‘‘Good appetite! Tea and sugar!’’ he began to entertain his guests. ‘‘Good health to you. Such rare guests, rare guests, and Father Khristofor I haven’t seen for five years already. And does nobody want to tell me whose nice little boy this is?’’ he asked, looking affectionately at Egorushka.
‘‘He’s the son of my sister Olga Ivanovna,’’ answered Kuzmichov.
‘‘And where is he going?’’
‘‘To study. We’re taking him to school.’’
Moisei Moiseich, for the sake of politeness, gave his face a look of astonishment and wagged his head meaningfully.
‘‘Oh, this is good!’’ he said, shaking his finger at the samovar. ‘‘This is good! You’ll come out of school such a gentleman we’ll all take our hats off. You’ll be intelligent, rich, ambitious, and your mama will rejoice. Oh, this is good!’’
He paused for a while, stroked his knees, and began to speak in a respectfully jocular tone:
‘‘You forgive me now, Father Khristofor, but I’m going to write a letter to the bishop that you’re cutting into the merchants’ bread. I’ll take official paper and write that it means Father Khristofor hasn’t got enough money, if he’s gone into trade and started selling wool.’’
‘‘Yes, I’ve taken a notion in my old age . . .’’ Father Khristofor said and laughed. ‘‘I’ve gone over from the priests to the merchants, old boy. Instead of staying home and praying to God, I gallop around like pharaoh in his chariot ... Vanity!’’
‘‘But you’ll get a lot of moneys!’’
‘‘Oh, yes! A fig9 under my nose, not moneys! The goods aren’t mine, they’re my son-in-law Mikhailo’s!’’
‘‘Why didn’t he go himself ?’’
‘‘Because ... The mother’s milk still hasn’t dried on his lips. Buy the wool he did, but sell it—no, he’s not clever enough, he’s still young. He spent all his money, meaning to gain by it and kick up the dust, but he tried here and there, and nobody would even give him what he paid. So the lad knocked about for a year, then came to me and— ‘Papa, do me a favor, sell the wool! I don’t understand anything about these things!’ There you have it. So now I’m papa, but before, he could do without papa. When he bought the wool, he didn’t ask, but now he’s in a pinch, and so I’m papa. And what about papa? If it weren’t for Ivan Ivanych, papa wouldn’t be able to do a thing. What a bother they are!’’
‘‘Yes, children are a bother, I can tell you!’’ sighed Moisei Moiseich. ‘‘I myself have six of them. One to be taught, another to be doctored, the third to be carried in your arms, and when they grow up, there’s still more bother. Not only now, it was so even in Holy Scripture. When Jacob had little children, he wept, and when they grew up, he wept still worse!’’10
‘‘Mm, yes . . .’’ agreed Father Khristofor, gazing pensively at his glass of tea. ‘‘Personally, as a matter of fact, I’ve got no business angering God, I’ve reached the limit of my life, as God grant everybody ... I’ve married my daughters to good men, I’ve set my sons up, now I’m free, I’ve done my duty, and I can go any which way. I live quietly with my wife, eat, drink, and sleep, rejoice in my grandchildren, and pray to God, and I don’t need anything else. I’m rolling in clover and I answer to no one. In all my born days, I’ve never known any grief, and if, say, the tsar now asked me: ‘What do you need? What do you want?’ Well, there’s nothing I’m in need of! I have everything and thank God. There’s no happier man than I in the whole town. Only I have many sins, but then they say only God is without sin. Isn’t that right?’’
‘‘Must be right.’’
‘‘Well, of course, I’ve got no teeth, my back aches from old age, this and that ... shortness of breath and so forth ... Illnesses, the flesh is weak, but you must agree I’ve lived enough! I’m in my seventies! You can’t go on forever, enough’s enough!’’
Father Khristofor suddenly recalled something, burst out laughing into his glass, and got into a coughing fit from laughter. Moisei Moiseich, out of politeness, also laughed and coughed.
‘‘So funny!’’ said Father Khristofor and waved his hand. ‘‘My older son Gavrila comes to visit me. He works in the medical line and serves in Chernigov province as a zemstvo11 doctor . . . Very well, sir ... I say to him: ‘See here,’ I say, ‘I’m short of breath, this and that ... You’re a doctor, treat your father!’ He got me undressed at once, tapped, listened, various other things ... kneaded my stomach, and then says: ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘you need treatment with compressed air.’ ’ ’
Father Khristofor laughed convulsively, to tears, and stood up.
