Then the doors opened and Nikita Ivanich walked in. Everyone turned to look at him. Fyodor Kuzmich too. He walked in like he was at home, all grumpy, unkempt, rusht stuck in his beard, his hat still on. He didn't fall down on his knees, didn't roll his eyes back up under his forehead. Didn't even blink.
"Good morning, citizens." He was irritated. "I've implored you on more than one occasion: Take precautions with the stoves. You have to keep them under constant observation. You're always working this old man to the bone."
"Stoker Nikita, know your place, light the stove!" shouted Jackal Demianich in a terrible, sonorous voice.
"Now you listen to me, Jackal, don't be so familiar," said Nikita Ivanich in a huff. "And don't tell me what to do! I'm three hundred years old, and I saw enough bureaucratic nastiness in the Oldener Times to suffice! You have a job, an elementary responsibility to maintain a minimum level of order! You allow your colleagues to become inebriated, and you have the gall to badger me with trifles. The mass alcoholism we are experiencing, Jackal, is partly your fault. That's right! This isn't the first time I've brought this issue to your attention! You are not inclined to respect the individual human being. Like many people, for that matter. And your veteran status"-Nikita Ivanich raised his voice and tapped on the table with a crooked finger- "please don't interrupt me! Your veteran status does not give you the right to harass me!! I am a Homo sapiens, a citizen and mutant, like you! Like all these citizens!" he said, gesturing broadly with his hand.
Everyone knows that there's no point in listening to Nikita Ivanich: he just rambles on, probably doesn't understand half the words he says himself.
"Nikita Ivanich! You are in the presence of Fyodor Kuzmich himself, Glorybe!" cried Jackal Demianich, shaking.
"You are in my presence," said Fyodor Kuzmich with a cough. "Fire up the stove, Golubchik, for heaven's sake, my legs are frozen. Fire it up, what's there to get mad about?"
Nikita Ivanich just waved his hand. He was annoyed. He went over to the stove. He didn't seem to care that the head of state was there and not just anyone, that he'd deigned to honor them with a luminous visitation, that he was chatting with the people, sharing his governmental thoughts with them, that he made them a gift of a painting, that guards with staffs and halberds stood at attention, that Konstantin Leontich once again sat with a gag in his mouth, all tied up with ropes so he couldn't scream, that all Varvara Lukinishna's cock's combs were fluttering from the tension, that the floor was adorned with crimson rugs. No, he didn't care. He walked straight over those governmental rugs in his lapty. Everyone froze.
"Well, all right, where is the kindling?" he grumbled, disgruntled.
Lesser Murzas ran up with kindling and tossed it in the stove. Everyone watched: Fyodor Kuzmich watched, and Benedikt watched; he'd never seen the Head Stoker light the fire. There wasn't anything in his hands. And nothing sticking out of his pockets.
Nikita Ivanich squatted. He sat there for a while. Thought a bit. He turned his head and looked around at everyone. Thought some more. And then he opened his mouth wide, and out came a blast: Whoooooosssshhhhhh! A column of fire blew out of him like the wind, in great puffs, and went in the stove. With a burst everything caught fire in the wide stove, and the yellow tongues of flame crackled like a jeopard tree in spring blossom.
What with all the fear and people shouting, everything went all fuzzy in Benedikt's head. He only managed to notice that Fy-odor Kuzmich pushed off Olenka's lap with his huge hands, jumped on the floor, and disappeared. When Benedikt regained his senses, he rushed out on the street, but all you could see was a cloud of snowspouts reaching from the earth to the sky. And the Lesser Murzas galloping off in the other direction.
Back in the izba the rugs and the skins were gone, the walls were bare and dusty with smoke, the floor was covered with trash, the stove hummed and radiated waves of warmth. The warmth made the blue Demon on the wall stir, as though he wanted to get down.
IZHE
Oh, how Benedikt envied Nikita Ivanich! That evening, arriving home after work, all worried, he checked the stove as he always did. As if to spite him, as often happened, the stove had gone out. If he'd gotten home an hour earlier, it might have been all right, a little bit of life might still have warmed the embers, he could have probably gotten down on his knees and, turning his head like he was praying, blown and blown till a live flame came out of the gray, ashen sticks. Yes, just an hour earlier it could have still been done. The workday is long, and by the time you get to work and then run home afterward-it's like on purpose, like someone figured it out so that you couldn't make it in time! The soup, of course, wouldn't be cold yet if it was wrapped in rags the way it ought to be; you can fill your belly, but the taste is sad, twilightish. You're in the dark-there's nothing to light a candle with. You feel sorry for yourself, so sorry! The izba isn't cold yet either, you can hit the hay in your padded coat and hat. But it will start freezing up at nighttime: winter will creep up to the thin cracks and the notches, it'll blow under the door, breathe cold up from the ground. By morning there will be death in the izba, and nothing else.
No, you can't go that long. You have to go ask the Stokers for fire-and you'd better get some little surprises ready for them, Golubchik. Or you can knock on your neighbor family's door and beg, if they aren't too mean. Family people have it easier: while the husband works, the wife sits at home, keeps house, watches the stove. Makes soup. Bakes. Sweeps. Maybe even spins wool. You can't go on begging like that day after day, the neighbor ladies will lose all patience: they'll smack you on the head with a shaft. Or maybe they've gone to bed, maybe they're barking at each other like family folk do, or fighting, pulling each other's hair out, and here you show up: Could you spare some coals, kind Golubchiks?
But Nikita Ivanich now, he doesn't need a family, or a woman, or neighbors; his stove could go out a hundred times-what does he care? He puffs up-and lights it again. That means he can smoke when he wants, in the forest or the fields or wherever- he's got fire with him. If he wants, he can start a campfire and sit down by the flames, tossing on dry storm kindling, branches, forest garbage, fallen thicket rubbish; he can stare into the live, reddish-yellow, flickering, warm, dancing flame. He doesn't have to ask, or bow, or scrape, or be afraid-nothing. Freedom! Bene-dikt would like that! Yes, he would!…
Once again, in the pitch dark, he felt for the pot with the warm soup and fumbled around: Where is the spoon? Who the devil knows, he stuck it somewhere and forgot. Slurp it over the rim again? How much could he take, he wasn't a goat after all.
He went out on the porch. Lordy! How dark it was. To the north, to the south, toward the sunset, the sunrise-darkness, darkness without end, without borders, and in that darkness, pieces of gloom-other izbas like logs, like rocks, like black holes in the black blackness, like gaps into nowhere, into the freezing hush, into the night, into oblivion, into death, like a long fall into a well, like what happens to you in dreams-you fall and fall and there's no bottom and your heart gets smaller and smaller, more pitiful and tighter. Lordy!
And over your head is the sky, also blacker than black, and across the sky in a pattern are the bluish spots of the stars, thicker sometimes, or weaker, it looks like they're breathing, flickering, like they're suffocating too, they're withering, they want to break away, but they can't, they're pinned fast to the black heavenly roof, nailed tight, can't be moved. Right over Benedikt's head, always overhead wherever you go-the Trough, and the Bowl, and the bunch of Northern Horsetail, and the bright white Belly Button, and the strewn Nail Clippings, and dimly, crowded, thickened, in a stripe through the whole night vault, the Spindle. They've always been there, as long as you can remember. You're born, you die, you get up, you lie down, you dance at your neighbor's wedding, or in the morning, in the stern raspberry dawn you wake in fright as though someone hit you with a stick, like you alone remain alive on earth- and the stars are still there, always there, pale, blinking, indistinct, eternal, silent.