Fifty-Two Stories

Another puzzler for Grisha: Pelageya had lived freely, as she liked, not answering to anybody, and suddenly, out of the blue, appeared some stranger, who somehow got the right to her doings and her property! Grisha was upset. He wanted passionately, to the point of tears, to be nice to this victim, as he thought, of people’s abuse. Choosing the biggest apple in the pantry, he snuck into the kitchen, put it in Pelageya’s hand, and rushed back out again.

1885

IN A FOREIGN LAND

SUNDAY NOON. The landowner Kamyshev is sitting in his dining room at a sumptuously laid table, having a leisurely lunch. His meal is being shared by a neat, clean-shaven little old Frenchman, Monsieur Shampooing. This Shampooing was once the Kamyshevs’ family tutor, taught the children manners, proper pronunciation, and dancing; then, when the Kamyshev children grew up and became lieutenants, Shampooing stayed on as something like a male governess. The duties of the former tutor are not complicated. He has to dress decently, smell of perfume, listen to Kamyshev’s idle talk, eat, drink, sleep—and that, it seems, is all. In return he receives room, board, and an unspecified salary.

Kamyshev is eating and, as usual, babbling away.

“Deadly!” he says, wiping the tears that rise up following a slice of ham thickly smeared with mustard. “Oof! It hits you in the head and all the joints. Your French mustard wouldn’t do that, even if you ate a whole jar.”

“Some like French mustard, and some Russian…,” Shampooing pronounces meekly.

“Nobody likes French mustard, except maybe the French. But a Frenchman will eat anything you give him: frogs, rats, cockroaches—brr! You, for instance, don’t like this ham because it’s Russian, but if they give you fried glass and tell you it’s French, you’ll eat it and smack your lips…In your opinion, everything Russian is bad.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Everything Russian is bad, and everything French—oh, say tray jolee!¹ In your opinion, there’s no better country than France, but in mine…well, what is France, honestly speaking? A little scrap of land! Send our policeman there, and a month later he’ll ask to be transferred: there’s no room to turn around! You can travel all over your France in a day, but with us you step through the gate and—endless space! Drive on and on…”

“Yes, monsieur, Russia is an enormous country.”

“There you have it! In your opinion, there’s no better people than the French. Educated, intelligent folk! Civilized! I agree, the French are all educated, well-mannered…it’s true…A Frenchman will never allow himself to be boorish: he’ll promptly move a chair for a lady, won’t eat crayfish with a fork, won’t spit on the floor, but…it’s not the right spirit! He doesn’t have the right spirit! I can’t explain it to you, but, how shall I put it, there’s something lacking in Frenchmen, a certain” (the speaker twiddles his fingers) “…something…juridical. I remember reading somewhere that you all have an intelligence acquired from books, while ours is inborn. If a Russian learns all your subjects properly, no professor of yours will compare with him.”

“Maybe so…,” Shampooing says as if reluctantly.

“No, not maybe—it’s true! Don’t wince, I’m telling the truth! Russian intelligence is inventive! Only, of course, it’s not given scope enough, and it’s no good at boasting…It will invent something and then break it or give it to children to play with, while your Frenchman invents some sort of rubbish and shouts for all the world to hear. The other day the coachman Jonah made a manikin out of wood: you pull a string on this manikin and he makes an indecent gesture. And yet Jonah doesn’t boast. Generally…I don’t like the French! I’m not talking about you, but generally…Immoral people! Outwardly they seem to resemble humans, but they live like dogs…Take marriage, for instance. With us, whoever marries cleaves to his wife and there’s no more talking, but with you devil knows what goes on. The husband sits in a café all day, and his wife infests the house with Frenchmen and cancans away with them.”

“That’s not true!” Shampooing, unable to help himself, flares up. “In France the family principle is held very high!”

“We know all about that principle! And you should be ashamed to defend it. One must be impartial: pigs are pigs…Thanks to the Germans for beating them…By God, yes. God grant them good health…”

“In that case, monsieur, I don’t understand,” says the Frenchman, jumping up and his eyes flashing, “if you really hate the French, why do you keep me?”

“What else can I do with you?”

“Let me go, and I’ll leave for France!”

“Wha-a-at? As if they’d let you back into France now! You’re a traitor to your fatherland! One day Napoleon is your great man, then it’s Gambetta…the devil himself can’t figure you out!”

“Monsieur,” Shampooing says in French, spluttering and crumpling the napkin in his hands, “even an enemy could not have come up with a worse insult to my feelings than you have just done! All is finished!!”