«The thirteenth commandment says: thou shalt not go in to thy neighbour without notification,» muttered the glossy old man and fluttered around in the air, flapping the edges of his cloak. «I'm not going in. No, sir. But I'll palm a memo off on you all the same. Here you are, plop! You'd sign anything. And land up in the dock too.» He tossed sheets of paper out of his wide black sleeve, and they floated about, settling on the desks like gulls on seashore cliffs.
The room turned dark and the windows rocked.
«Comrade Blondy,» the exhausted Korotkov wept. «You can shoot me on the spot, but please issue me some kind of document. And I'll kiss your hand.»
In the darkness Blondy began to swell and grow, frantically signing the old man's sheets of paper and tossing them to the secretary, who caught them with a happy gurgle.
«To hell with him!» Blondy thundered. «To hell with him! Typists, hey!»
He waved an enormous hand, the wall disintegrated before Korotkov's eyes, and the thirty typewriters on the desks rang their bells and began to play a foxtrot. Swaying their hips, shaking their shoulders sensuously and kicking up a white foam with their cream legs, thirty women did a conga round the desks.
White snakes of paper slithered into the typewriters' jaws and were joined, cut out and sewn into a pair of white trousers with violet side-stripes which said «The bearer of this really is the bearer, and not just a worthless scallywag.»
«Put them on!» Blondy roared in the mist.
«Aaah,» whimpered Korotkov and began banging his head against the corner of Blondy's desk. His head felt better for a moment, and Korotkov caught a glimpse of a tear-stained face.
«Valerian drops!» cried someone on the ceiling.
The cloak obscured the light, like a black bird, and the old man whispered in alarm:
«Our only hope now is Dyrkin in section five. Hurry up! Hurry up!»
There was a smell of ether, and Korotkov was carried gently into the semi-dark corridor. The cloak enveloped him and swept him along, whispering and giggling: «I've done them a good turn alright. That stuff I threw on their desks will get each of them at least five years with loss of civil rights on the field of battle. Hurry up! Hurry up!»
The cloak fluttered to one side, and a damp gust of air wafted from the lift shaft plunging into the abyss.
X
DYRKIN THE DREAD
The mirrored cabin began to sink down, and two Korotkovs sank with it. The second Korotkov was forgotten in the mirror of the lift by the first and main one, who walked out alone into the cool vestibule. A very fat and pink gent in a top hat greeted Korotkov with the words:
«That's wonderful. I'm going to arrest you.»
«You can't do that,» Korotkov replied with a satanic laugh, «because nobody knows who I am. Of course not. You can't arrest me or marry me. And I'm not going to Poltava either.»
The fat man quaked with terror, looked into Korotkov's eyes and began to sink backwards.
«Arrest me,» Korotkov squealed and stuck out a pale quivering tongue smelling of Valerian drops at the fat man. «How can you arrest me if instead of documents I've got sweet fanny adams? Perhaps I'm a Hohenzollern.»
«Jesus Christ,» said the fat man, crossing himself with a trembling hand and turning from pink to yellow.
«Longjohn turned up?» Korotkov asked abruptly, looking round. «Answer me, Fatty.»
«Oh, no,» the fat man replied, his pink complexion changing to grey.
«Well, what shall I do now then? Eh?»
«Go and see Dyrkin himself,» the fat man babbled. «That's the best thing. Only he's a real terror! Don't get too close. He sent two people flying. And today he broke a phone.»
«Alright then,» Korotkov replied with a devil-may-care spit. «We've nothing to lose now. Lift me up!»
«Don't hurt your leg, Comrade Delegate,» said the fat man tenderly, helping Korotkov into the lift.
On the top landing was a little fellow of about sixteen who shouted menacingly:
«Where d'ya think you're going? Stop!»
«Don't hit us, old chap,» said the fat man, hunching up and covering his head with his hands. «To Dyrkin himself.»
«Go on then,» the little fellow shouted.
«You go, Your Excellency,» the fat man whispered. «I'll wait for you here on the bench. It's awfully scary…»
Korotkov went into a dark vestibule and from there into an empty hall with a threadbare blue carpet.
In front of a door with a notice saying «Dyrkin» Korotkov hesitated for a moment, then went in and found himself in a comfortably furnished room with a huge crimson table and a wall clock. A chubby little Dyrkin bounced out on a spring from behind the desk, bristled his moustache and barked:
«Be quiet!» although Korotkov had not said a word.
At that very moment a pallid youth with a briefcase appeared in the room. Dyrkin's face was instantly wreathed in smiling wrinkles.
«Ah!» he exclaimed ingratiatingly. «Artur Arturovich. Greetings, dear friend.»
«Now listen, Dyrkin,» the youth said in a metallic voice. «You wrote to Puzyryov that I'd set up my personal dictatorship in an old-age insurance office and pocketed the May benefits, didn't you? Eh? Answer me, you rotten bastard.»
«Me?» muttered Dyrkin, magically changing from Dyrkin the Dread into Dyrkin the Good Chap. «Me, Arthur Dictaturich… Of course, I… It's a lie…»
«You blackguard,» the youth said clearly. Shaking his head and brandishing his briefcase, he slapped the latter onto Dyrkin's pate, like a pancake on a plate.
Korotkov instinctively gasped and froze.
«It'll be the same for you, and any other smart alec who sticks his nose into my business,» the youth said menacingly and went out, shaking a red fist at Korotkov in parting.
For a moment or two there was silence in the room, broken only by the tinkling of the chandelier as a lorry rumbled by.
«There, young man,» said a nice and humiliated Dyrkin, with a bitter smile. «That's what you get for your pains. You deprive yourself of sleep, food and drink, and the result's always the same — a slap round the chops. Perhaps you've brought one too. Go on then. Give old Dyrkin a bashing. He's got a public property face. Perhaps your hand hurts, eh? Then use the chandelier, old chap.»
And Dyrkin proffered his chubby cheeks temptingly. In a daze, Korotkov gave a shy crooked smile, took the chandelier by the base and crunched the candles down on Dyrkin's head. Blood spurted onto the baize from the latter's nose and he rushed through an inner door shouting for help.
«Cuck-oo!» piped a forest cuckoo happily, hopping out of a little painted Nuremberg house on the wall.
«Ku-klux-klan!» it cried, turning into a bald head. «We'll tell them how you beat up public servants!»
Korotkov was seized by fury.