Short Stories
inhabiting are of priceless value. And so, far from repining at what has
happened, I confidently hope for the most brilliant of careers."
"You won't find it wearisome?" I asked sarcastically.
What irritated me more than anything was the extreme pomposity of his
language. Nevertheless, it all rather disconcerted me. "What on earth,
what, can this frivolous blockhead find to be so cocky about?" I muttered
to myself. "He ought to be crying instead of being cocky."
"No!" he answered my observation sharply, "for I am full of great ideas,
only now can I at leisure ponder over the amelioration of the lot of
humanity. Truth and light will come forth now from the crocodile. I shall
certainly develop a new economic theory of my own and I shall be proud of
it--which I have hitherto been prevented from doing by my official duties
and by trivial distractions. I shall refute everything and be a new
Fourier. By the way, did you give Timofey Semyonitch the seven roubles?"
"Yes, out of my own pocket," I answered, trying to emphasise that fact in
my voice.
"We will settle it," he answered superciliously. "I confidently expect my
salary to be raised, for who should get a raise if not I? I am of the
utmost service now. But to business. My wife?"
"You are, I suppose, inquiring after Elena Ivanovna?"
"My wife?" he shouted, this time in a positive squeal.
There was no help for it! Meekly, though gnashing my teeth, I told him how
I had left Elena Ivanovna. He did not even hear me out.
"I have special plans in regard to her," he began impatiently. "If I am
celebrated _here_, I wish her to be celebrated _there_. Savants, poets,
philosophers, foreign mineralogists, statesmen, after conversing in the
morning with me, will visit her _salon_ in the evening. From next week
onwards she must have an 'At Home' every evening. With my salary doubled,
we shall have the means for entertaining, and as the entertainment must not
go beyond tea and hired footmen--that's settled. Both here and there they
will talk of me. I have long thirsted for an opportunity for being talked
about, but could not attain it, fettered by my humble position and low
grade in the service. And now all this has been attained by a simple gulp
on the part of the crocodile. Every word of mine will be listened to, every
utterance will be thought over, repeated, printed. And I'll teach them what
I am worth! They shall understand at last what abilities they have allowed
to vanish in the entrails of a monster. 'This man might have been Foreign
Minister or might have ruled a kingdom,' some will say. 'And that man did
not rule a kingdom,' others will say. In what way am I inferior to a
Garnier-Pagesishky or whatever they are called? My wife must be a worthy
second--I have brains, she has beauty and charm. 'She is beautiful, and
that is why she is his wife,' some will say. 'She is beautiful _because_
she is his wife,' others will amend. To be ready for anything let Elena
Ivanovna buy to-morrow the Encyclopædia edited by Andrey Kraevsky, that she
may be able to converse on any topic. Above all, let her be sure to read
the political leader in the _Petersburg News_, comparing it every day with
the _Voice_. I imagine that the proprietor will consent to take me
sometimes with the crocodile to my wife's brilliant _salon_. I will be in a
tank in the middle of the magnificent drawing-room, and I will scintillate
with witticisms which I will prepare in the morning. To the statesmen I
will impart my projects; to the poet I will speak in rhyme; with the ladies
I can be amusing and charming without impropriety, since I shall be no
danger to their husbands' peace of mind. To all the rest I shall serve as a
pattern of resignation to fate and the will of Providence. I shall make my
wife a brilliant literary lady; I shall bring her forward and explain her
to the public; as my wife she must be full of the most striking virtues;
and if they are right in calling Andrey Alexandrovitch our Russian Alfred
de Musset, they will be still more right in calling her our Russian
Yevgenia Tour."
I must confess that although this wild nonsense was rather in Ivan
Matveitch's habitual style, it did occur to me that he was in a fever and
delirious. It was the same, everyday Ivan Matveitch, but magnified twenty
times.
"My friend," I asked him, "are you hoping for a long life? Tell me, in
fact, are you well? How do you eat, how do you sleep, how do you breathe? I
am your friend, and you must admit that the incident is most unnatural, and
consequently my curiosity is most natural."
"Idle curiosity and nothing else," he pronounced sententiously, "but you
shall be satisfied. You ask how I am managing in the entrails of the
monster? To begin with, the crocodile, to my amusement, turns out to be
perfectly empty. His inside consists of a sort of huge empty sack made of
gutta-percha, like the elastic goods sold in the Gorohovy Street, in the
Morskaya, and, if I am not mistaken, in the Voznesensky Prospect.
Otherwise, if you think of it, how could I find room?"
"Is it possible?" I cried, in a surprise that may well be understood. "Can
the crocodile be perfectly empty?"
"Perfectly," Ivan Matveitch maintained sternly and impressively. "And in
all probability, it is so constructed by the laws of Nature. The crocodile
possesses nothing but jaws furnished with sharp teeth, and besides the
jaws, a tail of considerable length--that is all, properly speaking. The
middle part between these two extremities is an empty space enclosed by
something of the nature of gutta-percha, probably really gutta-percha."
"But the ribs, the stomach, the intestines, the liver, the heart?" I
interrupted quite angrily.