‘‘And I say to him: ‘God help it, this compressed air!’ ’’ he brought out through his laughter and waved both hands. ‘‘God help it, this compressed air!’’
Moisei Moiseich also stood up and, clutching his stomach, also dissolved in high-pitched laughter, resembling the yelping of a lapdog.
‘‘God help it, this compressed air!’’ Father Khristofor repeated, laughing loudly.
Moisei Moiseich rose two notes higher and rocked with such convulsive laughter that he barely kept his feet.
‘‘Oh, my God ...’’ he moaned amid his laughter. ‘‘Let me catch my breath ... You’ve made me laugh so much that ... oh! ... it’s the death of me.’’
He laughed and talked and meanwhile kept glancing timorously and suspiciously at Solomon. The latter stood in the same pose and smiled. Judging by his eyes and smile, his contempt and hatred were serious, but they were so unsuited to his plucked little figure that it seemed to Egorushka that he assumed this defiant pose and sarcastic, contemptuous expression on purpose in order to play the buffoon and make the dear guests laugh.
Having silently drunk some six glasses, Kuzmichov cleared a space before him on the table, took his sack, the same one that lay under his head while he slept under the britzka, untied the string on it, and shook it. Stacks of banknotes spilled from the sack onto the table.
‘‘Come, Father Khristofor, let’s count it while there’s time,’’ said Kuzmichov.
Seeing the money, Moisei Moiseich became embarrassed, got up, and, as a tactful man who does not want to know other people’s secrets, left the room on tiptoe, balancing himself with his arms. Solomon stayed where he was.
‘‘How many are there in the one-rouble stacks?’’ Father Khristofor began.
‘‘Fifty in each ... In the three-rouble stacks, ninety . . . The twenty-fives and hundreds are by the thousands ... You count out seven thousand eight hundred for Varlamov, and I’ll count out for Gusevich. And see that you don’t miscount ...’’
Never since the day he was born had Egorushka seen such a pile of money as now lay on the table. It was probably a great deal of money, because the stack of seven thousand eight hundred that Father Khristofor set aside for Varlamov seemed very small compared to the whole pile. Another time such a mass of money might have struck Egorushka and prompted him to reflect on how many bagels, babas, and poppy-seed rolls could be bought with this pile; but now he looked at it impassibly and sensed only the smell of rotten apples and kerosene that the pile gave off. He was worn out from the jolting ride on the britzka, was tired and wanted to sleep. His head was heavy, his eyes kept closing, and his thoughts were tangled like threads. If it had been possible, he would gladly have lowered his head to the table, closed his eyes so as not to see the lamp and the fingers moving over the pile, and let his sluggish, sleepy thoughts tangle still more. When he made an effort not to doze off, the flame of the lamp, the cups, and the fingers went double, the samovar swayed, and the smell of rotten apples seemed still sharper and more repellent.
‘‘Ah, money, money!’’ sighed Father Khristofor, smiling. ‘‘Nothing but woe! Now my Mikhailo is surely sleeping and dreaming of me bringing him such a pile.’’
‘‘Your Mikhailo Timofeich is a man of no understanding,’’ Kuzmichov said in a low voice, ‘‘he took up a business that’s not right for him, but you understand and can reason. Why don�
��t you give me your wool, as I said, and go back home, and I—very well—I’ll give you fifty kopecks over your asking price, and that only out of respect . . .’’
‘‘No, Ivan Ivanovich,’’ sighed Father Khristofor. ‘‘Thank you for the offer ... Of course, if it were up to me, there’d be no discussion, but as you know, the goods aren’t mine . . .’’
Moisei Moiseich came in on tiptoe. Trying out of delicacy not to look at the pile of money, he crept up to Egorushka and tugged him by the shirt from behind.
‘‘Come along, little lad,’’ he said in a low voice, ‘‘I’ve got a bear cub to show you! Such a terrible, angry one! Ohh!’’
Sleepy Egorushka got up and lazily plodded after Moisei Moiseich to look at the bear. He went into a small room where, before he saw anything, his breath was taken away by the smell of something sour and musty, which was much more dense here than in the big room and had probably spread from here all over the house. One half of the room was occupied by a big bed covered with a greasy quilted blanket, and the other by a chest of drawers and heaps of all possible rags, beginning with stiffly starched petticoats and ending with children’s trousers and suspenders. A tallow candle was burning on the chest of drawers.
