“So, it’s decided… Tonight we’ll return here with the child and abandon her to Herman Durnev and his wife. The sight of a poor orphan cannot but touch their hearts… Let them bring her up together with their own daughter. Girls of the same age will be merrier together. We’re going, Medusa. It’s time! A-a-a-a-choo!” The academician suddenly sneezed so deafeningly that all the constellations were blown off his hanky at once, and the phone booth standing by the house tumbled with a crash to one side.

“I said you’d catch a cold!” Medusa said reproachfully.

“Nonsense!” Sardanapal was angry. “Stop keeping an eye on my health! He who had his head chopped off three times cannot be afraid of a common head cold… Choo!”

The academician of white magic wrapped himself tighter in his orange robe and, decisively treading on his beard, made his way past the houses to the small square. His restless moustaches were making a signal in time to the steps: one-two, one-two. Medusa picked her way after him.

Many passers-by filling the street in that hour and hurrying on their own affairs paid them very little attention. And what should even draw their curiosity when they only saw a shaggy mongrel and barely at a distance a thin elegant borzoi with a long snout? For the experienced magicians it constituted no difficulty to cook up a couple of deflecting spells.

Having taken about thirty steps, the academician Sardanapal awkwardly jumped up, clicked his knees in the air and, growling out a spell, dissolved in the air. Medusa in contrast to her teacher did not possess the ability of instantaneous disappearances from the human world. She reached the square and extracted from the bushes a kid’s rocking horse painted with Khokhloma designs. Having checked that all twelve talismans, without which the rocking horse simply would not take off, were in place, she clambered up onto it with difficulty and, soaring up steeply, disappeared among the clouds.

It was curious that even on the ridiculous kiddie rocker the associate professor Gorgonova contrived to appear majestic and to look ahead like a hawk. Somewhere along the way she ran into Lifeless Griffin; the wretch would have to pay. However, it was already dead, so there was nothing for it to lose.

The sun started to yawn lazily and climbed up from the roof. The unusual day continued.

* * *

Herman Durnev had one hundred and seventeen bad moods. If it is possible to describe the first mood as slightly bad, then the last, the hundred-and-seventeenth, amounted to a good force-eight storm. The head of the firm Second-Hand Socks returned home that day precisely in this hundred-and-seventeenth bad mood. On the road it constantly seemed to him that other cars were moving too slowly, and he began to hit the horn continually with his palm.

At the same time it twice seemed to him that the sound of the horn was too quiet, and then, sticking his head out the window of the car, he roared, “Hey, what are you dragging? Move it, move! You want me to come out and beat you up? You want to give a sick person a stroke?”

Durnev, it goes without saying, considered himself the sick person.

The basic reason Herman Nikitich’s mood was so abruptly spoilt was the sensation that some strange and mysterious forces were pursuing him and making fun of him. Everything began from that same morning when he just set off for work. Even along the way something started to rumble violently in the baggage carrier of the car, rumbling so that the car even jumped, but when he went out to look, it turned out there was nothing in there. When Durnev got back behind the wheel, he discovered that his own portrait from a magazine was stuck to the windshield of the automobile. Moreover, it appeared as if the wind dropped onto the glass a page soaked in a puddle…

The director was so anxious that when he ripped off his picture, his fingers were shaking and he accidentally tore part of his head, together with the ear, from the photograph. Seeing in this a bad omen for himself, Herman Nikitich immediately swallowed thirty Relief tablets and washed them down with a bottle of valerian tincture.

When he nevertheless got to the office, he discovered that the wastebasket in his office was turned upside down, and all the garbage from it was unceremoniously shaken out onto the carpet. And not simply shaken out but also steeped in something stinky. The furious Durnev immediately fired the cleaning woman, though she swore that she did not even drop into his office.

Having opened the safe in order to get the press, he beheld there a pale fungus on a thin leg, which, when Herman Nikitich stretched out his hand to it, spread on the papers a sticky slime that could not be wiped off. After this incident, Durnev collapsed into the armchair and sat in it for a long time, sweating and counting off small fractions with his teeth.

“Twenty five… twenty six… I’m not nervous at all… Why are you staring at me? Get back to work! Really, didn’t I ask you to get for me the price on old toothbrushes?” he began to yell at an employee timidly looking in.

The unlucky employee slid into his own tiny little office, which smelled of moth-eaten sweaters and worn jeans, and, collapsing onto the chair, nearly died of fright.

No need to explain that toward the evening Durnev had had quite a drop too much.

“Pour me anything to drink… Now you’ll see, soon something bad will happen!” he groaned as soon as he found himself at home.

In contrast to the office literally choked up from floor to ceiling with cut-price junk and worn out things, everything was completely new in Durnev’s home.

Herman Nikitich’s wife – Ninel – was as fat as her husband was thin. When she slept, her wrinkled cheeks spread all over the pillow, and her body, covered with a blanket, resembled a snowy mountain from which it was possible to ski down.

