Золотой теленок / The Golden Calf. Илья Ильф
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Ivanovich had one peculiar talent: he could instantly divide and multiply three- and four-digit numbers in his head. Despite this talent, they still thought Koreiko was somewhat slow.
“Listen, Alexander Ivanovich,” an office mate would ask, “how much is 836 times 423?”
“Three hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight,” Koreiko would answer after a moment’s hesitation.
The co-worker wouldn’t even bother to check the result because he knew that the slow Koreiko never made a mistake.
“Someone else would have made a career out of this,” Sakharkov, Dreyfus, Tezoimenitsky, Musicant, Chevazhevskaya, Borisokhlebsky, Lapidus Jr., the old fool Kukushkind, and even Berlaga, the one who escaped to the nuthouse, often repeated. “But this one is a loser. He’ll spend his whole life making forty-six rubles a month.”
Of course, his co-workers, or the head of Finance and Accounting, Comrade Arnikov himself, or even Impala Mikhailovna, the personal secretary to the director of the entire Hercules, Comrade Polykhaev – all of them would have been shocked had they found out what exactly Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, the quietest of the clerks, had been up to just one hour earlier. For whatever reason, he dragged a particular suitcase from one train station to another. The suitcase contained not Odessa Centennial pants, nor a boiled chicken, and certainly not The Goals of the Young Communist League in the Countryside, but ten million rubles in Soviet and foreign currency.
In 1915, Alex Koreiko, twenty-three, the ne’er-do-well son of middle class parents, was one of those who are deservedly known as “retired high-schoolers.” He didn’t finish school, didn’t take up any trade, he just hung out on the boulevards and lived off his parents. His uncle, the manager of the regional military office, had shielded him from the draft, so he could listen to the cries of the half-witted paperboy without worrying:
“The latest cables! Our troops are advancing! Thank God! Multiple casualties! Thank God!”
Back then, Alex Koreiko pictured his future in the following way: he’s walking down the street and suddenly, near a downspout covered with zinc stars, right next to the wall, he sees a burgundy leather wallet that’s squeaky like a new saddle. There’s a lot of money in the wallet, 2,500 rubles… After that, everything would be swell. He pictured finding the money so often that he knew exactly where it was going to happen – on Poltava Victory Street, in an asphalt corner formed by the jutting wall of a building, near the star-studded downspout. There it lies, his leather savior, dusted with dry acacia flowers, next to a flattened cigarette butt. Alex walked to Poltava Victory Street every day, but to his great surprise, the wallet was never there. He’d poke the garbage with a student’s walking stick and mindlessly stare at the glazed metal sign that hung by the front door: YU. M. SOLOVEISKY, TAX ASSESSOR. Then he would wander home in a daze, throw himself on the red velvet couch and dream of riches, deafened by the ticking of his heart and pulse. His pulse was shallow, angry, and impatient.
The revolution of 1917 chased Koreiko off his velvet couch. He realized that he could become the lucky heir to some wealthy strangers. He felt in his guts that the country was awash in unclaimed gold, jewelry, expensive furniture, paintings and carpets, fur coats and dining sets. One just had to move fast and grab the riches, the sooner the better.
At the time, however, he was still young and foolish.He took over a large apartment – whose owner was smart enough to escape to Constantinople on a French ship – and started living there openly. Over the course of a week, he grew accustomed to the lavish lifestyle of the fugitive businessman: he drank the muscat wine he found in the cupboard with pickled herring from his food ration and sold knickknacks at the flea market. He was quite surprised when he was arrested.
He got out of prison five months later. He hadn’t given up the idea of becoming rich, but he came to realize that such an undertaking has to be secret, hidden, and gradual. First, he had to acquire some camouflage. In the case of Alexander Ivanovich, the camouflage came in the form of tall orange boots, huge dark-blue breeches, and the long military-style jacket of a food-supply official.
In those distressing times, everything that had been made by human hands wasn’t working as well as it had before: houses no longer gave any protection from the cold, food wasn’t filling, the electricity was only turned on to round up deserters and bandits, running water didn’t reach beyond the first floor, and streetcars did not run at all. At the same time, the elements became more ferocious and dangerous: the winters were colder than before, the winds were stronger, and the common cold, which used to put a person in bed for three days, killed him within the same three days. Groups of young men without any discernible occupation wandered the streets, singing a devil-may-care ditty about money that had lost its value:
I am standing at the till,
Not a single smaller bill.
Can you break a hundred million fo-o-o-r me?
Alexander Ivanovich watched in consternation as the money that he had gone to incredible lengths to acquire was turning into dust.
Typhoid was killing people by the thousands. Alex was selling medications that had been stolen from a warehouse. He made five hundred million on the typhoid, but inflation turned it into five million within a month. Then he made a billion on sugar; inflation turned it into dust.
During that period, one of his most successful operations was the heist of a scheduled food train that was headed for the famished Volga region. Koreiko was in charge of the train. The train left Poltava for Samara but never reached Samara and did not return to Poltava either. It disappeared en route without a trace. Alexander Ivanovich disappeared with it.
Chapter 5. The underground kingdom
The orange boots surfaced in Moscow toward the end of 1922. Above the boots, a thick greenish leather coat lined with golden fox fur reigned supreme. A raised sheepskin collar with a quilted lining protected a cocky-looking mug, with short Sebastopol-style sideburns, from the elements. A lovely Caucasian hat made of curly fleece adorned the head of Alexander Ivanovich.
Meanwhile, Moscow was already beginning to fill with brand new automobiles that sported crystal headlights, and the nouveau riche, in tony sealskin skull caps and coats lined with patterned Lyre fur, paraded in the streets. Pointy gothic shoes and briefcases with luggage-style belts and handles were coming into vogue. The word “citizen” started to replace the familiar “comrade,” and some young people, who were quick to appreciate the real joys of life, were already dancing the Dixie One-step and even the Sunflower Foxtrot in the restaurants. The city echoed with the shouts of smart coachmen in expensive carriages, while inside the grand building of the Foreign Ministry the tailor Zhurkevich sewed tailcoats, day and night, for Soviet diplomats who were preparing to go abroad.
To his surprise, Alexander Ivanovich realized that his outfit, which projected valor and wealth in the provinces, was seen as a curious anachronism in Moscow and cast an unfavorable light on its owner.
Two months later, a new company called Revenge, the Industrial Chemicals Cooperative, opened on Sretensky Boulevard. The Cooperative occupied two rooms. The first room was decorated with a portrait of Friedrich Engels, one of the founders of socialism. Beneath it sat Alexander Ivanovich himself, with an innocent smile on his face. He wore a gray English suit with red silk stripes. The orange pirate boots and the crude sideburns were gone. Koreiko’s cheeks were clean shaven. The manufacturing plant was located in the back room. It consisted of two oak barrels with pressure gauges and water-level indicators, one on the floor, the other in the loft. The barrels were connected by a thin enema hose through which some liquid babbled busily. When all the liquid ran from the upper barrel into the lower one, a boy in felt boots would appear on the shop floor. Sighing like an adult, the boy scooped the liquid from the lower barrel with a bucket, dragged the bucket to the loft, and emptied it into the upper barrel. After completing this complex manufacturing process, the boy would go to the office to warm up, while the enema hose would start sobbing again. The liquid continued on its usual path from the upper reservoir to the lower.
Alexander Ivanovich himself wasn’t quite sure which chemicals were being produced by the Revenge Cooperative. He had more important things to do. Even