The Twelve Chairs (26 page)

for the dying and the curtain came down, wafting a breath of cool air.
"I'm satisfied with the  performance,"  said  Ostap.  "The  chairs  are
intact. But we've no time to lose. If Agafya Tikhonovna  is going to land on
those chairs each day, they won't last very long."
Jostling and  laughing,  the  young  men  in  their  fashioned  jackets
discussed the finer points of the scenic effects.
"You need some shut-eye, Pussy," said Ostap. "We have  to stand in line
for tickets early tomorrow  morning. The theatre  is leaving by express  for
Nizhni tomorrow evening at seven. So get two seats in a hard coach to Nizhni
on the Kursk Railway. We'll sit it out. It's only one night."
The next day the  Columbus Theatre was sitting in  the  buffet at Kursk
Station.  Having taken steps to see that the scenic effects went by the same
train,  Simbievich-Sindievich was having a  snack  at  one  of  the  tables.
Dipping his moustache into the beer, he asked the fitter nervously:
"The hydraulic press won't get broken on the way, will it?"
"It's not the press that's the trouble," said fitter Mechnikov.
"It's that it only works for five minutes and we have to cart it around
the whole summer."
"Was it any easier with the 'time projector' from the Ideology Powder!"
"Of course it was. The projector was big, but not so fragile."
At the next  table sat Agafya Tikhonovna, a  youngish  woman with  hard
shiny  legs, like  skittles.  The  sound  effects  -Galkin,  Palkin, Malkin,
Chalkin and Zalkind-fussed around her.
"You didn't keep in time  with me  yesterday," she complained. "I might
have fallen off."
"What can we do?" clamoured the sound effects. "Two douches broke."
"You  think it's easy to get an Esmarch douche from abroad  nowadays? "
cried Galkin.
"Just try going to the  State Medical Supply Office. It's impossible to
buy a thermometer, let alone an Esmarch douche," added Palkin.
"Do you play thermometers as well?" asked the girl, horrified.
"It's not  that we play  thermometers," observed Zalkind, "but that the
damned douches are enough  to drive you out of your mind and we have to take
our own temperatures."
Nich. Sestrin,  stage  manager and  producer, was strolling  along  the
platform with his wife. Podkolesin and Kochkarev had downed three vodkas and
were wooing Georgetta Tiraspolskikh, each trying to outdo the other.
The concessionaires  had arrived two hours  before the train was due to
depart and were now on their sixth round of the garden laid out in front  of
the station.
Ippolit Matveyevich's head was  whirling. The hunt for  the chairs  was
entering the last lap.  Long  shadows  fell on  the  scorching roadway. Dust
settled on  their wet, sweaty faces. Cabs rattled past them and there  was a
smell of petrol. Hired vehicles set down their passengers. Porters ran up to
them  and carried off the bags, while their badges glittered in the sun. The
Muse of Travel had people by the throat.
"Let's get going as well," said Ostap.
Ippolit Matveyevich meekly consented. All of a sudden he  came face  to
face with Bezenchuk, the undertaker.
"Bezenchuk!" he exclaimed in amazement. "How did you get here?"
Bezenchuk   doffed  his  cap   and  was  speechless   with   joy.  "Mr.
Vorobyaninov," he cried. "Greetin's to an honoured guest."
"Well, how are things?"
"Bad," answered the undertaker.
"Why is that?"
"I'm lookin' for clients. There ain't none about."
"Is the Nymph doing better than you?"
"Likely!  Could  they  do  better  than  me?  No  chance.   Since  your
mother-in-law, only Tierre and Constantine' has croaked."
"You don't say! Did he really die?"
"He croaked,  Ippolit  Matveyevich.  He  croaked at  his  post.  He was
shavin'  Leopold the chemist when he croaked. People said it was his insides
that bust, but I think it was the smell of medicine from the chemist that he
couldn't take."
"Dear  me, dear me," muttered  Ippolit Matveyevich. "So you buried him,
did you?"
