The lamp cast its light through the window, where a small green branch quivered like a lady’s brooch.
Cookies, candies, and a small can of pickled walleye sat on the table.
The electric kettle captured the whole of the Ptiburdukovs’ cozy nest on its rounded surface.
It reflected the bed, the white curtains, and the night stand.
It also reflected Ptiburdukov himself, who was sitting in front of his wife, wearing dark-blue pajamas with braids.
He, too, was happy.
Blowing cigarette smoke though his mustache, he was using a fretsaw to make a plywood model of a country outhouse.
It was a painstaking job.
First, he had to carve out the walls, then put on a sloping roof, add the inside equipment, insert glass in the tiny window, and finally attach a microscopic hook to the door.
Ptiburdukov toiled with passion; he thought woodcarving was the best way to relax.
Having finished the project, the satisfied engineer laughed, patted his wife on her soft warm back, and pulled the can of fish closer.
At that very moment, however, somebody started banging on the door, the lamp flickered, and the kettle slid off its wire stand.
“Who could it be so late?” wondered Ptiburdukov, opening the door.
Standing in the stairwell was Basilius Lokhankin. He was wrapped up to his beard in a white Marseilles blanket, his hairy legs showing.
He held Man and Woman, which was thick and gilded, like an icon, to his chest.
His eyes were wandering.
“Please come in,” said the astonished engineer, taking a step back. “Barbara, what’s this all about?”
“I came today to live with you forever,” replied Lokhankin in a grave pentameter, “it’s shelter that I’m seeking now from you.”
“What do you mean—shelter?” said Ptiburdukov, turning red in the face. “What do you want, Basilius Andreevich?”
Barbara ran out into the stairwell.
“Sasha!
Look, he’s naked!” she screamed. “Basilius, what happened?
Come in, for God’s sake, come in.”
Barefoot Lokhankin stepped over the threshold and started racing around the room, muttering: “Disaster, disaster!”
The edge of his blanket promptly knocked Ptiburdukov’s delicate woodwork to the floor.
The engineer stepped back into a corner, with a hunch that nothing good was going to come of all this.
“What disaster?” asked Barbara.
“Why are you only wearing a blanket?”
“I came today to live with you forever,” lowed Lokhankin.
His yellow heel beat an anxious drumroll on the clean waxed floor.
“What are you talking about?” Barbara scolded her ex-husband. “Go home and sleep it off.
Get out of here!
Go, go home!”
“My home is gone,” said Basilius, continuing to shiver. “My home has burned to ashes.
A fire, that’s what’s bringing me to you.
I only saved the blanket that I wear, and saved a book, my favorite at that.
But since you’re being so unkind and cruel, I’ll go away, and damn you both for that.”
Swaying in despair, Basilius headed for the door.
But Barbara and her husband held him back.
They apologized; they said that at first they hadn’t grasped what had happened, and started fussing around Lokhankin.
They brought out Ptiburdukov’s new suit, underwear, and shoes.
While Lokhankin was dressing, the couple had a discussion in the hallway.
“Where are we going to put him?” whispered Barbara. “He can’t stay here, we only have one room.”
“You surprise me,” said the kind-hearted engineer, “the man has just suffered a terrible misfortune, and all you can think of is your own comfort.”
When they returned to the room, the victim was sitting at the table, eating pickled fish straight from the can.
On top of that, two volumes of Strength of Materials had been knocked off the shelf—the gilded Man and Woman was in it’s place.
“The whole building burned down?” asked Ptiburdukov with sympathy. “How terrible!”
“Well, I think maybe that’s how it should be,” remarked Basilius, finishing off his hosts’ supper, “I may emerge from the flames a new man, don’t you think?”
But a new man he was not.
After the conversation died down, the Ptiburdukovs started getting ready for the night.