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ROCK ’N’ ROLL MOVIES
 QU I C K TA K E S: M O V IE S A N D P O P U L A R CU LT U RE

Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture is a series offering suc-

cinct overviews and high-quality writing on cutting-edge themes
and issues in film studies. Authors offer both fresh perspectives
on new areas of inquiry and original takes on established topics.
SERIES EDITORS:
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is Willa Cather Professor of English,
and she teaches film studies in the Department of English at the
University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed Profes-

sor of Film Studies and Professor of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln.

Steven Gerrard, The Modern British Horror Film

Daniel Herbert, Film Remakes and Franchises
Ian Olney, Zombie Cinema
Valérie K. Orlando, New African Cinema
Steven Shaviro, Digital Music Videos
David Sterritt, Rock ’n’ Roll Movies
John Wills, Disney Culture
 DAVID STERRITT

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sterritt, David author.
Title: Rock ’n’ roll movies / David Sterritt.
Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2017. |
Series: Quick takes: movies and popular culture |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017016370 (print) | LCCN 2017032589 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780813583235 (E-pub) | ISBN 9780813583242 (Web PDF) |
ISBN 9780813590073 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780813583228 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Rock films—United States—History—
20th century.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.M86 (ebook) |
LCC PN1995.9.M86 S75 2017 (print) |
DDC 791.43/6578—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016370
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is
available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2017 by David Sterritt
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the
publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset
Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this
prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.48-1992.
www.rutgersuniversitypress.org
Manufactured in the United States of America
 TO MIKITA

AND JEREMY AND TANYA

AND CRAIG AND KIM

(AND OLIVER)
 CONTENTS

Introduction 1

1 The Fabulous 1950s 6

2 The Swinging 1960s 23

3 The Slippery 1970s 73

4 From the 1980s to Now 113

Epilogue: The Hits Just Keep on Coming 118

Further Reading 121

Works Cited 123

Index131

vii
ROCK ’N’ ROLL MOVIES
 INTRODUCTION

Since the first appearance of rock ’n’ roll movies in the

1950s, they have fired the public imagination, offering
images of youthful rebellion, excess, and hedonism, some-
times presented as harmless fun and other times seen as
an open challenge to mainstream American norms. Like
the music they presented, celebrated, and exploited, the
most potent of these pictures changed American culture
and then world culture with their message of youth-­
propelled social transformation.
The history of rock ’n’ roll movies is more complex
than it may seem at first glance. Many were made for no
nobler purpose than cashing in on a hot musical fad. But
long before Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) became
the first film with a wall-to-wall rock soundtrack, trend
watchers could tell that “rock ’n’ roll [was] here to stay,”
as Danny & the Juniors sang in 1958, an endlessly quoted
rock ’n’ roll reference that every writer on the subject
has to cite at least once. More important, savvy observ-
ers know that rock ’n’ roll is supercharged with meaning
about the changing values of the paradigm-breaking

1
2 • ROCK ’N’ ROLL MOVIES

decades—the deceptively conservative 1950s and boldly

rebellious 1960s—when an unprecedented teen ethos, far
from monolithic but always identifiable and distinctive,
came to the forefront of popular entertainment, music
and movies very much included. The teens of the post–
World War II era are now middle-aged or beyond, but the
ethos of their heyday still rings out. Underpinning my dis-
cussion is the multifaceted question of how rock ’n’ roll
movies transcended their scruffy B-picture beginnings
to become an integral—and respectable!—mainstay of
modern-day cultural expression, permanently altering the
social landscape that surrounds us all.
This book traces the history of rock ’n’ roll in its many
filmic forms, putting a wide variety of topics before the
lens and zooming in for close-ups on noteworthy narrative
films, documentaries, animations, shorts, hybrids, cross-
breeds, avant-garde meditations, and experimental what-
sits, some of them noble or ignoble failures, others fondly
remembered or half-forgotten hits. Recognizing that the
moving-image media have captured much more rock ’n’
roll than a succinct account can chronicle, I take a neces-
sarily selective approach, guided by my critical tastes and
personal predilections as well as my wish to cover the field
in a fair and representative way. I focus mainly on rock ’n’
roll’s first three decades for two reasons. First, these were
the all-important periods when the music emerged and
 I ntroduction • 3

came of age, and they remain the golden age when giants
walked the earth (or duckwalked, in Chuck Berry’s case).
Second, most present-day listeners are already au courant
with recent developments, whereas the early decades are
less familiar and more in need of exposition and explica-
tion. The weight of my coverage therefore skews toward
the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
The first task of a book about rock ’n’ roll movies is
to ask what we’re talking about. Beginning with the
“rock ’n’ roll” part of the equation, a loose and flexible
definition suits the subject at hand. Critics, scholars,
and fans have wrangled over the essence of rock music
for decades, and the difficulty of defining it is clear from
a game attempt by Michael Campbell and James Brody,
who write in the first edition of their book Rock and
Roll: An Introduction (1999) that the term “rock” implies
“a certain sound, or range of sounds. It is not classical,
or folk, or pop, or jazz, or country. It is rock” (7). This
description is an exercise in negative theology or in the
logic used by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when
he said of hard-core pornography, “I know it when I see
it.” The writers are more specific when they name “loud
guitars, up-front rhythms,” and “rough-edged vocals”
among the usual ingredients, but the haze returns when
they concede that “a lot of rock music has none of these
qualities” (7).
4 • ROCK ’N’ ROLL MOVIES

In the second edition of Campbell and Brody’s book,

they focus more crisply on what rock is instead of what it
isn’t, likening it to an extended family of sounds that can
be “vocal or instrumental, soft or loud, acoustic or elec-
tric, cobbled together in a garage or generated on a com-
puter,” radiating out “in every conceivable direction,” and
sometimes—as with the Beatles song “Michelle” or Frank
Zappa’s semiclassical compositions—qualifying as rock
simply because rock musicians wrote or recorded it (2).
While that description still casts a wide net, it contains
reasonably clear clues to rock’s fundamental nature. As
to the differences between “rock” and “rock ’n’ roll,” the
writers suggest a terminological triad: “rock,” referring
to music by white performers or played in the style(s)
favored by such performers; “rock ’n’ roll,” referring pri-
marily to the prototypical rock of the 1950s; and “rock era,”
an all-inclusive label encompassing rock and its subgenres
and substyles, from rhythm and blues, soul, reggae, and
techno to heavy metal, new wave, and fusions with other
traditions such as jazz, Latin music, and musical theater.
I follow a similar strategy, using “rock ’n’ roll” for the
music’s early wave—from the late 1940s to the early
1960s—and “rock” for the more elaborate forms spawned
in subsequent years, starting with the British invasion, the
psychedelic sound, and the poetic lyrics of Bob Dylan
and Paul Simon and continuing through hip-hop to the
 I ntroduction • 5

present day. Regarding orthography, I have always favored

the old-fashioned “rock ’n’ roll” over such variants as “rock
& roll” and “rock-and-roll” and “rock and roll,” margin-
ally more dignified though the latter three may be. There
is no authoritative dictum on this matter, so I use “rock
’n’ roll” because that’s how the term sounded to me as a
youthful listener of 1010 WINS in the mid-1950s, when
the New York disc jockey Alan Freed popularized the
alliterative catchphrase.
The other half of my title, “movies,” needs only a brief
note. I use the word to designate all types of moving-­
image production, from theatrical features photographed
and projected on thirty-five-millimeter film to digital
and analog videos, live television broadcasts, computer-­
generated imagery, and the rest, whether seen in picture
palaces, on the internet, or somewhere between. Let a
zillion flowers bloom.
 1
THE FABULOUS 1950s

Origins tend to be murky, and identifying the first-ever

rock ’n’ roll movie is a tricky business. The first film to
make tentative contact with the music was Richard
Brooks’s message movie Blackboard Jungle, a juvenile-­
delinquency drama that premiered in March 1955. This
isn’t a true rock ’n’ roll picture, since its nod to the genre is
limited to one song: “Rock Around the Clock,” performed
by Bill Haley and His Comets, whose Decca Records sin-
gle had been around since 1954. Officially titled “(We’re
Gonna) Rock Around the Clock,” it was the B-side of the
disc—the A-side was “Thirteen Women (And Only One
Man in Town),” a song with an atom-bomb theme—and
sales were disappointing until Blackboard Jungle propelled
it to international fame. Heard behind the opening titles,
reprised without vocals later on, and repeated at the
end, it made a major impression on audiences, and four
months after the movie opened, it became the first rock ’n’
roll disc to reach the top of the Billboard pop chart.

6
 THE FABULOUS 1950s • 7

BILL BEATS BIX

The overall impact and influence of Brooks’s film were

similarly strong, enhanced by attacks from educational
groups and especially from Claire Booth Luce, the
American ambassador to Italy, whose successful effort
to keep it out of the Venice Film Festival helped make it
“the most highly publicized film on the worldwide mar-
ket” (Hollinger 5; quoted in Doherty 58). Together with
Nicholas Ray’s teen melodrama Rebel Without a Cause,
released seven months later, Blackboard Jungle alerted
Hollywood to the idea that rebellious youths on the
screen held a powerful appeal for money-bearing youths
at the ticket window.
“Although purportedly adult films,” the cinema his-
torian Thomas Doherty points out, these timely, con-
troversial pictures “offered convincing evidence that
teenagers were becoming the most populous segment
of the movie­going audience.” And that segment loved
the “foreshadowing of the shape of things to come” that
occurs in Blackboard Jungle when “the kids erupt in an
orgy of destruction and play Frisbee with their music
instructor’s priceless collection of Bix Beiderbecke
78s” (57–58), demanding “some bop” or at least some
Frank Sinatra or Joni James, as they trash and smash the
teacher’s platters. Rock ’n’ roll is never named, but the
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 JOY
IT was twelve o’clock at night.
Mitya Kuldarov, with excited face and ruffled hair, flew into his
parents’ flat, and hurriedly ran through all the rooms. His parents
had already gone to bed. His sister was in bed, finishing the last
page of a novel. His schoolboy brothers were asleep.
“Where have you come from?” cried his parents in amazement.
“What is the matter with you?
“Oh, don’t ask! I never expected it; no, I never expected it! It’s . .
. it’s positively incredible!”
Mitya laughed and sank into an armchair, so overcome by
happiness that he could not stand on his legs.
“It’s incredible! You can’t imagine! Look!”
His sister jumped out of bed and, throwing a quilt round her, went
in to her brother. The schoolboys woke up.
“What’s the matter? You don’t look like yourself!”
“It’s because I am so delighted, Mamma! Do you know, now all
Russia knows of me! All Russia! Till now only you knew that there
was a registration clerk called Dmitry Kuldarov, and now all Russia
knows it! Mamma! Oh, Lord!”
Mitya jumped up, ran up and down all the rooms, and then sat
down again.
“Why, what has happened? Tell us sensibly!”
 “You live like wild beasts, you don’t read the newspapers and take
no notice of what’s published, and there’s so much that is interesting
in the papers. If anything happens it’s all known at once, nothing is
hidden! How happy I am! Oh, Lord! You know it’s only celebrated
people whose names are published in the papers, and now they
have gone and published mine!”
“What do you mean? Where?”
The papa turned pale. The mamma glanced at the holy image and
crossed herself. The schoolboys jumped out of bed and, just as they
were, in short nightshirts, went up to their brother.
“Yes! My name has been published! Now all Russia knows of me!
Keep the paper, mamma, in memory of it! We will read it sometimes!
Look!”
Mitya pulled out of his pocket a copy of the paper, gave it to his
father, and pointed with his finger to a passage marked with blue
pencil.
“Read it!”
The father put on his spectacles.
“Do read it!”
The mamma glanced at the holy image and crossed herself. The
papa cleared his throat and began to read: “At eleven o’clock on the
evening of the 29th of December, a registration clerk of the name of
Dmitry Kuldarov . . .”
“You see, you see! Go on!”
“. . . a registration clerk of the name of Dmitry Kuldarov, coming
from the beershop in Kozihin’s buildings in Little Bronnaia in an
intoxicated condition. . .”
“That’s me and Semyon Petrovitch. . . . It’s all described exactly!
Go on! Listen!”
 “. . . intoxicated condition, slipped and fell under a horse
belonging to a sledge-driver, a peasant of the village of Durikino in
the Yuhnovsky district, called Ivan Drotov. The frightened horse,
stepping over Kuldarov and drawing the sledge over him, together
with a Moscow merchant of the second guild called Stepan Lukov,
who was in it, dashed along the street and was caught by some
house-porters. Kuldarov, at first in an unconscious condition, was
taken to the police station and there examined by the doctor. The
blow he had received on the back of his head. . .”
“It was from the shaft, papa. Go on! Read the rest!”
“. . . he had received on the back of his head turned out not to be
serious. The incident was duly reported. Medical aid was given to the
injured man. . . .”
“They told me to foment the back of my head with cold water. You
have read it now? Ah! So you see. Now it’s all over Russia! Give it
here!”
Mitya seized the paper, folded it up and put it into his pocket.
“I’ll run round to the Makarovs and show it to them. . . . I must
show it to the Ivanitskys too, Natasya Ivanovna, and Anisim
Vassilyitch. . . . I’ll run! Good-bye!”
Mitya put on his cap with its cockade and, joyful and triumphant,
ran into the street.
 LADIES

