“Your refusal grieves me,” Hottabych said. “After all, no one will notice me prompting you.”
“Ha!” Volka said bitterly. “You don’t know what keen ears our teacher Varvara Stepanovna has.”
“You not only upset me, you now offend me, O Volka ibn Alyosha! If Hassan Abdurrakhman ibn Hottab says that no one will notice, it means no one will notice!”
“Not a single soul?” Volka asked again, just to make sure.
“Not a single soul. The words which I will have the pleasure of telling you will go straight from my deferential lips to your greatly respected ears.”
“I really don’t know what to do, Hassan Hottabych,” Volka said sighing, as though with reluctance. “I really hate to upset you by refusing. All right, have your own way! Geography isn’t Math or Grammar. I’d never agree to even the tiniest prompt in those subjects, but since geography isn’t really the most important subject… Come on, let’s hurry!” He looked at the old man’s unusual clothing with a critical eye. “Hm-m-m… D’you think you could change into something else, Hassan Hottabych?”
“Don’t my garments please your gaze, O most noble of Volkas?” Hottabych asked unhappily.
“Sure they do, they certainly do,” Volka answered diplomatically. “But you’re dressed … if you know what I mean… Our styles are a little bit different… Your clothes will attract too much attention.”
“But how do respectable, honourable gentlemen of advanced age dress nowadays?”
Volka tried to explain what a jacket, trousers and a hat were, but though he tried very hard, he wasn’t very successful. He was about to despair, when he suddenly glanced at his grandfather’s portrait on the wall. He led Hottabych over to the time-darkened photograph and the old man gazed long at it with curiosity, surprised to see clothing so unlike his own.
A moment later, Volka, holding Hottabych’s arm, emerged from the house. The old man was magnificent in a new linen suit, an embroidered Ukrainian shirt, and a straw boater. The only things he had refused to change, complaining of three thousand-year-old corns, were his slippers. He remained in his pink slippers with the upturned toes, which, in times gone by, would have probably driven the most stylish young man at the Court of Caliph Harun al Rashid out of his mind with envy.
When Volka and a transformed Hottabych approached the entrance of Moscow Secondary School No. 245 the old man looked at himself coyly in the glass door and remained quite pleased with what he saw.
The elderly doorman, who was sedately reading his paper, put it aside with pleasure at the sight of Volka and his companion. It was hot and the doorman felt like talking to someone.
Skipping several steps at a time, Volka dashed upstairs. The corridors were quiet and empty, a true and sad sign that the examination had begun and that he was late.
“And where are you going?” the doorman asked Hottabych good-naturedly as he was about to follow his young friend in.
“He’s come to see the principal,” Volka shouted from the top of the stairs.
“You won’t be able to see him now. He’s at an examination. Won’t you please come by again later on in the day?”
Hottabych frowned angrily.
“If I be permitted to, O respected old man, I would prefer to wait for him here.” Then he shouted to Volka, “Hurry to your classroom, O Volka ibn Alyosha! I’m certain that you’ll astound your teachers and your comrades with your great knowledge!”
“Are you his grandfather or something?” the doorman inquired, trying to start up a conversation. Hottabych said nothing. He felt it beneath his dignity to converse with a doorkeeper.
“Would you care for a cup of tea?” the doorman continued. “The heat’s something terrible today.”
He poured a full cup of tea and, turning to hand it to the untalkative stranger, he saw to his horror that the old man had disappeared into thin air. Shaken by this impossible occurrence, the doorman gulped down the tea intended for Hottabych, poured himself a second cup, and then a third, and did not stop until there wasn’t a drop left. Then he sank into his chair and began to fan himself exhaustedly with his newspaper.
All the while, a no less unusual scene was taking place on the second floor, right above the doorman, in the classroom of 6B. The teachers, headed by the principal, Pavel Vasilyevich, sat at a table covered with a heavy cloth used for special occasions. Behind them was the blackboard, hung with various maps. Facing them were rows of solemn pupils. It was so quiet in the room that one could hear a lonely fly buzzing monotonously near the ceiling. If the pupils of 6B were always this quiet, theirs would undoubtedly be the most disciplined class in all of Moscow .
It must be noted, however, that the quiet in the classroom was not only due to the hush accompanying any examination, but also to the fact that Volka Kostylkov had been called to the board — and he was not in the room.
“Vladimir Kostylkov!” the principal repeated and looked at the quiet children in surprise.
It became still more quiet.
Then, suddenly, they heard the loud clatter of running feet in the hall outside, and at the very moment the principal called “Vladimir Kostylkov” for the third and last time, the door burst open and Volka, very much out of breath, gasped:
“Here!”
“Please come up to the board,” the principal said dryly. “We’ll speak about your being late afterwards.”
“I … I feel ill,” Volka mumbled, saying the first thing that came to his head, as he walked uncertainly towards his examiners.
While he was wondering which of the slips of paper laid out on the table he should choose, old man Hottabych slipped through the wall in the corridor and disappeared through the opposite one into an adjoining classroom. He had an absorbed look on his face.
Volka finally took the first slip his hand touched. Tempting his fate, he turned it over very slowly, but was pleasantly surprised to see that he was to speak on India . He knew quite a lot about India , since he had always been interested in that country.
“Well, let’s hear what you have to say,” the principal said.
Volka even remembered the beginning of the chapter on India word for word as it was in his book. He opened his mouth to say that the Hindustan Peninsula resembled a triangle and that this triangle bordered on the Indian Ocean and its various parts: the Arabian Sea in the West and the Bay of Bengal in the East, that two large countries — India and Pakistan — were located on the peninsula, that both were inhabited by kindly and peace-loving peoples with rich and ancient cultures, etc., etc., etc., but just then Hottabych, standing in the adjoining classroom, leaned against the wall and began mumbling diligently, cupping his hand to his mouth like a horn:
“India, O my most respected teacher…!”
And suddenly Volka, contrary to his own desires, began to pour forth the most atrocious nonsense:
“India, O my most respected teacher, is located close to the edge of the Earth’s disc and is separated from this edge by desolate and unexplored deserts, as neither animals nor birds live to the east of it. India is a very wealthy country, and its wealth lies in its gold. This is not dug from the ground as in other countries, but is produced, day and night, by a tireless species of gold-bearing ants, which are nearly the size of a dog. They dig their tunnels in the ground and three times a day they bring up gold sand and nuggets and pile them in huge heaps. But woe be to those Indians who try to steal this gold without due skill! The ants pursue them and, overtaking them, kill them on the spot. From the north and west, India borders on a country of bald people. The men and women and even the children are all bald in this country. And these strange people live on raw fish and pine cones. Still closer to them is a country where you can neither see anything nor pass, as it is filled to the top with feathers. The earth and the air are filled with feathers, and that is why you can’t see anything there.”