It was just past one o’clock. I hurried on foot to the address. It was over two years since I’d taken a cab—I gave my word (otherwise I wouldn’t have saved sixty roubles). I never went to auctions, I couldn’t affordit yet; and though my present “step” was only tentative, even this step I had resolved to resort to only when I had finished school, when I had broken with everyone, when I had shrunk into my shell and become completely free. True, I was still far from being in a “shell” and far from being free; but I resolved to take the step only as a test—just so, in order to see, almost to dream a little, as it were, and then perhaps not to come for a long time, until it was a serious beginning. For everyone else it was only a small, stupid little auction, but for me it was the first log for the ship in which Columbus went to discover America. Those were my feelings at the time.
Reaching the place, I went into the courtyard indicated on the announcement, and entered Mrs. Lebrecht’s apartment. The apartment consisted of a front hall and four not very big, not very highceilinged rooms. In the first room beyond the hall there was a crowd of up to thirty people, of whom half were buyers and the rest, judging by their looks, were either curious, or amateurs, or sent from Mrs. Lebrecht; there were both merchants and Jews, who had their eye on the gold things, and there were several people dressed “properly.” Even the physiognomies of some of these gentlemen are imprinted on my memory. In the room to the right, in the open doorway, a table had been placed squarely between the doorposts, so that it was impossible to enter that room: the objects being perquisitioned and sold were there. To the left was another room, but the doors to it were closed, though they kept opening every moment by a little crack, through which someone could be seen peeking out—it must have been one of Mrs. Lebrecht’s numerous family, who naturally felt very ashamed at the moment. At the table between the doors, facing the public, Mr. Bailiff sat on a chair, wearing a badge, and carried out the sale of the objects. I found the business almost half over already; as soon as I entered, I made my way through the crowd to the table. Bronze candlesticks were being sold. I began to look.
I looked and at once began to think: what can I buy here? And what was I going to do right now with bronze candlesticks, and would I achieve my goal, and was this how things were done, and would my calculation succeed? And wasn’t my calculation childish? I thought of all this and waited. It was the same sort of sensation as at the gambling table, at the moment when you haven’t played a card yet, but have come over with the intention of playing: “I’ll play if I want, and I’ll leave if I want—it’s my choice.” Your heart isn’t pounding yet, but somehow hesitates and thrills slightly—a sensation not without pleasure. But indecision quickly begins to weigh you down, and you somehow turn blind: you reach out, you take a card, but mechanically, almost against your will, as if someone else was guiding your hand; finally you make up your mind and play—here the sensation is quite different, tremendous. I’m writing not about the auction, but only about myself: who else would have a pounding heart at an auction?
There were some who got excited, there were some who kept silent and bided their time, there were some who bought and regretted it. I felt no pity at all for a gentleman who, by mistake, having misheard, bought a nickel silver pitcher instead of a silver one, for five roubles instead of two; I even began to feel rather merry. The bailiff varied the objects: after the candlesticks came earrings, after the earrings, an embroidered morocco pillow, followed by a box—probably for the sake of diversity or in line with the buyers’ demands. I didn’t even hold out for ten minutes, was tending towards the pillow, then towards the box, but each time I stopped at the decisive moment: the objects seemed quite impossible to me. Finally, an album turned up in the bailiff’s hands.
“A family album, bound in red morocco, worn, with drawings in watercolor and ink, in a carved ivory case with silver clasps—the starting price is two roubles!”
I went up: the object looked refined, but there was a flaw in one place in the ivory carving. I was the only one who went up, everybody was silent; there were no competitors. I could have unfastened the clasps and taken the album out of the case to examine it, but I didn’t exercise my right and only waved a trembling hand, as if to say: “It makes no difference.”
“Two roubles, five kopecks,” I said, again, I believe, with chattering teeth.
It fell to me. I took out the money at once, paid, snatched the album, and went into a corner of the room; there I took it out of the case and feverishly, hurriedly, began to examine it: excepting the case, it was the trashiest thing in the world—a little album the size of small-format letter paper, thin, with worn gilt edges—exactly the kind that girls used to start keeping in the old days, as soon as they left the institute. Temples on hills, cupids, a pond with swans floating on it, were drawn in watercolors and ink; there were verses:
I am setting out for far away,
I am leaving Moscow for many a day,
To all my dear ones I say good-bye,
By stagecoach to the Crimee I fly.
(They’ve been preserved in my memory!) I decided that I had “failed”; if there was anything nobody needed, this was precisely it.
“Never mind,” I decided, “you always lose on the first card; it’s even a good omen.”
I was decidedly cheerful.
“Ah, I’m too late! It’s yours? Did you acquire it?” I suddenly heard beside me the voice of a gentleman in a dark blue coat, well dressed and of an imposing air. He was too late.
“I’m too late. Ah, what a pity! How much?”
“Two roubles, five kopecks.”
“Ah, what a pity! Won’t you let me have it?”
“Let’s step out,” I whispered to him, my heart skipping a beat.
We went out to the stairway.
“I’ll let you have it for ten roubles,” I said, feeling a chill in my spine.
“Ten roubles! Good heavens, how can you!”
“As you wish.”
He stared wide-eyed at me; I was well dressed, in no way resembled a Jew or a retailer.
“Merciful heavens, it’s a trashy old album, who needs it? The case is in fact quite worthless, you won’t sell it to anybody.”
“You want to buy it.”
“But mine is a special case, I found out only yesterday, I’mthe only one like that! Good heavens, how can you!”
“I should have asked twenty-five roubles; but since there was a risk that you’d let it go, I asked only ten so as to be sure. I won’t go down even a kopeck.”
I turned and walked away.
“Take four roubles,” he overtook me in the courtyard, “or make it five.”
I said nothing and walked on.
“All right, here!” He took out ten roubles, and I gave him the album.
“But you must agree it’s dishonest! Two roubles and ten—eh?”
“Why dishonest? It’s the market!”
“What kind of market is this?” (He was angry.)
“Where there’s demand, there’s the market. If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have been able to sell it for forty kopecks.”
Though I wasn’t laughing out loud and looked serious, I did laugh my head off inwardly, not really with delight, but I don’t know why myself, slightly out of breath.
“Listen,” I murmured quite irrepressibly, but amiably and loving him terribly, “listen: when James Rothschild, 13the late one, in Paris, the one who left seventeen hundred million francs” (the man nodded), “while still a young man, when he chanced to learn a few hours ahead of everybody else about the murder of the Duke of Berry, he rushed off at once to inform the right people, and with that one trick, in one instant, made several million—that’s the way to do it!”