Kitabı oku: «Methodius Buslaev. The Scroll of Desires», sayfa 4

Chapter 3
Minister of Scrofula, King of Aspirin

In the infinite flow of humanity that crawls along the subway escalators all day and a substantial part of the night, thousands of female faces flicker. They float past and are lost in the expanse of the subway reeking of rubber and the twisting passages under the streets. Their motley army includes: battalions of workaholics and regiments of harassed housewives, squads of sympathisers and artillery battalions of stinkers, logistic units of prisoners of the office, cavalry of hundreds of adventure seekers, divisions of wild hysterical women, draft reinforcements of bluestockings, strategic reserves of former wives, lawless detachments of good-natured mindless ones with canine fur on their skirts, and finally, platoons of poor devils supplied with the newest weapon of tears.

However, one ought not think that it is possible to cover all skirts rushing about with the above given modest classification. Some do not fall into any classification at all. A martyr, a pivot, or pouty lips and all ears? And this is still nothing – a mild case. There are even some, whom a guard of Gloom will not talk about, that are everything before him, and he will only scratch his head and go away. Women are like water. They never stay in one spot and frequently flow from one state to another. To take at least this one or that one there… Today she is a bluestocking, tomorrow a nice frump, the day after a harassed hostess or prisoner of the office. It seems, all the same, she gets off quickly at the terminal. But that is a denial. A woman is always capable of surprises. Suddenly a miracle happens – and a recent bluestocking takes off like a speeding rocket. A phoenix flares up where there were recently the ashes of a person.

Zozo Buslaeva, mother of Methodius, belonged to the now extended category of women-motors. Their main special feature is that they spend their entire life in fussy and chaotic motion. For them, an hour spent in one place is equivalent to a year of strict confinement. It was now necessary for Zozo to spend her days exactly in one place. Recently she was sweating over the post of secretary in the firm Construction Battalion Forever, busy with deliveries of construction equipment. The owner of the firm was Isadora Cutletkina, General Cutletkin’s wife, through whom Khavron arranged the job for his sister. However, Zozo saw Isadora herself only once. Moreover, their dislike for each other was mutual. However, this had no influence on anything. Isadora was barely at the office. The owner and director, as is well known to many, are often treated differently.

Five days a week from ten in the morning to six in the afternoon Zozo accepted and put her signature on papers, on which demolition hammers chiselled, asphalt spreaders rumbled, crane clamping mechanisms clanked, paint sprayers hissed like a snake, and Black and Decker pistol drills droned hollowly. In her time free from the drills, Zozo answered the phone, entered into the computer requests for spare parts for cranes, or sorrowfully watered the flowers.

Next to her behind the wall, in the large room occupied by the sales division, the telephone shrilled non-stop. The old informer Xerox squeaked idiotically. The drywall-covered wall, against which it leaned, shook nervously. Sputtering managers flew along the corridor like clamorous flocks. Something like fastening chains and construction gloves reigned over their bickering. The flock with the gloves had barely managed to rush past and a new invasion turned up. The door was thrown open, someone looked in and shouted, “Seen Tsitsin? Where’s that idiot?” Zozo vaguely and languidly waved her hand in the air as if entreating: all of you stay away from me, I know nothing. The flock of lynchers setting off in pursuit of the idiot Tsitsin had only just disappeared but a commotion again began in the corridor. Zozo plugged up her ears in order not to hear the managers’ sorrowful whine, but it was not possible to work on the computer with plugged ears, and she willy-nilly tore her hands away from them.

They were again getting excited behind the door. There along the corridor they were dragging Tsitsin, caught red-handed in the cafeteria in an attempt to purchase a bottle of Holy Spring mineral water. “What were you thinking when you wrote ‘Country of Recipient Egypt’ in the documentation on a snow blower?” they yelled at him. “Don’t blame me! They screwed up the order!” a velvety tenor objected with dignity. “But you’re not a moron! You could consider that the most severe frost in Egypt is twenty plus degrees!” “I warned the deputy Alex Kurilko, and he said: stop! I can’t work when they say ‘stop’ to me! I have two higher degrees! And let go of my arm immediately! You have sweaty fingers!” the tenor defended himself. “Aha, right away! Go, go!” the voices said and, judging by some suspicious sounds, they were urging on Tsitsin in the back.

Zozo wanted to scream and, screwing up her eyes, threatened the monitor with her fist. She felt like a prisoner of the dull office Cyclops with the spat-upon whiskers, which she wanted terribly to hit on the head with the cover torn from the Xerox. Stretching and straightening her numbed back, she glanced through the window at the crows bathing with pleasure in the air eddies by their high-rise, and smiled at some of her own obscure, mysterious, but very pleasant thoughts. Nevertheless, even in these dreamy moments her fingers continued as usual to run along the keyboard, concrete mixers and dumpsters jumped in the columns assigned to them, and the stapler clicked loudly, biting into the papers.

Zozo was despondent. She wanted a personal life or at the worst to be on leave. But for the time being there was no chance for either personal life or leave. It was hot in the office. The air conditioner did not get rid of the stupidity and boredom of the place. The yogi and essayist Basevich had disappeared somewhere. He had stopped phoning and, apparently, running in the morning. Other adequate candidates had not yet showed up.

A couple of weeks ago, on a wave of drawn-out absence of fish, Zozo put up a notice on an Internet dating site, accompanying it with a scanned ten-year-old photograph, in which she in a low-neck dress was tenderly embracing someone’s collie. The photograph seemed very good to Zozo. True, with the scanning and the reduction a certain special expression in the face adding attractiveness had vanished, and it was necessary to cut out Methodius, who, to tell the truth, was also in the photograph, neatly using Photoshop. In Zozo’s opinion, he decreased her chances for personal happiness. A pale, light-haired child with an aloof look, moreover, appeared too adult for his then three years of age.

Soon, to Zozo’s happiness, letters started to arrive. She immediately eliminated some, held others in reserve, listlessly answered a third, doubting for a number of reasons whether it would be worthwhile to lead it to a personal meeting. And then one more letter arrived, and Zozo understood with the nose of a bloodhound: he. Although the letter itself was sufficiently sluggish and spineless, and even the last name was some vegetable: Ogurtsov. Anton Ogurtsov.

* * *

Are you all still following Calderón, convinced that life is a dream? Untrue! Life is a nightmare. The only comfort is that a nightmare is short-term. People fear possibly everything. There are many thousands of fears or phobias. The fear of darkness is called achluophobia, cold – frigophobia, solitude – isolophobia, being buried alive – taphophobia, open space – agoraphobia, daylight – phengophobia, beard – pogonophobia, going to bed – clinophobia, standing or walking – stasiphobia, being robbed – harpaxophobia, work – ergasiophobia. Not in any way fewer than phobias are manias. The most inoffensive consists of the incessant washing of hands. Besides manias and phobias, there are some dozens of “philias” not promising their possessor anything except troubles, frequently criminal.

According to statistics, one phobia and a couple of manias haunt the average unremarkable moronoid. Rarely can someone brag about more. However, such unique examples nevertheless exist. In Moscow on Stromynka Street, in the beautiful elite house with turrets and circular windows lived a certain individual, who strove for absolutely all existing phobias and more than half of the manias. Anton Ogurtsov was that remarkable individual. He had wide shoulders, chubby cheeks with the insolent bloom of a piglet, and a firm nose of good breeding. He would even be considered a handsome man, if not for an eternal expression of hunted terror in the eyes and pursed lips.

A former medical student, who quit during second year, he knew too much. Even now, ten years later, occupying a post of average importance in the office of an Austrian firm producing disposable serviettes, cotton swabs, and paper towels, Ogurtsov suffered from a multitude of his knowledge. The medical student who failed to complete training saw dangers where others let them slip satisfactorily. What indeed, it seems, is more pleasant than messing around in one’s nose with a finger? By no means, attention! Being excessively absorbed, it is easy for you, darling, to join the ranks of clinical idiots. How? Easy! Pursing his lips, eternally stiffened in expectation of misfortune, Ogurtsov would explain to you that, by extracting snot stuck in the nose, it would be easy to bring on an infection through the capillaries, which in turn cause a clot of brain tissues.

“And this is only the beginning!” Ogurtsov would exclaim and, rolling his languishing eyes tormented by Graves’ disease, would disclose a terrible secret. Fish accumulates mercury. Canned foods increase the probability of cancer. It is easy to suffer a stroke getting up too quickly from a chair. The sharp foil of Alenka chocolate can cut a vein if we saw it with this foil for a certain time. And our food? What is it if not a cemetery of pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, and hormonal additives!

