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