person
Semyon Erastovich Miguyev
Miguyev
also: Мигуев, Семен Эрастович, Semyon Erastovich, collegiate assessor
A collegiate assessor confronted, on his evening walk home, with a bundled infant left on his porch step by Agnia, the former housemaid he once seduced and abandoned; he oscillates in cowardly panic between dumping the child on a neighbor and confessing all to his wife, finally staging a farcical retraction when a servant's stray remark hands him an accidental cover story.
Reading notes
- An Act of Lawlessness §16 the rascal's got a nose with a bit of a hump to it, just like his father's
The story's one moment of unguarded tenderness: alone on the moonlit road, Miguyev unwraps the bundle and, seeing his own features in the infant's face, briefly registers the child as his own rather than as a problem to be disposed of -- a recognition his cowardice will not survive past the next few sections.
- An Act of Lawlessness §39 I was joking
The story's final beat: handed an accidental alibi, Miguyev instantly abandons the one moment of honesty and courage he attempted at his wife's knees, retreating into a flatly implausible lie rather than face the consequences he had, seconds before, seemed ready to accept -- the satirical point on which the story closes.