The Golden Calf

by Ilya Ilf

  When they turned onto Mehring Street, the howl of the siren spread over the city. The sound was long, undulating, and mournful. On a foggy night, a sound like this makes seamen uneasy, makes them want to ask for hazard pay, for some reason. The siren continued to wail. It was joined by a variety of horns and other sirens, more distant and even more mournful. Pedestrians suddenly sped up, as if they were being chased by a driving rain. At the same time, they were all chuckling and glancing at the sky. The fat old women who sold sunflower seeds ran with their stomachs stuck out, glass cups bouncing in rush baskets that were full of their ever-shifting wares. Adolf Nikolaevich Bomze raced across the street, cutting the corner. He managed to slip safely into the revolving door of the Hercules. A squad of mounted police reserves on mismatched horses galloped past. An automobile emblazoned with red crosses whizzed by. The street was suddenly empty. Ostap caught sight of a small herd of Piqué Vests far ahead as they detached themselves from the former Florida Café. Waving their newspapers, boater hats, and panamas, the old men went trotting down the street. But before they reached the corner, there was the deafening, cracking sound of an artillery blast. The Piqué Vests lowered their heads, froze, then turned around, and trotted back. The flaps of their woven silk jackets blew in the wind.

  The maneuvers of the Piqué Vests made Ostap laugh. While he was admiring their amusing gestures and leaps, Alexander Ivanovich went ahead and opened the package he brought from home.

  “Wild geezers! Vaudeville comics!” said Ostap, turning toward Koreiko.

  But there was no Koreiko. Instead, the grand strategist saw a grotesque mug with the glass eyes of a diving suit and a rubber trunk, at the end of which dangled a khaki metal cylinder. Ostap was so startled that he even jumped.

  “That’s not funny!” he said, reaching for the gas mask. “Citizen defendant, please come to order!”

  But the next moment, a whole group of people in similar masks surrounded them, and he could no longer recognize Koreiko among the dozen or so identical rubber mugs. Holding his folder close, Ostap immediately started looking at the monsters’ legs, but the moment he thought he recognized Koreiko’s widower pants, he was grabbed by the arms, and a spirited voice announced:

  “Comrade! You’ve been poisoned!”

  “Who’s been poisoned?” protested Ostap, trying to free himself. “Let me go!”

  “Comrade, you’ve been poisoned by gas!” repeated the orderly cheerfully. “You’re in the affected zone. See, there’s the gas bomb.”

  And indeed, a small wooden box was sitting in the middle of the street, with thick smoke busily pouring out of it. The suspicious pants had moved far away. They flashed for the last time between two plumes of smoke and disappeared altogether. Ostap fought hard and silently to free himself. Six gas masks were already restraining him.

  “Plus you’ve been hit by shrapnel in the arm, Comrade. Don’t get upset, Comrade! Please understand. You know there’s a military exercise going on. We’ll bandage your wounds and carry you to the gas shelter.”

  The grand strategist just couldn’t grasp that there was no use resisting. The gambler, who had hit a winning streak at sunrise and kept surprising everybody at the table, lost everything within ten minutes to a young man who had dropped in casually, just out of curiosity. He no longer looks pale and triumphant, and the regulars no longer crowd around him, begging him for a few lucky coins. He’ll be returning home on foot.

  A Young Communist League girl with a red cross on her apron ran up to Ostap. She pulled bandages and gauze out of her canvas bag and wrapped them around the grand strategist’s arm, on top of his sleeve. She kept frowning, so as not to burst out laughing. After her act of mercy was complete, she giggled and ran to the next casualty, who obediently offered her a leg. Others tried to carry Ostap to the stretcher. Another skirmish ensued, with trunks swaying around, while the first orderly, who was in charge, continued to appeal to Ostap’s conscience and other civic virtues in the loud voice of a lecturer.

  “Guys!” muttered the grand strategist as he was being belted to the stretcher. “Please tell my late father, a Turkish subject, that his beloved son, who once specialized in horns and hoofs, fell like a hero on the battlefield.”

  In the end, the battlefield casualty recalled a few songs:

  “Sleep, oh ye warrior eagles! Nightingale, nightingale, teensy bird . . .”

