top hat was perched at a devil-may- care angle on the reveler’s head.
The merchant opened his drowsy eyes and hiccupped: “Delivered? Where?”
“Where you ordered, Your Worship. This is it, the Rose itself.”
The restaurant was famous throughout Moscow, and there was a row of cabs lined up in front of it. The coachmen watched the noisy driver of the flashy cab with annoyance — shouting and yelling and cracking his whip like that, he was likely to frighten other people’s horses. One driver, a clean-shaven, high-strung- looking lad in a shiny leather coat, walked over to the troublemaker and set into him angrily.
“What do you think you’re doing, waving your whip around like that? This isn’t a gypsy fair! Now you’re here, stand in line like everyone else.” Then he added in a low voice, “Off you go, Sinelnikov. You got him here, now get going, don’t make yourself too obvious. I’ve got my carriage here. Tell Evgeny Osipovich everything’s going according to plan.”
The young merchant jumped down onto the pavement, staggered, and waved to the cabbie: “Off with you! I’ll be spending the night here.”
The smart driver cracked his whip, whistled like a bandit, and set off. The roistering trader from Okhotny Ryad took several uncertain steps and staggered. The clean-shaven young driver was there in a flash to take him by the elbow.
“Let me help, Your Worship. It wouldn’t do for you to go missing your step.”
He took a solicitous grip on the reveler’s elbow and whispered rapidly.
“Agent Klyuev, Your Honor. That’s my carriage there, with the chestnut mare. I’ll be waiting up on the box. Agent Nesznamov is at the rear entrance in an oilskin apron, playing the part of a knife-grinder. The mark arrived just ten minutes ago. He’s wearing a ginger beard. Seems very nervous. He’s armed, too — there’s a bulge under his armpit. And His Excellency told me to give you this.”
In the very doorway, the ‘cabbie’ deftly slipped a sheet of paper folded into eight into the young merchant’s pocket, then doffed his cap and bowed low from the waist, but he received no tip for his pains and could only grunt in annoyance when the door slammed in his face. To the jeers of the other drivers (“Hey, my bold fellow, didn’t you get your twenty kopecks, then?”) he plodded back to his droshky and climbed dejectedly up onto the box.
The Alpine Rose restaurant was regarded on the whole as a decorous European establishment — during the daytime, that is. Moscow’s Germans, both merchants and civil servants, flocked here for breakfast and lunch. They ate leg of pork with sauerkraut, drank genuine Bavarian beer, and read newspapers from Berlin, Vienna, and Riga. But come evening, all the boring beer-swillers went back home to tot up the balances in their account books, have supper, and get into their feather beds while it was still light, and a louder and more free-spending public began to converge on the Rose. For the most part they were foreigners, people of easy manners who preferred to take their fun in the European style rather than the Russian. If Russians did look in, it was more out of curiosity than anything else and also — in more recent times — to hear Mademoiselle Wanda sing.
The young merchant stopped in the white marble entrance hall, hiccupped as he surveyed the columns and the carpeted stairs, tossed his dazzling top hat to a flunky, and beckoned to the maitre d’hotel.
The first thing he did was to hand him a white one-ruble note. Then, enveloping him in cognac fumes, he demanded: “Now then, you German pepper sausage, you fix me up with a table, and not just one that happens to be standing empty anyway, but one I happen to fancy.”
“The place is rather crowded, sir,” the maitre d’hotel said with a shrug. He might have been German, but he spoke Russian like a true Muscovite.
“Fix me up,” the merchant said, wagging a threatening finger at him. “Or else
The merchant opened his drowsy eyes and hiccupped: “Delivered? Where?”
“Where you ordered, Your Worship. This is it, the Rose itself.”
The restaurant was famous throughout Moscow, and there was a row of cabs lined up in front of it. The coachmen watched the noisy driver of the flashy cab with annoyance — shouting and yelling and cracking his whip like that, he was likely to frighten other people’s horses. One driver, a clean-shaven, high-strung- looking lad in a shiny leather coat, walked over to the troublemaker and set into him angrily.
“What do you think you’re doing, waving your whip around like that? This isn’t a gypsy fair! Now you’re here, stand in line like everyone else.” Then he added in a low voice, “Off you go, Sinelnikov. You got him here, now get going, don’t make yourself too obvious. I’ve got my carriage here. Tell Evgeny Osipovich everything’s going according to plan.”
The young merchant jumped down onto the pavement, staggered, and waved to the cabbie: “Off with you! I’ll be spending the night here.”
The smart driver cracked his whip, whistled like a bandit, and set off. The roistering trader from Okhotny Ryad took several uncertain steps and staggered. The clean-shaven young driver was there in a flash to take him by the elbow.
“Let me help, Your Worship. It wouldn’t do for you to go missing your step.”
He took a solicitous grip on the reveler’s elbow and whispered rapidly.
“Agent Klyuev, Your Honor. That’s my carriage there, with the chestnut mare. I’ll be waiting up on the box. Agent Nesznamov is at the rear entrance in an oilskin apron, playing the part of a knife-grinder. The mark arrived just ten minutes ago. He’s wearing a ginger beard. Seems very nervous. He’s armed, too — there’s a bulge under his armpit. And His Excellency told me to give you this.”
In the very doorway, the ‘cabbie’ deftly slipped a sheet of paper folded into eight into the young merchant’s pocket, then doffed his cap and bowed low from the waist, but he received no tip for his pains and could only grunt in annoyance when the door slammed in his face. To the jeers of the other drivers (“Hey, my bold fellow, didn’t you get your twenty kopecks, then?”) he plodded back to his droshky and climbed dejectedly up onto the box.
The Alpine Rose restaurant was regarded on the whole as a decorous European establishment — during the daytime, that is. Moscow’s Germans, both merchants and civil servants, flocked here for breakfast and lunch. They ate leg of pork with sauerkraut, drank genuine Bavarian beer, and read newspapers from Berlin, Vienna, and Riga. But come evening, all the boring beer-swillers went back home to tot up the balances in their account books, have supper, and get into their feather beds while it was still light, and a louder and more free-spending public began to converge on the Rose. For the most part they were foreigners, people of easy manners who preferred to take their fun in the European style rather than the Russian. If Russians did look in, it was more out of curiosity than anything else and also — in more recent times — to hear Mademoiselle Wanda sing.
The young merchant stopped in the white marble entrance hall, hiccupped as he surveyed the columns and the carpeted stairs, tossed his dazzling top hat to a flunky, and beckoned to the maitre d’hotel.
The first thing he did was to hand him a white one-ruble note. Then, enveloping him in cognac fumes, he demanded: “Now then, you German pepper sausage, you fix me up with a table, and not just one that happens to be standing empty anyway, but one I happen to fancy.”
“The place is rather crowded, sir,” the maitre d’hotel said with a shrug. He might have been German, but he spoke Russian like a true Muscovite.
“Fix me up,” the merchant said, wagging a threatening finger at him. “Or else
Similar Books
