Forty Stories (11 page)

Yulia Vassilyevna’s left eye reddened and filled with tears. Her chin trembled. She began to cough nervously, blew her nose, and said nothing.

“Then around New Year’s Day you broke a cup and saucer. Subtract two rubles. The cup cost more than that—it was a heirloom, but we won’t bother about that. We’re the ones who pay. Another matter. Due to your carelessness Kolya climbed a tree and tore his coat. Subtract ten. Also, due to your carelessness the chambermaid ran off with Varya’s boots. You ought to have kept your eyes open. You get a good salary. So we dock off five more.… On the tenth of January you took ten rubles from me.”

“I didn’t,” Yulia Vassilyevna whispered.

“But I made a note of it.”

“Well, yes—perhaps …”

“From forty-one we take twenty-seven. That leaves fourteen.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and her thin, pretty little nose was shining with perspiration. Poor little child!

“I only took money once,” she said in a trembling voice. “I took three rubles from your wife … never anything more.”

“Did you now? You see, I never made a note of it. Take three from fourteen. That leaves eleven. Here’s your money, my dear. Three, three, three … one and one. Take it, my dear.”

I gave her the eleven rubles. With trembling fingers she took them and slipped them into her pocket.

“
Merci
,” she whispered.

I jumped up, and began pacing up and down the room. I was in a furious temper.

“Why did you say ‘
merci’?
” I asked.

“For the money.”

“Dammit, don’t you realize I’ve been cheating you? I steal your money, and all you can say is
‘merci’!
”

“In my other places they gave me nothing.”

“They gave you nothing! Well, no wonder! I was playing a trick on you—a dirty trick.… I’ll give you your eighty
rubles, they are all here in an envelope made out for you. Is it possible for anyone to be such a nitwit? Why didn’t you protest? Why did you keep your mouth shut? Is it possible that there is anyone in this world who is so spineless? Why are you such a ninny?”

She gave me a bitter little smile. On her face I read the words: “Yes, it is possible.”

I apologized for having played this cruel trick on her, and to her great surprise gave her the eighty rubles. And then she said “
merci
” again several times, always timidly, and went out. I gazed after her, thinking how very easy it is in this world to be strong.

February 1883

A FEW days ago K., a man of considerable local importance, rich and well connected, shot himself in the town of T. The bullet entered his mouth and lodged in his brain.

In the poor man’s side pocket a letter was found, with the following contents:

“I read in the Almanac today there will be a bad harvest this year. For me a bad harvest can only mean bankruptcy. Having no desire to fall victim to dishonor, I have decided to put an end to my life in advance. It is my desire, accordingly, that no one should be held responsible for my death.”

We have received from authentic sources the following distressing item from a local clinic:

“The well-known surgeon M., while amputating both legs of a railway switchman, absent-mindedly cut off one of his own legs, together with one of the legs of his assistant. Both are now receiving medical care.”

“I, the son of a former honorary citizen, being a reader of
The Citizen
,
¹
wearing the clothes of a citizen, contracted a civil marriage with my Anyuta.…”
²

We are informed that a certain T., one of the contributors to
Kievlyanin
,
³
having read the greater portion of the Moscow newspapers, suffered an attack of self-doubt and searched his own home for illegal literature. Finding none, he nevertheless gave himself up to the police.

April 1883

ON a beautiful night the no less beautiful government clerk Ivan Dmitrich Chervyakov
¹
sat in the second row of the stalls watching
Les Cloches de Corneville
through opera glasses. He was gazing at the stage and thinking himself the most blessed among mortals when suddenly … (Very often in stories you come upon this word “suddenly,” and this is all very proper, since authors must always concern themselves with the unexpectedness of life.) Suddenly, then, his face puckered up, he rolled his eyes, his breathing stopped, the opera glasses fell from his eyes, he collapsed into his seat, and … 
at-choo!
As the reader has observed, he sneezed.

There are, of course, no laws promulgated against sneezing. It is done by peasants, police inspectors, even by privy councilors. Everyone sneezes. Chervyakov was not in the least embarrassed. He wiped his nose with a handkerchief, and like any well-behaved man, he looked round to see whether he had inconvenienced anyone. He was acutely embarrassed when he saw, sitting in the front row of the stalls just in front of him, an old man who was carefully wiping his bald head and neck with a pair of gloves and muttering something under his breath. The old man, as Chervyakov recognized, was General Brizzhalov, a very high official in the Ministry of Communications.

“I splashed him!” thought Chervyakov. “He’s not my boss,
but still—it’s devilishly awkward! I shall have to apologize.”

Chervyakov coughed, leaned forward, and whispered in the general’s ear: “I’m afraid, Your Excellency, I sneezed … quite unintentionally.…”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Forgive me, for God’s sake. I really didn’t intend …”

“Sit down and keep quiet! Let me listen!”

Chervyakov was embarrassed. He smiled stupidly, and began to turn his attention to the stage. Watching the actors, he no longer felt he was the most blessed among mortals. He was suffering torments of anxiety. During the entr’acte he sought out Brizzhalov, hovered around him for a while, and at last, gaining courage, he murmured: “Excellency, I sneezed over you. Forgive me. I didn’t … I really haven’t …”

“Oh, this is too much!” the general exploded, his lower lip twitching with impatience. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

“He’s forgotten all about it, but there’s a mean look in his eyes,” Chervyakov thought, glancing suspiciously in the general’s direction. “He refuses to talk to me. I’ll have to explain I had absolutely no intention of … Why, it’s a law of nature!… He may even think I spat on him deliberately. Maybe not now, but later that’s what he’ll think.”

As soon as he got home, Chervyakov told his wife about this unfortunate happening. It occurred to him that his wife took the news with altogether too much levity. There was a moment when she seemed alarmed, but when she understood that Brizzhalov belonged “to another bureau,” she regained her composure.

