Ivlev and Petrov the golden calf. Golden calf - full version

Ilf Ilya & Petrov Evgeny

Golden calf

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, we are approached with questions that are completely legitimate, but very monotonous: "How do you two write together?"

At first, we answered in detail, went into details, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel "12 Chairs" Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the fate of the hero was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out, and in half an hour the great strategist was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. The quarrel was not talked about. Then they stopped going into details. And, finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that friends do not steal it. And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

Tell us, - asked us a certain strict citizen from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, - tell me, why do you write funny? What kind of chuckles in the reconstructive period? Are you out of your mind?

After that, he long and angrily convinced us that laughter is now harmful.

Is it wrong to laugh? he said. Yes, you can't laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these shifts, I don't want to smile, I want to pray!

But we don't just laugh, we objected. - Our goal is a satire on those people who do not understand the reconstruction period.

Satire cannot be funny,” said the strict comrade, and, grabbing the arm of some handicraft Baptist, whom he mistook for a 100% proletarian, led him to his apartment.

All that is said is not fiction. It could have been even funnier.

Give free rein to such a hallelujah citizen, and he will even put on a veil on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that in this way it is necessary to help build socialism.

And all the time while we were composing The Golden Calf, the face of a strict citizen hovered over us.

What if this chapter comes out funny? What would a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided:

a) write a novel as cheerful as possible,

b) if a strict citizen declares again that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic to bring the aforementioned citizen to criminal liability under an article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. ILF. E. PETROV

* PART ONE. ANTELOPE CREW*

Crossing the street

look around

(Street rule)

CHAPTER I. HOW PANIKOVSKY VIOLATED THE CONVENTION

Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Not only that, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected high-rise buildings, installed sewerage and plumbing, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented the printing press, invented gunpowder, threw bridges over rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that one hundred and fourteen tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the native planet took on a relatively comfortable look, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and smart pedestrians began to crush. The streets created by pedestrians have passed into the power of motorists. Pavements have become twice as wide, sidewalks have narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And the pedestrians began to huddle in fear against the walls of the houses.

In the big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross the streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where the traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which the life of a pedestrian usually hangs is easiest to cut.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the formidable outlines of a fratricidal projectile. He disables entire ranks of union members and their families. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to flutter out from under the silver nose of the car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind them of their existence. God, God, which in essence does not exist, to which you, who in fact do not exist, have brought a pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: "Let's rebuild the life of textile workers," and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangle reserve sandals "Uncle Vanya" and a tin kettle without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years at the very gates of Moscow will be crushed by a heavy autocar, the number of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican walking. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would gladly go that way, without a barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All my life I have to push the damned container in front of me, on which, moreover, (shame, shame!) There is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of Driver's Dreams automotive oil. So the pedestrian has degraded.

And only in small Russian towns are pedestrians still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, carelessly wandering along the pavement and crossing it in the most intricate way in any direction.

The citizen in the cap with the white top, such as summer garden administrators and entertainers mostly wear, undoubtedly belonged to the greater and better part of mankind. He moved along the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetrical bag. The city, apparently, did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.

He saw a dozen and a half blue, mignon and white-pink belfries; the shabby American gold of church domes caught his eye. The flag crackled over the official building.

"Golden Calf - 01"

When crossing the street, look around.

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, we are approached with questions that are quite legitimate, but very monotonous: "How do you write together?"

At first, we answered in detail, went into details, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel "12 Chairs" Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the fate of the hero was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out and in half an hour the great strategist was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. The quarrel was not talked about. Then they stopped going into details. And, finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that friends do not steal it. And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

Tell us, - a certain strict citizen from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, asked us, - tell me, why do you write funny? What kind of chuckles in the reconstructive period? Are you out of your mind?

After that, he long and angrily convinced us that laughter is now harmful.

Is it wrong to laugh? he said. Yes, you can't laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these shifts, I don't want to smile, I want to pray!

But we don't just laugh, we objected. - Our goal is a satire on those people who do not understand the reconstructive period.

Satire cannot be funny,” said the strict comrade, and, grabbing the arm of some Baptist handicraftsman, whom he mistook for a 100% proletarian, led him to his apartment.

All of the above is not fiction. It could have been even funnier.

Give free rein to such a hallelujah citizen, and he will even put on a veil on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that in this way it is necessary to help build socialism.

And all the time while we were composing The Golden Calf, the face of a strict citizen hovered over us.

What if this chapter comes out funny? What would a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided: a) to write a novel as cheerful as possible, b) if a strict citizen declares again that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic to bring the aforementioned citizen to criminal liability under an article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. Ilf, E. Petrov

PART ONE

"ANTELOPE CREW"

About how Panikovsky violated the convention

Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Moreover, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected high-rise buildings, installed sewerage and plumbing, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented the printing press, invented gunpowder, threw bridges over rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that one hundred and fourteen tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the native planet took on a relatively comfortable look, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and smart pedestrians began to crush. The streets created by pedestrians have passed into the power of motorists. Pavements have become twice as wide, sidewalks have narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And the pedestrians began to huddle in fear against the walls of the houses.

In the big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross the streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where the traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which the life of a pedestrian usually hangs is easiest to cut.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the formidable outlines of a fratricidal projectile. He disables entire ranks of union members and their families. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to flutter out from under the silver nose of the car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind them of their existence. God, God, which in essence does not exist, to which you, who in fact do not exist, have brought a pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: "Let's rebuild the life of textile workers," and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangle reserve sandals "Uncle Vanya" and a tin kettle without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years at the very gates of Moscow will be crushed by a heavy autocar, the number of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican walking. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would gladly go that way, without a barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All my life I have to push the damned container in front of me, on which, moreover, (shame, shame!) There is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of Driver's Dreams automotive oil. So the pedestrian has degraded.

And only in small Russian towns are pedestrians still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, carelessly wandering along the pavement and crossing it in the most intricate way in any direction.

The citizen in the cap with the white top, such as summer garden administrators and entertainers mostly wear, undoubtedly belonged to the greater and better part of mankind. He moved along the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetrical bag. The city, apparently, did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.

He saw a dozen and a half blue, mignon and white-pink belfries; the shabby American gold of church domes caught his eye. The flag crackled over the official building.

At the white tower gates of the provincial Kremlin, two stern old women spoke French, complained about the Soviet regime and remembered their beloved daughters. From the church cellar it was cold, the sour smell of wine was beating from there. Apparently there were potatoes in there.

The Temple of the Savior on potatoes, - the pedestrian said quietly.

Passing under a plywood arch with a fresh limestone slogan, "Hail to the 5th District Conference of Women and Girls," he found himself at the head of a long alley called the Boulevard of Young Talents.

No, - he said with chagrin, - this is not Rio de Janeiro, it is much worse.

Almost on all the benches of the Boulevard of Young Talents sat lonely girls with open books in their hands. Leaky shadows fell on the pages of books, on bare elbows, on touching bangs. As the visitor stepped into the cool alley, there was a noticeable movement on the benches. The girls, hiding behind the books of Gladkov, Eliza Ozheshko and Seifullina, cast cowardly glances at the visitor. He walked past the excited readers with a parade step and went out to the building of the executive committee - the goal of his walk.

At that moment a cab drove out from around the corner. Beside him, holding onto the dusty, peeling wing of the carriage and waving a swollen folder with an embossed inscription "Musique", a man in a long sweatshirt walked quickly. He was ardently proving something to the rider. The rider, an elderly man with a nose hanging like a banana, clutched the suitcase with his feet and from time to time showed his interlocutor a fico. In the heat of the argument, his engineer's cap, the band of which sparkled with green sofa plush, squinted to one side. Both litigants often and especially loudly uttered the word "salary". Soon other words were heard.

You will answer for this, Comrade Talmudovsky! shouted the long-haired one, moving the engineer's figurine away from his face.

And I'm telling you that not a single decent specialist will go to you under such conditions, - Talmudovsky answered, trying to return the figure to its previous position.

Are you talking about salary again? We'll have to raise the question of grabbing.

I didn't care about my salary! I will work for nothing! - shouted the engineer, excitedly describing all sorts of curves with a fico. - I want to, and generally retire. You give up this serfdom. They themselves write everywhere: "Freedom, equality and fraternity", but they want to force me to work in this rat hole.

Here the engineer Talmudovsky quickly unclenched the fig and began to count on his fingers:

The apartment is a pigsty, there is no theater, the salary ... A cab driver! Went to the station!

Whoa! screeched the long-haired one, running fussily ahead and grabbing the horse by the bridle. - I, as the secretary of the section of engineers and technicians ... Kondrat Ivanovich! After all, the plant will be left without specialists ... Fear God ... The public will not allow this, engineer Talmudovsky ... I have a protocol in my portfolio.

And the secretary of the section, spreading his legs, began to untie the ribbons of his "Musique".

This negligence settled the dispute. Seeing that the path was clear, Talmudovsky got to his feet and shouted with all his strength:

Went to the station!

Where? Where? murmured the secretary, rushing after the carriage. - You are a deserter of the labor front!

Sheets of tissue paper flew out of the "Musique" folder with some kind of purple "listened-decided".

The visitor, who had observed the incident with interest, stood for a minute in the deserted square and said in a convinced tone:

No, this is not Rio de Janeiro.

A minute later he was already knocking on the door of the executive committee's office.

Who do you want? asked his secretary, who was seated at a table near the door. - Why do you want to see the chairman? For what business?

As you can see, the visitor knew the system of dealing with the secretaries of government, economic and public organizations. He did not assure that he had arrived on urgent official business.

Personally,” he said dryly, without looking back at the secretary and thrusting his head into the crack in the door. - Can I come to you?

And without waiting for an answer, he approached the desk:

Hello, don't you recognize me?

The chairman, a black-eyed, big-headed man in a blue jacket and similar trousers tucked into high-heeled boots, looked rather absently at the visitor and declared that he did not recognize him.

Don't you know? Meanwhile, many people find that I am strikingly similar to my father.

I also look like my father,” the chairman said impatiently. - What do you want, comrade?

It's all about what kind of father, - the visitor noted sadly. - I am the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.

The chairman was embarrassed and got up. He vividly recalled the famous image of a revolutionary lieutenant with a pale face and a black cape with bronze lion clasps. While he was gathering his thoughts to ask the son of the Black Sea hero a question befitting the occasion, the visitor looked at the furniture of the office with the eyes of a discerning buyer. A special breed of official furniture had been grown: flat, ceiling-mounted cabinets, wooden sofas with polished three-inch seats, tables on thick billiard legs, and oak parapets that separated the presence from the restless world outside. During the revolution, this type of furniture almost disappeared, and the secret of its development was lost. People forgot how to furnish the premises of officials, and in office rooms objects appeared that were still considered an integral part of a private apartment. Lawyer spring sofas with a mirrored shelf for seven porcelain elephants appeared in the institutions, which supposedly bring happiness, slides for dishes, whatnots, sliding leather chairs for rheumatism and blue Japanese vases. In the office of the chairman of the Arbatov executive committee, in addition to the usual desk, two ottomans upholstered in broken pink silk, a striped chaise longue, a satin screen with Fuzi-Yama and cherry blossoms, and a Slavic mirror cabinet of rough market work took root.

"And a locker like "Gay, Slavs!" - the visitor thought. - You can't take much here. No, this is not Rio de Janeiro."

It's very good that you stopped by, - the chairman finally said. - You are probably from Moscow?

Yes, passing through, - answered the visitor, looking at the chaise longue and becoming more and more convinced that the financial affairs of the executive committee were bad. He preferred the executive committees furnished with new Swedish furniture from the Leningrad wood trust.

The chairman wanted to ask about the purpose of the lieutenant's son's visit to Arbatov, but unexpectedly for himself, he smiled plaintively and said:

Our churches are amazing. Here already from Glavnauka came, they are going to restore. Tell me, do you yourself remember the uprising on the battleship "Ochakov"?

Vaguely, vaguely, - answered the visitor. - At that heroic time, I was still extremely small. I was a child.

Excuse me, what's your name?

Nikolai... Nikolai Schmidt.

And for the father?

Ah, how bad! thought the visitor, who himself did not know his father's name.

Yes, - he drawled, avoiding a direct answer, - now many do not know the names of the heroes. NEP frenzy. There is no such enthusiasm, I actually came to your city quite by accident. Road trouble. Left without a penny.

The Chairman was very pleased with the change in the conversation. It seemed shameful to him that he forgot the name of the Ochakov hero.

"Indeed," he thought, looking lovingly at the inspired face of the hero, "you are deaf here at work. You forget the great milestones."

How do you say? Without a penny? This is interesting.

Of course, I could turn to a private person, - said the visitor, - anyone will give me, but, you understand, this is not very convenient from a political point of view. The son of a revolutionary - and suddenly he asks for money from a private trader, from a Nepman ...

The lieutenant's son uttered the last words with anguish. The chairman listened anxiously to the new intonations in the visitor's voice. “What if he has a seizure?” he thought, “you won’t get any trouble with him.”

And they did very well that they did not turn to a private trader, - said the completely confused chairman.

Then the son of the Black Sea hero gently, without pressure, got down to business. He asked for fifty rubles. The chairman, constrained by the narrow limits of the local budget, was able to give only eight rubles and three coupons for lunch in the cooperative canteen "Former Friend of the Stomach."

The hero's son put the money and coupons in a deep pocket of a worn dapple-gray jacket and was about to get up from the pink ottoman when a clatter and a barrage of a secretary were heard outside the office door.

The door hurriedly opened, and a new visitor appeared on its threshold.

Who is in charge here? he asked, breathing heavily and looking around the room with his lascivious eyes.

Well, I, - said the chairman.

Hello, chairman, - the newcomer barked, holding out a spade-shaped palm. - Let's get to know each other. Son of Lieutenant Schmidt.

Who? - asked the head of the city, goggle-eyed.

The son of the great, unforgettable hero, Lieutenant Schmidt, repeated the stranger,

And here is a friend sitting - the son of Comrade Schmidt, Nikolai Schmidt.

And the chairman, in complete distress, pointed to the first visitor, whose face suddenly assumed a sleepy expression.

A ticklish moment has come in the life of two crooks. In the hands of the modest and trusting chairman of the executive committee, the long, unpleasant sword of Nemesis could flash at any moment. Fate gave only one second of time to create a saving combination. Horror reflected in the eyes of Lieutenant Schmidt's second son.

His figure in a Paraguay summer shirt, sailor flap trousers and bluish canvas shoes, sharp and angular a minute ago, began to blur, lost its formidable contours and definitely did not inspire any respect. A wicked smile appeared on the chairman's face.

And now, when it already seemed to the second son of the lieutenant that everything was lost and that the terrible chairman's anger would now fall on his red head, salvation came from the pink ottoman.

Vasya! shouted the first son of Lieutenant Schmidt, jumping up. - Native brother! Do you recognize brother Kolya?

And the first son embraced the second son.

I know! - exclaimed Vasya, who had begun to see clearly. - I recognize my brother Kolya!

The happy meeting was marked by such chaotic caresses and hugs so unusual in strength that the second son of the Black Sea revolutionary came out of them with a face pale from pain. Brother Kolya, for joy, crushed him quite strongly.

While embracing, the two brothers glanced askance at the chairman, whose face did not leave the vinegary expression. In view of this, the saving combination had to be developed right there on the spot, replenished with everyday details and new details of the uprising of the sailors in 1905 that eluded Eastpart. Holding hands, the brothers sat down on the chaise longue and, without taking their flattering eyes off the chairman, plunged into memories.

What an amazing meeting! - falsely exclaimed the first son, with a glance inviting the chairman to join the family celebration.

Yes, said the chairman in a frozen voice. - It happens, it happens.

Seeing that the chairman was still in the clutches of doubt, the first son stroked his brother's red hair. like a setter, curly and affectionately asked:

When did you come from Mariupol, where did you live with our grandmother?

Yes, I lived, - the second son of the lieutenant muttered, - with her.

Why did you write to me so rarely? I was very worried.

I was busy, - the red-haired man answered sullenly. And, fearing that the restless brother would immediately become interested in what he was doing (and he was mainly busy with sitting in correctional houses in various autonomous republics of the regions), the second son of Lieutenant Schmidt snatched the initiative and asked the question himself:

Why didn't you write?

I wrote, - the brother unexpectedly answered, feeling an unusual surge of cheerfulness, - I sent registered letters. I even have postage receipts.

And he reached into his side pocket, from where he actually took out a lot of stale pieces of paper, but for some reason showed them not to his brother, but to the chairman of the executive committee, and even then from a distance.

Oddly enough, the sight of the papers reassured the chairman a little, and the brothers' memories became more vivid. The red-haired man quite got used to the situation and quite sensibly, albeit monotonously, told the contents of the mass pamphlet "Mutiny on Ochakovo". His brother embellished his dry exposition with details so picturesque that the chairman, who was beginning to calm down, pricked up his ears again.

However, he released the brothers in peace, and they ran out into the street, feeling great relief. Around the corner of the executive committee house they stopped.

Speaking of childhood, - said the first son, - in childhood, I killed people like you on the spot. From a slingshot.

Why? - Joyfully asked the second son of the famous father.

These are the harsh laws of life. Or, in short, life dictates its harsh laws to us. Why did you enter the office? Haven't you seen that the chairman is not alone?

I thought...

Ah, you thought? Do you think sometimes? You are a thinker. What is your last name, thinker? Spinoza? Jean Jacques Rousseau? Marcus Aurelius?

