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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781963956023 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bigfontbooks |
| Publication date: | 02/24/2024 |
| Pages: | 302 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Twelve Chairs
A NovelBy Ilya Ilf Evgeny Petrov
Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2011 Alexandra IlfAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2772-2
Chapter One
Bezenchuk and the Nymphs
IN THE PROVINCIAL TOWN of N. there were so many barbershops and funeral parlors that it seemed as though the town's inhabitants were born solely to get a shave and a haircut, freshen up with some Vegetal, and then promptly expire. But in actuality, people were born, shaved, and died fairly rarely in the provincial town of N. The town led the quietest of lives. Spring evenings were ravishing, mud sparkled in the moonlight like anthracite, and all the town's young men were so smitten with the secretary of the Communal Services Committee chairman that it kept her from collecting membership dues.
Questions of love and death didn't concern Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, although by the very nature of his job he presided over these questions daily from nine to five, with a half-hour break for something to eat.
In the mornings, after drinking his portion of warm milk out of a frosted, veined glass handed to him by Claudia Ivanovna, he would walk out of his little house, still half-dark, and into Comrade Gubernsky Street, a spacious street full of fierce spring sunlight. It was the pleasantest of all the kinds of streets one encounters in provincial towns. The silver coffins of The Nymph, an undertaker's outfit, gleamed behind greenish, wavy glass on the left-hand side of the street. On the right-hand side, the dusty, boring oak coffins of master coffin-maker Bezenchuk lay morosely behind small windows with crumbling putty. A little farther on, Master Barber Pierre and Constantine promised its customers nails polished and permanent waves done in your home. Still farther down was a hotel with a beauty salon. In a large, empty plot behind it stood a straw-colored calf, lovingly licking a rusted sign leaned up against a lonely, awkward gate:
THE YOU ARE ALWAYS WELCOME FUNERAL HOME.
Even though there were many funeral depots, their clientele was modest. You Are Always Welcome had gone out of business three years before Ippolit Matveevich had settled in the town of N., while the craftsman Bezenchuk was a hard drinker and once had even tried to hock his best display coffin in the pawnshop.
People in the town of N. seldom died, and Ippolit Matveevich knew this better than anyone else, because he worked in the Office of Vital Statistics, where he presided over the death and marriage registration desk.
The desk at which Ippolit Matveevich worked looked like an old headstone. Rats had destroyed its left corner. Its puny legs shook under the weight of swollen, tobacco-colored file folders with entries from which one could extract all the facts on the townspeople's genealogies and the family trees that had sprung from the poor provincial soil.
On Friday, the fifteenth of April, 1927, Ippolit Matveevich woke up at seven thirty as usual, and immediately thrust his nose into an old-fashioned pince-nez with a gold nosepiece. He didn't wear glasses. Still, one day Ippolit Matveevich had decided that wearing a pince-nez was unhygienic, so he went to the optician's and bought frameless glasses with gilded earpieces. He liked the glasses from the start, but his wife (this was not long before her death) thought that he looked exactly like Milyukov in them, and so he gave them to the dvornik. Although the dvornik was not nearsighted, he got used to the glasses and wore them with pleasure.
"Bonjour!" Ippolit Matveevich sang to himself, setting his legs down on the fl oor. Bonjour! indicated that Ippolit Matveevich had woken in a good mood. A Gut Morgen on rising usually meant that his liver was complaining, that fifty-two years is no joke, and that the weather had been wet lately.
Ippolit Matveevich poked his spindly legs into his prewar, tailor-made trousers, tied the ankle-laces, and sank his feet into short, soft boots with narrow, square noses. Five minutes later he boasted a lunar vest sprinkled with little silver stars and a shiny lustrine jacket. Ippolit Matveevich wiped off the dewdrops that clung to his gray temples after washing his face, wiggled his mustache fiercely, tested his stubbly chin indecisively, and ran a brush through his close-cut aluminum hair. Then, smiling courteously, he moved toward the woman who'd just entered the room: his mother-in-law Claudia Ivanovna.
"Eppole-e-et," she thundered. "I saw an horrible dream today." The word "horrible" was pronounced with a French accent.
Ippolit Matveevich glanced down his nose at his mother-in-law. His full height extended to over six feet. From that altitude it was easy and convenient to treat his mother-in-law with a certain amount of disdain.
