CHAPTER VIII
A NERVOUS THIEF
THE superintendent of the home for the aged was a faint-hearted thief. He protested with all his being against theft, but he could not refrain from thieving. He stole and was ashamed of stealing. He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed. of himself, and as a result his cheeks glowed from a mixture of shame and embarrassment. His name was Alexander Yakovlevich and his wife was called Alexandra Yakovlevna. He called her Sashkin and she called him Alkin. The world had never known such a thief as Alexander Yakovlevich.
He was not only the superintendent of the home for the aged but the director as well. The former superintendent had lost his job for bad treatment of the inmates. Alkin was in no way like his ignorant predecessor—he treated the inmates politely, and introduced important reforms and improvements.
Ostap Bender opened the heavy oak door of Hippolyte's former home and went into the hall. He could smell burnt porridge, and he could hear people talking loudly in the rooms above. From the distance it sounded as if they were cheering, but there was no one in the hall and no one appeared. There were two flights of stairs leading up from the hall, which had at one time been polished. On the stairs the eyes had been left in their places, but the rods that used to press the carpet down had long since disappeared.
'This fellow Hippolyte knew how to live,' thought Bender as he went up the staircase. 'Such luxury is positively indecent.'
He found a circle of some eighteen old women sitting in the first room. They were all dressed in the cheapest A NERVOUS THIEF
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mouse-coloured material. They were straining their necks towards a young man who was standing in the middle of the ring. This was the choirmaster, dressed in a coat and trousers of the same grey cloth, and he was beating time with both hands. ‘ Softer there, sopranos,’ he was saying. Gentler, Kokushkina ! ’ He turned round and saw Bender, but, unable to control his hands, he simply glared at him and went on conducting. The choir made a great effort, but it sounded as if the music were coming through a pillow. ‘ Ta-ra-ra, ta-ra-ra, ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra ! ’
- Ta-ra-rum, ta-ra-roo, ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra ! ’
‘ Tell me,’ said Bender, ‘ where can I find the head of this home ? ’ ‘ Why, what d’you want, comrade ? Bender went forward, shook hands with the con ductor, and asked him genially : ‘ Folk songs ? Very interesting ! I am the inspector of fire preventives The superintendent blushed. ‘ Oh ! yes, he said, ' you’ve just come at the right time. I was just thinking of writing a report.’ .
- Don’t you bother,’ said Bender magnanimously.
‘ I can write the report myself. Well now, let’s have a look at the building.’ , Alkin dismissed the choir with a wave of the hand, and the little old women tripped away with small, mincing steps. ‘ Kindly foUow me,’ invited the superintendent. But before moving Bender had a good look at the furniture in the room, which consisted of a table, two garden benches, and an old harmonium.
- Any “ Primus ” stoves lit in this room . Any oil
stoves or such like ? ’ . ‘ No no,’ said the superintendent. Various groups meet here : the choir, the dramatic society, and the musical society'——’ At the word ‘ musical ’ Alkin blushed. He was 44
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ashamed, for he had long since sold all the instruments, and in any case the lungs of the old women could only squeak like puppies. It was ridiculous to have all those brass instruments about the place. There was nothing else to do but steal them ; but he was terribly ashamed now. A slogan was hanging on the wall stretched from window to window and printed on the same mouse-coloured material: ‘ A brass band is the first step towards collective creation.’ ‘ Excellent ! ’ said Bender. ‘ This room, used as it is for such admirable purposes, does not seem to present any dangers of fire.’ They walked rapidly through the front rooms of the house, but Bender did not see the walnut chair with bent legs upholstered in bright English chintz. Notices were fixed on all the walls. Bender read them, and from time to time he would ask briskly : ‘ Chim neys swept regularly ? Stoves in order ? ’ And after receiving exhaustive replies he would move on. The inspector of fire prevention looked in every comer of the house to see if there was any possible danger. Everything was perfectly satisfactory, but there was no sign of the treasure. Bender went into the dormitories, and as the old women caught sight of him they all bowed deeply. Their beds were covered with blankets as rough as hairy terriers and on one end of them was woven the word ‘ Feet ’. There was a small trunk under each bed, and by order of Alkin, who loved military precision, exactly one-third of each trunk protmded from beneath. Everything in the home was extremely modest. The furniture consisted of garden benches brought in from the boulevard, and the paraffin lamps and blankets with their terrifying inscription ‘ Feet ’ came from the market. But there was one thing in the place that was good, even luxurious—the door-springs. The superintendent had a passion for door-springs. He had taken great trouble to fit all the doors with A NERVOUS THIEF
