I have recently read a French scientist who writes that the lion’s face does not at all resemble a human countenance, though that is what scientists think. We can discuss that as well. Come and visit, do me the loving-kindness. Tomorrow’s good, for example. We’re keeping Lent, but for you we’ll make meat and dairy. My daughter Natasha is asking you to bring some clever books along. She is all emanseepated and thinks that everyone is stupid and she is the only smart one. Young people nowadays, I tell you, know how to make themselves heard. God help them! In a week’s time, my brother Ivan (the major) is coming to visit; he’s a good man but, between the two of us, he’s a lout who doesn’t like science. This letter should be delivered to you by my steward Trofim exactly at eight this evening. If he brings it later than that, give him a couple of good slaps across the face, professorial-style, because his kind can’t be handled with kid gloves. If he delivers it later than that, it means he detoured to the drinking house, the cussed oaf. The custom of visiting neighbors has not been invented by us and will not end with us, which is why you must come to visit with all your gadgets and books. I would have visited you myself, but I am very bashful and lack nerve. Pardon me, the sorry wretch, for disturbing you.
I remain, respectfully yours, the retired noncommissioned officer of the Don Cossack Host, member of the nobility, your neighbor,
VASILY SEMI-BULATOV
IN THE TRAIN CAR
MAIL TRAIN number such-and-such is speeding at full steam from Fun-Crash Station to Save-Yourselves-if-You-Can Station. The locomotive whistles, hisses, puffs, and snorts. The train cars shake and their ungreased wheels howl like wolves and screech like owls. The sky, the earth, and the train cars are all pitch-black. “Just you wait, just you wait” thump the train cars, trembling with age. “Woe! Wooooe! Woe!” joins in the locomotive. Pickpockets and the drafts sweep through the train cars. It’s terrifying. I stick my head out of the window and stare at the limitless expanse. All the semaphore lights are green, which means that any trouble is still some way off. No sign of the station signal or station lights. It’s dark, it’s dreary, my thoughts turn to death, to childhood memories. Dear God!
“I’m a sinner,” I whisper, “a terrible sinner!”
Someone is trying to get into my back pocket. My pocket’s empty, but it still gives me the willies. I turn my head. A man in a straw hat and a dark gray shirt stands beside me. “Is there anything I can do for you?” I ask him, patting down my pockets.
“Nothing, sir!” He jerks his hand away and turns his back to mine, leaning hard against me. “I’m just looking out the window!”
A hoarse whistle. The train slows down more and more and finally stops. I get out of the train car and head to the station restaurant for a drink to lift my spirits. Passengers and members of the train crew cram the restaurant.
“Well, they say it’s vodka, but it’s got no bite,” says the respectable-looking conductor-in-chief to a fat passenger. The fat passenger struggles to reply. He’s got a fossilized sandwich stuck in his throat.
“Gendarme! Gendarme!” someone on the train platform bellows—like a hungry mastodon, an ichthyosaurus, or a plesiosaurus from primeval antediluvian times. I walk over to see what’s the matter. There’s a man with a cockade standing next to a first-class car, displaying his bare feet for the whole world to see. Poor man, his shoes and socks were stolen off him while he slept.
“What am I going to wear now?” he hollers. “I’m traveling all the way to Rrrevel! Isn’t there any security?”
There’s a policeman by him. “This is no place to make a scene,” he insists. I go back to my car, number 224. Everything’s the same: darkness, snoring, stale tobacco, and rotgut—this is Russia all right. A red-haired court investigator traveling to Kiev from Ryazan snores at my side, while a pretty girl dozes some two or three feet away from him. A peasant, wearing a straw hat, wheezes, snorts, turns and tosses, and has no idea what to do with his long legs. Off in the corner, someone’s having a bite to eat, chomping so everyone can hear. The common folk sleep soundly under the benches. The door creaks. Two shriveled old women enter with bags slung over their backs.
“Why don’t we sit ourselves down here, dearie,” says one. “How dark it is! Trials and tribulations. Oh, I just stepped on someone. Where’s Pakhom?”
“Pakhom? Oh, dear! Where could he be? Oh, dear me!”
The old woman bustles over to the window, opens it, and peers out at the platform.
“Pakhom,” she calls in a tremulous voice. “Where are you? Pakhom! We’re right here!”
“I’m in trouble!” the shout comes from outside. “They ain’t letting me in.”
“Ain’t letting you in? Which one of them ain’t letting you in? Don’t you pay any attention! No one can stop you if you’ve got a genuine ticket!”
“They ain’t selling tickets no more! The ticket window’s closed!”
Someone leads a horse across the platform. Sounds of clattering hooves and snorting.
“Get back!” hollers a policeman. “Where do you think you’re going? Why are you raising a ruckus?”
“Petrovna!” Pakhom groans.
Petrovna throws down her sack, grabs a large tin kettle, and rushes out of the train. The second bell rings. A short conductor with a small black mustache enters.
“You better go buy a ticket!” he tells the old man across from me. “The controller’s coming!”
“Yes? Well, that’s no good. Which one? The prince?”
“Nah. The prince isn’t coming here, not even if they chase after him with a stick.”
“So which one then? The one with the beard?”
“Yeah, with the beard . . .”
“Well, if it’s him, then it’s all right. He’s decent.”
“What you do is up to you.”
“Are there a lot of fare-beaters?”
“About forty.”
“Really? Good for them! They know how to play the game! As long as the controller doesn’t catch them!”
My heart sinks. I’m a fare-beater, one of the passengers who hands over cash to the conductor not the ticket vendor. It’s a fine thing to be a fare-beater, dear reader! The rate’s unwritten, but fare-beaters get 75 percent off on the price of a ticket—they don’t have to line up to buy it, they don’t have to show it, and the conductors are more polite to them to boot! Everything you could possibly wish for!
“Why should I pay whoever whatever?” mumbles the old man. “Never! I give my money directly to the conductor. The conductor needs it more than Polyakov!”*
The third bell rattles.
“Oh, dear!” the old woman said, bustling around. “Where could Petrovna be? There goes the third bell! Lord have mercy. She got left behind! She got left behind, the poor thing. And her things are here. What’s going to happen with her things, with her bag? Dear me, she got left behind!”
The old woman thinks for a minute.
“At least she’ll have her things!”—and out the window goes Petrovna’s bag.
The next station is Khaldeevo; my Frum travel guide, however, calls it Common Grave.
The controller and the conductor-in-chief walk in with a candle.
“Tickets!” shouts the conductor-in-chief.
The controller turns to me and to the old man. “Tickets!”
We huddle, we cringe, we hide our hands, we glue our eyes to the reassuring face of the conductor-in-chief.
“Get their tickets,” says the controller to his companion and moves on. We’re saved.
“Ticket! Hey, you! Your ticket!” The conductor-in-chief jostles a sleeping young man. The young man wakes up and takes a yellow ticket out of his hat.