Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories by Mikhail Bulgakov

Author:Mikhail Bulgakov [Bulgakov, Mikhail]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literary, General, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9780875010571
Amazon: 0875010571
Publisher: Ardis
Published: 1991-02-07T08:00:00+00:00

*

Two bulbs fracture the shadows on a bridge. We plunge into darkness again. A street-lamp. A grey fence with a poster. Huge garish letters. Goodness, what's that word? Twanvlam. What on earth does it mean?

Twelfth Anniversary of Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The cart stopped. They took off some luggage. I stared at the word, entranced. A good word! And I, provincial wretch that I am, had sniggered in the mountains at the ASS head! What the blazes! But Moscow is not as black as its papooses. Sudden urge to imagine Vlam. Never seen him, but I know ... I know. He's about forty, very short and bald, wears glasses and is always dashing about. Short trousers turned up. Works in an office. Doesn't smoke. Has a large flat with portieres, now compulsorily shared with a lawyer, who is a lawyer no longer, but the commandant of a government building. Lives in a study with an unheated fireplace. Likes butter, comic verse and a tidy room. Favourite writer — Conan Doyle. Favourite opera — Eugene One-gin. Cooks himself rissoles on a primus-stove. Can't stand the lawyer-commandant, and dreams of getting him out some day, marrying and living happily ever after in five rooms.

The cart creaked, shuddered, moved on for a bit, then stopped again. Neither storm nor tempest could daunt the immortal citizen Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. By a building, which seemed in the darkness and fear to have about fifteen storeys, the cartload grew perceptibly thinner. In the inky blackness a figure rushed from it into an entrance and whispered: "What about the butter, Dad? And the lard, Dad? And the flour, Dad?"

Dad stood in the darkness, muttering: "That's the lard, and the butter, and the wheat, and the rye..."

Then out of the pitch dark flashed Dad's thumb, which peeled off twenty banknotes for the drayman.

There will be other tempests. Raging tempests! And everyone may perish. But not Dad.

The cart turned into a huge platform which engulfed the medical student's sack and my travelling-bag. And we sat down, legs dangling, and rode off into the darkness.

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