B605 <=> B607 [BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 606]

“Of these private laboratories, such as I wished to set up, not one but thousands could there be had; it was merely necessary to know first of all what abnormal ‘goings’ and ‘comings’ were the practice for procuring the permits for these laboratories, and then to act in accordance with these abnormalities.

“I, however, on account of the short time I had stayed there, had not yet had time to make clear for myself all the subtleties of the ordinary being-existence which had begun in this community, as I said, to become particularly abnormal.

“That is why, when I set out to take steps to get the permit I required, there began for me those endless vexations, or, as they themselves say in such cases, the ‘idiotic dillydallyings’ which were also fixed not long before in the process of their being-existence, and in addition all this turned out in the end to be quite without result and unnecessary.

“It began with this: when I had reached the aforesaid department and addressed myself to the staff there, they all began to eye each other perplexedly and to whisper together, and several of them rummaged through fat tomes in the hope obviously of finding some written rule about the issuing of these permits. Finally the oldest of them came toward me and importantly required from me that I should first of all bring him from a certain other department certain information concerning my personal, as they express it, ‘loyalty.’

“It was from just this that my further endless perambulations began, from one department to another, from, as they say, one administration to another, from one official specialist to another . . . and so on without end.

“Thus the business continued until from the so-called ‘district-officer’ I had to go to the so-called ‘parish priest’ and so on, all but to the official city midwife.