by Ilya Ilf
Finally, Sevryugov did something that totally confused the newspaper which was close to the Polish foreign ministry. He found the expedition lost in the ice ridges, radioed their exact location, and then disappeared himself. The world exploded in a frenzy. Sevryugov’s name was uttered in 320 different languages and dialects, including the language of the Blackfoot. Pictures of Sevryugov, clad in animal skins, were printed on every available sheet of paper. Meeting with the press, Gabriele d’Annunzio announced that he had just finished his new novel and was immediately embarking on a search for the brave Russian. A charleston named I’m Warm at the Pole with My Baby was released. The old Moscow hacks Usyshkin-Werther, Leonid Trepetovsky, and Boris Ammiakov, who had been engaged in literary dumping for years, and periodically flooded the market with their production at throwaway prices, were already working on an article entitled “Aren’t You Cold?” In other words, the planet was living out a great sensation.
All this caused an even greater sensation in apartment No. 3 at 8 Lemon Lane, better known as the Rookery.
“Our tenant is missing,” cheerfully reported the retired janitor Nikita Pryakhin, who was drying a felt boot over a Primus stove. “He’s missing, that boy. Well, who forced him to fly? A man should walk, not fly. Yes, walk, that’s right.”
And he repositioned the boot over the whooshing fire.
“That’s what you get for flying, goggle-face,” muttered an old grandma whose name nobody knew. She lived in the loft over the kitchen, and although the entire apartment had electricity, the grandma used a kerosene lamp with a reflector in her loft. She didn’t believe in electricity. “Now we’ve got a spare room, some spare footage!”
The grandma was the first to name what had long been burdening the hearts of everyone in the Rookery. Everybody started talking about the missing pilot’s room, among them: a former Prince from the Caucasus mountains, lately a proletarian from the East, Citizen Hygienishvili; Dunya, a woman who was renting a bed in Auntie Pasha’s room; Auntie Pasha herself, a street vendor and a hopeless boozer; Alexander Dmitrievich Sukhoveiko, once Chamberlain at His Imperial Majesty’s Court, known to his neighbors simply as Mitrich; and other minor apartment characters, all headed by the chief leaseholder, Lucia Franzevna Pferd.
“Well,” said Mitrich, straightening his gold-rimmed glasses as the kitchen filled up with tenants, “since the comrade is missing, we have to divvy it up. I, for example, have long been entitled to some extra footage.”
“Why should a man get the footage?” countered Dunya the bed renter. “Shouldn’t it be a woman? This might be the only time in my life that a man suddenly goes missing.”
She continued lingering in the crowd for a long time, offering various arguments in her own favor and frequently repeating the word “man.”
The one thing all the tenants agreed upon was that the room had to be taken immediately.
That same day, the world was shaken by yet another sensation. The brave Sevryugov was no longer missing. Nizhny Novgorod, Quebec City, and Reykjavik had heard his radio signals. He was stranded at the eighty-fourth parallel with damaged landing gear. The airwaves teemed with reports: “The brave Russian is in excellent condition,” “Sevryugov sends a message to the Society for Defense and Aviation,” “Charles Lindbergh calls Sevryugov the world’s top pilot,” “Seven icebreakers are on their way to rescue Sevryugov and the expedition he found.” Apart from these reports, the newspapers printed nothing but photos of some icy shores and banks. The following words were constantly repeated: “Sevryugov,” “North Cape,” “parallel,” “Sevryugov,” “Franz Joseph Land,” “Spitsbergen,” “King’s Bay,” “sealskin boots,” “fuel,” “Sevryugov.”
The gloom that this news brought to the Rookery was soon replaced by quiet confidence. The icebreakers were moving slowly, the ice fields were hard to crack.
“Let’s take the room—and that’s that,” said Nikita Pryakhin. “He’s sitting pretty on that ice over there, while Dunya here, for example, has all the rights. Especially since, by law, a tenant cannot be absent for more than two months.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Citizen Pryakhin!” argued Barbara—still Mrs. Lokhankin at the time—waving a copy of Izvestiya. “He’s a hero! He’s on the eighty-fourth parallel now!”
