Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997) -
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'Anyhow,' grumbled Dvubratsky.
"The laddie must've got stuck on the Klyazma,' came the thick-voiced
response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant,
who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the
pen-name of Bos'n George.
'Excuse me!' boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches,
'but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in
here. The meeting was set for ten o'clock, wasn't it?'
'It's nice now on the Klyazma,' Bos'n George needled those present,
knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was
everybody's sore spot. 'There's nightingales singing already. I always work
better in the country, especially in spring.'
'It's the third year I've paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to
this paradise, but there's nothing to be spied amidst the waves,' the
novelist leronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.
'Some are lucky and some aren't,' the critic Ababkov droned from the
window-sill.
Bos'n George's little eyes lit up wim glee, and she said, softening her
contralto:
We mustn't be envious, comrades. There's twenty-two
dachas[4] in all, and only seven more being built, and there's
three thousand of us in Massolit.'
'Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' someone put in from the
corner.
'So you see,' the Bos'n went on, 'what can be done? Naturally, it's the
most talented of us that got the dachas . . .'
'The generals!' Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.
Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.
'Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,' Glukharev said behind him.
'Lavrovich has six to himself,' Deniskin cried out, 'and the dining
room's panelled in oak!'
'Eh, that's not the point right now,' Ababkov droned, 'it's that it's