by Unknown
The old men said to my father:
“This youngster has a Godsent talent, and where there is talent there will be good fortune.”
And so it came about; but to attain good fortune, you know, you have to show humble patience, and I was also sent two major trials: first, my parents died, leaving me when I was still young in years, and secondly, the place where I lived burned down the night before Christmas while I was in church at matins, and with it all my equipment was burnt—my iron, and my tailor’s dummy, and the customers’ clothes I had taken in to darn. I found myself at the time in great distress, but it was from that that I took my first step toward my good fortune.
VI
One customer whose fur-lined coat burned in my disaster came to me and said: “My loss is great, and it’s awkward to be left without a coat just before the holidays, yet I can see that there’s no claim to make against you but rather you must be helped. If you’re a sensible lad, I’ll put you on the right path provided you will eventually repay me.”
I answered:
“If only God pleases, with the greatest of pleasure. I’ll deem it my first duty to repay my debt.”
He told me to dress and took me to the hotel opposite the Governor-General’s house, to the assistant barman, and said to him in my presence: “Here,” he says, “is that same apprentice who, I told you, could be very useful in your line of trade.”
Their trade consisted in pressing all kinds of clothing as it would come wrinkled from the suitcases, and doing all kinds of necessary repairs for the newly arrived guests.
The assistant barman gave me one piece to do by way of trial, saw that I could do a good job, and told me to stay.
“Now,” he says, “it is Christ’s feast, and a great many gentlemen have come and are drinking and making merry, and there are still the New Year and the Twelfth Night to come, there will be still more goings-on, so you stay here. . . .”
I answer:
“I am willing.”
And the one who brought me says: “Well, mind you, get going—here one can make a good pile. But just listen to him (that is, the assistant barman) as to a shepherd. God will provide a shelter and give you a shepherd.”
I was given a little corner by the window in the back passage and I got going. A great many were the gentlemen—I daresay I couldn’t even count them—whom I fixed up, but it would be a sin to complain, I got myself pretty well fixed up, too, for there was an awful lot of work to do and the pay was good. Ordinary men did not stop there, only the big shots who liked the idea of staying in the same location as the Governor-General, window to window with him.
The pay for patching and darning was particularly good when the damage was unexpectedly discovered in clothes which had to be worn right away. Sometimes I felt even ashamed—the hole was the size of a dime, but mend it invisibly—you get a gold piece.
Less than ten rubles was never paid for darning a tiny hole. But naturally real skill was demanded, so that the piece would be pieced in as two drops of water run together and you can’t tell them apart.
Of the money that was paid each time, I was given one third; one third was taken by the assistant barman, and the other by the room servants who unpack the gentlemen’s suitcases and brush their clothes. It is they really who matter most because it is they who crumple the things and scuff them, and pick a little hole, and that’s why they got two parts and the rest went to me. But even so my share was more than enough, so that I moved from my corner in the passage and rented a quieter room in the same yard, and a year later the sister of the assistant barman came from her village and I married her. My present spouse, as you see her—that’s her, she has reached old age with honor, and it was for her sake perhaps that God gave us all this. And as for marrying, it was simply like this: the assistant barman said: “She’s an orphan and you must make her happy, and then through her you will have good luck.” And she also said: “I bring luck,” says she, “God will reward you on my behalf,” and suddenly, as if because of this, an astonishing surprise really happened.
VII
Christmas came again, and again New Year’s Eve. I am sitting in the evening in my room, darning something or other, and already thinking of stopping work and going to bed when one of the room servants runs in and said:
“Run quickly, a terrible Big Shot is staying in Room One. I reckon he’s beaten everybody and whomever he strikes he tips ten rubles. Now he’s demanding you.”
“What does he want from me?” I ask.
“He started dressing to go to a ball,” says he, “and at the very last moment noticed a hole burnt in his tailcoat in a conspicuous place. He gave a thrashing and three gold pieces to the man who had brushed it. Run as quickly as you can, he’s so furious he looks like all the wild beasts put together.”
I just shook my head, for I knew how they purposely ruined the clothes of their hotel guests, to derive profit from the mending; nevertheless I dressed and went to see the Big Shot who resembled all the wild beasts put together.
The pay certainly would be high because Room One in any hotel is considered to be a room for Big Shots, and none but luxury trade stops there; and in our hotel the price for Room One per day was what is now fifteen rubles and in those days was figured in paper money, amounting to fifty-two fifty, and whoever stopped there was known as the Big Shot.
The one to whom I was brought now was really fearful to look upon—of enormous stature, swarthy-faced and wild, and truly looking like all the wild beasts.
“You,” he asks me in a fierce voice, “can you mend a hole so well that it can’t be noticed?”
I answer:
“Depends on what kind of thing it is. If the stuff is napped then it can be done very well, but if it’s shiny satin or silky mauvais-stuff, then I won’t undertake it.”
