Eugene Petrov - The Twelve Chairs

watched the smooth operator's ascent, but then lost interest and began to

survey the base of Tamara's castle, which stood on a rock like a horse's

tooth.

Just at this time, about a mile away from the concessionaires, Father

Theodore entered the Daryal gorge from the direction of Tiflis. He marched

along like a soldier with his eyes, as hard as diamonds, fixed ahead of him,

supporting himself on a large crook.

With his last remaining money Father Theodore had reached Tiflis and

was now walking home, subsisting on charity. While crossing the Cross gap he

had been bitten by an eagle. Father Theodore hit out at the insolent bird

with his crook and continued on his way.

As he went along, intermingling with the clouds, he muttered:

"Not for personal gain, but at the wishes of my wife who sent me."

The distance between the enemies narrowed. Turning a sharp bend, Father

Theodore came across an old man in a gold pince-nez.

The gorge split asunder before Father Theodore's eyes. The Terek

stopped its thousand-year-old roar.

Father Theodore recognized Vorobyaninov. After the terrible fiasco in

Batumi, after all his hopes had been dashed, this new chance of gaining

riches had an extraordinary effect on the priest. He grabbed Ippolit

Matveyevich by his scraggy Adam's apple, squeezed his fingers together, and

shouted hoarsely:

"What have you done with the treasure that you slew your mother-in-law

to obtain?" Ippolit Matveyevich, who had not been expecting anything of this

nature, said nothing, but his eyes bulged so far that they almost touched

the lenses of his pince-nez.

"Speak!" ordered the priest. "Repent, you sinner!"

Vorobyaninov felt himself losing his senses.

Suddenly Father Theodore caught sight of Bender leaping from rock to

rock; the technical adviser was coining down, shouting at the top of his

voice:

"Against the sombre rocks they dash, Those waves, they foam and

splash."

A terrible fear gripped Father Theodore. He continued mechanically

holding the marshal by the throat, but his knees began to knock.

"Well, of all people!" cried Ostap in a friendly tone. "The rival

concern."

Father Theodore did not dally. Obeying his healthy instinct, ' he

grabbed the concessionaires' bread and sausage and fled.

"Hit him, Comrade Bender!" cried Ippolit Matveyevich, who was sitting

on the ground recovering his breath. "Catch him!. Stop him I"

Ostap began whistling and whooping.

"Wooh-wooh," he warbled, starting in pursuit. "The Battle of the

Pyramids or Bender goes hunting. Where are you going, client? I can offer

you a well-gutted chair."

This persecution was too much for Father Theodore and he began climbing

up a perpendicular wall of rock. He was spurred on by his heart, which was

in his mouth, and an itch in his heels known only to cowards. His legs moved

over the granite by themselves, carrying their master aloft.

"Wooooh-woooh!" yelled Ostap from below. "Catch him!"

"He's taken our supplies," screeched Vorobyaninov, running up.

"Stop!" roared Ostap. "Stop, I tell you."

But this only lent new strength to the exhausted priest. He wove about,

making several leaps, and finally ended ten feet above the highest

inscription.

"Give back our sausage!" howled Ostap. "Give back the sausage, you

fool, and we'll forget everything."

Father Theodore no longer heard anything. He found himself on a flat

ledge, on to which no man had ever climbed before. Father Theodore was

seized by a sickening dread. He realized he could never get down again by

himself. The cliff face dropped vertically to the road.

He looked below. Ostap was gesticulating furiously, and the marshal's

gold pince-nez glittered at the bottom of the gorge.

"I'll give back the sausage," cried the holy father, "only get me

down."

He could see all the movements of the concessionaires. They were

running about below and, judging from their gestures, swearing like

troopers.

An hour later, lying on his stomach and peering over the edge, Father

Theodore saw Bender and Vorobyaninov going off in the direction of the Cross

gap.

Night fell quickly. Surrounded by pitch darkness and deafened by the

infernal roar, Father Theodore trembled and wept up in the very clouds. He

no longer wanted earthly treasures, he only wanted one thing-to get down on

to the ground.

During the night he howled so loudly that at times the sound of the

Terek was drowned, and when morning came, he fortified himself with sausage

and bread and roared with demoniac laughter at the cars passing underneath.

The rest of the day was spent contemplating the mountains and that heavenly

body, the sun. The next night he saw the Tsaritsa Tamara. She came flying

over to him from her castle and said coquettishly:

"Let's be neighbours! "

"Mother!" said Father Theodore with feeling. "Not for personal gain . .

."

"I know, I know," observed the Tsaritsa, "but merely at the wishes of

your wife who sent you."

"How did you know?" asked the astonished priest.

"I just know. Why don't you stop by, neighbour? We'll play sixty-six.

What about it?"

She gave a laugh and flew off, letting off firecrackers into the night

sky as she went.

The day after, Father Theodore began preaching to the birds. For some

reason he tried to sway them towards Lutheranism.

"Birds," he said in a sonorous voice, "repent your sins publicly."

On the fourth day he was pointed out to tourists from below.

"On the right we have Tamara's castle," explained the experienced

guides, "and on the left is a live human being, but it is not known what he

lives on or how he got there."

"My, what a wild people!" exclaimed the tourists in amazement.

"Children of the mountains!"

Clouds drifted by. Eagles cruised above Father Theodore's head. The

bravest of them stole the remains of the sausage and with its wings swept a

pound and a half of bread into the foaming Terek.

Father Theodore wagged his finger at the eagle and, smiling radiantly,

whispered:

"God's bird does not know Either toil or unrest, He leisurely builds

His long-lasting nest."

The eagle looked sideways at Father Theodore, squawked cockadoodledoo

and flew away.

"Oh, eagle, you eagle, you bitch of a bird!"

Ten days later the Vladikavkaz fire brigade arrived with suitable

equipment and brought Father Theodore down.

As they were lowering him, he clapped his hands and sang in a tuneless

voice:

"And you will be queen of all the world, My lifelo-ong frie-nd!"

And the rugged Caucuses re-echoed Rubinstein's setting of the Lermontov

poem many times.

"Not for personal gain, but merely at the wishes . . ." Father Theodore

told the fire chief.

The cackling priest was taken on the end of a fire ladder to the

psychiatric hospital.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THE EARTHQUAKE

"What do you think, marshal," said Ostap as the concessionaires

approached the settlement of Sioni, "how can we earn money in a dried-up

spot like this?"

Ippolit Matveyevich said nothing. The only occupation by which he could

have kept himself going was begging, but here in the mountain spirals and

ledges there was no one to beg from.

Anyway, there was begging going on already-alpine begging, a special

kind. Every bus and passenger car passing through the settlement was

besieged by children who performed a few steps of a local folk dance to the