The Twelve Chairs (4 page)

"Glory to our fire chief,
Glory to dear Comrade Pumpoff!"
"They've  been  havin'  a  good  time  at  Nicky's  wedding,"  remarked
Bezenchuk  nonchalantly.  "He's the  fire  chief's  son."  And  he scratched
himself under his coat. "So you really want it without tassels and brocade?"
By that moment Ippolit Matveyevich had finally made up his mind.  "I'll
go  and  find  them,"  he  decided,  "and   then  we'll  see."  And  in  his
jewel-encrusted visions  even his deceased  mother-in-law  seemed nicer than
she had actually been. He turned to Bezenchuk and said:
"Go on then, damn you, make it! With brocade! And tassels!"

Having  heard  the dying Claudia Ivanovna's confession, Father Theodore
Vostrikov,  priest  of  the  Church  of St.  Frol  and  St.  Laurence,  left
Vorobyaninov's house in a complete daze and  the whole way home kept looking
round him distractedly and smiling to himself in confusion. His bewilderment
became  so  great  in  the  end  that  he was  almost  knocked down  by  the
district-executive-committee motor-car,  Gos. No. 1. Struggling  out of  the
cloud of purple smoke  issuing from the infernal  machine,  Father Vostrikov
reached the stage  of complete distraction, and, despite his  venerable rank
and middle age, finished the journey at a frivolous half-gallop.
His  wife, Catherine, was laying the table for supper. On the days when
there was no evening service to conduct, Father  Theodore liked  to have his
supper  early. This  time, however, to his wife's surprise, the holy father,
having  taken  off his hat  and  warm  padded cassock, skipped past into the
bedroom, locked himself  in and began chanting the prayer  "It Is Meet" in a
tuneless voice.
His wife sat down on a chair and whispered in alarm:
"He's up to something again."
Father Theodore's tempestuous soul knew no rest, nor had ever known it.
Neither at the time when he was Theo, a pupil of the Russian Orthodox Church
school,  nor  when he  was  Theodore Ivanych, a bewhiskered  student  at the
college. Having left the college and studied law at the university for three
years in 1915 Vostrikov became afraid of the possibility of mobilization and
returned to the  Church. He  was  first  anointed  a deacon, then ordained a
priest and  appointed to the  regional centre of  N. But  the whole time, at
every stage of  his clerical and  secular career, Father Theodore never lost
interest in worldly possessions.
He cherished the dream of possessing  his own candle factory. Tormented
by the vision of thick  ropes of wax winding on to the factory drums, Father
Theodore devised various schemes that would bring in enough basic capital to
buy a little factory in Samara which he had had his eye on for some time.
Ideas  occurred to Father  Theodore  unexpectedly, and when they did he
used to get down to work on the spot. He once started making  a  marble-like
washing-soap;  he made  pounds and pounds of it, but despite an enormous fat
content,  the soap would not lather, and it cost twice as much as the Hammer
and Plough brand,  to boot. For a long time after it  remained in the liquid
state  gradually decomposing on  the porch  of  the house, and whenever  his
wife,  Catherine,  passed it,  she  would  wipe away a  tear.  The soap  was
eventually thrown into the cesspool.
Reading  in  a farming  magazine  that  rabbit meat was  as  tender  as
chicken, that rabbits were highly  prolific, and  that a  keen  farmer could
make  a mint of  money  breeding them, Father Theodore  immediately acquired
half a dozen stud rabbits, and two months later, Nerka the dog, terrified by
the  incredible  number of long-eared creatures filling the yard and  house,
fled to an unknown destination. However, the wretchedly  provincial citizens
of  the  town of  N. proved  extraordinarily conservative and, with  unusual
unanimity,  refused  to buy Vostrikov's rabbits. Then Father Theodore had  a
talk with his wife and decided to enhance his diet with the rabbit meat that
was supposed to  be tastier  than  chicken. The  rabbits were roasted whole,
turned into rissoles and cutlets, made into soup, served cold for supper and
baked in  pies. But to no avail. Father Theodore worked it out that even  if
they switched exclusively to a diet of rabbit, the family  could not consume
more than forty of the  creatures  a  month, while the monthly increment was
ninety, with the number increasing in a geometrical progression.
The Vostrikovs then decided to sell home-cooked  meals. Father Theodore
spent a whole  evening  writing out an advertisement in indelible  pencil on
neatly cut sheets of  graph paper, announcing the sale of  tasty home-cooked
meals prepared in pure butter. The advertisement began "Cheap and Good!" His
wife filled an enamel dish  with flour-and-water paste, and late one evening
the holy father went around sticking the advertisements on all the telegraph
poles, and also in the vicinity of state-owned institutions.
