spite in the
collectivised fields, giving his above-mentioned arm no rest. Every year he
does the equivalent of not less than four hundred work-day units.
"The collective farm management together with the chairman of the
village Soviet affirms that, being a pre-revolutionary and uneducated old
man, he transplanted the said tung tree to the site of his fictitious grave
by mistake, for which he will be fined in accordance with collective farm
regulations. The management of the collective farm affirms that the
transplantation of tung trees from collective farm plantations to the
communal cemetery and particularly to home allotments has never been
practised on a mass scale and is in the nature of an individual lapse of
consciousness.
"The collective farm management affirms that old man Shchaaban Larba,
otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has never poured scorn on collective farm
affairs but in accordance with his gay and peppery character (Abkhazian
pepper) has poured scorn on certain individuals, which include quite a few
parasites of the collective farm fields, who are heroes in quotation marks
and advanced workers, without quotation marks, on their own home allotments.
But we have been eradicating such heroes and advanced workers and shall
continue to do so in accordance with the collective farm regulations up to
and including expulsion from the collective farm and confiscation of home
allotments.
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, thanks to his inborn folk talent, mimics
the local cocks, in the course of which he exposes the most harmful Moslem
customs of olden times and also entertains the collective farmers without
interrupting work in the fields."
The statement was signed and sealed by the chairman of the collective
farm and the chairman of the village Soviet.
When the work was done, the guests went out on to the veranda, where
farewell glasses of Isabella were drunk and the comrade from the district
centre passed a hint through one of the members of the management board that
he would not be averse to listening to Crooked Arm mimicking the cocks.
Crooked Arm did not have to be asked twice. He raised his immortal hand to
his mouth and gave such a cock-a-doodle-doo that all the cocks in the
vicinity broke loose like dogs from the chain. Only the host's cock, before
whose very eyes the whole deception took place, was at first struck dumb
with indignation, and then burst into such a fit of crowing that it had to
be chased out of the yard on to the vegetable patch because it offended the
ear of the comrade from the district centre and prevented him from making
himself heard.
"Does it work on all cocks or only on the local ones?" the comrade from
the district centre asked, having waited for the cock to be chased out of
hearing.
"On all of them," Crooked Arm replied readily. "Try it out anywhere you
like."
"A real folk artist," said the comrade from the district centre, and
everyone started saying goodbye to Uncle Meksut, who accompanied them to the
gate and a little further.
The chairman of the collective farm carried out to the letter what had
been promised in the statement. He fined Crooked Arm twenty work-day units.
In addition, he ordered him to move the tung tree back to the plantation and
to fill in the grave forever as a precaution against accidents to cattle.
Crooked Arm dug up the tree and moved it to the plantation, but its
sufferings had been too great and it declined into a half-withered state.
"Like my arm," said Crooked Arm. But he managed to defend his grave by
surrounding it with a rather handsome stake fence with a gate and a latch.
After the business of the anonymous letter had died down Crooked Arm's
relative once again, through an intermediary, cautiously reminded him about
the calf.
Crooked Arm replied that he couldn't be bothered with the calf just now
because he had been disgraced and slandered, and was busy day and night
looking for the slanderer and even took his gun with him to work. He would
know no peace until he had driven the slanderer into his grave and would not
even grudge him his own grave if he was not too big for it. Finally, he
wanted his relative to keep his ear to the ground and his eyes peeled so
that at the slightest suspicion he could give Crooked Arm the signal and
Crooked Arm would know what to do. Only when he had fulfilled his Manly Duty
would he be able to settle the business of the calf and other minor
misunderstandings that were quite natural between relatives.
After that, they say, the relative fell silent altogether and never
mentioned the calf again and tried to keep out of Crooked Arm's way. None
the less they did run into one another at a celebration of some kind. It was
late at night and Crooked Arm had plenty of drink inside him, and during the
performance of a drinking song that allowed of some improvisation, he
started repeating the same couplet over and over again:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
Who sold his kinsman for a calf...
He went on singing without looking in the direction of his relative,
with the result that the latter gradually became sober and in the end,
unable to bear it any longer, asked Crooked Arm across the table:
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing," Crooked Arm replied, and looked at him as though taking his
measurements, "just singing."
"Yes, but it's a funny kind of song," said the relative.
"In our village," Crooked Arm explained to him, "everyone sings it
except one man."
"What man?" the relative asked.
"Guess," Crooked Arm suggested.
"I wouldn't even try," the relative said hastily.
"Then I'll tell you," Crooked Arm threatened.
"Go on, then!" the relative challenged recklessly.
"The chairman of the village Soviet," declared Crooked Arm.
"Why doesn't he sing it?" the relative asked pointblank.
"He's not allowed to drop hints," Crooked Arm explained.
"Can you prove anything?" the relative asked.
"No, I can't, so for the time being I'm just singing," said Crooked Arm
and once again surveyed the relative, as though taking his measurements.
By this time they had attracted the anxious attention of their host,
who did not want them to spoil the feast he was giving to celebrate the
decoration of his son with the Order of the Red Banner.
Again someone struck up the song and everyone sang, and Crooked Arm
sang with the others without any particular variations because he felt the
host's eye upon him. But when the host relaxed, Crooked Arm seized his
chance, and invented another line:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
With a fence the dear one is protected...
But the host did hear him nevertheless and came over to the two men
with a horn full of wine.
"Crooked Arm!" he cried. "Swear by our sons who are shedding their
blood in the country's defence that you will be forever reconciled at this
table."
"I've forgotten about the calf," the relative said.
"And high time you did," Crooked Arm corrected him, then turned to the
host: "For the sake of our children I'd eat dirt--be it as you wish, Amen!"
And he threw back his head and drank a litre horn of wine in a single
draught, leaning further and further back to the accompaniment of a general
chorus helping him to drink: "Uro, uro, uro, u-r-o-o..."
Then the whole table again burst into song and the relative, so they
say, waited anxiously to see how he would sing the passage that could be
improvised. And when Crooked Arm sang:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
O heroes, advancing under fire...
the relative listened intently for a few seconds, considering the words
from all points of view, and finally, having decided that he bore no
resemblance whatever to a hero advancing under fire, felt entirely relieved
and joined in the singing.
In the autumn we gathered a rich harvest from our allotment and
returned to town with maize, pumpkins, nuts and an enormous quantity of
dried fruit. In addition, we had laid in a store of about twenty bottles of
bekmez, fruit honey, in this case, made of apples.
We had struck a bargain with one of the workteam leaders on the farm
that we would pick the apples in an old orchard, giving half the harvest to
the farm and keeping the other half for ourselves.
Because of the shortage of labour at the farm there was simply no one
to pick the apples; everyone was busy with the main crops--tea, tobacco and
tung.
Having obtained permission to pick the apples, mother in her turn
struck a bargain with three soldiers in a pioneer battalion stationed close
by that they would help us to pick, crush and boil the bekmez out of the
apples and in exchange receive half of our half of the harvest.
In a week the operation was brilliantly completed. We acquired twenty
bottles of thick golden bekmez (clear profit), which provided us with a
substitute for sugar for the whole of the next winter.
Thus, having given everyone a splendid lesson in commercial enterprise,
we left the collective farm and Crooked Arm's voice faded away into the
distance.
___
Many years later, during a hunting trip I again found myself in that
village.
While waiting for a passing lorry to give me a lift, I stood outside
the management office in the shade of the same old mulberry tree. It was a
hot August day. I looked at the deserted school building, at the school yard
covered with succulent grass, grass of oblivion for me, at the eucalyptus
trees that we had once planted, at the old gymnastics bar which we used to
make a dash for every break between lessons, and with a traditional sense of
sorrow I breathed the fragrance of years gone by.
Occasional passers-by greeted me as everyone does in the country, but
none of them recognised me, nor I them. A girl came out of the office
carrying two water bottles, lazily let the bucket down the well and filled
it. Slowly she wound the bucket up again and started filling both bottles at
once, splashing water over them as though taking a delight in the sudden
abundance of cool. Then she tipped out the rest of the water on the grass
and walked lazily back to the office, carrying the wet bottles.
