by Leo Tolstoy
THE FORGED COUPON
Part One
I
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH SMOKOVNIKOV, the head of a government department, a man of incorruptible integrity and proud of it, a liberal of a gloomy cast of mind, and not only a free-thinker but a hater of any and every manifestation of religious feeling, which he regarded as a relic of primitive superstition, had returned home from his department in an extremely vexed state of mind. The governor had sent him an utterly stupid memorandum from which it could have been inferred that Fyodor Mikhailovich had acted dishonestly. Fyodor Mikhailovich, furious at the suggestion, had lost no time in composing a biting and caustic reply.
Having got home, Fyodor Mikhailovich had the feeling that everything was happening to thwart him.
It was five minutes to five. He was expecting dinner to be served at once, but the dinner was not ready. Fyodor Mikhailovich banged the door and went off to his study. Someone knocked at the door. ‘Who the devil is it now?’ he thought, and called out:
‘Who is it now?’
Into the room came Fyodor Mikhailovich’s fifteen-year-old son, a grammar-school boy in the fifth year.
‘What brings you here?’
‘It’s the first of the month today.’
‘So, is it money you’re after?’
By an established agreement, on the first day of each month the father gave his son an allowance of three roubles to spend on hobbies and amusements. Fyodor Mikhailovich frowned, reached for his wallet and fished out from it a two-and-a-half-rouble bond coupon,1 then got out the purse in which he kept his small change and counted out a further fifty copecks. His son remained silent and did not take the money.
‘Please, Papa, can you let me have an advance?’
‘What?’
‘I wouldn’t ask you, but I borrowed some money on my word of honour, I promised to pay it back. As a man of honour I can’t just … I only need another three roubles, honestly. I won’t ask you … at least, I don’t mean I won’t ask you, it’s simply that … Please, Papa.’
‘You have already been told that –’
‘Yes, Papa, I know, but it’s just for this once, really …’
‘You receive an allowance of three roubles, and it is always too little. When I was your age I didn’t even get fifty copecks.’
‘But all my friends get more than I do now. Petrov and Ivanitsky actually have fifty roubles a month.’
‘And I tell you that if that is the way you are going to behave, then you will end up as a swindler. That is all I have to say on the matter.’
‘And what if it is? You’ll never look at things from my point of view: it means I shall have to look like an absolute cad. It’s all very well for you.’
‘Get out of here, you good-for-nothing, get out!’
Fyodor Mikhailovich jumped up from his chair and rushed at his son.
‘Get out. What you need is a good hiding.’
His son was both frightened and bitterly resentful, but his resentment outweighed his fear, and bowing his head he made hurriedly for the door. Fyodor Mikhailovich had no intention of hitting him, but he was enjoying his own anger and he continued shouting and cursing at his son as the latter made his retreat.
When the maid came to say that the dinner was ready to serve, Fyodor Mikhailovich stood up.
‘At last,’ he said. ‘I’ve quite lost my appetite now.’ And he walked scowling into the dining-room.
At the dinner table his wife struck up a conversation but his growled reply was so curt and irritable that she fell silent. His son too did not look up from his plate and said nothing. They ate their meal in silence, then silently got up from the table and went their separate ways.
After dinner the schoolboy went back to his own room, took the coupon and the small change out of his pocket and threw them on the desk table. Then he took off his school uniform and put on a jacket. For some time he pored over a battered Latin grammar, then he shut the door and fastened it on the hook, swept the money off the desk top and into a drawer, took some cigarette papers out of the drawer, filled one with tobacco, plugged the cardboard mouthpiece with some cotton wool, and started to smoke.
He spent a further two hours or so sitting over his grammar and his exercise books but without taking anything in, then he stood up and began pacing to and fro across the room, stamping his heels and recalling everything that had passed between him and his father. His father’s abusive words, and above all the spiteful expression on his father’s face, came back to him just as if he was hearing and seeing it now. ‘Good-for-nothing. What you need is a good hiding.’ And the more he remembered, the more furious with his father he became. He remembered his father saying to him ‘I can see how you will end up – as a swindler. Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ – and – ‘You’ll end up as a swindler if you go on like this.’ ‘It’s all right for him,’ he thought, ‘he’s forgotten what it was like when he was young. And what are these crimes I have committed? Just going to the theatre, and running out of money, and borrowing some from Petya Grushetsky. What’s so dreadful about that? Anybody else would have been sympathetic and asked me all about it, but all he does is rage at me and think of nobody but himself. Whenever he doesn’t get what he wants he shouts the house down, but I, I am a swindler. No, my father he may be, but I don’t love him. I don’t know whether all fathers are the same as he is, but I don’t love him.’
The maid knocked at his door. She had brought him a note.
‘They said you were to reply at once.’
The note read: ‘This is the third time I am having to ask you to return the six roubles you borrowed from me, but you keep trying to get out of it. That is not how honourable men behave. I ask you to send the money at once by the bearer of this note. I am extremely hard up myself. Surely you can get it? Your – depending whether you pay me or you don’t – contemptuous or respectful friend, Grushetsky.’
‘Well, what do you make of that? What a swine. He can’t wait for a bit. I shall just have to have another try.’
