The Steel Flea · 2

And Count Kiselvrode ordered that the left-handed man should be washed in the Tulyakoff public bath, that his hair and beard should be trimmed in a hairdresser’s shop, and that he should be clothed in a State kaftan taken from a Court singer,[25] so that he might make a good appearance, and have some sort of rank conferred upon him.

When they had re-uniformed him in this manner, treated him to tea with Platoff’s vodka for the journey, and had drawn in his leather belt as snugly as possible, in order that his bowels might not shake, they took him to London. And there foreign things happened to the left-handed man.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] The genuine Russian form of saying, “I forgive you.”

[25] It would be difficult to devise an outfit more comically unsuited to the whole style and bearing of the squint-eyed, left-handed Tula gunsmith. The kaftan of a Court singer (member of the Imperial Choir) is made of cloth, the hue of an American Beauty rose, elaborately trimmed with broad gold galloon. All Choristers’ kaftans in Russia have simulated angel-wings on the shoulders and back, as (in the language of the Cherubimic Hymn in the Liturgy) they represent the Cherubim. The leather belt is the crowning touch of absurdity.

XV

The Courier travelled so very swiftly with the left-handed man, that they halted nowhere to rest between Petrograd and London, but merely drew their belts tighter at every posting-station, so that their bowels and their lungs might not get mixed up together; but, as an allowance of liquor at will had been appointed to the left-handed man after his interview with the Emperor, at Platoffs instance, he sustained himself on that alone, without eating, and sang Russian songs all through Europe, making only a refrain in foreign fashion, “Aï, people, c’est très juli.”[26]

As soon as the Courier brought him to London, he presented himself to the proper persons and delivered the casket, but placed the left-handed man in a chamber at a hotel; but there the latter speedily grew bored, and felt a desire to eat. He knocked on the door, and pointed out his mouth to the servant who waited on him, and the man immediately conducted him to the food-reception room.

There the left-handed man seated himself at the table, and sat, and sat; but how to ask for anything in English he did not know. But after a while he found out. Again he simply tapped upon the table with his finger, and pointed at his mouth; the Englishmen guessed, and served him, only they did not always bring what he wanted, but he did not take what did not suit him. They brought him a hot studing in fire[27] of their preparation. Says he, “I know not whether that can be eaten,” and he would not taste it; so they changed it, and brought him another dish. And thus, also, he would not drink their brandy, because it was green, as though mixed with copperas, but chose the most natural things of all, and waited for the Courier in the coolness behind the bottle-room.

And those persons to whom the Courier had delivered the nymfozoria examined it that very moment with the most powerful melkoscopes, and immediately put a description in the public news, so that an announcement[28] of it might come to general notice on the following day.

“And we wish to see that master-workman himself at once,” said they.

The Courier led them to the chamber, and thence to the food-reception room, where our left-handed man had already grown fairly red in the face, and said: “Here he is!”

The Englishmen immediately began to clap the left-handed man on the shoulder, slap-slap, and on the hands, as with an equal.

“Comrade,” said they, “comrade,--good master,--we will talk with thee hereafter, in due time, but now we will drink to thy success.”

They called for a great deal of liquor, and gave the first glass to the left-handed man, but he would not drink first: “Perhaps they wish to poison me out of vexation,” he thought.

“No,” says he, “that is not proper etiquette. Even in Poland no one is greater than the host--drink first yourselves.”

The Englishmen tested all the liquors in his presence, and then began to pour out for him. He rose, crossed himself with his left hand, and drank to the health of them all.

They noticed that he crossed himself with his left hand, and asked the Courier: “What is he--a Lutheran or a Protestant?”

The Courier replied: “No, he is neither a Lutheran nor a Protestant, but of the Russian faith.”

“But why does he cross himself with his left hand?”

The Courier said: “He’s left-handed, and does everything with his left hand.”