“Still, I think you should go and apologize,” she said. “Otherwise he may think you don’t know how to behave in public.”

“That’s just it! I’ve already apologized, but he behaved so strangely.… His words didn’t make sense. He gave me no time to explain.…”

The next day Chervyakov put on his new frock coat, had a haircut, and went to offer his excuses to Brizzhalov. He found
the general’s reception room full of petitioners, the general himself standing there and listening to the petitions. He listened to quite a few of them before he raised his eyes and recognized Chervyakov.

“Yesterday, Your Excellency … if you remember … at the Arcadia Theater … I sneezed, sir … and quite accidently splashed a little …”

“Balderdash!” snapped the general. “God knows what’s going to happen next! What can I do for you?” he went on, addressing the next petitioner.

“He won’t talk to me,” Chervyakov thought, turning pale. “He’s furious with me. I can’t possibly leave it like that. I’ll have to explain to him …”

When the general had finished talking with the last of the petitioners and was turning to enter his private apartments, Chervyakov hurried after him, muttering: “Your Excellency, may I presume to trouble you for a moment … feelings dictated, you might say, by a deep regret … not intentionally … extremely sorry …”

The general looked as though he were about to break out in tears, and waved him away.

“You’re making fun of me, my dear sir!” the general said, before shutting the door in his face.

“So I am making fun of him, am I?” Chervyakov thought. “It’s not a laughing matter! He’s a general, and knows nothing. Well, I won’t bother to apologize any more to that brazen old fool! Devil take him! I’ll write him a letter, and never set eyes on him again. God in heaven, I’ll never trouble him again.”

So Chervyakov thought as he made his way home. But he did not write a letter to the general. He thought and thought, but he could never put the words in the right order. On the following day he again visited the general to offer his excuses.

“Yesterday I ventured to trouble Your Excellency,” he murmured, as soon as the general turned a questioning glance in his direction. “I assure Your Excellency I never intended to
make fun of you. I’ve come to apologize for sneezing, for splashing a little … Making fun of Your Excellency was the last thing on my mind. I wouldn’t dare to—I really wouldn’t. If we made fun of people, I ask you, what would happen to respect for the individual?”

“Get out of here!” the general roared, livid and shaking with rage.

“What were you saying, sir?” Chervyakov whispered.

“Get out!” the general repeated, and he stamped his foot.

In the living body of Chervyakov something snapped. He neither heard nor saw anything as he backed towards the door, went out into the street, and shuffled slowly away. Mechanically he put one foot before the other, reached his home, and without taking off his frock coat he lay down on the divan and died.

July 1883

A FEW days ago we attended the funeral of the beautiful young wife of our postmaster, Sladkopertsov. According to traditions handed down from our forefathers, the burial was followed by the “commemoration,” which took place at the post office.

While the pancakes were being offered round, the old widower was weeping bitterly.

“Those pancakes are just as pink as my poor darling,” he said. “So beautiful she was. Indeed she was …”

“Well, that’s true enough,” we all chanted in unison. “She really was beautiful—no doubt about it.”

“True, true. Everyone was amazed when they saw her. Oh, but, gentlemen, I did not love her for her beauty or her gentle disposition alone. It’s natural for women to have these qualities, and many times one finds them in this world below. I loved her for another quality entirely. The truth is I loved my poor darling—may God grant her to enter the Kingdom of Heaven—because in spite of her playfulness and
joie de vivre
she was always faithful to her husband. She was faithful to me though she was only twenty, and I shall soon be past sixty. She was faithful to her old man!”

The deacon, who was sharing our meal, expressed his disbelief by means of an eloquent, bellowlike cough.

“Why, don’t you believe me?” The widower turned in his direction.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” the deacon said in some confusion. “But you know … young wives nowadays … what is it called?… rendezvous … 
sauce provençale
 …”

“Then you don’t believe me! Well, I’ll prove it! I kept her faithful to me by means of certain strategical efforts on my part—you might call them fortifications. Because of what I did, and because I am a very cunning man, it was absolutely impossible for my wife to be unfaithful to me. I employed craft to protect my marriage bed. I know some magic words. I have only to say these words, and—
basta!—
I can sleep in peace as far as unfaithfulness goes.”

“What were the words?”

“Very simple. I spread a terrible rumor round the town. I am sure you know the rumor. I told everyone: ‘My wife Alyona is sleeping with Ivan Alexeyevich Zalikhvatsky, the Chief of Police.’ These words were enough. Not a single man dared to make love to Alyona for fear of the wrath of the Chief of Police. And if anyone so much as caught a glimpse of her, he would soon be running away for dear life, for fear of what Zalikhvatsky might think of him. Hee-hee-hee. Try having anything to do with that whiskered pisspot! You’ll get no satisfaction from him! He’ll write out five official reports about your sanitation, and if he so much as saw your cat wandering about in the street, he would write a report which would make it look as though a herd of cattle were wandering abroad.”

“So your wife didn’t live with Ivan Alexeyevich?” we said in amazement, the truth slowly dawning on us.

“No, of course not! That was where I was clever! Hee-hee. I played the fool with you, eh? Clever, wasn’t I?”

Three minutes passed in silence. We sat and said not a word, and we felt insulted and ashamed for having been so successfully cheated by that fat, red-nosed old man.

“May God grant you to marry again,” the deacon said.

October 1883

IN the zemstvo hospital the patients were received by the medical orderly Kuryatin in the absence of the doctor, who had gone away to get married. Kuryatin, a stout man, about forty, was wearing a shabby pongee jacket and frayed woolen trousers, and his expression was one of amiability and devotion to duty. Between the index and middle finger of his left hand, there was a terrible-smelling cigar.