Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

there."
     
    *
     
    ASS Lit. is plugged in. A second paper has arrived from
the young ladies upstairs. A woman in a kerchief brought it. Asked
me to sign for it in a book.
    Wrote a memo to the Service Department:
"Give me a car."
    A man came two days later and shrugged his shoulders.
    "Do you really need a car?"
    "More than anyone else in this building, I should
say."
    I managed to find the old man. And
the young one too. When the old man saw the car and I told him he had to
sign the papers, he gave me a long look, ruminating.
    "There's something about you. You should apply
for an academician's food ration."
    The bandit's wife and I started drafting an official
claim for payment of salary. ASS Lit. was firmly plugged into the mainstream now.
    N. B. My future biographer: all this was done by me.

 
     
     
THE FIRST SWALLOWS
     
    At 11 a. m. a young poet, obviously frozen to death,
came in and said quietly: " Storn ."
    "What can I do for you?"
    "I'd like a job in ASS Lit."
    I unrolled a sheet of paper headed "Staff". ASS Lit. was allowed eighteen
members of staff. I was vaguely hoping to allocate these posts as follows:
    Poetry instructors: Bryusov , Bely , etc.
    Prose writers:
Gorky
, Veresayev , Shmelyov , Zaitsev , Serafimovich , etc.
    But none of the afore-mentioned showed up.
    So with a bold hand I scribbled on Storn's application: " Pise , appt." instr . pp. head." Letter. Squiggle.
    "Go upstairs while he's still here."
    Then the curly-headed, rosy-cheeked poet Skartsev arrived, full of joie de vivre.
    "Go upstairs while he's still here."
    A gloomy fellow in glasses, about twenty-five, so
thick-set he seemed to be made of bronze, arrived from
Siberia
.
    "Go upstairs..."
    But he replied:
    "I'm not going anywhere."
    He sat down in a corner on a rickety, broken chair,
pulled out a scrap of paper and started writing some short lines. Obviously a very experienced fellow.
    The door opened and in came a man wearing a nice warm
coat and a sealskin hat. It was a poet. Sasha .
    The old man wrote the magic words. Sasha looked round the room carefully, fingered the dangling piece of broken wire
thoughtfully, and for some reason looked into the cupboard. He sighed.
    Sitting down beside me, he asked confidentially:
    "Will they pay cash?"

 
     
     
WE WORK UP STEAM
     
    There was no room at the desks. We were all writing
slogans, with a new fellow, very active and noisy, in gold glasses, who called
himself the king of reporters. The king appeared the morning after we got an
advance, at 8.45 a. m. with the words:
    "Is it true they paid out cash here?"
    And joined the staff on the spot.
    The episode of the slogans was like this.
    A memo arrived from upstairs.
    "ASS Lit. urgently requested to produce a set of slogans by 12 noon."
    Theoretically this is what was supposed to happen: the
old man with my assistance would issue an order or summons to all places where
there were supposed to be writers. We would then receive thousands of slogans
from all over the country, by telegraph, letter and word of mouth. Then a
commission would select the best and present them by 12 noon on a certain date.
After that my secretarial staff ( i . e., the bandit's
sad wife) and I would draw up a claim for payment, receive the monies concerned
and pay the most deserving for the best slogans.
    But that was in theory.
    In practice, however:
    1) It was impossible to issue a summons, because there
was no one to summon. All the writers within the field of vision were: the
above-mentioned, plus the king.
    2) Excluded by one: we could not possibly be flooded
with slogans.
    3) The slogans could not be submitted by 12 noon on
such-and-such a date, because the memo arrived at 1.26 p. m. on the date in
question.
    4) We needn't have written a claim for payment,
because there was no "slogan" allocation. But — the old man did have
a small, precious amount for travel allowances.
    Therefore: a) The slogans shall be written as a matter
of urgency by all those present;
    b)