figure
the murderer (an unnamed good-for-nothing)
the murderer
also: шалопай, убийца, the good-for-nothing
The parable's unnamed culprit, a repeat offender "notorious for his depraved life" caught with the murdered doctor's stolen property, a bloodstained shirt, and the doctor's own lancet -- overwhelming, undisputed evidence of guilt that the town's judges and jury nonetheless refuse to act on, acquitting him on the presiding judge's declared faith that no man could have done such a thing.
Reading notes
- The Head Gardener's Story §17 a certain good-for-nothing, already tried many times before, notorious for his depraved life
The fable's actual culprit is introduced with a full circumstantial case against him -- a prior record, the victim's stolen and pawned property in his possession, a bloodstained shirt, the victim's own lancet found hidden in his bed -- built up point by point (loc 17) precisely so that his guilt is left in no reasonable doubt before the trial (loc 19) even begins. The fable is careful to make this a case of textbook, overwhelming evidence, not an ambiguous one, which is what makes the judges' and townspeople's subsequent refusal to convict (loc 19-24) an explicit act of will rather than a reasonable doubt.
- The Head Gardener's Story §19 the judges seemed to have gone out of their minds
The narration's own description of the judges' visible distress under the weight of overwhelming evidence -- blushing, drinking water, laboring from morning to evening over a verdict that should by the fable's own account be straightforward -- signals that convicting this particular man is experienced by the court as something like a moral impossibility, not a legal judgment they arrive at easily or complacently.
- The Head Gardener's Story §21 he is not guilty! I cannot admit the thought that there could be found a man who would dare kill our friend the doctor
SENSITIVITY / CONTENT NOTE. The presiding judge's outburst is a knowing acquittal of a proven guilty party, explicitly framed by the fable as an act of religious conviction ('let God punish me') rather than a factual determination -- the judge is not claiming the evidence is insufficient, but that he refuses, on faith, to accept what the evidence shows. This is the fable's most direct dramatization of the choice Mikhail Karlovich set up at loc 7: 'faith in man' deliberately overriding proof. The text does not flag this as either heroic or corrupt; it hands the moment its full emotional weight (the dropped paper, the cold sweat, the crowd's answering cry) and lets it stand.