The Twelve Chairs / Двенадцать стульев. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Seated at table in addition to the old women were Isidor, Afanasy, Cyril and Oleg, and also Pasha Emilevich. Neither in age nor sex did these young men fit into the pattern of social security, but they were the younger brothers of Alchen, and Pasha Emilevich was Alexandra Yakovlevna's cousin, once removed. The young men, the oldest of whom was the thirty-two-year-old Pasha Emilevich, did not consider their life in the pensioners' home in any way abnormal. They lived on the same basis as the old women; they too had government-property beds and blankets with the word «Feet»; they were clothed in the same mouse-grey material as the old women, but on account of their youth and strength they ate better than the latter. They stole everything in the house that Alchen did not manage to steal himself. Pasha could put away four pounds of fish at one go, and he once did so, leaving the home dinnerless.

Hardly had the old women had time to taste their porridge when the younger brothers and Pasha Emilevich rose from the table, having gobbled down their share, and went, belching, into the kitchen to look for something more digestible.

The meal continued. The old women began jabbering:

«Now they'll stuff themselves full and start bawling songs».

«Pasha Emilevich sold the chair from the recreation room this morning. A second-hand dealer took it away at the back door».

«Just you see. He'll come home drunk tonight».

At this moment the pensioners' conversation was interrupted by a trumpeting noise that even drowned the hissing of the fire extinguisher, and a husky voice began:

«…vention…»

The old women hunched their shoulders and, ignoring the loudspeaker in the corner on the floor, continued eating in the hope that fate would spare them, but the loudspeaker cheerfully went on: Х

«Evecrashshsh … viduso … valuable invention. Railwayman of the Murmansk Railway, Comrade Sokutsky, S Samara, O Oriel, K Kaliningrad, U Urals, Ts Tsaritsina, K Kaliningrad, Y York. So-kuts-ky».

The trumpet wheezed and renewed the broadcast in a thick voice.

«… vented a system of signal lights for snow ploughs. The invention has been approved by Dorizul…».

The old women floated away to their rooms like grey ducklings. The loudspeaker, jigging up and down by its own power, blared away into the empty room:

«And we will now play some Novgorod folk music».

Far, far away, in the centre of the earth, someone strummed a balalaika and a black-earth Battistini broke into song:

«On the wall the bugs were sitting,
Blinking at the sky;
Then they saw the tax inspector
And crawled away to die».

In the centre of the earth the verses brought forth a storm of activity. A horrible gurgling was heard from the loudspeaker. It was something between thunderous applause and the eruption of an underground volcano.

Meanwhile the disheartened fire inspector had descended an attic ladder backwards and was now back in the kitchen, where he saw five citizens digging into a barrel of sauerkraut and bolting it down. They ate in silence. Pasha Emilevich alone waggled his head in the style of an epicurean and, wiping some strings of cabbage from his moustache, observed:

«It's a sin to eat cabbage like this without vodka».

«Is this a new intake of women?» asked Ostap.

«They're orphans», replied Alchen, shouldering the inspector out of the kitchen and surreptitiously shaking his fist at the orphans.

«Children of the Volga Region?»

Alchen was confused.

«A trying heritage from the Tsarist regime?»

Alchen spread his arms as much as to say: «There's nothing you can do with a heritage like that».

«Co-education by the composite method?»

Without further hesitation the bashful Alchen invited the fire inspector to take pot luck and lunch with him.

Pot luck that day happened to be a bottle of Zubrovka vodka, home-pickled mushrooms, minced herring, Ukrainian beet soup containing first-grade meat, chicken and rice, and stewed apples.

«Sashchen», said Alexander Yakovlevich, «I want you to meet a comrade from the province fire-precaution administration».

Ostap made his hostess a theatrical bow and paid her such an interminable and ambiguous compliment that he could hardly get to the end of it. Sashchen, a buxom woman, whose good looks were somewhat marred by sideburns of the kind that Tsar Nicholas used to have, laughed softly and took a drink with the two men.

«Here's to your communal services», exclaimed Ostap.

The lunch went off gaily, and it was not until they reached the stewed fruit that Ostap remembered the point of his visit.

«Why is it», he asked, «that the furnishings are so skimpy in your establishment?»

«What do you mean?» said Alchen. «What about the harmonium?»

«Yes, I know, vox humana. But you have absolutely nothing at all of any taste to sit on. Only garden benches».

«There's a chair in the recreation room», said Alchen in an offended tone. «An English chair. They say it was left over from the original furniture».

«By the way, I didn't see your recreation room. How is it from the point of view of fire hazard? It won't let you down, I hope. I had better see it».

«Certainly».

Ostap thanked his hostess for the lunch and left.

No primus was used in the recreation room; there was no portable stove of any kind; the chimneys were in a good state of repair and were cleaned regularly, but the chair, to the incredulity of Alchen, was missing. They ran to look for it. They looked under the beds and under the trunks; for some reason or other they moved back the harmonium; they questioned the old women, who kept looking at Pasha Emilevich timidly, but the chair was just not there. Pasha Emilevich himself showed great enthusiasm in the search. When all had calmed down, Pasha still kept wandering from room to room, looking under decanters, shifting iron teaspoons, and muttering:

«Where can it be? I saw it myself this morning. It's ridiculous!»

«It's depressing, girls», said Ostap in an icy voice.

«It's absolutely ridiculous!» repeated Pasha Emilevich impudently.

At this point, however, the Eclair fire extinguisher, which had been hissing the whole time, took a high F, which only the People's Artist, Nezhdanova, can do, stopped for a second and then emitted its first stream of foam, which soaked the ceiling and knocked the cook's cap off. The first stream of foam was followed by another, mouse-grey in colour, which bowled over young Isidor Yakovlevich. After that the extinguisher began working smoothly. Pasha Emilevich, Alchen and all the surviving brothers raced to the spot.

«Well done», said Ostap. «An idiotic invention!»

As soon as the old women were left alone with Ostap and without the boss, they at once began complaining:

«He's brought his family into the home. They eat up everything».

«The piglets get milk and we get porridge».