by Ilya Ilf
“I just need . . .” started Ostap.
But he didn’t finish. There was no use. The line, stony and gray, was as impregnable as a Greek phalanx. Everybody knew their place and was prepared to die defending their petty rights.
Forty-five minutes later, Ostap was finally able to insert his head into the postal window and boldly demanded his parcel back. The clerk coldly returned the receipt to Ostap.
“Comrade, we don’t give parcels back.”
“What! You already sent it?” asked the grand strategist in a shaky voice. “I brought it here just an hour ago!”
“Comrade, we don’t give parcels back,” repeated the postal worker.
“But it’s my parcel,” said Ostap gently, “it’s mine, you see. I mailed it, now I want it back. You see, I forgot to put in a jar of preserves. Crabapple preserves. Please, do me a big favor. My uncle will be so mad. You see . . .”
“Comrade, we do not give parcels back.”
Ostap glanced back, looking for help. Behind him was the line, silent and stern, well aware of all the rules, including the one which said that parcels cannot be given back to the sender.
“Just one jar,” murmured Ostap, “crabapples . . .”
“Send the jar in a separate parcel, comrade,” said the clerk, softening. “Your uncle will survive.”
“You don’t know my uncle!” said Ostap excitedly. “Besides, I’m a poor student, I don’t have any money. Please, I’m asking you as a civic-minded citizen.”
“See what you’ve done, comrade,” said the clerk plaintively. “How am I supposed to find it? We have three tons of parcels over there.”
But then the grand strategist launched into such a pitiful and nonsensical spiel that the clerk went to the other room to look for the poor student’s parcel. The hitherto silent line promptly started raising hell. They scolded the grand strategist for his ignorance of the postal regulations, and one woman even pinched him angrily.
“Don’t ever do this again,” exhorted the clerk, tossing the suitcase back to Bender.
“Never again!” swore the captain. “Student’s word of honor!”
The roofs clattered in the wind, the streetlights swayed, shadows darted over the ground, and rain crisscrossed the headlight-beams of the automobiles.
“Enough of these psychological excesses,” said Bender with great relief, “enough anguish and navel-gazing. Time to start living the life of the hard-working rich. On to Rio de Janeiro! I’ll buy a plantation and bring in Balaganov to serve as a monkey. He’ll fetch me bananas from the trees!”
CHAPTER 36
A KNIGHT OF THE ORDER
OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE
An odd-looking man was walking at night through the marshy delta of the Dniester. He was enormous and shapelessly fat. He was tightly enveloped in an oilcloth cloak with its hood raised. The odd man carefully tiptoed past stands of cattails and under gnarled fruit trees as if he were walking through a bedroom. At times, he would stop and sigh. Then a clunking sound, the kind produced by metal objects that were striking against each other, came from under the cloak. And each time after that, a particularly fine high-pitched jingle would hang in the air. Once, the odd man stumbled over a wet root and fell on his stomach. That produced a very loud bang, as if a set of body armor had collapsed onto a hardwood floor. The odd man stayed on the ground for a while, peering into the darkness.
The March night was full of sound. Large, well-shaped drops were falling from the trees and plopping onto the ground.
“That goddamn platter!” whispered the man.
He got up and walked all the way to the Dniester without further incident. Then the man lifted the hem of his cloak, skidded down the bank, and, struggling to maintain his balance on the wet ice, ran toward Romania.
The grand strategist had spent the whole winter preparing. He had purchased American dollars, that featured portraits of presidents with white curly hair, gold watches and cigarette cases, wedding rings, diamonds, and other valuable toys.
He was carrying seventeen massive cigarette cases with monograms, eagles, and engraved inscriptions like:
TO EVSEY RUDOLFOVICH CUSTOMEIR,
DIRECTOR OF THE RUSSO-CARPATHIAN BANK AND OUR BENEFACTOR,
ON THE DAY OF HIS SILVER WEDDING ANNIVERSARY,
FROM HIS GRATEFUL CO-WORKERS.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY M. I. INDIGNATYEV
UPON COMPLETION OF THE SENATORIAL AUDIT,
FROM THE STAFF OF THE CHERNOMORSK MAYORAL OFFICE.
