“I am aware, comrade Demin, that Monday starts on Saturday,” Korneev said morosely.
“Enough of your demagoguery,” said the skinny man. “Return the sofa immediately, and do not dare come back here again.”
“I won’t return the sofa,” said Korneev. “Not until we’ve finished the experiment.”
The fat man made a shocking scene at that. “Unpardonable insubordination,” he squealed. “You hooligan!”
The vulture started screeching excitedly again. Without taking his hands out of his pockets, Korneev turned his back and stepped straight through the wall. The fat man dashed after him, yelling, “Oh no, you give back the sofa!”
The skinny man said to me, “It’s all a misunderstanding. We’ll take measures to prevent it from happening again.” He nodded to me and also started moving toward the wall.
“Wait,” I exclaimed. “The eagle! Take the eagle! And take the smell with it!”
The skinny man, already halfway into the wall, turned back and beckoned to the bird with his finger. The vulture noisily launched itself off the oven and was sucked in under his fingernail. The skinny man disappeared. The blue light slowly faded and the room went dark. I switched on the light and looked around. Everything in the room was the same as it had been, except for the deep, gaping scratches from the vulture’s claws on the oven and the fantastically absurd, dark-ribbed imprints of my shoes on the ceiling.
“The transparent oil found in the cow,” the mirror pronounced with idiotic profundity, “does not facilitate the cow’s nourishment, but being processed in an appropriate fashion, it provides the finest of nutrition.”
I turned the light off and lay down. The floor was hard and there was a cold draft. I’ll catch it hot from the old woman tomorrow, I thought.
6
“No,” he said, in answer to the persistent interrogation of my eye; “I’m not a member—I’m a ghost.”
“Well, that doesn’t give you the run of the Mermaid Club.”
—H. G. Wells
In the morning the sofa was back where it belonged. I wasn’t surprised. I just thought that one way or another the old woman had gotten what she wanted: the sofa was standing in one corner and I was lying in another. As I cleared away my bedding and did my morning exercises, I thought about how there must be some kind of limit to the capacity for surprise. Clearly I was well past the threshold now. In fact I was feeling pretty close to saturation. I tried to imagine something that would astonish me at that moment, but my imagination wasn’t up to it. I didn’t like that at all, because I can’t stand people who are incapable of being surprised. But my psychological state was still a long way from so what’s the big deal anyway—it was more like Alice in Wonderland, as if I were dreaming and prepared to accept any miracle as something perfectly natural that deserved a more adequate response than simply dropping my jaw and gaping wide-eyed.
I was still doing my exercises when I heard the hallway door slam. There was a sound of shuffling feet and clattering heels, someone coughed, something clattered and fell, and an imperious voice called out, “Comrade Gorynych!” The old woman didn’t answer, and the people in the hallway started talking to each other.
“Which door is this? Ah, I see. And this one?”
“This is the entrance to the museum.”
“And this here? What’s this? All sealed up, these locks . . .”
“She keeps a very strict house, Janus Polyeuctovich. And here’s the phone.”
“Then where is the famous sofa? In the museum?”
“No. There should be a storeroom here somewhere.”
“That’s in here,” said a familiar morose voice.
The door of my room swung open to reveal a tall, skinny old man with a magnificent head of snow-white hair, black eyebrows, a black mustache, and intense black eyes. Catching sight of me (I was standing there in my underpants with my arms extended to the sides and my feet planted at shoulder width), he stopped and said in a sonorous voice, “I see.”
There were other faces peering into the room on his left and right. I said: “I beg your pardon” and ran to get my jeans. But in fact they took no notice of me. Four people came into the room and arranged themselves around the sofa. I knew two of them: the morose Korneev, unshaven and red-eyed, still wearing that frivolous Hawaiian shirt, and the swarthy, hook-nosed Roman, who winked at me, made a mysterious sign with his hand, and immediately turned away. I didn’t know the white-haired man. And I didn’t know the tall, stout man with the black suit that was shiny on the back and the sweeping, imperious gestures.
“This sofa here?” the shiny man asked.
“It’s not a sofa,” Korneev said morosely. “It’s a translator.”
“To me it’s a sofa,” said the shiny man, looking in a notebook. “Sofa, soft, small double, inventory number 1123.” He leaned down and felt it. “There’s a damp spot here, Korneev, you had it out in the rain. You’ll see, now the springs will turn rusty and the upholstery will go rotten.”
“The value of the item concerned,” said Roman in a tone that I thought sounded mocking, “does not depend in any way on its upholstery, or even its springs, because it doesn’t have any.”
“Now that’s enough of that, Roman Petrovich,” the shiny man said with dignity. “Don’t you go trying to shield your Korneev from me. The sofa’s registered to my museum, and that’s where it has to stay.”
“It’s a piece of equipment,” Korneev said despairingly. “It’s for working with.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the shiny man declared. “I don’t know what you mean by working with a sofa. I’ve got a sofa at home too, and I know what kind of work gets done on that.”
“We know that too,” Roman said quietly.
“Now, that’s enough of that,” said the shiny man, turning to face him. “You’re not in the beer hall now—this is an official institution. What exactly are you trying to say?”
“What I’m trying to say is that this is not a sofa,” said Roman, “or, to put it in a form that you can grasp, it is not entirely a sofa. It is a piece of equipment with the appearance of a sofa.”
“I would ask you please to stop making insinuations,” the shiny man said emphatically, “concerning forms that I can grasp and so forth. Let’s each of us stick to his own job. My job is to put a stop to maladministration and waste, and that’s what I’m doing.”
“Right,” said the white-haired man in a clear, ringing voice. Suddenly there was silence. “I have had a word with Cristóbal Joséevich and Fyodor Simeonovich. They believe that the only value this translator has is as a museum piece. It once belonged to King Rudolf II, which puts its historical value beyond dispute. In addition, if my memory does not deceive me, we have already ordered a serial translator, two years ago . . . Can you remember who put in the order, Modest Matveevich?”
“Just a moment,” said the shiny Modest Matveevich, and began leafing rapidly through his notebook. “Just a moment . . . One Kitezhgrad Plant TDK-80E Twin-Cycle Translator . . . At the request of comrade Balsamo.”
“Balsamo works on it round the clock,” said Roman.
“And that TDK’s a load of junk,” added Korneev. “Molecular-level discrimination.”
“Yes, yes,” said the white-haired man. “Now I remember. There was a report on a study of the TDK. The discrimination curve really is rather uneven . . . Yes. What about this . . . er . . . sofa?”
“Handcrafted,” Roman put in quickly. “Absolutely reliable. Designed and made by Loew ben Bezalel. It took him three hundred years to assemble it and tune it.”
“Now then!” said the shiny Modest Matveevich. “That’s the way to do a job! An old man like that and he did everything himself.”
The mirror suddenly cleared its throat and said, “All of them became younger after having been in the water for an hour, and they emerged from it as handsome, young, and healthy, as strong and cheerful in spirit, as they were at the age of twenty.”
“Precisely,?
?? said Modest Matveevich. The mirror had spoken in the voice of the white-haired man.
The white-haired man frowned irritably. “Let us not try to settle this question now,” he suggested.
“When, then?” asked the loutish Korneev.
“On Friday at the Academic Council.”
“We can’t go around squandering ancient relics,” interjected Modest Matveevich.
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Korneev asked rudely. The mirror began muttering in a sinister, sepulchral voice:
My eyes beheld Canidia, bareheaded and barefooted,
Howling as she did walk, her folded robes clutched up around her,
And with her Sagana, older in years, both pale of feature,
Terrible to behold.
Then did they with their nails the earth root up,
And bite and tear the black lamb’s flesh . . .
The white-haired man wrinkled up his entire face into a frown, went over to the mirror, thrust his arm into it up to the shoulder, and clicked something. The mirror fell silent.
