But Platov shouted:
“Ah, you’re talking through your hats, you scoundrels! I won’t part with you just like that. One of you is going to ride with me to Petersburg, and there I’ll find out just how clever you are.”
And with that, he seized cross-eyed Lefty by the scruff of the neck with his clubbsy fingers, so hard that all the hooks of his jacket flew off, and threw him into the carriage at his feet.
“Sit there like a pooble-dog all the way to Petersburg,” he says. “You’ll answer for all of them. And you,” he says to the odorlies, “get a move on! And look sharp, I have to be in Petersburg at the sovereign’s the day after tomorrow.”
The masters only ventured to say to him about their comrade, “How is it you’re taking him away without any dokyment? He won’t be able to come back!” But instead of an answer, Platov showed them his fist—terrible, burple, scarred all over and healed any old way—shook it at them, and said: “Here’s your dokyment!” And to the Cossacks, he said:
“Get a move on, boys!”
The Cossacks, the driver, and the horses all began working at once, and they carried Lefty off without any dokyment, and in two days, as Platov had ordered, they drove up to the sovereign’s palace and, going at a good clip, even rode past the columns.
Platov stood up, pinned on his decorations, and went to the sovereign, and told the Cossack odorlies to guard cross-eyed Lefty by the entrance.
XI
Platov was afraid to show his face to the sovereign, because Nikolai Pavlovich was terribly remarkable and memorable—he never forgot anything. Platov knew that he would certainly ask him about the flea. And so he, who had never feared any enemy in the world, now turned coward: he went into the palace with the little chest and quietly put it behind the stove in the reception room. Having hidden the chest, he presented himself before the sovereign in his office and hastily began to report to him what the internecine conversation was among the Cossacks on the quiet Don. He thought like this: that he would occupy the sovereign with that, and then, if the sovereign himself remembered and began to speak of the flea, he would have to give it to him and answer, but if he didn’t begin to speak, he would keep silent; he would tell the office valet to hide the chest and put Lefty in a cell in the fortress with no set term and keep him there until he might be needed.
But the sovereign, Nikolai Pavlovich, never forgot anything, and as soon as Platov finished about the internecine conversation, he asked at once:
“And so, how have my Tula masters acquitted themselves against the English nymphosoria?”
Platov replied in keeping with the way the matter seemed to him.
“The nymphosoria, Your Majesty,” he said, “is still in the same place, and I’ve brought it back, and the Tula masters were unable to do anything more astonishing.”
The sovereign replied:
“You’re a courageous old fellow, but what you report to me cannot be so.”
Platov started assuring him, and told him how the whole thing had gone, and when he reached the point where the Tula masters had asked him to show the flea to the sovereign, Nikolai Pavlovich slapped him on the shoulder and said:
“Bring it here. I know that my own can’t let me down. Something supramental has been done here.”
XII
They brought the chest from behind the stove, took off the flannel cover, opened the golden snuffbox and the diamond nut—and in it lies the flea, just as it was and as it lay before.
The sovereign looked and said:
“What the deuce!” But his faith in his Russian masters was undiminished, and he sent for his beloved daughter, Alexandra Nikolaevna, and told her:
“You have slender fingers—take the little key and quickly wind up the mechanism in the nymphosoria’s belly.”
The princess started turning the key, and the flea at once moved its feelers, but not its legs. Alexandra Nikolaevna wound it all the way up, but the nymphosoria still did no danser nor any veritations, as it had before.
Platov turned all green and shouted:
“Ah, those doggy rogues! Now I understand why they didn’t want to tell me anything there. It’s a good thing I took one of those fools along with me.”
With those words, he ran out to the front steps, seized Lefty by the hair, and began yanking him this way and that so hard that whole clumps went flying. But once Platov stopped thrashing him, the man put himself to rights and said:
“I had all my hair torn out as an apprentice. What’s the need of performing such a repetition on me?”
“It’s this,” said Platov, “that I trusted you and vouched for you, and you ruined a rare thing.”
Lefty said:
“We’re much pleased that you vouched for us, and as for ruining anything, that we haven’t done: take and look at it through the most powerful meagroscope.”
Platov ran back to tell about the meagroscope, and only threatened Lefty:
“You so-and-such-and-so,” he said, “you’re still going to get it from me.”
And he told the odorlies to pull Lefty’s elbow still tighter behind his back, while he himself went up the steps out of breath and reciting a prayer: “Blessed Mother of the blessed King, pure and most pure …” and so on, in good fashion. And the courtiers standing on the steps all turned away from him, thinking: “That’s it for Platov, now he’ll be thrown out of the palace”—because they couldn’t stand him on account of his bravery.
XIII
When Platov brought Lefty’s words to the sovereign, he at once said joyfully:
“I know my Russian people won’t let me down.” And he ordered a meagroscope brought on a cushion.