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing of all that, and probably there never
has been. All that is the idle fancy of frivolous travellers. As one
inflates an air-cushion, I am now with my person inflating the crocodile.
He is incredibly elastic. Indeed, you might, as the friend of the family,
get in with me if you were generous and self-sacrificing enough--and even
with you here there would be room to spare. I even think that in the last
resort I might send for Elena Ivanovna. However, this void, hollow
formation of the crocodile is quite in keeping with the teachings of
natural science. If, for instance, one had to construct a new crocodile,
the question would naturally present itself. What is the fundamental
characteristic of the crocodile? The answer is clear: to swallow human
beings. How is one, in constructing the crocodile, to secure that he should
swallow people? The answer is clearer still: construct him hollow. It was
settled by physics long ago that Nature abhors a vacuum. Hence the inside
of the crocodile must be hollow so that it may abhor the vacuum, and
consequently swallow and so fill itself with anything it can come across.
And that is the sole rational cause why every crocodile swallows men. It is
not the same in the constitution of man: the emptier a man's head is, for
instance, the less he feels the thirst to fill it, and that is the one
exception to the general rule. It is all as clear as day to me now. I have
deduced it by my own observation and experience, being, so to say, in the
very bowels of Nature, in its retort, listening to the throbbing of its
pulse. Even etymology supports me, for the very word crocodile means
voracity. Crocodile--_crocodillo_--is evidently an Italian word, dating
perhaps from the Egyptian Pharaohs, and evidently derived from the French
verb _croquer_, which means to eat, to devour, in general to absorb
nourishment. All these remarks I intend to deliver as my first lecture in
Elena Ivanovna's _salon_ when they take me there in the tank."
"My friend, oughtn't you at least to take some purgative?" I cried
involuntarily.
"He is in a fever, a fever, he is feverish!" I repeated to myself in alarm.
"Nonsense!" he answered contemptuously. "Besides, in my present position it
would be most inconvenient. I knew, though, you would be sure to talk of
taking medicine."
"But, my friend, how ... how do you take food now? Have you dined to-day?"
"No, but I am not hungry, and most likely I shall never take food again.
And that, too, is quite natural; filling the whole interior of the
crocodile I make him feel always full. Now he need not be fed for some
years. On the other hand, nourished by me, he will naturally impart to me
all the vital juices of his body; it is the same as with some accomplished
coquettes who embed themselves and their whole persons for the night in raw
steak, and then, after their morning bath, are fresh, supple, buxom and
fascinating. In that way nourishing the crocodile, I myself obtain
nourishment from him, consequently we mutually nourish one another. But as
it is difficult even for a crocodile to digest a man like me, he must, no
doubt, be conscious of a certain weight in his stomach--an organ which he
does not, however, possess--and that is why, to avoid causing the creature
suffering, I do not often turn over, and although I could turn over I do
not do so from humanitarian motives. This is the one drawback of my present
position, and in an allegorical sense Timofey Semyonitch was right in
saying I was lying like a log. But I will prove that even lying like a
log--nay, that only lying like a log--one can revolutionise the lot of
mankind. All the great ideas and movements of our newspapers and magazines
have evidently been the work of men who were lying like logs; that is why
they call them divorced from the realities of life--but what does it
matter, their saying that! I am constructing now a complete system of my
own, and you wouldn't believe how easy it is! You have only to creep into a
secluded corner or into a crocodile, to shut your eyes, and you immediately
devise a perfect millennium for mankind. When you went away this afternoon
I set to work at once and have already invented three systems, now I am
preparing the fourth. It is true that at first one must refute everything
that has gone before, but from the crocodile it is so easy to refute it;
besides, it all becomes clearer, seen from the inside of the crocodile....
There are some drawbacks, though small ones, in my position, however; it is
somewhat damp here and covered with a sort of slime; moreover, there is a
smell of india-rubber like the smell of my old galoshes. That is all, there
are no other drawbacks."
"Ivan Matveitch," I interrupted, "all this is a miracle in which I can
scarcely believe. And can you, can you intend never to dine again?"
"What trivial nonsense you are troubling about, you thoughtless, frivolous
creature! I talk to you about great ideas, and you.... Understand that I am
sufficiently nourished by the great ideas which light up the darkness in
which I am enveloped. The good-natured proprietor has, however, after
consulting the kindly _Mutter_, decided with her that they will every
morning insert into the monster's jaws a bent metal tube, something like a
whistle pipe, by means of which I can absorb coffee or broth with bread
soaked in it. The pipe has already been bespoken in the neighbourhood, but
I think this is superfluous luxury. I hope to live at least a thousand
years, if it is true that crocodiles live so long, which, by the way--good
thing I thought of it--you had better look up in some natural history
to-morrow and tell me, for I may have been mistaken and have mixed it up
with some excavated monster. There is only one reflection rather troubles
me: as I am dressed in cloth and have boots on, the crocodile can obviously
not digest me. Besides, I am alive, and so am opposing the process of
digestion with my whole will power; for you can understand that I do not
wish to be turned into what all nourishment turns into, for that would be