As Vodkin proceeded, his listeners began to whisper among them- selves. Everyone liked the speech, it even extracted a few tears, but there was a lot in it that seemed odd. First, no one could understand why the orator called the dead man Prokofy Osipovich, instead of Kirill Ivanovich. Secondly, evervone knew that the deceased had spent a lifetime warring with his lawful wedded wife and could not therefore be termed a bachelor; and thirdly, he had a bushy ginger beard and had never once used a razor, so that it was a mystery why the orator should describe him as dean-shaven. Perplexed, the lis- teners exchanged glances and shrugged.
'Prokofy Osipych !' continued the orator, staring raptly into the grave. 'Your face was plain - shall I say ugly? - you were stern and unbending, but we all knew that behind that outer shell there beat a heart of purest gold!'
Soon the audience ^^an to notice something odd about the orator, too. His eyes were fixed on one point, he fidgeted restlessly and he himself began to shrug his shoulders. Suddenly he dried up, his mouth fell open in astonishment, and he turned round to Pop- lavsky.
'But he's alive!' he said, staring in horror.
'Who is?'
'Prokofy Osipych! He's standing over there by the headstone!'
'He's not the one who's dead, it's Kirill lvanych !'
'But you said yourself your secretary had died!'
'Kirill lvanych was our secretary - you've mixed them up, you clown! Prokofy Osipych was our secretary before, that's right, but he was transferred two years ago to the second section as head clerk.'
'Ah, God knows!'
'Why aren't you going on? This is gerting embarrassing!'
Vodkin turned back to the grave and resumed with all his previous eloquence. Prokofy Osipych, an elderly civil servant with a clean- shaven countenance, was indeed standing by the headstone, looking at the orator and scowling.
'You put your foot in it there!' laughed the civil servants on their way back from the funeral with Vodkin. 'Fancy burving someone who's still alive.'
'A poor show, young fellow!' growled Prokofy Osipych. 'That kind of speech may be all right when someone's dead, but when they're still alive — it's just poking fun, sir! How did you put it, for heaven's sake? Unselfish, incorruptible, doesn't take bribes! To say that ofa living person you have to be joking, sir. And who asked you, young man, to sound off about my face? Plain and ugly it may be, but why draw the attention ofall and sundry to it? No sir, I'm offendcd!'
Vanka
Vanka Zhukov, a boy of nmc apprenticed three months ago to Alyakhin the shoemaker, did not go to bed on Christmas Eve. He waited until his master and mistress and the older apprentices had left for the early morning service, then he fetched a little bottle of ink and .1 pen with a rusty nib from his master's cupboard, spread a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, and began to write. Before forming the first letter, he looked round nervously several times at the doors and windows, glanced up at the dark i.:on, to left and right of which stretched shelves of lasts, and sighed brokenly. He was kneelmg in front of a work bench, on which lay his sheet of paper.
'Dear Grandad Konstantin Makarych,' he wrote. 'I'm writing you this letter. I wish you a Happy Christmas and all God's blessings. I have no father or mummy, you're the only person I have left.'
Vanka turned to look at the dark window, in which flickered the reflection of his candle, and vividly imagined to himself his grand- father Konstantin Makarych, who worked as a night-watchman on the Zhivaryovs' estate. He was a skinny little old man of about sixry-five, but amazingly lively and nimble, with a face that was always laughing and drunken eyes. During the daytime he slept in the servants' kitchen or played the fool with the cooks; at night, wrap- ped in his voluminous fu!l-length sheepskin, he went the rounds of the estate beating with his watchman's clapper. Behind him, their heads hung low, walked old Kashtanka and Loacher, named after the fish on account of his dark back and long, weasel-like body. Loacher is an extremely deferential and affectionate dog, he gives the same adoring look to friend and stranger alike, but his reputation is nil. Behind that deference and docility there lurks the most Jesuitical cunning. No one knows better than he how to creep up and nip you in the leg, slip into the ice-house, or steal a peasant's chicken. Many is the time he has nearly had his back legs broken, a couple oftimes he has been strung up, and every week he is beaten within an inch ofhis life; but he always bounces back.
Now Grandfather was sure to be standing at the gates of the village church, squinting at its bright red windows, stamping up and down in his big felt boots, and fooling about with the servants. His watchman's clapper hangs at his belt. He waves his arms around, hugs himself to keep warm, and with an impish old chuckle keeps going up to the housemaids and cooks and pinching them.
'Why don't we have some snuff?' he says, offering the girls his snuff-box.
The girls take a pinch and sneeze. This sends grandfather into indescribable raptures, he breaks into peals of merry laughter, and cries:
'Wipe the stuff off, it's freezing to you!'
They hold the box out to the dogs, as well. Kashtanka sneezes, shakes her muzzle about and walks away, offended. Loacher is too polite to sneeze and wags his tail instead. The weather is superb. The air is still, transparent, and crisp. It is a dark night, but the whole village can be seen clearly: the white roofs with plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys, the trees silvered with rime, the deep snowdrifts. The whole sky is strewn with gaily twinkling stars, and the Milky Way shines forth so clearly that you would think it had been washed and polished with snow for Christmas . . .
Vanka sighed, dipped his pen in the ink, and carried on writing:
'And yesterday I got a thrashing. The master dragged me out into the yard by my hair and walloped me with a strap, because I was rocking their baby in it's cradle and went and dropped off. And last week the mistress told me to gut a herring and I started from the tail so she took hold ofthe herringand wiped it's snout all over my mug. The older apprentices are always making fun of me they send me to the tavern for vodka and make me steal the master's gherkins and the master beats me with the first thing comes to hand. And there's nothing to eat here at all. They give me bread in the morning porridge for dinner and bread again for supper but the master and mistress they guzzle all the tea and cabbage soup. And they make me sleep in the passage and when their baby's crying I don't sieep at all but have to rock the cradle. Dear Grandad, for the Dear Lord's sake take me away from here take me home to the village I can't stand it any longer ... I beg and beseech you and will pray for you always take me away from here or I'll die -'