Authors: Ilya Ilf
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Dramas & Plays, #Regional & Cultural, #Russian, #Drama & Plays
The word rang out and reverberated noisily down the stairs.
"Hoo-hoo!" they echoed.
"Caretaker! Caretaker!"
"Hum-hum! Hum-hum!"
It was at this point that the engineer, impatiently shifting from one
bare foot to the other, suddenly slipped and, to regain his balance, let go
of the door.
The brass bolt of the Yale lock clicked into place and the door shut
fast. The wall shook. Not appreciating the irrevocable nature of what had
happened, Ernest Pavlovich pulled at the door handle. The door did not
budge.
In dismay the engineer pulled the handle again several times and
listened, his heart beating fast. There was a churchlike evening stillness.
A little light still filtered through the multicoloured glass of the high
window.
A fine thing to happen, thought Shukin. "You son of a bitch," he said
to the door. Downstairs, voices broke through the silence like exploding
squibs. Then came the muffled bark of a dog in one of the rooms. Someone was
pushing a pram upstairs. Ernest Pavlovich walked timidly up and down the
landing. "Enough to drive you crazy!"
It all seemed too outrageous to have actually happened. He went up to
the door and listened again. Suddenly he heard a different sort of noise. At
first he thought it was someone walking about in the apartment.
Somebody may have got in through the back door, he thought, although he
knew that the back door was locked and that no one could have got in.
The monotonous sound continued. The engineer held his breath and
suddenly realized that the sound was that of running water. It was evidently
pouring from all the taps in the apartment. Ernest Pavlovich almost began
howling.
The situation was awful. A full-grown man with a moustache and higher
education was standing on a ninth-floor landing in the centre of Moscow,
naked except for a covering of bursting soapsuds. There was nowhere he could
go. He would rather have gone to jail than show himself in that state. There
was only one thing to do-hide. The bubbles were bursting and making his back
itch. The lather on his face had already dried; it made him look as though
he had the mange and puckered his skin like a hone.
Half an hour passed. The engineer kept rubbing himself against the
whitewashed walls and groaning, and made several unsuccessful attempts to
break in the door. He became dirty and horrible.
Shukin decided to go downstairs to the caretaker at any price. There's
no other way out. None. The only thing to do is hide 10 the caretaker's
room.
Breathing heavily and covering himself with his hand as men do when
they enter the water, Ernest Pavlovich began creeping downstairs close to
the banister. He reached the landing between the eighth and ninth floors.
His body reflected multicoloured rhombuses and squares of light from
the window. He looked like Harlequin secretly listening to a conversation
between Columbine and Pierrot. He had just turned to go down the next flight
when the lock of an apartment door below snapped open and a girl came out
carrying a ballet dancer's attache case. Ernest Pavlovich was back on his
landing before the girl had taken one step. He was practically deafened by
the terrible beating of his heart.
It was half an hour before the engineer recovered sufficiently to make
another sortie. This time he was fully determined to hurtle down at full
speed, ignoring everything, and make it to the promised land of the
caretaker's room.
He started off. Silently taking four stairs at a time, the engineer
raced downstairs. On the landing of the sixth floor he stopped for a moment.
This was his undoing. Someone was coming up.
"Insufferable brat!" said a woman's voice, amplified many times by the
stairway. "How many times do I have to tell him!"
Obeying instinct rather than reason, like a cat pursued by dogs Ernest
Pavlovich tore up to the ninth floor again.
Back on his own land, all covered with wet footmarks, he silently burst
into tears, tearing his hair and swaying convulsively. The hot tears ran
through the coating of soap and formed two wavy furrows.
"Oh, my God!" moaned the engineer. "Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord!"
There was no sign of life. Then he heard the noise of a truck going up
the street. So there was life somewhere! Several times more he tried to
bring himself to go downstairs, but his nerve gave way each time. He might
as well have been in a burial vault.
"Someone's left a trail behind him, the pig!" he heard an old woman's
voice say from the landing below.
The engineer ran to the wall and butted it several times with his head.
The most sensible thing to do, of course, would have been to keep shouting
until someone came, and then put himself at their mercy. But Ernest
Pavlovich had completely lost his ability to reason; breathing heavily he
wandered round and round the landing.
