Илья Ильф – The Twelve Chairs / Двенадцать стульев. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 4)
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:
«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 cooperative, 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.