The Old Genie Hottabych

by Lazar Lagin

“I would never have believed you,” Hottabych said with a sigh. “I would never have believed you if your words had not been corroborated on the pages of this newspaper I so respect. I beg you, O Volka, explain why everything is so different in this wonderful country of yours?”

  “With pleasure,” Volka answered. And sitting down on the river bank, he spoke at length and with great pride, explaining the essence of the Soviet system to Hottabych.

  There is no use repeating their long conversation.

  “All you have said is as wise as it is noble. And to anyone who is honest and just all this gives plenty to think about,” Hottabych said candidly when his first lesson in current events was over. After a short pause he added:

  “That is all the more reason why I want you and your friend to sail on the ‘Ladoga.’ Believe me, I will see that it is arranged.”

  “But please, no rough stuff,” Volka warned. “And no monkey-business. That means no fakery. For instance, don’t think of making me out to be a straight ‘A’ pupil. I have ‘B’s in three subjects.”

  “Your every wish is my command,” Hottabych replied and bowed low.

  The old man was as good as his word. He did not lay a finger on a single employee of the Central Excursion Bureau.

  He just arranged matters so, that when our three friends boarded the “Ladoga,” they were met very warmly and were given an excellent cabin; and no one ever inquired why in the world they had been included in the passenger list — it simply did not occur to anyone to ask such a question.

  To the captain’s great surprise, twenty minutes before sailing time a hundred and fifty crates of oranges, as many crates of excellent grapes, two hundred crates of dates and a ton and a half of the finest Eastern delicacies were delivered to the ship. The following message was stencilled on each and every crate:

  “For the passengers and the members of the fearless crew of the ‘Ladoga,’ from a citizen who wishes to remain anonymous.”

  One does not have to be especially clever to guess that these were Hottabych’s gifts: he did not want the three of them to take part in the expedition at someone else’s expense.

  And if you ask any of the former passengers, they still cherish the kindest feelings for the “citizen who wished to remain anonymous.” His gifts were well liked by all.

  Now, having made it sufficiently clear to the readers how our friends found themselves aboard the “Ladoga,” we can continue our story with a clear conscience.

  THE UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER

  If you recall, dear readers, it was a hot July noon when the ice-breaker “Ladoga” sailed from the Red Pier in the port of Arkhangelsk with a large group of excursionists on board. Our three friends, Hottabych, Volka and Zhenya, were among the passengers. Hottabych was sitting on deck, conversing solemnly with a middle-aged fitter from Sverdlovsk on the advantages of cloth shoes as compared to leather ones, pointing out the comfort people suffering from old corns found in cloth shoes.

  Volka and Zhenya were leaning on the railing of the top deck. They were as happy as only boys can be who are aboard a real ice-breaker for the first time in their lives, and, to top it all, are sailing away for a whole month, not to just any old place, but to the Arctic.

  After exchanging opinions on boats, diesel ships, ice-breakers, tug-boats, schooners, trawlers, cutters, and other types of craft skimming over the surface of the Northern Dvina, the boys fell silent, enchanted by the beauty of the great river.

  “Isn’t that something!” Volka said in a voice that seemed to imply he was responsible for all this beauty.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Nobody’d believe it if you told them.”

  “Uh-huh!”

  “I’m really glad that we. …” Volka began after a long pause and looked around cautiously to see if Hottabych was anywhere nearby. Just in case, he continued in a whisper, “… that we’ve taken the old man away from Varvara Stepanovna for at least a month.”

  “Sure,” Zhenya agreed.

  “There’s the Mate in charge of the passengers,” Volka whispered, nodding towards a young sailor with a freckled face.

  They looked with awe at the man who carried his high and romantic title so nonchalantly. His glance slid over the young passengers unseeingly and came to rest on a sailor who was leaning on the railing nearby.

  “What’s the matter, are you feeling homesick?”

  “Well, here we are, off again for a whole month to the end of nowheres.”

  The boys were amazed to discover that someone might not want to go to the Arctic ! What a strange fellow!

