“And if it’s without a grandezvous,” they said, “what do you do in such cases, so as to make an agreeable choice?”
Lefty explained our situation to them.
“With us,” he says, “when a man wants to display thorough-going intentions regarding a girl, he sends a talker woman, and once she makes a preposition, they politely go to the house together and look the girl over, not in secret, but with all the familiality.”
They understood, but replied that with them there were no talker women and no such custom, and Lefty said:
“That’s even better, because if you take up such business, it must be with thorough-going intentions, and since I feel none at all towards a foreign nation, why addle girls’ heads?”
He pleased the Englishmen with these reasonings of his, and they again set about patting him pleasantly on the shoulders and knees, and then asked:
“We’d like to know just one thing out of curiosity: what reproach-able qualities have you noticed in our girls and why are you devoiding them?”
Here Lefty replied quite openly:
“I don’t reproach them, and the only thing I don’t like is that the clothes on them somehow flutter, and you can’t figure out what it is they’re wearing and out of what necessity; first there’s some one thing, then something else pinned on below, and some sort of socks on their arms. Just like a sapajou ape in a velveteen cape.”
The Englishmen laughed and said:
“What obstacle is that to you?”
“Obstacle,” replied Lefty, “it’s not. Only I’m afraid I’d be ashamed to watch and wait for her to get herself out of it all.”
“Can it be,” they said, “that your fashion is better?”
“Our fashion in Tula,” he replies, “is simple: each girl wears her own lace, and even grand ladies wear our lace.”12
They also showed him to their ladies, and there they served him tea and asked:
“Why do you wince?”
He replied that we are not used to it so sweet.
Then they gave him a lump of sugar to suck Russian-style.
It seemed to them that it would be worse that way, but he said:
“To our taste it’s tastier.”
There was nothing the Englishmen could do to throw him off, so as to tempt him by their life, and they only persuaded him to stay for a short time, during which they would take him to various factories and show him all their art.
“And then,” they say, “we’ll put you on our ship and deliver you alive to Petersburg.”
To that he agreed.
XVI
The Englishmen took charge of Lefty and sent the Russian courier back to Russia. Though the courier was a man of rank and knew various languages, they were not interested in him, but in Lefty they were interested—and they started taking him around and showing him everything. He looked at all their industries—metalworking shops and soap-rope factories—and liked all their arrangements very much, especially with regard to the workers’ keeping. Each of their workers ate his fill, was dressed not in rags, but in his own good jacket, and was shod in thick boots with iron hobnails, so that his feet would never run up against anything; he worked, not under the lash, but with training and with his own understanding. In plain view before each of them hung the multipeclation table, and under his hand was a rub-out board: whatever a master does, he looks at the multipeclation table and checks it with his understanding, and then writes one thing on the board, rubs out another, and brings it to precision: whatever’s written in the numbers is what turns out in reality. And when a holiday comes, they get together in pairs, take their sticks, and go promenading nobly and decorously, as is proper.
Lefty took a good look at their whole life and all their work, but he paid most attention to something that greatly astonished the Englishmen. He was interested not so much in how new guns were made as in the way the old ones were kept. He goes around and praises it all, and says:
“We can do that, too.”
But when he comes to an old gun, he puts his finger into the barrel, moves it around inside, and sighs:
“That,” he says, “is far superior to ours.”
The Englishmen simply couldn’t figure out what Lefty had noticed, and then he asks:
“Might I know whether our generals ever looked at that or not?”
They say:
“Those who were here must have looked at it.”
“And how were they,” he asks, “in gloves or without gloves?”
“Your generals,” they say, “wear dress uniforms, they always go about in gloves, meaning here as well.”
Lefty said nothing. But he suddenly felt a restless longing. He languished and languished and said to the Englishmen:
“I humbly thank you for all your treats, and I’m very pleased with everything here, and I’ve already seen everything I had to see, and now I’d like to go home quickly.”
