(Northwestern World Classics) Ilya Ilf - Yevgeny Petrov - Anne O. Fisher - The Twelve Chairs-Northwestern University Press (2011)

The Twelve Chairs
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Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
The Twelve Chairs

A Novel
Translated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher

Foreword by Alexandra Ilf
Northwestern University Press ✦ Evanston, Illinois

Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Translation copyright © 2011 by Anne O. Fisher. Foreword copyright
© 2011 by Alexandra Ilf. Published 2011 by Northwestern University
Press. Originally published in Russian under the title Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev
in 1928. Authorial version compiled by Alexandra Ilf copyright © 2006
by Tekst Publishers, Moscow. Agreement via www.nibbe.wiedling.de. All
rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Il¯f, Il¯i a , 1897–1937.
[Dvenadtsat¯ stul¯ev. English]
The twelve chairs : a novel / Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov ; trans-
lated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher ; foreword by Alexandra
Ilf.
p. cm. — (Northwestern world classics)
“Originally published in Russian under the title Dvenadtsat’
stul’ev in 1928.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8101-2772-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Petrov, Evgeniı̆, 1903–1942. II. Fisher, Anne O. III. Title. IV.
Series: Northwestern world classics.
PG3476.I44D913 2011
891.73’42—dc22
2011013393
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require-
ments of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
To Valentin Petrovich Kataev
Contents
Foreword
Alexandra Ilf xi
Translator’s Introduction xxvii
Part One: The Lion of Stargorod
1 Bezenchuk and the Nymphs 5
2 The Demise of Madame Petukhova 17
3 The Sinner’s Mirror 27
4 The Muse of Distant Travel 37
5 The Registrar’s Past 43
6 The Smooth Operator 65
7 Diamond Smoke 75
8 Traces of the Titanic 83
9 The Little Sky-Blue Thief 89
10 Where Are Your Curls? 103
11 The Parakeet, the Repairman, and the

Fortune-Teller 113
12 The Alphabet, the Mirror of Life 125
13 A Passionate Woman, a Poet’s Dream 141
14 Breathe Deeper, You’re Excited! 155
15 The Union of the Sword and the Plowshare 175
Part Two: In Moscow
16 Amid an Ocean of Chairs 191
17 The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dormitory 195
18 Respect Your Mattresses, Citizens! 211
19 The Furniture Museum 219
20 European-Style Voting 229
21 From Seville to Granada 241
22 Corporal Punishment 255
23 Ellochka the Cannibal 269
24 Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov 279
25 The Motorists’ Club 291
26 Conversation with a Naked Engineer 305
27 Two Visits 315

28 The Excellent Jailhouse Basket 321
29 The Little Hen and the Pacific Rooster 331
30 The Author of “The Gavriliad” 343
31 The Mighty Handful, or the Gold-Seekers 355
32 In the Columbus Theater 365
Part Three: Madame Petukhova’s Treasure
33 A Magical Night on the Volga 383
34 A Pair of Unclean Animals 397
35 Expulsion from the Garden of Eden 411
36 The Interplanetary Chess Congress 421
37 And Others 439
38 A View of a Malachite Puddle 449
39 Cape Green 459
40 Under the Clouds 469
41 Earthquake 481
42 Treasure 495
Translator’s Notes 507

Fo r e wo r d
Alexandra Ilf
In 1928, in Soviet Russia, a novel by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

came out under the none-too-appealing title The Twelve Chairs
(Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev). This was way back when, more than eighty
years ago. First the novel was serialized in seven issues of the
Moscow monthly magazine 30 Days (30 dnei), then it came
out in a book edition that same year. No one suspected that it
would go on to become one of the most popular novels ever
written in Russian.
Ilf and Petrov began working on the novel in August or
September of 1927, when Ilf was twenty-nine and Petrov was
twenty-four. The idea for the plot was a present of sorts from
the well-established writer Valentin Kataev, Petrov’s older
brother and Ilf’s friend. This all happened in the editorial of-
fices of The Steam Whistle (Gudok), the railroad workers’ news-
paper, where they all worked at the time. In his memoir, My
Diamond Crown (Almaznyi moi venets), the “master writer” Ka-
taev eschews false modesty as he describes his role in forming
his brother’s and his friend’s creative alliance:
As I saw it, the search for diamonds hidden in one
of twelve chairs scattered all over the country by the
Revolution offered the chance to portray a satirical
picture gallery of character types from the NEP era.
I laid it all out for my friend and my brother. I’d
decided to follow Dumas père’s example and turn
them into my literary Negroes:1 I suggest the idea, the
springboard, and they work it up, clothe it in the flesh
and blood of a satirical novel. Then I go over their
✦ xi ✦
writing with the master’s expert hand. And we end up
with an amusing picaresque novel.2
The entire process of coming up with the idea of the novel

The Twelve Chairs and writing it is described in detail in Ka-
taev’s My Diamond Crown, in Evgeny Petrov’s memoirs about
Ilf, and in Petrov’s notes to the book he never wrote called
“My Friend Ilf” (Moi drug Il’f). Valentin Kataev really was a
talented writer, and, in a sense, the future coauthors’ master-
teacher, so the first book edition of The Twelve Chairs in 1928
was dedicated to him, Valentin Petrovich Kataev. That dedica-
tion has remained on the novel’s title page to this very day.
The Twelve Chairs, composed “for four hands,” is Ilya Ilf and Ev-
geny Petrov’s first attempt at writing together. Such an unex-
pected, magnificently achieved first attempt! How did they do
it? It’s alarming to think that if Valentin Kataev hadn’t had the
idea of becoming Dumas père back in 1927, we’d never have
been able to enjoy the fruits of their marvelous collaboration.
But as it happened, both authors were from Odessa. Both
came to Moscow in 1923. Both worked for magazines and news-
papers. Both wrote sketches, stories, and feuilletons. They
both worked alone until the fall of 1927. And then they started
writing together, and they wrote the novel The Twelve Chairs.
They might not have been able to pull it off. “Writing to-
gether wasn’t twice as easy, it was ten times as difficult,” Petrov
admitted.3 But by that time they were both full-fledged writ-
ers: both of them worked for The Steam Whistle, the railroad
workers’ newspaper, and contributed to many humorous pub-
lications. The idea of writing an adventure novel was much to
their liking. “Let’s try writing together,” Ilf suggested. “At the
same time. We’ll write every line together . . . One of us will
xii ✦ foreword
write, and the other one will be sitting next to him the whole
time. You know: writing together.”4
So they did. They pulled it off, and they didn’t need “the
master’s expert hand,” and they worked together for almost
ten years. But now, all this time later, readers still want to know
things like: How did they do it? Who are they, anyway, this “Ilf
and Petrov”? How did two men write one novel?
Ilf and Petrov’s creative association didn’t just happen by
chance. It’s true that young people make friends easily, but
even so, there has to have been some kind of connective tis-
sue of mutual affection and like-mindedness between them
for them to just sit down and produce not only a three-page
feuilleton but a thick novel. Over the years, their collaboration
turned into an exceptionally close friendship.
An editorial note in the January 1928 issue of the magazine
30 Days informs readers,
The Twelve Chairs, a novel chronicling contemporary
life, depicts the adventures of a band of rogues and
opportunists wandering over the hills and dales of the
Soviet Union. The novel The Twelve Chairs imitates the
best examples of the classical satirical novel, in that it’s
composed of a series of individual novellas or episodes
mocking philistinism, incompetence, and every sort of
perversion of our new way of life. The masterful literary
writing of the authors, Ilf and E. Petrov, along with their
lively narration, engaging situations, and witty language,
will doubtless make these young writers widely popular
with readers of all stripes.
Each following issue of the magazine had a short summary

of the preceding chapters. Chapter 35 was rounded off with
three photographs—of Ilf, Petrov, and the artist Mikhail Che-
remnykh. What intelligent, young faces they have!
foreword ✦ xiii
Ilf and Petrov made parodic use of the adventure-novel struc-
ture suggested by Kataev. The coauthors didn’t pay particular
attention to the adventure aspect of their creation; rather, they
surrendered themselves to the free flow of their satirical narra-
tive: “We quickly agreed that the plot with the chairs shouldn’t
be the main focus of the novel, it should just be an excuse, a
pretext for showing real life.”5
The speed with which the novel was written testifies to the
fact that the coauthors were intrinsically ready to write it. They
were quick to pick up on the characteristic phenomena of their
time and filled the novel with topical details and observations.
“After all, we put everything we knew into that first novel.”6
The book was written quickly, but not all that easily or
simply. “We worked very conscientiously for a newspaper and
for humorous magazines,” Petrov wrote. “We’d known hard
work since we were little. But we’d never imagined how hard it
would be to write a novel. If I weren’t afraid of sounding banal,
I’d say that we wrote it with our own blood.”7
But still, the speed of the work is proof that the young jour-
nalists were well prepared for the difficult work of satirical writ-
ing. There were a great number of half-finished items in Ilf’s
notebooks and in Petrov’s comic sketches that came in handy
for their future novel. Their literary “piggy banks” contained
many ideas, images, and typical phenomena. And the satirical
bent of their characters made them household names.
As I already said, the novel was topical. It wasn’t called a novel

chronicling everyday life for nothing. The year most of the nov-
el’s events take place, 1927, coincides with the time of its com-
position. The authors were walking in step with current events.
The novel is characterized by the distinguishing features of
NEP, the New Economic Policy (a semi-retreat from Commu-
xiv ✦ foreword
nism ordered by Lenin himself in 1921, NEP legalized some
free trade and other free market practices in order to stimulate
production in an economy crushed by World War I, two revo-
lutions, and a civil war): homeless children in asphalt boilers,
Kislyarsky and his “universal jailhouse basket,” private enter-
prise (the widow Gritsatsueva and her flour shop), and much
more—old Moscow, the housing crisis, and street traffic (horse-
cabs were still the primary means of locomotion in Moscow).
Just remember the phrase from Ellochka the Cannibal’s reper-
toire: “Let’s take a horse-cab” (said to her husband); “Let’s take
a taxi-waxi” (said to male acquaintances). And don’t forget
Bender: “on Theater Square the smooth operator was run over
by a horse. The shy white animal raced into him completely
out of the blue and shoved him with its bony chest. Bender fell
down . . .”
The chapter “The Interplanetary Chess Congress” might
never have been written if Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capa-
blanca, and other luminaries—the greatest masters of the
chessboard—hadn’t converged on Moscow in 1927 for an in-
ternational tournament. The Vasyukian amateurs’ passion for
chess was what let Bender play them for fools with his marvel-
ous projections of the grand city that was to be called New
Vasyuki. We also know that Ilf and his close friend, the mod-
ernist writer Yury Olesha, went to see Capablanca perform a
simultaneous exhibition.
Memories of Ilf and Petrov’s trip to the Caucasus the sum-
mer of 1927, before they became coauthors, are reflected in
chapters 38 and 39, “A View of a Malachite Puddle” and “Cape
Green.” The great Crimean earthquake of 1927 is described in
chapter 41, “Earthquake”: “A magnitude nine earthquake that
caused countless disasters all over the peninsula had wrested
the treasure right out of the concessionaires’ hands.”
The story of how the treasure was found is also real: the
funds were used to build a House of Culture for railroad work-
foreword ✦ xv
ers on what is now Komsomolskaya Square in Moscow. People
used to say that Ilf and Petrov interviewed the treasure’s for-
mer owner.
Every writer’s work is autobiographical, whether he be well
known or unknown. No matter what a writer writes about, even
when a novel, novella, or story tells of the lives of the ancient
Egyptians or the inhabitants of the reaches of deep space, he is
first and foremost writing about himself, and what he’s seen and
experienced. That’s why the adventures of Ostap Bender as he
searches for the diamonds hidden in one of the Gambs chairs
are so richly endowed with details taken straight from real life.
Ostap Bender was intended to be a secondary figure. We
had one phrase all ready for him: “The key to a room
full of money.” We heard it from one of our friends,
who was later portrayed in the novel under the guise of
Iznurenkov. But Bender gradually shouldered his way
out of the framework we’d prepared for him and took on
more and more significance. Soon we couldn’t cope with
him at all.8
By the end of the novel we were treating him like a
real, live person, and we were often angry at him for the
impudence with which he wormed his way into almost
every chapter.9
When Valentin Kataev’s brother and friend had him pass judg-
ment on their brand-new work, he praised it highly: they had
“introduced a completely new, magnificent character of their
own devising: Ostap Bender, now a household name . . . These
days it’s that very Ostap Bender, or the ‘smooth operator,’ as
they called him, who has become the main character of the
novel, its most powerful driving force,” Kataev asserted.10
All [the novel’s] characters, without exception, were
taken directly from life, from friends and acquaintances
xvi ✦ foreword
. . . and one of them was even taken from me, where I
am featured by the name of Engineer Bruns, who says
“Moosie, give me a goosie” or something like that to his
wife . . . And as far as the novel’s central figure Ostap
Bender goes, he was also taken from one of our Odessan
friends. In real life he had a different last name, of course,
but the name Ostap is an extremely rare one and so was
preserved . . .
The prototype for Ostap Bender was a certain young
poet’s older brother . . . The coauthors kept his physical
appearance almost completely inviolate in their novel:
an athletic build and a romantic, purely Black Sea
temperament . . . Ostap was drawn to poets, even though
he’d never written a line of poetry in his life. But deep
down, of course, he was a poet, the most original of us all.
That’s what Ostap Bender’s prototype was like.11
As Bender takes on the characteristics of the smooth operator,

his image changes, acquiring the sparkle and wit of a feuille-
ton. The “magnificent Ostap’s” phrases and aphorisms didn’t
just adorn the speech of Russophone readers of those bygone
days, they are still used today, too.
Ilf and Petrov’s friends and colleagues knew many of the
prototypes of the characters in The Twelve Chairs by name. Oth-
ers were suggested by life itself. The novel owes a lot of its suc-
cess to the newspaper The Steam Whistle where Ilf and Petrov
worked. The spirit of the “Fourth Strip” (the newspaper’s notori-
ous fourth page, which featured biting feuilletons and sketches
exposing lazy workers, incompetent managers, and so forth)
inhabits the “novel-feuilleton,” as reviewers called it.
The novel is populated by mirror images of real people in a
parodic atmosphere. Mikhail Glushkov, a splendid “idea man”
(that is, someone who supplied ideas for caricatures and draw-
ings) for Moscow satire magazines, appears under the guise
foreword ✦ xvii
of Absalom Iznurenkov. We know that Glushkov “was very
pleased with the figure of Iznurenkov and even kissed Ilf on
the shoulder for it.”12 The young Odessan poet Osip Sirkes,
who assumed the noble family name of Kolychev as his pseud-
onym, became Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy, the indefatigable
bard of “The Gavriliad.” The tricks played on him and the piti-
less mockery of his ignorance were fine fodder for humorists.
The prototype of Ellochka the Cannibal was a certain Ta-
mara, the sister of Kataev’s wife at the time. Elena Stanislav-
ovna Bour was a real person, the Odessan Elena Stanislavovna
Gintsinger. Incidentally, she was very displeased with the way
she’d been portrayed in the novel, and according to the story,
she even smacked Petrov on the head with the book.
The novel also features comic episodes from day-to-day
life in the editorial office. According to the memoirs of Steam
Whistle coworkers, the writing duo used to give them a few
pages of the draft of the next chapter twice a week. There the
colleagues encountered familiar details, observations, gener-
alizations, and parodies that they’d heard from Ilf and Petrov
before. Ilf and Petrov’s colleagues laughed themselves silly
when they read about the Columbus Theater’s production of
Gogol’s Marriage, with “text by Gogol, poetry by Cherchezla-
femmov” (chapter 32, “In the Columbus Theater”). It’s a par-
ody of the numerous “ultra-left” productions so characteristic
of the 1920s, when Meyerhold’s and Eisenstein’s shows were
provoking bitter polemics in the contemporary press. It goes
without saying that the Steam Whistle duo couldn’t let this spec-
tacle pass by in silence. The novel’s depiction of the show is
perhaps the most biting parody in the whole book.
It was Ilf who lived in “The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dor-
mitory,” in the little pencil-case of a room. The scene with the
Tatars who brought a horse into their room is an actual event
that Ilf’s sister-in-law mentions in her memoirs. It happened
xviii ✦ foreword
on Sretensky Lane, where the Ilfs shared an apartment with
the Oleshas.
Father Fyodor’s demands for money in his letters to his wife
(“Send money,” “Sell whatever you can,” and so forth) coincide
almost word for word with Dostoevsky’s continual pleas to his
wife. The priest’s signature, “Eternally your husband, Fedya,”
mimics the signature in one of the writer’s letters: “Eternally
your husband, Dostoevsky.” The book F. M. Dostoyevsky’s Letters
to His Wife came out not long before Ilf and Petrov began work
on their first novel.
There’s a lot of spontaneous merriment, mischievous play,
and witty insinuation in the novel. This isn’t that “laughter
through tears” so characteristic of, say, Gogol; it’s “laughter
through laughter.”
Readers were ecstatic over both the journal serialization of
the novel and the first book edition, which came out in the
middle of 1928. It was an instant, widespread success. Every-
day speech began to include not only individual phrases from
the novel, but words, epithets, and characters who’d instantly
become household names.
We publish The Twelve Chairs. First review in the Evening

[the newspaper Evening Moscow]. “They didn’t achieve
the heights . . .”13
Despite popular success, Ilf and Petrov’s work went almost un-
noticed by critics. When it was noticed, it was with extreme dis-
approval, which sounded something like this: “The authors’
satire founders on cheap entertainment and biting mockery.
Joking takes the place of jeering, and there’s not a whit of deep
hatred for the class enemy; the work is firing blanks.”14
foreword ✦ xix
Remembering these reviews later prompted a bitter re-
sponse from the coauthors: “If a writer should—God forbid!—
write something jolly, something along the line of, say, satire
or humor, then two critical earrings are immediately popped
into his pale ears: if it’s of a satirical bent, then it’s ‘The au-
thor didn’t achieve the heights of true satire and is just firing
blanks,’ and if it’s humorous, then it’s ‘toothless mockery.’ ”15
All the same, there was some support. One of the first to
support The Twelve Chairs was Vladimir Mayakovsky, who called
the novel “excellent” in 1928.16 And Osip Mandelstam stuck up
for the novel at the very beginning of 1929 when he appraised
it as “a political pamphlet bubbling over with merriment.” He
wrote, “I’ll give one good and truly embarrassing, comical ex-
ample of the ‘not-noticing’ of an excellent book. People from
all circles are literally choking with laughter when they read
a book by the young authors Ilf and Petrov called The Twelve
Chairs.”17
These voices were lone exceptions to the general critical
reception. But with time, the predominantly negative tone
changed. Even the Literary Encyclopedia (1930) was forced to
admit the book’s merits: “The skillful modeling of images, the
engaging action, and the sharp satire directed at various rep-
resentatives of the contemporary petite bourgeoisie make Ilf
and Petrov’s novel a significant work of contemporary humor-
ous literature.” An enthusiastic review of The Twelve Chairs ap-
peared in the Parisian literary newspaper Candide even before
V. Bienstock’s French translation of it was published; the re-
viewer had read the book in the original Russian.
The novel was published many times and continues to be
released today in various languages. It has been adapted for
the screen not only in Russia but in other countries.
xx ✦ foreword
The text of the novel fluctuated quite a bit. The initial version
of the novel, as serialized in the magazine 30 Days in 1928,
had thirty-seven chapters; this was significantly shorter than
Ilf and Petrov’s original manuscript, but they had to trim it
considerably to fit the space available in the magazine. For
the first book edition, published just a few months after the
serialization was completed, the coauthors put many of the
left-out scenes back in, so this edition had forty-one chapters.
After that, the authors had some time to sit down and really go
over the manuscript, editing out unnecessary repetitions and
length, resulting in a second book edition with forty chapters,
which has remained the canonical version of the novel’s text.
For example, the initial, serialized version of the novel
doesn’t have chapter 3 (“The Sinner’s Mirror”) or chapter 14
(“Breathe Deeper, You’re Excited!”), both of which are in the
canonical version of the novel’s text. In the serialized version,
chapter 16 (“Amid an Ocean of Chairs”) is folded into the fol-
lowing chapter, “The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dormitory.”
In fact, entire episodes, scenes, and phrases are absent from
the serialized version. But on the other hand, in that version,
chapter 30 (“The Author of ‘The Gavriliad’ ”) does include
“The Story of an Ill-Fated Love,” which was excluded from the
second book edition.
The second book edition, in turn, is missing the following
scenes (and this isn’t even counting all the smaller episodes):
a real-life story about a newspaper photographer who is sent to
take a picture of Newton on the occasion of his bicentennial;
the fantastical twist of the Mexican who demands to be admit-
ted to the chess tournament in New Vasyuki; the inset piece
about blue-eyed Clotilde and the hack sculptor; the parody of
well-known Moscow writers, inspired by Kataev’s novella The Em-
bezzlers (Rastratchiki); and the magnificent, sharply satirical chap-
ter “The Mighty Handful, or the Gold-Seekers” (chapter 31).
foreword ✦ xxi
Two chapters united under the title “The Registrar’s Past”
(chapter 5), which describe Vorobyaninov’s childhood, ado-
lescence, and adulthood, were published in 30 Days at the end
of 1928. But they never were included in the text of the novel;
editions generally added them at the end, in an appendix.
Now the American reader is being offered a version of the
text that includes all the interesting “excisions” I listed above.
And a question arises: if various episodes, images, and scenes
were rejected by the authors for various reasons, then to what
extent is it seemly for us to reinsert edits and reattach beheaded
chapters?
Actually, there’s no question of seemliness or infringement.
Everything here presented to the reader was written by Ilf and
Petrov personally, by their own hand. Passages that were once
rejected now fit smoothly into the canonical text of the novel
without disrupting the flow of reading; in fact, they even in-
crease reader interest in the book.
“The Twelve Chairs is a superb example of the comic novel. It’s
cheerful, funny, and touching, and has other excellent quali-
ties as well. There’s a real knowledge of life in it, and the cari-
cature and grotesque only underline this knowledge and make
the novel a full-fledged satire.” That’s Mikhail Zoshchenko.18
And now “the question to beat all questions” arises, the one
they were always asked: How on earth do you write together?
Here is how the writers replied:
People usually ask us entirely valid but exceedingly
monotonous questions regarding our nationalized
literary industry: “How do you write together?”
At first we answered at length, going into detail and
even telling people about the big argument we had over
xxii ✦ foreword
the following issue: should we kill Ostap Bender, the
protagonist of The Twelve Chairs, or leave him among the
living? We didn’t neglect to mention that the character’s
fate was decided by chance. We put two scraps of paper,
on one of which a trembling hand had drawn a skull and
two chicken bones, into the sugar bowl. The skull was
chosen, so within half an hour the smooth operator was
no more. He had his throat slashed with a razor.
Later, we started answering without length. We stopped
going into detail. Then we didn’t tell anyone about the
argument anymore. Finally, we got to where we were
answering without any inspiration at all: “How do we
write together? We just do. Like the Goncourt brothers.
Edmond runs around town talking to editors, while Jules
sits at home with the manuscript so friends don’t steal it.”19
They’re kidding, of course. But if we want to be serious about

it, then here’s their answer:
In the beginning, when we began to write together, we
didn’t just write every word sitting side by side or facing
each other at a table (it was something like two pianists,
playing a show on two pianos): we even wrote business
correspondence together and went around to all the
editorial offices and publishers together.20
After ten years of collaboration, we worked out a
single literary style and a single literary taste. It was a
perfect melding of spirits.21
Slavicist Omry Ronen writes,

We ended up with an eternally fresh double name, with
catchphrases like the ones the Russian language has
preserved since the days of Krylov, Griboyedov, Gogol,
and Saltykov-Shchedrin, with these everlasting books,
an essential part of an immortal literature. Ilf and
foreword ✦ xxiii
Petrov have long been the people’s writers, and now
“Ilfopetrovistics” is becoming a popular pursuit.22
Many people have written and spoken about Ilf and Petrov’s
novels. But among these numerous pronouncements figures
one of exceptional interest: that of Vladimir Nabokov. This
great aesthete and snob, who held a supercilious, disdainful
opinion of his “brothers of the pen”—especially those of the
Soviet period—calls Ilf and Petrov “wonderfully gifted writers”
and their works “absolutely first-rate.”23 He confers upon the
coauthors the title of “joint authors of genius” and numbers
them among “such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevsky,
Chekhov, and Zoshchenko.”24 In the story “Torpid Smoke,”
Nabokov includes The Twelve Chairs in the list of “favorite books
that at one time or another had done [the protagonist’s] heart
good.”25
I’d like to conclude my short foreword with another com-
ment from the writer:
I think that on a certain level, at a certain height,
humor loses its tether to national shores and becomes
as cosmopolitan as talent. The humor of Raymond
Queneau, whom I admire, the humor of Ilf and Petrov,
the humor of a few contemporary English writers such
as Anthony Burgess or Graham Greene: all this is the
humor of a single family, the great family of talent.26
Notes
1. The astonishingly prolific Dumas was well known for using (even
overusing) ghostwriters, or nègres littéraires. Kataev’s designation of Ilf
and Petrov as his own literaturnye negry is not just a neutral description
of them as ghostwriters, however, since both the original term and the
Russian calque have an additional pejorative, racially insensitive over-
tone of “working like black slaves.”—Trans.
xxiv ✦ foreword
2. Valentin Kataev, Almaznyi moi venets. Izbrannoe (Moscow: Eksmo,
2003), 434.
3. Evgenii Petrov, “Iz vospominanii ob Il’fe,” in Georgii Munblit and
Alexandr Raskin, eds., Vospominanii ob Il ’e Il ’fe i Evgenii Petrove (Mos-
cow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963), 11.
4. Ibid., 18.
5. Ibid.
6. Evgenii Petrov, “Moi drug Il’f,” ed., comm. Aleksandra Il’f (Mos-
cow: Tekst, 2001), 27.
7. Petrov, “Iz vospominanii ob Il’fe,” 19–20.
8. Petrov, “Moi drug Il’f,” 24.
9. Petrov, “Iz vospominanii ob Il’fe,” 21.
10. Kataev, Almaznyi moi venets, 437.
11. Ibid., 140–43.
12. Semyon Gekht, “Sem’ stupenei,” in Georgii Munblit and Alex-
andr Raskin, eds., Vospominanii ob Il ’e Il ’fe i Evgenii Petrove (Moscow:
Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963), 116.
13. Petrov, “Moi drug Il’f,” 31.
14. I. Sitkov, “Obzor zhurnala 30 dnei,” Kniga i revoliutsiia no. 8
(1929).
15. Kholodnyi filosof (pseud. Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov), “Otdaite
emu kursiv!” Literaturnaia gazeta no. 24, May 29, 1932.
16. Vladimir Maiakovskii, “Vystuplenie na sobranii FOSP 22 dek-
abria 1928 g.,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 13-i tomakh, vol. 12 (Mos-
cow: GIKhL, 1959), 367.
17. Osip Mandelstam, “Veer gertsogini,” Vechernii Kiev, January 29,
1929.
18. Mikhail Zoshchenko, “Satirik-publitsist. K godovshchine so dnia
smerti Il’i Il’fa,” Literaturnaia gazeta no. 31, April 15, 1938.
19. Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, “Ot avtorov,” in Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii
Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii v 5-i tomakh, vol. 2 (Moscow: GIKhL, 1961), 7.
The article “Ot avtorov” is Ilf and Petrov’s authorial foreword to Zolotoi
telenok (The Little Golden Calf ).
20. Evgenii Petrov, “Iz vospominanii ob Il’fe: K piatiletiiu so dnia
smerti,” in Georgii Munblit and Alexandr Raskin, eds., Vospominanii ob
Il ’e Il’fe i Evgenii Petrove (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963), 329.
21. Petrov, “Iz vospominanii,” 12.
22. Omry Ronen, “Otstuplenie,” in Iz goroda Enn (Saint Petersburg:
Izdatel’stvo zhurnala “Zvezda,” 2005), 141.
foreword ✦ xxv
23. Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: Vintage Interna-
tional, 1990), 87.
24. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire: A Novel (New York: Vintage Interna-
tional, 1989), 155.
25. Vladimir Nabokov, “Torpid Smoke,” in The Stories of Vladimir
Nabokov (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 394–95.
26. Vladimir Nabokov, interview with Pierre Dommergues in Les
langues modernes 62, no. 1 ( January–February 1968): 101.
xxvi ✦ foreword
Translator ’s In t r o d u c t io n
There are several reasons for a new translation of Ilf and

Petrov’s 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs. First of all, neither of
the two extant English translations (from 1930 and 1961)
capture the humor of the original, nor are they true enough
to the text. Second, there are several textual variants of the
novel; this one, which was re-created from archival materials
by Alexandra Ilf, Ilya Ilf ’s daughter, is the fullest and there-
fore the most representative of Ilf and Petrov’s grand satirical
sweep. Third, the novel is a veritable encyclopedia of realia of
Soviet everyday life, but these realia are now so historically and
culturally distant that even Russophone readers need further
commentary to understand them and appreciate their satiri-
cal bent. This English translation is the first to provide notes
helping the English-speaking reader to do the same. There
are several Russian commentaries available on both The Twelve
Chairs and its sequel, The Little Golden Calf, most notably those
of Yury K. Shcheglov. In my notes I have indicated where I
relied on these, on the commentaries of Mikhail Odessky and
David Feldman, or on other sources.
The fourth reason for a new translation is to disprove the
stubborn misconception that Ilf and Petrov’s wit, particularly
as embodied in their legendary con man, Ostap Bender, is
somehow inaccessible to foreigners. Quite the contrary: much
of the novel’s humor is situational and even slapstick, and is
therefore fairly universal (the Father Fyodor story arc, for ex-
ample). Still, the novel is primarily a satirical one, and trans-
lating satire is always a risky venture, since trying to explain
narrowly topical jokes often robs them of their verve. I sought
to honor both levels of humor, and simultaneously to provide
✦ xxvii ✦
for two different reading audiences, by providing notes for
those readers who want the extra information but making the
translation itself a text that can be enjoyed by all readers—
even those with no previous knowledge of early Soviet Russia.
The transliteration system used in this book needs some
explanation. Names are given in the text in a modified, sim-
plified transliteration that will be more familiar to most readers
(Dmitry instead of Dmitrii, Mayakovsky instead of Maiakovskii,
Vaska instead of Vas’ka, and so forth), but in notes and cita-
tions, all Russian phrases and names will be given in modified
Library of Congress transliteration.
The wide-ranging nature of this novel required me to get
help from many people, whose input improved the transla-
tion markedly and saved me from many blunders. Still, it goes
without saying that any mistakes or lapses are mine. For their
help with specialized topics I thank Jonathan Bolton, Emma
Garkavi, Seth Graham, John Hope, Stephanie Lucas at the
Benson Ford Research Center, Clay Maier at the Kentucky
Horse Park, Joe Peschio, Janneke van de Stadt, Andrey
Ukhov, and Sarah Womack. In addition, Alexander Barbukh,
Boris Briker, Alexander Burak, Alice Nakhimovsky, Andrei
Prokofiev, Larissa Rudova, Mila Shevchenko, Sergei Sychov,
Dmitry Voevoda, Anatoly Vorobey, and Boris Wolfson were
kind enough to answer my seemingly endless questions. For
their careful reading and comments I am indebted to Stephen
Dodson, who writes the blog Languagehat, and Mikhail Viesel.
Alexandra Ilf was, as always, generous far above and beyond
the call of duty. And thanks also to my husband, Derek Mong,
whose editorial eye and poetic ear made all the difference.
xxviii ✦ translator’s introduction

The Twelve Chairs
✦ Part One ✦
The Lion of Stargorod
1
Bezenchuk and the Nymphs
in the provincial town of N. there were so many barbershops

and funeral parlors that it seemed as though the town’s inhab-
itants were born solely to get a shave and a haircut, freshen up
with some Vegetal, and then promptly expire. But in actuality,
people were born, shaved, and died fairly rarely in the pro-
vincial town of N. The town led the quietest of lives. Spring
evenings were ravishing, mud sparkled in the moonlight like
anthracite, and all the town’s young men were so smitten with
the secretary of the Communal Services Committee chairman
that it kept her from collecting membership dues.
Questions of love and death didn’t concern Ippolit Matvee-
vich Vorobyaninov, although by the very nature of his job he
presided over these questions daily from nine to five, with a
half-hour break for something to eat.
In the mornings, after drinking his portion of warm milk
out of a frosted, veined glass handed to him by Claudia Iva-
novna, he would walk out of his little house, still half-dark,
and into Comrade Gubernsky Street, a spacious street full of
fierce spring sunlight. It was the pleasantest of all the kinds of
streets one encounters in provincial towns. The silver coffins
of The Nymph, an undertaker’s outfit, gleamed behind green-
ish, wavy glass on the left-hand side of the street. On the right-
hand side, the dusty, boring oak coffins of master coffin-maker
Bezenchuk lay morosely behind small windows with crumbling
putty. A little farther on, Master Barber Pierre and Constan-
✦ 5 ✦
tine promised its customers nails polished and permanent
waves done in your home. Still farther down was a hotel with
a beauty salon. In a large, empty plot behind it stood a straw-
colored calf, lovingly licking a rusted sign leaned up against a
lonely, awkward gate:
the YOU ARE ALWAYS WELCOME funeral home.
Even though there were many funeral depots, their clien-

tele was modest. You Are Always Welcome had gone out of
business three years before Ippolit Matveevich had settled in
the town of N., while the craftsman Bezenchuk was a hard
drinker and once had even tried to hock his best display coffin
in the pawnshop.
People in the town of N. seldom died, and Ippolit Matvee-
vich knew this better than anyone else, because he worked in
the Office of Vital Statistics, where he presided over the death
and marriage registration desk.
The desk at which Ippolit Matveevich worked looked like
an old headstone. Rats had destroyed its left corner. Its puny
legs shook under the weight of swollen, tobacco-colored file
folders with entries from which one could extract all the facts
on the townspeople’s genealogies and the family trees that
had sprung from the poor provincial soil.
On Friday, the fifteenth of April, 1927, Ippolit Matveevich
woke up at seven thirty as usual, and immediately thrust his
nose into an old-fashioned pince-nez with a gold nosepiece.
He didn’t wear glasses. Still, one day Ippolit Matveevich had
decided that wearing a pince-nez was unhygienic, so he went
to the optician’s and bought frameless glasses with gilded ear-
pieces. He liked the glasses from the start, but his wife (this
was not long before her death) thought that he looked exactly
like Milyukov in them, and so he gave them to the dvornik.
Although the dvornik was not nearsighted, he got used to the
glasses and wore them with pleasure.
6 ✦ the lion of stargorod

“Bonjour! ” Ippolit Matveevich sang to himself, setting his
legs down on the floor. Bonjour! indicated that Ippolit Matvee-
vich had woken in a good mood. A Gut Morgen on rising usu-
ally meant that his liver was complaining, that fifty-two years is
no joke, and that the weather had been wet lately.
Ippolit Matveevich poked his spindly legs into his prewar,
tailor-made trousers, tied the ankle-laces, and sank his feet
into short, soft boots with narrow, square noses. Five minutes
later he boasted a lunar vest sprinkled with little silver stars
and a shiny lustrine jacket. Ippolit Matveevich wiped off the
dewdrops that clung to his gray temples after washing his face,
wiggled his mustache fiercely, tested his stubbly chin indeci-
sively, and ran a brush through his close-cut aluminum hair.
Then, smiling courteously, he moved toward the woman who’d
just entered the room: his mother-in-law Claudia Ivanovna.
“Eppole-e-et,” she thundered. “I saw an horrible dream today.”
The word “horrible” was pronounced with a French accent.
Ippolit Matveevich glanced down his nose at his mother-in-
law. His full height extended to over six feet. From that alti-
tude it was easy and convenient to treat his mother-in-law with
a certain amount of disdain.
Claudia Ivanovna continued, “I saw my late Marie with her
hair down, wearing a gold sash.” The iron lamp, with its shot-
filled weight and dusty glass tchotchkes, shook from the can-
nonade of Claudia Ivanovna’s voice.
“I am quite distressed! I’m afraid something’s going to
happen.”
The last few words were spoken with such force that the
square, close-cropped hair on Ippolit Matveevich’s head blew
back in different directions. He frowned and said, articulating
clearly, “Nothing is going to happen, maman. Did you already
pay the water bill?”
It turned out that maman had not. His galoshes hadn’t been
cleaned, either. Ippolit Matveevich didn’t like his mother-in-
bezenchuk and the nymphs ✦ 7

law. Claudia Ivanovna was stupid, and her advanced age left no
room to hope she might ever become smarter. She was exceed-
ingly miserly, and it was only Ippolit Matveevich’s poverty that
prevented this thrilling sensation from developing any further.
Her voice was possessed of such strength and resonance that
Richard the Lion-Hearted (whose shouts, as everyone knows,
could make warhorses cringe) would have envied her. In ad-
dition—and this was the worst of all—Claudia Ivanovna had
dreams. She had them all the time. She saw girls with sashes,
horses encased in sheaths of gold dragoon piping, dvorniks play-
ing on harps, archangels in watchmen’s sheepskin coats hold-
ing their rattles and walking their nightly rounds, and knitting
needles that jumped around the room all by themselves, mak-
ing a troubling ringing sound. Claudia Ivanovna was a silly old
fool. On top of all that, a mustache had grown underneath her
nose. Each side of it looked like a shaving brush.
Ippolit Matveevich left home slightly annoyed. Master coffin-
maker Bezenchuk stood at the entrance to his shabby estab-
lishment, arms folded, leaning against the doorpost. Due to
the systematic failures of his commercial undertakings and the
long-term internal use of strong drink, the craftsman’s eyes
were bright yellow, like a tomcat’s, and burned with an un-
quenchable flame.
“My respects to the honored guest!” he burst out in rapid
fire, as soon as he saw Ippolit Matveevich. “A good morning
to you.”
Ippolit Matveevich lifted his stained beaver hat politely.
“How is your dear mother-in-law’s health, if I may be so bold
to ask?”
“Hmm, mmmm, er,” said Ippolit Matveevich vaguely. He
shrugged his square shoulders and proceeded on his way.
“Well, God keep her good and healthy,” said Bezenchuk
bitterly. “We’re running on pure losses these days, dadgum
it!” Recrossing his arms, he leaned back against the door.

Ippolit Matveevich was held up again at the gates of the un-
dertaker’s outfit The Nymph. It had three proprietors. They
bowed in unison to Ippolit Matveevich and inquired with one
voice as to his mother-in-law’s health.
“She’s fine, just fine, what could happen to her!” answered
Ippolit Matveevich. “Today she dreamed about a golden girl
with her hair loose. That’s the kind of vision she had in her
sleep.”
The three “nymphs” exchanged a glance and heaved a loud
sigh.
All these conversations delayed Ippolit Matveevich on his
way, so that, contrary to his usual practice, he arrived at his
workplace when the clock hanging above the slogan leave
when you’ve done your work showed five minutes after
nine.
Everyone in the office called Ippolit Matveevich Maciste
because of his height and, especially, his mustache, although
the real Maciste didn’t have a mustache. Ippolit Matveevich
took a dark-blue felted cushion from his desk drawer, placed
it on his chair, imparted the proper position to his mustache
(parallel to the surface of the table), and sat on the cushion,
where he loomed slightly over all three of his coworkers. Ip-
polit Matveevich employed the blue felt not out of concern
for hemorrhoids, but out of concern over wearing out his
trousers.
Two young people, a man and a damsel, shyly followed all
the government office worker’s machinations. The man, in a
broadcloth jacket lined with batting, was completely intimi-
dated by the official work atmosphere, the smell of alizarine
ink, the clock that breathed heavily and often, and especially
the stern placard leave when you’ve done your work. Even
though the man in the jacket hadn’t even begun doing his
work, he already felt like leaving. He thought the work he’d
come to do so insignificant that he was embarrassed to dis-

turb such a prominent gray-haired citizen as Ippolit Matvee-
vich over it. For his part, Ippolit Matveevich knew perfectly
well that the visitor’s business was minor and that it could wait.
Therefore, he opened binder No. 2, twitched his cheek, and
became absorbed in his papers. The damsel, wearing a long
coat embroidered with shiny black laces, whispered with the
man for a little while and then, growing warm from shame,
slowly approached Ippolit Matveevich.
“Comrade, where is the . . .” she said.
The man in the jacket sighed joyfully and then, so suddenly
he surprised even himself, barked, “Register a union!”
Ippolit Matveevich looked attentively at the railing behind
which the couple stood. “Birth? Death?”
“Register a union,” repeated the man in the jacket, looking
confusedly around him.
The damsel burst into a giggle. Everything was going fine.
Ippolit Matveevich got down to work as deftly as a magician. He
wrote the newlyweds’ names in thick books with his old wom-
an’s handwriting; he sternly interrogated the witnesses, whom
the bride had run out into the courtyard to fetch; he breathed
long and lovingly on the square stamps; and he stood half-
way up from his chair to press them onto the worn passports.
As he accepted the newlyweds’ two rubles and handed them
their receipt, Ippolit Matveevich grinned and said, “For the
completion of the sacrament.” Then he straightened up to his
full, marvelous height, puffing up his chest out of habit (he’d
been known to wear a corset in his day). Thick yellow rays of
sunlight lay on his shoulders like epaulettes. His bearing was a
little comic, but quite ceremonial. The double-concave lenses
of his pince-nez shone the bright white of a searchlight. The
young people stood there like sheep.
“Young people,” Ippolit Matveevich announced loftily, “al-
low me to congratulate you, as they used to say, on the occasion
of your lawful wedded union. It’s very pleasant, ver-r-ry pleas-

ant to see young people like you walking hand in hand toward
the achievement of eternal ideals. Very, ver-r-ry pleasant.”
Upon delivering this tirade, Ippolit Matveevich shook the
newlyweds’ hands, sat down, and continued reading papers
from binder No. 2, exceedingly pleased with himself.
The office workers at the next table snorted into their
inkwells.
The calm flow of the workday began. No one disturbed
the death and marriage registration table. Through the win-
dow one could see citizens, shivering from the spring chill,
wandering back to their homes. Exactly at noon, the rooster
from the Plow and Hammer Co-op crowed. This surprised no
one. Then the metallic quacking and shrieking of an engine
could be heard. A thick column of purple smoke rolled out
from Comrade Gubernsky Street. The shrieking intensified.
Soon the outline of the district executive committee car, Gov’t
No. 1, with its tiny radiator and cumbersome body, appeared
through the smoke. Wallowing in the mud, the automobile
crossed Staropanskaya Square and disappeared, swaying, in a
cloud of poisonous smoke. Office workers continued to stand
by their windows for a long time, commenting on the event
and linking it to a possible workforce reduction. A little while
later, master craftsman Bezenchuk came carefully down the
wooden gangways. He skulked all over town for days at a time,
inquiring whether anyone had died.
It was time for the obligatory half-hour break for a midday
bite to eat. A juicy chomping resounded. They chased a little
old lady who’d come to register her dear little grandson all the
way back out to the middle of the square.
Sapezhnikov the copyist struck up the same old series of
hunting stories that everyone already knew inside and out.
The stories all boiled down to the fact that it is not only pleas-
ant, but essential, to drink vodka while hunting. Getting any-
thing else out of the copyist was impossible.

“Well then, sir,” Ippolit Matveevich said ironically. “You were
just so kind as to tell us that you’d cracked open those two half
bottles. So what happened then?”
“What happened then? Well, that’s just what I’m saying, that
when you’re out for hare you need to use large shot . . . So,
anyway. Grigory Vasilievich lost a bottle to me on that . . . And
so then we finished off that bottle and tossed back a hundred-
grammer, too. That’s what we did.”
Ippolit Matveevich gave an annoyed “ahem” and said, “So
what about the hares? Did you use large shot on them?”
“Now just wait a minute, don’t interrupt. So then Donni-
kov comes up in a cart and what does he have under the hay
back there, the tramp, but a whole goose, a quarter of grain
alcohol . . .”
Sapezhnikov guffawed, showing his light-pink gums.
“The four of us, we put that goose to rest and go to sleep,
all the more so since you have to go out as soon as it’s light to
hunt. The next day we get up. It’s still dark, it’s cold . . . in a
word, we got the cold shivers. Then I find I’ve got half a bottle
left. We drink that. But we can tell it’s not enough. We’re shak-
ing, we’re roaring—horrors! So a peasant woman brought us
a snort, there’s a sorceress in the village there, she sells grain
alcohol . . .”
“But when did you do any hunting, if you’ll allow me to
inquire?”
“We hunted then, at the same time . . . And oh, what hap-
pened to Grigory Vasilievich! I never throw up, if you want to
know . . . and I even had a little stinker, too, just to loosen up.
But Donnikov, that tramp, goes off in his cart again. ‘Don’t
go anywhere, fellows,’ he says, ‘I’ll be right back with a little
something.’ So he brings something back, of course. A bunch
of forty-grammers, the Hammer was out of everything else. We
even gave some to the dogs . . .”
“What about the hunt? How was the hunt?” everyone yelled.

“Now what kind of hunting could we do with drunk dogs?”
Sapezhnikov said, offended.
“Little boy!” Ippolit Matveevich whispered indignantly as he
walked back to his table.
With this, the obligatory midday break came to an end.
The workday was drawing to a close. In the neighboring bell

tower, yellow with white trim, someone started ringing the bells as
hard as he could. The windowpanes shook. Jackdaws poured out
of the bell tower, held a swift meeting over the square, and sped
away. The evening sky congealed over the deserted square.
A bearded, redheaded policeman wearing a service cap and
a shaggy-collared sheepskin coat came into the office. He care-
fully carried a small delivery book in a grease-stained canvas
cover under his arm. Shyly thumping his elephantine boots on
the floor, the policeman went over to Ippolit Matveevich and
leaned his big chest against the frail little railing.
“Hello, comrade,” the policeman said in a thick, rich voice
as he produced a large document from the delivery book. “The
comrade director sent this over to you, to submit for your dis-
pensation, for you to register it.”
The piece of paper read thus:
Official memo
To the Office of Vital Statistics
Comrade Vorobyaninov! Please do me a favor. I’ve just had a

son. At 3:15 this morning. So you just go on and register him
for me without all that red tape, so I don’t have to wait in line.
My son’s name is Ivan, and he’s got my last name.
With Communist greetings,

District Police Force Vice-Director Perervin.

Ippolit Matveevich hurried. He registered the District Police
Force child without all that red tape, and also without any wait-
ing in line (all the more so since there never was one in the
office).
The policeman reeked of tobacco as badly as Peter the
Great did, and the delicate Ippolit Matveevich only breathed
freely again after the policeman left.
It was time for Ippolit Matveevich to leave, too. Everything
that was meant to be born on that day had been born and
entered into the thick books. Everyone who wanted to com-
plete their marriage rites had been married and also entered
into the thick books. The only thing there hadn’t been any
incidences of, to the coffin-makers’ evident ruin, was death.
Ippolit Matveevich put away his file folders, tucked his felt
cushion back in his drawer, and fluffed his mustache with a
comb. Dreaming of a steaming bowl of soup, he was on the
verge of leaving when the office door burst open and master
coffin-maker Bezenchuk appeared on the threshold.
“My compliments, dear guest!” Ippolit Matveevich said with
a smile. “What’s the news?”
Although the craftsman Bezenchuk’s crazed face glowed
in the advancing gloom, he wasn’t capable of saying a single
word.
“Well?” Ippolit Matveevich said, more strictly.
“Is that Nymph really going to give you a solid product,
dadgum it?” the coffin-master said vaguely. “Can she really sat-
isfy the customer? A coffin, why, a coffin takes a lot of wood,
and that’s just for starters . . .”
“What?” Ippolit Matveevich asked.
“You know, the Nymph! That’s three whole families living
off one little business. They don’t use good materials, and their
finishing isn’t as nice, and their tassels are stringy, dadgum it!
But me, now, I’m an old firm. I was founded in 1907. A coffin

from me is slick as a whistle, a real select item, for people who
know their coffins . . .”
“What are you, crazy or something?” Ippolit Matveevich
asked curtly, heading for the exit. “You’re losing your mind
out there with your coffins.”
Bezenchuk threw the door open courteously, let Ippolit
Matveevich go first, and followed him, shaking as if from im-
patience. “Back when You Are Always Welcome was around,
then it’s true. Not a single firm, not even in Tver, could hold
a candle to its brocade, dadgum it. But these days, I’ll tell it to
you straight: there’s nothing better than my product. Don’t
even bother looking.”
Ippolit Matveevich spun around in a fury, gave Bezenchuk
a long, angry glare, and started walking a little faster. Even
though nothing unpleasant had happened to him today at
work, he still felt fairly vile.
The three proprietors of The Nymph were standing by
their establishment in the very same poses Ippolit Matveevich
had left them in that morning. It seemed that they hadn’t ex-
changed a single word since then, but the striking change in
their faces showed that they knew something significant.
At the sight of his commercial enemies, Bezenchuk waved
his hand in despair, came to a halt, and whispered after Vo-
robyaninov, “I’ll let you have it for just thirty-two rubles!”
Ippolit Matveevich frowned and walked faster.
“You can even have it on credit!” Bezenchuk added.
The three proprietors of The Nymph didn’t say a word.
They just rushed silently after Vorobyaninov, continually doff-
ing their hats on the run and bowing politely.
Ippolit Matveevich, good and truly angered by the coffin-
makers’ stupid advances, ran up the stairs to the porch more
quickly than usual. Annoyed, he scraped the mud off his boots
onto the top step and walked into the outer hall, experienc-

ing strong twinges of appetite. Father Fyodor, the priest of the
Saints Frol and Lavr Church, came steaming hot out of the
room toward him. Holding his skirts in his right hand, Father
Fyodor swept past Ippolit Matveevich to the door without pay-
ing him the slightest attention.
At this point, Ippolit Matveevich noticed an excessive clean-
liness, a new, glaringly evident disorder in the arrangement of
the few pieces of furniture, and a tickling in his nose from a
strong medicinal smell. In the first room Ippolit Matveevich
met the neighbor, Madame Kuznetsova, the agronomist’s wife.
She waved her arms and hissed, “She’s worse, she just had con-
fession. Father Fyodor just left. Don’t stomp your boots.”
“I’m not stomping,” Ippolit Matveevich said obediently.
“But what happened?”
Madame Kuznetsova pursed her lips and pointed at the
door to the second room. “A very serious heart attack.”
Obviously repeating someone else’s words that had im-
pressed her with their significance, she added, “We can’t rule
out the possibility of a fatal outcome. I’ve been on my feet all
day. I came over this morning for the meat grinder, and I look
and the door’s open, so I just thought, well, Claudia Ivanovna
went out for some flour for Easter cakes. Lately she’s been
meaning to. Flour these days, you know how it is, if you don’t
buy enough beforehand . . .”
Madame Kuznetsova would have gone on talking for a long
while about flour, the high cost of living, and how she found
Claudia Ivanovna lying deathly still next to the tile stove, but
a groan from the next room pierced Ippolit Matveevich’s ears
painfully. He quickly crossed himself with a half-numb hand
and walked into his mother-in-law’s room.

2
The Demise of Madame Petukhova
claudia ivanovna lay on her back with one arm tucked un-
derneath her head. Her head was in a bonnet of an intense
apricot color, the kind that was fashionable some year back
when women wore Chanticler dresses and had only begun
dancing an Argentinian dance called the tango.
Claudia Ivanovna’s face was ceremonially solemn, but ut-
terly blank of expression. Her eyes gazed at the ceiling.
“Claudia Ivanovna!” Vorobyaninov called.
His mother-in-law quickly started moving her lips. But
instead of the booming noises, as if from the depths of the
plumbing, that he was used to, he heard a moan that was so
quiet, thin, and pathetic that his heart clenched. With surpris-
ing quickness, a shining tear rolled from his eye and slid down
his face like mercury.
“Claudia Ivanovna,” Vorobyaninov repeated. “What’s the
matter?”
But again, he received no answer. The old lady closed her
eyes and collapsed slightly to one side.
The agronomist’s wife came quietly into the room and led
him away by the hand, like a little boy who’s being taken to
wash up.
“She’s asleep. The doctor ordered her not to be disturbed.
I’ll tell you what, my dear man. Run on over to the pharmacy.
Here, take the prescription, and find out how much ice bags
cost.”
✦ 17 ✦
Ippolit Matveevich completely submitted to Madame Kuz-
netsova, sensing her indisputable superiority in such matters.
It was a long way to run to the pharmacy. Clutching the pre-
scription in his fist like a schoolboy, Ippolit Matveevich rushed
out into the street. By then, it was almost dark. Set off against
the dwindling dusk he could make out the frail figure of the
master coffin-maker Bezenchuk, who was leaning against a gate
of fir wood chasing a shot with bread and onion. The three
Nymphs were crouched on their heels right next to him eating
buckwheat kasha from an iron pot and licking their spoons. At
the sight of Ippolit Matveevich the coffin-makers stood at at-
tention, like soldiers. Bezenchuk gave an offended shrug and
gestured toward his competition, muttering, “They’re getting
all tangled underfoot, dadgum it.”
Lively discussions of the news about Claudia Ivanovna’s grave

illness were being held in the middle of Staropanskaya Square,
next to the little bust of the poet Zhukovsky with in the holy
dreams of earth, poetry is god inscribed on the plinth. The
townsfolks’ general opinion came down to “we’ll all be there
someday” and “God hath granted, God hath taken away.”
The barber Pierre and Constantine (who nevertheless an-
swered readily to the name Andrey Ivanovich) didn’t let this
chance to display his expertise in the medical field, which he’d
gleaned from the Moscow magazine Ogonek, go by.
Andrey Ivanovich said, “Contemporary science has achieved
the impossible. Get this: let’s say that a pimple pops up on a
client’s cheek. Before, it could even go so far as a blood infec-
tion, but people are saying that in Moscow these days—and I
don’t know if this is true or not—there’s a separate, sterilized
brush for every client.”
The citizens heaved a long sigh.

“You just stretched the truth there a bit, Andrey!”
“Who’s ever heard of having a separate brush for each per-
son! He’s making it up!”
Prusis, the former proletarian of mental labor who was now
a street vendor, even got annoyed: “Allow me, Andrey Ivano-
vich, but in Moscow, according to the latest census data, there
are more than two million residents? So they’d need more
than two million brushes, then? That’s a new one.”
The conversation was taking on a heated tone, and might
have turned into devil knows what, if Ippolit Matveevich hadn’t
shown up at the end of Osypnaya Street.
“There he goes, off to the pharmacy again. Things are go-
ing bad, then.”
“The old lady’s going to croak. Bezenchuk’s not running
around completely beside himself for nothing.”
“What’s the doctor say?”
“What doctor! Are those government insurance quacks
really doctors? They’d bring a healthy person to death’s door!”
Pierre and Constantine had been trying for some time now
to make another observation on a medical subject. He spoke,
looking around fearfully. “Now hemoglobin’s the only thing
that can help.”
Having said this, Pierre and Constantine went quiet.
The townsfolk went quiet too, each pondering the mysteri-
ous powers of hemoglobin in his own way.
When the moon rose and illuminated the miniature bust of
Zhukovsky with its minty light, one could plainly make out the
short curse-word written in large chalk letters on its brassy back.
A similar inscription had appeared on the bust for the first
time on the fifteenth of June, 1897, the night immediately fol-
lowing the bust’s dedication ceremony. And no matter how
hard the representatives of the Tsarist police, and then the
Soviet police, had tried, they couldn’t keep the abusive inscrip-
tion from reappearing promptly every day.
the demise of madame petukhova ✦ 19

Samovars were already singing away inside little wooden
houses with rustic shutters. It was suppertime. The citizens
weren’t about to stand around wasting time, so they dispersed.
The wind blew.
Meanwhile, Claudia Ivanovna was dying. First she would ask
for something to drink, then she said she needed to get up
and fetch Ippolit Matveevich’s good shoes from the leather
repair shop, next she’d complain about the dust, which, ac-
cording to her, could choke a person, and finally, she’d ask for
all the lights to be turned on.
Ippolit Matveevich, now fed up with worrying, was pacing
the room. He kept having unpleasant thoughts about the busi-
ness he’d have to take care of now. He thought of how he’d
have to take a loan from the office’s mutual aid fund, run for
the priest, and answer relatives’ letters of condolence. Ippolit
Matveevich went out onto the porch to distract himself a little.
The master coffin-maker Bezenchuk stood there in the moon’s
green light.
“So how would you like it, Mister Vorobyaninov?” asked the
craftsman, pressing his cap to his chest.
“All right, why not,” Ippolit Matveevich answered morosely.
“Is that Nymph really going to give you a good product,
dadgum it?” Bezenchuk fretted.
“Just go to hell! I’m sick of this!”
“I’m not doin’ nothing. I’m just asking about tassels and
brocade. How should I do it up, dadgum it? Primo, first class?
Or what?”
“No tassels and no brocade of any kind. A simple wooden
coffin. Pine. Got it?”
Bezenchuk laid a finger to his lips, indicating that he got
everything. Then he turned around and headed for home,
balancing with his hat, but staggering all the same. Only then
did Ippolit Matveevich notice that the master craftsman was
dead drunk.

Once again, Ippolit Matveevich was oppressed by an unusually
vile feeling. He couldn’t imagine coming home to a deserted,
unkempt apartment. He thought that with his mother-in-law’s
death, he would be deprived of all the little comforts and habits
he’d worked hard to create for himself after the Revolution,
which had stolen away his large comforts and grand habits.
“Should I get married?” Ippolit Matveevich thought. “But to
whom? The chief of police’s niece? To Prusis’s sister Varvara
Stepanovna? Or maybe I should just hire a maid? Not a chance!
She’d just drag me into court all the time. And it’s not cheap.”
Life abruptly went dark for Ippolit Matveevich. He went in-
side again, brimming with indignation and disgust for every-
thing in general.
Claudia Ivanovna wasn’t delirious anymore. She lay propped
up high on pillows. As Ippolit Matveevich walked in, she gave
him a look that was entirely coherent and, he thought, even
stern.
“Ippolit,” she said distinctly, “sit next to me. I have to tell
you something . . .”
Ippolit Matveevich sat next to her, displeased, and scrutinized
his mother-in-law’s sunken, mustached face. He tried to smile
and say something encouraging. But the smile came out horri-
bly, and he couldn’t find any encouraging words at all. Only an
awkward squeak burst from Ippolit Matveevich’s throat.
“Ippolit,” his mother-in-law repeated. “Do you remember
our parlor set?”
“Which one?” asked Ippolit Matveevich with the kind of
courtesy that is only possible with very sick people.
“That one . . . upholstered in English chintz . . .”
“Oh, the one back in my house?”
“Yes, in Stargorod.”
“I remember, I remember it very well . . . A couch, a dozen
chairs, and a round six-legged table. It was magnificent furni-
ture, Gambs furniture. But what made you think of it?”

But Claudia Ivanovna couldn’t answer. A sulfuric color
slowly started washing over her face. For some reason, it took
Ippolit Matveevich’s breath away, too. He clearly remembered
the parlor in his mansion, the symmetrically arranged walnut
furniture with curved legs, the spotlessly scrubbed and waxed
floor, the antique brown piano, and the black oval frames on
the walls holding daguerreotypes of highly ranked relatives.
Then Claudia Ivanovna said, in a wooden, indifferent voice,
“I sewed my diamonds into the seat of a chair.”
Ippolit Matveevich glanced at the old woman out of the cor-
ner of his eye. “What diamonds?” he said automatically, but then
caught himself. “Weren’t they taken away during the search?”
“I hid my diamonds in a chair,” the old woman repeated
stubbornly.
Ippolit Matveevich leaped out of his chair. After one look
at Claudia Ivanovna’s stony face, illuminated by the kerosene
lamp, he realized that she wasn’t delirious.
“Your diamonds!” he shouted, frightened by the power of
his own voice. “In a chair? Who gave you that idea? Why didn’t
you give them to me?”
“How could I have given them to you, when you squandered
my daughter’s entire fortune?” the old woman said calmly and
acidly.
Ippolit Matveevich sat down, but immediately sprang back
up. His heart was noisily sending gushes of blood through his
entire body. He started hearing a hollow roar.
“But you took them out, right? You have them?”
The old woman shook her head. “I didn’t have time. You
remember how quickly we had to escape, with no warning.
They were left in the chair that stood between the terra-cotta
lamp and the fireplace.”
“But this is just insane! How like your daughter you are!”
Ippolit Matveevich shouted at full voice. No longer caring that

he was at someone’s deathbed, he shoved the chair aside with
a clatter and started pacing the room.
The old woman observed Ippolit Matveevich’s actions in-
differently.
“But do you have even the slightest idea of where those
chairs could’ve ended up? Or maybe you think they’re just
standing there cool as cucumbers in the parlor in my house,
waiting until you come to retrieve your r-r-regalia?”
The old woman didn’t answer.
The Office of Vital Statistics registrar was so angry that his
pince-nez fell off. Its gold nosepiece glinted once by his knees,
then crashed to the floor. “How could you! Sticking seventy
thousand in diamonds in a chair! A chair that anybody on
earth could be sitting on!”
At this point Claudia Ivanovna let out a sob and heaved her
whole body over to the edge of the bed. Her hand described a
half circle in the air as she tried to clutch Ippolit Matveevich,
but it fell abruptly onto the purple quilted blanket.
Squealing in fear, Ippolit Matveevich rushed to his neigh-
bors’. “I think she might be dying!”
The agronomist’s wife crossed herself in a businesslike way
and, without hiding her curiosity, ran with her bearded agron-
omist husband over to Ippolit Matveevich’s house. Vorobyani-
nov himself, dazed, wandered over to the town park.
And so, while the agronomical pair and their servant
cleaned up the late woman’s room, Ippolit Matveevich walked
around the park without his pince-nez, bumping into benches
and mistaking couples numb with early spring love for bushes.
There was no telling what the hell was going on inside Ippolit
Matveevich’s head. Gypsy choirs sounded forth, bosomy all-
girl orchestras performed the Amapá tango without pause,
and in his mind’s eye he saw the Moscow winter and a sleek
black pacer grunting disdainfully at passersby. He saw many

things in his mind’s eye, such as orange, ravishingly expensive
long underwear, and a lackey’s devotion, and a possible trip
to Cannes.
Ippolit Matveevich started walking faster, but suddenly
stumbled over master coffin-maker Bezenchuk’s body. The
craftsman was lying across the park path, sleeping in his sheep-
skin coat. He woke up from the jolt, sneezed, and stood with
alacrity.
“Hang on a minute now, don’t you worry, Mister Vorobyani-
nov,” he said hotly, as if he were continuing a conversation just
recently begun. “A coffin, now, a coffin needs a craftsman’s
hand.”
“Claudia Ivanovna died,” the customer informed him.
“Well, the Kingdom of Heaven to her, then,” agreed Be-
zenchuk. “So the old lady’s departed this life, then . . . Old
ladies, they always depart this life. Or they give up their souls
to God—it depends on the old lady. Yours, for example, was
short and had a bit of flesh to her, so she departed this life. But
a different lady, who’s a little more important, who’s a little bit
thinner, well, everybody says that a lady like that gave up her
soul to God.”
“I don’t follow—who says that? Who is this everybody?”
“We say it. Us craftsmen. So now you, for example, you’re a
prominent man, of an elevated height, although a bit skinny.
For you, if you were to, God forbid, up and die, we’d say that
you cashed in your chips. But a fellow who’s a merchant, used
to belong to the traders’ guilds, a fellow like that would meet
his Maker. And then somebody a little less high up, like maybe
a dvornik, or somebody from a peasant family, well we say
about him that he kicked the bucket or stretched out his legs
for good. But when the powerful ones up and go, train con-
ductors or somebody from management, then we say that they
gave up the ghost. That’s what they say about them, all right:
‘Have you heard? We had one give up the ghost.’ ”

Astonished by this odd classification of human deaths, Ip-
polit Matveevich asked, “Well, when you go, what will your
craftsmen say about you?”
“I’m a little person. They’ll say ‘Bezenchuk fizzled.’ And
they won’t say another word about it.” He added sternly, “It’s
out of the question for me to give up the ghost or cash in my
chips. Me, I’m a small-time customer . . . So, how do you want
me to do up the coffin, Mister Vorobyaninov? You’re not really
setting it out without any tassels or brocade, are you?”
But Ippolit Matveevich, who had sunk once more into daz-
zling dreams, didn’t answer and kept walking. Bezenchuk fol-
lowed him, counting something on his fingers and, as was his
habit, mumbling.
The moon had vanished a long time ago. It was cold as win-
ter. Brittle wafers of ice were forming over the puddles again.
The wind was fighting with the shop signs on Comrade Gu-
bernsky Street, which the traveling companions entered. With
the sound of a metal shop shutter being pulled down, a fire
wagon with stick-thin horses drove onto the street from the
direction of Staropanskaya Square.
Firemen, their helmeted heads wobbling, sat with their can-
vas legs hanging off the wagon and sang, with intentionally
off-putting voices, “Glory to our brigade captain! Glory to our
dear Comrade Nasosov!”
“They’ve been whooping it up at Kolka’s wedding, he’s the
brigade captain’s son,” said Bezenchuk indifferently, scratch-
ing his chest under his sheepskin coat. “But you don’t really
want me to do it up without any brocade or anything, do you?”
At that precise moment, Ippolit Matveevich made up his
mind. “I’ll go and find it,” he decided. “And then . . . well, we’ll
see.” In his diamond daydreams, even his late mother-in-law
seemed nicer than she really had been. He turned to Bezen-
chuk and said, “To hell with you! All right! With brocade! And
tassels!”

3
The Sinner’s Mirror
after hearing the dying Claudia Ivanovna’s confession, Fa-

ther Fyodor Vostrikov, priest of the Frol and Lavr Church, left
Vorobyaninov’s home in a very excited state. The whole way
back to his apartment he looked around absently, with a shy
smile. By the end of his trip his distraction was so complete
that he was almost run over by the district executive commit-
tee car, Gov’t No. 1. Father Vostrikov made his way out of the
purple fog emitted by the hellish machine and grew so utterly
distressed that he completed the rest of his journey in a friv-
olous half gallop, notwithstanding his respected station and
middle age.
Katerina Alexandrovna, his wife, was setting the table for
supper. Father Fyodor liked eating supper early on days he
didn’t have to do the evening services. But today the reverend
father took off his hat and warm, batting-lined cassock and, to
his dear little mother’s surprise, ran straight to the bedroom.
He locked himself in and started singing “It Is Truly Meet.”
His wife sat down on a chair and whispered fearfully, “He’s
up to something again! It’ll all end like it did with Nerka.”
Nerka was the name of the French bulldog bitch Father
Fyodor had bought for twenty rubles at the Myussky market
in Moscow. Father Fyodor had got it into his head to cross the
lady bulldog with the district executive committee secretary’s
barrel-chested, thick-flewed, eternally sneezing dog, take the
✦ 27 ✦
select pair’s periodic offspring to Moscow, and sell them to
admirers at a profit.
The priest’s wife cried out at the sight of the dog and an-
nounced resolutely that she would not allow a “stud farm.”
However, Father Fyodor was impossible to deal with. After
three days of fighting, Katerina Alexandrovna gave in and
Nerka’s upbringing began. They fed the dog on three differ-
ent plates. Square bits of boiled meat lay on one plate, cream
of wheat on another. Father Fyodor ladled some kind of nasty
mash onto the third plate, insisting that it contained a high
percentage of phosphorus. Nerka blossomed from the healthy
food and gentle upbringing and attained the age necessary to
produce posterity. Father Fyodor supervised the dog and had
long discussions with the town’s most prominent dog lovers,
mourning only the fact that he couldn’t chat with the district
executive committee secretary, whom everyone knew to be a
real expert on dog-breeding.
Finally Nerka was adorned with a dandified, feathered new
collar very reminiscent of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra’s
bracelet, and Katerina Alexandrovna took three rubles and
led the sweet-smelling bride to her award-winning groom.
The happy prince met the delightful Nerka with a tender
barking that could be heard all over town.
Father Fyodor sat at the window and waited impatiently for
the young lady’s return. The well-fed figure of Katerina Alex-
androvna appeared at the end of the street. About seventy-five
yards from the house she stopped to chat with a neighbor lady.
Nerka, tethered by a string, absentmindedly described rings,
figure eights, and parabolas around her owner. Every so often
she sniffed the bottom of the nearest guard post.
But a moment later the pride of ownership that filled Father
Fyodor’s soul was replaced by indignation, and then by horror.
Marsik, a large, one-eyed dog known up and down the whole
street for his depravity, trotted swiftly around the corner. He

gave a wave of his tail, which lay curled tightly on his back, and
leaped up to Nerka with impure intentions.
Father Fyodor hopped up and down on his chair from in-
dignation. Katerina Alexandrovna was distracted by her con-
versation and didn’t notice any of what was happening behind
her back. Vostrikov was horrified and ran out into the street,
taking a stick from the entryway as he did so. The scene that
confronted him was full of drama. Katerina Alexandrovna was
running around the dogs squealing “Go away! Go away! Go
away!” and beating Marsik’s mighty back with her umbrella.
The dog didn’t pay her the slightest attention. His thoughts
were far away. Father Fyodor started up a terrible shouting
while he was still a ways off and raced to save his future wealth,
but it was too late. The thoroughly beaten Marsik hopped away
on three legs.
Back home, there was a big, painful scene, garnished with
many painful details. The priest’s wife cried. Father Fyodor
fumed in silence and looked disgustedly at the defiled dog.
There was still a faint hope that Nerka’s posterity would take
after the district executive committee line.
In due time, Nerka gave them six excellent, big-flewed,
barrel-chested puppies that were pure bulldog. One little de-
tail spoiled them: every puppy had a big, black, fluffy tail that
lay tightly curled on its back. Those pretzel-shaped tails de-
stroyed any chance of selling the litter for profit. They gave the
puppies away. Nerka was subjected to strictest seclusion and,
once again, they waited for the litter. Every night, and also ev-
ery morning, noon, and evening, the depraved Marsik walked
slowly back and forth under Father Fyodor’s windows, howling
pitifully, his single insolent eye boring into the glass.
Notwithstanding a regimen of strict incarceration and an
additional three rubles spent on the secretary’s dog, the sec-
ond generation looked even more like the tramp Marsik. One
puppy even came out with just one eye. The street mutt’s suc-
the sinner’s mirror ✦ 29

cess was utterly inexplicable. All the same, the third installment
of puppies (there were twelve) all turned out to be miniature
Marsiks. The only thing they took from the visits to the district
executive committee prizewinner was his bowlegs.
Father Fyodor was so upset he wanted to sue, but since Mar-
sik had no owner, there was no one to sue. That was the end
of the “stud farm” and his dream of a constant, reliable source
of income.
Father Fyodor’s impetuous soul knew no peace. It never
had, neither when he was Fedya, ward of the seminary school,
nor when he was Fyodor Ivanych, mustached seminarian. Vo-
strikov switched from seminary to university and finished the
first three years of the law faculty, but in 1915 he got scared
of being mobilized and returned to the spiritual line of work.
First he was ordained as a deacon, then he was consecrated to
the sacred office of priest and assigned to the provincial town
of N. And throughout all these stages of his spiritual and lay
career, Father Fyodor had always been, and now remained, a
money-grubber.
Father Fyodor dreamed of owning his own candle factory.
Tormented by the sight of large factory drums winding up
thick ropes of wax, Father Fyodor invented various projects
that were supposed to provide both basic and floating capital
for the purchase of a little factory in Samara he’d long had his
eyes on.
Ideas struck Father Fyodor without warning, and he would
immediately put them into action. He began boiling up mar-
bled blocks of laundry soap. He boiled up dozens of pounds of
it, but even though the soap had a very high percentage of fat,
it didn’t make any suds. On top of that, it cost three times more
than the Plow and Hammer’s. Later the soap got wet and sat in
the entryway for a long time, disintegrating, to the point that
whenever Katerina Alexandrovna walked past it she burst into
tears. Then, afterward, they dumped the soap in the cesspit.

Once he read in some animal husbandry magazine that rab-
bit meat is as tender as a spring chicken’s, that rabbits repro-
duce in large numbers, and that raising them can bring the
careful owner more than a little profit. So Father Fyodor im-
mediately acquired half a dozen breeders. In just five months,
Nerka the dog, spooked by the incredible numbers of large-
eared creatures filling the house and courtyard, lit out for di-
rections unknown. But the damned residents of the town of
N. turned out to be extremely conservative and exhibited a
rare unanimity in refusing to purchase the Vostrikovs’ rabbits.
Then Father Fyodor had a talk with his wife and decided to
embellish their menu with rabbit, whose meat is superior in
taste to that of spring chickens. They made roasts, meatballs,
and croquettes out of rabbit; they boiled them in soups, served
them cold for lunch, and baked them into babki. This didn’t
amount to anything. Father Fyodor calculated that even if they
switched exclusively to rabbit rations, the family could eat no
more than forty animals a month, while the monthly offspring
would be ninety, which number would increase monthly in
geometric progression.
Then the Vostrikovs decided to give home-cooked dinners.
That entire evening Father Fyodor sat with a copying pencil
writing advertisements for tasty home-cooked dinners (always
prepared with fresh butter) on neatly cut pieces of squared
paper. The advertisement began with the words Cheap and
Tasty. Late one night the priest’s wife filled an enamel bowl
with flour paste and Father Fyodor stuck up ads on telegraph
poles and around government offices.
The new enterprise was a huge success. Seven people showed
up the first day, including Bendin, the military office registrar,
and Kozlov, the head of the town improvement department,
whose efforts had resulted in the demolition of the city’s only
historical monument (the Triumphal Arch dating back to Em-
press Elizaveta’s reign), because, according to him, it inter-

fered with traffic. They all liked the dinner very much. The
next day, fourteen people showed up. Father Fyodor and his
wife couldn’t skin rabbits fast enough. Everything went mag-
nificently for a week, and Father Fyodor had already begun
thinking about opening a furrier’s outfit (without a motor),
when a completely unforeseeable event occurred.
The Plow and Hammer Co-op, which had been closed for
inventory for three weeks, opened. Huffing and puffing from
effort, the counter clerks rolled a barrel of spoiled cabbage
out into their back courtyard, adjoining Father Fyodor’s, and
dumped it into the cesspit. The rabbits, attracted by the pi-
quant odor, converged on the pit. By the next morning, plague
struck the gentle rodents. It only raged for three hours, but it
brought down two hundred and forty breeders and all their
countless offspring.
Stupefied, Father Fyodor quieted down for two whole
months. His spirits lifted only now, as he came back from Vo-
robyaninov’s house and, to his dear little mother’s surprise,
locked himself in the bedroom. Everything pointed to the fact
that Father Fyodor had had another idea that was consuming
him body and soul.
Katerina Alexandrovna knocked on the bedroom door with
the knuckle of one finger. There was no answer. The singing just
got louder. The door opened after a minute, and Father Fyodor’s
face, with its girlish rosy cheeks, appeared in the crack.
“Hurry now, Mother, give me the scissors,” Father Fyodor
said quickly.
“But what about supper?”
“Never mind. Later.”
Father Fyodor grabbed the scissors, locked himself in again,
and walked up to the wall mirror in its scratched black frame.
The antique folk art picture The Sinner’s Mirror, printed
from a brass plate and pleasantly colored by hand, hung next
to the mirror. The Sinner’s Mirror had been especially comfort-

ing to Father Fyodor after the bad luck with the rabbits. The
lubok clearly proved the frailty of all earthly things. Along the
top of it ran four drawings that were meaningful and calming
to the spirit, labeled underneath in ornamental Slavic writ-
ing: “Shem God praises, Ham wheat raises, Japheth’s power
amazes. Death all razes.” Death had a scythe and a winged
hourglass. Death looked as though it were made of prostheses
and orthotic devices and stood with its legs wide apart on the
barren, hilly ground. Its expression clearly said that the bad
luck with the rabbits was just a trifle.
Father Fyodor smiled and, watching himself carefully in
the mirror, began trimming his handsome beard. Hair fell on
the floor, the scissors squeaked, and five minutes later Father
Fyodor realized that he hadn’t the slightest idea how to trim
a beard. His beard ended up slanted to one side. It looked
unseemly, even suspicious.
Father Fyodor lingered at the mirror for a little while lon-
ger. Then he got fed up, called in his wife, and held the scis-
sors out to her. Annoyed, he said, “At least you can help me,
Mother dear. I just can’t make head or tails of this mop.”
The mother dear was so astounded that she put both hands
behind her. “What have you done to yourself?” she finally said.
“I haven’t done anything. I’m trimming my hair. Please,
help me. Right here it looks like it’s a little lopsided . . .”
“Oh my Lord,” Father Fyodor’s wife said, taking a stab at his
locks. “You weren’t really planning on going over to the Reno-
vationists, were you?”
Father Fyodor was pleased with this new turn in the con-
versation.
“And why shouldn’t I go over to the Renovationists, Mother?
What’s wrong with them? Aren’t they people too?”
“Of course they are, they’re people too,” his wife agreed
caustically. “Certainly they are. Running after their illusions,
paying their alimony . . .”

“Well, then, I’m going to run after illusions, too.”
“Be my guest, run.”
“I will run.”
“You’ll run yourself straight into trouble. Take a good look
in the mirror.”
And in truth, there it was: a lively, black-eyed physiognomy
with a small, wild beard and an absurdly large mustache gazing
back at Father Fyodor.
They began trimming the mustache, bringing it down to a
proportional size.
What Father Fyodor did next shocked his dear little mother
even more. He announced that he had to leave on business
that very night, and demanded that Katerina Alexandrovna
run to see her brother, the baker, and borrow his brown duck-
billed cap and overcoat with the sheepskin collar for a week.
“I’m not going anywhere!” the little mother announced,
and burst into tears.
Father Fyodor paced the room for half an hour, talking
nonsense and frightening his wife by how much his face had
changed. The only thing she understood was that Father Fyo-
dor had cut his hair for absolutely no reason, that he wanted
to go off to parts unknown in that stupid cap, and that he was
leaving her.
“I’m not leaving you,” Father Fyodor insisted. “I’m not leav-
ing you, I’ll be back in a week. After all, a man can have busi-
ness to take care of. Right? Can he or can’t he?”
“He can’t,” his wife said.
Father Fyodor, a man meek in his dealings with loved ones,
even had to bang his fist on the table. Although he did this
carefully and awkwardly, since he’d never done it before, he
still scared his wife, who threw on an Orenburg headscarf and
ran over to her brother’s for some civilian clothes.
Once he was left alone, Father Fyodor grew thoughtful for a
minute and said, “It’s hard for women, too.” Then he pulled a

little trunk bound in tin out from under the bed. Little trunks
like this are most often to be found in the possession of Red
Army men. They are lined with striped wallpaper and crowned
by a portrait of Budyonny or the front of a box of Beach pa-
pirosy depicting three beautiful women lounging on the gravel-
strewn shore of Batumi. Much to Father Fyodor’s displeasure,
the Vostrikovs’ little trunk was also lined with glued-on por-
traits, but these depicted neither Budyonny nor the Batumi
beauties. The priest’s wife had stuck photographs cut out from
the magazine The War Chronicle of 1914 all over the inside of
the little trunk. There were The Siege of Przemyśl, The Dis-
tribution of Warm Clothes to the Lower Ranks at Their Posts,
and all kinds of things.
Father Fyodor took out the books that were on top (a full
set of the magazine Russian Pilgrim from 1903, the enormously
thick History of the Schism, and the pamphlet A Russian in Italy
with a smoking Vesuvius printed on the cover), laid them on
the floor, reached down to the very bottom of the little trunk,
and pulled out his wife’s worn old bonnet. Squinting at the
smell of naphthalene that suddenly burst from the trunk, Fa-
ther Fyodor ripped open the lace and stitching and pulled a
heavy linen sausage out of the bonnet. The sausage contained
twenty gold ten-ruble pieces, all that was left of Father Fyodor’s
commercial adventures.
He hiked up the hem of his cassock in a habitual gesture
and thrust the sausage into the pocket of his striped pants.
Then he walked over to the chest of drawers and pulled fifty
rubles in three- and five-ruble notes out of an old candy box.
Twenty rubles were left.
“That’s enough to pay the bills,” he decided.

4
The Muse of Distant Travel
an hour before the arrival of the evening mail train, Fa-

ther Fyodor, holding a reed basket and wearing a short over-
coat that barely covered his knees, stood in line at the ticket
window looking timidly at the entrance doors. He was afraid
that his dear little mother would disobey his command and
run over to the train station to see him off, for then the street
vendor Prusis, who was sitting in the station buffet with the tax
inspector he’d just treated to a beer, would recognize him right
away. Father Fyodor kept glancing with wonder and shame at
his striped trousers, revealed for all laypeople to see.
An agent of the Traffic and Transportation Division of the
GPU strolled slowly around the hall, pacified a shouting match
that arose over places in line, and started rounding up the
homeless children who’d had the nerve to go into the halls for
first- and second-class passengers and play “There Once Was a
Country Named Russia, a Mighty State” on wooden spoons.
The man in the ticket window, a stern citizen, fussed with
his ticket-punches for a long time, punching lacy numerals
into tickets and, to the amazement of the entire line, giving
small change back in actual money, not in stamps for the chil-
dren’s charity.
Boarding the train with no reserved seating was a scandal-
ous affair, as usual. Passengers bent double under the weight
of enormous sacks were running from the head of the train to
its tail, and from the tail to the head. Father Fyodor, dazed, ran
✦ 37 ✦
with everyone else. He talked to conductors ingratiatingly, just
like everyone else, and he was afraid the man in the ticket win-
dow had given him the wrong ticket, just like everyone else,
and it was only after he’d finally been let into his train car
that he regained his usual equanimity and even started feeling
cheerful.
The engine shrieked in a sonorous voice and the train
moved off, carrying Father Fyodor away to distant, unknown
horizons on business that, although enigmatic, clearly prom-
ised a large return.
The railroad right-of-way is an interesting piece of work.
Once he enters it, even the most everyday, ordinary citizen
experiences a certain anxiety and quickly turns into either a
passenger, or a recipient of goods, or just a ticketless bum who
casts a pall over the life and work of conductors’ brigades and
platform guards.
The minute a citizen steps into the railroad right-of-way—
which he, a dilettante, calls a stop or a train station—his life
changes abruptly. Yermak Timofeeviches in their white aprons
with nickel-plated badges over their hearts instantly gallop up
to him and obligingly pick up his baggage. And from that mo-
ment on, the citizen no longer belongs to himself. He is a pas-
senger, and begins to perform all the duties thereof. These
duties are highly complex, but pleasant.
The passenger eats a lot. Mere mortals don’t eat late at
night, but the passenger eats even though it’s nighttime. He
eats fried spring chicken (which is expensive for him), hard-
boiled eggs (which are bad for his digestion), and black olives.
When the train bursts through the switch points, numerous
teakettles clank on their shelves next to the bouncing spring
chickens that have been divested of their legs (which the pas-
sengers have ripped out by the root) and wrapped in newspa-
per. But the passengers notice none of this. They are telling
jokes. Regularly, every three minutes, the entire train car splits

its sides with laughter. Then there’s a silence, and a velvety
voice delivers the following joke:
An old Jew is dying. His wife is there, his kids.
“Is Monya here?” the Jew is barely able to ask.
“Yes.”
“Did Aunt Brana come?”
“She came.”
“Where’s Grandmother? I don’t see her.”
“She’s standing right there.”
“What about Isaac?”
“Isaac is here.”
“And the children?”
“Look, all the children are here.”
“Then who’s left to mind the store?!”
That very second the teapots begin clanking and the spring
chickens, disturbed by the thunderous laughter, fly down onto
the top bunks. But the passengers don’t notice. Each cherishes
a sacred joke, which, trembling, awaits its turn. The next per-
former pokes his neighbors with his elbows and shouts plead-
ingly, “I heard a good one!” With difficulty, he gains everyone’s
attention and begins:
This one Jew comes home and gets into bed next to his wife.
Suddenly he hears something scraping around under the bed.
The Jew sticks his hand down under the bed and asks, “Is that
you, Rover?”
And Rover licks his hand and answers, “It’s me!”
The passengers die laughing, the dark night covers the fields,
sparks fly twisting and turning out of the engine’s smokestack,
and the thin semaphore gantries with their glowing green
glasses rush punctiliously by, looking out over the train.
The railroad right-of-way is an interesting piece of work!
Heavy long-distance trains run to all corners of the land. Every-
the muse of distant travel ✦ 39

where the way lies open for them. There are green lights all
over: the coast is clear. The polar express goes up to Murmansk.
Bent and hunched on its switch points, the K-One leaps out of
Kursk Station, breaking the trail to Tbilisi. The Far East cou-
rier train curves around Lake Baikal, racing at full speed to-
ward the Pacific Ocean.
The muse of distant travel beckons to people. She’s already
ripped Father Fyodor out of his quiet local cloister and thrown
him into Lord only knows what other provinces. Ippolit Ma-
tveevich Vorobyaninov, formerly a marshal of the gentry, now
a registrar of the Office of Vital Statistics, has already been
struck to the very quick and has started thinking the devil
knows what.
People get swept off all over the country. One person finds
himself a beaming bride ten thousand kilometers away from
where he works. Another quits his mail and telegraph division
and runs off like a schoolboy to the Aldan on a treasure hunt.
But a third just keeps on sitting around at home, tenderly
stroking his full-blown hernia and reading the works of Count
Salias, which he got for five kopeks instead of a ruble.
The second day after the funeral, whose organization mas-

ter coffin-maker Bezenchuk courteously took upon himself,
Ippolit Matveevich went off to work. As a duty entrusted to
him by his office, he registered with his own hand the demise
of Claudia Ivanovna Petukhova, age fifty-nine, housewife, no
Party affiliation, residing in the provincial town of N., and
issuing from the Stargorod Province nobility by birth. Then
Ippolit Matveevich secured the two-week leave guaranteed by
law, received his forty-one rubles of leave wages, said his good-
byes to his coworkers, and headed for home. On the way he
stopped by a pharmacy.

The druggist Leopold Grigorievich, referred to as Lipa by
family and friends, stood surrounded by milky jars of poison
behind a red lacquered countertop. He was getting annoyed
as he tried to sell the fire chief’s sister-in-law
Ango Crème, which prevents sunburn and freckles, and
lends the skin an exceptional whiteness.
However, the fire chief’s sister-in-law was demanding

Rachel Powder, in a golden color that lends the body an
even tan of the kind unattainable in Nature.
But the pharmacy only had “Ango Crème to prevent sunburn.”

The battle of two such diametrically opposed products of the
cosmetics industry lasted for half an hour. In the end it was
Lipa who won, by selling the fire chief’s sister-in-law a lipstick
and a “bedbugovar” (a contraption built on the same prin-
ciple as a samovar, but that looks like a watering can).
“So, what do you think of Shanghai?” Lipa asked Ippolit
Matveevich. “I wouldn’t want to be in that particular settle-
ment right now.”
“The English are all swine,” Ippolit Matveevich answered.
“They deserve it. They’ve always sold Russia out.”
Leopold Grigorievich shrugged sympathetically, as if to say,
Who hasn’t sold Russia out? and got down to business. “What
would you like?”
“Something for my hair.”
“To grow it, get rid of it, or color it?”
“As if I need to grow it!” Ippolit Matveevich said. “To
color it.”
“We have Titanic, a splendid preparation for coloring hair.
It came over from customs. Contraband. It doesn’t wash out
with either cold or hot water, or soapsuds, or kerosene. A radi-
cally black color. A bottle lasting you six months costs three ru-
bles, twelve kopeks. I’m recommending it to you as a friend.”
the muse of distant travel ✦ 41

Ippolit Matveevich turned the little square bottle of Titanic
in his hands, looked at the label with a sigh, and laid his money
on the counter.
“They’ll take all of Henan soon, those Cantonese,” Lipa
said, by way of farewell. “Shantou, I know they will. Right?”
Ippolit Matveevich returned home and started pouring Ti-
tanic over his head and mustache with disgust. A stench spread
through the apartment.
After dinner the stink let up a little, and his mustache dried
and clumped together, so that he could only comb it through
with great difficulty. The radically black color turned out to
have a slight green tint, but he had no time to dye his hair
again. Ippolit Matveevich took the list of valuables he’d found
the night before in his mother-in-law’s jewelry box, counted
his money again, and locked the apartment. Then he tucked
the keys in his back pocket, boarded the express No. 7, and
left for Stargorod.

5
The Registrar’s Past
during MASLENITSA of the year 1913, an event took place in

Stargorod that outraged the community’s progressive circles.
That Thursday evening, a grandiose program was in progress
in the luxuriously finished halls of the café chantant Salve:
The World-Famous Juggling Troupe

10 Arabs!
With Staens, the Most Magnificent Phenomenon of the
Twentieth Century:
Mysterious! Inscrutable! Monstrous!!!
Staens, the Human Puzzle!
Inas, the Stupendous Spanish acrobats!
Brezina, the Diva from the Parisian Theater
Folies Bergère!
The Drafir Sisters, and Other Numbers
The Drafir Sisters (there were three) dashed around the

tiny stage with a backdrop depicting a view of Versailles and
sang, in a Volga accent:
Before you now we flit and float
As light as birds, as gauze,
✦ 43 ✦
We make our audiences gloat,
The world gives us applause.
After performing these couplets, the sisters flinched, took each

other’s hands, and roared out the refrain as loud as they could
to the ever-intensifying piano accompaniment:
We flit about the stage,

We know no sorrow or care.
Be he idiot or sage,
Every man knows who we are.
The desperate dancing and bewitching smiles of the Drafir

trio had not the slightest effect on the progressive circles of
Stargorod society. These circles (represented in the café chan-
tant by Charushnikov, a member of the town Duma, and his
lady cousin; Angelov, a merchant of the first guild, sitting mer-
rily with two lady cousins clothed in pale yellow; the town ar-
chitect; the town doctor; three landowners; and many other,
less distinguished people, both with lady cousins and without)
saw the Drafir trio off the stage with funereal smatterings of
applause and then applied themselves once more to the de-
lights of “a family-style gala dinner with Mumm Champagne
Cordon Vert for two rubles per individual.”
On the tables, attractive light-blue menus stuck up out of
special silver-plated stands. The contents of the menus, which
caused a drunken boredom to descend on the merchant An-
gelov, were seductive and unusual for the young man of about
seventeen who was sitting right by the stage with an inexpen-
sive, very mature lady cousin.
The young man reread the menu again: “Zander paupiettes.
Roast poussin. Pickles. Soufflé glacé Jeanne d’Arc. Mumm
Champagne Cordon Vert. Live flowers for the ladies.” He
mentally weighed various sums known only to himself, then
timidly ordered supper for two individuals. It wasn’t half an

hour later that the sobbing young man (whom the merchant
Angelov loudly recognized as Dmitry Markelovich, the baker’s
son, dressed in mufti instead of his gymnasium uniform) was
being led out by the old lackey Pyotr. The lackey was mutter-
ing indignantly, “If you don’t have the money, why order fruit
. . . It’s not listed in the menu, there’s a special price for it.”
The lady cousin, coquettishly wrapped in her cat-fur stole with
its black paws, walked behind him, swaying her bottom first
to the right, then to the left. The merchant Angelov joyfully
shouted “D student! You were held back a year! I’ll tell your
papa! You’ll have a nice little benefit performance then!” after
the disgraced student.
The boredom cast over everyone by the Drafir Sisters’ per-
formance vanished without a trace. The famous mademoiselle
Brezina, with her shaved armpits and heavenly little face, slowly
came out on stage. The diva was arrayed in ostrich feathers.
She neither sang nor told stories. She didn’t even dance. She
walked grandly around the stage looking sweetly at the audi-
ence, and gave piercing shrieks while simultaneously knock-
ing a wire pince-nez off the nose of her partner, a colorless,
mustached gentleman, with the tip of her divine foot. Angelov
and the town architect, a shaven-headed little old man, were
beside themselves.
“Show us what you’ve got!” Angelov shouted in a terrible
voice.
Charushnikov, one of the town Duma members, was stung
to the quick by the fairy from the Folies Bergère. Breathing
heavily, he stood up from his table, aimed, and threw a coiled
paper streamer at the stage. It uncoiled only halfway before
it hit the lovely diva right in the chin. Unfeigned merriment
took hold of the hall. Champagne was ordered. The town
architect wept. The landowners insistently invited the town
doctor to come hunt on their lands. The orchestra played a
flourish.
the registrar’s past ✦ 45

At the peak of joy, loud voices rang out. The orchestra went
quiet, and the architect, the first to turn toward the entrance,
gave a cough, then started to applaud. Into the hall strode
Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, the district marshal of the
nobility, a well-known wastrel and bon vivant, arm in arm with
two completely naked ladies. An officer of the law walked be-
hind them, holding the multicolored trappings that had, evi-
dently, comprised the attire of Ippolit Matveevich’s unclothed
companions.
“Excuse me, Your High Nobleness, but it is my official
duty . . .” the officer was saying in a trembling voice.
The naked ladies looked curiously at everyone. A commo-
tion was beginning in the hall. The only one to rise to the oc-
casion was Angelov.
“My dear fellow! Ippolit Matveevich!” he shouted. “You
eagle! Let me kiss you.”
“It is my official duty,” the officer said, surprisingly firmly.
“The rules don’t allow it!”
“Excuse me, sir?” Ippolit Matveevich asked in a tenor voice.
“And just who are you?”
“Law officer Yukin of the sixth ward, Sadovaya station.”
Ippolit Matveevich said, “Mister Yukin, run over to the po-
lice chief’s and report that you’ve gotten on my nerves. And
then you can go and do whatever it is you need to do as part
of your official duty.”
Ippolit Matveevich and his companions proudly continued
to a private room. The worried maître d’hôtel, the merchant
Angelov (by now completely wild), and the Salve’s owner him-
self promptly raced over to it.
This event, which agitated the progressive circles of Star-
gorod society, ended up the way all such events do, with a
twenty-five-ruble fine and a little piece in the local liberal pa-
per The Public’s Thoughts with the careful title “The Adventures

of a Marshal.” The piece was written in an elevated style and
began like this:
In our blessed town, every event is a sensation!
And who is mixed up in every sensation, as though on
purpose, but: influential figures!!!
The article, in which Ippolit Matveevich’s initials were men-

tioned, ended with the inevitable “The times have been worse,
but they’ve never been so mean.” It was signed by The Danish
Prince, a popular local writer of feuilletons.
That same day, a general functionary in the mayor’s office
called the editorial office and courteously asked “Mister Dan-
ish Prince” to come to the mayor’s office at four to explain
himself. The Danish Prince abruptly grew melancholy and was
unable to complete his latest feuilleton. At the appointed time,
the crowned head of journalism was sitting in the mayor’s re-
ception room, confused. He was wondering how he, who stut-
tered so badly that not even a course of treatment by Professor
Feinstein could cure him, was going to explain anything to the
mayor, a hot-tempered man who didn’t know the first thing
about how a newspaper was run.
The mayor peered with particular pleasure into The Danish
Prince’s bluish face as the latter struggled vainly to pronounce
words that were unusually difficult for him: “Your High Excel-
lency.” The conversation ended with the mayor standing up
from the table and saying, “If writing such things makes you
stutter like this, then for your own peace of mind, I’d recom-
mend that you not write about them anymore.”
The Danish Prince, who by then had managed to master the
words “Your High Excellency,” started hissing especially stub-
bornly. He allowed himself a smile and almost turned himself
inside out as he forced out an answer: “B-b-b-but I always-s-s
s-s-s-stutter!”

The Prince’s wit came at a fairly high price. The newspaper
paid a hundred-ruble fine and didn’t write anything about Ip-
polit Matveevich’s subsequent adventures.
Unexpected acts had been typical for Ippolit Matveevich
since he was small.
Ippolit Matveevich was born in 1875 in the Stargorod dis-
trict on his father Matvey Alexandrovich’s estate. His father
was a passionate devotee of pigeons. While his son grew up,
had childhood diseases, and worked out his first opinions on
life, Matvey Alexandrovich raced pigeons, stirring them up
with a long bamboo pole. In the evenings he sat wrapped in
his housecoat writing essays about his favorite birds’ varieties
and habits. The roofs of all the buildings on the estate were
covered with a brittle carpet of pigeon droppings. Frederick,
Matvey Alexandrovich’s favorite pigeon, and his wife Manka
resided in a separate, well-appointed pigeon loft.
In his ninth year the boy was sent to the preparatory class
of the Stargorod gymnasium for nobles, where he learned that
apart from such handsome, pleasant items as a pencil-case, a
creaking, fragrant leather knapsack, pictures on tracing pa-
per, and enchanting trips down the polished handrails of the
gymnasium staircase, there were also such things as Fs, Ds, D
pluses, and Cs with two minuses.
Ippolit found out that he was better than other boys during
his entrance exams in mathematics. Ippolit didn’t give an an-
swer to the question of how many apples he’d have if he took
three apples out of his left pocket and nine out of his right
one, put them all together, and divided by three, because he
couldn’t figure out the answer. The examiner was on the verge
of giving Vorobyaninov, Ippolit, a D, when the priest sitting
at the examination table heaved a sigh and informed them,
“That’s Matvey Alexandrovich’s son, a very chipper lad.” The
examiner gave Vorobyaninov, Ippolit, a C, and the chipper lad
was accepted.

There were two gymnasiums in Stargorod, the regular school
and the school for nobles. The pupils of the noble gymnasium
harbored deep enmity toward the students of the regular gym-
nasium. They called them pencils and were proud of their own
round uniform caps with a red band. Because of these, they,
in turn, received the insulting nickname eggplants. More than
one pencil had been granted a martyr’s crown of shiners and
eye patches at the hands of vengeful eggplants. The embit-
tered pencils lay in wait to round up individual eggplants and,
hooting, barraged the noble brats with their long-range sling-
shots. One eggplant, caught alone, ran off into a side street,
his knapsack shaking. He sat, pale and with only one galosh,
for quite a long time in the entryway of some building. The
victors took the other galosh captive and threw it onto the roof
of a three-story building, the tallest in town.
There were also cadets in Stargorod, whom the gymnasium
students called boots, but they lived in their own building two
versts out of town. There, according to the eggplants, they led
mysterious, even legendary, lives.
Ippolit envied the cadets, their light-blue shoulder stripes
with the carelessly stenciled green monogram of Alexander,
and their badges with eagles affixed to them. But since, by his
father’s wishes, he was deprived of the opportunity to receive
a soldierly education, he sat in the gymnasium, got his Ds with
two minuses, and undertook the most unheard-of things.
Ippolit was held back for a year in third year. Right before
the final exams, during the midday break, three students
somehow got into the assembly hall and spent a long time
poking around. They rapturously surveyed the table covered
in shining green cloth, the heavy, raspberry-red curtains with
pom-poms, and the potted palms. Savitsky, a student known
throughout the gymnasium as a daredevil, joyfully spit into
a flowerpot holding a ficus. Ippolit and the third student,
Pykhteev-Kakuev, almost died laughing.

“But can you pick up that ficus?” Ippolit asked respectfully.
“Ha!” Savitsky the strong man replied.
“Well, then, pick it up!”
Savitsky immediately got to work on the ficus.
“You won’t be able to!” Ippolit and Pykhteev-Kakuev whis-
pered. Savitsky, his little face all red and his wet hair sticking
up in all directions, continued straining at the ficus.
Suddenly the worst happened. Savitsky lost his grip on the fi-
cus and flew backwards into the mahogany column with gilded
fluting with a bust of Alexander I, the Blessed, sitting on it.
The bust rocked back and forth, the Tsar’s blind eyes looking
reproachfully at the now mute students. The Blessed stood for
a moment at a forty-five degree angle, then leaped down head-
first, like a diver into a river. The fall of the emperor had fatal
consequences. A glistening chunk, like a sugar cube, broke off
the Tsar’s face. The students, horrified, saw that it was his nose.
The comrades went cold. They picked up the bust and put it
back. Pykhteev-Kakuev was the first to bolt.
“What’s going to happen now, Vorobyaninov?” Savitsky
asked.
“I’m not the one who broke it,” Ippolit answered quickly. He
was second to leave the assembly hall. Savitsky, left on his own,
hopelessly tried to reestablish the nose in its former place. The
nose didn’t stick. Then Savitsky went to the toilet and drowned
the nose by throwing it down the hole.
During Greek, the director, “Sizik,” came into the third-year
classroom. Sizik signaled the Greek to stay where he was and
pronounced the exact same speech he’d just given to the five
classes above them. The director didn’t have any teeth.
“Zhentelmen,” he announced. “Who broke fe busht of fe
shovereign in fe ashembly hall?”
The class was silent.
“For shame!” barked the director, spattering the teacher’s
pets in the front row with saliva.

The pets gazed devotedly into Sizik’s eyes. Their faces ex-
pressed bitter sorrow at not knowing the criminal’s name.
“For shame!” the director repeated. “Keep in mind, zhen-
telmen, fat if fe guilty party doesh not confesh wifin one hour,
fe whole clash will be held back a year. Fosh of you who haf
already been held back onsh fill be ecshpelled.”
The third-years didn’t know that Sizik had said the same
thing in all the other classes, and so his speech horrified
them.
The lesson ended in complete turmoil. No one was listen-
ing to the Greek. Ippolit looked at Savitsky.
“Sizik’s lying,” Savitsky said gloomily. “He’s just scaring us.
You can’t hold everyone back.”
Pykhteev-Kakuev was crying, his head on his desk.
“But why us?” the pets cried, gazing devotedly at the Greek.
“Now, children, children, children!” the Greek called.
But the panic only increased. By now Pykhteev-Kakuev wasn’t
the only one crying. The teacher’s pets, driven to despair, were
sobbing. The end-of-class bell rang amid outbursts of mass
despair.
After the Bible lesson, Murzik, a pet, recited the prayer “We
Thank You, Creator,” while hiccupping from woe.
After class, Savitsky, who hadn’t been able to get anything
useful out of the tear-stained Pykhteev-Kakuev, went to look
for Ippolit, but Ippolit was nowhere to be found.
The next day Savitsky was expelled from the gymnasium.
Pykhteev-Kakuev got a C in comportment with a warning and
a parents’ summons. His parent, a small-time landowner, ar-
rived in a sulky drawn by a little unshod horse. After his talk
with the director, he dragged his son off to the coatroom,
where he flogged him most viciously with the cloth reins in
the presence of a mass of curious onlookers from the upper
years. Little Pykhteev-Kakuev’s roaring could be heard even
out past the city limits.

Ippolit was not punished. His gymnasium years were accom-
panied by the usual events and things. He came to school ev-
ery day in a phaeton with lanterns and a fat driver who called
him by his first name and patronymic. He had a supply of the
best, most expensive erasers (both regular and kneaded). He
was always lucky at nibs because he got nibs by the boxful and
with those reserves, he could play endlessly, beating his oppo-
nents by wearing them down. He was driven home for the mid-
day meal. This provoked the envy of others, and he was proud
of it.
He smoked his first papirosa when he was a sixth-year. The
winter passed in school balls. Ippolit whirled the mazurka and
drank rum in the cloakroom. In the seventh year he was tor-
tured by quadratic equations, the “devil’s staircase” (the vol-
ume of a pyramid), the parallelogram of force, and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. In his final year he discovered logic, The Chris-
tian Teachings, and mild venereal disease.
His father had become quite decrepit. The long bamboo
pole shook now in his hands, and his essay on the qualities of
the pigeon as a breed still wasn’t even halfway done. Matvey
Alexandrovich died without ever finishing it. Along with six-
teen pigeon lofts and the completely withered Frederick, who
now looked like a parakeet, Ippolit Matveevich received twenty
thousand a year and an enormous, badly managed estate.
The beginning of young Vorobyaninov’s independence was
marked by a debauchery that included drunken target practice
on pigeons. He did not go on either to university or to gov-
ernment service. He was spared army service by general weak
health that was suspicious in a person so evidently in his prime.
And thus he remained: an unemployed nobleman on the look-
out for easy money, a faithless bridegroom, and bureaucrat by
nature. He remodeled his parents’ mansion in Stargorod after
his own taste and acquired a mutton-chopped chamberlain,
three lackeys, a French cook, and a large kitchen staff.

✦
Philanthropic bazaars in Stargorod were notable for the im-

pressive luxury and inventiveness that the ladies from high
society took turns displaying. Sometimes these bazaars were
decorated in the style of a Moscow tavern, while other times
they were set up to look like a Caucasian village, where Circas-
sian ladies in corsets sold Ay champagne to benefit orphaned
children at prices unheard of even at these superb heights.
At one of these bazaars, Ippolit Matveevich, who was stand-
ing underneath a banner reading reel caucasiun dukhan.
reguler caucasiun delites, met Elena Stanislavovna Bour,
the wife of the new district attorney. The prosecutor was old,
but his wife, according to the court clerk, was:
the sacred font of Youth, so merry,
and tender, like a gentle fairy,
with kisses I yearn to tarry!
She is so very airy.
The court clerk dabbled in poetry.

