The Twelve Chairs: A Novel

39. Cape Green

✦ 459 ✦ 39 Cape Green engineer bruns was sitting on the stone veranda of his dacha on Cape Green under a large palm tree whose starched leaves threw sharp, narrow shadows on the shaved back of the engineer’s head, his white shirt, and the Gambs chair from General Popov’s widow’s set on which the engineer languished as he awaited dinner. Bruns pursed his thick, juicy lips into a tube and said, in the long, drawn-out whine of a playful little tyke, “Moo-oosie!” The dacha remained silent. Tropical flora fawned on the engineer. Cacti stretched out their hedgehog-spined mittens to him. Dracaenas rattled their leaves thunderously. Banana trees and sago palms chased flies from the engineer’s bald spot. The roses winding around the veranda fell at his sandaled feet. But all was in vain. Bruns wanted dinner. Annoyed, he looked at the pearly bay and the distant little cape of Batumi and called out in a singsong, “Moo-oosie! Moo-oosie!” Sound died out quickly in the wet subtropical air. There was no answer. Bruns imagined a large brown goose with fat, sizzling skin and, unable to restrain himself, howled, “Moosie!! Is the goosie ready?” “Andrey Mikhailovich! Stop pestering me!” a woman’s voice shouted from inside. The engineer, who’d already pursed his lips into the usual tube, quickly answered, “Moosie! You’re not being very nice to your little hubby!” “Go on with you, greedy-guts!” came the reply from inside. But the engineer did not give in. He was just going to continue his calls for the goosie (which he’d been carrying on unsuccessfully for two hours now), but a sudden rustling made him turn around. Out of the green-and-black bamboo thicket stepped a man wearing dirty striped trousers and a ripped dark-blue kosovorotka belted with a worn, twisted cord ending in two thick tassels . A shaggy beard bristled on the stranger’s kind face. He carried his jacket. The man came close and asked in a pleasant voice, “Where would I find Engineer Bruns?” “I’m Engineer Bruns,” the goosie-charmer said in a sudden bass. “What can I do for you?” The man fell on his knees in silence. It was Father Fyodor. “You’re crazy!” the engineer exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “Please, stand up!” “I won’t,” Father Fyodor replied, turning his head to follow the engineer and gazing at him with clear eyes. “Stand up!” “I won’t!” And then Father Fyodor started hitting his head on the gravel, carefully, so it wouldn’t hurt. “Moosie! Come here!” the frightened engineer shouted. “Look what’s going on. Stand up, I ask you! Come on, I beg you!” “I won’t!” Father Fyodor repeated. Moosie, who had a good feel for her husband’s intonations, ran out onto the veranda. At the sight of the lady, Father Fyodor nimbly crawled over to her without getting up, bowed at her feet, and began to rattle off a string of words: “All my 460 ✦ madame petukhova’s treasure hopes, kind little mother, all my hopes, my dear lady, all my hopes are on you.” Then Engineer Bruns turned red, grabbed the petitioner under the arms and, straining, lifted him up to set him on his feet. But Father Fyodor cleverly tucked his feet up under him. Bruns, upset, dragged the strange guest into a corner and forced him down into a chair (a Gambs chair, which was not at all from Vorobyaninov’s mansion, but rather from General Popov’s widow’s parlor). “I don’t dare,” Father Fyodor muttered, placing the baker’s jacket, which smelled of kerosene, on his knees. “I wouldn’t dare sit in the presence of high-ranking personages.” Father Fyodor attempted to fall to his knees again. With a sad cry, the engineer held Father Fyodor by the shoulders. “Moosie!” he said, breathing heavily. “Talk to the citizen. There’s been some kind of mistake.” Moosie immediately adopted a businesslike tone. “If you please, there will be no kneeling of any kind in my home!” she said threateningly. “Kind lady!” said Father Fyodor, moved. “Dear little mother!” “I’m no little mother to you. What do you want?” The priest mumbled something that was unintelligible, but clearly touching. Only after a lot of questioning did they glean that, as a special act of charity, he was asking them to sell him their set of twelve chairs, one of which he...