and brocade.
How shall I make it? Best quality? Or how?"
     "No tassels  or brocade. Just an ordinary coffin made  of pine-wood. Do
you understand? "
     Bezenchuk  put his  finger  to  his  lips to  show that  he  understood
perfectly,  turned round  and,  managing  to  balance  his cap  on  his head
although  he  was  staggering,  went off.  It  was  only  then  that Ippolit
Matveyevich noticed that he was blind drunk.
     Ippolit Matveyevich felt singularly upset. He  tried to picture himself
coming  home to an empty, dirty  house.  He was  afraid  his mother-in-law's
death would deprive him of  all  those little luxuries and set  ways  he had
acquired  with  such  effort  since  the revolution-a  revolution  which had
stripped him of  much  greater luxuries and a grander way of life. "Should I
marry?" he  wondered.  "But  who?  The  militia  chief's  niece  or  Barbara
Stepanova, Prusis's sister? Or maybe I should hire a housekeeper. But what's
the use? She would only drag me around  the law courts. And it would cost me
something, too!"
     The  future  suddenly  looked  black for Ippolit Matveyevich.  Full  of
indignation and  disgust  at  everything around him,  he went back  into the
house. Claudia Ivanovna was no longer  delirious. Lying high on her pillows,
she looked  at Ippolit Matveyevich, in full  command of her  faculties,  and
even sternly, he thought.
     "Ippolit Matveyevich," she  whispered clearly. "Sit close to me. I want
to tell you something."
     Ippolit   Matveyevich   sat   down  in   annoyance,  peering  into  his
mother-in-law's thin, bewhiskered face. He made an attempt  to smile and say
something  encouraging,  but  the  smile  was   hideous  and  no   words  of
encouragement  came  to  him.  An  awkward  wheezing noise was all he  could
produce.
     "Ippolit,"   repeated   his   mother-in-law,  "do   you   remember  our
drawing-room suite?"
     "Which  one?"  asked  Ippolit  Matveyevich with  that  kind  of  polite
attention that is only accorded to the very sick.
     "The one . . . upholstered in English chintz."
     "You mean the suite in my house?"
     "Yes, in Stargorod."
     "Yes,  I remember it very well . . . a sofa, a dozen chairs and a round
table with six legs. It was splendid furniture. Made by Hambs. . . . But why
does it come to mind?"
     Claudia Ivanovna, however, was  unable to answer. Her  face had  slowly
begun  to turn  the colour of  copper  sulphate.  For  some  reason  Ippolit
Matveyevich also caught  his breath. He clearly remembered the  drawing-room
in  his  house  and its symmetrically  arranged walnut furniture with curved
legs,  the polished parquet floor, the old brown grand  piano,  and the oval
black-framed daguerreotypes of high-ranking relatives on the walls.
     Claudia Ivanovna then said in a wooden, apathetic voice:
     "I sewed my jewels into the seat of a chair."
     Ippolit Matveyevich looked sideways at the old woman.
     "What jewels?" he asked mechanically, then, suddenly realizing what she
had said, added quickly:
     "Weren't they taken when the house was searched?"
     "I hid the jewels in a chair," repeated the old woman stubbornly.
     Ippolit  Matveyevich  jumped up and,  taking  a close  look at  Claudia
Ivanovna's stony face lit by the paraffin lamp, saw she was not raving.
     "Your jewels!" he cried, startled at the loudness of his own voice. "In
a chair? Who induced you to do that? Why didn't you give them to me?"
     "Why  should I have  given  them to  you  when you  squandered  away my
daughter's  estate?" said  the  old  woman  quietly  and viciously.  Ippolit
Matveyevich sat down and immediately stood up again.
     His heart was  noisily  sending  the blood coursing around his body. He
began to hear a ringing in his ears.
     "But you took them out again, didn't you? They're here, aren't they?"
     The old woman shook her head.
     "I didn't have time. You remember  how  quickly and unexpectedly we had
to  flee. They were left  in  the chair . .. the one  between the terracotta
lamp and the fireplace."
     "But that was madness! You're just like your daughter," shouted Ippolit
Matveyevich loudly.
     And no longer concerned for the fact  that  he was at the bedside of  a
dying woman, he pushed back his chair  with a crash and began prancing about
the room.
     "I suppose you realize what may have happened to the chairs? Or do  you
think they're  still there in the drawing-room in  my house, quietly waiting
for you to come and get your jewellery? " The old woman did not answer.
     The registry clerk's wrath was so  great that the pince-nez fell of his
nose and  landed  on the floor with a tinkle, the gold nose-piece glittering
as it passed his knees.
     "What?  Seventy thousand roubles' worth of jewellery hidden in a chair!
Heaven knows who may sit on that chair!"
     At this point Claudia Ivanovna gave  a sob and leaned forward with  her
whole body towards the edge of the bed. Her hand described a semi-circle and
reached  out  to grasp  Ippolit  Matveyevich, but  then fell back on to  the
violet  down  quilt. Squeaking with fright, Ippolit Matveyevich ran to fetch
his neighbour. "I think she's dying," he cried.
     The agronomist crossed herself  in  a  businesslike  way  and,  without
hiding her curiosity, hurried into  Ippolit Matveyevich's house, accompanied
by  her  bearded  husband, also an agronomist.  In  distraction Vorobyaninov
wandered into the municipal park.
     While the two agronomists  and  their  servants  tidied up the deceased
woman's  room,  Ippolit Matveyevich  roamed  around the  park,  bumping into
benches  and mistaking for bushes the young couples  numb with  early spring
love.
     The strangest things  were  going on in Ippolit  Matveyevich's head. He
could hear the sound of gypsy choirs and orchestras composed of big-breasted
women playing the tango over and over again;  he imagined the Moscow  winter
and  a  long-bodied  black  trotter  that   snorted  contemptuously  at  the
passers-by.  He  imagined  many  different things:  a  pair  of  deliriously
expensive orange-coloured panties, slavish devotion, and a possible  trip to
Cannes. Ippolit Matveyevich began walking more slowly and suddenly  stumbled
over the form of Bezenchuk the undertaker. The  latter was asleep,  lying in
the middle of the path in his fur coat. The jolt woke him up. He sneezed and
stood up briskly.
     "Now don't you  worry, Mr Vorobyaninov,"  he  said heatedly, continuing
the  conversation started a while before. "There's lots of work  goes into a
coffin."
     "Claudia Ivanovna's dead," his client informed him.
     "Well, God rest her soul," said Bezenchuk.  "So  the old  lady's passed
away.  Old ladies  pass away . . . or they depart  this life. It depends who
she is. Yours, for instance, was small and plump, so she passed away. But if
it's one who's a bit bigger and thinner, then they say she has departed this
life. . . ."
     "What do you mean 'they say'? Who says?"
     "We   say.   The   undertakers.   Now   you,   for   instance.   You're
distinguished-lookin' and tall, though a bit on the thin side. If you should
die, God forbid, they'll say you  popped off. But a tradesman, who  belonged
to the former merchants' guild, would breathe his last. And if  it's someone
of  lower status, say  a caretaker, or a peasant,  we say he has  croaked or
gone west. But  when the high-ups die, say a railway conductor or someone in
administration, they say he has kicked  the bucket. They say: 'You  know our
boss has kicked the bucket, don't you?' "
     Shocked  by  this  curious  classification  of human mortality, Ippolit
Matveyevich asked:
     "And what will the undertakers say about you when you die?"
     "I'm small fry. They'll say, 'Bezenchuk's gone', and nothin' more."
     And then he added grimly:
     "It's not possible for me to pop off or kick the bucket; I'm too small.
But what about the  coffin, Mr Vorobyaninov? Do you really want  one without
tassels and brocade? "
     But Ippolit Matveyevich, once more immersed in dazzling dreams,  walked
on without answering. Bezenchuk followed him, working something  out on  his
fingers and muttering to himself, as he always did.
     The moon had long since vanished and there was a wintry  cold. Fragile,
wafer-like  ice covered  the puddles.  The  companions  came  out on Comrade
Gubernsky Street, where the wind was tussling with the hanging shop-signs. A
fire-engine drawn  by skinny horses  emerged from the  direction of Staropan
Square with a noise like the lowering of a blind.
     Swinging their canvas  legs from the platform, the firemen wagged their
helmeted heads and sang in intentionally tuneless voices:

     "Glory to our fire chief,
     Glory to dear Comrade Pumpoff!"

     "They've  been  havin'  a  good  time  at  Nicky's  wedding,"  remarked
Bezenchuk  nonchalantly.  "He's the  fire  chief's  son."  And  he scratched
himself under his coat. "So you really want it without tassels and brocade?"
     By that moment Ippolit Matveyevich had finally made up his mind.  "I'll
go  and  find  them,"  he  decided,  "and   then  we'll  see."  And  in  his
jewel-encrusted visions  even his deceased  mother-in-law  seemed nicer than
she had actually been. He turned to Bezenchuk and said:
     "Go on then, damn you, make it! With brocade! And tassels!"

        CHAPTER THREE

        THE PARABLE OF THE SINNER

     Having  heard  the dying Claudia Ivanovna's confession, Father Theodore
Vostrikov,  priest  of  the  Church  of St.  Frol  and  St.  Laurence,  left
Vorobyaninov's house in a complete daze and  the whole way home kept looking
round him distractedly and smiling to himself in confusion. His bewilderment
became  so  great  in  the  end  that  he was  almost  knocked down  by  the
district-executive-committee motor-car,  Gos. No. 1. Struggling  out of  the
cloud of purple smoke  issuing from the infernal  machine,  Father Vostrikov
reached the stage  of complete distraction, and, despite his  venerable rank
and middle age, finished the journey at a frivolous half-gallop.
     His  wife, Catherine, was laying the table for supper. On the days when
there was no evening service to conduct, Father  Theodore liked  to have his
supper  early. This  time, however, to his wife's surprise, the holy father,
having  taken  off his hat  and  warm  padded cassock, skipped past into the
bedroom, locked himself  in and began chanting the prayer  "It Is Meet" in a
tuneless voice.
     His wife sat down on a chair and whispered in alarm:
     "He's up to something again."
     Father Theodore's tempestuous soul knew no rest, nor had ever known it.
Neither at the time when he was Theo, a pupil of the Russian Orthodox Church
school,  nor  when he  was  Theodore Ivanych, a bewhiskered  student  at the
college. Having left the college and studied law at the university for three
years in 1915 Vostrikov became afraid of the possibility of mobilization and
returned to the  Church. He  was  first  anointed  a deacon, then ordained a
priest and  appointed to the  regional centre of  N. But  the whole time, at
every stage of  his clerical and  secular career, Father Theodore never lost
interest in worldly possessions.
     He cherished the dream of possessing  his own candle factory. Tormented
by the vision of thick  ropes of wax winding on to the factory drums, Father
Theodore devised various schemes that would bring in enough basic capital to
buy a little factory in Samara which he had had his eye on for some time.
     Ideas  occurred to Father  Theodore  unexpectedly, and when they did he
used to get down to work on the spot. He once started making  a  marble-like
washing-soap;  he made  pounds and pounds of it, but despite an enormous fat
content,  the soap would not lather, and it cost twice as much as the Hammer
and Plough brand,  to boot. For a long time after it  remained in the liquid
state  gradually decomposing on  the porch  of  the house, and whenever  his
wife,  Catherine,  passed it,  she  would  wipe away a  tear.  The soap  was
eventually thrown into the cesspool.
     Reading  in  a farming  magazine  that  rabbit meat was  as  tender  as
chicken, that rabbits were highly  prolific, and  that a  keen  farmer could
make  a mint of  money  breeding them, Father Theodore  immediately acquired
half a dozen stud rabbits, and two months later, Nerka the dog, terrified by
the  incredible  number of long-eared creatures filling the yard and  house,
fled to an unknown destination. However, the wretchedly  provincial citizens
of  the  town of  N. proved  extraordinarily conservative and, with  unusual
unanimity,  refused  to buy Vostrikov's rabbits. Then Father Theodore had  a
talk with his wife and decided to enhance his diet with the rabbit meat that
was supposed to  be tastier  than  chicken. The  rabbits were roasted whole,
turned into rissoles and cutlets, made into soup, served cold for supper and
baked in  pies. But to no avail. Father Theodore worked it out that even  if
they switched exclusively to a diet of rabbit, the family  could not consume
more than forty of the  creatures  a  month, while the monthly increment was
ninety, with the number increasing in a geometrical progression.
     The Vostrikovs then decided to sell home-cooked  meals. Father Theodore
spent a whole  evening  writing out an advertisement in indelible  pencil on
neatly cut sheets of  graph paper, announcing the sale of  tasty home-cooked
meals prepared in pure butter. The advertisement began "Cheap and Good!" His
wife filled an enamel dish  with flour-and-water paste, and late one evening
the holy father went around sticking the advertisements on all the telegraph
poles, and also in the vicinity of state-owned institutions.
     The new idea was a great success. Seven people appeared the  first day,
among them Bendin, the  military-commissariat clerk, by  whose endeavour the
town's oldest monument-a triumphal arch, dating from the time of the Empress
Elizabeth-had  been  pulled down  shortly  before  on  the  ground  that  it
interfered  with  the  traffic. The dinners were very popular. The next  day
there were fourteen  customers. There  was  hardly  enough  time to skin the
rabbits.  For  a whole week things  went swimmingly and Father Theodore even
considered starting  up  a small fur-trading business, without a  car,  when
something quite unforeseen took place.
     The Hammer and Plough co-operative, which had been shut for three weeks
for stock-taking, reopened, and some of the  counter hands, panting with the
effort,  rolled a barrel of  rotten  cabbage into the yard shared  by Father
Theodore,  and  dumped the  contents  into the cesspool.  Attracted  by  the
piquant smell, the rabbits hastened to the cesspool, and the next morning an
epidemic broke  out among the gentle rodents. It only raged for three hours,
but during that time it finished off two hundred and forty adult rabbits and
an uncountable number of offspring.
     The shocked priest had been  depressed for two whole months, and it was
only now,  returning from Vorobyaninov's  house and to  his wife's surprise,
locking  himself  in  the bedroom,  that he regained  his spirits. There was
every indication that Father Theodore had been captivated by some new idea.
     Catherine  knocked  on the  bedroom door with her knuckle. There was no
reply, but the chanting grew louder. A moment later the door opened slightly
and through  the  crack  appeared  Father Theodore's face, brightened  by  a
maidenly flush.
     "Let  me  have  a  pair  of  scissors quickly,  Mother," snapped Father
Theodore.
     "But what about your supper? "
     "Yes, later on."
     Father Theodore  grabbed the  scissors, locked the door again, and went
over to a mirror hanging on the wall in a black scratched frame.
     Beside the  mirror  was an ancient folk-painting, entitled "The Parable
of the Sinner", made from a copperplate and neatly hand-painted. The parable
had  been a great consolation to Vostrikov  after  the  misfortune with  the
rabbits. The picture clearly showed the transient nature  of earthly things.
The top  row was  composed of  four drawings with meaningful and consolatory
captions in Church Slavonic: Shem saith a prayer, Ham soweth wheat,  Japheth
enjoyeth power, Death overtaketh  all. The figure of Death  carried a scythe
and  a  winged  hour-glass and looked as  if  made  of  artificial limbs and
orthopaedic appliances; he  was  standing on deserted hilly  ground with his
legs wide apart, and his  general appearance made  it clear that  the fiasco
with the rabbits was a mere trifle.
     At this moment Father Theodore preferred  "Japheth enjoyeth power". The
drawing  showed a fat, opulent man with  a  beard sitting on  a throne  in a
small room.
     Father Theodore  smiled and, looking closely at himself in the  mirror,
began  snipping at his fine beard. The scissors clicked,  the hairs fell  to
the floor,  and five minutes later Father Theodore knew he was absolutely no
good at beard-clipping. His  beard was  all askew; it looked  unbecoming and
even suspicious.
     Fiddling  about  for  a while  longer, Father  Theodore  became  highly
irritated, called his wife, and, handing her the scissors, said peevishly:
     "You can help me, Mother. I can't do anything with these rotten hairs."
     His wife threw up her hands in astonishment.
     "What have you done to yourself?" she finally managed to say.
     "I haven't  done anything. I'm trimming my beard. It seems to have gone
askew just here. . . ."
     "Heavens!"  said  his  wife, attacking  his curls.  "Surely  you're not
joining the Renovators, Theo dear?"
     Father Theodore  was delighted  that the  conversation had  taken  this
turn.
     "And why shouldn't I join the Renovators, Mother? They're human-beings,
aren't they?"
     "Of  course they're human-beings," conceded his  wife venomously,  "but
they go to the cinema and pay alimony."
     "Well, then, I'll go to the cinema as well."
     "Go on then!"
     •Twill!"
     "You'll get tired of it. Just look at yourself in the mirror."
     And indeed,  a lively black-eyed  countenance with a short, odd-looking
beard  and an  absurdly  long moustache  peered out of the mirror  at Father
Theodore. They trimmed down the moustache to the right proportions.
     What happened next amazed Mother still  more. Father  Theodore declared
that he had to go  off on a business trip that  very evening,  and asked his
wife to go round to her brother, the baker, and borrow his fur-collared coat
and duck-billed cap for a week.
     "I won't go," said his wife and began weeping.
     Father  Theodore  walked  up  and  down  the  room for  half  an  hour,
frightening his wife by the change in his expression  and  telling  her  all
sorts of  rubbish. Mother could  understand only  one  thing-for no apparent
reason Father Theodore had cut his hair,  intended to go off somewhere  in a
ridiculous cap, and was leaving her for good.
     "I'm  not  leaving you," he kept saying.  "I'm not.  I'll be back  in a
week. A man can have a job to do, after all. Can he or can't he?"
     "No, he can't," said his wife.
     Father Theodore even had to strike the table with his fist, although he
was normally a mild person  in his treatment of his  near  ones.  He  did so
cautiously,  since  he had never done  it before,  and, greatly alarmed, his
wife threw a kerchief around her head and ran to fetch the civilian clothing
from her brother.
     Left  alone, Father Theodore thought for  a moment,  muttered, "It's no
joke  for women,  either," and  pulled out a small tin trunk from under  the
bed. This type  of trunk  is mostly  found  among  Red  Army soldiers. It is
usually lined with striped paper, on top of which is a picture  of Budyonny,
or  the lid of a Bathing Beach cigarette box depicting three lovelies on the
pebbly  shore  at  Batumi.   The  Vostrikovs'  trunk  was  also  lined  with
photographs, but,  to Father Theodore's annoyance, they were not of Budyonny
or Batumi  beauties.  His  wife had  covered  the inside of  the trunk  with
photographs cut out of the magazine Chronicle of the 1914 War. They included
"The Capture of Peremyshl", "The  Distribution of Comforts to Other Ranks in
the Trenches", and all sorts of other things.
     Removing the  books that were lying  at  the top (a set  of the Russian
Pilgrim for 1913; a fat tome, History of the Schism, and a brochure entitled
A  Russian in Italy, the cover of  which showed a smoking  Vesuvius), Father
Theodore reached down into the very bottom of the  trunk and drew out an old
shabby hat belonging to  his  wife. Wincing at the smell of moth-balls which
suddenly assailed  him from the trunk,  he tore apart the lace and trimmings
and took from the  hat  a heavy  sausage-shaped object wrapped in linen. The
sausage-shaped object contained  twenty  ten-rouble gold coins, all that was
left of Father Theodore's business ventures.
     With a habitual movement of the hand, he lifted his cassock and stuffed
the sausage  into the pocket of his striped trousers.  He then  went over to
the chest of drawers and took twenty roubles in three- and five-rouble notes
from a  sweet-box. There  were twenty roubles left in the box. "That will do
for the housekeeping," he decided.


        CHAPTER FOUR

        THE MUSE OF TRAVEL

     An  hour before  the evening  mail-train was due in,  Father  Theodore,
dressed in a  short coat  which came  just below  the  knee, and carrying  a
wicker basket, stood in line in front of the booking-office and kept looking
apprehensively at  the station entrance. He was afraid that  in spite of his
insistence,  his wife might  come  to  see him  off,  and  then  Prusis, the
stall-owner, who was sitting in the buffet treating the income-tax collector
to a glass of beer, would immediately recognize him. Father  Theodore stared
with shame and surprise  at his striped trousers, now exposed to the view of
the entire laity.
     The process of boarding a train without reserved seats took  its normal
and scandalous  course.  Staggering  under  the  weight  of  enormous sacks,
passengers ran  from the front of  the train to the  back,  and then  to the
front again. Father Theodore followed them in a daze. Like everyone else, he
spoke to  the conductors  in an ingratiating tone, like everyone else he was
afraid he had been  given  the  "wrong" ticket, and it was only when he  was
finally allowed  into a coach  that his customary calm returned and  he even
became happy.
     The locomotive hooted at the top of its  voice and the train moved off,
carrying Father Theodore into  the unknown on business that  was mysterious,
yet promised great things.
     An interesting thing, the permanent way. Once he gets on to it the most
ordinary  man in the  street feels a certain animation in  himself  and soon
turns into  a passenger, a  consignee, or simply a trouble-maker  without  a
ticket,  who makes life difficult  for the teams of conductors  and platform
ticket-inspectors.
     The  moment  a  passenger  approaches  the  right   of  way,  which  he
amateurishly calls a railway station, his life is completely changed.  He is
immediately  surrounded by predatory  porters with white aprons  and  nickel
badges on their chests, and his luggage is obsequiously picked up. From that
moment,  the  citizen no  longer is his own master. He  is  a  passenger and
begins to  perform all the duties of one. These duties are many, though they
are not unpleasant.
     Passengers eat a lot. Ordinary mortals do not eat during the night, but
passengers do. They eat fried chicken, which is expensive, hard-boiled eggs,
which are bad  for  the stomach,  and olives. Whenever the train passes over
the points,  numerous teapots in  the  rack  clatter together,  and  legless
chickens  (the legs have been torn out by the  roots by  passengers) jump up
and down in their newspaper wrapping.
     The  passengers,  however, are  oblivious of  all this. They  tell each
other jokes. Every three  minutes the whole compartment rocks with laughter;
then there is a silence and a soft-spoken voice tells the following story:
     "An old Jew lay dying. Around him were his wife and children. 'Is Monya
here?' asks the  Jew with  difficulty. 'Yes,  she's here.' 'Has Auntie Brana
come?' 'Yes.' 'And where's Grandma?  I  don't  see her.'  'She's over here.'
'And Isaac?' 'He's here, too.' 'What about the children?' They're all here.'
'Then who's minding the shop?'"
     This very moment the teapots begin rattling and the chickens fly up and
down in the rack, but the passengers do not notice. Each one has a favourite
story  ready,  eagerly  awaiting its  turn.  A  new raconteur,  nudging  his
neighbours and  calling out in a pleading tone, "Have  you  heard this one?"
finally gains attention and begins:
     "A Jew comes home and gets into bed beside his wife. Suddenly he  hears
a  scratching noise under the bed.  The Jew  reaches his hand underneath the
bed and asks: 'Is that  you, Fido?'  And Fido licks his hand and says: 'Yes,
it's me.' "
     The  passengers  collapse  with  laughter;  a  dark  night  cloaks  the
countryside. Restless sparks fly from  the funnel,  and the slim signals  in
their  luminous green  spectacles  flash snootily  past,  staring above  the
train.
     An interesting thing, the right of way! Long, heavy trains race to all'
parts  of the country. The way is open at every  point. Green  lights can be
seen everywhere; the track  is clear. The polar express goes up to Murmansk.
The K-l  draws out of Kursk Station, bound for Tiflis, arching its back over
the  points. The  far-eastern courier  rounds Lake Baikal and approaches the
Pacific at full speed.
     The Muse of Travel is calling.  She has already plucked Father Theodore
from his quiet regional cloister and cast him  into  some unknown  province.
Even Ippolit Matveyevich  Vorobyaninov, former  marshal  of the nobility and
now clerk in a  registry office, is stirred to  the depths of  his heart and
highly excited at the great things ahead.
     People speed  all  over  the  country. Some  of  them  are looking  for
scintillating  brides thousands of miles  away, while others, in pursuit  of
treasure, leave  their jobs in the post office  and rush off like schoolboys
to Aldan. Others simply  sit  at home,  tenderly stroking an imminent hernia
and reading the works of Count Salias, bought  for five kopeks instead of  a
rouble.
     The day after the funeral, kindly arranged by Bezenchuk the undertaker,
Ippolit Matveyevich went  to work and, as part  of  the duties with which he
was charged, duly  registered in his own hand the demise of Claudia Ivanovna
Petukhov, aged  fifty-nine, housewife,  non-party-member,  resident  of  the
regional centre of N., by origin a member of the upper class of the province
of  Stargorod. After this, Ippolit  Matveyevich granted  himself  a two-week
holiday due to him, took forty-one roubles in salary,  said good-bye  to his
colleagues, and went home. On the way he stopped at the chemist's.
     The chemist, Leopold  Grigorevich,  who  was called Lipa by his friends
and  family,  stood  behind   the   red-lacquered  counter,  surrounded   by
frosted-glass  bottles  of poison, nervously trying to sell the fire chief's
sister-in-law  "Ango  cream  for  sunburn  and  freckles-gives  the  skin an
exceptional whiteness". The fire chief's sister-in-law,  however, was asking
for  "Rachelle  powder, gold  in colour-gives  the skin  a  tan not normally
acquirable". The chemist had  only the Ango cream in  stock, and the  battle
between these two very different cosmetics raged for half an hour. Lipa  won
in  the  end  and sold the  fire chief's sister-in-law  some lipstick  and a
bugovar, which is a device similar in principle to the samovar,  except that
it looks like a watering-can and catches bugs.
     "What can I get you?"
     "Something for the hair."
     "To make it grow, to remove it, or to dye it? "
     "Not to make it grow," said Ippolit Matveyevich. "To dye it."
     "We have a  wonderful  hair  dye called  Titanic.  We got  it from  the
customs people;  it was  confiscated.  It's  a jet  black  colour. A  bottle
containing a  six months' supply costs three  roubles,  twelve kopeks. I can
recommend it to you, as a good friend."
     Ippolit  Matveyevich twiddled  the bottle in his hands,  looked at  the
label with a sigh, and put down his money on the counter.
     He went home and, with a feeling of revulsion,  began  pouring  Titanic
onto his head and moustache. A stench filled the house.
     By  the time dinner was over, the stench had cleared, the moustache had
dried and become matted and was very difficult to comb. The jet-black colour
turned out to have a greenish tint, but there was no time for a second try.
     Taking from his mother-in-law's jewel box a list of the gems, found the
night before, Ippolit Matveyevich counted  up  his cash-in-hand, locked  the
house,  put the key  in  his  back pocket and  took  the no.  7  express  to
Stargorod.


        CHAPTER FIVE

        THE SMOOTH OPERATOR

     At  half  past  eleven  a  young  man aged about  twenty-eight  entered
Stargorod from the direction of the village of Chmarovka, to the north-east.
A waif ran along behind him.
     "Mister!" cried the boy gaily, "gimme ten kopeks!"
     The young man took a warm apple out of his pocket "and handed it to the
waif, but the  child  still kept running behind. Then the young  man stopped
and, looking ironically at the boy, said quietly:
     "Perhaps you'd also like the key of the apartment where the money is?"
     The  presumptuous  waif then  realized  the  complete  futility of  his
pretensions and dropped behind.
     The young man had  not  told the truth.  He  had no money, no apartment
where it might have been found, and no key with which to open it. He did not
even have a coat. The young man entered the town in a green suit tailored to
fit  at the waist and an  old  woollen scarf  wound several times around his
powerful neck.  On his feet  were  patent-leather boots with orange-coloured
suede uppers. He had no socks on. The young man carried an astrolabe.
     Approaching the market, he broke into a  song: "O, Bayadere, tum-ti-ti,
tum-ti-ti."
     In  the market he found plenty going on. He squeezed into  the  line of
vendors selling  wares  spread out  on  the  ground  before them, stood  the
astrolabe in front of him and began shouting:
     "Who  wants an  astrolabe? Here's  an  astrolabe  going  cheap. Special
reduction for delegations and women's work divisions !"
     At first the unexpected supply met  with little demand; the delegations
of housewives were more  interested in obtaining commodities in short supply
and were milling around the  cloth and drapery stalls. A detective from  the
Stargorod  criminal investigation  department  passed  the  astrolabe-vendor
twice, but  since  the instrument in no way resembled the typewriter  stolen
the day before from the Central Union  of Dairy Co-operatives, the detective
stopped glaring at the young man and passed on.
     By  lunchtime the astrolabe  had  been sold to  a repairman  for  three
roubles.
     "It measures  by  itself," he said,  handing over the  astrolabe to its
purchaser, "provided you have something to measure."
     Having rid himself of the calculating  instrument, the happy  young man
had lunch in the Tasty Corner snack bar, and then went to have a look at the
town.  He  passed  along  Soviet Street,  came  out  into  Red  Army  Street
(previously  Greater Pushkin Street), crossed  Co-operative Street and found
himself again on Soviet Street. But it was  not the same Soviet  Street from
which  he had come.  There were  two  Soviet  Streets  in  the town. Greatly
surprised  by this fact, the young man carried  on and found himself in Lena
Massacre  Street  (formerly  Denisov Street).  He stopped  outside no. 28, a
pleasant two-storeyed private house, which bore a sign saying:

        USSR RSFSR
     SECOND SOCIAL SECURITY HOME
     OF THE
     STAR-PROV-INS-AD

     and  requested  a  light from  the  caretaker, who was sitting  by  the
entrance on a stone bench.
     "Tell me, dad,"  said the  young man,  taking  a  puff,  "are there any
marriageable young girls in this town? "
     The old caretaker did not show the least surprise.
     "For  some a mare'd be a  bride," he  answered, readily  striking up  a
conversation.
     "I  have  no  more questions,"  said  the  young  man  quickly. And  he
immediately asked one more: "A house like this and no girls in it?"
     "It's a long while since there've  been  any young girls here," replied
the  old  man.  "This  is  a  state  institution-a  home  for old-age  women
pensioners."
     "I see. For ones born before historical materialism?"
     "That's it. They were born when they were born."
     "And  what  was  here in  the  house  before  the  days  of  historical
materialism?"
     "When was that?"
     "In the old days. Under the former regime."
     "Oh, in the old days my master used to live here."
     "A member of the bourgeoisie")"
     "Bourgeoisie yourself! I told you. He was a marshal of the nobility."
     "You mean he was from the working class?"
     "Working class yourself! He was a marshal of the nobility."
     The conversation with the intelligent caretaker so poorly versed in the
class structure of society might have gone on  for heaven knows how long had
not the young man got down to business.
     "Listen, granddad," he said, "what about a drink?"
     "All right, buy me one!"
     They were gone an hour. When they returned, the caretaker was the young
man's best friend.
     "Right, then,  I'll stay the night with  you," said the newly  acquired
friend.
     "You're a good man. You can stay here for the rest  of your life if you
like."
     Having  achieved  his aim, the young man  promptly  went down into  the
caretaker's room, took off his orange-coloured boots, and, stretching out on
a bench, began thinking out a plan of action for the following day.
     The young  man's  name  was  Ostap Bender.  Of  his background he would
usually  give only  one  detail. "My dad," he  used  to say, "was a  Turkish
citizen."  During  his life  this son  of  a Turkish  citizen  had had  many
occupations. His lively nature had prevented him  from devoting  himself  to
any one thing for long  and  kept him  roving  through the  country, finally
bringing him to Stargorod without any socks and without a key, apartment, or
money.
     Lying in the caretaker's room,  which was  so warm that it stank, Ostap
Bender weighed up in his mind two possibilities for a career.
     He could  become  a polygamist and calmly  move on from  town  to town,
taking with him  a suitcase  containing his latest  wife's valuables, or  he
could go the  next  day to the  Stargorod Commission  for the Improvement of
Children's  Living Conditions  and suggest they undertake the popularization
of  a brilliantly  devised,  though  yet  unpainted,  picture  entitled "The
Bolsheviks Answer Chamberlain" based on Repin's famous canvas "The Zaporozhe
Cossacks  Answer the  Sultan". If it worked, this possibility could bring in
four hundred or so roubles.
     The two possibilities had been thought up by Ostap during his last stay
in Moscow. The polygamy idea was  conceived after reading a law-court report
in the evening paper,  which clearly stated that the convicted man was given
only a two-year  sentence,  while the second idea  came  to Bender as he was
looking round the Association  of  Revolutionary Artists' exhibition, having
got in with a free pass.
     Both possibilities had their drawbacks, however. To begin a career as a
polygamist without a heavenly grey polka-dot suit was unthinkable. Moreover,
at  least ten roubles would  be  needed for purposes of  representation  and
seduction. He could get married, of course,  in his green field-suits, since
his virility and good  looks were absolutely  irresistible to the provincial
belles looking for husbands, but that would have been, as Ostap used to say,
"poor workmanship".  The question of the painting was not all plain  sailing
either. There  might be difficulties of a purely technical nature.  It might
be awkward, for instance,  to show Comrade  Kalinin in a fur  cap  and white
cape,  while  Comrade Chicherin was  stripped  to  the waist. They  could be
depicted in ordinary dress, of course,  but that would not be quite the same
thing.
     "It wouldn't have the right effect!" said Ostap aloud.
     At this point he noticed that the caretaker had been prattling away for
some time, apparently reminiscing about the previous owner of the house.
     "The police chief used to salute him. . . . I'd go and wish him a happy
new year,  let's say, and he'd give  me three roubles. At Easter, let's say,
he'd give me another three roubles.  . . . Then on his birthday,  let's say.
In  a year I'd get as  much  as  fifteen  roubles from wishing him. He  even
promised to  give me a medal. 'I want my caretaker to have a medal,' he used
to say.  That's what he would say: 'Tikhon,  consider that you already  have
the medal.'"
     "And did he give you one? "
     "Wait a moment. .  . . T don't  want a caretaker  without a medal,'  he
used to say. He went  to St. Petersburg to get me a medal. Well,  the  first
time  it  didn't  work  out. The officials didn't want to give  me one. 'The
Tsar,' he used to say, 'has gone abroad. It isn't possible just now.' So the
master told me to wait. 'Just wait a  bit, Tikhon,' he used  to say, 'you'll
get your medal.' "
     "And what happened to this master of yours? Did they bump him off?"
     "No one  bumped him off. He went away. What was the good of him staying
here with the soldiers? . . . Do they give medals to caretakers nowadays?"
     "Certainly. I can arrange one for you."
     The caretaker looked at Bender with veneration.
     "I can't be without one. It's that kind of work."
     "Where did your master go?"
     "Heaven knows. People say he went to Paris."
     "Ah, white acacia-the emigre's flower! So he's an emigre!"
     "Emigre yourself. . . . He went to Paris, so people say. And the  house
was taken over for old women. You greet them every day, but they don't  even
give you a ten-kopek bit! Yes, he was some master!"
     At that moment the rusty bell above the door began to ring.
     The  caretaker ambled over to the door, opened it,  and stepped back in
complete amazement.
     On the  top step  stood  Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov with  a black
moustache   and  black   hair.  His  eyes   behind  his   pince-nez   had  a
pre-revolutionary twinkle.
     "Master!" bellowed Tikhon with delight. "Back from Paris!"
     Ippolit Matveyevich became embarrassed by the presence of the stranger,
whose bare purple feet he had just spotted protruding from behind the table,
and was about to leave again when Ostap Bender briskly jumped up  and made a
low bow.
     "This isn't Paris, but you're welcome to our abode."
     Ippolit Matveyevich felt himself forced to say something.
     "Hello, Tikhon. I certainly haven't come from Paris. Where  did you get
that strange idea from?"
     But  Ostap Bender,  whose long  and noble nose had caught the  scent of
roast meat, did not give the caretaker time to utter a word.
     "Splendid," he  said, narrowing his eyes. "You haven't come from Paris.
You've no doubt come from Kologriv to visit your deceased grandmother."
     As he spoke, he tenderly embraced the caretaker and pushed him  outside
the door before the old man had time  to realize what was happening. When he
finally  gathered  his wits, all he knew was that  his  master had come back
from Paris, that he himself had been pushed out of his own room, and that he
was clutching a rouble note in his left hand.
     Carefully locking  the door,  Bender turned to  Vorobyaninov,  who  was
still standing in the middle of the room, and said:
     "Take it easy, everything's all right! My  name's Bender. You may  have
heard of me!"
     "No, I haven't," said Ippolit Matveyevich nervously.
     "No, how  could  the name of Ostap Bender be known in Paris? Is it warm
there  just  now? It's a  nice  city.  I  have  a married cousin there.  She
recently sent me a silk handkerchief by registered post."
     "What   rubbish   is  this?"  exclaimed   Ippolit  Matveyevich.   "What
handkerchief? I haven't come from Paris at all. I've come from . . ."
     "Marvellous! You've come from Morshansk!"
     Ippolit Matveyevich had never had dealings with so spirited a young man
as Ostap Bender and began to feel peculiar.
     "Well, I'm going now," he said.
     "Where  are