He Lover of Death (18 page)

It didn’t matter that she was older. The fluff on his cheeks would sprout into a beard and moustache soon enough, and then he’d really come into his own. And he could touch up his temples with grey, like Erast Petrovich – and why not, it was very impressive.

Only when Senka and Death went to get married, it would have to be well away from any embankment where you could fall in and drown. God takes care of those as take care of themselves.

So there was Senka, already picturing the wedding, and the feast in the Hermitage dining hall, but he knew the money on its own wouldn’t be enough. Death had had beaus and lovers with huge fortunes before, that was nothing new for her. And he couldn’t win her over with presents. He had to turn himself from a grey sparrow into a white falcon and go soaring way up high before he could fly close to a swan like her.

His thoughts turned to education and cultured manners. He had no chance of being a falcon without them, even if he did have the riches.

There was a bookstall out on the square – Senka could see it from the window. He went out and bought a clever book that was called
Life in Society, at Home and at Court
– how to behave in decent society so you they wouldn’t boot you out.

When he started reading, he came out in a cold sweat. Holy saints, it was all so complicated! How to bow to who, how to kiss a woman’s hand – a lady’s, that is – how to give compliments, how to dress when and where, how to walk into a room and how to walk out. If he spent his whole life studying, he still wouldn’t remember it all!

‘One should never pay a visit earlier than two o’clock or later than five or six,’ Senka read, moving his lips and ruffling up his French coiffure. ‘Before two o’clock, one risks finding the master and mistress of the house engaged in domestic activities or arranging their toilette; at a later hour, one may appear to be angling for an invitation to dinner.’

Or there was this: ‘On arriving to pay a visit and not finding the master and mistress of the house at home, a well-bred individual leaves a card, creased at the upper left side; if the visit is on the occasion of a death or other sad event, the card is creased at the lower right, with the fold slightly torn.’

Blimey!

But the most frightening thing of all was reading about clothes. If you were poor, it was easy: just one shirt and one pair of trousers –nothing to rack your brains over. But oh, the hassle if you were rich! When to wear a jacket, when to wear a frock coat, when to wear tails: when you should take your gloves off, when you shouldn’t; what should be check, what should be striped, and what should be flowery. And it seemed, for cultured people, not every colour matched every other one!

But the hardest part of all, though, was the hats – Senka even had to make notes.

The rules went like this. In an office, shop or hotel, you took your hat off only if the owners and countermen were bareheaded too (ah, if only he’d known that back at the Grand Moscow!). When leaving after a visit, you put your hat on outside the door, not in the doorway. In an omnibus or carriage, you didn’t take your hat off at all, even in the presence of ladies. When you paid a visit, you held your hat in your hand, and if you were in tails, your top hat had to be the kind with a spring to keep it straight, not the simple kind. When you sat down, you could put your hat on a vacant chair or on the floor but never, God forbid, on a table.

Senka felt sorry for the poor hat, it would get dirty on the floor. He looked at the handsome boater on his table (twelve and a half roubles, that cost). Put it on the floor? Not a chance.

When he was tired of studying society manners, he took another look at his new clothes. A frock coat of fine camlet (nineteen roubles ninety), two pique´ waistcoats, one white and one grey (ten roubles the pair), pantaloons with a black and grey stripe (fifteen roubles), trousers with foot straps (nine roubles ninety), button-down half-boots (twelve roubles), and another pair, patent leather (he shelled out twenty-five for them, but they were a real sight for sore eyes). And there was a little mirror with a silver handle, and pomade in a gilded jar – to grease his quiff, so it wouldn’t dangle. He spent longest of all admiring the mother-of-pearl penknife. Eight blades, an awl, even a toothpick and a nail file too!

When he’d had his fun, he read a bit more of the book.

Senka went down to dinner, dressed according to the requirements of etiquette, in his frock coat, because ‘a simple jacket is only permissible at table in the family circle’.

In the dining room he bowed respectfully, said
‘Bonsoir’,
and put his hat on the floor – so be it, but he put a napkin he’d taken from the kitchen underneath.