"I buried him. Who else could? Does the Nymph, damn 'em, give tassels?"
"You got in ahead of them, then? "
"Yes,  I did, but  they beat me up afterwards. Almost beat the guts out
of me. The militia  took me away. I was in bed for two days.  I cured myself
with spirits."
"You massaged yourself?"
"No, I don't do that with spirits."
"But what made you come here? "
"I've brought my stock."
"What stock?"
"My  own. A guard I know helped  me bring it  here free in  the guard's
van. Did it as a friend."
It  was  only  then that  Ippolit  Matveyevich noticed  a neat pile  of
coffins on the ground a little way from Bezenchuk. Some had tassels,  others
did not.  One of them Ippolit Matveyevich recognized immediately. It was the
large, dusty oak coffin from Bezenchuk's shop window.
"Eight of them," said Bezenchuk smugly. "Like gherkins."
"But who  needs  your  coffins  here?  They have  plenty  of  their own
undertakers."
"What about the flu?"
"What flu?"
"The  epidemic. Prusis told me  flu was ragin'  in Moscow and there was
nothin' to bury people in. All the coffins were used up. So I decided to put
thin's right."
Ostap,  who had been  listening  to  the  conversation  with curiosity,
intervened. "Listen, dad, the flu epidemic is in Paris."
"In Paris?"
"Yes,  go to  Paris.  You'll make  money. Admittedly, there may be some
trouble with the visa,  but don't give up.  If Briand  likes you, you'll  do
pretty   well.  They'll  set  you  up  as  undertaker-royal  to  the   Paris
municipality. Here they have enough of their own undertakers."
Bezenchuk  looked around him  wildly. Despite the assurances of Prusis,
there  were certainly no bodies  lying about;  people were cheerfully moving
about on their feet, and some were even laughing.
Long  after the train had carried off the concessionaires, the Columbus
Theatre, and various other people, Bezenchuk was still standing in a daze by
his  coffins. His  eyes shone  in the approaching darkness with  an unfading
light.

MADAME PETUKHOV'S TREASURE

The smooth  operator stood with his friend and closest associate, Pussy
Vorobyaninov, on the  left of the passenger landing-stage of the state-owned
Volga  River Transport  System under a  sign  which said: "Use the rings for
mooring, mind the grating, and keep clear of the wall".
Flags fluttered  above the quay. Smoke as curly as a cauliflower poured
from the funnels. The S.S. Anton Rubinstein was being  loaded at pier No. 2.
Dock workers dug their iron claws  into  bales  of  cotton;  iron  pots were
stacked in a square on the quayside, which was littered  with treated hides,
bundles of wire, crates of sheet glass, rolls  of cord  for binding sheaves,
mill-stones,   two-colour   bony  agricultural  implements,  wooden   forks,
sack-lined baskets of early cherries, and casks of herrings.
The Scriabin was not in, which greatly disturbed Ippolit Matveyevich.
"Why worry about it?" asked Ostap. "Suppose the Scriabin were here. How
would you  get aboard?  Even if you had the money to buy  a ticket, it still
wouldn't be any use. The boat doesn't take passengers."
While still on the  train, Ostap had  already had a  chance  to talk to
Mechnikov, the fitter in  charge of  the  hydraulic press, and had found out
everything. The S.S. Scriabin had been chartered by the  Ministry of Finance
and was due to sail  from Nizhni to Tsaritsin,  calling at every river port,
and holding a government-bond  lottery. A complete government department had
left Moscow for the trip, including a lottery committee, an office  staff, a
brass band, a cameraman, reporters from  the central press and the  Columbus
Theatre. The theatre was there to perform  plays  which popularised the idea
of  government loans.  Up  to  Stalingrad  the Columbus Theatre  was  on the
establishment of the lottery committee, after which the  theatre had decided
to tour the Caucasus and the Crimea with The Marriage at its own risk.
