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

him any of her rouge, but she had to yield⁠—and Peredonov coloured his cheeks. He muttered:

“Veriga himself paints so as to look younger. You don’t expect me to get married with white cheeks.”

Then, shutting himself in his bedroom, he decided to mark himself, so that Volodin could not change places with him. On his chest, on his stomach, on his forearms and in various other places he marked in ink the letter P.

“Volodin ought to be marked too. But how can he be? He would see it and rub it off,” thought Peredonov dejectedly.

Then a new thought came into his mind⁠—to put on a pair of corsets so that he should not be taken for an old man if he happened to bend over. He asked Varvara for a pair of corsets, but Varvara’s corsets proved to be too tight⁠—they would not come together.

“They ought to have been bought earlier,” he said savagely. “You never think of anything in time.”

“What man wears corsets?” said Varvara. “No one does.”

“Veriga does,” said Peredonov.

“Yes, Veriga is an old man, but you, Ardalyon Borisitch, thank God, are in your prime.”

Peredonov smiled with self-satisfaction, looked in the mirror and said:

“Of course, I shall live another hundred and fifty years.”

The cat sneezed under the bed. Varvara said with a smile:

“There, even the cat’s sneezing! That shows it’s true.”

But Peredonov suddenly frowned. The cat now aroused dread in him and its sneezing seemed to him a sign of ominous cunning.

“He’ll sneeze something that’s not wanted,” he thought, and got under the bed and began to drive the cat out. The cat mewed savagely, pressed against the wall, and suddenly with a loud, piercing mew, jumped between Peredonov’s hands and ran out of the room.

“A Dutch devil,” Peredonov abused the animal savagely.

“He’s certainly a devil,” affirmed Varvara. “He’s become altogether wild. He won’t let himself be stroked, as if the devil had got into him.”

The Prepolovenskys sent for the bride’s-men early in the morning. At ten o’clock all had gathered at Peredonov’s. Grushina also came, and Sofya with her husband. They were handed vodka and the usual zakouska.

Peredonov ate little and thought dejectedly as to how he could distinguish himself from Volodin.

“He’s curled like a sheep,” he thought maliciously, and suddenly imagined that he too might comb his hair in a special way. He rose from the table and said:

“You go on eating and drinking⁠—I don’t object; but I’ll go to the hairdresser and I’ll have my hair done in the Spanish style.”

“What is the Spanish style?” asked Routilov.

“Wait and you’ll see.”

When Peredonov went to get his hair trimmed, Varvara said:

“He’s always inventing new notions. He sees devils. If he only drank less gin, the cursed tippler!”

Prepolovenskaya said with a sly smile:

“Well, as soon as you are married, Ardalyon Borisitch will get his place and settle down.”

Grushina sniggered. She was amused by the secrecy of this wedding, and she was excited by an intense desire to create an ignominious spectacle of some sort and yet not be mixed up with it. On the day before she had whispered in an underhand way to her friends the place and hour of the wedding. And early that morning she had called in the blacksmith’s younger son, had given him a five-kopeck piece, and hinted to him that towards evening he should wait outside the town where the newly married couple would pass, to throw rubbish at them. The boy gladly agreed and gave his sworn promise not to betray her. Grushina reminded him:

“You did give away Cherepnin when they beat you.”

“We were fools,” said the boy. “Now, let ’em hang us and we won’t tell.”

And the boy, in confirmation of his oath, ate a small handful of loam. For this Grushina added another three kopecks.

At the hairdresser’s Peredonov demanded the barber himself. The barber, a young man who had lately finished a course at the town school and who had read books from the rural library, was just finishing cutting the hair of a landed proprietor. When he had finished, he came up to Peredonov.

“Let him go first,” said Peredonov angrily.

The man paid and left. Peredonov sat down in front of the mirror.

“I want my hair trimmed and properly arranged,” said he. “I have an important affair on today, something special, and so I want my hair arranged in the Spanish style.”

The boy apprentice, who stood at the door, snorted with amusement. His master looked sternly at him. He had never had occasion to trim anyone’s hair in Spanish style, and did not know what the Spanish style was or even if there were such a style. But if the gentleman demanded such a thing, then it must be assumed that he knew what he wanted. The young hairdresser did not want to betray his ignorance. He said respectfully:

“It’s impossible to do it with your hair, sir.”

“Why impossible?” said Peredonov taken aback.

“Your hair is badly nourished,” explained the hairdresser.

“Do you expect me to pour beer over it?” growled Peredonov.

“Excuse me, why beer?” said the hairdresser affably. “When your hair is trimmed your head shows signs of baldness and what’s left isn’t enough to do the thing in the Spanish style.”

Peredonov felt himself crushed by the impossibility of having his hair trimmed in the Spanish style. He said dejectedly:

“Well, cut it as you like.”

He began to wonder whether the hairdresser had been persuaded not to cut his hair in a distinguished style. He ought not to have spoken about it at home. Evidently, while he was walking gravely and sedately along the street, Volodin had run like a little sheep by back streets and had conspired with the hairdresser.

“Would you like a spray, sir?” said the hairdresser, having finished trimming his hair.

“Spray me with mignonette. The more, the better,” demanded Peredonov. “You might at least make up by spraying me with plenty of mignonette.”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t keep mignonette,” said the hairdresser in confusion. “How will opopanax do?”

“You can’t do anything I want,” said Peredonov bitterly. “Go