Ask fifty rubles,
understand?"

"Is that so?" I said, spitting through my front teeth onto a sidewalk
covered with gleaming white snow, "not me, damn them! Whose baggage?"

They did not answer--in their language it meant 'don't know, don't
care, and go to hell!'

On the coach I saw "_Moscow Special_" written with white stone and I
decided to take one more chance and ask for my handbag, presenting my
luggage check.

"It came at last," said the man in charge of the luggage depot, "thank
God I won't see your _muzzle_ any more. What's in it?"

"Since when has it been your business, your burjooi honor?" I said,
"You did not pay me for buying my belongings, so better keep your trap
shut!"

I took the dear old bag--it was Maroosia's before, and came home.
What did Mlle. Goroshkin put in the bag in Moscow? I opened the rusty
lock--and found my silver toilet kit, razors, "La Question du
Maroc," on which the shaving soap had made a big yellow spot, Laferme
cigarettes, some linen (the thing I need the most), night slippers,
manicuring box, and poor Maroossia's fan,--she wired me to take it to
Gurzoof in the last telegram I ever got from her.

The fan was fragrant with her perfume on it; so I shed a few tears. On
the inside of the bag was written "All well, write often," and on the
bottom of the bag--was this book of my notes. I had decided to sell
the silver kit and the fan and get some money as I was very short of
it. Both the fan and the silver outfit looked so inharmonious in my
little room with a small window on a triste court with a yard full of
blindingly white snow.

21

Here is what brought me here:

I could not leave Petrograd on time on account of the house. Nobody
wanted it for 800,000. I waited and waited--day after day, week after
week. Many and many were giving me advice to leave and were warning
me, but I would not listen. When the wire came that poor Maroossia
was killed,--I lost interest in life completely. So I was living in
Petrograd, until the clash for the Assembly. Then,--perhaps my nerves
needed a good shaking up,--I became active again. I went to the Volga
Kama for my money,--the were already closed and gave me 150 rubles,
and allowed me to take another 150 in a week. I went to the Volkov's.
The clerk said that I had no right to withdraw more than 150. I knew
the man from Moscow well, and he recognized me from the time that I
was coming to Bros. Djamgarov Bank. He was really kind, and