Fifty-Two Stories

“Your Honor! Where are my legs? My arms?”

“Say goodbye to your arms and legs…They got frozen. Now, now…what are you crying for? You’ve lived, thank God for that! You must have lived some sixty years—that will do you!”

“Grief!…Y’ronor, it’s such grief! Kindly forgive me! Another five or six little years…”

“What for?”

“I borrowed the horse, I’ve got to return it…Bury the old woman…How quickly it all gets done in this world! Your Honor! Pavel Ivanych! A cigar box of the best Karelian birch! Croquet balls…”

The doctor waves his hand and walks out of the ward. Woodturner—amen!

1885

THE EXCLAMATION POINT

A Christmas Story

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Efim Fomich Perekladin, a collegiate secretary,¹ went to bed offended and even insulted.

“Stop bothering me, you she-devil!” he barked angrily at his wife when she asked why he was so gloomy.

The trouble was that he had just come back from a party where many things had been said that he found unpleasant and offensive. At first they talked about the benefits of education in general, then they moved on imperceptibly to the educational requirements for civil servants, about the low level of which a great many laments, reproaches, and even gibes were voiced. And here, as is customary in all Russian gatherings, they moved on from the general to the personal.

“Take you, for instance, Efim Fomich.” A young man turned to Perekladin. “You occupy a respectable post…but what kind of education did you receive?”

“None, sir. For us no education’s needed,” Perekladin said meekly. “Just write correctly…”

“And where did you learn to write correctly?”

“Habit, sir…After forty years of service you get the knack of it, sir…Of course, it was hard at first, I made mistakes, but then I got used to it, sir…no problem…”

“And punctuation?”

“Punctuation’s no problem…Just put it in correctly.”

“Hm!…” The young man became embarrassed. “But habit’s not the same as education. It’s not enough to put in punctuation correctly…not enough, sir! You should put it in consciously! When you put in a comma, you should know why you’re putting it in…yes, sir! And this unconscious…reflex orthography of yours isn’t worth a kopeck. It’s mechanical production and nothing more.”

Perekladin held his tongue and even smiled meekly (the young man was the son of a state councillor and had the right to the tenth rank), but now, on going to bed, he was all transformed into anger and indignation.

“I’ve served for forty years,” he thought, “and no one has ever called me a fool, but now just look what critics have turned up! ‘Unconscious…Lefrex! Mechanical production…’ Ah, you, devil take you! Anyhow, maybe I understand more than you do, even if I didn’t study in your universities.”

Having mentally poured out all the abuse known to him at the critic’s expense and getting warm under the blanket, Perekladin began to calm down.

“I know…I understand…,” he thought, falling asleep. “I wouldn’t put a colon where a comma’s called for, which means I’m aware, I understand. Yes…So there, young man…First you’ve got to live, serve, and only then judge your elders…”

In the closed eyes of the dozing Perekladin, through a crowd of dark, smiling clouds, a fiery comma flew like a meteor. It was followed by a second, a third, and soon the whole boundless dark background spread out before his imagination was covered with dense clusters of flying commas…

“Take just these commas…,” thought Perekladin, feeling his limbs turning sweetly numb from the onset of sleep. “I understand them perfectly…I can find a place for each one, if you like…and…and consciously, not by chance…Test me and you’ll see…Commas are put in various places, where they go, and where they don’t. The more confusing the document, the more commas are needed. They’re put before ‘which’ and sometimes before ‘that.’ If there’s a list of officials, each one should be separated by a comma…I know!”

The golden commas spun around and raced off to one side. They were replaced by fiery periods…

“And periods are put at the end of a document…Where a big pause and a glance at the listener is needed, there should also be a period. After every long passage a period is needed, so that the secretary’s mouth doesn’t go dry while he’s reading. Periods are not put anywhere else…”

Again the commas come flying…They mix with the periods, whirl around—and Perekladin sees a whole multitude of colons and semicolons…

“And these I know…,” he thinks. “Where a comma is too little and a period is too much, there we need a semicolon. Before ‘but’ and ‘therefore’ I always put a semicolon…Well, and the colon? A colon is needed after the phrases ‘it has been decreed’ or ‘decided’…”

The colons and semicolons fade away. It is the turn of the question marks. They leap down from the clouds dancing the cancan…