438
BORIS PILNYAK
his slippers over to Maria Klimovna's bed. The old woman was
sleeping. The candle trembled in Yakov Karpovich's hand. He
giggled and touched Maria Klimovina's shoulder, which was as
dry and shrivelled as parchment, and his eyes grew moist with
pleasure.
"Mariushka," he whispered, "this is life, Mariushka, this is
life." The eighteenth century vanished in Voltairean darkness.
In the morning church bells again went to their doom and
howled and were smashed to smithereens. The Bezdetov brothers
woke early, but Maria Klimovna had got up even earlier and hot
pies with onion and mushrooms were served with the morning
tea. Yakov Karpovich was still in bed. Katerina looked sleepy.
Tea was drunk in silence. The day rose up grey and sluggish.
After breakfast the Bewetov brothers went off to their work.
Pavel Feodorovich drew up on a piece of paper a list of all the
houses and families they had to visit. The streets lay mute amidst
the provincial pavements, the brick walls, the weeds growing
under them, the elder bushes in the ruins left from the great fire,
the churches and the bell-towers. The silence of the streets was
deafened by the whining of the bells and it shrieked when they
smashed to the ground.
The Bezdetovs walked silently, side by side, into the houses
they visited and their eyes were blank as they looked around.
Vyacheslav Pavlovich Karazin was lying on a sofa in the
dining room; he was covered by an impossibly worn jacket made
of squirrel fur. The dining room and the combined study and
bedroom which he shared with his wife presented the spectacle
of an antique shop which had been housed in the cramped quar-
ters of a post office clerk. The Bezdetov brothers paused in the
t
doorway and bowed. Karazin studied them for some time and
then he roared:
"Get out! Swindlers! Get out of here!"
The brothers did not budge.
