by Ilya Ilf
Ostap no longer had any doubts. The game was turning his way.
All that had been unclear became clear. The numerous people with ropey mustaches and kingly beards that Ostap had encountered, and who had left their traces in the yellow folder with shoelace straps, had suddenly dropped off, and the white-eyed ham-face, with wheat-blonde eyebrows and drill-sergeant jowls, came to the fore, sweeping everyone and everything else aside.
Ostap put a full stop, blotted his work with a press whose silver handle was shaped like a bear cub, and started filing the papers. He liked to keep his files in order. He admired the smoothed-out testimonials, telegrams, and assorted official papers for the last time. There were even photographs and account statements in the folder. It contained the complete story of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, along with palms, girls, the azure ocean, a white ship, the Blue Express, a gleaming automobile, and Rio de Janeiro, a magical city on the bay inhabited by friendly mulattos, where the vast majority of citizens wear white pants. The grand strategist had finally found the kind of individual he’d been dreaming about all his life.
“And no one can even appreciate this heroic effort of mine,” sighed Ostap, getting up and tying the laces on the thick folder. “Balaganov is very nice, but dumb. Panikovsky is just a cranky old man. Kozlevich is an angel without wings. He’s still convinced that we do collect horns for the manufacturers of cigarette-holders. Where are my friends, my wives, my children? I only hope that the esteemed Alexander Ivanovich appreciates my great effort and rewards it with some five hundred thousand, in consideration of my poverty. Wait a minute! After all this, I won’t take less than a million, or else the friendly mulattos will have no respect for me.”
Ostap got up from his desk, picked up his remarkable folder and started pacing around the empty office, thinking. He skirted the typewriter with the German accent and the ticket punch, and nearly brushed his head against the deer antlers. The white scar on Ostap’s throat turned pink. His motions gradually grew slower, and his feet, clad in the red shoes he bought from a Greek sailor, started sliding silently across the floor. Without realizing it, he began to sidestep. His right arm held the folder to his chest in a tender embrace, like a woman, while his left arm stretched forward. The squeaky Wheel of Fortune was clearly heard above the city. It produced a gentle musical tone that suddenly turned into a gentle string harmony. The poignant, long-forgotten tune gave voices to all the objects found at the Chernomorsk Branch of the Arbatov Bureau for the Collection of Horns and Hoofs.
The samovar was the first to begin. A flaming ember suddenly fell out of it onto the tray. The samovar broke into a song:
Under the sun of Argentina,
Where the skies are blue and steamy . . .
The grand strategist was dancing a tango. His coin-like face appeared in profile. He would get down on his knee, then get up quickly, turn, and slide forward again, stepping lightly. His invisible coattails flew apart during the sudden turns.
Meanwhile, the typewriter with the German accent picked up the tune:
. . . Where the zkiez are blue and zteamy,
With picture-perfect ladiez gleaming . . .
The lumbering cast-iron ticket punch, who had been around, sighed quietly about times gone by:
. . . With picture-perfect ladies gleaming,
The tango’s danced by all.
Ostap was dancing a classical provincial tango; it had been a feature of variety shows twenty years earlier, when Berlaga wore his first bowler hat, when Sardinevich worked in the Mayor’s Office, when Polykhaev was taking his first test for the Imperial Civil Service, and the dummy chairman Funt was a sprightly seventy-year-old who sat in the Florida Café with other Piqué Vests and discussed the shocking news that the Dardanelles were closed due to the Italo-Turkish War. The Piqué Vests, who still had red cheeks and smooth skin back then, were going over the current political figures of the time. “Enver Pasha is a brain. Yuan Shikai is a brain. Purishkevich is also a brain, after all!” they said. And even that far back, they claimed that Briand was a brain, for he was already serving in the government.
Ostap was dancing. Palms crackled above his head; colorful birds fluttered over him. Ocean liners brushed against the piers of Rio de Janeiro. Savvy Brazilian dealers undercut coffee prices in broad daylight, while local youths enjoyed alcoholic beverages in open-air restaurants.
“I am commanding the parade!” exclaimed the grand strategist.