Now if only all the horrors of the world were limited to this! How easy, how nice it would be to live then! Alas, a hundred times more things were known to the unhappy Ogurtsov. Take transport. Aircrafts fall into oceans. Trolley buses burn like matches. If a trolley bus did not burn today, that means it burned yesterday. Buses only pretend that they have routes and stops. In reality, they patiently search for closed-down railroad barriers in order to demolish them and then go lifeless. And the subway? The air in it is full of the worst infections. An escalator, breaking down, seizes with its gears a poor fellow off his guard and drags him into its clanking womb. And the maniac-machinists, rushing into the tunnel with a grin at its mouth, and passengers pinched by the pneumatic doors?

The ill-fated Anton Ogurtsov lived sadly, very sadly, in the world. He did not live but dwelled in it. Even in the evening, falling in exhaustion onto his bachelor bed, covered in antiseptic sheets given to him free of charge for advertising purposes, he could not drop off with dreams of escape. Ogurtsov was lying and remembering that streptococci were living in his pillows, the cup of tea drunk at night could cause vomiting, and a smouldering mattress was capable of suffocating a sleeping person in five minutes. In the middle of the night, he woke up in a cold sweat. It seemed to him that the protective vent over the pipe was ripped out and the apartment was filled with methane. Furthermore, a mean little falsetto regularly whispered to him that, according to statistics, ninety percent of people die in bed. The same tireless little falsetto suggested to Anton Ogurtsov to watch his health vigilantly.

At different times, the employee of a foreign firm suspected he had spondylarthritis, peritonitis, pyoderma, helminthiasis, iritis, astigmatism, cancer, lymphadenitis, polyneuritis, endocarditis, cirrhosis, tracheitis, leprosy, and gingivitis. The fact that none of these diagnoses was confirmed did not weaken his natural hypochondria.

There was not a single prominent medical notable, to whom Ogurtsov would not show himself. Homeopathists, virologists, dermatologists, allergists, bacteriologists, gastroenterologists, therapists, toxicologists, and physiotherapists – all knew him in person. To all of them, the worker of the serviette front demonstrated his athletic trunk and vigilant eyes of a paranoid. It was impossible to disengage oneself from the frightened Ogurtsov, burning with desire to learn the truth. He clung like a leech and cried on the doctor’s shoulders, imploring, “Professor, please don’t deceive me! Tell me the truth, no matter how brutal!”

In despair, doctors used the last resort – they sent the minister of antibacterial serviettes to their colleagues, also venerable notables, against whom they had a grudge. Doctors exchanged Ogurtsov like iron ingots, hastening with his help to play a dirty trick on their foe. As a result, the histologist sent Anton to the cardiologist, the ophthalmologist – to the balneologist, and the endocrinologist – to the orthopaedist. At parting, each notable nevertheless considered it his duty to write some prescription for Ogurtsov to remember him by. As a result, in Anton’s kitchen cupboard were set up in rows: Papazol, Asparcam, riboxine, Nitrosorbid, norsulfazole, Erynitum, ethazole, Senade, Sustak, theophylline, Levomycetin, cholosasum in blue bottles, cholosasum in red bottles, Teturam, Nembutal, Nootropil, Suprastin, hydrocortisone, and the most favourite of all medicines, the name of which Ogurtsov uttered after two passionate sighs – amoxicillin 0.123 %. So far, the powerful organism of the athlete was coping successfully with all this trash, devoured daily in unthinkable quantities.

The duke of serviettes and master of the order of cotton swabs did not exactly have harmful habits, in fact, not at all. He had solid lines in this column. When they smoked in his presence, he turned green. Sometimes he drank wine, but exclusively within the framework of treatment with grapes at one teaspoon twice a day. Ogurtsov was even tenser with girls. If it so happened that some girl approached the sinewy handsome man with an interest, Ogurtsov would immediately turn to flight. Where others saw girls, he saw hordes of microbes, hepatitis, and the flu.

When Ogurtsov turned thirty-five, his parents, living in Noginsk outside Moscow, sounded the alarm and took him in a tight Nelson hold, forcing him to get married. After being obstinate for half a year, the hypochondriac employee of the disposable serviette firm gave in. He sighed submissively, swallowed vitamins, and began to read ads on the Internet. Having written Zozo a very modest letter – the first letter in his life unrelated to business, he was extremely surprised when white hands immediately caught him and quickly mobilized him for a date.

* * *

Ogurtsov waited for Zozo where all Muscovites deprived of imagination meet: at the Pushkin monument. He had a large bouquet of roses in his hands. “Are you Zoe?” he asked in a business-like manner. “Me? Yes.” “Then this is for you. Please hold the flowers carefully. Don’t get pricked! They’re fraught with sporotrichosis,” warned Ogurtsov. Zozo almost dropped the flowers. She did not know what this sporotrichosis was, but the word sounded terrible.

