Ukusy-Kalanchevsky

Re: Memorandum No. 1032

In answer to Your highly esteemed Excellency in matters of document no. 1032, I have the honor to inform you that in the province entrusted to my care there was no eclipse of the moon, though some phenomenon of nature did in fact manifest itself in the sky, which led to a darkening of the lunar light, though I cannot say with certainty whether this was the eclipse or not. Following an exhaustive search, three street lanterns were ascertained to be in my district, which, after scrubbing the glass and the insides, were lit. But these measures did not have the desired results, for said eclipse took place at a moment when the lanterns, as the result of a gust of wind blowing through their broken glass, went out, and hence could not illuminate the eclipse referred to in Your Excellency’s memorandum. There were no gatherings, as all the townsfolk were asleep except for one clerk of the district council, Ivan Avelev, who was sitting on the fence and peering at the eclipse through his fist, grinning equivocally. “Same to me whether there’s a moon or not . . . I don’t give a hoot!” he said. When I informed him that these words were whimsical, he boldly declared: “What are you defending the moon for, lamebrain! You’ll be sending it season’s greetings next!” And he added an immoral expression in local parlance, which I will have the honor of reporting him for.

Glotalov

Witnessed by: A man without a spleen

A PROBLEM

Iwould like to present the following problem for the reader to solve:

At two o’clock in the morning my wife, my mother-in-law, and I left the house where we had been celebrating the marriage of a distant cousin. At the feast, needless to say, we had eaten and drunk our fill.

“In my condition I can’t go on foot,” my wife announced, turning to me. “Kirill, darling, can you get us a cab?”

“A cab? What will you think of next, Dasha!” my mother-in-law protested. “With the price of everything these days, and us having to scrimp and save for every loaf of bread! We don’t have a stick of wood for the stove, and you want a cab? Ignore her, Kirill!”

But valuing my wife’s health and the fruit of our unhappy love (the reader will already have guessed that my wife was expecting), and finding myself at that stage of blissful tipsiness when walking provides an excellent impetus for understanding Copernicus’ theory of the earth’s rotation, I ignored my mother-in-law’s entreaties and called to a cabbie. The cab pulled up . . . and this is the problem:

We all know the measurements of an average cab. I am a man of letters, from which it follows that I am thin and underfed. My wife, too, is thin, though somewhat broader than I am, since the will of fate has widened her diameter. My mother-in-law’s diameter, on the other hand, is immense, her length equaling her width, her weight close to four hundred pounds.

“We won’t all fit in a single cab,” I said. “We’ll have to take two.”

“Are you stark raving mad?” my mother-in-law gasped. “We have no money to pay the rent, and you want to hire two cabs? I won’t allow this! I withhold my blessing! A curse on this scheme!”

“But dearest mamasha,” I said to my mother-in-law in as reverential a tone as I could muster, “you must see that the three of us simply cannot squeeze into this cab. Once you take a seat, by God’s bounty, the cab will be full. Thin as I am, I might possibly be able to squeeze in next to you, but owing to her delicate condition our Dasha simply won’t be able to squeeze in beside you. Where would she sit?”

“Do as you please!” my mother-in-law snapped, waving her hand dismissively. “The Lord has clearly sent you to torment me. But I withhold my blessing in the matter of a second cab!”

“Well, let me see . . .” I began, thinking aloud. “Thin as I am, I could sit with you, though then there would be no place for Dasha . . . and if I sit with Dasha, there’ll be no place for you . . . Wait a minute! If, say, I sat with you, Dasha could sit on our knees. Although now that I think of it, that’s physically impossible, since these cabs are so damned narrow.