“Encore!” hissed the schoolboy.
“What the hell is going on!” Colonel Pepsinov muttered in my ear. “You could have stayed home to hiccup, sir!”
Zoya blushed. Once again I hiccuped, and then I ran out of the box, my fists fiercely clenched. I paced up and down the hallway. I paced, and paced, and paced—and I hiccuped. The things I ate and drank to make the hiccups go away! At the beginning of the fourth act, I called it quits. I went home. No sooner did I get home, than I stopped hiccuping. I hit myself on my head and exclaimed, “Why don’t you hiccup now! Go ahead, hiccup, you booed-off fiancé! No, not booed-off! You didn’t boo yourself off the matrimonial stage! You hiccuped yourself off!”
The next evening, I went to dine with the Pepsinovs, as was my habit. Zoya didn’t come down to dinner. She sent a message that she couldn’t see me. She was ill. Colonel Pepsinov gave a long speech about how certain young men do not know how to behave in public. The idiot! Didn’t he know that the organs that produce hiccups are stimulated independently of conscious control? A stimulus, ma chère, means an impulse.
“Would you have given your daughter, if you had one,” Pepsinov said to me after dinner, “to a man who permits himself to engage in public belching? Well, sir?”
“I would,” I muttered.
“Then you’d be making a mistake, sir!”
That was the end of Zoya. She couldn’t forgive the hiccups. I was done for.
The remaining twelve incidents—should I describe them?
I could, but enough! The veins of my temples bulge, my tears flow, and my liver churns. “O brother writers, our fates are stamped with doom!”* Allow me, ma chère, to wish you the very best! I press your hand and I send my regards to Paul. I hear that he is a good husband and father. Praise be unto him! It’s a shame that he drinks like a fish, though (don’t take that as a reproach, ma chère!).
Good health to you, ma chère, and good cheer. I remain your most faithful servant,
MAKAR BALDASTOV
* These are all opera singers who were famous in Russia at the time.
*Faust (1859) is an opera written by Charles Gounod (1818-1893) that consists of five acts and ballet pieces. In the first act, the aged Faust complains that all his studies have come to nothing and made him miss out on life and love.
*An ironic quote from Nikolay Nekrasov’s poem “At the Hospital” (1855).
A SINNER FROM TOLEDO
(Translated from the Spanish)
“WHOSOEVER reports the whereabouts of the witch, who calls herself Maria Spalanzo, or whosoever delivers her living or dead to the court, shall receive absolution for their past sins.”
Such was the proclamation signed by the Bishop of Barcelona and by four judges back in those long-gone days that remain an indelible blot on the history of Spain—and, one could say, of humanity itself.
All of Barcelona had read the proclamation. The hunt began. Sixty women who looked like the witch in question were detained; her relatives were tortured. Back then there was a foolish but deeply held belief that witches can turn themselves into cats, dogs, and other animals, invariably black ones. Very often, it was said, a hunter who had been attacked by an animal would cut off a paw for a trophy only to discover, on opening his hunting bag, a bloodied human hand—that of his own wife. The residents of Barcelona had killed every last black cat and every last black dog, but all in vain—none of them was Maria Spalanzo.
Maria Spalanzo was the daughter of a successful Barcelona merchant. Her father was French; her mother, Spanish. From her father she had inherited a Gallic lightheartedness and the boundless gaiety that makes French women so attractive; from her mother, a perfect Spanish figure. She was beautiful, smart, and always cheerful. She led a life of Spanish leisure and was dedicated to the arts. Joyful as a child, she had never shed a tear in all of her twenty years. On the day she turned twenty, she married a sailor named Spalanzo, well-known to all of Barcelona, very handsome, and—it was said—very learned. She was marrying him for love. Her husband vowed that he’d rather die than see her unhappy. He loved her madly.
Two days after the wedding, her fate was sealed.
Towards evening, she set out from her new home to pay a visit to her mother. She was soon lost. Barcelona is a large city, and not every woman there can be expected to know her way around it.
Maria ran into a young monk. “How can I get to St. Mark’s Street?” she asked.
The monk stopped. He peered closely at her—he seemed to be thinking about something. The sun had set. The moon had risen. It cast its cold rays upon Maria’s beautiful face. Not for nothing do the poets mention the moon when they praise the beauty of women. A woman is a hundred times lovelier by moonlight. Maria’s brisk walk had left her breathless and panting. Her beautiful black hair had tumbled down over her shoulders and her breasts. She reached up to draw her scarf around her neck and inadvertently bared her arms to the elbow.
“By the blood of Saint Januarius, you are a witch!” the young monk burst out.
“If you weren’t a monk, I’d say you’re drunk!” Maria parlayed back.
“A witch!” Through clenched teeth, the monk recited an incantation against evil. “That dog that I saw just a moment ago, where is it? It’s you! I saw it turn into you. I know. I saw. I am not yet twenty-five years old, but already I’ve uncovered fifty witches. And you are number fifty-one! I am Augustine . . .” And crossing himself, he turned and was gone.
Maria knew all about Augustine. She’d heard about him from her parents. She knew he was a zealous exterminator of witches and the author of a learned tract that reviled women and men born of woman.
Maria went on her way and before long, she met Augustine again. Four black figures emerged from a large building with a long Latin inscription over the door. They let her pass and then followed her. One of them, she could tell, was Augustine. They followed her all the way home.
Three days later, a man with a puffy shaved face, dressed in black, evidently a judge, paid a visit to the Spalanzos. Spalanzo was summoned before the archbishop immediately.
“Your wife is a witch!” the archbishop thundered.
Spalanzo turned pale.
“Praise the Lord,” the archbishop continued. “A man whose precious gift is to see the evil spirit within has opened our eyes. Your wife was seen to turn into a black dog, a black dog that turned back into your wife.”
Spalanzo gasped. “She’s not a witch. She’s my wife!”
“The bride of Satan is no wife for a Catholic! Wretch, she has betrayed you with the evil one countless times. Haven’t you noticed? Go home. Bring her here straightaway.”
The archbishop was a very learned man. He derived the word femina from two words: fe and minus, because incontestably a woman has less faith than a man.