Meanwhile the chairman of the board had stood up and proposed the election of a chairman for the meeting. There sounded from various places: “Kraevich, let’s have Kraevich …” and Professor Kraevich (no relation to the author of the textbook on physics—he was a professor of international law), a mobile, angular old man in a knitted waistcoat and unbuttoned jacket, swept up to the presidium table extraordinarily fast, holding his left hand in his trouser pocket and tossing up his pince-nez on the end of its cord with his right; he sat down between Vasiliev and Gurman (who was slowly and gloomily twisting a cigarette into an amber holder), immediately stood up again, and pronounced the meeting opened.
I wonder, thought Fyodor, glancing sideways at Vladimirov, I wonder if he has read my book? Vladimirov put down his glass and looked at Fyodor, but said nothing. Beneath his jacket he was wearing an English sports sweater with a black-and-orange border along its triangular opening; the receding hair on either side of his forehead exaggerated the latter’s dimensions, his large nose was strongly boned, his grayish-yellow teeth glistened unpleasantly beneath his slightly raised lip and his eyes looked out with intelligence and indifference—he had studied, it seemed, at an English university and flaunted a pseudo-British manner.
At twenty-nine he was already the author of two novels—outstanding for the force and swiftness of their mirror-like style—which irritated Fyodor perhaps for the very reason that he felt a certain affinity with him. As a conversationalist Vladimirov was singularly unattractive. One blamed him for being derisive, supercilious, cold, incapable of thawing to friendly discussions—but that was also said about Koncheyev and about Fyodor himself, and about anyone whose thoughts lived in their own private house and not in a barrack-room or a pub.
When a secretary had also been elected, Professor Kraevich proposed that all should stand to honor the memory of the two deceased members of the Society; and during this five-second petrification the excommunicated waiter scanned the tables, having forgotten who had ordered the ham sandwich he had just brought in on a tray. Everyone stood as he could. Gurman, for example, his skew-bald head lowered, was holding his hand palm upwards on the table, as if he had just cast the dice and had frozen in astonishment at his loss.
“Allo! Hier!” shouted Shahmatov, who had been waiting anxiously for the moment when with a clatter of relief life would be seated again—and then the waiter quickly raised his index finger (he had remembered), glided over to him, and with a tinkle put the plate down on the imitation marble. Shahmatov immediately began to cut the sandwich, holding his knife and fork crosswise; on the edge of the plate a yellow blob of mustard projected, as is usually the case, a yellow horn.
Shahmatov’s complaisantly Napoleonic face with its strand of steely-blue hair slanting toward the temple appealed particularly to Fyodor at these gastronomic moments. Next to him, drinking tea with lemon, and himself very lemony, with sadly arched eyebrows, sat the satirist from the Gazeta, whose pseudonym, Foma Mur, contained according to his own assertion “a complete French novel (femme, amour), a page of English literature (Thomas Moore), and a touch of Jewish skepticism (Thomas the Apostle).” Shirin was sharpening a pencil over an ashtray: he was very much offended at Fyodor for refusing “to figure” in the election list.
Of the writers, there were also: Rostislav Strannyy—a rather dreadful person with a bracelet on his hairy wrist; the parchment-pale, raven-haired poetess, Anna Aptekar; a theater critic—a skinny, singularly quiet young man with an elusive something about him recalling a daguerreotype of the Russian forties; and, of course, kindly Busch, his eyes resting paternally on Fyodor, who, with half an ear cocked to the Society president’s report, had now transferred his gaze from Busch, Lishnevski, Shirin and the other writers to the general mass of those present, among whom were several journalists, as for instance old Stupishin, whose spoon was working its way through a wedge of mocha cake, many reporters, and—sitting alone and admitted here on God knows what basis—Lyubov Markovna in her timorously gleaming pince-nez; and in general there was a large number of those whom Shirin severely termed “the outside element”: the imposing lawyer Charski, holding his fourth cigarette of the night in his white, always trembling hand; a bearded little jobber who had once published an obituary notice in a Bundist paper; a gentle, pale old man, tasting of apple paste, who enthusiastically discharged his duties as the precentor of a church choir; an enormous, enigmatic fat man who lived as a hermit in a pine wood near Berlin, some said in a cave, and had there compiled a collection of Soviet anecdotes; a separate group of rowdies, conceited failures; a pleasant young man of unknown means and position (“a Soviet agent,” said Shirin simply and darkly); another lady—someone’s former secretary; her husband—the brother of a well-known publisher; and all these people, from the illiterate bum with a heavy, drunken gaze, who wrote denunciatorily mystical verses which not a single newspaper had yet agreed to publish, to the repulsively small, almost portable lawyer, Poshkin, who when talking to people said “I pot” for “I put” and “coshion” for “cushion” as if establishing an alibi for his name; all of these, in Shirin’s opinion, damaged the Society’s dignity and were liable to immediate expulsion.