He turned off the lights, went out, and took the shortest possible route to Lesser Tangential Street. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, then descended, slicing across buildings and suddenly revealing a balcony or a glass-covered porch where a startled couple would freeze up. Two small tanks with round mushroom caps swayed from around the corner toward Ostap, their tracks clattering. A cavalryman bent down from his saddle and asked a pedestrian how to get to the Old Market. In one place, Ostap’s path was blocked by moving cannons. He rushed through between two artillery batteries. At another spot, policemen were hastily nailing a black GAS SHELTER sign to the door.
Ostap was in a hurry. The Argentine tango was egging him on. Paying no attention to what was going on around him, he entered Koreiko’s building and knocked on the familiar door.
“Who’s there?” came the voice of the underground millionaire.
“Telegram!” answered the grand strategist, winking into the darkness.
The door opened, and he entered, bumping his folder against the door frame.
At sunrise, the Vice President and the messenger were sitting in a gully far beyond the city limits.
They were sawing through the weights. Their noses were smudged with iron shavings. Panikovsky’s dickey lay beside him on the grass. He had taken it off—it interfered with his sawing. The prudent violator of the pact had put newspapers under the weights, so as not to waste a single speck of the precious metal.
At times the half-brothers exchanged significant glances and went back to work with renewed energy. The only sounds heard in the serenity of the morning were the whistles of gophers and the scraping of overheated hacksaws.
“What the hell?” said Balaganov finally and stopped working. “I’ve been sawing for three hours now, and still no gold.”
Panikovsky didn’t say anything. He already knew the answer, and for the last thirty minutes, he had been moving the hacksaw back and forth just for show.
“Well, let’s saw some more!” said the red-headed Shura cheerfully.
“Yes, let’s,” agreed Panikovsky, trying to put off the terrible moment of reckoning.
He covered his face with his hand and watched the rhythmic motions of Balaganov’s broad back through his spread fingers.
“I don’t get it!” said Shura after sawing through the entire kettlebell and pulling the two apple halves apart. “This isn’t gold!”
“Keep sawing, keep sawing,” whimpered Panikovsky.
But Balaganov was already approaching the violator of the pact, holding a cast-iron hemisphere in each hand.
“Don’t come near me with that iron!” shrieked Panikovsky, running a few steps away. “I despise you!”
Then Shura drew his arm back and, groaning from the effort, hurled half of the kettlebell at the schemer. Hearing the projectile whiz over his head, the schemer dropped to the ground.
The battle between the Vice President and the messenger did not last very long. First, the enraged Balaganov gleefully stomped on the dickey, and then moved on to its owner. While pummeling him, Shura kept repeating:
“Whose idea was that? Who embezzled from the office? Who badmouthed Bender?”
On top of that, the Lieutenant’s firstborn remembered the violation of the Sukharev pact, and that cost Panikovsky a few extra punches.
“You’ll be sorry you trashed my dickey!” Panikovsky shouted angrily, protecting himself with his elbows. “I’ll never forgive you for the dickey, keep that in mind! You can’t buy a dickey like this any more!”
In conclusion, Bal
aganov took away his opponent’s ratty little wallet, which contained thirty-eight rubles.
“That’s for your kefir, you creep!” he explained.
The walk back to the city was joyless.
An angry Shura was walking in front of Panikovsky, who limped along behind him, sobbing loudly.
“I’m a poor old man!” he wailed. “You’ll be sorry you trashed my dickey. Give me back my money.”
“Just wait, you’ll get yours!” said Shura without looking back. “I’ll tell Bender all about it. Hothead!”
CHAPTER 21
THE END OF
THE ROOKERY
Barbara Ptiburdukov was happy. She was sitting at a round table, surveying her household. The Ptiburdukovs’ room was filled with furniture, so there was hardly any open space left. But even that small space was good enough for happiness. The lamp cast its light through the window, where a small green branch quivered like a lady’s brooch. Cookies, candies, and a small can of pickled walleye sat on the table. The electric kettle captured the whole of the Ptiburdukovs’ cozy nest on its rounded surface. It reflected the bed, the white curtains, and the night stand. It also reflected Ptiburdukov himself, who was sitting in front of his wife, wearing dark-blue pajamas with braids. He, too, was happy. Blowing cigarette smoke though his mustache, he was using a fretsaw to make a plywood model of a country outhouse. It was a painstaking job. First, he had to carve out the walls, then put on a sloping roof, add the inside equipment, insert glass in the tiny window, and finally attach a microscopic hook to the door. Ptiburdukov toiled with passion; he thought woodcarving was the best way to relax.
Having finished the project, the satisfied engineer laughed, patted his wife on her soft warm back, and pulled the can of fish closer. At that very moment, however, somebody started banging on the door, the lamp flickered, and the kettle slid off its wire stand.
“Who could it be so late?” wondered Ptiburdukov, opening the door.
Standing in the stairwell was Basilius Lokhankin. He was wrapped up to his beard in a white Marseilles blanket, his hairy legs showing. He held Man and Woman, which was thick and gilded, like an icon, to his chest. His eyes were wandering.
“Please come in,” said the astonished engineer, taking a step back. “Barbara, what’s this all about?”
“I came today to live with you forever,” replied Lokhankin in a grave pentameter, “it’s shelter that I’m seeking now from you.”
“What do you mean—shelter?” said Ptiburdukov, turning red in the face. “What do you want, Basilius Andreevich?”
Barbara ran out into the stairwell.
“Sasha! Look, he’s naked!” she screamed. “Basilius, what happened? Come in, for God’s sake, come in.”
Barefoot Lokhankin stepped over the threshold and started racing around the room, muttering: “Disaster, disaster!” The edge of his blanket promptly knocked Ptiburdukov’s delicate woodwork to the floor. The engineer stepped back into a corner, with a hunch that nothing good was going to come of all this.
“What disaster?” asked Barbara. “Why are you only wearing a blanket?”
“I came today to live with you forever,” lowed Lokhankin.
His yellow heel beat an anxious drumroll on the clean waxed floor.
“What are you talking about?” Barbara scolded her ex-husband. “Go home and sleep it off. Get out of here! Go, go home!”
“My home is gone,” said Basilius, continuing to shiver. “My home has burned to ashes. A fire, that’s what’s bringing me to you. I only saved the blanket that I wear, and saved a book, my favorite at that. But since you’re being so unkind and cruel, I’ll go away, and damn you both for that.”
Swaying in despair, Basilius headed for the door. But Barbara and her husband held him back. They apologized; they said that at first they hadn’t grasped what had happened, and started fussing around Lokhankin. They brought out Ptiburdukov’s new suit, underwear, and shoes.
While Lokhankin was dressing, the couple had a discussion in the hallway.
“Where are we going to put him?” whispered Barbara. “He can’t stay here, we only have one room.”
“You surprise me,” said the kind-hearted engineer, “the man has just suffered a terrible misfortune, and all you can think of is your own comfort.”
When they returned to the room, the victim was sitting at the table, eating pickled fish straight from the can. On top of that, two volumes of Strength of Materials had been knocked off the shelf—the gilded Man and Woman was in it’s place.
“The whole building burned down?” asked Ptiburdukov with sympathy. “How terrible!”
“Well, I think maybe that’s how it should be,” remarked Basilius, finishing off his hosts’ supper, “I may emerge from the flames a new man, don’t you think?”
But a new man he was not.
After the conversation died down, the Ptiburdukovs started getting ready for the night. They set up a small mattress for Basilius on the last remaining free spot, which only an hour earlier had been good enough for happiness. The window was closed, the lights were turned off, and night entered the room. Everyone was quiet for about twenty minutes, just tossing and sighing deeply from time to time. And then Lokhankin’s whiny whisper came from the floor:
“Barbara! Barbara! Hey, Barbara!”
“What now?” asked the ex-wife angrily.
“Why did you leave me, Barbara?”
Receiving no answer to this fundamental question, Basilius started whining:
“You’re a floozy, Barbara! You’re a she-wolf! You she-wolf you, I truly do despise you . . .”
