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Perhaps Ivan Nikolayevich should have been asked why he thought







The Ou«43

The professor was on the Moscow River and not somewhere else. But there was, alas, no one to ask him. The foul and odious street was completely deserted.

In no time at all Ivan Nikolayevich could be seen on the granite steps of the amphitheater by the Moscow River.

After taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant-looking fellow with a beard who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Next to him was a torn, white Tolstoyan-style shirt and a pair of worn-down, unlaced shoes. Waving his arms in order to cool off, Ivan plunged into the water like a swallow. The water was so cold it took his breath away, and the thought even flashed through his mind that he might not be able to surface. But surface he did, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes bulging with terror, Ivan Nikolayevich began swimming in the black, oil-reeking water between the broken zigzags of light cast by the street-lamps along the bank.

When a wet Ivan came tripping up the steps to the spot where the bearded fellow had been safeguarding his clothes, it soon became clear that not only the latter had been kidnapped, but the former as well, that is, the bearded fellow himself. Where the pile of clothes had been, there was now only a pair of striped long Johns, a torn Tolstoyan-style shirt, a candle, a paper icon, and a box of matches. After shaking his fist at someone in the distance in a gesture of feeble outrage, Ivan proceeded to put on what had been left behind.

It was then that two thoughts began to plague him: first, his MAS-SOLIT ID, which he was never without, was gone, and second, would he be able to walk around Moscow the way he was dressed without being stopped? Long underwear was a bit... True, it was nobody's business, but someone might make a fuss or try to stop him.

Ivan tore the ankle buttons off his long Johns, thinking that might make them look more like summer trousers. He then gathered up the icon, candle, and matches and set off, saying to himself, To Gribo-yedov! No doubt he's there."

The evening life of the city had already begun. Trucks sped by in clouds of dust, their chains rattling, and on their platforms men lay on sacks, their stomachs sticking up in the air. Everyone's windows were open, and shining in each one was a lamp with an orange shade; from all the windows, doors, gateways, rooftops, attics, cellars, and courtyards came the hoarse strains of the polonaise from the opera Eugene Onegin.

Ivan Nikolayevich's fears were completely justified: passersby took one look at him and laughed and turned to stare. As a result he decided to abandon the main thoroughfares and make his way through the side streets and back alleys where people were less nosy, and there was less chance that a barefoot man would be pestered about long Johns that stubbornly refused to look like trousers.






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