IN MOSCOW
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A SEA OF CHAIRS
Statistics know everything.
It has been calculated with precision how much ploughland there is in
the USSR, with subdivision into black earth, loam and loess. All citizens of
both sexes have been recorded in those neat, thick registers-so familiar to
Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov-the registry office ledgers. It is known
how much of a certain food is consumed yearly by the average citizen in the
Republic. It is known how much vodka is imbibed as an average by this
average citizen, with a rough indication of the titbits consumed with it. It
is known how many hunters, ballerinas, revolving lathes, dogs of all breeds,
bicycles, monuments, girls, lighthouses and sewing machines there are in the
country.
How much life, full of fervour, emotion and thought, there is in those
statistical tables!
Who is this rosy-cheeked individual sitting at a table with a napkin
tucked into his collar and putting away the steaming victuals with such
relish? He is surrounded with herds of miniature bulls. Fattened pigs have
congregated in one corner of the statistical table. Countless numbers of
sturgeon, burbot and chekhon fish splash about in a special statistical
pool. There are hens sitting on the individual's head, hands and shoulders.
Tame geese, ducks and turkeys fly through cirrus clouds. Two rabbits are
hiding under the table. Pyramids and Towers of Babel made of bread rise
above the horizon. A small fortress of jam is washed by a river of milk. A
pickle the size of the leaning tower of Pisa appears on the horizon.
Platoons of wines, spirits and liqueurs march behind ramparts of salt and
pepper. Tottering along in the rear in a miserable bunch come the soft
drinks: the non-combatant soda waters, lemonades and wire-encased syphons.
Who is this rosy-cheeked individual-a gourmand and a tosspot-with a
sweet tooth? Gargantua, King of the Dipsodes? Silaf Voss? The legendary
soldier, Jacob Redshirt? Lucullus?
It is not Lucullus. It is Ivan Ivanovich Sidorov or Sidor Sidorovich
Ivanov-an average citizen who consumes all the victuals described in the
statistical table as an average throughout his life. He is a normal consumer
of calories and vitamins, a quiet forty-year-old bachelor, who works in a
haberdashery and knitwear shop.
You can never hide from statistics. They have exact information not
only on the number of dentists, sausage shops, syringes, caretakers, film
directors, prostitutes, thatched roofs, widows, cab-drivers and bells; they
even know how many statisticians there are in the country.
But there is one thing that they do not know.
They do not know how many chairs there are in the USSR.
There are many chairs.
The census calculated the population of the Union Republics at a
hundred and forty-three million people. If we leave aside ninety million
peasants who prefer benches, boards and earthen seats, and in the east of
the country, shabby carpets and rugs, we still have fifty million people for
whom chairs are objects of prime necessity in their everyday lives. If we
take into account possible errors in calculation and the habit of certain
citizens in the Soviet Union of sitting on the fence, and then halve the
figure just in case, we find that there cannot be less than twenty-six and a
half million chairs in the country. To make the figure truer we will take
off another six and a half million. The twenty million left is the minimum
possible number.
Amid this sea of chairs made of walnut, oak, ash, rosewood, mahogany
and Karelian birch, amid chairs made of fir and pine-wood, the heroes of
this novel are to find one Hambs walnut chair with curved legs, containing
Madame Petukhov's treasure inside its chintz-upholstered belly.
The concessionaires lay on the upper berths still asleep as the train
cautiously crossed the Oka river and, increasing its speed, began nearing
Moscow.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Date: 2015-01-02; view: 910
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