HARITONOV - Вклад участника [ru]

CHAPTER SEVEN (FULL TEXT TRANSLATION)

2020-06-01T13:08:30Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER SEVEN WHEREIN WE, RECURRING TO ELAPSED DEVELOPMENTS AND AS THOUGH RETROSPECTING, WHICH FROM THENCEFORWARD WE SHALL PRACTICE NOT INFREQUENTLY, WITNESS THE COLLOQUY BETWEEN THE TEMERARIOUS PEREGRINATOR AND THE SAINT-LIKE RIGHTEOUS CREATURE

October 5, 312 H. E. well into the evening segueing into nighttime.

Land of Fools, Inter-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY

“… arguably, it is plausible to admit as a firmly established fact that the cult of Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix in the most salient features thereof crystallized long before the revelation of the Dead Man's Chest, and independently of this phenomenon. Fundamentally, it was based upon the idolatry of motherhood in terms of a sublimated transcendental idea ubiquitous predominantly amongst incubated entities, and also the anthropolatry (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and its genome veneration mainstreamed amongst anthropoid authorities. Thus, the quintessential principle of the entire paradigm: “Maternity is saint-like” had been documented by informants as early as half a century before the disinterment of the Chest. The discrimination of entities whose physiognomies vary discernibly from the romanticized anthropoid one likewise epitomizes the integral element of the traditional cultural milieu of the Land of Fools (see my oeuvre “Anthropomorphism as a Quasi-Aristocratic Ideology: Incunabula and Parallelisms”, KHLF, Issue 11, hereon). Indisputably, however, is that it is precisely the Chest with its audio and video content (in contrast with the textual component which exerted virtually no influence upon the Land of Fools, which fact merits a particular examination) that marked the messianic milestone. Idolized yet ethereal abstruseness acquired the palpably perceptible incarnation whilst ill-defined pagan practices expeditiously metamorphosed into the full-fledged religious system boasting its own cultic textual canon and icons, well-elaborated ceremonies and rituals and, last but not least, the caste of consecrated ecclesiastics, the priesthood who enforced orthodoxy”.

N. E. Znayko. More on the Genesis of the Goddaughter-Matrolatry. See in “Cultural Heritage of the Land of Fools: Collection of Multi-Disciplinary Essays”, Issue # 14. Torah Borah University Publishing House. Torah Borah, 108672 daytimes from the Apocalypse.

Bas descried the small wooden cabin at the distance of around five hundred meters, synchronously in three wavelengths. In the grayness of the realm of high-frequency bandwidths it phosphoresced in incarnadine: some electrical appliances were being operated therein. In ebony-verdant infrared it silhouetted the glaringly lettuce-green rectangle: it was emitting surgeless warmth. In the x-ray spectrum it was particularly inconspicuous although the underground cable tail wired thereto was discernible. Presumably, a communications node or a transformer vault was situated therein formerly.

The hitherto lurking moon abruptly protruded and gushed forth with its larcenous moonlight from behind the transient cloud bisecting the sky with the narrow wedge with opaque pinnacles above, as though wolves mounted it, squatted down thereon and rode along, as it were, routinely, to shit. The cat synchronized bandwidths superposing the wireless one upon radiation, and wolves segued into evanescent oblong clusters, the moon instead being haloed with a fluctuant aura. Similarly, the wooden cabin luxuriated in the tremulous, verdantly grayish halo. Echoes of sacramental eulogies, anthems and scarcely audible strumming of balalaika wafted from thence.

Basilio mused. The small structure seemed ostensibly non-hazardous. Anyway, it oozed no observable threat whatsoever. On the other part, the fact that the dweller thereof was not concealing himself itself portended that no easy prey should be reckoned upon equally. And then again, it was absolutely enigmatically who dared to overtly colonize the neutral territory, and why dwarfish ponies as well as woollies tolerate this.

The cat loathed abstruseness: multifarious troubles typically oozed forth from thence, occasionally not instantaneously yet subtly, stealthily. That is why he resolved to invest some time into reconnoitring merely so as not to leave goodness knows what in the rear, behind his back.

As he neared, Basilio discerned what precisely is sung. The bass, hoarse voice karaoked, or rather was karaoking the sacramental chanson from the Cycle of Hymnography by Elena Vaenga.

The small edifice was situated upon the hillock under which the wreckage of the windmill was strewn around. A scarcely visible footpath conducting upwards was discernible in the millimeter-wave range. However, the prudent cat preferred to climb up the hillside slope. He sneaked up almost stealthily, solely at the edge of the summit his claws glissaded off grindingly, and clods of earth collapsed downwards. The cat paralyzed and alerted pre-empting some plausible backlash. However, psalm-singing was not discontinued, not even for a moment.

“I am re-glued to the window. I re-kindle the cigarette, mother, anew”, drawled out the rich, throaty bass voice accentuating sacramental syllables “mother” with the particularly orotund basso so that the cat almost visualized an anonymous stranger thurifying frankincense to Goddaughter. “And tranquility is circumjacent, utilized as a substrate ...” the balalaika strummed for a final time and trailed off.

Although Basilio disbelieved in Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix, he instinctively marveled at hugeness of giftedness of ancient bards. To visualize the piece of workmanship whose genetic substrate had been Tranquility: that re-echoed grandiloquently, exaltedly and abstrusely. However, such epithets behooved the icon of the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix.

Anyway, currently the time was not ripe for meditating on loftiest subjects. Having dismissed unrelated ideas, the cat groped for a secure toehold, leapfrogged, somersaulted upwards and found himself by the edge of the rusticated house wall. The acrid odor of the putrescent fish and freshly defecated excrements wafted around: obviously, the house-dweller utilized this side as a junkyard. The aroma of excrements was pungent and unfamiliar: the aggressive ursine component was identifiably scented interspersed with something else, either leporine or vulpine. Anyhow, one thing was certain: a male animal defecated thereat which had been evidenced by the rancid smell of putrescent adrenaline and testosterone acidulousness.

The cat peered through the wall in the X-ray range. The nanometer wave lengths were perceptibly lacking. Nevertheless, some creature with an extremely massive skeleton, around twice the size of Bas himself, was discernible. He executed slow-moving oscillations in the genuflected position in front of the sophisticated piece of metalized artwork.

Basilio ascended gingerly, and stealthily circumvented the angle by the narrow footpath, simultaneously re-synchronizing his perception nearer unto the visible spectrum. The pair of goggles hindered thereat, and he shifted them off to the forehead. Moonlight inundated empty eye orbits, drilled into lenses and impinged incident upon photo-multipliers’ planar surfaces ejecting electronic particles from out of them.

The plank-built gate with the wrought-iron door-knocker attached hereon silhouetted. The psalm sung by Grigoriy Leps echoed from behind it, the soundtrack lesser venerated than the sacramental canon by Elena Vaenga yet likewise the collegially-blessed one.

Having deferentially hearkened unto the anthem through the end thereof, to interrupt the holiest karaoke was considered a grave screw-up, as chance offers, even collegially punishable, the cat energetically pulled at the doorknocker. The gate did not yield. He pulled it more vigorously. Thereupon he deduced that the door might likewise be pushable. He pushed it then, and paralyzed in awe at the threshold.

He was ushered into the pedobears' preaching house. The multi-level iconostasis occupied the entire mural space of the opposite wall. Printed hardcopies of ancient imagery of the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix reposed in tabernacles illuminated by icon lamps. Icons were etched out painstakingly, meticulously and scrupulously, as it were, pixelized. That was a certain lesser-known collection, not the mainstream one amongst the authorities of the Land of Fools “The Petite Mary’s Privy Parts” or “Cherubic Buttocks of the Petite Veronika the Morsel”, but rather computer files retrieved from some remotest labyrinths of the Chest. The ebony-haired anthropoid female infant, precisely these terms recurred to the contemplator, was meditating intently recumbent on the sofa sprawling out her disproportionately slender legs. The dwarfish perforated defloration of her Divine Womb was virginally plugged with a certain prayerful object, either with the cordless massager or with some other sacramental item from amongst those usable by the ancients on such occasions. Uncharacteristically exquisite lineaments of her countenance mirrored such a voluptuous, super-terrestrial ecstatic ravishment that even Basilio, who dubbed the Collegiate Cult a heresy, instinctively thrilled.

“May Foremother bless you and may Goddaughter salute you, the holiest Deputy of the State Duma Vikentiy Vilenovich Parkhachik, who perpetuated these saint icons for us”, the cat deferentially enunciated the unabridged ritual formulae and salaamed.

“Let her verily bless and salute”, re-echoed the pedved’s bass voice. He groveled prostrating in front of the iconostasis in a mass of red bearskin. The vintage balalaika, the antediluvian one, lathed from yellowish ivory, lay beside him.

“Do you yearn to worship Goddaughter-Foremother, pilgrim?” enquired the master of the household. “If so, genuflect in front of the Womb of Goddaughter, and we shall eulogize her in a sacramental karaoke”.

“I profess an alternative religion”, responded the cat urbanely. “However, I have never blasphemed against Goddaughter-Foremother: neither verbally, nor mentally, nor through my acts. And you can take my word for it collegially. Merely, I am a passer-by. I came around to warm myself. If I hindered your ascesis, please, excuse me, I shall go away”.

“Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix dotes on all of her fathers and children”, replied the pedobear rearing his head, “even prodigal and erring ones. I am Father Onuphrius Neurotic. This is my last name. And the aforesaid is spelled solid and unhyphenated”, he added obviously anticipating to hear a vulgar joke from the cat.

“May your ilk be glorified, exalted and superlatively fecund”, similarly ceremoniously and grandiloquently said Basilio. The pedobear was discernibly delighted to hearken unto that.

“Please, relax in the next room, pilgrim. You are travel-weary”, he said blandly. “I must finalize the liturgy. I have not yet recited vespers”.

He genuflected once again, grasped the prayer beads with his claws and, fixing his eyes on sacred images began to whisper the holy praying: “your spread beaver makes me quiver”.

In the meanwhile the cat furtively pussyfooted in the next room whereto the lowly aisle, curtained off with the hopsack cloth, was ushering through the wall.

It was opaquely and smoky thereat. The smoldered wicker lamp protruded from off the rush-light holder, below, underneath it, dispersed airy white cinders floated in the water tub. The cat detected another lamp nearby, inserted it in the rush-light holder, and kindled it with his sinistrocular laser device. The flickering flame sparks somehow elbowed the opaqueness away. The latter, however, withdrew a short way off, if only to make corrugated and obfuscated walls visible. The massive coffer with the nigrescent with age lid locked away with the large-size rust-eaten padlock occupied the left-hand side off the door almost completely. The icon from the series “Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix with Petite Nipples” suspended above the coffer. The feline quizzically ogled at the small icon: as far as he was informed, the majority of pedobears referred to such iconography as too old. Evidently, the house-owner epitomized the exotic ecumenical orthodox ramification of the Collegial Cult which venerated all the computer files retrieved from the Dead Man’s Chest as equally vivifying and solely varyingly elucidating the capacities of the Eternal Figure’s Godhead.

On the right-hand side adjacent to the wall there stood the couch with a bundle of rags heaped thereon which reeked of an unwashed body. The malodor was neutralized by the aroma of pickled custard squashes: the pressurized barrel blackened in the corner. The tinned plateful with orts of the feed concentrate lay on the slovenly hammered together tabletop. The saucer of sturgeon roe buttered with oleomargarine, and the damasked hemisphere with the exquisitely arched twig-little nozzle from one side thereof, towered thereon. Having scrutinized that, the cat realized that this had been a vintage battery-operated electric tea kettle, the rarest and precious thing. However, it was discharged: the cat acutely intuited such issues.

Basilio calculated his possessions. Tesla-batteries integrated into his body were replenished at about twenty per cents: the accelerated march on an empty stomach consumed quite some energy. He was likewise coerced to regularly utilize his laser devices whilst all of his endeavors at tapping into the Yoke in any full-fledged way were frustrated: the longest durable contact therewith lasted for as long as approximately five seconds. Nevertheless, the cat felt an urge to somehow reciprocate the hospitable pedobear, well, to recharge his tea kettle at minimum. This is why he unplugged the auxiliary feed-through cord from under his tail, and re-plugged terminals to the battery, whereupon he squatted down on the couch and mused.

Footsteps thudded, the hopsack cloth shuffled being drawn aside. Father Onuphrius ambled into the room, and squatted down on the coffer, having occupied all but half of the room with his carcass.

“You are vainly exhausting yourself, pilgrim”, he said discerning the cord which liaised the tea-kettle to the cat. “I have got electricity. I have got no tea”.

“I am powerless about that” the cat strugglingly retracted the cord, the latter solely swished through the air. “I don't have any tea too. I don't have any victuals whatsoever... and I don't need any”, he added promptly seeing that the pedobear upped and obviously wended to creep somewhere.

“Food is indispensable even for your ilk”, the pedobear demurred sternly. “Anyway, please, taste the custard squash. I pickled it myself. Garlic and cloves are also my own-grown”, he added proudly. “It tastes super cool, appetizing”.

The cat made some lame excuses briefly. Before too long he shared the table with the host, and was disposing of the third custard squash in succession snacking it with the sturgeon roe. In the meanwhile the pedobear finished recharging his tea kettle, the high-performance nickel-cadmium accumulator battery powered from the Tesla-receiver emerged from under his couch, and sipped boiling water through cubes of sugar in full blast comically puffing with his massive muzzle on the miniature porcelain saucer he was clasping in his claws.

They got to talking over the lunch. It transpired that Father Onuphrius had been an erstwhile ex-novitiate by the temple named after the Saint Icon of Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix Donning Knee Socks. Subsequently, he withdrew into individual apostleship, ruralized nearby some local lake and immersed into prayerful meditation upon the holiest icons from amongst the collection of “the fully-nude Olga”. However, after the demise of the Grand Yoprst Apostasius Prostatic (who, as it follows from his last name, succumbed to prostatitis obliterans), internecine bickering erupted amongst the orphaned elite whereupon dwarfish ponies infiltrated into the forest and rather promptly sirenized and enthralled all of the dwellers thereof in their routine fashion. Father Onuphrius had been resisting the temptation to the uttermost, however, regretfully, the majority of pedobears, even the most adamant ones from amongst them, succumbed and failed to rise to the challenge of apostleship. When Onuphrius beheld his fellow friar in novitiate osculating the hoof of the incarnadine dwarfish pony, he, incensed, anathematized, cussed out their entire equine ilk and desired to withdraw. Dwarfish ponies adopted a laissez-faire attitude hereto, and even aided him to settle down and acquire household on the neutral territory: the pugnacious pedobear had been the connoisseur of the Cycle of Hymnography sung by Elena Vaenga whereon dwarfish ponies particularly doted.

Eventually, the pedobear remained satisfied: dwelling on the neutral ground proved to be halcyon, tranquil and serene. Despite rareness and volatility of Tesla-enmeshment, energy sufficed him, for he consumed it extremely frugally, predominantly for preheating the tea kettle. By the hermitage he planted a vegetable garden wherefrom he subsisted precisely, compensating the protein shortage through hunting for ferine lowlifes. Feral sturgeons-centipedes, who spawned every nook with their roe, latterly veritably plagued the hillock. The pedobear collected five large jugs of this stuff, pickled it, and currently lunched it with oleomargarine.

“But why haven’t you withdrawn to nakhnakhs?” queried the cat.

“Goddaughter, fulminate your Foremother!” the pedobear reverentially touched his ear lobes with his forepaws, contriving not to smash the miniature saucer therewith. “I shall preferably devour the gozman's liver. These defective cunts ought to be cremated in a bio-sterilizer. They had never been particularly good-mannered, but they had become lost to any fear whatsoever latterly.

This kindled the cat’s interest, and he requested the pedobear to expatiate thereupon. It transpired that over the past two months, the woollies who had not been emerging for years haunted the small cabin thrice. The previous visit they pilfered the gramophone and two phonograph records with holiest anthems. During their last visit, however, they even broached the subject of the smaller share, although to levy a tribute on worshippers of the Ecumenical One had since Adam been referred to as a collegially excommunicable taboo. The pedobear hearkened unto their arrogant claims, regaled them with little custard squashes, and, for the purpose of purification of the soul from malevolent motivations, put forward the suggestion to chant the sacramental ode dedicated to ebony eyes in front of the Womb of the Goddaughter. They belted out “The Ebony Eyes” haphazardly, then withdrew embittered, and said that, allegedly, “our Tarzan shall espouse the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix herself before too long, wah-wah” instead of the farewell.

“They seem to have utterly gone berserk”, Basilio muttered under his breath. “Basically, such things are collegially excommunicable”.

“It seems to me that this is being done for an ulterior motive”, the pedobear shook his massive head. “Some abstruse hidden agenda lurks behind this corrupted hectic atmosphere. It looks as if they harnessed some energy, or probably, a trump card recently. I suspect that they managed to tap into the Monolith... However, all of this is too old: we have become engrossed in the conversation, pilgrim, whilst you are fatigued. If you prefer, you can stay overnight at mine. I shall spend the night prayerfully eulogizing”.

“Thank you, courteous master”, the cat darted a sidelong scowl at the couch, and upped. “But still, I must be off now. I appreciate Goddaughter's hospitability. Please, excuse my religion’s taboo on extolling Goddaughter-Foremother”.

“Well then, I wish you a safe journey”, the pedobear scrutinized Basilio keenly herewith. “You wend to the Zone, don't you?”

Basilio opted not to prevaricate.

“I do”, he confessed, “But not for the loot” he instantaneously emphasized. “I have got some other errands to do there”.

“I lack adequate motives for any further interrogations, pilgrim”, Father Onuphrius sighed insomuch profoundly that he nearly sucked in the entire air circulating in the small room. “And I shall not catechize you on affairs which do not affect me. This violates the code of the underworld. However, I have been dwelling in the closest proximity to the Zone throughout my lifetime, and I am well-informed about something. Please, accept my advice, certainly, not to prejudice or offend you”.

“I hearken unto thee”, the cat slightly pricked up his ear demonstrating that he is truly hearkening.

“Firstly”, the pedobear scarcely half-rose and scratched his rump against the coffer. The fur stridulated, something jingled inside the coffer. “The Monolith is referred to as the Monolith precisely because it is windowless, all the more so, gateless, as well as eyeless and earless. This is the merest electricity-laden stone. And there is no point in verifying that personally and persuading oneself of that first-hand”.

“I do not intend to near the Monolith”, said the cat unhesitatingly having privately decided to elucidate the details from the Hirudotherapist.

“And secondly”, the pedobear protracted and elevated his claw. “There exists the location wherein the Monolith rests. And there exists yet another location. So, a great many people had been yearning to infiltrate therein within my remembrance. Some of them did. Few people even exited... Now then, reportedly, solely those can exit forth from thence for whom it is veritably indispensable, precisely, veritably, under the situation when no alternative whatsoever exists”.

The cat comprehended it for this once.

“Do you mean the Field of Miracles?” he re-confirmed, and the pedobear nodded. “I am not going to wend thitherward”.

The pedved pensively scratched his muzzle with his obtuse yellowish claw.

“Verily, fewest people know wherefore they itinerate, all the less so, whither”, he uttered.

[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2020-05-30T11:54:55Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity, volatility and non-contiguousness of Tesla-enmeshment. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted: tamper-proof. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Visitation is deprecated.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” enquired the cat just in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophilic cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Has she pulled a lever?” queried the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to demothball the base? She ought to tamper with it, infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion?"

"By Lake Garda. No mouse whatsoever shall jog therefrom".

"Incidentally, what did we need there?”, the cat suddenly grew curious.

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxious for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile amphibious portmanteau.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles fine-tuning long-range optics.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the petite sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

It dawned upon Harlequin that the ravenously famished ogre might want to join the repast, hence he began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he re-vivified, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny. "On this wise held they the funeral for horse-taming Hector", he blurted out some obtuseness.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift. Like that of the Frustrator-Flamingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on himself, a sort of self-sacrifice. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their turf, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Sublime Grandee Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, as it were, a masculine. She will ogle you with her eyelets and the game is over”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the Monarch of Beasts shall obligatorily evince an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Memorize, these are dwarfish ponies. Filly foals and maiden mares dote upon slash art”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was unditching some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a splendid time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things during the night-time when these boyfriends will, hm… slumber”.

“Together”, the cat couldn't refrain from divulging. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drubbed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May God...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May God-Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but who will appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the petite sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony dorsum of Karabas who was marching towards the turret in a surer step. Lineaments and adumbrations of his silhouette irradiated some sort of augustness, portentousness and fatefulness. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the dorsum, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2020-05-28T10:21:47Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity, volatility and non-contiguousness of Tesla-enmeshment. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Visitation is deprecated.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophilic cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to tamper with it, infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion?"

"By Lake Garda. No mouse whatsoever shall jog therefrom".

"Incidentally, what did we need there?”, the cat suddenly grew curious.

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile amphibious suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles fine-tuning long-range optics.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the petite sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

It dawned upon Harlequin that the ravenously famished ogre might want to join the repast, hence he began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he re-vivified, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny. "On this wise held they the funeral for horse-taming Hector", he blurted out some obtuseness.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on himself, a kind of self-sacrifice. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their turf, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, as it were, a masculine. She will ogle you with her eyelets and the game is over”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the Monarch of Beasts shall obligatorily evince an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Memorize, these are dwarfish ponies. Filly foals and maiden mares dote upon slash art”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was unditching some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a splendid time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things during the night-time when this couple will, hm… slumber”.

“Together”, the cat couldn't refrain from divulging. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drubbed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May God...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May God-Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the petite sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony dorsum of Karabas who was marching towards the turret in a surer step. Lineaments and adumbrations of his silhouette irradiated some sort of augustness, portentousness and fatefulness. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the dorsum, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Five (full text English translation)

2020-05-27T11:52:50Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER FIVE WHEREIN EVERYBODY IS DORMANT EXCEPT FOR THE TWO LONG-STANDING INTIMATE FRIENDS WHO ARE ABSORBED IN THE MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE

September 30, 312 H. E. around 3.00 a. m.

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY

“The information communicable to the agent must be construed in terms of the element of his logistics. As is the case with the logistical support, the guideline set forth hereunder must be stringently enforced: the agent must be equipped with everything indispensable and relieved of everything superfluous. Each isolated irrelevant fact consumes additional storage space in the agent’s cache memory and thereby hinders the rationalized planning of his operations, just like each superfluous item in the knapsack encumbers the portability thereof… The agent must not be briefed on the information which he shall ineluctably glean over the course of pursuance of his mission. Likewise his memory must not be overloaded with hints and recommendations albeit reasonably relevant yet shackling his creativity and diverting from the key target”.

N. Biebenhaf. Introduction to Special Forces’ Operational Planning: A Course of Lectures, translated from the German under the editorship of Colonel Barsukov. “Khemool” LLC, Debet City, “St. Bernard, Sennenhund and Retriever” Publishers, 294.

The uppermost dwarfish loft room of the turret was miniature and somewhat toy-like: seamlessly streamlined walling, the little bench smoothly circumflexing the perimeter thereof, the flat level floor painted over with multi-hued streaks and polyhedrons. The moonlight was oozing through the mural transparent segment. It was sort of enswathing things which luxuriated therein and silhouetted solely slender, brittle and elusive shadiness.

Karabas scarcely fitted one hemisphere of his rump on the narrow strip of the bench, and enviously leered at the cosily ensconced feline. Through the lurid moonlight the muzzle of Basilio seemed ostensibly even maturer than in daytime.

“I dislike this location”, said the cat.

“It is tranquilly in here”, remarked Karabas.

“Tranquilly yet eerily”, the cat yawned, his bristly whiskers jutted out highlighting the opaque back of the throat and jaws. “Have you noticed that the premises are dustless? And the air is not stagnant. It is crispy and ventilated therewith. Don’t you think it is odd?”

“Much remains to be learned”, commented Karabas philosophically. “Incidentally, how did you detect it is dustless? You are normally on alternative bandwidths, aren’t you?

“Dust emits radioactivity in the ultra-violet spectrum”, elucidated the cat. “But it is purely in here. And these walls… Do you know what is there inside them?”

“A steel framework, supposedly”, conjectured Karabas.

“Nothing” sighed the cat. “Nothing whatsoever. Not even a crevise, as if molded from a monolith. And the echo does not reverberate. No re-echo whatsoever, as if dampened by a pillow”.

“Humans possessed technologies erstwhile” consented Karabas. “Okay, let us get down to business: the mission and briefing. Listen here attentively. And thereafter do not pretend that you misheard me”.

“I hear and obey”, said the cat earnestly, and pricked up his ears.

“So”, Karabas comprehended that he could not balance and maintain the sedentary position on such a narrow bench, hence he upped and began to circumambulate the dwarfish cubicle: three steps hither, three steps thither. “Your mission is tripartite: firstly, to infiltrate into the Zone, secondly, to locate the Hirudotherapist, thirdly, to clarify the situation and to convey something from me. Subsequently: to respond to his questions and to withdraw, preferably intact, and, as the situation permits, unscathed”.

“Just even thusly? I see”, stammered the cat. “And what was the original agreement?”

“He vowed to rendezvous us on the disembarkation station, and to furnish the guide. He pledged nothing else”, responded Karabas.

“Hold on. I missed the point” the cat swung around resiliently, and squatted down. “The airship manned by such crewmembers as our Pierrito on board was scheduled to land in the Zone? And who excogitated such an ingenious plan?”

“I did” said Karabas. “That was our onliest chance to infiltrate the Directorate stealthily. Currently, you can safely abandon this idea. They ambush us thereat. Because the first thing Malvina did was that she leaked all the information available to her to the Directorate if she is not an imbecile. And she is not an imbecile. So, now we shall decamp thereto ceremoniously, solemnly, under the orchestral accompaniment”.

“And why do you think she did not leak the info to dwarfish ponies?” enquired the cat, “or to woollies so that they clamp down on us here in their inimitable style?”

“I pondered hereon. No, she scarcely did. See for yourself. Accompanied by Artemonito she is currently dominating the military facility… I am clueless how they climbed therein, but let us admit your version. Let us assume that she ensconced therein. She is strongly entrenched, if we take into consideration that inferior wildlife of the neighborhoods is controllable by her. Her immediate goal is to become the collegially recognized reputable authority, as you formulated that. Did you say that?”

“Well, yes, I did” acknowledged Basilio. “And I still think so. However, to slay us is the matter of survival for her, and her holy crusade. She is unable to perpetrate that herself. However, to report to the locals that we are clandestine intelligence agents recruited by Torah Borah and infiltrated herein on hell knows what reconnaissance mission – properly speaking, why not?”

Karabas averted his gaze from the fenestration, and crossed his arms behind him.

“Hold on, hold on”, he said. “So, she yearns to obtain authoritativeness and rightfulness of the ownership of the military facility. However, everybody is disinterested in her acknowledgement. It is ubiquitously disadvantageous. Nakhnakhs themselves claimed the base, merely they frustrated… Dwarfish ponies are scarcely interested therein yet the power balance…”

“That’s all too old, in the parlance of pedveds”, the cat interrupted him discourteously. “So, why should she preserve reticence?”

“Well, calculate it yourself” frowned Karabas. “If she re-tells everything like it is, then, according to the code, it shall transpire that she eloped from the boss, that is, from me. Consequently, she is not a candidate whatsoever, but rather a runaway lowlife and no one shall recognize her authoritativeness, either never at all or over an extremely long period of time until she browbeats everybody. But she yearns for it now”.

“This is an extremely precarious speculation”, the cat scratched his chin with his claws musingly. “And what if we shall leak the info about her?”

“We shall leak obligatorily”, responded Karabas. “But this will be our allegation oppugnant against her allegations. In the estimation of the dwellers of the Land of Fools, we are all an electorate, and the problems of the electorate do not fuck the bosses, something like that, anyway. That is, she shall certainly be accused…”

“And again you are proceeding to discuss the codes”, the cat began to get vexed. “This is an exercise in futility. If you are not a boss yourself, then, in accordance with the codes, you are invariably wrong”.

“I am not discussing the codes, I am discussing Malvina”, Karabas reverted to the window, and his broad back eclipsed the moonlight.

“Whose mentality, as you said, is inscrutable for you”, the cat did not refrain from saying that.

“No more of that!” roared Karabas. “You didn’t finish listening to the briefing”, he resumed slightly more tranquilly. “What do you know about the Zone?”

“What everybody knows”, the cat meticulously maintained the neutral tone.

“No. Please, cerebrate”, commanded the Rabbi. “Precisely cerebrate hereon, and I shall mind-read what you are cerebrating about”.

Tranquility suspended in midair, and instantaneously it clarified that she never withdrew from thence, that she is the truest dominatrix herein, and all of the echoes whatsoever are merely fortuitous visitors who chanced to come around so as to briefly amuse her.

“Well, generally, all correct”, Karabas disturbed the silence. “Although on several particular issues I discerned some qualms in you. Let us rectify ambiguities…” He re-circumambulated the room neglecting that tranquility was killing the echo of thudding footsteps. “Thus, the Zone… anticipating intensely opaque…” he chanted a fragment from the sacramental anthem atrociously off-key. “…from the bird’s-eye perspective, it epitomizes a sort of an oval ellipsoid topographically elongated alongside meridians. Actually, it is extended between magnetic dip poles. This is for the sake of accuracy. Due to terrain undulations it represents not a lozenge proper but rather some warped inkblot”, Karabas twiddled his thumbs in the air endeavoring to mimic something sophisticated. The silhouette of his hand mirrored on the wall in the shape of some huge arachnoid insect.

“I visualize it approximately”, said the cat urbanely.

“Okay. Let us continue. The Monolith rests in the northern sector of the Zone. This is the segment of the Yoke which had collapsed on the Earth, the Tesla-inductor. It does not resemble the golden sphere”, Karabas leered at Basilio askance and sneered subtly. “It does not self-fulfill desires whatsoever. It is merely a mechanism which pumps energy”.

“From whence?” quizzed the cat abruptly.

“Well, what a question…” Karabas spread his hands. “From whence does the Yoke pump energy altogether?”

“For example, I am clueless”, said Basilio.

“For example, the response is correct”, the Rabbi dismissed the subject summarily. “So, the Monolith collapsed, but it did not unmesh from other segments. That is, it had been the segment of the Yoke, and it persists so. That is why the electrical current is torrentially flowing through it. It jettisons the voltage in the atmosphere. The Zone is precisely the area whereon the Monolith discharges itself. Tesla-effects abound ubiquitously therein, mainly electrical, but also magnetic ones and so forth. When the Monolith swells, the overall short circuit, the soi-disant Ejaculation ensues. To come under the Ejaculation is strongly inadvisable, especially for cybernetic organisms and cyber hybrids all the more so if they incorporate some integrated Tesla-devices. One thing is gladdening. Such pleasantness occurs not oftener than once in half a year or rarer, and the last occurrence was documented two months ago. So, promenade audaciously… yet circumambulate gingerly. One more thing: please, heed that your navigational system shall not function in the Zone. Tip-offs:

The cat was squatting motionlessly with half-shut eyes and pricked up ears.

“You have heard something about mutants”, resumed Karabas. “Allow me to scan your brain… Well, yes, everything is correct, Tesla-dependent entities yoked to the Monolith-generated energy. They will not jeopardize your health particularly, unless you over-eat them. Do not fear vampires: ordinary blood-suckers. Problems might arise from brain-peckers and other mentalists”.

“Do filifyonkas swarm thereat?” interjected Basilio.

“Mutants extirpated them themselves”, grinned the Rabbi. “It is plausible to admit, they decimated them. They are loathed, truly loathed in the Zone”.

“And rightly so”, said the cat satisfyingly.

Karabas giggled.

“Susanins are rather obnoxious… Shun and circumvent mandalaykas, they are so… From amongst the feral: fear slowpokes and white-ribboned nits. Although nits have been exterminated yet nevertheless… You know about creackles: when you see them, hit first. Incidentally, they are palatable. Well, and endeavor to evade rendezvousing with barabakas, namely, with Baskervilles”, Bar Rabbas sulked, evidently he reminisced something and this reminiscence did not gladden him. The cat noticed that.

“I have never heard about barabaka”, he said. “What sort of fowl is that?”

“It is not a fowl. It is a werewolf-vampire based on the substrate of the jellyfish and upgraded with helminths and leeches. It is amorphous, it mimics and camouflages extremely resourcefully, attacks from behind. To a certain extent, I am the discoverer of this loathsomeness. Her lips are frigid”, the Rabbi squirmed. “Thereafter I had not been able to squat down for half a year, it had permanently been sore to”.

“I am wondering who authored that?” said Bas pensively. “But please, don’t tell me that all of these wantonly luxurious lowlifes swarmed from out of nowhere”.

“Several particular issues are beyond our frame of reference”, uttered the Rabbi meaningfully.

“Ah, you mean from this perspective”, the cat wrinkled his muzzle.” Well, I see. How should I itinerate and what precisely should I accomplish?”

“Traverse the neutral zone. Most crucially, do not get ensnared by the woollies. You will supposedly not trespass on dwarfish ponies yourself. How long can you eke out on your batteries?”

“As ever: I can eke out throughout around ten days with water and minerals. Well, I shall devour somebody while en route, this is not the issue. Incidentally, can I piggyback on the Monolith?”

“I am really clueless about that”, confessed Karabas pityingly. “Ostensibly, woollies endeavored to, yet it fizzled, or rather, precisely they fizzled. You are immune to that, yours is the constabulary modification. Not a single one from amongst yours has ever immolated while in prosecution of his duties. If you tap into the Monolith, you will become the strong cat, the menace of the Zone… Anyway, you need to infiltrate therein first”.

Karabas re-endeavored to alight on the bench and failed to fit in again.

“I am somewhat fatigued this day. Well, then, we shall decamp tomorrow morning. You will lurk here. Snooze as much as you like, and altogether indulge yourself. You will be readying in the evening. You will decamp through the nighttime. Indeed, the Moon is inauspicious”, he gazed out of the window, “but it cannot be remedied anyway. Navigate the terrain through six and a half, along the vintage fiber cable. That is, six of them are buried therein in the soil at the depth of around no more than three meters, will you discern them? Excuse me”, the Rabbi intercepted the feline emotion, “that was a foolish question… Follow along the cable, you will reach the “Sauerkraut Soup” inn. This emporium is considered to be the neutral zone. You will finagle stalker’s gadgets therein and altogether. Visit it obligatorily, I reiterate, indispensably”.

“Probably, I should rather keep under the radar?” queried the cat.

“Conversely, expose yourself precisely, to the fullest”, the Rabbi waggled his head.

“And what’s the aid of that? Ah, the eatery is the check-point of the Hirudotherapist?”

“What catchwords you are having… Can you speak plain human?”

“Human? Hm… It has been long since I last spoke it … ''gav’vavvah zay… ha’n’shem’humgat'', allegedly”

“''Ko’sherh''”, lauded the Rabbi. “Although as for what concerns ''ha’n’shem’humgat'', it is rather controversial. It is not that he is the superintendent over swamplands. Rather he is the enforcer, if I interpreted his status adequately. Anyway, this is a moot point. Essentially, if you will not check in with the “Sauerkraut Soup”, you may consider that you itinerated futilely. You will never detect him autonomously, even with your capabilities”.

“I see. Shall I misbehave atrociously?”

“Without particular nastiness. Most significantly, do not foment arsons and do not smash anything. And please, do not massacre wantonly”.

“How else then?” misunderstood Basilio.

“Sparingly and blandly”, Karabas stirred his fingers in midair as if sculpting some figure therefrom. “Well, then, pressurize somebody, extort equipment, ''ebal ba’an''... and most crucially, do not defray any costs whatsoever under any circumstances. Otherwise, you will earn no kudos, and altogether, it is improper”.

“I never intended to”, offended the cat, “although… at the expense of what does the emporium subsist then?”

“At the expense of bravado”, explicated the Rabbi nebulously. “Thereupon, transgress the frontier and infiltrate at several kilometers deep. And merely promenade. You can accumulate some artifacts, but do not be obsessed herewith. I fix no deadlines. This is beyond your control. One day or other the Doctor shall locate you”, the Rabbi hushed.

“And?” the cat did not forbear.

“Hold on. Do not interrupt… Well, then. He is inquisitive, and shall bombard you with questions. You will conscientiously satisfy his inquisitiveness to the best of your capabilities. When it comes to what I want from him, inform him that Karabas wants to obtain the ordered work from the senile anti-Semite, and that he needs aid: to obtain and to convey. It would be preferable if the Doctor should take care of that personally. If he says nay, remind him of that accident in the Alps”.

“Which accident?” specified the cat knowingly that his inquisitiveness shall not be satisfied.

“That is an old story. You see, over the last hundred years the Leech Doctor and I accumulated, so to speak…, reciprocal reckonings. It all began when once he extracted me from out of the quagmire and cured. Subsequently, I rescued his life on one occasion. Thereafter, he rescued me… anyway. Briefly, he has not yet compensated for the Alps. And this is his brilliant opportunity to redeem this debt. Hopefully, he shall pounce on this chance”.

“And what if he does not?” quizzed the cat.

“This is implausible. He is not an altruist but he always discharges his obligations and pays off his debts. This is why he incurred few of them. But if he suddenly balks, utter eight words: ''no yokes are holier than those of companionship''”.

The cat glanced at Karabas somehow bizarrely.

“Yes, yes. Utter precisely these words in the Russian language”, the Rabbi nodded. “The next thing: you will respond to all of the questions posed by the Leech Doctor. Subsequently, he shall inform you on what you should do next. Most probably, he shall want that you withdraw. He may offer you an escort or he may not. Anyway, do not insist on staying. Do not endeavor to eavesdrop on him. Don’t even think of that. The Doctor is extremely petulant as to what concerns any varieties of external control. And he renders decisions himself.”

“And what?” questioned Basilio.

“You will establish rapport with the Directorate. Your target is the Institute for Transgenic Research. You ought to contact with our clandestine agents, to infiltrate therein and… Hold on…” Karabas mused. “The beetle is irrelevant” he said assertively. “Well, no” he re-intercepted the dissatisfied thought of the cat. “What does this carabid with her ovipositor has to do with this? I did not even think of her. Well, even though you boast the proneness to trans-sexual insects”.

“I beseech”, said the cat in such a voice that Karabas instinctively faltered.

“This is not to derogate from you, semi-sibling”, he said conciliatorily, “Verily, the time is not ripe for jocularities. Merely, we are totally unfamiliar with that beetle. And it would be better if I shall be the first to establish rapport with him. This is the matter of private and pious concernment. Furthermore, he is of paramount significance to us. You will contact another agent. And now I am saying this with all earnestness: this time round let us eschew your promiscuous philandering with devious rogue females”.

“Why do you think that I should suddenly? ...” the cat prudently smoothened down his resentfully bristling fur.

“Because she is vulpine”, sighed the Rabbi. “Well, you know what I mean”.

For the first time ever during the conversation, the cat grinned.

“Let us assume”, he purred through his whiskers, “that this is my bonus”.

[[Категория:English translation]]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (FULL TEXT TRANSLATION)

2020-05-27T09:56:33Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN WHEREIN THE FATIGUED WAYFARER OBTAINS BOARD, LODGING AND COMPANIONSHIP

October 10, 312 H. E., an hour before sunset

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Terrain

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

“Sauerkraut Soup” Inn

Carte Du Jour:

All prices are indicated in standard soldos (1/100 of the gold sovereign).

BEVERAGES

Vodka Ordinary (100 gram) – 2 sol.

Vodka Ordinary (1 liter) – 20 sol.

Chianti Ordinary (1 liter) – 10 sol.

Vodka “Crystalline” Artifacts-Infused (1 liter) – 30 sol.

Pale Ale (Jug) – 2 sol.

Dark Beer (Jug) – 2 sol.

Fungal Ale Craft Brewed (Jug) – 4 sol.

Kvass (Jug) – 1 sol.

Coffee Freshly Brewed (Demitasse) – 1 sol.

FOODS

Jellied Vampiric Tentacles in Aspic Au Jus Gourmet Style – 2 sovereigns.

Spermatic Ventricle of Malignant Pimpled Wart Hog Stuffed with Green Cabbage – 1 sovereign 50 sol.

Creacle Stewed with Carrot Chernobyl Style – 60 sol.

Meat Balls Eupeptic – 4 sol.

Chanakhs from Pikachu with Fresh Vegetables – 45 sol.

Slowpoke’s Flesh with Dumplings – 40 sol.

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ < 70) – 20 sol. per brochette

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ > 70, Flesh Legalized) – 40 sol. per skewer

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ > 70, Flesh Smuggled) – 50 sol. per skewer + negotiable with management

Azu from Meat Cuttings – 10 sol.

Cheese from Incubator’s Milk “Maternal” – 3 sol.

Fungal Potato Fried – 3 sol.

Sauerkraut Soup Ordinary – 3 sol.

Sauerkraut Soup Extra Ordinary – 6 sol.

Vegetables Served on Separate Dish – 2 sol.

Cherry Plum Sauce – 1 sol.

Walnut Sauce – 1 sol.

A LA CARTE

Fuck-Headed Wood Pecker, Lactic, Denigrated in Charcoal Roaster Grill by Artisanal Recipe, King-Size (the specialty of the house for 4 dinner guests) – 5 sovereigns, time of execution of order – 8 hours.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Smashed Crockery, Per Piece – 10 sol.

Obnoxious Misconduct (Urination and Defecation in the Shared Saloon Inclusively) – 50 sol.

Vandalism of Cabinetry, Equipment and so forth – at prime cost + 20%.

Brawl with Inn-Goers with No Grievous Bodily Injuries Inflicted – 1 sovereign.

Brawl with Security Guards with No Grievous Bodily Injuries Inflicted – 2 sovereigns + indemnification for emotional distress.

Grievous Bodily Injury or Mortification of a Waiter or Other Employee of the Inn with IIQ < 70 – at prime cost but no less than 5 sovereigns + 20% in the favor of the inn.

Grievous Bodily Injury or Mortification of an Inn-goer with IIQ > 70 – reimbursement by the codes of the underworld + 20% in the favor of the inn.

Brawl with Management – the amount of the damage is estimable by the management.

Blasphemous Desecration of the Holiest Religion Aggravated by Disesteem of Codes – On-The-Spot Forfeiture of Available Property and Gang Raping.

Have a Pleasant Rest!

The gate to the “Sauerkraut Soup” inn was hammered together from larchen sawn timber fastened with screwed-on wrought-iron crossbars. Three-edged forged-steel barbs menacingly targeting at the guest's lower limbs protruded from below. The narrow latticed observation slit embrasure seemed extremely uninviting.

Basilio glanced up in the vesper sky - it was growing dark. He pondered for a while. The check-in with the “Sauerkraut Soup” was an indispensably inalienable element of his mission. Furthermore, he ravenously famished whilst peregrinating. Peripheral synthesis of adenosine tri-phosphate reinvigorated the organism but it did not compensate nonrenewable devitaminization, paucity of microelements and other nutrient additives. Last time he supped adequately in the pedobear’s den. A sufficiently considerable period of time has elapsed from thenceforth.

However, the fastidious feline was extremely reluctant to socialize with autochthonous folks. It is not that stalkers were altogether unobservant of codes of conduct, but they were notoriously disreputable even throughout the Land of Fools, dwellers whereof could scarcely be shocked by ill breeding. The cat likewise chanced to intercommunicate with this fraternity: on several occasions he purchased exotic artifacts from them to satisfy the requirements of the Piedmont Kingdom, and could re-confirm from his first-hand experience that disreputableness of artifact raiders was considerably well-earned.

Anyway, it was indispensable to usher in. Having resolved to act as the situation permits, Basilio toggled his vision into the X-ray spectrum and peered behind the door. A massive large-boned creature typical of cavicornians was situated therein. Insofar as it was evidenced by its skeleton topology, it alighted on the floor clasping an obtuse cumbersome object, in all likelihood, a bastinado, on its lap.

Basilio synchronized the spectrum into visibility frequencies, elevated his pair of goggles, knocked on the gate, and instantaneously recoiled on two steps rearwards preventing his hind paws from being maimed by the spikes.
The gate flung open lustily. A muscular ox clasping a bastinado was deployed behind it.

“Yes, what gives?” bellowed the ox.

“Yes, yes, ream your ass”, courteously, ritually responded the cat. “Is there anything edible and potable available in your emporium?”

“Your drinks were quaffed last night”, the ox inclined his head flaunting copper armored antlers.

“And what if I glean some?” the cat drew nearer roughly calculating how to better neutralize the churlish beast without crippling him gravely.

“They will bust the holy fuck out of you rather” vowed the ox. However, he backed off.

Slithering softly past the ardent bovine carcass, the cat pussyfooted through the shorter obscure aisle and found himself in incommodious premises with some wall-mounted hooks, adjacent to the door. Steady noise interruptible with ejaculations and cachinnations wafted from behind the door. The cat re-synced and fine-tuned the range into X-ray wavelengths and beheld an ample saloon crammed full with multiform and multiple-sized fluctuant ossifications. His attention was particularly riveted to someone’s massive skeleton in the left-hand corner, and the slender petite skeleton by the farthest edge of the elongated scintillating strip, most probably, the bar counter.

Basilio toggled into the red segment of the visible frequency spectrum, and ushered in.

Generally, the saloon proved to be precisely identical with what it seemed from behind the door: ample and congested therewith, for it was windowless and jam-packed with haunters. The premises were illuminated by some wands protruding from out of wall-mounted overhung supports. The wands were ostensibly incandescent although they irradiated no warmth. Furthermore, in the infrared spectrum they loomed opaque. Seemingly, these were some artifacts from the Zone.

