Chapter 2. Lieutenant Schmidt’s Thirty Sons
The frantic morning came to an end. Bender and Balaganov walked quickly away from the ispolkom in silent agreement. A long blue rail was being carted along the main street on a pair of widely-spread peasant carts. The main street was so filled with ringing and singing that it was as if the coachman in the oilcloth work clothes were carting some kind of deafening musical note rather than a metal rail. The sun was breaking through the glass window of a store selling visual aids, where two skeletons sat locked in a friendly embrace above a set of globes, skulls, and the merrily painted cardboard liver of a drunkard. In the meager window of a stamp and seal workshop the most space was taken up by enameled boards reading ‘Closed for Lunch, ‘Lunch Break From 2 to 3 pm’, ‘Closed for Lunch Break’, the simple Closed, ‘Store Closed’, and, finally, a sturdy black board with the golden letters ‘Closed for Inventory’. There was clearly a great demand for these decisive texts in Arbatov. The stamp and seal workshop offered only a single little blue tablet for all of life’s other contingencies: “Nanny on Call”.
Further along stood three stores in a row selling wind instruments, mandolins and bass balalaikas. Copper trumpets lay gleaming lecherously on the steps of a red calico-lined showcase. The bass helicon was especially handsome. It looked so powerful as it warmed itself lazily in the sun, curled up in a circle, that it would have looked more at home displayed in a capital city zoo, somewhere between the elephant and the python. Parents could take their children to see it on Sundays and holidays and say “There, my child, is the helicon pavilion. The helicon is sleeping. But when it wakes up, you will certainly hear it blow.” And the children would look at the amazing trumpet, their big eyes filled with wonder.
At any other time, Ostap Bender would have noticed the freshly-hewn balalaikas the size of a room, the sun-warped gramophone records and the Pioneers’ drums, whose smart paintwork brought to mind the old adage about the bullet being a fool and the bayonet a hero[8], but his mind was on other things today. He was hungry.
“I assume you are standing on the edge of a financial abyss?” he asked Balaganov.
“You mean money?” said Shura. “I haven’t had money for a whole week.”
“In that case, young man, your future is grim” - pronounced Ostap. “The financial abyss is the deepest kind of abyss; you can spend your whole life falling into it. Still, don’t sulk. I did manage to carry off three dinner vouchers in my beak. The chairman of the ispolkom liked me at first sight.”
But the two stepbrothers weren’t able to take advantage of the city administrator’s kindness. A large lock, covered with what was either rust or buckwheat kasha, hung on the door of the ‘Stomach’s Former Friend’ cafeteria,.
“Of course,” said Ostap bitterly. “The cafeteria has been permanently closed for schnitzel inventory. We’ll have to let the private speculators tear our bodies apart.”
“Speculators prefer ready cash,” said Balaganov dully.
“Fine, fine, I’m not going to torture you. The chairman also showered me with gold in the amount of eight rubles. But keep in mind, my esteemed Shura, that I don’t intend to give you a free lunch. I’m going to demand a variety of minor services for every vitamin you’re fed.”
The city turned out not to have a private market, and the brothers ate their dinner in the summer cooperative garden instead, where some unusual banners informed citizens of Arbatov’s latest innovation in the field of public nutrition:
BEER SERVED TO UNION MEMBERS ONLY
“We will make do with kvas[9],” said Balaganov.
“All the more since the local kvas is prepared by private brewers, who are sympathetic to Soviet rule,” added Ostap, “But now tell me what that cutthroat Panikovski did wrong. I like stories about petty swindling.”
The sated Balaganov looked upon his savior with gratitude and began his story. It went on for two hours and included some exceptionally interesting information.
In every area of human activity, there exist special institutions to regulate the supply and demand of labor. An actor will go to Omsk only after ascertaining that he has no need to fear competition there and that there will be no rivals for his role as a cool lover or servant announcing “dinner is served”. Railroad workers are taken care of by their professional unions, which carefully post announcements in the newspapers warning that unemployed baggage handlers shouldn’t count on finding work on the Syzrano-Vyazemskaya line, or that four crossing guards are needed on that the Central Asian line.. An expert procurement agent will place an ad in the paper and the whole country will learn that there exists in the world an expert procurement agent with ten years’ experience who wants to change his place of employment from Moscow to the provinces for family reasons.