The Englishmen began to be more amazed than ever, and set to pouring liquor into the left-handed man and the Courier, and thus they went on for three days, and then they said: “Now, that’s enough.”

But they took a symphony of water with airfixe, and having completely freshened themselves up, they began to interrogate the left-handed man; Where and what he had studied, and to what point he was acquainted with arithmetic?

The left-handed man replied: “Our learning is single: we can read the Psalter and the Polusonnik, but we know no arithmetic whatever.”

The Englishmen exchanged glances and said: “This is astounding!”

But the left-handed man replied: “That’s the way with us everywhere.”

“But,” they inquire, “what sort of a book in Russia is that ‘Polusonnik’?”[29]

“That,” says he, “is a book concerned with this--that if there is anything touching on fortune-telling which King David has not clearly set forth in the Psalter, then people are able to divine the completion in the Polusonnik.”

They say: “That’s a pity; ‘t would be better if you knew at least the four ordinary rules of arithmetic,--they would be far more useful to you than the entire Polusonnik. Then you would be able to grasp the fact that in every machine there is a calculation of powers, and although you are very clever with your hands, you have not taken into consideration that such a tiny machine as the nymfozoria is calculated with the most exact accuracy, and that it cannot carry its shoes.”

To that the left-handed man agreed. “As to that,” says he, “there is no dispute--that we have not gone in for science, but only we are faithfully loyal to our Fatherland.”

But the Englishmen say to him; “Stay with us, we will transmit to you great instruction, and you will turn out a wonderful master-expert.”

But to that the left-handed man did not agree: “I have parents at home,” says he.

The Englishmen offered to send his parents money, but the left-handed man would not accept it.

“We,” says he, “are devoted to our country, and my daddy is already an old man, and my mother is an old woman, and they are used to going to church in their own parish, and besides, I should be very lonely all by myself, for I am still in the vocation of a bachelor.”

“You’ll get used to it,” say they,--“accept our law[30] and we will marry you off.”

“That,” replies the left-handed man, “can never be.”

“Why so?”

“Because,” he replies, “our Russian faith is the most correct, and as the ancestors have believed, so, also, should the descendants believe.”

“You do not know our faith,” say the Englishmen; “we hold to the same Christian law and the same Gospels.”

“The Gospels,” replies the left-handed man, “are, indeed, the same among all, but our books are thicker than yours, and our faith is more complete, also.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Because,” he replies, “we possess all the visible proofs.”

“What proofs?”

“These,” says he: “that we have God-sent holy images, and grave-oozing heads,[31] and relics, but you have nothing, and even no extra holidays, nothing beyond Sunday; and for the second reason, even if I were married to an Englishwoman, it would confuse me to live with her.”

“Why so?” they ask. “Do not scorn her--our women also dress very neatly and are good housewives.”

But the left-handed man says: “I don’t know them.”

The Englishmen reply: “That’s not a weighty matter--you can learn to know them: we will arrange a grendezvous for you.”

The left-handed man was abashed. “Why,” says he, “worry the girls vainly?” and he refused. “A grendezvous,” says he, “is a matter for the gentry, and not suitable for such as me, and if folks were to hear of that at home, in Tula, they would ridicule me greatly.”

The Englishmen became curious: “But if you don’t have grendezvous,” say they, “how do you manage in such cases to make a pleasing choice?”

The left-handed man explained to them our position. “With us,” says he, “when a man wishes to display a more particular intention with regard to a girl, he sends the confabulation-woman, and when she makes the proposal, then we go together, very politely, to the house, and we look the girl over, not in secrecy, but in the presence of all her relatives.”

They understood, but answered that they had no confabulation-women, and such a custom was not in practice, but the left-handed man said: “That’s all the more agreeable, because if you are going to occupy yourself with such a matter, it must be with a definite intention, and as I do not feel that towards a foreign nation, then why torment the girls?”

