“Please stop this. I have already forgotten it, and you still remember? Please let it go,” the general said, impatiently twitching his lower lip.
“He’s forgotten, but he has this evil look in his eyes,” thought Mr. Worm, looking suspiciously at the general. “He doesn’t even want to talk to me. I must explain to him that I didn’t intend to do it; it’s the law of nature. Otherwise he might think I did it on purpose. He won’t think about it right now, but he might later on.”
When Mr. Worm came home, he told his wife the story of his ignorance. It seemed to him that his wife paid too little attention to the event; at first she was alarmed, but then, after she found that the general was from another ministry, she calmed down.
“But, anyway, you ought to go ask for forgiveness,” she said. “Otherwise he might think you don’t know how to behave in public.”
“That’s it; that’s exactly how I feel. I apologized to the general, but he behaved somewhat strangely. He said nothing definite. And besides, we didn’t have enough time to talk then.”
The next day, Mr. Worm put on his new uniform coat, cut his hair, and went to Whining to explain and apologize. When he entered the general’s waiting room he saw many visitors, and then the general himself, surrounded by the crowd. After the general had spoken to a few people, he lifted his eyes to Mr. Worm.
“Your Honor, you might remember me. Yesterday, at the Arcadia Theater,” the executor reported, “I sneezed, and then, quite by chance, I dropped it on you.”
“What a trifle, for heaven’s sake! What are you going on about? How can I help you?” the general addressed the next visitor.
“He doesn’t even want to talk to me,” thought Mr. Worm, turning pale. “He must be angry with me. No, I can’t leave this in such a state. I will explain everything to him in a moment.”
When the general finished talking to the last visitor and turned to go into the back room, Mr. Worm stepped up to him and mumbled, “Your Honor! If I dare impose on your time, sir, it is only due to the feelings of remorse I am experiencing at the moment. I did not do it on purpose, sir.”
The general made a sour face and waved his hand in the air.
“You mock me, sir!” he said, taking cover behind the door.
“What mockery?” thought Mr. Worm. “It’s nothing of the kind. The general just didn’t get it! I won’t apologize to him anymore, the freak. Forget that. I’ll write him a letter, but I’m not going to go to see him in person again.”
Mr. Worm thought about it all the way home. He did not write a letter to the general. He thought about the text of the letter, but could not make up his mind what to write. So, he had to go see the general in person the next day.
“Yesterday I dared disturb Your Honor,” he started mumbling when the general lifted his inquiring eyes to him. “But I did not do so with the purpose of mocking you, as Your Honor informed me. I was merely apologizing for sneezing and dropping my sneeze upon you; I did not at all plan to mock you. How could I dare mock you?
“If we simple people should start mocking important persons, then there would be no respect for such persons, and then, you know—”
“Get out of here! Get out!” yelled the general at the top of his voice, his face turning blue and his body trembling.
“What did you say, sir?” asked Mr. Worm in a whisper, frozen with terror.
“Get out!” repeated the general, and stomped his foot with rage.
Suddenly something broke in Mr. Worm’s heart. Hearing and seeing nothing, he backed out to the door, went out into the street, and dragged himself home. He got home mechanically, and, without taking off his official uniform coat, lay down on the sofa and died.
75 GRAND
Late at night, about midnight, two friends were walking along Tverskoy Boulevard. The first man was tall and handsome, with brown hair. He was wearing an old bear fur coat and a brown top hat. The second man was a short redhead who wore a dark red coat with polished ebony buttons. Both were silent as they went. The first whistled a tune, and the second looked gloomily under his feet as they walked, and spat to the side from time to time.
“Would you like to sit for a while?” the brown-haired man suggested as they were passing the dark monument of Pushkin and the dimly lit entrance of the Strastnoi Monastery. The redhead consented, and the two friends sat down on a park bench.
“I have a small personal favor to ask you, Nikolai Borisovich,” said the dark-haired man after some silence between them. “Dear friend, can you lend me ten or fifteen rubles? I will give the money back to you in a week.” The redhead said nothing.
“I would never have asked you if not for extreme necessity. Fate has played a lousy joke on me. My wife gave me her bracelet earlier today to pawn. She has to pay for her sister’s tuition.
“So I pawned it, then played cards and lost the money.”
The red-haired man moved on his seat and cleared his throat.
“You are not a serious man, Vasily Ivanych,” he said with an evil smile.
“Not a serious man at all. You had no right to sit down and play those cards. How could you gamble if you knew that it was not your money you were betting?”
He continued, “Wait, don’t interrupt me, let me tell you once and for all. Why do you need all these new clothes, this pin on your tie? You are a poor man, why do you want to look fashionable? Why are you wearing this stupid hat? You live at your wife’s expense and then go and pay one hundred fifty rubles for that hat on your head.” Vasily touched the hat he was wearing on his head.
“You could have a nice fur hat that only costs three rubles, and neither fashion nor beauty would suffer. Why do you always boast about your important friends, if you don’t know these people? You said that you personally know Ivanov, Plevako, and other publishers. I was burning with shame at your name-dropping nonsense. You lied without even blushing! And when you played cards and lost your wife’s money to those women tonight, you were wearing such a stupid grin, I would be ashamed to have anything to do with you. I don’t even want to slap your face.”
“Stop it. You’re in a rotten mood today. Enough!”
“All right, I can admit that you act like an idiot because you are too young. But Vasily, I can’t understand it. How can you play cards and cheat? I saw you pull the ace of spades from the bottom of the pack!”
Vasily Ivanovich blushed like a high school student and tried to apologize. The accusations of the red-haired man continued. They had a long, loud dispute. Finally, they calmed down and became silent.
“Yes, it is true, I have done wrong,” said the brown-haired man after a long silence. “It is true. I spent too much money. And now I am in debt. I spent my wife’s money and I can’t find the way out. Have you ever felt like you are itchy all over, and there is no cure? This is how I feel now. I feel terrible about myself. I’m in it up to my neck. I am ashamed of myself, and of the human race in general. I make mistakes, I do bad things, I have low motives, and I cannot stop, I am too bad!” He scratched his chin. “If I were to receive an inheritance or win the lottery, then I think I would be able to give up my bad habits and start all over again. And you, Nikolai Borisovich, please don’t blame me. Don’t throw stones at me. Remember Mr. Clumsy.”
“I remember him very well,” said the red-haired man. “I remember him. He spent somebody else’s money at a restaurant to show off in front of his girlfriend, and he wound up crying on her shoulder, although he wasn’t crying before he did it.
“It’s shameful to even speak of that scoundrel. If he didn’t have good manners or such nice looks, the girl would never have fallen in love with him and he would never have repented. Bad people are good-looking as a rule. Like you, for example.