Илья Ильф, Евгений Петров
Золотой теленок / The Golden Calf

© КАРО, 2021

Все права защищены

“Look both ways before crossing the street.”

– Traffic regulation

Part 1. The Crew of the Antelope

Chapter 1. How Panikovsky broke the pact

You have to be nice to pedestrians. Pedestrians comprise the greater part of humanity.

Moreover, its better part. Pedestrians created the world. They built cities, erected tall buildings, laid out sewers and waterlines, paved the streets and lit them with electricity. They spread civilization throughout the world, invented the printing press and gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that no less than 114 tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And just when everything was ready, when our native planet had become relatively comfortable, the motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But, somehow, the motorists quickly forgot about this. They started running over the mild-mannered and intelligent pedestrians. The streets – laid out by pedestrians – were taken over by the motorists.

The roads became twice as wide, while the sidewalks shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. The frightened pedestrians were pushed up against the walls of the buildings.

In a big city, pedestrians live like martyrs. They’ve been forced into a kind of traffic ghetto. They are only allowed to cross the streets at the intersections, that is, exactly where the traffic is heaviest – where the thread by which a pedestrian’s life hangs is most easily snapped.

In our expansive country, the common automobile – intended by the pedestrians to peacefully transport people and things – has assumed the sinister role of a fratricidal weapon. It puts entire cohorts of union members and their loved ones out of commission.

And if on occasion a pedestrian manages to dart out from under a silver grille, he is fined by the police for violating the traffic laws.

In general, the pedestrians’ standing is not what it used to be. They, who gave the world such outstanding figures as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg, and Anatole France, have been forced to jump through ridiculous hoops just to remind others of their existence. Lord, oh Lord (who, frankly, doesn’t exist), how low you (who don’t really exist) have let the pedestrian stoop! Here he is, walking along a Siberian road from Vladivostok to Moscow, carrying a banner that reads IMPROVE THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE TEXTILE WORKERS in one hand, and with an extra pair of Uncle Vanya sandals and a lidless tin kettle dangling from a stick that he’s slung over his shoulder.

This is a Soviet hiker who left Vladivostok as a young man and who, upon reaching the outskirts of Moscow in his old age, will be run over and killed by a heavy truck. And nobody will even manage to get the license plate number.

Here’s another one, the last of the Mohicans of European foot traffic. He is pushing a barrel around the world. He would have been more than happy to walk just like that, without the barrel, but then nobody would notice that he is a long-distance hiker, and the press would ignore him. And so all his life he is forced to push the damn thing, which, to add insult to injury, has a large yellow advertisement extolling the unparalleled qualities of Motorist’s Dream engine oil.

This is how far the pedestrian has fallen.

Only in small Russian towns is the pedestrian still loved and respected. In those towns, he still rules, wandering carelessly in the middle of the street and crossing it in the most intricate manner in whatever direction he chooses.

A man wearing a white-topped captain’s cap, the kind favored by administrators of summer amusement parks and MCs, undoubtedly belonged to this greater and better part of humanity. He traveled the streets of the town of Arbatov on foot, looking around with somewhat critical curiosity. He carried a small doctor’s bag in his hand. Apparently the town made no particular impression on the pedestrian in the artsy cap.

He saw a dozen or so blue, yellow, and pinkish white church towers and noticed the peeling gold of the domes. A flag crackled above a government building. Near the white gate tower of the provincial citadel, two severe-looking old ladies conversed in French, complaining about the Soviet regime and reminiscing about their beloved daughters. Cold air and a sour wine-like smell wafted from the church basement. Apparently, it was used to store potatoes.

“Church of the Savior on Spilled Potatoes,” muttered the pedestrian.

He walked under the plywood arch with the freshly painted banner, WELCOME TO THE 5TH DISTRICT CONFERENCE OF WOMEN AND GIRLS, and found himself at the beginning of a long tree-lined alley named Boulevard of Prodigies.

“No,” he said with chagrin, “this is no Rio de Janeiro, this is much worse.”

Almost all the benches on the Boulevard of Prodigies were taken up by young women sitting alone with open books in their hands. Dappled shade fell across the pages of the books, the bare elbows, and the cute bangs. When the stranger stepped into the cool alley there was a noticeable stir on the benches. The girls hid their faces behind volumes by Gladkov, Eliza Orzeszkowa, and Seyfullina and eyed the visitor with temerity. He paraded past the excited book lovers and emerged from the alley at his destination, the city hall.

At that moment, a horse cab appeared from around the corner. A man in a long tunic briskly walked next to it, holding on to the dusty, beat-up fender and waving a bulging portfolio embossed with the word “Musique.” He was heatedly arguing with the passenger. The latter, a middle-aged man with a pendulous banana-shaped nose, held a suitcase between his legs and from time to time shook a finger in his interlocutor’s face in vehement disagreement. In the heat of the argument his engineer’s cap, sporting a band of plush green upholstery fabric, slid to one side. The adversaries uttered the word “salary” loudly and often.

Soon other words became audible as well.

“You will answer for this, Comrade Talmudovsky!” shouted the Tunic, pushing the engineer’s hand away from his face.

“And I am telling you that no decent professional would come to work for you on such terms,” replied Talmudovsky, trying to return his finger to its original position.

“Are you talking about the salary again? I’m going to have to launch a complaint about your excessive greed.”

“I don’t give a damn about the salary! I’d work for free!” yelled the engineer, angrily tracing all kinds of curves in the air with his finger. “I can even retire if I want to. Don’t treat people like serfs! You see ‘Liberty, equality, brotherhood’ everywhere now, and yet I am expected to work in this rat hole.”

At this point, Talmudovsky quickly opened his hand and started counting on his fingers:

“The apartment is a pigsty, there’s no theater, the salary… Driver! To the train station!”

“Whoa!” shrieked the Tunic, rushing ahead and grabbing the horse by the bridle. “As the secretary of the Engineers and Technicians local, I must… Kondrat Ivanovich, the plant will be left without engineers… Be reasonable… We won’t let you get away with this, Engineer Talmudovsky… I have the minutes here with me…”

And then the secretary of the local planted his feet firmly on the ground and started undoing the straps of his “Musique.”

This lapse decided the argument. Seeing that the path was clear, Talmudovsky rose to his feet and yelled at the top of his lungs:

“To the station!”

“Wait, wait…” meekly protested the secretary, rushing after the carriage. “You are a deserter from the labor front!”

Sheets of thin paper marked “discussed-resolved” flew out of the portfolio.

The stranger, who had been closely watching the incident, lingered for a moment on the empty square, and then said with conviction:

“No, this is definitely not Rio de Janeiro.”

A minute later he was knocking on the door of the city council chairman.

“Who do you want to see?” asked the receptionist who was sitting at the desk by the door. “What do you need to see the chairman for? What’s your business?”

Apparently the visitor was intimately familiar with the principles of handling receptionists at various governmental, non-governmental, and municipal organizations. He didn’t bother to claim that he had urgent official business.

“Private matters,” he said dryly and, without looking back at the receptionist, stuck his head in the door. “May I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer, he approached the chairman’s desk.

“Good morning, do you recognize me?”

The chairman, a dark-eyed man with a large head, wearing a navy blue jacket and matching pants that were tucked into tall boots with high angled heels, glanced at the visitor rather distractedly and said he did not recognize him.

“You don’t? For your information, many people think I look remarkably like my father.”

“I look like my father, too,” said the chairman impatiently. “What do you want, Comrade?”

“What matters is who the father was,” said the visitor sadly. “I am the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.”

The chairman felt foolish and started rising from his seat. He instantly recalled the famous image of the pale faced revolutionary lieutenant in his black cape with bronze clasps in the shape of lion’s heads. While he was pulling his thoughts together to ask the son of the Black Sea hero an appropriate question, the visitor examined the office furnishings with the eye of a discriminating buyer.

Back in tsarist times, all government offices were furnished in a particular style. A special breed of office furniture was developed: flat storage cabinets rising to the ceiling, wooden benches with polished seats three inches thick, desks on monumental legs, and oak barriers separating the office from the turmoil of the world outside. During the revolution, this type of furniture almost disappeared, and the secret of making it was lost. People forgot how to furnish government offices properly, and official spaces started filling up with objects that until then were thought to belong exclusively in private apartments. Among these were soft lawyer’s couches with springs and tiny glass shelves for the seven porcelain elephants that supposedly bring luck, as well as china cabinets, flimsy display shelves, folding leather chairs for invalids, and blue Japanese vases. In addition to a regular desk, the office of the chairman of the Arbatov city council also gave refuge to two small ottomans, which were upholstered with torn pink silk, a striped love seat, a satin screen depicting Mount Fuji with a flowering cherry tree, and a heavy mirrored wardrobe that was slapped together at the local open-air market.

“The wardrobe, I’m afraid, is of the Hey Slavs type,” thought the visitor. “The pickings here are slim. Nope, this is no Rio de Janeiro.”

“It’s very good of you to stop by,” said the chairman finally. “You must be from Moscow?”

“Yes, just passing through,” replied the visitor, examining the love seat and becoming even more convinced that the city’s finances were not in good shape. He much preferred city halls with new, Swedish-style furniture from the Leningrad Woodworks Enterprise.

The chairman was about to ask what brought the Lieutenant’s son to Arbatov, but instead, to his own surprise, he smiled meekly and said:

“The churches here are remarkable. We already had some people from Cultural Heritage here, there’s talk about restoration. Tell me, do you remember the uprising on the battleship Ochakov yourself?”

“Barely,” replied the visitor. “In those heroic times, I was very young. I was just a baby.”

“Excuse me, what is your name?”

“Nikolay… Nikolay Schmidt.”

“And your patronymic?”

“Oops, that’s not good!” thought the visitor, who did not know his own father’s name either.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, evading a direct answer, “these days, people don’t know the names of our heroes. The frenzy of the New Economic Policy. The enthusiasm of old is gone. As a matter of fact, I’m here entirely by accident. Trouble on the road. Not a penny left.”

The chairman was also happy to change the subject. He was genuinely embarrassed that he had forgotten the name of the hero of the Ochakov.

“That’s right,” he thought, looking at the hero’s exalted features with love, “work deadens your soul. Makes you forget the important things.”

“What’s that? Not a penny? That’s interesting.”

“Of course, I could have asked some private citizen. Anybody would be happy to help me out, but, as you understand, that would not be entirely proper from the political standpoint,” said the Lieutenant’s son, turning mournful. “The son of a revolutionary asking for money from an individual, a businessman…”

The chairman noticed the change in the visitor’s tone with alarm. “What if he’s an epileptic?” he thought. “He could be a lot of trouble.”

“And it’s a very good thing that you didn’t ask a businessman,” said the chairman, who was totally confused.

Then, gently, the son of the Black Sea hero got down to business. He asked for fifty rubles. The chairman, constrained by the tight local budget, came up with only eight rubles and three meal vouchers to the Former Friend of the Stomach cooperative diner.

The hero’s son put the money and the vouchers in a deep pocket of his worn dappled gray jacket. He was about to get up from the pink ottoman when they heard the sound of stomping and the receptionist’s cries of protest coming from behind the door. The door flew open, and a new visitor appeared.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked, breathing heavily and searching the room with his eyes.

“I am, so?” said the chairman.

“Hiya, Chairman,” thundered the newcomer, extending his spade-sized hand. “Nice to meet you! I’m the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.”

“Who?” asked the city father, his eyes bulging.

“The son of that great, immortal hero, Lieutenant Schmidt,” repeated the intruder.

“But this comrade sitting here, he is the son of Comrade Schmidt. Nikolay Schmidt.” In total confusion, the chairman pointed at the first visitor, who suddenly looked sleepy.

This was a very delicate situation for the two con artists. At any moment, the long and nasty sword of retribution could glisten in the hands of the unassuming and gullible chairman of the city council. Fate allowed them just one short second to devise a strategy to save themselves. Terror flashed in the eyes of Lieutenant’s Schmidt’s second son.

His imposing figure – clad in a Paraguayan summer shirt, sailor’s bell bottoms, and light-blue canvas shoes – which was sharp and angular just a moment earlier, started to come apart, lost its formidable edges, and no longer commanded any respect at all. An unpleasant smile appeared on the chairman’s face. But when the Lieutenant’s second son had already decided that everything was lost, and that the chairman’s terrible wrath was about to fall on his red head, salvation came from the pink ottoman.

“Vasya!” yelled the Lieutenant’s firstborn, jumping to his feet. “Buddy boy! Don’t you recognize your brother Nick?”

And the first son gave the second son a big hug.

“I do!” exclaimed Vasya, his eyesight miraculously regained. “I do recognize my brother Nick!”

The happy encounter was marked by chaotic expressions of endearment and incredibly powerful hugs – hugs so powerful that the face of the second son of the Black Sea revolutionary was pale with pain. Out of sheer joy, his brother Nick had thrashed him rather badly.

While hugging, both brothers were cautiously glancing at the chairman, whose facial expression remained vinegary throughout the scene. As a result, their strategy had to be elaborated on the spot and enriched with stories of their family life and details of the 1905 sailors’ revolt that had somehow eluded official Soviet historians. Holding each other’s hands, the brothers sat down on the love seat and began reminiscing, all the while keeping their fawning eyes on the chairman.

“What an incredible coincidence!” exclaimed the first son insincerely, his eyes inviting the chairman to partake in the happy family occasion.

“Yes,” said the chairman frostily. “It happens.”

Seeing that the chairman was still in the throes of doubt, the first son stroked his brother’s red, Irish-setter locks and asked softly:

“So when did you come from Mariupol, where you were staying with our grandmother?”

“Yes, I was staying,” mumbled the Lieutenant’s second son, “with her.”

“So why didn’t you write more often? I was very worried.”

“I was busy,” answered the redhead gloomily.

Afraid that his inquisitive brother might ask him what exactly kept him so busy, which was largely doing time at correctional facilities in various jurisdictions, the second son of Lieutenant Schmidt seized the initiative and asked a question himself:

“And why didn’t you write?”

“I did write,” replied his sibling unexpectedly. Feeling a great rush of playfulness he added, “I’ve been sending you registered letters. Here, I’ve got the receipts.” He produced a pile of frayed slips of paper from his side pocket, which, for some reason, he showed to the chairman of the city council instead of his brother – from a safe distance.

Oddly, the sight of the paper reassured the chairman somewhat, and the brothers’ reminiscences grew even more vivid. The redhead became quite comfortable and gave a fairly coherent, albeit monotonous, rendition of the popular brochure “The Revolt on the Ochakov.” His brother embellished the dry presentation with such picturesque vignettes that the chairman, who had started to calm down, pricked up his ears again.

Nevertheless, he let the brothers go in peace, and they rushed outside with great relief. They stopped behind the corner of the city hall.

“Talk about childhood,” said the first son, “when I was a child, I used to kill clowns like you on the spot. With a slingshot.”

“And why is that?” inquired the famous father’s second son light-heartedly.

“Such are the tough rules of life. Or, to put it briefly, life imposes its tough rules on us. Why did you barge into the office? Didn’t you see the chairman wasn’t alone?”

“I thought…”

“Ah, you thought? So you do think on occasion? You are a thinker, aren’t you? What is your name, Mr. Thinker? Spinoza? Jean-Jacques Rousseau? Marcus Aurelius?”

The redhead kept quiet, feeling guilty as charged.

“All right, I forgive you. You may live. And now let’s introduce ourselves. We are brothers, after all, and family ties carry certain obligations. My name is Ostap Bender. May I ask your original name?”

“Balaganov,” said the redhead. “Shura Balaganov.”

“I’m not asking what you do for a living,” said Bender politely, “but I do have some inkling. Probably something intellectual? How many convictions this year?”

“Two,” replied Balaganov freely.

“Now that’s no good. Why are you selling your immortal soul? A man should not let himself get convicted. It’s amateurish. Theft, that is. Beside the fact that stealing is a sin – and I’m sure your mother introduced you to that notion – it is also a pointless waste of time and energy.”

Ostap could have gone on and on about his philosophy of life, but Balaganov interrupted him.

“Look,” he said, pointing into the green depths of the Boulevard of Prodigies. “See that man in the straw hat?”

“I see him,” said Ostap dismissively. “So what? Is that the governor of the island of Borneo?”

“That’s Panikovsky,” said Shura. “The son of Lieutenant Schmidt.”

An aging man, leaning slightly to one side, was making his way through the alley in the shade of regal lindens. A hard straw hat with a ribbed brim sat askew on his head. His pants were so short that the white straps of his long underwear were showing. A golden tooth was glowing beneath his mustache, like the tip of a burning cigarette.

“What, yet another son?” said Ostap. “This is getting funny.”

Panikovsky approached the city hall, pensively traced a figure eight in front of the building, grabbed his hat with both hands and set it straight on his head, tidied up his jacket, sighed deeply, and went inside.

“The Lieutenant had three sons,” remarked Bender, “two smart ones, one a fool. We have to warn him.”

“No, don’t,” said Balaganov, “next time he’ll know better than to break the pact.”

“What pact? What are you talking about?”

“Wait, I’ll tell you later. Look, he’s in, he’s in!”

“I am a jealous man,” confessed Bender, “but there’s nothing to be jealous of here. Have you ever seen a bullfight? Let’s go watch.”

