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FASHIONS AND MILLINERY

 

This was also only for show.

Inside the fashions-and-millinery workroom there was no esparterie, no

trimmings, no headless dummies with soldierly bearing, nor any large heads

for elegant ladies' hats. Instead, the three-room apartment was occupied by

an immaculately white parrot in red underpants. The parrot was riddled with

fleas, but could not complain since it was unable to talk. For days on end

it used to crack sunflower seeds and spit the husks through the bars of its

tall, circular cage on to the carpet. It only needed a concertina and new

squeaky Wellingtons to resemble a peasant on a spree. Dark-brown patterned

curtains flapped at the window. Dark-brown hues predominated in the

apartment. Above the piano was a reproduction of Boecklin's "Isle of the

Dead" in a fancy frame of dark-green oak, covered with glass. One corner of

the glass had been broken off some time before, and the flies had added so

many finishing touches to the picture at this bared section that it merged

completely with the frame. What was going on in that section of the "Isle of

the Dead" was quite impossible to say.

The owner herself was sitting in the bedroom and laying out cards,

resting her arms on an octagonal table covered by a dirty Richelieu

tablecloth. In front of her sat Widow Gritsatsuyev, in a fluffy shawl.

"I should warn you, young lady, that I don't take less than fifty

kopeks per session,' said the fortune-teller.

The widow, whose anxiousness to find a new husband knew no bounds,

agreed to pay the price.

"But predict the future as well, please," she said plaintively. "You

will be represented by the Queen of Clubs." "I was always the Queen of

Hearts," objected the widow. The fortune-teller consented apathetically and

began manipulating the cards. A rough estimation of the widow's lot was

ready in a few minutes. Both major and minor difficulties awaited her, but

near to her heart was the King of Clubs, who had befriended the Queen of

Diamonds.

A fair copy of the prediction was made from the widow's hand. The lines

of her hand were clean, powerful, and faultless. Her life line stretched so

far that it ended up at her pulse and, if it told the truth, the widow

should have lived till doomsday. The head line and line of brilliancy gave

reason to believe that she would give up her grocery business and present

mankind with masterpieces in the realm of art, science, and social studies.

Her Mounts of Venus resembled Manchurian volcanoes and revealed incredible

reserves of love and affection. The fortune-teller explained all this to the

widow, using the words and phrases current among graphologists, palmists,

and horse-traders.

"Thank you, madame," said the widow. "Now I know who the King of Clubs

is. And I know who the Queen of Diamonds is, too. But what about the King?

Does that mean marriage?" "It does, young lady." The widow went home in a



dream, while the fortune-teller threw the cards into a drawer, yawned,

displaying the mouth of a fifty-year-old woman, and went into the kitchen.

There she busied herself with the meal that was warming on a Graetz stove;

wiping her hands on her apron like a cook, she took a chipped-enamel pail

and went into the yard to fetch water.

She walked across the yard, dragging her flat feet. Her drooping

breasts wobbled lazily inside her dyed blouse. Her head was crowned with

greying hair. She was an old woman, she was dirty, she regarded everyone

with suspicion, and she had a sweet tooth. If Ippolit Matveyevich had seen

her now, he would never have recognized Elena Bour, his former mistress,

about whom the clerk of the court had once said in verse that "her lips were

inviting and she was so spritely!" At the well, Mrs. Bour was greeted by her

neighbour, Victor Mikhailovich Polesov, the mechanic-intellectual, who was

collecting water in an empty petrol tin. Polesov had the face of an operatic

Mephistopheles who is carefully rubbed with burnt cork just before he goes

on stage.

As soon as they had exchanged greetings, the neighbours got down to a

discussion of the affair concerning the whole of Stargorod.

"What times we live in!" said Polesov ironically. "Yesterday I went all

over the town but couldn't find any three-eighths-inch dies anywhere. There

were none available. And to think-they're going to open a tramline!"

