A NERVOUS THIEF
47
not have time to steal. Paul could swallow five pounds of porridge at a sitting, which he did once, leaving the whole house without dinner. To-day the old women had hardly had time to taste the porridge when the young men gulped theirs down and went into the kitchen to hunt for something else to eat. The meal continued. The old women began to grumble : ‘ That’s all they do. They guzzle up their food and then begin bawling for more.’ ‘ Yes,’ said one of them, ‘ and this morning Paul sold the chair that used to stand in the corner. I saw hirn carry it down the back stairs to a man who bought it. ‘ You’ll see,’ said another, ‘ he’ll come back drunk to-night.’ . At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a violent buzzing from the loud-speaker. The old women bent over their plates and went on eating without paying any attention to the loud-speaker, but a voice began to talk to them ; A valuable . . . crrch . . . buz . . . buz . . . invention . . . the . . . director of the Murmansk railway . . . Comrade Sokutsky . . . S for Samara . . . O for Orel . . . K for Kazan . . . U for Uganda . . . TS for Tsaritsin ... K for Kiev, and Y for York . . .SO-KUTSKY.’ The loud-speaker buzzed again and then con tinued : ‘ invented signalling by means of light. The invention has been approved by----- The old women waddled out of the room like so many grey birds and the loud-speaker continued to address an empty room. In the meantime Bender, feeling very depressed, had gone down the back stairs to the kitchen, where he saw the five young men digging their fingers into a barrel of sour cabbage and enjoying themselves hugely. They were having a thoroughly good feed and were eating in silence. Paul was the only one who spoke : ‘ It’s wicked eating such good cabbage without a drop of vodka.’
