The Podzatylkins’ daughter is remarkable by virtue of being completely unremarkable. Since no one has ever seen or heard any evidence of her intellect, let’s not talk about it. Her looks are as plain as can be: her papa’s nose, her mama’s chin, feline eyes, mediocre bust. She plays the piano, though she can’t read music. She helps her mama in the kitchen, wears a corset, hates Lenten fare, and considers correct spelling to be the alpha and omega of all wisdom. More than anything, she loves tall men and the name Roland.

  Nazariev is a man of average height. His face is pallid and expressionless, his hair is curly, and the back of his head is flat. He works somewhere or other and makes a pittance—barely enough to cover his tobacco. He always smells of egg soap and carbolic disinfectant, fancies himself a real ladies’ man, talks loudly, and is perpetually expressing surprise. When he talks, spittle splatters. He dresses foppishly, looks down on his parents, and tells every girl, “You’re much too naive! Why don’t you read some literature!” More than anything, he loves his own handwriting, Amusement Magazine,* squeaky boots, and, most of all, himself, particularly when he is surrounded by girls, drinking sweet tea, and vehemently denying the existence of the devil.

  Such are the betrothed!

  The morning after the betrothal, the Podzatylkins’ daughter rose from her slumbers and was told by the cook to pay a visit to her mama. Her mother, still in bed, delivered the following reprimand: “A wool dress? Why on earth did you deck yourself out in that? Couldn’t you have worn the plain cotton one? My head is killing me! Yesterday that ugly balding nitwit—your father, I mean—decided to play the joker. As if I needed that! He handed me a shot glass. ‘Drink up!’ he says. I thought that it was wine, but instead it was vinegar and herring oil. Some joke, the drunken slobbering nitwit! All he ever does is humiliate people! I’m shocked, I’m amazed you were so cheerful yesterday. You didn’t weep once! What was there to be so happy about? You found some money you lost? Astonishing! Everyone must have thought that you are happy to be leaving your parents. That’s how it looks. What? Love? What love? You’re not marrying for love, you’re marrying a collegiate assessor. It’s his rank you’re after! Isn’t that the truth? Of course, it is. As for me, my dear, I don’t much care for your intended. He’s stuck-up; he’s conceited. You should put him in his place. Whaaat? Don’t even think of it! In a month you’d be hammering at each other with your fists. He’s the sort and so are you. Unmarried girls are crazy to get married, but they’re the only ones, because it’s no good at all. I’m married, I should know. Give it time and you’ll see for yourself. Don’t fidget—my head is spinning as it is. Men are fools. It’s awful living with them. Your intended is another fool, for all the airs he puts on. Don’t pay much attention to what he says, don’t just do what he tells you to, and don’t go out of your way to show him respect. What’s to respect? No matter what comes up, always ask me first. Just as soon as anything happens, come to me. God forbid that you do anything without consulting your mother first! A husband’s never going to give you sound or sensible advice. He’s just going to do whatever suits him best. Remember that! Don’t listen to your father either. Don’t let him visit; be careful! Don’t be a ninny and blurt out an invitation. As it is, he’s trying to squeeze everything he can out of you. He’ll want to come and spend whole days at your place. Why would the two of you want that? He’ll just mooch vodka and smoke your husband’s tobacco. He may be your father, but he’s an obnoxious beast for all that. The stinker wears a kind face but he’s got a vicious soul. Don’t lend him money, even if he asks. He’s a crook, even if he does go by the name of titular councillor. And there he goes, yelling, wanting you! Go, but don’t say a word about all this. Otherwise he’ll tear right into me, that Cain. I hope he swells up till he can’t move! Go to him. My heart’s in my throat! You’re all my enemies! When I’m dead and gone, you’ll remember I warned you, not till then. Tormentors!”

  The daughter left her mother and set off to see her father, who was sitting on his bed and sprinkling his pillow with Persian powder against bedbugs.