Elena Stanislavovna, who had as much idea about three-eighths-inch dies

as a student of the Leonardo da Vinci ballet school, who thinks that cream

comes from cream tarts, expressed her sympathy.

"The shops we have now! Nothing but long queues. And the names of the

shops are so dreadful. Stargiko!"

"But I'll tell you something else, Elena Stanislavovna. They have four

General Electric engines left. And they just about work, although the bodies

are junk. The windows haven't any shock absorbers. I've seen them myself.

The whole lot rattles. Horrible! And the other engines are from Kharkov.

Made entirely by the State Non-Ferrous Metallurgy Industry."

The mechanic stopped talking in irritation. His black face glistened in

the sun. The whites of his eyes were yellowish. Among the artisans owning

cars in Stargorod, of whom there were many, Victor Polesov was the most

gauche, and most frequently made an ass of himself. The reason for this was

his over-ebullient nature. He was an ebullient idler. He was forever

effervescing. In his own workshop in the second yard of no. 7 Pereleshinsky

Street, he was never to be found. Extinguished portable furnaces stood

deserted in the middle of his stone shed, the corners of which were

cluttered up with punctured tyres, torn Triangle tyre covers, rusty padlocks

(so enormous you could have locked town gates with them), fuel cans with the

names "Indian" and "Wanderer", a sprung pram, a useless dynamo, rotted

rawhide belts, oil-stained rope, worn emery paper, an Austrian bayonet, and

a great deal of other broken, bent and dented junk. Clients could never find

Victor Mikhailovich. He was always out somewhere giving orders. He had no

time for work. It was impossible for him to stand by and watch a horse . and

cart drive into his or anyone else's yard. He immediately went out and,

clasping his hands behind his back, watched the carter's actions with

contempt. Finally he could bear it no longer.

"Where do you think you're going?" he used to shout in a horrified

voice. "Move over!"

The startled carter would move the cart over.

"Where do you think you're moving to, wretch?" Victor Polesov cried,

rushing up to the horse. "In the old days you would have got a slap for

that, then you would have moved over."

Having given orders in this way for half an hour or so, Polesov would

be just about to return to his workshop, where a broken bicycle pump awaited

repair, when the peaceful life of the town would be disturbed by some other

contretemps. Either two carts entangled their axles in the street and Victor

Mikhailovich would show the best and quickest way to separate them, or

workmen would be replacing a telegraph pole and Polesov would check that it

was perpendicular with his own plumb-line brought specially from the

workshop; or, finally, the fire-engine would go past and Polesov, excited by

the noise of the siren and burned up with curiosity, would chase after it.

But from time to time Polesov was seized by a mood of practical

activity. For several days he used to shut himself up in his workshop and

toil in silence. Children ran freely about the yard and shouted what they

liked, carters described circles in the yard, carts completely stopped

entangling their axles and fire-engines and hearses sped to the fire

unaccompanied-Victor Mikhailovich was working. One day, after a bout of this

kind, he emerged from the workshop with a motor-cycle, pulling it like a ram

by the horns; the motor-cycle was made up of parts of cars,

fire-extinguishers, bicycles and typewriters. It had a one-and-a-half

horsepower Wanderer engine and Davidson wheels, while the other essential

parts had lost the name of the original maker. A piece of cardboard with the

words "Trial Run" hung on a cord from the saddle. A crowd gathered. Without

looking at anyone, Victor Mikhailovich gave the pedal a twist with his hand.

There was no spark for at least ten minutes, but then came a metallic

splutter and the contraption shuddered and enveloped itself in a cloud of

filthy smoke. Polesov jumped into the saddle, and the motor-cycle,

accelerating madly, carried him through the tunnel into the middle of the

roadway and stopped dead. Polesov was about to get off and investigate the

mysterious vehicle when it suddenly reversed and, whisking its creator

through the same tunnel, stopped at its original point of departure in the

yard, grunted peevishly, and blew up. Victor Mikhailovich escaped by a

miracle and during the next bout of activity used the bits of the

motor-cycle to make a stationary engine, very similar to a real one-except

that it did not work.

