"HERE goes, I've done with drinking! Nothing. . . n-o-thing shall
tempt me to it. It's time to take myself in hand; I must buck up
and work. . . You're glad to get your salary, so you must do your
work honestly, heartily, conscientiously, regardless of sleep and
comfort. Chuck taking it easy. You've got into the way of taking a
salary for nothing, my boy--that's not the right thing . . . not
the right thing at all. . . ."
After administering to himself several such lectures Podtyagin, the
head ticket collector, begins to feel an irresistible impulse to
get to work. It is past one o'clock at night, but in spite of that
he wakes the ticket collectors and with them goes up and down the
railway carriages, inspecting the tickets.
"T-t-t-ickets . . . P-p-p-please!" he keeps shouting, briskly
snapping the clippers.
Sleepy figures, shrouded in the twilight of the railway carriages,
start, shake their heads, and produce their tickets.
"T-t-t-tickets, please!" Podtyagin addresses a second-class passenger,
a lean, scraggy-looking man, wrapped up in a fur coat and a rug and
surrounded with pillows. "Tickets, please!"
The scraggy-looking man makes no reply. He is buried in sleep. The
head ticket-collector touches him on the shoulder and repeats
impatiently: "T-t-tickets, p-p-please!"
The passenger starts, opens his eyes, and gazes in alarm at Podtyagin.
"What? . . . Who? . . . Eh?"
"You're asked in plain language: t-t-tickets, p-p-please! If you
please!"
"My God!" moans the scraggy-looking man, pulling a woebegone face.
"Good Heavens! I'm suffering from rheumatism. . . . I haven't slept
for three nights! I've just taken morphia on purpose to get to
sleep, and you . . . with your tickets! It's merciless, it's inhuman!
If you knew how hard it is for me to sleep you wouldn't disturb me
for such nonsense. . . . It's cruel, it's absurd! And what do you
want with my ticket! It's positively stupid!"
Podtyagin considers whether to take offence or not--and decides
to take offence.
"Don't shout here! This is not a tavern!"
"No, in a tavern people are more humane. . ." coughs the passenger.
"Perhaps you'll let me go to sleep another time! It's extraordinary:
I've travelled abroad, all over the place, and no one asked for my
ticket there, but here you're at it again and again, as though the
devil were after you. . . ."
"Well, you'd better go abroad again since you like it so much."
"It's stupid, sir! Yes! As though it's not enough killing the
passengers with fumes and stuffiness and draughts, they want to
strangle us with red tape, too, damn it all! He must have the ticket!
My goodness, what zeal! If it were of any use to the company--but
half the passengers are travelling without a ticket!"
"Listen, sir!" cries Podtyagin, flaring up. "If you don't leave off
shouting and disturbing the public, I shall be obliged to put you
out at the next station and to draw up a report on the incident!"
"This is revolting!" exclaims "the public," growing indignant.
"Persecuting an invalid! Listen, and have some consideration!"
"But the gentleman himself was abusive!" says Podtyagin, a little
scared. "Very well. . . . I won't take the ticket . . . as you like
. . . . Only, of course, as you know very well, it's my duty to do
so. . . . If it were not my duty, then, of course. . . You can ask
the station-master . . . ask anyone you like. . . ."
Podtyagin shrugs his shoulders and walks away from the invalid. At
first he feels aggrieved and somewhat injured, then, after passing
through two or three carriages, he begins to feel a certain uneasiness
not unlike the pricking of conscience in his ticket-collector's
bosom.
"There certainly was no need to wake the invalid," he thinks, "though
it was not my fault. . . .They imagine I did it wantonly, idly.
They don't know that I'm bound in duty . . . if they don't believe
it, I can bring the station-master to them." A station. The train
stops five minutes. Before the third bell, Podtyagin enters the
same second-class carriage. Behind him stalks the station-master
in a red cap.
"This gentleman here," Podtyagin begins, "declares that I have no
right to ask for his ticket and . . . and is offended at it. I ask
you, Mr. Station-master, to explain to him. . . . Do I ask for
tickets according to regulation or to please myself? Sir," Podtyagin
addresses the scraggy-looking man, "sir! you can ask the station-master
here if you don't believe me."
The invalid starts as though he had been stung, opens his eyes, and
with a woebegone face sinks back in his seat.
"My God! I have taken another powder and only just dozed off when
here he is again. . . again! I beseech you have some pity on me!"
"You can ask the station-master . . . whether I have the right to
demand your ticket or not."
"This is insufferable! Take your ticket. . . take it! I'll pay for
five extra if you'll only let me die in peace! Have you never been
ill yourself? Heartless people!"
"This is simply persecution!" A gentleman in military uniform grows
indignant. "I can see no other explanation of this persistence."
"Drop it . . ." says the station-master, frowning and pulling
Podtyagin by the sleeve.
Podtyagin shrugs his shoulders and slowly walks after the station-master.
"There's no pleasing them!" he thinks, bewildered. "It was for his
sake I brought the station-master, that he might understand and be
pacified, and he . . . swears!"
Another station. The train stops ten minutes. Before the second
bell, while Podtyagin is standing at the refreshment bar, drinking
seltzer water, two gentlemen go up to him, one in the uniform of
an engineer, and the other in a military overcoat.
"Look here, ticket-collector!" the engineer begins, addressing
Podtyagin. "Your behaviour to that invalid passenger has revolted
all who witnessed it. My name is Puzitsky; I am an engineer, and
this gentleman is a colonel. If you do not apologize to the passenger,
we shall make a complaint to the traffic manager, who is a friend
of ours."
"Gentlemen! Why of course I . . . why of course you . . ." Podtyagin
is panic-stricken.
"We don't want explanations. But we warn you, if you don't apologize,
we shall see justice done to him."
"Certainly I . . . I'll apologize, of course. . . To be sure. . . ."
Half an hour later, Podtyagin having thought of an apologetic phrase
which would satisfy the passenger without lowering his own dignity,
walks into the carriage. "Sir," he addresses the invalid. "Listen,
sir. . . ."