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INDIA Geography
On a rainy day in October, Ippolit Matveyevich, in his silver star-spangled waistcoat and without a jacket, was working busily in Ivanopulo's room. He was working at the windowsill, since there still was no table in the room. The smooth operator had been commissioned to paint a large number of address plates for various housing co-operatives. The stencilling of the plates had been passed on to Vorobyaninov, while Ostap, for almost the whole of the month since their return to Moscow, had cruised round the area of the October Station looking with incredible avidity for clues to the last chair, which undoubtedly contained Madame Petukhov's jewels. Wrinkling his brow, Ippolit Matveyevich stencilled away at the iron plates. During the six months of the jewel race he had lost certain of his habits. At night Ippolit Matveyevich dreamed about mountain ridges adorned with weird transparents, Iznurenkov, who hovered in front of him, shaking his brown thighs, boats that capsized, people who drowned, bricks falling out of the sky, and ground that heaved and poured smoke into his eyes. Ostap had not observed the change in Vorobyaninov, for he was with him every day. Ippolit Matveyevich, however, had changed in a remarkable way. Even his gait was different; the expression of his eyes had become wild and his long moustache was no longer parallel to the earth's surface, but drooped almost vertically, like that of an aged cat. He had also altered inwardly. He had developed determination and cruelty, which were traits of character unknown to him before. Three episodes had gradually brought out these streaks in him: the miraculous escape from the hard fists of the Vasyuki enthusiasts, his debut in the field of begging in the Flower Garden at Pyatigorsk, and, finally, the earthquake, since which Ippolit Matveyevich had become somewhat unhinged and harboured a secret loathing for his partner. Ippolit Matveyevich had recently been seized by the strongest suspicions. He was afraid that Ostap would open the chair without him and make off with the treasure, abandoning him to his own fate. He did not dare voice these suspicions, knowing Ostap's strong arm and iron will. But each day, as he sat at the window scraping off surplus paint with an old, jagged razor, Ippolit Matveyevich wondered. Every day he feared that Ostap would not come back and that he, a former marshal of the nobility, would die of starvation under some wet Moscow wall. Ostap nevertheless returned each evening, though he never brought any good news. His energy and good spirits were inexhaustible. Hope never deserted him for a moment. There was a sound of running footsteps in the corridor and someone crashed into the cabinet; the plywood door flew open with the ease of a page turned by the wind, and in the doorway stood the smooth operator. His clothes were soaked, and his cheeks glowed like apples. He was panting. "Ippolit Matveyevich!" he shouted. "Ippolit Matveyevich!" Vorobyaninov was startled. Never before had the technical adviser called him by his first two names. Then he cottoned on. . . . "It's there?" he gasped. "You're dead right, it's there, Pussy. Damn you." "Don't shout. Everyone will hear." "That's right, they might hear," whispered Ostap. "It's there, Pussy, and if you want, I can show it to you right away. It's in the railway-workers' club, a new one. It was opened yesterday. How did I find it? Was it child's play? It was singularly difficult. A stroke of genius, brilliantly carried through to the end. An ancient adventure. In a word, first rate!" Without waiting for Ippolit Matveyevich to pull on his jacket, Ostap ran to the corridor. Vorobyaninov joined him on the landing. Excitedly shooting questions at one another, they both hurried along the wet streets to Kalanchev Square. They did not even think of taking a tram. "You're dressed like a navvy," said Ostap jubilantly. "Who goes about like that, Pussy? You should have starched underwear, silk socks, and, of course, a top hat. There's something noble about your face. Tell me, were you really a marshal of the nobility?" Pointing out the chair, which was standing in the chess-room, and looked a perfectly normal Hambs chair, although it contained such untold wealth, Ostap pulled Ippolit Matveyevich into the corridor. There was no one about. Ostap went up to a window that had not yet been sealed for the winter and drew back the bolts on both sets of frames. "Through this window," he said, "we can easily get into the club at any time of the night. Remember, Pussy, the third window from the front entrance." For a while longer the friends wandered about the club, pretending to be railway-union representatives, and were more and more amazed by the splendid halls and rooms. "If I had played the match in Vasyuki," said Ostap, "sitting on a chair like this, I wouldn't have lost a single game. My enthusiasm would have prevented it. Anyway, let's go, old man. I have twenty-five roubles. We ought to have a glass of beer and relax before our nocturnal visitation. The idea of beer doesn't shock you, does it, marshal? No harm. Tomorrow you can lap up champagne in unlimited