Eugenia Grandet, Eugene Onegin, Eugene Primakov, Eugene Gutsalo, Eugenics: A Racist's Weapon, Eugene Sue.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Tashkent-City of Bread, Bread -A Common Noun, Urengoi- The Land of Youth, Uruguay- An Ancient Land, Kustanai- The Steppe Country, Scabies-An Illness of Dirty Hands,.

Foot Hygiene on the Road, F. Leghold, Ardent Revolutionaries, The Barefoot Doctors, Flat Feet in Young Children, Claws: New Types, Shoe Polish Manufacture, Grow Up, Friend: What a Young Man Needs to Know about Wet Dreams, Hands Comrade!, Sewing Trousers, The Time of the Quadrupeds, Step Faster!, How the Millipede Made Porridge, Marinating Vegetables at Home, Faulkner, Fiji: Class Struggle, Fyodor's Woe, Shakh-Reza-Pahlevi, Shakespeare, Shukshin.

Mumu, Nana, Shu-shu: Tales of Lenin, Gagarin: We Remember Yura, Tartar Women's Costumes, Bubulina-A Popular Greek Heroine, Boborykin, Babaevsky, Chichibabin, Bibigon, Gogol, Dadaists Exhibition Catalogue, Kokoschka, Mimicry in Fish, Vivisection, Tiutiunnik, Chavchavadze, Lake Titicaca, Popocatepetl, Raising Chihuahuas, The Adventures of Tin Tin.

Afraid of guessing, Benedikt went through the treasures with shaking hands; he was no longer thinking about issue number eight. It's not here, I'll live. But book after book, journal after journal-he'd already seen this, read this, this, this, this, this… So what did this mean? Had he already read everything? Now what was he going to read? And tomorrow? A year from now?

His mouth went dry and his legs felt weak. He lifted the candle high; its bluish light parted the darkness and danced on the shelves along the books' covers… maybe, up on the top…

Plato, Plotinus, Platonov, Plaiting and Knitting Jackets, Herman Plisetsky, Maya Plisetskaya, Plevna: A Guide, Playing with Death, Plaints and Songs of the Southern Slavs, Playboy. Plinths:

A Guidebook, Planetary Thinking, Plan for Popular Development in the Fifth Five-year Plan. Plebeians of Ancient Rome. Plenary Sessions of the CPSU, The Horn of Plenty in Oil Painting, Pleurisy. Pliushka, Khriapa, and Their Merry Friends. Plying the Arctic Waters. The Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. He'd read them all.

That was it. "It's all over," muttered Vladimir. Nothing foretold this. Benedikt stood there, dripping candle oil on the floor, trying to take in the full horror of what he'd just realized. A guy is feasting at a rich banquet, wearing a crown of roses, laughing, carefree, his whole life lies ahead: he doesn't have a worry in the world and everything's bright; he takes a bite of sweet roll in play, reaches out for another-and all of a sudden he sees that the table is empty, cleared, there are no leftovers and the room is dead: no friends, no beauties, no flowers, no candles, no cymbals, no dancers, no rusht, maybe even the table itself is gone, there's only dry straw… slowly drifting from the ceiling… rustling and drifting…

Slowly, slowly he returned to the dining room and sat down; they talked and grumbled, served him food… Patties… On his plate-a meat pattie. It lay there. A pattie… There's a meat pattie on Benedikt's plate. He looked and looked… the pattie lay there. He couldn't understand… what should he think… about the meat pattie?