The new idea was a great success. Seven people appeared the  first day,
among them Bendin, the  military-commissariat clerk, by  whose endeavour the
town's oldest monument-a triumphal arch, dating from the time of the Empress
Elizabeth-had  been  pulled down  shortly  before  on  the  ground  that  it
interfered  with  the  traffic. The dinners were very popular. The next  day
there were fourteen  customers. There  was  hardly  enough  time to skin the
rabbits.  For  a whole week things  went swimmingly and Father Theodore even
considered starting  up  a small fur-trading business, without a  car,  when
something quite unforeseen took place.
The Hammer and Plough co-operative, which had been shut for three weeks
for stock-taking, reopened, and some of the  counter hands, panting with the
effort,  rolled a barrel of  rotten  cabbage into the yard shared  by Father
Theodore,  and  dumped the  contents  into the cesspool.  Attracted  by  the
piquant smell, the rabbits hastened to the cesspool, and the next morning an
epidemic broke  out among the gentle rodents. It only raged for three hours,
but during that time it finished off two hundred and forty adult rabbits and
an uncountable number of offspring.
The shocked priest had been  depressed for two whole months, and it was
only now,  returning from Vorobyaninov's  house and to  his wife's surprise,
locking  himself  in  the bedroom,  that he regained  his spirits. There was
every indication that Father Theodore had been captivated by some new idea.
Catherine  knocked  on the  bedroom door with her knuckle. There was no
reply, but the chanting grew louder. A moment later the door opened slightly
and through  the  crack  appeared  Father Theodore's face, brightened  by  a
maidenly flush.
"Let  me  have  a  pair  of  scissors quickly,  Mother," snapped Father
Theodore.
"But what about your supper? "
"Yes, later on."
Father Theodore  grabbed the  scissors, locked the door again, and went
over to a mirror hanging on the wall in a black scratched frame.
Beside the  mirror  was an ancient folk-painting, entitled "The Parable
of the Sinner", made from a copperplate and neatly hand-painted. The parable
had  been a great consolation to Vostrikov  after  the  misfortune with  the
rabbits. The picture clearly showed the transient nature  of earthly things.
The top  row was  composed of  four drawings with meaningful and consolatory
captions in Church Slavonic: Shem saith a prayer, Ham soweth wheat,  Japheth
enjoyeth power, Death overtaketh  all. The figure of Death  carried a scythe
and  a  winged  hour-glass and looked as  if  made  of  artificial limbs and
orthopaedic appliances; he  was  standing on deserted hilly  ground with his
legs wide apart, and his  general appearance made  it clear that  the fiasco
with the rabbits was a mere trifle.
At this moment Father Theodore preferred  "Japheth enjoyeth power". The
drawing  showed a fat, opulent man with  a  beard sitting on  a throne  in a
small room.
Father Theodore  smiled and, looking closely at himself in the  mirror,
began  snipping at his fine beard. The scissors clicked,  the hairs fell  to
the floor,  and five minutes later Father Theodore knew he was absolutely no
good at beard-clipping. His  beard was  all askew; it looked  unbecoming and
even suspicious.
Fiddling  about  for  a while  longer, Father  Theodore  became  highly
irritated, called his wife, and, handing her the scissors, said peevishly:
"You can help me, Mother. I can't do anything with these rotten hairs."
His wife threw up her hands in astonishment.
"What have you done to yourself?" she finally managed to say.
"I haven't  done anything. I'm trimming my beard. It seems to have gone
askew just here. . . ."
"Heavens!"  said  his  wife, attacking  his curls.  "Surely  you're not
joining the Renovators, Theo dear?"
Father Theodore  was delighted  that the  conversation had  taken  this
turn.
"And why shouldn't I join the Renovators, Mother? They're human-beings,
aren't they?"
"Of  course they're human-beings," conceded his  wife venomously,  "but
they go to the cinema and pay alimony."
"Well, then, I'll go to the cinema as well."
"Go on then!"
Twill!"
"You'll get tired of it. Just look at yourself in the mirror."
And indeed,  a lively black-eyed  countenance with a short, odd-looking
beard  and an  absurdly  long moustache  peered out of the mirror  at Father
Theodore. They trimmed down the moustache to the right proportions.
What happened next amazed Mother still  more. Father  Theodore declared
that he had to go  off on a business trip that  very evening,  and asked his
wife to go round to her brother, the baker, and borrow his fur-collared coat
and duck-billed cap for a week.
"I won't go," said his wife and began weeping.
Father  Theodore  walked  up  and  down  the  room for  half  an  hour,
frightening his wife by the change in his expression  and  telling  her  all
sorts of  rubbish. Mother could  understand only  one  thing-for no apparent
reason Father Theodore had cut his hair,  intended to go off somewhere  in a
ridiculous cap, and was leaving her for good.
