Their places were promptly taken by Tarasov and Parovitsky.
Without delay, they started jumping on the couches and pressing all the buttons.
The girl jumped enthusiastically along with them.
After less than thirty minutes, the original trio barged into the compartment, drawn back by their nostalgia for lost splendors.
They were followed by two more, with sheepish smiles, and then by another one, with a mustache.
He was scheduled to ride in luxury the following day, but he just couldn’t wait that long.
His arrival was greeted by particularly excited hoots, which drew the attention of the car attendant.
“That’s not good, citizens,” he said officiously. “The whole gang is here.
Those from third class, please leave.
Or I’m going to the boss.”
The gang grew quiet.
“But they are our guests,” said the girl, disconcerted. “They were just going to sit here with us for a while.”
“It’s against the rules,” insisted the attendant, “please leave.”
The mustachioed one started backing toward the exit, but at this point, the grand strategist inserted himself into the dispute.
“Come on, pops,” he said to the attendant, “you shouldn’t be lynching your passengers unless you absolutely have to.
Is it really necessary to stick to the letter of the law like this?
You should be hospitable.
You know, like in the East.
Let’s step out, I’ll tell you all about it.”
After a chat with Ostap in the corridor, the attendant embraced the spirit of the East so ardently that he vanquished all thoughts of ousting the gang and instead brought them nine glasses of tea in sturdy holders, along with his entire supply of crackers.
And he didn’t even charge them.
“As dictated by the customs of the East,” explained Ostap to his company, “in compliance with the laws of hospitality, as a certain employee of the culinary sector used to say.”
The favor was granted with such grace and ease that it was impossible not to accept it.
The cracker packages rustled as they were being ripped open. Ostap passed around the tea like a host and soon became friends with all eight of the male students and the female one.
“I have long been interested in issues of universal, equal, and direct education,” he babbled happily, “I even discussed it recently with an amateur Indian philosopher.
An exceptionally erudite man.
No matter what he says, they immediately put his words on a phonograph record, and as the old man is quite a talker—yes, he does have this weakness—his records ended up filling eight hundred railcars, and now they make them into buttons.”
Having started with this free improvisation, the grand strategist picked up a cracker.
“This cracker,” he said, “is just one step away from being a grindstone.
And that step has already been taken.”
Warmed up by witticisms of this sort, their friendship blossomed quickly, and soon the whole gang was singing a ditty under Ostap’s direction:
Peter, Tsar of great renown,
Has no kinfolk of his own.
Just the serpent and the steed—
That’s his family indeed.
By the end of the day, Ostap knew everybody and was even on a first-name basis with a few of them.
But a lot of what the youngsters were talking about was beyond his grasp.
Suddenly, he felt incredibly old.
In front him was youth—a bit rough, straight as an arrow, and frustratingly uncomplicated.
He was different when he was twenty; he had to admit that he was far more sophisticated—and rotten—at that age.
He didn’t laugh back then, he smirked.
But these kids were laughing their hearts out.
“What are these pudgy-cheeked kids so happy about?” he thought with sudden irritation. “I’m starting to envy them, I really am.”
Although Ostap was undoubtedly the center of attention for the whole compartment and talked incessantly, and although they treated him very nicely, they showed him neither Balaganov’s adoration, nor Panikovsky’s craven submission, nor Kozlevich’s loving devotion.
In these students, he sensed the superiority that the audience feels toward an entertainer.
The audience listens to the man in the tailcoat, laughs at times, applauds him half-heartedly, but in the end it goes home and no longer gives him another thought.
The entertainer, on the other hand, goes to the artists’ club after the show, hovers gloomily over his plate, and complains to a fellow member of the Art Workers’ Union—a vaudeville comedian—that the public doesn’t understand him and the government doesn’t value him.
The comedian drinks vodka and also complains that nobody understands him.
But what’s not to understand?
His jokes are old, his techniques are old, and it’s too late to learn new tricks.