He pleased the Englishmen in these arguments, also, so that they again began to clap him on the shoulders and the knees, with pleasantness, and asked: “We would just like to know, out of mere curiosity: what defect have you observed in our girls, and why do you shun them?”

Thereupon the left-handed man answered them frankly: “I accuse them of no defect, but what does not please me is that their dress sort of flutters about them, and one cannot make out what they have on, and for what purpose; first there is some sort of thing or other, and underneath there’s another pinned on, and on their arms are some sort of leglets or other. Their plush cloak is exactly like an ape--a sapajou.”

The Englishmen burst out laughing and say: “Where’s the objection in that?”

“There’s no objection,” replies the left-handed man, “only I’m afraid it would make me blush to watch and wait while she is getting herself out of all that.”

“Is it possible,” say they, “that your fashion is better?”

“Our fashion,” he replies, “in Tula is simple: every woman wears a roundabout,[32] and even the greatest ladies wear our roundabouts.”

They also showed him to their ladies, and there they poured tea for him, and inquired: “Why do you frown?”

He replies: “Because,” says he, “we are not used to taking it very sweet.”

Then they gave him a lump of sugar to nibble at, in Russian fashion.

They argued with him that it could not be as nice that way, but he said: “To our taste it is more tasty thus.”

In no way could the English disconcert him, or make him feel attracted by their manner of life, and merely succeeded in persuading him to remain their guest for a short time, by promising that during that time they would take him about to divers factories, and show him all their art.

“And then,” said they, “we will take him to his ship, and deliver him alive in Petrograd.”

To this he agreed.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] A very bad rhyme in the original.

[27] Plum-Pudding.

[28] The old gunsmith contrives to say “scandal.”

[29] Literally, “The Half-Dreamer.”

[30] The usual expression for “join our Church.”

[31] In the Catacombs at Kieff are a number of chrism-exuding skulls.

[32] He probably means a garment like the sarafan, composed of many straight breadths gathered into a narrow band at the arm-pits, and suspended by straps over shoulders; or the ancient Russian gown, without gathers, cut with gores from neck to heel. What he manages to say is, that they wear lace gowns--or something approximating that.

XVI

The Englishmen took charge of the left-handed man, but sent the Russian Courier back to Russia. Although the Courier had a rank[33] and was skilled in divers languages, they took no interest in him, but they did find the left-handed man interesting, and set about taking him everywhere and showing him everything.

He inspected all their products, and their metal foundries, and their soap and saw-mills, and all their domestic arrangements pleased him exceedingly, especially those pertaining to the maintenance of the workingman. Every laborer among them is always well fed, clothed not in rags but each in a capable every-day waistcoat, and shod with stout boots with iron caps, so that their feet might never receive any shock from anything. And they work not at haphazard but after training, and understand their business. In front of every one of them hangs a multiplication table, and close by his hand is an erasing-board;[34] whenever an artisan does anything, he looks at the multiplication table, and verifies it with surety, and then writes down one thing on the board and erases another, and brings it into accuracy: what is written in figures turns out just so in fact. And when a holiday comes, they assemble in pairs, each takes a slender rod in his hand, and they go off to enjoy themselves in honorably dignified fashion, as is fitting.

The left-handed man gazed his fill at their manner of life and all their labors, but devoted most attention of all to one object which caused the Englishmen great amazement. He was not so much absorbed in their manner of making new guns as in the condition of the old ones. He kept going about and uttering praises, and saying: “And this, also, we can do.” But when he came across an old gun, he would thrust his finger into the barrel, draw it along the walls, and sigh; “This,” says he, “is incomparably finer than ours.”

The Englishmen could by no means divine what it was that the left-handed man was commenting upon, but he inquired: “Cannot I find out whether our Generals ever beheld this or not?”

They say to him: “Some of them have been over here, and they must have seen it.”

“But how were they,” says he, “with gloves or without gloves?”

“Your Generals,” say they, “are always in full dress; they always go about in gloves, and, of course, they did so here, also.”

