‘See what La Fontaine fables I have to listen to! Stuck him with four hundred dollars! Now, all of you here are currency dealers, so I address you as experts: is that conceivable?’
‘We’re not currency dealers,’ various offended voices came from the theatre, ‘but, no, it’s not conceivable!’
‘I’m entirely of the same mind,’ the artiste said firmly, ‘and let me ask you: what is it that one can be stuck with?’
‘A baby!’ someone cried from the house.
‘Absolutely correct,’ the programme announcer confirmed, ‘a baby, an anonymous letter, a tract, an infernal machine, anything else, but no one will stick you with four hundred dollars, for such idiots don’t exist in nature.’ And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, the artiste added reproachfully and sorrowfully: ‘You’ve upset me, Nikanor Ivanovich, and I was counting on you. So, our number didn’t come off.’
Whistles came from the house, addressed to Nikanor Ivanovich.
‘He’s a currency dealer,’ they shouted from the house, ‘and we innocent ones have to suffer for the likes of him!’
‘Don’t scold him,’ the master of ceremonies said softly, ‘he’ll repent.’ And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, his blue eyes filled with tears, he added: ‘Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, you may go to your place.’
After that the artiste rang the bell and announced loudly:
‘Intermission, you blackguards!’
The shaken Nikanor Ivanovich, who unexpectedly for himself had become a participant in some sort of theatre programme, again found himself in his place on the floor. Here he dreamed that the house was plunged in total darkness, and fiery red words leaped out on the walls: ‘Turn over your currency!’ Then the curtain opened again and the master of ceremonies invited:
‘I call Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil to the stage.’
Dunchil turned out to be a fine-looking but rather unkempt man of about fifty.
‘Sergei Gerardovich,’ the master of ceremonies addressed him, ‘you’ve been sitting here for a month and a half now, stubbornly refusing to turn over the currency you still have, while the country is in need of it, and you have no use for it whatsoever. And still you persist. You’re an intelligent man, you understand it all perfectly well, and yet you don’t want to comply with me.’
‘To my regret, there is nothing I can do, since I have no more currency,’ Dunchil calmly replied.
‘Don’t you at least have some diamonds?’ asked the artiste.
‘No diamonds either.’
The artiste hung his head and pondered, then clapped his hands. A middle-aged lady came out from the wings, fashionably dressed - that is, in a collarless coat and a tiny hat. The lady looked worried, but Dunchil glanced at her without moving an eyebrow.
‘Who is this lady?’ the programme announcer asked Dunchil.
That is my wife,‘ Dunchil replied with dignity and looked at the lady’s long neck with a certain repugnance.
‘We have troubled you, Madame Dunchil,’ the master of ceremonies adverted to the lady, ‘with regard to the following: we wanted to ask you, does your husband have any more currency?’
‘He turned it all over the other time,’ Madame Dunchil replied nervously.
‘Right,’ said the artiste, ‘well, then, if it’s so, it’s so. If he turned it all over, then we ought to part with Sergei Gerardovich immediately, there’s nothing else to do! If you wish, Sergei Gerardovich, you may leave the theatre.’ And the artiste made a regal gesture.
Dunchil turned calmly and with dignity, and headed for the wings.
‘Just a moment!’ the master of ceremonies stopped him. ‘Allow me on parting to show you one more number from our programme.’ And again he clapped his hands.
The black backdrop parted, and on to the stage came a young beauty in a ball gown, holding in her hands a golden tray on which lay a fat wad tied with candy-box ribbon and a diamond necklace from which blue, yellow and red fire leaped in all directions.
Dunchil took a step back and his face went pale. The house froze.
‘Eighteen thousand dollars and a necklace worth forty thousand in gold,’ the artiste solemnly announced, ‘kept by Sergei Gerardovich in the city of Kharkov, in the apartment of his mistress, Ida Herkulanovna Vors, whom we have the pleasure of seeing here before us and who so kindly helped in discovering these treasures — priceless, yet useless in the hands of a private person. Many thanks, Ida Herkulanovna!’
The beauty smiled, flashing her teeth, and her lush eyelashes fluttered.
‘And under your so very dignified mask,’ the artiste adverted to Dunchil, ‘is concealed a greedy spider and an astonishing bamboozler and liar. You wore everyone out during this month and a half with your dull obstinacy. Go home now, and let the hell your wife sets up for you be your punishment.’
Dunchil swayed and, it seems, wanted to fall down, but was held up by someone’s sympathetic hands. Here the front curtain dropped and concealed all those on-stage.
