The Twelve Chairs (24 page)

Persidsky  the  reporter  was  busily  preparing for  the two-hundredth
anniversary of the great mathematician Isaac Newton.
While the work  was in full swing, Steve came in from Science and Life.
A plump citizeness trailed after him.
"Listen, Persidsky," said  Steve,  "this citizeness has come to see you
about something. This way, please, lady. The comrade will explain to you."
Chuckling to himself, Steve left.
"Well?" asked Persidsky. "What can I do for you?"
Madame Gritsatsuyev  (it  was  she)  fixed her  yearning  eyes  on  the
reporter and silently handed him a piece of paper.
"So," said Persidsky, "knocked down by a horse . . . What about it?"
"The  address," beseeched the widow, "wouldn't it  be possible to  have
the address?"
"Whose address?"
"O. Bender's."
"How should I know it? "
"But the comrade said you would."
"I have no idea of it. Ask the receptionist."
"Couldn't you remember, Comrade? He was wearing yellow boots."
"I'm wearing  yellow  boots  myself.  In Moscow there are  two  hundred
thousand  people  wearing  yellow   boots.  Perhaps  you'd  like  all  their
addresses? By all means. I'll leave what I'm doing and do it for you. In six
months' time you'll know them all. I'm busy, citizeness."
But the widow  felt great respect for Persidsky and  followed him  down
the corridor, rustling her starched petticoat and repeating her requests.
That son of a  bitch, Steve, thought Persidsky. All  right, then,  I'll
set the inventor of perpetual motion on him. That will make him jump.
"What can I do about it?" said Persidsky irritably, halting in front of
the widow. "How  do I know the  address  of Citizen O. Bender? Who am I, the
horse that  knocked him down? Or the cab-driver he punched in the back-in my
presence?"
The  widow  answered  with a  vague  rumbling from  which it  was  only
possible to decipher the words "Comrade" and "Please".
Activities  in  the House of  the  Peoples  had already  finished.  The
offices and corridors had emptied. Somewhere  a typewriter was polishing off
a final page.
"Sorry, madam, can't you see I'm busy?"
With these words  Persidsky hid in the lavatory.  Ten minutes  later he
gaily emerged. Widow Gritsatsuyev  was patiently rustling  her  petticoat at
the  corner  of  two corridors. As Persidsky approached, she  began  talking
again.
The reporter grew furious.
"All right,  auntie," he  said, "I'll tell you where your Bender is. Go
straight  down the corridor, turn right, and then continue  straight. You'll
see a door. Ask Cherepennikov. He ought to know."
And, satisfied with his fabrication, Persidsky  disappeared  so quickly
that  the  starched  widow had  no time  to  ask  for  further  information.
Straightening her petticoat, Madame Gritsatsuyev went down the corridor.
The  corridors of the  House of  the Peoples were so  long and | narrow
that people walking  down  them inevitably  quickened their pace. You  could
tell from  anyone  who passed how far they had come. If they walked slightly
faster than normal, it meant the marathon had only just begun. Those who had
already completed two  or three corridors developed a fairly fast  trot. And
from time to  time  it was  possible  to see someone running  along  at full
speed; he had reached the  five-corridor stage. A citizen who had gone eight
corridors could  easily  compete  with a bird, racehorse or Nurmi, the world
champion runner.
Turning to the  right, the  widow Gritsatsuyev began running. The floor
creaked.
Coming  towards her  at  a  rapid  pace  was  a brown-haired  man in  a
light-blue waistcoat and crimson boots.  From Ostap's  face it was clear his
visit to the House of the Peoples at  so late  an hour I was necessitated by
the  urgent affairs  of the concession.  The | technical adviser's plans had
evidently not envisaged an encounter with his loved one.
At the  sight  of the widow,  Ostap about-faced  and,  without  looking
around, went back, keeping close to the wall.
"Comrade Bender," cried the widow in delight. "Where are you going? "
The smooth operator increased his speed. So did the widow.
"Listen to me," she called.
But her words  did not  reach  Ostap's ears.  He heard the sighing  and
whistling  of the wind.  He tore  down the fourth corridor and  hurtled down
flights of  iron  stairs. All he left for his  loved  one  was an echo which
repeated the starcase noises for some time.
"Thanks,"  muttered  Ostap,  sitting down on the  ground  on the  fifth
floor. "A fine time for a rendezvous. Who invited the  passionate lady here?
It's  time to liquidate the Moscow branch of the concession, or else I might
find that self-employed mechanic here as well."
