The Little Golden Calf

ilya ilf & evgeny petrov

TheLittleGoldenCalf

Russian LifeBOOKS

PO Box 567Montpelier, VT 05602www.russianlife.com

Cover illustration: Julia Valeeva

“A grand satirical novel...There ismore ofRussia in this book

than in adozen treatises by foreigners.”– NEW YORK TIMES (1932)

THIS NEW EDITION OF THE LITTLE GOLDEN CALF, one of the greatest Russian satires,is the first English translation of this classic novel in nearly 50 years. It is also thefirst unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and includes an introduction byAlexandra Ilf, daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.

The novel resurrects the con man Ostap Bender, “the smooth operator,” and followshim and his three hapless co-conspirators on a hilarious romp through the SovietRussia and Central Asia of 1930.

So many quotations from this novel have entered everyday Russian speech that itstands alongside the works of Griboyedov, Pushkin, and Gogol for its profound effecton Russian language and culture. The tale overflows with legendary literary episodes,offering a portrait of Russian life that is as funny and true today as it was when thenovel was first published.

For decades, foreigners trying to understand Russia have been advised to read theadventures of Ostap Bender. This fresh new translation by Anne O. Fisher makes themmore enjoyable than ever.

ilf&

petro

v

Russian LifeBOOKS

FICTION / LITERATURE $20 (US)

cover_new:Layout 1 11/17/09 1:38 PM Page 1

“A grand satirical novel... There is more of Russia in this bookthan in a dozen treatises written by foreigners.”

— New York Times (1932)

Upton Sinclair “assured us that he'd never laughed as hard ashe did while reading The Little Golden Calf.... he announced thathe practically had it memorized.”

— Letters of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (1935)

“The Little Golden Calf… is prized by the European reader notonly as a wonderful read, but also as one of the best works ofworld satire.”

— Lion Feuchtwanger (1937)

“One of my favorite sources of aphorisms is the work of Ilfand Petrov. I highly recommend their novels to anyone underthe impression that corruption and scams are a phenomenonof the post-Soviet period, introduced by the Wicked West.”

— Michele A. BerdyTheMoscow Times (2003)

“Ilf and Petrov’s dilogy has no equal in Russian literature of thetwentieth century in terms of its influence on everyday speech...”

— Alexandra Ilf (from the Introduction)

ilya ilf & evgeny petrov

translation by anne o. fisher

Russian LifeBOOKS

The Little Golden Calf

Russian Life BOOKS

PO Box 567Montpelier, VT 05601orders@russianlife.comwww.russianlife.com

The Little Golden Calf (Zolotoy telyonok) by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov.

Based on the text as first published in Russian in the journal 30 Dney (30 Days) in 1931,

© Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, 1931.

English translation and notes © Anne O. Fisher, 2009 (anne.o.fisher@gmail.com)

Cover image © Julia Valeeva, 2009 (valeeva.com)

Layout and design © Russian Information Services, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any

form. For information contact the publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009939608

ISBN: 978-1-880100-61-5 • 1-880100-61-4

Contents

Introduction Alexandra Ilf 9Foreword Anne O. Fisher 13From the Authors Ilya Ilf & Evgeny Petrov 32

