get married, you keep waiting for something! Then the Scriptures tell us that 'wine maketh glad the heart of man.' . . . If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then go to the refreshment bar and have a drink. The great thing is not to be too clever, but to follow the beaten track! The beaten track is a grand thing!'
'You say that man is the creator of his own happiness. How the devil is he the creator of it when a toothache or an ill-natured mother-in-law is enough to scatter his happiness to the winds? Everything depends on chance. If we had an accident at this moment you'd sing a different tune.'
'Stuff and nonsense!' retorts the bridegroom. 'Railway accidents only happen once a year. I'm not afraid of an accident, for there is no reason for one. Accidents are exceptional! Confound them! I don't want to talk of them! Oh, I believe we're stopping at a station.'
'Where are you going now?' asks Pyotr Petrovitch. 'To Moscow or somewhere further south?
'Why, bless you! How could I go somewhere further south, when I'm on my way to the north?'
'But Moscow isn't in the north.'
'I know that, but we're on our way to Petersburg,' says Ivan Alexyevitch.
'We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!'
'To Moscow? What do you mean?' says the bridegroom in amazement.
'It's queer. . . . For what station did you take your ticket?'
'For Petersburg.'
'In that case I congratulate you. You've got into the wrong train.'
There follows a minute of silence. The bridegroom gets up and looks blankly round the company.
'Yes, yes,' Pyotr Petrovitch explains. 'You must have jumped into the wrong train at Bologoe. . . . After your glass of brandy you succeeded in getting into the down-train.'
Ivan Alexyevitch turns pale, clutches his head, and begins pacing rapidly about the carriage.
'Ach, idiot that I am!' he says in indignation. 'Scoundrel! The devil devour me! Whatever am I to do now? Why, my wife is in that train! She's there all alone, expecting me, consumed by anxiety. Ach, I'm a motley fool!'
The bridegroom falls on the seat and writhes as though someone had trodden on his corns.
'I am un-unhappy man!' he moans. 'What am I to do, what am I to do?'
'There, there!' the passengers try to console him. 'It's all right. . . . You must telegraph to your wife and try to change into the Petersburg express. In that way you'll overtake her.'
'The Petersburg express!' weeps the bridegroom, the creator of his own happiness. 'And how am I to get a ticket for the Petersburg express? All my money is with my wife.'
The passengers, laughing and whispering together, make a collection and furnish the happy man with funds.
NOTES
a journalist in Jules Verne: French author of science fiction romances (1828-1905)
second bell: train passengers were given 3 warning bells: the first (single) ring indicated 15 minutes until departure; the second (2 rings) indicated 5 minutes; and the third bell (3 rings) sounded as the train left the station
counting-house: he substitutes the word 'counting-house' for 'countenance'
phylloxera: small insects related to aphids
the down-train: the translator uses the British terms for trains going to the capital (up trains) and trains leaving the capital (down trains)
* * *
The Privy Councillor
by Anton Chekhov
AT the beginning of April in 1870 my mother, Klavdia Arhipovna, the widow of a lieutenant, received from her brother Ivan, a privy councillor in Petersburg, a letter in which, among other things, this passage occurred: 'My liver trouble forces me to spend every summer abroad, and as I have not at the moment the money in hand for a trip to Marienbad, it is very possible, dear sister, that I may spend this summer with you at Kotchuevko. . . .'
On reading the letter my mother turned pale and began trembling all over; then an expression of mingled tears and laughter came into her face. She began crying and laughing. This conflict of tears and laughter always reminds me of the flickering and spluttering of a brightly burning candle when one sprinkles it with water. Reading the letter once more, mother called together all the household, and in a voice broken with emotion began explaining to us that there had been four Gundasov brothers: one Gundasov had died as a baby; another had gone to the war, and he, too, was dead; the third, without offence to him be it said, was an actor; the fourth . . .
'The fourth has risen far above us,' my mother brought out tearfully. 'My own brother, we grew up together; and I am all of a tremble, all of a tremble! . . . A privy councillor with the rank of a general! How shall I meet him, my angel brother? What can I, a foolish, uneducated woman, talk to him about? It's fifteen years since I've seen him! Andryushenka,' my mother turned to me, 'you must rejoice, little stupid! It's a piece of luck for you that God is sending him to us!'
After we had heard a detailed history of the Gundasovs, there followed a fuss and bustle in the place such as I had been accustomed to see only before Christmas and Easter. The sky above and the water in the river were all that escaped; everything else was subjected to a merciless cleansing, scrubbing, painting. If the sky had been lower and smaller and the river had not flowed so swiftly, they would have scoured them, too, with bath-brick and rubbed them, too, with tow. Our walls were as white as snow, but they were whitewashed; the floors were bright and shining, but they were washed every day. The cat Bobtail (as a small child I had cut off a good quarter of his tail with the knife used for chopping the sugar, and that was why he was called Bobtail) was carried off to the kitchen and put in charge of Anisya; Fedka was told that if any of the dogs came near the front-door 'God would punish him.' But no one was so badly treated as the poor sofas, easy-chairs, and rugs! They had never, before been so violently beaten as on this occasion in preparation for our visitor. My pigeons took fright at the loud thud of the sticks, and were continually flying up into the sky.
The tailor Spiridon, the only tailor in the whole district who ventured to make for the gentry, came over from Novostroevka. He was a hard-working capable man who did not drink and was not without a certain fancy and feeling for form, but yet he was an atrocious tailor. His work was ruined by hesitation. . . . The idea that his cut was not fashionable enough made him alter everything half a dozen times, walk all the way to the town simply to study the dandies, and in the end dress us in suits that even a caricaturist would have called
This Spiridon spent a long time taking my measure. He measured me all over lengthways and crossways, as though he meant to put hoops round me like a barrel; then he spent a long time noting down my measurements with a thick pencil on a bit of paper, and ticked off all the measurements with triangular signs. When he had finished with me he set to work on my tutor, Yegor Alexyevitch Pobyedimsky. My beloved tutor was then at the stage when young men watch the growth of their moustache and are critical of their clothes, and so you can imagine the devout awe with which Spiridon approached him. Yegor Alexyevitch had to throw back his head, to straddle his legs like an inverted V, first lift up his arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several times, walking round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its mate, going down on one knee, bending double. . . . My mother, weary, exhausted by her exertions and heated by ironing, watched these lengthy proceedings, and said:
'Mind now, Spiridon, you will have to answer for it to God if you spoil the cloth! And it will be the worse for you if you don't make them fit!'
Mother's words threw Spiridon first into a fever, then into a perspiration, for he was convinced that he would not make them fit. He received one rouble twenty kopecks for making my suit, and for Pobyedimsky's two roubles, but we provided the cloth, the lining, and the buttons. The price cannot be considered excessive, as Novostroevka was about seven miles from us, and the tailor came to fit us four times. When he came to try the things on and we squeezed ourselves into the tight trousers and jackets adorned with basting threads, mother always frowned contemptuously and expressed her surprise: