The Englishmen laughed and said, ‘Why does that get in your way?’
‘It don’t get in my way,’ answered Lefty, ‘only I’m scared I’d be ashamed to look and wait until she got untangled from all that stuff.’
‘But do you really think your fashions are better?’ they asked.
‘Our fashions in Tula,’ he replied, ‘are simple: every girl is dressed in her own lace. Our lace is worn even by fine ladies.’
Then they showed him off to their own ladies, and there they served him tea and asked him, ‘What are you frowning for?’
He answered that ‘We ain’t used to drinking it so sweet.’
Then they served it to him in the Russian way, with a lump of sugar to suck.
This didn’t seem to be as good to them, but Lefty said, ‘To our taste this way it’s tastier.’
The Englishmen couldn’t find any bait at all that could make him take to their life. They could only talk him into staying with them for a short while as their guest, and said they would take him to all sorts of factories and show him all their arts.
And after that, they said, they would put him on their own ship and ‘deliver him safe and sound in Petersburg.’
He agreed to that.
16
The Englishmen took charge of Lefty and sent the Russian courier back to Russia. Even though the courier had government rank and was learned in various languages, they weren’t interested in him, but they were interested in Lefty, and they set out to take Lefty around and show him everything. He looked at all their production: he really liked their metallic mills and their soapy-rope factories, and the way they managed things – especially the way they took care of their workers. Every one of their workmen was always well fed, none was dressed in rags, each one had on a capable everyday jacket and wore thick hard-nail boots with iron caps, so that he wouldn’t stump his toes anywhere on anything. Along with his work he got teaching instead of beatings, and he worked with comprehension. In front of each one, hung up right in full view, was a stultification table, and within arm’s reach was a racing slate. Whatever any craftsman did, he would look up at the tables, and then check it with comprehension, and then write one thing down on the slate, race another thing, and put it together accurately: whatever was written down in the figures really came out that way. And when a holiday came, they would all get together in couples, each one would take a walking stick in his hand, and they would go for a walk in a proper way, all proud and polite.
Lefty got a good look at all their life and all their work, but above all else he paid attention to something that surprised the Englishmen a lot. He wasn’t interested so much in how they made new rifles as in how they took care of the old ones. He would walk around everything and praise it and say, ‘We can do that too.’
But whenever he came to an old rifle, he would stick his finger in the barrel, rub it around inside, and sigh, ‘That is way yonder better than ours.’
The Englishmen couldn’t figure out what Lefty noticed. He asked them, ‘Might I know whether or not our generals have ever looked at this?’
They answered, ‘Those who have been here must have taken a look.’
‘But when they were here,’ he asked, ‘did they have gloves on or not?’
‘Yours are full-dress generals,’ they said. ‘Gloves come with them, so they must have had them on here.’
Lefty said nothing. But suddenly he began to feel an uneasy homesickness. He pined away and pined away and said to the Englishmen, ‘I thank you kindly for your entertainment, and I like everything in your country, and I’ve seen everything I needed to see – and now I’d like to go home in a hurry.’
They couldn’t hold him back any longer. There was no way to let him go by land because he didn’t know all languages, and it was a bad time to go by sea because it was the fall of the year and stormy, but he insisted, ‘Let me go.’
‘We’ve looked at the whether-meter,’ they said. ‘A storm is coming; you could drown; after all, this is not like your Gulf of Finland – this is the real Militerranean Sea.’
‘It’s all the same where a man dies,’ he answered. ‘It’s all God’s will alone, and I want to get back home in a hurry; because if I don’t, I might get a kind of craziness in the head.’
They couldn’t hold him back by force. They fed him till he creaked, they rewarded him with money, they gave him an alarmed gold watch as a souvenir, and for the cold weather at sea on the late fall voyage they gave him a woollen overcoat with a windy hurricane hat for his head. They dressed him warmly and took him down to the ship that was sailing for Russia. There they gave Lefty the very best cabin, like a real nobleman, but he felt ashamed and didn’t like to sit shut up with the other gentlemen, and he would go up on deck and sit down under the tar poling and ask, ‘Where is our Russia?’