Part OneOne How Panikovsky Broke the Treaty 37

Two Lieutenant Schmidt’s Thirty Sons 49

Three You Provide the Gasoline, We’ll Provide the Ideas 63

Four An Ordinary Little Suitcase 75

Five The Underground Kingdom 85

Six The Antelope-Gnu 93

Seven The Sweet Burden of Glory 105

Eight A Genre In Crisis 117

Nine Another Genre in Crisis 130

Part TwoTen A Telegram from the Brothers Karamazov 145

Eleven The Herculeans 150

Twelve Homer, Milton, and Panikovsky 159

Thirteen Vasisualy Lokhankin and His Role 170

in the Russian Revolution

Fourteen The First Tryst 186

Fifteen Horns and Hooves 198

Sixteen Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen 210

Seventeen The Return of the Prodigal Son 222

Eighteen On Land and By Sea 232

Nineteen The Universal Stamp 246

Twenty The Commander Dances The Tango 254

Twenty-One The End of the Crow’s Nest 265

Twenty-Two I Will Command The Parade 272

Twenty-Three The Driver’s Heart 281

Twenty-Four The Weather Conditions were Favorable for Love 292

Twenty-Five Three Roads 306

Part ThreeTwenty-Six A Passenger on the Lettered Train 319

Twenty-Seven “Allow Capitalism’s Hireling to Enter” 330

Twenty-Eight The Great Sweaty Wave of Inspiration 341

Twenty-Nine Roaring Spring 351

Thirty Alexander Ibn-Ivanovich 363

Thirty-One Baghdad 372

Thirty-Two The Wide Gates of Possibility 379

Thirty-Three The Indian Guest 387

Thirty-Four Friendship with Young People 393

Thirty-Five Somebody Who’s Been Loved by Housewives, 405

Domestics, Widows, and Even One Woman

Who Was a Dental Technician

Thirty-Six A Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece 417

Notes to Part One 424

Notes to Part Two 430

Notes to Part Three 437

Appendix 1: Ilf & Petrov’s Colorful Characters 441

Appendix 2: Krylatiye frazy (Catchphrases) 444

About the Translator 447

32

From the Authors

People usually ask us entirely valid but exceedingly monotonous ques-tions regarding our nationalized literary industry:1 “How do you write to-gether?”

At first we answered at length, going into detail and even telling peo-ple about the big argument we had over the following issue: should we killOstap Bender, the protagonist of The Twelve Chairs, or leave him amongthe living? We didn’t neglect to mention that the character’s fate was de-cided by chance.We put two scraps of paper, on one of which a tremblinghand had drawn a skull and two chicken bones, into the sugar bowl. Theskull was chosen, so within half an hour the smooth operator was nomore.He had his throat slashed with a razor.

Later, we started answering without length. We stopped going intodetail. Then we didn’t tell anyone about the argument anymore. Finally,we got to where we were answering without any inspiration at all: “Howdo we write together? We just do. Like the Goncourt brothers.2 Edmondruns around town talking to editors, while Jules sits at home with theman-uscript so friends don’t steal it.”

Then, suddenly, the interrogative monotony was broken.“Tell me,” asked a certain stern citizen, from the ranks of those who

recognized Soviet power a little later than England but a little earlier thanGreece, “tell me, why do you write funny things? What’s with these jokesin the period of reconstruction?3 What are you, crazy or something?”

Then he spent a long time angrily trying to convince us that rightnow laughter was harmful.

“Laughing is sinful!” he’d say. “That’s right, there is to be no laugh-ing! And no smiling!When I see this new life, these major improvements,I don’t feel like smiling, I feel like praying!”

“But we’re not just laughing,” we protested. “The whole point is thatit’s satire, satire of precisely those people who don’t understand the periodof reconstruction.”

“Satire can’t be funny,” the stern comrade said. Then he grabbedsome skilled craftsman of the Baptist faith, whom he mistook for a card-carrying proletarian, and dragged him off to his apartment so he coulddescribe him with boring words in a six-volume novel entitled No RoomHere for the Shirk! 4

None of the above was made up. We could’ve made up something alot funnier.

Once you give an alleluia-hollering citizen like this his way, he’ll evenstart putting men in burkas,5 and he’ll trumpet hymns and psalms day inand day out, thinking that doing this is the very best way to help build so-cialism.

So the stern citizen’s face hovered over us the entire time we werewriting The Little Golden Calf: “What if this chapter suddenly turns out tobe funny? What will the stern citizen say?”

Finally, we resolved:a) to write the funniest novel we could;b) to ask the Attorney General, comrade Krylenko,6 to bring criminal

charges against the aforementioned stern citizen (according to the articleof the law punishing bungling idiocy with a deadly weapon) if he announcesagain that satire can’t be funny.

I. Ilf, E. Petrov

33

ILYA ILF & EVGENY PETROV

��Part One

Chapter OneHow Panikovsky Broke the Treaty

Pedestrians just need to be loved.Pedestrians comprise the larger part of humanity. More than that: its

better part. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built cities,erected multi-story buildings, laid sewage systems and water pipes, pavedthe streets, and illuminated them with electric lights. It was they whospread culture all over the world, invented the printing process, concoctedgunpowder, cast bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics,introduced the safety razor, destroyed the slave trade, and determined thatone hundred and fourteen tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from thesoybean.And then, when everything was ready, when our native planet had as-

sumed a relatively well-appointed mien, the motorists appeared.It must be noted that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians.