The red-haired man was silent, crushed by the just accusation.

Well, I forgive you. Live. Now let's get to know each other. After all, we are brothers, and kinship obliges. My name is Ostap Bender. Let me also know your first name.

Balaganov, - the red-haired man introduced himself, - Shura Balaganov.

I don’t ask about the profession, ”Bender said politely,“ but I can guess. Probably something intellectual? Are there many convictions this year?

Two, - Balaganov answered freely.

This is not good. Why are you selling your immortal soul? A person should not sue. This is a dirty job. I mean theft. Not to mention the fact that it is a sin to steal - your mother probably introduced you to such a doctrine in childhood - it is also an aimless waste of strength and energy.

Ostap would have been developing his views on life for a long time if Balaganov had not interrupted him.

Look, - he said, pointing to the green depths of the Boulevard of Young Talents. “Do you see the man in the straw hat walking over there?”

I see, - Ostap said arrogantly. - So what? Is this the Governor of Borneo?

This is Panikovsky, - said Shura. - Lieutenant Schmidt's son.

Along the alley, in the shade of the august lindens, leaning a little to one side, an elderly citizen was moving. A hard straw hat with ribbed edges sat sideways on his head. The trousers were so short that they exposed the white drawstrings of the underpants. Under the citizen's mustache, like the flame of a cigarette, a golden tooth blazed.

How, another son? - said Ostap. - It's getting funny.

Panikovsky went up to the building of the executive committee, thoughtfully made a figure eight at the entrance, took hold of the brim of his hat with both hands and correctly placed it on his head, pulled off his jacket and, sighing heavily, moved inside.

The lieutenant had three sons, Bender noted, two were smart and the third was a fool. He needs to be warned.

No need, - said Balaganov, - let him know another time how to violate the convention.

What kind of convention is this?

Wait, I'll tell you later. Entered, entered!

I am an envious person, Bender confessed, but there is nothing to envy here. Have you never seen a bullfight? Let's go see.

The friendly children of Lieutenant Schmidt came out from around the corner and approached the window of the chairman's office.

Behind a foggy, unwashed glass sat the chairman. He wrote quickly. Like all writers, he has a face. it was mournful. Suddenly he raised his head. The door swung open and Panikovsky entered the room. Pressing his hat to his greasy jacket, he stopped near the table and moved his thick lips for a long time. After that, the chairman jumped up in his chair and opened his mouth wide. Friends heard a long cry.

With the words "all back," Ostap drew Balaganov along with him. They ran to the boulevard and hid behind a tree.

Take off your hats, - said Ostap, - bare your heads. The body will now be removed.

He wasn't wrong. No sooner had the peals and overflows of the chairman's voice died down than two hefty employees appeared in the portal of the executive committee. They carried Panikovsky. One held his hands and the other his legs.

The ashes of the deceased, - Ostap commented, - were carried out in the arms of relatives and friends.

The employees dragged the third stupid child of Lieutenant Schmidt onto the porch and began to slowly rock it. Panikovsky was silent, dutifully looking into the blue sky.

After a short civil memorial service... - began Ostap.

At that very moment, the officers, having given Panikovsky's body sufficient scope and inertia, threw him out into the street.

The body was interred, Bender finished. Panikovsky flopped to the ground like a toad. He quickly got up and, leaning to one side more than before, ran along the Boulevard of Young Talents with incredible speed.

Well, now tell me, - Ostap said, - how this bastard violated the convention and what kind of convention it was.

Thirty Sons of Lieutenant Schmidt The troublesome morning was over. Bender and Balaganov, without saying a word, quickly walked away from the executive committee. A long blue rail was being driven along the main street on the parted peasant passages. Such a ringing and singing stood on the main street, as if a driver in a fishing tarpaulin overall was carrying not a rail, but a deafening musical note. The sun was beating down on the glass window of the visual aids shop, where two skeletons were embracing amicably above globes, skulls, and a cheerfully painted cardboard liver of a drunkard. In the poor window of the workshop of stamps and seals, the largest place was occupied by enameled tablets with the inscriptions: "Closed for lunch", "Lunch break from 2 to 3 p.m.", "Closed for lunch break", simply "Closed", "The store is closed" and and, finally, a black fundamental board with golden letters: "Closed for inventory of goods." Apparently, these resolute texts were in the greatest demand in the city of Arbatov. For all other phenomena of life, the workshop of stamps and seals responded with only one blue plate: "Nanny on duty."

Then, one after the other, three stores of wind instruments, mandolins and bass balalaikas were located in a row. Copper pipes, gleaming depravedly, reclined on the showcase steps covered with red calico. The bass helicon was especially good. He was so powerful, so lazily basking in the sun, curled up in a ring, that he should have been kept not in a window, but in the capital's zoo, somewhere between an elephant and a boa constrictor, And so that on rest days parents would take their children to him and say : "Here, baby, the helikon pavilion. Helikon is sleeping now. And when he wakes up, he will definitely start blowing." And so that the children look at the amazing pipe with big wonderful eyes.

At another time, Ostap Bender would have paid attention to freshly cut balalaikas, the size of a hut, and to gramophone records curled up from the heat of the sun, and to pioneer drums, which, with their dashing coloring, suggested that a bullet was a fool, and a bayonet - well done, - but now he was not up to it. He wanted to eat.

Are you, of course, standing on the edge of a financial abyss? he asked Balaganov.

Is this about money? Shura said. I haven't had any money for a whole week.

In that case, you will end badly, young man, - Ostap said admonishingly. - The financial abyss is the deepest of all abysses, you can fall into it all your life. Okay, don't fret. I still carried three coupons for lunch in my beak. The chairman of the executive committee fell in love with me at first sight.

But the dairy brothers failed to take advantage of the kindness of the head of the city. On the door of the dining room "Former Friend of the Stomach" hung a large padlock covered with either rust or buckwheat porridge.

Of course, - Ostap said bitterly, - on the occasion of counting the schnitzels, the dining room is closed forever. You will have to give your body to be torn to pieces by private traders.

Private traders love cash, - Balaganov objected dully.

Well, well, I won't torture you. The chairman showered me with golden rain in the amount of eight rubles. But keep in mind, dear Shura, I do not intend to feed you for free. For every vitamin I feed you, I will demand many small favors from you. However, there was no private sector in the city, and the brothers had lunch in the summer cooperative garden, where special posters informed citizens about the latest Arbat innovation in the field of public nutrition:

BEER IS SOLD ONLY TO TRADE UNION MEMBERS

Let's be satisfied with kvass, - said Balaganov.

Satisfied, Balaganov glanced gratefully at his savior and began the story. The story lasted two hours and contained extremely interesting information.

In all areas of human activity. labor supply and demand are regulated by special bodies. The actor will go to Omsk only when he finds out for sure that he has nothing to fear from competition and that there are no other applicants for his role as a cold lover or "meal is served". The railroad workers are taken care of by their relatives, who carefully publish reports in the newspapers that unemployed baggage distributors cannot count on getting work within the Syzran-Vyazemskaya road, or that the Central Asian road is in need of four barrier watchmen. An expert merchandiser places an ad in the newspaper, and the whole country will know that there is an expert merchandiser in the world with ten years of experience, who, for family reasons, changes his service in Moscow to work in the provinces.

Everything is regulated, flows along cleared channels, makes its circuit in full accordance with the law and under its protection.

And only the market of a special category of swindlers, who call themselves the children of Lieutenant Schmidt, was in a chaotic state. Anarchy was tearing apart the corporation of the lieutenant's children. They could not derive from their profession the benefits that a moment's acquaintance with administrators, business executives and social activists, people for the most part surprisingly gullible, could undoubtedly bring them.

All over the country, extorting and begging, the false grandchildren of Karl Marx, the non-existent nephews of Friedrich Engels, the brothers of Lunacharsky, the cousins ​​of Clara Zetkin, or, at worst, the descendants of the famous anarchist Prince Kropotkin, move.

From Minsk to the Bering Strait and from Nakhichevan on the Araks to the land of Franz Josef, executive committees and executive committees enter, land on station platforms and anxiously roll in cabs relatives of great people. They are in a hurry. They have a lot to do.

At one time, the supply of relatives nevertheless exceeded demand, and depression set in in this peculiar market. There was a need for reform. The grandchildren of Karl Marx, the Kropotkinites, the Engelsists and the like, gradually streamlined their activities, with the exception of the violent corporation of the children of Lieutenant Schmidt, which, in the manner of the Polish Sejm, was always torn apart by anarchy. Some kind of rude, greedy, obstinate children crept up and interfered with each other to collect in the granaries.

Shura Balaganov, who considered himself the firstborn of a lieutenant, was seriously worried about the current situation. More and more often he had to deal with comrades in the corporation, who completely spoiled the fruitful fields of Ukraine and the resort heights of the Caucasus, where he used to work profitably.

And you were afraid of increasing difficulties? asked Ostap mockingly.

But Balaganov did not notice the irony. Sipping purple kvass, he continued his story.

There was only one way out of this tense situation - a conference. Balaganov worked all winter to convene it. He corresponded with competitors whom he personally knew. Unfamiliar. conveyed the invitation through the grandchildren of Marx who came across on the way. And finally, in the early spring of 1928, almost all the famous children of Lieutenant Schmidt gathered in a Moscow tavern, near the Sukharev Tower. The quorum was great - Lieutenant Schmidt had thirty sons between the ages of eighteen and fifty-two and four daughters, stupid, middle-aged and ugly. In a short opening speech, Balaganov expressed the hope that the brothers would find a common language and finally work out a convention, the need dictated by life itself.

According to Balaganov's project, the entire Union of Republics was to be divided into thirty-four operational sections, according to the number of those gathered. Each plot is transferred to the long-term use of one child. None of the members of the corporation has the right to cross borders and invade foreign territory in order to earn money.

No one objected to the new principles of work, with the exception of Panikovsky, who already then declared that he would live without a convention. But during the division of the country, ugly scenes played out. The high contracting parties quarreled in the very first minute and no longer addressed each other except with the addition of abusive epithets. The whole dispute arose because of the division of plots.

Nobody wanted to take the university centers. Nobody needed battered Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov.

The distant eastern regions, immersed in the sands, also enjoyed a very bad reputation. They were accused of being unfamiliar with the personality of Lieutenant Schmidt.

Found fools! - Panikovsky shouted shrillly. - You give me the Central Russian Upland, then I will sign the convention.

How? All upland? Balaganov said. - Why don't we give you Melitopol as well? Or Bobruisk?

At the word "Bobruisk" the assembly groaned painfully. Everyone agreed to go to Bobruisk even now. Bobruisk was considered a wonderful, highly cultured place.

Well, not the whole hill, - the greedy Panikovsky insisted, - at least half. Finally, I am a family man, I have two families. But they didn't even give him half.

After much shouting, it was decided to divide the plots by lot. Thirty-four pieces of paper were cut, and a geographical name was applied to each of them. Fertile Kursk and dubious Kherson, little-developed Minusinsk and almost hopeless Ashgabat, Kyiv, Petrozavodsk and Chita - all the republics, all regions lay in someone's hare hat with headphones and waited for the owners.

Cheerful exclamations, muffled groans and curses accompanied the draw.

The evil star of Panikovsky had an influence on the outcome of the case. He got the Volga region. He joined the convention beside himself with anger.

I will go, - he shouted, - but I warn you: if they treat me badly, I will violate the convention, I will cross the border!

Balaganov, who got the golden Arbatovsky plot, was alarmed and then declared that he would not tolerate violations of operational standards.

One way or another, the matter was streamlined, after which thirty sons and four daughters of Lieutenant Schmidt went to their areas to work.

And now, Bender, you yourself saw how this bastard violated the convention, - Shura Balaganov finished his story. - He crawled on my site for a long time, but I still could not catch him.

Contrary to the narrator's expectation, Panikovsky's bad deed did not evoke condemnation from Ostap. Bender lounged back in his chair, casually looking ahead.

Trees were painted on the high back wall of the restaurant garden, leafy and even, like a picture in a reader. There were no real trees in the garden, but the shadow falling from the wall gave a life-giving coolness and completely satisfied the citizens. Citizens were, apparently, without exception members of the union, because they drank only beer and did not even have a snack.

A green car drove up to the gates of the garden, continuously gasping and shooting, on the door of which there was a white arcuate inscription: "Oh, I'll give you a ride!" Below were the conditions for walking in a cheerful car. Three rubles per hour. For the end - by agreement. There were no passengers in the car.

The gardeners whispered anxiously. For about five minutes the driver looked pleadingly through the garden grate, and, having apparently lost hope of getting a passenger, shouted defiantly:

Taxi is free! Please sit down! But none of the citizens expressed a desire to get into the car "Oh, I'll give it a ride!" And even the very invitation of the driver had an effect on them in a strange way. They lowered their heads and tried not to look in the direction of the car. The driver shook his head and drove off slowly. The Arbatovites looked after him sadly. Five minutes later the green car sped past the garden in the opposite direction. The driver was jumping up and down in his seat and shouting something unintelligible. The car was still empty. Ostap looked after her and said:

So. Balaganov, you dude. Don't be offended. By this I want to indicate precisely the place that you occupy under the sun.

Go to hell! Balaganov said rudely.

Are you still offended? So, in your opinion, the position of a lieutenant's son is not foppery?

But you yourself are the son of Lieutenant Schmidt! cried Balaganov.

You are a dude, - repeated Ostap. - And the dude's son. And your children will be dudes. Boy! What happened this morning is not even an episode, but just a pure coincidence, a whim of an artist. Gentleman in search of ten. Catching such meager odds is not in my nature. And what kind of profession is this, God forgive me! Lieutenant Schmidt's son! Well, another year, well, two. And then what? Further, your red curls become familiar, and they will simply start beating you.

So what to do? Balaganov got worried. - How to get daily bread?

You have to think,” said Ostap sternly. - I, for example, feed ideas. I do not hold out my paw for the sour executive committee ruble. My basting is wider. You, I see, disinterestedly love money. What amount do you like?

Five thousand, - quickly answered Balaganov.

Per month?

Then I'm out of my way with you. I need five hundred thousand. And whenever possible at once, but not in parts.

Maybe take it in parts? - asked the vengeful Balaganov.

Ostap looked attentively at his interlocutor and quite seriously replied:

I would take parts. But I need it right now. Balaganov was about to make a joke about this phrase as well, but, raising his eyes to Ostap, he immediately broke off. In front of him sat an athlete with an exact face, as if stamped on a coin. A brittle white scar cut his swarthy throat. His eyes sparkled with formidable amusement.

Balaganov suddenly felt an irresistible desire to stretch his arms at his sides. He even wanted to clear his throat, as happens with people of average responsibility when talking with one of their superior comrades. Indeed, clearing his throat, he asked in embarrassment:

Why do you need so much money ... and immediately?

Actually, I need more, - said Ostap, - five hundred thousand - this is my minimum, five hundred thousand full-weight approximate rubles. I want to leave, Comrade Shura, to go very far, to Rio de Janeiro.

Do you have relatives there? Balaganov asked.

But what, do I look like a person who can have relatives?

No, but I...

I have no relatives, Comrade Shura, I am alone in the whole world. I had a father, a Turkish subject, and he died long ago in terrible convulsions. Not in this case. I have wanted to go to Rio de Janeiro since childhood. Of course, you do not know about the existence of this city.

Balaganov shook his head mournfully. Of the world centers of culture, besides Moscow, he knew only Kyiv, Melitopol and Zhmerinka. In general, he was convinced that the earth was flat.

Ostap threw on the table a sheet torn from a book.

This is a clipping from the Small Soviet Encyclopedia. Here is what is written about Rio de Janeiro: "1360 thousand inhabitants ..." so ... "a significant number of mulattos ... near the vast bay of the Atlantic Ocean ..." Here, here! "The main streets of the city in terms of the wealth of shops and the splendor of buildings are not inferior to the first cities in the world." Can you imagine, Shura? Do not yield! Mulattos, the bay, coffee exports, so to speak, coffee dumping, Charleston called "My girl has one little thing" and ... what to talk about! You see for yourself what is happening. One and a half million people, and all without exception in white pants. I want to leave here. Over the past year, I have had the most serious disagreements with the Soviet government. She wants to build socialism, but I don't want to. I'm bored with building socialism. Now you understand why I need so much money?

Where will you get five hundred thousand? Balaganov asked quietly.

Anywhere, - answered Ostap. - Show me only a rich man, and I will take his money.

How? Murder? - Balaganov asked even more quietly and glanced at the neighboring tables, where the Arbatovites were raising toasty wine glasses.

You know, - said Ostap, - you shouldn't have signed the so-called Sukharev Convention. This mental exercise seems to have exhausted you greatly. You are becoming stupid right before your eyes. Note to yourself, Ostap Bender never killed anyone. He was killed - it was. But he himself is clean before the law. I am certainly not a cherub. I don't have wings, but I respect the Criminal Code. This is my weakness.

How are you going to take the money?

How can I take away? Taking or withdrawing money varies depending on the circumstances. I personally have four hundred comparatively honest methods of weaning. But it's not about the methods. The fact is that now there are no rich people, And this is the horror of my position. Another would, of course, pounce on some defenseless state institution, but this is not in my rules. You know my respect for the Criminal Code. There is no calculation to rob the team. Give me a richer individual. But he is not, this individual.

Yes you! Balaganov exclaimed. - There are very rich people.

Do you know them? Ostap said immediately. - Can you give the name and exact address of at least one Soviet millionaire? But they are, they should be. Since some banknotes are roaming around the country, then there must be people who have a lot of them. But how do you find such a trickster?

