46
PARTISAN REVIEW
before the City Council with a bouquet of wild poppies when he was
summoned to undergo disciplinary criticism . What's amazing is
that they accepted the bouquet.
The director of a film crew from Rome placed a call to the very
same City Council and proposed, in conjunction with the film he
was shooting in Pompeii about life abroad, that the whole town be
converted into a film studio, that is, to restore capitalism, for all
practical purposes , in Pompeii .
Also, some criminal types bashed a zinc bucket over the head of
the pensioner Karandashkin , who, as a free service to his country,
was selling state lottery tickets on Shoreline Road. Of the one hun–
dred thousand tickets that the muggers took from him not one was a
winning number. Subsequently, Karandashkin sent an open letter
addressed to all honest people of the planet, only to have the letter
published in the newspaper
The Furnace
oj
Health .
This began a very
absurd polemic, which came to a halt only after the Ideological
Commission issued a direct order.
Yet the record for mindless cruelty in those days turned out to
be the attack on the circus tigers by some deadbeat tramps . They
chased the beasts, frightened to death, out of their cages with fire
extinguishers. These tigers had performed as circus entertainers for
ten generations, so they now jumped through hoops simply because
of genetic traits, not in response to any training. Once they had scat–
tered through the town and come into contact with the strange life–
style of the resort's inhabitants and tourists , they quite naturally ran
wild again. The thunderous roars of these ill-fated creatures could be
heard in Pompeii right up to the last day of its existence.
However, there were also occurrences of some questionably
perspicuous acts of virtue. Once, late at night, a threesome grabbed
Matvei Tryapkin, the chef at the sanatorium Homeland, by his coat
lapels and demanded: "You have 50 roubles?" Now where would a
drunken cook get a hold of such a sum of money? The robbers
frisked the poor fellow and, once they'd convinced themselves that
he wasn't lying, gave him a gift of a fifty-rouble note.
What is the link between people's behavior and the action of
fiery lava from the underworld-one of cause and effect or the oppo–
site, a direct or an indirect connection? No one knows , so everyone
stays confused. The pink cap on top of the volcano grew larger with
each passing day.
