The Golden Calf

by Ilya Ilf

  “Are you finished?” asked the grand strategist.

  “Yes, finished,” answered Panikovsky, his eyes fixed on the pile of clean bills. “How can you talk about Kozlevich at a moment like this?”

  “And now it’s my turn,” said Ostap firmly.

  He slowly put all the piles back together, placed the money in the metal box, and stuck the box in the pocket of his white pants.

  “All this money,” he announced, “will immediately be returned to the victim, Citizen Koreiko. How do you like that?”

  “I don’t,” blurted out Panikovsky.

  “Don’t joke around, Bender,” said Balaganov testily. “We have to split it fair and square.”

  “Not going to happen,” said Ostap coldly. “I wouldn’t joke around at this late hour.”

  Panikovsky clasped his purplish old-man’s hands. He glanced at the grand strategist with horror in his eyes, stepped back into a corner, and said nothing. Only his gold tooth gleamed occasionally in the dark.

  Balaganov’s face turned shiny, as if it had been burned by the sun.

  “So all this work was for nothing?” he asked, puffing. “That’s not right. That’s . . . please explain.”

  “To you, the Lieutenant’s favorite son,” said Ostap politely, “I can only repeat what I already told you in Arbatov. I revere the Criminal Code. I’m not a bandit, I’m a highly principled pursuer of monetary instruments. Mugging is not on my list of four hundred honest methods of taking money, it just doesn’t fit. On top of that, we didn’t come here for a mere ten thousand. I myself need at least five hundred of those thousands.”

  “Then why did you send us?” asked Balaganov, cooling off. “We tried really hard . . .”

  “In other words, you mean to ask if the esteemed captain knows why he undertook this latest action? The answer is: Yes, I do. You see . . .”

  At this moment, the gold tooth stopped gleaming in the corner. Panikovsky turned, lowered his head, and, screaming “And who are you?” rushed Ostap in a rage. Without changing his position, or even turning his head, the grand strategist hit the deranged violator of the pact with his rubber fist, sending him back to his original position. He then continued:

  “You see, Shura, this was a test. A clerk who makes forty rubles a month has ten thousand in his pocket, which is a bit unusual. It improves our chances, or, as racing fans would say, it gives us good odds for scoring big. Five hundred thousand is definitely a big score. And here’s how we’re going to get it. I will return the ten thousand to Koreiko, and he’ll take it. I have yet to see a man who wouldn’t take his money back. And that’ll be the end of him. His greed will be his undoing. The moment he confesses to his riches, I’ll get him with my bare hands. As a smart man, he’ll understand that a portion is less than the whole, and he’ll give me that portion for fear of losing everything. And then, Shura, a certain platter with a rim will appear on the scene . . .”

  “That’s right!” exclaimed Balaganov.

  Panikovsky was weeping in the corner.

  “Give me back my money,” he moaned, “I have nothing! I haven’t had a bath in a year. I’m old. Girls don’t love me.”

  “Contact the World League for Sexual Reform,” said Ostap. “Maybe they’ll be able to help you.”

  “Nobody loves me,” continued Panikovsky, shuddering.

  “And why should anybody love you? Girls don’t love people like you. They love the young, the long-legged, the politically up-to-date. And you will soon die. And nobody will write about you in the paper: “Yet another one worked himself to death.” There will be no beautiful widow with Persian eyes sitting at your grave. And teary-eyed kids won’t be asking: “Papa, papa, can you hear us?”

  “Don’t say that!” cried out the frightened Panikovsky. “I’ll outlive you all. You don’t know Panikovsky yet. Panikovsky will buy and sell you all, you’ll see. Give me back my money.”

  “Just tell me, will you continue to serve or not? I’m asking you for the last time.”

  “I will,” answered Panikovsky, wiping away his sluggish, old-man’s tears.

  Night, dark, deep night, shrouded the whole country.

