Fifty-Two Stories

“As if we’ve never seen question marks! Even if there were a thousand of them, I’d find a place for them all. They’re always used when there’s a request to be made or, let’s say, documents are being examined: ‘Where is the remainder of the sums for such-and-such year?’ or ‘Will the police department find it possible for a certain Mrs. Ivanov…?’ and so on.”

The question marks nodded their hooks in approval and instantly, as if on command, straightened themselves into exclamation points…

“Hm!…This punctuation mark is often used in letters. ‘My dear sir!’ or ‘Your Excellency, father and benefactor!…’ But when in documents?”

The exclamation points drew themselves up still taller and stood waiting…

“They’re used in documents when…well…that’s…how is it? Hm!…In fact, when are they used in documents? Wait…God help me remember…Hm!…”

Perekladin opened his eyes and turned on his other side. But before he could close them again, the exclamation points appeared once more against the dark background.

“Devil take them…When should they be used?” he thought, trying to drive the uninvited guests out of his imagination. “Can it be I’ve forgotten? Forgotten, or…just never used them…”

Perekladin began to recall the contents of all the documents he had written out in his forty years of service; but however much he thought, however much he furrowed his brow, in his past he did not find a single exclamation point.

“How odd! Writing for forty years and never once using an exclamation point…Hm!…But when does the long devil get used?”

From behind the row of fiery exclamation points appeared the sarcastically grinning mug of his young critic. The points also smiled and merged into one big exclamation point.

Perekladin shook his head and opened his eyes.

“Devil knows what…,” he thought. “Tomorrow morning I have to get up for matins, and I can’t drive this fiendish thing out of my head…Pah! But…when do we use it then? There’s habit for you! There’s getting the knack for you! Not a single exclamation point in forty years! Eh?”

Perekladin crossed himself and closed his eyes, but immediately opened them again; the big point still stood there against the dark background…

“Pah! This way I won’t sleep all night. Marfusha!” He turned to his wife, who often boasted of having finished boarding school. “Do you know, sweetheart, when to use an exclamation point in documents?”

“As if I don’t! I didn’t spend seven years in boarding school for nothing. I remember all of grammar by heart. It’s used in appeals, exclamations, and expressions of delight, indignation, joy, anger, and other feelings.”

“So-o-o…,” thought Perekladin. “Delight, indignation, joy, anger, and other feelings…”

The collegiate secretary fell to thinking…For forty years he had been writing out documents, he had written out thousands, tens of thousands of them, but he did not remember a single line that expressed delight, indignation, or anything of the sort…

“And other feelings…,” he thought. “But is there any need for feelings in documents? Even a man with no feelings can write them out…”

The young critic’s mug peeked out again from behind the fiery point and smiled sarcastically. Perekladin got up and sat on the bed. He had a headache, cold sweat stood out on his brow…In the corner an icon lamp glimmered cozily, the furniture was clean and had a festive look, over everything spread the warmth and presence of a woman’s hands, but the poor little clerk was cold, uncomfortable, as if he were sick with typhus. The exclamation point no longer stood in his closed eyes, but before him, in the room, by his wife’s dressing table, and it winked mockingly at him…

“Machine! Writing machine!” whispered the ghost, wafting dry cold at the clerk. “Unfeeling block of wood!”

The clerk covered himself with the blanket, but he also saw the ghost under the blanket; he pressed his face to his wife’s shoulder, but it stuck out from behind her shoulder as well…Poor Perekladin suffered all night, but in the daytime the ghost did not leave him. He saw it everywhere: in the boots he was putting on, in his cup of tea, in his Stanislas medal…²

“And other feelings…,” he thought. “It’s true there haven’t been any feelings…I’m going now to sign my superior’s Christmas greeting…but is it done with any feelings? So, it’s all nothing…A merry-christmas machine…”

When Perekladin went out and hailed a cab, it seemed to him that an exclamation point drove up instead of a cabby.

Coming to his superior’s anteroom, instead of a porter he saw the same exclamation point…And it all spoke to him of delight, indignation, anger…The pen in its stand also looked like an exclamation point. Perekladin took it, dipped the pen in ink, and wrote:

“Collegiate Secretary Efim Perekladin!!!”

And in setting down these three exclamation points he felt delight, indignation, joy, and he seethed with anger.

“There, take that! Take that!” he muttered as he pressed down with the pen.

The fiery exclamation point was satisfied and vanished.

1885

AN EDUCATED BLOCKHEAD