Chapter 8. A Crisis of Genre
At four o’clock the poisoned Antelope stopped above a cliff. Below it on a little plate lay an unknown city. It was cut out carefully, like a tort. Multicolored morning mists floated above it. The hurried crew of the Antelope could just make out a faint sound of whistling and the slightest of crackling noises. This was clearly the sound of the natives snoring. A sawtooth forest came up to the edge of the city. The road drooped in loops from the cliff.
“A paradise valley,” said Ostap. “It’s nice to rob towns like this in the morning, when the sun isn’t too hot. One doesn’t get as tired.”
“It just happens to be early morning right now,” remarked Panikovski, looking ingratiatingly into the commander’s eyes.
“Be quiet, you ruffian!” cried Ostap. “What a high-strung old man. Can’t take a joke.”
“What should we do with the Antelope?” asked Kozlevich.
“Yes,” said Ostap. “There’s no way we can ride into town in that green washtub now. They would arrest us. We will have to take our cue from the most developed nations. In Rio-de-Janeiro, for example, stolen automobiles are repainted another color. This is done from strictly humanitarian motives – so that the former owner will not feel sad when he sees a stranger driving his car. The Antelope has gained a bitter fame for herself; we need to rechristen her.”
It was decided to go into town on foot and obtain paint, and to search out a suitable hideaway for the car outside the town limits.
Ostap walked quickly along the road down the escarpment and soon saw a crooked little log cabin, its tiny windows glimmering with blue river light. Behind the house stood a barn which looked like a good place to hide the Antelope.
While the Great Combinator was deciding which pretext was best for entering the little house and befriending its occupants, the door opened and an older gentleman in soldier’s long johns with black tin buttons ran out onto the wing. A pair of upstanding white sideburns covered his pale paraffin cheeks. At the turn of the last century, a similar physiognomy would have looked completely normal. Back then the majority of men wore that kind of official, loyally subordinate facial hair. But now, without a blue uniform, a state medal with moiré ribbon, or epaulets with a privy councilor's golden stars to go with the sideburns, the man's face looked unnatural.
“Oh Lord,” mumbled the resident of the log house, extending his arms to the rising sun. “Oh God, Oh God! The same dreams! Always the same dreams!”
And having voiced this complaint, the old man began to weep and ran along the path around the house, shuffling his feet. An ordinary rooster who had been just about to crow for the third time, and who had walked out into the middle of the courtyard with this goal in mind, leaped aside, taking a few more rapid steps and even dropping a feather in his haste. Soon, however, he came to his wits, climbed out onto the trellis and from that safe position informed the world that the morning had arrived. But one could still detect a note of anxiety in his voice, brought on by the undignified behavior of the owner of the house.
“They’re in my dreams, curse them,” Ostap could hear the old man’s voice say.
Bender looked in puzzlement at the strange man with the kind of sideburns that could only be found on the ministerial face of a conservatory doorman.
Meanwhile the unusual gentleman had completed his circuit and reappeared on the wing. Here he slowed down and with the words “I will go try again,” disappeared behind the door.
“I like old men,” whispered Ostap, “They are never boring. We’ll have to wait and see how this mysterious attempt pans out.” But Ostap did not have to wait long. Soon a tearful wail could be heard from inside the house, and the old man emerged backwards out onto the terrace weaving like Boris Godunov in the last act of Musogorski’s opera.
“Stay away from me, away!” he cried with a Shalyapin-like intonation to his voice. "It's always the same dream. Aaaa!”
He turned and walked straight towards Ostap, tripping over his own feet. Deciding that it was time to act, the Great Combinator stepped out from behind a tree and seized the sideburned man in his strong embrace.
“What? Who? What’s happening?” yelled the agitated old man. “What?”
Ostap carefully loosened his grip, grabbed the old man by the hand and shook it earnestly.
“I sympathize with you!” he exclaimed.
“Really?” asked the owner of the house, clinging to Bender’s shoulder.
“Of course I do,” replied Ostap. “I often have dreams myself.”
“What do you dream about?”
“Oh, various things.”
“But what kinds of things?”
“Well, it varies. A mixture. What in the newspapers they would call ‘Notes from All Over’ or ‘On The World Stage’. For example, the day before yesterday I dreamed about a Mikado funeral, and yesterday it was the Sushchev Fire Department Jubilee.”
“God!” cried the old man. “Oh God! What a fortunate man you are! How fortunate! Tell me — have you ever had a dream about a governor-general or perhaps even… a minister?”
