The Twelve Chairs (32 page)

Three  days  after the concessionaires' deal with Mechnikov the fitter,
the  Columbus Theatre left by railway via Makhacha-Kala and  Baku. The whole
of these three days  the concessionaires, frustrated  by the contents of the
two chairs opened on Mashuk, waited for Mechnikov to bring them the third of
the Columbus chairs.  But the narzan-tortured  fitter converted the whole of
the  twenty roubles into the purchase of plain  vodka and drank himself into
such a state that he was kept locked up in the props room.
"That's Mineral  Waters  for you!" said Ostap, when  he heard about the
theatre's  departure. "A useful fool, that fitter. Catch  me having dealings
with theatre people after this!"
Ostap became much more nervy  than before.  The chances  of finding the
treasure had increased infinitely.
"We  need money to get  to  Vladikavkaz," said Ostap. "From there we'll
drive  by  car  to  Tiflis  along  the  Georgian Military  Highway. Glorious
scenery!  Magnificent  views! Wonderful mountain air! And at the end  of  it
all-one hundred and fifty thousand roubles, zero zero kopeks.  There is some
point in continuing the hearing."
But it  was  not quite so  easy to  leave Mineral Waters.  Vorobyaninov
proved to have absolutely no talent for bilking the railway, and so when all
attempts to get him aboard a train had failed he had to perform again in the
Flower  Garden, this time as an educational district ward. This  was not  at
all a success. Two roubles for twelve hours' hard and degrading work, though
it was a large enough sum for the fare to Vladikavkaz.
At Beslan, Ostap, who was travelling without  a  ticket, was thrown off
the train, and the  smooth  operator impudently ran behind it for a  mile or
so, shaking his fist at the innocent Ippolit Matveyevich.
Soon after, Ostap  managed  to jump on to a train slowly making its way
to the Caucasian ridge. From his position on the steps  Ostap surveyed  with
great curiosity the panorama of the mountain range that unfolded before him.
It was between three and  four  in the morning. The  mountain-tops were
lit by dark pink sunlight. Ostap did not like the mountains.
"Too showy," he said. "Weird kind of beauty. An idiot's imagination. No
use at all."
At  Vladikavkaz station the passengers were met by  a  large  open  bus
belonging  to the  Transcaucasian  car-hire-and-manufacturing  society,  and
nice, kind people said:
"Those travelling by  the Georgian Military  Highway will be taken into
the town free."
"Hold on, Pussy," said Ostap. "We want the bus. Let them take us free."
When the bus had given  him a lift to the  centre of the town, however,
Ostap was in  no hurry to put  his  name down for a seat  in a  car. Talking
enthusiastically to Ippolit Matveyevich, he gazed admiringly at  the view of
the cloud-enveloped Table Mountain, but  finding  that it really  was like a
table, promptly retired.
They had  to spend several days  in Vladikavkaz. None of their attempts
to obtain money  for the road  fare met with any success, nor  provided them
with enough money to buy food. An attempt to make the citizens pay ten-kopek
bits failed.  The  mountain  ridge was  so  high and clear that  it was  not
possible to charge for looking at it. It  was visible from practically every
point, and  there were no other  beauty spots in  Vladikavkaz. There was the
Terek, which flowed  past the "Trek", but the town charged for entry to that
without Ostap's  assistance.  The  alms collected  in  two  days by  Ippolit
Matveyevich only amounted to thirteen kopeks.
"There's only one thing  to  do," said Ostap.  "We'll go to  Tiflis  on
foot.  We can  cover the hundred miles in five  days.  Don't worry, dad, the
mountain view is delightful and the air is bracing  . . . We only need money
for  bread  and salami sausage. You  can  add a few  Italian phrases to your
vocabulary, or  not, as you  like; but  by evening you've  got to collect at
least two  roubles. We won't  have  a chance to eat today, dear chum.  Alas!
What bad luck!"
Early in the morning the partners crossed the little bridge across  the
Terek river, went around the barracks,  and disappeared  deep into the green
valley along which ran the Georgian Military Highway.
"We're in luck,  Pussy," said Ostap. "It rained  last night so we won't
have to swallow the dust. Breathe in the fresh air, marshal. Sing something.
Recite some Caucasian poetry and behave as befits the occasion."
But Ippolit  Matveyevich did not sing or  recite  poetry. The road went
uphill.  The nights spent  in the open made themselves felt by  pains in his
side and heaviness in his legs, and the salami sausage made itself felt by a
constant and  griping  indigestion. He walked  along, holding in his  hand a
five-pound  loaf  of  bread  wrapped in  newspaper,  his left foot  dragging
slightly.