The Scriabin  was  late.  A promise was given that  she would leave the
backwater, where  last-minute preparations were  being made, by evening.  So
the whole department from Moscow set up  camp on the quayside and waited  to
go aboard.
Tender creatures  with attache1  cases and hold-alls sat on the bundles
of wire,  guarding  their Underwoods, and  glancing  apprehensively  at  the
stevedores.  A  citizen  with a  violet  imperial  positioned  himself on  a
mill-stone. On his knees was a pile of enamel plates. A curious person could
have read the uppermost one:
Mutual Settlement Department
Desks with ornamental  legs and other,  more modest, desks stood on top
of one another. A guard sauntered up and down  by a  sealed safe. Persidsky,
who  was representing  the  Lathe, gazed  at the  fairground  through  Zeiss
binoculars with eightfold magnification.
The  S.S.  Scriabin approached, turning  against the  stream. Her sides
were  decked  with plyboard sheets  showing  brightly  coloured  pictures of
giant-sized bonds.  The ship gave a roar, imitating  the sound of a mammoth,
or possibly some other animal used in prehistoric times, as a substitute for
the sound of a ship's hooter.
The finance-and-theatre camp came  to life. Down the slopes to the quay
came the lottery  employees.  Platon Plashuk, a fat little man, toddled down
to the ship in a cloud  of dust. Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin and Zalkind
flew out of  the  Raft beer-hall.  Dockers  were already loading  the  safe.
Georgetta Tiraspolskikh, the acrobatics instructress, hurried up the gangway
with  a  springy walk,  while Simbievich-Sindievich, still worried about the
scenic effects, raised his hands, at one moment to the  Kremlin heights, and
at another towards the captain standing on the bridge. The cameraman carried
his camera  high above the heads of  the crowd, and as he went he demanded a
separate cabin in which to set up a darkroom.
Amid the  general confusion, Ippolit  Matveyevich made  his way over to
the chairs and was about to drag one away to one side.
"Leave the chair  alone!" snarled Bender.  "Are  you  crazy? Even if we
take  one, the others will disappear for good. You'd do better to think of a
way to get aboard the ship."
Belted with brass tubes, the band passed  along the landing-stage.  The
musicians looked with  distaste  at the saxophones, flexotones, beer bottles
and Esmarch douches, with which the sound effects were armed.
The  lottery wheels arrived in a Ford  station wagon. They  were  built
into a  complicated device composed of  six  rotating cylinders with shining
brass and glass. It  took some  time to  set them up on  the lower deck. The
stamping about and exchange of abuse continued until late evening.
In the lottery hall  people were erecting  a stage,  fixing notices and
slogans to  the  walls,  arranging  benches  for the  visitors, and  joining
electric cables to the lottery wheels. The desks were in the stern,  and the
tapping of typewriters, interspersed with laughter,  could be heard from the
typists' cabin. The pale man in the violet imperial walked the length of the
ship, hanging his enamel plates on the relevant doors.
Mutual Settlement Department
Personnel Department
Office
Engine Room
To the larger plates the man with the imperial added smaller plates.
No entry except on business
No consultations
No admittance to outsiders
All inquiries at the registry
The first-class  saloon had  been fitted up  for an exhibition of  bank
notes and bonds.  This  aroused a wave  of indignation  from Galkin, Palkin,
Malkin, Chalkin and Zalkind.
"Where are  we  going  to eat?" they fretted. "And what  happens if  it
rains?"
"This  is too much," said  Nich. Sestrin to his assistant. "What do you
think, Seryozha? Can we do without the sound effects?"
"Lord, no, Nicholas Constantinovich. The actors  are used to the rhythm
by now."
A fresh racket broke  out. The "Five" had found that  the stage manager
had taken all four chairs to his cabin.
"So that's it," said the "Five" ironically. "We're supposed to rehearse
sitting on our berths, while Sestrin and his wife, Gusta, who has nothing to
do with  our group, sit on the  four chairs. Perhaps  we should have brought
our own wives with us on this trip."