Claudia Ivanovna continued, "I saw my late Marie with her hair down, wearing a gold sash." The iron lamp, with its shot- filled weight and dusty glass tchotchkes, shook from the cannonade of Claudia Ivanovna's voice.
"I am quite distressed! I'm afraid something's going to happen."
The last few words were spoken with such force that the square, close-cropped hair on Ippolit Matveevich's head blew back in different directions. He frowned and said, articulating clearly, "Nothing is going to happen, maman. Did you already pay the water bill?"
It turned out that maman had not. His galoshes hadn't been cleaned, either. Ippolit Matveevich didn't like his mother-in-bezenchuk law. Claudia Ivanovna was stupid, and her advanced age left no room to hope she might ever become smarter. She was exceedingly miserly, and it was only Ippolit Matveevich's poverty that prevented this thrilling sensation from developing any further. Her voice was possessed of such strength and resonance that Richard the Lion-Hearted (whose shouts, as everyone knows, could make warhorses cringe) would have envied her. In addition-and this was the worst of all-Claudia Ivanovna had dreams. She had them all the time. She saw girls with sashes, horses encased in sheaths of gold dragoon piping, dvorniks playing on harps, archangels in watchmen's sheepskin coats holding their rattles and walking their nightly rounds, and knitting needles that jumped around the room all by themselves, making a troubling ringing sound. Claudia Ivanovna was a silly old fool. On top of all that, a mustache had grown underneath her nose. Each side of it looked like a shaving brush.
Ippolit Matveevich left home slightly annoyed. Master coffin-maker Bezenchuk stood at the entrance to his shabby establishment, arms folded, leaning against the doorpost. Due to the systematic failures of his commercial undertakings and the long-term internal use of strong drink, the craftsman's eyes were bright yellow, like a tomcat's, and burned with an unquenchable flame.
"My respects to the honored guest!" he burst out in rapid fire, as soon as he saw Ippolit Matveevich. "A good morning to you."
Ippolit Matveevich lifted his stained beaver hat politely.
"How is your dear mother-in-law's health, if I may be so bold to ask?"
"Hmm, mmmm, er," said Ippolit Matveevich vaguely. He shrugged his square shoulders and proceeded on his way.
"Well, God keep her good and healthy," said Bezenchuk bitterly. "We're running on pure losses these days, dadgum it!" Recrossing his arms, he leaned back against the door.
Ippolit Matveevich was held up again at the gates of the undertaker's outfit The Nymph. It had three proprietors. They bowed in unison to Ippolit Matveevich and inquired with one voice as to his mother-in-law's health.
"She's fine, just fine, what could happen to her!" answered Ippolit Matveevich. "Today she dreamed about a golden girl with her hair loose. That's the kind of vision she had in her sleep."
The three "nymphs" exchanged a glance and heaved a loud sigh.
All these conversations delayed Ippolit Matveevich on his way, so that, contrary to his usual practice, he arrived at his workplace when the clock hanging above the slogan LEAVE WHEN YOU'VE DONE YOUR WORK showed five minutes after nine.
Everyone in the office called Ippolit Matveevich Maciste because of his height and, especially, his mustache, although the real Maciste didn't have a mustache. Ippolit Matveevich took a dark-blue felted cushion from his desk drawer, placed it on his chair, imparted the proper position to his mustache (parallel to the surface of the table), and sat on the cushion, where he loomed slightly over all three of his coworkers. Ippolit Matveevich employed the blue felt not out of concern for hemorrhoids, but out of concern over wearing out his trousers.
Two young people, a man and a damsel, shyly followed all the government office worker's machinations. The man, in a broadcloth jacket lined with batting, was completely intimidated by the official work atmosphere, the smell of alizarine ink, the clock that breathed heavily and often, and especially the stern placard LEAVE WHEN YOU'VE DONE YOUR WORK. Even though the man in the jacket hadn't even begun doing his work, he already felt like leaving. He thought the work he'd come to do so insignificant that he was embarrassed to disturb such a prominent gray-haired citizen as Ippolit Matveevich over it. For his part, Ippolit Matveevich knew perfectly well that the visitor's business was minor and that it could wait. Therefore, he opened binder No. 2, twitched his cheek, and became absorbed in his papers. The damsel, wearing a long coat embroidered with shiny black laces, whispered with the man for a little while and then, growing warm from shame, slowly approached Ippolit Matveevich.
"Comrade, where is the ..." she said.
The man in the jacket sighed joyfully and then, so suddenly he surprised even himself, barked, "Register a union!"
Ippolit Matveevich looked attentively at the railing behind which the couple stood. "Birth? Death?"
"Register a union," repeated the man in the jacket, looking confusedly around him.
The damsel burst into a giggle. Everything was going fine. Ippolit Matveevich got down to work as deftly as a magician. He wrote the newlyweds' names in thick books with his old woman's handwriting; he sternly interrogated the witnesses, whom the bride had run out into the courtyard to fetch; he breathed long and lovingly on the square stamps; and he stood halfway up from his chair to press them onto the worn passports. As he accepted the newlyweds' two rubles and handed them their receipt, Ippolit Matveevich grinned and said, "For the completion of the sacrament." Then he straightened up to his full, marvelous height, puffing up his chest out of habit (he'd been known to wear a corset in his day). Thick yellow rays of sunlight lay on his shoulders like epaulettes. His bearing was a little comic, but quite ceremonial. The double-concave lenses of his pince-nez shone the bright white of a searchlight. The young people stood there like sheep.
"Young people," Ippolit Matveevich announced loftily, "allow me to congratulate you, as they used to say, on the occasion of your lawful wedded union. It's very pleasant, ver-r-ry pleasant to see young people like you walking hand in hand toward the achievement of eternal ideals. Very, ver-r-ry pleasant."
Upon delivering this tirade, Ippolit Matveevich shook the newlyweds' hands, sat down, and continued reading papers from binder No. 2, exceedingly pleased with himself.
The office workers at the next table snorted into their inkwells.
The calm flow of the workday began. No one disturbed the death and marriage registration table. Through the window one could see citizens, shivering from the spring chill, wandering back to their homes. Exactly at noon, the rooster from the Plow and Hammer Co-op crowed. This surprised no one. Then the metallic quacking and shrieking of an engine could be heard. A thick column of purple smoke rolled out from Comrade Gubernsky Street. The shrieking intensified. Soon the outline of the district executive committee car, Gov't No. 1, with its tiny radiator and cumbersome body, appeared through the smoke. Wallowing in the mud, the automobile crossed Staropanskaya Square and disappeared, swaying, in a cloud of poisonous smoke. Office workers continued to stand by their windows for a long time, commenting on the event and linking it to a possible workforce reduction. A little while later, master craftsman Bezenchuk came carefully down the wooden gangways. He skulked all over town for days at a time, inquiring whether anyone had died.
It was time for the obligatory half-hour break for a midday bite to eat. A juicy chomping resounded. They chased a little old lady who'd come to register her dear little grandson all the way back out to the middle of the square.
Sapezhnikov the copyist struck up the same old series of hunting stories that everyone already knew inside and out. The stories all boiled down to the fact that it is not only pleasant, but essential, to drink vodka while hunting. Getting anything else out of the copyist was impossible.
"Well then, sir," Ippolit Matveevich said ironically. "You were just so kind as to tell us that you'd cracked open those two half bottles. So what happened then?"
"What happened then? Well, that's just what I'm saying, that when you're out for hare you need to use large shot ... So, anyway. Grigory Vasilievich lost a bottle to me on that ... And so then we finished off that bottle and tossed back a hundred-grammer, too. That's what we did."
Ippolit Matveevich gave an annoyed "ahem" and said, "So what about the hares? Did you use large shot on them?"
"Now just wait a minute, don't interrupt. So then Donnikov comes up in a cart and what does he have under the hay back there, the tramp, but a whole goose, a quarter of grain alcohol ..."
Sapezhnikov guffawed, showing his light-pink gums.
"The four of us, we put that goose to rest and go to sleep, all the more so since you have to go out as soon as it's light to hunt. The next day we get up. It's still dark, it's cold ... in a word, we got the cold shivers. Then I find I've got half a bottle left. We drink that. But we can tell it's not enough. We're shaking, we're roaring-horrors! So a peasant woman brought us a snort, there's a sorceress in the village there, she sells grain alcohol ..."
"But when did you do any hunting, if you'll allow me to inquire?"
"We hunted then, at the same time ... And oh, what happened to Grigory Vasilievich! I never throw up, if you want to know ... and I even had a little stinker, too, just to loosen up. But Donnikov, that tramp, goes off in his cart again. 'Don't go anywhere, fellows,' he says, 'I'll be right back with a little something.' So he brings something back, of course. A bunch of forty-grammers, the Hammer was out of everything else. We even gave some to the dogs ..."
