Great Russian Short Stories (17 page)

I went off to do the repair; none too pleased about it, however, because you can't always be sure of how it will come off: a more loosely woven bit of cloth will blend in better, but the one with the harder finish, it is difficult to work in the nap inconspicuously.

I did a good job, however, but I didn't take it back myself, for I didn't at all like the way he treated me. It's tricky work, and no matter how well you may do it, if the customer is set on finding fault, it can easily lead to unpleasantness.

I sent my wife with the tailcoat to her brother and told her to hand it over to him and hurry home, and as soon as she came running back we put the door on the hook and went to bed.

In the morning I got up and began the day in my usual way. There I sit at my work waiting to see what sort of reward from the Big Shot gentleman they will come to announce to me—a pot of money or a knock on the head.

And suddenly, soon after one o'clock or so, the room servant comes and says:

“The gentleman from Room One demands you.”

I say: “I won't go for anything.”

“Why so?”

“Just so; I won't go, and that's flat. Rather let my work be wasted, but I have no wish to see him.”

But the servant began to insist:

“You've no call to be scared: he is very pleased and saw the New Year in at the ball in your tailcoat and nobody noticed the hole in it. And now he has guests for lunch who have come to wish him a Happy New Year. They've had a few drinks under their belt, and, getting to talk of your work, they had a wager—which of them will find the hole, but not one of them did. Now, for sheer joy, using this as an excuse, they are toasting your Russian skill and wish to see you in person. Go quickly, this will bring you new luck in the new year.”

My wife also insisted. “Do go,” she said, “my heart tells me that this will be the beginning of our new fortune.”

I obeyed them and went.

I found about ten gentlemen in Room One and all of them had had a lot in the way of drinks, and as soon as I came in they handed me right off a glass of wine, and said: “Drink with us to your Russian skill through which you can bring glory to our nation.”

And in their cups they said all sorts of things like that which the whole business was not worth at all.

Naturally, I thank them and bow, and drank two glasses of wine to Russia and to their health, but I could not, I said, drink any more of sweet wine, not being used to it, and, besides, unworthy of such company.

To which the terrible gentleman from Room One replies:

“You, my friend, are an ass and a fool and a brute—you don't know your own worth nor how much you deserve through your talent. You helped me on New Year's Eve to set straight the whole course of my life, because yesterday at the ball I disclosed my love to my beloved betrothed of high birth and received her consent, and when the fast is over I'll have a wedding.”

“I wish you and your future spouse,” I say, “to enter into wedlock with full happiness.”

“Have a drink to it then.”

I could not refuse and drank, but asked to be excused from any more.

“All right,” says he, “only tell me where you live and what is your name, patronymic, and surname. I want to be your benefactor.”

I reply: “My name is Vasily, son of Konon, and by surname Laputin. And my workshop is right here, next door, there is a small sign there, too, saying ‘Laputin'.”

There I stood telling all this and not noticing that at my words all the guests snorted and burst into gales of laughter, and the gentleman whose tailcoat I had repaired up and landed me one on the ear, and then one on the other ear, so that I could not keep on my feet. Then he shooed me to the door and threw me out over the threshold.

I couldn't understand a thing and made off as fast as my legs would carry me.

I come home and my wife asks me:

“Tell me quickly, Vasenka, how has my luck served you?”

I say: “Don't you, Mashenka, ask me for all particulars, but if this is only the first taste and there is more of the same to come, then I'd rather not live by your luck. He beat me up, my angel, he did, this gentleman.”

My wife was worried. What, how and what for? But I naturally could not tell her because I didn't know myself.

But while we were having this conversation, suddenly there was clatter, noise, crashing, and in comes my benefactor from Room One.

We both got up from our places and stared at him while he, flushed with innermost feelings or from having had more wine, was holding in one hand the janitor's long-handled ax and in the other, chopped up into splinters, the little board on which I had my wretched little sign, indicating my poor craft and surname: OLD CLOTHES MENDED AND TURNED OUT. LAPUTIN.

