“Here’s the situation, Naina Kievna,” said Hawk-nose, wiping rust from his palms. “We have to put up our new colleague for two nights. May I present… Mmm…”
“Don’t bother,” said the crone, riveting me with her gaze. “I can see for myself. Privalov, Alexander Ivanovich, 1938, male, Russian, member of VLKSM, no, no, has not participated, had not, was not, but will have, my crystal one, a long, long road and an interest in a government house, and what you should fear and avoid, my very diamond, is an ill-willed redheaded man, and won’t you gild my palm, my precious…?”
“Ha-hm!” Hawk-nose pronounced loudly, and the crone stopped short.
“Just call me Sasha…” I squeezed out the previously prepared phrase.
“And where shall I put him?” inquired the crone.
“In the spare room, of course,” said Hawk-nose in a somewhat irritated manner.
“And who will be responsible?”
“Naina Kievna!” roared Hawk-nose in the best rolling tones of a provincial tragedian. He grabbed the old hag under the arm and dragged her off toward the house. You could hear them arguing.
“But we agreed!”
“And what if he swipes something?”
“Can’t you be quiet! He is a programmer, don’t you understand? A Comsomol! Well educated!”
“And what if he starts sucking his teeth?”
I turned toward Volodia, ill at ease. Volodia tittered.
“It’s a bit embarrassing,” I said.
“Don’t worry; it’s going to work out just fine…” He was going to say something else, when the crone started shouting: “And the sofa—how about the sofa?”
I started nervously and said, “You know what? I think I’d better go, no?”
“Let’s have no more of that kind of talk,” Volodia said decisively. “Everything will be worked out. It’s just that the old woman is looking to have her due, and Roman and I don’t have any cash.”
“I will pay,” I said. Now I wanted to leave very badly. I can’t stand these so-called daily-life collisions.
Volodia shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. Here he comes. Everything’s in order.”
The hawk-nosed Roman came up to us, took me by the arm, and said, “Well, it’s all fixed. Let’s go.”
“Listen. It doesn’t feel right, somehow,” I said. “After all, she is not obliged…”
But we were already on the way to the house.
“She is obliged—she is obliged,” repeated Roman.
Having circumnavigated the oak, we came up to the rear entrance. Roman pushed on the naugahyde-covered door, and we found ourselves in a large, clean but poorly lighted entryway. The old hag waited for us with compressed lips, and hands folded on her stomach.
At the sight of us, she boomed out vindictively, “And the statement—let’s have that statement now! Stating thus and so: have received such and such, from such and such; which person has turned over the above-mentioned to the undersigned…”
Roman yelped weakly, and we entered the assigned room. It was cool, with a single window hung with a calico curtain.
Roman said in a tense voice, “Make yourself at home.”
The old woman immediately inquired from the entry in a jealous tone, “And he won’t be sucking his teeth?”
Roman barked without turning around, “No, he won’t! I’m telling you there are no teeth to worry over.”
“Then let’s go and write up the statement.”
Roman raised his eyebrows, rolled his eyes, shook his head, but still left the room. I looked around. There wasn’t much furniture. A massive table covered with a sere gray cloth with a fringe stood by the window, and in front of it—a rickety stool. A vast sofa was placed against a bare wood wall, and a wardrobe stood against the other wall, which was decorated with assorted wallpaper. The wardrobe was stuffed with old trash (felt boots, bald fur coats, torn caps, and earmuffs). A large Russian stove jutted into the room resplendent with fresh calcimine, and a large murky mirror in a peeling frame hung in the opposite corner. The floor was scoured clean and covered with striped runners.
Two voices boomed on in a duet behind the wall: the old woman’s voice buzzed on the same note; Roman’s went up and down.
“Tablecloth, inventory number two hundred and forty-five…”
“Are you going to list each floorboard?”
“Table, dining…”
“Put down the stove, too.”
