The Bishop and Other StoriesChekhov, Anton Pavlovich
General
The Bishop and Other Stories
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904 -- Translations into English; Russia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Dashutka was left alone in the tavern. No one came now to drink tea
or vodka, and she divided her time between cleaning up the rooms,
drinking mead and eating rolls; but a few days later they questioned
the signalman at the railway crossing, and he said that late on
Monday evening he had seen Yakov and Dashutka driving from Limarovo.
Dashutka, too, was arrested, taken to the town and put in prison.
It soon became known, from what Aglaia said, that Sergey Nikanoritch
had been present at the murder. A search was made in his room, and
money was found in an unusual place, in his snowboots under the
stove, and the money was all in small change, three hundred one-rouble
notes. He swore he had made this money himself, and that he hadn't
been in the tavern for a year, but witnesses testified that he was
poor and had been in great want of money of late, and that he used
to go every day to the tavern to borrow from Matvey; and the policeman
described how on the day of the murder he had himself gone twice
to the tavern with the waiter to help him to borrow. It was recalled
at this juncture that on Monday evening Sergey Nikanoritch had not
been there to meet the passenger train, but had gone off somewhere.
And he, too, was arrested and taken to the town.
The trial took place eleven months later.
Yakov Ivanitch looked much older and much thinner, and spoke in a
low voice like a sick man. He felt weak, pitiful, lower in stature
that anyone else, and it seemed as though his soul, too, like his
body, had grown older and wasted, from the pangs of his conscience
and from the dreams and imaginings which never left him all the
while he was in prison. When it came out that he did not go to
church the president of the court asked him:
"Are you a dissenter?"
"I can't tell," he answered.
He had no religion at all now; he knew nothing and understood
nothing; and his old belief was hateful to him now, and seemed to
him darkness and folly. Aglaia was not in the least subdued, and
she still went on abusing the dead man, blaming him for all their
misfortunes. Sergey Nikanoritch had grown a beard instead of whiskers.
At the trial he was red and perspiring, and was evidently ashamed
of his grey prison coat and of sitting on the same bench with humble
peasants. He defended himself awkwardly, and, trying to prove that
he had not been to the tavern for a whole year, got into an altercation
with every witness, and the spectators laughed at him. Dashutka had
grown fat in prison. At the trial she did not understand the questions
put to her, and only said that when they killed Uncle Matvey she
was dreadfully frightened, but afterwards she did not mind.
All four were found guilty of murder with mercenary motives. Yakov
Ivanitch was sentenced to penal servitude for twenty years; Aglaia
for thirteen and a half; Sergey Nikanoritch to ten; Dashutka to
six.
VII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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