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springs of the most varied shapes and patterns. There were simple springs and complicated springs, and they were all very effective and strong. As soon as a door was opened, it sprang to again with the same force as the hd of a mousetrap. The whole house shook when one of these springs came into action. The old women would squeak plaintively as the doors slammed to on them, but they did not always manage to escape. The doors would catch them in the back and shoot them forward. As the two men went through the various rooms of the house the doors saluted them with loud bangs, but there were no chairs to be seen anywhere. In con tinuing his search the inspector presently found hirnself in the kitchen, where porridge was being cooked in a large cauldron. Bender had smelt this when he had first come into the house. He sniffed the air and then asked : ‘ Cooked on train oil ? ’ , ‘ No ! I swear it’s cooked with fresh farm butter, said Alkin, going as red as a beetroot. ‘ We always get it from the farm.’ He was terribly ashamed. ‘ Still, there’s no danger of fire taking place here.’ The chair was not in the kitchen. There was only a stool on which the male cook, dressed in an overall and cap of the same mouse-coloured material, was sitting. ‘ Why are they all dressed in the same grey colour ? ’ Bender asked the superintendent, ‘ and of such a quality that it’s not fit for anything else except cleaning windows ? ’ Alkin was more confused than ever. ‘ We don’t get sufficient credit.’ He hated himself for saying this. Bender looked at him suspiciously and then said. ' Of course, this has nothing to do with safeguards against fire, in which I am interested at the moment. Alkin grew alarmed. ‘We have taken every precaution against fire. We’ve even got a fire-extinguisher. It’s a “ Lightning ” extinguisher.’ But Bender was not interested in the extinguisher. 46
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‘ Where can that chair be ? ’ thought Bender. ‘ I’m beginning to enjoy myself.’ And he decided not to leave this mousetrap of a place until he had been everywhere. While the two men were clambering about the attics and going into every detail about the prevention of fire, life was going on as usual in the home for the aged. Dinner was ready. The smell of burnt porridge increased and overpowered all the other smells of the place. There was a rustle in the corridors, and the old women, carrying tin mugs full of porridge, went slowly and carefully out of the kitchen and sat down at a common table in the dining-room, trying not to take any notice of the slogans that were hanging on the walls. These slogans had been per sonally composed by Alkin and artistically executed by his wife. This is what they said ; ‘ Food is the source of health’, ‘One egg contains as much fat as half a pound of meat ’, ‘ Look after your teeth ’, ‘ In chewing your food remember you are helping society ’, and finally, ‘ Meat is bad for you ’. These words of inspiration revived in the old women memories of teeth that had disappeared long before the revolution, of eggs that had vanished approximately at the same time, and of the society they had been deprived of helping by chewing their food. Apart from the old women sitting at the table there were Isidor, Athanasius, Cyril, Oleg, and Paul. Neither in age nor sex did these young men harmonize with the aims of the institution. The first four were Alkin’s younger brothers, while Paul was his wife’s nephew. These young men, the eldest of whom was thirty-two years old, did not consider that their presence in this home for the aged was in any way unnatural. They had the same rights as the old women. They slept in Government beds with blankets marked ‘ Feet ’, and they were dressed in the same mouse-coloured material. But as they were young and strong they ate far more than the old women. They stole whatever Alkin did A NERVOUS THIEF
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not have time to steal. Paul could swallow five pounds of porridge at a sitting, which he did once, leaving the whole house without dinner. To-day the old women had hardly had time to taste the porridge when the young men gulped theirs down and went into the kitchen to hunt for something else to eat. The meal continued. The old women began to grumble : ‘ That’s all they do. They guzzle up their food and then begin bawling for more.’ ‘ Yes,’ said one of them, ‘ and this morning Paul sold the chair that used to stand in the corner. I saw hirn carry it down the back stairs to a man who bought it. ‘ You’ll see,’ said another, ‘ he’ll come back drunk to-night.’ . At that moment their conversation was interrupted by a violent buzzing from the loud-speaker. The old women bent over their plates and went on eating without paying any attention to the loud-speaker, but a voice began to talk to them ; A valuable . . . crrch . . . buz . . . buz . . . invention . . . the . . . director of the Murmansk railway . . . Comrade Sokutsky . . . S for Samara . . . O for Orel . . . K for Kazan . . . U for Uganda . . . TS for Tsaritsin ... K for Kiev, and Y for York . . .SO-KUTSKY.’ The loud-speaker buzzed again and then con tinued : ‘ invented signalling by means of light. The invention has been approved by----- The old women waddled out of the room like so many grey birds and the loud-speaker continued to address an empty room. In the meantime Bender, feeling very depressed, had gone down the back stairs to the kitchen, where he saw the five young men digging their fingers into a barrel of sour cabbage and enjoying themselves hugely. They were having a thoroughly good feed and were eating in silence. Paul was the only one who spoke : ‘ It’s wicked eating such good cabbage without a drop of vodka.’ 48
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' Is this a fresh batch of old women ? ’ Bender asked Alkin. ‘ N-no. They are orphans,’ answered Alkin, tact fully drawing Bender away and threatening the gluttons with his fist behind the fire-inspector’s back. ‘ Children from the Volga ? ’ Alkin did not know what to say. He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something about the orphans being a terrible heritage from the Tsarist days. ‘ Do you have co-education here ? ’ Instead of answering, Alkin invited Bender to take pot-luck with him. The ' pot-luck ’ that day con sisted of a bottle of vodka, pickled mushrooms, mashed herrings, Ukranian borshch made of prime quality meat, a chicken with rice, and stewed apples. ‘ Sashkin,’ Alkin said to his wife, ‘ let me introduce you to our comrade the fire-inspector.’ Bender bowed gracefully to his hostess and made her such an involved and dubious compliment that he had to break off in the middle because he did not know how to finish it. Sashkin laughed quietly and drank a glass with the men. ' I drink to your communal household! ’ said Bender. The dinner went merrily, and it was only as he was eating the stewed apples that he remembered the object of his visit.