“Whatever that parallel is,” Mitrich responded vaguely. “Maybe it doesn’t even exist, that parallel. We don’t know that. We didn’t attend classical gymnasiums.”
Mitrich was telling the truth. He hadn’t attended a gymnasium. He had graduated from His Majesty’s Corps of Pages.
“Look here,” argued Barbara, putting the newspaper right in front of the Chamberlain’s nose. “Here’s the article. See? Amid ice ridges and icebergs.”
“Icebergs!” sneered Mitrich. “Yes, we can understand that. Ten long years of nothing but tears. Icebergs, Weisbergs, Eisenbergs, all those Rabinovitzes. Pryakhin is right. Let’s just take it, end of story. Especially since Lucia Franzevna here agrees about the law.”
“And his stuff can go into the stairwell, to hell with it!” exclaimed the former Prince, lately a proletarian from the East, Citizen Hygienishvili, in his throaty voice.
Barbara got a good pecking and ran to her husband to complain.
“But maybe that’s how it should be,” replied the husband, raising his pharaonic beard, “maybe the Great Russian Homespun Truth speaks through the simple peasant Mitrich. Just think of the role of the Russian intelligentsia and its significance.”
On that extraordinary day when the icebreakers finally reached Sevryugov’s tent, Citizen Hygienishvili broke the lock on Sevryugov’s door and threw all of the hero’s belongings out into the hallway, including a red propeller that was hanging on the wall. The room was taken by Dunya, who immediately brought in six paying bed renters. The conquered territory was the site of a night-long feast. Nikita Pryakhin played the concertina, and Chamberlain Mitrich did Russian folk dances with a drunken Auntie Pasha.
If Sevryugov had been slightly less famous, if his incredible flights over the Arctic hadn’t given him international celebrity, he would never have seen his room again. He would have been sucked in by the centripetal force of litigiousness, and for the rest of his life he would have referred to himself not as “the brave Sevryugov,” not as “the hero of the ice,” but as “the injured party.” But this time the Rookery was hit back hard. The room was returned (although Sevryugov soon moved to a new building), while the daring Hygienishvili spent four months in jail for acting without proper authority; he came back mad as hell.
He was the one who first pointed out the need to turn off the bathroom lights regularly to the orphaned Lokhankin. As he spoke, his eyes looked decidedly devilish. The absentminded Lokhankin failed to appreciate the importance of this démarche by Citizen Hygienishvili and thus completely missed the beginnings of the conflict that was soon to lead to a horrifying event, unheard of even in the history of communal living.
Here’s how it all happened. Basilius Andreevich continued to leave the lights on in the shared facilities. How could he possibly remember such a trivial thing when his wife had left him, when he found himself penniless, when the multifaceted significance of the Russian intelligentsia was not yet entirely understood? Could he even imagine that the lousy, dim light from an eight-watt bulb would inspire such powerful feelings in his neighbors? At first they warned him several times each day. Then they sent him a letter, which had been composed by Mitrich and signed by all the other tenants. In the end, they stopped issuing warnings and sending letters. Lokhankin still didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation, but he had developed a vague premonition that some kind of circle was about to close around him.
On Tuesday evening, one of Auntie Pasha’s girls came running in and reported in a single breath:
“They’re telling you one last time to turn it off.”
But it somehow happened that Basilius Andreevich got distracted again, and the bulb continued to shine nefariously th
rough the cobwebs and dirt. The apartment gave a sigh. A minute later, Citizen Hygienishvili appeared at Lokhankin’s door. He was wearing light-blue canvas boots and a flat brown sheepskin hat.
“Come,” he said, beckoning Basilius with his finger.
Holding his hand tightly, Citizen Hygienishvili led Lokhankin down the dark hallway, where Basilius got antsy and even started kicking a bit. The former Prince pushed him into the middle of the kitchen with a blow to his back. Grabbing onto the laundry lines, Lokhankin managed to stay on his feet and looked around fearfully. The whole apartment was present. Lucia Franzevna Pferd stood there in silence. Creases of purple ink ran across the imperious face of the leaseholder-in-chief. Next to her, a boozed-up Auntie Pasha slumped forlornly on the stove. Barefoot Nikita Pryakhin was looking at the frightened Lokhankin with a smirk. The head of nobody’s grandma dangled from the loft. Dunya was gesturing at Mitrich. The former Chamberlain of the Imperial Court was smiling and hiding something behind his back.
