“What am I to do now?” she wept. “Can I go looking like this? No, never! Better to die! I’ll wait till it gets dark; then, in the darkness, I’ll go to Aunt Agafya and send her home for a dress…And meanwhile I’ll go and hide under the little bridge.”
My heroine, choosing where the grass was higher and crouching down, scurried to the little bridge. Slipping under it, she saw a naked man with a musician’s mane and a hairy chest, cried out and fainted.
Bowsky was also frightened. At first he took the girl for a naiad.
“Isn’t she a river siren come to entice me?” he thought, and that surmise flattered him, because he had always had a high opinion of his looks. “If she’s not a siren, but a human being, how explain this strange transformation? Why is she here under the bridge? And what’s the matter with her?”
While he was debating all these questions, the beauty came to her senses.
“Don’t kill me!” she whispered. “I’m Princess Bibulova. I beseech you! You’ll be given a lot of money! I was untangling my fishing line in the water, and some thieves stole my new dress, shoes, and everything!”
“Miss!” said Bowsky in a pleading voice. “I also had my clothes stolen. And along with my trousers they also made off with the rosin that was in my pocket!”
Those who play double basses and trombones are usually unresourceful, but Bowsky was a pleasant exception.
“Miss!” he said a while later. “I see you’re embarrassed at the sight of me. But you must agree that I have the same grounds for not leaving this place as you do. Here’s what I’ve come up with: how would you like to lie in the case of my double bass and cover yourself with the lid? That will conceal me from you…”
Having said that, Bowsky took the instrument out of the case. For a moment it seemed to him that by yielding up the case he was blaspheming against the sacredness of art, but his hesitation did not last long. The beauty lay down in the case and curled up, and he tightened the straps and rejoiced that nature had endowed him with such intelligence.
“Now, miss, you don’t see me,” he said. “Lie there and be at peace. When it gets dark, I’ll carry you to your parents’ home. I can come back here later for my double bass.”
When darkness fell, Bowsky hoisted the case with the beauty on his shoulders and trudged to Bibulov’s dacha. His plan was this: he will come to the first cottage and obtain some clothing, then he will go on…
“There’s no bad without some good,” he thought, stirring up the dust with his bare feet and bending under the burden. “For the heartfelt share I’ve taken in the princess’s fate, Bibulov is sure to reward me generously.”
“Are you comfortable, miss?” he asked in the tone of a cavalier galant inviting her to a quadrille. “Kindly do not stand on ceremony: treat my case as if it were your own home.”
Suddenly the gallant Bowsky fancied that ahead of him, shrouded in darkness, two human figures were walking. He peered intently and realized that this was not an optical illusion: the figures were indeed walking and even carrying some bundles in their hands…
“Aren’t these the thieves?” flashed through his mind. “They’re carrying something. It’s probably our clothes!”
Bowsky set the case down by the roadside and ran after the figures.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop! Seize them!”
The figures turned and, seeing the pursuit, took to their heels…The princess heard the quick footsteps and the shouts of “Stop!” for a long time. Finally, all fell silent.
Bowsky got carried away by the pursuit, and the beauty might well have spent a long time lying in the field by the roadside had it not been for a lucky play of chance. It chanced that just then Bowsky’s colleagues, the flute Buzzkin and the clarinet Wavarmov, came along the same road. Stumbling upon the case, they looked at each other in surprise and spread their arms.
“A double bass!” said Buzzkin. “Hah, it’s our Bowsky’s double bass! How did it wind up here?”
“Something probably happened to Bowsky,” decided Wavarmov. “Either he got drunk, or he was robbed…In either case, it wouldn’t be right to leave the instrument here. Let’s take it with us.”
Buzzkin hoisted the case on his back, and the musicians went on.
“It’s heavy, damn it!” the flute grumbled on the way. “Not for anything in the world would I agree to play such a monster…Oof!”
On arriving at Prince Bibulov’s dacha, the musicians put the case in the area reserved for the orchestra and went to the buffet.
Just then the chandeliers and sconces were being lit. The fiancé, Court Councillor Flunkeyich, a handsome and affable official from the Ministry of Transportation, was standing in the middle of the reception room, his hands in his pockets, talking with Count Flaskov. They were discussing music.
“In Naples, Count,” Flunkeyich was saying, “I was personally acquainted with a fiddler who literally performed miracles. You won’t believe it! On a double bass…on an ordinary double bass, he pulled off such devilish trills, it was simply awful! He played Strauss waltzes.”
“Come now, that’s impossible…” The count doubted him.
“I assure you! He even performed a Liszt rhapsody. I lived in the same room with him and having nothing to do I even learned from him to play a rhapsody of Liszt on the double bass.”
“A rhapsody of Liszt…Hm…you’re joking…”
“You don’t believe it?” Flunkeyich laughed. “I’ll prove it to you right now! Let’s go to the orchestra!”
The fiancé and the count went to the orchestra. They approached the double bass, quickly started undoing the straps…and—oh, horror!
But here, while the reader, giving free rein to his imagination, pictures the outcome of the musical dispute, let us turn back to Bowsky…The poor musician, having failed to catch the thieves and gone back to the place where he left the case, could not locate the precious burden. Totally at a loss, he walked up and down the road several times and, not finding the case, decided that he had come to the wrong road…
“This is awful!” he thought, clutching his hair and turning cold. “She’ll suffocate in the case! I’m a murderer!”
Until midnight Bowsky walked the road and looked for the case, but finally, out of strength, he headed back to the little bridge.
“I’ll search at dawn,” he decided.
The search at dawn produced the same result, and Bowsky decided to wait under the bridge till nightfall…
“I’ll find her!” he muttered, taking off his top hat and seizing his hair. “I may look for a whole year, but I’ll find her!”
—
To this day peasants living in the area we have described tell that, at night, by the little bridge, one can see a naked man, overgrown with hair and wearing a top hat. Every now and then under the little bridge the wheezing of a double bass can be heard.
1886
THE CHORUS GIRL
ONCE, WHEN SHE WAS YOUNGER, prettier, more full voiced, her admirer, Nikolai Petrovich Kolpakov, was sitting in the mezzanine of her dacha. It was unbearably hot and stifling. Kolpakov had just finished dinner and, having drunk a whole bottle of bad port, felt out of sorts and ill. They were both bored and were waiting for it to cool off in order to go for a walk.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the doorbell rang. Kolpakov, who was in his shirtsleeves and wearing slippers, jumped up and looked questioningly at Pasha.
“Must be the mailman, or maybe one of my girlfriends,” said the singer.
Kolpakov was not embarrassed either by Pasha’s friends or by mailmen, but, just in case, he grabbed his clothes and went to the next room, while Pasha ran to open the door. To her great surprise, it was neither a mailman nor a girlfriend who stood at the door, but an unknown woman, young, beautiful, elegantly dressed, and, by all appearances, of a respectable sort.