by Ilya Ilf
CHAPTER 35
HOUSEWIVES, HOUSEKEEPERS,
WIDOWS, AND EVEN A
DENTAL TECHNICIAN—
THEY ALL LOVED HIM
Roofs were clattering in Chernomorsk, and the wind romped through the streets. An unexpected northeaster assailed the city and chased the fragile Indian summer into the garbage cans, drains, and corners, where it was expiring amidst charred maple leaves and torn streetcar tickets. Cold chrysanthemums were drowning in the flower ladies’ tubs. The green shutters of locked-up refreshment stands banged in the wind. Pigeons were saying, “You throoh, you throoh.” Sparrows kept warm by pecking at steaming horse manure. People struggled against the wind, lowering their heads like bulls. It was especially hard on the Piqué Vests. The gusts blew the boater hats and panamas off their heads and rolled them across the wood block pavement down toward the boulevard. The old men ran after their hats, expressing their outrage and gasping for air. Sidewalk gales carried the pursuers so fast that at times, they would overtake their own headgear before finally regaining their composure at the wet feet of a dignitary from the time of Catherine the Great, whose bronze statue stood in the middle of the square.
At the taxi stand, the Antelope creaked like a ship. Kozlevich’s vehicle used to look oddly amusing, but it had become a pitiful sight: the rear left fender was held on by a rope, a piece of plywood had replaced a large portion of the windshield, and instead of the rubber bulb that played the maxixe, which was lost in the wreck, a nickel-plated chairman’s bell was hanging from a string. Even the steering wheel upon which Adam Kozlevich rested his honest hands was a bit askew. On the sidewalk, next to the Antelope, stood the grand strategist. Leaning against the car, he was saying:
“I lied to you, Adam. I can’t give you an Isotta-Fraschini, or a Lincoln, or a Buick, or even a Ford. I can’t buy a new car. The state doesn’t consider me a legitimate customer. I’m a private citizen. Anything I could find for you in the classifieds would be the same kind of junk as our Antelope.”
“Don’t say that,” protested Kozlevich, “my Lorraine-Dietrich is a fine vehicle. If only I could find a used oil hose—then who’d need a Buick?”
“That I have,” said Ostap. “Here. But that’s all I can do for you, dear Adam, when it comes to mechanized means of transportation.”
Thrilled with the hose, Kozlevich inspected it thoroughly and started fitting it in right away. Ostap pushed the bell, which produced an officious ring, and said emotionally:
“Have you heard the news, Adam? Turns out, each individual is under the pressure of a column of air that weighs 472 pounds!”
“No, I haven’t,” said Kozlevich. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? It’s a medical fact. And lately, it’s been very hard on me. Just think of it! Four-hundred-and-seventy-two pounds! It weighs down on you day in and day out, especially at night. I can’t sleep. What?”
“No, no, I’m listening,” replied Kozlevich softly.
“I don’t feel well at all, Adam. My heart is too big.”
The driver of the Antelope chuckled. Ostap went on babbling:
“Yesterday, an old woman approached me on the street and offered me a permanent needle valve for a Primus stove. You know, Adam, I didn’t buy it. I don’t need a permanent valve, I don’t want to live forever. I want to die. I’ve got all the tawdry symptoms of being in love: loss of appetite, insomnia, and a maniacal desire to write poetry. Just listen to what I scribbled down last night, in the flickering light of an electric bulb: ‘I recollect that wondrous meeting, that instant I encountered you, when like an apparition fleeting, like beauty’s spirit, past you flew.’ It’s good, isn’t it? Brilliant? And only at sunrise, just as I finished the last lines, did I realize that this poem had already been written by Pushkin. Such a blow from a literary giant! Excuse me?”
“No, no, please continue,” said Kozlevich warmly.
“So that’s my life,” continued Ostap, his voice shaking. “My body is registered at the Cairo Hotel, but my soul is taking a break, it doesn’t even want to go to Rio de Janeiro any more. And now this atmospheric column—it’s choking me.”
“Have you seen her?” asked the forthright Kozlevich. “I mean Zosya Victorovna?”