In walked the gentleman with those splintered little boards and flung them straight away into the stove, and said to me: “Get dressed, you're coming with me in my carriage, I'll make your life's fortune. Or else I'll chop up you and your wife and everything you have, just as I did those boards.”

I thought that rather than argue with such a rowdy I'd better get him out of the house as soon as possible lest he do some harm to my wife.

I dressed hastily, said to my wife, “Make the sign of the cross over me, Mashenka,” and off we went. We drove to Bronnaya where the well-known real estate agent Prokhor Ivanych lived, and the gentleman asked him straight away:

“What houses are there for sale and in what location, priced from twenty-five to thirty thousand or a little more?” Naturally in paper money as was used then. “But I need such a house,” he explains, “that can be taken over and moved into this very moment.”

The agent took a ledger out of his cupboard, put on his spectacles, looked at one page and at another, and said:

“There is a house suitable to you in every way but you'll have to add a bit.”

“I can do it.”

“You will have to go up to thirty-five thousand.”

“I am willing.”

“Then,” says he, “we'll complete the deal in an hour and it will be possible to move in tomorrow because in this house a deacon choked on a chicken bone at a christening and died, and that's why nobody lives there now.”

And that's this very same little house where you and I are sitting now. There was some talk about the late deacon walking about at night and choking, but all this is absolute nonsense and nobody has seen him here in our time. My wife and I moved in here the very next day because the gentleman transferred the title-deed to this house to us as a gift; and the day after that he comes with some workmen, more than six or seven of them, and with them a ladder and this very signboard that makes me out a French tailor.

They came and nailed it on and went away, and the gentleman instructed me:

“I have just one order for you,” he says, “don't you ever dare change this signboard, and always answer to this name.” And all of a sudden he exclaimed:

“Lepoutant!”

I respond: “Yes, sir.”

“Good lad,” says he, “here is another 1000 rubles for spoons and saucers, but mind you, Lepoutant, follow my commandments with care and you'll be taken care of, but if anything . . . and if, God forbid, you start asserting your former name and I find out . . . then, to begin with, I'll give you a sound hiding, and secondly, according to the law ‘the gift reverts to the giver.' But if you are loyal to my wish, then just say what else you want and you'll get everything from me.”

I thank him and say that I have no wishes and can think of nothing except for one thing—if he can be so good to tell me what is the meaning of all this and why did I receive the house.

But that he wouldn't tell me.

“That,” says he, “you don't need to know at all; just remember that from now on you are called Lepoutant and are thus named in my gift deed. Keep this name; you will gain thereby.”

We set up housekeeping in our own home, and everything went very well, and we believed that all this was due to my wife's good luck, because for a long time we could not come upon the true explanation from anybody; but one day two gentlemen hurried past our house, and suddenly stopped and came in.

The wife asks them:

“Can I help you?”

They replied:

“We need Monsieur Lepoutant himself.”

I come out, and they exchanged glances, both of them laughed at the same time and began talking to me in French.

I apologize, saying I do not understand French.

“Have you hung out this sign for a long time?”

I told them how many years it was.

“Well, that's it. We remember you,” they say, “and saw how you did a marvelous job mending a gentleman's tailcoat for a ball on New Year's Eve, and later suffered unpleasantness at his hands in our presence in the hotel.”

“That's quite right,” I say, “there was such an occasion, but I am grateful to that gentleman, and it is through him that my life began; but I don't know his name or surname, for all this has been kept from me.”

They told me his name, and his surname, they added, was Laputin.

“What do you mean, Laputin?”

“Yes, of course,” they say, “Laputin. Didn't you really know why he showered on you all those benefactions? So that his name should not appear on your signboard.”

“Fancy that,” I say, “and we couldn't understand it at all to this very day; we enjoyed the benefaction but in the dark as it were.”

“However,” continue my visitors, “it didn't do him any good. Yesterday he got involved in a new mixup.”

And they told me a bit of news that made me feel very sorry for my erstwhile namesake.