F
YODOR PETROVITCH the Director of Elementary Schools in the
N. District, who considered himself a just and generous man,
was one day interviewing in his office a schoolmaster called
Vremensky.
“No, Mr. Vremensky,” he was saying, “your retirement is inevitable.
You cannot continue your work as a schoolmaster with a voice like
that! How did you come to lose it?”
“I drank cold beer when I was in a perspiration. . .” hissed the
schoolmaster.
“What a pity! After a man has served fourteen years, such a
calamity all at once! The idea of a career being ruined by such a
trivial thing. What are you intending to do now?”
The schoolmaster made no answer.
“Are you a family man?” asked the director.
“A wife and two children, your Excellency . . .” hissed the
schoolmaster.
A silence followed. The director got up from the table and walked
to and fro in perturbation.
“I cannot think what I am going to do with you!” he said. “A
teacher you cannot be, and you are not yet entitled to a pension. . .
. To abandon you to your fate, and leave you to do the best you can,
is rather awkward. We look on you as one of our men, you have
served fourteen years, so it is our business to help you. . . . But how
are we to help you? What can I do for you? Put yourself in my place:
what can I do for you?”
 A silence followed; the director walked up and down, still thinking,
and Vremensky, overwhelmed by his trouble, sat on the edge of his
chair, and he, too, thought. All at once the director began beaming,
and even snapped his fingers.
“I wonder I did not think of it before!” he began rapidly. “Listen,
this is what I can offer you. Next week our secretary at the Home is
retiring. If you like, you can have his place! There you are!”
Vremensky, not expecting such good fortune, beamed too.
“That’s capital,” said the director. “Write the application to-day.”
Dismissing Vremensky, Fyodor Petrovitch felt relieved and even
gratified: the bent figure of the hissing schoolmaster was no longer
confronting him, and it was agreeable to recognize that in offering a
vacant post to Vremensky he had acted fairly and conscientiously,
like a good-hearted and thoroughly decent person. But this
agreeable state of mind did not last long. When he went home and
sat down to dinner his wife, Nastasya Ivanovna, said suddenly:
“Oh yes, I was almost forgetting! Nina Sergeyevna came to see
me yesterday and begged for your interest on behalf of a young
man. I am told there is a vacancy in our Home. . . .”
“Yes, but the post has already been promised to someone else,”
said the director, and he frowned. “And you know my rule: I never
give posts through patronage.”
“I know, but for Nina Sergeyevna, I imagine, you might make an
exception. She loves us as though we were relations, and we have
never done anything for her. And don’t think of refusing, Fedya! You
will wound both her and me with your whims.”
“Who is it that she is recommending?”
“Polzuhin!”
 “What Polzuhin? Is it that fellow who played Tchatsky at the party
on New Year’s Day? Is it that gentleman? Not on any account!”
The director left off eating.
“Not on any account!” he repeated. “Heaven preserve us!”
“But why not?”
“Understand, my dear, that if a young man does not set to work
directly, but through women, he must be good for nothing! Why
doesn’t he come to me himself?”
After dinner the director lay on the sofa in his study and began
reading the letters and newspapers he had received.
“Dear Fyodor Petrovitch,” wrote the wife of the Mayor of the town.
“You once said that I knew the human heart and understood people.
Now you have an opportunity of verifying this in practice. K. N.
Polzuhin, whom I know to be an excellent young man, will call upon
you in a day or two to ask you for the post of secretary at our
Home. He is a very nice youth. If you take an interest in him you will
be convinced of it.” And so on.
“On no account!” was the director’s comment. “Heaven preserve
me!”
After that, not a day passed without the director’s receiving letters
recommending Polzuhin. One fine morning Polzuhin himself, a stout
young man with a close-shaven face like a jockey’s, in a new black
suit, made his appearance. . . .
“I see people on business not here but at the office,” said the
director drily, on hearing his request.
“Forgive me, your Excellency, but our common acquaintances
advised me to come here.”
“H’m!” growled the director, looking with hatred at the pointed
toes of the young man’s shoes. “To the best of my belief your father
is a man of property and you are not in want,” he said. “What
induces you to ask for this post? The salary is very trifling!”
“It’s not for the sake of the salary. . . . It’s a government post, any
way . . .”
“H’m. . . . It strikes me that within a month you will be sick of the
job and you will give it up, and meanwhile there are candidates for
whom it would be a career for life. There are poor men for whom . .
.”
“I shan’t get sick of it, your Excellency,” Polzuhin interposed.
“Honour bright, I will do my best!”
It was too much for the director.
“Tell me,” he said, smiling contemptuously, “why was it you didn’t
apply to me direct but thought fitting instead to trouble ladies as a
preliminary?”
“I didn’t know that it would be disagreeable to you,” Polzuhin
answered, and he was embarrassed. “But, your Excellency, if you
attach no significance to letters of recommendation, I can give you a
testimonial. . . .”
He drew from his pocket a letter and handed it to the director. At
the bottom of the testimonial, which was written in official language
and handwriting, stood the signature of the Governor. Everything
pointed to the Governor’s having signed it unread, simply to get rid
of some importunate lady.
“There’s nothing for it, I bow to his authority. . . I obey . . .” said
the director, reading the testimonial, and he heaved a sigh.
“Send in your application to-morrow. . . . There’s nothing to be
done. . . .”
And when Polzuhin had gone out, the director abandoned himself
to a feeling of repulsion.
 “Sneak!” he hissed, pacing from one corner to the other. “He has
got what he wanted, one way or the other, the good-for-nothing
toady! Making up to the ladies! Reptile! Creature!”
The director spat loudly in the direction of the door by which
Polzuhin had departed, and was immediately overcome with
embarrassment, for at that moment a lady, the wife of the
Superintendent of the Provincial Treasury, walked in at the door.
“I’ve come for a tiny minute . . . a tiny minute. . .” began the lady.
“Sit down, friend, and listen to me attentively. . . . Well, I’ve been
told you have a post vacant. . . . To-day or to-morrow you will
receive a visit from a young man called Polzuhin. . . .”
The lady chattered on, while the director gazed at her with
lustreless, stupefied eyes like a man on the point of fainting, gazed
and smiled from politeness.
And the next day when Vremensky came to his office it was a long
time before the director could bring himself to tell the truth. He
hesitated, was incoherent, and could not think how to begin or what
to say. He wanted to apologize to the schoolmaster, to tell him the
whole truth, but his tongue halted like a drunkard’s, his ears burned,
and he was suddenly overwhelmed with vexation and resentment
that he should have to play such an absurd part—in his own office,
before his subordinate. He suddenly brought his fist down on the
table, leaped up, and shouted angrily:
“I have no post for you! I have not, and that’s all about it! Leave
me in peace! Don’t worry me! Be so good as to leave me alone!”
And he walked out of the office.
 A PECULIAR MAN