quantities." By the time they emerged from the beer-hall, Bender was thoroughly enjoying himself and made taunting remarks at the passers-by. He embraced the slightly tipsy Ippolit Matveyevich round the shoulders and said lovingly: "You're an extremely nice old man, Pussy, but I'm not going to give you more than ten per cent. Honestly, I'm not. What would you want with all that money? " "What do you mean, what would I want?" Ippolit Matveyevich seethed with rage. Ostap laughed heartily and rubbed his cheek against his partner's wet sleeve. "Well, what would you buy, Pussy? You haven't any imagination. Honestly, fifteen thousand is more than enough for you. You'll soon die, you're so old. You don't need any money at all. You know, Pussy, I don't think I'll give you anything. I don't want to spoil you. I'll take you on as a secretary, Pussy my lad. What do you say? Forty roubles a month and all your grub. You get work clothes, tips, and national health. Well, is it a deal?" Ippolit Matveyevich tore his arm free and quickly walked ahead. Jokes like that exasperated him. Ostap caught him up at the entrance to the little pink house. "Are you really mad at me?" asked Ostap. "I was only joking. You'll get your three per cent. Honestly, three per cent is all you need, Pussy." Ippolit Matveyevich sullenly entered the room. "Well, Pussy, take three per cent." Ostap was having fun. "Come on, take three. Anyone else would. You don't have any rooms to rent. It's a blessing Ivanopulo has gone to Tver for a whole year. Anyway, come and be my valet. . . an easy job." Seeing that Ippolit Matveyevich could not be baited, Ostap yawned sweetly, stretched himself, almost touching the ceiling as he filled his broad chest with air, and said: "Well, friend, make your pockets ready. We'll go to the club just before dawn. That's the best time. The watchmen are asleep, having sweet dreams, for which they get fired without severance pay. In the meantime, chum, I advise you to have a nap." Ostap stretched himself out on the three chairs, acquired from different corners of Moscow, and said, as he dozed off: "Or my valet . . . a decent salary. No, I was joking. . . . The hearing's continued. Things are moving, gentlemen of the jury." Those were the smooth operator's last words. He fell into a deep, refreshing sleep, untroubled by dreams. Ippolit Matveyevich went out into the street. He was full of desperation and cold fury. The moon hopped about among the banks of cloud. The wet railings of the houses glistened greasily. In the street the flickering gas lamps were encircled by halos of moisture. A drunk was being thrown out of the Eagle beer-hall. He began bawling. Ippolit Matveyevich frowned and went back inside. His one wish was to finish the whole business as soon as possible. He went back into the room, looked grimly at the sleeping Ostap, wiped his pince-nez and took up the razor from the window sill. There were still some dried scales of oil paint on its jagged edge. He put the razor in his pocket, walked past Ostap again, without looking at him, but listening to his breathing, and then went out into the corridor. It was dark and sleepy out there. Everyone had evidently gone to bed. In the pitch darkness of the corridor Ippolit Matveyevich suddenly smiled in the most evil way, and felt the skin creep on his forehead. To test this new sensation he smiled again. He suddenly remembered a boy at school who had been able to move his ears. Ippolit Matveyevich went as far as the stairs and listened carefully. There was no one there. From the street came the drumming of a carthorse's hooves, intentionally loud and clear as though someone was counting on an abacus. As stealthily as a cat, the marshal went back into the room, removed twenty-five roubles and the pair of pliers from Ostap's jacket hanging on the back of a chair, put on his own yachting cap, and again listened intently. Ostap was sleeping quietly. His nose and lungs were working perfectly, smoothly inhaling and exhaling air. A brawny arm hung down to the floor. Conscious of the second-long pulses in his temple, Ippolit Matveyevich slowly rolled up his right sleeve above the elbow and bound a wafer-patterned towel around his bare arm; he stepped back to the door, took the razor out of his pocket, and gauging the position of the furniture in the room turned the switch. The light went out, but the room was still lit by a bluish aquarium-like light from the street lamps. "So much the better," whispered Ippolit Matveyevich. He approached the back of the chair and, drawing back his hand with the razor, plunged the blade slantways into Ostap's throat, pulled it out, and jumped backward towards the wall. The smooth operator gave a gurgle like a kitchen sink sucking down the last water. Ippolit Matveyevich managed to avoid being splashed with blood. Wiping the wall with his jacket, he stole towards the blue door, and for a brief moment looked back at Ostap. His body had arched twice and slumped against the backs of the chairs. The light from the street moved across a black puddle forming on the floor. What is that puddle? wondered Vorobyaninov. Oh, yes, it's blood. Comrade Bender is dead. He unwound the slightly stained