“All right,” said the white-haired man. “We will also decide the question of your group at the council. And in the meantime you . . .”—I could see from his face that he had forgotten Korneev’s name—“. . . you will . . . er . . . refrain from visiting the museum.”
And so saying, he left the room. By the door.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Korneev said through clenched teeth, looking at Modest Matveevich.
“I won’t allow you to squander resources,” Modest Matveevich replied curtly, tucking his notebook away in his inside pocket.
“Squander!” exclaimed Korneev. “You couldn’t give a damn about anything. Keeping the books simple is all you’re concerned about. You just don’t want to put in an extra column.”
“Now that’s enough of that,” said the indomitable Modest Matveevich. “We’ll be setting up a commission to see what damage has been done to this relic—”
“Inventory number 1123,” Roman added in a soft voice.
“That’s the way of things,” Modest Matveevich said pompously, turning around and catching sight of me. “And what are you doing here?” he inquired. “Why are you sleeping here?”
“I . . .” I began.
“You slept on the sofa,” Modest declared in icy tones, his counterintelligence agent’s eyes boring into me. “Are you aware that it is an item of equipment?”
“No,” I said. “That is, I am now, of course.”
“Modest Matveevich!” exclaimed hook-nosed Roman. “This is our new programmer, Sasha Privalov!”
“Then why is he sleeping here? Why not in the hostel?”
“He hasn’t been registered yet,” said Roman, putting his arm around my waist.
“All the more reason!”
“You mean he ought to be sleeping out in the street?” Korneev asked spitefully.
“Now, that’s enough of that,” said Modest. “There’s a hostel and there’s a hotel, but this here is a museum, a state institution. What if everybody slept in the museums? Where are you from?”
“From Leningrad,” I said sullenly.
“What if I were to come to Leningrad and sleep in the Hermitage?”
“Be my guest,” I said with a shrug.
Roman still had his arm around my waist. “Modest Matveevich, you’re absolutely right, it’s most irregular, but today he’ll sleep in my room.”
“Now that’s a different matter. By all means,” said Modest magnanimously. He cast a proprietary glance around the room, saw the footprints on the ceiling, and immediately looked down at my feet. Fortunately I was barefoot. “That’s the way of things,” he said, then straightened out the old junk hanging on the hooks and left the room.
“Nin-com-poop,” Korneev hissed. “Blockhead.” He sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “Ah, to hell with the lot of them. I’ll snatch it again tonight.”
“Calm down,” said Roman gently. “It’s not that bad. We just had a bit of bad luck. Did you notice which Janus it was?”
“What of it?” Korneev asked hopelessly.
“It was A-Janus.”
Korneev raised his head. “What difference does that make?”
“A huge difference,” said Roman with a wink. “Because S-Janus has flown off to Moscow. Specifically to deal with the matter of this sofa. Now do you understand, you ransacker of museums?”
“Listen, you’ve saved my life,” said Korneev, and for the first time I saw him smile.
“You know, Sasha,” said Roman, turning to me, “we happen to have an ideal director. One person in two. There’s A-Janus Polyeuctovich and S-Janus Polyeuctovich. S-Janus is a topflight international scientist. But A-Janus is just a fairly ordinary administrator.”
“Twins?” I asked tentatively.
“No, they’re one and the same man. Only he’s one person in two.”
“Oh, I get it,” I said, starting to put on my shoes.
“Never mind, Sasha, you’ll know all about everything soon,” said Roman reassuringly.
I raised my head. “Meaning?”
“We need a programmer,” said Roman with feeling.
“I need a programmer very badly,” said Korneev, perking up a bit.
“Everybody needs a programmer,” I said, going back to my shoes. “And please don’t try hypnosis or any of those enchanted places of yours.”
“He’s beginning to catch on,” said Roman.
Korneev was about to say something when we heard loud voices outside the window.
“It’s not our five-kopeck piece!” yelled Modest.
“Then whose five-kopeck piece is it?”
