Chapter 1, Part 3 Summary

There is no ferry to cross the river, but the boatman offers to row Yakov across for a ruble. Yakov is upset at this sum. He had hoped to cross the river and stay in an inn. He is also upset that he must part with his horse. The boatman informs Yakov that it is many miles out of the way to a bridge and that the horse is worthless and about to die anyway. He convinces Yakov that he is getting a bargain by having the boatman take the stubborn nag off his hands at the riverbank.

As the fixer looks back sadly at the farting, stubborn horse, the boatman says he does not recognize Yakov's accent. Yakov has stopped speaking Yiddish and is using only Russian outside his shtetl and pretends to have lived all over the place. He...