Laputin's wife, to whom he proposed in his darned tail-coat, was even more snobbish than her husband, and adored pomp. Neither of them was particularly high-born, it was just that their fathers had grown rich through government contracts; but they sought the acquaintance of the nobility only. And at that time our governor-general in Moscow was Count Zakrevsky, who himself, they say, was also from the Polish gentry, and real gentlemen like Prince Sergey Mikhailovich Golitsyn did not rate him high, but all the rest were flattered to be received in his house. The spouse of the man who used to have the same name as mine also thirsted for this honor. Yet, goodness knows why, this eluded them for a long time, but at last Mr. Laputin found the opportunity of pleasing the Count, and the latter said to him:

“Come and see me, my dear fellow, I'll leave orders to have you admitted. Tell me, lest I forget, what is your name?”

The other answered that his name was Laputin.

“Laputin?” asked the Count. “Laputin . . . Wait a moment, wait a moment, if you please. Laputin . . . I seem to remember something. This is someone's name.”

“That's right, your excellency,” he says, “that's my name.”

“Yes, yes, my dear fellow, it is indeed your name, but I remember something—there seems to have been another Laputin. Perhaps it's your father who was Laputin?”

The gentleman replied that indeed his father had been Laputin.

“That's why I remember it, I do. Laputin. It's quite possible that it was your father. I have a very good memory; come, Laputin, come tomorrow. I'll leave orders for you to be admitted, Laputin.”

The latter was beside himself with joy and the very next day went there.

But Count Zakrevsky, even though he had boasted of his memory, nevertheless had slipped up on this occasion and said nothing about admitting Mr. Laputin.

The latter came flying.

“I'm So-and-So,” says he, “and I wish to see the Count.”

But the doorman would not let him in.

“There are no orders,” he says, “to admit anyone.”

The gentleman tries to argue with him this way and that. “I haven't come on my own,” he says, “but at the invitation of the Count.” The doorman remains adamant.

“I have no orders to admit anyone,” he says. “And if you've come on business go to the office.”

“I have not come on business,” the gentleman says, “but through personal acquaintance. The Count must have given you my name—Laputin, and you must have mixed it up.”

“The count didn't give me any name yesterday.”

“That can't be. You've simply forgotten the name—Laputin.”

“I never forget anything, and as for this name I am not likely to forget it because I am Laputin myself.”

The gentleman simply boiled over.

“What do you mean,” says he, “you're Laputin yourself! Who put you onto calling yourself that?!”

And the doorman replies:

“No one put me onto it, but that's our stock, and there is any number of Laputins in Moscow, only the others are of no account and I'm the only one who has come up in the world.”

And at that moment, while they were arguing, the Count comes down the stairs and says:

“That's right, he is the one I had in mind, he is that very Laputin, and in my house he's a scoundrel, too. And you come some other time, I am busy now. Good day.”

Well, naturally, how can you pay a call after this?

Maître tailleur Lepoutant told me this story with an air of compassionate modesty, adding by way of finale that the very next day, as he walked along the boulevard with his work, he happened to run into anecdotic Laputin himself, whom Vasily Konych had reason to regard as his benefactor.

“He is sitting on a bench,” he said, “very sad. I wanted to slip past, but the moment he noticed me he said:

‘Good morning, Monsieur Lepoutant. How's life treating you?'

‘Very well, by the grace of God and with your help. And you, sir, how are you?'

‘Couldn't be worse. A most wretched thing happened to me.'

‘I have heard about it, sir,' I say, ‘and was glad that at least you didn't lay hands on him.'

‘I couldn't lay hands on him because he is not a man of free profession but the Count's knave; but what I want to know is: Who bribed him to play this filthy trick on me?' ”

And Konych, in his simplicity, began to comfort the gentleman.

“Don't look, sir,” he says, “for instigation. There really are many Laputins and among them some very honest folk, as for example my late grandfather; he used to sell insoles all over Moscow. . . .”

“And at those words he suddenly let me have it across the back with his stick. I ran away, and since then I haven't seen him, but have heard that he and his spouse went abroad, to France, and there he got ruined and died, and she erected a monument to him and they say that the inscription happened to be the same as that on my sign: ‘Lepoutant.' Thus we became namesakes once more.”