Mitya went to see his mother. This was his last hope. His mother was a kind-hearted woman who found it hard to refuse him anything, and she might indeed have helped him, but just now she was anxious about the illness of her youngest child, two-year-old Petya. She was annoyed with Mitya for coming in and making a noise, and she turned down his request on the spot.
He muttered something under his breath and started to walk out of the room. Feeling sorry for her son, she called him back.
‘Just a minute, Mitya,’ she said. ‘I haven’t any money at the moment but I can get some tomorrow.’
But Mitya was still seething with bitter anger against his father.
‘What’s the use of telling me “tomorrow”, when I need it right away? You may as well know that I am going to see a friend to ask him for it.’
He went out, banging the door.
‘There’s nothing else to be done. He’ll tell me where I can go to pawn my watch,’ he thought, feeling for the watch which he had in his pocket.
Mitya took the coupon and the change out of the desk drawer, put on his overcoat and set off to see his friend Makhin.
II
Makhin too was a schoolboy, but a sophisticated one. He played cards and knew women, and he always had money. He lived with his aunt. Mitya was aware that Makhin was a bad character, but when he was with him he automatically deferred to Makhin’s authority. Makhin was at home, getting ready to go out to the theatre: his scruffy little room smelt of scented soap and eau de Cologne.
‘It’s the last straw, my friend,’ said Makhin when Mitya had told him his woeful story, shown him the coupon and the fifty copecks, and explained that he was in need of nine roubles. ‘You could actually pawn your watch, but there is an even better way,’ said Makhin, winking his eye.
‘What sort of a better way?’
‘It’s really very simple.’ Makhin took the coupon. ‘You just need to put in a figure one in front of the 2 r.50, and i
t will read 12 r.50.’
‘But are there coupons for that amount?’
‘Naturally there are, on thousand-rouble bonds. I passed off one myself once.’
‘But surely it’s not possible?’
‘Well, shall we have a go?’ said Makhin, taking a pen and smoothing out the coupon with a finger of his left hand.
‘But it can’t be right.’
‘Oh, what nonsense.’
‘He was quite right,’ thought Mitya, remembering again the bad things his father had said about him: a swindler. ‘I’ll be a swindler now.’ He looked Makhin in the face. Makhin was looking at him and smiling quietly.
‘Well then, shall we have a go?’
‘All right, go ahead.’
Makhin painstakingly traced out a figure one.
‘Right, now we’ll go to a shop. The one on the corner there that sells photographic supplies. I happen to need a frame, to go round this person here.’
He produced a mounted photograph of a young woman with large eyes, luxuriant hair and a magnificent bosom.
‘A real peach, eh?’
‘Yes, yes, absolutely. But all the same …’
‘It’s very simple. Let’s go.’
Makhin put his coat on and the two of them went out together.
III
The bell over the door to the photographic shop gave a tinkle. The schoolboys entered and looked round the empty shop with its shelves of photographic supplies and glass display cases on the counters. From the door at the back of the shop emerged a plain-looking woman with a kindly face who took up her position behind the counter and asked them what they required.
‘A nice little picture-frame, Madame.’
‘At what sort of price?’ asked the lady, swiftly and expertly running her mittened hands with their swollen finger joints over the various types of frames. ‘These are priced at fifty copecks, these are a little dearer. And this one here is very nice, a new style – it costs one rouble twenty.’
‘Very well, I’ll take that one. But couldn’t you knock it down a bit? I’ll give you a rouble for it.’
‘All the prices here are fixed,’ said the lady with dignity.
‘All right, as you wish,’ said Makhin, putting the coupon down on the top of the display case. ‘Please give me the frame and my change, and as quickly as you can, please. We don’t want to be late for the theatre.’
‘You have plenty of time yet,’ said the lady, and she began examining the coupon with her shortsighted eyes.
‘It’ll look charming in that frame, won’t it, eh?’ said Makhin, turning to Mitya.
‘Haven’t you got any other money?’ asked the saleslady.
‘That’s just the problem. I haven’t. My father gave it to me, and I need to get it changed.’
‘And do you really not have a rouble and twenty copecks on you?’
‘I do have fifty copecks. But what’s the matter, are you afraid we are going to swindle you with forged money?’
‘No, I didn’t say that.’
‘Well, let me have it back please. We’ll find somewhere else to change it.’
‘So how much do I have to give you?’
‘Let’s see now, it should come to eleven something.’
The saleslady flicked the beads on her abacus, unlocked the bureau which served as a till, took out a ten-rouble note, and rummaging among the small change assembled a further six twenty-copeck and two five-copeck pieces.
‘Would you kindly wrap it up for me please?’ said Makhin, unhurriedly taking the money.
‘Right away.’
The saleslady wrapped up the frame and tied the package with string.
Mitya only began to breathe easily once more when the entrance bell had tinkled behind them and they had emergd into the street.
‘Well now, here’s ten roubles for you, and let me take the rest. I’ll give it back.’
And Makhin went off to the theatre, leaving Mitya to go and see Grushetsky and settle up with him.
IV
An hour after the boys had left the shop the owner returned home and started to count the takings.
‘Oh, you stupid, muddling woman! What a fool you are!’ he shouted at his wife as soon as he saw the coupon and immediately spotted the forgery. ‘And why on earth have you been accepting coupons at all?’
‘But I’ve been there when you have accepted them yourself, Zhenya, and they were twelve-rouble coupons just like this one,’ said his wife, who was growing confused and angry and was on the point of bursting into tears. ‘I don’t know myself how they managed to take me in, those schoolboys. He was a handsome young man too, he really looked so comme il faut.’2
‘And you’re a simpleton comme il faut,’ shouted her husband abusively as he went on counting the contents of the till. ‘I accept a coupon when I know and can see clearly what is written on it. But you no doubt spend your whole life gazing at the ugly mugs of schoolboys.’
His wife could take no more of this, and she too lost her temper.
‘There’s a man for you! Always blaming other people – and when you go and lose fifty-four roubles at cards, that’s a mere nothing!’
‘I – that’s a different matter altogether.’
‘I’m not talking to you any longer,’ said his wife, and she went off to her room and began to recall how her family had been against her becoming the wife of this man who was socially so much her inferior, and how she had herself insisted on the marriage; she recalled her child who had died, and her husband’s indifference at this loss, and she felt such hatred of her husband that she thought how glad she would be if he were to die. But when she had thought that she became alarmed at her own feelings and hastened to get dressed and go out. When her husband got back to their apartment she had already left. Without waiting for him she had put on her coat and driven by herself to the house of a teacher of French, an acquaintance of theirs, who had invited them to a social gathering that evening.
V
At the house of the French teacher, a Russian Pole, there was a formal tea party with sweet pastries, after which the guests sat down at several tables to play vint.3
The photographic-shop owner’s wife was at a table with the host, an army officer and an elderly deaf lady in a wig who was the widow of a music-shop owner, and a passionate and very good card-player. The play was going in favour of the photographic supplier’s wife: she made two slams. Beside her was a plate containing grapes and a pear, and she was now in a thoroughly cheerful mood.
‘Why isn’t Yevgeny Mikhailovich here yet?’ asked the hostess from another table. ‘We were counting on him for our fifth hand.’
‘I expect he’s got tied up in doing the accounts,’ said Yevgeny Mikhailovich’s wife. ‘This is the day when he settles the accounts for the groceries and the firewood.’
And remembering the scene with her husband she frowned, and her hands in their mittens trembled from the resentment she felt towards him.
‘Well, talk of the devil,’ said the host, turning towards Yevgeny Mikhailovich, who had just walked in. ‘What kept you?’
‘Oh, various kinds of business,’ replied Yevgeny Mikhailovich in a jovial voice, rubbing his hands together. And to his wife’s surprise, he came over to her and said:
‘You know that coupon – I managed to get rid of it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I gave it to a peasant for some firewood.’
And with great indignation Yevgeny Mikhailovich told everybody the story – with additional details supplied by his wife – of how some unscrupulous schoolboys had managed to dupe his wife.
‘Well now, let’s get on with the main business,’ he said, sitting down at the table when his turn arrived and shuffling the cards.
VI
Yevgeny Mikhailovich had indeed managed to get rid of the coupon to a muzhik named Ivan Mironov in payment for some firewood.
Ivan Mironov’s trade involved buying up single sazhens4 of firewood from the tim
ber warehouses and delivering them to the townspeople; but he would divide the sazhen of wood into five parts, each of which he sold at the price a quarter-load would fetch in the woodyards. Early in the morning of this day which proved so ill-fated for him, Ivan Mironov had carted out an eighth-load intending to sell it, but he drove about until evening looking in vain for a customer. He continually came across experienced townsfolk who knew all about the tricks played by muzhik firewood-vendors and refused to believe his assurances that he had brought in this firewood from the country. He was getting really hungry and felt chilled to the marrow in his worn sheepskin jacket and his tattered cloth under-coat; by evening the temperature had dropped to twenty degrees of frost; and his little horse, which he had been driving pitilessly because he was at the point of selling it to the knacker, came to a complete standstill. So that Ivan Mironov was even ready to consider selling off the firewood at a loss, when he encountered Yevgeny Mikhailovich who had popped out to the tobacconist’s and was now on his way home.
‘Do you want some firewood, master? I’ll let you have it cheap. My horse won’t go any further.’
‘And where are you from, then?’
‘From the country, sir. My own firewood it is, and good and dry too.’
‘We know your sort. Well, so what are you asking for it?’ Ivan Mironov named an absurdly high sum, then started progressively to reduce it, and finally let the firewood go for his usual price.
‘Just for you, master, seeing as it’s not too far to deliver it,’ he said.
Yevgeny Mikhailovich did not waste too much time bargaining since he was pleased at the thought that he would now be able to pass on the coupon. Somehow or other, hauling on the shafts of the cart himself, Ivan Mironov managed to drag the load into the courtyard of the house and personally unloaded it into the woodshed. There was no yardman about. At first Ivan Mironov was reluctant to accept the coupon, but Yevgeny Mikhailovich was so persuasive and looked to be such an important gentleman, that he agreed to take it.