Bender wasn’t about to be stubborn.
“I’ve dreamed about them,” he said happily. “Sure. A governor general, just last Friday. I dreamed about him all night. And, now that I remember, there was a chief of police next to him wearing patterned Turkish bloomers.”
“Oh, that's wonderful!” said the old man. “And did you ever happen to dream about the tsar-emperor’s arrival in the city of Kostroma?”
“Kostroma? Yes, I had a dream like that. Let me think, when was it? Ah yes, February third of this year. The tsar-emperor, and next to him, I remember, was Count Fredericks — you know, one of those court ministers.”
“Oh good Lord!” the old man exclaimed, worried. “What are we standing here for? Please, come in the house. Pardon me, you are not a socialist? Not a party member?”
“Oh come now!” said Ostap good-naturedly. “Me, a party member? I am a nonaligned monarchist. A servant to the tsar, father to our soldiers. You know... 'oh falcons, soar on high, soar as eagles, full of woe’…”
“Some tea then, will you have some tea?” muttered the old man, pushing Bender towards the door.
The house turned out to consist of one room with a vestibule. Portraits of noblemen in tailored frocks hung on the walls. Judging from their uniforms, in their day they had served in the Ministry of National Education. The bed looked unkempt and testified to the fact that the owner spent the most unsettled hours of his life there.
“Have you been living this hermit’s life for long?” asked Ostap.
“Since the spring,” replied the old man. “My name is Hvorobyev. I thought I would start a new life here. But could you believe what happened instead…”
Fyodor Nikitich Hvorobyev was a monarchist and hated Soviet rule. It was repugnant to him. He - who had once been a district superintendent - was forced to serve as the head of the methodological-pedagogical sector of the local Proletkult. He found this disgusting.
To the very end of his service he did not know how to decipher the word “Proletkult”, and this made him despise it all the more. Just the sight of a member of the local council, a fellow worker or a visitor to the methodological-pedagogical sector was enough to send cold shivers running down his spine. He grew to hate the word “sector”. Oh, that sector! Fedor Nikitich, who valued everything that was enlightened, including geometry, could never have believed that this beautiful mathematical concept, denoting a portion of the area of a curved figure, could be so debased.
Many things at work maddened Hvorobyev: meetings, wall newspapers, collections. But even at home his proud soul could not find peace. At home there were also wall newspapers, collections, and meetings. His friends talked only about things that Hvorobyev considered vulgar: about their wages, which they called their zarplata, about Children's Aid Month and about the social meaning of the play The Armored Train.
There was nowhere he could go to get away from the Soviet system. Even when a disappointed Hvorobyev walked alone down the streets of the town, he could still hear the set phrases flying out of the mouths of passers-by:
“…Then we decided to expel him from the leadership council.”
“…and I told them: your worker's council is heading straight for the industrial tribunal!”
And, looking unhappily at the posters exhorting citizens to fulfill the five-year plan in four years, Hvorobyev would repeat with irritation:
“Expel him! From the council! Industrial tribunal! In four years! This is a government of thugs!”
When the methodological-pedagogical sector switched to the seven-day work week, and some kind of violet fifth days of the month replaced pure Sundays as Horobyev's days off, he fought his way to a retirement pension and went to live far outside the town. He did this in order to get away from the new form of rule, which had taken over his life and deprived him of peace.
The hermit monarchist would sit for entire days above the cliff and, looking at the town, try to think of pleasant things: saint’s day services for some high-ranking personage, his gymnasium exams, and his relatives who had served in the ministry of national education. But to his puzzlement, his thoughts leapt immediately to unpleasant, Soviet things.
“What is happening now in that damned proletkult?” he would think. And after the proletkult even more upsetting episodes would come to mind: May Day and October demonstrations, club family nights with lessons and beer, and the six-month-long audit of the methodological sector.
“Soviet rule has taken everything I have,” thought the former superintendent, “My rank, my medal, my position and the money I had in the bank. It has even replaced my thoughts. But there is one sphere where the Bolsheviks won’t be able to penetrate: into my dreams, which are sent to a person by God. The night will bring me peace. In my dreams I will see the things that are pleasant to see.”
The first night after this God sent Fyodor Nikitich a nightmare. He dreamt that he was sitting in an office corridor, lit by a kerosene lamp. He was sitting down and knew that at any minute he would be thrown out of the leadership council. Suddenly an iron door opened and civil servants ran out from it crying “Horobyev needs some more work to do!” He wanted to run, but couldn’t.
