and rubbing my temples as if I wanted to banish some new and painful thought that had suddenly entered my head. And this thought really was painful, unbearably intense… It struck me that I, who was no investigating magistrate and even less a forensic psychologist, had stumbled upon one man’s terrible secret, a secret that was no business of mine. I walked up and down the veranda, trying to persuade myself not to believe what I had discovered.

Kamyshev’s story was not published for the reasons given at the end of my chat with the reader. I shall meet my reader again, but for the moment I’m taking leave of him for a long time and I offer Kamyshev’s story for his perusal.

It’s really a very ordinary story, containing many longueurs and in places the style is very uneven. The author has a weakness for striking effects and resounding phrases. Obviously he’s writing for the very first time, with an inexperienced, untrained hand. For all that, his story makes for easy reading. There’s a plot, it makes sense and – most important of all – it’s original, with a very distinctive character – it’s what one would call sui generis.⁵ And it does have some literary merit. It’s worth reading… here it is.