Special Assignments (4 page)

For some reason ordinary people failed to pay this crucial activity the serious attention it deserved. They thought: If someone likes me, that's good; if they don't, then that's just too bad - you can't force anyone to like you. Oh yes, you can, Mitenka thought as he grew up, you certainly can. And once you've made someone like you, managed to find the key that fits him, that person is yours to do with as you like.

It turned out that you could make anyone like you, and very little was required to do it - just to understand what kind of person they were, how they saw the world, what they were afraid of. And once you'd understood that, you could play them like a reed pipe, and choose your own melody. A serenade if you liked, or a polka.

Nine out of ten people would tell you everything about themselves if you were just willing to listen. The astounding thing was that nobody listened to anybody else properly. In the best case, if people were well brought up, they would wait for a pause in the conversation before mounting their own hobbyhorse again. But you could find out so many important and interesting things if you just knew how to listen!

Listening properly was a kind of art. You had to imagine that you were an empty bottle, a transparent vessel connected with the person you were talking to via an invisible tube, and let the contents of the other person flow into you a drop at a time, so that you were filled with liquid that was the same colour and strength, the same composition - to stop being yourself for a while and become him. And then you would come to understand that person's essential being, and you would know in advance what he was going to say and what he was going to do.

Momos mastered his science gradually and in his early years he applied it in a small way, for limited gain, but mostly for purposes of checking and experimenting: to obtain a good mark at his grammar school without having learned the lesson; then later, at military school, to win the respect and affection of his comrades; to make a girl fall in love with him.

Later, when he had joined the regiment and his skill and control had grown rather more sure, the benefits that it brought became more significant. For instance, you could clean out a man with money at cards, and he would sit there calmly and not take offence at this fine young chap, the Cornet Mitya Sawin. And he wouldn't stare at your hands any more than necessary. That was not bad, surely?

But all this had only been gymnastic exercises for developing the muscles. His knowledge and talent had come in genuinely useful six years earlier, when destiny had offered the future Momos his first real Chance. He hadn't yet known at that time that a Chance ought not to be fished for, but created. He had kept waiting for good fortune to swim into his hands of its own accord, and the only thing he had been afraid of was that he might let it slip. He hadn't.

At the time things in general were looking pretty mouldy for the young cornet. The regiment had been stationed in the provincial city of Smolensk for more than a year, and every opportunity to apply his talents had already been exhausted. He had won money at cards from everyone he could; everything he could borrow had been borrowed long ago; the colonel's wife loved Mitya with all her heart, but she was tight-fisted with money, and her jealousy exhausted him. And then there was his little slip with the remount money: Cornet Sawin had been sent to the horse fair at Torzhok, where he had got quite carried away and spent more than was permitted.

The general outlook was that he could either be taken to court, or make a run for it, or marry the merchant Pochechuev's pimply daughter. The first option, of course, was out of the question, and the capable young man was hesitating between the second and the third.

Then suddenly fortune had tossed him a trump widow card that might well be just enough for him to save his doomed hand. His great-aunt, a Vyatka landowner, bequeathed her estate to her favourite nephew. Once, when he was still a cadet, Mitenka had spent an extremely boring month with her and, for lack of anything better to do, had practised his science of life a little. Afterwards he had completely forgotten the old woman and never thought of her, but his aunt had not forgotten the dear, quiet little boy. It was certainly no vast latifundium that Mitya had inherited: only a miserable thousand acres, and that in some back-of-beyond province where it was shameful for a respectable man to spend even a week.

How would an ordinary, unexceptional little cornet have behaved if he had had such a stroke of luck? He would have sold the inheritance from his great-aunt to cover the shortfall in the remount money, paid off some of his debts and carried on living in the same old way, the stupid fool. Well, how else? you may ask.

