'What about the children?'
They're all here.'
'Then who's minding the shop?'"
This very moment the teapots begin rattling and the chickens fly up and down in the rack, but the passengers do not notice.
Each one has a favourite story ready, eagerly awaiting its turn.
A new raconteur, nudging his neighbours and calling out in a pleading tone,
"Have you heard this one?" finally gains attention and begins:
"A Jew comes home and gets into bed beside his wife.
Suddenly he hears a scratching noise under the bed.
The Jew reaches his hand underneath the bed and asks:
'Is that you, Fido?'
And Fido licks his hand and says:
'Yes, it's me.' "
The passengers collapse with laughter; a dark night cloaks the countryside. Restless sparks fly from the funnel, and the slim signals in their luminous green spectacles flash snootily past, staring above the train.
An interesting thing, the right of way!
Long, heavy trains race to all' parts of the country.
The way is open at every point.
Green lights can be seen everywhere; the track is clear.
The polar express goes up to Murmansk.
The K-l draws out of Kursk Station, bound for Tiflis, arching its back over the points.
The far-eastern courier rounds Lake Baikal and approaches the Pacific at full speed.
The Muse of Travel is calling.
She has already plucked Father Theodore from his quiet regional cloister and cast him into some unknown province.
Even Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, former marshal of the nobility and now clerk in a registry office, is stirred to the depths of his heart and highly excited at the great things ahead.
People speed all over the country.
Some of them are looking for scintillating brides thousands of miles away, while others, in pursuit of treasure, leave their jobs in the post office and rush off like schoolboys to Aldan.
Others simply sit at home, tenderly stroking an imminent hernia and reading the works of Count Salias, bought for five kopeks instead of a rouble.
The day after the funeral, kindly arranged by Bezenchuk the undertaker, Ippolit Matveyevich went to work and, as part of the duties with which he was charged, duly registered in his own hand the demise of Claudia Ivanovna Petukhov, aged fifty-nine, housewife, non-party-member, resident of the regional centre of N., by origin a member of the upper class of the province of Stargorod.
After this, Ippolit Matveyevich granted himself a two-week holiday due to him, took forty-one roubles in salary, said good-bye to his colleagues, and went home.
On the way he stopped at the chemist's.
The chemist, Leopold Grigorevich, who was called Lipa by his friends and family, stood behind the red-lacquered counter, surrounded by frosted-glass bottles of poison, nervously trying to sell the fire chief's sister-in-law "Ango cream for sunburn and freckles-gives the skin an exceptional whiteness".
The fire chief's sister-in-law, however, was asking for "Rachelle powder, gold in colour-gives the skin a tan not normally acquirable".
The chemist had only the Ango cream in stock, and the battle between these two very different cosmetics raged for half an hour.
Lipa won in the end and sold the fire chief's sister-in-law some lipstick and a bugovar, which is a device similar in principle to the samovar, except that it looks like a watering-can and catches bugs.
"What can I get you?"
"Something for the hair."
"To make it grow, to remove it, or to dye it? "
"Not to make it grow," said Ippolit Matveyevich. "To dye it."
"We have a wonderful hair dye called Titanic.
We got it from the customs people; it was confiscated.
It's a jet black colour.
A bottle containing a six months' supply costs three roubles, twelve kopeks.
I can recommend it to you, as a good friend."
Ippolit Matveyevich twiddled the bottle in his hands, looked at the label with a sigh, and put down his money on the counter.
He went home and, with a feeling of revulsion, began pouring Titanic onto his head and moustache.
A stench filled the house.
By the time dinner was over, the stench had cleared, the moustache had dried and become matted and was very difficult to comb.
The jet-black colour turned out to have a greenish tint, but there was no time for a second try.
Taking from his mother-in-law's jewel box a list of the gems, found the night before, Ippolit Matveyevich counted up his cash-in-hand, locked the house, put the key in his back pocket and took the no. 7 express to Stargorod.
CHAPTER FIVE