“What? Are we having a meeting?” asked Basilius Andreevich in a high-pitched voice.
“Just wait,” said Nikita Pryakhin, moving closer to Lokhankin, “you’ll have everything. Champagne, caviar, everything . . . Lie down!” he yelled suddenly, breathing either vodka or turpentine on Basilius.
“What do you mean, lie down?” asked Basilius Andreevich, beginning to tremble.
“There’s no point in talking to this bad man!” said Citizen Hygienishvili. He squatted and started feeling around Lokhankin’s waist to unbutton his suspenders.
“Help me!” whispered Basilius, fixing a crazed stare on Lucia Franzevna.
“You should have been turning the lights off!” replied Citizen Pferd sternly.
“We’re no moneybags here, we can’t afford to waste electricity like that,” added Chamberlain Mitrich, dipping something into a bucket of water.
“Its not my fault!” squeaked Lokhankin, trying to free himself from the former Prince, lately a proletarian from the East.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” muttered Nikita Pryakhin, restraining the quivering tenant.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Nobody did anything.”
“I’m depressed.”
“Everybody’s depressed.”
“You can’t touch me. I’m anemic.”
“Everybody’s anemic.”
“My wife left me!” cried Basilius.
“Everybody’s wife left,” replied Nikita Pryakhin.
“Get going, Nikita!” interrupted Chamberlain Mitrich, bringing some shining wet birches into the light. “Talking won’t get us anywhere.”
Basilius Andreevich was placed face down on the floor. His legs glowed like milk in the light. Hygienishvili swung his arm as far back as he could, and the birch made a high-pitched sound as it cut through the air.
“Mama!” screamed Basilius.
“Everybody has a mama!” said Nikita didactically, holding Lokhankin down with his knee.
And suddenly Basilius fell silent.
“Maybe that’s how it should be,” he thought, flinching from the blows and looking at Nikita’s dark, armored toenails. “Maybe this is all about atonement, cleansing, a great sacrifice . . .”
And so while he was being flogged—while Dunya giggled sheepishly and the grandma cheered from her loft: “Give it to him, just give it to him!”—Basilius Andreevich thought hard about the significance of the Russian intelligentsia, and that Galileo had also suffered in the name of truth.
Mitrich was the last to take up the switch.
“Well, let me try now,” he said, raising an arm. “A few good switches to his rear end.”
But Lokhankin never got the chance to taste the Chamberlain’s switches. There was a knock on the back door. Dunya rushed to open it. (The front door of the Rookery had been nailed shut a long time ago because the tenants couldn’t decide who would wash the stairs first. The room with the bathtub was also permanently locked for the same reason.)
“Basilius Andreevich, some strange man is asking for you,” said Dunya, as if nothing had happened.
And indeed, everyone saw a strange man in white gentleman’s pants standing in the doorway. Basilius Andreevich jumped up from the floor, adjusted his wardrobe, and, with an unnecessary smile on his face, turned toward Bender, who had just come in.
“I’m not interrupting anything?” inquired the grand strategist courteously, squinting.
“Well,” murmured Lokhankin, bowing slightly, “you see, I was, how should I put it, somewhat busy . . . But . . . it looks like I’m free now?”
And he looked around inquiringly. But there was nobody left in the kitchen except for Auntie Pasha, who had fallen asleep on the stove while the punishment was being meted out. Only a few twigs and a white canvas button with two holes were left on the wooden floor.
“Why don’t you come in,” invited Basilius.
“But maybe I interrupted something after all?” asked Ostap, entering Lokhankin’s first room. “No? All right, fine. So tell me, is that your ad: “FR: exl. rm. all am. s.v. r.bac.?” Is it really “exl.” with “all am.?”
“Absolutely,” said Lokhankin, brightening up. “An excellent room, all amenities. And I’m not asking much. Fifty rubles a month.”
“I’m not going to haggle,” said Ostap politely, “but the neighbors . . . what about them?”
