Chapter 6

In the morning, it turned out that the sofa was standing in its place. I was not surprised. I only thought that, one way or the other, the crone had achieved her purpose: the sofa was in one corner and I was lying in the other. Picking up the bedding and doing my exercises, I cogitated that there probably existed some limit to the capacity of being surprised. Apparently I had overstepped that limit by a large margin. I was actually experiencing a sort of lassitude. I attempted to imagine anything that could now astonish me, but all my fantasizing proved inadequate. I didn’t like that the least bit since I couldn’t stand people incapable of being astonished. True, I was far from the attitude of “So what, I’ve seen it before.” My condition more closely approximated that of Alice in Wonderland. I was in a dreamlike state and accepted, or was ready to accept, any wonder that called for a more varied reaction than an open mouth and blinking eyes, as something I should expect.

I was still doing my setting-up exercises, when a door banged in the entry, heels tapped and scraped, someone coughed, something crashed and fell, and an authoritative voice called out: “Comrade Gorynitch!”

The old woman did not respond, and voices in the entry began to converse.

“What is that door…?” Aha, I see. And this one?”

“This is the entrance to the museum.”

“And here? What’s this — everything is locked up…”

“An exceedingly well-managed woman, Janus Poluektovich. And this is the telephone.”

“And where is the famous sofa? In the museum?”

“No. The repository should be right here.”

“It’s here,” said a familiar gloomy voice.

The door to my room swung open and a tall, spare old man with magnificent snow-white hair but black eyebrows, black moustache, and deep black eyes, appeared on the threshold. Seeing me (I stood in shorts only, arms to the side, feet apart to the breadth of my shoulders), he stopped and said in a resonant voice, “So!”

To his right and left more faces were peering into the room. I said, “I beg your pardon,” and trotted toward my jeans. However, no attention was paid me. Four came into the room and crowded around the sofa. I knew two of them: the gloomy Korneev, unshaved, with red eyes, and in the same frivolous Hawaiian shirt; and the swarthy hawk-nosed Roman, who winked at me, turning away at once. The white-haired one, I didn’t know. Likewise, I didn’t know the portly tall man in the black suit with shiny back and wide proprietary gestures.

“This sofa, here?” asked the shiny-suited man.

“It’s not a sofa,” Korneev said morosely. “It’s a translator.”

“To me it’s a sofa,” declared the shiny-suited one, looking at a notebook. “Sofa, stuffed, oversize, inventory number eleven twenty-three.” He bent down and palpated. “Now you got it wet, Korneev; you’ve been lugging it about in the rain. Consider now: the springs rusted through, the upholstery rotting.”

“The value of the subject item,” said hawk-nosed Roman, in a mocking vein, it seemed to me, “does not lie at all in the upholstery and not even in the springs, of which there aren’t any”.

“You will please desist, Roman Petrovich,” suggested the shiny one with dignity. “Don’t be protecting your Korneev. The sofa is registered at the museum, as far as I am concerned, and that’s where it must be.”

“It’s an apparatus,” Korneev said hopelessly. “It’s being used in serious work.”

“I don’t know about that,” declared the shiny one. “I don’t know what kind of work that would be with the sofa.”

“But some of us do know,” said Roman very softly.

“You will desist,” said the shiny one, turning on him. “You are not in a beer hall, you are in a place of work here. What do you have in mind, substantively?”

“I am considering the fact that it’s not a sofa,” said Roman, “or in terms more within your reach, it’s not only a sofa. It’s an apparatus having the external appearance of a sofa.”

“I would ask you to desist from these insinuations,” said the shiny one with determination. “Regarding forms within reach and so forth. Let’s each of us do his job. My job is to stop this wanton misuse — and I am stopping it.”

“So,” said the white-haired one clearly. All were quiet at once. “I have been conversing with Cristobal Joseevich and Feodor Simeonovich. They suggest that the sofa represents purely a museum value. In its time, it belonged to King Rudolph the second, so that its historical value is beyond dispute. Besides, if my memory serves me right, about two years ago we ordered a standard translator. Do you remember who ordered it, Modest Matveevich?

