“Interesting…”
Nonsense — galoshes. There’s no joy in galoshes, thought the dog. But he’s still an exceptional person.
“If you please we will take the rack. Since 1903 I have been living in this house. All this time until March 1917 there was not a single case — and I underline this in red pencil — not one case that a single pair of galoshes disappeared from our front hall, even though the door was never locked. And note, there are twelve flats here and I receive patients. In March 1917 all the galoshes vanished in a single day, amongst them two pairs of my own, three walking sticks, a coat and the porter’s samovar. And that was the end of the galoshes rack. My dear Sir! I won’t mention the central heating.
I won’t mention it. Let us make allowances: when there’s a social revolution going on one does without central heating… But I ask you: why, when it all began, did everyone begin to march up and down the marble staircase in their dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why, to this day, do we have to keep our galoshes under lock and key?
Why have they removed the carpet from the main staircase? Did Karl Marx forbid us to carpet our staircases? Is it written anywhere in Karl Marx that the 2nd staircase entrance to the Kalabukhov house on Prechistenka Street should be boarded up so that all the inhabitants should have to go round the back through the tradesmen’s entrance? Who requires all this? Why can’t the proletariat leave its galoshes downstairs, why does it have to dirty the marble?”
“But they don’t have galoshes, Philip Philipovich,” the bitten man tried to contradict.
“Not so!” roared Philip Philipovich in reply and poured himself a glass of wine. “Hm, I don’t approve of liqueurs after dinner; they make one feel heavy and have a bad effect on the liver. Not so at all! They do have galoshes now, and those galoshes are mine. They are precisely those very same galoshes that disappeared in 1917. Who else pinched them, I’d like to know? Did I? Impossible.
That bourgeois Sablin? (Philip Philipovich pointed a finger at the ceiling.) The very idea is absurd! The sugar-manufacturer Polozov? (Philip Philipovich pointed to the wall.) Never! It was done by those songbirds up there. Yes, indeed! But if only they would take them off when they go upstairs! (Philip Philipovich began to turn crimson.) And why the hell did they remove the flowers from the landings? Why does the electricity which, if I remember aright, only failed twice in 20 years, now leave us blacked out regularly once a month? Doctor Bormental, statistics are a fearful thing. You, who have read my latest work, know that better than anyone.”
“It’s the Disruption, Philip Philipovich.”
“No,” Philip Philipovich contradicted him with the utmost certainty. “You should be the first, dear Ivan Arnoldovich, to refrain from using that particular word. It is a mirage, smoke, fiction.” Philip Philipovich spread wide his short fingers so that two shadows resembling tortoises began to wriggle across the table-cloth. “What is this Disruption of yours? An old woman with a staff? A witch who goes round knocking out the window-panes and putting out the lamps? Why, she doesn’t exist at all. What do you mean by the word?” demanded Philip Philipovich furiously of the unfortunate cardboard duck suspended legs uppermost by the side-board, and answered for it himself.
“I’ll tell you what it means. If I stop doing operations every evening and initiate choir practice in my flat instead, I’ll get Disruption. If, when I go to the lavatory, I, if you’ll forgive the expression, begin to piss and miss the bowl, and Zina and Darya Petrovna do the same, then we get Disruption in the lavatory. So it follows that Disruption is in the head.
So, when all these baritones start calling upon us to ‘Beat Disruption’, I just laugh.” (Philip Philipovich’s face twisted into such a terrible grimace that the bitten man’s mouth fell open.) “Believe me, I just laugh. It means that every one of them should begin by knocking himself over the head! And when he’s whacked out all the hallucinations and begins to clean out the barns — the job he was made for — Disruption will disappear of its own accord. You can’t serve two gods!
It is impossible at one and the same time to sweep the tram lines and to organise the fate of a lot of Spanish ragamuffins. No one can do that, Doctor, and still less people who are roughly two hundred years behind Europe in their general development and are still none too sure how to button up their own trousers!”
Philip Philipovich was quite carried away. His hawk-like nostrils were extended. Having recuperated his forces thanks to an excellent dinner, he was thundering away like a prophet of olden times, and his hair shone silver.
His words reached the sleepy dog like a dull rumbling from beneath the earth. Now the owl with its stupid yellow eyes leapt out at him in his dream, now the foul face of the chef in his dirty white cap, now the dashing moustache of Philip Philipovich, lit by the harsh electric light from beneath the lampshade, now sleepy sleighs scraped past and disappeared, and in the juice of the dog’s stomach floated a chewed piece of roast beef.
He could make money as a speaker at meetings, the dog thought vaguely through his sleep. Talk the hind leg off a donkey, he would. Still, he seems to be made of money as it is.
“The policeman on the beat!” yelled Philip Philipovich. “The policeman!” Oohoo-hoo-hoo! Something in the nature of rising bubbles broke in the dog’s mind. “The policeman! That and that only. And it makes no odds whatsoever whether he has a badge on his chest or wears a red cap.
Attach a policeman to every single person and let him have orders to control the vocal impulses of the citizens. You say — Disruption. I say to you, Doctor, that nothing will change for the better in our house or in any other house for that matter until such time as they put down those singers! As soon as they give up their concerts, and not before, things will change for the better.”
“What counter-revolutionary things you do say, Philip Philipovich,” remarked the bitten man jokingly. “It’s to be hoped you’ll not be overheard.”
“No danger to anyone,” Philip Philipovich retorted hotly. “No counter-revolution whatsoever, and that, by the way, is another word I simply cannot stand. It is an absolute riddle— what does it imply? The devil alone knows. So I say to you that there is no counter-revolution whatsoever behind my words: just experience of life and common sense.”
At this point Philip Philipovich untucked the tail of the brilliantly white unfolded napkin from his collar and, crumpling it, put it down on the table next to his unfinished glass of wine. The bitten man rose to his feet and said: “Merci.”
“Just a moment, Doctor!” Philip Philipovich halted him, taking his wallet from a trouser pocket. He narrowed his eyes, counted out some white notes and handed them to the bitten man with the words: “Today, Ivan Arnoldovich, you are owed 40 roubles. Be so good.”
The dog’s victim thanked him politely and, blushing, thrust the money into the pocket of his jacket.
“Do you not need me this evening, Philip Philipovich?” he asked.
“No, thank you, dear Doctor. We will not do any more today. In the first place, the rabbit has died and, in the second, Aida is on at the Bolshoi. And it’s quite a while since I heard it. One of my favourites… Remember? The duet… Tari-ra-rim.”
“How do you find the time, Philip Philipovich?” asked the doctor respectfully.
“The person who always finds time is the one who is never in a hurry,” explained his host didactically. “Of course, if I began to flutter from meeting to meeting or sing like a nightingale all day long, I wouldn’t have time for anything.” Under Philip Philipovich’s fingers in his pocket a repeater-watch chimed divinely. “Just after eight o’clock… I shall arrive for the second act… I am all for the division of labour. Let them sing at the Bolshoi, and I shall operate. That’s how it should be. And no Disruption… Remember, Ivan Arnoldovich, keep a close watch: the moment there is a suitable fatality, off the operating table, into sterilised isotonic saline and round to me!”
“Don’t worry, Philip Philipovich, I have a promise from the pathoanatomists.”
“Good, and in the meantime we’ll keep this nervous wreck from the street under observation. Give his side a chance to heal.”
He’s taking thought for me, thought the dog. A very good man. I know who he is. He’s a magician, one of those wonder workers and conjurors out of dogs’ fairy-tales… It can’t be that I dreamt it all. What if it is all a dream? (The dog shuddered in his sleep.) I’ll wake up and there’ll be nothing left. Not the lamp with the silk cover, nor the warmth, nor feeling full. And it’ll all start again: that crazy cold under the archway, the icy tarmac, hunger, unkind people… The canteen, snow… Oh God, how miserable I shall be!
But nothing of all this happened. It was the arched gateway
