I am a literary giant in Russia

Chapter 20 Old Slave Happy Tea

When Mikhail came down from his small room, the other tenants in the apartment had already sat down at a large rectangular table not far from the kitchen and started eating.

The wooden table was a bit old, but looked sturdy. At this moment, there were some rye bread and two vegetable soups that looked really ordinary on the table, with some pickled cucumbers and mushrooms as side dishes.

There aren't many types of dishes, but each one is very large in size, because the landlord Pavlovna obviously has more than one tenant, Mikhail, and according to the agreement when renting the house, the landlord will provide food and maid service for each tenant.

Therefore, in addition to the old maid Nastasya, there was also a fat cook in the fairly large apartment who was as big and strong as the landlord Pavlovna. The food he cooked was so-so, and the only advantage was that it was cheap, which won Pavlovna's favor.

If you want to eat, you can either come here to eat or ask the landlord or maid to deliver it to you, but this often requires you to wait until others have finished their meal or pay a small amount of money to ask the landlord and maid to take care of it.

If you arrive too late, there are often only leftovers.

Therefore, the most economical and decent way to eat is to come here and come early.

At this moment, there were quite a few people sitting at the table, including the small businessman Versilov mentioned earlier, the small landowner Tusenbach who came to visit his relatives, and the fourteenth-rank civil servant Smirnov.

Oh yes, and our majestic landlord Pavlovna.

She seemed to have finished her meal. At this moment, she was standing aside with a heavy heart, guarding the copper samovar beside her like a guard. As for the samovar, there were naturally tea leaves that had been brewed several times and tea that pretended to be tea.

It is worth mentioning that the samovar is a special utensil for drinking tea in Russia. It combines the functions of making tea and keeping it warm, and occupies an important position in Russian tea culture.

Although tea has a short history in Russia, it became popular throughout Russia in a very short period of time.

At first, only the nobility could enjoy it. Later, as the price of tea dropped, it gradually entered thousands of households. In today's Russia, everyone from the nobility to the poorest peasants drinks tea.

Even the great Tsar Nicholas I, who was now in power, ordered that tea be provided to imprisoned revolutionaries, as not doing so would be inhumane.

Of course, Mikhail reasonably suspected that the premise of this order was that during the time of Tsar Nicholas I, most of the revolutionaries were of aristocratic origin...

Otherwise, what would Tsar Nicholas care about humanity or inhumanity...

The Russians' favorite drink is sweet tea. They often add things like sugar cubes and lemon slices to the tea. Generally speaking, there are three ways for Russians to drink tea:

One is to put sugar into tea, stir it with a spoon and drink it; the second is to bite off a small piece of sugar and hold it in your mouth while drinking tea; the third is to drink tea while looking at the sugar, neither putting the sugar into the tea nor holding it in your mouth, but drinking tea while looking at or thinking about the sugar.

The first method is the most common, while the second method is mostly accepted by the elderly and serfs. As for the third method, it is naturally prepared for those who have no money, and this group is mostly old slaves.

Therefore, Mikhail prefers to call it Old Slave Happy Tea, which is cheap, inexpensive, and helps with mental health.

Just like iced black tea has become the happy tea for the old man at the construction site.
Oh yes, iced tea must be iced.

Back to the point, although the landlord Pavlovna was a penny pincher, she would at most brew the tea a dozen times more, not so much as to make the tenants thirsty for tea. But tea was still not that cheap these days, so if the landlord Pavlovna didn't keep a close eye on it, it would probably be drunk up by these tenants in no time.

So the landlord Pavlovna stood there majestically, unmoved by the constant shouts of "Please be kind!", "Kind-hearted Pavlovna! Another cup!", "I'm thirsty! I haven't drunk yet!", and occasionally she would reluctantly take someone's teacup out of impatience, and then it would be a not-so-full cup.

Oh, dear Pavlovna! You are like a tsar!
Although Mikhail wanted to play a joke on his landlord after seeing this scene, in order to avoid being taken to the police station by this big and strong woman, Mikhail had to suppress his nature and quickly found a place to sit down.

When she saw Mikhail coming, Pavlovna seemed to glance at him, then hesitated for a moment, but in the end, considering that Mikhail had paid part of the rent a few days ago, she poured Mikhail a cup of tea and brought it over.

To be honest, although it tastes bad, we are so poor now, so it’s good enough to replenish our sugar intake.

Just as Mikhail nodded and smiled, Pavlovna seemed to have thought of something and asked, "Mikhail, how is the novel you submitted? Have you heard anything? I heard that those of you who write manuscripts can get some royalties. Is that true? Wouldn't that mean you can pay your rent again?"

As soon as Pavlovna said this, before Mikhail could say anything, the small businessman Versilov at the other side of the table couldn't help laughing:

"Pavlovna, how can it be so easy? If it were so easy, the university students would be the richest people in Russia! But as far as I know, the opposite is true. They can't even survive without their families!

"Just by wielding a pen, without running around or chasing after others, putting on a smile and saying nice things, you can make money. How can there be so many good things?"

"You're wrong, Versilov." Smirnov, a gentle civil servant of the fourteenth rank, said, "As long as you find the right direction, anyone can make a difference in the world of writing.

Just like me, I just came up with a joke yesterday afternoon, so I told my colleagues, oh my god, they almost died of laughter after listening to it! And they bought me a drink at the pub. Sooner or later, I will write down all these jokes I have come up with and ask the publisher to publish them for me!

Tusenbacher, the usually talkative landlord, didn't say a word at this moment, but just tried his best to stuff food into his mouth.

He was already quite old and had a poor appetite, so he often asked his landlord Pavlovna to reduce some of the meal expenses that he should not have paid, but was flatly rejected by her:

"Tusenbach, there's an old saying in my hometown of Khabarovsk Province: the older you get, the better your appetite becomes, though they often don't even realize it!"

After the small merchant Versilov and the civil servant Smirnov finally quieted down a bit, Mikhail finally had the opportunity to speak. He looked at Pavlovna, who seemed a little disappointed, coughed lightly, attracted the attention of everyone present, and then spoke:

"Pavlovna, the novel has been published in a magazine, but the royalties will have to wait for a while. I'll pay you back part of it when I have more money."

Just pay it back. It’s not good to keep owing it. Besides, Pavlovna will charge a certain amount of interest...

Just as Mikhail was thinking this, everyone at the table looked over. Even the old maid Nastasia, who seemed to have been busy in the kitchen just now, poked her head out from another room.

"oh………"

(End of this chapter)