Everything is self-regulating, everything flows down cleared channels and completes its natural cycles both in harmony with and under the full protection of the law.
Only one very unusual market existed in a state of chaos, and that was the market of hucksters calling themselves the children of Lieutenant Schmidt. Anarchy was tearing the Lieutenant’s children apart. They were not able to extract from their profession the comforts that would have doubtless been theirs given even a momentary acquaintance with any number of administrators, factory directors or union heads, who for the most part are surprisingly gullible people.
Karl Marx’s grandsons, the nonexistent relatives of Friedrich Engels, Lunacharski’s[10] brothers, Klara Zetkin’s[11] cousins, even – at the bitter end - the descendants of the famous anarchist Prince Kropotkin[12], all crisscrossed the country, wheedling and extorting. From Minsk to the Bering Strait, and from Nakhichevan-on-Arax to Franz-Josef Land you could find the relatives of great men and women walking into ispolkoms, stepping out onto station platforms and driving anxiously around in hired coaches. They rushed about. They were very busy.
At one point, the supply of relatives exceeded demand, and this unique market experienced a depression. The need for reform made itself felt. And so one after another, the grandchildren of Karl Marx, the Kropotkinites, the Engelsons and their ilk began to clean up their act, with the sole exception of the thriving group of Lieutenant Schmidt’s children, who, like the Polish Sejm[13], found themselves riven by anarchy. The children had somehow all turned out to be rude, greedy, and contrary, and they made it impossible for one another to earn a living.
Shura Balaganov, who considered himself the Lieutenant’s firstborn, had begun to seriously worry about the trend things were taking. More and more frequently he would run into colleagues from his cohort who had completely besmirched the fertile fields of the Ukraine or the mountain resorts of the Caucasus where he had grown used to doing seasonal work.
“You were afraid these difficulties were growing up to haunt you?” asked Ostap mockingly.
But Balaganov didn’t notice the irony. Drinking his lilac-colored kvas, he continued his story.
There was only one way out of this tense situation - a conference. Balaganov worked on the call for it all winter long. He corresponded with the competitors he knew personally. Those he didn’t know he invited through the various grandchildren of Marx he had met in his travels. Finally, in the early spring of 1928, almost all of Lieutenant Schmidt’s known children got together in a Moscow tavern, near the Sukharev Tower. The quorum was large – it turned out that Lieutenant Schmidt had thirty sons, from eighteen to fifty-two years in age, and four daughters, all of them stupid, unattractive and no longer young.
In his short introductory speech, Balaganov expressed the hope that the brothers might find a common language and work out a treaty that life had rendered imperative.
According to Balaganov’s plan, the entire Soviet Union was to be broken up into thirty-four operating districts, to match the number of participants. Each district would be entrusted to one of the children for their long-term use. None of the members of the corporation would be allowed to cross the border into another’s territory with the goal of making money there.
No one objected to these new work rules with the exception of Panikovski, who right then announced that he could live without a treaty. There were some ugly scenes, however, when it came to dividing up the country. The parties that had been in such lofty agreement fell to bickering right from the start and would only address one another with the addition of vulgar epithets. The whole argument hinged on how districts were to be assigned.
No one wanted to take the university towns. No one wanted savvy Moscow, Leningrad or Khar’kov.
The far eastern areas, buried in sand, also suffered from a very poor reputation. It was intimated that their inhabitants lacked any familiarity with the person of Lieutenant Schmidt.
“You think you’ve found yourself some fools!” squealed Panikovski. “Give me the mid-Russian plateau, and I’ll sign your convention.”
“What? The whole plateau?” said Balaganov. “Maybe you want us to throw in Melitopol’, too? Or Bobruysk?”
The assembled parties gave a painful howl at the mention of Bobruysk. Everyone was ready to go to Bobruysk that very instant. They thought Bobruysk was a wonderful, highly cultured place.
“Fine, not the whole plateau,” insisted the greedy Panikovski. “Just give me half. I am a family man, after all, I have two families.” But they didn’t give him even half.
After prolonged shouting it was agreed that districts would be assigned by drawing straws. Thirty-four little pieces of paper were prepared, with the name of a region written on each one. Every republic and every region - fruitful Kursk and doubtful Kherson, the underdeveloped Minusinsk and the practically hopeless Ashkhabad, Kiev, Petrozavodsk and Chita – waited for their master in a rabbit hat with earmuffs someone had donated.
Joyful cries, dull moans and profanity accompanied the drawing.
Panikovski’s unlucky star showed its influence. He got the Volga basin. He was beside himself with wrath as he signed the treaty.
“I’ll go,” he yelled. “But I’m warning you, if they treat me badly, I’ll break the treaty, I’ll cross the border!”
Balaganov, who had got the golden Arbatov sector, took fright and announced right there that he would not stand for any infringement of the operating norms.
One way or another, the deal was worked out, after which Lieutenant Schmidt’s thirty sons and four daughters went off to go to work in their assigned regions.
“You saw for your yourself how that swine defied the convention, Bender,” Shura Balaganov finished his story. “He’d been crawling around my territory for a long time, but I hadn’t been able to catch him until now.”
To the storyteller’s surprise, Panikovski’s wicked deed aroused no judgment from Ostap. Bender sprawled out in his chair, looking distractedly ahead.
An even line of trees with dense foliage was painted on the high rear wall of the restaurant, like a picture in a children’s primer. There were no real trees in the garden, but the shadow cast by the wall provided a refreshing coolness and the citizens found it completely satisfactory. The citizens were clearly all members of the trade union, since they were drinking beer without having anything to eat.
A green automobile with ‘Let’s Go For A Ride!’ written in a white arc across its door rode up towards the garden gates, backfiring and wheezing as it came. Below the sign were the conditions for riding in the jolly vehicle. Three rubles per hour. Fixed itinerary negotiable. There were no passengers in the car.
The people in the garden whispered nervously among themselves. The driver stood imploringly for about five minutes, looking through the garden gate, and having lost all hope of finding a passenger, he cried out in a provocative voice:
“Taxi available! Climb in!”
But none of the citizens expressed any desire to get into the car marked ‘Let’s Go For A Ride!’. And even the very invitation by the driver had a strange effect on them. They hunkered lower and tried not to look towards the car. The driver shook his head and slowly drove away. The residents of Arbatov followed him sadly with their eyes. Five minutes later the green automobile raced by the garden in the other direction, going full tilt. The driver was bouncing on his seat and yelling something unintelligible. The car was empty as before. Ostap watched it pass and said:
“Now listen. Balaganov, you are a fop. Don’t get offended. By that I just mean to clearly define the position you occupy under the sun.”
“Go to hell!” said Balaganov rudely.
“You got offended after I told you not to? Does that mean you think being a lieutenant’s son is not being a fop?”
“You yourself are Lieutenant Schmidt’s son!” cried Balaganov.
“You are a fop,” repeated Ostap. “And the son of a fop. And your children will be fops. My boy! What happened this morning - it wasn’t even an episode, but just a pure coincidence, the whim of an artist. A gentleman in search of a ten ruble note. Fishing at such miserly odds is not in my character. And what kind of a profession is this, for God’s sake? Lieutenant Schmidt’s son! Maybe for another year, two on the outside. And then what? Then people will get used to your red curls, and they’ll just start beating you.”
“So what do I do?” worried Balaganov. “How do I win my daily bread?”
“You need to think,” said Ostap sternly. “Me, for example; it’s ideas that keep me fed. I don’t hold out my hand for a sour ispolkom ruble. I cast my net wider. I have observed that you have a selfless love of money. Tell me, what kind of amount would be suitable?”
“Five thousand,” said Balaganov quickly.
“A month?”
“A year.”
“Then I’m not the guy for you. I need five hundred thousand. And I need it all at once, not in installments.”
“Maybe you would take in installments nonetheless?” asked the vengeful Balaganov.
Ostap looked at his interlocutor attentively, and in complete seriousness replied:
“I would take it in installments. But I need it all at once.”
Balaganov wanted to make a joke out of that answer, but looking up at Ostap, he stopped cold. The man sitting across from him was an athlete with a sharply defined face that looked as if it were stamped on a coin. A thick white scar ran across his dark throat. His eyes shone with a menacing bemusement.
Balaganov suddenly felt an unconquerable desire to snap to attention. He even wanted to clear his throat, as happens with people of middling responsibilities when they are talking to one of their higher-ranking comrades. And actually clearing his throat, he asked bashfully.
“Why do you need so much money... and right away?”