  The stretcher started moving. Ostap fell silent and gazed into the sky, which was getting quite busy. Light-colored puffs of smoke, as dense as hearts, rolled across it. Transparent celluloid planes moved at high altitude in an irregular V formation. They emitted a resonant quiver, as if they were all connected with tin threads. The howling sirens could still be heard between the frequent artillery blasts.

  Ostap was to suffer yet another humiliation. They carried him right past the Hercules. The Herculeans peeked out of the windows on all four floors of the lumber/timber enterprise. The entire Finance and Accounting stood on window sills. Lapidus Jr. teased Kukushkind, pretending that he was about to push him over the edge. Berlaga made big eyes and bowed to the stretcher. Polykhaev and Sardinevich, their arms around each other’s shoulders, stood in a second-floor window, with palm trees in the background. When they spotted the bound Ostap, they started whispering and quickly shut the window.

  The stretcher stopped in front of a sign that said Gas Shelter No. 34. They helped Ostap up, and since he once again tried to break free, the orderly in charge had to once again appeal for his understanding.

  The gas shelter was set up in the neighborhood community center. It was a long, bright semi-basement with a ribbed ceiling, with models of military and postal aircraft suspended from it by metal wires. There was a small stage in the back of the room. Two dark-blue windows with the moon and the stars, along with a brown door, were painted on the wall behind it. The Piqué Vests, whose entire herd had been apprehended, were languishing near the wall under a sign that read: WE DON’T WANT A WAR, BUT WE’RE READY TO FIGHT. A lecturer in a green military tunic was pacing on the stage. Glancing fretfully at the door that continued to noisily admit new groups of victims, the lecturer was enunciating with military clarity:

  “In terms of their effect, the poisonous chemicals used in warfare include asphyxiating agents, tear-inducing agents, lethal poisons, blistering agents, general irritants, etc. Of the tear-inducing agents, we might mention chloropicrin, benzyl bromide, bromoacetone, chloracetophenone . . .”

  Ostap shifted his gloomy gaze from the lecturer to the audience. Young men were listening intently, or took notes, or were occupied with the display of rifle parts. A sporty looking young woman sat alone in the second row, gazing pensively at the painted moon.

  “A nice girl,” decided Ostap, “too bad there’s no time for that. What is she thinking about? I bet it’s not benzyl bromide. What a shame! Just this morning, I could have dashed off with a girl like this to Oceania, or Fiji, or some High Society Islands—or to Rio de Janeiro.”

  The thought that Rio had been lost sent Ostap pacing frantically around the shelter.

  The Piqué Vests, numbering forty, had already recovered from the shock, straightened their starched collars, and launched into a heated debate about the pan-Europe proposal, the Tripartite Maritime Conference, and Gandhism.

  “Did you hear?” one Vest asked another. “Gandhi arrived in Dandi.”

  “Gandhi is a real brain!” the other sighed. “Dandi is a brain, too.”

  An argument ensued. Some Vests maintained that Dandi was a place and thus couldn’t possibly be a brain. Others vehemently argued the opposite. In the end, everybody agreed that Chernomorsk was about to be declared a free city any day.

  The lecturer cringed again because the door opened, and two new arrivals noisily entered the room: Balaganov and Panikovsky. They were caught in the gas attack on the way back from their nighttime jaunt. After working on the weights, they were as filthy as naughty tomcats. Seeing the captain, they both looked down.

&n
bsp; “Have you been to a dinner party or something?” asked Ostap gloomily.

  He was afraid they might ask him about the Koreiko case, so he frowned angrily and went on the attack.

  “Well, boys and girls, what have you been up to?”

  “I swear,” said Balaganov, putting his hand on his heart, “it was all Panikovsky’s idea.”

  “Panikovsky!” the captain called out sternly.

  “I give you my word!” exclaimed the violator of the pact. “I’m sure you know, Bender, how much I respect you! It was all Balaganov’s doing.”

  “Shura!” called out Ostap even more sternly.

  “How could you believe him?” said the Vice President for Hoofs reproachfully. “Do you really think I would have taken those weights without your permission?”

  “So it was you who took the weights!” exclaimed Ostap. “But why?”

