Fifty-Two Stories

IN A FOREIGN LAND

SUNDAY NOON. The landowner Kamyshev is sitting in his dining room at a sumptuously laid table, having a leisurely lunch. His meal is being shared by a neat, clean-shaven little old Frenchman, Monsieur Shampooing. This Shampooing was once the Kamyshevs’ family tutor, taught the children manners, proper pronunciation, and dancing; then, when the Kamyshev children grew up and became lieutenants, Shampooing stayed on as something like a male governess. The duties of the former tutor are not complicated. He has to dress decently, smell of perfume, listen to Kamyshev’s idle talk, eat, drink, sleep—and that, it seems, is all. In return he receives room, board, and an unspecified salary.

Kamyshev is eating and, as usual, babbling away.

“Deadly!” he says, wiping the tears that rise up following a slice of ham thickly smeared with mustard. “Oof! It hits you in the head and all the joints. Your French mustard wouldn’t do that, even if you ate a whole jar.”

“Some like French mustard, and some Russian…,” Shampooing pronounces meekly.

“Nobody likes French mustard, except maybe the French. But a Frenchman will eat anything you give him: frogs, rats, cockroaches—brr! You, for instance, don’t like this ham because it’s Russian, but if they give you fried glass and tell you it’s French, you’ll eat it and smack your lips…In your opinion, everything Russian is bad.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Everything Russian is bad, and everything French—oh, say tray jolee!¹ In your opinion, there’s no better country than France, but in mine…well, what is France, honestly speaking? A little scrap of land! Send our policeman there, and a month later he’ll ask to be transferred: there’s no room to turn around! You can travel all over your France in a day, but with us you step through the gate and—endless space! Drive on and on…”

“Yes, monsieur, Russia is an enormous country.”

“There you have it! In your opinion, there’s no better people than the French. Educated, intelligent folk! Civilized! I agree, the French are all educated, well-mannered…it’s true…A Frenchman will never allow himself to be boorish: he’ll promptly move a chair for a lady, won’t eat crayfish with a fork, won’t spit on the floor, but…it’s not the right spirit! He doesn’t have the right spirit! I can’t explain it to you, but, how shall I put it, there’s something lacking in Frenchmen, a certain” (the speaker twiddles his fingers) “…something…juridical. I remember reading somewhere that you all have an intelligence acquired from books, while ours is inborn. If a Russian learns all your subjects properly, no professor of yours will compare with him.”

“Maybe so…,” Shampooing says as if reluctantly.

“No, not maybe—it’s true! Don’t wince, I’m telling the truth! Russian intelligence is inventive! Only, of course, it’s not given scope enough, and it’s no good at boasting…It will invent something and then break it or give it to children to play with, while your Frenchman invents some sort of rubbish and shouts for all the world to hear. The other day the coachman Jonah made a manikin out of wood: you pull a string on this manikin and he makes an indecent gesture. And yet Jonah doesn’t boast. Generally…I don’t like the French! I’m not talking about you, but generally…Immoral people! Outwardly they seem to resemble humans, but they live like dogs…Take marriage, for instance. With us, whoever marries cleaves to his wife and there’s no more talking, but with you devil knows what goes on. The husband sits in a café all day, and his wife infests the house with Frenchmen and cancans away with them.”

“That’s not true!” Shampooing, unable to help himself, flares up. “In France the family principle is held very high!”

“We know all about that principle! And you should be ashamed to defend it. One must be impartial: pigs are pigs…Thanks to the Germans for beating them…By God, yes. God grant them good health…”

“In that case, monsieur, I don’t understand,” says the Frenchman, jumping up and his eyes flashing, “if you really hate the French, why do you keep me?”

“What else can I do with you?”

“Let me go, and I’ll leave for France!”

“Wha-a-at? As if they’d let you back into France now! You’re a traitor to your fatherland! One day Napoleon is your great man, then it’s Gambetta…the devil himself can’t figure you out!”

“Monsieur,” Shampooing says in French, spluttering and crumpling the napkin in his hands, “even an enemy could not have come up with a worse insult to my feelings than you have just done! All is finished!!”

And, making a tragic gesture with his hand, the Frenchman affectedly throws the napkin on the table and walks out with dignity.

Some three hours later the table setting is changed and dinner is served. Kamyshev sits down to eat alone. After the first glass, he is overcome with a thirst for idle talk. He would like to chat, but there is no one to listen.

“What’s Alphonse Ludvigovich doing?” he asks the servant.

“Packing his suitcase, sir.”

“What a dunderhead, God forgive me!…,” says Kamyshev, and he goes to the Frenchman.

Shampooing is sitting on the floor in the middle of his room and with trembling hands is packing his linen, perfume bottles, prayer books, suspenders, neckties into a suitcase…His whole respectable figure, his suitcase, bed, and table exude refinement and effeminacy. From his big blue eyes large tears drop into the suitcase.

“Where are you off to?” asks Kamyshev, after standing there for a while.

The Frenchman is silent.

“You want to leave?” Kamyshev goes on. “Well, you know best…I wouldn’t dare hold you back…Only here’s the strange thing: how are you going to go without a passport? I’m surprised! You know, I lost your passport. I put it somewhere among the papers, and it got lost…And here they’re very strict about passports. You won’t go three miles before they nab you.”

Shampooing raises his head and looks mistrustfully at Kamyshev.

“Yes…You’ll find out! They’ll see by your face that you’ve got no passport, and right away: ‘Who are you? Alphonse Shampooing! We know these Alphonse Shampooings! Maybe you’d like to be shipped off to some not-so-nearby parts!’ ”

“Are you joking?”

“Why on earth would I be joking? As if I need that! Only watch out, I warn you: no whimpering and letter-writing afterwards. I won’t lift a finger when they march you by in chains!”

Shampooing jumps up, pale, wide-eyed, and starts pacing the room.

“What are you doing to me?!” he says, clutching his head in despair. “My God! Oh, cursed be the hour when the pernicious thought came to my head of leaving my fatherland!”

“Now, now, now…I was joking!” says Kamyshev, lowering his tone. “What an odd fellow, he doesn’t understand jokes! One dare not utter a word!”

“My dear!” shrieks Shampooing, calmed by Kamyshev’s tone. “I swear to you, I’m attached to Russia, to you, to your children…To leave you is as hard for me as to die! But each word you say cuts me to the heart!”

“Ah, you odd fellow! Why on earth should you be offended if I denounce the French? We denounce all sorts of people—should they all be offended? An odd fellow, really! Take my tenant Lazar Isakich, for example…I call him this and that, Yid and kike, make a pig’s ear out of my coattail, pull him by the whiskers…he doesn’t get offended.”

“But he’s a slave! He’s ready for any meanness to make a kopeck!”

“Now, now, now…enough! Let’s go and eat. Peace and harmony!”

Shampooing powders his tear-stained face and goes with Kamyshev to the dining room. The first course is eaten in silence, after the second the same story begins, and so Shampooing’s sufferings never end.

1885