Fyodor Nikitich woke up in the middle of the night. He prayed to God, explaining to Him that clearly a regrettable error had taken place and a dream intended for some responsible comrade, possibly even a Party member, had reached the wrong destination. For starters, he, Horobyev, would like to dream about the Tsar leaving the Cathedral of the Dormition.
Calmed by this, he fell asleep again, but instead of seeing the face of his adored monarch he immediately had a dream about the chairman of the executive council, comrade Surzhikov.
And every night after that with incomprehensible methodicalness the same Soviet dreams visited Fyodor Nikitich. He dreamed about membership dues, wall newspapers, the “Giant” sovkhoz, the triumphal opening of the first communal kitchen, the chairman of the Society of Friends of Cremation and key achievements in Soviet aviation.
The monarchist roared in his sleep. He didn’t want to dream about the Friends of Cremation. He wanted to dream about far right State Duma deputy Purishkevich, the patriarch Tikhon, Yalta mayor Dumbadze, or even just another simple inspector of state schools. But none of it happened. The Soviet system had penetrated even into the monarchist’s dreams.
“Always the same dreams!” finished Hvorobyev in a tearful voice. “Those damned dreams!”
“Your situation is bad,” said Ostap with sympathy. “Like they saying goes, the way you live determines what you experience. If you’re living in a Soviet country, your dreams are necessarily going to be Soviet, too.”
“Not a minute’s rest,” complained Hvorobyev. “Give me anything. I'll take anything now. Only not Purishkevich. Just give me Milyukov. He at least has a higher education and is a monarchist at heart. But it's hopeless! It’s always these Soviet antichrists.”
“I will help you,” said Ostap. “I’ve had to treat my friends and acquaintances using the Freudian method. Dreams are nothing. The main thing is to isolate the cause of the dreams. The fundamental cause here is the very existence of Soviet rule. I am unable to remove it right at present; I lack the time. You see, I am a sportsman and tourist, I need to fix my car a little bit, so let me put it in your barn. And as far as the causes go, don’t worry about them. I will get rid of them on my way back. Just as soon as I can finish my trip.”
Stunned by these heavy words, the monarchist readily gave the nice and helpful young man permission to use his barn. He threw an overcoat over his shirt, pulled galoshes on his bare feet and followed Bender into the courtyard.
“So there is hope?” he asked, scuffling behind his early morning guest.
“Don’t doubt it for a minute,” replied the commander lightly. “As soon as Soviet rule is gone, you will feel much better. You’ll see!”
A half-hour later the Antelope had been hidden with Horobyev and left under the supervision of Kozlevich and Panikovski. Bender went off into town with Balaganov to get paint.
The foster brothers walked towards the sun, making their way towards the center of town. Grey pigeons were strolling on the building ledges. The wooden sidewalks had been sprinkled with water and were cool and clean.
It was the kind of morning when a man with a clear conscience might find it pleasant to walk out of his house, stop at his gate, take out a box of matches with a picture on its cover captioned “A Reply to Curzon”, showing an airplane with a fist where its propeller should be, and gaze with pleasure at a fresh pack of cigarettes before scaring off a bee with golden ribbons on its belly with a puff of incense-like smoke.
Bender and Balaganov fell under the spell of the morning, the tidy streets and the penniless pigeons. For a while it seemed to them that their consciences were not burdened by anything, that everyone loved them, that they were bridegrooms, going to meet their brides.
Suddenly a man with a folding easel and a polished paintbox in his hands blocked the brothers’ path. He looked as agitated as if he had just jumped out of a burning building, having only managed to save his easel and box from the flames.
“Excuse me,” he said in a ringing voice, “Comrade Plotsky-Potseluyev was supposed to have just passed by here. Did you happen to come across him? Did he come this way?”
“We never come across people like that,” said Balaganov rudely.
The artist poked Bender in the chest, said ‘pardon’ and hurried on.
“Plotsky-Potseluev” growled the Great Combinator, who hadn’t had breakfast yet. “I once knew a midwife with the name Meduza-Gorgoner, and I never made a fuss about it, I didn’t run around the streets crying out ‘did you happen to see citizen Meduza-Gorgoner go by? She was supposed to be walking right around here.’ Just think! Plotsky-Potseluev”
Bender hadn’t managed to finish this tirade before two men with black easels and polished sketchboxes leaped out right in front of him. The men were polar opposites. One of them clearly adhered to the point of view that an artist must be hairy, and the quantity of growth on his face marked him as the USSR's prime substitute for Henri de Navarre. His mustache, curls and beard made his flat face look very lively. The second man was simply bald, and his head was as slippery and smooth as a glass lampshade.