The lottery ship was  watched malevolently from the  bank by the smooth
operator. A fresh outbreak of shouting reached the concessionaires' ears.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" cried a committee member.
"How was I to know he would fall ill."
"A  hell of a mess we're in! Then go to  the  artists'-union office and
insist that an artist be sent here immediately."
"How  can  I? It's now six o'clock. The union office closed  long  ago.
Anyway, the ship is leaving in half an hour."
"Then you  can do the painting yourself. Since you're  responsible  for
the decorations on the ship, get out of the mess any way you like!"
Ostap was already  running up  the  gangplank, elbowing his way through
the dockers, young ladies, and idle onlookers. He was stopped at the top.
"Your pass?'
"Comrade!"  roared Bender.  "You! You! The  little fat man! The one who
needs an artist!"
Five minutes later the smooth operator was sitting  in the  white cabin
occupied by  the fat little assistant manager of  the  floating lottery, and
discussing terms.
"So  we  want you to  do  the following, Comrade," said  fatty.  "Paint
notices,  inscriptions, and  complete the transparent. Our  artist began the
work,  but  is  now ill.  We've left  him at the  hospital. And, of  course,
general supervision of the art department.
Can you take that on? I warn you, incidentally, there's a great deal of
work."
"Yes,  I can undertake that. I've had occasion  to do that kind of work
before."
"And you can come along with us now?"
"That will be difficult, but I'll try."
A large  and heavy  burden fell from  the  shoulders  of the  assistant
manager. With a feeling of relief, the fat man looked at the new artist with
shining eyes.
"Your terms?" asked Ostap  sharply.  "Remember,  I'm not from a funeral
home."
"It's piecework. At union rates."
Ostap frowned, which was very hard for him.
"But free meals as  well," added the tubby man hastily. "And a separate
cabin."
"All right," said  Ostap,  "I  accept. But I have a boy, an  assistant,
with me."
"I don't know about the  boy. There are no funds for a boy. But at your
own expense by all means. He can live in your cabin."
"As you like. The kid is smart. He's used to Spartan conditions."
Ostap was given  a pass for himself  and for the smart boy; he put  the
key of the cabin in his pocket and went out onto the hot deck. He felt great
satisfaction as he fingered the key. For the first time  in  his stormy life
he had both a key and an apartment. It  was  only  the money  he lacked. But
there was some right next to him  in  the chairs. The smooth operator walked
up and down the deck with his hands in his pockets, ignoring Vorobyaninov on
the quayside.
At first Ippolit Matveyevich made signs; then he was even daring enough
to whistle.  But Bender  paid no heed. Turning his back on the  president of
the concession, he watched with interest as the  hydraulic press was lowered
into the hold.
Final preparations  for casting off were being made. Agafya Tikhonovna,
alias Mura, ran with  clattering feet from her cabin to the stern, looked at
the  water,  loudly  shared her delight with  the  balalaika  virtuoso,  and
generally  caused  confusion  among  the  honoured officials of  the lottery
enterprise.
The ship gave a second hoot.  At the terrifying sound the clouds  moved
aside. The  sun turned crimson and sank below the  horizon. Lamps and street
lights came on  in  the  town above. From the  market  in Pochayevsky Ravine
there  came  the  hoarse  voices  of  gramophones  competing  for  the  last
customers. Dismayed and lonely, Ippolit Matveyevich kept shouting something,
but no one heard him. The clanking of winches drowned all other sounds.
Ostap Bender  liked  effects. It  was only just  before the third hoot,
when Ippolit Matveyevich no longer doubted that he had been abandoned to the
mercy of fate, that Ostap noticed him.
"What are you standing there like a coy suitor for?  I thought you were
aboard  long ago. They're just going to raise the  gangplank. Hurry  up! Let
this citizen board. Here's his pass."
