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  BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION…

  There is probably hardly a Russian alive who could not at the drop of a hat recite the opening lines from Pushkin’s “Russian and Ludmilla,” which set the mood of that fairy tale. They tell of Lukomoriye, the bight in the sea, where a verdant and mighty oak makes a home for a mermaid dwelling in its branches and a prison for a learned cat chained to its trunk. A cat who goes round and round on its golden links, singing on his clockwise journey, and telling tales when unwinding to the left.

  There, in that enchanted land, are miracles and wonders, and unseen beasts wandering by unknown paths in the shadowy woods.

  There stands the house on hen’s legs, without doors or windows, and grove and dale are full of visions strange.

  There, at dawn, thirty heroes radiant exit from the briny waves, led by their sea monarch. There, the youthful prince takes the stern king prisoner in passing, and in the clouds, the magician is bearing off the mighty warrior.

  There the princess languishes in durance with her faithful wolf; there Baba Yaga rides by in her mortar and Czar Koschei wastes away in contemplation of his golden hoards. There, in sum, are collected all the wonders of Russian folklore.

  The Strugatskis, also, make use of this common cultural background to set the stage for their tale at the outset and to prepare the reader for the wonders of hybrid magi-science. But be not deceived—behind the Daliesque landscapes, just as in his case, there underlie superb craftsmanship and an unyielding adherence to the rules of objective reason.

  —Leonid Renen

  Translator

  ENGLISH TRANSLATION COPYRIGHT © 1977

  BY DAW BOOKS, INC.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Bob Pepper.

  Originally published in Russian by the Young Guard Publishing House, Moscow, 1966. Translation by Leonid Renen.

  FIRST PRINTING, NOVEMBER 1977

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  PRINTED IN U.S.A.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For this ebook of the DAW edition, with the exception of the title page illustration, all illustrations are from the original Russian publication (Понедельник начинается в субботу) issued in 1966 and illustrated by Yevgeniy Migunov. Tale of the Troika was translated from the Russian text by Antonina W. Bouis.

  CONTENTS

  THE FIRST TALE

  Run Around a Sofa

  THE SECOND TALE

  Vanity of Vanities

  THE THIRD TALE

  All Kinds of Fuss

  EPILOGUE and COMMENTARY

  GLOSSARY

  BONUS STORY

  Tale of the Troika

  “But what is the strangest, the most incomprehensible of all, is the fact that authors can undertake such themes—I confess this is altogether beyond me, really… No, no, I don’t understand it at all.”

  N.V. Gogol

  THE FIRST TALE

  Run Around a Sofa

  Chapter 1

  Teacher: Children, write down the proposition:

  “The fish was sitting in a tree.”

  Pupil: But is it true that fish sit in trees?

  Teacher: Well…it was a crazy fish.

  School Joke

  I was approaching my destination. All around, pressing up against the very edge of the road, the green of the forest yielded now and then to a meadow overgrown with yellow sedge. The sun had been setting for an hour and still couldn’t make it, hanging low on the horizon. The car rolled along, crunching on a gravel surface. I steered around the bigger rocks, and each maneuver caused the empty canisters to rattle and clang in the trunk.

  A couple of men came out of the woods on the right and stopped on the shoulder, looking in my direction. One of them raised his hand. I took my foot off the gas, scrutinizing the pair. They seemed to be hunters, young, and maybe a bit older than myself. Deciding I liked their looks, I stopped.

  The one who had raised his hand stuck his swarthy, hawk-nosed face through the window and asked, grinning, “Could you give us a lift to Solovetz?”

  The second man, with a reddish beard and without a moustache, peering over his shoulder, was also smiling. These were positively nice people.

  “Sure thing. Get in,” I said. “One in the front and one in the back, ’cause I have some junk on the rear seat.”

  “A true philanthropist,” pronounced the hawk-nosed one joyfully as he slid the gun off his shoulder and sat down next to me.

