"Teterya, watch how you talk to your betters! Your place is in the bridle!"
"And yours is-you know where… I had a mirrored buffet. And a color TV with an Italian tube… My brother-in-law managed to get a hold of a Yugoslav cabinet set, I had a separate bathroom and toilet, Golden Autumn wallpaper."
"Talking again! Go on, bridle up!"
"The kitchen was linoleum, but the rest was parquet tiles. I had a three-burner stove."
"Teterya! Who am I talking to!"
"A fridge with a freezer, beer in cans… lemon vodka, nice and cold…"
And he stands there, the rodent, on his hind legs like he was an equal, leaning on the fence, chatting, and there's a dream in his eyes, and it's clear as day he doesn't think of Benedikt as his master at all! He's lost in memories!
"Tomatoes from Kuban, Estonian cucumbers with bumps… We ate pressed black caviar and thought the regular stuff was shit… There was dark rye bread for twelve kopecks… Herring with onion… Tea with lemon… Pink and white meringues… Cherries in liqueur from Kuibyshev… Samarkand melon…"
Once he got started, he just kept on, who was there to stop him! Nikita Ivanich is right when he says there should be respect for people, and justice too! But this swine doesn't respect people, he doesn't give a fig for them! Benedikt got mad and beat him on the sides with the whip, slapped him on the ears and kicked him good and hard. And his father-in-law says Terenty's the calm one, it's Potap that's skittish! What's Potap like, then, if this one is obedient?… After that trip, you gotta call him Ter-enty Petrovich, like he was some kind of Murza. Yeah, sure.
Then he had another thought. Maybe he missed his tail? He'd had a tail a long time, he'd wagged it, enjoyed it. When you wag your tail sometimes it makes your ears tickle. It was a good tail, smooth, white, and strong. Sure, it's embarrassing to have a tail when others don't, but it wasn't a bad tail. That's a fact. And now Nikita Ivanich had gone and chopped it off, almost to the very root-jeez it was scary. Nikita Ivanich crossed himself: God bless me! And… whack… but it didn't hurt as much as he'd feared. And that's because it's all cartilage, says Nikita Ivanich. Not bone. "Congratulations," he said to Benedikt, "on the occasion of your partial humanization." That was probably a joke. "Maybe you'll get smarter," he joked again.
Now, in place of a tail he had a callus, like a bump, and it ached. Afterward Benedikt walked around for a whole week with his legs apart. He couldn't sit down. But it healed before the wedding. And now it was kind of strange: you couldn't wag it or anything. So that must be how everybody else feels, he thought. Hmmm.
But on the other hand-what does that mean, everybody else? Who is everybody else? After all, each and every one has his own special Consequence. His relatives have claws, for instance. They ruin the floor. Mother-in-law is bulky, descended from the French-she can scratch up the floor so bad it looks like a whole head of hair fell out on it. Olenka is more delicate, her piles are smaller. Father-in-law scrapes up long thin strips of kindling, you could start a fire with them. Benedikt suggested to Olenka that he clip her claws. He was afraid that she would scratch him in bed. But she started howling: What are you talking about? Look at what he's after now! My organism! No!!! Ay!!… And she didn't let him.
But the Degenerators don't have claws, even though they're probably not really people. They have feet at the end of their legs and hands on their arms. Very dirty ones: they wear felt boots all day long, when they're not playing cards. Sometimes they sit down, stretch their legs out, and scratch behind their ears, real quick, but if you catch a glimpse you can see that they don't have claws.
All in all, it was kind of sad at first. His rear end felt orphaned, and he stared at every tail he came across, whether a goat's, a bird's, a dog's, or a mouse's.
He went to check out the pushkin. Just a week before the wedding Benedikt had decided: That's enough, it's ready. What else is there to do?
Toward the end he wasn't really carving the figure but fixing details. He chiseled the curls, shaved down the back of the neck so it looked more like the genius was hunched over, like he was saddened by life. He touched up the fingers, the eyes. He had carved six fingers to begin with. Nikita Ivanich got mad as a hornet, shouted all kinds of things at him, but Benedikt was used to his shouts and explained calmly that that's what carpentry science requires: a bit extra never hurts. Who knows how things will turn out, what kind of mistake you might make, if you're drunk and you hit the wrong place with the ax. You can always cut off the extra. He'd finished the work now, you could say, he'd rubbed it with dry rusht-polishing, they call it-so it would be smooth and wouldn't have any splinters. Then, of course, he offered the commissioner a choice: which finger did he wish to cut off of freedom's bard? There's a lot to choose from, it made him feel good, take your pick! If you want-this one, or maybe that one; oh, you don't like that one, well, then this one, we could take off this one or that, or that one or this. Well? When everything is done scientifically, the way it's supposed to be-with extra to spare and no stinting-the soul rejoices.
But Nikita Ivanich got all tied up in knots and couldn't choose, he ran around and around and pulled out his hair-and he had a ton of hair. How could he, so to speak, dare to have the Freethinking temerity to blasphemously hack off the poet's hands at his own caprice? A tail was one thing, but this is a hand!!! He buried his face in his palms, shook his head, peeked out with one eye, then squeezed it shut, fretted and fretted, and couldn't decide. He left all six fingers. And the pushkin didn't have any legs, they decided not to bother with legs. They didn't have time. Only the trunk, just down to the sash around his shirt. After that it was like a stump, all smooth.
It took six of them to drag it-they hired serfs and paid them with mice. One of the Oldeners, Lev Lvovich of the Dissidents, a friend of Nikita Ivanich, decided to help. He approved of the idol.
"He looks like a pure retard. A six-phalanged seraphim. A slap in the face of public taste," he said. But he wasn't much help pulling, he was so skinny, he was more of a director, so to speak, the way bosses always are. "Come on, come on. Stop! Move it! There you go. Not like that! To the left!" They wanted to put the pushkin where Nikita Ivanich showed them-for some reason he liked that spot. They started digging a hole under him. But the owner there turned out to be ornery: he ran out waving his arms, spitting and frothing at the mouth-they trampled his dill, you see. That dill is useless stuff, no taste, no smell, it's more for looks' sake; but of course if you're starving you'll eat dill too.
Nikita Ivanich had to go and put his symbol right in the middle of a Golubchik's garden, of course, and he argued with him and tried to shame him and bribe him with getting fire without standing in line, and then appealed to the serfs to raise a ruckus so that the people's voice could be heard. But the serfs didn't give a hoot: they stood there frowning, crossing their legs, smoking, waiting for their pay, for the boss to shout himself out, for his heart to burst so he'd quiet down, that's what always happens. In the end, the chunk of beriawood had to be lugged across the street. There was a place between the fences that didn't belong to anyone.
So there he stands, the poor dear, listening to the noise of the street, like Nikita Ivanich wanted-you turn the corner and see him on a hill, in the wind, all black. This wood, beriawood, always blackens from the rain. The pushkin stands there like a bush at night, a rebellious and angry spirit; his head bent, two meat patties on the sides of his face-old-fashioned sideburns -his nose down, his fingers tearing at his caftan. A shitbird had settled on his head, of course, but that's just what they do, shamelessly: whatever they see they shit on, that's why they got that disgraceful nickname, for their disgracefulness.