There was no way they could keep him any longer. It was impossible for him to go by land, because he didn’t speak any languages, and to go by sea was not so good, because it was autumn and stormy, but he insisted that they let him go.
“We looked at the blowrometer,” they say. “A storm’s blowing up, you may drown; it’s not like your Gulf of Finland, it’s the real Firmaterranean Sea.”
“That makes no difference,” he replies. “Where you die is all the same, it’s God’s will, and I want to get back to my native land soon, because otherwise I may fetch myself some kind of insanity.”
They didn’t force him to stay: they fed him up, rewarded him with money, gave him a gold watch with a rebeater as a souvenir, and for the sea’s coolness on his late autumn journey they gave him a woolen coat with a windbreaking hood. They dressed Lefty very warmly and took him to a ship that was going to Russia. There they accommodated him in the best way, like a real squire, but he didn’t like sitting with other gentlemen in a closed space and felt abashed, so he would go up on deck, sit under a tarpoling, and ask: “Where is our Russia?”
The Englishman whom he asked would point his hand in that direction or nod his head, and Lefty would turn his face and look impatiently towards his native shore.
Once they left harbord for the Firmaterranean Sea, his longing for Russia became so strong that there was no way to calm him. There was a terrible downflood, but Lefty still would not go below to his room—he sits under the tarpoling, his hood pulled over his head, and looks towards his fatherland.
The Englishmen came many times to call him to the warm place below, but he even began to snap at them, so as not to be bothered.
“No,” he replies, “it’s better for me here outside; under the roof I may get seaccups from the fluctations.”
And so he never went below in all that time until one special occasion, through a certain bos’man who liked him very much and who, to our Lefty’s misfortune, could speak Russian. This bos’man could not help admiring that a Russian landlubber could endure such foul weather.
“Fine fellow, Rus!” he says. “Let’s drink!”
Lefty drank.
The bos’man says:
“Another!”
Lefty drank another, and they got drunk.
Then the bos’man asks him:
“What’s the secret you’re taking from our state to Russia?”
Lefty replies:
“That’s my business.”
“In that case,” replied the bos’man, “let’s make an English bet between us.”
Lefty asks:
“What sort?”
“This sort: that we don’t drink anything on our lonesome, but everything equally; whatever the one drinks, the other’s got to drink, too, and whichever out-drinks the other is the winner.”
Lefty thought: “The sky’s cloudy, my belly’s rowdy—the trip’s a big bore, it’s a long way to shore, and my native land can’t be seen beyond the waves—anyhow to make a bet will cheer things up.”
“All right,” he says, “you’re on!”
“Only keep it honest.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he says.
So they agreed and shook hands.
XVII
They made the bet while still in the Firmaterranean Sea, and they drank till Dünamünde near Riga, but they kept even and did not yield to each other, and were so perfectly matched that when one looked into the sea and saw a devil emerging from the water, the same thing at once appeared to the other. Only the bos’man saw a red-haired devil, while Lefty said he was dark as a Moor.
Lefty says:
“Cross yourself and turn away—it’s the devil from the watery deep.”
And the Englishman argues that “it’s a deep-sea driver.”
“Do you want me to toss you into the sea?” he says. “Don’t be afraid—he’ll give you back to me at once.”
And Lefty replies:
“In that case, toss me in.”
The bos’man took him on his back and carried him to the bulwarps.
The sailors saw it, stopped them, and reported to the captain, and he ordered them both locked up below and given rum and wine and some cold food, so that they could eat and drink and go on with their bet—but they were not to be given hot inflamed puddling, because the alcohol might cause combustion inside them.
And so they were brought to Petersburg locked up, and neither of them won the bet between them; and there they were laid in different carriages, and the Englishman was taken to the embassy on the English Embankment, while Lefty was taken to the police station.
From then on their fates began to differ greatly.
XVIII
As soon as the Englishman was brought to the embassy, a doctor and an apothecary were called for him. The doctor ordered him put into a warm bath, in his presence, and the apothecary at once rolled a gutta-percha pill and stuck it into his mouth himself, and then they both took him and laid him on a featherbed, covered him with a fur coat, and left him there to sweat, and, so that he wouldn’t be disturbed, the order was given to the whole embassy that no one should dare to sneeze. The doctor and the apothecary waited until the bos’man fell asleep, and then prepared another gutta-percha pill for him, put it on his bedside table, and left.
But Lefty was dumped on the floor of the police station and asked:
“Who are you and where from and do you have a passport or any other dokyment?”
But he was so weakened by illness, drinking, and the prolonged fluctations that he didn’t answer a word, but only groaned.
Then he was searched at once, his nice clothes were taken off him, the money and the watch with the rebeater were confiscated, and the police chief ordered him dispatched to the hospital for free in the first cab that came along.
A policeman took Lefty out, intending to put him in a sleigh, but he was a long time catching a cabby, because they avoid the police. And all that while Lefty lay on the cold gobbles, and then, when the policeman did catch a cabby, he had no warm fox fur, because on such occasions cabbies hide the warm fox fur under them, so that the policemen will get their feet frozen quickly. They transported Lefty uncovered, and, when changing cabs, they also dropped him each time, and when they picked him up, they pulled his ears so that he would come to his senses. They brought him to one hospital—he could not be admitted without a dokyment; they brought him to another—he was not admitted there either; and the same for the third, and the fourth—they dragged him around the remote by-lanes till morning, and kept changing cabs, so that he got all battered up. Then one doctor told the policeman to take him to the Obukhovsky Charity Hospital, where people of unknown estate were all brought to die.
There he asked for a receipt, and Lefty was left sitting on the floor in the corridor until things were sorted out.
And meanwhile the English bos’man got up the next day, swallowed the other gutta-percha pill, had a light breakfast of chicken and rice, washed it down with fuzzy water, and said:
“Where’s my Russian cumrade? I’ll go and look for him.”
He got dressed and ran off.
XIX
Astonishingly enough, the bos’man somehow found Lefty very quickly, only he was still not lying in bed, but on the floor of the corridor, and he complained to the Englishman.
“There’s a couple of words,” he says, “that I absolutely must say to the sovereign.”
The Englishman ran to Count Kleinmichel13 and raised a ruckus.
“This is not possible! It’s a sheep’s hide,” he says, “but there’s a man’s soul inside.”
For such reasoning the Englishman was thrown out at once, so that he wouldn’t dare mention man’s soul. And then someone said to him, “You’d better go to the Cossack Platov—he has simple feelings.”
The Englishman got to Platov, who was now lying on his couchment again. Platov heard him out and remembered Lefty.
“Why, of course, brother,” he says, “I’m a close acquaintance of his, even pulled his hair once, only I don’t know how to help him in this unfortunate case, because I’m no longer in the service at all and got myself a full aperplexy—there’s no respect for me now—but run quickly to Commandant Skobelev,14 he’s in power and also has experience in this line, he’ll do something.”
The bos’man went to Skobelev and told him everything: what Lefty’s ailment was and how it came about. Skobelev says:
“I understand that ailment, only a German can’t treat it, what’s needed is a doctor from the clerical estate, who grew up with such examples and knows what to do. I’ll send the Russian doctor Martyn-Solsky15 there at once.”
But by the time Martyn-Solsky arrived, Lefty was already done for, because the back of his head had been bashed against the gobbles, and he could utter only one thing clearly:
“Tell the sovereign that the English don’t use bath brick to clean their guns: let us not use it either, otherwise, God forbid there’s a war, they’ll be no good for shooting.”
And with these loyal words, Lefty crossed himself and died.
Martyn-Solsky went at once and reported it to Count Chernyshev,16 so that the sovereign could be informed, but Count Chernyshev yelled at him:
“Take care of your vomitives and purgatives,” he says, “and don’t mix in what’s not your business: in Russia we’ve got generals for that.”
So the sovereign was not told, and such cleaning went on right up to the Crimean campaign. At that time, they started loading their guns, and the bullets were loose in them, because the barrels had been cleaned with bath brick.