The Englishman he asked would point or nod off in that direction, and then Lefty would turn his head that way and impatiently look for his native land.
When they sailed out of the bay into the Militerranean Sea, his longing for Russia became so strong that there was no way to calm him down. The rolling and pitching was awful, but Lefty still wouldn’t go down to his cabin; he sat under the tar poling, pulled his hurricane hat down over his eyes and kept looking towards his homeland.
Often the Englishmen would come up and invite him to a warm spot down below, and he even began to lie his way out so that they would stop bothering him. ‘No,’ he would answer. ‘I feel better out here; if I went inside with all this rolling and pitching the sea wretch would get me.’
And so the whole time he would never go below until he had to for special reasons, and because of this the thirst mate took a liking to him. This thirst mate, to the misfortune of our Lefty, knew how to talk Russian, and he couldn’t get over marvelling that a Russian landlubber could hold out like that through all the rough weather.
‘Good lad, Russ!’ he said. ‘Let’s take a drink!’
Lefty took a drink.
And the thirst mate said, ‘Another one!’
So Lefty took another one, and they drank themselves tight. The thirst mate asked him, ‘What kind of secret is it you’re taking to Russia from our country?’
Lefty answered, ‘That’s my business.’
‘Well, if that’s the way it is,’ answered the thirst mate, ‘then let me make an English bet with you.’
Lefty asked, ‘What kind?’
‘That we’ll never drink alone and will always drink the same – one just as much as the other – and whoever drinks the other one down will win.’
Lefty thought, ‘Dark skies, bellies rise; the boredom’s strong and the way is long. We still can’t see the homeland beyond the waves – it will be merrier after all to make the bet.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘It’s a bet.’
‘Only let it be honest.’
‘As far as that goes,’ he said, ‘you ain’t got no worry.’
They agreed and shook hands on it.
17
Their bet began in the Militerranean Sea, and they drank all the way to the Riga Dunamunde,11 but they ran neck and neck, and neither one fell behind the other, and they kept so strictly even with each other that when one of them looked down into the sea and saw a devil climbing up out of the water, the very same thing immediately appeared to the other one. Only, the thirst mate saw a red-headed devil, and Lefty claimed it was dark, like a blackamoor.
Lefty said, ‘Cross yourself and turn away; that’s a devil from the deep.’
But the Englishman argued that it was only a ‘deep-sea driver’. ‘If you want me to,’ he said, ‘I’ll pitch you overboard. Don’t be afraid – he’ll bring you right back to me.’
And Lefty answered, ‘If that’s true, then pitch me over.’
The thirst mate picked him up by the shoulders and carried him to the rail.
The sailors saw this and stopped them and reported it to the captain. He ordered them both to be locked up below and kept on
rations of rum and wine and cold food, so that they could both eat and drink and stick to their bet, but he gave orders that they were not to get any hot glum pudding in flames, for fear the spirits in their innards might catch fire.
So they travelled locked up all the way to Petersburg, and neither one of them won the bet. There they were spread out in separate sleighs, and the Englishman was sent to the embassy on the English quay and Lefty to the police station.
From this point their destinies became very different.
18
When the Englishman was brought to the Ambassador’s house, they at once called in a doctor and a druggist for him. The doctor ordered him put into a warm bath on the spot, and the druggist right away rolled up a gutta-percha pill and personally stuck it in his mouth, and then both of them together took and laid him on a feather bed and covered him over with a fur coat and left him to sweat; and to keep anyone from disturbing him the order was sent out through the whole embassy to let nobody sneeze. The doctor and the druggist waited till the thirst mate went to sleep, and then they made another gutta-percha pill for him, laid it on a little table at the head of his bed and went off.
But at the police station they threw Lefty on the floor and started questioning him, ‘Who was he, and where was he from, and did he have a grasp port or any other kind of document?’
But he was so weak from his illness and the drinking and the rolling and pitching that he didn’t answer a word, but only groaned.
Then they searched him right away, relieved him of his colourful clothes and his alarmed watch and fleeced him of his money; and the police officer gave orders that the first passing sleigh-driver should take him free to the hospital.
The policeman took Lefty out to put him into a sleigh, but for a long time he couldn’t catch a single one, because sleigh-drivers avoid policemen. Lefty was lying all this time on the cold depravement. Then the policeman caught a sleigh-driver, only one without a warm fur lap-robe, because in cases like that they hide the fur lap-robe by sitting on it, in order to make policemen’s feet freeze faster. So they carried Lefty in an open sleigh, and whenever they transferred him from one sleigh to another they would keep dropping him, and when they picked him up they would pull his ears to make him come to. They got him to one hospital, but there they wouldn’t accept him without a grasp port; they took him to another, and they wouldn’t accept him there either; and then to a third, and a fourth. All night long they kept dragging him through all the little winding alleys and transferring him over and over, until he was half dead. Then one doctor’s assistant told the policeman to take him to the Obukhvin Public Hospital, where everybody of unknown social class was taken in to die.
There they gave orders to write out a receipt and deposit Lefty on the floor in the corridor till they could inspect him.
And at that very same time the next day the English thirst mate got up, swallowed the second gutta-percha pill down to his innards, ate a light breakfast of chicken and rice, took a drink of impressed air, and said, ‘Where is my Russian buddy? I’m going to look for him.’
19
He got dressed and off he ran.
In some amazing way the thirst mate found Lefty very quickly; only, they hadn’t yet put him on a bed. He was still lying in the hall on the floor, and he complained to the Englishman. ‘I’ve just got to have two words with the Emperor,’ he said.
The Englishman ran off to Count Kleinmichel12 and ripped and roared, ‘Really, now, this is the limit!’ he said. ‘Though only a sheepskin coat it be, in its wearer a human soul we see.’
For this statement the Englishman was turned out at once, so that he shouldn’t dare mention the human soul again. After that somebody said to him, ‘You’d do better to go around to Platov the Cossack; he’s got simple feelings.’
The Englishman got hold of Platov, who by this time was lying again on his bed. Platov listened to his story and remembered Lefty.
‘Why, of course, brother,’ he said. ‘I know him very well. I’ve even dragged him around by the hair. Only, I don’t know how I can help him in this kind of trouble, because I’ve served out my time and got a full apple plexy – now they don’t pay attention to me any more. But you just run over to the Commandant Skobelev;13 he’s in full force, and he’s also had experience in this line – he’ll do something.’
The thirst mate went to Skobelev and told all about what sort of illness Lefty had and how it had happened. Skobelev said, ‘I understand that illness; only, the Germans don’t know how to treat it; here you have to have some kind of doctor from the spiritual profession, because they have grown up with these cases and they can help; I’ll send over the Russian doctor Martyn-Solsky right away.’14
But when Martyn-Solsky got there, Lefty was already dying, because he had cracked open the back of his head when they dropped him on the cold depravement; and he was able to say only one thing clearly, ‘Tell the Emperor that the English don’t clean their rifles with brick dust, and we must stop it too, or else God save us from a war, because they won’t be any good for shooting.’
And with this loyalty, Lefty crossed himself and kicked the bucket.
Martyn-Solsky went out at once and reported this to Count Chernyshov,15 so that he could tell the Emperor, but Count Chernyshov shouted at him, ‘Look here now,’ he said, ‘your job is laxatives and purgatives. Don’t stick your nose into other people’s business: in Russia we’ve got generals for that.’