The left-handed man said nothing, but all at once he began to get uneasy and bored. He pined, and pined, and said to the Englishmen: “I thank you sincerely for all your hospitality, and I am very content here with you, and all that it was necessary for me to see I have seen, and now I desire to return home as speedily as possible.”

They could by no means detain him longer. It was impossible to let him go home by land, because he did not know all the languages, and it was not good to sail upon the sea, because it was the autumn season, and stormy; but he insisted: “Let me go.”

“We have looked at the buremeter,”[35] they said. “There is going to be a storm--you may be drowned: for this is not like your Gulf of Finland, but this is the regular Dryland Sea.”[36]

“That makes no difference,” he replied: “’t is all the same to me where I die; God’s will be done. But I desire to return to my native land as speedily as may be, because otherwise I may acquire a sort of madness.”

They did not detain him by force; they crammed him with food, rewarded him with money, gave him gifts to remember them by--a golden watch with a repeater[37]--and against the sea chill on his late autumn road they gave him a frieze great-coat, with a weather-hood for his head. They clothed the left-handed man very warmly, and conducted him to a ship which was due to sail for Russia. There they installed the left-handed man in the very best manner, like a real gentleman; but he did not like it, and was ashamed to sit shut up with the other gentle-folk; so he went off to the deck, sat down under the tarpaulin, and asked: “Where is our Russia?”

The Englishman whom he asked pointed or nodded his head in the right direction, and he turned his face thither and gazed impatiently towards his native land.

When they emerged from the harbor into the Dryland Sea, his longing for Russia became so great that it was impossible to soothe him in any way whatever. The dash of the waves became terrible, but still the left-handed man would not go below to the cabin--he sat there under the tarpaulin, pulled up his hood, and gazed towards his Fatherland. Many times did the Englishmen approach to invite him to come below to a warm place; but he, in order that they might not annoy him, even began to fend them off by means of a lie.

“No,” he answered, “I feel better outside--but under cover the rolling of the ship gives me porpoises.”

Thus he never went below the whole time, until a certain occasion, and thereby greatly pleased a certain half-skipper,[38] who, to the misfortune of our left-handed man, was able to speak Russian. This half-skipper could never overcome his amazement that a Russian landlubber could so withstand all rough weather.

“Fine fellow!” says he. “Russian--let’s have a drink!” The left-handed man drank. And the half-skipper says: “Again!”

So the left-handed man drank once more, and they became tipsy.

And the half-skipper questions him: “What secret are you carrying from our kingdom to Russia?”

The left-handed man replies: “That is my affair.”

“If that is so,” replies the half-skipper, “then let’s make a bet after the English fashion.”

The left-handed man asks: “What sort of a bet?”

“This sort: That neither of us shall drink anything alone, but always together, evenly; what one drinks, that the other also must drink, without fail, and the one who outdrinks the other wins.”

The left-handed man reflects: “The sky is clouded, my belly is swelling; I am greatly bored; the way is long, and my native land is not visible beyond the waves; ‘t will be more merry to make this wager.”

“Good,” says he; “done!”

“Only, it must be on honor.”

“Don’t bother yourself on that score.”

So they agreed, and shook hands on it.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Evidently, an Imperial Messenger.

[34] Apparently, a slate. The point is, that Russians still perform all their calculations on the ancient abacus, with marvellous rapidity, and look upon pen-and-paper or slate-and-pencil as a slow, cumbrous process.

[35] By this twist of pronunciation the word becomes “storm-meter.”

[36] The North Sea. The Mediterranean, literally translated, is “Sredizemnoe”--Midland. Therefore the old gunsmith twists this into “Tverdezemnoe.”

[37] The old gunsmith uses a word which sounds fairly right, but means “a disturber.”

[38] By substituting an l for a d the old gunsmith turns “under-skipper” into “half-skipper.”

XVII

Their wager began on the Dryland Sea, and they drank until they came to Dunamund on the Gulf of Riga, but they always kept even, and did not yield to each other; and they kept so accurately even that when one of them, gazing at the sea, beheld an imp crawling out of the water, the same thing instantly revealed itself to the other. Only, the half-skipper beheld a red-headed imp, whereas the left-handed man declared that he was as swarthy as a Moor.

The left-handed man said: “Cross yourself and turn away--here is a friend from the Abyss;” and the Englishman disputed, and declared that it was a “sea-puss.”

“If you like,” says he, “I’ll toss you into the sea, and be not afraid--it will give you back to me immediately.”

And the left-handed man replied: “If that is so, then throw me.”

The half-skipper took him by the slack of the breeches, and carried him to the rail.

The sailors saw this, stopped them, and reported to the Captain, and he ordered them both to be locked up downstairs, and that they should be given rum and liquor and cold food, so that they might eat and drink and carry out their wager; but hot studing with fire[39] was not to be given to them because it might set fire to the spirits inside them.

And thus they were brought, in confinement, to Petrograd, and neither had won the wager from the other; and there they were placed on separate carts, and the Englishman was carried to the house of the Ambassador, on the English Quay, while the left-handed man was taken to the police station.

And from that time on their fates began to differ greatly.

FOOTNOTE:

[39] “Studen” means “cold.” The gunsmith converts it into hot plum-pudding with blazing brandy.

XVIII

When the Englishman was brought to the Embassy, they immediately summoned to him a medical man and an apothecary. The medical man ordered him to be placed in a warm bath, while the apothecary instantly rolled a gutta-percha pill, and thrust it into his mouth, and then they took hold of him, and laid him on a feather-bed and covered him with a fur coat, and left him to sweat; and that no one might disturb him, orders were issued throughout the whole Embassy that no one should dare so much as to sneeze. The medical man and the apothecary waited until the half-skipper had fallen asleep, and then they prepared another gutta-percha pill for him, laid it on a small table by the head of his bed, and went away.

But the left-handed man was tumbled down on the floor of the police station, and asked: “Who are you, and whence come you, and have you a passport or any other tugament?”

But he, from illness, drinking, and the long pitching on the ship, had grown so weak that he answered not a word, but only groaned.

Then they immediately searched him, took his motley garment off of him, and seized his money and his repeater-watch, and the Inspector ordered that he be taken, gratis, to the hospital, by the first cabman who happened along.[40]

A policeman led the left-handed man out to place him in a sledge, but for a long time he could not catch one, because cabmen shun the police. And all this time the left-handed man lay on the cold pavement; then the policeman caught a sledge, only without a warm laprobe, because on such occasions cabmen hide their laprobes in the sledges under them, in order that the policeman’s feet may get chilled the more quickly. So they carried the left-handed man uncovered, and when they began to shift him from one sledge to another they kept dropping him, and when they picked him up they tweaked his ears to bring him to his senses. They carried him to one hospital, but there they would not take him in because he had no tugament. They carried him to another, and there, also, they would not receive him, and so, also, at a third, and a fourth; they dragged him about until morning dawned, through all the most tangled and distant ways, and kept shifting him incessantly, so that they completely wore him out. Then one assistant medical man told the policeman to take him to the Obukhoff hospital for common people, where they receive all people of unknown rank to die.

There they ordered a receipt to be given, and the left-handed man to be set upon the floor in the corridor until he should be examined.

But at the same hour on the following day, the English half-skipper rose, swallowed the second gutta-percha pill, ate a light breakfast of chicken and rice, drank airfixe, and said: “Where is my Russian comrade? I will go and seek him.”

He dressed himself and sallied forth.

FOOTNOTE:

[40] Policemen have the right to use cabs thus, gratis, for the transportation of intoxicated persons, each cabman being obliged to convey him to the boundary of that particular police district; after which, he is trans-shipped to another reluctant cabman; and so on.

