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  .., 2026.



PART ONE  

STARGORODSKY LEV  » The information will be paid for.  I

Bezenchuk and The Nymphs   

In the county town of N, there were so many barber shops and funeral processions that it seemed that the inhabitants of the city were born only to shave, cut their hair, refresh their heads with vezhetal and immediately die.    N         ,  ,     ,  , ,       . In fact, in the county town of N, people were born, shaved, and died quite rarely.        N  ,     . The life of City N was the quietest.   N  . The spring evenings were delightful, the mud glittered like anthracite under the moonlight, and all the young people of the city were so in love with the secretary of the local communal committee that it prevented her from collecting membership fees.    ,    ,  ,             ,       .

Questions of love and death did not concern Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, although he was in charge of these questions from nine in the morning to five in the evening every day, with a half-hour break for breakfast.         ,                     .

In the morning, after drinking his portion of hot milk from a frosty, veined glass served by Klavdia Ivanovna, he would leave the dim house and go out to the spacious street named after Comrade Gubernsky, full of strange spring light.  ,   ,  ,     ,   ,       ,        . It was the most pleasant of all the streets found in county towns.     ,     . To the left, behind wavy greenish panes of glass, the coffins of the Nymph funeral home glittered silver.            .On the right, behind small windows with crumbling putty, the dusty and boring oak coffins of the coffin-maker Bezenchuk lay sullenly.   ,               . Further, "Cirulny master Pierre and Konstantin" promised its customers "nail care" and "ondulyancion at home".               . Still further away was a hotel with a barber shop, and behind it, on a large vacant lot, a fawn calf stood and gently licked a rusty sign leaning against a lonely gate:FUNERAL HOME "Welcome"     ,             ,      :  

Although there were a lot of funeral businesses, their clientele was not very rich.     ,      . "You are welcome" burst three years before Ippolit Matveyevich settled in the city of N, and master Bezenchuk drank bitter and even once tried to pawn his best exhibition coffin in a pawnshop.         ,       N,                .

People in the city of N rarely died, and Ippolit Matveyevich knew this better than anyone else, because he served in the registry office, where he was in charge of the registration table for deaths and marriages.    N  ,           ,     ,       .

The table at which Ippolit Matveyevich worked looked like an old tombstone. ,     ,     . The left corner of it was destroyed by rats.      . His frail legs shook under the weight of bulky tobacco-colored folders with notes from which it was possible to get all the information about the pedigrees of the inhabitants of the city of N and about the genealogical firewood that grew on the scanty county soil.            ,            N    ,     .

On Friday, April 15, 1927, Ippolit Matveyevich, as usual, woke up at half past seven and immediately stuck his nose into an old-fashioned pince-nez with a gold bow.   15  1927   ,  ,               . He did not wear glasses.    . One day, having decided that wearing pince-nez was not hygienic, Ippolit Matveyevich went to the optician and bought rimless glasses with gilded shafts. , ,     ,          ,   . He liked the glasses from the first time, but his wife (it was not long before her death) found that he looked just like Milyukov in glasses, and he gave them to the janitor.      ,   (     ) ,      ,     . The janitor, although not nearsighted, was used to glasses and enjoyed wearing them. ,     ,        .

"Bonjour!  ! - Ippolit Matveyevich sang to himself, swinging his legs out of bed.       ,    . "Bonjour" indicated that Ippolit Matveyevich had woken up in a good mood.    ,       .Saying "gut morgen" on waking usually meant that the liver was playing tricks, that fifty-two years was no joke, and that the weather was wet.       ,   ,            . Ippolit Matveyevich shoved his lean legs into pre-war piece trousers, tied them at the ankles with ribbons, and plunged into short soft boots with narrow square toes.         ,               . Five minutes later, Ippolit Matveyevich was wearing a moonlight vest studded with a small silver star and an iridescent lustrous jacket.         ,    ,    . Ippolit Matveyevich brushed the dewdrops from his gray hair that had remained after washing, moved his moustache savagely, hesitatingly touched his rough chin with his hand, ran a brush through his short  cropped aluminum hair, and, smiling politely, moved towards his mother-in-law, Klavdia Ivanovna, who was entering the room.        ,     ,      ,        ,  ,         .

"Eppolet," she thundered, " I had a bad dream today."

The word "dream" was pronounced with a French accent.  -,   ,      .

Ippolit Matveyevich looked down at his mother-in-law.       . His height reached one hundred and eighty-five centimeters, and from this height it was easy and convenient for him to treat his mother-in-law with some disdain.        ,               . Klavdia Ivanovna continued:   :

 I saw the late Marie with her hair down and a gold sash.            .

The cannon sounds of Klavdia Ivanovna's voice made the cast-iron lamp with its ball, shot, and dusty glass tsatskami shake.           ,     .

 I'm very worried.    . I'm afraid something wouldn't have happened. ,    .

The last words were uttered with such force that the square of hair on Ippolit Matveyevich's head swayed in different directions.       ,           . He wrinkled his face and said separately:      :

"Nothing will happen, Maman.    , .Have you already paid for water?     ?

It turns out that they didn't make any changes. ,   . The galoshes were also not washed.     . Ippolit Matveyevich did not love his mother-in-law.      . Klavdia Ivanovna was a fool, and her advanced age made it impossible to hope that she would ever grow wiser.    ,         ,    . She was extremely stingy, and only Ippolit Matveyevich's poverty prevented this exciting feeling from unfolding.     ,           . Her voice was so strong and thick that it would have been the envy of Richard the Lionheart, whose cry is known to make horses crouch.        ,       ,   ,  ,  . And what was most dreadful of all, Klavdia Ivanovna also had dreams.   ,     ,     . She always saw them.    . She dreamed of girls in sashes, horses with yellow dragoon piping, street sweepers playing harps, archangels in guard sheepskins walking at night with mallets in their hands, and knitting needles that jumped around the room by themselves, making a distressing clink.     , ,    , ,   ,    ,       ,   ,      ,   . The empty old woman was Klavdia Ivanovna.     . On top of that, she had grown a mustache under her nose, and each mustache looked like a shaving brush.         ,         .

Ippolit Matveyevich, slightly annoyed, went out of the house.  ,  ,   .

At the entrance to his shabby establishment, coffin maker Bezenchuk was leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed.       ,       ,    .The master's eyes were bright yellow, like a cat's, and burned with an unquenchable fire from the systematic failure of his commercial ventures and the long-term ingestion of strong drinks.                 -,   ,    .




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