Ostap even sighed. Apparently, dreams of a rich individual had long worried him.

How nice, - he said thoughtfully, - to work with a legal millionaire in a well-organized bourgeois state with old capitalist traditions. There the millionaire is a popular figure. His address is known. He lives in a mansion somewhere in Rio de Janeiro. You go straight to his reception and already in the hall, after the very first greetings, you take money away. And all this, keep in mind, in a good, polite way: "Hello, sir, don't worry. You'll have to disturb you a little. Alright. Done." And that's it. Culture! What could be easier? A gentleman in a society of gentlemen does his little business. Just don't shoot at the chandelier, it's superfluous. And we have ... God, God! .. In what a cold country we live! We have everything hidden, everything is underground. The Soviet millionaire cannot be found even by the Narkomfin with its super-powerful tax apparatus. And the millionaire, perhaps, is now sitting in this so-called summer garden at the next table and drinking forty-kopeck Tip-Top beer. That's what's embarrassing!

So, you think, - asked Balaganov ceiling, - what if there was such a secret millionaire, then? ...

Don't go on. I know what you want to say. No, not that, not at all. I will not choke him with a pillow or hit him on the head with a blued revolver. And in general, nothing stupid will happen. Oh, if only to find an individual! I'll arrange it in such a way that he will bring me his money himself, on a silver platter.

This is very good. Balaganov smiled trustingly. - Five hundred thousand on a silver platter.

He got up and began to circle around the table. He smacked his tongue plaintively, stopped, even opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but, without saying anything, sat down and got up again. Ostap indifferently followed Balaganov's evolutions.

Will he bring it? Balaganov suddenly asked in a raspy voice. - On a saucer? What if it doesn't? Where is Rio de Janeiro? Far? It can't be that everyone is wearing white pants. Come on, Bender. For five hundred thousand, you can live well with us.

Undoubtedly, unquestionably,” Ostap said cheerfully, “it is possible to live. But you don't flap your wings for no reason. You don't have five hundred thousand.

A deep wrinkle appeared on Balaganov's placid, unplowed forehead. He looked uncertainly at Ostap and said:

I know such a millionaire. All animation disappeared from Bender's face in an instant. His face immediately hardened and again took on a medal shape.

Go, go, - he said, - I serve only on Saturdays, there is nothing to pour here.

Honestly, Monsieur Bender...

Listen, Shura, if you have finally switched to French, then call me not monsieur, but situationyen, which means citizen. By the way, the address of your millionaire?

He lives in Chernomorsk.

Well, of course he knew it. Chernomorsk! There, even before the war, a man with ten thousand was called a millionaire. And now... I can imagine! No, it's nonsense!

No, let me tell. This is a real millionaire. You see, Bender, I recently happened to be in the detention center there...

Ten minutes later, the dairy brothers left the summer cooperative garden with beer. The great strategist felt himself in the position of a surgeon who had to perform a very serious operation. All is ready. Napkins and bandages are steamed in electric saucepans, a nurse in a white toga moves inaudibly across the tiled floor, medical faience and nickel shine, the patient lies on a glass table, rolling his eyes languidly to the ceiling, the smell of German chewing gum wafts in the specially heated air. The surgeon, arms outstretched, approaches the operating table, accepts a sterilized Finnish knife from the assistant, and dryly says to the patient: "Well, take off the burnus."

It’s always like this with me,” Bender said, his eyes shining, “you have to start a million dollar business with a noticeable shortage of banknotes. All my capital, fixed, circulating and reserve, is estimated at five rubles .. - What, you said, is the name of the underground millionaire?

Koreiko, - Balaganov answered.

Yes, yes, Koreiko. Great last name. And you claim that no one knows about his millions.

Nobody but me and Pruzhansky. But Pruzhansky, as I told you, will be in prison for another three years. If only you could see how he was dying and crying when I went out into the wild. He apparently felt that I did not need to tell about Koreiko.

That he revealed his secret to you is nonsense. Not because of this he was killed and cried. He probably had a presentiment that you would tell the whole story to me. And this is really a direct loss for poor Pruzhansky. By the time Pruzhansky is released from prison, Koreiko will find solace only in the vulgar proverb: "Poverty is not a vice."

Ostap threw off his summer cap and, waving it in the air, asked:

Do I have gray hair?

Balaganov drew up his stomach, spread his socks to the width of a rifle butt, and answered in a right-flank voice:

No way!

So they will. We have great battles ahead of us. You will also turn gray, Balaganov. Balaganov suddenly giggled stupidly:

How do you say? Will he bring the money on a silver platter?

On a silver platter for me, - said Ostap, - and on a plate for you.

But what about Rio de Janeiro? I want white pants too.

Rio de Janeiro is the crystal dream of my childhood, - the great strategist answered sternly, - do not touch it with your paws. Get to the point. Send linemen at my disposal. Parts to arrive in the city of Chernomorsk as soon as possible. Guard uniform. Well, trumpet the march! I will lead the parade!

Gasoline is yours - our ideas

A year before Panikovsky violated the convention by penetrating into someone else's operational area, the first car appeared in the city of Arbatov. The founder of the automobile business was a driver named Kozlevich.

The decision to start a new life led him to the steering wheel. The old life of Adam Kozlevich was sinful. He constantly violated the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, namely Article 162, which treats the issues of secret theft of other people's property (theft).

This article has many points, but point "a" (theft committed without the use of any technical means) was alien to sinful Adam. It was too primitive for him. Paragraph "e", punishable by imprisonment for up to five years, did not suit him either. He didn't like being in jail for a long time. And since from childhood he was attracted to technology, he wholeheartedly devoted himself to point "c" (secret theft of other people's property, committed using technical means or repeatedly, or by prior agreement with other persons, at railway stations, piers, ships, wagons and in hotels).

But Kozlevich was not lucky. He was caught both when he used his favorite technical means, and when he did without them. He was caught at stations, marinas, on steamboats and in hotels. They also caught him in the wagons. He was caught even when, in complete desperation, he began to grab someone else's property by prior agreement with other persons.

After spending a total of three years in prison, Adam Kozlevich came to the conclusion that it is much more convenient to engage in the open accumulation of one's own property than the secret abduction of someone else's. This thought brought peace to his rebellious soul. He became an exemplary prisoner, wrote revealing poems in the prison newspaper "The Sun Rises and Sets" and worked diligently in the mechanical workshop of the correctional house. The penitentiary system had a beneficial effect on him. Kozlevich, Adam Kazimirovich, forty-six years old, coming from peasants b. Częstochowa County, single, repeatedly sued, came out of prison an honest man.

After two years of work in one of the Moscow garages, he accidentally bought such an old car that its appearance on the market could only be explained by the liquidation of the automobile museum. A rare exhibit was sold to Kozlevich for one hundred and ninety rubles. For some reason, the car was sold along with an artificial palm tree in a green tub. I had to buy a palm tree. The palm tree was still back and forth, but it took a long time to fiddle with the car: to look for the missing parts in the bazaars, to patch up the seats, to reinstall the electrical facilities. The repair was topped off by painting the car in lizard green. The breed of the car was unknown, but Adam Kazimirovich claimed that it was "Loren Dietrich". As proof, he nailed a copper plaque with the Lauren-Dietrich brand name to the car radiator. It remained to proceed to the private rental, which Kozlevich had long dreamed of.

On the day when Adam Kazimirovich was about to take his offspring into the world for the first time, to the automobile exchange, a sad event happened for all private drivers. One hundred and twenty small black, Browning-like Renault taxis arrived in Moscow. Kozlevich did not even try to compete with them. He handed over the palm tree for safekeeping to the "Versailles" cab-driver's tea house and went to work in the provinces.

Arbatov, deprived of motor transport, liked the driver, and he decided to stay in it forever.

Adam Kazimirovich imagined how hardworking, fun and, most importantly, honestly he would work in the field of car rental. He imagined how he was on duty at the station in the early Arctic morning, waiting for the Moscow train. Wrapped up in a red cowhide coat and raising canned aviators on his forehead, he amiably treats the porters with cigarettes. Frozen cabbies are huddled somewhere behind. They cry from the cold and shake their thick blue skirts. But then the alarm ringing of the station bell is heard. This is the agenda. The train came. Passengers go to the station square and with satisfied grimaces stop in front of the car. They did not expect that the idea of ​​car rental had already penetrated into the backwoods of Arbatov. Blowing a horn, Kozlevich rushes passengers to the Peasant's House.

There is work for the whole day, everyone is happy to use the services of a mechanical crew. Kozlevich and his faithful "Loren Dietrich" are indispensable participants in all city weddings, excursions and celebrations. But most of the work is in the summer. On Sundays, whole families go out of town in Kozlevich's car. The senseless laughter of children is heard, the wind pulls scarves and ribbons, women babble merrily, fathers of the family look respectfully at the driver’s leather back and ask him about the state of the automobile business in the United States of North America (is it true, in particular, that Ford buys daily a new car?).

This is how Kozlevich imagined his new wonderful life in Arbatov. But reality in the shortest possible time destroyed the air castle built by the imagination of Adam Kazimirovich with all its turrets, drawbridges, weathercocks and a standard.

First summed up the railway schedule. Fast and courier trains passed the Arbatov station without stopping, taking wands on the move and dropping hasty mail. Mixed trains came only twice a week. They brought more and more small people: walkers and shoemakers with knapsacks, stocks and petitions. As a rule, mixed passengers did not use the car. There were no excursions and celebrations, and Kozlevich was not invited to weddings. In Arbatov, for wedding processions, they used to hire cab drivers, who in such cases wove paper roses and chrysanthemums into horse manes, which the planted fathers really liked.

However, there were many country walks. But they were not at all what Adam Kazimirovich dreamed of. There were no children, no fluttering scarves, no merry babble.

On the very first evening, illuminated by dim kerosene lanterns, four men approached Adam Kazimirovich, who had stood fruitlessly all day on Spaso-Kooperativnaya Square. For a long time and silently they peered into the car. Then one of them, a hunchback, asked uncertainly:

Can everyone ride?

Everyone,” Kozlevich replied, surprised at the timidity of the Arbatov citizens. - Five rubles an hour.

The men whispered. The driver heard strange sighs and the words: "Let's take a ride, comrades, after the meeting? Is it convenient? Twenty-five rubles per person is not expensive.

And for the first time, a roomy machine accepted the Arbatovites into its calico bosom. For several minutes, the passengers were silent, overwhelmed by the speed of movement, the hot smell of gasoline and the whistles of the wind. Then, tormented by a vague foreboding, they quietly dragged on: "Fast as waves are the days of our lives." Kozlevich took the third gear. The gloomy outlines of a mothballed food tent flashed by, and the car jumped out into the field, onto the lunar path.

"As the day goes, our way to the grave is shorter," the passengers languidly deduced. They felt sorry for themselves, it was a shame that they had never been students. They sang the chorus with loud voices:

"A glass, a little, tirlim-bom-bom, tirlim-bom-bom."

Stop! the hunchback suddenly shouted. - Come back! The soul is on fire.

In the city, riders captured many white bottles and some broad-shouldered citizen. They set up a bivouac in the field, had dinner with vodka, and then, without music, they danced a polka-coquette.

Exhausted by the night's adventure, Kozlevich dozed all day at the helm in his parking lot. And in the evening, yesterday's company appeared, already tipsy, got into the car again and rushed around the city all night. The same thing happened on the third day. Night feasts of a cheerful company, led by a hunchback, continued for two weeks in a row. The joys of motorization had a strange effect on Adam Kazimirovich's clients: their faces swelled up and turned white in the dark, like pillows. A hunchback with a piece of sausage hanging from his mouth looked like a ghoul.

They became fussy and, in the midst of their merriment, sometimes wept. Once a troubled hunchback brought a bag of rice to the car in a cab. At dawn, the rice was taken to the village, exchanged there for moonshine-pervach, and on that day they did not return to the city. They drank with the peasants on brotherhood, sitting on stacks. And at night they lit bonfires and wept especially plaintively.

On the greyish morning that followed, the Lineets railway cooperative, in which the hunchback was the manager, and his merry comrades were members of the board and the shop commission, closed for the rediscount of goods. What was the bitter surprise of the auditors when they found neither flour, nor pepper, nor laundry soap, nor peasant troughs, nor textiles, nor rice in the store. Shelves, counters, boxes and tubs - everything was bare. Only in the middle of the store on the floor stood giant hunting boots number forty-nine, on yellow cardboard soles, stretched out to the ceiling, and the National automatic cash register, whose nickel-plated lady's bust was dotted with multi-colored buttons, glimmered dimly in a glass booth. And a summons was sent to Kozlevich's apartment from the people's investigator: the driver was called as a witness in the case of the Lineets cooperative.

The hunchback and his friends did not appear again, and the green car stood idle for three days. The new passengers, like the first ones, appeared under the cover of darkness. They also started with an innocent walk out of town, but the thought of vodka arose in them as soon as the car made the first half kilometer. Apparently, the Arbatovites did not imagine how it was possible to use a car while sober, and considered Kozlevich's motor-cart a nest of debauchery, where it was necessary to behave rollickingly, utter obscene cries and generally burn life. Only then did Kozlevich understand why the men passing by his parking lot during the day winked at each other and smiled wickedly.

Everything did not go at all as Adam Kazimirovich expected. At night, he rushed past the surrounding groves with his headlights on, hearing the drunken fuss and screams of passengers behind him, and during the day, stupefied with insomnia, he sat at the investigators and gave evidence. For some reason, the Arbatovites spent their lives on the money that belonged to the state, society and cooperation. And Kozlevich, against his will, again plunged into the abyss of the Criminal Code, into the world of chapter three, which instructively speaks of malfeasance.

Lawsuits have begun. And in each of them, Adam Kazimirovich was the main witness for the prosecution. His truthful stories knocked the defendants off their feet, and they, choking in tears and snot, confessed to everything. He destroyed many institutions. His last victim was the branch office of the regional film organization, which shot the historical film "Stenka Razin and the Princess" in Arbatov. The entire branch was hidden for six years, and the film, which was of narrow judicial interest, was transferred to the museum of material evidence, where hunting boots from the Lineets cooperative were already located.

After that came the collapse. The green car began to be feared like the plague. Citizens bypassed Spaso-Kooperativnaya Square, where Kozlevich erected a striped pole with a sign: "Automobile Exchange". For several months, Adam didn't make a dime and lived off the savings he made from his overnight trips.

Then he made sacrifices. On the car door, he brought out a white and, in his opinion, very tempting inscription: "Oh, I'll give it a ride!" - and reduced the price from five rubles an hour to three. But the citizens did not change tactics here either. The driver slowly traveled around the city, drove up to the institutions and shouted through the windows:

What air! Let's ride, shall we?

Officials leaned out into the street and, to the roar of underwoods, answered:

Ride yourself. Murderer!

Why the killer? - almost crying, asked Kozlevich.

There is a murderer, - the employees answered, - you will let me down for an exit session.

And you would ride on yours! the driver shouted passionately. - With my own money.

At these words, the officials exchanged humorous glances and locked the windows. Riding in a car with their own money seemed just stupid to them.

Owner of "Oh, let's ride!" quarreled with the whole city. He no longer bowed to anyone, became nervous and angry. Seeing some co-worker in a long Caucasian shirt with balloon sleeves, he drove up behind him and shouted with a bitter laugh:

Fraudsters! And now I'll let you down under the demonstration! Under the one hundred and ninth article.

The sovsluzh shuddered, indifferently adjusted his belt with a silver set, which is usually used to decorate the harness of draft horses, and, pretending that the shouts did not refer to him, quickened his pace. But the vengeful Kozlevich continued to ride alongside and tease the enemy with the monotonous reading of a pocket criminal breviary:

- "The misappropriation by an official of money, valuables or other property that is in his possession by virtue of his official position is punishable ..."

Sovsluzh cowardly ran away, throwing up his back high, flattened from a long sitting on an office stool.

- "... imprisonment, - Kozlevich shouted after him, - for up to three years."

But all this brought the driver only moral satisfaction. His material affairs were not good. Savings were running out. Some decision had to be made. It couldn't go on like this. In such an inflamed state, Adam Kazimirovich once sat in his car, looking with disgust at the stupid striped column "Automobile Exchange". He vaguely understood that an honest life had failed, that the automobile messiah arrived ahead of schedule and the citizens did not believe in him. Kozlevich was so immersed in his sad thoughts that he did not even notice two young people who had been admiring his car for quite a long time.

An original design, one of them finally said, is the dawn of motoring. See, Balaganov, what can be done from a simple Singer sewing machine? A small adaptation - and it turned out to be a lovely collective farm sheaf binder.

Get away, - sullenly said Kozlevich.

So how do you "leave"? Why did you put on your threshing machine an advertising brand "Oh, I'll give it a ride!"? Maybe a friend and I would like to take a business trip? Maybe we just want to eh-ride?

For the first time in the Arbat period of his life, a smile appeared on the face of the martyr of the automotive business. He jumped out of the car and nimbly started the thumping engine.

Please, - he said, - where to take?

This time - nowhere, - Balaganov noticed, - there is no money. Nothing can be done, comrade mechanic, poverty.

Still sit down! - shouted Kozlevich desperately. - I'll give you a gift. Will you not drink? You won't dance naked in the moonlight? Eh! I'll ride!

Well, let's take advantage of the hospitality, - said Ostap, sitting down next to the driver. - I see you have a good character. But why do you think we can dance naked?

