You don’t know what a chicken is!
It’s a heavenly, juicy bird, the chicken!” Ostap was confused and irritated.
“What chicken?
I thought your specialty was goose!” But Panikovsky kept insisting,
“Chicken, chicken, chicken!”
Then he woke up.
Bender saw the ceiling, which curved like the top of an antique chest right above his head.
The luggage net swayed in front of the grand strategist’s nose. Bright sunlight filled the car.
The hot air of the Orenburg plains blew in through the half-open window.
“Chicken!” a voice called out. “What happened to my chicken?
There’s nobody in here except us!
Right?
Now wait a minute, whose feet are these?”
Ostap covered his eyes with his hand and he immediately had the unpleasant thought that this was exactly what Panikovsky used to do when he sensed trouble.
He lowered his hand and saw two heads next to his bunk.
“Sleeping?
Well, well . . . ,” said the first head.
“Tell me, my friend,” said the second head good-naturedly, “you ate my chicken, right?”
Menshov the photojournalist was sitting on a lower bunk; both of his arms were up to their elbows in a black changing bag.
He was reloading film.
“Yes,” replied Ostap cautiously, “I ate it.”
“Thank you so much!” exclaimed Gargantua, to Ostap’s surprise.
“I had no idea what to do with it.
It’s so hot in here, it could have gone bad, right?
Would’ve been a shame to throw it away, right?”
“Of course,” said Ostap warily, “I’m glad I could do this small favor for you.”
“Which newspaper are you with?” asked the photojournalist, who, with a faint smile on his face, was still feeling around in the bag.
“You didn’t get on in Moscow, did you?”
“I see you’re a photographer,” replied Ostap evasively. “I once knew a small-town photographer who’d only open cans of food under the red light. He was afraid they’d spoil otherwise.”
Menshov laughed.
He appreciated the new passenger’s joke.
And so for the rest of the morning, nobody asked the grand strategist any more tricky questions.
Bender jumped off the bunk, stroked his stubble-covered cheeks—which made him look like an outlaw—and gave the kindly Gargantua an inquiring glance.
The satirist opened his suitcase, took out a shaving kit and, handing it over to Ostap, started to explain something, all the while pecking at invisible bird feed and constantly demanding confirmation for what he was saying.
While Ostap shaved and washed, Menshov, decked out with camera straps, was spreading the word about a new small-town journalist in his compartment who caught up with the train by air the night before and polished off Gargantua’s chicken.
The chicken story caused quite a stir.
Almost all of them had brought food from home: shortbread cookies, meat patties, loaves of bread, and hard-boiled eggs.
Nobody ate any of it.
They preferred to go to the dining car.
And so the moment Bender finished his morning ritual, a portly writer in a soft casual jacket appeared in Bender’s compartment.
He put twelve eggs on the table in front of Ostap and said:
“Eat up.
These are eggs.
As long as eggs exist, somebody has to eat them.”
Then the writer looked out the window, observed the warty-looking plain, and remarked sadly:
“The desert is so uninspiring!
But it does exist, and one has to take that into account.”
He was a philosopher.
After Ostap thanked him, he shook his head and went back to his own compartment to finish writing a story.
A disciplined man, he had resolved to write one story every day, no matter what. He stuck to his resolution with the diligence of a valedictorian.