The Beggar
Storyboard Text
- KIND sir, have pity; turn your attention to a poor, hungry man!For three days I have had nothing to eat; I haven’t five copecks for a lodging, I swear it before God. For eight years I was a village schoolteacher and then I lost my place through intrigues.I fell a victim to calumny. It is a year now since I have had anything to do.
- The advocate, Sergei, looked at the ragged, fawn-coloured overcoat of the suppliant, at his dull, drunken eyes, at the red spot on either cheek, and it seemed to him as if he had seen this man somewhere before.
- I have now had an offer of a position in the province of Kaluga,”the mendicant went on, but I haven’t the money to get there.Help me kindly; I am ashamed to ask, but — I am obliged toby circumstances.
- Sergei’s eyes fell on the man’s overshoes, one of which was high and the other low, and he suddenly remembered something.
- Look here, it seems to me I met you the day before yesterday in Sadovya Street, but you told me then that you were a student who had been expelled, and not a village schoolteacher.Do you remember?
- Have done with lying! You called yourself a student and even told me what you had been expelled for. Don’t you remember?
- N-no, that can’t be so, I am a village schoolteacher, and if you like I can show you my papers.
- Sergei flushed and turned from the ragged creature with an expression of disgust.
- I wouldn’t refuse to do that, but in these days even skilled wood-cutters find themselves sitting without bread.
- This is dishonesty, my dear sir! This is swindling — I shall send the police for you, damn you!
- How would you like to chop wood for me?
- “What can you do? You ask what you can do? Work! That’s what you can do! You must work!
- Sir! the fact is I was lying! I am neither a student nor a schoolteacher. All that was fiction. Formerly I sang in a Russian choir and was sent away for drunkenness. But what else can I do? I can’t get along without lying. No one will give me anything when I tell the truth,what can I do?
- Work — yes. I know that myself; but where can I find work?
- Will you come and chop wood for me?
- Very well; we’ll soon find out.
- Yes sir, I will.
- Sergei hastened along, rubbing his hands. He called his cookout of the kitchen.
- Here, Olga, take this gentleman into the wood-shed and let him chop wood.
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