Fifty-Two Stories

And, making a tragic gesture with his hand, the Frenchman affectedly throws the napkin on the table and walks out with dignity.

Some three hours later the table setting is changed and dinner is served. Kamyshev sits down to eat alone. After the first glass, he is overcome with a thirst for idle talk. He would like to chat, but there is no one to listen.

“What’s Alphonse Ludvigovich doing?” he asks the servant.

“Packing his suitcase, sir.”

“What a dunderhead, God forgive me!…,” says Kamyshev, and he goes to the Frenchman.

Shampooing is sitting on the floor in the middle of his room and with trembling hands is packing his linen, perfume bottles, prayer books, suspenders, neckties into a suitcase…His whole respectable figure, his suitcase, bed, and table exude refinement and effeminacy. From his big blue eyes large tears drop into the suitcase.

“Where are you off to?” asks Kamyshev, after standing there for a while.

The Frenchman is silent.

“You want to leave?” Kamyshev goes on. “Well, you know best…I wouldn’t dare hold you back…Only here’s the strange thing: how are you going to go without a passport? I’m surprised! You know, I lost your passport. I put it somewhere among the papers, and it got lost…And here they’re very strict about passports. You won’t go three miles before they nab you.”

Shampooing raises his head and looks mistrustfully at Kamyshev.

“Yes…You’ll find out! They’ll see by your face that you’ve got no passport, and right away: ‘Who are you? Alphonse Shampooing! We know these Alphonse Shampooings! Maybe you’d like to be shipped off to some not-so-nearby parts!’ ”

“Are you joking?”

“Why on earth would I be joking? As if I need that! Only watch out, I warn you: no whimpering and letter-writing afterwards. I won’t lift a finger when they march you by in chains!”

Shampooing jumps up, pale, wide-eyed, and starts pacing the room.

“What are you doing to me?!” he says, clutching his head in despair. “My God! Oh, cursed be the hour when the pernicious thought came to my head of leaving my fatherland!”

“Now, now, now…I was joking!” says Kamyshev, lowering his tone. “What an odd fellow, he doesn’t understand jokes! One dare not utter a word!”

“My dear!” shrieks Shampooing, calmed by Kamyshev’s tone. “I swear to you, I’m attached to Russia, to you, to your children…To leave you is as hard for me as to die! But each word you say cuts me to the heart!”

“Ah, you odd fellow! Why on earth should you be offended if I denounce the French? We denounce all sorts of people—should they all be offended? An odd fellow, really! Take my tenant Lazar Isakich, for example…I call him this and that, Yid and kike, make a pig’s ear out of my coattail, pull him by the whiskers…he doesn’t get offended.”

“But he’s a slave! He’s ready for any meanness to make a kopeck!”

“Now, now, now…enough! Let’s go and eat. Peace and harmony!”

Shampooing powders his tear-stained face and goes with Kamyshev to the dining room. The first course is eaten in silence, after the second the same story begins, and so Shampooing’s sufferings never end.

1885

CORPORAL WHOMPOV

“CORPORAL WHOMPOV! You are accused of insulting, on the third of September instant, by word and deed, the village constable Zhigin, the parish elder Alyapov, the local militiaman Efimov, the witnesses Ivanov and Gavrilov, and another six peasants—the first three being subjected to your insults while in performance of their duties. Do you acknowledge your guilt?”

Whompov, a wrinkled corporal with a prickly face, stands at attention and answers in a hoarse, stifled voice, rapping out each word as if giving a command:

“Your Honor, Mister Justice of the Peace! It transpires that, by all the articles of the law, there is the following reason for attesting to each circumstance in its reciprocity. The guilty party is not me, but all the others. This whole business occurred on account of a dead corpse—may he rest in peace. Two days ago I was walking with my wife Anfisa, quietly, honorably, I see—there’s a heap of various folk standing on the riverbank. By what full right have these folk gathered here? I ask. How come? Does the law say folk come in herds? I shouted: ‘Break it up!’ I started pushing the folk so they’d go to their homes, ordered the militiaman to drive them away…”

“Excuse me, but you’re not a policeman or a headman—what business have you got dispersing folk?”

“None! None!” Voices are heard from various corners of the courtroom. “There’s no living with him, Y’ronor! Fifteen years we’ve suffered from him! Ever since he got back from the army, we’ve felt like fleeing the village. He torments everybody!”