Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America. Илья Ильф

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СКАЧАТЬ am beholden for much to the Soviet Union. Yes, yes, very much! No, don’t talk; you don’t even understand what you are doing there in your country!”

      He became so excited that by mistake he jumped out through the open door and found himself in the hall. We had quite a time of it, dragging him back into our room.

      “Were you ever in the Soviet Union?”

      “Surely!” cried Mr. Adams. “Of course! No, no, no! Don’t say, “Were you ever in the Soviet Union!” I lived there a long time. Yes, yes, yes! I worked in your country for seven years. You spoiled me in Russia. No, no, no! You cannot understand that!”

      Several minutes of association with Mr. Adams made it clear to us that we do not understand America at all, that we do not understand the Soviet Union at all, and that in general we understand nothing of anything at all, like newborn calves.

      But it was quite impossible to be annoyed with Mr. Adams. When informed of our intention to undertake an automobile journey through the States, he cried: “Surely!” and attained such a state of excitement that he suddenly opened the umbrella which he carried under his arm and for some time stood under it, as if protecting himself from rain.

      “Surely!” he repeated. “Of course! It would be foolish to think

      that you could find out anything about America by sitting in New York. Isn’t it true, Mr. Ilf and Mr. Petrov?”

      Much later, when our friendship had deepened considerably, we noticed that Mr. Adams, after expressing any thought, always demanded confirmation of its correctness and would not rest until he received that confirmation.

      “No, no, gentlemen! You don’t understand anything! We need a plan! A plan for the journey! That’s the main thing! And I will make that plan for you. No, no, don’t talk! You cannot possibly know anything about it!”

      He suddenly took off his coat, pulled off his spectacles, flung them on the couch (later he looked for them in his pockets for about ten minutes), spread an automobile road map of America on his lap, and began to trace curious lines on it.

      Right there before our eyes he was transformed from a wild eccentric into a businesslike American. We exchanged glances. Was this not perchance the ideal creature of whom we had dreamed? Was this not the luxuriant hybrid which even Michurin and Burbank together could not have brought forth?

      In the course of two hours we travelled over the map of America. What an exhilarating occupation that was!

      For some time we discussed the advisability ofdriving into Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin. There you find at once two La Follettes, one a governor and one a senator, and it was possible to get letters of introduction to both of them. An enviable situation! Two Muscovites sit in New York and decide the question of a journey to Milwaukee. If they like, they’ll go there; if not, they won’t!

      Old man Adams sat there, calm, clean, self-contained. No, he did not recommend that we go to the Pacific Ocean by the northern route through Salt Lake City, the city of the salt lake. By the time we arrived there, the mountain passes might be in snow.

      “Gentlemen!” exclaimed Mr. Adams. “This is very, very dangerous. It would be foolish to risk your lives. No, no, no! You cannot imagine what an automobile journey is.”

      “But the Mormons?” we moaned.

      “No, no! Mormons – that is very interesting. Yes, yes, Mormons are the same Americans as others. But snow – that is very dangerous!”

      How delightful it was to talk of dangers, of mountain passes, of prairies! But even more delightful was it to calculate, pencil in hand, the extent to which an automobile was cheaper than going by railway, the number of gallons of petrol needed for a thousand miles, the cost of dinners, of a modest dinner for a tourist. For the first time we heard the words “camp” and “tourist-room”. Although we had not yet begun the journey we were already concerned about keeping expenses down, and although we had no automobile we were already concerned about greasing it. We began to regard New York as a dark hole from which we must forthwith escape.

      When our elated discussion passed into the stage of incomprehensible shouts, Mr. Adams suddenly jumped off the couch, caught his head in his hands, squinted in dumb desperation, and stood like that for a full minute.

      We were frightened.

      Without opening his eyes, Mr. Adams began to knead his head in his hands and to mutter:

      “Gentlemen, everything is lost! You don’t understand anything!”

      And then what we did not understand became clear. Mr. Adams had come here with his wife and, having left her in their automobile, had run up to see us for just a second in order to ask us to his house for lunch. He had run in for just a second!

      We raced down the corridor, frightening the old ladies who always populate American hotels. In the elevator Mr. Adams jumped with impatience, so eager was he to reach the protective wing of his wife.

      Around the corner from Lexington Avenue, on Forty-eighth Street, in a neat but no longer new Chrysler sat a young lady who wore the same kind of protruding spectacles as did Mr. Adams.

      “Becky!” groaned our new friend, stretching forth his fat little arms toward the Chrysler.

      In the confusion his hat flew off and his round head glistened in the reflected light of New York’s autumn sun.

      “And where is the umbrella?” asked the lady, smiling wanly.

      The sun went out on the head of Mr. Adams. He forgot the umbrella in our room, he forgot his wife in the street, the umbrella was upstairs. Under such circumstances occurred our meeting with Mrs. Rebecca Adams.

      With bitterness we noticed that it was not Mr. Adams, but his wife, who took the wheel. We again exchanged glances.

      “No, evidently this is not the hybrid we need. Our hybrid must know how to drive an automobile.”

      Mr. Adams regained his calm and normal state and talked about things as if nothing untoward had happened. On the entire trip to Central Park West, where his apartment was located, old man Adams assured us that the most important thing for us is our future travelling companion.

      “No, no, no, you don’t understand! This is very, very important!”

      We became sad. We ourselves knew how important that was.

      The door of the Adams’s apartment was opened to us by a Negress to whose skirts clung a two-year-old girl. The little girl had a firmly moulded little body. She was a little Adams without spectacles.

      She looked at her parents, and said in her thin little voice:

      “Papa and Mamma.”

      Papa and Mamma groaned from sheer satisfaction and happiness.

      We exchanged glances for the third time.

      “Besides, he has a child! No, this is most decidedly not the hybrid!”

      7. The Electric Chair

      THE AMERICAN, Ernest Hemingway, author of the recently published Fiesta, which evoked much discussion in Soviet literary circles, happened to be in New York while we were there.

      And another American writer, СКАЧАТЬ