“Who will go as high as ten rubles?
I will bet that Mishka devours ten pounds of ham in two hours!”
But they all knew that Mishka was well able to do that, and they said:
“We won’t take your bet, but buy the ham and let him eat it, and we will look on.”
“Only let it be all meat and no bones!”
They would dispute a little and lazily, and then out of the dark storehouse crept a lean, beardless fellow with high cheek-bones, in a long cloth coat girdled with a red belt all stuck round with tufts of wool.
Respectfully removing his cap from his small head, he gazed in silence, with a dull expression in his deep-set eyes, at the round face of his master which was suffused with purple blood. The latter was saying in his thick harsh voice:
“Can you eat a gammon of ham?”
“How long shall I have for it?” asked Mishka practically, in his thin voice.
“Two hours.”
“That will be difficult.”
“Where is the difficulty?”
“Well, let me have a drop of beer with it.”
“All right,” said his master, and he would boast: “You need not think that he has an empty stomach. No! In the morning he had two pounds of bread, and dinner at noon, as you know.”
They brought the ham, and the spectators took their places. All the merchants were tightly enveloped in their thick fur-coats and looked like gigantic weights. They were people with big stomachs, but they all had small eyes and some had fatty tumors. An unconquerable feeling of boredom oppressed them all.
With their hands tucked into their sleeves, they surrounded the great glutton in a narrow circle, armed with knives and large crusts of rye bread. He crossed himself piously, sat down on a sack of wool and placed the ham on a box at his side, measuring it with his vacant eyes.
Cutting off a thin slice of bread and a thick one of meat, the glutton folded them together carefully, and held the sandwich to his mouth with both hands. His lips trembled; he licked them with his thin and long canine tongue, showing his small sharp teeth, and with a dog-like movement bent his snout again over the meat.
“He has begun!”
“Look at the time!”
All eyes were turned in a business-like manner on the face of the glutton, on his lower jaw, on the round protuberances near his ears; they watched the sharp chin rise and fall regularly, and drowsily uttered their thoughts.
“He eats cleanly — like a bear.”
“Have you ever seen a bear eat?”
“Do I live in the woods?
There is a saying, ‘he gobbles like a bear.’ ”
“Like a pig, it says.”
“Pigs don’t eat pig.”
They laughed unwillingly, and soon some one knowingly said:
“Pigs eat everything — little pigs and their own sisters.”
The face of the glutton gradually grew darker, his ears became livid, his running eyes crept out of their bony pit, he breathed with difficulty, but his chin moved as regularly as ever.
“Take it easy, Mikhail, there is time!” they encouraged him.
He uneasily measured the remains of the meat with his eyes, drank some beer, and once more began to munch.
The spectators became more animated. Looking more often at the watch in the hand of Mishka’s master, they suggested to one another:
“Don’t you think he may have put the watch back? Take it away from him!
Watch Mishka in case he should put any meat up his sleeve!
He won’t finish it in the time!”
Mishka’s master cried passionately:
“I’ll take you on for a quarter of a ruble!
Mishka, don’t give way!”
They began to dispute with the master, but no one would take the bet.
And Mishka went on eating and eating; his face began to look like the ham, his sharp grisly nose whistled plaintively.
It was terrible to look at him. It seemed to me that he was about to scream, to wail:
“Have mercy on me!”
At length he finished it all, opened his tipsy eyes wide, and said in a hoarse, tired voice: “Let me go to sleep.”
But his master, looking at his watch, cried angrily:
“You have taken four minutes too long, you wretch!”
The others teased him:
“What a pity we did not take you on; you would have lost.”
“However, he is a regular wild animal, that fellow.”
“Ye — e — es, he ought to be in a show.”
“You see what monsters the Lord can make of men, eh?”