This Syvorotka, a humble creature—a shadow of yesterday—has only one thing of which he cannot be robbed, his only consolation: the sorrow which he wears deep under his uniform jealously concealed from the rest of the world.
20
My baggage—the handbag—was found.
Those peculiar things can happen only in the present Russia. She is like a good make of automobile after a wreck. Everything seems to be crushed and broken—machinery, wheels, glass, body…. Still some parts are strong enough to keep moving. So miraculously there moved a part, which brought my handbag here from Moscow,—the very first ray of sun in my existence for a long time.
I came to the depot this morning—I had been coming every day since Schmelin gave me the baggage check—and saw a few men unloading a baggage coach. I approached them.
"Hello," I said to a tartar whose abominable face was covered with pock marks, (nowadays one must always address the most hostile looking person in a crowd, never the most sympathetic, for one should not show any weakness to the mob), "any work"?
"Hello,—yourself," the tartar answered grouchily and without looking at me, "there is. Don't let them skin you. Ask fifty rubles, understand?"
"Is that so?" I said, spitting through my front teeth onto a sidewalk covered with gleaming white snow, "not me, damn them! Whose baggage?"
They did not answer—in their language it meant 'don't know, don't care, and go to hell!'
On the coach I saw "Moscow Special" written with white stone and I decided to take one more chance and ask for my handbag, presenting my luggage check.