Information about the computer file:

Title: On the Conscientious Laplander and the Patriotic Mirror
Author: Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin
Translator: John Albert Barnstead
Edition: Version 1 of the ETC Kuzmin Collection edition of
Responsibility: John Barnstead, chief editor
Responsibility: Vivien Hannon, editor
Publisher: Electronic Text Centre, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada: Kuzmin Collection, May 2002
Source: Translated from
Encoding: Encoded in TEI-conformant SGML by Konstantin Kostyukevich.

The Laplander Kay was like all Laplanders: small of stature, high-cheeked and slant-eyed. He lived in a yurt, kept reindeer and killed whales. He had a mirror, given to him by a shaman, which, according to the assurances of this latter, reflected the face of each ethnic group as it ought to be. Since Kay had seen no other ethnic group, he thought that Laplanders were the only people on earth, and was not at all surprised when he kept seeing one and the same slant-eyed mug in the mirror. But once upon a time Kay landed in Amsterdam. This may seem rather strange, but after all, we're writing a fairy tale and can do whatever we like with our heroes. In Amsterdam he met the most varied nationalities. There were Dutchmen and Germans and Frenchmen and Italians and Spaniards, and every other sort. When they got drunk in the tavern, each began to praise his country and his people.

Kay was offended by this, because he had nothing to boast of, and when he spoke of the boundless snowy plains, the northern lights, or a duskless summer day, or sang doleful Lapland songs, no one was interested. Kay thought: "It's because I don't have an ethnic face; it's not for nothing that my mirror always shows me one and the same face, my own mug." And this is how he reasoned: "What is a face? And more particularly, an ethnic face? In order to look different from others you need to study the qualities of each people and develop in yourself the opposite ones, then you will get an ethnic face which is unlike any other."

For this purpose he bought an old calendar, where amidst information about accessions to the throne, about the infant birthrate, about earthquakes, amidst interpretations of the simplest dreams and recipes for pickling cucumbers, the following heading was to be found: "Traits of the European Nations and Their Features." There he read: "Englishmen are taciturn and eat meat rare."

"The French are for the most part polite and attentive to the fairer sex, but are misers in financial matters and are very strict with their own wives."

"The Spaniards are proud and arrogant, and quite devoted to the Catholic faith."

"Italians are by nature lazy, and therefore are most favorably inclined to singing."

"The Greeks are born litigators and traders, which fact is cited even by the comic author Aristophanes."

"The Germans are extraordinary drunkards, but quite useful for breeding purposes; it is said that German maidens can conceive a child from a single sidelong glance."

All this our Laplander read, and now all his efforts were directed toward acting just the opposite from what he had read. The only thing was, he didn't know how to combine the opposites of French loquacity and English laconicism. But here he was aided by the fact that he spoke only Laplander, so no one understood him. On the one hand he looked like a talkative gentleman; on the other hand, this chatter didn't oblige anyone to anything, since no one understood him. He always ate his meat overcooked, was beastly to the fairer sex and, to pique the French fashion, married with every intention of keeping his wife on a long leash. He was extravagant, not arrogant at all, took no offense at shoves and cuffs and cursed not only Catholicism but also his own faith on every street corner. He was not involved in any litigations; in business deals he always played the fool and kept busy with something or other just to distinguish himself from the indolent Italians. He arranged his affairs in such a way that children failed to be born either from his glance or from anything else of him. There was only one thing he could not refrain from: drunkenness. But he consoled himself with the thought that this would be merely a slight German strain in his otherwise ethnic face.

The main thing he did, however, was to repeat as often as possible: "We, Laplanders are a remarkable people, we do everything differently than you do, and we're proud of it." Perhaps Laplanders really did have something to be proud of, but Kay certainly did not. Thus, once, having chattered various nonsense in Laplander, which no one understood, Kay went to the tavern in the evening and got drunk. Dragging girls to himself by the hair, Kay began to brag: "We Laplanders are a remarkable people, everything we have is original, unlike anything else; we're not misers like the French, here's how we treat women, but my wife. God bless her, she's probably had about ten men this week. I don't pay it any mind, and if anyone beats me I'm very glad, I'm ready to spit on myself: we're not Spaniards. What's there to be proud of? Only we're a remarkable people. And as to what the priests say it's all nonsense -- when we die clovers will cover us, and all that Roman curia should have had their chips cashed in for them long ago. And I won't have a whole passel of children, we're not Germans, I know one thing . . . what kind of meat are you giving me? Am I an Englishman that I should stuff myself with raw meat? But it's certainly true that I'm not stingy," and he threw his whole purse on the counter.

Kay wended his way home, staggering, and kept boasting to himself that now he had a marvelous ethnic face, and reached into his vest to get out his mirror. But in the mirror, instead of the drunken mug of the boastful Kay, there was reflected quite a different face. It was high- cheeked and slant-eyed, it was obviously Laplander, but it looked on thoughtfully, steadily, and seriously. And it seemed as if beyond it a boundless snowy plain stretched out, where in the drenching light of the aurora borealis, harnessed dogs ran toward the distant calls of reindeer. "That shaman must have fooled me. What sort of magic mirror is this!" And Kay threw it to the ground and staggered home, where his wife was entertaining her eleventh lover.

1912-1913