person
the parasite (guitarist-singer)
the parasite
also: паразит
A small, bald, fat old man with a guitar who performs comic songs and grunts like a pig for Frolov's amusement, plied with a foul mixture of vodka, wine, cognac, salt, and pepper; Frolov calls him a byword for the parasitic hangers-on who cluster around rich men.
Reading notes
- Drunk §26 with a guitar
The seven-string Russian guitar (gypsy-tuned) was the standard instrument of restaurant and tavern entertainers of this type; the old man's comic, self-abasing performance -- billed by Frolov as having "made his fortune by grunting like a pig" -- exemplifies the class of professional buffoon-entertainers (called шуты or, as here, contemptuously "parasites") that wealthy patrons kept on hand for humiliation-as-amusement.