The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

He sent all the odorlies racing off and had already started sending simple people from the curious public, and was even impatiently sticking his own legs out of the carriage and in his impatience was about to run off himself, and kept gnashing his teeth—so slow it all seemed to him.

Because at that time it was required that everything be done with great punctuality and speed, so that not a minute would be lost for Russian usefulness.

IX

The Tula masters, who were doing their astonishing deed, were just then finishing their work. The odorlies came running to them out of breath, and as for the simple people from the curious public—they did not reach them at all, because, being unaccustomed, their legs gave out on the way and they collapsed, and then, for fear of facing Platov, they hied themselves home and hid wherever they could.

The odorlies came running, called out at once, and, seeing that they did not open, at once unceremoniously tore at the bolts of the shutters, but the bolts were so strong that they did not yield in the least; they pulled at the door, but the door was held shut from inside by an oaken bar. Then the odorlies took a log from the street, placed it fireman-fashion under the eaves of the roof, and ripped off the whole roof of the little house at one go. But on taking off the roof, they themselves collapsed at once, because the air in the cramped little chamber where the masters had been working without respite had turned into such a sweaty stuffage that for an unaccustomed man, fresh from outdoors, it was impossible to take a single breath.

The envoys shouted:

“What are you blankety-blank scum doing, hitting us with such stuffage! There’s no God in you after that!”

And they replied:

“We’re just now hammering in the last little nail and, once we’re done, we’ll bring our work out to you.”

And the envoys say:

“He’ll eat us alive before that and won’t leave enough to pray over.”

But the masters reply:

“He won’t have time to swallow you, because while you were talking, we hammered that last nail in. Run and tell him we’re bringing it.”

The odorlies ran, but not confidently: they thought the masters would trick them, and therefore they ran and ran and then looked back; but the masters came walking behind them, and so hurriedly that they were not even fully dressed as was proper for appearing before an important person and were fastening the hooks of their kaftans as they went. Two of them had nothing in their hands, and the third, Lefty, was carrying under a green cover the tsar’s chest with the English steel flea.

X

The odorlies came running to Platov and said:

“Here they are!”

Platov says at once to the masters:

“Is it ready?”

“Everything’s ready,” they say.

“Give it here.”

They gave it to him.

And the carriage was already hitched up, and the driver and postillion were in place. The Cossacks were right there beside the driver and had their whips raised over him and held them brandished like that.

Platov tore off the cover, opened the chest, unwrapped the cotton wool, took the diamond nut out of the snuffbox and looked: the English flea was lying there as before, and there was nothing else besides.

Platov says:

“What is this? Where is your work, with which you wanted to hearten our sovereign?”

The gunsmiths reply:

“Our work is here, too.”

Platov asks:

“What does it consist in?”

And the gunsmiths reply:

“Why explain? It’s all there in front of you—see for yourself.”

Platov heaved his shoulders and shouted:

“Where’s the key for the flea?”

“Right there,” they reply. “Where the flea is, the key is—in the same nut.”

Platov wanted to pick up the key, but his fingers were clubbsy; he tried and tried, but could not get hold either of the flea or of the key to its belly-winding, and suddenly he became angry and began to abuse them Cossack-fashion.

He shouted:

“So, you scoundrels, you did nothing, and you’ve probably ruined the whole thing besides! Your heads will roll!”

The Tula masters replied:

“You needn’t abuse us like that. You being the sovereign’s emissary, we must suffer all your offenses, but because you have doubted us and thought that we’re even likely to let down the sovereign’s name, we will not tell you the secret of our work, but kindly take it to the sovereign—he’ll see what sort of people he has in us and whether he should be ashamed of us or not.”

But Platov shouted:

“Ah, you’re talking through your hats, you scoundrels! I won’t part with you just like that. One of you is going to ride with me to Petersburg, and there I’ll find out just how clever you are.”

And with that, he seized cross-eyed Lefty by the scruff of the neck with his clubbsy fingers, so hard that all the hooks of his jacket flew off, and threw him into the carriage at his feet.

“Sit there like a pooble-dog all the way to Petersburg,” he says. “You’ll answer for all of them. And you,” he says to the odorlies, “get a move on! And look sharp, I have to be in Petersburg at the sovereign’s the day after tomorrow.”