The train was headed to Chernomorsk.
The first passenger removed his suit jacket, hung it on the curled brass tip of the luggage rack, then pulled off his shoes, raising his pudgy feet one by one almost all the way up to his face, and put on his slippers.
“So have you heard about the land surveyor from Voronezh who turned out to be related to the Japanese Mikado?” he asked, smiling in anticipation.
The second and the third passengers moved closer.
The fourth passenger was already lying on an upper bunk under a scratchy maroon blanket, staring gloomily into an illustrated magazine.
“You really haven’t heard?
There was a lot of talk about it at some point.
He was just an ordinary land surveyor: a wife, one room, 120 rubles a month.
His name was Bigusov.
An ordinary, completely unremarkable man, even, frankly, between you and me, quite an asshole.
So one day he comes home from work, and there’s a Japanese man waiting for him in his room and he’s wearing, frankly, an excellent suit, eyeglasses, and, between you and me, snakeskin shoes, the latest rage.
‘Is your name Bigusov?’ asks the Japanese.
‘Yes,’ says Bigusov.
‘And your given name?’
‘So-and-so,’ he says.
‘That’s the one,’ says the Japanese. ‘In that case, would you mind removing your shirt, I need to examine your naked torso.’
‘No problem,’ Bigusov says.
But frankly, between you and me, the Japanese doesn’t even look at his torso and goes straight for his birthmark.
Bigusov actually had one on his side.
The Japanese looks at it through a magnifying glass, turns pale, and says:
‘Congratulations, Citizen Bigusov, allow me to present you with this parcel and letter.’
Well, his wife opens the parcel, of course.
And in that parcel, frankly, is a two-sided Japanese sword, sitting in wood shavings.
‘So why do I get a sword?’ asks the surveyor.
‘Read the letter’, he says, ‘it’s all in there.
You’re a samurai.’
Now it’s Bigusov who turns pale.
Voronezh, frankly, is not exactly a metropolis.
Between you and me, how can they possibly feel about the samurai down there?
Very negatively.
But what can you do?
So Bigusov takes the letter, breaks the fourteen wax seals, and reads.
And what do you know?
It turns out that exactly thirty-six years earlier, a Japanese almost-prince was traveling incognito through Voronezh Province.
Well, of course, between you and me, His Highness got mixed up with a Voronezh girl and had a baby with her, all incognito.
He even wanted to marry her, but the Mikado nixed it with an encrypted cable.
The almost-prince had to leave, and the baby remained illegitimate.
That was Bigusov.
And so after all these years, the almost-prince is about to die, but what do you know: he has no legitimate offspring, no one to pass the inheritance to, and on top of that, a prominent lineage is coming to an end, which for the Japanese is the worst thing.
So he thought of Bigusov.
Can you believe the man’s luck?
They say he’s already in Japan.
The old man died.
And Bigusov is a prince, a member of the Mikado’s family, and on top of that, between you and me, he got a million yen in cash.
A million!
To that moron!”
“If only somebody gave me a million rubles!” said the second passenger, twitching his legs. “I’d show them what to do with a million!”
The fourth passenger’s head appeared in the gap between the two upper bunks.
He took a good look at the man who knew precisely what to do with a million, and without saying a word, he hid behind his magazine again.
“Yes,” said the third passenger, opening a small package that contained two complimentary crackers, “all sorts of things happen in the field of money circulation.