“You’re all womanizers. Women don’t love you; they only want to have an affair with you. It’s strange. You’re very lucky with women.” The redhead stood up and started pacing around the bench.
“Your wife, for example. She is an honest and noble woman. Why did she fall in love with you? And today, for example, that pretty blonde never moved her glance from you for a second when you lied and played the fool. Women fall in love with men like you. It is completely different with me. I have worked hard all my life. I am an honest man, and I deserve at least one moment of happiness. And then, do you remember, I was engaged to Olga Alekseevna, your wife, a long time ago, before she knew you, and I had a little bit of happiness, and then you came along and I was totally ruined.”
“You’re jealous!” The dark-haired man smiled. “I didn’t know that!”
Anger and disgust appeared on the face of Nikolai Borisovich for a moment. Without understanding what was doing, he stretched his hand forward and waved it. The sound of a slap broke the silence of the night. The brown top hat fell and rolled over the hard-packed snow. The red-haired man became ashamed. He stood up and pushed his nose into the collar of his shabby coat and walked along the boulevard. When he came to the Pushkin monument, he looked back at the brown-haired man, stood for a moment quietly and then, as if afraid of something, started running along Tverskoy Boulevard.
Vasily Ivanych sat in silence, motionless, for a long time. A woman passed him and, laughing, gave him his hat. He mechanically thanked her, stood up, and walked away.
“Now she’s going to scold me,” he thought, climbing the stairwell to the apartment. “She’ll be scolding me the whole night through. Damn her! I’ll tell her that I lost her stupid money!”
When he came to his door, he timidly rang the doorbell. The maid let him in.
“Congratulations!” she said, smiling broadly.
“What for?”
“See for yourself! Finally God has had some pity on you!”
Vasily Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders and entered the bedroom. There his wife, Olga Alekseevna, a short blonde with curlers in her hair, sat at the desk. Several finished, sealed letters were in front of her on the desk. The moment she saw her husband, she jumped to her feet and hung around his neck.
“You have come, finally!” she said. “I am so happy! You can’t believe how happy I am! I was hysterical for a while after this pleasant surprise. Here, read this!”
She jumped to the table and brought the newspaper to her husband’s face.
“Read this! My ticket won seventy-five thousand. Yes, I had a ticket. I give you my word on it. I hid it from you and kept it secret, because you would have pawned it.
“Nikolai Borisovich gave it to me as a gift when he was my fiancée, and then he did not want to take it back. That Nikolai Borisovich is such a nice man! Now we are very rich! You will change for the better now, you can change your life! I understand that you drank and lied to me because of our poverty, I know this. I understand you. I know that you are a clever and honest man.”
Olga Alekseevna walked across the room and laughed.
“What a surprise! I was waiting for you, pacing the room. I scolded and hated you for your dissipation, and then I got bored and sat down to read a newspaper. And then I saw it! I have already written letters to all my sisters, my mother. They will be so happy for me! Where are you going?”
Vasily Ivanovich looked at the newspaper. He stood speechless for a while, thinking about something, then replaced his hat and left the room, went out of the house and into the street.
“To Great Dmitovka Street, the furnished apartment N.N.,” he told the cabman.
He did not find the woman he was looking for there. The room was locked.
‘She’s probably at the theater. And after the theater she’ll go have supper. I’ll wait for a while.’
He waited. He waited for half an hour, then for an hour. He went along the corridor and spoke to a sleepy concierge. He heard the old clock downstairs strike three. Finally, out of patience, he started back down the stairs, but his luck returned.
At the entrance of the building, he bumped into her, a thin, tall brunette wearing a long boa. A man in dark blue sunglasses and a cheap fur hat followed her.
“Excuse me,” Vasily Ivanovich addressed the woman. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
The man and woman frowned.
“Wait a second,” the woman said to her companion and went to the nearest lamp post with Vasily Ivanovich.
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you—well, let’s talk business, Nadine,” started Vasily Ivanovich, stumbling. “It’s a pity you have this man with you, otherwise I would have told you everything.”
“What do you want? I don’t have time for this.”
“Oh, so you have new admirers and you’re in a hurry! Look at you! Do you remember some time ago, before Christmas, when you threw me out? You did not want to live with me because—because I did not make enough money for your lifestyle. But you were wrong. Yes. Do you remember the lottery ticket I gave you as a birthday gift? There, look here! Read! That ticket won seventy-five thousand!”
The woman took the newspaper into her hands and scanned it with eager, almost frightened eyes. And she found what she wanted.
At the same time another pair of eyes, reddened by tears and dumb from woe, looked in the jewelry box for the ticket. These eyes searched for the ticket the whole night through, and could not find it.
The ticket was gone, and Olga Alekseevna knew that her husband had stolen it.
On the same night, the red-haired Nikolai Borisovich turned restlessly in his bed and could not fall asleep until the morning. He was ashamed of that slap on the cheek.
AT THE CEMETERY
“Where are his jokes, his cases, and his tricks?”
—Hamlet
“Dear gentlemen, it is cold, and dark, shall we head home?”
The gust of wind touched the yellow leaves of old birch trees.
The leaves drenched us all with many droplets of water. One of us slid on the claylike soil and had to grab at a big gray cross in order to stop his slide downhill. Its inscription read,
‘A general, a secret councilor, decorated with orders and medals, George Black, is lying here.’
“I knew this man. He loved his wife, had medals of honor, and never read anything in his life. His stomach was working properly. He died from an accident. Truly, but if not for that accident he would have kept on living. He died as a victim of his own observations. One day, he was eavesdropping behind a door, which swung to hit him so hard he was given a severe concussion from the blow, dying shortly after. Now, look at this monument. This man hated poetry all his life, see his headstone there? Do you see the irony? His entire tombstone is completely covered with poetry; what an ironic twist of fate! Look, someone is headed our way.”
A man in a shabby old overcoat and a reddish complexion with a blue aftershave hue on his face was coming over to us. He had a bottle of vodka under his arm and a ham sandwich sticking out of his pocket.
“Do you know by any chance where I can find the grave of the actor Bugsy?” he inquired of us in a hoarse voice.
We led him over to the grave of that actor, who had passed away about two years ago.
“Are you an office worker?” we asked him.
“No, I am an actor. These days, it is hard to see a difference between an office worker and an actor, which we actors do not find very flattering.”
So, we finally found Bugsy’s grave. It had partially fallen down in the earth, and was covered with weeds, and did not look like a grave at all. There was small cheap cross on it, lying crooked to one side, covered with moss, looking worn out, as if it were ill. The inscription said, “… forgettable friend Mr. Bugsy.”
Time and the elements had worn out the prefix “un” from the word “unforgettable” and revealed the human lie.