Letter Killers Club, The by Krzhizhanovsky Sigizmund

Author:Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund [Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Translated, Novel, Modern Classics
ISBN: 978-1-59017-523-1
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2011-12-06T02:00:00+00:00

5

I DECIDED not to attend any more Saturdays of the Letter Killers Club. But by the end of the week the thought of Rar had made me change my mind. From the first evening, this singularly original man had struck me as necessary and significant; his name, for all that it pretended to be a nonsense syllable, was the only one of them to suggest a meaning; nevertheless, the address bureau would not exchange it for an address. I had to see Rar again, just once, and finish what I had to say: he wasn’t one of them, he was one of us. Why should he remain among killers and distorters; first the manuscript, then the— I had to see Rar. And since this was possible only inside the black square of blank bookshelves, when Saturday came I decided—for the last time, I told myself—to attend the club meeting.

As I entered the assembled circle, Rar, sitting in his accustomed place, raised his eyes to me in surprise. I tried to hold his gaze, but he turned away with a look of utter disconnection and indifference.

After the usual ritual, the floor was given to Fev. A sly glint glimmered in his small, fat-embedded eyes. He shifted in his seat, which creaked beneath the weight of fat and muscle.

“My asthma,” Fev began, laboring to draw breath, “does not like it when I launch into long narratives. I shall therefore give you only the bare bones of my Tale of Three Mouths.”

In a tavern called the Three Kings, three merry men were squandering their last taler* on drink. Three letters will suffice to form their names: Ing, Nig, and Gni. It was past midnight: the hour when bottles stand empty and hearts fill to overflowing. To the music of wine cups, the friends were amusing themselves—each in his fashion. Ing had the gift of gab; clinking wine cup to wine cup, he gave toasts and little speeches, quoted the holy fathers and told florid tales. Nig was a hunter after kisses and a good judge of them (the very best); now he too was hard put to keep up his end of the conversation because his lips were working—had the stout wench upon his knee been paid by the kiss, one evening would have made her a rich match. Gni needed neither words nor kisses: his bulging cheeks were stained with grease, while his mouth suckled an enormous mutton bone from which he patiently tore the meat with meticulous teeth.

Suddenly the wench, between two of Nig’s kisses, said, “Why don’t men have three mouths?”

“So as to kiss three wenches at once?” Nig roared with laughter and made to return his lips to hers.

“Wait a minute,” Ing stopped him, sensing a new theme worthy of rhetorical elaboration. “Don’t go butting in between words with kisses.”

“That’s just what I’m saying.” Nig’s lass turned to Ing. “If you each had three mouths, so as to talk, eat, and kiss all at the same time, then you’d—”

“Bosh!” Ing raised an edifying finger.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.