“Wonderful people,” replied Basilius, “not to mention all amenities. And it’s inexpensive.”
“But it looks like they resort to corporal punishment here?”
“Oh,” said Lokhankin with affectation, “after all, who knows? Maybe that’s how it should be. Maybe that’s what the Great Russian Homespun Truth is all about.”
“Homespun?” repeated Ostap pensively. “Also known as homegrown, homebred, and home-brewed? I see. So tell me, which grade of the gymnasium did you flunk out of? Sixth?”
“Fifth,” replied Lokhankin.
“Ah, that golden grade. So you never made it as far as physics? And you’ve been leading a strictly intellectual life ever since, haven’t you? Then again, what do I care. It’s your life. I’m moving in tomorrow.”
“What about the deposit?” asked the ex-student.
“You’re not in church, nobody’s going to fleece you,” said the grand strategist weightily. “You’ll get your deposit. In due course.”
CHAPTER 14
THE FIRST DATE
Returning to the Carlsbad Hotel, Ostap walked past countless reflections of himself in the mirrors that lined the entryway, stairwell, and hallway (that are so popular in establishments of this sort), and went to his room. He was surprised to find everything upside down. The plush red chair was lying on its back, exposing its short legs and unattractive jute underbelly. The braided velvet tablecloth had slid off the table. Even The Appearance of Christ to the People was tilted to one side and lost most of the didacticism intended by the artist. Fresh sea breezes blew from the balcony, rustling the bills that were scattered across the bed. Amid the bills lay the metal Caucasus cigarette box. Panikovsky and Balaganov, were silently grappling on the carpet, kicking the air with their legs.
Disgusted, the grand strategist stepped over the combatants and went out to the balcony. On the boulevard below, people chatted, gravel crunched under their feet, and the harmonious breath of a symphony orchestra soared above the black maples. In the dark depths of the port, a refrigerator ship that was under construction flaunted its lights and banged its steel parts. Beyond the breakwater, an invisible steamer bellowed insistently, probably asking to be let into the harbor.
Stepping back into the room, Ostap found the half-brothers already sitting on the floor face to face, pushing each other wearily with their hands, and mumbling: “And who are you?”
“Couldn’t you share?” asked Bender, closing the curtain.
Panikovsky and Balaganov quickly jumped to their feet and launched into their story. Each claimed the success of the entire mission for himself and
denigrated the role of the other. Each skipped the facts that were not particularly flattering to himself, invoking instead the many details that shed a positive light on his own mettle and skill.
“That’s enough!” said Ostap. “Don’t bang your skull on the hardwood. I get the picture. So you’re saying he had a girl with him? That’s good. Well, let’s see: a lowly clerk happens to have in his pocket . . . looks like you’ve already counted? How much? Wow! Ten thousand! Mr. Koreiko’s wages for twenty years of dedicated service. A sight for the gods, as the most astute of the editorialists would have it. But it looks like I interrupted something? Weren’t you doing something on the floor here? You were dividing up the money? Please, please continue, I’ll watch.”
“I wanted it to be honest and fair,” said Balaganov, collecting the money from the bed. “Everybody gets an equal share—twenty-five hundred.”
He put the money into four piles and modestly stepped aside, saying:
“You, me, him, and Kozlevich.”
“Very good,” said Ostap. “Now let Panikovsky do it. Looks like he has a dissenting opinion on the subject.”
The author of the dissenting opinion dove into the task with gusto. Leaning over the bed, Panikovsky moved his fat lips, wetted his fingers, and endlessly shuffled the bills, as if he was playing a game of solitaire. All these complex maneuvers produced three piles on the blanket: a large one, composed of clean new bills, another large one, but with less pristine bills, and a third one, with small and dirty bills.
“You and I get four thousand each,” said Panikovsky to Bender, “and Balaganov gets two. Even that’s too much for what he did.”
“And what about Kozlevich?” asked Balaganov, angrily closing his eyes.
“Why should Kozlevich get anything?” shrieked Panikovsky. “That’s highway robbery! Who’s this Kozlevich and why should we share with him? I don’t know any Kozlevich!”