The crowning glory of the mechanic-intellectual's academic activity was

the epic of the gates of building no. 5, next door. The housing co-operative

that owned the building signed a contract with Victor Polesov under which he

undertook to repair the iron gates and paint them any colour he liked. For

its part, the housing co-operative agreed to pay Victor Mikhailovich Polesov

the sum of twenty-one roubles, seventy-five kopeks, subject to approval by a

special committee. The official stamps were charged to the contractor.

Victor Mikhailovich carried off the gates like Samson. He set to work

in his shop with enthusiasm. It took several days to un-rivet the gates.

They were taken to pieces. Iron curlicues lay in the pram; iron bars and

spikes were piled under the work-bench. It took another few days to inspect

the damage. Then a great disaster occurred in the town. A water main burst

on Drovyanaya Street, and Polesov spent the rest of the week at the scene of

the misfortune, smiling ironically, shouting at the workmen, and every few

minutes looking into the hole in the ground.

As soon as his organizational ardour had somewhat abated, Polesov

returned to his gates, but it was too late. The children from the yard were

already playing with the iron curlicues and spikes of the gates of no. 5.

Seeing the wrathful mechanic, the children dropped their playthings and

fled. Half the curlicues were missing and were never found. After that

Polesov lost interest in the gates.

But then terrible things began to happen in no. 5, which was now wide

open to all. The wet linen was stolen from the attics, and one evening

someone even carried off a samovar that was singing in the yard. Polesov

himself took part in the pursuit, but the thief ran at quite a pace, even

though he was holding the steaming samovar in front of him, and looking over

his shoulder, covered Victor Mikhailovich, who was in the lead, with foul

abuse. The one who suffered most, however, was the yard-keeper from no. 5.

He lost his nightly wage since there were now no gates, there was nothing to

open, and residents returning from a spree had no one to give a tip to. At

first the yard-keeper kept coming to ask if the gates would soon be

finished; then he tried praying, and finally resorted to vague threats. The

housing cooperative sent Polesov written reminders, and there was talk of

taking the matter to court. The situation had grown more and more tense.

Standing by the well, the fortune-teller and the mechanic-enthusiast

continued their conversation.

"Given the absence of seasoned sleepers," cried Victor Mikhailovich for

the whole yard to hear, "it won't be a tramway, but sheer misery!"

"When will all this end!" said Elena Stanislavovna. "We live like

savages!"

"There's no end to it. . . . Yes. Do you know who I saw today?

Vorobyaninov."

In her amazement Elena Stanislavovna leaned against the wall,

continuing to hold the full pail of water in mid-air.

"I had gone to the communal-services building to extend my contract for

the hire of the workshop and was going down the corridor when suddenly two

people came towards me. One of them seemed familiar; he looked like

Vorobyaninov. Then they asked me what the building had been in the old days.

I told them it used to be a girls' secondary school, and later became the

housing division. I asked them why they wanted to know, but they just said,

Thanks' and went off. Then I saw clearly that it really was Vorobyaninov,

only without his moustache. The other one with him was a fine-looking

fellow. Obviously a former officer. And then I thought. . ."

At that moment Victor Mikhailovich noticed something unpleasant.

Breaking off what he was saying, he grabbed his can and promptly hid behind

the dustbin. Into the yard sauntered the yard-keeper from no. 5. He stopped

by the well and began looking round at the buildings. Not seeing Polesov

anywhere, he asked sadly:

"Isn't Vick the mechanic here yet?"

"I really don't know," said the fortune-teller. "I don't know at all."

And with unusual nervousness she hurried off to her apartment, spilling

water from the pail.

The yard-keeper stroked the cement block at the top of the well and

went over to the workshop. Two paces beyond the sign:

 


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 844


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