There were about ten people dining at the widow Borisenko’s. They gaped at the well-bred young man, some of them said good evening, others simply nodded. Not one was wearing a frock coat, and the fat, curly-headed young man sitting beside Senka was dining in his shirt and braces. He turned out to be a student at the Institute of Land Surveyors, George by name. He lived up in the attic, where the rooms were twelve roubles apiece.

Their landlady introduced Senka as Mr Spidorov, a Moscow merchant-trader, although when they agreed terms for the room, he’d just called himself a trading man. Of course ‘merchant-trader’ sounded much better.

This George started pestering him straight away, asking what kind of commerce he was engaged in at such a young age, and about his old mum and dad. When they served the sweet (it was called ‘dessert’), the student asked in a whisper whether he could borrow three roubles.

Naturally, Senka didn’t give him three roubles just like that, and he answered his questions vaguely, but he had an idea for how George could be useful.

Senka couldn’t learn everything from just one book. A tutor, that was what he needed.

He took George aside and started lying, saying he was a merchant’s son who had worked in his father’s business, he’d never had time to study. Now his old dad had died and left all his riches to his heir, but what had he, Semyon Spidorov, ever seen of life, apart from a shop counter? If he could fine someone good-hearted to teach him a few things – proper manners, French and other bits and pieces –then he would pay good money for the privilege.

The student listened carefully and took the hint, and they fixed terms for classes straight off. As soon as George heard Senka was going to pay a rouble an hour, he announced that he wouldn’t go to the institute and was ready to put himself entirely at Semyon Trofimovich’s disposal all day long.

What they agreed was this: one hour a day studying spelling and fine handwriting; an hour for French, an hour for arithmetic; lunch and dinner were for studying good manners; and the evening class was proper behaviour in society. Seeing as it was a bulk-supply contract, Senka arranged a discount for himself: four roubles a day all told. They were both satisfied.

They lost no time, starting straight after dinner with a trip to the ballet. Senka’s tails were hired for two roubles from the musician in the next room.

At the theatre Senka sat up straight without fidgeting, though he soon got tired of watching men in tight underpants jumping about all over the stage. When the girls came running out in transparent skirts, things got a bit more lively, but the music had a really sour edge to it. It would have been deadly boring if George hadn’t taken the magnifying glasses from the cloakroom (‘binoculars’, they were called). Senka got a good look at everything. First the thighs of the dancing girls, then who was sitting in the boxes round the hall, and then he let his fancy wander – a wart on the bald patch of the leader of the musicians, who was waving a stick at the orchestra, so they would keep better order. When everyone
applauded,
Senka stuck the binoculars under his arm and clapped his hands, too, louder than anyone else.

Spending seven roubles to sit in a prickly collar for three hours couldn’t be anybody’s idea of fun. He asked George if rich people went to get sweaty at the theatre every night. George reassured him: he said you could go just once a week. Well, that wasn’t too bad, and Senka cheered up a bit. It was like standing through mass on a Sunday if you were God-fearing.

From the ballet, they went to the bordello (that was the cultured name for a bawdy house), to learn proper manners with ladies.

Senka was really embarrassed by the lamps with silk shades and the soft couches with bouncy springs. Mamselle Loretta, who was sat on his knee, was plump and springy herself, and she smelled of sweet powder. She called Senka ‘sweety’ and ‘kitten’, then she led him into a room and started getting up to all sorts of tricks that Senka had never heard of, even from Prokha.

But he felt ashamed because the lamp was lit, and anyway, there was no way this fat pussycat Loretta had anything on Death.

Phooey!

After that, they spent a long time learning how to drink champagne: you put a strawberry in it, let it settle in and get well soaked, then fished it out with your lips. Then you downed the bubbly booze in one and started all over again.

Well, of course, in the morning his head was killing him. It was even worse than after vodka. But only until George called in.

