398
KONSTANTIN
PAUSTOVSKY
"All right, you can go. You'll get your cut."
Old Cires left quite happy, feeling like a man who had taken
out a life insurance policy that would be paid in gold. . . .
..
I
The next day, Senka and Five-Rubles met in front of the
cashier's window of the Concordia Workshop. They looked straight
into each other's eyes and Senka asked:
"Would you mind telling me who fingered this job for you?
"Old Cires. And what about you, Senka?"
"Old Cires too."
"And so?" Five-Rubles said.
"And so he won't go on living."
"Amen," Five-Rubles agreed.
Each bandit went peacefully on his way. According to the
regulations, when two bandits meet on a job, the job is cancelled.
Forty minutes later, Cires was killed in his home while his wife
Hava was out in the courtyard hanging her washing. She didn't s,ee
the murderer, but she knew that no one but Senka, or one of his
crowd, could have done it. Senka never forgave a doublecross.
That Kidl
Babel's father, a fussy old man, was a dealer in a small depot
of agricultural machinery in Odessa. From time to time, he sent
his
son Isaac to Kiev to buy machines from the manufacturer Gronfein.
In Gronfein's house, Babel met his daughter, then a high–
school senior. Soon they were in love.
Marriage was ruled out. Babel, a threadbare student, the son
of a small Odessa merchant, was obviously no match for the heiress
to Gronfein's fortune. When the matter was first mentioned to
him,
Gronfein unbuttoned his coat, stuck
his
fingers into the armholes
of his vest and, swaying back and forth on his heels, let out a scorn–
ful hissing sound, "F-ss-sss!" thus leaving no one in doubt as to
how he felt. He didn't even bother to put his contempt into words.
This would have been to honor the puny student too much.
The only thing left for the lovers to do was to elope, and they
did just that. Afterward everything developed on Old Testament
lines: Gronfein laid
his
curse on Babel's descendants unto the tenth
generation and disinherited his daughter. ...
But time went by. Came the revolution. The Bolsheviks con-
