The Golden Calf. Илья Ильф

down, three stores—selling wind instruments, mandolins, and bass balalaikas—stood together. Brass trumpets shone immodestly from display stands covered with red fabric. The tuba was particularly impressive. It looked so powerful, and lay coiled in the sun so lazily, that one couldn’t help thinking its proper place was not in a window but in a big city zoo, somewhere between the elephant and the boa constrictor. On their days off, parents would bring their kids to see it and would say: “Look, honey, this is the tuba section. The tuba is now asleep. But when it wakes up, it will definitely start trumpeting.” And the kids would stare at the remarkable instrument with their large wondrous eyes.

      Under different circumstances, Ostap Bender would have noticed the freshly hewn, log cabin-sized balalaikas, the phonograph records warping in the heat, and the children’s marching band drums, whose dashing color schemes suggested that providence is always on the side of the big battalions. This time, however, he was preoccupied with something else. He was hungry.

      “I gather you’re on the verge of a financial abyss?” he asked Balaganov.

      “You mean money?” replied Shura. “I haven’t had any for a week now.”

      “In that case, I’d worry about your future, young man,” said Ostap didactically. “The financial abyss is the deepest of them all, and you can be falling into it all your life. Oh well, cheer up. After all, I captured three meal vouchers in my beak. The chairman fell in love with me at first sight.”

      Alas, the freshly minted brothers did not get to benefit from the kindness of the city father. The doors of the Former Friend of the Stomach diner sported a large hanging lock that was covered with what looked like either rust or cooked buckwheat.

      “Of course,” said Ostap bitterly, “the diner is closed forever—they’re inventorying the schnitzel. We are forced to submit our bodies to the ravages of the private sector.”

      “The private sector prefers cash,” reminded Balaganov gloomily.

      “Well, I won’t torture you any more. The chairman showered me with gold—eight rubles. But keep in mind, dearest Shura, that I have no intention of nourishing you for free. For every vitamin I feed you, I will demand numerous small favors in return.”

      But since there was no private sector in town, the brothers ended up eating at a cooperative summer garden, where special posters informed the customers of Arbatov’s newest contribution to public dining:

      “We’ll settle for kvass,” said Balaganov.

      “Especially considering that the local kvass is produced by a group of private artisans who are friendly with the Soviet regime,” added Ostap. “Now tell me what exactly this devil Panikovsky did wrong. I love stories of petty thievery.”

      Satiated, Balaganov looked at his rescuer with gratitude and began the story. It took a good two hours to tell and was full of exceptionally interesting details.

      In all fields of human endeavor, the supply and demand of labor is regulated by specialized bodies. A theater actor will move to the city of Omsk only if he knows for sure that he need not worry about competition—namely, that there are no other candidates for his recurring role as the indifferent lover or the servant who announces that dinner is ready. Railroad employees are taken care of by their own unions, who helpfully put notices in the papers to the effect that unemployed baggage handlers cannot count on getting work on the Syzran-Vyazma Line or that the Central Asian Line is seeking four crossing guards. A commodities expert places an ad in the paper, and then the entire country learns that there is a commodities expert with ten years’ experience who wishes to move from Moscow to the provinces for family reasons.

      Everything is regulated, everything flows along clear channels and comes full circle in compliance with the law and under its protection.

      And only one particular market was in a state of chaos—that of con artists claiming to be the children of Lieutenant Schmidt. Anarchy ravaged the ranks of the Lieutenant’s offspring. Their trade was not producing all the potential gains that should have been virtually assured by brief encounters with government officials, municipal administrators, and community activists—for the most part an extremely gullible bunch.

      Fake grandchildren of Karl Marx, non-existent nephews of Friedrich Engels, brothers of the Education Commissar Lunacharsky, cousins of the revolutionary Klara Zetkin, or, in the worst case, the descendants of that famous anarchist, Prince Kropotkin, had been extorting and begging all across the country.

      From Minsk to the Bering Strait and from the Turkish border to the Arctic shores, relatives of famous persons enter local councils, get off trains, and anxiously ride in cabs. They are in a hurry. They have a lot to do.

      At some point, however, the supply of relatives exceeded the demand, and this peculiar market was hit by a recession. Reform was needed. Little by little, order was established among the grandchildren of Karl Marx, the Kropotkins, the Engelses, and others. The only exception was the unruly guild of Lieutenant Schmidt’s children, which, like the Polish parliament, was always torn by anarchy. For some reason, the children were all difficult, rude, greedy, and kept spoiling the fruits of each other’s labors.

      Shura Balaganov, who considered himself the Lieutenant’s firstborn, grew very concerned about market conditions. More and more often he was bumping into fellow guild members who had completely ruined the bountiful fields of Ukraine and the vacation peaks of the Caucasus, places that used to be quite lucrative for him.

      “And you couldn’t handle the growing difficulties?” asked Ostap teasingly.

      But Balaganov didn’t notice the irony. Sipping the purple kvass, he went on with his story.

      The only solution to this tense situation was to hold a conference. Balaganov spent the whole winter organizing it. He wrote to the competitors he knew personally. Those he didn’t know received invitations through the grandsons of Karl Marx whom he bumped into on occasion. And finally, in the early spring of 1928, nearly all the known children of Lieutenant Schmidt assembled in a tavern in Moscow, near the Sukharev Tower. The gathering was impressive. Lieutenant Schmidt, as it turned out, had thirty sons, who ranged in age between eighteen and fifty-two, and four daughters, none of them smart, young, or pretty.

      In a brief keynote address, Balaganov expressed hope that the brothers would at last come to an understanding and conclude a pact, the necessity of which was dictated by life itself.

      According to Balaganov’s plan, the entire Soviet Union was to be divided into thirty-four operational areas, one for everyone present. Each child would be assigned a territory on a long-term basis. All guild members would be prohibited from crossing the boundaries and trespassing into someone else’s territory for the purpose of earning a living.

      Nobody objected to the new work rules except Panikovsky, who declared early on that he would do perfectly well without any pacts. The division of the country was accompanied by some very ugly scenes, however. All parties to the treaty immediately started fighting and began addressing one another exclusively with rude epithets.

      The bone of contention was the assignment of the territories.

      Nobody wanted large cities with universities. Nobody cared for Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov—these cities had seen it all. To a person, they refused the Republic of the Volga Germans.

      “Why, is that such a bad republic?” asked Balaganov innocently. “I think it’s a good place. As civilized people, the Germans cannot refuse to help out.”

      “Oh, come on!” yelled the agitated children. “Try to get anything out of those Germans!”

      Apparently, quite a few of them had been thrown into jail by distrustful German colonists.

      The distant Central Asian regions, buried in the desert sand, had a very bad reputation as well. They were accused of being unfamiliar with the person of Lieutenant Schmidt.

      “You think