An extraordinary event, or a passage within a passage

a fair story about how one gentleman, of a certain age and a certain appearance, was swallowed alive by a passing crocodile, completely without a trace, and what came of it

I

Oh Lambert! Où est Lambert?

This thirteenth of January of the current sixty-fifth year, at half past one in the afternoon, Elena Ivanovna, the wife of Ivan Matveich, my educated friend, colleague and partly distant relative, wished to see the crocodile shown for a certain fee in the Passage. Having already in his pocket his ticket for traveling abroad (not so much due to illness as out of curiosity), and, therefore, already considered on leave from work and, therefore, being completely free that morning, Ivan Matveich not only did not prevent the insurmountable the desire of his wife, but even he himself was kindled with curiosity. “Great idea,” he said complacently, “let’s examine the crocodile!” When going to Europe, it’s not a bad idea to get acquainted with the natives who inhabit it on the spot,” and with these words, taking his wife by the arm, he immediately went with her to Passage. I, as is my custom, stuck close to them - in the form of a house friend. I have never seen Ivan Matveich in a more pleasant mood than on that memorable morning for me - it is true that we do not know our fate in advance! Entering the Passage, he immediately began to admire the splendor of the building, and when he approached the store where the monster, newly brought to the capital, was displayed, he himself wanted to pay a quarter to the crocodile for me, which had never happened to him before. Entering the small room, we noticed that in addition to the crocodile, it also contained parrots from a foreign breed of cockatoo and, in addition, a group of monkeys in a special cabinet in the recess. At the very entrance, against the left wall, there was a large tin box in the shape of a bathtub, covered with a strong iron mesh, and at the bottom there was an inch of water. In this shallow puddle, a huge crocodile was preserved, lying like a log, completely motionless and, apparently, having lost all its abilities from our damp climate, inhospitable to foreigners. This monster did not arouse any particular curiosity in any of us at first.

- So it’s a crocodile! - Elena Ivanovna said in a voice of regret and in a sing-song voice. – And I thought that he... was someone else!

Most likely, she thought it was diamond. The German who came out to us, the owner, the owner of the crocodile, looked at us with an extremely proud look.

“He’s right,” Ivan Matveich whispered to me, “for he realizes that he’s the only one in all of Russia who is now showing a crocodile.”

I also attribute this completely absurd remark to the overly complacent mood that possessed Ivan Matveyevich, who in other cases was very envious.

“It seems to me that your crocodile is not alive,” Elena Ivanovna said again, piqued by the owner’s intractability, and turning to him with a graceful smile in order to bow down this rude man, a maneuver so characteristic of women.

“Oh no, madam,” he answered in broken Russian and immediately, lifting the mesh of the box halfway, began poking the crocodile in the head with a stick.

Then the insidious monster, in order to show its signs of life, slightly moved its paws and tail, raised its snout and let out something like a prolonged sniffle.

- Well, don’t be angry, Karlchen! – the German said affectionately, satisfied in his pride.

- What a disgusting crocodile! “I was even scared,” Elena Ivanovna babbled even more flirtatiously, “now I’ll see him in my dreams.”

“But he won’t bite you in your sleep, madam,” the German picked up haberdashery and, first of all, laughed at the wit of his words, but none of us answered him.

“Come on, Semyon Semyonich,” Elena Ivanovna continued, addressing exclusively me, “let’s take a look at the monkeys.” I really like monkeys; some of them are so sweet... and the crocodile is terrible.

“Oh, don’t be afraid, my friend,” Ivan Matveich shouted after us, pleasantly brave in front of his wife. “This sleepy inhabitant of the pharaoh’s kingdom will not do anything to us,” and remained by the box. Moreover, taking his glove, he began to tickle the crocodile’s nose with it, wanting, as he admitted later, to make him sniffle again. The owner followed Elena Ivanovna, like a lady, to the closet with monkeys.

