The last to escape from the building, which was already filled with samovar smoke and streaks of fire, was Lokhankin. He tried to protect himself with a white blanket.
He screamed
“Fire!
Fire!” at the top of his lungs, even though it was no longer news to anybody.
All the Rookery tenants were already there.
Inebriated Pryakhin was sitting on his trunk with metal corners.
He stared mindlessly at the flickering windows, mumbling:
“We’ll do as we wish.”
Hygienishvili was squeamishly sniffing his hands, which smelled of kerosene, and he wiped them on his pants after each sniff.
A flaming spiral flew out of a window and sprung open under the wooden overhang, sending sparks downward.
The first window pane shattered and fell out, making a loud noise.
Nobody’s grandma burst into a terrifying howl.
“The house stood here for forty years,” explained Mitrich with authority, walking around in the crowd. “It stood through all the regimes; it was a good one.
But under the Soviets, it burned down.
A sad, sad fact, citizens.”
The female population of the Rookery banded together and couldn’t take their eyes off the flames.
Cannon-like fire was shooting from all the windows.
The flames would disappear momentarily and the darkened house would seem to recoil, like an artillery piece that’s just been fired.
Then the red-and-yellow cloud would reappear, giving Lemon Lane a bright and festive look.
It was hot.
One could no longer stand near the house, so the gathering moved to the opposite sidewalk.
Only Nikita Pryakhin didn’t move; he was snoozing on his trunk in the middle of the street.
Then he suddenly jumped up, barefoot and wild-looking.
“Christians!” he yelled out, tearing his shirt apart. “Citizens!”
He ran away from the fire sideways, barged into the crowd, and, shouting something unintelligible, started pointing at the burning building.
The crowd was rattled.
“They forgot a baby,” said a woman in a small straw hat confidently.
People surrounded Nikita.
He tried to push them away and get to the house.
“On my bed!” he yelled like a madman. “Let me go, let me go!”
Violent tears streamed down his cheeks.
He hit Hygienishvili on the head in order to clear the way and ran into the courtyard.
A minute later, he ran back out with a ladder.
“Stop him!” shouted the woman in a straw hat. “He’ll burn alive!”
“Get lost!” yelled Pryakhin, setting the ladder against the wall and pushing away the young men who were trying to grab his legs. “I can’t leave it.
My soul’s on fire!”
He kicked with his legs and climbed up the ladder, toward the smoke billowing from the second-floor window.
“Get back!” people shouted from the crowd. “What are you doing?
You’ll burn!”
“On my bed!” Nikita continued to bellow. “A full bottle of vodka, a big one! Three quarts!
How can I leave it behind, Christians?”
With unexpected agility, Pryakhin grabbed onto the flashing and instantly disappeared, sucked in by the air stream.
His last words were:
“We’ll do as we wish.”
Silence fell over the street, only to be interrupted by the bell and the trumpets of the fire brigade.
Firemen in stiff canvas suits with broad dark-blue belts came running into the courtyard.
A minute after Nikita Pryakhin committed the only heroic act of his life, a large burning timber fell from the building and crashed onto the ground.
The roof cracked open with a tearing sound and collapsed into the house.
A shining pillar rose to the sky, as if the house had fired a cannonball toward the moon.
Such was the end of apartment No. 3, which was known as the Rookery.