When she mounted the steps and went in through the door I heard the
wave of voices rise to meet her, and suddenly subside as the door closed. A
feeling came over me that this had all happened before.
A lad wearing a jacket and with one leg of his trousers rolled up, rode
past me on a rustily squeaking bicycle, then turned round, his thoughts
still riveted on something else, and rode up to me to ask for a light.
He had two large loaves of bread tied to his carrier. I gave him a
light and asked him if he knew Yashka, the grandson of Crooked Arm.
"Of course, I do," he replied. "Yashka the postman. Just wait here.
He'll soon be coming along on his motorbike."
I started watching the road and quite soon I did hear the chugging of a
motor-cycle. I recognised Yashka only because I was expecting him. On his
lightweight mount he looked like Gulliver on a children's bicycle.
"Yashka!" I shouted. He looked in my direction and the motor-cycle came
to a startled halt, then he seemed to press it down into the earth and the
engine gave up altogether.
Yashka wheeled the bike out from under him. We walked away from the
road and in about fifteen minutes were lying in dense fern thickets.
A big, burly fellow, with a lazy smile on his face, he lay beside me,
still very much like the Yashka who used to sit behind his grandfather on
horseback and gaze absent-mindedly around him. Until a short while ago,
apparently, he had been one of the farm's team-leaders but he had slipped up
somewhere and had now been given the job of postman. He told me this with
the same lazy smile. Even at school it had been obvious that ambition was
not one of his weaknesses.
His grandfather, it seems, had expended the whole supply of family
frenzy himself, so that there just was nothing left for Yashka to work
himself into a frenzy with. What difference did it make whether he was a
team-leader or a postman, a postman or a team-leader? His voice, however,
seemed as deep and powerful as his grandfather's, but without those choking
high notes. I asked him, of course, about his grandfather.
"You mean to say you never heard?" Yashka asked in surprise, and stared
at me with his big round eyes.
"Heard what?" I asked.
"But everyone knows about that affair. Where have you been?"
"In Moscow," I said.
"Ah, so it hasn't got to Moscow," Yashka drawled, expressing his
respect for the distance between Abkhazia and Moscow; if a story like that
had not reached Moscow yet, it really must be a very long way.
Yashka raked in some more fern and packed it under him, settled his
head more comfortably on his postman's bag and told me about his
indefatigable grandfather's last adventure. I heard the story later from
several other people, but the first person to tell me was Yashka.
I was still marvelling at this, the final mighty splash of Old Crooked
Arm's imagination, when all of a sudden...
"Zhuzhuna! Zhuzhuna!" Yashka called out without so much as a pause
after his story, and not even raising his head from the ground.
"What's the matter?" a girl's voice responded from somewhere. I raised
myself on my elbow and looked round. Beyond the fern thickets there was a
small beech grove. Through the trees I made out a fence and, beyond that, a
field of maize. The voice had come from there.
"There's a letter for you, Zhuzhuna! A letter!" Yashka called again,
and winked at me.
"Are you making it up?" I whispered.
Yashka nodded joyfully and listened. The hushed grasshoppers cautiously
began buzzing to each other again.
"Humbug!" the girl's voice rang out at last, and I sensed that the
postman's ruse had flushed the hind.
"Hurry up, Zhuzhuna, hurry, or I'll be gone!" Yashka called
delightedly, intoxicated either with the sound of his own voice or by the
sound of the girl's name.
I realised it was time for me to go and began to say goodbye. Still
listening for a reply, Yashka urged me to stay the night but I refused; both
because I was in a hurry and because, if I did so, I would offend my own
folk, whom I had not been to see. I knew that if I stayed the night there
would be no hunting trip for me, because it would take me another two days
to recover.
As I made my way up the path to the road I again heard the girl's
voice; now it sounded more distinct.
"Tell me who it's from--then I'll come!" she was calling invitingly.
"Come, and then I'll tell you, Zhuzhuna, Zhuzhuna!" floated back on the
hot August air for the last time, and with a vague sense of melancholy or,
to put it more plainly, envy, I stepped out into the deserted village
street.
