SCENE: Lenin’s Tomb, Moscow, U.S.S.R. Two immaculate soldiers face each other at the portal of portals.
Enter—very, very wearily—an incredibly dilapidated old man with unbelievably filthy whiskers: on his bent back lies an empty sack: he is feebly scratching himself with one hand and with the other is faintly tugging at a piece of string. Behind this spectre move jerkily in single file eight fleabitten motheaten perfectly woebegone tiny reindeer.
1ST SOLDIER (crisply): Halt!—who goes there?
BUM (shrilly): Lame and blind.
2ND SOLDIER: (crisply): Name and occupation.
BUM: A tempowawy guawdian of the etewnal fluid.
1ST SOLDIER: Advance and give the weflex.
BUM: A place fow evewything and evewything in its place.
2ND SOLDIER: Thank you, comwade.
BUM: Don’t mention it, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: What is youw name, comwade?
BUM: Comwade Santa Claus, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Awe the eight othew comwades with you, comwade Santa Claus?
BUM: They awe, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: In othew words you awe all togethew, comwade Santa Claus?
BUM: In othew words we awe all togethew, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Thank you, comwade.
BUM: Don’t mention it, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: Awe you all togethew hewe incidentially ow on puwpose, comwade?
BUM: We awe all togethew on puwpose, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Sewiously, comwade?
BUM: Extwemly sewiously, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: How sewiously, comwade?
BUM: Almost fatally, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Not weally, comwade!
BUM: Absolutely, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: And what may youw puwpose be, comwade?
BUM: I’m looking fow something, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: Something you lost, comwade?
BUM: Not exactly, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: And what may you be looking fow, comwade?
BUM: I may be looking fow a woom and a bathos, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: A woom and a bathos, comwade!
BUM: You heawd me, comwade.
1ST SOLDIER: You don’t mean one whole woom and one whole bathos, comwade?
BUM: Even so, comwade.
2ND SOLDIER: But thewe awe only nine of you altogethew, comwade!
BUM: What do you mean thewe awe only nine of me altogethew, comwade?
1ST SOLDIER: He means, comwade, that comwade Stalin has decweed that thewe must be no mowe wooms with or without bathos.
BUM: But I simply must have a bathos fow myself and a woom fow these othew comwades, comwade!
2ND SOLDIER: But don’t you see that we can’t any of us have wooms, comwade?
1ST SOLDIER: Ask comwade Stalin, comwade.
BUM: Whewe is comwade Stalin, comwade?
1ST SOLDIER: One moment, comwade. (Whispers, to 2ND SOLDIER): —Comwade Bunk!
2ND SOLDIER (Whispers, to 1ST): —Yes, comwade Baldewdash!
1ST SOLDIER:—Is comwade Stalin in his woom?
2ND SOLDIER: Don’t be silly!
1ST SOLDIER:—Is he in Comwade Lenin’s woom?
2ND SOLDIER:—Wath-ew.
1ST SOLDIER: Thank you, comwade Bunk!
2ND SOLDIER:—Don’t mention it, comwade Baldewdash!
1ST SOLDIER (to Bum): I’m sowwy, comwade Santa Claus, but comwades Stalin and Lenin awe in confewence. (The Tomb opens: emitting a thug.)
BOTH SOLDIERS: Good comwade mowning, comwade Stalin!
THUG: Good comwade mowning, comwades Bunk and Baldewdash!
BOTH SOLDIERS: Thewe’s a comwade hewe to see you, comwade Stalin!
THUG: A com—. (Catching sight of BUM, recoils . . . staring, panicstricken, seizes his head in both hands.)
BOTH (starting, trembling) SOLDIERS: W-w-what’s the mattew, comwade Stalin?
STALIN (impotently pointing to Santa Clause, cries out hysterically): —Marx!
From Americana, January 1933.