There are some here, - answered the driver, bringing the car to the main street, - state criminals.

Where to go now? - with anguish finished Kozlevich. - Where to go?

Ostap hesitated, looked significantly at his red-haired companion, and said:

All your troubles come from the fact that you are a truth seeker. You're just a lamb, a failed Baptist. It is sad to observe such decadent moods among drivers. You have a car - and you don't know where to go. Things are worse for us - we don't have a car. But we know where to go. Do you want us to go together?

Where? the driver asked.

To Chernomorsk,” said Ostap. - We have a little intimate affair. And you will find work. In Chornomorsk, antiques are valued and they are willing to ride on them. Let's go.

At first, Adam Kazimirovich only smiled, like a widow, for whom nothing in life is sweet. But Bender did not spare colors. He unfolded amazing distances in front of the embarrassed driver and immediately painted them blue and pink.

And in Arbatov you have nothing to lose, except for spare chains. You won't go hungry along the way. This is what I take on. Your gasoline - our ideas.

Kozlevich stopped the car and, still resisting, said gloomily:

Not enough gasoline.

Is it enough for fifty kilometers?

Enough for eighty.

In that case, everything is fine. I have already told you that I have no shortage of ideas and thoughts. Exactly after sixty kilometers, a large iron barrel with aviation gasoline will be waiting for you right on the road. Do you like aviation gasoline?

I like it, - Kozlevich answered shyly. Life suddenly seemed easy and fun to him. He wanted to go to Chernomorsk immediately.

And this barrel, - finished Ostap, - you will receive absolutely free of charge. I will say more. You will be asked to accept this gasoline.

What gasoline? whispered Balaganov. - What are you weaving?

Ostap looked importantly at the orange freckles scattered over his foster brother's face, and answered just as quietly:

People who do not read newspapers should be morally killed on the spot. I leave you life only because I hope to re-educate you.

Ostap did not explain what connection exists between reading newspapers and a large barrel of gasoline, which allegedly lies on the road.

I declare a large high-speed run Arbatov-Chernomorsk open, - solemnly said Ostap. - I appoint myself the commander of the run. The driver of the car is credited ... what is your last name? Adam Kozlevich. Citizen Balaganov is approved as a flight mechanic with the assignment of servant duties for everything. Only this, Kozlevich: the inscription "Oh, I'll give it a ride!" should be painted over immediately. We don't need special signs.

Two hours later, a car with a fresh dark green spot on its side slowly fell out of the garage and rolled for the last time through the streets of the city of Arbatov. Hope shone in Kozlevich's eyes. Balaganov sat next to him. He busily rubbed the copper parts with a rag, zealously fulfilling his new duties as a flight mechanic. The commander of the run sprawled on a red seat, looking with satisfaction at his new subordinates.

Adam! he shouted, covering the rumble of the engine. - What is the name of your cart?

- "Loren-Dietrich", - answered Kozlevich.

Well, what is this name? The machine, like a warship, must have its own name. Your "lorenditrich" is remarkable for its remarkable speed and noble beauty of lines. Therefore, I propose to give the car a name - "Gnu Antelope". Who is against? Unanimously.

The green "Antelope", creaking with all its parts, rushed along the outer passage of the Boulevard of Young Talents and flew into the market square.

There, the gaze of the crew of the Antelope presented itself with a strange picture. A man with a white goose under his arm was running bent over from the square towards the highway. With his left hand he held a hard straw hat on his head. A large crowd followed him screaming. The one who was running away often looked back, and one could discern an expression of horror on his handsome actor's face.

Panikovsky is running! shouted Balaganov.

The second stage of stealing a goose,” Ostap remarked coldly. - The third stage will begin after the capture of the culprit. It is accompanied by sensitive beatings.

Panikovsky probably guessed that the third stage was approaching, because he was running at full speed. Out of fear, he did not let go of the goose, and this caused great irritation in the pursuers.

One hundred and sixteenth article, - said Kozlevich by heart. - Secret, as well as open abduction of cattle from the working agricultural and pastoral population.

Balaganov laughed. He was amused by the thought that the violator of the convention would receive legal retribution.

The car pulled out onto the highway, cutting through the noisy crowd.

Save! shouted Panikovsky, when the Antelope drew level with him.

God will give, - answered Balaganov, hanging overboard.

The car doused Panikovsky with clubs of raspberry dust.

Take me! - Panikovsky yelled with the last of his strength, keeping close to the car. - I'm good.

Can we take a bastard? asked Ostap.

No need, - Balaganov answered cruelly, - let him know how to break conventions next time.

But Ostap had already made up his mind.

Panikovsky immediately obeyed. The goose got up unhappily from the ground, scratched itself and, as if nothing had happened, went back to the city.

Get in, - suggested Ostap, - to hell with you! But sin no more, or I will rip out my hands by the roots.

Panikovsky, kicking his feet, grabbed the body, then leaned on the side with his stomach, rolled into the car, as if bathing in a boat, and, clattering his cuffs, fell to the bottom.

Full speed ahead, - commanded Ostap. - The meeting continues.

Balaganov pressed the pear, and old-fashioned, cheerful, suddenly breaking sounds escaped from the brass horn: Matchish is a lovely dance. Ta-ra-ta... Matchish lovely dance. Ta-ra-ta...

And "Antelope-Gnu" escaped into a wild field, towards a barrel of aviation gasoline.

Ordinary suitcase

A man without a hat, in gray canvas trousers, leather sandals worn on bare feet like a monk, and a collarless white shirt, bowing his head, stepped out of the low gate of house number sixteen. Finding himself on a pavement paved with bluish stone slabs, he stopped and said in a low voice:

Today is Friday. So, you have to go to the station again.

After saying those words, the man in the sandals quickly turned around. It seemed to him that a citizen with a zinc muzzle was a spy standing behind him. But Little Tangent Street was completely empty.

The June morning was just beginning to take shape. The acacias trembled, dropping cold tin dew on the flat stones. Street birds clicked some cheerful rubbish. At the end of the street, below, behind the roofs of the houses, the molten, heavy sea burned. Young dogs, sadly looking around and clattering their claws, climbed onto the dustbins. The hour of the janitors has already passed, the hour of the milkmaids has not yet begun.

There was that interval between five and six o'clock when the janitors, having swung their prickly brooms to their heart's content, had already dispersed to their tents, the city was bright, clean and quiet, like in a state bank. At such a moment, one wants to cry and believe that curdled milk is actually healthier and tastier than bread wine; but distant thunder is already heard: milkmaids with cans are being unloaded from suburban trains. Now they will rush into the city and, on the landings of the back stairs, will start the usual quarrel with housewives. Workers with purses will appear for a moment and immediately disappear through the factory gates. Smoke rises from factory chimneys. And then, bouncing with anger, a myriad of alarm clocks will ring out on the night tables (Pavel Bure - quieter, precision mechanics trusts - louder), and Soviet employees will moan half-awake, falling from high girls' beds. The hour of the milkmaids will end, the hour of the service people will come.

But it was still early, the employees were still sleeping under their ficuses. The man in sandals walked the whole city, meeting almost no one on the way. He walked under the acacias, which in Chernomorsk carried some public functions: some of them hung blue mailboxes with the departmental coat of arms (envelope and lightning), while others were chained to tin tubs with water for dogs.

A man in sandals arrived at the Seaside Station just as the milkmaids were coming out. Hitting painfully several times on their iron shoulders, he went to the luggage storage room and presented a receipt. The baggage keeper, with an unnatural strictness, accepted only on railways, glanced at the receipt and immediately threw out his suitcase to the bearer. The bearer, in turn, unbuttoned his leather purse, with a sigh took out a ten-kopeck coin and placed it on the luggage counter, made of six old rails polished by elbows.

Finding himself on the station square, the man in sandals placed the suitcase on the pavement, carefully looked it over from all sides, and even touched its white briefcase clasp with his hand. It was an ordinary suitcase, concocted from wood and covered with artificial fiber.

In suitcases like these, younger passengers contain Sketch cotton socks, two changes of sweatshirts, one hair-keeper, panties, a pamphlet called The Tasks of the Komsomol in the Village, and three hard-boiled squashed eggs. In addition, in the corner there is always a lump of dirty laundry wrapped in the newspaper "Economic Life". Older passengers keep in such a suitcase a full suit and separately to it trousers made of plaid fabric, known as the "Centenary of Odessa", roller suspenders, slippers with tongues, a bottle of triple cologne and a white Marseilles blanket. It should be noted that in this case, too, there is something wrapped in "Economic Life" in the corner. But this is no longer dirty laundry, but pale boiled chicken.

Satisfied with a cursory inspection, the man in sandals grabbed a suitcase and climbed into a white tropical tram car that delivered him to the other end of the city - to the East Station. Here his actions were directly opposite to what he had just done at the Seaside Station. He deposited his suitcase and received a receipt from the great baggage keeper.

Having made these strange evolutions, the owner of the suitcase left the station just at the time when the most exemplary employees already appeared on the streets. He interfered with their discordant columns, after which his costume lost all originality. The man in sandals was an employee, and employees in Chernomorsk almost all dressed in an unwritten fashion: a nightgown with sleeves rolled up above the elbows, light orphan trousers, the same sandals or canvas shoes. Nobody wore hats and caps. From time to time only a cap came across, and most often black tresses raised on end, and even more often, like a melon on a chestnut, a sun-tanned bald head shimmered, on which one really wanted to write some word with an indelible pencil.

The institution in which the man in sandals served was called "Hercules" and was located in a former hotel. A revolving glass door with brass steamer rails pushed him into a large pink marble vestibule. An information desk was located in a grounded elevator. From there, a laughing female face was already peeking out. Having run a few steps out of inertia, the newcomer stopped in front of an old porter in a cap with a gold zigzag on the band and asked in a valiant voice:

Well, old man, is it time for the crematorium?

It's time, father, - the porter answered, smiling joyfully, - to our Soviet columbarium.

He even waved his hands. His kind face showed complete readiness, even now, to indulge in a fiery burial.

In Chernomorsk, they were going to build a crematorium with an appropriate room for coffin urns, that is, a columbarium, and for some reason this innovation on the part of the cemetery subdivision amused the citizens a lot. Maybe they were amused by their new words - crematorium and columbarium, or maybe they were especially amused by the very idea that a person can be burned like a log - but only they pestered all the old men and old women in trams and on the streets with shouts: "Where are you going, old lady? Are you in a hurry to the crematorium?" Or: "Let the old man go ahead, it's time for him to go to the crematorium." And surprisingly, the old people liked the idea of ​​a fiery burial very much, so that funny jokes aroused their complete approval. In general, talk about death, which until now was considered uncomfortable and impolite, began to be quoted in Chernomorsk on a par with anecdotes from Jewish and Caucasian life and aroused general interest.

Having rounded the naked marble girl who was located at the beginning of the stairs, who held an electric torch in her raised hand, and looking with displeasure at the poster: “The purge of Hercules begins. Down with the conspiracy of silence and mutual responsibility,” the employee went up to the second floor. He worked in the finance department. There were still fifteen minutes left before the start of classes, but Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musician, Chevazhevskaya, Kukushkind, Borisokhlebsky and Lapidus Jr. were already sitting at their tables. They were not at all afraid of purges, in what they did not; they reassured each other once, but recently, for some reason, they began to come to the service as early as possible. Taking advantage of the few minutes of free time, they were talking noisily among themselves. Their voices boomed in the huge hall, which in the old days was a hotel restaurant. This was reminiscent of a ceiling in carved oak caissons and painted walls, where maenads, naiads and dryads tumbled with terrifying smiles.

Have you heard the news, Koreiko? - Lapidus Jr. asked the newcomer. - Haven't you heard? Well? You will be amazed.

What news?.. Hello, comrades! Koreiko said. - Hello, Anna Vasilievna!

You can't even imagine! - Lapidus Jr. said with pleasure. - Berlaga's accountant ended up in a lunatic asylum.

Yes, what are you saying? Berlaga? After all, he's a normal person!

Until yesterday he was the most normal, but since today he has become the most abnormal, - Borisokhlebsky entered the conversation. - It is a fact. I got a call from his brother-in-law. Berlaga has a serious mental illness, a calcaneal nerve disorder.

One must only be surprised that we all do not yet have a disorder of this nerve, - old man Kukushkind remarked ominously, looking at his colleagues through oval nickel-plated glasses.

Do not croak, - said Chevazhevskaya. - He always makes me sad.

All the same, I feel sorry for Berlag,” Dreyfus replied, turning on his helical stool to face society.

Society tacitly agreed with Dreyfus. Only Lapidus Jr. smiled enigmatically. The conversation turned to the subject of the behavior of the mentally ill; they started talking about maniacs, several stories about famous madmen were told.

Here I have, - Sakharkov exclaimed, - there was a crazy uncle who imagined himself to be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the same time! Imagine the noise he made!

And Jacob? Sakharkov asked mockingly.

Yes! And Jacob! Kukushkind suddenly squealed. - And Jacob! It's Jacob. You live in such a nervous time ... That's when I worked in the banking office "Sikomorsky and Tsesarevich", then there was no purge.

At the word "purge" Lapidus Jr. started up, took Koreiko by the arm and led him to a huge window, on which two Gothic knights were lined with colored glass.

You still don’t know the most interesting thing about Berlaga,” he whispered. - Berlaga is healthy as a bull.

How? So he's not in a lunatic asylum?

No, crazy. Lapidus smiled thinly.

That's the whole trick: He just got scared of the purge and decided to sit out the worrying time. He pretended to be crazy. Now he is probably growling and laughing. Here's the dodger! Even enviable!

Does he have any wrong parents? Merchants? Foreign element?

Yes, and the parents are not in order, and he himself, speaking between us, had a pharmacy. Who could have known that there would be a revolution? People settled down as best they could, some had a pharmacy, and some even a factory. I personally don't see anything wrong with that. Who could know?

You should have known,” Koreiko said coldly.

So I say, - quickly picked up Lapidus, - there is no place for such people in a Soviet institution.

And, looking at Koreiko with widened eyes, he retired to his table.

The hall was already filled with employees, elastic metal rulers shining with herring silver, abacuses with palm bones, thick books engraved with pink and blue lines, and many other small and large stationery utensils were taken out of the drawers. Tezoimenitsky tore yesterday's leaf from the calendar - a new day had begun, and one of the employees had already sunk his young teeth into a long sandwich with lamb pate.

Koreiko also sat down at his table. Placing his tanned elbows on his desk, he began to make entries in the account book.

Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, one of the most insignificant employees of the Hercules, was a man in the last fit of his youth - he was thirty-eight years old. Yellow wheat eyebrows and white eyes sat on a red wax face. English tendrils also looked like ripe cereal in color. His face would have seemed quite young if it were not for the coarse corporal folds that crossed his cheeks and neck. In the service, Alexander Ivanovich behaved like a conscripted soldier: he did not reason, he was diligent, hardworking, searching and stupid.

He is kind of timid, - the head of the financial account said about him, - some kind of too humiliated, some kind of betrayed too much. As soon as they announce a loan subscription, he is already climbing with his monthly salary. The first to sign is - And the whole salary is forty-six rubles. I would like to know how he exists with this money ...

Alexander Ivanovich had an amazing feature. He instantly multiplied and divided in his mind large three-digit and four-digit numbers. But this did not free Koreiko from the reputation of a dumb guy.

Listen, Alexander Ivanovich, - the neighbor asked, - how much is eight hundred thirty-six by four hundred twenty-three?

Three hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight,” answered Koreiko, after a moment's hesitation.

And the neighbor did not check the result of the multiplication, because he knew that the stupid Koreiko was never wrong.

Another would have made a career in his place, - said Sakharkov, and Dreyfus, and Tezoimenitsky, and the Musician, and Chevazhevskaya, and Borisokhlebsky, and Lapidus Jr., and the old fool Kukushkind, and even Berlag's accountant who had fled to a madhouse, - and this - hat! All his life he will sit on his forty-six rubles.

And, of course, Alexander Ivanovich's colleagues, and the head of the financial account Comrade Arnikov himself, and not only him, but even Serna Mikhailovna, the personal secretary of the head of the entire "Hercules" Comrade Polykhaev - well, in a word, everyone would be extremely surprised if they knew that Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, the humblest of clerks, only an hour ago was dragging for some reason from one station to another suitcase, in which were not trousers "Centenary of Odessa", not a pale chicken, and not some "Tasks of the Komsomol in the countryside", and ten million rubles in foreign currency and Soviet banknotes.

In 1915, the tradesman Sasha Koreiko was a twenty-three-year-old idler from among those who are rightly called retired high school students. He did not graduate from the real school, did not take up any business, staggered to the boulevards and fed himself with his parents. He was saved from military service by his uncle, the clerk of the military commander, and therefore he listened without fear to the cries of the half-mad newspaperman:

Latest telegrams! Ours are coming! God bless! Many dead and wounded! God bless!

At that time, Sasha Koreiko imagined the future in this way: he was walking down the street - and suddenly, at the gutter, showered with zinc stars, under the very wall, he found a cherry leather wallet creaking like a saddle. There is a lot of money in the wallet, two thousand five hundred rubles ... And then everything will be extremely good.