towel, threw it aside, carefully put the razor on the floor, and left, closing the door quietly. Finding himself in the street, Vorobyaninov scowled and, muttering "The jewels are all mine, not just six per cent," went off to Kalanchev Square. He stopped at the third window from the front entrance to the railway club. The mirrorlike windows of the new club shone pearl-grey in the approaching dawn. Through the damp air came the muffled voices of goods trains. Ippolit Matveyevich nimbly scrambled on to the ledge, pushed the frames, and silently dropped into the corridor. Finding his way without difficulty through the grey pre-dawn halls of the club, he reached the chess-room and went over to the chair, bumping his head on a portrait of Lasker hanging on the wall. He was in no hurry. There was no point in it. No one was after him. Grossmeister Bender was asleep for ever in the little pink house. Ippolit Matveyevich sat down on the floor, gripped the chair between his sinewy legs, and with the coolness of a dentist, began extracting the tacks, not missing a single one. His work was complete at the sixty-second tack. The English chintz and canvas lay loosely on top of the stuffing. He had only to lift them to see the caskets, boxes, and cases containing the precious stones. Straight into a car, thought Ippolit Matveyevich, who had learned the facts of life from the smooth operator, then to the station, and on to the Polish frontier. For a small gem they should get me across, then . . . And desiring to find out as soon as possible what would happen then, Ippolit Matveyevich pulled away the covering from the chair. Before his eyes were springs, beautiful English springs, and stuffing, wonderful pre-war stuffing, the like of which you never see nowadays. But there was nothing else in the chair. Ippolit Matveyevich mechanically turned the chair inside out and sat for a whole hour clutching it between his legs and repeating in a dull voice: "Why isn't there anything there? It can't be right. It can't be." It was almost light when Vorobyaninov, leaving everything as it was in the chess-room and forgetting the pliers and his yachting cap with the gold insignia of a non-existent yacht club, crawled tired, heavy and unobserved through the window into the street. "It can't be right," he kept repeating, having walked a block away. "It can't be right." Then he returned to the club and began wandering up and down by the large windows, mouthing the words: "It can't be right. It can't be." From time to time he let out a shriek and seized hold of his head, wet from the morning mist. Remembering the events of that night, he shook his dishevelled grey hair. The excitement of the jewels was too much for him; he had withered in five minutes. "There's all kinds come here!" said a voice by his ear, He saw in front of him a watchman in canvas work-clothes and poor quality boots. He was very old and evidently friendly. "They keep comin'," said the old man politely, tired of his nocturnal solitude. "And you, comrade, are interested. That's right. Our club's kind of unusual." Ippolit Matveyevich looked ruefully at the red-cheeked old man. "Yes, sir," said the old man, "a very unusual club; there ain't another like it." "And what's so unusual about it?" asked Ippolit Matveyevich, trying to gather his wits. The little old man beamed at Vorobyaninov. The story of the unusual club seemed to please him, and he liked to retell it. "Well, it's like this," began the old man, "I've been a watchman here for more'n ten years, and nothing like that ever happened. Listen, soldier boy! Well, there used to be a club here, you know the one, for workers in the first transportation division. I used to be the watchman. A no-good club it was. They heated and heated and couldn't do anythin'. Then Comrade Krasilnikov comes to me and asks, 'Where's all that firewood goin'?' Did he think I was eatin' it or somethin"? Comrade Krasilnikov had a job with that club, he did. They asked for five years' credit for a new club, but I don't know what became of it. They didn't allow the credit. Then, in the spring, Comrade Krasilnikov bought a new chair for the stage, a good soft'n." With his whole body close to the watchman's, Ippolit Matveyevich listened. He was only half conscious, as the watchman, cackling with laughter, told how he had once clambered on to the chair to put in a new bulb and missed his footing. "I slipped off the chair and the coverin' was torn off. So I look round and see bits of glass and beads on a string come pouring out." "Beads?" repeated Ippolit Matveyevich. "Beads!" hooted the old man with delight. "And I look, soldier boy, and there are all sorts of little boxes. I didn't touch 'em. I went straight to Comrade Krasilnikov and reported it. And that's what I told the committee afterwards. I didn't touch the boxes, I didn't. And a good thing I didn't, soldier boy. Because jewellery was found in 'em, hidden by the bourgeois. . . ." "Where are the jewels?" cried the marshal. "Where, where?" the watchman imitated him. "Here they are, soldier boy, use your imagination! Here they are." "Where?" "Here they are!" cried the ruddy-faced old man, enjoying the effect. "Wipe your eyes. The club was