Well, anyway, I thought, Old Crooked Arm's traditions are not dying
out. Half an hour later I left the village and have not been there since;
but I still hope to go and pay our folk a visit, if only to find out where
Yashka's shouts got him with his Zhuzhuna.
___
I will tell Crooked Arm's last adventure as I now have it in my head.
Crooked Arm had lived to see the end of the war and the return of his
son and had gone on living splendidly until quite recently. But a year or so
ago, the time had come for him to die, and this time it was the real thing.
That day he was, as usual, lying on the veranda of his house and
watching his horse grazing in the yard when Mustafa rode up. Mustafa
dismounted and walked up the steps on to the veranda. A chair was brought
out for him and he sat down beside Crooked Arm. As usual, they recalled
times gone by. Crooked Arm would lapse for an instant into forgetfulness or
doze, but as soon as he awoke he would always resume from exactly where he
had left off.
"So you're really leaving us?" Mustafa asked, with a sharp glance at
his friend and rival.
"Yes, I am," Crooked Arm replied. "I'll soon be bathing the other
world's horses in the other world's rivers."
"We'll all be there one day," Mustafa sighed politely. "But I didn't
think you'd be the first."
"There were other times when you didn't think I'd be first, at the
races," Crooked Arm said so clearly that the relatives waiting at his
bedside all heard him and even had a little laugh, although they concealed
it with their hands, because it was not quite appropriate to laugh in the
presence of a dying man, even if that man happened to be Crooked Arm.
Mustafa felt slighted, but it would have been impolite to argue,
because the man was dying. And yet, it was somehow particularly humiliating
for a man who was alive and well to be laughed at by a dying man, because if
a dying man laughed at you, it meant you must be in an even more disastrous
or pitiful state than he--and how much worse could that be!
It would, of course, have been impolite to argue, but at least one
could tell a story. So he told one.
"As you're going away on this journey, I had better tell you
something," Mustafa said, bending over Crooked Arm.
"Tell me then, if you must," Crooked Arm replied, not looking round
because he was watching the yard, where his horse was grazing. In the time
left to him his greatest interest was in watching his horse.
"Don't be angry, Crooked Arm, but it was I who rang up the farm and
told them you had died," Mustafa said, as though sorrowing that
circumstances did not permit him now, as then, to launch that false rumour
again, and wishing it to be understood that he regretted this as a true
friend should.
"How could you, when they spoke Russian?" Crooked Arm asked in surprise
and looked at him.
Mustafa knew no Russian and, in spite of his great managerial talents,
was so illiterate that he had been obliged to invent his own alphabet or, at
least, introduce for his own use certain quaint hieroglyphs with the help of
which he kept a note of all the people who were in debt to him, and also a
set of accounts based on complex, multi-stage barter operations. So,
naturally, Crooked Arm was surprised to hear of his speaking on the
telephone, particularly in Russian.
"Through my nephew in town. I was standing beside him," Mustafa
explained. "As they had cured you I decided to have a joke, and besides who
would have sent a lorry for you but for that," he added, recalling the
difficulties of those far-off days.
They say Crooked Arm closed his eyes and for a long time was silent.
Then he slowly opened them again and said without looking at Mustafa:
"Now I see you are a better horseman than I am."
"It looks like it," Mustafa admitted modestly and glanced round at
those who were attending the dying man.
But at this point the close relatives gave way to tears because it was
the first time in his life that Crooked Arm had ever acknowledged himself
beaten, and this was more like death than death itself that was so near.
Crooked Arm silenced them and nodded in the direction of the horses.
"Give them some water. They're thirsty."
One of the girls took two pails and went for water. She came back with
the pails full of clear spring water and placed them in the middle of the
yard. Crooked Arm's horse went up to one of the pails and began to drink,
and Mustafa's horse turned its head and pulled at the halter. The girl
untethered the horse and, holding the bridle, stood by while it drank. The
horses reached down with their long necks, drinking quietly, and Crooked Arm
watched them with pleasure, and his Adam's apple, they say, moved up and
down as though he himself were drinking.
