by Ilya Ilf
Instead, there was a cardboard poster in Arabic and Russian:
“Let’s go in,” said Ostap forlornly, “at least it’s cool in there. Besides, the public health physicians’ itinerary includes a visit to a museum.”
They entered a large room with whitewashed walls, put their millions on the floor, and took their time wiping their hot foreheads with their sleeves. The museum had only eight objects on display: a mammoth’s tooth, which had been presented to the brand new museum by the city of Tashkent; an oil painting, entitled A Skirmish With the Basmachs; two emir’s cloaks; a goldfish in an aquarium; a glass case filled with dried-up locusts; a porcelain statuette from the Kuznetsov Factory; and a model of the obelisk that the city was planning to erect on the main square. Right next to the model lay a large tin wreath with ribbons. A special delegation from a neighboring republic had recently delivered it, but since the obelisk did not exist yet—the funds had been diverted to the construction of a bathhouse, a far more pressing need—the delegation had made the appropriate speeches and placed the wreath at the foot of the model.
A young man, wearing a thick Bukhara skull cap on his shaved head, approached the visitors promptly and asked them, like a nervous author:
“Your impressions, comrades?”
“Passable,” said Ostap.
Without missing a beat, the young man—who was the museum’s director—launched into a litany of problems that his baby had to overcome. Funding was insufficient. Tashkent had gotten off the hook with a single tooth, and there wasn’t anybody to collect the local treasures, artistic or historic. And they still hadn’t sent him a trained expert.
“If only I had three hundred rubles!” exclaimed the director. “I would have made it into a Louvre!”
“Tell me, do you know the town well?” asked Ostap, winking at Alexander Ivanovich. “Would you mind showing us a few places of interest? I used to know this town well, but now it seems different somehow.”
The director was thrilled. Shouting that he would show them everything, he locked up the museum and lead the millionaires to the very street where they had been looking for Under the Moonlight just thirty minutes earlier.
“The Avenue of Socialism!” he announced, eagerly inhaling the alabaster dust. “Oh! What lovely air! You won’t believe what it’ll look like a year from now! Asphalt! Buses! The Irrigation Research Institute! The Tropical Institute! And if Tashkent won’t provide research personnel even then . . . You know, they have all kinds of mammoth bones, yet they sent me just one tooth—despite the strong interest in the natural sciences in our republic.”
“Really?” remarked Koreiko, looking at Ostap with reproach.
“And you know,” the enthusiast whispered, “I suspect it’s not even a mammoth tooth. They slipped me an elephant tooth!”
“And what about those places . . . in the Asian style, you know, with timbrels and flutes?” asked the grand strategist impatiently.
“We got rid of them,” replied the young man dismissively, “should have eradicated that blight a long time ago. A hotbed for epidemics. Just this past spring, we stamped out the last of those dens. It was called Under the Moonlight.”
“Stamped out?” gasped Koreiko.
“You bet! Instead, we opened a mass-dining establishment. European cuisine. The plates are washed and dried with electricity. The number of cases of gastrointestinal disease have plummeted.”
“What do you know!” exclaimed the grand strategist, covering his face with his hands.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” said the museum director, smiling shyly. “Let’s go eat at the new dining facility.”
They climbed into a cart, under a canvas canopy that was festooned in dark blue, and took off. On the way, the affable guide kept making the millionaires stick their heads out from under the canopy while he pointed out the buildings that had already been constructed, the buildings that were in the process of being constructed, and the sites where they were going to be constructed. Koreiko kept glancing angrily at Ostap. Bender turned away and said:
“What a lovely native bazaar! Just like Baghdad!”
“The demolition starts on the seventeenth,” said the young man. “There will be a hospital here, and a co-op center.”
“And no regrets about losing this exotic place? It’s Baghdad!”
“It is beautiful!” sighed Koreiko.
The young man grew angry:
“It may look beautiful to you, you’re just visiting, but we have to live here.”
In the spacious hall of the new dining facility, surrounded by tiled walls, under sticky ribbons of flypaper hanging from the ceiling, the travelers dined on barley soup and small brown meatballs. Ostap inquired about wine but the young man responded enthusiastically that a natural spring had recently been discovered nearby. In terms of taste, its mineral water was superior to the famed variety from the Caucasus. As proof, he ordered a bottle of the new water, and they drank it in grave silence.
“And how are the numbers on prostitution?” asked Alexander bin Ivanovich hopefully.
“Way down,” replied the implacable young man.
“Well, what do you know!” said Ostap, laughing insincerely.
But he really didn’t know what was going on. When they got up from the table, it turned out that the young man had already paid for all three of them. He flatly refused to take any money from the millionaires, assuring them that he was getting paid in two days anyway, and that, until then, he’d make it somehow.
“And what about entertainment? What do you do for entertainment here?” asked Ostap without much enthusiasm. “Timbrels, cymbals?”
“Don’t you know?” asked the director, surprised. “Our new concert hall opened just last week. The Bebel and Paganini Grand Symphony Quartet. Let’s go right now. How could I have forgotten!”
Since he had paid for the dinner, it would have been impossible, for ethical reasons, to decline an invitation to the concert hall. After it was over, Alexander bin Ivanovich said mockingly:
“The concert hole!”
