Lazar Lagin: The Old Genie Hottabych

“I shall never forget your wise generosity,” Hottabych said gratefully, and they returned to the lounge. The young worker was in the midst of a really good trick. He offered anyone in the audience to choose a card, look at it, replace it, and then shuffle the deck. Then he shuffled it too, and the top card always turned out to be the right one.

After he had received his well-earned applause and returned to his seat, Hottabych asked to be permitted to entertain the gathering with several simple tricks. That’s how the boastful old man put it — simple.

Naturally, everyone agreed. They applauded before he even began.

Bowing smartly to all sides like an old-timer on the stage, Hottabych took two ping-pong balls from a table and threw them into the air. Suddenly, there were four balls; he threw them up again and they became eight, then thirty-two. He began juggling all thirty-two balls, and then they disappeared and were found to be in thirty-two pockets of thirty-two people in the audience. Then they flew out of the pockets, formed a chain and began spinning around a bowing Hottabych like sputniks until they became a white hoop. Hottabych put this large hoop on Varvara Stepanovna’s lap with a low bow. The hoop began to flatten out until it turned into a roll of excellent silk. Hottabych cut it into pieces with Volka’s pen-knife. The pieces of silk flew into the air like birds and wound themselves into turbans of remarkable beauty around the heads of the amazed audience.

Hottabych listened to the applause blissfully. Then he snapped his fingers. The turbans turned into pigeons which flew out through the open port-holes and disappeared. Everyone was now convinced that the old man in the funny oriental slippers was one of the greatest conjurors.

Hottabych wallowed in the applause. The boys knew him well enough to understand how dangerous such unanimous and exciting approval was for him.

“Just wait and see! Watch him go to town now,” Zhenya whispered in a worried voice. “I have a funny feeling, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry, we have a very strict agreement on this point.”

“One minute, my friends,” Hottabych said to the applauding passengers. “Will you permit me to…”

He yanked a single hair from his beard. Suddenly a shrill whistle sounded on deck. They could hear the heavy clatter of running feet.

“That’s the militia coming to fine someone!” Zhenya joked. “Somebody’s jumped overboard at full speed!” No one had time to laugh, because the “Ladoga” shuddered and something clanged menacingly below. For the second time that day the ship came to a stop.

“See! What did I say!” Zhenya hissed and looked at Hottabych with loathing. “He couldn’t control himself. Just look at him boast! Golly! I’ve never met a more conceited, boastful and undisciplined Genie in my whole life!”

“Are you up to your old tricks again, Hottabych? You swore yesterday that…”

There was such shouting in the lounge that Volka didn’t bother lowering his voice.

“Oh, no! No! Do not insult me with such suspicions, O serpent among boys, for I have never broken the smallest promise, to say nothing of an oath. I swear I know no more than you do about the reasons for our sudden stop.”

“A snake?” Volka shouted angrily. “Oh, so on top of everything else, I’m a snake! Thank you, Hottabych! My best merci to you!”

“Not a snake, a serpent, for know ye that a serpent is the living embodiment of wisdom.”

This time the old man was really not to blame. The “Ladoga” had lost its way in the fog and gone aground. Passengers crowded the deck, but they had difficulty in even making out the rails. However, by leaning over the side near the bow they could see the propellers churning up the dark unfriendly waters.

Half an hour passed, but all attempts to get the ship off the shoal by putting it in reverse ended in failure. Then the captain ordered the spry boatswain to pipe all on deck.

Everyone except those standing watch gathered on the spardeck. The captain said, “Comrades, this is an emergency. There’s only one way to get off the shoal under our own steam and that’s transfer the coal from the bow to the stern; then we’ll be able make free of the shoal. If everyone pitches in, it won’t take more than ten or twelve hours to do the job. The boatswain will divide you into teams. Put on your worst clothes and let’s start the ball rolling.

“You, boys, and you, Hassan Hottabych, need not worry. its is no job for you: the boys are too young and it’s a little too late for you to carry heavy loads.”

“What do you mean by saying I can’t carry heavy loads?” Hottabych replied scornfully. “Please be informed that no one present here can equal me in weight-lifting, O most respected captain.”

The other passengers began to smile.

“What an old man!” “Listen to him boast.” “Just look at that muscle-man!”

“There’s nothing to laugh at, he feels offended. It’s no fun be old.”

“See for yourself!” Hottabych shouted. He grabbed his two young friends and, to the general amazement, began juggling them as if they were plastic billiard balls stead of sturdy thirteen-year-old boys. The applause which followed was so deafening, the whole scene might very well have taken place at a weight-lifting contest and not on board a ship in danger.

“I take my words back,” the captain said solemnly after the applause had died down. “And now, let’s get to work! There’s time to waste!”

“Hottabych,” Volka said, -taking the old man off to a side “what’s the use of dragging coal from one hold to another for twelve long hours? I think you should do something to get the ship off the shoal.”

“That’s not within my powers,” the old man answered sadly “I thought of it already. Naturally, I can pull it off the rocks, but then the bottom will be all scratched and ripped, and I won’t b able to fix it, because I never saw what a ship looks like on the bottom. Then we’ll certainly drown in no time.”

“Think again, Hottabych! Maybe you’ll think of some thing!”

“I’ll try my best, O compass of my soul,” the old man replied. After a short pause he asked, “What if I make the rocks disappear?”

“Oh, Hottabych! How smart you are!” Volka said and began to shake his hand. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

“I hear and I obey.”

The first emergency team was down in the hold, loading the first iron bins with coal, when the “Ladoga” suddenly lurched and then began to spin around in a whirlpool over the spot where there had just been a shoal. In another minute, the ship would have broken to bits, had not Volka sense enough to tell Hottabych to make the whirlpool disappear. The sea became calm; the “Ladoga” spun around a while longer from sheer force of inertia. Then it continued on its way.

Once again, no one but Hottabych and Volka knew what he happened.

Ahead were more exciting days, each unlike the other, as they journeyed across little-known seas and channels, past bleak islands upon which no human foot had ever stepped. The passengers often left the ship to go ashore on deserted cliffs and on islands where polar station teams greeted them with rifle salvos. Our three friends joined the rest in climbing glaciers, wandering over the naked stones of basalt plateaux, jumping from ice-floe to ice-floe over black open patches of water, and hunting polar bears. The fearless Hottabych dragged one bear aboard the “Ladoga” by the scruff of its neck. Under his influence the animal soon became as tame and playful as a cat, and so provided many happy hours for both passengers and crew. Now the bear often tours with circuses, and many of our readers have undoubtedly seen him. His name is Kuzya.