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

“For this reason. At first this was an unexpected characteristic, but it got to be believed, although in your time maybe it didn’t exist. The tenants began to say: you know M. Budnikov is an economical man. That was meant well and even as a sign of approval. But it suddenly reacted on Budnikov.⁠ ⁠… You understand? The unintelligible man began to develop a special intelligible trait.⁠ ⁠… It became clearer and clearer. All believed, for example, that M. Budnikov kept no servants. Gavrilo was the porter of the house where I lived; he used to clean the clothes of the different people, fix the samovars, and run errands. Sometimes the master and servant used to sit side by side and clean shoes, the porter for the tenants, Budnikov for himself. Then M. Budnikov got a horse. No special need for him to do it. As a luxury, he’d ride twice a week to a farm near the city. The rest of the time the horse was free. Gavrilo wasn’t busy all the time either.⁠ ⁠… The result was⁠—the horse was put at Gavrilo’s disposal, and he used to ride down town. Gavrilo had nothing against this arrangement, because he considered incessant work his special duty. You know there’s a sort of talent for everything, and I thought once that Gavrilo was a kind of genius in the field of muscular labor.⁠ ⁠… Easy motioned⁠—unwearied freshness. Sometimes at night he wouldn’t sleep. Look out of the window and you’d see Gavrilo sweeping the street or cleaning the ditches. It meant⁠—he’d gone to bed and then remembered he hadn’t swept all the pavement the last thing. So he’d go and clean it. And this was really beautiful.”

“Yes,” said the mathematician, “that’s a good description of the man. I remember I liked to look at him⁠—he seemed rather attractive.”

“Spiritual poise is always beautiful, and he did his duty without speculating about his relation to his master.⁠ ⁠… And that was a fine thing, you know⁠—their mutual relations. One used his muscles admirably. The other gave reason and rational meaning to it.⁠ ⁠… He saw that the time was not all filled⁠ ⁠… and he found a new occupation.⁠ ⁠… There was a sort of balancing of interests, almost an idyl.⁠ ⁠… Almost before dawn Gavrilo was at work. M. Budnikov also got up early. They said good morning with a manifestly pleasant feeling. Then M. Budnikov either went to work in his garden or went around his ‘estate’ scattered through the city. Poverty gets up early, and he went mornings to poverty’s quarters.⁠ ⁠… Then he’d come back and say:

“ ‘Now harness up, Gavrilo, and I’ll finish cleaning up.⁠ ⁠… The officials are just going to their offices. You may meet someone.⁠ ⁠…’

“At this time he considered himself neither a Tolstoyan nor a deliberate simplifier.⁠ ⁠… He often spoke of the abnormality of our lives, of the necessity of paying our debt to the laboring man, of the advantages of physical labor. ‘See, I’m working,’ he’d say to anyone who caught him busied with axe or spade. ‘I’m helping my neighbor, my porter, with his work.’ It was hard to tell whether he was talking ironically or seriously.⁠ ⁠… At noon Gavrilo’d come back and put his horse in the stable, and M. Budnikov would go of on business and make polite remarks to his tenants about a broken fence or a piece of plaster knocked down by children’s balls.⁠ ⁠… He often came back with one or two beggars. They had asked him for alms on the street and he’d offered ‘assistance through toil.’⁠ ⁠… Of course, the rogues ran off shamefully, but M. Budnikov took especial pleasure in working, either alone or with Gavrilo. All the beggars in the city soon got to know him and bowed with a friendly smile, but did not ask for money. ‘Why can’t you see what’s good for you, my friends?’ he’d say meaningly. I must say that a ‘life of toil’ did bring him manifest personal benefits; his ruddy color was absolutely evident, even, and healthy. His face was always quiet and placid, and almost like Gavrilo’s.⁠ ⁠… It had nothing malicious or strange in it.”

“I see, you’re back on your old theme!” said the mathematician, standing up and striking his companion’s shoulder. “Of course, nothing terrible.⁠ ⁠… I’m going out here.⁠ ⁠… Eight minutes’ wait.”

The train slowed down and stopped.

Pavel Semenovich, thus left without an audience, looked around in despair. Soon his gray eyes met mine. In his gaze I noticed an obstinate idea like that of a maniac.⁠ ⁠…

“You⁠ ⁠… understand?” he said frankly, wholly undisturbed by the fact that he was talking to a stranger.

“I think so,” I answered.

“Good,” he said, with evident satisfaction, and then he went on, as if he were talking to the same person.

“I had, you know, a school friend named Kalugin, Petr Petrovich. As a young man he was infected with the tendencies of his age, but he was a rare type. He said little. He preferred to listen, and he watched how others failed, and he tried, as is said, to turn the wheel of history.⁠ ⁠… But you could feel his rapture and his devotion in his silence.⁠ ⁠… He finally came to the conclusion: ‘Everything is good and extraordinarily fine, but there is no lever. Money is the lever. And you can’t do a thing without a hundred thousand.’ You know, he succeeded in convincing several of his friends of this and they formed a small savings association. Of course, nothing came of it: one simply got tired; fate placed another too far from the source of gain. But Petr Petrovich held on and won. He wasn’t brilliant, but he was of a good character, and that kind of men get along well in business. He first went into some sort of an institution along the Volga. It wasn’t a bank nor a loan association. To get ahead, he didn’t despise even this, and all of a sudden he put new life into it, as they say. In three years’ time, he