by Ilya Ilf
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.”
While paying the talkative clerk, Ostap asked:
“Oh yes, by the way, who’s this Platonikov-Pervertov? We’re not from around here, you know, so we aren’t up to date.”
“Comrade Pervertov is a prominent figure in Moscow, although he’s from here originally. He’s here on vacation.”
“I see,” said Ostap. “Thanks for the information. Goodbye!”
Outside, the half-brothers spotted the Dialectical Easelists again. All four of them stood at the intersection, looking sad and melodramatic, like Gypsy performers. Next to them were their easels, placed together like a stack of rifles.
“Bad news, fellows?” asked Ostap. “Did you lose Platonikov-Pervertov?”
“We did,” groaned the artists. “And we almost had him.”
“Feofan snatched him, didn’t he?” asked Ostap, casually revealing his familiarity with the scene.
“He’s already painting him, that charlatan,” said the deputy of Henri de Navarre. “In oats. Says he’s going back to his old method. The hack is complaining that he’s having an artistic crisis.”
“And where’s this operator’s studio?” inquired Ostap. “I’d like to take a look.”
The artists, who had plenty of time on their hands, were happy to take Ostap and Balaganov to Feofan Smarmeladov’s place. Feofan was working outside in his yard. Comrade Platonikov, apparently a timid man, sat in front of him on a stool. He held his breath and looked at the artist who, like the sower on a thirty-ruble bill, was grabbing oats
from a basket by the handful and throwing them across the canvas. Smarmeladov frowned. The sparrows were bothering him. They brazenly flew onto the painting and pecked at the smaller details.
“How much are you going to get for this painting?” asked Platonikov shyly.
Feofan stopped sowing, examined his creation with a critical eye, and tentatively replied:
“Well, I think the museum will pay something like 250 for it.”
“That’s kind of pricey.”
“But who can afford oats these days?” said Smarmeladov melodically. “They’re not cheap, those oats.”
“So how are the crops doing?” asked Ostap, sticking his head through the garden fence. “I see the sowing season is well under way. A hundred percent success! But this is nothing compared to what I saw in Moscow. One artist there made a painting out of hair. A large painting with multiple figures, mind you, and ideologically flawless, too, although, admittedly, he used the hair of non-party members. But ideologically, I repeat, the painting was absolutely impeccable. It was called “Grandpa Pakhom and His Tractor on the Night Shift.” It was such a mischievous painting they really didn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes, the hair on it would literally stand on end. And one day it turned completely gray, so Grandpa Pakhom and his tractor disappeared without a trace. But the author was fast enough to collect some fifteen hundred for his bright idea. So don’t get too confident, Comrade Smarmeladov! The oats might germinate, your painting will start sprouting, and then you’ll never harvest again.”
The Dialectical Easelists laughed supportively, but Feofan was unfazed.
“This sounds like a paradox,” he remarked, returning to his sowing.
“All right,” said Ostap, “keep sowing the seeds of reason, good, and the everlasting, and then we’ll see. And you, fellows, goodbye to you, too. Forget your oils. Switch to mosaics made of screws, nuts, and spikes. A portrait in nuts! What a splendid idea!”
The Antelopeans spent the whole day painting their car. By evening, it was unrecognizable and glistened with all the different colors of an egg-yolk.
At sunrise the next morning, the transformed Antelope left the cozy shed and set a course toward the south.
“Too bad we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to our host. But he was sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to wake him. Perhaps at this very moment, he’s finally dreaming of Archbishop Inclement, blessing the Ministry of Education officials on the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov.”
And then they heard the howling cries that were already familiar to Ostap. They came from the little log house.
“The same dream!” cried old Khvorobyov. “Lord, oh Lord!”
“I was wrong,” observed Ostap. “Instead of Archbishop Inclement, he must have seen a plenary session of The Forge and the Farm literary group. To hell with him, though. Business calls us to Chernomorsk.”
CHAPTER 9
ANOTHER ARTISTIC CRISIS
It’s amazing what some people do for a living.
Parallel to the big world inhabited by big people and big things, there’s a small world with small people and small things. In the big world, they invented the diesel engine, wrote the novel Dead Souls, built the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, and flew around the globe. In the small world, they invented the blowout noisemaker, wrote the song Little Bricks, and built Soviet Ambassador-style pants. People in the big world aspire to improve the lives of all humanity. The small world is far from such high-mindedness. Its inhabitants have only one desire—to get by without going hungry.
The small people try to keep up with the big people. They understand that they must be in tune with the times, since only then will their small offerings find a market. In Soviet times, when ideological monoliths have been created in the big world, the small world is in a state of commotion. All the small inventions from the world of ants are given rock-solid foundations of Communist ideology. The noisemaker is adorned with the likeness of Chamberlain, very similar to the one that appears in Izvestiya cartoons. In a popular song, a savvy metalworker wins the love of a Young Communist League girl by meeting, and even exceeding, his quotas in three stanzas. And while the big world is torn by vehement arguments about what the new life should look like, the small world has already figured everything out: there’s the Shockworker’s Dream necktie; the Fyodor Gladkov tunic; the plaster statuette, called A Collective Farm Woman Bathing; and the Love of the Worker Bees brand ladies’ absorbent armpit pads.
