The Twelve Chairs: A Novel

4. The Muse of Distant Travel

✦ 37 ✦ 4 The Muse of Distant Travel an hour before the arrival of the evening mail train, Father Fyodor, holding a reed basket and wearing a short overcoat that barely covered his knees, stood in line at the ticket window looking timidly at the entrance doors. He was afraid that his dear little mother would disobey his command and run over to the train station to see him off, for then the street vendor Prusis, who was sitting in the station buffet with the tax inspector he’d just treated to a beer, would recognize him right away. Father Fyodor kept glancing with wonder and shame at his striped trousers, revealed for all laypeople to see. An agent of the Traffic and Transportation Division of the GPU strolled slowly around the hall, pacified a shouting match that arose over places in line, and started rounding up the homeless children who’d had the nerve to go into the halls for first- and second-class passengers and play “There Once Was a Country Named Russia, a Mighty State” on wooden spoons. The man in the ticket window, a stern citizen, fussed with his ticket-punches for a long time, punching lacy numerals into tickets and, to the amazement of the entire line, giving small change back in actual money, not in stamps for the children ’s charity. Boarding the train with no reserved seating was a scandalous affair, as usual. Passengers bent double under the weight of enormous sacks were running from the head of the train to its tail, and from the tail to the head. Father Fyodor, dazed, ran 38 ✦ the lion of stargorod with everyone else. He talked to conductors ingratiatingly, just like everyone else, and he was afraid the man in the ticket window had given him the wrong ticket, just like everyone else, and it was only after he’d finally been let into his train car that he regained his usual equanimity and even started feeling cheerful. The engine shrieked in a sonorous voice and the train moved off, carrying Father Fyodor away to distant, unknown horizons on business that, although enigmatic, clearly promised a large return. The railroad right-of-way is an interesting piece of work. Once he enters it, even the most everyday, ordinary citizen experiences a certain anxiety and quickly turns into either a passenger, or a recipient of goods, or just a ticketless bum who casts a pall over the life and work of conductors’ brigades and platform guards. The minute a citizen steps into the railroad right-of-way— which he, a dilettante, calls a stop or a train station—his life changes abruptly. Yermak Timofeeviches in their white aprons with nickel-plated badges over their hearts instantly gallop up to him and obligingly pick up his baggage. And from that moment on, the citizen no longer belongs to himself. He is a passenger , and begins to perform all the duties thereof. These duties are highly complex, but pleasant. The passenger eats a lot. Mere mortals don’t eat late at night, but the passenger eats even though it’s nighttime. He eats fried spring chicken (which is expensive for him), hardboiled eggs (which are bad for his digestion), and black olives. When the train bursts through the switch points, numerous teakettles clank on their shelves next to the bouncing spring chickens that have been divested of their legs (which the passengers have ripped out by the root) and wrapped in newspaper . But the passengers notice none of this. They are telling jokes. Regularly, every three minutes, the entire train car splits its sides with laughter. Then there’s a silence, and a velvety voice delivers the following joke: An old Jew is dying. His wife is there, his kids. “Is Monya here?” the Jew is barely able to ask. “Yes.” “Did Aunt Brana come?” “She came.” “Where’s Grandmother? I don’t see her.” “She’s standing right there.” “What about Isaac?” “Isaac is here.” “And the children?” “Look, all the children are here.” “Then who’s left to mind the store?!” That very second the teapots begin clanking and the spring chickens, disturbed by the thunderous laughter, fly down onto the top bunks. But the passengers don’t notice. Each cherishes a sacred joke, which, trembling, awaits its turn. The next performer pokes his neighbors with his elbows and shouts pleadingly , “I heard a good one!” With difficulty, he gains everyone’s attention and begins: This one...