“I’m not going,” said Ostap, “on account of my bashful pride. She awoke the janissary in me. I sent this heartless woman 350 rubles worth of telegrams from Moscow and didn’t even get a fifty-kopeck response. And that’s considering I’ve had any number of housewives, housekeepers, widows, and even a dental technician—they all loved me! No, Adam, I’m not going! See you!”
The grand strategist returned to the hotel and pulled the suitcase with the million from under the bed, where it sat next to a pair of worn-out shoes. For a while, he stared mindlessly at it, then grabbed it by the handle and went outside. The wind gripped Ostap’s shoulders and dragged him toward Seaside Boulevard. It was deserted. The white benches—covered with romantic messages that had been carved in summers past—were empty. A low-sitting cargo ship with thick upright masts was skirting the lighthouse on its way to the outer roadstead.
“Enough,” said Ostap, “the golden calf is not for me. Whoever wants it can have it. Let him be a free-range millionaire!”
He looked back and, seeing that there wasn’t anybody around, threw the suitcase onto the gravel.
“It’s all yours,” he said to the black maples and bowed graciously.
He started walking down the tree-lined alley without looking back. First he moved slowly, at a leisurely pace, then put his hands into his pockets—they were suddenly getting in his way—and speeded up, in order to allay his doubts. He forced himself to turn the corner and even started singing, but a minute later he turned around and ran back. The suitcase was still there. However, a rather unremarkable-looking middle-aged man was already approaching it from the other side, bending down and reaching for it.
“What the hell are you doing?” yelled Ostap from afar. “I’ll show you how to grab other people’s suitcases! You can’t leave anything even for a moment! Outrageous!”
The man shrugged sullenly and retreated. And Bender went trudging on with the golden calf in his hands.
“Now what?” he wondered. “What do I do with this goddamn booty? It’s brought me nothing but anguish! Should I burn it?”
The grand strategist found this thought intriguing.
“Actually, there’s a fireplace in my room. Burn it in the fireplace! That’s regal! An act worthy of Cleopatra! Into the fire! Stack after stack! Why should I waste my time on it? No, wait, that’s stupid. Burning money is in poor taste! It’s ostentatious! But what can I do with it, other than party like a swine? What a ridiculous situation! The museum director thinks he can slap together a Louvre with just three hundred rubles. Any organized group of waterworks employees or something—or a playwrights’ cooperative—can use a million to build a near-skyscraper, complete with a flat roof for holding open-air lectures. But Ostap Bender, a descendant of the janissaries, can’t do a damn thing! The ruling working class is smothering a lone millionaire!”
Wondering what to do with the million, the grand strategist paced through the park, sat on the parapet, and stared morosely at the steamer that was rocking outside the breakwater.
“No, fire is not the answer. Burning money is cowardly and inelegant. I need to come up with a strong statement. What if I endow the Balaganov Scholarship at the radio technicians’ correspondence school? Or buy fifty thousand silver teaspoons, recast them into an equestrian statue of Panikovsky, and install it on his grave? Have the Antelope encrusted with mother of pearl? And maybe . . .”
The grand strategist jumped off the parapet, fired up by a new thought. Without even a moment’s pause, he left the boulevard and, firmly resisting the onslaughts of both head and side winds, set out for the main post office.
There, at his request, the suitcase was sewn into a piece of burlap and tied with a string. It looked like an ordinary parcel, one of the th
ousands that the post office accepts every day, the kind people use to send salt pork, fruit preserves, or fresh apples to their relatives.
Ostap picked up an indelible pencil, waved it excitedly in the air, and wrote:
Valuable
To: THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR OF FINANCE
Moscow
Thrown by the hand of a mighty postal worker, the parcel tumbled onto a pile of oval-shaped sacks, bags, and boxes. Stuffing the receipt into his pocket, Ostap noticed that a slow-moving geezer with white lightning bolts on his collar was already taking the cart with his million into the next room.
“Our deliberations continue,” said the grand strategist, “this time without O. Bender representing the Deranged Agrarians.”
He lingered under the post office archway for a long time, alternately congratulating himself and having second thoughts. The wind snuck under Ostap’s raincoat. He shivered, and began to regret that he never bothered to buy another fur coat.