XIX

By some wonderful means the half-skipper found the left-handed man rather speedily, only they had not yet put him to bed, but he still lay on the floor of the corridor and complained to the Englishman: “I must say a couple of words to the Emperor without fail.”

The Englishman hastened to Count Kleinmichel and made a row: “How can they treat him so? He has a human soul,” says he, “even if he has only a sheepskin coat.”

For this bit of reasoning they immediately chased the Englishman away,--because he had dared to mention the human soul. And then some one said to him: “You had better go to Cossack Platoff--he has simple feelings.”

The Englishman got at Platoff, who was now reclining on his couch once more. Platoff listened to him and recalled the left-handed man.

“Certainly, my friend,” says he, “I am very intimately acquainted with him--I have even tweaked him by the hair--only I know not how I can assist him in his present unhappy plight, because I am now entirely out of the service and have received full pension, so they no longer respect me; but do you run quickly to Commandant Skobeleff; he is in power, and also experienced in this sort of thing--he will do something.”

And the half-skipper went to Skobeleff, and told him everything; what the left-handed man’s illness was, and how he had contracted it. Says Skobeleff: “I understand this complaint, only the Germans cannot cure it; but some sort of a doctor of the ecclesiastical vocation is needed here, because those fellows have been reared on such examples, and they can give aid. I will immediately send thither the Russian doctor, Martyn-Solsky.”

But when Martyn-Solsky arrived, the left-handed man was breathing his last, because he had cracked his neck on the pavement, and could utter intelligibly only these words: “Tell the Emperor that the English do not clean their guns with brick-dust. Let them not clean their guns so among us; otherwise--God preserve us from war--they will not be fit to fire.” And with this assurance the left-handed man crossed himself and died.

Then Martyn-Solsky immediately went and reported this to Count Tchernyscheff in order that he might announce it to the Emperor. But Count Tchernyscheff shouted at him: “Stick to your emetics and cathartics and don’t meddle in what is none of your business--we have Generals in Russia to attend to that!”

And so they did not tell the Emperor, and this mode of cleaning continued down to the very date of the Crimean campaign. At that time, when they began to load their guns the bullets rattled about in them, because they had been cleaned with brick-dust. Then Martyn-Solsky reminded Count Tchernyscheff of the left-handed man, and Count Tchernyscheff said: “Go to the devil, you windbag! Don’t meddle with what does not concern you, or I’ll deny that I ever heard anything about this from you--and won’t you just catch it!”

Martyn-Solsky reflected: “He actually will deny it,” and so he held his tongue.

But if he had reported the left-handed man’s words to the Emperor in season, the war with the enemy in the Crimea would have taken quite a different turn.

XX

And now all this is “a matter of bygone days” and “traditions of the olden times,” albeit they are not so very ancient. But there is no need to make haste to forget these traditions, in spite of the fabulous style of the legend, and the epic character of its principal hero. The actual name of that hero, like the names of many of the greatest geniuses, is forever lost to posterity; but, considered as a myth personified by popular fancy, it is interesting, and his deeds may serve as a memorial of the epoch of which the general spirit has been faithfully and accurately caught.

Of course, there are no longer any such master-workmen in Tula as this fabulous, left-handed man; machines have evened up the inequalities of talents and gifts, and genius is not eager to struggle against industry and accuracy. Machines, while favorable to a rise in wages, are not favorable to artistic enterprise, which formerly exceeded measure, inspiring the popular fancy to the fabrication of legends similar to the one in hand.

Workmen, naturally, understand how to prize the benefits which have accrued to them from the practical adjustments of mechanical science, but they allude to the days that are past with pride and affection. This is their epos, and it has, moreover, a great deal of the “human soul” about it.

Three hundred copies were printed by D. B. Updike, at The Merrymount Press, Boston, in October, 1916, of which this is Number 66.

End of Project Gutenberg’s The Steel Flea, by Nikolai Semyonovitch Lyeskoff