But somehow, motorists immediately forgot about that. They began torun over the clever, meek pedestrians. The streets, created by pedestrians,were taken over by motorists. Roads grew twice as wide, while sidewalksnarrowed down to the width of a cigar band. Pedestrians began flatteningthemselves against the walls of buildings in alarm.

37

38

The Little Golden Calf

Pedestrians lead martyrs’ lives in the big city, where a sort of trans-portational ghetto has been created for them. They are allowed to cross thestreet only at crosswalks—in other words, only at the precise place wherestreet traffic is heaviest, and where the thread by which the pedestrian’s lifeusually hangs is easiest to break.In our vast land, the ordinary automobile, intended by the pedestrian

to be used for the peaceful transport of people and goods, has assumed thethreatening shape of a fratricidal missile. It takes out entire ranks of unionmembers, along with their families. If, every once in a while, a pedestriandoes manage to flit back out from beneath a car’s silver snout, he is finedby the police for breaking the rules of the street catechism.On the whole, the pedestrian’s authority has been badly shaken. Those

who gave the world people as splendid as Horace, Boyle and Mariotte,Lobachevsky, Gutenberg, Meyerhold, and Anatole France are now forcedto act in the most vulgar, affected manner, simply to remind everyone oftheir existence. Oh God (who, in point of fact, doesn’t exist), what haveyou brought the pedestrian to, God (who really and truly doesn’t exist)?!There goes one, along the Siberian highway from Vladivostok to

Moscow. In one hand he’s holding a banner with the inscription

and in the other he’s holding a stick slung over his shoulder with an extrapair of “Uncle Vanya” sandals and a tin teakettle with no lid dangling fromit. This is the Soviet pedestrian-cum-physical-culture-enthusiast, who leftVladivostok as a young man, but who, in his declining years, at the verygates of Moscow, will be run over by a light truck. Whose license platenumber no one will even manage to get.Or take this one, the European pedestrian movement’s very own last

of theMohicans. He is going all the way around the world on foot, rollinga barrel before him. He would gladly have gone as he was, without the bar-rel, but then no one would notice that he really is a long-distance pedes-trian, and no one would write anything about him in the papers. He’llhave to push that cursed wooden container in front of him all his life.

We Will Build a Better Life forTextile Workers

39

HOW PANIKOVSKY BROKE THE TREATY

Adding insult to injury, a large yellow inscription extolling the unsur-passable quality of Driver’s Dream automotive oil (oh shame, shame!) istraced out upon it.Thus has the pedestrian been degraded.Only in small Russian towns is the pedestrian still loved and respected.

There, he still owns the streets; he strolls along in the road without a careand crosses it in the most intricate fashion, in all manner of directions.A citizen in a white cap with a short bill, the kind worn mostly by em-

cees and summer garden administrators, doubtless belonged to the largerand better part of humanity. He moved along the streets of Arbatov onfoot, looking around him with condescending curiosity. He held a smallGladstone bag in his hand. Clearly, the town did not make an outstand-ing impression on the pedestrian in the flamboyant cap.He saw fifteen or so light blue, pale yellow, and rosy white bell towers.

Shabby cupolas, with their flaking American gold, stuck out like sorethumbs. A flag crackled above an official building.Two old ladies were standing at the whitewashed gates of the provin-

cial kremlin’s watchtower, chatting in French, complaining about the So-viet regime and reminiscing about their beloved daughters. A cold draftemanated from the church basement, giving off a sour, winey smell.Clearly, potatoes were being stored there.“The Church of the Savior on the Potato,”7 the pedestrian said softly.He walked through a plywood archway that was adorned with the

slogan

freshly lettered on it in white paint and found himself at the beginning ofa long alley called the Boulevard of Young Talents.“No,” he said to himself with chagrin, “this is no Rio de Janeiro. This

is much worse.”Lonely maidens holding little books sat on almost every bench along

the Boulevard of Young Talents. Ragged shadows fell on the pages of thebooks, on themaidens’ bare elbows, on their touching bangs. A noticeable

Greetings to the Fifth Regional Conference of Women and Girls

40

The Little Golden Calf

stir arose on the benches when the new arrival stepped into the cool alley.The girls threw him apprehensive glances, hiding behind their books byGladkov, Eliza Orzeszko and Seifullina.8He made his way in parade steppast the agitated female readers and walked up to the town’s executivecommittee building, the goal of his constitutional.At that moment, a horse-cab drove around the corner. Aman in a long