On  the move again! But  this  time towards Tiflis; this time along the
most beautiful road in the world. Ippolit Matveyevich could  not  have cared
less. He did not  look around him as Ostap did. He  certainly did not notice
the  Terek,  which now could  just  be  heard rumbling at the  bottom of the
valley. It was only the ice-capped mountain-tops glistening in the sun which
somehow reminded  him of a sort of cross between the sparkle of diamonds and
the best brocade coffins of Bezenchuk the undertaker.
After Balta the road entered and continued as a narrow ledge cut in the
dark  overhanging  cliff. The  road spiralled  upwards, and  by  evening the
concessionaires reached the village of Lars, about three thousand feet above
sea level.
They  passed the  night in a poor native hotel without charge  and were
even given a glass of milk each for delighting the owner and his guests with
card tricks.
The  morning was  so  glorious that Ippolit Matveyevich,  braced by the
mountain air, began to  stride  along more  cheerfully than the day  before.
Just behind Lars rose the impressive rock wall of the Bokovoi ridge. At this
point the Terek valley closed up into a series of narrow gorges. The scenery
became more and more sombre, while  the inscriptions on the cliffs grew more
frequent At the point where  the  cliffs squeezed  the Terek's flow  between
them to the extent that the  span  of  the bridge was no more than ten feet,
the concessionaires saw so many inscriptions  on  the side of the gorge that
Ostap forgot  the majestic sight of the Daryal gorge and shouted out, trying
to drown the rumble and rushing of the Terek:
"Great  people!  Look at  that, marshal!  Do you see it?  Just a little
higher than the  cloud and  slightly lower  than the eagle!  An  inscription
which says, 'Micky and Mike, July 1914'. An unforgettable sight! Notice  the
artistry with which it was  done. Each letter  is three feet high,  and they
used oil paints. Where are you now, Nicky and Mike?"
"Pussy," continued Ostap, "let's record ourselves for prosperity,  too.
I have some chalk,  by the  way. Honestly, I'll go  up and  write 'Pussy and
Ossy were here'."
And  without giving  it  much  thought,  Ostap put down the  supply  of
sausage on the  wall  separating the  road from the  seething  depths of the
Terek  and began  clambering  up  the rocks.  At  first Ippolit  Matveyevich
watched  the smooth  operator's ascent, but then lost  interest and began to
survey the  base of Tamara's  castle, which stood on a rock like  a  horse's
tooth.
Just at this time, about a mile  away from  the concessionaires, Father
Theodore entered the Daryal gorge from  the direction  of Tiflis. He marched
along like a soldier with his eyes, as hard as diamonds, fixed ahead of him,
supporting himself on a large crook.
With his last remaining money  Father Theodore  had  reached Tiflis and
was now walking home, subsisting on charity. While crossing the Cross gap he
had been  bitten  by an eagle. Father Theodore hit out at the insolent  bird
with his crook and continued on his way.
As he went along, intermingling with the clouds, he muttered:
"Not for personal gain, but at the wishes of my wife who sent me."
The distance between the enemies narrowed. Turning a sharp bend, Father
Theodore came across an old man in a gold pince-nez.
The  gorge split asunder  before  Father  Theodore's  eyes.  The  Terek
stopped its thousand-year-old roar.
Father Theodore recognized Vorobyaninov. After  the terrible  fiasco in
Batumi, after  all his  hopes had been dashed,  this new  chance of  gaining
riches had  an  extraordinary  effect  on  the  priest.  He grabbed  Ippolit
Matveyevich by his scraggy Adam's apple, squeezed his fingers  together, and
shouted hoarsely:
"What  have you done with the treasure that you slew your mother-in-law
to obtain?" Ippolit Matveyevich, who had not been expecting anything of this
nature, said nothing, but his  eyes bulged  so  far that they almost touched
the lenses of his pince-nez.
"Speak!" ordered the priest. "Repent, you sinner!"
Vorobyaninov felt himself losing his senses.
Suddenly Father  Theodore caught sight of  Bender leaping from rock  to
rock; the  technical adviser  was coining down, shouting at the  top  of his
voice:
"Against the  sombre  rocks  they  dash,  Those  waves,  they foam  and
splash."
A  terrible  fear  gripped Father  Theodore. He continued  mechanically
holding the marshal by the throat, but his knees began to knock.
"Well,  of  all people!" cried  Ostap  in  a  friendly tone. "The rival
concern."