“Mauvais yourself,” says he, “but some bastard, who was probably sitting behind me yesterday, burnt a hole in my tailcoat with his cigarette: Here, look it over and tell me.”
I looked it over and said:
“This can be done well.”
“And how long will it take?”
“Well, in an hour’s time,” I answer, “it will be ready.”
“Do it,” says he, “and if you do it well, you’ll get a pot of money, and if you don’t you’ll get a knock on the head. Go and ask the lads here how I thrashed them, and you can be sure that I’ll thrash you a hundred times worse.”
VIII
I went off to do the repair; none too pleased about it, however, because you can’t always be sure of how it will come off: a more loosely woven bit of cloth will blend in better, but the one with the harder finish, it is difficult to work in the nap inconspicuously.
I did a good job, however, but I didn’t take it back myself, for I didn’t at all like the way he treated me. It’s tricky work, and no matter how well you may do it, if the customer is set on finding fault, it can easily lead to unpleasantness.
I sent my wife with the tailcoat to her brother and told her to hand it over to him and hurry home, and as soon as she came running back we put the door on the hook and went to bed.
In the morning I got up and began the day in my usual way. There I sit at my work waiting to see what sort of reward from the Big Shot gentleman they will come to announce to me—a pot of money or a knock on the head.
And suddenly, soon after one o’clock or so, the room servant comes and says:
“The gentleman from Room One demands you.”
I say: “I won’t go for anything.”
“Why so?”
“Just so; I won’t go, and that’s flat. Rather let my work be wasted, but I have no wish to see him.”
But the servant began to insist:
“You’ve no call to be scared: he is very pleased and saw the New Year in at the ball in your tailcoat and nobody noticed the hole in it. And now he has guests for lunch who have come to wish him a Happy New Year. They’ve had a few drinks under their belt, and, getting to talk o
f your work, they had a wager—which of them will find the hole, but not one of them did. Now, for sheer joy, using this as an excuse, they are toasting your Russian skill and wish to see you in person. Go quickly, this will bring you new luck in the new year.”
My wife also insisted. “Do go,” she said, “my heart tells me that this will be the beginning of our new fortune.”
I obeyed them and went.
IX
I found about ten gentlemen in Room One and all of them had had a lot in the way of drinks, and as soon as I came in they handed me right off a glass of wine, and said: “Drink with us to your Russian skill through which you can bring glory to our nation.”
And in their cups they said all sorts of things like that which the whole business was not worth at all.
Naturally, I thank them and bow, and drank two glasses of wine to Russia and to their health, but I could not, I said, drink any more of sweet wine, not being used to it, and, besides, unworthy of such company.
To which the terrible gentleman from Room One replies:
“You, my friend, are an ass and a fool and a brute—you don’t know your own worth nor how much you deserve through your talent. You helped me on New Year’s Eve to set straight the whole course of my life, because yesterday at the ball I disclosed my love to my beloved betrothed of high birth and received her consent, and when the fast is over I’ll have a wedding.”
“I wish you and your future spouse,” I say, “to enter into wedlock with full happiness.”
“Have a drink to it then.”
I could not refuse and drank, but asked to be excused from any more.
“All right,” says he, “only tell me where you live and what is your name, patronymic, and surname. I want to be your benefactor.”
I reply: “My name is Vasily, son of Konon, and by surname Laputin. And my workshop is right here, next door, there is a small sign there, too, saying ‘Laputin’.”
There I stood telling all this and not noticing that at my words all the guests snorted and burst into gales of laughter, and the gentleman whose tailcoat I had repaired up and landed me one on the ear, and then one on the other ear, so that I could not keep on my feet. Then he shooed me to the door and threw me out over the threshold.
I couldn’t understand a thing and made off as fast as my legs would carry me.
I come home and my wife asks me:
“Tell me quickly, Vasenka, how has my luck served you?”
I say: “Don’t you, Mashenka, ask me for all particulars, but if this is only the first taste and there is more of the same to come, then I’d rather not live by your luck. He beat me up, my angel, he did, this gentleman.”
My wife was worried. What, how and what for? But I naturally could not tell her because I didn’t know myself.
But while we were having this conversation, suddenly there was clatter, noise, crashing, and in comes my benefactor from Room One.
We both got up from our places and stared at him while he, flushed with innermost feelings or from having had more wine, was holding in one hand the janitor’s long-handled ax and in the other, chopped up into splinters, the little board on which I had my wretched little sign, indicating my poor craft and surname: OLD CLOTHES MENDED AND TURNED OUT. LAPUTIN.
X
In walked the gentleman with those splintered little boards and flung them straight away into the stove, and said to me: “Get dressed, you’re coming with me in my carriage, I’ll make your life’s fortune. Or else I’ll chop up you and your wife and everything you have, just as I did those boards.”