The meagroscope was brought instantly, and the sovereign took the flea and put it under the glass, first back up, then side up, then belly up—in short, they turned it all ways, but there was nothing to be seen. But the sovereign did not lose his faith here either, and only said:
“Bring the gunsmith who is downstairs here to me at once.”
Platov reported:
“He ought to be smartened up a bit—he’s wearing what he was taken in, and he looks pretty vile now.”
The sovereign says:
“Never mind—bring him as he is.”
Platov says:
“Now come yourself, you such-and-such, and answer before the eyes of the sovereign.”
And Lefty replies:
“Well, so I’ll go as I am and answer.”
He went wearing what he had on: some sort of boots, one trouser leg tucked in, the other hanging out, and his coat is old, the hooks all gone and the collar torn off, but—never mind—he’s not embarrassed.
“What of it?” he thinks. “If it pleases the sovereign to see me, I must go; and if I have no dokyment, it’s not my fault, and I’ll tell how come it happened.”
When Lefty entered and bowed, the sovereign said to him at once:
“What does it mean, brother, that we’ve looked at it this way and that, and put it under the meagroscope, and haven’t found anything remarkable?”
And Lefty says:
“Was Your Majesty so good as to look in the right way?”
The courtiers wag their heads at him, as if to say “That’s no way to speak!” but he doesn’t understand how it’s done at court, with flattery and cunning, but speaks simply.
The sovereign says:
“Don’t complicate things for him—let him answer as he can.”
And he clarified at once:
“We,” he says, “put it this way.” And he put the flea under the meagroscope. “Look for yourself,” he says, “there’s nothing to see.”
Lefty replies:
“That way, Your Majesty, it’s impossible to see anything, because on that scale our work is quite hidden.”
The sovereign asked:
“How should we look?”
“Only one leg should be put under the meagroscope,” he said, “and each foot it walks on should be examined separately.”
“No help for it,” Lefty replies, “since that’s the only way our work can be seen: and then the whole astonishment will show itself.”
They put it the way Lefty said, and as soon as the sovereign looked through the upper glass, he beamed all over, took Lefty just as he was—disheveled, covered with dust, unwashed—embraced and kissed him, then turned to his courtiers and said:
“You see, I know better than anyone that my Russians won’t let me down. Look, if you please: the rogues have shod the English flea in little horseshoes!”
XIV
They all went up to look: the flea was indeed shod on each foot with real little horseshoes, but Lefty said that that was still not the most astonishing thing.
“If,” he said, “there was a better meagroscope, one that magnifies five million times, then,” he said, “you’d see that each shoe has a master’s name on it—of which Russian master made that shoe.”
“And is your name there?” asked the sovereign.
“By no means,” Lefty replied, “mine is the only one that’s not.”
“Why so?”
“Because,” he says, “I worked on something smaller than these shoes: I fashioned the nails that hold the shoes on. No meagroscope can see that.”
The sovereign asked:
“Where did you get a meagroscope with which you could produce this astonishment?”
And Lefty replied:
“We’re poor people and from poverty we don’t own a meagroscope, but we’ve got well-aimed eyes.”
Here the other courtiers, seeing that Lefty’s case had come off well, began to kiss him, and Platov gave him a hundred roubles and said:
“Forgive me, brother, for yanking your hair.”
Lefty replies:
“God forgives—it’s not the first time my head’s caught it.”
And he said no more, nor did he have time to talk with anyone, because the sovereign ordered at once that the shod nymphosoria be packed up and sent back to England—as a sort of present, so that they would understand there that for us this was nothing astonishing. And the sovereign ordered that the flea be carried by a special courier, who had learned all the languages, and that Lefty go with him, so that he himself could show the English his work and what good masters we have in Tula.
Platov made the sign of the cross over him.
“May a blessing be upon you,” he said, “and I’ll send you some of my vodka for the road. Don’t drink too little, don’t drink too much, drink middlingly.”
And so he did—he sent it.
And Count Nestlebroad11 ordered that Lefty be washed in the Tulyakovsky public baths, have his hair cut at a barber shop, and be put in the dress kaftan of a court choirboy, so that it would look as if he had some sort of rank.
Once he was shaped up in this fashion, they gave him some tea with Platov’s vodka, drew in his belt as tightly as possible, so that his innards wouldn’t get shaken up, and took him to London. From then on with Lefty it was all foreign sights.
XV
The courier and Lefty drove very fast, and did not stop to rest anywhere between Petersburg and London, but only tightened their belts a notch at each station, so that their lungs would not get tangled with their innards; but since Lefty, after his presentation to the sovereign, on Platov’s orders, had received a plentiful supply of drink from the treasury, he did not eat, but got by on that alone, and sang Russian songs all across Europe, only adding the foreign refrain: “Ai liu-lee, say tray zhulie.”
As soon as he brought him to London, the courier made his appearance to the right people and handed them the chest, and Lefty he installed in a hotel room, but it quickly became boring for him there, and he wanted to eat. He knocked on the door and pointed at his mouth to the attendant, and the attendant led him at once to the food-taking room.
