The Twelve Chairs: A Novel

6. The Smooth Operator

✦ 65 ✦ 6 The Smooth Operator at half past twelve, a young man of about twenty-eight walked into Stargorod from the direction of a village called Chmarovka to the northwest. A little homeless boy ran after him. “Uncle!” he shouted cheerfully. “Give me ten kopeks!” The young man pulled a warm apple out of his pocket and handed it to the homeless boy, but he didn’t stop begging. Then the pedestrian stopped, gave the boy an ironic look, and said quietly, “Maybe you want me to give you the key to a room full of money, too?” The homeless boy, who’d gone a little too far in pursuit of charity, realized that his claims were completely groundless and stopped bothering the young man. But the young man had lied: he had neither money, nor a room, nor a key with which to open the room. He didn’t even have a coat. The young man had entered the city in a fitted green suit. An old wool scarf was wrapped a few times around his mighty neck and on his feet were patent leather shoes with orange suede uppers. There were no socks under the shoes. The young man was holding an astrolabe. “Oh, Bayaderka, tee-ree-reem, tee-ree-rah!” he sang, as he approached the district market. There was a lot for him to do there. He squeezed his way into the ranks of sellers bargaining over their used wares, set the astrolabe out before him, and started shouting, in a seri- 66 ✦ the lion of stargorod ous voice, “Who wants an astrolabe? Astrolabe for sale, cheap! Discounts for delegations and women’s sections!” The unexpected offering didn’t generate any interest for a long time. The housewives’ delegations were more interested in hard-to-get items and crowded around the stalls selling manufactured goods. An agent from the Stargorod Province Bureau of Criminal Investigation had already walked past the astrolabe-seller twice. But since the astrolabe did not in the least resemble the typewriter that had been stolen from the Central Butter office the day before, the agent stopped magnetizing the young man with his eyes and left. By lunchtime the astrolabe had been sold to a repairman for three rubles. “It’d measure all by itself, if you had anything for it to measure,” the young man said as he handed the astrolabe to its buyer. Thus freed from the clever instrument, the cheerful young man dined in the Tasty Corner cafeteria and went to have a look at the town. He walked down Sovetskaya Street, turned onto Krasnoarmeyskaya Street (formerly Bolshaya Pushkinskaya Street), crossed Kooperativnaya Street, and found himself on Sovetskaya Street once more. But it wasn’t the same Sovetskaya Street he’d walked down: there were two Sovetskaya Streets in the town. More than a little surprised by this circumstance, the young man ended up on Lena Massacre Street (formerly Denisovskaya). The young man paused to get a light from the dvornik sitting on a stone bench next to the gates of building No. 28, a handsome two-story house, featuring the sign ussr – rsfsr stargorod province government social security home no. 2. “What do you say, father,” the young man asked, inhaling. “Are there any brides in this town of yours?” The old dvornik didn’t bat an eye. “Some people would take an old nag for a bride,” he answered, eagerly entering into the conversation. “No more questions,” the young man said quickly. Then he asked another question: “A building like this, and no brides in it?” “You couldn’t find our brides with a bright light on a sunny day. This here is our government-run poorhouse, the old ladies get three squares a day.” “I see. Those being the ones who were born back before historical materialism?” “Now that’s the truth. Whenever they were born, why, that’s when they were born.” “So what was in this building before historical materialism?” “Before what?” “You know, back then, under the old regime?” “Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.” “A bourgeois?” “You’re a bourgeois yourself! He wasn’t a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.” “So he was a proletarian, then?” “You’re a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.” The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted God knows how long if the young man hadn...