Читать книгу The Golden Calf - Илья Ильф - Страница 13

A Plain-Looking Suitcase

A man without a hat walked out of the small gate of building number sixteen, his head bowed. He wore gray canvas pants, leather sandals without socks, like a monk, and a white collarless shirt. Stepping onto the flat, bluish stones of the sidewalk, he stopped and said quietly to himself:

“Today is Friday. That means I have to go to the train station again.”

Having uttered these words, the man in sandals quickly looked over his shoulder. He had a hunch that a man, wearing the impenetrable expression of a spy, was standing behind him. But Lesser Tangential Street was completely empty.

The June morning was just beginning to take shape. Acacia trees were gently trembling and dropping cold metallic dew on the flat stones. Little birds were chirping some cheerful nonsense. The heavy molten sea blazed at the end of the street below, beyond the roofs. Young dogs, looking around sadly and making tapping sounds with their nails, were climbing onto trash cans. The hour of the street sweepers had ended, and the hour of the milk delivery women hadn’t started yet.

It was that time, between five and six in the morning, when the street sweepers, having swung their bristly brooms enough, returned to their shacks, and the city is light, clean, and quiet, like a state bank. At moments like this, one feels like crying and wants to believe that yogurt is indeed tastier and healthier than vodka. But one can already hear the distant rumble of the milk delivery women, who are getting off commuter trains with their cans. They will rush into the city and bicker with housewives at back doors. Factory workers with lunch bags will appear for a brief moment and then immediately disappear behind factory gates. Smoke will start billowing from the stacks. And then, jumping angrily on their night stands, myriad alarm clocks will start ringing their hearts out (those of the Paul Buhre brand a bit quieter, those from the Precision Mechanics State Trust a bit louder), and half-awake office workers will start bleating and falling off their high single beds. The hour of the milk delivery women will be over, and the hour of the office dwellers will begin.

But it was still early, and the clerks were still asleep under their ficus. The man in sandals walked through the entire city, seeing almost no one on the way. He walked under the acacias, which performed certain useful functions in Chernomorsk: some had dark blue mailboxes that were emblazoned with the postal logo (an envelope with a lightning bolt) hanging on them, others had metal water bowls, for dogs, attached to them with chains.

The man in sandals arrived at the Seaside Station just when the milk delivery women were leaving the building. After a few painful encounters with their iron shoulders, the man approached the luggage room and handed over a receipt. The attendant glanced at the receipt—with the unnatural seriousness that is unique to railroad personnel—and promptly tossed a suitcase to him. For his part, the man opened a small leather wallet, sighed, took out a ten-kopeck coin, and put it on the counter, which was made of six old rails that had been polished by innumerable elbows.

Back on the square in front of the station, the man in sandals put the suitcase down on the pavement, looked it over carefully, and even touched the small metal lock. It was a plain-looking suitcase that had been slapped together from a few wooden planks and covered with man-made fabric.

If this kind of suitcase belongs to a younger passenger, it usually contains cotton Sketch socks, two spare shirts, a hairnet, some underwear, a brochure entitled The Goals of the Young Communist League in the Countryside, and three squished boiled eggs. Plus, there’s always a roll of dirty laundry wrapped in the newspaper Economic Life and tucked in the corner. Older passengers use this kind of suitcase to carry a full suit and a separate pair of pants (made of “Odessa Centennial” checkered fabric), a pair of suspenders, a pair of closed-back slippers, a bottle of eau-de-cologne, and a white Marseilles blanket. It should be noted that in these cases there’s also something wrapped in Economic Life and tucked in the corner, except that instead of dirty laundry it’s a pale boiled chicken.

Satisfied with this perfunctory inspection, the man in sandals picked up the suitcase and boarded a tropical-white streetcar that took him to the Eastern Station at the other end of the city. Here, he reversed the process he had just completed at the Seaside Station—he checked his suitcase in at the luggage room and obtained a receipt from the imposing attendant.

Having completed this unusual ritual, the owner of the suitcase left the station just as the streets were beginning to fill up with the most exemplary of the clerks. He quickly joined their disorderly ranks, and his outfit immediately lost all its strangeness. The man in sandals was an office worker, and almost every office worker in Chernomorsk followed an unwritten dress code: a night shirt with sleeves rolled up above the elbows, light, orphanage-style pants, and those same sandals, or canvas shoes. Nobody wore a hat. One could occasionally spot a cap, but a mane of wild black hair standing on end was much more common, and a bald, sun-tanned pate, glimmering like a melon lying in the field and tempting you to write something on it with an indelible pencil, was more common still.

The organization where the man in sandals worked was called The Hercules, and it occupied a former hotel. Revolving glass doors with brass steamboat handles propelled him into a large, pink marble hallway. The elevator was permanently moored on the first floor, and it served as an information booth—one could already see a woman’s laughing face inside. Having run a few steps, thanks to the momentum given to him by the door, the newcomer stopped in front of an old doorman, who was wearing a cap with a golden zigzag, and asked cheerily:

“So, old man, are you ready for the crematorium?”

“Ready, my friend,” answered the doorman with a broad smile, “ready for our Soviet columbarium.”

He even waived his hands in excitement. His kindly face showed a willingness to submit himself to the fiery ritual at any moment.

The Chernomorsk authorities were planning to build a crematorium—along with a space called a columbarium, for funeral urns—and for some reason this novelty, courtesy of the municipal cemetery department, delighted the citizens to no end. Maybe they thought the new words—crematorium and columbarium—were funny, or maybe they were particularly amused by the thought that a human body can be burned like a log. Either way, they pestered elderly people in the streets and on streetcars with comments like: “Where are you charging off to, old woman? To the crematorium?” Or: “Let the old man pass, he’s off to the crematorium.” Surprisingly, the old folks liked the idea of cremation very much, and they responded good-naturedly to all jokes on the subject. In general, all that talk about dying, which was previously considered inappropriate and impolite, had come to enjoy universal popularity in Chernomorsk and was considered as entertaining as Jewish and Armenian jokes.

The man skirted a naked marble woman that stood at the bottom of the stairs, an electric torch in her raised hand, and threw a quick annoyed look at the poster that said, the purge of the hercules begins. down with the conspiracy of silence and cronyism. Then he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He worked in the Department of Finance and Accounting. It was still fifteen minutes before the official start of the workday, but the others—Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musicant, Chevazhevskaya, Kukushkind, Borisokhlebsky, and Lapidus Jr.—were already at their desks. They weren’t worried about the purge at all, and repeatedly reassured one another that they weren’t, but lately, for some reason, they had started coming to work earlier and earlier. Taking advantage of the few minutes of free time, they were chatting loudly among themselves. Their voices boomed across the huge hall, which was once the hotel’s restaurant. Its oak-paneled ceiling, which was covered with carvings, and the murals of frolicking dryads and other nymphs, with dreadful smiles on their faces, were evidence of its past.

“Have you heard the news, Koreiko?” Lapidus Jr. asked the new arrival. “You really haven’t? Then you won’t believe it.”

“What news? Good morning, Comrades,” said Koreiko. “Good morning, Anna Vasilevna.”

“You can’t even imagine!” said Lapidus Jr. gleefully. “Accountant Berlaga is in the nuthouse.”

“Are you serious? Berlaga? He’s the most normal person in the world!”

“Was the most normal until yesterday, but now he’s the least normal,” chimed in Borisokhlebsky. “It’s true. His brother-in-law called me. Berlaga has a very serious mental illness, the heel nerve disorder.”

“The only surprising thing is that the rest of us don’t have this nerve disorder yet,” remarked old Kukushkind darkly, looking at his co-workers through his round, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Bite your tongue,” said Chevazhevskaya. “He’s always so depressing.”

“It’s really too bad about Berlaga,” said Dreyfus, turning his swivel chair towards the others.

The others silently agreed with Dreyfus. Only Lapidus Jr. smirked mysteriously. The conversation moved on to the behavior of the mentally ill. They mentioned a few maniacs, and told a few stories about notorious madmen.

“I had a crazy uncle,” reported Sakharkov, “who thought he was simultaneously Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You can imagine the ruckus he raised!”

“The only surprising thing,” said old Kukushkind in a scratchy voice, methodically wiping off his glasses with the flap of his jacket, “the only surprising thing is that the rest of us don’t yet think that we are Abraham . . .” The old man started puffing, “. . . Isaac . . .”

“And Jacob?” asked Sakharkov teasingly.

“That’s right! And Jacob!” shrieked Kukushkind suddenly. “And Jacob! Yes, Jacob. We live in such unnerving times . . . When I worked at the banking firm of Sycamorsky and Cesarewitch they didn’t have any purges.”

Hearing the word “purge,” Lapidus Jr. perked up, took Koreiko by the elbow, and pulled him toward the enormous stained-glass window, which depicted two gothic knights.

“You haven’t heard the most interesting bit about Berlaga yet,” he whispered. “Berlaga is healthy as a horse.”

“What? So he’s not in the nuthouse?”

“Oh yes, he is.”

Lapidus smiled knowingly.

“That’s the trick. He was simply afraid of the purge and decided to sit this dangerous period out. Faked mental illness. Right now, he’s probably growling and guffawing. What an operator! Frankly, I’m envious.”

“Is there a problem with his parents? Were they merchants? Undesirable elements?”

“Yes, his parents were problematic, and he himself, between you and me, used to own a pharmacy. Who knew the revolution was coming? People took care of themselves the best they could: some owned pharmacies, others even factories. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Who knew?”

“They should have known,” said Koreiko icily.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” agreed Lapidus quickly, “people like this do not belong in a Soviet organization.”

He gave Koreiko a wide-eyed look and returned to his desk.

The hall was filled with employees. Flexible metal rulers, shining and silvery like fish scales, abacuses with palm beads, heavy ledgers with pink and yellow stripes on their pages, and a multitude of other pieces of stationery great and small were pulled out of desk drawers. Tezoimenitsky tore yesterday’s page off the wall calendar, and the new day began. Somebody had already sunk his young teeth into a large chopped mutton sandwich.

Koreiko settled down at his desk as well. He firmly planted his suntanned elbows on the desk and started making entries in a current accounts ledger.

Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, one of the lowest-ranking employees of the Hercules, was approaching the very end of his youth. He was thirty-eight. His brick-red face sported white eyes and blonde eyebrows that looked like ears of wheat. His thin English mustache was the color of ripe cereal, too. His face would have looked quite young had it not been for the rough drill-sergeant’s jowls that cut across his cheeks and neck. At work, Alexander Ivanovich carried himself like an army volunteer: he didn’t talk too much, he followed instructions, and he was diligent, deferential, and a bit slow.

“He’s too timid,” the head of Finance and Accounting said, “too servile, if you will, too dedicated. The moment a new bond campaign is announced, he’s right there, with his one-month salary pledge. The first to sign up. And his salary is a measly forty-six rubles a month. I would love to know how he manages to live on that . . .”

Alexander Ivanovich had one peculiar talent: he could instantly divide and multiply three- and four-digit numbers in his head. Despite this talent, they still thought Koreiko was somewhat slow.

“Listen, Alexander Ivanovich,” an office mate would ask, “how much is 836 times 423?”

“Three hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight,” Koreiko would answer after a moment’s hesitation.

The co-worker wouldn’t even bother to check the result because he knew that the slow Koreiko never made a mistake.

“Someone else would have made a career out of this,” Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musicant, Chevazhevskaya, Borisokhlebsky, Lapidus Jr., the old fool Kukushkind, and even Berlaga, the one who escaped to the nuthouse, often repeated. “But this one is a loser. He’ll spend his whole life making forty-six rubles a month.”

Of course, his co-workers, or the head of Finance and Accounting, Comrade Arnikov himself, or even Impala Mikhailovna, the personal secretary to the director of the entire Hercules, Comrade Polykhaev—all of them would have been shocked had they found out what exactly Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, the quietest of the clerks, had been up to just one hour earlier. For whatever reason, he dragged a particular suitcase from one train station to another. The suitcase contained not Odessa Centennial pants, nor a boiled chicken, and certainly not The Goals of the Young Communist League in the Countryside, but ten million rubles in Soviet and foreign currency.

In 1915, Alex Koreiko, twenty-three, the ne’er-do-well son of middle class parents, was one of those who are deservedly known as “retired high-schoolers.” He didn’t finish school, didn’t take up any trade, he just hung out on the boulevards and lived off his parents. His uncle, the manager of the regional military office, had shielded him from the draft, so he could listen to the cries of the half-witted paperboy without worrying:

“The latest cables! Our troops are advancing! Thank God! Multiple casualties! Thank God!”

Back then, Alex Koreiko pictured his future in the following way: he’s walking down the street and suddenly, near a downspout covered with zinc stars, right next to the wall, he sees a burgundy leather wallet that’s squeaky like a new saddle. There’s a lot of money in the wallet, 2,500 rubles . . . After that, everything would be swell.

He pictured finding the money so often that he knew exactly where it was going to happen—on Poltava Victory Street, in an asphalt corner formed by the jutting wall of a building, near the star-studded downspout. There it lies, his leather savior, dusted with dry acacia flowers, next to a flattened cigarette butt. Alex walked to Poltava Victory Street every day, but to his great surprise, the wallet was never there. He’d poke the garbage with a student’s walking stick and mindlessly stare at the glazed metal sign that hung by the front door: yu. m. soloveisky, tax assessor. Then he would wander home in a daze, throw himself on the red velvet couch and dream of riches, deafened by the ticking of his heart and pulse. His pulse was shallow, angry, and impatient.

The revolution of 1917 chased Koreiko off his velvet couch. He realized that he could become the lucky heir to some wealthy strangers. He felt in his guts that the country was awash in unclaimed gold, jewelry, expensive furniture, paintings and carpets, fur coats and dining sets. One just had to move fast and grab the riches, the sooner the better.

At the time, however, he was still young and foolish. He took over a large apartment—whose owner was smart enough to escape to Constantinople on a French ship—and started living there openly. Over the course of a week, he grew accustomed to the lavish lifestyle of the fugitive businessman: he drank the muscat wine he found in the cupboard with pickled herring from his food ration and sold knickknacks at the flea market. He was quite surprised when he was arrested.

He got out of prison five months later. He hadn’t given up the idea of becoming rich, but he came to realize that such an undertaking has to be secret, hidden, and gradual. First, he had to acquire some camouflage. In the case of Alexander Ivanovich, the camouflage came in the form of tall orange boots, huge dark-blue breeches, and the long military-style jacket of a food-supply official.

In those distressing times, everything that had been made by human hands wasn’t working as well as it had before: houses no longer gave any protection from the cold, food wasn’t filling, the electricity was only turned on to round up deserters and bandits, running water didn’t reach beyond the first floor, and streetcars did not run at all. At the same time, the elements became more ferocious and dangerous: the winters were colder than before, the winds were stronger, and the common cold, which used to put a person in bed for three days, killed him within the same three days. Groups of young men without any discernible occupation wandered the streets, singing a devil-may-care ditty about money that had lost its value:

I am standing at the till,

Not a single smaller bill.

Can you break a hundred million fo-o-o-r me?

Alexander Ivanovich watched in consternation as the money that he had gone to incredible lengths to acquire was turning into dust.

Typhoid was killing people by the thousands. Alex was selling medications that had been stolen from a warehouse. He made five hundred million on the typhoid, but inflation turned it into five million within a month. Then he made a billion on sugar; inflation turned it into dust.

During that period, one of his most successful operations was the heist of a scheduled food train that was headed for the famished Volga region. Koreiko was in charge of the train. The train left Poltava for Samara but never reached Samara and did not return to Poltava either. It disappeared en route without a trace. Alexander Ivanovich disappeared with it.