Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

a treasury clerk and his wife, who departed for Novgorod before daylight, had slept in the same cabin with me.

While the horses were being harnessed for my cart, another carriage drawn by three horses arrived. A man wrapped in a large cape got out, and the hat he wore, its floppy brim pulled down, hindered me from seeing his face. He demanded horses even though he did not have a pass, and since lots of coach drivers swarmed round him and haggled, he did not wait for them to finish their bargaining and impatiently said to one of them, “Harness up quickly, I shall give you four kopecks per verst.”* The coachman ran for the horses. The others, seeing that there was nothing left to negotiate about, all walked away from him.

I stood not more than five sazhen† from him. Without removing his hat, he approached me and said, “My dear sir, give an unhappy man whatever you can.” This astonished me exceedingly, and I could not refrain from telling him that I was surprised by his request for aid when he had not bargained over the fee for the relay horses and paid twice as much as others did. “I see,” he told me, “that in your life nothing untoward has crossed you.” So firm a response I liked a good deal and I readily pulled out my wallet …: “Do not disapprove of me,” I said, “I cannot do any more for you right now; but if we travel to our destination then perhaps I shall do something more.” My intention in this respect was to make him come clean, and I was not wrong. “I see,” he said to me, “that you still possess sensitivity, that mixing in society and the quest for your own advantage have not closed your heart to it. Allow me to take a seat in your carriage, and bid your servant to take a seat in mine.” Meanwhile, our horses were readied, I fulfilled his wish—and off we go.

“Ah! dear sir, I find it hard to fathom that I am unfortunate. No more than a week ago was I cheerful, gratified, had no want, was loved, at least so it seemed since my house daily was full of people sporting marks of distinction already conferred; my table was always like some magnificent celebration. But if my vanity was greatly satisfied, the genuine bliss the soul enjoyed was its equal. After repeated, initially fruitless efforts, approaches, and failures, finally I had acquired for a wife her whom I desired. Our mutual passion, delighting feeling and soul, presented everything to us in a bright guise. We never saw a cloudy day. We attained the zenith of our bliss. My spouse was pregnant and the hour of her delivery approached. Fate had decided that all this bliss would collapse in a single instant.

“I hosted a luncheon, and a multitude of so-called friends, having gathered, were sating their idle appetite at my expense. One of those present, someone who privately did not like me, began to speak to someone next to him, albeit in a low voice though still sufficiently loud so that what was spoken could be audible to my wife and many others. ‘Are you not aware that our host’s case in the criminal court has already been decided….’

“You will think it odd,” said my fellow traveler, addressing his speech to me, “that a man not in service and in the situation I describe could become subject to a criminal trial. That is how I thought for a long while—indeed, until the moment when my case, after wending its way through the lower courts, reached the highest one. This is what it was about. I belonged to the merchant estate. In putting my capital into circulation, I took a share in a private concession. My inexperience was the reason I trusted a devious man who, having personally been caught in a crime, was banned from a business concession and, supposedly on the evidence of his accounts, it seemed a substantial liability had accumulated against him. He vanished, I remained available, and it was decided to recover the financial shortfall from me. After doing calculations the best I could, I found that the sum for which I was liable either did not exist; or, if it did, was very small, and for that reason asked that a final account be struck with me, since I was the guarantor. But instead of complying with my request, it was decided to seek the arrears from me. This was the first unjust ruling. To this a second one was added. At the time I became the guarantor of concession, I owned no property; but, as was customary, a forfeit was issued on my property in the civil court. A strange matter it is to prohibit the selling of property that does not exist as an actual possession! Afterwards, I bought a home and made other acquisitions. At this very time, chance allowed me by rising in rank to move from the merchant estate into that of the nobility. Seeing an advantage, I had an opportunity to sell my home on good terms, having completed its purchase in the very same court of justice where the forfeiture of my belongings was established. This was attributed to me as a crime, for there were people whose satisfaction was overshadowed by the blessings of my life. The solicitor of fiscal matters produced a denunciation of me to the effect that I evaded payment of the liability when I sold the house, I swindled the civil court of justice, by having identified myself by the status to which I belonged rather than the one in which I was at the time of the purchase of the home. It was to no effect that I said that no prohibition could exist against something that was not my property; it was to no effect that I said that at the very least any remaining