The cat stood on the smaller platform elevated above the flooring at about two meters. The wooden staircase, which Basilio inexplicably disliked, was ushering downwards. Having augmented standard vision with high-frequency wavelengths and radiation, the cat beheld that the third stair-step from above was unhinged and impaled upon some sort of an axle, evidently, so as a fortuitous visitor whilst endeavoring to tread thereon should trip over, tumble and collapse downward. Calculating the trajectory, the cat detected the table whereat a massive ox, a sibling to the one who saluted him at the threshold, was relaxing over a jug full of frothy beer.

The bovine table was the smallest one. All other dining places were designed to accommodate five or six persons. A suspicious-looking coterie ensconced by the very edge of the aisle: a provocatively grinning buxom zebra was gambling at cards with a gozman, toxic even visually. An antelope tranquilly pined over the liquor-glass. Some musk-rat, felonious and scraggy, gently stroked and fondled her by the knee. A nursery of raccoons-debauchees and fornicators was cavorting nearby, they endeavored to chorus the anachronistic vintage ode “vultures de-hibernated early in the morning, pandiculated, flatulated”. Sniffing at the circumambient air the cat was persuaded to acknowledge that raccoons were somewhat correct: it was not the redolence of rosebuds that hovered around the saloon.

The premises were isolated with the elongated bar counter. The aisle-way conducting toward the water closet loomed on its left. The corridor ushering into the adjacent room, the billiard room, as judged from what Bas could discern through the wall, was situated on the right-hand side thereof.

The cat descended gingerly obviating the insidious stair-step, and sashayed to the bar counter. However, scarcely had he completed five steps when somebody tugged at his trouser leg.

“You trod on my toes, whoreson!” snarled the muskrat half-upping.

The cat slightly elevated his pair of goggles.

“I untrod your toes. But I punched you in the eye”, he uttered irradiating a hair-thin laser beam into the left-hand pupil of the muskrat so as not to blind him for life but to merely combust the retina.

The muskrat wailed chokingly and clutched his eye. The cat grinned, pawed at the glass from the tabletop and smelled it. Water was in the glass.

He reached the bar counter unadventurously, although glances of habitués were riveted on his dorsum transfixing it like needles.

A marmoset or, perchance, a simian was wiping glassware with his tail behind the bar counter. The pectoral name badge “Boba Susych” was affixed on his grizzled wool.

“Wellness and goodness”, Basilio saluted him in accordance with consuetude of the Land of Fools.

“Neither fuck nor nastiness. Have you paid your bill for the alcohol last time round?” snarled Boba continuing to fumble with glasses.

“Last time round I was gone”, said the cat.

“Are you a first-time goer or who? Get the hell out of here. Alcohol is not dispensed to first-time goers in here”, the simian grew even less amicable, “or request more decent gentlemen, perchance, they will regale and you will pay for all”.

“Last time round I was gone, and the time before last you were gone”, the cat squinted aiming at him, “for that you will pour me vodka now” with these words he sheared off the simian’s left earlobe with his laser emitter.

Boba’s jaw dropped. He speechlessly snapped it shut, groped the ear, glanced down at his fingers, sniffed at them. His muzzle contracted into a sort of grimace.

“Two soldos per fifty gram”, announced Susych extracting a labeled phial with a deft manoeuvre of his prehensile paw.
“Discuss pricing policies with those who pay you”, interrupted him the cat who had already intuited how to properly position himself here.

The pony shot glass of icy vodka whereon a folium of sweet basil herb lay surfaced on well-polished glossy mahogany. The cat tossed it off, chewed up the tiny folium and chased down alcohol with it. The vodka was mediocre but it compensated energy losses.

“And whoever shall pay for the handsomest you?” queried the bartender.

“You decide. I shall take a seat for right now”, the cat beckoned at the remote dining-table whereat a lone, bachelor wolf hound in stalker’s outfit was sitting over a sprat.

“You ought not to go yonder”, spoke the simian softly, mussitatingly.

At that instant the door swung open with a snap and a luxuriously caparisoned black-maned stallion pranced up on the ladder landing platform. The spring-autumn leather coat and the bridle rein with the ornamental snaffle bit were particularly gratifying.

The stallion glanced around the saloon haughtily and snorted audibly.

“The first-time zone-bound goer”, Susych commented pensively, “Do you think he will lapse in the warp or not? Ostensibly, he ought to”.

Basilio intuited that Boba was referring to the wobbly stair step as the “warp”, and made an equivocal, arbitrarily construable gesture.

The stallion obviated the warp intact. He descended the staircase in two major strides straddling the entrapment. He obviated the bovine table equally accident-free and proceeded to squeeze his way to the bar counter approximately mimicking the itinerary of Bas.

“You trod on my toes, shit-fucker!” yelled the muskrat as he upped.

The rants which were wafted into the cat’s ears were evocative. He unmuted auricular directional microphones. He grew curious.

In the meanwhile the scenario unfolded. Scarcely had the steed attempted to extricate himself when instantaneously a well-muscled, irascible lion with piebald mane plaited in dreadlocks pounced out - surfaced from out of somewhere on the flank.

“I hear noise all right, but where is the fight?” he enquired.

“Well, you see, some bastardized lowlifes are gate-crashing. They trample on feet like on parquetry”, the muskrat informed against the stallion.

“I did nothing!” the stallion has already intuited that he embroiled in a mess but it has not yet dawned on him how much profoundly.

The lion advanced on the stallion, having half-opened his jaws, and braved him. The stallion did not shy but he was discernibly uncomfortable.

“Young gentleman, you erred thrice”, roared the lion, “Firstly, you pranced hither. Secondly, you trod on the toes of the esteemed creature...”

“Let him validate that I trod!” the stallion endeavored to belatedly appeal to codes.

“And thirdly, you overtly accused esteemed creatures of bullshitting”, predictably concluded the lion.

“Do not molest the colt! Do not maltreat him! But what are you doing!” the ample-breasted zebra shrieked frenziedly. The muskrat, without twirling around, seized her by the mane and tugged vehemently. The latter spluttered and hushed.

“Don’t bullshit me...” the balky steed neighed shrilly but instantaneously sputtered and wheezed. The cat squinted, re-scanned the situation in ultra-short waves and beheld a strip of ferrous metal: apparently, whilst the lion was diverting attention, somebody lurked stealthily from behind and was currently holding the stallion at dagger point prodding the razor edge under his shoulder blade.

The notorious wolf hound, who was keenly invigilating the situation, abruptly tautened himself, resiliently scrambled to his hind paws and surprisingly airily ambled through the aisle between tables.

“Am I bullshitting? You, jaded bastard, have you hurled an accusation at me?” the muskrat was swollen with ire. The stallion struggled to neigh something, however, at every endeavor the razor menacingly stirred under his shoulder blade so the unlucky creature only gasped for breath.

“So, everybody had witnessed”, heralded the lion, “this bastard ascended to our dwelling, misbehaved himself, violated the codes and insulted esteemed creatures. He cannot validate anything whatsoever. I opine that he is a mere thug. Would you tell me, gentlemen” he inexplicably accosted the raccoons “if thugs are welcome in here?”

“Thugs are unwanted here! We ourselves are thugs!” growled the raccoons.

“The voice of the people is the voice of Godmother. Hey, Boba!” vociferated the lion through the entire saloon howling down the tumultuous crowd with his stentorian throat, “Enquire in the kitchen at what price they purchase horseflesh?”

“I’ll get right on that!” the simian shouted back but did not budge. He was evidently well-familiarized with the plotline of the role-playable mummery.

“Halt!” barked the wolf who eventually reached the scene of the incident. “Hey, you there”, he accosted the muskrat. “Stop badgering the guy. He is a first-time goer, and is clueless about our traditions”.

“What is your relationship to him?” the muskrat bristled, "Is he a spawn of your brood? He doesn't look like one, anyway…”

The wolf neared the stallion, half-rose on tiptoes and half-embraced him by his broad shoulders.

“He is coming along with me to the Zone!” he barked so that the entire saloon might hear. “He is my mate! He comes along with me!”

“Are you his matching-key?” the lion shook his mane. The stupefied steed nodded.

“If I were you, bro, I wouldn’t have taken this horse shit along with me even as far as to the latrine”, roared the lion. His outward appearance suggested how acutely reluctant he was to release the prey from his claws.

“But I am telling you that he shall return intact and with a loot”, the wolf said unflinchingly, “Will you trot back unscathed and with a loot, colt?” he questioned the steed. The latter re-tossed his head, this time round more vigorously and unhesitatingly.

“And until we come back, he is under my protection”, summarized the wolf.

“Well, if so... Consider that clemency is granted unto thee”, the muskrat alighted, “Count yourself fortunate, lad. Hey, wolf hound, if he is your matching-key, he must stand treat”.

“He stands treat!” howled the wolf, “Boba, write down on this table! Grab a seat. Take the load off your hooves”, he offered the nonplussed stallion with well-feigned friendliness, “Well, what about a tankard of beer to welcome company?”

The puss averted his eyes. Subsequent doom of the feckless steed was self-evident.

“I pity the guy”, the marmoset sighed hypocritically “the wolf hound is a nefarious creature. He profiteers off artifacts from devious warps. His matching-keys are cremated like firewood in “incinerators”… Art thou zone-bound?”

Basilio opted not to deny the obvious and nodded.

“As I can see, you are a first time goer, but a somewhat streetwise one. Take a seat over there”, the simian stirred his unscathed ear pointing to the right from the bar counter whereat a small-size vacant dining-table with an overturned jug in the midst was located.

“Is that a reservation?” enquired the cat, “I did not pre-book. Although...” he squinted inspecting the ambience. The table seemed innocuous throughout all bandwidths and ostensibly did not portend any unexpectedness whatsoever. Nevertheless, the cat was inexplicably reluctant to sit down at it. He was inured to trust his intuition implicitly. Consequently, he reached the adjacent table whereat a haughty, grey-grizzled male goat of tall stature was sitting solemnly over a bowlful indolently re-masticating a briquette of baled hay.

It was rumored that the hircine substratum was somewhat frowned at throughout the Land of Fools generally and the Zone particularly. Yet, nevertheless, hircine flesh was not spurned as disreputable. Even more so, this particular goat was portlier, in a luxurious stalker’s accoutrement, with a stylish jingle bell through his nose. Furthermore, the hilt of some formidable sharp-bladed weapon with mosaic ivory on-lays protruded from behind the goat’s left shoulder. Even the grey goatee beard was jauntily tied in a dashing knot which was somewhat portentous.

Basilio, however, opted to waive etiquette. He merely neared the table, pulled out the chair and ensconced himself.

“Art thou invited?” bleated the goat quizzically ruminating hay.

“Thou art uninvited either”, the cat reminded him “Nevertheless, thou art seated. Anyway, I perched likewise. What do they feed on here except hay?”

The goat peered at the cat very probingly so that Bas even mused if the drabber one was clairvoyant, if he was scanning his brain. However, the goat, even if he beheld something, did not ooze it out anyway. He merely half-shut his eyes and relapsed into silence.

“Boba!” summoned the cat, “Send someone over to me, I’d like to place an order!”

In the meanwhile the goat unclosed his eyes wherein a certain verdict was legible.

“Take the malignant wart hog”, he recommended quite affably, “it is well-cooked here, and they add palatable cabbage thereto. However, it is costly, although, it is not you who will pay the bill. Incidentally, have you decided who will feed you? On the house – forget it”.

“Well, let the house opt who will pay. The persuasion is on me”, the cat shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, really, that is, you are insomuch tough? But why then the toughest you did not sit there?” the goat pointed his horn at the dining-table with the overturned jug.

“I disliked the place”, said Basilio.

“Mm...” drawled out the goat unbaling a fresher bale of hay, “You may well be right. Under the jug there is an “extinguisher”, this is such an artifact”, he deigned to explicate “a not particularly baneful one. Merely, it discharges any batteries down to zero. So, you might forfeit your laser devices, electric-powered cat.

Scarcely had Basilio retorted mordantly, when a cateress, a rather ingratiating fulvous bitch came over to the table. Regretfully, turbidity was undulating in her bleary eyes: maidenly IIQ was balancing on the verge of the lowest threshold of mental sanity or so. A frayed pet collar with a metal buckle thereon was dangling around her neck. As judged from the inscription engraved thereon, she was registered on Boba as his privately-owned electorate.

“Tell Boba, let him cook the malignant pimply wart hog, one portion”, the cat enunciated slowly and distinctly.

The doggess suddenly relapsed into torpor. A sort of corrugation, the symptom of intense mental exertion, wrinkled her smoothened tawny brow.

“But it is unavailable”, the bitch finally yelped, “it has been eaten”, she spread out her forepaws.

“Are there any vampirish tentacles left?” the goat questioned sternly.

The lass’s appearance signalled bewilderment and cluelessness.

“What is available then, lacerated cunt?” grunted out the goat.

The bitch yawned petulantly denuding her fangs. Obviously, she agonized over each mental effort.

“The menu is available”, she eventually whelped, “Probably, the menu?”

“Mm... but, probably, you”, the goat smirked lewdly in the hircine style and nictitated at Basilio, “Would you like this bitch?”

The cat screwed up his face in revulsion.

“As a matter of fact, I intended to dine”, he reminded.

“Well, this is precisely what I am talking about? You are carnivorous, anyway. How about fresher meat? Hey, Boba!” he yelled, “Do you need this flea-infested cunt any longer or she can be cannibalized in the kitchen?”

“You need not”, Basilio abruptly interrupted him “I loathe canine flesh”.

“Do you cherish some racial prejudices?” the goat let his amber eye rove, “or your religion tabooed it?”

“I am basically feline, anyway. Canine odor ruins my appetite”, explained Basilio. “A little mouse or a rat is a different matter”.

“A rat? This is an idea. Boba!” bleated the goat, “Have you pickled the rat?”

“I did. It has been soaking for twenty four hours in vinegar pickles!” Boba shouted back “An ordinary portion?”

“Double”, requested the cat.

The obtuse bitch-cateress still stood blinking dumbly. Basilio spanked her on the bottom - she gratefully wiggled her tail - and sent her back to where she came from.

“Perhaps, we can have a quick one?” suggested the goat, “to our acquaintance?”

Basilio roughly estimated his strategies. The goat might be helpful as a source of intelligence. The soul was yearning after relaxation. In addition to that, it was somewhat tawdry and inappropriate to perpetrate certain acts sober-headedly. And as far as the fact that it will be indispensable to perpetrate them is concerned, the cat not in the slightest degree doubted that any longer.

“We can have a king-size one”, he resolved, “which one would you prefer?”

“Crystalline”, recommended the goat, “it is Perdu-Monocles-infused”.

“And what is the good of it? the cat opted to clarify, “does is distil?”

“No, it produces the effect of distillation”, authoritatively elucidated the goat, “that is, it renders it ostensibly drinkable”.

“Well, let it be “Crystalline””, acquiesced the cat, “Incidentally, my name is Basilio, Persecutor, Expert Problemist”.

“An expert on problem solving or on problem spawning?” the goat squinted.

“Either way round”, said the cat having pondered a little, "in these terms, I am a Multi-Skilled Generalist".

“Fair enough. Septimius Popandopulos”, the cornuted one introduced himself. “I have a niche over-specialization: Scapegoat Sodomizer".

[[Категория:English translation]]

CHAPTER SEVEN (FULL TEXT TRANSLATION)

2020-05-27T09:30:24Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER SEVEN WHEREIN WE, RECURRING TO THE ELAPSED DEVELOPMENTS AND AS THOUGH RETROSPECTING, WHICH FROM THENCEFORWARD WE SHALL PRACTICE FREQUENTLY, WITNESS THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CERTAIN PILGRIM AND THE SAINT-LIKE RIGHTEOUS CREATURE

October 5, 312 H. E. well into the evening segueing into nighttime.

Land of Fools, Inter-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY

“… arguably, it is plausible to admit as a firmly established fact that the cult of Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix in the most salient features thereof crystallized long before the revelation of the Dead Man's Chest, and independently of this phenomenon. Fundamentally, it was based upon the idolatry of motherhood in terms of a sublimated transcendental idea ubiquitous predominantly amongst incubated entities, and also the anthropolatry (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and its genome veneration mainstreamed amongst anthropoid authorities. Thus, the quintessential principle of the entire paradigm: “Maternity is saint-like” had been documented by informants as early as half a century before the disinterment of the Chest. The discrimination of entities whose physiognomies vary discernibly from the romanticized anthropoid one likewise epitomizes the integral element of the traditional cultural milieu of the Land of Fools (see my oeuvre “Anthropomorphism as a Quasi-Aristocratic Ideology: Incunabula and Parallelisms”, KHLF, Issue 11, hereon). Indisputably, however, is that it is precisely the Chest with its audio and video content (in contrast with the textual component which exerted virtually no influence upon the Land of Fools, which fact merits a particular examination) that marked the messianic milestone. Idolized yet ethereal abstruseness acquired the palpably perceptible incarnation whilst ill-defined pagan practices expeditiously metamorphosed into the full-fledged religious system boasting its own cultic textual canon and icons, well-elaborated ceremonies and rituals and, last but not least, the caste of consecrated ecclesiastics, the priesthood who enforced orthodoxy”.

N. E. Znayko. More on the Genesis of the Goddaughter-Matrolatry. See in “Cultural Heritage of the Land of Fools: Collection of Multi-Disciplinary Essays”, Issue # 14. Torah Borah University Publishing House. Torah Borah, 108672 daytimes from the Apocalypse.

Bas descried the small wooden cabin at the distance of around five hundred meters, synchronously in three wavelengths. In the grayness of the realm of high-frequency bandwidths it phosphoresced in incarnadine: some electrical appliances were being operated therein. In ebony-verdant infrared it silhouetted the glaringly lettuce-green rectangle: it was emitting surgeless warmth. In the x-ray spectrum it was particularly inconspicuous although the underground cable tail wired thereto was discernible. Presumably, a communications node or a transformer vault was situated therein formerly.

The hitherto lurking moon abruptly protruded and gushed forth with its larcenous moonlight from behind the transient cloud bisecting the sky with the narrow wedge with opaque pinnacles above, as though wolves mounted it, squatted down thereon and rode along, as it were, routinely, to shit. The cat synchronized bandwidths superposing the wireless one upon radiation, and wolves segued into evanescent oblong clusters, the moon instead being haloed with a fluctuant aura. Similarly, the wooden cabin luxuriated in the tremulous, verdantly grayish halo. Echoes of sacramental eulogies, anthems and scarcely audible strumming of balalaika wafted from thence.

Basilio mused. The small structure seemed ostensibly non-hazardous. Anyway, it oozed no observable threat whatsoever. On the other part, the fact that the dweller thereof was not concealing himself itself portended that no easy prey should be reckoned upon equally. And then again, it was absolutely enigmatically who dared to overtly colonize the neutral territory, and why dwarfish ponies as well as woollies tolerate this.

The cat loathed abstruseness: multifarious troubles typically oozed forth from thence, occasionally not instantaneously yet subtly, stealthily. That is why he resolved to invest some time into reconnoitring merely so as not to leave goodness knows what in the rear, behind his back.

As he neared, Basilio discerned what precisely is sung. The bass, hoarse voice karaoked, or rather was karaoking the sacramental chanson from the Cycle of Hymnography by Elena Vaenga.

The small edifice was situated upon the hillock under which the wreckage of the windmill was strewn around. A scarcely visible footpath conducting upwards was discernible in the millimeter-wave range. However, the prudent cat preferred to climb up the hillside slope. He sneaked up almost stealthily, solely at the edge of the summit his claws glissaded off grindingly, and clods of earth collapsed downwards. The cat paralyzed and alerted pre-empting some plausible backlash. However, psalm-singing was not discontinued, not even for a moment.

“I am re-glued to the window. I re-kindle the cigarette, mother, anew”, drawled out the rich, throaty bass voice accentuating sacramental syllables “mother” with the particularly orotund basso so that the cat almost visualized an anonymous stranger thurifying frankincense to Goddaughter. “And tranquility is circumjacent, utilized as a substrate ...” the balalaika strummed for a final time and trailed off.

Although Basilio disbelieved in Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix, he instinctively marveled at hugeness of giftedness of ancient bards. To visualize the piece of workmanship whose genetic substrate had been Tranquility: that re-echoed grandiloquently, exaltedly and abstrusely. However, such epithets behooved the icon of the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix.

Anyway, currently the time was not ripe for meditating on loftiest subjects. Having dismissed unrelated ideas, the cat groped for a secure toehold, leapfrogged, somersaulted upwards and found himself by the edge of the rusticated house wall. The acrid odor of the putrescent fish and freshly defecated excrements wafted around: obviously, the house-dweller utilized this side as a junkyard. The aroma of excrements was pungent and unfamiliar: the aggressive ursine component was identifiably scented interspersed with something else, either leporine or vulpine. Anyhow, one thing was certain: a male animal defecated thereat which had been evidenced by the rancid smell of putrescent adrenaline and testosterone acidulousness.

The cat peered through the wall in the X-ray range. The nanometer wave lengths were perceptibly lacking. Nevertheless, some creature with an extremely massive skeleton, around twice the size of Bas himself, was discernible. He executed slow-moving oscillations in the genuflected position in front of the sophisticated piece of metalized artwork.

Basilio ascended gingerly, and stealthily circumvented the angle by the narrow footpath, simultaneously re-synchronizing his perception nearer unto the visible spectrum. The pair of goggles hindered thereat, and he shifted them off to the forehead. Moonlight inundated empty eye orbits, drilled into lenses and impinged incident upon photo-multipliers’ planar surfaces ejecting electronic particles from out of them.

The plank-built gate with the wrought-iron door-knocker attached hereon silhouetted. The psalm sung by Grigoriy Leps echoed from behind it, the soundtrack lesser venerated than the sacramental canon by Elena Vaenga yet likewise the collegially-blessed one.

Having deferentially hearkened unto the anthem through the end thereof, to interrupt the holiest karaoke was considered a grave screw-up, as chance offers, even collegially punishable, the cat energetically pulled at the doorknocker. The gate did not yield. He pulled it more vigorously. Thereupon he deduced that the door might likewise be pushable. He pushed it then, and paralyzed in awe at the threshold.

He was ushered into the pedobears' preaching house. The multi-level iconostasis occupied the entire mural space of the opposite wall. Printed hardcopies of ancient imagery of the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix reposed in tabernacles illuminated by icon lamps. Icons were etched out painstakingly, meticulously and scrupulously, as it were, pixelized. That was a certain lesser-known collection, not the mainstream one amongst the authorities of the Land of Fools “The Petite Mary’s Privy Parts” or “Cherubic Buttocks of the Petite Veronika the Morsel”, but rather computer files retrieved from some remotest labyrinths of the Chest. The ebony-haired anthropoid female infant, precisely these terms recurred to the contemplator, was meditating intently recumbent on the sofa sprawling out her disproportionately slender legs. The dwarfish perforated defloration of her Divine Womb was virginally plugged with a certain prayerful object, either with the cordless massager or with some other sacramental item from amongst those usable by the ancients on such occasions. Uncharacteristically exquisite lineaments of her countenance mirrored such a voluptuous, super-terrestrial ecstatic ravishment that even Basilio, who dubbed the Collegiate Cult a heresy, instinctively thrilled.