He had so often imagined how he would find the money that he even knew exactly where it would happen. On Poltava Victory Street, in the asphalt corner formed by the ledge of the house, near the star trough. There he lies, a leather benefactor, lightly sprinkled with dry acacia, next to a flattened cigarette butt. Sasha went to Poltava Pobedy Street every day, but, to his extreme surprise, there was no wallet. He stirred the rubbish with the gymnasium stack and stared blankly at the enamelled plaque hanging by the front door - "Tax Inspector Yu.M. Soloveisky." And Sasha staggered home, collapsed on a red plush sofa and dreamed of wealth, deafened by the beats of his heart and pulses. The pulses were small, angry, impatient.

The revolution of the seventeenth year drove Koreiko from the plush sofa. He realized that he could become a happy heir to rich people unknown to him. He felt that all over the country there was now a great amount of stray gold, jewelry, excellent furniture, paintings and carpets, fur coats and services. It is only necessary not to miss a minute and quickly grab wealth.

But then he was still stupid and young. He seized a large apartment, the owner of which had prudently left on a French steamer for Constantinople, and openly lived there. For a whole week he grew into someone else's rich life of a disappeared merchant, drank the nutmeg found in the buffet, eating it with a ration of herring, dragged various trinkets to the market and was quite surprised when he was arrested.

He was released from prison after five months. He did not abandon his idea of ​​becoming a rich man, but he understood that this business required secrecy, obscurity and gradualness. It was necessary to put on a protective skin, and she came to Alexander Ivanovich in the form of high orange boots, bottomless blue breeches and a long jacket of a food supply worker.

In that restless time, everything made by human hands served worse than before: houses were not saved from the cold, food did not saturate, electricity was lit only on the occasion of a large round-up of deserters and bandits, water supply only supplied water to the first floors, and trams did not work at all. All the same, the elemental forces became more vicious and dangerous: the winters were colder than before, the wind was stronger, and the cold, which used to put a person to bed for three days, now killed him in the same three days. And young people with no specific occupation wandered the streets in groups, recklessly singing a song about money that had lost its value:

I fly into the buffet, Not a penny of money, Exchange ten million ...

Alexander Ivanovich saw with concern how the money that he made with great tricks turned into nothing.

Typhoid brought down people by the thousands. Sasha traded medicines stolen from the warehouse. He made five hundred million on typhoid, but the exchange rate turned it into five million in a month. He made a billion on sugar. The course turned this money into powder.

During this period, one of his most successful cases was the abduction of a block train with food going to the Volga. Koreiko was the commandant of the train. The train left Poltava for Samara, but did not reach Samara, and did not return to Poltava. He disappeared without a trace along the way. Alexander Ivanovich disappeared with him.

Underworld

Orange boots surfaced in Moscow at the end of 1922. A greenish bekesha on golden fox fur reigned over the boots. A raised lambskin collar, resembling a quilted blanket from the inside, protected the valiant mug with Sevastopol forecastles from the frost. On the head of Alexander Ivanovich was placed a lovely curly hat.

And in Moscow at that time, new motors with crystal lanterns were already running, fast-rich people were moving along the streets in fur seals and fur coats lined with patterned lira fur. Pointy-nosed Gothic boots and briefcases with suitcase straps and handles came into fashion. The word "citizen" began to crowd out the usual word "comrade", and some young people, who quickly realized what exactly the joy of life was, were already dancing in the Dixie one-step restaurants and even the Sun Flower foxtrot. Over the city there was a cry of reckless drivers, and in the large house of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the tailor Zhurkevich scribbled tailcoats day and night for Soviet diplomats serving abroad.

Alexander Ivanovich was surprised to see that his attire, considered in the provinces as a sign of masculinity and wealth, here in Moscow is a relic of antiquity and casts an unfavorable shadow on its owner.

Two months later, a new establishment was opened on Sretensky Boulevard under the sign "Revenge Industrial Chemical Products Artel", the Artel had two rooms. with red silk thread. Orange over the knee boots and rough half-tanks disappeared. Alexander Ivanovich's cheeks were well shaved. In the back room there was a production. There were two oak barrels with pressure gauges and water-measuring glasses, one on the floor, the other on the mezzanine. The barrels were connected by a thin klyster a pipe through which liquid ran, busily murmuring. When all the liquid passed from the upper vessel to the lower one, a boy in felt boots appeared in the production room. Sighing not like a child, the boy scooped up liquid from the lower barrel with a bucket, dragged it to the mezzanine and poured it into top barrel. Having finished this complex production process, the boy went to the office sobbing again rushed from the clyster tube: the liquid made its usual path - from the upper reservoir to the lower one.

Alexander Ivanovich himself did not know exactly what kind of chemicals the Revenge artel was producing. He didn't care for chemicals. His working day was packed already. He moved from bank to bank, applying for loans to expand production. In trusts, he entered into contracts for the supply of chemical products and received raw materials at a fixed price. He also received loans. A lot of time was taken away by the resale of the received raw materials to state factories at a tenfold price, and currency affairs on the black exchange, at the foot of the monument to the heroes of Plevna, absorbed a lot of energy.

After a year, banks and trusts had a desire to find out how beneficially the financial and raw material assistance rendered to the development of the Revenge promartel was reflected in it, and whether a healthy private trader still needs any assistance. The commission, hung with learned beards, arrived at the artel "Revenge" on three spans. In the empty office, the chairman of the commission gazed for a long time at Engels' indifferent face and pounded on the spruce counter with a stick, calling out the leaders and members of the artel. Finally, the door of the production room opened, and a tear-stained boy with a bucket in his hand appeared before the eyes of the commission.

From a conversation with a young representative of "Revenge", it turned out that the production was in full swing and that the owner had not come for a week. The commission did not stay long in the production room. The liquid, so busily gurgling in the clysteric intestine, in taste, color and chemical content, resembled ordinary water, which in reality it was. After certifying this incredible fact, the chairman of the commission said "hm" and looked at the members, who also said "hm". Then the chairman looked at the boy with a terrible smile and asked:

What year are you?

The twelfth passed, - answered - the boy. And he burst into such sobs that the members of the commission, pushing, ran out into the street and, having settled on the spans, left in complete embarrassment. As for the "Revenge" artel, all its operations were recorded in the bank and trust books on the "Account of Profits and Losses", and precisely in that section of this account that does not mention profits in a word, but is entirely devoted to losses.

On the very day when the commission was having a significant conversation with the boy in the Revenge office, Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko disembarked from a sleeping car of direct communication in a small grape republic, three thousand kilometers away from Moscow.

He opened the window in the hotel room and saw a town in an oasis, with bamboo plumbing, with a crappy clay fortress, a town fenced off from the sands by poplars and full of Asiatic noise.

The very next day he learned that the republic had begun building an electric station. He also learned that there was always a shortage of money and that the building, on which the future of the republic depended, might stop.

And a healthy private trader decided to help the republic. He again plunged into orange boots, put on a skullcap and, taking a pot-bellied briefcase, moved to the construction management.

He was received not particularly kindly; but he behaved very dignifiedly, did not ask for anything for himself, and emphasized mainly that the idea of ​​electrifying the backward outskirts was extremely close to his heart.

Your construction, - he said, - does not have enough money. I'll get them.

And he proposed to organize a profitable auxiliary enterprise during the construction of the power plant.

What could be easier! We will be selling building postcards and this will bring in the funds the building needs. Remember: you will not give anything, you will only receive.

Alexander Ivanovich resolutely chopped the air with his palm, his words seemed convincing, the project was correct and profitable. Having secured an agreement under which he received a quarter of all the profits from the postcard enterprise, Koreiko began to work.

First, working capital was needed. They had to be taken from the money allocated for the construction of the station. There was no other money in the republic.

Nothing, - he consoled the builders, - remember: from now on you will only receive.

Alexander Ivanovich, on horseback, inspected the gorge, where the concrete parallelepipeds of the future station were already rising, and at one glance appreciated the picturesqueness of the porphyry rocks. Behind him on Lineyka, photographers rolled into the gorge. They surrounded the construction with jointed, ankle-length tripods, hid under black shawls and clicked the shutters for a long time. When everything was filmed, one of the photographers pulled down his shawl and said judiciously:

It would be better, of course, to build this station to the left, against the background of the monastery ruins, it is much more picturesque there.

To print postcards, it was decided to build their own printing house as soon as possible. The money, like the first time, was taken from construction funds. Therefore, some work had to be curtailed at the power plant. But everyone was consoled by the fact that the profits from the new enterprise would make it possible to make up for lost time.

The printing house was built in the same gorge, opposite the station. And soon, not far from the concrete parallelepipeds of the station, the concrete parallelepipeds of the printing house appeared. Gradually barrels of cement, iron rods, bricks and gravel moved from one end of the gorge to the other. Then the workers also made an easy transition through the gorge - they paid more on the new building.

Six months later, distributors in striped pants appeared at all railway stops. They traded in postcards depicting the rocks of the grape republic, among which grandiose works were going on. In summer gardens, theatres, cinemas, on steamboats and resorts young ladies-sheep spun the glazed drums of the charitable lottery. The lottery was a win-win - each win was a postcard with a view of the electric gorge.

Koreiko's words came true - revenues flowed in from all sides. But Alexander Ivanovich did not let them out of his hands. He took the fourth part for himself under the contract, appropriated the same amount, referring to the fact that not all agency caravans had yet received reports, and used the rest of the funds to expand the charitable plant.

You have to be a good owner," he said quietly, "first let's put things right, then real incomes will appear.

By this time, the Marion excavator, removed from the power plant, was digging a deep pit for a new printing house. Work at the power plant has stopped. The building was deserted. Only photographers were busy there and black shawls flashed by.

The business flourished, and Alexander Ivanovich, whose face did not leave an honest Soviet smile, began printing postcards with portraits of film actors.

As usual, one evening a plenipotentiary commission arrived in a shaky car. Alexander Ivanovich did not hesitate, cast a farewell glance at the cracked foundation of the power plant, at the grandiose, full of light building of an auxiliary enterprise, and set the rattle.

Hm! - said the chairman, picking with a stick in the cracks of the foundation. - Where is the power plant?

He looked at the committee members, who in turn said "um." There was no power plant.

But in the building of the printing house, the commission found the work in full swing. Violet lamps shone, and flat-panel presses flapped their wings in concern. Three of them baked the gorge in one color, and from the fourth, multi-colored, like cards from the sleeve of a card sharp, flew out postcards with portraits of Douglas Fairbanks in a black half-mask on a thick samovar muzzle, charming Lia de Putti and a nice guy with bulging eyes, known as Monty Banks.

And for a long time after this memorable evening, show trials were going on in the open-air gorge. And Alexander Ivanovich added half a million rubles to his capital.

His little evil pulses were still beating impatiently. He felt that right now, when the old economic system had disappeared, and the new one was just beginning to live, great wealth could be created. But he already knew that an open struggle for enrichment in the Soviet country was unthinkable. And with a smile of superiority, he looked at the lonely Nepmen, rotting under the signs:

"Trade in goods of the worsted trust B.A. Leybedev", "Brass and utensils for churches and clubs" or "Grocery store X. Robinson named after Pyatnitsa".

Under the pressure of the state press, the financial base of both Leybedev, and Pyatnitsa, and the owners of the musical false artel "There is a tambourine ringing" is cracking.

Koreiko realized that now only underground trade based on the strictest secrecy is possible. All the crises that shook the young economy benefited him, everything that the state lost on brought him income. He broke into every commodity gap and carried away his hundred thousand from there. He traded in bakery products, cloth, sugar, textiles - everything. And he was alone, completely alone with his millions. In different parts of our country, big and small rogues worked, but they did not know for whom they were working. Koreiko acted only through figureheads. And only he himself knew the length of the chain along which the money went to him.

Exactly at twelve o'clock Alexander Ivanovich pushed aside his account book and started breakfast. He took a raw turnip, which had been peeled beforehand, out of the box and, dignifiedly looking ahead of himself, ate it. Then he swallowed a cold soft-boiled egg. Cold soft-boiled eggs - the food is very tasteless, and a good, cheerful person will never eat them. But Alexander Ivanovich did not eat, but ate. He did not have breakfast, but performed the physiological process of introducing the proper amount of fats, carbohydrates and vitamins into the body.

All the Herculeans crowned their breakfast with tea, Alexander Ivanovich drank a glass of boiling water as a bite. Tea excites excessive activity of the heart, and Koreiko valued his health.

The owner of ten million was like a boxer prudently preparing his triumph. He obeys a special regimen, does not drink or smoke, tries to avoid excitement, trains and goes to bed early - all in order to jump out into the shining ring on the appointed day as a happy winner. Alexander Ivanovich wanted to be young and fresh on the day when everything will return to the old and he will be able to get out of the underground, fearlessly opening his ordinary suitcase. Koreiko never doubted that the old would return. He saved himself for capitalism.

And so that no one would guess his second and main life, he led a miserable existence, trying not to go beyond the forty-six-ruble salary that he received for miserable and tedious work in the financial accounting department, painted with maenads, dryads and naiads.

"Gnu Antelope"

The green box with the four crooks raced along the smoky road.

The machine was subjected to the pressure of the same forces of the elements, which are experienced by a swimmer swimming in stormy weather. She was suddenly knocked down by a bump, pulled into the pits, thrown from side to side and doused with red sunset dust.

Listen, student,” Ostap turned to the new passenger, who had already recovered from the recent shock and was sitting carelessly next to the commander, “how dare you violate the Sukharev convention, this venerable pact approved by the League of Nations tribunal?

Panikovsky pretended not to hear, and even turned away.

And in general, - continued Ostap, - you have an unclean grip. We just witnessed a disgusting scene. The Arbatovites were chasing you, from whom you stole a goose.

Pitiful, worthless people! Panikovsky muttered angrily.

That's how! - said Ostap. - Do you consider yourself, obviously, a public doctor? Gentleman? Then here's the thing: if you, like a languishing gentleman, get into the idea of ​​making notes on your cuffs, you will have to - write with chalk.

Why? the new passenger asked irritably.

Because they are completely black. Isn't it from dirt?

You are a miserable, worthless person! - quickly said Panikovsky.

And you're talking to me, your savior? - meekly asked Ostap, - Adam Kazimirovich, stop your car for a minute. Thank you. Shura, my dear, please restore the status quo.

Balaganov did not understand what "status quo" means. But he was guided by the intonation with which these words were uttered. Smiling nastily, he took Panikovsky under his arms, carried him out of the car and put him on the road.

Student, go back to Arbatov,” Ostap said dryly, “there the owners of the goose are impatiently waiting for you. We don't need rude people. We ourselves are rude. Let's go.

I won't do it again! Panikovsky pleaded. - I'm nervous!

Get on your knees, - said Ostap. Panikovsky sank down on his knees so hastily, as if his legs had been cut off.

Fine! - said Ostap. - Your posture satisfies me. You are accepted conditionally, until the first violation of discipline, with the imposition on you of the duties of a servant for everything.

The Gnu Antelope accepted the resigned brute and rolled on, swaying like a funeral chariot.

Half an hour later, the car turned onto the large Novozaitsevsky tract and, without slowing down, drove into the village. People gathered near the log house, on the roof of which grew a gnarled and crooked radio mast. A man without a beard stepped forward decisively from the crowd. The beardless man held a piece of paper in his hand.

Comrades,” he shouted angrily, “I consider the ceremonial meeting open! Allow me, comrades, to count this applause... He apparently prepared a speech and was already looking at the paper, but, noticing that the car was not stopping, he did not begin to expand.

All in Avtodor! he said hurriedly, looking at Ostap, who had caught up with him. - We will establish mass production of Soviet cars. The iron horse is replacing the peasant horse.

And already in pursuit of the departing car, covering the congratulatory rumble of the crowd, he laid out the last slogan:

A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation.

With the exception of Ostap, all the Antelopovites were somewhat uneasy about the solemn welcome. Understanding nothing, they twirled in the car like sparrows in a nest. Panikovsky, who generally did not like large concentrations of honest people in one place, cautiously squatted down on his haunches, so that only the dirty straw roof of his hat appeared to the eyes of the villagers. But Ostap was not at all embarrassed. He took off his cap with a white top and answered the greetings with a proud inclination of his head first to the right, then to the left.

Improve your roads! he shouted goodbye. - Merci for the reception!

And the car again found itself on a white road that cut through a large quiet field.

Are they after us? Panikovsky asked anxiously. - Why the crowd? What's happened?

It’s just that people have never seen a car,” Balaganov said.

The exchange of impressions continues, - said Bender. - The word for the driver of the car. What is your opinion, Adam Kazimirovich?

The driver thought, frightened the dog that had foolishly ran out into the road with the sounds of the match, and suggested that the crowd had gathered on the occasion of the Temple holiday.

Holidays of this kind, - the driver of the Antelope explained, - are often held by the villagers.

Yes, said Ostap. - Now I clearly see that I got into a society of uncultured people, that is, tramps without a higher education. Ah, children, dear children of Lieutenant Schmidt, why don't you read the papers? They need to be read. They quite often sow what is reasonable, good, eternal.

Ostap took Izvestia out of his pocket and in a loud voice read to the crew of the Antelope a note about the Moscow-Kharkov-Moscow rally.

Now,” he said smugly, “we are on the rally line, about a hundred and fifty kilometers ahead of the lead car. I guess you already guessed what I'm talking about?

The lower ranks of the Antelope were silent. Panikovsky unbuttoned his jacket and scratched his bare chest under his dirty silk tie.

So you don't understand? As you can see, in some cases even reading newspapers does not help. Well, I will speak in more detail, although this is not in my rules. First, the peasants took the "Antelope" for the lead car of the rally. Secondly, we do not renounce this title, moreover, we will appeal to all institutions and individuals with a request to provide us with appropriate assistance, emphasizing precisely that we are the head machine. Third ... However, two points are enough for you. It is quite clear that for some time we will stay ahead of the rally, skimming foam, cream and similar sour cream from this highly cultured undertaking.