Father  Theodore  did not  dally. Obeying his healthy  instinct,  '  he
grabbed the concessionaires' bread and sausage and fled.
"Hit him,  Comrade Bender!" cried  Ippolit Matveyevich, who was sitting
on the ground recovering his breath. "Catch him!. Stop him I"
Ostap began whistling and whooping.
"Wooh-wooh,"  he  warbled,  starting  in pursuit.  "The  Battle of  the
Pyramids or  Bender  goes hunting. Where are you  going, client? I can offer
you a well-gutted chair."
This persecution was too much for Father Theodore and he began climbing
up a  perpendicular wall of rock.  He was spurred on by his heart, which was
in his mouth, and an itch in his heels known only to cowards. His legs moved
over the granite by themselves, carrying their master aloft.
"Wooooh-woooh!" yelled Ostap from below. "Catch him!"
"He's taken our supplies," screeched Vorobyaninov, running up.
"Stop!" roared Ostap. "Stop, I tell you."
But this only lent new strength to the exhausted priest. He wove about,
making  several  leaps,  and  finally  ended  ten  feet  above  the  highest
inscription.
"Give  back our sausage!"  howled Ostap.  "Give  back  the sausage, you
fool, and we'll forget everything."
Father  Theodore no longer heard anything. He  found himself on a  flat
ledge,  on  to  which no  man  had ever climbed before. Father  Theodore was
seized by a sickening dread.  He realized he  could never  get down again by
himself. The cliff face dropped vertically to the road.
He looked below. Ostap was gesticulating  furiously, and  the marshal's
gold pince-nez glittered at the bottom of the gorge.
"I'll give back the  sausage," cried  the  holy father,  "only  get  me
down."
He could  see  all  the  movements of  the  concessionaires.  They were
running  about  below  and,  judging  from  their  gestures,  swearing  like
troopers.
An hour later,  lying on his stomach and peering over the  edge, Father
Theodore saw Bender and Vorobyaninov going off in the direction of the Cross
gap.
Night fell  quickly. Surrounded  by pitch darkness and  deafened by the
infernal roar,  Father Theodore trembled and wept up in the  very clouds. He
no longer wanted earthly treasures, he only wanted one thing-to  get down on
to the ground.
During the night he  howled so loudly  that at  times the sound of  the
Terek was drowned, and when morning came,  he fortified himself with sausage
and bread and  roared with demoniac laughter at the cars passing underneath.
The rest of the day was spent contemplating the mountains and  that heavenly
body, the sun. The  next night he saw the Tsaritsa  Tamara. She  came flying
over to him from her castle and said coquettishly:
"Let's be neighbours! "
"Mother!" said Father Theodore with feeling. "Not for personal gain . .
."
"I know, I know,"  observed the Tsaritsa, "but merely at the  wishes of
your wife who sent you."
"How did you know?" asked the astonished priest.
"I just know. Why don't you  stop  by, neighbour? We'll play sixty-six.
What about it?"
She gave a laugh and flew off, letting  off firecrackers into the night
sky as she went.
The day after, Father  Theodore began preaching to the birds. For  some
reason he tried to sway them towards Lutheranism.
"Birds," he said in a sonorous voice, "repent your sins publicly."
On the fourth day he was pointed out to tourists from below.
"On  the  right we have  Tamara's castle,"  explained  the  experienced
guides, "and on the left is a live human being, but it is not  known what he
lives on or how he got there."
"My,  what  a  wild  people!"  exclaimed  the  tourists  in  amazement.
"Children of the mountains!"
Clouds  drifted  by. Eagles cruised above Father Theodore's  head.  The
bravest of them stole the remains of the sausage  and with its wings swept a
pound and a half of bread into the foaming Terek.
Father Theodore wagged his finger at the  eagle and, smiling radiantly,
whispered:
"God's  bird does not know Either  toil  or unrest, He leisurely builds
His long-lasting nest."
The eagle  looked sideways at Father Theodore, squawked  cockadoodledoo
and flew away.
"Oh, eagle, you eagle, you bitch of a bird!"
Ten  days later  the  Vladikavkaz  fire  brigade  arrived with suitable
equipment and brought Father Theodore down.
As they were lowering him,  he clapped his hands and sang in a tuneless
voice:
"And you will be queen of all the world, My lifelo-ong frie-nd!"
And the rugged Caucuses re-echoed Rubinstein's setting of the Lermontov
poem many times.
"Not for personal gain, but merely at the wishes . . ." Father Theodore
told the fire chief.
The cackling priest was  taken on  the  end  of  a  fire ladder to  the
psychiatric hospital.