"Mustafa," he said at length, turning to his friend, "now I admit that
you knew more about horses than I did, but you know that I loved horses and
had some understanding of them."
"But, of course! Who doesn't know that!" Mustafa exclaimed generously,
and again turned round to look at everyone who was on the veranda.
"In a few days I shall die," Crooked Arm continued. "My coffin will
stand where those empty pails are standing now. When the weeping is over, I
want you to do something for me."
"What is it?" Mustafa asked, and with a hiss at the members of the
family, because they had again tried to sob, bent over his friend. It looked
as if Crooked Arm was expressing his last will.
"I want you to take your horse and jump three times over my coffin.
Before they put the lid down I want to feel the smell of a horse over me.
Will you do that?"
"I will, if our customs see in this no sin, " Mustafa promised.
"I don't think they do," Crooked Arm said a little more slowly and
closed his eyes--either he had fallen asleep or was just musing. Mustafa
rose and walked quietly down from the veranda. He rode away, considering the
last will of the dying man.
That evening Mustafa gathered the elders of the village, gave them all
plenty to eat and drink and told them of Crooked Arm's request. The elders
discussed the matter and reached a decision.
"You'd better jump, if that's his dying wish, because you're the best
horseman now."
"He admitted that himself," Mustafa interpolated.
"There's no sin in it because a horse doesn't eat meat and its breath
is clean," they concluded.
Crooked Arm heard of the elders' decision the same night and so they
say, was well pleased. Two days later he died.
Once again, as during the war, the messengers of woe were sent out to
the neighbouring villages. Some received the news of his death with
suspicion, and the relative who had brought the calf in those days said that
it would do no harm to jab him with the sharp end of a crook to make sure he
really was dead and not just shamming.
"There's no need to jab him," the messenger of woe replied patiently,
"because horseman Mustafa is going to jump over him. That was his dying
wish."
"Then I'll go," the relative said with relief. "Crooked Arm wouldn't
let anyone jump over him while he was still alive."
They say there were even more people at the funeral this time than
before, when no one had any doubt that Crooked Arm was dead. Many of them,
of course, were attracted by the promised spectacle of a funeral
steeplechase. They all knew of the great rivalry between the two friends,
and it was said that even though Crooked Arm was dead he wouldn't let the
matter rest there.
Afterwards some people claimed to have seen Mustafa practising in his
yard with a trough propped on chairs. But Mustafa denied with a frenzy
worthy of Crooked Arm himself that he had been jumping over any such trough.
He said his horse could easily leap a gate if necessary and Crooked Arm
wouldn't be able to reach him even if he tried to do so with his famous arm.
And so, on the fourth day after the old man's death, when everyone had
finished taking final leave of their relative and fellow villager, Mustafa
stationed himself by the coffin awaiting his finest hour, sorrowful and at
the same time impatient.
When the time came he delivered a short speech, full of a solemn
dignity. He recounted the heroic life of Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as
Crooked Arm, from one horse to the next, right up to his dying wish. As a
brief reminder to the young, Mustafa mentioned the feat of the stolen
stallion and how Crooked Arm had not been afraid to leap down the cliff,
giving it to be understood in passing that if he had yielded to fear it
would have been a great deal worse for him. He said that he recalled the
incident not in order to detract from Crooked Arm's exploit but to offer the
young folk yet another proof of the advantage of bold decisions.
And then, in accordance with the dead man's wish, and his own wish, he
addressed the assembled elders in a thunderous voice and again asked them if
it were not wicked to jump over a coffin.
"There is no sin in that," the elders replied. "A horse eats no meat,
so its breath is clean."
After that Mustafa walked to the tethering post, untied his horse,
leapt into the saddle, flourished his whip and charged along the corridor
formed by the crowd towards the coffin.
While he had been walking to the tethering post the space beyond the
coffin had been cleared and the people moved back so that the horse should
not ride anyone down. Someone had suggested covering the dead man with the
tent cape to protect him from any earth that might be scattered from the
horse's hooves. But one of the elders had said there would be no sin in that
either because he was going to lie in the earth anyway.