A young woman stopped for a moment right in front of him. She threw back her head, looked at the shiny face of the post office clock, and moved on. She wore a rough lightweight coat that was shorter than her dress and a dark-blue beret with a childish pompom. She held down the flap of her coat, which was being blown by the wind, with her right hand. The captain’s heart fluttered even before he recognized Zosya, and then he started following her over the wet slabs of the sidewalk, subconsciously maintaining a distance. Occasionally, other people stepped between them; then Ostap would walk out onto the street, peering at Zosya from the side and preparing his talking points for the upcoming face-to-face.
On the corner, Zosya stopped in front of a stand that was selling accessories and studied some brown men’s socks that were dangling from a string. Ostap patrolled nearby.
Two men with briefcases were having a heated conversation on the curb. Both wore fall overcoats, their white summer pants showing underneath.
“You didn’t leave the Hercules a moment too soon, Ivan Pavlovich,” said one, clutching his briefcase to his chest, “they’re having a vicious purge right now. It’s brutal.”
“The whole city is talking about it,” sighed the other.
“Yesterday, it was Sardinevich,” said the first man lustily, “standing room only. At first, everything was hunky-dory. When Sardinevich told his life story, everybody applauded. ‘I was born, he said, between the hammer and the anvil.’ By that he meant that his parents were blacksmiths. But then somebody from the audience asked: ‘Excuse me, do you happen to remember a trading company called Sardinevich & Son Hardware? You’re not that Sardinevich, by any chance?’ And this idiot blurts out: ‘No, I’m not that Sardinevich, I’m the son.’ Can you imagine what they’ll do to him now? Category One is all but assured.”
“Yes, Comrade Brinetrust, it’s tough. And who are they purging today?”
“Today’s a big day! Today it’s Berlaga, the one who tried to sit it out in the nuthouse. Then it’s Polykhaev himself, along with Impala Mikhailovna, that snake, his illegitimate wife. She wouldn’t let anyone at the Hercules breathe easily. I’m going there two hours early, or else I’ll never get in. Also, Bomze’s coming up . . .”
Zosya started walking again, and Ostap never found out what happened to Adolf Nikolaevich Bomze. He couldn’t care less, though. He had already come up with an opening line. The captain quickly caught up with the girl.
“Zosya,” he said, “I’m here, and this fact is impossible to ignore.”
He uttered these words with unbelievable impudence. The girl flinched, and the grand strategist realized that his opening had sounded phony. He changed key, spoke rapidly and incessantly, blamed circumstances, said that his youth hadn’t passed the way he had pictured it as a child, that life turned out to be harsh and low, like a bass key.
“You know, Zosya,” he said in the end, “every single person, even a party member, is under the pressure of an atmospheric column that weighs 472 pounds. Haven’t you noticed?”
Zosya didn’t say anything.
They walked past the Capital Hill movie theater. Ostap quickly glanced across the street, at the building that just a few months earlier had housed the bureau he had founded, and gasped quietly. A large sign stretched across the entire length of the building:
In every window, one could see typewriters and portraits of political leaders. A sprightly messenger, who looked nothing like Panikovsky, stood at the door with a satisfied smile. Three-ton trucks, loaded down with horns and hoofs that met the industry’s standards were driving in through an open gate that bore the sign MAIN WAREHOUSE. Ostap’s baby had clearly taken the right path.
“The ruling class is smothering me,” said Ostap wistfully, “it even took my offhand idea and used it to it’s own advantage. And I got pushed aside, Zosya. You hear? I got pushed aside. I’m miserable.”
“A heartsick lover,” said Zosya, turning to Ostap for the first time.
“Yes,” agreed Ostap, “I’m your typical Eugene Onegin, also known as a knight who’s been disinherited by the Soviet regime.”
“A knight? Come on!”
“Zosya, don’t be mad! Think of the atmospheric column. I even have a feeling that it puts a lot more pressure on me than on other people. On account of my love for you. Besides, I’m not a union member. That’s another reason.”
“And also because you tell more lies than other people.”
