“Now that’s enough of that, Roman Petrovich,” the shiny man said with dignity. “Don’t you go trying to shield your Korneev from me. The sofa’s registered to my museum, and that’s where it has to stay.”
“It’s a piece of equipment,” Korneev said despairingly. “It’s for working with.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the shiny man declared. “I don’t know what you mean by working with a sofa. I’ve got a sofa at home too, and I know what kind of work gets done on that.”
“We know that too,” Roman said quietly.
“Now, that’s enough of that,” said the shiny man, turning to face him. “You’re not in the beer hall now—this is an official institution. What exactly are you trying to say?”
“What I’m trying to say is that this is not a sofa,” said Roman, “or, to put it in a form that you can grasp, it is not entirely a sofa. It is a piece of equipment with the appearance of a sofa.”
“I would ask you please to stop making insinuations,” the shiny man said emphatically, “concerning forms that I can grasp and so forth. Let’s each of us stick to his own job. My job is to put a stop to maladministration and waste, and that’s what I’m doing.”
“Right,” said the white-haired man in a clear, ringing voice. Suddenly there was silence. “I have had a word with Cristóbal Joséevich and Fyodor Simeonovich. They believe that the only value this translator has is as a museum piece. It once belonged to King Rudolf II, which puts its historical value beyond dispute. In addition, if my memory does not deceive me, we have already ordered a serial translator, two years ago… Can you remember who put in the order, Modest Matveevich?”
“Just a moment,” said the shiny Modest Matveevich, and began leafing rapidly through his notebook. “Just a moment… One Kitezhgrad Plant TDK-80E Twin-Cycle Translator… At the request of comrade Balsamo.”
“Balsamo works on it round the clock,” said Roman.
“And that TDK’s a load of junk,” added Korneev. “Molecular-level discrimination.”
“Yes, yes,” said the white-haired man. “Now I remember. There was a report on a study of the TDK. The discrimination curve really is rather uneven… Yes. What about this… er… sofa?”
“Handcrafted,” Roman put in quickly. “Absolutely reliable. Designed and made by Loew ben Bezalel. It took him three hundred years to assemble it and tune it.”
“Now then!” said the shiny Modest Matveevich. “That’s the way to do a job! An old man like that and he did everything himself.”
The mirror suddenly cleared its throat and said, “All of them became younger after having been in the water for an hour, and they emerged from it as handsome, young, and healthy, as strong and cheerful in spirit, as they were at the age of twenty.”
“Precisely,” said Modest Matveevich. The mirror had spoken in the voice of the white-haired man.
The white-haired man frowned irritably. “Let us not try to settle this question now,” he suggested.
“When, then?” asked the loutish Korneev.
“On Friday at the Academic Council.”
“We can’t go around squandering ancient relics,” interjected Modest Matveevich.
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Korneev asked rudely. The mirror began muttering in a sinister, sepulchral voice:
The white-haired man wrinkled up his entire face into a frown, went over to the mirror, thrust his arm into it up to the shoulder, and clicked something. The mirror fell silent.
“All right,” said the white-haired man. “We will also decide the question of your group at the council. And in the meantime you…”—I could see from his face that he had forgotten Korneev’s name—“…you will… er… refrain from visiting the museum.”
And so saying, he left the room. By the door.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Korneev said through clenched teeth, looking at Modest Matveevich.
“I won’t allow you to squander resources,” Modest Matveevich replied curtly, tucking his notebook away in his inside pocket.
“Squander!” exclaimed Korneev. “You couldn’t give a damn about anything. Keeping the books simple is all you’re concerned about. You just don’t want to put in an extra column.”
“Now that’s enough of that,” said the indomitable Modest Matveevich. “We’ll be setting up a commission to see what damage has been done to this relic—”
“Inventory number 1123,” Roman added in a soft voice.
“That’s the way of things,” Modest Matveevich said pompously, turning around and catching sight of me. “And what are you doing here?” he inquired. “Why are you sleeping here?”
“I…” I began.
“You slept on the sofa,” Modest declared in icy tones, his counterintelligence agent’s eyes boring into me. “Are you aware that it is an item of equipment?”
“No,” I said. “That is, I am now, of course.”
“Modest Matveevich!” exclaimed hook-nosed Roman. “This is our new programmer, Sasha Privalov!”
“Then why is he sleeping here? Why not in the hostel?”
“He hasn’t been registered yet,” said Roman, putting his arm around my waist.
“All the more reason!”
“You mean he ought to be sleeping out in the street?” Korneev asked spitefully.
“Now, that’s enough of that,” said Modest. “There’s a hostel and there’s a hotel, but this here is a museum, a state institution. What if everybody slept in the museums? Where are you from?”
“From Leningrad,” I said sullenly.
“What if I were to come to Leningrad and sleep in the Hermitage?”
“Be my guest,” I said with a shrug.
Roman still had his arm around my waist. “Modest Matveevich, you’re absolutely right, it’s most irregular, but today he’ll sleep in my room.”
“Now that’s a different matter. By all means,” said Modest magnanimously. He cast a proprietary glance around the room, saw the footprints on the ceiling, and immediately looked down at my feet. Fortunately I was barefoot. “That’s the way of things,” he said, then straightened out the old junk hanging on the hooks and left the room.
“Nin-com-poop,” Korneev hissed. “Blockhead.” He sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “Ah, to hell with the lot of them. I’ll snatch it again tonight.”
“Calm down,” said Roman gently. “It’s not that bad. We just had a bit of bad luck. Did you notice which Janus it was?”
“What of it?” Korneev asked hopelessly.
“It was A-Janus.”
Korneev raised his head. “What difference does that make?”
“A huge difference,” said Roman with a wink. “Because S-Janus has flown off to Moscow. Specifically to deal with the matter of this sofa. Now do you understand, you ransacker of museums?”
“Listen, you’ve saved my life,” said Korneev, and for the first time I saw him smile.
“You know, Sasha,” said Roman, turning to me, “we happen to have an ideal director. One person in two. There’s A-Janus Polyeuctovich and S-Janus Polyeuctovich. S-Janus is a topflight international scientist. But A-Janus is just a fairly ordinary administrator.”
“Twins?” I asked tentatively.
“No, they’re one and the same man. Only he’s one person in two.”