The “so very airy” Elena Stanislavovna wore on her head a
black velvet plate with a silk rosette in the colors of the French
national flag, which was supposed to represent the complete
attire of a young Circassian maid. On her shoulder the district
attorney’s merry wife carried a cardboard jug covered in gold
paper with the neck of a champagne bottle protruding from it.
“Bee zo kind, a little glaz of Zhampagne,” Ippolit Matvee-
vich said, pretending to be a real highlander.
The district attorney’s wife smiled tenderly and lowered the
jug from her shoulder. Ippolit Matveevich caught his breath
as he gazed at her bare, waxen arms and her hands, as they
awkwardly opened the bottle. He tossed back the bubbly with-
out even tasting it. Elena Stanislavovna’s bare arms had set his
thoughts awhirl. He pulled a ticket worth one hundred rubles

out of his vest pocket, laid it on the edge of a brown papier-
mâché cliff, and walked away, breathing heavily through his
nose. The district attorney’s wife smiled even more tenderly,
pulled over the ticket, and murmured, in a musical voice, “The
poor children will not forget your generosity.”
From a distance, Ippolit Matveevich pressed his hands to his
chest and bowed a whole two feet lower than he usually did. As
he straightened back up, Ippolit Matveevich realized that he
couldn’t live without her and asked the court clerk to intro-
duce him to the new district attorney. The prosecutor looked
like a wise old monkey. As he and Ippolit Matveevich strolled
between Tamara’s castle and a stuffed eagle holding a cup for
donations in its beak, prosecutor Bour nimbly scratched be-
hind his ear and shared the latest news from Petersburg.
He happened to converse with Elena Stanislavovna several
more times that evening about the disastrous plight of orphaned
children and how picturesque the Stargorod park was.
The next day, Ippolit Matveevich drove up to the Bours’
front entrance with the meanest horses in the world and spent
half an hour in the pleasantest of conversation regarding the
disastrous plight of orphans. Not a month later the court clerk
whispered confidentially into the special cases investigator’s
shaggy ear that the prosecutor, “it seemed, had started using
his horns,” to which the inspector replied, smirking, “this af-
fair needs to be thoroughly investigated,” and regaled him
with a very interesting case that had taken place in the city of
Oryol and ended with the acquittal of a husband who’d mur-
dered his unfaithful wife.
Ladies all over town were singing like nightingales. Hus-
bands envied Vorobyaninov’s success. Fasters, teetotalers, and
idealists deluged the prosecutor with anonymous letters. The
prosecutor read them during court sessions as he scratched
behind his ear nimbly and quickly. He was even more gracious
with Vorobyaninov than before. There was no way out of his

situation, since he was waiting for an impending transfer to
the capital and couldn’t ruin his career with the vulgar murder
of his wife’s lover.
Then Ippolit Matveevich allowed himself a perfectly tact-
less move: he ordered his carriage painted white and drove up
and down Bolshaya Pushkinskaya Street in it with the district
attorney’s wife, who was smothering in the fumes of love.
In vain did Elena Stanislavovna cover her marble face with
a veil embroidered in little black birds. Everyone recognized
her. The town shivered with fear, but even this excess of love
didn’t have any effect on the district attorney. In desperation
the fasters, teetotalers, and idealists began bombarding the
Ministry of Justice itself with anonymous letters. The Deputy
Minister was struck by the district attorney’s cowardice. Every-
one expected a duel. But the prosecutor drove past the gun
shop to the judicial building every morning, like always, look-
ing sadly at the figure of Themis holding the scale. Bour
plainly saw himself as the city prosecutor of Saint Petersburg
in one pan of the scale, and the rosy, brazen Vorobyaninov in
the other.
Everything turned out quite unexpectedly: Ippolit Matvee-
vich took the district attorney’s wife to Paris, while the prose-
cutor was transferred to Syzran. The prosecutor lived in Syzran
for a long time, sent some eight hundred people to prison
camps, and eventually died.
When they returned after a year, Stargorod was buried in
snow. A train of heavy wagons rolled at a snail’s pace down
Bolshaya Pushkinskaya Street. Crowds of jackdaws were reserv-
ing their spots in the ice-covered trees along Alexandrovsky
Boulevard. Snowy stars, frozen crosses, and other frosty service
decorations settled slowly on Ippolit Matveevich’s nose. There
was no wind.
Ippolit Matveevich rode home from the station on a low
sleigh, looking carelessly at the town’s sights: the new stock

exchange building (constructed, thanks to the Stargorod mer-
chants’ zeal, in an Assyrian-Babylonian style) and the Pushkin
Station fire tower with the two big balls hanging from it, indi-
cating that a medium-sized fire was burning in the region.
“Who’s burning, Mikhayla?” Ippolit Matveevich asked the
driver.
“The Balagurovs. Second day now.”
They hadn’t gone two blocks when they came up against
a small crowd of people standing dolefully across from the
Balagurov house. Smoke trickled slowly out of an open win-
dow on the second floor. Suddenly a fireman appeared in the
window and shouted down lazily, “Vanya! Send the French lad-
der on up.”
The snow continued to fly. No one replied from below.
The firefighter stood for a while at the window in contempla-
tion, then yawned and disappeared indifferently back into the
smoke.
“It’ll burn for five days at that rate,” Ippolit Matveevich said
angrily. “Some Paris!”
Vorobyaninov and Elena Stanislavovna split up quite amica-
bly. He continued visiting her occasionally, he sent her three
hundred rubles in an envelope every month, and he was not
at all offended when he came across young men, for the most
part chipper and excellently brought up, in her house.
Ippolit Matveevich continued living in his mansion on De-
nisovskaya Street, leading an easy bachelor’s life. He was very
careful about his appearance, always went to opening night at
the town theater, and at one point grew so passionate about
opera that he became friends with the baritone Abramov and
worked up Germont’s aria “Di Provenza il mar, il suol,” from
La Traviata. When they began working on “Cortigiani, vil razza
dannata,” the aria from Rigoletto, the baritone noticed with in-
dignation that Ippolit Matveevich was living with his wife, a

coloratura soprano. The scene that followed was terrible. The
baritone, deeply disturbed, wrested a hundred and sixty rubles
from Vorobyaninov and went off to Kazan.
Ippolit Matveevich’s risqué adventures, especially his thrash-
ing of the attorney-at-law Murzuri in the noblemen’s club, se-
cured his reputation as a demonic fellow.
Even in 1905, a year that brought unrest and alarm, Ippolit
Matveevich’s inherent joie de vivre and faith in the firm foun-
dations of the Russian state didn’t desert him. In addition, ev-
erything remained quiet on Ippolit Matveevich’s estate, if one
didn’t count the burning of the occasional haystack. In a fit
of temper, Ippolit Matveevich called Count Witte, who’d just
signed the Treaty of Portsmouth, a traitor, but he never did go
into detail about it.
The new times had no effect on Ippolit Matveevich’s life.
He often went to Petersburg and Moscow; he loved listening
to Gypsy singers, and understood the fine distinctions between
those of Petersburg and those of Moscow; and he visited his
friends from his gymnasium days, who were now in the civil
service, some in the Ministry of the Interior, others in finance.
Life went by quickly and merrily. Enterprising matriarchs
no longer pursued him. Everyone thought he was a dissolute
bachelor. Then, suddenly, in 1911, Vorobyaninov married the
daughter of his neighbor Petukhov, a well-off landowner. This
took place after the inveterate bachelor drove into his estate
one day and saw that his affairs were going badly and that it
would be impossible to set them right without a financially ad-
vantageous marriage. He was able to secure the largest dowry
from Marie Petukhova, a meek, gangling girl. For two months
Ippolit Matveevich laid white roses at the foot of Marie’s ped-
estal, and in the third month he offered her his hand, mar-
ried her, and was elected marshal of the nobility for the entire
district.

“So, how’s your little skeleton?” Elena Stanislavovna would
ask tenderly. Ippolit Matveevich had begun visiting her more
frequently after the wedding.
Ippolit Matveevich laughed so hard and gleefully, he showed
all his teeth.
“No, no, word of honor, she’s very nice, but she is so naive
. . . And that Claudia Ivanovna! You know what? She calls me
‘Eppolet.’ She thinks that’s how it’s pronounced in Paris! It’s
marvelous!”
Over the years, Ippolit Matveevich’s life changed notice-
ably. He went gray early and handsomely. He developed little
habits. Mornings when he woke up, he would say to himself,
“Guten Morgen” or “Bonjour.” He was possessed by childish
passions. He began collecting zemstvo stamps, spending quite
a bit of money on it, and soon became the owner of the fin-
est collection in Russia. He started up a lively correspondence
with Enfield, an Englishman who had the most complete ex-
tant collection of Russian zemstvo stamps. The Englishman’s
superiority in the stamp-collecting arena bothered Ippolit
Matveevich a great deal. The marshal’s position and good con-
nections helped him overcome his crafty Glaswegian enemy.
Ippolit Matveevich put the chairman of the zemstvo council up
to releasing a new stamp of the Stargorod Province zemstvo,
which at that point hadn’t existed for ten years. The chair-
man, an easily amused old man, guffawed heartily when Ip-
polit Matveevich filled him in on the details and agreed to
Vorobyaninov’s proposal. The new stamp was released in a
limited edition of two copies and included in the catalog for
1912. Vorobyaninov personally smashed the plate with a little
hammer. Three months later Ippolit Matveevich received a
courteous letter from Enfield, in which the Englishman asked
him to sell one of these extremely rare stamps at any price that
Mister Vorobyaninov would care to name.

Mister Vorobyaninov was so happy that tears even sprang
to his eyes. He immediately sat down to write a reply to Mister
Enfield. He wrote in Latin letters:
LIKE HELL I WILL!
After that, the business relationship with Mister Enfield ended

for good and Ippolit Matveevich’s passion for stamps, now sat-
isfied, abated significantly.
By this time people had started calling Vorobyaninov a bon
vivant. And, as a matter of fact, he did like living well. To his
mother-in-law’s amazement, he lived off the income from his
wife’s estate. Once, Claudia Ivanovna even tried to share her
views on life and the duties of a model husband with him, but
her son-in-law suddenly started trembling, dashed the sugar
bowl to the ground, and shouted, “Wonderful! I’m being
taught how to live my life! This is simply wonderful!”
After that, the future son-in-law drove off to Moscow for a
banquet put on by a hunting club in honor of the famous gen-
tleman hunter Sharabarin, who had just killed the two thou-
sandth wolf since the club’s founding.
The tables were set up in a half-moon. The pelt of the cel-
ebrated guest lay in the middle on a sugar-white tablecloth,
surrounded by suckling pigs, aspics, and sweating carafes of
vodka. Mister Sharabarin, in a brown cutaway coat and derby,
had been tippling since morning. He was blinded by the mag-
nesium of countless photographers. He stood looking around
wildly and listening to speeches.
Ippolit Matveevich was given the floor relatively late, when
he’d already gotten good and merry. He quickly threw the wolf
pelt around his shoulders and, forgetting about his family af-
fairs, said triumphantly, “Kind sirs, gentlemen members of the
hunting club! Allow me, in the name of Stargorod’s aficiona-
dos of rifle hunting, to congratulate you on this momentous

occasion. It’s very, very pleasant to see such respected aficiona-
dos of rifle hunting as Mister Sharabarin, who go hand in hand
toward the achievement of eternal ideals! Very, very pleasant!”
After delivering this speech, Ippolit Matveevich threw the
celebrated pelt on the ground, stood the protesting Mister
Sharabarin on it, and kissed him three times.
Ippolit Matveevich spent two weeks in Moscow on that trip
and returned home giddy and mean as the devil. His mother-
in-law sulked. To get back at her, Ippolit Matveevich commit-
ted the act that gave The Danish Prince’s evil tongue such rich
fodder.
It was 1913.
The French aviator Brindejonc des Moulinais had just com-
pleted his famous flight from Paris to Warsaw for the Pommery
Cup. Older gymnasium students and ladies in flower-basket
hats with white lace umbrellas met the conqueror of the air
with rapturous cries. The conqueror felt fairly brisk, regardless
of the ordeal he’d just undergone, and eagerly drank Russian
vodka.
Life was in full swing.
At Alexandrov Station a crowd of girl students, porters, and
members of the Society of Free Aesthetics was meeting the
poet K. D. Balmont, who had returned from Polynesia. A fat-
cheeked young lady was the first to throw the goateed trouba-
dour a wet rose. The poet was showered with lilies of the valley,
the flower of spring. The first welcoming speech began.
“Dear Konstantin, it’s seven years you’ve been away from
Moscow . . .”
After the speeches one of the many attorney-at-law admirers
made his way to the troubadour, handed the poet a bouquet,
and pronounced a previously memorized improvisation:
A cloudy day,
But hark, a ray

Of your light falls.
Your genius fey,
Your songs so gray,
Hold us in thrall.
That evening in the Society of Free Aesthetics, the celebra-

tion in honor of the poet was clouded by the appearance of
the neo-Futurist Mayakovsky, who kept trying to find out from
the illustrious bard “whether he was surprised by the fact that
all the greetings were coming from close friends.” Hissing and
whistling drowned out the neo-Futurist’s speech.
Two young men, the twenty-year-old Baron Heismar and
one Dalmatov, the son of a prominent official in the Foreign
Ministry, made the acquaintance of Marianna Tima, the wife
of an ensign in the reserve, in the illusion. Then they killed
and robbed her.
On their wrinkled screens the cinemas were showing The
Princess Butyrskaya, a powerful three-part drama from Russian
life; Éclair Magazine, a newsreel of world events; and The Tal-
ented Policeman, a comedy with Pockson (Homeric laughter).
A Procession of the Cross came out of the Kremlin’s Sav-
ior Tower Gates onto Red Square, and Protodeacon Rozov, a
three-hundred-and-fifty-pound hulk of a man, read the mani-
festo in an intimidating voice.
A triumphant little verse from the pen of Plaksin, the local
censor, appeared in The Mayorial Bulletin, a Stargorod paper:
Tell me, oh tell me, Mama,
Why do you polish the brass?
Why’s Papa in his uniform jacket,
And brother Mitya not going to class?
Brother Mitenka wasn’t going to class because of the tricen-

tennial of the House of Romanov. The papas really were in
gleaming uniforms and wide tricorne hats as they drove in

their carriages to Strelbishchenskoe Field, where there was go-
ing to be a parade of units from the garrison, the cadet cam-
pus, and the state gymnasiums.
Tickets to the Romanov celebrations in the temperance
gardens were distributed to workers in the jute factory and the
train repair depots, and that evening several civilians plucked
two workers out of the crowds of merrymakers and took them
away in horse-cabs to the local office of the state security forces.
An Imperial insignia made of fireworks glittered in the dark
sky, then dimmed, then flared again as the wind caught it.
That night Ippolit Matveevich, who still smelled of perfume,
sat on the balcony of his mansion digesting his ceremonial din-
ner. He was only thirty-eight. His body was clean, well fed, and
benign. He had all his teeth. A fresh Armenian joke stirred in
his head like a child in its mother’s womb. He thought life was
wonderful. His mother-in-law had been defeated, he had lots of
money, and he was thinking of another trip abroad next year.
But Ippolit Matveevich did not know that a year later, in
May, his wife would die, and that war with Germany would
break out in July. He thought he’d be marshal of the nobility
for the entire province by fifty, not knowing that in 1918 he’d
be driven out of his own home, and that he, so used to com-
fortable, well-fed lassitude, would abandon the extinguished
town of Stargorod to escape in a mixed train to wherever he
could.
Ippolit Matveevich sat on his balcony imagining in his
mind’s eye the small ripples of the Ostend seashore, the graph-
ite roofs of Paris, and the dark chambers and gleaming brass
buttons of international train cars; but Ippolit Matveevich did
not imagine bread lines, a freezing bed, makeshift oil lamps,
typhus epidemics, and the slogan leave when you’ve done
your work in the Office of Vital Statistics in the provincial
town of N. (and even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood
them).

Nor did Ippolit Matveevich know, as he sat on his balcony,
that in fourteen years he would return to Stargorod, still hale
and hearty, and enter the very gates he was now sitting over;
that he’d enter them as a stranger to look for his mother-in-
law’s treasure, hidden in the Gambs chair that was so com-
fortable to sit in as he was then, watching the fireworks with
the Imperial insignia burning in the middle and daydreaming
about how wonderful life was.

6
The Smooth Operator
at half past twelve, a young man of about twenty-eight walked

into Stargorod from the direction of a village called Chmarovka
to the northwest. A little homeless boy ran after him.
“Uncle!” he shouted cheerfully. “Give me ten kopeks!”
The young man pulled a warm apple out of his pocket and
handed it to the homeless boy, but he didn’t stop begging.
Then the pedestrian stopped, gave the boy an ironic look, and
said quietly, “Maybe you want me to give you the key to a room
full of money, too?”
The homeless boy, who’d gone a little too far in pursuit of
charity, realized that his claims were completely groundless
and stopped bothering the young man.
But the young man had lied: he had neither money, nor a
room, nor a key with which to open the room. He didn’t even
have a coat. The young man had entered the city in a fitted
green suit. An old wool scarf was wrapped a few times around
his mighty neck and on his feet were patent leather shoes with
orange suede uppers. There were no socks under the shoes.
The young man was holding an astrolabe.
“Oh, Bayaderka, tee-ree-reem, tee-ree-rah!” he sang, as he
approached the district market.
There was a lot for him to do there. He squeezed his way
into the ranks of sellers bargaining over their used wares, set
the astrolabe out before him, and started shouting, in a seri-
✦ 65 ✦
ous voice, “Who wants an astrolabe? Astrolabe for sale, cheap!
Discounts for delegations and women’s sections!”
The unexpected offering didn’t generate any interest for a
long time. The housewives’ delegations were more interested
in hard-to-get items and crowded around the stalls selling
manufactured goods. An agent from the Stargorod Province
Bureau of Criminal Investigation had already walked past the
astrolabe-seller twice. But since the astrolabe did not in the
least resemble the typewriter that had been stolen from the
Central Butter office the day before, the agent stopped mag-
netizing the young man with his eyes and left.
By lunchtime the astrolabe had been sold to a repairman
for three rubles. “It’d measure all by itself, if you had anything
for it to measure,” the young man said as he handed the astro-
labe to its buyer.
Thus freed from the clever instrument, the cheerful young
man dined in the Tasty Corner cafeteria and went to have a
look at the town. He walked down Sovetskaya Street, turned onto
Krasnoarmeyskaya Street (formerly Bolshaya Pushkinskaya
Street), crossed Kooperativnaya Street, and found himself on
Sovetskaya Street once more. But it wasn’t the same Sovetskaya
Street he’d walked down: there were two Sovetskaya Streets in
the town. More than a little surprised by this circumstance,
the young man ended up on Lena Massacre Street (formerly
Denisovskaya). The young man paused to get a light from the
dvornik sitting on a stone bench next to the gates of building
No. 28, a handsome two-story house, featuring the sign
ussr – rsfsr
stargorod province
government social security home no. 2.
“What do you say, father,” the young man asked, inhaling. “Are
there any brides in this town of yours?”

The old dvornik didn’t bat an eye. “Some people would take
an old nag for a bride,” he answered, eagerly entering into the
conversation.
“No more questions,” the young man said quickly. Then he
asked another question: “A building like this, and no brides
in it?”
“You couldn’t find our brides with a bright light on a sunny
day. This here is our government-run poorhouse, the old la-
dies get three squares a day.”
“I see. Those being the ones who were born back before
historical materialism?”
“Now that’s the truth. Whenever they were born, why, that’s
when they were born.”
“So what was in this building before historical materialism?”
“Before what?”
“You know, back then, under the old regime?”
“Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.”
“A bourgeois?”
“You’re a bourgeois yourself! He wasn’t a bourgeois. He was
a marshal of the nobility.”
“So he was a proletarian, then?”
“You’re a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a
marshal.”
The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague un-
derstanding of the class structure of society would have lasted
God knows how long if the young man hadn’t made a decisive
move.
“I’ve got an idea, grandpa,” he said. “How about having a
little drink?”
“Well, treat me, then.”
They both disappeared for an hour, and by the time they
returned, the dvornik had become the young man’s boon
companion.
the smooth operator ✦ 67

“So then, I’ll spend the night at your place,” said the new
companion.
The dvornik replied, “As far as I’m concerned you can live
here your whole life, seeing as how you’re a good person.”
With his goal thus rapidly accomplished, the guest de-
scended nimbly into the dvornik’s basement room, took off his
orange shoes, and stretched out on a bench, thinking over the
next day’s plan of action.
The young man’s name was Ostap Bender. He usually shared
only one detail from his biography: he’d say, “My father was a
Turkish subject.”
The Turkish subject’s son had held many different occu-
pations in the course of his life. His lively character, which
prevented him from dedicating himself to any one thing, con-
tinually tossed him across the country and back again and had
now brought him to Stargorod with no socks, no key, no room,
and no money.
Ostap Bender lay in the dvornik’s room, which was warm to
the point of reeking, and mentally put the finishing touches
on two possible career plans.
He could become a polygamist and move peacefully from
town to town, dragging behind him a new suitcase full of valu-
able items he’d picked up from the latest wife. Or he could
go the very next day to the Stargorod Children’s Commission
and offer them the chance to distribute the as-yet unpainted
but brilliantly conceived canvas The Bolsheviks Writing a Letter
to Chamberlain, based on the artist Repin’s popular painting
The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan. If
it worked out, this option could bring in something along the
line of four hundred rubles.
Ostap had thought up both options during his last stay in
Moscow. The polygamy option had been born under the in-
fluence of the court report from the evening paper, where it
was clearly indicated that some polygamist had only gotten two

years without strict isolation. Option number two had taken
shape in Bender’s mind when he was going through the AARR
exhibit on a free ticket.
However, both options had their downsides. It was impos-
sible to begin a career as a polygamist without a wondrous,
dapple-gray suit. In addition, he needed at least ten rubles for
hospitality expenses and seduction. Of course, he could get
married in his green campaign uniform as well, because Bend-
er’s masculine power and attraction were absolutely irresistible
to provincial, marriage-ready Margaritas; but that would be,
as Bender liked to say, “Poor-quality goods. Not clean work.”
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the painting, either. Purely
technical difficulties could arise. Would it be proper to paint
Comrade Kalinin in a papakha and a white burka, or Comrade
Chicherin naked to the waist? He could, of course, draw all the
people in the painting in normal clothes if it was a problem,
but that just wouldn’t be right.
“Not the right effect!” Ostap said aloud.
At that point, he noticed that the dvornik had been hotly
discussing something for quite a while already. It turned out
that the dvornik had sunk into reminiscence about the build-
ing’s former owner. “The chief of police used to salute him
. . . You’d come up to him, let’s just say, on New Year’s Day to
wish him a happy holiday, and he gives you a three-ruble note
. . . For Easter, let’s just say, and another three rubles. Yes, and
then you wish him well on his name day, let’s say . . . So then,
in a year you get like to fifteen rubles coming your way just off
of those good wishes . . . He even promised to get me a medal.
‘I want my dvornik to have a medal,’ he says. That’s what he’d
say: ‘You, Tikhon, consider your medal a done deal . . .’ ”
“So what about it, did you get one?”
“Now hold on a minute . . . ‘I don’t need a dvornik without
a medal,’ he says. He went off to Saint Petersburg for a medal.
Well, but the first time, I’ll tell you, it didn’t work out. The

gentlemen bureaucrats didn’t feel like it. ‘The Tsar left and
went to the abroad,’ they said. ‘It’s impossible right now.’ So
then my master, he ordered me to wait. ‘You wait,’ he says,
‘Wait, Tikhon, you won’t be left without a medal . . .’ ”
“So what’d they do, did they off him?”
“Nobody offed him. He left all by himself. What’s he going
to do sitting around here with the soldiers . . . So do they give
medals for service as a dvornik these days?”
“They do. I can see that you get one.”
The dvornik looked respectfully at Bender.
“I can’t go around without a medal. It’s my job.”
“Where did your master go?”
“Who knows! People said he went to Paris.”
“Ah! ‘The white acacia, the flower of emigration . . .’ So he’s
an émigré?”
“You’re an émigré yourself! He went to Paris, people say.
And they took the house for the old ladies . . . You can wish
them well every day of your life, but you won’t get ten kopeks
from them! . . . Oh, my! He was a real lord!”
At that moment, the rusty bell above the door jerked. The
dvornik, groaning, dragged himself over to the door, opened
it, and fell back, utterly confused. On the top step stood Ip-
polit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, with black hair and mustache.
His eyes shone with a prewar gleam behind his pince-nez.
“Master!” Tikhon lowed passionately. “From Paris!”
Ippolit Matveevich, confused at finding a third, unknown
person in the dvornik’s basement room, a person whose bare
violet soles he’d only just now glimpsed underneath the table,
grew embarrassed and was on the verge of dashing back out of
the room, but Ostap Bender quickly leaped up and bowed low
before Ippolit Matveevich. “Even though this isn’t quite Paris,
you are always welcome in our hut.”
“Hello, Tikhon,” Ippolit Matveevich was forced to say. “I
didn’t come from Paris at all. What made you think that?”

But Ostap Bender, whose long, noble nose distinctly smelled
the odor of something fried nice and crispy, didn’t even let the
dvornik open his mouth.
“Excellent, you’re not from Paris,” he said, winking. “Of
course not. You’ve come from Konotop to visit your late grand-
mother.”
Speaking thus, he gently embraced the stunned dvornik and
thrust him out the door before the latter could understand
what happened, and when he did come to his senses, the only
thing he could figure out was that his master had come from
Paris, that he, Tikhon, had been locked out of his basement
room, and that a paper ruble was clutched in his left hand. The
dvornik looked at the little piece of paper and was so touched
that he headed straight for a tavern and ordered two bottles
of Gorshanov beer.
After carefully locking the door behind the dvornik, Bender
turned to Vorobyaninov, still standing in the middle of the
room, and said, “Easy now, everything’s all right. My name’s
Bender! Maybe you’ve heard of me?”
“I have not,” Ippolit Matveevich answered nervously.
“But of course not, how on earth could you have heard the
name Ostap Bender in Paris? Is it warm in Paris these days? A
fine city. My cousin’s married to a fellow there. A little while
ago she sent me a silk scarf in a registered letter . . .”
“What is this nonsense?” shouted Ippolit Matveevich. “What
scarves? I didn’t come from Paris, I came from . . .”
“Marvelous, marvelous! You came from Morshansk.”
Ippolit Matveevich had never had to deal with a young man
as temperamental as Bender before. He started feeling poorly.
“Well, you know, I’ll just be going,” he said.
“But where will you go? You don’t have to be in a hurry to
get anywhere. The GPU will come to you, all by itself.”
Ippolit Matveevich couldn’t think of a single thing to say in
reply. He unbuttoned his coat with its threadbare velvet collar

and sat down on a bench, looking at Bender in a very unfriendly
way. “I don’t understand you,” he said, in a small voice.
“That’s not a problem. You’ll understand me in just a min-
ute.” Ostap put his orange shoes on his bare feet and said,
“Which border did you come across? The Polish border? The
Finnish one? The Rumanian? It must be an expensive plea-
sure. A fellow I know crossed the border not too long ago,
he lives in Slavuta, on our side, but his parents-in-law live on
the other side. He had a fight with his wife about some fam-
ily matter, and she’s from a very touchy family. She spat right
in his snout and took off across the border to her parents’
place. So this fellow I know sat at home for two or three days
and saw that things were going badly—no dinner, the room
was a mess—so he decided to make up with her. He left one
night and started walking across the border to his father-in-
law’s. Then the border guards nabbed him: they got him with
a trumped-up charge and locked him away for six months, so
then he was expelled from his union. People say that his wife’s
come running back now, the fool, and her husband’s in the
clink. She brings him packages . . . But did you come across
the Polish border too?”
“Word of honor,” Ippolit Matveevich said, feeling abruptly
dependent on the talkative young man who’d blocked his path
to the diamonds. “Word of honor, I am a subject of the RSFSR.
I can show you my passport, after all . . .”
“Given the contemporary state of the printing industry in
the West, printing a Soviet passport is such a trifle that it’s ri-
diculous to even talk about it . . . A fellow I know even got to
the point where he was printing dollars. And do you know how
hard it is to counterfeit American dollars? They’ve got this pa-
per with these little threads, you know, multicolored threads.
It takes somebody who’s really mastered the technique. He was
able to pass them off on the Moscow black market, but then it
turned out that his grandpa, a famous speculator in hard cur-

rency, was buying them in Kiev and went completely bankrupt,
because, after all, the dollars were fake. So you might also have
a losing proposition with your passport there.”
Ippolit Matveevich was aggravated by the fact that he was sit-
ting in this stinking basement room listening to the blathering
of some young hooligan about his acquaintances’ shady affairs
instead of energetically searching for the diamonds. Neverthe-
less, he could not work up the nerve to leave. He felt intensely
timid at the idea that this unknown young man would spread
the news of the former marshal of the nobility’s arrival all over
town. Then all would be lost, and the GPU might even lock
him up, to boot.
“But anyway, just don’t tell anybody that you saw me,” Ip-
polit Matveevich said beseechingly. “People might think I actu-
ally am an émigré.”
“There! There, now, that’s just congenial. Most importantly,
we have our assets: an émigré who has returned to his native
town. And we have our liabilities: he is afraid the GPU will take
him away.”
“But I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not an émigré!”
“So who are you, then? Why did you come here?”
“Well, I came from the town of N., on business.”
“On what kind of business?”
“Well, on personal business.”
“And after that, you’re telling me you’re not an émigré? A
fellow I know also came . . .”
At this point, Ippolit Matveevich, driven to despair by Bend-
er’s stories about fellows he knew and realizing he’d never get
Bender to change his mind, gave up. “All right,” he said. “I’ll
explain everything.”
“All things considered, it’s hard to get by without some
help,” Ippolit Matveevich thought. “And as far as con men go,
he’s evidently a good one. Somebody like that might come in
handy.”

7
Diamond Smoke
ippolit matveevich took off his stained beaver hat, combed

his mustache (which, at the comb’s touch, released a friendly
little flock of electric sparks), cleared his throat decisively,
and told Ostap Bender, the first rascal he’d happened across,
everything he’d learned from his dying mother-in-law about
the diamonds.
Ostap leaped to his feet several times throughout the story,
exclaiming rapturously to the iron stove, “The ice has started
breaking up, gentlemen of the jury! The ice has started break-
ing up.”
An hour later, both were sitting at the rickety table, their
heads leaned together, reading the long list of jewels that had
once adorned the mother-in-law’s fingers, neck, ears, breast,
and hair. Ippolit Matveevich read with great emphasis, reseat-
ing his unsteady pince-nez on his nose every few minutes:
“Three strands of pearls . . . I remember them well . . . Two
strands of forty pearls each, and one long one with a hundred
and ten . . . A diamond pendant . . . Claudia Ivanovna used to
say that it cost four thousand, it was an antique piece . . .”
Next came the rings (not heavy, stupid, cheap wedding
rings, but rings that were delicate and airy, with clean, washed
diamonds soldered into them); heavy, blinding pendant ear-
rings that cast a varicolored fire onto the petite feminine ear;
snake-shaped bracelets with emerald scales; a necklace paid
for with the harvest of one thousand three hundred and fifty
✦ 75 ✦
acres; and a pearl choker that only a famous operatic diva would
be capable of wearing. It was all crowned by a forty-thousand-
ruble diadem.
Ippolit Matveevich looked around. A vernal emerald light
blazed up and trembled in the plague-infested basement room’s
dark corners. Diamond smoke floated under the ceiling. Round
pearls rolled across the table and bounced onto the floor. The
precious mirage shook the room.
Only the sound of Ostap’s voice brought the excited Ippolit
Matveevich back to his senses.
“A fine selection. I can tell the stones were tastefully chosen.
How much was all this music worth?”
“Seventy, seventy-five thousand.”
“Mm-hm . . . So now, that’d be a hundred and fifty thou-
sand.”
“Would it really be that much?” asked Vorobyaninov, over-
joyed.
“No less. But you, my dear comrade from Paris, can just kiss
all that good-bye.”
“How do you mean, kiss it good-bye?”
“How? With your lips,” Ostap replied. “The way people used
to kiss before the age of historical materialism. Nothing’s go-
ing to come of this.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Here’s what. How many chairs were there?”
“A dozen. A parlor set.”
“Your parlor set probably burned up in a stove a long
time ago.”
Vorobyaninov was so terrified he even stood up out of his
chair.
“Easy now, easy. I’m going to take care of it. The meeting is
still in session. By the way, you and I need to set up a nice little
contract.”

Ippolit Matveevich, breathing heavily, expressed his agree-
ment with a short nod. Then Ostap Bender began to work out
the conditions.
“In the event of our acquisition of the treasure, I, as a direct
participant in the concession and the whole affair’s technical
director, receive sixty percent. But you don’t have to pay for
my insurance. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Ippolit Matveevich went gray.
“That’s highway robbery!”
“And how much were you planning on offering me?”
“Well . . . five percent, maybe ten, in the end. You’ve got to
see, after all, that is fifteen thousand rubles!”
“And you don’t want anything else?”
“N-no.”
“But maybe you want me to work for free, and then to give
you the key to a room full of money, too?”
“If that’s the case, then—excuse me!” said Vorobyaninov
nasally. “I have every reason to think that I can manage my
affairs by myself.”
“Oh-ho! If that’s the case, then excuse me,” the magnificent
Ostap objected. “I have no less reason, as Andy Tucker used to
say, to think that I can manage your affairs by myself.”
“Swindler!” Ippolit Matveevich shouted, starting to tremble.
Ostap was cold. “Listen, gentleman from Paris, do you have
any idea that your diamonds are all but in my pocket as we
speak?! You interest me solely to the extent that I feel like pro-
viding for you in your old age!”
Only then did Ippolit Matveevich see what iron paws had
seized him by the throat.
“Twenty percent,” he said gloomily.
“What about my grub?” Ostap asked mockingly.
“Twenty-five.”
“And the key to the room?”
diamond smoke ✦ 77
“But that’s thirty-seven and a half thousand, after all!”
“Why be so precise? Well, so be it. Fifty percent. Half for
you, half for me.”
The bargaining continued. Ostap conceded even more. He
agreed to work for forty percent, purely out of respect for Vo-
robyaninov as a person.
“Sixty thousand!” Vorobyaninov shouted.
“You’re a pretty vulgar person,” Bender objected. “You like
money more than you should.”
“And you don’t like money?” Ippolit Matveevich howled in
a flutelike voice.
“I don’t.”
“Then why should you get sixty thousand?”
“For the principle of it!”
Ippolit Matveevich sat catching his breath.
Ostap added, “So, has the ice started breaking up?”
Vorobyaninov started panting and said, submissively, “It has.”
“Well then, shake on it, district marshal of the Comanches!
The ice has started breaking up, gentlemen of the jury!”
Ippolit Matveevich, offended by the nickname “marshal of
the Comanches,” demanded an apology and Ostap called him
a field marshal in his apology speech. Then they got down to
drawing up a disposition.
Meanwhile, Tikhon the dvornik sat in the Phase tavern drink-

ing away the ruble that had appeared by magic in his hand.
Five blind accordionists huddled close on a tiny wooden is-
land, squinting as they were splashed by the spray of the beery
surf.
The dvornik was touched to the depths of his heart by the
appearance of his master and three bottles of beer. Everything

seemed superb to him: his master, and the beer, and even the
warning sign we aks you not to use umpolite words. The
word “Not” had long ago been torn out, along with a chunk
of sign, by some wag. This peculiarity also amused Tikhon the
dvornik. His head moved in circles and he mumbled, “What all
don’t they come up with, the devils!”
After laughing to his heart’s content, Tikhon the dvornik
took his last bottle and went over to the next table. At it sat
young nonuniformed men he’d never seen before in his
life.
“So, soldier boys,” Tikhon asked, sitting down. “Is it true
what they say, that the landowners are going to be given their
land back soon?”
The young men guffawed. One of them asked, “So you’re a
landowner, then?”
“We’re a dvornik,” Tikhon answered. “But, let’s just say the
landowner came back. They’re not going to give him his land?”
“Well it’s obvious, you silly fool. They’re not.”
Tikhon was very surprised, finished his beer, got even
drunker, and started mumbling something absurd about his
master having come back. The young men physically removed
him from their table.
“Master’ll give me a medal,” Tikhon muttered. “My master’s
back.”
“What a fool!” the young people concluded. “Whose dvornik
is that?”
“He’s with the widows’ home. Used to be Vorobyaninov’s.”
“As if he’d come back here! He’s doing just fine abroad.”
“Maybe he did come back, trying to get in as a specialist.”
At midnight, Tikhon the dvornik, grasping at every garden
fence that crossed his path and pressing himself for a long
time to its posts, dragged himself back to his basement. Unfor-
tunately for him, there was a new moon.
“Ah! The proletarian of intellectual labor! The worker of
the broom!” exclaimed Ostap, catching sight of the dvornik,
curled up into a ring.
The dvornik started mumbling in a low, passionate voice,
the kind of voice in which a toilet sometimes starts mumbling,
hotly and fussily, in the late-night quiet.
“Well, that’s congenial,” Ostap informed Ippolit Matvee-
vich. “Your dvornik’s actually a pretty vulgar fellow. Is it really
possible to get that drunk on one ruble?”
“Yeeeees!” the dvornik said unexpectedly.
“Tikhon, listen,” Ippolit Matveevich began. “Would you by
any chance know what happened to my furniture, little friend?”
Ostap carefully supported Tikhon, so that the words could
flow freely from his wide-open mouth. Ippolit Matveevich
waited intently. But out of the dvornik’s mouth, with yawning
gaps where he was missing every other tooth, burst forth a
deafening shout: “Theeerrre weeerrre merrryyy dayyys . . .”
The basement room filled with thunder and clanging. The
dvornik performed the song diligently and zealously, without
missing a single word. He roared as he moved about the room,
first falling unconscious under the table, then knocking his
cap off on the pendulum clock’s brass cylindrical weight, and
finally getting down on one knee. He was having an awfully
good time.
Ippolit Matveevich was completely lost.
“We’ll have to put off the questioning of the witness until
tomorrow morning,” Ostap said. “Now, to sleep.”
They carried the slumbering dvornik, heavy as a chest of
drawers, over to the bench. Vorobyaninov and Ostap decided
to both sleep in the dvornik’s bed. A red-and-black checked
cowboy shirt was revealed under Ostap’s jacket. Under the
cowboy shirt there was nothing else at all. But Ippolit Matvee-
vich, to make up for it, wore another vest of bright blue wor-
sted under the lunar vest already familiar to the reader.

“A vest nice enough to sell,” Bender said enviously. “And it
just happens to fit. Sell it to me.”
Ippolit Matveevich didn’t feel comfortable refusing his new
companion and direct participant in the concession, so he
frowned and agreed to sell the vest for its original price of
eight rubles.
“I’ll get you the money after the acquisition of the trea-
sure,” Bender announced, taking the still-warm vest from
Vorobyaninov.
“No, I can’t accept that,” Ippolit Matveevich said, turning
red. “Please be so kind as to give the vest back.”
Ostap’s delicate nature rebelled. “But that’s dime-store
mercantilism!” he shouted. “Beginning a deal worth a hun-
dred and fifty thousand only to argue over eight rubles! Learn
to live a little!”
Ippolit Matveevich turned even redder, pulled out a tiny
notebook, and wrote in a calligraphic hand:
25/4/1927 — rubles issued to Comrade Bender — 8.
Ostap took a look inside the little book.

“Oh-ho! If you’ve gone ahead and opened a personal ac-
count for me, then the least you could do is tally it right. Start
up a debit column, start up a credit column. Don’t forget
to enter the sixty thousand rubles you owe me in the debits,
and the vest can go in the credits. The balance is in my favor:
59, 992 rubles. Life goes on.”
Then Ostap fell into a soundless, childlike sleep. But Ip-
polit Matveevich took off his wool pulse-warmers and baronic
boots, and, clad only in his mended Jaeger underwear, crawled
under the blanket. He was very uncomfortable. It was cold on
the outside, where there wasn’t enough blanket, but from the
other side he was burned by the young body of the smooth
operator, all atremble with ideas.
All three of them had dreams.
Vorobyaninov dreamed dark dreams: microbes, the Crimi-
nal Investigations office, velvet Tolstoyan shirts, and the mas-
ter coffin-maker Bezenchuk, in a tuxedo, but unshaven.
Ostap saw the volcano Fujiyama, the head of the Butter Trust,
and Taras Bulba selling postcards with a view of the Dnieper
Hydroelectric Station construction site.
The dvornik dreamed that a horse was gone from the stable.
He looked for it in his sleep all night long and woke, shattered
and gloomy, without having found it. He stared for a long time,
amazed, at the people sleeping in his bed. He didn’t have the
foggiest idea what was going on, but he took up his broom
and headed outside to perform his primary duties: cleaning
up horse apples and shouting at the old ladies.

8
Traces of the Titanic
ippolit matveevich woke up from habit at seven thirty, mur-

mured “Gut Morgen,” and went over to the washstand. He
washed with great pleasure, spit, keened, and shook his head
to get rid of the water that had run into his ears. It was pleasant
to wipe the water off. But when he pulled the towel from his
face, Ippolit Matveevich saw that it was stained with the same
radically black hue that had colored his horizontal mustache
since the day before yesterday. Ippolit Matveevich’s heart gut-
tered suddenly. He rushed to get his pocket mirror. Reflected
in the little mirror were his large nose and the left half of a
mustache as green as new grass. Ippolit Matveevich hurriedly
shifted the little mirror to the right. The right half of the mus-
tache was the exact same sickening color. Lowering his head as
though he intended to butt the mirror with it, the unfortunate
man saw that the radical black color still reigned in the middle
of his hair, but its edges were lined with the same grassy bor-
der. Ippolit Matveevich’s entire being issued such a loud moan
that Ostap Bender opened his eyes.
“You’re crazy,” Bender exclaimed, and shut his sleepy lids
tight again.
“Comrade Bender,” the victim of the Titanic whispered
pleadingly.
Ostap woke up after much jostling and persuasion. He gave
Ippolit Matveevich a good, long look and broke into joyful
laughter. The primary manager of operations and technical di-
✦ 83 ✦
rector turned away from the director and founder of the con-
cession and started shaking. He grasped at the headboard of
the bed, shouted “I just can’t take it!” and raged once more.
“This behavior on your part is uncalled for, Comrade
Bender!” Ippolit Matveevich said, trembling and twitching his
green mustache.
This gave Ostap, who had been on the verge of exhaustion,
new strength. His frank, sincere laughter continued for at least
ten more minutes. He caught his breath and abruptly became
dead serious.
“Why are you giving me such a dirty look, like a soldier at a
louse? You should take a look at yourself!”
“But the pharmacist told me that it would be a radical black
color. It doesn’t wash off in either cold or hot water, or with
soap, or with kerosene . . . It’s contraband merchandise . . .”
“Contraband? All contraband is made in Odessa, on Ma-
laya Arnautskaya Street. Show me the bottle . . . And now look
here. Did you read that?”
“Yes.”
“What about that, the part that’s in fine print? It’s clearly
stated here that after washing with hot and cold water, or soap
and kerosene, you need to not wipe your hair dry, but dry it
in the sun or over a primus stove . . . Why didn’t you air-dry it?
Where are you going to go now with that lime-green fake?”
Ippolit Matveevich was utterly dejected. Tikhon came in.
Upon catching sight of his master with a green mustache, he
crossed himself and asked for money for a hair of the dog.
“Give a ruble to the hero of labor,” Ostap suggested, “and
please, don’t charge it to my account! This is your own intimate
business with a former coworker . . . Wait a minute, father, don’t
go anywhere, we’ve got a little something to take care of.”
Ostap started up a conversation with the dvornik about fur-
niture, and five minutes later the concessionaires knew every-

thing. In 1919, all the furniture had been carted off to the
Department of Housing, with the exception of one parlor
chair that had been in Tikhon’s possession at first, but was
later taken away by the manager of the Second Social Security
Home.
“So it’s what, here in the building?”
“It’s right here.”
“But tell me, little friend,” Vorobyaninov asked, standing
absolutely still, “when you had the chair here, you didn’t . . .
repair it, did you?”
“It’s impossible to repair that chair. They did good work
back in the old days. A chair like that could hold up for thirty
more years.”
“Well, go on, then, little friend, take another ruble, but
make sure you don’t tell anyone I’m here.”
“Silent as the grave, citizen Vorobyaninov.”
After sending off the dvornik and shouting “The ice has
started breaking up!” Ostap Bender addressed himself to Ip-
polit Matveevich’s mustache once more.
“We’ll have to dye it again. Give me some money, I’ll go
to the drugstore. Your Titanic isn’t worth a damn, maybe you
could dye dogs with it . . . Now back in the old days, they knew
their dye! This racing professor told me an exciting story.
Were you ever interested in racing? No? A shame. It’s an ex-
citing thing. So then . . . there was a certain infamous opera-
tor, Count Drutsky. He lost five hundred thousand on horses.
He was the king of losing. When the count had nothing to
his name but his debts, and he’d already started thinking
about suicide, this tout gave him a fantastic piece of advice
for fifty rubles. The count left and came back a year later with
a three-year-old Orlov Trotter colt. Then the count not only
made his money back, he actually won about three hundred
thousand more. His Orlov Trotter with the excellent pedigree,
traces of the titanic ✦ 85

Broker, always came in first. He beat McMahon by a length in
the Derby. It was a bolt out of the blue! But then Kurochkin
(maybe you’ve heard of him) notices that all Orlov Trotters’
coats change color as they age, but Broker’s, that sweetheart’s,
is the only one that doesn’t. It was a huge scandal! The count
got three years. It turned out that Broker wasn’t an Orlov Trot-
ter, but a dyed crossbreed, and crossbreeds are much faster
than Orlov Trotters, they don’t let trotters get within a mile of
them. How do you like that? Now there’s a dye! Not like you
and your mustache!”
“But the pedigree? After all, he had an excellent pedigree,
didn’t he?”
“The same kind as the label on your Titanic: a fake one!
Give me money for some new dye.”
Ostap returned with a new mixture.
“Naiad. This might just be better than your Titanic. Take
off your jacket!”
The re-dying ceremony was begun, but the “amazing chest-
nut color that lends the hair a soft, fluffy feel,” when mixed with
the green of the Titanic, suddenly turned Ippolit Matveevich’s
hair and mustache all the colors of the visible spectrum.
Vorobyaninov, who still hadn’t had anything to eat that day,
spitefully cursed all cosmetics manufacturing plants, whether
they were state-run or underground, located in Odessa on Ma-
laya Arnautskaya Street.
“I’m pretty sure that not even Aristide Briand has a mus-
tache like this,” Ostap remarked briskly, “but living in Soviet
Russia with such ultraviolet hair is not recommended. We’ll
have to shave it off.”
“I can’t,” Ippolit Matveevich answered mournfully. “It’s out
of the question.”
“What, does your mustache have a lot of sentimental value
for you?”
“I can’t,” Vorobyaninov repeated, hanging his head.

“Then you can sit in the basement for the rest of your life,
but I’m going after the chairs. By the way, the first chair is right
over our heads.”
“Shave it off!”
Bender hunted down some scissors and snipped off the
mustache, quick as a wink. It tumbled noiselessly to the floor.
Then, after finishing the haircut, the technical director got an
old Gillette razor out of his pocket and an extra blade out of
his wallet and started shaving Ippolit Matveevich, who was on
the verge of tears.
“I’m wasting my last blade on you. Don’t forget to note down
two rubles for the shave and haircut in my debits column.”
Trembling from woe, Ippolit Matveevich still managed to
ask, “Why so expensive? It costs forty kopeks everywhere else!”
“For the conspiratorial secrecy, comrade field marshal,”
Bender answered quickly.
The sufferings of a person whose head is being shaved with
a safety razor are unbelievable. Ippolit Matveevich understood
this from the very beginning of the operation. Still, the end,
which comes to everything, came.
“There we go. The meeting is still in session! Nervous per-
sons are requested to avert their eyes! Now you look like Bobo-
rykin, the famous writer of satirical couplets.”
Ippolit Matveevich brushed off the nasty clumps of hair that
so recently had been handsome gray locks and washed his face.
Experiencing a strong burning sensation all over his head, he
looked in the mirror for the hundredth time that day. Surpris-
ingly, he liked what he saw. Looking back at him was the face
of an actor between engagements, which, although twisted
from suffering, was still fairly young.
“Well, forward march, the horn is calling!” Ostap shouted.
“I’ll follow the tracks to the Department of Housing, or rather,
to the building where the Department used to be, and you go
after the old women!”
traces of the titanic ✦ 87

“I can’t,” Ippolit Matveevich said. “It will be quite difficult
for me to enter my own home.”
“Oh, that’s right . . . ! A moving story! The exiled baron!
Very well. You go to the Department of Housing, and I’ll do
a little work here. Our rendezvous point is the basement. Let
the parade of circus performers begin!”

9
The Little Sky-Blue Thief
the manager of the Second Stargorod Social Security Home

was a shy little thief. His entire being protested against theft,
but he couldn’t not steal. He stole, and was ashamed. He
stole continually, and was continually ashamed; therefore, his
well-shaven little cheeks always burned with the ruddy glow
of embarrassment, bashfulness, timidity, and confusion. The
manager’s name was Alexander Yakovlevich, and his wife’s was
Alexandra Yakovlevna. He called her Sashkhen, and she called
him Alkhen. In all the whole wide world, there had never been
such a little sky-blue thief as Alexander Yakovlevich.
He was not only the manager, he was the director. The for-
mer director had been removed from his post for being rude
to the wards and was then appointed conductor of the sym-
phony orchestra. Alkhen didn’t resemble his poorly brought-
up boss in the least. In order to fill his workday to maximum
capacity, he took it upon himself to direct the home, interact-
ing with the retirees with utmost politeness and introducing
important reforms and innovations.
Ostap Bender pulled on the heavy oak door of Vorobyani-
nov’s mansion and found himself in the front hall. It smelled
like burnt kasha. From the upper rooms came a dissonance
that sounded like a distant “hurray!” going through the ranks.
No one was around, and no one appeared. An oak staircase
with steps that had once been lacquered led upward for two
✦ 89 ✦
flights. Now it only had rings sticking out of it, while the brass
rods that had once pressed the carpet to the steps were gone.
“Didn’t the marshal of the Comanches live in vulgar luxury,
though,” Ostap thought, ascending the stairs.
In the very first room, which was bright and airy, more than a
dozen gray-headed little old ladies in dresses of the cheapest pos-
sible mouse-gray toile du nord were sitting in a circle. Stretching
out their dry necks to the utmost and watching the man in his
prime standing in the middle of the circle, the old ladies sang,
Oh, the familiar sound of our troika,
The little bells ringing, ringing so gay.
Like a white blanket is the sparkling snow
In the distance, awaiting our play.
The leader of the choir, in a gray Tolstoyan shirt and trousers

made of that very same toile du nord, was marking the time
with both hands and shouting, “Descant, softer! Kokushkina,
weaker!” as he turned to and fro.
He saw Ostap, but, powerless to halt the motion of his
hands, just gave him a malevolent glance and continued di-
recting. The choir made an effort and began to thunder, as if
through a pillow:
Ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta,
To-ro-rom, tu-ru-rum, tu-ru-rum . . .
“Tell me, where can I find the comrade manager?” Ostap

said, breaking in at the first pause.
“What’s the matter, comrade?”
Ostap shook the director’s hand and asked, in a friendly
way, “Folk songs of the peoples? Very interesting. I’m the fire
safety inspector.”
The maintenance director blushed with shame. “Yes, yes,”
he said, at a loss, “you’re most apropos, very opportune. I was
just about to write up a report.”

“No need for you to take the trouble,” Ostap announced
magnanimously. “I’ll write up the report myself. Well, let’s
have a look at the place.”
Alkhen released the choir with a wave of his hand, and the
old ladies retired with joyful little steps.
“Please, follow me,” the manager invited.
Before going any further, Ostap fixed his gaze on the fur-
niture in the first room. In the room stood a table, two park
benches on iron legs (one with the name “Kolya” carved deeply
into its wooden back), and a reddish-brown harmonium.
“No one lights primus stoves in this room? No temporary
stoves or anything like that?”
“No, no. This is where our clubs meet: choral, drama, the
fine arts, and music . . .”
As soon as he reached the word “music,” Alexander Ya-
kovlevich turned red. His chin caught fire first, then his fore-
head and cheeks. Alkhen was deeply ashamed. He’d sold all
the instruments of the brass chamber ensemble a long time
ago. The old ladies’ weak lungs couldn’t pump anything other
than a puppy’s squeals out of them, anyway. It was funny to see
such a hulking mass of metal in such a helpless state. Alkhen
couldn’t not steal the chamber ensemble. And now, he was
deeply ashamed.
On the wall hung a slogan written in white letters on a piece
of mouse-colored toile du nord that stretched from one window
all the way to the other:
a brass band is the path to collective creativity.
“Very good,” said Ostap. “The club activity room presents

no danger in terms of fire safety. Let’s move on.”
Moving at a fast clip through the street-facing rooms of
Vorobyaninov’s mansion, Ostap didn’t see a walnut chair with
curved legs and upholstered in a light, flowered English calico
anywhere. Regulations for the Second Social Security Home
the little sky-blue thief ✦ 91

were pasted on the slick, as if ironed, marble walls. Ostap read
them, occasionally issuing energetic questions: “Are the flues
cleaned out regularly? The stoves all working?” Then, receiv-
ing exhaustive answers, he moved on.
The fire safety inspector diligently sought even the tiniest
corner that could present a danger in terms of fire hazards,
but as far as those were concerned, everything was fine. It was
the search that was a failure. Ostap went into the bedrooms.
The old ladies stood up and bowed low when he walked in.
Their cots were made up with blankets that were as fluffy and
hairy as if they’d been made of dog fur, with the word “legs”
woven into one end at the factory. Little trunks stood under
the beds, exactly one-third of each trunk sticking out in front,
upon the initiative of Alexander Yakovlevich, who liked every-
thing to be arranged with military precision.
Everything in home No. 2 was striking for its excessive mod-
esty: the furnishings, composed exclusively of park benches that
had been carried over from Alexandrovsky (now Proletarian
Volunteer Saturdays) Boulevard, and the kerosene lamps that
looked as if they’d come straight from the flea market, and
those same blankets with the frightening word “legs.” But one
particular thing in the home was made well and to last. This
was the door springs.
Door fittings were Alexander Yakovlevich’s passion. By
dint of great effort, he managed to equip each and every
door with springs in the widest possible variety of systems and
fashions. There were quite simple springs in the form of an
iron rod. There were pneumatic door closers with cylindrical
brass pumps. There were apparati on blocks and pulleys,
with heavy little bags of shot hanging from them. There were
even springs with such complicated constructions that the
Social Security Home repairman could only shake his head in
amazement. All these cylinders, springs, and counterweights
were possessed of a mighty power. Doors slammed shut with

the alacrity of a mousetrap. The entire house shook from the
door mechanisms’ action. Squeaking sadly, the old ladies fled
the doors’ attacks, but escape wasn’t always possible. The doors
would catch the lady fugitives and shove them in the back, while
from above, the counterweight would already be descending,
cawing hollowly and flying past their temples like a shot. The
doors shot off frightening salutes the whole time Bender and
the manager were walking through the building.
Nothing was hidden behind all this serfdom-era magnifi-
cence. There was no chair. In the course of his search for fire
hazards, the inspector found himself in the kitchen, where ka-
sha was cooking in a big laundry boiler, emanating the smell
the smooth operator had caught back in the front hall. Ostap
moved his nose in a circle and said, “What are you cooking
that with, machine oil?”
“It’s pure butter, as God is my witness!” Alkhen said, redden-
ing to the verge of tears. “We buy it straight from the farm.”
He was deeply ashamed.
“Ah! In any case, that doesn’t present a fire hazard,” Ostap
noted.
The chair wasn’t in the kitchen either. There was only a
greasy stool with the cook, in his apron and cap made of toile
du nord, sitting on it. “Why are all your outfits gray and made
out of a cheap muslin that’s only fit for washing windows?”
The shy Alkhen lowered his gaze even further. “We’re not
being extended the necessary amount of credit.”
He was disgusting even to himself.
Ostap gave him a doubtful glance and said, “This has no
relation to the Department of Fire Safety, which I currently
represent.”
Alkhen got scared.
“We’ve taken all the necessary measures to prevent fire,”
he announced. “We even have an Éclair foam spray fire
extinguisher.”

The inspector continued reluctantly to the fire extinguisher,
looking into storerooms on the way. Even though the red tin
cone was the single object in the building that had a direct
connection to fire prevention, it provoked the inspector’s spe-
cial ire.
“Did you buy this at the flea market?”
Without waiting for an answer from the stunned Alexander
Yakovlevich, he took the Éclair from its rusty nail, broke the
cap without warning, and quickly pointed the cone up. But
instead of the expected jet of foam, the cone only ejected a
thin hissing that was reminiscent of the old-time melody “How
Great Is Our God of Zion.”
“Of course you did,” said Ostap, confirming his original
opinion. Then he hung the fire extinguisher, which continued
to sing, back in its place.
They went on, accompanied by the hissing.
“Where on earth can it be?” Ostap thought. “I’m beginning
to not like this.” Ostap decided not to quit the toile du nord
palace until he’d found out everything.
While the inspector and the manager were crawling around
in attics, getting into the minutest details of fire prevention
and the distribution of flues, the Second Social Security Home
was going about its usual, everyday business.
Lunch was ready. The smell of burnt kasha grew noticeably
stronger and overcame all the other sour smells residing in the
home. A rustling started up in the corridors. The old ladies,
carrying their tin bowls of kasha in front of them with both
hands, carefully walked out of the kitchen and sat down to eat
at a single large table, trying not to look at the dining room’s
omnipresent slogans, personally composed by Alexander Ya-
kovlevich and artistically executed by Alexandra Yakovlevna.
The slogans were as follows:
food is the source of health

one egg contains as much fat as half a pound of meat
you help society by chewing your food carefully
meat is bad for you.
For the old ladies, all these holy words awoke memories of
their teeth, which had disappeared even before the Revolu-
tion; of eggs, which had gone missing at approximately the
same time; of meat, which couldn’t hold its own against eggs
in terms of fat; and even, perhaps, of society, which they had
been deprived of the opportunity to help by carefully chewing
their food.
The one who suffered most was old lady Kokushkina, who
sat opposite a big drawing of a cow, finely illuminated in water-
color. The drawing had been donated by NSSOEL (the New
Society for the Scientific Organization of Everyday Life). The
appealing cow, gazing out of the drawing with one dark Span-
ish eye, was skillfully separated into parts and resembled a
master plan of a new cooperatively built building, with one ex-
ception: the parts that were designated as bathrooms, kitchens,
corridors, and back stairways on the schematic plan of the
building figured under such titles as filet, shank, rib steak, and
grades A, B, and C on the schematic plan of the cow.
Kokushkina ate her kasha without lifting her head. The
striking cow caused her to drool and made her heart beat
erratically. Meat was not served for lunch in the Second Social
Security Home.
Along with the old ladies, Isidor Yakovlevich, Afanasy Ya-
kovlevich, Kirill Yakovlevich, Oleg Yakovlevich, and Pasha
Emilevich were also sitting at the big table. These young men
did not harmonize with the mandate of the home either in
age or gender. However, the four Yakovleviches were Alkhen’s
younger brothers, and Pasha Emilevich was Alexandra Yakov-
levna’s nephew once removed. The young men, the oldest

of whom was thirty-two-year-old Pasha Emilevich, did not
consider living in the Social Security Home anything out of the
ordinary. They lived in the home under the same rules as the
old ladies—they also had government-issue cots with blankets
with the word “legs” written on them, and they were enrobed
in mousy toile du nord, just like the old ladies—but thanks to
their youth and strength, they ate better than the wards. They
stole everything in the building that Alkhen hadn’t stolen
first. Pasha Emilevich could eat two kilograms of tyulka at one
sitting, which he went and did once, leaving the entire home
without any dinner.
The old ladies had no sooner begun to dig into their ka-
sha than the Yakovleviches and Emilevich, who had already
gulped down their portions, burped, stood up from the table,
and went to the kitchen in search of something digestible.
The dinner continued. The old ladies started raising a
racket:
“They’re going to get soused and start belting out their
songs!”
“Pasha Emilevich sold the chair from the red corner this
morning. He took it out the back door and gave it to a fence!”
“Just you wait, he’ll come home drunk tonight . . .”
At that moment, the wards’ conversation was interrupted
by what sounded like a horn blowing its nose. It even drowned
out the ever-continuing song of the fire extinguisher. Then a
bovine voice began, “. . . vention . . .”
The old ladies hunched over and did not turn toward the
cabinet loudspeaker standing on the washed parquetry in the
corner, instead continuing to eat and hoping to let this cup
pass from them. But the loudspeaker energetically continued,
“evokrrakkhhhh in light of . . . able invention. A railway techni-
cian of the Murmansk railroad, Comrade Sokutsky—Samara,
Oryol, Karakum, Ustinya, Tver’, Semyon, Klementy, York—
So-kut-sky . . .”

The horn wheezily inhaled a great draft of air and revived
the program in its nasal, stopped-up voice: “. . . invented a
system of light signals for snowplows. The invention was ap-
proved by Transinvimp—Terenty, Raymond, Amur . . .”
The old ladies glided off to their rooms like little gray
ducks. The loudspeaker, hopping up and down from its own
might, raged on in the empty room: “And now you’ll hear
some Novgorod chastushki . . .”
Far, far away, in the very center of the earth, somebody
strummed once on a balalaika, and a black-earth Battistini
started singing:
On the walls the bedbugs sit
Squinting at the sun so bright,
They saw the tax man coming round
And kicked the bucket that same night.
These chastushki excited furious activity in the center of the

earth. A terrible roaring could be heard in the speaker. It was
either thunderous applause or the eruption of underground
volcanoes.
Meanwhile, the fire safety inspector, now sullen as a storm
cloud, was coming down the attic stairs backwards. Finding
himself in the kitchen once again, he saw five citizens scooping
sauerkraut out of a barrel with their bare hands and stuffing
their faces with it. They ate in silence. Only Pasha Emilevich
rolled his head around with a gourmand’s delight, pulling sea-
weedy fronds of cabbage off his mustache and saying with dif-
ficulty, “It’s a sin to eat cabbage like this without vodka.”
“A new batch of old ladies?” Ostap asked.
“They’re orphans,” Alkhen replied, shouldering the inspector
out of the kitchen and secretly shaking his fist at the orphans.
“Children of the Volga region?”
Alkhen cringed.
“A grim legacy of the Tsarist regime?”

Alkhen spread his hands wide and shrugged, as if to say,
well, what can you do with a legacy like that?
“Coeducation with an integrated approach?”
The bashful Alexander Yakovlevich lost no time inviting the
fire prevention inspector to dine with them on whatever God
provided to grace their table.
That day, God graced Alexander Yakovlevich’s dinner ta-
ble with a bottle of buffalo-grass vodka, homemade pickled
mushrooms, mashed potatoes with hashed herring, Ukrainian
borscht with grade A meat, chicken with rice, and dried apple
compote.
“Sashkhen,” Alexander Yakovlevich said, “meet the com-
rade from the Province Fire Department.”
Ostap exchanged bows with the mistress of the house like
a seasoned actor and proclaimed such a long and ambiguous
compliment that he wasn’t even able to finish it. Sashkhen,
a strapping lady whose attractive appearance was disfigured
somewhat by a pair of tidy muttonchops like those of Nicholas
I, laughed delicately and drank with the men.
“I drink to your communal services!” Ostap exclaimed.
The dinner was jolly indeed, and it was only after the com-
pote that Ostap remembered the goal of his visit.
“Why is the inventory in your kefir sanatorium here so
scanty?” he asked.
“What do you mean,” Alkhen said, worried. “What about
the harmonium?”
“I know, I know: the vox humanum. But there’s absolutely
nothing tasteful around here to sit on. All you’ve got are these
old washtubs from the park.”
“There’s a chair in the red corner,” Alkhen said, offended, “an
English chair. They say it was left over from the old furniture.”
“But come to think of it, I haven’t seen your red corner.
How is it in terms of fire hazards? Not a chink in your armor?
I’ll have to take a look.”

“Be my guest.”
Ostap thanked the hostess for dinner and set out.
Nobody lit primus stoves in the red corner, nor were there
any temporary stoves, and the flues were all in working order
and were cleaned out regularly, but, to Alkhen’s exorbitant
amazement, there was no chair in it. Ostap gnashed his teeth
in annoyance. They rushed to look for the chair. They looked
under beds and under benches, they moved the harmonium
out from the wall for some reason, and they interrogated the
old ladies, who shot fearful glances at Pasha Emilevich; but
they still couldn’t find the chair. Pasha Emilevich demon-
strated enormous persistence in his search for the chair. Every-
one else had already resigned themselves, but Pasha Emilevich
still wandered the rooms looking under water pitchers and re-
arranging tin teacups, mumbling, “Where on earth can it be?
It was here today, I saw it with my own eyes. It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s sad, girls,” Ostap said in an ice-cold voice.
“It’s just ridiculous!” Pasha Emilevich repeated insolently.
At this point, the Éclair fire extinguisher, which had been
singing the entire time, hit the highest possible F, of which only
Miss Nezhdanova, People’s Artist of the Republic, is capable.
Then it went momentarily silent, and, with a scream, released
its first jet of foam, which covered the ceiling and knocked the
cook’s toile du nord cap off his head. After this first jet, the foam
spray fire extinguisher let out a second, toile-du-nord-colored
one that felled Isidor Yakovlevich, who was still a minor. Then
the Éclair started functioning smoothly, without any hitches.
Pasha Emilevich, Alkhen, and all the Yakovleviches who’d
been spared rushed to the scene of the incident.
“Nice, clean work!” Ostap said. “An idiotic idea!”
The old ladies, who were left alone with Ostap without any su-
pervisors around, immediately started filing their complaints:
“He moved in all his younger brothers. They eat everything
in the house.”

“He gives the piglets milk and then fobs kasha off on us.”
“He’s carried off everything in the house.”
“Calmly now, girls,” Ostap said, retreating. “Save it for the
labor inspector. I haven’t been authorized by the senate.”
The old ladies weren’t listening.
“That little Pasha Emilevich, he carried that chair off today
and sold it. I saw him myself.”
“To who?” Ostap shouted.
“He sold it, that’s all. He wanted to sell my blanket.”
In the corridor, they were fiercely battling the fire extin-
guisher. Finally, the human spirit won out: the foam extinguisher,
stomped flat under Pasha Emilevich’s iron feet, vomited out a
weak stream for the last time and then went forever quiet.
The old ladies were sent in to wash the floor. The fire safety
inspector lowered his head and, swinging his hips slightly,
walked up to Pasha Emilevich.
“A fellow I know also used to sell state-owned furniture,”
Ostap said authoritatively. “Now he’s gone off to become a
monk. He’s doing time in the lockup.”
“I find your groundless accusations strange,” remarked Pa-
sha Emilevich, who reeked of jets of foam.
“Who’d you sell the chair to?” Ostap asked in a ringing
whisper.
At that point Pasha Emilevich, who was possessed of a su-
pernatural intuition, realized that he was about to be beaten,
and maybe even kicked.
“A fence,” he answered.
“Address?”
“That was the first time I ever saw him in my life.”
“The first time in your life?”
“As God is my witness.”
“I would really love to smash in that ugly mug of yours,”
Ostap informed him wistfully, “but Zarathustra won’t allow it.
Well, get the hell out of here.”

Pasha Emilevich smiled beseechingly and started to walk
away.
“Hey you, abortion victim,” Ostap said magnanimously, “fill
in the rest of the picture, don’t shove off yet. This fence of
yours, what did he look like? Blond or brown hair?”
Pasha Emilevich started explaining in detail. Ostap heard
him out with attention and ended the interview with the words,
“This, without a doubt, has nothing to do with fire safety.”
In the corridor, bashful Alkhen walked up to Bender, who
was already leaving, and gave him a chervonets.
“Article 114 of the Criminal Code,” Ostap said, “bribing an
official during the fulfillment of his work duties.”
But he took the money and, without saying good-bye to
Alexander Yakovlevich, headed for the door. The door, which
was equipped with a mighty apparatus, opened only with great
difficulty and then gave Ostap a one-and-a-half-ton shove in
the backside.
“A blow has been landed,” Ostap said, rubbing the bruised
spot. “The meeting is still in session!”

10
Where Are Your Curls?
while ostap was examining the Second Social Security

Home, Ippolit Matveevich, who felt the cold on his shaved
head as soon as he left the dvornik’s basement, was walking the
streets of his hometown.
Bright springtime water ran down the pavement. There was
a continual crackling and pattering from the diamond-like
drops falling from the roofs. The sun was setting on all the roof-
tops. Golden bityugs thundered deliberately loudly on the na-
ked pavement with their hooves and flicked their ears back, lis-
tening with pleasure to their own clatter. Wet advertisements
with words lettered in copying pencil that had run (i’ll teach
you to play the guitar using the number system and
social science lessons for students enrolling at the peo-
ple’s conservatory) shrank and shivered on wet telegraph
poles. A Red Army platoon in winter helmets walked through
a puddle that began at the Stargaico shop and stretched all the
way to the Provplan building, whose pediment was crowned
with plaster tigers, cobras, and statues of Nike.
As Ippolit Matveevich walked, he looked with interest at
the pedestrians going this way and that. He, who had lived in
Russia all his life, and all through the Revolution, had seen
everyday life shattered, turned inside out, and changed. He
was used to it, but it turned out that he was only used to it on
one point of the earthly globe, in the provincial town of N. As
✦ 103 ✦
soon as he entered the town where he was born, he realized
that he didn’t understand it at all. He felt awkward, strange,
as if he really had been an émigré and was only now coming
back from Paris. Before, when he was driving through town
in his carriage, he would always meet friends, or at least peo-
ple he’d seen around town. Now he’d gone four blocks along
Lena Massacre Street without meeting anyone he knew. They
had disappeared, or maybe they’d aged so much that they were
unrecognizable, or maybe they’d become unrecognizable be-
cause they were wearing different clothes, different hats. Maybe
they’d changed their gait. In any case, there weren’t any.
Pale, cold, and lost, Ippolit Matveevich walked. He’d com-
pletely forgotten that he needed to find the Department of
Housing. He walked from sidewalk to sidewalk and turned
into lanes where the bityugs had gotten out of hand and were
now openly and deliberately clattering their hooves. There
was more winter to be seen in the lanes, and in places he still
came across rotten ice. The entire city was a different color.
Blue houses had turned green, yellow houses had turned gray,
the balls had vanished from the fire tower that had no pacing
fireman on it, and it was much louder on the street than Ip-
polit Matveevich remembered.
On Bolshaya Pushkinskaya Street, Ippolit Matveevich was
amazed by tracks and streetcar poles with wires, which he’d
never before seen in Stargorod. Ippolit Matveevich didn’t read
the newspaper and so didn’t know that two streetcar lines, Sta-
tion Line and Market Line, were going to be opened in Star-
gorod on the first of May. At first Ippolit Matveevich felt as
though he’d never left Stargorod, then Stargorod seemed to
be a completely foreign place.
As he pondered these things, he reached Marx and Engels
Street. At that point the childish sensation that someone he
knew was definitely going to come around the corner of the
two-story building with a long balcony came back to him. Ip-

polit Matveevich even paused in expectation. But the acquain-
tance didn’t show up. At first a glazier with a box of Bohemian
glass and a loaf of honey-colored putty came from around the
corner. Then a dandy in a suede cap with a yellow leather bill
rounded the corner. After him ran children, first-graders hold-
ing their books in leather straps.
Suddenly Ippolit Matveevich felt a cold lump in his stom-
ach and a burning on his palms. An unfamiliar citizen with a
kind face was walking right in front of him, carrying a chair
horizontally, like a cello. Ippolit Matveevich, who was suddenly
seized by a fit of hiccups, looked closely at it and immediately
recognized his chair.
Yes! It was the Gambs chair, upholstered in flowered En-
glish calico that had grown dark in the storm of revolution; it
was the walnut chair with bent legs. Ippolit Matveevich felt as
though somebody had shot off a gun right next to his ear.
“Knives sharpened, scissors sharpened, razors straightened!”
shouted a nearby bass-baritone.
A thin echo came right after it: “Soldering, repairing!”
“Moscow paper ’zvestiye, magazine The Laugher, Red Virgin
Soil . . .”
Somewhere up above him, a window broke with a crash. A
truck from Millconst drove past, shaking the entire town. A
policeman started blowing his whistle. Life was in full swing, it
was full to overflowing. There was no point wasting time.
Ippolit Matveevich bounded like a leopard over to the out-
rageous stranger and silently yanked on the chair. The stranger
yanked it back. Then Ippolit Matveevich, clutching one of the
chair’s legs with his left hand, started forcefully tearing the
stranger’s fat fingers off the chair.
“I’m being robbed,” the stranger whispered, holding on to
the chair more tightly.
“Allow me, please,” Ippolit Matveevich babbled, continuing
to unpeel the stranger’s fingers.
where are your curls? ✦ 105

A crowd started to gather. Three or four people were al-
ready standing nearby, observing the conflict’s development
with lively interest.
They both looked around warily. Without looking at each
other, but also without letting go of the chair, they started
walking quickly away, as though nothing at all had happened.
“What in the world is going on?” Ippolit Matveevich thought
in despair.
It was impossible to tell what the stranger thought, but his
gait was quite decisive.
They walked faster and faster, spied a vacant lot strewn with
construction materials and broken rocks in a blind alley, and
turned toward it as if on command. Here Ippolit Matveevich’s
strength quadrupled.
“But really, allow me!” he shouted, not caring who might
hear.
“Help!” the stranger exclaimed, barely audibly.
And since both men’s hands were full holding the chair,
they started kicking at each other with their feet. The strang-
er’s boots were shod, so Ippolit Matveevich had a pretty rough
time of it at first. But he adapted quickly. Leaping first to the
right, then to the left, as if he were dancing the krakowiak, he
twisted away from his adversary’s blows and tried to strike his
enemy’s stomach. He wasn’t able to reach the stomach, be-
cause the chair got in the way, but he was able to land a solid
blow to his adversary’s kneecap, after which the latter could
only lash out with his left leg.
“Oh, Lord!” whispered the stranger.
And then Ippolit Matveevich saw that the stranger who had
absconded with his chair in the most outrageous manner was
none other than the priest of the Frol and Lavr Church, Fa-
ther Fyodor Vostrikov.
Ippolit Matveevich was taken aback.

“Reverend Father!” he exclaimed, letting go of the chair in
amazement.
Father Vostrikov turned purple and finally unclutched his
fingers. The chair, unsupported by anyone, crashed down onto
the broken brick.
“Where is your mustache, my esteemed Ippolit Matveevich?”
the spiritual personage asked, with the utmost sarcasm.
“And your curls, where are they? I believe you used to have
curls?”
Insufferable disdain was evident in every word Ippolit Ma-
tveevich said. He looked Father Fyodor up and down with an
unusually noble gaze, took the chair under his arm, and turned
around to leave. But Father Fyodor, now recovered from his
confusion, didn’t give Vorobyaninov such an easy victory. Cry-
ing “No, sir! If you please!” he grasped the chair again. They
resumed their original positions. Both adversaries stood clutch-
ing their chair legs, taking each other’s measure and shifting
from side to side like cats or boxers.
The heart-stopping pause lasted an entire minute.
“So it’s you, Holy Father,” Ippolit Matveevich ground out.
“You’re the one chasing after my property?”
With these words, Ippolit Matveevich lashed at the holy
father’s hip with his foot.
Father Fyodor contrived to kick the marshal angrily in the
groin, so that the latter doubled over, and said, “It’s not your
property!”
“Then whose is it?”
“Not yours.”
“But whose, then?”
“Not yours! Not yours!”
“But whose, then? Whose?”
“Not yours!”
Hissing, they lashed out furiously with their feet.

“But whose property is it, then?” cried the marshal, burying
his foot in the holy father’s stomach.
Overcoming his pain, the holy father said firmly, “It’s na-
tionalized property.”
“Nationalized property?”
“Yes sir, that’s right, sir, nationalized property.”
They spoke with such unusual speed that their words ran
together.
“Nationalized by whom?”
“The Soviet regime! By the Soviet regime!”
“Which regime?”
“By the workers’ regime.”
“Ah, yes!” Ippolit Matveevich said, growing cold. “By the
workers’ and peasants’ regime?”
“That’s right, sir!”
“Mmm-hmm . . . So then, perhaps, you are a Party member,
Holy Father?”
“Perrrhaps!”
At this point, Ippolit Matveevich couldn’t take it anymore.
Howling “Perhaps?!” he spat a juicy gob right into Father Fyo-
dor’s kind face.
Father Fyodor immediately spat at Ippolit Matveevich’s face,
and also hit his target. They could not wipe away the spittle,
since their hands were full holding the chair. Ippolit Matvee-
vich made a sound like a door opening and shoved his enemy
with the chair as hard as he could. The enemy fell, pulling the
panting Vorobyaninov down with him. The battle continued
on the ground floor.
Suddenly a crack rang out. The two front legs had both
broken off simultaneously. The adversaries forgot about each
other and started tearing apart the walnut treasure chest.
The flowered English calico ripped apart with the sad cry of a
seagull. The back flew off, cast aside by the mighty surge. The
treasure hunters ripped the bast matting out, along with the

brass tacks, and thrust their fingers into the woolen stuffing,
cutting themselves on the springs. The disturbed springs sang.
The chair was gnawed clean. Nothing was left but skin and
bones. Springs rolled off in every direction. The wind carried
the rotten wool around the empty lot. The bent legs lay in a
pit. There were no diamonds.
“So, did you find them?” Ippolit Matveevich asked, breath-
ing heavily.
Father Fyodor was covered in clumps of wool. He huffed
and puffed, but remained silent.
“You’re a crook,” Ippolit Matveevich shouted. “I’ll get you
right in the mug, Father Fyodor!”
“You couldn’t touch me if you tried,” the reverend father
answered.
“Where are you going, all covered in fuzz?”
“What’s it to you?”
“For shame, Reverend Father! You’re nothing but a thief!”
“I didn’t steal anything from you!”
“How did you find out about it? Did you use the secrets
of confession for your own personal benefit? Very good! Very
nice!”
Ippolit Matveevich walked out of the empty lot with an in-
dignant “Fooey!” and set off for home, brushing off the sleeves
of his long coat as he walked.
At the corner of Lena Massacre Street and Yerofeevsky Lane,
Vorobyaninov saw his companion. The technical director and
primary manager of operations was standing with his left foot
in the air as the tops of his shoes were buffed with canary-
yellow polish. Ippolit Matveevich ran over to him. The direc-
tor was carelessly humming “The Shimmy.”
Camels in the desert used to do it,

The Botocudos used to get down to it,
And now the shimmy’s all over the worrrld . . .

“So, how was the Housing Department?” he asked briskly,
then added immediately, “Wait. Don’t tell me about it, you’re
too excited. Cool off a little.”
After giving the shoeshine boy seven kopeks, Ostap took
Vorobyaninov’s arm and pulled him down the street. Ostap
listened to everything the overexcited Ippolit Matveevich told
him with great attention.
“Aha! A small black beard? Right! A long coat with a sheep-
skin collar? Got it. That’s the chair from the poorhouse. It was
bought for three rubles this morning.”
“But wait, there’s more . . .”
Ippolit Matveevich told the primary concessionaire about
all of Father Fyodor’s low-down tricks. Ostap’s face clouded
over.
“A rotten business,” he said. “The cave of Leichtweiss. A se-
cret rival. We have to get to the treasure first; we can always do
a number on his ugly mug later.”
By the time the friends had a bite to eat in the pub Stenka
Razin and Ostap found out which building the Department of
Housing used to be in and what institution was housed there
now, the day ended.
The golden bityug s turned brown again. The diamond-like
water drops grew cold on the way down and plopped onto the
earth. In beer parlors and the Phoenix Restaurant the price of
beer rose: evening had come. Electric lamps lit up on Bolshaya
Pushkinskaya Street, and a detachment of Young Pioneers re-
turned with a tramping of drums from its first spring hike.
The Provplan building’s tigers, cobras, and statues of Nike
glowed mysteriously in the light of the moon, which had come
out over the city.
On the way home with a suddenly silent Ostap, Ippolit
Matveevich looked at the Provplan tigers and cobras. Back in
his day the province’s zemstvo executive committee had been

housed there, and the city-dwellers had been proud of their
cobras, considering them one of the Stargorod sights.
“I’ll find them,” Ippolit Matveevich thought, gazing at a
plaster statue of Nike.
The tigers thrashed their tails tenderly, the cobras coiled joy-
ously, and Ippolit Matveevich’s soul brimmed with confidence.

11
The Parakeet, the Repairman,
and the Fortune-Teller
building no. 7 on pereleshinsky lane was not among the

best buildings in Stargorod. Its two floors, built in Second Em-
pire style, were decorated with chipped lion’s heads bearing
an unusual resemblance to the face of the once-famous writer
Artsybashev. There were exactly eight Artsybashevian faces, the
same as the number of windows looking out into the lane. The
lion’s snouts were the keystones of the window arches.
There were two more adornments on the building, but
these were purely commercial in nature. On one side hung an
azure sign reading
the odessa bublik co-op
“Moscow Bread Rings.”
The sign depicted a young man in a tie and short French trou-
sers. He was holding a fairy-tale horn of plenty that spilled out
a lavalike flood of ochre-yellow Moscow Bread Rings (which
could be passed off as Odessan bubliks as necessary). The young
man was smiling voluptuously. On the other side, the packing
office Quickpack informed its esteemed citizen clients of its
presence with a black sign with round gold letters.
Notwithstanding the palpable difference between their sign-
age and quantities of circulating capital, both these different
enterprises were engaged in the same thing: speculation in
textiles of all kinds (coarse woolen material, fine woolen mate-
✦ 113 ✦
rial, worsted, and cotton, and if they could get their hands on
silk in good colors and patterns, then silk, too).
By proceeding through the gateway flooded with water and
the gloom of the tunnel, and turning right into the courtyard
with its cement well, one could see two bare doors with no
steps opening directly onto the sharp stones of the courtyard.
Over the right-hand door hung a little plaque of tarnished
brass with the name
V. M. Polesov
engraved on it in cursive letters. The left-hand door was
equipped with a little white tin sign reading
fashion and hats.
That was also nothing but outward appearance.

Inside the fashion and millinery studio there was neither
sparterie, nor trimmings, nor headless mannequins with their
officerial posture, nor big-headed milliner’s blocks for charm-
ing ladies’ hats. The three-room apartment was inhabited not
by all this flashy stuff, but by an immaculate white parakeet
in red bloomers. The parakeet was overcome by fleas, but it
couldn’t complain to anybody since it didn’t speak in a hu-
man voice. The parakeet chewed on sunflower seeds for days
at a time and spit the shells out through the bars of its tower-
shaped cage onto the carpet. All it needed was an accordion
and squeaky new galoshes and it would have looked just like a
self-employed skilled craftsman who’d had a drop too much.
Dark-brown curtains with pom-poms fluttered on the windows,
and dark-brown tones predominated in the apartment. A re-
production of Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead, under glass
in the kind of frame known as fantaisie made of dark-green
polished oak, hung over the piano. One corner of the glass
had broken off a long time ago, and the exposed part of the
picture was so flyspecked that it merged with the frame com-

pletely. Now it was impossible to discern what was happening
in that part of the isle of the dead.
The mistress herself was sitting in the bedroom on the bed,
leaning her elbows on a little octagonal table covered in a Riche-
lieu tablecloth that was none too clean and laying out cards.
The widow Gritsatsueva, in a fuzzy shawl, sat before her.
“I must warn you, young lady, that I don’t take less than fifty
kopeks per séance,” the mistress said.
The widow, whose yearning to find a new husband knew no
bounds, agreed to pay the set price.
“Just tell me my future, please,” she said plaintively.
“You should be a queen of clubs,” the mistress said.
The widow objected, “But I’ve always been a queen of
hearts.”
The mistress agreed indifferently and began laying out the
cards. A rough draft of the widow’s fortune was ready in just a
few minutes. Unpleasant incidents large and small awaited the
widow, and the king of clubs was dear to her heart although he
was on friendly terms with the queen of diamonds.
They took the final reading from her palm. The lines on
the widow Gritsatsueva’s palm were clean, powerful, and im-
peccable. Her life line stretched so far that it went down her
wrist, and if the line spoke truth, then the widow would live
until Judgment Day. Her head and heart lines gave cause to
hope that the widow would quit peddling groceries and be-
stow on humanity unsurpassable masterpieces in every con-
ceivable realm of art, science, and the social sciences. The
widow’s Mounts of Venus resembled the hills of Manchuria
and indicated wondrous reserves of love and tenderness.
The fortune-teller explained all this to the widow using
words and terms common among graphologists, palmists, and
horse traders.
“And thank you, my dear lady,” the widow said. “Now I’ve
got a pretty good idea who the king of clubs might be, and I
the parakeet, the repairman, the fortune-teller ✦ 115

also know exactly who the queen of diamonds is. But does the
king foretell marriage?”
“Yes it does, young lady.”
The widow plodded home on winged thoughts of love.
The fortune-teller tossed her cards into a drawer, yawned, dis-
playing the maw of a fifty-year-old woman, and went to the
kitchen. There she fussed with the dinner she had warming
on the Grets portable kerosene stove and wiped her hands on
her apron like a scullery maid. Then she picked up a bucket
with the enamel chipping off and went into the courtyard for
water.
She walked through the courtyard, moving heavily on her
flat feet. Her half-collapsed bosom bounced listlessly in her re-
dyed blouse. A little garland of graying hair grew on her head.
She was an old lady, she was rather dirty, she looked at every-
one suspiciously, and she liked sweets. If Ippolit Matveevich
had seen her now, he would never have recognized the beauty
Elena Bour, his beloved of old, about whom the court clerk
had once said in verse, “With kisses I yearn to tarry! She is so
very airy.”
At the well, Madame Bour was greeted by her neighbor, Vik-
tor Mikhailovich Polesov, an intellectual repairman who was
collecting his water in an old gas can. Polesov had the face of
an opera devil who has been carefully smeared with soot be-
fore appearing on stage.
The neighbors exchanged greetings and then began discuss-
ing the event that had the whole city of Stargorod talking.
“Look what we’ve come to,” Polesov said ironically. “I ran
all over town yesterday but couldn’t get any three-eighths-inch
dies anywhere. Nope! Nobody has ’em! And they’re getting
ready to start up a streetcar!”
Elena Stanislavovna, who had as much understanding of
three-eighths-inch dies as a co-ed at the Leonardo da Vinci
Choreographical School (who thinks that farmer’s cheese

comes from farmer’s cheese vareniki) has of farming, was sym-
pathetic nonetheless: “And the stores these days! Now there’s
only lines, not stores. And these stores have the most awful
names. Stargaico!”
“No, you know what, Elena Stanislavovna? That’s not the
worst of it! They have four engines left from General Electric.
Well, those will work all right, even though the bodies are ab-so-
lute trash! The windows aren’t seated in rubber! I saw it myself!
They’re all going to shake! Appalling! And the rest of the en-
gines are from Kharkov. Good for nothing but State Industrial
Light Metals. They won’t last a verst. I was looking at them . . .”
The repairman went silent, annoyed. His black face shone in
the sun. The whites of his eyes were yellowish. Of all the town’s
skilled craftsmen with motors (workers in whom Stargorod
abounded), Viktor Mikhailovich was the most maladroit and the
most likely to get himself into hot water. The reason for this was
his excessively exuberant character. He was an exuberant loafer.
He was constantly frothing at the mouth about something. It
was impossible to find him in his own shop, situated in building
No. 7 on Pereleshinsky Lane. The portable furnace, now gone
cold, stood orphaned in the middle of the stone shed, which
also contained punctured inner tubes, torn treads from Trian-
gle tires, rust-colored padlocks so enormous they could lock up
entire cities, dented fuel cans labeled indian and wanderer,
baby carriages with spring shock absorbers, a dynamo that had
gone forever silent, rotted belts of raw leather, greased oakum,
worn sandpaper, an Austrian bayonet, and a lot of shredded,
bent, and crumpled rubbish piled up in the corners.
Viktor Mikhailovich never had clients come to him. Viktor
Mikhailovich was always going out and taking charge of things
himself. He had no time for work. He couldn’t stand the sight
of a loaded wagon peacefully driving into a courtyard, whether
it was his own or someone else’s. Polesov would immediately
go into the courtyard and, clasping his hands behind his back,

observe the driver’s actions with contempt. Finally, he wouldn’t
be able to take it anymore.
“Who in the world drives in like that?” he would shout, hor-
rified. “Turn!”
The frightened driver would turn.
“What direction are you turning, you lug?” Viktor Mikhail-
ovich would shout, suffering, and fly over to the horse. “In
the old days they’d’ve slapped you in the face, then you sure
would’ve turned.”
After being in charge for half an hour or so, Polesov would
be on the verge of returning to his shop, where an unrepaired
bicycle pump was waiting for him, when the peaceful life of
the town would usually be disturbed once more by some mis-
understanding or other. Either two carts would get their axles
stuck together in the street, and Viktor Mikhailovich would tell
them the quickest, easiest way to get unstuck; or they’d be chang-
ing out a telegraph pole, and Polesov would check its perpen-
dicularity with his own plumb line, brought specially from the
shop; or finally, a string of fire trucks would be going by, and
Polesov, excited by the sound of the horn and burned to ash in
the fire of his own impatience, would run after the chariots.
Still, sometimes the elemental force of actual productiv-
ity would overcome Viktor Mikhailovich. He would hide for
several days in his shop, working in utter silence. Children
would run freely around the courtyard shouting whatever
they wanted, wagons would describe all manner of arcs in the
courtyard, carts on the street completely stopped getting stuck
together, and fire chariots and catafalques rolled off to their
fires in solitude: Viktor Mikhailovich was working. Once, after
a similar long binge, he led a motorcycle like a ram by the horn
out into the courtyard. It was made of bits of automobiles, fire
extinguishers, bicycles, and typewriters. The one-and-a-half-
horsepower engine was from a Wanderer and the wheels were
Davidsons, but the other essential parts had all lost their brand

name a long time ago. A cardboard sign reading test hung
off the saddle from a piece of string.
A crowd gathered. Without looking at anyone, Viktor
Mikhailovich cranked the pedal with his hand. There were no
sparks for about ten minutes. Then a noise like the champing
of iron rang out, the apparatus started to shake, and a cloud
of dirty smoke enveloped it. Viktor Mikhailovich threw him-
self into the saddle and the motorcycle carried him at insane
speed through the tunnel to the middle of the street, where it
stopped abruptly, as though it had been cut down by a bullet.
Viktor Mikhailovich was getting ready to climb off and inspect
his enigmatic little vehicle, but suddenly it went into reverse,
carried its creator back through the same tunnel, stopped at its
point of departure in the middle of the courtyard, exclaimed
peevishly, and blew up. Viktor Mikhailovich was miraculously
spared. During his next binge he built a stationary engine out
of the motorcycle’s wreckage. It looked very much like a real
engine, but it didn’t work.
The intellectual repairman’s academic pursuits were crowned
by the saga of the gates of building No. 5. The building housing
association had signed a contract with Viktor Mikhailovich, ac-
cording to which Polesov had agreed to get the building’s iron
gates back in perfect working order and paint them some eco-
nomical color of his own choosing. For its part, the housing asso-
ciation agreed to pay V. M. Polesov 21 r. 75 kop. upon the special
committee’s approval of his work. The revenue stamps were pro-
vided at the cost of the party contracted to do the work.
Viktor Mikhailovich dragged the gates off like Samson. He
enthusiastically got to work in his shop. Two days went to dis-
assembling the gates. They were reduced to their component
parts. Cast-iron curlicues lay in a baby stroller and iron rods
and spears were piled under the workbench. Several more
days were spent on examining the damage. Then the town had
some big trouble: on Drovyanaya Street a water main broke,

and Viktor Mikhailovich spent the rest of the week at the scene
of the accident smiling ironically, shouting at workers, and go-
ing to look down into the chasm every few minutes. Viktor
Mikhailovich got back to work on the gates once his organi-
zational fire burned down a little, but by then it was too late.
The courtyard children were already playing with the cast-
iron curlicues and spears of building No. 5’s gates. The chil-
dren took one look at the furious repairman, dropped their
tchotchkes, and ran off in fright. Half the curlicues were miss-
ing and he couldn’t find them. After that, Victor Mikhailovich
grew completely cold toward the gates.
Meanwhile, something terrible was going on in building
No. 5, now left wide open. Wet laundry was being stolen from
the rooftops, and one evening somebody even stole a steam-
ing samovar right out of the courtyard. Viktor Mikhailovich
personally participated in the chase after the thief, but the thief
ran quite fast, even though he was carrying a boiling samovar
with flames licking out of the tin pipe on top in his two out-
stretched hands. He even turned around and mocked Viktor
Mikhailovich, who was leading the pack of pursuers, with dirty
words.
But the one who suffered the most was the dvornik of build-
ing No. 5. He’d lost his nightly income. There were no gates,
so there was nothing to open, and the inhabitants who came
back after a night out had no reason to give him their ten-
kopek coins. At first the dvornik stopped by to find out whether
the gates would be reassembled soon, then he begged in the
name of Christ the Lord, and by the end he’d begun issuing
vague threats. The housing association was sending Viktor
Mikhailovich written reminders. It was starting to smell like a
lawsuit. The situation was becoming more and more tense.
The fortune-teller and the repairman continued their con-
versation as they stood by the well.

“Given the presence of the absence of creosote-impregnated
railroad ties, it won’t be a streetcar, it’ll be nothing but trouble!”
Viktor Mikhailovich shouted to the entire courtyard.
“When will it all end,” Elena Stanislavovna said. “We live like
savages.”
“There’s going to be no end to it . . . Oh yes! Do you know
who I saw today? Vorobyaninov!”
Elena Stanislavovna leaned against the well, so amazed that
she forgot to set down her full bucket of water.
“I was going to the Communal Services office to extend my
shop lease, I was walking down the hall, and then two men
come up to me. I look at them, and there’s something familiar
about one of them. Sort of like Vorobyaninov’s face. He asks,
‘Tell me, what kind of institution used to be here in this build-
ing?’ So I tell him that the women’s college prep school used
to be here, and then it was the Housing Department. ‘And why
do you want to know?’ I ask. But they say, ‘Thank you,’ and
keep going. Then I clearly saw that it was Vorobyaninov him-
self, just without his mustache. Where did he come from? And
the fellow that was with him, the other one, he was a handsome
fellow, obviously a former officer. So then I thought . . .”
At that moment, Viktor Mikhailovich noticed something
unpleasant. He cut his speech short, grabbed his gas can, and
quickly hid behind the trash bin. Slowly the dvornik of building
No. 5 walked into the courtyard, stopped next to the well, and
started surveying the buildings inside the courtyard. He didn’t
see Viktor Mikhailovich anywhere and grew sad.
“Vitka the repairman’s out again?” he asked Elena Stan-
islavovna.
“Oh, I don’t know anything,” the fortune-teller said, “I don’t
know a thing.”
She was unusually upset and walked quickly back to her
apartment, splashing water from the bucket.

The dvornik stroked the well’s cement side and walked over
to the shop. Two paces after the sign
entrance to repairman’s shop
came the prominently displayed sign

repairman’s shop and primus repair
under which hung a heavy lock. The dvornik kicked the lock
and said hatefully, “Ooo, you gangrene!”
The dvornik stood in front of the shop for a few minutes as
he was overcome with the most poisonous feelings; then he
ripped off the sign with a crash, carried it over to the well in
the middle of the courtyard, stomped on it with both feet, and
started raising a ruckus.
“You’ve got thieves living here in building No. 5!” cried the
dvornik. “All kinds of riffraff! Seven-fathered viper! He’s got
a high-school education! I don’t give a lick for a high-school
education! Damned gangrene!”
All the while, the seven-fathered viper with a high-school
education was sitting behind the trash on his gas can, feeling
morose.
Windows burst open with a crash and merry inhabitants
peered out. Curious passersby drifted slowly into the courtyard
from the street. The dvornik got even more fired up when he
saw he had an audience.
“That mechanic of a repairman!” the dvornik shouted. “Dog-
gone aristocrat!”
The dvornik generously larded his parliamentary expres-
sions with the censored words to which he gave preference.
The weak female race thickly clotting the windowsills was very
upset at the dvornik, but did not budge from the windows.
“I’ll turn your snout inside out! Educated!” the dvornik raged.
When the scandalous scene had peaked, a policeman
showed up and started dragging the dvornik off to the station

without a word. The fine young men from Quickpack helped
the policeman.
The dvornik embraced the policeman’s neck submissively
and burst into tears.
The danger had passed.
Then the exhausted Viktor Mikhailovich leaped out from
behind the trash can. The audience roared.
“Boor!” Viktor Mikhailovich shouted after the procession.
“Boor! I’ll show you! You rat!”
The bitterly sobbing dvornik heard none of this. He was car-
ried over to the station. The sign repairman’s shop and pri-
mus repair was also brought in, to serve as material evidence.
Viktor Mikhailovich kept stalking around for a long time.
“Sons of bitches,” he said to the spectators. “They got too
big for their britches! Boors!”
“That’s quite enough for now, Viktor Mikhailovich!” Elena
Stanislavovna shouted from her window. “Come over here for
just a minute.”
She set a little plate of compote down in front of Viktor
Mikhailovich and began interrogating him as she paced the
room.
“But I’m telling you, it’s him, no mustache, but it’s him,”
Viktor Mikhailovich shouted, as usual. “So there. I know him
really well. Vorobyaninov, as I live and breathe!”
“Quiet. Oh, Lord! Why’d he come here, do you think?”
An ironic smile formed on Viktor Mikhailovich’s black face.
“Well, what do you think?”
He gave an even more ironic grin. “He didn’t come to sign
any contracts with the Bolsheviks, that’s for sure.”
“Do you think he’s exposed to any danger?”
The reserves of irony Viktor Mikhailovich had stored up in
ten years of revolution were inexhaustible. A series of smiles
of various strengths and levels of skepticism played across his
face.

“Who in Soviet Russia is not exposed to any danger, much
less a person in Vorobyaninov’s situation? People don’t shave
off their mustaches for no reason, Elena Stanislavovna.”
“Was he sent from abroad?” Elena Stanislavovna asked, on
the verge of suffocating.
“Indubitably,” the genius repairman answered.
“But what’s his purpose here?”
“Don’t be a child.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have to see him.”
“Do you know the risk you’ll be taking?”
“Oh, I don’t care! After ten years apart, I can’t not see Ip-
polit Matveevich.”
It really did seem to her as though fate had torn them apart
at a time when they loved each other.
“Find him, I beg you! Find out where he is! You go every-
where! It won’t be hard for you! Tell him I want to see him. Do
you hear me?”
The parakeet in the red bloomers, which had been doz-
ing on its perch, was frightened by the loud conversation. It
turned upside down and froze in that position.
“Elena Stanislavovna,” said the repairman-mechanic, stand-
ing and pressing both hands to his heart, “I will find him and
make contact with him.”
The fortune-teller was touched. “Would you like some more
compote?”
Viktor Mikhailovich finished his compote. Then he recited
an ill-tempered lecture about the incorrect construction of
the birdcage, advised Elena Stanislavovna to keep everything
in strictest secrecy, and took his leave.

12
The Alphabet, the Mirror of Life
by the second day the companions had ascertained that liv-

ing in the dvornik’s basement wasn’t really comfortable any-
more. Tikhon kept mumbling, completely dumbfounded after
seeing his master first with a black mustache, then with a green
one, and finally without any mustache at all. There was noth-
ing to sleep on. The smell of rotting manure disseminated by
Tikhon’s new felt boots stood thick in the basement. His old
felt boots stood in the corner and didn’t exactly ozonize the
air either.
“I declare the evening of fond reminiscence closed,” Ostap
said. “We need to move into a hotel.”
Ippolit Matveevich flinched. “We can’t do that.”
“And why not, sir?”
“We’d have to register there.”
“Isn’t your passport in order?”
“Well, yes, my passport’s in order, but my name is well known
in town. People will talk.”
The concessionaires were silent for a while, thinking.
“Do you like the name Mikhelson?” the magnificent Ostap
asked abruptly.
“Which Mikhelson? The senator?”
“No. The member of the Soviet Sales Industry Worker’s
Union.”
“I’m sure I don’t understand.”
✦ 125 ✦
“That’s because of the lack of practical experience. Don’t
be such a chump, champ.”
Bender took a union membership card out of his green
jacket and gave it to Ippolit Matveevich. “Conrad Karlovich
Mikhelson, forty-eight years old, not a Party member, unmar-
ried, union member since 1921, a morally upstanding individ-
ual, my good friend, and, I believe, a friend of children . . . but
you don’t have to be friends with children, the police won’t
ask that of you.”
Ippolit Matveevich blushed glowingly. “But is it all right?”
“In comparison with our concession, this activity, although
it is banned by the Criminal Code, has the innocent appear-
ance of a children’s game of tag.”
Nevertheless, Vorobyaninov faltered.
“You are an idealist, Conrad Karlovich. You’re lucky. Imag-
ine, you could have had to be some kind of Papa-Christozopulo
or Malodorus.”
Consent quickly followed, and the concessionaires made their
way out into the street without saying good-bye to Tikhon.
They checked in to the furnished rooms of the Sorbonne.

Ostap threw the hotel’s entire modest staff into a tizzy. At first
he surveyed the seven-ruble rooms, but he was left dissatisfied
with their furnishings. He liked the nicely appointed five-ruble
rooms better, but the carpets were somehow worn, and the
smell was disturbing. In the three-ruble rooms, everything was
good except for the pictures.
“I can’t live in the same room as a landscape,” Ostap said.
They were forced to take a room for a ruble eighty. There
weren’t any landscapes or rugs in it, and the furniture was stern
and restrained: two beds and a nightstand.

“Stone Age–style,” Ostap noted approvingly. “But you don’t
have any prehistoric animals living there in your mattresses,
do you?”
“Depends on the season,” the hall monitor said slyly. “Now
say for example there’s been some All-Province Congress, then
of course there aren’t any, because there’s a lot of passengers
and there’s a big cleaning before they get here. But the rest of
the time it can indeed happen that they swarm you. From the
Livadia’s rooms next door.”
That same day the concessionaires stopped at the Stargorod
Communal Services office, where they obtained all the neces-
sary information. It seemed that the Housing Department had
been dissolved in 1921 and that its voluminous archive had been
merged with the Stargorod Communal Services office’s archive.
The smooth operator took it from there. By evening, the
companions had found out the home address of the archive
director, Varfolomey Korobeynikov, a former bureaucrat in
the city government who was now a worker in the field of of-
fice labor.
Ostap robed himself in his worsted vest, beat his jacket on
the headboard until it was dust-free, demanded one ruble
twenty kopeks from Ippolit Matveevich for hospitality ex-
penses, and went to pay the archivist a visit. Ippolit Matveevich
stayed behind in the Sorbonne, where he was so nervous that
he paced up and down in the canyon between the two beds.
The fate of the entire enterprise would be decided that cold,
green evening. If they could get a copy of the orders accord-
ing to which the furniture from Vorobyaninov’s mansion had
been distributed, they could consider the deal half-done al-
ready. There would be unimaginable complications later on,
of course, but they’d have a clear path to their goal.
“If we could just get those orders,” Ippolit Matveevich whis-
pered as he lolled on the bed. “We just need those orders!”
the alphabet, the mirror of life ✦ 127

The broken-down mattress’s springs bit him like fleas. He
didn’t feel a thing. He still didn’t have a clear understanding
of what would happen after the orders were procured, but he
was certain that then everything would go along easy as a knife
through butter. “And you can’t spoil the kasha with butter,”
ran through his head.
They were cooking up something much bigger than a pot
of kasha. Caught fast in the grip of his rosy dreams, Ippolit
Matveevich tossed and turned on the bed. The springs bleated
underneath him.
Ostap had to go all the way to the other side of town. Ko-
robeynikov lived in Gusishche, on the outskirts of Stargorod.
It was primarily railroad workers who lived there. Sometimes
a steam engine, breathing heavily through the nose, would
back up over the buildings along the gravel embankment en-
closed by a thin concrete fence, illuminating the buildings’
roofs momentarily with the blazing light from the firebox;
sometimes empty train cars would roll along; sometimes track
torpedoes would go off. The long brick frames of cooperative
apartment buildings, their paint still wet, stretched out among
the shanties and temporary barracks.
Ostap went around the shining island of the railroad work-
ers’ club, checked an address on a piece of paper, and stopped
at the archivist’s little house. He turned the doorbell, inscribed
please turn in fat, embossed letters. After prolonged ques-
tioning to the tune of “who do you want to see?” and “why?”
the door opened, and Ostap found himself in a dark entryway
packed full of storage cupboards. In the darkness someone
breathed on Ostap but didn’t say anything.
“Where’s citizen Korobeynikov?” Bender asked.
The breathing person took Ostap’s arm and led him into
a dining room lit by a hanging kerosene lamp. Ostap saw be-
fore him a prim little old man with an unusually flexible spine.
There could be no doubt about it: the old man was citizen

Korobeynikov himself. Ostap pulled out a chair and sat down
without waiting for an invitation.
The little old man looked fearlessly at the rather too self-
reliant visitor and remained silent. Ostap courteously spoke
first: “I’m here on business. Do you work in the Stargorod Com-
munal Services office?”
The old man’s back sprang into motion, bending affirma-
tively.
“And you used to work in the Housing Department?”
“I worked everywhere,” the old man said happily.
“Even in the city government office?”
Ostap smiled graciously as he said this. The old man’s back
coiled and uncoiled, finally coming to a halt in a position tes-
tifying that he’d worked in city government a long, long time
ago and that it was simply impossible to remember everything.
“But still, allow me to inquire: to what do I owe the honor?”
the old man asked, gazing at his guest with interest.
“I will allow you,” the guest answered. “I’m Vorobyani-
nov’s son.”
“Which Vorobyaninov? The marshal?”
“His.”
“What, he’s still alive?”
“He died, citizen Korobeynikov. He’s passed.”
“Yes,” the old man said, not especially sorrowfully. “It’s a sad
thing. But I thought he didn’t have any children, after all?”
“He didn’t,” Ostap confirmed courteously.
“But then . . .”
“It’s all right. I’m from his morganatic marriage.”
“You wouldn’t be dear Elena Stanislavovna’s son, would
you?”
“Yes. Precisely.”
“And how is her health these days?”
“Maman went on to her grave a long time ago.”
“I see, I see . . . Oh, how sad.”