“One minute,” said the shiny Modest and started to leaf through his notebook rapidly. “One moment… translator, dual-powered, TDX-eight-OE, Kitezhgrad factory per request of comrade Balsamo.”

“Balsamo works it round the clock,” said Roman.

“Brummagem, is what the TDX amounts to,” added Korneev. “It’s selectivity is on the molecular level.”

“Yes, yes,” said The Gray-hairs. “I am remembering now. There was a report on the test of the TDX. It’s true that the selectivity curve is not smooth… yes. And this. .eh… sofa?”

“Handwork,” said Roman quickly. “Faultless. The craftsmanship of Leo Ben Beczalel. He assembled and tuned it for three hundred years..”

“There you are!” said the shiny Modest. “That’s the way to work! He was an old man, but he did it all himself.”

Suddenly the mirror coughed and said, “They all became younger, after staying an hour in the water, and came out of it just as rosy, good-looking, youthful. Healthy, and full of joie de vivre as they were at twenty.”

“Precisely,” said Modest. The mirror was talking in the gray-haired one’s voice.

The gray-haired one grimaced with distaste.

“Let’s not decide this question right now,” he said.

“When, then?” asked the rude Korneev.

“Friday, at the Learned Council.”

“We can’t devalue our relics,” inserted Modest Matveevich.

“And what are we going to do?” asked the rude Korneev.

The mirror boomed forth in a menacing voice as from beyond the grave:

“I saw it for myself, how, picking up their black skirts, there went, The barefooted Kanidia, hair undone, and howling, and with her, Sagana, the elder in years, both white of face and fearful to look upon. Then they both tore at the earth with fingernails and ripped the black lamb with their bare teeth.”

The gray-haired one, still grimacing in distaste, went up to the mirror, inserted his arm into it up to the shoulder, and snapped something inside. The mirror became quiet.

“So,” said the gray-haired one, “the question of your group will also be resolved at the council. As for you” — you could tell by his face that he had forgotten Korneev’s patronymic — “refrain for the time being… eh from visiting the museum.”

With these words he left the room. Through the door.

“You’ve got your way,” said Korneev through his teeth, looking at Modest Matveevich.

“Wanton misuse, I’ll not allow,” he answered shortly, shoving the notebook in his inside pocket.

“Misuse!” said Korneev. “You don’t give a hang about all that. Accountancy is what bothers you. Reluctance to enter an extra item.”

“Will you desist,” said the unbending Modest. “We’ll appoint a commission yet and we’ll see if perhaps the relic has been damaged.

“Inventory number eleven twenty-three,” added Roman in a small voice.

“That’s how you have to accept it,” pronounced Modest Matveevich majestically. Then he turned and saw me. “And what are you doing here?” he inquired. “Why are you sleeping here?”

“I — “ I began.

“You slept on the sofa,” proclaimed Modest in icy tones, boring through me with the gaze of the counterspy. “You know that it is an apparatus?”

“No,” I said. “I wean that now I know, of course.”

“Modest Matveevich!” exclaimed the hawk-nosed Roman. “But that’s our new computer expert, Sasha Privalov!”

“So, why is he sleeping here? Why isn’t he in the dorm?”

“He is not registered yet,” said Roman, grabbing me around the waist.

“All the more reason!”

“You mean, let him sleep in the street?” Roman asked angrily.

“You will kindly desist with that,” said Modest. “There’s the dorm, there is a hotel, and this here is a museum, a state institution. If everyone will take to sleeping in museums… Where are you from?”

“From Leningrad,” I said gloomily.

“And what if I come to Leningrad and go to bed in the Hermitage?”

“You are welcome to it,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

Roman kept holding me around the waist.

“Modest Matveevich, you are quite right, it is disorderly, but tonight he will sleep at my place.”

“That’s a different matter; that you are welcome to do,” Modest allowed magnanimously. He looked the room over with a proprietary eye, saw the prints on the ceiling, and immediately looked at my feet. Fortunately I was barefooted. “That’s how you have to accept it,” said he, then straightened the trash on the hanger and left the room.

