The things

Daniil Kharms

Falling old ladies

Because of her excessive curiosity, an old lady fell out of the window and smashed into the ground.

Another old lady looked out of the window, staring down at the one who was smashed, but out of her excessive curiosity she also fell out of the window and smashed into the ground.

Then the third old lady fell out of the window, then the fourth did, then the fifth.

When the sixth old lady fell out of the window, I got bored watching them and went to Maltsev market where, they say, someone gave a woven shawl to a blind.

The things

Once Orlov had too much crushed beans and died. And Krylov died too, when he found out about Orlov. But Spridonov died of no reason. And Spridonov's wife fell off a kitchen cabinet and died too. But Spridonov's children drowned in a pond. Meanwhile Spridonov's grandmother became an alcoholic and went on the tramp. But Mikhailov ceased combing his hair and got ill. And Kruglov sketched a lady with a whip and went mad. And Perehvostov received a wire for four hundred roubles and became so uptight that they fired him.

Good people are not capable of getting a good foothold in life.

August 22, 1936

A knight

Aleksey Alekseyevich Alekseyev was a real knight. So, for example, on one occasion, catching sight from a tram of a lady stumbling against a kerbstone and dropping from her bag a glass lampshade for a table-lamp, which promptly smashed, Aleksey Alekseyevich, desiring to help the lady, decided to sacrifice himself and, leaping from the tram at full speed, fell and split open the whole of his phizog on a stone. Another time, seeing a lady who was climbing over a fence catch her skirt on a nail and get stuck there, so that she could move neither backward nor forward, Aleksey Alekseyevich began to get so agitated that, in his agitation, he broke two front teeth with his tongue. In a word, Aleksey Alekseyevich was really the most chivalrous knight, and not only in relation to ladies. With unprecedented ease, Aleksey Alekseyevich could sacrifice his life for his Faith, Tsar and Motherland, as he proved in the year '14, at the start of the German war, by throwing himself, with the cry 'For the Motherland!', on to the street from a second-floor window. By some miracle, Aleksey Alekseyevich remained alive, getting off with only light injuries, and was quickly, as such an uncommonly zealous patriot, dispatched to the front.

At the front, Aleksey Alekseyevich distinguished himself with his unprecedentedly elevated feelings and every time he pronounced the words 'banner', 'fanfare', or even just 'epaulettes', down his face there would trickle a tear of emotion.

In the year '16, Aleksey Alekseyevich was wounded in the loins and withdrew from the front.

As a first-category invalid, Aleksey Alekseyevich had no longer to serve and, profiting from the time on his hands, committed his patriotic feelings to paper.

Once, chatting with Konstantin Lebedev, Aleksey Alekseyevich came out with his favourite utterance - I have suffered for the motherland and wrecked my loins, but I exist by the strength of conviction in my posterior subconscious.

- And you're a fool! - said Konstantin Lebedev. - The highest service to the motherland is rendered only by a Liberal.

For some reason, these words became deeply imprinted on the mind of Aleksey Alekseyevich and so, in the year '17, he was already calling himself a liberal whose loins had suffered for his native land.

Aleksey Alekseyevich greeted the Revolution with delight, notwithstanding even the fact that he was deprived of his pension. For a certain time Konstantin Lebedev supplied him with cane-sugar, chocolate, preserved suet and millet groats. But when Konstantin Lebedev suddenly went missing no one knew where, Aleksey Alekseyevich had to take to the streets and ask for charity. At first, Aleksey Alekseyevich would extend his hand and say: - Give charity, for Christ's sake, to him whose loins have suffered for the motherland. - But this brought no success. Then Aleksey Alekseyevich changed the word 'motherland' to the word 'revolution'. But this too brought no success. Then Aleksey Alekseyevich composed a revolutionary song, and, if he saw on the street a person capable, in Aleksey Alekseyevich's opinion, of giving alms, he would take a step forward and proudly, with dignity, threw back his head and start singing:

To the barricades
We will all zoom!
For freedom
We will ourselves all maim and doom!
And, jauntily tapping his heels in the Polish manner, Aleksey Alekseyevich would extend his hat and say - Alms, please, for Christ's sake. - This did help and Aleksey Alekseyevich rarely remained without food.

Everything was going well, but then, in the year '22, Aleksey Alekseyevich got to know a certain Ivan Ivanovich Puzyryov, who dealt in Sunflower oil in the Haymarket. Puzyryov invited Aleksey Alekseyevich to a cafe, treated him to real coffee and, himself chomping fancy cakes, expounded to him some sort of complicated enterprise of which Aleksey Alekseyevich understood only that he had to do something, in return for which he would receive from Puzyryov the most costly items of nutrition. Aleksey Alekseyevich agreed and Puzyryov, on the spot, as an incentive, passed him under the table two caddies of tea and a packet of Rajah cigarettes.

After this, Aleksey Alekseyevich came to see Puzyryov every morning at the market, and picking up from him some sort of papers with crooked signatures and numerous seals, took a sleigh, if it were winter and if it were summer a cart, and set off as instructed by Puzyryov, to do the rounds of various establishments where, producing the papers, he would receive some sort of boxes, which he would load on to his sleigh or cart, and in the evening take them to Puzyryov at his flat. But once, when Aleksey Alekseyevich had just rolled up in his sleigh at Puzyryov's flat, two men came up to him, one of whom was in a military great-coat, and asked him: - Is your name Alekseyev? - Then Aleksey Alekseyevich was put into an automobile and taken away to prison.

At the interrogation, Aleksey Alekseyevich understood nothing and just kept saying that he had suffered for his revolutionary motherland. But, despite this, he was sentenced to ten years of exile in his motherland's northern parts. Having got back in the year '28 to Leningrad, Aleksey Alekseyevich began to ply his previous trade and, standing up on the corner of Volodarskiy, tossed back his head with dignity, tapped his heel and sang out:

To the barricades
We will all zoom!
For freedom
We will ourselves all maim and doom!
But he did not even manage to sing it through twice before he was taken away in a covered vehicle to somewhere in the direction of the Admiralty. His feet never touched the ground.

And there we have a short narrative of the life of the valiant knight and patriot, Aleksey Alekseyevich Alekseyev.

1934-36