After that, the old man looked at Ostap with tears of sym-
pathy in his eyes for a long time, although he’d seen Elena
Stanislavovna no longer ago than that same day in the meat
section at the market.
“Everyone dies,” he said. “But, still, allow me to inquire as
to the purpose of your visit, my esteemed, well, I don’t know
your name . . .”
“Voldemar,” Ostap informed him hastily.
“Vladimir Ippolitovich? Very good. So. What can I do for
you, Vladimir Ippolitovich?”
The old man sat down at the table covered in patterned
oilcloth and looked deep into Ostap’s eyes.
In carefully chosen words, Ostap expressed his sadness for
his parents. He deeply regretted having intruded into the most
esteemed archivist’s domicile so late and causing him such
trouble with his visit, but he hoped that the most esteemed ar-
chivist would forgive him once he discovered the feeling that
had moved him.
“I would like to find something from my dear old dad’s fur-
niture, to preserve his memory,” Ostap concluded, with a son’s
inexpressible love. “Would you happen to know who the furni-
ture from papa’s home was distributed to?”
“It’s a complicated business,” the old man answered, after
some thought. “Only a well-off person could manage it . . . But
now you, forgive me, what do you do?”
“I’m an unaffiliated professional. I have my own coopera-
tive meatpacking plant in Samara.”
The old man glanced doubtfully at the young Vorobyani-
nov’s green armor, but did not voice any objections. “A sharp
young man,” he thought.
Ostap, who had completed his observation of Korobeynikov
by then, decided that the old man was “a typical swine.”
“So, then,” Ostap said.

“So, then,” the archivist said. “It’s difficult, but it can be
done . . .”
“Some expenses will be necessary?” the owner of the meat-
packing plant said helpfully.
“A small sum . . .”
“Let’s get down to business, as Maupassant says. Your infor-
mation will be paid for.”
“Well then, lay down seventy rubles.”
“And why so much? Are oats expensive these days?”
The old man tinkled lightly as he curled and uncurled his
spine.
“Allow me my little joke.”
“Agreed, pops. Cash in exchange for orders. When should
I come see you?”
“Do you have the money on you?”
Ostap clapped his hand to his pocket readily.
“Then we can do it right now, if you like,” Korobeynikov
said triumphantly. He lit a candle and led Ostap into the next
room. Apart from a bed, on which the house’s owner clearly
slept, there stood in it a desk piled high with account books
and a long office cabinet with open shelves. Printed letters
were glued to the shelves’ edges: A, B, C, and so forth, down to
the rearguard letter Z. Bundles of orders tied in fresh packing
twine lay on the shelves.
“Oh-ho!” Ostap said, delighted. “A complete home archive!”
“Absolutely complete,” the archivist said modestly. “I just . . .
you know, in case . . . The Communal Services office doesn’t
need it, but it might come in handy in my sunset years . . . It’s
like living on the edge of a volcano these days, you know . . .
anything could happen . . . And then people will rush off to
find their furniture again, but where is it, where is their furni-
ture? Here’s where it is! Right here! In the cabinet. And who
saved it? Who kept it safe? Korobeynikov. Then the gentlemen

will say thank you to the nice old man, they’ll help him in his
sunset years . . . And I don’t need much, a nice tenner for each
little order, and even for that I’ll be grateful . . . Otherwise, just
go and try it, just you go on a wild goose chase. Without me
they’ll never find it!”
Ostap looked at the old man, enraptured.
“A wonderful office, fully mechanized,” he said. “You’re a
downright hero of labor!”
The flattered archivist started giving his guest all the details
of his favorite activity. He opened fat record and distribution
books.
“Everything’s here!” he said. “All of Stargorod! All the fur-
niture: what was taken from whom when, and when what was
given to whom. And then this one, the alphabetized book, the
mirror of life! Whose furniture do you want to know about?
The first-guild merchant Angelov’s furniture? Be my guest.
Look under letter A. The letter A, Ak, Am, An, Angelov . . .
Number . . . here it is: 82,742. And now we bring over the
record book. Page 142. Where is Angelov? There’s Angelov.
On December 18, 1918, from Angelov, was taken: a Becker
grand piano, number 97,012; its upholstered piano stool; writ-
ing desks—two; wardrobes—four, two of mahogany; one ar-
moire; and so forth . . . And to whom was it given? We look in
the distribution book. That same number: 82,742 . . . Given
. . . the armoire went to the town military commissariat, three
wardrobes went to the Lark boarding school for homeless chil-
dren, and one more wardrobe was given to the secretary of the
Stargorod Province Procurement Committee for personal use.
And where did the grand piano go? The grand piano went
to the Second Social Security Home. And that grand piano is
there to this very day . . .”
“Somehow I don’t recall seeing a grand piano like that
there,” Ostap thought, remembering Alkhen’s bashful little
face.

“Or, for example, see what Murin, the town council office
manager, has . . . so we need to look under the letter M, then
. . . Everything’s here. The entire town. The grand pianos are
here, and all kinds of little couches, and cheval glasses, and
armchairs, settees, ottomans, chandeliers . . . Even tea and cof-
fee services, we’ve got them, too . . .”
“Well,” Ostap said. “Someone needs to build you a monu-
ment not made by human hands. However, let’s get down to
business. The letter V, for instance . . .”
“I’ve got the letter V,” Korobeynikov replied eagerly. “Just a
moment. Vm, Vn, Voritsky, number 48,238, Vorobyaninov, Ip-
polit Matveevich, your dear father, may he rest in peace, he
was a man with a big heart . . . A Becker grand piano number
54,809, four stamped Chinese vases from the French factory
Sèvres, eight Aubusson rugs of various sizes, a tapestry of a shep-
herdess, a tapestry of a shepherd, two Turkoman carpets, a Kho-
rassan rug, a stuffed bear holding a tray, a twelve-piece bedroom
suite, a sixteen-piece dining room suite, a fourteen-piece parlor
suite, walnut, from the master furniture-maker Gambs . . .”
“And who was it given to?” Ostap asked impatiently.
“We’ll get to that. The stuffed bear with the tray went to the
second district police station. The shepherd tapestry went to
the Art Objects fund. The shepherdess tapestry went to the
water transportation workers’ club. The Aubusson, Turkoman,
and Khorassan rugs went to the People’s Commissar of For-
eign Trade. The bedroom suite went to the Hunters’ Union,
the dining room suite went to the Stargorod branch of Central
Tea. The parlor suite was divided up. The round table and
one chair went to the Second Social Security Home, the couch
with a curved back was placed at the disposal of the Housing
Department, and has been sitting in the entrance hall ever
since, they’ve covered the upholstery in grease stains, the riff-
raff . . . And the director of the Housing Department, Com-
rade Burkina, resolved that another chair be given to Comrade

Gritsatsuev as a crippled veteran of the imperialist war, after he
filed an official petition. Ten chairs went to the museum of
furniture craftsmanship in Moscow, as ordered in the circular
from the Commissar of People’s Education . . . The stamped
Chinese vases . . .”
“My compliments!” Ostap said, exulting. “That’s just con-
genial! It would be good to take a look at the orders them-
selves, too.”
“Just a minute, now, we’ll get to the orders. For number
48,238, the letter V . . .”
The archivist walked over to the shelves and stood up on his
tiptoes to get the folder he was looking for.
“There we are, sir. All your dear father’s furniture is right
here. Do you want all the orders?”
“What would I do with all of them? It’s just . . . childhood
memories . . . our parlor suite . . . I remember how I used to play
in the parlor, sitting on the Khorassan carpet, looking at the
shepherdess tapestry . . . that was a good time in life, my golden
childhood! So then, we’ll just stick with the parlor suite, pops.”
The archivist lovingly smoothed down the folder of green
stubs and started looking for the necessary orders. Korobey-
nikov took out five of them. One order for ten chairs, two or-
ders for one chair apiece, one for the round table, and one for
the shepherdess tapestry.
“If I may be so bold as to point out, everything’s in order.
What went where: it’s all been recorded. All the addresses, and
the signatures of the recipients themselves, are on the stubs.
So nobody can deny anything, just in case. Would you perhaps
be interested in General Popov’s widow’s suite? It’s very good.
Also by Gambs.”
But Ostap, who was moved solely by filial love, plucked up
the orders and thrust them to the very bottom of his trouser
pocket, and refused the general’s widow’s suite.

“May I write up a receipt?” the archivist inquired, curving
his spine cunningly.
“You may,” Bender said graciously. “Write away, fighter for
an idea!”
“So, I’ll just write one up.”
“Lay it on!”
They went back into the first room. Korobeynikov wrote up
a receipt in a calligraphic hand and handed it to his guest
with a smile. The primary concessionaire took the piece of
paper exceptionally courteously, between two fingers of his
right hand, and placed it in the very same pocket that already
contained the precious orders.
“Well, so long,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “It looks like
I’ve made you go to a lot of trouble. I don’t dare burden you
with my presence any more. Your hand, ruler of the office.”
The dumbfounded archivist weakly shook the proffered
hand.
“So long,” Ostap repeated.
He started moving toward the door.
Korobeynikov didn’t understand a thing. He even looked at
the table, in case the guest had left the money there, but there
was no money on it. So the archivist asked, very quietly: “And
the money?”
“What money?” Ostap said, opening the door. “Did I hear
right—I believe you’re asking about some kind of money?”
“Well, what else would I ask about? For the furniture! For
the orders!”
“My dear man,” Ostap sang out, “I swear to God, I swear
on my dear departed father’s honor . . . I’d be more than
happy, but I don’t have it, I forgot to take it out of my checking
account.”
The old man started trembling and stretched out his puny
little paw, meaning to restrain his nighttime guest.

“Easy, fool,” Ostap said threateningly. “I’m telling you in
plain Russian: tomorrow means tomorrow. Well then, good-
bye! Don’t forget to write!”
The door slammed shut with a crash. Korobeynikov opened
it again and ran out into the street, but Ostap was already gone.
He was walking quickly past the bridge. The train engine’s fires
lit him up and enveloped him in smoke.
“The ice has started breaking up!” Ostap shouted to the engi-
neer. “The ice has started breaking up, gentlemen of the jury!”
The engineer didn’t hear what Ostap said and waved his hand
dismissively. The engine’s wheels started yanking the crank-
shafts’ steel elbows harder and the steam engine raced off.
Korobeynikov stood in the ice-cold breeze a minute or two
more, and, cursing vilely, went back into his little house. He
was overcome by an unbearable bitterness. He stopped short
in the middle of the room and started kicking the table in
fury. The ashtray, shaped like a boot with the word “Triangle”
inscribed on it in red letters, hopped up and down, and the
glass and the carafe clinked.
Varfolomey Korobeynikov had never been had by such a
low-down swindle. He himself could swindle anyone at all, but
here he’d just been duped with such brilliant simplicity that
he continued to stand there hammering his feet into the thick
legs of the dinner table for a long time.
Korobeynikov’s nickname in Gusishche was Varfolomeyich.
People only turned to him in moments of dire need. Var-
folomeyich took things in hock and charged murderous in-
terest rates. He’d been doing this for several years now and
hadn’t been caught by the police a single time. But now he’d
been caught like a newly hatched chick, and in his best com-
mercial undertaking, too, the one he’d expected to bring in
big money and secure his old age.
Only one instance in Varfolomeyich’s life could compare
with this failure.

Some three years ago, when those honeyed individuals who
sell life insurance had appeared again for the first time since
the Revolution, Varfolomeyich had decided to get rich at the
government insurance company’s expense. He insured his
hundred-and-two-year-old grandmother, a respectable woman
whose age was the pride of all Gusishche, for a thousand rubles.
The ancient woman was in the grip of many illnesses afflicting
the elderly. Therefore, Varfolomeyich had to pay high insur-
ance premiums. But Varfolomeyich’s reckoning was simple and
reliable. The old woman wouldn’t be able to live much longer.
Varfolomeyich’s calculations indicated that she wouldn’t last
another year. He would have to put in around sixty rubles of
insurance money in a year, and his nine hundred and forty
rubles would be a virtually guaranteed profit.
But the old lady didn’t die. She successfully lived out her
hundred-and-third year. Varfolomeyich indignantly renewed
the insurance for a second year. The old woman took a sig-
nificant turn for the better in her hundred-and-fourth year:
she developed an appetite, and the index finger on her right
hand, which had been curled tight from gout for at least ten
years, came unbent. Varfolomeyich realized fearfully that,
having already wasted a hundred and twenty rubles on his
grandmother, he hadn’t gotten a single kopek of return on his
capital. His grandmother didn’t seem like she was about to die:
she was capricious, she demanded coffee, and one summer
she even crawled out onto Paris Commune Square to listen to
a newfangled fad, music on the radio. For a while Varfolomey-
ich hoped that this musical trip would finish the old woman
off, and she did, in fact, take to her bed and stay in it for three
days, sneezing every other minute. But her organism won out.
The old woman got up and asked for kissel. He had to pay her
insurance a third time. His situation was unbearable. The old
woman had to die, and yet she didn’t. The thousand-ruble mi-
rage melted, the deadlines went by, and he had to renew her

insurance. Varfolomeyich was stricken with doubt. The cursed
old woman might still live twenty years. No matter how much
the insurance agent courted Varfolomeyich, no matter how
much he tried to convince him by describing the old woman’s
beguiling—God forbid—funeral, Varfolomeyich stood as fast
as diabase. He did not renew the insurance.
It was better to lose a hundred and eighty rubles, he decided,
than two hundred and forty, three hundred, three hundred
and sixty, four hundred and twenty, or even, perhaps, four hun-
dred and eighty, not to mention the interest on his capital.
Even now, as he kicked the table, Varfolomeyich kept listen-
ing out of habit to his grandmother’s groaning, even though
he couldn’t derive any commercial benefit out of the groaning
anymore.
“Jokes, eh?!” he shouted, remembering the lost orders.
“Now I’m always taking the money in advance. How could I
have blundered so badly? I gave away a walnut parlor suite with
my very own hands! The shepherdess tapestry alone is worth
how much . . . ! Handmade!”
Someone’s hesitant hand had been twisting the doorbell,
with its instruction “please twist,” for quite a while, and Var-
folomeyich hadn’t even remembered yet that the outer door
had been left open, when a heavy clatter came from the entry-
way and the voice of someone who’d gotten lost in the laby-
rinth of storage cupboards appealed, “How do I get in?”
Varfolomeyich went out into the entrance hall, pulled
somebody’s coat (good wool, by the feel of it) after him, and
led Father Fyodor Vostrikov into his dining room.
“Kindly forgive me,” Father Fyodor said.
After ten minutes of hints and clever machinations from
both parties, it became evident that citizen Korobeynikov did
indeed have certain information about Vorobyaninov’s furni-
ture, and that Father Fyodor wouldn’t be against paying for

this information. In addition, to the archivist’s most lively plea-
sure, the visitor turned out to be the former marshal’s brother
and passionately desired to preserve his memory by acquiring
the walnut parlor suite. Vorobyaninov’s brother’s fondest ado-
lescent memories were directly tied to precisely this suite.
Varfolomeyich asked for one hundred rubles. The visitor
assessed his brother’s memory to be worth significantly less:
around thirty rubles. They agreed on fifty.
“I would ask for the money up front,” the archivist an-
nounced. “That’s my rule.”
“Is it all right if I pay with gold ten-ruble pieces?” Father
Fyodor asked hastily, ripping out the lining of his jacket.
“I’ll take it at the exchange rate. Nine and a half. That’s
today’s rate.”
Vostrikov shook five yellow coins out of the little sausage,
sprinkled two and a half more silver coins over them, and
pushed the whole little pile over to the archivist.
Varfolomeyich counted the coins twice, swept them into
his hand, asked the guest to wait just a moment, and went to
get the orders. Once in his secret chancellery, Varfolomeyich
didn’t ponder the situation at great length; he opened the al-
phabet—the mirror of life—to the letter P, quickly found the
desired number, and took the pack of General Popov’s widow’s
orders off the shelf. He disemboweled the pack and selected
one order for twelve walnut chairs from the Gambs furniture
workshop given to Comrade Bruns, residing at thirty-four Vi-
nogradnaya Street. Amazed at his own gumption and knack
for finagling his way out of a tight spot, the archivist grinned
and took the order over to its purchaser.
“They’re all in the same place?” the purchaser exclaimed.
“Like peas in a pod. They’re all there. It’s a remarkable
suite. Your mouth waters just looking at it. But what am I do-
ing, explaining this to you! You know it yourself!”

Father Fyodor spent some time rapturously shaking the
archivist’s hand. Then he bumped into the cupboards in the
entryway innumerable times and ran off into the dark night.
Varfolomeyich laughed for a long time at the buyer he’d
fooled so neatly. He laid the gold coins out in a row on the
table and sat over them for a long time, looking sleepily at the
five bright little circles.
“What’s got them all running after Vorobyaninov’s furni-
ture?” he thought. “They’ve all lost their minds.”
He undressed, said his prayers inattentively, lay down in his
cot, narrow as an unmarried girl’s, and fell worriedly asleep.

13
A Passionate Woman, a Poet’s Dream
that night, the cold was devoured without a trace. It got

so warm that early pedestrians’ legs ached. Sparrows were
carrying on about a lot of nonsense. Even a chicken that had
come out of the kitchen into the hotel courtyard felt a surge of
strength and tried to take flight. The sky was full of tiny cloud
dumplings. Trash bins exuded the smell of violets and soupe
paysanne. The wind luxuriated under the cornice. Tomcats
sprawled on their roofs as if they were theater boxes. Squint-
ing condescendingly, they gazed at the courtyard through
which Alexander, the hall attendant, was running holding a
bale of dirty laundry.
It got noisy in the halls of the Sorbonne. Delegates from
local districts had come in for the grand opening of the street-
car. A big crowd of them got out of the hotel brake adorned
with a sign reading sorbonne.
The sun shone at full strength, warming everything thor-
oughly. Storefronts’ corrugated iron shutters flew up. Gov-
ernment office workers who’d left for work in padded coats
started feeling smothered and threw their coats open, feeling
the weight of spring.
One of an overloaded truck’s springs broke on Koopera-
tivnaya Street, and Viktor Mikhailovich Polesov had arrived at
the scene of the accident and was giving advice.
A horsey snorting and neighing could be heard in the room
at the Hotel Sorbonne, furnished with businesslike luxury
✦ 141 ✦
(two beds and a nightstand). Ippolit Matveevich was cheerfully
washing up and clearing out his nose. The smooth operator
was lying in bed, examining the damage to his canary-yellow
shoes.
“By the way,” he said, “I would ask you to settle your debt.”
Ippolit Matveevich dove up out of his towel and gave his
companion a look, his eyes bulging without his pince-nez.
“Why are you looking at me like a soldier at a louse? What’s
so surprising? Your debt? Yes! You owe me money. I forgot to tell
you yesterday that, in accordance with the authority you invested
in me, I paid seventy rubles for the orders. I herewith attach the
receipt. Toss thirty-five rubles on over. The concessionaires are
paying their expenses on an equal footing, I trust?”
Ippolit Matveevich put on his pince-nez, read the receipt,
and, stewing, handed over the money. But even this couldn’t
cast a pall over his joy. The riches were in reach. The thirty-ruble
dust mote disappeared in the diamond mountain’s brilliance.
Ippolit Matveevich, smiling radiantly, went out into the
hall and started sauntering up and down. He was gratified by
dreams of a new life built on that precious foundation. “And
what about the holy father?” he thought maliciously. “Once
a fool, always a fool. He’ll find his old beard sooner than he
finds those chairs.”
Vorobyaninov reached the end of the hallway and turned
around. The cracked white door of room thirteen opened and
Father Fyodor, in a blue kosovorotka belted with a thin black
rope with thick tassels, came out headed straight for him. The
priest’s kind face was bloated from happiness. He had also
come out into the hallway to take a walk. The rivals crossed
paths several times and, eyeing each other victoriously, contin-
ued on their respective ways. At the ends of the hallway they
would both turn around simultaneously and approach each
other again. Rapture seethed in Ippolit Matveevich’s heart.
Father Fyodor was overcome by the same feeling. Pity for the

vanquished foe overcame them both. Finally, during the fifth
round, Ippolit Matveevich couldn’t stand it any longer: “Greet-
ings, dear Father,” he said, with inexpressible sweetness.
Father Fyodor gathered in all the sarcasm God had bestowed
on him and replied, “Good morning, Ippolit Matveevich.”
The enemies parted ways. When their paths crossed again,
Vorobyaninov let fall, “Did I not injure you during our last
meeting?”
“No, what makes you say that, it was very pleasant to run
into you,” Father Fyodor answered, exulting.
They were parted once more. Father Fyodor’s face started
bothering Ippolit Matveevich.
“You must not be performing the liturgy anymore, then?”
he asked at their next meeting.
“How could I? The parishioners have all run back off to
their towns, looking for treasure.”
“Their own treasure, take note! Their own!”
“I don’t know whose it is, I just know they’re looking for it.”
Ippolit Matveevich wanted to say something nasty, and
even opened his mouth for this purpose, but couldn’t think
of anything to say and continued angrily back to his room.
A minute later out came Ostap Bender, son of a Turkish sub-
ject, in his sky-blue vest. Stepping on his shoelaces, he headed
toward Vostrikov. The roses on Father Fyodor’s cheeks faded
and turned to ash.
“Do you buy old stuff?” Ostap asked menacingly. “Chairs?
Innards? Empty tins of polish?”
“What can I do for you?” Father Fyodor whispered.
“What you can do for me is buy my old trousers.”
The priest grew cold and moved away.
“What’s got you so quiet, like a bishop at a reception?”
Father Fyodor slowly headed for his room.
“We buy old stuff but steal what’s new!” Ostap shouted
after him.
a passionate woman, a poet’s dream ✦ 143

Vostrikov ducked his head between his shoulders and stopped
at his door. Ostap continued mocking him. “What about the
pants, esteemed servant of a religious cult? You want them?
I’ve also got some vest sleeves, a bagel hole, and the ears off
a dead donkey. I’ll sell you the lot wholesale, it’ll be cheaper.
And they’re not inside any chairs; you won’t even have to look
for them! Whaddaya say?”
The door shut behind the servant of a cult.
Ostap, satisfied, started walking back slowly, his laces flap-
ping on the rug. Once his massive figure had moved far enough
away, Father Fyodor quickly stuck his head out the door and,
with long-repressed indignation, squeaked, “You’re a dummy!”
“What?” Ostap shouted as he raced back, but the door was
already closed, and the only sound was the lock clicking shut.
Ostap leaned over to the keyhole, put his curled-up hand
to his mouth, and articulated, “How much is your opium for
the people?”
There was only silence on the other side of the door.
“You’re a vulgar man, pops!” Ostap shouted.
At that moment, a pencil shot out of the keyhole and poked
around as Father Fyodor tried to sting his enemy with its point.
The concessionaire recoiled in time and grabbed hold of the
pencil. Each enemy, one on either side of the door, silently
started pulling the pencil toward himself. Youth won out, and
the pencil drew slowly out of the keyhole, resisting all the way,
like a splinter. Ostap returned to the room with this trophy.
The companions grew even jollier.
“And the enemy runs, he runs, he runs!” Ostap sang.
He cut an offensive word into the side of the pencil with
a penknife, ran out into the hall, slid the pencil into the key-
hole, and came back.
The friends brought the green order stubs out into the light
and started studying them closely.

“The order for the shepherdess tapestry,” Ippolit Matvee-
vich said pensively. “I bought that tapestry from a Petersburg
antiquarian.”
“To hell with the shepherdess!” Ostap shouted, ripping the
order into strips of confetti.
“One round table . . . from the furniture suite, obviously . . .”
“Give the table here. To the devil’s mother with the table.”
There were two orders left: one for ten chairs for the museum
of furniture craftsmanship in Moscow, the other, for one chair,
for Comrade Gritsatsuev, in Stargorod, building No. 15 on
Plekhanov Street.
“Get your money ready,” Ostap said. “We might have to go
to Moscow.”
“But there’s a chair here, too, though?”
“One chance against ten. Simple math. And even that’s assum-
ing that citizen Gritsatsuev didn’t use it to stoke his burzhuika.”
“Don’t! Don’t joke like that.”
“It’s all right, never mind, lieber Vater Conrad Karlovich
Mikhelson, we’ll find it! It’s a sure thing! We’ll be wearing foot-
wraps made of cambric and eating Margot cream.”
“For some reason, I feel like the valuables are going to be in
precisely this chair,” Ippolit Matveevich remarked.
“Ah! You feel that? What else do you feel? Nothing? All right,
then. We’ll work in the Marxist fashion. We’ll leave heaven to
the birds and turn to the chairs ourselves. I’m tormented by
the desire to meet citizen Gritsatsuev, crippled from the Impe-
rial war, of No. 15 Plekhanov Street. Don’t fall behind, Conrad
Karlovich. We’ll work up a plan on the way.”
As they went past Father Fyodor’s door, the vengeful son of
a Turkish subject kicked it. From inside they heard the weak
growling of the rival they’d brought to bay.
“Oh, if only he doesn’t come after us!” Ippolit Matveevich
said, alarmed.

“After today’s meeting of ministers on the yacht, no closer
relations are possible. He’s afraid of me.”
The friends didn’t return until evening. Ippolit Matveevich

was troubled. Ostap beamed. He had on new raspberry shoes
with round rubber tips hammered into the heels, chess socks
in a black-and-green check, a cream-colored cap, and a silk-
blend scarf in Rumanian tones.
“Well, it’s there, all right,” Ippolit Matveevich said, recalling
their visit to the widow Gritsatsueva, “but how are we going to
get it? Buy it?”
“What do you mean?” said Ostap. “Not to mention the com-
pletely unproductive expenditure, it will also get people talk-
ing. Why one chair? Why this particular chair?”
“But what are we going to do?”
Ostap examined the backs of his new shoes lovingly. “Chic-
moderne,” he said. “What are we going to do? Don’t worry, chair-
man, I’ll take on this operation. Not a single chair will be able
to resist these little shoes.”
“No, but you know,” said Ippolit Matveevich, perking up,
“while you were talking to Mrs. Gritsatsueva about the flood,
I sat down on our chair, and I swear to you, I felt something
hard underneath me. They’re there, I swear to God they’re
there . . . They are, I absolutely swear to God, I can feel it.”
“Don’t excite yourself, citizen Mikhelson.”
“We have to go over at night and steal it! I swear to God, we
have to steal it!”
“My word, you do things on too small a scale for a marshal
of the gentry. And do you know the technical aspects of this
operation? Perhaps you have a toiletries case with a set of lock-
picks hidden away in your suitcase? Get it out of your head!
That’s typical small-time stuff, robbing a poor widow.”

Ippolit Matveevich came to his senses.
“I just want it fast as we can,” he said pleadingly.
“The only thing that comes along that fast is kittens,” Ostap
observed didactically. “I’ll marry her.”
“Who?”
“Madame Gritsatsueva.”
“But whatever for?”
“So we can dig around in the chair in peace, without any
fuss.”
“But you’re tying yourself down for your whole life!”
“What won’t a fellow do for the good of the concession!”
“For your whole life!” Ippolit Matveevich whispered. He
clasped his hands in extreme astonishment. His lips drew
back from his shaven pastor’s face, revealing the blue teeth he
hadn’t brushed since the day he left the town of N.
“For your whole life!” Ippolit Matveevich whispered. “That’s
a big sacrifice.”
“Life!” Ostap said. “Sacrifice! What do you know about life,
about sacrifice? Or do you think that if you were kicked out of
your mansion, then you know life? Or that if your fake Chinese
vase was requisitioned, then that’s a sacrifice? Life, gentlemen
of the jury, is a complicated thing, but this complicated thing,
gentlemen of the jury, opens simply, like a box. You just have
to know how to open it. Whoever can’t open it is lost. Have you
heard about the hussar ascetic?”
Ippolit Matveevich hadn’t heard.
“Bulanov! You haven’t heard? The hero of aristocratic Pe-
tersburg? Well, you’re going to hear about it now . . .”
And so Ostap Bender told Ippolit Matveevich a story whose
amazing beginning had excited all the high society in Peters-
burg, but whose even more amazing ending was lost and had
transpired, completely unnoticed, over the past few years.

The Story of the Hussar Ascetic ——
As Bender correctly recounted, Count Alexei Bulanov, the brilliant

hussar, was indeed a hero of aristocratic Petersburg. The name of the
magnificent cavalryman and reveller was constantly on the lips of the
prim residents of the palaces along the English Embankment and the
columns of the society page. The pages of illustrated journals often
sported photographic portraits of the handsome hussar: a jacket em-
broidered with Brandenburg loops and trimmed in Astrakhan fur,
glistening like caviar; a Caesar cut with the hair smoothed down at the
temples; and a short victorious nose.
Bulanov was followed everywhere by his reputation as a participant
in many secret duels with fatal consequences, open romances with the
most beautiful, least accessible society ladies, crazy pranks pulled on
persons of note, and heartfelt debaucheries which inevitably ended
with him thrashing petty bureaucrats.
The count was handsome, young, rich, lucky in love, lucky in cards,
and lucky in his inheritances. His relatives died quickly, and their in-
heritances further increased the hussar’s already enormous fortune.
He was daring and brave. He helped Menelik, the negus of Abys-
sinia, in his war with the Italians. He sat wrapped in a white burnoose
under the big Abyssinian stars, looking at a three-verst map of the en-
virons. Torchlight threw quivering shadows on the count’s smoothed-
down temples. His new friend, the Abyssinian boy Vaska, sat at his
feet.
After routing the Italian king’s soldiers, the count returned to
Petersburg along with Vaska the Abyssinian. Petersburg met the hero
with flowers and champagne. Count Alexei sank once more into a care-
free abyss of delights, as they say in novels about high society. Every-
one continued talking about him with redoubled admiration. Women
poisoned themselves over him and men were jealous of him. The
Abyssinian, whose blackness and narrow waist provoked the wonder
of pedestrians, invariably stood on the servant’s step on the back of the
count’s carriage as it flew along Millionnaya Street.

But suddenly, it was all over. Count Alexei Bulanov disappeared.
Princess Belorussko-Baltiyskaya, the count’s latest passion, was incon-
solable. The count’s disappearance caused quite a furor. The newspa-
pers were full of conjecture. Detectives ran their legs off. But all was in
vain. No traces of the count were found.
Once the noise had started dying down, a letter arrived from the
Averky Hermitage explaining everything. The brilliant count, the hero
of aristocratic Petersburg, the Balthazar of the nineteenth century, had
taken the highest monastic vows. People passed on the horrifying de-
tails. They said that the count-monk wore chains and fetters weighing
over a hundred pounds, and that he, a man used to fine French cuisine,
was now eating only potato peels. A whirlwind of supposition arose.
People said the count had seen a vision of his dead mother. Women
wept. A line of carriages stood at the entrance to Princess Belorussko-
Baltiyskaya’s residence. The princess and her husband accepted every-
one’s condolences. New rumors were born. The count was supposed
to be coming back. People said it was temporary insanity caused by
religion. They insisted the count was fleeing his creditors. They spread
the idea that it was all due to an unhappy love affair.
But in actuality, the count had become a monk to know the meaning
of life. He didn’t come back. Gradually people forgot about him. The
Princess Baltiyskaya met an Italian singer and Vaska the Abyssinian
returned to his homeland.
In his cloister, Count Alexei Bulanov, who had taken the name Yevpl,
mortified his flesh with great deeds. He really did wear chains and fet-
ters, but felt that that was not enough for him to know the meaning of
life. Then he invented a special monastic uniform for himself: a klobuk
with a bill that hung down in front, covering his entire face, and a cas-
sock that restricted his motions. With the hegumen’s blessing, he took
to wearing this uniform. But even this seemed too little. In the firm grip
of pride, he retired to a sod hut in the woods and lived in an oak coffin.
The great deed of the ascetic Yevpl filled the cloister with wonder.
The only thing he ate was dried crusts of bread, which were replen-
ished every three months.

Thus passed twenty years. Yevpl thought that he was living a wise,
correct life, and the only true one. Living became exceptionally easy for
him, and his thoughts became crystalline. He knew the meaning of life
and understood that living any other way would be impossible.
One day he noticed with amazement that there was nothing in the
spot where, for twenty years, he’d been used to finding his crusts. He
didn’t eat for four days. On the fifth day an old stranger in woven birch-
bark shoes showed up and said that the Bolsheviks had kicked the
monks out and set up a collective farm in the cloister. The old man left
some crusts and went away, weeping. The ascetic didn’t understand
the old man. Radiant and quiet, he lay in his coffin and felt the joy of
his knowledge of life. The old farmer continued to bring him crusts.
Thus passed several more calm, untroubled years.
Once the door of his sod hut opened and a few men entered, hunch-
ing. They walked over to the coffin and started examining the elder
monk in silence. They were tall people in spurred boots and enormous
jodhpurs, with Mausers in polished wooden boxes. The monk lay in
his coffin with his arms stretched out beside him and gazed radiantly
at the outlanders. His long, light gray beard covered half the coffin.
The strangers’ spurs rang. They shrugged and went away, closing the
door behind them carefully.
Time passed. Life opened up before the ascetic in all its sweet full-
ness. The night after the day the ascetic understood for once and for
all that everything in his consciousness was illuminated, he suddenly
woke up. This amazed him. He never woke up at night. As he thought
about what had woken him, he fell back asleep, but then woke right
back up again with a strong burning sensation in his back. He tried to
fall asleep as he pondered the cause of the burning, but he couldn’t.
Something was keeping him from it. He didn’t sleep all night. The
next night, something woke him up again. He tossed and turned until
morning, moaning quietly and, without even noticing it, scratching
his arms and hands. During the day, after he’d gotten up, he happened
to look in the coffin. Then he understood everything. Cherry-colored

bedbugs were running around the corners of his gloomy bed. The as-
cetic was disgusted.
That same day, the old man came with the bread crusts. And then
the great ascetic, who had remained silent for twenty-five years, spoke.
He asked for a little kerosene. The peasant was dumbstruck upon hear-
ing speech from the great one who’d taken the vow of silence. Still, he
brought some kerosene, although he was embarrassed for some reason
and kept the bottle hidden. As soon as the old man left, the ascetic
wiped down all the coffin’s seams and cracks with a shaking hand.
Yevpl fell peacefully asleep for the first time in three days. Nothing
bothered him. He wiped the coffin down with kerosene for the next
few days, too. But two months later he realized that you can’t get rid of
bedbugs with kerosene. At night he turned quickly from side to side
and prayed loudly, but prayers helped even less than kerosene.
Half a year went by in indescribable torment before the ascetic ap-
pealed to the old man again. His second request surprised the old man
even more. The ascetic asked him to go to town and bring him some
Aragats bedbug powder. But even the Aragats didn’t help. The bed-
bugs multiplied unusually quickly. The ascetic’s mighty health, which
not even twenty-five years of fasting could break, got noticeably worse.
A dark, desperate life began. Yevpl started to find the coffin revolting
and uncomfortable. At night he burned the bedbugs with a lit splinter,
on the peasant’s advice. The bedbugs died, but did not yield.
As a last resort he tried a Glick Brothers product, a pink liquid
called Bedbugine that smelled like poisoned peaches. But even this
didn’t help. His situation grew worse. Two years after the beginning of
the great battle, it occurred to the ascetic that he’d completely stopped
thinking about the meaning of life because he was spending entire days
killing bedbugs.
Then he realized that he’d been wrong. Life was dark and mysteri-
ous, just as it had been twenty-five years ago. He hadn’t been able to
walk away from the world’s anxieties. Living with his body on earth
and his soul in heaven had proved impossible.

Then the elder monk got up and swiftly walked out of the sod
hut. He was standing in the middle of a gloomy green forest. It was
fall, early fall when it’s still dry. An entire family of white potbellied
mushrooms had thrust itself up out of the ground right next to the hut.
An unseen bird sat on a branch singing a solo. He heard the sound of a
train going by. The sod hut shook. Life was beautiful. The elder monk
walked ahead without looking back.
Now he’s working as a driver in the Moscow Community Services
horse depot.
After telling Ippolit Matveevich this extremely enlightening

story, Ostap polished his raspberry shoes with the sleeve of his
jacket, blew a fanfare with his lips, and headed out.
He staggered into their room just before dawn, took off
his shoes, and put the raspberry footwear on the nightstand,
where he started stroking the patent leather, murmuring “my
little friends” with tender passion.
“Where were you?” Ippolit Matveevich asked, half-asleep.
“At the widow’s,” Ostap answered dully.
“Well?” Ippolit Matveevich got up on one elbow. “So you’re
going to marry her?”
Ostap’s eyes started to sparkle. “Now I have to marry her, as
an honest man.”
Ippolit Matveevich gave a disconcerted grunt.
“A passionate woman, a poet’s dream,” Ostap said. “Provin-
cial artlessness. There aren’t any subtropical beauties like that
in the capital anymore, but out in the provinces, in the local
places, you can still find them.”
“When’s the wedding?”
“The day after tomorrow. Tomorrow we can’t, it’s the first of
May, everything’s closed.”

“But what about our business? You’re getting married . . .
but we might have to go to Moscow . . .”
“What are you worried about? The meeting is still in
session!”
“What about your wife?”
“My wife? The little diamond widow? She’s the last item on
the agenda. A sudden departure due to a summons from the
center. A small report for the Lesser Council of People’s Com-
missars. A farewell scene and a chicken for the road. We’ll travel
in comfort. Go to sleep. Tomorrow we have a day off.”

14
Breathe Deeper, You’re Excited!
on may day morning Viktor Mikhailovich Polesov, consumed

by his usual thirst for action, leaped out of the house and
raced off downtown. At first his multifaceted talents couldn’t
be put to the necessary use because there weren’t many people
around yet and the festive stage, guarded by mounted police,
was empty. But by nine, orchestras had started purring, wheez-
ing, and whistling all over the town. Housewives came running
out of gates.
A column of workers in the music industry, wearing soft,
fold-down collars, somehow squeezed itself into the middle of
a procession of railroad workers, getting underfoot and both-
ering everyone.
A truck dressed up with green cardboard as a Shchukin-
series steam engine kept driving up into the music workers
from behind. Angry shouting at the laborers of the oboe and
flute rang out from the very belly of the engine: “Where’s your
parade leader? Are you really supposed to be going down Kras-
noarmeyskaya Street? Can’t you see you barged in and caused
a traffic jam?”
At this point Viktor Mikhailovich got involved, much to the
music workers’ dismay.
“Well, sure, you need to turn off into this dead end! These
people can’t even put a festival together!” Polesov shouted.
“This way! This way! An astounding disgrace!”
✦ 155 ✦
Trucks from Millconst and Stargorod Communal Services
were ferrying children around. The smallest ones stood up
against the truck railings, and those who were a bit taller were
in the middle. The underage host waved its little paper flags
and enjoyed itself to the point of exhaustion.
Young Pioneers’ drums sounded. Youths still too young for
the army stuck out their chests and tried to walk in step. It was
crowded, noisy, and hot. Traffic jams were forming every other
minute, and dissolving every other minute, too. Old men and
activists were tossed in the air to pass the time stuck in traffic.
The old men keened like peasant women. The activists flew
up and down silently, their faces serious. In one merry column
they mistook Viktor Mikhailovich, who was elbowing his way
through the crowd, for a parade leader and started tossing
him up in the air. Polesov kicked his legs around like a clown.
An effigy of Chamberlain, the English Prime Minister, his top
hat being beaten in by a worker with anatomical musculature
wielding a cardboard hammer, was carried past. Three Young
Communists in white gloves and tails drove by in an automo-
bile. They kept peering with embarrassment at the crowd.
“Vaska!” somebody shouted from the sidewalk. “Bourgeois!
Give those suspenders back.”
Girls were singing. Alkhen, wearing a big red bow on his
breast, walked in the Social Security employees’ group and
sang, pensively, through his nose:
But from the taiga to the wide-open sea,
stronger than all is the Red Army!
At a command, physical culture enthusiasts shouted some-

thing unintelligible syllable by syllable.
Everything was walking, driving, surging, and marching to-
ward the new streetcar depot, from which the first wagon of
the first electric streetcar in Stargorod was supposed to set out
at exactly one o’clock that afternoon.

No one knew for sure when the construction of the Star-
gorod streetcar line was begun. Once back in ’20, when the
volunteer Saturday work brigades were up and running, the
depot workers and cable factory workers walked out to Gu-
sishche to musical accompaniment and dug ditches all day.
They dug a great many big, deep ditches. A comrade in an
engineer’s cap ran around down among the workers. Fore-
men carrying rods in various colors walked behind him. Two
ditches that had been dug in the wrong place had to be filled
back in. The comrade in the engineer’s cap flew at the fore-
men and demanded an explanation. The new ditches were
dug even deeper and wider.
Then the brick was brought in, and real construction work-
ers appeared. They started laying the foundation. Then every-
thing went quiet. The comrade in the engineer’s cap still came
by the deserted construction site sometimes, where he would
wander the brick-lined ditch for a long time, muttering, “It has
to pay for itself.”
He would tap the foundation with a stick for a while and
run back home into town, covering his frozen ears with his
hands.
The engineer’s last name was Treukhov.
Treukhov had thought up the streetcar system (whose con-
struction had come to a standstill at the foundation stage) a
long time ago, back in 1912, but the town council had rejected
the proposal. Two years later Treukhov renewed his assault on
the town council, but then the war got in the way. After the
war, the Revolution got in the way. Then NEP, and the require-
ment that it pay for itself and make a profit, got in the way. In
summer the foundation was covered in flowers, and in winter
children made ice slides in it.
Treukhov dreamed about doing something big. He was
obliged to work in the Stargorod Communal Services office’s
Department of Public Works, repairing curbs and writing up
breathe deeper, you’re excited! ✦ 157

estimates on the installation of advertising columns. But there
wasn’t anything big to do. The streetcar proposal that had
been submitted once again for consideration was floundering
in the upper echelons of provincial government, where it was
approved, then rejected, then sent to the central authorities
for consideration, but regardless of whether it was approved or
rejected, it gathered dust, because they didn’t give any money
for it in either the former or the latter case.
“This is barbaric!” Treukhov shouted at his wife. “There’s
no money for it? But we do have the money to pay through
the nose for big-time industrial waggoners and cabbies, for
horse-drawn delivery of goods to the station? Stargorod horse-
cab drivers strip you down to your last kopek! Of course! The
marauders have a monopoly! Go ahead and try walking the
five versts to the station with all your things! A streetcar will
pay for itself in six years!”
His faded mustache drooped furiously. His snub-nosed face
twitched. He took some architectural designs printed in white
on dark-blue paper out of his desk drawer and showed them
angrily to his wife for the thousandth time. There were layouts
of the transfer station, the depot, and twelve streetcar lines.
“To hell with it, we don’t need twelve. People can wait. But
three! Three lines! Stargorod will suffocate without them.”
Treukhov snorted and went to the kitchen to chop wood.
He did all the household chores himself. He’d designed
and built a rocking cradle for the baby and a washing machine.
At first he did the laundry himself, explaining to his wife how
to use the washer. At least a fifth of Treukhov’s salary went to
subscriptions to foreign technical journals. He quit smoking
to make ends meet.
He lugged his proposal over to Gavrilin, the new director
of Stargorod Communal Services, who’d been transferred to
Stargorod from Samarkand. The new director, blackened by
the Turkestani sun, listened to Treukhov for a long time with-

out paying him any particular attention. He leafed through all
the designs, and then, as the meeting drew to a close, he said,
“Now in Samarkand, you don’t need any streetcar. Everyone
gets around by donkey there. A donkey’s cheap, costs three
rubles. But it can lift three hundred and fifty pounds! A little
bitty donkey like that, it’s just plain amazing!”
“That’s Asia for you!” Treukhov said angrily. “A donkey costs
three rubles, but you have to spend thirty rubles a year feed-
ing it.”
“And how much are you going to ride around on your
streetcar for thirty rubles? Three hundred times. That’s not
even every day of the year.”
“Well, you can just order yourself some donkeys, then!”
Treukhov shouted, and ran out of the office, slamming the door
behind him.
From then on, the new director had the habit of asking
Treukhov mocking questions every time they met: “So, are we
going to order some donkeys or are we going to build a street-
car line?”
Gavrilin’s face looked like a smooth-whittled radish. His
eyes were crafty.
A couple of months later, Gavrilin called in the engineer
and said seriously, “I’ve got a little plan in the offing here. If I
know anything, it’s that there’s no money, and that a streetcar’s
no donkey—you’re not going to get it for three rubles. We
need to set up a material foundation here. So what’s the prac-
tical solution? A joint-stock company! What’s another? Bonds!
With interest. How many years will it take for the streetcar to
pay for itself?”
“Six years from the day the three initial lines are put into
operation.”
“So we’ll say ten. Now for the joint-stock company. Who’s
going to join? The Food Trust, Central Butter . . . Do the cable
factory workers need a streetcar? They do! We’ll send freight

cars to the train station. So we’ve got the cable men. The Peo-
ple’s Commissariat of Transportation might give a little. And
the Province Executive Committee will give something. That’s
a sure thing. And once we’ve started, the State Bank and the
Communal Bank will give loans. So that’s my little plan . . . On
Friday there’ll be a discussion in the Presidium of the Province
Executive Committee. If we decide to do it, then you’ll be the
only one holding us up.”
Treukhov anxiously did laundry until late at night, explain-
ing the advantages of streetcar transportation over horse-
drawn to his wife.
On Friday the question was decided favorably. So the tor-
ment began. They cobbled together a joint-stock company with
a great deal of effort. The People’s Commissariat of Transpor-
tation kept joining, and then not joining, the shareholders’
ranks. The Food Trust tried every which way it could to take on
just ten percent of the shares instead of fifteen. Finally, the en-
tire packet of shares was assigned, although the process wasn’t
completely conflict-free. Gavrilin was called into the Province
Controlling Commission for “applying pressure.” Neverthe-
less, everything turned out all right. The only thing left to do
was begin.
“So, Comrade Treukhov,” Gavrilin said. “Get started. Do
you have any idea just what you can build here? That’s right.
This isn’t exactly buying a donkey.”
Treukhov dove headfirst into his work. The time for that
something big he’d been dreaming about for many long years
had come. Estimates were calculated, a construction plan was
drawn up, orders were placed. Difficulties arose where they
were least expected. There were no skilled concrete finishers in
the entire town, so they had to be brought in from Leningrad.
Gavrilin tried to rush the factories, but they would only prom-
ise to have the streetcar bodies ready in eighteen months, even

though they’d be needed in a year at the latest. The only thing
that had any effect was the threat to order them from abroad.
Then the more petty annoyances started coming. First they
couldn’t find the right size of molded iron, then they were of-
fered untreated railroad ties instead of creosote-impregnated
ones. Finally they got what they needed, but Treukhov, who
went to the railroad tie saturation plant in person, rejected
sixty percent of the ties as defective. There were bubbles in the
cast-iron details. The wood was green. The rails were good, but
even they started coming in a month late. Gavrilin would often
go over to the site of the transfer station in his old Fiat that
sounded like it’d caught cold. There, shouting matches would
flare up between him and Treukhov.
A financial crisis set in, too. The State Bank cut its loan by
forty percent. There was no money to build with. The situa-
tion was such that if they didn’t get money in two weeks, there
wouldn’t be anything to pay the promissory notes with. Lately
Treukhov had been spending the night in the construction
office. He kept in touch with his wife by phone and only went
home on Saturday nights. The evening of the financial defeat,
Gavrilin came shaking up to the construction office in his frail
Fiat and shouted, “Engineer, we’re going to Moscow to negotiate,
or else the bank is going to send us out to beg in the streets.”
Treukhov barely managed to call home. Gavrilin was hurry-
ing to make the express train.
The builders spent five days in Moscow. The central office was
defeated. The loans were restored to their original amount.
The entire time the streetcar depot and transfer station
were being built and fitted, all the citizens of Stargorod could
do was joke about them.
Fedya Kletchaty, a writer of satirical couplets, even dared
to mock the construction project in verse in the Phoenix
Restaurant.

Suitors flocked to beg my hand,
Chasing me from near and far.
What did Papa promise them
But a sorrel streetcar!
But once the rails started being laid and lines started being
hung on the round streetcar poles, even dyed-in-the-wool pes-
simists like Fedya Kletchaty changed their stance and started
singing a new song:
My electric little steed
Is better than a pony.
The streetcar takes me ’round with speed,
And with me rides my honey.
In Stargorod Pravda The Danish Prince, known throughout

the city for his feuilletons, took up the streetcar issue. He wrote
under the pseudonym Flywheel. Flywheel discharged a big
essay commenting on the project’s progress no fewer than
three times a week. The third page of the newspaper, abun-
dant in notes with skeptical headlines like “No Signs of Life
for Clubhouse,” “Where It Hurts,” “Inspections Are Good,
but Why the Splendor and Long Tails?” “Good and . . . Bad,”
“What We Like and What We Don’t,” “Tighten the Screws on
the Wreckers of Education,” “Time to Put a Stop to the Sea
of Paper,” began presenting readers with the sunny, peppy
headlines of Flywheel’s essays: “How We Build, How We Live,”
“Soon the Giant Will Start Working,” “The Modest Construc-
tion Worker,” and so forth, in the same vein. Treukhov, trem-
bling, would open the newspaper and then, disgusted with
his writerly brethren, read peppy lines dedicated to his own
person:
I ascend the trusses. The wind roars in my ears.
Up there he stands, that ordinary builder of our
mighty streetcar system, that little snub-nosed man, so

thin to look at him, in a sloppy cap with the little hammer
insignia.
I recall: “On the shore of a desert flood, deep in
mighty thought he stood . . .”
I walk up. Not a breath of wind. The trusses don’t
move an inch.
I ask: “How are the tasks coming along?”
The builder Treukhov’s unattractive face lights up . . .
He shakes my hand. He says: “Seventy percent of the
task has been completed . . .”
The article ends like this:
He shakes my hand in parting. The trusses hum

behind me.
Workers bustle this way and that.
Who could ever forget this active construction site,
seething with activity, or our builder’s homely figure?
—Flywheel
The only thing that saved Treukhov was that he didn’t have
time to read the paper, so he sometimes managed to let Com-
rade Flywheel’s compositions go unread.
Once Treukhov couldn’t stand it anymore and wrote a bit-
ing, carefully thought-out rebuttal.
Of course, you can always call bolts a transmission, but the

only people who do this are the ones who don’t know the
first thing about construction. And in addition I would
like to point out to Comrade Flywheel that trusses only
hum when the entire construction site is getting ready to
collapse. Saying that about trusses is the same as insisting
that babies come from cellos. Best regards and so forth.
After that, the indefatigable prince stopped showing up at

the construction site, but his sketches on everyday life kept

adorning the third page just like they did before, standing
out boldly against the background of the ordinary features:
“150,000 Rubles: Rusting,” “Housing in Clots,” “Construction
Materials Are Crying,” and “Foibles and Follies.”
Construction was almost complete. The rails were thermite-
welded, and they stretched without gaps from the train sta-
tion itself to the slaughterhouse and from the market to the
cemetery.
At first they wanted to time the streetcar’s grand opening to
coincide with the ninth anniversary of the October Revolution,
but the streetcar factory didn’t send out the cars in time, blam-
ing the “fittings.” The grand opening had to be postponed until
the first of May. By that day absolutely everything was ready.
The concessionaires wandered festively along with the dem-
onstrations all the way to Gusishche, where the entire town
of Stargorod was gathered. Garlands of evergreen entwined
the new depot, flags popped, the wind ran along the banners
with slogans. Mounted police galloped after the first ice-cream
seller, who had, God only knows how, penetrated the ring of
streetcar workers into the empty circle. A rickety, still-empty
stage platform with a microphone and loudspeaker towered
between the depot’s two gates. Delegates were approaching
the platform. The communal services and cable factory work-
ers’ combined orchestra was testing the strength of its lungs. A
drum lay on the ground.
A correspondent from Moscow in a hairy cap was slinking
around the bright hall of the depot, with its ten light-green
cars numbered seven hundred one to seven hundred ten. On
his breast hung a little mirror into which he often looked, wor-
ried. The correspondent was looking for the chief engineer
to ask him a few streetcar-themed questions. Although the
correspondent already had a complete mental sketch of the
streetcar’s grand opening (including a summary of speeches
that hadn’t been given yet), he conscientiously continued his

search. The only shortcoming he found was the absence of a
restaurant.
The crowd sang, shouted, and nibbled on sunflower seeds
as it waited for the streetcar to be launched.
The Presidium of the Province Executive Committee as-
cended the platform. The Danish Prince exchanged a few
phrases with his brothers of the pen. They were waiting for the
newsreel crew from Moscow to arrive.
“Comrades!” Gavrilin said. “Allow me to announce that our
celebratory rally in honor of the Stargorod streetcar’s grand
opening has now begun!”
The brass horns stirred, sighed, and played the “Internatio-
nale” three times in a row.
“Comrade Gavrilin has the floor to make his report!”
shouted Gavrilin.
Without discussing it beforehand, The Danish Prince—
Flywheel—and the guest from Moscow both wrote in their
notebooks, “The celebratory rally opened with a report by Com-
rade Gavrilin, chairman of Stargorod Communal Services. The
crowd was all ears.”
The two correspondents were completely different people.
The guest from Moscow was young and unmarried. Prince Fly-
wheel, burdened with a large family, had long ago seen the
last of his fourth decade. One had always lived in Moscow, the
other had never been in Moscow. The Muscovite liked beer,
the Danish Flywheel wouldn’t touch anything but vodka. But
regardless of these differences in temperament, age, habit,
and upbringing, both journalists’ impressions were cast in
one-and-the-same worn-out, used-up, dragged-through-the-
dust phrases. Their pencils started chirping, and a new note
appeared in their notebooks: “On this festive day, the streets
of Stargorod have become somehow wider . . .”
Gavrilin began his speech nice and simply. He said, “Build-
ing a streetcar isn’t exactly buying a donkey.”

Suddenly the loud laughter of Ostap Bender rang out
from the crowd. He appreciated the phrase. Gavrilin, encour-
aged by this reception, abruptly started talking about the in-
ternational situation, although he himself didn’t know why.
He tried several times to get his speech going along streetcar
rails, but realized, horrified, that he could not. Somehow the
words came out internationally of their own accord, against
the orator’s will. After Chamberlain, to whom Gavrilin allot-
ted thirty minutes, the American Senator Borah entered the
international arena. The crowd went limp. In unison the cor-
respondents wrote, “The orator depicted our Union’s interna-
tional situation in picturesque expressions . . .” Gavrilin, now
incensed, said some bad things about the Rumanian boyars
and then moved on to Mussolini. Only at the end of his speech
did he overcome his second, international nature and start
saying something that was useful and to the point.
“And I think, comrades, that this streetcar, that’s going to
come out of the depot here in a minute, who do we have to
thank for setting it in motion? Of course, comrades: you! And,
comrades, thanks to all the workers who really worked hard,
and not because they had to, but because they wanted to! And
also, comrades, thanks to our honest Soviet specialist, Chief
Engineer Treukhov. Thanks to him, too!”
They started looking for Treukhov, but couldn’t find him.
A representative of Central Butter who’d been raring to go for
quite some time made his way to the platform railing, waved
his hand, and started talking loudly about the international sit-
uation. At the end of his speech both correspondents listened
to the few scanty handclaps and wrote, “Noisy applause, swell-
ing to an ovation.” Then they thought for a moment about
whether “swelling to an ovation” might be a bit too much. The
Muscovite made his mind up and crossed out the ovation. Fly-
wheel sighed and left it.

The sun slid quickly down its inclined plane. Welcoming
speeches were pronounced from the platform. The orchestra
played a fanfare every other minute. The evening lightened
into a dark blue, but the rally still kept going. Both speakers
and listeners felt that something was wrong, that the meeting
was dragging on, that they needed to get to the launch of the
streetcar as soon as possible. But everyone had gotten so used
to speaking that they couldn’t stop.
They finally found Treukhov. He was dirty, so he spent a
long time washing his face and hands in the office before he
went up onto the platform.
“Comrade Treukhov, the chief engineer, has the floor!”
Gavrilin proclaimed joyfully. “Well, you talk then, because I
said absolutely the wrong thing,” he added in a whisper.
Treukhov wanted to talk about many things. He wanted to
talk about the volunteer Saturdays, and about their hard work,
and about everything that they had done and that they could
still do, and they could still do a lot: they could rid the town of
its dirty market and build covered glass buildings, they could
build a permanent bridge instead of the temporary one that
was carried off every year by the spring ice flow, and they could
finally implement their plans to construct a huge meatpacking
plant.
Treukhov opened his mouth and spoke, hesitating: “Com-
rades! The international situation of our state . . .” He went on
to mumble such copybook maxims that the crowd, listening to
its sixth international speech, went cold. It was only after he’d
finished that Treukhov realized he hadn’t said a single word
about the streetcar. “It’s insulting,” he thought. “We have no
idea how to speak, we have absolutely no idea.”
He remembered the speech of a French communist he’d
heard at a meeting in Moscow. The Frenchman was talking
about the bourgeois press. He’d exclaimed, “Those acrobats

of the pen, those virtuosos of farce, those jackals of the rotary
press . . .” The Frenchman pronounced the first part of his
speech on an F, the second part on an A, and the last, histri-
onic part on a C. His gestures were measured and attractive.
“But we just dirty the water, stir around the dregs,” Treu-
khov concluded. “It’d be better if we didn’t even speak at all.”
It was completely dark by the time the chairman of the
Province Executive Committee took the scissors and cut the
red ribbon cordoning off the exit from the depot. Workers
and representatives of public service groups raised a hubbub
as they went through the cars and took their seats. Little bells
were rung, and the first streetcar, driven by Treukhov himself,
rolled out of the depot to the crowd’s deafening cries and the
orchestra’s moans. Illuminated, the cars looked even more
blinding than during the day. All of them glided through Gu-
sishche, one behind the other. After they went under the rail-
road bridge, they ascended easily into town and turned onto
Bolshaya Pushkinskaya Street. The orchestra was riding in the
second car with their horns sticking out the window, playing
“Budyonny’s March.”
Gavrilin, wearing a conductor’s uniform jacket with a little
bag slung across his shoulder, was jumping from car to car,
smiling kindly, ringing the bell for no reason, and presenting
passengers tickets to
AN EVENING OF CELEBRATION
to take place in the
Communal Services Workers’ Club,
May 1 with the following program:
at 1) Comrade Mosin’s report
9:00 p.m. 2) Communal Services Workers’ presentation of
awards
3) Unofficial part of the evening: Large concert and
buffet supper for the whole family

Viktor Mikhailovich, who had somehow been included
among the ranks of honored guests, stood on the platform
of the last car. He was smelling the engine. To Polesov’s ex-
treme surprise, the engine looked excellent and was obviously
in good working order. The windowpanes weren’t shaking. Ex-
amining them carefully, Viktor Mikhailovich assured himself
that they had been set in rubber, after all. He’d already made a
few remarks to the streetcar driver and the public considered
him an expert on streetcars in the West.
“Now, the vacuum brake isn’t working so well—the vacu-
um’s not very strong,” Polesov announced, looking at the pas-
sengers triumphantly.
“Nobody asked you,” the streetcar driver replied. “The
vacuum’ll work just fine, without your help.”
After their festive tour of the city, the cars returned to the
depot, where the crowd awaited them. Treukhov was tossed
into the air, by now in the glow of bright electric lights. Gavri-
lin was tossed into the air too, but since he weighed over two
hundred pounds and didn’t go up very high, people quickly
let him go. Comrade Mosin, technicians, and workers were
also tossed. Viktor Mikhailovich was tossed into the air for the
second time that day. He didn’t kick his legs anymore; rather,
he looked sternly and seriously at the starry sky as he flew up
and hovered in the evening darkness. After he glided down
for the last time, Polesov noticed that holding him by the foot
and laughing a nasty little laugh was none other than Ippolit
Matveevich Vorobyaninov, the former marshal of the nobil-
ity. Polesov politely got free and distanced himself a little, but
didn’t let the marshal out of his sight. Viktor Mikhailovich
noticed that Ippolit Matveevich was leaving, along with the
young stranger who was clearly a former officer, and carefully
followed them.
When everything was over and Gavrilin was in his little lilac
Fiat waiting for Treukhov (who was giving the last few instruc-

tions) so they could go to the club, a small Ford Model T
pickup with the film crew rolled up to the depot gates.
The first to leap deftly out of the truck was a man in do-
decagonal horn-rimmed glasses and an elegant, sleeveless ar-
myak made of leather. A long, sharp beard was growing right
out of the man’s Adam’s apple. A second man came out, lug-
ging a camera and getting tangled up in a long scarf of the
kind Ostap Bender usually called chic-moderne. Then assistants,
girls, and floodlight men clambered out of the little truck.
The entire group rushed to the depot, shouting.
“Attention!” shouted the armyak’s bearded owner. “Kolya!
Set up the floodlights!”
Treukhov turned crimson and headed for the night guests.
“Are you the film people?” he asked. “Why didn’t you come
during the day?”
“But what time is the streetcar’s grand opening?”
“It’s already open.”
“Yes, yes, we got held up a little. We ran across some good
outdoor shots. Tons of work. The sunset! At any rate, we’ll
make do with this. Kolya! Give us some light! Close-up on the
turning wheel! Close-up on the crowd’s legs moving! Lyuda!
Milochka! Go walk around! Kolya, let’s go! Let’s go! Start
walking. Walk, keep walking, keep walking . . . That’s good.
Thanks. Now we’ll shoot a builder. Comrade Treukhov? If you
don’t mind, Comrade Treukhov. No, not that way. In three-
quarter profile . . . like that, something a little more original,
with the streetcar in the background . . . Kolya! Let’s go! Say
something!”
“But, honestly, this is a little awkward . . .”
“Magnificent! Good! Talk some more! Now you’re talking
with the streetcar’s first lady passenger . . . Lyuda! Come into
the frame. Right . . . breathe deeper, you’re excited. Kolya!
Close-up on the legs! Let’s go! Okay . . . okay . . . thank you very
much. That’s all!”

Gavrilin climbed out of the Fiat that had been standing
there shaking for a long time by then and came to get his lag-
ging friend. The director with the hairy Adam’s apple grew
animated.
“Kolya! Come here! A great physical type. A worker. A street-
car passenger! Breathe deeper. You’re excited. You’ve never
ridden a streetcar before. Let’s go! Breathe!”
Gavrilin started wheezing with hatred.
“Beautiful! Milochka! Come over here! Greetings from the
Young Communist League! Breathe deeper. You’re excited . . .
Right . . . Beautiful. Kolya, we’re done.”
“Aren’t you going to shoot the streetcar?” Treukhov asked
bashfully.
“Well, you see,” the leathern director mumbled, “the light-
ing conditions won’t allow it. We’ll have to finish shooting in
Moscow. Kisses!”
The gang disappeared in a flash.
“Well, let’s go, my friend,” Gavrilin said. “What, you started
smoking?”
“I did,” Treukhov admitted. “I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
At the family dinner the hungry Treukhov, who’d smoked
too much, drank three shots of vodka and became utterly
drunk. He exchanged kisses with everyone, and everyone ex-
changed kisses with him. He wanted to say something nice to
his wife, but he just burst into laughter. Then he shook Ga-
vrilin’s hand for a long time, saying, “You’re an odd fellow!
You need to learn to draw up railroad bridges! It’s an excellent
science. And the best part is that it’s absolutely simple. The
bridge across the Hudson . . .”
Half an hour later he was definitively soused, and he pro-
nounced a philippic directed at the bourgeois press. “Those
acrobats of farce and hyenas of the pen! Those virtuosos of the
rotary press . . .” he shouted.
His wife took him home in a horse-cab.

“I want to ride in the streetcar,” he said to his wife. “How
can you not understand that? Now that we’ve got a streetcar,
we have to ride on it! Why? First of all, it’s economical . . .”
Polesov walked behind the concessionaires for a long time,

gathering up his courage and waiting until there was no one
around. Finally, he walked up to Vorobyaninov and respect-
fully said, “Good evening, Mister Ippolit Matveevich!”
Vorobyaninov started feeling very uncomfortable.
“I haven’t had the honor,” he muttered.
Ostap thrust his right shoulder forward and walked up to
the intellectual repairman. “Now, now,” he said. “What do you
want to say to my friend?”
“There’s no need to worry,” Polesov whispered, glancing
around. “Elena Stanislavovna sent me . . .”
“What? Is she here?”
“She’s here. And she wants to see you very much.”
“What for?” Ostap asked. “And just who are you?”
“I’m . . . I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, Ip-
polit Matveevich. You don’t know me, but I remember you
very well.”
“I wouldn’t mind going to see Elena Stanislavovna,” Voro-
byaninov said hesitantly.
“She asked most urgently that you come.”
“Yes, but how did she find out . . . ?”
“I saw you in the corridor of the Communal Services office
and thought for a long time about how familiar your face was.
Later I remembered. You don’t have to worry about anything,
Ippolit Matveevich! Everything will be kept in total secrecy.”
“You know this woman?” Ostap asked, all business.
“Hmm, yes, an old friend . . .”

“Then maybe we can drop by, have some dinner at this old
friend’s? I, for one, could eat a horse, but everything’s closed.”
“As you wish.”
“Then let’s go. Lead us, mysterious stranger.”
Viktor Mikhailovich led the companions through various
courtyards, looking around him all the while, until they came
to the fortune-teller’s building in Pereleshinsky Lane.

15
The Union of the Sword
and the Plowshare
many unpleasant things can happen to a woman when she

gets older. Her teeth can fall out, or her hair go thin and gray,
or she can develop shortness of breath; she can be struck with
corpulence, or be overcome by extreme thinness. But her
voice will not change. It will remain exactly as it was when she
was a schoolgirl, a bride, or a young rake’s lover.
Therefore, when Polesov knocked at the door and Elena
Stanislavovna asked, “Who’s there,” Vorobyaninov trembled.
His lover’s voice was the same as in ’99, before the opening
of the Paris Exhibition. But as he came into the room and
squinted in the light, Ippolit Matveevich saw that not a trace
of her former beauty was left.
“How you’ve changed!” he said, involuntarily.
The old woman threw her arms around his neck.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know what you’ve risked by
coming to me. You’re just the same magnanimous knight.
I’m not asking you why you came from Paris. You see, I’m not
curious.”
“But I haven’t come from Paris at all,” Vorobyaninov said,
perplexed.
“My colleague and I came from Berlin,” corrected Ostap,
pressing on Ippolit Matveevich’s elbow. “But we don’t recom-
mend talking about that.”
✦ 175 ✦
“Oh, I’m so happy to see you!” the fortune-teller cried. “Come
in, come into this room . . . and you, Viktor Mikhailovich, for-
give me, but would you come back by in half an hour?”
“Ah! The first meeting? Difficult moments!” Ostap re-
marked. “Allow me to retire as well. May I accompany you, my
dear Viktor Mikhailovich?”
The repairman trembled with joy. Both of them went to
Polesov’s apartment, where Ostap, sitting on a piece of the
gates from building No. 5 on Pereleshinsky Lane, started elab-
orating on some phantasmagorical ideas meant to incline the
dumbstruck self-employed skilled craftsman (with a motor)
toward saving the Motherland.
An hour later they returned and found that the old folks
had softened up completely.
“Remember, Elena Stanislavovna?” Ippolit Matveevich was
saying.
“Remember, Ippolit Matveevich?” Elena Stanislavovna was
saying.
“Feels like the psychologically appropriate time for dinner
has arrived,” Ostap thought. Interrupting Ippolit Matveevich,
who was reminiscing about the town council elections, he said,
“There’s a very strange custom in Berlin: they eat so late that
no one can tell whether it’s an early supper or a late dinner!”
Elena Stanislavovna roused herself with a start, averted her
rabbity gaze from Vorobyaninov, and dragged herself into the
kitchen.
“And now we must take action, action, and more action!”
said Ostap, lowering his voice to the level of complete illegal-
ity. He grasped Polesov’s arm. “The old lady won’t let us down?
She’s a reliable woman?”
Polesov clasped his hands prayerfully.
“Your political credo?”
“Always!” Polesov answered rapturously.
“You’re a Kirill supporter, I hope?”

“Yes, sir.” Polesov stood ramrod-straight.
“Russia will not forget you!” Ostap barked.
Ippolit Matveevich, confused, held a sweet pie and listened
to Ostap, but it was impossible to restrain him. He was getting
carried away. The smooth operator was inspired. He was in the
entrancing state of mind that precedes a better-than-average
blackmail. He stalked the room like a snow leopard.
Elena Stanislavovna found him in this excited condition as
she struggled to carry the samovar in from the kitchen. Ostap
gallantly leaped over to her, took the samovar from her, and set
it on the table. The samovar whistled. Ostap decided to act.
He said, “Madam, in your person we are happy to see . . .”
He didn’t know whom he was happy to see in the person of
Elena Stanislavovna. He had to start over. Of all the Tsarist re-
gime’s flowery turns of phrase, the only thing rattling around
in his brain was some kind of “be graciously pleased to com-
mand.” But that wasn’t appropriate. So he began, in a busi-
nesslike manner, “Strictly confidential! A government secret!”
Ostap indicated Vorobyaninov with his hand. “Who is this
powerful old man, in your opinion? Don’t speak, you cannot
know. This is the giant of thought, the father of Russian de-
mocracy, and a figure closely connected to the emperor.”
Ippolit Matveevich stood up to his full, marvelous height
and looked around, lost. He had no idea what was going on,
but remained silent, knowing that Ostap Bender never said
anything for nothing. Everything that was transpiring made
Polesov tremble. He stood with his chin lifted toward the ceil-
ing, in the pose of a man getting ready to perform a ceremo-
nial march. Elena Stanislavovna sat down on a chair, looking
at Ostap fearfully.
“Are there a lot of our men in town?” Ostap asked bluntly.
“What’s the mood?”
“Given the presence of the absence of . . .” Viktor Mikhailo-
vich said, and began to explain his troubles confusedly. There
the union of the sword and the plowshare ✦ 177

was the dvornik of building No. 5 (a boor who’d gotten too big
for his britches), and three-eighths-inch dies, and the street-
car, and so forth.
“Good!” Ostap burst out. “Elena Stanislavovna! With your
help, we want to get in contact with the town’s best people,
whom an ill fate has driven underground. Who can we invite
over?”
“Who can you invite? Maybe Maxim Petrovich and his wife?”
“Without the wife,” Ostap corrected her. “No wife! You will
be the single pleasant exception. Who else?”
In the course of their discussion, in which Viktor Mikhailo-
vich took an active part, it became evident that they could invite
that same Maxim Petrovich Charushnikov, formerly a member
of the town Duma, who was currently, by some marvelous turn,
numbered among the ranks of government office workers; Dya-
dyev, the owner of Quickpack; Kislyarsky, the chairman of the
Odessa Bublik Co-op “Moscow Bread Rings”; and two young
men who had no last names, but were completely reliable.
“In that case, I would ask you to invite them immediately to
a small conference. In utter secrecy.”
Polesov spoke up. “I’ll run over to Maxim Petrovich’s, and
get Nikesha and Vladya, and you, Elena Stanislavovna, be so
kind as to go to Quickpack and to get Kislyarsky.”
Polesov raced off. The fortune-teller gave Ippolit Matveevich
a reverent look and left too.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Ippolit Matveevich asked.
“The meaning of this,” answered Ostap, “is that you are be-
hind the times.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because! Forgive the vulgar question, but—how much
money do you have on you?”
“What kind of money?”
“Any kind. Including silver and copper.”
“Thirty-five rubles.”

“And you were going to cover all our business expenses with
that?”
Ippolit Matveevich was silent.
“I’ll tell you what, my dear patron. I get the feeling you see
my point. You’ll have to be a giant of thought and a figure
closely connected to the emperor for a while.”
“What for?”
“Because we need circulating capital. My wedding is tomor-
row. I’m not a pauper. I want to revel with feasting on that
momentous day.”
“But what do I have to do?” Ippolit Matveevich moaned.
“You have to keep quiet. Puff out your cheeks sometimes,
to look important.”
“But that’s . . . fraud.”
“And who, exactly, is saying this? Is it Count Tolstoy saying
this? Or Darwin? No. I’m hearing this directly from a person
who as recently as yesterday was getting ready to sneak into
Gritsatsueva’s apartment at night and steal a poor widow’s fur-
niture. Don’t think about it so much. Keep quiet. And don’t
forget to puff out your cheeks.”
“What’s the point of getting involved in such a dangerous
affair? People could report us, after all.”
“Don’t worry about that. I don’t bet on bad odds. I’ll work it
so no one knows what’s going on. Let’s drink our tea.”
While the concessionaires ate and drank, and the parrot
cracked the shells of his sunflower seeds, the guests arrived at
the apartment.
Nikesha and Vladya came with Polesov. Viktor Mikhailovich
couldn’t bring himself to introduce the young men to the gi-
ant of thought. The young men sat down in a corner and took
to watching the father of Russian democracy eat cold veal.
Nikesha and Vladya were perfectly ripe oafs. They were both
around thirty years old. They were clearly very pleased to have
been invited to the meeting.

The stout old man Charushnikov, former member of the
town Duma, shook Ippolit Matveevich’s hand for a long time
while looking right in his eyes. Under Ostap’s supervision, the
town’s old-timers began sharing their reminiscences. After giv-
ing them a chance to get warmed up, Ostap turned to Cha-
rushnikov. “What regiment did you serve in?”
Charushkinov began huffing and puffing. “I . . . I didn’t ac-
tually serve, so to speak, because . . . since I was invested with
the public trust . . . I was elected.”
“Are you a nobleman?”
“Yes. I was.”
“You have, I hope, remained one even today? Stand firm.
Your help will be needed. Did Polesov tell you . . . ? We’ll get
help from abroad. It’s public opinion that’s holding us up.
Our organization works in absolute secrecy. Your attention,
please!”
Ostap chased Polesov away from Nikesha and Vladya and
asked, with genuine severity: “What regiment did you serve
in? Now you’re going to have to serve your fatherland. Are
you nobles? Very good. The West will help us. Stand firm. Your
donations—that is, our organization works in absolute secrecy.
Your attention, please!”
Ostap was getting carried away. It seemed like everything
was going well. When Elena Stanislavovna introduced him to
the owner of Quickpack, Ostap led him to one side, suggested
that he stand firm, and inquired which regiment he’d served
in. Then he promised assistance from abroad and the organi-
zation’s absolute secrecy. The Quickpack owner’s first impulse
was to escape as quickly as possible from the conspiratorial
apartment. He thought his own enterprise too well established
for him to join in such a risky undertaking. But after examin-
ing Ostap’s nimble figure from head to toe, he hesitated and
started considering it. “But what if . . . ! Anyway, everything
depends on what kind of sauce it’s served with.”

The friendly conversation at the tea table became animated.
The initiated ones piously kept their secret and started talking
about the news in town.
The last to arrive was citizen Kislyarsky, who, not being a noble-
man and never having served in a Guards regiment, grasped the
situation immediately after his short conversation with Ostap.
“Stand firm,” Ostap said didactically.
Kislyarsky promised.
“You, as a representative of private capital, cannot remain
deaf to the groans of your motherland.”
Kislyarsky grew sad in sympathy.
“Do you know who that is sitting there?” Ostap asked, indi-
cating Ippolit Matveevich.
“Of course,” Kislyarsky answered. “It’s Mister Vorobyaninov.”
“That,” said Ostap, “is a giant of thought, the father of Russian
democracy, and a figure closely connected to the emperor.”
“Even in the best-case scenario, that’s two years in strict iso-
lation,” Kislyarsky thought, beginning to tremble. “Why did I
come here?”
“The secret ‘Union of the Sword and the Plowshare’!” Os-
tap whispered ominously.
“Ten years,” flashed through Kislyarsky’s mind.
“By the way, you can leave, but I warn you that we have long
arms!”
“I’ll show you, you son of a bitch,” thought Ostap. “I’m not
letting you go for less than a hundred rubles.”
Kislyarsky turned to marble. Just today he’d been having
such a tasty and peaceful dinner, eating chicken gizzards and
bouillon with nuts, without knowing anything about the ter-
rible “Union of the Sword and the Plowshare.” He stayed. The
“long arms” had made an unfavorable impression on him.
“Citizens!” Ostap said, opening the meeting. “Life dictates
its own laws, its own cruel laws. I won’t start telling you the goal
of our gathering; it is known to you. It is a sacred goal. We hear

groans from every direction. People are calling for help from
all corners of our vast land. We must reach out a helping hand,
and we will do so. Some of you work civil service jobs and eat
bread and butter, while others do seasonal work and eat open-
faced caviar sandwiches. Both the former and the latter sleep
in their own beds and cover themselves with warm blankets.
And only the little children, the little homeless children, are
left without a home. Those flowers of the street, or, as the pro-
letarians of mental labor put it, those flowers on the asphalt,
deserve a better fate. We, gentlemen of the jury, must help
them. And we, gentlemen of the jury, will do so.”
The smooth operator’s speech engendered varying feelings
in its listeners.
Polesov didn’t understand his new friend, the young Guard.
“What children?” he thought. “Why children?”
Ippolit Matveevich didn’t even try to understand anything.
He’d long ago waved his hand in resignation at it all and was
sitting silently, puffing up his cheeks.
Elena Stanislavovna was downcast.
Nikesha and Vladya gazed devotedly at Ostap’s sky-blue vest.
The owner of Quickpack was extraordinarily pleased. “It’s
nicely put together,” he concluded. “With that kind of sauce I
can give money. If it works out, I get respect! If it doesn’t, I’m
number sixteen on their list. I was helping children—end of
story.”
Charushnikov exchanged a significant glance with Dyadyev,
gave the speaker’s conspirational dexterity its due, and contin-
ued rolling little balls of bread around on the table.
Kislyarsky was in seventh heaven. “He’s sharp as a tack,” he
thought. He felt that he’d never loved homeless children as
ardently as he did at that moment.
“Comrades!” Ostap continued. “Help is needed immedi-
ately. We must rip children out of the clutching paws of the
street, and we will do so. We will help children. We will remem-

ber that children are the flowers of life. I invite you to make
your contributions right away and help the children. Only
children, and no one else. Do you understand me?”
Ostap pulled a receipt book out of his trouser pocket.
“I’ll ask you to make your contributions. Ippolit Matveevich
will confirm my authorization.”
Ippolit Matveevich puffed up importantly and bowed his
head. At this, even the slow-witted Nikesha and Vladya, and
the genius repairman himself, grasped the secret message of
Ostap’s allegory.
“In order of rank, gentlemen,” Ostap said. “We’ll begin with
the esteemed Maxim Petrovich.”
The esteemed Maxim Petrovich squirmed and, with an effort,
gave thirty rubles. “I’ll give more when things turn around!” he
declared.
“Things will turn around soon,” Ostap said. “However, this
has nothing to do with homeless children, whom I represent
at the present time.”
Nikesha and Vladya gave eight rubles.
“That’s not much, young men.”
The young men blushed.
Polesov ran home and brought back fifty. “Bravo, hussar!”
Ostap said. “That’s good enough for the first time from a self-
employed hussar (with a motor). What’ll the merchant class
have to say?”
Dyadyev and Kislyarsky haggled for a long time, complain-
ing about their leveling taxes. Ostap was implacable. “I regard
these conversations as unnecessary, given the presence of Ip-
polit Matveevich himself.”
Ippolit Matveevich bowed his head. The merchants donated
two hundred rubles each for the children.
“The total sum is four hundred eighty-eight rubles,” Ostap
proclaimed. “Ah, me! We only need twelve rubles for a round
number.”

Elena Stanislavovna, who had stood firm all this time, went
into the bedroom and brought out the desired twelve rubles
in her clutch.
The remainder of the meeting was short and less formal
in character. Ostap began cracking jokes. Elena Stanislavovna
melted completely. Gradually, the guests went home, paying
their respects to the evening’s organizers.
“You’ll be given special notice of the next meeting date,”
Ostap said on parting. “In strictest secrecy. The business of help-
ing children must remain secret. That, by the way, is in your
own personal interest.”
When Kislyarsky heard that, he wanted to give fifty more
rubles, but never come to any more meetings. He barely re-
strained himself from this impulse.
“Well,” Ostap said, “we’ll be off. You, Ippolit Matveevich,
will, I hope, take advantage of Elena Stanislavovna’s hospitality
and spend the night with her. Actually, it’ll serve our conspira-
torial ends to be parted for a while. So I’m going.”
Ippolit Matveevich winked desperately at Ostap, but he
pretended he didn’t notice and went outside. After walking a
block, he remembered that he had five hundred honest, hard-
earned rubles in his pocket. “Cabbie!” he shouted. “Take me
to the Phoenix.”
“I can do that,” the horse-cab driver said.
He drove Ostap slowly to the closed restaurant.
“What’s that? It’s closed?”
“Because of May First.”
“Ah, to heck with them! I’ve got more money than I can
shake a stick at, and there’s nowhere to have some fun! Well
then, get us over to Plekhanov Street. You know it?” Ostap had
decided to visit his bride.
“What was that street called before?” the cabbie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then where do I go? I don’t know either.”

Nevertheless, Ostap ordered him to drive around and look.
They rolled around the empty evening town for an hour
and a half, asking night watchmen and policemen for direc-
tions. One policeman hemmed and hawed for a long time and
finally informed them that Plekhanov was none other than the
former Gubernatorial Street.
“Well, Gubernatorial! I know Gubernatorial real well. I’ve
been driving on Gubernatorial for twenty years.”
“So, drive on over!”
They arrived at Gubernatorial Street, but it wasn’t Plekha-
nov Street, it was Karl Marx Street.
The evil-tempered Ostap renewed his search for the lost
Plekhanov Street, but he didn’t find it. Dawn faintly illumi-
nated the face of the rich sufferer who never did end up get-
ting to have any fun. “Take me to the Sorbonne!” he shouted.
“He calls himself a cabbie! Doesn’t even know Plekhanov!”
The widow Gritsatsueva’s face shone. The king who foretold

marriage, the Turkish subject’s son, sat at the head of the wed-
ding feast. He was elegant and drunk. The guests were noisy.
The young bride was no longer young. She was no fewer
than thirty-five years old. She was richly endowed by Nature.
She had it all: melon-like breasts, a nose like the butt of an ax,
painted cheeks, and a mighty neck. She adored her new hus-
band and was very afraid of him. Therefore she didn’t call him
by his name, or even by his patronymic, which she never did
find out, but by his last name, Comrade Bender.
Ippolit Matveevich was sitting on the sacred chair again. He
spent the entire wedding dinner hopping up and down on
the chair to feel something hard. Sometimes he could. Then
he started liking everyone present, and would furiously shout,
“Bitter!”

Ostap continually proclaimed speeches, addresses, and
toasts. Everyone drank to popular education and to the irriga-
tion of Uzbekistan. Then the guests started going home. Ippolit
Matveevich lingered in the entry and whispered to Bender,
“Now don’t drag things out. They’re there!”
“Wait for me in the hotel, you money-grubber,” replied the
drunken Ostap. “Don’t go anywhere. I could come at any mo-
ment. Pay the hotel bill. Make sure everything’s ready. Adieu,
field marshal. Wish me good night.”
Ippolit Matveevich wished him good night and headed off
to the Sorbonne to worry.
Ostap appeared with the chair at five o’clock in the morn-
ing. Ippolit Matveevich was pierced to the quick. Ostap placed
the chair in the middle of the room and sat down.
“How did you do it?” Vorobyaninov finally managed.
“Very simple, informally. The widow’s sleeping, dreaming
dreams. It was a shame to wake her. ‘Don’t wake her when
Dawn softly comes.’ Alas! I had to leave my beloved a note:
‘I’m leaving for Novokhopersk to give a report. Don’t keep
dinner for me. —Your little chipmunk.’ I picked up the chair
in the dining room. There’s no streetcar in these early morn-
ing hours, so I rested along the way.”
Ippolit Matveevich gurgled and threw himself at the chair.
“Take it easy,” Ostap said. “We have to do it nice and quiet.”
He took a pair of pliers out of his deep pockets and they got
down to work.
“Did you lock the door?” Ostap asked.
Pushing aside the impatient Vorobyaninov, Ostap carefully
opened up the chair, trying not to damage the flower-print
English calico.
“They don’t make fabric like this anymore, we need to save
it. Nothing else for it; consumer goods are in short supply.”
All this drove Ippolit Matveevich to a state of extreme
irritation.

“All done,” Ostap said quietly.
He lifted the coverings and started feeling around between
the springs with both hands. A venous letter v bulged in his
forehead.
“Well?” Ippolit Matveevich repeated in varying tones. “Well?
Well?”
“Well, of all things!” Ostap answered. “One chance out of
eleven. And that chance . . .”
He dug around thoroughly in the chair for a moment, and
concluded, “And so far, that chance isn’t ours.”
He stood up to his full height and started brushing off his
knees. Ippolit Matveevich threw himself at the chair.
There were no diamonds. Ippolit Matveevich’s arms went
slack. But Ostap was cheerful as ever. “Now our chances have
increased.” He paced the room: “It’s all right. That chair cost
the widow more than it did us.” Ostap pulled a golden brooch
with glass jewels, a hollow gold bracelet, half a dozen gilded
spoons, and a tea strainer out of his trouser pocket.
In his sorrow, Ippolit Matveevich didn’t even realize that
he’d turned accomplice to an ordinary theft.
“It’s a vulgar thing,” Ostap remarked, “but you have to agree
that I couldn’t abandon a beloved woman without leaving my-
self any reminders of her. But we can’t waste any time. This is
only the beginning. The end is in Moscow. And that furniture
museum is no widow, it’ll be a harder nut to crack!”
The companions stuffed the remnants of the chair under
the bed, counted their money (including the donations to
help children, they had five hundred and thirty-five rubles),
and left for the station and the Moscow train.
They had to ride across the entire town in a horse-cab. On
Kooperativnaya Street they caught sight of Polesov, who was
running down the sidewalk like a skittish antelope. The dvornik
of building No. 5 on Pereleshinsky Lane was racing after him.
As they turned the corner, the concessionaires had time to

note that the dvornik had caught up with Viktor Mikhailovich
and begun walloping him. Polesov was shouting “Help!” and
“Boor!”
Right next to the train station, in Gusishche, they had to
wait for a funeral procession. A flatbed truck with a coffin on
it drove by, followed by the utterly drained Varfolomeyich. His
scheming grandmother had died the exact year he’d stopped
paying her insurance premiums.
They sat in the bathroom until the train’s departure, afraid
to run into Ostap’s beloved.
The train carried the friends off to the noisy district center.
The friends pressed up to the window. The train cars rushed
past high above Gusishche.
Suddenly, Ostap started yelling and grabbed Vorobyaninov
by the bicep. “Look, look!” he shouted. “Quick! Alkhen, that
son of a bitch!”
Ippolit Matveevich looked down. At the top of the gravel
incline, a burly, mustached young fellow was dragging a wheel-
barrow loaded down with a reddish-brown harmonium and
five window frames. A bashful citizen in a little mouse-colored
Tolstoyan shirt was pushing the wheelbarrow. The sun beamed
down through the clouds. Church crosses gleamed. Ostap,
laughing, leaned out the window and barked, “Pashka! You
headed for the flea market?”
Pasha Emilevich lifted his head, but only saw the last train
car’s buffers. He started working his legs even harder.
“You see that?” Ostap asked joyously. “Beautiful! Those
people really know how to work!” Ostap clapped the dejected
Vorobyaninov on the back.
“Never mind, pops! Don’t give up! The meeting is still in
session. Tomorrow evening we’re in Moscow!”

✦ Part Two ✦
In Moscow
16
Amid an Ocean of Chairs
statistics knows everything.

Exact stock has been taken of the amount of arable land
in the USSR, divided by subcategories into black earth, loam,
and forest. All citizens of both sexes have been written down
in the neat, fat books, the Office of Vital Statistics books, so
well known to Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov. We know how
much of which food the average citizen of the republic eats
in a year. We know how much vodka, on average, that aver-
age citizen drinks, with an approximate indication of the ac-
companying zakuska. We know how many hunters, ballerinas,
turret lathes, dogs of all breeds, bicycles, monuments, girls,
lighthouses, and sewing machines there are in the land.
How much life, full of fire, passion, and thought, gazes out
at us from statistics tables!
Who is he, this rosy-cheeked individual who sits at dinner
with a napkin tucked into his shirt, annihilating the steaming
food with an appetite? Herds of miniature bulls lie all around
him. Fat pigs crowd into a corner of the statistics table. Count-
less sturgeons, burbots, and sabre carps splash in a special sta-
tistical pool. Chickens sit on the individual’s shoulders, arms,
and head. Homegrown geese, ducks, and turkeys fly in feath-
ery clouds. Two rabbits sit under the table. Pyramids and Baby-
lons of bread loom on the horizon. A small fortress of jam is
washed by a milky river. A cucumber the size of the Leaning
Tower of Pisa stands on the horizon. Half companies of spir-
✦ 191 ✦
its, vodkas, and fruit liqueurs march in behind ramparts made
of salt and pepper. The rear guard is brought up by a pitiful
clutch of nonalcoholic beverages: noncombatant Narzan min-
eral waters, lemonades, and seltzer bottles in string mesh.
Who is this rosy-cheeked individual, this glutton and drunk
with a sweet tooth? Gargantua, the king of the Dipsods? Strong-
man Voss? The legendary soldier Yashka Red-Shirt? Lucullus?
It is not Lucullus. It is Ivan Ivanovich Sidorov, or Sidor Sido-
rovich Ivanov, an average citizen, who during his life will eat,
on average, everything depicted on the statistical table. He is
a normal consumer of calories and vitamins, a quiet forty-year-
old bachelor who works in the state haberdashery and knit-
wear store.
You can’t hide anywhere from statistics. It not only has exact
information about the quantity of dentists, sausage stands, hy-
podermic needles, dvorniks, film directors, prostitutes, thatched
roofs, widows, horse-cab drivers, and bells, it even knows how
many statisticians the country has.
But there is one thing it doesn’t know, doesn’t know and
can’t find out: how many chairs there are in the USSR.
There are a great many chairs. The last statistical census de-
termined the size of the population of the Union republics to
be 143 million. If you throw out 90 million peasants who instead
of chairs prefer benches, plank platforms, and banks of earth
outside their huts (and who, in the East, prefer worn rugs and
carpets), then you still have 53 million people for whom chairs
remain items of primary importance in the domestic sphere.
If, though, you take into account possible errors in calculation
and the habit of certain citizens of the Republic of falling be-
tween two chairs, then, by reducing the general figure in half,
just in case, we find that there should be no less than 26.5 mil-
lion chairs in the country. Just to be sure we’ll give up 6.5 mil-
lion. The remaining 20 million will be the minimum figure.
192 ✦ in moscow
Amid this ocean of chairs made of walnut, oak, ash, rose-
wood, mahogany, and Karelian birch, amid chairs made of fir
and pine, the novel’s protagonists have to find a Gambs walnut
chair upholstered in English calico with little bent legs hiding
Madame Petukhova’s treasure in its belly.
The concessionaires were still lying on their upper bunks,
asleep, when the train carefully crossed the Oka, gathered
speed, and began the approach to Moscow.
amid an ocean of chairs ✦ 193

17
The Brother Berthold Schwartz
Dormitory
the dim moscow sky was stuccoed in clouds along the

horizon.
Streetcars turning corners squealed so naturally that it
seemed as if it weren’t the streetcar squealing but the con-
ductor himself, squashed up by crowds of government work-
ers against the sign smoking and spitting are forbidden.
Smoking and spitting were forbidden, but elbowing the con-
ductor in the stomach, breathing in his ear, and getting on his
case for no reason at all were obviously not forbidden, and ev-
eryone rushed to take advantage of this. It was a critical hour.
Earthly and unearthly creatures were hurrying to work.
A ragtag bunch of little birds covered in the first dust of
May was raising a ruckus in the trees.
At the House of Nations the streetcars let their citizens out
and, relieved, sped farther on their way.
Office workers approached the House of Nations from
three directions and disappeared into three entrances. The
building was a large white five-story square, sliced through
with a thousand windows. The feet of secretaries, typists, exec-
utive officers, shipping agents with their paperwork, reporters,
couriers, and poets all tramped along the floors and hallways.
With the exception of the poets, the entire workforce slowly
started conducting its usual, necessary business. The poets were
✦ 195 ✦
taking their poems around to all the various specialized maga-
zines’ editorial offices.
The House of Nations was rich in offices and office workers.
It had more offices than a provincial town has buildings. The
editorial and business offices of the big daily newspaper The
Lathe took up an entire verst of the second-floor hallway.
The windows of the editorial office looked out over the in-
side courtyard, where a close-cropped physical culture enthu-
siast in sky-blue trunks and soft shoes was running around the
ring of the athletic field, training for a race. His white legs, still
untanned, flashed between the trees.
Short skirmishes were taking place between editorial office
employees. They were clarifying who would get to take vaca-
tion when. Each and every one cried, “The velvet season,” thus
expressing the desire to go on vacation only in August.
As soon as the chairman of the local labor union committee
had been driven to exhaustion by these claims, Persitsky, a re-
porter, tore himself away from the telephone on which he was
inquiring about the achievements of the joint-stock company
Merinos and announced, “I’m not going in August. Write me
down for June. August is malaria season.”
“Well, that’s good,” said the chairman.
But then all the other employees also switched their sym-
pathies to June. The chairman, annoyed, tossed the list aside
and left.
The fashionable writer Agafon Shakhov drove up to the
House of Nations in a horse-cab. The alcohol thermometer
mounted on the wall showed sixty-four degrees, but Shakhov
wore a shaggy three-season coat, a white muffler, an astrakhan
hat touched with gray, and big galoshes. Agafon Shakhov
guarded his health solicitously.
Agafon Shakhov’s meatball-shaped beard was the finest orna-
ment of his face. His full cheeks, the color of a salmon steak,
were handsome. His eyes gleamed almost wisely. The writer was
196 ✦ in moscow
getting on for forty. He’d been writing and publishing since he
was fifteen, but real fame had only come the year before last. It
had begun when Agafon Shakhov took to writing psychologi-
cal novels and bringing a variety of problems before his read-
ers for judgment. Problems in nice covers, with dedications on
a special page (“To Soviet youth”; “Dedicated to students of
Moscow’s institutes of higher education”; “To young women”)
flashed before his readers, particularly female ones. The prob-
lems were as follows: gender and marriage, marriage and love,
love and gender, gender and jealousy, jealousy and love, mar-
riage and jealousy. The novels, sprinkled with a small dose of
Soviet ideology, enjoyed widespread sales. Ever since, Shakhov
had taken to saying that students liked him. However, subsist-
ing perpetually on marriage and jealousy turned out to be dif-
ficult. Critics started nagging, drawing the writer’s attention
to the narrow range of his themes. Shakhov grew alarmed. He
buried himself in newspapers. He was in such fear that he was
about to sit down to write a novel illustrating the reduction
of overhead expenses, and even wrote eighty pages in three
days. But he couldn’t fit a single word about the reduction of
overhead expenses into the description of the amorous fix the
manager had gotten himself into with three different dames.
He had to quit. However, it was a shame to waste the eighty
pages, so Shakhov quickly switched to the theme of embezzle-
ment. He turned the manager into a payroll-office cashier, but
left the dames. Shakhov spent a good deal of time developing
the figure of the cashier, bestowing upon him the passions of
Nero, the Roman emperor.
The novel was written in two weeks and released six weeks
later.
Agafon climbed out of the horse-cab in front of the House
of Nations, ran his fingers lovingly over the nice new book
in his pocket, and headed for the entrance. On the way, the
writer kept looking at the back ends of his galoshes to see if
the brother berthold schwartz dormitory ✦ 197

they’d been worn down. He walked up to the elevator gate
and waited. He only needed to go up to the second floor, but
he was taking care of his health (and also, the elevator in the
House of Nations was provided free of charge).
Shakhov went into the office of the Lathe’s daily life section,
where he was often published. Without greeting anyone, he
asked, “Are you paying today? Well, that’s just fine. What, Gra-
cious Sir still hasn’t embezzled everything?”
“Gracious Sir” was what they called Asokin, the cashier, in
the editorial and business offices. Shakhov had used Asokin as
the basis for his main character, and the entire staff, including
the cashier himself, knew it.
The employees all shook their heads in negation. Shakhov
went to the cashier’s window to collect money for a story.
“Hello, Gracious Sir,” the writer said. “I hear you’re giving
out money today.”
“I am, Agafon Vasilievich.”
The cashier thrust a payroll register and a copying pencil
through the little window.
“I hear you’ve written a new work? The fellows were talking
about it.”
“I have.”
“They say you described me in it?”
“You’re the most important one.”
The cashier was glad. “Then you should at least let me bor-
row it, seeing as how you described me and all.”
Shakhov got out the brand-new little book and wrote “To
Comrade Asokin, in friendship. Agafon Shakhov” on the title
page, using the same pencil he’d signed the register with.
“There, read it. Print run of ten thousand. Everyone in Rus-
sia will know who you are.”
The cashier took the book reverently and put it in the fire-
proof safe on top of a pack of chervontsy.
198 ✦ in moscow
✦
Ippolit Matveevich and Ostap stood leaning against each other

at the open window of the third-class car, looking attentively
at the conifers, the cows slowly descending the gravel embank-
ment, and the wooden-plank platforms of the dacha-region
stations.
All their travel stories had already been told. Tuesday’s Star-
gorod Pravda had been read all the way to the classifieds and
covered in oily splotches. All the spring chickens, eggs, and
olives had been eaten.
They still had to get through the most tedious section of
track: the last hour before Moscow.
Cheerful little dachas leaped up to the embankment out of
thin copses and groves. Among them were entire wooden pal-
aces, the glass of their verandas and their freshly painted iron
roofs glittering. There were also simple wood-frame huts with
tiny square windows, tempting traps for dacha-owners.
First Udelnaya flew at them, then Malakhovka, and then
Kraskovo disappeared off behind them somewhere.
“Look, Vorobyaninov!” Ostap shouted. “See that two-
story dacha? That’s the dacha for medical and public health
workers.”
“I see it. It’s a nice dacha.”
“I lived in it last season.”
“Are you really a medical worker?” Vorobyaninov asked,
distracted.
“To live in a dacha like that you don’t need to be a medical
worker.”
Ippolit Matveevich found this strange answer sufficient. He
was worried. All the while the other passengers were examining
the horizon with an expert air and, muddling up the few facts
about the Battle of the Kalka they could still remember, tell-

ing each other about Moscow past and present, Ippolit Matvee-
vich stubbornly kept trying to imagine the furniture museum.
He imagined the museum as a corridor many versts long, with
lines of chairs along its walls. Vorobyaninov saw himself walk-
ing quickly between the chairs.
“We don’t have any idea what it’s going to be like in the fur-
niture museum. Will we manage?” he said anxiously.
“It’s time to give you electric shock therapy, marshal. Don’t
get into premature hysterics. If you can’t stop worrying, then
worry without talking.”
The train bounced on the railroad switches. The sema-
phores saw the train and gaped. The train tracks multiplied.
One could sense the approach of an enormous railway hub.
The grass disappeared and was replaced by slag. Shunting en-
gines whistled. Switchmen trumpeted. Suddenly the clatter
grew stronger. The train rolled into a corridor between empty
trains and clicked like a turnstile as it began to count off cars:
“A white refrigerator car, the Tashkent express, a direct re-
turn, a meat and fish car, one equipped with hooks.”
“Dark oak, paneled decks, soft suspension, an international
sleeping car.”
“Twelve freight cars of the Ryazan-Ural Line. Covered in
chalked signs.”
“Oil tanks. Direct return to Baku.”
“Proletarians of the world, unite. The workers’ club car of
the Moscow–Kazan Line’s union traveling committee.”
“Platforms loaded with lumber . . . one, two, three . . . eight
. . . ten . . .”
And suddenly, off to the side, a forgotten train car, a shabby
mixed-use car with the slogan the denikin front.
The tracks cracked in half and doubled.
The train leaped out of the corridor. The sun beat down.
Switchmen’s handheld lights, resembling small axes, ran off
low along the ground in every direction. Smoke was roiling
200 ✦ in moscow
past. The engine chuffed and let out a pair of snow-white mut-
tonchops. There was a lot of shouting on the transfer table.
Depot workers herded the engine into its stall.
The train’s joints popped from the abrupt braking. Every-
thing screeched. Ippolit Matveevich felt as though he’d entered
the kingdom of toothache. The train moored at the asphalt
platform.
It was Moscow. It was Ryazan Station, the freshest and newest
of all Moscow’s train stations. Not a single one of the other eight
stations in Moscow has such spacious, high-ceilinged rooms as
Ryazan Station. All of Yaroslav Station, with its pseudo-Russian
crests and heraldic little chickens, can easily fit inside Ryazan
Station’s large restaurant.
Moscow’s train stations are the gates of the city. Every day
they let thirty thousand passengers in and out. The foreigner
wearing rubber-soled shoes and a golf outfit (plus fours with
thick wool socks) comes into Moscow through Alexandrov Sta-
tion. The Caucasian in a brown sheepskin hat with ventilation
holes and a tall fellow from the Volga region with a hempen
beard come out of Kursk Station. A midlevel manager with a
wondrous pigskin briefcase jumps out of October Station. He’s
here from Leningrad to negotiate coordination, harmoniza-
tion, and concrete parameters of coverage. Representatives
of Kiev and Odessa make their way into the capital through
Bryansk Station. As early as Tikhon Hermitage, the Kievans have
already begun smiling scornfully, for they are perfectly aware
that Kreshchatik is the best street on the planet. Odessans take
along heavy baskets and flat boxes of smoked mackerel. They
are also aware of the best street on the planet. But it’s not
Kreshchatik, it’s LaSalle (formerly Deribasovskaya) Street.
Paveletsky Station is where people arrive in Moscow from Sara-
tov, Atkarsk, Tambov, Rtishchev, and Kozlov. The most negli-
gible numbers of people arrive in Moscow through Savyolov
Station. These are cobblers from Taldom, inhabitants of the

town of Dmitrov, Yakhromsky textile plant workers, or the dis-
mal dacha resident who lives, winter and summer, at Khleb-
nikovo. It’s not far to Moscow from here. The longest distance
you can travel on this line is a hundred and thirty versts. But
people who’ve arrived from big, distant cities, from Vladivostok,
Khabarovsk, and Chita, get to the capital via Yaroslav Station.
The most exotic passengers, though, are at Ryazan Station.
These are Uzbeks in white muslin turbans and flowered robes,
red-bearded Tajiks, Turkmens, Khivans, and Bukharans, over
whose republics the sun shines eternal.
The concessionaires forced their way through to the exit
with difficulty and found themselves on Watchtower Square.
The heraldic chickens of Yaroslav Station towered to their
right. Directly across from them, October Station glinted dully,
coated in two colors of oil paint. The clock on it showed five
minutes after ten. It was ten o’clock exactly on the Yaroslav
Station clock. And when they looked at the dark-blue clock
face of Ryazan Station, adorned with the signs of the zodiac,
the travelers noted that the clock showed five minutes to ten.
“Very convenient for a rendezvous!” Ostap said. “You always
have a ten-minute advantage.”
“Where are we going now? To a hotel?” asked Vorobyaninov,
stepping down out of the station portico and looking around
apprehensively.
“In this town, the only citizens who stay in hotels are the
ones who’ve come on business,” Ostap informed him, “whereas
we, my dear comrade, are private entrepreneurs. We don’t like
overhead expenses.”
Ostap walked up to a horse-cab, sat down in silence, and
invited Ippolit Matveevich in with an expansive gesture. “To
Sivtsev Vrazhek!” he said. “Eight griven.”
The cabbie was stupefied. They got into a boring argument,
in which the price of oats and the key to a room full of money
were often mentioned.
202 ✦ in moscow
Finally, the cabbie made a kissing sound with his lips. They
went under the bridge and the magnificent panorama of the
capital city unfolded itself before the travelers.
Near the Red Gates, restored by the zeal of the Central
Science Administration, stood plasterers, bricklayers, lime-
bedaubed painters with their yard-long brushes, and carpen-
ters with saws. The corner of Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street was
covered with them.
“The Reserve Palace,” Ippolit Matveevich remarked, looking
at the long white-and-green building on Novaya Basmannaya.
“I worked in that palace too,” Ostap said. “It’s not a palace,
by the way, it’s the People’s Commissary of Transportation of
the USSR. To this day, the workers there are probably wear-
ing the enamel badges I invented and distributed. And here’s
Myasnitskaya. An excellent street. You can croak from hunger
here. After all, you’re not about to eat ball bearings for your
first course and millstones for your main dish, but they don’t
sell anything else here.”
“It was like that before, too. I remember it well. I used to or-
der lightning rods for my house in Stargorod on Myasnitskaya.”
When they drove across Lubyanka Square, Ippolit Matvee-
vich started to worry.
“Where are we going, anyway?” he asked.
“To see some fine people,” Ostap answered. “There’s a
whole lot of them in Moscow. And I know them all.”
“And we’ll be staying with them?”
“It’s a dormitory. If one person doesn’t have space, some-
one else always does.”
A little palm was already sticking up on the square oppo-
site the Bolshoi Theater. It announced that summer had come
and that persons wishing to breathe fresh air needed to go no
less than two thousand versts away immediately.
But winter still raged in the academic theaters. The win-
ter season was in full swing. Placards informed one and all of

the debut performance of the opera Love for Three Oranges, the
“last concert before the famous tenor Dmitry Smirnov goes
abroad,” and the world-famous captain and his sixty crocodiles
in State Circus No. 1.
There was a commotion in Okhotny Ryad. Unlicensed ped-
dlers with their trays on their heads ran like geese, scattering
in all directions. A policeman trotted lazily after them. Home-
less children sat by the asphalt vats and inhaled the smell of
boiling tar with delight.
The hurly-burly of vehicles, both mechanical and horse-
powered, was especially tumultuous on the corner of Okhotny
Ryad and Tverskaya Street. Dvorniks watered down the streets
and sidewalks with hoses thin as Cracow sausage. A carter with
a load of plywood boxes of Our Brand papirosas came out of
Mokhovaya Street.
“Hey, mister!” he shouted to a dvornik. “Bathe my horse!”
The dvornik courteously agreed and turned his stream on
the sorrel bityug. The bityug firmly planted its front legs and
allowed itself to be bathed. It turned from a sorrel into a black
and started to look like a monument to a horse. The traffic
of horse-drawn and mechanical vehicles stopped. The bath-
ing bityug was standing in the worst possible spot. Cars shifted
gears and came to a halt all along Tverskaya Street, Okhotny
Ryad, Mokhovaya Street, and even on Theater Square. Lines
of buses surrounded the scene of the incident from all sides.
Drivers breathed hot gasoline and fury. Mirror-bright driver’s
side doors burst open, and shouting issued from inside.
“Why’d you stop?” people shouted from all four directions.
“Let me bathe my horse!” snarled the carter.
“Move along, you! We’re talking to you, you lollygagger!”
It made such a large traffic jam that traffic even came to
a standstill on Lubyanka Square. The dvornik had long ago
stopped spraying the horse, and the refreshed bityug had even
managed to dry off and get covered in dust again, but the traf-
204 ✦ in moscow
fic jam got worse and worse. The carter couldn’t make his way
out of the awful mess, and the bityug still stood in the middle
of the street.
The concessionaires were smack in the middle of this bed-
lam. Ostap, who was standing up in the horse-cab like a police
chief racing to a fire, fired off sardonic remarks and shifted
impatiently from one leg to the other.
Half an hour later the traffic had been regulated and the
travelers drove out onto Arbat Square, drove down Prechisten-
sky Boulevard, and, turning to the right, found themselves on
Sivtsev Vrazhek.
“Head right, to the entrance,” Ostap said. “Climb on out,
Conrad Karlovich, we’re here!”
“What kind of building is that?” Ippolit Matveevich asked.
Ostap looked at the little pink house with a mezzanine and
answered, “The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dormitory for
chemistry students.”
“Was he really a monk?”
“Okay, I was just joking. The Semashko Dormitory.”
Just as one might expect from an ordinary student dormi-
tory in Moscow, the chemistry students’ building had long ago
been occupied by people with a fairly distant relationship to
chemistry. The students had scattered in all directions. Some
of them had finished their studies and left for their assign-
ments, others had been expelled for poor academic perfor-
mance. It was precisely the latter group, which increased every
year, that had set up something between a building society and
a feudal village in the pink edifice. In vain did ranks of new stu-
dents attempt to breach the dormitory walls. The ex-chemists
were unusually resourceful and repelled all attacks. So, every-
one waved their hand dismissively at the little building. People
thought of it as having gone feral, and it disappeared from
all the Moscow Real Estate Administration files. It was as if it
didn’t exist. Still, it did exist, and people even lived in it.