The children of Lieutenant Schmidt, now fast friends, stepped out from behind the corner and approached the window of the chairman’s office.

The chairman was sitting behind the grimy, unwashed glass. He was writing quickly. Like all those engaged in writing, he looked grieved. Suddenly he raised his head. The door swung open, and in came Panikovsky. Holding his hat against his greasy jacket, he stopped in front of the desk and moved his thick lips for a long time. Then the chairman jumped in his chair and opened his mouth wide. The brothers heard a long howl.

Whispering “Fall back, now!” Ostap dragged Balaganov away. They ran to the boulevard and hid behind a tree.

“Take your hats off,” said Ostap, “bare your heads. The body is about to be escorted outside.”

He was right. The thunderous cadences of the chairman’s voice could still be heard when two large men appeared in the doorway of the city hall. They were carrying Panikovsky. One held his arms, the other his legs.

“The remains,” narrated Ostap, “were carried out by the friends and family of the deceased.”

The men dragged the third, foolish offspring of Lieutenant Schmidt out to the porch and started slowly swinging him back and forth. Panikovsky silently gazed into the blue sky with resignation.

“After a brief funeral service…” continued Ostap.

At this very moment the men, having given Panikovsky’s body sufficient momentum, threw him out onto the street.

“…the ashes were interred,” concluded Bender.

Panikovsky plopped on the ground like a toad. He quickly got up and, leaning to one side even more than before, ran down the Boulevard of Prodigies with amazing speed.

“All right,” said Ostap, “now tell me how the bastard broke the pact and what that pact was all about.”

Chapter 2. The thirty sons of lieutenant Schmidt

The eventful morning came to an end. Without discussion, Bender and Balaganov walked briskly away from the city hall. A long, dark-blue steel rail was being carried down the main street in an open peasant cart. The street was ringing and singing, as if the peasant in rough fisherman’s clothes was carrying a giant tuning fork rather than a rail. The sun beat down on the display in the window of the visual aids store, where two skeletons stood in a friendly embrace amidst globes, skulls, and the cheerfully painted cardboard liver of an alcoholic. The modest window of the sign shop was largely filled with glazed metal signs that read CLOSED FOR LUNCH, LUNCH BREAK 2–3 P.M., CLOSED FOR LUNCH BREAK, CLOSED, STORE CLOSED, and, finally, a massive black board with CLOSED FOR INVENTORY in gold lettering. Apparently these blunt statements were particularly popular in the town of Arbatov. All other eventualities were covered with a single blue sign, ATTENDANT ON DUTY. Farther down, three stores – selling wind instruments, mandolins, and bass balalaikas – stood together. Brass trumpets shone immodestly from display stands covered with red fabric. The tuba was particularly impressive. It looked so powerful, and lay coiled in the sun so lazily, that one couldn’t help thinking its proper place was not in a window but in a big city zoo, somewhere between the elephant and the boa constrictor. On their days off, parents would bring their kids to see it and would say: “Look, honey, this is the tuba section. The tuba is now asleep. But when it wakes up, it will definitely start trumpeting.” And the kids would stare at the remarkable instrument with their large wondrous eyes.

Under different circumstances, Ostap Bender would have noticed the freshly hewn, log cabin-sized balalaikas, the phonograph records warping in the heat, and the children’s marching band drums, whose dashing color schemes suggested that providence is always on the side of the big battalions. This time, however, he was preoccupied with something else. He was hungry.

“I gather you’re on the verge of a financial abyss?” he asked Balaganov.

“You mean money?” replied Shura. “I haven’t had any for a week now.”

“In that case, I’d worry about your future, young man,” said Ostap didactically. “The financial abyss is the deepest of them all, and you can be falling into it all your life. Oh well, cheer up. After all, I captured three meal vouchers in my beak. The chairman fell in love with me at first sight.”

Alas, the freshly minted brothers did not get to benefit from the kindness of the city father. The doors of the Former Friend of the Stomach diner sported a large hanging lock that was covered with what looked like either rust or cooked buckwheat.

“Of course,” said Ostap bitterly, “the diner is closed forever – they’re inventorying the schnitzel. We are forced to submit our bodies to the ravages of the private sector.”

“The private sector prefers cash,” reminded Balaganov gloomily.

“Well, I won’t torture you any more. The chairman showered me with gold – eight rubles. But keep in mind, dearest Shura, that I have no intention of nourishing you for free. For every vitamin I feed you, I will demand numerous small favors in return.”

But since there was no private sector in town, the brothers ended up eating at a cooperative summer garden, where special posters informed the customers of Arbatov’s newest contribution to public dining:

“We’ll settle for kvass,” said Balaganov.

“Especially considering that the local kvass is produced by a group of private artisans who are friendly with the Soviet regime,” added Ostap. “Now tell me what exactly this devil Panikovsky did wrong. I love stories of petty thievery.”

Satiated, Balaganov looked at his rescuer with gratitude and began the story. It took a good two hours to tell and was full of exceptionally interesting details.

In all fields of human endeavor, the supply and demand of labor is regulated by specialized bodies.

A theater actor will move to the city of Omsk only if he knows for sure that he need not worry about competition – namely, that there are no other candidates for his recurring role as the indifferent lover or the servant who announces that dinner is ready. Railroad employees are taken care of by their own unions, who helpfully put notices in the papers to the effect that unemployed baggage handlers cannot count on getting work on the Syzran-Vyazma Line or that the Central Asian Line is seeking four crossing guards. A commodities expert places an ad in the paper, and then the entire country learns that there is a commodities expert with ten years’ experience who wishes to move from Moscow to the provinces for family reasons.

Everything is regulated, everything flows along clear channels and comes full circle in compliance with the law and under its protection.

And only one particular market was in a state of chaos – that of con artists claiming to be the children of Lieutenant Schmidt. Anarchy ravaged the ranks of the Lieutenant’s offspring.

Their trade was not producing all the potential gains that should have been virtually assured by brief encounters with government officials, municipal administrators, and community activists – for the most part an extremely gullible bunch.

Fake grandchildren of Karl Marx, non-existent nephews of Friedrich Engels, brothers of the Education Commissar Lunacharsky, cousins of the revolutionary Klara Zetkin, or, in the worst case, the descendants of that famous anarchist, Prince Kropotkin, had been extorting and begging all across the country.

From Minsk to the Bering Strait and from the Turkish border to the Arctic shores, relatives of famous persons enter local councils, get off trains, and anxiously ride in cabs. They are in a hurry. They have a lot to do.

At some point, however, the supply of relatives exceeded the demand, and this peculiar market was hit by a recession. Reform was needed. Little by little, order was established among the grandchildren of Karl Marx, the Kropotkins, the Engelses, and others. The only exception was the unruly guild of Lieutenant Schmidt’s children, which, like the Polish parliament, was always torn by anarchy. For some reason, the children were all difficult, rude, greedy, and kept spoiling the fruits of each other’s labors.

Shura Balaganov, who considered himself the Lieutenant’s firstborn, grew very concerned about market conditions. More and more often he was bumping into fellow guild members who had completely ruined the bountiful fields of Ukraine and the vacation peaks of the Caucasus, places that used to be quite lucrative for him.

“And you couldn’t handle the growing difficulties?” asked Ostap teasingly.

But Balaganov didn’t notice the irony. Sipping the purple kvass, he went on with his story.

The only solution to this tense situation was to hold a conference. Balaganov spent the whole winter organizing it. He wrote to the competitors he knew personally. Those he didn’t know received invitations through the grandsons of Karl Marx whom he bumped into on occasion. And finally, in the early spring of 1928, nearly all the known children of Lieutenant Schmidt assembled in a tavern in Moscow, near the Sukharev Tower. The gathering was impressive. Lieutenant Schmidt, as it turned out, had thirty sons, who ranged in age between eighteen and fifty-two, and four daughters, none of them smart, young, or pretty.

In a brief keynote address, Balaganov expressed hope that the brothers would at last come to an understanding and conclude a pact, the necessity of which was dictated by life itself.

According to Balaganov’s plan, the entire Soviet Union was to be divided into thirty-four operational areas, one for everyone present. Each child would be assigned a territory on a long-term basis. All guild members would be prohibited from crossing the boundaries and trespassing into someone else’s territory for the purpose of earning a living.

Nobody objected to the new work rules except Panikovsky, who declared early on that he would do perfectly well without any pacts. The division of the country was accompanied by some very ugly scenes, however. All parties to the treaty immediately started fighting and began addressing one another exclusively with rude epithets.

The bone of contention was the assignment of the territories. Nobody wanted large cities with universities. Nobody cared for Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov – these cities had seen it all. To a person, they refused the Republic of the Volga Germans.

“Why, is that such a bad republic?” asked Balaganov innocently. “I think it’s a good place. As civilized people, the Germans cannot refuse to help out.”

“Oh, come on!” yelled the agitated children. “Try to get anything out of those Germans!”

Apparently, quite a few of them had been thrown into jail by distrustful German colonists. The distant Central Asian regions, buried in the desert sand, had a very bad reputation as well. They were accused of being unfamiliar with the person of Lieutenant Schmidt.

“You think I’m stupid!” shrieked Panikovsky. “Give me Central Russia, then I’ll sign the pact.”

“What? The entire Center?” mocked Balaganov. “Would you also like Melitopol on top of that? Or Bobruisk?”

At the word Bobruisk, the children moaned painfully. Everyone was prepared to go to Bobruisk immediately. Bobruisk was considered a wonderful, highly civilized place.

“Fine, not the whole Center,” the greedy Panikovsky kept insisting, “give me half. After all, I am a family man, I have two families.”

But he didn’t get even half.

After much commotion, it was decided to assign the areas by drawing lots. Thirty-four slips of paper were cut up, and each had a geographical name written on it. Lucrative Kursk and questionable Kherson, barely touched Minusinsk and nearly hopeless Ashkhabad, Kiev, Petrozavodsk, Chita – all the republics and regions lay in somebody’s rabbit-fur hat waiting for their masters.

The drawing was accompanied by cheers, suppressed moans, and swearing.

Panikovsky’s unlucky star played a role in the outcome. He ended up with the barren republic of the vindictive Volga Germans. He joined the pact, but he was mad as hell.

“I’ll go,” he yelled, “but I’m warning you: if they don’t treat me well, I’ll violate the pact, I’ll trespass!”

Balaganov, who drew the golden Arbatov territory, became alarmed. He declared then and there that he would not tolerate any violations of the operational guidelines.

Either way, order was established, and the thirty sons and four daughters of Lieutenant Schmidt headed for their areas of operation.

“And now, Bender, you just saw for yourself how that bastard broke the pact,” said Shura Balaganov, concluding the story. “He’s been creeping around my territory for a while, I just couldn’t catch him.”

Against Shura’s expectations, Ostap did not condemn Panikovsky’s infraction. Bender was leaning back in his chair and staring absentmindedly into the distance. The back wall of the restaurant garden was high and painted with pictures of trees, symmetrical and full of leaves, like in a school reader. There were no real trees in the garden, but the shade of the wall provided a refreshing coolness which satisfied the customers. Apparently, they were all union members, since they were drinking nothing but beer – without any snacks.

A bright green car drove up to the gate of the garden, gasping and backfiring incessantly. There was a white semi-circular sign on its door which read LET’S RIDE! Below the sign were the rates for trips in this cheerful vehicle. Three rubles per hour. One-way fares by arrangement. There were no passengers in the car.

The customers started nervously whispering to each other. For about five minutes, the driver stared pleadingly through the latticed fence of the garden. Apparently losing hope of getting any passengers, he dared them:

“The taxi is free! Please get in!”

But nobody showed any desire to get into the LET’S RIDE! car. Even the invitation itself had the most peculiar effect on people. They hung their heads and tried not to look towards the car. The driver shook his head and slowly drove off. The citizens of Arbatov followed him glumly with their eyes. Five minutes later, the green vehicle whizzed by in the opposite direction at top speed. The driver was bouncing up and down in his seat and shouting something unintelligible. There were still no passengers.

Ostap followed it with his eyes and said:

“Well, let me tell you, Balaganov, you are a loser. Don’t be offended. I’m just trying to point out your exact position in the grand scheme of things.”

“Go to hell!” said Balaganov rudely.

“So you took offense anyway? Do you really think that being the Lieutenant’s son doesn’t make you a loser?”

“But you are a son of Lieutenant Schmidt yourself!” exclaimed Balaganov.

“You are a loser,” repeated Ostap. “Son of a loser. Your children will be losers, too. Look, kiddo. What happened this morning was not even a phase, it was nothing, a pure accident, an artist’s whim. A gentleman in search of pocket money. It’s not in my nature to fish for such a miserable rate of return. And what kind of a trade is that, for God’s sake! Son of Lieutenant Schmidt! Well, maybe another year, maybe two. And then what? Your red locks will grow familiar, and they’ll simply start beating you up.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” asked Balaganov, alarmed. “How am I supposed to win my daily bread?”

“You have to think,” said Ostap sternly. “I, for one, live off ideas. I don’t beg for a lousy ruble from the city hall. My horizons are broader. I see that you love money selflessly. Tell me, what amount appeals to you?”

“Five thousand,” answered Balaganov quickly.

“Per month?”

“Per year.”

“In that case, we have nothing to talk about. I need five hundred thousand. A lump sum preferably, not in installments.”

“Would you accept installments, if you had to?” asked Balaganov vindictively.

Ostap looked back at him closely and replied with complete seriousness:

“I would. But I need a lump sum.”

Balaganov was about to crack a joke about this as well, but then raised his eyes to look at Ostap and thought better of it. In front of him was an athlete with a profile that could be minted on a coin. A thin white scar ran across his dark-skinned throat. His playful eyes sparkled with determination.

Balaganov suddenly felt an irresistible urge to stand at attention. He even wanted to clear his throat, which is what happens to people in positions of moderate responsibility when they talk to a person of much higher standing. He did indeed clear his throat and asked meekly:

“What do you need so much money for… and all at once?”

“Actually, I need more than that,” said Ostap, “Five hundred thousand is an absolute minimum. Five hundred thousand fully convertible rubles. I want to go away, Comrade Shura, far, far away. To Rio de Janeiro.”

“Do you have relatives down there?” asked Balaganov.

“Do you think I look like a man who could possibly have relatives?”

“No, but I thought…”

“I don’t have any relatives, Comrade Shura, I’m alone in this world. I had a father, a Turkish subject, but he died a long time ago in terrible convulsions. That’s not the point. I’ve wanted to go to Rio de Janeiro since I was a child. I’m sure you’ve never heard of that city.”

Balaganov shook his head apologetically. The only centers of world culture he knew other than Moscow were Kiev, Melitopol, and Zhmerinka. Anyway, he was convinced that the earth was flat.

Ostap threw a page torn from a book onto the table.

“This is from The Concise Soviet Encyclopedia. Here’s what it says about Rio de Janeiro: ‘Population 1,360,000…’ all right… ‘…substantial Mulatto population… on a large bay of the Atlantic Ocean…’ Ah, there! ‘Lined with lavish stores and stunning buildings, the city’s main streets rival those of the most important cities in the world.’ Can you imagine that, Shura? Rival! The mulattos, the bay, coffee export, coffee dumping, if you will, the charleston called ‘My Little Girl Got a Little Thing,’ and… Oh well, what can I say? You understand what’s going on here. A million and a half people, all of them wearing white pants, without exception. I want to get out of here. During the past year, I have developed very serious differences with the Soviet regime. The regime wants to build socialism, and I don’t. I find it boring. Do you understand now why I need so much money?”

“Where are you going to get five hundred thousand?” asked Balaganov in a low voice.

“Anywhere,” answered Ostap. “Just show me a rich person, and I’ll take his money from him.”

“What? Murder?” asked Balaganov in an even lower voice, quickly glancing at the nearby tables, where the citizens of Arbatov were raising their glasses to each other’s health.

“You know what,” said Ostap, “you shouldn’t have signed the so-called Sukharev Pact.

This intellectual effort apparently left you mentally exhausted. You’re getting dumber by the minute. Remember, Ostap Bender has never killed anybody. Others tried to kill him, that’s true. But he is clean before the law. I’m no angel, of course. I don’t have wings, but I do revere the criminal code. That’s my weakness, if you will.”

“Then how are you going to take somebody else’s money?”

“How am I going to take it? The method of swiping money varies, depending on the circumstances. I personally know four hundred relatively honest methods of taking money. That’s not a problem. The problem is that there are no rich people these days. That’s what’s really frustrating. Of course, somebody else might simply go after a defenseless state institution, but that’s against my rules. You already know how I feel about the criminal code. It’s not a good idea to rob a collective. Just show me a wealthy individual instead. But that individual doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Balaganov. “There are some very rich people out there.”

“Do you know people like that?” asked Ostap quickly. “Can you give me the name and exact address of at least one Soviet millionaire? Yet they do exist, they gotta exist. As long as monetary instruments are circulating within the country, there must be people who have a lot of them. But how do you find such a fox?”

Ostap sighed heavily. He must have been dreaming of finding a wealthy individual for quite some time.

