ПЕРЕВЕДИТЕ ПОЖАЛУЙСТА
AN INCIDENT FROM THE LIFE OF A RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY
“Every worker must understand that the only way to a happy future is through struggle and the struggle is growing harder and harder. On the one hand."A knock at the door interrupted Bauman. He stopped speaking and first looked at the people sitting round him, and then at the dentist, in whose waiting-room they were having their secret meeting.“Are you expecting any patients?” he asked.Everybody understood what Bauman’s question meant. They didn’t even speak to each other, they didn’t have to be reminded what to do. One of them accompanied the dentist into the surgery, while the others sat down on the chairs standing along the wall and pretended to be patients waiting their turn. It didn’t take them long. When everything was ready, the dentist’s maid went to answer the knock and soon came back with an unexpected visitor, who tried to go straight into the surgery."I say, it isn’t your turn,”1 a ‘patient’ sitting next to the door said to him.“I can’t wait. I’ve got a terrible toothache,” the man answered, hurriedly examining everybody’s face.Bauman, who pretended that he was reading a news paper, didn’t even turn his head tVisitor. He could, however, clearly see the man's face, and recognized him at once. He was a spy, the same man he had often seen before.“Has he brought the police with him?”. One thing was clear: it was necessary to keep the spy in the flat as long as possible, so that he would believe that they were real patients.2 Bauman looked up at the newcomer, and for a moment it seemed to him that there was joy in the man’s eyes. Then Bauman said as politety as he could.“We don’t mind if the dentist sees him first, do we?” and then, turning to the spy, “Since you have a bad toothache, you can go next.”The spy didn’t know what to say. At that moment the surgery door opened and the dentist asked the next pa tient in. Bauman, who went on watching the spy, imme diately said, “Anyone with bad teeth should certainly have them out.”In a second the spy was sitting in the dentist’s chair. The dentist told him to open his mouth wide, examined his teeth with great care, and began working quickly. A quarter of an hour later he showed the patient two large yellow teeth and said:“I did my best. To tell you the truth it was quite a serious operation. You’should take better care of your teeth. Ten roubles, please.”For a minute the spy stood there, not knowing what to do. “Would you like me to do anything else for you?” the dentist asked, smiling. The spy answered nothing, paid the money, and hurried out into the waiting-room. He expected to find no one there, but to his great surprise everybody was in his place. The spy could do nothing but leave the dentist’s flat.When the spy had left, someone said, “It’s a good thing he had bad teeth.”“Bjat he didn’t . He just has two good teeth less now than he did when he came," the dentist explained, and added,“and it didn’t cost him much. So he should be grateful.”Everybody laughed, and Bauman said, “That was a good idea. Didn’t I say that they would break their teeth if they fought against us? I wonder whether he will be able to go and report to the police after that. I don’t think they'll be able to make out anything he says. Well, I think we can go on with our meeting now.”
