The Little Demon, Fyodor Sologub [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

girls, smiling and conversing freely with them. Peredonov thought that it was not quite becoming for him to conduct himself so freely before the future inspector. Machigin wore a straw hat. But Peredonov remembered that in the summer he had seen him just outside the town wearing an official cap with a badge. Peredonov decided to complain about it. As it happened, Inspector Bogdanov was also present. Peredonov walked up to him and said:

“Your Machigin has been wearing a cap with a badge. He’s trying to look like a gentleman.”

Bogdanov was alarmed, trembled, and his grey Adam’s apple quivered.

“He has no right! No right whatever!” he exclaimed anxiously, blinking his red-rimmed eyes.

“He has no right, but he’s been wearing it,” complained Peredonov. “He ought to be stopped⁠—I told you that long ago. Or else any boor of a muzhik can wear a badge; and what will come of it?”

Bogdanov, who had been frightened by Peredonov before, was even more alarmed.

“How does he dare, eh?” he wailed. “I will call him up at once, at once. And I’ll reprimand him most severely.”

He left Peredonov and quickly ran off home.

Volodin walked at Peredonov’s side and said in a reproachful, bleating voice:

“He’s wearing a badge. What do you think of that! As if he had an official rank! Why is it allowed!”

“You mustn’t wear a badge either,” said Peredonov.

“I mustn’t and I don’t want to,” said Volodin. “Still I sometimes put on a badge⁠—only I know where and when one can do it. I go out of the town and I put it on there. It gives me great pleasure, and there’s no one to stop me. And when you meet a muzhik you get more respect⁠—”

“A badge doesn’t become your mug, Pavloushka,” said Peredonov; “and keep farther off, you’re making me dusty with your hoofs.”

Volodin relapsed into an injured silence, but still walked beside him. Peredonov said in a preoccupied way:

“The Routilov girls ought to be informed against too. They only go to church to chatter and to laugh. They rouge themselves, they dress themselves up and then go to church. And then they steal incense to make scents of⁠—that’s why they have such a strong smell.”

“What do you think of that?” said Volodin shaking his head with his bulging, dull eyes.

The shadow of a cloud ran quickly over the ground, and brought a feeling of dread on Peredonov. Sometimes the grey nedotikomka glimmered in the clouds of dust. Whenever the grass stirred in the wind Peredonov saw the nedotikomka running through it, feeding on the grass.

“Why is there grass in the town?” he thought. “What neglect; it ought to be rooted out.”

A twig stirred in the tree, it rolled up, cawed and flew away in the distance. Peredonov shivered, gave a wild cry and ran off home. Volodin ran after him anxiously, and, with a perplexed expression in his bulging eyes, clutched at his bowler hat and swung his stick.

That same day Bogdanov asked Machigin to come and see him. Before entering the inspector’s house Machigin stood in the street with his back to the sun, took off his hat and combed his hair with his fingers, noticing from his shadow that his hair was unkempt.

“Explain yourself, young man. What are you thinking of, eh?” Bogdanov assailed Machigin with these words.

“What is the matter?” asked Machigin unconcernedly, playing with his straw hat and swinging his left foot.

Bogdanov did not ask him to sit down as he intended to reprimand him.

“How is it, young man, how is it that you’ve been wearing a badge, eh? What made you infringe the rule?” he asked, assuming an expression of sternness and shaking his Adam’s apple. Machigin flushed but answered boldly:

“What of it? Haven’t I a right to?”

“Are you an official, eh? An official?” said Bogdanov excitedly. “What sort of an official are you, eh? A copying clerk, eh?”

“It’s a sign of a schoolmaster’s calling,” said Machigin, boldly, and suddenly smiled as he called to mind what the dignity of a schoolmaster’s vocation was.

“Carry a stick in your hand, a stick. That’s the sign of your schoolmaster’s calling,” said Bogdanov shaking his head.

“But please, Sergey Potapitch,” said Machigin in an injured tone, “what’s the good of a stick? Anyone can do that, but a badge gives a man prestige.”

“What sort of prestige, eh? What sort of prestige?” Bogdanov shouted at him. “What sort of prestige do you want, eh? Are you an official?”

“Oh, but forgive me, Sergey Potapitch,” said Machigin persuasively and reasonably. “Among the ignorant peasant classes a badge immediately arouses a feeling of respect⁠—they’ve been much more respectful lately.”

Machigin stroked his red moustache in a self-satisfied way.

“It can’t be allowed, young man, it can’t be allowed under any consideration,” said Bogdanov shaking his head stiffly.

“But please, Sergey Potapitch, a schoolmaster without a badge is like the British lion without a tail,” protested Machigin. “He’s only a caricature.”

“What’s a tail got to do with it, eh? Why drag in the tail, eh?” said Bogdanov excitedly. “Why are you mixing it up with politics, eh? What business is it of yours to discuss politics, eh? No, young man, you’d better dispense with the badge. For Heaven’s sake, give it up. No, it’s impossible. How could it be possible. God preserve us, we can’t tell who might find it out!”

Machigin shrugged his shoulders and was about to say something else, but Bogdanov interrupted him⁠—what Bogdanov considered a brilliant idea flashed into his head.

“But you came to me without the badge, without the badge, eh? You yourself feel that it’s not the right thing to do.”

Machigin was nonplussed for a moment, but found an answer even to this:

“As we are rural schoolmasters we need this privilege in the country, but in town we are known to belong to the intellectual classes.”

“No, young man, you know very well that this is not allowed. And if I hear of it again we shall have to get rid of you.”

From time to time Grushina arranged evening parties for young people,