Tolstoyan shirt moved rapidly alongside it, holding on to the carriage’sdusty, flaking side door and brandishing a bloated folder stamped withthe wordMusique. He was hotly proving some point to the passenger. Thepassenger, an elderly man with a pendulous, banana-like nose, sat press-ing his suitcase tightly between his legs, from time to time giving his in-terlocutor the fig.9 In the heat of the argument his engineer’s cap, flashinga band made of that green velvet usually used to upholster couches, hadslid down the side of his head. Both litigants pronounced the words “paygrade” especially loudly and often.Soon other words could be heard, too.“You’ll answer for this, Comrade Talmudovsky!” cried the man in the

long shirt, pushing the engineer’s fig out of his face.“And I’m telling you that not a single specialist worth his salt will work

for you under these conditions,” Talmudovsky answered, trying to restorehis fig to its former position.“Are you going on about the pay grade again? I’ll be forced to set a

special agenda item about your self-serving attitude …”10

“I don’t give a damn about your pay grade! I’ll work for free!” shoutedthe engineer, excitedly describing all kinds of curves and arcs with his fig.“I’ll just go on and retire, if I feel like it! You just lay off me with your serf-dom. All they write about these days is ‘freedom, equality, and brother-hood,’ but then they try and force me to work in this rat’s nest.” At thispoint, engineer Talmudovsky quickly unclenched his fig and started count-ing off on his fingers: “The apartment is a pigsty, there’s no theater, the paygrade… Driver! To the station!”“Whoa!” screamed the man in the long shirt, rushing nervously ahead

and grabbing the horse by the bridle. “As secretary of the engineers’ andtechnicians’ section, I… Conrad Ivanovich! You know the factory will beleft without any specialists… God will punish you… The public will not

41

HOW PANIKOVSKY BROKE THE TREATY

allow this, engineer Talmudovsky… I have a report form in my brief-case…”The secretary planted his legs wide and quickly began to untie the

strings holding his Musique shut. This imprudence concluded the argu-ment. Seeing that the coast was clear, Talmudovsky stood up and shoutedas loud as he could, “To the station!”“Where are you going? Where are you going?” the secretary babbled,

racing after the horse-cab. “You deserter from the labor front!” Out of theMusique folder flew sheets of parchment paper covered with purple-inkedbureaucratic expressions: “Heard by the committee:…”; “Resolved: thecommittee shall…”The new arrival, who had observed the incident with interest, stood a

minute longer on the now-empty square. With a tone of finality, he said,“No, this is no Rio de Janeiro.”A minute later he was knocking on the office door of the town execu-

tive committee chairman. The chairman’s secretary, sitting behind a tableby the door, asked, “Who do you want to see? Why do you need to seethe chairman? What’s your business?”The visitor plainly had a shrewd understanding of the proper mode of

interaction with secretaries of governmental, industrial, and public serviceorganizations. He did not start asserting that he had arrived on urgent of-ficial business. “It’s personal business,” he said dryly, avoiding the secre-tary’s gaze and sticking his head through the crack of the door. “Can Icome in?” Without waiting for an answer, he walked up to the desk andsaid, “Hello, don’t you recognize me?”The chairman, a man with dark eyes and a large head, wearing a dark

blue jacket with identical trousers tucked into the tops of his tall, high-heeled walking boots, gave the visitor a rather distracted look and an-nounced that he did not.“You really don’t recognize me? As it happens, many people have been

struck by how much I look like my father.”“I also look like my father,” the chairman said impatiently. “What do

you want, comrade?”“It all comes down to who your father is,” the visitor observed sadly.