“May Foremother bless you and may Goddaughter salute you, the holiest Deputy of the State Duma Vikentiy Vilenovich Parkhachik, who perpetuated these saint icons for us”, the cat deferentially enunciated the unabridged ritual formulae and salaamed.

“Let her verily bless and salute”, re-echoed the pedved’s bass voice. He groveled prostrating in front of the iconostasis in a mass of red bearskin. The vintage balalaika, the antediluvian one, lathed from yellowish ivory, lay beside him.

“Do you yearn to worship Goddaughter-Foremother, pilgrim?” enquired the master of the household. “If so, genuflect in front of the Womb of Goddaughter, and we shall eulogize her in a sacramental karaoke”.

“I profess an alternative religion”, responded the cat urbanely. “However, I have never blasphemed against Goddaughter-Foremother: neither verbally, nor mentally, nor through my acts. And you can take my word for it collegially. Merely, I am a passer-by. I came around to warm myself. If I hindered your ascesis, please, excuse me, I shall go away”.

“Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix dotes on all of her fathers and children”, replied the pedobear rearing his head, “even prodigal and erring ones. I am Father Onuphrius Neurotic. This is my last name. And the aforesaid is spelled solid and unhyphenated”, he added obviously anticipating to hear a vulgar joke from the cat.

“May your ilk be glorified, exalted and superlatively fecund”, similarly ceremoniously and grandiloquently said Basilio. The pedobear was discernibly delighted to hearken unto that.

“Please, relax in the next room, pilgrim. You are travel-weary”, he said blandly. “I must finalize the liturgy. I have not yet recited vespers”.

He genuflected once again, grasped the prayer beads with his claws and, fixing his eyes on sacred images began to whisper the holy praying: “your spread beaver makes me quiver”.

In the meanwhile the cat furtively pussyfooted in the next room whereto the lowly aisle, curtained off with the hopsack cloth, was ushering through the wall.

It was opaquely and smoky thereat. The smoldered wicker lamp protruded from off the rush-light holder, below, underneath it, dispersed airy white cinders floated in the water tub. The cat detected another lamp nearby, inserted it in the rush-light holder, and kindled it with his sinistrocular laser device. The flickering flame sparks somehow elbowed the opaqueness away. The latter, however, withdrew a short way off, if only to make corrugated and obfuscated walls visible. The massive coffer with the nigrescent with age lid locked away with the large-size rust-eaten padlock occupied the left-hand side off the door almost completely. The icon from the series “Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix with Petite Nipples” suspended above the coffer. The feline quizzically ogled at the small icon: as far as he was informed, the majority of pedobears referred to such iconography as too old. Evidently, the house-owner epitomized the exotic ecumenical orthodox ramification of the Collegial Cult which venerated all the computer files retrieved from the Dead Man’s Chest as equally vivifying and solely varyingly elucidating the capacities of the Eternal Figure’s Godhead.

On the right-hand side adjacent to the wall there stood the couch with a bundle of rags heaped thereon which reeked of an unwashed body. The malodor was neutralized by the aroma of pickled custard squashes: the pressurized barrel blackened in the corner. The tinned plateful with orts of the feed concentrate lay on the slovenly hammered together tabletop. The saucer of sturgeon roe buttered with oleomargarine, and the damasked hemisphere with the exquisitely arched twig-little nozzle from one side thereof, towered thereon. Having scrutinized that, the cat realized that this had been a vintage battery-operated electric tea kettle, the rarest and precious thing. However, it was discharged: the cat acutely intuited such issues.

Basilio calculated his possessions. Tesla-batteries integrated into his body were replenished at about twenty per cents: the accelerated march on an empty stomach consumed quite some energy. He was likewise coerced to regularly utilize his laser devices whilst all of his endeavors at tapping into the Yoke in any full-fledged way were frustrated: the longest durable contact therewith lasted for as long as approximately five seconds. Nevertheless, the cat felt an urge to somehow reciprocate the hospitable pedobear, well, to recharge his tea kettle at minimum. This is why he unplugged the auxiliary feed-through cord from under his tail, and re-plugged terminals to the battery, whereupon he squatted down on the couch and mused.

Footsteps thudded, the hopsack cloth shuffled being drawn aside. Father Onuphrius ambled into the room, and squatted down on the coffer, having occupied all but half of the room with his carcass.

“You are vainly exhausting yourself, pilgrim”, he said discerning the cord which liaised the tea-kettle to the cat. “I have got electricity. I have got no tea”.

“I am powerless about that” the cat strugglingly retracted the cord, the latter solely swished through the air. “I don't have any tea too. I don't have any victuals whatsoever... and I don't need any”, he added promptly seeing that the pedobear upped and obviously wended to creep somewhere.

“Food is indispensable even for your ilk”, the pedobear demurred sternly. “Anyway, please, taste the custard squash. I pickled it myself. Garlic and cloves are also my own-grown”, he added proudly. “It tastes super cool, appetizing”.

The cat made some lame excuses briefly. Before too long he shared the table with the host, and was disposing of the third custard squash in succession snacking it with the sturgeon roe. In the meanwhile the pedobear finished recharging his tea kettle, the high-performance nickel-cadmium accumulator battery powered from the Tesla-receiver emerged from under his couch, and sipped boiling water through cubes of sugar in full blast comically puffing with his massive muzzle on the miniature porcelain saucer he was clasping in his claws.

They got to talking over the lunch. It transpired that Father Onuphrius had been an erstwhile ex-novitiate by the temple named after the Saint Icon of Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix Donning Knee Socks. Subsequently, he withdrew into individual apostleship, ruralized nearby some local lake and immersed into prayerful meditation upon the holiest icons from amongst the collection of “the fully-nude Olga”. However, after the demise of the Grand Yoprst Apostasius Prostatic (who, as it follows from his last name, succumbed to prostatitis obliterans), internecine bickering erupted amongst the orphaned elite whereupon dwarfish ponies infiltrated into the forest and rather promptly sirenized and enthralled all of the dwellers thereof in their routine fashion. Father Onuphrius had been resisting the temptation to the uttermost, however, regretfully, the majority of pedobears, even the most adamant ones from amongst them, succumbed and failed to rise to the challenge of apostleship. When Onuphrius beheld his fellow friar in novitiate osculating the hoof of the incarnadine dwarfish pony, he, incensed, anathematized, cussed out their entire equine ilk and desired to withdraw. Dwarfish ponies adopted a laissez-faire attitude hereto, and even aided him to settle down and acquire household on the neutral territory: the pugnacious pedobear had been the connoisseur of the Cycle of Hymnography sung by Elena Vaenga whereon dwarfish ponies particularly doted.

Eventually, the pedobear remained satisfied: dwelling on the neutral ground proved to be halcyon, tranquil and serene. Despite rareness and volatility of Tesla-enmeshment, energy sufficed him, for he consumed it extremely frugally, predominantly for preheating the tea kettle. By the hermitage he planted a vegetable garden wherefrom he subsisted precisely, compensating the protein shortage through hunting for ferine lowlifes. Feral sturgeons-centipedes, who spawned every nook with their roe, latterly veritably plagued the hillock. The pedobear collected five large jugs of this stuff, pickled it, and currently lunched it with oleomargarine.

“But why haven’t you withdrawn to nakhnakhs?” queried the cat.

“Goddaughter, fulminate your Foremother!” the pedobear reverentially touched his ear lobes with his forepaws, contriving not to smash the miniature saucer therewith. “I shall preferably devour the gozman's liver. These defective cunts ought to be cremated in a bio-sterilizer. They had never been particularly good-mannered, but they had become lost to any fear whatsoever latterly.

This kindled the cat’s interest, and he requested the pedobear to expatiate thereupon. It transpired that over the past two months, the woollies who had not been emerging for years haunted the small cabin thrice. The previous visit they pilfered the gramophone and two phonograph records with holiest anthems. During their last visit, however, they even broached the subject of the smaller share, although to levy a tribute on worshippers of the Ecumenical One had since Adam been referred to as a collegially excommunicable taboo. The pedobear hearkened unto their arrogant claims, regaled them with little custard squashes, and, for the purpose of purification of the soul from malevolent motivations, put forward the suggestion to chant the sacramental ode dedicated to ebony eyes in front of the Womb of the Goddaughter. They belted out “The Ebony Eyes” haphazardly, then withdrew embittered, and said that, allegedly, “our Tarzan shall espouse the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix herself before too long, wah-wah” instead of the farewell.

“They seem to have utterly gone berserk”, Basilio muttered under his breath. “Basically, such things are collegially excommunicable”.

“It seems to me that this is being done for an ulterior motive”, the pedobear shook his massive head. “Some abstruse hidden agenda lurks behind this corrupted hectic atmosphere. It looks as if they harnessed some energy, or probably, a trump card recently. I suspect that they managed to tap into the Monolith... However, all of this is too old: we have become engrossed in the conversation, pilgrim, whilst you are fatigued. If you prefer, you can stay overnight at mine. I shall spend the night prayerfully eulogizing”.

“Thank you, courteous master”, the cat darted a sidelong scowl at the couch, and upped. “But still, I must be off now. I appreciate Goddaughter's hospitability, and excuse my religion’s prohibition on eulogizing Goddaughter-Foremother”.

“Well then, I wish you a safe journey”, the pedobear scrutinized Basilio keenly herewith. “You wend to the Zone, don't you?”

Basilio opted not to prevaricate.

“I do”, he confessed, “But not for the loot” he instantaneously emphasized. “I have got some other errands to do there”.

“I lack adequate motives for any further interrogations, pilgrim”, Father Onuphrius sighed insomuch profoundly that he nearly sucked in the entire air circulating in the small room. “And I shall not catechize you on affairs which do not affect me. This violates the code of the underworld. However, I have been dwelling in the closest proximity to the Zone throughout my lifetime, and I am well-informed about something. Please, accept my advice, certainly, not to prejudice or offend you”.

“I hearken unto thee”, the cat slightly pricked up his ear demonstrating that he is truly hearkening.

“Firstly”, the pedobear scarcely half-rose and scratched his rump against the coffer. The fur stridulated, something jingled inside the coffer. “The Monolith is referred to as the Monolith precisely because it is windowless, all the more so, gateless, as well as eyeless and earless. This is the merest electricity-laden stone. And there is no point in verifying that personally and persuading oneself of that first-hand”.

“I do not intend to near the Monolith”, said the cat unhesitatingly having privately decided to elucidate the details from the Hirudotherapist.

“And secondly”, the pedobear protracted and elevated his claw. “There exists the location wherein the Monolith rests. And there exists yet another location. So, a great many people had been yearning to infiltrate therein within my remembrance. Some of them did. Few people even exited... Now then, reportedly, solely those can exit forth from thence for whom it is veritably indispensable, precisely, veritably, under the situation when no alternative whatsoever exists”.

The cat comprehended it for this once.

“Do you mean the Field of Miracles?” he re-confirmed, and the pedobear nodded. “I am not going to wend thitherward”.

The pedved pensively scratched his muzzle with his obtuse yellowish claw.

“Verily, fewest people know wherefore they itinerate, all the less so, whither”, he uttered.

[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2020-05-27T09:15:25Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity, volatility and non-contiguousness of Tesla-enmeshment. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophilic cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion?"

"By Lake Garda. No mouse whatsoever shall jog therefrom".

"Incidentally, what did we need there?”, the cat suddenly grew curious.

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile amphibious suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles fine-tuning long-range optics.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the petite sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

It dawned upon Harlequin that the ravenously famished ogre might want to join the repast, hence he began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he re-vivified, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny. "On this wise held they the funeral for horse-taming Hector", he blurted out some obtuseness.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on himself, a kind of self-sacrifice. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their turf, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, as it were, a masculine. She will ogle you with her eyelets and the game is over”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the Monarch of Beasts shall obligatorily evince an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Memorize, these are dwarfish ponies. Filly foals and maiden mares dote upon slash art”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a splendid time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things during the night-time when this couple will, hm… slumber”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, the cat couldn't refrain from divulging. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May God...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May God-daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the petite sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony dorsum of Karabas, who was marching towards the turret in a surer step. Lineaments of his figure silhouetted something august, portentous and fateful. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the dorsum, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (FULL TEXT TRANSLATION)

2020-05-26T07:56:05Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN WHEREIN THE FATIGUED WAYFARER OBTAINS BOARD, LODGING AND COMPANIONSHIP

October 10, 312 H. E., an hour before sunset

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Terrain

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

“Sauerkraut Soup” Inn

Carte Du Jour:

All prices are indicated in standard soldos (1/100 of the gold sovereign).

BEVERAGES

Vodka Ordinary (100 gram) – 2 sol.

Vodka Ordinary (1 liter) – 20 sol.

Chianti Ordinary (1 liter) – 10 sol.

Vodka “Crystalline” Artifacts-Infused (1 liter) – 30 sol.

Pale Ale (Jug) – 2 sol.

Dark Beer (Jug) – 2 sol.

Fungal Ale Craft Brewed (Jug) – 4 sol.

Kvass (Jug) – 1 sol.

Coffee Freshly Brewed (Demitasse) – 1 sol.

FOODS

Jellied Vampire Bat’s Tentacles in Aspic Au Jus – 2 sovereigns.

Spermatic Ventricle of Malignant Pimpled Wart Hog Stuffed with Green Cabbage – 1 sovereign 50 sol.

Creacle Stewed with Carrot Chernobyl Style – 60 sol.

Meat Balls Eupeptic – 4 sol.

Chanakhs from Pikachu with Fresh Vegetables – 45 sol.

Slowpoke’s Flesh with Dumplings – 40 sol.

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ < 70) – 20 sol. per brochette

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ > 70, Flesh Legalized) – 40 sol. per skewer

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ > 70, Flesh Smuggled) – 50 sol. per skewer + negotiable with management

Azu from Meat Cuttings – 10 sol.

Cheese from Incubator’s Milk “Maternal” – 3 sol.

Fungal Potato Fried – 3 sol.

Sauerkraut Soup Ordinary – 3 sol.

Sauerkraut Soup Extra Ordinary – 6 sol.

Vegetables Served on Separate Dish – 2 sol.

Cherry Plum Sauce – 1 sol.

Walnut Sauce – 1 sol.

A LA CARTE

Fuck-Headed Wood Pecker Denigrated in Charcoal Roaster Grill by Artisanal Recipe King-Size (the specialty of the house for 4 dinner guests) – 5 sovereigns, time of execution of order – 8 hours.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Smashed Crockery, Per Piece – 10 sol.

Obnoxious Misconduct (Urination and Defecation in the Shared Saloon Inclusively) – 50 sol.

Vandalism of Cabinetry, Equipment and so forth – at prime cost + 20%.

Brawl with Inn-Goers with No Grievous Bodily Injuries Inflicted – 1 sovereign.

Brawl with Security Guards with No Grievous Bodily Injuries Inflicted – 2 sovereigns + indemnification for emotional distress.

Grievous Bodily Injury or Mortification of a Waiter or Other Employee of the Inn with IIQ < 70 – at prime cost but no less than 5 sovereigns + 20% in the favor of the inn.

Grievous Bodily Injury or Mortification of an Inn-goer with IIQ > 70 – reimbursement by the codes of the underworld + 20% in the favor of the inn.

Brawl with Management – the amount of the damage is estimable by the management.

Blasphemous Desecration of the Holiest Religion Aggravated by Disesteem of Codes – On-The-Spot Forfeiture of Available Property and Gang Raping.

Have a Pleasant Rest!

The gate to the “Sauerkraut Soup” inn was hammered together from larchen sawn timber fastened with screwed-on wrought-iron crossbars. Three-edged forged-steel barbs menacingly targeting at the guest's lower limbs protruded from below. The narrow latticed observation slit embrasure seemed extremely uninviting.

Basilio glanced up in the vesper sky - it was growing dark. He pondered for a while. The check-in with the “Sauerkraut Soup” was an indispensably inalienable element of his mission. Furthermore, he ravenously famished whilst peregrinating. Peripheral synthesis of adenosine tri-phosphate reinvigorated the organism but it did not compensate nonrenewable devitaminization, paucity of microelements and other nutrient additives. Last time he supped adequately in the pedobear’s den. A sufficiently considerable period of time has elapsed from thenceforth.

However, the fastidious feline was extremely reluctant to socialize with autochthonous folks. It is not that stalkers were altogether unobservant of codes of conduct, but they were notoriously disreputable even throughout the Land of Fools, dwellers whereof could scarcely be shocked by ill breeding. The cat likewise chanced to intercommunicate with this fraternity: on several occasions he purchased exotic artifacts from them to satisfy the requirements of the Piedmont Kingdom, and could re-confirm from his first-hand experience that disreputableness of artifact raiders was considerably well-earned.

Anyway, it was indispensable to usher in. Having resolved to act as the situation permits, Basilio toggled his vision into the X-ray spectrum and peered behind the door. A massive large-boned creature typical of cavicornians was situated therein. Insofar as it was evidenced by its skeleton topology, it alighted on the floor clasping an obtuse cumbersome object, in all likelihood, a bastinado, on its lap.

Basilio synchronized the spectrum into visibility frequencies, elevated his pair of goggles, knocked on the gate, and instantaneously recoiled on two steps rearwards preventing his hind paws from being maimed by the spikes.
The gate flung open lustily. A muscular ox clasping a bastinado was deployed behind it.

“Yes, what gives?” bellowed the ox.

“Yes, yes, ream your ass”, courteously, ritually responded the cat. “Is there anything edible and potable available in your emporium?”

“Your drinks were quaffed last night”, the ox inclined his head flaunting copper armored antlers.

“And what if I glean some?” the cat drew nearer roughly calculating how to better neutralize the churlish beast without crippling him gravely.

“They will bust the holy fuck out of you rather” vowed the ox. However, he backed off.

Slithering softly past the ardent bovine carcass, the cat pussyfooted through the shorter obscure aisle and found himself in incommodious premises with some wall-mounted hooks, adjacent to the door. Steady noise interruptible with ejaculations and cachinnations wafted from behind the door. The cat re-synced and fine-tuned the range into X-ray wavelengths and beheld an ample saloon crammed full with multiform and multiple-sized fluctuant ossifications. His attention was particularly riveted to someone’s massive skeleton in the left-hand corner, and the slender petite skeleton by the farthest edge of the elongated scintillating strip, most probably, the bar counter.

Basilio toggled into the red segment of the visible frequency spectrum, and ushered in.

Generally, the saloon proved to be precisely identical with what it seemed from behind the door: ample and congested therewith, for it was windowless and jam-packed with haunters. The premises were illuminated by some wands protruding from out of wall-mounted overhung supports. The wands were ostensibly incandescent although they irradiated no warmth. Furthermore, in the infrared spectrum they loomed opaque. Seemingly, these were some artifacts from the Zone.

The cat stood on the smaller platform elevated above the flooring at about two meters. The wooden staircase, which Basilio inexplicably disliked, was ushering downwards. Having augmented standard vision with high-frequency wavelengths and radiation, the cat beheld that the third stair-step from above was unhinged and impaled upon some sort of an axle, evidently, so as a fortuitous visitor whilst endeavoring to tread thereon should trip over, tumble and collapse downward. Calculating the trajectory, the cat detected the table whereat a massive ox, a sibling to the one who saluted him at the threshold, was relaxing over a jug full of frothy beer.

The bovine table was the smallest one. All other dining places were designed to accommodate five or six persons. A suspicious-looking coterie ensconced by the very edge of the aisle: a provocatively grinning buxom zebra was gambling at cards with a gozman, toxic even visually. An antelope tranquilly pined over the liquor-glass. Some musk-rat, felonious and scraggy, gently stroked and fondled her by the knee. A nursery of raccoons-debauchees and fornicators was cavorting nearby, they endeavored to chorus the anachronistic vintage ode “vultures de-hibernated early in the morning, pandiculated, flatulated”. Sniffing at the circumambient air the cat was persuaded to acknowledge that raccoons were somewhat correct: it was not the redolence of rosebuds that hovered around the saloon.

The premises were isolated with the elongated bar counter. The aisle-way conducting toward the water closet loomed on its left. The corridor ushering into the adjacent room, the billiard room, as judged from what Bas could discern through the wall, was situated on the right-hand side thereof.

The cat descended gingerly obviating the insidious stair-step, and sashayed to the bar counter. However, scarcely had he completed five steps when somebody tugged at his trouser leg.

“You trod on my toes, whoreson!” snarled the muskrat half-upping.

The cat slightly elevated his pair of goggles.

“I untrod your toes. I punched you in the eye”, he uttered irradiating a hair-thin laser beam into the left-hand pupil of the muskrat so as not to blind him for life but to merely combust the retina.

The muskrat wailed chokingly and clutched his eye. The cat grinned, pawed at the glass from the tabletop and smelled it. Water was in the glass.

He reached the bar counter unadventurously, although glances of habitués were riveted on his dorsum transfixing it like needles.

A marmoset or, perchance, a simian was wiping glassware with his tail behind the bar counter. The pectoral name badge “Boba Susych” was affixed on his grizzled wool.

“Wellness and goodness”, Basilio saluted him in accordance with consuetude of the Land of Fools.

“Neither fuck nor nastiness. Have you paid your bill for the alcohol last time round?” snarled Boba continuing to fumble with glasses.

“Last time round I was gone”, said the cat.

“Are you a first-time goer or who? Get the hell out of here. Alcohol is not dispensed to first-time goers in here”, the simian grew even less amicable, “or request more decent gentlemen, perchance, they will regale and you will pay for all”.

“Last time round I was gone, and the time before last you were gone”, the cat squinted aiming at him, “for that you will pour me vodka now” with these words he sheared off the simian’s left earlobe with his laser emitter.

Boba’s jaw dropped. He speechlessly snapped it shut, groped the ear, glanced down at his fingers, sniffed at them. His muzzle contracted into a sort of grimace.

“Two soldos per fifty gram”, announced Susych extracting a labeled phial with a deft manoeuvre of his prehensile paw.
“Discuss pricing policies with those who pay you”, interrupted him the cat who had already intuited how to properly position himself here.

The pony shot glass of icy vodka whereon a folium of sweet basil herb lay surfaced on well-polished glossy mahogany. The cat tossed it off, chewed up the tiny folium and chased down alcohol with it. The vodka was mediocre but it compensated energy losses.

“And whoever shall pay for the handsomest you?” queried the bartender.

“You yourself opt. I shall take a seat for right now”, the cat beckoned at the remote dining-table whereat a lone, bachelor wolf hound in stalker’s outfit was sitting over a sprat.

“You ought not to go yonder”, spoke the simian softly, mussitatingly.

At that instant the door swung open with a snap and a luxuriously caparisoned black-maned stallion pranced up on the ladder landing platform. The spring-autumn leather coat and the bridle rein with the ornamental snaffle bit were particularly gratifying.