There was no way out.
In the editorial offices of the large daily newspaper Lathe, located on
the second floor of the House of the Peoples, material was hurriedly being
got ready for the typesetters.
News items and articles were selected from the reserve (material which
had been set up but not included in the previous number) and the number of
lines occupied were counted up; then began the daily haggling for space.
The newspaper was able to print forty-four hundred lines in all on its
four pages. This had to include everything: cables, articles, social events,
letters from correspondents, advertisements, one satirical sketch in verse
and two in prose, cartoons, photographs, as well as special sections, such
as theatre, sports, chess, the editorial, second editorial, reports from
Soviet Party and trade-union organizations, serialized novels, features on
life in the capital, subsidiary items under the title of "Snippets",
popular-science articles, radio programmes, and other odds-and-ends. In all,
about ten thousand lines of material from all sections was set up, hence the
distribution of space was usually accompanied by dramatic scenes.
The first person to run to the editor was the chess correspondent,
Maestro Sudeikin. He posed a polite though bitter question. "What? No chess
today?"
"No room," replied the editor. "There's a long special feature. Three
hundred lines."
"But today's Saturday. Readers are expecting the Sunday section. I have
the answers to problems. I have a splendid study by Neunyvako, and I also
have-"
"All right, how much do you want?"
"Not less than a hundred and fifty."
"All right, if it's answers to problems, we'll give you sixty lines."
The maestro tried for another thirty so that at least the Neunyvako
could go in (the wonderful Tartokover vs. Bogolyubov game had been lying
about for a month), but was rebuffed.
Persidsky, the reporter, arrived. "Do you want some impressions of the
Plenum?" he asked softly.
"Of course," cried the editor. "It was held the day before yesterday,
after all!"
"I have the Plenum," said Persidsky even more softly, "and two
sketches, but they won't give me any room."
"Why won't they? Who did you talk to? Have they gone crazy?"
The editor hurried off to have an argument. He was followed by
Persidsky, intriguing as he went; behind them both ran a member of the
advertisement section.
"We have the Sekarov fluid to go in," he cried gloomily.
The office manager trailed along after them, dragging a chair he had
bought at an auction for the editor.
"The fluid can go in on Thursday. Today we're printing our
supplements!"
"You won't make much from free advertisements, and the fluid has been
paid for."
"Very well, we'll clear up the matter in the night editor's office.
Give the advertisements to Pasha. He's just going over there."
The editor sat down to read the editorial. He was immediately
interrupted from that entertaining occupation. Next to arrive was the
artist.
"Aha!" said the editor, "very good! I have a subject for a cartoon in
view of the latest cable from Germany."
"What about this?" said the artist. '"The Steel Helmet and the General
Situation in Germany'?"
"All right, you work something out and then show it to me."
The artist went back to his department. He took a square of
drawing-paper and made a pencil sketch of an emaciated dog. On the dog's
head he drew a German helmet with a spike. Then he turned to the wording. On
the animal's body he printed the word 'Germany', then he printed 'Danzig
Corridor' on its curly tail, 'Dreams of Revenge' on its jaw, 'Dawes Plan' on
its collar, and 'Stresemann' on its protruding tongue. In front of the dog
the artist drew a picture of Poincare holding a piece of meat in his hand.
He thought of something to write on the piece of meat, but the meat was too
small and the word would not fit. Anyone less quick-witted than a cartoonist
would have lost his head, but, without a second thought, the artist drew a
shape like a label of the kind found on necks of bottles near the piece of
meat and wrote 'French Guarantees of Security' in tiny letters inside it. So
that Poincare should not be confused with any other French statesman, he
wrote the word 'Poincare' on his stomach. The drawing was ready.
The desks of the art department were covered with foreign magazines,
large-size pairs of scissors, bottles of India ink and whiting. Bits of
photographs-a shoulder, a pair of legs, and a section of countryside-lay
about on the floor.
There were five artists who scraped the photographs with Gillette razor
blades to brighten them up; they also improved the contrast by touching them
up with India ink and whiting, and wrote their names and the size (3?
squares, 2 columns, and so on) on the reverse side, since these directions
are required in zincography.
There was a foreign delegation sitting in the chief editor's office.
