“Hello there,” I said tiredly.
The Small Man twisted his long lips in a grimace of suffering.
“Good evening,” he said. “Please excuse me. I’ve been shunted here some way I don’t quite understand. It’s about the sofa.”
“You are a bit late about the sofa,” I said, sitting down at the table.
“I can see that,” said The Small Man in a low voice, twisting about clumsily. Bits of plaster rained down.
I smoked, regarding him pensively.
The Small Man looked down at the floor in indecision. “You need help?” I said, making a move toward him. “No, thank you,” The Small Man said drearily. “I’d better do it myself.”
Smearing himself with calcimine, he worked his way to the edge of the shelf and, pushing off in an ungainly manner, dived down head first. My heart flipped, but he hung in midair and began to descend slowly, arms and legs spread-eagled convulsively. It wasn’t very aesthetic, but it was quite amusing. Landing on all fours, he stood up and wiped his wet face with his sleeve.
“Getting really old,” he croaked. “Now, a hundred years ago, say in the reign of Gonzast, I would have been drummed out without a diploma for such a descent, you may be sure, Alexander Ivanovich.”
“Diploma in what?” I demanded, lighting my second cigarette.
He wasn’t listening to me. Having sat down on the stool, he continued mournfully.
“In the old days, I levitated as well as Zex. But now, forgive me, I can’t eradicate the growth in my ears. It’s so untidy…. But if you have no talent? There is a vast number of attractions around, all kinds of degrees, titles, but no talent! Many get overgrown in their old age. Of course, this does not apply to the stars. Gian Giacomo, Cristobal Junta, Giuseppe Balsamo or, say, comrade Feodor Simeonovich Kivrin… not a trace of hairy growth!” He looked at me triumphantly. “Not—a—trace! Smooth skin, elegance, suppleness…”
“Forgive me,” I said. “You said—Giuseppe Balsamo but that’s the same as Count Cagliostro! And according to Tolstoi, the count was fat and very unpleasant to look at…”
The Small Man looked at me with sadness and smiled condescendingly.
“You are simply not informed, Alexander Ivanovich,” he said. “Count Cagliostro is something entirely different from Giuseppe Balsamo. It’s, how shall I put it… it’s not a very successful copy. Balsamo matricized himself in his youth. He was most extraordinarily talented, but you know how it is done when one is young…. Hurry up, make it more amusing, slam bam, and it’ll get by…Yes-s… never say that Balsamo and Cagliostro are one and the same. It could be embarrassing.”
I was embarrassed.
“True,” I said. “Naturally, I am not an expert. But, excuse my indiscreet question, what has the sofa to do with it? Who needed it?”
The Small Man started.
“Inexcusable arrogance,” he said loudly, getting up. “I committed an error and I am prepared to admit it with complete candor. When such giants… and even these cheeky youngsters…” He began to bow, pressing his pale hands to his heart. “Please forgive me, Alexander Ivanovich, I have importuned you so…. Let me apologize once again most sincerely. I am departing at once.” He approached the Russian stove and looked up queasily.
“Old is what I am, Alexander Ivanovich,” he said, with a deep sigh. “Old indeed…”
“Maybe it would be more congenial for you through the. . eh… There was a chap came through here before you, and he used the…”
“Oh, no, my friend, that was Cristobal Junta! What’s it to him to percolate through the plumbing for a distance of ten leagues…?” The Small Man waved his hands in grief. “As for me, I take the simpler way…. Did he take the sofa with him or did he transvect it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Fact is, he, too, was late.”
Overwhelmed, The Small Man pulled on the hairs of his right ear.
“Late? Him? Most improbable! However, how can we be the judge of that? Farewell, Alexander Ivanovich. Please find it in your generous heart to forgive me.”
With obvious effort, he passed through the wall and disappeared. I threw the cigarette butt into the litter on the floor. Some sofa! That was no simple talking tomcat; that was something a bit more substantial—some sort of drama. Perhaps it was even a drama of concepts. Maybe more would come… the late ones. For sure, more would come. I regarded the litter. Where had I seen a broom?
The broom stood by the cask under the telephone. I set to sweeping up the dust and debris, when something heavy caught in the broom and rolled out into the middle of the room. I stared at it. It was a shiny elongated cylinder about the size of my thumb. I poked at it with the broom. The cylinder swayed, something crackled crisply, and the room filled with the smell of ozone. I threw the broom aside and picked up the cylinder. It was smooth, finely polished, and warm to the touch. I tapped it with my nail and again it crackled. I turned it to see the other end, and at the same moment, felt the floor sway under my feet. Everything turned before my eyes. I struck something most painfully with my heels, then my shoulder, and then my occiput, dropped the cylinder, and finished my fall. I was thoroughly disoriented and did not immediately grasp that I was lying in the narrow space between wall and stove. The lamp was swinging overhead, and, raising my eyes, I was surprised to discover the prints of my rib-soled shoes on the ceiling. Groaning, I climbed out of the crack and looked at my soles. They had calcimine on them.
“How about that,” I cerebrated aloud. “Why not percolate through the plumbing next…”
I searched visually for the cylinder. It stood, touching the floor with an edge of its flat end, in an attitude defying all the laws of balance. I approached it cautiously and squatted down next to it. It was swaying to and fro and crackling softly. I looked at it for a long time, stretching my neck, and then blew on it. The little cylinder rocked harder and leaned over, at which point there was a stir of wind and a sound of hoarse clucking behind my back. I turned to look and sat down hard on the floor. There on the stove, folding its wings, sat a colossus of a griffin with a bald neck and menacingly curved beak.
“How do you do,” I said. I was convinced that the griffin was of the talking variety.
It looked at me with one eye, which made its appearance instantly resemble a hen. I waved my hand in a gesture of greeting. The griffin opened its beak, but no words came forth. It raised its wing and took to clicking its beak, searching under its armpit. The cylinder kept swaying and crackling. The griffin quit its hunt, drew its head down into its shoulders, and covered its eyes with a yellow membrane. Trying not to turn my back to it, I finished my clean-up and threw the litter out the door into the rainy blackness. Then I returned to my room.
The griffin slept and the ozone stank. I checked my watch: it was twenty past midnight. I stood a while looking down at the cylinder, cogitating on the conservation of energy and of matter, too. It wasn’t likely that griffins condensed out of nothing. If the given griffin had materialized here in Solovetz, then it must be that a griffin (not necessarily this given one) disappeared in the Caucasus, or wherever it was they lived. I estimated the energy of transport and eyed the cylinder warily. Best not to touch it, I thought. Better cover it up with something and let it stay there. I brought in the dipper from the hall, took careful aim, and, holding my breath, let it settle over the cylinder. Next I sat down on the stool and waited for whatever would come next. The griffin snored with remarkable clarity. In the light of the lamp its feathers had a coppery sheen, and its huge claws were sunk into the plaster. A stench of decay slowly expanded from its vicinity.