At that  moment,  Widow Gritsatsuyev,  separated from  Ostap  by  three
storeys, thousands of doors and dozens of corridors, wiped her hot face with
the edge of  her petticoat and  set off again.  She  intended  to  find  her
husband as quickly as possible and  have it out with him. The corridors were
lit with dim lights. All the lights,  corridors and doors were the same. But
soon she began to feel terrified and only wanted to get away.
Conforming  to  the  corridor progression,  she  hurried  along  at  an
ever-increasing rate. Half an hour later  it was impossible to stop her. The
doors  of  presidiums, secretariats, union  committee  rooms, administration
sections and editorial offices flew open with a crash on  either side of her
bulky body. She upset ash-trays as she went with her iron skirts.  The trays
rolled after her with the clatter  of  saucepans.  Whirlwinds and whirlpools
formed at the ends of  the  corridors. Ventilation windows flapped. Pointing
fingers stencilled on the walls dug into the poor widow.
She finally found herself on a  stairway landing. It was dark,  but the
widow  overcame her fear, ran down, and pulled at a glass door. The door was
locked. The widow hurried back, but the door through which she had just come
had just been locked by someone's thoughtful hand.
In Moscow they like to lock doors.
Thousands of  front  entrances  are  boarded up  from  the inside,  and
thousands of citizens find their  way into their apartments through the back
door.  The year 1918 has long  since  passed; the concept of a "raid on  the
apartment" has long since become something vague; the apartment-house guard,
organized  for  purposes  of  security,  has  long  since vanished;  traffic
problems are being solved; enormous power stations are being built  and very
great scientific discoveries are  being made, but there is  no one to devote
his life to studying the problem of the closed door.
Where is the man who  will solve the enigma of  the  cinemas, theatres,
and circuses?
Three thousand members of the public have ten minutes in which to enter
the  circus through  one  single  doorway,  half  of  which  is closed.  The
remaining ten doors designed to accommodate large crowds of people are shut.
Who knows why they are shut? It  may be that twenty years  ago  a performing
donkey  was stolen from the circus stable and ever since the  management has
been walling up convenient entrances and exits in  fear. Or  perhaps at some
time  a famous queen  of the air  felt  a draught  and  the closed doors are
merely a repercussion of the scene she caused.
The  public is  allowed  into  theatres and  cinemas in  small batches,
supposedly to avoid bottlenecks.  It is quite easy to avoid bottlenecks; all
you  have  to do is  open  the  numerous  exits.  But  instead of  that  the
management  uses  force; the attendants link arms and form a living barrier,
and in this way keep the public at bay for at  least half an hour. While the
doors, the cherished doors, closed as far back as Peter the Great, are still
shut.
Fifteen thousand football fans elated  by  the superb  play  of a crack
Moscow team are forced  to squeeze their way to  the tram through a crack so
narrow  that  one  lightly  armed  warrior  could  hold  off  forty thousand
barbarians supported by two battering rams.
A sports stadium  does not have a roof, but it does have several exits.
All that is open is a wicket gate. You can get out  only by breaking through
the main gates. They are always broken after every great sporting event. But
so great is the  desire  to keep up the sacred tradition, they are carefully
repaired each time and firmly shut again.
If there is no  chance  of hanging a door (which happens when  there is
nothing on which to hang it), hidden doors of all kinds come into play:
1. Rails
2. Barriers
3. Upturned benches
4. Warning signs
5. Rope
Rails are very common in government offices.
They prevent access to the official you want to see.
The visitor walks up and down the rail like a tiger, trying  to attract
attention by making signs. This  does not always  work. The visitor may have
brought  a  useful invention! He might  only want to pay his income tax. But
the rail is in  the way. The unknown invention is  left outside; and the tax
is left unpaid.
Barriers are used on the street.
They  are set up in spring on a noisy main street, supposedly to  fence
off the part of the pavement  being repaired. And the noisy street instantly
becomes deserted.  Pedestrians  filter through to their  destinations  along
other streets. Each day they have to go an extra half-mile, but hope springs
eternal.  The summer  passes. The leaves  wither.  And the  barrier is still
there. The repairs have not been done. And the street is deserted.
Upturned benches  are used to block  the  entrances to gardens  in  the
centre of the Moscow squares, which on account of the disgraceful negligence
of the builders have not been fitted with strong gateways.
A whole book could be written about warning signs, but that  is not the
intention of the authors at present.
The signs are of two types-direct and indirect:

These notices are sometimes hung on the  doors  of  government  offices
visited by the public in particularly great numbers.
