The Christmas Tree and The Wedding es una historia de Fyodor Dostoyevsky de 1848. Es
narrada por un incómodo invitado a una fiesta de navidad…
THE other day I
saw a wedding . . . But no! I would rather tell you about a Christmas tree. The
wedding was superb. I liked it immensely. But the other incident was still
finer. I don't know why it is that the sight of the wedding reminded me of the
Christmas tree. This is the way it happened:
Exactly five
years ago, on New Year's Eve, I was invited to a children's party by a
man high up in the business world, who had his connections, his circle of acquaintances,
and his intrigues. So it seemed as though the children's ball was merely a
pretext for the parents to come together and discuss matters of interest to
themselves, quite innocently and casually.
I was an
outsider, and, as I had no special matters to air, I was able to spend the
evening independently of the others. There was another gentleman present who
like myself had just stumbled upon this affair of domestic bliss. He was the
first to attract my attention. His appearance was not that of a man of birth or
high family. He was tall, rather thin, very serious, and well dressed.
Apparently he had no heart for the family festivities. The instant he went off
into a corner by himself the smile disappeared from his face, and his thick
dark brows knitted into a frown. He knew no one except the host and showed
every sign of being bored to death, though bravely sustaining the role of
thorough enjoyment to the end. Later I learned that he was a provincial, had
come to the capital on some important, difficult business, had brought a
letter of recommendation to our host, and our host had taken him under his
protection, not at all tenderly. It was merely out of politeness that he
had invited him to the children's ball. They
did not play cards with him, they did not offer him cigars. No one entered into
conversation with him. Possibly they recognised the bird by its feathers from a
distance. Thus, my gentleman, not knowing what to do with his hands, was
compelled to spend the evening stroking his whiskers. His whiskers were really
fine, but he stroked them so assiduously that one got the feeling that the
whiskers had come into the world first and afterwards the man in order to
stroke them.
There was
another guest who interested me. But he was of quite a different order. He was
a personage. They called him Julian Mastakovich. At first glance one could tell
he was an honoured guest and stood in the same relation to the host as the host
to the gentleman of the whiskers. The host and hostess said no end of amiable things
to him, were most attentive, wining him, hovering over him, bringing guests up
to be introduced, but never leading him to any one else. I noticed tears glisten
in our host's eyes when Julian Mastakovich remarked that he had rarely spent
such a pleasant evening. Somehow I began to feel uncomfortable in this
personage's presence. So, after amusing myself with the children, five of whom,
remarkably well-fed young persons, were our host's, I went into a little
sitting-room, entirely unoccupied, and seated myself at the end that was a conservatory
and took up almost half the room.
The children
were charming. They absolutely refused to resemble their elders,
notwithstanding the efforts of mothers and governesses. In a moment they
had bared the Christmas tree down to the very last sweet and had already
succeeded in breaking half of their playthings before they even found out which
belonged to whom.
One of them was
a particularly handsome little lad, dark-eyed, curly-haired, who stubbornly
persisted in aiming at me with his wooden gun. But the child that attracted the
greatest attention was his sister, a girl of about eleven, lovely as a Cupid.
She was quiet and thoughtful, with large, full, dreamy eyes. The children had
somehow offended her, and she left them and walked into the same room that I
had withdrawn into. There she seated herself with her doll in a corner.
"Her father
is an immensely wealthy business man," the guests informed each other in
tones of awe. "Three hundred thousand rubles set aside for her dowry already."
As I turned to
look at the group from which I heard this news item issuing, my glance met
Julian Mastakovich's. He stood listening to the insipid chatter in an attitude
of concentrated attention, with his hands behind his back and his head inclined
to one side.
All the while I
was quite lost in admiration of the sagacity our host displayed in the
dispensing of the gifts. The little maid of the many-rubled dowry received the
handsomest doll, and the rest of the gifts were graded in value according to
the diminishing scale of the parents' stations in life. The last child, a tiny
chap of ten, thin, red-haired, freckled, came into possession of a small book of
nature stories without illustrations or even head and tail pieces. He was the
governess's child. She was a poor widow, and her little boy, clad in a
sorry-looking little nankeen jacket,
looked thoroughly crushed and intimidated. He took the book of nature stories
and circled slowly about the children's toys. He would have given anything to
play with them. But he did not dare to. You could tell he already knew his
place… (from The Christmas Tree and The
Wedding de Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Vocabulario reemplazado
ball
brain-racking con amore jiffy denuded shrewdness
Vocabulario
dowry: dote.
nankeen: una tela amarilla.
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