“D-dumbbell,” squeezed out Korneev. “Blockhead.” He sat down on the sofa and lowered his head on his hands. “To hell with them all. Tonight I’ll drag it off again.”

“Take it easy,” Roman said gently. “Nothing terrible has happened. We just had some bad luck. Did you notice which Janus that was?”

“So?” said Korneev, despondent.

“That was Janus-A.”

Korneev raised his head. “And what’s the difference?”

“Tremendous!” said Roman and winked. “Because Janus-U has taken a plane to Moscow. And, it’s important among other things, in relation to this sofa. Did you grasp that, pillager of museum treasures?”

“Listen. You are my savior,” said Korneev, and for the first time I saw how he smiled.

“You see, Sasha,” said Roman, addressing me, “we have an ideal director. He is one director in two individuals.

There is a Janus-A Poluektovich and a Janus-U Poluektovich. Janus-U is an important scientist with international stature. As for Janus-A, he is a rather ordinary administrator.”

“Twins?” I inquired cautiously.

“Of course not; it’s one and the same man. Only he exists as two persons.”

“Obviously,” I said, and started to put on my shoes.

“That’s all right, Sasha, you’ll get to know it all soon,” Roman said encouragingly.

I raised my head. “Meaning what?”

“We must have a computer man,” said Roman with deep sincerity.

“I need one very badly,” said Korneev, becoming animated.

“Everybody needs a programmer,” I said, returning my attention to the shoes. “And, please, no hypnotism or some charmed environments.”

“He’s catching on,” said Roman.

Korneev was going to say something when voices erupted outside the window.

“That’s not our five kopecks!” yelled Modest.

“Whose is it, then?”

“I don’t know whose it is! That’s not my affair! That’s your affair — to catch the counterfeiters, comrade Sergeant!”

“The five-kopeck piece was extracted from a certain Privalov, who is living here with you in the Iznakurnozh!”

“Aha, from Privalov? I knew right away that he was a thief!”

The reproachful voice of Janus-A broke in: “Tut, tut, Modest Matveevich!”

“No — excuse me, Janus Poluektovich, it can’t be let go at that! Comrade Sergeant, let’s go in! He is inside. Janus Poluektovich, stand by the window, so he’ll not jump out of it. I’ll prove it! I’ll not allow aspersions to be cast on comrade Gorynitch!”

A nasty, cold sensation began to spread in my stomach. But Roman had already assessed the situation. He grabbed a greasy cap off the hanger and clapped it down on my ears.

I disappeared.

It was a very strange sensation. Everything remained in place, except myself. But Roman would not permit me to absorb the new sensations.

“It’s an invisibility cap,” he hissed. “Move off to the side and be quiet.”

I ran to the corner on tiptoes and squatted under the mirror. At the same instant, Modest, beside himself, burst into the room, dragging the young Sergeant Kovalev by his sleeve.

“Where is he?” hollered Modest looking about. “There,” said Roman, pointing at the sofa. “Don’t worry, it’s where it should be,” added Korneev. “I am asking — where is he, that programmer of yours?” “What programmer?” Roman feigned puzzlement. “Now, you will stop that!” said Modest. “There was a programmer here. He stood there with his pants on and no shoes.”

“Oh, so that’s what you have in mind,” said Roman. “But we were just kidding, Modest Matveevich. There wasn’t any programmer here! It was just a — “ He made a gesture with his hands and a man appeared in the middle of the room, dressed in jeans and sport shirt. I saw him from the back, and can’t say any more about him, but the young Kovalev shook his head and said, “No, that’s not him.”

Modest walked around the apparition, mumbling, “Sport shirt… pants… no shoes…. It’s him, it’s him.”

The apparition vanished.

“No, no, that’s not the man,” said Sergeant Kovalev. “The other was young, without a beard.

“Without a beard?” demanded Modest. He was seriously embarrassed.

“No beard,” confirmed Kovalev.

