Short Fiction by Vladimir Korolenko (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

a frame of coal-black hair, while Matriona would creep through back ways to the police station. There the cobbler Mikita, who made a very good living out of these very affairs with Turkevich, was always sitting. On seeing Matriona he would immediately throw down his boot-last and rise from his seat.

Meanwhile Turkevich, seeing that no good results followed his dithyrambs, would, little by little, cautiously have recourse to satire. He would usually begin by remarking what a pity it was that his benefactor thought it necessary to dye his honourable grey hair with shoe blacking. Next, grieved by the absolute lack of attention which his eloquence received, he would raise his voice and begin to assail his benefactor as a melancholy example of a man living illegally with Matriona. By the time he reached this delicate subject, the General had always lost all hope of reconciliation with his “benefactor,” and would therefore arm himself with all the genuine eloquence of indignation. It was a pity that an unexpected interruption almost always came at this point in his speech. Kotz’s angry yellow face would appear thrust out of one of the windows of his house, and Mikita, who had crept up with marvellous dexterity, would seize Turkevich from behind. No member of his audience ever tried to warn the orator of his approaching danger, for Mikita’s artistic methods always called forth universal admiration. Cut off in the midst of a word, the General would suddenly whirl through the air and find himself upside down on Mikita’s back. A few seconds more, and the sturdy cobbler would be quietly making his way to the gaol, bending slightly beneath his burden, and followed by the deafening shouts of the populace. Another minute, and the black door of the police station would gape like a pair of forbidding jaws and the General would disappear into the darkness, helplessly kicking his feet. The thankless mob would cry, “Hurrah for Mikita!” and gradually melt away.

Beside these individuals who were conspicuous among the ranks of the vagabonds, a dark crew of pitiful, ragged creatures had taken refuge near the chapel, and these never failed to create intense excitement by their appearance at the bazaars. The merchants would hastily seek to protect their goods with their hands, as a hen covers her brood when a hawk appears in the sky above her. There was a rumour afloat that these poor wretches had formed a fraternal organisation and that now, since they had been deprived of their last resources by their expulsion from the castle, they occupied themselves with petty thieving in the town and its environs. Such rumours were chiefly founded on the fact that a man cannot live without bread, and as all the suspicious persons had in some way or other abandoned the normal way of obtaining it, and had been cut off from the benefits of local charity, it was naturally concluded that they must either steal or die. As they did not die, the very fact of their remaining alive was evidence of their guilty practices.

If this was true, it was no less apparent that the organiser and leader of the band could be no other than Tiburtsi Drab, the most remarkable of all the queer characters that had lost their home in the castle.

Drab’s origin was shrouded in the most mystifying uncertainty. Those who were gifted with a vivid imagination credited him with having an aristocratic name which he had brought to shame; he was therefore obliged to conceal himself, at the same time taking part, it was said, in the exploits of the notorious Karmeliuk. But, in the first place, he was not old enough for this, and, in the second place, Tiburtsi’s appearance did not present one single aristocratic feature. He was tall, and his heavily stooping shoulders seemed to tell of great burdens borne by the unfortunate man. His large features were coarsely expressive. His short, reddish hair bristled stiffly all over his head; his receding forehead, his slightly projecting lower jaw, and the rapid play of his facial muscles lent something apish to his face, but the eyes that sparkled under his beetling brows were determined and dark, and there shone in them, beside cunning, a keen perspicacity, energy, and an uncommon intelligence. While his features were changing under the kaleidoscopic play of his expressions, his eyes would retain their same fixed, unvarying look, and for this reason the buffoonery of the strange man filled me with unreasoning dread.

Tiburtsi’s hands were callous and rough, and he stamped his great feet like a peasant. Therefore the consensus of opinion among the townsfolk was that he was not of aristocratic birth, and the most they would concede was that he might have been the servant of a great family. But here another difficulty presented itself: how, then, explain the phenomenal learning that everyone unanimously admitted he possessed? It was impossible not to acknowledge this obvious fact, for there was not a tavern in the whole town, where Tiburtsi had not stood on a barrel and spouted whole speeches from Cicero and Xenophon for the benefit of the Little Russians collected there on market days. These Little Russians would gape and nudge one another with their elbows, while Tiburtsi, towering above them in his rags, would thunder forth Catilinus or paint the exploits of Caesar and the craft of Mithridates. Little Russians are, by nature, endowed with a glowing fancy, and these were able to read their own meaning into Tiburtsi’s fiery if unintelligible speeches. When the orator beat his breast and turned to them with flashing eyes, exclaiming: “Patres Conscripti!” they too would knit their brows and say to one another:

“Aha, the son of a gun, he does bark!”

Later, when Tiburtsi would raise his eyes to the ceiling and begin declaiming endless verses of Latin poetry, his whiskered audience would follow every word he uttered with timid and pitying sympathy. They felt as if the soul of their orator