“I am the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.”11

42

The Little Golden Calf

The chairman stood halfway out of his chair from confusion and em-barrassment. He vividly remembered the revolutionary lieutenant’sfamous figure, the pale face and the black cape with bronze leonine clasps.While he gathered his thoughts in order to ask the son of the hero of theBlack Sea a question appropriate to the occasion, his visitor was sizing upthe office furniture with the gaze of a discriminating consumer.Way back when, in tsarist times, government offices were furnished ac-

cording to a set template. They developed a special breed of office furni-ture: shallow, flat cabinets of shelves rising all the way up to the ceiling,wooden couches with three-inch-thick, polished seats, tables with fat, bil-liard-table legs, and oaken parapets that separated the workplace from theanxious external world. During the revolutionary years this breed of fur-niture almost disappeared, and the secret of its production was lost. Peo-ple forgot how to furnish bureaucratic establishments. Items that, untilthen, had been considered indispensable to the furnishing of domesticspaces, started showing up in public ones. Items such as: couches fit for alaw firm, but with broken springs and a little mirrored shelf for the sevenporcelain elephants that allegedly bring good fortune; china display cases;low bookshelves; special leather armchairs for rheumatics; and light-blueJapanese vases—all these appeared in government establishments. Alongwith a normal office desk, several other items had made themselves athome in the Arbatov executive committee chairman’s office: two ot-tomans upholstered in tattered rose silk; a striped chaise lounge; a satinscreen with a print ofMount Fuji and a cherry tree in bloom; and, crudelyknocked together as if for sale at a flea market, a mirrored cabinet in thestyle known as “Slavic.”“That there’s a little cabinet from the ‘Hail, Slavs!’ furniture line,”

thought the visitor. “I won’t get much out of this place. No, this is no Riode Janeiro.”“It’s very good that you dropped by,” the chairman finally said. “You’re

coming from Moscow, I take it?”“Yes, just passing through,” the visitor answered, eyeing the chaise

lounge and becoming more and more convinced that the executive com-mittee’s financial situation was grim. He preferred executive committee

43

HOW PANIKOVSKY BROKE THE TREATY

offices furnished with new Swedish furniture from the Leningrad LumberTrust.The chairman wanted to ask about the goal of the lieutenant’s son’s

trip to Arbatov, but, surprising himself, he suddenly smiled plaintivelyand said, “We have marvelous churches here. People from the Central Sci-ence Administration have already come out a few times, they’re gettingready to do some restoration. So tell me, do you remember anythingabout the mutiny on the armored ship Ochakov?”“Just vaguely,” the visitor answered. “At that heroic time I was still ex-

tremely small. I was but a babe.”“Forgive me, but what’s your name?”“Nikolai… Nikolai Schmidt.”“And… your father’s…?”12

“Oh, this isn’t good,” thought the visitor, who didn’t even know hisown father’s name.“Ye-es,” he said slowly, avoiding a direct answer, “these days a lot of

people don’t remember the names of our heroes. The intoxication ofNEP.13 We’ve lost our old enthusiasm. Actually, I wound up here in yourtown completely by accident… some trouble on the road… I’m left with-out a kopek.”The chairman was very glad the topic of conversation had changed.

He was ashamed he’d forgotten the name of the hero of theOchakov. “It’strue,” he thought, looking at the hero’s inspired face, “you just get buriedhere under all this work. You forget the great landmark events.”He continued, “What was that? Without a kopek, you said? Very in-

teresting.”“Of course, I could turn to a private individual,” the visitor said, “every-

one would help me. But it’s not quite appropriate from a political pointof view, you see. The son of a revolutionary, and suddenly he asks formoney from a—a private businessman, a nepman…”14The lieutenant’s son pronounced the last few words in anguish.The chairman listened worriedly to the new intonation in the visitor’s

voice. “And what if he’s an epileptic?” he thought to himself, “You’ll haveno end of trouble with him…”

44

The Little Golden Calf

“And it’s a good thing, too, that you didn’t turn to a private business-man,” the confused chairman finally said.At which point the son of the hero of the Black Sea—gently, without

too much pressure—got down to business. He asked for fifty rubles. Thechairman, constrained by the narrow framework of the local budget, couldonly give eight rubles and three vouchers for lunch in the cooperative cafe-teria The Former Stomach’s Friend. The hero’s son put the money andvouchers into a deep pocket of his worn, dapple-grey jacket, and was justgetting ready to stand up from his rose ottoman, when a barrage of criesfrom the secretary and a loud stamping of feet issued from behind the of-fice door.The door opened hastily and a new visitor appeared on the threshold.“Who’s in charge here?” he asked, breathing heavily, eyes darting

thievishly around the room.“Well, I am,” the chairman said.“A pleasure, chairman!” barked the new visitor, extending a hand as

broad as a shovel. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Schmidt’sson.”“Who are you?” asked the head of the town, his eyes bulging.“The son of the great, unforgotten hero, Lieutenant Schmidt,” replied

the newly arrived guest.“But the comrade sitting right here is Nikolai Schmidt, comrade