“You must be orderly… Sofa…”
I went up to the window and drew the curtain. Outside was the oak, and nothing else could be seen. Quite evidently it was a truly ancient tree. Its bark was gray and somehow dead looking, and its monstrous roots, which had worked out of the ground, were covered with red-and-white lichen. “Put down the oak, too!” said Roman behind the wall. A fat, greasy book lay on the windowsill. I ruffled it absentmindedly, came away from the window, and sat down on the sofa. All at once, I felt sleepy. Remembering that I had driven the car for fourteen hours that day, I decided that perhaps there was no point in all this rush, that my back ached, that everything was jumbled in my head, that I didn’t give a hang about the tiresome hag, and that I wished everything would get settled so I could lie down and go to sleep…
“There you are,” said Roman, appearing in the doorway. “The formalities are over.” He waved his hands, fanning ink-stained fingers. “Our digits are fatigued; we wrote and wrote… Go to bed. We are leaving, and you can rest easy. What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Wait,” I said, listless.
“Where?”
“Here, and at the post office.”
“You’ll not leave tomorrow…chances are?”
“Probably not. Most likely—the day after tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll see you again. Our liaison is still ahead of us.” He smiled and went out with a wave of his hand. I should see him out and say good-bye to Volodia, I thought lackadaisically, and lay down. And there was the old woman in the room again. I got up. She looked hard at me for some time.
“I fear me, old fellow, that you’ll be smacking through your teeth,” she said.
“No I won’t be,” I said. Then, exhausted, “It’s sleeping I’ll be.”
“Then lie down and sleep… Just pay me and welcome to snooze.”
I reached for my wallet in the back pocket. “What do I owe you?”
The crone raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Let’s say a ruble for the quarters… Fifty kopecks for the bed-clothes—that’s my own, not G.I. For two nights, that comes out to be three rubles… As to what you’ll throw in for generosity’s sake—that’s for my troubles, you know—that I couldn’t say…”
I proffered her a five-ruble note.
“Make it a ruble out of generosity for now,” said I, “and then we’ll see.”
The crone snatched the money and retired, muttering something about change. She was absent a fair time and I was about to forget the change and the bed-sheets, but she came back and laid a handful of dirty coppers on the table.
“And here’s your change, governor,” she said. “One nice ruble, exactly; you needn’t count.”
“I won’t count,” I said. “How about the sheets?”
“I’ll make your bed right away. You go take a walk in the yard, and I’ll get right to it.”
I went out, extricating my pack of cigarettes. The sun had finally set and the white night had arrived. Dogs were barking somewhere in the distance. I sat down by the oak on a garden bench that had sunk into the ground, lighted up, and stared at the pale, starless sky. The cat appeared noiselessly out of somewhere, glanced at me with his fluorescent eyes, and then rapidly climbed up the oak and disappeared in its foliage. I forgot about him at once, and started when he began pottering above me. Some sort of rubbish fell on my head. “You darned…” I said aloud, and shook myself. The desire to sleep became overwhelming. The crone came out, and wended her way to the well, not seeing me. I took this to mean that the bed was read
y, and went back to the room.
The perverse crone had made my bed on the floor. Oh no you don’t, I thought, slid the bolt on the door, dragged the bedding over onto the sofa, and began to undress. The somber light fell through the window; the cat was thrashing about noisily in the oak. I shook my head, to dislodge the rubbish from my hair. It was strange and unexpected rubbish: largish dry fish scales. Prickly to sleep on, I thought. I fell on the pillow and was immediately asleep.
Chapter 2
…The deserted house became the lair of foxes and badgers, and that is why weird spirits and shape-shifters can now appear here.
A. Weda
I woke up in the middle of the night because a conversation was going on in the room. Two voices were talking in a barely audible whisper. They were very similar, but one was a bit stifled and hoarse and the other betrayed an extreme irritation.
“Stop wheezing,” whispered the irritated one. “Can’t you do without it?”
“I can,” responded the stifled one, and began to hack.
“Be quiet!” hissed the irritated voice.
“It’s the wheezes,” explained the stifled one. “The morning cough of the smoker…” He started hacking again.
“Get out of here,” said the irritated one.
“He is asleep, in any case…”
“Who is he? Where did he come from?”
“How should I know?”
“What a disgusting development…such phenomenal bad luck.”