B
ETWEEN twelve and one at night a tall gentleman, wearing a
top-hat and a coat with a hood, stops before the door of
Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a midwife and an old maid. Neither
face nor hand can be distinguished in the autumn darkness, but in
the very manner of his coughing and the ringing of the bell a certain
solidity, positiveness, and even impressiveness can be discerned.
After the third ring the door opens and Marya Petrovna herself
appears. She has a man’s overcoat flung on over her white petticoat.
The little lamp with the green shade which she holds in her hand
throws a greenish light over her sleepy, freckled face, her scraggy
neck, and the lank, reddish hair that strays from under her cap.
“Can I see the midwife?” asks the gentleman.
“I am the midwife. What do you want?”
The gentleman walks into the entry and Marya Petrovna sees
facing her a tall, well-made man, no longer young, but with a
handsome, severe face and bushy whiskers.
“I am a collegiate assessor, my name is Kiryakov,” he says. “I
came to fetch you to my wife. Only please make haste.”
“Very good . . .” the midwife assents. “I’ll dress at once, and I
must trouble you to wait for me in the parlour.”
Kiryakov takes off his overcoat and goes into the parlour. The
greenish light of the lamp lies sparsely on the cheap furniture in
patched white covers, on the pitiful flowers and the posts on which
ivy is trained. . . . There is a smell of geranium and carbolic. The
little clock on the wall ticks timidly, as though abashed at the
presence of a strange man.
 “I am ready,” says Marya Petrovna, coming into the room five
minutes later, dressed, washed, and ready for action. “Let us go.”
“Yes, you must make haste,” says Kiryakov. “And, by the way, it is
not out of place to enquire—what do you ask for your services?”
“I really don’t know . . .” says Marya Petrovna with an
embarrassed smile. “As much as you will give.”
“No, I don’t like that,” says Kiryakov, looking coldly and steadily at
the midwife. “An arrangement beforehand is best. I don’t want to
take advantage of you and you don’t want to take advantage of me.
To avoid misunderstandings it is more sensible for us to make an
arrangement beforehand.”
“I really don’t know—there is no fixed price.”
“I work myself and am accustomed to respect the work of others.
I don’t like injustice. It will be equally unpleasant to me if I pay you
too little, or if you demand from me too much, and so I insist on
your naming your charge.”
“Well, there are such different charges.”
“H’m. In view of your hesitation, which I fail to understand, I am
constrained to fix the sum myself. I can give you two roubles.”
“Good gracious! . . . Upon my word! . . .” says Marya Petrovna,
turning crimson and stepping back. “I am really ashamed. Rather
than take two roubles I will come for nothing . . . . Five roubles, if
you like.”
“Two roubles, not a kopeck more. I don’t want to take advantage
of you, but I do not intend to be overcharged.”
“As you please, but I am not coming for two roubles. . . .”
“But by law you have not the right to refuse.”
“Very well, I will come for nothing.”
 “I won’t have you for nothing. All work ought to receive
remuneration. I work myself and I understand that. . . .”
“I won’t come for two roubles,” Marya Petrovna answers mildly.
“I’ll come for nothing if you like.”
“In that case I regret that I have troubled you for nothing. . . . I
have the honour to wish you good-bye.”
“Well, you are a man!” says Marya Petrovna, seeing him into the
entry. “I will come for three roubles if that will satisfy you.”
Kiryakov frowns and ponders for two full minutes, looking with
concentration on the floor, then he says resolutely, “No,” and goes
out into the street. The astonished and disconcerted midwife fastens
the door after him and goes back into her bedroom.
“He’s good-looking, respectable, but how queer, God bless the
man! . . .” she thinks as she gets into bed.
But in less than half an hour she hears another ring; she gets up
and sees the same Kiryakov again.
“Extraordinary the way things are mismanaged. Neither the
chemist, nor the police, nor the house-porters can give me the
address of a midwife, and so I am under the necessity of assenting
to your terms. I will give you three roubles, but . . . I warn you
beforehand that when I engage servants or receive any kind of
services, I make an arrangement beforehand in order that when I
pay there may be no talk of extras, tips, or anything of the sort.
Everyone ought to receive what is his due.”
Marya Petrovna has not listened to Kiryakov for long, but already
she feels that she is bored and repelled by him, that his even,
measured speech lies like a weight on her soul. She dresses and
goes out into the street with him. The air is still but cold, and the
sky is so overcast that the light of the street lamps is hardly visible.
The sloshy snow squelches under their feet. The midwife looks
intently but does not see a cab.
 “I suppose it is not far?” she asks.
“No, not far,” Kiryakov answers grimly.
They walk down one turning, a second, a third. . . . Kiryakov
strides along, and even in his step his respectability and positiveness
is apparent.
“What awful weather!” the midwife observes to him.
But he preserves a dignified silence, and it is noticeable that he
tries to step on the smooth stones to avoid spoiling his goloshes. At
last after a long walk the midwife steps into the entry; from which
she can see a big decently furnished drawing-room. There is not a
soul in the rooms, even in the bedroom where the woman is lying in
labour. . . . The old women and relations who flock in crowds to
every confinement are not to be seen. The cook rushes about alone,
with a scared and vacant face. There is a sound of loud groans.
Three hours pass. Marya Petrovna sits by the mother’s bedside
and whispers to her. The two women have already had time to make
friends, they have got to know each other, they gossip, they sigh
together. . . .
“You mustn’t talk,” says the midwife anxiously, and at the same
time she showers questions on her.
Then the door opens and Kiryakov himself comes quietly and
stolidly into the room. He sits down in the chair and strokes his
whiskers. Silence reigns. Marya Petrovna looks timidly at his
handsome, passionless, wooden face and waits for him to begin to
talk, but he remains absolutely silent and absorbed in thought. After
waiting in vain, the midwife makes up her mind to begin herself, and
utters a phrase commonly used at confinements.
“Well now, thank God, there is one human being more in the
world!”
 “Yes, that’s agreeable,” said Kiryakov, preserving the wooden
expression of his face, “though indeed, on the other hand, to have
more children you must have more money. The baby is not born fed
and clothed.”
A guilty expression comes into the mother’s face, as though she
had brought a creature into the world without permission or through
idle caprice. Kiryakov gets up with a sigh and walks with solid dignity
out of the room.
“What a man, bless him!” says the midwife to the mother. “He’s so
stern and does not smile.”
The mother tells her that he is always like that. . . . He is honest,
fair, prudent, sensibly economical, but all that to such an exceptional
degree that simple mortals feel suffocated by it. His relations have
parted from him, the servants will not stay more than a month; they
have no friends; his wife and children are always on tenterhooks
from terror over every step they take. He does not shout at them
nor beat them, his virtues are far more numerous than his defects,
but when he goes out of the house they all feel better, and more at
ease. Why it is so the woman herself cannot say.
“The basins must be properly washed and put away in the store
cupboard,” says Kiryakov, coming into the bedroom. “These bottles
must be put away too: they may come in handy.”
What he says is very simple and ordinary, but the midwife for
some reason feels flustered. She begins to be afraid of the man and
shudders every time she hears his footsteps. In the morning as she
is preparing to depart she sees Kiryakov’s little son, a pale, close-
cropped schoolboy, in the dining-room drinking his tea. . . . Kiryakov
is standing opposite him, saying in his flat, even voice:
“You know how to eat, you must know how to work too. You have
just swallowed a mouthful but have not probably reflected that that
mouthful costs money and money is obtained by work. You must eat
and reflect. . . .”
 The midwife looks at the boy’s dull face, and it seems to her as
though the very air is heavy, that a little more and the very walls will
fall, unable to endure the crushing presence of the peculiar man.
Beside herself with terror, and by now feeling a violent hatred for the
man, Marya Petrovna gathers up her bundles and hurriedly departs.
Half-way home she remembers that she has forgotten to ask for
her three roubles, but after stopping and thinking for a minute, with
a wave of her hand, she goes on.
 AT THE BARBER’S

M
ORNING. It is not yet seven o’clock, but Makar Kuzmitch
Blyostken’s shop is already open. The barber himself, an
unwashed, greasy, but foppishly dressed youth of three and
twenty, is busy clearing up; there is really nothing to be cleared
away, but he is perspiring with his exertions. In one place he
polishes with a rag, in another he scrapes with his finger or catches
a bug and brushes it off the wall.
The barber’s shop is small, narrow, and unclean. The log walls are
hung with paper suggestive of a cabman’s faded shirt. Between the
two dingy, perspiring windows there is a thin, creaking, rickety door,
above it, green from the damp, a bell which trembles and gives a
sickly ring of itself without provocation. Glance into the looking-glass
which hangs on one of the walls, and it distorts your countenance in
all directions in the most merciless way! The shaving and haircutting
is done before this looking-glass. On the little table, as greasy and
unwashed as Makar Kuzmitch himself, there is everything: combs,
scissors, razors, a ha’porth of wax for the moustache, a ha’porth of
powder, a ha’porth of much watered eau de Cologne, and indeed the
whole barber’s shop is not worth more than fifteen kopecks.
There is a squeaking sound from the invalid bell and an elderly
man in a tanned sheepskin and high felt over-boots walks into the
shop. His head and neck are wrapped in a woman’s shawl.
This is Erast Ivanitch Yagodov, Makar Kuzmitch’s godfather. At one
time he served as a watchman in the Consistory, now he lives near
the Red Pond and works as a locksmith.
“Makarushka, good-day, dear boy!” he says to Makar Kuzmitch,
who is absorbed in tidying up.
 They kiss each other. Yagodov drags his shawl off his head,
crosses himself, and sits down.
“What a long way it is!” he says, sighing and clearing his throat.
“It’s no joke! From the Red Pond to the Kaluga gate.”
“How are you?”
“In a poor way, my boy. I’ve had a fever.”
“You don’t say so! Fever!”
“Yes, I have been in bed a month; I thought I should die. I had
extreme unction. Now my hair’s coming out. The doctor says I must
be shaved. He says the hair will grow again strong. And so, I
thought, I’ll go to Makar. Better to a relation than to anyone else. He
will do it better and he won’t take anything for it. It’s rather far,
that’s true, but what of it? It’s a walk.”
“I’ll do it with pleasure. Please sit down.”
With a scrape of his foot Makar Kuzmitch indicates a chair.
Yagodov sits down and looks at himself in the glass and is
apparently pleased with his reflection: the looking-glass displays a
face awry, with Kalmuck lips, a broad, blunt nose, and eyes in the
forehead. Makar Kuzmitch puts round his client’s shoulders a white
sheet with yellow spots on it, and begins snipping with the scissors.
“I’ll shave you clean to the skin!” he says.
“To be sure. So that I may look like a Tartar, like a bomb. The hair
will grow all the thicker.”
“How’s auntie?”
“Pretty middling. The other day she went as midwife to the
major’s lady. They gave her a rouble.”
“Oh, indeed, a rouble. Hold your ear.”
 “I am holding it. . . . Mind you don’t cut me. Oy, you hurt! You are
pulling my hair.”
“That doesn’t matter. We can’t help that in our work. And how is
Anna Erastovna?”
“My daughter? She is all right, she’s skipping about. Last week on
the Wednesday we betrothed her to Sheikin. Why didn’t you come?”
The scissors cease snipping. Makar Kuzmitch drops his hands and
asks in a fright:
“Who is betrothed?”
“Anna.”
“How’s that? To whom?”
“To Sheikin. Prokofy Petrovitch. His aunt’s a housekeeper in
Zlatoustensky Lane. She is a nice woman. Naturally we are all
delighted, thank God. The wedding will be in a week. Mind you
come; we will have a good time.”
“But how’s this, Erast Ivanitch?” says Makar Kuzmitch, pale,
astonished, and shrugging his shoulders. “It’s . . . it’s utterly
impossible. Why, Anna Erastovna . . . why I . . . why, I cherished
sentiments for her, I had intentions. How could it happen?”
“Why, we just went and betrothed her. He’s a good fellow.”
Cold drops of perspiration come on the face of Makar Kuzmitch.
He puts the scissors down on the table and begins rubbing his nose
with his fist.
“I had intentions,” he says. “It’s impossible, Erast Ivanitch. I . . . I
am in love with her and have made her the offer of my heart . . . .
And auntie promised. I have always respected you as though you
were my father. . . . I always cut your hair for nothing. . . . I have
always obliged you, and when my papa died you took the sofa and
ten roubles in cash and have never given them back. Do you
remember?”
“Remember! of course I do. Only, what sort of a match would you
be, Makar? You are nothing of a match. You’ve neither money nor
position, your trade’s a paltry one.”
“And is Sheikin rich?”
“Sheikin is a member of a union. He has a thousand and a half
lent on mortgage. So my boy . . . . It’s no good talking about it, the
thing’s done. There is no altering it, Makarushka. You must look out
for another bride. . . . The world is not so small. Come, cut away.
Why are you stopping?”
Makar Kuzmitch is silent and remains motionless, then he takes a
handkerchief out of his pocket and begins to cry.
“Come, what is it?” Erast Ivanitch comforts him. “Give over. Fie, he
is blubbering like a woman! You finish my head and then cry. Take
up the scissors!”
Makar Kuzmitch takes up the scissors, stares vacantly at them for
a minute, then drops them again on the table. His hands are
shaking.
“I can’t,” he says. “I can’t do it just now. I haven’t the strength! I
am a miserable man! And she is miserable! We loved each other, we
had given each other our promise and we have been separated by
unkind people without any pity. Go away, Erast Ivanitch! I can’t bear
the sight of you.”
“So I’ll come to-morrow, Makarushka. You will finish me to-
morrow.”
“Right.”
“You calm yourself and I will come to you early in the morning.”
 Erast Ivanitch has half his head shaven to the skin and looks like a
convict. It is awkward to be left with a head like that, but there is no
help for it. He wraps his head in the shawl and walks out of the
barber’s shop. Left alone, Makar Kuzmitch sits down and goes on
quietly weeping.
Early next morning Erast Ivanitch comes again.
“What do you want?” Makar Kuzmitch asks him coldly.
“Finish cutting my hair, Makarushka. There is half the head left to
do.”
“Kindly give me the money in advance. I won’t cut it for nothing.”
Without saying a word Erast Ivanitch goes out, and to this day his
hair is long on one side of the head and short on the other. He
regards it as extravagance to pay for having his hair cut and is
waiting for the hair to grow of itself on the shaven side.
He danced at the wedding in that condition.
 AN INADVERTENCE