The office interpreter looked into the speaker's face and, turning to the
chief editor, said: "Comrade Arnaud would like to know .. ."
They were discussing the running of a Soviet newspaper. While the
interpreter was explaining to the chief editor what Comrade Arnaud wanted to
know, Arnaud, in velvet plus fours, and all the other foreigners looked
curiously at a red pen with a No. 86 nib which was leaning against the wall
in the corner. The nib almost touched the ceiling and the holder was as wide
as an average man's body at the thickest part. It was quite possible to
write with it; the nib was a real one although it was actually bigger than a
large pike.
"Hohoho! " laughed the foreigners. "Kolossal! " The pen had been
presented to the editorial office by a correspondents' congress.
Sitting on Vorobyaninov's chair, the chief editor smiled and, nodding
first towards the pen and then at his guests, happily explained things to
them.
The clamour in the offices continued. Persidsky brought in an article
by Semashko and the editor promptly deleted the chess section from the third
page. Maestro Sudeikin no longer battled for Neunyvako's wonderful study; he
was only concerned about saving the solutions. After a struggle more tense
than his match with Lasker at the San Sebastian tournament, he won a place
at the expense of Life-and-the-Law.
Semashko was sent to the compositors. The editor buried himself once
more in the editorial. He had decided to read it at all costs, just for the
sporting interest.
He had just reached the bit that said ". . . but the contents of the
pact are such that, if the League of Nations registers it, we will have to
admit that . . ." when Life-and-the-Law, a hairy man, came up to him. The
editor continued reading, avoiding the eyes of Life-and-the-Law, and making
unnecessary notes on the editorial.
Life-and-the-Law went around to the other side of him and said in a
hurt voice: "I don't understand."
"Uhunh," said the editor, trying to play for time. "What's the matter?"
"The matter is that on Wednesday there was no Life-and-the-Law, on
Friday there was no Life-and-the-Law, on Thursday you carried only a case of
alimony which you had in reserve, and on Saturday you're leaving out a trial
which has been written up for some time in all other papers. It's only us
who-"
"Which other papers?" cried the editor. "I haven't seen it."
"It will appear again tomorrow and we'll be too late."
"But when you were asked to report the Chubarov case, what did you
write? It was impossible to get a line out of you. I know. You were
reporting the case for an evening paper."
"How do you know?"
"I know. I was told."
"In that case I know who told you. It was Persidsky. The same Persidsky
who blatantly uses the editorial-office services to send material to
Leningrad."
"Pasha," said the editor quietly, "fetch Persidsky."
Life-and-the-Law sat indifferently on the window ledge. In the garden
behind him birds and young skittle players could be seen busily moving
about. They litigated for some time. The editor ended the hearing with a
smart move: he deleted the chess and replaced it with Life-and-the-Law.
Persidsky was given a warning.
It was five o'clock, the busiest time for the office.
Smoke curled above the over-heated typewriters. The reporters dictated
in voices harshened by haste. The senior typist shouted at the rascals who
slipped in their material unobserved and out of turn.
Down the corridor came the office poet. He was courting a typist, whose
modest hips unleashed his poetic emotions. He used to lead her to the end of
the corridor by the window and murmur words of love to her, to which she
usually replied: "I'm working overtime today and I'm very busy."
That meant she loved another.
The poet got in everyone's way and asked all his friends the same
favour with monotonous regularity. "Let me have ten kopeks for the tram."
He sauntered into the local correspondents' room in search of the sum.
Wandering about between the desks at which the readers were working, and
fingering the piles of despatches, he renewed his efforts. The readers, the
most hardboiled people in the office (they were made that way by the need to
read through a hundred letters a day, scrawled by hands which were more used
to axes, paint-brushes and wheelbarrows than a pen), were silent.
The poet visited the despatch office and finally migrated to the
clerical section. But besides not getting the ten kopeks, he was buttonholed
by Avdotyev, a member of the Young Communist League, who proposed that the
poet should join the Automobile Club. The poet's enamoured soul was
enveloped in a cloud of petrol fumes. He took two paces to the side, changed
into third gear, and disappeared from sight.
Avdotyev was not a bit discouraged. He believed in the triumph of the
car idea. In the editor's room he carried on the struggle, on the sly, which
also prevented the editor from finishing the editorial.