Schmidt’s son.”At a complete loss, the chairman pointed at the first visitor, whose face

had suddenly assumed a sleepy expression.A ticklish moment had arrived in the two conmen’s lives. Anyminute

now the long, unpleasant sword of Nemesis, the goddess of justice, couldflash in the modest, trusting chairman’s hands. Fate was giving them nomore than a second to come up with a rescue operation. Horror shone inthe eyes of Lieutenant Schmidt’s second son. The figure he cut in his so-called ‘Paraguay-style’ summer shirt, nautical trousers with a button-upfront flap, and blue canvas shoes, a figure that had been so bold and an-gular just a minute earlier, began to sag. It lost its awe-inspiring outlineand commanded not a smidgen of respect. A nasty smile appeared on thechairman’s face.

45

HOW PANIKOVSKY BROKE THE TREATY

Just then, when it seemed clear to the lieutenant’s second son thateverything was lost, and that the terrible wrath of a chairman was going topour down right on his red-haired head, salvation ascended from the roseottoman.“Vasya!” Lieutenant Schmidt’s first son shouted, leaping up from his

seat. “My own little flesh-and-blood brother! Don’t you recognize yourbrother Kolya?” The first son engulfed the second son in an embrace.“I do!” exclaimed Vasya, whose memory, evidently, had just been

miraculously restored. “I do recognize my brother Kolya!”The happy meeting was marked by such tempestuous gestures of af-

fection and such unusually strong embraces that the second son of theBlack Sea revolutionary emerged from themwith a face pale from pain. Inhis joy, Brother Kolya had squeezed him pretty tight.Embracing, both brothers watched the chairman out of the corners of

their eyes. The vinegary expression still hadn’t left his face. Given the na-ture of this rescue operation, they were forced right then and there to ex-pand and fill out the story of the sailors’ uprising of 1905. They gavevignettes from that time in history and new details that had previously es-caped official Party historians. Arm in arm, the brothers lowered them-selves onto the chaise lounge and lost themselves in reminiscence, notonce taking their adoring eyes off the chairman.“What an amazing meeting!” the first son exclaimed exaggeratedly, his

glance inviting the chairman to join the familial festivities.“Yes,” the chairman said in a frozen voice. “It happens.”Seeing that the chairman was still caught fast in doubt’s strong paws,

the first son stroked his brother’s curls, red as an Irish setter’s, and askedtenderly, “When did you arrive from Mariupol, where you were livingwith our Grandma?”“Yes,” mumbled the lieutenant’s second son, “I was. Living with her.”“Why didn’t you write more often? I was so worried.”“I was busy,” the redhead answered sullenly. Fearing that his irrepress-

ible brother would immediately inquire what he had been busy doing(and he had primarily been busy doing time in various republics’ and re-gions’ houses of correction), Lieutenant Schmidt’s second son seized theinitiative and asked a question himself: “Why didn’t you write?”

“I did,” his brother answered unexpectedly, filled by an unusual surgeof merriment. “I sent you letters by registered mail. I even have the re-ceipts.” He started digging around in his hip pocket, from which he actu-ally did produce a multitude of crumpled old scraps of paper. For somereason he showed them not to his brother, but to the executive commit-tee chairman, and from a distance at that.Strange as it may seem, the chairman calmed down a little at the sight

of the crumpled bits of paper, and the brothers started to reminisce moreenergetically. By now, the redhead felt quite at ease with his surroundingsand so related the contents of the widely-distributed pamphletUprising onthe Ochakov in a fairly competent, if monotonous, way. His brother em-bellished his dry recollection with details that were so picturesque that thechairman, who had seemed just about to relax completely, pricked up hisears again.Nevertheless, he let both brothers go in peace.With a great sense of re-

lief they ran out into the street, stopping only when they had roundedthe corner of the executive committee building.“By the way, speaking of childhood…” the first son said. “In my child-

hood I killed people like you on the spot. With a slingshot.”“Why is that?” asked the famous father’s second son, still elated.“Because such are life’s severe laws. Or, to put it more concisely, life dic-

tates its own severe laws to us. Why did you barge into that office?Couldn’t you see that the chairman wasn’t alone?”“I thought…”“Oh, you thought. So you think sometimes, is that it? You’re a thinker?