The grand strategist blushed.
On the way to the hotel, the young man suddenly told the coachman to stop. He made the millionaires get out, took their hands, and, overcome with excitement, rose to his tiptoes and led them to a small stone with a fence around it.
“The obelisk will be erected here!” he announced solemnly. “The Column of Marxism!”
As they said their goodbyes, the young man asked them to come visit more often. The good-natured Ostap promised that he’d definitely come back, because he’d never had such a blissful day in his life.
“I’m off to the station,” said Koreiko when he and Bender were finally alone.
“Shall we go have a good time in some other town?” asked Ostap. “One can easily spend a few fun-filled days in Tashkent.”
“I’ve had enough,” replied Alexander Ivanovich, “I’m going to the station to put my suitcase into storage, then I’ll find myself an office job here. I’ll wait for capitalism. That’s when I’ll have a good time.”
“Wait all you want,” said Ostap rather rudely, “but I’m going. Today was just an unfortunate misunderstanding, overzealous locals. The little golden calf still wields some power in this country!”
On the square in front of the station, they saw a crowd of journalists from the special train, who were touring Central Asia after the joining. They all gathered around Ukhudshansky. The proprietor of the Celebratory Kit turned back and forth smugly, demonstrating his new purchases. He was decked out in a velvet hat trimmed with a jackal’s tail and a cloak that had been fashioned from a quilted blanket.
The plush-nosed prophet’s predictions continued to come true.
CHAPTER 32
THE DOOR TO
BOUNDLESS OPPORTUNITIES
On that autumn day, filled with sadness and light, when gardeners cut flowers in Moscow parks and pass them out to children, Shura Balaganov, the preeminent son of Lieutenant S
chmidt, was sleeping on a wooden bench in the waiting area of the Ryazan train station. He was resting his head on the arm of the bench, and a crumpled cap covered his face. It was clear that the Antelope’s rally mechanic and Vice President for Hoofs was dejected and destitute. Crushed eggshell clung to his unshaven cheek. His canvas shoes had lost their shape and color, and they looked more like Moldovan peasant footwear. Swallows flew under the high ceiling of the airy hall.
Through its large, unwashed windows, one could see block signals, semaphores, and the other necessary objects of the railroad. Porters raced by, and moments later the arriving passengers entered the hall. A neatly dressed man was the last passenger to come in from the platform. Under his light, unbuttoned raincoat one could see a suit with a tiny kaleidoscopic checked pattern. Trousers descended to his patent-leather shoes like a waterfall. The passenger’s foreign look was amplified by a fedora, which was tipped forward ever so slightly. He didn’t make use of the porter and carried his suitcase himself. The passenger strolled through the empty hall and he would certainly have reached the vestibule, had he not suddenly spotted the sorry figure of Balaganov. He squinted, came closer, and observed the sleeping man for a while. Then he carefully lifted the cap from the rally mechanic’s face with two gloved fingers and smiled.
“Arise, Count, you’re being called from down below!” he said, shaking Balaganov awake.
Shura sat up, rubbed his face, and only then realized who the passenger was.
“Captain!” he exclaimed.
“No, no,” said Bender, holding his hand out, “don’t hug me. I’m a proud man now.”
Balaganov started prancing around the captain. He could hardly recognize him. It wasn’t only his dress that had changed; Ostap had lost some weight, a certain absentmindedness showed in his eyes, and his face was bronzed with a colonial tan.
“You’re a big deal now!” gushed Balaganov excitedly. “You really are!”
“Yes, I am a big deal,” allowed Bender, sounding dignified. “Look at my trousers. Europe First Class! And look at this! The fourth finger of my left hand is adorned with a diamond ring. Four carats. And what have you been up to? Still a son?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Shura uncertainly, “just little things here and there.”
At the restaurant, Ostap ordered white wine with pastries for himself and sandwiches with beer for the rally mechanic.
“Tell me honestly, Shura, how much money do you need to be happy?” asked Ostap. “Count everything.”
“A hundred rubles,” answered Balaganov, reluctantly taking a break from the bread and sausage.
“No, no, you didn’t understand me. I don’t mean today, I mean in general. To be happy. See what I mean? So that you could have a good life.”
Balaganov thought for a long time, smiling tentatively, and finally announced that, to be completely happy, he needed 6,400 rubles, and that this amount would make his life very good indeed.
“Fine,” said Ostap, “here’s fifty thousand for you.”
He unlocked a square travel case on his knees and handed Balaganov five white stacks that had been tied up with string. The rally mechanic suddenly lost his appetite. He stopped eating, stuck the money deep into his pockets, and couldn’t bring himself to take his hands back out.
“The platter, right?” he asked excitedly.
“That’s right, the platter,” replied Ostap impassively. “With a blue rim. The defendant brought it in his teeth. He kept wagging his tail until I finally agreed to take it. Now I’m commanding the parade! I feel great.”
He uttered these last words without much conviction.
Truth be told, the parade wasn’t going smoothly, and the grand strategist was lying when he claimed that he felt great. It would have been more honest to say that he felt somewhat awkward, which, however, he wasn’t willing to admit even to himself.