Then Martyn-Solsky reminded Chernyshev about Lefty, but Count Chernyshev only said:
“Go to the devil, anima-tube, don’t mix in what’s not your business, otherwise I’ll deny I ever heard it from you—and then you’ll really get it.”
Martyn-Solsky thought: “It’s true he’ll deny it,” so he kept quiet.
But if they had made Lefty’s words known to the sovereign in time, the Crimean War would have turned out quite differently for the enemy.
XX
Now all this is already “the deeds of bygone days” and “legends of old,”17 though not very old, but we need not hasten to forget this legend, despite its fabulous makeup and the epic character of its main hero. Lefty’s proper name, like the names of many great geniuses, is forever lost to posterity; but, as a myth embodied by popular fantasy, he is interesting, and his adventures may serve as a reminder of that epoch, the general spirit of which has been aptly and rightly grasped.
To be sure, there are no such masters as the fabulous Lefty in Tula nowadays: machines have evened out the inequality of talents and gifts, and genius does not strive against assiduousness and precision. While favoring the increase of earnings, machines do not favor artistic boldness, which sometimes went beyond all measure, inspiring popular fantasy to compose fabulous legends similar to this one.
Workers, of course, know how to value the advantages provided by the practical application of mechanical science, but they remember the old times with pri
de and love. It is their epos, and, what’s more, with “a man’s soul inside.”
* The “priest Fedot” has not blown in on the wind: before his death in Taganrog, the emperor Alexander Pavlovich confessed to the priest Alexei Fedotov-Chekhovsky, who afterwards was referred to as “His Majesty’s Confessor” and liked to remind everyone of this completely accidental circumstance. This Fedotov-Chekhovsky is obviously the legendary “priest Fedot.” Author.
The Spirit of Madame de Genlis
A Spiritualistic Occurrence
It is sometimes much easier to call up a spirit than to get rid of it.
A. B. CALMET1
I
The strange adventure I intend to tell took place several years ago, and can now be freely told, the more so as I reserve for myself the right not to use a single proper name in doing so.
In the winter of the year 186–, there came to settle in Petersburg a very prosperous and distinguished family, consisting of three persons: the mother—a middle-aged lady, a princess, reputed to be a woman of refined education and with the best social connections in Russia and abroad; her son, a young man, who that year had set out on his career in the diplomatic corps; and her daughter, the young princess, who was just going on seventeen.
Up to then the newly arrived family had usually lived abroad, where the old princess’s late husband had occupied the post of Russian representative at one of the minor European courts. The young prince and princess were born and grew up in foreign parts, receiving there a completely foreign but very thorough education.
II
The princess was a woman of highly strict principles and deservedly enjoyed a most irreproachable reputation in society. In her opinions and tastes she adhered to the views of French women renowned for their intelligence and talents in the time of the blossoming of women’s intelligence and talents in France. The princess was considered very well read, and it was said that she read with great discrimination. Her favorite reading was the letters of Mmes de Sévigné, La Fayette, and Maintenon, as well as of Caylus, Dangeau, and Coulanges, but most of all she respected Mme de Genlis,2 for whom she had a weakness to the point of adoration. The small volumes of the finely made Paris edition of this intelligent writer, modestly and elegantly bound in pale blue morocco, always occupied a beautiful little bookshelf hanging on the wall over a big armchair, which was the princess’s favorite place. Over the edge of the bookshelf, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, reaching slightly beyond its dark velvet cushion, rested a miniature hand, perfectly formed from terracotta, which Voltaire had kissed in his Ferney, not suspecting that it was going to let fall on him the first drop of a refined but caustic criticism.3 How often the princess had reread the little volumes traced by that small hand, I do not know, but she always had them near her, and the princess used to say that they had for her a particular, so to speak, mysterious meaning, of which she would not venture to tell just anyone, because not everyone would believe it. From what she said, it followed that she had never parted from these volumes “since she could remember herself,” and that they would go with her to the grave.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 48
