had sufficient cultural background;
had a good character, otherwise he would spoil the journey;
and
did not like to make money.
The last point was obligatory, because we did not have much money. We lacked it to such an extent that, to tell the truth, we had very little of it.
Thus, as a matter of fact, we needed an ideal creature, a rose without thorns, an angel without wings. We needed a complex hybrid: a guide-chauffeur-interpreter-altruist. Michurin himself would have given up. It would have taken scores of years to breed this hybrid.
There was no sense in buying an automobile until we found the appropriate hybrid, yet the longer we stayed in New York the less money we had left for an automobile. We solved this complex problem daily, and yet we could not solve it. Besides, there was almost no time for thinking about it.
On the way to America we did not take into consideration one thing: hospitality, American hospitality. It is limitless and far outstrips everything possible or conceivable of its kind, including Russian, Siberian, and Georgianhospitality. The first American you meet will not fail to invite you to his house or to a restaurant to drink a cocktail with him. At each cocktail party you will find ten friends of your new acquaintance. Each one of them will not fail to invite you to a cocktail party of his own, and each one of these will have ten or fifteen friends. in two days you suddenly acquire a hundred new acquaintances, and within a week several thousand. It is simply dangerous to spend a year in America, because you will be a confirmed drunkard and a kind of Gleb Uspensky tramp.
All the several thousands of our new friends were filled with one desire: to show us everything that we would want to see, to go with us wherever we’d like to go, to explain everything to us that we did not understand. Remarkable people are these Americans. It is pleasant to be friends with them, and it is easy to do business with them.
We were almost never alone. The telephone of our hotel began to ring in the morning, and it rang as regularly as that in an information bureau. In the rare and brief intervals between meetings with necessary and interesting people we dreamed of this ideal creature still out of our reach. Even our amusements were most businesslike, spurred on by such advice as:
“You must see it; otherwise, you will never know America!”
“What? You haven’t been in a burlesque? Well, but then you haven’t seen America! Why, that is the most vulgar spectacle in the world! You can see it only in America!”
“What? You haven’t been to the automobile races? Excuse me, but you don’t know what America is!”
It was on a bright October morning that we made our way by automobile out of New York to an agricultural exhibit in the little town of Danbury, in the state of Connecticut.
We will say nothing here about the roads on which we travelled. That would take time, inspiration, a special chapter.
The red autumnal landscape stretched on both sides of the road. The leafage was red-hot, and when it. seemed that nothing in the world could be redder there appeared another grove of maddeningly Indian colour. That was not the design of the forest around Moscow, to which our eyes were accustomed, where you will find red and bright yellow and soft brown. Here everything flamed as in a sunset, and this amazing conflagration around New York, this Indian sylvan gorgeousness, continued all through October.
A roar and a clatter was heard as we approached Danbury. The flock of automobiles rested on the slopes of a little valley that was still green. There the exhibit was laid out. Policemen stretched out their arms forbiddingly, chasing us from one place to another. We finally found a place for the automobile and went to the stadium.
At the round tribune the roar was heart-rending, and over the high walls of the stadium flew small stones and hot sand, thrown up by machines around the sharp turn. It would have been easy to lose an eye or a tooth. We hastened our footsteps, shielded ourselves with our arms, just as the Pompeians must have done when their native city was perishing in a volcanic eruption.
We had to wait in a small queue to buy tickets. Around us was the clatter of a drab, provincial fair. The vendors, who have been described more than once by O. Henry, loudly praised their wares: strange aluminium whistles, carved swagger sticks, sticks crowned with dolls, all the trash found at a fair. A cow with beautiful eyes and long eyelashes was being led away. The beauty swung her udder enticingly. The owner of the mechanical organ danced to the tune of the deafening music of his contraption. A swing in the shape of a boat attached to a green metallic rigging made a complete circle. When those who were swinging were high in the sky, their heads down, the pure-hearted and hysterical feminine scream that broke forth carried us at once from the state of Connecticut to the state of Moscow, to the Park of Culture and Rest. The vendors of salted nuts and cheese-cracker sandwiches yelled at the top of their voices.
An automobile race is an empty spectacle, dreary and morbid. Red, white, and yellow racing machines with straddling wheels and numbers painted on the sides, shooting out like rocket volleys, flew past us. One round was succeeded by the next. Five, six, sometimes ten,machines competed at the same time. The audience roared. It was frightfully boring. The only thing that could possibly amuse the public would be an automobile accident. As a matter of fact, that is what people came here for. At last it occurred. Suddenly, alarm signals were heard. Everyone jumped from his seat. One of the automobiles flew off the track while going full-speed. We were still pushing our way through the crowd which surrounded the stadium when we heard the frightful baying of the ambulance. Through its window-panes we managed to see the injured driver. He no longer wore his leather helmet. He sat there, holding on to his blue skull with both hands. He had an angry look. He had lost the prize for which he had risked his life.
In the intervals between heats, on a wooden platform inside the circle, circus comedians were playing a scene which portrayed four clumsy fellows building a house. Naturally, bricks fell on the four fools. They smeared each other with the cement mixture. They beat each other with hammers by mistake, and in sheer self-forgetfulness sawed off their own legs. All this concoction of tricks, which had its origin in the distant antiquity of Greece and Rome and is still brilliantly carried on by such great master clowns as Fratellini, was excellently done by the clowns of the Danbury fair. It is always pleasant to watch good circus work, and its ways, polished through ages, are never boresome.
The fair came to an end. The visitors in the wooden pavilions were few in number. On long tables in the pavilions lay large lacquered vegetables that seemed inedible. The orchestras performed farewell marches, and all the visitors en masse, raising clouds of dust over the clean dark yellow sand, made their way to their automobiles. Here were demonstrated (and sold, of course) trailers for automobiles.
Pairs of Americans, in most cases composed of man and wife, would go inside and exclaim for a long time, impressed by the trailers. They examined the enticing inside of the trailer, the comfortable beds, the lace curtains on the windows, the couch, the convenient and simple metal stove. What could be better? You attach a trailer like that to an automobile, drive out of the thundering city, and drive and drive to wherever your eyes may lead you. That is, you know where you are driving. The eyes “look into the forest,” and they see the Great Lakes, the beaches of the Pacific Ocean, the canyons, and the broad rivers.
Groaning, man and wife would crawl out of a trailer. It was too expensive. Here in Danbury were trailers at $350 and some at $700. But where can you get $700? Where can you get the time for a long trip?
The long columns of machines flew soundlessly back to New York, and after an hour and a half at a good clip we saw the flaming sky. Skyscrapers shone from top to bottom. Over the earth gleamed the flowing lights of the cinemas and the theatres?
Carried away by the storm of life, we decided to devote the evening to acquaintanceship with entertainment for common people.
A “nickel” is what Americans call a small nickel coin of five cents. With all its appearance nocturnal New York tells the pleasure-seeker:
“Give me your nickel! Drop your nickel! Part with your nickel and you will be happy!”
The clicking noise comes out of