“Mmm — yes,” said Modest “But I was sure he had a beard…”

“I am handing you the notification,” said Sergeant Kovalev, and offered Modest an official-looking sheet of paper. “It’s up to you to figure out what’s what between your Privalov and your Gorynitch…”

“And I am telling you, it’s not our five-kopeck piece!” yelled Modest. “I am not saying a word about Privalov. Maybe Privalov doesn’t even exist, as such…. But comrade Gorynitch is a colleague!”

Young Kovalev, pressing his hands to breast, was trying to say something.

“I demand that this be cleared up at once!” yelled Modest. “You stop that, comrade Sergeant! The notification, as given, casts a shadow on the whole collective! I insist that you make certain!”

“I have my orders — “ Kovalev began, but Modest, with a cry of, “You stop that! I insist,” flew at him and dragged him out of the room.

“Off to the museum,” said Roman. “Sasha, where are you? Take off the cap; let’s go see….”

“Maybe I’d do better not to remove it,” I said.

“Take it off, take it off,” said Roman. “You are now a phantom. No one believes in you, neither the administration nor the police.”

Korneev said, “I am off to get some sleep. Sasha, come on around after dinner. You’ll see our collection of machines, and in general..”

I took off the cap.

“You stop that,” I said. “I’m on vacation.”

“Let’s go, let’s go,” said Roman.

In the hall, Modest was opening the massive padlock with one hand and clutching Kovalev with the other. “I’ll show you our coin right now!” he yelled. “Everything is registered.. . Everything is in its place.”

“I’m not saying anything at all,” Kovalev defended himself weakly. “I’m only saying that there may be more than one coin..

Modest threw open the door and we all went into a spacious chamber.

It was quite a proper museum, with stands, diagrams, windows, mock-ups, and moulages. Its general appearance was more reminiscent of a criminology museum than anything else: lots of photographs and unappetizing displays. Modest immediately dragged Kovalev behind the stands, where they took to booming as in a hollow barrel.

“Here’s our coin…”

“I didn’t say — “

“Comrade Gorynitch — “

“I have my orders!”

“You stop that!”

“Be inquisitive, be inquisitive, Sasha,” said Roman, making a wide gesture and sitting down in the easy chair by the entrance.

I went along the wall. I was not astonished by anything. I was just immensely interested. Water-of-Life, Effectivity 52 %, Permissible Sediment 0.3: (ancient square bottle with water; cork sealed with colored wax); Diagram of Commercial Process for Manufacturing Water of Life; Mock-up of Live-Auto-Conversion Cube; Changeling Salts of Veshkovsk-Traubenbach (a drugstore bottle with poisonous yellow paste); Bad Blood, Ordinary (a soldered ampul with black liquid).

Over this entire stand hung a tablet: ACTIVE CHEMICAL AGENTS. XII–XVIII CENTURIES. There were many more little bottles, jars, retorts, ampuls, test tubes, working and nonworking models for extraction, distillation, and concentration, but I went on.

Enchanted Sword (very rusty two-handed sword with a wavy blade, shackled with a chain to an iron counter, window meticulously sealed); Right Eyetooth [Working] of Count Dracula (I’m no Cuvier, but judging by that tooth, Count Dracula must have been a most unusual and unpleasant person); Footprint, Normal, and Footprint, Extracted (to my eye, they looked the same, but one had a crack in it); Mortar on Launching pad, IX Century (massive construction of porous gray cast iron); Dragon Gorynitch, Skeleton, 1/25 Natural Size (similar to a diplodocus with three heads); Schematic of Fire-breathing Gland, middle Head; Seven-league Boots, Gravitic, Working Model (very large rubber boots); Flying Carpet, Anti-gravitic, Operational Model (a rug, about four by five with a he-Circassian embracing a young she-Circassian against a background of piled mountain peaks).

I arrived at the display Development of the Concept of the Philosopher’s Stone, when Sergeant Kovalev and Modest Matveevicb reappeared in the aisle. By all indications, they had not been successful in moving off their dead center.

“You can stop that,” Modest kept saying tiredly.

“I have my orders,” replied Kovalev just as wearily.

“Our coin is in its place. .

“Let the old woman come in and make a deposition. .”

“So then, according to you, counterfeiters?”