The concessionaires went up the stairs to the second floor
and turned into a completely dark hallway.
“Ah, light and air,” Ostap said.
Suddenly, somebody began breathing heavily in the dark-
ness, right next to Ippolit Matveevich’s elbow.
“Don’t be afraid,” Ostap remarked. “It’s not in the hallway.
It’s behind the wall. Plywood, as we know from physics, is an
excellent conductor of sound. Careful! Stay behind me! There
should be a fireproof safe somewhere around here.”
The cry promptly issued by Vorobyaninov, who’d hit the
sharp iron corner with his chest, showed that the safe really
was somewhere around there.
“What, did that hurt?” Ostap inquired. “That’s nothing.
That’s physical torment. But the amount of moral torment
that went on here—it’s terrible to recall. The student Ivano-
pulo’s skeleton stood right here. He bought it at the Sukharev
market, but was afraid to keep it in his room. So first visitors
stumbled into the safe, and then the skeleton fell on top of
them. Pregnant women were most dissatisfied.”
The companions ascended to the mezzanine by a spiral
staircase. Plywood partitions sliced the mezzanine’s large room
into long, five-foot-wide pieces. The rooms looked like pencil-
cases, with the only difference being that these contained peo-
ple and primus stoves as well as pencils and pens.
“Are you home, Kolya?” Ostap asked quietly, stopping in
front of the central door.
In reply, all five pencil-cases stirred and began raising a
fuss.
“I’m home,” came the answer from behind the door.
“That fool’s got visitors coming over early in the morning
again!” a woman’s voice whispered from the end pencil-case
on the left.
“Let a fellow get some shut-eye!” pencil-case No. 2 growled.
206 ✦ in moscow
In the third pencil-case someone whispered joyfully, “Some-
body from the police came by Kolka’s. Because of the window
yesterday.”
The fifth pencil-case remained silent. Inside, a primus stove
neighed and people kissed.
Ostap prodded the door with his foot. The entire plywood
construction shook, and the concessionaires made their way
into Kolka’s slot. Notwithstanding its superficial innocence,
the picture that greeted Ostap was horrifying. The only fur-
niture in the room was a red-striped mattress resting on four
bricks. But it wasn’t this that bothered Ostap. And it wasn’t
Kolka himself, sitting with his feet on the mattress, that amazed
him. But sitting next to Kolka was such a heavenly creature
that Ostap immediately grew dour. Girls like this never hap-
pen to be friends from work; their eyes are too blue and their
necks are too bright for that. They are lovers, or, even worse,
wives—beloved wives. And Kolya did, in fact, call the creature
Liza, speak to her using the informal ty, and make eyes at her.
Ippolit Matveevich doffed his beaver hat. Ostap called Kolya
out into the hallway. They whispered out there for a long
time.
“It’s a beautiful morning, madam,” Ippolit Matveevich said.
The blue-eyed madam laughed and, without any apparent
connection to Ippolit Matveevich’s remark, started talking
about what fools they had living in the next-door pencil-case.
“They turn their primus up so nobody can hear them kissing.
But that’s so stupid, you see. We can hear everything. They’re
the ones who can’t hear anything, because of their primus.
Want me to show you? Listen.”
Kolya’s wife, who’d attained all the secrets of the primus,
said, loudly, “Brutish fools!”
They heard the hellish singing of the primus and the sounds
of kisses from behind the wall.

“See? They don’t hear anything . . . Brutish fools, block-
heads, and psychopaths! See?”
“Yes,” said Ippolit Matveevich.
“We don’t keep a primus at home. What for? We go to the
vegetarian cafeteria to eat, even though I’m against vegetarian
cafeterias. But when Kolya and I got married, he dreamed that
we’d go to the veggie together. So, here we are, going to it. But
I really like meat. And their cutlets are made out of noodles.
But please, don’t say anything to Kolya . . .”
Just then, Kolya and Ostap came back. “Well then, seeing as
how we really can’t stay with you, we’ll go to Panteley’s.”
“That’s right, fellows!” Kolya shouted, “go to Ivanopulo’s.
He’s one of us.”
“Come and visit sometime,” Kolya’s wife said. “My husband
and I’d be very glad.”
“There they go, asking people over again!” the last pencil-
case on the left said indignantly. “As if they didn’t have enough
visitors!”
“And you’re fools, blockheads, and psychopaths, and it’s
none of your business!” said Kolya’s wife, without raising her
voice.
“You hear that, Ivan Andreyich?” the last pencil-case said,
agitated. “Your wife is being insulted, and you aren’t saying
anything.”
The invisible commentators from the other pencil-cases also
gave their opinions. The verbal skirmish grew more heated.
The companions headed back down to Ivanopulo’s.
The student wasn’t home. Ippolit Matveevich lit a match. On
the door hung a note: “I won’t be back before nine. Panteley.”
“No problem,” said Ostap. “I know where the key is.” He
fumbled around on top of the fireproof safe, produced the
key, and opened the door.
The student Ivanopulo’s room was the exact same size as
Kolya’s, but it was a corner room. One of its walls was stone, a
208 ✦ in moscow
fact the student was very proud of. Ippolit Matveevich noted
with dismay that the student didn’t even have a mattress.
“We’ll be marvelously comfortable here,” Osap said. “For
Moscow it’s a pretty good square footage. If we all three lie down
on the floor, there’s even a little space left. But Panteley—son
of a bitch! What’d he do with his mattress, I’d like to know?”
The window looked out into a lane. A policeman was walk-
ing back and forth in it. The embassy of a tiny state was op-
posite them, in a little place built to resemble a Gothic tower.
People were playing tennis behind the iron fence. A white ball
flew around. Short exclamations could be heard.
“Out,” said Ostap. “The class of play isn’t very high. Still,
let’s get some rest.”
The concessionaires spread newspapers out on the floor.
Ippolit Matveevich took out the tiny lacy pillow that he took
everywhere with him.
They had hardly gotten settled on the telegrams and chron-
icle of theatrical events when they heard the noise of a win-
dow being opened in the next room, and Panteley’s neighbor
shouted defiantly at the tennis players: “Long live the Soviet
Republic! Down with imperialist predators!”
The shouting lasted around ten minutes. Ostap was sur-
prised and got up off the floor. “Who is this connoisseur of
predators, anyway?”
He leaned out the window, looked to the right, and saw two
young men in the next window. He noticed immediately that
the young men only shouted about predators whenever the
policeman posted at the embassy walked past their window.
He would look worriedly at the young men, then peer out past
the fence at the tennis match. He was in a difficult situation.
The shouting about predators kept going, and he didn’t know
what to do about it. On the one hand, these exclamations were
completely normal and had no obscene content. But on the
other hand, the tennis-playing predators in white pants, out

there behind the fence, might take it personally and be of-
fended. The policeman, who was in no condition to analyze
this new state of affairs, looked pleadingly at the young men
and ended the matter by throwing himself at a train of carts
and ordering it to turn around. The diplomatic complications
ended when some visitors came to see the young men and they
started loudly discussing a chess problem.
Ostap flopped down on the telegrams and fell asleep. Ip-
polit Matveevich had already been asleep for a long time.
210 ✦ in moscow
18
Respect Your Mattresses, Citizens!
“liza, let’s go eat!”

“I don’t feel like it. I already ate yesterday.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I’m not going to go eat fake hare.”
“Well, that’s stupid!”
“I can’t live on vegetarian sausages.”
“Today you’ll have charlotte.”
“Somehow I just don’t feel like it.”
“Talk quieter. Everyone can hear.”
So the young couple switched to a dramatic whisper. Two
minutes later Kolya understood, for the first time in his three
months of married life, that his beloved wife liked sausages
made of carrots, potatoes, and peas a lot less than he did.
“So you prefer dog meat to dietary nutrition?” Kolya
shouted, forgetting the eavesdropping neighbors in the heat
of the moment.
“Talk quieter!” Liza shouted loudly. “And you don’t treat
me right, either. Yes! I like meat! Sometimes. What’s wrong
with that?”
Kolya, astonished, went silent. This was an unexpected turn
of events for him. Meat would make an enormous, unplug-
gable breach in Kolya’s budget. The young husband ran some
desperate calculations as he strolled along the mattress, with
the beet-red Liza, curled into a ball, sitting on it.
✦ 211 ✦
Copying designs onto tracing paper in Technopower, his
drafting firm, brought Kolya Kalachov no more than forty
rubles, even in the most successful months. Kolya didn’t pay
for his apartment. There was no building management in the
feral settlement, and rent was an abstract concept. Ten rubles
went to Liza’s dressmaking course (which granted her the
same rights and privileges as students of the technical college
of construction). Their dinners for two (one first course of
monastic borscht and one main course, either fake hare or
real noodles), divided in half fair and square and eaten in the
vegetarian cafeteria Thou Shalt Not Steal, wrested thirteen ru-
bles a month from the couple’s budget. The rest of the money
just trickled away somehow. That was what troubled Kolya
more than anything else. “Where does all the money go?” he
mused, executing a long, thin line on some sky-blue tracing
paper with his ruling pen. In these circumstances, switching to
a carnivorous diet would mean the end. Therefore, Kolya said
hotly, “Just think, devouring the corpses of dead animals! Can-
nibalism under the mask of culture! Meat causes all illnesses.”
“Of course,” Liza said, with shy irony. “Like tonsillitis.”
“That’s right! And tonsillitis, too! And what did you think?
An organism that’s weakened by constant meat consumption
doesn’t have the strength to resist infection.”
“That’s so stupid!”
“That’s not what’s stupid. Anybody who just thinks about
stuffing their belly without considering the quantity of vita-
mins is stupid.”
“Are you trying to say I’m a fool?”
“That’s stupid.”
“A stupid fool?”
“Please, just let it go. What’s this about, anyway?”
Kolya abruptly went quiet. A vast pork chop appeared before
his inner eye, blocking out more and more of the background
of insipid, listless porridges, noodle frittatas, and potatoey
212 ✦ in moscow
nonsense. It was obvious that it had just leaped out of the pan.
It was still hissing, burbling, and releasing a fragrant aroma.
The bone stuck up out of the chop like a dueling pistol.
“But you just have to see,” Kolya shouted. “A pork chop
takes a week off your life!”
“Let it!” Liza said. “Fake hare takes off six months. Yesterday
when we ate that carrot roast, I could tell that I was dying. I just
didn’t want to tell you.”
“But why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“I didn’t have the strength. I was afraid I’d start crying.”
“But you’re not afraid of that now?”
“Now I don’t care.” Liza burst into tears.
“Lev Tolstoy didn’t eat meat, either,” said Kolya, his voice
trembling.
“Ri-i-ight,” Liza answered, hiccupping from crying. “The
count ate asparagus.”
“Asparagus isn’t meat.”
“But when he was writing War and Peace he ate meat! He did
eat meat, he did! And when he was writing Anna Karenina, he
gobbled it up! He gobbled it!”
“You just be quiet!”
“He gobbled meat! He gobbled it!”
“What about when he was writing The Kreutzer Sonata? Did
he gobble it then, too?” Kolya asked maliciously.
“The Kreutzer Sonata is short. I’d like to have seen him try
writing War and Peace on nothing but vegetarian sausages!”
“What’s this all about? Why on earth are you going on at me
about your Tolstoy?”
“I’m going on at you about Tolstoy? I’m going on? I’m going
on at you, mister, about Tolstoy?”
Kolya also switched to the formal mode of address. The
pencil-cases exulted loudly. Liza hastily yanked her light-blue
knitted cap from the back of her head to the front.
“Where are you going?”
respect your mattresses, citizens! ✦ 213

“Leave me alone. I’ve got something to do.”
And Liza ran away.
“Where could she have gone?” Kolya thought. He started
listening.
“Your sister’s been given much freedom under Soviet power,”
the pencil-case farthest to the left said.
“She’s going to drown herself!” the third pencil-case
decided.
The fifth pencil-case lit its primus and got down to its daily
kissing.
Liza, upset, ran through the streets.
It was that hour of Sunday when lucky folks are hauling mat-
tresses and chests of drawers from the Smolensk market down
the Arbat.
Newlyweds and middle-class Soviet citizens are the primary
purchasers of mattresses with springs. They carry them up-
right, embracing them with both hands. How could they not
embrace the sky-blue foundation of their happiness, dotted, as
it is, with shiny, big-snouted flowers!
Citizens! Respect the mattress with springs and a sky-blue
floral print! It is the family hearth, the alpha and omega of
furnishings, the be-all and end-all of domestic comfort, the
foundation of love, the father of the primus stove! How sweet
it is to slumber to the democratic chimes of its springs! What
pleasant dreams are had by him who falls asleep on its sky-blue
ticking! What respect is enjoyed by every mattress-owner!
A man deprived of a mattress is pitiful. He doesn’t exist.
He doesn’t pay taxes, he doesn’t have a wife, his friends don’t
lend him money “until Wednesday,” taxi drivers shout insult-
ing words when he walks past, and girls laugh at him. They
don’t like idealists.
214 ✦ in moscow
More often than not, a man deprived of a mattress will write
poetry:
It’s pleasant to rest in a rocking chair
Under the soft chime of a Buhre clock.
Snowflakes whirl in the courtyard, where
Jackdaws, like dreams, fly past in a flock.
He writes these poems at the high counter of the telegraph

office, holding up mattress-owners who’ve come on business
to send telegrams.
A mattress rends the fabric of people’s lives. A kind of power
is concealed in its upholstery and springs, a magnetic power
that science has not yet explained. People and things alike
flock to the inviting call of its springs. The tax inspector comes
over, and girls. They all want to be friends with mattress-
owners. The tax inspector does this for financial reasons, for
the benefit of the state, while the girls do it selflessly, obeying
the laws of nature.
The flowering of youth begins. The tax inspector, who has
collected his taxes the way a bee collects the springtime’s bribe,
flies off to his local hive with a joyful buzzing. And the girls,
who have receded like the tide, are replaced by a wife and a
Yuvel No. 1 primus stove.
The mattress is insatiable. It demands sacrifices. At night it
rings out like a falling sword. It needs freestanding shelving. It
needs a table supported by stupid pedestals. Lashing out with
its springs, it demands curtains, drapes, and kitchenware. It
shoves the man and tells him:
“Go! Buy an ironing paddle and a rocking chair!”
“I’m ashamed of you, man! You still don’t have a rug!”
“Work! Soon I will bring you children! You need money for
diapers and a baby carriage.”
The mattress remembers everything and does everything in
its own way.

Not even the poet can escape the common fate. There he is,
bringing the mattress home from the market, pressing himself
to its soft belly with horror.
“I shall break your will, poet!” says the mattress. “You won’t
need to run to the telegraph office to write poems anymore.
And anyway, is it even worth writing them? Work! And the bal-
ance sheet will always be in your favor. Think about your wife
and children.”
“I don’t have a wife,” shouts the poet, staggering away from
his springéd teacher.
“You will. And I make no guarantees that she’ll be the pret-
tiest girl on earth. I don’t even know if she’ll be nice. Be pre-
pared for anything. You will have children.”
“I don’t like children!”
“You will!”
“You’re scaring me, citizen mattress!”
“Shut up, dummy! You don’t know the half of it! You’re go-
ing to go to the Moscow Woodworking Industry Trust to take
out credit for furniture, too.”
“I’ll kill you, mattress!”
“Puppy! If you dare, your neighbors will report you to build-
ing management.”
So, every Sunday, lucky folks circulate around Moscow to
the joyous ringing of mattresses.
But Sundays in Moscow aren’t wonderful for this reason
alone, of course. Sunday is museum day.
There’s a special category of people in Moscow. This cat-
egory doesn’t know a thing about art, isn’t interested in archi-
tecture, and doesn’t like ancient artifacts. It visits museums
solely because they are located in beautiful buildings. These
people wander the brilliant halls examining the painted ceil-
ings enviously, touching things they are forbidden to touch
and muttering ceaselessly, “Phew! People used to live!”
216 ✦ in moscow
They don’t care that the walls were painted by the French-
man Puvis de Chavannes. They care about finding out how
much that cost the mansion’s former owner. They walk up a
staircase with marble statues on the landings and imagine how
many lackeys stood there, and how much each lackey received
in wages and tips. There’s porcelain on the fireplace, but they
pay no attention to that and decide that the fireplace is no
good, since it uses too much wood. In the oak-paneled dining
room, they don’t even glance at the excellent carving. They
are tortured by one thought: what did the former owner, a
merchant, eat in here and how much would it cost now, given
the high price of goods today?
You can find people like this in any museum. While excur-
sions march energetically from one masterpiece to the next,
a person like this stands in the middle of the hall and, with-
out looking at anything in particular, mutters, “Phew! People
really used to live!”
Liza ran along the street, swallowing her tears. Her thoughts
spurred her on. She thought about her poor, happy life. “Now
if only we had a table and two chairs, it’d be really nice. And
sooner or later we’ll have to get a primus. We have to get settled
somehow.”
She started walking slower, because she suddenly remem-
bered her fight with Kolya. Besides, she was very hungry. Out
of nowhere, hatred for her husband flared up. “It’s simply out-
rageous!” she said aloud.
She got even hungrier.
“All right, then. All right. I know what to do all by myself.”
So Liza, reddening, bought an open-faced bologna sand-
wich from a peddler. But no matter how hungry she was, it

didn’t seem very appropriate to eat on the street. She was a
mattress-owner, after all, and had a keen understanding of life.
She looked around and went into the entryway of a large man-
sion. There, with a surge of delight, she fell to her sandwich.
The bologna was seductive. A large excursion walked into the
entryway. The sightseers all looked at Liza, standing over by
the wall, as they walked past.
“Let them see!” decided the spiteful Liza.
218 ✦ in moscow
19
The Furniture Museum
liza wiped her mouth with a hanky and brushed the crumbs
off her blouse. She started to feel happier. She was standing in
front of a sign reading:
the museum of furniture craftsmanship.
Going home would be too awkward. There were twenty

kopeks in her pocket. So Liza decided to begin her indepen-
dent life with a visit to the museum. Liza double-checked her
money and went into the entrance hall.
There she immediately bumped into a man with a worn beard.
He was staring oppressively at a malachite column. Through his
mustache he forced out, “People used to live real good!”
Liza gave the column a respectful glance and went up.
She wandered around for ten minutes in small square rooms
with such low ceilings that every person who went in them felt
like a giant. These were rooms furnished with stern, wonder-
ful, military furniture in the Pauline Empire style of mahogany
and Karelian birch. Two rectangular cupboards whose glass
doors were covered with crossed spears stood opposite a desk.
The desk was immense. Sitting at it would be like sitting at
Theater Square, and the Bolshoi Theater with its colonnade
and four bronze draft horses pulling Apollo to the premiere
of Red Poppy would have looked like an inkwell on the table.
At least, that’s how it seemed to Liza, who was being raised on
carrots like some kind of rabbit. Armchairs with tall backs, the
✦ 219 ✦
tops of which were curved to look like ram’s horns, stood in
the corners. The sun lay on the armchairs’ peach upholstery.
One felt like sitting right down in an armchair like that, but
sitting was forbidden.
Liza did a mental comparison of how the priceless Pauline
Empire armchair would look next to her red-striped mattress.
Not half-bad, as it happened. She read the little sign on the
wall giving the scientific and ideological foundation of the
Pauline Empire style, grew sad that she and Kolya didn’t have
a room in the palace, and went into an unexpected corridor.
Low semicircular windows ran along the left-hand side at
floor level. Through them, under her feet, Liza saw an enor-
mous white-columned hall, trimmed in two colors. Furniture
stood in it too, and visitors wandered around. Liza came to a
halt. She’d never seen a hall under her feet before.
Amazed and delighted, she looked down for a long time.
Suddenly she noticed that the people she’d met earlier that day,
Comrade Bender and his companion, the imposing, shaven-
headed old man, were walking from some armchairs over to a
writing desk.
“That’s good,” Liza said. “It won’t be as boring.”
She was very happy. She ran downstairs and immediately
got lost. She ended up in a red parlor with about forty exhib-
its in it. They were pieces of walnut furniture with little bent
legs. There was no exit from the parlor. She had to run back,
through a round room lit from above and furnished exclu-
sively, it seemed, with flowered pillows.
She ran past brocade armchairs of the Italian Renaissance,
Dutch cupboards, a large Gothic bed with a canopy on four
twisted columns. A person in that bed would look no bigger
than a peanut.
The hall was somewhere under her feet, maybe off to the
right, but it was impossible to find. Finally Liza caught the buzz-
ing of sightseers listening inattentively as the tour guide un-
220 ✦ in moscow
masked Catherine the Great’s imperialist bent, as revealed in
the deceased empress’s love for Louis XVI furniture.
It was that same large two-toned hall with columns. Liza
walked through it to the other end, where her new acquain-
tance, Comrade Bender, was conversing hotly with his shaven-
headed traveling companion.
As she approached, Liza heard a sonorous voice saying,
“Furniture in the chic-moderne style. But I believe that’s not what
we need.”
“No, but there are other halls here too, obviously. We need
to look everything over systematically.”
“Hello,” Liza said.
Both turned around and immediately frowned.
“Hello, Comrade Bender. It’s good I found you. It would’ve
been really boring by myself. Let’s look at everything together.”
The concessionaires exchanged glances. Ippolit Matveevich
assumed a dignified air, even though he was annoyed that Liza
might hinder them in the important matter of their search for
the diamond furniture.
“We’re typical provincials,” Bender said impatiently, “but
how did you, a Muscovite, end up here?”
“Completely by chance. Kolya and I had a fight.”
“Is that so?” Ippolit Matveevich remarked.
“Well, let us forsake this hall,” Ostap said.
“But I haven’t looked at it yet. It’s so pretty.”
“Here we go!” Ostap whispered into Ippolit Matveevich’s
ear. Turning to Liza, he added, “There’s absolutely nothing to
see here. A decadent style. The Kerensky epoch.”
“I was told there’s furniture by the master craftsman Gambs
around here somewhere,” Ippolit Matveevich informed them.
“Perhaps we could head that way.”
Liza agreed, took Vorobyaninov’s arm (she thought him a
wonderfully nice representative of the scientific community),
and headed for the exit. Notwithstanding the seriousness of
the furniture museum ✦ 221

their situation and the fact that the decisive moment in their
search for the treasure had come, Bender, who was walking
behind the pair, chortled playfully. It made him laugh to see
the marshal of the Comanches play the cavalier.
Liza was very shy around the concessionaires. While they were
able to determine at first glance that a room did not contain the
necessary furniture, and were involuntarily drawn to the next,
Liza dawdled in every section. She read all the printed critical
overviews of the furniture out loud, made clever remarks about
other visitors, and stood in front of each exhibit for a long time.
Involuntarily, and without even noticing she was doing it, she
imagined how the furniture she saw would fit her room and her
needs. She didn’t like the Gothic bed at all. The bed was too
grand. Even if Kolya had somehow been able to get a twenty-
square-foot room, the medieval couch still wouldn’t have fit in
it. However, Liza walked around the bed for a long time, mea-
suring its actual area with her footsteps. She was having a really
good time. She didn’t notice the sour faces of her companions,
whose chivalrous natures didn’t allow them to race at breakneck
speed to the room of master craftsman Gambs.
“We can wait,” Ostap whispered. “The furniture isn’t going
anywhere. But don’t squeeze the girl, marshal. I’m jealous.”
Vorobyaninov gave a self-satisfied smirk.
The halls dragged slowly on. There was no end to them. Fur-
niture from the Alexandrine epoch was represented in large
suites. Liza went into raptures over its relatively modest size.
“Look, look!” she shouted trustingly, clasping Vorobyaninov’s
sleeve. “See that chest of drawers? It would go so marvelously
in our room. Don’t you think?”
“It’s wonderful furniture!” Ostap said furiously. “It’s just
decadent.”
The furniture didn’t make the due impression on Ippolit
Matveevich. Nevertheless, it was gorgeous. The perfection of
its form staggered the eye.
222 ✦ in moscow
Liza said dreamily, “Pushkin might’ve sat on this chair.”
Ostap asked, “Who, did you say? Pushkin? Let me find out.”
Ostap knelt and looked under the seat. “O. Henry sat on it
during his stay in the American prison Sing Sing. Are you satis-
fied? And now we can safely move on to the next room.”
Herds of couches, writing desks, and wardrobes of all styles,
all times, and all epochs had been examined by the conces-
sionaires, but the halls, large and small, continued stretching
out before them.
“I’ve already been here,” Liza said as she entered a red par-
lor. “I don’t think it’s worth stopping in here.”
She was amazed when her companions, so indifferent to
furniture, froze at the entrance, like guards.
“Why’ve you stopped? Let’s go. I’m tired now.”
“Wait just one minute,” said Ippolit Matveevich, freeing
his arm.
The large room was overloaded with furniture. Gambs
chairs were arranged along walls and around tables. The sofa
in the corner was also surrounded by chairs. Their bent little
legs and comfortable backs were breathtakingly familiar to Ip-
polit Matveevich. Ostap looked at him questioningly. Ippolit
Matveevich turned red.
“You’re tired, madam,” he said to Liza. “Why don’t you sit
down here and rest, and he and I will walk around a little. It
looks like this is an interesting hall.”
They sat Liza down.
The concessionaires walked over to a window.
“Is it them?” asked Ostap.
“It looks like them. I need to examine them more closely.”
“Are all the chairs here?”
“Let me count them. Wait a minute, wait a minute . . .” Vo-
robyaninov started moving his eyes from one chair to the next.
“But just a minute—twenty chairs,” he said finally, “That can’t
be. There should only be ten of them, after all.”

“Give it another look. Maybe those aren’t the right chairs.”
They began walking up and down between the chairs.
“Well?” Ostap said, hurrying him.
“The backs don’t look the same as mine.”
“So it’s not them?”
“It’s not them.”
“I should’ve never taken up with you, I guess.”
Ippolit Matveevich was utterly crushed.
“It’s all right,” Ostap said. “The meeting is still in session. A
chair’s not a needle, we can find it. Give me those orders. I’ll
have to initiate unpleasant contact with the museum administra-
tion. Sit down next to the girl and stay there. I’ll be right back.”
“Why are you so sad?” Liza said. “Are you tired?”
Ippolit Matveevich tried to get out of it by remaining silent.
“Does your head hurt?”
“Yes . . . a little. Troubles, you see. The absence of feminine
tenderness is having an effect on my day-to-day existence.”
At first Liza was surprised, but then, after giving her shaven-
headed interlocutor a good look, she really did feel sorry for
him. Vorobyaninov’s eyes were full of suffering. His pince-nez
did not hide the sharply defined bags under his eyes. The
abrupt transition from the peaceful existence of registrar in
a provincial town’s Office of Vital Statistics to the uncomfort-
able, troublesome life of a diamond-hunter and adventurer
came at a price. Ippolit Matveevich had grown quite thin, and
his liver had started acting up. Under Bender’s stern care Ip-
polit Matveevich was losing his own identity and rapidly dis-
solving into the powerful intellect of the Turkish subject’s son.
Now, when he was left for a minute on his own with the charm-
ing citizen Kalachova, he wanted to tell her about all his wor-
ries and troubles, but he didn’t dare.
“Yes,” he said, gazing tenderly at his interlocutor, “such is
life. But how are you doing, Elizaveta . . .”
“Petrovna. What’s your name?”
224 ✦ in moscow
They exchanged first names and patronymics.
“A fairy tale of dear love,” thought Ippolit Matveevich, look-
ing intently at Liza’s simple face. So passionately, so inexorably,
did the old marshal desire that feminine tenderness whose ab-
sence was having such a malignant effect on his day-to-day exis-
tence that he suddenly took Liza’s little paw in his own wrinkled
hands and began speaking ardently of Paris. He wanted to be
rich, extravagant, and irresistible. He wanted to be alluring, to
drink Roederer champagne in a private room to the sound of
orchestras with a pretty little thing from the all-girl orchestra.
What could he have to talk about with this young girl, who,
without a doubt, knew nothing about either Roederer or all-girl
orchestras, and who, by her very nature, could not fathom all
the charms of that genre. But he did so want to be alluring! So
Ippolit Matveevich beguiled Liza with stories of Paris.
“Are you a scientist?” Liza asked.
“Yes. More or less,” answered Ippolit Matveevich, sensing
that ever since he’d met Bender, he’d acquired an insolence
uncharacteristic of him these past few years.
“Forgive my boldness, but how old are you?”
“That has nothing to do with the science I happen to rep-
resent at this time.”
Liza was subdued by this quick, to-the-point answer.
“But even so . . . ? Thirty? Forty? Fifty?”
“Almost. Thirty-eight.”
“Oh-ho! You look significantly younger.”
Ippolit Matveevich was happy.
“When will you give me the happiness of seeing you again?”
Ippolit Matveevich asked nasally.
Liza became very embarrassed. She shifted around in her
chair and grew sad. “Wherever has Comrade Bender got off
to?” she said, in a thin voice.
“So when?” Vorobyaninov asked impatiently. “When and
where will we see each other?”

“Well, I don’t know. Whenever you want.”
“Is today possible?”
“Today?”
“I beg you.”
“Well, all right. Let’s meet today, then. Come over to our
place.”
“No, let’s meet outside. The weather is so splendid these
days. Do you know the poem? ‘It’s May, the naughty child, May
the magician, who waves his fresh’ning fan . . .’ ”
“Is that poem by Zharov?”
“Erm . . . I think so. So, today? But where?”
“How funny you are! Wherever you want. What about by
the fireproof safe? Remember? When it gets dark . . .”
Ippolit Matveevich had barely managed to kiss Liza’s hand,
which he did extremely ceremoniously, when Ostap returned.
Ostap was very businesslike.
“Forgive me, mademoiselle, but my friend and I can’t see
you home,” he said quickly. “A small but very important mat-
ter has come up. We need to depart for a certain place imme-
diately.”
Ippolit Matveevich caught his breath.
“Good-bye, Elizaveta Petrovna,” he said hastily. “Forgive me,
forgive me, forgive me, but we are in a terrible hurry.”
Then the companions ran away, leaving the amazed Liza in
a room lavishly furnished with Gambs furniture.
“If it wasn’t for me the whole thing would’ve gone to hell,”
Ostap said as they went down the stairs. “Idolize me. Go on,
idolize me, don’t be afraid, your head won’t fall off! Listen!
Your furniture isn’t museum quality. It belongs in the barracks
of a disciplinary battalion, not in a museum. Are you satisfied
with this turn of events?”
“What kind of mockery is this!” exclaimed Vorobyaninov,
who had been on the verge of freeing himself from the yoke
of the Turkish subject’s son’s powerful intellect.
226 ✦ in moscow
“Quiet,” Ostap said coldly. “You have no idea what’s going
on. If we don’t grab our furniture now, it’s all over. We’ll never
see it again. I just had a painful conversation in the office with
the director of this historic trash heap.”
“So what happened?” Ippolit Matveevich shouted. “What
did the director tell you?”
“He told me everything I needed to know. Don’t worry. ‘Tell
me,’ I asked him, ‘how do you explain the fact that the furni-
ture that was requisitioned to you from Stargorod isn’t pres-
ent in public view?’ I asked him courteously, of course, in a
friendly way. ‘What furniture is that?’ he asks. ‘There aren’t
any facts of that sort at hand in my museum.’ I shoved the
orders right in his face. Off he goes digging in his books. He
looks for half an hour and finally comes back. So what do you
think? Where is that furniture?”
“Lost?” Vorobyaninov squeaked.
“Just imagine that: it’s not. Just imagine that it stayed safe
and sound in a pigsty like this. Like I already told you, it’s not
museum quality. They piled it in a storeroom, and just yester-
day, take note of this, yesterday, after seven years (it sat in a
storeroom for seven years!), it was sent off to be sold at auc-
tion. The Central Sciences Administration auction. And if no-
body bought it yesterday or this morning, then it’s ours! Are
you satisfied?”
“Quick!” Ippolit Matveevich shouted.
“Cabbie!” Ostap cried.
They sat down without bargaining.
“Idolize me, idolize me! Don’t be afraid, Hofmarschall! The
wine, women, and cards are guaranteed. We’ll settle accounts
for the sky-blue vest then, too.”
In the very first auction room, they saw what they’d sought
for so long. All ten of Ippolit Matveevich’s chairs stood along
the wall on their bent little legs. The upholstery hadn’t even
darkened with age, or been burned up or ruined. The chairs

were as fresh and clean as if they’d just left the care of the
thrifty Claudia Ivanovna.
“Is it them?” Ostap asked.
“Oh Lord, oh my Lord,” Ippolit Matveevich repeated over
and over. “It’s them, it’s them. This time there’s no doubt
whatsoever.”
“We’ll check, just in case,” Ostap said, trying to remain
calm.
He walked over to the salesclerk. “Tell me, it looks like those
are the chairs from the furniture museum?”
“Those? Sure are.”
“And they’re for sale?”
“Yes.”
“For how much?”
“There’s no price yet. They’re being sold at auction.”
“Ah. Today?”
“No. Sales are finished for the day. Tomorrow starting at
five.”
“And they’re not for sale right now?”
“No. Tomorrow starting at five.”
It was impossible to just walk away from the chairs so fast.
“Allow us to inspect them,” Ippolit Matveevich babbled.
“May we?”
The concessionaires spent a long time examining the chairs
and sitting down on them. They also looked at other things,
for appearance’s sake. Vorobyaninov breathed heavily through
his nose and kept jabbing Ostap with his elbow.
“Idolize me!” Ostap whispered. “Idolize me, marshal.”
Ippolit Matveevich was willing not only to idolize Ostap, but
to kiss the soles of his raspberry shoes.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.”
He felt like singing.
228 ✦ in moscow
20
European-Style Voting
while the friends were leading a cultured, educated way of

life visiting museums and making advances on young ladies,
the twice-widowed Gritsatsueva, a fat, weak woman, was con-
ferring and conspiring with the neighbor ladies on Plekhanov
Street in Stargorod. The whole crowd of them was examining
the note Bender had left, even holding it up to the light to
inspect it. But there were no watermarks, and even if there
had been, the magnificent Ostap’s chicken-scratches wouldn’t
have made any more sense.
Three days went by. The horizon remained clear. Neither
Bender, nor the tea strainer, nor the hollow gold bracelet, nor
the chair came back. All these animate and inanimate objects
had disappeared most mysteriously.
Then the widow took radical measures. She went to the of-
fice of Stargorod Pravda, where they quickly threw together an
announcement for her:
I BEG
Those, Who Know His Whereabouts.
Comrade Bender, 25–30 years of age, left home. Dressed
in green suit, yellow shoes, and blue vest. Brown hair.
Informed persons request. to report for sizeab. rewrd.
15 Plekhanov St., Gritsatsueva.
“Is that your son?” the people in the office inquired sympa-
thetically.
✦ 229 ✦
“He’s my husband!” the sufferer replied, covering her face
with a hanky.
“Oh, your husband!”
“Legally married . . . What?”
“Nothing, nothing. But you should’ve gone to the police.”
The widow got scared. She was afraid of the police. She with-
drew, accompanied by strange looks.
The call sounded three times in the pages of Stargorod
Pravda. But the mighty country was silent. No one could be
found who knew the whereabouts of the brown-haired man in
yellow shoes. No one showed up for the sizeable reward. The
neighbor ladies gossiped.
The widow’s brow clouded more and more with each pass-
ing day. It was strange: her husband had flashed by like a
rocket, taking a good chair and her mother’s tea strainer away
into the dark sky with him, but the widow loved him still. Who
can understand the heart of a woman, especially a widow?
People in Stargorod had already gotten used to the streetcar
and boarded it fearlessly. Conductors shouted “Ain’t no more
room” and everything ran along as though the town streetcar
had been established back in the reign of Vladimir the Fair
Sun. Handicapped people of all categories, women with chil-
dren, and Viktor Mikhailovich Polesov boarded the streetcar
from the front entrance. To the shout “Get your tickets here”
Polesov replied grandly, “Yearly,” and remained standing up
by the driver. He did not have a yearlong pass, and there was
no way he could have gotten one.
Vorobyaninov and the smooth operator’s stay in town had
left strong traces.
The conspirators carefully preserved the secret to which
they’d been entrusted. Even Viktor Mikhailovich was silent,
although he felt an overwhelming urge to reveal the exciting
secrets to the first person he came across. However, Polesov
230 ✦ in moscow
remembered Ostap’s mighty shoulders and stood fast. He was
only able to vent his feelings in conversation with the fortune-
teller.
“What do you think, Elena Stanislavovna?” he was saying.
“How do you explain our leaders’ absence?”
Elena Stanislavovna also found this extremely interesting,
but she didn’t have any information on the subject.
“Don’t you think they’re fulfilling a special assignment right
now?” the indefatigable repairman continued.
The fortune-teller was convinced he was right. Clearly, the
parrot in the red drawers also held this opinion. It looked at
Polesov with its round, wise eye, as if to say, “Give me some sun-
flower seeds, and I’ll tell you everything this minute. Viktor,
you’ll be governor. All repairmen will be subordinated to you.
But the dvornik of building No. 5 will never be anything else
but a dvornik and a boor who’s too big for his britches.”
“Don’t you think we need to continue our work, Elena Stan-
islavovna? No matter how you look at it, we can’t just sit here
doing nothing.”
The fortune-teller agreed and said, “After all, Ippolit Ma-
tveevich is a hero!”
“He is, Elena Stanislavovna! That’s clear. And the young
military officer with him? The kind of fellow who gets things
done! You can do what you want, Elena Stanislavovna, but
things can’t go on this way. They absolutely cannot.”
So Polesov began to act. He made regular visits to all the mem-
bers of the secret society The Sword and the Plowshare, taking
special care to pester citizen Kislyarsky, the cautious owner of
the Odessa Bublik Co-op “Moscow Bread Rings.” Citizen Kislyar-
sky’s visage went dark whenever he saw Polesov. And talk of the
need to act drove the fearful bublik-seller to distraction.
Toward the end of the week everyone gathered in Elena
Stanislavovna’s room with the parrot. Polesov was on fire.
european-style voting ✦ 231

“Now, Viktor, don’t rattle on so,” the reasonable Dyadyev said.
“What are you doing, running around the city for days on end?”
“We need to act!” Polesov shouted.
“We certainly do need to act, but we certainly do not need to
shout. Gentlemen, here’s how I see all this. If Ippolit Matvee-
vich says it’s happening, then it’s a sure thing. And we have to
assume that we don’t have much longer to wait. We don’t need
to know exactly how it’s all going to happen; that’s what the
military people are for. We’re the civil part, the representatives
of the urban intelligentsia and merchants. What’s important
for us? To be ready. Do we have anything ready? Do we have
a center? No. Who is going to be head of town? Nobody. And
that, gentlemen, is the most important thing. It looks like the
English aren’t going to stand on ceremony with the Bolsheviks
any longer, gentlemen. That’s our first sign. Everything’s go-
ing to change, gentlemen, and fast. I assure you of it.”
“Well, we haven’t had any doubts about that,” said Charush-
nikov, puffing up importantly.
“That’s wonderful that you had no doubts. What do you
think, Mister Kislyarsky? And you, young men?”
Everything about the young men’s appearance expressed
their confidence in a speedy change. Kislyarsky had gathered
from the head of Quickpack’s speech that he wouldn’t have to
participate directly in armed conflict, so he happily agreed.
“But what are we supposed to do right now?” Viktor Mi-
khailovich asked impatiently.
“Just a minute,” said Dyadyev. “Take Mister Vorobyaninov’s
companion as an example. What deftness! What caution! Did
you notice how quickly he switched the whole affair to help-
ing homeless children? We’re just helping children. And so,
gentlemen, we shall nominate our candidates!”
“We nominate Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov for marshal
of the nobility!” the young men exclaimed.
Charushnikov coughed condescendingly.
232 ✦ in moscow
“Not likely! He won’t be anything lower than minister. Or
you could even shoot a little higher, to dictator!”
“Come now, gentlemen, come now,” said Dyadyev. “The
marshal is the last thing on our plate! It’s the governor we
need to be thinking about, not the marshal. I think . . .”
“Mister Dyadyev!” Polesov shouted ecstatically. “Who else
could take the reins of the entire province!”
“I am flattered by the trust . . .” Dyadyev began. But just
then Charushnikov, who had gone beet-red, spoke out.
“Gentlemen, this question should be thoroughly aired,” he
said, his voice strained.
Everyone tried not to look at Dyadyev.
The owner of Quickpack proudly examined his boots, which
had wood shavings stuck to them. “I have no objections,” he
said. “Let’s put it to a vote. Shall the ballots be open or secret?”
“We don’t need Soviet-style voting,” Charushnikov said, of-
fended. “Let’s vote the honest way, the European way: secret
ballots.”
They voted on pieces of paper. Four notes were entered
for Dyadyev. Two for Charushnikov. Someone abstained. It
was clear from the look on Kislyarsky’s face that it was he. He
didn’t want to spoil his relationship with the future governor,
whoever it might be.
A painful silence reigned after the trembling Polesov pro-
claimed the results of the honest European ballot. Everyone
tried not to look at Charushnikov. The unlucky gubernato-
rial candidate sat there as though he’d been dragged through
the mud.
Elena Stanislavovna felt very sorry for him. She had voted
for him.
Charushnikov, who was well versed in electoral matters, had
cast the other vote for himself. The kind Elena Stanislavovna
said quickly, “But I propose we at least nominate Monsieur
Charushnikov for mayor.”

“But why at least?” the magnanimous governor pronounced.
“Not at least him, but precisely him, and no other. We are all well
aware of Mister Charushnikov’s public service record.”
“Go on, then, go on!” everyone shouted.
“So, the election is confirmed?”
The dragged-through-the-mud Charushnikov livened up
and even protested: “No, no, gentlemen, I ask you to put it
to a vote! It’s probably even more important for the mayor to
be voted in than for the governor. Gentlemen, if you want to
prove your confidence in me, then please, I most earnestly ask
you, put it to a vote!”
Pieces of paper poured into the empty sugar bowl.
“Six votes for and one abstention,” said Polesov.
“Congratulations, Mister Mayor!” said Kislyarsky, from whose
expression one could tell that he had abstained that time too.
“Congratulations!”
Charushnikov blossomed. “The only thing left to do now is
take refreshment, Your Excellency,” he said to Dyadyev. “Pole-
sov, why don’t you run on over to the October. Do you have
money?”
Polesov made a mysterious gesture and ran off. The elec-
tions were temporarily interrupted and continued only after
supper.
They selected Raspopov, the former director of the nobles’
gymnasium who was now an antique book dealer, to be district
warden of schools. Everyone praised him highly. Then Vladya,
who’d had three shots of vodka, suddenly protested: “We can’t
elect him. He gave me a D in logic on my final exam.”
Everyone threw themselves on Vladya. “We can’t be con-
cerned with our own good at such a decisive time!” everyone
shouted at him. “Think about the fatherland.”
They propagandized Vladya so quickly that he himself even
voted for his tormentor. Raspopov was elected by unanimous
decision with one abstention.
234 ✦ in moscow
Kislyarsky was offered the post of chairman of the stock
exchange committee. He didn’t have any objections, but ab-
stained during the voting, just in case.
They went through their friends and relatives, electing
the chief of police, the director of the assay office, and ex-
cise, tax, and industrial inspectors; they filled the vacancies of
district attorney, court clerk, and the chairman and members
of the court; they selected chairmen for the zemstvo council,
the merchants’ council, the board of guardians for minors,
and, finally, the petit bourgeois council. Elena Stanislavovna
was elected warden of the societies A Drop of Milk and The
White Flower. Vladya and Nikesha, due to their youth, were
appointed general functionaries to the governor.
“If you please!” Charushnikov exclaimed suddenly. “The
governor gets two whole functionaries! What about me?”
“The mayor’s staff doesn’t include any general function-
aries,” the governor said gently.
“Well, then, a secretary.”
Dyadyev agreed. Elena Stanislavovna perked up.
“Is there any chance . . .” she said shyly. “I have a young man
in mind, he’s a very nice, well-brought-up boy. Madame Cher-
kessova’s son . . . He’s very, very nice, very capable. He’s out of
work right now. He’s waiting to hear from the work placement
office. He even has a number. They promised to set him up in
a labor union any day now . . . Is there any way you could take
him on? His mother would be so grateful.”
“It might be possible,” Charushnikov said graciously. “What
do you think of that, gentlemen? All right . . . Well, on the
whole, I think, it’ll work.”
“Well then,” Dyadyev remarked. “It looks like that’s more or
less it? That’s pretty much everything?”
“What about me?” a thin, offended voice called out.
Everyone turned around. Polesov, who was good and truly
upset, stood in the corner next to the parrot. Tears were bub-

bling on Viktor Mikhailovich’s black cheeks. Everyone felt
deeply ashamed. The visitors suddenly remembered that they
were drinking Polesov’s vodka and that he was even one of the
main organizers of the Stargorod branch of The Sword and
the Plowshare.
Elena Stanislavovna clutched at her temples and cried out,
frightened.
“Viktor Mikhailovich!” everyone moaned. “Our dear fellow!
Dear man! You should be ashamed of yourself! Why did you
stand over there in the corner? Come over here right now!”
Polesov came closer. He was suffering. He hadn’t expected
such callousness from his Sword and Plowshare comrades.
Elena Stanislavovna couldn’t stand it.
“Gentlemen!” she said. “This is horrible! How could you
forget Viktor Mikhailovich, so dear to us all?”
She stood and kissed the aristocrat repairman on his smoke-
cured forehead.
“Gentlemen, couldn’t Viktor Mikhailovich be a worthy dis-
trict warden of schools or police chief too?”
“Well, Viktor Mikhailovich?” the governor asked. “Want to
be warden?”
“But of course, he’ll be a marvelous, humane warden!” the
mayor seconded, swallowing a mushroom and frowning.
“But Ra-a-aspopov?” Viktor Mikhailovich drawled touchily.
“Didn’t you already appoint Raspopov?”
“Yes, that’s true, where do we put Raspopov?”
“Maybe make him fire chief?”
“Fire chief!” Viktor Mikhailovich said, agitated.
Suddenly countless fire engines, the glare of flames, and
the sound of horns and drumrolls appeared before him. Axes
flashed, torches waved, the earth yawned, and raven-black
dragons carried him to the burning city theater.
“Fire chief? I want to be fire chief!”
236 ✦ in moscow
“And that’s just perfect! Congratulations. From now on
you’re fire chief.”
“May the voluntary fire brigade flourish!” the chairman of
the stock exchange committee said ironically.
Everyone fell upon Kislyarsky:
“You were always a leftist! We know you!”
“Gentlemen, what kind of leftist could I be?”
“We know, we know!”
“Leftist!”
“All Jews are leftists!”
“But I swear to God, gentlemen, I don’t understand these
jokes.”
“Leftist, leftist! Don’t even try to hide it!”
“When he sleeps at night he dreams about Milyukov!”
“Cadet! Cadet!”
“The Cadets sold Finland,” Charushnikov mumbled sud-
denly. “They took money from the Japanese! They stirred up
those little Armenians.”
Kislyarsky couldn’t stand the torrent of unfounded accusa-
tions. Pale, his eyes flashing, the chairman of the stock exchange
committee grasped the back of his chair and said in a ringing
voice, “I have always been an Octobrist and shall remain one.”
They began determining who sympathized with which party.
“Democracy above all, gentlemen,” Charushnikov said. “Our
town government must be democratic. But without any of
those Cadet boys. They did a nice little number on us in ’17!”
“I hope that there are no so-called Social Democrats among
us?” the governor inquired maliciously.
There was no one more left than the Octobrists, repre-
sented at the meeting by Kislyarsky. Charushnikov announced
that he was “center.” The fire chief was on the extreme right-
hand flank. He was so right that he didn’t even know which
party he belonged to.

They started talking about the war.
“It’ll be any day now,” Dyadyev said.
“The war will come, that it will.”
“I advise you to stock up on certain items before it’s too
late.”
“Do you think so?” Kislyarsky said, anxious.
“And what did you think? Do you think you’ll be able to get
anything during the war? There’s already no flour in the mar-
ket! Silver coins have vanished, there’ll be all kinds of differ-
ent paper money, and postage stamps that are to be circulated
as monetary equivalents, and all that kind of thing.”
“War is a done deal.”
“You can do what you want, but I’m putting everything I can
spare into buying the essentials,” Dyadyev said.
“What about your textile business?”
“Textiles can take care of themselves, but flour and sugar
have to be given their due. I advise you to do the same. I advise
you most urgently.”
Polesov grinned.
“But how will the Bolsheviks fight, after all? With what?
What are they going to fight with? Old rifles? What about the
air force? A prominent Communist was telling me that they
have—well, what do you think, how many airplanes do they
have?”
“Around two hundred!”
“Two hundred? Not two hundred, but thirty-two! And
France has eighty thousand military aircraft.”
“Ye-e-es . . . they’ve brought the Bolsheviks to the end of
their rope . . .”
They all went home well after midnight.
The governor walked the mayor home. Both of them walked
in an exaggeratedly straight line.
“Governor!” Charushnikov was saying. “What kind of gover-
nor can you be when you aren’t a general?”
238 ✦ in moscow
“I’ll be a civil service general. Jealous? I can put you in
the jail tower whenever I want. You’ll be doing a lot of time
under me!”
“You can’t put me in jail. I was elected. I’m invested with
confidence.”
“They’ll exchange two nonelected fellows for one elected
one.”
“I will ask you not to joke around with me!” Charushnikov
suddenly shouted, loud enough for the entire street to hear.
“Why are you shouting, you dummy?” the governor asked.
“Do you want to spend the night at the police station?”
“I can’t spend the night at the police station,” the mayor
replied. “I’m a government office worker . . .”
A star shone. The night was magical. The argument be-
tween the governor and the mayor on Vtoraya Sovetskaya Street
continued.

21
From Seville to Granada
but wait just a minute—where is Father Fyodor? Where is

the trim-shaven priest of the Frol and Lavr Church? It seems
he’d been about to go see citizen Bruns in building No. 34
on Vinogradnaya Street? Where is this treasure-seeker in an
angel’s image, this sworn enemy of Ippolit Matveevich Voro-
byaninov (who is currently keeping watch in a dark hallway by
a fireproof safe)?
Father Fyodor has disappeared. The devil’s thrown him for
a loop. People say they saw him at Popasnaya Station on the
Donetsk lines. He was running down the platform with his tea-
kettle of hot water . . .
Father Fyodor’s got a hunger. He’s started to want riches.
He’s been carried off all over Russia looking for Popova’s, the
general’s widow’s, set of chairs (in which, we have to admit,
there’s not a damn thing).
The holy father’s going all over Russia. And all he does is
write his wife letters.
The letter of Father Fyodor,

written by him at the Kharkov train station,
to his wife in the provincial town of N.
My dear little dove, Katerina Alexandrovna!

I am entirely guilty before you. I left you all alone, poor
thing, at a time like this.
✦ 241 ✦
I have to tell you everything. You’ll understand me and, I
dare hope, agree.
Of course I haven’t gone off to any Living Churchists and
never had the slightest intention of doing so, God save me.
Now read carefully. Soon we’ll start to live differently. You
remember, I used to tell you about the candle factory. We’ll
have it, and we may well have a certain something else, too.
And you won’t have to cook up dinners by yourself and feed
boarders, to boot. We’ll go to Samara and hire a servant.
Now there’s a deal I’m looking at here, but you keep it ab-
solutely secret, don’t tell anybody, not even Marya Ivanovna.
I’m looking for treasure. Remember the departed Claudia
Ivanovna Petukhova, Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law? Before
she died, Claudia Ivanovna revealed to me that her diamonds
were hidden in her house in Stargorod, in one of the parlor
chairs (there’s only twelve of them). Now, Katenka, don’t you
go thinking that I’m some kind of thief or something. She
bequeathed those diamonds to me and ordered me to keep
them safe from Ippolit Matveevich, her longtime tormentor.
That’s why I left you so unexpectedly, poor thing.
Just don’t hold anything against me.
I arrived in Stargorod and, imagine, that old woman-chaser
also turned up there. He found out somehow. Obviously, he
tortured the old woman before her death. He’s a terrible man!
And he’s got some criminal offender going around with him,
he hired himself a bandit. They threw themselves on me, plain
and simple, they wanted to get rid of me. But I’m not such an
easy mark, you can’t trifle with me. I didn’t give in.
At first I went down the wrong path. I only found one chair
in Vorobyaninov’s house (now there’s a charitable institution
there), and I was carrying my furniture back to my room at
the Sorbonne when suddenly a fellow comes around the cor-
ner, throws himself at me like unto a lion, and grabs the chair.
242 ✦ in moscow
It almost came down to a fight. Wanted to put me to shame.
But then I got a good look, and I saw it was Vorobyaninov. He’d
shaved his mustache off, if you can imagine that, and shorn
his head bare, the crook, he’ll disgrace himself in his old age.
We broke the chair, there was nothing there. It was only
later that I understood I’d stumbled onto the wrong path. But
at the time I was very upset.
I was insulted, and I told that libertine the whole truth,
right to his face.
What a disgrace, I said, in your old age. What savagery has
taken hold in Russia these days, I said, when a marshal of the
nobility throws himself at a servant of the church, like unto a
lion, and upbraids him for having no party affiliation. You are
a low person, I said, Claudia Ivanovna’s tormentor, someone
who chases after other people’s belongings, that belong to the
state now, not to you.
He was ashamed, and he went away from me, probably to a
bawdy house.
But I went back to my room at the Sorbonne and started
thinking about my future plans. And I thought of something
that never would’ve entered that shaven-headed fool’s mind: I
decided to find the person who distributed the requisitioned
furniture. Imagine that, Katenka, I didn’t take classes in the
faculty of law for nothing, they came in handy! So I found that
person. I found him the very next day. Varfolomeyich, a very
nice, upstanding old man. He lives with his old grandmother
and earns his daily bread by the sweat of his brow. He gave me
all the papers. It’s true that I did have to reward him for this
service. I’m left without any money (more about that later). It
turned out that all twelve parlor chairs from Vorobyaninov’s
house went to Engineer Bruns in building No. 34 on Vino-
gradnaya Street. You notice that all the chairs went to one per-
son, which I didn’t expect at all (I was afraid the chairs would
from seville to granada ✦ 243

end up in different places). I was very glad to hear that. Then,
just by chance, I happened to run into the vile Vorobyaninov
again in the Sorbonne. I let him have it and didn’t spare his
friend, the bandit, either. I was sorely afraid they’d figure out
my secret, and I hid in the hotel until they checked out.
It turns out that in 1923, Bruns moved from Stargorod to
Kharkov, where he was transferred for work. I found out from
the dvornik that he took all his furniture with him and that he
takes very good care of it. People say he’s a sedate man.
I’m sitting at the train station in Kharkov now and this
is what I’m writing you for: First, I love you very much and
remember you fondly, and secondly, Bruns isn’t here any-
more. But don’t you get upset. Bruns works in Rostov now,
in Newrusscement, as I found out. I have just enough money
for the trip. I’m leaving in an hour on the mixed freight and
passenger train. And so you, my kind one, please go over to
your brother’s and get fifty rubles from him (he owes me and
promised to pay it back) and send it poste restante to Fyodor
Ioannovich Vostrikov at the main post office in Rostov. Send
the transfer by mail to save money. It’ll be thirty kopeks.
What’s going on in town? What’s new?
Did Kondratievna come to see you? Tell Father Kirill that
I’ll be back soon, that I said I went to see my dying aunt in
Voronezh. Keep your spending down. Is Yevstigneev still board-
ing? Say hello to him from me. Say I went to my aunt’s.
How’s the weather? Here in Kharkov it’s already summer.
It’s a busy town, the center of the Ukrainian Republic. After
the provinces it feels like I’m abroad.
Things to do:
1) send my summer cassock to the cleaners—better to
spend 3 r. on cleaning than to waste money on a new one,
2) stay healthy, 3) when you write Gulenka next, mention
offhand that I went to my aunt’s in Voronezh.
Say hello to everyone from me. Say I’ll be back soon.
244 ✦ in moscow
I kiss you tenderly, embrace you, and bless you.
Your husband, Fedya
Nota bene: Where is that Vorobyaninov prowling now?
Love dries people up. Bulls moo with passion. Roosters can’t
sit still. Marshals of the nobility lose their appetite.
Ippolit Matveevich abandoned Ostap and the student Iva-
nopulo to their tavern, made his way back to the little pink
house, and took up his position at the fireproof safe. He heard
the sound of trains leaving for Castile and the splashing of
disembarking steamships.
The golden lands of Alpujarra
Grow dim in the night so clear.
His heart was knocking about like a pendulum. He heard a

ticking sound.
Heed the call of my guitar!
Come out, come out, my dear.
Anxiety wafted down the hallway. Nothing could warm the

chill of the fireproof safe.
From Seville to Granada’s shade,
Shining in the night like jewels,
Phonographs moaned in the pencil-cases. The bees’ buzz of

primus stoves resounded.
Resounds the tune of serenades,
And the clash of swords in duels.
In a word, Ippolit Matveevich was head over heels in love with

Liza Kalachova.

Many people walked down the hallway past Ippolit Matvee-
vich, but they smelled of tobacco, or vodka, or a druggist’s,
or day-old cabbage soup. In the gloom of the hallway people
were only distinguishable from each other by smell, or by the
weight of their tread. Liza was not walking past. Ippolit Matvee-
vich was sure of that. She didn’t smoke, drink, or wear boots
with slices of iron nailed to the soles. It was impossible for her
to smell of iodine or headcheese. She could produce only the
tenderest smell of rice porridge, or of the tastily cooked hay
that Madame Nordman-Severova fed the famous artist Ilya Re-
pin for so long.
But then he heard light, uncertain steps. Someone was walk-
ing down the hallway, bumping into its elastic walls and mum-
bling sweetly.
“Is that you, Elizaveta Petrovna?” Ippolit Matveevich asked
in a light, marshmallowy voice.
A bass voice replied, “Could you please tell me where the
Pfefferkorns live? You can’t see a damn thing in the dark
here.”
Ippolit Matveevich, frightened, remained silent. The
Pfefferkorn-seeker, baffled, waited for an answer; but since he
didn’t receive one, he felt his way on.
Liza didn’t come until almost nine. They went out into the
street under a green-and-caramel evening sky.
“Where should we walk?” Liza asked.
Ippolit Matveevich looked at her glowing white face. But
instead of saying directly, “I’m here, Inesilda, standing under-
neath your window,” he began to talk at boring length about
how he hadn’t been in Moscow in a long time and how Paris
was a sight better than the City of White Stone, which, no mat-
ter how you slice it, was a big village planned without any sys-
tem at all.
“I remember a different Moscow, Elizaveta Petrovna. You
can tell how stingy everything is now. But back in our day, we
246 ✦ in moscow
didn’t give a thought to money. ‘You only live once in life . . .’
That’s from a song.”
Black and reddish-brown foxtails stretched out past the Mos-
cow River Bridge. The Mosgas electric stations smoked like a
squadron. Streetcars rolled across bridges. Boats went down
the river. An accordion told a sad tale.
Liza, her arm in Ippolit Matveevich’s, told him about all
her troubles: the fight with her husband, and her difficult life
among eavesdropping neighbors (former chemists), and the
monotony of vegetarian cuisine.
Ippolit Matveevich listened and pondered. Demons awoke
in him. An excellent supper appeared before him. He con-
cluded that girls like this needed to be stunned with some-
thing big.
“Let’s go to the theater,” Ippolit Matveevich suggested.
“The movies would be better,” Liza said. “The movies are
cheaper.”
“Oh! What does money have to do with it! Can you even talk
about money on a night like this?”
The demons, now in full swing, sat the pair in a horse-cab
without haggling and took them to the Ars movie theater.
Ippolit Matveevich was magnificent. He got the most expen-
sive tickets. Still, they didn’t even make it to the end of the
show. Liza was used to sitting up close, in the cheap seats, and
couldn’t see very well from the expensive twenty-fourth row.
Half the sum the concessionaires had netted from the Star-
gorod conspirators was in Ippolit Matveevich’s pocket. That
was a lot of money for Vorobyaninov, who had forgotten what
luxury felt like. Now, excited by the prospect of easy love, he
was getting ready to dazzle Liza with his expansive ways. He
considered himself magnificently prepared for this. With
pride he remembered how easily he’d once conquered the
heart of the lovely Elena Bour. He had an inborn talent for
wasting money easily and pompously. In Stargorod he’d been

famous for his manners and ability to converse with any lady.
He thought it funny to be wasting all his old-regime luster on
subduing a little Soviet girl who hadn’t seen or done much of
anything yet.
After a little persuasion, Ippolit Matveevich took Liza to
the Prague, the model cafeteria of the Moscow Union of Con-
sumer Groups, or “the best place in Moscow,” as Bender had
told him.
The Prague struck Liza with its abundance of light, mirrors,
and flowerpots. This was understandable for Liza, since she
had never visited large model-demonstration restaurants be-
fore. But surprisingly, Ippolit Matveevich was also struck by the
mirrored hall. He’d gotten behind the times and forgotten
the ways of restaurants. Now he was definitely ashamed of his
baronial boots with their square tips, his prewar tailor-made
trousers, and his lunar vest sprinkled with silver stars.
Both grew embarrassed and froze, right in front of the en-
tire colorful crowd.
“Let’s go over there, in the corner,” Vorobyaninov sug-
gested, even though there were free tables right next to the
stage, where the orchestra was sawing out the standard pot-
pourri from Die Bajadere.
Liza quickly assented, sensing that everyone was looking
at them. The embarrassed Vorobyaninov, lion of society and
tamer of women, followed her. The lion of society’s worn trou-
sers hung down from his gaunt bottom like an empty bag. The
tamer of women hunched over and began wiping his pince-
nez to overcome his confusion.
No one came over to their table. Ippolit Matveevich hadn’t
expected this. So instead of conversing gallantly with his lady,
he kept silent, stewed, rapped the ashtray on the table timidly,
and cleared his throat repeatedly. Liza looked around curi-
ously. The silence became unnatural. But Ippolit Matveevich
248 ✦ in moscow
couldn’t say a word. He had forgotten that it was always he who
did the talking in these situations.
“If you please!” he said, appealing to the workers of the
people’s food industry as they rushed past.
“Just one minute, sir,” the workers of the people’s food in-
dustry shouted as they ran.
Finally the menu was brought over. Ippolit Matveevich, re-
lieved, buried himself in it.
“Well, I never,” he mumbled. “Veal cutlets two twenty-five,
sirloin two twenty-five, vodka five rubles.”
“For five rubles you get a large carafe,” the waiter informed
him, looking around impatiently.
“What’s the matter with me?” Ippolit Matveevich thought,
horrified. “I’m becoming laughable.”
“Here you are,” he said to Liza with tardy politeness. “Won’t
you choose something? What will you have?”
Liza felt guilty. She saw the waiter looking haughtily at
her companion and realized that he was doing something
wrong.
“I’m really not hungry at all,” she said in a quavering voice.
“Or, let me see . . . Tell me, comrade, do you have anything
vegetarian?”
The waiter started stamping his feet like a horse.
“We don’t carry any vegetarian dishes, ma’am. Perhaps a
ham omelet?”
“Then here’s what we’ll have,” said Ippolit Matveevich de-
cisively. “Give us some sausages. You’ll eat sausages, won’t you,
Elizaveta Petrovna?”
“I will.”
“All right, then. Sausages. Those there, for a ruble twenty-
five. And a bottle of vodka.”
“It’ll come in a carafe.”
“Then a large carafe.”

The people’s food industry worker looked at the defenseless
Liza with his transparent eyes. “What will you have to accom-
pany your vodka? Some fresh caviar? Salmon? Rasstegaichiki?”
Deep inside Ippolit Matveevich, the Office of Vital Statistics
registrar continued to rage.
“We don’t want any,” he said, obnoxious to the point of
rudeness. “How much are your pickles? All right then, we’ll
take two.”
The waiter ran off and silence settled over the table once
more. Liza was the first to speak. “I’ve never been here before.
It’s very nice here.”
“Ye-e-es,” Ippolit Matveevich drawled, mentally adding up
the cost of everything he’d ordered. “It’s all right,” he thought,
“I’ll drink some vodka and loosen up. I’d better—it really is a
little awkward.”
But once he’d had some vodka, followed by a bite of pickle,
he didn’t loosen up; he grew even more gloomy. Liza wasn’t
drinking. The strained atmosphere didn’t lift. And then, on
top of that, a man walked up to the table, gazed tenderly at
Liza, and offered to sell him some flowers.
Ippolit Matveevich pretended not to notice the mustached
flower-seller, but the man didn’t go away. It was absolutely im-
possible to pay her compliments while he was standing there.
The musical program rescued them for a little while. A man
in a cutaway coat and patent leather dress shoes came out onto
the stage. “And so, here we are, seeing each other again,” he
said in an unduly familiar way to the crowd. “The next number
of our musical pr-r-rogram will be the world-famous performer
of Russian folk songs, a woman well known in Marya’s Copse,
Varvara Ivanovna Goldevskaya. Varvara Ivanovna! If you would!”
Ippolit Matveevich drank vodka and kept silent. Since Liza
wasn’t drinking and kept trying to get up and go home, he had
to hurry to finish the entire carafe.
250 ✦ in moscow
By the time a satirical cabaret singer in a velvet corduroy
Tolstoyan shirt came out on stage to replace the singer who
was well known in Marya’s Copse and started singing
You walk,
You wander all over,
Alone through the city’s detritus,
As if that’ll help your appendicitis,
You walk,
Ta-ra-ra-ra . . .
Ippolit Matveevich was already good and drunk. He’d even

started clapping in time and singing
You walk,
Ta-ra-ra-ra
along with all the other patrons of the model cafeteria, whom
he’d considered churls and stingy Soviet bandits not half an
hour ago.
He often leaped to his feet and went to the bathroom with-
out excusing himself. The neighboring tables were already
calling him “uncle” and trying to attract him over for a beer.
But he wouldn’t go. He suddenly became prideful and suspi-
cious. Liza stood up from the table decisively.
“I’m leaving. But you stay. I’ll go by myself.”
“No, whatever for? As a nobleman, I cannot allow this!
Signor! The check! Boors . . .”
Ippolit Matveevich looked at the check for a long time,
rocking back and forth in his chair.
“Nine rubles, twenty kopeks?” he mumbled. “Maybe you
want the key to a room full of money, too?”
It ended with Ippolit Matveevich being taken downstairs,
carried tenderly under the arms. Liza couldn’t escape because
the lion of high society had the coat check ticket.

In the first side street they came to, Ippolit Matveevich butted
Liza with his shoulder and started pawing at her. Silently, Liza
tore herself away.
“Listen!” she kept saying. “Listen, now! Listen!”
“Let’s go to a hotel!” Vorobyaninov said, trying to per-
suade her.
Liza got free with some effort and, without aiming, hit
the tamer of women in the nose with her little fist. The gold-
rimmed pince-nez fell off, landed under the baronial boots’
square tips, and crumbled with a crunch.
The evening zephyr wafts the air so clear
Liza, choking in tears, took off running down Serebryany Lane

back home.
It flows with a roar, the Guadalquivir
Ippolit Matveevich, now blind, trotted lightly in the oppo-

site direction, shouting, “Stop thief!” Then he cried for a long
time. Then, still crying, he bought all an old woman’s bread
rings, along with the basket they were in. He went to the dark,
empty Smolensky market and stalked back and forth, throw-
ing bread rings in all directions the way a sower throws seed.
As he did so, he shouted, not especially tunefully,
You walk,
You wander all over,
Ta-ra-ra-ra.
Then Ippolit Matveevich made friends with a daredevil cab-

bie, poured out his heart, and explained incoherently about
the diamonds.
“What a jolly gentleman!” the cabbie exclaimed.
Ippolit Matveevich had indeed grown exceedingly jolly. It
was evident that his jollity was of a somewhat blameworthy na-
ture, because he woke up at about eleven the next morning in
252 ✦ in moscow
the police station. Out of the two hundred rubles with which
he’d so shamefully begun his evening of pleasure and delight,
he only had twelve left.
He felt like he was dying. His spine hurt, his liver was com-
plaining, and his head felt like someone had clamped a lead
pot down on top of it. But worst of all was the fact that he
absolutely could not remember where and how he could have
spent so much money. On the way home he had to stop in at
the optician’s and replace the lenses in his pince-nez.
Ostap, astonished, regarded the worn, wrung-out Ippolit
Matveevich at length, but said nothing. He was cold and ready
for battle.

22
Corporal Punishment
the auction began at five o’clock. Citizens were allowed to

view items starting at four. The friends showed up at three and
spent a whole hour perusing the exhibition of the machine-
building plant right next to the auction.
Ostap said, “Looks like we’ll be able to buy that little steam en-
gine tomorrow, if we should so desire. Too bad there’s no price
on it. It’s always pleasant to have one’s own steam engine.”
Ippolit Matveevich was suffering. The chairs were the only
things that could console him. He didn’t leave them until the
very minute the auctioneer, with his checkered “Centenary”
trousers and his beard falling down on to his Tolstoyan shirt of
Russian-made English twill, ascended to the podium.
The concessionaires took their places on the right-hand
side of the fourth row. Ippolit Matveevich began worrying fu-
riously. He somehow felt that the chairs would be sold right
away. But they were forty-third on the bill, and the first to go
on sale was the usual auction-house stuff and nonsense: in-
dividual pieces from heraldic tea services, a sauce boat, a sil-
ver tea-glass holder, a landscape by the artist Petunin, a lady’s
beaded clutch, a brand-new gas burner for a primus stove, a
little bust of Napoléon, linen brassieres, a tapestry entitled
Hunter Shooting Wild Duck, and other baloney.
They had to be patient and wait. Waiting was very hard. All
the chairs were present; the goal was near, so close he could
reach out and grab it.
✦ 255 ✦
Ostap surveyed the auction-house audience and thought,
“A real big fuss would kick up if they found out what kind of
little treat’s being sold today in the guise of those chairs.”
“A figurine depicting justice!” the auctioneer proclaimed.
“Bronze. No defects. Five rubles. Who’ll give me more? Six
and a half, seven on the far right. Eight rubles in the first row
middle. Going twice, eight rubles, middle. Going three times,
in the first row middle.”
A young lady with a claim ticket immediately rushed over to
the citizen in the first row to take his money.
The auctioneer’s hammer rapped. An ashtray from a palace,
some Baccarat glassware, and a porcelain powder-box were all
sold.
Time dragged torturously on.
“A bronze bust of Alexander the Third. Can be used as a
paperweight. Don’t think it’s good for much else. A small bust
of Alexander the Third, going for the list price.”
People in the crowd laughed.
“Buy it, marshal!” Ostap said. “You like him, right?”
Ippolit Matveevich remained silent and didn’t take his eyes
off the chairs.
“No takers? The bronze bust of Alexander the Third is re-
moved from sale. A figurine depicting justice. Seems like the
mate to the one that was just bought. Vasily, show Justice to the
public. Five rubles. Who’ll give me more?”
Heavy breathing through the nose resounded from the first
row middle. Obviously, the citizen wanted to have a matched
set of Justice.
“Five rubles for the bronze Justice!”
“Six!” the citizen said clearly.
“Six rubles in the middle. Seven. Nine rubles, on the far
right.”
“Nine and a half,” the admirer of Justice said quietly, raising
his hand.
256 ✦ in moscow
“Nine and a half, in the middle. Going twice, nine and a
half, in the middle. Going three times, nine and a half.”
The gavel came down. The young lady flew over to the citi-
zen in the first row.
He paid and sauntered into the other room to receive his
bronze.
“Ten chairs from a palace!” the auctioneer suddenly said.
“Why from a palace?” Ippolit Matveevich cried softly.
Ostap said angrily, “You just go to hell! Listen and be
still!”
“Ten chairs from a palace. Walnut. From the reign of Alex-
ander the Second. No defects. Made by the Gambs furniture
craftsmen. Vasily, hold a chair up to the reflector lamp.” Vasily
yanked the chair around so roughly that Ippolit Matveevich
leaped up.
“Sit down, you damned idiot! What a pain in the neck you
are!” Ostap hissed. “Sit down, I’m telling you!”
Ippolit Matveevich’s jaw started working. Ostap was on
point. His eyes had grown brighter.
“Ten walnut chairs. Eighty rubles.”
The hall grew lively. Something that would be useful in the
home was being sold. Hands shot up, one after the other. Os-
tap was calm.
“Why aren’t you bidding?” Vorobyaninov said accusingly.
“Butt out,” Ostap replied through gritted teeth.
“One hundred and twenty rubles, in the back. One hun-
dred and thirty-five, same place. One hundred and forty.”
Ostap turned to face the audience and, smirking, started
examining his competition.
The auction was in full swing. There weren’t any more free
seats. Right behind Ostap, as it happened, a lady had had a con-
versation with her husband, been very tempted by the chairs
(“Marvelous armchairs! Wonderful craftsmanship! Sanya!
They’re from a palace!”) and raised her hand.
corporal punishment ✦ 257

“One hundred forty-five on the right in the fifth row, going
once.”
The hall went still. It was too expensive.
“One hundred forty-five. Going twice.”
Ostap examined the molded cornice indifferently. Ippolit
Matveevich sat with his head lowered, trembling.
“One hundred forty-five. Going three times.”
But before the black lacquered gavel hit the plywood po-
dium, Ostap turned around, threw his hand in the air, and
said softly, “Two hundred.”
All heads turned toward the concessionaires. Service caps,
peaked caps, regular caps, and hats all swiveled. The auction-
eer raised his bored face and looked at Ostap.
“Two hundred, going once,” he said. “Two hundred in the
fourth row on the right, going twice. Does anyone else want to
bid? Two hundred rubles for a ten-piece set of walnut chairs
from a palace. Two hundred rubles, going three times. Fourth
row on the right.”
The hand with the gavel hovered over the podium.
“Mama!” Ippolit Matveevich said loudly.
Ostap, pink and calm, smiled. The gavel fell, producing a
heavenly sound.
“Sold,” said the auctioneer. “Young lady! Fourth row on the
right.”
“Well, chairman—did you like the effect?” Ostap asked.
“I’d like to know what you’d have done without your technical
director?”
Ippolit Matveevich gave a cry of joy. The young lady trotted
up to them. “Are you the ones who bought the chairs?”
“It was us!” shouted Ippolit Matveevich, who’d held himself
in check long enough. “It was us, it was us. When can we take
them?”
“Whenever you like. Right now, if you want!”
258 ✦ in moscow
The tune to “You walk, you wander all over” leaped around
madly inside Ippolit Matveevich’s head. “They’re our chairs,
they’re ours, ours, ours!” His entire organism was shouting it.
“They’re ours!” his liver shouted. “They’re ours!” his cecum
confirmed.
He was so happy that he could feel his pulse in the most
unexpected places. Everything was vibrating, swaying, and
crackling under the pressure of this unheard-of happiness. He
started to discern a train approaching Saint Gotthard. Ippolit
Matveevich Vorobyaninov, wearing white trousers and smoking
a cigar, was standing on the open platform of the last train car.
Flowerets of edelweiss were falling softly on his head, which
was once again touched with a gleaming aluminum-gray. Ip-
polit Matveevich was rolling into Eden.
“But why is it two hundred and thirty rubles, not two hun-
dred?” Ippolit Matveevich heard. It was Ostap, who was fidget-
ing with the claim ticket.
“That’s including the fifteen percent commission,” the young
lady answered.
“Well, nothing to be done. Take it.”
Ostap pulled out his wallet, counted out two hundred ru-
bles, and turned to the enterprise’s executive director. “Lay
down thirty rubles, dearest sir, and fast. Can’t you see the little
lady’s waiting? Well?”
Ippolit Matveevich made not the slightest move toward pro-
ducing the money.
“Well? Why are you looking at me like a soldier at a louse?
Have you gone nuts from joy?”
“I don’t have any money,” Ippolit Matveevich finally
mumbled.
“Who doesn’t have any money?” Ostap asked, very softly.
“I don’t.”
“But that two hundred?!”

“I . . . mmmm . . . l-lost it.”
Ostap looked at Vorobyaninov and quickly sized up his bat-
tered face, the green of his cheeks, and the puffed-up bags
under his eyes.
“Give me the money!” he whispered hatefully. “You old
scum.”
“So are you going to pay or not?” asked the young lady.
“Just one minute,” Ostap said, smiling beguilingly. “A small
hitch.” He had one faint hope. He could convince them to
wait to get all the money.
Then, Ippolit Matveevich, who’d come back to his senses,
broke into their conversation, spraying saliva. “If you please!”
he shrieked. “What commission? We don’t know anything
about any commission! You have to tell us in advance. I refuse
to pay those thirty rubles.”
“Very well,” the young lady said shortly. “I’ll get everything
taken care of.”
She took the claim ticket, rushed over to the auctioneer, and
said a few words to him. The auctioneer immediately stood up.
His beard sparkled in the electric lamps’ strong light.
“According to the rules of sale at auction,” he announced in
a resounding voice, “persons refusing to pay the whole price
of the item purchased must vacate the auction hall. The sale
of the chairs is revoked.”
The dumbfounded friends sat motionlessly.
“If you please!” the auctioneer said.
The effect was grand. People in the audience laughed spite-
fully. Ostap didn’t actually get up. He hadn’t suffered a blow
like this for a long time.
“If you please!” the auctioneer sang out in a voice that
brooked no dissent.
There was more laughter in the hall.
And so, they left. Few people have walked out of an auc-
tion feeling so bitter. Vorobyaninov went first. He walked like
260 ✦ in moscow
a crane in his jacket that had grown too short and his stupid
baronial boots. His straight bony shoulders hunched. From
behind he sensed the smooth operator’s warm, friendly gaze.
The concessionaires stopped in the room next to the auc-
tion hall. Now they could only watch the sale of the century
through the glass door. Their way in had been cut off. Ostap
maintained an amicable silence.
“Disgraceful rules,” Ippolit Matveevich mumbled timidly.
“It’s a downright outrage! We need to complain to the police
about them.”
Ostap was silent.
“I mean, really, what the hell is this?” Vorobyaninov contin-
ued, angrily. “They’re charging honest workers three times the
price! I swear to God! . . . Two hundred and thirty rubles for
ten used chairs. It could drive you crazy . . .”
“Yes,” Ostap said woodenly.
“Isn’t that right?” Vorobyaninov repeated. “It could drive
you crazy!”
“It could.”
Ostap walked up very close to Vorobyaninov, looked around,
and surreptitiously gave the marshal a strong, sharp blow in
the side so that no one watching could’ve seen.
“There’s the police for you! There’s the high price of chairs
for workers of the world! There’s your evening strolls with
girls! There’s your gray in the beard but sparkle in the eye!”
Ippolit Matveevich didn’t let out a peep during the admin-
istration of corporal punishment.
To an onlooker, it might have looked as though a respectful
son were conversing with his father, except that the father was
shaking his head rather too animatedly.
“And now, get out of here!”
Ostap turned his back to the director of the enterprise and
took to watching the auction. A minute later he turned around.
Ippolit Matveevich was still behind him, standing at attention.

“Ah, the soul of society’s still here, is he? Get out! Well?”
“Co-o-omrade Bender!” Vorobyaninov pleaded. “Co-o-
omrade Bender!”
“Go on! Go! And don’t come to Ivanopulo’s! I’ll throw
you out!”
“Co-o-omrade Bender!”
Ostap didn’t turn around again. Something in the auction
interested Bender so intensely that he cracked open the door
and started listening closely.
“We lost them!” he muttered.
“What did we lose?” Vorobyaninov asked ingratiatingly.
“The chairs are being sold individually, that’s what. Perhaps
you’d like to get one? Be my guest. I’m not keeping you from
it. I just doubt they’ll let you in. And I believe you aren’t ex-
actly rolling in dough, either.”
At that moment, the following was taking place at the auc-
tion: the auctioneer had sensed that he’d never be able to
wring two hundred rubles at once from the audience, since it
was too large a sum for the riffraff remaining in the hall, and
decided to get those two hundred rubles in bits and pieces.
The chairs were put up for sale again, this time individually.
“Four chairs from a palace. Walnut. Upholstered. Made by
Gambs. Thirty rubles. Who’ll give me more?”
All Ostap’s decisiveness and composure quickly returned.
“Okay, you ladies’ favorite, stand right here and don’t go any-
where. I’ll be back in five minutes. You stay here and watch
who’s doing what. Don’t let a single chair get away.”
A plan, the only plan that would work in their difficult situ-
ation, had taken shape in Bender’s head. He ran out onto Pe-
trovka and headed for the nearest asphalt vat. From twenty-five
yards away he saw a young man setting up his tripod and cam-
era. Homeless children were sitting in the boiler. As soon as they
saw that someone was getting ready to take a picture of their
compact group, they began to defend themselves. Chunks of tar
262 ✦ in moscow
flew at the photographic newsman. He jumped aside, dragging
his altar-like tripod and Klapp camera with him. After making
his way to the opposite sidewalk, the photographer attempted
to take a picture of the homeless children from afar. Then the
young ragamuffins abandoned their vat and fell upon their en-
emy. Alarmed for the welfare of his camera, the photographer
saved himself by running off down the Petrov Lines.
A photographic correspondent from a competing maga-
zine walked lazily out of the depths of the gathered crowd.
The homeless children watched him without the slightest sign
of goodwill, but the crowd stirred the photographer the way a
beautiful woman’s gaze stirs a toreador. He was a shrewd psy-
chologist, to boot. He walked up to the children, handed over
half a ruble for the lot of them, and a minute later the home-
less children were sitting placidly in their boiler while the pho-
tographer clicked his shutter at them from all directions.
“Merci, all done,” he said, as usual.
The dispersing audience’s approving laughter saw him off.
Then Ostap entered into business negotiations with the
homeless children. As he promised, he returned to Ippolit
Matveevich in five minutes. Homeless children stood at the
ready near the entrance to the auction.
“They’re selling them, they’re selling them,” Ippolit Matvee-
vich whispered. “Four and two have already been sold.”
“That’s because of your good deed,” Ostap said. “Be happy.
Everything was in our hands, do you understand? In our hands.
Can you understand that?”
A raspy voice, the kind nature bestows only on auctioneers,
croupiers, and glaziers, resounded in the auction hall: “. . . and
a half, on the right. Going three times. Another chair from a
palace. Walnut. In perfect condition. Bid and a half, in the
middle. Going once, bid and a half, in the middle.”
Three chairs were sold individually. The auctioneer an-
nounced the sale of the last chair. Ostap choked on his anger.

He threw himself on Vorobyaninov again. His insulting remarks
overflowed with bile. There’s no telling how far Ostap would
have taken his satirical exercises, if he hadn’t been interrupted
by the rapid approach of a man wearing a suit in various shades
of Łódź brown. He waved his plump arms, hopped around,
and leaped back, just as though he were playing tennis.
“Tell me,” he asked Ostap rapidly, “Is this really an auction?
Right? An auction? And things really are being sold here?
Wonderful!”
The stranger leaped away, his face lit with a multitude of smiles.
“Things really are being sold here? And you really can buy them
for cheap? That’s high class! Very, very high! Oh, my!”
The stranger, wiggling his fat little hips, rushed past the dumb-
struck concessionaires into the auction hall and bought the
last chair so quickly that Vorobyaninov could only grunt. The
stranger ran over to the claim window with the claim check in
his hand.
“But tell me, can I get the chair now? Wonderful! Oh, my!
Oh, my!” Bleating without pause and moving continuously,
the stranger loaded his chair into a horse-cab and drove away.
A homeless boy ran off in pursuit.
Little by little, all the new chair owners walked and rode
home. Ostap’s underage agents raced after them. He left,
too. Ippolit Matveevich followed him fearfully. The whole day
seemed like a dream. Everything had happened quickly and
not at all like he’d expected.
Pianos, mandolins, and accordions were celebrating spring
on Sivtsev Vrazhek. Windows were flung wide open. Flowers in
clay pots filled the windowsills. A fat man with suspenders over
his bare, hairy chest stood at the window, singing passionately.
A tomcat picked its way slowly along the wall. Kerosene lamps
blazed in the grocery stalls.
Kolya was strolling near the small pink house. He caught sight
of Ostap, who was walking in front, exchanged polite bows with
264 ✦ in moscow
him, and walked up to Vorobyaninov. Ippolit Matveevich greeted
him warmly. Kolya, however, wasn’t about to waste any time.
“Good evening,” he said decisively and, unable to restrain
himself, punched Ippolit Matveevich in the ear. At the same
time, Kolya pronounced what Ostap, who was observing the
entire scene, found a fairly vulgar phrase.
“That’s what’ll happen to everybody who tries to . . .” said
Kolya in a childish voice. Who tries to what, Kolya didn’t say.
He stood on his tiptoes, closed his eyes, and smacked him on
the cheek. Ippolit Matveevich raised his elbow but didn’t dare
make a sound.
“That’s right,” Ostap was saying. “And now in the neck.
Twice. Good. Nothing to be done. Sometimes eggs have to
teach a lesson to chickens who’ve gone too far . . . And once
more . . . Good. Don’t be shy. But don’t hit him in the head
anymore. That’s his weak spot.”
If the Stargorod conspirators had seen the giant of thought
and father of Russian democracy at this critical moment, then
one has to imagine that the secret union of “The Sword and
the Plowshare” would have ceased its existence.
“Well, seems like that’s enough,” said Kolya, putting his hand
in his pocket.
“Just one more time,” Ostap pleaded.
“To hell with him! Next time he’ll know better!”
Kolya left. Ostap went upstairs to Ivanopulo’s and looked
down. Ippolit Matveevich stood diagonally opposite the build-
ing, leaning against the embassy’s iron fence.
“Citizen Mikhelson!” Ostap shouted. “Conrad Karlovich!
Come into the building! I give you permission!”
Ippolit Matveevich was a bit livelier when he came into the
room. “Unheard-of insolence!” he said furiously. “I barely con-
tained myself!”
“Ai-yai-yai!” Ostap said sympathetically. “Young people these
days! Young people are terrible! They chase after other people’s

wives! They embezzle other people’s money! Utter degenera-
tion. But tell me, does it really hurt when people hit you in the
head?”
“I’ll challenge him to a duel.”
“Wonderful! I have a good friend I can recommend. He
knows the dueling code by heart and is the owner of two brooms
quite suitable for a struggle not for life, but to the death. You
can take Ivanopulo and the neighbor to the right as seconds.
He’s a former honorary citizen of the town of Kologriv and
boasts of the title to this very day. Or you could fight a duel
with meat grinders, that’s more elegant. Every wound is inevi-
tably mortal. The defeated opponent is automatically turned
into a meatball. How do you like that, marshal?”
Just then a whistle came from the street, and Ostap headed
out to receive investigative evidence from his homeless chil-
dren. They had excellently fulfilled the mission with which
they’d been entrusted. Four chairs had landed in the Colum-
bus Theater. The homeless boy explained in detail how the
chairs had been taken away by car, unloaded, and brought
into the building through the performers’ entrance. Ostap
knew the location of the theater well.
Two chairs had been taken away by a “chic bird,” as an-
other young tracker put it, in a horse-cab. Clearly, the little
boy had no outstanding aptitude for anything. He knew the
lane the chairs had been taken to, Varsonofievsky, and he even
remembered that it was apartment number seventeen, but he
couldn’t remember the building number for the life of him.
“I ran real quick,” the homeless boy said. “It flew out of my
head.”
“You won’t get your money,” the employer announced.
“But u-u-uncle! I’ll show you.”
“All right. Stay here. We’ll go there together.”
The bleating citizen lived, as it turned out, on Sadovaya-
Spasskaya Street. Ostap wrote down his address in a notepad.
266 ✦ in moscow
The eighth chair had gone to the House of Nations. The lit-
tle boy who’d followed that chair turned out to be a tenacious
little weasel. He overcame several obstacles in the form of the
commandant’s office and numerous couriers to gain entry
into the House, where he confirmed that the chair had been
purchased by the manager of The Lathe’s editorial offices.
Two boys still hadn’t arrived. They ran up almost simultane-
ously, tired and out of breath.
“Kazarmenny Lane, by Chistye Prudy.”
“Number?”
“Nine. And apartment nine. Tatars live next door. In the
courtyard. I carried the chair in for him. We went on foot.”
The last messenger brought sad news. At first everything
had gone well, but then everything went badly. The purchaser
took his chair to the loading platform of October Station, and
it had been impossible to slip in after him, since there were
guards from the Armed Defense Department of the People’s
Commissary of Transportation at the gate.
“He probably left town,” said the homeless boy, finishing
his report.
This troubled Ostap a great deal. After conferring a kingly
sum—a ruble—on each homeless boy (not counting the her-
ald from Varsonofievsky Lane who had forgotten the building
number, and who was ordered to come back early the next
day), the technical director went home. Without answering
questions from the disgraced chairman of the board, he began
piecing together some nice little combinations.
“Nothing’s lost yet. We have the addresses, and there are
many tried-and-true means of getting the chairs: 1) simple ac-
quaintance, 2) romantic intrigue, 3) acquaintance with break-
ing and entry, 4) exchange, and 5) money. The last is the most
reliable. But we’re short on money.”
Ostap gave Ippolit Matveevich an ironic look. The smooth
operator’s usual spiritual equilibrium and freshness of thought

had returned. He could always get money, of course. In re-
serve they still had: the painting Bolsheviks Writing a Letter to
Chamberlain, the tea strainer, and the option of pursuing his
career of polygamist.
The tenth chair was the only thing that made him worry. There
was a trail, of course, but what a trail—a vague, foggy one!
“Well, so be it!” Ostap said loudly. “I can still play against
these odds. I’ll be putting nine against one. The meeting is still
in session! You hear me? You! Gentleman of the jury!”
268 ✦ in moscow
23
Ellochka the Cannibal
according to researchers’ calculations, William Shake-

speare’s lexicon comprises twelve thousand words. The lexi-
con of a Negro from the cannibalistic tribe Mumbo-Jumbo
comprises three hundred words. Ellochka Shchukina got by
easily and freely with thirty.
Here are the words, phrases, and interjections she judi-
ciously chose out of the entire great, powerful, word-rich Rus-
sian language:
1. So rude.
2. Ho-ho! (This expresses, depending on the circumstances:
irony, amazement, rapture, hatred, joy, disdain, and satis-
faction.)
3. Outstanding.
4. Dismal. (Said about everything. For example: “dismal
Petya came over,” “dismal weather,” “a dismal occasion,”
“a dismal tomcat,” and so forth.)
5. Appalling.
6. Horror. (Horrible. For example, on running into a dear
friend: “a horrible meeting.”)
7. Little fellow. (Said about all men of her acquaintance, re-
gardless of age or social standing.)
8. Don’t teach me how to live.
9. Like . . . a baby. (“It was like taking candy from a baby,”
said about a card game. “I smacked him like a baby’s bot-
✦ 269 ✦
tom,” said, evidently, during a conversation with the re-
sponsible lessee.)
10. Be-e-e-yootiful!
11. Fat and handsome. (Used to characterize animate and in-
animate objects.)
12. Let’s take a horse-cab. (Said to her husband.)
13. Let’s take a taxi-waxi. (To male acquaintances.)
14. Your back is all white. (A joke.)
15. Just think.
16. Ulya. (An affectionate ending for names. For example:
Mishulya, Zinulya.)
17. Oho! (Irony, amazement, rapture, hatred, joy, disdain,
and satisfaction.)
The extremely insignificant number of remaining words

served as communicative links between Ellochka and sales-
clerks.
Upon examination of the photographs of Ellochka (one
frontal view, one side view) hanging over the bed of her hus-
band, the engineer Ernest Pavlovich Shchukin, it was not dif-
ficult to discern a pleasantly high, round forehead, large moist
eyes, the dearest little nose in all of Moscow province, and a
chin with a little beauty spot drawn on with mascara.
Ellochka’s height flattered men. She was short, and even
the shabbiest fellows looked like tall, powerful men next to
her. As for distinguishing characteristics, she hadn’t any. El-
lochka didn’t need them. She was pretty.
The two hundred rubles her husband received each month
from the Elektrochandelier factory was an insult to Ellochka.
There was no way it could aid her in the grand battle Ellochka
had been fighting for four years now, ever since she’d assumed
the social standing of a housewife, Shchukin’s wife. All the
forces at her command were dedicated to the battle. It swal-
lowed up all their resources. Ernest Pavlovich brought extra
270 ✦ in moscow
work home with him, denied the household a maid, acquired
a primus stove, took out the trash, and even cooked up the
meatballs.
But it was a fruitless effort. Every year the dangerous enemy
did more damage to their household finances. Four years ago,
Ellochka had noticed that she had a rival across the ocean. Mis-
fortune arrived at her doorstep on that joyous evening when
Ellochka was trying on a very nice crepe de chine blouse. In
this raiment she almost looked like a goddess.
“Ho-ho,” she exclaimed, reducing the staggeringly complex
feelings that had seized her down to this cannibalistic cry. In
simplified form, these feelings could be expressed in a phrase
such as: “Men will become agitated when they see me like this.
They will begin trembling. They will follow me to the ends
of the earth, stuttering from love. But I will be cold. Are they
really worthy of me? I am the most beautiful woman alive. No-
body else on the planet has such an elegant blouse.”
But she only had thirty words, so Ellochka chose the most
expressive one of all: “ho-ho.”
It was in just such a grand hour that Fima Sobak came over
to see her. She swept in with January’s frosty breath and a
French fashion magazine. Ellochka came to a halt on page
one. The glossy photograph depicted the daughter of the
American billionaire Vanderbilt in an evening gown. She saw
furs and feathers, silk and pearls, an extraordinarily easy cut
and a breathtaking hairstyle. That decided everything.
“Oho!” Ellochka said to herself.
That meant: “It’s either her or me.”
The morning of the next day greeted Ellochka at the beauty
salon, where she lost her beautiful long black braid and dyed
her hair red. Then she was able to ascend one more rung on
the ladder that was bringing her closer to the gleaming para-
dise of promenading billionaires’ daughters who can’t hold
a candle to housewife Shchukina. A dog fur that looked like
ellochka the cannibal ✦ 271

Russian desman was bought on workers’ credit and used to
trim her evening attire.
Mister Shchukin, who had long been nurturing his dream of
buying a new drafting table, became somewhat melancholy.
The dog-trimmed dress delivered the insolent Vanderbilt
hussy the first solid blow. Then three blows in a row landed on
the haughty American. Ellochka obtained a chinchilla stole
(Russian hare, slaughtered in Tula province) from Fimochka
Sobak’s house furrier, got herself a dove-colored hat of Argen-
tinian felt, and turned out her husband’s new jacket into a
fashionable ladies’ one. The lady billionaire took a turn for
the worse, but was saved, evidently, by her ever-loving Papa
Vanderbilt.
The next issue of the fashion magazine included portraits
of the cursed rival in four different aspects: 1) in dark-red fox
furs, 2) with a diamond star on her forehead, 3) in an avi-
ator’s outfit (tall boots, a marvelously delicate green jacket,
and gloves whose bell cuffs were encrusted with medium-sized
emeralds), and 4) in a ball gown (cascades of jewels and a little
bit of silk).
Ellochka mobilized her forces. Papa Shchukin took out a
loan in the office’s mutual-aid fund. They wouldn’t give him
more than thirty rubles. This mighty new effort pruned the
household budget down to a stump. They had to continue the
struggle in all spheres of life. Not long ago they’d received
photographs of the young miss in her new castle in Florida.
So Ellochka had to set herself up with some new furniture,
too. She bought two upholstered chairs at auction. (A lucky
find! There was no way to let them get away!) Ellochka took
the cash out of the grocery fund without asking her husband.
They had ten days and four rubles left until the fifteenth.
Ellochka drove the chairs stylishly down Varsonofievsky
Lane. Her husband wasn’t home. He soon appeared, however,
dragging along his briefcase, big as a trunk.
272 ✦ in moscow
“The dismal husband’s home,” Ellochka said clearly.
All her words were pronounced clearly and bounced out
briskly, like dry peas.
“Hello, Elenochka, and what’s that? Where did those chairs
come from?”
“Ho-ho!”
“No, really!”
“Be-e-e-yootiful!
“Yes. They are nice chairs.”
“Outstanding!”
“Did someone give them to you?”
“Oho?”
“What?! You didn’t buy them, did you? Where’d you get the
money? You didn’t use our household money, did you? After
all, I’ve told you a thousand times . . .”
“Ernestulya! So rude!”
“Well, how could you go and do that? Now we won’t have
anything to eat!”
“Just think!”
“But this is just an outrage! You aren’t living according to
your means!”
“You’re joking, sir.”
“It’s true. You, madam, aren’t living according to your
means . . .”
“Don’t teach me how to live!”
“No, let’s talk seriously. I get two hundred rubles . . .”
“Appalling!”
“I don’t take bribes, I don’t steal money and don’t know
how to counterfeit it . . .”
“Horror!”
Ernest Pavlovich went silent.
“You know what,” he finally said. “I can’t live this way.”
“Ho-ho,” said Ellochka, who sat down on her new chair.
“We have to get divorced.”

“Just think!”
“Our temperaments are too different. I . . .”
“You are a fat and handsome little fellow.”
“How many times have I asked you not to call me a little
fellow!”
“You’re joking!”
“And where did you pick up that idiotic jargon?”
“Don’t teach me how to live!”
“Oh, damn it!” the engineer shouted.
“So rude, Ernestulya.”
“Let’s separate amicably.”
“Oho!”
“You can’t prove anything to me! This argument . . .”
“I’ll smack you like a baby’s bottom . . .”
“No, this is completely unbearable. Your conclusions can’t
keep me from taking the step I’m forced to take. I’m going to
get a cart right now.”
“We’ll split the furniture evenly.”
“Horror!”
“You’ll get a hundred rubles a month. A hundred twenty,
even. You can keep the room. You can live however you want,
but I can’t live like this . . .”
“Outstanding,” Ellochka said disdainfully.
“And I’m moving to Ivan Alexeevich’s.”
“Oho!”
“He went to the dacha and left me his whole apartment for
the summer. I have the key, I just don’t have any furniture.”
“Be-e-e-yootiful!”
Ernest Pavlovich returned with the dvornik five minutes
later.
“Well, I won’t take the wardrobe, you need it more, but the
desk, if you don’t mind . . . And, dvornik, take that one chair,
274 ✦ in moscow
there. I’ll take one of those two chairs. I have a right to it, I
believe?!”
Ernest Pavlovich gathered his things into a large bundle,
wrapped his boots in newspaper, and turned to the door.
“Your back is all white,” Ellochka said in a voice like a
phonograph.
“Good-bye, Elena.”
He waited to see whether his wife would at this moment,
at least, refrain from her usual metallic little words. Ellochka
also felt the moment’s importance. She tensed, searching for
words appropriate to their parting. She found them quickly.
“Are you taking a taxi-waxi? Be-e-e-yootiful!”
The engineer raced like an avalanche down the stairs.
Ellochka spent the evening with Fima Sobak. They discussed
an unusually important event that threatened to overturn the
entire world economy.
“It looks like hems are going to be long and wide,” Fima
said, ducking her head into her shoulders like a chicken.
“Appalling.”
Ellochka looked respectfully at Fima Sobak. Mademoiselle
Sobak was the very image of a cultured girl: she had around
a hundred and eighty words in her lexicon. In addition, she
knew one special word that Ellochka couldn’t even dream of.
It was a rich word: homosexuality. Fima Sobak was, without a
doubt, a cultured girl.
Their lively discussion lasted until well after midnight.
At ten o’clock in the morning, the smooth operator walked
into Varsonofievsky Lane. The homeless boy from the day be-
fore was running in front of him. The boy showed him the
building.
“You’re not lying?”
“Of course not, uncle . . . Here, this way, through the main
entrance.”

