Father Khristofor laughed convulsively until the tears came, and then he got up.
‘ “Confound your compressed air!” I said. “Confound your compressed air!” ’ As he said this he laughed and waved his arms. Moses stood up, too, hands on stomach, and burst into peals of shrill laughter, just like a yapping lapdog.
‘Confound your compressed air!’ repeated Father Khristofor, guffawing.
Laughing two notes higher, Moses had such a paroxysm of mirth he could barely keep his footing.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ he groaned in mid guffaw. ‘Let me get my breath… You’re real comedian you are. Oh, you’ll be death of me!’
He laughed and talked, but at the same time he kept giving Solomon timorous, suspicious looks. The latter was standing in the same posture as before and smiling. Judging from his eyes and his grin he genuinely despised and hated people, but this was so at odds with his plucked-hen appearance that Yegorushka construed his defiant attitude and sarcastic, supercilious expression as deliberate clowning, calculated to amuse the honoured guests.
After drinking about six glasses of tea in silence, Kuzmichov cleared a place in front of him on the table, picked up his bag – that same bag he had kept under his head when he slept under the carriage – untied the string and shook it. Bundles of banknotes tumbled out onto the table.
‘Let’s count them while we have the time, Father Khristofor,’ said Kuzmichov.
Moses was embarrassed at the sight of the money, stood up and, since he was a sensitive man reluctant to pry into others’ secrets, he tiptoed from the room, balancing himself with his arms. Solomon stayed where he was.
‘How many in the one-rouble packets?’ Father Khristofor began.
‘They’re in fifties. The three-rouble notes are in nineties, the twenty-fives and hundreds are in thousands. You can count seven thousand eight hundred out for Varlamov and I’ll count Gusevich’s. Now, mind you don’t make any mistakes!’
Never in his life had Yegorushka seen such a huge pile of money as was now lying on the table. There must have been a really vast amount, since the pile of seven thousand eight hundred roubles that Father Khristofor had put aside for Varlamov seemed exceedingly small in proportion to the rest of the bundle. At any other time so much money might have stunned Yegorushka and led him to consider how many buns, dough-rolls and poppy-cakes he could have bought with that pile. But now he looked at it indifferently, conscious only of the revolting smell of rotten apples and kerosene it gave off. Exhausted by the bumpy carriage ride, he felt terribly drained and all he wanted was to sleep. His head dropped, his eyes kept closing and his thoughts were tangled like threads. Had it been possible he would gladly have leant his head on the table, closed his eyes to avoid seeing the lamp and those fingers moving over the pile of banknotes and allowed his sluggish, sleepy thoughts to become even more muddled. As he struggled to stay awake he saw the lamp, the cups and the fingers double, the samovar swayed and the smell of rotten apples seemed even sharper and more revolting.
‘Ah, money, money, money!’ sighed Father Khristofor, smiling. ‘You bring nothing but trouble. I dare say my Mikhailo’s asleep, dreaming that I’ll be bringing him a pile like this.’
‘Your Mikhailo hasn’t a clue,’ Kuzmichov said in a low voice, ‘he’s like a fish out of water, but you understand and can see things straight. As I said, you’d do better if you let me have your wool and went back home. Oh yes, I’d give you fifty copecks over and above my own price – and that’s only out of respect for you.’
‘No, thank you very much,’ sighed Father Khristofor. ‘I appreciate your concern… Of course, if I had the choice I wouldn’t hesitate, but as you know very well, the wool isn’t mine…’
In tiptoed Moses. Trying not to look at the heap of money out of delicacy, he crept up to Yegorushka and tugged the back of his shirt.
‘Come with me, young sir,’ he said in an undertone. ‘I’ll show you such lovely little bear! Such fierce, grumpy bear! Oooh!’
Sleepy Yegorushka stood up and lazily plodded after Moses to have a look at the bear. He entered a small room where, before he saw anything, his breath was taken away by that sour, musty smell which was much stronger here than in the large room and was probably spreading all over the inn. Half of the room was taken up by a large double bed covered with a greasy quilt and the other by a chest of drawers and piles of every conceivable kind of clothing, ranging from stiffly starched skirts to children’s trousers and braces. On the chest of drawers a tallow candle was burning.
Instead of the promised bear Yegorushka saw a big, very fat Jewess with her hair hanging loose, wearing a red flannel dress with black dots. She had great difficulty in manoeuvring the narrow space between bed and chest of drawers, emitting protracted, groaning sighs as if she had toothache. At the sight of Yegorushka she assumed a sorrowful look, sighed long and deep and before he had time to look round put a slice of bread and honey to his lips.
‘Eat it, dear,’ she said. ‘Your mama’s not here and there’s no one to feed you. Eat up.’
Yegorushka began to eat, although after the fruit drops and poppy-seed cakes which he had at home every day he didn’t care much for the honey, half of which was a mixture of wax and bees’ wings. While he was eating, Moses and the Jewess looked on and sighed.
‘Where are you going, dear?’ asked the Jewess.
‘To school,’ Yegorushka replied.
‘How many children does your mama have?’
‘There’s only me, no one else.’
‘Oh dear!’ sighed the Jewess, looking up. ‘Your poor, poor mama! How she’ll cry! How she’ll miss you! In a year’s time we’re taking our Nahum to school, too. Oh dear!’
‘Oh, Nahum, Nahum!’ sighed Moses, the skin twitching on his pale face. ‘He’s such sickly child.’
The greasy quilt moved and there emerged a child’s curly head on a very thin neck. Two black eyes gleamed and stared inquisitively at Yegorushka. Still sighing, Moses and the Jewess went to the chest and started discussing something in Yiddish. Moses spoke in a deep undertone and for the most part his Yiddish sounded like a non-stop ‘gal-gal-gal’, whilst his wife answered him in a shrill ‘too-too-too’, like a turkey-hen. As they were conferring another curly little head on a thin neck peeped out from under the greasy quilt, then a third, then a fourth. If Yegorushka had possessed a vivid imagination he might have fancied a hundred-headed hydra lay under that quilt.
‘Gal-gal-gal,’ boomed Moses.
‘Too-too-too,’ twittered the Jewess.
The conference finished when the Jewess plunged her hands deep into the chest of drawers, unfolded some kind of green rag and took out a large heart-shaped rye cake.
‘Take it, dear,’ she said, handing it to Yegorushka. ‘You’ve no mama now, no one to give you nice presents.’
Yegorushka put the cake in his pocket and retreated to the door as he could no longer bear to breathe that acrid, musty air in which the innkeeper and his wife lived. When he returned to the main room he settled comfortably on the sofa and let his thoughts wander.
Kuzmichov had just finished counting the banknotes and was putting them back in the bag. He paid them little respect and unceremoniously bundled them into the dirty bag – indifferently, as though they were so much waste paper.
Father Khristofor was chatting to Solomon.
‘Well, Solomon the Wise,’ he asked, yawning and making the sign of the cross over his mouth. ‘How are things with you?’
‘What things do you mean?’ asked Solomon, giving him a venomous look, as if some crime were being hinted at.
‘Well… I mean, things in general. How are you getting on?’
‘Getting on?’ Solomon repeated, shrugging his shoulders. ‘The same as everyone. As you see, I’m a servant. I’m my brother’s servant, my brother’s the visitors’ servant and his visitors are Varlamov’s servants – and if I had ten million roubles Varlamov would be my servant.’