Well, Mustafa's horse charged up to the coffin and suddenly stopped
dead. Mustafa shouted and lashed it on both flanks with his whip. The horse
twisted its head round and bared its teeth, but stubbornly refused to jump.
Mustafa swung it round, galloped back, dismounted, for some reason
tested the saddle girths, and once again swooped on the coffin like a hawk.
But again the horse balked and, no matter how Mustafa whipped it, refused to
jump, although it did rear.
There was about a minute of tense silence in which only the crack of
the whip and Mustafa's laboured breathing could be heard.
And then one of the elders said:
"It strikes me the horse won't jump over a dead man."
"That's right," recalled one of the others. "A good dog won't bite his
master's hand and a good horse won't jump over a dead man."
"Down you get, Mustafa," somebody shouted. "Crooked Arm has proved to
you that he knew more about horses than you."
Mustafa turned his horse and, parting the crowd as he went, rode out of
the yard. And then a tremendous burst of laughter went up among the
mourners, such as one would be unlikely to hear even at a wedding, let alone
a funeral.
The laughter was so loud and long that when the chairman of the village
Soviet heard it in his office he dropped his rubber stamp and exclaimed:
"Upon my word, I believe Crooked Arm has jumped out of his grave at the
last moment!"
It was a merry funeral. The next day Crooked Arm's posthumous joke was
being told and retold in nearly every corner of Abkhazia. In the evening
Mustafa was somehow persuaded to attend the funeral supper, for though it
was no sin to jump over a dead man it was considered a sin to bear a grudge
against the dead.
When an old man dies in our country the funeral feast is a lively
affair. Men drink wine and tell each other funny stories. Custom forbids
only drinking to excess and the singing of songs. Someone may inadvertently
strike up a drinking song, but he is soon stopped and falls into an
embarrassed silence.
It seems to me that when an old man dies there is place for
merry-making and ritual splendour at his funeral feast. A man has completed
life's journey and, if he dies in old age, having lived his span, it means
there is cause for the living to celebrate his victory over fate.
And ritual splendour, if it is not taken to the absurd, did not spring
from nowhere. It says to us: something tremendous has happened--a man has
died. And if he was a good man, there will be many who wish to mark and
remember the event. And who deserves to be remembered of men, if not Crooked
Arm, who all his life enriched the earth with labour and merriment, and in
his last ten years, it might be said, actually tended his own grave and made
it bear fruit and gathered from it quite a good crop of peaches.
You must agree that not everyone manages to pick a crop of peaches from
his own grave; many may try but they lack the imagination and daring that
Old Crooked Arm possessed.
And may the earth be soft as swan's down for him, as indeed it should
be, considering that it was a good dry spot they chose for him, a fact he
was very fond of mentioning while he lived.
--------
Borrowers
The man who wants to touch you for a loan sends no telegram in advance.
Everything happens suddenly.
He begins by discussing certain cultural matters of wide general
interest, possibly even outer space, listens to all you have to say on the
subject with the greatest attention and, when a warm human relationship has
developed between you in this abstract sphere, he takes advantage of the
first pause in the conversation to splash down gently from the cosmic
heights, and say:
"Incidentally, you couldn't lend me a tenner for a fortnight, could
you?"
Such a swift change of subject cripples the imagination and always
leaves me at a loss. What I really cannot understand is why this should be
incidental. But that is the way of borrowers. They can turn any incident to
their advantage.
For the first few precious seconds I am confused. And confusion spells
disaster. The mere fact of not answering promptly indicates that I have
money, and once that is established, it is the hardest thing in the world to
prove that you need that money yourself. The only thing to do is to fork
out.
Of course, there are some odd characters who pay back what they borrow.
Actually they do a lot of harm. If they didn't exist, the whole tribe of
chronic defaulters would have died out long ago. But, as things are, it
continues to prosper, profiting by the moral credit of these eccentrics.
I did once refuse an obvious cadger. But I soon repented.
We met in a cafe. I might never have noticed him but for a revolting
male habit I have of observing other people's tables. Our eyes happened to
meet and I had to say hullo. It had seemed to me that he was firmly enough
established at his own table. But he relinquished it with unexpected ease
and, smiling joyfully, headed in my direction.