“It is so nice,” he said pensively, “to work with a legal millionaire in a properly functioning capitalist country with long established bourgeois traditions. In such places, a millionaire is a well-known figure. His address is common knowledge. He lives in a mansion somewhere in Rio de Janeiro. You go to see him in his office and you take his money without even having to go past the front hall, right after greeting him. And on top of that, you do it nicely and politely: “Hello, Sir, please don’t worry. I’m going to have to bother you a bit. All right. Done.” That’s it. That’s civilization for you! What could be simpler? A gentleman in the company of gentlemen takes care of a bit of business. Just don’t shoot up the chandelier, there’s no need for that. And here… my God! This is such a cold country. Everything is hidden, everything is underground. Even the Commissariat of Finance, with its mighty fiscal apparatus, cannot find a Soviet millionaire. A millionaire may very well be sitting at the next table in this so-called summer garden, drinking forty-kopeck Tip-Top beer. That’s what really upsets me!”

“Does that mean,” Balaganov asked after a pause, “that if you could find such a secret millionaire, then….?”

“Hold it right there. I know what you’re going to say. No, it’s not what you think, not at all. I won’t try to choke him with a pillow or pistol-whip him. None of that silliness. Oh, if only I could find a millionaire! I’ll make sure he’ll bring me the money himself, on a platter with a blue rim.”

“That sounds really good,” chuckled Balaganov simple-heartedly. “Five hundred thousand on a platter with a blue rim.”

Balaganov got up and started circling the table. He smacked his lips plaintively, stopped, opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, sat down without uttering a word, and then got up again. Ostap watched his routine nonchalantly.

“So he’d bring it himself?” asked Balaganov suddenly in a raspy voice. “On a platter? And if he doesn’t? Where is that Rio de Janeiro? Far away? I don’t believe that every single man there wears white pants. Forget it, Bender. With five hundred thousand one can live a good life even here.”

“Absolutely,” said Ostap smiling, “one certainly can. But don’t get worked up for no reason. You don’t have the five hundred thousand, do you?”

A deep wrinkle appeared on Balaganov’s smooth, virginal forehead. He looked at Ostap uncertainly and said slowly:

“I know a millionaire.”

Bender lost his lively expression immediately; his face turned harsh and began to resemble the profile on a coin again.

“Go away,” he said, “I give to charity only on Saturdays. Don’t pull my leg.”

“I give you my word, Monsieur Bender…”

“Listen, Shura, if you insist on switching to French, please call me citoyen, not monsieur. It means citizen. And what, incidentally, is this millionaire’s address?”

“He lives in Chernomorsk.”

“Of course, I knew that. Chernomorsk! Down there, even before the war, a man with ten thousand rubles was called a millionaire. And now… I can imagine! No, I’m sure this is pure nonsense!”

“Wait, just let me finish. He’s a real millionaire. You see, Bender, I was in their detention center recently…”

Ten minutes later, the half-brothers left the cooperative beer garden. The grand strategist felt like a surgeon who is about to perform a rather serious operation. Everything is ready. Gauze and bandages are steaming in the electric sterilizers, a nurse in a white toga moves silently across the tiled floor, the medical glass and nickel shine brightly. The patient lies languorously on a glass table, staring at the ceiling. The heated air smells like German chewing gum. The surgeon, his arms spread wide, approaches the operating table, accepts a sharp sterilized dagger from an assistant, and says to the patient dryly:

“Allrighty, take off your nightie.”

“It’s always like this with me,” said Bender, his eyes shining, “I have to start a project worth a million while I’m noticeably short of monetary instruments. My entire capital – fixed, working, and reserve – amounts to five rubles… What did you say the name of that underground millionaire was?”

“Koreiko,” said Balaganov.

“Oh yes, Koreiko. A very good name. Are you sure nobody knows about his millions?”

“Nobody except me and Pruzhansky. But I already told you that Pruzhansky will be in prison for about three more years. If you could only see how he moaned and groaned when I was about to be released. He probably had a hunch that he shouldn’t have told me about Koreiko.”

“The fact that he disclosed his secret to you was no big deal. That’s not why he moaned and groaned. He must have had a premonition that you would tell the whole story to me. That is indeed a big loss for poor Pruzhansky. By the time he gets out of prison, Koreiko’s only consolation will be the cliché that there’s no shame in poverty.”

Ostap took off his summer cap, waved it in the air, and asked:

“Do I have any gray hair?”

Balaganov sucked in his stomach, spread his feet to the width of a rifle butt, and boomed like a soldier:

“No, Sir!”

“I will. Great battles await us. Your hair, Balaganov, will turn gray too.”

Balaganov suddenly giggled childishly:

“How did you put it? He’ll bring the money himself on a platter with a blue rim?”

“A platter for me,” said Ostap, “and a small plate for you.”

“But what about Rio de Janeiro? I want white pants too.”

“Rio de Janeiro is the cherished dream of my youth,” said the grand strategist seriously, “keep your paws off it. Now back to business. Send the forward guards to my command. Troops are to report to the city of Chernomorsk asap. Full dress uniform. Start the music! I am commanding the parade!”

Chapter 3. Gas is yours, ideas ours

A year before Panikovsky violated the pact by trespassing on someone else’s territory, the first automobile appeared in the town of Arbatov. The town’s trailblazing automotive pioneer was a motorist by the name of Kozlevich. It was his decision to start a new life that brought him to the steering wheel.

The old life of Adam Kozlevich was sinful.

He repeatedly violated the Criminal Code of the Russian Socialist Republic, specifically Article 162, which deals with the misappropriation of another person’s property (theft). This article has many sections, but sinful Adam had no interest in Section A (theft committed without the use of technical devices). That was too primitive for him. Section E, which carried the penalty of incarceration for up to five years, did not suit him either. He didn’t want to spend too much time in prison. Having been interested in all things technical since he was a child, Kozlevich devoted his energies to Article C (felonious misappropriation of another person’s property committed with the use of technical devices, or repeatedly, or in collusion with other individuals, at train stations, in ports, on boats, on trains, or in hotels).

But Kozlevich had very bad luck. He was caught whether he utilized his beloved technical devices or made do without them. He was caught at train stations, in ports, on boats, and in hotels. He was also caught on trains. He was caught even when, in total despair, he resorted to grabbing property in collusion with other individuals.

After a total of about three years in jail, Adam Kozlevich decided that it was much better to accumulate your own property honestly and overtly than to take it from others covertly. This decision brought peace to his restless soul. He became a model inmate, published denunciatory poems in the prison newsletter, Day In and Day Out, and worked hard in the machine shop. The penitentiary system had a salutary effect on him. Adam Kazimirovich Kozlevich, 46, single, of peasant origin, of the former Czestochowa District, multiple repeat offender, came out of prison an honest man.

After two years of working in a Moscow garage, he bought a used car; it was so ancient that its appearance on the market could only be explained by the closing of an automotive museum. Kozlevich paid 190 rubles for this curiosity. For some reason, the car came with a fake palm tree in a green pot. He had to buy the palm tree as well. The tree was passable, but the car needed plenty of work. He searched flea markets for missing parts, patched up the seats, replaced the entire electric system, and, as a final touch, painted the car bright lizard green. The car’s breed was impossible to determine, but Adam claimed it was a Lorraine-Dietrich. As proof of that, he attached a brass plate with the Lorraine-Dietrich logo to the radiator. He was ready to start a private taxi business, which had been Adam’s dream for quite some time.

The day when Adam introduced his creation to the public at a taxi stand was a sad day for private taxi drivers. One hundred and twenty small, black Renault taxicabs, that looked like Browning pistols, were introduced to the streets of Moscow by the authorities. Kozlevich didn’t even attempt to compete with them. He put the palm tree in the Versailles cabdrivers’ tearoom, for safekeeping, and went to work in the provinces.

Arbatov, which totally lacked automotive transport, was much to his liking, so he decided to stay there for good.

Kozlevich imagined how hard, cheerfully, and, above all, honestly he would toil in the field of cabs for hire. He pictured himself on early arctic-cold mornings, waiting at the station for the train from Moscow. Wrapped in a thick ruddy-colored fur coat, his aviator goggles raised to his forehead, he jovially offers cigarettes to the porters. Somewhere behind him, the freezing coachmen are huddling. They cry from the cold and shiver in their thick dark-blue capes. And then the station bell begins to ring. It’s a sign that the train has arrived. Passengers walk out onto the station square and stop in front of the car, pleasantly surprised. They didn’t think that the idea of the taxi had reached the boondocks of Arbatov. Sounding the horn, Kozlevich whisks his passengers to the Peasants’ Hostel. There’s enough work for the whole day, and everyone is happy to take advantage of his services. Kozlevich and his faithful Lorraine-Dietrich invariably participate in all of the town’s weddings, sightseeing trips, and other special occasions. Summers are particularly busy. On Sundays, whole families go to the country in Adam’s car. Children laugh foolishly, scarves and ribbons flutter in the wind, women chatter merrily, fathers look at the driver’s leather-clad back with respect and ask him about automotive developments in the United States of North America. For example, is it true that Ford buys himself a new car every day?

That’s how Kozlevich pictured his blissful new life in Arbatov. The reality, however, quickly destroyed Adam’s castle in the air, with all its turrets, drawbridges, weathervanes, and standards.

The first blow was inflicted by the train schedule. Fast trains passed through Arbatov without making a stop, picking up single line tokens and dropping express mail on the move. Slow trains arrived only twice a week. For the most part, they only brought insignificant people: peasants and shoemakers with knapsacks, boot trees, and petitions to the local authorities. As a rule, these people did not use taxis. There were no sightseeing trips or special occasions, and nobody hired Kozlevich for weddings. People in Arbatov were accustomed to using horse-drawn carriages for weddings. On such occasions, the coachmen would braid paper roses and chrysanthemums into the horses’ manes. The older men, who were in charge of the festivities, loved it.

On the other hand, there were plenty of outings, but those were very different from the ones Adam had pictured. No children, no fluttering scarves, no merry chatter.

On the very first evening, when the dim kerosene street lamps were already lit, Adam was approached by four men. He had spent the whole day pointlessly waiting on Holy Cooperative Square. The men stared at the car for a long time without saying a word. Then one of them, a hunchback, asked uncertainly:

“Can anybody take a ride?”

“Yes, anybody,” replied Kozlevich, surprised by the timidity of the citizens of Arbatov.

“Five rubles an hour.”

The men whispered among themselves. The chauffeur heard some strange sighs and a few words: “Why don’t we do it after the meeting, Comrades…? Would that be appropriate…? One twenty-five per person is not too much… Why would it be inappropriate…?”

And so for the first time, the spacious car took a few locals into its upholstered lap. For a few minutes, the passengers were silent, overwhelmed by the speed, the smell of gasoline, and the whistling wind. Then, as if having a vague premonition, they started quietly singing: “The time of our lives, it’s fast as waves…” Kozlevich shifted into third gear. The sombre silhouette of a boarded-up roadside stand flew by, and the car tore out into the fields on the moonlit highway.

“Every day brings the grave ever closer to us,” crooned the passengers plaintively. They felt sorry for themselves, sorry that they had never gone to university and had never sung student songs. They belted out the chorus rather loudly:

“Let’s have a glass, a little one, tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la-la.”

“Stop!” shouted the hunchback suddenly. “Turn around! I can’t take it any more!”

Back in town, the riders picked up a large number of bottles that were filled with clear liquid, as well as a broad-shouldered woman from somewhere. Out in the fields, they set up a picnic, ate dinner with vodka, and danced the polka without music.

Exhausted from the night’s adventures, Kozlevich spent the next day dozing off behind the wheel at his stand. Towards evening, the same gang showed up, already tipsy. They climbed into the car and drove like mad through the fields surrounding the city all night long. The third night saw a repeat of the whole thing. The nighttime feasts of the fun-loving gang, headed by the hunchback, went on for two weeks in a row. The joys of automotive recreation affected Adam’s clients in a most peculiar way: in the dark, their pale and swollen faces resembled pillows. The hunchback, with a piece of sausage hanging from his mouth, looked like a vampire.

They grew anxious and, at the height of the fun, occasionally wept. One night, the adventurous hunchback arrived at the taxi stand in a horse-drawn carriage with a big sack of rice. At sunrise, they took the rice to a village, swapped it for moonshine, and didn’t bother going back to the city. They sat on haystacks and drank with the peasants, hugging them and swearing eternal friendship. At night, they set up bonfires and wept more pitifully than ever.

The following morning was gray and dull, and the railroad-affiliated Lineman Co-op closed for inventory. The hunchback was its director, his fun-loving friends members of the board and the control commission. The auditors were bitterly disappointed to discover that the store had no flour, no pepper, no coarse soap, no water troughs, no textiles, and no rice. The shelves, the counters, the boxes, and the barrels had all been completely emptied. A pair of enormous hip boots, size fifteen with yellow glued-leather soles, towered in the middle of the store. A National cash register, its lady-like nickel-plated bosom covered with numerous keys, sat in a glass booth. That was all that was left. Kozlevich, for his part, received a subpoena from a police detective; the driver was wanted as a witness in the case of the Lineman Co-op.

The hunchback and his friends never showed up again, and the green car stood idle for three days.

All subsequent passengers, like the first bunch, would appear under the cover of darkness. They would also start with an innocent drive to the country, but their thoughts would turn to vodka after the first half-mile. Apparently, the people of Arbatov could not imagine staying sober in an automobile. They clearly regarded Adam’s vehicle as a refuge for sinful pleasures, where one ought to behave recklessly, make loud obscene noises, and generally live one’s life to the fullest.

Kozlevich finally understood why the men who walked past his stand during the day winked at one another and smiled wryly.

Things were very different from what Adam had envisioned. At night, he was whizzing past the woods with his headlights on, listening to the passengers’ drunken fussing and hollering behind him. During the day, in a stupor from lack of sleep, he sat in detectives’ offices giving statements. For some reason, the citizens of Arbatov paid for their high living with money that belonged to the state, society, or the co-ops. Against his will, Kozlevich was once again deeply entangled with the Criminal code, this time its Part III, the part that informatively discusses white-collar crimes.

The trials soon commenced. In all of them, the main witness for the prosecution was Adam Kozlevich. His truthful accounts knocked the defendants off their feet, and they confessed everything, choking on tears and snot. He ruined countless organizations. His last victim was a branch of the regional film studio, which was shooting a historical movie, Stenka Razin and the Princess, in Arbatov. The entire staff of the branch was locked up for six years, while the film, which was of legal interest only, joined the pirate boots from the Lineman Co-op at the material evidence exhibit.

After that, Adam’s business crashed. People avoided the green vehicle like the plague. They made wide circles around Holy Cooperative Square, where Kozlevich had erected a tall sign: AUTOMOBILE FOR HIRE. He earned nothing at all for several months and lived off the savings from earlier nocturnal rides.

Then he had to make a few sacrifices. He painted a white sign on the car’s door that said LET’S RIDE! and lowered the fare from five to three rubles an hour. The sign looked rather enticing to him, but people resisted anyway. He would drive slowly around town, approaching office buildings and yelling into open windows:

“The air is so fresh! Why not go for a ride?”

Officials would stick their heads out and yell back over the clatter of the Underwood typewriters:

“Go take a ride yourself, you hangman!”

“Hangman?” Kozlevich asked, on the verge of tears.

“Of course you are,” answered the officials, “you’d put us all in the slammer.”

“Then why don’t you pay with your own money?” asked the driver. “For the rides?”

At this point the officials would exchange funny looks and shut the windows. They thought it was ridiculous to use their own money to pay for car rides.

The owner of LET’S RIDE! was at loggerheads with the entire city. He no longer exchanged greetings with anybody. He became edgy and mean-spirited. Seeing an office worker in a long Caucasus-style shirt with puffy sleeves, he would drive up and yell, laughing bitterly:

“Thieves! Just wait, I’m going to set all of you up! Article 109!”

The office worker shuddered, pulled up his silver-studded belt (that looked like it belonged on a draft horse), pretended that the shouting had nothing to do with him, and started walking faster. But vindictive Kozlevich would continue to follow him and goad the enemy by monotonously reading from a pocket edition of the Criminal code, as if from a prayer book:

“Misappropriation of funds, valuables, or other property by a person in a position of authority who oversees such property as part of his daily duties shall be punished…”

The worker would flee in panic, his derriere, flattened by long hours in an office chair, bouncing as he ran.

“…by imprisonment for up to three years!” yelled Kozlevich after him.

But this brought him only moral satisfaction. Financially, he was in deep trouble; the savings were all but gone. He had to do something fast. He could not continue like this.

One day, Adam was sitting in his car in his usual state of anxiety, staring at the silly AUTOMOBILE FOR HIRE sign with disgust. He had an inkling that living honestly hadn’t worked out for him, that the automotive messiah had come too early, when citizens were not yet ready to accept him. Kozlevich was so deeply immersed in these depressing thoughts that at first he didn’t even notice the two young men who had been admiring his car for some time.

“A unique design,” one of them finally said, “the dawn of the automotive industry. Do you see, Balaganov, what can be made out of a simple Singer sewing machine? A few small adjustments – and you get a lovely harvester for the collective farm.”

“Get lost,” said Kozlevich grimly.

“What do you mean, ‘get lost’? Then why did you decorate your thresher with this inviting LET’S RIDE! sign? What if my friend and I wish to take a business trip? What if a ride is exactly what we’re looking for?”

The automotive martyr’s face was lit by a smile – the first of the entire Arbatov period of his life. He jumped out of the car and promptly started the engine, which knocked heavily.

“Get in, please” he said.