Fresh winds are blowing in the field of riddles, puzzles, anagrams, and other brainteasers. The old ways are out. The newspaper and magazine sections like At Your Leisure or Use Your Brain flatly refuse to accept non-ideological material. And while the great country was moving and shaking, building assembly lines for tractors and creating giant state farms, old man Sinitsky, a puzzle-maker by trade, sat in his room, his glazed eyes on the ceiling, and worked on a riddle based on the fashionable word industrialisation.
Sinitsky looked like a garden gnome. Such gnomes often appeared on the signs of umbrella stores. They wear pointy red hats and wink amicably at the passers-by, as if inviting them to hurry up and buy a silk parasol or a walking stick with a silver dog-head knob. Sinitsky’s long yellowish beard descended below the desk right into the waste basket.
“Industrialisation,” he whispered in despair, wiggling his old-man’s lips, which were as pale as uncooked ground meat.
And then he divided the word into parts for the puzzle, like he always did:
“In. Dust. Rial. Is. Ation.”
Everything was wonderful. Sinitsky was already picturing an elaborate word puzzle—rich in meaning, easy to read, yet hard to solve. The only problem was the last part, ation.
“What in the world is ation?” struggled the old man. “If only it was action instead! Then it would have been perfect: industrialisaction.”
Sinitsky agonized over the capricious ending for half an hour, but he couldn’t find a good solution. He then decided that it would come to him later on and got down to work. He started his poem on a sheet of paper which had been torn from a ledger that had Debit printed at the top.
Through the white glass door of his balcony, he could see the acacias in bloom, patched-up roofs, and the sharp blue line of the horizon in the sea. The Chernomorsk noon filled the city with a thick gooey heat.
The old man thought for a while and wrote down the opening lines:
My first one is a little word,
It is a preposition, truly . . .
“It is a preposition, truly,” repeated the old man, satisfied.
He liked what he had so far, but he was struggling to find rhymes for word and truly. The puzzle-maker walked around the room and fiddled with his beard. And suddenly it came to him:
The second is the finest dirt
That every maid expunges duly.
The rial and is weren’t too difficult either:
My third one lines the pockets of
A Persian, if his God is kindly.
The fourth one is a simple verb,
You see it everywhere, mind you.
Tired from this last effort, Sinitsky leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was seventy years old. For fifty of those years he had been composing puzzles, riddles, and other brainteasers. But the good old puzzle-maker had never had such a hard time professionally. He wasn’t up to date, he was politically ignorant, and his younger rivals were beating him hands down. The puzzles they brought to their editors had such impeccable ideological underpinnings that the old man cried with envy just reading them. How could he possibly compete with something like this:
The old man shook off his depressing thoughts, and was about to go back to his “debit” sheet, when a young woman, with wet bobbed hair and a black swimsuit hanging over her shoulder, entered the room.
Without saying a word, she stepped out onto the balcony, hung her soggy swimsuit on the chipped railing, and looked down. She saw the same meager courtyard that sh
e had been looking at for years—actually, it was a destitute-looking courtyard, with broken crates lying around, wandering cats covered with coal dust, and a tinsmith noisily fixing a bucket. Housewives on the ground floor were talking about their hard lives.
It wasn’t the first time the young woman had heard these complaints. She also knew the cats by name, while the tinsmith had been fixing the same bucket for years—or so it seemed. Zosya Sinitsky went back into the room.
“This ideology is killing me,” she heard her grandfather mumble. “What does puzzle-making have to do with ideology? Puzzle-making . . .”
Zosya looked at the old man’s scribbles and exclaimed:
“What have you written here? What is this? ‘A Persian, if his God is kindly.’ What God? Weren’t you telling me that the editors no longer accept puzzles with religious expressions?”
Sinitsky gasped. Crying, “Where’s God? There’s no God there!” he pulled his white-rimmed glasses onto his nose with shaking hands and picked up the sheet.
“There is a God,” he admitted brokenheartedly. “Snuck in . . . I messed up again. What a shame! Such a good line wasted.”
“Why don’t you replace God with fate?” suggested Zosya.
But the frightened Sinitsky rejected fate.
“That’s mysticism too. I know. Oh, I messed up again! What’s going to happen, Zosya sweetheart?”
Zosya gave her grandfather a cold look and advised him to start a new puzzle from scratch.
“Either way,” she said, “you always struggle with words that end in -tion. Remember how you struggled with levitation?”
“Of course,” replied the old man. “I used ‘levit’ as the first part and wrote: ‘The first one will not challenge you, it is the last name of a Jew.’ They rejected that riddle: ‘Not up to snuff, won’t do.’ I messed up!”
Then the old man settled down at his desk and went to work on a large, ideologically correct picture puzzle. First he sketched a goose holding a letter L in his beak. The letter was large and heavy, like an upside down gallows. The work proceeded smoothly.