"Listen, Alexander Josifovich, wait a moment, it's a serious matter,"
said Avdotyev, sitting down on the editor's desk. "We've formed an
automobile club. Would the editorial office give us a loan of five hundred
roubles for eight months?"
"Like hell it would."
"Why? Do you think it's a dead duck?"
"I don't think, I know. How many members are there?"
"A large number already."
For the moment the club only consisted of the organizer, but Avdotyev
did not enlarge on this.
"For five hundred roubles we can buy a car at the 'graveyard'. Yegorov
has already picked one out there. He says the repairs won't come to more
than five hundred. That's a thousand altogether. So I thought of recruiting
twenty people, each of whom will give fifty. Anyway, it'll be fun. We'll
learn to drive. Yegorov will be the instructor and in three months' time, by
August, we'll all be able to drive. We'll have a car and each one in turn
can go where he likes."
"What about the five hundred for the purchase?"
"The mutual-assistance fund will provide that on interest. We'll pay it
off. So I'll put you down, shall I?"
But the editor was rather bald, hard-worked, and enslaved by his family
and apartment, liked to have a rest after dinner on the settee, and read
Pravda before going to sleep. He thought for a moment and then declined.
Avdotyev approached each desk in turn and repeated his fiery speech.
His words had a dubious effect on the old men, which meant for him anyone
above the age of twenty. They snapped at him, excusing themselves by saying
they were already friends of children and regularly paid twenty kopeks a
year for the benefit of the poor mites. They would like to join, but. . .
"But what?" cried Avdotyev. "Supposing we had a car today? Yes,
supposing we put down a blue six-cylinder Packard in front of you for
fifteen kopeks a year, with petrol and oil paid for by the government?"
"Go away," said the old men. "It's the last call, you're preventing us
from working." The car idea was fading and beginning to give off fumes when
a champion of the new enterprise was finally found. Persidsky jumped back
from the telephone with a crash and, having listened to Avdotyev, said:
"You're tackling it the wrong way. Give me the sheet. Let's begin at the
beginning."
Accompanied by Avdotyev, Persidsky began a new round.
"You, you old mattress," he said to a blue-eyed boy, "you don't even
have to give any money. You have bonds from '27, don't you? For how much?
For five hundred? All the better. You hand over the bonds to the club. The
capital comes from the bonds. By August we will have cashed all the bonds
and bought the car."
"What happens if my bond wins a prize?" asked the boy defiantly.
"How much do you expect to win?"
"Fifty thousand."
"We'll buy cars with the money. And the same thing if I win. And the
same if Avdotyev wins. In other words, no matter whose bonds win, the money
will be spent on cars. Do you understand now? You crank! You'll drive along
the Georgian Military Highway in your own car. Mountains, you idiot! And
Life-and-the-Law, social events, accidents, and the young lady -you know,
the one who does the films-will all go zooming along behind you in their own
cars as well. Well? Well? You'll be courting!"
In the depths of his heart no bond-holder believes in the possibility
of a win. At the same time he is jealous of his neighbours' and friends'
bonds. He is dead scared that they will win and that he, the eternal loser,
will be left out in the cold. Hence the hope of a win on the part of an
office colleague drew the bond-holders into the new club. The only
disturbing thought was that none of their bonds would win. That seemed
rather unlikely, though, and, furthermore, the Automobile Club had nothing
to lose, since one car from the graveyard was guaranteed by the capital
earned from the bonds.
In five minutes twenty people had been recruited. As soon as it was all
over, the editor arrived, having heard about the club's alluring prospects.
"Well, fellows," he said, "why shouldn't I put my name down on the
list?"
"Why not, old man," replied Avdotyev, "only not on our list. We have a
full complement and no new members are being admitted for the next five
years. You'd do better to enrol yourself as a friend of children. It's cheap
and sure. Twenty kopeks a year and no need to drive anywhere."
The editor looked sheepish, remembered that he was indeed on the old
side, sighed, and went back to finish reading the entertaining editorial.
He was stopped in the corridor by a good-looking man with a Circassian
face.
"Say, Comrade, where's the editorial office of the Lathe!"
It was the smooth operator.