Primeiro capítulo da novela "The Golden Calf"
(literatura russa)
Ilya Il'f, Evgenij Petrov, 1930.
Translation by Maciej Ceglowski, Peter Gadjokov.
Amazon
"You have to love pedestrians. Pedestrians make up the greater part of humanity. The best part, no less. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built the cities, raised skyscrapers, laid sewage and water lines, paved the streets and lit them with electric lights. It was they who spread civilization throughout the world, invented movable type, thought up gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade and established that soybeans can be used to prepare 114 tasty, nutritious dishes.
And when everything was ready, when our home planet had taken on a comparatively comfortable form, the drivers appeared.
We should note that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But drivers somehow instantly forgot about that. They started running over the peaceful, intelligent pedestrians. They took over the streets the pedestrians had created. The pavement doubled in width, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco pouch, and pedestrians had to start pressing themselves against the walls of buildings in fear.
Pedestrians in the big city lead a martyr’s life. A kind of transportation ghetto has been created for them. They are only permitted to cross the streets at pedestrian crossings, that is, in precisely those places where traffic is the heaviest and where it is easiest to sever the hair by which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs.
In our expansive country, the ordinary automobile—designed by pedestrians for the transportation of goods and people—has taken on the terrifying outlines of a fratricidal missile. It mows down rows of union members and their families. And if a pedestrian somehow manages to escape from under the car’s silver nose, he is fined by police for violating the rules of the traffic catechesis.
And in general, the authority of the pedestrian has been rather severely shaken. Having given the world such notable persons as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg, and Anatole France, he must now go the most undignified lengths simply to remind the world of his existence. Oh God, oh great God who does not actually exist, what have you brought the pedestrian to?
There he is, walking from Vladivostok to Moscow along the trans-Siberian roads, carrying a banner reading ‘We Will Improve the Lives of Textile Workers’ in one hand. A pair of spare “Uncle Vanya” rubber sandals and a tin teapot without a lid dangle from the stick he carries over his shoulder. This Soviet fitness enthusiast left Vladivostok in his youth and upon reaching the gates of Moscow in his twilight years will be run over by a heavy truck whose license plate number nobody will quite catch.
Or take another one, a European Mohican of the pedestrian movement, circumnavigating the globe by walking and rolling a barrel in front of him. He’d happily go without the barrel but then nobody would notice that he was truly a long-distance pedestrian, no newspaper would write a word about him. And so he must roll forth with his damned container which (For shame!) is emblazoned with a big yellow slogan praising the unsurpassed quality of Motorist’s Dream motor oil. Such is the degradation of the pedestrian.
And only in little Russian towns is the pedestrian still respected and loved. There he remains master of the streets, strolling carefree along the pavement and weaving across it in whatsoever direction he pleases.
The citizen wearing an officer’s cap with a white top, the kind mainly worn by summer park administrators and masters of ceremonies, doubtless belonged to this greater and better part of humanity. He moved along the streets of the town of Arbatov on foot, carrying a doctor’s small traveling bag and looking around with a condescending curiosity. It was clear that the town did not impress the pedestrian in the artistic cap.
He saw a dozen or so blue, yellow and pink-and-white bell towers; the balding American gold of the church cupolas jumped out at him.A flag snapped above an official building.
At the white gates of the tower of the provincial Kremlin, two severe old ladies were speaking in French, complaining about Soviet rule and reminiscing about their favorite daughters. A cold draft carried a vinous smell up from a church basement. Apparently that was where they kept the potatoes.
“Church of the potato Savior” said the pedestrian quietly.
Walking past a plywood arch with the freshly whitewashed slogan: “Greetings to the Fifth Regional Women and Girls’ Conference”, he found himself at the mouth of a long alley named Young Talents Boulevard.
“No,” he said with some disappointment, “This is not Rio de Janeiro, this is much worse.”
Single girls with open books in their hands were sitting on almost every bench along Young Talents Boulevard. Spotted shadows fell on the pages of the books, on the girls’ bare elbows, and on their touching bangs. There was a noticeable stir on the benches when the visitor entered the cool alley. The girls, hiding behind books by Gladkov, Eliza Ozheshko and Seifullina, darted bashful glances at the visitor. He strode past the agitated readers with a parade-like step and headed towards his destination - the ispolkom building.
Right then a coachman rode out from behind a corner. A man in a long-tailed peasant shirt was walking rapidly alongside him, holding on to the dusty, encrusted side of the carriage and waving a bulging folder with the word Musique stenciled on its side. He was heatedly explaining something to a man sitting in the carriage.The passenger, an elderly man whose nose hung like a banana, was holding a suitcase squeezed between his legs and shaking his fist from time to time at his interlocutor, thumb protruding outwards in a vulgar gesture. His engineer’s cap, its band shimmering with green upholsterer’s velvet, had tilted to one side in the heat of the argument. Both sides in this tug of war spoke the word “compensation” loudly and repeatedly. Soon other words became audible as well.
“You will answer for this, comrade Talmudovski!” yelled the man with the long shirttails, pushing the engineer’s fist away from his face.
“I’m telling you that not a single decent specialist would work for you under those conditions,” answered Talmudovski, trying to return his fist to its earlier position.
“Are you still going on about the compensation? I’m going to have to bring you up for extortion!”
“Screw the compensation! I’ll work for free!” yelled the engineer, tracing all manner of curves with his fist in his agitation. “I could retire altogether if I wanted to. Get out of here with your serfdom. You go on all over the place in print about ‘freedom, equality and brotherhood’, but you want to make me work in that rat hole.”
Here Talmudovski the engineer quickly opened his fist and began enumerating on his fingers:
“The rat hole apartment, the compensation, no theater... Coachman!
Take me to the train station!”
“Whoa!” squealed the long-tailed man, running fussily ahead to grab the horse by its bridle. “As secretary of the engineering and technical section... Kondrat Ivanovich! You’ll be leaving the factory without any specialists... for God’s sake... society won’t stand for this, engineer Talmudovski... I have a resolution here in my briefcase”
Spreading his legs apart, the section secretary began to rapidly untie the ribbons on the folder marked Musique.
This bit of carelessness decided the argument.
Seeing that the way was clear, Talmudovski stood up and yelled “To the railroad station!” at the top of his lungs.
“Where? Where?” stammered the secretary, trying to keep up. “You — you’re a deserter from the labor front!”
Sheets of onionskin paper with some kind of ‘whereas – therefore’ written on them flew out of the folder marked Musique.
Having observed this incident with interest, the visitor stood for a minute on the now abandoned square and then said in a tone of conviction:
“No, this is not Rio de Janeiro.”
