Eugene Petrov - The Twelve Chairs

straight on to the angular flagstones of the yard. A dulled brass plate with

a name engraved in script was fixed to the right-hand door:

V.M. POLESOV

The left-hand door was fitted with a piece of whitish tin:

FASHIONS AND MILLINERY

This was also only for show.

Inside the fashions-and-millinery workroom there was no esparterie, no

trimmings, no headless dummies with soldierly bearing, nor any large heads

for elegant ladies' hats. Instead, the three-room apartment was occupied by

an immaculately white parrot in red underpants. The parrot was riddled with

fleas, but could not complain since it was unable to talk. For days on end

it used to crack sunflower seeds and spit the husks through the bars of its

tall, circular cage on to the carpet. It only needed a concertina and new

squeaky Wellingtons to resemble a peasant on a spree. Dark-brown patterned

curtains flapped at the window. Dark-brown hues predominated in the

apartment. Above the piano was a reproduction of Boecklin's "Isle of the

Dead" in a fancy frame of dark-green oak, covered with glass. One corner of

the glass had been broken off some time before, and the flies had added so

many finishing touches to the picture at this bared section that it merged

completely with the frame. What was going on in that section of the "Isle of

the Dead" was quite impossible to say.

The owner herself was sitting in the bedroom and laying out cards,

resting her arms on an octagonal table covered by a dirty Richelieu

tablecloth. In front of her sat Widow Gritsatsuyev, in a fluffy shawl.

"I should warn you, young lady, that I don't take less than fifty

kopeks per session,' said the fortune-teller.

The widow, whose anxiousness to find a new husband knew no bounds,

agreed to pay the price.

"But predict the future as well, please," she said plaintively. "You

will be represented by the Queen of Clubs." "I was always the Queen of

Hearts," objected the widow. The fortune-teller consented apathetically and

began manipulating the cards. A rough estimation of the widow's lot was

ready in a few minutes. Both major and minor difficulties awaited her, but

near to her heart was the King of Clubs, who had befriended the Queen of

Diamonds.

A fair copy of the prediction was made from the widow's hand. The lines

of her hand were clean, powerful, and faultless. Her life line stretched so

far that it ended up at her pulse and, if it told the truth, the widow

should have lived till doomsday. The head line and line of brilliancy gave

reason to believe that she would give up her grocery business and present

mankind with masterpieces in the realm of art, science, and social studies.

Her Mounts of Venus resembled Manchurian volcanoes and revealed incredible

reserves of love and affection. The fortune-teller explained all this to the

widow, using the words and phrases current among graphologists, palmists,

and horse-traders.

"Thank you, madame," said the widow. "Now I know who the King of Clubs

is. And I know who the Queen of Diamonds is, too. But what about the King?

Does that mean marriage?" "It does, young lady." The widow went home in a

dream, while the fortune-teller threw the cards into a drawer, yawned,

displaying the mouth of a fifty-year-old woman, and went into the kitchen.

There she busied herself with the meal that was warming on a Graetz stove;

wiping her hands on her apron like a cook, she took a chipped-enamel pail

and went into the yard to fetch water.

She walked across the yard, dragging her flat feet. Her drooping

breasts wobbled lazily inside her dyed blouse. Her head was crowned with

greying hair. She was an old woman, she was dirty, she regarded everyone

with suspicion, and she had a sweet tooth. If Ippolit Matveyevich had seen

her now, he would never have recognized Elena Bour, his former mistress,

about whom the clerk of the court had once said in verse that "her lips were

inviting and she was so spritely!" At the well, Mrs. Bour was greeted by her

neighbour, Victor Mikhailovich Polesov, the mechanic-intellectual, who was

collecting water in an empty petrol tin. Polesov had the face of an operatic

Mephistopheles who is carefully rubbed with burnt cork just before he goes

on stage.

As soon as they had exchanged greetings, the neighbours got down to a

discussion of the affair concerning the whole of Stargorod.

"What times we live in!" said Polesov ironically. "Yesterday I went all

over the town but couldn't find any three-eighths-inch dies anywhere. There

were none available. And to think-they're going to open a tramline!"

Elena Stanislavovna, who had as much idea about three-eighths-inch dies

as a student of the Leonardo da Vinci ballet school, who thinks that cream

comes from cream tarts, expressed her sympathy.

"The shops we have now! Nothing but long queues. And the names of the

shops are so dreadful. Stargiko!"

"But I'll tell you something else, Elena Stanislavovna. They have four

General Electric engines left. And they just about work, although the bodies

are junk. The windows haven't any shock absorbers. I've seen them myself.

The whole lot rattles. Horrible! And the other engines are from Kharkov.

Made entirely by the State Non-Ferrous Metallurgy Industry."

The mechanic stopped talking in irritation. His black face glistened in

the sun. The whites of his eyes were yellowish. Among the artisans owning

cars in Stargorod, of whom there were many, Victor Polesov was the most

gauche, and most frequently made an ass of himself. The reason for this was

his over-ebullient nature. He was an ebullient idler. He was forever

effervescing. In his own workshop in the second yard of no. 7 Pereleshinsky

Street, he was never to be found. Extinguished portable furnaces stood

deserted in the middle of his stone shed, the corners of which were

cluttered up with punctured tyres, torn Triangle tyre covers, rusty padlocks

(so enormous you could have locked town gates with them), fuel cans with the

names "Indian" and "Wanderer", a sprung pram, a useless dynamo, rotted

rawhide belts, oil-stained rope, worn emery paper, an Austrian bayonet, and

a great deal of other broken, bent and dented junk. Clients could never find

Victor Mikhailovich. He was always out somewhere giving orders. He had no

time for work. It was impossible for him to stand by and watch a horse . and

cart drive into his or anyone else's yard. He immediately went out and,

clasping his hands behind his back, watched the carter's actions with

contempt. Finally he could bear it no longer.

"Where do you think you're going?" he used to shout in a horrified

voice. "Move over!"

The startled carter would move the cart over.

"Where do you think you're moving to, wretch?" Victor Polesov cried,

rushing up to the horse. "In the old days you would have got a slap for

that, then you would have moved over."

Having given orders in this way for half an hour or so, Polesov would

be just about to return to his workshop, where a broken bicycle pump awaited

repair, when the peaceful life of the town would be disturbed by some other

contretemps. Either two carts entangled their axles in the street and Victor

Mikhailovich would show the best and quickest way to separate them, or

workmen would be replacing a telegraph pole and Polesov would check that it

was perpendicular with his own plumb-line brought specially from the

workshop; or, finally, the fire-engine would go past and Polesov, excited by