«Ah, white acacia-the emigre's flower! So he's an emigre!»
«Emigre yourself…. He went to Paris, so people say. And the house was taken over for old women. You greet them every day, but they don't even give you a ten-kopek bit! Yes, he was some master!»
At that moment the rusty bell above the door began to ring.
The caretaker ambled over to the door, opened it, and stepped back in complete amazement.
On the top step stood Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov with a black moustache and black hair. His eyes behind his pince-nez had a pre-revolutionary twinkle.
«Master!» bellowed Tikhon with delight. «Back from Paris!»
Ippolit Matveyevich became embarrassed by the presence of the stranger, whose bare purple feet he had just spotted protruding from behind the table, and was about to leave again when Ostap Bender briskly jumped up and made a low bow.
«This isn't Paris, but you're welcome to our abode».
Ippolit Matveyevich felt himself forced to say something.
«Hello, Tikhon. I certainly haven't come from Paris. Where did you get that strange idea from?»
But Ostap Bender, whose long and noble nose had caught the scent of roast meat, did not give the caretaker time to utter a word.
«Splendid», he said, narrowing his eyes. «You haven't come from Paris. You've no doubt come from Kologriv to visit your deceased grandmother».
As he spoke, he tenderly embraced the caretaker and pushed him outside the door before the old man had time to realize what was happening. When he finally gathered his wits, all he knew was that his master had come back from Paris, that he himself had been pushed out of his own room, and that he was clutching a rouble note in his left hand.
Carefully locking the door, Bender turned to Vorobyaninov, who was still standing in the middle of the room, and said:
«Take it easy, everything's all right! My name's Bender. You may have heard of me!»
«No, I haven't», said Ippolit Matveyevich nervously.
«No, how could the name of Ostap Bender be known in Paris? Is it warm there just now? It's a nice city. I have a married cousin there. She recently sent me a silk handkerchief by registered post».
«What rubbish is this?» exclaimed Ippolit Matveyevich. «What handkerchief? I haven't come from Paris at all. I've come from …»
«Marvellous! You've come from Morshansk!»
Ippolit Matveyevich had never had dealings with so spirited a young man as Ostap Bender and began to feel peculiar.
«Well, I'm going now», he said.
«Where are you going? You don't need to hurry anywhere. The secret police will come for you, anyway». Ippolit Matveyevich was speechless. He undid his coat with its threadbare velvet collar and sat down on the bench, glaring at Bender.
«I don't know what you mean», he said in a low voice.
«That's no harm. You soon will. Just one moment».
Ostap put on his orange-coloured boots and walked up and down the room.
«Which frontier did you cross? Was it the Polish, Finnish, or Rumanian frontier? An expensive pleasure, I imagine. A friend of mine recently crossed the frontier. He lives in Slavuta, on our side, and his wife's parents live on the other. He had a row with his wife over a family matter; she comes from a temperamental family. She spat in his face and ran across the frontier to her parents. The fellow sat around for a few days but found things weren't going well. There was no dinner and the room was dirty, so he decided to make it up with her. He waited till night and then crossed over to his mother-in-law. But the frontier guards nabbed him, trumped up a charge, and gave him six months. Later on he was expelled from the trade union. The wife, they say, has now gone back, the fool, and her husband is in prison. She is able to take him things…. Did you come that way, too?»
«Honestly», protested Ippolit Matveyevich, suddenly feeling himself in the power of the talkative young man who had come between him and the jewels. «Honestly, I'm a citizen of the RSFSR. I can show you my identification papers, if you want».
«With printing being as well developed as it is in the West, the forgery of Soviet identification papers is nothing. A friend of mine even went as far as forging American dollars. And you know how difficult that is. The paper has those different-coloured little lines on it. It requires great technique. He managed to get rid of them on the Moscow black market, but it turned out later that his grandfather, a notorious currency-dealer, had bought them all in Kiev and gone absolutely broke. The dollars were counterfeit, after all. So your papers may not help you very much either».
Despite his annoyance at having to sit in a smelly caretaker's room and listen to an insolent young man burbling about the shady dealings of his friends, instead of actively searching for the jewels, Ippolit Matveyevich could not bring himself to leave. He felt great trepidation at the thought that the young stranger might spread it round the town that the ex-marshal had come back. That would be the end of everything, and he might be put in jail as well.
«Don't tell anyone you saw me», said Ippolit Matveyevich. «They might really think I'm an emigre». «That's more like it! First we have an Emigre who has returned to his home town, and then we find he is afraid the secret police will catch him».
«But I've told you a hundred times, I'm not an emigre».
«Then who are you? Why are you here?»
«I've come from N. on certain business».
«What business?»
«Personal business».
«And then you say you're not an emigre! A friend of mine …»
At this point, Ippolit Matveyevich, driven to despair by the stories of Bender's friends, and seeing that he was not getting anywhere, gave in.
«All right», he said. «I'll tell you everything».
Anyway, it might be difficult without an accomplice, he thought to himself, and this fellow seems to be a really shady character. He might be useful.
Chapter Six. A Diamond Haze
Ippolit Matveyevich took off his stained beaver hat, combed his moustache, which gave off a shower of sparks at the touch of the comb, and, having cleared his throat in determination, told Ostap Bender, the first rogue who had come his way, what his dying mother-in-law had told him about her jewels.
During the account, Ostap jumped up several times and, turning to the iron stove, said delightedly:
«Things are moving, gentlemen of the jury. Things are moving».
An hour later they were both sitting at the rickety table, their heads close together, reading the long list of jewellery which had at one time adorned the fingers, neck, ears, bosom and hair of Vorobyaninov's mother-in-law.
Ippolit Matveyevich adjusted the pince-nez, which kept falling off his nose, and said emphatically:
«Three strings of pearls…. Yes, I remember them. Two with forty pearls and the long one had a hundred and ten. A diamond pendant … Claudia Ivanovna used to say it was worth four thousand roubles; an antique».
Next came the rings: not thick, silly, and cheap engagement rings, but fine, lightweight rings set with pure, polished diamonds; heavy, dazzling earrings that bathe a small female ear in multicoloured light; bracelets shaped like serpents, with emerald scales; a clasp bought with the profit from a fourteen-hundred-acre harvest; a pearl necklace that could only be worn by a famous prima donna; to crown everything was a diadem worth forty thousand roubles.
Ippolit Matveyevich looked round him. A grass-green emerald light blazed up and shimmered in the dark corners of the caretaker's dirty room. A diamond haze hung near the ceiling. Pearls rolled across the table and bounced along the floor. The room swayed in the mirage of gems. The sound of Ostap's voice brought the excited Ippolit Matveyevich back