"I'm  not  leaving you," he kept saying.  "I'm not.  I'll be back  in a
week. A man can have a job to do, after all. Can he or can't he?"
"No, he can't," said his wife.
Father Theodore even had to strike the table with his fist, although he
was normally a mild person  in his treatment of his  near  ones.  He  did so
cautiously,  since  he had never done  it before,  and, greatly alarmed, his
wife threw a kerchief around her head and ran to fetch the civilian clothing
from her brother.
Left  alone, Father Theodore thought for  a moment,  muttered, "It's no
joke  for women,  either," and  pulled out a small tin trunk from under  the
bed. This type  of trunk  is mostly  found  among  Red  Army soldiers. It is
usually lined with striped paper, on top of which is a picture  of Budyonny,
or  the lid of a Bathing Beach cigarette box depicting three lovelies on the
pebbly  shore  at  Batumi.   The  Vostrikovs'  trunk  was  also  lined  with
photographs, but,  to Father Theodore's annoyance, they were not of Budyonny
or Batumi  beauties.  His  wife had  covered  the inside of  the trunk  with
photographs cut out of the magazine Chronicle of the 1914 War. They included
"The Capture of Peremyshl", "The  Distribution of Comforts to Other Ranks in
the Trenches", and all sorts of other things.
Removing the  books that were lying  at  the top (a set  of the Russian
Pilgrim for 1913; a fat tome, History of the Schism, and a brochure entitled
A  Russian in Italy, the cover of  which showed a smoking  Vesuvius), Father
Theodore reached down into the very bottom of the  trunk and drew out an old
shabby hat belonging to  his  wife. Wincing at the smell of moth-balls which
suddenly assailed  him from the trunk,  he tore apart the lace and trimmings
and took from the  hat  a heavy  sausage-shaped object wrapped in linen. The
sausage-shaped object contained  twenty  ten-rouble gold coins, all that was
left of Father Theodore's business ventures.
With a habitual movement of the hand, he lifted his cassock and stuffed
the sausage  into the pocket of his striped trousers.  He then  went over to
the chest of drawers and took twenty roubles in three- and five-rouble notes
from a  sweet-box. There  were twenty roubles left in the box. "That will do
for the housekeeping," he decided.

An  hour before  the evening  mail-train was due in,  Father  Theodore,
dressed in a  short coat  which came  just below  the  knee, and carrying  a
wicker basket, stood in line in front of the booking-office and kept looking
apprehensively at  the station entrance. He was afraid that  in spite of his
insistence,  his wife might  come  to  see him  off,  and  then  Prusis, the
stall-owner, who was sitting in the buffet treating the income-tax collector
to a glass of beer, would immediately recognize him. Father  Theodore stared
with shame and surprise  at his striped trousers, now exposed to the view of
the entire laity.
The process of boarding a train without reserved seats took  its normal
and scandalous  course.  Staggering  under  the  weight  of  enormous sacks,
passengers ran  from the front of  the train to the  back,  and then  to the
front again. Father Theodore followed them in a daze. Like everyone else, he
spoke to  the conductors  in an ingratiating tone, like everyone else he was
afraid he had been  given  the  "wrong" ticket, and it was only when he  was
finally allowed  into a coach  that his customary calm returned and  he even
became happy.
The locomotive hooted at the top of its  voice and the train moved off,
carrying Father Theodore into  the unknown on business that  was mysterious,
yet promised great things.
An interesting thing, the permanent way. Once he gets on to it the most
ordinary  man in the  street feels a certain animation in  himself  and soon
turns into  a passenger, a  consignee, or simply a trouble-maker  without  a
ticket,  who makes life difficult  for the teams of conductors  and platform
ticket-inspectors.
The  moment  a  passenger  approaches  the  right   of  way,  which  he
amateurishly calls a railway station, his life is completely changed.  He is
immediately  surrounded by predatory  porters with white aprons  and  nickel
badges on their chests, and his luggage is obsequiously picked up. From that
moment,  the  citizen no  longer is his own master. He  is  a  passenger and
begins to  perform all the duties of one. These duties are many, though they
are not unpleasant.
Passengers eat a lot. Ordinary mortals do not eat during the night, but
passengers do. They eat fried chicken, which is expensive, hard-boiled eggs,
which are bad  for  the stomach,  and olives. Whenever the train passes over
the points,  numerous teapots in  the  rack  clatter together,  and  legless
chickens  (the legs have been torn out by the  roots by  passengers) jump up
and down in their newspaper wrapping.
