1. How Panikovsky Violated the Convention
Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians comprise the greater part of humanity. Moreover — its better part. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built the cities, erected multistory buildings, installed the sewage and water systems, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the entire world, invented printing, thought up gunpowder, threw bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor into use, abolished the slave trade, and established that 114 delicious, nutritious dishes can be prepared from soybeans.
And when everything was ready, when the home planet had taken on a relatively well-ordered appearance, the motorists appeared.
It should be noted that the automobile was also invented by a pedestrian. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about this. The meek and clever pedestrians began to be crushed. The streets, created by pedestrians, passed into the power of the motorists. The roadways became twice as wide, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco excise stamp. And pedestrians began to huddle fearfully against the walls of houses.
In a big city, pedestrians lead a martyred life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross the streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where traffic is strongest and where the hair on which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs is easiest to snap.
In our vast country, the ordinary automobile, intended in the minds of pedestrians for the peaceful transport of people and cargo, has taken on the menacing outlines of a fratricidal projectile. It knocks out of commission whole ranks of trade union members and their families.
If a pedestrian occasionally manages to flit out from under the silver nose of a machine alive, he is fined by the militia for violating the rules of the street catechism.
And in general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such remarkable people as Horace, Boyle Mariotte, Lobachevsky, and Gutenberg; they, who yielded from their midst such inveterate pedestrians as Pushkin, Voltaire, Meyerhold, and Anatole France — are now forced to grimace in the most vulgar manner just to remind others of their existence. Lord, Lord, who in essence does not exist! To what have you, who in actual fact does not exist, brought the pedestrian!
There he goes from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian tract, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: “Let us restructure the life of textile workers” and having slung over his shoulder a stick, on the end of which dangle reserve “Uncle Vanya” sandals and a tin teapot without a lid. This is a Soviet physical culture pedestrian, who set out from Vladivostok as a youth and in the decline of his years, at the very gates of Moscow, will be crushed by a heavy autocar, the number of which no one will even have time to notice.
Or another, a European Mohican of the pedestrian movement. He is going on foot around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would have gone just like that, without a barrel, but then no one would notice that he really is a long-distance pedestrian and they wouldn’t write anything about him in the newspapers. He has to push that cursed container all his life, on which, moreover (shame, shame!) is displayed a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of the motor oil “Chauffeur’s Dreams.”
Thus has the pedestrian degraded.
And only in small Russian towns is the pedestrian still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, wanders nonchalantly along the roadway and crosses it in the most intricate manner in any direction.
A citizen in a cap with a white top, the kind mostly worn by administrators of summer gardens and masters of ceremonies, undoubtedly belonged to the greater and better part of humanity. He moved through the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetric valise. The city, apparently, did nothing to impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.
He saw some fifteen blue, mignonette, and white pink bell towers; the peeling Caucasian gold of church domes caught his eye. A strawberry colored flag crackled over an official building. At the white gate towers of the provincial kremlin, two stern old women were talking in French, complaining about the Soviet regime and remembering favorite daughters. From a church basement came a chill; a sour wine smell struck from there. Potatoes, it seemed, were stored there.
“The Church of the Savior on Potatoes,” the pedestrian said softly.
Having passed under a plywood arch with a fresh lime white slogan: “Greetings to the 5th District Conference of Women and Girls,” he found himself at the beginning of a long avenue called the Boulevard of Young Talents.
“No,” he said with chagrin, “this is not Rio de Janeiro, this is much worse.”
On almost all the benches of the Boulevard of Young Talents sat solitary maidens with open books in their hands. Hole filled shadows fell on the pages of the books, on bare elbows, on touching fringes. When the newcomer entered the cool avenue, a noticeable movement occurred on the benches. The girls, covering themselves with books by Gladkov, Eliza Orzeszkowa, and Seifullina, cast fearful glances at the newcomer. He proceeded past the agitated readers with a ceremonial stride and came out to the building of the executive committee — the goal of his stroll.
At that moment, a cabman drove around the corner. Beside him, holding onto the dusty, charred wing of the carriage and waving a swollen folder with the embossed inscription “Musique,” a man in a long skirted Tolstoy blou-se was walking quickly. He was heatedly proving something to the passenger. The passenger — an elderly man with a nose hanging like a banana — was squeezing a suitcase with his legs and from time to time was showing his interlocutor a fig. In the heat of the argument, his engineer’s cap, the band of which sparkled with green sofa plush, had skewed to one side. Both litigating parties frequently and especially loudly pronounced the word “salary rate.”
Soon other words became audible.
“You shall answer for this, Comrade Talmudovsky!” the long skirted one shouted, moving the engineer’s fig away from his face.
“And I am telling you that on such conditions not a single decent specialist will go to your place!” Talmudovsky replied, trying to return the fig to its former position.
“You are again about the salary rate! The question of self-seeking will have to be raised.”
“I spit on the salary rate! I will work for free!” the engineer shouted, excitedly describing all sorts of curves with the fig. “If I want — I’ll just go on a pension. Drop this serfdom! They write ‘Liberty, equality and fraternity’ everywhere themselves, yet they want to force me to work in this rat hole.”
Here Talmudovsky quickly unclenched the fig and began to count on his fingers:
“The apartment is a pigsty, there is no theater, the salary rate… Cabman! To the station!”
“Whoa!” squealed the long skirted one, fussily running ahead and grabbing the horse by the bridle. “I, as secretary of the section of engineers and technicians… Kondrat Ivanovich! After all, the plant is being left without specialists!.. Fear God!.. The public will not allow this, Engineer Talmudovsky!.. I have the minutes in my briefcase…”
And the section secretary, having spread his legs, began briskly untying the ribbons of his “Musique.”
This imprudence decided the dispute. Seeing the way was clear, Talmudovsky rose to his feet and shouted with all his might:
“To the station!”
“Where? Where?” the secretary babbled, rushing after the carriage. “You are a deserter of the labor front!..”
From the “Musique” folder flew sheets of tissue paper with some purple “heard-resolveds.”
The newcomer, who had observed the incident with interest, stood for a minute in the deserted square and said in a convinced tone:
“No, this is not Rio de Janeiro!”
A minute later he was already knocking on the door of the office of the chairman of the executive committee.
“Who are you looking for?” the secretary asked him, sitting at a desk next to the door. “Why do you need to see the chairman? On what business?”
As was evident, the visitor knew the system of dealing with secretaries of government, economic, and public organizations subtly. He did not state that he had arrived on urgent, official business.
“On personal,” he said drily, not looking back at the secretary and sticking his head into the door crack. “May I come in?”
And not waiting for an answer, he approached the writing desk.
“Hello, do you recognize me?”
The chairman, a black-eyed, large headed man in a blue jacket and similar trousers tucked into boots with high Skorokhod heels, looked at the visitor rather absently and stated that he did not recognize him.
“You really don’t recognize me? And yet many find that I am strikingly like my father.”
“I am also like my father,” the chairman said impatiently, “what do you want, comrade?”
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