Allow me to set you a little problem. You have an estate that is worth at best twenty-five, perhaps thirty thousand roubles. But you have debts amounting to a full fifty thousand. And, most important of all, you are sick to death of counting the kopecks, you want to live a decent life, with a good carriage, in the finest hotels; you want life always to taste sweet: you don't want to be kept by the colonel's fat wife, you want to acquire a fine, fragrant buttonhole of your own, a tuberose with tender eyes, a slim waist and a lilting laugh.

I've had enough of drifting along the river of life like a splinter of wood, Mitenka decided; it's time to take destiny by its long swan neck. And that was when the science of psychology came in truly useful.

He did not spend just a week or even two in that remote province; he lived there for three whole months. He rode around visiting the neighbours and succeeded in making each of them like him in their own way. With the retired major, a churlish recluse and boor, he drank rum and hunted a bear (and that really gave him a fright). With the collegiate counsellor's wife, a thrifty widow, he made jam out of paradise apples and wrote down advice about farrowing pigs in a little book. With the district marshal of the nobility, who had never graduated from the Corps of Pages, he discussed the news of the great world. With the justice of the peace he visited the gypsy camp on the other side of the river.

He was rather successful: at one and the same time he was a simple chap, a wild character from the capital, a serious young man, a bold spirit, a 'new man', a devotee of the old times and also a certain candidate for a bridegroom (in two families unacquainted with each other).

And when he decided that the soil had been sufficiently manured, he carried the entire business off in just two days.

Even now, years later, when you might think he had plenty of other things to remember and be proud of, Momos enjoyed going over the memory of his first genuine 'operation' - especially the episode with Euripides Callistratovich Kandelaki, who had a reputation among the local landowners as the greatest skinflint and addict of lawsuits ever to walk the earth. Of course, he could have got by without Kandelaki, but Mitenka was young and passionate then; he enjoyed the challenge of cracking tough nuts.

The niggardly Greek was a retired revenue officer. There's only one way to make a man of that sort like you: create the illusion that he can turn a profit at your expense.

The bold cornet galloped up to his neighbour's house on a lathered horse, flushed bright red, with tears in his eyes and his hands trembling. From the doorway he howled: 'Euripides Callistratovich, save me! You are my only hope! I confide in you as my confessor! They've summoned me back to the regiment, to the auditor! I embezzled some money! Twenty-two thousand!'

He really did have a letter from the regiment - concerning the indiscretion with the remount funds. The colonel had lost patience with waiting for Sawin to return from leave.

Mitya took out the envelope with the regimental seal and one other document as well. 'In a month's time I am due to receive a loan of twenty-five thousand from the Nobles' Land Bank secured against my aunt's estate. I thought,' he sobbed, knowing perfectly well that the Greek could not possibly be moved to pity, 'that I would get the money and cover the shortfall. But I won't have enough time! The shame of it! There's only one thing left for me - a bullet in the forehead! Save me, Euripides Callistratovich, my dear fellow! Give me twenty-two thousand, and I'll have a power of attorney drawn up for you to receive the loan. I'll go back to the regiment, make amends, save my honour and my life. And in a month you'll receive twenty-five thousand. Profit for you and salvation for me! I implore you!'

Kandelaki put on his spectacles, read the ominous letter from the regiment and carefully studied the mortgage agreement with the bank (also genuine, drawn up in due, correct form) chewed on his lips for a while and offered fifteen thousand. He finally settled on nineteen.

The scene in the bank a month later must have been truly remarkable, when the owners of the eleven powers of attorney issued by Mitya all turned up at once. His profits were pretty good, only after that, of course, he had had to change his life in the most radical manner. But to hell with his former life; he didn't regret it at all.

The former Cornet Sawin was not afraid of any difficulties with the police. The Empire, thank the Lord, was a big one, there were plenty of fools in it and more than enough rich towns. A man of imagination and spirit would always find scope for his ingenious pranks. And a new name and papers were a trifling matter. He could call himself whatever he wanted. He could be whoever he wanted.