  In the port of Chernomorsk, cranes swung back and forth rapidly, lowering their steel cables into the deep holds of foreign ships, and then they swung back again, carefully lowering, with cat-like caution, pinewood crates filled with equipment for the tractor factory onto the dock. Pink comet-like flames burst out of the tall smokestacks of cement plants. The star clusters of the Dnieper hydroelectric site, Magnitogorsk, and Stalingrad were ablaze. The star of the Red Putilov rose over the north, followed by a multitude of the brightest stars. These were factories and plants, power stations and construction sites. The entire Five-Year Plan was aglow, eclipsing the old sky that even the ancient Egyptians knew all too well.

  A young man who stayed at the workers’ club late into the night with his girl would hastily turn on the electric map of the Five-Year Plan and whisper:

  “Look at this little red light. That’s where the Siberian Combine Factory is going to be. We can go there together. Do you want to?”

  And the girl would quietly laugh and pull her hands away.

  Night, dark, deep night, as mentioned before, shrouded the whole country. The monarchist Khvorobyov groaned in his sleep because he saw a giant union card in his dream. Engineer Talmudovsky snored on the upper bunk on the train headed from Kharkov to Rostov, lured by a higher salary. The two American gentlemen rolled on the broad Atlantic waves, carrying the recipe for a delicious wheat moonshine home. Basilius Lokhankin was tossing on his couch and stroking his injured parts. The old puzzle-maker Sinitsky was wasting electricity, working on a picture puzzle entitled “Find the chairman of the pumping station general staff meeting, convened to elect local union officials,” which he intended for The Plumbing Journal. He was trying to be quiet, so as not to wake Zosya. Polykhaev lay in bed with Impala Mikhailovna. Other Herculeans slept nervously in various parts of the city. Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, worried about his riches, couldn’t sleep. If he had nothing, he’d be sleeping well. We already know what Bender, Balaganov, and Panikovsky were doing. Only Kozlevich, the owner-driver of the Antelope, will not be mentioned here, even though he had already got himself into trouble of a very sensitive nature.

  Early in the morning, Bender opened his doctor’s bag, took out the policeman’s cap with the crest of the city of Kiev, stuck it in his pocket, and went to see Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko. On his way, he pestered the milk delivery women—as the hour of these resourceful ladies had already begun, while the hour of the office dwellers hadn’t yet—and murmured the lyrics of the love song: “But now the joys of our first date no longer move me like before.” The grand strategist wasn’t being entirely honest; his first date with the millionaire clerk excited him. Entering No. 16 Lesser Tangential Street, he stuck his official cap on his head, frowned, and knocked on the door.

  Alexander Ivanovich stood in the middle of the room. He was wearing a sleeveless fishnet undershirt and had already slipped into his lowly clerk pants. The room was furnished with exemplary austerity, which in tsarist times was typical of orphanages and other such institutions that were under the patronage of Empress Maria Fyodorovna. There were just three pieces: a small metal field-hospital bed, a kitchen cabinet with doors that were held shut by wooden latches that one normally sees on country outhouses, and a beat-up Vienna chair. There were a few dumbbells in the corner, along with two large kettle-bell weights, the joy of a weightlifter.

  Seeing a policeman, Alexander Ivanovich took a heavy step forward.

  “Citizen Koreiko?” asked Ostap, smiling radiantly.

  “That’s me,” answered Alexander Ivanovich, also expressing his joy at seeing a representative of law and order.

  “Alexander Ivanovich?” inquired Ostap, smiling even more radiantly.

  “Precisely,” confirmed Koreiko, turning up the heat of his joy as high as he could.

  After that, th
e only thing left to the grand strategist was to sit down on the Vienna chair and generate a supernatural smile. Having accomplished this, he looked at Alexander Ivanovich. But the millionaire clerk made a huge effort and projected God knows what on his face: adoration, delight, happiness, and quiet admiration all at once. All on account of his happy encounter with a representative of law and order.

  This escalation of smiles and emotions was reminiscent of a manuscript by the composer Franz Liszt, where a note on the first page said to play “fast”; on the second page—“very fast”; on the third—“much faster”; on the fourth—“as fast as possible”; and on the fifth—“still faster.”

  Seeing that Koreiko was already on page five, and that any further competition was simply impossible, Ostap got down to business.

  “Actually, I have something for you,” he said, turning serious.

