The britzka had barely stopped by the covered porch when joyful voices were heard inside the house—one male, the other female. The sliding door shrieked on its pulley, and in an instant a tall, skinny figure rose up by the britzka, flapping its arms and coattails. This was the innkeeper Moisei Moiseich, a middle-aged man with a very pale face and a handsome ink-black beard. He was dressed in a worn black frock coat that hung on his narrow shoulders as if on a hanger, and its tails flapped like wings each time Moisei Moiseich clasped his hands in joy or horror. Besides the frock coat, the landlord was wearing wide white untucked trousers and a velvet vest with orange flowers resembling gigantic bedbugs.
Moisei Moiseich, recognizing the visitors, first stopped dead from the flood of emotion, then clasped his hands and groaned. His frock coat flapped its tails, his back bent into a curve, and his pale face twisted into such a smile as if the sight of the britzka was not only pleasant for him but also painfully sweet.
‘‘Ah, my God, my God!’’ he began in a high singsong voice, breathless and bustling, his movements hindering the passengers from getting out of the britzka. ‘‘And what a happy day it is for me! Ah, and what am I to do now! Ivan Ivanych! Father Khristofor! What a pretty little sir is sitting on the box, God punish me! Ah my God, what am I doing standing here and not inviting the guests in? Please, I humbly beg you ... come in! Give me all your things ... Ah, my God!’’
While rummaging in the britzka and helping the visitors to get out, Moisei Moiseich suddenly turned around and shouted in such a wild, strangled voice, as if he were drowning and calling for help:
‘‘Solomon! Solomon!’’
‘‘Solomon, Solomon!’’ the woman’s voice repeated in the house.
The door shrieked on its pulley, and a young Jew appeared on the threshold, of medium height, red-haired, with a big bird’s nose and a bald spot in the midst of his stiff, curly hair; he was dressed in a short, very worn jacket with rounded tails and too short sleeves, and tricot trousers, also too short, as a result of which he himself looked short and skimpy, like a plucked bird. This was Solomon, Moisei Moiseich’s brother. Silently, not offering any greeting but only smiling somehow strangely, he approached the britzka.
‘‘Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor have come!’’ Moisei Moiseich said to him in such a tone as if he was afraid his brother might not believe him. ‘‘Oi, weh, amazing business, such good people up and came! Well, take the things, Solomon. Come in, dear guests!’’
A little later Kuzmichov, Father Khristofor, and Egorushka were sitting in a big, gloomy, and empty room at an old oak table. This table was almost solitary, because apart from it, a wide sofa covered with torn oilcloth, and three chairs, there was no other furniture in the room. And not everyone would have ventured to call those chairs chairs. They were some pitiful semblance of furniture, with oilcloth that had outlived its time, and a highly unnatural bend to their backs, which gave them a great likeness to a child’s sled. It was hard to see what comfort the unknown cabinetmaker had in mind in bending the backs so mercilessly, and one would rather have thought that it was the fault not of the cabinetmaker but of some itinerant strongman who, wishing to boast of his strength, had bent the chairs’ backs, then tried to set them straight and bent them still more. The room looked gloomy. The walls were gray, the ceiling and cornices were covered with soot, the floor was cracked and had holes of unknown origin gaping in it (one might have thought the same strongman had broken through it with his heel), and it seemed that if a dozen lamps were hung up in the room, it would not stop being dark. There was nothing resembling decoration either on the walls or on the windows. However, on one wall, in a gray wooden frame, hung a list of rules of some sort with a double-headed eagle, and on another, in the same sort of frame, some lithograph with the caption: ‘‘Men’s Indifference.’’ What it was that men were indifferent to was impossible to tell, because the lithograph was badly faded with time and generously flyblown. The room smelled of something musty and sour.
Having led the guests into the room, Moisei Moiseich went on writhing, clasping his hands, squirming, and making joyful exclamations—he considered it necessary to perform all this in order to appear extremely polite and amiable.
‘‘When did our carts pass by here?’’ Kuzmichov asked him.
‘‘One party passed this morning, and another, Ivan Ivanych, rested here at dinnertime and left before evening.’’
‘‘Ah ... Did Varlamov pass this way or not?’’
‘‘No, Ivan Ivanych. Yesterday morning his agent, Grigory Egorych, passed by and said he must now be at the Molokan’s8 farmstead.’’
‘‘Excellent. That means we’ll catch up with the train now, and then go to the Molokan’s.’’
‘‘God help you, Ivan Ivanych!’’ Moisei Moiseich clasped his hands, horrified. ‘‘Where are you going to go with night falling? Have a nice little bite of supper, spend the night, and tomorrow morning, with God’s help, you can go and catch up with anybody you want!’’
‘‘No time, no time ... Sorry, Moisei Moiseich, some other occasion, but now is not the time. We’ll stay for a quarter of an hour and then go, and we can spend the night at the Molokan’s.’’
‘‘A quarter of an hour!’’ shrieked Moisei Moiseich. ‘‘You have no fear of God, Ivan Ivanych! You’ll force me to hide your hats and lock the door! At least have a bite to eat and some tea!’’
‘‘We have no time for any teas and sugars,’’ said Kuzmichov.
Moisei Moiseich inclined his head, bent his knees, and held his palms up in front of him as if defending himself from blows, and with a painfully sweet smile began to implore:
‘‘Ivan Ivanych! Father Khristofor! Be so kind, have some tea with me! Am I such a bad man that you can’t even have tea with me? Ivan Ivanych!’’
‘‘Why, we might just have a drop of tea,’’ Father Khristofor sighed sympathetically. ‘‘It won’t keep us long.’’
‘‘Well, all right!’’ Kuzmichov agreed.
Moisei Moiseich roused himself, gasped joyfully, and, squirming as if he had just jumped out of cold water into the warmth, ran to the door and shouted in a wild, strangled voice, the same with which he had called Solomon earlier:
‘‘Rosa! Rosa! Bring the samovar!’’
A minute later, the door opened and Solomon came into the room with a big tray in his hands. Setting the tray on the table, he looked mockingly somewhere to the side and smiled strangely, as before. Now, in the light of the lamp, it was possible to examine his smile; it was very complex and expressed many feelings, but one thing was