The engineer lay in bed quietly, livid with rage and clenching his fists.
The Rookery caught fire at midnight, at exactly the same time when Ostap Bender was dancing a tango in the empty office, and while the half-brothers Balaganov and Panikovsky were walking out of town, stooped under the weight of the golden kettlebells.
Nobody’s grandma was the first link in the long chain of events that ultimately led to the fire in apartment No. 3. She, as we know, had been burning kerosene in her loft because she didn’t believe in electricity. For a long time after Basilius Andreevich was flogged, nothing exciting happened in the apartment, and the restless mind of Chamberlain Mitrich suffered from the idleness. So he thought long and hard about the grandma’s ways and became alarmed.
“The old bat will burn the whole place down!” he grumbled. “What does she care? And my grand piano alone is probably worth two thousand.”
With that in mind, Mitrich had all his belongings insured against fire. That way, he didn’t have to worry about it anymore, and so he watched calmly as the grandma dragged a large murky bottle of kerosene up to her loft, holding it like a baby. The first to find out about Mitrich’s prudent move was Citizen Hygienishvili, who immediately interpreted it in his own peculiar way. He came up to Mitrich in the hallway, grabbed him by the chest, and said threateningly:
“You want to burn the whole place down? You want to get the insurance money? You think Hygienishvili is a fool? Hygienishvili understands everything.”
And so the hot-blooded tenant took out a large insurance policy for himself on the very same day. The Rookery was terrified. Lucia Franzevna Pferd came running into the kitchen with her eyes bulging.
“These bastards will burn us all down. Whatever you say, people, I’m off to buy my own insurance right now. We’ll have a fire anyway, but at least I’ll get some money. I have no desire to go penniless because of them.”
The next day, everybody bought insurance, with the exception of Lokhankin and nobody’s grandma. Lokhankin was busy reading Motherland magazine and wasn’t paying attention, while the grandma didn’t believe in insurance any more than she did in electricity. Nikita Pryakhin brought home his purple-edged insurance policy and studied its watermarks against the light at length.
“So the government gives us a helping hand?” he said glumly. “Offers aid to the tenants? Well, thank you kindly! So now
we’ll do as we wish.”
He stuck the policy under his shirt and went into his room. His words made people so fearful that no one at the Rookery went to bed that night. Dunya was packing, while the other bed renters went off to stay with their friends. During the day, everyone watched everyone else, and the building was being slowly emptied of belongings, piece by piece.
There was no longer any doubt. The house was doomed. It simply had to burn down. And indeed, it went up in flames at midnight, set ablaze on six sides simultaneously.
The last to escape from the building, which was already filled with samovar smoke and streaks of fire, was Lokhankin. He tried to protect himself with a white blanket. He screamed “Fire! Fire!” at the top of his lungs, even though it was no longer news to anybody. All the Rookery tenants were already there. Inebriated Pryakhin was sitting on his trunk with metal corners. He stared mindlessly at the flickering windows, mumbling: “We’ll do as we wish.” Hygienishvili was squeamishly sniffing his hands, which smelled of kerosene, and he wiped them on his pants after each sniff. A flaming spiral flew out of a window and sprung open under the wooden overhang, sending sparks downward. The first window pane shattered and fell out, making a loud noise. Nobody’s grandma burst into a terrifying howl.
“The house stood here for forty years,” explained Mitrich with authority, walking around in the crowd. “It stood through all the regimes; it was a good one. But under the Soviets, it burned down. A sad, sad fact, citizens.”
The female population of the Rookery banded together and couldn’t take their eyes off the flames. Cannon-like fire was shooting from all the windows. The flames would disappear momentarily and the darkened house would seem to recoil, like an artillery piece that’s just been fired. Then the red-and-yellow cloud would reappear, giving Lemon Lane a bright and festive look. It was hot. One could no longer stand near the house, so the gathering moved to the opposite sidewalk.
Only Nikita Pryakhin didn’t move; he was snoozing on his trunk in the middle of the street. Then he suddenly jumped up, barefoot and wild-looking.