  “My child!” said her father. “How pleased I am to see you engaged to a clever man like Nazariev. I’m really very pleased. I entirely approve of this match. Marry, my daughter, without fear. Marriage is such a solemn thing that . . . well, what can I say? Go forth, be fruitful and multiply. The Good Lord will bless you. I—I weep. Then again, tears are meaningless. What are man’s tears? Merely an expression of man’s enfeebled psychology! Heed what I say, my daughter! Do not forget your parents! Your husband won’t treat you better than your own parents do—he won’t. Husbands only care about your looks. We—we love you for yourself. What does your husband love? Your personality? Your kindness? Your tender feelings? None of that! He loves your dowry. An even one thousand rubles, that’s what we’re giving him, dearie, and that’s not chump change! You can see that! Nazariev is a good man, but don’t show him any more respect than you do your father. Oh, he’ll cleave unto you, I’m sure, but that doesn’t make him your friend. There’ll be a time when . . . Wait, no, mum’s the word about that, my child. Hear your mother out, sweetie, but be careful. She’s nice enough, but no less of a double-dealing, flighty, namby-pambyish unbeliever for all that. Oh, she’s noble and she’s honest, and—oh, the hell with her! Her advice can’t compare to that of your father, the very author of your being. Don’t let her move in with you. Husbands don’t take to mothers-in-law. I didn’t take to my mother-in-law. I detested her so much that I put burnt cork in her coffee. Now that was a hoot! Sublieutenant Ziumbumbunchikov sued his mother-in-law in military court. Remember that? Oh wait, you weren’t born yet. Anyway, a father comes first—always! Remember that and mind what I say. Don’t listen to anyone else. And, my daughter . . . European civilization got women thinking that the more children a woman has, the worse for her. How wrong! It’s a lie! The more children, the merrier! No, wait! It’s just the opposite! My mistake, sweetie. Less children—that’s what it is. I read it in some journal the other day—something someone named Malthus came up with. So there you go. A man just rode up. Well, if it isn’t your groom! Oh, he’s got style, that little rascal, that scoundrel! What a man! A regular Walter Scott! Go ahead, go entertain him, while I dress.”

  Nazariev arrived and the bride greeted him. “Sit down,” she said, “there’s no need to stand on ceremony!”

  Nazariev clicked his heels twice and sat down beside his bride.

  “So how are you doing?” he said with a bold air. “How’d you sleep? You know, I didn’t sleep all night. I was reading Zola. I was dreaming of you. Have you read Zola? You haven’t? Really? But that’s criminal! An acquaintance of mine, a civil servant, loaned me some Zola. Such ravishing writing! I’ll lend it to you. Oh, but these feelings I feel! If you only knew what I feel—feelings such as you have never felt in your life! Let me kiss you!”

  And rising from his seat, Nazariev gave a little peck to the Podzatylkins’ daughter’s lower lip.

  “And your folks—where are they?” he asked even more boldly. “I must see them. Frankly, I’m a bit put out. They’ve pulled one over on me. Listen. Your father told me that he was a court councillor and now it turns out he’s only a titular councillor. How do you like that? Another thing: They promised one-and-a-half thousand rubles, then yesterday your mother says not a kopeck over a thousand. What kind of a dirty trick is that? Even the bloodthirsty Circassians wouldn’t stoop to that! Nobody’s going to swindle me! You can do what you want, but don’t trifle with either my pride or my humbleness! It’s indecent! It’s irrational! I’m an honest man and I don’t like crooks! The way I see it, you can do what you want, just don’t act shifty, don’t be underhanded, show some good faith. That’s right! And they’re ignorant! You can see it in their faces! What kind of a look is that? Those aren’t faces! Forgive me—they don’t seem like family to me. No! Once we’re married, we’ll bring them to heel. Bullying, barbaric! I won’t stand for it. I’m not an unbeliever of the cynical sort, but I know a thing or two about education. We’ll bring them to heel! My parents don’t dare say boo to me, and they haven’t for a long time now. Listen, have you had coffee yet? No? Well, let’s have some. And fetch me a cigarette—I forgot my tobacco at home.”

  The bride left the room.

  That was before the wedding. You don’t need to be a prophet to figure out what happens after.

  * A cheap, low-quality sparkling wine, produced by the company of N. Lanin and sold as genuine champagne.

