Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut [33]
As he had expected, the old man laughed at that one, too. But before Beskudnikov could destroy it, young Gregorian snatched it away and ran out into the marketplace. He bought a box of cigars with the genuine ruble, telling the tobacconist that the note was surely genuine, since it had come from Beskudnikov, engraver of the plates for the Imperial paper currency.
Beskudnikov was horrified when the boy returned with the cigars. He had never meant for him to actually spend his counterfeit in the marketplace. He had named negotiability simply as his standard for excellence. His bugging eyes and sweaty brow and gasping proved that he was an honest man whose judgment was clouded by jealousy. Because his brilliant apprentice had handed him the ruble, his own work, incidentally, it really did look like a fake to him.
What could the old man do, now? The tobacconist would surely recognize the note as a fake, too, and know where it had come from. After that? The law was the law. The Imperial engraver and his apprentice would be hanged side by side in the marketplace.
“To his eternal credit,” Dan Gregory said to me, “he himself resolved to retrieve what he thought was a fatal piece of paper. He asked me for the ruble I had copied. I of course handed him my perfect counterfeit.”
Beskudnikov told the tobacconist a preposterous story about how the ruble his apprentice had spent on cigars had great sentimental value. It was a matter of indifference to the tobacconist, who traded him the real one for the fake.
The old man returned to the workshop beaming. The moment he was inside, however, he promised Gregorian the beating of his life. Until that time, Gregorian had always stood still for his beatings, as a good apprentice should.
This time the boy ran a short distance away and turned to laugh at his master.
“How dare you laugh at a time like this?” cried Beskudnikov.
“I dare to laugh at you now and for the rest of my life,” the apprentice replied. He told what he had done with his counterfeit ruble and the real one. “You can teach me no more. I have surpassed you by far,” he said. “I am such a genius that I have tricked the engraver of the Imperial currency into passing a counterfeit ruble in the marketplace. My last words on Earth will be a confession to you, should we find ourselves side by side with nooses around our necks in the marketplace. I will say, ‘You were right after all. I wasn’t as talented as I thought I was. Good-bye, cruel world, good-bye.’”
13
COCKY DAN GREGORIAN left Beskudnikov’s employ that day, and easily became a journeyman under another master engraver and silk screen artist, who made theatrical posters and illustrations for children’s books. His counterfeit was never detected, or at any rate was not traced to him or Beskudnikov.
“And Beskudnikov surely never told anyone the true story,” he said to me, “of how he and his most promising apprentice came to a parting of the ways.”
He said he had so far done me the favor of making me feel unwelcome. “Since you are so much older than I was when I surpassed Beskudnikov,” he went on, “we should waste no time in assigning you work roughly equivalent to copying a ruble by hand.” He appeared to consider many possible projects, but I am sure he had settled on the most diabolical one imaginable well before my arrival.
“Aha!” he said. “I’ve got it! I want you to set up an easel about where you’re standing now. You should then paint a picture of this room—indistinguishable from a photograph. Does that sound fair? I hope not.”
I swallowed hard. “No, sir,” I said, “it sure isn’t fair.”
And he said, “Excellent!”
I have just been to New York City for the first time in two years. It was Circe Berman’s idea that I do this, and that I do it alone—so as to prove to myself that I was still a perfectly healthy man, in no