  “Please, be my guest,” replied Alexander Ivanovich, also clouding over.

  “We’ve got good news for you.”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  Sad beyond measure, Ostap delved into his pocket. Koreiko watched him with an altogether funereal expression. A metal Caucasus cigarette box emerged. However, there was no exclamation of surprise, as Ostap had expected. The underground millionaire stared at the box blankly. Ostap took out the money, carefully counted it, pushed the pile towards Alexander Ivanovich, and said:

  “Ten thousand, even. Kindly make out a receipt for me.”

  “This is a mistake, Comrade,” said Koreiko very quietly. “What ten thousand? What receipt?”

  “What do you mean? Weren’t you robbed yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean—no?” Ostap grew animated. “Yesterday, by the sea. And they took the ten thousand. The robbers were apprehended. Just make out the receipt.”

  “I swear, nobody robbed me,” said Koreiko, and something flickered momentarily on his face. “This is clearly a mistake.”

  Not yet realizing the full extent of his defeat, the grand strategist stooped to an unseemly state of discomposure, which later made him squirm whenever he thought about it. He persisted, he became angry, he tried to push the money into Koreiko’s hands, and in general lost face, as the Chinese saying goes. Alexander Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders, and smiled politely, but he wouldn’t take the money.

  “So, nobody robbed you?”

  “That’s right, nobody robbed me.”

  “And nobody took ten thousand from you?”

  “Of course not. How could I possibly have that much money?”

  “That’s true,” said Ostap, cooling off. “How could a simple clerk have such a pile of money? So, everything’s fine with you?”

  “Everything!” replied the millionaire with a charming smile.

  “And your stomach is fine, too?” asked Ostap, smiling even more seductively.

  “It’s perfect. I’m a very healthy man, you know.”

  “And no bad dreams either?”

  “No, none.”

  After that, the smiles closely followed Liszt’s instructions: fast, very fast, much faster, as fast as possible, and still faster. The way the new friends were saying goodbye, one might have thought they really adored each other.

  “Don’t forget your police cap,” said Alexander Ivanovich. “You left it on the table.”

  “Don’t eat raw tomatoes before bedtime,” advised Ostap, “it might hurt your stomach.”

  “All the best to you,” said Koreiko, bowing cheerfully and clicking his heels.

  “See you later,” replied Ostap. “You’re such an interesting man. Everything’s fine with you. All that luck—and you’re still at large. Amazing!”

  Finally, the grand strategist bolted outside; he was still smiling, even though it was no longer necessary. He walked briskly for a few blocks, forgetting that he was still wearing the policeman’s cap with the crest of the city of Kiev, which was completely out of place in the city of Chernomorsk. And only when he walked into a crowd of respectable-looking old men, who were babbling away in front of the covered porch of City Diner No. 68, did he come back to his senses and start assessing the situation rationally.

  While he strolled back and forth absentmindedly, immersed in his thoughts, the old men continued to do what they did here every day.

  These were odd people, preposterous in this day and age. Nearly all of them wore white piqué vests and straw boater hats. Some even sported panamas that had darkened with age. And, of course, they all had yellowed starched collars around their hairy chicken necks. This spot near Diner No. 68, formerly the fabled Florida Café, was the gathering place for the remnants of long-gone commercial Chernomorsk. They were brokers left without their brokerage firms, commissioned salesmen who had faded in the absence of commissions, grain traders, accountants who had gone off the deep end, and other such riffraff. In the old days, they used to gather here to cut deals. But it was long-time habit, combined with a need to exercise their old tongues, that kept bringing them to this sunny street corner. Every day, they read Moscow’s Pravda —they had no respect for the local press—and interpreted anything that was going on anywhere in the world as a prelude to Chernomorsk becoming a free city. About a hundred years earlier, Chernomorsk was indeed a free city, which brought so much fun and so much profit that the legend of porto franco still shone its golden light on the sunny street corner near the Florida Café.

  “Have you read about the disarmament conference?” one Piqué Vest would inquire of another. “Count Bernstorff’s speech?”

  “Bernstorff is a real brain!” replied the other Vest, as if he had known the Count personally for many years. “And have you read the speech that Snowden gave at the electoral meeting in Birmingham, that Conservative stronghold?”

