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Updated: June 28, 2025
As soon as Khlopov had entered the room, he began to play with me and Marusya. He gave us candy, and insisted on dancing a jig with us. Anna met him with a frown: "Drunk again?" But this time her eyes seemed to have no power over Khlopov. He could not stand it any longer, and gave tit for tat. "Zhidovka!" he shouted. I looked at Anna: she turned red. Marusya blushed.
Right here you can see the difference between the Jew and the Gentile. The finer soul of the Jew may contract and settle on the very point of his nose. But the grosser soul of the Gentile needs, as it were, more space to spread over. This, I believe, is why Khlopov never failed to get a clean shave on the eve of every holiday.
Small wonder, then, that he kept putting it off. But the time came when it was necessary that Anna should speak to him about the matter; and yet she could not muster up enough courage to do it. For at times she thought herself nothing but a stranger in the place. Who was she anyway, to inherit the property left by old Simeon Khlopov, deceased?
And our patrons slept peacefully, delighted with their unpunished thievery, till a Gentile boy, one Serge Ivanovich, joined us on one of his own "nights." He was the son of the village elder, and a cousin of Peter Khlopov. He was compelled to obey Jacob, but the next morning he blabbed about it all over the village. Of course, our patrons were angry.
This is what Colonel Pavel Akimovich used to say of us. Now, once I decided to find out Anna's secret, I thought it all out beforehand, as a Cantonist should; and I hit upon a plan. That was at the beginning of spring. One day Khlopov left on a journey to the neighboring villages to collect the taxes. He had to stay away some time. The whole of that day Anna kept worrying me as usual.
Stories are good only when told the way Khlopov used to tell them to me. But that is all irrelevant. In short, Khlopov was kind to me. As to Anna, she was entirely different. She was close-mouthed, ill-tempered, and a great stay-at-home. She never visited her neighbors, and they, in turn, called on her very rarely. In the village she was spoken of as a snob and a hypocrite.
He lived in the same village. At the request of my patron Khlopov I was excused from the daily drill, and had to report but once a week. You see, Peter expected to derive some benefit from me by employing me about the house and in the field. Now it was surely through the merits of my ancestors that I happened to be placed in the household of Peter Khlopov.
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