Arkady Strugatsky - Tale of the Troika

“ ‘We drank, we drink, and we will drink!’ Who do you think they’re talking about? Us! He’s talking about us, the bugger! Our blood! Hah!” He looked around wildly. “I’ll squash him right now, I will! Get no sleep at night from them, and now they torture us in the daytime too! Torturers!” And he set about scratching furiously.

Gabby was frightened but continued to carry himself with dignity. However, he was eyeing a convenient corner in case it came to that. The odor of very strong cognac spread through the room.

“Bloodsuckers!” Khlebovvodov rasped, as he jumped up and lunged forward. My heart stopped. Eddie grabbed my hand—he was frightened too. Gabby just squatted in horror. But Khlebovvodov, clutching his stomach, raced past the demonstration table, opened the door, and ran out. We could hear his footsteps on the stairs. Gabby wiped the cold sweat from his brow and dispiritedly lowered his antennae.

“Harrumph,” Lavr Fedotovich said pathetically. “Who else would like the floor?”

“Allow me,” said Farfurkis. I realized the machine was starting up. “Citizen Gabby’s announcement has created a unique impression on me. I am sincerely and categorically incensed. And not only because Citizen Gabby is giving a perverted history of the human race as the history of the suffering of exceptional individuals. I am also willing to leave the orator’s totally un-self-critical pronouncements as to his own person to his conscience. But his idea, his offer of union—even the idea of such a union sounds, to me, both insulting and blasphemous. Just what do you take us for, Citizen Gabby? Or perhaps the insult was intentional? Personally, I am inclined to classify it as intentional. And on top of that, I looked through the minutes of the earlier meeting on the case of Citizen Gabby and noted with chagrin that, as far as I am concerned, there is a total lack of the necessary interlocutory decree for the case. This, comrades, is our mistake, our oversight, which we must correct with all due speed. What do I mean? I mean that in the person of Citizen Gabby we are confronted by nothing more than a typical talking parasite, in other words a sponging loafer with means of support that can only be classified as illegal.”

At that moment the exhausted Khlebovvodov appeared in the doorway. As he walked past Gabby he brandished his fist at him and muttered, “You tailless, six-legged cur!” Gabby ducked his head. He finally understood that things were bad. “Alex,” Eddie whispered to me in a panic. “Alex, think of something.” I feverishly looked for a way out, while Farfurkis droned on.

“Insulting humanity, insulting an authoritative body. This is typical parasitism, which belongs behind bars. Is this not a little much, comrades? Are we not displaying spinelessness, toothlessness, bourgeois liberalism, and abstract humanism? I don’t know the feelings of my respected colleagues in this matter, and I don’t know what decision will be reached in this case; however, as a man who is not malicious by nature but who is principled, I permit myself to address you, Citizen Gabby, with a word of warning. The fact that you, Citizen Gabby, have learned to speak, or rather to gab, in Russian, may be a temporizing factor in our attitude toward you. But beware! Don’t pull the string too tight!”

“Squash the parasite!” rasped Khlebovvodov. “Here, I’ve got a matchstick.” He started patting his pockets.

Gabby’s face was blank. So was Eddie’s. He was feverishly tinkering with the humanizer. And I still had not come up with a way out.

“No, no, Comrade Khlebovvodov,” said Farfurkis, grimacing in disgust, “I am against illegal acts. Why this lynch law? We’re not in America, you know. Everything must be done according to the law. First of all, if Lavr Fedotovich has no objections, we must rationalize Citizen Gabby as an unexplained phenomenon, which will therefore put him in our competence.”

Gabby, the fool, cheered up at those words. Ah, vanity!

“Then,” continued Farfurkis, “we will classify the rationalized unexplained phenomenon as a dangerous one, and therefore one that can be expunged during the utilization procedure. The rest is ridiculously simple. We will write the decree along these lines: the decree on expunging the talking bedbug, hereafter referred to as Gabby.”

“That’s right!” rasped Khlebovvodov. “We’ll get him with the Seal!”

“This is arbitrary rule!” squeaked Gabby.

“Excuse me!” Farfurkis was on the attack. “What do you mean arbitrary? We are expunging you in accordance with paragraph 75 of the Appendix on Expunging Social Vestiges, where it most clearly states …”

“It’s still arbitrary!” Gabby was shouting. “Executioners! Gendarmes!”

And that’s when I finally figured it out.

“Hold on,” I said. “Lavr Fedotovich! I beg you to intervene! This is squandering your cadres!”

Lavr Fedotovich barely managed his “Harrumph.” He was so sick that he didn’t care.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Farfurkis. “And Lavr Fedotovich is absolutely right! You must pay less attention to form and look more closely at content. Our injured feelings have nothing to do with the best interests of the people’s resources. Why this administrative sentimentality? Is this a boarding school for young princesses? Or courses for improving qualifications? Yes, Citizen Gabby is rude and impertinent and uses questionable parallels. Yes, Citizen Gabby is far from perfect. But does that mean that we should expunge him as being unnecessary? What are you thinking of, Comrade Farfurkis? Or are you perhaps prepared to pull out another talking bedbug from your pocket? Maybe your circle of acquaintances includes a talking bedbug? Why this lèse majesty? ‘I don’t like the talking bedbug, let’s write off the talking bedbug.’ And you, Comrade Khlebovvodov? Yes, I can see that you are a man who has suffered deeply from bedbugs. I sympathize deeply with your sufferings, but I ask you: perhaps you have already found a means of combating these bloodsucking parasites? These pirates of the bed, these gangsters of the people’s dreams, these vampires of rundown hotels?”

“That’s just what I’m saying,” said Khlebovvodov. “Just squash him without any to-do. All these decrees and nonsense …”

“Oh, no, Comrade Khlebovvodov! We forbid it! We will not allow you to take advantage of the scientific consultant’s sickness to introduce and apply crude administrative methods instead of scientific administrative methods. We will not allow voluntarism and subjectivism to reign once more! Don’t you understand that Citizen Gabby here is the only opportunity we have so far to begin a reeducation program among these frenzied parasites? In the past, some homegrown talent turned peaceful vegetarian bugs to their present disgusting modus vivendi . Don’t you think that our contemporary, educated bedbug, enriched with the full power of theory and practice, is capable of doing the reverse? Armed with carefully composed instructions and the latest techniques of pedagogy, knowing that all of humanity supports him, he could become the Archimedean lever with whose help we will turn the tide of bedbug history back to the forests and fields, to Nature’s bosom, to a pure, simple, and innocent existence. I beg the commission to take all these thoughts into consideration and carefully examine them.”

I sat down. Eddie, pale with joy, gave me a thumbs-up sign. Gabby was on his knees, fervently praying. As for the Troika, it was dumbstruck by my oratorical power. Farfurkis stared at me with joyous amazement. I could tell that he thought my idea was a stroke of genius and that he was feverishly examining the best way to take over the command of this new undertaking. He was picturing how he would write a wide-ranging, detailed instruction manual; he could see the paragraphs, chapters, appendixes, and footnotes in his mind’s eye; in his imagination he was consulting with the bedbug, organizing courses in Russian for gifted bedbugs, being named head of the State Committee on Propaganda for Vegetarianism Among Bloodsuckers, whose expanding sphere of activity would also include mosquitoes and gnats, midges and leeches.