Bender handed the boy the ruble he’d earned fair and
square.
“Need to sweeten it a little,” the little boy said, like a horse-
cab driver.
“With the ears from a dead donkey. Get it from Pushkin.
Good day to you, you defective runt.”
Ostap knocked at the door without giving the slightest
thought to a pretext for getting inside. He preferred inspira-
tion for conversations with nice dames.
“Oho?” asked someone behind the door.
“It’s on business,” Ostap replied.
The door opened. Ostap went into a room that could have
only been furnished by a creature with the imagination of a
woodpecker. Little dolls, Tambov tapestries, and movie post-
cards hung on the walls. It was difficult to find the room’s
small inhabitant against that multicolored background, which
dazzled the eyes. She was wearing a little housecoat made from
Ernest Pavlovich’s Tolstoyan shirt and trimmed with a mysteri-
ous fur.
Ostap immediately understood how to conduct himself in
high society. He closed his eyes and took a step back.
“Excellent fur!” he exclaimed.
“You’re joking!” Ellochka said tenderly. “It’s Mexican jerboa.”
“That’s impossible. You were tricked. You were given a much
finer fur. This is Shanghai snow leopard. But of course! Snow
leopard! I recognize it by the hue. See how the fur plays in the
sun! Emerald . . . pure emerald!”
Ellochka had painted the Mexican jerboa herself, with green
watercolor, so she found the morning visitor’s praise especially
pleasant.
Without giving the housewife any time to think, the smooth
operator poured out everything he’d ever heard about furs.
After that, they started talking about silk, and Ostap promised
to give the charming housewife a few hundred silk cocoons
276 ✦ in moscow
the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Uzbeki-
stan had brought him.
“You’re a swell little fellow,” Ellochka remarked after their
first few minutes of acquaintance.
“You are, of course, surprised by this stranger’s morning
visit.”
“Ho-ho!”
“But I’ve come to you regarding a certain delicate issue.”
“You were at the auction yesterday and made an unusual
impression on me.”
“So rude!”
“For mercy’s sake! It would be inhuman to be rude to such
a charming woman.”
“Horror!”
The conversation continued in the same vein, which, none-
theless, yielded wondrous fruit in certain instances. But Ostap’s
compliments grew ever more watery and short. He’d noticed
that the second chair was not in the room. He was forced to
cast around for the trail. Alternating his questions with flowery
Eastern flattery, Ostap found out about the events of the past
evening of Ellochka’s life.
“A new twist,” he thought. “The chairs are crawling off every
which way like cockroaches.”
“My dear girl,” Ostap said abruptly, “sell me that chair. I
really like it. Only you, with your feminine intuition, could
have chosen such an artistic item. Sell it to me, my little one,
I’ll give you seven rubles.”
“So rude, little fellow,” Ellochka said playfully.
“Ho-ho,” Ostap explained.
“She needs to be traded with,” he decided. “We’ll just offer
her a trade.”
“You know, right now in Europe and the finest houses of
Philadelphia they’ve revived an ancient tradition: pouring out

tea through a tea strainer. It’s extremely effective and very
elegant.”
Ellochka perked up her ears.
“A diplomat I know just arrived from Vienna and brought
me one. It’s an amusing little thing.”
“It must be outstanding,” Ellochka said, interested.
“Oho! Ho-ho! Let’s make a trade. You give me the chair and
I give you the strainer. How about it?”
Ostap took the small gilt tea strainer out of his pocket. The
sun rolled around like an egg inside it. Sparkles of light leaped
around the ceiling. A dark corner of the room was suddenly
lit up. The thing made the same impression on Ellochka that
an empty canning jar makes on a cannibal of the Mumbo-
Jumbo tribe. In such instances the cannibal shouts aloud, but
Ellochka softly moaned, “Ho-ho!”
Without giving the charming woman a moment to recon-
sider, Ostap placed the strainer on the floor, clasped the chair,
and got her husband’s address. He bowed gallantly and took
his leave.
278 ✦ in moscow
24
Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov
the busy season began for the concessionaires. Ostap insisted

that they needed to strike while the chairs were hot. Ippolit
Matveevich was amnestied, although Ostap still interrogated
him from time to time: “Why the hell did I get involved with
you? When you get down to it, what do I need you for? You
should go back home to your Office of Vital Statistics. New-
borns and the deceased are waiting for you. Don’t torture the
wee babes. Go on home!”
But deep down, the smooth operator had grown attached
to the feral marshal. “It’s not as much fun without him,” Ostap
thought. Amused, he glanced at Vorobyaninov, whose head
sported a silvery lawn.
A large part of their plan of action was devoted to develop-
ing Ippolit Matveevich’s sense of initiative. As soon as the quiet
student Ivanopulo left, Bender hammered the quickest ways
to search for treasure into his companion’s skull. “Act boldly.
Don’t ask anybody anything. Lay on the cynicism. People like
that. Don’t undertake anything through third parties. There
are no more fools anymore. No one’s going to pull diamonds
out of someone else’s pocket for you. But don’t do anything
criminal. We have to obey the Code.”
Nevertheless, the search proceeded without any special lus-
ter. They were hampered by the Criminal Code and by the
enormous number of bourgeois prejudices held by the cap-
ital’s residents. For example, they couldn’t stand nighttime
✦ 279 ✦
visits through the fortochka. The friends were forced to work
legally.
Furniture appeared in the student Ivanopulo’s room the
day Ostap visited Ellochka Shchukina. It was the third trophy
of their expedition: the chair that had been exchanged for
the tea strainer. The time was long gone when the hunt for
diamonds had provoked strong emotions in the companions,
when they tore into the chairs with their claws and gnawed
on the springs. “Even if there’s nothing in these chairs, we
can consider ourselves to have earned at least ten thousand,”
Ostap said. “Every chair we open up improves our chances. So
what if there was nothing in the little lady’s chair? There’s no
reason to bust it up just because of that. Let Ivanopulo furnish
his place. It’s nicer for us, too.”
That day, the concessionaires flitted out of the little pink
house and went in different directions. Ippolit Matveevich
had been entrusted with the bleating stranger from Sadovaya-
Spasskaya Street, given twenty-five rubles for expenses, and or-
dered not to enter any beer parlors and not to return without
the chair. The smooth operator took Ellochka’s husband on
himself.
Ippolit Matveevich crossed the city on the No. 6 bus. As he
shook on his leather bench and flew right up to the bus’s lac-
quered ceiling, he thought about how to find out the bleat-
ing citizen’s last name, under what pretense to make his way
inside, what the first phrase out of his mouth should be, and
how to get down to brass tacks.
He got out at the Red Gates, found the building according
to the address Ostap had written down, and started beating
around the bush. He couldn’t bring himself to go inside. It was
an old, dirty Moscow hotel that had been converted into an
apartment building. Judging by the shabby façade, its building
society was composed of incorrigible rent defaulters.
280 ✦ in moscow
Ippolit Matveevich stood opposite the entrance for a long
time. He walked up to it repeatedly and memorized the hand-
written sign threatening the incorrigible rent defaulters; then,
still without having thought of anything, he went up to the
second floor. Individual rooms came off the corridor. Ippolit
Matveevich approached room 41 slowly, as though he were go-
ing up to the chalkboard to write out the proof for a theorem
he hadn’t memorized. A card pinned with one pin hung up-
side down on the door:
absalom vladimirovich iznurenkov.
His mind was in a fog. Ippolit Matveevich forgot to knock,

opened the door, took three lunatic steps, and found himself
in the middle of the room.
“Excuse me,” he said in a stifled voice. “Could I see Com-
rade Iznurenkov?”
Absalom Vladimirovich did not answer. Vorobyaninov raised
his head and only then saw that the room was empty. There
was no way to determine the inhabitant’s inclinations from its
outward appearance. The only thing Vorobyaninov could tell
for sure was that he was a bachelor and had no maid. A piece
of paper holding sausage skins lay on the windowsill. The cot
by the wall was piled with newspapers. A few dusty books stood
on a little shelf. Color photographs of pussycats, tomcats, and
kittens looked down from the walls. A walnut chair stood in the
middle of the room next to some dirty boots that had fallen on
their sides. Raspberry wax seals dangled from all the articles
of furniture, including the chair from the Stargorod mansion.
But Ippolit Matveevich didn’t pay any attention to this. He im-
mediately forgot about the Criminal Code and Ostap’s teach-
ings, and leaped over to the chair.
Just then, the newspapers on the cot started to move. Ippo-
lit Matveevich was terrified. The newspapers slid to one side,
absalom vladimirovich iznurenkov ✦ 281

then fell on the floor. A calm little tomcat emerged from under
them. It looked indifferently at Ippolit Matveevich and started
to wash, grabbing its ear, cheek, and whiskers with its paw.
“Phooey!” Ippolit Matveevich said.
He dragged the chair over to the door. The door opened of
its own accord. The bleating stranger, the room’s inhabitant,
appeared on the doorsill. He was wearing a long coat with his
lilac long underwear peeking out from underneath. He was
holding his trousers.
You could truly say of Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov
that there was no one else like him in the entire republic. The
republic valued him according to his merits. He brought it a
great deal of benefit. And yet, despite all this, he remained
unknown, although he was the same master of his art form as
Shalyapin was of singing, as Gorky was of literature, as Capa-
blanca was of chess, as Melnikov was of ice-skating, and as the
most hook-nosed, brownest Assyrian, with the best spot on the
corner of Tverskaya and Kamergersky, was of polishing your
shoes with yellow cream.
Shalyapin sang. Gorky wrote a big novel. Capablanca pre-
pared for his match with Alekhine. Melnikov broke world rec-
ords. The Assyrian polished citizens’ boots until they shone
like the sun. Absalom Iznurenkov cracked jokes.
He never joked aimlessly, just to hear himself talk. He joked
to order for humor magazines. He carried the most crucial
campaigns on his own two shoulders. He equipped the major-
ity of Moscow’s satire magazines with ideas for pictures and
feuilletons.
Great people crack two great jokes in a lifetime. These witti-
cisms increase their fame and become part of history. Iznuren-
kov released no fewer than sixty first-class witticisms a month,
which were repeated by everyone with a smile, but he never-
theless remained unknown. If one of Iznurenkov’s jokes cap-
282 ✦ in moscow
tioned a drawing, then the artist received the fame. The artist’s
name was under the drawing. Iznurenkov’s name was not.
“This is horrible!” he would shout. “It’s impossible to sign my
name. What am I going to sign my name under? Two lines?”
And he continued his heated battle against society’s ene-
mies: bad co-op employees, embezzlers, Chamberlain, and
bureaucrats. With his wit he stung sycophants, private busi-
nessmen, hooligans, managers, building managers, business
managers who shirked the economizing regime, and citizens
who didn’t want to lower prices.
After these humor magazines were published, his witticisms
were broadcast in the circus arena, reprinted in the evening
papers without citing the source, and presented to the public
from the stage by “satirical cabaret singers who write their own
songs.”
Iznurenkov managed to crack jokes about things it seemed
impossible to say anything funny about. He squeezed a hun-
dred masterpieces of humor from such poor soil as inflated
markups of production costs. Heine would have laid down his
pen if he’d been asked to say something that was both funny
and socially useful about the incorrect tariffing of slow cargo.
Mark Twain would have fled in fright from such an idea. But
Iznurenkov remained at his post.
He ran from editorial office to editorial office, bleating and
bumping into urns for cigarette butts. In ten minutes his idea
was worked up, an illustration thought through, and a title
drafted.
When he came into his room and saw a person carrying
away his chair, Absalom Vladimirovich waved his trousers (just
pressed at the tailor’s), hopped up and down, and yelled,
“You’re crazy! I protest! You don’t have the right! There is
such a thing as the law, after all! Even though it was not made
for fools, still, even you might have heard that I can keep the

furniture for two more weeks! I’ll complain to the district at-
torney! I’ll pay, after all!”
Ippolit Matveevich stood frozen to the spot while Iznuren-
kov stood in front of the door, threw off his long coat, and
pulled his trousers onto legs as pudgy as Chichikov’s. Iznu-
renkov was rather fat, but had a thin face. Vorobyaninov had
no doubt that he would immediately be dragged off to the
police station. Therefore he was extremely surprised when the
room’s inhabitant abruptly grew calm as soon as he’d adjusted
his attire.
“But you have to understand,” the inhabitant said in a con-
ciliatory tone. “I just can’t agree to this, that’s all.”
When all was said and done, if Ippolit Matveevich had been
in the inhabitant’s place, he wouldn’t have been able to agree
to someone stealing his chairs in broad daylight, either. But he
didn’t know what to say, so he remained silent.
“It’s not my fault. It’s the Association of Music Businesses’
fault. Yes, I admit it. I didn’t pay for the upright piano I rented
for eight months, but I didn’t sell it, after all, even though I
had every opportunity to do so. I behaved honestly, but they
acted like crooks. They took the instrument, and then they
also sued me and distrained my furniture. I can’t have any-
thing distrained. This furniture is a means of production. And
the chair is also a means of production!”
Ippolit Matveevich started to understand a few things.
“Put the chair down!” Absalom Vladimirovich suddenly
squealed. “You hear me? You! Bureaucrat!”
Ippolit Matveevich obediently released the chair and mum-
bled, “Forgive me, there was a mix-up, it happens in this line
of work . . .”
Then Iznurenkov became awfully happy. He started run-
ning around the room, singing, “And in the morning she’d
be smiling in her window, as always.” He didn’t know what to
do with his hands. They flew in all directions. He began to tie
284 ✦ in moscow
his necktie, but quit before he’d finished. Then he picked up
a newspaper and threw it on the floor again without having
read anything.
“So you’re not taking the chair today? Good! Oh, my!
Oh, my!”
Ippolit Matveevich took advantage of the favorable turn of
events to move toward the door.
“Wait!” Iznurenkov suddenly cried. “Have you ever seen a
tom like this? Tell me, isn’t he really fluffy to the extreme?”
The little tomcat ended up in Ippolit Matveevich’s quiver-
ing arms.
“High class!” Absalom Vladimirovich muttered, not know-
ing what to do with his excess energy. “Oh, my! Oh, my!”
He rushed over to the window, threw up his arms, and be-
gan giving quick, shallow bows to two girls watching him from
the window of the building opposite. He stamped his feet and
showered them with languishing ohs and ahs: “Girls from the
suburbs! The finest fruit! High class! Oh, my! ‘And in the morn-
ing she’d be smiling in her window, as always.’ ”
“So I’ll just be going, citizen,” the director of the concession
said stupidly.
“Wait, wait!” Iznurenkov said, suddenly worried. “Just a mo-
ment! Oh, my! And the little tom? Don’t you think he’s fluffy
to the extreme? Wait just a minute! I’ll be right back!”
He dug around awkwardly in all his pockets, ran off, came
back, cried “oh,” looked out the window, ran off again, and
came back again.
“Forgive me, my good man,” he said to Vorobyaninov, who
had stood with his arms folded military-style for the duration
of these manipulations. With these words he gave the marshal
a fifty-kopek piece. “No, no, don’t refuse, please. All labor
must be compensated.”
“Very much obliged,” Ippolit Matveevich said, amazed at his
own resourcefulness.

“Thank you, my dear fellow, thank you, my good man!”
As he walked down the hall, Ippolit Matveevich heard bleat-
ing, squeals, singing, and passionate cries coming out of Iznu-
renkov’s room.
Once he was out on the street, Vorobyaninov remembered
Ostap and began shaking with fear.
Ernest Pavlovich Shchukin wandered around the empty apart-

ment that his friend had graciously let him have for the sum-
mer and pondered a question: to take a bath or not to take a
bath.
The three-room apartment was right up under the roof of
the nine-story building. The only thing in the apartment apart
from the desk and Vorobyaninov’s chair was a cheval glass. The
sun reflected off the mirror and pierced the eye. The engineer
lay down for a moment on the desk, but jumped right back off.
Everything was red-hot.
“I’ll just have a bath,” he decided.
He undressed, cooled off, looked at himself in the mirror,
and went into the bathroom, where the cool seized him. He
clambered into the bathtub, poured water over himself with
a light-blue enamel mug, and lathered up generously. He was
covered in flakes of lather and looked like Grandfather Frost.
“Good!” Ernest Pavlovich said.
And everything was good. It had cooled down. There was no
wife. Absolute freedom lay before him. The engineer crouched
and turned the faucet on to wash off the soap. The faucet
choked and started saying something unintelligible. The water
wasn’t running. Ernest Pavlovich stuck his slippery little fin-
ger into the opening of the faucet. A thin stream trickled out,
nothing more.
286 ✦ in moscow
Ernest Pavlovich frowned, got out of the tub by lifting each
leg out in turn, and went over to the kitchen faucet, but he
wasn’t able to milk anything out of it, either.
Ernest Pavlovich shuffled through the rooms, then came
to a stop in front of the mirror. The lather was burning his
eyes, his back itched, and flakes of lather were falling onto
the parquet floor. After listening to see whether the water had
started running in the bathroom, Ernest Pavlovich decided
to call the dvornik. “Let him bring me some water, at least,”
the engineer decided, wiping his eyes and slowly beginning
to simmer. “Otherwise who the hell knows what’s going on
here.”
He looked out the window. Children were playing at the
very bottom of the well of the courtyard.
“Dvornik!” Ernest Pavlovich shouted. “Dvornik!”
No one answered.
Then Ernest Pavlovich remembered that the dvornik lived
by the front entrance, under the stairs. He went out onto the
cold tile, held the door open, and leaned down. There was
only one apartment on the landing, and Ernest Pavlovich
wasn’t afraid someone would see him in his strange outfit of
soapy lather.
“Dvornik!” he shouted down.
The word rang out and rolled noisily down the stairs.
“Ooom, ooom!” the staircase answered.
“Dvornik! Dvornik! ”
“Boom-boom! Boom-boom!”
At this point the engineer, who was impatiently pawing
the ground with his bare feet, slipped, and let go of the door
to keep his balance. The brass tongue of the American lock
clicked and the door shut tight. The wall shook. Ernest Pav-
lovich, who didn’t yet appreciate the irreparable nature of
the situation, pulled the door handle. The door didn’t budge.

Dumbfounded, the engineer yanked it a few more times, try-
ing to listen while his heart beat loudly. There was a dusky,
churchly silence. Light barely made it through the multicol-
ored glass of the tall window.
“Here’s a fine situation,” Ernest Pavlovich thought.
“You dirty swine!” he said to the door.
Downstairs, people’s voices crashed and exploded like pe-
tards. Then a house dog started barking like a loudspeaker.
Someone pushed a baby carriage up the stairs.
Ernest Pavlovich began pacing timidly back and forth on
the landing. “Enough to drive you crazy!”
It all seemed too absurd to be happening in real life. He
walked over to the door again and listened. He heard some
kind of different sound. At first, he thought it was someone
walking around inside the apartment.
“Maybe someone came in from the back staircase?” he
thought, although he knew that the back staircase was closed
off and no one could get into the apartment.
The monotonous noise continued. The engineer held his
breath. Then he realized that the noise was being made by
splashing water. It was clearly running from every faucet in the
apartment. Ernest Pavlovich almost started howling.
It was a terrible situation. In Moscow, in the center of town,
on a ninth-floor landing, stood a grown-up man with a mus-
tache and a higher education who was completely naked and
covered in still-foamy soapsuds. He had nowhere to go. He
would sooner have agreed to go to prison than show himself
in that state. There was only one thing left to do: perish. The
lather popped and burned his back. It had already dried on
his hands and face, where it looked like mange and pulled his
skin taut like a shaving stone.
Half an hour passed this way. The engineer rubbed himself
on the chalky walls, moaned, and tried a few times to break
down the door, with no success. He got dirty and scary.
288 ✦ in moscow
Shchukin decided to go downstairs to the dvornik’s, no mat-
ter what it cost him. “There’s no other way, none. I just have
to hide at the dvornik’s.” Panting and covering himself with his
hand the way men do when they go into water, Ernest Pavlo-
vich slowly started stealing down along the handrail. He ended
up on the landing between the eighth and ninth floors.
His figure was illuminated by many-colored rhombuses and
squares from the window. He looked like Harlequin eavesdrop-
ping on a conversation between Columbine and Pierrot. He’d
already turned to go down the next section of stairs when the
lock of the door to the apartment below rang out and a young
lady with a ballet case came out of the apartment. The young
lady hadn’t had time to take a single step before Ernest Pavlo-
vich was back on his own landing. He was almost deafened by
the terrible beating of his heart.
It took half an hour for the engineer to recover enough
to attempt a new sortie. This time he was determined to rush
headlong downstairs, no matter what, and make it all the way
to the longed-for basement room.
And so he did. This council member of the engineers’ and
technical workers’ section leaped noiselessly down the stairs,
four steps at a time, wailing to himself. At the sixth-floor land-
ing he paused for a moment. That was what finished him.
Somebody was coming up the stairs.
“Intolerable child!” sounded a woman’s voice, intensified
many times over by the loudspeaker of the staircase. “How
many times have I told him . . .”
Ernest Pavlovich flew back up to the ninth floor, succumb-
ing not to reason, but to instinct, like a cat being chased by
dogs. Once he was back on his own landing, soiled with wet
footprints, he started weeping soundlessly, pulling his hair
and rocking back and forth convulsively. Boiling-hot tears cut
into the sudsy crust and burned two wavy furrows into it. “Oh
God!” the engineer said. “Oh God! Oh God!”

All life was finished. Nevertheless, he distinctly heard the
sound of a truck going down the street. So there was life,
somewhere!
He tried to get himself to go downstairs a few more times,
but couldn’t. His nerves were shot. He’d ended up in a burial
vault.
“They tracked their footprints everywhere, the pigs!” sounded
an old woman’s voice from the landing below.
The engineer ran over to the wall and hit it with his head a
few times. Of course, the most logical thing to do would have
been to shout until someone came, and then give himself up
to that person. But Ernest Pavlovich had completely lost the
ability to think and ran to and fro on the landing, panting.
There was no escape.
290 ✦ in moscow
25
The Motorists’ Club
asokin, the gracious sir, read Agafon Shakhov’s new book

three nights in a row. The cashier’s heart filled with inspiration
every time he turned a page. He, the cashier, was the novel’s
protagonist. There was no doubt about it. Asokin recognized
himself in everything. The protagonist of the novel had his
habits, slavishly copied all his little sayings, and wore one and
the same suit (a mustard-colored military shirt and trousers
that fell down to the high heels of his boots).
Gracious Sir’s cashier’s cage was described in photographic
detail (Agafon Shakhov was devoid of imagination). Even the
last name was almost the same: Azhogin. At first, Gracious Sir
was overjoyed. He’d been described accurately. “Anybody who
knows me will recognize me,” the cashier said proudly.
But the sixth chapter, where the author ascribed to the cashier
the theft of five thousand rubles from the payroll, provoked a
worried little laugh from Gracious Sir. The seventh, eighth, and
ninth chapters were devoted to the description of Gracious Sir’s
titanic carousings with priestesses of Venus in the perfectly be-
guiling dives of the town of Kaluga, where, according to some
whim of the author’s, the cashier was hiding out. That evening,
Asokin did not eat supper. He sat in the square on a bench right
under the electric streetlight, reading about his fantastical life
by its rosy glow. At first he was afraid that management would
find out about his feats, but then, once he remembered that
he hadn’t performed any, he calmed down, and even began to
✦ 291 ✦
feel flattered. After all, Agafon Shakhov had chosen him, none
other, to be the protagonist of his sensational new novel.
Asokin felt that he was much better and smarter than the
unsuccessful embezzler the writer depicted. By the end, he’d
even begun to despise the runaway cashier. In the first place,
the novel’s protagonist preferred the criminal cocaine-sniffer
Esmeralda (“a flat bosom, carnivorous teeth, and a throaty tim-
bre to her voice”) to the dear little Natashka (“a high bosom,
green eyes, and a strong line to her hips”). If he’d been in
the protagonist’s shoes, Asokin would have preferred, at worst,
even the simple little Fenechka (“a pillowy bosom, healthy,
ruddy cheeks, and a strong line to her hips”), but never the
dirty scum Esmeralda, who robbed her johns. As Gracious Sir
read on, he grew even more upset. His double went to the
races and lost two thousand government rubles, stupidly and
crudely. Asokin, of course, never would have done that. Asokin
spit in vexation at the thought of such childish stupidity. There
was only one way the writer pleased Asokin: the descriptions
of dives, dinners, and all kinds of zakuski. The dives were de-
scribed well, with a keen understanding of the matter, with the
fire of youth (which knows no catarrh), with love, with enthu-
siasm, and with pleasant literary details. Salmon, for example,
was compared to the lap of a young girl from Chios. Nor was
fresh caviar, that charming companion of trashy French nov-
els and half-serious Russian ones, forgotten. At least twenty
pounds of it was described. All the novel’s main and secondary
characters ate it. Asokin started to feel pained. He wouldn’t
have given anyone else caviar, he would have eaten it all him-
self. Champagne bottles, Martell cognac (the novel’s author
didn’t know the best brands), fruit, the silky bulge of ladies’
legs, maîtres d’hôtel, starched tablecloths, automobiles, and
cigars all mingled into a luxurious heap, from under which
the embezzler crawled in the very last chapter, only to head
straight for criminal investigations to turn himself in.
292 ✦ in moscow
Shivering from the evening chill, Asokin finished the novel,
called The Racing Wave, and went home to bed.
He couldn’t fall asleep. His double weighed heavily on his
imagination. The next day, when he left the office, Gracious Sir
took five thousand rubles with him, exactly the same amount
his criminal double had embezzled. Gracious Sir decided to
spend the money rationally and emulate all Azhogin’s accom-
plishments, but avoid his shortcomings by taking his mistakes
into account.
That evening, Asokin emulated accomplishments and
avoided shortcomings in the company of young ladies from
the Petrov Lines. This sharing of experience cost him a hun-
dred rubles. At dawn, Gracious Sir, now sober, went out onto
Tverskoy Boulevard and ambled from the Pushkin monument
to the Timiryazev monument.
He didn’t come into the office that day. A line formed at the
cashier’s window. The reporter Persitsky, who had managed to
secure a small advance and who had been waiting for the be-
ginning of payroll operations for half an hour, raised a terrible
racket. Then they sent a courier for Asokin. The cashier wasn’t
home, either. After that everything happened very quickly.
They broke the seal on the safe and checked the money. Then
a representative of the office administration went to the Mos-
cow Criminal Investigation Administration to report on the
disappearance of cashier and money. There, to his utmost sur-
prise, he met Asokin, who was already sitting behind the little
barrier in the commandant’s office and crying, awkwardly, like
a grown-up. The embezzlement of one hundred rubles had
scared him so much that he immediately ran to confess. Four
thousand nine hundred rubles were returned to the office
that very day; the reporter Persitsky got what was coming to
him; and Asokin, due to the insignificance of the embezzled
sum, was released, after he’d been interrogated and signed a
statement declaring he wouldn’t leave town. Asokin came into
the motorists’ club ✦ 293

the office and wandered down the extremely long corridors
of the House of Nations, not daring to speak to anyone. The
office manager carried an upholstered chair he’d bought at
auction for the editor past the justly punished cashier. Other
employees with packets of memos ran past him. Someone
was looking for the confectioners’ section, and had evidently
been looking for quite a long time, since he asked about it
in a voice that was now very weak. People asked how to get
to the exit and where to turn in official notice about losing
one’s identification papers. A young man with an enormous
briefcase inquired several times as to whether Gracious Sir
wanted to subscribe to the Large Soviet Encyclopedia bound in
leatherette. In a word, he was asked all the questions that citi-
zens running around the corridors of a Soviet government in-
stitution always ask of every random person they encounter.
Asokin didn’t answer. The other employees sensed some-
thing bad. Rumors spread from department to department
and were quickly confirmed. Asokin was released from his
position for payroll irregularities. People called Shakhov. Sha-
khov rejoiced. “How about that?” he shouted into the tele-
phone. “Hit the nail on the head! Well, say hello to Gracious
Sir for me! What? An insignificant sum? That doesn’t matter.
The principle is what matters!”
But Shakhov couldn’t come personally to the scene of the
crime. The latest problem, the problem of suicide, was trem-
bling under his pen.
Material for the typography was being hastily cooked up in the

editorial office of the big daily newspaper The Lathe, located
on the second floor of the House of Nations. Notes and ar-
ticles were being selected from the overmatter, the number of
294 ✦ in moscow
lines they took up was being calculated, and the daily haggling
over space had ensued.
The newspaper could place a total of four thousand four
hundred lines on its four pages, or “strips.” Everything had to
fit in this space: telegrams, articles, news items, letters from
worker-correspondents, classifieds, one feuilleton in verse and
two in prose, caricatures, photographs, special columns (the-
ater, sport, chess), the front-page article and the front-page
beneath-the-fold article, notices from Soviet, Party, and pro-
fessional organizations, the latest installment of a serialized
novel, essays appraising life in the capital, trifles under the
title “Kernels of Wisdom,” popular science articles, radio pro-
grams, and various incidental material. The total amount of
material from all the sections was enough for about ten thou-
sand lines. Therefore, the distribution of strip space was usu-
ally accompanied by dramatic scenes.
The first person to run over to the editor in chief was Mae-
stro Sudeikin, the editor of the chess column. He asked a
deeply bitter, although polite, question: “What’s this? There’s
not going to be any chess today?”
“It doesn’t fit,” the editor in chief said. “We’ve got a big
basement today. Three hundred lines.”
“But today’s Saturday, after all. Readers are expecting the
Sunday column. I have answers to problems, I have a marvel-
ous étude by Neunyvako, and I also have . . .”
“All right. How much do you want?”
“No less than a hundred and fifty.”
“All right. Seeing as how you’ve got answers to problems,
I’ll give you sixty lines.”
The maestro tried to beg just thirty more lines for the Neu-
nyvako étude (the excellent Tartakover-Bogoliubov match in
India had been sitting on his desk for over a month), but he
was squeezed out.

Persitsky walked in.
“Do you need me to turn in my impressions from the Ple-
num?” he asked, very softly.
“Of course!” the editor in chief shouted. “It was the day be-
fore yesterday, after all!”
“I have the Plenum, and two sketches,” Persitsky said, even
more softly, “but they’re not giving me room.”
“What do you mean, they’re not giving you room? Who did
you talk to? What are they, crazy?”
The editor in chief raced off to cuss them out. Persitsky fol-
lowed, scheming on the fly, while behind him ran an employee
from the classified section.
“We have Séquard’s liquid!” he shouted sadly.
The office manager dragged along behind them, lugging
the upholstered chair he’d bought for the editor at auction.
“The liquid goes on Tuesday. Today we publish our sup-
plements!”
“A lot you’re going to get for your free classified ads, but we
already got money for our liquid.”
“All right, we’ll work it out with the night editor. Give your
ad to Pasha, he’s just going over to the night desk now.”
The editor in chief sat down to read the lead article. His
pursuit of this diverting pastime was immediately interrupted
when the artist came in.
“Aha!” said the editor in chief. “Very good. We’ve got an idea
for a caricature, based on the latest telegrams from Germany.”
“Something like this,” the artist said. “A steel helmet and
Germany’s general situation . . .”
“Sounds good. Show me what you come up with.”
The artist went to his section. He took a square of What-
man paper and sketched a skinny dog on it in pencil. He put
a spiked German helmet on the dog’s head. Then he started
writing in the captions. He wrote the word “Germany” on the
animal’s body in block letters, “The Danzig Corridor” on the
296 ✦ in moscow
curly tail, “Dreams of Revanche” on the jaw, “The Dawes Plan”
on the collar, and “Stresemann” on the lolling tongue. The art-
ist put Poincaré in front of the dog, holding a piece of meat.
The artist had also intended to put a caption on the piece of
meat, but it was small, and the caption didn’t fit. Someone less
quick-witted than a newspaper caricaturist might have found
himself at a loss, but the artist didn’t even blink. He drew a
label coming off the meat like the label tied with string to the
neck of a bottle, and wrote “French Proposals of a Security
Guarantee” on it in tiny letters. The artist wrote “Poincaré”
on Poincaré’s stomach so that no one would confuse him with
some other government figure. The drawing was ready.
Foreign magazines, a large pair of scissors, and jars of ink
and whitewash covered the tables in the art section. Scattered
on the floor were cut-off scraps of photographs: someone’s
shoulder, someone’s legs, and parts of a landscape.
Five artists sat brightening photographs by scraping them
with Gillette razors and sharpening the images by touching
them up with ink and whitewash. Then on the back they wrote
their signature and the size (“3 ¾ square,” “2 columns,” and so
on—notes for the zincographers).
A foreign delegation was sitting in an editor’s office. The
office interpreter looked at the speaking foreigner’s face, and
then, addressing the editor, said, “Comrade Arnaut would like
to know . . .”
They were discussing the structure of the Soviet newspaper.
While the interpreter told the editor what Comrade Arnaut
wanted to know, Arnaut himself, in his velvet bicycling trou-
sers, and the rest of the foreigners gazed curiously at the red
pen with a No. 86 nib that was leaning in a corner of the room.
The nib was almost touching the ceiling, and the pen, at its
widest part, was as thick around as an average person’s torso.
One could have actually written with this pen, since the nib was
a real one, although it was bigger than a large pike in size.

“Oh-ho-ho!” the foreigners laughed. “Colossal!”
The ink pen had been presented to the editorial office at
the worker-correspondents’ congress.
The editor, sitting on Vorobyaninov’s chair, smiled and ex-
plained, nodding first at the pen, then at the guests.
The shouting in the editor in chief’s office continued. Per-
sitsky brought over an article by Semashko, so the editor in chief
immediately crossed the chess column out of the mock-up of
the third strip. Maestro Sudeikin wasn’t even fighting to keep
the marvelous étude by Neunyvako anymore. Now he was just
trying to keep enough space for the problem solutions, at least.
After a struggle more intense than his struggle with Lasker at
the San Sebastian tournament, the maestro won himself a little
space at the expense of “In Court and About Town.”
Semashko was sent down to typography. The editor in chief
buried himself in the lead article once again. The secretary was
determined to finish it no matter what, purely out of sporting
interest. Just as he got to the part reading “However, the con-
tents of the last pact are such that if the League of Nations rati-
fies it, then we’ll have to accept that . . . ,” “In Court and About
Town,” a hairy man, walked up to him. The editor in chief
kept reading, purposefully not looking at “In Court and About
Town” and making unnecessary notes in the lead article.
“In Court and About Town” came around the other side of
the table and said huffily, “I don’t understand.”
“Well, then,” the editor in chief said, trying to stall. “What’s
wrong?”
“What’s wrong is that ‘In Court and About Town’ didn’t
run on Wednesday, on Friday ‘In Court and About Town’
didn’t run, and on Thursday the only thing that made it from
the overmatter was the alimony decisions, while for Saturday
they’re taking out a trial that all the other papers have been
writing about for a long time already, but we . . .”
298 ✦ in moscow
“Where are they writing about it?” the editor in chief
shouted. “I haven’t read anything.”
“It’s going to be everywhere tomorrow, but we’ll be late
again.”
“And when you were assigned the Chubarov case, what did
you write? It was impossible to get a single line from you. But
I know. You were writing about the Chubarovites for the eve-
ning paper.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. People told me.”
“In that case I know who told you. Persitsky told you, the
same Persitsky who everyone in Moscow knows is using office
resources to send material to Leningrad.”
“Pasha!” the editor in chief said quietly. “Call Persitsky in.”
“In Court and Around Town” sat indifferently on the win-
dowsill. Behind him one could see a garden in which birds
puttered around and people played gorodki. The litigation
dragged on for a long time. The editor in chief resolved it with
a clever move: he threw out the chess and put “In Court and
Around Town” in its place. He issued a warning to Persitsky.
Five o’clock, the most feverish editorial moment, was upon
them. A faint smoke wafted above the warmed-up typewriters.
Writers dictated in haste-harshened voices. The head typist
shouted at the good-for-nothings who’d stealthily managed to
slip their material to the head of the line.
Up and down the corridor paced the staff poet, the kind
who writes:
Listen, earth,
The rivers are waking up,
From the mine shafts,
From the plowing,
From lathes . . .

From every
Miniature
Library
Sounds a hundred-voiced roar in waves . . .
He was courting a typist whose modest hips unleashed his po-

etic feelings. He would lead her to a window at the end of
the corridor and speak words of love, to which the girl would
reply, “I have lots of overtime today and I’m very busy.” This
meant that she loved another. Then the poet would go home
and write poetry to console himself:
Your gaze, so alluring, tempts me,
The Caucasus is just in view.
Your lips, your waist so sultry—
Oh, I am done in by you!
The poet got in everyone’s way and addressed everyone he

knew with the suspiciously monotonous plea: “Give me ten ko-
peks for the streetcar!”
He wandered into the worker-correspondents’ department.
The poet bumped around between the tables where the letter-
readers were working and fingered the heaps of correspon-
dence, then renewed his attempts. The letter-readers, the
sternest people in the entire newspaper (rendered this way
by the need to read up to a hundred letters a day scrawled by
hands more used to the ax, painter’s brush, or wheelbarrow
than to writing), remained silent.
The poet went off on another expedition and eventually
migrated into the business office. But there he not only did
not receive ten kopeks, he was even subjected to attack by Av-
dotyev, a Young Communist, who suggested that the poet join
the office motorists’ club. The poet’s lovelorn soul was envel-
oped in a cloud of gasoline fumes. He took two steps away,
shifted into third gear, and vanished from the scene.
300 ✦ in moscow
Avdotyev didn’t care a whit. He believed in the victory of the
automotive idea. He went to the editor in chief’s office and
began the fight surreptitiously, like a sapper (which also kept
the editor in chief from finishing the lead article).
“Listen, Alexander Iosifovich. Now wait a minute, this is
serious,” Avdotyev said, sitting down on the editor in chief’s
desk. “We’ve started a motoring club. We don’t have an auto-
mobile yet, but we want to buy one. Would the office loan us
five hundred rubles or so for eight months?”
“No doubt about that.”
“What? You think it’s dead in the water?”
“I don’t think so, I know so. How many members are there
in your club?”
“A whole lot.”
So far the entire club consisted of its organizer, but Avdo-
tyev wasn’t spreading that around.
“We can get a car at the graveyard for five hundred rubles.
Yegorov already checked it out. He said that the repairs will
cost five hundred, tops. A thousand in all. So I’m thinking to
get about twenty people together at fifty a head. But it’ll be
sensational. We’ll learn how to drive a car. Yegorov will be in
charge. And three months later, by August, we’ll all know how
to drive, we’ve got a car, and everyone can take turns going
wherever he wants.”
“And the five hundred rubles for buying it?”
“The office mutual-aid fund will give it to us on interest.
We’ll pay it off. So what do you say, should I sign you up?”
But the editor in chief was already balding and worked a lot.
He was at the mercy of his family and apartment. He enjoyed
lying down on the couch for a spell after dinner and reading
Pravda before bed. He thought about it and refused.
“You old man!” Avdotyev said.
Avdotyev walked up to every desk and repeated his inflam-
matory speeches. His words had a dubious effect on the old

men (which was what he considered all employees over twenty
years of age to be). They made their sour-faced excuses, citing
the fact that they were already friends of children and regu-
larly paid twenty kopeks a year to further the good work of
helping the dear little tykes. As a matter of fact, they would be
happy to join the new club, but . . .
“But what?” Avdotyev shouted. “If we already had a car
today? Huh? If somebody put a midnight-blue six-cylinder
Packard right on your desk for fifteen kopeks a year, and the
government picked up the gasoline and oil!”
“Go on, now!” the old men said. “It’s final deadline, you’re
keeping us from working!”
The automotive idea was sputtering out and starting to
smoke. At last, a pioneer was found for the new enterprise.
Persitsky leaped away from the telephone with a crash, heard
Avdotyev out, and said, “You’re not approaching this the right
way. Give me that paper. We’re starting over.”
So Persitsky, along with Avdotyev, made the rounds again.
“Hey, you old mattress,” Persitsky would say to a blue-eyed
youth, “you don’t even have to spend any money on it. Do you
have any 1928 lottery bonds? For how much? Fifty? All the bet-
ter. You give your bonds to our club. We’ll build the capital out
of these bonds. By August the bonds will pay up and we’ll be
able to buy an automobile.”
“And if my lottery bond wins?” the young man said defen-
sively.
“How much are you supposed to win?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“Then we’ll buy automobiles with that fifty thousand. And
if I win, we will, too. And if Avdotyev wins, we will, too. In a
word, no matter whose bond wins, the money goes to mo-
torcars. You get it now? You odd duck! You’ll be driving your
own car down the Georgian Military Road! Mountains! You
fool! And ‘In Court and About Town,’ and current events, and
302 ✦ in moscow
the city desk, and that little doll, you know, the one who does
the movies, they’ll be driving right behind you in their own
cars . . . So? What about it? You’ll go courting . . .”
Deep down, each holder of a lottery bond believes that it’s
impossible to win. But in spite of this, he regards his friends’
and neighbors’ bonds with great jealousy. More than anything
else, he’s afraid that they’ll win, while he, the eternal failure,
will be left high and dry again. Therefore, the bondholders’
faith in their editorial neighbors’ winning pushed them in-
exorably into the lap of the new club. The only fear troubling
them was that not a single bond would win. But for some rea-
son, this seemed highly unlikely. Besides, the motoring club
wouldn’t lose a thing: one car from the graveyard was guaran-
teed from the capital collected on the bonds.
They found twenty people in five minutes. Once the deal
was already done, in walked the editor in chief, who had sniffed
out something about the motoring club’s tempting future.
“So then, kids,” he said. “How about I sign up, too?”
“Go ahead and sign up, old man, why not,” Avdotyev an-
swered. “Just not for our club. Unfortunately, we’ve already
collected our full complement, and we’ve stopped taking on
new members until 1929. But you’d do better to sign up for
the friends of children. It’s cheap and easy. Twenty kopeks a
year, and you don’t need to drive anywhere.”
The editor in chief hesitated, remembered that he really
was getting to be older; then he sighed and went off to finish
reading his diverting lead article.
In the corridor, he was stopped by a handsome man with a
Circassian face who said, “Tell me, comrade, where’s the office
of the newspaper The Lathe?”
It was the smooth operator.

26
Conversation with a Naked Engineer
ostap’s appearance in the editorial office was preceded by a

series of events of no small importance.
Since he hadn’t found Ernest Pavlovich at home during the
day (the apartment was locked, and the inhabitant was prob-
ably at work), the smooth operator decided to stop by later.
Meanwhile he walked up and down the city streets. In his thirst
for activity he crossed streets, stopped in squares, made eyes
at policemen, helped ladies get into buses, and, in general,
looked as though all Moscow, with its monuments, streetcars,
Mosselprom vendors, little churches, train stations, and adver-
tising columns, was included on his beat. He mingled with his
guests, chatted fondly with them, and found a warm word for
each of them. The reception of such an enormous quantity
of guests tired the smooth operator somewhat. In addition,
it was already past five, and he had to head over to Engineer
Shchukin’s.
But fate had determined that Ostap would be held up for
about two hours to sign a police report before his rendezvous
with Ernest Pavlovich.
On Theater Square the smooth operator was run over by
a horse. The shy white animal raced into him completely out
of the blue and shoved him with its bony chest. Bender fell
down, bathed in sweat. It was very hot. The white horse loudly
begged his forgiveness. Ostap got up quickly. His powerful
✦ 305 ✦
body had received not the slightest injury. It was all the more
reason—and provided all the more opportunity—for a scene.
The hospitable, courteous host of Moscow was unrecogniz-
able. He stalked menacingly toward the cabbie, an embarrassed
old man, made a fist, and walloped him in his cotton-padded
back. The old man bore his punishment patiently. A police-
man ran up.
“I demand a police report!” Ostap said, his feelings running
high.
The metallic notes of a person whose most cherished sense
of self has been injured rang in his voice. And so, right next
to the wall of the Maly Theater, on the very spot where the
monument to the great Russian playwright Ostrovsky would be
erected, Ostap signed the police report. He also gave a short in-
terview to Persitsky, who’d come running over. Persitsky wasn’t
above dirty work. He neatly wrote the victim’s first and last
names in his notepad and rushed on.
Ostap proudly set off on his distant way. He went up to the
seventh floor of Shchukin’s building, taking two steps at a time,
still upset about the white horse’s attack and regretting, after
the fact, that he hadn’t managed to land the cabbie one in the
neck, too. Then a heavy drop fell on his head. He looked up.
A small waterfall of dirty water poured down from the landing
above right into his eyes.
“Someone ought to get a punch in the mug for tricks like
this,” Ostap decided.
He rushed up the stairs. A naked man suffering from a bad
outbreak of impetigo sat at the door to Shchukin’s apartment
with his back to the stairs. He sat right on the tile floor, clutch-
ing his head and rocking back and forth. Water poured out
of the crack between the apartment door and the jamb and
surged around the naked man.
“Oh-h-h . . .” the naked man moaned. “Oh-h-h . . .”
306 ✦ in moscow
“Tell me, are you the one pouring water everywhere?” Ostap
asked, annoyed. “What kind of place is this to take a bath? You’re
crazy!”
The engineer looked dimly at Ostap and sniffled.
“Listen, citizen, instead of crying, maybe you should just go
to the banya. Just look at yourself. You look like some kind of
picador!”
“The key!” the engineer muttered, his teeth chattering.
“What about a key?” Ostap asked.
“To the apa-a-artment.”
“With a room full of money?”
The naked man hiccupped with impressive speed.
Nothing could throw Ostap off. He was beginning to see
what was going on. And when he finally figured it out, he al-
most fell over the banister, laughing so hard he couldn’t have
stopped if he tried.
“So you can’t get into your apartment? But it’s so simple!”
Ostap took care to avoid dirtying himself on the naked man as
he walked over to the door, stuck a long yellow thumbnail into
the keyhole of the American lock, and carefully turned it up
and down and back and forth.
The door opened soundlessly, and the naked man ran into
the flooded apartment with a joyous cry. All the faucets were
running noisily. The water in the dining room had formed a
whirlpool. In the bedroom the water was a calm pond, along
whose surface bed slippers glided, quietly, like swans. Cigarette
butts gathered in the corner like a sleepy school of fish.
Vorobyaninov’s chair was in the dining room, where the flow
of water was strongest. Little white breakers were lapping at all
four of its legs. The chair was trembling slightly and seemed
like it was on the verge of floating away from its pursuer. Ostap
sat down on it and tucked his feet under him. Ernest Pavlo-
vich, who’d come to his senses, was shouting “Pardon! Pardon!”
conversation with a naked engineer ✦ 307

while he closed the faucets, rinsed off, and appeared before
Bender naked to the waist, his wet trousers rolled up to the
knee.
“You saved me, plain and simple!” he shouted excitedly.
“Beg pardon, but I can’t shake your hand, I’m all wet. I just
about went crazy, you know.”
“That looked to be where you were heading.”
“I ended up in a terrible situation.”
And Ernest Pavlovich relived the terrible event again, cloud-
ing over and laughing nervously by turns as he recounted for
the smooth operator all the details of his troubles.
“If it hadn’t been for you, I would’ve been lost,” the engi-
neer concluded.
“Yes,” said Ostap. “I had the same kind of thing happen to
me. It was even a little bit worse.”
The engineer was now so interested in everything pertain-
ing to such stories that he even put down the bucket he was
using to bail with and listened raptly.
Bender began, “It was just like what happened to you, but
it was winter, and it wasn’t in Moscow, it was in Mirgorod, back
in ’19, in one of those happy little stretches between Makhno
and Tyutyunnik. I was living with a certain family there. Ab-
solute Uke yokels! Typical private-property owners, with their
one-story house and all kinds of junk. And I should note that
as far as plumbing and similar comforts go, Mirgorod only has
open sewage pits. So, there I went and ducked out one night
in the snow in nothing but my skivvies. I wasn’t afraid of catch-
ing cold, it was only going to take a minute. I slipped out and
automatically shut the door behind me. It was below zero out-
side. I knocked, but no one opened the door. You can’t stand
still, you’ll freeze to death! So I knock and run around, knock
and run around, but no one opens the door. And the main
thing is that not a single damn person in the whole house was
asleep! It’s a terrible night. The dogs are howling. There’s
308 ✦ in moscow
shooting somewhere. And I’m running around the snowdrifts
in my summer drawers. I knocked for a whole hour. I just
about gave up the ghost. And why didn’t they open the door,
do you think? They were hiding all their goods, sewing kerenki
into a pillow. They thought it was a search party. I just about
killed them all after.”
All this was very close to the engineer’s heart.
“So,” Ostap said, “you’re engineer Shchukin?”
“Yes. But please, don’t go spreading it around. It’s embar-
rassing, to tell the truth.”
“Oh, as you wish! Entre nous, tête-à-tête. Under four eyes, as
the French say. But I’m here to see you on business, Comrade
Shchukin.”
“I’ll be extremely glad to help.”
“Grand merci. It’s nothing. Your spouse asked me to stop by
and take this chair. She said she needs it to make a matched
set. And she’ll send you an armchair.”
“Of course, be my guest!” Ernest Pavlovich exclaimed. “I’ll
be happy to! But why should you take the trouble? I can bring
it over myself. Today.”
“No, no, whatever for? It’s nothing for me, a trifle. I live
nearby, it’s not difficult for me.”
The engineer rushed nervously to and fro and accompa-
nied the smooth operator all the way to the door, which he was
afraid to go through, even though the key had been carefully
secured in his wet pants pocket.
The former student Ivanopulo received one more chair. True,

its upholstery was a little damaged, but still, it was an excellent
chair, and what’s more, it was exactly like the first one.
Ostap wasn’t bothered by the failure of this chair, the fourth
so far. He knew all of fate’s little tricks.

He reasoned, “Happiness always comes at the last minute. If
you’re at the Smolensk market and you need to get on street-
car No. 4, and apart from the No. 4 the 5, 17, 15, 30, 31, B,
D, and two bus lines also go through there, then you can be
certain that the D will go by first, then two 15s in a row, which
is completely unnatural, and then the 17, the 30, several Bs, a
D again, the 31, the 5, another 17, and another B. And then,
just when you start thinking that there’s no such thing as a
No. 4 on the planet, it slowly comes up from Bryansk Station,
festooned with people. But actually getting into a streetcar is
no problem for the experienced streetcar passenger. All you
need is for the streetcar to get there. But if you need to get the
No. 15, then you may be quite sure that first a multitude of all
the other streetcars will go by, even the damned 4 will go by
eight times in a row, but the 15, the one that was running every
five minutes such a short while ago, will now start appearing
no more than once a day. All you need is patience, and you’ll
catch it.”
Then the huge, dark mass of the chair that had sailed off
into the depths of October Station’s loading platform came
crashing into his elegant deductive system. Thinking about
this chair was unpleasant and evoked oppressive doubts.
The smooth operator was in the same situation as a gambler
at the roulette table who bets exclusively on single numbers,
one of that particular breed of person who wants to win no less
than thirty-six times his bet. Bender’s situation was even worse:
the concessionaires were playing a kind of roulette where
eleven numbers out of twelve were zero. And even that same
twelfth number had gone out past the field of vision, and no
one knew where the hell it was, even though it might be the
very one containing marvelous winnings.
This chain of woeful thoughts was broken by the director’s
arrival. Just the sight of him provoked unpleasant feelings in
Ostap.
310 ✦ in moscow
“Oho!” the technical director said. “I see you’ve been enjoy-
ing some success. Just don’t joke around with me. Why did you
leave the chair in the hall? To have a little fun at my expense?”
“Comrade Bender,” the marshal mumbled.
“Oh, why are you getting on my nerves! Bring it on over,
bring it here quick. You can see that the new chair I’m sitting on
has increased the value of your acquisition many times over.”
Ostap tilted his head and squinted.
“Don’t torment the wee babe,” he finally said, in a low bass.
“Where’s the chair? Why didn’t you bring it back?”
Ippolit Matveevich’s halting report was interrupted by
shouts from the audience, ironic applause, and devious ques-
tions. Vorobyaninov finished his report under general laugh-
ter from the hall.
“What about my instructions?” Ostap asked threateningly.
“How many times have I told you stealing is sinful! Even back
then in Stargorod, when you wanted to rob my wife, Madame
Gritsatsueva, even back then I knew you had the nature of a
petty thief. The worst your talents can bring you is six months
without strict isolation. It seemed like a low-level operation for
the giant of thought and father of Russian democracy, and
look at the results. A chair that was in your hands slipped away.
Even worse, you’ve ruined an easy mark! Just try going on a
second visit there now. This Absalom will rip your head off.
You were lucky that idiotic turn of events helped you out, oth-
erwise you’d be sitting behind bars waiting in vain for me to
bring you packages. Keep in mind that I’m not going to be
bringing you any packages. What’s Hecuba to me? After all,
you’re not my mother, my sister, or my lover.”
Ippolit Matveevich, who was fully aware of his worthlessness,
stood hanging his head.
“Here’s the thing, my good man, I can see that it’s totally
pointless for us to work together. In any case, working with
such a poorly cultured companion as yourself for forty percent

seems absurd to me. Volens or wollen Sie nicht, I’m going to have
to set out some new conditions.”
Ippolit Matveevich started breathing again. Until then, he’d
tried not to.
“Yes, my old friend, you’ve got a bad case of organizational
impotence and pale infirmity. In proportion to which your
shares are going down. Tell me the truth: do you want twenty
percent?”
Ippolit Matveevich shook his head firmly.
“But why not? Is that not enough for you?”
“N-no, it’s not.”
“But after all, that’s thirty thousand rubles! How much do
you want, then?”
“I’d agree to forty.”
“Highway robbery!” said Ostap, imitating the intonation
the marshal had used during the historical haggling in the
dvornik’s basement. “Thirty thousand isn’t enough for you? Do
you need the key to a room, too?”
“You’re the one who needs the key to a room,” Ippolit Ma-
tveevich babbled.
“Take twenty before it’s too late, or I might change my mind.
Take advantage of the fact that I’m in a good mood.”
Vorobyaninov had long ago lost the self-satisfied expression
with which he’d begun the search for the diamonds.
The ice that had started breaking up back in the dvornik’s
basement, the ice that had thundered, cracked, and crashed
into the granite embankment, had long ago broken into
pieces and melted away. There was no more ice. Instead, there
was water that had spread out in all directions, water that was
heedlessly carrying Ippolit Matveevich away, tossing him from
side to side, first bashing him into a log, then knocking him
into his chairs, and finally tearing him away from these chairs.
Ippolit Matveevich felt an inexpressible fear. Everything scared
him. The river carried along trash, an oil slick, broken chicken
312 ✦ in moscow
coops, a dead fish, and someone’s awful hat. Perhaps it was
Father Fyodor’s hat, the duck-billed cap that had been wrested
from his head in Rostov? Who knows! They could not see the
end of the path. The former marshal of the gentry wasn’t wash-
ing ashore, but neither did he have the strength or will to swim
against the current.
He was carried off into the open sea of adventure.

27
Two Visits
like a bare-bottomed tot waiting for a new diaper who

opens and closes his little waxy fists, waves his tiny legs, turns
his frilly-capped head (the size of a large Antonov apple) in
circles, and blows bubbles from his mouth, all without ceasing
for a single second, Absalom Iznurenkov was in a state of eter-
nal agitation. He waved his fat little legs, turned his smoothly
shaved chin in circles, oohed and aahed, and gestured with
his hairy arms as though he were doing exercises with elastic
bands.
He led a very busy life. He was everywhere at once, suggest-
ing something, racing down the street like a scared chicken,
and speaking rapidly out loud, as though he were calculating
the insurance for a stone structure with an iron roof. The es-
sence of his life and activity came down to the fact that he was
physically incapable of devoting himself to any kind of work,
object, or thought for longer than one minute.
If people didn’t like one of his jokes, if it didn’t provoke
immediate laughter, Iznurenkov didn’t do what other people
do and start trying to persuade the editor that it was a good
joke and just needed a little thought to be fully appreciated.
He immediately suggested a new joke. “What’s bad is bad,” he
would say. “Of course.”
Absalom Vladimirovich caused such chaos in stores, he ap-
peared and disappeared so quickly before the amazed shop
clerks’ eyes, he bought a box of chocolates so expansively, that
✦ 315 ✦
the cashier girl expected to get no less than thirty rubles from
him. But Iznurenkov, dancing at the cashier window and grab-
bing at his tie as if he were being strangled, would throw a
crumpled three-ruble note onto the little slab of glass and run
off, bleating his thanks.
If this person could have stopped himself for even just two
hours, the most unexpected events would have occurred. Per-
haps Iznurenkov would have sat down at a desk and written an
excellent story, or an application for a grant from the office
mutual-aid fund, or a new article of the law governing the use
of living space, or a book entitled How to Dress Well and Behave
in Society.
But he could not. His madly working legs carried him off,
his thoughts hopped around, and his pencil flew out of his
flailing hands like an arrow.
Iznurenkov ran around his room, the seals on his furniture
shaking like the earrings of a dancing Gypsy girl. An amused
girl from the suburbs was sitting on the chair.
“Oh, my! Oh, my!” Absalom Vladimirovich was shouting.
“Divine! ‘The queen enlivens the feast with her luxurious voice
and glance.’ Oh, my! High class! You are Queen Margot.”
The queen from the suburbs, who didn’t understand any of
this, laughed respectfully.
“Go on, then, eat some chocolate, go on, I beg you! Oh, my!
Oh, my! Charming!”
He kissed the queen’s hands time and again, went into rap-
tures over her modest attire, and kept handing her the tom-
cat and asking ingratiatingly, “Don’t you think he looks like a
parrot? A lion! He’s a lion! A real lion! Tell me, isn’t he really
fluffy to the extreme? And the tail! The tail! Tell me, it really is
a large tail, isn’t it? Oh, my!”
Then the cat ran into a corner of the room, and Absalom
Vladimirovich, pressing his hands to his puffy, milk-white
breast, started exchanging bows with someone in the window.
316 ✦ in moscow
Suddenly some valve in his daring head popped open and he
started cracking provocative jokes about his guest’s physical
and spiritual qualities.
“Tell me, is that pin really made of glass? Oh, my! Oh, my!
What a sparkle! You’ve blinded me, honest to goodness! And
tell me, is Paris really a big city? Is the Eiffel Tower really there?
Oh, my! Oh, my! What hands! What a nose! Oh, my!”
He didn’t embrace the girl. It was enough for him to pay her
compliments. And he paid them without cease. The stream
was interrupted by Ostap’s sudden appearance.
The smooth operator toyed with a piece of paper and in-
quired severely, “Does Iznurenkov live here? Are you he?”
Absalom Vladimirovich peered anxiously into the visitor’s
stony face. He tried to read in his eyes which claims would be
brought against him this time: a fine for breaking a window in
a streetcar during a conversation, a summons into the people’s
court for delinquency on his rent payments, or a subscription
campaign to a magazine for the blind.
“What’s all this, comrade,” Bender said harshly. “This just
isn’t done, chasing out an official courier like that.”
“What courier?” Iznurenkov said, horrified.
“You know good and well yourself. Now I’m going to take
away this furniture. I’ll ask you to free up that chair, citizeness,”
Ostap said sternly.
The citizeness had just been having the most lyric poets’
verses quoted to her, but she stood up.
“No! Sit down!” Iznurenkov shouted, covering the chair
with his body. “They have no right!”
“You’d do better to keep quiet about your rights, citizen!
You need to be conscious of your responsibilities. Free up that
chair! You have to obey the law!”
With these words, Ostap seized the chair and shook it in
the air.
“I’m taking this chair away!” Bender announced firmly.
two visits ✦ 317

“No, you’re not!”
“How am I not taking it away, when I am doing precisely
that,” laughed Ostap, taking the chair out into the hall.
Absalom kissed the queen’s hand, tilted his head, and ran
after the stern judge, who was already going down the stairs.
“But I’m telling you that you don’t have the right! By law
the furniture can be here for two weeks, but it’s only been
three days! I could still pay!”
Iznurenkov circled Ostap like a honeybee. In this manner
they both ended up on the street. Absalom Vladimirovich ran
after the chair all the way to the corner. There he saw some
sparrows hopping around a pile of manure. His eyes lit up
as he looked at them, and he muttered to himself, threw up
his hands, and started bubbling over with laughter. He said,
“High class! Oh, my! Oh, my! What an idea for a new twist!!”
Distracted by working out his idea, Iznurenkov happily
turned around and ran back home, hopping and skipping. He
only remembered the chair once he got back and found the
girl from the suburbs standing in the middle of the room.
Ostap took the chair home in a horse-cab.
“Watch and learn,” he said to Ippolit Matveevich. “I took
the chair with my bare hands. For free. Do you understand?”
After they opened up the chair, Ippolit Matveevich grew sad.
“Our chances keep getting better and better,” Ostap said.
“But we don’t have a kopek. Tell me, your departed mother-in-
law didn’t like to have her little joke, did she?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe there are no diamonds at all?”
Ippolit Matveevich waved his hands in negation so hard that
his jacket hitched up.
“In that case, everything’s marvelous. We’ll hope that Ivano-
pulo’s property is only increased by one more chair.”
“The papers wrote about you today, Comrade Bender,” said
Ippolit Matveevich ingratiatingly.
318 ✦ in moscow
Ostap frowned. He didn’t like it when the press got up a
howl over his name.
“What’s this nonsense? Which paper was it?”
Ippolit Matveevich grandly opened The Lathe. “Right here.
In the ‘What Happened To-Day’ column.”
Ostap calmed down a little, because he was only afraid of
items in unmasking columns such as “Our Pinpricks” and
“Take Abusers of Power to Court.”
And indeed, in the “What Happened To-Day” column,
printed in nonpareil, was:
Run Over by a Horse
Yesterday on Sverdlov Square, citizen O. Bender was run

over by the horse of cabbie No. 8974. The victim suffered
only a mild scare.
“It was the cabbie who suffered a mild scare, not me,” O.
Bender grumbled. “Idiots. They write and write, but they have
no idea what they’re writing. Oh! It’s The Lathe. Very, very nice.
You know, Vorobyaninov, they might have written this notice
sitting on our chair? An amusing story!”
The smooth operator was lost in thought. A reason for a
visit to the editorial office had been found.
Ostap found out from the editor in chief that all the rooms
to the right and left all along the hallway were Lathe offices, so
he lent his face a simpleton’s expression and started going on
his rounds of the offices. He needed to find out which room
the chair was in.
He made his way into the local labor union committee
room, where a meeting of young motorists was already un-
der way, but since he immediately saw the chair wasn’t there,
he migrated on to the next room. In the business office he
acted as if he were submitting an application; in the worker-
correspondents’ room he inquired where the waste paper was
two visits ✦ 319

being sold, like it said in the ad; in the editor in chief’s office
he clarified the conditions of subscription; and in the feuilleton-
writers’ room he asked where he could submit notice that he’d
lost his identification papers.
In this manner he proceeded all the way to the editor’s
room, where the editor, sitting on the concessionaires’ chair,
was trumpeting into the telephone receiver.
Ostap needed time to study the location carefully.
“Comrade editor, there’s some downright libel about me
printed here,” Bender said.
“What libel?” the editor said.
Ostap took his time unfolding the copy of The Lathe. He
looked back at the door and saw an American lock on it. If he
cut out a piece of glass, he’d easily be able to stick his hand
through and unlock the lock from inside.
The editor read the note Ostap showed him.
“But where are you seeing libel in this?”
“What do you mean! Right here: ‘The victim suffered only
a mild scare.’ ”
“I don’t understand you.”
Ostap looked tenderly at the editor and the chair. “As if I’d
go being scared by some cabbie! You’ve shamed me before the
whole world. You need to print a retraction.”
“Now look here, citizen,” the editor said. “No one’s shamed
you, and we don’t print retractions of such trivial issues.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, you haven’t heard the last of me,”
said Ostap as he walked out of the office.
He’d already seen everything he needed.
320 ✦ in moscow
28
The Excellent Jailhouse Basket
the stargorod division of the ephemeral “Sword and Plow-

share,” along with the fine young men from Quickpack, had
formed quite a long line outside the Grainproduct flour and
meal shop. Passersby stopped.
“What’s the line for?” citizens asked.
In a boring line at a store, there is always one person whose
loquacity increases the farther he stands from the store’s front
door. Polesov was standing furthest of all.
“Oh, what we’ve come to!” the fire chief was saying. “Soon
we’ll all be living on oilcakes. It wasn’t even this bad in ’19.
There’s only four days’ worth of flour in the whole town.”
The citizens twisted their mustaches mistrustfully, started ar-
guing with Polesov, and cited Stargorod Pravda. Having proved
sure as two and two is four that the town had all the flour it
could ever need and that there was no reason to cause a panic,
the citizens ran home, got all their cash, and formed a line for
flour.
Once they’d bought out all the flour in the shop, the fine
young men from Quickpack switched to the grocery store and
formed a line for tea and sugar. In three days Stargorod was
racked by crisis-level deficits of provisions and goods. Repre-
sentatives of co-ops and government stores suggested limiting
the sale of goods to a pound of sugar and five pounds of flour
per person until the provisions that were en route could reach
town.
✦ 321 ✦
An antidote to this was discovered the very next day. The
first person in the sugar line was Alkhen. Behind him was his
wife Sashkhen, Pasha Emilevich, the four Yakovleviches, and
all fifteen of the old charity cases, in their toile du nord fin-
ery. After wresting twenty pounds of sugar from the Stargaico
store, Alkhen took his line over to the other co-op, bowing
along the way to Pasha Emilevich, who had already managed
to eat up his allotted pound of sugar. Pasha poured the sugar
into a little mound on the palm of his hand and tossed it into
his wide maw. Alkhen was busy all day. To cut down on losses
from his wares drying out or settling during shipment, he took
Pasha Emilevich out of the line and used him for hauling their
purchases to the market. There Alkhen shyly resold his sugar,
flour, tea, and cotton voile to private vendors.
Polesov was standing in line mostly out of principle. He
didn’t have any money and couldn’t buy anything anyway. He
wandered from line to line listening to conversations, making
biting remarks, raising his eyebrows significantly, and proph-
esying. As a result of his hints and allusions the town filled with
rumors that some kind of underground organization having
to do with a sward and a cow fair was coming to town.
Governor Dyadyev made ten thousand in one day. No one
knew how much the chairman of the stock exchange commit-
tee made, not even his wife.
The thought that he belonged to a secret society gave him
no peace. The rumors going through town had him utterly
terrified. After a sleepless night, the chairman of the stock ex-
change committee decided that only a clean confession could
shorten his jail time.
“Listen, Henrietta,” he said to his wife. “It’s time to transfer
the textile factory to your brother.”
“Why, are they really going to come?” Henrietta Kislyarskaya
asked.
322 ✦ in moscow
“They might. Seeing as how there’s no free trade in this
country, I’m going to have to go to jail at some point, right?”
“So is it time to get your underclothes ready? Oh, my un-
happy life. I’ll have to be bringing you packages all the time.
Why don’t you become a government office worker? My
brother is a union member, and he’s fine! But no, this one just
has to be a red merchant!”
Henrietta didn’t know that fate had elected her husband
chairman of the stock exchange committee. So she was calm.
“I might not come home tonight,” Kislyarsky said. “In that
case, come tomorrow with a package. Just don’t bring any var-
eniki, please. How enjoyable is it going to be for me to eat cold
vareniki?”
“Maybe you could take a primus stove with you?”
“As if they’d let me keep a primus in my cell! Give me my
basket.”
Kislyarsky had a special jailhouse basket. It was made-to-
order and was completely universal. When it was unfolded, it
turned into a bed, while when it was halfway unfolded, it was
a table. Apart from that, it was also a perfect substitute for a
wardrobe, since it had shelves, hooks, and drawers. His wife
put a cold supper and some fresh underclothes in the univer-
sal basket.
“You don’t have to see me off,” her experienced husband
said. “If Rubens comes by for his money, tell him we don’t have
any. Good-bye! Rubens can wait.”
And Kislyarsky walked gravely out, carrying his jailhouse
basket.
“Where are you going, citizen Kislyarsky?” Polesov called
to him. He was standing by a telegraph pole shouting en-
couragement to a communications worker, who was sticking
his iron claws into the wood and making his way up to the
insulators.
the excellent jailhouse basket ✦ 323

“I’m going to confess,” Kislyarsky answered.
“To confess what?”
“The Sword and the Plowshare.”
Viktor Mikhailovich was dumbfounded. Kislyarsky thrust
out his egg-shaped tummy, girded with a dacha-style belt with
a removable case for his watch, and headed calmly off to the
province district attorney’s office.
Viktor Mikhailovich flapped his wings and flew off to Dya-
dyev’s. “Kislyarsky’s a provocateur!” the fire chief shouted. “He
just went to inform on us. You can still see him.”
“What? Did he have his basket?” the Stargorod governor
said.
“Yes.”
Dyadyev kissed his wife, shouted for her not to give Rubens
any money if he came by, and rushed headlong outside. Vik-
tor Mikhailovich fidgeted, paced, and groaned, like a chicken
who’s just laid an egg, and ran over to Vladya and Nikesha’s.
Meanwhile, citizen Kislyarsky, slowly strolling along, was
nearing the province district attorney’s office. He ran into Ru-
bens on the way and spoke with him for a long time.
“So how about that money?” Rubens asked.
“Go ask my wife about it.”
“And why do you have a basket?” Rubens asked suspiciously.
“I’m going to the banya.”
“Well, have a nice bath.”
Then Kislyarsky went to the pastry shop of the Stargorod
Union of Consumer Associations (formerly known as the Bon-
bon de Varsovie), where he enjoyed a cup of coffee and ate
a puff pastry. It was time to go repent. The chairman of the
stock exchange committee went into the province district at-
torney’s reception room. It was empty. Kislyarsky went over to
the door, which had “Province District Attorney” written on it,
and knocked politely.
“Come in!” answered the district attorney’s familiar voice.
324 ✦ in moscow
Kislyarsky walked in and stopped short in amazement. His
egg-shaped tummy immediately deflated and shriveled up like
a date. What he saw was totally unexpected.
The desk at which the district attorney sat was surrounded
by the members of the mighty organization “The Sword and
the Plowshare.” Judging by their gestures and weepy voices,
they had confessed to everything.
“There he is,” exclaimed Dyadyev. “The main one, the
Octobrist.”
“First of all, I’m not an Octobrist,” Kislyarsky said, putting
down his jailhouse basket and approaching the desk. “And sec-
ondly, I have always sympathized with the Soviet regime, and
thirdly, the main one isn’t me, it’s Comrade Charushnikov,
whose address . . .”
“Krasnoarmeyskaya Street!” Dyadyev shouted.
“Number three!” indicated Vladya and Nikesha in unison.
“Go into the courtyard and turn left,” added Viktor Mi-
khailovich. “I can show you.”
They brought in Charushnikov twenty minutes later. The
first thing he did was announce that he’d never seen any of
those present in the office in his life. Then, without breaking
stride, he informed on Elena Stanislavovna.
Only after he was in his cell and had changed his underwear
and stretched out on his jailhouse basket did the chairman of
the stock exchange committee feel light and easy.
During the crisis, Madame Gritsatsueva-Bender had man-
aged to lay in enough food products and wares for her little
shop to last at least four months. Now that she’d calmed down,
she grew sad again, remembering her young husband, who
was suffering through meetings of the Lesser Council of Peo-
ple’s Commissars. Not even a visit to the fortune-teller brought
her peace of mind.
Elena Stanislavovna, upset by the disappearance of the
entire Stargorod Areopagus, threw down the cards with dis-

tressing negligence. First the cards proclaimed the end of the
world, then a pay raise, and finally a meeting with her husband
in a government building in the presence of an ill-wisher, the
king of spades. And the fortune-telling session itself ended
rather oddly. Investigators (kings of spades) came and led the
prophetess away to a meeting with the district attorney in a
government building.
Left alone with the parrot, the confused little widow was just
about to leave when suddenly the parrot pecked the cage and
spoke in a human voice for the first time in its life. “Oh, what
we’ve come to!” it said sardonically, and pulled a feather out
from underneath its wing.
Madame Gritsatsueva-Bender threw herself at the door in a
panic. A passionate, halting speech poured out after her. The
ancient bird was so stricken by the investigators’ visit and its
owner’s involuntary departure to a government building that
it began shouting all the words it knew. The largest portion of
its repertoire was occupied by Viktor Mikhailovich Polesov.
“In the presence of the absence of . . .” the bird said, an-
noyed. It flipped upside down on its perch and winked at the
widow, standing frozen at the door, as if to say, “Well now, how
do you like them apples, little widow?”
“Oh, dear Mother!” the little widow moaned.
“What regiment did you serve in?” the parrot asked, in
Bender’s voice. “Wrack and ruin! Europe will help us.”
After the widow’s flight the parrot straightened its dicky and
said the words everyone had been trying vainly to wrest from it
for the past thirty years: “Polly want a cracker!”
The widow ran down the street, wailing. At home, a restless
little old man was waiting for her.
It was Varfolomeyich. “About the ad,” Varfolomeyich said.
“I’ve been waiting for two hours, madam.”
The heavy hoof of premonition struck Gritsatsueva’s heart.
326 ✦ in moscow
“Oh!” the widow sang. “My little soul is weary!”
“Seems that citizen Bender left you? Are you the one who
placed the ad?”
The widow fell onto her sacks of flour.
“What weak little organisms you women have,” Varfolo-
meyich said sweetly. “First and foremost I’d like to clarify the
issue of the reward . . .”
“Oh! Take everything! I don’t care about anything any-
more!” keened the sensitive widow.
“Very good, ma’am. I know the place of residence of your
dear son O. Bender. But what kind of reward will there be?”
“Take everything!” the widow repeated.
“Twenty rubles,” Varfolomeyich said drily.
The widow got up off her sacks. She was coated in flour.
Her white-dusted eyelashes blinked intently.
“How much?” she asked.
“Fifteen rubles,” Varfolomeyich said, backing down on the
price. He could tell that it would be difficult to wrest even
three rubles from the unfortunate woman.
Treading on her sacks, the widow went on the offensive
against the little old man. She called down the heavenly pow-
ers as her witness, and with their help achieved a set price.
“All right, for goodness’ sake, let it be five rubles, then. I’d
just ask for the money in advance. That’s my rule.”
Varfolomeyich dug around in his diary and produced two
articles cut out of the paper. Without letting go of them, he
started reading. “Here, be so good as to look . . . everything’s
in order. So then, you wrote, ‘I beg . . . Comrade Bender, 25–
30 years of age, left home . . . green suit, yellow shoes, and blue
vest.’ Isn’t that right? So then, that’s the Stargorod Pravda. And
here’s what they’re writing about your dear little son in the
capital’s papers. Here we are . . .‘Run over by a horse . . .’ Now
don’t go grieving, dear madam, keep listening . . . ‘Run over

by a horse . . .’ Yes, he’s alive, he’s alive! I’m telling you he’s
alive. Would I really take money for a dead man? Now then.
‘Run over by a horse. Yesterday on Sverdlov Square, citizen
O. Bender was run over by the horse of cabbie No. 8974. The
victim suffered only a mild scare.’ Now then, I’m handing you
over these nice little documents, but you have to give me the
money in advance. It’s a little rule I have.”
The widow, wailing, gave him the money. Her husband,
her dear husband was lying on the distant Muscovite earth in
his yellow shoes while a fire-breathing cab-horse trampled his
blue worsted chest with its hoof.
Varfolomeyich’s sensitive soul was satisfied with the sizeable
reward. He explained to the widow that she could doubtless
find additional traces of her husband in the editorial office of
the newspaper The Lathe, where, of course, they knew every-
thing, and then he left.
After the stunning blow his grandmother’s inglorious end
had dealt him, Varfolomeyich had started making a living with
dogs. He worked the classified ads in Stargorod Pravda. Upon
reading the notice
Lost Germ. Pointer. Brown. Gray
chest, paws, neck. Conceal. will be prosec.
Deliver to Koop. St., 17, 2
and, next to it, the encoded

Found. Bitch, breed unknown, dark yellow.
After three days will consider mine. Perelesh. Lane, 6.
Varfolomeyich would go around to both parties, assure him-

self that it was one and the same bitch, and inform the owner
of his lost dog’s location before the three-day time limit was
up. This brought in an irregular, uncertain income, but af-
ter the collapse of his grandiose plans, even a scrap of string
might come in handy.
328 ✦ in moscow
Father Fyodor’s letter
written in Rostov, in the water-heater The Milky Way,
My dear Katya!
A new woe has befallen me, but I’ll tell you about it later.
I got the money quite quickly, for which I thank you heart-
ily. As soon as I arrived in Rostov I ran over to the address I
had. Newrusscement is a very large establishment and nobody
there even knew Engineer Bruns. I was about ready to despair,
but then I got some good advice. Someone told me to ask at
the personnel desk. So I did. And there they said, yes, we did
have somebody like that working here, he was in management,
but he left us last year, they said. He was tempted over to
Baku, to work in Asiagas as a safety engineer.
Well, my dear little dove, my trip isn’t as short as we
thought. You wrote that the money’s running out. Nothing for
it, Katerina Alexandrovna. It won’t be long now. Arm yourself
with patience, pray to God, and sell my student uniform of
good serge. That won’t be the last of our expenses, either. Be
ready for anything.
Prices in Rostov are terrible. I paid 2 r. 25 kop. for a hotel
room. I’ve got enough to get to Baku. I’ll send you a telegram
from there if I’m successful.
The weather is hot these days. I carry my coat with me.
I’m afraid to leave it in the room, it’d be stolen in a minute.
People are poor here.
I don’t like the town of Rostov. It’s significantly inferior
to Kharkov in terms of its population count and geographi-
cal situation. But it doesn’t matter, dear little mother. If God
grants it, we’ll go all the way to Moscow together. You’ll see,
it’s a completely Western European city. And then we’ll go live
in Samara, next to our little factory.
Has Vorobyaninov come back? Where’s he prowling around
now? Is Yevstigneev still boarding? How’s my cassock after

the cleaners? Keep everyone we know thinking that I’m in
Voronezh at my auntie’s deathbed. Write Gulenka the same
thing.
Oh yes! I almost forgot to tell you about the terrible thing
that happened to me today.
I was standing by a bridge admiring the quiet Don and had
started daydreaming about our future prosperity. Then the
wind blew up and carried your brother the baker’s hat into
the river. I just managed to see it go. I had to bear another
expense and buy an English cap for 2 r. 30 kop. Don’t tell your
brother the baker anything about what happened. Convince
him I’m in Voronezh.
I’m having some trouble with my underclothes. I wash
them in the evening, and if they’re not dry by morning, I put
them on damp. But in this heat, it’s actually pleasant.
I kiss you and embrace you.
Eternally your husband, Fedya
330 ✦ in moscow
29
The Little Hen and the Pacific Rooster
persitsky, the reporter, was busily preparing for the bicenten-

nial celebration of the great mathematician Isaac Newton. “I’ll
take Newton myself. Just give me the space,” he announced.
“Now you look here, Persitsky,” the editor in chief warned.
“Do him up right, treat him like a human being.”
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
“Don’t let the same thing happen as with Lomonosov. The
Red Doctor had Lomonosov’s great-great-granddaughter, the
Pioneer, but what did we have . . .”
“I had nothing to do with that. You just had to go and en-
trust redheaded Ivanov with such an important thing! You
have only yourself to blame.”
“But what are you going to bring in?”
“What do you mean, what? An article from the Central Sci-
ence Administration—I’ve got some good connections there,
not like Ivanov. We’ll take the biography from Brockhaus. But
the portrait will be outstanding. Everyone else is going to grab
that same portrait out of Brockhaus, but I’ll have something
a little more original. I found a swell little engraving in The
International Book. All I need’s an advance! Well, I’m off to
Newton’s then!”
“Aren’t we going to take a picture of Newton?” asked the
photographer, who’d shown up in time for the end of the
conversation.
✦ 331 ✦
Persitsky made a warning sign which meant, “Easy now, ev-
erybody, just watch.” The entire editor in chief’s office pricked
up its ears.
“What? You still haven’t taken Newton’s picture?” said Per-
sitsky, pouncing on the photographer.
The photographer started talking his way out of it, just in
case. “Why don’t you try catching him, then,” he said haughtily.
“A good photographer would’ve caught him!” Persitsky
shouted.
“So what is it, then? Do I need to take his picture or not?”
“Of course you do! Hurry! Fellows from all the other papers
are probably already there!”
The photographer heaved his camera and clattering tripod
onto his shoulder.
“He’s in the State Sewing Machine Factory now. Don’t forget:
Newton, Isaac, I don’t remember his patronymic. Take his an-
niversary picture. And please, don’t get him at work. You always
have everyone sitting behind a desk going through papers. Get
him walking around. Or in the bosom of the family.”
“I’ll shoot him walking around as soon as I get some foreign
plates. Well, I’m off.”
“Hurry up! It’s already after five!”
The photographer went off to take pictures of the great
mathematician for his bicentennial. The room flooded with
the other newspapermen’s laughter.
Styopa from “Science and You” came in at the height of the
merriment. A corpulent citizeness toiled along behind him.
“Listen, Persitsky,” Styopa said. “This citizeness here’s come
to see you about something. Come over here, citizeness, this
comrade’s going to explain it all to you.”
Styopa ran away laughing.
“Well?” Persitsky asked. “What’s the story?”
Madame Gritsatsueva (for it was she) turned her languid
eyes on the reporter and silently handed him a piece of paper.
332 ✦ in moscow
“All right,” Persitsky said. “Run over by a horse . . . suffered
a mild scare . . . So what’s the problem?”
“His address,” the widow pleaded. “Might I possibly get his
address?”
“Whose address?”
“O. Bender’s.”
“How should I know?”
“But the comrade there was saying that you know.”
“I don’t know anything. Ask at the directory desk.”
“But maybe you’ll remember, comrade? He was in yellow
shoes.”
“I’m in yellow shoes myself. Two hundred thousand people
in Moscow are walking around in yellow shoes. Maybe you
need their addresses too? By all means. I’ll quit whatever I’m
doing and get busy on this. In six months you’ll know every-
thing. I’m busy, citizeness.”
But the widow, who felt a great deal of respect for Persitsky,
followed him down the hallway, repeating her pleas, banging
around with her starched petticoat.
“Styopa’s a swine,” Persitsky thought. “Never mind, though,
I’ll sic that perpetual motion inventor on him. That’ll make
him hop.”
“Now what am I supposed to do?” the annoyed Persitsky
asked, coming to a halt before the widow. “How am I supposed
to know the address of citizen O. Bender? Who am I, the horse
that ran into him? Or the cabbie I saw him wallop in the back
with my very own eyes?”
The widow replied with a vague murmur, in which the only
distinguishable words were “comrade” and “I beg you.”
Work in the House of Nations had already stopped. Busi-
ness offices and corridors grew deserted. Somewhere a type-
writer was smacking out its last page.
“Pardon me, madam, you can see I’m busy!” With these
words Persitsky hid in the men’s room. He strolled around in-
the little hen and the pacific rooster ✦ 333

side it for ten minutes and came happily out. Gritsatsueva was
patiently shaking her skirts on the corner of two hallways. She
started talking again when Persitsky approached.
The reporter saw red.
“Now look, lady,” he said. “Have it your way, I’ll tell you
where your O. Bender is. Go straight down the hall, then turn
right and go straight again. There’ll be a door there. Ask for
Cherepennikov. He should know.”
Then Persitsky, satisfied with his inventiveness, disappeared
so quickly that the starched little widow didn’t have a chance to
get any additional information. Madame Gritsatsueva straight-
ened her skirts and went down the hall.
The corridors of the House of Nations were so long and nar-
row that people walking down them involuntarily quickened
their pace. You could tell by looking at any passerby how long
he’d been walking. If he was walking with a slightly increased
pace, it meant that his march was just beginning. People who’d
already gone down two or three corridors developed a medium
trot. And sometimes you could see a fellow running as fast as
he could; he was in the fifth-corridor stage. But a citizen who’d
covered eight corridors could easily have rivaled a bird, a race-
horse, or the world-champion runner Nurmi in speed.
Madame Gritsatsueva turned right and started running.
The parquet floor tiles creaked.
A brown-haired man in a sky-blue vest and raspberry shoes
was walking briskly toward her. Ostap’s expression clearly indi-
cated that his visit to the House of Nations at such a late hour
was necessitated by some extremely urgent business related to
the concession. A meeting with his beloved clearly did not en-
ter into the technical director’s plans. When he saw the little
widow, Bender turned and went back along the wall, without
looking around.
“Comrade Bender!” the widow shouted, overjoyed. “Where
are you going, sir?”
334 ✦ in moscow
The smooth operator picked up the pace. The widow also
sped up.
“Wait,” she pleaded. “I have something to tell you.”
But her words didn’t make it to Ostap’s ears. The wind was al-
ready singing and whistling in them. He raced along his fourth
corridor and leaped up entire flights of the building’s internal
iron staircase. The only thing he left his beloved was an echo
that repeated its stairwell rumblings to her for a long time.
“Well, thanks!” Ostap grumbled, sitting on the fifth floor. “A
fine time for a rendezvous. Who sent that passionate little lady
out here? It’s well past time to liquidate the Moscow division
of the concession, or else, for all I know, that self-employed
hussar (with a motor) will show up, too.”
Meanwhile, Madame Gritsatsueva, who was separated from
Ostap by three floors, a thousand doors, and a dozen corri-
dors, had wiped off her hot face with the hem of her petticoat
and begun her search. At first she wanted to find her husband
as soon as possible and have it out with him. Then dim lights
went on in the corridors. All the lights, all the corridors, and
all the doors looked alike. The widow started to feel scared.
Suddenly, she wanted to leave.
She raced with ever-increasing speed, succumbing to the
corridorial progression. Half an hour later she was unable to
stop. The doors of presidiums, editor in chief’s offices, local
labor union committees, planning departments, and editorial
offices flew past both sides of her cumbersome body. She over-
turned urns for cigarette butts with her iron petticoats as she
ran by. The urns rolled in her wake, sounding like pots and
pans. Whirlwinds and whirlpools formed in the corners where
corridors met. Windows that had come open slammed shut.
Hands with outstretched index fingers stenciled on the walls
poked at the poor wayfarer.
Finally, Gritsatsueva ended up on a landing of the inter-
nal stairway. It was dark there, but the widow overcame her

fear, ran downstairs, and pulled at the glass door. The door
was locked. The widow raced back up the stairs. But the door
she had just gone through had also been closed by someone’s
solicitous hand.
In Moscow, people love to lock doors.

Thousands of front entrances are boarded up from the in-
side, and hundreds of thousands of citizens make their way
into their apartments by the back door. The year 1918 is long
gone, the concept of “apartment raids” faded long ago, build-
ing patrols that the residents organized for their own safety
have vanished, the problem of street traffic is being solved,
enormous electric power plants are being built, and magnifi-
cent scientific discoveries are being made, but there is not a
single person who would even consider dedicating his life to
solving the problem of closed doors.
Where is the man who’ll solve the puzzle of movie houses,
theaters, and circuses?
Three thousand people have to get into the circus in ten
minutes through a single double door, of which only one
side is open. The remaining ten sets of doors, specifically
constructed to let in large crowds of people, are closed. Who
knows why they’re closed? It’s possible that twenty years ago
a trained donkey was stolen from the circus stable, and ever
since, the fearful management has walled over the convenient
entrances and exits. Or perhaps a famous king of the air once
caught cold from a draft, and the closed doors are just an echo
of the scene the king caused.
Purportedly the audience is let out of theaters and movie
houses in small groups so as to avoid congestion. Avoiding con-
gestion is very easy: one only has to open the exits, of which
336 ✦ in moscow
there is an abundance. But instead, the administration acts
by applying force. Ushers with linked arms form a living bar-
rier and hold the audience under siege for no less than half
an hour. Meanwhile, the doors, the hallowed doors that were
closed back when Peter the Great ruled, remain closed today.
Fifteen thousand soccer fans, excited by the Moscow se-
lect team’s fine playing, are compelled to make their way to
the streetcar stop through a fissure so narrow that one lightly
armed soldier standing in it could hold off forty thousand bar-
barians and two siege towers.
There is no roof over a stadium, but there are several large
gates. However, only one little gate, like a garden gate, is open.
So the only way to get out is to break open the large gates.
They are broken open after every big match. But, due to anxi-
ety over preserving a holy tradition, they are carefully repaired
and locked up tight again each time.
If there is no possible way to hang a door somewhere (this
happens when there’s nothing to hang it from), then disguised
doors of all descriptions are put into action:
1. Barriers
2. Sawhorses
3. Overturned park benches
4. Forbidding signs
5. Twine
Barriers are all the rage in institutions.
Access to the necessary employee is blocked off with them.
The visitor paces back and forth along the barrier like a ti-
ger, gesturing to get someone’s attention. This is not always
successful. But maybe the visitor has brought in a useful in-
vention! Maybe he just wants to pay his income tax! But the
barrier got in the way, and so the invention remains unknown
and the tax remains unpaid.

Sawhorses are used in the street.
They’re set up in spring on a busy thoroughfare, suppos-
edly to fence off an area where the sidewalk’s being repaired.
And immediately the noisy thoroughfare is deserted. Pedestri-
ans filter through to wherever they need to go by other streets.
They have to go an extra kilometer every day, but light-winged
hope does not desert them. The summer passes. The leaves
wither. But the sawhorses still stand. The repairs were never
made. And the street is deserted.
Overturned park benches are used to bar the way into Mos-
cow’s squares, which, due to distressing laxity on the part of
the construction crew, are not equipped with strong gates.
An entire book could be written about forbidding signs, but
that doesn’t figure in the authors’ current plans.
There are two kinds of these signs: direct and indirect.
Among the direct signs, we can note:
entrance is forbidden
entrance is forbidden to unofficial personnel
no entrance.
Such signs are sometimes even hung on the doors of those

institutions that the public visits especially frequently.
Indirect signs are more pernicious. They do not forbid en-
try, but it’s a rare daredevil who’ll go ahead and risk exercising
his lawful right. Here they are, these shameful signs:
no admission without prior announcement
no visitors
your visit inconveniences a busy person.
In places where it’s not possible to put up barriers or saw-

horses, overturn park benches, or hang a forbidding sign,
people string up twine. It’s strung up according to whim, in
338 ✦ in moscow
the most unexpected places. If it’s stretched out at chest level,
then the whole affair ends with a mild scare and some nervous
laughter. But twine that’s strung up at ankle height can cripple
a person.
To hell with doors! To hell with lines at theater entrances!
Admit us without prior announcement! We beg you, take
down the sawhorses the negligent building manager set out
around his warped floorboards! Down with overturned park
benches! Put them back where they belong! It’s pleasant to
sit in squares, particularly at night. The air is clean, and intel-
ligent thoughts come into one’s head!
Madame Gritsatsueva, sitting on the stairs by the locked glass

door in the very middle of the House of Nations, pondered
her widowly fate and dozed occasionally as she waited for
morning.
The yellow light of the flat electric panels illuminating the
hallway fell on the widow through the glass door. The ashen
early-morning light made its way through the stairwell window.
It was that quiet hour when the morning is still young and
fresh. At that hour, Gritsatsueva heard footsteps in the corri-
dor. The widow quickly rose and flattened herself against the
glass. A sky-blue vest flashed at the end of the corridor. The
raspberry shoes were dusted with plaster. The fickle son of a
Turkish subject was brushing the dust off his jacket and ap-
proaching the glass door.
“My little chipmunk!” the widow called. “Oh, my little chip-
munk!”
She breathed on the glass with inexpressible tenderness. The
glass fogged up and rainbow-colored splotches spread across it.
Sky-blue and rainbow-colored apparitions shone through the
fog and rainbows.

Ostap didn’t hear the widow’s yoo-hoos. He was scratching
his back and cracking his neck distractedly. Another second,
and he’d have disappeared around the corner.
The poor wife started beating on the glass, moaning, “Com-
rade Bender!” The smooth operator turned around.
“Ah,” he said, seeing that he was separated from the widow
by a locked door. “You’re here, too?”
“I’m here, I’m here,” the widow repeated joyously.
“But come and embrace me, my joy, we haven’t seen each
other in so long,” the technical director said invitingly.
The widow began to fuss. She hopped around behind the
door like a goldfinch in a cage. Her skirts, which had gone
silent during the night, began thundering once more. Ostap
opened his arms wide.
“Why aren’t you coming to me, my little guinea hen? Your
little Pacific rooster got so tired at the meeting of the Lesser
Council of People’s Commissars.”
The widow’s imagination ran dry. “My little chipmunk,”
she said for the fifth time. “Open the door for me, Comrade
Bender.”
“Easy, girl! Modesty becomes a woman. Why all this jump-
ing around?”
The widow was in torment.
“Now why are you torturing yourself?” Ostap asked. “What’s
keeping you from going on about your life?”
“He’s the one who left, and now he’s asking!”
The widow burst into tears.
“Wipe your dear eyes, citizeness. Each of your tears is a mol-
ecule in the cosmos.”
“And I waited and waited. I shut down my shop and went
after you, Comrade Bender . . .”
“So? How’s it going now, there in the staircase? It’s not too
drafty?”
340 ✦ in moscow
The widow slowly started coming to a boil, like a big mon-
astery samovar.
“Deceiver!” she said, flinching.
Ostap still had a little free time. He snapped his fingers,
swayed rhythmically from side to side, and softly sang,
Sometimes a man’s got a devil’s hair
In him; who knows how it got there!
And a woman’s charms have such power
A fire grows in men by the hour!
“Confound you!” the widow applauded him when the dance

was over. “You stole my bracelet, a gift from my husband. And
why’d you take the chair?”
“I see that you’ve started getting personal, ma’am?” Ostap
remarked coldly.
“You stole it! You did!” the widow repeated.
“Now you listen to this, girl: get it into your head that Ostap
Bender never stole anything.”
“And who took the tea strainer?”
“Oh, the tea strainer! From your nonliquid assets? And you
call that stealing? In that case our views on life are diametri-
cally opposed.”
“You ran off with it,” the widow crowed.
“So, then, if a young, healthy person borrows a kitchen im-
plement from a provincial grandmother that she doesn’t need
anyway on account of her poor health, then that means he’s a
thief? Is that how I’m supposed to understand you?”
“A thief! You’re a thief!”
“In that case, we shall have to part ways. I agree to a divorce.”
The widow threw herself at the door. The panes of glass
started to tremble. Ostap realized that it was time to go.
“No time for embraces,” he said. “Farewell, beloved! We
passed like ships in the night.”

“He-e-elp!” the widow shrieked.
But Ostap was already at the end of the corridor. He got
up onto the windowsill, jumped heavily down to the ground,
still wet from a nocturnal rain, and disappeared into the glis-
tening garden where physical culture enthusiasts held their
workouts.
The watchman, who’d just woken up, ambled over at the
widow’s shouts. He threatened the captive with a fine and let
her go.
342 ✦ in moscow
30
The Author of “The Gavriliad”
by the time madame gritsatsueva left the business office’s

inhospitable camp, the lowest level of office workers was al-
ready trickling into the House of Nations: couriers, the young
ladies from incoming and outgoing, the next shift of telephone
operators, accountants’ young assistants, and quota teenagers.
Among them circulated Nikifor Lapis, a young man with an
immodest gaze whose fleecy hair was cut like a sheep’s.
The only people who went into the House of Nations through
the front entrance were ignoramuses, stubborn people, and
first-time visitors. Nikifor Lapis went into the building through
the medical clinic. He was completely at home in the House of
Nations and knew the shortest ways to the oases where bright
springs of authors’ fees gush under the wide-leafed shade of
trade publications.
The first thing Nikifor Lapis did was go to the snack bar.
The nickel-plated cash register played a maxixe and threw out
three tickets. Nikifor broke the paper seal on his glass and
ate his varenets, then consumed a cream puff that looked like
a little round flower bed. He finished it all off with some tea.
Then he sedately began making the rounds of his demesne.
He made his first visit to the office of the monthly hunting
magazine Gerasim and Mumu. Comrade Napernikov wasn’t in
yet, so Nikifor Lapis moved on to The Hygroscopic Herald, the
weekly mouthpiece by which pharmaceutical workers inter-
acted with the wider world.
✦ 343 ✦
“Good morning,” Nikifor said. “I wrote a marvelous poem.”
“What’s it about?” asked the editor of the literary page.
“What’s the theme? You do know, Trubetskoy, that our maga-
zine is . . .”
The editor wiggled his fingers in order to more subtly de-
fine the essence of The Hygroscopic Herald.
Trubetskoy-Lapis looked down at his white canvas trousers,
leaned back, and said, in a singsong voice, “The Ballad of
Gangrene.”
“That’s interesting,” remarked the hygroscopic personage.
“It’s long past time we started promoting the idea of disease
prevention in a more popular form.”
Lapis quickly declaimed,
Gavrila’s bane was gangrene dire,
Gangrenous were his legs, his feet.
In the same fine iambic quadrameter, the rest of the poem

related how the benighted Gavrila didn’t go to the pharmacy
in time and eventually died because he didn’t swab a cut with
iodine.
“You’re coming along, Trubetskoy,” the editor approved.
“But it’d be good if there were a little more . . . You know?”
He wiggled his fingers, but took the terrible ballad and
promised to pay on Tuesday.
Lapis was met hospitably in the magazine The Telegraph Op-
erator’s Workday.
“Good thing you’ve come, Trubetskoy. We do need some
poetry just now. All we’ve got is daily life, nothing but daily life.
There’s no lyricism. You hear me, Trubetskoy? Something out
of the mail and telegraph worker’s life, but something that’s
also, you know . . . got it?”
“I was just thinking yesterday about nothing other than the
everyday life of the mail and telegraph worker. And this epic
poem just came pouring out. It’s called ‘The Last Letter.’ Here:
344 ✦ in moscow
Gavrila was a mailman brave,
Gavrila kept the mail on time.”
The story of Gavrila was told in seventy-two lines. At the end of

the poem, the mailman Gavrila, wounded by a fascist’s bullet,
still manages to deliver the letter to its addressee.
“Where does the story take place?” he asked Lapis. It was a
logical question. There are no fascists in the USSR, and there
are no Gavrilas (members of the communications workers’
union) abroad.
“What’s the big deal?” Lapis said. “It takes place here, of
course, and the fascist is in disguise.”
“You know what, Trubetskoy? It’d be better if you’d write
something for us about a radio station.”
“But why don’t you want the mailman?”
“Let it sit around here for a while. We’ll take it conditionally.”
Saddened, Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy went back to Gerasim
and Mumu. By now, Napernikov was sitting at his desk. On the
wall hung an enlarged portrait of Turgenev wearing a pince-
nez and waders with a double-barreled gun over his shoulder.
Lapis’s competitor, a poet from the suburbs, was standing next
to Napernikov.
The old song about Gavrila began, but this time it was spiced
with a hunting flavor. The creation went by the name “The
Hunter’s Prayer.”
Gavrila waited for a rabbit.

The sly Gavrila hunted game.
“Very good!” the kind Napernikov said. “With this poem

you’ve outdone Entikh himself, Trubetskoy. But we just need
to fix a few things. First of all, throw out ‘prayer.’ ”
“And ‘rabbit,’ ” said the competitor.
“But why ‘rabbit’? ” Napernikov said, surprised.
“Because it’s not rabbit season.”
the author of “ the gavriliad ” ✦ 345

“You hear that, Trubetskoy? Change the rabbit, too.”
The poem in its transfigured form bore the title “The
Poacher’s Lesson,” and the rabbits were exchanged for snipe.
But then it turned out that people don’t hunt snipe in sum-
mer, either. In its final form, the poem sounded like this:
Gavrila waited for a bird.
The sly Gavrila hunted fowl.
. . . and so forth.
After a noontime snack in the cafeteria, Lapis got back
down to work. His white trousers flashed in the darkness of
the corridors. He went from office to office, selling the multi-
faceted Gavrila.
In The Cooperative Flute Gavrila was sold under the title
“Aeolus’s Flute.”
Gavrila worked to sell his wares,
Gavrila sold his flutes with pride.
The simple fellows from the thick journal The Unvarnished

Forest bought a short poem entitled “At the Edge of the Forest”
from him. It began thus:
Gavrila walked the loamy forest
In hopes of harvesting bamboo.
The last thing Gavrila did that day was bake bread. The
office of The Bun and Roll Worker found him some space. The
epic poem had the long, sad name “On Bread, Production
Quality, and My Beloved.” The poem was dedicated to the mys-
terious Khina Chlek. The beginning was epic, as always:
Gavrila was a baking man,
Gavrila baked a pan of buns.
After a delicate battle, the dedication was rejected.
346 ✦ in moscow
The worst part was that Lapis didn’t get any money anywhere.
Some people promised to pay on Tuesday, others on Thursday
or Friday (two weeks from now). He was forced to go to the en-
emy camp, where they never printed him, to borrow money.
Lapis descended from the fifth floor to the second and went
into the Lathe’s editor in chief’s office. To his great misfortune,
he immediately ran into the hardworking Persitsky.
“Ah!” Persitsky exclaimed. “Lapsus!”
“Listen,” Nikifor Lapis said, lowering his voice. “Give me
three rubles. Gerasim and Mumu owes me tons of money.”
“I’ll give you fifty kopeks. Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Persitsky returned with a dozen of his fellow Lathe employ-
ees in tow. A general conversation ensued.
“So, how’s business?” Persitsky asked.
“I wrote some excellent poems!”
“About Gavrila? Something about peasants? ‘Gavrila plowed
from dawn till dusk, Gavrila loved his plow so dear’?”
“What about Gavrila? That’s just hack work, after all!” Lapis
said defensively. “I wrote about the Caucasus.”
“Have you ever been to the Caucasus?”
“I’m going there in two weeks.”
“But aren’t you afraid, Lapsus? There are jackals there!”
“As if that could scare me! The ones in the Caucasus aren’t
poisonous!”
Everyone’s ears pricked up at this answer.
“Tell me, Lapsus,” Persitsky asked. “What do you think jack-
als look like?”
“I know what they look like, get off my back!”
“Well then tell us, if you know!”
“Well, they’re . . . they look like snakes.”
“Yes, of course, you’re right, as always. And in your opin-
ion, saddle of wild goat is served at the table along with the
stirrups.”

“I never said that!” Trubetskoy shouted.
“You didn’t say it. You wrote it. Napernikov told me that you
were in Gerasim and Mumu trying to pawn off some doggerel
like that, supposedly describing the everyday life of hunters.
Now tell me the truth, Lapsus, why do you write about things
you’ve never seen before in your life? Things you don’t have
the slightest idea about? Why is ‘peignoir’ a ball gown in your
poem ‘Canton’? Why?”
“You’re a petit bourgeois,” Lapis said boastfully.
“In your poem ‘Races for the Budyonny Prize,’ why does
your jockey put a hame strap on the horse and then sit on the
coachman’s seat? Have you ever seen a hame strap?”
“Yes.”
“So then tell me, what does it look like?”
“Leave me alone. You’re psychotic!”
“And have you ever seen a coachman’s seat? Have you ever
been to the races?”
“You don’t have to have been everywhere!” Lapis shouted.
“Pushkin wrote Turkish poems and he was never in Turkey.”
“Oh, right, after all, Erzurum is in Tula province.”
Lapis didn’t get the sarcasm. He continued hotly: “Pushkin
wrote using documentary sources. He read the history of the
Pugachev rebellion and then wrote. And Entikh told me every-
thing about the races.”
After this virtuoso defense, Persitsky dragged the resisting
Lapis into the next room. The audience followed them. A
large newspaper clipping bordered with a thick black line, like
a memorial, hung on the wall.
“Was it you who wrote this essay in The Captain’s Bridge?”
“It was me.”
“Your very first attempt at prose, I believe? Congratula-
tions! ‘The waves came rolling over the pier and crashed
down in swift jacks.’ Well, now, didn’t you just do The Captain’s
348 ✦ in moscow
Bridge a good turn! The Bridge won’t forget you anytime soon,
Lapsus!”
“What’s the big deal?”
“The deal is . . . do you even know what a jack is?”
“Well of course I do! Leave me alone!”
“What do you think a jack looks like? Describe it in your
own words.”
“It’s like a . . . it falls, in a word.”
“A jack falls. Take note, everyone! A jack falls swiftly. Wait
a minute, Lapsus, I’m bringing your fifty kopeks right now.
Don’t let him go!”
But the fifty kopeks were not handed over then either. Per-
sitsky dragged the twenty-fourth volume of Brockhaus (from
“Iconostasis” to “Key West”) over from the information desk.
He found the necessary word between “Jacaranda” (a flower-
ing plant of the family Bignoniaceae native to Central and
South America) and “Jackal” (any of three species of wolflike
carnivores of the Canidae family).
“Listen! ‘Jack: one of several machines used for lifting
heavy weights. The simple, everyday J., used to lift carriages,
etc., consists of a sliding toothed rod which is engaged by a
cogwheel, which is rotated, in turn, with the aid of a handle.’
And so forth and so on. ‘In 1879, John Dickson set the obelisk
known as Cleopatra’s Needle in place with the help of four
workmen using four hydraulic J.’s.’ And you think that this
device has the capacity to fall quickly? So the diligent Brock-
haus and Efron have deceived all humanity for the past fifty
years, then? Why do you write this hack stuff instead of learn-
ing something? Answer me!”
“I need the money.”
“But you never have any. You’re always prowling around af-
ter fifty kopeks.”
“I just bought a lot of furniture and went over my budget.”