  “A real sailor is a guest on shore and at home at sea!” the Passenger Mate said weightily. “Did you ever hear that saying?”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m a real sailor, since I’m only a waiter.”

  “Then get one dinner in the galley and take it to Cabin 14, to a lady named Koltsova.”

  “That’s the same last name as Varvara Stepanovna has,” Volka remarked to Zhenya.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s a middle-aged lady and she caught cold on the way here,” the Mate explained. “It’s nothing very serious,” he said, as if to calm the waiter, though the latter did not appear in any way alarmed at the lady’s state of health. “She only ought to stay in her cabin a day or two and she’ll be all right. And please be especially nice. She’s an Honoured Teacher of the Republic.”

  “An Honoured Teacher! And her last name is Koltsova. What a coincidence!” Volka whispered.

  “Well, it’s a very common last name, just like Ivanov,” Zhenya objected in a voice that was suddenly hoarse.

  “Her name and patronymic are Varvara Stepanovna,” the Mate went on.

  The boys saw spots before their eyes.

  “It’s no matter that she’s Varvara Stepanovna, too. That doesn’t mean she’s our Varvara Stepanovna,” Zhenya said in an effort to reassure himself and his friend.

  At this point, however, Volka recalled the conversation that had taken place in the principal’s office when he was there to take his geography examination. He merely shrugged hopelessly.

  “It’s she all right. That’s exactly who it is. I’m scared to think what’ll happen to her. Why couldn’t she go some place else!”

  “We’ll save her anyway, we just have to think of a way,” Zhenya said darkly after a short but painful silence.

  They sat down on a bench, thought a while, and complained of their bad luck: such a journey was really something wonderful for anyone else, but it would be nothing but a headache for them from now on. Yet, since this was the way things had turned out, they must save their teacher. But how? Why, it was all quite simple: by distracting Hottabych.

  They had no need to worry today, for she would certainly be confined to her cabin till the morrow. Then they would plan their strategy as follows: one would go strolling with Varvara Stepanovna, or sit on a bench talking to her, while the other would be distracting Hottabych. For instance, Volka and Hottabych might play a game of chess, while Zhenya and Varvara Stepanovna took a stroll down the deck. Volka and Hottabych could be on deck, while Zhenya and Varvara Stepanovna were talking somewhere far away, in a cabin or someplace. The only points remaining to be cleared up were what they were supposed to do when everyone went ashore together or gathered for meals in the mess hall.

  “What if we disguise her?” Volka suggested.

  “What do you want to do — stick a beard on her?” Zhenya snapped. “Nonsense. Make-up won’t save her. We’ll have to think it over carefully.”

  “Ahoy, my young friends! Where are you?” Hottabych shouted from below.

  “We’re here, we’re coming right down.”

  They went down to the promenade deck.

  “I and my honourable friend here are having an argument about the Union of South Africa,” Hottabych said, introducing them to his companion.

  Things were going from bad to worse. If the old man began advertising his knowledge of geography, the passengers would surel
y laugh at him; he might very well become offended, and what might happen then did not bear thinking about.

  “Who’s right, my young friends? Isn’t Pretoria the capital of the Union of South Africa?”

  “Sure it is,” the boys agreed.

  They were amazed. How had the old man come by this correct information? Maybe from the papers? Naturally. That was the only answer.

  “My honourable friend here insists it’s Cape Town , not Pretoria ,” Hottabych said triumphantly. “We also argued about how far above us the stratosphere is. I said that one could not draw a definite line between the troposphere and the stratosphere, since it is higher or lower in various parts of the world. And also that the line of the horizon, which, as one can ascertain from the science of geography, is no more than a figment of our imagination…” .

  “Hottabych, I want a word with you in private,” Volka interrupted sternly. They walked off to a side. “Tell me the truth, was it you who filched my geography book?”

  “May I be permitted to know what you mean by that strange ” word? If you mean, O Volka, that I… What’s the matter now, O anchor of my heart? You’re as pale as a ghost.”

  Volka’s jaw dropped. His gaze became fixed on something behind the old Genie’s back.

