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‘Delighted… How can I help you?’

The gentleman who wanted to make a start sat down and gazed at the floor with imploring eyes.

‘I’ve brought you a little story,’ he continued, ‘which I’d like you to print in your paper. I’m telling you quite frankly, Mr Editor, I haven’t written this story either for literary fame or to express “sweet sounds” in words.2 I’m too old now for admirable things like that. No, I’m setting out on the writer’s path for purely commercial considerations… I want to earn some money… At the moment I’m completely unemployed. You know, I was investigating magistrate in S— district. I worked there for just over five years, but I didn’t make much money – nor did I preserve my innocence.’

Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes.

‘The work there was a real bore,’ he added, softly laughing. ‘I simply slaved away until I called it a day and left. Now I’m out of a job and just about broke. If you published my story, regardless of any merits it may have, you’d be doing me more than a favour – you’d be helping me. I’m well aware that a newspaper isn’t a charitable institution, nor an old people’s home, but… if you’d be good enough to…’

‘You’re lying,’ I thought.

Those little trinkets and that diamond ring on his little finger didn’t tally at all with having to write for a living. What’s more, a barely perceptible cloud – something that the experienced eye can detect on the faces of those who only rarely lie – passed over Kamyshev’s face.

‘What’s the subject of your story?’ I asked.

‘Subject? What can I say? It’s nothing new… it’s about love, murder. Read it and you’ll see. It’s called From the Memoirs of an Investigating Magistrate.’

I probably frowned, as Kamyshev blinked in embarrassment, gave a start and quickly added:

‘My story’s written in the hackneyed style of previous investigating magistrates but… you’ll find facts in it… the truth. Everything that’s depicted in it, from start to finish, happened before my eyes… I was both eyewitness and even an active participant.’

‘It’s not a question of truth… You don’t necessarily have to see something in order to describe it – that’s not important. The point is, for far too long now our poor readers have had their teeth set on edge by Gaboriau3 and Shklyarevsky.4 They’re sick and tired of all these mysterious murders, these detectives’ artful ruses, the phenomenal quick-wittedness of investigating magistrates. Of course, there are different kinds of public, but I’m talking about the public that reads my paper. What’s your story called?’

The Shooting Party.’

‘Hmm, doesn’t sound much. And to be quite honest with you I’m so piled up with stuff here at the moment that it’s impossible to take on anything new, even if its merits cannot be questioned.’

‘But please take my story… please. You say it’s nothing much, but you can’t condemn something out of hand without even having seen it! Surely you must admit that even investigating magistrates are capable of writing seriously?’

Kamyshev said all this with a stutter, twiddling his pencil between his fingers and gazing at his feet. Finally he became extremely flustered and couldn’t stop blinking. I felt quite sorry for him.

‘All right, leave it here,’ I said. ‘But I can’t promise that your story will be read soon. You’ll have to wait.’

‘For very long?’

‘I can’t say… come back in a month… or two… or three.’

‘That’s absolutely ages! But I dare not insist. You must do as you please.’ Kamyshev stood up and reached for his cap. ‘Thanks for the audience,’ he said. ‘I’m off home now and I’ll feed myself on hope. Three months of hoping! But I can see that you’ve had enough of me. I wish you good day, sir!’

‘Just one more word, if you don’t mind,’ I said, turning the pages of his thick notebook that were filled with very small handwriting. ‘You write here in the first person… So, by investigating magistrate I take it you mean yourself?’

‘Yes, but under a different name. My part in the story is rather scandalous… it would have been awkward to use my real name. Well then, in three months?’

‘Perhaps… but not earlier.’

The former investigating magistrate bowed gallantly, gingerly grasped the door handle and vanished, leaving his story on my desk. I took the notebook and put it away in the table drawer.

That handsome Kamyshev’s story reposed in my drawer for two months. One day, as I was leaving the office for my summer villa, I remembered it and took it with me.

After taking my seat in the railway compartment I opened the notebook and started reading from the middle: it excited my curiosity. That same evening, although I didn’t really have the time, I read the story from the beginning to the words ‘The End’, written with a flourish. That night I read the story right through again and when dawn came I was pacing my veranda and rubbing my temples as if I wanted to banish some new and painful thought that had suddenly entered my head. And this thought really was painful, unbearably intense… It struck me that I, who was no investigating magistrate and even less a forensic psychologist, had stumbled upon one man’s terrible secret, a secret that was no business of mine. I walked up and down the veranda, trying to persuade myself not to believe what I had discovered.

Kamyshev’s story was not published for the reasons given at the end of my chat with the reader. I shall meet my reader again, but for the moment I’m taking leave of him for a long time and I offer Kamyshev’s story for his perusal.

It’s really a very ordinary story, containing many longueurs and in places the style is very uneven. The author has a weakness for striking effects and resounding phrases. Obviously he’s writing for the very first time, with an inexperienced, untrained hand. For all that, his story makes for easy reading. There’s a plot, it makes sense and – most important of all – it’s original, with a very distinctive character – it’s what one would call sui generis.5 And it does have some literary merit. It’s worth reading… here it is.

THE SHOOTING PARTY

(From the Memoirs of an Investigating Magistrate)

I

‘A husband murdered his wife! Oh, you’re so stupid! Now, will you please give me some sugar!’

This cry woke me up. I stretched myself and felt a heavy weight and lifelessness in every limb. You can get pins and needles in the legs and arms by lying on them, but now I felt that I’d made my whole body go to sleep, from head to foot. An after-dinner nap, in a stuffy, dry atmosphere, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around, has a debilitating rather than invigorating effect. Jaded and bathed in sweat, I got up and went over to the window. It was after five in the afternoon. The sun was still high and was burning just as zealously as three hours earlier. The sunset and the cool of evening were still a long way off.

‘A husband murdered his wife!’

‘Enough of your nonsense, Ivan Demyanych!’ I said, giving Ivan Demyanych’s beak a gentle flick. ‘Husbands murder their wives only in novels or in the tropics, where African passions run high, dear chap. We’ve enough of such horrors as burglaries or false identities as it is…’

‘Burglaries…’ Ivan Demyanych intoned through his hooked beak. ‘Oh, you’re so stupid!’