- Why is there so little furniture in your institution ? ’
he asked. ‘ How d’you mean ? ’ said Alkin. ‘ What about the harmonium ? ’ ‘Ohl I know all about the vox humanum,’ said Bender, ‘ but there’s nothing on which one can sit down. There’s nothing but garden benches.’ ‘ Oh, dear me, no! ’ said Alkin rather offended. ‘ There’s a chair in one of the rooms. It’s an English chair. I m told it is one of the chairs that formerly belonged to the furniture of the house.’ A NERVOUS THIEF
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‘ I’d like to see the chair. Is there any danger of fire in the room where you keep it ? I shall have to look at it.’ ‘ Certainly. Certainly.’ Bender thanked the hostess for her dinner and set off with Alkin to see the chair. They went into the room. No ‘ Primus ’ stoves were used there—there was no stove the chimneys were in good order and cleaned regularly, but to Alkin’s utter amazement the chair was not there. He bustled about looking for it, he searched under the beds and under the garden benches, he moved the harmonium out of its place, he questioned the old women, who looked furtively at Paul, but the chair could not be found. Paul was more energetic than any one in looking for the chair, and when they had all calmed down again he was still wandering in and out of the rooms, lifting up water-jugs, moving tin mugs, and muttering to himself : ‘ Now where can it be ? It was here this morning. I saw it with my own eyes. It’s really too odd ! ’ ' It’s a pity it can’t be found,’ said Bender icily. ‘ It’s simply ridiculous,’ said Paul brazenly. Presently Bender found himself alone with the old women, and they unmediately began to air their grievances to him. . ‘ He’s settled his relations in here and they eat their heads off,’ said one. ‘ He feeds the pigs on milk, but he gives us burnt porridge,’ said another. ’ He’s taken everything out of the place.’
- Gently, gently, young women,’ said Bender, step
ping back. * The labour inspector will come to you about this. I have no instructions from the Senate to attend to this matter.’ The old women would not be quiet. ‘ And that wretch Paul took the chair away this morning. I know, for I saw him.’ ‘ Took it away ? ’ said Bender. ‘ To whom ? 4 50
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‘ I don’t know, but I know he sold it. He wanted to sell my blanket one day.’ The inspector went out of the room and found Paul. ‘ One of my friends,’ said Bender, emphasizing each word, ‘ also used to sell Government furniture, but now he’s a monk, as it were. He’s sitting in prison.’ ' Your groundless accusation sounds rather strange to me,’ said Paul .
- Who’s got that chair ? ’ Bender asked threateningly.
Paul, who was gifted with supernatural intuition, suddenly realized that he would either be kicked or beaten if he did not tell him. ‘ A dealer has got it.’ ‘ And his address ? ’ ‘ I’ve never seen him before.’ ' Never ? ’ ‘ No. I swear.’ ' I’d beat your face in,’ said Bender quietly, ‘ but Zarathustra does not allow it. Go to the devil! ’ Paul grinned obsequiously and began to move away. ‘ Now then, you bastard ! ’ shouted Bender, ‘ don’t you slide away like that. Was the dealer fair or dark ? ’ Paul began to describe him ; Bender listened atten tively to the end and then said : ‘ That of course has nothing to do with safeguards against fire.’ As he was about to leave the home Alkin slyly approached Bender in the corridor and offered him some money. ‘ That means Article 114 of the Criminal Code,’ said Bender, ' a bribe to an official during the execution of his orders.’ But he took the money and without saying good-bye to Alkin he moved towards the front door. The heavy oak door, weighing at least a ton and a half, was fitted with such powerful springs that when Bender opened it with great difficulty it slammed behind him and shot him out into the street. ‘ That’ll do ! That’ll do ! ’ said Bender as he rubbed the part that had been hit. ‘ Let the good work go on.’