Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories Read online

you come home,Ilya Stepanitch; Alexandr Vassilitch is very much worried about you.'And he said to me, 'What does he want to worry for! I want to be in thefresh air. My head aches. Go home,' he said, 'and I will come later.'"

  "And you left him?" I cried, clasping my hands.

  "What else could I do? He told me to go ... how could I stay?"

  All my fears came back to me at once.

  "Take me to him this minute--do you hear? This minute! O Semyon,Semyon, I did not expect this of you! You say he is not far off?"

  "He is quite close, here, where the copse begins--he is sitting there.It is not more than five yards from the river bank. I found him as Icame alongside the river."

  "Well, take me to him, take me to him."

  Semyon set off ahead of me. "This way, sir.... We have only to getdown to the river and it is close there."

  But instead of getting down to the river we got into a hollow andfound ourselves before an empty shed.

  "Hey, stop!" Semyon cried suddenly. "I must have come too far to theright.... We must go that way, more to the left...."

  We turned to the left--and found ourselves among such high, rank weedsthat we could scarcely get out.... I could not remember such a tangledgrowth of weeds anywhere near our village. And then all at once a marshwas squelching under our feet, and we saw little round moss-coveredhillocks which I had never noticed before either.... We turnedback--a small hill was sharply before us and on the top of it stood ashanty--and in it someone was snoring. Semyon and I shouted severaltimes into the shanty; something stirred at the further end of it, thestraw rustled--and a hoarse voice shouted, "I am on guard."

  We turned back again ... fields and fields, endless fields.... I feltready to cry.... I remembered the words of the fool in _KingLear_: "This night will turn us all to fools or madmen."

  "Where are we to go?" I said in despair to Semyon.

  "The devil must have led us astray, sir," answered the distractedservant. "It's not natural ... there's mischief at the bottom of it!"

  I would have checked him but at that instant my ear caught a sound,distinct but not loud, that engrossed my whole attention. There was afaint "pop" as though someone had drawn a stiff cork from a narrowbottle-neck. The sound came from somewhere not far off. Why the soundseemed to me strange and peculiar I could not say, but at once I wenttowards it.

  Semyon followed me. Within a few minutes something tall and broadloomed in the fog.

  "The copse! here is the copse!" Semyon cried, delighted. "Yes,here ... and there is the master sitting under the birch-tree....There he is, sitting where I left him. That's he, surely enough!"

  I looked intently. A man really was sitting with his back towards us,awkwardly huddled up under the birch-tree. I hurriedly approached andrecognised Tyeglev's great-coat, recognised his figure, his head bowedon his breast. "Tyeglev!" I cried ... but he did not answer.

  "Tyeglev!" I repeated, and laid my hand on his shoulder. Then hesuddenly lurched forward, quickly and obediently, as though he werewaiting for my touch, and fell onto the grass. Semyon and I raised himat once and turned him face upwards. It was not pale, but was lifelessand motionless; his clenched teeth gleamed white--and his eyes,motionless, too, and wide open, kept their habitual, drowsy and"different" look.

  "Good God!" Semyon said suddenly and showed me his hand stainedcrimson with blood.... The blood was coming from under Tyeglev'sgreat-coat, from the left side of his chest.

  He had shot himself from a small, single-barreled pistol which waslying beside him. The faint pop I had heard was the sound made by thefatal shot.

  XVII

  Tyeglev's suicide did not surprise his comrades very much. I have toldyou already that, according to their ideas, as a "fatal" man he wasbound to do something extraordinary, though perhaps they had notexpected that from him. In the letter to the colonel he asked him, inthe first place, to have the name of Ilya Tyeglev removed from thelist of officers, as he had died by his own act, adding that in hiscash-box there would be found more than sufficient money to pay hisdebts,--and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at thattime commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter whichwas in the same envelope. This second letter, of course, we all read;some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains overthe composition of this letter.

  "You know, Your Excellency" (so I remember the letter began), "you areso stern and severe over the slightest negligence in uniform when apale, trembling officer presents himself before you; and here am I nowgoing to meet our universal, righteous, incorruptible Judge, theSupreme Being, the Being of infinitely greater consequence even thanYour Excellency, and I am going to meet him in undress, in mygreat-coat, and even without a cravat round my neck."

  Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me,with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the deadman's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, toinvent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently beenpleased with the phrase: he had made use in it of the accumulation ofepithets and amplifications _a la_ Marlinsky, at that time infashion. Further on he had alluded to destiny, to persecution, to hisvocation which had remained unfulfilled, to a mystery which he wouldbear with him to the grave, to people who had not cared to understandhim; he had even quoted lines from some poet who had said of the crowdthat it wore life "like a dog-collar" and clung to vice "like aburdock"--and it was not free from mistakes in spelling. To tell thetruth, this last letter of poor Tyeglev was somewhat vulgar; and I canfancy the contemptuous surprise of the great personage to whom it wasaddressed--I can imagine the tone in which he would pronounce "aworthless officer! ill weeds are cleared out of the field!"

