The ample frame of the Pan-Slavist leader Ivan Aksakov would be draped in the flowered smock of a village babushka;
The directors of the Lozovo-Sevastopol Railways would, on account of their poverty, strut about in petticoats.
And as for the conversations:
“Your bodice is above all criticism, Your Excellency, and the bustle is excellent. Your décolleté might, however, be a little low.”
“Nonsense, old boy, my décolleté follows the guidelines set by our table of ranks. It’s a Grade 4 décolleté. By the way, can you straighten my ruffle?”
LETTER TO A REPORTER
Sir:
I know everything! There were six big fires this week and four tiny ones. A young man shot himself in a conflagration of passion for a young lady, whose head, upon hearing of his death, went astray. Guskin, a house porter, hanged himself after excessive imbibification. A boat drowned yesterday, along with two passengers and a small child . . . poor child! At the Arkadia, someone burned a hole in the back of a merchant’s jacket, and in the ensuing rumpus he nearly had his neck broken. Four swindlers dressed to the nines were apprehended, and a train capsized. I know everything, my dear sir! As many exciting things have happened this week as you have rubles in your pocket, of which you haven’t given me a single kopeck of what you owe me!
A gentleman does not act this way!
Your tailor,
Smirnov
RUSSIAN COAL
A True Story
Count Tulupov was traveling down the Rhine on a boat one fine April morning and, having nothing better to do, struck up a conversation with a Kraut. The German—young and angular, bristling with haughty scholarliness and staunch self-esteem in his starched collar—introduced himself as Arthur Imbs, a mining specialist, and launched into an extensive discourse on Russian coal, a topic that, try as he might, the bored count could not divert him from.
“Indeed, the fate of our coal is most lamentable,” the count interrupted with the sigh of the knowledgeable expert. “Lamentable! St. Petersburg and Moscow are running on British coal, Russia is burning her virgin forests in its ovens, and all the while there are vast reserves of coal lying buried in the south!”
Imbs shook his head wistfully and, clicking his tongue in indignation, asked to see a map of Russia.
The count’s manservant brought a map and the count ran his finger along the shores of the Sea of Azov and then over Kharkov: “There . . . around here . . . you see? The whole south!”
Imbs wanted more precise information about the exact location of the coal fields, but could not induce the count to be more specific. The count’s finger darted randomly over the length and breadth of Russia, and, wanting to stress the coal riches of the Don region, skidded as far south as Stavropol. The Russian count, it seemed, was not overly familiar with his country’s geography. He was quite startled, even incredulous, when Imbs informed him that the Carpathian Mountains belonged to Russia.
“I have an estate in the Don region, you know,” the count said. “Some twenty thousand acres of land, a superb estate! As for coal, it has . . . eine zahllose . . . eine ozeanische Menge! Millions of tons are buried there, just going to waste! It’s always been my dream to do something about this. I’ve been waiting to come across the right man to help me—but we have no specialists in Russia! Not one!”
They began to talk about specialists. They talked and talked. Suddenly the count jumped up as if stung by a bee, clapping his hand to his forehead. “What a stroke of luck that we ran into each other!” he shouted. “What would you say if I asked you to come to my estate? Why stay here in Germany? Germany is teeming with learned Germans, while if you come to my estate you’ll be able to do some good, some real good! How about it? Say you will!”
Imbs paced the cabin with a grave expression, weighing the offer. He agreed to come to Russia. The count clasped his hand, shook it enthusiastically, and called for champagne.
“Finally, after all these years, my mind is at peace!” the count told him. “Now I will have coal!”
A week later Imbs set out for Russia laden with books, charts, hopes, and impure thoughts of Russian rubles. In Moscow the count gave him two hundred rubles and the address of his estate, and told him to head south. “Why not go there now on your own and start work. I might perhaps come down in the autumn. Write and let me know how things are going.”
Imbs arrived at Tulupov’s estate, settled down in one of the mansion’s wings, and the following day set about preparing to supply the whole of Russia with coal.
Three weeks later he sent the count a letter.
“I have familiarized myself with the coal on your land,” he wrote, after a timid and protracted beginning, “and have come to the conclusion that due to its low quality it is not worth digging up. And even if it were three grades higher in quality, it would still not be worth touching. Not to mention that there appears to be a complete lack of demand for coal. Your neighbor, the coal magnate Alpatov, has fifteen million poods of coal ready for shipment, but cannot find a single buyer willing to give him even a brass kopeck for a pood. Not one sack of coal has ever traveled over the Donetsk coal line that passes through your estate, even though the tracks were specifically laid for that purpose. I would be dishonest or reckless if I gave you the slightest hope of success. I would also respectfully venture to add that your estate is in such total disrepair that thinking of coal prospecting or any other enterprise could be considered quite futile.”
At the end of his letter the German asked the count if he could recommend him to another Russian nobleman—“Fürsten oder Grafen”—or send him “ein wenig” money for his return to Germany.
While Imbs waited for a reply, he busied himself with fishing for carp and trapping quail by whistling on a little pipe.
When the reply arrived, it was addressed not to Imbs but to Dzerzhinski, the Polish steward of the estate.
“And tell that German he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing!” the count added in a postscript. “I showed his letter to an engineer (Privy Councilor Mleyev) and he split his sides laughing! You can tell the German that I’m not holding him back! He’s free to go whenever he wants! I gave him two hundred rubles—if he spent fifty rubles to get there, he still has a hundred and fifty left!”
When the Pole informed Imbs of the count’s letter, Imbs panicked. He sat down and filled two sheets with overwrought Germanic handwriting. He begged the count to magnanimously forgive him for having refrained from touching on “a few important details” in his first letter. With tears in his eyes and tormented by pangs of conscience, he wrote that in a card game with Dzerzhinski he had imprudently lost the 172 rubles that had remained after his trip from Moscow. “But afterwards I won back 250 rubles, and yet Dzerzhinski refuses to give them to me, even though I had paid him readily enough when he won. That is why I permit myself the indelicacy of throwing myself on Your Grace’s mercy, and beg you to compel the highly esteemed Mr. Dzerzhinski to pay me at least half the sum he owes me, so that I may leave Russia and no longer eat your bread for naught.”
Much water flowed under the bridge and many carp and quail were caught by Imbs before the count replied. Toward the end of July the Pole came into Imbs’ room, sat down on his bed, and began rattling off every curse he knew in the German language.
“What a royal ass the count is!” he said. “He writes that he is about to leave for Italy, but doesn’t give any instructions about you! What am I supposed to do with you? Chop you up and eat you for dinner? And I don’t know what got into him with that damned coal! He needs it as much as I need to have you hovering around here all day! And you’re a fine one too! A blithering fool talks big to you out of sheer boredom and you fall for it!”