“But how much furniture could you really buy? You get paid
exactly what your hack work is worth: peanuts!”
“Some peanuts! I bought this swell chair at auction . . .”
“Does it look like a snake?”
“No. It’s from a palace. But I’ve had some bad luck. Yester-
day I got home late at night . . .”
“From Khina Chlek’s?” everyone present shouted in unison.
“Khina! I haven’t lived with Khina for a long time now. I was
coming back from the Mayakovsky debate. So I come in, and
the window’s open. I could tell right away that something was
the matter.”
“Ai-yai-yai!” Persitsky said, covering his face with his hands.
“Comrades, I sense that Lapsus’s masterpiece was stolen: ‘Gav-
rila was a dvornik bold, Gavrila learned to wield a broom.’ ”
“Let me finish. It was outrageous vandalism! Some good-
for-nothings broke into my room and ripped all the stuffing
out of my chair. Maybe somebody can lend me a fiver to get
it fixed?”
“Compose a new Gavrila, that’ll pay for it. I can even give you
the beginning. Wait a minute . . . wait a minute . . . almost there
. . . I’ve got it! ‘Gavrila bought a chair at market, Gavrila had
a flimsy chair.’ Write it down quick. You can sell it to The Side-
Table Times for a nice profit. Phew! Trubetskoy, Trubetskoy! Oh
yes, by the way, Lapsus, why are you Trubetskoy? Why shouldn’t
you take a better pseudonym? Dolgoruky, for instance! Nikifor
Dolgoruky! Or Nikifor Valois! Or even better: Citizen Nikifor
Sumarokov-Elston? If you get something that really hits pay dirt,
like three pieces at once in Ger-mumu, you’ve got an excellent
way to work it. One bit of twaddle you sign with Sumarokov, you
sign some other trash with Elston, and the third with Yusupov
. . . Phew! You hack! Hold on to him, comrades! I’m going
to tell him a marvelous story. You, Lapsus! Listen! This will be
good for you, given your profession.”
350 ✦ in moscow
Employees eating open-faced sandwiches as big as bark
shoes strolled down the corridor. It was the midday break.
Quota teenagers walked around in pairs. Avdotyev ran from
room to room, gathering the friends of the motorcar for an
emergency meeting. But almost all the friends were sitting in
the editor in chief’s office listening to Persitsky, who was tell-
ing them a story he’d heard from a bunch of artists.
Here is that story.
The Story of an Ill-Fated Love
In Leningrad, on the Second Line of Vasiliev Island, lived a poor girl

with big blue eyes. Her name was Clotilde.
The girl loved reading Schiller in the original, daydreaming as she
sat on the low wall along the Neva embankment, and eating rare steak
for lunch.
But the girl was poor. There was quite a lot of Schiller, but there
was absolutely no meat. Therefore, and also because it was the season
of white nights, Clotilde fell in love. The man who had astounded her
with his beauty was a sculptor. His studio was in New Holland.
The young people sat on the windowsill, gazing into the black canal
and kissing. Stars, or perhaps they were gondolas, swam in the canal.
At least, that’s what it looked like to Clotilde.
“Look, Vasya,” the girl said. “It’s Venice! The green dawn glows
behind the castle of black marble.”
Vasya didn’t take his hand from around the girl’s shoulder. The
green sky turned rosy, then yellowed, but the lovers still didn’t aban-
don their windowsill.
“Tell me, Vasya,” Clotilde would say. “Is art eternal?”
“It is,” Vasya would answer. “Man dies, the climate changes, new
planets appear, dynasties crumble, but art is steadfast. It is eternal.”
“Yes,” the girl would say. “Michelangelo . . .”
“Yes,” Vasya would repeat, inhaling the scent of her hair. “Praxiteles!”

“Canova!”
“Benvenuto Cellini!”
And again the stars wandered through the sky, sank into the waters
of the canal, and shone there, tubercular, until morning.
The lovers didn’t leave their windowsill. There wasn’t very much
meat at all. But the names of geniuses kept them warm at heart.
The sculptor worked days. He sculpted busts. But his work was
shrouded in great secrecy. Clotilde didn’t come into his studio during
work hours. In vain she begged, “Vasya, let me watch you create!”
But he was adamant. Gesturing toward a bust covered in wet bur-
lap, he would say, “It’s not the right time yet, Clotilde, it’s not the right
time. Happiness, fame, and fortune are awaiting our pleasure in the
anteroom. But let them wait.”
The stars floated by . . .
Once, someone gave the happy girl a pass to the movies. The film
was showing under the title When the Heart Must Keep Silent. Clotilde
sat in the front row, right in front of the screen. Schooled in Schiller
and sausage, the girl was unusually affected by everything she saw.
Hans the sculptor sculpted busts. Fame was making its way to
him in leaps and bounds. His wife was beautiful. But they had a
fight. In a fury, the beautiful woman took a hammer and shattered
a bust, the great work the sculptor Hans had been working on for
three years. Fame and riches perished under the hammer’s stroke.
Hans’s grief was inconsolable. He tried to hang himself. But his
repentant wife got him out of the noose in time. Then she quickly
threw off all her clothes.
“Sculpt me!” she exclaimed. “No body on earth is more beauti-
ful than mine.”
“Oh!” Hans exclaimed. “How blind I was!”
He was seized by inspiration, and sculpted a statue of his wife.
It was such a magnificent statue that the whole world trembled
with joy. Hans and his beautiful wife became famous and lived
happily ever after.
352 ✦ in moscow
Clotilde was walking to Vasya’s studio. Everything was getting all
mixed up inside her. Schiller and Hans, the stars and marble, velvet
and rags . . .
“Vasya!” she shouted to him.
He was in his studio. He was sculpting a marvelous bust: a person
with a long mustache in a Tolstoyan shirt. He was sculpting it from a
photographic postcard.
“And all our life is a struggle!” sang the sculptor, as he gave the
sculpture the finishing touches.
At that moment, the bust shattered thunderously into pieces from a
terrible hammer blow. Clotilde had done her work. She extended her
hand, covered in plaster, to Vasya and said proudly, “Clean my nails, sir!”
Then she retired. She heard some strange sounds. She understood
what it was: the great sculptor was weeping over his broken creation.
The next morning Clotilde came over to continue her work by tak-
ing the shocked Vasya out of the noose, throwing off her clothes before
him, and saying, “Sculpt me! No body on earth is more beautiful than
mine!”
She went in and looked. Vasya was not hanging from a noose. He
was sitting on a tall stool with his back to Clotilde, doing something.
But the girl was not the least bit embarrassed. She threw off all her
clothes, got goose pimples all over from the cold, and, teeth clattering,
exclaimed, “Sculpt me, Vasya, no body on earth is more beautiful than
mine!”
Vasya turned around. The words of his little song died on his lips.
It was then that Clotilde saw what he was doing. He was sculpting
a marvelous bust of a man with a long mustache wearing a Tolstoyan
shirt. The photographic postcard stood on the table. Vasya was giving
the sculpture the finishing touches.
“What are you doing?” Clotilde asked.
“I’m sculpting a bust of the manager of cooperative store No. 28.”
“But I smashed it to pieces yesterday!” Clotilde stammered. “Why
didn’t you hang yourself? You were just saying that art is eternal. I de-
stroyed your eternal art. Why are you still alive, man?”

“What’s eternal is eternal, but I still have to get my commissions
done on time,” said Vasya. “What did you think?”
Vasya was just an everyday hack sculptor of average talent.
And Clotilde was reading too much Schiller.
“So look, Lapsus, don’t you go scaring little Khina Chlek with
your art. She’s a delicate woman. She believes in your talent.
Seems like she’s the only one who does. But if you keep run-
ning around to all these Hydroscopic Heralds for another month,
then even Khina Chlek is going to reject you. By the way, I’m
not giving you fifty kopeks. Go away, Lapsus!”
354 ✦ in moscow
31
The Mighty Handful, or the Gold-Seekers
as one might have known, the story about Clotilde called

forth not a single emotion in Lapis’s sheeplike soul.
Styopa ran into the room shouting, “The victim speaks out,”
“The robbers got away,” and “Secrets of the editor’s office.”
He said, “Persitsky, run over to the scene of the crime and
write something for ‘A Day in the City.’ It’s a sensation worth
five lines of brevier!” It turned out that when the editor got
to his office, he’d found the enormous pen with the No. 86
nib lying on the floor. The nib had pierced one of the couch’s
legs. And the editor’s new chair, bought at auction, looked as
though crows had been pecking at it. All the upholstery was
ripped up, the stuffing was tossed out onto the floor, and the
springs stuck out like snakes getting ready to bite.
“Petty theft,” Persitsky said. “If we can line up three more,
then we’ll give a three-line notice.”
“But that’s the whole point—it’s not theft. They didn’t steal
anything. They just ruined a chair.”
“Just like with Lapsus,” Persitsky noted. “Looks like Lapsus
wasn’t lying.”
“There, you see?” Lapis said proudly. “Give me fifty kopeks.”
Someone brought over the evening paper. Persitsky started
looking it over.
The normal reader reads a newspaper. The first thing a
journalist does is examine it like a painting. He’s interested in
the composition.
✦ 355 ✦
“I wouldn’t have set it like this, anyway,” Persitsky said. “Our
readers aren’t ready for the American layout . . . A caricature
of Chamberlain, of course . . . An essay on Sukharev Tower . . .
Lapsus, you should scribble up something about the Sukharev
market; it’s a fresh theme, there are only forty essays a year
printed on it . . . So what else have we got . . .”
Persitsky, slightly scornful, began to read the crime section,
which was complete hackwork as far as he was concerned.
“This material’s a hundred years old! . . . We already had this
embezzler . . . An attempted theft in the Columbus Theater!
We-e-ell, comrades, this is something new . . . Listen!”
Persitsky read aloud:
Attempted Theft in the Columbus Theater
Four antique chairs were carried off by two unknown

perpetrators who broke into the props room of the Columbus
Theater. The night watchman saw the perpetrators in the
courtyard and chased them, upon which they threw down
the chairs and escaped. It may be of interest that the chairs
were acquired specifically for the new production of Gogol’s
Marriage.
“Looks like there’s something going on here. It’s some kind of

sect that abducts chairs.”
“They’re maniacs!”
“No, it’s not that simple. They’re acting fairly rationally.
They were at Lapsus’s, here, and at the theater.”
“That’s right!”
“They’re looking for something, comrades.”
At this, Nikifor Lapis’s face suddenly changed. He left the
room soundlessly and ran down the corridor. Five minutes
later he was in a streetcar that rocked back and forth as it car-
ried him back to the Intercession Gates.
356 ✦ in moscow
Lapis resided in building No. 9 on Kazarmenny Lane with
two young men who wore soft caps. Lapis wore a captain’s hat
with the coat of arms of Neptune, the lord of the seas. The other
people on Lapis’s floor, a large Tatar family, had to go through
his room to get to their own.
When Lapis got home, Khuntov was sitting on the window-
sill flipping through a theater guidebook. He was a man in
tune with the times. He did everything the times demanded.
The times demanded poems, and so Khuntov wrote multi-
tudes of them.
Tastes changed. Demands changed. The times, and his con-
temporaries, were in need of a heroic novel on the theme of
the Civil War. And so Khuntov wrote heroic novels.
Then stories of everyday life were in demand. Khuntov, in
tune with the times, got down to writing stories.
The times demanded a lot, but for some reason, they didn’t
take anything from Khuntov.
Now the times demanded a play. Therefore, Khuntov was
sitting on the windowsill, flipping through a theater guide-
book. One might expect a person getting ready to write a play
to begin studying the mores of the social stratum he’s going
to put on stage. One might expect the author of a play that’s
purportedly in progress to begin fleshing out the characters’
personalities and coming up with the play’s quiproquo. But
Khuntov began at the opposite end: he started with mathe-
matical computations. He was consulting a diagram of every
theater’s seating plan to calculate the show’s average gross
yield in each one. His broad, pleasant face wrinkled from ef-
fort. His brows lifted and fell.
Khuntov briskly jotted columns of figures in his notebook,
multiplying the number of seats by the average ticket price.
What’s more, he did all these calculations twice, once with
raised prices, and once with regular prices.
the mighty handful, or the gold-seekers ✦ 357

The Bolshoi Academic Theater was at the forefront of all of
Moscow’s entertainment establishments, both in terms of the
number of seats and in terms of these seats’ prices. Khuntov
let it go with great regret. He’d have to write an opera or a
ballet to make it to the Bolshoi. But at this particular moment,
the times were demanding drama. So Khuntov chose the most
profitable theater: MKhAT, the Moscow Academic Art Theater.
He figured that under Stanislavsky’s direction, Kachalov and
Moskvin would bring in good returns. Khuntov counted up
his author’s royalties. According to his calculations, the play
would be performed no less than a hundred times a season.
After all, he thought, The Days of the Turbins was running. The
royalties came out to a lot of money. Fortune had never before
promised Khuntov this much dough.
The only thing left was to write the play. But this was the least
of Khuntov’s worries. “Audiences are stupid,” he thought.
“A world-class plot!” Lapis proclaimed, as he approached
the man who ceaselessly rang out in tune with the times.
Khuntov needed a plot, and so he quickly asked, “What
kind of plot?”
“A swell one!” Lapis replied.
The timely man was already poised to write down what La-
pis was going to say, but the author of the multifaceted Gavrila
was suspicious by nature and went quiet.
“Well? Talk already!”
“You’ll steal it.”
“How often have I stolen plots from you?”
“What about the story about the Young Communist who
won a hundred thousand rubles?”
“Well, yes, but nobody took it.”
“Who’s ever taken anything from you! Whereas I could
write a marvelous epic poem.”
“Come on, don’t make a fool out of yourself! Tell me!”
“You won’t steal it?”
358 ✦ in moscow
“Word of honor.”
“It’s a swell plot. See, here’s what happens. A Soviet inven-
tor comes up with a death ray and hides the design in a chair.
Then he dies. His wife doesn’t know about it and sells the
chairs to different people. But the fascists find out and start
hunting down the chairs. But then a Young Communist finds
out about the chairs, and so a struggle begins. Now you could
do something really big here . . .”
Khuntov started racing around the room, drawing big arcs
with his hands around Vorobyaninov’s devastated chair.
“And you’ll give that plot to me?”
“As if.”
“Lapis! You’ve got no feel for plot! That’s not a plot for an
epic poem. That’s a plot for a play.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s my plot.”
“In that case I’ll finish my play faster than you can come up
with a title for your poem.”
Ibrahim’s arrival interrupted the argument that flared up
between the young men. Ibrahim was an easy-mannered man,
active and cheerful, who tended to fat. Collars choked him.
Freckles sparkled on his face, neck, and hands. His hair was
the color of beaten eggs. Thick smoke came from his mouth.
Ibrahim smoked Figaro cigars (two for twenty-five kopeks). He
was wearing a canvas approximation of a cutaway coat with
rolls of sheet music sticking out of the pockets. A Panama hat
made of cloth sat on the back of his head like a little basket.
Ibrahim was drenched in dirty sweat.
“What’s this all about?” he said shrilly.
Ibrahim, a composer, lived off his sister’s charity. She sent
him new fox-trots from Warsaw. Ibrahim would rewrite them
on sheet music, change the name (“Love in the Ocean” to
“Ambrosia,” or “A Flirt in the Metro” to “Singapore Nights”),
equip the music with Khuntov’s poems, and fob them off on
the music industry.

“What’s this all about?” he repeated.
The rivals appealed to Ibrahim’s impartiality. The story
about the fascists was told a second time.
“It needs to be an epic poem,” Lapis-Trubetskoy maintained.
“A play!” Khuntov shouted.
But Ibrahim took an action worthy of the biblical judge. He
decided the dispute instantly.
“An opera!” Ibrahim said, puffing up importantly. “This will
make a real opera, with a ballet, a choir, and magnificent voice
parts.”
Khuntov supported him. He immediately remembered the
magnitude of the Bolshoi Theater’s returns. They tempted
the stubborn Lapis with stories of the coming profits. Khuntov
slapped his hand down on the theatrical guide and shouted
out figures that shot all Lapis’s previous conceptions of riches
out of the water.
They divvied up the creative work. Khuntov took charge of
the script and the prose synopsis. Lapis got the poems. Ibra-
him was responsible for the music. They decided to write it
then and there.
Khuntov sat down on his maimed chair and neatly wrote
“Act One” at the top of a sheet of paper.
“Now look, friends,” Ibrahim said. “As long as you’re over
there scribbling something out, describe the main characters
for me. I’ll get a few leitmotifs ready. It’s absolutely essential.”
The gold-seekers began to work out what the main charac-
ters were like. They sketched out dramatis personae such as:
ugolino: A grand master of the Fascist Order (bass)
alfonsina: His daughter (coloratura soprano)
comrade mitin: A Soviet inventor (baritone)
sforza: A fascist prince (tenor)
gavrila: A Soviet Young Communist (mezzo-soprano
dressed as a man)
360 ✦ in moscow
nina: A Young Communist and daughter of a priest
(lyric soprano)
(Fascists, moonshiners, chaplains, major domos, techni-
cians, Sicilians, laboratory assistants, Mitin’s ghost, Young
Pioneers, and others.)
Ibrahim, who had begun to see gratifying prospects open-
ing up before him, said, “I’ll just write the chaplains’ chorus
and the Sicilian dances for now. You write the first act. Put in
lots of arias and duets.”
“But what are we going to call the opera?” Lapis asked.
Then, from the entrance hall, they heard hooves ringing
on the rotten parquetry, a quiet neighing, and a family argu-
ment. The door to the gold-seekers’ room opened and citizen
Sharinov, who lived in the next room, led in a lean, emaciated
horse with a long tail and a graying muzzle.
“Go on!” Sharinov shouted at the horse. “Hup, now, you old
piece of . . .”
The horse startled, turned around, and ran into Lapis with
its croup.
The gold-seekers were so amazed that they pressed up
against the wall in fright. Sharinov dragged the horse into his
room as a multitude of greenish Tatar young erupted out of
it. The horse resisted and lashed out with a hoof. A piece
of parquetry leaped from its slot and whirred out the open
window.
“Fatima! Push from the back!” Sharinov shouted in a ter-
rible voice.
Tenants ran into the gold-seekers’ room from all over the
building. Lapis shrieked in a voice not his own. Ibrahim was
ironically whistling “Ambrosia,” while Khuntov waved the list
of characters around. The horse gave them a sidelong glance,
worried, and wouldn’t budge.
“Go on!” Sharinov said weakly. “O-o-oh, damn you!”

Then the gold-seekers came back to their senses and de-
manded an explanation. The building manager and the dvornik
arrived.
“What are you doing?” the building manager asked. “Who
does stuff like this? How can you bring a horse into an apart-
ment?”
Sharinov flew abruptly into a rage.
“What’s it to you? I bought a horse. Where do I put it? It’ll
get stolen in the courtyard!”
“Take that horse out of here this instant!” the building man-
ager shouted hysterically. “If you need horsemeat, buy it at the
Muslim butcher’s.”
“It’s expensive at the butcher’s,” Sharinov said. “Go on!
You! . . . Damn horse! . . . Fatima!”
The building manager was saying, “I’m not letting you get
away with this, you’ll answer for this in court.”
Nevertheless, the unfortunate Sharinov took the horse into
his room and continually shouted “Whoa” as he tied the ani-
mal to the window handle. A minute later Fatima ran through
with a big, fluffy armful of hay.
“How are we supposed to work when there’s a horse next
door? We’re writing an opera, this is going to bother us!” Lapis
cried.
“Don’t worry,” the building manager said as he left. “Go
ahead and work.”
The gold-seekers sat down to work again, listening to the
clatter of hooves.
“So, what are we going to call the opera?” Lapis asked.
“I propose the title ‘The Iron Rose.’ ”
“What’s a rose got to do with it?”
“Then we can call it something else. Say, ‘The Sword of
Ugolino.’ ”
“That’s not very contemporary either.”
“Well, what are we going to call it, then?”
362 ✦ in moscow
And so, they ended up with a wonderful, intriguing title:
“The Death Ray.” Under the words “Act One,” Khuntov wrote
with a steady hand, “Early morning. The stage depicts a Mos-
cow street, a ceaseless flow of motorcars, buses, and streetcars.
Ugolino stands on the corner in a long, tight coat. With him
is Sforza . . .”
“Sforza is wearing pajamas,” Lapis interjected.
“Don’t butt in, stupid! Go write your little ditties for Mitin’s
arioso instead. People don’t go out into the street in pajamas!”
Khuntov continued writing: “With him is Sforza in a Young
Communist outfit . . .”
They weren’t able to write any more. The building manager
and two policemen started taking the horse out of Sharinov’s
apartment.
“Fatima! Hang on, Fatima!” Sharinov shouted.
Lapis grabbed a loaf of bread off the table and hesitantly
whacked the horse’s bony croup with it.
“Pull!” cried the apartment manager.
The horse was blessing people right and left with its tail.
The policemen huffed and puffed. The Tatar brood, along
with Fatima and her brothers, wrapped themselves around
the horse’s thin knees. Citizen Sharinov shouted hopelessly,
“Go on!”
The gold-seekers came to the aid of the representatives of
the law, and the picturesque group burst noisily into the en-
trance hall.
It smelled like a circus stable in the empty room. A sud-
den gust of wind ripped the operatic pages off the table and
whirled them around the room along with the hay. Comrade
Mitin’s arioso flew right up to the ceiling. The chaplains’ cho-
rus and the rudiments of the Sicilian dance did a jig on the
windowsill.
Shouting and disgusted neighs issued from the staircase.
The gold-seekers, policemen, and representatives of the build-

ing administration applied all their strength. After overcoming
the stubborn animal, the coauthors gathered their wind-strewn
pieces of paper and continued writing freely, without making
any corrections.
364 ✦ in moscow
32
In the Columbus Theater
ippolit matveevich was gradually turning into a sycophant.

Whenever he looked at Ostap, his eyes assumed a gendarme-
blue tint.
It was so hot in Ivanopulo’s room that Vorobyaninov’s dried-
out chairs popped like wood in a fireplace. The smooth opera-
tor was reclining, head pillowed on his sky-blue vest. Ippolit
Matveevich was looking out the window. A carriage bearing
a coat of arms on the side rushed past tiny Moscow yards as it
rolled down crooked lanes. Its black lacquer reflected an array
of bowing passersby: a bronze-headed Horse Guardsman, city
ladies, and little pudgy white clouds. The horses’ hooves thun-
dered on the sidewalk as they took the carriage past Ippolit
Matveevich. He turned away in disappointment.
The carriage bore the coat of arms of the Moscow Commu-
nal Services Department. Its function was trash removal, and
its wooden-plank sides did not reflect a single thing. A dashing
old man with a fluffy gray beard sat on the box. If Ippolit Ma-
tveevich had known that the coachman was none other than
Count Alexei Bulanov, the famous hussar hermit, he would
probably have hailed the old man so they could chat awhile
about the delightful days of yore.
Count Alexei Bulanov was gravely troubled. As he whipped
the horses, he mused sadly about the bureaucracy that was
consuming the division of sewage pit maintenance and which
had kept the count from receiving the work apron that, ac-
✦ 365 ✦
cording to his contract, he was supposed to have recieved six
months ago.
“Listen,” said the smooth operator suddenly. “What was
your name when you were little?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just because! I don’t know what to call you. I’m tired of
calling you Vorobyaninov, and Ippolit Matveevich is too sour.
So what was your name? Ipa?”
“Kisa,” Ippolit Matveevich replied, grinning.
“Congenial. So how about this, Kisa: take a look and see
what’s on my back, if you don’t mind. It hurts between my
shoulder blades.”
Ostap pulled his cowboy-style shirt off over his head. The
vast back of a provincial Antinous was revealed before Kisa Vo-
robyaninov, a back that was most charming in form, but a bit
dirty.
“Oh-ho,” Ippolit Matveevich said. “You’ve got a real beauty.”
Oddly shaped purple bruises in all the rainbow colors of
an oil slick shone between the smooth operator’s shoulder
blades.
“My word of honor, it’s the number eight!” Vorobyaninov
exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a bruise like that before.”
“Is there another number?” Ostap asked calmly.
“Something that looks like the letter P.”
“No further questions. I get it. Damn pen! Do you see how
I’m suffering, what dangers I’m subjecting myself to, Kisa, all
because of your chairs? These mathematical signs were in-
flicted by a large self-falling fountain pen with a No. 86 nib. I
should point out that the damn pen fell on my back just as I’d
sunk both hands into the guts of the editor’s chair.”
“Me too! I also suffered!” Kisa interjected hastily.
“And when was that? When you were rutting around after
someone else’s wife? As far as I can recall, that untimely flir-
366 ✦ in moscow
tation didn’t end too well! Or was it during your duel with
Kolya?”
“Not at all, if you’ll excuse me. My injuries were inflicted
on the job!”
“Ah! Was this when strategical considerations caused us to
retreat from the Columbus Theater?”
“That’s right. When the night watchman was chasing us.”
“So you consider your falling off the fence a heroic act,
then?”
“I hit my kneecap on the pavement.”
“Not to worry! Given the pace of construction these days,
it’ll be repaired before you know it.”
Ippolit Matveevich promptly rolled up his left pant leg and
stopped in confusion. The yellow knee revealed no signs of
injury.
“What a bad thing that is, lying at such a young age,” Ostap
said sadly. “I’ll have to give you a B in comportment and call in
your parents! And you can’t do anything right, anyway. Why did
we have to run away from the theater? Because of you! What
the hell made you stand on the lookout straight and tall like a
sentry, without moving an inch? But of course—you did it to
attract everyone’s attention. And who messed up Iznurenkov’s
chair so badly that I had to go do his work for him? I’m not
even talking about the auction. A perfect time to go rutting
around the ladies! Goating around at your age is dangerous!
You need to take better care of your health! And what about
me? I got the little widow’s chair. I got both the Shchukins’
chairs. In the end, it was me who took care of Iznurenkov’s
chair! I’m the one who went to the editorial office and to La-
pis’s! While you led only a single chair to victory, and even that
was with the help of our holy enemy, the archbishop.”
The technical director paced soundlessly on his bare feet as
he made the submissive Kisa listen to reason.
in the columbus theater ✦ 367

The chair that had disappeared onto the loading platform
of October Station remained a black stain on their conces-
sion’s gleaming plans. The four chairs in the Columbus The-
ater represented a sure profit, but the theater was leaving for
a trip down the Volga on the lottery bond steamboat The Scria-
bin, so today it was putting on the premiere of Marriage, the
last show of the season. They had to decide whether to remain
in Moscow to look for the chair that had vanished in the vast
space of Watchtower Square or to go on tour with the troupe.
Ostap was leaning toward the latter.
“But maybe we could split the difference?” Ostap asked. “I
go with the theater, and you stay here and track down that
chair from the loading platform.”
But Kisa blinked his gray lashes so fearfully that Ostap didn’t
bother to continue.
“When you’ve got two birds and one stone, you go for the
bird that’s fatter,” he said. “We’ll go together. But we’re going
to have a lot of expenses. We’ll need money. I have sixty rubles
left. How much do you have? Oh, I forgot! A young girl’s love
is so expensive at your age! I hereby resolve that we’re going
to the theater for the premiere of Marriage today. Don’t forget
to wear your tailcoat. If they still have the chairs and haven’t
sold them to pay their insurance bill, we’ll be leaving tomor-
row. Remember, Vorobyaninov, the last act of the comedy My
Mother-in-Law’s Treasure is beginning. The finita la commedia is
getting close, Vorobyaninov! Hold your breath, old friend!
Eyes to the footlights! Oh, my youth! Oh, the smell of back-
stage! How many memories! How many intrigues! How much
talent I showed back in the day, when I played Hamlet! In a
word, the meeting is still in session!”
They walked to the theater on foot to save money. It was still
completely light out, but the streetlights were already issuing
their lemony radiance. Spring was dying, right there in front
of everyone. Dust chased her out of squares and a hot little
368 ✦ in moscow
wind pushed her back into lanes. Little old ladies took ten-
der care of her there, and drank tea with her, sitting at round
tables in their cozy courtyards. But Spring’s life was over, and
she was no longer let out in public. Still, she wanted so much
to go to the Pushkin monument, where young men in color-
ful caps, stovepipe trousers, “dog’s happiness” neckties, and
Jimmy boots were already strolling.
Girls sprinkled in lilac-colored powder were circulating be-
tween the cathedral of the Moscow Consumer Organizations’
Union and the Communard Co-op (between the former Filip-
pov and the former Yeliseev). The girls were cursing audibly.
Passersby slowed down at this hour, and not only because
Tverskaya Street was getting crowded. Moscow horses were no
better than the ones in Stargorod: they clattered their hooves
on the paving stones just as intentionally. Bicyclists flew back
noiselessly from the first big intercity race at the Young Pio-
neers’ Stadium. An ice-cream seller rolled his green chest, full
of May thunder, down the street, fearfully glancing at a police-
man out of the corner of his eye; but the policeman, shackled
by the glowing semaphore he was using to regulate street traf-
fic, presented no danger.
The two friends made their way through all this commotion.
Temptations arose at every step. Karian, Caucasian, and filleted
shish kebabs were being grilled in tiny little joints right out on
the street. The hot, piercing smoke ascended to the bright sky.
The sound of stringed instruments wafted out of beer parlors,
hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and the Great Silent movie house.
A loudspeaker was getting all worked up at a streetcar stop:
“Lensky, a young landowner and poet, is in love with another
landowner’s daughter, Olga Larina. Evgeny Onegin pretends
to court the young Olga to vex his friend. Now listen to the
overture. I’m tuning you in to the live auditorium . . .”
The loudspeaker quickly finished tuning up the orchestra,
loudly tapped its conductor’s wand on its music stand, and

sprinkled the first few bars of the overture onto the crowd await-
ing the streetcar. Streetcar No. 6 approached with a tortured
groan. The curtain flew up, and old lady Larina gazed sub-
missively at the conductor’s wand and sang “Habit is handed
down from above” while she fiddled with her preserves, but
still the streetcar couldn’t manage to wrest itself away from the
attacking crowd. It was only able to set off, howling and weep-
ing, as Lensky’s voice performed “In your house.”
They had to hurry. The friends stepped into the Columbus
Theater’s echoing entrance hall. Vorobyaninov rushed over to
the ticket window and read out the seat prices.
“My word,” he said. “It’s quite expensive. Three rubles for
the sixteenth row.”
“How I dislike these petit bourgeois, these provincial nin-
nies!” Ostap remarked. “Where are you going? Can’t you see
that’s the ticket window?”
“But where else should I go? They won’t let us in without a
ticket, you know!”
“Kisa, you are a vulgar fellow. There are two windows in ev-
ery well-appointed theater. Only lovers and rich heirs go to
the ticket window. The remaining citizens (which comprise,
as you can see, the overwhelming majority) go directly to the
administrator’s window.”
And sure enough, there were five or six modestly dressed peo-
ple standing in front of the ticket window. They might very well
have been rich heirs or lovers. But there was quite a commotion
at the administrator’s window. A colorful line stretched out be-
fore it. Young men wearing high-fashion jackets and trousers cut
in a way that provincials could only dream of confidently bran-
dished notes from directors, actors, editorial offices, costumers,
district chiefs of police, and other persons closely associated
with the theater, namely: members of the association of theater
and film critics, the association The Poor Mothers’ Tears, the
school council of The Workshop of Circus Experiments, and
370 ✦ in moscow
some kind of FORTINBRAS of the UMSLOPOGAAS. At least
eight people were there with notes from Esper Eclairovich.
Shouting, “I just need to ask a question, you can see I haven’t
even taken off my galoshes,” Ostap cut in line. He shoved
aside the Fortinbrasians, broke through to the window, and
looked in.
The administrator was working as hard as a stevedore. Bright
diamonds of sweat were sprinkled across his fat face. The tele-
phone harassed him every other minute and rang with the
insistence of a streetcar trying to make its way across the Smo-
lensk market.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Yes! Yes! Eight thirty!”
He hung up the phone with a clang, only to pick it right
back up again.
“Yes! Columbus Theater! Oh, it’s you, Segidilia Markovna?
Of course we have them, yes, of course. Benoir! But Boucat
isn’t coming? Why not? The flu! Isn’t that awful? All right,
then! Yes, yes, good-bye, Segidilia Markovna.”
“Columbus Theater!! No! No passes of any kind are being
taken today! True, but what can I do? The Moscow City Coucil
forbade it!”
“Columbus Theater!! Wha-a-at? Mikhail Grigorievich? Tell
Mikhail Grigorievich that his aisle seat in the third row is al-
ways waiting for him, day and night.”
A man with a fleshy face, whose brows constantly lifted and
fell, was seething and shaking next to Ostap.
“What’s that to me?” the administrator told him.
Khuntov (it was the man in tune with the times) was asking
for a free pass in a quick, shy mumble.
“It’s impossible!” the administrator said. “You understand,
the Moscow City Council!”
“Yes,” Khuntov fumbled, “but the Moscow branch of the
Leningrad Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers
arranged with Pavel Fyodorovich to . . .”

“I can’t and that’s the end of it. Next!”
“But I beg your pardon, Yakov Menelaevich, they told me
in the Moscow branch of the Leningrad Society of Dramatic
Writers and Opera Composers that . . .”
“Just what am I supposed to do with you? No, I’m not giving
you one! What can I do for you, comrade?”
Khuntov, sensing that the administrator had wavered, started
mumbling again: “But you’ve just got to see, Yakov Menelae-
vich, the Moscow branch of the Leningrad Society of Dramatic
Writers and Opera Compo . . .”
The administrator couldn’t bear it any longer. There’s a
limit to everything. Menelaevich snapped pencils and clutched
at the telephone, but found Khuntov a seat right up next to
the chandelier.
“Give me your note, quick,” he shouted to Ostap.
“Two orchestra seats,” Ostap said, very quietly.
“For who?”
“For me!”
“And who are you, that I should give you seats?”
“Well, now, I’m pretty sure you know me.”
“I don’t recognize you.”
But the stranger’s eyes were so clear, so pure, that the ad-
ministrator’s hand moved of its own accord to give Ostap two
seats in the eleventh row.
“All kinds of people come around here,” the administrator
said, shrugging. “Who knows who the heck they are! Maybe
he’s from the People’s Commissariat of Education? I think I’ve
seen him in the People’s Commissariat of Education . . . now
where have I seen him?”
As he mechanically handed out passes to fortunate theater
and film critics, Yakov Menelaevich, now gone quiet, kept try-
ing to remember where he’d seen those clear eyes.
Once all the passes had been given out and the lights in the
foyer had gone down, Yakov Menelaevich remembered. He’d
372 ✦ in moscow
seen those clear eyes and that confident gaze in Taganskaya
Prison in 1922, when he was doing time there himself for a
trifling little thing.
The Columbus Theater was housed in a mansion. Therefore
the auditorium wasn’t very big, the foyer was disproportion-
ately huge, and the smoking room nestled under the stairs. A
mythological hunt was depicted on the ceiling. The theater was
young and cultivated such daring that it had been deprived of
government subsidies. This was its second year of existence,
and it survived primarily by going on tour in the summer.
Laughter rang out from the eleventh row, where the con-
cessionaires sat. Ostap liked the musical introduction, which
the orchestra members were performing on bottles, Esmarch’s
irrigators, saxophones, and large regimental drums. A flute
whistled and the curtains parted, wafting coolness.
Vorobyaninov, who was used to the classic interpretation
of Marriage, was surprised to see that Podkolyosin was not
on stage. As he cast his eyes about, Ippolit Matveevich saw
plywood rectangles painted all the colors of the visible light
spectrum hanging from the ceiling. There were neither doors
nor deep-blue muslin windows. Ladies in large hats cut out of
black cardboard were dancing under the many-colored rect-
angles. Moaning bottles called Podkolyosin out on stage. He
rode in on Stepan’s back and crashed right into the dancing
group. Podkolyosin was arrayed in a chamberlain’s uniform.
After chasing the ladies away with words that were not in the
play, Podkolyosin cried, “Stepa-a-an!”
At the same time, he leaped to one side and froze in a hard-
to-hold position. The Esmarch’s irrigators thundered.
“Stepa-a-an!” Podkolyosin repeated, making another leap.
But since Stepan, who was standing right next to him
dressed in the skin of a snow leopard, wasn’t responding, Pod-
kolyosin asked tragically, “Why are you keeping quiet, like the
League of Nations?”

“I was afeared of Chamberlain, obviously,” Stepan said,
scratching at his snow-leopard skin.
It was clear that Stepan was going to edge out Podkolyosin
and become the main character of the updated play.
“So, then, is the tailor making my frock coat?” A leap. A
bang on the Esmarch’s irrigators. With an effort, Stepan stood
on his hands and in this position answered, “He is!”
The orchestra played a potpourri from Madame Butterfly.
Stepan stood on his hands the whole time. His face flushed
with color.
“Well,” Podkolyosin asked, “didn’t the tailor ask why the
master needs such fine calico?”
Stepan, who by now was sitting in the orchestra embracing
the director, answered, “No, he didn’t. Why should he, is he a
deputy of the English Parliament?”
“And didn’t the tailor ask whether the master might be get-
ting married?”
“The tailor asked whether the master might be paying ali-
mony.”
Then the lights went out and the audience started stamping
its feet. It stamped until Podkolyosin’s voice rang out from the
stage, “Citizens! Don’t worry! The lights were turned out on
purpose, to go with the action. It’s part of the set design.”
The public resigned itself. The lights weren’t turned back
on until the end of the act. Drums thundered in total dark-
ness. A detachment of flashlight-wielding soldiers wearing ho-
tel doormen’s uniforms went past. Then, Kochkaryov arrived,
evidently riding a dromedary. One could conclude this based
on the following dialogue:
“Phew, how you frightened me! And you come riding in on
a drome-dary, too!”
“So, you noticed, even though it’s dark? But I wanted to of-
fer you a sweet dairy treat!”
The concessionaires read the playbill during the intermission.
374 ✦ in moscow
Marriage
Text – N. V. Gogol
Poetry – M. Cherchezlafemmov
Literary Montage – I. Antiochsky
Musical Accompaniment – Kh. Ivanov
Author of the Show – Nik. Sestrin
Set Design – Simbievich-Sindievich
Lighting: Plato Plashchuk. Sound Design: Galkin, Palkin,

Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind. Makeup: The KRULT Studio.
Wigs: Foma Kochura. Furniture: The Master Woodworkers of
FORTINBRAS of the Balthazar UMSLOPOGAAS.
Acrobatics Instructor: Georgetta Tiraspolskikh.
Hydraulic Press: supervised by the fitter Mechnikov.
Playbill was composed, set, and printed in the
KRULT Industrial Training School.
“Do you like it?” Ippolit Matveevich asked timidly.

“Do you?”
“It’s very interesting, it’s just that Stepan is a bit odd.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Ostap said. “Particularly because their
furniture is from some VOGOPAS studios. Have they gone
and started using our chairs for something else?”
These fears proved groundless. At the beginning of the sec-
ond act, all four chairs were carried out on stage by black men
in top hats.
The courtship scene provoked the most audience inter-
est. The moment Agafya Tikhonovna started making her way
down a wire stretched all the way across the auditorium, Kh.
Ivanov’s awe-inspiring orchestra raised such a racket that the
sound alone should have made Agafya Tikhonovna go tum-

bling down into the audience. But Agafya was magnificent
and didn’t break the scene. She was wearing a flesh-colored
leotard and a man’s derby hat. She stepped along the wire,
balancing with a green umbrella with i want podkolyosin
written on it, and everyone could see her dirty soles from un-
derneath. She leaped off the wire directly onto a chair. At the
same time, the blacks, Podkolyosin, Kochkaryov in his tutu,
and the matchmaker in her streetcar driver’s uniform all did
a backwards somersault. Then the lights were brought down
again so everyone could rest for five minutes.
The suitors were very funny, especially Omelet. Instead of a
person, they brought out a large omelet in a frying pan. The
sailor was wearing a mast with a sail.
The merchant Oldmanov shouted in vain that he was being
strangled by license fees and leveling taxes. Agafya Tikhonovna
didn’t like him. She married Stepan. Both of them started bolt-
ing down the omelet, which was served by Podkolyosin, who’d
turned into a footman. Kochkaryov and Fyokla sang satirical
ditties about Chamberlain and the alimony payments the Brit-
ish Prime Minister was going to get out of Germany. A hymn
of prayer for the dying was played on the Esmarch’s irrigators.
The curtain slammed shut, wafting coolness.
“I’m pleased with the show,” Ostap said. “The chairs aren’t
damaged. But there’s no point in taking it slow. If Agafya Ti-
khonovna’s going to plop down on them every day, they’re not
long for this world.”
The young men in high-fashion jackets were jostling each
other and laughing as they delved into the finer points of the
set and sound design.
Khuntov’s condescending voice rang out in the stairwell.
“Yes. I’m writing an opera. They were just telling me in the
Moscow branch of the Leningrad Society of Dramatic Writers
and Opera Composers . . .”
376 ✦ in moscow
For a long time thereafter, the dispersing audience could
still hear the staccato drumroll of the man in tune with the
times: “You’ve got to agree that the Moscow branch of the Len-
ingrad Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers . . .”
“Well, Kisochka, it’s time for you to go bye-bye,” said Ostap.
“Tomorrow we have to get in line for tickets early in the morn-
ing. The theater is leaving on the express to Nizhny Novgorod
at seven in the evening. So get two third-class seats on the
Kursk Line to Nizhny Novgorod. It’s no trouble, we can sit for
a while. It’s just one night.”
The next day, the entire Columbus Theater was sitting in the
Kursk Station restaurant. Simbievich-Sindievich had taken all
the necessary precautions to ensure that the set and props
were going on their same train and now sat at a table, drink-
ing beer and eating snacks. He wet his mustache in his beer
and asked the fitter worriedly, “They’re not going to break the
hydraulic press on the way, are they?”
“That press gives us nothing but trouble,” Mechnikov re-
plied. “We use it for five minutes, but we have to drag it around
with us all summer.”
“But was it any easier with the time projector from the play
The Ideological Powder?”
“Of course it was. Even though the projector was bigger, it
wasn’t as fragile.”
Agafya Tikhonovna, a nice young girl with legs that were as
hard and shiny as skittles, sat at the next table.
Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind, the sound de-
sign, fussed next to her.
“Yesterday you didn’t play in time with me,” Agafya Tikho-
novna complained. “I could fall that way.”

The sound design raised a racket. “What are we supposed to
do! Two irrigators broke!”
Galkin shouted, “Where are you going to get an imported
Esmarch’s irrigator these days?”
Palkin added, “Just try them over in State Medical Supply.
Forget about Esmarch’s irrigators, you can’t even get a ther-
mometer there!”
“Do you really play on thermometers, too?” the girl said,
horrified.
“We don’t play on thermometers,” Zalkind noted. “But
those damned irrigators make you downright sick, and then
you have to take your temperature.”
The show’s author and director, Nik. Sestrin, was strolling
along the platform with his wife. Podkolyosin and Kochkaryov
had tossed back three shots of vodka apiece and were trying to
outdo each other in courting Georgetta Tiraspolskikh.
The concessionaires, who had arrived two hours before the
train’s departure, were already on their fifth lap around the
square laid out in front of the train station.
Ippolit Matveevich’s head was spinning. Their pursuit of
the chairs was entering the decisive stage. Elongated shad-
ows lay on the overheated pavement. Dust settled on hot, wet
faces. Light carriages pulled up. It smelled like gasoline. Hired
cars let out their passengers. Yermak Timofeeviches, their oval
badges shining in the sun, ran out to meet them and carried
off their suitcases. The muse of distant travel was clutching
people by the throat.
“Well, we might as well go on, too,” Ostap said.
Ippolit Matveevich agreed submissively. Then he ran right
into Bezenchuk, the master coffin craftsman.
“Bezenchuk!” he said, extremely surprised. “How did you
get here?”
Bezenchuk doffed his hat and was joyfully dumbfounded.
378 ✦ in moscow
“Mister Vorobyaninov!” he shouted. “My respects to the
honored guest!”
“So how are things?”
“Things are bad,” the master coffin craftsman said.
“And why is that?”
“I’m looking for clients. I can’t get any clients.”
“Is The Nymph edging you out?”
“How could she? Could she really edge me out? Ain’t no
chance for it. After your dear mother-in-law, Pierre and Con-
stantine is the only one who’s turned up his toes.”
“Is that right? He really died?”
“He died, Ippolit Matveevich. He turned up his toes at his
post. He was shaving our pharmacist, Leopold, and turned up
his toes. People said there was a rupture of his insides, but I
think the departed just breathed in too much medicine from
that pharmacist and couldn’t take it.”
“Ai-yai-yai,” Ippolit Matveevich mumbled. “Ai-yai-yai. So,
were you the one who buried him, then?”
“I was. Who else? Is Nymph really going to give you tassels,
dadgum it?”
“So you won out, then?”
“I won out. They just beat me up afterwards, is all. Darn
near beat the stuffing out of me. The police had to break it up.
I was laid up for two days, treating myself with alcohol.”
“You wiped yourself down with it?”
“We don’t need none of that wiping.”
“What brought you out here?”
“I brought in my goods.”
“What goods?”
“My goods. A conductor I know helped me ship them for
free in the mail car. Since we’re friends.”
Only then did Ippolit Matveevich notice a pile of coffins on
the ground a short distance from Bezenchuk. Some had tas-

sels, some didn’t. Ippolit Matveevich recognized one of them
immediately. It was the large, dusty oak coffin from Bezen-
chuk’s display window.
“Eight of them, like peas in a pod,” Bezenchuk said smugly.
“All of ’em slick as a whistle.”
“But who needs your goods here? They’ve got enough of
their own craftsmen here.”
“What about the fluke?”
“What fluke?”
“The epidemic. Prusis told me that the fluke’s raging in
Moscow, and there’s nothing to bury people in. All the mate-
rial’s been used up. So I decided to come out and set things
straight.”
Ostap, who had been listening curiously to the entire con-
versation, stepped in. “Listen, pops. It’s Paris where the flu is
raging.”
“In Paris?”
“Well, yes. So go to Paris. You’ll rake it in there! It’s true
you’ll have a few difficulties with the visa, but don’t get down
about it, pops. If Briand takes a shine to you, your life won’t
be half-bad: you’ll be set up as personal coffin-maker to the
municipality of Paris. But they’ve got enough of their own
coffin-makers here.”
Bezenchuk looked around wildly. In point of fact, there
were no corpses lying around on the square, regardless of
Prusis’s assurances; people were keeping on their feet quite
cheerfully, and a few of them were even laughing.
The train had long ago carried off the concessionaires,
and the Columbus Theater, and the remaining public, but Be-
zenchuk still stood, stunned, over his coffins. His eyes burned
with an unquenchable yellow flame in the darkness settling
over him.
380 ✦ in moscow
✦ Part Three ✦
Madame Petukhova’s Treasure
33
A Magical Night on the Volga
the smooth operator and his friend and closest assistant,

Kisa Vorobyaninov, stood to the left of the State Volga River-
boat Line’s landing stages, under a sign reading tie up to
rings, watch out for fence, don’t touch walls.
The suffering cries of steamships frightened the marshal.
Lately he’d gotten as jumpy as a rabbit. The sleepless night
Ippolit Matveevich spent in the third-class car of the Moscow–
Nizhny Novgorod mail train had left shadows, blotches, and
dusty wrinkles all over his face.
Flags popped on the pier. Smoke, curly as cauliflower, poured
out of ships’ smokestacks. The steamer Anton Rubinstein, at
landing stage No. 2, was being loaded. Stevedores thrust their
iron claws into cotton bales; cast-iron pots stood arranged in a
bataillon carré; and wet-salted hides, coils of wire, boxes of plate
glass, balls of binding twine, millstones, bony, two-toned agri-
cultural machinery, wooden pitchforks, baskets of new cherries
sewn up with sacking, and barrels of sardines were everywhere.
The motor ship The Paris Commune was docked at landing stage
No. 4. According to schedule, it was only supposed to set off
downriver at six that evening, but the passengers who’d arrived
that morning from Moscow had begun strolling its neat white
decks by ten. But the Scriabin wasn’t there. This worried Ippolit
Matveevich a great deal.
“What are you so worried about?” Ostap asked. “And just
imagine that the Scriabin was here. How would you get on
✦ 383 ✦
board? Even if we had the money to buy a ticket, nothing would
come of it. That steamship isn’t taking any passengers.”
In the train, Ostap had managed to have a chat with Mech-
nikov, the fitter who was working the hydraulic press. He found
out everything. The steamer Scriabin had been chartered by
the People’s Commissariat of Finances and was to complete
a trip from Nizhny Novgorod to Tsaritsyno, stopping at every
dock and printing up and issuing rounds of lottery bonds. To
effect this, an entire institution had come out from Moscow:
the lottery commission, a business office, a brass band, a cam-
eraman, correspondents from the main newspapers, and the
Columbus Theater. The theater was to perform shows demon-
strating the benefits of government bonds along the way. The
theater was fully provisioned by the lottery commission up to
Tsaritsyno, and after that it was going to take its Marriage on a
wide-ranging tour of the Caucasus and Crimea at its own risk.
The Scriabin was late. It was in the boatyard undergoing the
final preparations for the trip, and they could only promise
that it would arrive by evening. Therefore all the Moscow per-
sonnel were bivouacked on the pier to await loading.
Gentle creatures with little suitcases and carryalls were sit-
ting on coils of wire, guarding their Underwoods and looking
fearfully at the stevedores. A citizen with a purple goatee was
perched on a millstone. A pile of little enameled doorplates
sat on his lap. On the top one, a curious bystander could have
read
mutual settlements department.
Pedestal tables and other, more modest tables stood piled on

top of each other. A sentry strolled to and fro by the sealed
safe.
The TASS correspondent had ensconced himself on the
edge of the pier and was dangling his legs over the side, fishing.
The fish weren’t biting, and the correspondent grunted, an-
384 ✦ madame petukhova’s treasure

noyed, as he changed the bait. Persitsky, representing The Lathe,
looked at the market through a pair of Zeiss binoculars with a
magnification factor of eight. Then he shifted his feet restlessly,
found out that it would be another five hours or so until the
Scriabin’s arrival, and went up to town on the Kremlin eleva-
tor. He could get a heap of material together in the remaining
free time and submit an essay about the city, Bonch-Bruevich’s
radio laboratory, and the aftermath of the flood.
Agafya Tikhonovna was sitting on one of Vorobyaninov’s
chairs in the shade of the hydraulic press, flirting with the bal-
alaika virtuoso, a proper young man with a European bearing.
The virtuoso felt marvelous in his native environs. He sat down
graciously on one of Vorobyaninov’s chairs, paying absolutely
no attention to the fact that all five of Galkin, Palkin, Malkin,
Chalkin, and Zalkind were then forced to make do with just
two chairs.
The concessionaires stalked in circles around the chairs
like jackals. Ostap was especially outraged by the balalaika vir-
tuoso. “What kind of tomtit is that?” he whispered to Ippolit
Matveevich. “There’s all kinds of fools sitting on your chairs.
It’s all the fruit of your vulgar goating around.”
“Why are you pestering me?” Vorobyaninov whimpered. “I
don’t even know what that means, goating around.”
“You should. Goating around means courting young ladies
with impure intentions in your heart. Your denials are use-
less. Liza told me everything. The entire city of Moscow is roll-
ing on the floor laughing. Everyone knows about your old
goatishness.”
The companions circled the chairs and cursed one another
quietly.
Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind were predict-
ing the future. Malkin had no faith in the quality of the lot-
tery dinners. “The contract should’ve specified the number of
dishes and quantity of calories,” he was saying. “According to
a magical night on the volga ✦ 385

regulations we should be equated with metalworkers and get
no fewer than four thousand calories for lunch.”
Galkin and Palkin were more optimistic.
“But at least the caviar is fresh here, and the fish,” they in-
formed everyone.
“And what about the air!” Chalkin cried. “The sea air!”
“That makes it all the worse,” said whip-thin Zalkind. “With
air like this you’re constantly hungry. I’m hungry already.”
“We’ll make it to Tsaritsyno all right. They’ll feed us.”
“And who’s going to feed us in the Caucasus? Especially if
Sestrin already scooped up twenty cafeteria tokens . . .”
“While we get one and a half each. And then if the show
flops, too . . .”
“That’s right. We’ll be making fifteen kopeks a day.”
The balalaika virtuoso invited Agafya Tikhonovna to lunch
in the motor ship The Paris Commune, moored at landing stage
No. 4.
“But will they let us in?”
“Of course they will. In the summer, that’s how the kitchen
makes its money. They’ve got very good, cheap lunches.”
The sound design heaved a sigh and trudged over to a tav-
ern called The Raft. The concessionaires perked up.
“Maybe we should risk it?” Ostap said abruptly, involuntarily
drawing closer to the chairs. “You take two and I take two, and
we beat it! How about it? Damn, but that would be fine!”
He looked around. He would have to run down the gravel
embankment to Rozhdestvenskaya Street, packed with trains
of carts. And forcing his way through the crowd of stevedores
wouldn’t be easy, either. On top of that, Kochkaryov and
Podkolyosin were hanging around nearby. Of course they’d
start yelling something awful once they saw someone trying
to make off with their furniture, supposedly produced in the
woodworking shops of the FORTINBRAS of the Balthazar
UMSLOPOGAAS.

Ostap turned sour. “We’ll have to go with them! But how?
In the worst case we could’ve gotten on The Paris Commune,
gone to Tsaritsyno, and waited for the troupe to get there, but
money! Money! Ah, Kisa, to hell with you! Have you fully com-
prehended your vulgarity yet, Kisa?”
The companions decided to at least sit on the chairs for a
while. They hopped up and down on the springs and switched
from chair to chair. Ippolit Matveevich squirmed.
“The irony of fate!” Ostap said. “Millionaire beggars! Have
you felt anything yet?”
Podkolyosin and Kochkaryov walked up to the office cou-
rier and, nodding their heads toward the concessionaires, asked
just who was daring to sit on their props.
“Well, now they’ll send us packing!” Ostap concluded.
A watchman came over. “Which department are you with,
comrades?”
“The Mutual Settlements Department,” the observant Ostap
said.
But even this didn’t help. The courier walked away and re-
turned immediately with Comrade Ludwig. Comrade Ludwig
chased the concessionaires away from the chairs. The friends
ran over to the landing stage to meet the Scriabin, which was
already approaching, turning against the current. It bore
plywood panels with rainbow-colored depictions of gigantic
bonds on its sides. The steamer roared, imitating the bellow of
a wooly mammoth, or perhaps of some other animal that used
to stand in for steamship horns in prehistoric days.
The financial and theatrical bivouac came to life. Civil ser-
vants working for the lottery bond came running down the slope
from the city. The stout Plato Plashchuk came rolling up to the
ship in a cloud of dust. Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and
Zalkind ran out of The Raft tavern. Stevedores were already
laboring over the safe. Georgetta Tiraspolskikh, the acrobat-
ics instructor, ran gymnastically up the gangway. Simbievich-

Sindievich, worried about his set, stretched his hands out first to
the heights of the Kremlin, then to the captain who was stand-
ing on the bridge. The cameraman went through the crowd
carrying his camera high above his head, demanding as he
walked that a four-person cabin be set aside for a darkroom.
Ippolit Matveevich made his way over to the chairs in the
general melee. He was in such a state that he was about to drag
one of them off.
“Drop the chair!” Bender cried. “Are you crazy, or what? We
get one chair, and the rest are lost to us forever! You’d do bet-
ter to think of a way for us to get on that steamer.”
Musicians girded with brass tubes walked down the landing
stage. They looked disgustedly at the sound design, bristling
with its saxophones, flexatones, beer bottles, and Esmarch’s
irrigators. “Bunch of douches!” said the clarinet as he came
up even with the Mighty Five. Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin,
and Zalkind did not reply, but they did cherish revenge deep
in their hearts.
The lottery drum was brought in on a little Ford pickup. It
was a complicated piece of machinery, made from six rotating
cylinders sparkling with glass and brass. It took a long time to
get it mounted on the lower deck.
The tramping around and squabbling lasted until late that
night.
The Columbians were insulted that they’d been put in sec-
ond class and threw themselves with abandon at Nik. Sestrin,
the director and author of the show.
“Come on, now, is this worth getting upset about?” Nik. Se-
strin mumbled. “They’re marvelous cabins, comrades. I think
everything’s just fine.”
“The only reason you think that is because you got set up in
first class,” Galkin shot off.
“Galkin!” the director said ominously.
“What? ‘Galkin! ’ ”

“You’re already starting to demoralize people!”
“I am? But what about Palkin? Or Malkin? Do you think
Chalkin and Zalkind won’t tell you the same exact thing? After
all, where are we going to rehearse?”
And in unison, the entire Mighty Five demanded a separate
cabin for rehearsals, and, while they were at it, at least a little
bit of money in advance.
“Go to hell!” cried Nik. Sestrin. “Here they are giving de-
mands at a time like this!”
Without explaining what “a time like this” was, the author
of the show leaned over the side of the ship and cried, “Simbie-
e-evich! Sindie-e-evich! Mura! Have you seen Simbievich-
Sindievich?”
In the lottery room people were setting up a stage, nail-
ing placards and banners with slogans to the walls, setting out
wooden benches for visitors, and hooking up the lottery drums
to electric cables. The desks were set up aft. Bursts of laughter
alternated with the clatter of typewriters in the typists’ cabins.
A pale man with a purple goatee was walking all over the ship
hanging his enameled signs on their respective doors:
mutual settlements department
personnel desk
business office
machinery department.
The man with the goatee was sticking up smaller signs next to
the large ones. These read:
no entry except on business
no visitors
employees only
address all questions to registration desk.

The first-class salon was set up for an exhibit of paper money
and vouchers. This provoked a new explosion of dissatisfac-
tion from Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind.
“Where in the world are we going to eat?” they worried.
“What do we do when it rains?”
“Whew, I can’t take it!” Nik. Sestrin said to his assistant.
“What do you think, Seryozha, couldn’t we get by without the
sound design?”
“What do you mean, Nikolai Konstantinovich! The actors
have gotten used to the rhythm!”
Then another commotion started. The Five had caught
wind of the fact that the author of the show had carried all
four chairs off to his cabin. “Oh, yes,” the Five said ironically.
“And we’ll have to sit on our beds to rehearse, while Nikolai
Konstantinovich will sit on four chairs with his wife Gusta, who
has nothing to do with our group at all. Maybe we also wanted
to bring our wives with us on the trip!”
The smooth operator stood on shore looking evilly at the
lottery steamship. A new burst of shouting carried over to the
concessionaires.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” a committee member
shouted.
“But how was I supposed to know he was going to get
sick?”
“What the hell is this! Well, then, you just go on over to the
Union of Artistic Workers and make them commission us an
artist right away.”
“But where am I supposed to go? It’s already six. The union’s
been closed for a long time now. And the steamship’s leaving
in half an hour.”
“Then you’ll draw everything yourself. Since you’re the one
who took responsibility for decorating the steamship, now you
may be so kind as to get us out of this however you want.”

Ostap was already running up the gangway, elbowing aside
stevedores, young ladies, and the merely curious. He was
stopped at the entrance.
“Your pass!”
“Comrade!” Bender roared. “You! You! The pudgy one!
The one who needs an artist!”
Five minutes later the smooth operator was sitting in the
white cabin of the floating lottery’s pudgy manager, working
out the job conditions.
The fat little man was saying, “So then, comrade, here’s what
we need from you: we need you to draw up placards, captions,
and signs, and to finish the big illuminated cutout. Our artist
started doing it, but he got sick. We left him in a hospital here.
Oh, and, of course, just generally supervising design. Can you
do all that? And I’m warning you now, it’s a lot of work.”
“Yes, I can do all that. I’ve had to do that kind of work
before.”
“And you can go with us right away?”
“It’ll be difficult, but I’ll see what I can do.”
A large, heavy mountain lifted from the manager’s shoul-
ders. The fat little man gazed radiantly at his new artist and felt
as carefree as a child.
Ostap asked boldly, “What are your terms? Keep in mind
that I’m not a funeral parlor.”
“We pay by the job, union wages.”
Ostap frowned, which cost him a large effort.
“But apart from that there’s also free board, and your own
cabin,” the little fatty added hastily.
“In what class, though?”
“In second class. Although you can have first class, too. I’ll
see to it for you.”
“And the return trip?”
“On your own dime. We don’t have the credit.”

“Well, all right,” Ostap said with a sigh. “I’ll take it. But I
have a boy, an assistant, too.”
“I’m not sure about the boy. We didn’t get any credit for a
boy. If you want to pay for him yourself, then fine. He can stay
in your cabin.”
“Okay, we’ll do it your way. My boy’s a quick one. He’s used
to spartan conditions. Are you going to feed him?”
“Send him over to the kitchen. We’ll see how it goes.”
Ostap got a pass for himself and for his quick boy, put the
cabin key in his pocket, and went out onto the burning-hot
deck. Ostap felt more than a little satisfaction whenever he
touched the key. It was the first time in his stormy life that
he had a key and a room. The only thing he didn’t have was
money. But it was right there next to him, in the chairs. The
smooth operator strolled along the railing with his hands in
his pockets as if he didn’t notice Vorobyaninov, left standing
on shore.
At first, Ippolit Matveevich gestured in silence. Then he
risked squeaking a little. But Bender was deaf. He stood with
his back to the chairman of the concession and attentively ob-
served the way the hydraulic press was being lowered down
into the hold.
The final preparations for departure were being made.
Agafya Tikhonovna (also known as Mura) ran out of her cabin
to the stern of the ship, thumping her little feet. She looked
down into the water and loudly shared her delight with the
balalaika virtuoso, all of which caused disorder in the ranks of
the lottery enterprise’s most respected figures.
The steamship let out the second whistle. The terrible noise
parted the clouds. The sun turned crimson and dropped down
past the horizon. Lamps and streetlights went on in the city
above. The wheezing of phonographs competing for the last
shoppers wafted over from the market in the Pochaev Ravine.
Deafened and lonely, Ippolit Matveevich shouted something,

but no one could hear him. The clanging of the capstan de-
stroyed all other sounds.
Ostap Bender enjoyed effective gestures. It was only just be-
fore the third whistle, when Ippolit Matveevich no longer had
any doubt that he’d been abandoned to the whim of fate, that
Ostap noticed him.
“What are you doing, standing there like a fellow who’s just
been betrothed! I thought you were on the steamship a long
time ago! They’re getting ready to take down the gangway! Get
up here quick! Let that citizen through! Here’s his pass.”
Ippolit Matveevich was almost crying as he ran up onto the
steamship.
“That’s your boy?” the manager asked suspiciously.
“That’s my boy,” Ostap said. “Not bad, eh? Your typical boy.
Let whoever says he’s a girl cast the first stone!”
The fat man walked away grumpily.
“Well, Kisa, we’ll have to get down to work first thing in
the morning,” Ostap remarked. “I hope you know how to mix
paint. And then there’s this: I’m an artist, I graduated from
Vkhutemas, and you’re my assistant. If there’s anything you
don’t agree with here, then you’d better run back to shore
quick.”
Greenish-black foam gushed up from under the stern. The
steamship quivered, the brass cymbals flew together, the flutes,
cornets, trombones, and tubas sounded a wonderful march,
and the balancing, rotating city moved over to the port side.
The steamship continued quivering as it turned downstream
and quickly rushed into the darkness. Stars, lamps, and port
signals of various colors rocked back and forth behind it. A
minute later the steamship had gone so far that the city lights
started to look like a skyrocket’s sparks that had frozen in
place.
Even though the sound of laboring Underwoods was still
faintly audible, nature and the Volga had their way. Bliss over-

came everyone on board the Scriabin. The members of the
lottery commission sipped their tea languorously. Tenderness
reigned at the first meeting of the local committee, held on
the prow. The warm wind sighed so loudly, the water lapped
so gently at the sides of the boat, the black outlines of shore
flew past them so quickly, that the committee chairman, a de-
cisive individual who had just opened his mouth to pronounce
a speech on how to meet job expectations while in an unusual
setting, caught both himself and everyone else by surprise
when he started singing,
A steamship plies the Volga,
Mother Volga, dear river . . .
The meeting’s other stern participants roared the refrain,

The lilac is blooming . . .
No resolution on the committee chairman’s report was ever

drawn up. The sounds of an upright piano rang out. The di-
rector of musical accompaniment, Kh. Ivanov, was enticing
some quite lyrical notes out of the instrument. The balalaika
virtuoso was trundling along behind Murochka. Since he
couldn’t come up with his own words to express his love, he
was mumbling the words to a love song: “Don’t go! Your kisses
are burning, I’ve still no surfeit of passionate caresses. The
mist sleeps still in the mountain valleys, the starry vault of the
sky has not yet faded.”
Simbievich-Sindievich was clutching the railing and contem-
plating the heavenly abyss. He felt like the set design of Mar-
riage was disgracefully coarse in comparison to it. He looked
down in disgust at his hands, which had ardently taken part in
the classic comedy’s set design.
Just when the languor reached its peak, Galkin, Palkin, Mal-
kin, Chalkin, and Zalkind, who had settled in on the aft deck,
struck their pharmaceutical and alcoholic accessories. They

were rehearsing. The mirage dissipated immediately. Agafya
Tikhonovna yawned and went to bed, paying no attention to
the sighing virtuoso. Once again the general contract rang out
in the committee members’ souls, and they got back down to
their resolution. Simbievich-Sindievich decided, on second
thought, that Marriage’s design wasn’t so bad after all. An an-
noyed voice in the dark called Georgetta Tiraspolskikh in for
a meeting with the director. Dogs barked in the villages. The
air grew cool.
In a first-class cabin Ostap reclined on a leather couch and
gazed pensively at a cork ring covered in green canvas as he
interrogated Ippolit Matveevich: “Do you know how to draw?
That’s too bad. Unfortunately, I don’t know how, either.”
He thought for a moment and continued, “Can you do let-
ters? You don’t know how to do letters either? Now that’s really
bad! After all, we’re artists! Well, we can get by for a couple of
days, but then they’ll throw us off. We have to get everything
done in those two days. Our situation has become a bit more
complicated. I found out that the chairs are in the director’s
cabin. But even that’s not too terrible after all’s said and done.
The most important thing is that we’re on the ship. We have to
examine all the chairs before we get thrown off. It’s too late to
do anything today. The director’s asleep in his cabin.”

34
A Pair of Unclean Animals
the first person to appear on deck the next morning was

Persitsky, the reporter. He’d already managed to take a shower
and devote ten minutes to calisthenics. People were still asleep,
but the river was as alive as during the day. Enormous rafts,
like fields of boards with huts on top, floated by. An angry little
tugboat with its name, The Lord of Storms, painted in an arc on
its paddle box was pulling three oil barges tied together in a
train. The express mail carrier Red Latvia ran past below them.
The Scriabin passed a dredging caravan, tested the depth with
a striped rod, and began to describe an arc as it turned against
the current.
Persitsky applied himself to the binoculars and started sur-
veying the landing stage. He read its sign: barmino.
People on the steamship began waking up. A weighted
string flew onto the Barmino landing. The fellows on the land-
ing pulled in this thin line until they brought in the thick end
of the mooring line. The propellers reversed. Quavering foam
spread out over half the river. The Scriabin shook from the
propeller’s sharp blows and pushed its entire side up against
the landing stage. It was still early, so the beginning of the lot-
tery was set for ten o’clock.
Work on the Scriabin started exactly at nine, just as if ev-
eryone were on dry land. No one changed his habits. Anyone
who was late to work on land was late here, too, even though
he slept in his own office. The expeditionary personnel of the
✦ 397 ✦
People’s Committee of Finances got used to their new lifestyle
fairly quickly. Couriers swept their cabins just as indifferently
as they used to sweep their offices in Moscow. Cleaning ladies
distributed tea and ran papers from the registration desk to
the personnel desk, not a bit bewildered that the personnel
desk was located on the aft deck while registration was in the
nose of the ship. In the mutual settlements cabin, one could
hear abacuses clicking like castanets and the grinding of add-
ing machines. Somebody was being dressed down under the
captain’s tower.
The smooth operator was burning his bare feet on the up-
per deck as he walked around a long, narrow strip of red cal-
ico, painting a slogan on it. He kept having to check a piece of
paper to make sure he was getting it right:
Everyone to the lottery! Every worker should have
a government bond in his pocket.
Even though the smooth operator was doing his best, his utter
lack of any aptitude was obvious. The slogan gradually crawled
down to the bottom of the piece of calico, which appeared
to be hopelessly ruined. Then with the help of his boy, Kisa,
Ostap turned the long strip of fabric over and started paint-
ing again. This time he was more careful. Before he scrawled
on the letters, he laid down two parallel lines with a piece of
chalked string and then, quietly cursing the innocent Voro-
byaninov, began tracing out words.
Ippolit Matveevich performed his boy’s duties conscien-
tiously. He ran down to get hot water, he melted glue, he poured
paints into a bucket in spite of his sneezing, and peered obse-
quiously into the demanding artist’s eyes. The concessionaires
carried the finished, dried slogan downstairs and attached it
to the side of the ship. The captain, a calm man with a droop-
ing Zaporozhian mustache, was walking past. He stopped and
shook his head. “That’s no way to work,” he said. “What are you

hammering nails into the banisters for? Where are we going to
get the money to repair this when you’re gone?”
The captain was aggrieved. On his steamship, no one had
ever hung little signs reading no entry except on business
and no visitors on the doors, there had never been typewrit-
ers on deck, and no one had ever played Esmarch’s irrigators,
the very sight of which drove the shy captain into a state of
cold indignation.
Polkan, the sleepy cameraman, came out of his cabin. He
took a long time surveying both horizons and setting up his
camera. Then he turned away from the crowd that had already
gathered at the landing stage and shot about thirty feet of the
manager of the personnel desk. The manager was trying to
walk around freely and easily in front of the camera to make it
look more natural, but Polkan resisted this: “Comrade, don’t
go outside the frame. Stand in one place. And don’t move
your hands, please.”
The manager crossed his arms on his chest and was filmed in
this monumental pose. Then Polkan retired to his darkroom.
The fat little man who’d hired Ostap ran onto shore and
surveyed the new artist’s work from there. The letters of the
slogan were of different thicknesses and slanted slightly in
different directions. The fat man thought that for all his self-
confidence, the new artist could’ve put a little more effort into
it, but there was no choice, he had to be satisfied with what
he had.
The brass band went on shore and started puffing out some
intoxicating marches. At the sound of the music, children came
running from all over Barmino. Then peasant men and women
came in from the apple orchards. The band thundered until
the members of the lottery committee got off the ship. A rally
started on shore. The first sounds of a report on the interna-
tional situation poured out from the porch of the Korobkov
tearoom.
a pair of unclean animals ✦ 399

The Columbians gawked at the rally from on board the ship.
From there they could see the white kerchiefs of the peasant
women standing at a distance from the porch, the motionless
crowd of peasant men listening to the orator, and the orator
himself, who waved his hands around from time to time. Then
music started playing. The orchestra turned and moved to-
ward the gangway, playing continuously. The crowd thronged
after them.
“Just a moment!” the little fat man shouted from the deck.
“And now, comrades, we are going to pull the numbers of the
winning bonds. Therefore I ask everyone to board the steam-
ship. When the numbers have been determined, there will be
a concert. So we ask that you not disperse after the end of the
lottery, but gather on shore and watch from there. The perfor-
mance will be on deck!”
Everyone bumped into each other as they ran onto the
steamship and went down into the cool lottery room. The
lottery committee, which included representatives of the vil-
lage of Barmino, took their places on stage. The committee
members did this with a dignity born of habitually doing these
kinds of ceremonies. The representatives of the village, how-
ever (there were two of them), in their woven bark shoes and
striped dark-blue shirts, walked over to the table seriously, as
though they were going to do some threshing, and sat down
at the end.
“I hereby request the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate
to examine the seals on the lottery drums,” the chairman of
the committee said.
A representative of the Inspectorate bent over, touched the
seals carefully, and announced, “The seals are intact!”
After the examination of the seals on the lottery drums, a
child volunteer was requested from the audience.
“And now, comrades, the child will pull one slip out of each
cylinder, here in front of everyone. There is one number on

each slip. All six numbers together make up the number of the
winning bond. Those of you who have bonds can follow along.
Those who don’t can get them right here on the steamship.”
The drums rotated, winking their little glass windows, and
stopped. A trembling barefoot boy dropped his hand into
each cylinder and pulled out a roll of paper that looked like a
papirosa, then gave them all to the committee.
“Bond number 0703418 has won in all five series.”
The lottery machine methodically spat out combinations of
numbers. The drums turned, numbers were called out, and
the people of Barmino watched and listened.
The sound design, excited by the whole process, pooled its
money and acquired one bond. It sighed, relieved, after every
announcement. “Thank goodness it wasn’t ours!”
“What are you so happy about?” Nik. Sestrin said, amazed.
“You didn’t win!”
“As if we wanted to win twenty rubles!” the Mighty Five
shouted. “You could win fifty thousand with this bond. It’s a
pretty easy calculation.”
“Here’s an idea, my friends: it’s a long time yet to the big
prizes, and there’s nothing for you to do here,” the director
said. “Go get ready for your performance.”
Ostap ran up for a moment, ascertained that all the steam-
ship dwellers were sitting in the lottery room, and ran off to
the deck again. “Vorobyaninov, I’ve got a pressing artistic task
for you,” he whispered. “Go over to the exit from the first-class
hallway and stand there. If somebody approaches, start sing-
ing, loudly.”
The old man was taken aback.
“But what should I sing?”
“Not ‘God Save the Tsar,’ that’s for sure! Something pas-
sionate, like ‘Little Apple’ or ‘The Heart of a Beauty.’ But I
warn you that if you don’t start your aria on time, I’ll—! This
isn’t your Experimental Theater! I’ll rip your head off.”

The smooth operator, his bare feet slapping the deck, ran
out into the cherry-paneled hallway. The large mirror at the
end of the hallway reflected his figure for a second. He read
the sign on the door:
nik. sestrin
director, columbus theater.
His image disappeared from the mirror. Then the smooth op-
erator appeared in it again. He was carrying a chair with little
bent legs. He raced along the hallway, slowed his steps to go
out on deck, exchanged a glance with Ippolit Matveevich, and
carried the chair upstairs to the wheelhouse. There was no one
inside the little glass hut. Ostap carried the chair to the aft deck
and said didactically, “The chair will remain here until evening.
I’ve thought it all through. Almost no one comes back here but
us. Let’s cover the chair up with placards, and when it gets dark
we can acquaint ourselves with its contents at leisure.”
A minute later the chair became invisible, covered in sheets
of plywood and scraps of red calico.
Gold fever seized Ippolit Matveevich once more.
“But why not just carry it off to our cabin?” he asked impa-
tiently. “We could open it up right now. And if we found the
diamonds, then we could get on shore right away . . .”
“And if we didn’t find them? Then what? What would we do
with it then? Or maybe we could take it back to citizen Sestrin
and say politely, ‘Excuse us,’ we’d say, ‘we stole your dear little
chair, but unfortunately we didn’t find anything in it,’ we’d
say, ‘so please take it back in a slightly damaged state!’ Is that
what you’d do?”
The smooth operator was right, as always. Ippolit Matvee-
vich recovered from his embarrassment only when the sounds
of an overture being performed on Esmarch’s irrigators and
rows of beer bottles wafted over from the deck.

The lottery-related activities were done for the day. The au-
dience members took their seats on the sloping riverbank and
exceeded everyone’s expectations by loudly expressing their
approval of the ensemble with black performers and phar-
maceutical instruments. Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and
Zalkind looked around proudly, as if saying, “See! And you
said the broad masses wouldn’t understand. Art always gets
through!” Then, the Columbians performed a light vaudeville
number with singing and dancing on an improvised stage. Its
plot could be boiled down to how Vavila won fifty thousand
rubles and what happened as a result. The actors threw off the
fetters of Nik. Sestrin’s Constructivism and performed hap-
pily, with energetic dancing and sweet song. The riverbank was
completely satisfied.
The second act was the balalaika virtuoso. The riverbank
broke out in smiles. His cutaway coat, along with the part cleav-
ing his hair, provoked bewilderment and ironic catcalls from the
audience. The virtuoso sat down on a bench, adjusted his tails,
and slowly began Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. The virtuoso
gradually increased his speed, thus achieving the heights of bal-
alaika technique. The skeptics were crushed. Still, there wasn’t
any real enthusiasm. Then the virtuoso started playing “Young
Lady:” “Young lady, young lady, dear mistress, young lady.”
The balalaika went into action. It flew behind the perform-
er’s back, from whence everyone heard, “If the master’s got a
watch chain, then you know he’s got no watch!” The balalaika
flew into the air, releasing more than a few extremely difficult
variations during its short flight.
Then it was Georgetta Tiraspolskikh’s turn. She led out a
little herd of girls in sarafany. The concert ended with Russian
dances.
The Scriabin got ready to continue its voyage; the captain
conversed through a tube with the engine room, and the steam-

ship’s furnaces blazed. Meanwhile, the brass band went on
shore again and, to everyone’s delight, began playing dance
music. The crowd formed picturesque groups full of life and
movement. The setting sun radiated a soft apricot color. It was
the ideal time for filming. And indeed, Polkan, the camera-
man, came yawning out of his cabin. Vorobyaninov, who’d al-
ready grown accustomed to the role of general errand boy,
walked behind Polkan, carrying his camera. Polkan walked up
to the railing and stared out at shore. People were dancing a
military polka there on the grass. The fellows were stamping
their bare feet as though they wanted to crack our planet in
two. The ladies glided. Spectators arranged themselves on the
riverbank’s terraces and descents. A French cameraman from
the group Avant-garde would have found three days’ worth of
work here. But Polkan raked his beady rat eyes once across
the shore, turned hastily away, and ran like a pacer up to the
committee chairman. He stood him in front of a white wall,
stuck a book in his hand, asked him not to move a muscle, and
cranked the camera for a long time. Then he led the embar-
rassed chairman to the aft deck and filmed him against the
backdrop of the sunset.
After finishing his filming, Polkan retired importantly to his
cabin and shut himself in.
The steam whistle roared again, and again the sun ran off
in fright. The second night began. The steamship was ready
for departure.
Persitsky ran along the hallways and stairs, looking for the
TASS correspondent, who had disappeared. He was nowhere
to be seen. The correspondent turned up only as they were
taking in the gangways. Tripping, clattering his jars, and wav-
ing his fishing pole, he ran along the riverbank.
“You forgot someone!” he shouted in long, drawn-out cries.
“You forgot someone!”
They had to wait.

“To hell with you!” said Persitsky, once the worn-out corre-
spondent had arrived. “Were you fishing?”
“Yes.”
“Then where are your sturgeon, your burbots, and craw-
dads?”
“Well, this is just the devil knows what!” the correspondent
said, upset. “You scared off all the fish with your bands! And
then when one fish finally did take the bait, that awful steam
whistle went roaring and that fish got away, too. No, sir, com-
rades, it’s completely impossible to work under these condi-
tions! Completely impossible!”
The furious correspondent went to see the captain to find
out when the next stop was.
“First there’ll be Yurino, then Kozmodemyansk, then Chebok-
sary, Mariansky Posad, and Kozlovka,” the captain said. “Then
comes Kazan. We’re on the lottery committee’s schedule.”
The correspondent inquired about what everyone always
inquires about (approximately how much does a steamship
like this one cost and what it was called before the Revolu-
tion), then shifted to a no less trivial line of questioning about
Volga crossings and shoals.
The captain sighed. “Now that’s a nasty business; it all de-
pends. The riverbed can change every day. There’s special set-
tings for it.”
“What settings?” said the correspondent, surprised.
“Lighthouses, buoys, shore signals. They’re all called settings.
But the most important thing is experience. My boy here . . .”
The captain indicated a twelve-year-old lad sitting at the
handrail, looking out at the banks as they flowed past.
“He’s gonna be a real Volga man. He knows the channels
better than me. I’ve been taking him around with me since he
was six.”
The office manager walked up to the captain. The slightly
lost director of the diamond concession followed behind him.

“This is our artist, we’re making a big cutout,” the manager
said. “So is there any way we could fasten it to the captain’s
bridge? Up there, people could see it from all directions.”
The captain categorically refused to have his bridge deco-
rated. “If you want it next to the bridge, be my guest!”
The manager turned to Ostap. “Comrade artist, will next to
the captain’s bridge be all right with you?”
“Sure,” Bender said with a sigh.
“Well look alive, then! Tomorrow you’ll get to work first
thing in the morning.”
Ostap thought fearfully about the next day. He was going
to have to take a sheet of plywood and cut from it the figure
of a sower throwing handfuls of bonds in all directions. This
artistic trial was more than the smooth operator could handle.
Although Ostap had somehow managed the letters, he had no
resources left for an artful rendering of a sower.
“Keep in mind that we start the evening lotteries as soon as
we get to Vasyuki, so we absolutely have to have the cutout by
then,” the fat man warned him.
“Of course, don’t worry, the cutout will be done,” Ostap an-
nounced, pinning his hopes more on that evening than on the
following morning.
After dinner, the quality of which not even such gourmets
as Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind could im-
pugn, conversations like the following could be heard on the
aft deck:
“And what about overtime?”
“You know very well that we can’t allow overtime without
the approval of the labor inspectorate.”
“Forgive me, my dear comrade, but we’re working under
the conditions of a shock-work campaign . . .”
“Well, then, why didn’t you make sure to get approval from
Moscow ahead of time?”
“Moscow will approve it ex post facto.”

“Then let everyone do the work ex post facto, too.”
“In that case I cannot be held responsible for the commit-
tee’s success.”
The starry, windy night set in after these and other conversa-
tions. The population of the ark of the lottery fell asleep. The
lions of the lottery committee slumbered. The lambs from the
personnel desk, the goats from accounting, the rabbits from
the mutual settlements department, the hyenas and jackals
from sound design, and the turtledoves from the machinery
department all slept.
The only ones not sleeping were the pair of unclean ani-
mals. The smooth operator came out of his cabin after mid-
night. The loyal Kisa’s noiseless shadow followed him.
They ascended to the upper deck and silently walked up to
the chair, covered under its sheets of plywood. Ostap carefully
dismantled the camouflage and set the chair upright. Then he
clenched his jaw, gutted the upholstery with a pair of pliers,
and slid his hand under the seat.
The wind raced along the upper deck. Stars stirred lightly
in the heavens. Far beneath their feet, the black water plashed.
They couldn’t see the riverbanks. Ippolit Matveevich was
shaking.
“There’s something there!” Ostap said in a hushed voice.
Father Fyodor’s letter,

written by him in Baku in the furnished rooms of the Value
My dear, priceless Katya!

With each hour we are coming nearer our happiness. I’m
writing you from the furnished rooms of the Value after I’ve
been out taking care of things. The city of Baku is very large.

People say this is where kerosene is produced, but you have
to go there on an electric train and I don’t have the money.
This picturesque city is washed by the Caspian Sea. It really is
very grand by all measures. The heat here is terrible. I carry my
overcoat over one arm and my jacket over the other, and it’s
still hot. My hands sweat. Every now and then I indulge myself
in a little tea. I have almost no money. But it’s not a problem,
my little dove, Katerina Alexandrovna, soon we’ll have a great
deal of money. We’ll go everywhere and then we’ll settle down
very well in Samara, next to our little factory, and we’ll drink
nice fruit liqueurs. In any case, down to business.
Baku is significantly superior to the city of Rostov in terms
of geographical location and population count. However, it’s
significantly inferior to the city of Kharkov in terms of its
street traffic. There are a host of minority nationalities here,
but there are especially many Armenian types and Persians.
Turkey’s not far from here, mother dear. I was also at a bazaar
and saw a lot of shawls and Turkish things. I wanted to get you
an Islamic woman’s veil but I didn’t have the money. But I re-
membered that after we get rich (and you can count the days
until then), I’ll be able to buy you an Islamic veil then, too.
Oh, mother dear, I forgot to write about two terrible in-
cidents that occurred in the city of Baku: 1) I dropped your
brother the baker’s jacket into the Caspian Sea, and 2) a one-
humped camel spit on me at the bazaar. Both of these occur-
rences completely amazed me. How can the regime allow such
outrages to be perpetrated on travelers passing through town,
especially since I didn’t do anything to the camel. I was even
making it feel good by tickling its nostril with a switch! Every-
one around me helped fish out the jacket, we were barely able
to get it, and then, what do you know, it comes out all covered
in kerosene. Now I don’t have any idea what I’m going to tell
your brother the baker. My dove, keep your mouth shut for
the time being. Is Yevstigneev still boarding?

I reread the letter and saw that I didn’t even tell you any-
thing about the main issue. Engineer Bruns really does work
in Asiagas, he’s just not in Baku right now. He left to go to
the city of Batumi for vacation. His family has a permanent
residence in Batumi. I was talking here with people and they
say that all Bruns’s furniture is definitely in Batumi. He’s liv-
ing there at his dacha on Cape Green, that’s a resort area there
(people say it’s expensive). The trip from here to Batumi is fif-
teen rubles and some change. Send twenty here by telegraph,
and I’ll cable you everything from Batumi. Spread the rumor
in town that I’m still at my dear aunt’s deathbed in Voronezh.
Eternally your husband, Fedya
P.S. As I was carrying this letter to the mailbox, somebody got

into my room at the Value and stole your brother the baker’s
overcoat. I’m in such misery! Good thing it’s summer now.
Don’t tell your brother anything.

35
Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
while some of our novel’s characters assumed they had

plenty of time and others were convinced time was a-wastin’,
time passed in its usual fashion. The dusty Moscow May was
followed by dusty June. In the provincial town of N., the car
Gov’t No. 1 had been damaged going over a pothole and had
been sitting at the corner of Staropanskaya Square and Com-
rade Gubernsky Street for two weeks, occasionally envelop-
ing everything in the vicinity in a desperate cloud of smoke.
One by one, the confused members of the Sword and Plow-
share conspiracy signed statements declaring they wouldn’t
leave town and were released from the Stargorod lockup. The
widow Gritsatsueva (a passionate woman, a poet’s dream) re-
turned to her grocery store and was fined fifteen rubles for
not displaying a current price list for soap, pepper, bluing, and
other petty goods in a visible spot—a forgetfulness entirely for-
givable in a bighearted woman!
The day before the trial, which had been set for the twenty-
first of June, the cashier Asokin went to see Agafon Shakhov.
He sat down on Shakhov’s couch and burst into tears. The
writer, in a bathrobe, was smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and
lounging in an armchair.
“I’m done for, Agafon Vasilievich, they’re gonna convict me
now,” the cashier said.
“What in the world made you do it?” Shakhov asked
didactically.
✦ 411 ✦
“You’re the one did me in, Agafon Vasilievich.”
“And what do I have to do with it, I’d like to know?”
“You confused me, Comrade Shakhov. You slandered me in
print. I was never like that.”
“Just what is it you want from me, silly fool?”
“I don’t need anything. It’s just that it was your book did me
in. The case is tomorrow. But the main thing is that I lost my
job. What kind of work can I find for myself now?”
“My book didn’t have that much of an effect, did it?”
“It did, Agafon Vasilievich. It had such an effect that I don’t
even know how it all happened.”
“Marvelous!” the writer exclaimed. He was flattered. He’d
never seen such a clear manifestation of the artistic word’s ef-
fect on the reader’s intellect before. It was just a shame that
this model case would remain unknown to critics and the mass
readership. Agafon buried his fingers in his round, meatball-
shaped beard and thought hard. Asokin wiped a tear from his
eye with a dark hanky.
“Now listen to this, brother,” the writer said, in a heartfelt
voice. “What did you really do wrong? What are you afraid
of? You stole something? Yes, you did. You stole one hundred
rubles when you were subjected to the irresistible influence
of Agafon Shakhov’s novel The Racing Wave, published in Mos-
cow in the year 1927 by Vasiliev’s Thursdays, print run 10,000,
269 pages, price with jacket 2 rubles, 25 kopeks.”
“I understand you very well, sir. That’s just what happened.
Agafon Vasilievich, do you think they’ll give me a suspended
sentence?”
“Well, definitely, of course. But you just lay out everything
plain and simple. So it was like this, you say, the writer Agafon
Shakhov, you say, my moral murderer . . .”
“As if I would dare to shame an author, Agafon Vasilievich!”
“Shame me!”

“As if I would ever betray you!”
“Betray me, my good fellow. It’s my fault.”
“I’ll never cast a shadow over you!”
“Cast away, my dear man, cast a big, leafy shadow! And don’t
forget to talk about the pornography and the naked girls, and
don’t forget to talk about Fenechka. Remember how that
went?”
“Of course I do, Agafon Vasilievich! ‘A pillowy bosom,
healthy, ruddy cheeks, and a strong line to her hips.’ ”
“That’s right, that’s it. And Esmeraldochka. Carnivorous
teeth, and some kind of line of the hips.”
“Natashka turned out real pretty. Seeing as how I’ve been
fired, I’ve been reading your book every day.”
“All the better. Read it some more tonight, and then lay it
all out tomorrow. Tell everyone that I am a public demoralizer,
say that after reading my book a grown man just can’t help
himself. Say it’s a thrilling book and that scenes of inexpress-
ible sexual licentiousness are described in it.”
“You want me to say that?”
“I want you to say that. Agafon Shakhov’s novel The Rac-
ing Wave. You won’t forget? Moscow, 1927, with the Vasiliev’s
Thursdays publishing house, print run 10,000, 269 pages, price
with jacket 2 rubles, 25 kopeks. Say that it’s for sale in all stores,
kiosks, and railroad stations.”
“You’d do better to write it down for me, Agafon Vasilievich,
or else I’ll forget.”
The writer sank into his armchair and jotted down the em-
bezzler’s complete confession. Present were all the primary
elements, such as hips. The price of the book (undoubtedly
a low one given the large number of pages) was indicated sev-
eral times, too, along with the size of the print run and the ad-
dress of the Vasiliev’s Thursdays warehouse: 21 Koshkov Lane,
Apt. 17A.
expulsion from the garden of eden ✦ 413

In parting, the hopeful cashier wheedled a copy of Sha-
khov’s new book, entitled A Story of Lost Innocence, or The Struggle
Against Negligence.
“So go forth, brother, and sin no more,” Shakhov said. “It’s
not tidy of you.”
“I’ll just be going, Agafon Vasilievich. So do you think they’ll
give me a suspended sentence, then?”
“That depends on you. Pin as much as you can on the book.
Then you’ll get out of it.”
Shakhov saw the cashier out, then did a few dancelike steps
and purred, “Beat the drums, let the guitars ring out . . .”
Then he called the Vasiliev’s Thursdays publishing house.
“Print up a fourth edition of The Racing Wave, go ahead and
print it, have no fear! This is Agafon Shakhov speaking!”
“There’s something there!” Ostap repeated, his voice break-

ing. “Hold this!”
Ippolit Matveevich took the flat wooden box into his shaking
hands. Ostap continued to dig around in the chair in the dark.
A small lighthouse on the riverbank flashed. A golden column
lay on the water and floated along behind the steamship.
Ostap said, “What the hell? There’s nothing else in here!”
“Tha-tha-tha-that can’t be!” Ippolit Matveevich babbled.
“Well, you come over and look too, then!”
Without breathing, Vorobyaninov fell to his knees and bur-
ied his hand up to the elbow in the seat. He felt the bases
of springs between his fingers. There was nothing else solid
there. A nasty smell of disturbed dust rose from the chair.
“Nothing, eh?” Ostap asked.
“No.”
Then Ostap lifted the chair and threw it far out into the
river. They heard a heavy splash. Full of doubt and shivering

from the evening damp, the concessionaires returned to their
cabin.
“Well,” Ostap said. “At least we found something.”
Ippolit Matveevich took the little box out of his pocket and
blinked owlishly at it.
“Come on, come on! What are you staring at it for?”
They opened the box. In it lay a tarnished brass plate
inscribed
with this armchair,
master craftsman gambs
is starting a new batch of furniture.
saint petersburg, 1865.
Ostap read this inscription aloud.

“But where are the diamonds?” Ippolit Matveevich asked.
“You are strikingly perceptive, my dear hunter of kitchen
stools! As you can see, there are no diamonds.”
Vorobyaninov was utterly pitiful. His shaggy mustache moved,
and the lenses of his pince-nez were clouded. It looked like he
was beating his cheeks with his ears in despair.
The smooth operator’s cold voice of reason worked its usual
magic. Vorobyaninov stood at attention, hands held stiffly
down along his worn seams, and went quiet.
“Silence, sadness! Silence, Kisa! One day we’ll laugh about
this dumb eighth chair, in which we found the stupid brass
plate. Hang in there. There are still three chairs here, our
odds are ninety-nine out of a hundred!”
That night a volcanic pimple erupted on the extremely dis-
tressed Ippolit Matveevich’s cheek. All their suffering, all their
misfortunes, all the torments of the hunt for the diamonds
had gone into that pimple and were now shining through in
shades of mother-of-pearl, cherry, and bluing.
“Did you do that on purpose?” Ostap asked.

The tall Ippolit Matveevich, slightly bent like a fishing rod,
sighed convulsively and went to get the paints. They began mak-
ing the cutout. The concessionaires worked on the upper deck.
And the third day of the voyage began.
It began with a short skirmish between the brass band and
the sound design over rehearsal space.
After breakfast, at precisely the same time, the big fellows
with brass horns and the thin knights of the Esmarch’s irrigators
both headed for the aft deck from opposite directions. Galkin
managed to be the first to sit down on the bench on the stern.
The clarinet from the brass band came running up after.
“This spot is taken,” Galkin said darkly.
“Who took it?” the clarinet asked ominously.
“I did, Galkin.”
“You and who else?”
“Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind.”
“Don’t you have a Scram-kin too? This is our spot.”
Reinforcements approached from both sides. The helicon,
the most powerful mechanism in the band, stood thrice-girded
in his brass Zmey-Gorynich. The French horn, which looked
like an ear, swaggered. The trombones stood in full military
readiness. The sun was reflected a thousand times in their mil-
itary armor. The sound design looked small and dark. Bottle
glass glinted in it, and the douche-irrigators shone wanly, and
the saxophone—that disgraceful parody of a wind instrument,
nothing but an extract of the gonads of a real brass horn—was
pitiful and looked like a tiny tobacco pipe.
“The enema battalion’s trying to get our spot,” said the
bullying clarinet.
“Those irrigating young men,” the first bass said disdainfully.
“You . . . you conservators of music!” Zalkind said, trying to
come up with the most insulting possible expression.
“Don’t bother us during rehearsal!”
“You’re the ones bothering us!”

“The less you rehearse on those chamber pots of yours, the
better it comes out.”
“You can’t get a damn thing out of those samovars, whether
you rehearse or not.”
Since they hadn’t come to any arrangement, each side re-
mained on the spot and stubbornly played its own music. The
sounds that carried downriver were the kind that only a street-
car crawling slowly along broken glass could produce. The
band men were performing the march of the Kexholm Impe-
rial Guards Regiment, while the sound design played the tribal
dance “An Antelope at the Source of the Zambezi.” It took the
personal intervention of the chairman of the lottery commit-
tee to resolve the scandal.
That day the steamship stopped twice. They spent all day at
Kozmodemyansk. The usual operations were performed: the
opening rally, the lottery itself, a performance by the Colum-
bus Theater, the balalaika player, and dancing on the riverbank.
During all of this, the concessionaires worked by the sweat of
their brow. The manager ran over a few times and was assured
that everything would be ready by evening, upon which he
returned, mind at ease, to fulfill his primary duties.
The masterwork was done by eleven. Ostap and Vorobya-
ninov, bottoms in the air, dragged the cutout to the captain’s
bridge. The fat little man, the manager, ran before them with
his hands lifted up to the stars. It took everyone’s help to get
the cutout affixed to the railings. It towered over the passen-
ger deck like a movie screen. It took the electrician half an hour
to run some cables over to the back of the cutout and install
three lightbulbs inside it. The only thing left to do was to flip
the switch.
Up ahead, on the starboard side, the lights of the town of
Vasyuki were already slipping closer.
The manager convened the steamship’s entire population
for the ceremonial lighting of the cutout. Ippolit Matveevich

and the smooth operator, standing on either side of the not-yet-
illuminated holy tablet, looked down at the collected masses.
The floating institution took everything that happened
on the steamship to heart. The typists, couriers, supervisors,
Columbians, and crew, their heads thrown back, crowded to-
gether on the passenger deck.
“Lights!” the fat little man commanded.
The cutout lit up.
Ostap looked down into the crowd. A rosy light lay on ev-
eryone’s faces.
The spectators burst out laughing. Then a silence spread. And
then a stern voice from below said, “Where’s the manager?”
The voice was so senior that the manager threw himself
headlong down the stairs.
“Take a look,” the voice said. “Admire your work!”
“Now they’ll throw us off,” Ostap whispered to Ippolit Ma-
tveevich.
Ostap was right, as always. The fat little man flew to the up-
per deck like a hawk.
“So, how do you like our cutout?” Ostap asked insolently.
“Does it do the trick?”
“Gather your things!” the manager shouted.
“What’s the big hurry?”
“Ga-ther-your-things! Get out! I’ll take you to court! Our
boss doesn’t like to joke around!”
“Get him out of here!” the senior voice rang out from below.
“No, seriously—you don’t like our cutout? You really think
it’s not a very good cutout?”
There was no point in continuing the charade any longer.
The Scriabin had already moored at Vasyuki and even from on
board one could discern the stunned faces of the Vasyukians
who’d crowded the landing stage.
The concessionaires were categorically refused any money.
They were given five minutes to gather their things.

“Son of a gun!” Simbievich-Sindievich said, as the compan-
ions got off the boat. “They should’ve let me design the cut-
out. I’d have done it so well that no Meyerhold would’ve been
able to touch me.”
The concessionaires stopped on the landing stage and
looked up. The cutout shone in the black heavens.
“Hmm, yes, it is a pretty absurd little cutout. The execution
is simply wretched.”
A drawing made by the tail of a balky mule would have been
a museum-worthy piece in comparison with Ostap’s cutout. In-
stead of a sower throwing bonds around, Ostap’s rascally hand
had drawn a kind of hacked-off thing with a piece of lump
sugar for a head and thin whips instead of arms.
Behind the concessionaires the steamship blazed with light
and thundered out music, while in front of them, high up on
the bank, was the barking of dogs, a distant accordion, and the
gloom of a provincial midnight.
Ostap said cheerfully, “I’ll summarize our situation. Liabili-
ties: we don’t have two coins to rub together, three chairs are
going off downriver, we’ve got nowhere to sleep, and we don’t
have a single children’s aid committee pin. Assets: a 1927
edition of a guidebook to the Volga (I had to borrow it from
Monsieur Simbievich’s cabin). It will be very difficult to come
up with a balance that’s in the black. We’ll have to spend the
night on the landing stage.”
The concessionaires got settled on the benches on the land-
ing. Ostap read from the guidebook by the light of a decrepit
kerosene streetlamp:
The town of Vasyuki is on the high right bank. Timber, pitch,

bast, and bast matting are sent out from here, while consumer
goods are brought in here for the entire region, which is 50
kilometers away from the nearest train line. The town has 8,000
inhabitants, a state cardboard factory with 320 workers, a small

iron foundry, a brewery, and a tannery. Apart from general
educational facilities, there is also a forestry trade school.
“Our situation is much more serious than I thought,” Ostap

said. “For the time being, shaking money out of the Vasyukians
seems to be an insurmountable problem. But we need no less
than thirty rubles. First of all, we have to eat, and secondly, we
need to catch up to the lottery washtub and meet the Colum-
bians on dry land, in Stalingrad.”
Ippolit Matveevich curled up like an old skinny tomcat af-
ter a skirmish with his young rival, the passionate lord of roof-
tops, attics, and dormer windows.
Ostap strolled down an avenue of shops as he calculated
and considered. By one in the morning, he had worked out
a magnificent plan. Bender lay down next to his companion
and fell asleep.

