Fifty-Two Stories

Bowsky got carried away by the pursuit, and the beauty might well have spent a long time lying in the field by the roadside had it not been for a lucky play of chance. It chanced that just then Bowsky’s colleagues, the flute Buzzkin and the clarinet Wavarmov, came along the same road. Stumbling upon the case, they looked at each other in surprise and spread their arms.

“A double bass!” said Buzzkin. “Hah, it’s our Bowsky’s double bass! How did it wind up here?”

“Something probably happened to Bowsky,” decided Wavarmov. “Either he got drunk, or he was robbed…In either case, it wouldn’t be right to leave the instrument here. Let’s take it with us.”

Buzzkin hoisted the case on his back, and the musicians went on.

“It’s heavy, damn it!” the flute grumbled on the way. “Not for anything in the world would I agree to play such a monster…Oof!”

On arriving at Prince Bibulov’s dacha, the musicians put the case in the area reserved for the orchestra and went to the buffet.

Just then the chandeliers and sconces were being lit. The fiancé, Court Councillor Flunkeyich, a handsome and affable official from the Ministry of Transportation, was standing in the middle of the reception room, his hands in his pockets, talking with Count Flaskov. They were discussing music.

“In Naples, Count,” Flunkeyich was saying, “I was personally acquainted with a fiddler who literally performed miracles. You won’t believe it! On a double bass…on an ordinary double bass, he pulled off such devilish trills, it was simply awful! He played Strauss waltzes.”

“Come now, that’s impossible…” The count doubted him.

“I assure you! He even performed a Liszt rhapsody. I lived in the same room with him and having nothing to do I even learned from him to play a rhapsody of Liszt on the double bass.”

“A rhapsody of Liszt…Hm…you’re joking…”

“You don’t believe it?” Flunkeyich laughed. “I’ll prove it to you right now! Let’s go to the orchestra!”

The fiancé and the count went to the orchestra. They approached the double bass, quickly started undoing the straps…and—oh, horror!

But here, while the reader, giving free rein to his imagination, pictures the outcome of the musical dispute, let us turn back to Bowsky…The poor musician, having failed to catch the thieves and gone back to the place where he left the case, could not locate the precious burden. Totally at a loss, he walked up and down the road several times and, not finding the case, decided that he had come to the wrong road…

“This is awful!” he thought, clutching his hair and turning cold. “She’ll suffocate in the case! I’m a murderer!”

Until midnight Bowsky walked the road and looked for the case, but finally, out of strength, he headed back to the little bridge.

“I’ll search at dawn,” he decided.

The search at dawn produced the same result, and Bowsky decided to wait under the bridge till nightfall…

“I’ll find her!” he muttered, taking off his top hat and seizing his hair. “I may look for a whole year, but I’ll find her!”

—

To this day peasants living in the area we have described tell that, at night, by the little bridge, one can see a naked man, overgrown with hair and wearing a top hat. Every now and then under the little bridge the wheezing of a double bass can be heard.

1886

THE CHORUS GIRL

ONCE, WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER, prettier, more full voiced, her admirer, Nikolai Petrovich Kolpakov, was sitting in the mezzanine of her dacha. It was unbearably hot and stifling. Kolpakov had just finished dinner and, having drunk a whole bottle of bad port, felt out of sorts and ill. They were both bored and were waiting for it to cool off in order to go for a walk.

Suddenly and unexpectedly the doorbell rang. Kolpakov, who was in his shirtsleeves and wearing slippers, jumped up and looked questioningly at Pasha.

“Must be the mailman, or maybe one of my girlfriends,” said the singer.

Kolpakov was not embarrassed either by Pasha’s friends or by mailmen, but, just in case, he grabbed his clothes and went to the next room, while Pasha ran to open the door. To her great surprise, it was neither a mailman nor a girlfriend who stood at the door, but an unknown woman, young, beautiful, elegantly dressed, and, by all appearances, of a respectable sort.

The unknown woman was pale and breathing heavily, as if after climbing a steep stairway.

“What can I do for you?” asked Pasha.

The lady did not answer at once. She took a step forward, slowly looked around the room, and sat down as if she were too tired or unwell to go on standing; then she moved her pale lips for a long time, trying to utter something.

“Is my husband here?” she asked, finally, raising to Pasha her big eyes with their red, tear-stained eyelids.

“What husband?” Pasha whispered and suddenly became so frightened that her hands and feet went cold. “What husband?” she repeated, beginning to tremble.

“My husband…Nikolai Petrovich Kolpakov.”

“N-no, madam…I…I don’t know any husband.”