And elderly peasant woman with a basket of walnuts got off the bus and started across the street in the middle of the block. A traffic policeman blew his whistle, but instead of stopping, she began to run, spilling her walnuts on the way. She kept on running until she had reached the other side of the street.
Platon Samsonovich was one of the last to get off. He stood for a moment beside the bus, his jacket hanging limply from one shoulder. Then he suddenly started off in the opposite direction from the newspaper office.
“He’s walking away,” someone was the first to gasp.
“What do you mean, walking away?” asked Avtandil Avtandilovich in a threatening tone.
“I’ll go after him,” cried the humorist, dashing toward the door.
“Be sure you don’t tell him anything!” the editor shouted after him.
The rest of us stood by the window, not letting Platon Samsonovich out of our sight. With his jacket still slung over his shoulder he made his way slowly across the street. Having reached the other side, he suddenly halted by a soda water stand.
“He’s stopping for soda water,” someone noted in surprise, and we all burst out laughing.
The humorist came running out to the street and made his way to the nearest intersection. Raising one hand to shade his eyes from the sun, he began looking around in every direction. He didn’t notice Platon Samsonovich, however, because another customer had come up to the stand and temporarily blocked him from view.
The humorist stood at the corner for several seconds, peering anxiously about. Then, beginning to panic, he dashed across the street and continued walking in the direction of the sea. We watched with eager curiosity as he began to approach the soda water stand. But his gaze was fixed so resolutely ahead that he walked right by without even noticing Platon Samsonovich. Once again we all burst out laughing. But just at this moment Platon Samsonovich must have hailed him, for he wheeled around in surprise. He addressed a few words to Platon Samsonovich and then, motioning in the direction of the office, quickly moved on. Knowing that we were watching him from the window, he undoubtedly felt self-conscious and wanted to have as little contact with Platon Samsonovich as possible.
In the meantime all of the remaining passengers had left the bus. And now as Platon Samsonovich was making his way back to the office, the bus driver suddenly darted out into the street and began retrieving the walnuts dropped by the peasant woman. When he had gathered up every last one of them, he got back into the bus and drove off.
After what seemed like an interminable wait, Platon Samsonovich opened the office door and walked in. He greeted us with a nod and sat down. His face wore a look of gloomy concentration, and even from the way he was perched on the edge of his chair, one could tell that he knew everything. Or perhaps I only imagine this in retrospect.
“Well, did you arrange everything with the breeding specialist?” the editor asked calmly.
Platon Samsonovich’s tightly pressed lips began to tremble.
“Avtandil Avtandilovich,” he said in a hollow voice as he rose half stooping from his chair. “I know everything…”
“Well, who told you, I’d like to know,” asked the editor, now glancing at the humorist. The humorist threw up his hands in protest, then froze in position as if awaiting his fate.
“They reported it on the radio this morning,” said Platon Samsonovich, continuing to stand in the same half-stooping position.
“So you’re in the forefront here too,” the editor joked gloomily, trying to hide his disappointment at not being the first to break the news.
The editor gazed coldly at Platon Samsonovich, and as the seconds passed, it was as if the distance between them had increased to the point where he almost ceased to recognize him. Under the weight of this gaze Platon Samsonovich seemed to grow even more stooped.
“Have a seat,” said Avtandil Avtandilovich, addressing him in the tone reserved for chance visitors to the office.
In a clear, ringing voice the editor now began reading the article aloud. And as he read, gradually warming to his subject, he would occasionally cast a glance at Platon Samsonovich.
At first he seemed to include himself along with the rest of us in his recitation of our common errors and excesses. But as he kept on reading, the note of pathos in his voice continued to rise until suddenly it began to appear as if it were he himself, along with various other comrades, who had detected these errors. And by the time he finished, the tone of his voice had blended so well with that of the article in its rapid transitions from anger to irony that one might have imagined that it was he alone, without the help of any comrades, who had first noticed our mistakes and brought them boldly into the open.
Finally Avtandil Avtandilovich put down the article and declared the matter open for discussion. He spoke first and, to give him his due, he did criticize himself along with everyone else. For although he had in fact tried to call a halt to the ill-advised promotion of the goatibex (and for this very reason had insisted on printing the livestock expert’s critical commentary, if only in the “Laughing at the Skeptics” column), still, his efforts in this direction had been insufficiently energetic and for this he must take at least part of the blame.
The humorist, who had been fidgeting impatiently all the while, took the floor immediately after Avtandil Avtandilovich and reminded us that in his satiric sketch about the man who had defaulted in his alimony payments, he too had tried to make a veiled criticism of the ill-advised promotion of the goatibex. But not only had Platon Samsonovich ignored his criticism — he had even tried to malign him.
“Malign you?” suddenly exclaimed Platon Samsonovich, gazing gloomily at the humorist.
“Yes, politically!” the latter firmly asserted, gazing back at him with the eyes of a man who has once and for all thrown off the chains of his bondage.
“You’re exaggerating,” interjected Avtandil Avtandilovich in conciliatory fashion. He did not like broad generalizations unless he was the one to make them.
Avtandil Avtandilovich now proceeded to raise the question of Platon Samsonovich’s family life, which had inevitably suffered from the ill-advised promotion of the goatibex.
“His estrangement from the economic realities of collective farm life gradually led to an estrangement from his own family,” the editor summarized. “And this is quite understandable, for having lost all criteria for truth, he came away with an inflated sense of his own importance.”
After all of the staff members had voiced their individual support of his criticisms, Avtandil Avtandilovich took the floor once again — this time urging us to bear in mind that Platon Samsonovich was an old and experienced newspaper man who, for all his mistakes, was nonetheless devoted heart and soul to our common cause. Here too the staff was in complete agreement, and someone even quoted the saying to the effect that old horses shouldn’t be put out to pasture.
The humorist, once again unable to restrain himself, now broke in to remind us that such excesses were all too typical of Platon Samsonovich. Several years before, for example, he had tried to develop a new method for catching fish. His idea was to run high-frequency electric currents through the water, thus encouraging the fish to collect in one particular area, away from the electric currents. But what had actually happened was that the fish had left the bay and might never have returned, had his experiments been allowed to continue.
“That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work, you’ve got it all wrong,” Platon Samsonovich was about to object, but by this time everyone was too tired to listen to technical details of an old experiment.