The stallion glanced around the saloon haughtily and snorted audibly.

“The first-time zone-bound goer”, Susych commented pensively, “Do you think he will lapse in the warp or not? Ostensibly, he ought to”.

Basilio intuited that Boba was referring to the wobbly stair step as the “warp”, and made an equivocal, arbitrarily construable gesture.

The stallion obviated the warp intact. He descended the staircase in two major strides straddling the entrapment. He obviated the bovine table equally accident-free and proceeded to squeeze his way to the bar counter approximately mimicking the itinerary of Bas.

“You trod on my toes, shit-fucker!” yelled the muskrat as he upped.

The rants which were wafted into the cat’s ears were evocative. He unmuted auricular directional microphones. He grew curious.

In the meanwhile the scenario unfolded. Scarcely had the steed attempted to extricate himself when instantaneously a well-muscled, irascible lion with piebald mane plaited in dreadlocks pounced out - surfaced from out of somewhere on the flank.

“I hear noise all right, but where is the fight?” he enquired.

“Well, you see, some bastardized lowlifes are gate-crashing. They trample on feet like on parquetry”, the muskrat informed against the stallion.

“I did nothing!” the stallion has already intuited that he embroiled in a mess but it has not yet dawned on him how much profoundly.

The lion advanced on the stallion, having half-opened his jaws, and braved him. The stallion did not shy but he was discernibly uncomfortable.

“Young gentleman, you erred thrice”, roared the lion, “Firstly, you pranced hither. Secondly, you trod on the toes of the esteemed creature...”

“Let him validate that I trod!” the stallion endeavored to belatedly appeal to codes.

“And thirdly, you overtly accused esteemed creatures of bullshitting”, predictably concluded the lion.

“Do not molest the colt! Do not maltreat him! But what are you doing!” the ample-breasted zebra shrieked frenziedly. The muskrat, without twirling around, seized her by the mane and tugged vehemently. The latter spluttered and hushed.

“Don’t bullshit me...” the balky steed neighed shrilly but instantaneously sputtered and wheezed. The cat squinted, re-scanned the situation in ultra-short waves and beheld a strip of ferrous metal: apparently, whilst the lion was diverting attention, somebody lurked stealthily from behind and was currently holding the stallion at dagger point prodding the razor edge under his shoulder blade.

The notorious wolf hound, who was keenly invigilating the situation, abruptly tautened himself, resiliently scrambled to his hind paws and surprisingly airily ambled through the aisle between tables.

“Am I bullshitting? You, jaded bastard, have you hurled an accusation at me?” the muskrat was swollen with ire. The stallion struggled to neigh something, however, at every endeavor the razor menacingly stirred under his shoulder blade so the unlucky creature only gasped for breath.

“So, everybody had witnessed”, heralded the lion, “this bastard ascended to our dwelling, misbehaved himself, violated the codes and insulted esteemed creatures. He cannot validate anything whatsoever. I opine that he is a mere thug. Would you tell me, gentlemen” he inexplicably accosted the raccoons “if thugs are welcome in here?”

“Thugs are unwanted here! We ourselves are thugs!” growled the raccoons.

“The voice of the people is the voice of Godmother. Hey, Boba!” vociferated the lion through the entire saloon howling down the tumultuous crowd with his stentorian throat, “Enquire in the kitchen at what price they purchase horseflesh?”

“I’ll get right on that!” the simian shouted back but did not budge. He was evidently well-familiarized with the plotline of the role-playable mummery.

“Halt!” barked the wolf who eventually reached the scene of the incident. “Hey, you there”, he accosted the muskrat. “Stop badgering the guy. He is a first-time goer, and is clueless about our traditions”.

“What is your relationship to him?” the muskrat bristled, "Is he a spawn of your brood? He doesn't look like one, anyway…”

The wolf neared the stallion, half-rose on tiptoes and half-embraced him by his broad shoulders.

“He is coming along with me to the Zone!” he barked so that the entire saloon might hear. “He is my mate! He comes along with me!”

“Are you his matching-key?” the lion shook his mane. The stupefied steed nodded.

“If I were you, bro, I wouldn’t have taken this horse shit along with me even as far as to the latrine”, roared the lion. His outward appearance suggested how acutely reluctant he was to release the prey from his claws.

“But I am telling you that he shall return intact and with a loot”, the wolf said unflinchingly, “Will you trot back unscathed and with a loot, colt?” he questioned the steed. The latter re-tossed his head, this time round more vigorously and unhesitatingly.

“And until we come back, he is under my protection”, summarized the wolf.

“Well, if so... Consider that clemency is granted unto thee”, the muskrat alighted, “Count yourself fortunate, lad. Hey, wolf hound, if he is your matching-key, he must stand treat”.

“He stands treat!” howled the wolf, “Boba, write down on this table! Grab a seat. Take the load off your hooves”, he offered the nonplussed stallion with well-feigned friendliness, “Well, what about a tankard of beer to welcome company?”

The puss averted his eyes. Subsequent doom of the feckless steed was self-evident.

“I pity the guy”, the marmoset sighed hypocritically “the wolf hound is a nefarious creature. He profiteers off artifacts from devious warps. His matching-keys are cremated like firewood in “incinerators”… Art thou zone-bound?”

Basilio opted not to deny the obvious and nodded.

“As I can see, you are a first time goer, but a somewhat streetwise one. Take a seat over there”, the simian stirred his unscathed ear pointing to the right from the bar counter whereat a small-size vacant dining-table with an overturned jug in the midst was located.

“Is that a reservation?” enquired the cat, “I did not pre-book. Although...” he squinted inspecting the ambience. The table seemed innocuous throughout all bandwidths and ostensibly did not portend any unexpectedness whatsoever. Nevertheless, the cat was inexplicably reluctant to sit down at it. He was inured to trust his intuition implicitly. Consequently, he reached the adjacent table whereat a haughty, grey-grizzled male goat of tall stature was sitting solemnly over a bowlful indolently re-masticating a briquette of baled hay.

It was rumored that the hircine substratum was somewhat frowned at throughout the Land of Fools generally and the Zone particularly. Yet, nevertheless, hircine flesh was not spurned as disreputable. Even more so, this particular goat was portlier, in a luxurious stalker’s accoutrement, with a stylish jingle bell through his nose. Furthermore, the hilt of some formidable sharp-bladed weapon with mosaic ivory on-lays protruded from behind the goat’s left shoulder. Even the grey goatee beard was jauntily tied in a dashing knot which was somewhat portentous.

Basilio, however, opted to waive etiquette. He merely neared the table, pulled out the chair and ensconced himself.

“Art thou invited?” bleated the goat quizzically ruminating hay.

“Thou art uninvited either”, the cat reminded him “Nevertheless, thou art seated. Anyway, I perched likewise. What do they feed on here except hay?”

The goat peered at the cat very probingly so that Bas even mused if the drabber one was clairvoyant, if he was scanning his brain. However, the goat, even if he beheld something, did not ooze it out anyway. He merely half-shut his eyes and relapsed into silence.

“Boba!” summoned the cat, “Send someone over to me, I’d like to place an order!”

In the meanwhile the goat unclosed his eyes wherein a certain verdict was legible.

“Take the malignant wart hog”, he recommended entirely affably, “it is well-cooked here, and they add palatable cabbage thereto. However, it is costly, although, it is not you who will pay the bill. Incidentally, have you decided who will feed you? On the house – forget it”.

“Well, let the house opt who will pay. The persuasion is on me”, the cat shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, really, that is, you are insomuch tough? But why then the toughest you did not sit there?” the goat pointed his horn at the dining-table with the overturned jug.

“I disliked the place”, said Basilio.

“Mm...” drawled out the goat unbaling a fresher bale of hay, “You may well be right. Under the jug there is an “extinguisher”, this is such an artifact”, he deigned to explicate “a not particularly baneful one. Merely, it discharges any batteries down to zero. So, you might forfeit your laser devices, electric-powered cat.

Scarcely had Basilio retorted mordantly, when a cateress, a rather ingratiating fulvous bitch came over to the table. Regretfully, turbidity was undulating in her bleary eyes: maidenly IIQ was balancing on the verge or so. A frayed pet collar with a metal buckle thereon was dangling around her neck. As judged from the inscription engraved thereon, she was registered on Boba as his privately-owned electorate.

“Tell Boba, let him cook the malignant pimply wart hog, one portion”, the cat enunciated slowly and distinctly.

The doggess suddenly relapsed into torpor. A sort of corrugation, the symptom of intense mental exertion, wrinkled her smoothened tawny brow.

“But it is unavailable”, the bitch finally yelped, “it has been eaten”, she spread out her forepaws.

“Are there any vampire bat’s tentacles left?” the goat questioned sternly.

The lass’s appearance signalled bewilderment and cluelessness.

“What is available then, lacerated cunt?” grunted out the goat.

The bitch yawned petulantly denuding her fangs. Obviously, she agonized over each mental effort.

“The menu is available”, she eventually whelped, “Probably, the menu?”

“Mm... but, probably, you”, the goat smirked lewdly in the hircine style and nictitated at Basilio, “Would you like this bitch?”

The cat screwed up his face in revulsion.

“As a matter of fact, I intended to dine”, he reminded.

“Well, this is precisely what I am talking about? You are carnivorous, anyway. How about fresher meat? Hey, Boba!” he yelled, “Do you need this flea-infested cunt any longer or she can be cannibalized in the kitchen?”

“You need not”, Basilio abruptly interrupted him “I loathe canine flesh”.

“Do you have some prejudices?” the goat let his amber eye rove, “or your religion tabooed it?”

“I am basically feline, anyway. Canine odor ruins my appetite”, explained Basilio. “A little mouse or a rat is a different matter”.

“A rat? This is an idea. Boba!” bleated the goat, “Have you pickled the rat?”

“I did. It has been soaking for twenty four hours in vinegar pickles!” Boba shouted back “An ordinary portion?”

“Double”, requested the cat.

The obtuse bitch-cateress still stood blinking dumbly. Basilio spanked her on the bottom - she gratefully wiggled her tail - and sent away.

“Perhaps, we can have a quick one?” suggested the goat, “to our acquaintance?”

Basilio roughly estimated his strategies. The goat might be helpful as a source of intelligence. The soul was yearning after relaxation. In addition to that, it was somewhat tawdry and inappropriate to perpetrate certain acts sober-headedly. And as far as the fact that it will be indispensable to perpetrate them is concerned, the cat not in the slightest degree doubted that any longer.

“We can have a king-size one”, he resolved, “which one would you prefer?”

“Crystalline”, recommended the goat, “it is Perdu-Monocles-infused”.

“And what is the good of it? the cat opted to clarify, “does is distil?”

“No, it produces the effect of distillation”, authoritatively elucidated the goat, “that is, it renders it ostensibly drinkable”.

“Well, let it be “Crystalline””, acquiesced the cat, “Incidentally, my name is Basilio, Persecutor, Expert Problemist”.

“An expert on problem solving or on problem spawning?” the goat squinted.

“These are mutually intermeshed”, the cat shrugged his shoulders.

“Fair enough. Septimius Popandopulos”, introduced himself the cornuted one. “I have a niche over-specialization: Sodomizer Scapegoat”.

[[Категория:English translation]]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (FULL TEXT TRANSLATION)

2020-05-25T12:00:44Z

Alexander Sharov: Новая страница: «MIKHAIL KHARITONOV THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO VOLUME ONE THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO CHAPTER THIRTEEN WHEREIN THE FATIGUED WAYFARER OBTAINS B…»

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THIRTEEN WHEREIN THE FATIGUED WAYFARER OBTAINS BOARD, LODGING AND COMPANIONSHIP

October 10, 312 H. E., an hour before sunset

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Terrain

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

“Sauerkraut Soup” Inn

Carte Du Jour:

All prices are indicated in standard soldos (1/100 of the gold sovereign).

BEVERAGES

Vodka Ordinary (100 gram) – 2 sol.

Vodka Ordinary (1 liter) – 20 sol.

Chianti Ordinary (1 liter) – 10 sol.

Vodka “Crystalline” Artifacts-Infused (1 liter) – 30 sol.

Pale Ale (Jug) – 2 sol.

Dark Beer (Jug) – 2 sol.

Fungal Ale Craft Brewed (Jug) – 4 sol.

Kvass (Jug) – 1 sol.

Coffee Freshly Brewed (Demitasse) – 1 sol.

FOODS

Jellied Vampire Bat’s Tentacles in Aspic Au Jus – 2 sovereigns.

Spermatic Ventricle of Malignant Pimpled Wart Hog Stuffed with Green Cabbage – 1 sovereign 50 sol.

Creacle Stewed with Carrot Chernobyl Style – 60 sol.

Meat Balls Eupeptic – 4 sol.

Chanakhs from Pikachu with Fresh Vegetables – 45 sol.

Slowpoke’s Flesh with Dumplings – 40 sol.

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ < 70) – 20 sol. per brochette

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ > 70, Flesh Legalized) – 40 sol. per skewer

Barbecue Fleshy (Flesh IIQ > 70, Flesh Smuggled) – 50 sol. per skewer + negotiable with management

Azu from Meat Cuttings – 10 sol.

Cheese from Incubator’s Milk “Maternal” – 3 sol.

Fungal Potato Fried – 3 sol.

Sauerkraut Soup Ordinary – 3 sol.

Sauerkraut Soup Extra Ordinary – 6 sol.

Vegetables Served on Separate Dish – 2 sol.

Cherry Plum Sauce – 1 sol.

Walnut Sauce – 1 sol.

A LA CARTE

Fuck-Headed Wood Pecker Denigrated in Charcoal Roaster Grill by Artisanal Recipe King-Size (the specialty of the house for 4 dinner guests) – 5 sovereigns, time of execution of order – 8 hours.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Smashed Crockery, Per Piece – 10 sol.

Obnoxious Misconduct (Urination and Defecation in the Shared Saloon Inclusively) – 50 sol.

Vandalism of Cabinetry, Equipment and so forth – at prime cost + 20%.

Brawl with Inn-Goers with No Grievous Bodily Injuries Inflicted – 1 sovereign.

Brawl with Security Guards with No Grievous Bodily Injuries Inflicted – 2 sovereigns + indemnification for emotional distress.

Grievous Bodily Injury or Mortification of a Waiter or Other Employee of the Inn with IIQ < 70 – at prime cost but no less than 5 sovereigns + 20% in the favor of the inn.

Grievous Bodily Injury or Mortification of an Inn-goer with IIQ > 70 – reimbursement by the codes of the underworld + 20% in the favor of the inn.

Brawl with Management – the amount of the damage is estimable by the management.

Blasphemous Desecration of the Holiest Religion Aggravated by Disesteem of Codes – On-The-Spot Forfeiture of Available Property and Gang Raping.

Have a Pleasant Rest!

The gate to the “Sauerkraut Soup” inn was hammered together from larchen sawn timber fastened with screwed-on wrought-iron crossbars. Three-edged forged-steel barbs menacingly targeting at the guest's lower limbs protruded from below. The narrow latticed observation slit embrasure seemed extremely uninviting.

Basilio glanced up in the vesper sky - it was growing dark. He pondered for a while. The check-in with the “Sauerkraut Soup” was an indispensably inalienable element of his mission. Furthermore, he ravenously famished whilst peregrinating. Peripheral synthesis of adenosine tri-phosphate reinvigorated the organism but it did not compensate nonrenewable devitaminization, paucity of microelements and other nutrient additives. Last time he supped adequately in the pedobear’s den. A sufficiently considerable period of time has elapsed from thenceforth.

However, the fastidious feline was extremely reluctant to socialize with autochthonous folks. It is not that stalkers were altogether unobservant of codes of conduct, but they were notoriously disreputable even throughout the Land of Fools, dwellers whereof could scarcely be shocked by ill breeding. The cat likewise chanced to intercommunicate with this fraternity: on several occasions he purchased exotic artifacts from them to satisfy the requirements of the Piedmont Kingdom, and could re-confirm from his first-hand experience that disreputableness of artifact raiders was considerably well-earned.

Anyway, it was indispensable to usher in. Having resolved to act as the situation permits, Basilio toggled his vision into the X-ray spectrum and peered behind the door. A massive large-boned creature typical of cavicornians was situated therein. Insofar as it was evidenced by its skeleton topology, it alighted on the floor clasping an obtuse cumbersome object, in all likelihood, a bastinado, on its lap.

Basilio synchronized the spectrum into visibility frequencies, elevated his pair of goggles, knocked on the gate, and instantaneously recoiled on two steps rearwards preventing his hind paws from being maimed by the spikes.
The gate flung open lustily. A muscular ox clasping a bastinado was deployed behind it.

“Yes, what gives?” bellowed the ox.

“Yes, yes, ream your ass”, courteously, ritually responded the cat. “Is there anything edible and potable available in your emporium?”

“Your drinks were quaffed last night”, the ox inclined his head flaunting copper armored antlers.

“And what if I glean some?” the cat drew nearer roughly calculating how to better neutralize the churlish beast without crippling him gravely.

“They will bust the holy fuck out of you rather” vowed the ox. However, he backed off.

Slithering softly past the ardent bovine carcass, the cat pussyfooted through the shorter obscure aisle and found himself in incommodious premises with some wall-mounted hooks, adjacent to the door. Steady noise interruptible with ejaculations and cachinnations wafted from behind the door. The cat re-synced and fine-tuned the range into X-ray wavelengths and beheld an ample saloon crammed full with multiform and multiple-sized fluctuant ossifications. His attention was particularly riveted to someone’s massive skeleton in the left-hand corner, and the slender petite skeleton by the farthest edge of the elongated scintillating strip, most probably, the bar counter.

Basilio toggled into the red segment of the visible frequency spectrum, and ushered in.

Generally, the saloon proved to be precisely identical with what it seemed from behind the door: ample and congested therewith, for it was windowless and jam-packed with haunters. The premises were illuminated by some wands protruding from out of wall-mounted overhung supports. The wands were ostensibly incandescent although they irradiated no warmth. Furthermore, in the infrared spectrum they loomed opaque. Seemingly, these were some artifacts from the Zone.

The cat stood on the smaller platform elevated above the flooring at about two meters. The wooden staircase, which Basilio inexplicably disliked, was ushering downwards. Having augmented standard vision with high-frequency wavelengths and radiation, the cat beheld that the third stair-step from above was unhinged and impaled upon some sort of an axle, evidently, so as a fortuitous visitor whilst endeavoring to tread thereon should trip over, tumble and collapse downward. Calculating the trajectory, the cat detected the table whereat a massive ox, a sibling to the one who saluted him at the threshold, was relaxing over a jug full of frothy beer.

The bovine table was the smallest one. All other dining places were designed to accommodate five or six persons. A suspicious-looking coterie ensconced by the very edge of the aisle: a provocatively grinning buxom zebra was gambling at cards with a gozman, toxic even visually. An antelope tranquilly pined over the liquor-glass. Some musk-rat, felonious and scraggy, gently stroked and fondled her by the knee. A nursery of raccoons-debauchees and fornicators was cavorting nearby, they endeavored to chorus the anachronistic vintage ode “vultures de-hibernated early in the morning, pandiculated, flatulated”. Sniffing at the circumambient air the cat was persuaded to acknowledge that raccoons were somewhat correct: it was not the redolence of rosebuds that hovered around the saloon.

The premises were isolated with the elongated bar counter. The aisle-way conducting toward the water closet loomed on its left. The corridor ushering into the adjacent room, the billiard room, as judged from what Bas could discern through the wall, was situated on the right-hand side thereof.

The cat descended gingerly obviating the insidious stair-step, and sashayed to the bar counter. However, scarcely had he completed five steps when somebody tugged at his trouser leg.

“You trod on my toes, whoreson!” snarled the muskrat half-upping.

The cat slightly elevated his pair of goggles.

“I untrod your toes. I punched you in the eye”, he uttered irradiating a hair-thin laser beam into the left-hand pupil of the muskrat so as not to blind him for life but to merely combust the retina.

The muskrat wailed chokingly and clutched his eye. The cat grinned, pawed at the glass from the tabletop and smelled it. Water was in the glass.

He reached the bar counter unadventurously, although glances of habitués were riveted on his dorsum transfixing it like needles.

A marmoset or, perchance, a simian was wiping glassware with his tail behind the bar counter. The pectoral name badge “Boba Susych” was affixed on his grizzled wool.

“Wellness and goodness”, Basilio saluted him in accordance with consuetude of the Land of Fools.

“Neither fuck nor nastiness. Have you paid your bill for the alcohol last time round?” snarled Boba continuing to fumble with glasses.

“Last time round I was gone”, said the cat.

“Are you a first-time goer or who? Get the hell out of here. Alcohol is not dispensed to first-time goers in here”, the simian grew even less amicable, “or request more decent gentlemen, perchance, they will regale and you will pay for all”.

“Last time round I was gone, and the time before last you were gone”, the cat squinted aiming at him, “for that you will pour me vodka now” with these words he sheared off the simian’s left earlobe with his laser emitter.

Boba’s jaw dropped. He speechlessly snapped it shut, groped the ear, glanced down at his fingers, sniffed at them. His muzzle contracted into a sort of grimace.

“Two soldos per fifty gram”, announced Susych extracting a labeled phial with a deft manoeuvre of his prehensile paw.
“Discuss pricing policies with those who pay you”, interrupted him the cat who had already intuited how to properly position himself here.

The pony shot glass of icy vodka whereon a folium of sweet basil herb lay surfaced on well-polished glossy mahogany. The cat tossed it off, chewed up the tiny folium and chased down alcohol with it. The vodka was mediocre but it compensated energy losses.

“And whoever shall pay for the handsomest you?” queried the bartender.

“You yourself opt. I shall take a seat for right now”, the cat beckoned at the remote dining-table whereat a lone, bachelor wolf hound in stalker’s outfit was sitting over a sprat.

“You ought not to go yonder”, spoke the simian softly, mussitatingly.

At that instant the door swung open with a snap and a luxuriously caparisoned black-maned stallion pranced up on the ladder landing platform. The spring-autumn leather coat and the bridle rein with the ornamental snaffle bit were particularly gratifying.

The stallion glanced around the saloon haughtily and snorted audibly.

“The first-time zone-bound goer”, Susych commented pensively, “Do you think he will lapse in the warp or not? Ostensibly, he ought to”.

Basilio intuited that Boba was referring to the wobbly stair step as the “warp”, and made an equivocal, arbitrarily construable gesture.

The stallion obviated the warp intact. He descended the staircase in two major strides straddling the entrapment. He obviated the bovine table equally accident-free and proceeded to squeeze his way to the bar counter approximately mimicking the itinerary of Bas.

“You trod on my toes, shit-fucker!” yelled the muskrat as he upped.

The rants which were wafted into the cat’s ears were evocative. He unmuted auricular directional microphones. He grew curious.

