The hunchback and his friends never showed up again, and the green car stood idle for three days.
All subsequent passengers, like the first bunch, would appear under the cover of darkness. They would also start with an innocent drive to the country, but their thoughts would turn to vodka after the first half-mile. Apparently, the people of Arbatov could not imagine staying sober in an automobile. They clearly regarded Adam’s vehicle as a refuge for sinful pleasures, where one ought to behave recklessly, make loud obscene noises, and generally live one’s life to the fullest. Kozlevich finally understood why the men who walked past his stand during the day winked at one another and smiled wryly.
Things were very different from what Adam had envisioned. At night, he was whizzing past the woods with his headlights on, listening to the passengers’ drunken fussing and hollering behind him. During the day, in a stupor from lack of sleep, he sat in detectives’ offices giving statements. For some reason, the citizens of Arbatov paid for their high living with money that belonged to the state, society, or the co-ops. Against his will, Kozlevich was once again deeply entangled with the Criminal code, this time its Part III, the part that informatively discusses white-collar crimes.
The trials soon commenced. In all of them, the main witness for the prosecution was Adam Kozlevich. His truthful accounts knocked the defendants off their feet, and they confessed everything, choking on tears and snot. He ruined countless organizations. His last victim was a branch of the regional film studio, which was shooting a historical movie, Stenka Razin and the Princess, in Arbatov. The entire staff of the branch was locked up for six years, while the film, which was of legal interest only, joined the pirate boots from the Lineman Co-op at the material evidence exhibit.
After that, Adam’s business crashed. People avoided the green vehicle like the plague. They made wide circles around Holy Cooperative Square, where Kozlevich had erected a tall sign: automobile for hire. He earned nothing at all for several months and lived off the savings from earlier nocturnal rides.
Then he had to make a few sacrifices. He painted a white sign on the car’s door that said let’s ride!, and lowered the fare from five to three rubles an hour. The sign looked rather enticing to him, but people resisted anyway. He would drive slowly around town, approaching office buildings and yelling into open windows:
“The air is so fresh! Why not go for a ride?”
Officials would stick their heads out and yell back over the clatter of the Underwood typewriters:
“Go take a ride yourself, you hangman!”
“Hangman?” Kozlevich asked, on the verge of tears.
“Of course you are,” answered the officials, “you’d put us all in the slammer.”
“Then why don’t you pay with your own money?” asked the driver. “For the rides?”
At this point the officials would exchange funny looks and shut the windows. They thought it was ridiculous to use their own money to pay for car rides.
The owner of let’s ride! was at loggerheads with the entire city. He no longer exchanged greetings with anybody. He became edgy and mean-spirited. Seeing an office worker in a long Caucasus-style shirt with puffy sleeves, he would drive up and yell, laughing bitterly:
“Thieves! Just wait, I’m going to set all of you up! Article 109!”
The office worker shuddered, pulled up his silver-studded belt (that looked like it belonged on a draft horse), pretended that the shouting had nothing to do with him, and started walking faster. But vindictive Kozlevich would continue to follow him and goad the enemy by monotonously reading from a pocket edition of the Criminal code, as if from a prayer book:
“Misappropriation of funds, valuables, or other property by a person in a position of authority who oversees such property as part of his daily duties shall be punished . . .”
The worker would flee in panic, his derriere, flattened by long hours in an office chair, bouncing as he ran.
“. . . by imprisonment for up to three years!” yelled Kozlevich after him.
But this brought him only moral satisfaction. Financially, he was in deep trouble; the savings were all but gone. He had to do something fast. He could not continue like this.
One day, Adam was sitting in his car in his usual state of anxiety, staring at the silly automobile for hire sign with disgust. He had an inkling that living honestly hadn’t worked out for him, that the automotive messiah had come too early, when citizens were not yet ready to accept him. Kozlevich was so deeply immersed in these depressing thoughts that at first he didn’t even notice the two young men who had been admiring his car for some time.
“A unique design,” one of them finally said, “the dawn of the automotive industry. Do you see, Balaganov, what can be made out of a simple Singer sewing machine? A few small adjustments—and you get a lovely harvester for the collective farm.”
“Get lost,” said Kozlevich grimly.
“What do you mean, ‘get lost’? Then why did you decorate your thresher with this inviting let’s ride! sign? What if my friend and I wish to take a business trip? What if a ride is exactly what we’re looking for?”
The automotive martyr’s face was lit by a smile—the first of the entire Arbatov period of his life. He jumped out of the car and promptly started the engine, which knocked heavily.
“Get in, please” he said. “Where to?”
“This time, nowhere,” answered Balaganov, “we’ve got no money. What can you do, Comrade driver, poverty . . .”
“Get in anyway!” cried Kozlevich excitedly. “I’ll drive you for free! You’re not going to drink? You’re not going to dance naked in the moonlight? Let’s ride!”
“All right, we’ll accept your kind invitation,” said Ostap, settling himself in next to the driver. “I see you’re a nice man. But what makes you think that we have any interest in dancing naked?”
“They all do it here,” replied the driver, turning onto the main street, “those dangerous felons.”
He was dying to share his sorrows with somebody. It would have been best, of course, to tell his misfortunes to his kindly, wrinkle-faced mother. She would have felt for him. But Madame Kozlevich had passed away a long time ago—from grief, when she found out that her son Adam was gaining notoriety as a thief. And so the driver told his new passengers the whole story of the downfall of the city of Arbatov, in whose ruins his helpless green automobile was buried.
“Where can I go now?” concluded Kozlevich forlornly. “What am I supposed to do?”
Ostap paused, gave his red-headed companion a significant look, and said:
“All your troubles are due to the fact that you are a truth-seeker. You’re just a lamb, a failed Baptist. I am saddened to encounter such pessimism among drivers. You have a car, but you don’t know where to go. We’re in a worse bind: we don’t have a car, but we know where we want to go. Want to come with us?”
“Where?” asked the driver.
“To Chernomorsk,” answered Ostap. “We have a small private matter to settle down there. There’d be work for you, too. People in Chernomorsk appreciate antiques and enjoy riding in them. Come.”
At first Adam was just smiling, like a widow with nothing to look forward to in this life. But Bender gave it his eloquent best. He drew striking perspectives for the perplexed driver and quickly colored them in blue and pink.
“And