B44 <=> B46 [BTG I The arousing of thought, p. 45]

Wait! Wait! . . . This process, it seems, is also ceasing, and in all the depths of my consciousness, and let us meanwhile say “even beneath my subconsciousness,” there already begins to arise everything requisite for the complete assurance that it will entirely cease, because I have remembered another fragment of life wisdom, the thought of which led my mentation to the reflection that if I indeed acted against the advice of the highly esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin, I nevertheless acted without premeditation according to the principle of that extremely sympathetic – not so well known everywhere on earth, but never forgotten by all who have once met him – that precious jewel, Karapet of Tiflis.

It can’t be helped . . . Now that this introductory chapter of mine has turned out to be so long, it will not matter if I lengthen it a little more to tell you also about this extremely sympathetic Karapet of Tiflis.

First of all I must state that twenty or twenty-five years ago, the Tiflis railway station had a “steam whistle.”

It was blown every morning to wake the railway workers and station hands, and as the Tiflis station stood on a hill, this whistle was heard almost all over the town and woke up not only the railway workers, but the inhabitants of the town of Tiflis itself.

The Tiflis local government, as I recall it, even entered into a correspondence with the railway authorities about the disturbance of the morning sleep of the peaceful citizens.

To release the steam into the whistle every morning was the job of this same Karapet who was employed in the station.

So when he would come in the morning to the rope with which he released the steam for the whistle, he would, before taking hold of the rope and pulling it, wave his hand in all directions and solemnly, like a Mohammedan mullah from a minaret, loudly cry: