had retarded
knee reflexes, lost appetite...
...and exhibited symptoms
of general depression. Yes.
The difficult years of fighting
for the liberty of this
country are gone.
The ones that follow them
are also difficult.
Zina, my dear, what's that noise?
- They're having another general meeting.
- What, again?
Oh well, so it's started.
This is the end of this house.
Mow they'll get things rolling.
First of all, there'll be community
singing every evening, then the pipes
will freeze in the lavatories...
...then the steam-heating pipes
will blow up, and so on.
You paint too grim a picture,
Philip Philipovich.
They're very different now.
And I won't mention the boiler,
my dear...
Let them! When there's a social revolution
going on, one does without central heating.
But I ask you, why all this,
when did it all start...
...Why is everybody marching up
and down the marble staircase
in dirty galoshes and felt boots?
Just listen to that!
Why must we still keep galoshes
under lock and key...
...and put a soldier on guard over them
to prevent them from being stolen?
He could well be making money speaking
at meetings. A First rate speaker.
Why was the carpet removed
from the main staircase?
Is it that Karl Marx forbids people
to cover staircases with carpets?
Did Karl Marx write somewhere, that
the front door Number Two of the house
on Prechistenka Street...
...should be boarded up, so
that people have to go around
and come in by the back door?
What good does it do to anybody?
Why can't the proletariat leave...
...his dirty galoshes downstairs
instead of dirtying the marble?
- But the proletarians don't have any
galoshes at all, Philip Philipovich.
- Nothing of the sort.
They do have galoshes now
and those galoshes are mine!
The very same galoshes
that disappeared in 1918.
O the question is who pinched
them? Me? Impossible.
Sablin the bourgeois? Polozov,
the sugar manufacturer? On no account.
It was done by those
songbirds up there.
Bu if only they would take them off
when they go upstairs.
Why on earth did they have to remove
flowers from the landings?
Why does the electricity, which if
I remember right only failed twice
in the past twenty years...
...now go out regularly twice a day?
- It's Disruption, Philip Philipovich. - And
what does this "disruption" of yours mean?
An old woman with a broomstick?
A witch who smashed all the windows
and put out all the lights?
No such thing. What do you
mean by that word?
I'll tell you what it is:
If instead of operating every evening
I were to start singing in chorus...
...in my apartment,
I would get Disruption.
If when I go to the lavatory I don't pee,
if you'll excuse the expression,
into the bowl but on the floor instead...
...and if Zina and Darya Petrovna
do the same, there would be
Disruption in he lavatory.
Disruption, therefore, does not happen
in lavatories, but in people's heads.
O when those baritones start
howling "Away with Disruption".
Really, I laugh.
It means that every one of them should
hit himself on the back of the head!
And then when he has knocked
all the hallucinations out...
...and gets down to cleaning out the barns -
which is his job in the first place...
...all this Disruption will
disappear of its own accord.
You can't serve two gods,
dear doctor.
You can't sweep the dirt out of the
streetcar tracks and settle the fate...
...of some foreign beggars
at the same time.
You sound like a counterrevolutionary,
Philip Philipovich.
Nothing dangerous. Nothing
counterrevolutionary.
Incidentally, that's another word
I simply can't stand.
What the devil is it supposed
to mean, anyway? Nobody knows.
O, there's nothing counterrevolutionary
in what I am saying.
It's full of sound sense
and a lifetime of experience.
Merci. Do you need me this evening,
Philip Philipovich?
No, thank you. We won't
do anything today.
For one thing, the rabbit is dead,
and for another