Instead of the promised bear, Egorushka saw a large, very fat Jewess with loose hair and in a red flannel dress with black specks; she was turning heavily in the narrow passage between the bed and the chest of drawers and letting out long, moaning sighs, as if she had a toothache. Seeing Egorushka, she made a tearful face, heaved a long sigh, and, before he had time to look around, brought to his mouth a chunk of bread smeared with honey.
‘‘Eat, child, eat!’’ she said. ‘‘You’re here without your mama, and there’s nobody to feed you. Eat.’’
Egorushka began to eat, though after the fruit drops and poppy-seed rolls he ate every day at home, he found nothing good in honey half mixed with wax and bees’ wings. He ate, and Moisei Moiseich and the Jewess watched and sighed.
‘‘Where are you going, child?’’ asked the Jewess.
‘‘To study,’’ replied Egorushka.
‘‘And how many of you does your mama have?’’
‘‘I’m the only one. There’s nobody else.’’
‘‘Och!’’ sighed the Jewess, and she raised her eyes. ‘‘Poor mama, poor mama! How she’s going to weep and miss you! In a year we, too, will take our Nahum to study! Och!’’
‘‘Ah, Nahum, Nahum!’’ sighed Moisei Moiseich, and the skin twitched nervously on his pale face. ‘‘And he’s so sickly.’’
The greasy blanket stirred, and from under it appeared a child’s curly head on a very thin neck; two black eyes flashed and stared at Egorushka with curiosity. Moisei Moiseich and the Jewess, without ceasing to sigh, went over to the chest of drawers and began talking about something in Yiddish. Moisei Moiseich talked softly in a low bass, and generally his Yiddish resembled a ceaseless ‘‘gal-gal-gal-gal . . .’’ and his wife answered him in a thin hen-turkey’s voice, and with her it came out something like ‘‘tu-tu-tu-tu . . .’’ While they were conferring, another curly head on a thin neck peeked from under the greasy blanket, then a third, then a fourth ... If Egorushka had possessed a rich fantasy, he might have thought a hundred-headed hydra was lying under the blanket.
‘‘Gal-gal-gal-gal . . .’’ said Moisei Moiseich.
‘‘Tu-tu-tu-tu ...’’ the Jewess replied.
The conference ended with the Jewess sighing deeply, going to the chest of drawers, unfolding some sort of green rag there, and taking out a big rye gingerbread shaped like a heart.
‘‘Take, child,’’ she said, handing Egorushka the gingerbread. ‘‘You’ve got no mama now, there’s nobody to give you a treat.’’
Egorushka put the gingerbread in his pocket and backed towards the door, no longer able to breathe the musty and sour air in which his hosts lived. Returning to the big room, he snuggled up comfortably on the sofa and let his thoughts run freely.
Kuzmichov had just finished counting the money and was putting it back in the sack. He treated it with no particular respect and shoved it into the dirty sack unceremoniously, with such indifference as if it was not money but wastepaper.
Father Khristofor was conversing with Solomon.
‘‘Well, then, my wise Solomon?’’ he asked, yawning and crossing his mouth.12 ‘‘How’s things?’’
‘‘What things are you talking about?’’ asked Solomon and looked at him with great sarcasm, as if he was hinting at some sort of crime.
‘‘Generally ... What are you doing?’’
‘‘What am I doing?’’ Solomon repeated and shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘The same as everybody ... You see, I’m a lackey. I’m my brother’s lackey, my brother is the travelers’ lackey, the travelers are Varlamov’s lackeys, and if I had ten million, Varlamov would be my lackey.’’
‘‘Why would he be your lackey?’’
‘‘Why? Because there’s no such gentleman or millionaire as wouldn’t lick the hands of a scruffy Yid for an extra kopeck. I’m now a scruffy and beggarly Yid, and everybody looks at me like a dog, but if I had money, Varlamov would mince before me like a fool, the way Moisei does before you.’’
Father Khristofor and Kuzmichov exchanged glances. Neither of them understood Solomon. Kuzmichov looked at him sternly and drily and asked:
‘‘How can a fool like you put yourself on a par with Varlamov?’’
‘‘I’m not such a fool as to put myself on a par with Varlamov,’’ Solomon replied, looking his interlocutors over mockingly. ‘‘Varlamov may be a Russian, but in his soul he’s a scruffy Yid; his whole life is money and gain, but I burned up my money in the stove. I don’t need money, or land, or sheep, and I don’t need to be feared and have people take their hats off when I drive by. Meaning I’m smarter than your Varlamov and more like a human being!’’