“Where to?” “This time, nowhere,” answered Balaganov, “we’ve got no money. What can you do, Comrade driver, poverty…”

“Get in anyway!” cried Kozlevich excitedly. “I’ll drive you for free! You’re not going to drink? You’re not going to dance naked in the moonlight? Let’s ride!”

“All right, we’ll accept your kind invitation,” said Ostap, settling himself in next to the driver. “I see you’re a nice man. But what makes you think that we have any interest in dancing naked?”

“They all do it here,” replied the driver, turning onto the main street, “those dangerous felons.”

He was dying to share his sorrows with somebody. It would have been best, of course, to tell his misfortunes to his kindly, wrinkle-faced mother. She would have felt for him. But Madame Kozlevich had passed away a long time ago – from grief, when she found out that her son Adam was gaining notoriety as a thief. And so the driver told his new passengers the whole story of the downfall of the city of Arbatov, in whose ruins his helpless green automobile was buried.

“Where can I go now?” concluded Kozlevich forlornly. “What am I supposed to do?”

Ostap paused, gave his red-headed companion a significant look, and said:

“All your troubles are due to the fact that you are a truth-seeker. You’re just a lamb, a failed Baptist. I am saddened to encounter such pessimism among drivers. You have a car, but you don’t know where to go. We’re in a worse bind: we don’t have a car, but we know where we want to go. Want to come with us?”

“Where?” asked the driver.

“To Chernomorsk,” answered Ostap. “We have a small private matter to settle down there. There’d be work for you, too. People in Chernomorsk appreciate antiques and enjoy riding in them. Come.”

At first Adam was just smiling, like a widow with nothing to look forward to in this life. But Bender gave it his eloquent best. He drew striking perspectives for the perplexed driver and quickly colored them in blue and pink.

“And here in Arbatov, you’ve got nothing to lose but your spare chains. You won’t be starving on the road, I will take care of that. Gas is yours, ideas ours.”

Kozlevich stopped the car and, still resisting, said glumly:

“I don’t have much gas.”

“Enough for thirty miles?”

“Enough for fifty.”

“In that case, there’s nothing to worry about. I have already informed you that I have no shortage of ideas and plans. Exactly forty miles from here, a large barrel of aviation fuel will be waiting for you right on the road. Do you fancy aviation fuel?”

“I do,” answered Kozlevich, blushing.

Life suddenly seemed easy and fun. He was prepared to go to Chernomorsk immediately.

“And this fuel,” continued Ostap, “will cost you absolutely nothing. Moreover, they’ll be begging you to take it.”

“What fuel?” whispered Balaganov. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Ostap disdainfully studied the orange freckles spread across his half-brother’s face and answered in an equally low voice:

“People who don’t read newspapers have no right to live. I’m sparing you only because I still hope to re-educate you.”

He did not explain the connection between reading newspapers and the large barrel of fuel allegedly sitting on the road.

“I now declare the grand Arbatov-Chernomorsk high-speed rally open,” said Ostap solemnly. “I appoint myself the captain of the rally. The driver of the vehicle will be… what’s your last name? Adam Kozlevich. Citizen Balaganov is confirmed as the rally mechanic, with additional duties as Girl Friday. One more thing, Kozlevich: you have to paint over this LET’S RIDE! sign right away. We don’t need to attract any attention.”

Two hours later the car, with a freshly painted dark green spot on the side, slowly climbed out of the garage and drove through the streets of Arbatov for the last time. Adam’s eyes sparkled hopefully. Next to him sat Balaganov, who was diligently carrying out his role as the rally’s mechanic by thoroughly polishing the car’s brass with a piece of cloth. The captain of the rally sat behind them, leaning into the ruddy-colored seat and eyeing his staff with satisfaction.

“Adam!” he shouted over the engine’s rumble, “what’s your buggy’s name?”

“Lorraine-Dietrich,” answered Kozlevich.

“What kind of a name is that? A car, like a naval ship, ought to have a proper name. Your Lorraine-Dietrich is remarkably fast and incredibly graceful. I therefore propose to name it the Gnu Antelope. Any objections? Unanimous.”

The green Antelope, all of its parts creaking, sped down the outer lane of the Boulevard of Prodigies and flew out onto the market square.

An odd scene greeted the crew of the Antelope on the square. A man with a white goose under his arm was running from the square, in the direction of the highway. He held a hard straw hat on his head with his left hand, and he was being chased by a large howling crowd. The man glanced back frequently, and there was an expression of terror on his decent-looking actor’s face.

“That’s Panikovsky!” cried Balaganov.

“The second phase of stealing a goose,” remarked Ostap coldly. “The third phase comes after the culprit is apprehended. It is accompanied by painful blows.”

Panikovsky apparently knew that the third phase was coming. He was running as fast as he could. He was so frightened that he kept holding on to the goose, which irritated his pursuers to no end.

“Article 116,” recited Kozlevich from memory. “Covert or overt theft of large domestic animals from persons engaged in agriculture or animal husbandry.”

Balaganov burst out laughing. He loved the thought that the violator of the pact would finally receive his due punishment.

The car cut through the noisy crowd and drove onto the highway.

“Help me!” yelled out Panikovsky as the car caught up with him.

“Not today,” said Balaganov, hanging over the side.

The car shrouded Panikovsky with clouds of crimson dust.

“Take me with you!” screamed Panikovsky, desperately trying to keep up with the car.

“I am good!”

The voices of the individual pursuers blended into a roar of disapproval.

“Shall we take the bastard?” enquired Ostap.

“No, don’t,” said Balaganov harshly, “that’ll teach him to break pacts.”

But Ostap had already made the decision.

“Drop the bird!” he yelled to Panikovsky; then he turned to the driver and added quietly, “Dead slow.”

Panikovsky immediately obeyed. The goose got up from the ground looking displeased, scratched itself, and started walking back to town as if nothing had happened.

“Get in,” invited Ostap. “What the hell. But don’t sin any more, or I’ll rip your arms out of their sockets.”

Panikovsky grabbed the edge of the car, then leaned into it and, beating the air with his legs, rolled himself inside, like a swimmer into a boat. He fell to the floor, his stiff cuffs knocking loudly.

“Full speed ahead,” ordered Ostap. “Our deliberations continue.”

Balaganov squeezed the rubber bulb, and the brass horn produced the cheerful strains of an old-fashioned Brazilian tango that cut off abruptly:

The Maxixe is fun to dance.

Ta-ra-ta…

The Maxixe is fun to dance.

Ta-ra-ta…

And the Antelope tore out into the wilderness, towards the barrel of aviation fuel.

Chapter 4. A plain-looking suitcase

A man without a hat walked out of the small gate of building number sixteen, his head bowed. He wore gray canvas pants, leather sandals without socks, like a monk, and a white collarless shirt. Stepping onto the flat, bluish stones of the sidewalk, he stopped and said quietly to himself:

“Today is Friday. That means I have to go to the train station again.”

Having uttered these words, the man in sandals quickly looked over his shoulder. He had a hunch that a man, wearing the impenetrable expression of a spy, was standing behind him. But Lesser Tangential Street was completely empty.

The June morning was just beginning to take shape. Acacia trees were gently trembling and dropping cold metallic dew on the flat stones. Little birds were chirping some cheerful nonsense. The heavy molten sea blazed at the end of the street below, beyond the roofs. Young dogs, looking around sadly and making tapping sounds with their nails, were climbing onto trash cans. The hour of the street sweepers had ended, and the hour of the milk delivery women hadn’t started yet.

It was that time, between five and six in the morning, when the street sweepers, having swung their bristly brooms enough, returned to their shacks, and the city is light, clean, and quiet, like a state bank. At moments like this, one feels like crying and wants to believe that yogurt is indeed tastier and healthier than vodka. But one can already hear the distant rumble of the milk delivery women, who are getting off commuter trains with their cans. They will rush into the city and bicker with housewives at back doors. Factory workers with lunch bags will appear for a brief moment and then immediately disappear behind factory gates. Smoke will start billowing from the stacks. And then, jumping angrily on their night stands, myriad alarm clocks will start ringing their hearts out (those of the Paul Buhre brand a bit quieter, those from the Precision Mechanics State Trust a bit louder), and half-awake office workers will start bleating and falling off their high single beds. The hour of the milk delivery women will be over, and the hour of the office dwellers will begin.

But it was still early, and the clerks were still asleep under their ficus. The man in sandals walked through the entire city, seeing almost no one on the way. He walked under the acacias, which performed certain useful functions in Chernomorsk: some had dark blue mailboxes that were emblazoned with the postal logo (an envelope with a lightning bolt) hanging on them, others had metal water bowls, for dogs, attached to them with chains.

The man in sandals arrived at the Seaside Station just when the milk delivery women were leaving the building. After a few painful encounters with their iron shoulders, the man approached the luggage room and handed over a receipt. The attendant glanced at the receipt – with the unnatural seriousness that is unique to railroad personnel – and promptly tossed a suitcase to him. For his part, the man opened a small leather wallet, sighed, took out a ten-kopeck coin, and put it on the counter, which was made of six old rails that had been polished by innumerable elbows.

Back on the square in front of the station, the man in sandals put the suitcase down on the pavement, looked it over carefully, and even touched the small metal lock. It was a plain-looking suitcase that had been slapped together from a few wooden planks and covered with man-made fabric. If this kind of suitcase belongs to a younger passenger, it usually contains cotton Sketch socks, two spare shirts, a hairnet, some underwear, a brochure entitled The Goals of the Young Communist League in the Countryside, and three squished boiled eggs. Plus, there’s always a roll of dirty laundry wrapped in the newspaper Economic Life and tucked in the corner. Older passengers use this kind of suitcase to carry a full suit and a separate pair of pants (made of “Odessa Centennial” checkered fabric), a pair of suspenders, a pair of closed-back slippers, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, and a white Marseilles blanket. It should be noted that in these cases there’s also something wrapped in Economic Life and tucked in the corner, except that instead of dirty laundry it’s a pale boiled chicken.

Satisfied with this perfunctory inspection, the man in sandals picked up the suitcase and boarded a tropical-white streetcar that took him to the Eastern Station at the other end of the city. Here, he reversed the process he had just completed at the Seaside Station – he checked his suitcase in at the luggage room and obtained a receipt from the imposing attendant. Having completed this unusual ritual, the owner of the suitcase left the station just as the streets were beginning to fill up with the most exemplary of the clerks. He quickly joined their disorderly ranks, and his outfit immediately lost all its strangeness. The man in sandals was an office worker, and almost every office worker in Chernomorsk followed an unwritten dress code: a night shirt with sleeves rolled up above the elbows, light, orphanage-style pants, and those same sandals, or canvas shoes. Nobody wore a hat. One could occasionally spot a cap, but a mane of wild black hair standing on end was much more common, and a bald, sun-tanned pate, glimmering like a melon lying in the field and tempting you to write something on it with an indelible pencil, was more common still.

The organization where the man in sandals worked was called The Hercules, and it occupied a former hotel. Revolving glass doors with brass steamboat handles propelled him into a large, pink marble hallway. The elevator was permanently moored on the first floor, and it served as an information booth – one could already see a woman’s laughing face inside. Having run a few steps, thanks to the momentum given to him by the door, the newcomer stopped in front of an old doorman, who was wearing a cap with a golden zigzag, and asked cheerily:

“So, old man, are you ready for the crematorium?”

“Ready, my friend,” answered the doorman with a broad smile, “ready for our Soviet columbarium.”

He even waived his hands in excitement. His kindly face showed a willingness to submit himself to the fiery ritual at any moment.

The Chernomorsk authorities were planning to build a crematorium – along with a space called a columbarium, for funeral urns – and for some reason this novelty, courtesy of the municipal cemetery department, delighted the citizens to no end. Maybe they thought the new words – crematorium and columbarium – were funny, or maybe they were particularly amused by the thought that a human body can be burned like a log. Either way, they pestered elderly people in the streets and on streetcars with comments like: “Where are you charging off to, old woman? To the crematorium?” Or: “Let the old man pass, he’s off to the crematorium.” Surprisingly, the old folks liked the idea of cremation very much, and they responded good-naturedly to all jokes on the subject. In general, all that talk about dying, which was previously considered inappropriate and impolite, had come to enjoy universal popularity in Chernomorsk and was considered as entertaining as Jewish and Armenian jokes.

The man skirted a naked marble woman that stood at the bottom of the stairs, an electric torch in her raised hand, and threw a quick annoyed look at the poster that said, THE PURGE OF THE HERCULES BEGINS. DOWN WITH THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE AND CRONYISM. Then he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He worked in the Department of Finance and Accounting.

It was still fifteen minutes before the official start of the workday, but the others – Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musicant, Chevazhevskaya, Kukushkind, Borisokhlebsky, and Lapidus Jr. – were already at their desks. They weren’t worried about the purge at all, and repeatedly reassured one another that they weren’t, but lately, for some reason, they had started coming to work earlier and earlier. Taking advantage of the few minutes of free time, they were chatting loudly among themselves. Their voices boomed across the huge hall, which was once the hotel’s restaurant. Its oak-paneled ceiling, which was covered with carvings, and the murals of frolicking dryads and other nymphs, with dreadful smiles on their faces, were evidence of its past.

“Have you heard the news, Koreiko?” Lapidus Jr. asked the new arrival. “You really haven’t? Then you won’t believe it.”

“What news? Good morning, Comrades,” said Koreiko. “Good morning, Anna Vasilevna.”

“You can’t even imagine!” said Lapidus Jr. gleefully. “Accountant Berlaga is in the nuthouse.”

“Are you serious? Berlaga? He’s the most normal person in the world!”

“Was the most normal until yesterday, but now he’s the least normal,” chimed in Borisokhlebsky. “It’s true. His brotherin-law called me. Berlaga has a very serious mental illness, the heel nerve disorder.”

“The only surprising thing is that the rest of us don’t have this nerve disorder yet,” remarked old Kukushkind darkly, looking at his co-workers through his round, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Bite your tongue,” said Chevazhevskaya. “He’s always so depressing.”

“It’s really too bad about Berlaga,” said Dreyfus, turning his swivel chair towards the others.

The others silently agreed with Dreyfus. Only Lapidus Jr. smirked mysteriously. The conversation moved on to the behavior of the mentally ill. They mentioned a few maniacs, and told a few stories about notorious madmen.

“I had a crazy uncle,” reported Sakharkov, “who thought he was simultaneously Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You can imagine the ruckus he raised!”

“The only surprising thing,” said old Kukushkind in a scratchy voice, methodically wiping off his glasses with the flap of his jacket, “the only surprising thing is that the rest of us don’t yet think that we are Abraham.” The old man started puffing, “… Isaac…”

“And Jacob?” asked Sakharkov teasingly.

“That’s right! And Jacob!” shrieked Kukushkind suddenly. “And Jacob! Yes, Jacob. We live in such unnerving times… When I worked at the banking firm of Sycamorsky and Cesarewitch they didn’t have any purges.”

Hearing the word “purge,” Lapidus Jr. perked up, took Koreiko by the elbow, and pulled him toward the enormous stained-glass window, which depicted two gothic knights.

“You haven’t heard the most interesting bit about Berlaga yet,” he whispered. “Berlaga is healthy as a horse.”

“What? So he’s not in the nuthouse?”

“Oh yes, he is.”

Lapidus smiled knowingly.

“That’s the trick. He was simply afraid of the purge and decided to sit this dangerous period out. Faked mental illness. Right now, he’s probably growling and guffawing. What an operator! Frankly, I’m envious.”

“Is there a problem with his parents? Were they merchants? Undesirable elements?”

“Yes, his parents were problematic, and he himself, between you and me, used to own a pharmacy. Who knew the revolution was coming? People took care of themselves the best they could: some owned pharmacies, others even factories. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Who knew?”

“They should have known,” said Koreiko icily.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” agreed Lapidus quickly, “people like this do not belong in a Soviet organization.”

He gave Koreiko a wide-eyed look and returned to his desk.

The hall was filled with employees. Flexible metal rulers, shining and silvery like fish scales, abacuses with palm beads, heavy ledgers with pink and yellow stripes on their pages, and a multitude of other pieces of stationery great and small were pulled out of desk drawers. Tezoimenitsky tore yesterday’s page off the wall calendar, and the new day began. Somebody had already sunk his young teeth into a large chopped mutton sandwich.

Koreiko settled down at his desk as well. He firmly planted his suntanned elbows on the desk and started making entries in a current accounts ledger.

Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, one of the lowest-ranking employees of the Hercules, was approaching the very end of his youth. He was thirty-eight. His brick-red face sported white eyes and blonde eyebrows that looked like ears of wheat. His thin English mustache was the color of ripe cereal, too. His face would have looked quite young had it not been for the rough drill-sergeant’s jowls that cut across his cheeks and neck. At work, Alexander Ivanovich carried himself like an army volunteer: he didn’t talk too much, he followed instructions, and he was diligent, deferential, and a bit slow.

“He’s too timid,” the head of Finance and Accounting said, “too servile, if you will, too dedicated. The moment a new bond campaign is announced, he’s right there, with his one-month salary pledge. The first to sign up. And his salary is a measly forty-six rubles a month. I would love to know how he manages to live on that…”

Alexander Ivanovich had one peculiar talent: he could instantly divide and multiply three- and four-digit numbers in his head. Despite this talent, they still thought Koreiko was somewhat slow.