I thought that rather than argue with such a rowdy I’d better get him out of the house as soon as possible lest he do some harm to my wife.
I dressed hastily, said to my wife, “Make the sign of the cross over me, Mashenka,” and off we went. We drove to Bronnaya where the well-known real estate agent Prokhor Ivanych lived, and the gentleman asked him straight away:
“What houses are there for sale and in what location, priced from twenty-five to thirty thousand or a little more?” Naturally in paper money as was used then. “But I need such a house,” he explains, “that can be taken over and moved into this very moment.”
The agent took a ledger out of his cupboard, put on his spectacles, looked at one page and at another, and said:
“There is a house suitable to you in every way but you’ll have to add a bit.”
“I can do it.”
“You will have to go up to thirty-five thousand.”
“I am willing.”
“Then,” says he, “we’ll complete the deal in an hour and it will be possible to move in tomorrow because in this house a deacon choked on a chicken bone at a christening and died, and that’s why nobody lives there now.”
And that’s this very same little house where you and I are sitting now. There was some talk about the late deacon walking about at night and choking, but all this is absolute nonsense and nobody has seen him here in our time. My wife and I moved in here the very next day because the gentleman transferred the title-deed to this house to us as a gift; and the day after that he comes with some workmen, more than six or seven of them, and with them a ladder and this very signboard that makes me out a French tailor.
They came and nailed it on and went away, and the gentleman instructed me:
“I have just one order for you,” he says, “don’t you ever dare change this signboard, and always answer to this name.” And all of a sudden he exclaimed:
“Lepoutant!”
I respond: “Yes, sir.”
“Good lad,” says he, “here is another 1000 rubles for spoons and saucers, but mind you, Lepoutant, follow my commandments with care and you’ll be taken care of, but if anything . . . and if, God forbid, you start asserting your former name and I find out . . . then, to begin with, I’ll give you a sound hiding, and secondly, according to the law ‘the gift reverts to the giver.’ But if you are loyal to my wish, then just say what else you want and you’ll get everything from me.”
I thank him and say that I have no wishes and can think of nothing except for one thing—if he can be so good to tell me what is the meaning of all this and why did I receive the house.
But that he wouldn’t tell me.
“That,” says he, “you don’t need to know at all; just remember that from now on you are called Lepoutant and are thus named in my gift deed. Keep this name; you will gain thereby.”
XI
We set up housekeeping in our own home, and everything went very well, and we believed that all this was due to my wife’s good luck, because for a long time we could not come upon the true explanation from anybody; but one day two gentlemen hurried past our house, and suddenly stopped and came in.
The wife asks them:
“Can I help you?”
They replied:
“We need Monsieur Lepoutant himself.”
I come out, and they exchanged glances, both of them laughed at the same time and began talking to me in French.
I apologize, saying I do not understand French.
“Have you hung out this sign for a long time?”
I told them how many years it was.
“Well, that’s it. We remember you,” they say, “and saw how you did a marvelous job mending a gentleman’s tailcoat for a ball on New Year’s Eve, and later suffered unpleasantness at his hands in our presence in the hotel.”
“That’s quite right,” I say, “there was such an occasion, but I am grateful to that gentleman, and it is through him that my life began; but I don’t know his name or surname, for all this has been kept from me.”
They told me his name, and his surname, they added, was Laputin.
“What do you mean, Laputin?”
“Yes, of course,” they say, “Laputin. Didn’t you really know why he showered on you all those benefactions? So that his name should not appear on your signboard.”
“Fancy that,” I say, “and we couldn’t understand it at all to this very
day; we enjoyed the benefaction but in the dark as it were.”
“However,” continue my visitors, “it didn’t do him any good. Yesterday he got involved in a new mixup.”
And they told me a bit of news that made me feel very sorry for my erstwhile namesake.
XII
Laputin’s wife, to whom he proposed in his darned tail-coat, was even more snobbish than her husband, and adored pomp. Neither of them was particularly high-born, it was just that their fathers had grown rich through government contracts; but they sought the acquaintance of the nobility only. And at that time our governor-general in Moscow was Count Zakrevsky, who himself, they say, was also from the Polish gentry, and real gentlemen like Prince Sergey Mikhailovich Golitsyn did not rate him high, but all the rest were flattered to be received in his house. The spouse of the man who used to have the same name as mine also thirsted for this honor. Yet, goodness knows why, this eluded them for a long time, but at last Mr. Laputin found the opportunity of pleasing the Count, and the latter said to him:
“Come and see me, my dear fellow, I’ll leave orders to have you admitted. Tell me, lest I forget, what is your name?”
The other answered that his name was Laputin.
“Laputin?” asked the Count. “Laputin . . . Wait a moment, wait a moment, if you please. Laputin . . . I seem to remember something. This is someone’s name.”