A Night in the Cemetery

75 GRAND

Late at night, about midnight, two friends were walking along Tverskoy Boulevard. The first man was tall and handsome, with brown hair. He was wearing an old bear fur coat and a brown top hat. The second man was a short redhead who wore a dark red coat with polished ebony buttons. Both were silent as they went. The first whistled a tune, and the second looked gloomily under his feet as they walked, and spat to the side from time to time.

“Would you like to sit for a while?” the brown-haired man suggested as they were passing the dark monument of Pushkin and the dimly lit entrance of the Strastnoi Monastery. The redhead consented, and the two friends sat down on a park bench.

“I have a small personal favor to ask you, Nikolai Borisovich,” said the dark-haired man after some silence between them. “Dear friend, can you lend me ten or fifteen rubles? I will give the money back to you in a week.” The redhead said nothing.

“I would never have asked you if not for extreme necessity. Fate has played a lousy joke on me. My wife gave me her bracelet earlier today to pawn. She has to pay for her sister’s tuition.

“So I pawned it, then played cards and lost the money.”

The red-haired man moved on his seat and cleared his throat.

“You are not a serious man, Vasily Ivanych,” he said with an evil smile.

“Not a serious man at all. You had no right to sit down and play those cards. How could you gamble if you knew that it was not your money you were betting?”

He continued, “Wait, don’t interrupt me, let me tell you once and for all. Why do you need all these new clothes, this pin on your tie? You are a poor man, why do you want to look fashionable? Why are you wearing this stupid hat? You live at your wife’s expense and then go and pay one hundred fifty rubles for that hat on your head.” Vasily touched the hat he was wearing on his head.

“You could have a nice fur hat that only costs three rubles, and neither fashion nor beauty would suffer. Why do you always boast about your important friends, if you don’t know these people? You said that you personally know Ivanov, Plevako, and other publishers. I was burning with shame at your name-dropping nonsense. You lied without even blushing! And when you played cards and lost your wife’s money to those women tonight, you were wearing such a stupid grin, I would be ashamed to have anything to do with you. I don’t even want to slap your face.”

“Stop it. You’re in a rotten mood today. Enough!”

“All right, I can admit that you act like an idiot because you are too young. But Vasily, I can’t understand it. How can you play cards and cheat? I saw you pull the ace of spades from the bottom of the pack!”

Vasily Ivanovich blushed like a high school student and tried to apologize. The accusations of the red-haired man continued. They had a long, loud dispute. Finally, they calmed down and became silent.

“Yes, it is true, I have done wrong,” said the brown-haired man after a long silence. “It is true. I spent too much money. And now I am in debt. I spent my wife’s money and I can’t find the way out. Have you ever felt like you are itchy all over, and there is no cure? This is how I feel now. I feel terrible about myself. I’m in it up to my neck. I am ashamed of myself, and of the human race in general. I make mistakes, I do bad things, I have low motives, and I cannot stop, I am too bad!” He scratched his chin. “If I were to receive an inheritance or win the lottery, then I think I would be able to give up my bad habits and start all over again. And you, Nikolai Borisovich, please don’t blame me. Don’t throw stones at me. Remember Mr. Clumsy.”

“I remember him very well,” said the red-haired man. “I remember him. He spent somebody else’s money at a restaurant to show off in front of his girlfriend, and he wound up crying on her shoulder, although he wasn’t crying before he did it.

“It’s shameful to even speak of that scoundrel. If he didn’t have good manners or such nice looks, the girl would never have fallen in love with him and he would never have repented. Bad people are good-looking as a rule. Like you, for example.

“You’re all womanizers. Women don’t love you; they only want to have an affair with you. It’s strange. You’re very lucky with women.” The redhead stood up and started pacing around the bench.

“Your wife, for example. She is an honest and noble woman. Why did she fall in love with you? And today, for example, that pretty blonde never moved her glance from you for a second when you lied and played the fool. Women fall in love with men like you. It is completely different with me. I have worked hard all my life. I am an honest man, and I deserve at least one moment of happiness. And then, do you remember, I was engaged to Olga Alekseevna, your wife, a long time ago, before she knew you, and I had a little bit of happiness, and then you came along and I was totally ruined.”