Thus, everything went perfectly and nothing could be foreseen. Elena Ivanovna even enjoyed herself to the point of playfulness with the monkeys and seemed to give herself entirely to them. She screamed with pleasure, constantly turning to me, as if not wanting to pay any attention to the owner, and laughed at the similarity she noticed between these monkeys and her short-term acquaintances and friends. I was also amused, because the similarity was undeniable. The German owner did not know whether to laugh or not, and therefore in the end he completely frowned. And at that very moment, suddenly a terrible, I might even say, unnatural scream shook the room. Not knowing what to think, I froze on the spot at first; but noticing that Elena Ivanovna was already screaming, he quickly turned around and - what did I see! I saw - oh my God! - I saw Ivan Matveich in the terrible jaws of a crocodile, intercepted by them across the body, already lifted horizontally into the air and desperately dangling his legs in it. Then a moment - and he was gone. But I will describe it in detail, because I stood motionless the whole time and managed to see the entire process taking place in front of me with such attention and curiosity that I don’t even remember. “For,” I thought at that fateful moment, “what if all this had happened to me instead of Ivan Matveich - what a nuisance it would have been for me!” But to the point. The crocodile began by turning poor Ivan Matveich in his terrible jaws towards himself with his feet, and first swallowed the very feet; then, burping a little Ivan Matveich, who was trying to jump out and was clinging to the box with his hands, again pulled him into himself above the waist. Then, burping again, he swallowed again and again. Thus, Ivan Matveich apparently disappeared in our eyes. Finally, having finally swallowed, the crocodile absorbed all of my educated friend, and this time without a trace. On the surface of the crocodile one could notice how Ivan Matveich with all his forms walked through its interior. I was already getting ready to scream again, when suddenly fate once again wanted to play a treacherous joke on us: the crocodile strained, probably choking from the enormity of the object he had swallowed, again opened his entire terrible mouth, and from it, in the form of a last belch, suddenly jumped out for one second the head of Ivan Matveich, with a desperate expression on his face, and his glasses instantly fell off his nose to the bottom of the box. It seemed that this desperate head jumped out just to take one last look at all the objects and mentally say goodbye to all secular pleasures. But she didn’t have time in her intention: the crocodile gathered his strength again, took a sip - and instantly she disappeared again, this time forever. This appearance and disappearance of a still living human head was so terrible, but at the same time - whether from the speed and unexpectedness of the action or as a result of glasses falling off the nose - it contained something so funny that I suddenly and completely unexpectedly snorted; but, realizing that it was indecent for me to laugh at such a moment as a family friend, he immediately turned to Elena Ivanovna and said to her with a sympathetic look:

- Now kaput our Ivan Matveich!

I can’t even think or express how strong Elena Ivanovna’s excitement was throughout the entire process. At first, after the first cry, she seemed to freeze in place and looked at the chaos that appeared to her, apparently indifferently, but with extremely bulging eyes; then she suddenly burst into a tearing scream, but I grabbed her hands. At that moment the owner, who at first was also stupefied with horror, suddenly clasped his hands and shouted, looking at the sky:

- Oh my crocodile, oh mein allerlibster Karlchen! Mutter, mutter, mutter!

At this cry, the back door opened and a mutter appeared, in a cap, ruddy, elderly, but disheveled, and with a squeal she rushed to her German.

It was then that the sodomy began: Elena Ivanovna shouted out, like a frenzy, only one word: “Rip up!” rip!" - and rushed to the owner and to the mutter, apparently begging them - probably in self-forgetfulness - to cut someone up for something. The owner and the mutter did not pay attention to any of us: they both howled like calves near the box.

“He’s a loser, he’s going to gobble up now, because he swallowed the ganz official!” - the owner shouted.

- Unser Karlchen, unser allerlibster Karlchen vird sterben! - howled the hostess.

- We are orphans and without kleb! – the owner picked up.

- Rip, rip, rip! - Elena Ivanovna burst into tears, clutching the German’s frock coat.

