Eugene Petrov - The Twelve Chairs

"S" kept running into the musicians from behind, eliciting shouts from the

bowels of the locomotive in the direction of the toilers of the oboe and

flute:

"Where's your supervisor? You're not supposed to be on Red Army Street!

Can't you see you're causing a traffic jam?"

At this point, to the misfortune of the musicians, Victor Polesov

intervened.

"That's right! You're supposed to turn into the blind alley here. They

can't even organize a parade! Scandalous!"

The children were riding in lorries belonging to the Stargorod communal

services and the grain-mill-and-lift-construction administration. The

youngest ones stood at the sides of the lorry and the bigger ones in the

middle. The junior army waved paper flags and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

It was crowded, noisy, and hot. Every minute there were bottlenecks, and

every other minute they were cleared. To pass the time during the

bottlenecks the crowd tossed old men and activists in the air. The old men

wailed in squeaky voices, while the activists sailed up and down with

serious faces in silence. One merry column of people mistook Polesov for a

supervisor as he was trying to squeeze through them and began tossing him.

Polesov thrashed about like Punchinello.

Then came an effigy of Neville Chamberlain, being beaten on his top-hat

with a cardboard hammer by a worker possessing a model anatomical physique.

This was followed by a truck carrying three members of the Communist Youth

in tails and white gloves. They kept looking at the crowd with

embarrassment.

"Basil!" shouted someone from the pavement, "you bourgeois ! Give back

those braces!"

Girls were singing. Alchen was marching along in a group of

social-security workers with a large red bow on his chest. As he went he

crooned in a nasal voice:

From the forests of Siberia

To the British Sea,

There's no one superior

To the Red Army. . . .

At a given command, gymnasts disjointedly shouted out something

unintelligible. Everything walked, rode and marched to the new tram depot

from where at exactly one o'clock the first electric tram in Stargorod was

due to move off.

No one knew exactly when the construction of the tramline had been

begun. Some time back in 1920, when voluntary Saturday work was introduced,

railway workers and ropemakers had marched to Gusishe to the accompaniment

of music and spent the whole day digging holes. They dug a great number of

large, deep holes. A comrade in an engineer's cap had run about among the

diggers, followed by a foreman carrying coloured poles. Work had continued

at the same spot the next Saturday. Two holes dug in the wrong place had to

be filled in again. The comrade descended on the foreman and demanded an

explanation. Then fresh holes had been dug that were even bigger and deeper.

Next, the bricks were delivered and the real builders arrived. They set

about laying the foundations, but then everything quieted down. The comrade

in the engineer's cap still appeared now and then at the deserted building

site and wandered round and round the brick-lined pit, muttering:

"Cost accounting!"

He tapped the foundations with a stick and then hurried home, covering

his frozen ears with his hands. The engineer's name was Treukhov.

The idea of the tram depot, the construction of which ceased abruptly

at the foundation stage, was conceived by Treukhov in 1912, but the Tsarist

town council had rejected the project. Two years later Treukhov stormed the

town council again, but the war prevented any headway. Then the Revolution

interfered, and now the New Economic Plan, cost accounting, and capital

recovery were the obstacles. The foundations were overgrown with flowers in

the summer, and in the winter children turned them into a snow-slide.

Treukhov dreamed of great things. He was sick and tired of working in

the town-improvement department of the Stargorod communal services, tired of

mending the kerbs, and tired of estimating the cost of hoardings. But the

great things did not pan out. The tramline project, re-submitted for

consideration, became bogged down at the higher instances of the provincial

administration; it was approved by one and rejected by another, passed on to

the capital, regardless of approval or rejection, became covered in dust,

and no money was forthcoming.

"It's barbarous!" Treukhov shouted at his wife. "No money, indeed! But

they have enough money to pay for cab drivers and for carting merchandise to

the station! The Stargorod's cab-drivers would rob their own grandmothers!

It's a pillagers' monopoly, of course. Just try carrying your own stuff to

the station! A tramline would pay for itself in six years."

His withered moustache drooped angrily, and his snub-nosed face worked

convulsively. He took some blueprints out of the desk and showed them to his

wife for the thousandth time. They were plans for a terminus, depot and

twelve tramcar routes.

"To hell with twelve routes! They can wait. But three! Three! Stargorod

will choke without them!"

Treukhov snorted and went into the kitchen to chop wood. He did all the

household chores himself. He designed and built a cradle for the baby and

also constructed a washing-machine. For a while he washed the clothes in it

himself, explaining to his wife how to work the machine. At least a fifth of

Treukhov's salary went on subscriptions to foreign technical literature. To

make ends meet he gave up smoking.

He took his project to Gavrilin, the new chief of the Stargorod

communal services who had been transferred from Samarkand. The new chief,

deeply tanned by the Tunisian sun, listened to Treukhov for some time,

though without particular attention, and finally said:

"In Samarkand, you know, we don't need trams. Everyone rides donkeys. A

donkey costs three roubles-dirt cheap-and it can carry about three hundred

pounds. Just a little donkey; it's amazing!"

"But that's Asia," said Treukhov angrily. "A donkey costs three

roubles, but you need thirty roubles a year to feed it."

"And how many times do you think you can travel on your trams for

thirty roubles? Three hundred. And that's not even every day for a year."

"Then you'd better send for some of your donkeys," shouted Treukhov and

rushed out of the office, slamming the door. Whenever he met Treukhov from

that time on, the new chief would ask derisively: "Well, then, shall we send

for donkeys or build a tramway?"

Gavrilin's face was like a smoothly-peeled turnip. His eyes were filled

with cunning. About two months later he sent for the engineer and said to

him earnestly:

"I have a little plan. One thing is clear, though; there's no money,

and a tramline is not like a donkey-it can't be bought for three roubles.

We'll have to get some funds. What practical solution is there? A

shareholding company? What else? A loan repayable with interest! How long

will it take for a tramline to pay for itself? "

"Six years from the opening of the first three routes."

"Well, let's say ten years then. Now, the shareholding company. Who

will buy the shares? The food co-operatives and the-central union of dairy

co-operatives. Do the ropemakers need trams? Yes, they do. We will be

dispatching freight cars to the railway station. So that's the ropemakers.

The Ministry of Transport may contribute something, and also the province

executive committee. That's definite. And once we've got things going, the