wagging tongues, but certain knowledge about your amours.”
“About what amours?” cried Katerina Lvovna, blushing unfeignedly.
“I know what.”
“If you know, then speak more clearly!”
Zinovy Borisych was silent and again moved the empty cup towards his wife.
“Clearly there’s nothing to talk about,” Katerina Lvovna answered with disdain, defiantly throwing a teaspoon onto her husband’s saucer. “Well, tell me, who have they denounced to you? Who is my lover according to you?”
“You’ll find out, don’t be in such a hurry.”
“Is it Sergei they’ve been yapping about?”
“We’ll find out, we’ll find out, Katerina Lvovna. My power over you no one has taken away and no one can take away… You’ll talk yourself…”
“Ohh, I can’t bear that!” Katerina Lvovna gnashed her teeth and, turning white as a sheet, unexpectedly rushed out the door.
“Well, here he is,” she said a few seconds later, leading Sergei into the room by the sleeve. “Question him and me about what you know. Maybe you’ll find out a lot more than you’d like!”
Zinovy Borisych was at a loss. He glanced now at Sergei, who was standing in the doorway, now at his wife, who calmly sat on the edge of the bed with her arms crossed, and understood nothing of what was approaching.
“What are you doing, you serpent?” he barely brought himself to utter, not getting up from his armchair.
“Question us about what you know so well,” Katerina Lvovna replied insolently. “You thought you’d scare me with a beating,” she went on, winking significantly. “That will never be; but what I knew I would do to you, even before these threats of yours, that I am going to do.”
“What’s that? Get out!” Zinovy Borisych shouted at Sergei.
“Oh, yes!” Katerina Lvovna mocked.
She nimbly locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and again sprawled on the bed in her little jacket.
“Now, Seryozhechka, come here, come, darling,” she beckoned the clerk to her.
Sergei shook his curls and boldly sat down by his mistress.
“Oh, Lord! My God! What is this? What are you doing, you barbarians!?” cried Zinovy Borisych, turning all purple and getting up from his chair.
“What? You don’t like it? Look, look, my bright falcon, how beautiful!”
Katerina Lvovna laughed and passionately kissed Sergei in front of her husband.
At the same moment, a deafening slap burned on her cheek, and Zinovy Borisych rushed for the open window.
Chapter Eight
“Ah… ah, so that’s it!.. Well, my dear friend, thank you very much. That’s just what I was waiting for!” Katerina Lvovna cried. “Now it’s clear… it’s going to be my way, not yours…”
In a single movement she pushed Sergei away from her, quickly threw herself at her husband, and before Zinovy Borisych had time to reach the window, she seized him by the throat from behind with her slender fingers and threw him down on the floor like a damp sheaf of hemp.
Having fallen heavily and struck the back of his head with full force against the floor, Zinovy Borisych lost his mind completely. He had never expected such a quick denouement. The first violence his wife used on him showed him that she was ready for anything, if only to be rid of him, and that his present position was extremely dangerous. Zinovy Borisych realized it all instantly in the moment of his fall and did not cry out, knowing that his voice would not reach anyone’s ear but would only speed things up still more. He silently shifted his eyes and rested them with an expression of anger, reproach, and suffering on his wife, whose slender fingers were tightly squeezing his throat.
Zinovy Borisych did not defend himself; his arms, with tightly clenched fists, lay stretched out and twitched convulsively. One of them was quite free; the other Katerina Lvovna pinned to the floor with her knee.
“Hold him,” she whispered indifferently to Sergei, turning to her husband herself.
Sergei sat on his master, pinning down both his arms with his knees, and was about to put his hands around his throat under Katerina Lvovna’s, but just then he cried out desperately himself. Seeing his offender, blood vengeance aroused all the last strength in Zinovy Borisych: with a terrible effort, he tore his pinned-down arms from under Sergei’s knees and, seizing Sergei by his black curls, sank his teeth into his throat like a beast. But that did not last long: Zinovy Borisych at once uttered a heavy moan and dropped his head.
Katerina Lvovna, pale, almost breathless, stood over her husband and her lover; in her right hand was a heavy metal candlestick, which she held by the upper end, the heavy part down. A thin trickle of crimson blood ran down Zinovy Borisych’s temple and cheek.
“A priest,” Zinovy Borisych moaned dully, throwing his head back with loathing as far as he could from Sergei, who was sitting on him. “To confess,” he uttered still more indistinctly, trembling and looking from the corner of his eye at the warm blood thickening under his hair.
“You’ll be all right like this,” Katerina Lvovna whispered.
“Well, no more dawdling with him,” she said to Sergei. “Squeeze his throat well and good.”
Zinovy Borisych wheezed.
Katerina Lvovna bent down, pressed her own hands to Sergei’s hands, which lay on her husband’s throat, and put her ear to his chest. After five quiet minutes, she stood up and said: “Enough, he’s had it.”
Sergei also stood up and let out a long breath. Zinovy Borisych lay dead, with a crushed throat and a bruised temple. Under his head on the left side was a small spot of blood which, however, was no longer pouring from the clotted wound stopped up with hair.
Sergei carried Zinovy Borisych to the cellar under the floor of the same stone larder where he himself had been locked up so recently by the late Boris Timofeich and returned to the room upstairs. Meanwhile, Katerina Lvovna, having rolled up the sleeves of her bed jacket and tucked her skirt up high, was carefully washing off with a soapy sponge the bloodstain left by Zinovy Borisych on the floor of his bedroom. The water was not yet cold in the samovar from which Zinovy Borisych had steamed his little merchant’s soul in poisoned tea, and the stain was washed away without a trace.
Katerina Lvovna took the copper basin and soapy sponge.
“Light, here,” she said to Sergei, going to the door. “Lower, hold it lower,” she said, carefully studying all the floorboards over which Sergei had dragged Zinovy Borisych to the cellar.
In only two places on the painted floor were there two tiny spots the size of a cherry. Katerina Lvovna rubbed them with the sponge and they disappeared.
“That’ll teach you not to sneak up to your wife like a thief and spy on her,” said Katerina Lvovna, straightening up and glancing in the direction of the larder.
“Finished off,” said Sergei, and he jumped at the sound