“Listen, Alexander Ivanovich,” an office mate would ask, “how much is 836 times 423?”

“Three hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight,” Koreiko would answer after a moment’s hesitation.

The co-worker wouldn’t even bother to check the result because he knew that the slow Koreiko never made a mistake.

“Someone else would have made a career out of this,” Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musicant, Chevazhevskaya, Borisokhlebsky, Lapidus Jr., the old fool Kukushkind, and even Berlaga, the one who escaped to the nuthouse, often repeated. “But this one is a loser. He’ll spend his whole life making forty-six rubles a month.”

Of course, his co-workers, or the head of Finance and Accounting, Comrade Arnikov himself, or even Impala Mikhailovna, the personal secretary to the director of the entire Hercules, Comrade Polykhaev – all of them would have been shocked had they found out what exactly Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, the quietest of the clerks, had been up to just one hour earlier. For whatever reason, he dragged a particular suitcase from one train station to another. The suitcase contained not Odessa Centennial pants, nor a boiled chicken, and certainly not The Goals of the Young Communist League in the Countryside, but ten million rubles in Soviet and foreign currency.

In 1915, Alex Koreiko, twenty-three, the ne’er-do-well son of middle class parents, was one of those who are deservedly known as “retired high-schoolers.” He didn’t finish school, didn’t take up any trade, he just hung out on the boulevards and lived off his parents. His uncle, the manager of the regional military office, had shielded him from the draft, so he could listen to the cries of the half-witted paperboy without worrying:

“The latest cables! Our troops are advancing! Thank God! Multiple casualties! Thank God!”

Back then, Alex Koreiko pictured his future in the following way: he’s walking down the street and suddenly, near a downspout covered with zinc stars, right next to the wall, he sees a burgundy leather wallet that’s squeaky like a new saddle. There’s a lot of money in the wallet, 2,500 rubles… After that, everything would be swell. He pictured finding the money so often that he knew exactly where it was going to happen – on Poltava Victory Street, in an asphalt corner formed by the jutting wall of a building, near the star-studded downspout. There it lies, his leather savior, dusted with dry acacia flowers, next to a flattened cigarette butt. Alex walked to Poltava Victory Street every day, but to his great surprise, the wallet was never there. He’d poke the garbage with a student’s walking stick and mindlessly stare at the glazed metal sign that hung by the front door: YU. M. SOLOVEISKY, TAX ASSESSOR. Then he would wander home in a daze, throw himself on the red velvet couch and dream of riches, deafened by the ticking of his heart and pulse. His pulse was shallow, angry, and impatient.

The revolution of 1917 chased Koreiko off his velvet couch. He realized that he could become the lucky heir to some wealthy strangers. He felt in his guts that the country was awash in unclaimed gold, jewelry, expensive furniture, paintings and carpets, fur coats and dining sets. One just had to move fast and grab the riches, the sooner the better.

At the time, however, he was still young and foolish.He took over a large apartment – whose owner was smart enough to escape to Constantinople on a French ship – and started living there openly. Over the course of a week, he grew accustomed to the lavish lifestyle of the fugitive businessman: he drank the muscat wine he found in the cupboard with pickled herring from his food ration and sold knickknacks at the flea market. He was quite surprised when he was arrested.

He got out of prison five months later. He hadn’t given up the idea of becoming rich, but he came to realize that such an undertaking has to be secret, hidden, and gradual. First, he had to acquire some camouflage. In the case of Alexander Ivanovich, the camouflage came in the form of tall orange boots, huge dark-blue breeches, and the long military-style jacket of a food-supply official.

In those distressing times, everything that had been made by human hands wasn’t working as well as it had before: houses no longer gave any protection from the cold, food wasn’t filling, the electricity was only turned on to round up deserters and bandits, running water didn’t reach beyond the first floor, and streetcars did not run at all. At the same time, the elements became more ferocious and dangerous: the winters were colder than before, the winds were stronger, and the common cold, which used to put a person in bed for three days, killed him within the same three days. Groups of young men without any discernible occupation wandered the streets, singing a devil-may-care ditty about money that had lost its value:

I am standing at the till,
Not a single smaller bill.
Can you break a hundred million fo-o-o-r me?

Alexander Ivanovich watched in consternation as the money that he had gone to incredible lengths to acquire was turning into dust.

Typhoid was killing people by the thousands. Alex was selling medications that had been stolen from a warehouse. He made five hundred million on the typhoid, but inflation turned it into five million within a month. Then he made a billion on sugar; inflation turned it into dust.

During that period, one of his most successful operations was the heist of a scheduled food train that was headed for the famished Volga region. Koreiko was in charge of the train. The train left Poltava for Samara but never reached Samara and did not return to Poltava either. It disappeared en route without a trace. Alexander Ivanovich disappeared with it.

Chapter 5. The underground kingdom

The orange boots surfaced in Moscow toward the end of 1922. Above the boots, a thick greenish leather coat lined with golden fox fur reigned supreme. A raised sheepskin collar with a quilted lining protected a cocky-looking mug, with short Sebastopol-style sideburns, from the elements. A lovely Caucasian hat made of curly fleece adorned the head of Alexander Ivanovich.

Meanwhile, Moscow was already beginning to fill with brand new automobiles that sported crystal headlights, and the nouveau riche, in tony sealskin skull caps and coats lined with patterned Lyre fur, paraded in the streets. Pointy gothic shoes and briefcases with luggage-style belts and handles were coming into vogue. The word “citizen” started to replace the familiar “comrade,” and some young people, who were quick to appreciate the real joys of life, were already dancing the Dixie One-step and even the Sunflower Foxtrot in the restaurants. The city echoed with the shouts of smart coachmen in expensive carriages, while inside the grand building of the Foreign Ministry the tailor Zhurkevich sewed tailcoats, day and night, for Soviet diplomats who were preparing to go abroad.

To his surprise, Alexander Ivanovich realized that his outfit, which projected valor and wealth in the provinces, was seen as a curious anachronism in Moscow and cast an unfavorable light on its owner.

Two months later, a new company called Revenge, the Industrial Chemicals Cooperative, opened on Sretensky Boulevard. The Cooperative occupied two rooms. The first room was decorated with a portrait of Friedrich Engels, one of the founders of socialism. Beneath it sat Alexander Ivanovich himself, with an innocent smile on his face. He wore a gray English suit with red silk stripes. The orange pirate boots and the crude sideburns were gone. Koreiko’s cheeks were clean shaven. The manufacturing plant was located in the back room. It consisted of two oak barrels with pressure gauges and water-level indicators, one on the floor, the other in the loft. The barrels were connected by a thin enema hose through which some liquid babbled busily. When all the liquid ran from the upper barrel into the lower one, a boy in felt boots would appear on the shop floor. Sighing like an adult, the boy scooped the liquid from the lower barrel with a bucket, dragged the bucket to the loft, and emptied it into the upper barrel. After completing this complex manufacturing process, the boy would go to the office to warm up, while the enema hose would start sobbing again. The liquid continued on its usual path from the upper reservoir to the lower.

Alexander Ivanovich himself wasn’t quite sure which chemicals were being produced by the Revenge Cooperative. He had more important things to do. Even without the chemicals his days were already full. He moved from bank to bank, applying for loans to expand the operation. He signed agreements with state trusts to supply the chemicals and obtained raw materials at wholesale prices. Loans were also coming in. Reselling the raw materials to state factories at ten times wholesale was very time-consuming, and the black-market currency operations he conducted at the foot of the monument to the heroes of the battle of Plevna were also extremely labor-intensive.

After a year, the banks and the trusts developed a desire to find out how much the Revenge Industrial Cooperative benefited from all the financial and material aid it received, and they wanted to know whether the healthy private establishment needed any further assistance. The commission, decked out in scholarly beards, arrived at the Revenge in three coaches. The chairman stared into Engels’s dispassionate face for a long time and kept banging on the fir counter with a cane, in an attempt to summon the administrators and members of the cooperative. Finally the door of the manufacturing plant opened, and a teary-eyed boy with a bucket in his hand appeared in front of the commission.

An interview with the young representative of the Revenge revealed that the manufacturing process was going full-throttle, and that the owner had been gone for a week. The commission didn’t spend much time at the production plant. In its taste, color, and chemical composition, the liquid that babbled so busily in the enema hose resembled ordinary water, and that’s exactly what it was. Having established this incredible fact, the chairman said “Hmm” and looked at the other members, who also said “Hmm.”

Then the chairman looked at the boy with a terrible smile and asked:

“And how old are you?”

“Twelve,” answered the boy.

And then he burst out crying so inconsolably that the members ran outside, pushing each other on the way, climbed into their coaches, and left in total confusion. As for the Revenge Cooperative, all of its operations were duly recorded in the profit and loss balance sheets of bank and trust ledgers, specifically in the sections that say nothing about profits and deal exclusively with losses.

On the same day that the commission had such a meaningful exchange with the boy at the Revenge, Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko got off the sleeper car of an express train two thousand miles from Moscow, in a small grape-growing republic.

He opened his hotel room window and saw a small oasis town, complete with bamboo water lines and a shoddy mud-brick fortress. The town was separated from the sands by poplars and was filled with Asiatic hubbub.

The next day he learned that the republic had started building a new electric power plant. He also learned that money was short, and that the construction, which was crucial to the future of the republic, might have to be halted.

And so the successful entrepreneur decided to help out. He got into a pair of orange boots again, put on an embroidered Central Asian cap, and headed to the construction office with a fat briefcase in his hand.

They didn’t receive him very warmly, but he carried himself with dignity, didn’t ask anything for himself, and insisted that the idea of bringing electricity to backward hinterlands was especially dear to his heart.

“Your project is short of money,” he said. “I’ll get it for you.”

He proposed to create a profitable subsidiary within the construction enterprise.

“What could be easier! We will sell postcards with views of the construction site, and that will bring the funds that the project needs so badly. Remember, you won’t be giving anything, you will only be collecting.”

Alexander Ivanovich cut the air with his hand for emphasis. He sounded convincing, and the project seemed sure-fire and lucrative. Koreiko secured the agreement – giving him a quarter of all profits from the postcard enterprise – and got down to work.

First, he needed working capital. It had to come from the money allocated for construction. That was the only money the republic had.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured the builders, “and remember that starting right now, you will only be collecting.”

Alexander Ivanovich inspected the gorge on horseback. The concrete blocks of the future power plant were already in place, and Koreiko sized up the beauty of the granite cliffs with a glance. Photographers followed him in a coach. They surrounded the site with tripods on long jointed legs, hid under black shawls, and clicked their shutters for a while. When all of the shots were taken, one of the photographers lowered his shawl and said thoughtfully:

“Of course, it would’ve been better if the plant was farther to the left, in front of the monastery ruins. It’s a lot more scenic over there.”

It was decided that they would build their own print shop to produce the postcards as soon as possible. The money, as before, came from the construction funds. As a result, certain operations at the power plant had to be curtailed. But everybody took solace in the thought that the profits from the new enterprise would allow them to make up for lost time.

The print shop was built in the same gorge, across from the power plant. Soon the concrete blocks of the print shop appeared right beside those of the plant. Little by little, the drums with concrete mix, the iron bars, the bricks, and the gravel all migrated from one side of the gorge to the other. The workers soon followed – the pay at the new site was better.

Six months later, train stations across the country were inundated with salesmen in striped pants. They were selling postcards that showed the cliffs of the grape-growing republic, where construction proceeded on a grand scale. Curly-haired girls spun the glass drums of the charitable lottery in amusement parks, theaters, cinemas, on ships, and at resorts, and everyone won a prize – a postcard of the electric gorge.

Koreiko’s promise came true: revenues were pouring in from all sides. But Alexander Ivanovich was not letting the money slip through his hands. One quarter was already his under the agreement. He apprehended another quarter by claiming that some of the sales squads hadn’t submitted their reports yet. He used the rest to expand the charitable enterprise.

“One has to be a good manager,” he would say quietly, “first we’ll set up the business properly, then the real profits will start pouring in.”

By then the Marion excavator taken from the power plant site was already digging a large pit for a new printing press building. The work at the power plant had come to a complete halt. The site was abandoned. The only ones still working there were the photographers with their black shawls.

Business was booming, and Alexander Ivanovich, always with an honest Soviet smile on his face, began printing postcards with portraits of movie stars.

As was to be expected, a high-level commission arrived one evening in a jolting car. Alexander Ivanovich didn’t linger. He threw a farewell glance at the cracked foundation of the power plant, at the imposing, brightly lit building of the subsidiary, and skipped town in a jiffy.

“Hmm,” said the chairman, picking at the cracks in the foundation with a cane. “Where’s the power plant?” He looked at the commission members, who in turn said “Hmm.” The power plant was nowhere to be found.

In the print shop, however, the commission saw the work going full-speed ahead. Purple lights shone; flat printing presses busily flapped their wings. Three of them produced the gorge in black-and-white, while the fourth, a multi-color machine, spewed out postcards: portraits of Douglas Fairbanks with a black half-mask on his fat teapot face, the charming Lya de Putti, and a nice bulgy-eyed guy named Monty Banks.

Portraits flew out of the machine like cards from a sharper’s sleeve. That memorable evening was followed by a long series of public trials that were held in the open air of the gorge, while Alexander Ivanovich added a half-million rubles to his assets.

His shallow, angry pulse was as impatient as ever. He felt that at that moment, when the old economic system had vanished and the new system was just beginning to take hold, one could amass great wealth. But he already knew that striving openly to get rich was unthinkable in the land of the Soviets. And so he looked with a condescending smile at the lonely entrepreneurs rotting away under signs like: GOODS FROM THE WORSTED TRUST B. A. LEYBEDEV, BROCADE AND SUPPLIES FOR CHURCHES AND CLUBS, or GROCERIES, X. ROBINSON AND M. FRYDAY.

The pressure from the state is crushing the financial base under Leybedev, under Fryday, and under the owners of the musical pseudo co-op “The Bell’s A-Jingling.”

Koreiko realized that in these times, the only option was to conduct underground commerce in total secrecy. Every crisis that shook the young economy worked in his favor; every loss of the state was his gain. He would break into every gap in the supply chain and extract his one hundred thousand from it. He traded in baked goods, fabrics, sugar, textiles – everything. And he was alone, completely alone, with his millions. Both big- and small-time crooks toiled for him all across the country, but they had no idea who they were working for. Koreiko operated strictly through frontmen. He alone knew the entire length of the channels that ultimately brought money to him.

* * *

At twelve o’clock sharp, Alexander Ivanovich set the ledger aside and prepared for lunch. He took an already peeled raw turnip out of the drawer and ate it, looking straight ahead with dignity. Then he swallowed a cold soft-boiled egg. Cold soft-boiled eggs are quite revolting; a nice, good-natured man would never eat them. But Alexander Ivanovich wasn’t really eating, he was nourishing himself. He wasn’t having lunch; he was performing the physiological process of delivering the right amounts of protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins to his body.

Herculeans usually capped their lunch with tea, but Alexander Ivanovich drank a cup of boiled water with sugar cubes on the side. Tea makes the heart beat harder, and Koreiko took good care of his health.

The owner of ten million was like a boxer who is painstakingly preparing for his triumph. The fighter follows a strict regimen: he doesn’t drink or smoke, he tries to avoid any worries, he practices and goes to bed early – all with the aim of one day jumping into the glittering ring and leaving a jubilant winner. Alexander Ivanovich wanted to be young and fresh on the day when everything came back to normal, when he could emerge from the underground and open his plain-looking suitcase without fear. Koreiko never doubted that the old days would return. He was saving himself for capitalism.

And in order to keep his second, true life hidden from the world, he lived like a pauper, trying not to exceed the forty-six rubles a month he was paid for the miserable and tedious work he did beside the nymph- and dryad-covered walls of the Finance and Accounting Department.

Chapter 6. The Gnu Antelope

The green box with the four con artists went flying in leaps and bounds along the dusty road. The car was subjected to the same natural forces that a swimmer experiences during a storm. It would be suddenly thrown off track by an unexpected bump, sucked into a deep pothole, rocked from side to side, and showered with sunset-red dust.

“Listen, young man,” said Ostap to the new passenger, who had already recovered from his recent misadventure and was sitting next to the captain as if nothing had happened. “How dare you violate the Sukharev Pact? It’s a respectable treaty which was approved by the League of Nations Tribunal.”

Panikovsky pretended he didn’t hear and even looked the other way.

“And in general, you play dirty,” continued Ostap. “We have just witnessed a most unpleasant scene. The people of Arbatov were chasing you because you took off with their goose.”

“Miserable, wretched people!” mumbled Panikovsky angrily.

“Really?” said Ostap. “And you are, apparently, a public health physician? A gentleman? Keep in mind, though, that if you decide to make notes on your cuffs like a true gentleman, you’re going to have to use chalk.”

“Why is that?” asked the new passenger grumpily.

“Because your cuffs are pitch black. That wouldn’t be dirt, by any chance?”

“You’re a miserable, wretched man!” retorted Panikovsky quickly.

“You’re saying this to me, your savior?” asked Ostap gently. “Adam Kazimirovich, could you stop the car for a moment? Thank you kindly. Shura, my friend, would you please restore the status quo?”