In the meantime, Anton Ogurtsov straightened his Herculean shoulders and solemnly uttered another truth, “Since we’ve already met, it’s not worthwhile to stand by the road. Here I estimated and realized that in those ten minutes I waited for you, my lungs had taken in around four hundred million micro-organisms. People don’t have immunity to many of them.” Zozo patiently nodded just in case. She had long been used to being hit exclusively by psychos. Indeed, she had such karma.

“Let’s go somewhere for a bite? I just came from work,” she proposed. This simple proposal provoked the most unexpected reaction. The employee of a foreign firm absent-mindedly stared at her. Zozo perceived how his intellect broke through the shroud of hygienic thoughts, descending from the height of the stars, where spiral viruses flew and gloomy intestinal bacteria soared, to the sinful earth filled with microbes.

“Hmm… Eh… Well, yes…” “You’re not against it?” “Of course not. Of course, it’s possible to get a bite, only where?” Ogurtsov asked. “What’s the difference? Well, at least over there!” Frivolously flirting with sporotrichosis reigning on the thorns, Zozo waved the roses in the direction of McDonalds. Anton stared at her wildly and his chin shuddered involuntarily, “Are you serious? Carcinogenic preservatives, trans fats, and artificial carbohydrates there! How can you not be ashamed!” Zozo was humbly ashamed, but at the same time remarked timidly that all food without exception was harmful and what to do now – die of hunger?

The trainer of cotton swabs thought for a bit. Zozo began to languish. “I’d have dinner all the same! I’ll pay my own shot, if that’s what embarrasses you,” she said persistently, feeling the beast of hunger. “Is money really the matter? So, let’s go! It seems there’s this one place…” Anton said sourly. The necessity for a heroic deed was clearly visible on his noble face.

They went somewhere, turned, turned again, and slid under an arch. Although the sun was raging on the street, here dampness reigned. Having squeezed through between parked cars, they passed one more playground, and dived under one more arch. Here Ogurtsov stopped. Above a small basement with a sparse artificial palm at the entrance crowded the bright letters: DREAM OF YOGI.

“What’s this?” Zozo asked in horror. “A vegetarian restaurant. Someone – don’t remember who, don’t remember when – described it as very good,” the marquis of serviettes proudly explained. He took a serviette from his pocket, wrapped it around the door handle, and with disgust opened it. After Zozo had entered, Ogurtsov discarded the serviette and whisked sideways through the closing door, contented that he had slipped away from the bacilli dwelling on the handle. “Now down the steps! Careful, might fall!” he warned. It was possible to fall fifty times. Namely, there were so many steps.

The restaurant was in a former air-raid shelter. It was chilly in its only hall, like in a tomb. Anton Ogurtsov looked around knowingly and sat down at the far table next to the fire extinguisher. The restaurant was completely empty. Only by the door, a strange sleek little fellow with a lively, exactly elastic face was hunting with a fork the only radish on his plate. He was hunting with such zeal that Zozo even thought that perhaps he was mocking someone. However, the sleek little fellow persistently did not look in their direction.

After some time a pale waitress crept out to them. All things considered, it was obvious that she was extremely surprised by today’s influx of visitors. After leafing through the menu, Ogurtsov ordered the Dual Health salad, asparagus, and carrot juice. The waitress again crept away somewhere. There appeared to be sluggish movement beyond the partition to the kitchen.

Zozo was bored and frozen. Ogurtsov folded a napkin into a ship. “So, are we going to keep quiet? Do you intend to talk about something?” Zozo nervously asked. The king of disposable towels did not answer. After finishing the ship, he took the next napkin and made a toad. “Hey! I’m here!” Zozo shouted. “Is it possible to find out what you’re thinking?” Again, she did not get an answer. The duke of hygiene, without raising his eyes from the table, kept silent and planted the toad into the ship. “That’s it! I’ve had enough! I’m leaving!” Zozo decided. She was already almost getting up when the waitress appeared from the kitchen with a tray. Two tall glasses of carrot juice stood on the tray. Caught unawares, Zozo remained on the spot.

