Petrovich Kamyshev, Bachelor of Law and former examining magistrate. I have not the honour of belonging to the fellowship of authors, nevertheless I appear before you from motives that are purely those of a writer. Notwithstanding his forty years, you have before you a man who wishes to be a beginner… Better late than never!’
‘Very pleased… What can I do for you?’
The man wishing to be a beginner sat down and continued, looking at the floor with his imploring eyes:
‘I have brought you a novel which I would like to see published in your journal. Mr Editor, I will tell you quite candidly I have not written this story to attain an author’s celebrity, nor for the sake of sweet-sounding words. I am too old to enjoy such things. I venture on the writer’s path from purely commercial motives… I want to earn something… At the present moment I have absolutely no occupation. I was a magistrate in the S — district for more than five years, but I did not make a fortune, nor did I keep my innocence either…’
Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes and laughed gently.
‘Service is tiresome… I served and served till I was quite fed up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing to eat… If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story, you will do me more than a great favour… You will help me… A journal is not an almshouse, nor an old-age asylum… I know that, but… if you’d be so kind…’
‘He is lying,’ I thought.
The ornaments on his watch-chain and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his having written simply for money. Besides, a slight cloud passed over Kamyshev’s face such as only an experienced eye can trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.
‘What is the subject of your story?’ I asked.
‘The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new… Love and murder… But read it, you will see… “From the Notes of an Examining Magistrate”..
I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:
‘My story is written in the conventional style of former examining magistrates, but… you will find in it facts, the truth… All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my eyes… Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.’
‘The truth does not matter… It is not absolutely necessary to see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky. They are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?’
‘The Shooting Party.’
‘Hm! That’s rather sensational, you know… And, to be quite frank with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.’
‘Pray look at my work… You say it is sensational, but… it is difficult to tell what something is like until you have seen it… Besides, it seems to me you refuse to admit that an examining magistrate can write serious works.’
All this Kamyshev said stammeringly, twisting a pencil about between his fingers and looking at his feet. He finished by blinking his eyes and becoming exceedingly confused. I was sorry for him.
‘All right, leave it,’ I said. ‘But I can’t promise that your story will be read very soon. You will have to wait…’
‘How long?’
‘I don’t know. Look in… in about two to three months…’
‘That’s a pretty long time… But I dare not insist… Let it be as you say…’
Kamyshev rose and took up his cap.
‘Thank you for the audience,’ he said. ‘I will now go home and dwell in hope. Three months of hope! However, I am boring you. I have the honour to bid you goodbye!’
‘One word more, please,’ I said as I turned over the pages of his thick copybook, which were written in a very small handwriting.
‘You write here in the first person You therefore mean the examining magistrate to be yourself?’
‘Yes, but under another name. The part I play in this story is somewhat scandalous… It would have been awkward to give my own name… In three months, then?’
‘Yes, not earlier, please… Goodbye!’
The former examining magistrate bowed gallantly, turned the door handle gingerly, and disappeared, leaving his work on my writing table. I took up the copybook and put it away in the table drawer.
Handsome Kamyshev’s story reposed in my table drawer for two months. One day, when leaving my office to go to the country, I remembered it and took it with me.
When I was seated in the railway coach I opened the copybook and began to read from the middle. The middle interested me. That same evening, notwithstanding my want of leisure, I read the whole story from the beginning to the words ‘The End’, which were written with a great flourish. That night I read the whole story through again, and at sunrise I was walking about the terrace from corner to corner, rubbing my temples as if I wanted to rub out of my head some new and painful thoughts that had suddenly entered my mind… The thoughts were really painful, unbearably sharp. It appeared to me that I, neither an examining magistrate nor even a psychological juryman, had discovered the terrible secret of a man, a secret that did not concern me in the slightest degree. I paced the terrace and tried to persuade myself not to believe in my discovery…
Kamyshev’s story did not appear in my newspaper for reasons that I will explain at the end of my talk with the reader. I shall meet the reader once again. Now, when I am leaving him for a long time, I offer Kamyshev’s story for his perusal.
It is not an unusual story. There are longueurs in it, there are things crudely expressed… The author is too fond of effects and melodramatic phrases… It is evident that he is writing for the first time, his hand is unaccustomed, uneducated. Nevertheless his narrative reads easily. There is a plot, a meaning, too, and what is most important, it is original, very characteristic and what may be called sui generis. It also possesses certain literary qualities. It is worth reading. Here it is.
CHAPTER I
‘The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are! Give me some sugar!’
These cries awoke me. I stretched myself, feeling indisposition and heaviness in every limb. One can lie upon one’s legs or arms until they are numb, but now it seemed to me that my whole body, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, was benumbed. An afternoon snooze in a sultry, dry atmosphere amid the buzzing and humming of flies and mosquitoes does not act in an invigorating manner but has an enervating effect. Broken and bathed in perspiration, I rose and went to the window. The sun was still high and baked with the same ardour it had done three hours before. Many hours still remained until sunset and the coolness of evening.
‘The husband killed his wife!’
‘Stop lying, Ivan Dem’yanych!’ I said as I gave a slight tap to Ivan Dem’yanych’s nose. ‘Husbands kill their wives only in novels and in the tropics, where African passions boil over, my dear. For us such horrors as thefts and burglaries or people living on false passports are quite enough.’
‘Thefts and burglaries!’ Ivan Dem’yanych murmured through his hooked nose. ‘Oh, how stupid you are!’
‘What’s to be done, my dear? In what way are we mortals to blame for our brain having its limits? Besides, Ivan Dem’yanych,