Sentimental Tales

by Mikhail Zoshchenko

  The author would never have considered expending his gift for empathy on such a figure, but the demand for contemporary tales has forced his hand. Grudgingly, he takes up the pen and begins the tale of Belokopytov.

  This will be a somewhat melancholy tale of the collapse of every possible philosophical system, of man’s destruction, of the essential meaninglessness of human culture, and of how easily that culture can vanish. It will narrate the collapse of idealistic philosophy.

  On this plane, Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov may indeed have been a rather curious and significant specimen. The author advises the reader not to attach much importance to any other plane, and certainly not to empathize with the hero’s base, beastly emotions and animal instincts.

  And so the author takes up the pen and begins his contemporary tale.

  The tale is not so very rich in personae: Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov—lean, thirty-seven years of age, non-Party; his wife, Nina Osipovna Arbuzova—a somewhat dark, gypsylike lady, of the ballerina type; Yegor Konstantinovich Yarkin—thirty-two years of age, non-Party, head of the First Municipal Bakery; and, finally, the stationmaster, Comrade Peter Pavlovich Sitnikov, respected by all.

  The reader will also encounter a handful of peripheral personae, such as Yekaterina Vasilyevna Kolenkorova, Aunt Pepelyukha, and the station guard and Hero of Labor1 Yeremeyich—but there’s really no sense in discussing them in advance, considering the insignificance of their roles.

  In addition to these human characters the tale also features a small dog, about which, needless to say, there’s nothing to say.

  2

  The Belokopytovs are an old, aristocratic, landowning family. At the time these events took place, however, they were fading away. In fact, there were only two Belokopytovs left: the father, Ivan Petrovich, and his offspring, Ivan Ivanovich.

  The father, Ivan Petrovich, a very rich and respectable individual, was a somewhat odd, eccentric gentleman. He was slightly populist in his tendencies but enamored of Western ideas, and would either rail against peasants, calling them swine and human scum, or shut himself in his library to pore over the works of such authors as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Baudouin de Courtenay, admiring the freedom of their thought and the independence of their views.2

  And yet, despite all this, Ivan Petrovich Belokopytov adored the quiet, peaceful country life. He loved raw milk, which he imbibed in staggering quantities, and he was fond of horse riding. Never a day passed that Ivan Petrovich didn’t go out on horseback, so as to admire the beauty of nature or the babbling of one or another forest brook.

  Belokopytov the elder died young, in the full flower of his activity. He was crushed by his own horse.

  One clear summer day, Ivan Petrovich stood at his dining room window, fully dressed and prepared for his usual ride, waiting impatiently for his horse to be brought round. Looking dashingly handsome in his silver spurs, he stood at the window, testily brandishing his gold-handled riding crop. Meanwhile, his son, youthful Vanya Belokopytov, gamboled about him, prancing blithely and toying with the rowels of his father’s spurs.

  Come to think of it, young Belokopytov must have done the gamboling at a much younger age. He was past twenty the year his father died—already a mature young man, with fuzz on his upper lip.

  No, he certainly couldn’t have been gamboling that year. He was standing at his father’s side, trying to persuade him not to go riding.

  “Don’t go, papa,” urged the young Belokopytov, who was filled with foreboding.

  But the dashing father simply twirled his mustache and waved the young man away, as if to say, if my number’s up, so be it. He went down to give the tarrying groom a tongue-lashing.

  He stormed into the yard, angrily leapt onto his horse’s back, and, in a fit of extreme irritation and wrath, dug his spurs into its sides.

  And this, it seems, was his undoing. The furious animal bolted and, about three miles from the estate, threw Belokopytov, smashing his skull against the rocks.

  Young Belokopytov took the news of his father’s death in stride. After first ordering that the horse in question be sold, he withdrew his decision, marched into the stable, and personally shot the animal, placing the revolver directly in its ear. Then he locked himself in the house and bitterly lamented his father’s demise. Only several months later did he again take up his former pursuits. He was a student of Spanish, and, under the guidance of a seasoned instructor, translated the works of Spanish authors. Of course, one should note that he was also a student of Latin, always digging through old books and manuscripts.

