“The count is leaving for Italy?” Imbs asked, turning pale. “But did he send me any money? No? How am I supposed to leave if I don’t have a kopeck to my name? I beg you, my dear Mr. Dzerzhinski, if you cannot give me the money I won from you, at least let me sell you my books and charts. Here in Russia you can get a lot of money for them!”
“Who needs your books and charts in Russia?”
Imbs sat down and thought. While the Pole filled the air with his curses, the German tried to figure out how to save his hide, and with all his German feelings felt his blood turning sour. His body shrank and sagged, and his air of haughty scholarliness yielded to hopelessness and pain. The realization of inescapable captivity far from the gentle waves of the Rhine and the convivial company of other mining engineers reduced him to tears. At night he sat by the window, gazing at the moon. There was silence all around. Somewhere in the distance a harmonica moaned a plaintive Russian song. The sound tore at his heart; he was overcome by such a powerful longing for his homeland and for fairness and justice, that he would have given his life to find himself back in Germany that very night.
“The same moon shines there as it does here—but what a difference!” he thought.
All night Imbs lay steeped in melancholy. Toward morning he could stand it no longer and decided to leave. He packed the books and charts that nobody in Russia needed into his knapsack, filled his empty stomach with water, and at precisely four in the morning left the estate and began walking north. He decided to head for Kharkov, over which the count’s pink finger had darted not too long ago. Imbs was hoping to find Germans there who would lend him money for the journey home.
“And would you believe it, they even stole the boots off my feet as I lay sleeping by the roadside!” Imbs told a friend a month later as he sat on the deck of the same boat traveling down the Rhine. “So much for Russian honesty! But one thing I will say for Russian honesty: I slipped the train conductor forty kopecks I had gotten for my pipe, and he looked the other way and let me ride without a ticket all the way from Slavianska to Kharkov! Perhaps no honesty there, but what a bargain!”
THE ECLIPSE
Memorandum No. 1032
There is to be an eclipse of the planet moon on September the twenty-second at ten o’clock at night. This phenomenon, far from being unlawful, is in fact of some possible educational benefit (if seen from the point of view that even planets must frequently subject themselves to the laws of nature), I propose that Your Excellencies order that on said evening all street lanterns in your districts shall be lit so that the darkness of night will not prevent officials and townsfolk from seeing the eclipse. I also urge Your Excellencies to ensure that every precaution be taken to hinder any gathering of crowds in the streets, shouts of joy, and other such behavior that said eclipse might occasion. I ask you to inform me of all persons who might interpret this natural phenomenon subversively, should there be such persons (which I doubt, as I know how sensible townsfolk generally are).
Gnilodushin
Witnessed by: Secretary Tryasunov
Re: Memorandum No. 1032
In response to document no. 1032 circulated by Your Excellency, I have the honor to inform you that in my district we have no street lanterns, for which reason the eclipse of the planet moon took place in full darkness of the air, which, however, did not prevent many of the people assembled from perceiving said eclipse with fitting clarity. No infringement of the general peace and quiet or subversive interpretations or expressions of dissatisfaction were ascertained, except for one instance when the son of Deacon Amfiloch Babelmandebsky, a tutor, in response to a question from one of the townsfolk as to the cause of said eclipse of the planet moon, launched into a lengthy explanation clearly subversive for healthy minds. I did, however, not understand the gist of his explanation, as he spoke in scientific terms using many foreign expressions.
Ukusy-Kalanchevsky
Re: Memorandum No. 1032
In answer to Your highly esteemed Excellency in matters of document no. 1032, I have the honor to inform you that in the province entrusted to my care there was no eclipse of the moon, though some phenomenon of nature did in fact manifest itself in the sky, which led to a darkening of the lunar light, though I cannot say with certainty whether this was the eclipse or not. Following an exhaustive search, three street lanterns were ascertained to be in my district, which, after scrubbing the glass and the insides, were lit. But these measures did not have the desired results, for said eclipse took place at a moment when the lanterns, as the result of a gust of wind blowing through their broken glass, went out, and hence could not illuminate the eclipse referred to in Your Excellency’s memorandum. There were no gatherings, as all the townsfolk were asleep except for one clerk of the district council, Ivan Avelev, who was sitting on the fence and peering at the eclipse through his fist, grinning equivocally. “Same to me whether there’s a moon or not . . . I don’t give a hoot!” he said. When I informed him that these words were whimsical, he boldly declared: “What are you defending the moon for, lamebrain! You’ll be sending it season’s greetings next!” And he added an immoral expression in local parlance, which I will have the honor of reporting him for.
Glotalov
Witnessed by: A man without a spleen
A PROBLEM
Iwould like to present the following problem for the reader to solve:
At two o’clock in the morning my wife, my mother-in-law, and I left the house where we had been celebrating the marriage of a distant cousin. At the feast, needless to say, we had eaten and drunk our fill.
“In my condition I can’t go on foot,” my wife announced, turning to me. “Kirill, darling, can you get us a cab?”
“A cab? What will you think of next, Dasha!” my mother-in-law protested. “With the price of everything these days, and us having to scrimp and save for every loaf of bread! We don’t have a stick of wood for the stove, and you want a cab? Ignore her, Kirill!”
But valuing my wife’s health and the fruit of our unhappy love (the reader will already have guessed that my wife was expecting), and finding myself at that stage of blissful tipsiness when walking provides an excellent impetus for understanding Copernicus’ theory of the earth’s rotation, I ignored my mother-in-law’s entreaties and called to a cabbie. The cab pulled up . . . and this is the problem:
We all know the measurements of an average cab. I am a man of letters, from which it follows that I am thin and underfed. My wife, too, is thin, though somewhat broader than I am, since the will of fate has widened her diameter. My mother-in-law’s diameter, on the other hand, is immense, her length equaling her width, her weight close to four hundred pounds.
“We won’t all fit in a single cab,” I said. “We’ll have to take two.”
“Are you stark raving mad?” my mother-in-law gasped. “We have no money to pay the rent, and you want to hire two cabs? I won’t allow this! I withhold my blessing! A curse on this scheme!”
“But dearest mamasha,” I said to my mother-in-law in as reverential a tone as I could muster, “you must see that the three of us simply cannot squeeze into this cab. Once you take a seat, by God’s bounty, the cab will be full. Thin as I am, I might possibly be able to squeeze in next to you, but owing to her delicate condition our Dasha simply won’t be able to squeeze in beside you. Where would she sit?”
“Do as you please!” my mother-in-law snapped, waving her hand dismissively. “The Lord has clearly sent you to torment me. But I withhold my blessing in the matter of a second cab!”