There is a story about this story: |
we were told it by Stepan Ivanovich Kurochka, who came over from Gadyach. |
You must know that my memory is incredibly poor: |
you may tell me a thing or not tell it, it is all the same. |
It is just pouring water into a sieve. |
Being aware of this weakness, I purposely begged him to write the story down in a notebook. |
Well, God give him good health, he was always a kind man to me, he began to work and wrote it down. |
I put it in the little table; I believe you know it: |
it stands in the corner as you come in by the door.... |
But there, I forgot that you had never been in my house. |
My old woman, with whom I have lived thirty years, has never learned to read—no use hiding one’s shortcomings. |
Well, I noticed that she baked the pies on paper of some sort. |
She bakes pies beautifully, dear readers; you will never taste better pies anywhere. |
I happened to look on the underside of a pie —what did I see? |
Written words! |
My heart seemed to tell me at once: I went to the table; only half the book was there! |
All the other pages she had carried off for the pies. |
What could I do? |
There is no fighting at our age! |
Last year I happened to be passing through Gadyach. |
Before I reached the town I purposely tied a knot in my handkerchief so that I might not forget to ask Stepan Ivanovich about it. |
That was not all: |
I vowed to myself that as soon as ever I sneezed in the town I would be sure to think of it. |
It was all no use. I drove through the town and sneezed and blew my nose too, but still I forgot it; and I only thought of it nearly six miles after I had passed through the town gate. |
Well, it couldn’t be helped, I had to publish it without the end. |
However, if anyone particularly wants to know what happened later on in the story, he need only go on purpose to Gadyach and ask Stepan Ivanovich. |
He will be glad to tell the story all over again from the beginning. |
He lives not far from the brick church. |
There is a little lane close by, and as soon as you turn into the lane it is the second or third gate. |
Or better still, when you see a big post with a quail on it in the yard and coming to meet you a fat peasant woman in a green skirt (you should know, he is a bachelor), that is his yard. |
Though you may also meet him in the market, where he is to be seen every morning before nine o’clock, choosing fish and vegetables for his table and talking to Father Antip or the Jewish contractor. |
You will know him at once, for there is no one else who has trousers of printed linen and a yellow cotton coat. |
And another thing to help you recognize him—he always swings his arms as he walks. |
Denis Petrovich, the assessor, now deceased, always used to say when he saw him in the distance: |
“Look, look, here comes our windmill!” |
I IVAN FIODOROVICH SHPONKA |
II |
III |
IV |
V HIS AUNT’S NEW PLANS |