  Only at the very end of the letter there was a sincere note fromTyeglev's heart. "Ah, Your Excellency," he concluded his epistle, "Iam an orphan, I had no one to love me as a child--and all held alooffrom me ... and I myself destroyed the only heart that gave itself tome!"

  Semyon found in the pocket of Tyeglev's great-coat a little album fromwhich his master was never separated. But almost all the pages hadbeen torn out; only one was left on which there was the followingcalculation:

  Napoleon was born Ilya Tyeglev was born on August 15th, 1769. on January 7th, 1811. 1769 1811 15 7 8* 1+ ----- ----- Total 1792 Total 1819

  * August--the 8th month + January--the 1st month of the year. of the year.

  1 1 7 8 9 1 2 9 --- --- Total 19! Total 19!

  Napoleon died on May Ilya Tyeglev died on 5th, 1825. April 21st, 1834.

  1825 1834 5 21 5* 7+ ----- ----- Total 1835 Total 1862

  * May--the 5th month + July--the 7th month of the year. of the year.

  1 1 8 8 3 6 5 23 -- -- Total 17! Total 17!

  Poor fellow! Was not this perhaps why he became an artillery officer?

  As a suicide he was buried outside the cemetery--and he wasimmediately forgotten.

  XVIII

  The day after Tyeglev's burial (I was still in the village waiting formy brother) Semyon came into the hut and announced that Ilya wanted tosee me.

  "What Ilya?" I asked.

  "Our pedlar."

  I told Semyon to call him.

  He made his appearance. He expressed some regret at the death of thelieutenant; wondered
what could have possessed him....

  "Was he in debt to you?" I asked.

  "No, sir. He always paid punctually for everything he had. But I tellyou what," here the pedlar grinned, "you have got something of mine."

  "What is it?"

  "Why, that," he pointed to the brass comb lying on the little toilettable. "A thing of little value," the fellow went on, "but as it was apresent ..."

  All at once I raised my head. Something dawned upon me.

  "Your name is Ilya?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Was it you, then, I saw under the willow tree the other night?"

  The pedlar winked, and grinned more broadly than ever.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And it was _your_ name that was called?"

  "Yes, sir," the pedlar repeated with playful modesty. "There is ayoung girl here," he went on in a high falsetto, "who, owing to thegreat strictness of her parents----"

  "Very good, very good," I interrupted him, handed him the comb anddismissed him.

  "So that was the 'Ilyusha,'" I thought, and I sank into philosophicreflections which I will not, however, intrude upon you as I don'twant to prevent anyone from believing in fate, predestination and suchlike.

  When I was back in Petersburg I made inquiries about Masha. I evendiscovered the doctor who had treated her. To my amazement I heardfrom him that she had died not through poisoning but of cholera! Itold him what I had heard from Tyeglev.

  "Eh! Eh!" cried the doctor all at once. "Is that Tyeglev an artilleryofficer, a man of middle height and with a stoop, speaks with a lisp?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I thought so. That gentleman came to me--I had never seen himbefore--and began insisting that the girl had poisoned herself. 'Itwas cholera,' I told him. 'Poison,' he said. 'It was cholera, I tellyou,' I said. 'No, it was poison,' he declared. I saw that the fellowwas a sort of lunatic, with a broad base to his head--a sign ofobstinacy, he would not give over easily.... Well, it doesn't matter,I thought, the patient is dead.... 'Very well,' I said, 'she poisonedherself if you prefer it.' He thanked me, even shook hands withme--and departed."

  I told the doctor how the officer had shot himself the same day.

  The doctor did not turn a hair--and only observed that there were allsorts of queer fellows in the world.

  "There are indeed," I assented.

  Yes, someone has said truly of suicides: until they carry out theirdesign, no one believes them; and when they do, no one regrets them.

  Baden, 1870.

  * * * * *

  THE INN

  On the high road to B., at an equal distance from the two townsthrough which it runs, there stood not long ago a roomy inn, very wellknown to the drivers of troikas, peasants with trains of waggons,merchants, clerks, pedlars and the numerous travellers of all sortswho journey upon our roads at all times of the year. Everyone used tocall at the inn; only perhaps a landowner's coach, drawn by sixhome-bred horses, would roll majestically by, which did not preventeither the coachman or the groom on the footboard from looking withpeculiar feeling and attention at the little porch so familiar to them;or some poor devil in a wretched little cart and with three five-kopeckpieces in the bag in his bosom would urge on his weary nag when hereached the prosperous inn, and would hasten on to some night's lodgingin the hamlets that lie by the high road in a peasant's hut, where hewould find nothing but bread and hay, but, on the other hand, would nothave to pay an extra kopeck. Apart from its favourable situation, theinn with which our story deals had many attractions: excellent water intwo deep wells with creaking wheels and iron buckets on a chain; aspacious yard with a tiled roof on posts; abundant stores of oats inthe cellar; a warm outer room with a very huge Russian stove with longhorizontal flues attached that looked like titanic shoulders, andlastly two fairly clean rooms with the walls covered with reddishlilac paper somewhat frayed at the lower edge with a painted woodensofa, chairs to match and two pots of geraniums in the windows, whichwere, however, never cleaned--and were dingy with the dust of years.The inn had other advantages: the blacksmith's was close by, the millwas just at hand; and, lastly, one could get a good meal in it, thanksto the cook, a fat and red-faced peasant woman, who prepared rich andappetizing dishes and dealt out provisions without stint; the nearesttavern was reckoned not half a mile away; the host kept snuff whichthough mixed with wood-ash, was extremely pungent and pleasantlyirritated the nose; in fact there were many reasons why visitors ofall sorts were never lacking in that inn. It was liked by those whoused it--and that is the chief thing; without which nothing, of course,would succeed and it was liked principally as it was said in thedistrict, because the host himself was very fortunate and successfulin all his undertakings, though he did not much deserve his goodfortune; but it seems if a man is lucky, he is lucky.