The  passengers,  however, are  oblivious of  all this. They  tell each
other jokes. Every three  minutes the whole compartment rocks with laughter;
then there is a silence and a soft-spoken voice tells the following story:
"An old Jew lay dying. Around him were his wife and children. 'Is Monya
here?' asks the  Jew with  difficulty. 'Yes,  she's here.' 'Has Auntie Brana
come?' 'Yes.' 'And where's Grandma?  I  don't  see her.'  'She's over here.'
'And Isaac?' 'He's here, too.' 'What about the children?' They're all here.'
'Then who's minding the shop?'"
This very moment the teapots begin rattling and the chickens fly up and
down in the rack, but the passengers do not notice. Each one has a favourite
story  ready,  eagerly  awaiting its  turn.  A  new raconteur,  nudging  his
neighbours and  calling out in a pleading tone, "Have  you  heard this one?"
finally gains attention and begins:
"A Jew comes home and gets into bed beside his wife. Suddenly he  hears
a  scratching noise under the bed.  The Jew  reaches his hand underneath the
bed and asks: 'Is that  you, Fido?'  And Fido licks his hand and says: 'Yes,
it's me.' "
The  passengers  collapse  with  laughter;  a  dark  night  cloaks  the
countryside. Restless sparks fly from  the funnel,  and the slim signals  in
their  luminous green  spectacles  flash snootily  past,  staring above  the
train.
An interesting thing, the right of way! Long, heavy trains race to all'
parts  of the country. The way is open at every  point. Green  lights can be
seen everywhere; the track  is clear. The polar express goes up to Murmansk.
The K-l  draws out of Kursk Station, bound for Tiflis, arching its back over
the  points. The  far-eastern courier  rounds Lake Baikal and approaches the
Pacific at full speed.
The Muse of Travel is calling.  She has already plucked Father Theodore
from his quiet regional cloister and cast him  into  some unknown  province.
Even Ippolit Matveyevich  Vorobyaninov, former  marshal  of the nobility and
now clerk in a  registry office, is stirred to  the depths of  his heart and
highly excited at the great things ahead.
People speed  all  over  the  country. Some  of  them  are looking  for
scintillating  brides thousands of miles  away, while others, in pursuit  of
treasure, leave  their jobs in the post office  and rush off like schoolboys
to Aldan. Others simply  sit  at home,  tenderly stroking an imminent hernia
and reading the works of Count Salias, bought  for five kopeks instead of  a
rouble.
The day after the funeral, kindly arranged by Bezenchuk the undertaker,
Ippolit Matveyevich went  to work and, as part  of  the duties with which he
was charged, duly  registered in his own hand the demise of Claudia Ivanovna
Petukhov, aged  fifty-nine, housewife,  non-party-member,  resident  of  the
regional centre of N., by origin a member of the upper class of the province
of  Stargorod. After this, Ippolit  Matveyevich granted  himself  a two-week
holiday due to him, took forty-one roubles in salary,  said good-bye  to his
colleagues, and went home. On the way he stopped at the chemist's.
The chemist, Leopold  Grigorevich,  who  was called Lipa by his friends
and  family,  stood  behind   the   red-lacquered  counter,  surrounded   by
frosted-glass  bottles  of poison, nervously trying to sell the fire chief's
sister-in-law  "Ango  cream  for  sunburn  and  freckles-gives  the  skin an
exceptional whiteness". The fire chief's sister-in-law,  however, was asking
for  "Rachelle  powder, gold  in colour-gives  the skin  a  tan not normally
acquirable". The chemist had  only the Ango cream in  stock, and the  battle
between these two very different cosmetics raged for half an hour. Lipa  won
in  the  end  and sold the  fire chief's sister-in-law  some lipstick  and a
bugovar, which is a device similar in principle to the samovar,  except that
it looks like a watering-can and catches bugs.
"What can I get you?"
"Something for the hair."
"To make it grow, to remove it, or to dye it? "
"Not to make it grow," said Ippolit Matveyevich. "To dye it."
"We have a  wonderful  hair  dye called  Titanic.  We got  it from  the
customs people;  it was  confiscated.  It's  a jet  black  colour. A  bottle
containing a  six months' supply costs three  roubles,  twelve kopeks. I can
recommend it to you, as a good friend."
Ippolit  Matveyevich twiddled  the bottle in his hands,  looked at  the
label with a sigh, and put down his money on the counter.
He went home and, with a feeling of revulsion,  began  pouring  Titanic
onto his head and moustache. A stench filled the house.
By  the time dinner was over, the stench had cleared, the moustache had
dried and become matted and was very difficult to comb. The jet-black colour
turned out to have a greenish tint, but there was no time for a second try.
Taking from his mother-in-law's jewel box a list of the gems, found the
night before, Ippolit Matveyevich counted  up  his cash-in-hand, locked  the
house,  put the key  in  his  back pocket and  took  the no.  7  express  to
Stargorod.