So nothing was said to the Emperor, and the cleaning went on in the same old way right up to the Crimean War. At that time when they started loading their rifles, the bullets just rattled around in them, because the barrels had been cleaned out with brick dust.
Then Martyn-Solsky reminded Count Chernyshov about Lefty, and Count Chernyshov said, ‘Go to the devil, you public enema, and don’t stick your nose into other people’s business or I’ll deny I ever heard about that from you, and then you yourself will catch it.’
Martyn-Solsky thought, ‘And he really will deny it.’ So he kept quiet.
But if only they had reported Lefty’s words in time to the Emperor, the war against the enemy in Crimea would have taken an entirely different turn.
Now all this is ‘affairs of long-gone days’ and ‘traditions of yore’16 even though this yore is not very old. But there is no need to be hasty about forgetting these traditions, despite the incredible nature of the legend and the epic character of its principal hero. Lefty’s real name, like the names of many of the greatest geniuses, has been lost to posterity forever; but he is interesting as the embodiment of a myth in the popular imagination, and his adventures can serve to remind us of an epoch whose general spirit has been portrayed here clearly and accurately.
It goes without saying that Tula no longer has such master craftsmen as the legendary Lefty: machines have evened up the inequalities in gifts and talents, and genius no longer strains itself in a struggle against diligence and exactness. Even though they encourage the raising of salaries, machines do not encourage artistic daring, which sometimes went so far beyond ordinary bounds as to inspire the folk imagination to create unbelievable legends like this one.
The workmen, of course, can appreciate the advantages they have gained through practical applications of mechanical science, but they still recall those olden times with pride and affection. These memories are their epic – an epic that has a genuinely ‘human soul’.
First published in 1881
Translated by William Edgerton
ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV (1860–1904)
Chekhov was born in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov. His father was a grocer. While studying medicine at Moscow University Chekhov published hundreds of comic sketches in order to pay his way and support his parents and siblings. After becoming famous in the late 1880s, he practised as a doctor only intermittently; most of his medical work was on behalf of the peasants, and unpaid. In 1890 he travelled across the whole of Siberia to Sakhalin Island, where he investigated the l
iving conditions of the settlers, of the native Ainu and Gilyak, and – most importantly – of the thousands of exiled convicts. During the 1890s Chekhov’s tuberculosis worsened and from 1897 he had to spend most of his time in the Crimean resort of Yalta. There he composed his plays The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, as well as some of his finest stories. In 1901 he married the actress Olga Knipper, for whom he wrote the part of Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard.
Unlike Tolstoy, whom he admired, Chekhov refused to moralize in his art; he wanted his readers to think for themselves. There is a fine tribute to Chekhov in Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate:
Chekhov brought Russia into our consciousness in all its vastness – with people of every estate, every class, every age. More than that! It was as a democrat that he presented all these people – as a Russian democrat… Chekhov said, let’s put God – and all these grand progressive ideas – to one side. Let’s begin with man; let’s be kind and attentive to the individual man – whether he’s a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands or a waiter in a restaurant. Let’s begin with respect, compassion and love for the individual – or we’ll never get anywhere.1
Chekhov’s father was unusually devout and his children received a strict religious upbringing. No Russian writer – except possibly Leskov – had a more precise knowledge of the rites and tenets of Orthodoxy than the atheistic Chekhov. It is only recently, however, that critics have noticed the hints of religious symbolism in Chekhov’s work; at the end of ‘In the Cart’, for example, a ‘baptism’ in the river and a glimpse of a church with ‘its crosses blazing as they reflected the evening sun’ herald a moment of epiphany.
Chekhov’s writing can seem deceptively ordinary on first reading, but even his early stories touch unexpected depths. And ‘In the Cart’, both in its evocation of a life of tedium and in its moment of illumination, exemplifies the critic Janet Malcolm’s words about the ‘bark of the prosaic in which Chekhov consistently encases a story’s vital poetic core, as if such protection were necessary for its survival’.2
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics) Page 19