Lefty seated himself at the table and sat there, but how to ask for something in English—that he did not know. But then he figured it out: again he simply tapped the table with his finger and pointed at his mouth—the Englishmen caught on and served him, not always what he wanted, but he did not take what did not suit him. They served him a hot inflamed puddling the way they make it—he said, “I don’t know that such a thing can be eaten,” and refused it; they changed it and set something else before him. He also did not drink their vodka, because it was green, as if mixed with vitriol, but chose what looked most natural, and awaited the courier in the cool over a nice noggin.
But the persons to whom the courier delivered the nymphosoria examined it that same minute under the most powerful of meagroscopes and sent the description at once to the Publice Gazette, so that the very next day a fooliton for general information came out.
“As for that same master,” they said, “we want to see him at once.”
The courier brought them to the hotel room, and from there to the food-taking room, where our Lefty was already properly flushed, and said: “Here he is!”
The Englishmen at once gave Lefty a pat-pat on the back and shook hands with him as an equal. “Cumrade,” they said, “cumrade—good master—we’ll talk with you in due time, and now we’ll drink your health.”
They ordered many drinks, and offered Lefty the first glass, but he politely refused to drink first. He thought, “Maybe you want to poison me out of envixation.”
“No,” he says, “that’s not proper—guest is not above host—have a go yourselves first.”
The Englishmen tried all the drinks before him and then started pouring for him. He stood up, crossed himself with his left hand, and drank the health of them all.
They noticed that he had crossed himself with his left hand, and asked the courier:
“What is he—a Lutheranian or a Protestantist?”
The courier replied:
“No, he’s no Lutheranian or Protestantist, he’s of Russian faith.”
“Why then does he cross himself with his left hand?”
The courier said:
“He’s a lefty and does everything with his left hand.”
The Englishmen were still more astonished and began pumping both Lefty and the courier full of drink, and it went on like that for a whole three days, and then they said: “Enough now.” They drank fuzzy water from a symphon and, quite freshened up, began questioning Lefty: where had he studied and how much arithmetic did he know?
Lefty replied:
“Our science is simple: the Psalter and the Dream Book, and as for arithmetic, we don’t know any.”
The Englishmen exchanged glances and said:
“That’s astonishing.”
And Lefty replies:
“With us it’s that way everywhere.”
“And what,” they ask, “is this ‘Dream Book’ in Russia?”
“That,” he says, “is a book which, if you’re looking for some fortune-telling in the Psalter and King David doesn’t reveal it clearly, then in the Dream Book you get souplemental divinations.”
They say:
“That’s a pity. It would be better if you knew at least the four rules of addition in arithmetic—that would be much more useful to you than the whole Dream Book. Then you might have realized that for every mechanism there is a calculation of force, while you, though you have very skillful hands, did not realize that such a small mechanism as in this nymphosoria is calculated with the finest precision and cannot carry these horseshoes. That’s why it no longer leaps or does a danser.”
Lefty agreed.
“There’s no disputing,” he said, “that we haven’t gone far in learning, but, then, we’re faithfully devoted to our fatherland.”
And the Englishmen say to him:
“Stay with us, we’ll give you a grand education, and you’ll come out an astonishing master.”
But Lefty did not agree to that.
“I’ve got parents at home,” he said.
The Englishmen offered to send money to
his parents, but Lefty did not accept.
“I’m attached to my native land,” he says, “and my father’s already an old man, and my mother’s an old woman, they’re used to going to their parish church, and I’ll be very bored here alone, because I’m still of the bachelor’s estate.”
“You’ll get used to it here,” they say. “Change your religion, and we’ll get you married.”
“That,” said Lefty, “can never be.”
“Why so?”
“Because,” he says, “our Russian faith is the most correct one, and as our anceptors believed, so the descenders should believe.”
“You don’t know our faith,” say the Englishmen. “We’re of the same Christian religion and adhere to the same Gospel.”
“The Gospel,” says Lefty, “is indeed the same for all, only our books are thicker next to yours, and our faith has more in it.”
“What makes you think so?”
“About that,” he says, “we have all the obvious proofs.”
“Such as?”
“Such as,” he says, “that we have God-working icons and tomb-exuding heads and relics, and you have nothing, and, except for Sunday, you don’t even have any extraneous feast days, and for another reason—though we might be married legally, it would be embarrassing for me to live with an Englishwoman.”
“How come?” they ask. “Don’t scorn them: our women also dress neatly and make good housewives.”
And Lefty says:
“I don’t know them.”
The Englishmen reply:
“That doesn’t matter. You can get to know them: we’ll arrange a grandezvous for you.”
Lefty became abashed.
“Why addle girls’ heads for nothing?” he says. And he declined. “A grandezvous is for gentlefolk, it’s not fitting for us, and if they find out back home in Tula, they’ll make a great laughingstock of me.”
The Englishmen became curious:
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 47
