The Twelve Chairs / Двенадцать стульев. Книга для чтения на английском языке

They stole everything in the house that Alchen did not manage to steal himself. Pasha could put away four pounds of fish at one go, and he once did so, leaving the home dinnerless.

Hardly had the old women had time to taste their porridge when the younger brothers and Pasha Emilevich rose from the table, having gobbled down their share, and went, belching, into the kitchen to look for something more digestible.

The meal continued. The old women began jabbering:

В«Now they'll stuff themselves full and start bawling songsВ».

В«Pasha Emilevich sold the chair from the recreation room this morning. A second-hand dealer took it away at the back doorВ».

В«Just you see. He'll come home drunk tonightВ».

At this moment the pensioners' conversation was interrupted by a trumpeting noise that even drowned the hissing of the fire extinguisher, and a husky voice began:

«…vention…»

The old women hunched their shoulders and, ignoring the loudspeaker in the corner on the floor, continued eating in the hope that fate would spare them, but the loudspeaker cheerfully went on: РҐ

«Evecrashshsh … viduso … valuable invention.

The trumpet wheezed and renewed the broadcast in a thick voice.

«… vented a system of signal lights for snow ploughs. The invention has been approved by Dorizul…».

The old women floated away to their rooms like grey ducklings. The loudspeaker, jigging up and down by its own power, blared away into the empty room:

В«And we will now play some Novgorod folk musicВ».

Far, far away, in the centre of the earth, someone strummed a balalaika and a black-earth Battistini broke into song:

В«On the wall the bugs were sitting,

Blinking at the sky;

Then they saw the tax inspector

And crawled away to dieВ».

In the centre of the earth the verses brought forth a storm of activity. A horrible gurgling was heard from the loudspeaker. It was something between thunderous applause and the eruption of an underground volcano.

Meanwhile the disheartened fire inspector had descended an attic ladder backwards and was now back in the kitchen, where he saw five citizens digging into a barrel of sauerkraut and bolting it down. They ate in silence.