In the meanwhile the scenario unfolded. Scarcely had the steed attempted to extricate himself when instantaneously a well-muscled, irascible lion with piebald mane plaited in dreadlocks pounced out - surfaced from out of somewhere on the flank.

“I hear noise all right, but where is the fight?” he enquired.

“Well, you see, some bastardized lowlifes are gate-crashing. They trample on feet like on parquetry”, the muskrat informed against the stallion.

“I did nothing!” the stallion has already intuited that he embroiled in a mess but it has not yet dawned on him how much profoundly.

The lion advanced on the stallion, having half-opened his jaws, and braved him. The stallion did not shy but he was discernibly uncomfortable.

“Young gentleman, you erred thrice”, roared the lion, “Firstly, you pranced hither. Secondly, you trod on the toes of the esteemed creature...”

“Let him validate that I trod!” the stallion endeavored to belatedly appeal to codes.

“And thirdly, you overtly accused esteemed creatures of bullshitting”, predictably concluded the lion.

“Do not molest the colt! Do not maltreat him! But what are you doing!” the ample-breasted zebra shrieked frenziedly. The muskrat, without twirling around, seized her by the mane and tugged vehemently. The latter spluttered and hushed.

“Don’t bullshit me...” the balky steed neighed shrilly but instantaneously sputtered and wheezed. The cat squinted, re-scanned the situation in ultra-short waves and beheld a strip of ferrous metal: apparently, whilst the lion was diverting attention, somebody lurked stealthily from behind and was currently holding the stallion at dagger point prodding the razor edge under his shoulder blade.

The notorious wolf hound, who was keenly invigilating the situation, abruptly tautened himself, resiliently scrambled to his hind paws and surprisingly airily ambled through the aisle between tables.

“Am I bullshitting? You, jaded bastard, have you hurled an accusation at me?” the muskrat was swollen with ire. The stallion struggled to neigh something, however, at every endeavor the razor menacingly stirred under his shoulder blade so the unlucky creature only gasped for breath.

“So, everybody had witnessed”, heralded the lion, “this bastard ascended to our dwelling, misbehaved himself, violated the codes and insulted esteemed creatures. He cannot validate anything whatsoever. I opine that he is a mere thug. Would you tell me, gentlemen” he inexplicably accosted the raccoons “if thugs are welcome in here?”

“Thugs are unwanted here! We ourselves are thugs!” growled the raccoons.

“The voice of the people is the voice of Godmother. Hey, Boba!” vociferated the lion through the entire saloon howling down the tumultuous crowd with his stentorian throat, “Enquire in the kitchen at what price they purchase horseflesh?”

“I’ll get right on that!” the simian shouted back but did not budge. He was evidently well-familiarized with the plotline of the role-playable mummery.

“Halt!” barked the wolf who eventually reached the scene of the incident. “Hey, you there”, he accosted the muskrat. “Stop badgering the guy. He is a first-time goer, and is clueless about our traditions”.

“What is your relationship to him?” the muskrat bristled, "Is he a spawn of your brood? He doesn't look like one, anyway…”

The wolf neared the stallion, half-rose on tiptoes and half-embraced him by his broad shoulders.

“He is coming along with me to the Zone!” he barked so that the entire saloon might hear. “He is my mate! He comes along with me!”

“Are you his matching-key?” the lion shook his mane. The stupefied steed nodded.

“If I were you, bro, I wouldn’t have taken this horse shit along with me even as far as to the latrine”, roared the lion. His outward appearance suggested how acutely reluctant he was to release the prey from his claws.

“But I am telling you that he shall return intact and with a loot”, the wolf said unflinchingly, “Will you trot back unscathed and with a loot, colt?” he questioned the steed. The latter re-tossed his head, this time round more vigorously and unhesitatingly.

“And until we come back, he is under my protection”, summarized the wolf.

“Well, if so... Consider that clemency is granted unto thee”, the muskrat alighted, “Count yourself fortunate, lad. Hey, wolf hound, if he is your matching-key, he must stand treat”.

“He stands treat!” howled the wolf, “Boba, write down on this table! Grab a seat. Take the load off your hooves”, he offered the nonplussed stallion with well-feigned friendliness, “Well, what about a tankard of beer to welcome company?”

The puss averted his eyes. Subsequent doom of the feckless steed was self-evident.

“I pity the guy”, the marmoset sighed hypocritically “the wolf hound is a nefarious creature. He profiteers off artifacts from devious warps. His matching-keys are cremated like firewood in “incinerators”… Art thou zone-bound?”

Basilio opted not to deny the obvious and nodded.

“As I can see, you are a first time goer, but a somewhat streetwise one. Take a seat over there”, the simian stirred his unscathed ear pointing to the right from the bar counter whereat a small-size vacant dining-table with an overturned jug in the midst was located.

“Is that a reservation?” enquired the cat, “I did not pre-book. Although...” he squinted inspecting the ambience. The table seemed innocuous throughout all bandwidths and ostensibly did not portend any unexpectedness whatsoever. Nevertheless, the cat was inexplicably reluctant to sit down at it. He was inured to trust his intuition implicitly. Consequently, he reached the adjacent table whereat a haughty, grey-grizzled male goat of tall stature was sitting solemnly over a bowlful indolently re-masticating a briquette of baled hay.

It was rumored that the hircine substratum was somewhat frowned at throughout the Land of Fools generally and the Zone particularly. Yet, nevertheless, hircine flesh was not spurned as disreputable. Even more so, this particular goat was portlier, in a luxurious stalker’s accoutrement, with a stylish jingle bell through his nose. Furthermore, the hilt of some formidable sharp-bladed weapon with mosaic ivory on-lays protruded from behind the goat’s left shoulder. Even the grey goatee beard was jauntily tied in a dashing knot which was somewhat portentous.

Basilio, however, opted to waive etiquette. He merely neared the table, pulled out the chair and ensconced himself.

“Art thou invited?” bleated the goat quizzically ruminating hay.

“Thou art uninvited either”, the cat reminded him “Nevertheless, thou art seated. Anyway, I perched likewise. What do they feed on here except hay?”

The goat peered at the cat very probingly so that Bas even mused if the drabber one was clairvoyant, if he was scanning his brain. However, the goat, even if he beheld something, did not ooze it out anyway. He merely half-shut his eyes and relapsed into silence.

“Boba!” summoned the cat, “Send someone over to me, I’d like to place an order!”

In the meanwhile the goat unclosed his eyes wherein a certain verdict was legible.

“Take the malignant wart hog”, he recommended entirely affably, “it is well-cooked here, and they add palatable cabbage thereto. However, it is costly, although, it is not you who will pay the bill. Incidentally, have you decided who will feed you? On the house – forget it”.

“Well, let the house opt who will pay. The persuasion is on me”, the cat shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, really, that is, you are insomuch tough? But why then the toughest you did not sit there?” the goat pointed his horn at the dining-table with the overturned jug.

“I disliked the place”, said Basilio.

“Mm...” drawled out the goat unbaling a fresher bale of hay, “You may well be right. Under the jug there is an “extinguisher”, this is such an artifact”, he deigned to explicate “a not particularly baneful one. Merely, it discharges any batteries down to zero. So, you might forfeit your laser devices, electric-powered cat.

Scarcely had Basilio retorted mordantly, when a cateress, a rather ingratiating fulvous bitch came over to the table. Regretfully, turbidity was undulating in her bleary eyes: maidenly IIQ was balancing on the verge or so. A frayed pet collar with a metal buckle thereon was dangling around her neck. As judged from the inscription engraved thereon, she was registered on Boba as his privately-owned electorate.

“Tell Boba, let him cook the malignant pimply wart hog, one portion”, the cat enunciated slowly and distinctly.

The doggess suddenly relapsed into torpor. A sort of corrugation, the symptom of intense mental exertion, wrinkled her smoothened tawny brow.

“But it is unavailable”, the bitch finally yelped, “it has been eaten”, she spread out her forepaws.

“Are there any vampire bat’s tentacles left?” the goat questioned sternly.

The lass’s appearance signalled bewilderment and cluelessness.

“What is available then, lacerated cunt?” grunted out the goat.

The bitch yawned petulantly denuding her fangs. Obviously, she agonized over each mental effort.

“The menu is available”, she eventually whelped, “Probably, the menu?”

“Mm... but, probably, you”, the goat smirked lewdly in the hircine style and nictitated at Basilio, “Would you like this bitch?”

The cat screwed up his face in revulsion.

“As a matter of fact, I intended to dine”, he reminded.

“Well, this is precisely what I am talking about? You are carnivorous, anyway. How about fresher meat? Hey, Boba!” he yelled, “Do you need this flea-infested cunt any longer or she can be cannibalized in the kitchen?”

“You need not”, Basilio abruptly interrupted him “I loathe canine flesh”.

“Do you have some prejudices?” the goat let his amber eye rove, “or your religion tabooed it?”

“I am basically feline, anyway. Canine odor ruins my appetite”, explained Basilio. “A little mouse or a rat is a different matter”.

“A rat? This is an idea. Boba!” bleated the goat, “Have you pickled the rat?”

“I did. It has been soaking for twenty four hours in vinegar pickles!” Boba shouted back “An ordinary portion?”

“Double”, requested the cat.

The obtuse bitch-cateress still stood blinking dumbly. Basilio spanked her on the bottom - she gratefully wiggled her tail - and sent away.

“Perhaps, we can have a quick one?” suggested the goat, “to our acquaintance?”

Basilio roughly estimated his strategies. The goat might be helpful as a source of intelligence. The soul was yearning after relaxation. In addition to that, it was somewhat tawdry and inappropriate to perpetrate certain acts sober-headedly. And as far as the fact that it will be indispensable to perpetrate them is concerned, the cat not in the slightest degree doubted that any longer.

“We can have a king-size one”, he resolved, “which one would you prefer?”

“Crystalline”, recommended the goat, “it is Perdu-Monocles-infused”.

“And what is the good of it? the cat opted to clarify, “does is distil?”

“No, it produces the effect of distillation”, authoritatively elucidated the goat, “that is, it renders it ostensibly drinkable”.

“Well, let it be “Crystalline””, acquiesced the cat, “Incidentally, my name is Basilio, Persian, Expert Problemist”.

“An expert on problem solving or on problem spawning?” the goat squinted.

“These are mutually intermeshed”, the cat shrugged his shoulders.

“It is fair enough. Septimius Popandopulos”, introduced himself the cornuted one. “I have a niche over-specialization: a sodomizing scapegoat”.

[[Категория:English translation]]

CHAPTER SEVEN (FULL TEXT TRANSLATION)

2019-11-25T01:23:01Z

Alexander Sharov: Новая страница: «MIKHAIL KHARITONOV THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO VOLUME ONE THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO CHAPTER SEVEN WHEREIN WE, RECURRING TO THE ELAPSED DEVEL…»

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER SEVEN WHEREIN WE, RECURRING TO THE ELAPSED DEVELOPMENTS AND AS THOUGH RETROSPECTING, WHICH FROM THENCEFORWARD WE SHALL PRACTICE FREQUENTLY, WITNESS THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CERTAIN PILGRIM AND THE SAINT-LIKE RIGHTEOUS CREATURE

October 5, 312 H. E. well into the evening segueing into nighttime.

Land of Fools, Inter-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY

“… arguably, it is plausible to admit as a firmly established fact that the cult of Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix in the most salient features thereof crystallized long before the revelation of the Dead Man's Chest, and independently of this phenomenon. Fundamentally, it was based upon the idolatry of motherhood in terms of a sublimated transcendental idea ubiquitous predominantly amongst incubated entities, and also the anthropolatry (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and its genome veneration mainstreamed amongst anthropoid authorities. Thus, the quintessential principle of the entire paradigm: “Maternity is saint-like” had been documented by informants as early as half a century before the disinterment of the Chest. The discrimination of entities whose physiognomies vary discernibly from the romanticized anthropoid one likewise epitomizes the integral element of the traditional cultural milieu of the Land of Fools (see my oeuvre “Anthropomorphism as a Quasi-Aristocratic Ideology: Incunabula and Parallelisms”, KHLF, Issue 11, hereon). Indisputably, however, is that it is precisely the Chest with its audio and video content (in contrast with the textual component which exerted virtually no influence upon the Land of Fools, which fact merits a particular examination) that marked the messianic milestone. Idolized yet ethereal abstruseness acquired the palpably perceptible incarnation whilst ill-defined pagan practices expeditiously metamorphosed into the full-fledged religious system boasting its own cultic textual canon and icons, well-elaborated ceremonies and rituals and, last but not least, the caste of consecrated ecclesiastics, the priesthood who enforced orthodoxy”.

N. E. Znayko. More on the Genesis of the Goddaughter-Matrolatry. See in “Cultural Heritage of the Land of Fools: Collection of Multi-Disciplinary Essays”, Issue # 14. Torah Borah University Publishing House. Torah Borah, 108672 daytimes from the Apocalypse.

Bas descried the small wooden cabin at the distance of around five hundred meters, synchronously in three wavelengths. In the grayness of the realm of high-frequency bandwidths it phosphoresced in incarnadine: some electrical appliances were being operated therein. In ebony-verdant infrared it silhouetted the glaringly lettuce-green rectangle: it was emitting surgeless warmth. In the x-ray spectrum it was particularly inconspicuous although the underground cable tail wired thereto was discernible. Presumably, a communications node or a transformer vault was situated therein formerly.

The hitherto lurking moon abruptly protruded and gushed forth with its larcenous moonlight from behind the transient cloud bisecting the sky with the narrow wedge with opaque pinnacles above, as though wolves mounted it, squatted down thereon and rode along, as it were, routinely, to shit. The cat synchronized bandwidths superposing the wireless one upon radiation, and wolves segued into evanescent oblong clusters, the moon instead being haloed with a fluctuant aura. Similarly, the wooden cabin luxuriated in the tremulous, verdantly grayish halo. Echoes of sacramental eulogies, anthems and scarcely audible strumming of balalaika wafted from thence.

Basilio mused. The small structure seemed ostensibly non-hazardous. Anyway, it oozed no observable threat whatsoever. On the other part, the fact that the dweller thereof was not concealing himself itself portended that no easy prey should be reckoned upon equally. And then again, it was absolutely enigmatically who dared to overtly colonize the neutral territory, and why dwarfish ponies as well as woollies tolerate this.

The cat loathed abstruseness: multifarious troubles typically oozed forth from thence, occasionally not instantaneously yet subtly, stealthily. That is why he resolved to invest some time into reconnoitring merely so as not to leave goodness knows what in the rear, behind his back.

As he neared, Basilio discerned what precisely is sung. The bass, hoarse voice karaoked, or rather was karaoking the sacramental chanson from the Cycle of Hymnography by Elena Vaenga.

The small edifice was situated upon the hillock under which the wreckage of the windmill was strewn around. A scarcely visible footpath conducting upwards was discernible in the millimeter-wave range. However, the prudent cat preferred to climb up the hillside slope. He sneaked up almost stealthily, solely at the edge of the summit his claws glissaded off grindingly, and clods of earth collapsed downwards. The cat paralyzed and alerted pre-empting some plausible backlash. However, psalm-singing was not discontinued, not even for a moment.

“I am re-glued to the window. I re-kindle the cigarette, mother, anew”, drawled out the rich, throaty bass voice accentuating sacramental syllables “mother” with the particularly orotund basso so that the cat almost visualized an anonymous stranger thurifying frankincense to Goddaughter. “And tranquility is circumjacent, utilized as a substrate ...” the balalaika strummed for a final time and trailed off.

Although Basilio disbelieved in Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix, he instinctively marveled at hugeness of giftedness of ancient bards. To visualize the piece of workmanship whose genetic substrate had been Tranquility: that re-echoed grandiloquently, exaltedly and abstrusely. However, such epithets behooved the icon of the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix.

Anyway, currently the time was not ripe for meditating on loftiest subjects. Having dismissed unrelated ideas, the cat groped for a secure toehold, leapfrogged, somersaulted upwards and found himself by the edge of the rusticated house wall. The acrid odor of the putrescent fish and freshly defecated excrements wafted around: obviously, the house-dweller utilized this side as a junkyard. The aroma of excrements was pungent and unfamiliar: the aggressive ursine component was identifiably scented interspersed with something else, either leporine or vulpine. Anyhow, one thing was certain: a male animal defecated thereat which had been evidenced by the rancid smell of putrescent adrenaline and testosterone acidulousness.

The cat peered through the wall in the X-ray range. The nanometer wave lengths were perceptibly lacking. Nevertheless, some creature with an extremely massive skeleton, around twice the size of Bas himself, was discernible. He executed slow-moving oscillations in the genuflected position in front of the sophisticated piece of metalized artwork.

Basilio ascended gingerly, and stealthily circumvented the angle by the narrow footpath, simultaneously re-synchronizing his perception nearer unto the visible spectrum. The pair of goggles hindered thereat, and he shifted them off to the forehead. Moonlight inundated empty eye orbits, drilled into lenses and impinged incident upon photo-multipliers’ planar surfaces ejecting electronic particles from out of them.

The plank-built gate with the wrought-iron door-knocker attached hereon silhouetted. The psalm sung by Grigoriy Leps echoed from behind it, the soundtrack lesser venerated than the sacramental canon by Elena Vaenga yet likewise the collegially-blessed one.

Having deferentially hearkened unto the anthem through the end thereof, to interrupt the holiest karaoke was considered a grave screw-up, as chance offers, even collegially punishable, the cat energetically pulled at the doorknocker. The gate did not yield. He pulled it more vigorously. Thereupon he deduced that the door might likewise be pushable. He pushed it then, and paralyzed in awe at the threshold.

He was ushered into the pedobears' preaching house. The multi-level iconostasis occupied the entire mural space of the opposite wall. Printed hardcopies of ancient imagery of the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix reposed in tabernacles illuminated by icon lamps. Icons were etched out painstakingly, meticulously and scrupulously, as it were, pixelized. That was a certain lesser-known collection, not the mainstream one amongst the authorities of the Land of Fools “The Petite Mary’s Privy Parts” or “Cherubic Buttocks of the Petite Veronika the Morsel”, but rather computer files retrieved from some remotest labyrinths of the Chest. The ebony-haired anthropoid female infant, precisely these terms recurred to the contemplator, was meditating intently recumbent on the sofa sprawling out her disproportionately slender legs. The dwarfish perforated defloration of her Divine Womb was virginally plugged with a certain prayerful object, either with the cordless massager or with some other sacramental item from amongst those usable by the ancients on such occasions. Uncharacteristically exquisite lineaments of her countenance mirrored such a voluptuous, super-terrestrial ecstatic ravishment that even Basilio, who dubbed the Collegiate Cult a heresy, instinctively thrilled.

“May Foremother bless you and may Goddaughter salute you, the holiest Deputy of the State Duma Vikentiy Vilenovich Parkhachik, who perpetuated these saint icons for us”, the cat deferentially enunciated the unabridged ritual formulae and bowed.

“Let her verily bless and salute”, echoed the pedved’s bass voice. He groveled prostrating in front of the iconostasis in a mass of red bearskin. The vintage balalaika, the antediluvian one, lathed from yellowish ivory, lay beside him.

“Do you yearn to worship Goddaughter-Foremother, pilgrim?” enquired the master of the household. “If so, genuflect in front of the Womb of Goddaughter, and we shall eulogize her in a sacramental karaoke”.

“I profess an alternative religion”, responded the cat urbanely. “However, I have never blasphemed against Goddaughter-Foremother: neither verbally, nor mentally, nor through my acts. And you can take my word for it collegially. Merely, I am a passer-by. I came around to warm myself. If I hindered your ascesis, please, excuse me, I shall go away”.

“Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix dotes on all of her fathers and children”, replied the pedobear rearing his head, “even prodigal and erring ones. I am Father Onuphrius Neurotic. This is my last name. And the aforesaid is spelled solid and unhyphenated”, he added obviously anticipating to hear a vulgar joke from the cat.

“May your ilk be glorified, exalted and superlatively fecund”, similarly ceremoniously and grandiloquently said Basilio. The pedobear was discernibly delighted to hearken unto that.

“Please, relax in the next room, pilgrim. You are travel-weary”, he said blandly. “I must finalize the liturgy. I have not yet recited vespers”.

He genuflected once again, grasped the prayer beads with his claws and, fixing his eyes on sacred images began to whisper the holy praying: “your spread beaver makes me quiver”.

In the meanwhile the cat furtively pussyfooted in the next room whereto the lowly aisle, curtained off with the hopsack cloth, was ushering through the wall.

It was opaquely and smoky thereat. The smoldered wicker lamp protruded from off the rush-light holder, below, underneath it, dispersed airy white cinders floated in the water tub. The cat detected another lamp nearby, inserted it in the rush-light holder, and kindled it with his sinistrocular laser device. The flickering flame sparks somehow elbowed the opaqueness away. The latter, however, withdrew a short way off, if only to make corrugated and obfuscated walls visible. The massive coffer with the nigrescent with age lid locked away with the large-size rust-eaten padlock occupied the left-hand side off the door almost completely. The icon from the series “Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix with Petite Nipples” suspended above the coffer. The feline quizzically ogled at the small icon: as far as he was informed, the majority of pedobears referred to such iconography as too old. Evidently, the house-owner epitomized the exotic ecumenical orthodox ramification of the Collegial Cult which venerated all the computer files retrieved from the Dead Man’s Chest as equally vivifying and solely varyingly elucidating the capacities of the Eternal Figure’s Godhead.

On the right-hand side adjacent to the wall there stood the couch with a bundle of rags heaped thereon which reeked of an unwashed body. The malodor was neutralized by the aroma of pickled custard squashes: the pressurized barrel blackened in the corner. The tinned plateful with orts of the feed concentrate lay on the slovenly hammered together tabletop. The saucer of sturgeon roe buttered with oleomargarine, and the damasked hemisphere with the exquisitely arched twig-little nozzle from one side thereof, towered thereon. Having scrutinized that, the cat realized that this had been a vintage battery-operated electric tea kettle, the rarest and precious thing. However, it was discharged: the cat acutely intuited such issues.

Basilio calculated his possessions. Tesla-batteries integrated into his body were replenished at about twenty per cents: the accelerated march on an empty stomach consumed quite some energy. He was likewise coerced to regularly utilize his laser devices whilst all of his endeavors at tapping into the Yoke in any full-fledged way were frustrated: the longest durable contact therewith lasted for as long as approximately five seconds. Nevertheless, the cat felt an urge to somehow reciprocate the hospitable pedobear, well, to recharge his tea kettle at minimum. This is why he unplugged the auxiliary feed-through cord from under his tail, and re-plugged terminals to the battery, whereupon he squatted down on the couch and mused.

Footsteps thudded, the hopsack cloth shuffled being drawn aside. Father Onuphrius ambled into the room, and squatted down on the coffer, having occupied all but half of the room with his carcass.

“You are vainly exhausting yourself, pilgrim”, he said discerning the cord which liaised the tea-kettle to the cat. “I have got electricity. I have got no tea”.

