«Well, how was the housing division?» he asked in a businesslike way, and immediately added:
«Wait a moment. Don't tell me now; you're too excited. Cool down a little».
Giving the shoeshiner seven kopeks, Ostap took Vorobyaninov by the arm and led him down the street. He listened very carefully to everything the agitated Ippolit Matveyevich told him.
«Aha! A small black beard? Right! A coat with a sheepskin collar? I see. That's the chair from the pensioner's home. It was bought today for three roubles».
«But wait a moment…».
And Ippolit Matveyevich told the chief concessionaire all about Father Theodore's low tricks.
Ostap's face clouded.
«Too bad», he said. «Just like a detective story. We have a mysterious rival. We must steal a march on him. We can always break his head later».
As the friends were having a snack in the Stenka Razin beer-hall and Ostap was asking questions about the past and present state of the housing division, the day came to an end.
The golden carthorses became brown again. The diamond drops grew cold in mid-air and plopped on to the ground. In the beer-halls and Phoenix restaurant the price of beer went up. Evening had come; the street lights on Greater Pushkin Street lit up and a detachment of Pioneers went by, stamping their feet, on the way home from their first spring outing.
The tigers, figures of victory, and cobras on top of the province-planning administration shone mysteriously in the light of the advancing moon.
As he made his way home with Ostap, who was now suddenly silent, Ippolit Matveyevich gazed at the tigers and cobras. In his time, the building had housed the Provincial Government and the citizens had been proud of their cobras, considering them one of the sights of Stargorod.
«I'll find them», thought Ippolit Matveyevich, looking at one of the plaster figures of victory.
The tigers swished their tails lovingly, the cobras contracted with delight, and Ippolit Matveyevich's heart filled with determination.
Chapter Ten. The Mechanic, the Parrot, and the Fortune-teller
No. 7 Pereleshinsky Street was not one of Stargorod's best buildings. Its two storeys were constructed in the style of the Second Empire and were embellished with timeworn lion heads, singularly reminiscent of the once well-known writer Artsybashec. There were exactly seven of these Artsybashevian physiognomies, one for each of the windows facing on to the street. The faces had been placed at the keystone of each window.
There were two other embellishments on the building, though these were of a purely commercial nature. On one side hung the radiant sign:
ODESSA ROLL BAKERY
MOSCOW BUN ARTEL
The sign depicted a young man wearing a tie and ankle-length French trousers. Ift one dislocated hand he held the fabulous cornucopia, from which poured an avalanche of ochre-coloured buns; whenever necessary, these were passed off as Moscow rolls. The young man had a sexy smile on his face. On the other side, the Fastpack packing office announced itself to prospective clients by a black board with round gold lettering.
Despite the appreciable difference in the signs and also in the capital possessed by the two dissimilar enterprises, they both engaged in the same business, namely, speculation in all types of fabrics: coarse wool, fine wool, cotton, and, whenever silk of good colour and design came their way, silk as well.
Passing through the tunnel-like gateway and turning right into the yard with its cement well, you could see two doorways without porches, giving straight on to the angular flagstones of the yard. A dulled brass plate with a name engraved in script was fixed to the right-hand door:
V.M. POLESOV
The left-hand door was fitted with a piece of whitish tin:
FASHIONS AND MILLINERY
This was also only for show.
Inside the fashions-and-millinery workroom there was no esparterie, no trimmings, no headless dummies with soldierly bearing, nor any large heads for elegant ladies' hats. Instead, the three-room apartment was occupied by an immaculately white parrot in red underpants. The parrot was riddled with fleas, but could not complain since it was unable to talk. For days on end it used to crack sunflower seeds and spit the husks through the bars of its tall, circular cage on to the carpet. It only needed a concertina and new squeaky Wellingtons to resemble a peasant on a spree. Dark-brown patterned curtains flapped at the window. Dark-brown hues predominated in the apartment. Above the piano was a reproduction of Boecklin's «Isle of the Dead» in a fancy frame of dark-green oak, covered with glass. One corner of the glass had been broken off some time before, and the flies had added so many finishing touches to the picture at this bared section that it merged completely with the frame. What was going on in that section of the «Isle of the Dead» was quite impossible to say.
The owner herself was sitting in the bedroom and laying out cards, resting her arms on an octagonal table covered by a dirty Richelieu tablecloth. In front of her sat Widow Gritsatsuyev, in a fluffy shawl.
«I should warn you, young lady, that I don't take less than fifty kopeks per session», said the fortune-teller.
The widow, whose anxiousness to find a new husband knew no bounds, agreed to pay the price.
«But predict the future as well, please», she said plaintively. «You will be represented by the Queen of Clubs». «I was always the Queen of Hearts», objected the widow. The fortune-teller consented apathetically and began manipulating the cards. A rough estimation of the widow's lot was ready in a few minutes. Both major and minor difficulties awaited her, but near to her heart was the King of Clubs, who had befriended the Queen of Diamonds.
A fair copy of the prediction was made from the widow's hand. The lines of her hand were clean, powerful, and faultless. Her life line stretched so far that it ended up at her pulse and, if it told the truth, the widow should have lived till doomsday. The head line and line of brilliancy gave reason to believe that she would give up her grocery business and present mankind with masterpieces in the realm of art, science, and social studies. Her Mounts of Venus resembled Manchurian volcanoes and revealed incredible reserves of love and affection. The fortune-teller explained all this to the widow, using the words and phrases current among graphologists, palmists, and horse-traders.
«Thank you, madame», said the widow. «Now I know who the King of Clubs is. And I know who the Queen of Diamonds is, too. But what about the King? Does that mean marriage?» «It does, young lady». The widow went home in a dream, while the fortune-teller threw the cards into a drawer, yawned, displaying the mouth of a fifty-year-old woman, and went into the kitchen. There she busied herself with the meal that was warming on a Graetz stove; wiping her hands on her apron like a cook, she took a chipped-enamel pail and went into the yard to fetch water.
She walked across the yard, dragging her flat feet. Her drooping breasts wobbled lazily inside her dyed blouse. Her head was crowned with greying hair. She was an old woman, she was dirty, she regarded everyone with suspicion, and she had a sweet tooth. If Ippolit Matveyevich had seen her now, he would never have recognized Elena Bour, his former mistress, about whom the clerk of the court had once said in verse that «her lips were inviting and she was so spritely!» At the well, Mrs. Bour was greeted by her neighbour, Victor Mikhailovich Polesov, the mechanic-intellectual, who was collecting water in an empty petrol tin. Polesov had the face of an operatic Mephistopheles who is carefully rubbed with burnt cork just before he goes on stage.
As soon as they had exchanged greetings, the neighbours got down to a discussion of the affair concerning the whole of Stargorod.
«What times we live in!» said Polesov ironically. «Yesterday I went all over the town but couldn't find any three-eighths-inch dies anywhere. There were none available. And to think-they're going to open a tramline!»
Elena Stanislavovna, who had as much idea about three-eighths-inch dies as a student of the Leonardo da Vinci ballet school, who thinks that cream