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Updated: May 6, 2025
"In that case, you give me change," he urges Grisha, coming back from the kitchen. "I'll pay you for the change. Won't you? Come, give me ten kopecks for a rouble." Grisha looks suspiciously at Vasya, wondering whether it isn't some trick, a swindle. "I won't," he says, holding his pockets. Vasya begins to get cross, and abuses them, calling them idiots and blockheads.
A faded old blackbird, with most of its feathers plucked out of its tail, sits on a dirty perch. He is dignified, grave, and motionless as a retired general. He has waved his claw in resignation to his captivity long ago, and looks at the blue sky with indifference. Probably, owing to this indifference, he is considered a sagacious bird. He is not to be bought for less than forty kopecks.
"I will, Athanasi Vassilievitch, I will. But what a fate is mine! Did ever such a fate befall a man? To think of all the patience with which I have gathered my kopecks, of all the toil and trouble which I have endured! Yet what I have done has not been done with the intention of robbing any one, nor of cheating the Treasury. Why, then, did I gather those kopecks?
Katrina Petrovna, her teacher, praised and encouraged her; and there was no reason why the promising pupil should not have developed into a young lady of culture, with Madame teaching Russian, German, crocheting, and singing yes, out of a book, to the accompaniment of a clavier all for a fee of seventy-five kopecks a week. Did I say there was no reason? And what about the marriage broker?
You are laughing, I see.... Stepan Trofimovitch said truly that I lie under a stone, crushed but not killed, and do nothing but wriggle. It was a good comparison of his." "Stepan Trofimovitch declares that you are mad over the Germans," I laughed. "We've borrowed something from them anyway." "We took twenty kopecks, but we gave up a hundred roubles of our own." We were silent a minute.
When my mother died I was left a little devil this high a homeless orphan . . . no kith nor kin, wretched, ragged, little clothes, hungry, nowhere to sleep in fact, 'we have here no abiding city, but seek the one to come. In those days I used to lead an old blind woman about the town for five kopecks a day . . . the frosts were cruel, wicked.
And so proud, apparently, was he of the proposal that a faint smile crossed his flaccid countenance. "You see, it would be work," he added with his brown eyes veiled, "whilst, in addition, you would be paid ten kopecks for your trouble, and allowed to keep the shroud." "And should also be given some supper, I suppose?" "Yes and should also be given some supper." "Where is the corpse lying?"
In competition they reached such a state, that they lowered their passenger rates for the third class from seventy-five kopecks to five, three, two, and even one kopeck. In the end, ready to fall from exhaustion in the unequal struggle, one of the steamship companies offered a free passage to all the third-class passengers.
Once Cousin Hirshel went to see a giant, who exhibited himself for three kopecks, and came home with such marvellous accounts of his astonishing proportions, and his amazing feats of strength, that little Mendele cried for envy, and I had to play lotto with him and let him beat me oh, so easily! till he felt himself a man again. And sometimes I had adventures of my own.
"Nevertheless, consider my poverty, dear friend, and make it FORTY kopecks per soul." "Venerable sir, would that I could pay you not merely forty kopecks, but five hundred roubles. I should be only too delighted if that were possible, since I perceive that you, an aged and respected gentleman, are suffering for your own goodness of heart." "By God, that is true, that is true."
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