“Did you tell the driver to take off before I could get in?” asked the captain harshly.
“I swear…” began Panikovsky.
“Don’t deny it! It’s all your doing. So you’re a coward on top of everything else? I’m in the company of a thief and a coward? Fine! I am demoting you. You were a fire chief in my eyes, but from now on, you’re just a simple fireman.”
And Ostap solemnly tore the golden pumps off of Panikovsky’s red collar patches.
After this procedure, Ostap apprised his companions of the contents of the telegram.
“We’re in trouble. The telegram says to seize the green car that’s running ahead of the rally. We need to get off to the side somewhere right away. Enough of the triumphs, palm branches, and free dinners cooked with cheap oil. This idea has outlived itself. Our only option is to turn off onto the Griazhsk Road. But that’s still three hours away. And I’m sure that a very warm welcome will be awaiting us in every town between here and there. This blasted telegraph has planted its stupid wired posts all over the place.”
The captain was right.
The Antelopeans never learned the name of the next small town they encountered, but they wished they had, so that they could curse it from time to time. At the town line, the road was blocked with a heavy log. The Antelope turned and, like a blind puppy, started poking around with its nose, looking for a detour. But there wasn’t any.
“Let’s turn back!” said Ostap, becoming very serious.
And suddenly the impostors heard a very distant, mosquito-like buzz. This must have been the cars of the real rally. There was no way back, so the Antelopeans rushed forward again.
Kozlevich frowned and raced the Antelope toward the log. The people standing around it rushed aside, fearing a wreck. But Kozlevich decelerated abruptly and slowly climbed over the obstacle. The passers-by grumbled and cursed the passengers as the Antelope drove through town, but Ostap kept quiet.
The Antelope was approaching the Griazhsk Road, and the rumble of the still invisible cars grew stronger and stronger. The moment they turned off the damned highway, hiding the car behind a small hill in the falling darkness, they heard the bursts and the firing of the engines. The lead car appeared in the beams of light. The con artists hid in the grass on the side of the road and, suddenly losing their usual arrogance, quietly watched the passing motorcade.
Banners of blinding light flapped over the road. The cars creaked softly as they passed the crushed Antelopeans. Dust flew from under the wheels. Electric horns howled. The wind blew in all directions. It was over in a minute, and only the ruby taillights of the last car danced and jumped in the dark for a long time.
Real life flew by, trumpeting joyously and flashing its glossy fenders. All that was left for the adventurers was a tail of exhaust fumes. They sat in the grass for a long while, sneezing and dusting themselves off.
“Yes,” said Ostap, “now even I see that the car is not a luxury but a means of transportation. Aren’t you jealous, Balaganov? I am.”
Chapter 8. An artistic crisis
Some time after 3 A.M., the hounded Antelope stopped at the edge of a bluff. An unfamiliar city lay below, neatly sliced, like a cake on a platter. Multicolored morning mists swirled above it. The dismounted Antelopeans thought they heard a distant crackling and an ever so slight whistling. This must have been the citizens snoring. A jagged forest bordered the city. The road looped down from the bluff.
“A valley from heaven,” said Ostap. “It’s nice to plunder cities like this early in the morning, before the sun starts blazing. It’s less tiring.”
“It is early morning right now,” observed Panikovsky, looking fawningly into the captain’s eyes.
“Quiet, Goldilocks!” exploded Ostap. “You’re such a restless old man! No sense of humor whatsoever.”
“What are we going to do with the Antelope?” asked Kozlevich.
“A good point,” replied Ostap, “we can’t drive this green washtub into the city under the circumstances. They’d put us in jail. We’re going to have to follow the lead of the most advanced nations. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, stolen cars are repainted a different color. This is done for purely humanitarian reasons, so that the previous owner doesn’t get upset when he sees a stranger driving his car. The Antelope has acquired a dicey reputation; it needs to be repainted.”
They decided to enter the city on foot and find some paint, leaving the car in a safe place outside the city limits.
Ostap walked briskly down the road along the edge of the bluff and soon saw a lopsided log house, its tiny windows gleaming river-blue. A shed behind the house looked like the perfect hiding place for the Antelope.
The grand strategist was thinking up a good excuse to enter the little house and make friends with its residents when the door flew open and a respectable-looking man, in soldier’s underwear with black metal buttons, ran out onto the porch. His paraffin-pale cheeks sported neatly styled gray sideburns. At the end of the nineteenth century, a face like this would have been common. In those times, most men cultivated such government-issue, conformist hair devices on their faces. But when the sideburns were not sitting above a dark-blue uniform, or some civilian medal on a silk ribbon, or the golden stars of a high-ranking imperial official, this kind of face seemed unnatural.
“Oh my Lord,” mumbled the toothless log house dweller, his arms outstretched toward the rising sun. “Lord, oh Lord! The same dreams! Those very same dreams!”
After this lament, the old man started crying and ran, shuffling his feet, along the footpath around the house. An ordinary rooster, who was about to sing for the third time, and who had already positioned itself in the middle of the yard for that purpose, darted away. In the heat of the moment it took several hurried steps and even dropped a feather, but soon composed itself, climbed on top of the wattle fence, and from this safe position finally notified the world that morning had come. Its voice, however, betrayed the anxiety that the untoward behavior of the owner of the little house had caused.
“Those goddamn dreams,” the old man’s voice reached Ostap.
Bender was staring in surprise at the strange man and his sideburns – nowadays, the only place to see sideburns like that is on the imperious face of a doorman at the symphony hall, if anywhere.
Meanwhile, the extraordinary gentleman completed a full circle and once again appeared near the porch. Here he lingered for a moment and then went inside, saying, “I’ll go try again.”
“I love old people,” whispered Ostap to himself, “they’re always entertaining. I have to wait and see how this mysterious test will turn out.”
He didn’t have to wait long. Shortly thereafter, howling could be heard from the house, and the old man crawled out onto the porch, moving backwards, like Boris Godunov in the final act of Mussorgsky’s opera.
“Begone! Begone!” he cried out, sounding like Shalyapin.
“That same dream! Aaaa!”
He turned around and started walking straight towards Ostap, stumbling over his own feet. Deciding that it was the time to act, the grand strategist stepped out from behind the tree and took the Sideburner into his powerful embrace.
“What? Who’s that? What’s that?” cried the restless old man. “What?”
Ostap carefully opened his embrace, grabbed the old man’s hand, and shook it warmly.
“I feel for you!” he declared.
“Really?” asked the owner of the little house, leaning against Bender’s shoulder.
“Of course I do,” replied Ostap. “I myself have