  The bearded one was looking through the rear door in a quandary of indecision and said, “Eh, could you maybe move it a little?”

  I leaned over the back of the seat and helped him clean off a space occupied by a sleeping bag and a rolled-up tent. He sat down gingerly, placing his gun between his knees.

  “Shut the door tighter,” I said.

  Everything was going along normally. The car started off. The hawk-nosed one turned around and started an animated discourse about how much nicer it was to be riding in a passenger car than to be traveling on foot. The bearded one mumbled assent and kept slamming the door. “Pick up the poncho,” I counseled, looking at him through the rear-view mirror. “You’re pinching it in the door.” After five minutes everything finally settled down. I asked, “Is it some ten kilometers to Solovetz?”

  “Right” answered Hawk-nose, “or a little more. Though, in truth, the road isn’t very good, made mostly for trucks.”

  “The road is quite decent,” I contradicted. “I was promised I couldn’t get through at all.”

  “On this road you can get through even in the fall.”

  “Here, maybe but from Korobetz on it’s just a plain dirt road.”

  “It’s a dry summer this year; everything is dried out from the drought.”

  “Over by Zatonyie there have been some rains, they say,” noted the bearded one on the rear seat.

  “Who said?” asked Hawk-nose.

  “Merlin said.”

  For some reason they both laughed. I fished out my cigarettes, lighted up, and passed them around.

  “Clara Tsetkin brand,” said Hawk-nose, studying the pack. “Are you from Leningrad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Touring?”

  “Touring,” I said. “And you—are you from around here?”

  “Native,” said Hawk-nose.

  “Me, I am from Murmansk,” offered the bearded one.

  “For Leningrad it must be all the same—North, whether it’s Murmansk or Solovetz,” said Hawk-nose.

  “Well, not really,” I said politely.

  “Are you going to stop over in Solovetz?” asked Hawk-nose.

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s Solovetz I am going to.”

  “You have friends or relatives there?”

  “No,” I said, “just going to wait up for some friends. They are taking the shore route and Solovetz is our rendezvous point”

  I saw a heap of gravel piled up ahead, braked, and said, “Hang on tight” The car bounced and pitched. Hawk-nose banged his nose on the gun barrel. The engine roared, rocks flew up against the undercarriage.

  “Poor old car,” said Hawk-nose.

  “Can’t be helped,” I said.

  “It’s not everyone who would drive on a road like this with his own car.”

  “I would,” I said. The freshly graveled section came to an end.

  “Oh, so it’s not your own car,” guessed Hawk-nose with some tone of disappointment, it seemed to me. I felt piqued.

  “And what sense would there be in buying a car so you could drive on pavement? Where there is pavement there is nothing of interest and where it’s interesting—there’s no pavement.”

  “Yes, of course,” Hawk-no
se commented diplomatically.

  “It’s dumb to make an idol out of a car,” I asserted.

  “So it is,” said the bearded one. “But not everyone thinks so.”

  We started talking cars and came to the conclusion that if you were going to buy anything at all, a GAZ-69 would be best, but unfortunately they were not for sale to the public. Later Hawk-nose asked, “So, where do you work?”

  I answered, “Colossal!”

  Exclaimed Hawk-nose, “A programmer! That’s exactly what we are looking for. Listen. Quit your institute and join up with us!”

  “And what do you have to offer?”

  “What do we have?” asked Hawk-nose, turning around.

  “Aldan-three,” said The Beard.

  “A well-endowed machine,” I said. “Has it been running well?”

  “Well, how shall I say…”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “As a matter of fact, it hasn’t been debugged yet,” said The Beard. “Stay here with us and fix it up.”

  “We’ll arrange your transfer before you can count to two,” added Hawk-nose.

  “What are you working on?” I asked.

  “As with all science—the happiness of man.”

  “Understood,” I said. “Something to do with space?”

  “That too,” said Hawk-nose.

  “Well, you know what they say—let well enough alone,” said I.

