predominant in it—an obvious contempt. It was as if he was thinking of something funny and stupid, could not stand someone and was contemptuous of him, was glad of something and waiting for the appropriate moment to sting someone with his mockery and roll with laughter. His long nose, fat lips, and sly, protruding eyes seemed to be straining with the wish to burst out laughing. Looking at his face, Kuzmichov smiled mockingly and asked:
‘‘Solomon, why didn’t you come to the fair this summer in N. to play the Yid for us?’’
Two years ago, as Egorushka also remembered perfectly well, in one of the show booths at the fair in N., Solomon had narrated some scenes from Jewish everyday life and had been a great success. The reminder of it did not make any impression on Solomon. He went out without answering and a little later came back with the samovar.
After doing what was to be done at the table, he went to one side and, crossing his arms on his chest, thrusting one foot forward, fixed his mocking eyes on Father Khristofor. There was something defiant, haughty, and contemptuous in his pose, and at the same time something pathetic and comical in the highest degree, because the more imposing it became, the more conspicuous were his short trousers, his skimpy jacket, his caricature of a nose, and his whole plucked-bird-like little figure.
Moisei Moiseich brought a stool from another room and sat down at some distance from the table.
‘‘Good appetite! Tea and sugar!’’ he began to entertain his guests. ‘‘Good health to you. Such rare guests, rare guests, and Father Khristofor I haven’t seen for five years already. And does nobody want to tell me whose nice little boy this is?’’ he asked, looking affectionately at Egorushka.
‘‘He’s the son of my sister Olga Ivanovna,’’ answered Kuzmichov.
‘‘And where is he going?’’
‘‘To study. We’re taking him to school.’’
Moisei Moiseich, for the sake of politeness, gave his face a look of astonishment and wagged his head meaningfully.
‘‘Oh, this is good!’’ he said, shaking his finger at the samovar. ‘‘This is good! You’ll come out of school such a gentleman we’ll all take our hats off. You’ll be intelligent, rich, ambitious, and your mama will rejoice. Oh, this is good!’’
He paused for a while, stroked his knees, and began to speak in a respectfully jocular tone:
‘‘You forgive me now, Father Khristofor, but I’m going to write a letter to the bishop that you’re cutting into the merchants’ bread. I’ll take official paper and write that it means Father Khristofor hasn’t got enough money, if he’s gone into trade and started selling wool.’’
‘‘Yes, I’ve taken a notion in my old age . . .’’ Father Khristofor said and laughed. ‘‘I’ve gone over from the priests to the merchants, old boy. Instead of staying home and praying to God, I gallop around like pharaoh in his chariot ... Vanity!’’
‘‘But you’ll get a lot of moneys!’’
‘‘Oh, yes! A fig9 under my nose, not moneys! The goods aren’t mine, they’re my son-in-law Mikhailo’s!’’
‘‘Why didn’t he go himself ?’’
‘‘Because ... The mother’s milk still hasn’t dried on his lips. Buy the wool he did, but sell it—no, he’s not clever enough, he’s still young. He spent all his money, meaning to gain by it and kick up the dust, but he tried here and there, and nobody would even give him what he paid. So the lad knocked about for a year, then came to me and— ‘Papa, do me a favor, sell the wool! I don’t understand anything about these things!’ There you have it. So now I’m papa, but before, he could do without papa. When he bought the wool, he didn’t ask, but now he’s in a pinch, and so I’m papa. And what about papa? If it weren’t for Ivan Ivanych, papa wouldn’t be able to do a thing. What a bother they are!’’
‘‘Yes, children are a bother, I can tell you!’’ sighed Moisei Moiseich. ‘‘I myself have six of them. One to be taught, another to be doctored, the third to be carried in your arms, and when they grow up, there’s still more bother. Not only now, it was so even in Holy Scripture. When Jacob had little children, he wept, and when they grew up, he wept still worse!’’10
‘‘Mm, yes . . .’’ agreed Father Khristofor, gazing pensively at his glass of tea. ‘‘Personally, as a matter of fact, I’ve got no business angering God, I’ve reached the limit of my life, as God grant everybody ... I’ve married my daughters to good men, I’ve set my sons up, now I’m free, I’ve done my duty, and I can go any which way. I live quietly with my wife, eat, drink, and sleep, rejoice in my grandchildren, and pray to God, and I don’t need anything else. I’m rolling in clover and I answer to no one. In all my born days, I’ve never known any grief, and if, say, the tsar now asked me: ‘What do you need? What do you want?’ Well, there’s nothing I’m in need of! I have everything and thank God. There’s no happier man than I in the whole town. Only I have many sins, but then they say only God is without sin. Isn’t that right?’’
‘‘Must be right.’’
‘‘Well, of course, I’ve got no teeth, my back aches from old age, this and that ... shortness of breath and so forth ... Illnesses, the flesh is weak, but you must agree I’ve lived enough! I’m in my seventies! You can’t go on forever, enough’s enough!’’
Father Khristofor suddenly recalled something, burst out laughing into his glass, and got into a coughing fit from laughter. Moisei Moiseich, out of politeness, also laughed and coughed.
‘‘So funny!’’ said Father Khristofor and waved his hand. ‘‘My older son Gavrila comes to visit me. He works in the medical line and serves in Chernigov province as a zemstvo11 doctor . . . Very well, sir ... I say to him: ‘See here,’ I say, ‘I’m short of breath, this and that ... You’re a doctor, treat your father!’ He got me undressed at once, tapped, listened, various other things ... kneaded my stomach, and then says: ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘you need treatment with compressed air.’ ’ ’
Father Khristofor laughed convulsively, to tears, and stood up.
‘‘And I say to him: ‘God help it, this compressed air!’ ’’ he brought out through his laughter and waved both hands. ‘‘God help it, this compressed air!’’
Moisei Moiseich also stood up and, clutching his stomach, also dissolved in high-pitched laughter, resembling the yelping of a lapdog.