“I am powerless about that” the cat strugglingly retracted the cord, the latter solely swished through the air. “I don't have any tea too. I don't have any victuals whatsoever... and I don't need any”, he added promptly seeing that the pedobear upped and obviously wended to creep somewhere.

“Food is indispensable even for your ilk”, the pedobear demurred sternly. “Anyway, please, taste the custard squash. I pickled it myself. Garlic and cloves are also my own-grown”, he added proudly. “It tastes super cool, appetizing”.

The cat made some lame excuses briefly. Before too long he shared the table with the host, and was disposing of the third custard squash in succession snacking it with the sturgeon roe. In the meanwhile the pedobear finished recharging his tea kettle, the high-performance nickel-cadmium accumulator battery powered from the Tesla-receiver emerged from under his couch, and sipped boiling water through cubes of sugar in full blast comically puffing with his massive muzzle on the miniature porcelain saucer he was clasping in his claws.

They got to talking over the lunch. It transpired that Father Onuphrius had been an erstwhile ex-novitiate by the temple named after the Saint Icon of Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix Donning Knee Socks. Subsequently, he withdrew into individual apostleship, ruralized nearby some local lake and immersed into prayerful meditation upon the holiest icons from amongst the collection of “the fully-nude Olga”. However, after the demise of the Grand Yoprst Apostasius Prostatic (who, as it follows from his last name, succumbed to prostatitis obliterans), internecine bickering erupted amongst the orphaned elite whereupon dwarfish ponies infiltrated into the forest and rather promptly subjugated all of the dwellers thereof in their routine fashion. Father Onuphrius had been resisting the temptation to the uttermost, however, regretfully, the majority of pedobears, even the most adamant ones from amongst them, succumbed and failed to rise to the challenge of apostleship. When Onuphrius beheld his fellow friar in novitiate osculating the hoof of the incarnadine dwarfish pony, he, incensed, anathematized, cussed out their entire equine ilk and desired to withdraw. Dwarfish ponies adopted a laissez-faire attitude hereto, and even aided him to settle down and acquire household on the neutral territory: the pugnacious pedobear had been the connoisseur of the Cycle of Hymnography sung by Elena Vaenga whereon dwarfish ponies particularly doted.

Eventually, the pedobear remained satisfied: living on the neutral ground proved tranquil and serene. Despite rareness and fugacity of Tesla-interlocking, energy sufficed him, for he consumed it extremely frugally, predominantly for preheating the tea kettle. By the hermitage he planted a vegetable garden wherefrom he subsisted precisely, compensating the protein shortage through hunting for ferine lowlifes. Feral sturgeons-centipedes, who spawned every nook with their roe, latterly veritably plagued the hillock. The pedobear collected five large jugs of this stuff, pickled it, and currently lunched it with oleomargarine.

“But why haven’t you withdrawn to nakhnakhs?” queried the cat.

“Goddaughter, fulminate your Foremother!” the pedobear reverentially touched his ear lobes with his forepaws, contriving not to smash the miniature saucer therewith. “I shall preferably devour the gozman's liver. These defective cunts ought to be cremated in a bio-sterilizer. They had never been particularly good-mannered, but they had become lost to any fear whatsoever latterly.

This kindled the cat’s interest, and he requested the pedobear to expatiate thereupon. It transpired that over the past two months, the woollies who had not been emerging for years haunted the small cabin thrice. The previous visit they pilfered the gramophone and two phonograph records with holiest anthems. During their last visit, however, they even broached the subject of the smaller share, although to levy a tribute on worshippers of the Ecumenical One had since Adam been referred to as a collegially excommunicable taboo. The pedobear hearkened unto their arrogant claims, regaled them with little custard squashes, and, for the purpose of purification of the soul from malevolent motivations, put forward the suggestion to chant the sacramental ode dedicated to ebony eyes in front of the Womb of the Goddaughter. They belted out “The Ebony Eyes” haphazardly, then withdrew embittered, and said that, allegedly, “our Tarzan shall espouse the Goddaughter-Foremother-Genetrix herself before too long, wah-wah” instead of the farewell.

“They seem to have utterly gone berserk”, Basilio muttered under his breath. “Basically, such things are collegially excommunicable”.

“It seems to me that this is being done for an ulterior motive”, the pedobear shook his massive head. “Some abstruse hidden agenda lurks behind this corrupted hectic atmosphere. It looks as if they harnessed some energy, or probably, a trump card recently. I suspect that they managed to tap into the Monolith... However, all of this is too old: we have become engrossed in the conversation, pilgrim, whilst you are fatigued. If you prefer, you can stay overnight at mine. I shall spend the night prayerfully eulogizing”.

“Thank you, courteous master”, the cat darted a sidelong scowl at the couch, and upped. “But still, I must be off now. I appreciate Goddaughter's hospitability, and excuse my religion’s prohibition on eulogizing Goddaughter-Foremother”.

“Well then, I wish you a safe journey”, the pedobear scrutinized Basilio keenly herewith. “You wend to the Zone, don't you?”

Basilio opted not to prevaricate.

“I do”, he confessed, “But not for the loot” he instantaneously emphasized. “I have got some other errands to do there”.

“I lack adequate motives for any further interrogations, pilgrim”, Father Onuphrius sighed insomuch profoundly that he nearly sucked in the entire air circulating in the small room. “And I shall not catechize you on affairs which do not affect me. This violates the code of the underworld. However, I have been dwelling in the closest proximity to the Zone throughout my lifetime, and I am well-informed about something. Please, accept my advice, certainly, not to prejudice or offend you”.

“I hearken unto thee”, the cat slightly pricked up his ear demonstrating that he is truly hearkening.

“Firstly”, the pedobear scarcely half-rose and scratched his rump against the coffer. The fur stridulated, something jingled inside the coffer. “The Monolith is referred to as the Monolith precisely because it is windowless, all the more so, gateless, as well as eyeless and earless. This is the merest electricity-laden stone. And there is no point in verifying that personally and persuading oneself of that first-hand”.

“I do not intend to near the Monolith”, said the cat unhesitatingly having privately decided to elucidate the details from the Hirudotherapist.

“And secondly”, the pedobear protracted and elevated his claw. “There exists the location wherein the Monolith rests. And there exists yet another location. So, a great many people had been yearning to infiltrate therein within my remembrance. Some of them did. Few people even exited... Now then, reportedly, solely those can exit forth from thence for whom it is veritably indispensable, precisely, veritably, under the situation when no alternative whatsoever exists”.

The cat comprehended it for this once.

“Do you mean the Field of Miracles?” he re-confirmed, and the pedobear nodded. “I am not going to wend thitherward”.

The pedved pensively scratched his muzzle with his obtuse yellowish claw.

“Verily, fewest people know wherefore they itinerate, all the less so, whither”, he uttered.

[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-25T06:56:29Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophilic cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the petite sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

It dawned upon Harlequin that the ravenously famished ogre might want to join the repast, hence he began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he re-vivified, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on himself. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Memorize, these are dwarfish ponies. Filly foals and maiden mares dote upon slash art”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May God...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May God-daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the petite sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-22T07:28:12Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the petite sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he re-vivified, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Memorize, these are dwarfish ponies. Filly foals and maiden mares dote upon slash art”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May God...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May God-daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the petite sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Five (full text English translation)

2019-07-18T11:05:08Z

Alexander Sharov: Новая страница: «MIKHAIL KHARITONOV THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO VOLUME ONE THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO CHAPTER FIVE WHEREIN EVERYBODY IS DORMANT EXCEPT FOR THE…»

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER FIVE WHEREIN EVERYBODY IS DORMANT EXCEPT FOR THE TWO LONG-STANDING INTIMATE FRIENDS WHO ARE ABSORBED IN THE MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE

September 30, 312 H. E. around 3.00 a. m.

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY

“The information communicable to the agent must be construed in terms of the element of his logistics. As is the case with the logistical support, the guideline set forth hereunder must be stringently enforced: the agent must be equipped with everything indispensable and relieved of everything superfluous. Each isolated irrelevant fact consumes additional storage space in the agent’s cache memory and thereby hinders the rationalized planning of his operations, just like each superfluous item in the knapsack encumbers the portability thereof… The agent must not be briefed on the information which he shall ineluctably glean over the course of pursuance of his mission. Likewise his memory must not be overloaded with hints and recommendations albeit reasonably relevant yet shackling his creativity and diverting from the key target”.

N. Biebenhaf. Introduction to Special Forces’ Operational Planning: A Course of Lectures, translated from the German under the editorship of Colonel Barsukov. “Khemool” LLC, Debet City, “St. Bernard, Sennenhund and Retriever” Publishers, 294.

The uppermost dwarfish loft room of the turret was miniature and somewhat toy-like: seamlessly streamlined walling, the little bench smoothly circumflexing the perimeter thereof, the flat level floor painted over with multi-hued streaks and polyhedrons. The moonlight was oozing through the mural transparent segment. It was sort of enswathing things which luxuriated therein and silhouetted solely slender, brittle and elusive shadiness.

Karabas scarcely fitted one hemisphere of his rump on the narrow strip of the bench, and enviously leered at the cosily ensconced feline. Through the lurid moonlight the muzzle of Basilio seemed ostensibly even maturer than in daytime.

“I dislike this location”, said the cat.

“It is tranquilly in here”, remarked Karabas.

“Tranquilly yet eerily”, the cat yawned, his bristly whiskers jutted out highlighting the opaque back of the throat and jaws. “Have you noticed that the premises are dustless? And the air is not stagnant. It is crispy and ventilated therewith. Don’t you think it is odd?”

“Much remains to be learned”, commented Karabas philosophically. “Incidentally, how did you detect it is dustless? You are normally on alternative bandwidths, aren’t you?

“Dust emits radioactivity in the ultra-violet spectrum”, elucidated the cat. “But it is purely in here. And these walls… Do you know what is there inside them?”

“A steel framework, supposedly”, conjectured Karabas.

“Nothing” sighed the cat. “Nothing whatsoever. Not even a crevise, as if molded from a monolith. And the echo does not reverberate. No re-echo whatsoever, as if dampened by a pillow”.

“Humans possessed technologies erstwhile” consented Karabas. “Okay, let us get down to business: the mission and briefing. Listen here attentively. And thereafter do not pretend that you misheard me”.

“I hear and obey”, said the cat earnestly, and pricked up his ears.

“So”, Karabas comprehended that he could not balance and maintain the sedentary position on such a narrow bench, hence he upped and began to circumambulate the dwarfish cubicle: three steps hither, three steps thither. “Your mission is tripartite: firstly, to infiltrate into the Zone, secondly, to locate the Hirudotherapist, thirdly, to clarify the situation and to convey something from me. Subsequently: to respond to his questions and to withdraw, preferably intact, and, as the situation permits, unscathed”.

“Just even thusly? I see”, stammered the cat. “And what was the original agreement?”

“He pledged to rendezvous us on the disembarkation station, and to furnish the guide. He pledged nothing else”, responded Karabas.

“Hold on. I missed the point” the cat swung around resiliently, and squatted down. “The airship manned by such crewmembers as our Pierrito on board was scheduled to land in the Zone? And who excogitated such an ingenious plan?”

“I did” said Karabas. “That was our onliest chance to infiltrate the Directorate stealthily. Currently, you can safely abandon this idea. They ambush us thereat. Because the first thing Malvina did was that she leaked all the information available to her to the Directorate if she is not an imbecile. And she is not an imbecile. So, now we shall decamp thereto ceremoniously, solemnly, under the orchestral accompaniment”.

“And why do you think she did not leak the info to dwarfish ponies?” enquired the cat, “or to woollies so that they clamp down on us here in their inimitable style?”

“I pondered hereon. No, she scarcely did. See for yourself. Accompanied by Artemonito she is currently dominating the military facility… I am clueless how they climbed therein, but let us admit your version. Let us assume that she ensconced therein. She is strongly entrenched, if we take into consideration that inferior wildlife of the neighborhoods is controllable by her. Her immediate goal is to become the collegially recognized reputable authority, as you formulated that. Did you say that?”

“Well, yes, I did” acknowledged Basilio. “And I still think so. However, to slay us is the matter of survival for her, and her holy crusade. She is unable to perpetrate that herself. However, to report to the locals that we are clandestine intelligence agents recruited by Torah Borah and infiltrated herein on hell knows what reconnaissance mission – properly speaking, why not?”

Karabas averted his gaze from the fenestration, and crossed his arms behind him.

“Hold on, hold on”, he said. “So, she yearns to obtain authoritativeness and rightfulness of the ownership of the military facility. However, everybody is disinterested in her acknowledgement. It is ubiquitously disadvantageous. Nakhnakhs themselves claimed the base, merely they frustrated… Dwarfish ponies are scarcely interested therein yet the power balance…”

“That’s all too old, in the parlance of pedveds”, the cat interrupted him discourteously. “So, why should she preserve reticence?”

“Well, calculate it yourself” frowned Karabas. “If she re-tells everything like it is, then, according to the code, it shall transpire that she eloped from the boss, that is, from me. Consequently, she is not a candidate whatsoever, but rather a runaway lowlife and no one shall recognize her authoritativeness, either never at all or over an extremely long period of time until she browbeats everybody. But she yearns for it now”.

“This is an extremely precarious speculation”, the cat scratched his chin with his claws musingly. “And what if we shall leak the info about her?”

“We shall leak obligatorily”, responded Karabas. “But this will be our allegation oppugnant against her allegations. In the estimation of the dwellers of the Land of Fools, we are all an electorate, and the problems of the electorate do not fuck the bosses, something like that, anyway. That is, she shall certainly be accused…”

“And again you are proceeding to discuss the codes”, the cat began to get vexed. “This is an exercise in futility. If you are not a boss yourself, then, in accordance with the codes, you are invariably wrong”.

“I am not discussing the codes, I am discussing Malvina”, Karabas reverted to the window, and his broad back eclipsed the moonlight.

“Whose mentality, as you said, is inscrutable for you”, the cat did not refrain from saying that.

“No more of that!” roared Karabas. “You didn’t finish listening to the briefing”, he resumed slightly more tranquilly. “What do you know about the Zone?”

“What everybody knows”, the cat meticulously maintained the neutral tone.

“No. Please, cerebrate”, commanded the Rabbi. “Precisely cerebrate hereon, and I shall mind-read what you are cerebrating about”.

Tranquility suspended in midair, and instantaneously it clarified that she never withdrew from thence, that she is the truest dominatrix herein, and all of the echoes whatsoever are merely fortuitous visitors who chanced to come around so as to briefly amuse her.

“Well, generally, all correct”, Karabas disturbed the silence. “Although on several particular issues I discerned some qualms in you. Let us rectify ambiguities…” He re-circumambulated the room neglecting that tranquility was killing the echo of thudding footsteps. “Thus, the Zone… anticipating intensely opaque…” he chanted a fragment from the sacramental anthem atrociously off-key. “…from the bird’s-eye perspective, it epitomizes a sort of an oval ellipsoid topographically elongated alongside meridians. Actually, it is extended between magnetic dip poles. This is for the sake of accuracy. Due to terrain undulations it represents not a lozenge proper but rather some warped inkblot”, Karabas twiddled his thumbs in the air endeavoring to mimic something sophisticated. The silhouette of his hand mirrored on the wall in the shape of some huge arachnoid insect.

“I visualize it approximately”, said the cat urbanely.

“Okay. Let us continue. The Monolith rests in the northern sector of the Zone. This is the segment of the Yoke which had collapsed on the Earth, the Tesla-inductor. It does not resemble the golden sphere”, Karabas leered at Basilio askance and sneered subtly. “It does not self-fulfill desires whatsoever. It is merely a mechanism which pumps energy”.

“From whence?” quizzed the cat abruptly.

“Well, what a question…” Karabas spread his hands. “From whence does the Yoke pump energy altogether?”

“For example, I am clueless”, said Basilio.

“For example, the response is correct”, the Rabbi dismissed the subject summarily. “So, the Monolith collapsed, but it did not disengage from other segments. That is, it had been the segment of the Yoke, and it persists so. That is why the electrical current is torrentially flowing through it. It jettisons the voltage in the atmosphere. The Zone is precisely the area whereon the Monolith discharges itself. Tesla-effects abound ubiquitously therein, mainly electrical, but also magnetic ones and so forth. When the Monolith swells, the overall short circuit, the soi-disant Ejaculation ensues. To come under the Ejaculation is strongly inadvisable, especially for cybernetic organisms and cyber hybrids all the more so if they incorporate some integrated Tesla-devices. One thing is gladdening. Such pleasantness occurs not oftener than once in half a year or rarer, and the last occurrence was documented two months ago. So, promenade audaciously… yet circumambulate gingerly. One more thing: please, heed that your navigational system shall not function in the Zone. Tip-offs:

The cat was squatting motionlessly with half-shut eyes and pricked up ears.

“You have heard something about mutants”, resumed Karabas. “Allow me to scan your brain… Well, yes, everything is correct, Tesla-dependent entities yoked to the Monolith-generated energy. They will not jeopardize your health particularly, unless you over-eat them. Do not fear vampires: ordinary blood-suckers. Problems might arise from brain-peckers and other mentalists”.

“Do filifyonkas swarm thereat?” interjected Basilio.

“Mutants extirpated them themselves”, grinned the Rabbi. “It is plausible to admit, they decimated them. They are loathed, truly loathed in the Zone”.

“And rightly so”, said the cat satisfyingly.

Karabas giggled.

“Susanins are rather obnoxious… Shun and circumvent mandalaykas, they are so… From amongst the feral: fear slowpokes and white-ribboned nits. Although nits have been exterminated yet nevertheless… You know about creackles: when you see them, hit first. Incidentally, they are palatable. Well, and endeavor to evade rendezvousing with barabakas, namely, with Baskervilles”, Bar Rabbas sulked, evidently he reminisced something and this reminiscence did not gladden him. The cat noticed that.

“I have never heard about barabaka”, he said. “What sort of fowl is that?”

“It is not a fowl. It is a werewolf-vampire based on the substrate of the jellyfish and upgraded with helminths and leeches. It is amorphous, it mimics and camouflages extremely resourcefully, attacks from behind. To a certain extent, I am the discoverer of this loathsomeness. Her lips are frigid”, the Rabbi squirmed. “Thereafter I had not been able to squat down for half a year, it had permanently been sore to”.

“I am wondering who authored that?” said Bas pensively. “But please, don’t tell me that all of these wantonly luxurious lowlifes swarmed from out of nowhere”.

“Several particular issues are beyond our frame of reference”, uttered the Rabbi meaningfully.

“Ah, you mean from this perspective”, the cat wrinkled his muzzle.” Well, I see. How should I itinerate and what precisely should I accomplish?”

“Traverse the neutral zone. Most crucially, do not get ensnared by the woollies. You will supposedly not trespass on dwarfish ponies yourself. How long can you eke out on your batteries?”

“As ever: I can eke out throughout around ten days with water and minerals. Well, I shall gobble somebody up while en route, this is not the issue. Incidentally, can I piggyback on the Monolith?”

“I am really clueless about that”, confessed Karabas pityingly. “Ostensibly, woollies endeavored to, yet it fizzled, or rather, precisely they fizzled. You are immune to that, yours is the constabulary modification. Not a single one from amongst yours has ever immolated while in prosecution of his duties. If you tap into the Monolith, you will become the strong cat, the menace of the Zone… Anyway, you need to infiltrate therein first”.

Karabas re-endeavored to alight on the bench and failed to fit in again.

“I am somewhat fatigued this day. Well, then, we shall decamp tomorrow morning. You will lurk here. Snooze as much as you like, and altogether indulge yourself. You will be readying in the evening. You will decamp through the nighttime. Indeed, the Moon is inauspicious”, he gazed out of the window, “but it cannot be helped anyway. Navigate the terrain through six and a half, along the vintage fiber cable. That is, six of them are buried therein in the soil at the depth of around no more than three meters, will you discern them? Excuse me”, the Rabbi intercepted the feline emotion, “that was a foolish question… Follow along the cable, you will reach “The Sauerkraut Soup” tavern. This emporium is considered to be the neutral zone. You will finagle stalker’s gadgets therein and altogether. Visit it obligatorily, I reiterate, indispensably”.

“Probably, I should rather keep under the radar?” queried the cat.

“Conversely, expose yourself precisely, to the fullest”, the Rabbi waggled his head.

“And what’s the aid of that? Ah, the eatery is the check-point of the Leech Therapist?”

“What catchwords you are having… Can you speak plain human?”

“Human? Hm… It has been long since I last spoke it … gav’vavvah zay… ha’n’shem’humgat, allegedly”

“Ko’sherh”, lauded the Rabbi. “Although as for what concerns ha’n’shem’humgat, it is rather controversial. It is not that he is the superintendent over swamplands. Rather he is the enforcer, if I interpreted his status adequately. Anyway, this is a moot point. Essentially, if you do not check in with “The Sauerkraut Soup”, you may consider that you itinerated futilely. You will never locate him autonomously, even with your capabilities”.

“I see. Shall I misbehave atrociously?”

“Without particular nastiness. Most significantly, do not foment arsons and do not smash anything. And please, do not massacre wantonly”.

“How else then?” misunderstood Basilio.

“Sparingly and blandly”, Karabas stirred his fingers in midair as if sculpting some figure therefrom. “Well, then, pressurize somebody, extort equipment, ebal ba’an... and most crucially, do not defray any costs whatsoever under any circumstances. Otherwise, you will earn no kudos, and altogether, it is improper”.

“I never intended to”, offended the cat, “although… at the expense of what does the emporium subsist then?”

“At the expense of bravado”, explicated the Rabbi nebulously. “Thereupon, transgress the frontier and infiltrate at several kilometers deep. And merely promenade. You can accumulate some artifacts, but do not be obsessed herewith. I fix no deadlines. This is beyond your control. One day or other the Doctor shall locate you”, the Rabbi hushed.

“And?” the cat did not forbear.

“Hold on. Do not interrupt… Well, then. He is inquisitive, and shall bombard you with questions. You will conscientiously satisfy his inquisitiveness to the best of your capabilities. When it comes to what I want from him, inform him that Karabas wants to obtain the ordered work from the senile anti-Semite, and that he needs aid: to obtain and to convey. It would be better if the Doctor shall take care of that personally. If he says nay, remind him of that accident in the Alps”.

“Which accident?” specified the cat knowingly that his inquisitiveness shall not be satisfied.

“That is an old story. You see, over the last hundred years the Leech Doctor and I accumulated, so to speak…, reciprocal reckonings. It all began when once he extracted me from out of the quagmire and cured. Subsequently, I rescued his life on one occasion. Thereafter, he rescued me… anyway. Briefly, he has not yet compensated for the Alps. And this is his brilliant opportunity to redeem this debt. Hopefully, he shall pounce on this chance”.

“And what if he does not?” quizzed the cat.

“This is implausible. He is not an altruist but he always discharges his obligations and pays off his debts. This is why he incurred few of them. But if he suddenly balks, utter eight words: no yokes are holier than those of companionship”.

