"Teterya!!!" Benedikt croaked. "You hairy rat! I see everything!"

He immediately darted back on all fours, as if he hadn't been doing anything, and raised his leg on the pillar as if to say, yeah? I'm just relieving myself, the way we do. I'm pissing.

"You pig…"

Nikita Ivanich looked out over Benedikt's shoulder. "Benya! Why don't you invite your comrade inside? Good Lord, he's outside and in such cold weather!"

"Comrade? Nikita Ivanich! That's a Degenerator! Don't tell me you haven't seen Degenerators before!"

Lev Lvovich hadn't taken a liking to Benedikt: he looked at him with disdain and kept his mouth squinched to one side. He also got up from the table, crowded behind the Stoker's back, and looked out. "Appalling exploitation…" he muttered.

"Call him, call him into the house! That's inhumane!"

"But he's not a human! Humans don't have felt boots on their hands!"

"You have to look at it more broadly! Even without him the people is incomplete!" Lev Lvovich instructed.

"We won't argue about definitions…" The old man wrapped a scarf around his neck… "Who are you and I…? Bipeds without feathers, with articulate speech… Let me out, I'll go and invite him… What's his name?"

"He answers to Teterya."

"But I can't speak to an adult like that… What's his patronymic?"

"Petrovich… Don't be crazy, Nikita Ivanich, watch out, for God's sake!!! Invite a Degenerator into the izba? He'll muck the whole place up. Wait!"

"Terenty Petrovich," the Stoker said, leaning over into the snowdrift, "kindly come in to the izba! Come sit at the table and warm up!"

The deranged Oldeners unhitched the Degenerator, took off his shaft, and led him into the izba. Benedikt spat.

"Please, let me have your reins, I'll help. Hang them on the nail."

"They'll filch the bear skin! No one's watching the hide," screamed Benedikt and ran to the sleigh. Just in time: two Golubchiks had already wrapped the bear skin in a rug and thrown it on their shoulder. Everyone would have done the same-why not? Who leaves goods like that in the middle of the street without an owner nearby! Seeing Benedikt, they ran into a lane with the rug. He caught up with them, gave them a thrashing, and recovered the goods, huffing and puffing. Oohh, what thievery!

"… I came home, everything was quite civilized, the floors were covered with goddamn Polish varnish!" cursed a soused Teterya. "I took off my shoes, put on my slippers, and there was figure skating on the tube. Irina Rodnina! A double lux… Maya Kristalinskaya was singing. She gets on your nerves, doesn't she?"

"I…" objected Lev Lvovich.

"I, I, I, it's always I. T is just a letter of the alphabet! Gone to seed under Kuzmich, Glorybe! He's let everyone go to pot, frigging dwarf! Reading books, all a bunch of smart alecs all of a sudden! Under Sergeich you wouldn't have done all that reading!"

"Excuse me, but I beg to differ!" Lev Lvovich and Nikita Ivanich broke in, interrupting each other. "Under Sergei Sergeich there was utter terror! He trampled the rights of the individual!… There were arrests in broad daylight! Have you forgotten that more than three were forbidden to gather at one time?… No singing or smoking on the streets!… Curfew!… And what happened if you were late to the recount?-And the uniforms…"

"There was law and order under Sergeich! All the terems were built! All the fences! They never held up Warehouse packages! A basket for holidays, my ration was fifth category, and I got a postcard from the local committee!…"

"You've got it all mixed up, all confused… postcards were before the Blast!… But just remember-a mere forty years ago private mouse-catching was forbidden!"

"… A co-op apartment in Skabl… in Sviblovo," said Te-terya, tripping over his own tongue, "five minutes from the metro. A park zone, you got me? We weren't a bunch of rabi-noviches living in the center!… They were right to put you all in jail!"

"I beg your pardon… we're talking about Sergei Sergeich!"

"… They stick a pair of glasses on and then they start thinking!… I won't let you weeds hit me with a wrench. Don't you shake your beard at meeee! Abraham! You're an abraham! The government gives you a quota and you're supposed to stay within it… Jeezus F… Christ… and not go wagging your butts in front of a bunch of foreigners…"

"But-"

"Gone and multiplied like rabbits, shit! Supposed to be two percent and not a cent more so you don't crush the working class!… Who ate all the meat? Epstein! Huh? Who bought up all the sugar… and we're supposed to make hooch from tomato paste, right? Isn't that right? You're a hitler! There's no Zhirinovsky for you guys anymore!"

"But-"

"Made your son a nice liddle blue shoot, suit, a hunnert percent wool! Then you made a deal to sell the Kuriles to Reagan!… Not an inch will we yield!…"

"Terenty Petrovich!"

"I said not one inch!… We won't give up the Kuriles… And you can stick your pillars up your rear end! You parasites, tried to turn the country into a museum. Pour gasoline over you and-just one little match!… and your ppppparliament, and your books, and your academic Ssssssakharov! And…"

"Now you've done it, you s.o.b.!" A crimson Lev Lvovich suddenly hauled back and punched him. "Don't you dare touch Andrei Dmitrich!!!"

There wasn't any Andrei Dmitrich in the izba; but that happens when you drink too much: your eyes see everything double, and strange figures and faces watch you from the corners. Then you blink-and they're gone.

"You bastard!" shouted the Head Stoker as well. "Get out of here!"

"Don't touuuuch me!" Teterya yelled, flailing his furry elbows. "Help! They're beating Ruuuusssssians!"

"You prison slime… Terrorist! Tie him up!"

They knocked over the table and the jug rolled away. Benedikt jumped in too, and helped them tie the drunken pig with the reins; they rolled him up, threw him outside in the snow, and kicked him for good measure.

"I had a chrome faucet in Sviblovo!" they could hear from the snowstorm. "And you can't even get it up, you queers!…"

If this one is quiet, what is Potap like?

SHA

Bright thoughts ascend In my heart's battered torch And bright thoughts descend By a dark fire scorched.

"Under Sergei Sergeich there was law and order," said Benedikt.

"You said it," replied Father-in-law.

"No more than three people gathered at a time."

"No way."

"But now everybody's too smart for their britches, they read books, they've gone to seed. Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, has let everything get out of hand."

"Words of gold!" Father-in-law exclaimed joyfully.

"Sergei Sergeich built fences, but What've we got nowadays?"

"A crying shame!"

"Holes everywhere, fences falling down, the people's path is overgrown with dill!"

"That's right!"

"A useless weed, no taste, no smell!"

"Not a smidgen."

"People hang underwear and pillowcases on the pushkin, and the pushkin-is our be all and end all!"

"Right down to his itty bitty toes!"

"He's the one who wrote the poems, not Fyodor Kuzmich!"

"Never a truer word spoken."

"He's higher than the Alexander column!"

"Oh, my dear, the column can't compare!"

"But Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, is only knee high to a grasshopper! And he wants to be the Greatest Murza, Long May He Live. Sits right down on Olenka's lap and makes himself at home!"

"Yes, yes… tell me more…"

"What do you mean, 'yes and tell me more'?"

"Take the next step, think it through."

"Think what where?"

"What does your heart tell you?"

Benedikt's heart wasn't telling him anything. His heart was dark, dark as an izba in winter when all the candles have gone out and you live with your hands outstretched. There was an extra candle somewhere, but just try and find it now in the pitch dark.