George looked at his pupil’s agony, clicked his tongue and sent one of the servants out for champagne and pâté at once. They spread the pâté on white bread rolls and drank the wine straight from the bottle.

Senka felt a bit better.

‘Now we’ll do a bit of French, and for lunch we’ll go to a French restaurant to reinforce our knowledge,’ George told him, and licked his thick lips.

Well, this isn’t too shabby,
Senka thought, feeling more relaxed.
Not nearly as hard as it looks. The life of luxury is all right by me.

Story three.
About his little brother Vanka

Senka enjoyed thinking about his two great dreams, imagining how everything would work out – with love and countless riches. But even with his present riches, which weren’t
so
very great, he could already make one dream – which had seemed impossible before –come true. He could appear in all his glory before his brother Vanka.

Of course, he couldn’t turn up out of the blue just like that: Hello, I’m your big brother, dressed to the nines, but I’m a slum boy through and through, can’t speak a single cultured word. What if Vanka despised his ignorance?

But he could get by without all that much learning in front of a little kid.

Right from the off, Senka had asked George to correct any words he got wrong when they were talking. And to make sure the student made the effort, he was relieved of five kopecks for every word corrected.

Naturally, he was only too glad to try his best. Almost every other word got a: ‘No, Semyon Trofimovich, in cultured society they don’t say
collidor,
it should be
corridor’
– and he jotted down another cross on his special piece of paper. Afterwards, in the arithmetic lesson, Senka himself multiplied those little crosses by five. On the first of September 1900, he was stung for eighteen roubles and seventy-five kopecks – and he’d tried to be stingy, not say a single word more than he needed to get by. He started off talking like a book: ‘But in this case it seems to me that. . .’ And then shut his mouth.

Senka groaned at the huge sum, and demanded a reduction –from five kopecks to one.

On the second of September he forked out, that is, he
paid out,
four roubles and thirty-five kopecks.

On the third of September, it was three roubles and twelve kopecks.

By the fourth of September he’d copped on a bit, that is
got the feel of things,
and it was down to one rouble and ten kopecks, and on the fifth he escaped only ninety kopecks poorer.

Senka decided that was good enough for Vanka, it was time to go. He could now
expound his opinions
for five minutes
with perfect ease.
After all, God had given him a perfectly good memory.

According to
society etiquette,
first he ought to send Justice Kuvsh-innikov a letter, saying this and that, and I would like to call on Your Grace with a view to visiting my adored little brother Vanya. But he didn’t have the patience for that.

First thing in the morning Senka went to the
dentist
to have a gold tooth put in, and he packed George off to Tyoply Stan to warn them that in the afternoon,
if His Grace was agreeable,
Semyon Trofimovich Spidorov, the
well-to-do merchant-trader,
would call in person, for a
family visit,
so to speak. George dressed up in his student uniform, bought his uniform cap out of hock and set off.

Senka was
extremely nervous
(that is, he was in a real lather) in case the judge said: What the hell does my adopted son want with scummy relatives like that?

But it went off all right. George came back delighted with himself and announced that they were expecting him at three. So not for lunch, Senka twigged, but he didn’t take offence; on the contrary, he was glad, because he still wasn’t too good with table knives and telling the meat forks from the ones for fish and salad.

It said in the book: ‘When paying a visit to children, one should give them a present of sweets in a bonbonnier’, and Senka didn’t play the tightwad, that is he didn’t
penny-pinch
– he bought the very finest tin of chocolate from Perlov’s on Myasnitskaya Street, in the shape of the little humpbacked horse from the fairy tales.

He hired a shiny lacquered carriage for a five-rouble note, but his nerves were so bad he set out way too early, and at first he walked along the street with the carriage driving behind him.

He tried to step out the way the textbook said you should: ‘In the street, the well-bred, refined individual is easily distinguished. His gait is always steady and measured, his stride is confident. He walks straight ahead, without looking round, and only occasionally stops for a moment in front of shops, usually stays on the right-hand side of the road and looks neither up nor down, but several paces straight ahead of himself.’