Repository path: workshop/translations/bargamot/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-bargamot-R06-v1 — Andreyev, «Баргамот и Гараська», single-pass draft

Regime R06 (lead single pass — R04 stopped before the self-revision). Frozen as its own artifact before the revision was begun, per R04 §Procedure 2a. This page is the draft and nothing else; the revised text and the full translator's log are T-bargamot-R04-v1.

• Source: Леонид Андреев, «Баргамот и Гараська» (1898), ru.wikisource.org, PD-old-70. Text as recorded in ../R04-v1/source-ru.txt.
• Translated by: lead agent, in session, no API call, $0.
• Contamination: suspected — declared in full on the R04 page, where the measurement lives. A priming declaration belongs here too and is the reason this draft is not none: before the passage was selected the lead had seen W. H. Lowe's English of roughly the first third of the story (down to the "gunners" walking to church), in the course of locating a comparator. The passage translated here lies beyond what was seen, which is why it was chosen; but one term, "gunner" for пушкарь, was seen in Lowe and is used here.
• Units: this draft covers Unit A (the gate paragraph, 171 Russian words) and Unit B (the pilot passage, 315 Russian words). Unit B was drafted only after Unit A's contamination gate had been run and recorded — the two halves of this file were frozen in two separate commits, and the commit that froze Unit A contains no Unit B text.

Unit A — draft

But Bargamot's good humour was spoiled in the vilest way imaginable. Round the corner came uneven footsteps and a hoarse muttering. "Who the devil is that?" thought Bargamot, looked round the corner, and was offended to the depths of his soul. Garaska! In his own drunken person — he was all that was wanting! Where he had contrived to get soused before daybreak was his own secret, but that he was soused was beyond any doubt. His conduct, mysterious to any outsider, was perfectly clear to Bargamot, who had made a study of the gunner soul in general and of Garaska's vile nature in particular. Drawn by an irresistible force, Garaska had been pressed from the middle of the street, along which it was his custom to process, up against a fence. Braced on both hands and peering at the wall with concentrated enquiry, Garaska swayed, gathering his strength for a fresh struggle with unexpected obstacles. After a short spell of strenuous reflection Garaska shoved himself energetically off the wall, backed rump-first to the middle of the street, and, executing a decisive turn, strode off at a great pace into space — which proved not to be nearly so infinite as it is said to be, being in fact bounded by a quantity of lamp-posts. With the very first of them Garaska entered into the closest of relations, folding it in a firm and friendly embrace.

Unit B — draft

"You'll do your talking at the station! March!" — Bargamot's mighty hand shot out towards Garaska's greasy collar, a collar so greasy and so torn that Bargamot was plainly not the first guide Garaska had had along the thorny path of virtue.

Giving the drunkard a slight shake and imparting to his body the proper direction and a certain stability, Bargamot hauled him off towards the destination he had named, exactly like a powerful tug towing behind it a flimsy schooner that has come to grief at the very mouth of the harbour. He felt deeply wronged: instead of the rest he had earned, here he was trudging to the station with this little sot. Ah! Bargamot's hands itched, but the knowledge that on so great a day it was somehow not the thing to set them to work held him back. Garaska stepped out briskly, combining in a remarkable way self-assurance and even impudence with meekness. He evidently had a thought of his own, and he began to approach it by the Socratic method.

"Tell me now, mister constable, what day is it we've got today?"

"You'd do better to hold your tongue!" Bargamot answered with contempt. "Soaked before daylight."

"And have they rung at Michael the Archangel's?"

"They've rung. What's that to you?"

"Then Christ, it means, is risen?"

"Well, He's risen."

"Then allow me…" — Garaska, who had been conducting this conversation half turned towards Bargamot, turned round to face him with decision.

Bargamot, intrigued by Garaska's strange questions, let the greasy collar slip mechanically out of his hand; and Garaska, having lost his point of support, lurched and fell, without managing to show Bargamot the object he had just taken out of his pocket. Raising his trunk alone, propped on his hands, Garaska looked down — and then fell face forward on the ground and set up a wail, the way women wail over a corpse.

Garaska wailing! Bargamot was astounded. "He's thought up some new trick, I suppose," he decided, but he was interested all the same to see what would come next. What came next was that Garaska went on wailing without words, like a dog.

"What's the matter, have you gone off your head?" Bargamot prodded him with his boot.

He wails. Bargamot ponders.

"Well, what's tearing you to pieces?"

"My e-e-egg…"

Garaska, still wailing, but more quietly now, sat up and raised his hand in the air. The hand was covered with some kind of slime, and to the slime there clung fragments of dyed eggshell. Bargamot, still at a loss, begins to feel that something bad has happened.