Without saying a word, he opened the cupboard, took out a cold chicken, and ate it all while pacing around the room.
Then he opened the cupboard again, took out a loop of Polish sausage that weighed exactly one pound, sat down, and slowly consumed the whole thing, staring straight ahead with glazed-over eyes.
When he reached for the boiled eggs that were sitting on the table, his wife became alarmed and asked:
“What happened, Boris?”
“Disaster!” he replied, stuffing a hard rubbery egg into his mouth. “They’re taxing me to death.
You can’t even imagine.”
“But why are you eating so much?”
“I need a distraction,” answered the merchant. “I’m scared.”
All that night, he stumbled around his rooms, which contained no less than eight chests of drawers, and kept on eating.
He ate all the food in the house.
He was scared.
The next day, he sublet half of the store to a stationer.
So one window displayed neckties and suspenders, while the other was taken up by a huge yellow pencil hanging from two strings.
Then things got even tougher.
A third co-owner set up shop inside the store.
He was a watchmaker. He pushed the pencil to the side and filled half of the window with a magnificent brass clock in the shape of the goddess Psyche yet missing its minute hand.
And so the poor haberdasher, whose ironic smile had become permanent, had to face not just the tiresome pencil man but also the watchmaker with a black magnifying glass stuck in his eye.
Disaster struck two more times, and two more tenants moved in: a plumber, who immediately fired up some kind of a soldering furnace, and a downright bizarre merchant, who had decided that A.D. 1930 was just the right year for the people of Chernomorsk to pounce on his wares—starched collars.
The once-proud and respectable storefront started to look ghastly:
Clients and customers entered the formerly sweet-smelling store with trepidation.
The watchmaker Glassius-Schenker, surrounded by tiny wheels, watch glasses, and springs, sat under a collection of clocks, one of them big enough for the city tower.
Alarm clocks were constantly going off.
Schoolchildren crowded in the back of the store, inquiring about notebooks that were always in short supply.
Karl Baboonian killed time while waiting for his clients by trimming his collars with scissors.
And the moment the courteous B.
Kulturtrigger asked a customer:
“What would you like?,” Fanatiuk the plumber would hit a rusty pipe with a hammer, producing a loud bang. Soot from the soldering furnace settled on the delicate haberdashery items.
In the end, the oddball commune of private merchants fell apart. Karl Baboonian rode a horse cab into oblivion, taking his anachronistic merchandise with him.
Then Habertrade and Offisuppl disappeared too, with tax inspectors on horseback in hot pursuit.
Fanatiuk became an alcoholic. Glassius-Schenker joined the New Times Co-op.
The corrugated iron shutters fell down with a bang.
The peculiar storefront signage disappeared as well.
Soon, however, the shutters in front of the merchants’ ark went back up and a small but neat sign appeared:
If an idle Chernomorskian were to peek inside, he would have noticed that the shelves and counters were gone, and the floor was sparkling clean. There were egg yolk-colored desks, and the walls displayed the usual posters regarding office hours and the harmful effects of handshaking.
The brand new little office was already equipped with a barrier to protect it from visitors, even though there weren’t any yet.
A messenger with a gold tooth sat at a small table, where a yellow samovar was already puffing away, emitting high-pitched complaints about its samovarian fate.
Drying teacups with a towel, the messenger hummed irritably:
That’s the oddest time we live in, That’s the oddest time we live in. Everybody stopped believing, Everybody stopped believing.
A strapping red-headed fellow loitered behind the barrier.
He would occasionally approach the typewriter, hit a key with his fat, unbending finger, and burst out laughing.
The grand strategist, illuminated by a desk lamp, sat in the back of the office, under the sign BRANCH PRESIDENT.
The Carlsbad Hotel had long been abandoned.
All the Antelopeans, except Kozlevich, had moved into the Rookery to stay with Basilius Lokhankin, which scandalized him to no end.
He even tried to protest, pointing out that he had offered the room to one person, not three, and to a respectable bachelor at that.
“Mon dieu, Basilius Andreevich,” said Ostap nonchalantly, “stop torturing yourself.
Of the three of us, I’m the only one who’s respectable, so your conditions have been met.”
As the landlord continued to lament, Bender added weightily:
“Mein Gott, dear Basilius!
Maybe that’s exactly what the Great Homespun Truth is all about.”
Lokhankin promptly gave in and hit Bender up for twenty rubles.