But the heaviest of all was a case with the dedication: TO MR. CHIEF OF THE ALEXEEVSKY POLICE PRECINCT FROM THE GRATEFUL JEWISH MEMBERS OF THE MERCHANT CLASS. Below the dedication was a blazing enamel heart pierced with an arrow; it was clearly supposed to symbolize the love of the Jewish members of the merchant class for Mr. Chief.
His pockets were stuffed with rings and bracelets that had been strung into necklaces. Twenty gold pocket watches, suspended from sturdy twine, formed three layers on his back. Some of them ticked annoyingly, giving Bender the sensation that insects were crawling over his back. Some of the watches were gifts, as evidenced by the engravings on their lids: TO OUR BELOVED SON SERGE CASTRAKI IN RECOGNITION OF HIS PERFORMANCE AT SCHOOL. Above the word “performance,” someone had scratched the word “sexual” with a pin. This must have been the work of young Castraki’s buddies, all losers like himself. Ostap had long resisted buying this indecent watch, but he did in the end, because he had decided to invest his entire million in jewelry.
All in all, the winter was very busy. The grand strategist was able to acquire only four hundred thousand rubles worth of diamonds, and only fifty thousand in foreign currency, including some questionable notes from Poland and the Balkans. He had to spend the rest on heavy stuff. It was particularly hard to move with a golden platter on his stomach. The platter was large and oval-shaped, like the shield of an African tribal chief. It weighed twenty pounds. The captain’s powerful neck was weighed down by a bishop’s pectoral cross that was inscribed, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, which he had purchased from the former deacon of the Orthodox cathedral, Citizen Overarchangelsky. Above the cross, a little ram cast in gold dangled on a magnificent ribbon—the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Ostap bargained hard for this Order with a peculiar old man who may even have been a Grand Duke, or else a Grand Duke’s valet. The old man was asking an exorbitant price, pointing out that very few people in the world had this particular decoration, most of them royals.
“The Golden Fleece,” muttered the old man, “is awarded for the utmost valor!”
“Then I qualify,” replied Ostap, “and besides, I’m only buying this ram for scrap.”
The captain wasn’t telling the truth, however. He fancied the medal from the start and had decided to keep it for himself, as the Order of the Golden Calf.
Driven by fear and expecting the crack of a rifle shot at any moment, Bender raced to the middle of the river and then stopped. All that gold was heavy: the platter, the cross, the bracelets. His back was itching under the dangling watches. The bottom of the cloak had gotten soaked and weighed a ton. With a groan, Ostap tore off the cloak, dumped it on the ice, and continued running. This revealed his fur coat—a stupendous, almost unbelievable fur coat, easily the single most valuable object Ostap had on his person. He had built it over the course of four months, like a house, preparing blueprints and gathering materials. The coat had two layers: genuine sealskin lined with unique silver fox. The collar was made of sable. That coat was amazing! A supercoat with chinchilla pockets, which were stuffed with civilian medals for bravery, little neck crosses, and golden bridges—the latest in dental technology. The grand strategist’s head was crowned with a towering cap. Not just a cap—a beaver skin tiara.
All this magnificent freight was supposed to provide the captain with an easy, care-free life by the warm ocean, in the city of his childhood dreams, among the palms and ficus on the balconies of Rio de Janeiro.
“Now, a few formalities with the kindhearted Romanian counts—and the path is clear. I think a couple of medals for bravery would brighten up their dull frontier existence.”
He turned toward the Soviet side, stretched his chubby, sealskin-clad arm into the melting haze, and announced:
“Everything must be done according to the proper form. Form No. 5: saying farewell to one’s country. Well, adieu, great land. I don’t care to be a model pupil and receive grades for my attention, diligence, and behavior. I’m a private citizen, and I have no obligation to show interest in silage pits, trenches, and towers. I don’t have much interest in the socialist transformation of men into angels and holders of passbooks at the state savings bank. On the contrary. My interest lies in the pressing issue of kindness to lone millionaires . . .”
