A gentleman does not act this way!
Your tailor,
Smirnov
RUSSIAN COAL
A True Story
Count Tulupov was traveling down the Rhine on a boat one fine April morning and, having nothing better to do, struck up a conversation with a Kraut. The German—young and angular, bristling with haughty scholarliness and staunch self-esteem in his starched collar—introduced himself as Arthur Imbs, a mining specialist, and launched into an extensive discourse on Russian coal, a topic that, try as he might, the bored count could not divert him from.
“Indeed, the fate of our coal is most lamentable,” the count interrupted with the sigh of the knowledgeable expert. “Lamentable! St. Petersburg and Moscow are running on British coal, Russia is burning her virgin forests in its ovens, and all the while there are vast reserves of coal lying buried in the south!”
Imbs shook his head wistfully and, clicking his tongue in indignation, asked to see a map of Russia.
The count’s manservant brought a map and the count ran his finger along the shores of the Sea of Azov and then over Kharkov: “There . . . around here . . . you see? The whole south!”
Imbs wanted more precise information about the exact location of the coal fields, but could not induce the count to be more specific. The count’s finger darted randomly over the length and breadth of Russia, and, wanting to stress the coal riches of the Don region, skidded as far south as Stavropol. The Russian count, it seemed, was not overly familiar with his country’s geography. He was quite startled, even incredulous, when Imbs informed him that the Carpathian Mountains belonged to Russia.
“I have an estate in the Don region, you know,” the count said. “Some twenty thousand acres of land, a superb estate! As for coal, it has . . . eine zahllose . . . eine ozeanische Menge! Millions of tons are buried there, just going to waste! It’s always been my dream to do something about this. I’ve been waiting to come across the right man to help me—but we have no specialists in Russia! Not one!”
They began to talk about specialists. They talked and talked. Suddenly the count jumped up as if stung by a bee, clapping his hand to his forehead. “What a stroke of luck that we ran into each other!” he shouted. “What would you say if I asked you to come to my estate? Why stay here in Germany? Germany is teeming with learned Germans, while if you come to my estate you’ll be able to do some good, some real good! How about it? Say you will!”
Imbs paced the cabin with a grave expression, weighing the offer. He agreed to come to Russia. The count clasped his hand, shook it enthusiastically, and called for champagne.
“Finally, after all these years, my mind is at peace!” the count told him. “Now I will have coal!”
A week later Imbs set out for Russia laden with books, charts, hopes, and impure thoughts of Russian rubles. In Moscow the count gave him two hundred rubles and the address of his estate, and told him to head south. “Why not go there now on your own and start work. I might perhaps come down in the autumn. Write and let me know how things are going.”
Imbs arrived at Tulupov’s estate, settled down in one of the mansion’s wings, and the following day set about preparing to supply the whole of Russia with coal.
Three weeks later he sent the count a letter.
“I have familiarized myself with the coal on your land,” he wrote, after a timid and protracted beginning, “and have come to the conclusion that due to its low quality it is not worth digging up. And even if it were three grades higher in quality, it would still not be worth touching. Not to mention that there appears to be a complete lack of demand for coal. Your neighbor, the coal magnate Alpatov, has fifteen million poods of coal ready for shipment, but cannot find a single buyer willing to give him even a brass kopeck for a pood. Not one sack of coal has ever traveled over the Donetsk coal line that passes through your estate, even though the tracks were specifically laid for that purpose. I would be dishonest or reckless if I gave you the slightest hope of success. I would also respectfully venture to add that your estate is in such total disrepair that thinking of coal prospecting or any other enterprise could be considered quite futile.”
At the end of his letter the German asked the count if he could recommend him to another Russian nobleman—“Fürsten oder Grafen”—or send him “ein wenig” money for his return to Germany.
While Imbs waited for a reply, he busied himself with fishing for carp and trapping quail by whistling on a little pipe.
When the reply arrived, it was addressed not to Imbs but to Dzerzhinski, the Polish steward of the estate.
“And tell that German he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing!” the count added in a postscript. “I showed his letter to an engineer (Privy Councilor Mleyev) and he split his sides laughing! You can tell the German that I’m not holding him back! He’s free to go whenever he wants! I gave him two hundred rubles—if he spent fifty rubles to get there, he still has a hundred and fifty left!”
When the Pole informed Imbs of the count’s letter, Imbs panicked. He sat down and filled two sheets with overwrought Germanic handwriting. He begged the count to magnanimously forgive him for having refrained from touching on “a few important details” in his first letter. With tears in his eyes and tormented by pangs of conscience, he wrote that in a card game with Dzerzhinski he had imprudently lost the 172 rubles that had remained after his trip from Moscow. “But afterwards I won back 250 rubles, and yet Dzerzhinski refuses to give them to me, even though I had paid him readily enough when he won. That is why I permit myself the indelicacy of throwing myself on Your Grace’s mercy, and beg you to compel the highly esteemed Mr. Dzerzhinski to pay me at least half the sum he owes me, so that I may leave Russia and no longer eat your bread for naught.”
Much water flowed under the bridge and many carp and quail were caught by Imbs before the count replied. Toward the end of July the Pole came into Imbs’ room, sat down on his bed, and began rattling off every curse he knew in the German language.
“What a royal ass the count is!” he said. “He writes that he is about to leave for Italy, but doesn’t give any instructions about you! What am I supposed to do with you? Chop you up and eat you for dinner? And I don’t know what got into him with that damned coal! He needs it as much as I need to have you hovering around here all day! And you’re a fine one too! A blithering fool talks big to you out of sheer boredom and you fall for it!”
“The count is leaving for Italy?” Imbs asked, turning pale. “But did he send me any money? No? How am I supposed to leave if I don’t have a kopeck to my name? I beg you, my dear Mr. Dzerzhinski, if you cannot give me the money I won from you, at least let me sell you my books and charts. Here in Russia you can get a lot of money for them!”
“Who needs your books and charts in Russia?”
Imbs sat down and thought. While the Pole filled the air with his curses, the German tried to figure out how to save his hide, and with all his German feelings felt his blood turning sour. His body shrank and sagged, and his air of haughty scholarliness yielded to hopelessness and pain. The realization of inescapable captivity far from the gentle waves of the Rhine and the convivial company of other mining engineers reduced him to tears. At night he sat by the window, gazing at the moon. There was silence all around. Somewhere in the distance a harmonica moaned a plaintive Russian song. The sound tore at his heart; he was overcome by such a powerful longing for his homeland and for fairness and justice, that he would have given his life to find himself back in Germany that very night.
“The same moon shines there as it does here—but what a difference!” he thought.
All night Imbs lay steeped in melancholy. Toward morning he could stand it no longer and decided to leave. He packed the books and charts that nobody in Russia needed into his knapsack, filled his empty stomach with water, and at precisely four in the morning left the estate and began walking north
. He decided to head for Kharkov, over which the count’s pink finger had darted not too long ago. Imbs was hoping to find Germans there who would lend him money for the journey home.
“And would you believe it, they even stole the boots off my feet as I lay sleeping by the roadside!” Imbs told a friend a month later as he sat on the deck of the same boat traveling down the Rhine. “So much for Russian honesty! But one thing I will say for Russian honesty: I slipped the train conductor forty kopecks I had gotten for my pipe, and he looked the other way and let me ride without a ticket all the way from Slavianska to Kharkov! Perhaps no honesty there, but what a bargain!”
THE ECLIPSE
Memorandum No. 1032
There is to be an eclipse of the planet moon on September the twenty-second at ten o’clock at night. This phenomenon, far from being unlawful, is in fact of some possible educational benefit (if seen from the point of view that even planets must frequently subject themselves to the laws of nature), I propose that Your Excellencies order that on said evening all street lanterns in your districts shall be lit so that the darkness of night will not prevent officials and townsfolk from seeing the eclipse. I also urge Your Excellencies to ensure that every precaution be taken to hinder any gathering of crowds in the streets, shouts of joy, and other such behavior that said eclipse might occasion. I ask you to inform me of all persons who might interpret this natural phenomenon subversively, should there be such persons (which I doubt, as I know how sensible townsfolk generally are).
Gnilodushin
Witnessed by: Secretary Tryasunov
Re: Memorandum No. 1032
In response to document no. 1032 circulated by Your Excellency, I have the honor to inform you that in my district we have no street lanterns, for which reason the eclipse of the planet moon took place in full darkness of the air, which, however, did not prevent many of the people assembled from perceiving said eclipse with fitting clarity. No infringement of the general peace and quiet or subversive interpretations or expressions of dissatisfaction were ascertained, except for one instance when the son of Deacon Amfiloch Babelmandebsky, a tutor, in response to a question from one of the townsfolk as to the cause of said eclipse of the planet moon, launched into a lengthy explanation clearly subversive for healthy minds. I did, however, not understand the gist of his explanation, as he spoke in scientific terms using many foreign expressions.
Ukusy-Kalanchevsky
Re: Memorandum No. 1032
In answer to Your highly esteemed Excellency in matters of document no. 1032, I have the honor to inform you that in the province entrusted to my care there was no eclipse of the moon, though some phenomenon of nature did in fact manifest itself in the sky, which led to a darkening of the lunar light, though I cannot say with certainty whether this was the eclipse or not. Following an exhaustive search, three street lanterns were ascertained to be in my district, which, after scrubbing the glass and the insides, were lit. But these measures did not have the desired results, for said eclipse took place at a moment when the lanterns, as the result of a gust of wind blowing through their broken glass, went out, and hence could not illuminate the eclipse referred to in Your Excellency’s memorandum. There were no gatherings, as all the townsfolk were asleep except for one clerk of the district council, Ivan Avelev, who was sitting on the fence and peering at the eclipse through his fist, grinning equivocally. “Same to me whether there’s a moon or not . . . I don’t give a hoot!” he said. When I informed him that these words were whimsical, he boldly declared: “What are you defending the moon for, lamebrain! You’ll be sending it season’s greetings next!” And he added an immoral expression in local parlance, which I will have the honor of reporting him for.
Glotalov
Witnessed by: A man without a spleen
A PROBLEM
Iwould like to present the following problem for the reader to solve:
At two o’clock in the morning my wife, my mother-in-law, and I left the house where we had been celebrating the marriage of a distant cousin. At the feast, needless to say, we had eaten and drunk our fill.
“In my condition I can’t go on foot,” my wife announced, turning to me. “Kirill, darling, can you get us a cab?”
“A cab? What will you think of next, Dasha!” my mother-in-law protested. “With the price of everything these days, and us having to scrimp and save for every loaf of bread! We don’t have a stick of wood for the stove, and you want a cab? Ignore her, Kirill!”
But valuing my wife’s health and the fruit of our unhappy love (the reader will already have guessed that my wife was expecting), and finding myself at that stage of blissful tipsiness when walking provides an excellent impetus for understanding Copernicus’ theory of the earth’s rotation, I ignored my mother-in-law’s entreaties and called to a cabbie. The cab pulled up . . . and this is the problem:
We all know the measurements of an average cab. I am a man of letters, from which it follows that I am thin and underfed. My wife, too, is thin, though somewhat broader than I am, since the will of fate has widened her diameter. My mother-in-law’s diameter, on the other hand, is immense, her length equaling her width, her weight close to four hundred pounds.
“We won’t all fit in a single cab,” I said. “We’ll have to take two.”
“Are you stark raving mad?” my mother-in-law gasped. “We have no money to pay the rent, and you want to hire two cabs? I won’t allow this! I withhold my blessing! A curse on this scheme!”
“But dearest mamasha,” I said to my mother-in-law in as reverential a tone as I could muster, “you must see that the three of us simply cannot squeeze into this cab. Once you take a seat, by God’s bounty, the cab will be full. Thin as I am, I might possibly be able to squeeze in next to you, but owing to her delicate condition our Dasha simply won’t be able to squeeze in beside you. Where would she sit?”
“Do as you please!” my mother-in-law snapped, waving her hand dismissively. “The Lord has clearly sent you to torment me. But I withhold my blessing in the matter of a second cab!”
“Well, let me see . . .” I began, thinking aloud. “Thin as I am, I could sit with you, though then there would be no place for Dasha . . . and if I sit with Dasha, there’ll be no place for you . . . Wait a minute! If, say, I sat with you, Dasha could sit on our knees. Although now that I think of it, that’s physically impossible, since these cabs are so damned narrow. Well, if, say, I sit with you, Mother, and you, Dasha, sit up on the box next to the cabbie . . . Dasha, how about sitting next to the cabbie?”
“Next to the cabbie?” my mother-in-law gasped. “I am a widow of high social standing! I will not allow a daughter of mine to seat herself next to some provincial lout! Has anyone ever heard the like? A lady sitting up on the box next to a cabbie!”
“In that case, how about this,” my resourceful wife ventured. “Mother will sit in the back, as is proper, and I’ll sit on the floor at her feet. I can huddle up and steady myself on the empty spot next to Mother, while you, Kirill, can sit with the cabbie . . . Your family has no standing worth mentioning, so there’s no harm in your sitting up on the box.”
“Yes, that might work. And yet,” I said, scratching my head, “as I admit to being slightly tipsy, what happens if I fall off the box?”
“Slightly tipsy? Ha!” my mother-in-law countered. “Well, if you’re so afraid of falling off, why not stand on the footboard and hold on to the back of the cab. We’ll go slowly—you won’t fall off.”
Inebriated though I was, I could only spurn this shameful suggestion. A Russian man of letters clinging willy-nilly to the back of a cab! That would be the end of civilization as we know it! Exhausted from all the drinking and the perplexing puzzle I was facing, I was ready to throw up my hands and go home on foot when the cabbie leaned down to us and said:
“How about trying this . . .??
?
He offered us a solution to the problem that we all accepted.
What was this solution?
P.S. As an aid to the less nimble-minded among my readers, the cabbie’s solution had me sitting next to my mother-in-law, while my wife was close enough to be able to whisper in my ear, “Kirill, you’re jabbing me with your elbow. Move back a little!” The cabbie was sitting in his place. Surely the reader can now guess our configuration.
The solution:
I sat next to my mother-in-law with my back to the cabbie, my legs dangling out the back of the cab. My wife stood in the cab in the space where my legs would have been if I had been sitting like a normal human being, and steadied herself by holding on to my shoulders.
ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NATIONS
(From the Notebook of a Naïve Member of the Russian Geographic Society)
The French are noted for their frivolity. They read immoral novels, marry without their parents’ consent, do not obey doormen, do not respect their elders, and fail to read The Moscow News. They are so devoid of morals that their courts are overwhelmed with divorce cases. Sarah Bernhardt, for instance, divorces husbands with such regularity that through her patronage one court secretary alone grew richer by two houses. French women act in operettas and stroll along Nevsky Prospekt, while the men bake French bread and sing the Marseillaise. Many of their names rhyme with gigolo: Monsieur Rigolo, Monsieur Tremolo, Monsieur Ex-Nihilo, to name a few.
The Swedes waged war against Peter the Great and gave our compatriot Lapshin the idea of Swedish matches (though they have not yet taught him how to make them work). Swedes ride Swedish horses, listen to Swedish ladies sing in restaurants, and grease the wheels of their carts with Norwegian tar. They live in remote areas.
The Greeks are mainly involved in trade. They sell sponges, goldfish, wine from Santorini, and Greek soap. Greeks who lack trading permits lead monkeys on leashes, or teach ancient languages. In their free time they fish near the Odessa and Taganrog customs offices. The Greek feeds on the bad-quality food served in Greek taverns, which is what ultimately leads to his demise. From time to time one comes upon a tall Greek such as Mr. Vlados, who runs a Tatar restaurant in Moscow—a man who is very tall and very fat.