A month had passed since he had parted ways with Alexander Ivanovich outside the luggage room where the underground millionaire had stored his plain-looking suitcase.
Ostap entered the next city feeling like a conqueror, but he couldn’t get a room at the hotel.
“I’ll pay anything!” said the grand strategist smugly.
“You’re out of luck, citizen,” replied the receptionist, “the entire congress of soil scientists have come down for a tour of our experimental station. Everything’s reserved for the scholars.”
The receptionist’s polite face expressed reverence for the congress. Ostap wanted to cry out that he was the big shot, that he was to be respected and revered, that he had a million in his bag, but then he thought better of it and left in a state of utter frustration.
He spent the whole day riding around town in a horse cab. In the city’s best restaurant, he had to bide his time for an hour and a half until the soil scientists, whose entire congress came to dinner, were finished with their meal. In the evening, the theater was putting on a special performance for the soil scientists, so no tickets were available to the public. Ostap wouldn’t have been allowed into the theater with a bag in his hands anyway, and he had nowhere to put it. To avoid spending the night in the streets, in the name of science, the millionaire left that same evening and slept in a first-class car.
In the morning, Bender got off the train in a large city on the Volga. Transparent yellow leaves flew off the trees, spinning like propellers. The river was breathing the wind. There wasn’t a single hotel with a vacancy.
“Maybe in a month or so,” the hotel managers—some wore goatees and some didn’t, some wore mustaches, and some were simply clean-shaven—offered vaguely. “Until they finish the third plant at the power station, you haven’t got a prayer. Everything’s reserved for the technical personnel. Plus, there’s the regional Young Communist League conference. There’s nothing we can do.”
And while the grand strategist hung around the tall reception counters, the hotels’ stairwells teemed with engineers, technicians, foreign experts, and Young Communist Leaguers who were attending their conference.
Once again, Ostap spent the whole day in a horse cab, looking forward to the nighttime express where he could wash, rest, and sit back with a newspaper.
The grand strategist spent a total of fifteen nights on a variety of trains, traveling from city to city, because there weren’t any vacancies anywhere. One town was building a blast furnace, another a refrigeration plant, the third a zinc smelter. The cities were overflowing with people who had come there for work. In the fourth town, Ostap was undercut by a gathering of Young Pioneers, and the hotel room where a millionaire could have spent a pleasant evening with a lady friend was filled with the racket of children. While on the road, he acquired various creature comforts and obtained a suitcase for his million, along with other travel gear. Ostap was already contemplating a long and comfortable journey to Vladivostok, which he figured would take three weeks, when suddenly he sensed that he’d die of some mysterious railroad malady if he didn’t settle down immediately. So he did something he had always done when he was the happy owner of empty pockets. He started pretending he was someone else, cabling ahead to announce the arrival of an engineer, or a public health physician, or a tenor, or an author. To his surprise, there were always vacancies for people who were traveling on official business, and Ostap was able to recover a bit from the rocking of the trains. Once, he even had to pretend he was the son of Lieutenant Schmidt in order to obtain a hotel room. This episode plunged the grand strategist into unhappy thoughts.
“And this is the life of a millionaire?” he reflected in frustration. “Where’s the respect? Where’s the reverence? The fame? The power?”
Even the Europe First Class that Ostap bragged about to Balaganov —the suit, the dress shoes, the fedora—came from a consignment store, and despite their superb quality, they had one defect: they weren’t his own, his original garb, they were second-hand. Someone else had already worn them; maybe for just an hour, or even a minute, but still it was someone else’s. He w
as also hurt that the government was ignoring the dire straits of the nation’s millionaires and distributed social benefits in accordance with a plan. Nothing was going right. The station chief didn’t salute him, like he would have any merchant worth a lousy fifty thousand in the old days; the city fathers didn’t come to his hotel to introduce themselves; the local paper didn’t rush to interview him; and instead of photos of the millionaire, it printed portraits of some God-forsaken exemplary workers who earned 120 rubles a month.
Ostap counted his million every day, and it was still pretty much a million. He tried very hard, eating several dinners a day, drinking the best wines, and giving exorbitant tips. He bought a diamond ring, a Japanese vase, and a coat that was lined with fitch fur. But he ended up giving the coat and the vase to a room attendant—he didn’t want to deal with all that bulk on the road. Besides, if need be, he could buy himself many more coats and vases. Nevertheless, he only managed to spend six thousand in a whole month.
No, the parade decidedly wasn’t going well, even though everything was in place. The forward guards were dispatched on time, the troops arrived when they were supposed to, the band was playing. But the regiments didn’t look at him, they didn’t shout “Hooray” to him, and the bandmaster didn’t wave his baton for him. Nevertheless, Ostap wasn’t about to give up. He had high hopes for Moscow.
“So what about Rio de Janeiro?” asked Balaganov excitedly. “Are we going?”
“To hell with it!” said Ostap, suddenly angry. “It’s all a fantasy: there is no Rio de Janeiro, no America, no Europe, nothing. Actually, there isn’t anything past Shepetovka, where the waves of the Atlantic break against the shore.”