Again the neighbors can’t get to sleep, I thought, half awake. I imagined I was at home. I have these neighbors there, two brother physicists, who adore working through the night. Toward two A.M. they run out of cigarettes and then they invade my room and start feeling about for them, banging the furniture and cursing at each other.
I grabbed the pillow and flung it at random. Something fell with a crash, and then silence ensued.
“You can return my pillow,” I said, “and welcome to leave. The cigarettes are on the table.”
The sound of my own voice awakened me completely. I sat up. Somewhere dogs were barking despondently; behind the wall the old woman snored menacingly. At last I remembered where I was. There was nobody in the room. In the dim light I saw the pillow on the floor and the trash that had fallen from the wardrobe. The old crone will have my head, I thought, jumping up. The floor was icy and I stepped over on the runners. The snoring stopped. I froze. The floorboards creaked; something crackled and rustled in the corners. The crone gave a deafening whistle and continued her snoring. I picked up the pillow and threw it on the sofa. The trash smelled of dog. The hanger rod had fallen off its support on one side. I re-hung it and began picking up the old trash. No sooner had I hung up the last coat, than the pole came away again and, sliding along the wallpaper, hung by one nail again. The crone stopped snoring and I turned cold with sweat. Somewhere, nearby, a cock crowed loudly. To the soup pot with you, I thought venomously. The crone behind the wall set to turning, the bedspring snapping and creaking. I waited, standing on one foot.
Someone in the yard said softly, “Time for bed; we have sat up too long today.” The voice was youthful and female.
“So be it, it’s off to sleep,” responded the other voice. There was a protracted yawn.
“No more splashing for you today?”
“It’s too cold. Let’s go bye-bye.”
All was quiet. The old hag growled and muttered, and I returned cautiously to the sofa. I’ll get up early in the morning and fix everything up properly.
I turned on my right side, pulled the blanket over my ear, and it suddenly became crystal clear to me that I wasn’t at all sleepy—that I was hungry. Oh-oh, I thought. Severe measures had to be taken at once, and I took them.
Consider, for instance, a system of integral equations of the type commonly found in star statistics: both unknowns are functions to be integrated. Naturally the only solutions possible are by successive numerical approximations and only with computers such as the RECM. I recalled our RECM. The main control panel is painted the color of boiled cream. Gene is laying a package on the panel and is opening it unhurriedly.
“What have you got?”
“Mine is with cheese and sausage.” Polish, lightly smoked, in round slices.
“Poor you, it’s married you should be. I have cutlets, with garlic, home-made. And a dill pickle.”
No, there are two dill pickles… Four cutlets, and to make things even, four pickles. And four pieces of buttered bread.
I threw off the blanket and sat up. Maybe there was something left in the car? No—I had already cleaned out everything there was. The only remaining item was the cookbook that I had got for Valya’s mother, who lived in Liezhnev.
Let’s see, how does it go? Sauce piquant…half a glass of vinegar, two onions, and a pinch of pepper. Served with meat dishes… I can see it now with miniature steaks. What a rotten trick, I thought, not just any old steaks, but miniature ones. I jumped up and ran to the window. The night air was distinctly laden with the odor of miniature beefsteaks. Out of some nether depths of my subconscious this floated up: “Such dishes were usually served him in the taverns as: marinated vegetable soup, brains with fresh peas, pickles [I swallowed], and the perpetual layer cake…” I must distract myself, I thought, and took the book on the windowsill. It was The Gloomy Morning by Alexis Tolstoi. I opened it at random.
“Makhno, having broken the sardine can opener, pulled out a mother-of-pearl knife with half a hundred blades, and continued to operate with it, opening tins with pineapple [Now I’ve had it, I though], French pâté, with lobsters, which filled the room with a pungent smell.”
Gingerly I put down the book and sat down on the stool by the table. At once a strong, appetizing odor permeated the room: it must have been the odor of lobsters. I began to ponder why I had never tried a lobster before, or, say, oysters. With Dickens, everybody eats oysters; working with folding knives, they cut huge slabs of bread, spread them thickly with butter… I began to smooth the tablecloth with nervous movements. On it, latent food stains appeared clearly visible. Much and tasty eating has been done on it, I thought. Probably lobsters and brains with peas. Or miniature steaks with sauce piquant. Also large and medium-sized steaks. People must have sighed, replete with food, and sucked their teeth in huge satisfaction. There was no cause for sighing and so I took to sucking my teeth.