The cat glanced at Karabas somehow bizarrely.

“Yes, yes. Utter precisely these words in the Russian language”, the Rabbi nodded. “The next thing: you will respond to all of the questions posed by the Leech Doctor. Subsequently, he shall inform you on what you should do next. Most probably, he shall want that you withdraw. He may offer you an escort or he may not. Anyway, do not insist on staying. Do not endeavor to eavesdrop on him. Don’t even think of that. The Doctor is extremely petulant as to what concerns any varieties of external control. And he renders decisions himself.”

“And what?” questioned Basilio.

“You will establish rapport with the Directorate. Your target is the Institute for Transgenic Research. You ought to contact with our clandestine agents, to infiltrate therein and… Hold on…” Karabas mused. “The beetle is irrelevant” he said assertively. “Well, no” he re-intercepted the dissatisfied thought of the cat. “What does this carabid with her ovipositor has to do with this? I did not even think of her. Well, even though you boast the proneness to trans-sexual insects”.

“I beseech”, said the cat in such a voice that Karabas instinctively faltered.

“This is not to offend you, semi-brother”, he said, “Verily, the time is not ripe for jocularities. Merely, we are totally unfamiliar with that beetle. And it would be better if I shall be the first to establish rapport with him. This is the matter of private and pious concernment. Furthermore, he is of paramount significance to us. You will contact another agent. And now I am saying this with all earnestness: this time round let us eschew your promiscuous philandering with devious rogue females”.

“Why do you think that I should suddenly? ...” the cat prudently smoothened down his resentfully bristling fur.

“Because she is vulpine”, sighed the Rabbi. “Well, you know what I mean”.

For the first time ever during the conversation, the feline muzzle wreathed in smile.

“Let us assume”, he purred through his whiskers, “that this is my bonus”.

[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-11T07:37:50Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Filly foals and maiden mares yearn after slash art”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-10T07:11:13Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION ONLY:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, re-masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Lasses yearn for slash”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-10T07:03:28Z

Alexander Sharov: Alexander Sharov переименовал страницу Chapter Three (the full text English translation) в Chapter Three (full text English translation) поверх перенаправления

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Lasses yearn for slash”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (the full text English translation)

2019-07-10T07:03:28Z

#перенаправление [[Chapter Three (full text English translation)]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-10T07:02:32Z

Alexander Sharov: Alexander Sharov переименовал страницу Chapter Three (full text English translation) в Chapter Three (the full text English translation)

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Lasses yearn for slash”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-10T06:58:11Z

Alexander Sharov: Alexander Sharov переименовал страницу Chapter Three (the full text English translation) в Chapter Three (full text English translation) без оставления перенаправления

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Lasses yearn for slash”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-09T07:01:01Z

Alexander Sharov:

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat skewered thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently foddering”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gluttonize”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spicery in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my barbecued tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Lasses yearn for slash”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The grave is earthed”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]
[[Категория:English translation]]

Chapter Three (full text English translation)

2019-07-08T08:08:33Z

Alexander Sharov: Новая страница: «MIKHAIL KHARITONOV THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO VOLUME ONE THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZ…»

MIKHAIL KHARITONOV

THE GOLDEN CLUE OR THE ADVENTURES OF BURATINO

VOLUME ONE

THE ITINERANCY OF BASILIO

CHAPTER THREE WHEREIN THE COTERIE WE ARE WELL FAMILIARIZED WITH FLOUNDERS THROUGH THE EMBARRASSING SITUATION AND FORFEITS THE FAITHFUL COMPANION

September 29, 312 H. E. around noontime

Land of Fools, Cross-Domain Territory

FOR INFORMATION:

Briefing report: delimitation area (“neutrality zone”) between the domain of the Woollies and Wonderland. Breadth: ranges from five hundred to one thousand and five hundred meters. Endemic rational entities (IIQ>70) lacking. Despite relative proximity to the Zone, Tesla-mutants scarcely occur due to fugacity and non-contiguousness of Tesla-interlocking. Isolated edifices dating back to the pre-Homocaust era persisted. The nearest large-scale facility: the mothballed German military base Graublaulichtung “The Grey-Blue Glade”. Endeavors at external infiltration therein aborted. Nearest adjacent inhabited localities: the fortification of Hyena-Aul (Woollies), the mini-municipality of Qawai (Wonderland). Not recommended for visiting.

Karabas Bar-Rabbas sprawled out on flawlessly verdant, glossily scintillating grass. Isolated grass-blades were absolutely identical, well-trimmed, with horizontal, as though manicured tips. He pondered thereon, and inferred that these were actually mown, for it is implausible for any gene modification whatsoever to so prioritize and polish the lawn. All too many things would have slanted toward heterogeneity herein, commencing from varying light exposure.

Peering thereat, the Rabbi discerned the leaf-cutting ant ensconcing on the leaf apex. The ant was lifeless, or, if you prefer, moribund. Bar Rabbas somewhat mused on whether or not it is renderable thusly into Russian, and deduced that everything is anyhow renderable into Russian.

He shifted his glance slightly further ahead, refocusing it on where the ribbon of the rivulet zigzagged across the lawn. The water oozed forth languorously, reluctantly obviating gravel stones. On the yonder side of the rivulet the soil was grassless. Wanton foliage of miscellaneous endemic herbs with jagged white spots of cyme inflorescences, fondled by zephyrous breeze, vibrated under sunrays thereat. Cicadas were enthusiastically rent-seeking. Fleas, bugs, and smaller insects were whistling and crackling in accompaniment thereto.

Moldering ruins either of some villa or of a little church loomed thereupon. The slender, white turret, seamless and spotless like a candle, with lobed pinnacle crowned by the ebony canopy, stood nearby. A raven or a batman would look handsomely thereon, however, the spire was unoccupied.

Karabas beheld such edifices on former occasions likewise. They were being erected throughout the latest fifty years before the Homocaust from some abstruse raw stuff resembling masonry or brickwork but non-destructible. For some weird reasons, birds never perched thereon.

The verdant sea was bisected by the lengthy, tapering silhouette adumbrated by the skewed mast of the archaic wind mill. The leaden-gray segment of the airship hull whereon the characters “LED” had been inscribed suspended from off the fragment of the vane. The continuation of the inscription was torn off, if it had existed whatsoever.

Some non-picturesque, amorphous wreckage were situated to the right-hand side thereof, from behind which silhouetted low hills overgrown with somber eerie forest. The grand cloud drifted languorously above it, as if waddling and clasping at the corrugated wall of pine-trees.

“Fucked up”, uttered Karabas without accosting someone particularly.

“Something of that sort”, - consented Basilio squatting nearby on the raincoat spread out over the lawn. Having snuggly tucked his slender dry-shod hind paws under him he was pensively poking around his fore fangs with a grass blade.

“Or you meant something in particular?” clarified the cat just for in case.

“Kenny fucked up”, elucidated the Rabbi. “They have just retrieved him. That is, Pierrot did. Currently he reminisces that he sort of anticipated something like that”.

“A spoon is dear when lunch time is near”, sighed the cat. “Well, what is on our agenda, Herr Schwarzkopf?”

“Preferably Signor Testanera or something like that, anyway... Psht”, Karabas rolled over on his stomach, and tilted his broad-brimmed Rabbinical felt hat over his eyes protecting himself from the scorching sun. “So, what do we have here?”

“This zoophile cunt bitch and her canine have nearly smashed us up”, Basilio conveyed the stale piece of news.

“With her canine? I do not think Artemon is involved. Treasonable ideas metastasize throughout stealthily. It takes time. I would have intercepted them if any. No, nobody consulted with him. Malvina perpetrated everything unassisted”.

“Did she yank some lever?” clarified the cat.

“Frankly, I do not remember exactly if it is leverage or a push button”, confessed Karabas. “Scarcely something sophisticated. Altogether, she opted for liberty for herself and on behalf of Artemonito. But I am wondering how she managed to kick-start and re-launch the base? She ought to infiltrate therein and reach the control panel”.

“She rewired everything through batman's brains, and jettisoned him. Big deal”, snarled the cat.

“As far as I am informed regarding these contrivances, not even a mouse can squeeze through therein”, demurred Bar-Rabbas.

“A mouse cannot squeeze? Well, then, a mouse or a rat. Not a prototype, but a real-life rat or mouse, anima vili, in a nutshell. Some petty rodent with re-soldered brains infiltrated in the control room and gnawed through some cable, or squatted down on a push button. And whoops”.

“And how do you visualize that? Batman plummeted from the altitude of six kilometers clasping the little mouse in his teeth? They would perish both”.

“And who told you that she had energized the base prior to the elopement? That would be obtusely. When did we park on the last occasion? By the lake? Incidentally, for what?”

“I needed to negotiate with someone”, Karabas shared with Basilio not any more information as the latter could glean autonomously from the existing evidence, all the more so that it was obnoxiously for him to reminisce the discussion with the senile buoyant suitcase.

"Well then, Malvina jettisoned him whilst you were negotiating”, inferred the cat. "wingless, certainly. Although intuition hints me that our jet-propelled packs are lacking whatsoever. And altogether many other things are lacking. We have been fleeced”.

“Let nothing be wasted”, commented the Rabbi philosophically, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. Sultriness intensified.

Voices echoed. Pierrot and Harlequin were reverting. Symptoms of the ice abstinence ostensibly recrudesced in Pierrot.

“Lolled, lulled, oozed, circumfused, fluctuated”, maundered the poet gradually elevating his voice. “Whiter than water lilies, redder than rubies, thou wert alabaster and incarnadine, mauve, mallow, Malva, Malvina. Oh, nay, there is not a single dew-drop of incarnadine or lilaceous in thee whatsoever. Thou art a glacial osculation, every single inch of thee, whiteness on azureness. However, it was an alternative music about distant lands that my fellow was toting in his saddle. He crooned as he beheld outlands: Malvina, my bride, evanesced!” - he ululated the lattermost words at the top of his lungs already.

The muffled, crisp echo of the one-palm handclap pealed out: Harlequin dealt a hard-hitting slap in the face of Pierrot. Instantaneously, the handclap re-echoed in an alternative tonality: the author of the slap in the face decided to enhance the attained effectiveness with a box on the ear.

“Shut the fuck up, blowjob”, he finalized the pedagogical session.

The cat glanced back to the echo, and momentarily slightly lifted his pair of spectacles.

“They are fetching something”, he informed. “But I cannot discern what precisely”.

“Kenny, the tablet and my knapsack with victuals”, expounded the Rabbi. “We ought to fortify ourselves. What do you think about that?”

“I guess so”, the cat yawned petulantly. “And you as ever?”

“Mammals permissible for consumption must be cloven-hoofed, even-toed ungulate and ruminant. As regards the situation of Pikuach nefesh, I do not currently diagnose it”, the Rabbi commenced his hermeneutics. “Generally, the issue is extremely controversial and thought-provoking. “The Book of Raphael the Angel” expressly prohibits it even under the situation of Pikuach nefesh, although Rambam in “Maahalot Asurot” argues that...”

The cat ostentatiously lowered his ears.

“It is okay. Let us get down to business”, halted Karabas. “Collect some fallen dead branches, and I shall go and seek some gravestone. The remains must be treated with due deference”.

The Rabbi reverted in forty minutes or so. He panted and puffed as he was carrying the gravestone on his shoulders.

Meanwhile the posse congregated around the small bonfire. Crouching and face-palming Pierrot was serenely, noiselessly weeping: the terminal stage of the ice withdrawal syndrome re-pullulated. Harlequin was fumbling with the intestines, rummaging in the guts. The prudent puss was roasting the liver on the twig.

“Would you like to break your fast?” inquired the cat, extending to the Rabbi the twig with the smoking slab of meat thereon. “Freshly-cooked meat, do you know how palatable is that?”

“I do”, the Rabbi squatted down gingerly unburdening his shoulders. “Withdraw my biscuits from the knapsack. And we ought to boil some water”.

“There isn’t anything to boil it in”, sighed the cat.

“Run down to the nacelle”, said Karabas leering at the hectic Harlequin. “Fetch something promptly. Incidentally, see if you can find my humidor”.

“Boss, will you let me eat something or what?” resented Harlequin hastily stuffing his mouth with meat and spewing the sauce.

Karabas squinted. Harlequin conspicuously reluctantly upped, stood at attention, the flesh meat dropped out from his right hand which menacingly withdrew aside clenching the fist.

“Will comply, will comply, I’ll be right back, like a bee”, muttered the little sodomite.

“Incidentally, this is the idea, like a bee”, remarked the cat. “One batman ostensibly survived, didn't he? He is reachable, right? Well then, let him fly over, and seek the humidor while he is at it”.

“He is currently nourishing”, scowled the Rabbi who loathed when somebody flouted his instructions. “Okay, though, let him fly. Don't stir” he retorted to Harlequin. “Gorge yourself”.

“Anyway, this Kenny was not so bad”, commented the cat sucking the twig all over after the liver. “Please, grill the tongue for me”, he accosted Harlequin. “Schwarzkopf, are there spices in your knapsack?”

“The highland pepper should suit” said the Rabbi musingly. “Listen here. Don’t you remember who the defunct was basically? He is unlikely to have had porcine genes in him... Leporine ones are also scarcely plausible... I can't think of anything particularly non-kosher...”

Harlequin guessed that the hungry giant might want to join the repast, and began to toil with his jaws at twice the speed.

“Napsibypytreten” intelligibly spelled out Pierrot. “Nap-si-by-pyt-re-ten”.

“Yes?” quizzed Harlequin munching with relish. “Shall I fuck you in the ass?” he decided to clarify proactively. “I can do it if anything”.

“Napsibypytreten” reiterated the poet. “I shall coin this neologism tomorrow so as to vainly mention him who is guilty of everything. Let him be the scapegoat. Thou, Malvina, my truelove, however, art immaculate, innocent: merely constellations agglutinated thusly...” he abruptly stretched forward his slender, thin-fingered hand, grabbed the slab of half-raw meat, and tearfully stuffed it into his mouth.

“Lo and behold, he revives, he has got the munchies”, commented the cat. “Apropos, where is my grilled tongue?”

“Well, you see, his head is severed from his neck” acknowledged Harlequin. “He was decapitated by the explosion. This guy had damned bad luck. I cannot even figure out how he had such bad luck. We escaped with nothing worse than bruises whilst he thusly”.

“This is precisely what we have taken him along for” Karabas, having dismissed hesitations, aggressively reached out for yet another twig. “This is precisely why we escaped”.

“The mascot?” comprehended the cat. “I did not know that. You never told us we had a mascot”.

“He was doomed to die”, informed Pierrot almost meaningfully, masticating a cannibalized fragment of Kenny.

“He certainly was”, the Rabbi deigned to explicate. “The Rarest Gift: a sort of oblomingo’s, but the reverse thereof. It concentrates inauspicious probabilities refocusing them from others on him. The Russian genetics. The chromosomal map is lost. Such are scarcely extant”.

“That is, we wasted our clandestine trump card at the first outset”, acknowledged the cat. “That's a pity. I shall wash my forepaws. Water seems to be there?” he twisted his head toward the rivulet.

“Yes, there. I shall also go down. Neaten things up here, and excavate a decorous grave, we shall inter the remains” commanded Karabas.

The rivulet proved to be extremely shallow and rather turbid. Nevertheless, the cat thoroughly washed up his muzzle, combed his clotted hair under the chin with his claws, and performed the ablution again.

Karabas squatted down demonstrably intimating that he yearned to discuss something, but was reluctant to accost. Basilio intuited him.

“Whatever shall we do next? Shall we revert back to the nacelle?” he queried.

“No. We ought to stay here. We shall occupy that turret, for instance, if we shall be able to unlock the door. If not, we shall spend the night in the ruins. We should rather not revert back to the nacelle. Anyway, there is nothing precious therein except for my cigars. And the woollies will emerge there before much longer: we landed on their territory, and they are petulant”.

“The woollies are none too well. And what shall prevent them from promenading as far as here?” enquired the cat.

“Here we have chances” Karabas proceeded to explain. “See here, the situation is as follows: we collapsed upon the woollies, quite literally, on the very brink thereof. Here we are in the cross-domain zone. Over there”, he fingered at the hills “Wonderland looms. It was hitherto supervised by the Grand Yoprst Apostasius; currently, however, it is usurped by dwarfish ponies. Woollies fear dwarfish ponies, and never molest them promiscuously. Along there - the Co-Operative Society “Loch”, we have already visited it...”

“It takes seven days to reach the Loch afoot, and then if only by the paved road”, admonished the cat.

“Currently, it is irrelevant to us. Significantly, Tortilla hosted us. By the codes of the underworld, the boss identified us as code-bound. And dwarfish ponies, albeit they are hell of bitches, nevertheless esteem the code, in contrast with the woollies. They will allow us to pass through”.

Basilio sighed.

“Well, anyway, Schwarz, we were not born yesterday, and we know the Land of Fools perfectly well. Do not trust bosses, do not place reliance in bosses, and do not solicit from bosses. And never discuss the codes if you are not a boss yourself. The electorate is codeless. And in the estimation of autochthones we are an electorate no matter what they might bloviate. You should better ponder on how many nakhnakhs you can browbeat, should anything happen. And can you browbeat even though one single dwarfish pony, particularly, if we take into consideration that you are, so to speak, a masculine”.

“A safety lane to the Directorate is anyway indispensable for us” reminded Karabas. “We shall not infiltrate through the woollies. I am reluctant to rendezvous with Tarzan and his apes. Such sort of intercourse is counterproductive, if you know what I mean. And the King of Beasts shall obligatorily take an interest in us. Not so keen as to trespass on the Wonderland, however”.

“And however shall we penetrate through dwarfish ponies, quite apart from the fact that we need some nutrition, a vehicle, and a dormitory? Money is indispensable for all of that, while Malvina absconded with our gold. Has anything remained with you?”

“Five sovereigns”, sighed Karabas “I mislaid them in my pocket. We shall put them aside for use in an emergency. And altogether the situation is frustrating yet extricable. We shall put a play on the stage. The Empathetic Theatre. Pierrot and Harlequin is a readymade duo. We shall recruit several autochthones for the enhancement of effectiveness”.

“Is that what I am thinking about? What a loathsomeness” Basilio bristled up his whiskers. “Is it absolutely indispensable?”

“Suggest an alternative idea” Karabas shrugged his shoulders. “Remember, these are dwarfish ponies. Lasses yearn for slash”.

“This is precisely what I am talking about: loathsomeness” hissed the cat. “Hopefully, I am not involved therein?”

“No, you are not. You are overslaughed. Your mission is to re-establish liaison with our might-have-been guide. Regretfully, he dwells in an obnoxious location, but you can infiltrate there, it is passable for you. It is not far away from here”.

“If it is not far away, you dubbed this place obnoxious, and this is not about the woollies, then the Zone remains”, the cat squirmed. “Am I correct?”

“I am not dispatching you to the Monolith, and nobody anticipates the stalker’s heroics on the Field of Miracles from you”, Karabas grinned. “You merely ought to rendezvous with a certain iconic figure who acquiesced to collaborate with us, the Hirudotherapist”.

“The leech therapist?” the cat plunged into pensiveness. “Is that the one who exhumed you?”

“Precisely. He extracted me from out of the quagmire wherein I had been interred for too long, properly speaking, ever since the labefaction of the Monolith”.

“I have been meaning to ask you how he detected you?” inquired the cat.

“Fortuitously” responded Karabas. “He was extracting some hippopotamus thence, well, and fortuitously hooked me. Initially he misidentified me as a mummy, subsequently he clarified. I spent around a year in his leech burrow. That was a nice time”.

“And is he truly as tough a guy as he is rumored to be?” queried the cat.

“I am well-acquainted with him. He is somewhat heavy-handed, although he is the toughest Cisalpian guy. You will click with each other”.

“If they don’t ensnare me in some grill or slaughterhouse earlier than that” grunted Basilio out.

“You are a lynx-eyed gazer, Bas. You are the only one from amongst all of us who can intuit Tesla-effects”.

“Probably, some of them” snarled the cat. “Yet altogether… into the Zone… unaided … without a single latch-key…”

“We have utilized Kenny” reminded Karabas. “Incidentally, let’s go and finalize it with him lastly. We shall discuss other things when this couple will, hm… snooze”.

“Clasping their arms around each other”, leaked the cat. The Rabbi said nothing.

When Karabas and Basilio reverted, Kenny’s orts lay in the shallow burrow tactfully veiled with an orange-colored parka.

“They killed Kenny”, sighed the cat, itching with his claw under his pair of goggles. “You bastards”.

“But was the defunct an ethical person?” simpered Harlequin. Karabas quizzically scrutinized his brain and persuaded that the classical citation infiltrated therein fortuitously. In his younger days Harle sojourned with a certain fuckwit who drummed several utterances into his head.

The Rabbi elevated the gravestone. His robust arms exerted, sleeves of the frock-coat pleated in an accordion.

“Kenny immolated himself for our sake. He sacrificed his flesh and blood unto us. May...” he re-snatched the burdensome gravestone more comfortably. “May Daughter bless you”.

The lattermost extant batman whizzed above the grave, and leaked the jet of liquid excrements therein. The obtuse creature likewise intuited death, and endeavored to pay condolences after its own fashion.

Karabas groaningly dropped the gravestone over the hole, rearranged it, thereupon he mounted it from the above. The porous soil yielded and sagged under the burdensomeness of the massive body. The Rabbi circumambulated the grave along the edges tamping the soil down with his high boots.

“The sepulcher is enshrouded”, he said. “Well, now, this is seemingly all there is to it. I could have recited the Ziduk Ha-Din yet, but whoever shall hearken unto that or appreciate that?”

“Not me”, asserted Bas adamantly. “Requiems are irrelevant, for the soul anyway obtains what it had prepared for itself through its mundane exertions”.

“Solely Kenny empathized with me”, informed Pierrot staring somewhere heavenward with the petrified glance.

Harlequin re-opened his mouth demonstrably intending to utter yet another nastiness, however, Karabas squinted his eyes hereon, and the jaws of the little sodomite convulsively shrank into a gallinaceous rump.

Pierrot upped, neared the gravestone, and hugged it with his supple arms. He nuzzled against the ancient monolith whereon vestiges of the lapidary inscription were still discernible. The entire inscription was unreadable: shredders-alphanumeric erasers nibbled at almost each character thereof having routinely substituted them with regular vacant tick boxes. Just one word, with the tailpiece of the other, persisted: “TRESPASSERS WILL”. Pierrot endeavored to ponder on whoever that might have been. He merely osculated the monument instead, and relapsed in lamentation and ululation, profuse and mellifluous, as has always been the case when the ice eventually ebbs away.

When he finalized herewith, and reared his head, he beheld the retreating ebony back of Karabas, who was nearing the turret with solid step. It momentarily loomed unto Pierrot that something goldenly scintillated in the Rabbi's hand. Suddenly, it lusciously nettled in the back, and instantaneously thawed like a little icy needle.

[[Категория:Золотой ключ]]