On seeing the juice, the single-use dandy came alive and began to move his fingers. “Here are some plain glasses! I love everything elegant!” he said inopportunely. “What a coincidence! Me too!” Zozo said, glad that her collocutor had come out of his lethargic dream. “Imagine, recently I bought an excellent box in an antique store. Here indeed is a feeling of style!” “Ah, what’s so special about it?” “Well, it’s all so… ancient… carved, from mahogany… on the lid the sun and two such winged… dragons, perhaps? Everything with great taste!” Ogurtsov had difficulty describing it precisely. The little fellow hunting the radish froze.

“And what do you keep in the box?” Zozo asked with the tenderness of a psychotherapist. But Ogurtsov had already become quiet. He took his fork and with disgust began to scrutinize it in the light, checking if it was washed. “What? Medicines, which must be stored in a dry dark place. The box is excellent for this. Above are several small compartments, and a deep one below. Furthermore, there are several drawers. I store vitamins there,” he said edifyingly. “And where do you store your vitamins, Zoe?” “Eh-eh… In the fridge,” Zozo lied. She thought that if she had vitamins for real, in two days Eddy would pig out on them and have an allergic reaction. Her brother eternally suffered from an undivided love for anything free.

Ogurtsov chewed the asparagus critically. Before swallowing, he processed each piece with saliva no less than thirty times. One could read the thought on his face that the digestion of food was an important and necessary labour. The muscles of his strong cheekbones moved vigorously. Zozo looked at him with irritation. She wanted to hurl the plate with turnip at him, then catch a taxi and go to bite someone. Having put an end to the asparagus, Ogurtsov looked at Zozo in the manner of a bird and, making up his mind, started to gurgle with the carrot juice.

“It’s bad to live alone. Solitude depresses me. I need a beloved soul next to me. Zozo, a man cannot exist without a woman. Downright unreal after all,” he complained, full of suffering. Zozo choked on the juice from surprise. Passing from an innocent conversation on a box to family life was much too unexpected. “No, Zozo, a man cannot be without a woman at all,” Ogurtsov continued to develop the thought. “Here, for example, if he has problems with the heart at night, who would phone emergency? I’ll teach you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Zoe! And we will give each other injections! You have a light hand, I hope?” Zozo began to look around uneasily. She in no way expected this turn in the conversation.

“So will you agree?” The encouraged Ogurtsov was enthusiastic. “Will I agree to what?” Zozo did not understand. “What do you mean to what? To marry me.” “So soon? I don’t suit you. I don’t know how to make mustard plasters. It’s better for you to look for a nurse,” unexpectedly for her, Zozo blurted out. Accurate female intuition suggested to her that before her was a complete and incurable psycho, whom no injection could already save. The employee of a foreign firm extracted a feeble bird sigh from his powerful chest. He was not offended. Rather he was distressed. His eyelashes were long like a girl’s. “A nurse? Do you think so? I didn’t think about it. Perhaps it’s better than a doctor-resuscitator? This, in my opinion, is more reliable, what do you think? In other words, more extensive!” he seriously asked. “Absolutely. All the best! And good luck to you!”

Zozo got up and began to move back. She was already imagining buying a large chocolate bar at the kiosk. With the thought that chocolate was harmful, she started to feel better. “Please stop! I probably should escort you?” Anton asked. “By no means! I can manage!” Zozo refused and forever disappeared from both the Dream of Yogi restaurant and Anton Ogurtsov’s life.

The king of towels finished drinking the carrot juice in small gulps and felt his own pulse. The pulse was normal. As if Zozo’s departure also did not affect his blood pressure. Ogurtsov thought with relief that all matters of amour were finished today. At the same time, it seemed to him that the little fellow with the crushed face and pushed-out shoulder blades winked insidiously at him from the adjacent table. Acting in the best traditions of a public health ministry, Ogurtsov was not immediately disturbed. He paid the bill and left, again wrapping the door handle with a serviette in order not to get microbes – airborne ones – on his hand.

* * *

Ogurtsov walked home: good it was not far. He walked and fearfully pulled his head into his shoulders. The insolent stooping little fellow with the crushed face – the same one that had winked – in some mysterious manner seemed to him to be anywhere and everywhere. He jumped in shop windows, passed by in trolley buses and taxis, with a leash on his neck ran after small dogs and, swinging his legs, sat on the fence of an avenue. One time he even managed to grin slyly from the street ad of a fashion magazine, where, smacking his lips over the empty casing of a sausage, he sat unsteadily on the shoulders of the very young model. Ogurtsov’s mouth went dry. He felt like a complete paranoiac and began to consider in earnest a visit to a psychiatrist.

