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Updated: June 28, 2025
Waters was frankly aghast; this, upon the top of his other troubles, was overwhelming. The istvostchik ruptured the moment with a brassy yell. "Wow!" he howled. "My Amerikanetz, the Foreigner, the jail-bird! Look at him, brothers!" He waved his whip as though the darkness were thronged with auditors. "Look at the jail-bird!" From the gate below the dull lamp a dvornik poked his head forth.
He advanced into the clear space of roadway behind the rearmost cab, between Waters and his tormentors. His darting official eye fell on the former, standing in his conspicuous blouse, his thin face tense and dire. "And this?" he demanded. "What is this?" A chorus of explanations from the istvostchiks answered him. "Amerikanetz," they told him, "just out of prison!"
By and by, we will send you up for six months, and after that nobody will know you for an Amerikanetz. Ah, you will thank me some day!" Waters heard him stonily and nodded with meaning. "You bet I will," he replied. "And when I'm through with you, you'll know just how grateful I am." The need for words with a taste to them mastered him. He broke into his own tongue.
The discord of their mirth rilled the street; the big men, padded out under their clothes to a grotesque obesity, their long coats hanging to their heels giving them the aspect of figures out of a Noah's Ark, drew all eyes. The beginnings of a crowd gathered to watch and listen. "The Amerikanetz," the foremost istvostchik was roaring. "Look at him! Look at his clothes!
The dvornik and the istvostchik, it seemed, had laughed loudly and significantly as Waters went by, and he had turned to inquire into the joke. "Because, y'see, Mr. Selby, them Russians just don't laugh in a general way, except they're wantin' to start something. An' I heard 'em say 'Amerikanetz' just as plain as I can see you settin' there. So, a' course, I knowed it was me they was pickin' on."
Just out of prison Look at him!" Everybody looked; the word "Amerikanetz" fled from lip to lip like a witticism. Waters, stunned by the suddenness of it all, daunted and overwhelmed, turned to move away, to get out of sound and hearing. Forthwith a fresh howl went up. He caught at his self-possession and turned back.
The wretched animal jerked forward, and Waters backed to the wall as his enemy clattered down upon him again. "That'll do you," he warned as the cabman dragged his horse to a standstill once more. "I'm not lookin' for trouble. You be on your way!" The immense ragged-edged voice of the istvostchik descended upon him, drowning his protest. "He runs away from me, this Amerikanetz!
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