"Ah, the tea-strainer!
From your non-liquid fund.
And you consider that theft?
In that case our views on life are diametrically opposed."
"You took it," clucked the widow.
"So if a young and healthy man borrows from a provincial grandmother a kitchen utensil for which she has no need on account of poor health, he's a thief, is he?
Is that what you mean?"
"Thief! Thief!"
The widow threw herself against the door.
The glass rattled.
Ostap realized it was time to go.
"I've no time to kiss you," he said. "Good-bye, beloved.
We've parted like ships at sea."
"Help!" screeched the widow.
But Ostap was already at the end of the corridor.
He climbed on to the windowsill and dropped heavily to the ground, moist after the night rain, and hid in the glistening playgrounds.
The widow's cries brought the night watchman.
He let her out, threatening to have her fined.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE AUTHOR OF THE "GAVRILIAD"
As Madame Gritsatsuyev was leaving the block of offices, the more modest ranks of employees were beginning to arrive at the House of the Peoples: there were messengers, in-and-out girls, duty telephonists, young assistant accountants, and state-sponsored apprentices.
Among them was Nikifor Lapis, a very young man with a sheep's-head haircut and a cheeky face.
The ignorant, the stubborn, and those making their first visit to the House of the Peoples entered through the front entrance.
Nikifor Lapis made his way into the building through the dispensary.
At the House of the Peoples he was completely at home and knew the quickest ways to the oases where, under the leafy shade of departmental journals, royalties gushed from clear springs.
First of all, Nikifor went to the snack-bar.
The nickel-plated register made a musical sound and ejected three checks.
Nikifor consumed some yoghurt, having opened the paper-covered jar, then a cream puff which looked like a miniature flower-bed.
He washed it all down with tea.
Then Lapis leisurely began making the round of his possessions.
His first visit was to the editorial office of the monthly sporting magazine Gerasim and Mumu.
Comrade Napernikov had not yet arrived, so Nikifor moved on to the Hygroscopic Herald, the weekly mouthpiece by which pharmaceutical workers communicated with the outside world.
"Good morning!" said Nikifor. "I've written a marvellous poem."
"What about?" asked the editor of the literary page. "On what subject?
You know, Trubetskoi, our magazine . . ."
To give a more subtle definition of the essence of the Hygroscopic Herald, the editor gestured with his fingers.
Trubetskoi-Lapis looked at his white sailcloth trousers, leaned backward, and said in a singsong voice:
"The Ballad of the Gangrene".
'.'That's interesting," said the hygroscopic individual. "It's about time we introduced prophylaxis in popular form."
Lapis immediately began declaiming:
"Gavrila took to bed with gangrene.
The gangrene made Gavrila sick . . ."
The poem went on in the same heroic iambic tetrameter to relate how, through ignorance, Gavrila failed to go to the chemist's in time and died because he had not put iodine on a scratch.
"You're making progress, Trubetskoi," said the editor in approval. "But we'd like something a bit longer. Do you understand?"
He began moving his fingers, but nevertheless took the terrifying ballad, promising to pay on Tuesday.
In the magazine Telegraphist's Week Lapis was greeted hospitably.
"A good thing you've come, Trubetskoi.
We need some verse right away.
But it must be about life, life, and life.
No lyrical stuff.