Balaganov had no idea what “status quo” meant, but he took his cue from the tone with which these words were uttered. With a nasty smile on his face, he put his hands under Panikovsky’s arms, pulled him out of the car, and lowered him onto the road.

“Go back to Arbatov, young man,” said Ostap dryly. “The owners of the goose can’t wait to see you there. We don’t need boors here. We are boors ourselves. Let’s go.”

“It won’t happen again!” pleaded Panikovsky. “My nerves are bad!”

“Get on your knees,” said Ostap.

Panikovsky instantly dropped on his knees, as if his legs had been cut out from under him.

“Good!” said Ostap. “I find your posture satisfactory. You are accepted conditionally, until the first violation, as the new Girl Friday.”

The Antelope re-admitted the chastened boor and went rolling on again, swaying like a hearse.

Half an hour later, the car turned onto the big Novozaitsev highway and, without slowing down, entered a village. People were gathered near a log house with a crooked and knotty radio mast growing from its roof. A clean-shaven man stepped out of the crowd resolutely, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Comrades!” he shouted sternly, “I now declare our meeting of celebration open! Allow me, comrades, to consider your applause…”

He had evidently prepared a speech and was already looking at his paper, but then he realized that the car wasn’t stopping and cut it short.

“Join the Road Club!” he said hastily, looking at Ostap, who was just then riding past him. “Let’s mass-produce Soviet motorcars! The iron steed is coming to replace the peasant horse.”

And then, as the car was already speeding away, he blurted out the last slogan over the congratulatory rumble of the crowd:

“The car is not a luxury but a means of transportation!”

With the exception of Ostap, all the Antelopeans were somewhat unnerved by this elaborate reception. Not knowing what to make of it, they fidgeted in the car like little sparrows in their nest. Panikovsky, who generally disliked large gatherings of honest people, crouched on the floor just in case, so that the villagers could see only the dirty top of his straw hat. Ostap, on the other hand, was totally unfazed. He took off his white-topped cap and acknowledged the greetings by nodding left and right with dignity.

“Improve the roads!” he shouted as a farewell. “Merci for the reception!”

The car was back on the white road cutting though a large, quiet field.

“They’re not going to chase us?” asked Panikovsky anxiously. “Why the crowd? What happened here?”

“These people have never seen an automobile before, that’s all,” said Balaganov.

“Continuing our discussion,” commented Ostap. “Let’s hear from the driver. What’s your assessment, Adam Kazimirovich?”

The driver thought for a moment, sounded the maxixe to shoo off a silly dog that had run into the road, and allowed that the crowd had gathered to celebrate a local church holiday. “Holidays of this nature are common among country people,” explained the driver of the Antelope.

“Right,” said Ostap. “Now I know for sure that I’m in the company of unenlightened people. In other words, bums without university education. Children, dear children of Lieutenant Schmidt, why don’t you read newspapers? One must read newspapers. They quite often sow the seeds of reason, good, and the everlasting.”

Ostap pulled a copy of Izvestiya out of his pocket and loudly read to the crew a short article about the Moscow – Kharkov – Moscow auto rally.

“We are now on the route of the rally,” he said smugly, “roughly one hundred miles ahead of its lead car. I suppose now you understand what I’m talking about?”

The low-ranking Antelopeans were quiet. Panikovsky unbuttoned his jacket and scratched his bare chest under his dirty silk tie.

“So you still don’t get it? Apparently, even reading newspapers doesn’t help in some cases. Fine, I’ll give you more details, even though it goes against my principles. First: the peasants thought the Antelope was the lead car of the rally. Second: we don’t deny it. Moreover, we will appeal to all organizations and persons for proper assistance, underscoring the fact that we are the lead car. Third… Oh well, the first two points should be enough for you. It’s abundantly clear that we will keep ahead of the rally for a while and will milk, skim off, and otherwise tap this highly civilized undertaking.”

The grand strategist’s speech made a huge impression. Kozlevich looked at the captain with admiration. Balaganov rubbed his wild red locks with his palms and laughed uncontrollably. Panikovsky shouted “Hooray!” in anticipation of worry-free looting.

“All right, enough emotion,” said Ostap. “On account of the falling darkness, I now declare the evening open. Stop!”

The car stopped, and the tired Antelopeans climbed out. Grasshoppers hopped around in the ripening crops. The passengers were already seated in a circle near the road, but the old Antelope was still huffing and puffing, its body creaking here and there and its engine rattling occasionally.

The novice Panikovsky made such a large fire that it seemed like a whole village was ablaze. The wheezing flames blew in all directions. While the travelers fought the pillar of fire, Panikovsky bent down and ran into the fields, returning with a warm, crooked cucumber in his hand. Ostap promptly snatched the cucumber from him, saying:

“Don’t make a cult out of eating.”

Then he ate the cucumber himself. They dined on the sausage that the practical Kozlevich brought from home and went to sleep under the stars.

“And now,” said Ostap to Kozlevich at sunrise, “get ready. Your mechanical tub has never seen a day like this before, and it will never see one like this again.”

Balaganov grabbed a small bucket, that was inscribed “Arbatov Maternity Hospital,” and ran to the river to fetch some water. Adam raised the hood of the car, squeezed his hands into the engine, and, whistling along, started fiddling with its little copper intestines. Panikovsky leaned against the spare wheel and stared pensively and unblinkingly at the cranberry-colored sliver of sun that had appeared above the horizon. The light revealed a multitude of small age-related details on his wrinkled face: bags, pulsating veins, and strawberry-colored splotches. This was the face of a man who had lived a long, honorable life, has adult children, drinks healthy acorn coffee in the morning, and writes for his organization’s newsletter under the pen name “The Antichrist.”

“Panikovsky,” asked Ostap suddenly, “do you want to hear how you’re going to die?”

The old man flinched and turned toward him.

“It’ll be like this. One day, when you return to a cold, empty room at the Hotel Marseilles – which will be in some small town where your line of work takes you – you’ll start feeling sick. One of your legs will be paralyzed. Hungry and unshaven, you will lie on a wooden bench, and nobody will come to see you, Panikovsky, nobody will feel sorry for you. You didn’t have kids because you were too cheap, and you dumped your wives. You will suffer for an entire week. Your agony will be horrible. Your death will be slow, and everyone will be sick and tired of it. You will not be quite dead yet when the bureaucrat in charge of the hotel will already be requesting a free coffin from the municipal authorities… What is your full name?”

“Mikhail Samuelevich,” replied the stunned Panikovsky.

“…requesting a free coffin for Citizen M. S. Panikovsky. But don’t cry, you’ll still last for a couple of years. Now back to business. We need to take care of the promotional and educational aspects of our campaign.”

Ostap pulled his doctor’s bag out of the car and put it down on the grass.

“My right hand,” said the grand strategist, patting the bag on its fat sausage-like side. “Everything that an elegant man of my age and ambition might possibly need is right here.”

Bender squatted over the bag like an itinerant Chinese magician and started pulling various objects out of it. First he took out a red armband with the word “Administrator” embroidered on it in gold. It was joined on the grass by a policeman’s cap with the crest of the city of Kiev, four decks of playing cards with identically patterned backs, and a pack of official documents with round purple stamps on them.

The entire crew of the Antelope looked at the bag with respect. Meanwhile, new objects kept coming out of it.

“You are amateurs,” said Ostap, “I’m sure you’d never understand why an honest Soviet pilgrim like me can’t get by without a doctor’s coat.”

The bag contained not only the coat but a stethoscope as well.

“I’m not a surgeon,” remarked Ostap. “I am a neuropathologist, a psychiatrist. I study the souls of my patients. For some reason, I always get very silly souls.”

An ABC for the deaf-and-dumb came out of the bag next, followed by charity postcards, enamel badges, and a poster, which featured Bender himself in traditional Indian pants and a turban. The poster read:

A PRIEST has ARRIVED!!!
the famous Bombay brahmin (yogi)
– son of Parva —
Iokanaan Of Murusidze

The poster was followed by a dirty, greasy turban.

“I resort to this kind of amusement very rarely,” said Ostap. “Believe it or not, it’s the progressive-minded people, like the directors of railway workers’ clubs, who are the most likely to buy into the high priest story. The job is easy but irksome. Personally, I find being the favorite of Rabindranath Tagore distasteful. And Samuel the Prophet invariably gets the same old questions: ‘Why is there no butter in the stores?’ or ‘Are you Jewish?’”

Ostap finally found what he was looking for – a lacquered tin with honey-based paints in porcelain cups and two paintbrushes.

“The car that leads the rally has to be decorated with at least one slogan,” said Ostap.

He then proceeded to paint brown block letters on a long band of yellowish linen: They hung the banner above the car on two long tree branches.

The moment the car started moving, the banner arched in the wind and looked so dashing that it left no doubt about the need to use the rally as a weapon against roadlessness, irresponsibility, and maybe even red tape as well. The passengers of the Antelope started puffing and preening. Balaganov covered his red hair with the cap that he always carried in his pocket. Panikovsky turned his cuffs inside out and made them show exactly three-quarters of an inch below the sleeves. Kozlevich was more concerned about the car than about himself. He washed it thoroughly before starting out, and the sun was glimmering on the Antelope’s dented sides. The captain squinted playfully and teased his companions.

“Village on the port side!” yelled Balaganov, making a visor with his hand. “Are we stopping?”

“We are followed by five top-notch vehicles,” said Ostap. “A rendezvous with them is not in our interest. We must skim off what we can, and fast. Therefore, we’ll stop in the town of Udoev. Incidentally, that’s where the drum of fuel should be waiting for us. Step on it, Adam.”

“Do we respond to the crowds?” asked Balaganov anxiously.

“You can respond with bows and smiles. Kindly keep your mouth shut; God knows what might come out of it.”

The village greeted the lead car warmly, but the usual hospitality had a rather peculiar flavor here. The citizens must have been informed that someone would be passing through, but they didn’t know who or why. So, just in case, they dug up all the slogans and mottoes from previous years. The street was lined with schoolchildren who were holding a hodgepodge of obsolete banners: “Greetings to the Time League and its founder, dear Comrade Kerzhentsev!” “The bourgeois threats will come to naught, we all reject the Curzon note!” “For our little ones’ welfare please organize a good daycare.” Besides that, there were many banners of various sizes, written primarily in Old Church Slavonic script, all saying the same thing: “Welcome!” All this flew swiftly by.

This time, the crew waved their hats with confidence. Panikovsky couldn’t resist and, despite his orders, jumped up and shouted a confused, politically inappropriate greeting. But nobody could make it out over the noise of the engine and the roar of the crowd.

“Hip, hip, hooray!” cried Ostap.

Kozlevich opened the choke, and the car emitted a trail of blue smoke – the dogs that were running after them started sneezing.

“How are we doing on gas?” asked Ostap. “Will we make it to Udoev? We only have twenty miles to go. Once we’re there, we’ll take everything.”

“Should be enough,” Kozlevich replied uncertainly.

“Keep in mind,” said Ostap, looking at his troops with a stern eye, “that I will not tolerate any looting. No violation of the law whatsoever. I am commanding the parade.”

Panikovsky and Balaganov looked embarrassed.

“The people of Udoev will give us everything we need anyway. You’ll see. Make room for bread and salt.”

The Antelope covered twenty miles in an hour and a half. During the last mile, Kozlevich fussed a lot, pressed on the accelerator, and shook his head in despair. But all his efforts, as well as Balaganov’s shouting and encouraging, were in vain. The spectacular finale planned by Adam Kazimirovich did not materialize, due to the lack of fuel. The car disgracefully stopped in the middle of the street, a hundred yards short of a reviewing stand that had been decorated with conifer garlands in honor of the intrepid motorists.

With loud cries, people rushed to the Lorraine-Dietrich, which had arrived from the dark ages. The thorns of glory promptly pierced the noble foreheads of the travelers. They were unceremoniously dragged out of the car and wildly thrown into the air, as if they drowned and had to be brought back to life at any cost.

Kozlevich stayed with the car while the rest of the crew were led to the stand – a short three-hour event had been planned. A young man who was dressed like a motorist made his way to Ostap and asked:

“How are the other cars?”

“Fell behind,” replied Ostap indifferently. “Flat tires, breakdowns, exuberant crowds. All this slows you down.”

“Are you in the captain’s car?” The automotive enthusiast wouldn’t let go. “Is Kleptunov with you?”

“I took him out of the rally,” said Ostap dismissively.

“And Professor Pesochnikov? Is he in the Packard?”

“Yes, in the Packard.”

“And how about the writer Vera Cruz?” the quasi-motorist continued to grill him. “I would love to take a peek at her. Her and Comrade Nezhinsky. Is he with you too?”

“You know,” said Ostap, “I am exhausted by the rally.”

“Are you in a Studebaker?”

“You can think of our car as a Studebaker,” answered Ostap angrily, “but up until now it’s been a Lorraine-Dietrich. Are you satisfied now?”

But the enthusiast was not satisfied.

“Wait a minute!” he exclaimed with youthful persistence. “There aren’t any Lorraine-Dietrichs in the rally! The paper said that there are two Packards, two Fiats, and a Studebaker.”

“Go to hell with your Studebaker!” exploded Ostap. “Who is this Studebaker? Is he a relative of yours? Is your Daddy a Studebaker? What do you want from me? I’m telling you in plain Russian that the Studebaker was replaced with a Lorraine-Dietrich at the last moment, and you keep bugging me! Studebaker my foot!”

The young man had long been eased away by officials yet Ostap kept waving his arms and muttering:

“Experts! Such experts should go to hell! Just give him his Studebaker, or else!”

The chairman of the welcoming committee embellished his opening speech with such a long chain of subordinate clauses that it took him a good half hour to finish them all.

Meanwhile, the captain of the rally was worried. He followed the suspicious activities of Balaganov and Panikovsky, who were a little too busy weaving through the crowd, from his perch on the stand. Bender kept making stern faces at them and finally his signals stopped the children of Lieutenant Schmidt in their tracks.

“I am happy, comrades,” declared Ostap in his response, “to break the age-old silence in the town of Udoev with the horn of an automobile. An automobile, comrades, is not a luxury but a means of transportation. The iron steed is coming to replace the peasant horse. Let’s mass-produce Soviet motorcars! May the rally fight roadlessness and irresponsibility! This concludes my remarks, comrades. After a snack, we will continue our long journey.”

While the crowd stood still around the podium and absorbed the captain’s words, Kozlevich wasted no time. He filled the tank with gas which, just as Ostap promised, was of the highest quality, and shamelessly took three large cans of extra fuel as a reserve. He replaced the tires and the tubes on all four wheels, even picked up a pump and a jack. This completely decimated both the long-term and the current inventories of the Udoev branch of the Road Club.

The trip to Chernomorsk was now well-supplied with materials. The only thing missing was money, but that didn’t really bother the captain. The travelers had a very nice dinner in Udoev.

“Don’t worry about pocket money,” said Ostap. “It’s lying on the road. We’ll pick it up as needed.”

Between ancient Udoev, founded in A.D. 794, and Chernomorsk, founded in A.D. 1794, lay a thousand years and a thousand miles of both paved and unpaved roads.

A variety of characters appeared along the Udoev – Black Sea highway over those thousand years. Traveling salesmen with merchandize from Byzantine trading firms moved along this road. They were greeted by Nightingale the Robber, a boorish man in an Astrakhan hat who would step out of the howling forest to meet them. He’d seize the merchandise and do away with the salesmen. Conquerors followed this road with their soldiers, as did peasants and singing pilgrims.

Life in this land changed with every new century. Clothing changed, weapons became more sophisticated, potato riots were put down. People learned to shave off their beards. The first hot air balloon went up. The iron twins, the steamboat and the steam engine, were invented. Cars started honking.

But the road remained the same as it was during the time of Nightingale the Robber.

Humped, buried in volcanic mud, or covered with a dust as toxic as pesticide, our Russian road stretched past villages, towns, factories, and collective farms like a thousand-mile-long trap. The yellowing, poisoned grasses along the route are littered with the skeletal remains of carriages and the bodies of exhausted, expiring automobiles.

An émigré, going mad from selling newspapers amid the asphalt fields of Paris, may remember the Russian country road as a charming feature of his native landscape: the young moon sitting in a small puddle, crickets praying loudly, an empty pail clattering gently against a peasant’s cart.

But the moonlight has already received a new assignment. The moon will shine perfectly well on paved highways. Automobile sirens and horns will replace the symphonic clatter of the peasant’s pail, and one will be able to hear crickets in special nature preserves. They’ll build bleachers, and visitors, warmed up by the introductory remarks of a white-haired cricketologist, will be able to enjoy the singing of their favorite insects to their heart’s content.