A little later, Egorushka, through half-sleep, heard Solomon speaking about the Jews in a voice hollow and hoarse from the hatred that choked him, hurrying and swallowing his R’s; at first he spoke correctly, in Russian, then he lapsed into the tone of raconteurs of Jewish life and began speaking with an exaggerated Jewish accent, as he used to in the show booth.
‘‘Wait . . .’’ Father Khristofor interrupted him. ‘‘If you don’t like your faith, change it, but it’s a sin to laugh at it; he’s the lowest of men who derides his own faith.’’
‘‘You don’t understand anything!’’ Solomon rudely cut him short. ‘‘I’m talking to you about one thing, and you’re talking about another ...’’
‘‘It’s obvious at once that you’re a stupid man,’’ Father Khristofor sighed. ‘‘I admonish you the best I can, and you get angry. I talk to you as an old man, quietly, but you’re like a turkey: blah-blah-blah! An odd fellow, really ...’’
Moisei Moiseich came in. He looked in alarm at Solomon and his guests, and again the skin on his face twitched nervously. Egorushka shook his head and looked around him; he caught a fleeting glimpse of Solomon’s face just at the moment when it was turned three-quarters towards him and the shadow of his long nose crossed his whole left cheek; his contemptuous smile, mingled with this shadow, his glittering, mocking eyes, his haughty expression, and his whole plucked little figure, doubling and flashing in Egorushka’s eyes, now made him resemble not a buffoon but something one occasionally dreams of, probably an unclean spirit.
‘‘Some kind of demoniac you’ve got here, Moisei Moiseich, God help him!’’ Father Khristofor said with a smile. ‘‘You’d better set him up somewhere, get him married or something ... He’s not like a human being ...’’
Kuzmichov frowned angrily. Moisei Moiseich again gave his brother and his guests an alarmed and quizzical look.
‘‘Solomon, get out of here!’’ he said sternly. ‘‘Get out.’’
And he added something else in Yiddish. Solomon laughed abruptly and went out.
‘‘But what is it?’’ Moisei Moiseich fearfully asked Father Khri
stofor.
‘‘He forgets himself,’’ replied Kuzmichov. ‘‘He’s a rude one and thinks a lot of himself.’’
‘‘I just knew it!’’ Moisei Moiseich was horrified and clasped his hands. ‘‘Ah, my God! My God!’’ he murmured in a low voice. ‘‘Be so kind, forgive and don’t be angry. He’s such a man, such a man! Ah, my God! My God! He’s my own brother, but I’ve never had anything but grief from him. You know, he’s ...’’
Moisei Moiseich twirled his finger near his forehead and went on:
‘‘Not in his right mind ... a lost man. And what I’m to do with him, I don’t know! He doesn’t love anybody, he doesn’t esteem anybody, he’s not afraid of anybody ... You know, he laughs at everybody, says stupid things, throws it in everybody’s face. You won’t believe it, but once Varlamov came here, and Solomon said such things to him that the man struck both him and me with his whip ... But why me? Is it my fault? God took away his reason, that means it’s God’s will, and is it my fault?’’
Some ten minutes passed, and Moisei Moiseich still went on murmuring in a low voice and sighing.
‘‘He doesn’t sleep nights and keeps thinking, thinking, thinking, and what he thinks about, God knows. You come to him at night, and he’s angry and he laughs. He doesn’t love me, either ... And he doesn’t want anything! Father, when he was dying, left us six thousand roubles each. I bought myself an inn, got married, and now have children, but he burned up his money in the stove. Such a pity, such a pity! Why burn it? If you don’t need it, give it to me, why burn it?’’
Suddenly the door shrieked on its pulley, and the floor trembled from someone’s footsteps. A light wind blew at Egorushka, and it seemed to him that a big black bird swept past him and flapped its wings just by his face. He opened his eyes ... His uncle, the sack in his hands, ready for the road, was standing by the sofa. Father Khristofor, holding his broad-brimmed top hat, was bowing and smiling to someone, not gently and tenderly, as always, but with a strained deference that was very unsuited to his face. And Moisei Moiseich, as if his body had broken into three parts, was balancing and trying all he could not to fall apart. Only Solomon stood in the corner as if nothing had happened, his arms crossed, and smiling as contemptuously as before.
The Complete Short Novels Page 6