‘But what can I do about it, dear chap? How are we humans to blame if we’re born with limited brainpower? What’s more, Ivan Demyanych, there’s nothing to be ashamed of if one behaves like an idiot in temperatures like these. You’re my clever little birdie, but it seems that your brains have curdled and grown stupid in this heat.’
My parrot’s called Ivan Demyanych, not Pretty Polly or any other bird name. He acquired this name purely by chance. My servant Polikarp was once cleaning his cage when he suddenly made a discovery without which my noble bird would have been called Pretty Polly to this day. For no apparent reason, it suddenly struck that lazy servant of mine that my parrot’s beak closely resembled the nose of Ivan Demyanych, our village shopkeeper, and ever since the name and patronymic of that long-nosed shopkeeper has stuck to my parrot. Thanks to Polikarp the entire village christened my remarkable bird Ivan Demyanych; thanks to Polikarp the bird became a real person, while the shopkeeper lost his real name: to the end of his days he’ll be spoken of by country bumpkins as the ‘magistrate’s parrot’.
I bought Ivan Demyanych from the mother of my predecessor, investigating magistrate Pospelov, who passed away shortly before my appointment. I bought him together with some old-fashioned oak furniture, sundry trashy kitchen utensils and in general all the various household effects left by the deceased. To this day my walls are embellished with photographs of his relatives, and a portrait of the former owner still hangs over my bed. The deceased, a lean, wiry man with red moustache and thick underlip, sits goggling at me from his discoloured walnut frame, never taking his eyes off me while I’m lying there in his bed. I haven’t taken down one photograph from the walls – briefly, I’ve left the flat exactly as I found it. I’m too lazy to think of my own comfort and I would have no objection to the living as well as the dead hanging on my walls – if the living should so desire.*
Ivan Demyanych found it as stifling as I did. He ruffled his feathers, spread his wings and screeched phrases out loud that he had learned from my predecessor Pospelov and from Polikarp. To occupy myself somehow during my post-prandial leisure time I sat down in front of the cage and started observing the movements of my parrot, who was making a determined effort to escape from the torments inflicted by the stifling heat and the insects that resided in his feathers, but without success. The poor thing seemed as miserable as sin.
‘What time does ’e get up?’ boomed a voice from the hall.
‘It all depends!’ Polikarp replied. ‘Sometimes he’ll wake up at five, sometimes he’ll carry on sleeping till morning. There’s nothing I can do about it, you know.’
‘Are you ’is valet?’
‘His house servant. Now, don’t bother me and shut up… Can’t you see I’m reading?’
I peeped into the hall. There was my Polikarp, lolling on the large red trunk and reading some book, as usual. Peering into it with his drowsy, unblinking eyes, he kept twitching his lips and frowning. He was clearly irritated by the presence of that stranger – a tall, bearded peasant who was standing by the trunk and trying in vain to engage him in conversation. On my appearance the peasant took one step away from the trunk and stood to attention like a soldier. Polikarp pulled a dissatisfied face and rose slightly without taking his eyes off his book.
‘What do you want?’ I asked the peasant.
‘I’m from the Count, yer ’onner. The Count begs to send ’is compliments and asks you to come over right away.’
‘Is the Count back?’ I asked in amazement.
‘That’s right, yer ’onner. Came back last night, ’e did. ’Ere’s a letter for you, sir.’
‘Just look what the devil’s brought in!’ exclaimed my Polikarp. ‘For two years we led nice quiet lives while he was away and now he’ll go and turn the whole district into a pigsty again. There’ll be no end to the shameful goings-on!’
‘Shut up, I’m not asking you!’
‘You don’t have to ask me! I’m telling you straight. You’ll leave his place filthy drunk and then you’ll go swimming in the lake, just as you are, with your suit on. And I’m the one who’ll have to clean it afterwards! That’s at least a three-day job!’
‘What’s the Count doing just now?’ I asked the peasant.
‘ ’E was just sitting down to ’is dinner when ’e sends me over. Before that ’e was fishing in the bathing-pool, sir. What shall I tell ’im?’
I opened the letter and read the following:
My dear Lecoq!6
If you’re still alive and well and haven’t forgotten your ever-intoxicated friend, don’t waste another minute, attire yourself and ride over post-haste! I got back only last night, but already I die of boredom! The impatience I wait for you with knows no bounds. I wanted to come for you myself and carry you off to my lair, but the heat has fettered my limbs! All I can do is sit still and fan myself. Well, how are you? And how is that very clever Ivan Demyanych of yours? Do you still do battle with that old pedant Polikarp? Come quickly and tell me everything…
Your A. K.
I didn’t need to look at the signature to recognize in that large, ugly scrawl the drunken hand of my friend, Count Karneyev, who rarely put pen to paper. The brevity of the letter, its pretensions to a certain degree of playfulness and liveliness, showed beyond doubt that my dull-witted friend had torn up a large quantity of notepaper before managing to complete it. Pronouns such as ‘which’ were absent from the letter and all gerunds were sedulously avoided – the Count rarely managed to employ both at one sitting.
‘What answer shall I give, sir?’ asked the peasant.
I didn’t reply to this question immediately and any decent man in my place would have hesitated as well. The Count was very fond of me and most sincerely thrust his friendship upon me. But I felt nothing like friendship for him and I even disliked him. Therefore it would have been more honest to reject his friendship once and for all than go and visit him and play the hypocrite. Besides, going over to the Count’s meant plunging once again into the kind of life that my Polikarp dignified by the name of ‘pigsty’ and which, for the entire two years before the Count left his estate for St Petersburg, had been shattering my robust health and drying my brains out. That dissipated, abnormal life, so full of dramatic incident and mad drunkenness, had failed to undermine my organism. But on the other hand it made me notorious all over the province… I was popular…
My reason told me the whole truth, the basic truth; a blush of shame for my recent past spread over my face and my heart sank at the thought that I wouldn’t have the courage to say no to that trip to the Count’s. But I didn’t hesitate for long: the struggle lasted no longer than a minute.
‘Convey my respects to the Count,’ I told the messenger, ‘and thank him for thinking of me… tell him I’m busy and that… tell him I’m…’
And just at that moment, when a definitive ‘no’ was about to roll off my tongue, I was suddenly overcome by a painful feeling. A young man, so full of life, strength and desire, cast by fate into that rural backwater, was gripped by feelings of melancholy and loneliness…
I remembered the Count’s garden, with all the splendour of its cool conservatories, and the semidarkness of its narrow, neglected avenues. These avenues, protected from the sun by a canopy of the green, intertwined branches of ancient limes, know me very well. And they know those women who sought my love and the semidarkness… I remembered the luxurious drawing-room with the sweet repose of its velvet sofas, those heavy curtains and carpets soft as down, that indolence so adored by healthy young animals… I recalled my drunken recklessness that knew no bounds, my satanic pride and contempt for life. And my large body, weary with sleep, once more yearned for movement.