It's ruining me. Heavy losses every day!"
He wrung his hands, and continued, addressing Olenka: "What a life,
Olga Semyonovna! It's enough to make a man weep. He works, he does his
best, his very best, he tortures himself, he passes sleepless nights,
he thinks and thinks and thinks how to do everything just right. And
what's the result? He gives the public the best operetta, the very
best pantomime, excellent artists. But do they want it? Have they the
least appreciation of it? The public is rude. The public is a great
boor. The public wants a circus, a lot of nonsense, a lot of stuff.
And there's the weather. Look! Rain almost every evening. It began to
rain on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up through the whole of
June. It's simply awful. I can't get any audiences, and don't I have
to pay rent? Don't I have to pay the actors?"
The next day towards evening the clouds gathered again, and Kukin said
with an hysterical laugh:
"Oh, I don't care. Let it do its worst. Let it drown the whole
theatre, and me, too. All right, no luck for me in this world or the
next. Let the actors bring suit against me and drag me to court.
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