Ippolit Matveyevich hurried aboard almost in tears.
"Is this your boy?" asked the boss suspiciously.
"That's  the one,"  said Ostap. "If  anyone  says he's  a girl,  I'm  a
Dutchman!"
The fat man glumly went away.
"Well, Pussy," declared Ostap, "we'll have to get down  to  work in the
morning.  I hope you can  mix paints.  And, incidentally,  I'm  an artist, a
graduate of the Higher Art and Technical Workshops, and you're my assistant.
If you don't like the idea, go back ashore at once."
Black-green  foam surged up from  under the stern. The  ship shuddered;
cymbals clashed together, flutes, cornets, trombones and tubas thundered out
a  wonderful march, and  the town,  swinging around and trying  to  balance,
shifted to the left bank. Continuing to throb, the ship moved into midstream
and was soon swallowed up in the darkness. A minute later it was so far away
that the lights of the town looked like sparks from a rocket that had frozen
in space.
The murmuring of typewriters could still  be heard, but nature and  the
Volga were gaining the upper hand. A cosiness enveloped all those aboard the
S.S. Scriabin. The members  of the lottery committee  drowsily  sipped their
tea. The  first meeting of the union committee, held in the prow, was marked
by tenderness. The warm wind  breathed so heavily, the water  lapped against
the sides of the ship so gently, and the dark outline of the shore sped past
the ship so  rapidly that when the  chairman  of the union committee, a very
positive  man, opened his  mouth  to  speak about working conditions  in the
unusual situation, he unexpectedly for himself, and for everyone else, began
singing:
"A ship sailed down the Volga,
Mother Volga, River Volga. . ."
And the other, stern-faced  members taking part in  the meeting rumbled
the chorus:
"The lilac bloo-ooms. . ."
The resolution on the chairman's report was just  not recorded. A piano
began  to play. Kh. Ivanov, head of the musical accompaniment, drew the most
lyrical  notes from  the instrument. The  balalaika  virtuoso  trailed after
Murochka and, not finding any words of his own to express his love, murmured
the words of a love song.
"Don't go  away! Your  kisses  still fire me,  your passionate embraces
never tire me.  The  clouds have not awakened in  the mountain  passes,  the
distant sky has not yet faded as a pearly star."
Grasping  the  rail,  Simbievich-Sindievich contemplated  the  infinite
heavens. Compared  with  them,  his  scenic  effects  appeared  a  piece  of
disgusting vulgarity. He looked with revulsion at his hands, which had taken
such an eager part in arranging the scenic effects for the classical comedy.
At the moment the languor was greatest, Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin
and Zalkind, who  were in the stern of the ship, began banging away at their
surgical and  brewery appliances. They were rehearsing. Instantly the mirage
was  dispelled.  Agafya   Tikhonovna  yawned  and,  ignoring  the  balalaika
virtuoso, went to bed. The minds of  the trade  unionists were again full of
working conditions,  and  they  dealt  with  the resolution.  After  careful
consideration,  Simbievich-Sindievich  came  to  the  conclusion   that  the
production  of  The Marriage was not  really so bad. An irate voice from the
darkness  called Georgetta  Tiraspolskikh  to a  producer's conference. Dogs
began barking in the villages and it became chilly.
Ostap  lay  in  a first-class cabin on  a leather  divan,  thoughtfully
staring at a green canvas work belt and questioning Ippolit Matveyevich.
"Can you draw? That's a pity. Unfortunately, I can't, either."
He thought for a while and then continued.
"What about lettering? Can't do that either? Too bad. We're supposed to
be artists. Well, we'll manage for a day or so before  they kick  us out. In
the time  we're here we  can do everything  we  need  to. The  situation has
become a bit  more complicated. I've  found out that  the  chairs are in the
producer's cabin. But that's not so bad in the long run. The important thing
is that we're aboard.  All the chairs must be examined before they  throw us
off. It's too late for today. The producer's already asleep in his cabin."