A HAPPY MAN

THE passenger train is just starting from Bologoe, the junction on the Petersburg-Moscow line.  In a second-class smoking compartment five passengers sit dozing, shrouded in the twilight of the carriage.  They had just had a meal, and now, snugly ensconced in their seats, they are trying to go to sleep.  Stillness.

The door opens and in there walks a tall, lanky figure straight as a poker, with a ginger-coloured hat and a smart overcoat, wonderfully suggestive of a journalist in Jules Verne or on the comic stage.

The figure stands still in the middle of the compartment for a long while, breathing heavily, screwing up his eyes and peering at the seats.

“No, wrong again!” he mutters.  “What the deuce!  It’s positively revolting!  No, the wrong one again!”

One of the passengers stares at the figure and utters a shout of joy: 

“Ivan Alexyevitch! what brings you here?  Is it you?”

The poker-like gentleman starts, stares blankly at the passenger, and recognizing him claps his hands with delight.

“Ha!  Pyotr Petrovitch,” he says.  “How many summers, how many winters!  I didn’t know you were in this train.”

“How are you getting on?”

“I am all right; the only thing is, my dear fellow, I’ve lost my compartment and I simply can’t find it.  What an idiot I am!  I ought to be thrashed!”

The poker-like gentleman sways a little unsteadily and sniggers.

“Queer things do happen!” he continues.  “I stepped out just after the second bell to get a glass of brandy.  I got it, of course.  Well, I thought, since it’s a long way to the next station, it would be as well to have a second glass.  While I was thinking about it and drinking it the third bell rang. . . .  I ran like mad and jumped into the first carriage.  I am an idiot!  I am the son of a hen!”

“But you seem in very good spirits,” observes Pyotr Petrovitch.  “Come and sit down!  There’s room and a welcome.”

“No, no. . . .  I’m off to look for my carriage.  Good-bye!”

“You’ll fall between the carriages in the dark if you don’t look out!  Sit down, and when we get to a station you’ll find your own compartment.  Sit down!”

Ivan Alexyevitch heaves a sigh and irresolutely sits down facing Pyotr Petrovitch.  He is visibly excited, and fidgets as though he were sitting on thorns.

“Where are you travelling to?” Pyotr Petrovitch enquires.

“I?  Into space.  There is such a turmoil in my head that I couldn’t tell where I am going myself.  I go where fate takes me.  Ha-ha!  My dear fellow, have you ever seen a happy fool?  No?  Well, then, take a look at one.  You behold the happiest of mortals!  Yes!  Don’t you see something from my face?”

“Well, one can see you’re a bit . . . a tiny bit so-so.”

“I dare say I look awfully stupid just now.  Ach! it’s a pity I haven’t a looking-glass, I should like to look at my counting-house.  My dear fellow, I feel I am turning into an idiot, honour bright.  Ha-ha!  Would you believe it, I’m on my honeymoon.  Am I not the son of a hen?”