- He teased the crocodile, - why did your husband tease the crocodile! - the German shouted, fighting back. – You will pay if Karlchen vird lopal, – das var mein zone, das var mein einziger zone!

I admit, I was in terrible indignation, seeing such selfishness of a visiting German and dryness of heart in his disheveled mutter; nevertheless, Elena Ivanovna’s continuously repeated cries: “Rip up, rip up!” - aroused my anxiety even more and finally captivated all my attention, so that I was even frightened... I will say in advance that these strange exclamations were completely misunderstood by me: it seemed to me that Elena Ivanovna had lost her mind for a moment, but nevertheless, wanting to take revenge for the death of her beloved Ivan Matveich, offered, in the form of satisfaction that followed, to punish the crocodile with rods. Meanwhile, she meant something completely different. Not without embarrassment, looking at the door, I began to beg Elena Ivanovna to calm down and, most importantly, not to use the sensitive word “rip.” For such a retrograde desire here, in the very heart of the Passage and educated society, two steps from the very hall where, perhaps at that very moment, Mr. Lavrov was giving a public lecture, was not only impossible, but even unthinkable from the moment to a minute could attract the whistles of education and caricatures of Mr. Stepanov. To my horror, I was immediately proven right in my fearful suspicions: suddenly the curtain that separated the crocodile room from the entrance closet in which quarters were collected was parted, and a figure with a mustache, a beard and a cap in his hands appeared on the threshold, bending very strongly with his upper body forward and very prudently tried to keep her feet outside the threshold of the crocodile room in order to preserve the right not to pay for the entrance.

“Such a retrograde desire, madam,” said the stranger, trying not to somehow fall over to us and stand behind the threshold, “does not honor your development and is caused by a lack of phosphorus in your brains.” You will immediately be booed in the chronicles of progress and in our satirical sheets...

But he did not finish: the owner, who came to his senses, was horrified to see a man speaking in the crocodile room and not paying anything for it, furiously rushed at the progressive stranger and pushed him into the neck with both fists. For a minute both disappeared from our eyes behind the curtain, and only then did I finally realize that the whole mess had come out of nothing; Elena Ivanovna turned out to be completely innocent: she did not at all think, as I already noted above, to subject the crocodile to retrograde and humiliating punishment with rods, but simply simply wished that his belly would be ripped open with a knife and thus Ivan Matveich would be freed from his entrails.

- How! You're going to let my crocodile go to waste! - the owner screamed as he ran in again. - No, let your husband first be a loser, and then a crocodile!.. Main Vater will show the crocodile, Main Grosfater will show the crocodile, Main Zone will show the crocodile, and I will show the crocodile! Everyone will show the crocodile! I am a Ghanaian from Europe, but you are unknown to a Ghanaian from Europe and he is paying me a fine.

- I, I! – picked up the evil German woman. - Don’t let you in, fine when Karlchen eats!

“And it’s useless to tear it up,” I added calmly, wanting to distract Elena Ivanovna to go home as quickly as possible, “for our dear Ivan Matveich, in all likelihood, is now floating somewhere in the empyrean.”

“My friend,” Ivan Matveich’s voice came out completely unexpectedly at that moment, amazing us to the extreme, “my friend, my opinion is to act directly through the warden’s office, because a German will not understand the truth without the help of the police.”

These words, spoken firmly, with weight and expressing an extraordinary presence of mind, at first amazed us so much that we all refused to believe our ears. But, of course, they immediately ran up to the crocodile box and listened to the unfortunate prisoner with as much reverence as they did with incredulity. His voice was muffled, thin and even loud, as if coming from a considerable distance from us. It was like when some joker, going into another room and covering his mouth with an ordinary sleeping pillow, begins to scream, wanting to present to the audience remaining in the other room how two men call to each other in the desert or being separated from each other by a deep ravine - that I I had the pleasure of hearing it once from my friends at Christmas time.

