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Updated: June 24, 2025
Father Christopher suddenly thought of something, spluttered into his glass and choked with laughter. Moisey Moisevitch laughed, too, from politeness, and he, too, cleared his throat. "So funny!" said Father Christopher, and he waved his hand. "My eldest son Gavrila came to pay me a visit.
This was the innkeeper, Moisey Moisevitch, a man no longer young, with a very pale face and a handsome beard as black as charcoal. He was wearing a threadbare black coat, which hung flapping on his narrow shoulders as though on a hatstand, and fluttered its skirts like wings every time Moisey Moisevitch flung up his hands in delight or horror.
Moisey Moisevitch spoke in a low bass undertone, and altogether his talk in Yiddish was like a continual "ghaal-ghaal-ghaal-ghaal, . . ." while his wife answered him in a shrill voice like a turkeycock's, and the whole effect of her talk was something like "Too-too-too-too!"
There was a smell of something decayed and sour in the room. As he led the visitors into the room, Moisey Moisevitch went on wriggling, gesticulating, shrugging and uttering joyful exclamations; he considered these antics necessary in order to seem polite and agreeable. "When did our waggons go by?" Kuzmitchov asked.
"What a ferocious fellow you've got here, Moisey Moisevitch! God bless him!" said Father Christopher with a smile. "You ought to find him a place or a wife or something. . . . There's no knowing what to make of him. . . ." Kuzmitchov frowned angrily. Moisey Moisevitch looked uneasily and inquiringly at his brother and the visitors again. "Solomon, go away!" he said shortly.
"Has Varlamov been here to-day?" a woman's voice inquired. "No, your Excellency," said Moisey Moisevitch. "If you see him to-morrow, ask him to come and see me for a minute." All at once, quite unexpectedly, Yegorushka saw half an inch from his eyes velvety black eyebrows, big brown eyes, delicate feminine cheeks with dimples, from which smiles seemed radiating all over the face like sunbeams.
"Be so kind as to excuse it, and don't be angry. He is such a queer fellow, such a queer fellow! Oh dear, oh dear! He is my own brother, but I have never had anything but trouble from him. You know he's. . ." Moisey Moisevitch crooked his finger by his forehead and went on: "He is not in his right mind; . . . he's hopeless. And I don't know what I am to do with him!
"Go away!" and he added something in Yiddish. Solomon gave an abrupt laugh and went out. "What was it?" Moisey Moisevitch asked Father Christopher anxiously. "He forgets himself," answered Kuzmitchov. "He's rude and thinks too much of himself." "I knew it!" Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror, clasping his hands. "Oh dear, oh dear!" he muttered in a low voice.
"I am the only one; there are no others." "O-oh!" sighed the Jewess, and turned her eyes upward. "Poor mamma, poor mamma! How she will weep and miss you! We are going to send our Nahum to school in a year. O-oh!" "Ah, Nahum, Nahum!" sighed Moisey Moisevitch, and the skin of his pale face twitched nervously. "And he is so delicate."
"Well, we may just as well have a cup of tea," said Father Christopher, with a sympathetic smile; "that won't keep us long." "Very well," Kuzmitchov assented. Moisey Moisevitch, in a fluster uttered an exclamation of joy, and shrugging as though he had just stepped out of cold weather into warm, ran to the door and cried in the same frantic voice in which he had called Solomon: "Rosa! Rosa!
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