Золотой теленок / The Golden Calf

A minute later he was knocking on the door of the city council chairman.

“Who do you want to see?” asked the receptionist who was sitting at the desk by the door. “What do you need to see the chairman for? What’s your business?”

Apparently the visitor was intimately familiar with the principles of handling receptionists at various governmental, non-governmental, and municipal organizations. He didn’t bother to claim that he had urgent official business.

“Private matters,” he said dryly and, without looking back at the receptionist, stuck his head in the door. “May I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer, he approached the chairman’s desk.

“Good morning, do you recognize me?”

The chairman, a dark-eyed man with a large head, wearing a navy blue jacket and matching pants that were tucked into tall boots with high angled heels, glanced at the visitor rather distractedly and said he did not recognize him.

“You don’t? For your information, many people think I look remarkably like my father.”

“I look like my father, too,” said the chairman impatiently. “What do you want, Comrade?”

“What matters is who the father was,” said the visitor sadly. “I am the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.”

The chairman felt foolish and started rising from his seat. He instantly recalled the famous image of the pale faced revolutionary lieutenant in his black cape with bronze clasps in the shape of lion’s heads. While he was pulling his thoughts together to ask the son of the Black Sea hero an appropriate question, the visitor examined the office furnishings with the eye of a discriminating buyer.

Back in tsarist times, all government offices were furnished in a particular style. A special breed of office furniture was developed: flat storage cabinets rising to the ceiling, wooden benches with polished seats three inches thick, desks on monumental legs, and oak barriers separating the office from the turmoil of the world outside. During the revolution, this type of furniture almost disappeared, and the secret of making it was lost. People forgot how to furnish government offices properly, and official spaces started filling up with objects that until then were thought to belong exclusively in private apartments. Among these were soft lawyer’s couches with springs and tiny glass shelves for the seven porcelain elephants that supposedly bring luck, as well as china cabinets, flimsy display shelves, folding leather chairs for invalids, and blue Japanese vases. In addition to a regular desk, the office of the chairman of the Arbatov city council also gave refuge to two small ottomans, which were upholstered with torn pink silk, a striped love seat, a satin screen depicting Mount Fuji with a flowering cherry tree, and a heavy mirrored wardrobe that was slapped together at the local open-air market.

“The wardrobe, I’m afraid, is of the Hey Slavs type,” thought the visitor. “The pickings here are slim. Nope, this is no Rio de Janeiro.”

“It’s very good of you to stop by,” said the chairman finally. “You must be from Moscow?”

“Yes, just passing through,” replied the visitor, examining the love seat and becoming even more convinced that the city’s finances were not in good shape. He much preferred city halls with new, Swedish-style furniture from the Leningrad Woodworks Enterprise.

The chairman was about to ask what brought the Lieutenant’s son to Arbatov, but instead, to his own surprise, he smiled meekly and said:

“The churches here are remarkable. We already had some people from Cultural Heritage here, there’s talk about restoration. Tell me, do you remember the uprising on the battleship Ochakov yourself?”

“Barely,” replied the visitor. “In those heroic times, I was very young. I was just a baby.”

“Excuse me, what is your name?”

“Nikolay… Nikolay Schmidt.”

“And your patronymic?”

“Oops, that’s not good!” thought the visitor, who did not know his own father’s name either.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, evading a direct answer, “these days, people don’t know the names of our heroes. The frenzy of the New Economic Policy. The enthusiasm of old is gone. As a matter of fact, I’m here entirely by accident. Trouble on the road. Not a penny left.”

The chairman was also happy to change the subject. He was genuinely embarrassed that he had forgotten the name of the hero of the Ochakov.

“That’s right,” he thought, looking at the hero’s exalted features with love, “work deadens your soul. Makes you forget the important things.”

“What’s that? Not a penny? That’s interesting.”

“Of course, I could have asked some private citizen. Anybody would be happy to help me out, but, as you understand, that would not be entirely proper from the political standpoint,” said the Lieutenant’s son, turning mournful. “The son of a revolutionary asking for money from an individual, a businessman…”

The chairman noticed the change in the visitor’s tone with alarm. “What if he’s an epileptic?” he thought. “He could be a lot of trouble.”

“And it’s a very good thing that you didn’t ask a businessman,” said the chairman, who was totally confused.

Then, gently, the son of the Black Sea hero got down to business. He asked for fifty rubles. The chairman, constrained by the tight local budget, came up with only eight rubles and three meal vouchers to the Former Friend of the Stomach cooperative diner.

The hero’s son put the money and the vouchers in a deep pocket of his worn dappled gray jacket. He was about to get up from the pink ottoman when they heard the sound of stomping and the receptionist’s cries of protest coming from behind the door. The door flew open, and a new visitor appeared.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked, breathing heavily and searching the room with his eyes.

“I am, so?” said the chairman.

“Hiya, Chairman,” thundered the newcomer, extending his spade-sized hand. “Nice to meet you! I’m the son of Lieutenant Schmidt.”

“Who?” asked the city father, his eyes bulging.

“The son of that great, immortal hero, Lieutenant Schmidt,” repeated the intruder.

“But this comrade sitting here, he is the son of Comrade Schmidt. Nikolay Schmidt.” In total confusion, the chairman pointed at the first visitor, who suddenly looked sleepy.

This was a very delicate situation for the two con artists. At any moment, the long and nasty sword of retribution could glisten in the hands of the unassuming and gullible chairman of the city council. Fate allowed them just one short second to devise a strategy to save themselves. Terror flashed in the eyes of Lieutenant’s Schmidt’s second son.

His imposing figure – clad in a Paraguayan summer shirt, sailor’s bell bottoms, and light-blue canvas shoes – which was sharp and angular just a moment earlier, started to come apart, lost its formidable edges, and no longer commanded any respect at all. An unpleasant smile appeared on the chairman’s face. But when the Lieutenant’s second son had already decided that everything was lost, and that the chairman’s terrible wrath was about to fall on his red head, salvation came from the pink ottoman.

“Vasya!” yelled the Lieutenant’s firstborn, jumping to his feet. “Buddy boy! Don’t you recognize your brother Nick?”

And the first son gave the second son a big hug.

“I do!” exclaimed Vasya, his eyesight miraculously regained. “I do recognize my brother Nick!”

The happy encounter was marked by chaotic expressions of endearment and incredibly powerful hugs – hugs so powerful that the face of the second son of the Black Sea revolutionary was pale with pain. Out of sheer joy, his brother Nick had thrashed him rather badly.

While hugging, both brothers were cautiously glancing at the chairman, whose facial expression remained vinegary throughout the scene. As a result, their strategy had to be elaborated on the spot and enriched with stories of their family life and details of the 1905 sailors’ revolt that had somehow eluded official Soviet historians. Holding each other’s hands, the brothers sat down on the love seat and began reminiscing, all the while keeping their fawning eyes on the chairman.

“What an incredible coincidence!” exclaimed the first son insincerely, his eyes inviting the chairman to partake in the happy family occasion.

“Yes,” said the chairman frostily. “It happens.”

Seeing that the chairman was still in the throes of doubt, the first son stroked his brother’s red, Irish-setter locks and asked softly:

“So when did you come from Mariupol, where you were staying with our grandmother?”

“Yes, I was staying,” mumbled the Lieutenant’s second son, “with her.”

“So why didn’t you write more often? I was very worried.”