built with them, soldier boy. You see? It's the club. Central heating, draughts with timing-clocks, a buffet, theatre; you aren't allowed inside in your galoshes." Ippolit Matveyevich stiffened and, without moving, ran his eyes over the ledges. So that was where it was. Madame Petukhov's treasure. There. All of it. A hundred and fifty thousand roubles, zero zero kopeks, as Ostap Suleiman Bertha Maria Bender used to say. The jewels had turned into a solid frontage of glass and ferroconcrete floors. Cool gymnasiums had been made from the pearls. The diamond diadem had become a theatre-auditorium with a revolving stage; the ruby pendants had grown into chandeliers; the serpent bracelets had been transformed into a beautiful library, and the clasp had metamorphosed into a creche, a glider workshop, a chess and billiards room. The treasures remained; it had been preserved and had even grown. It could be touched with the hand, though not taken away. It had gone into the service of new people. Ippolit Matveyevich felt the granite facing. The coldness of the stone penetrated deep into his heart. And he gave a cry. It was an insane, impassioned wild cry-the cry of a vixen shot through the body-it flew into the centre of the square, streaked under the bridge, and, rebuffed everywhere by the sounds of the waking city, began fading and died away in a moment. A marvellous autumn morning slipped from the wet roof-tops into the Moscow streets. The city set off on its daily routine.
INDIA Geography India comprises the bulk of the Indian subcontinent and lies atop the minor Indian tectonic plate, which in turn belongs to the Indo-Australian Plate.[108] India's defining geological processes commenced 75 million years ago when the Indian subcontinent, then part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, began a north-eastward drift across the then-unformed Indian Ocean that lasted fifty million years.[108] The subcontinent's subsequent collision with, and subduction under, the Eurasian Plate bore aloft the planet's highest mountains, the Himalayas. They abut India in the north and the north-east.[108] In the former seabed immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement created a vast trough that has gradually filled with river-borne sediment;[109] it now forms the Indo-Gangetic Plain.[110] To the west lies the Thar Desert, which is cut off by the Aravalli Range.[111] The original Indian plate survives as peninsular India, which is the oldest and geologically most stable part of India; it extends as far north as the Satpura and Vindhya ranges in central India. These parallel chains run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-rich Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east.[112] To the south, the remaining peninsular landmass, the Deccan Plateau, is flanked on the west and east by coastal ranges known as the Western and Eastern Ghats;[113] the plateau contains the nation's oldest rock formations, some of them over one billion years old. Constituted in such fashion, India lies to the north of the equator between 6° 44' and 35° 30' north latitude[e] and 68° 7' and 97° 25' east longitude.[114]
India's coastline measures 7,517 kilometres (4,700 mi) in length; of this distance, 5,423 kilometres (3,400 mi) belong to peninsular India and 2,094 kilometres (1,300 mi) to the Andaman, Nicobar, and Lakshadweep island chains.[115] According to the Indian naval hydrographic charts, the mainland coastline consists of the following: 43% sandy beaches; 11% rocky shores, including cliffs; and 46% mudflats or marshy shores.[115] Major Himalayan-origin rivers that substantially flow through India include the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, both of which drain into the Bay of Bengal.[116] Important tributaries of the Ganges include the Yamuna and the Kosi; the latter's extremely low gradient often leads to severe floods and course changes.[117] Major peninsular rivers, whose steeper gradients prevent their waters from flooding, include the Godavari, the Mahanadi, the Kaveri, and the Krishna, which also drain into the Bay of Bengal;[118] and the Narmada and the Tapti, which drain into the Arabian Sea.[119] Coastal features include the marshy Rann of Kutch of western India and the alluvial Sundarbans delta of eastern India; the latter is shared with Bangladesh.[120] India has two archipelagos: the Lakshadweep, coral atolls off India's south-western coast; and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a volcanic chain in the Andaman Sea.[121] The Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, both of which drive the economically and culturally pivotal summer and winter monsoons.[122] The Himalayas prevent cold Central Asian katabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes.[123][124] The Thar Desert plays a crucial role in attracting the moisture-laden south-west summer monsoon winds that, between June and October, provide the majority of India's rainfall.[122] Four major climatic groupings predominate in India: tropical wet, tropical dry, subtropical humid, and montane.[125] Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1074
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