P
YOTR PETROVITCH STRIZHIN, the nephew of Madame Ivanov,
the colonel’s widow—the man whose new goloshes were
stolen last year,—came home from a christening party at two
o’clock in the morning. To avoid waking the household he took off
his things in the lobby, made his way on tiptoe to his room, holding
his breath, and began getting ready for bed without lighting a
candle.
Strizhin leads a sober and regular life. He has a sanctimonious
expression of face, he reads nothing but religious and edifying
books, but at the christening party, in his delight that Lyubov
Spiridonovna had passed through her confinement successfully, he
had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass of
wine, the taste of which suggested something midway between
vinegar and castor oil. Spirituous liquors are like sea-water and
glory: the more you imbibe of them the greater your thirst. And now
as he undressed, Strizhin was aware of an overwhelming craving for
drink.
“I believe Dashenka has some vodka in the cupboard in the right-
hand corner,” he thought. “If I drink one wine-glassful, she won’t
notice it.”
After some hesitation, overcoming his fears, Strizhin went to the
cupboard. Cautiously opening the door he felt in the right-hand
corner for a bottle and poured out a wine-glassful, put the bottle
back in its place, then, making the sign of the cross, drank it off. And
immediately something like a miracle took place. Strizhin was flung
back from the cupboard to the chest with fearful force like a bomb.
There were flashes before his eyes, he felt as though he could not
breathe, and all over his body he had a sensation as though he had
fallen into a marsh full of leeches. It seemed to him as though,
instead of vodka, he had swallowed dynamite, which blew up his
body, the house, and the whole street. . . . His head, his arms, his
legs—all seemed to be torn off and to be flying away somewhere to
the devil, into space.
For some three minutes he lay on the chest, not moving and
scarcely breathing, then he got up and asked himself:
“Where am I?”
The first thing of which he was clearly conscious on coming to
himself was the pronounced smell of paraffin.
“Holy saints,” he thought in horror, “it’s paraffin I have drunk
instead of vodka.”
The thought that he had poisoned himself threw him into a cold
shiver, then into a fever. That it was really poison that he had taken
was proved not only by the smell in the room but also by the
burning taste in his mouth, the flashes before his eyes, the ringing in
his head, and the colicky pain in his stomach. Feeling the approach
of death and not buoying himself up with false hopes, he wanted to
say good-bye to those nearest to him, and made his way to
Dashenka’s bedroom (being a widower he had his sister-in-law called
Dashenka, an old maid, living in the flat to keep house for him).
“Dashenka,” he said in a tearful voice as he went into the
bedroom, “dear Dashenka!”
Something grumbled in the darkness and uttered a deep sigh.
“Dashenka.”
“Eh? What?” A woman’s voice articulated rapidly. “Is that you,
Pyotr Petrovitch? Are you back already? Well, what is it? What has
the baby been christened? Who was godmother?”
 “The godmother was Natalya Andreyevna Velikosvyetsky, and the
godfather Pavel Ivanitch Bezsonnitsin. . . . I . . . I believe, Dashenka,
I am dying. And the baby has been christened Olimpiada, in honour
of their kind patroness. . . . I . . . I have just drunk paraffin,
Dashenka!”
“What next! You don’t say they gave you paraffin there?”
“I must own I wanted to get a drink of vodka without asking you,
and . . . and the Lord chastised me: by accident in the dark I took
paraffin. . . . What am I to do?”
Dashenka, hearing that the cupboard had been opened without
her permission, grew more wide-awake. . . . She quickly lighted a
candle, jumped out of bed, and in her nightgown, a freckled, bony
figure in curl-papers, padded with bare feet to the cupboard.
“Who told you you might?” she asked sternly, as she scrutinized
the inside of the cupboard. “Was the vodka put there for you?”
“I . . . I haven’t drunk vodka but paraffin, Dashenka . . .” muttered
Strizhin, mopping the cold sweat on his brow.
“And what did you want to touch the paraffin for? That’s nothing
to do with you, is it? Is it put there for you? Or do you suppose
paraffin costs nothing? Eh? Do you know what paraffin is now? Do
you know?”
“Dear Dashenka,” moaned Strizhin, “it’s a question of life and
death, and you talk about money!”
“He’s drunk himself tipsy and now he pokes his nose into the
cupboard!” cried Dashenka, angrily slamming the cupboard door.
“Oh, the monsters, the tormentors! I’m a martyr, a miserable
woman, no peace day or night! Vipers, basilisks, accursed Herods,
may you suffer the same in the world to come! I am going to-
morrow! I am a maiden lady and I won’t allow you to stand before
me in your underclothes! How dare you look at me when I am not
dressed!”
 And she went on and on. . . . Knowing that when Dashenka was
enraged there was no moving her with prayers or vows or even by
firing a cannon, Strizhin waved his hand in despair, dressed, and
made up his mind to go to the doctor. But a doctor is only readily
found when he is not wanted. After running through three streets
and ringing five times at Dr. Tchepharyants’s, and seven times at Dr.
Bultyhin’s, Strizhin raced off to a chemist’s shop, thinking possibly
the chemist could help him. There, after a long interval, a little dark
and curly-headed chemist came out to him in his dressing gown,
with drowsy eyes, and such a wise and serious face that it was
positively terrifying.
“What do you want?” he asked in a tone in which only very wise
and dignified chemists of Jewish persuasion can speak.
“For God’s sake . . . I entreat you . . .” said Strizhin breathlessly,
“give me something. I have just accidentally drunk paraffin, I am
dying!”
“I beg you not to excite yourself and to answer the questions I am
about to put to you. The very fact that you are excited prevents me
from understanding you. You have drunk paraffin. Yes?”
“Yes, paraffin! Please save me!”
The chemist went coolly and gravely to the desk, opened a book,
became absorbed in reading it. After reading a couple of pages he
shrugged one shoulder and then the other, made a contemptuous
grimace and, after thinking for a minute, went into the adjoining
room. The clock struck four, and when it pointed to ten minutes past
the chemist came back with another book and again plunged into
reading.
“H’m,” he said as though puzzled, “the very fact that you feel
unwell shows you ought to apply to a doctor, not a chemist.”
“But I have been to the doctors already. I could not ring them up.”
 “H’m . . . you don’t regard us chemists as human beings, and
disturb our rest even at four o’clock at night, though every dog,
every cat, can rest in peace. . . . You don’t try to understand
anything, and to your thinking we are not people and our nerves are
like cords.”
Strizhin listened to the chemist, heaved a sigh, and went home.
“So I am fated to die,” he thought.
And in his mouth was a burning and a taste of paraffin, there were
twinges in his stomach, and a sound of boom, boom, boom in his
ears. Every moment it seemed to him that his end was near, that his
heart was no longer beating.
Returning home he made haste to write: “Let no one be blamed
for my death,” then he said his prayers, lay down and pulled the
bedclothes over his head. He lay awake till morning expecting death,
and all the time he kept fancying how his grave would be covered
with fresh green grass and how the birds would twitter over it. . . .
And in the morning he was sitting on his bed, saying with a smile
to Dashenka:
“One who leads a steady and regular life, dear sister, is unaffected
by any poison. Take me, for example. I have been on the verge of
death. I was dying and in agony, yet now I am all right. There is
only a burning in my mouth and a soreness in my throat, but I am
all right all over, thank God. . . . And why? It’s because of my regular
life.”
“No, it’s because it’s inferior paraffin!” sighed Dashenka, thinking
of the household expenses and gazing into space. “The man at the
shop could not have given me the best quality, but that at three
farthings. I am a martyr, I am a miserable woman. You monsters!
May you suffer the same, in the world to come, accursed Herods. . .
.”
And she went on and on. . . .
 THE ALBUM