Chapter 7. The sweet burden of fame

The captain of the rally, the driver, the rally mechanic, and the Girl Friday all felt great. The morning was chilly. The pale sun floated in a pearly sky. A collection of small birdies screeched in the grass. Little roadside birds, known as water rails, slowly walked across the road, right in front of the car. The grassland horizons produced such a cheerful smell that if instead of Ostap, there was a mediocre peasant writer from a literary group called the Iron Udder or something, he wouldn’t have been able to control himself. He would have leapt out of the car, installed himself in the grass, and immediately started writing a new story in his notebook. Something like this: “Them winter crops got mighty toasty. The sun got awful strong and went a-pushing its rays ’crost the whole wide world. Old-timer Romualdych sniffed his sock real good and went, I’ll be darned…”

But Ostap and his companions had no time for poetry. It was their second day running ahead of the rally. They were greeted with music and speeches. Children beat drums in their honor. Adults fed them lunches and dinners, provided them with the automobile parts they had prepared in advance. In one tiny town they were even given bread and salt on a carved oak platter with a cross-stitched towel. The bread and salt sat on the floor between Panikovsky’s feet. He kept picking at the round loaf until finally he made a mouse hole in it. The squeamish Ostap threw the bread and salt out on the road. The Antelopeans spent the night in a village, in the caring arms of the local activists. They left with a big jug of baked milk and sweet memories of the fragrant scent of the hay in which they slept.

“Milk and hay, what could possibly be better?” said Ostap as the Antelope was leaving the village at sunrise. “One always thinks, ‘I’ll do this some other time. There will still be plenty of milk and hay in my life.’ But in fact, there won’t be anything like this ever again. Make note of it, my poor friends: this was the best night of our lives. And you didn’t even notice.”

Bender’s companions looked at him with respect. They absolutely loved the easy life that was suddenly theirs.

“Life is beautiful!” said Balaganov. “Here we are, driving along, our stomachs full. Maybe happiness awaits us…”

“Are you sure?” asked Ostap. “Happiness awaits us on the road? Maybe it even flaps its wings in anticipation? ‘Where, it wonders, is Admiral Balaganov? Why is he taking so long?’ You’re crazy, Balaganov! Happiness isn’t waiting for anybody. It wanders around the country in long white robes, singing children’s songs: ‘Ah, America, there’s the land, people there drink straight from the bottle.’ But this naïve babe must be caught, you have to make her like you, you have to court her. Sadly, Balaganov, she won’t take up with you. You’re a bum. Just look at yourself! A man dressed like you will never achieve happiness. Come to think of it, the entire crew of the Antelope is dressed atrociously. I’m surprised people still believe we’re part of the rally!”

Ostap looked his companions over with disappointment and continued:

“Panikovsky’s hat really bothers me. He’s dressed far too ostentatiously. The gold tooth, the underwear straps, the hairy chest poking out from under the tie… You should dress more modestly, Panikovsky! You’re a respectable old man. You need a long black jacket and a felt hat. Balaganov would look good in a checkered cowboy shirt and leather leggings. He could easily pass as a student-athlete, but now he looks like a merchant sailor fired for drunkenness. Not to mention our esteemed driver. Hard luck has prevented him from dressing in a way that befits his position. Can’t you see how well leather overalls and a black calfskin cap would go with his inspired, oil-smudged face? Whatever you say, boys, you have to update your wardrobe.”

“There’s no money,” said Kozlevich, turning around.

“The driver is correct,” replied Ostap courteously. “Indeed, there is no money. None of those little metal discs that I love so dearly.”

The Gnu Antelope glided down a small hill. The fields continued to slowly rotate on both sides of the car. A large brown owl was sitting by the side of the road, its head bent to one side, its unseeing yellow eyes bulging foolishly. Disturbed by the Antelope’s creaking, the bird spread its wings, soared above the car and quickly flew away to take care of its boring owlish business. Other than that, nothing interesting was happening on the road.

“Look!” cried Balaganov suddenly. “A car!”

Just in case, Ostap ordered them to take down the banner that called on the citizens to fight against irresponsibility. While Panikovsky was carrying out this task, the Antelope approached the other car.

A gray hard-top Cadillac was parked on the shoulder, listing slightly. The landscape of central Russia was reflected in its thick shiny windows, looking neater and more scenic than it actually was. The driver was on his knees, taking the tire off a front wheel. Three figures in sand-colored travel coats hovered behind him, waiting.

“Your ship’s in distress?” asked Ostap, tipping his cap politely.

The driver raised his tense face, said nothing, and went back to work.

The Antelopeans climbed out of their green jalopy. Kozlevich walked around the magnificent vehicle several times, sighing with envy. He squatted down next to the driver and struck up a technical conversation. Panikovsky and Balaganov stared at the passengers with childlike curiosity. Two of the passengers had a rather standoffish, foreign look to them. The third one was a fellow Russian, judging by the overpowering smell of galoshes coming from his State Rubber Trust raincoat.

“Your ship’s in distress?” repeated Ostap, politely touching the rubber-clad shoulder of his fellow countryman, while at the same time eyeing the foreigners pensively.

The Russian started complaining about the blown tire, but his grumbling went in one of Ostap’s ears and out the other. Two plump foreign chicklets were strolling around the car – on a highway some eighty miles from the nearest town of any significance, right in the middle of European Russia. That got the grand strategist excited.

“Tell me,” he interrupted, “these two wouldn’t be from Rio de Janeiro, by any chance?”

“No,” said the Russian. “They’re from Chicago. And I am their interpreter, from Intourist.”

“What on earth are they doing here in this ancient wilderness in the middle of nowhere? So far from Moscow, from the Red Poppy ballet, from the antique stores and Repin’s famous painting Ivan the Terrible Kills his Son? I don’t get it! Why did you drag them out here?”

“They can go to hell!” said the interpreter bitterly. “We’ve been racing from village to village like mad for three days now. I can’t take it any more. I’ve dealt with foreigners quite a bit, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

He waved in the direction of his ruddy-faced companions.

“Normal tourists run around Moscow, buying handmade wooden bowls in gift shops. But these two broke away and went driving around the back-roads.”

“That’s commendable,” said Ostap. “America’s billionaires are learning about life in the new Soviet countryside.”

The two citizens of Chicago looked on sedately as their car was being repaired. They wore silvery hats, frozen starched collars, and red matte shoes.

The interpreter looked at Ostap indignantly and blurted out:

“Yeah, right! Like they need your new countryside! They need the country moonshine, not the countryside!”

Hearing the word “moonshine,” which the interpreter had stressed, the two gentlemen looked around nervously and edged closer.

“See!” said the interpreter. “Just hearing the word gets them all excited.”

“Interesting. There’s a mystery here,” said Ostap. “I don’t understand why one would want moonshine when our native land offers such a large selection of superb hard liquors.”

“This is much simpler than you think,” said the interpreter. “They’re just searching for a decent moonshine recipe.”

“Of course!” exclaimed Ostap. “Prohibition! I get it now… So have you found a recipe? Of course not. You might as well have shown up in a three-car motorcade! Obviously, people think you’re officials. I can assure you that you’ll never find a recipe this way.”

The interpreter began to complain about the foreigners again.

“You won’t believe it, but they’ve even started pestering me: ‘Just tell us the secret of the moonshine!’ For God’s sake, I’m not a moonshiner. I’m a member of the education workers’ union. I have an elderly mother in Moscow.”

“And how badly do you want to go back to Moscow? To be with your mother?”

The interpreter sighed dejectedly.

“In that case, our deliberations continue,” declared Ostap. “How much will your bosses pay for a recipe? 150, perhaps?”

“They’ll pay two hundred,” whispered the interpreter. “Do you really have a recipe?”

“I can give it to you this very moment – I mean, the moment I get the money. Made from anything you want: potatoes, wheat, apricots, barley, mulberry, buckwheat. One can even brew moonshine from an ordinary chair. Some people enjoy the chair brew. Or you can have a simple raisin or plum brew. In other words, any of the 150 kinds of moonshine known to me.”

Ostap was introduced to the Americans. Their politely raised hats floated in the air for a long time. Then they got down to business. The Americans chose the wheat moonshine – the simplicity of the brewing process appealed to them. They painstakingly recorded the recipe in their notebooks. As a bonus, Ostap sketched out a design for a compact still that could be hidden in an office desk. The seekers assured Ostap that, given American technology, making such a still would be a breeze. For his part, Ostap assured the Americans that the device he described would produce two gallons of beautiful, fragrant pervach per day.

“Oh!” cried the Americans.

They had already heard this word in a very respectable home in Chicago, where pervach was highly recommended. The man of the house had been in Archangel, with the American expeditionary force. He drank pervach there and never forgot the alluring sensation that it gave him.

On the lips of the enchanted tourists, the crude word pervach sounded both tender and enticing.

The Americans easily parted with two hundred rubles and endlessly shook Bender’s hand. Panikovsky and Balaganov also got to shake hands with the citizens of the transatlantic republic, who had been suffering under Prohibition for so long. The interpreter was thrilled; he pecked Ostap on his cheek and invited him to stop by, adding that his elderly mother would be delighted. For some reason, however, he neglected to give his address.

The new friends climbed into their respective cars. Kozlevich played a farewell maxixe, and to the accompaniment of these cheerful sounds, the cars flew off in opposite directions.

“See,” said Ostap when the American car disappeared in a cloud of dust, “everything happened just like I told you. We were driving. Money was lying on the road. I picked it up. Look, it didn’t even get dusty.” And he crackled the stack of bills in his hand. “Actually, this isn’t much to brag about, a trivial job. But it was clean and honest, that’s what counts. Two hundred rubles in five minutes. And not only did I not break the law, I even did some good. I provided the crew of the Antelope with financial backing. The elderly mother is getting her son the interpreter back. And finally, I quenched the spiritual thirst of the citizens of a country that does, after all, maintain trade relations with us.”

It was almost time for lunch. Ostap immersed himself in the rally map that he had torn out of an automotive magazine and announced the upcoming town of Luchansk.

“The town is very small,” said Bender, “that’s not good. The smaller the town, the longer the welcoming speeches. So let’s ask our amiable hosts to give us lunch for starters and speeches for the second course. In the intermission, I will equip you with more appropriate gear. Panikovsky! You are beginning to neglect your duties. Return the banner to its original position.”

Kozlevich, who had become an expert in spectacular finales, brought the car to a dramatic halt right in front of the reviewing stand. Bender kept his remarks very short. They arranged to postpone the ceremonies for two hours. Fortified by a free lunch, the motorists were in high spirits, and they headed for a clothing store. They were surrounded by the curious. The Antelopeans carried the sweet burden of their new-found fame with dignity. They walked in the middle of the street, holding hands and swaying like sailors in a foreign port. The red-headed Balaganov, looking every inch the young boatswain, broke into a seaman’s song.

The store that sold clothing “For men, ladies, and children” was located under an enormous sign that covered the entire façade of the two-story building. The sign showed dozens of figures: yellow-faced men with pencil mustaches wearing winter coats whose open flaps revealed fitch-fur lining, women with muffs in their hands, short-legged children in little sailors’ suits, Young Communist League girls in red kerchiefs, and gloomy industrial managers sinking up to their hips in large felt boots.

All this splendor was ruined by a small hand-made sign on the front door:

OUT OF TROUSERS

“Ugh, how vulgar,” said Ostap, entering the store. “I can see that I’m in the provinces. Why don’t they say, ‘Out of trousers,’ like they do in Moscow? That would be proper and decent. The customers would go home satisfied.”

They didn’t spend much time in the store. For Balaganov, they found a canary yellow cowboy shirt with large checks and a Stetson hat with vent holes. Kozlevich got his calfskin cap, as promised, but had to settle for a black calfskin jacket, which shined like pressed caviar. Outfitting Panikovsky took much longer. They had to forget about the long pastor’s coat and the fedora, which Bender thought would give the violator of the pact a more refined look. The store’s only alternative was a fireman’s dress uniform: a jacket with golden pumps on its collar patches, fuzzy wool-blend pants, and a cap with a blue strap. Panikovsky jumped around in front of the wavy mirror for a long time.

“I don’t understand why you don’t like the fireman’s uniform,” said Ostap. “It’s certainly better than the exiled king outfit that you’re wearing now. Come now, turn around, my boy! Excellent! Let me tell you, this suits you much better than the coat and hat that I had in mind for you.”

They went outside in their new outfits.

“Me, I need a tuxedo,” said Ostap, “but they didn’t have any. Oh well, some other time.”

Ostap opened the ceremonies in a great mood, unaware of the storm that was gathering over the Antelopeans’ heads. He was witty; he told funny driving stories and Jewish jokes. The public loved him. The final portion of his speech was devoted to the analysis of pressing automobile-related issues. “The car,” he boomed, “is not a luxury but…” At that point he noticed a boy run up to the chairman of the welcoming committee and hand him a telegram. While still uttering the words “not a luxury but a means of transportation,” Ostap leaned to the left and glanced at the telegram over the chairman’s shoulder. What he read startled him. He had thought they had one more day. The long list of towns and villages where the Antelope had misappropriated materials and funds flashed through his mind.

The chairman was still wiggling his mustache, trying to digest the message, when Ostap jumped off the stand in mid-sentence and started making his way through the crowd. The green Antelope was waiting at the intersection. Fortunately, the other passengers were already in their seats. Bored, they were waiting for the moment when Ostap would order them to haul the town’s offerings into the car. This usually happened after the ceremonies.

When the chairman finally grasped what the telegram was saying, he raised his eyes only to see the captain of the rally running away.

“They’re con artists!” he shouted in agony.

He had spent the whole night preparing his welcoming speech, and now his writer’s ego was wounded.

“Hold them, guys!”

The chairman’s shrieking reached the ears of the Antelopeans. They began fussing nervously. Kozlevich started the engine and leapt into his seat. The car jumped forward without waiting for Ostap. In their great hurry, the Antelopeans didn’t even realize they were abandoning their captain to grave danger.

“Stop!” yelled Ostap, making giant leaps. “I’ll get you! You’re all fired!”

“Stop!” yelled the chairman.

“Stop, you bonehead!” Balaganov yelled at Kozlevich. “Can’t you see we’ve lost the chief?”

Adam hit the brakes, and the Antelope screeched to a halt. The captain lunged into the car and screamed, “Full speed ahead!” Despite his open-minded and cool-headed nature, he hated the idea of physical reprisal. In a panic, Kozlevich jumped into third gear and the car jerked forward, forcing a door open and throwing Balaganov to the ground. All this happened in a flash. While Kozlevich was braking again, the shadow of the approaching crowd was already falling on Balaganov. Huge hands were already stretching out to grab him, but then the Antelope crept back in reverse, and the captain’s steely hand seized him by his cowboy shirt.

“Full speed!” screamed Ostap.

And that’s when the citizens of Luchansk understood the advantages of automotive transport for the first time. The car rattled away, delivering the four lawbreakers from their well-deserved punishment.

For the first mile, they just breathed heavily. Balaganov, who valued his good looks, examined the red scratches left by the fall with the help of a pocket mirror. Panikovsky was shaking in his fireman’s uniform. He feared the captain’s retribution, and it came promptly.

“Did you tell the driver to take off before I could get in?” asked the captain harshly.

“I swear…” began Panikovsky.

“Don’t deny it! It’s all your doing. So you’re a coward on top of everything else? I’m in the company of a thief and a coward? Fine! I am demoting you. You were a fire chief in my eyes, but from now on, you’re just a simple fireman.”

And Ostap solemnly tore the golden pumps off of Panikovsky’s red collar patches.

After this procedure, Ostap apprised his companions of the contents of the telegram.

“We’re in trouble. The telegram says to seize the green car that’s running ahead of the rally. We need to get off to the side somewhere right away. Enough of the triumphs, palm branches, and free dinners cooked with cheap oil. This idea has outlived itself. Our only option is to turn off onto the Griazhsk Road. But that’s still three hours away. And I’m sure that a very warm welcome will be awaiting us in every town between here and there. This blasted telegraph has planted its stupid wired posts all over the place.”

The captain was right.

The Antelopeans never learned the name of the next small town they encountered, but they wished they had, so that they could curse it from time to time. At the town line, the road was blocked with a heavy log. The Antelope turned and, like a blind puppy, started poking around with its nose, looking for a detour. But there wasn’t any.

“Let’s turn back!” said Ostap, becoming very serious.

And suddenly the impostors heard a very distant, mosquito-like buzz. This must have been the cars of the real rally. There was no way back, so the Antelopeans rushed forward again.

Kozlevich frowned and raced the Antelope toward the log. The people standing around it rushed aside, fearing a wreck. But Kozlevich decelerated abruptly and slowly climbed over the obstacle. The passers-by grumbled and cursed the passengers as the Antelope drove through town, but Ostap kept quiet.

The Antelope was approaching the Griazhsk Road, and the rumble of the still invisible cars grew stronger and stronger. The moment they turned off the damned highway, hiding the car behind a small hill in the falling darkness, they heard the bursts and the firing of the engines. The lead car appeared in the beams of light. The con artists hid in the grass on the side of the road and, suddenly losing their usual arrogance, quietly watched the passing motorcade.

Banners of blinding light flapped over the road. The cars creaked softly as they passed the crushed Antelopeans. Dust flew from under the wheels. Electric horns howled. The wind blew in all directions. It was over in a minute, and only the ruby taillights of the last car danced and jumped in the dark for a long time.

Real life flew by, trumpeting joyously and flashing its glossy fenders. All that was left for the adventurers was a tail of exhaust fumes. They sat in the grass for a long while, sneezing and dusting themselves off.

“Yes,” said Ostap, “now even I see that the car is not a luxury but a means of transportation. Aren’t you jealous, Balaganov? I am.”

Chapter 8. An artistic crisis

Some time after 3 A.M., the hounded Antelope stopped at the edge of a bluff. An unfamiliar city lay below, neatly sliced, like a cake on a platter. Multicolored morning mists swirled above it. The dismounted Antelopeans thought they heard a distant crackling and an ever so slight whistling. This must have been the citizens snoring. A jagged forest bordered the city. The road looped down from the bluff.

