Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [50]
“Listen to me. You are not the village elder, nor the patrolman—is it your business to break up crowds?”
“It’s not his business—no, it isn’t!” people shouted from all over the room. “No one can live in the same world with him, Your Honor! Fifteen years we’ve had to endure him! Ever since he came back from the Army, we’ve felt like running away from the village. He only torments us—that’s all he ever does!”
“Just so, Your Honor,” says the village elder. “The whole village—everyone—complains about him. No one can breathe while he’s around. Whenever we march in procession with the icons, or there’s a wedding, or any kind of occasion, he’s always there shouting, making noises, and ordering everyone about. He pulls the children’s ears, and spies on the womenfolk in case they are up to mischief—he’s like a father-in-law.… The other day he went round all the houses ordering us not to sing songs and not to burn lights!”
“Wait a bit,” said the magistrate. “You’ll be given an opportunity to testify later. For the present Prishibeyev may proceed. Proceed, Prishibeyev!”
“Oh yes, sir!” the sergeant croaked. “Your Honor, you’ve been pleased to say it’s not my business to disperse the crowd. Very good, sir. But supposing there is a breach of the peace. You can’t permit people to behave in an unbecoming manner. What law says people can be free? I won’t permit it. If I don’t run after them and punish them, who will? No one here knows anything about law and order, and in the whole village, Your Honor, there’s only me who knows how to deal with the common folk, and, Your Honor, there isn’t anything I don’t know. I’m not a peasant. I’m a non-commissioned officer, a retired quartermaster sergeant! I did my service in Warsaw attached to headquarters, and later on, may it please Your Honor, upon receiving an honorable discharge I was seconded into the fire brigade, and then, seeing as how I was retired from the fire brigade due to infirmities consequent to illness, I served for two years as doorkeeper in a junior high school for boys.… I know all the rules and regulations, sir. Take an ignorant peasant who doesn’t understand anything—he has to do what I tell him to do, because it’s for his own good. Then there’s this little trouble we’re talking about. Well, it is quite true I broke up the crowd, but right there on the shore, lying on the sands, there was a dead body, see. Man drowned. So I says to myself: What right does he have to lie there? What’s right and proper about it? What’s the officer doing there, gaping away? So I address myself to the officer, and I say: ‘You ought to notify the authorities. Maybe the drowned fellow drowned himself, or maybe there’s a smell of Siberia about the business. Maybe it’s a question of criminal homicide.…’ Well, Officer Zhigin didn’t pay any attention to me; he only went on smoking a cigarette. ‘Who’s giving orders here?’ he says. ‘Where does he come from, eh? Don’t we know how to behave without him butting in?’ ‘You’re a damned fool!’ says I. ‘The truth is you don’t know what you’re doing. You just stand there and don’t pay attention to anything.’ Says he: ‘I notified the district police inspector yesterday.’ Why,’ says I, ‘did you notify the district police inspector? Under what article of what code of law? In such cases, when it’s a matter of drowning or hanging or something of the sort, what is the inspector expected to do? Here we