The indirect signs are more insidious. They do not  prohibit entry; but
rare is the adventurer  who will risk exercising his rights. Here they  are,
those shameful signs:

Wherever it  is  impossible  to  place rails or  barriers, to  overturn
benches or hang up warning signs, ropes are used. They  are stretched across
your path according to mood, and in the  most unexpected places. If they are
stretched  at chest level they cause no  more  than slight shock and nervous
laughter. But when stretched at ankle level they can cripple you for life.
To hell with doors! To hell with queues outside theatres.  Allow us  to
go in without business. We implore you to  remove the barrier set up by  the
thoughtless  apartment superintendent on the pavement by his door. There are
the upturned  benches!  Put  them  the right  side  up!  It  is precisely at
night-time that it is so nice to sit in the gardens in the squares. The  air
is clear and clever thoughts come to mind.
Sitting on the  landing by the locked glass  door in the very centre of
the House of the  Peoples,  Mrs. Gritsatsuyev contemplated her widow's  lot,
dozed off from time to time, and waited for morning.
The yellow light of  the  ceiling lamps poured on to the widow  through
the glass door from the illuminated corridor. The ashen morn made its way in
through the window of the stairway.
It was that  quiet hour when the morning is fresh  and young. It was at
this hour that the widow heard footsteps  in the  corridor. The widow jumped
up and pressed against the  glass.  She caught a glimpse of a blue waistcoat
at the end of the corridor.  The crimson  boots were dusty with plaster. The
flighty son of a Turkish citizen approached the glass door, brushing a speck
of dust from the sleeve of his jacket.
"Bunny!" called the widow. "Bun-ny!"
She breathed on the glass with unspeakable tenderness. The glass misted
over and made rainbow circles. Beyond  the mistiness and  rainbows glimmered
blue and raspberry-coloured spectres.
Ostap did not hear the widow's cooing. He scratched his back and turned
his head anxiously. Another second and he would have been around the corner.
With  a groan of  "Comrade Bender", the poor wife began drumming on the
window. The smooth operator turned around.
"Oh,"  he said, seeing he was separated from the widow by a glass door,
"are you here, too?"
"Yes, here, here," uttered the widow joyfully.
"Kiss me, honey,"  the technical adviser invited. "We haven't seen each
other for such a long time!"
The widow was in a frenzy. She hopped up  and down behind the door like
a finch  in a cage. The petticoat which had been silent for  the night began
to rustle loudly. Ostap spread his arms.
"Why don't you  come to  me,  my little hen? Your Pacific rooster is so
tired after the meeting of the Junior Council of Ministers."
The widow had no imagination.
"Bunny,"  she  called  for  the fifth time,  "open  the  door,  Comrade
Bender."
"Hush, girl!  Modesty becomes a  woman.  What's  all the  jumping about
for?"
The widow was in agony.
"Why are  you torturing yourself?" asked Ostap.  "Who's  preventing you
from living? "
The widow burst into tears.
"Wipe your eyes, Citizeness. Every  one  of your tears is a molecule in
the cosmos."
"But I've  been waiting and waiting. I closed  down the shop. I've come
for you, Comrade Bender."
"And how does it feel on the stairs? Not draughty, I hope?"
The widow slowly began to seethe like a huge monastery samovar. ,
"Traitor!" she spat out with a shudder.
Ostap  had a little time left.  He  clicked  his fingers  and,  swaying
rhythmically, crooned:
"We all go through times
When the devil's beside us,
When a young woman's charms
Arouse passion inside us."
"Drop dead!" advised the  widow at the end of the dance. "You  stole my
bracelet, a present from my husband. And why did you take the chair? "
"Now you're getting personal," Ostap observed coldly.
"You stole, you stole!" repeated the widow.
"Listen,  girl. Just remember  for future  reference that  Ostap Bender
never stole anything in his life."
"Then who took the tea-strainer?"
"Ah, the tea-strainer! From your non-liquid fund. And you consider that
theft? In that case our views on life are diametrically opposed."
"You took it," clucked the widow.
"So if a young and healthy man borrows  from a provincial grandmother a
kitchen utensil for  which she has no need on account of poor health, he's a
thief, is he? Is that what you mean?"
"Thief! Thief!"
The widow threw  herself  against  the door.  The  glass rattled. Ostap
realized it was time to go.
"I've no  time to kiss you," he said. "Good-bye,  beloved. We've parted
like ships at sea."
"Help!" screeched the widow.
But Ostap was already at the end of the corridor.  He climbed on to the
windowsill  and dropped heavily to the ground,  moist after the night  rain,
and hid in the glistening playgrounds.
The  widow's  cries  brought  the  night  watchman.  He  let  her  out,
threatening to have her fined.