Tanya Grotter And The Magic Double Bass - Емец Дмитрий Александрович. Страница 6

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 squatted down and propped up his head with his palms.

“Ninel, Ninel, come here – see what was tossed up to us!” he called mournfully.

From the apartment the fat-cheeked head of his spouse looked around. Ninel clutched a T-Fal frying pan in her hand, grabbed for the same purpose as her husband arming himself with a hammer.

“Look, a case!” she was astonished.

“Don’t take it into your head to touch it! For sure it’s a bomb!” Herman Nikitich yelped.

At that moment, a strange sound came from the case. The Durnevs decided that it was the ticking of a clock mechanism.

“Now it’ll go off with a jerk! Down!” the head of the firm Second-Hand Socks started to shout and quickly began to crawl away. His spouse flopped onto the linoleum, covering her head with the T-Fal frying pan.

But the expected explosion did not follow. Instead, the weeping of a demanding child was heard from the case. Exchanging dumbfounded glances, Durnev and his spouse crawled up to the case. The old lock clicked, the cover was thrown back…

“Ah-ha! Do you see? It’s a child!” Ninel exclaimed, her forehead bumping into her husband.

“A bomb would be better!” Herman Nikitich groaned.

In the case, on a carefully stretched out red blanket, lay a little girl with curly hair. On the tip of her nose was a small buckwheat grain, the birthmark. The baby just woke up and now she was crying loudly from hunger, energetically drumming on the double bass case with her hands and feet. Ninel winced with disgust, “No, I’ll not take her into our home! What if she has some infection? Even infectious for sure! Look at this suspicious spot on the nose! And I’ll be shaking with loathing if she turns up in the same bed with Pipa. But we also can’t abandon her here. The neighbours will gather…”

“Oh, it goes without saying, we won’t abandon her! We’re humane people! We’ll turn the girl in to the orphanage! There she’ll learn to paint fences, sweep the streets, and a hundred other remarkable professions!” Durnev said cheerfully.