THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ANTON CHEKHOV. Anton Chekhov

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      CHAPTER XXXI

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      The unexpected eruption of one-eyed Kuz’ma into this almost finished story confused things most dreadfully. I was quite bewildered, and did not know what to think about Kuz’ma’s evidence. He denied any involvement, and the preliminary investigations were against his guilt. Olga had been murdered not from motives of greed; according to the doctors ‘it was probable’ that no attempt against her honour had been made; the only possible explanation if Kuz’ma had killed her was that he had done so for lust, or for money. He might have been drunk, or have strangled her in the course of an attack. But none of this tallied with the setting of the murder.

      But if Kuz’ma was not guilty, why had he not explained the presence of blood on his poddevka, and why had he invented dreams and hallucinations? Why had he implicated this gentleman, whom he had seen and heard, but had forgotten so entirely that he could not even remember the colour of his clothes?

      Polugradov hurried back post haste.

      ‘Now you see, sir!’ he said, ‘if you had examined the scene of the crime at once, believe me all would have been plain now, as plain as a pikestaff! If you had examined all the servants at once, we could then have known who had carried Olga Nikolaevna and who had not. And now we can’t even find out at what distance from the scene of the crime this drunkard was lying!’

      He cross-questioned Kuz’ma for about two hours, but could get nothing new out of him; he only said that while half asleep he had seen a gentleman, that the gentleman had wiped his hands on the skirts of his poddevka and had cursed him for a ‘drunken swine’, but he could not say who this gentleman was, nor what his face and clothes were like.

      ‘How much cognac did you drink?’

      ‘I finished half a bottle.’

      ‘Perhaps it was not cognac?’

      ‘No, sir, it was real fine champagne.’

      ‘So you even know the names of wines!’ the Assistant Prosecutor said, laughing.

      ‘How should I not know them? I’ve served my masters for more than thirty years, thank God! I’ve had time to learn…’

      For some reason the Assistant Prosecutor required that Kuz’ma should be confronted with Urbenin… Kuz’ma looked for a long time at Urbenin, shook his head and said:

      ‘No, I can’t remember… perhaps it was Pëtr Egorych, perhaps not… Who can say?’

      Polugradov shrugged his shoulders and drove away, leaving me to choose which was the right one of the two murderers.

      The investigations were protracted… Urbenin and Kuz’ma were imprisoned in the guard-house of the village in which I lived. Poor Pëtr Egorych lost courage very much; he grew thin and grey and fell into a religious mood; two or three times he sent to me, begging to let him see the laws about punishments; it was evident he was interested in the extent of the punishment that awaited him.

      ‘What will become of my children?’ he asked me at one of the examinations. ‘If I were alone your mistake would not grieve me very much; but I must live… live for the children! They will perish without me. Besides, I… I am not able to part from them! What are you doing with me?’

      When the guards said ‘thou’ to him, and when he had to go a couple of times from my village to the town and back on foot under escort, in the sight of all the people who knew him, he became despondent and nervous.

      ‘These are not lawyers,’ he cried so that he was heard all over the guard-house. ‘They are nothing but cruel, heartless boys, without mercy either for people or truth! I know why I am confined here, I know it! By casting the blame on me they want to hide the real culprit! The Count killed her; or if it was not the Count, it was his hireling!’

      When he heard that Kuz’ma had been arrested, he was at first very pleased.

      ‘Now the hireling has been found!’ he said to me. ‘Now he’s been found!’

      But soon, when he saw he was not released and when he was informed of Kuz’ma’s testimony, he again became depressed.

      ‘Now I’m lost,’ he said, ‘definitely lost. In order to get out of prison this one-eyed devil will be sure sooner or later to name me and say it was I who wiped my hands in his skirts. But you yourself saw that my hands had not been wiped!’

      Sooner or later our suspicions would have to be elucidated.

      About the end of November of that year, when snow began to drift before my windows and the lake looked like an endless white desert, Kuz’ma asked to see me; he sent the guard to tell me he had ‘thought things over’. I ordered him to be brought to me.

      ‘I am very pleased that you have at last thought the matter over,’ I greeted him. it is high time to СКАЧАТЬ