What’s your name, Great Thinker? Spinoza? Jean-Jacques Rousseau?Mar-cus Aurelius?”The redhead was silent, crushed by the just accusation.“Well then, I forgive you. Live in peace. And now, let’s get acquainted.

Whether you like it or not, we’re brothers, and family has to stick together.My name is Ostap Bender. Allow me to inquire as to your original lastname.”“Balaganov,” the redhead introduced himself. “Shura Balaganov.”

46

The Little Golden Calf

“I won’t ask about your profession,” Bender said politely, “but I canguess. Something intellectual, no doubt? Have you been convicted manytimes this year?”“Twice,” Balaganov answered breezily.“That’s not good at all. Why are you selling your immortal soul? A

man shouldn’t be convicted of things. It’s a vulgar occupation. Theft, Imean. Not only is stealing a sin (your mama probably introduced you toa similar doctrine when you were a child), it’s also a pointless waste ofyour strength and energy.”Ostap would have continued to expound his philosophy of life at

length if Balaganov had not interrupted him.“Look,” he said, pointing into the green depths of the Boulevard of

Young Talents. “See that fellow over there in the straw hat?”“I do,” Ostap said haughtily. “What about him? Is he the governor of

the island of Borneo?”“That’s Panikovsky, the son of Lieutenant Schmidt,” Shura said.A slightly lopsided citizen, well past the first bloom of youth, was mov-

ing along the alley, shaded by extremely august lime trees. A stiff strawhat with a jagged brim was perched askance on his head. His trousers wereso short they revealed the white ankle-laces of his long drawers. A goldentooth smoldered under his mustache like the lit end of a papirosa.15

“What, another son?” Ostap said. “This is becoming amusing.”Panikovsky walked up to the executive committee building, pensively

traced a figure-eight before the entrance, took the brim of his hat in bothhands and replaced it evenly on his head, gave his jacket a brisk tug,breathed out heavily, and headed inside.“The lieutenant had three sons,” Bender remarked. “The first two were

clever, but the third one was a fool. We have to warn him.”“No we don’t,” Balaganov said. “This’ll teach him not to break the

treaty again.”“What treaty is that?”“Wait, I’ll tell you after. He went in!”“I’m an envious person,” Bender admitted, “but there’s nothing to be

envious of here. Have you ever seen a bullfight? Let’s go watch one.”

47

HOW PANIKOVSKY BROKE THE TREATY

The sons of Lieutenant Schmidt, now fast friends, came out from be-hind the building and went up to the window of the chairman’s office.Behind the cloudy, unwashed glass, they could see the chairman sitting

at his desk, writing briskly. His face was sorrowful, like everyone’s face iswhen writing. Suddenly he lifted his head. The door flew open andPanikovsky made his way into the room. Hat pressed to his greasy jacket,he stopped in front of the desk and moved his thick lips for a long time.Then, the chairman jumped out of his chair and opened his mouth wide.The friends heard a prolonged roaring.With the words, “Everyone fall back!” Ostap pulled Balaganov away.

They ran over to the boulevard and hid behind a tree. “Remove your hatsand bare your heads,” Ostap said. “They’re bringing out the body.”He was right. The thunderous rolls and peals of the chairman’s voice

hadn’t even died out yet when two hefty employees appeared in the build-ing entrance. They were carrying Panikovsky out. One was holding him bythe arms, the other by the legs. Ostap gave a running commentary: “Theearthly remains of the departed were carried out on the shoulders of hisnear and dear.”The employees hauled Lieutenant Schmidt’s foolish third son onto the

porch and slowly began to swing him back and forth. Panikovsky wassilent, gazing submissively into the azure sky. Ostap began: “After a shortcivil service in his memory…”At that moment the employees had evidently given Panikovsky’s body

sufficient force and inertia, and they threw him out into the street.“…the body was committed to the earth,” Bender concluded.Panikovsky plopped to the ground like a toad. He got up quickly and,

even more lopsided than before, ran off down the Boulevard of YoungTalents with unbelievable speed.“So,” Ostap said, “now you can tell me just what kind of treaty this is,

and how that lousy cheat broke it.”

48

The Little Golden Calf