Fifty-Two Stories

THE BEGGAR

“MY DEAR SIR! Be so good as to pay attention to an unfortunate, hungry man. I haven’t eaten for three days…don’t have a fiver for a night’s lodging…I swear to God! Eight years I worked as a village schoolmaster and lost my post owing to local intrigues…Fell victim to denunciation…I’ve been out of work for a year now.”

The barrister Skvortsov looked at the petitioner’s tattered blue-gray coat, his dull, drunken eyes, the red splotches on his cheeks, and it seemed to him that he had already seen this man somewhere before.

“Now they’re offering me a post in Kaluga province,” the petitioner went on, “but I have no means of getting there. Be so kind as to help me! I’m ashamed to ask, but…circumstances make it necessary.”

Skvortsov looked at the man’s galoshes, one of which was high and the other low, and suddenly remembered.

“Listen, I believe I met you three days ago on Sadovaya Street,” he said, “and you told me then that you were an expelled student, not a village schoolmaster. Remember?”

“N-no, it can’t be!” the petitioner mumbled in embarrassment. “I’m a village schoolmaster, and, if you wish, I can show you documents.”

“Enough lying! You called yourself a student and even told me what you were expelled for. Remember?”

Skvortsov turned red and stepped back from the ragbag with a look of disgust on his face.

“That is mean, my dear sir!” he shouted angrily. “You’re a crook! I’ll turn you over to the police, devil take you! You’re poor, hungry, but that doesn’t give you the right to lie so brazenly and shamelessly!”

The ragbag took hold of the door handle and perplexedly, like a caught thief, looked into the entryway.

“I…I’m not lying, sir!” he mumbled. “I can show you documents.”

“Who’s going to believe you?” Skvortsov went on indignantly. “To exploit society’s sympathy for village schoolmasters and students—it’s so low, mean, nasty! Outrageous!”

Skvortsov got carried away and scolded the petitioner in a most merciless fashion. By his impudent lying, the ragbag had awakened loathing and disgust in him, had insulted in him that which he, Skvortsov, so loved and valued in himself: kindness, a sensitive heart, compassion for the unfortunate; by his lying appeal for mercy, it was as if this “subject” had defiled the alms which he, out of purity of heart, liked to give to the poor. The ragbag began by justifying himself, swearing to God, but then fell silent and hung his head in shame.

“Sir!” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “Indeed, I…was lying! I’m not a student or a village schoolmaster. That’s all made up! I sang in a Russian choir, and was fired for drunkenness. But what am I to do? By God, it’s impossible without lying. When I tell the truth, nobody gives me alms. With the truth you die of hunger and freeze without night quarters! Your reasoning is correct, I understand, but…what am I to do?”

“What to do? You ask what you’re to do?” Skvortsov cried, going up close to him. “Work, that’s what! You must work!”

“Work…I understand that myself, but where will I find work?”

“Nonsense! You’re young, healthy, strong, and will always find work, if only you want to. But you’re lazy, spoiled, drunk! You stink of vodka like a pot-house! You’re false and shoddy to the marrow of your bones, and capable only of panhandling and lying! If you deign some day to lower yourself to work, you’ll expect it to be in an office, in a Russian choir, or as a billiard marker, where you can do nothing and get money for it! But how would you like to take up physical labor? It’s not as if you’d accept to be a street sweeper or a factory worker! You’ve got pretensions!”

“The way you reason, my God…” the petitioner said and smiled bitterly. “Where am I to get physical labor? It’s too late for me to be a shopkeeper, because you start such jobs as a boy; nobody will take me as a street sweeper, because I’m the wrong class to talk down to…and they won’t hire me at a factory, you have to know a skill, and I don’t know anything.”

“Nonsense! You’ll always find a justification! How would you like to chop wood?”

“I wouldn’t refuse, but nowadays even real woodchoppers go hungry.”

“Well, all parasites reason like that. If you get an offer, you’ll refuse. Would you like to chop some wood for me?”

“All right, I will…”

“Very well, we’ll see…Excellent…We’ll see!”

Skvortsov hurried off and, not without glee, rubbing his hands, summoned the cook from the kitchen.

“Here, Olga,” he said to her, “take this gentleman to the shed and have him chop wood.”

The ragbag shrugged his shoulders as if in perplexity, and irresolutely followed the cook. From his gait it could be seen that he had agreed to go and chop wood not because he was hungry and wanted to earn some money, but simply out of vanity and shame, having been taken at his word. It was also obvious that he was badly weakened from vodka, was unwell, and felt not the slightest disposition to work.

Skvortsov hurried to the dining room. There, through the windows looking out on the yard, he could see the woodshed and everything that went on in the yard. Standing at the window, Skvortsov saw the cook and the ragbag come out the back door to the yard and make their way through the dirty snow to the shed. Olga, looking crossly at her companion, her elbows thrust out, unlocked the shed and angrily banged the door open.

“We probably interrupted the woman at her coffee,” thought Skvortsov. “What a spiteful creature!”

Then he saw the pseudo-teacher and pseudo-student sit down on a block of wood and, propping his red cheeks on his fists, fall to thinking about something. The woman flung the axe at his feet, spat angrily, and, judging by the expression of her lips, began to scold him. The ragbag irresolutely pulled a log towards him, put it between his legs, and timorously tapped it with the axe. The log swayed and fell over. The ragbag pulled it to him, blew on his cold hands, and again tapped it with the axe, as cautiously as if he were afraid to hit his galosh or chop off his toes. The log fell over again.

Skvortsov’s anger was gone by then, and he felt a little pained and ashamed that he had made a man who was spoiled, drunk, and maybe ill undertake physical labor outside in the cold.

“Well, never mind, let him…,” he thought, going from the dining room to his study. “It’s for his own good.”

An hour later Olga came and reported that the wood had been chopped.

“Here, give him fifty kopecks,” said Skvortsov. “If he wants, let him come to chop wood on the first of each month…Work will always be found.”

On the first of the month the ragbag came and again earned fifty kopecks, though he could barely stand on his feet. After that he turned up quite often in the yard, and each time work was found for him: he shoveled piles of snow, tidied up the shed, beat the dust from the rugs and mattresses. Each time he earned from twenty to forty kopecks for his labor, and once he was even given a pair of old trousers.

On moving to different lodgings, Skvortsov hired him to help with packing and transporting the furniture. This time the ragbag was sober, sullen, and silent; he barely laid a finger on the furniture, followed the carts with his head hanging down, and did not even try to look active, and only huddled against the cold and became embarrassed when the carters laughed at his idleness, weakness, and tattered gentleman’s coat. After the moving, Skvortsov had him summoned.

“Well, I see my words had an effect on you,” he said, handing him a rouble. “This is for your labors. I see you’re sober and not against doing work. What is your name?”

“Lushkov.”

“I can offer you a different sort of work now, Lushkov, cleaner work. Can you write?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then go to my colleague tomorrow with this letter and you’ll get to do copying for him. Work, don’t drink, and don’t forget what I said to you. Goodbye!”

Pleased at having put the man on the right path, Skvortsov amiably patted Lushkov on the shoulder and even offered him his hand as he said goodbye. Lushkov took the letter, left, and no longer came to the yard for work.

Two years went by. One day, standing at a theater ticket window buying his ticket, Skvortsov saw next to him a little man with an astrakhan collar and a shabby sealskin hat. The little man timidly asked for a ticket in the gallery and paid in copper coins.

“Lushkov, is it you?” asked Skvortsov, recognizing the little man as his former woodchopper. “Well, how are you? What are you up to? Is life going well?”

“Not bad…I work for a notary now, earn thirty-five roubles, sir.”

“Well, thank God. That’s excellent! I’m glad for you. Very, very glad, Lushkov! You’re my godson in a certain sense. It was I who pushed you onto the proper path. Remember how I reprimanded you, eh? You almost fell through the floor then. Well, thank you, my dear fellow, for not forgetting my words.”

“And thank you,” said Lushkov. “If I hadn’t come to you then, I’d probably still call myself a teacher or a student. Yes, I was saved through you, I jumped out of the pit.”

“I’m very, very glad.”

“Thank you for your kind words and deeds. You spoke very well then. I’m grateful to you and to your cook—God grant good health to that kind, generous woman. You spoke very well then, I’m obliged to you till my dying day, but in fact it was your cook Olga who saved me.”

“How so?”

“Here’s how. I’d come to you to chop wood, and she’d start on me: ‘Ah, you drunkard! Cursed as you are! There’s no punishment good enough for you!’ And then she’d sit down, turn sad, look me in the face and lament: ‘Miserable man that you are! There’s no joy for you in this world, and in the next, you drunkard, you’ll burn in hell! Poor wretch!’ And all in the same vein, you know. How much she grieved over me and how many tears she shed, I can’t even tell you. But the main thing was—she chopped the wood for me! I didn’t split a single piece of your wood, sir, she did it all! Why she saved me, why I changed, looking at her, and stopped drinking, I can’t tell you. I only know that from her words and generous acts, a change took place in my soul, she set me right, and I’ll never forget it. But it’s time, the curtain bell’s already ringing.”

Lushkov bowed and went to the gallery.

1887