Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [132]
During those first years I was elected honorary justice of the peace. Sometimes I would have to go to town to take part in the assizes—the circuit courts—and this pleased and delighted me. When you have lived here for two or three months without ever leaving the place, then—and this happens especially in winter—you finally come to yearn for the sight of a black coat. Now, uniforms and black coats and frock coats were in evidence at the circuit courts; they were worn by lawyers, who are men who have received a liberal education; and there were people to talk to. After sleeping in a sleigh and eating in the servants’ kitchen it was the purest luxury to sit in an armchair wearing clean linen and soft boots, with a chain of office round one’s neck.
I was warmly received in the town, and eagerly made friends. Of these friendships the most intimate and, to speak truthfully, the most delightful for me was my friendship with Luganovich, the vice-chairman of the circuit court. You both know him, of course—a wonderfully charming fellow. All this happened after a celebrated case of arson. The preliminary investigation lasted two days, leaving us exhausted. Luganovich looked over to me and said: “Look here, come and have dinner with me.”
This was an unexpected invitation because I scarcely knew Luganovich except in his official capacity, and I had never been to his house. I returned to my hotel room for a few moments to change, and then went off to dinner. And there it happened that I met Anna Alexeyevna, Luganovich’s wife. In those days she was still a very young woman, no more than twenty-two, and her first child had been born only six months before. This all happened a long time ago, and nowadays I would find it hard to understand what was so remarkable about her, and what attracted me to her, but during the dinner it was all perfectly clear to me. I saw a young woman who was kind, beautiful, clever, fascinating, such as I had never met before. I felt her as a being who was close to me, and already familiar to me: it was as though I had seen her face and those friendly intelligent eyes long ago in the days of my childhood, in the album which lay on my mother’s chest of drawers.
In the arson case, four Jews, said to be members of a gang, were placed on trial; in my opinion they were completely innocent. At dinner I was very much agitated and disturbed, and I no longer remember what I said. All I recall is that Anna Alexeyevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband: “Dmitry, how can this be?”
Luganovich was a good-natured fellow, one of those simple-minded people who hold firmly to the opinion that once a man is brought before the court he must be guilty, and that one should not express any doubts about the correctness of a judgment unless all legal formalities have been complied with, and never over a dinner or in the course of a private conversation.
“You and I did not set fire to the place,” he said softly, “and as you see, we are not on trial, and we are not in prison.”
Both the husband and the wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible. From little things that happened—for example, the way they made coffee together, the way they understood one another without finishing their words or sentences—I came to the conclusion they were living peacefully and in harmony together, and were