“I didn’t say that..”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it…”

Kovalev didn’t notice me, but Modest stopped, looked me over dully from head to foot, screwed up his eyes, and lectured aloud drearily, “Ho-mun-culus, laboratory model, general type,” and went on.

I started off after them, sensing a bad premonition. Roman was awaiting us by the door.

“How goes it?” he asked.

“It’s a disgrace,” said Modest in a wilted tone. “Bureaucrats!”

“1 have my orders,” Kovalev repeated stubbornly from the entry.

Roman went out. I made to move after him, but Modest stopped me.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“How do you mean — where?” I said in a fallen voice.

“To your place, go to your place.”

“What place?”

“Well, wherever it is that you stand. You are — pardon me — a… ho-munculus? Then be kind enough to stand where you are supposed to stand.”

I understood that I was lost. And I probably would have been, because Roman apparently also lost his presence of mind, but just then Naina Kievna lumbered into the entry, stomping and clacking and pulling along a hefty black goat on a rope. At the sight of the policeman, the goat bleated in a sick tone and took off. Naina Kievna fell down. Modest flew to the entry and a horrendous commotion ensued. The empty vat rolled off its stand with a thunderous rumble. Roman grabbed me by the hand, and whispering, “Move, move!” flew into my room. We shut the door and fell against it, breathing heavily. Yells wafted from the entry.

“Present your documents!”

“Mercy, governor, what’s that for?”

“Why the goat? Why a goat in the house!”

“Now you stop that; this is not a beer hall.”

“I don’t know about your five-kopeck piece, and it’s no business of mine.”

“Me-eh-eh!”

“Citizeness, remove the goat!”

“Stop it! The goat is registered!”

“Registered? How?”

“It’s not a goat! He is our colleague!” -

“Then let him present — “

“Out the window and into the car!” ordered Roman.

I grabbed my jacket and jumped out. Basil scuttled out from under my feet, meowing. Bending low, I ran to the car, threw open the door, and jumped behind the wheel. Roman was already opening the gate. The engine wouldn’t start. Torturing the starter, I could see the door to the cottage open and the black goat running out, bounding off with gigantic leaps somewhere around the corner. The engine caught and roared. I swung the car around and lurched out into the street. The oaken gate shut with a crash. Roman popped out behind the small gate and flung himself on the seat beside me.

“Go!” he said vigorously. “Downtown!”

While we were turning onto the Prospect of Peace, he asked, “So, how do you like it here with us?”

“I like,” I said. “Only it’s very raucous.”

“It’s always raucous at Naina’s,” said Roman. “A contrary old hag. She hasn’t taken advantage of you?”

“No,” I said. “We had almost no truck with each other.”

“Wait up,” said Roman. “Slow down.”

“What’s up?”

“There goes Volodia. Remember him?”

I braked. The bearded Volodia climbed into the back seat, and, beaming happily, shook our hands.

“Great!” he said. “I was just on my way to your place.”

“That’s all we needed there — you,” said Roman.

“How did it all end?”

“No how,” said Roman.

“Where are you going now?”

“To the Institute,” said Roman.

“What for?” I asked.

“To work,” said Roman.

“I’m on vacation.”

“That’s immaterial,” said Roman, “Monday begins on Saturday and August will begin in July, this time.”

“My friends are waiting,” I said, pleading.

“We’ll take care of that,” said Roman. “Your friends will notice absolutely nothing.”

“It’s enough to drive you insane,” I said.

We drove in between retail store No. 2 and dining room No. 11.

“He already knows where to go,” noted Volodia.

“Stout fellow,” said Roman. “A giant!”

“I took a liking to him right from the start,” said VoIodia.

“Obviously you must have a programmer or die,” I said. “We need far more than just any programmer,” contradicted Roman.

I braked alongside the strange building with the SRITS sign between the windows.

“What does it mean?” I asked. “Could I at least learn where I am being impressed to work?”

“You may,” said Roman. “You are now permitted everything. It is The Scientific Research Institute for Thaumaturgy and Spellcraft… Well, why are you standing? Drive in!”

“Where?” I asked.

“Don’t tell me you don’t see it!”

And I saw.

But that is altogether a different tale.