THE deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were going to an inquest in the village of Syrnya.On the road they were overtaken by a snowstorm; they spent a long time going round and round, and arrived, not at midday, as they had intended, but in the evening when it was dark.They put up for the night at the Zemstvo hut.It so happened that it was in this hut that the dead body was lying -- the corpse of the Zemstvo insurance agent, Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three days before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot himself, to the great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary.
In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow off themselves and knocked it off their boots.And meanwhile the old village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp.There was a strong smell of paraffin.
"Who are you?" asked the doctor.
"Conshtable,..." answered the constable.
He used to spell it "conshtable" when he signed the receipts at the post office.
"And where are the witnesses?"
"They must have gone to tea, your honor."On the right was the parlor, the travelers' or gentry's room; on the left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves under the rafters.The doctor and the examining magistrate, followed by the constable, holding the lamp high above his head, went into the parlor.Here a still, long body covered with white linen was lying on the floor close to the table-legs.In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly see, besides the white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything about it was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body.On the table stood a samovar, cold long ago; and round it parcels, probably the eatables.
"To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!" said the doctor."If one does want to put a bullet through one's brains, one ought to do it at home in some outhouse."He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur coat, and his felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examining magistrate, sat down opposite.
"These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists," the doctor went on hotly."If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he gets up a scene with his wife without troubling about your presence; and when he feels inclined to shoot himself, he shoots himself in a village in a Zemstvo hut, so as to give the maximum of trouble to everybody.These gentlemen in every circumstance of life think of no one but themselves! That's why the elderly so dislike our 'nervous age.'""The elderly dislike so many things," said the examining magistrate, yawning."You should point out to the elder generation what the difference is between the suicides of the past and the suicides of to-day.In the old days the so-called gentleman shot himself because he had made away with Government money, but nowadays it is because he is sick of life, depressed.
...Which is better?"
"Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might have shot himself somewhere else.""Such trouble!" said the constable, "such trouble! It's a real affliction.The people are very much upset, your honor; they haven't slept these three nights.The children are crying.The cows ought to be milked, but the women won't go to the stall --they are afraid...for fear the gentleman should appear to them in the darkness.Of course they are silly women, but some of the men are frightened too.As soon as it is dark they won't go by the hut one by one, but only in a flock together.And the witnesses too...."Dr.Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a dark beard, and the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man, still young, who had only taken his degree two years before and looked more like a student than an official, sat in silence, musing.
They were vexed that they were late.Now they had to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night, though it was not yet six o'clock; and they had before them a long evening, a dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold in the morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the life which they would have chosen for themselves and of which they had once dreamed, and how far away they both were from their contemporaries, who were at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town without noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the theatre, or sitting in their studies over a book.Oh, how much they would have given now only to stroll along the Nevsky Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow, to listen to decent singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!
"Oo-oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm in the loft, and something outside slammed viciously, probably the signboard on the hut.
"Oo-oo-oo-oo!"
"You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here,"said Startchenko, getting up."It's not six yet, it's too early to go to bed; I am off.Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only a couple of miles from Syrnya.I shall go to see him and spend the evening there.Constable, run and tell my coachman not to take the horses out.And what are you going to do?" he asked Lyzhin.
"I don't know; I expect I shall go to sleep."The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out.Lyzhin could hear him talking to the coachman and the bells beginning to quiver on the frozen horses.He drove off.