“Ah, Hermanchik, you imagine all sorts of things! Don’t be so upset! You’re completely green like the fir on New Year! Let me kiss you on the cheek!” Ninel cooed with a juicy bass, reassuringly patting her husband on the frail back with a hand adorned with rings.

“Phew! Drop this tenderness!” Herman Nikitich growled. However, his bad mood dispersed a little, jumping from hundred-and-seventeenth to sixty-sixth, and later even to fiftieth.

After supper, Durnev cheered up so much that he had the desire to spend time with his year-old daughter Penelope, or Pipa as she was tenderly called by her parents, who inherited from mama the moving eyebrows and figure of a porter, and from papa eyes bunched together, protruding ears, and sparse whitish hair. Of course, the Durnevs doted on her and considered their Pipa the first beauty in the world.

The heiress of the Durnev family was sitting in the playpen and concentrating on breaking a doll. Three beheaded dolls were already scattered about on the floor, and their heads were mounted on parts of rattles decorating the playpen.

“What a smart little girl! She will be a director like her papa!” Durnev was touched.

He leaned over the playpen and made an attempt to kiss Pipa on the top of her head. The daughter grasped papa by the hair with her right hand, and with the plastic shovel clutched in her left hand she started to saw papa’s neck, clearly intending to do with him the same as she had done with the dolls.

“Darling! Wonderful child!” Papa panted.

He freed his hair with difficulty and, just in case, moved further away from the playpen where he could not be reached or spat on. Pipa forcefully threw the shovel after him, but it only fell into the vase on the TV, and immediately, with the greatest readiness, scattered splinters.

“Oh, what a strong girlie we have! What good aim!” Ninel squealed enthusiastically.

“Careful… She’s taking off her boots!” Durnev warned, covering his head with his hands, just in case, to dodge these sufficiently heavy projectiles.

At this moment, there was suddenly a ringing in the apartment. The bell, usually squeaking spitefully, now issued a loud, almost triumphant trill. Durnev and his spouse shuddered at once.

“Are you expecting someone, mousie?” Ninel asked.

“No, no one. You?”

“Me neither…” Ninel answered and, following Herman, made her way to the door.

Pipa threw her boots after them, but the laces got tied up around her hand, and the boots, recoiling, struck her on the nose. Pipa began to wail like a steamer siren.

Meanwhile, Herman looked into the peephole. No one was visible, although the bell, not stopping for a second, continued to demand persistently that they open the door.

“Hey, who’s there? I warn you: I don’t like these jokes!” Durnev bellowed and, armed with a hammer, looked onto the landing. Suddenly his face became like that of an old lady who, by mistake, instead of a poodle stroked a crocodile from the Nile.

In front of the door, barely finding room in the narrow landing, lay an enormous case for a double bass. The case was exceptionally old, trimmed on the outside with very thick rough leather, something simultaneously resembling scales. If Herman Nikitich were a little more learned or had the habit, for example, of leafing through books, he would easily understand that artists always depict such things as dragon skin. Furthermore, to the bulging handle of the double bass case was riveted a small copper tag; half-obliterated letters on it read:

…ilver …truments wizard Theo…: drums, …ble basses etc.

But Durnev had not the least desire to examine either the case or especially the tag on it. He only saw that a large and extremely suspicious object was tossed up to him on the threshold and the one who tossed it up most likely was running away now.

Shedding his sneakers, Herman Nikitich clumsily jumped over the case and, darting out to the stairs, began to yell into the resonant void:

“Hey you there! Hey! Take away your suspicious thingamajig, or I’ll call the police! No good throwing me a bomb!”

No one answered his cry. Only for a moment, it seemed to Durnev, pushing his head through between the rails, that a shadow flickered several floors below. Then the external door slammed and everything was quiet. The director of the firm Second-Hand Socks considered that the old foxes, having tossed the mysterious thingamajig up to him, had run out.

Screaming out yet a couple more threats, Herman Nikitich dragged his feet back. The case was in its previous place. Walking a few steps toward it, Durnev squatted down and propped up his head with his palms.

“Ninel, Ninel, come here – see what was tossed up to us!” he called mournfully.

From the apartment the fat-cheeked head of his spouse looked around. Ninel clutched a T-Fal frying pan in her hand, grabbed for the same purpose as her husband arming himself with a hammer.

“Look, a case!” she was astonished.

“Don’t take it into your head to touch it! For sure it’s a bomb!” Herman Nikitich yelped.

At that moment, a strange sound came from the case. The Durnevs decided that it was the ticking of a clock mechanism.

“Now it’ll go off with a jerk! Down!” the head of the firm Second-Hand Socks started to shout and quickly began to crawl away. His spouse flopped onto the linoleum, covering her head with the T-Fal frying pan.

But the expected explosion did not follow. Instead, the weeping of a demanding child was heard from the case. Exchanging dumbfounded glances, Durnev and his spouse crawled up to the case. The old lock clicked, the cover was thrown back…

“Ah-ha! Do you see? It’s a child!” Ninel exclaimed, her forehead bumping into her husband.