“A valley from heaven,” said Ostap. “It’s nice to plunder cities like this early in the morning, before the sun starts blazing. It’s less tiring.”

“It is early morning right now,” observed Panikovsky, looking fawningly into the captain’s eyes.

“Quiet, Goldilocks!” exploded Ostap. “You’re such a restless old man! No sense of humor whatsoever.”

“What are we going to do with the Antelope?” asked Kozlevich.

“A good point,” replied Ostap, “we can’t drive this green washtub into the city under the circumstances. They’d put us in jail. We’re going to have to follow the lead of the most advanced nations. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, stolen cars are repainted a different color. This is done for purely humanitarian reasons, so that the previous owner doesn’t get upset when he sees a stranger driving his car. The Antelope has acquired a dicey reputation; it needs to be repainted.”

They decided to enter the city on foot and find some paint, leaving the car in a safe place outside the city limits.

Ostap walked briskly down the road along the edge of the bluff and soon saw a lopsided log house, its tiny windows gleaming river-blue. A shed behind the house looked like the perfect hiding place for the Antelope.

The grand strategist was thinking up a good excuse to enter the little house and make friends with its residents when the door flew open and a respectable-looking man, in soldier’s underwear with black metal buttons, ran out onto the porch. His paraffin-pale cheeks sported neatly styled gray sideburns. At the end of the nineteenth century, a face like this would have been common. In those times, most men cultivated such government-issue, conformist hair devices on their faces. But when the sideburns were not sitting above a dark-blue uniform, or some civilian medal on a silk ribbon, or the golden stars of a high-ranking imperial official, this kind of face seemed unnatural.

“Oh my Lord,” mumbled the toothless log house dweller, his arms outstretched toward the rising sun. “Lord, oh Lord! The same dreams! Those very same dreams!”

After this lament, the old man started crying and ran, shuffling his feet, along the footpath around the house. An ordinary rooster, who was about to sing for the third time, and who had already positioned itself in the middle of the yard for that purpose, darted away. In the heat of the moment it took several hurried steps and even dropped a feather, but soon composed itself, climbed on top of the wattle fence, and from this safe position finally notified the world that morning had come. Its voice, however, betrayed the anxiety that the untoward behavior of the owner of the little house had caused.

“Those goddamn dreams,” the old man’s voice reached Ostap.

Bender was staring in surprise at the strange man and his sideburns – nowadays, the only place to see sideburns like that is on the imperious face of a doorman at the symphony hall, if anywhere.

Meanwhile, the extraordinary gentleman completed a full circle and once again appeared near the porch. Here he lingered for a moment and then went inside, saying, “I’ll go try again.”

“I love old people,” whispered Ostap to himself, “they’re always entertaining. I have to wait and see how this mysterious test will turn out.”

He didn’t have to wait long. Shortly thereafter, howling could be heard from the house, and the old man crawled out onto the porch, moving backwards, like Boris Godunov in the final act of Mussorgsky’s opera.

“Begone! Begone!” he cried out, sounding like Shalyapin.

“That same dream! Aaaa!”

He turned around and started walking straight towards Ostap, stumbling over his own feet. Deciding that it was the time to act, the grand strategist stepped out from behind the tree and took the Sideburner into his powerful embrace.

“What? Who’s that? What’s that?” cried the restless old man. “What?”

Ostap carefully opened his embrace, grabbed the old man’s hand, and shook it warmly.

“I feel for you!” he declared.

“Really?” asked the owner of the little house, leaning against Bender’s shoulder.

“Of course I do,” replied Ostap. “I myself have dreams quite often.”

“And what do you dream about?”

“This and that.”

“No, seriously?” insisted the old man.

“Well, all kinds of things. A mishmash really. What the newspapers call ‘All things from all places’ or ‘World panorama.’ The other day, for example, I dreamed of the Mikado’s funeral, and yesterday it was the anniversary celebration at the Sushchevsky Fire Brigade headquarters.”

“My God!” said the old man. “My God, what a lucky man you are! A lucky man! Tell me, have you ever dreamt of a Governor General or… maybe even an imperial minister?”

Bender wasn’t going to be difficult.

“I have,” he said playfully. “I sure have. The Governor General. Last Friday. All night. And right next to him, I recall, was the chief of police in patterned breeches.”

“Oh, how nice!” said the old man. “And have you, by any chance, dreamt of His Majesty’s visit to the city of Kostroma?”

“Kostroma? Yes, I had that dream. Wait, wait, when was that? Ah yes, February third of this year. His Majesty was there, and next to him, I recall, was Count Frederiks, you know… the Minister of the Imperial Court.”

“Oh my!” the old man became excited. “Why are we standing here? Please, please come in. Forgive me, you’re not a Socialist, by any chance? Not a party man?”

“Of course not,” said Ostap good-naturedly. “Me, a party man? I’m an independent monarchist. A faithful servant to his sovereign, a caring father to his men. In other words, soar, falcons, like an eagle, ponder not unhappy thoughts…”

“Tea, would you like some tea?” mumbled the old man, steering Bender towards the door.

The little house consisted of one room and a hallway. Portraits of gentlemen in civilian uniforms covered the walls. Judging by the patches on their collars, these gentlemen had all served in the Ministry of Education in their time. The bed looked messy, suggesting that the owner spent the most restless hours of his life in it.

“Have you lived like such a recluse for a long time?” asked Ostap.

“Since the spring,” replied the old man. “My name is Khvorobyov. I thought I’d start a new life here. And you know what happened? You must understand…”

Fyodor Nikitich Khvorobyov was a monarchist, and he detested the Soviet regime. He found it repugnant. He, who had once served as a school district superintendent, was forced to run the Educational Methodology Sector of the local Proletkult. That disgusted him.

Until the end of his career, he never knew what Proletkult stood for, and that made him detest it even more. He cringed with disgust at the mere sight of the members of the local union committee, his colleagues, and the visitors to the Educational Methodology Sector. He hated the word “sector.” Oh, that sector! Fyodor Nikitich had always appreciated elegant things, including geometry. Never in his worst nightmares would he imagine that this beautiful mathematical term, used to describe a portion of a circle, could be so brutally trivialized.

At work, many things enraged Khvorobyov: meetings, newsletters, bond campaigns. But his proud soul couldn’t find peace at home either. There were newsletters, bond campaigns, and meetings at home as well. And Khvorobyov’s acquaintances talked exclusively about vulgar things: remuneration (what they called their salaries), Aid to Children Month, and the social significance of the play The Armored Train.

He was unable to escape the Soviet system anywhere. Even when Khvorobyov walked the city streets in frustration he would overhear detestable phrases, like:

“…So we determined to remove him from the board…”

“…And that’s exactly what I told them: if you insist on the PCC, we’ll appeal to the arbitration chamber!”

Khvorobyov was distressed to see posters calling upon citizens to implement the Five-Year Plan in four years, and he repeated to himself indignantly:

“Remove! From the board! The PCC! In four years! What a crass regime!”

When the Educational Methodology Sector switched to the continuous work-week, and Khvorobyov’s days off became some kind of mysterious purple fifth days instead of Sundays, he retired in disgust and went to live far beyond the city limits. He did it in order to escape the new regime – it had taken over his entire life and deprived him of his peace.

The lone monarchist would sit above the bluff all day long, look at the city, and think about pleasant things: church services celebrating the birthday of a member of the royal family, school exams, or his relatives who had served in the Ministry of Education. But, to his surprise, his thoughts almost immediately returned to Soviet, and therefore unpleasant, things.

“What’s new at the blasted Proletkult?” he would think.

After the Proletkult, his mind would wander to downright outrageous things: May Day and Revolution Day rallies, family evenings at the workers’ club with lectures and beer, the projected semiannual budget of the Methodology Sector.

“The Soviet regime took everything from me,” thought the former school district superintendent, “rank, medals, respect, bank account. It even took over my thoughts. But there’s one area that’s beyond the Bolsheviks’ reach: the dreams given to man by God. Night will bring me peace. In my dreams, I will see something that I’d like to see.”

The very next night, God gave Fyodor Nikitich a terrible dream. He dreamt that he was sitting in an office corridor that was lit by a small kerosene lamp. He sat there with the knowledge that, at any moment, he was to be removed from the board. Suddenly a steel door opened, and his fellow office workers ran out shouting: “Khvorobyov needs to carry more weight!” He wanted to run but couldn’t.

Fyodor Nikitich woke up in the middle of the night. He said a prayer to God, pointing out to Him that an unfortunate error had been made, and that the dream intended for an important person, maybe even a party member, had arrived at the wrong address. He, Khvorobyov, would like to see the Tsar’s ceremonial exit from the Cathedral of the Assumption, for starters.

Soothed by this, he fell asleep again, only to see Comrade Surzhikov, the chairman of the local union committee, instead of his beloved monarch.

And so night after night, Fyodor Nikitich would have the same, strictly Soviet, dreams with unbelievable regularity. He dreamt of union dues, newsletters, the Goliath state farm, the grand opening of the first mass-dining establishment, the chairman of the Friends of the Cremation Society, and the pioneering Soviet flights.

The monarchist growled in his sleep. He didn’t want to see the Friends of the Cremation. He wanted to see Purishkevich, the far-right deputy of the State Duma; Patriarch Tikhon; the Yalta Governor, Dumbadze; or even just a simple public school inspector. But there wasn’t anything like that. The Soviet regime had invaded even his dreams.

“Those same dreams!” concluded Khvorobyov tearfully. “Those cursed dreams!”

“You are in serious trouble,” said Ostap compassionately. “Being, they say, determines consciousness. Since you live under the Soviets, your dreams will be Soviet too.”

“Not one break,” complained Khvorobyov. “Anything, anything at all. I’ll take anything. Forget Purishkevich. I’ll take Milyukov the Constitutional Democrat. At least he was a university-educated man and a monarchist at heart. But no! Just these Soviet anti-Christs.”

“I’ll help you,” said Ostap. “I’ve treated several friends and acquaintances using Freud’s methods. Dreams are not the issue. The main thing is to remove the cause of the dream. The principal cause of your dreams is the very existence of the Soviet regime. But I can’t remove it right now. I’m in a hurry. I’m on a sports tour, you see, and my car needs a few small repairs. Would you mind if I put it in your shed? As for the cause of your dreams, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it on the way back. Just let me finish the rally.”

The monarchist, dazed by his troublesome dreams, readily allowed the sympathetic, kind-hearted young man to use his shed. He threw on a coat over his shirt, stuck his bare feet into galoshes, and went outside with Bender.

“So you think there’s hope for me?” he asked, mincing behind his early morning guest.

“Don’t give it another thought,” replied the captain dismissively. “The moment the Soviet regime is gone, you’ll feel better at once. You’ll see!”

Within half an hour the Antelope was stowed away in Khvorobyov’s shed and left under the watchful eyes of Kozlevich and Panikovsky. Bender, accompanied by Balaganov, went to the city to get paint.

The half-brothers walked towards the sun, making their way into the town center. Gray pigeons promenaded on the roof edges. Sprayed with water, the wooden sidewalks were clean and cool.

For a man with a clear conscience, it was a good morning to step outside, linger at the gate for a moment, take out a box of matches (emblazoned with an airplane that had a fist in place of a propeller and a slogan, “Our answer to Curzon”), admire the fresh pack of cigarettes, and then light up, puffing out a small cloud of smoke that chases away a bumble bee with golden stripes on its belly.

Bender and Balaganov fell under the spell of the morning, the clean streets, and the carefree pigeons. For a brief moment they felt as if their consciences were as clear as a whistle, that everybody loved them, and that they were off to a date with their fiancées.

Suddenly a man with a portable easel and a shiny paintbox in his hands blocked their path. He had the wild-eyed look of a man who had just escaped from a burning building, and the easel and the box were all he had managed to salvage.

“Excuse me,” he said loudly. “Comrade Platonikov-Pervertov was supposed to pass by here a moment ago. You haven’t seen him, by any chance? Was he here?”

“We never see people like that,” answered Balaganov rudely.

The artist bumped into Bender’s chest, mumbled “Pardon!” and rushed on.

“Platonikov-Pervertov?” grumbled the grand strategist, who hadn’t had his breakfast yet. “I personally knew a midwife whose name was Medusa-Gorgoner, and I didn’t make a big fuss over it. I didn’t run down the street shouting: ‘Have you by any chance seen Comrade Medusa-Gorgoner? She’s been out for a walk here.’ Big deal! Platonikov-Pervertov!”

The moment Bender finished his tirade, he was confronted by two more men with black easels and shiny paintboxes. The two couldn’t have looked more different. One of them evidently believed that an artist had to be hairy: his facial hair qualified him for the role of deputy of Henri de Navarre in the Soviet Union. The mustache, his hair, and his beard made his flat features very lively. The other man was simply bald, his head shiny and smooth like a glass lampshade.

“Comrade Platonikov…,” said the deputy of Henri de Navarre, panting.

“Pervertov,” added the Lampshade.

“Have you seen him?” cried de Navarre.

“He was supposed to be taking a stroll here,” explained the Lampshade.

Balaganov had already opened his mouth to utter a curse, but Bender pushed him aside and said with stinging courtesy:

“We haven’t seen Comrade Platonikov, but if you are really interested in seeing him, you’d better hurry. He’s already being sought by some character who looks like an artist. A con artist, that is.”

Bumping against each other and getting their easels stuck together, the artists ran off. Then a horse cab careened from around the corner. Its passenger was a fat man whose sweaty gut was barely concealed by the folds of his long tunic. The passenger’s general appearance brought to mind an ancient advertisement for a patented ointment that began with the words: “The sight of a naked body covered with hair makes a revolting impression.” The fat man’s profession wasn’t hard to guess. His hand held down a large easel. Under the coachman’s feet lay a big shiny box which undoubtedly contained paint.

“Hello!” Ostap called out. “Are you searching for Pervertov?”

“Yessir,” confirmed the fat artist, looking plaintively at Ostap.

“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” cried Ostap. “Three artists are already ahead of you. What’s going on here? What happened?”

But the horse, banging its shoes on the cobblestones, had already carried away the fourth practitioner of fine arts.

“What a center of culture!” said Ostap. “You must have noticed, Balaganov, that of the four citizens we encountered thus far, all four were artists. How curious.”

When the half-brothers stopped in front of a small hardware store, Balaganov whispered to Ostap:

“Aren’t you ashamed?”

“Of what?” asked Ostap.

“That you’re actually going to pay money for the paint.”

“Oh, I see,” said Ostap. “Frankly, I am a little bit. It’s silly, you’re right. But what can you do? We’re not going to run to the city council and ask them to supply the paint for Skylark Day. They would, of course, but that could take us all day.”

The brilliant colors of the dry paint in jars, glass cylinders, sacks, caskets, and torn paper bags gave the hardware store a festive look.

The captain and the rally mechanic started the painstaking process of picking a color.

“Black is too mournful,” said Ostap. “Green won’t do: it’s the color of lost hope. Purple, no. Let the chief of police ride around in a purple car. Pink is trashy, blue is banal, red is too conformist. We’re going to have to paint the Antelope yellow. A bit too bright, but pretty.”

“And what would you be? Artists?” asked the salesman, whose chin was lightly powdered with cinnabar.

“Yes, artists,” answered Bender, “scenic and graphic.”

“Then you’re in the wrong place,” said the salesman, removing the jars and the bags from the counter.

“What do you mean, the wrong place?” exclaimed Ostap. “What’s the right place?”

“Across the street.”

The clerk led the two friends to the door and pointed at the sky-blue sign across the street. It had a brown horse head and the words OATS AND HAY written in black letters.

“Right,” said Ostap, “soft and hard feed for livestock. But what does it have to do with us artists? I don’t see the connection.”

It turned out there was a connection, and a very meaningful one at that. Ostap grasped it shortly after the clerk began his explanation.

The city had always loved fine paintings, and the four resident artists formed a group called the Dialectical Easelists. They painted portraits of officials and sold them to the local fine arts museum. With time, the pool of yet-unpainted officials grew smaller and smaller, and the income of the Dialectical Easelists had decreased accordingly, but they still managed to get by. The truly lean years began when a new artist, Feofan Smarmeladov, came to the city.

His first painting made quite a stir. It was a portrait of the director of the local hotel authority. Feofan Smarmeladov left the Easelists in his dust. The director of the hotel authority was not depicted in oil, watercolors, coal, crayons, gouache, or lead pencil; he was done in oats. While Smarmeladov was taking the portrait to the museum in a horse cart, the horse looked back nervously and whinnied. Later, Smarmeladov began to use other grains as well. He made portraits in barley, wheat, and poppy seeds, bold sketches in corn and buckwheat, landscapes in rice, and still-lifes in millet – every one a smashing success.

At the moment, he was working on a group portrait. A large canvas depicted a meeting of the regional planning board. Feofan was working in dry beans and peas. Deep in his heart, however, he remained true to the oats that had launched his career and undermined the Dialectical Easelists.

“You bet it’s better with oats!” exclaimed Ostap. “And to think those fools Rubens and Raphael kept messing with oils. Like Leonardo da Vinci, we’re fools, too. Give us some yellow enamel.”

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