At that point, saying farewell to one’s country according to form No. 5 was interrupted by the appearance of several armed men, whom Bender identified as Romanian border guards. The grand strategist gave a dignified bow and clearly enunciated the phrase he had learned by heart for this very occasion:
“Traiasca Romania mare!”
He gave a friendly look to the border guards, whose faces he could barely make out in the murky light. He thought the guards were smiling.
“Long live great Romania!” repeated Ostap in Russian. “I’m an old professor who escaped from the Moscow Cheka! I barely made it, I swear! Allow me to greet you as representatives . . .”
One of the guards came right up to Ostap and, without saying a word, took the fur tiara off his head. Ostap made a motion to reclaim his headgear, but the guard pushed his hand back, again without a word.
“Come on,” said the captain good-naturedly, “please keep your hands to yourself! Or I’ll report you to the Sfatul T¸aˇrii, your Supreme Soviet!”
Meanwhile, another guard began unbuttoning Ostap’s stupendous, almost unbelievable supercoat with the speed and ease of an experienced lover. The captain jerked. As a result, a large woman’s bracelet fell from one of his pockets and rolled away.
“Branzuletka!” shrieked the guards’ officer in a short coat with a dog-fur collar and large metal buttons on his prominent behind.
“Branzuletka!” cried the others, rushing Ostap.
Getting entangled in his coat, the grand strategist fell on the ground and immediately sensed that they were pulling the precious platter out of his pants. When he got up, he saw that the officer, with a devilish smile on his face, was holding up the platter, trying to determine how much it weighed. Ostap grabbed his possession and tore it out of the officer’s hands, then immediately received a blinding blow to the face. The scene unfolded with military swiftness. Trapped in his coat, for a while the grand strategist stood on his knees and fought off the attackers, hurling medals for bravery at them. Then he suddenly felt an immense relief, which enabled him to deliver a few crushing blows. As it turned out, they had managed to rip the one-hundred-thousand-ruble coat off his back.
“Oh, so that’s how you treat people!” shrieked Ostap, casting wild glances around.
There was a moment when he was standing with his back against a tree and bashed his foes over the head with the gleaming platter. There was a moment when they were trying to rip the Order of the Golden Fleece from his neck, and the captain swung his head around like a horse. There was another moment, when he held the bishop’s cross with the words IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT high above his head and screamed hysterically:
“Oppressors of the working masses! Bloodsuckers! Capitalist stooges! Bastards!”
As he screamed, pink saliva ran from his mouth. Ostap fought like a gladiator for his million. Again and again, he threw the attackers off his back and rose up from the ground, looking ahead with bleary eyes.
He came back to his senses on the ice, his face smashed up, wearing only one boot, without the fur coat, without the engraved cigarette cases, without the watch collection, without the platter, without the foreign money, without the cross or the diamonds, without his million. The officer with the dog-fur collar stood high on the bank and looked down at Ostap.
“Bloody persecutors!” shouted Ostap, raising his bare foot. “Parasites!”
The officer slowly pulled out his pistol and cocked it. The grand strategist realized that the interview was over. Hunching over, he started limping back toward the Soviet shore.
Smoky white fog was rising from the river. Bender opened his fist and saw a flat copper button, a lock of someone’s coarse black hair, and the Order of the Golden Fleece, which had miraculously survived the battle. The grand strategist gave his trophies and what was left of his riches a blank stare and continued on, slipping into ice pits and flinching from pain.
A lengthy and loud cannon-like boom made the surface of the ice tremble. The warm wind was blowing hard. Bender looked down and saw a large green crack running through the ice. The ice field under him rocked and began to tilt into the water.
“The ice has broken!” cried the grand strategist in horror. “Gentlemen of the jury, the ice has broken!”