  † “Oh what times! Oh what customs!” (Latin)

  ‡ “Long live the future good spouses!” (Latin)

  * A weekly humor magazine (Razvlechenie) published in Moscow.

  A LETTER TO A LEARNED NEIGHBOR

  The Village of Eaten-Pancakes

  DEAREST NEIGHBOR,

  Maxim . . . (can’t recall your patronymic . . . forgive me kindly!) Forgive and pardon me, an old fogy and ridiculous human soul, that I dare pester you with my pathetic epistolary blathering. A whole year has gone by since it pleased you to settle in our corner of the world, neighboring me, an insignificant nobody, and I still am not acquainted with you, and still you aren’t acquainted with me, pathetic flittering insect that I am. Allow me then, precious neighbor, if only by means of these senile hieroglyphicated scribblings, to introduce myself to you, mentally to shake your learned hand, and to congratulate you on your arrival from St. Petersburg to our unworthy land, inhabited by muzhiks and peasant folk, that is to say, the plebeian element. I have long sought an occasion to make your acquaintance, I yearned for it, because science is, in a manner of speaking, the mother of us all, just the same as civileezation, and also because I have a heartfelt respect for those people whose famed names and titles have been crowned with the gloriosity of public renown, laurels, cymbals, medals, decoration ribbons, and endorsements, and resound like thunder and lightning in all the corners of this inhabited world both visible and invisible, that is to say, sublunary. I passionately admire astronomers, poets, metaphysicians, privatdozents, chemists, and other votaries of the sciences, among which you are to be numbered due to your employment of clever facts and your familiarity with the various branches of the sciences, that is to say, with their outcomes and fruitions. I have heard that you have published many books during the time of your mental sedentarizing amid glass tubing, thermometers, and stacks of foreign books with titillating pictures. Recently, my neighbor Gerasimov visited me in my humble abode, amid my ruins and wreckage, and with characteristic fanaticism berated and castigated your thoughts and ideas concerning human origin and other phenomena of the visible world, and mutinied and railed against your mental sphere and your cerebral horizon bedecked with loominaries and aerolites. I disagree with Gerasimov concerning your learned ideas, because I live for and am nurtured by science alone, which providence has given to the human race so that it could plumb the depths of the world seen and unseen for precious metals, metalloids, and diamonds, but still, my dear, you will have to forgive me, an insect barely visible, if I have the audacity to contradict, in my doddering way, some of your ideas concerning the essence of nature. Gerasimov informed me that you have composed a treatize in which it pleased you to express some rather unsubstantiated ideas about mankind’s primal condition and antediluvian existence. It pleased you to pen that man has descended from the apish tribes of monkeys, orangutans, and so forth. Forgive me, an old man, but I disagree with you on this important point and can even provide you with some pause for thought here. For if man, the ruler of the world, the smartest of all breathing creatures, descended from the stupid and ignorant ape, then he would have a tail and a beastly voice. If we had descended from apes, then in present times the Gypsies would be taking us around to various towns and we would be paying money to be exhibited to each other, dancing at the command of the Gypsy or sitting in a cage at the zoo. Are we covered with fur all over? Are we not wearing clothing, which the apes lack? Could we feel any love for woman rather than contempt, if she smelled even a bit like the monkey that we see every Tuesday at the house of the Marshal of Nobility? If our progenitors have descended from apes they wouldn’t have been buried at Christian cemeteries; for instance, my great-great-grandfather Ambrosius who lived in days of yore in the Kingdom of Poland was interred not as an ape but beside the Catholic abbot Joakim Shostak, whose writings regarding temperate climate and the intemperate use of alcoholic drinks are preserved to this day by my brother Ivan (the major). An abbot means a Catholic priest. Forgive me, a know-nothing, that I interfere in your learned business, interpret it in my own senile way, and thrust upon you my half-baked and garish ideas that are more likely to be found in the stomachs of learned and civilized people than in their heads. But I cannot stomach it in silence when scientists reason incorrectly, and so cannot but contradict you. Gerasimov informed me that you reason incorrectly about the night’s loominary, that is, the moon, which replaces the sun for us during the hours of darkness, when people sleep, while you are conducting electricity from place to place and fantasizing. Do not laugh at an old man for writing so foolishly. You write that the moon, that is to say, the crescent, is inhabited and settled by peoples and tribes. That could never be, because if people were living on the moon, they would have blocked from us its magical and enchanting light by their houses and ample pastures. People cannot live without rain, and rain falls downward toward the earth and not upward toward the moon. Filth and garbage would pour down upon our land from such an inhabited moon. Could people live on the moon if it exists only during the night and disappears during the day? Also, governments could never allow people to live on the moon because, due to reasons of great distance and inaccessibility, it would be very easy to hide there in order to evade compulsory military service. You are a little mistaken about all this. Gerasimov told me that you have composed and published a learned treatize, where you write that on the greatest of all loominaries, the sun, there are little black spots. Such a thing cannot be, because it could never be. How could you see these spots on the sun, if you cannot look at the sun with the plain human eye, and what are these spots for, if you can make do without them? From which wet substance are these spots made if they do not burn up? Maybe fish also live on the sun, according to you? Forgive me, the noxious weed that I am, this stupid witticism! I am terribly loyal to science! The ruble, that sail of the nineteenth century, has no hold upon me; in my eyes, science has outraced it upon its vaster wings. Every discovery torments me like a sharp nail hammered into my back. I may be an ignoramus and an old-fashioned landowner, but despite that, the old rascal that I am, I still busy myself with science and discoveries, which I effect with my own two hands as I fill my senseless noggin, my uncultivated scull, with thoughts and an array of the greatest scientific knowledge. Mother Nature is a book that must be read and observed. I have enacted many discoveries with my own brain, such discoveries that not a single reformer has yet managed to invent. I can say without boasting that I am not the last in line when it comes to learnedness obtained by sweat and tears and not by the wealth of parents, that is to say, mothers and fathers or guardians, who often bring their children to ruin by means of wealth, luxury, and six-story mansions filled with slaves and electric bells. Here is what my worthless brain discovered. I discovered that our great fiery loominous chlamys, the sun, shimmers entertainingly and picturesquely with multicolored hues once a year, early in the morning, in such a way as to produce a playful impression by its splendid glimmering. Here is another discovery of mine: Why is it that in the winter the day is short and the night is long, and in the summer the reverse? In the winter the day is short because, akin to other objects visible and invisible, it shrinks from the cold as the sun sets early, while the night expands from the illumination of lighting fixtures and streetlamps because it warms up thereby. Then I also discovered that dogs eat grass in the spring, like sheep, and that coffee is unwholesome for sanguine people because it brings on light-headedness, bleary eyes, and other suchlike things. I have made many discoveries besides these, even though I have neither award certificates nor diplomas to show for it. Really, dearest neighbor, why don’t you just come and visit? We’ll discover something together, get busy with some literature, and you can teach rotten little me some calculations or other.

  I have recently read a French scientist who writes that the lion’s face does not at all resemble a human countenance, though that is what scientists think. We can discuss that as well. Come and visit, do me the loving-kindness. Tomorrow’s good, for example. We’re keeping Lent, but for you we’ll make meat and dairy. My daughter Natasha is asking you to bring some clever books along. She is all emanseepated and thinks that everyone is stupid and she is the only smart one. Young people nowadays, I tell you, know how to make themselves heard. God help them! In a week’s time, my brother Ivan (the major) is coming to visit; he’s a good man but, between the two of us, he’s a lout who doesn’t like science. This letter should be delivered to you by my steward Trofim exactly at eight this evening. If he brings it later than that, give him a couple of good slaps across the face, professorial-style, because his kind can’t be handled with kid gloves. If he delivers it later than that, it means he detoured to the drinking house, the cussed oaf. The custom of visiting neighbors has not been invented by us and will not end with us, which is why you must come to visit with all your gadgets and books. I would have visited you myself, but I am very bashful and lack nerve. Pardon me, the sorry wretch, for disturbing you.

  I remain, respectfully yours, the retired noncommissioned officer of the Don Cossack Host, member of the nobility, your neighbor,

 

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