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Read Ebook: Λόγοι Φιλιππικοί Θεοδώρου : Δεληγιάννη Απαγγελθέντες εντός και εκτός του Συνδερίου Εμμέτρως δε Διασκευασθέντες by Souris Georgios
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Ebook has 80 lines and 2436 words, and 2 pages
Translator: Gertrude M. Foakes
IN THE WORLD
TRANSLATED BY
MRS. GERTRUDE M. FOAKES
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
IN THE WORLD
I went out into the world as "shop-boy" at a fashionable boot-shop in the main street of the town. My master was a small, round man. He had a brown, rugged face, green teeth, and watery, mud-colored eyes. At first I thought he was blind, and to see if my supposition was correct, I made a grimace.
"Don't pull your face about!" he said to me gently, but sternly. The thought that those dull eyes could see me was unpleasant, and I did not want to believe that this was the case. Was it not more than probable that he had guessed I was making grimaces?
"I told you not to pull your face about," he said again, hardly moving his thick lips.
"Don't scratch your hands," his dry whisper came to me, as it were, stealthily. "You are serving in a first-class shop in the main street of the town, and you must not forget it. The door-boy ought to stand like a statue."
I did not know what a statue was, and I could n't help scratching my hands, which were covered with red pimples and sores, for they had been simply devoured by vermin.
"What did you do for a living when you were at home?" asked my master, looking at my hands.
I told him, and he shook his round head, which was closely covered with gray hair, and said in a shocked voice:
"Rag-picking! Why, that is worse than begging or stealing!"
I informed him, not without pride:
"But I stole as well."
At this he laid his hands on his desk, looking just like a cat with her paws up, and fixed his eyes on my face with a terrified expression as he whispered:
"Wha--a--t? How did you steal?"
I explained how and what I had stolen.
"Well, well, I look upon that as nothing but a prank. But if you rob me of boots or money, I will have you put in prison, and kept there for the rest of your life."
He said this quite calmly, and I was frightened, and did not like him any more.
Besides the master, there were serving in the shop my cousin, Sascha Jaakov, and the senior assistant, a competent, unctuous person with a red face. Sascha now wore a brown frock-coat, a false shirt-front, a cravat, and long trousers, and was too proud to take any notice of me.
When grandfather had brought me to my master, he had asked Sascha to help me and to teach me. Sascha had frowned with an air of importance as he said warning:
"He will have to do what I tell him, then."
Laying his hand on my head, grandfather had forced me to bend my neck.
"You are to obey him; he is older than you both in years and experience."
And Sascha said to me, with a nod:
"Don't forget what grandfather has said." He lost no time in profiting by his seniority.
"Kashirin, don't look so goggle-eyed," his master would advise him.
"I--I'm all right," Sascha would mutter, putting his head down. But the master would not leave him alone.
"Don't butt; the customers will think you are a goat."
The assistant smiled respectfully, the master stretched his lips in a hideous grin, and Sascha, his face flushing, retreated behind the counter. I did not like the tone of these conversations. Many of the words they used were unintelligible to me, and sometimes they seemed to be speaking in a strange language. When a lady customer came in, the master would take his hands out of his pockets, tug at his mustache, and fix a sweet smile upon his face--a smile which wrinkled his cheeks, but did not change the expression of his dull eyes. The assistant would draw himself up, with his elbows pressed closely against his sides, and his wrists respectfully dangling. Sascha would blink shyly, trying to hide his protruding eyes, while I would stand at the door, surreptitiously scratching my hands, and observing the ceremonial of selling.
Kneeling before the customer, the assistant would try on shoes with wonderfully deft fingers. He touched the foot of the woman so carefully that his hands trembled, as if he were afraid of breaking her leg. But the leg was stout enough. It looked like a bottle with sloping shoulders, turned neck downward.
One of these ladies pulled her foot away one day, shrieking:
"Oh, you are tickling me!"
"That is--because--you are so sensitive," the assistant explained hastily, with warmth.
It was comical to watch him fawning upon the customers, and I had to turn and look through the glass of the door to keep myself from laughing. But something used to draw me back to watch the sale. The proceedings of the assistant were very interesting, and while I looked at him I was thinking that I should never be able to make my fingers move so delicately, or so deftly put boots on other people's feet.
It often happened that the master went away from the shop into a little room behind it, and he would call Sascha to him, leaving the assistant alone with the customer. Once, lingering over the foot of a red-haired woman, he took it between his fingers and kissed it.
"Oh," breathed the woman, "what a bold man you are!"
He puffed out his cheeks and emitted a long-drawn-out sound:
"O--o--h!"
At this I laughed so much that, to keep my feet, I had to hang on to the handle of the door. It flew open, and my head knocked against one of the panes of glass and broke it. The assistant stamped his foot at me, my master hit me on the head with his heavy gold ring, and Sascha tried to pull my ears. In the evening, when we were on our way home, he said to me, sternly:
"You will lose your place for doing things like that. I 'd like to know where the joke comes in." And then he explained: "If ladies take a fancy to the assistant, it is good for trade. A lady may not be in need of boots, but she comes in and buys what she does not want just to have a look at the assistant, who pleases her. But you--you can't understand! One puts oneself out for you, and--"
This incensed me. No one put himself out for me, and he least of all.
In the morning the cook, a sickly, disagreeable woman, used to call me before him. I had to clean the boots and brush the clothes of the master, the assistant, and Sascha, get the samovar ready, bring in wood for all the stoves, and wash up. When I got to the shop I had to sweep the floor, dust, get the tea ready, carry goods to the customers, and go home to fetch the dinner, my duty at the door being taken in the meantime by Sascha, who, finding it lowering to his dignity, rated me.
"Lazy young wretch! I have to do all your work for you."
This was a wearisome, dull life for me. I was accustomed to live independently in the sandy streets of Kunavin, on the banks of the turbid Oka, in the fields or woods, from morning to night. I was parted from grandmother and from my comrades. I had no one to speak to, and life was showing me her seamy, false side. There were occasions on which a customer went away without making a purchase, when all three would feel themselves affronted. The master would put his sweet smile away in his pocket as he said:
"Kashirin, put these things away." Then he would grumble:
"There's a pig of a woman The fool found it dull sitting at home, so she must come and turn our shop upside down! If you were my wife, I'd give you something!"
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