  “Big city and good pay,” said The Beard in a low voice, but I heard him.

  “Don’t,” I said, “don’t judge it in terms of money.”

  “No, really, I was just kidding,” said The Beard.

  “It’s his idea of a joke,” said Hawk-nose. “You couldn’t find more interesting work anywhere else than with us.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “I am positive.”

  “But I am not convinced.”

  Hawk-nose chuckled. “We’ll talk about that some more,” he said. “Are you going to stay long in Solovetz?”

  “Two days maximum.”

  “So we’ll talk on day two.”

  The Beard announced: “Personally, I see the hand of fate in this. There we were walking through the woods and we meet a programmer. I sense that we are committed.”

  “You really need a programmer that badly?” I asked.

  “Our need is dire indeed.”

  “I’ll talk to the fellows,” I promised. “I know some who are unhappy.”

  “We don’t need just any programmer,” said Hawk-nose. “Programmers are in short supply, and are spoiled, but we don’t need a prima donna.”

  “That’s more complicated,” I said.

  Hawk-nose started counting his fingers. “We need a programmer who: a—is not spoiled; b—is a volunteer; c—is willing to live in a dorm—”

  “D,” picked up The Beard, “will take one hundred and twenty rubles.”

  “And how about wings?” I asked. “Or, say, a halo around the head? You are searching for one in a thousand!”

  “But all we need is just that one,” said Hawk-nose.

  “But what if there’s only nine hundred?”

  “We’ll settle for nine-tenths.”

  The forest fell away on either side; we crossed a bridge and ran along between potato fields.

  “Nine o’clock,” said Hawk-nose. “Where are you planning to spend the night?”

  “I’ll sleep in the car. How late are the stores open?”

  “The stores are already closed,” said Hawk-nose. “You could stay in the dorm,” said The Beard. “I have an extra bunk bed in my room.”

  “You can’t park near the dorm,” Hawk-nose said dreamily.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said The Beard, chuckling for some private reason.

  “We can park the car over by the police,” said Hawk-nose.

  “That’s a lot of folderol,” said The Beard. “Here I am prattling nonsense, and you trail right along. How’s he going to get in the dorm?”

  “Right, right, damn it,” said Hawk-nose. “Quite so; can’t get through a workday without forgetting one of these sidelights.”

  “How about transvecting him?”

  “That’s a no-no,” said Hawk-nose. “You are not dealing with a sofa, you know. And you are no Cristobal Junta, and neither am I…”

  “Don’t worry yourselves,” I said. “It’s not the first time I slept in the car.”

  Suddenly I felt a terrible yen to sleep between sheets. It had been four nights that I had been sleeping in a bag.

  “I’ve got it,” said Hawk-nose. “Ho-ho—Iznakurnozh!” 1

  “Right!” exclaimed The Beard. “Over to Lukomoriye with him!”

  “Honest to God, I can sleep over in the car,” I said.

  “You are going to sleep in a house,” said Hawk-nose, “on relatively clean sheets. There must be some way we can repay you…”

  “You wouldn’t want us to push a ruble on you, would you?” said The Beard.

  We entered the town. Ancient stout fences, mighty log houses with blackened timbers and narrowish windows, decorated with filigreed fronts and the regulation carved wooden cockerels on the roofs, stretched on both sides of the street. Here and there a dirty brick structure with iron doors evoked the half-known word for grain stone. The street was wide and straight and bore the name of Peace Prospect. Up ahead, toward the center of town, I could make out some two-story town houses with interspersed open squares.

  “Turn right at the next alley,” said Hawk-nose.

  I switched on the turn signal, braked, and turned right. Here the road was overgrown with grass, but a brand-new car manufactured in the Ukraine was snuggled up against one of the gates. House numbers were hung over the posterns, and the numerals were almost invisible against the rusty tinplate. The alley was modishly titled Lukomoriye Street.2 It was rather narrow and squeezed between sturdy palisades that must have been erected in those times when Swedish and Norwegian pirates raided the lands.

