In its window, this shop displayed perfect shining red corals, lighter in weight than the stones of Nissen Piczenik, but also cheaper. A whole large coral necklace cost one ruble fifty, and there were smaller chains for eighty, fifty and twenty kopecks. The prices were prominently displayed in the window. Finally, to prevent anyone still walking past the shop, there was a phonograph inside turning out merry tunes all day long. It could be heard all over town, and in the outlying villages, too. There was no large market in Sutschky as there was in Progrody. Nevertheless — and in spite of the fact that it was harvest time — the farmers flocked to the shop of Mr. Lakatos to hear the music and buy the cheap corals.
One day, after Mr. Lakatos had been running his business successfully for a few weeks, a prosperous farmer came to Nissen Piczenik and said: “Nissen Semyonovitch, I can’t believe the way you’ve been cheating me and everybody else these past twenty years. But now there’s a man in Sutschky who’s selling the most beautiful coral chains for fifty kopecks apiece. My wife wanted to go over there right away, but I thought I’d see what you had to say about it first, Nissen Semyonovitch.”
“That Lakatos,” said Nissen Piczenik, “is a thief and a cheat. There’s no other way to explain his prices. But I’ll go over there if you give me a lift in your cart.”
“Very well,” said the farmer, “see for yourself.”
And so the coral merchant went to Sutschky. He stood in front of the shop window for awhile, listening to the music blaring from inside the shop, then finally he stepped inside, and addressed Mr. Lakatos.
“I’m a coral seller myself,” said Nissen Piczenik. “My wares come from Hamburg, Odessa, Trieste, and Amsterdam, and I can’t understand how you are able to sell such fine corals so cheaply.”
“You’re from the old school,” replied Lakatos, “and if you’ll pardon the expression, you’re a bit behind the times.”
So saying, he emerged from behind the counter — and Nissen Piczenik saw that he had a slight limp. His left leg was obviously shorter, because the heel of his left boot was twice as high as the one on his right. Powerful and intoxicating scents emanated from him — and one wondered what part of his frail body could possibly be home to all these scents. His hair was blackish-blue as night. And while his dark eyes appeared gentle enough, they glowed so powerfully that a strange redness appeared to flare up in the midst of all their blackness. Under his curled black mustaches, Lakatos had a set of dazzling white and smiling mouse teeth.
“Well?” said the coral merchant Nissen Piczenik.
“Well,” said Lakatos, “we’re not mad. We don’t go diving to the bottom of the sea. We simply manufacture artificial corals. I work for the company of Lowncastle Brothers, in New York. I’ve just had two very good years in Budapest. It doesn’t bother the farmers. It didn’t bother them in Hungary, it’ll never bother them in Russia. Fine red flawless corals are what they’re after. And I’ve got them. Cheap, competitively priced, pretty, and wearable. What more do they want? Real corals don’t come any better!”
“What are your corals made of?” asked Nissen Piczenik.
“Celluloid, my dear fellow, celluloid!” cried a delighted Lakatos. “It’s no good arguing with science! Anyway, rubber trees grow in Africa, and it’s rubber that you make celluloid out of. What’s unnatural about that? Are rubber trees any less part of nature than corals? How is a rubber tree in Africa any worse than a coral tree on the seabed? Well, so what do you say? Do you want to do a deal with me? Just say the word! A year from now, all your customers will have gone over to me, and you can take all your fine real corals back to the seabed they came from. So, will you come in with me or not?”
“Give me two days to think it over,” said Nissen Piczenik, and he went home.
VII
AND THAT WAS how the Devil first came to tempt the coral merchant Nissen Piczenik. The Devil was Jenö Lakatos from Budapest, who introduced artificial coral to Russia — celluloid coral that burns with a bluish flame, the same color as the ring of purgatorial fire that burns around Hell.
When Nissen Piczenik got home, he kissed his wife indifferently on both cheeks, he greeted his threaders, and he started looking at his beloved corals with confused eyes, eyes confused by the Devil, his living corals that didn’t look nearly as flawless as the fake celluloid corals that his rival Jenö Lakatos had shown him. And so the Devil inspired the honest coral merchant Nissen Piczenik with the idea of mixing fake corals with real.
One day he went to the public clerk in the post office and dictated a letter to Jenö Lakatos in Sutschky, and a few days later he received no less than twenty pud of fake coral. Dazzled and led astray by the Devil, Nissen Piczenik mixed the fake and the real corals, and thereby he betrayed both himself and the real corals.
The harvest was in progress out in the countryside, and hardly any farmers were coming to buy corals. But from the few who did occasionally turn up, Nissen Piczenik now earned more than he had before when he had had many customers, thanks to the fake corals. He mixed genuine and fake — which was even worse than selling only fake. Because that is what happens to people when they are led astray by the Devil — they come to outdo him in devilishness. And so Nissen Piczenik outdid Jenö Lakatos from Budapest. And all that Nissen Piczenik earned he took conscientiously to Pinkas Warschawsky. And so corrupted had the coral merchant been by the Devil that he took real pleasure in the thought of his money being fruitful and multiplying.
Then one day the usurer Pinkas Warschawsky suddenly died, and at that Nissen Piczenik panicked, and he went right away to the usurer’s heirs, and he demanded his money back with interest. It was paid out on the spot, and the sum came to no less than five thousand four hundred and fifty rubles and sixty kopecks. With that money he paid Lakatos for his fake corals, and he ordered another twenty pud.
One day, the rich hop farmer came to Nissen Piczenik and asked for a chain of corals for one of his grandchildren, to ward off the Evil Eye.
The coral merchant threaded a chain made up entirely of fake corals, and he said: “These are the most beautiful corals I have.”
The farmer paid him the price for real corals, and returned to the village.
A week after the fake corals had been placed round her neck, his granddaughter came down with diphtheria, and died horribly of suffocation. And in the village of Solovetzk where the rich farmer lived (and also in the surrounding villages), the news spread that the corals of Nissen Piczenik from Progrody brought bad luck and illness — and not only to those who had bought from him. For diphtheria began to rage in the surrounding villages, it took away many children, and the rumor spread that Nissen Piczenik’s corals brought sickness and death.
And so that winter no more customers came to Nissen Piczenik. It was a hard winter. Every day brought with it an iron frost, hardly any snow fell, and even the rooks seemed to freeze as they crouched on the bare boughs of the chestnut trees. It grew very still in Nissen Piczenik’s house. He dismissed his threaders one by one. On market days he sometimes ran into one of his old customers, but they never greeted him.
Yes, the farmers who in the summer had embraced him, now behaved as if they no longer knew the coral merchant.
The temperature fell to forty degrees below. The water froze in the water carrier’s cans. A thick sheet of ice covered Nissen Piczenik’s windows, so that he could no longer see what was going on in the street. Great heavy icicles hung from the crossbars of the iron grilles, and blinded the windows still further. Nissen Piczenik had no customers, but he blamed the severe winter for it, rather than the fake corals. And yet Mr. Lakatos’s shop in Sutschky was continually bursting at the seams. The farmers bought his perfect cheap celluloid corals in preference to Nissen Piczenik’s real ones.