36
The Interplanetary Chess Congress
a tall, thin old man wearing a gold pince-nez and short,

filthy, paint-spattered boots had been walking around Vasyuki
all day. He was gluing handwritten handbills on walls. They
read:
June 22, 1927
In the Cardboard Factory Workers’ Club

there will be a lecture
on the topic:
An Idea for a Fruitful Opening Move

and
A Simultaneous Chess Exhibition on 160 Boards
by Grand Master (senior master player) O. Bender
Players bring their own boards

Price of play: 50 kop. Price of entry: 20 kop.
Begins promptly at 6 o’clock p.m.
Administrator: C. Mikhelson
✦ 421 ✦
The grand master wasn’t wasting any time either. He booked
the club for three rubles, then hurried over to the chess sec-
tion, which was, for some reason, in the same hallway as the
Department of Equine Husbandry.
A one-eyed man was sitting in the chess section reading the
Panteleev edition of one of Spielhagen’s novels.
“Grand Master O. Bender!” Ostap announced as he sat down
on the table. “I’m giving a simultaneous exhibit here.”
The Vasyukian chess player’s single eye opened as wide as
physically possible.
“Just one moment, Comrade Grand Master!” the one-eyed
man shouted. “Sit down, please. I’ll be right back.”
The one-eyed man ran off. Ostap surveyed the chess divi-
sion’s premises. Pictures of racehorses hung on the walls. A
dust-covered account book entitled The Accomplishments of the
Vasyuki Chess Section for the Year 1925 lay on the table.
The one-eyed man returned with a dozen citizens of various
ages. They all took turns coming up to introduce themselves,
giving their last names and respectfully shaking the grand mas-
ter’s hand.
“I’m just en route to Kazan,” Ostap said curtly. “Yes, yes, the
exhibition is tonight, please come. For now, forgive me, I’m
not up to it, the Carlsbad tournament tired me out.”
The Vasyuki chess players listened to Ostap with filial love.
Ostap was getting carried away. He felt a surge of strength and
chess-related ideas.
“You won’t believe how far our thinking about chess has
come. Lasker, you know, has stooped to vulgarities, it’s got-
ten impossible to play with him. He smokes his opponents out
with cigars. He buys cheap ones on purpose, so the smoke will
be more disgusting. The chess world is in turmoil.”
The grand master moved on to local topics.
“Why isn’t there any play of thought in the provinces! Just take
your own chess section here. That’s what it’s called, ‘the chess

section.’ It’s boring, girls! Really, now, why shouldn’t you name
it something fine, something that captures the essence of chess?
You could call your section ‘The Four Knights Chess Club,’ for
example, or ‘Red Endgame,’ or ‘Sacrificing Quality for a Gain
in Speed.’ That would be good! Has a nice ring to it!”
The idea was a success.
“It’s true,” said the Vasyukians. “Why not rename our sec-
tion ‘The Four Knights Chess Club’?”
Since the administration of the chess section was right there,
Ostap organized an immediate meeting under his honorary
chairmanship. At the meeting, the section was unanimously
renamed ‘The Four Knights Chess Club.’ The grand master
used what he’d learned on the Scriabin to execute a rendering
of four knights and the corresponding inscription on a piece
of cardboard with his own hand.
This important event signified the dawn of a new era of
chess thought in Vasyuki.
“Chess!” Ostap said. “Do you even know what chess is? It ad-
vances not only culture but the economy as well! Did you know
that your Four Knights Chess Club can completely transform
the town of Vasyuki, if everything’s done right?”
Ostap hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day. There-
fore his speech was unusually eloquent.
“Yes!” he said. “Chess enriches the whole country! If you
agree to my plan, then you’ll go down to the pier from town
on a marble staircase! Vasyuki will become the center of ten
provinces! What did you know about the town of Semmering
before? Nothing! But now that little town is rich and famous,
just because there was an international tournament there. And
that’s what I’m saying: you need to put on an international
chess tournament in Vasyuki!”
“What?” everyone shouted.
“You could really pull this off,” the grand master replied.
“My personal connections and your hard work, that’s every-
the interplanetary chess congress ✦ 423

thing you need! More than enough to organize a Vasyuki In-
ternational Tournament. Just think how good it will sound:
‘The Vasyuki International Tournament of 1927.’ The partici-
pation of José Raúl Capablanca, Emanuel Lasker, Alekhine,
Nimzowitsch, Réti, Rubinstein, Marotsi, Tarrasch, Vidmar, and
Doctor Grigoriev is guaranteed. And my participation is guar-
anteed as well!”
“But money!” the Vasyukians moaned. “We’ll have to pay
them all money! Several thousand! Where will we get it?”
“A mighty hurricane reckoned everything,” O. Bender said.
“Our takings will bring in money.”
“But who here is going to pay such crazy prices? Vasyuki-
ans . . .”
“What about Vasyukians? Vasyukians aren’t going to pay
anyone anything. Everyone is going to pay them! It’s all quite
simple. After all, chess fans from all over the world will come
to a tournament with such magnificent world masters. Hun-
dreds of thousands of people, people with a lot of money, will
be trying to get to Vasyuki. First of all, the river transporta-
tion system can’t move that kind of volume. Therefore the
People’s Commissariat of Transportation will build a direct
railroad line from Moscow to Vasyuki. That’s first off. Second
are the hotels and skyscrapers for housing the visitors. Third
is raising agricultural productivity for a thousand-kilometer
radius: we have to provide the visitors with vegetables, fruit,
caviar, and chocolate candies. A palace to house the tourna-
ment is fourth. Fifth is the construction of garages for the
visitors’ vehicular transportation. A high-powered broadcast-
ing station will have to be built to inform the world of the
tournament’s sensational results. That’s sixth. Now about this
Moscow–Vasyuki railroad line. It goes without saying that it
won’t have the carrying capacity to transport everyone who
wants to go to Vasyuki. This will mean an airport, ‘Big Vasyuki,’

with regularly scheduled departures of mail planes and diri-
gibles to all the ends of the earth, including Los Angeles and
Melbourne.”
Dazzling perspectives opened up before the chess-lovers
of Vasyuki. The boundaries of the room expanded. The rot-
ten walls of that den of equine husbandry crumbled, and in
their place a thirty-three-story glass palace of the chess idea
disappeared up into the blue sky. In each of its auditoriums
and rooms, even in the elevators that raced past like bullets,
thoughtful people sat and played chess on boards inlaid with
malachite.
Marble staircases cascaded into the deep-blue Volga. Ocean
liners were moored in the river. Throngs of people were car-
ried into the city by funicular: foreigners with big, fat mugs,
chess-loving ladies, Australian admirers of the Indian defense,
Hindus in white turbans, proponents of the Spanish opening,
Germans, French, New Zealanders, and dwellers of the Ama-
zon basin, as well as Muscovites, Leningraders, Kievans, Siberi-
ans, and Odessans, all of them jealous of Vasyukians.
Automobiles moved in a stately conveyer belt between mar-
ble hotels. But then everyone stopped. The world champion
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera came out of the fashionable
hotel The Passed Pawn. Ladies surrounded him. A policeman
in a special chessboard uniform (black-and-white checked
jodhpurs and bishops on his collar tabs) saluted politely. The
one-eyed chairman of the Vasyuki Four Knights Chess Club ap-
proached the champion with dignity.
The conversation of the two luminaries, conducted in En-
glish, was interrupted by the arrival of Doctor Grigoriev and
Alekhine, the future world champion.
Cries of welcome shook the city. José Raúl Capablanca y
Graupera frowned. At a wave of the one-eyed man’s hand, a
marble staircase was sent up to the airplane. Doctor Grigoriev

ran down it, waving a new hat in greeting and commenting
on a mistake Capablanca might make in his upcoming match
with Alekhine as he went.
Suddenly a black dot was glimpsed on the horizon. It quickly
drew nearer and grew larger, transforming into a large emerald
parachute. A man with a suitcase was hanging off the para-
chute ring like a large radish.
“It is he!” the one-eyed man shouted. “Hooray! Hooray!
Hooray! I recognize the great philosopher and chess player,
Doctor Lasker. He is the only one in the world who wears such
little green socks.”
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera frowned again.
A marble staircase was promptly positioned underneath
Lasker. The spry ex-champion blew off a speck of dust that had
settled on his left sleeve while he was flying over Silesia and fell
into the one-eyed man’s embrace. The one-eyed man put his
arm around Lasker’s waist, drew him over to the champion,
and said, “Make up! I ask this of you in the name of the broad
masses of Vasyuki! Make up!”
José Raúl sighed loudly and shook the old veteran’s hand,
saying, “I have always admired your idea of moving the bishop
from b4 to c4 in the Spanish opening!”
“Hooray!” the one-eyed man shouted. “Simple and convinc-
ing, just like a champion!”
The entire vast crowd picked up the refrain: “Hooray! Vivat!
Banzai! Simple and convincing, just like a champion!!!”
The enthusiasm was reaching its peak. The one-eyed man
caught sight of the maestro Duz-Khotimirsky and the maestro
Perekatov floating above the city in an egg-shaped orange di-
rigible, and waved. In a single inspired burst, two and a half
million people started singing:
For the man who has even the slightest advantage
The law of chess is wondrous and irrefutable:

If he’s superior in space, mass, time, or force of pressure
For him alone is victory indisputable.
Express trains rolled in to Vasyuki’s twelve railway stations, un-

loading ever-increasing crowds of chess fans.
An express messenger ran up to the one-eyed man: “There’s
a commotion at the high-powered broadcasting station. Your
help is needed.”
At the station, engineers met the one-eyed man with a shout:
“Distress signals! Distress signals!”
The one-eyed man plopped the earphones on and listened.
Desperate cries resounded through the ether: “A-a-ahh!
A-a-ahh! A-a-ahh! SOS! SOS! SOS! Save our souls!”
“Who are you, he who begs for rescue?” the one-eyed man
shouted sternly into the ether.
“I’m a young Mexican!” the airwaves informed him. “Save
my soul!”
“What’s your request to the Four Knights Chess Club?”
“A small request!”
“What is it?”
“I’m the young Mexican Torre! I just got out of the crazy
house! Let me into the tournament! Let me in!”
“Argh! I’ve got no time as it is, and now this!” the one-eyed
man replied.
“SOS! SOS! SOS!” the ether squealed.
“Oh, all right! Hurry and fly in!”
“I don’t have any mo-o-oney!” they heard from the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico.
“Phew! These young chess players are really getting to me!”
the one-eyed man sighed. “Send the motorized flying handcar
for him. Let him come!”
The sky was ablaze with glowing advertisements by the time
a white horse was led along the city streets. It was the only
horse left after the mechanization of the Vasyuki transporta-

tion system. It had been renamed the Knight by a special reso-
lution, even though it had been considered a lowly mare all
its life. Chess fans welcomed it by waving palm branches and
chessboards.
“Don’t worry, my plan guarantees your city an unheard-of
flowering of production capabilities,” Ostap said. “Just think
what will happen when the tournament is over and all the visi-
tors have gone. The residents of Moscow, crowded by the hous-
ing crisis, will flee to your magnificent city. The capital will
be transferred automatically to Vasyuki. The government will
move here. Vasyuki will be renamed New Moscow, and Moscow
will be Old Vasyuki. Leningraders and Kharkovians will grind
their teeth, but they won’t be able to do a thing about it. New
Moscow will become the elegant cultural center of Europe,
and soon, of the whole world.”
“Of the whole world!” the stunned Vasyukians moaned.
“Yes! And then of the entire universe. Chess thought, hav-
ing once transformed a provincial town into the capital of the
globe, will turn to the applied sciences and invent a means of
interplanetary communication. Signals will fly from Vasyuki to
Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune. Communicating with Venus will
become just as easy as going from Rybinsk to Yaroslavl. And
then, who can say? In eight or nine years Vasyuki will host the
first interplanetary chess congress in the history of creation!”
Ostap wiped his noble brow. He was so hungry that he’d
have eagerly devoured a panfried knight.
“Ye-e-es,” the one-eyed man squeezed out, surveying the
dusty premises with a crazed glance, “but how can we get this
event on a practical footing, how can we build a foundation
for it, so to speak . . .”
Everyone present looked tensely at the grand master.
“I repeat that practically speaking, it all depends on your
hard work. I repeat, I will take on all the organization myself.

You’ll bear no material losses, unless you count the cost of
telegrams.”
The one-eyed man elbowed his comrades-in-arms. “Well?”
he asked. “What do you say?”
“We’ll do it! We’ll do it!” the Vasyukians hollered.
“How much money do you need for those . . . for the
telegrams?”
“A laughable sum,” Ostap said. “A hundred rubles.”
“We’ve only got twenty-one rubles and sixteen kopeks in the
cash box. We know this is far from enough, of course . . .”
But the grand master turned out to be a compliant organizer.
“All right, give me your twenty rubles,” he said.
“But will it be enough?” the one-eyed man asked.
“It’s enough for the first few telegrams. Then the influx of
donations will start and you’ll have so much money you won’t
know what to do with it all.”
The grand master tucked the money into his green field
jacket and reminded the collected audience of his lecture
and simultaneous exhibition on one hundred and sixty chess-
boards. Then he courteously took his leave until evening and
headed for the Cardboard Factory Workers’ Club to meet Ip-
polit Matveevich.
“I’m starving,” Vorobyaninov said, his voice cracking.
He’d been sitting at the ticket window, but hadn’t collected
a single kopek yet and couldn’t even buy a pound of bread. Be-
fore him sat a basket made of green wire, designated to hold
the proceeds. It was the kind of basket that middling-income
families keep their forks and knives in.
“Listen, Vorobyaninov,” Ostap shouted. “Shut down the ticket
window for an hour and a half. We’re going to the People’s Caf-
eteria. I’ll fill you in on our situation on the way. By the way, you
need to shave and clean yourself up. You smack of a barefoot
hobo. A grand master can’t have such suspicious friends.”

“I didn’t sell a single ticket,” Ippolit Matveevich said.
“Not a problem. Everyone will come running by evening.
The town’s already donated twenty rubles toward the organi-
zation of an international chess tournament.”
“Then what do we need the simultaneous exhibition for?”
the administrator whispered. “They could beat us up, you know.
But with twenty rubles we could get on a steamship, the Karl
Liebknecht just happened to arrive upriver, and we could ride
in peace to Stalingrad and wait there for the theater to arrive.
We’ll figure out some way to get into the chairs in Stalingrad.
And then we’re rich men and everything is ours.”
“You mustn’t say such stupid things on an empty stomach.
It has a negative influence on the brain. Maybe we could make
it to Stalingrad on twenty rubles. But how would we eat? Vita-
mins, my dear comrade marshal, don’t get handed out for
free. However, we can wrest thirty rubles from the expansive
Vasyukians for the lecture and exhibition.”
“We’re going to get a beating!” Vorobyaninov said bitterly.
“There is that risk, of course. They could very well bruise
our muttonchops. But as a matter of fact, I have a certain little
idea that will keep you, at least, out of danger. I’ll tell you about
that later, though. For now, let’s go sample the local cuisine.”
At six o’clock that evening the grand master, full, shaven,
and smelling of eau de cologne, walked into the ticket office
of the Cardboard Factory Workers’ Club.
A full, shaven Vorobyaninov was doing a brisk trade in
tickets.
“Well?” the grand master asked softly.
“Thirty entrance tickets and twenty for play,” the adminis-
trator answered.
“Sixteen rubles. Weak, that’s weak!”
“What do you mean, Bender, look at the line here! We’re
inevitably going to get a beating!”

“Don’t think about that. You can cry when they beat you,
but until then don’t hold things up! Learn to do business!”
An hour later there were thirty-five rubles in the cashbox.
The audience in the main hall was excited.
“Close the window! Hand over the money!” Ostap said.
“Now look. Here’s five rubles. Go down to the pier, rent a skiff
for a couple of hours, and wait for me on shore, below the
warehouse. You and I are going to take a little evening plea-
sure cruise. Don’t worry about me. I’m in good form today.”
The grand master went into the main hall. He was cheerful
and knew that the first move, e2 to e4, would present him with
no difficulties. True, the remaining moves were completely
obscured by a thick fog, but this did not worry the smooth
operator one bit. He had worked up a surprise exit strategy to
salvage even the most hopeless game.
The grand master was met with applause. The clubhouse’s
modest hall was decorated with little multicolored paper flags.
A week ago, the Water Rescue Society had held an evening
there, as evidenced by the slogan hanging on the wall:
the cause of helping the drowning

is in the hands
of the drowning themselves.
Ostap bowed, put out his hands as though he were refusing

applause he didn’t deserve, and took the stage.
“Comrades!” he said in a marvelous voice. “Comrades and
brothers in chess, the subject of my lecture today will be the
same thing I spoke about—and, I have to admit, not without
success—in Nizhny Novgorod a week ago. The subject of my
lecture is an idea for a fruitful opening move. What exactly is
an opening move, comrades, and what exactly, comrades, is an
idea? An opening move, comrades, is ‘Quasi una fantasia.’ And

what exactly does ‘idea’ mean, comrades? An idea, comrades,
is human thought clothed in the logical form of chess. Even
with insignificant strength, it’s possible to control the entire
board. Everything depends on each individual taken individu-
ally. For example, take that fine blond gentleman over there in
the third row. Let us assume he plays well . . .”
The blond man in the third row glowed.
“But let’s say that brown-haired man over there plays worse.”
Everyone turned and examined the brown-haired man too.
“And just what is it that we see, comrades? We see that the
blond man plays well, but the brown-haired man plays badly.
And no lecture can change that correlation of power, if each
individual taken individually does not constantly improve his
check—er, that is, I meant to say, his chess game. And now,
comrades, I will relate a few edifying tales from the play of our
respected hypermodernists Capablanca, Lasker, and Doctor
Grigoriev.”
Ostap told the audience a few antiquated stories he’d read
in the Blue Magazine back when he was a kid. With that, the
intermedio was concluded.
Everyone was a bit surprised at the lecture’s brevity. The
one-eyed man didn’t take his single eye off the grand master’s
footwear.
Still, the beginning of the simultaneous exhibition kept the
one-eyed chess player’s growing suspicions at bay. He helped
everyone set out the tables in a U. A total of thirty players sat
down to play against the grand master. Many of them were ut-
terly dismayed and kept looking in their chess books, review-
ing complex variations they hoped would help them surrender
to the grand master at least no earlier than the twenty-second
move.
Ostap raked his gaze over the ranks of Black surrounding
him from all sides, as well as over the closed door, and fear-
lessly set to work. He walked up to the one-eyed man sitting

behind the first chessboard and moved the queen’s pawn from
the square e2 to the square e4.
The one-eyed man immediately grasped his ears with both
hands and began thinking furiously. A rustle moved down the
rows of players: “The grand master played e2 to e4.”
Ostap didn’t spoil his opponents with a great variety of open-
ing moves. He performed the exact same operation (dragging
the queen’s pawn from e2 to e4) on the remaining twenty-nine
boards. One by one the players clutched at their hair and sank
into feverish calculations. Spectators watched the grand mas-
ter as he went around the room. The town’s single amateur
photographer was already getting ready to climb up on a chair
and ignite the magnesium, but Ostap halted his course along
the chessboards, waved his arms angrily, and shouted loudly,
“Take away the photographer! He’s interfering with my chess
thought!”
“What’s the point of leaving my photograph in this miser-
able little hamlet? I don’t like getting mixed up with the po-
lice,” he decided to himself.
The chess-lovers’ indignant catcalls forced the photogra-
pher to abandon his attempt. Feelings ran so high that the
photographer was even locked out of the premises.
By the third move it was evident that the grand master was
playing eighteen Spanish openings. For the remaining twelve,
Black was using the old but fairly reliable Philidor defense. If
Ostap had known he was playing such sophisticated opening
moves and running up against such tried-and-true defenses,
he would have been most surprised. The thing is, the smooth
operator was playing chess for the second time in his life.
At first the chess fans (and the best among them, the one-
eyed man) were horrified. The grand master’s perfidy was
plain as day. With unusual ease the grand master was sacrific-
ing pawns, as well as major and minor pieces, left and right,
doubtless entertaining malicious thoughts about the residents

of the town of Vasyuki. He even sacrificed a queen to the
brown-haired man he’d picked on during his lecture. The man
was horrified and wanted to resign immediately, and was only
able to force himself to continue the game through a mighty
act of will.
Lightning struck from a clear blue sky five minutes later.
“Checkmate!” babbled the brown-haired man, scared to
death. “Checkmate, Comrade Grand Master!”
Ostap analyzed the situation, embarrassingly called the queen
“Her Highness,” and loftily congratulated the brown-haired
man on his victory. A buzzing flew through the players’ ranks.
“Time to cut bait!” Ostap thought, calmly pacing among
the tables and carelessly placing the pieces.
“You moved the knight wrong, Comrade Grand Master! The
knight doesn’t move like that,” the one-eyed man cringed.
“Pardon, pardon, my mistake,” the grand master replied. “I’m
a little fatigued after my lecture.”
In the next ten minutes the grand master proceeded to lose
ten more games.
Cries of amazement resounded from the premises of the
Cardboard Factory Workers’ Club. A conflict was ripening. Os-
tap lost fifteen games in a row, and three more soon after that.
The only one left was the one-eyed man. At the beginning of
the game, he’d been so afraid that he’d made a number of
mistakes, but now he was laboriously bringing the game to a
victorious conclusion. Ostap surreptitiously palmed a black
rook and hid it in his pocket.
The crowd formed a tight ring around the players.
The one-eyed man looked around and shouted, “My rook
was just on this square! But now it’s not here anymore.”
“If it’s not there now, means it wasn’t there before!” Ostap
said, rather rudely.
“What do you mean, it wasn’t there? I remember it clearly!”
“Of course it wasn’t there.”

“Then where did it go? Did you take it?”
“I took it.”
“When? Which move?”
“Why are you wasting my time with this rook? If you give up,
then just say so!”
“But just a minute now, comrade, I wrote down all my
moves.”
“The office is writing!”
“But this is outrageous!” the one-eyed man roared. “Give
me back my rook!”
“Come on, just give up, what is all this cat-and-mouse
fol de rol!”
“Give me my rook!”
At this the grand master, who had realized that delay would
be the death of him, grabbed a handful of pieces and threw
them at his one-eyed opponent’s head.
The one-eyed man squealed, “Comrades! Everyone look! A
chess lover’s getting a beating!”
The chess players of the town of Vasyuki were stunned.
Ostap didn’t waste precious time. He slung the chessboard
into the kerosene lamp and, in the ensuing darkness, hit some
jaws and foreheads as he ran out into the street. The chess
fans of Vasyuki dashed after him, stumbling over each other
as they went.
It was a moonlit evening. Ostap floated lightly down the
silvery street like an angel pushing off from the sinful earth.
Due to the fact that Vasyuki had not turned into the center of
the universe, he was forced to run between wooden huts with
rustic shutters rather than between palaces.
The chess lovers flew along behind him.
“Stop the grand master!” the one-eyed man roared.
“Swindler!” the rest seconded.
“Small-timers!” the grand master ground through his teeth
as he sped up.

“Help!” shouted the deeply offended chess players.
Ostap leaped down the staircase leading to the pier. He
had to run down four hundred steps. Two chess lovers who
had taken a side path that ran straight down the incline were
waiting for him on the sixth landing. Ostap looked around. A
tight group of enraged adherents of the Philidor defense were
pouring down from above like a pack of dogs. There was no
way back. So Ostap ran forward.
“I’ve got you now, you dirty rats!” he barked at the fearless
frontline scouts as he leaped down from the fifth landing.
The scared would-be Cossacks dove over the handrail and
rolled off somewhere into the darkness, with its bumps and
inclines. The coast was clear.
“Stop the grand master!” came down from above.
The pursuers ran, thundering down the wooden staircase
like bowling balls.
Ostap ran out onto the riverbank and headed right, scan-
ning the river for the skiff with his loyal administrator.
Ippolit Matveevich lounged idyllically in the skiff. Ostap
plopped down on the bench and started rowing furiously away
from the riverbank. Stones flew into the skiff a minute later.
One of them hit Ippolit Matveevich. A dark knot swelled up
just over his volcanic pimple. Ippolit Matveevich ducked his
head between his shoulders and whimpered.
“There you go, crybaby! I almost got my head ripped off,
but I’m just fine, sprightly and cheerful. And if you take into
account our fifty rubles of pure profit, then that’s a pretty nice
fee in exchange for a goose egg on your head.”
Meanwhile their pursuers, who had only now realized that
their plans to turn Vasyuki into New Moscow were dashed and
that the grand master was absconding from town with fifty
hard-earned Vasyukian rubles, all loaded into a large dinghy
and rowed, shouting, out to the middle of the river. Some thirty
people had crowded into the dinghy. All of them wanted to

participate personally in the reprisals against the grand mas-
ter. The one-eyed man commanded the expedition. His single
eye shone in the night like a lighthouse.
“Stop the grand master!” came from the overloaded barque.
“Step on it, Kisa!” Ostap said. “If they catch up to us, I can’t
guarantee the security of your pince-nez.”
Both boats were going downriver. The distance between
them kept decreasing. Ostap was rowing for all he was worth.
“You won’t get away, you dirty rats!” the men in the dinghy
shouted.
Ostap didn’t answer. He didn’t have time. His oars were
bursting forth from the river. Water flew in sheets from the
madly working oars and fell back into the skiff.
“Come on!” Ostap whispered to himself.
Ippolit Matveevich cringed. The dinghy exulted. Its tall hull
had already turned toward the concessionaires’ skiff from the
left-hand side, so as to force the grand master to shore. A la-
mentable fate awaited the concessionaires. The joy on board
the dinghy was so great that all the chess players moved over
to the starboard side in order to descend upon that crook of a
grand master with their superior forces as soon as they caught
up with the skiff.
“Hold on to your pince-nez, Kisa,” Ostap shouted desper-
ately, throwing his oars. “Here it comes!”
“Gentlemen! You’re not really going to give us a beating, are
you?” Ippolit Matveevich suddenly screeched like a bantam.
“Oh, yes we are!” the chess fans of Vasyuki thundered, as
they prepared to jump into the skiff.
But just then an event that was highly offensive for honest
chess players all over the world occurred. The barque tipped
to the right and scooped in some water.
“Careful!” the one-eyed captain squeaked.
But it was too late. Too many chess lovers had amassed on
the starboard side of the Vasyukian dreadnought. The dinghy’s

center of gravity had changed, so it didn’t lose any time acting
in full agreement with the laws of physics by flipping over.
The peace of the river was broken by a general shout. “A-a-
a-a-h!” cried the chess players in a prolonged moan.
All thirty fans ended up in the water. They quickly bobbed
up to the surface and caught hold of the overturned dinghy,
one after another. The last to moor was the one-eyed man.
“Small-timers!” Ostap shouted rapturously. “Why aren’t you
giving your grand master a beating? You wanted to give me a
beating, if I’m not mistaken?”
Ostap rowed a circle around the shipwreck victims.
“You do understand, individuals of Vasyuki, that I could
drown you one by one, but I grant you your lives. Live in peace,
citizens! Only don’t play chess, for the love of the Creator! You
just don’t know how to play! What small-timers you are! Let’s
go, Ippolit Matveevich. Farewell, one-eyed chess players! I’m
afraid Vasyuki isn’t going to become the center of the universe
after all! I don’t think chess masters would come to visit fools
like you, even if I asked them to! Farewell, lovers of the strong
sensations of chess! Long live the Four Knights Chess Club!”

37
And Others
morning found the concessionaires in view of Chebok-

sary. Ostap dozed at the rudder. The sleepy Ippolit Matveevich
skimmed the water with the oars. Both were worn out with
shivering through the cold night. The east was putting out
rosy buds. Ippolit Matveevich’s pince-nez grew brighter and
brighter. Its oval lenses started reflecting light. Both shores
were reflected in it by turns. A semaphore gantry from the left-
hand bank was bent in its double concave lenses. The dark-
blue cupolas of Cheboksary floated past like ships. The garden
in the east grew taller. The buds turned into volcanoes and be-
gan erupting a lava of the finest confectionary hues. Birds on
the left-hand bank caused a big, loud scene. The golden nose-
piece of the pince-nez was set ablaze and blinded the grand
master. The sun came up.
Ostap opened his eyes and stretched, making the skiff wob-
ble as his joints cracked.
“A fine morning to you, Kisa,” he said, choking on a yawn.
“I have come to you to greet you, to tell you that the sun is
up, the sun’s hot light now waits to greet you, and something
something the leaves and sap.”
“A pier,” Ippolit Matveevich reported.
Ostap pulled out his guidebook and consulted it.
“From what I can tell, looks like this is Cheboksary. Here
we are . . .
✦ 439 ✦
We direct you to the very handsomely situated town of
Cheboksary . . .
Kisa, is it really handsomely situated?
At the present time Cheboksary has 7,702 residents.
Kisa! Let’s give up our diamond hunt and increase the popula-
tion of Cheboksary to 7,704. What about it? It’d be very stylish,
very effective . . . We’ll open a Petits Chevaux which will give us
our grand daily bread . . . All right, what else have we got . . .
Several very interesting churches have been preserved in

the town, which was founded in 1555. The town has
a workers’ faculty, a Party school, a teacher-training school,
two secondary schools, a museum, a scientific society, and
a library, as well as administrative offices of the Chuvash
Republic. One can see Chuvashes and Cheremises, with their
distinctive appearances, on the Cheboksary pier and at the
bazaar . . .”
But before the friends approached the pier where one could
see Chuvashes and Cheremises, their attention was caught by
an object floating downriver in front of the skiff.
“Our chair!” Ostap shouted. “Administrator, there’s our
chair.”
The companions pulled up to the chair. It rocked back and
forth, turned around, sank into the water, and rose up again,
all the while pulling farther away from the concessionaires’ skiff.
Water poured freely through its gutted belly.
It was the chair they’d opened on the Scriabin, and it was
now slowly heading out to the Caspian Sea.
“Good to see you, friend!” Ostap shouted. “We haven’t seen
each other in ages! You know, Vorobyaninov, that chair reminds
me of our lives. We are also drifting along with the current. We
are pushed under and we float back up, although we don’t

seem to be making anyone especially happy by doing so. No
one likes us, unless you count Criminal Investigations, which
also doesn’t like us. No one will have anything to do with us. If
those lovers of chess had been able to drown us yesterday, the
only thing left of us would have been the detective’s report on
the bodies: ‘Both bodies are lying with their legs to the south-
east and their heads to the northwest. There are laceration
wounds on both bodies, clearly inflicted by some kind of blunt
instrument . . .’ The chess fans would obviously have beaten us
with chessboards. No denying it, those are blunt instruments
. . . ‘The first corpse belongs to a man of approximately fifty-
five years of age, dressed in a torn lustrine jacket, old trousers,
and old boots. There is an identity card with the name of citi-
zen Conrad Karlovich Mikhelson in a pocket of the jacket . . .’
That, Kisa, is what they’d have written about you.”
“And what would they have written about you, then?” Vo-
robyaninov asked angrily.
“Oh, well! They would have written something totally dif-
ferent about me. They would have written this: ‘The second
corpse belongs to a man of approximately twenty-seven years
of age. He loved and he suffered. He loved money, and he
suffered from not having enough of it. His head, with its high
forehead framed in jet-black curls, is turned toward the sun.
His elegant feet, shoe size forty-two, are pointed toward the
northern lights. His body is arrayed in unblemished white
clothing, and on his chest lie sheet music to the art song “Fare
Thee Well, New Village” and a golden harp inlaid with mother-
of-pearl. The deceased youth enjoyed craft wood-burning, as
is evident from membership card No. 86/1562, issued on Au-
gust 23, 1924, by the handicraft co-op Pegasus and Parnassus,
discovered in a pocket of his tailcoat.’ And I will be buried in
style, Kisa, with an orchestra and speeches, and on my head-
stone will be carved ‘Here lies the famous heating engineer
and fighter Ostap-Suleiman-Berta-Maria Bender-Bey, whose
and others ✦ 441

father was a Turkish subject who died without leaving his son
Ostap-Suleiman any inheritance at all. The mother of the de-
ceased was a countess and lived on unearned income.’ ”
Conversing in this way, the concessionaires came to rest on
the Cheboksary riverbank.
That evening, having increased their capital by five rubles
by selling the Vasyukian skiff, the friends boarded the mo-
tor ship Uritsky and glided into Stalingrad. They figured they
would overtake the slow lottery steamer on the way and meet
up with the Columbus theater troupe in Stalingrad.
The gleaming giant carried the companions downriver.
Mariinsky Posad, Kazan, Tetyushi, Ulyanovsk, Sengiley, and
the village Novodevichie all went by, and just before evening
of the second day of their journey, they approached Zhiguli.
Evening has come on, the sun has set, and a star has shone
a hundred times in this novel so far; but never before has an
evening in the novel been as mild, as full of premonitions of
great events, as this one.
The decks of the Uritsky were filled with crowds of passen-
gers colored orange by the setting sun. The low Zhiguli Moun-
tains loomed, mighty and green, on the right. The passengers’
souls were overcome with excitement.
Ostap, who had by some miracle managed to make his way
from third class all the way to the prow of the diesel steamer,
pulled out his guidebook, which informed him that the jour-
ney along the Zhiguli is a rare treat.
Ostap read aloud:
The steamship goes right along the riverbank, slicing through
the shadows cast on the water by the mountains on the bank.
A lush carpet of green vegetation in various shades beckons the
traveler to lose himself in the thick of virgin forests, so that he
may revel in the marvelous air and admire not only the vistas
opening up before him but that powerful beauty herself, the Volga,

and remember the distant past, when disorganized rebellious
elements . . .
The passengers crowded close around Ostap.
disorganized rebellious elements, powerless to restructure the

contemporary social system, caroused here, instilling fear in the
merchants and government clerks who inevitably sought out
the Volga as an important trade route. It’s for good reason that
popular memory has, to this very day, preserved more than a few
legends, songs, and tales about figures associated with Zhiguli,
such as Yermak Timofeevich, Ivan Koltso, Stepan Razin, and
others.
“And others!” Ostap repeated, enchanted by the evening.

“And others!” moaned the crowd, peering at the twilit out-
line of the Hero’s Barrow.
“And other-r-rs!” the steamship’s whistle screeched, calling
everyone out into the open spaces, legends, songs, and tales
nestling in the peaks of the Zhiguli Mountains.
The moon rose like a child’s balloon. The Maiden’s Moun-
tain lit up. It was more than any human being could withstand.
The gastric rumblings of a guitar issued from the steamer’s
depths, and a passionate female voice sang,
From beyond the wooded island

To the river wide and free
Proudly sailed the arrow-breasted
Ships of Cossack yeomanry . . .
Sympathetic voices picked up the song. Enthusiasm took hold

of the entire ship. Everyone was remembering “the distant
past, when disorganized rebellious elements, powerless to re-
structure the contemporary social system, caroused here, in-
stilling fear . . .”
and others ✦ 443

The moon and the Zhiguli Mountains, irresistible to the
human spirit, made their usual impression.
By the time the Uritsky went past the Two Brothers, every-
one was singing. No one had been able to hear the guitar for
a long time. Everything was smothered by thunderous peals
of song:
Stenka holds the drunken revels.
Tears of moonlight stood in the first-class passengers’ eyes.

From the engine room, so loud it muffled the clanking ma-
chinery, came:
With his beauteous young bride!
The second class, dreamily arranged on the aft deck, added a

note of warmth:
From behind there comes a murmur
“He has left his sword to woo;
One short night and Stenka Razin . . .
“Stenka Razin, Stenka Razin, Stenka Razin!” Bald Mountain

boomed, perplexed.
“Stenka Razin!” everyone in third class sang.
“Has become a woman, too.”
By this time the Uritsky had caught up to the lottery steam-

ship. From a distance one might have thought that a sailors’
mutiny was taking place on the steamship, since moans, curses,
and death rattles could be heard coming from it. It seemed
as though barrels of rum had already been cracked open on
the Scriabin, as though the esteemed passengers from first and
second class were already hanging from the yards, and the cap-
tain was sprawled with his head bashed in at the door with the
little plate reading mutual settlements department.

In reality, both the sailors and the first-, second-, and third-
class passengers were merely bringing out the last couplet with
an unusual amount of din and vigor:
Dance, you fools, and let’s be merry
What is this that’s in your eyes?
Let us thunder out a chantey . . .
And even the captain on the bridge howled into the moonlit
expanse, without taking his eyes off the Tsar’s Barrow:
Let us thunder out a chantey
To the place where beauty lies.
“Where beauty lies!” sang the cameraman Polkan, shaking his

head and clutching the handrail.
“Where beauty lies!” cooed Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin,
and Zalkind.
“Where beauty lies!” pleaded Simbievich-Sindievich.
“Where beauty lies!” exuberantly sang the office workers,
whose alacrity this aromatic evening was not limited to work-
related phenomena.
The captain, an old river wolf, cried like a baby. He’d been
guiding steamships past the Zhiguli for thirty years now and
every time he cried like a baby. Since he completed no less
than twenty trips in his yearly navigations, in thirty years he’d
thereby managed to burst into tears six hundred times.
Do we need any more proof of the irresistibility of the
Zhiguli Mountains’ sad beauty? The Uritsky, which had now
come up even with the Scriabin, was in the middle of a melodic
cyclone. Passengers were throwing the Persian princess over-
board en masse.
Up raced local steamboats filled with passengers who’d
grown to adulthood in sight of the Zhiguli. Nevertheless, the
locals were also singing “Stenka Razin”:
and others ✦ 445

You have never seen such riches
From the Cossacks of the Don.
Buoys glowed, the square windows of the steamships’ salons

were reflected in the water, and the local steamboats’ running
lights flashed. Songs thundered out. It felt as though a ball
were being held on the river.
The Uritsky easily passed the lottery steamship. The conces-
sionaires looked hopefully at their original floating refuge.
Three brightly lit chairs stood there in the director’s cabin,
surrounded by forbidding signs and the hustle and bustle of
office work. The Scriabin slowly pulled away. Its lights were vis-
ible all the way to Samara.
The Scriabin arrived in Stalingrad at the beginning of July. The

friends hid behind boxes on the pier to meet it. A lottery was
held before the steamship was unloaded. Large prizes were to
be won.
The concessionaires had to wait four hours for the chairs.
The first to come off the steamship were the Columbians and
the lottery clerks. Persitsky’s shining face stood out among
them.
As they sat in their ambush, the concessionaires heard his
shouts: “Yes! I’m going to Moscow immediately! I already sent
a telegram! Know what it said? ‘I rejoice with you.’ Let them
guess what that means!”
Then Persitsky got into a rental car (but not before examin-
ing it from all sides and fingering the radiator) and drove off,
accompanied, for some reason, by cries of “Hooray!”
After the hydraulic press was unloaded from the steamship,
people began carrying the Columbus’s scenery ashore. It was
completely dark by the time the chairs were unloaded. The

Columbians, shouting merrily, loaded onto five two-horse wag-
ons and rolled off directly to the train station.
“Looks like they’re not going to be performing in Stalin-
grad,” Ippolit Matveevich said.
This perplexed Ostap.
“We’ll have to go with them,” he decided. “But how are we
going to buy the tickets? Anyway, let’s go to the train station,
we’ll figure it out there.”
At the train station they found out that the theater was go-
ing to Pyatigorsk via Rostov and Mineralnye Vody. The conces-
sionaires only had enough money for one ticket.
“Do you know how to ride without a ticket?” Ostap asked
Vorobyaninov.
“I’ll try,” Ippolit Matveevich said timidly.
“To hell with you! Better you don’t even try! I forgive you
once more. Well, so be it. I’ll go ticketless.”
They bought Ippolit Matveevich a ticket for the fourth-class
car, and in this car the former marshal arrived at the Northern
Caucasian Railroad’s Mineralnye Vody station, decorated with
oleanders in green pots, where he began trying to find Ostap
without attracting the attention of the Columbians who were
getting off the train.
The theater had long ago boarded the nice new cars of the
local train and left for Pyatigorsk, but Ostap still hadn’t ar-
rived. It was evening by the time he got there and found Vo-
robyaninov in a state of utter confusion.
“Where were you?” the marshal moaned. “I’m exhausted!”
“You’re exhausted! You, the one who traveled with a ticket
in your pocket? While I wasn’t exhausted at all, then? So you
mean to say that it wasn’t I who was chased off the buffers of
your train in Tikhoretsk Station? So, then, it wasn’t I who sat
there for three hours like an idiot, waiting for the freight train
full of empty Narzan bottles? You’re a swine, citizen marshal!
Where’s the theater?”
and others ✦ 447

“In Pyatigorsk.”
“Let’s go! I scraped together a little something on the way
here. Our net income amounts to three rubles. That’s not
much, of course, but it’s enough to cover the initial bottles of
Narzan and train tickets.”
It took fifty minutes for the local train, rattling like a cart,
to drag the travelers to Pyatigorsk. The concessionaires passed
the Zmeyka and Beshtau and arrived at the foothills of the
Mashuk.

38
A View of a Malachite Puddle
it was a sunday night. Everything was washed clean. Even

the Mashuk, overgrown with bushes and copses, looked as
though it had been carefully combed. The scent of mountain
Vegetal streamed down from it.
White pants of every conceivable type gleamed on the tiny
platform, pants made of hopsack, moleskin, calamanco, sail-
cloth, and soft flannel. People here went about in sandals and
Apache shirts. The concessionaires felt completely foreign in
their thick, dirty boots, heavy, dusty trousers, hot vests, and
white-hot jackets.
The brightest and most elegant of the myriad cheerful cal-
ico prints the local girls were showing off was the uniform of
the station director. The station director was a woman, which
amazed all the town’s visitors. Strawberry-blond curls burst out
from under her red service cap with the two silver galloons on
the band. She wore a white uniform jacket and a white skirt.
The travelers admired the female director, read the freshly
posted handbills advertising the Columbus Theater’s perfor-
mances in Pyatigorsk, and drank two five-kopek glasses of
Narzan, then made their way into town on the streetcar line
“Station–Flower Garden.” It cost them ten kopeks to get into
the Flower Garden.
There were a lot of music, a lot of jolly people, and very few
flowers in the Flower Garden. A symphony orchestra in a white
band shell was performing “The Dance of the Mosquitoes.”
✦ 449 ✦
Narzan was being sold in the Lermontov Gallery. Narzan could
be bought to take home, or in kiosks to drink on the spot.
No one had the time of day for two dirty diamond-seekers.
“Too bad, Kisa,” Ostap said. “We’re strangers at this feast of
life.” The concessionaires spent their first night in the resort
at the Narzan spring.
Only here in Pyatigorsk, when the Columbus Theater was
performing its Marriage for the surprised townsfolk for the
third time, did the companions fully understand all the dif-
ficulties hindering their pursuit of the treasure. It was impos-
sible to sneak into the theater as they had earlier assumed they
could, since Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin, and Zalkind were
sleeping backstage. Their skimpy rations of tokens prevented
them from staying in a hotel.
And so the days passed, and the friends wore themselves out
spending nights at the scene of Lermontov’s duel and living
off what they could make carrying baggage for run-of-the-mill
tourists.
On the sixth day Ostap was able to make the acquaintance
of Mechnikov, the fitter who oversaw the hydraulic press. By
this time, Mechnikov, who was treating his daily hangover with
Narzan straight from the spring due to lack of funds, had got-
ten into a terrible state. Ostap had seen him at the market,
selling certain items from the theater’s prop stores. A final
understanding was reached at the morning libations at the
spring. Mechnikov the fitter called Ostap “sweetheart” and
agreed.
“That we can do,” he said. “That we can always do, sweet-
heart. It would be our pleasure, sweetheart.”
Ostap understood immediately that the fitter was an old
hand.
The contracting parties gazed into each other’s eyes, em-
braced, clapped each other on the back, and laughed politely.
“So! I’ll give you ten for the whole ball of wax,” Ostap said.

The fitter was surprised. “Sweetheart! You’re making me
upset. I’m a man who’s tortured by Narzan.”
“How much did you want, then?”
“Put down fifty. After all, it is government property. And I’m
a man who’s tortured by Narzan.”
“All right! Take twenty! Do you agree? Why, I can see it in
your eyes that you do.”
“Agreement is the product of both sides’ complete non-
resistance.”
“He can really lay it on, the dog,” Ostap whispered into Ip-
polit Matveevich’s ear. “Listen and learn.”
“So when will you bring the chairs?”
“Chairs for cash money.”
“We can do that,” Ostap said, without thinking.
The fitter announced, “Money up front. Money in the
morning and chairs in the evening, or money today, chairs
tomorrow.”
“But maybe, chairs today, money tomorrow?” Ostap at-
tempted.
“Now, sweetheart, I am a tortured man. My soul can’t bear
these conditions.”
“But I’m only getting the money cabled to me tomorrow,”
Ostap said.
“Then that’s when we’ll talk,” the stubborn fitter concluded.
“Meanwhile, sweetheart, enjoy the spring here. I’ve got to go.
I’ve got a lot of work with that press. Simbievich’s got me by
the throat. I can’t go on. Can you really live on nothing but
Narzan?”
And so Mechnikov retired, magnificently illuminated by
the sun.
Ostap looked sternly at Ippolit Matveevich and said, “The
time we’ve got is money we don’t. Kisa, we have to make a
career for ourselves. One hundred fifty thousand rubles and
zero kopeks are lying there before us. All we need is twenty
a view of a malachite puddle ✦ 451

rubles to make the treasure ours. At this point we can’t scruple
about using any possible means. Aut Caesar aut nihil. I choose
Caesar, even though he’s clearly a monarchist.”
Ostap walked around Ippolit Matveevich thoughtfully.
“Take off your jacket, marshal, and be quick about it,” he
said suddenly.
Ostap took the jacket from the surprised Ippolit Matvee-
vich, threw it on the ground, and started trampling it with his
dusty shoes.
“What are you doing?” Vorobyaninov howled. “I’ve been
wearing that jacket for fifteen years and it’s still just like new!”
“Not to worry! Soon it won’t be like new anymore! Give me
your hat! And now sprinkle some dust on your trousers and
wet them down with Narzan. Quick!”
A few minutes later, Ippolit Matveevich was disgustingly dirty.
“Now you’re ripe for the challenge of earning your money
through honest labor.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Vorobyaninov asked tearfully.
“You do know French, I hope?”
“Very badly. Just what I learned in school.”
“Hmm . . . we’ll have to work with what you learned in
school, then. Can you say the following phrase in French:
‘Gentlemen, I haven’t eaten in six days’?”
Ippolit Matveevich began haltingly, “Messieurs . . . messieurs,
je ne, I think, je ne mange pas . . . ‘six,’ what is that again . . . un,
deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six . . . six . . . jour. Right: je ne mange pas
six jours!”
“That’s quite a pronunciation you’ve got there, Kisa! Still,
what do you expect from a beggar. Of course a beggar in Eu-
ropean Russia speaks French worse than Millerand. So then,
Kisulya, how much German did you learn in school?”
“What’s all this for?” Ippolit Matveevich exclaimed.
“It’s for you,” Ostap said forcefully. “Because now you’re go-
ing to go over to the Flower Garden, stand in the shade, and

ask for handouts in French, German, and Russian, stressing
the fact that you are a former member of the State Duma from
the Cadet party. The entire net takings go to Mechnikov, the
fitter. You got that?”
Ippolit Matveevich was immediately transformed. He puffed
up his chest until it stuck out as much as the Palace Bridge in
Leningrad, his eyes flashed fire, and a thick smoke came boil-
ing out of his nostrils—or at least that’s what it looked like to
Ostap. His mustache slowly began to rise.
“Ai-yai-yai!” the smooth operator said, not a bit frightened.
“Take a look at him. He’s not a man, he’s some kind of Little
Humpbacked Horse!”
Suddenly Ippolit Matveevich intoned sonorously, without
moving his lips, “Vorobyaninov has never stretched out a hand
to beg, never!”
“Then you’ll be stretching out your legs for good, you old
booby!” Ostap shouted. “You’ve never stretched out your
hand?”
“I’ve never stretched out my hand.”
“How do you like that dandyism? He’s been living off me for
three months! Three months I’ve been feeding him, watering
him, and educating him, but now this dandy stands in third
position and announces that he’s . . . All right, then! Enough,
comrade! It’s either one or the other: either you head over to
the Flower Garden this instant and bring ten rubles back by
evening, or I automatically exclude you from the ranks of the
shareholders and concessionaires. I’ll count to five. Yes or no?
One . . .”
“Yes,” the marshal grumbled.
“In that case, repeat the incantation.”
“Messieurs, je ne mange pas six jours. Geben Sie mir bitte etwas
Kopeck auf dem Stück Brot. Give something to a former deputy
of the State Duma.”
“Again. More pitiful!”

Ippolit Matveevich repeated the phrases.
“Well, all right. You’ve had a talent for begging ever since
you were little. Go on. We’ll meet at the spring at midnight.
But keep in mind that this isn’t to be romantic, it’s because
people give more in the evening.”
“What about you?” Ippolit Matveevich asked. “Where are
you going?”
“Don’t worry about me. As always, I’ll be where the work is
hardest.”
The friends separated.
Ostap ducked into a stationer’s shop and bought a receipt
book with his last coin, then sat for an hour or so on a low
stone column numbering the receipts and writing something
on each of them.
He mumbled, “The main thing is having a system. Every
public kopek has to be accounted for.”
The smooth operator marched like an Imperial rifleman
along the mountain road leading around the Mashuk past
sanatoriums and recreation centers up to the location of Ler-
montov’s duel with Martynov. Buses and two-horse carriages
passed Ostap as he came out onto the square in front of the
Sinkhole.
A small gallery cut into the cliff led to the cone-shaped
sinkhole. The gallery ended in a small balcony with a view of
the small puddle of stinking malachite liquid at the bottom
of the Sinkhole. This Sinkhole is considered one of the sights
of Pyatigorsk, so a large number of excursions and individual
tourists visit it every day.
Ostap immediately realized that the Sinkhole could be a
fine source of income for persons devoid of prejudice.
He thought, “It’s amazing that the city still hasn’t thought
to take people’s coins for entry to the Sinkhole. It looks like
this is the only place the people of Pyatigorsk let tourists go for
free. I will eliminate this ignominious blot on the city’s repu-

tation. I will correct this annoying oversight.” And so Ostap
undertook the actions dictated to him by his reason, his sound
instinct, and the situation at hand.
He stopped at the entrance to the Sinkhole and started
thwacking the receipt book against the palm of his hand and
periodically shouting, “Get your tickets, citizens. Ten kopeks!
Children and Red Army soldiers free! Students five kopeks!
Non–union members, thirty kopeks!”
Ostap had hit the bull’s-eye. The people of Pyatigorsk didn’t
go to the Sinkhole, and it was the easiest thing imaginable to
strip ten kopeks from a Soviet tourist for entry into something.
By five o’clock he’d taken in six rubles. Non–union members
helped, since there were many of these in Pyatigorsk. Every-
one gullibly gave their coins away, and one red-cheeked tour-
ist, upon catching sight of Ostap, said triumphantly to his wife,
“See, Tanyusha? What did I tell you yesterday? And you said
that you don’t have to pay to get into the Sinkhole. That’s im-
possible! Right, comrade?”
“That’s absolutely right,” Ostap confirmed. “It’s impossible
for us not to take an entrance fee. Union members, ten ko-
peks. Non–union members, thirty kopeks.”
As evening came on, a tour group of policemen from Khar-
kov drove up in two brakes. Ostap got scared and was going to
pretend to be an innocent tourist, but the policemen gathered
around the smooth operator so meekly that retreat was impos-
sible. So Ostap shouted, in a reasonably firm voice, “Union
members, ten kopeks . . . but since members of the police
force can be equated to students and children, then five ko-
peks for them.”
The policemen paid, but not before delicately inquiring
as to the purpose for which their five-kopek coins were being
collected.
“The purpose is to complete major repairs on the Sinkhole,
so it doesn’t sink too much,” Ostap answered boldly.

While the smooth operator was adroitly selling the view of
a malachite puddle, Ippolit Matveevich stood, hunched and
wallowing in shame, under an acacia. Without looking at the
strolling tourists, he chewed the three phrases he’d been as-
signed: “Messieurs, je ne mange . . . Geben Sie mir bitte. . . Give
something to a former deputy of the State Duma . . .”
It wasn’t that people didn’t give him much; it was that they
didn’t enjoy it, somehow. Still, he was able to scrape together
about three rubles in copper coins by playing on his purely Pa-
risian pronunciation of the word mange and touching people’s
hearts with the former State Duma member’s pitiful plight.
Gravel crunched underfoot. An orchestra played Strauss,
Brahms, and Grieg with short pauses between numbers. A
bright, babbling crowd surged past the old marshal and then
returned. Lermontov’s ghost hovered invisibly over the citi-
zens enjoying matsoni on the restaurant veranda. The scent of
eau de cologne and Narzan gases hung in the air.
“Give to the former member of the State Duma!” the mar-
shal mumbled.
“Tell me, were you really a member of the State Duma?”
rang out just over Ippolit Matveevich’s ear. “And did you really
go to sessions? Oh, my! Oh, my! High class!”
Ippolit Matveevich lifted his face and froze. The chubby Ab-
salom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov was hopping up and down in
front of him like a little sparrow. He’d exchanged his brown
suit made in Łódź for a white jacket and gray pantaloons with
a glimmer playing through them. He was unusually animated
and sometimes jumped as far as five inches off the ground.
Iznurenkov didn’t recognize Ippolit Matveevich and contin-
ued to sprinkle him with questions.
“Tell me, did you really see Rodzianko? Was Purishkevich
really bald? Oh, my! Oh, my! What a subject! High class!”
Iznurenkov continued his gyrations as he stuck three rubles
into the confused marshal’s hand and ran off. But for a long

time after, everyone in the Flower Garden could still see his fat
little haunches flashing by, and his cries issued seemingly from
the trees themselves, “Oh, my! Oh, my! ‘Don’t sing to me, fair
maid, your mournful songs of Georgia!’ Oh, my! ‘They all re-
mind me of another life, another shore!’ Oh, my! ‘Then in the
morning she smiled once more!’ High class!”
Ippolit Matveevich continued to stand with eyes down-
turned. He shouldn’t have stood that way. There was a lot he
didn’t see.
Ellochka Shchukina came strolling along the park’s alleys
in the wondrous gloom of a Pyatigorsk night, pulling behind
her the submissive Ernest Pavlovich, who’d made up with her.
The trip to the mineral waters was the finale of a difficult bat-
tle with the Vanderbilt girl. Recently, the proud American had
left on a pleasure trip to the Sandwich Islands on her own
personal yacht.
“Ho-ho!” resounded in the evening quiet. “Outstanding,
Ernestulya! Be-e-e-yootiful!”
Alkhen, the little sky-blue thief, was sitting with his wife,
Sashkhen, in a lamp-lit restaurant. As before, her cheeks were
adorned with muttonchops worthy of Nicholas. Alkhen shyly
ate Karian shish kebab, washing it down with Kakhetian wine
No. 2, while Sashkhen stroked her chops and waited for the
sturgeon she’d ordered.
After the second Stargorod Social Security Home had been
liquidated (everything had been sold, even the cook’s toile du
nord cap and the slogan you help society by chewing your
food carefully), Alkhen had decided to relax and have a
little fun. Fate itself was protecting this well-fed crook. He’d
wanted to go to the Sinkhole that day, but didn’t have time.
That’s what saved him. Ostap would’ve milked no less than
thirty rubles out of the bashful manager.
Once the musicians began putting away their music stands,
the festive crowd dispersed, and only pairs of young lovers still

breathed heavily in the narrow little alleys of the Flower Gar-
den, Ippolit Matveevich wandered over to the spring.
“How much did you get?” Ostap asked, when the marshal’s
hunched figure appeared at the spring.
“Seven rubles, twenty-nine kopeks. One three-ruble note.
The rest in copper and a few silver coins.”
“That’s marvelous for your first performance on tour! That’s
the wage rate of a supervisory position! I’m touched. Kisa! What
idiot gave you three rubles, though, I’d like to know? You didn’t
give him any change, did you?”
“Iznurenkov gave it to me.”
“Impossible! Absalom? Would you get a load of that! Little
ball, whither have you rolled? Did you talk to him? Oh, he
didn’t recognize you!”
“He asked me about the State Duma! He was laughing!”
“So you see, marshal, being a beggar isn’t all that bad, espe-
cially when you’ve got a moderate amount of education and a
poorly trained voice! And there you were, being obstinate and
making yourself out to be some kind of Lord Privy Seal! Well,
Kisochka, I didn’t waste my time either. Fifteen rubles, easy as
pie. To sum up: we’ve got enough.”
The next morning the fitter got his money, and that eve-
ning he dragged over two chairs. According to him, getting
the third chair was completely out of the question. The sound
design was sitting on it playing cards.
Just to be safe, the friends went almost all the way to the
peak of Mount Mashuk to open up the chairs.
Below them shone the firm, unmoving lights of Pyatigorsk.
Below Pyatigorsk, some puny little lights marked the stanitsa
of Goryachevodsk. On the horizon, Kislovodsk stuck out from
behind the mountains in two parallel dotted lines.
Ostap looked into the starry sky and took the familiar pliers
out of his pocket.

39
Cape Green
engineer bruns was sitting on the stone veranda of his da-

cha on Cape Green under a large palm tree whose starched
leaves threw sharp, narrow shadows on the shaved back of the
engineer’s head, his white shirt, and the Gambs chair from
General Popov’s widow’s set on which the engineer languished
as he awaited dinner.
Bruns pursed his thick, juicy lips into a tube and said, in the
long, drawn-out whine of a playful little tyke, “Moo-oosie!”
The dacha remained silent.
Tropical flora fawned on the engineer. Cacti stretched out
their hedgehog-spined mittens to him. Dracaenas rattled their
leaves thunderously. Banana trees and sago palms chased flies
from the engineer’s bald spot. The roses winding around the
veranda fell at his sandaled feet.
But all was in vain. Bruns wanted dinner. Annoyed, he looked
at the pearly bay and the distant little cape of Batumi and called
out in a singsong, “Moo-oosie! Moo-oosie!”
Sound died out quickly in the wet subtropical air. There was
no answer. Bruns imagined a large brown goose with fat, siz-
zling skin and, unable to restrain himself, howled, “Moosie!!
Is the goosie ready?”
“Andrey Mikhailovich! Stop pestering me!” a woman’s voice
shouted from inside.
✦ 459 ✦
The engineer, who’d already pursed his lips into the usual
tube, quickly answered, “Moosie! You’re not being very nice to
your little hubby!”
“Go on with you, greedy-guts!” came the reply from inside.
But the engineer did not give in. He was just going to con-
tinue his calls for the goosie (which he’d been carrying on
unsuccessfully for two hours now), but a sudden rustling made
him turn around.
Out of the green-and-black bamboo thicket stepped a man
wearing dirty striped trousers and a ripped dark-blue kosovo-
rotka belted with a worn, twisted cord ending in two thick tas-
sels. A shaggy beard bristled on the stranger’s kind face. He
carried his jacket.
The man came close and asked in a pleasant voice, “Where
would I find Engineer Bruns?”
“I’m Engineer Bruns,” the goosie-charmer said in a sudden
bass. “What can I do for you?”
The man fell on his knees in silence. It was Father Fyodor.
“You’re crazy!” the engineer exclaimed, leaping to his feet.
“Please, stand up!”
“I won’t,” Father Fyodor replied, turning his head to follow
the engineer and gazing at him with clear eyes.
“Stand up!”
“I won’t!”
And then Father Fyodor started hitting his head on the
gravel, carefully, so it wouldn’t hurt.
“Moosie! Come here!” the frightened engineer shouted.
“Look what’s going on. Stand up, I ask you! Come on, I beg
you!”
“I won’t!” Father Fyodor repeated.
Moosie, who had a good feel for her husband’s intonations,
ran out onto the veranda. At the sight of the lady, Father Fyo-
dor nimbly crawled over to her without getting up, bowed
at her feet, and began to rattle off a string of words: “All my

hopes, kind little mother, all my hopes, my dear lady, all my
hopes are on you.”
Then Engineer Bruns turned red, grabbed the petitioner
under the arms and, straining, lifted him up to set him on
his feet. But Father Fyodor cleverly tucked his feet up under
him. Bruns, upset, dragged the strange guest into a corner
and forced him down into a chair (a Gambs chair, which was
not at all from Vorobyaninov’s mansion, but rather from Gen-
eral Popov’s widow’s parlor).
“I don’t dare,” Father Fyodor muttered, placing the baker’s
jacket, which smelled of kerosene, on his knees. “I wouldn’t
dare sit in the presence of high-ranking personages.” Father
Fyodor attempted to fall to his knees again.
With a sad cry, the engineer held Father Fyodor by the
shoulders.
“Moosie!” he said, breathing heavily. “Talk to the citizen.
There’s been some kind of mistake.”
Moosie immediately adopted a businesslike tone. “If you
please, there will be no kneeling of any kind in my home!” she
said threateningly.
“Kind lady!” said Father Fyodor, moved. “Dear little mother!”
“I’m no little mother to you. What do you want?”
The priest mumbled something that was unintelligible, but
clearly touching. Only after a lot of questioning did they glean
that, as a special act of charity, he was asking them to sell him
their set of twelve chairs, one of which he happened to be sit-
ting on at that very moment.
The engineer was so surprised that he let go of Father Fyo-
dor’s shoulders. The latter immediately fell to his knees and
started chasing the engineer turtle-style.
“Why? Why should I sell my chairs?” the engineer shouted,
twisting away from Father Fyodor’s long arms. “No matter
how many times you plop onto your knees, I just can’t under-
stand it!”
cape green ✦ 461

“But they’re my chairs!” Father Fyodor moaned.
“What do you mean, they’re yours? How can they be yours?
Are you off your rocker? Moosie! Now I understand every-
thing! He’s obviously psychotic!”
“They’re mine,” Father Fyodor insisted humbly.
“So, what, I stole them from you, is that it?” the engineer
said, boiling mad. “I stole them? Hear that, Moosie? This is
some kind of blackmail!”
“For goodness’ sake, no,” Father Fyodor whispered.
“If I stole them from you, then go to court to get them back,
don’t raise pandemonium in my home! You hear that, Moosie?
People are so insolent these days. They don’t even let you eat
dinner like a normal human being!”
No, Father Fyodor didn’t want to go to court to get “his”
chairs back. Far from it. He knew that Engineer Bruns hadn’t
stolen his chairs. Oh, no! The thought had never even crossed
his mind. But still, before the Revolution, those chairs had be-
longed to him, Father Fyodor, and they were infinitely dear to
his wife, now on her deathbed in Voronezh. It was to fulfill her
wishes, not at all due to his own audacity, that he had allowed
himself to discover the chairs’ location and appear before citi-
zen Bruns. Father Fyodor was not asking for a handout. Oh,
no! He made a decent enough living (a small candle factory in
Samara) that he could sweeten the last moments of his wife’s
life by buying those old chairs. He was ready to be generous
and pay twenty rubles for the entire set.
“What?” the engineer shouted, turning purple. “Twenty
rubles? For an excellent parlor set? Moosie! Do you hear this?
He is psychotic! I swear to God, he’s psychotic!”
“I’m not psychotic. I’m only fulfilling the wishes of my wife,
who hath sent me . . .”
“Oh, hell,” the engineer said. “He’s gone and started crawl-
ing again. Moosie! He’s crawling again!”

“Name your price!” groaned Father Fyodor, as he cautiously
hit his head on the trunk of an araucaria.
“Don’t ruin the tree, you odd fellow of a man! Moosie, it
looks like he’s not psychotic. It’s just that the man is obviously
disturbed by his wife’s illness. Maybe we should sell him the
chairs, eh? Then he’ll leave us alone? How about it? Otherwise
he’ll break his head open!”
“And what are we going to sit on?” Moosie asked.
“We’ll buy other chairs.”
“And we’ll do that with twenty rubles?”
“Well, let’s just assume that I won’t sell for twenty rubles.
Let’s assume that I won’t sell for two hundred, either . . . But
for two hundred and fifty, now, for that I will sell.”
The reply was a terrible head-butt to the dracaena.
“Well, Moosie, now I’m good and tired of this.” The engi-
neer walked decisively over to Father Fyodor and began dictat-
ing his ultimatum. “First of all, step no fewer than three paces
away from the palm tree. Secondly, stand up immediately.
Thirdly, I will sell you the furniture for two hundred and fifty
rubles, no less.”
“Not for my own profit, but only to do the will of my sick
wife,” Father Fyodor said slowly, as he stood up and walked
three paces away from the dracaena.
“Well now, my dear man, my wife is also sick. It’s true,
Moosie, you’ve got lung problems. But I don’t use that as a
basis for demanding that you . . . oh, I don’t know . . . sell me,
say, your jacket for thirty kopeks . . .”
“Take it for free,” Father Fyodor sang out.
The engineer waved his hand in disgust and said coldly, “Quit
playing around. I am not going to indulge in any further discus-
sion. The chairs have been appraised by me to be worth two
hundred and fifty rubles, and I’m not taking a kopek less.”
“Fifty!” Father Fyodor offered.
cape green ✦ 463

“Moosie!” the engineer said. “Call Bagration. Let him show
the citizen out!”
“Not for my own profit . . .”
“Bagration!”
Father Fyodor ran away in fear. The engineer went into the
dining room and sat down to his goosie. His favorite fowl had
a salutary effect on him. Bruns began to calm down.
Just as the engineer was lifting a drumstick, its bone wrapped
in parchment paper, to his pink mouth, Father Fyodor’s plead-
ing face appeared in the window.
“Not for my own profit . . .” came his soft voice. “Fifty-five
rubles.”
Without turning around, the engineer snarled. Father Fyo-
dor vanished.
For the rest of the day, Father Fyodor’s figure could be seen
popping up all over the dacha. First it ran out from under the
shade of the Japanese cedar, then it flew across the back court-
yard and, trembling, raced off to the Botanical Garden.
All day the engineer, who had a headache, called for his
Moosie and complained about the psychotic. Even after it
turned dark, Father Fyodor’s voice could still be heard from
time to time.
“A hundred thirty-seven!” he shouted from somewhere up
in the sky.
But a minute later, his voice came from the direction of the
Dumbasov’s dacha. “A hundred forty-one,” offered the rever-
end father. “Not for my own profit, Mister Bruns, but only . . .”
Finally the engineer couldn’t take it any longer. He went
out to the middle of the veranda, peered into the darkness,
and began shouting in measured tones, “To hell with you! Two
hundred rubles! Just leave us alone!”
A rustling of disturbed bamboo could be heard, then a
quiet moan and steps running off into the distance. Then ev-
erything went quiet.

Stars floundered in the bay. Fireflies caught up to Father
Fyodor and spun around his head, pouring their greenish,
medicinal light over his face.
“A damned goosie business, no doubt about it,” mumbled
the engineer as he came back inside.
Meanwhile, Father Fyodor was flying along the seashore in
the last bus back to Batumi. A light surf ran up the shore un-
derneath him with the sound of someone flipping through
a book; the wind hit his face; and the mewling of jackals an-
swered the automobile’s horn.
That night, Father Fyodor sent the following telegram to
his wife, Katerina Alexandrovna, in the town of N.:
found goods stop cable two hundred thirty stop
sell anything can fedya stop.
For two days he skulked triumphantly around the Brunses’

dacha, exchanging bows with Moosie from a distance and even
deafening the tropical vistas from time to time with shouts of
“Not for my own profit, but only to do the will of my wife who
hath sent me!”
On the third day he received the money, along with a des-
perate telegram:
sold everything stop left without single kopek
stop kisses and expecting you stop yevstigneev still
boarding katya stop.
Father Fyodor counted the money, crossed himself furiously,

hired a wagon, and drove to Cape Green.
The weather was gloomy. Wind was chasing in clouds from
the Turkish border. The Chorokh River smoked. The streak
of blue in the sky grew smaller and smaller. The wind got up
to six on the Beaufort scale. Swimming and taking boats out
to sea was forbidden. A roaring and thundering hung over
Batumi. The gale-force winds shook the shore.
cape green ✦ 465

Father Fyodor reached Engineer Bruns’s dacha, ordered
the driver, an Adzhar in a bashlyk, to wait, and headed off for
his furniture.
“I brought the money; you could ease off on the price a
little,” Father Fyodor said.
“Moosie, I can’t take it anymore,” the engineer moaned.
“No, no, I brought the money,” Father Fyodor quickly re-
plied. “Two hundred rubles. Like you said.”
“Moosie! Take his money! Give him the chairs! And have
him do it fast. I have a migraine.”
His entire life’s goal had been achieved. The little candle
factory in Samara leaped into his arms. Diamonds poured into
his pockets like sunflower seeds.
One by one, twelve chairs were loaded into the wagon. They
were very similar to Vorobyaninov’s, with one exception: they
were upholstered not in flowered calico, but in blue rep with
pink stripes.
Father Fyodor was overcome with impatience. There was
a little ax stuck in his twisted-cord belt under the hem of his
shirt. Father Fyodor sat down next to the driver and drove out
to Batumi, glancing back at his chairs every other minute. The
brisk steeds brought Father Fyodor and his treasure past the
Final café, where the wind was wandering around between the
bamboo tables and pavilions, past the tunnel which was just
swallowing the last few oil tanks on the petroleum route, past
a photographer who was deprived on this cloudy day of his
regular clientele, and past the sign batumi botanical gar-
den down to the main highway, which ran along right above
the surf line. Father Fyodor was splashed by the salty spray at
the spot where the road intersected the massifs. The waves,
beaten back by the massifs, made geysers that went all the way
up to the sky and then fell slowly back down.
The surf’s shocks and explosions brought Father Fyodor’s
perturbed soul to a white-hot heat. The horses, struggling

against the wind, slowly approached Makhinjauri. No mat-
ter where the eye roamed, cloudy green waters whistled and
swelled. All the way to Batumi the white froth of the surf shiv-
ered like the hem of an underskirt coming out from under a
sloppy lady’s dress.
“Stop! Stop, Muslim!” Father Fyodor suddenly shouted to
the driver.
He trembled and stumbled as he began unloading the
chairs onto the deserted shore. The indifferent Adzhar took
his five-ruble note, whipped the horses, and drove off. Father
Fyodor made sure no one was around, then dragged the chairs
down the road embankment to a small, still-dry bit of beach
and pulled out his ax.
He stood undecided for a moment, as he didn’t know which
chair to begin with. Then he walked up to the third chair and
brutally chopped it in the back with the ax, like a lunatic. The
chair fell over without a scratch.
“Aha! I’ll show you!” Father Fyodor shouted.
He threw himself on the chair as if it were a living thing. In
the blink of an eye, the chair was reduced to coleslaw. Father
Fyodor didn’t hear the ax slicing into the wood, the rep, or the
springs. In the powerful roar of the storm all external sounds
were muffled, as if in felt.
“Aha! Aha! Aha!” Father Fyodor repeated, swinging from
the shoulder.
The chairs were taken out one after the other. Father Fyo-
dor’s fury grew stronger and stronger. The storm did, too.
Some waves reached all the way to Father Fyodor’s feet.
A great roaring reigned from Batumi to Sinop. The sea
was raging and took out its fury on every little passing ship.
The steamer Lenin, smoking from both smokestacks and set-
tling heavily to stern, was approaching Novorossisk. The storm
whirled all over the Black Sea, throwing thousand-ton billows
at the shores of Trabzon, Yalta, Odessa, and Constanta. The
cape green ✦ 467

Mediterranean thundered out past the quiet of the Bosporus
and the Dardanelles. Behind the Strait of Gibraltar, the Atlan-
tic Ocean came crashing down on Europe. Angry water girded
the entire globe.
Father Fyodor, drenched in sweat, stood on the shore of
Batumi and hacked the last chair to bits. A minute later it was
all over. Desperation seized Father Fyodor. He cast a dumb-
founded look at the mountain of legs, backs, and springs
he’d piled up. He retreated. Water clutched at his feet. He
wrenched himself away, drenched, and ran over to the high-
way. A large wave came thundering down where Father Fyodor
had just been standing and rolled back, carrying off General
Popov’s widow’s entire ruined parlor set with it. Father Fyodor
didn’t see any of this. He was wandering down the highway,
stooped over, a wet fist pressed to his breast.
He walked into Batumi, blind to everything around him.
His situation couldn’t have been worse. He was five thousand
kilometers away from home with twenty rubles in his pocket.
It was absolutely impossible to get back.
Father Fyodor went past the Turkish bazaar, where ideal
whispers advised him to buy Coty powder, silk stockings, and
bulk Sukhumi tobacco, dragged himself to the train station,
and disappeared into a crowd of porters.

40
Under the Clouds
three days after the concessionaires’ deal with Mechnikov

the fitter, the Columbus Theater left for Tbilisi by rail, via
Makhachkala and Baku. The concessionaires, dissatisfied with
the contents of the two chairs they’d opened up on Mount
Mashuk, had waited all three days for Mechnikov to bring
them the third and final Columbian chair. But the fitter, a man
tormented by Narzan, had invested his entire twenty rubles
in the purchase of good, plain vodka and ended up in such a
state that he was locked in the prop room.
“That’s some real mineral water for you!” Ostap announced
when he found out about the theater’s departure. “That fitter’s
a son of a gun! Catch me having anything to do with theater
people after this!”
Ostap became much more fidgety than before. The chances
of finding the treasure had increased immeasurably. Ostap
said, “We need money for the trip to Vladikavkaz. From there
we’ll go to Tbilisi by car along the Georgian Military Road.
Charming sights! Breathtaking landscapes! Marvelous moun-
tain air! And all of one hundred fifty thousand rubles and zero
kopeks as the grand finale. Good reason to keep the meeting
in session.”
But it wasn’t all that easy to get out of Mineralnye Vody. Vo-
robyaninov turned out to be hopeless at riding trains without
a ticket; since his attempts to board trains were unsuccessful,
he had to perform by the Flower Garden as the former dis-
✦ 469 ✦
trict warden of schools. This was less than a total success. Two
rubles for twelve hours of difficult, demeaning work. Still, the
sum was enough for the train to Vladikavkaz.
Ostap, who was traveling without a ticket, was chased off
the train in Beslan. The smooth operator ran impertinently
behind the train for about three versts, shaking his fist at the
completely innocent Ippolit Matveevich. Then Ostap was able
to jump onto the step of a train that was climbing slowly up
the Caucasian mountain range. From this vantage point Ostap
gazed curiously at the panorama of the Caucasian mountains
opening up before him.
It was after three in the morning. The mountain heights
glowed with dark-pink sunlight. Ostap didn’t like the moun-
tains. “Too much chic!” he said. “Absurd beauty. An idiot’s
flight of fancy. Useless.”
A large open-topped bus awaited those arriving at Vladi-
kavkaz Station, and some very endearing people said, “We’ll
take whoever’s touring the Georgian Military Road by car into
town for free.”
“Where are you going, Kisa?” Ostap said. “We’re headed for
the bus. Let them take us into town for free.”
However, once the bus brought them to the office of the
Transcaucausian Automotive Transportation Sales and Indus-
try Joint-Stock Company, Ostap was in no hurry to sign up for
a place in the car. He engaged Ippolit Matveevich in lively
discussion, admired the cloud-ringed Table Mountain, found
that the mountain really did look like a table, and quickly
retired.
They were stuck for several days in Vladikavkaz. All their
attempts to procure money for the trip along the Georgian
Military Road were either completely fruitless or yielded just
enough for them to feed themselves for the day. Their efforts
to wrest away citizens’ coppers just didn’t work. The Caucasian
mountain range was so tall and prominent that it didn’t seem

likely they’d be able to charge for the view. It was visible from
almost everywhere. And there were no other natural wonders
in Vladikavkaz. As far as the Terek was concerned, it flowed
past the Trek, to which the town was already charging admis-
sion without Ostap’s help. The takings from Ippolit Matvee-
vich’s begging were thirteen kopeks in two days.
Then Ostap extracted a deck of cards from some secret
place in his field jacket, sat down at the side of the road out
of town, and started up a three-card game. Next to him stood
the previously coached Ippolit Matveevich, who was supposed
to play the role of a delighted spectator who was amazed at
the ease of winning. Behind the friends, mountain ridges and
snowy peaks showed through the clouds.
“Red wins, black loses!” Ostap shouted.
Ostap, crouched before a crowd of mountain tribesmen, In-
gushetians, and Ossetians in felt caps, threw down three cards
faceup. One was a red card, the other two were black. Any
citizen was welcome to place any bet on the red card. Ostap
undertook to pay anyone who guessed correctly on the spot.
“Red wins, black loses! You saw it, you place your bet! You
guessed it, you take your money!”
The highlanders were captivated by the simplicity of the
game and the ease of winning. Right in front of everyone, the
red card was put down to the left or to the right, and it was no
trouble at all to guess where it was.
The spectators were gradually drawn into the game, and
Ostap had already lost forty kopeks to keep up appearances.
A horseman in a brown cherkeska, a reddish-brown sheepskin
cap, and the usual dagger on his hollow stomach joined the
crowd.
“Red wins, black loses!” Ostap sang out, sensing profit.
“You saw it, you place your bet! You guessed it, you take your
money!”
Ostap made a few passes and threw down the cards.
under the clouds ✦ 471

“There it is!” shouted the horseman, jumping down off his
horse. “That’s the red one! I saw it clearly!”
“Place your bet if you saw it, katso,” Ostap said.
“You’ll lose!” the highlander said.
“That’s all right. If I lose, I’ll pay the money,” Ostap replied.
“I’ll bet ten rubles.”
“Put it down.”
The highlander flipped open the skirts of his cherkeska and
pulled out a faded brown purse.
“That’s the red one! I saw it clearly!”
The gambler lifted the card. The card was black.
“Another card?” Ostap asked, tucking his winnings away.
“Give me one.”
Ostap threw down the cards.
The highlander lost twenty more rubles. Then thirty. The
highlander decided to win his money back no matter what.
The crowd was noisy. The horseman bet his entire losses.
Ostap, who hadn’t worked on his three-card game for a long
time and had lost his former qualifications, muffed his card-
sharping that time.
“Give me the money!” the highlander shouted.
“What?” Ostap shouted. “Everyone saw! No tricks!”
“Everyone saw, everyone didn’t see—that’s their business. I
saw how you switched the card and laid down black instead of
red! Give my money back!”
With these words, the highlander walked right up to Ostap.
The smooth operator steadfastly withstood the first blow to the
head and gave back some stunning change. Then the entire
crowd threw itself at Ostap. Ippolit Matveevich escaped back
into town. The irascible Ingushetians didn’t beat Ostap for
very long. They cooled off as quickly as the mountain air cools
off at night. Ten minutes later the highlander was headed for
his village with the government money he’d wrested back,
the crowd was returning to its workaday life, and Ostap was

elegantly spitting a long jet of the blood oozing from his split
gums as he hobbled off to meet up with Ippolit Matveevich.
“That’s enough,” Ostap said. “There’s only one way out:
walking to Tbilisi. We’ll make two hundred versts in five days.
It’s all right, pops . . . the charming mountain vistas, the fresh
air! We need money for bread and sausage. You could add a
few Italian phrases to your lexicon, as you see fit, but by eve-
ning you have to bring in no less than two rubles! We won’t
have to trouble ourselves with dinner today, my dear comrade.
Alas! Our chances are slim!”
First thing the next morning the concessionaires crossed
the bridge over the Terek, went around the barracks, and de-
scended into a green valley with the Georgian Military Road
running through it.
“We’re lucky, Kisa,” Ostap said. “There was rain last night,
and we won’t have to swallow dust. Breathe in the pure air,
marshal. Sing. Remember poems about the Caucasus. Con-
duct yourself in a manner fitting the occasion!”
But Ippolit Matveevich did not sing, and did not remember
any poems. The road started going uphill. The nights spent
under the open sky came back to haunt him in the form of
stitches in his side and heaviness in his legs, while the sausage
returned in the guise of continual, agonizing heartburn. He
bent over to one side and dragged his left leg a little as he
walked, holding a five-pound loaf of bread wrapped in a Vla-
dikavkaz newspaper.
On foot, again! This time to Tbilisi, this time along the most
beautiful road in the world. Ippolit Matveevich didn’t care. He
didn’t look around like Ostap did. He decidedly did not no-
tice the Terek, which was already beginning to rumble at the
bottom of the valley. Only the icy mountaintops gleaming in
the sun reminded him vaguely of something, either the glitter
of diamonds or master craftsman Bezenchuk’s best brocade-
lined coffins.

The travelers walked all the way to Balta, the first mail sta-
tion, still under Table Mountain’s sphere of influence. Its solid,
elephantine peak veined with snow followed behind them for
ten versts. The travelers were overtaken, first by a motorcar
from the Transcaucausian Automotive Transportation Sales and
Industry Joint-Stock Company, and then, half an hour later, by
a bus carrying no fewer than forty tourists and no more than a
hundred and twenty suitcases.
“Say hello to Kazbek!” Ostap shouted after the vehicle.
“Give it a kiss on the left glacier for us!”
The smell of gasoline fumes and heated rubber lingered
for a long time after the automobiles went by. Highlanders’
carts jingled resonantly as they passed the travelers. A phaeton
drove out from behind a turn and headed toward them.
In Balta, Ostap gave an inch of sausage to Ippolit Matvee-
vich and two inches to himself. “I’m the breadwinner of the
family, I’m supposed to get a high-calorie diet,” he said.
After Balta, the road entered a ravine and moved along a
narrow ledge cut into the dark cliffs. The spiral of the road
curled upward. That evening the concessionaires found them-
selves at Lare Station, thirty-three hundred feet above sea level.
They spent the night in a poor dukhan for free and even got
a glass of milk each for showing the owner and his guests some
fascinating card tricks.
The morning was so marvelous that even Ippolit Matvee-
vich, bedewed by the mountain air, stepped out more energeti-
cally than the day before. The grandiose wall of the Side Ridge
rose up immediately behind Lare Station. Here, the Terek
River valley was shut in by narrow passes. The landscape grew
ever gloomier, and the inscriptions on the cliffs ever more nu-
merous. At a point where the cliffs compressed the flow of the
Terek so much that the span of the bridge was only twenty-five
yards across, the concessionaires saw so many inscriptions on
the perpendicular walls of the ravine that Ostap forgot about

the magnificence of the Daryal Gorge and started trying to
outshout the Terek’s thundering and groaning: “Grand people!
Look at that, marshal. See there, a little higher than a cloud
and a bit lower than an eagle? An inscription: ‘Kolya and Mika,
July 1914.’ An unforgettable sight! Look at the artistry of the
execution! Every letter a yard tall, rendered in oil paint! Where
are you now, Kolya and Mika?”
Ippolit Matveevich grew pensive, too.
Where are you, Kolya and Mika? What are you doing now,
Kolya and Mika? You’ve gotten fat, no doubt? Gotten old? You
probably can’t even get up to the fourth floor these days, never
mind up under the clouds to write your names.
And where do you work, Kolya? You say work isn’t going well?
You’re remembering your golden days of childhood? What do
you mean, your golden days of childhood? Do you consider
scribbling on gorges your golden days of childhood? Kolya,
you are awful! And your wife, Mika, is a repulsive woman, al-
though she’s not as guilty as you. While you were hanging on a
cliff, sketching out your name, Mika stood beneath you, gazing
at you with lovelorn eyes. Back then she thought you were a
second Pechorin. Now she knows exactly what you are. You’re
just an idiot! Oh, yes, you’re all like that, clambering around
on the beautiful sights! You’re all Pechorin this, Pechorin that,
but then take a good look: you’re so stupid you can’t even bal-
ance an account!
“Kisa, let’s immortalize ourselves too,” Ostap continued.
“Let’s fluff Mika’s feathers. I even have chalk, too! I swear to
God, I’ll climb up there right now and write, ‘Kisa and Osya
were here.’ ”
Without thinking too long about it, Ostap put their stores
of sausage on the parapet separating the highway from the
boiling abyss of the Terek and began ascending the cliff.
At first Ippolit Matveevich followed the ascent of the smooth
operator, but then he got distracted and turned around to ex-

amine the foundation of Tamara’s castle, preserved there on
the cliff. It looked like a horse’s tooth.
Just then, Father Fyodor entered the Daryal Gorge from the
Tbilisi side, two versts from the concessionaires. He was walk-
ing a measured soldier’s step, looking straight ahead with hard
diamond eyes, and leaning on a tall walking stick with a hook
at the end.
Father Fyodor had used up the last of his money traveling to
Tbilisi and was now walking back to the motherland on foot,
living off well-wishers’ donations. An eagle had bitten him as
he went through the Pass of the Cross (seven thousand six
hundred and ninety-four feet above sea level). Father Fyodor
had waved his walking stick at the bold bird and continued
walking. He walked with his head in the clouds and mumbled,
“Not for my own profit, but only to do the will of my wife who
hath sent me!”
The distance between the enemies shortened. Father Fyo-
dor turned around a sharp projection of the cliff wall and ran
right into an old man with a golden pince-nez.
The gorge split in two before Father Fyodor’s eyes. The
Terek ceased its thousand-year cry. Father Fyodor recognized
Vorobyaninov. After the terrible failure in Batumi, after the
utter collapse of all his hopes, this new chance to secure his
riches had an unusual effect on Father Fyodor.
He clutched Ippolit Matveevich’s scrawny Adam’s apple,
squeezed his fingers, and shouted hoarsely, “What did you do
with the treasure of your mother-in-law, whom you killed?”
Ippolit Matveevich, who hadn’t expected anything like this,
remained silent, but bugged out his eyes so much that they
almost touched the lenses of his pince-nez.
“Speak!” Father Fyodor ordered. “Repent, sinner!”
Vorobyaninov could tell that he was beginning to run out
of air.

Then Father Fyodor, who was already celebrating his victory,
caught sight of Bender leaping down the cliff. The technical di-
rector descended, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Boiling and
spuming, the ocean waves against the gloomy cliffs do rage!”
A mighty fear struck Father Fyodor’s heart. Out of inertia,
he maintained his grip on the marshal’s throat, but his knees
started knocking.
“Aha, and who is this?” Ostap shouted in a friendly way.
“Our competing organization!”
Father Fyodor didn’t waste any time. Succumbing to some
beneficient instinct, he grabbed the concession’s bread and
sausage and ran off.
“Get him, Comrade Bender!” shouted Ippolit Matveevich
from the ground, as he recovered his breath. “Catch him! Hold
on to him!”
Ostap started whistling and hallooing. “Halloo-oo,” he
shouted as he gave chase. “The battle of the pyramids, or Bender
on the hunt! But where are you going, client? I can offer you a
well-disemboweled chair!”
Father Fyodor couldn’t bear the torment of pursuit and
clambered up a completely vertical cliff face. He was pushed
upward by his heart rising into his throat and by a special kind
of itch in the heels, the kind felt only by cowards. His feet
leaped off the granite of their own accord, carrying their mas-
ter upward.
“Haloo-oo!” Ostap shouted from down below. “Stop him!”
“He ran off with our supplies!” Ippolit Matveevich howled
as he ran up to Ostap.
“Stop!” Ostap thundered. “Stop, I tell you!”
But this only gave Father Fyodor, who’d been on the verge
of exhaustion, new strength. He soared upward and after a
few leaps found himself twenty-five yards higher than the very
highest inscription.

“Give back the sausage!” Ostap demanded. “Give back the
sausage, you fool! I’ll forgive everything!”
Father Fyodor couldn’t hear a thing by then. He found him-
self on a flat spot that not a single person before him had ever
managed to reach. Father Fyodor was struck with melancholy
horror. He realized that he’d never be able to climb back
down. The cliff fell in a perpendicular line to the highway, and
there was no point in even thinking about trying to descend
it. He looked down. Far beneath him Ostap raged, and at the
bottom of the gorge the marshal’s golden pince-nez glinted.
“I’ll give the sausage back! Get me down!” Father Fyodor
shouted.
In answer the Terek roared and terrible cries came from
Tamara’s castle. Owls lived in it.
“Ge-e-et me-e-e do-o-own!” Father Fyodor shouted plaintively.
He saw all the concessionaires’ maneuvers. They were run-
ning around the bottom of the cliff and, judging by their ges-
tures, cursing each other most foully.
An hour later Father Fyodor, who’d lain down on his stom-
ach and poked his head out over the edge, saw Bender and
Vorobyaninov walking away toward the Pass of the Cross.
The quick night came on. Up under the very clouds, in the
pitch-black dark and hellish roaring, Father Fyodor trembled
and cried. He didn’t need earthly treasures anymore. He only
wanted one thing: to be back on earth.
That night he cried so loudly he occasionally drowned out
the Terek, and the next morning he fortified himself with
some bread and sausage and laughed satanically over the cars
driving past down below. He spent the rest of the day in con-
templation of the mountains and the celestial lamp of the sun.
The next night he saw Queen Tamara. The queen flew over to
him from her castle and said coquettishly, “We’re going to be
neighbors.”

“Dear little mother!” Father Fyodor said feelingly. “It isn’t
for my own profit . . .”
“I know, I know,” the queen remarked. “But only to do the
will of the wife who hath sent you.”
“How’d you know that?” Father Fyodor said, amazed.
“Oh, I just do. You should come by for a visit, neighbor.
We’ll play some sixty-six! How about it?”
She laughed and flew away, letting fireworks off in the
night sky.
On the third day Father Fyodor started preaching to the
birds. For some reason, he inclined them to Lutheranism.
“Birds, repent publicly of your sins!” he said to them in a ring-
ing voice.
By the fourth day tour guides had begun pointing him out.
“On the right is Tamara’s castle,” the experienced tour guides
would say. “And on the left stands a real, live man, but no one
knows what he’s living on or how he got there.”
“My, but that’s a wild people!” the tourists said, surprised.
“Children of the mountains!”
Clouds went past. Eagles circled over Father Fyodor. The
bravest of them stole the rest of the sausage and with a stroke
of its wing sent a pound and a half of bread into the foaming
Terek.
Father Fyodor shook his finger at the eagle and whispered,
smiling beatifically,
The little bird of God knows not
Our woe, our worry, or our care,
It doesn’t work so hard to weave
A nest to be its little lair.
The eagle gave Father Fyodor a sidelong glance, shouted “Cock-

a-doodle-do!” and flew away.
“Oh, eagle, my dear little eagle, you are a bitch!”

Ten days later a fire brigade with all the appropriate ve-
hicles and appurtenances arrived from Vladikavkaz and got
Father Fyodor down.
While they were getting him down, he flapped his arms and
sang, in a voice devoid of appeal,
And you will be the que-e-en of the wo-o-orld,
My ete-e-ernal conso-o-ort!
The stern Caucasus repeated the words of M. Yu. Lermontov

and the music of A. Rubinstein many times.
“Not for my own profit, but only . . .” Father Fyodor said to
the brigade chief.
The fire engine carried the guffawing priest off to a psychi-
atric hospital.

41
Earthquake
“what do you think, marshal? How can we make some money

in this puny locale two versts above sea level?” Ostap asked as
the concessionaires approached the village of Sioni.
Ippolit Matveevich was silent. The single activity by which
he could win a means of living was begging, but there was no
one to beg from here, among the spirals and ledges of the
mountains.
Incidentally, there was begging here too, but of a very spe-
cial kind: alpine begging. Children would run up to every bus
or car that went past their village and perform a few steps of
the Naurskaya lezginka for the traveling auditorium. Then the
children would run after the car, shouting, “Give money! Give
us money!”
The passengers would hurl out their five-kopek coins and
ascend toward the Pass of the Cross.
“It’s a sure thing,” said Ostap. “No need for capital invest-
ments, and even though the profits aren’t large, they’re still
invaluable for people in our situation.”
Around two o’clock of the second day of their journey, Ip-
polit Matveevich performed his first dance for the speeding
passengers under the smooth operator’s direction. This dance
looked like the mazurka, but the passengers were overloaded
with wild Caucasian beauty and thought it was a lezginka. They
rewarded him with three five-kopek coins. The technical direc-
✦ 481 ✦
tor himself leaped and danced in front of the next car, which
turned out to be a bus going from Tbilisi to Vladikavkaz. “Give
money! Give us money!” he shouted angrily.
The laughing passengers rewarded his leaps generously.
Ostap gathered thirty kopeks up from the dusty street. At this
point, the Sionian children rained a hail of stones down on
their competitors. The travelers fled the bombardment and
headed in a quick march to the next village, where they spent
their hard-earned money on cheese and churek.
The concessionaires spent their days in these exertions.
They slept in mountain huts at night. On the fourth day they
followed the road’s zigzags down into the Kaishaur valley. The
sun was hot here, and the companions’ bones warmed up
quickly after being good and frozen at the Pass of the Cross.
The cliffs of the Daryal and the pass’s gloom and cold
were replaced by the green grass and good housekeeping of
the deep valley. The travelers walked above the Aragva, then
dropped down into the valley, inhabited by people and bur-
geoning with livestock and food. Here they’d be able to beg,
earn, or simply steal things. It was Transcaucasia.
The concessionaires’ mood brightened, and they started
walking faster.
In Passanaur, a hot, rich settlement with two hotels and sev-
eral dukhany, the friends begged a churek and lay down in the
bushes across from the hotel France with its garden and two
chained-up bear cubs. They enjoyed the warmth, the delicious
bread, and their well-earned rest.
However, their rest was soon disturbed by the shrieking of
automotive horns, the rustling of new tires on the flint gravel,
and happy cries. The friends peered out. Three identical new
cars rolled up to the France, one after the other. The cars came
to a stop without a sound. Persitsky leaped out of the first car.
After Persitsky came “In Court and About Town,” smoothing

down his dusty hair. Then the members of The Lathe’s motor-
ing club piled out of all three cars.
“Halt!” Persitsky shouted. “Innkeeper! Fifteen shish kebabs!”
Sleepy figures went into the France. Then came the cries of
a sheep being dragged by the legs into the kitchen.
“Don’t you recognize that young man?” Ostap asked. “He’s
the reporter from the Scriabin, one of the people who criticized
our cutout. Haven’t they rolled in with a lot of chic! What’s all
this about?”
Ostap approached the shish kebab eaters and exchanged
the most elegant of bows with Persitsky.
“Bonjour !” the reporter said. “Now where have I seen you
before, my dear comrade? Ah-ha! I remember now. You were
the artist from the Scriabin, right?”
Ostap pressed his hand to his heart and bowed respectfully.
“But allow me, just a moment,” continued Persitsky, who
had a reporter’s good memory. “Aren’t you the one that cab-
bie’s horse ran into on Sverdlov Square in Moscow?”
“None other! And I also, to use your apt expression, got off
with nothing more than a mild scare.”
“And you’re here doing what, plying the artist’s trade?”
“No, I’m here as a tourist.”
“On foot?”
“On foot. Experts agree that traveling the Georgian Military
Road by car is just plain stupid!”
“It’s not always stupid, my dear friend, not always! We, for
example, aren’t going along too stupidly here. As you can see,
these fine cars here are ours—I repeat, ours, the collective’s.
Direct service from Moscow to Tbilisi. The gasoline is nothing,
kopeks. Comfort and ease of travel. Soft-spring suspension. In
a word: Europe!”
“Where did you get all this?” Ostap asked enviously. “You
win a hundred thousand?”
earthquake ✦ 483
“It wasn’t a hundred, but we did win fifty thousand.”
“Playing ‘nines’?”
“With the bonds we pooled for the motoring club.”
“Ah,” Ostap said. “And you used the money to buy cars?”
“As you see.”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps you have need of a group leader? I have a
young man in mind. Doesn’t drink.”
“What kind of group leader?”
“Well, someone who . . . General management, business ad-
vice, visual teaching methods with an integrated approach . . .
How about it?”
“I see. No, we don’t need one.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Unfortunately. We don’t need an artist, either.”
“In that case, give me ten rubles!”
Persitsky said, “Avdotin, be so kind as to give this citizen
three rubles in my name. No need for a receipt. We don’t have
an account with him.”
“That’s quite a small amount, but I’ll take it,” Ostap said.
“I understand all the difficulties of your situation. Of course,
if you’d won a hundred thousand, you’d probably lend me a
whole five rubles. But, after all, you did only win fifty thousand
rubles and zero kopeks! In any case, I thank you!”
Bender courteously doffed his cap. Persitsky also doffed his
cap courteously. Bender bowed most graciously. Persitsky re-
plied with a quite gracious bow. Bender waved his hand in a
friendly way. Persitsky, sitting at the wheel, also made a gesture
of farewell. But Persitsky drove off into the glorious distance in
a marvelous car in the company of lighthearted friends, while
the smooth operator was left standing in the dusty road with
his idiot companion.
“Did you see all that glitter?” Ostap asked Ippolit Matveevich.
“Was it the Transcaucasian Automotive Transportation Sales
and Industry Joint-Stock Company or the private company

Motor?” asked the businesslike Vorobyaninov, who, after sev-
eral days of travel, was excellently acquainted with all the dif-
ferent kinds of motor transportation on the road.
“You’re going to go completely stupid on me, my poor friend.
What did they have to do with the Transcaucasian Automo-
tive Transportation Sales and Industry Joint-Stock Company?
Those people won, now listen up, Kisa, won fifty thousand ru-
bles. You can see for yourself, Kisulya, how happy they are and
how much mechanical garbage they bought! When we get our
money we’ll spend it much more rationally. Isn’t that right?”
And so the friends dreamed of what they would buy once
they were rich, and walked out of Passanaur. Ippolit Matvee-
vich was energetically imagining the purchase of new socks and
a trip abroad. Ostap’s dreams were more ambitious. His proj-
ects were grandiose, something between damming up the Blue
Nile and opening a gaming mansion in Riga with branches in
all the countries of the near abroad.
On the third day, just before dinner, when they’d passed
boring, dusty places like Ananur, Dushet, and Tsilkani, the
travelers approached Mtskheta, Georgia’s ancient capital. This
was where the Kura River turned toward Tbilisi. That evening,
the travelers went past the ZAGES, the Zemo-Avchalskaya Hy-
droelectric Station. Glass, water, and electricity flashed with
their respective fires. All of it was reflected, flickering, in the
swiftly flowing Kura.
At this point the concessionaires made friends with a peas-
ant who let them ride into Tbilisi on his cart. They arrived
near eleven o’clock, at the very hour when the evening cool
calls the Georgian capital’s residents, exhausted from the heat,
out onto the streets.
“Not a bad little city,” Ostap said, as they turned onto Shota
Rustaveli Prospect. “You know, Kisa . . .”
Abruptly, without finishing what he was saying, Ostap darted
after some citizen. He caught up with him in ten steps and
earthquake ✦ 485
started up a lively conversation. Then he quickly returned and
poked his finger into Ippolit Matveevich’s side.
“Know who that is?” he whispered quickly. “That’s citizen
Kislyarsky, the Odessa Bublik Co-op ‘Moscow Bread Rings.’
We’re going to talk to him. Once more, as paradoxical as it
might seem, you are now the giant of thought and the father of
Russian democracy. Don’t forget to puff out your cheeks and
wiggle your mustache. Damn! What a chance! Ah, fortune! If I
don’t open him up to the tune of five hundred rubles, you can
just spit in my face! Let’s go!”
And indeed, a short distance from the concessionaires
stood Kislyarsky, milky blue from fear, wearing a tussore silk
suit and a boater.
“I believe you are acquainted,” Ostap whispered. “Here is the
figure closely connected to the emperor, the giant of thought
and the father of Russian democracy. Pay no heed to his garb.
It serves our conspirational ends. Take us somewhere, quick.
We have to talk.”
Kislyarsky, who had come to the Caucasus to recover from
the shocks he’d received in Stargorod, was utterly crushed.
Kislyarsky purred some nonsense about stagnation in the bu-
blik and bread-ring trade as he sat his frightening acquain-
tances in a carriage with silver-plated spokes and step and took
them to Mount David. They went to the top of the restaurant
mountain on a funicular. Tbilisi with its thousand lights slowly
crawled back down into the netherworld. The conspirators as-
cended straight up to the stars.
The mountain’s tables were set out right on the grass. A
Caucasian orchestra droned faintly, and between tables, a little
girl danced the lezginka on her own initiative as her parents
watched happily.
“Have them bring us something!” Ostap prompted.
Upon the experienced Kislyarsky’s order, they were served
wine, herbs, and salty Georgian cheese.

“And something to eat, too,” Ostap said. “If you only knew
what Ippolit Matveevich and I had to endure today, my dear
Mister Kislyarsky, you would be amazed at our courage.”
“Again!” Kislyarsky thought in despair. “My sufferings are
beginning all over again! Why didn’t I go to the Crimea? I
definitely did want to go to the Crimea! Henrietta even told
me to!”
But he ordered two shish kebabs without a murmur and
turned his obliging face to Ostap.
“So, then, in a word,” Ostap said, looking around and low-
ering his voice. “We’ve been followed for two months, and it’s
likely that our conspiratorial hideout will be ambushed tomor-
row. We’ll have to shoot our way out.”
Kislyarsky’s cheeks turned silver.
Ostap continued, “We’re glad to have met a dedicated
fighter for the motherland in this perilous situation.”
“Hmm . . . yes!” Ippolit Matveevich said proudly through his
clenched teeth, as he remembered how hunger had made him
dance the lezginka so eagerly just outside Sioni.
“Yes!” Ostap whispered. “We hope to strike back at the en-
emy, with your help. I’ll give you an automatic.”
“Don’t,” Kislyarsky said firmly.
The next minute it turned out that the chairman of the
stock exchange committee wouldn’t be able to take part in the
morrow’s battle. He was very sorry, but it was not possible. He
was unacquainted with military matters. That’s why he’d been
elected chairman of the stock exchange committee. He was
in utter despair, but (being an old Octobrist himself) he was
ready to offer any possible financial assistance in order to save
the life of the father of Russian democracy.
“You are a true friend of the fatherland!” Bender said tri-
umphantly, as he washed down the fragrant shish kebab with
some sweet Kipiani. “Five hundred rubles can save the giant
of thought.”
earthquake ✦ 487
Kislyarsky said plaintively, “Can’t two hundred rubles save
the giant of thought?”
Ostap couldn’t help himself and kicked Ippolit Matveevich
triumphantly under the table.
Ippolit Matveevich said, “I find haggling to be inappropriate
at this time!” He immediately received a poke in the haunch,
which meant, “Bravo, Kisa, bravo! Now that’s good schooling!”
For the first time in his life, Kislyarsky heard the voice of the
giant of thought. He was so surprised by this development that
he immediately gave Ostap five hundred rubles. Then he paid
the bill and, claiming a headache, retired, leaving the friends
at the table. Half an hour later he sent his wife in Stargorod a
telegram:
per your advice going crimea stop prepare basket
just in case stop
The long privations which Ostap Bender had undergone

demanded immediate compensation. Therefore the smooth
operator drank himself into a stupor on top of the restaurant
mountain that night, and almost fell out of the funicular on
the way to the hotel. The next day he implemented his long-
standing dream: he bought a wondrous dapple-gray suit. It was
hot in that suit, but he went around in it anyway, drenched in
sweat. A white piqué suit and a naval cap with the golden insig-
nia of some unknown yacht club were purchased for Vorobya-
ninov in the Tblico-op ready-made clothing store. In this attire
Ippolit Matveevich looked like an amateur admiral of the mer-
chant marines. His posture straightened. His gait became firm.
“Oh, my!” Bender said. “High class! If I were a woman, I
would give a man as courageous and handsome as you a dis-
count of eight percent off the usual price. Oh, my! Oh, my! We
can move in high circles looking like this! Do you know how to
move in high circles, Kisa?”

“Comrade Bender!” Vorobyaninov insisted. “What about
the chair? We have to find out what the theater is doing!”
“Ho-ho!” Ostap objected, as he danced with a chair in the
large Mauritanian-style room of the Orient Hotel. “Don’t teach
me how to live. I’m wicked now. I have money. But I’m mag-
nanimous. I’ll give you twenty rubles and three days to sack
the city! I’m like Suvorov! Plunder the city, Kisa! Have fun!”
Shaking his hips back and forth, Ostap sang in a quick
tempo:
Those evening bells! those evening bells!

How many a tale their music tells . . .
The friends drank continuously for a whole week. Vorobya-

ninov’s admiral’s suit was covered in multicolored wine stains,
and the dapples of Ostap’s suit spread and merged into one
large rainbow-colored dapple.
“Hello!” Ostap said on the eighth morning, after picking
up The Dawn of the East to while away his hangover. “Listen,
you drunken sot, this is what smart people are writing in the
newspaper! Listen!
Theater Column
Having finished its stay in Tbilisi, the Columbus Theater of

Moscow left yesterday, the third of September, for the next stop
of its tour, in Yalta. The theater plans to remain in the Crimea
until the end of the winter season in Moscow.”
“Aha! I told you so!” Vorobyaninov said.

“What did you tell me?” Ostap snapped. Still, he was embar-
rassed. This negligence was very unpleasant. Instead of finish-
ing off the pursuit of the treasure in Tbilisi, they would now
have to make their way over to the Crimean Peninsula. Ostap
immediately took charge. He bought tickets to Batumi and
earthquake ✦ 489
reserved second-class spots on the steamship Pestel, leaving Ba-
tumi for Odessa on September 7 at 11:00 p.m. Moscow time.
On the night from the tenth to the eleventh of September,
the Pestel, which hadn’t stopped at Anapa because of a storm,
headed out to the open sea and set a course straight for Yalta.
Ippolit Matveevich, who had been throwing up all day and
only now managed to fall asleep, had a dream.
He dreamed that he was standing in his admiral’s uniform
on the balcony of his house in Stargorod, and he knew that
the crowd standing below him was waiting for him to do some-
thing. A large crane lowered a pig with black spots to his feet.
Tikhon the dvornik, who was wearing a two-piece suit, came
in, grasped the pig’s hind legs, and said, “Phew! Dadgum it! Is
The Nymph really going to give you tassels?”
A dagger appeared in Ippolit Matveevich’s hand. He stabbed
the pig in the ribs with it, and diamonds poured out of the big,
wide wound and bounced along the cement. They jumped
and clattered louder and louder. Near the end, their noise was
intolerable and frightening.
Ippolit Matveevich woke up from the waves crashing against
the portholes.
They arrived in Yalta in calm weather, on an exhaustingly
sunny morning. The marshal, who had recovered from his sea-
sickness, stood conspicuously at the prow of the ship, next to
the bell adorned with ornate cast-metal Slavic lettering. Cheer-
ful Yalta had set up its tiny shops and floating restaurants along
the shore. Little carriages with velvet seats stood along the pier
under striped, intricately cut tents, together with the cars and
buses of Crimeatour and the Crimean Drivers’ Association.
Brick-red girls twirled open umbrellas and waved hankies.
The friends were the first to disembark onto the red-hot
embankment. At the sight of the concessionaires, a citizen in
a tussore silk suit darted out of the crowd of welcomers and
the idly curious and quickly headed for the exit from the port

area. But it was too late. The smooth operator’s hunter’s eye
had quickly picked out the tussore silk citizen.
“Wait, Vorobyaninov,” Ostap shouted. He raced ahead so
quickly that he reached the silken man ten paces from the
exit. Ostap soon returned with one hundred rubles.
“He’s not giving any more. Incidentally, I didn’t insist, or
else he’d have had no money for the trip back home.”
Indeed, that same hour Kislyarsky bolted to Sevastopol by
car, and from there he took off home to Stargorod in a third-
class cabin.
The concessionaires spent all day in the hotel, sitting naked
on the floor and running to the bathroom every other minute
to take a shower. But the water came out warm, like nasty tea.
There was no relief from the heat. It seemed as though Yalta
were melting and running off into the sea.
At eight o’clock that evening, the companions, cursing all
the chairs in existence, wrenched on their hot shoes and went
to the theater.
Marriage was playing. Stepan stood on his hands, but he
was so tormented by the heat that he almost fell over. Agafya
Tikhonovna ran along the wire holding an umbrella inscribed
i want podkolyosin in her sweaty hands. At that moment,
and indeed all that day, all she wanted was one thing: cold ice
water. The audience was also thirsty. Because of this—or per-
haps it was because the sight of Stepan eating a hot omelet was
so disgusting—no one liked the show.
The concessionaires were satisfied because their chair was
there, along with three luxurious new rococo chairs. They hid
in one of the boxes and waited patiently until the end of the
incredibly long show. Finally, the audience dispersed and the
actors ran off to cool down. There was no one in the theater
except for the concession’s members and shareholders. Every-
thing living had run outside to be under the fresh rain that
had finally begun falling.
earthquake ✦ 491
“Follow me, Kisa!” Ostap commanded. “If anything hap-
pens, we’re provincials who couldn’t find the exit.”
They made their way onto the stage and examined all of it.
Even though they continually lit matches, they kept bumping
into the hydraulic press. The smooth operator ran upstairs to
the prop room.
“Come here!” he shouted from above.
Vorobyaninov shot up, arms flailing.
“See it?” Ostap said, as he lit a match.
A corner of the Gambs chair and the section of the um-
brella inscribed want gleamed in the darkness.
“There! There’s our future, present, and past! Light the
matches, Kisa, while I open it.” Ostap put his hand in his pocket
for his instruments.
“Well, then,” he said, reaching for the chair. “One more
match, marshal.”
The match flared up. Then a strange thing happened: the
chair leaped away by itself, and suddenly fell through the floor,
right before the amazed concessionaires’ eyes.
“Mama!” Ippolit Matveevich shouted as he hurled himself into
the wall, even though he hadn’t the slightest desire to do so.
Glass went flying with a crash, and the umbrella inscribed
i want podkolyosin was caught up by the wind and flew out
the window to sea. Ostap lay on the floor, gently weighed down
by sheets of plywood.
It was 12:14 a.m. It was the first tremor of the big Crimean
earthquake of 1927. A magnitude nine earthquake that caused
countless disasters all over the peninsula had ripped the trea-
sure right out of the concessionaires’ hands.
“Comrade Bender! What’s going on?” Ippolit Matveevich
shouted, horrified.
Ostap was beside himself. An earthquake had blocked his
path. It was the only time this had happened to him in all his
long years of experience.