As for his appearance, that was where Momos had been exceptionally lucky. He was very fond of his own face and could spend hours admiring it in the mirror. Hair a wonderful pale blondish-brown colour, like the overwhelming majority of the indigenous Slavonic population. Small, expressionless features, small grey-blue eyes, a nose of indefinite shape, a weak, characterless chin. All in all, absolutely nothing to hold the eye's attention. Not a physiognomy, but a blank canvas - paint whatever you like on it.

Average height, with no distinguishing features. The voice, it is true, was unusual - deep and resonant; but Momos had learned to control this instrument with consummate skill: he could boom in a deep bass and beguile in a charming tenor, squeak in a falsetto and even squeal a litde in a female soprano.

In order to change one's appearance and become unrecognisable, it is not enough simply to dye one's hair and glue on a beard. A man is made up of his facial expressions, his way of walking and sitting down, his gestures, intonations, the special little words he uses in conversation, the force of his glance. And, of course, his ambience - the clothes, the first impression, the name, the title.

If actors had earned big money, Momos would certainly have become a new Shchepkin or Sadovsky - he could sense that he had it in him. But no one paid the kind of sums he wanted, not even to leading actors in the theatres of the capital. And in any case, it was so much more interesting to act out plays not on the stage, with fifteen-minute intervals, but in real life, every day, from morning till night.

Who had he not played during the last six years? - it was impossible to remember all the roles. And what was more, every play had been entirely his own creation. Following the manner of military strategy, Momos referred to them as 'operations', and before the beginning of a new adventure he liked to imagine himself as Maurice of Saxony or Napoleon. But, of course, these were not sanguinary battles that he planned, but diverting amusements. That is, the other dramatis personae might not perhaps fully appreciate the wittiness of the plot, but Momos himself was always left entirely satisfied.

Many performances had been played out - both small and large, genuinely triumphant and less successful - but so far there had not been a single flop followed by booing and whistling.

At one time Momos had developed an interest in immortalising the memory of national heroes. The first time, after losing at whist on a Volga steamer and going ashore in Kostroma without a single kopeck to his name, he had tried collecting contributions for a bronze monument to Ivan Susanin. But the local merchants had been stingy, the landed gentry had tried to make their contributions in butter or rye, and the outcome had been a mere trifle - less than eight thousand. In Odessa, though, the contributions paid for a monument to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin had been generous, especially from the Jewish merchants, and in Tobolsk the fur traders and gold miners had stumped up seventy-five thousand to the eloquent 'member of the Imperial Historical Society' for a monument to Yermak Timofeevich, the conqueror of Siberia.

The year before last the Butterfly Credit Union had proved a great success in Nizhny Novgorod. The idea had been simple and brilliant, designed for that extremely common breed of people whose belief in free miracles is stronger than their natural caution. Butterfly had taken loans from the locals at a fantastically high rate of interest. The first week, only ten people put their money in (nine of them decoys, hired by Momos himself). However, next Monday, when they all received ten kopecks for every rouble invested - the interest was paid out weekly - the town seemed to go insane. A queue three blocks long formed at the company's office. A week later Momos again paid out ten per cent, after which he had to rent another two offices and hire twelve new assistants to take in the money. On the fourth Monday the doors of the offices remained locked. The rainbow-winged Butterfly had fluttered on its way, quitting the banks of the Volga for ever in search of pastures new.

For any other man the pickings from Nizhny Novgorod would have been enough to last the rest of his life, but Momos never hung on to money for very long. Sometimes he imagined that he was a windmill fed by a broad stream of bank notes and jingling coins. The windmill waved its broad sails through the air, knowing no respite, transforming the money into the fine flour of diamond tie pins, thoroughbred trotters, wild sprees that lasted for days, breathtaking bouquets for actresses. But the wind always kept on blowing, and the flour was scattered into the boundless distance, and not a single speck remained.

Well, let it scatter, there was enough 'grain' to last Momos for ever. There would always be grist for the miraculous windmill.