Chapter 21 a cup

Not long ago, a painter here, Ivan Antonovich Blokhin, fell ill and died.Forty days later his middle-aged widow, Marya Vasilyevna Brokhina, ordered a light meal at home. She invited me too. "Come," she said, "and eat whatever you have in the house, in remembrance of dear dead. Chickens, ducks, we don't have any; don't expect pies either. But you can drink as much tea as you want, and you'll be fine." You can take it home." I said: "Although I'm not very interested in tea, I'd still like to go. Ivan Antonovich Blokhin treated me very well, and once painted the roof for me without asking for money." .”

She said: "So, you have to come." I will be there on Thursday. Enough people came, all relatives and friends came.There was also my brother-in-law, Pyotr Antonovich Blokhin, a wicked man with an upturned moustache.He sits in front of a big watermelon, and does nothing but cut the watermelon with a pencil knife and eat it. I drank a cup of tea and didn't want to drink any more, feeling awkward in my heart.The tea is not very good, to be honest, it smells like swill.I just picked up the teacup and put it aside - fuck it. There was a sugar bowl next to it, and I wasn't careful when I put it down, so I bumped the glass on the sugar bowl and hit the handle of the sugar bowl.That teacup was really damned, it cracked a line when I touched it.I thought to myself that no one else would find out.In the end, people found out, these guys are really ghosts!

The hostess said: "What's the matter, brother, did you break the glass?" I said: "It's all right, Maria Vasilyevna Brokhina, it's not broken." Her little uncle was full of watermelons, and said, "Why don't you get in the way, it's okay! The widow invited them to be guests, but they smashed the widow's belongings." At this moment Marya Vasilyevna turned over the glass and looked at it, with more and more distress. She said: "Smashing a glass like this is going to cost me everything. This one smashes a glass, that one unscrews the faucet of the samovar, and someone takes the napkin away. How can it be!"

The villainous brother-in-law said: "There is nothing to say. This guest should chop his dog's face with watermelon rind." I said nothing about this, but my face turned pale with rage. "I said Comrade Brother-in-law, the word 'dog face' doesn't sound right to me. Comrade Brother-in-law, if my mother beat me with watermelon rind, I would never agree to it. To be honest, the tea here It smells like the water used to wash mops. It’s still a treat! To deal with people like you, three glasses and a mug are not too much.” Now, of course, the house was full of uproar and voices.

The one who made the most fuss was my uncle, most likely because of the watermelon he ate. The widow was also trembling with anger. She said: "I'm not in the habit of putting mop water in my tea. Probably you did it yourself at home, and now you're putting it on someone else's head. Dead painter Ivan Antonovich If you hear these words, you will definitely not sleep well in the coffin... dog, I can't just let you go." To these, I did not answer anything.I just said, "To hell with you all!" Walk away after speaking. Two weeks after that, I got a summons from the court, from Brokhina.

I went out to court, and I felt weird. The people's judge looked at the materials and said to me: "Now all the courts are busy with this kind of case, and you are here again. It's terrible! You pay the female citizen twenty kopecks, and it's over!" I said, "I can pay, but she'd have to give me the cracked glass to make sense." The widow said: "You can take it, and let the cup choke you to death." The next day, Xie Miao, the janitor of their house, brought the cup, which had three more cracks intentionally knocked on it. I didn't say anything about it, just said, "Tell your bastards I'm going to fuck them this time and take them to court."

Well, if anyone offends me, I'll take it to court and never end with them. (1923)① Translated by Gu Yaling and Bai Chunren