“Comrade Plotsky” said the substitute Henri de Navarre, out of breath.
“Potseluev,” added the lampshade.
“Have you seen him?” cried Navarre.
“He was supposed to be walking by here,” explained the lampshade.
Bender moved Balaganov, who had opened his mouth to swear, off to the side, and said with excruciating politeness:
“We have not seen comrade Plostky, but if this indicated comrade truly interests you, then you should hurry. Some kind of worker is already looking for him, an artist musketeer by the looks of it.”
The two artists ran on, bumping into one another and snagging each other's easels. Just then a carriage and team of horses emerged from around a corner. In the carriage sat a fat man, his sweaty belly discernible under the folds of his peasant shirt. The general look of the passenger brought to memory the old advertisement for patent ointment, which began with the words: “The sight of a naked body covered in hair creates a repulsive impression.” It wasn’t hard to guess the fat man’s profession. He was holding on to a large studio easel. At the coachman’s feet lay a polished box, undoubtedly containing paints.
“Ho there!” yelled Ostap, “Are you looking for Potseluev?”
“Yes, exactly” confirmed the corpulent artist, looking sadly at Ostap.
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!" cried Ostap. “Three other artists are already ahead of you! What is going on here? What has happened?”
But the horse, its shoes ringing against the wild cobblestones, had already carried off the fourth representative of the visual arts.
“What a cultured town!” said Ostap. “You, Balaganov, have no doubt noticed that of the four people we have met, four have turned out to be artists. Intriguing.”
When the foster brothers stopped in front of the paint shop, Balaganov whispered to Ostap:
“Aren't you ashamed?”
“Of what?” asked Ostap.
“That you’re about to pay for this paint with actual money?”
“Ah, so that’s your point” said Ostap. “I admit, it’s a little embarrassing. A tricky situation, of course. But what can we do? I can’t run to the town council and ask for paints in order to celebrate “Lark Day”. They’d give me the paints, but we’d lose an entire day.
The cans of dry paint, glass cylinders, bags, small jugs and torn paper satchels came in inviting circus colors and lent a holiday atmosphere to the paint shop.
The commander and ship's mechanic started fussily picking out paints.
“Black is too funereal,” said Ostap. “Green won’t do either: that is the color of shattered hope. Lily – no. Let an criminal investigator ride around in a lily-colored car. Pink – tacky, blue – banal, red – too subservient. We’ll have to paint the Antelope yellow. It will be a touch gaudy, but pretty.”
“Who are you then? Artists?” asked the salesman, his chin slightly dusted with cinnabar.
“Artists,” replied Bender. “Battle and marine landscapists.”
“Then this isn’t the place for you” said the salesman, taking the packets and cans off the counter.
“What do you mean it isn't?” cried Ostap. “Then where is?”
“Across the street.”
The clerk led the friends to the door and showed them the sign across the street. On it was a drawing of a brown horse's head with “Oats and Hay” spelled out in black letters on a blue background.
“This is correct,” said Ostap, “Dry and wet livestock feeds. But what does this have to do with our brother the artist? I don’t see any connection.”
The connection, however, turned out to be very pertinent. Ostap realized what it was at the very start of the clerk’s explanation.
The city had always loved painting, and the four artists who had lived here for a long time had founded a group called the “dialectical easelmen”. They painted portraits of responsible workers and unloaded them on the local art museum. Over time the number of unpainted responsible workers greatly declined, and this had a noticeable impact on the earnings of the dialectical easelmen. But they could still scrape by. The years of suffering began when a new artist, Feodan Muhin, arrived in town.
His first piece elicited a lot of noise in the town. It was a portrait of the director of the hotel trust. Feodan Muhin left the easelmen in the dust. The director of the hotel trust was depicted not in oil paints, not in watercolor, nor in charcoal, tempera, pastel, gouache or lead pencil. His portrait was done in oats. And as the artist Muhin drove the picture to the museum in a coach, the horse kept looking around restlessly and neighing.
Over time, Muhin began using other cereals as well.