The speech of the great strategist made a huge impression. Kozlevich cast devoted glances at the commander. Balaganov rubbed his red curls with his palms and burst into laughter. Panikovsky, in anticipation of a safe profit, shouted "Hurrah."

Well, enough emotions, - said Ostap, - In view of the onset of darkness, I declare the evening open. Stop!

The car stopped, and the tired Antelopians got off to the ground. Grasshoppers forged their little happiness in ripening bread. The passengers were already seated in a circle near the road, and the old Antelope was still boiling: sometimes the body crackled by itself, sometimes a short rattle was heard in the engine.

The inexperienced Panikovsky lit such a large fire that it seemed that the whole village was on fire. Fire, puffing, rushed in all directions. While the travelers were struggling with the pillar of fire, Panikovsky, crouching, ran into the field and returned, holding a warm crooked cucumber in his hand. Ostap quickly pulled it out of Panikovsky's hands, saying:

Do not make a cult out of food.

After that, he ate the cucumber himself. We dined on sausage, taken from the house by the housekeeper Kozlevich, and fell asleep under the stars.

Well, sir, - Ostap Kozlevich said at dawn, - get ready properly. Your mechanical trough has never seen such a day as today and will never see it.

Balaganov grabbed a cylindrical bucket with the inscription "Arbatovsky maternity hospital" and ran to the river for water.

Adam Kazimirovich raised the hood of the car, whistling, put his hands into the engine and began to delve into its copper intestines.

Panikovsky leaned his back on the car wheel and, sullen, looked unblinkingly at the cranberry sunny segment that appeared above the horizon. Panikovsky turned out to have a wrinkled face with many senile trifles: pouches, pulsating veins and strawberry blushes. Such a face happens to a person who has lived a long decent life, has adult children, drinks healthy coffee "Zheludin" in the morning and pees in the institutional wall newspaper under the pseudonym "Antichrist".

Tell you, Panikovsky, how will you die? Ostap said unexpectedly. The old man chuckled and turned around.

You will die like this. One day, when you return to the empty, cold room of the Marseille Hotel (it will be somewhere in the county town where your profession will take you), you will feel bad. Your leg will be taken away. Hungry and unshaven, you will lie on a wooden trestle bed, and no one will come to you. Panikovsky, no one will pity you. You did not give birth to children out of economy, but you abandoned your wives. You will suffer for a whole week. Your agony will be terrible. You will die for a long time, and everyone will get tired of it. You are not quite dead yet, and the bureaucrat who runs the hotel will already write a letter to the public utilities department about issuing a free coffin ... What is your name and patronymic?

Mikhail Samuelevich, - answered the amazed Panikovsky.

On the issuance of a free coffin for citizen M.S. Panikovsky. However, there is no need for tears, you will still last two years. Now - to business. We need to take care of the cultural and propaganda side of our campaign.

Ostap took his obstetrical bag out of the car and laid it on the grass.

My right hand, - said the great strategist, patting the bag on the plump side of the sausage. “This is everything a smart citizen of my age and stature could possibly need.

Bender squatted over the suitcase, like a wandering Chinese conjurer over his magic bag, and one by one began to take out various things. First, he took out a red armband on which was embroidered in gold the word Steward. Then a police cap with the coat of arms of the city of Kyiv lay down on the grass, four decks of cards with the same back, and a bundle of documents with round lilac seals.

The entire crew of the Antelope Wildebeest looked at the bag with respect. And from there, new items appeared.

You are pigeons, - said Ostap, - of course, you will never understand that an honest Soviet pilgrim pilgrim like me cannot do without a doctor's coat.

In addition to the dressing gown, there was also a stethoscope in the bag.

I'm not a surgeon, - said Ostap. - I'm a neurologist, I'm a psychiatrist. I study the souls of my patients. And for some reason I always come across very stupid souls.

Then, the alphabet for the deaf and dumb, charity cards, enamel badges and a poster with a portrait of Bender himself in shalwars and a turban were brought to light. The poster read:

The Priest has arrived

(Famous Bombay Brahmin Yogi)

son of Krepysh Favorite of Rabindranath Tagore YOKANAAN MARUSIDZE

(Honored Artist of the Union Republics)

Rooms based on the experience of Sherlock Holmes. Indian fakir. The chicken is invisible. Candles from Atlantis. Hell tent. Prophet Samuel answers questions from the audience. Materialization of spirits and distribution of elephants. Entrance tickets from 50 k. to 2 p.

A dirty, hand-caught turban appeared after the poster.

I use this fun very rarely, - said Ostap. “Imagine that such advanced people as the heads of railway clubs are most caught on the priest. The work is easy, but annoying. I personally hate to be the favorite of Rabindranath Tagore. And the prophet Samuel is asked the same questions: "Why is there no animal oil for sale?" or: "Are you a Jew?"

In the end, Ostap found what he was looking for: a tin lacquer box with honey paints in porcelain baths and two brushes.

The car that goes in the head of the run should be decorated with at least one slogan, - said Ostap.

And on a long strip of yellowish calico, taken from the same bag, he printed in block letters a brown inscription:

ROAD RIDE - OFF-ROAD AND sloppiness!

The poster was fixed above the car on two twigs. As soon as the car started, the poster arched under the pressure of the wind and took on such a dashing look that there could be no more doubts about the need to bang the car race on impassability, sloppiness, and at the same time, maybe even bureaucracy. The passengers of the Antelope drew themselves up. Balaganov put a cap on his red head, which he constantly carried in his pocket. Panikovsky turned the cuffs on the left side and released them from under the sleeves by two centimeters. Kozlevich cared more about the car than about himself. Before leaving, he washed it with water, and the sun began to play on the uneven sides of the Antelope. The commander himself squinted merrily and bullied his companions.

Left aboard the village! shouted Balaganov, putting his palm to his forehead. - Shall we stop?

Behind us, - said Ostap, - there are five first-class cars. A date with them is not included in our plans. We need to quickly skim the cream. Therefore, I appoint a stop in the city of Udoev. There, by the way, a barrel of fuel should be waiting for us. Go, Kazimirovich.

Answer greetings? Balaganov asked anxiously.

Respond with bows and smiles. Please don't open your mouth. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

The village greeted the lead car cordially. But the usual hospitality here was rather strange. Apparently, the village community was informed that someone would pass, but they did not know who would pass and for what purpose. Therefore, just in case, all the sayings and mottos made over the past few years were extracted. Schoolchildren stood along the street with various old-fashioned posters: "Greetings to the League of Time and its founder, dear comrade Kerzhentsev", "We are not afraid of the bourgeois ringing, we will answer Curzon's ultimatum", "So that our children do not fade away, please organize a nursery."

In addition, there were many posters, executed mainly in Church Slavonic font, with the same greeting: "Welcome!"

All this quickly swept past the travelers. This time they waved their hats confidently. Panikovsky could not resist and, despite the prohibition, jumped up and shouted out an indistinct, politically illiterate greeting. But behind the noise of the engine and the screams of the crowd, no one made out anything.

Hip, hip, hooray! shouted Ostap. Kozlevich opened the muffler, and the car emitted a plume of blue smoke, which caused the dogs running behind the car to sneeze.

How about gasoline? asked Ostap. - Enough for Udoev? We only have thirty kilometers to do. And then we'll take everything.

It should be enough, - Kozlevich answered doubtfully.

Keep in mind, - said Ostap, sternly looking at his army, - I will not allow looting. No breaking the law. I will lead the parade.

Panikovsky and Balaganov were embarrassed.

All that we need, the Udoyevites will give themselves. You will see it now. Prepare a place for bread and salt.

Thirty kilometers "Antelope" ran for an hour and a half. The last kilometer Kozlevich was very fussy, gave in to the gas and ruefully turned his head. But all the efforts, as well as Balaganov's cries and urgings, came to nothing. The brilliant finish, conceived by Adam Kazimirovich, failed due to a lack of gasoline. The car shamefully stopped in the middle of the street, not having reached a hundred meters to the pulpit, killed with coniferous garlands in honor of brave motorists.

Those gathered with loud cries rushed to meet the "Loren-Dietrich" who arrived from the mists of time. The thorns of glory immediately dug into the noble foreheads of the travelers. They were rudely dragged out of the car and rocked with such ferocity, as if they were drowned men and had to be brought back to life at all costs.

Kozlevich remained at the car, while everyone else was taken to the pulpit, where, according to the plan, a flying three-hour meeting was planned. A young man of the chauffeur type pushed his way to Ostap and asked:

How are the other cars?

They fell behind, - Ostap answered indifferently. - Punctures, breakdowns, the enthusiasm of the population. All this delays.

Are you in the commander's car? - the amateur driver did not lag behind. - Kleptunov with you?

I withdrew Kleptunov from the race, - said Ostap with displeasure.

And Professor Pesochnikov? On a Packard?

On the Packard.

And the writer Vera Kruts? the half-driver inquired. - I'd like to see her! On her and on Comrade Nezhinsky. Is he with you too?

You know, - said Ostap, - I'm tired of the run.

Are you at Studebaker?

Excuse me, - he exclaimed with youthful importunity, - but there are no "Lauren-Dietrichs" in the run! I read in the paper that there are two Packards, two Fiats and one Studebaker.

Go to hell with your Studebaker! shouted Ostap. - Who is Studebaker? Is this your cousin Studebaker? Is your dad a Studebaker? What do you stick to a person? They tell him in Russian that "Studebaker" was replaced by "Loren-Dietrich" at the last moment, and he fools his head! "Studebaker!"

The young man had long been pushed aside by the stewards, while Ostap waved his arms for a long time and muttered:

Connoisseurs! You need to kill such connoisseurs! Give him a Studebaker!

In his welcoming speech, the chairman of the commission for the meeting of the rally extended such a long chain of subordinate clauses that he could not get out of them for half an hour. All this time the commander of the run spent in great anxiety. From the height of the pulpit, he followed the suspicious actions of Balaganov and Panikovsky, who darted too animatedly in the crowd. Bender made scary eyes and eventually nailed the children of Lieutenant Schmidt to one place with his alarm.

I am glad, comrades, - Ostap declared in his response speech, - to break the patriarchal silence of the city of Udoev with a car siren. A car, comrades, is not a luxury, but a means of transportation. The iron horse is replacing the peasant horse. We will establish mass production of Soviet cars. Let's hit the rally on off-road and slovenliness. I'm done, comrades. After having a snack, we will continue our long journey.

While the crowd, immovably located around the pulpit, listened to the words of the commander, Kozlevich developed an extensive activity. He filled the tank with gasoline, which, as Ostap had said, turned out to be of the highest purity, shamelessly grabbed three large cans of fuel in reserve, changed the tubes and protectors on all four wheels, grabbed the pump and even the jack. With this, he completely devastated both the base and operational warehouses of the Udoevsky branch of Avtodor.

The road to Chernomorsk was provided with materials. There was, however, no money. But this did not bother the commander. The travelers had a wonderful lunch in Udoev.

You don't have to think about pocket money, - said Ostap, - they are lying on the road, and we will pick them up as needed.

Between the ancient Udoev, founded in 794, and Chernomorsk, founded in 1794, lay a thousand years and a thousand kilometers of unpaved and highway roads.

During this thousand years, various figures appeared on the Udoev-Black Sea highway.

Traveling clerks moved along it with the goods of Byzantine trading firms. To meet them out of the buzzing forest came the Nightingale the Robber, a rude man in an astrakhan hat. He selected the goods, and brought the clerks to the expense. The conquerors with their retinues wandered along this road, peasants passed by, wanderers trudged along with songs.

The life of the country has changed with every century. Clothes changed, weapons improved, potato riots were pacified. People have learned to shave their beards. The first balloon took off. The iron twin steamboat and steam locomotive were invented. Cars blew up.

And the road remained the same as it was under the Nightingale the Robber.

Humpbacked, covered with volcanic mud or covered with dust, poisonous, like powder from bugs, the national road stretched past villages, towns, factories and collective farms, stretched a thousand-mile trap. On its sides, in the yellowing, defiled grasses, the skeletons of carts and tortured, dying cars lie.

Perhaps the emigrant, maddened by the sale of newspapers among the asphalt fields of Paris, recalls the Russian country road with a charming detail of his native landscape: a moon sits in a puddle, crickets pray loudly and an empty bucket tied to a peasant cart tinkles.

But the moonlight has already been assigned another purpose. The moon will be able to shine perfectly on the tarmac. Car sirens and horns will replace the symphonic ringing of a peasant's pail. And crickets can be heard in special reserves; stands will be built there, and the citizens, prepared by the opening speech of some gray-haired cricket expert, will be able to enjoy the singing of their favorite insects to their fullest.

Sweet burden of fame

The commander of the run, the driver of the car, the flight mechanic and the servants felt great for everything.

The morning was cool. A pale sun shone in a pearly sky. A small bird bastard screamed in the grasses.

Road birds "shepherds" slowly crossed the road in front of the very wheels of the car. The steppe horizons exuded such cheerful smells that if in Ostap's place some middle-aged peasant writer from the group "Steel Udder" would not have resisted, he would have got out of the car, sat down in the grass and immediately on the spot would have begun to write on sheets of a travel notebook a new story, beginning with the words: "Indus, the winter crops rose. The sun rose, spread its rays over the white light. Old man Romualdych sniffed his footcloth and already bewitched ..."

But Ostap and his companions were far from poetic perceptions. For the past day they raced ahead of the rally. They were greeted with music and speeches. Children beat drums for them. Adults fed them lunches and dinners, supplied them with pre-prepared auto parts, and in one settlement they brought bread and salt on an oak carved dish with a towel embroidered with crosses. Bread and salt lay at the bottom of the car, between Panikovsky's legs. He kept pinching off pieces from the loaf and eventually made a mouse hole in it. After that, the squeamish Ostap threw bread and salt onto the road. The Antelopians spent the night in the village, surrounded by the cares of the village activists. They took away a large jug of baked milk and a sweet memory of the cologne smell of hay on which they slept.

Milk and hay, - said Ostap, when the Antelope left the village at dawn, - what could be better! Always thinking; "I still have time to do this. There will be a lot more milk and hay in my life." In fact, it will never happen again. So know this: it was the best night of our lives, my poor friends. And you didn't even notice it.

Bender's companions looked at him with respect. They were delighted with the easy life that opened before them.

It's good to live in the world! Balaganov said. - Here we go, we are full. Maybe happiness awaits us...

Are you sure of this? asked Ostap. - Happiness awaits us on the road? Maybe he is still flapping his wings with impatience? "Where," it says, "is Admiral Balaganov? Why has he been gone for so long?" You are crazy, Balaganov! Happiness waits for no one. It roams the country in long white robes, singing a children's song: "Ah, America is a country, they walk and drink without a snack." But this naive baby needs to be caught, she needs to get better, she needs to be looked after. And you, Balaganov, will not have an affair with this baby. You are a rogue. Look who you look like! The man in your suit will never achieve happiness. And in general, the entire crew of the Antelope is disgustingly equipped. I wonder how they still take us for participants in the rally!

Ostap looked at his companions with regret and continued:

Panikovsky's hat definitely confuses me. In general, he is dressed with defiant luxury. That precious tooth, those drawstrings, that hairy chest under the tie... It's easier to dress, Panikovsky! You are a respectable old man. You need a black frock coat and a castor hat. A checkered cowboy shirt and leather leggings will suit Balaganov. And he will immediately take on the appearance of a student involved in physical education. And now he looks like a merchant marine sailor fired for drunkenness. I'm not talking about our respected driver. Severe trials, sent down by fate, prevented him from dressing according to his rank. Can't you see how leather overalls and a black chrome cap would suit his soulful, slightly oiled face? Yes, kids, you need to equip yourself.

There is no money, - said Kozlevich, turning around.

The driver is right,” Ostap answered kindly, “there really is no money. There are no those little metal circles that I love so much. The Wildebeest slipped down the hillock. The fields continued to rotate slowly on both sides of the machine. A great tawny owl sat by the side of the road, its head cocked to one side and its yellow, sightless eyes widening stupidly. Alarmed by the creak of the Antelope, the bird spread its wings, soared over the car and soon flew away on its boring owl business. Nothing else of note happened on the road.

Look! Balaganov suddenly shouted. - Automobile!

Ostap, just in case, ordered to remove the poster admonishing the citizens to hit the slovenliness with a motor rally. While Panikovsky carried out the order, the Antelope approached the oncoming car.

A closed gray Cadillac, leaning slightly, stood at the edge of the road. Central Russian nature, reflected in its thick polished glass, looked cleaner and more beautiful than it actually was. The kneeling driver removed the tire from the front wheel. Three figures in sandy traveling coats languished above him, waiting.

Are you in distress? asked Ostap, politely raising his cap.

The driver raised a tense face and, without answering, went back to work.

The Antelopes climbed out of their green tarantass. Kozlevich walked around the wonderful car several times, sighing enviously, squatted down next to the driver, and soon started a special conversation with him. Panikovsky and Balaganov looked at the passengers with childish curiosity, two of whom had a very arrogant foreign appearance. The third, judging by the stupefying galoshes smell emanating from his rubber-trust raincoat, was a compatriot.

Are you in distress? Ostap repeated, delicately touching his compatriot's rubber shoulder and at the same time fixing a pensive glance on the foreigners.