K
RATEROV, the titular councillor, as thin and slender as the
Admiralty spire, stepped forward and, addressing Zhmyhov,
said:
“Your Excellency! Moved and touched to the bottom of our hearts
by the way you have ruled us during long years, and by your fatherly
care. . . .”
“During the course of more than ten years. . .” Zakusin prompted.
“During the course of more than ten years, we, your subordinates,
on this so memorable for us . . . er . . . day, beg your Excellency to
accept in token of our respect and profound gratitude this album
with our portraits in it, and express our hope that for the duration of
your distinguished life, that for long, long years to come, to your
dying day you may not abandon us. . . .”
“With your fatherly guidance in the path of justice and progress. .
.” added Zakusin, wiping from his brow the perspiration that had
suddenly appeared on it; he was evidently longing to speak, and in
all probability had a speech ready. “And,” he wound up, “may your
standard fly for long, long years in the career of genius, industry,
and social self-consciousness.”
A tear trickled down the wrinkled left cheek of Zhmyhov.
“Gentlemen!” he said in a shaking voice, “I did not expect, I had
no idea that you were going to celebrate my modest jubilee. . . . I
am touched indeed . . . very much so. . . . I shall not forget this
moment to my dying day, and believe me . . . believe me, friends,
that no one is so desirous of your welfare as I am . . . and if there
has been anything . . . it was for your benefit.”
 Zhmyhov, the actual civil councillor, kissed the titular councillor
Kraterov, who had not expected such an honour, and turned pale
with delight. Then the chief made a gesture that signified that he
could not speak for emotion, and shed tears as though an expensive
album had not been presented to him, but on the contrary, taken
from him . . . . Then when he had a little recovered and said a few
more words full of feeling and given everyone his hand to shake, he
went downstairs amid loud and joyful cheers, got into his carriage
and drove off, followed by their blessings. As he sat in his carriage
he was aware of a flood of joyous feelings such as he had never
known before, and once more he shed tears.
At home new delights awaited him. There his family, his friends,
and acquaintances had prepared him such an ovation that it seemed
to him that he really had been of very great service to his country,
and that if he had never existed his country would perhaps have
been in a very bad way. The jubilee dinner was made up of toasts,
speeches, and tears. In short, Zhmyhov had never expected that his
merits would be so warmly appreciated.
“Gentlemen!” he said before the dessert, “two hours ago I was
recompensed for all the sufferings a man has to undergo who is the
servant, so to say, not of routine, not of the letter, but of duty!
Through the whole duration of my service I have constantly adhered
to the principle;—the public does not exist for us, but we for the
public, and to-day I received the highest reward! My subordinates
presented me with an album . . . see! I was touched.”
Festive faces bent over the album and began examining it.
“It’s a pretty album,” said Zhmyhov’s daughter Olya, “it must have
cost fifty roubles, I do believe. Oh, it’s charming! You must give me
the album, papa, do you hear? I’ll take care of it, it’s so pretty.”
After dinner Olya carried off the album to her room and shut it up
in her table drawer. Next day she took the clerks out of it, flung
them on the floor, and put her school friends in their place. The
government uniforms made way for white pelerines. Kolya, his
Excellency’s little son, picked up the clerks and painted their clothes
red. Those who had no moustaches he presented with green
moustaches and added brown beards to the beardless. When there
was nothing left to paint he cut the little men out of the card-board,
pricked their eyes with a pin, and began playing soldiers with them.
After cutting out the titular councillor Kraterov, he fixed him on a
match-box and carried him in that state to his father’s study.
“Papa, a monument, look!”
Zhmyhov burst out laughing, lurched forward, and, looking
tenderly at the child, gave him a warm kiss on the cheek.
“There, you rogue, go and show mamma; let mamma look too.”
 OH! THE PUBLIC