“This is not a lie. It’s a law of physics. But maybe there really isn’t any column, and it’s just a fantasy?”
Zosya stopped and started taking off a glove that was the color of a gray stocking.
“I’m thirty-three years old,” said Ostap hastily, “the age of Jesus Christ. And what have I accomplished thus far? I haven’t created a teaching, I wasted my disciples, I haven’t resurrected the dead Panikovsky, and only you . . .”
“Well, see you,” said Zosya. “I’m off to the cafeteria.”
“I’ll have lunch too,” announced the grand strategist, glancing at the sign that read THE CHERNOMORSK STATE ACADEMY FOR SPATIAL ARTS VOCATIONAL COLLEGE. MODEL FOOD PREPARATION FACLITY. “I’ll have some model borscht du jour at this academy. Maybe it’ll make me feel better.”
“It’s for union members only,” warned Zosya.
“Then I’ll just sit with you.”
They went down three steps. A young man with black eyes sat deep inside the model training facility, under the green canopy of a palm tree, and studied the menu with a dignified expression.
“Pericles!” called out Zosya before she had even reached the table. “I bought you socks with double-knit heels. Here, please meet Femidi.”
“Femidi,” said the young man, giving Ostap a friendly handshake.
“Bender-Transylvansky,” replied the grand strategist snidely, instantly realizing that he was late to the feast of love, and that the socks with double-knit heels weren’t just a product of some pseudo-invalids’ co-op but a symbol of a happy marriage that had been sanctified by the office of the civil registrar.
“Wow! Are you really Transylvansky as well?” asked Zosya playfully.
“Yes, Transylvansky. And you’re not just Sinitsky anymore either, are you? Judging by the socks . . .”
“I am Sinitsky-Femidi.”
“For twenty-seven days now,” announced the young man, rubbing his hands.
“I like your husband,” said the disinherited knight.
“I do too,” retorted Zosya.
While the young spouses were eating navy-style borscht, raising their spoons high, and exchanging glances, Ostap examined the educational posters that were hanging on the walls with annoyance. One of them read: AVIOD DISTRACTING CONVERSATION WHILE EATING, IT INTERFERES WITH THE PROPER SECRETION OF STOMACH JUICES. The other was in verse: FRUIT JUICES HAVE BENEFICIAL USES. There wasn’t anything else for him to do. It was time to go, but a shyness that had materialized out of nowhere was getting in the way.
Ostap strained his faculties and offered: “The remains
of a shipwreck float in this navy borscht.”
The Femidis laughed good-naturedly.
“And what line of work do you happen to be in?” Ostap asked the young man.
“I happen to be the secretary of the painting collective of railroad artists,” answered Femidi.
The grand strategist slowly began to rise from his chair.
“Oh, so you represent a collective? I’m not surprised! Well, no more distracting talk from me. It might interfere with the proper secretion of stomach juices that are so vital to your health.”
He left without saying goodbye, bumping into tables while making a beeline toward the exit.
“They snatched my girl!” he muttered outside. “Straight from her stable! Femidi! Nemesidi! Femidi, representing the collective, snatched from a lone millionaire . . .”
And that was when Bender remembered with striking clarity and certainty that he no longer had the million. He kept turning this thought over while he was already running, slicing through the crowd like a swimmer who is trying to break the world record slices through the water.
“Look at this self-appointed St. Paul,” he grumbled, leaping across flower beds in the city park. “Money means nothing to this s-son of a bitch! A goddamn Mennonite, a Seventh-day Adventist! If the parcel is already gone—I’ll hang myself! Those Tolstoyan idealists ought to be killed on the spot!”
After slipping twice on the tiled floor of the post office, the grand strategist raced up to the window. In front of it was a small, silent, and stern line of people. In the heat of the moment, Ostap tried to stick his head into the window, but the citizen who was first in line raised his sharp elbows nervously and pushed the intruder back a little. Like clockwork, the second citizen also raised his elbows, muscling the grand strategist even farther away from the coveted window. Elbows continued to rise and stretch in total silence until the brazen trespasser ended up where he rightfully belonged—at the very end of the line.