"Hullo, chum! How's the old country?" he bellowed from a distance.
I put on a stern expression but it was too late. There are some people
you need only ask for a light and they'll be addressing you as "chum" and
talking about "the old country" for the rest of your life.
I decided to allow no familiarity whatever and certainly none of his
hail-fellow-well-met stuff. He fairly soon exhausted his wretched assortment
of softening-up devices and in an offhand manner popped the fateful
question.
"I'm out of cash," I said with a sigh, and made a rather feeble
pretence of slapping my pockets, actually tapping my purse in doing so. The
would-be borrower looked de pressed. I rejoiced at having shown firmness
and, in a sudden desire to palliate my refusal, found myself saying, "Of
course, if you are very badly in need, I could borrow some from a friend."
"That's fine," he perked up immediately. "Why don't you give him a
ring? I don't mind waiting."
He sat down at my table. Events were moving in direction I had not
foreseen.
"He lives a long way from here," I said, trying to damp his unexpected
enthusiasm and restore the original state of depression.
"That's all right," he replied airily, refusing to have his enthusiasm
damped or to succumb to his former dispiritedness. "I'll have a cup of
coffee while I'm waiting." And he took a cigarette from the packet I had
left lying on the table, as though surrendering himself entirely to my care.
"But I've just ordered a meal," I said, unconsciously switching to
defence.
"You'll be there and back before they serve you. And if the worst comes
to the worst, I can eat it and you'll order another one."
In short, the battle was lost. It's no use trying to fight nature. If
you haven't the gift for impromptu Eying, it's better not to try.
I had to leave that warm cafe and go out into the slushy street. There
wasn't really anyone to ring up but I went round the corner and slipped into
a telephone booth.
I spent about fifteen minutes in that booth. First I took the required
sum of money out of my purse and put it in one pocket, then I took out the
cost of the meal and put that in another pocket. When I restored the purse
to its usual place, it was nearly empty.
After this I returned slowly to the cafe, trying to read some
newspapers that were on display in the street. But nothing I read made any
sense because I was afraid of mixing up my pockets and bringing down on my
own head this whole edifice of lies, whose stability always proves to be an
illusion in the long run.
By the time I got back to the cafe he had finished off my dinner and
was about to start on my coffee. I gave him the money and he put it in his
pocket without counting it. I realised at once that its return journey to my
pocket would be hard and long. It was.
"I've ordered you some coffee," he said considerately. "They're
bringing it now."
There was nothing for me to do but drink the coffee because my appetite
had quite disappeared. The waitress brought the coffee and the bill with it.
When I had paid for my dinner, which he had eaten, he gave her a generous
tip, as if to make up for my churlishness while he himself presented an
image of bored but noble opulence.
Yes, all borrowers are like that. They usher you into a taxi, allowing
you to enter first and exit last, so as not to get in your way while you are
paying.
Shakespeare said that loan oft loses both itself and friend. My
experience was the opposite, or rather, I certainly lost my money but I
gained a dubious kind of friend.
One day I told him that everyone is in Great Debt to society. He agreed
with me. Then I added cautiously that the concept of Great Debt is in fact
made up of a multitude of small debts, which we are obliged to honour, even
if at times they may appear onerous. But with this he would not agree. He
observed that the concept of Great Debt is not a multitude of small debts
but, on the contrary, a Great Debt with capital letters, which one cannot
fritter away without running the risk of becoming a vulgariser. What was
more, he detected in my understanding of Great Debt certain traces of the
theory of small deeds, which had long since been condemned by progressive
Russian critics. I decided that the cost of reducing this fortress would
exceed any tribute I might exact when it was conquered, and left him in
peace.
But now here is a remarkable fact. It is easier to refuse a loan to the
scrupulously honest than to people with what I would call a mini-conscience.
When we refuse the former we comfort ourselves with the thought that our
refusal is not motivated by the fear of losing money.
Life is much more difficult with habitual spongers. When we lend to
them we know that we risk losing our money, and they know that we know the
risk we are taking. This gives rise to a delicate situation. Our refusal
appears to undermine the man's reputation. We insult him by treating him as
a potential extortioner.