  “Panikovsky said they were made of gold.”

  Ostap looked at Panikovsky. Only then did he notice that Panikovsky no longer had the fifty-kopeck dickey under his jacket, and that his bare chest was exposed for the whole world to see. Without saying a word, the grand strategist collapsed onto his chair. He started shaking and grasped the air with his hands. Volcanic thunder erupted from his throat, tears filled his eyes, and laughter that expressed all the exhaustion of the night, all the disappointment over the struggle with Koreiko that the half-brothers caricatured so pathetically—a terrible laughter rolled through the gas shelter. The Piqué Vests flinched, while the lecturer started talking even more clearly and loudly about the poisonous chemicals used in warfare.

  Laughter was still prickling Ostap with a thousand tingling needles, but he already felt refreshed and rejuvenated, like a man who had gone through the entire routine at the barbershop: a close relationship with the razor, an encounter with the scissors, a sprinkle of hair tonic, and even the combing of the eyebrows with a special brush. The shiny ocean wave already lapped into Bender’s heart, so when Balaganov asked him how things were going, he said everything was great, except that the millionaire had unexpectedly fled in an unknown direction.

  Ostap’s words didn’t register properly with the half-brothers because they were thrilled that they had gotten away with the whole weights business so easily.

  “Look, Bender,” said the Vice President for Hoofs, “see that young lady over there? That’s the one Koreiko always went out with.”

  “Oh, so this is Zosya Sinitsky?” said Ostap with emphasis. “Just like the poem: ‘By chance, in a thunderous ballroom . . .’”

  Ostap made his way to the stage, interrupted the speaker politely, and learned from him that their captivity would last for another couple of hours. He thanked him and sat down right there, near the stage, next to Zosya. Shortly thereafter, she was no longer looking at the crudely painted window. Laughing far too loudly, she was trying to tear her comb out of Ostap’s hands. As for the grand strategist, he must have been talking incessantly, judging by the way his lips were moving.

  The engineer Talmudovsky was next to be brought into the gas shelter. He was fighting back with his two suitcases. His ruddy forehead was damp with sweat and shiny like a crêpe.

  “There’s nothing I can do, Comrade!” said the man in charge. “It’s an exercise! You were inside the affected zone.”

  “But I was in a cab!” the engineer insisted. “IN A CAB! I have to get to the station fast, it’s for my work. I missed the train last night. Are you saying I have to miss another one?”

  “Comrade, please understand!”

  “Why should I understand when I was in a cab!” raged Talmudovsky.

  He kept pushing this fact, as if riding in a cab made the passenger immune somehow and stripped chloropicrin, bromoacetone, and benzyl bromide of their deadly properties. God knows how long Talmudovsky would have continued to bicker with the volunteers had it not been for a new arrival at the shelter. He must have been not only gassed but also wounded, judging by the gauze wrapped around his head. Seeing him, Talmudovsky shut up and quickly tried to melt away into the crowd of Piqué Vests. But the man in gauze spotted the engineer’s imposing figure right away and headed straight toward him.

  “I finally caught up with you, Engineer Talmudovsky!” he said in a sinister tone. “On what grounds did you abandon the plant?”

  Talmudovsky’s small wild-boar eyes darted in all directions. Seeing that there was no place to hide, he sat down on his suitcases and lit a cigarette.

  “I come to see him at the hotel,” continued the man in gauze loudly, “and they tell me he checked out. I say: What do you mean he checked out, when he arrived just yesterday and must work here for a year? That’s what the contract says. No, they say, he checked out, took his luggage, and went to Kazan. I thought: That’s it, we’ll have to start the search for an engineer all over again. But now I caught him here, sitting pretty and having a smoke. How about that? You’re a job-hopper, Talmudovsky! You’re destroying the industry!”

  The engineer jumped off his luggage, shouting: “You’re the one who’s destroying the industry!” And he took his accuser by the waist, led him into a corner, and started buzzing at him like a large fly. Soon, one could hear phrases like: “With this salary . . . ,” “Go find . . . ,” “And the per diem?” The man in gauze stared at the engineer in exasperation.

