Free The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov Page B

Soviet Union, which I passed with a “B”, and a test on Scientific Atheism.
    Of course, I didn’t forget what my true calling was and why I was there—to acquire that “solid specialization”, that indulgence from my parents and myself, so that, with a mechanical engineer’s diploma tucked under my jacket, I could stride fearlessly into the artistic world with a clear conscience.
    When they started developing a team at their institute for the Club of the Jolly and Ingenious competition, I dashed to join it. My first trial appearances on stage made it clear that I was “not funny”. Everyone realized it. I attributed this acting failure to my noble, entirely unclown-like stature and dramatic talent. Disappointed, I consoled myself with the thought that my natural gifts were not those of a buffoon in amateur dramatics, but of a serious artiste.
    I managed to make up two feeble jokes. One played on the name of Ukrainian vodka with pepper,
horilka
—“In Ukraine they’ve started making vodka for monkeys—Gorillka…”—and the other developed that Russian saying, “There’s no virtue in standing”— “There’s no virtue in standing. Take the weight off. Virtue’s in the backside.” They laughed at the second joke and ditched it. I also reworked the song ‘The Beautiful Distance’ to include the words, “I promise I’ll be cleaner and I’ll shave.”
    My hour of stardom arrived when our institute’s team got involved in the municipal festival. Three days before the quarterfinals, it turned out that the competition sections “Greetings” and “Homework” were still not ready. The Jolly and Ingenious were headed for the bottom, taking their captain with them. They laid out witticisms written on scraps of paper like a game of patienceand couldn’t gather them together into a single whole. The mournful prospect of an exit from the festival loomed over us.
    The manager of the student club, Dima Galoganov, dropped in to see us. He was a recent graduate of the institute and now a petty bureaucrat. Galoganov sombrely swore to disband the team in the event of failure.
    During the castigation I looked through the archive, which contained the rejected dross, jumbled it up together with some lightweight jokes, and suddenly a complete plan of the performance took shape in my mind.
    Raking up the pieces of paper and the notebook, I announced that by the next day I would write a complete programme for all the sections. In one night of work I managed to sew those dismal scraps together into a colourful and entirely original performance. One leitmotif was particularly successful, using songs in which the words “go crazy” figured at least in passing: “He’s wearing a camouflage tunic, it’ll make her go crazy”, “I’m going crazy or ascending to a higher plane of lunacy”, “And the postman will go crazy trying to find us”, “I’m going crazy over you”. The moment the singer reached that phrase with “crazy” in it, he suddenly started pulling dumb faces, smiling, gurgling and dribbling. In the final song we really cracked the audience up when our entire line-up started gurgling like idiots. Our team triumphantly won through to the semi-final, and a star of Moscow’s Club of the Jolly and Ingenious who was on the jury said that our performing skills were worthy of a higher league.
    The president of the institute congratulated the manager of the student club, Galoganov, on our victory, and Galoganov didn’t forget about me. In three days I had become number one in the team. From being a rank-and-file writer of jokes, I was elevated to a position with obscure contours, within which the functions of a director could be vaguely discerned. Moreover, no one objected to my elevation. On the contrary, I was loudly congratulated and thanked.
    I made haste to inform my family about my success and they nodded smugly—“Well, what did we say?”, “Well, well, only a second-year student and already a