About one man who borrowed off me I have a longer tale to tell. I will
not conceal the fact that besides the purely abstract aim of research I want
to use this story to make good some of my philanthropic losses and also to
scare some other borrowers with the possibility of exposure in print. There
are not really so many of them. Out of a population of over two hundred
million, only about seven or eight altogether. Only a tiny percentage, in
fact. And yet how pleasant to know that you have awakened someone's
conscience while at the same time recovering your long-lost money. If you
ask me, there's nothing more timely than an unexpectedly repaid debt, and
nothing more unexpected than a debt repaid on time. That's not such a bad
phrase, is it? On the whole, I find that when we start talking about our
losses, our voices acquire a note of genuine inspiration.
It all began when I received at a certain place quite a large sum of
money. I won't say what place it was because you wouldn't be able to get
anything there in any case.
Succumbing to the general craze, I decided to acquire my own means of
transport. I rejected the idea of a car at once. For one thing, you have to
have a licence. Well, of course, some people buy licences. But that, I
think, is just silly. First you buy a car, then a licence, and one day you
have an accident and lose both the car and the licence, if you have the luck
to get off so lightly. Besides, I had only about a fifth of the money needed
to buy a car.
For all of these reasons I gave up the idea of owning a car. From the
four-wheeled vehicle of my imagination I removed one wheel and the result
was a comfortable three-wheeled motor-cycle and sidecar.
After mature reflection, however, I decided that a motor-cycle and
sidecar would not suit me either, because of its incurable lack of symmetry.
I knew that this lopsidedness would irritate me and that in the end I should
have to dispose of the sidecar with the aid of a roadside post.
Eventually I plumped for a bicycle and bought one. I found it had all
kinds of advantages. A bicycle is the lightest, the quietest and the most
reliable means of transport. What was more, I would be saving on petrol
because its motive power would be supplied by my own energy. I would be
entirely self-supporting, so to speak.
For about a month I rode about on my bicycle and was pleased as Punch
with it. But one day when I was cycling along at full speed, a bus suddenly
came out of a turning ahead of me. Half-dead with fear, I swerved from under
its fire-breathing radiator, rode up on to the pavement and from there, with
no reduction of speed, crashed into a watchmaker's shop.
"What's happened?!" shouted one of the watchmakers, jumping to his feet
and dropping a Yerevan alarm clock, which rolled about the floor emitting a
noise like an oriental tambourine.
"I shall claim repairs under the guarantee," I said in a calm voice, as
I came to a sudden stop against the cash desk.
"He's a nut," the girl at the desk was the first to offer a solution,
and slammed the pay window shut in a hurry.
I came to my senses and, so as not to dispel this favourable
impression, silently wheeled my bicycle out of the shop. Out of the corner
of my eye I noticed that one of the watchmakers had let the magnifying glass
drop out of his eye. For some reason it occurred to me that the watchmaker's
magnifying glass and the aristocrat's monocle have a strange similarity of
purpose. A watchmaker uses his glass to magnify tiny mechanisms while the
man who wears a monocle probably thinks he is doing the same thing with
people.
On the way home I was struck by the thought that while walking along
beside a bicycle it is easier and safer to surrender oneself to one's dreams
than while mounted on the saddle, and so I decided not to use my bicycle any
more. After all, for a cyclist to compete with a bus is like a featherweight
going into the ring with a heavyweight champion.
When I got home, I put my bicycle into the shed and forgot all about
it.
About a month later a distant relative of mine paid us a visit and
reminded me of it. In general, if a distant relative you haven't seen for a
long time pays you a visit, you may expect no good to come of it. You have
probably spent years of hard work establishing yourself while he has been
gallivanting about God knows where. And then, when you have made your way in
life and even acquired a bicycle of your own, he turns up bold as brass,
grins at you with a whole mouthful of teeth and wants to start up a great
family fellowship.
Imagine a stocky, thick-set man, in a fireproof leather jacket, with a
rough powerful handshake. He has a job in town at a filling station and he
lives in a village