  The innkeeper was a man of the working class called Naum Ivanov. Hewas a man of middle height with broad, stooping shoulders; he had abig round head and curly hair already grey, though he did not lookmore than forty; a full and fresh face, a low but white and smoothforehead and little bright blue eyes, out of which he looked in a veryqueer way from under his brows and yet with an insolent expression, acombination not often met with. He always held his head down andseemed to turn it with difficulty, perhaps because his neck was veryshort. He walked at a trot and did not swing his arms, but slowlymoved them with his fists clenched as he walked. When he smiled, andhe smiled often without laughing, as it were smiling to himself, histhick lips parted unpleasantly and displayed a row of close-set,brilliant teeth. He spoke jerkily and with a surly note in his voice.He shaved his beard, but dressed in Russian style. His costumeconsisted of a long, always threadbare, full coat, full breeches andshoes on his bare feet. He was often away from home on business and hehad a great deal of business--he was a horse-dealer, he rented land,had a market garden, bought up orchards and traded in various ways--buthis absences never lasted long; like a kite, to which he hadconsiderable resemblance, especially in the expression of his eyes, heused to return to his nest. He knew how to keep that nest in order. Hewas everywhere, he listened to everything and gave orders, served outstores, sent things out and made up his accounts himself, and neverknocked off a farthing from anyone's account, but never asked morethan his due.

  The visitors did not talk to him, and, indeed, he did not care towaste words. "I want your money and you want my victuals," he used tosay, as it were, jerking out each word: "We have not met for achristening; the traveller has eaten, has fed his beasts, no need tosit on. If he is tired, let him sleep without chattering." Thelabourers he kept were healthy grown-up men, but docile and wellbroken in; they were very much afraid of him. He never touchedintoxicating liquor and he used to give his men ten kopecks for vodkaon the great holidays; they did not dare to drink on other days.People like Naum quickly get rich ... but to the magnificent positionin which he found himself--and he was believed to be worth forty orfifty thousand roubles--Naum Ivanov had not arrived by the straitpath....

  The inn had existed on the same spot on the high road twenty yearsbefore the time from which we date the beginning of our story. It istrue that it had not then the dark red shingle roof which made NaumIvanov's inn look like a gentleman's house; it was inferior inconstruction and had thatched roofs in the courtyard, and a humblefence instead of a wall of logs; nor had it been distinguished by thetriangular Greek pediment on carved posts; but all the same it hadbeen a capital inn--roomy, solid and warm--and travellers were glad tofrequent it. The innkeeper at that time was not Naum Ivanov, but acertain Akim Semyonitch, a serf belonging to a neighbouring lady,Lizaveta Prohorovna Kuntse, the widow of a staff officer. This Akimwas a shrewd trading peasant who, having left home in his youth withtwo wretched nags to work as a carrier, had returned a year later withthree decent horses and had spent almost all the rest of his life onthe high roads; he used to go to Kazan and Odessa, to Orenburg and toWarsaw and abroad to Leipsic and used in the end to travel with twoteams, each of three stout,
sturdy stallions, harnessed to two hugecarts. Whether it was that he was sick of his life of homelesswandering, whether it was that he wanted to rear a family (his wifehad died in one of his absences and what children she had borne himwere dead also), anyway, he made up his mind at last to abandon hisold calling and to open an inn. With the permission of his mistress,he settled on the high road, bought in her name about an acre and ahalf of land and built an inn upon it. The undertaking prospered. Hehad more than enough money to furnish and stock it. The experience hehad gained in the course of his years of travelling from one end ofRussia to another was of great advantage to him; he knew how to pleasehis visitors, especially his former mates, the drivers of troikas,many of whom he knew personally and whose good-will is particularlyvalued by innkeepers, as they need so much food for themselves andtheir powerful beasts. Akim's inn became celebrated for hundreds ofmiles round. People were even readier to stay with him than with hissuccessor, Naum, though Akim could not be compared with Naum as amanager. Under Akim everything was in the old-fashioned style, snug,but not over clean; and his oats were apt to be light, or musty; thecooking, too, was somewhat indifferent: dishes were sometimes put onthe table which would better have been left in the oven and it was notthat he was stingy with the provisions, but just that the cook had notlooked after them. On the other hand, he was ready to knock offsomething from the price and did not refuse to trust a man's word forpayment--he was a good man and a genial host. In talking,