- Ivan Matveich, my friend, so you’re alive! - Elena Ivanovna babbled.

“Alive and healthy,” answered Ivan Matveich, “and thanks to the Almighty, he was swallowed without any damage.” My only concern is how the authorities will look at this episode; because, having received a ticket abroad, he fell into a crocodile, which is not even witty...

“But, my friend, don’t worry about wit; “First of all, we need to somehow get you out of here,” Elena Ivanovna interrupted.

- They're picking! - the owner cried. “I won’t let the crocodile pick.” Now the public will walk around more, and I will ask for fufzig kopecks, and Karlchen will stop eating.

- Gotta dunk! – the hostess picked up.

“They are right,” Ivan Matveich calmly noted, “the economic principle comes first.”

“My friend,” I shouted, “I’m going to the authorities right now and I’m going to complain, because I have a presentiment that we won’t be able to cook this mess alone.”

“And I think so too,” noted Ivan Matveich, “but without economic reward, in our age of trade crisis it is difficult to rip open a crocodile’s belly for nothing, and meanwhile the inevitable question arises: what will the owner take for his crocodile?” and with it another: who will pay? for you know I have no means...

“Is it on account of my salary,” I timidly remarked, but the owner immediately interrupted me:

- I don’t sell crocodile, I sell three thousand crocodile, I sell four thousand crocodile! Now the public will be walking a lot. I'm selling five thousand crocodile!

In a word, he swaggered unbearably; selfishness and vile greed shone joyfully in his eyes.

- I'm on my way! – I shouted indignantly.

- And I! me too! “I’ll go to Andrei Osipych himself, I’ll soften him with my tears,” Elena Ivanovna whined.

“Don’t do this, my friend,” Ivan Matveich hastily interrupted her, for he had long been jealous of his wife for Andrei Osipych and knew that she was glad to go cry in front of an educated man, because tears really suited her. “And I don’t advise you either, my friend,” he continued, turning to me, “there’s no point in going straight from the bay; what else will come of this. You’d better come by today, as a private visit, to Timofey Semyonitch. He is an old-fashioned and narrow-minded man, but respectable and, most importantly, straightforward. Bow to him for me and describe the circumstances of the case. Since I owe him seven rubles for the last mess, give them to him at this opportunity: it will soften the stern old man. In any case, his advice can serve as a guide for us. Now take Elena Ivanovna away for now... Calm down, my friend,” he continued to her, “I’m tired of all these screams and women’s squabbles and I want to get some sleep. It’s warm and soft here, although I haven’t had time to look around in this unexpected shelter...

- Look around! Is it bright for you there? - Elena Ivanovna cried out overjoyed.

“I am surrounded by continuous night,” answered the poor prisoner, “but I can touch and, so to speak, look around with my hands... Farewell, be calm and do not deny yourself entertainment.” See you tomorrow! You, Semyon Semyonich, come see me in the evening, and since you are distracted and might forget, tie a knot...

I admit, I was glad to leave, because I was too tired, and partly bored. Hastily taking Elena Ivanovna, despondent but prettier from excitement, by the hand, I quickly led her out of the crocodile room.

– In the evening the entrance fee is again a quarter! – the owner shouted after us.

- Oh God, how greedy they are! - said Elena Ivanovna, looking in every mirror in the walls of the Passage and, apparently, realizing that she had become prettier.

“The economic principle,” I answered with slight excitement and proud of my lady in front of passers-by.

“The economic principle...” she drawled in a sympathetic voice, “I didn’t understand anything that Ivan Matveich said just now about this disgusting economic principle.”

“I’ll explain to you,” I answered and immediately began to talk about the beneficial results of attracting foreign capital to our fatherland, which I read about in the morning in Petersburg News and in Volos.

- How strange it all is! – she interrupted after listening for a while. - Stop it, you disgusting one; what nonsense are you talking... Tell me, am I very red?