I must have been doing it loudly and ravenously because the old woman behind the wall creaked her bed, muttered angrily, rattled something noisily, and suddenly entered my room. She had on a long gray nightshirt, and she was carrying a plate, so that a genuine and not an imaginary odor of food spread through the room. She was smiling, and set the plate directly in front of me and rumbled sweetly, “Dig in, dear friend Alexander Petrovitch. Help yourself to what God has sent, by his unworthy messenger…”
“Really now, really, Naina Kievna,” I was stammering, “you shouldn’t let me disturb you so…”
But my hand was already holding a fork with a horn handle, which had appeared from somewhere, and I began to eat while the old woman stood by and nodded and repeated, “Eat, my friend, eat to your health…”
And I ate it all. The dish was baked potatoes with melted butter.
“Naina Kievna,” I said earnestly, “you have saved me from starving to death.”
“Finished?” said Naina Kievna, in a voice somehow tainted with hostility.
“Yes, and magnificently fed. A tremendous thanks to you! You can’t even imagine how—”
“What’s there to imagine?” she interrupted, now definitely irritated. “Filled up, I say? Then give me the plate… The plate I say!”
“P-please,” I mumbled.
“‘Please and please.’ I have to feed you types for a please…”
“I can pay,” said I, growing angry.
“‘I can pay, I can pay.’” She went to the door. “And what if this sort of thing is not paid for at all? And you needn’t have lied…” r />
“What do you mean—lied?”
“Lied, that’s how. You said yourself you wouldn’t suck your teeth!”
She fell silent and disappeared through the door.
What’s with her? I thought. A strange old bag… Maybe she noticed the clothes rack? There was the sound of creaking springs as she tossed in her bed, grumbling and complaining. Then she started singing softly to some barbarous tune: “I’ll roll and I’ll wallow, fed up on Ivash’s meat.”
Cold night air drew from the window. Shivering, I got up to return to the sofa, and it dawned on me that I had locked the door before retiring. Discomfited, I approached the door and reached out to check the bolt, but no sooner had my hand touched the cold iron, than everything began to swim before my eyes. I was, in fact, lying on the sofa, facedown in the pillow, my finger feeling the cool logs of the wall.
I lay there for some time in a state of shock, slowing growing aware that the old hag was snoring away somewhere nearby, and a conversation was in progress in the room. Someone was declaiming tutorially in a quiet tone:
“The elephant is the largest of all the animals on earth. On his face there is a large lump of meat, which is called a trunk because it’s empty and hollow like a pipe. He bends and stretches it every which way and uses it in place of a hand…”
Growing icy cold and curious, I turned over gingerly on my right side. The room was as empty as before. The voice continued, even more didactic.
“Wine, used in moderation, is exceedingly salutary for the stomach; but when drunk to excess, it produces vapors that debase the human to the level of dumb animals. You have seen drunks on occasion, and still remember the righteous indignation that welled up in you…”
I sat up with a jerk, lowering my feet to the floor. The voice stopped. It was my impression that it was coming from somewhere behind the wall. Everything in the room was as before; even the coat rack, to my astonishment, hung in its proper place. And to my further surprise, I was again very hungry.
“Tincture, ex vitro of antimony,” announced the voice abruptly. I shivered. “Magiphterium antimon angelii salae. Bafilii oleum vitri antimonii elixiterium antimoiale!” There was the sound of frank tittering. “What a delirium!” said the voice and continued, ululating. “Soon these eyes, not yet defeated, will no longer see the sun, but let them not be shut ere being told of my forgiveness and salvation… This be from The Spirit or Moral Thoughts of the Renowned Jung. Extracted from his Nighttime Meditations. Sold in Saint Petersburg and Riga, in the bookstore of Sveshnikov for two rubles in hard cover.” Somebody sobbed. “That, too, is delirium,” said the voice, and declaimed with expression: