Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

we?
What place was this? Never mind. What did it matter?
Moscow
was all black, black, black . Silent buildings stared tightly and coldly. A church
loomed, looking confused and worried. It was swallowed up in the dark.
    Two in the morning. Where can I spend the night? All those houses! What
could be easier ... Just knock at any door. Could you
put me up for the night? I can just imagine it!
    Voice of the medical student:
    "Where're you going?"
    "Don't know."
    "What do you mean?"
    There are some good souls in this world. "The
person who rents the next room is still away in the country, see. You could
stay there for one night..."
    "Oh, how kind of you. I'll find my friends tomorrow." Cheered up a bit after that. And it's funny, but as soon as
I'd found somewhere to stay, I began to feel the
effects of losing three nights' sleep.
     
    *
     
    Two bulbs fracture the shadows on a bridge. We plunge
into darkness again. A street-lamp. A
grey fence with a poster. Huge garish letters. Goodness, what's that word? Twanvlam . What on earth does it mean?
    Twelfth Anniversary of Vladimir Mayakovsky .
    The cart stopped. They took off some luggage. I stared
at the word, entranced. A good word! And I, provincial wretch that I am, had
sniggered in the mountains at the ASS head! What the blazes! But
Moscow
is not as black as
its papooses. Sudden urge to imagine Vlam . Never seen
him, but I know ... I know. He's about forty, very short and bald, wears
glasses and is always dashing about. Short trousers turned up. Works in an office. Doesn't smoke. Has a large flat with portieres, now compulsorily shared with a lawyer, who is
a lawyer no longer, but the commandant of a government building. Lives in a study with an unheated fireplace. Likes
butter, comic verse and a tidy room. Favourite writer — Conan
Doyle. Favourite opera — Eugene One-gin. Cooks himself rissoles on a primus-stove. Can't stand the
lawyer-commandant, and dreams of getting him out some day, marrying and living
happily ever after in five rooms.
    The cart creaked, shuddered, moved on for a bit, then stopped again. Neither storm nor tempest could daunt
the immortal citizen Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov . By a building, which seemed in the darkness and
fear to have about fifteen storeys, the cartload grew perceptibly thinner. In
the inky blackness a figure rushed from it into an entrance and whispered:
"What about the butter, Dad? And the lard, Dad? And the flour, Dad?"
    Dad stood in the darkness, muttering: "That's the
lard, and the butter, and the wheat, and the rye..."
    Then out of the pitch dark flashed Dad's
thumb, which peeled off twenty banknotes for the drayman.
    There will be other tempests. Raging tempests! And
everyone may perish. But not Dad.
    The cart turned into a huge platform which engulfed
the medical student's sack and my travelling-bag. And we sat down, legs
dangling, and rode off into the darkness.
     
HOUSE No. 4, ENTRANCE 6, 2ND FLOOR, FLAT 50, ROOM 7
     
    To tell the truth I've no idea why I crossed the whole
of
Moscow
to
get to this huge building. The document I had carefully brought with me from
the mountain kingdom was valid for all six-storey buildings, or rather, for
none.
    The cage of the dead lift in entrance six. Got my breath back here. A door with two notices. One says "Flat 50". The other an enigmatic "F. Arts". Must get my breath back again. My fate is about to be
decided.
    I pushed open the unlocked door. In the semi-dark hall
was a huge box full of papers and a grand-piano top. A room flashed past, full
of women and wreathed in smoke. There was a short burst of typing. Silence. Then a deep voice said: " Meyerhold ."
    "Where's ASS Lit.?" I asked, leaning on the wooden
barrier.
    The woman by the barrier shrugged her shoulders
irritably. She didn't know. The other one didn't know either. A long dark corridor. I groped my way along by guesswork.
Opened one door — a bathroom. The next door had a scrap of paper nailed to it.
Askew, one corner turned up. AS.