3.
Upturned benches
4.
Warning signs
5.
Rope
Rails are very common in government offices.
They prevent access to the official you want to see.
The visitor walks up and down the rail like a tiger, trying to attract attention by making signs.
This does not always work.
The visitor may have brought a useful invention!
He might only want to pay his income tax.
But the rail is in the way. The unknown invention is left outside; and the tax is left unpaid.
Barriers are used on the street.
They are set up in spring on a noisy main street, supposedly to fence off the part of the pavement being repaired.
And the noisy street instantly becomes deserted.
Pedestrians filter through to their destinations along other streets.
Each day they have to go an extra half-mile, but hope springs eternal.
The summer passes.
The leaves wither.
And the barrier is still there.
The repairs have not been done.
And the street is deserted.
Upturned benches are used to block the entrances to gardens in the centre of the Moscow squares, which on account of the disgraceful negligence of the builders have not been fitted with strong gateways.
A whole book could be written about warning signs, but that is not the intention of the authors at present.
The signs are of two types-direct and indirect:
NO ADMITTANCE
NO ADMITTANCE TO OUTSIDERS
NO ENTRY
These notices are sometimes hung on the doors of government offices visited by the public in particularly great numbers.
The indirect signs are more insidious.
They do not prohibit entry; but rare is the adventurer who will risk exercising his rights.
Here they are, those shameful signs:
NO ENTRY EXCEPT ON BUSINESS
NO CONSULTATIONS
BY YOUR VISIT YOU ARE DISTURBING A BUSY MAN
Wherever it is impossible to place rails or barriers, to overturn benches or hang up warning signs, ropes are used.
They are stretched across your path according to mood, and in the most unexpected places.
If they are stretched at chest level they cause no more than slight shock and nervous laughter.
But when stretched at ankle level they can cripple you for life.
To hell with doors!
To hell with queues outside theatres.
Allow us to go in without business.
We implore you to remove the barrier set up by the thoughtless apartment superintendent on the pavement by his door.
There are the upturned benches!
Put them the right side up!
It is precisely at night-time that it is so nice to sit in the gardens in the squares.
The air is clear and clever thoughts come to mind.
Sitting on the landing by the locked glass door in the very centre of the House of the Peoples, Mrs. Gritsatsuyev contemplated her widow's lot, dozed off from time to time, and waited for morning.
The yellow light of the ceiling lamps poured on to the widow through the glass door from the illuminated corridor.