The Twelve Chairs

THE LION OF STARGOROD

BEZENCHUK AND THE NYMPHS

There were so many hairdressing establishments and funeral homes in the regional centre of N. that the inhabitants seemed to be born merely in order to have a shave, get their hair cut, freshen up their heads with toilet water and then die.

In actual fact, people came into the world, shaved, and died rather rarely in the regional centre of N.

Life in N. was extremely quiet.

The spring evenings were delightful, the mud glistened like anthracite in the light of the moon, and all the young men of the town were so much in love with the secretary of the communal-service workers' local committee that she found difficulty in collecting their subscriptions.

Matters of life and death did not worry Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, although by the nature of his work he dealt with them from nine till five every day, with a half-hour break for lunch.

Each morning, having drunk his ration of hot milk brought to him by Claudia Ivanovna in a streaky frosted-glass tumbler, he left the dingy little house and went outside into the vast street bathed in weird spring sunlight; it was called Comrade Gubernsky Street.

It was the nicest kind of street you can find in regional centres.

On the left you could see the coffins of the Nymph Funeral Home glittering with silver through undulating green-glass panes.

On the right, the dusty, plain oak coffins of Bezenchuk, the undertaker, reclined sadly behind small windows from which the putty was peeling off.

Further up,

"Master Barber Pierre and Constantine" promised customers a "manicure" and "home curlings".

Still further on was a hotel with a hairdresser's, and beyond it a large open space in which a straw-coloured calf stood tenderly licking the rusty sign propped up against a solitary gateway.

The sign read: Do-Us-the-Honour Funeral Home.

Although there were many funeral homes, their clientele was not wealthy.

The Do-Us-the-Honour had gone broke three years before Ippolit Matveyevich settled in the town of N., while Bezenchuk drank like a fish and had once tried to pawn his best sample coffin.

People rarely died in the town of N. Ippolit Matveyevich knew this better than anyone because he worked in the registry office, where he was in charge of the registration of deaths and marriages.