His portraits in panicum, wheat and poppy seed met with thunderous success, as did his bold dashes of corn and buckwheat, rice landscapes and still lifes in millet.
Now he was working on a group portrait. The large canvas showed a district planning committee meeting. Feodan was making this picture out of beans and peas. But deep in his soul he remained true to oats, which had made his career and knocked the dialectical easelmen out of position.
“Of course, it's better in oats!” exclaimed Ostap, “And Rubens and Rafael, the fools, tried to do it in oils. We’re also fools, in the mold of Leonardo da Vinci. Give us some yellow enamel paint."
Paying the chatty salesman, Ostap asked:
“Oh, by the way, who is this Plotsky-Potseluyev? We’re from out of town, you see, we’re not up on what is happening”
“Comrade Potseluyev is a famous worker from the center, a native of our city. He has come back here from Moscow on sabbatical.”
“I see,” said Ostap, “Thanks for the information. Goodbye!”
On the street the foster brothers caught sight of the dialectical easelmen. All four of them were standing on the crossroads, their faces sad and dark, like gypsies. Their easels stood stacked next to them like rifles.
“Something wrong, men?” asked Ostap, “Did you lose Plotsky-Potseluev?”
“We lost him,” moaned the artists. “He slipped right through our fingers.”
“Did Feodan get him?” asked Ostap, demonstrating a close familiarity with the subject.
“He’s already painting, the hack.” answered the replacement Henri de Navarre. "In oats. Going back to the old way, he says. That grain peddler is complaining about a crisis of genre."
“Where is this schemer’s studio?" inquired Ostap. “I’d like to take a look.”
The artists, who had a lot of free time, gladly took Ostap and Balaganov to Feodan Muhin. Feodan was working in his garden, in the open air. Comrade Plotsky, apparently a timid man, was sitting in front of him on a stool, trying not to breathe. He watched the artist grab oats by the handful from a little sack and throw them at the canvas like the sower on the three-ruble note. Flies swarmed around. Sparrows were interfering. They would fly brazenly up to the picture to peck out individual details.
“How much will you get for this picture?” asked Plotski shyly.
Feodan stopped sowing, looked critically at his work and answered pensively.
“The museum will give me two hundred fifty rubles for it.”
“That’s dear.”
“Where are you going to find oats these days?” asked Muhin melodiously, “Oats are expensive!”
“So how is the summer crop?” asked Ostap, sticking his head through the garden fence. “The sowing campaign, I see, is proceeding successfully. One hundred percent of the norm! But this is all nonsense compared to what I once saw in Moscow. An artist there had made a picture out of hair. It was a large picture with many figures, very ideologically refined, let me emphasize, even though the artist had used hair from non-Party members. This was a slight lapse. But from an ideological point of view, I repeat, it was a wonderfully refined picture. It was called Grandpa Pakhom And His Tractor At Home. It was such an ornery painting that they didn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes the hairs on it would stand on end, and one beautiful day it went completely white, and not a trace was left of Grandpa Pakhom or his tractor. But the artist still managed to snag one and a half thousand for this innovation. So don’t let your hopes rise too far, comrade Mukhin! These oats will start growing someday, your pictures will sprout, and you will never get to reap another harvest again.”
The dialectical easelmen giggled in sympathy. But Feodan was not fazed.
“That smells of paradox,” he noted, resuming his sowing motions.
“Fine,” said Ostap by way of goodbye. “Please continue sowing the wise, the good, and the eternal, and we'll see! And goodbye to you too, men. Forget those oil paints of yours. Start making mosaics out of bolts, spikes and screws. A portrait made of screws! A wonderful idea!”
The Antelopes spent the whole day painting their car. Towards evening it had become unrecognizable and shone with every shade of egg yolk yellow.
At dawn the next day, the transformed Antelope left the welcoming barn and headed south.
“Too bad we weren’t able to say goodbye to the owner. But he was sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake him. Maybe he’s finally having that dream he’s been waiting for for so long: Metropolitan Dvulogii blessing civil servants from the Ministry of National Education on the three-hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.
That very minute Ostap heard a familiar, tearful wail coming from the log cabin behind him.
“The same dream again!” howled the aged Hvorobyev. “My God, my God!”
“I was mistaken,” noted Ostap. “Apparently he wasn't dreaming about Metropolitan Dvulogii, but about an expanded plenum of the Forge and Homestead literary club. Still, to hell with him! We have business in Chernomorsk.”