“You’re jealous!” The dark-haired man smiled. “I didn’t know that!”

Anger and disgust appeared on the face of Nikolai Borisovich for a moment. Without understanding what was doing, he stretched his hand forward and waved it. The sound of a slap broke the silence of the night. The brown top hat fell and rolled over the hard-packed snow. The red-haired man became ashamed. He stood up and pushed his nose into the collar of his shabby coat and walked along the boulevard. When he came to the Pushkin monument, he looked back at the brown-haired man, stood for a moment quietly and then, as if afraid of something, started running along Tverskoy Boulevard.

Vasily Ivanych sat in silence, motionless, for a long time. A woman passed him and, laughing, gave him his hat. He mechanically thanked her, stood up, and walked away.

“Now she’s going to scold me,” he thought, climbing the stairwell to the apartment. “She’ll be scolding me the whole night through. Damn her! I’ll tell her that I lost her stupid money!”

When he came to his door, he timidly rang the doorbell. The maid let him in.

“Congratulations!” she said, smiling broadly.

“What for?”

“See for yourself! Finally God has had some pity on you!”

Vasily Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders and entered the bedroom. There his wife, Olga Alekseevna, a short blonde with curlers in her hair, sat at the desk. Several finished, sealed letters were in front of her on the desk. The moment she saw her husband, she jumped to her feet and hung around his neck.

“You have come, finally!” she said. “I am so happy! You can’t believe how happy I am! I was hysterical for a while after this pleasant surprise. Here, read this!”

She jumped to the table and brought the newspaper to her husband’s face.

“Read this! My ticket won seventy-five thousand. Yes, I had a ticket. I give you my word on it. I hid it from you and kept it secret, because you would have pawned it.

“Nikolai Borisovich gave it to me as a gift when he was my fiancée, and then he did not want to take it back. That Nikolai Borisovich is such a nice man! Now we are very rich! You will change for the better now, you can change your life! I understand that you drank and lied to me because of our poverty, I know this. I understand you. I know that you are a clever and honest man.”

Olga Alekseevna walked across the room and laughed.

“What a surprise! I was waiting for you, pacing the room. I scolded and hated you for your dissipation, and then I got bored and sat down to read a newspaper. And then I saw it! I have already written letters to all my sisters, my mother. They will be so happy for me! Where are you going?”

Vasily Ivanovich looked at the newspaper. He stood speechless for a while, thinking about something, then replaced his hat and left the room, went out of the house and into the street.

“To Great Dmitovka Street, the furnished apartment N.N.,” he told the cabman.

He did not find the woman he was looking for there. The room was locked.

‘She’s probably at the theater. And after the theater she’ll go have supper. I’ll wait for a while.’

He waited. He waited for half an hour, then for an hour. He went along the corridor and spoke to a sleepy concierge. He heard the old clock downstairs strike three. Finally, out of patience, he started back down the stairs, but his luck returned.

At the entrance of the building, he bumped into her, a thin, tall brunette wearing a long boa. A man in dark blue sunglasses and a cheap fur hat followed her.

“Excuse me,” Vasily Ivanovich addressed the woman. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

The man and woman frowned.

“Wait a second,” the woman said to her companion and went to the nearest lamp post with Vasily Ivanovich.

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you—well, let’s talk business, Nadine,” started Vasily Ivanovich, stumbling. “It’s a pity you have this man with you, otherwise I would have told you everything.”

“What do you want? I don’t have time for this.”

“Oh, so you have new admirers and you’re in a hurry! Look at you! Do you remember some time ago, before Christmas, when you threw me out? You did not want to live with me because—because I did not make enough money for your lifestyle. But you were wrong. Yes. Do you remember the lottery ticket I gave you as a birthday gift? There, look here! Read! That ticket won seventy-five thousand!”

The woman took the newspaper into her hands and scanned it with eager, almost frightened eyes. And she found what she wanted.

At the same time another pair of eyes, reddened by tears and dumb from woe, looked in the jewelry box for the ticket. These eyes searched for the ticket the whole night through, and could not find it.

The ticket was gone, and Olga Alekseevna knew that her husband had stolen it.

On the same night, the red-haired Nikolai Borisovich turned restlessly in his bed and could not fall asleep until the morning. He was ashamed of that slap on the cheek.