The compatriot spoke irritably about the burst tire, but his mutterings flew past Ostap's ears. On a high road, one hundred and thirty kilometers from the nearest district center, in the very middle of European Russia, two plump foreign chickens were walking by their car. This excited the great strategist.

Tell me, - he interrupted, - these two are not from Rio de Janeiro?

No, - answered the compatriot, - they are from Chicago. And I am a translator from Intourist.

What are they doing here, at a crossroads, in a wild ancient field, far from Moscow, from the ballet "Red Poppy", from antique shops and the famous painting by the artist Repin "Ivan the Terrible kills his son"? I don't understand! Why did you bring them here?

Well, to hell with them! - the translator said with sorrow. - The third day we are already rushing through the villages, like mad. Completely tortured me. I have had many dealings with foreigners, but I have not yet seen such, - and he waved his hand in the direction of his ruddy companions. - All tourists, like tourists, run around Moscow, buy wooden brothers in handicraft stores. And these two got away. They began to travel through the villages.

This is commendable,” said Ostap. - The broad masses of billionaires get acquainted with the life of the new, Soviet village.

Citizens of the city of Chicago importantly watched the repair of the car. They wore silvery hats, frosted starch collars, and frosted red shoes.

The interpreter looked indignantly at Ostap and exclaimed:

How! So they need a new village! They need village moonshine, not a village!

At the word "moonshine", which the interpreter pronounced with emphasis, the gentlemen looked around uneasily and began to approach the speakers.

Here you see! - said the translator. - They can't hear the words calmly.

Yes. There is some kind of mystery here, - said Ostap, - or perverted tastes. I don’t understand how you can love moonshine when in our country there is a large selection of noble strong drinks.

All this is much simpler than you think, - said the translator. - They are looking for a recipe for making good moonshine.

Well, of course! shouted Ostap. - After all, they have a "dry law." Everything is clear... Did you get the recipe?.. Oh, didn't you get it? Well, yes. Would you come in three more cars! It is clear that you are taken for superiors. You won't get a recipe, I can assure you. The translator began to complain about foreigners:

Believe me, they began to rush at me: tell them the secret of moonshine. And I'm not a bootlegger. I am a member of the Union of Educational Workers. I have an old mother in Moscow.

A. Do you really want to go back to Moscow? To Mom? The translator sighed piteously.

In this case, the meeting continues, - said Bender. - How much will your chefs give for the recipe? Will they give you half a hundred?

They'll give you two hundred,' whispered the interpreter. "Do you really have a recipe?"

I will dictate to you right now, that is, right after receiving the money. Whatever you like: potato, wheat, apricot, barley, mulberry, buckwheat porridge. Even from an ordinary stool you can drive moonshine. Some people love the stool. And then you can simple kishmishovka or slivyanka. In a word - any of the one and a half hundred moonshine, the recipes of which are known to me.

Ostap was introduced to the Americans. Politely raised hats floated in the air for a long time. Then they got down to business.

The Americans chose wheat moonshine, which attracted them with its ease of production. The recipe was written down in notebooks for a long time. In the form of a free bonus, Ostap told the American walkers the best design of a cabinet moonshine, which is easy to hide from prying eyes in the cabinet of a desk. The walkers assured Ostap that, with American technology, it would not be difficult to make such an apparatus. Ostap, for his part, assured the Americans that the apparatus of his design yielded a bucket of delicious aromatic pervach a day.

ABOUT! the Americans shouted. They had heard the word before in a respectable Chicago family. And there excellent references were given about "pervatsch" e. The head of this family was at one time with the American occupation corps in Arkhangelsk, drank "pervatsch" there and since then cannot forget the charming feeling that he experienced while doing so.

In the mouths of the exasperated tourists, the rude word "pervach" sounded gentle and tempting.

The Americans easily handed over two hundred rubles and shook Bender's hand for a long time. Panikovsky and Balaganov also managed to say goodbye by the hand to the citizens of the transatlantic republic, exhausted by the "dry law". The interpreter kissed Ostap in joy on his hard cheek and asked him to come in, adding that the old mother would be very glad. However, for some reason, he did not leave an address.

The friendly travelers sat down in their cars. Kozlevich played matchish at parting, and under his cheerful sounds the cars scattered in opposite directions.

You see, - said Ostap, when the American car was covered with dust, - everything happened just as I told you. We were driving. There was money on the road. I picked them. Look, they didn't even get dusty. And he cracked a stack of credit cards.

Strictly speaking, there is nothing to brag about, the combination is unpretentious. But neatness, honesty - that's what is expensive. Two hundred rubles. In five minutes. And I not only did not break the laws, but even did something pleasant. The crew of the "Antelope" supplied with monetary allowances. The old woman's mother returned the son-translator. And, finally, it quenched the spiritual thirst of the citizens of the country with which we, after all, have trade relations.

It was time for lunch. Ostap delved into the mileage map he had torn out of a car magazine and announced the approach of the city of Luchansk.

The city is very small, - Bender said, - this is bad. The smaller the city, the longer the welcoming speeches. Therefore, let us ask the kind hosts of the city for lunch for the first, and speeches for the second. During the intermission, I will supply you with clothing allowance. Panikovsky? You begin to forget your responsibilities. Restore the poster to its original location.

Having mastered the solemn finishes, Kozlevich famously laid siege to the car in front of the podium. Here Bender limited himself to a brief greeting. We agreed to postpone the rally for two hours. Having refreshed themselves with a free lunch, motorists in the most pleasant mood moved to the ready-made dress store. Curious people surrounded them. The Antelopians with dignity bore the sweet burden of glory that had fallen on them. They walked in the middle of the street, holding hands and swaying like sailors in a foreign port. The red-haired Balaganov, who really looked like a young boatswain, began to sing a sea song.

The store "Men's, Ladies' and Children's Dresses" was located under a huge sign that occupied the entire two-story house. Dozens of figures were painted on the sign: yellow-faced men with thin mustaches, in fur coats with fur coats turned outward, ladies with muffs in their hands, short-legged children in sailor suits, Komsomol members in red headscarves, and gloomy business executives immersed to the very hips in felt boots.

All this splendor was broken on a small piece of paper stuck to the front door of the store:

NO PANTS

Fu, how rude, - said Ostap, entering, - you can immediately see that the province. I would write, as they say in Moscow: "No trousers", decently and nobly. Happy citizens go home.

The motorists did not stay long in the shop. For Balaganov, there was a cowboy shirt in a spacious canary cage and a Stetson hat with holes. Kozlevich had to be content with the promised chrome cap and the same jacket, sparkling like pressed caviar. They fiddled with Panikovsky for a long time. The pastor's long-brimmed frock coat and soft hat, which, according to Bender's plan, were supposed to ennoble the appearance of the violator of the convention, disappeared in the first minute. The store could only offer a firefighter outfit: a jacket with gold pumps in buttonholes, hairy wool blend trousers and a cap with blue piping. Panikovsky jumped for a long time in front of the wavy mirror.

I don't understand, - said Ostap, - why don't you like the fireman's suit? It's still better than the exiled king costume you now wear. Well, turn around, son! Great! I'll tell you straight. It suits you better than the coat and hat I designed. They went out into the street in new clothes.

I need a tuxedo, - said Ostap, - but it's not here. Let's wait until better times.

Ostap opened the rally in high spirits, unaware of what kind of thunderstorm was approaching the passengers of the Antelope. He joked, told funny road adventures and Jewish anecdotes, which extremely endeared the audience to himself. He devoted the end of his speech to the analysis of a long overdue car problem.

At that moment, he saw that the chairman of the meeting committee had received a telegram from the hands of the boy who had run up.

Uttering the words: "not a luxury, but a means of transportation," Ostap leaned to the left and peered over the chairman's shoulder into the telegraph form. What he read amazed him. He thought he still had a whole day ahead of him. His mind instantly registered a number of villages and cities where the "Antelope" took advantage of other people's materials and means.

The chairman still wiggled his mustache, trying to grasp the contents of the dispatch, while Ostap, who had jumped from the podium in mid-sentence, was already making his way through the crowd. "Antelope" turned green at the crossroads. Fortunately, the passengers sat in their seats and, bored, waited for the moment when Ostap ordered to drag the gifts of the city into the car. This usually happened after the rally.

Finally, the meaning of the telegram reached the chairman.

He looked up and saw the fleeing commander.

These are crooks! he cried in anguish. He had been working all night on drafting a welcoming speech, and now his authorial vanity was wounded.

Grab them guys!

The chairman's cry reached the ears of the Antelopians. They fidgeted nervously. Kozlevich started the engine and in one fell swoop flew into his seat. The car jumped forward without waiting for Ostap. In a hurry, the Antelopians did not even realize that they were leaving their commander in danger.

Stop! shouted Ostap, making gigantic leaps. - I'll catch up - I'll fire everyone!

Stop! shouted the chairman.

Stop, fool! Balaganov shouted to Kozlevich. - Do not you see - the chief lost!

Adam Kazimirovich pressed the pedals, "Antelope" gnashed and stopped. The commander tumbled into the car with a desperate cry: "Full speed!" Despite the versatility and composure of his nature, he could not stand physical violence. The distraught Kozlevich jumped into third gear, the car took off, and Balaganov fell out through the opened door. All this happened in an instant. While Kozlevich slowed down again, the shadow of the oncoming crowd had already fallen on Balaganov. Hefty hands were already stretching out towards him when the Antelope crept up to him in reverse and the commander's iron hand grabbed him by the cowboy shirt.

The most complete! yelled Ostap. And then the inhabitants of Luchansk for the first time realized the advantage of mechanical transport over horse-drawn transport. The car rattled with all its parts and quickly took off, taking four offenders away from the just punishment.

The first kilometer crooks were breathing heavily. Balaganov, who valued his beauty, examined in a pocket mirror the crimson scratches on his face received during the fall. Panikovsky was trembling in his fireman's suit. He was afraid of the commander's revenge. And she came immediately.

Did you drive the car before I got in? - asked the commander menacingly.

By God... - began Panikovsky.

No, no, don't give up! These are your pieces. So you're also a coward, too? Am I in the same company as a thief and a coward? Fine! I will pity you. Until now, in my eyes, you have been a fire chief. From now on, you are a simple axeman.

And Ostap solemnly tore off the gold pumps from Panikovsky's red buttonholes.

After this procedure, Ostap introduced his companions to the contents of the telegram.

The thing is bad. The telegram proposes to detain the green car ahead of the rally. We need to turn around now. We've had enough of triumphs, palm fronds, and free lunches of vegetable oil. The idea has outlived itself. We can only turn onto the Gryazhskoe highway. But it's still three hours away. I am sure that a heated meeting is being prepared in all the nearest settlements. The damned telegraph office stuffed its poles with wires everywhere.

The commander was wrong.

Further along the path lay a town whose name the Antelopians never learned, but would like to know in order to commemorate it with an unkind word on occasion. At the very entrance to the city, the road was blocked by a heavy log. The Antelope turned and, like a blind puppy, began to poke around in search. bypass road. But she wasn't there.

Let's go back! said Ostap, who had become very serious.

And then the crooks heard a very distant mosquito singing of motors. As you can see, there were cars of a real rally. It was impossible to move back, and the Antelopians again rushed forward.

Kozlevich frowned and quickly brought the car to the very log. Citizens standing around, frightened, rushed back in different directions, expecting a catastrophe. But Kozlevich suddenly slowed down and slowly went over the obstacle. When the Antelope was passing through the city, passers-by scolded the riders grumpily, but Ostap did not even answer.

The Antelope approached the Gryazhskoye Highway to the ever-increasing roar of so far invisible cars. They barely had time to turn off the damned highway and in the ensuing darkness to remove the car behind a hillock, when explosions and firing of engines were heard and the lead car appeared in the pillars of light. The crooks hid in the grass near along the road and, suddenly losing their usual impudence, silently looked at the passing column.

Cloths of dazzling light rippled along the road. The cars creaked softly as they ran past the defeated Antelopians. Ashes flew from under the wheels. The horns howled long and loud. The wind blew in all directions. In a minute everything disappeared, and only the ruby ​​lantern of the last car hesitated and jumped in the darkness for a long time.

Real life flew by, trumpeting joyfully and flashing its lacquered wings.

The adventurers were left with only a gasoline tail. And for a long time they sat in the grass, sneezing and shaking themselves.

Yes, - said Ostap, - now I myself see that a car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation. Aren't you envious, Balaganov? I'm envious.

Ilf Ilya, Petrov Evgeny (Ilf and Petrov) - Golden Calf - 01, read text

See also Ilf Ilya, Petrov Evgeny (Ilf and Petrov) - Prose (stories, poems, novels ...):

Golden Calf - 02
Chapter VIII The Crisis of the Genre At the fourth hour, the hunted Antelope stops...

Golden Calf - 03
CHAPTER XV Horns and hooves There lived a poor private trader in the world. It was pretty b...

From the authors

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, we are approached with questions that are quite legitimate, but very monotonous: “How do you two write together?”

At first, we answered in detail, went into details, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel "12 Chairs" Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the fate of the hero was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out - and in half an hour the great strategist was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. The quarrel was not talked about. Then they stopped going into details. And, finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that friends do not steal it.

And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

“Tell me,” a certain strict citizen from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, asked us, “tell me why you write funny?” What kind of chuckles in the reconstructive period? Are you out of your mind?

After that, he long and angrily convinced us that laughter is now harmful.

- It's wrong to laugh! he said. Yes, you can't laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these shifts, I don't want to smile, I want to pray!

“But we don’t just laugh,” we objected. - Our goal is a satire on those people who do not understand the reconstruction period.

“Satire cannot be funny,” said the strict comrade, and, grabbing the arm of some Baptist handicraftsman, whom he mistook for a 100% proletarian, led him to his apartment.

All of the above is not fiction. It could have been even funnier.

Give free rein to such a hallelujah citizen, and he will even put on a veil on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that in this way it is necessary to help build socialism.

And all the time we were writing "Golden Calf" above us hovered the face of a strict citizen.

What if this chapter comes out funny? What would a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided:

a) write a novel as cheerful as possible,

b) if a strict citizen declares again that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic bring the aforementioned citizen to criminal liability under an article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. Ilf, E. Petrov

Part I
The crew of the Antelope

Crossing the street, look around

(Street rule)

Chapter 1
About how Panikovsky violated the convention

Pedestrians must be loved.

Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Moreover, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected high-rise buildings, installed sewerage and plumbing, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented the printing press, invented gunpowder, threw bridges over rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that one hundred and fourteen tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the native planet took on a relatively comfortable look, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and smart pedestrians began to crush. The streets created by pedestrians have passed into the power of motorists. Pavements have become twice as wide, sidewalks have narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And the pedestrians began to huddle in fear against the walls of the houses.

In the big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross the streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where the traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which the life of a pedestrian usually hangs is easiest to cut.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the formidable outlines of a fratricidal projectile. He disables entire ranks of union members and their families. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to flutter out from under the silver nose of the car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind them of their existence. God, God, which in essence does not exist, to which you, who in fact do not exist, have brought a pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: "Let's rebuild the life of textile workers" and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangle reserve sandals "Uncle Vanya" and a tin kettle without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years at the very gates of Moscow will be crushed by a heavy autocar, the number of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican walking. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would gladly go that way, without a barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All my life I have to push the damned container in front of me, on which, moreover, (shame, shame!) There is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of Driver's Dreams automotive oil.

So the pedestrian has degraded.

And only in small Russian towns are pedestrians still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, carelessly wandering along the pavement and crossing it in the most intricate way in any direction.

The citizen in the cap with the white top, such as summer garden administrators and entertainers mostly wear, undoubtedly belonged to the greater and better part of mankind. He moved along the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetrical bag. The city, apparently, did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.

He saw a dozen and a half blue, mignon and white-pink belfries; the shabby American gold of church domes caught his eye. The flag crackled over the official building.

At the white tower gates of the provincial Kremlin, two stern old women spoke French, complained about the Soviet regime and remembered their beloved daughters. From the church cellar it was cold, the sour smell of wine was beating from there. Apparently there were potatoes in there.

“The Church of the Savior on potatoes,” the pedestrian said in a low voice.

Passing under a plywood arch with a fresh limestone slogan, "Hail to the 5th District Conference of Women and Girls," he found himself at the head of a long alley called the Boulevard of Young Talents.

- No, - he said with chagrin, - this is not Rio de Janeiro, it is much worse.

Almost on all the benches of the Boulevard of Young Talents sat lonely girls with open books in their hands. Leaky shadows fell on the pages of books, on bare elbows, on touching bangs. As the visitor stepped into the cool alley, there was a noticeable movement on the benches. The girls, hiding behind the books of Gladkov, Eliza Ozheshko and Seifullina, cast cowardly glances at the visitor. He walked past the excited readers with a parade step and went out to the building of the executive committee - the goal of his walk.

At that moment a cab drove out from around the corner. Beside him, holding on to the dusty, peeling wing of the carriage and waving a swollen folder with an embossed inscription "Musique", a man in a long sweatshirt walked quickly. He was ardently proving something to the rider. The rider, an elderly man with a nose hanging like a banana, clutched the suitcase with his feet and from time to time showed his interlocutor a fico. In the heat of the argument, his engineer's cap, the band of which sparkled with green sofa plush, squinted to one side. Both litigants often and especially loudly uttered the word "salary".

Soon other words were heard.

- You will answer for this, Comrade Talmudovsky! shouted the long-haired one, moving the engineer's figurine away from his face.

“But I’m telling you that not a single decent specialist will go to you under such conditions,” Talmudovsky answered, trying to return the figure to its previous position.

- Are you talking about salary again? We'll have to raise the question of grabbing.

I don't give a damn about the salary! I will work for nothing! - shouted the engineer, excitedly describing all sorts of curves with a fico. - I want to - and generally retire. You give up this serfdom. They themselves write everywhere: “Freedom, equality and fraternity”, but they want to force me to work in this rat hole.

Here the engineer Talmudovsky quickly unclenched the fig and began to count on his fingers:

- The apartment is a pigsty, there is no theater, the salary ... A cab driver! Went to the station!

- Whoa! screeched the long-haired one, running fussily ahead and grabbing the horse by the bridle. - I, as the secretary of the section of engineers and technicians ... Kondrat Ivanovich! After all, the plant will be left without specialists ... Fear God ... The public will not allow this, engineer Talmudovsky ... I have a protocol in my portfolio.

And the secretary of the section, spreading his legs, began to quickly untie the ribbons of his "Musique".

This negligence settled the dispute. Seeing that the path was clear, Talmudovsky got to his feet and shouted with all his strength:

– Went to the station!

- Where? Where? murmured the secretary, rushing after the carriage. - You are a deserter of the labor front!

Sheets of tissue paper flew out of the “Musique” folder with some kind of purple “listened-decided”.

The visitor, who had observed the incident with interest, stood for a minute in the deserted square and said in a convinced tone:

No, this is not Rio de Janeiro.

A minute later he was already knocking on the door of the executive committee's office.

- Who do you want? asked his secretary, who was seated at a table near the door. Why do you want to see the chairman? For what business?

As you can see, the visitor knew the system of dealing with the secretaries of government, economic and public organizations. He did not assure that he had arrived on urgent official business.

"Personal," he said dryly, not looking back at the secretary and sticking his head in the crack in the door. – Can I come to you?

And without waiting for an answer, he approached the desk:

Hello, don't you recognize me?

The chairman, a black-eyed, big-headed man in a blue jacket and similar trousers tucked into high-heeled boots, looked rather absently at the visitor and declared that he did not recognize him.

"Don't you know?" Meanwhile, many people find that I am strikingly similar to my father.

“I also look like my father,” the chairman said impatiently. - What do you want, comrade?

“It’s all about what kind of father it is,” the visitor remarked sadly. “I am the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.

The chairman was embarrassed and got up. He vividly recalled the famous image of a revolutionary lieutenant with a pale face and a black cape with bronze lion clasps. While he was collecting his thoughts to ask the son of the Black Sea hero a question befitting the occasion, the visitor looked at the furnishings of the office with the eyes of a discerning buyer.

The fate of the novels by I.A. Ilfa and E.P. Petrova is unique.

As you know, in January 1928, the illustrated monthly 30 Days began publishing The Twelve Chairs, a satirical novel written by two employees of the Gudok newspaper, far from being spoiled by fame. Exactly three years later, 30 Days magazine began publishing the sequel to The Twelve Chairs, The Golden Calf. But by that time, the authors were among the most popular writers of the USSR. The popularity of Ilf and Petrov grew rapidly, the novels were reprinted every now and then, they were translated into dozens of foreign languages, released abroad, which, of course, was agreed in the Soviet censorship authorities. And in 1938-1939, the publishing house "Soviet Writer" published a four-volume collection of works by Ilf and Petrov. Few of the then Soviet

some classics has received such an honor. Finally, in the second half of the 1950s, the dilogy was officially recognized as a "classic of Soviet satire." Articles and monographs about the work of Ilf and Petrov, memories of them were constantly published. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, already at the end of the 1950s, the novels of Ilf and Petrov became a kind of “citation book” of dissidents who saw in the dilogy an almost outright mockery of propaganda settings, newspaper slogans, and judgments of the “founders of Marxism-Leninism.” Paradoxically, the "classics of Soviet literature" was perceived as anti-Soviet literature.

It cannot be said that this was a secret for the Soviet censors. Authoritative ideologists gave similar assessments to novels much earlier. The last time was in 1948, when the publishing house "Soviet Writer" published them in seventy-five thousand copies in the series "Selected Works of Soviet Literature: 1917-1947". By a special resolution of the Secretariat of the Union of Soviet Writers dated November 15, 1948, the publication was recognized as a “gross political mistake”, and the published book was recognized as “slander on Soviet society”. November 17 “General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers A.A. Fadeev” sent to the “Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, Comrade I.V. Stalin, comrade G.M. Malenkov" is a resolution, which described the reasons for the publication of the "harmful book" and the measures taken by the SSP Secretariat.

The writers' leadership showed vigilance not of their own free will - they forced it. Employees of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, as noted in the same resolution, "pointed out the error of the publication." In other words, they officially informed the Secretariat of the SSP that the publishing house “Soviet Writer”, which is directly subordinate to it, made an unforgivable mistake, in connection with which it is now necessary to look for the guilty, give explanations, etc.

The characteristic that the SSP Secretariat gave to the novels was, in fact, a verdict: “ideological sabotage” of such a scale would continue to be dealt with by the investigators of the Ministry of State Security, after which the perpetrators would come under the jurisdiction of the Gulag. However, due to understandable circumstances, the question of the responsibility of the authors of the dilogy was not raised: pulmonary tuberculosis brought Ilf to the grave in the spring of 1937, and Petrov, being a war correspondent, died in the summer of 1942. The secretariat of the SSP could only blame itself, because it was he who decided to publish the novels in a prestigious series, after which the book went through all the publishing authorities. Admitting this and taking all the blame is a suicidal step.

Nevertheless, there was a way out. The reasons given for the publication were "unacceptable carelessness and irresponsibility" of the SSP Secretariat. They expressed themselves in the fact that "neither in the process of passing the book, nor after its publication, none of the members of the Secretariat and of the responsible editors of the publishing house "Soviet Writer" read it", fully trusting the direct "editor of the book". That is why the SSP Secretariat reprimanded the main culprit - the "book editor", as well as his boss - "the editor of the department of Soviet literature of the publishing house A.K. Tarasenkov, who allowed the publication of the book by Ilf and Petrov without having read it first. In addition, he instructed a particularly reliable critic "to write an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta that reveals the slanderous nature of Ilf and Petrov's book."

Of course, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda (Agitprop, as it was then called) also got acquainted with this resolution, although not as quickly as in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Almost a month later, on December 14, 1948, Agitprop, in turn, sent G.M. Malenkov a memorandum, where, without questioning the version of the SSP secretariat, he insisted that "the measures taken by the Writers' Union" are insufficient. In the book, the agitprop specialists claimed, “enemies of the Soviet system swear at the great teachers of the working class”, it is replete with “vulgar, anti-Soviet witticisms”, moreover, “the social life of the country in the novels is described in a deliberately comic tone, caricatured”, etc. .d., while the Secretariat of the SSP ignored the issue of responsibility and the director of the publishing house, and his own.

All the ups and downs of Ilf and Petrov’s “exposing” did not receive publicity at that time: the documents cited above settled in the archive under the heading “secret” [See: “Do not publish vulgar novels by Ilf and Petrov” / / Source. 1997. No. 5. S. 89-94.]. The writers' management escaped responsibility, but the directors of the publishing house were indeed replaced, as Agitprop demanded. The secretariat of the SSP did not fulfill the promise to place an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta that would “reveal the slanderous nature” of the dilogy. But on February 9, 1949, an editorial article “Serious Mistakes of the Publishing House “Soviet Writer”” was published there. There was no longer any talk of "slander and libels" by Ilf and Petrov, the release of the dilogy was recognized as one of many mistakes, far from being the most important, even excusable. “During the years of the Stalinist five-year plans,” the editors reported, “many of our writers have seriously matured, including Ilf and Petrov. They would never have allowed two of their early works to be published today without a radical revision. Approximately in the same spirit, the authors of other articles in the periodical press of that time reasoned, and that is how it all ended.

This story seems to be quite ordinary. At least - at first glance. At that time, many writers, scientists (including the deceased), as well as employees of publishing houses and editorial offices of periodicals, were then charged with sedition. The country was in constant hysteria, whipped up by large-scale propaganda campaigns. Geneticists, cyberneticists, "rootless cosmopolitans" were exposed, and they fought against "servile worship of the West." But, from another point of view, there is something unprecedented in the history of the late exposure of novels: the absurdity of the justifications of the SSP secretariat, the persistence of Agitprop and an unexpectedly bloodless result. The latter is especially rare: it is hardly even more than half a century later that it is necessary to explain why in 1948 you get off with just a reprimand (or even removal from office) for “ideological sabotage” - like winning a car in the lottery.

It is these features that allow us to assume with a high degree of probability that the critical attack in the late 1940s was due not so much to the specifics of the novels of Ilf and Petrov, but to the quarrel of two groups in the then ideological leadership - the SSP Secretariat and Agitprop.

Against the backdrop of global "revealing" campaigns, Agitprop started its own local intrigue: the removal of the insufficiently helpful director of the Soviet Writer publishing house. The reason, presumably, was the prestigious series, which included the book by Ilf and Petrov.

The series was, one might say, ceremonial; according to the plan, only the best were selected there, proving that Soviet literature "has reached the world level." The very fact of publishing in such a series meant for any writer official recognition of merit, the status of a classic of Soviet literature, not to mention significant fees. It is clear that intrigues were woven at all levels. Both Agitprop and the SSP secretariat had their own creatures, someone motivated the choice of this or that book by considerations of the prestige and quality of the series as a whole, someone - by “ideological consistency” and political expediency. In general, the interests of the parties did not always coincide. In fact, there were and could not be any ideological and political differences: it was a dispute between officials about spheres of influence and the boundaries of very relative independence. And the director of the publishing house reported directly to the secretariat of the SSP, Agitprop could not manage the publishing house. To eliminate the director immediately - there was not enough power: according to the then rules, the secretariat of the SSP nominated the candidacy of the director of such a publishing house and approved the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The replacement should have begun with a “shake-up” of the overly independent secretariat of the SSP and pressure on Fadeev, who had repeatedly visited Stalin. The dilogy of Ilf and Petrov here is nothing more than one of the cards in the game. But the move was calculated precisely: the accusation of "ideological sabotage" cannot be brushed aside.

Ilf Ilya & Petrov Evgeny

Golden calf

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov

Usually, regarding our socialized literary economy, we are approached with questions that are completely legitimate, but very monotonous: "How do you two write together?"

At first, we answered in detail, went into details, even talked about a major quarrel that arose over the following issue: should we kill the hero of the novel "12 Chairs" Ostap Bender or leave him alive? They did not forget to mention that the fate of the hero was decided by lot. Two pieces of paper were placed in the sugar bowl, on one of which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted with a trembling hand. The skull came out, and in half an hour the great strategist was gone. He was cut with a razor.

Then we began to answer in less detail. The quarrel was not talked about. Then they stopped going into details. And, finally, they answered completely without enthusiasm:

How do we write together? Yes, we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editorial offices, and Jules guards the manuscript so that friends do not steal it. And suddenly the uniformity of questions was broken.

Tell us, - asked us a certain strict citizen from among those who recognized Soviet power a little later than England and a little earlier than Greece, - tell me, why do you write funny? What kind of chuckles in the reconstructive period? Are you out of your mind?

After that, he long and angrily convinced us that laughter is now harmful.

Is it wrong to laugh? he said. Yes, you can't laugh! And you can't smile! When I see this new life, these shifts, I don't want to smile, I want to pray!

But we don't just laugh, we objected. - Our goal is a satire on those people who do not understand the reconstruction period.

Satire cannot be funny,” said the strict comrade, and, grabbing the arm of some handicraft Baptist, whom he mistook for a 100% proletarian, led him to his apartment.

All that is said is not fiction. It could have been even funnier.

Give free rein to such a hallelujah citizen, and he will even put on a veil on men, and in the morning he will play hymns and psalms on the trumpet, believing that in this way it is necessary to help build socialism.

And all the time while we were composing The Golden Calf, the face of a strict citizen hovered over us.

What if this chapter comes out funny? What would a strict citizen say?

And in the end we decided:

a) write a novel as cheerful as possible,

b) if a strict citizen declares again that satire should not be funny, ask the prosecutor of the republic to bring the aforementioned citizen to criminal liability under an article punishing bungling with burglary.

I. ILF. E. PETROV

* PART ONE. ANTELOPE CREW*

Crossing the street

look around

(Street rule)

CHAPTER I. HOW PANIKOVSKY VIOLATED THE CONVENTION

Pedestrians must be loved. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Not only that, the best part of it. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities, erected high-rise buildings, installed sewerage and plumbing, paved the streets and lit them with electric lamps. It was they who spread culture throughout the world, invented the printing press, invented gunpowder, threw bridges over rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that one hundred and fourteen tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from soybeans.

And when everything was ready, when the native planet took on a relatively comfortable look, motorists appeared.

It should be noted that the car was also invented by pedestrians. But motorists somehow immediately forgot about it. Meek and smart pedestrians began to crush. The streets created by pedestrians have passed into the power of motorists. Pavements have become twice as wide, sidewalks have narrowed to the size of a tobacco parcel. And the pedestrians began to huddle in fear against the walls of the houses.

In the big city, pedestrians lead a martyr's life. A kind of transport ghetto was introduced for them. They are allowed to cross the streets only at intersections, that is, precisely in those places where the traffic is heaviest and where the thread on which the life of a pedestrian usually hangs is easiest to cut.

In our vast country, an ordinary car, intended, according to pedestrians, for the peaceful transportation of people and goods, has taken on the formidable outlines of a fratricidal projectile. He disables entire ranks of union members and their families. If a pedestrian sometimes manages to flutter out from under the silver nose of the car, he is fined by the police for violating the rules of the street catechism.

In general, the authority of pedestrians has been greatly shaken. They, who gave the world such wonderful people as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg and Anatole France, are now forced to make faces in the most vulgar way, just to remind them of their existence. God, God, which in essence does not exist, to which you, who in fact do not exist, have brought a pedestrian!

Here he is walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the Siberian highway, holding in one hand a banner with the inscription: "Let's rebuild the life of textile workers," and throwing a stick over his shoulder, at the end of which dangle reserve sandals "Uncle Vanya" and a tin kettle without a lid. This is a Soviet pedestrian-athlete who left Vladivostok as a young man and in his declining years at the very gates of Moscow will be crushed by a heavy autocar, the number of which will never be noticed.

Or another, European Mohican walking. He walks around the world, rolling a barrel in front of him. He would gladly go that way, without a barrel; but then no one will notice that he is really a long-distance pedestrian, and they will not write about him in the newspapers. All my life I have to push the damned container in front of me, on which, moreover, (shame, shame!) There is a large yellow inscription praising the unsurpassed qualities of Driver's Dreams automotive oil. So the pedestrian has degraded.

And only in small Russian towns are pedestrians still respected and loved. There he is still the master of the streets, carelessly wandering along the pavement and crossing it in the most intricate way in any direction.

The citizen in the cap with the white top, such as summer garden administrators and entertainers mostly wear, undoubtedly belonged to the greater and better part of mankind. He moved along the streets of the city of Arbatov on foot, looking around with condescending curiosity. In his hand he held a small obstetrical bag. The city, apparently, did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.

He saw a dozen and a half blue, mignon and white-pink belfries; the shabby American gold of church domes caught his eye. The flag crackled over the official building.

At the white tower gates of the provincial Kremlin, two stern old women spoke French, complained about the Soviet regime and remembered their beloved daughters. From the church cellar it was cold, the sour smell of wine was beating from there. Apparently there were potatoes in there.

The Temple of the Savior on potatoes, - the pedestrian said quietly.

Passing under a plywood arch with a fresh limestone slogan, "Hail to the 5th District Conference of Women and Girls," he found himself at the head of a long alley called the Boulevard of Young Talents.

No, - he said with chagrin, - this is not Rio de Janeiro, this is much worse.

Almost on all the benches of the Boulevard of Young Talents sat lonely girls with open books in their hands. Leaky shadows fell on the pages of books, on bare elbows, on touching bangs. As the visitor stepped into the cool alley, there was a noticeable movement on the benches. The girls, hiding behind the books of Gladkov, Eliza Ozheshko and Seifullina, cast cowardly glances at the visitor. He walked past the excited readers with a parade step and went out to the building of the executive committee - the goal of his walk.

At that moment a cab drove out from around the corner. Beside him, holding onto the dusty, peeling wing of the carriage and waving a swollen folder with an embossed inscription "Musique", a man in a long sweatshirt walked quickly. He was ardently proving something to the rider. The rider, an elderly man with a nose hanging like a banana, clutched the suitcase with his feet and from time to time showed his interlocutor a fico. In the heat of the argument, his engineer's cap, the band of which sparkled with green sofa plush, squinted to one side. Both litigants often and especially loudly uttered the word "salary". Soon other words were heard.

You will answer for this, Comrade Talmudovsky! shouted the long-haired one, moving the engineer's figurine away from his face.

And I'm telling you that not a single decent specialist will go to you under such conditions, - Talmudovsky answered, trying to return the figure to its previous position.

Are you talking about salary again? We'll have to raise the question of grabbing.

I didn't care about my salary! I will work for nothing! shouted the engineer, excitedly describing all sorts of curves with a figurine. I would like to retire. You give up this serfdom. They themselves write everywhere: "Freedom, equality and fraternity", but they want to force me to work in this rat hole.