“Really I need more.” said Ostap. “Five hundred thousand is my minimum, five hundred thousand full-strength approximate rubles. I want to go away, comrade Balaganov, go far away, to Rio de Janeiro.”
“Do you have relatives there?” asked Balaganov.’
“Do I look like the kind of person who would have relatives?”
“No, but I...”
“I don’t have any relatives, comrade Shura. I am alone in this world. I had a father, a Turkish subject, but he died long ago in horrible convulsions. That’s not the point. Ever since I was a child I have wanted to go to Rio de Janeiro. You, of course, weren’t even aware that such a city existed.”
Balaganov nodded his head dejectedly. Of all the centers of world culture, other than Moscow he knew of only Kiev, Melitopol'’ and Zhmerinka[14]. And anyway he was convinced that the Earth was flat.
Ostap tossed a page torn out of a book onto the table.
“Here is a clipping from the Small Soviet Encyclopedia. This is what they say about Rio de Janeiro: ‘1360 thousand inhabitants...’ Let’s see... ‘A significant number of mulattoes... by a wide bay on the Atlantic Ocean...” Here, here! “The city’s main streets are every bit the equal of the greatest cities in the world as far as the number of shops and the beauty of the architecture” “Can you imagine, Shura? Every bit the equal! Mulattoes, the bay, coffee exports - or coffee dumping, as they call it – a Charleston entitled ‘My little gal has a little thing’, and - what more is there to say? You can see for yourself what’s going on. One and a half million people, and every one of them dressed in white pants. I want to leave here. Over the last year some serious differences have arisen between me and the Soviet government. The Soviet government wants to build socialism, and I do not. I find building socialism tiresome. Now do you see why I want so much money?”
“Where will you get five hundred thousand rubles?” asked Balaganov quietly.
“Wherever I can,” replied Ostap. “Just show me a rich man, and I will take his money”
“How? Murder?” asked Balaganov in an even softer voice, casting a glance at the neighboring tables full of Arbatovites hefting toasts with their beer glasses.
“You know,” said Ostap, “you should never have signed the so-called Sukharev treaty. The intellectual effort clearly exhausted you. You are getting dumber by the minute. Please note that Ostap Bender has never killed anyone. Have others tried to kill him? They have. But he himself stands pure in the eyes of the law. I’m no cherub, of course. I don’t have wings, but I do honor the Criminal Code. That is my weakness.”
“How do you plan to take the money?”
“How do I plan to take it? The taking or removal of funds varies based on circumstances. I personally have four hundred comparatively honest methods of extracting wealth. But it’s not about how it’s done. The point is that right now there aren’t any wealthy people, and that is the horror of my position. Another person in my place might throw himself at some defenseless state enterprise, but that is not in my rights. You know the respect I have for the Criminal Code. There is no point in robbing the collective. Give me one of your richer individuals. But there are no such individuals.
“What do you mean!” exclaimed Balaganov. “There are some very rich people.”
“Do you know them?” said Ostap instantly. “Can you give me the name and exact address of just one single Soviet millionaire? And yet they exist, they must exist. Once you have a country in which there circulate certain financial instruments, there must exist people who possess them in large quantities. But how do you find such a catch?”
Ostap even gave a sigh at this point. It was clear he had been struggling with these dreams of rich individuals for a long time.
“How pleasant,” he said, immersed in thought, “To work with a legal millionaire in a well-organized bourgeois country with established capitalist traditions. There a millionaire is a popular figure. People know his address. He lives in a house of his own, somewhere in Rio-de-Janeiro. You go straight in to see him as a visitor and right there in the front room, after exchanging your first hellos, you take away his money. And all this politely, pleasantly, you see. “Hello, sir, don’t worry. I will need to importune you a little bit. All right.. Done.” and that’s it! Culture! What could be simpler? A gentleman doing a little bit of business in the society of other gentlemen. Just don’t shoot into the chandelier, that’s overdoing it. But over here... my God, my God. What a cold country we live in! Here everything is hidden, everything is buried in the basement. Even the Narkomfin[15] with its omnipotent revenue collectors, can’t find a Soviet millionaire. There might even be a millionaire sitting here right now in this so-called summer garden, drinking a forty-kopek ‘Tip-Top’ beer at the next table. That’s what offends me!”