“I don’t know whose five-kopeck piece it is! It’s none of my business! Catching counterfeiters is your job, comrade Sergeant!”
“The five-kopeck piece was confiscated from a certain Privalov, residing here in your museum at the Lohuchil!”
“Ah, from Privalov. I knew he was a thief the moment I laid eyes on him!”
The voice of A-Janus protested reproachfully, “Come now, Modest Matveevich!”
“I’m sorry, Janus Polyeuctovich, but something has to be done! Come with me, comrade Sergeant! He’s in the house . . . Janus Polyeuctovich, you stand by the window so he can’t escape that way! I’ll prove it! I won’t have aspersions like this cast on comrade Gorynych’s reputation!”
I turned cold inside. But Roman had already worked out what to do. He grabbed a grubby peaked cap off one of the clothes hooks and pulled it down over my ears.
I disappeared.
It was a very strange feeling. Everything stayed where it was, except for me. But Roman didn’t give me any chance to relish the new experience.
“It’s a cap of darkness,” he hissed. “Just move out of the way and keep quiet.”
I tiptoed rapidly across into the corner and sat down in front of the mirror. That very moment Modest came bursting excitedly into the room, dragging the youthful Sergeant Kovalyov along by the arm.
“Where?” Modest howled in confusion, gazing around.
“There,” said Roman, pointing to the sofa.
“No need to get excited, it’s right where it supposed to be,” added Korneev.
“I meant, where’s that . . . programmer?”
“What programmer?” Roman asked in surprise.
“That’s enough of that,” said Modest. “There was a programmer here. Wearing trousers with no shoes.”
“Oh, that’s what you meant,” said Roman. “We were just playing a joke, Modest Matveevich. There wasn’t any programmer here. It was simply . . .” He made a strange movement with his hands and a man wearing jeans and a T-shirt appeared in the center of the room.
I only saw him from the back, so I can’t say what he looked like, but the youthful Kovalyov shook his head and said, “No, that’s not him.”
Modest walked around the apparition, muttering, “T-shirt . . . trousers . . . no shoes! That’s him!” The apparition di
sappeared.
“No it’s not, that’s not him,” said Sergeant Kovalyov. “He was younger and he didn’t have a beard . . .”
“He didn’t have a beard?” Modest echoed. He was totally confused now.
“He didn’t,” Kovalyov confirmed.
“Mmm . . .” said Modest. “I think he did have a beard . . .”
“Here, then, I’ll give you the notice,” said the youthful Kovalyov, handing Modest an official-looking sheet of paper. “And you can sort this business out with your Privalov and your Gorynych . . .”
“But I tell you, the five-kopeck piece isn’t ours!” roared Modest. “I can’t say anything about this Privalov. Perhaps there isn’t any real Privalov at all . . . But comrade Gorynych is our employee!”
The youthful Kovalyov pressed his hands to his breast as he tried to say something.
“I insist that you get to the bottom of this immediately!” roared Modest. “I won’t take any more of this, comrade Sergeant! This notice is a slur on the reputation of the entire collective! I insist that you check for yourself!”
“I have my orders—” Kovalyov began, but Modest threw himself on him with a cry of “That’s enough of that! I insist!” and dragged him out of the room.
“He’s taken him off to the museum,” said Roman. “Sasha, where are you? Take the cap off. Let’s go and watch.”
“Maybe I ought to keep it on,” I said.
“Take it off, take it off,” said Roman. “You’re a phantom now. Nobody believes in you—not the administration or the militia.”
Korneev said, “All right, I’m off to get some sleep. Sasha, come over after lunch. You can have a look at our computers and what have you.”
I took the cap off. “Now that’s enough of that,” I said. “I’m on vacation.”
“Come on, let’s go,” said Roman.
In the hallway Modest was holding on to the sergeant with one hand while he opened a massive padlock with the other. “I’ll show you our five-kopeck piece!” he shouted. “Everything’s properly registered . . . Everything’s in its proper place.”