Having finally forced his way into the entrance of his building, he stared at the concierge, as if suspecting to see the sly stranger. He stared and calmed down. The concierge was the same as before. A clean little old lady was sitting in a glazed room with geraniums, listening to the radio, and reading something. After greeting her and having gotten a “good evening” in response, Ogurtsov was about to walk past her when suddenly something compelled him to look around fearfully. The concierge was reading – Oh God, no! – the Iron Men magazine for bodybuilders, with the same dreadful insolent little fellow staring out of the cover the whole time. He was naked to his waist and emaciated as the skeleton of a Caspian roach. After ascertaining that the minister of cotton swabs noticed him, the little fellow began waving at him and sending air kisses.

Ogurtsov rushed into the elevator and, after poking a button with his finger, got up to his floor in a hurry. On finding himself in the apartment, he slammed the door shut, turned the key four times, bolted and chained it. On legs like cotton, Anton set off for the kitchen and there, knocking a spoon against his teeth, he hurriedly drank three tablespoons and one teaspoon of red wine. Ogurtsov was never like this. It was already akin to a reckless attempt to pour alcohol into his liver. However, the Herculean organism of the king of serviettes managed even this.

After hiding the bottle and spoon, Anton limply wandered into the room, intending on lying down on the sofa and thinking over a call to the psychiatrist. After pushing open the door, he froze on the threshold and… started to croak in horror. On that very sofa he was aiming for, a pillow behind the back, the insolent person with the lively, somewhat flexible face was lounging. In his hand was a large pistol, which the shady character, tongue hanging out from enthusiasm, aimed directly at Ogurtsov’s heart. “Hands up! Everyone stand, lie, sit! No one leaves, walk together! Bang boom, everyone is dead!” he said in a vile voice. Ogurtsov’s knees buckled from fear. His pulse went off the scale.

Meanwhile the little fellow jumped from the sofa and ran around the room, shattering everything around. Glass clinked, a chair toppled over, pills gushed out from the overturned night table. Yanked out pages of the medical encyclopaedia fluttered, demonstrating terrible colour pictures of trophic ulcers. “Where’s the box? Confess voluntarily and we’ll let you go in half the sentence!” the little fellow shouted threateningly, brandishing the pistol.

Ogurtsov did not answer; however, his doe eyes slid by themselves to the cabinet. The strange character ran over and jerked open the door. A collection of cups rained down. The last to fall out of the cabinet was the ill-fated box. The insolent little fellow stretched out his hand, but immediately, having said “oh,” jerked it back, after barely touching the lid. One of his fingers flared up and burned almost to the joint. The agent began in panic to shake his hand, groaned, and started to mould his finger anew, lengthening the remaining part. “I hate these artefacts from Light, even if I weren’t Tukhlomon! Even almost no power is left in it, nevertheless still can’t sneak up on it… What to do? Ah, I know!” he muttered to himself. Waving the pistol, he beckoned a trembling Ogurtsov to himself. “Hey, you, boy, well, get over here! Take your box! Open it! Wider! Let’s have a look! Away with the medicines, they’ll no longer be of use to you.”

Pale from horror, Ogurtsov started to whimper, shaking out the pills onto the carpet. Tukhlomon fixed his eyes upon the bottom of the box. “Ah, here it is! Press with a finger on the bottom next to the right edge! Hold, don’t release! What, didn’t know, perhaps? Now with the other hand a quick turn of the sun on the lid! Turn more bravely! It’ll not bite you! Ready? And now release the bottom! Don’t hold it, I say! What, it moved? Take it out! I dare say, you indeed didn’t even know that it has a secret bottom here!”

Not taking his eyes off the little fellow and his terrible pistol, Ogurtsov took out the bottom of the box. Tukhlomon greedily glanced in; however, he only saw a pitiful handful of sawdust. The agent’s face shrunk in disappointment. It was crushed like a rotten apple, on which a sole had stepped. He clearly hoped to behold something more remarkable there.

However, the agent quickly pulled himself together. “It turned out to be a mistake… Your box is an empty shell. The bees have to fly further for honey!” Tukhlomon said sweetly. He approached the window and, fidgeting the flexible nose, thievishly looked out. He was probably checking whether there were any dangerous golden sparks nearby. At this moment, he was very similar to a thievish rat. He discovered no guards of Light. Tukhlomon grinned. “Remember, if golden-wings come flying to you after me, you will give my regards. Uncle Tukhlomon, you tell them, ordered you. Remember? Won’t fall into decay?” he anxiously asked Ogurtsov. After this, he waved to Anton and set off for the door.