“And now,” said Vasiliev, after finishing his report, “I bring to the notice of the meeting that I resign as Chairman of the Society and will not stand for re-election.”
He sat down. A little chill ran through the assembly. Beneath the burden of sorrow, Gurman closed his heavy lids. An electric train slid bowlike over a bass string.
“Next comes …” said Professor Kraevich, raising his pince-nez to his eyes and looking at the agenda, “the treasurer’s report. If you please.”
Gurman’s resilient neighbor, immediately adopting a challenging tone of voice, flashing his good eye and powerfully twisting his valuable-crammed mouth, commenced to read … figures were emitted like sparks, metallic words bounced … “entered the current year” … “debited” … “audited” … while Shirin, in the meantime, swiftly began to note something on the reverse side of a cigarette pack, added it up, and triumphantly exchanged glances with Lishnevski.
Having read to the end, the treasurer shut his mouth with a click, while some distance off a member of the Auditorial Committee had already risen, a Georgian socialist with a pockmarked face and black hair like a shoe-brush, and briefly enumerated his favorable impressions. After this Shirin asked for the floor and at once there was a whiff of something jolly, alarming, and improper.
He began by seizing on the fact that the expenditure for the New Year’s charity dance was inexplicably large; Gurman wanted to reply … the chairman, aiming his pencil at Shirin, asked him if he had finished.… “Let him speak, no cutting short!” shouted Shahmatov from his seat—and the chairman’s pencil, quivering like a serpent’s tongue, was aimed at him before returning to Shirin, who, however, bowed and sat down.
Gurman rose heavily, carrying his sorrowful burden with disdain and resignation, and began to speak … but Shirin soon interrupted him and Kraevich grasped his bell. Gurman finished, after which the treasurer instantly asked for the floor, but Shirin was already up and continuing: “The explanation of the honorable gentleman from the stock exchange …” The chairman rang his bell and requested more moderation, threatening to refuse permission to speak. Shirin again bowed and said that he had only one question: in the funds, according to the treasurer’s words, there were three thousand and seventy-six marks and fifteen pfennigs—could he see this money right now?
“Bravo,” shouted Shahmatov—and the least attractive member of the Union, the mystical poet, guffawed, applauded and almost fell off his chair. The treasurer, paling to a snowy shine, began to speak in a rapid patter … While he was speaking and being interrupted by impossible exclamations from the audience, a certain Shuf, lean, clean-shaven, looking somewhat like a Red Indian, left his corner, went up to the committee table unnoticed on his rubber soles, and suddenly slammed his red fist down on it, so that even the bell gave a jump. “You’re lying,” he bellowed and returned to his seat.
A row was breaking out on all sides when to Shirin’s chagrin it transpired that there was yet another faction wishing to seize power—namely the group that was always left out, and that included both the mystic and the Red Indian, as well as the little bearded fellow and several seedy and unbalanced individuals, one of whom suddenly began to read from a piece of paper a list of candidates for election to the committee, all of whom were completely unacceptable. The battle took a new turn, sufficiently tangled, now that there were three warring sides.
Such expressions flew about as “black marketeer,” “you’re not fit to duel” and “you’ve already been thrashed.” Even Busch spoke, trying to drown insulting ejaculations, but because of the natural obscurity of his style no one could understand what he was talking about until, sitting down, he explained that he was fully in agreement with the preceding speaker. Gurman, his nostrils alone expressing sarcasm, busied himself with his cigarette holder. Vasiliev left his seat and retired to a corner, where he pretended to read a newspaper.
Lishnevski delivered a crushing speech