He began leaping over the widening cracks between the ice floes, desperately trying to reach the same country he had bid farewell to so arrogantly just an hour earlier. The fog was lifting sedately and slowly, revealing ice-free marshes.
Ten minutes later, an odd-looking man with no hat and only one boot stepped onto the Soviet shore. Without addressing anyone in particular, he loudly announced:
“Hold the applause! As the Count of Monte Cristo, I’m a failure. I’ll have to go into apartment management instead.”
TRANSLATORS’ NOTES
CHAPTER 1
Lieutenant Schmidt—A Russian naval officer who was executed for his role in the revolution of 1905. Lt. Petr Schmidt had only one son.
The New Economic Policy (NEP)—The policy of the Soviet government in the early 1920s that promoted cooperative and private enterprise, which explains the abundance of small businesses in the novel. The NEP was followed by forced industrialization (the first Five-Year Plan) and the replacement of private establishments with state-owned ones, as depicted later in the novel.
CHAPTER 2
Chernomorsk (literally, a city on the Black Sea)—Unquestionably Odessa, the city in Ukraine where both Ilf (1897-1937) and Petrov (1903-1942) were born and grew up. In 1999, a small sculpture of the Antelope and its crew was installed in the courtyard of the Odessa Literary Museum.
CHAPTER 3
Gnu antelope—Another name for the African wildebeest.
Lorraine-Dietrich—An early French carmaker that was active until the 1930s; it was based in Alsace-Lorraine, hence the French-German name.
Maxixe—A Brazilian tango that was briefly popular in the early twentieth century. Mentioned in the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others.
CHAPTER 4
The purge—The novel accurately depicts the early purges, the campaigns to remove people of “non-proletarian” origin from Soviet organizations and institutions. Category Two involved dismissal and was comparatively mild, Category One essentially made the victim an unemployable pariah.
CHAPTER 8
The Proletkult—“The Proletarian Culture,” an early Soviet cultural and educational institution.
CHAPTER 13
Corps of Pages—An exclusive and highly privileged military school in Imperial Russia. All students also doubled as court pages.
Gymnasium—The fifth grade of pre-revolutionary classical gymnasium was roughly equal to grade nine or ten of present-day American high school.
CHAPTER 14
The Red Putilov—A major industrial complex in St. Petersburg. At the time, it still bore the name of its pre-revolutionary owner.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER 24
The Eastern Line—In real life the Turksib, the Turkestan-Siberia Line; one of the major projects and symbols of the first Five-Year Plan. Ilf and Petrov traveled to the Turksib joining ceremony with a group of journalists and writers.
CHAPTER 27
The Park of Culture and Rest—A multi-use park in central Moscow. Offered amusements, as well as lectures and variety shows, hence the “culture.” Later known as Gorky Park.
CHAPTER 32
“On that autumn day, filled with sadness and light . . .”—September 1, traditionally the first day of the school year, when younger children are expected to bring flowers to school.
“. . . There isn’t anything past Shepetovka.”—This landlocked Ukrainian town used to be near the Soviet-Polish border.
CHAPTER 33
The Indian guest—A character from Sadko, an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov.
CHAPTER 34
“. . . Kharkov actually approved it.”—At the time, Kharkov was the capital city of Ukraine and thus an important administrative center.
“Peter, Tsar of great renown . . .”—A reference to the famous Bronze Horseman, a massive equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. The horse is trampling a large snake.
CHAPTER 35
“I recollect that wondrous meeting . . .”—Translated by Walter Arndt. In: Pushkin, Alexander. Collected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984.
APPENDIX
In the first version of The Golden Calf, which appeared in the magazine 30 dnei and was completed in June (or July) of 1931, Chapter 34, “Friendship with Youth,” was followed by a final chapter, numbered 35 and entitled “Adam Says We Have To.” It was partly identical to Chapter 35, “Housewives, Housekeepers, Widows, and Even a Dental Technician—They All Loved Him,” as it appeared in the book version. However, following “He shivered, and began to regret that he never bothered to buy another fur coat,” the story line took a different turn.