"What about the hunt? How was the hunt?" everyone yelled.
"Now what kind of hunting could we do with drunk dogs?" Sapezhnikov said, offended.
"Little boy!" Ippolit Matveevich whispered indignantly as he walked back to his table.
With this, the obligatory midday break came to an end.
* * *
The workday was drawing to a close. In the neighboring bell tower, yellow with white trim, someone started ringing the bells as hard as he could. The windowpanes shook. Jackdaws poured out of the bell tower, held a swift meeting over the square, and sped away. The evening sky congealed over the deserted square.
A bearded, redheaded policeman wearing a service cap and a shaggy-collared sheepskin coat came into the office. He carefully carried a small delivery book in a grease-stained canvas cover under his arm. Shyly thumping his elephantine boots on the fl oor, the policeman went over to Ippolit Matveevich and leaned his big chest against the frail little railing.
"Hello, comrade," the policeman said in a thick, rich voice as he produced a large document from the delivery book. "The comrade director sent this over to you, to submit for your dispensation, for you to register it."
The piece of paper read thus:
Official memo To the Office of Vital Statistics
Comrade Vorobyaninov! Please do me a favor. I've just had a son. At 3:15 this morning. So you just go on and register him for me without all that red tape, so I don't have to wait in line. My son's name is Ivan, and he's got my last name.
With Communist greetings, District Police Force Vice-Director Perervin.
Ippolit Matveevich hurried. He registered the District Police Force child without all that red tape, and also without any waiting in line (all the more so since there never was one in the office).
The policeman reeked of tobacco as badly as Peter the Great did, and the delicate Ippolit Matveevich only breathed freely again after the policeman left.
It was time for Ippolit Matveevich to leave, too. Everything that was meant to be born on that day had been born and entered into the thick books. Everyone who wanted to complete their marriage rites had been married and also entered into the thick books. The only thing there hadn't been any incidences of, to the coffin-makers' evident ruin, was death. Ippolit Matveevich put away his file folders, tucked his felt cushion back in his drawer, and fluffed his mustache with a comb. Dreaming of a steaming bowl of soup, he was on the verge of leaving when the office door burst open and master coffin-maker Bezenchuk appeared on the threshold. (Continues...)
Excerpted from The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf Evgeny Petrov Copyright © 2011 by Alexandra Ilf. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword Alexandra Ilf....................xiTranslator's Introduction....................xxvii
1 Bezenchuk and the Nymphs....................5
2 The Demise of Madame Petukhova....................17
3 The Sinner's Mirror....................27
4 The Muse of Distant Travel....................37
5 The Registrar's Past....................43
6 The Smooth Operator....................65
7 Diamond Smoke....................75
8 Traces of the Titanic....................83
9 The Little Sky-Blue Thief....................89
10 Where Are Your Curls?....................103
11 The Parakeet, the Repairman, and the Fortune-Teller....................113
12 The Alphabet, the Mirror of Life....................125
13 A Passionate Woman, a Poet's Dream....................141
14 Breathe Deeper, You're Excited!....................155
15 The Union of the Sword and the Plowshare....................175
16 Amid an Ocean of Chairs....................191
17 The Brother Berthold Schwartz Dormitory....................195
18 Respect Your Mattresses, Citizens!....................211
19 The Furniture Museum....................219
20 European-Style Voting....................229
21 From Seville to Granada....................241
22 Corporal Punishment....................255
23 Ellochka the Cannibal....................269
24 Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov....................279
25 The Motorists' Club....................291
26 Conversation with a Naked Engineer....................305
27 Two Visits....................315
28 The Excellent Jailhouse Basket....................321
29 The Little Hen and the Pacific Rooster....................331
30 The Author of "The Gavriliad"....................343
31 The Mighty Handful, or the Gold-Seekers....................355
32 In the Columbus Theater....................365
33 A Magical Night on the Volga....................383
34 A Pair of Unclean Animals....................397
35 Expulsion from the Garden of Eden....................411
36 The Interplanetary Chess Congress....................421
37 And Others....................439
38 A View of a Malachite Puddle....................449
39 Cape Green....................459
40 Under the Clouds....................469
41 Earthquake....................481
42 Treasure....................495
Translator's Notes....................507