Issue 176, Spring 2006
Guests
THERE CAN CERTAINLY be no doubt about it. Something’s got into guests these days. You’ve got to keep an eye on them all the time. Even to make sure it’s their own overcoat they’re putting on. And that they don’t squeeze on an extra sheepskin hat.
Well of course, they can have food. But why do they have to go and fill their napkins with the stuff? That really is going too far. If you don’t keep an eye on that sort of thing, after a couple of parties the guests will have walked off with everything you possess, even the beds and the sideboards. That’s the sort of guests we’ve got these days!
On account of this, a little bit of an incident occurred to some people I know during the recent holidays. There were about fifteen guests of every description invited for Christmas. There were ladies present as well as the not so ladylike. Drinkers and drunkards.
It was a magnificent party. On the grub alone they’d spent around seven rubles. As for the booze, the costs were shared. Two-fifty each on the door. Ladies free. Though that, I must say, is stupid. Some ladies will put away so much that any man would have a hard time keeping up with them, even if you gave him a head start. But let’s not dwell on the details and get all upset. That’s up to them. They should know what they’re doing.
Now there were three of them throwing the party. The Zefirovs, man and wife, along with their elderly relative, Yevdokimych, the wife’s dad.
Maybe the only reason he’d been invited was to keep tabs on the guests.
“With three of us,” they said, “it’ll be easy keeping a watch over the guests. We’ll keep track of every guest.”
So they started watching. Yevdokimych was the first to break ranks. The old bastard, may God grant him health and a happy old age, had put away so much within the first five minutes that he couldn’t even say mommy.
He just sat there, rolling his eyes and mooing certain things at the ladies.
The host himself, Zefirov, got really upset at his father’s boozing and started walking around the apartment all aggravated, checking what was where and generally preventing any mischief. But toward twelve, he got worked up into such a state that he too made a complete disgrace of himself. Then he fell asleep in front of everyone, on the windowsill in the dining room. He later discovered his features had swollen up. He wound up walking around with a dental abscess for three weeks.
After stuffing their faces freely, the guests began to play and have fun. Blind man’s buff, tag, shchotochka. While they were playing shchotochka, the door opened and Madame Zefirova came in, pale as death.
“This!” she said. “It’s an absolute disgrace! Someone has just unscrewed the twenty-five-watt electric lightbulb in the toilet. There you go,” she said, “you can’t even let the guests into the toilet.”
There was noise and agitation. Old man Yevdokimych sobered up in an instant, of course, and became anxious and started grabbing at the guests.