  Hottabych was about to turn round to see what it was, but Volka wailed:

  “Don’t turn around! Please, don’t turn around! Hottabych, my sweet, dear Hottabych!”

  Nevertheless, the old man did turn around.

  Coming towards them, arm in arm with another elderly lady, was Varvara Stepanovna Koltsova, an Honoured Teacher of the Republic, the 6B geography teacher of Moscow Secondary School No. 245.

  Hottabych approached her slowly. With a practised gesture he yanked a hair from his beard, and then another.

  “Don’t!” Volka yelled in horror, as he grabbed Hottabych’s hand. “She’s not to blame! You’ve no right to!”

  Zhenya silently tackled Hottabych from the rear and gripped him as firmly as he could.

  The old man’s companion looked at this strange scene in utter amazement.

  “Boys!” Varvara Stepanovna commanded, apparently not at all surprised at meeting her pupils on the ice-breaker. “Behave yourselves! Leave the old man alone! Didn’t you hear me?! Kostylkov! Bogorad! Do you hear?”

  “He’ll turn you into a toad if we do!” Volka cried frantically, feeling that he could not manage Hottabych.

  “Or into a chopping-block on which butchers carve mutton!” Zhenya added. “Run, Varvara Stepanovna! Hurry up and hide before he breaks loose! What Volka said is true!”

  “What nonsense!” Varvara Stepanovna said, raising her voice. “Children, did you hear what I said?!”

  By then Hottabych had wrenched free from his young friends and quickly tore the hairs in two. The boys shut their eyes in horror.

  However, they opened them when they heard Varvara Stepanovna thanking someone. She was holding a bouquet of flowers and a large bunch of ripe bananas.

  Hottabych replied by bowing with a nourish and touching first his forehead and then his heart.

  When they were back in their cabin, the three friends had a show-down.

  “Oh, Volka, why didn’t you tell me right away, right after the examination, the very first day of our happy acquaintance, that I failed you by my over-confident and ignorant prompting? You’ve offended me. If you had only told me, I wouldn’t have bothered you with my annoying gratitude. Then you could have easily prepared for your re-examination, as is becoming an enlightened youth like you.”

  So spoke Hottabych, and there was real hurt in his voice.

  “But you’d have turned Varvara Stepanovna into a chopping-block for carving mutton. No, Hottabych, I know you only too well. We spent all these days in terrible fear for her life. Tell me, would you have changed her into a chopping-block?”

  Hottabych sighed.

  “Yes, I would have, there’s no use denying it. Either that or into a terrible toad.”

  “See! Is that what she deserves?”

  “Why, if anyone ever dares to turn this noble woman into a chopping-block or a toad he’ll have to deal with me first!” the old man cried hotly and added, “I bless the day you induced me to learn the alphabet and taught me how to read the papers. Now I am always up-to-date and well informed on which sea is being built, and where. And I also bless the day Allah gave me the wisdom to ‘filch’ your geography book — that’s the right expression, isn’t it, O Volka? For that truly wise and absorbing book has opened before me the blessed expanses of true science and has saved me from administering that which I, in my blindness, considered a deserving punishment for your highly respected teacher. I mean Varvara Stepanovna.”

  “I guess that takes care of that!” Volka said.

  “It sure does,” Zhenya agreed.

  WHAT INTERFERES WITH SLEEPING?

  They were having good sailing weather. For three days and three nights they sailed in open seas and only towards the end of the third day did they enter a region of scattered ice.

  The boys were playing checkers in the lounge, when an excited Hottabych burst in on them, holding on to the brim of his old straw hat.

  “My friends,” he said with a broad smile, “go and have a look: the whole world, as far as the eye can see, is covered with sugar and diamonds!”

  We can excuse Hottabych these funny words, as never before in his nearly forty centuries of living had he seen a single mound of ice worth speaking of.

  Everyone in the lounge rushed on deck and discovered thousands of snow-white drifting ice-floes sparkling and glittering in the bright rays of the midnight sun, moving silently towards the “Ladoga.” Soon the first ice-floes crunched and crashed against the rounded steel stem of the boat.

