Dose of valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary and the others so that he could do the same for them.

" Excuse me, my young citizeness, " said Vasily Stepanovich suddenly, addressing the young woman, " but has a black cat been here by any chance? "

" What cat? " she screamed angrily. " It's an ass we've got in this office, a real assl" and then she added, " Let him hear! I'll tell the whole story, " and she did, in fact, go on to relate what had happened.

It turned out that the director of the Moscow branch office, " who had made a complete mess of the leisure activities program" (the young woman's words exactly), had a mania for organizing all kinds of clubs and circles.

" He was trying to butter up his superiors! " yelled the young woman.

In just a year's time the director had managed to organize a Lermontov study group, a chess-and-checkers club, a ping-pong club, and a horseback-riding club. And he threatened to have two additional clubs in place by summen one for fresh-water rowing and the other for mountain climbing.

And then today, during the lunch break, the director walks in and...

" And he's leading some sonof-a-bitch by the hand, " related the young woman, " who comes from nobody knows where, and who's wearing tight checked trousers and a cracked pince-nez... with an unbelievable mug on him! "

And then, according to the young woman, he introduced him to everyone in the cafeteria as a noted specialist in the organization of choral groups.

The faces of the would-be mountain climbers clouded over, but the director encouraged everyone to be enthusiastic, and the specialist cracked jokes and showed off his wit, and gave his solemn word that the singing would take up hardly any time and would, incidentally, be extremely advantageous for everyone.

Well, naturally, as the young woman reported, the first to jump up were Fanov and Kosarchuk, notorious office toadies, who announced that they were going to join the chorus. The rest of the staff then realized that there was no way to escape it; so they said they would join too. It was decided that the singing would take place during the lunch break since the rest of the time was taken up with Lermontov and checkers. The director, in order to set a good example, announced that he was a tenor, and that was the beginning of the nightmare. The choirmaster-specialist in checks intoned, " Do-mi-sol-do! " He dragged the shy ones out of the closets where they were hiding to avoid singing, and told Kosarchuk that he had absolute pitch. Then he started to whine and bare his teeth, asked everyone to humor an old choirmaster, struck a tuning fork, and begged them to strike up a chorus of " Glorious Sea."