“So you think,” asked Balaganov after a pause – “That if you found such a secret millionaire, you would?...”
“Stop right there. I know what you’re going to say. No, not that. Not that at all. I don’t plan to strangle him with a pillow or beat him on the head with a black Nagant revolver. There won’t be any rough stuff at all. Oh, if I could only find an individual. I’d set it up so he brings me his money himself, on a little blue-bordered saucer.”
“That’s very good” Balaganov smiled trustfully. “Five hundred thousand on a little blue-bordered saucer.”
He got up and started walking around the table. He smacked his tongue sadly, stopping and starting, even opening his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but then he would sit down without saying anything and then get up again. Ostap followed his movements with indifference.
“He’ll bring it himself?” Balaganov asked suddenly in a creaky voice. “On a little saucer? And if he doesn’t? And where is this Rio de Janeiro? Is it far? It’s not possible that everyone walks around in white pants. Forget about all that, Bender. You can live well here for five hundred thousand.”
“No doubt, no doubt” said Ostap, amused. “You can live here. But don’t go flapping your wings for no reason. You don’t have five hundred thousand.”
A deep wrinkle appeared on Balaganov’s untroubled, unlined forehead. He looked at Ostap hesitantly and said:
“I know a millionaire like that” All the liveliness left Bender’s face in a flash. His face instantly became hard and again took on the features of a medal.
“Go on, go on,” he said, “I only offer handouts on Saturdays, no point in trying to con me.”
“I swear it’s true, monsieur Bender...”
“Listen, Shura, if you’re finally going to switch to French, then don’t call me Monsieur, but citoyen - meaning, citizen. Incidentally, what is this millionaire’s address?
“He lives in Chernomorsk.”
“Ah yes, I should have known. Chernomorsk! Even before the war they would call a man with ten thousand rubles there a millionaire. And now... I can imagine. No, that’s nonsense!”
“No, no, let me explain. He’s a real millionaire. See, Bender, not long ago I happened to be serving time in one of their pen...”
Ten minutes later the stepbrothers left the summer cooperative beer garden. The great combinator felt like a surgeon who has to carry out an extremely serious operation. Everything is ready. Towels and bandages are steaming in their electric autoclaves, a nurse in a white lab coat moves silently across the tiled floor, the medical porcelain and nickel are shining, the patient is lying on a glass table, his unseeing eyes rolled up towards the ceiling. The smell of German chewing gum wafts through the specially heated air. The surgeon walks up to the operating table, his hands spread, takes a sterilized scalpel from his assistant and curtly says to the patient “Well, take off your burnoose.”
“That’s how it always is with me” said Bender, his eyes shining. “I end up having to start a million ruble job with a tangible lack of monetary instruments. My entire personal capital — base, operating and reserve — amounts to five rubles. What did you say the underground millionaire’s name was?”
“Koreiko” replied Balaganov
“Yes, yes, Koreiko. A beautiful name. And you claim no one knows about his millions.”
“No one except for me and Pruzhanski. But Pruzhanski, like I told you, is going to be spending another three years in jail. If you could only see how he railed and cried when I went free. He could feel that he should never have told me about Koreiko.”
“The fact that he revealed his secret to you is nothing. That’s not why he was railing and crying. He evidently had a premonition that you would tell the whole story to me. And that truly is a direct loss for poor Pruzhanski. By the time Pruzhanski gets out of jail Koreiko will be finding consolation only in the despicable proverb ‘no shame in being poor’”.
Ostap took off his summer cap, waved it in the air, and asked
“Do I have any grey hairs?”
Balaganov sucked in his gut, spread his socks a rifle butt’s width apart, and in the voice of a front line soldier answered:
“Absolutely not!”
That means they’re on their way. Great battles lie ahead of us. You’ll go grey too, Balaganov.” Balaganov suddenly gave a silly giggle:
“How did you say it? They’ll bring the money on a little blue-bordered saucer?”
“Mine on a little saucer. Yours on a little plate”
“And what about Rio de Janeiro? I want to wear white pants, too!”
“Rio de Janeiro is the crystal dream of my childhood,” the great combinator replied sternly, “keep your paws off of it. Let’s get to the point. Send out troops under my command. Units are to arrive in the city of Chernomorsk as soon as humanly possible. Dress code is causual. Well, sound the march! I will lead the parade.