Dan Gregory and Beskudnikov

Dan Gregory and Beskudnikov’s relationship begins as an unequal apprenticeship and ends in a deliberately staged reversal: the master who sets the test of artistic excellence is forced to confront the pupil who has met it. Gregory recounts the episode to Rabo Karabekian as the story of how he learned to make himself useful, mastered his craft, and concluded that he had surpassed the man who trained him.

Origins of the Apprenticeship

Beskudnikov enters Gregory’s childhood through an act of rescue that is not an act of affection. When Gregory was about five, Beskudnikov’s wife took him away from his parents because she could not bear to see a stray, mangy child abused in the city. She handed him to the servants to clean and raise, as she had done with stray cats and dogs. Gregory later likened the servants’ attitude toward him to that of Rabo’s servants toward Rabo: he was one more task among the household chores.

The boy adapted by observing how the animals secured food and attention. He spent time in Beskudnikov’s workshop, where apprentices and journeymen petted and fed the animals, and copied their methods. This was more than a childhood anecdote: Gregory presents his early survival as a practical education in reading a social world that did not welcome him and finding a way to become useful within it.

From Useful Child to Apprentice

Gregory’s usefulness grew out of language as well as observation. Beskudnikov had studied in England and France and gave his workers orders in English or French, expecting them to understand. The servants had taught Gregory Polish and Russian, and he learned to translate the master’s instructions for the workers. When Rabo suggests that he also learned Armenian from his parents, Gregory rejects the idea, saying he learned no Armenian from them, only how to bray, gibber, or snarl.

He also mastered every craft practiced in Beskudnikov’s shop and had a talent for making quick, passable likenesses of people and things. At ten, Gregory was made an apprentice. By fifteen, he says, everyone could see that he was a genius. The relationship had thus moved from the rescued child being assigned to servants’ care to the young worker becoming an acknowledged artist in the workshop—an ascent that made the master’s response to his ability decisive.

The Ruble as a Test of Excellence

Beskudnikov set Gregory a task he and the other workers considered impossible: draw a one-ruble note, both front and back, so convincingly that sharp-eyed merchants in the marketplace would accept it. Only then, Beskudnikov said, would he promote Gregory to journeyman. The test had a dangerous edge, since counterfeiting carried the penalty of public hanging in that same marketplace. Artistic excellence was defined not by resemblance in the abstract but by whether the image could function as money in ordinary public exchange.

Gregory spent six months on his first note. His co-workers agreed that it was perfect, but Beskudnikov called it childish and tore it up. Gregory spent another six months making a better one; the master pronounced this one worse and threw it into the fire. He then devoted a full year to a third attempt while continuing his regular chores around the workshop and house. The escalating labor makes the supposed test inseparable from the power Beskudnikov held over his apprentice: Gregory had to satisfy a standard the master could repeatedly declare unmet.

The Reversal and Departure

When the third counterfeit was finished, Gregory kept it in his pocket and showed Beskudnikov the genuine ruble he had copied. The old man laughed at the genuine note too. Before he could destroy it, Gregory snatched it away, ran into the marketplace, and bought a box of cigars, assuring the tobacconist that the ruble must be genuine because it had come from Beskudnikov, engraver of the imperial currency plates.

Beskudnikov was horrified. He had meant negotiability to serve as a standard of artistic excellence, not intended Gregory actually to spend the counterfeit in public. The danger now implicated both men: the law could hang the apprentice and the imperial engraver side by side if the note were exposed as false. Beskudnikov went to retrieve the paper, telling the tobacconist that the spent ruble had great sentimental value. In exchange, the tobacconist gave him the real one. But Gregory had handed over his counterfeit, not the genuine ruble Beskudnikov expected to recover. The artist’s imitation had passed; the master, whose own professional standing was tied to the currency, had unwittingly helped it pass.

A Parting on Gregory’s Terms

Back in the workshop, Beskudnikov beamed, then promised Gregory the beating of his life. Gregory had always stood still for his beatings, as a good apprentice should, but this time he ran a short distance away and laughed at his master. When Beskudnikov demanded to know how he dared laugh, Gregory answered that he dared to laugh at him then and for the rest of his life. He explained that he had spent the genuine ruble on cigars and given Beskudnikov the counterfeit, and declared that he had surpassed him. He even imagined their possible hanging together, with his last words to the master a sardonic admission that he had not been as talented as he thought.

Gregory left Beskudnikov’s employ that day. He easily became a journeyman under another master engraver and silk-screen artist, who made theatrical posters and children’s-book illustrations. The counterfeit was never detected, or at least was never traced to Gregory or Beskudnikov. Gregory says Beskudnikov surely never told anyone the true story of their parting. The secret preserves the episode as Gregory’s account of the rupture: a professional victory, a narrow escape from the law, and a break in which the apprentice refused to accept either the master’s verdict or his authority to punish him.

The Story’s Later Echo

Gregory tells the story to Rabo as a precedent for what he expects from a younger artist. After recounting how he left Beskudnikov when he believed himself superior, he says that he has already done Rabo the favor of making him feel unwelcome. Because Rabo is older than Gregory was when he surpassed his own master, Gregory proposes assigning him work equivalent to copying a ruble by hand. The remembered apprenticeship therefore becomes a model Gregory uses to frame his relationship with Rabo: a demanding test is presented as the route to artistic independence, while the original story also reveals how such a test can expose a mentor’s jealousy and end in defiance.