Tanya Grotter And The Magic Double Bass. Дмитрий Емец

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СКАЧАТЬ it, move! You want me to come out and beat you up? You want to give a sick person a stroke?”

      Durnev, it goes without saying, considered himself the sick person.

      The basic reason Herman Nikitich’s mood was so abruptly spoilt was the sensation that some strange and mysterious forces were pursuing him and making fun of him. Everything began from that same morning when he just set off for work. Even along the way something started to rumble violently in the baggage carrier of the car, rumbling so that the car even jumped, but when he went out to look, it turned out there was nothing in there. When Durnev got back behind the wheel, he discovered that his own portrait from a magazine was stuck to the windshield of the automobile. Moreover, it appeared as if the wind dropped onto the glass a page soaked in a puddle…

      The director was so anxious that when he ripped off his picture, his fingers were shaking and he accidentally tore part of his head, together with the ear, from the photograph. Seeing in this a bad omen for himself, Herman Nikitich immediately swallowed thirty Relief tablets and washed them down with a bottle of valerian tincture.

      When he nevertheless got to the office, he discovered that the wastebasket in his office was turned upside down, and all the garbage from it was unceremoniously shaken out onto the carpet. And not simply shaken out but also steeped in something stinky. The furious Durnev immediately fired the cleaning woman, though she swore that she did not even drop into his office.

      Having opened the safe in order to get the press, he beheld there a pale fungus on a thin leg, which, when Herman Nikitich stretched out his hand to it, spread on the papers a sticky slime that could not be wiped off. After this incident, Durnev collapsed into the armchair and sat in it for a long time, sweating and counting off small fractions with his teeth.

      “Twenty five… twenty six… I’m not nervous at all… Why are you staring at me? Get back to work! Really, didn’t I ask you to get for me the price on old toothbrushes?” he began to yell at an employee timidly looking in.

      The unlucky employee slid into his own tiny little office, which smelled of moth-eaten sweaters and worn jeans, and, collapsing onto the chair, nearly died of fright.

      No need to explain that toward the evening Durnev had had quite a drop too much.

      “Pour me anything to drink… Now you’ll see, soon something bad will happen!” he groaned as soon as he found himself at home.

      In contrast to the office literally choked up from floor to ceiling with cut-price junk and worn out things, everything was completely new in Durnev’s home.

      Herman Nikitich’s wife – Ninel – was as fat as her husband was thin. When she slept, her wrinkled cheeks spread all over the pillow, and her body, covered with a blanket, resembled a snowy mountain from which it was possible to ski down.

      “Ah, Hermanchik, you imagine all sorts of things! Don’t be so upset! You’re completely green like the fir on New Year! Let me kiss you on the cheek!” Ninel cooed with a juicy bass, reassuringly patting her husband on the frail back with a hand adorned with rings.

      “Phew! Drop this tenderness!” Herman Nikitich growled. However, his bad mood dispersed a little, jumping from hundred-and-seventeenth to sixty-sixth, and later even to fiftieth.

      After supper, Durnev cheered up so much that he had the desire to spend time with his year-old daughter Penelope, or Pipa as she was tenderly called by her parents, who inherited from mama the moving eyebrows and figure of a porter, and from papa eyes bunched together, protruding ears, and sparse whitish hair. Of course, the Durnevs doted on her and considered their Pipa the first beauty in the world.

      The heiress of the Durnev family was sitting in the playpen and concentrating on breaking a doll. Three beheaded dolls were already scattered about on the floor, and their heads were mounted on parts of rattles decorating the playpen.

      “What a smart little girl! She will be a director like her papa!” Durnev was touched.

      He leaned over the playpen and made an attempt to kiss Pipa on the top of her head. The daughter grasped papa by the hair with her right hand, and with the plastic shovel clutched in her left hand she started to saw papa’s neck, clearly intending to do with him the same as she had done with the dolls.

      “Darling! Wonderful child!” Papa panted.

      He freed his hair with difficulty and, just in case, moved further away from the playpen where he could not be reached or spat on. Pipa forcefully threw the shovel after him, but it only fell into the vase on the TV, and immediately, with the greatest readiness, scattered splinters.

      “Oh, what a strong girlie we have! What good aim!” Ninel squealed enthusiastically.

      “Careful… She’s taking off her boots!” Durnev warned, covering his head with his hands, just in case, to dodge these sufficiently heavy projectiles.

      At this moment, there was suddenly a ringing in the apartment. The bell, usually squeaking spitefully, now issued a loud, almost triumphant trill. Durnev and his spouse shuddered at once.

      “Are you expecting someone, mousie?” Ninel asked.

      “No, no one. You?”

      “Me neither…” Ninel answered and, following Herman, made her way to the door.

      Pipa threw her boots after them, but the laces got tied up around her hand, and the boots, recoiling, struck her on the nose. Pipa began to wail like a steamer siren.

      Meanwhile, Herman looked into the peephole. No one was visible, although the bell, not stopping for a second, continued to demand persistently that they open the door.

      “Hey, who’s there? I warn you: I don’t like these jokes!” Durnev bellowed and, armed with a hammer, looked onto the landing. Suddenly his face became like that of an old lady who, by mistake, instead of a poodle stroked a crocodile from the Nile.

      In front of the door, barely finding room in the narrow landing, lay an enormous case for a double bass. The case was exceptionally old, trimmed on the outside with very thick rough leather, something simultaneously resembling scales. If Herman Nikitich were a little more learned or had the habit, for example, of leafing through books, he would easily understand that artists always depict such things as dragon skin. Furthermore, to the bulging handle of the double bass case was riveted a small copper tag; half-obliterated letters on it read:

      …ilver …truments wizard Theo…: drums, …ble basses etc.

      But Durnev had not the least desire to examine either the case or especially the tag on it. He only saw that a large and extremely suspicious object was tossed up to him on the threshold and the one who tossed it up most likely was running away now.

      Shedding his sneakers, Herman Nikitich clumsily jumped over the case and, darting out to the stairs, began to yell into the resonant void:

      “Hey you there! Hey! Take away your suspicious thingamajig, or I’ll call the police! No good throwing me a bomb!”

      No one answered his cry. Only for a moment, it seemed to Durnev, pushing his head through between the rails, that a shadow flickered several floors below. Then the external door slammed and everything was quiet. The director of the firm Second-Hand Socks considered that the old foxes, having tossed the mysterious thingamajig up to him, had run out.

      Screaming out yet a couple more threats, Herman Nikitich dragged his feet back. The case was in its previous place. Walking a few steps toward it, Durnev СКАЧАТЬ