“A bomb would be better!” Herman Nikitich groaned.

In the case, on a carefully stretched out red blanket, lay a little girl with curly hair. On the tip of her nose was a small buckwheat grain, the birthmark. The baby just woke up and now she was crying loudly from hunger, energetically drumming on the double bass case with her hands and feet. Ninel winced with disgust, “No, I’ll not take her into our home! What if she has some infection? Even infectious for sure! Look at this suspicious spot on the nose! And I’ll be shaking with loathing if she turns up in the same bed with Pipa. But we also can’t abandon her here. The neighbours will gather…”

“Oh, it goes without saying, we won’t abandon her! We’re humane people! We’ll turn the girl in to the orphanage! There she’ll learn to paint fences, sweep the streets, and a hundred other remarkable professions!” Durnev said cheerfully.

Having gathered the sneakers scattered on the landing, he already started to drag his feet to the telephone when suddenly his wife exclaimed, “Look, mousie, here’s a letter! Here it is, attached to the child’s wrist! And don’t you swing your hands, little frog, all the same I’ll take it away!”

Leaning down, Ninel freed the envelope with disgust. In it was inserted a photograph, after glancing at which Herman Nikitich was covered with beads of sweat. In the photograph were two boys – one whitish, emaciated, with a sour and evil face, and the other pensive and sad, with a large nose and red ringlets of hair.

“Oh, no!” Durnev groaned. “It’s Lenchik Grotter, my grandmother’s second cousin’s nephew. Here, look: I’m trying to whack him on the forehead with a truck, and he’s staring into his own devil’s telescope! It was not without reason that today presented itself as such a bad day. Is this little girl really his daughter? If so, we’ll have to take her in or my political career will come to an end. You know, Ninel, I want to be a candidate for deputy…”

Hearing that the girl would remain with them, his wife swelled up with anger so that she was hardly accommodated on the landing.

“You NEVER told me about LENCHIK GROTTER!” she yelped angrily.

Durnev started to cough in embarrassment.

“Well, he’s not Lenchik at all but Leopold… My grandmother called him Lenchik… Oh, that one was a real rogue, not grandmother of course, but this Grotter! We fiercely hated each other in childhood. Fought every time we met. More precisely, it’s I who beat him up, and he stayed more in the corners or turned the pages of his idiotic books. He was eternally busy with some nonsense: either puttering around with hedgehogs or learning to talk in cat’s language, and they held him up to me as an example! And what do you think? At ten, he drove his first motorcycle, and at twelve, robbed a bank! Here, trust a goody-goody after this!”

“A twelve-year-old boy robbed the bank?” his spouse could not believe her ears.

“Without efforts. He carried this out with the help of a computer, not even leaving the house, but they traced him. When the police arrived, he simply disappeared. Everyone thought that he was in the room, forced open the door, but no one was there. They searched for him, but also didn’t find him. Even thought that he had perished. I of all people was most pleased, because you know where this idiot transferred all the stolen money? To a fund for helping stray dogs!!! Not to me, his second cousin, but to some mongrels…”

Durnev flushed with indignation. It seemed that steam just about came out of his nostrils and ears.

“Well, okay, he disappeared and vanished,” he continued, calming down somewhat. “And now listen further. Fifteen years passed, and I received from this character a New Year postcard with an idiotic stamp depicting a winged monster. I read it, flung it onto a chair, and it immediately got lost somewhere before I had time to look at the return address. And now here’s this baby! Interesting, but for what reason did Grotter abandon his own offspring to me?”

“Look, there’s even a newspaper clipping!” Ninel exclaimed, guessing again to glance into the envelope.

TRAGEDY IN THE MOUNTAINS

A year does not pass that avalanches would not take away new lives.

This time their victims were the archaeologists Sophia and Leopold Grotter, exploring the tombs of prehistoric animals in the Tien Shan Mountains. An enormous snow avalanche literally headed right for their tent, which they had the imprudence to pitch on the dangerous part of the slope. The bodies of the courageous archaeologists were never discovered. Sophia and Leopold left a daughter, Tatiana, whom now, apparently, will be handed over to relatives.

It is known that not long before the tragedy the Grotters succeeded in finding the excellently preserved remains of a sabre-tooth tiger.

“Unlucky tiger! Found to be connected with them! Had no luck even after death!” Durnev exclaimed with feeling.

It was the only regret that Herman Nikitich expressed, learning about the demise of his second cousin. The girl lying in the double bass case piped down while they were reading the note, but afterward began to cry twice as loudly.

“You see how she spills as if she understands something!” Durnev hesitated. “I bet when she grows up they’ll put her in prison! Only for the sake of admiring this spectacle, we’ll register ourselves officially as her guardians! Feed her, Ninel! There’s an expired kefir left in the refrigerator. It’s just the same as throwing it out.”

So Herman Durnev and his wife Ninel became Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel. Under these pompous names, they, in their time, went into the reference publication A Thousand of the Most Unpleasant Moronoids.