"Eat! Eat, while it's still warm! Do you want some sauce?" They're saying words; who's talking? He looked and saw a huge woman, a female. A big head, a little nose in the center. On either side of the nose, cheeks-red, rubbed with beets. Two dark, worried eyes that looked as though they were full of autumn water; just like when you step on moss in the woods and leave a footprint-brown water fills it up right away. Black eyebrows arching over the eyes. A stone hung between the eyebrows, clear, bluish from the candlelight. On either side of the eyebrows-the temples, with woven, colorful temple rings, and above the eyebrows no forehead, only golden hair, all twirled and plaited, and above the hair a headdress. Small stones set in the headdress like stars, a blizzard of ribbons and beaded threads falling like rain-they hang, jangle, reach all the way to the chin. Under the chin, under its dimple-right away there's the torso, wide as a sleigh, and on the torso-three-story tits. Wow! Unbelievably, horribly beautiful: could this really be Olenka? The Queen of Sheba.

"Olenka!" said Benedikt in amazement. "Is that really you? How beautiful you've become! When did this happen? My forest rose! My Siren!"

"Control yourself," said Olenka, heaving and jiggling. But her eyes didn't leave him for a moment.

Benedikt didn't try to control himself, and Olenka was just saying that out of habit, just for appearances, as they say. For three days running, or maybe it was four, or five, or perhaps six… why beat around the bush-for an entire week Benedikt and Olenka frolicked and capered every which way as if in some sort of daze-and, well, you couldn't keep track of what they did. Seeing what was going on, Mother-in-law rolled a barrel of egg kvas out of the granary, strong stuff, take a gulp-you gasp- and tears spring to your eyes; it's good kvas. They romped and rollicked royally-got up to all sorts of antics, and played leapfrog. They ran around on all fours, Olenka in her birthday suit. Benedikt had a sudden hankering to wear Olenka's headdress and rattle her beads, and where his tail used to be he tied her bobbins on so there'd be more of a clatter-you tie on a string, thread the bobbins on it and it makes a regular racket-my oh my, like a thunderstorm at the beginning of May. Then he'd start bleating like a goat.

But after a while-how to put it? There was a pause. A kind of grimness set in.

SHCHA

"In the city of Delhi there lived a wealthy water-bearer. His name was Kandarpaketu…" Already read it.

What to do now? What to live for? Once again, he had a feeling of alarm, as if he'd lost himself, but where and when-he hadn't noticed. It was frightening… Just recently he'd thought: I'm a rich man. But then he caught himself-all his wealth was now behind him, it had leaked out like water. Ahead lay a great drought, a desert. In the city of Delhi there lived a wealthy water-bearer…

He looked around. Silence. No mice scurrying. Quiet. Then sounds began to come through: the regular click-clack of a knife. Someone was chopping meat for dumplings; over there he heard a smooth, womblike sound-someone was rolling dough. Outside the window nature fussed and complained. It droned and squeaked; it would suddenly send the wind wailing, blizzarding, hurling snow at the windows; then it began to drone again; it droned and droned, on and on in the tops of trees, rocking the nests, tossing the tree crests. Dense, heavy snows surrounded the terem, swept over the three fences, through the sty and the warehouses, everything was engulfed in a swift, nocturnal burst of snow. There's no heart in it, in the snow, and if there is, it's mean, blind. The snow billows like great sleeves, sweeps up to the roof, throws itself across the fences, courses through the settlement, along the lanes, through the plaited fences, the thin roofs, to the outskirts, across the fields, to the impenetrable woods. Trees fall there, dead and white, like human bones; the northern juniper bush spreads its needles to prick pedestrians and sleigh riders. The paths wind like nooses and grab you by the legs, swaddling you in snow; branches knock your hat off; prickly vines have hung themselves up to rip at your collar. The snow will pound your back, ensnare you, knock you down, string you up on a branch; you'll jerk and struggle. But the Slynx has already sensed you, the Slynx knows you're there…

Benedikt flinched, shook his head to get rid of the thoughts, squeezed his eyes shut, plugged his ears with his fingers and bit his tongue to chase the Slynx from his thoughts, chase it, get rid of it! Its body is long and supple, its head flat and its ears flattened back… Shoo! The Slynx is pale, muscular, colorless- like the twilight or like a fish, or like the skin on Kitty's stomach, between the legs… No, no!… No!!!