  “Goes without saying . . . Snowden is a real brain! Listen, Valiadis,” said the first, turning to yet another old fogey in a panama. “What’s your take on Snowden?”

  “I have to be honest with you,” replied the Panama, “Snowden is a tough cookie. Personally, I wouldn’t try to pull the wool over his eyes.”

  And showing no concern for the fact that Snowden would never let Valiadis pull anything over his eyes, the old man continued:

  “But whatever you say, I have to be honest with you: Chamberlain is a real brain, too.”

  The Piqué Vests would shrug their shoulders. They didn’t deny that Chamberlain was a real brain, too. But their absolute favorite was Briand.

  “Briand!” they would say enthusiastically. “Now there’s a brain! With his pan-Europe proposal . . .”

  “I’ll tell you honestly, Monsieur Funt,” whispered Valiadis, “everything’s going to be fine. Beneš has already agreed to pan-Europe, but you know on what condition?”

  The Piqué Vests gathered around and stuck their chicken necks out.

  “On the condition that Chernomorsk is declared a free city. Beneš is a real brain. They need to sell their agricultural machinery to somebody, right? Well, we’ll be the ones buying it.”

  Upon hearing this, the eyes of the old men began to sparkle. For many years, they’d been dying to buy and sell, sell and buy.

  “Briand is a real brain,” they sighed. “Beneš is a real brain, too.”

  When Ostap finally managed to shake off his heavy thoughts, he realized that an old man in a beat-up straw hat with a greasy black ribbon was clutching his jacket. His clip-on tie was off kilter, and a brass clasp glared right into Ostap’s face.

  “I’m telling you,” shouted the old man into the grand strategist’s ear, “MacDonald is not going to take this bait! He will not take this bait! You hear me?”

  Ostap moved the agitated geezer aside and made his way out of the crowd.

  “Hoover is a real brain!” came from behind. “And Hindenburg is a brain, too.”

  By then, Ostap had already decided what to do next. He went through all the four hundred honest methods of taking money, and although they included such gems as starting a company to sa
lvage gold that had sunk with a ship during the Crimean War, organizing a big carnival to benefit the prisoners of capital, or obtaining a concession to remove the ever-changing storefront signs—none of them quite suited the project at hand. So Ostap invented method number 401.

  “Our surprise attack on the fortress failed,” he thought, “so now we’re forced to set up a regular siege. We’ve established the main thing: the defendant has money. And judging by how easily he declined the ten thousand—without as much as a blink—we’re talking big money. Well, since the two sides failed to reach an agreement, our deliberations continue.”

  On his way home, he bought a yellow cardboard folder with shoelace straps.

  “So?” asked Balaganov and Panikovsky in unison, barely able to contain themselves.

  Ostap walked silently to the bamboo table, put the folder in front of him, and wrote on it in large letters:

  “The Case of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko. Opened June 25, 1930. Closed . . . , 193 . . .”

  The half-brothers stared at it over Bender’s shoulder.

  “What’s inside?” asked the curious Panikovsky.

  “Ah!” said Ostap. “Inside, there’s everything: palms, girls, the Blue Express, the azure ocean, a white ship, a barely used tuxedo, a Japanese butler, your own pool table, platinum teeth, socks with no holes, dinners cooked with real butter, but most importantly, my little friends, the power and fame that come with money.”

  With that, he opened the empty folder and showed it to the dumbfounded Antelopeans.

  CHAPTER 15

  HORNS AND HOOFS

  Once there was a poor merchant. He was a fairly rich man, the owner of the haberdashery near the Capital Hill movie theater. He peacefully sold underwear, lace, neckties, buttons, and other small, but profitable, wares. One day he came home looking shaken. Without saying a word, he opened the cupboard, took out a cold chicken, and ate it all while pacing around the room. Then he opened the cupboard again, took out a loop of Polish sausage that weighed exactly one pound, sat down, and slowly consumed the whole thing, staring straight ahead with glazed-over eyes. When he reached for the boiled eggs that were sitting on the table, his wife became alarmed and asked: