quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but — alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it’s all over! They see it, and you’re caught!’
Having delivered, and with great ardour, this highly convincing speech, the artiste tenderly inquired of Kanavkin:
‘And where is it hidden?’
‘With my aunt, Porokhovnikova, on Prechistenka.’
‘Ah! That’s ... wait ... that’s Klavdia Ilyinishna, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes! A separate little house? A little front garden opposite? Of course, I know, I know! And where did you put it there?’
‘In the cellar, in a candy tin ...’
The artiste clasped his hands.
‘Have you ever seen the like?’ he cried out, chagrined. ‘Why, it’ll get damp and mouldy there! Is it conceivable to entrust currency to such people? Eh? Sheer childishness! By God! ...’
Kanavkin himself realized he had fouled up and was in for it, and he hung his tufty head.
‘Money,’ the artiste went on, ‘must be kept in the state bank, in special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt’s cellar, where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for shame! You’re a grown-up!’
Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at the lapel of his jacket with his finger.
‘Well, all right,’ the artiste relented, ‘let bygones be ...’ And he suddenly added unexpectedly: ‘Ah, by the way ... so that in one ... to save a trip ... this same aunt also has some, eh?’
Kanavkin, never expecting such a turn of affairs, wavered, and the theatre fell silent.
‘Ehh, Kanavkin ...’ the master of ceremonies said in tender reproach, ‘and here I was praising him! Look, he just went and messed it up for no reason at all! It’s absurd, Kanavkin! Wasn’t I just talking about eyes? Can’t we see that the aunt has got some? Well, then why do you torment us for nothing?’
‘She has!’ Kanavkin cried dashingly.
‘Bravo!’ cried the master of ceremonies.
Bravo!‘ the house roared frightfully.
When things quieted down, the master of ceremonies congratulated Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home to the city in a car, and told someone in the wings to go in that same car to fetch the aunt and ask her kindly to come for the programme at the women’s theatre.
‘Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she hides hers?’ the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned somehow wistfully.
‘I believe you, I believe you,’ the artiste responded with a sigh. ‘Not just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn’t tell the devil himself! Well, so, we’ll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!’
And the happy Kanavkin drove off. The artiste inquired whether there were any others who wished to turn over their currency, but was answered with silence.
‘Odd birds, by God!’ the artiste said, shrugging, and the curtain hid him.
The lights went out, there was darkness for a while, and in it a nervous tenor was heard singing from far away:
‘There great heaps of gold do shine, and all those heaps of gold are Mine ...’7
Then twice the sound of subdued applause came from somewhere.
‘Some little lady in the women’s theatre is turning hers over,’ Nikanor Ivanovich’s red-bearded neighbour spoke up unexpectedly, and added with a sigh: ‘Ah, if it wasn’t for my geese! ... I’ve got fighting geese in Lianozovo, my dear fellow ... they’ll die without me, I’m afraid. A fighting bird’s delicate, it needs care ... Ah, if it wasn’t for my geese! ... They won’t surprise me with Pushkin ...’ And again he began to sigh.
Here the house lit up brightly, and Nikanor Ivanovich dreamed that cooks in white chef’s hats and with ladles in their hands came pouring from all the doors. Scullions dragged in a cauldron of soup and a stand with cut-up rye bread. The spectators livened up. The jolly cooks shuttled among the theatre buffs, ladled out bowls of soup, and distributed bread.
‘Dig in, lads,’ the cooks shouted, ‘and turn over your currency! What’s the point of sitting here? Who wants to slop up this swill! Go home, have a good drink, a little bite, that’s the way!’
‘Now, you, for instance, what’re you doing sitting here, old man?’ Nikanor Ivanovich was directly addressed by a fat cook with a raspberry-coloured neck, as he offered him a bowl in which a lone cabbage leaf floated in some liquid.
‘I don’t have any! I don’t! I don‘t!’ Nikanor Ivanovich cried out in a terrible voice. ‘You understand, I don’t!‘
‘You don’t?’ the cook bellowed in a menacing bass. ‘You don’t?’ he asked in a tender woman’s voice. ‘You don’t, you don‘t,’ he murmured soothingly, turning into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna.
She was gently shaking Nikanor Ivanovich by the shoulder as he moaned in his sleep. Then the cooks melted away, and the theatre with its curtain broke up. Through his tears, Nikanor Ivanovich made out his room in the hospital and two people in white coats, who were by no means casual cooks getting at people with their advice, but the doctor and that same Praskovya Fyodorovna, who was holding not a bowl but a little dish covered with gauze, with a syringe lying on it.
