Don’t go out!”
“Rubbish!”
Victorushka, who was also dressed, teased them all.
“I know what has happened.”
When the brothers went out into the street the women, having sent me to get the samovar ready, rushed to the window. But the master rang the street door-bell almost directly, ran up the steps silently, shut the door, and said thickly:
“The Czar has been murdered!”
“How murdered?” exclaimed the old lady.
“He has been murdered. An officer told me so.
What will happen now?”
Victorushka rang, and as he unwillingly took off his coat said angrily:
“And I thought it was war!”
Then they all sat down to drink tea, and talked together calmly, but in low voices and cautiously.
The streets were quiet now, the bells had given up tolling.
For two days they whispered together mysteriously, and went to and fro. People also came to see them, and related some event in detail.
I tried hard to understand what had happened, but they hid the news — papers from me. When I asked Sidorov why they had killed the Czar he answered, softly:
“It is forbidden to speak of it.”
But all this soon wore away. The old empty life was resumed, and I soon had a very unpleasant experience.
On one of those Sundays when the household had gone to early mass I set the samovar ready and turned my attention to tidying the rooms. While I was so occupied the eldest child rushed into the kitchen, removed the tap from the samovar, and set himself under the table to play with it.
There was a lot of charcoal in the pipe of the samovar, and when the water had all trickled away from it, it came unsoldered.
While I was doing the other rooms, I heard an unusual noise. Going into the kitchen, I saw with horror that the samovar was all blue. It was shaking, as if it wanted to jump from the floor.
The broken handle of the tap was drooping miserably, the lid was all on one side, the pewter was melted and running away drop by drop. In fact the purplish blue samovar looked as if it had drunken shivers.
I poured water over it. It hissed, and sank sadly in ruins on the floor.
The front door-bell rang. I went to open the door. In answer to the old lady’s question as to whether the samovar was ready, I replied briefly:
“Yes; it is ready.”
These words, spoken, of course, in my confusion and terror, were taken for insolence. My punishment was doubled.
They half killed me.
The old lady beat me with a bunch of fir-twigs, which did not hurt much, but left under the skin of my back a great many splinters, driven in deeply. Before night my back was swollen like a pillow, and by noon the next day the master was obliged to take me to the hospital.
When the doctor, comically tall and thin, examined me, he said in a calm, dull voice:
“This is a case of cruelty which will have to be investigated.”
My master blushed, shuffled his feet, and said something in a low voice to the doctor, who looked over his head and said shortly:
“I can’t.
It is impossible.”
Then he asked me:
“Do you want to make a complaint?”
I was in great pain, but I said:
“No, make haste and cure me.”
They took me into another room, laid me on a table, and the doctor pulled out the splinters with pleasantly cold pincers. He said, jestingly:
“They have decorated your skin beautifully, my friend; now you will be waterproof.”
When he had finished his work of pricking me unmercifully, he said:
“Forty-two splinters have been taken out, my friend. Remember that. It is something to boast of!
Come back at the same time tomorrow to have the dressing replaced.
Do they often beat you?”
I thought for a moment, then said:
“Not so often as they used to.”
The doctor burst into a hoarse laugh.
“It is all for the best, my friend, all for the best.”
When he took me back to my master he said to him:
“I hand him over to you; he is repaired.
Bring him back tomorrow without fail.
I congratulate you. He is a comical fellow you have there.”