Eugene Petrov - The Twelve Chairs

backside.

"Good shot!" said Ostap, rubbing the affected part. "The hearing is

continued."

CHAPTER NINE

WHERE ARE YOUR CURLS?

While Ostap was inspecting the pensioners' home, Ippolit Matveyevich

had left the caretaker's room and was wandering along the streets of his

home town, feeling the chill on his shaven head.

Along the road trickled clear spring water. There was a constant

splashing and plopping as diamond drops dripped from the rooftops. Sparrows

hunted for manure, and the sun rested on the roofs. Golden carthorses

drummed their hoofs against the bare road and, turning their ears downward,

listened with pleasure to their own sound. On the damp telegraph poles the

wet advertisements, "I teach the guitar by the number system" and

"Social-science lessons for those preparing for the People's Conservatory",

were all wrinkled up, and the letters had run. A platoon of Red Army

soldiers in winter helmets crossed a puddle that began at the Stargorod

co-operative shop and stretched as far as the province planning

administration, the pediment of which was crowned with plaster tigers,

figures of victory and cobras.

Ippolit Matveyevich walked along, looking with interest at the people

passing him in both directions. As one who had spent the whole of his life

and also the revolution in Russia, he was able to see how the way of life

was changing and acquiring a new countenance. He had become used to this

fact, but he seemed to be used to only one point on the globe-the regional

centre of N. Now he was back in his home town, he realized he understood

nothing. He felt just as awkward and strange as though he really were an

emigre just back from Paris. In the old days, whenever he rode through the

town in his carriage, he used invariably to meet friends or people he knew

by sight. But now he had gone some way along Lena Massacre Street and there

was no friend to be seen. They had vanished, or they might have changed so

much that they were no longer recognizable, or perhaps they had become

unrecognizable because they wore different clothes and different hats.

Perhaps they had changed their walk. In any case, they were no longer there.

Vorobyaninov walked along, pale, cold and lost. He completely forgot

that he was supposed to be looking for the housing division. He crossed from

pavement to pavement and turned into side streets, where the uninhibited

carthorses were quite intentionally drumming their hoofs. There was more of

winter in the side streets, and rotting ice was still to be seen in places.

The whole town was a different colour; the blue houses had become green and

the yellow ones grey. The fire indicators had disappeared from the fire

tower, the fireman no longer climbed up and down, and the streets were much

noisier than Ippolit Matveyevich could remember.

On Greater Pushkin Street, Ippolit Matveyevich was amazed by the tracks

and overhead cables of the tram system, which he had never seen in Stargorod

before. He had not read the papers and did not know that the two tram routes

to the station and the market were due to be opened on May Day. At one

moment Ippolit Matveyevich felt he had never left Stargorod, and the next

moment it was like a place completely unfamiliar to him.

Engrossed in these thoughts, he reached Marx and Engels Street. Here he

re-experienced a childhood feeling that at any moment a friend would appear

round the corner of the two-storeyed house with its long balcony. He even

stopped walking in anticipation. But the friend did not appear. The first

person to come round the corner was a glazier with a box of Bohemian glass

and a dollop of copper-coloured putty. Then came a swell in a suede cap with

a yellow leather peak. He was pursued by some elementary-school children

carrying books tied with straps.

Suddenly Ippolit Matveyevich felt a hotness in his palms and a sinking

feeling in his stomach. A stranger with a kindly face was coming straight

towards him, carrying a chair by the middle, like a 'cello. Suddenly

developing hiccups Ippolit Matveyevich looked closely at the chair and

immediately recognized it.

Yes! It was a Hambs chair upholstered in flowered English chintz

somewhat darkened by the storms of the revolution; it was a walnut chair

with curved legs. Ippolit Matveyevich felt as though a gun had gone off in

his ear.

"Knives and scissors sharpened! Razors set!" cried a baritone voice

nearby. And immediately came the shrill echo;

"Soldering and repairing!"

"Moscow News, magazine Giggler, Red Meadow."

Somewhere up above, a glass pane was removed with a crash. A truck from

the grain-mill-and-lift-construction administration passed by, making the

town vibrate. A militiaman blew his whistle. Everything brimmed over with

life. There was no time to be lost.

With a leopard-like spring, Ippolit Matveyevich leaped towards the

repulsive stranger and silently tugged at the chair. The stranger tugged the

other way. Still holding on to one leg with his left hand, Ippolit

Matveyevich began forcibly detaching the stranger's fat fingers from the

chair.

"Thief!" hissed the stranger, gripping the chair more firmly.

"Just a moment, just a moment!" mumbled Ippolit Matveyevich, continuing

to unstick the stranger's fingers.

A crowd began to gather. Three or four people were already standing

nearby, watching the struggle with lively interest. They both glanced around

in alarm and, without looking at one another or letting go the chair,

rapidly moved on as if nothing were the matter.

"What's happening?" wondered Ippolit Matveyevich in dismay.

What the stranger was thinking was impossible to say, but he was

walking in a most determined way.

They kept walking more and more quickly until they saw a clearing

scattered with bits of brick and other building materials at the end of a

blind alley; then both turned into it simultaneously. Ippolit Matveyevich's

strength now increased fourfold.

"Give it to me!" he shouted, doing away with all ceremony.

"Help!" exclaimed the stranger, almost inaudibly.

Since both of them had their hands occupied with the chair, they began

kicking one another. The stranger's boots had metal studs, and at first

Ippolit Matveyevich came off badly. But he soon adjusted himself, and,

skipping to the left and right as though doing a Cossack dance, managed to

dodge his opponents' blows, trying at the same time to catch him in the

stomach. He was not successful, since the chair was in the way, but he

managed to land him a kick on the kneecap, after which the enemy could only

lash out with one leg.

"Oh, Lord!" whispered the stranger.

It was at this moment that Ippolit Matveyevich saw that the stranger

who had carried off his chair in the most outrageous manner was none other

than Father Theodore, priest of the Church of St. Frol and St. Laurence.

"Father!" he exclaimed, removing his hands from the chair in

astonishment.

Father Vostrikov turned purple and finally loosed his grip. The chair,

no longer supported by either of them, fell on to the brick-strewn ground.

"Where's your moustache, my dear Ippolit Matveyevich?" asked the cleric

as caustically as possible.

"And what about your curls? You used to have curls, I believe!"

Ippolit Matveyevich's words conveyed utter contempt. He threw Father

Theodore a look of singular disgust and, tucking the chair under his arm,