  Late that night (but it was as bright and sunny as on a clear noonday) the passengers saw a group of islands in the distance. This was the first glimpse they had of the majestic and sombre panorama of Franz Joseph Land. They saw the gloomy, naked cliffs and mountains covered with glittering glaciers which resembled sharp, pointed clouds that had been pressed close to the harsh land.

  “It’s time to go to bed, I guess,” Volka said when everyone had had his fill of looking at the far islands. “There’s really nothing to do, but I don’t feel like sleeping. It all comes from not being used to sleeping while the sun is shining!”

  “O blessed one, it seems to me that it is not the sun which is interfering, but something else entirely,” Hottabych suggested timidly.

  However, no one paid attention to his words.

  For a while, the boys wandered up and down the decks. There were less and less people aboard. Finally they, too, went back to their cabin. Soon the only people on the ship who were not asleep were the crew members on duty.

  It was quiet and peaceful aboard the “Ladoga.” From every cabin there came the sound of snoring or deep breathing, as if this were not taking place on a ship some two and a half thousand kilometres from the mainland, in the harsh and treacherous Barents Sea, but in a cosy rest home somewhere near Moscow , during the afternoon “quiet hour.” The shades were drawn on the port-holes, just as on the windows in rest homes, to keep out the bright sunshine.

  SHIPWRECKED?

  However, it soon became clear that there was a very tangible difference between the “Ladoga” and a rest home. Apart from the Crimean earthquake, old-timers at rest homes do not recall having been tossed out of their beds in their sleep. The passengers had just fallen asleep when a sharp jerk threw them from their berths.

  That very moment the steady hum of the engines stopped. In the silence which followed, one could hear the slamming of doors and the sound of running feet, as the people rushed out of their cabins to find out what had happened. There were shouts of command coming from the deck. Volka was lucky in tumbling out of the top berth without major injuries. He immediately jumped to his feet and began to rub his sore spots. As he was still half asleep, he decided that it had been his own fa
ult and was about to climb up again when the murmur of anxious voices coming from the corridor convinced him that the reason was much more serious than he thought.

  “Perhaps we hit an underground reef?” he wondered, pulling on his clothes. This thought, far from frightening him, gave him a strange and burning feeling of anxious exhilaration. “Golly! This is a real adventure! Gee! There isn’t a single ship within a thousand kilometres, and maybe our wireless doesn’t work!”

  He imagined a most exciting picture: they were shipwrecked, their supplies of drinking water and food were coming to an end, but the passengers and crew of the “Ladoga” were calm and courageous — as Soviet people should be. Naturally, he, Volka Kostylkov, had the greatest will power. Yes, Vladimir Kostylkov could look danger in the face. He would always be cheerful and outwardly carefree, he would comfort those who were despondent. When the captain of the “Ladoga” would succumb to the inhuman strain and deprivation, he, Volka, would rightly take over command of the ship.

  “What has disturbed the sleep so necessary to your young system?” Hottabych asked and yawned, interrupting Volka’s day-dreams.

  “I’ll find out right away, Hottabych. I don’t want you to worry about anything,” Volka said comfortingly and ran off.

  Gathered on the spardeck near the captain’s bridge were about twenty half-dressed passengers. They were all discussing something quietly. In order to raise their spirits, Volka assumed a cheerful, carefree expression and said courageously:

  “Be calm, everyone! Calmness above all! There’s no need to panic!”

  “That’s very true. Those are golden words, young man! And that is why you should go right back to your cabin and go to sleep without fear,” one of the passengers replied with a smile. “By the way, no one here is feeling at all panicky.”

  Everyone laughed, to Volka’s considerable embarrassment. Besides, it was rather chilly on deck and he decided to run down and get his coat.

  “Calmness above all!” he said to Hottabych, who was waiting for him below. “There’s no reason to get panicky. Before two days are out, a giant ice-breaker will come for us and set us afloat once again. We certainly could have done it ourselves, but can you hear? The engines have stopped working. Something went wrong, but no one can find out what it is. There will surely be deprivations, but let’s hope that no one will die.”