“Don’t bother,” said the crone, riveting me with her gaze. “I can see for myself. Privalov, Alexander Ivanovich, 1938, male, Russian, member of VLKSM, no, no, has not participated, had not, was not, but will have, my crystal one, a long, long road and an interest in a government house, and what you should fear and avoid, my very diamond, is an ill-willed redheaded man, and won’t you gild my palm, my precious. .
“Ha-hm!” Hawk-nose pronounced loudly, and the crone stopped short.
“Just call me Sasha….” I squeezed out the previously prepared phrase.
“And where shall I put him?” inquired the crone.
“In the spare room, of course,” said Hawk-nose in a somewhat irritated manner.
“And who will be responsible?”
“Naina Kievna!” roared Hawk-nose in the best rolling tones of a provincial tragedian. He grabbed the old hag under the arm and dragged her off toward the house. You could hear them arguing.
“But we agreed!”
“And what if he swipes something?”
“Can’t you be quiet! He is a programmer, don’t you understand? A Comsomol! Well educated!”
“And what if he starts sucking his teeth?”
I turned toward Volodia, ill at ease. Volodia tittered.
“It’s a bit embarrassing,” I said.
“Don’t worry; it’s going to work out just fine…” He was going to say something else, when the crone started shouting: “And the sofa—how about the sofa?”
I started nervously and said, “You know what? I think I’d better go, no?
“Let’s have no more of that kind of talk,” Volodia said decisively. “Everything will be worked out. It’s just that the old woman is looking to have her due, and Roman and I don’t have any cash.”
“I will pay,” I said. Now I wanted to leave very badly. I can’t stand these so-called daily-life collisions.
Volodia shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. Here he comes. Everything’s in order.”
The hawk-nosed Roman came up to us, took me by the arm, and said, “Well, it’s all fixed. Let’s go.”
“Listen. It doesn’t feel right, somehow,” I said. “After all, she is not obliged…
But we were already on the way to the house.
“She is obliged—she is obliged,” repeated Roman.
Having circumnavigated the oak, we came up to the rear entrance. Roman pushed on the naugahyde-covered door, and we found ourselves in a large, clean but poorly lighted entryway. The old hag waited for us with compressed lips, and hands folded on her stomach.
At the sight of us, she boomed out vindictively, “And the statement—let’s have that statement now! Stating thus and so: have received such and such, from such and such; which person has turned over the above-mentioned to the undersigned. .
Roman yelped weakly, and we entered the assigned room. It was cool, with a single window hung with a calico curtain.
Roman said in a tense voice, “Make yourself at home.”
The old woman immediately inquired from the entry in a jealous tone, “And he won’t be sucking his teeth?”
Roman barked without turning around, “No, he won’t! I’m telling you there are no teeth to worry over.”
“Then let’s go and write up the statement.”
Roman raised his eyebrows, rolled his eyes, shook his head, but still left the room. I looked around. There wasn’t much furniture. A massive table covered with a sere gray cloth with a fringe stood by the window, and in front of it—a rickety stool. A vast sofa was placed against a bare wood wall, and a wardrobe stood against the other wall, which was decorated with assorted wallpaper. The wardrobe was stuffed with old trash (felt boots, bald fur coats, torn caps, and earmuffs)—A large Russian stove jutted into the room resplendent with fresh calcimine, and a large murky mirror in a peeling frame hung in the opposite corner. The floor was scoured clean and covered with striped runners.
Two voices boomed on in a duet behind the walclass="underline" the old woman’s voice buzzed on the same note; Roman’s went up and down.
“Tablecloth, inventory number two hundred and forty-five…
“Are you going to list each floorboard?”
“Table, dining…
“Put down the stove, too.”
“You must be orderly… Sofa…
I went up to the window and drew the curtain. Outside was the oak, and nothing else could be seen. Quite evidently it was a truly ancient tree. Its bark was gray and somehow dead looking, and its monstrous roots, which had worked out of the ground, were covered with red-and-white lichen. “Put down the oak, too!” said Roman behind the wall. A fat, greasy book lay on the windowsill. I ruffled it absentmindedly, came away from the window, and sat down on the sofa. All at once, I felt sleepy. Remembering that I had driven the car for fourteen hours that day, I decided that perhaps there was no point in all this rush, that my back ached, that everything was jumbled in my head, that I didn’t give a hang about the tiresome hag, and that I wished everything would get settled so I could lie down and go to sleep….
“There you are,” said Roman, appearing in the doorway. “The formalities are over.” He waved his hands, fanning ink-stained fingers. “Our digits are fatigued; we wrote and wrote…. Go to bed. We are leaving, and you can rest easy. What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Wait,” I said, listless.
“Where?”
“Here, and at the post office.”
“You’ll not leave tomorrow… chances are?”
“Probably not. Most likely—the day after tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll see you again. Our liaison is still ahead of us.” He smiled and went out with a wave of his hand. I should see him out and say good-bye to Volodia, I thought lackadaisically, and lay down. And there was the old woman in the room again. I got up. She looked hard at me for some time.
“I fear me, old fellow, that you’ll be smacking through your teeth,” she said.
“No I won’t be,” I said. Then, exhausted, “It’s sleeping I’ll be.”
“Then lie down and sleep…. Just pay me and welcome to snooze.”
I reached for my wallet in the back pocket. “What do I owe you?”
The crone raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Let’s say a ruble for the quarters. . Fifty kopecks for the bed-clothes—that’s my own, not G.I. For two nights, that comes out to be three rubles…. As to what you’ll throw in for generosity’s sake—that’s for my troubles, you know—that I couldn’t say…
I proffered her a five-ruble note.
“Make it a ruble out of generosity for now,” said I, “and then we’ll see.”
The crone snatched the money and retired, muttering something about change. She was absent a fair time and I was about to forget the change and the bed-sheets, but she came back and laid a handful of dirty coppers on the table.
“And here’s your change, governor,” she said. “One nice ruble, exactly; you needn’t count.”
“I won’t count,” I said. “How about the sheets?”
“I’ll make your bed right away. You go take a walk in the yard, and I’ll get right to it.”
I went out, extricating my pack of cigarettes. The sun had finally set and the white night had arrived. Dogs were barking somewhere in the distance. I sat down by the oak on a garden bench that had sunk into the ground, lighted up, and stared at the pale, starless sky. The cat appeared noiselessly out of somewhere, glanced at me with his fluorescent eyes, and then rapidly climbed up the oak and disappeared in its foliage. I forgot about him at once, and started when he began pottering above me. Some sort of rubbish fell on my head. “You darned…” I said aloud, and shook myself. The desire to sleep became overwhelming. The crone came out, and wended her way to the well, not seeing me. I took this to mean that the bed was ready, and went back to the room.