  “Halt,” said Hawk-nose. I braked, and he bumped his nose on the gun barrel again. “Now, then,” he said, massaging his nose. “You wait for me here and I will go to arrange everything.”

  “Really, you shouldn’t,” I said, for the last time.

  “No more arguments. Volodia, keep him in your sights.”

  Hawk-nose climbed out of the car, and, bending down, squeezed through the low gate. The house was invisible behind the towering gray stockade. The postern was altogether remarkable, big enough for a locomotive depot, hung on rusty hinges that must have weighed a stone apiece. I read the signs with growing astonishment. There were three. On the left wing, coldly gleaming with thick glass, there was an imposing blue sign with silver letters:

  S R I T S

  Izba on Hen’s Legs

  Monument

  of

  Solovetz Antiquity

  On the right wing hung a rusty sheet-metal tablet reading, Lukomoriye St., No. 13, N.K. Gorynitch,3 while under it, in shameless splendor, a piece of plywood bore in inked letters leaning every which way:

  CAT OUT OF ORDER

  Administration

  “What CAT?” I asked. “Committee for Advanced Technology?”

  The bearded one tittered. “Main thing is—don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s quite amusing here with us, but everything will be quite under control.”

  I got out of the car and proceeded to wipe the windshield. Something suddenly scuffled overhead. I took a look. Settling in and propping himself comfortably on the gate was a gray-and-white tomcat of gigantic proportions such as I had never seen before. Having settled himself to his satisfaction, he bestowed me with a sated and indifferent gaze out of his yellow eyes. “Kiss-kiss-kiss,” I said mechanically. The cat politely but coldly opened his huge and toothy jaws, delivered a dull throaty growl, and turned away to look inside the yard. The voice of Hawk-nose issued thence:

  “Basil, old friend, may I be permitted to disturb you?”

  The bolt squealed. T
he cat got up and noiselessly dived into the yard. The gates swayed heavily, there was an awful cracking and screeching, and the left wing of the gate slowly swung open, followed by Hawk-nose’s straining and reddened face.

  “Philanthropist!” he called. “Drive in!”

  I got back in the car and slowly drove into the yard. The yard was quite extensive. In its depths stood a house constructed of huge logs, and in front of it a squat giant of an oak with a thick, wide, and heavy crown, which screened the roof from view. A path paved with flagstones led from the gate to the house, curving around the oak. To the right there was a vegetable garden, and to the left, in the middle of the lawn, reared a well-house with windlass, blackened by time and covered with moss.

  I parked the car off to the side, turned off the engine, and got out.

  The bearded Volodia also climbed out, leaned the gun against the body of the car, and started to shrug on his rucksack.

  “Here you are, all settled,” he said.

  Hawk-nose was closing the gates with groanings and squealings for accompaniment while I, feeling a bit out of place, was looking about, not quite knowing what to do with myself.

  “Ah, and here’s the landlady!” cried The Beard. “And how be ye, Granny, Naina, light of my eyes, Kievna!”

  The landlady must have been well on the other side of a hundred. She came toward us slowly, leaning on a knobby cane, dragging her feet clad in felt boots with galoshes over them. Her face was a dark sepia web of wrinkles, out of which jutted a nose as sharp and curved as a yatagan. and her eyes peered pale and dim, as though obscured by cataracts.

  “Greetings, greetings, my young one,” she pronounced in an unexpectedly resonant basso. “So this will be the new programmer? Hello, friend, welcome, and make yourself at home!”

  I bowed, feeling well advised to keep quiet. Over the black kerchief tied under her chin, the old hag’s head was covered with a nylon scarf, which was gaily decorated with a picture of the Atomium and bearing the same inscription in several languages: Brussels World Fair. Sparse bristles stuck out under her nose and on her chin. She was dressed in black broadcloth and a quilted vest.