  The lecturer had already finished his oration, concluding with a demonstration of how to use a gas mask; the doors of the gas shelter had already opened; the Piqué Vests, holding onto each other, had already trotted back to the Florida; and Talmudovsky had already fought off his pursuer and escaped, calling out for a cab at the top of his lungs; but the grand strategist was still chatting with Zosya.

  “What a femina!” said Panikovsky jealously, as he and Balaganov were leaving the shelter. “Ah, if only the weights were made of gold! I would have married her, I swear I would have!”

  Hearing about the ill-fated weights again, Balaganov gave Panikovsky a painful jab with his elbow. It came just in time. Ostap appeared in the doorway of the shelter with the femina on his arm. He lingered over his goodbyes to Zosya, staring directly at her with yearning eyes. Zosya smiled for the last time and left.

  “What were you talking about?” asked Panikovsky suspiciously.

  “Oh, nothing much, this and that,” replied Ostap. “Well, golden boys, back to work! We have to find the defendant.”

  Panikovsky was sent to the Hercules, Balaganov to Koreiko’s place. Ostap himself rushed to the train stations. But the millionaire clerk had vanished. At the Hercules, his time card was still on the board. He never went home, and eight long-distance trains had left the stations during the gas attack. But Ostap didn’t expect anything different.

  “Well, it’s not the end of the world,” he said cheerlessly. “In China, for example, it would be hard to find a person: they have a population of 400,000,000. Here, it’s a piece of cake: we only have 160,000,000. Three times as easy as in China. All you need is money. And we have it.”

  But he came out of the bank with only thirty-four rubles in his hand.

  “This is what’s left of the ten thousand,” he said with unspeakable sadness. “And I thought we still had six or seven thousand in our account . . . How did that happen? We were having fun, we collected horns and hoofs, life was exhilarating, the Earth rotated just for us—and suddenly . . . Oh, I get it! The overhead! The organization consumed all the money.”

  And he looked at the half-brothers with reproach. Panikovsky shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: “You know, Bender, how much I respect you! I’ve always said you were an ass!” The stunned Balaganov stroked his locks and asked:

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed Ostap. “What about the Bureau for the Collection of Horns and Hoofs? The office equipment? Any organization would be happy to shell out a hundred rubles just for the Face the Country set alone! And the typewriter! The hole punch, the deer antlers, the desks, the barrier, the samova
r! All this can be sold off. On top of that, we have Panikovsky’s gold tooth in reserve. Of course, it’s not as substantial as the weights, but nevertheless, it’s a molecule of gold, a noble metal.”

  The companions stopped outside the office. Through the open door, they could hear the youthful leonine voices of the agriculture students, who had returned from their trip, the drowsy mumblings of Funt, and some unfamiliar basses and baritones that clearly came from cattle-raising stock.

  “This is an actionable offense!” roared the interns. “We were wondering from the start. In all this time, they’ve only collected twenty-five pounds of substandard horns!”

  “You will be prosecuted!” thundered the basses and the baritones. “Where’s the Branch President? Where’s the Vice President for Hoofs?”

  Balaganov started shaking in his boots.

  “The Bureau is dead,” whispered Ostap, “and we’re no longer needed here. We’re going to follow the shining path, while Funt will be taken to a red-brick building whose windows, due to the architect’s capricious fantasy, feature heavy iron bars.”

  The ex-President of the Branch was correct. The fallen angels had barely put three city blocks between themselves and the Bureau when they heard the creaking of a horse cab behind them. It was Funt. He would have passed for a loving grandfather who, after lengthy preparations, was finally off to see his married grandson, had it not been for the policeman who was standing on the running board, holding Funt’s bony shoulder.

  “Funt has always done time,” the Antelopeans heard the old man’s low, muted voice as the cab was passing by. “Funt did time under Alexander II the Liberator, under Alexander III the Peacemaker, under Nicholas II the Bloody, under Alexander Kerensky . . .”

  To keep track of the tsars and attorneys-at-law, Funt was counting them on his fingers.

  “And now what are we going to do?” asked Balaganov.

  “Please don’t forget that you are a contemporary of Ostap Bender,” said the grand strategist sadly. “Please remember that he owns the remarkable bag which has everything necessary for obtaining pocket change. Let’s go home to Lokhankin.”