  Now Ivan Ivanovich was the sole heir to an enormous fortune. Someone else in his position might have chucked all that Spanish stuff, given his instructors the boot, packed up his grief, and taken to wine, women, what have you. Unfortunately, young Belokopytov wasn’t that kind of man. His life went on just as before.

  Always rich and secure, he didn’t know the meaning of financial constraints and treated money with indifference and contempt. And having read his fill of liberal books, with his father’s notes in the margins, he even came to disdain his vast fortune.

  Catching wind of the elder Belokopytov’s death, all sorts of aunties descended upon the estate from every corner of the globe, each hoping to get a piece of the pie. They flattered Ivan Ivanovich, kissed his hand, and marveled at his wise directives.

  Then one day Ivan Ivanovich gathered all his relatives in the dining room and declared that he felt he had no right to his inherited fortune. He thought the very notion of “inheritance” was “utter nonsense,” and believed that human beings ought to make their own way in the world. And so he, Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov, being of sound mind and in full possession of his faculties, would renounce his property, on the condition that he himself could distribute it to various institutions and disadvantaged individuals of his choice.

  His relations oohed and aahed in unison, marveling at Ivan Ivanovich’s extraordinary generosity and suggesting that, in essence, they were precisely the disadvantaged individuals and institutions of which he had spoken. After allocating them nearly half his fortune, Ivan Ivanovich bid them a final farewell and set about liquidating the rest of his possessions.

  He quickly sold his land for a song and gave away part of his household goods and cattle to the peasants, squandering the rest. Still possessed of a sizable fortune, he moved to the city, renting two little rooms from some simple folk to whom he had no connection.

  Some distant relatives of his, who were then living in the city, took offense and broke off all contact with Ivan Ivanovich, finding his behavior to be harmful and dangerous to the life of the nobility.

  Settling in the city, Ivan Ivanovich didn’t alter his life or habits one bit. He continued to study Spanish, and, in his spare time, engaged in a wide variety of charity work.

  Huge crowds of beggars besieged Ivan Ivanovich’s apartment. Every manner of rogue, scoundrel, and confidence man lined up to plead for his help.

  Refusing almost no one and, in addition, sacrificing large sums to various institutions, Ivan Ivanovich soon squandered half his remaining possessions. On top of that, he befriended a certain revolutionary group, supporting and helping them in every possible way. There was even talk that he had given the group nearly all the money he had left, but the author can neither confirm nor deny that rumor. In any case, Belokopytov was involved in one revolutionary cause.

  The author, for his part, was then occupied with his poetic and familial affairs, and turned a somewhat blind eye to social developments, so certain details escaped him. That year the author was preparing his first little book of poems for publication, under the title A Bouquet of Mignonette. At the present time, of course, the author would hardly apply so wretched and sentimental a title to his poetic experiments. At the present time, he would attempt to bind his humble verses with some abstract philosophical idea and give the collection a fitting title—just as this tale is bound and titled with that enormous, significant word: “Peop
le.” Alas, at that time, the author was young and inexperienced. Still, the book wasn’t so bad. Printed on the finest art paper in three hundred copies, it sold out completely in just over four years, bringing its author a certain degree of celebrity among the citizens of his town.

  No, not a bad little book.

  But as to Ivan Ivanovich, he really did get tangled up in the course of events. In a fit of generosity, he gave a mink coat to some girl student who had been sentenced to exile.

  That coat gave Ivan Ivanovich no end of trouble. He was placed under secret surveillance, suspected of having relations with revolutionaries.

  Ivan Ivanovich, a nervous and impressionable man, was terribly anxious about being watched. He literally clutched his head, saying that he refused to remain in Russia, a country of semi-barbarians, where they stalked men as if they were beasts. He promised himself that he would soon sell everything off and go abroad as a political refugee, freeing his legs from this stagnant swamp.

  Having made this decision, he began to liquidate his affairs in a hurry, worried that he might be captured, arrested, or denied the right to emigrate. Then, one cloudy autumn day, with his affairs ended and with only a little money left for living expenses, Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov went abroad, cursing his fate and his generosity.

  This departure took place in September 1910.

  3

  No one knows how Ivan Ivanovich lived abroad, what he did there.

  Ivan Ivanovich himself never spoke of it, and the author won’t risk spinning yarns about the alien way of life in those lands.

  Of course, some experienced writer who has seen foreign parts with his own eyes would gladly lay it on thick, beguiling readers with two or three European tableaux featuring late-night bars, cabaret singers, and American billionaires.

  Alas! The author has never traveled to any foreign parts, and European life remains a dark mystery to him.

  Hence, with some regret and sadness, and even a degree of guilt before the reader, the author must skip over at least ten or eleven years of Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov’s life abroad, in order not to bungle up any minor details of those alien ways.

  But the reader should calm himself. Nothing remarkable happened in our hero’s life over those ten years. I mean, the man lived abroad, married a Russian ballet dancer…What else? Went completely broke, of course. And at the start of the revolution, he returned to Russia. That’s the long and the short of it.

  Of course, all this could have been laid out in a better, more attractive manner—but again, for the reasons mentioned above, the author leaves everything as it is. Let other writers make use of their beautiful verbiage. The author isn’t a vain man—if this is how he wrote it, so be it. The author loses no sleep over the laurels of other famed writers.

  And so, dear reader, there you have the whole story of Belokopytov’s ten years abroad. Well, not exactly.

  In those early years in Europe Ivan Ivanovich conceived of a book. He even put pen to paper, titling his opus The Possibility of Revolution in Russia and the Caucasus. But then the world war and revolution rendered his book unnecessary, nonsensical rubbish.

  But Ivan Ivanovich wasn’t too disappointed, and in the third or fourth year of the revolution he returned to Russia, to the town he’d left behind. At this point the author picks up his tale. Here the author is in his element, completely in command. No chance of bungling it now. This isn’t Europe for you. Everything here transpired before the author’s own eyes. Every detail, every incident was either witnessed by the author directly, or was relayed to him by the most reliable of first hands.

  And so the author begins his detailed account only from the date of Ivan Ivanovich’s arrival in our dear city.

  It was a lovely spring. The snow had almost completely melted away. Birds glided through the air, welcoming the long-awaited season with their cries. Yet it was still too soon to go about without galoshes; in certain places, the mud came up to the knees or higher.

  On one such lovely spring day, Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov returned to his native region.

  It was the afternoon.

  Several passengers were rushing from side to side on the platform, impatiently awaiting the train. Near them stood the stationmaster, Comrade Sitnikov, respected by all.

  And when the train arrived, a slender man in a soft hat and pointed-toe boots without galoshes emerged from the front car.

  That man was Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov.

  Dressed in European fashion, in an excellent broad coat, he casually stepped onto the platform after first tossing down two beautiful suitcases of yellowish leather with nickel-plated locks. Then he turned back and gave his hand to a somewhat dark, gypsy-like lady, helping her off the train.

  They stood beside their suitcases. She kept glancing about with some dismay, while he simply smiled softly and breathed deeply, gazing at the departing train.

  The train had long since moved away—but they stood motionless. A gang of feral urchins, whistling and slapping the platform with their bare feet, pounced on the suitcases. They pulled at the leather with their dirty paws and offered to drag them as far as the ends of the earth, if need be.

  The porter and old Hero of Labor, Yeremeich, drove the boys off and began to eye the now-sullied pale-yellow suitcases reproachfully. Then, hoisting them on his shoulders, Yeremeich moved toward the exit, thereby suggesting that the newly arrived pair follow him and not just stand there like idiots.

  Belokopytov followed him, but at the exit, on the porch behind the station, he ordered Yeremeich to stop. He himself stopped, took off his hat, and saluted his hometown, his country, and his return.

  Standing on the steps of the station and smiling softly, he gazed at the street that ran off into the distance, at the gutters with their little bridges, and at the little wooden houses with the gray smoke rising from their chimneys…There was a certain quiet joy, a certain salutatory delight on his face.

  He stood there a long time with his head uncovered. The mild spring breeze ruffled his slightly graying hair. Reflecting on his wanderings and on the new life that lay before him, Belokopytov stood motionless, drawing the fresh air deep into his chest.

  And suddenly he wanted, that very moment, to go somewhere, do something, create something—something important and necessary to all. He felt an extraordinary surge of youthful freshness and strength welling up inside him, along with some kind of delight. And he wanted to bow low to his native land, to his hometown, and to all of mankind.

  Meanwhile, his wife, Nina Osipovna Arbuzova, stood behind him, glaring nastily at his figure and impatiently tapping the cobblestones with the tip of her umbrella. A bit farther off stood Yeremeich, bent under the two bags, not knowing whether to put them on the ground and thus soil their dazzling surfaces, or to keep them on his back and wait for the command to move on. But then Ivan Ivanovitch turned to Yeremeich and kindly directed him to unburden himself—setting the bags down in the mud, if necessary. Ivan Ivanovich even walked up to Yeremeich and helped him lower the bags to the ground himself, saying:

  “Well, how are things? How’s life?”

  Somewhat crude and utterly unimaginative Yeremeich, who wasn’t accustomed to fielding such abstract questions and who had carried as many as fifteen thousand suitcases, baskets, and bindles on his back, replied rather plainly and crudely:

  “Ain’t dead yet…”

  At that point Belokopytov began to question Yremeich about things and events more firmly rooted in reality, enquiring where this or that person now was, and what changes had occurred in town. But Yeremeich, who had lived in this town continuously for fifty-six years, didn’t seem to recognize any of the names Belokopytov mentioned, be they of people or streets.

  Blowing his nose and wiping his sweaty face with his sleeve, Yeremeich would first pick up the bags, as if to indicate that it was time to go, then put them back down, worrying that he’d be late to greet the next train.

  Nina Osipovna broke into their friendly conver
sation, asking nastily whether Ivan Ivanovich intended to stay and live right there, in the bosom of nature, or whether he had something else in mind.

  As she spoke, Nina Osipovna angrily tapped her shoe against the steps and dolefully pursed her lips.

  Ivan Ivanovich was about to respond in some way, but then Comrade Peter Pavlovich Sitnikov, respected by all, emerged from his office. He had heard the hubbub and was accompanied by an agent of the criminal investigation division. However, seeing that all was well, and that the public peace and quiet had in no way been disturbed, and that, in fact, nothing at all had happened, aside from a family dispute involving the tapping of a lady’s shoe against the steps, Peter Pavlovich Sitnikov began to turn back—but then Ivan Ivanovich ran up to him and asked whether he remembered him, gripping him firmly by the hand, shaking it, and rejoicing.

  Maintaining his dignity, Sitnikov answered that he did indeed remember something, vaguely, and that there was something familiar about Belokopytov’s countenance, but he could not say or recall anything definitively.

  Pleading official business and shaking Belokopytov’s hand, he withdrew, giving a wave to the unfamiliar dark woman.

  The agent left as well, after first asking Belokopytov about international politics and events in Germany. He silently listened to Belokopytov’s speech, gave a nod, and walked off, commanding Yeremeich to move the bags as far as possible from the entrance, so that passengers wouldn’t break their legs.

  Yeremeich irately shouldered the bags for the final time and started walking, asking where he ought to take them.

  “Indeed,” Nina Osipovna asked Belokopytov. “Where were you planning on going?”

  With a certain degree of perplexity and concern, Ivan Ivanovich began to think about where he could go, but he simply didn’t know, and so he asked Yeremeich whether there was a room available somewhere in the vicinity, if only on a temporary basis.

  Lowering the bags once more, Yeremeich also began to think and try to remember. He finally concluded there was nowhere to go besides Katerina Vasilyevna Kolenkorova’s, and so off he went. But Ivan Ivanovich ran ahead of him, saying that he remembered that most gentle woman Katerina Vasilyevna full well, and remembered full well where she lived, and that he would lead the way.