“What is it?” Vorobyaninov shrieked.
Shouts, ringing, and whispers came in from outside.
“It’s that we need to get outside fast, before a wall smashes
us. Quick! Quick! Give me your hand, you useless old fool!”
They tore over to the exit. To their surprise, the Gambs chair,
whole and undamaged, was lying on its back at the stage door.
Ippolit Matveevich gave a canine squeal and clutched it with
a death grip.
“Give me the pliers!” he shouted to Ostap.
“You mangy idiot!” Ostap moaned. “The ceiling’s going
to come down any minute now, but he’s over here losing his
mind! Quick, out of the building!”
“Pliers!” the crazed Ippolit Matveevich roared.
“Then you go to hell! Go ahead and die here with your
chair! But my life has a lot of sentimental value for me!”
With these words Ostap broke for the door. Ippolit Matvee-
vich bayed, grabbed the chair, and ran after Ostap. As soon as
they made it to the middle of the street, the earth shook nause-
atingly under their feet, tiles fell down from the theater’s roof,
and the remains of the hydraulic press settled on the spot the
concessionaires had just vacated.
“So, now you can hand over the chair,” Bender said coolly.
“I can tell that you’re already tired of holding it.”
“No!” Ippolit Matveevich screeched.
“What’s this? A shipboard mutiny? Give me the chair! You
hear me?”
“It’s my chair!” Vorobyaninov screamed, outshouting the
moans, weeping, and crashing coming from everywhere.
“In that case, here’s your fee, you old boot!” Ostap clouted
Vorobyaninov in the neck with the palm of his brassy hand.
Just then, a fire brigade with lanterns raced down the street.
By its light Ippolit Matveevich saw such a terrible expression
on Bender’s face that he instantly submitted and handed over
the chair.
earthquake ✦ 493
“Well, now everything’s all right,” Ostap said, catching his
breath. “The mutiny has been quelled. Now, take the chair
and follow me. You will answer to me for the thing’s preserva-
tion. Even if there’s a magnitude fifty quake, the chair must be
saved. You got that?”
“Yes.”
The concessionaires wandered all night with the panicked
crowds. Like everyone else, they expected more tremors and
couldn’t bring themselves to go into the deserted buildings.
At dawn, once the fear had abated somewhat, Ostap chose a
little spot far away from walls that could come tumbling down
and people who could interfere, and they got down to open-
ing the chair.
The results of the opening surprised both concessionaires.
There was nothing in the chair. Ippolit Matveevich, who couldn’t
take all the shocks of that night and morning, started laughing
a high ratlike laugh. Immediately after that a third tremor hit.
The earth opened up and swallowed the Gambs chair, which
had been spared by the first tremor of the earthquake, but gut-
ted by people. As it went its little flowers smiled up at the sun,
dawning in clouds of dust.
Ippolit Matveevich fell to all fours, turned his wrinkled face
to the dirty-red disk of the sun, and howled. The smooth op-
erator listened to him and fainted dead away. When he recov-
ered, he saw Vorobyaninov’s chin, covered in purple stubble,
next to him. Ippolit Matveevich was also unconscious.
“Now our odds are a hundred out of a hundred, after all,”
Ostap said, sounding like a recovering typhoid fever victim.
“The last chair (Ippolit Matveevich came to at the word ‘chair’)
disappeared into the loading platform of October Station, but
it certainly was not swallowed up by the earth. What’s the prob-
lem? The meeting is still in session!”
Bricks fell, somewhere, with a rumble. A steamship’s horn
gave a long shriek.

42
Treasure
one rainy day at the end of October, Ippolit Matveevich,

wearing his lunar vest sprinkled with little silver stars, was work-
ing busily in Ivanopulo’s room. Ippolit Matveevich worked at
the windowsill, since there was still no table in the room. The
smooth operator had received a large order for a handcrafted
artisanal product: address plaques for building societies. Ostap
entrusted the stenciling of the plaques to Vorobyaninov, and
for his part had spent almost the whole month since their re-
turn to Moscow nosing around the general vicinity of October
Station, searching with inconceivable passion for traces of the
last chair, which undoubtedly concealed Madame Petukhova’s
diamonds.
Ippolit Matveevich frowned as he stenciled the iron plaques.
He’d lost all his old habits in six months of racing after the
diamonds. At night Ippolit Matveevich dreamed of mountain
ranges decorated with fierce wild cutouts; Iznurenkov, his
brown haunches trembling, dashed past before him; boats
turned over; people drowned; bricks fell from the sky; and the
gaping earth belched sulfurous smoke into his eyes.
Ostap, who was with Ippolit Matveevich every day, didn’t no-
tice any changes in him. Nevertheless, Ippolit Matveevich had
changed to an unusual degree. Ippolit Matveevich’s gait was
not the same, and the look in his eyes had turned wild, and
his mustache, now grown back, didn’t stick out parallel to the
earth’s surface anymore—it hung down almost perpendicular
✦ 495 ✦
to the ground, like an elderly tomcat’s whiskers. Ippolit Ma-
tveevich had changed on the inside, too. Qualities like deci-
siveness and cruelty, which he’d never evinced before, were
now part of his temperament. Three episodes had gradu-
ally cultivated these new feelings in him: his miraculous res-
cue from the Vasyukians’ heavy fists, his debut in the role of
beggar by the Flower Garden in Pyatigorsk, and, finally, the
earthquake, as a result of which Ippolit Matveevich became
somewhat deranged and began nursing a secret hatred for his
companion.
Lately, Ippolit Matveevich had been possessed by very strong
suspicions. He was afraid that Ostap would open up the chair
himself and abscond with the treasure, leaving him to the
mercy of fate. He didn’t dare express these suspicions, since
he knew Ostap’s heavy hand and adamant temperament. Every
day, as he sat by the window behind a stencil touching up dry
letters with a nicked razor blade, Ippolit Matveevich stewed.
Every day he was afraid that Ostap wouldn’t come home any-
more, and that he, a former marshal of the nobility, would die
of hunger under a dank Moscow fence.
But Ostap did come home every night, although he didn’t
bring any good news. His energy and cheer were inexhaust-
ible. He didn’t lose hope for a single minute.
A stamping of feet rang out in the hallway, someone slammed
into the fireproof safe, and the plywood door opened as easily
as a page turned by the wind. The smooth operator stood on
the threshold. He was drenched, and his cheeks burned apple-
red. He was panting.
“Ippolit Matveevich!” he shouted. “Listen, Ippolit Matvee-
vich!”
Vorobyaninov was amazed. The technical director had
never before called him by his name and patronymic. Then,
suddenly, he understood . . .
“You found it?” he breathed.

“That’s just it, I found it. Oh, Kisa, to hell with you!”
“Don’t shout, people can hear you.”
“True, true, someone could hear us,” Ostap whispered rap-
idly. “I found it. Kisa, I found it, and if you want I can show it
off to you right now . . . It’s in the railroad workers’ club. A
new club . . . just opened yesterday . . . How I found it, you ask?
Was it a trifle, you ask? It was an inordinately difficult matter!
An inspired combination, brilliantly sustained all the way to
the finish! An epic adventure from days of yore! In a word,
high class!”
Without waiting for Ippolit Matveevich to throw on his
jacket, Ostap ran out into the hallway. Vorobyaninov joined
him on the stairs. They hurled questions at each other excit-
edly and ran along the wet streets to Watchtower Square. They
didn’t even realize they could’ve taken the streetcar.
“You’re dressed like a cobbler!” Ostap chattered joyfully.
“Who goes around looking like that, Kisa? You need starched
linens, silk socks, and, of course, a top hat. There’s something
noble in your face! Tell me, were you really a marshal of the
nobility?”
Ostap showed the marshal the chair, which stood in the
chess group’s room and had an utterly ordinary Gambs ap-
pearance, although it concealed countless riches. Then he
dragged Vorobyaninov into the hallway. There was no one else
there. Ostap went over to the window, still not sealed shut for
winter, and yanked the window bolts on both frames up out of
their holes.
He said, “Tonight we can make our way easily and gently
through this little window into the club whenever we want. Re-
member, Kisa, the third window from the main entrance.”
Under the guise of representatives of the Provincial Depart-
ment of People’s Education, the friends continued wandering
around the club for a long time. They couldn’t get enough of
the beautiful auditoriums and rooms.
treasure ✦ 497
The club was not grand, but it was well built. The conces-
sionaires kept going back to the chess room and followed the
developments in several games of chess with evident interest.
Ostap said, “If I had played in Vasyuki sitting on a chair
like that, I wouldn’t have lost a single game. My enthusiasm
wouldn’t have permitted it. All the same—let’s go, old man. I
have twenty-five rubles stashed away. We need to drink some
beer and rest up before our nighttime visit. You’re not shocked
by beer, are you, marshal? No matter! Tomorrow you’ll be lap-
ping up champagne in unlimited quantities.”
As he came out of the beer parlor on Sivtsev Vrazhek, Bender
was terribly jolly and teased passersby. He put his arm around
the slightly tipsy Ippolit Matveevich’s shoulders and said ten-
derly to him, “You are an exceptionally nice little old man,
Kisa, but I’m not giving you more than ten percent. I swear I’m
not. I mean, what do you need it for? What do you need so
much money for?”
“What do you mean, what for? What do you mean?” Ippolit
Matveevich said, furious.
Ostap laughed sincerely and pressed his cheek to his busi-
ness friend’s wet sleeve. “Now what are you going to buy, Kisa?
What? After all, you don’t have any imagination. I swear, fif-
teen thousand will be more than enough for you . . . You’re
going to die soon, you’re old, you know. You don’t need any
money at all . . . You know, Kisa, I don’t think I’ll give you
anything. That would just spoil you. But I will take you on as
my secretary, Kisulya. How about that? Forty rubles a month.
Grub’s on me. Four days off a month . . . So how about it?
You’ll have your work uniform, your tips, your social security
. . . So? How’s that sit with you?”
Ippolit Matveevich wrenched his arm away and walked
ahead quickly. These jokes were driving him into a frenzy.
Ostap caught up with Vorobyaninov at the entrance to the
pink mansion. “Did I really offend you?” Ostap asked. “But I

was just joking. You’ll get your three percent. I swear, three
percent is enough for you, Kisa.”
Ippolit Matveevich walked glumly into the room.
“How about it, Kisa?” Ostap said playfully. “Take three per-
cent! I swear, take it. Anyone else would. You don’t need to buy
a room, seeing as how Ivanopulo’s gone to Tver for a whole
year. And you should come work for me, anyway, be my valet
. . . It’s a cushy job.”
Seeing that he couldn’t get a rise out of Ippolit Matveevich,
Ostap yawned deliciously and stretched all the way up to the
ceiling, filling his wide rib cage with air. Then he said, “Well,
my friend, get your pockets ready. We’ll go to the club just be-
fore dawn. That’s the best time. Watchmen are sleeping and
having sweet dreams, for which they are often fired without
any severance pay. Meanwhile, my dear fellow, I’d advise you
to get some rest.”
Ostap lay down on three chairs, collected in various parts
of Moscow. As he was falling asleep, he said, “But you could be
my chamberlain! Decent pay . . . Grub . . . Tips . . . Now, now,
I was joking . . . The meeting is still in session! The ice has
started breaking up, gentlemen of the jury!”
These were the smooth operator’s last words. He fell into
an untroubled sleep, one that was deep, refreshing, and unen-
cumbered by dreams.
Ippolit Matveevich went outside. He was full of desperation
and anger. The moon was jumping around from one cloudy
hummock to another. The wet latticework around mansions
shone greasily. Gas streetlamps, wreathed in haloes of fine wa-
tery dust, gave off an anxious glow. A drunk was being kicked
out of the Eagle beer parlor. The drunk started roaring. Ip-
polit Matveevich frowned and resolutely went back inside. He
had just one desire: to be done with it all, as soon as possible.
He went into the room, looked sternly at the sleeping Ostap,
wiped his pince-nez, and took the razor blade off the window-
treasure ✦ 499
sill. Dry flakes of oil paint were stuck in its nicks. He put the
razor blade in his pocket and walked past Ostap once more,
not looking at him but listening to his breathing, and ended
up in the hallway. It was quiet and sleepy there. It was evident
that everyone had already gone to bed. Ippolit Matveevich
suddenly smiled a poisonous little smile in the complete dark
of the hallway. He felt the way the skin on his forehead moved.
He smiled again to test this new sensation. Out of nowhere,
he remembered that his fellow student at the gymnasium,
Pykhteev-Kakuev, knew how to wiggle his ears.
Ippolit Matveevich walked up to the staircase and listened
carefully. There was no one on the stairs. From the street the
clatter of a cab-horse’s hooves sounded out particularly loud
and clear, as though someone were counting on an abacus.
The marshal returned to the room stealthily as a cat, took
twenty-five rubles and the pliers out of Ostap’s jacket, which
hung on the back of a chair, and put on his dirty admiral’s cap.
Then he listened again.
Ostap slept quietly, without wheezing. His nasal passages
and lungs were in ideal working order, industriously breathing
the air in and out. His mighty arm hung all the way down to
the floor. Ippolit Matveevich felt the vein in his temple beating
once each second as he slowly rolled his right sleeve up past
the elbow, wrapped a waffled towel around his bare forearm,
and walked back to the door. He took the razor blade out of
his pocket, visually measured the distance across the room,
and turned off the light switch. The light went out, but the
room was dimly illuminated by the bluish, aquarium-like light
of the streetlamp.
“All the better,” Ippolit Matveevich whispered.
He approached the head of the makeshift bed, reached the
hand holding the razor blade high into the air, and sank the
entire blade slantwise into Ostap’s throat with all his might. He
immediately yanked the blade back out and leaped away to the

wall. The smooth operator made a sound like a kitchen sink
sucking down the last bit of water. Ippolit Matveevich man-
aged to avoid getting blood on himself. He wiped off the stone
wall with the jacket, stole over to the blue door, and looked at
Ostap again, just for a moment. Ostap’s body curled up twice,
then fell back against the backs of the chairs. The light from
the street ran along a large black puddle that had formed on
the floor.
“What’s that puddle?” Ippolit Matveevich thought. “Ah, yes,
blood . . . Comrade Bender is dead.”
Vorobyaninov unwound the slightly smeared towel and
threw it down. Then he carefully laid the razor blade on the
floor and retired, closing the door quietly.
The smooth operator died on the verge of the happiness
he’d imagined for so long.
Once he found himself out on the street, Ippolit Matvee-
vich scowled and headed for Watchtower Square, muttering,
“All the diamonds are mine, not just six percent.”
Ippolit Matveevich paused at the third window from the
main entrance to the railroad workers’ club. The new building’s
mirror-bright windows shone a pearlescent gray in the light of
the approaching morning. The muffled voices of switch en-
gines could be heard in the damp air. Ippolit Matveevich
climbed agilely onto the windowsill, pushed the window frame
open, and jumped down noiselessly into the hallway.
Ippolit Matveevich found his way easily in the club’s gray, pre-
dawn halls. He went into the chess room, hit his head on the por-
trait of Emanuel Lasker hanging on the wall, and approached
the chair. He was in no hurry. He had nowhere to hurry off to,
and no one was chasing him. Grand Master O. Bender was at
his eternal rest in the pink mansion on Sivtsev Vrazhek.
Ippolit Matveevich sat down on the floor, wrapped his sin-
ewy legs around the chair, and started pulling out the brass
tacks with the patience of a dentist. He didn’t miss a single
treasure ✦ 501
one. His work was done on the sixty-second tack. The English
calico and burlap lay lightly on top of the chair’s stuffing. All
he had to do was lift them up to see the cases and boxes full of
precious stones.
“I’ll take a car straight off to the train station, and then
to the Polish border,” thought Ippolit Matveevich, who had
learned some street smarts in the smooth operator’s school.
“A nice little stone will get them to send me across to the other
side, and then . . .”
Wanting to see what would happen “then” as soon as pos-
sible, Ippolit Matveevich ripped the calico and burlap off the
chair. His eyes beheld springs, excellent English springs, and
stuffing, excellent stuffing, the kind you used to get before
the war, that you can’t find anywhere nowadays. But the chair
contained nothing else. Ippolit Matveevich ran his fingers me-
chanically through the upholstery and sat there for a whole
half an hour without releasing the chair from his tenacious
legs, repeating dully, “Why isn’t there anything here? This
can’t be! This can’t be!”
It was already almost light out when the exhausted Vorobya-
ninov, who left everything in the chess room just as it was, even
forgetting his pliers and the cap with some unknown yacht
club’s golden insignia, crawled heavily out the window onto
the street, unnoticed by anyone. “This can’t be!” he repeated,
as he walked a block away from the club. “This can’t be!”
He went back to the club and started walking up and down
along its large windows, his lips working: “This can’t be! This
can’t be! This can’t be!”
From time to time he cried out and clutched at his hair, wet
from the morning mist. He shook the matted gray hair as he
remembered all the past night’s events. All this diamond ex-
citement had turned out to be too strong a medicine for him,
and he aged to decrepitude in five minutes.

“Ever’body comes a-walkin’ round here, they do,” Vorobya-
ninov heard just above his ear.
He saw a watchman in canvas overalls and unlined boots.
The watchman was very old and, obviously, very kind.
“A-walkin’ and a-walkin’,” said the gregarious old man, tired
of being alone all night. “And you’re interested too, comrade.
That’s right. Our club is downright unusual, you could say
that.”
Ippolit Matveevich gave the rosy-cheeked old man a look
full of suffering.
“Yep, this club is unusual,” the old man said. “There ain’t
another one like it anywheres.”
“What’s so unusual about it?” asked Ippolit Matveevich, who
was collecting his thoughts.
The little old man looked at Vorobyaninov. Clearly, he liked
the story of the unusual club himself, and enjoyed repeating it.
“Well, now,” the old man began. “I been watchman here
for ten years, but nothin’ like this ever happened before. Now
you just listen up, soldier boy. There always was a club here;
ever’body knows which one, the club for the first district’s
crewmen. And I was the watchman. That club was good for
nothin’ . . . they’d try and try to heat it, but they couldn’t do
a thing with it. And then Comrade Krasilnikov comes over to
me, and he says, ‘Where is all your firewood going,’ says he,
and what does he think I’m doin’, eatin’ it, all that firewood?
Comrade Krasilnikov had his hands full with that club; it was
damp over here, and cold over there, and the brass band had
no space, and puttin’ on a show was nothing but trouble, the
actor gentlemen froze. They asked for five years of credit for
a new club, but I don’t got no idea what happened with that.
The railroad workers’ union didn’t approve the credit. It was
just this spring that Comrade Krasilnikov bought a chair for a
show, a good chair, upholstered . . .”
treasure ✦ 503
Ippolit Matveevich listened, leaning his whole body into the
watchman. He was half-dead. But the old man burst into happy
laughter and described the way he’d once clambered up onto
the chair to screw in an electric lightbulb, and went down
head over heels.
“I slipped right off that chair, and the upholstery ripped
wide open. And I look and see there’s bits of glass, and white
beads on a string, just pouring out from inside it.”
“Beads,” Ippolit Matveevich managed.
“Beads,” the old man squealed delightedly. “And I keep
looking, soldier boy, and there’s all kinds of little boxes in
there. But I didn’t touch those boxes. I went straight to Com-
rade Krasilnikov and reported it. The committee even said so,
later. No, sir, I didn’t touch ’em, I didn’t. And I was darn right
about that, soldier boy, because there was jewels in there, jew-
els them bourgeois hid . . .”
“But where are the jewels?” the marshal shouted.
“Where? Where?” the old man taunted him. “Now at this
point you’ve got to look a little sharper, soldier boy. They’re
right here!”
“Where? Where?”
“They’re right here!” the rosy-cheeked old man shouted,
enjoying the effect his words were having. “Right here! Wipe
off your glasses! They built a club with ’em, soldier boy! See?
Here it is, our club! Steam heating, chess clocks, a restaurant, a
theater, and they don’ even let you in with your galoshes on!”
Ippolit Matveevich turned to ice and ran his eyes along the
cornices without moving from the spot.
So that’s where Madame Petukhova’s treasure is! Here it is!
It’s all here! All one hundred fifty thousand rubles and zero
kopeks, as Ostap-Suleiman-Berta-Maria Bender used to say.
The diamonds had turned into wide plate glass and ceilings
of reinforced concrete. The cool exercise rooms were made of
pearl. The diamond diadem was transformed into a theater

with a revolving stage, the ruby pendants grew into entire chan-
deliers, the gold snake bracelets with emeralds turned into an
excellent library, and the collar was reincarnated as a child care
center, a planning studio, a chess room, and a billiards room.
The treasure was still there. It had been preserved, even in-
creased. It could be touched, but not taken away. It had gone
to serve other people.
Ippolit Matveevich touched the granite facing on the walls.
The stone’s cold pierced his very heart.
He screamed.
His cry, his crazed, passionate, wild cry—the cry of a she-
wolf shot in midleap—flew out to the middle of the square,
dashed under the bridge, and, finding itself pushed aside from
all directions by the sounds of a large city waking up, began to
fade. In a minute it had died out. A magnificent fall morning
rolled down off the wet rooftops onto the streets of Moscow.
The city set about its workaday routine.
treasure ✦ 505
T r a n sl ato r ’s N o t e s
The translator used Yury Shcheglov’s and Mikhail Odessky and David
Feldman’s commentaries as resources in writing her notes: Iurii K.
Shcheglov, “Kommentarii k romanu ‘Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev,’ ” in Il’ia Il’f
and Evgenii Petrov, Dvenadtsat’stul’ev: Roman (Moscow: Panorama,
1995), 427–653, and Mikhail Odesskii and David Fel’dman, “Kom-
mentarii,” in Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev (Moscow:
Vagrius, 1999), 444–541.
1. Bezenchuk and the Nymphs

5 Vegetal A men’s aftershave lotion.
6 Milyukov Pavel Milyukov (1859–1943) led the Constitutional
Democratic party (the Cadets) in pre-Revolutionary Russia and
supported the Whites in emigration after 1917. Vladimir Nabo-
kov’s father was killed defending Milyukov from an assassination
attempt in 1922.
6 dvornik A hallowed Russian institution. The dvornik (from dvor,
courtyard) usually lives in the basement of his building and com-
bines the functions of janitor, watchman, porter, gardener, and
all-around handyman.
7 Gut Morgen Per the original. Ilf and Petrov’s German is imper-
fect here and elsewhere.
9 Leave When You’ve Done Your Work Yury Shcheglov points out
that this slogan is characteristic of Ilf and Petrov’s penchant for
mixing contemporary Soviet elements with classical Imperial
ones. The exhortatory Soviet slogan “Leave When You’re Done”
was much in evidence when the coauthors were writing, but they
adulterate this with elements from the famous phrase in Schiller’s
play Fiesco: “The Moor has done his work, the Moor may go.”
9 Maciste The recurring Herculean hero of a run of twenty-seven
silent Italian films from 1914 to the late 1920s. There is a whiff of
mockery in applying the name of a character known for his brute
strength to the thin, physically unimposing Vorobyaninov.
12 half bottle In Imperial Russian liquid measurements, the stan-
dard was the bucket (a fortieth of a barrel, or a little over twelve
✦ 507 ✦
liters), then the “quarter” or “goose” (a quarter of a bucket, or a
little over three liters, so approximately the same as a jeroboam or
a double magnum), and then the bottle (a quarter of a “quarter,”
so more or less the size of a bottle of wine, although Russian wine
bottles were slightly larger than Russian liquor bottles). There
were also smaller measurements such as the sotochka (“hundred-
grammer,” a bottle holding a hundred grams) or merzavchik (“little
stinker,” two hundredths of a bucket) (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
2. The Demise of Madame Petukhova

17 Chanticler dresses The year 1910 saw the premiere of the play
Chanticler (The Rooster) by French dramatist Edmond Rostand
(1869–1918). The dress style made popular by the play—a mer-
maid dress, narrow but flaring out below the knee—was adver-
tised under the name “Chanticler” (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
18 Poetry is God This is the last line of Zhukovsky’s drama Camoëns,
based on the 1838 one-act play of the same name by Friedrich
Halm (pen name of Baron Eligius Franz Joseph von Münch-
Bellinghausen, 1806–72), about a poet who chooses to suffer for
his exalted art rather than adopt a more conventionally success-
ful life pursuit.
21 Gambs furniture Heinrich Gambs (sometimes anglicized to
Hambs, 1765–1831) was a luxury cabinetmaker of German ori-
gin who opened a shop in Petersburg in the late 1700s. With his
son Peter and brothers Alexander, Gustav, and Ernst, Gambs’s
workshop supplied the country’s elite with luxury furniture for
decades. Gambs furniture shows up as objects of desire in works
by Turgenev and Gogol, among others, and Pushkin still owed
the Gambs shop for several pieces when he was killed in 1837.
3. The Sinner’s Mirror

27 “It Is Truly Meet” This hymn to the Virgin Mary, “Dostoino
est’ . . .” is part of the Russian Orthodox liturgy.
28 guard post These were short posts sunk into the sidewalk near
buildings to keep carts and wagons from pulling up onto it
(Odesskii and Fel’dman).
508 ✦ translator’s notes

31 babki (pl.) A babka (sing.) is essentially a hash-brown casserole,
in which various ground meats may be sandwiched between two
layers of grated potatoes.
31 copying pencil A bureaucratic innovation of the 1870s, this
pencil had inks and other substances mixed with the graphite
in the lead. Marks made with copying pencils don’t erase, mak-
ing these pencils a convenient alternative to fountain pens and
ink. When wetted, the pencil marks dissolve into a bright purple
ink, from which copies may be made by wetting another piece of
paper and pressing it with the original to make a mirror-image
transfer.
31 the Triumphal Arch from Empress Elizaveta’s reign A transparent
reference to the demolition of one of Moscow’s architectural
monuments, the Krasnye Vorota (Red Gates), for the same rea-
son in 1927 (Shcheglov).
32 without a motor According to contemporary law, craftsmen who
owned equipment with an engine or motor were subject to ad-
ditional taxes (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
33 lubok (sing.) Lubki (pl.) were cheap, popular illustrated prints
found all over Imperial Russia from the latter part of the 1600s on.
33 Shem, Ham, Japheth According to the Book of Genesis, these are
Noah’s three sons, whose descendants repopulated the earth af-
ter the Flood.
33 Renovationists Also known as the “Living Church,” a group that
splintered away from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1922 to
side with the new Soviet regime as an attempt to preserve some
Church presence in an officially atheist Bolshevik Russia. Their
innovations included allowing priests (who can marry in the Rus-
sian Orthodox faith) to divorce and remarry.
35 Budyonny Semyon Budyonny (1883–1973) fought in the Russo-
Japanese War and World War I, was made the leader of the first
Red Cavalry in 1919, and in 1935 was one of the first people to be
named Marshal of the Soviet Union; he was made Commander
of the Soviet Army Cavalry in 1943.
35 papirosy (pl.) A papirosa (sing.) is an inexpensive filterless ciga-
rette with only the last third of its paper tube filled with tobacco
(usually of poor quality). The empty part of the tube can be bent
to form a kind of filter.
translator’s notes ✦ 509

4. The Muse of Distant Travel
37 The Muse of Distant Travel (Muza dal ’nykh stranstvii) This muse
is invoked in two poems by Acmeist poet and adventurer Nikolai
Gumilyov (1886–1921). Since this chapter is about train travel,
the title may also be a gesture toward the more pedestrian phrase
“long distance train,” which shares the adjective dal ’nii (poezd
dal’nogo sledovaniia).
37 Traffic and Transportation Division of the GPU The GPU (Gosu-
darstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, the State Political Adminis-
tration) was the secret police, the forerunner to the KGB. This
particular division was responsible for maintaining the order
and security of the railroads.
37 There Once Was a Country Named Russia Odessky and Feldman
point out that a monarchist character speaks an almost identical
line in Mikhail Bulgakov’s 1926 play The Days of the Turbins, and
he, in turn, is quoting from a monarchist poem by S. Bekhteev
that was widely disseminated during the Civil War.
37 the children’s charity The children in question were the masses
of besprizorniki (homeless children) left after the chaotic years of
World War I, the 1917 revolutions, and the Civil War. Campaigns
to benefit children could be annoying because of the compul-
sory nature of contributions (as when shopkeepers handed shop-
pers charity stamps instead of their change after a purchase),
although there were also more voluntary forms of charity, such
as benefit performances.
38 Yermak Timofeeviches Yermak Timofeevich (?–1585) was a Cos-
sack leader who led expeditions into Siberia, effectively begin-
ning Russian expansion into the region. His exploits in fighting
the Siberian khan made him a Russian folk hero.
38 ripped out by the root A pun on contemporary propaganda, which
was constantly proposing that various social evils be ripped out
by their roots (Shcheglov).
40 the Aldan In the 1890s, gold had been discovered in Sibe-
ria in the Aldan River basin. During the New Economic Policy
(NEP, 1923–28) many private individuals went to the Aldan to
make their fortunes selling prospected gold to the government
40 Count Salias The Russian writer Count Evgeny Andreevich
Salias de Turnemir (1841–1908) authored numerous popular

adventure novels, and his name is invoked here to signify undis-
cerning taste.
41 Lipa A humorous nickname, in that lipa is slang for a fake, a
knockoff.
41 “bedbugovar” (klopovar) This was essentially a long-spouted kettle
or oilcan with a vertical pipe welded into it to hold hot coals. Wa-
ter and chemicals were poured into the main body of the kettle
while the pipe was filled with hot coals. The insecticide steam
that then issued from the spout was used to steam out bedbugs
(Shcheglov).
41 Shanghai A reference to the civil war that broke out in China
in the spring of 1927 between the Kuomintang, or Chinese
Nationalists (supported by Western powers), and the Chinese
Communists (supported by the Soviets). On April 12, 1927, an-
ticommunist factions in the Kuomintang attacked leftists and
Communists in what became known as the Shanghai Massacre.
Odessky and Feldman point out that “the infamous ‘bloodbath
in Shanghai,’ which testified to the fundamental failure of Soviet
politics in the Far East, was the main news of the day in all the
papers on April 15, 1927, the day the action of the novel begins”
(Odesskii and Fel’dman, 456).
5. The Registrar’s Past

43 Maslenitsa (from the word maslo, “oil”) The Russian Orthodox
equivalent of Mardi Gras, a last, weeklong indulgence in excess
before the rigorous fasting and abstinence of Lent.
45 gymnasium In Imperial Russia, the gymnasium was an eight-
year, classically oriented secondary school that prepared students
to continue their educations or enter the civil service. Students
generally started at age ten and graduated at age seventeen, were
required to wear their school uniform in public at all times, and
were forbidden to visit cafés and restaurants.
46 Your High Nobleness Modes of address for the Imperial Russian
nobility, military, and court varied depending on the person’s
position on the Table of Ranks, a list from I (highest) to XIV
(lowest). Out of five possible modes of address, Your High No-
bleness (vashe vysokoblagorodie) was the fourth highest, used for
ranks VI–VII.

47 The times have been worse . . . An aphorism in wide contemporary
usage. It was taken from the poem Contemporaries (Sovremenniki)
by the liberal poet Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–78), who had himself
borrowed it from a story by V. Krestovsky (Nadezhda Khvoshchin-
skaya, 1824–89) (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
47 Your High Excellency Of the five modes of address in the Table of
Ranks, Your High Excellency (vashe vysokoprevoskhoditel ’stvo) was
the highest, used for Ranks I and II.
50 Alexander I, the Blessed Tsar Alexander I (1777–1825) acquired
the title “Blessed” (Blagoslovennyi) after the Russian victory over
France in the War of 1812.
52 nibs A universal schoolboy game in the days of inkwells in
schools, nibs was a sort of tiddledywinks played with pen nibs. If
a boy could make his opponent’s nib flip over onto its back with
a single motion of his own nib, he won it.
53 dukhan A Caucasian tavern.
54 Tamara’s castle A ruin in the Daryal Gorge above the river Terek
that local legends say belonged to Saint Tamar, the twelfth-
century queen of Georgia. The Romantic poet Mikhail Lermon-
tov reimagined the castle’s history by using it as the setting of
the poem “Tamara,” published posthumously in 1841, in which a
succubus-like fiend named Tamara lures handsome young men
to their deaths (see chapter 40, “Under the Clouds,” for Ilf and
Petrov’s take on the Tamara story).
54 fasters Those who diligently observe the extremely rigorous
Russian Orthodox calendar of fasts.
57 Count Witte . . . Treaty of Portsmouth Count Sergei Witte (1849–
1915), a Russian politician who was sent by Nicholas II to the
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine to negotiate the end of the
Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The Russians lost the war, which was
one reason for the Revolution of 1905, which forced concessions
from the Tsar. Contrary to Vorobyaninov’s opinion, the Ports-
mouth peace terms were so generous to the defeated Russians
that there were massive riots in Japan once the terms were made
public.
58 zemstvo stamps A zemstvo (sing.) was a form of limited local self-
governance in the late Imperial period. Since many rural areas
did not have easy access to official Imperial post offices, the zem-
stva (pl.) started issuing their own stamps for local mail.
61 illusion Old-fashioned French word for “cinema.”

61 the tricentennial of the House of Romanov In 1913.
62 Strelbishchenskoe From the word strel’bishche, a shooting ground.
6. The Smooth Operator

65 Oh, Bayaderka Ostap’s diminutive version of “Oh, Bayadera,” a
song from Die Bajadere (from the French bayadère, Indian danc-
ing girl), a three-act operetta by Hungarian composer Imre (or
Emmerich) Kalman (1882–1953) that was very popular during
NEP (Shcheglov) (not to be confused with the Imperial bal-
let La bayadère, staged by Marius Petipa with music by Ludwig
Minkus).
66 women’s sections Government enterprises’ Party committees usu-
ally included a women’s section meant to promote Party mem-
bership among women, help women attain responsible positions,
and so on (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
66 Central Butter What people called the All-Russian Union of Milk
Cooperatives (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
66 Lena Massacre Street The Lena Massacre took place on April 17,
1912, when the badly exploited gold-miners of the Lena Gold
Field Mining Joint Stock Company went on strike and were shot
by Tsarist troops, who killed one hundred fifty to two hundred
fifty people and injured many more. Odessky and Feldman point
out that the street must have been recently renamed, since many
articles marking the anniversary of the incident appeared in the
press in the spring of 1927.
68 Ostap Bender Several sources for, and parallels to, the figure of
Bender have been proposed, including a young Odessan police
detective; Ostap or Osip Shor, who lived through the Civil War
in Odessa by employing Benderesque tricks and scams; Valentin
Kataev, Ilf’s friend and Petrov’s older brother; the general jok-
ing, witty atmosphere of “the fourth strip,” the section of the
newspaper The Steam Whistle for which Ilf and Petrov, Mikhail
Bulgakov, Yury Olesha, Valentin Kataev, and others wrote; the
characters of O. Henry, particularly from his story cycle The
Gentle Grafter; Ponson du Terrail’s Rocambole; Dickens’s Alfred
Jingle, from The Pickwick Papers; Alexander Tarasovich Ametistov
from Bulgakov’s play Zoya’s Apartment; Babel’s Benia Krik from
The Odessa Tales; Khulio Khurenito, from Ilya Ehrenburg’s novel
of the same name; and various romantic characters and superflu-

ous men from the classic Russian literary tradition (Shcheglov,
Odesskii and Fel’dman).
68 a Turkish subject Odessky and Feldman point out that many Jews
in southern cities (such as Odessa, where both Ilf and Petrov were
born and grew up) acquired Turkish citizenship to free their chil-
dren from restrictive ethnic policies and obligatory army service,
while Shcheglov points out this designation’s literary associations,
including a certain romantic or even “demonic” quality (aligned
both with “high” sources like Lermontov’s Pechorin, and “low”
models such as the ethnically marked heroes of popular adventure
or crime novels). For a detailed study of Bender’s Turkishness,
see Charles Sabatos, “Crossing the ‘Exaggerated Boundaries’ of
Black Sea Culture: Turkish Themes in the Work of Ilf and Petrov,”
New Perspectives on Turkey 23 (Spring 2001): 83–104.
69 AARR The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR:
Assotsiatsiia khudozhnikov revolutsionnoi Rossii), 1922–28.
69 Comrade Kalinin in a papakha and a white burka, or Comrade Chi-
cherin . . . Repin’s 1880–1891 painting The Zaporozhian Cossacks
Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan features Cossacks in their dis-
tinctive late-seventeenth-century garb writing an insulting letter
to the Turkish sultan, whose forces they had just defeated. The
apocryphal text of the letter is heavily laced with profanity, which
explains the Cossacks’ evident enjoyment as they compose their
letter. It would be ridiculous to imagine contemporary Soviet
leaders such as Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946), an old Bolshevik
who was titular head of the Soviet state from 1919 to 1946, or
Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), People’s Commissar of Foreign
Affairs from 1918 to 1930, in either a papakha (a men’s hat of
tightly curled Astrakhan fur) or a burka (a long felt cloak), much
less naked from the waist up.
70 the white acacia . . . A somewhat changed line from a song that
was very popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, “Fra-
grant clusters of white acacia / smell so sweet once more. / Once
more pours out the nightingale’s song / In the wondrous moon’s
quiet gleam” (from a poem by A. A. Pugachev, music by A. Zorin)
(Shcheglov).
71 GPU The secret police (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie,
the State Political Administration), the forerunner to the KGB.
However, Shcheglov notes that at the time the book was written
in 1927, the GPU was not surrounded by an aura of fear as it

would be a decade later; at this time, the majority of Soviet citi-
zens were proud of the GPU and felt they could turn to it in time
of need. Moreover, in 1927 special emphasis was being placed on
the GPU’s function of catching persons who had come back to
the USSR illegally.
7. Diamond Smoke
77 Andy Tucker A con man featured in the story cycle The Gentle
Grafter by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910).
79 get in as a specialist As the USSR started gearing up to rebuild
and modernize the country during NEP, the government started
bringing in foreign specialists at great expense to share their
expertise; the threat was that Whites (such as the ex-nobleman
Vorobyaninov, presumed to have emigrated) could make their
way back into the USSR under the guise of a “specialist.”
80 Theeerrre weeerrre merrryyy dayyys An art song called “The Betray-
ing Woman” (music by M. Stolz, from the poem by P. Gorokhov)
that was popular in the early twentieth century about a man who
kills his unfaithful lover and her new beau and goes off to prison
camp (Shcheglov).
81 Jaeger underwear Gustav Jaeger (1832–1917) was a German natu-
ralist and health advocate who taught that only animal-derived
fibers (i.e., wool) should be worn next to the skin.
82 Butter Trust Another name for the All-Russian Union of Milk
Cooperatives (see the Central Butter note in chapter 6) (Odesskii
and Fel’dman).
8. Traces of the Titanic

86 McMahon A possible reference to an actual figure in harness
racing, Richard “Dick” McMahon (circa 1880–1945), one of the
most famous harness drivers in the United States by 1928.
86 Briand Aristide Briand (1862–1932), a leftist French statesman
who was Prime Minister of France several times from 1909 to
1929; he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 (along with
Gustav Stresemann) for his contribution to the 1925 agreements
known as the Locarno Pact, intended to stabilize post–World
War I national boundaries in Europe.

9. The Little Sky-Blue Thief
90 toile du nord Literally “cloth of the north” (French), this was a
light cotton fabric similar to gingham used for men’s shirts and
work clothes.
90 . . . awaiting our play From the popular song “Little Bells” (words
by A. Kusikov, music by A. Balaleinikov) (Shcheglov).
94 “How Great Is Our God of Zion” A hymn (music by D. Bortnyan-
sky, words by M. Kheraskov) played at ceremonies, usually those
in which the military took part. In the White Army the song re-
placed the Tsar’s hymn “God Save the Tsar” (Shcheglov).
95 NSSOEL There really was an organization called NOT (for
Nauchnaia organizatsiia truda, or the Scientific Organization of
Labor), and the “scientific organization of everyday life” was a
recurring theme in 1927 (see, for example, L. S. Eratov’s article
“Nauchnaia organizatsiia byta trudiashchiesia” [sic], Vestnik zna-
niia 4 (1927).
96 tyulka A fish in the same family as herring, anchovy, and sprat.
96 red corner Peasant huts traditionally had a red corner displaying
an icon and a candle; all who entered the hut bowed to the icon
and crossed themselves. In Soviet times, this was secularized into
a special place of distinction for portraits of government leaders,
or, in businesses and other establishments, into an entire room
where Party-related activities took place.
97 Transinvimp The Department of Transportation-Related Inven-
tions and Improvements (in Russian Dorizul [Dorozhnoye biuro izo-
bretenii i uluchshenii]).
97 chastushki (pl.) A chastushka (sing.) is a genre of satiric or comic
rhyming song, often improvised, that was especially popular in
the NEP period (Shcheglov).
97 black-earth Battistini Mattia Battistini (1856–1928) was an oper-
atic baritone famous throughout Europe who began performing
regularly in the Russian Empire in the 1890s. “Black earth” refers
to a belt of fertile soil in Ukraine and central Russia.
97 children of the Volga region In 1921–22, after the triple upheaval of
World War I, the 1917 revolutions, and Civil War, the usually fruit-
ful Volga region suffered massive famine from widespread crop
failure. International as well as Soviet aid was sent to the region.
98 kefir sanatorium Kefir is a fermented milk drink originally from
the Caucasus, while “kefir sanatorium” is an ironic reference to

the home’s extremely limited dietary regimen, which is suppos-
edly reminiscent of actual health resorts where one could go to
take a cure consisting of drinking large quantities of some re-
storative beverage (for example, the “kumys cure” Chekhov at-
tempted in 1901 to find relief from his tuberculosis; kumys is a
central Asian drink made from fermented mare’s milk).
101 chervonets (sing.) A ten-ruble banknote. Chervontsy (pl.) have a
long history in Russia. They were introduced as gold coins under
Peter the Great, but during NEP, a period characterized by wild
inflation, they were reintroduced as a stable paper currency.
10. Where Are Your Curls?

103 bityug (sing.) A Russian breed of draft horse created from Eu-
ropean draft horse studs sent to Russia by Peter the Great; the
breed is now extinct.
103 the Stargaico shop The Stargorod Association of Invalids’ Coop-
eratives (in Russian, Stargiko [Stargorodskoe ob’’edinenie invalidnykh
kooperatsii]).
103 Provplan The Province Planning Commission (in Russian, Gub-
plan [Gubernskaia planovaia kommissia]).
105 Millconst The State Mill and Grain Elevator Construction Trust
(in Russian, Melstroi [Gosudarstvennyi trest po stroitel’stvu mel’nits i
zernovykh elevatorov]).
109 “The Shimmy” Another song from the operetta Die Bajadere.
109 Botocudos The Botocudo are a South American tribe native to
Brazil whose members wear large plugs in their lips and ears; the
tribe was almost totally wiped out by Portuguese colonizers.
110 the cave of Leichtweiss This was an actual cave where one Hein-
rich Anton Leichtweiss hid for several months from local feudal
authorities in the late eighteenth century. The story was novel-
ized in German in 1880 and translated into Russian soon thereaf-
ter, immediately joining the ranks of the most popular adventure
stories (Shcheglov).
110 Stenka Razin Stepan “Stenka” Razin (1630–71) was a Cossack
leader who took over much of the Volga River and led an open
rebellion to establish a Cossack state along the Volga. His rebel-
lion initially enjoyed much popular support among lower-ranked
Russians tired of being oppressed by the boyars, or Russian no-

bles. Ilf and Petrov return to the Stenka Razin story in chapter
37, “And Others.”
110 zemstvo executive committee The zemstvo was a kind of local govern-
ment instituted as part of the great reforms of the 1860s; a repre-
sentative council elected the executive committee, consisting of
large landholders or nobles, smaller landholders, and represen-
tatives of the local townspeople and peasants.
11. The Parakeet, the Repairman, and the Fortune-Teller

113 Artsybashev Mikhail Artsybashev (1878–1928) was a relatively
minor writer who made waves with his 1907 book Sanin, about
the radical views and adventures (mostly sexual in nature) of a
young man; the book was widely attacked as antisocial and por-
nographic. Artsybashev had a mustache and beard.
113 bublik (sing.) A bread ring that is boiled before it is baked; it
looks like a bagel but is larger in diameter and thinner.
114 the gloom of the tunnel Many Russian apartment buildings (es-
pecially in Odessa, the coauthors’ hometown) have a vault or
tunnel connecting the street and the building’s inner courtyard,
so that vehicles and pedestrians can access the courtyard directly
from the street without having to go all the way around to the
back of the building.
114 sparterie Also known as “willow,” a flexible material used in mil-
linery consisting of a woven panel of a kind of grass found pri-
marily in Spain bonded with a panel of fine cotton crinoline.
114 Böcklin’s painting Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was a Swiss painter
whose symbolic, fantastical images were crowned by The Isle of the
Dead, his most famous work; reproductions of the painting were
a common sight in homes and offices in Europe and Russia at
the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centu-
ries (Shcheglov).
114 the kind of frame known as fantaisie Shcheglov indicates that these
are flowing, irregularly shaped art deco frames.
115 the hills of Manchuria “The Hills of Manchuria” was a popular
waltz written by Ilya Shatrov dedicated to the Russian soldiers
who died in the battle of Mukden in the Russo-Japanese War.
117 vareniki Dumplings that are filled with either savory or sweet
fillings, then boiled; the Ukrainian version of Italian ravioli or
Russian pel ’meni.

117 good for nothing but State Industrial Light Metals According to
Odessky and Feldman, Polesov is indicating that the quality is
so bad that the best use for them would be to give them as scrap
metal to State Industrial Light Metals.
117 Triangle A rubber factory in Saint Petersburg that was started
in the mid-1800s and renamed Red Triangle after the October
Revolution.
122 seven-fathered viper Russian cursing tends to focus on insulting
the mother; here, it’s also a reference to the belief that vipers
mate in clusters, with several males to one female.
12. The Alphabet, the Mirror of Life

125 didn’t exactly ozonize the air Ozonizing was at one time thought to
be an effective means of air purification. For example, the jour-
nal Metallurgical and Chemical Engineering 12, no. 4 (April 1914):
254–58 contains an article titled “Hygiene and the Uses of Ozone
for Ventilation” on the pros and cons of pumping ozone into
enclosed living spaces to purify the air.
131 are oats expensive these days Bender is quoting a phrase commonly
employed by horse-cab drivers to justify high fares (Shcheglov).
133 . . . not made by human hands Bender is quoting the famous first
line of Pushkin’s 1836 poem “Exegi monumentum,” about how
the poet will live on after death through his art.
137 kissel A sweet gelatinous dessert reminiscent of thin jelly.
139 Gambs . . . Bruns In an interesting historical coincidence, the
names Gambs and Bruns show up in two consecutive entries in
the inventory of Pushkin’s papers compiled by A. A. Bakhrushin
in 1909 (these are a passbook for a pharmacy the Pushkins fre-
quented from 1834 to 1836, the Panteleimon Pharmacy of L.
Bruns, and an account with the Gambs workshop, running from
1836 to 1837).
13. A Passionate Woman, a Poet’s Dream

141 a poet’s dream A cliché taken from the song “The Beggar Lady
(from Béranger)” (words by D. Lensky, music by Alexander Alya-
byev), a popular number for vaudeville performers (Shcheglov).
142 kosovorotka (sing.) A long, usually belted Russian peasant-style
shirt with a side-fastening collar (a kosoi vorot, or “crooked collar”).

144 “And the enemy runs . . .” From a popular military song based on
lines from Pushkin’s “Song of the Wise Oleg,” music by D. Dolsky
(Shcheglov).
145 burzhuika Lit. “little bourgeois,” name for a kind of portable
stove widely used for heating and cooking in the Civil War
years.
145 we’ll leave heaven to the birds A slightly altered quote from the Ger-
man Social Democrat August Bebel (1840–1913) (Shcheglov).
147 ascetic In Russian Orthodoxy, the ascetic monk (skhimnik) is the
highest of the three monastic ranks, and must uphold stricter
vows.
147 Bulanov As Shcheglov points out, there are many real-life ver-
sions of this story of a society lion taking vows, but this particular
version is based on the story of Alexander Bulatovich (1870–
1919), a Russian nobleman, adventurer, and officer who helped
Menelik fight the Italians (and brought back an Abyssinian boy
he named Vaska), won a silver medal from the Russian Geo-
graphical Society for his writings, and later became a monk.
149 Princess Belorussko-Baltiyskaya A joke juxtaposing a real noble
family name, Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya, with the name of one
of Moscow’s train stations, Belorussky-Baltiysky; possibly also a
joking reference to Mikhail Bulgakov’s second wife, Liubov Be-
lozerskaya (Shcheglov).
149 klobuk A special head covering worn by Russian Orthodox
monks, consisting of a tall round hat from which descends fab-
ric; often, this fabric covers the neck and extends in two long
fabric panels that drape down the monk’s chest.
153 Lesser Council of People’s Commissars According to Odessky and
Feldman, a special committee of the Council of People’s Com-
missars formed in November of 1917 to facilitate decisions on
issues that didn’t need to be brought before the entire Council;
later the Lesser Council’s role was to prepare materials for the
Council itself.
14. Breathe Deeper, You’re Excited!

158 transfer station In Ilf and Petrov’s time, streetcar systems had,
along with regular streetcar stops, special transfer stations (round
buildings with benches inside) where passengers who needed

to transfer from one line to another could deboard and wait in
comfort for their streetcar.
163 “. . . deep in mighty thought he stood” The well-known opening lines
of one of Pushkin’s most famous poems, The Bronze Horseman.
166 the American Senator Borah William Edgar Borah (1865–1940)
was a nationalist Idaho senator from 1907 to 1940 who fiercely
opposed the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. He
was, however, staunchly pro-Soviet, even before the United States
recognized the Soviet Union in 1933.
166 Rumanian boyars . . . Mussolini Odessky and Feldman point out
that the Soviet press, which already tended to denigrate Rumania
(now Romania) for the fact that land was still owned by individual
landowners there, increased its attacks against Rumania in 1926,
after it concluded an agreement with Mussolini’s fascist Italy.
168 “Budyonny’s March” “Budyonny’s March” was the battle song of
the Red Army.
170 armyak A long peasant’s coat made of thick cloth; the coat
doesn’t button shut, but is simply tied with a belt at the waist.
15. The Union of the Sword and the Plowshare

175 the Sword and the Plowshare A quote from Isaiah 2:4: “And he
shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people:
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
176 a Kirill supporter The Grand Prince Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov
(1876–1938), cousin of the last Russian Tsar, Nikolai II, declared
himself “Kirill I, Emperor of Russia” in emigration in 1924.
183 leveling taxes Taxes private entrepreneurs had to pay, a feature
of NEP (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
185 shout “Bitter!” It’s a Russian tradition to shout “Bitter” at wed-
dings as an inducement for the bride and groom to kiss, thereby
“sweetening” the atmosphere.
186 “. . . when Dawn softly comes” A poem by Afanasy Fet (1820–92)
set to music by A. Varlamov (Shcheglov).
186 Novokhopersk A town in Voronezh province. As Shcheglov points
out, a common trope for a provincial town or the back end of be-
yond in the 1920s.

16. Amid an Ocean of Chairs
191 zakuska (sing.) Any food meant to be eaten with alcoholic
drinks, particularly after straight vodka; drinking without zakuski
(pl.) is considered uncultured.
192 Gargantua . . . Strongman Voss . . . Yashka Red-Shirt . . . Lucullus All
of these are legendary eaters. Gargantua is a vulgar, appetite-
driven giant, whose adventures along with his son Pantagruel
are related in Rabelais’ satirical cycle The Life of Gargantua and
Pantagruel, published in the mid-sixteenth century. Strongman
Emil Voss, a circus wrestler with a fabulous appetite, would ap-
pear in restaurants and eat enough for ten men as a form of
advertisement. Once he retired, however, he continued to eat
enormous amounts, but without the ability to pay, causing great
consternation among shopkeepers and restaurant owners. Yashka
Red-Shirt is a popular soldier and picaresque character from
boulevard literature, which does not make special mention of
his eating habits, so apparently Ilf and Petrov added this quality
themselves. Lucullus was a general and politician of the late Ro-
man republic who was famous for his sumptuous feasts (Odesskii
and Fel’dman, Shcheglov).
17. The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dormitory

195 the Brother Berthold Schwartz A fourteenth-century Franciscan
monk in Freiburg, Germany, who was, according to a disputed
legend, the inventor of gunpowder.
195 House of Nations This was actually the Palace of Labor on Sol-
yanka Street in downtown Moscow, where the office of The Steam
Whistle (Gudok), the newspaper where Ilf and Petrov worked
while they wrote The Twelve Chairs, was located. The name of
the fictional newspaper The Lathe (Stanok) may be taken from a
real newspaper with the same name published in Odessa, Ilf and
Petrov’s hometown, in 1921 (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
196 Agafon Shakhov As Odessky and Feldman point out, the figure
of Agafon Shakhov is a composite portrait based on two con-
temporary literary figures. The first is Panteleimon Romanov
(1884–1938), a popular writer of sketches, satires, and observa-
tions on contemporary life (he had a beard recognizably similar
to Agafon’s, and one volume of his collected works, published in

1926, was entitled Gender Issues). The second reference, to Ilf’s
friend and Petrov’s older brother Valentin Kataev (1897–1986),
is also clear: Kataev, like Shakhov, began publishing at fifteen but
only grew widely famous with his 1926 satire The Embezzlers, which
featured an embezzling cashier just like Asokin.
199 the Battle of the Kalka A battle on the Kalka River (in what is
now Ukraine) between the Mongols and Kievan Rus forces in the
early thirteenth century. The Mongols won.
200 the Denikin Front The southern front of the Civil War. Anton Iva-
novich Denikin (1872–1947) was a White general who led the
White forces in southern Russia until 1920. He then lived in Eu-
rope for over twenty years, but spent the last two years of his life
in the United States, where he died.
202 eight griven (pl.) Bender uses the word grivna (sing.), which
means either the currency of Kievan Rus or twentieth and twenty-
first century Ukrainian currency; the Russian word for ten ko-
peks is actually grivennik, and this latter sense is clearly how it is
understood by the horse-cab driver.
203 Myasnitskaya Literally, “butcher’s street”; hence the joke about
nothing edible being sold on it.
205 the Semashko Dormitory Nikolai Semashko (1874–1949), an Old
Bolshevik and medical specialist who was the People’s Commis-
sar of Public Health from 1918 to 1930.
18. Respect Your Mattresses, Citizens!

215 a Buhre clock This is a tip-off to the poet’s domestic aspirations,
since Pavel Buhre provided watches to the Tsars, and clocks or
watches from his firm were a marker of the well-off Imperial
(and, later, Soviet) Russian household.
215 ironing paddle A rubel, or a ribbed wooden paddle with a handle
on one end used for ironing clothing. The wet item was wrapped
around a roller or pin and rubbed with the ironing paddle to get
the wrinkles out.
19. The Furniture Museum

219 Pauline Empire style Pavel (Paul, in its anglicized version) Petro-
vich Romanov was Tsar of Russia from 1796 to 1801.

219 Red Poppy The first ballet with a Soviet revolutionary theme, it
premiered in 1927 (score by Reinhold Glière).
221 the Kerensky epoch Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970), Socialist
and Duma member, was instrumental in the February Revolu-
tion of 1917 and leader of the short-lived Provisional Govern-
ment that followed it. Obviously, there was no style of furniture
established in his short, tumultuous term.
225 a fairy tale of dear love Likely to be a quote from the refrain of a
popular romance called “Anguish, Sadness, My Hopes Are Fled”:
“Be silent, sadness, be silent / Don’t open old wounds, / The
fairy tales of love / Can never, never return.” Also a possible ref-
erence to the 1918 film Be Silent, Sadness, Be Silent (The Fairy Tales
of Love), in which contemporary stars of the Russian silver screen
appeared (Shcheglov).
226 “It’s May, the naughty child . . .” Lines from the poem “May” by
minor poet Konstantin Fofanov (1862–1911). It would be virtu-
ally impossible to confuse Fofanov’s style with that of the Soviet
poet Alexander Zharov (1904–84), whose propagandistic, patri-
otic paeans to Soviet youth were widely known at the time The
Twelve Chairs was written (Shcheglov).
20. European-Style Voting

230 Vladimir the Fair Sun (Vladimir I Sviatoslavich, approx. 960–
1015.) Under his reign, Kievan Rus accepted Christianity, so he
is venerated as a saint in the Russian Orthodox tradition; he also
figures in byliny, or ancient sagas, as Vladimir the Fair Sun.
234 Your Excellency Of the five modes of address in the Table of
Ranks, “Your Excellency” (vashe prevoskhoditel ’stvo) was the sec-
ond highest, used for Ranks III and IV.
235 A Drop of Milk, The White Flower There were many philanthropic
associations to help various needy groups (refugees, children,
victims of poor harvests, etc.) in the pre-Revolutionary years, in-
cluding real ones named A Drop of Milk and The White Flower
(Shcheglov).
237 Milyukov . . . Cadet . . . Octobrist “Cadets” was the nickname of
the liberal Constitutional-Democratic Party formed at the height
of the 1905 Revolution; it opposed restrictive government poli-
cies with varying success in the Dumas between 1905 and 1917
and was the core of the Provisional Government formed after the

1917 February Revolution, when it was the most right-wing po-
litical party remaining after all the monarchist parties were abol-
ished, a fact that earned it the Bolsheviks’ distrust. It was effectively
disbanded after the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917. The
Jewish comment stems from the fact that many on the right as-
sociated the party with Jews, to the extent that some thought of
Milyukov as “selling Russia to the Jews.” The Finland comment
refers to the fact that the Cadet party consistently sought to give
ethnic and national regions more autonomy (including Finland,
to which the Provisional Government granted full autonomy in
March of 1917), while the remark about Japan reflects right-wing
accusations that the opposition during the years of the Russo-
Japanese War was financed by the Japanese (although this war
actually ended a few weeks before the Cadet party was formed).
The Armenians comment reflects right-wing attitudes toward the
Cadets’ support of an independent Armenia, especially in light of
the Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915–16. The Octobrists,
like the Cadets, were also formed as a result of the events of 1905;
their constitutional monarchist platform rested primarily on see-
ing through the reforms promised by the Tsar in his October
Manifesto of 1905 (Odesskii and Fel’dman, Shcheglov).
237 . . . number on us in ’17! A reference to the Milyukov’s Note
affair. Shortly after the establishment of the Provisional Govern-
ment in February 1917, Milyukov secretly sent a note to the Al-
lied Powers assuring them that Russia would continue to fight in
World War I; the discovery and publication of this note seriously
damaged the Provisional Government’s legitimacy, and Milyukov
had to step down as Foreign Minister.
237 Social Democrats The Russian Social Democratic Party (also
known as the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, a Marxist
group) formed in 1898 to unite the various revolutionary groups;
it gradually split into the Bolshevik (“majority”) and Menshevik
(“minority”) factions, with the Bolshevik faction, as we know,
eventually winning out.
238 postage stamps . . . monetary equivalents Shcheglov comments
that a series of stamps from the series “The Tricentennial of
the House of Romanov” (celebrated in 1913) was re-released in
1915–17 with captions on each stamp reading “To be circulated
as an equivalent to silver coins given in change” or “To be circu-
lated as an equivalent to copper coins.”

21. From Seville to Granada
241 From Seville to Granada the chapter title, as well as the song that
is quoted later in the chapter (beginning with the words “The
golden lands of Alpujarra”), are quotations from Don Juan’s Ser-
enade (Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s musical rendering of the poem by
Alexei K. Tolstoy) (Shcheglov).
245 Love dries people up From a song with the verse “A drugstore’s on
the corner, love dries people up” also quoted by Mikhail Bulga-
kov (Shcheglov).
246 tastily cooked hay . . . Ilya Repin Madame Nordman-Severova
(1863–1914), wife of the famous artist Repin (1844–1930), was
radical in many of her views, including in her vegetarianism, and
she really did serve hay soup at her table.
248 the Prague This restaurant, under this name, was one of the best
restaurants in Moscow even before the Revolution, and is still in
existence as of this writing. In Soviet times, it was declassified into
a cafeteria, albeit a “model” one, and so a few lines later, when Ilf
and Petrov describe it as a model-demonstration restaurant, they
are deliberately conjoining classical terminology (“restaurant”)
with Soviet (“model,” “demonstration”).
250 rasstegaichiki (pl.) These savory pies, whose name comes from
the word for “unbuttoned” since they are left open at the top, are
filled with minced fish; traditionally, fish bouillon is poured into
them, then various flourishes are added, including viziga (the
dried spinal cord of larger fish) and a slice of good fish such as
sturgeon, and finally they are garnished with a piece of burbot
liver.
250 Marya’s Copse An outlying district of Moscow frequented by
thieves; thieves’ jargon, songs, and folklore served as a source
of entertainment for well-off city types in the Imperial period as
well (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
252 The evening zephyr wafts the air so clear A quote from Pushkin’s
1824 poem “The Evening Zephyr.” It was set to music many times
and was widely popular (Shcheglov).
22. Corporal Punishment

255 checkered “Centenary” trousers . . . Russian-made English twill Odessa
celebrated its centenary in 1895, which is when a kind of checked

fabric known as “Odessa Centenary” was fashionable; it was around
this same time that Russian factories were able to begin produc-
ing a wool or wool-blend tweed or twill fabric called koverkot (after
the English “covercoat”) (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
23. Ellochka the Cannibal

269 the cannibalistic tribe Mumbo-Jumbo Ilf and Petrov’s usage now
seems sadly outdated, if not outright offensive. It does, however,
reveal a certain disconnect between contemporary rhetoric on
the unity and equality of all “brother nations” (a condescending
term often used in reference to Africa and India) and the actual
attitudes of many Russian Soviet citizens (see works such as Kate
A. Baldwin’s Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading En-
counters Between Black and Red, 1922–1963 [Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1993] or Kesha Fikes and Alaina Lemon’s ar-
ticle “African Presence in Former Soviet Spaces,” Annual Review
of Anthropology 31 [2002]: 497–524).
270 Elektrochandelier factory Odessky and Feldman note that although
there was no factory with that name (Elektroliustra) in Moscow,
there were two factories called Electrolamp (Elektrolampa).
24. Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov

280 fortochka A small hinged windowpane that is part of a regular
window, but it can open and close independently to provide
ventilation.
284 legs as pudgy as Chichikov’s The main character of Gogol’s 1842
classic Dead Souls, the con man Pavel Chichikov.
284 “And in the morning she’d be smiling . . .” A line from the refrain
of a song popular in the decade from 1910 to 1920, in which
all manner of deadly misfortunes beset a young lady but every
morning she stands smiling at the window again (Shcheglov).
286 Grandfather Frost In Soviet times, the religious holiday of Christ-
mas was supplanted by the more secular New Year, but both hol-
idays were attended by a Santa-like figure known as Ded moroz
(Grandfather Frost). Here, Ilf and Petrov use the term elochnyi
ded (fir-tree grandfather), a metonymic reference to the fact that
the central symbol of both celebrations is a fir tree.

288 shaving stone A small block of alum that is passed over the face
after shaving; alum has natural antiseptic qualities and will close
small nicks.
25. The Motorists’ Club

295 worker-correspondents These were workers in a factory, office, or
other area who wrote reports to newspapers about the state of af-
fairs on the job, the status of living conditions provided for work-
ers, and so on. These letters were sometimes written by workers
who were themselves barely literate, so “literary reworkers” (lito-
brabotchiki) refashioned the letters into a more readable form for
publication. One of Ilf’s early jobs at The Steam Whistle was “liter-
ary reworker.”
295 basement A typographical term for a newspaper article that
stretches end-to-end across the very bottom of a page.
295 the Tartakover-Bogoliubov match in India Efim Bogoliubov (1889–
1952), a chess grand master who developed an opening called
the Bogo-Indian Defense; Savielly Tartakover (1887–1956), a
grand master and well-known chess journalist.
296 Séquard’s liquid Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (1817–94) was
a French Mauritian physician who studied the spinal cord (a
disorder caused by damage to the spinal cord is named Brown-
Séquard Syndrome after him) and hormones. The latter special-
ization made him especially famous, as he advocated injections
of fluid from the testicles of animals as an age-defying treatment.
Shcheglov quotes a 1927 magazine advertisement for “Séquard’s
liquid,” an “extract of the sexual glands prepared according to
Prof. Doctor Büchner’s method.” The most famous descendent
of this kind of hormone treatment in Russian literature is Bul-
gakov’s Heart of a Dog, in which the testicles and pituitary gland
from a man’s corpse are transferred into a living stray dog.
296 a steel helmet A visual gesture linking the caricature to the para-
military nationalist German association Stahlhelm (The Steel Hel-
met), which arose after 1918 to further a right-wing, revanchist
program.
296 the artist’s caricature Shcheglov points out that the Soviet press’s
attitude toward Germany in 1927 was fairly sympathetic, given
what it saw as the West’s harsh reparation demands. The Danzig
(or Polish) Corridor was a section of land around Gdańsk that

the Allies had given back to the restored Polish state in 1918, an
act which also cut off Germany from East Prussia and caused a
great deal of German resentment. The Dawes Plan of 1924 was
an attempt to restructure Germany’s war reparation payments
to the Allies to lessen the financial strain and allow Germany’s
economy to recover, while ensuring payments were met. Since
much of the funding actually came from the United States, the
Soviets were suspicious of the plan. Gustav Stresemann (1878–
1929) was Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Weimar Re-
public, and was instrumental in concluding the Dawes Plan, the
Locarno Treaties of 1925 which normalized German borders
and relations with other European powers (notably France), and
the 1926 Treaty of Berlin, the German and Soviet nonaggression
pact. Germany was admitted into the League of Nations in
1926. Stresemann was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926
(together with Aristide Briand) for these diplomatic achieve-
ments. Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) was Prime Minister of
France off and on for a total of six years from 1912 to 1929, and
President of France from 1913 to 1920; he was especially hos-
tile to Germany. Odessky and Feldman point out that France felt
threatened by Germany’s relative prosperity after the Dawes Plan
and constantly sought German guarantees of French and Euro-
pean security.
299 the Chubarov case A gang rape committed in Chubarov Alley in
Saint Petersburg in 1926, the first such crime to receive broad
attention in the Soviet press. It caused a public outcry, in part
because the perpetrators were all workers and even included
some Komsomol members (thus negating possible exculpatory
claims that these were atypical crimes committed by decadent
bourgeois), and the sensational, highly political trial received
universal press coverage (Shcheglov).
299 gorodki A lawn game similar to the Western European skittles.
In gorodki, a bat is thrown at five arranged skittles to knock them
out of a square.
302 buying a car with lottery bonds To stimulate interest in government
bonds, the Soviet government added an extra lottery feature to
some of them. These bond series held drawings in which the
numbers of individual bonds were randomly selected and widely
publicized, and the holder of that bond won a preset amount,
anywhere from twenty to fifty thousand rubles.

26. Conversation with a Naked Engineer
305 Mosselprom vendors Mosselprom was the nickname for the Mos-
cow Trust for Agricultural Products Processing (Moskovskii trest po
pererabotke sel’skokhoziaistvennnoi produktsii).
309 kerenki (pl.) A banknote issued by the short-lived Russian Provi-
sional Government of 1917, named after its leader, Kerensky.
311 What’s Hecuba to me? After all, you’re not my mother, my sister, or my lover
The first line is a reference to Hamlet’s comment “What’s Hec-
uba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?” in
Act II, Scene II, expressing his amazement that an actor can feel
(or depict) such grief at Hecuba’s fate. The second line is from
Yakov Polonsky’s (1819–98) poem “The Lady Prisoner,” about the
revolutionary Vera Zasulich languishing in prison: “What is she to
me? Not my wife, nor my lover, / Nor my own dear daughter! / So
why then does her cursed fate / Not let me sleep all night . . .”
Bender is pointing out, by contrast, just how unmoved he would
be about Vorobyaninov’s fate (Shcheglov).
27. Two Visits

316 “The queen enlivens the feast . . .” An inexact quote from a poem
in Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights (1928) (Shcheglov).
316 Queen Margot Margaret of Valois (1553–1615), Queen of France,
married to Henry IV of Navarre. She was an extraordinary per-
son whose life served as the model for, among other things, Al-
exandre Dumas’ novel La reine Margot and Shakespeare’s Love’s
Labour’s Lost.
28. The Excellent Jailhouse Basket

324 Bonbon de Varsovie Lit. “the Warsaw bonbon,” the name of a pas-
try shop in pre-Revolutionary Russia (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
329 water-heater An establishment where one could obtain boiling
water for making hot beverages.
29. The Little Hen and the Pacific Rooster

334 Nurmi The Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi (1897–1973) won a
total of twelve medals in Track and Field in the 1920, 1924, and
1928 Olympics.

341 Sometimes a man’s got a devil’s hair An aria from Emmerich Kal-
man’s operetta Silva (Shcheglov).
341 . . . like ships in the night From a song by Boris Prozorovsky
(1891–1937) popular before the Revolution and during NEP:
“We never really loved each other / We weren’t welcoming in our
hearts, / We didn’t prize the chance meeting, / And passed like
ships in the night” (Shcheglov).
30. The Author of “The Gavriliad”

343 the author of “The Gavriliad” A reference to Pushkin’s sexually
explicit satirical poem “The Gavriliad,” written in 1821 but not
published in Russian until after the October Revolution.
343 young ladies from incoming and outgoing Odessky and Feldman
explain that this refers to the clerks who handled incoming and
outgoing paperwork.
343 quota teenagers At this time, institutions were required to em-
ploy a certain number of teenage workers (a quota based on the
institution’s size), who were usually sent by the local Komsomol,
or Communist Youth organization (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
343 Nikifor Lapis Viktor Ardov’s memoirs reveal that Lapis’s pro-
totype was a fellow Odessan, Osip Sirkes (1904–73), who wrote
under the pseudonym Kolychev; M. Shtikh noted in his mem-
oirs that Sirkes haunted the offices of Ilf and Petrov’s newspaper,
The Steam Whistle, where he was subjected to torments similar to
Lapis’s due to his ignorance, and that he only stopped pester-
ing the office staff when he recognized himself in Lapis. The
hack who serves one and the same dish under a variety of literary
sauces was a common trope in pre-Revolutionary days as well as
in Ilf and Petrov’s time (Shcheglov).
343 varenets Baked fermented milk.
343 Gerasim and Mumu Characters from Ivan Turgenev’s 1852 short
story “Mumu.” Although Turgenev’s cycle A Sportsman’s Sketches
(or A Hunter’s Sketches) is well known, his story “Mumu” (written
at the same time as the cycle but not included in it) does not
actually mention hunting.
344 Gavrila’s bane was gangrene dire Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938)
has a similar impromptu verse: “Gavrila loved his papirosy, / His
papirosy he adored. / He walked up to his friend Efros, / Abram
Markovich, and intoned . . .” (Shcheglov points out that more

research is necessary to say for certain whose Gavrila came first.)
Gavrila was also a popular eponymous figure at the time: from
1924 to 1927 there was a Moscow satirical weekly called Buzotyor
(The Troublemaker) which celebrated the exploits of a Gavrila in
feuilletons, poems, and caricatures, and from 1925 to 1926 there
was a Kharkov magazine called Gavrilo, featuring a similar char-
acter, that published many of Ilf and Petrov’s fellow Odessans,
including Valentin Kataev (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
345 the mailman Gavrila, wounded by a fascist’s bullet In February
1926, a diplomatic courier named Teodor Nette was killed trying
to defend the diplomatic mail from unknown attackers on the
Moscow–Riga train; among the many to write about this incident
were Mayakovsky and Demyan Bedny, and a film was even made
about it in 1927 (Shcheglov, Odesskii and Fel’dman).
345 It’d be better if you’d write . . . about a radio station As Odessky
and Feldman point out, Mayakovsky wrote a poem called “Radio-
agitator” (The Radio Propagandist) in 1925.
345 you’ve outdone Entikh himself Nikolai Tikhonov (1896–1979,
N. Tikh), a Soviet writer influenced by Kipling, whose ballads on
adventurous themes were hugely popular in the 1920s.
346 the simple fellows from the thick journal There is an innate irony in
calling the staff of a thick journal “simple,” since in Russian let-
ters, the thick journal has traditionally been associated with elites
and the intelligentsia.
346 “On Bread, Production Quality, and My Beloved” Odessky and
Feldman and Shcheglov differ significantly in their interpreta-
tions of this poem title. The former observe that this title for-
mat was recognizably Mayakovskian, which, along with the fact
that the poem is dedicated to “Khina Chlek” (a gesture toward
Mayakovsky’s real love, Lilya Brik), make this an unmistakable
parody of Mayakovsky, while Shcheglov points out that several
writers at the time used a similar formula for their titles, and that
Ilf and Petrov are, here as elsewhere, simply making use of extant
contemporary stereotypes.
347 Lapsus The Latin word for “lapse, slip, error,” which shows up
in phrases like lapsus linguae (a slip of the tongue), lapsus calami
(a slip of the pen), etc.
348 hame strap Part of a draft horse collar. Of course, a hame strap
has nothing to do with racing tack.

348 Pushkin wrote Turkish poems and he was never in Turkey Lapis
makes two mistakes here: first of all, Pushkin wrote a series of po-
ems known as the Southern Poems, but nothing known as Turk-
ish Poems, and second, Pushkin was in Turkey when he went
with the Russian forces to Erzurum, the city in Anatolia that was
taken by the Russians in the summer of 1829 (and returned to
the Sultan a few months later). Lapis apparently either mistakes
Pushkin’s prose piece about that trip, A Journey to Arzrum, for
a poem, or doesn’t know about the piece at all (Odesskii and
Fel’dman).
348 a large newspaper clipping Ilf and Petrov and others who worked
for the “fourth strip” at The Steam Whistle really did have a “wall
of shame” where they clipped and posted egregious mistakes by
fellow journalists (Shcheglov); the practice of doing so after giv-
ing the offending article a mock-funereal black border was wide-
spread at the time (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
349 Brockhaus The eighty-six-volume Brockhaus and Efron Encyclope-
dic Dictionary, published in Saint Petersburg from 1890 to 1907.
353 “And all our life is a struggle” A line from the Red Army battle
song “Budyonny’s March.”
31. The Mighty Handful, or the Gold-Seekers

357 quiproquo A variation on the Latin phrase quid pro quo, which
means something for something; this variation is a specific the-
atrical term meaning a misunderstanding or case of mistaken
identity.
358 Kachalov . . . Moskvin . . . Stanislavsky Vasily Kachalov (1875–
1948) and Ivan Moskvin (1874–1946) were stars of the contem-
porary stage; Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) was an actor
and director whose acting method was hugely influential in So-
viet and international acting, and who, together with Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko, formed the Moscow Academic Art The-
ater (MKhAT) in 1898. Odessky and Feldman point out that this
entire subplot is another instance of Ilf and Petrov’s reflecting
current trends, in that May 1927 saw the First All-Union Party
Meeting on Issues of Politics in Theater, which stressed, among
other issues, that consciousness of the role of Soviet dramaturgy
needed to be raised.

358 The Days of the Turbins A play by Mikhail Bulgakov about a White
family during the Civil War, which ran in MKhAT. The play was
very popular with viewers, but provoked harsh criticism from al-
most all official quarters; still, since Stalin liked the play (even
though he admitted that it was anti-Soviet), it was allowed to run
for several years.
363 “The Death Ray” This is a joking reference to a contemporary
fad of sorts for the death ray theme. A film by Lev Kuleshov
called The Death Ray came out in 1925, and there were several
contemporary literary works centering on some sort of power-
ful ray: Alexei N. Tolstoy’s novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin
(1925–27), Andrei Bely’s novel Moscow (1927), and Mikhail Bul-
gakov’s novella The Fatal Eggs (1925) (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
32. In the Columbus Theater

368 finita la commedia A reference to the last line of Italian composer
Ruggero Leoncavallo’s (1857–1919) opera Pagliacci (Clowns),
which premiered in 1892; the phrase has now come to indicate
the end of any process that has been comic, strange, or uncom-
fortable.
369 “dog’s happiness” neckties, and Jimmy boots According to Odessky
and Feldman, these neckties are pink with white polka dots and
resemble a kind of cheap sausage known as “dog’s happiness,”
while Jimmy boots (ankle boots with stacked heels) became pop-
ular from American films, which also explains the name.
369 the former Filippov and the former Yeliseev By 1855, Ivan Filippov’s
(1824–90) bakery was so successful that he was allowed to claim
the Tsar among his clientele, and Grigory Yeliseev (1858–1949)
turned his family business into one of the most famous chains of
luxury food stores in the Russian Empire.
371 FORTINBRAS of the UMSLOPOGAAS As both Odessky and Feld-
man and Shcheglov point out, Ilf and Petrov are here making fun
of typically inscrutable, hard-to-pronounce Soviet Russian acro-
nyms (the coauthors later took this jesting a bit too far in their
1932 feuilleton “KLOOP,” where the narrators run across an es-
tablishment called KLOOP and inquire as to the mysterious title’s
meaning, but can’t find out since no one who works there knows
what the establishment actually does). Fortinbras is a character

in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, while Umslopogaas is a character in Sir
Henry Rider Haggard’s (1856–1925) Allan Quatermain novels,
about the adventures of a white hunter in Africa in the 1880s.
371 Esper Eclairovich There was a Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtom-
sky (1861–1921), who was close to Nikolai II and was a poet and
scholar of the Orient (Shcheglov).
373 Esmarch’s irrigators Also known as a “wound douche,” this ap-
paratus was invented by military surgeon Friedrich von Esmarch
(1823–1908) in the latter 1800s and consisted of a metal can with
a tap at the bottom to which was fitted a rubber hose ending in
a nozzle. The can was filled with water and elevated, and the
nozzle on the bottom end of the hose was used to direct the
stream of water from the hose to cleanse wounds.
373 Podkolyosin was not on stage Gogol’s 1842 play Marriage (about a
feckless bachelor, Podkolyosin, who is so halfhearted about seek-
ing a wife that once he finally beats out several other competitors
for one Agafya Tikhonovna’s hand, he jumps out a first-floor win-
dow and escapes in a cab rather than go through with the wed-
ding) begins with the indolent Podkolyosin’s monologue; then,
Podkolyosin repeatedly calls his servant Stepan into the room
to ask whether the tailor and cobbler are wondering why he has
been ordering from them lately (that is, whether they suspect he
is planning to marry).
373 the classic interpretation of Gogol’s Marriage Although several fea-
tures of contemporary avant-garde theater are being mocked
here (including a predilection for restaging Gogol), the descrip-
tion of the updated version of Gogol’s Marriage shares several
details with Sergei Eisenstein’s early 1920s production of Alex-
ander Ostrovsky’s 1868 play Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man
(in which Eisenstein explored his new idea of introducing circus
elements into the theater to revitalize it). These details include
the politicized text, tightrope walking, and riding onstage on a
camel. Still, the more likely inspiration for the Columbus The-
ater’s antics are Meyerhold’s reimaginings of classic texts, such
as his version of Gogol’s The Inspector-General or of Ostrovsky’s The
Forest. Even certain elements of the playbill for Marriage are Mey-
erholdian, such as the phrases “Author of the Show” and “Set
Design” and the expanded first initial (compare “Nik. Sestrin” to
Vs. Meyerhold) (Shcheglov).

375 the KRULT Studio Once again Ilf and Petrov seem to have sim-
ply made up an amusing one-syllable acronym, perhaps on the
model of other contemporary names such as GVIRM (Gosudar-
stvennye vysshie rezhisserskie masterskie [The Advanced State Di-
recting Studio]) or FEKS (Fabrika ekstsentricheskogo aktera [The
Eccentric Actor Factory]) (Shcheglov, Odesskii and Fel’dman).
375 Mechnikov Since we’ll find out later that Mechnikov is an incor-
rigible drunkard, it is particularly appropriate that he should be
tied to water imagery (a hydraulic press, the way he will later be
“tortured by Narzan mineral water”); there is also an amusing
divergence between this character’s penchant for alcohol and
his namesake Ilya Mechnikov’s (1845–1916) penchant for sour
and fermented milk drinks. Mechnikov, a Nobel Prize–winning
scientist, was well known around the turn of the century for his
advocacy of the health benefits of sour and fermented milk prod-
ucts (Shcheglov).
375 VOGOPAS studios Another jab at inscrutable acronyms, this
time with a literary flavor: in a story called “Policeman Sapogov”
by the satirist Arkady Averchenko (1881–1925), Sapogov sees his
name set in type (meaning that he sees it backwards, as vogo-
pas) and thinks he’s being deliberately insulted (Shcheglov).
33. A Magical Night on the Volga

385 the Kremlin elevator Nizhny Novgorod consists of two parts, a
higher part housing the Kremlin and medieval city, and a lower
part; one could access the higher part from the lower part via
two elevators, the Kremlin elevator and the Pokhvalinsky eleva-
tor (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
385 Bonch-Bruevich’s radio laboratory Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich (1888–
1940) was the founder of the national radio industry and headed
the radio laboratory in Nizhny from 1918 to 1928 (Odesskii and
Fel’dman).
388 the Mighty Five A transparent reference to The Five, or The
Mighty Handful, an important group of five Russian composers
in Saint Petersburg in the third quarter of the nineteenth cen-
tury who promoted the idea of a purely Russian (rather than
European-derived) music. The composers were Mily Balakirev,
César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Al-
exander Borodin.

390 his wife Gusta Both Shcheglov and Odessky and Feldman see
this as a rather snide joke about Meyerhold and his wife, Zinaida
Raikh (whose success, many felt, was due to her marriage rather
than to any talent as an actress), and note the Germanic flavor
of both wives’ names (Gusta, Raikh [the Russian transliteration
of “Reich”]). Shcheglov also states that, according to some com-
mentators, Zinaida Raikh had an ample bottom, and suggests
that this may be another reason why Nik. Sestrin and his wife
will sit on four chairs, although he hastens to add that any such
conjecture must remain hypothetical. It is unlikely that either
Ilf or Petrov could have foreseen that just ten years after The
Twelve Chairs, Meyerhold and his wife would both be victims of
the Purge.
393 Vkhutemas An acronym for Vysshie Khudozhestvenno-Tekhnicheskie
Masterskie (The Advanced Art and Technical Studios), a Russian
state school founded in 1920 by decree of Lenin; it lasted only
ten years before being shut down but was an important stage in
early Soviet Russian art and design.
394 A steamship plies the Volga A popular lyric song about the Volga;
the words varied widely, but the second and fourth lines were
always the same in each version (“Mother Volga, dear river” and
“Overflows its banks”), and the refrain always began with the
words “The lilac is blooming.” One of the many variations on the
song was published in 1927 in the second issue of 30 Days (the
monthly magazine in which The Twelve Chairs was serialized in
the first half of 1928) (Shcheglov, Odesskii and Fel’dman).
394 “Don’t go! Your kisses are burning” According to Odessky and
Feldman, this is an inexact quotation of “Your Kisses Are Burn-
ing,” a popular art song by V. Muromtsevsky based on a poem by
minor poet Vladimir Zhukovsky.
34. A Pair of Unclean Animals

398 a drooping Zaporozhian mustache The word “Zaporozhian” im-
mediately leads one to think of the Zaporozhian Cossacks,
who more or less ruled the territory of the Dnieper from 1500
to 1775, when they were disbanded by Catherine II (although
other groups of Cossacks carried on the cultural heritage of the
Zaporozhians). The most famous image of the Zaporozhian
Cossacks, with several examples of the mustache in question, is

Repin’s painting The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the
Turkish Sultan.
400 the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate Created in 1920 to monitor
government institutions, including the administration of govern-
ment bonds (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
403 “Young Lady . . . If the master’s got a watch chain . . .” Odessky
and Feldman and Shcheglov differ somewhat on whether these
are two different songs or one song with alternating verses about
masters and mistresses, but the point of the song is to mock the
vanity of rich landowners and show their downfall.
403 sarafany (pl.) A sarafan (sing.) is part of Russian folk costume
for women, a long, flowing, armless dress that is worn over a
blouse and skirts.
404 Avant-garde A French experimental film group led by the film-
maker, screenwriter, and theorist Louis Delluc (1890–1924)
35. Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

412 Vasiliev’s Thursdays Odessky and Feldman point out that this is
a transparent reference to the writer’s group and publisher Ni-
kitinskie subbotniki (Nikitin’s Saturdays), named in honor of its
founder, the salon hostess E. Nikitina, and that this publishing
house happened to be releasing the six-volume Collected Works
of Panteleimon Romanov—one of the alleged models for Sha-
khov—in 1927.
414 “Beat the drums . . .” An art song with music by M. Neid (B.
Borisov), set to G. Namlegin’s poem “The Gypsy Girl Zara,” for
which the sheet music had just been published in 1927 (Odesskii
and Fel’dman).
416 Zmey-Gorynich An evil three-headed dragon from ancient Slavic
folktales.
417 Kexholm Imperial Guards Regiment A storied regiment of the Tsar-
ist Imperial Guards, named after a decisive 1710 battle in the war
that ultimately ended with Russia’s victory over Sweden in the
Baltic arena. In this battle, which occurred in Karelia, a distinct
area between present-day Russia and Finland with its own culture
and language, the Russians took a strategically important town
called, variously, Käkisalmi (Finnish), Kägöisalmi (Karelian), or
Kexholm (Swedish).

419 children’s aid committee pin The sales of such pins were meant
to raise money for various philanthropic campaigns to benefit
children.
36. The Interplanetary Chess Congress

421 The Interplanetary Chess Congress Shcheglov and Odessky and
Feldman note thematic echoes between this chapter and sev-
eral other literary works, including The Odyssey (Odysseus’s visit
to Polyphemus’s cave), Dead Souls (the game between Nozdryov
and Chichikov), Huckleberry Finn, and Valentin Kataev’s stories
“Niagarov’s Lecture” and “Chess Malaria.”
421 Grand Master (senior master player) According to Odessky and
Feldman, the title “grand master” was instituted in the USSR in
1927 (and retired in 1931), but no one had yet won the title at
the time the novel takes place, and chess was so popular in the
Soviet Union at the time that the characters in the novel would
have known the names of all players who had attained the status
of “Master Players of the USSR,” so Bender gives himself a title
that was still relatively unknown in Soviet Russia. The subtext of
the entire chapter is the chess fever that had taken hold of the
nation after the brightest stars of international chess descended
on Moscow in 1925 for the Moscow International Tournament
(acclaimed director Vsevolod Pudovkin, along with Nikolai
Shpikovsky, even released a popular film in 1925 called Chess Fe-
ver, in which a Russian chess fan is so excited about the tourna-
ment that he misses his own wedding; chess master José Raúl
Capablanca has a cameo in the film).
422 Spielhagen Friedrich von Spielhagen (1829–1911), a German
novelist whose novels about “heroic individuals fighting for the
ideals of democracy and progress” were popular in Russian leftist
circles in the late nineteenth century, but by the early twentieth
century were regarded as a sign of outdated taste. The Vasyuki
resident reading the foremost ideas of the 1880s in 1927 is a typi-
cal example of provincial pseudointellectualism. Longin Pan-
teleev (1840–1919) was a Petersburg publisher of a progressive
bent who released a multivolume Collected Works of Spielhagen in
1896–99 (Shcheglov).
422 the Carlsbad tournament Although this regular tournament was
the traditional proving ground for international-level chess,

there happened to not be one in 1927, the year the events of the
novel take place. Either Bender himself doesn’t know this detail
and is simply repeating a general fact about chess, or he is count-
ing on the chess lovers to be so provincial that they don’t know it
422 Lasker and the cigar Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941), a German
chess player and mathematician who was world champion from
1894 to 1921, was widely regarded as one of the strongest chess
players in history; he was known to use psychological tactics in
his games. There really was a widely discussed incident involving
smoking between two players, but there are conflicting versions:
in one version, Lasker claims that the incident occurred at an in-
formal match between himself and Aron Nimzowitsch in Berlin,
while in another version, the conflict took place at a 1927 tour-
nament in New York, when Nimzowitsch allegedly complained
that his opponent, Milan Vidmar, threatened to smoke during a
match.
423 It’s boring, girls! According to Shcheglov, a quote from Baron
Anton Delvig’s (1798–1831) poem “Russian Song”: “It’s boring,
girls, to be alone in spring, / As a young girl, to have no one to
talk with,” a complaint that is itself based on folklore motifs. The
poem was included in songbooks throughout the nineteenth
century.
423 Semmering An Austrian resort town where there was an interna-
tional chess tournament in 1926.
424 Capablanca, Lasker, Alekhine, Nimzowitsch, Réti, Rubinstein, Marotsi,
Tarrasch, Vidmar, and Doctor Grigoriev All of these were contem-
porary chess luminaries except for the last, a member of the Ex-
ecutive Committee of the All-Union Chess Section and editor
of the chess column for Izvestiya. The mention of his name is an
inside joke of sorts, since he was also editor of the chess column
in 30 Days, the magazine that serialized The Twelve Chairs in the
first half of 1928 (Shcheglov).
424 A mighty hurricane reckoned everything A typical Benderian re-
working of the art song “There’s the Ring of the Tambourine”
(words by Oskar Osenin, music by A. Lentzev), which begins: “A
mighty hurricane wrecked everything, / And now we must wan-
der freely, / My friend, let’s go off to the Gypsy tents / There, no
one knows how to sorrow for long.” The first line of the song
became a popular catchphrase. Here, Bender gives it his char-

acteristic treatment of substituting an element from a foreign
lexical sphere (“reckoned” instead of “wrecked”) (Shcheglov).
426 Duz-Khotimirsky, Perekatov Fyodor Duz-Khotimirsky (1879–1965)
was a Ukrainian chess master, but no reference for a player
named Perekatov has been found (the Turgenev short story “The
Duellist” [1846] features a landowner named Perekatov and his
family, but there seems to be no connection, unless it is a pri-
vate joke).
427 Torre Carlos Torre Repetto (1905–78), who surprised everyone
by defeating Lasker in the 1925 Moscow tournament with a bril-
liant move called The Windmill. Torre’s career was cut short a
few years later by mental illness.
431 Learn to do business Bender here ironically quotes a slogan pop-
ularized by Lenin as a way of preparing the citizenry for the tran-
sition to NEP (Shcheglov).
431 The cause of helping the drowning . . . A reworking of Marx’s clas-
sic dictum “The emancipation of the working class should be the
act of the working class itself,” later adopted by Lenin (Shche-
glov, Odesskii and Fel’dman).
431 “Quasi una fantasia” Beethoven titled his Piano Sonata no. 14,
popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata, “Quasi una fantasia”
(Like a Fantasy) because it does not follow the traditional sonata
form.
432 hypermodernists A reference to contemporary debates in the
chess world on this theme (which was not practiced by any of the
figures Bender mentions, according to Odessky and Feldman).
432 the Blue Magazine A Petersburg tabloid that, according to Kataev’s
memoirs, Petrov enjoyed reading when he was young (Shcheglov).
435 “The office is writing” A quote from a song popular in the 1920s,
“Business is booming, the office is writing, / The cashier girls are
handing out change . . .” The first line, “Business is booming, the
office is writing,” became a commonplace (Shcheglov).
435 delay would be the death of him Another Leninism (actually coined
by Peter the Great), declared to members of the Central Com-
mittee on the eve of the October Revolution (Shcheglov).
37. And Others

439 “I have come to you to greet you” A poem by Afanasy Fet (1820–92)
that was universally anthologized and a set piece for nineteenth-

century literary evenings (Shcheglov, Odesskii and Fel’dman).
The translation is James Greene’s.
440 Petits Chevaux French for “little horses”; a gambling game simi-
lar to roulette.
440 a workers’ faculty A special educational institution (or depart-
ment in an already existing institution) giving workers the edu-
cational background they needed to successfully pursue a higher
education; the system of workers’ faculties was instituted in 1920.
441 “Fare Thee Well, New Village” As Shcheglov points out, songs of
parting used this set formula, into which various names could
be inserted at will; Odessky and Feldman speculate that this is
a reference to Ostap’s criminal past, in that “new” can be un-
derstood as “Soviet” and “village” means “prison” in thieves’ jar-
gon. Odessky and Feldman also suggest that the musical symbols
(harp, sheet music) are yet another reference to Ostap’s crimi-
nal behavior, in that “playing music” or “walking to the music” is
thieves’ jargon for committing theft and other crimes.
441 craft wood-burning Burning designs onto wooden surfaces was
widely satirized in the contemporary press as the hobby of the
petite bourgeoisie, philistines, and goody two-shoes (Shcheglov).
442 Uritsky Moisei Uritsky (1873–1918), a Bund and then Menshe-
vik revolutionary who joined the Bolsheviks just before the Revo-
lution, only to faction off in 1918 as a “left Communist”; he was
assassinated in 1918.
442 Zhiguli The Zhiguli Mountains have long been known as one
of the most picturesque areas along the entire Volga River. Art-
ists Ivan Aivazovsky, Ilya Repin, and Fyodor Vasiliev all painted
canvases inspired by the area, and historically, the mountains are
considered to be one of the haunts of Stenka Razin, the leader
of a major peasant rebellion in 1670–71 (and the romanticized
embodiment of the freedom fighter ideal).
443 Yermak Timofeevich, Ivan Koltso, Stepan Razin Legendarily heroic
Cossacks. Yermak Timofeevich has been popularly regarded as
one of the first “conquerors of Siberia” since his expeditions in
the sixteenth century, Stepan “Stenka” Razin (1630–71) led an
open rebellion to establish a Cossack state along the Volga, and
Ivan Koltso (kol’tso, “ring”) was one of Yermak’s closest fellow
fighters (Odesskii and Fel’dman).
443 Hero’s Barrow The highest part of the Zhiguli range and the sub-
ject of many legends, most having to do with Stepan Razin and

his followers. Later in this chapter we will see other romantic
landmarks such as Maiden’s Mountain, the Two Brothers, Bald
Mountain, the Tsar’s Barrow, and so on.
443 From beyond the wooded island The first line of the widely known
folk song “Stenka Razin” or “From Beyond the Wooded Island”
(words by poet, folklorist, and ethnographer Dmitry Sadovnikov
[1847–83], music is folk). The translation, by John Jacob Rob-
bins, circa 1921, has been slightly altered. The song describes
how Stenka Razin, out on a pleasure jaunt with his men and his
brand-new Persian wife, drowns her in the Volga, asking Mother
Volga to accept his rich gift, rather than let his men think that
he’s “gone soft” due to his marriage; they are saddened by this
act, but Stenka Razin insists that they make merry.
448 Beshtau, Mashuk Both of these are mountains in the Caucasus
range. Beshtau is a five-peaked mountain near Pyatigorsk which
gave the town its name (pyat ’, “five”; gora, “mountain”). Mashuk
is a single peak just outside Pyatigorsk with a funicular from the
city to the top. The poet Lermontov fought his fatal duel with Mar-
tynov at the foot of the Mashuk in 1841, and (as both Shcheglov
and Odessky and Feldman point out) a certain Lermontovian, Ro-
mantic theme permeates the following chapter, set in Pyatigorsk.
38. A View of a Malachite Puddle

449 Apache shirts Shcheglov describes these shirts as being cheap,
open-collared shirts in a “proletarian style,” whereas Odessky
and Feldman describe them as having “fold-down collars without
buttons, which leave the throat open,” and trace the name back
to a colloquial Parisian term for bandit, apache (although it could
also be a reference to shirts worn by “Indian” characters in con-
temporary American cowboy films).
449 “The Dance of the Mosquitoes” A song by Danish composer Valde-
mar Fini Henriques (1867–1940).
450 We’re strangers at this feast of life Variations of this plaint can be
found in many Romantic writers, including Lermontov, the poet
whose life and works are one of the motifs of the Pyatigorsk chap-
ter of the novel (Shcheglov).
453 Little Humpbacked Horse The title of a famous fairy tale by Pyotr
Ershov (1815–69) in which the horse of the title, although small
and humpbacked, has magic powerful enough to help a peasant

boy perform many impossible trials asked of him by the Tsar; the
boy prevails and wins the Tsar-Maiden.
454 the Sinkhole A tiny lake with striking blue, mineral-rich water
at the bottom of a natural sinkhole in the side of Mount Mashuk.
It has been a tourist destination since the 1800s. Twenty-first-
century tourists can also admire the statue of Bender selling tick-
ets by the entrance to the Sinkhole.
456 matsoni The Georgian name for a kind of yogurt common in
the Caucasus region.
456 Rodzianko, Purishkevich Mikhail Rodzianko (1859–1924) was a
government figure both before and after the fall of the monar-
chy; he was one of the leaders of the Octobrist movement and was
chairman of the State Duma from 1911 to 1917. Vladimir Purish-
kevich (1870–1920) was a far-right monarchist politician; during
the 1905 Revolution, he helped organize the Black Hundreds, a
progovernment militia group that often participated in pogroms,
and later he was part of the group that killed Rasputin. Purishke-
vich’s bald pate was the target of many satirists’ barbs (Shcheglov).
457 “Don’t sing to me, fair maid, your mournful songs of Georgia . . .” An
inexact quote of the Pushkin poem by the same name. Over
twenty composers, including Glinka, wrote art songs to this poem
(Shcheglov).
458 stanitsa A large Cossack village.
39. Cape Green

464 Bagration (or Bagrationi) A dynasty that ruled Georgia for sev-
eral centuries up to the Bolshevik takeover; many representatives
achieved high ranks in the Tsarist army. Here, it is evidently the
name of the Brunses’ dog.
466 bashlyk (From the Turkish bas‚lık), a hood designed to be worn
over a hat or other headgear; it has a reinforced point at the top
and two long wings that can be wrapped around the wearer’s
neck.
40. Under the Clouds

470 Too much chic . . . Absurd beauty Odessky and Feldman read Os-
tap’s reaction to the natural beauty of the Caucasus as an allusion
to a 1925 poem by Mayakovsky, “Tamara and the Demon.” Maya-

kovsky’s poem alludes to Lermontov’s famous long poem The
Demon (whose title character falls in love with a mortal woman
named Tamara); Mayakovsky, who was born in Georgia and lived
there until he was thirteen, devotes his entire poem to a scornful
refutation of Lermontov’s romanticized view of the region.
471 Trek A park in Vladikavkaz (Shcheglov).
471 cherkeska From the Russian word cherkes, a Circassian; a long
military coat with decorated breast panels common throughout
the Caucasus region.
472 katso The Georgian word for “man,” in the vocative case since
it is used as a form of address; it is simply an informal, colloquial
form of address used with men, much like “fellow,” “friend,” or
even “buddy” in English.
475 Kisa and Osya were here Both Shcheglov and Odessky and Feld-
man point out thematic parallels between this diatribe and a
similar one in Mayakovsky’s 1926 poem “Office Habits,” which
satirizes vacationers who deface natural beauty with their signa-
tures and graffiti. Odessky and Feldman also mention that Maya-
kovsky called his lover, Lilya Brik, Kisa and her husband, Osip
Brik, Osya, and that the Briks were in the Caucasus in June 1927.
477 “Boiling and spuming, the ocean waves . . .” An inexact quotation
of Pushkin’s Caucasian-themed poem “Avalanche” (Shcheglov).
477 the battle of the pyramids A reference to Napoléon’s Egyptian
campaign (Shcheglov).
479 The little bird of God knows not From “The Gypsies,” one of the
most famous of Pushkin’s Southern Poems (Shcheglov).
480 the words of M. Yu. Lermontov and the music of A. Rubinstein A ref-
erence to Anton Rubinstein’s 1871 opera The Demon, based on
Lermontov’s poem.
41. Earthquake
481 Naurskaya lezginka The Naurskaya stanitsa, a regional center in
Chechnya, developed its own style of lezginka (a folk dance origi-
nated by Lezghins, but now danced by a variety of peoples of the
Caucasus Mountains).
482 churek A Caucasian leavened bread flavored with anise and
sprinkled with sesame seeds.
487 Kipiani Georgian wines exploded onto the European market
at the 1907 exhibition in Belgium. Kipiani, named after the

prominent Georgian family whose members cultivated the wine,
was renowned to be one of Stalin’s favorites, but was eventually
renamed Khvanchkara in order to remove the reference to pre-
Revolutionary nobility.
489 Those evening bells! those evening bells! An 1818 poem with a Rus-
sian theme by Thomas Moore, translated into Russian in 1828
by Ivan Kozlov (set to music by Alexander Alyabyev and others)
(Shcheglov).
490 Pestel Pavel Pestel (1793–1826), a leading Decembrist, one of
only five to be sentenced to death after the failed Decembrist
uprising of 1825.

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The Twelve Chairs

northwestern world classics

Northwestern World Classics brings readers

The Twelve Chairs

Translated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher

Northwestern University Press ✦ Evanston, Illinois

Translator’s Introduction xxvii

Part One: The Lion of Stargorod

1 Bezenchuk and the Nymphs 5

2 The Demise of Madame Petukhova 17

3 The Sinner’s Mirror 27

4 The Muse of Distant Travel 37

5 The Registrar’s Past 43

6 The Smooth Operator 65

8 Traces of the Titanic 83

9 The Little Sky-Blue Thief 89

10 Where Are Your Curls? 103

11 The Parakeet, the Repairman, and the

13 A Passionate Woman, a Poet’s Dream 141

14 Breathe Deeper, You’re Excited! 155

15 The Union of the Sword and the Plowshare 175

Part Two: In Moscow

16 Amid an Ocean of Chairs 191

17 The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dormitory 195

18 Respect Your Mattresses, Citizens! 211

19 The Furniture Museum 219

20 European-Style Voting 229

21 From Seville to Granada 241

22 Corporal Punishment 255

23 Ellochka the Cannibal 269

24 Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov 279

25 The Motorists’ Club 291

26 Conversation with a Naked Engineer 305

27 Two Visits 315

29 The Little Hen and the Pacific Rooster 331

30 The Author of “The Gavriliad” 343

31 The Mighty Handful, or the Gold-Seekers 355

32 In the Columbus Theater 365

Part Three: Madame Petukhova’s Treasure

33 A Magical Night on the Volga 383

34 A Pair of Unclean Animals 397

35 Expulsion from the Garden of Eden 411

36 The Interplanetary Chess Congress 421

37 And Others 439

38 A View of a Malachite Puddle 449

39 Cape Green 459

40 Under the Clouds 469

Translator’s Notes 507

In 1928, in Soviet Russia, a novel by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

The entire process of coming up with the idea of the novel

Each following issue of the magazine had a short summary

As I already said, the novel was topical. It wasn’t called a novel

As Bender takes on the characteristics of the smooth operator,

We publish The Twelve Chairs. First review in the Evening

They’re kidding, of course. But if we want to be serious about

Slavicist Omry Ronen writes,

There are several reasons for a new translation of Ilf and

xxviii ✦ translator’s introduction

in the provincial town of N. there were so many barbershops

Even though there were many funeral depots, their clien-

6 ✦ the lion of stargorod

bezenchuk and the nymphs ✦ 7

8 ✦ the lion of stargorod