“H
ERE goes, I’ve done with drinking! Nothing. . . n-o-thing
shall tempt me to it. It’s time to take myself in hand; I
must buck up and work. . . You’re glad to get your salary,
so you must do your work honestly, heartily, conscientiously,
regardless of sleep and comfort. Chuck taking it easy. You’ve got into
the way of taking a salary for nothing, my boy—that’s not the right
thing . . . not the right thing at all. . . .”
After administering to himself several such lectures Podtyagin, the
head ticket collector, begins to feel an irresistible impulse to get to
work. It is past one o’clock at night, but in spite of that he wakes the
ticket collectors and with them goes up and down the railway
carriages, inspecting the tickets.
“T-t-t-ickets . . . P-p-p-please!” he keeps shouting, briskly
snapping the clippers.
Sleepy figures, shrouded in the twilight of the railway carriages,
start, shake their heads, and produce their tickets.
“T-t-t-tickets, please!” Podtyagin addresses a second-class
passenger, a lean, scraggy-looking man, wrapped up in a fur coat
and a rug and surrounded with pillows. “Tickets, please!”
The scraggy-looking man makes no reply. He is buried in sleep.
The head ticket-collector touches him on the shoulder and repeats
impatiently: “T-t-tickets, p-p-please!”
The passenger starts, opens his eyes, and gazes in alarm at
Podtyagin.
“What? . . . Who? . . . Eh?”
 “You’re asked in plain language: t-t-tickets, p-p-please! If you
please!”
“My God!” moans the scraggy-looking man, pulling a woebegone
face. “Good Heavens! I’m suffering from rheumatism. . . . I haven’t
slept for three nights! I’ve just taken morphia on purpose to get to
sleep, and you . . . with your tickets! It’s merciless, it’s inhuman! If
you knew how hard it is for me to sleep you wouldn’t disturb me for
such nonsense. . . . It’s cruel, it’s absurd! And what do you want
with my ticket! It’s positively stupid!”
Podtyagin considers whether to take offence or not—and decides
to take offence.
“Don’t shout here! This is not a tavern!”
“No, in a tavern people are more humane. . .” coughs the
passenger. “Perhaps you’ll let me go to sleep another time! It’s
extraordinary: I’ve travelled abroad, all over the place, and no one
asked for my ticket there, but here you’re at it again and again, as
though the devil were after you. . . .”
“Well, you’d better go abroad again since you like it so much.”
“It’s stupid, sir! Yes! As though it’s not enough killing the
passengers with fumes and stuffiness and draughts, they want to
strangle us with red tape, too, damn it all! He must have the ticket!
My goodness, what zeal! If it were of any use to the company—but
half the passengers are travelling without a ticket!”
“Listen, sir!” cries Podtyagin, flaring up. “If you don’t leave off
shouting and disturbing the public, I shall be obliged to put you out
at the next station and to draw up a report on the incident!”
“This is revolting!” exclaims “the public,” growing indignant.
“Persecuting an invalid! Listen, and have some consideration!”
“But the gentleman himself was abusive!” says Podtyagin, a little
scared. “Very well. . . . I won’t take the ticket . . . as you like . . . .
Only, of course, as you know very well, it’s my duty to do so. . . . If
it were not my duty, then, of course. . . You can ask the station-
master . . . ask anyone you like. . . .”
Podtyagin shrugs his shoulders and walks away from the invalid.
At first he feels aggrieved and somewhat injured, then, after passing
through two or three carriages, he begins to feel a certain
uneasiness not unlike the pricking of conscience in his ticket-
collector’s bosom.
“There certainly was no need to wake the invalid,” he thinks,
“though it was not my fault. . . .They imagine I did it wantonly, idly.
They don’t know that I’m bound in duty . . . if they don’t believe it, I
can bring the station-master to them.” A station. The train stops five
minutes. Before the third bell, Podtyagin enters the same second-
class carriage. Behind him stalks the station-master in a red cap.
“This gentleman here,” Podtyagin begins, “declares that I have no
right to ask for his ticket and . . . and is offended at it. I ask you, Mr.
Station-master, to explain to him. . . . Do I ask for tickets according
to regulation or to please myself? Sir,” Podtyagin addresses the
scraggy-looking man, “sir! you can ask the station-master here if you
don’t believe me.”
The invalid starts as though he had been stung, opens his eyes,
and with a woebegone face sinks back in his seat.
“My God! I have taken another powder and only just dozed off
when here he is again. . . again! I beseech you have some pity on
me!”
“You can ask the station-master . . . whether I have the right to
demand your ticket or not.”
“This is insufferable! Take your ticket. . . take it! I’ll pay for five
extra if you’ll only let me die in peace! Have you never been ill
yourself? Heartless people!”
 “This is simply persecution!” A gentleman in military uniform
grows indignant. “I can see no other explanation of this persistence.”
“Drop it . . .” says the station-master, frowning and pulling
Podtyagin by the sleeve.
Podtyagin shrugs his shoulders and slowly walks after the station-
master.
“There’s no pleasing them!” he thinks, bewildered. “It was for his
sake I brought the station-master, that he might understand and be
pacified, and he . . . swears!”
Another station. The train stops ten minutes. Before the second
bell, while Podtyagin is standing at the refreshment bar, drinking
seltzer water, two gentlemen go up to him, one in the uniform of an
engineer, and the other in a military overcoat.
“Look here, ticket-collector!” the engineer begins, addressing
Podtyagin. “Your behaviour to that invalid passenger has revolted all
who witnessed it. My name is Puzitsky; I am an engineer, and this
gentleman is a colonel. If you do not apologize to the passenger, we
shall make a complaint to the traffic manager, who is a friend of
ours.”
“Gentlemen! Why of course I . . . why of course you . . .”
Podtyagin is panic-stricken.
“We don’t want explanations. But we warn you, if you don’t
apologize, we shall see justice done to him.”
“Certainly I . . . I’ll apologize, of course. . . To be sure. . . .”
Half an hour later, Podtyagin having thought of an apologetic
phrase which would satisfy the passenger without lowering his own
dignity, walks into the carriage. “Sir,” he addresses the invalid.
“Listen, sir. . . .”
The invalid starts and leaps up: “What?”
 “I . . . what was it? . . . You mustn’t be offended. . . .”
“Och! Water . . .” gasps the invalid, clutching at his heart. “I’d just
taken a third dose of morphia, dropped asleep, and . . . again! Good
God! when will this torture cease!”
“I only . . . you must excuse . . .”
“Oh! . . . Put me out at the next station! I can’t stand any more . .
. . I . . . I am dying. . . .”
“This is mean, disgusting!” cry the “public,” revolted. “Go away!
You shall pay for such persecution. Get away!”
Podtyagin waves his hand in despair, sighs, and walks out of the
carriage. He goes to the attendants’ compartment, sits down at the
table, exhausted, and complains:
“Oh, the public! There’s no satisfying them! It’s no use working
and doing one’s best! One’s driven to drinking and cursing it all . . . .
If you do nothing—they’re angry; if you begin doing your duty,
they’re angry too. There’s nothing for it but drink!”
Podtyagin empties a bottle straight off and thinks no more of
work, duty, and honesty!
 A TRIPPING TONGUE

N
ATALYA MIHALOVNA, a young married lady who had arrived
in the morning from Yalta, was having her dinner, and in a
never-ceasing flow of babble was telling her husband of all
the charms of the Crimea. Her husband, delighted, gazed tenderly at
her enthusiastic face, listened, and from time to time put in a
question.
“But they say living is dreadfully expensive there?” he asked,
among other things.
“Well, what shall I say? To my thinking this talk of its being so
expensive is exaggerated, hubby. The devil is not as black as he is
painted. Yulia Petrovna and I, for instance, had very decent and
comfortable rooms for twenty roubles a day. Everything depends on
knowing how to do things, my dear. Of course if you want to go up
into the mountains . . . to Aie-Petri for instance . . . if you take a
horse, a guide, then of course it does come to something. It’s awful
what it comes to! But, Vassitchka, the mountains there! Imagine
high, high mountains, a thousand times higher than the church. . . .
At the top—mist, mist, mist. . . . At the bottom —enormous stones,
stones, stones. . . . And pines. . . . Ah, I can’t bear to think of it!”
“By the way, I read about those Tatar guides there, in some
magazine while you were away . . . . such abominable stories! Tell
me is there really anything out of the way about them?”
Natalya Mihalovna made a little disdainful grimace and shook her
head.
“Just ordinary Tatars, nothing special . . .” she said, “though
indeed I only had a glimpse of them in the distance. They were
pointed out to me, but I did not take much notice of them. You
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