Vladimir Orlov - Danilov the Violist

One time, Georgii Nikolayevich, from house twenty-five, drunkenly tried to pick a fight with Danilov. "I'll show them!" he hollered. "All sorts try to get in everywhere! ... With beards yet!" But Georgii Nikolayevich was immediately forced to recall that he was merely a house spirit while Danilov wasn't -- he was only assigned to them.

Georgii Nikolayevich in general was despicable. Danilov was touring in Tashkent when house spirit Ivan Afanasyevich was transformed into something transparent and green, flew up with a crystal tinkle into the Ostankino sky, and was carried off to the place from which there is no return. When Danilov heard about the incident, he was upset. He had liked Ivan Afanasyevich. Danilov also knew Ekaterina Ivanovna: He had met her at the Muravlyovs' and had danced both jive and the kazachok* with her more than once. It hadn't even occurred to him that Ivan Afanasyevich lusted after her.

Ivan Afanasyevich did not have the right to love a human woman. That's why he ceased to exist. But none of this would have happened had it not been for Georgii Nikolayevich. He played a vile part in Ivan Afanasyevich's fate. Afterwards, Georgii Nikolayevich should not have dared show his face, but rather stayed somewhere in his house -- in the telephone receiver between the coil and diaphragm, or crinkled up in the form of a dry leaf for the winter in a third-grader's herbarium. But instead he behaved like a hero. As if to say, I did what I did, and they'll thank me for it yet, and your lousy job is to respect me and drink whiskey with me. And they drank whiskey with him. In silence, but they drank. "Bastard!" they thought. "If it were up to us, we'd ..." -- but they drank, supposing that in actuality Georgii Nikolayevich would be thanked. Or perhaps already had been. It grew quiet on Argunovskaya. A some sort of nervous chill had descended as if a sad hanged man had begun visiting them.

Then Danilov returned from his Tashkent tour. He hadn't been with the house spirits for a long time and decided to drop in. They told Danilov about Ivan Afanasyevich's disappearance and about Georgii Nikolayevich's baseness. The next day Danilov showed up at a meeting straight from a performance of Corsaire. He still wore his pressed tuxedo and bow tie and carried his black instrument case. He was always handsome, but now he looked just like the young Bilibin in Kustodiev's portrait. Almost solemnly, he greeted everyone with his shy smile but when Georgii Nikolayevich offered him his hand, Danilov pulled his own away. Everyone froze.

"Snub me, do you?" challenged Georgii Nikolayevich.

"I," said Danilov, "am merely observing proper hygiene."

"What am I, contagious?"

"Yes," said Danilov. "You have influenza. What's the matter, don't you feel it? Besides which, you survived the cholera of 1844. And its bacteria, as everyone knows, can survive decades -- even in ice. Well, forget the cholera. But the flu this year has serious complications."

And then Danilov opened his little case, took out a new gauze mask, and slowly, silently tied the silk straps behind his head. The starched gauze covered his nose, mouth, and beard, but he was still handsome. The house spirits rushed over to Danilov, and he handed each a face mask.

"What about me?" Georgii Nikolayevich asked piteously.

"You don't need one," Danilov said.

Georgii Nikolayevich sank into a chair and wept.

"What are you crying for?" Danilov said. "You should see a doctor."

"I lost a friend ... he dissolved up there." Georgii Nikolayevich pointed upward. "I feel sad and you're making fun of me..."

"Excuse me, which friend is this?"

"Vanya... Ivan Afanasyevich ... We spent our youth on Tretya Meshchanskaya Street, behind the church of Metropolitan Filipp... We used to play hide-and-seek... Toward the end he was living incorrectly... I told him the truth to his face ... and still he was my friend. And you're making fun of me... You ought to be ashamed of yourselves..."

"Enough of that, Georgii Nikolayevich," Danilov said. "You weren't a friend of Ivan Afanasyevich. The reason he no longer exists is that you are incapable of being anyone's friend."

Here Georgii Nikolayevich leapt up with angry eyes, now dry, and rushed toward Danilov. He grabbed his satin lapels with his huge hands, and tugged so hard that even though the material was from a good tailor, it cracked and broke in places.

"You gave yourself away! Yes, you did!" shouted Georgii Nikolayevich. "You're pulling this whole stunt because of him, that weakling! You can't do a thing to me! I'm a proper house spirit! And I'll twist you into a pretzel for today's little affair!"

"Take your hands off me," said Danilov, and instantly Georgii Nikolayevich flew toward the opposite wall, where he overturned the bridge table.

"I'll find a way to put you in your place!" Georgii Nikolayevich kept shouting. "If you are coming to us minor creatures, that means you've been demoted from the demons! You're being punished, and I know what for!"

Danilov wasn't usually prone to petty revenge, but this time he was so upset he couldn't control himself. Right there and then, by the wall, Georgii Nikolayevich got the Australian flu. He began sneezing, his temperature skyrocketed, his blood and other vital fluids began fermenting, gaseous substances precipitated in him as light blue crystals, and his nose started running.

Georgii Nikolayevich barely found the strength to leave. He turned at the doorstep, and whispered:

"You'll pay for this dearly..."

Danilov quietly untied his face mask, folded it neatly and triumphantly, as if he were a Japanese officer folding the flag in the presence of the emperor, and put it away in his case. All the house spirits took off their masks, too. Only Velizarii Arkadyevich blushed and asked if he could wear his mask for another week.

And it wasn't just that everyone cheered up, it was as if they had thrown off the ropes from their swollen wrists. Danilov was saddened by the fact that he had gotten excited and lost his self-control -- that was bad enough in itself. But, the worst part was that even his slightest gesture could bring disaster to innocent creatures, and Danilov was powerless to stop it. It had happened before. Not too long ago the Muravlyovs went off on a holiday to Planerskaya to stay in a vacation house. Actually, Muravlyov didn't like Planerskaya, he berated his wife for luring him out of town with hard-to-get travel packages, scorned the local cuisine, and one night as the mattress spring jabbed his left side, he muttered half-asleep: "I hope this place burns to the ground!" Danilov was far away, but as a free son of the ether, he received every sound and spiritual wave. Muravlyov's words reached him instantly as a friend's plea to be released from undeserved torment. Danilov didn't have time to think, but his compassion alone was enough to ignite the cottage in Planerskaya.

Horror-stricken, Muravlyov rescued a bottle of Extra Vodka that he was saving for the next day, while his son, Misha, shivered and clutched the house's skis to his chest, and his wife, Tamara, courageously tossed the family's clothes into suitcases. The evacuated family spent the entire night in the snow. Now Muravlyov berated not only his wife, but also the drunken electricians who had worked in the cottage attic during the day. Danilov suffered, but he could not restore the cottage.

He expected no good to come from this, either. And sure enough, the Australian virus that appeared in Georgii Nikolayevich was so strong that the entire populace of building number twenty-five caught it the next day. Danilov was distraught again but did not know what to do. After the fire in Planerskaya he was too embarrassed to visit the Muravlyovs, even though they did not suspect him of anything. They kept inviting him, but he refused, inventing excuses. He thought: "Enough! This is the last time! Don't I have any self-control at all? Couldn't I have put Georgii Nikolayevich in his place without all that sneezing and coughing?" He even gave Georgii Nikolayevich precious pills that could interfere with the Australian virus. And that was against the rules. But even when the flu abated, Danilov was still upset.