Then they’ll miss Ivan Osipovich.
Go, they’ll say, set up a banquet table for eighty-four people, to the bloody dogs.
But nobody will know how!
Ivan Osipovich Trikartov is gone!
Passed away!
Departed for a better place, where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting . . .
Ete-e-rnal mem-m-ory!”
And as the old man officiated at his own funeral, the tails of his coat fluttered in the wind like pennants.
Ostap didn’t even let Koreiko finish his dessert before dragging him away from the table to settle their account.
The two strategists climbed the small stepladder into the freight car that served as the office of the Northern Site and contained the timekeeper’s folding canvas cot.
They locked the door behind them.
After dinner, when the special passengers were resting and gathering their strength for the evening’s program, Gargantua the satirist caught the two journalist brothers, who were engaging in unauthorized activities.
Leo Shirtikov and Ian Benchikov were carrying two sheets of paper to the telegraph.
One sheet contained a short dispatch:
“Urgent moscow desert telegraph dash uzun kulak quote long ear comma carried camps news of joining shirtikov.”
The second sheet was covered with writing.
Here’s what it said:
THE LEGEND OF LAKE ISSYK KUL
An old Karakalpak named Ukhum Bukheev told me this legend, steeped in ancient lore.
Two hundred thousand four hundred and eighty-five moons ago, the young Sumburun, a khan’s wife, light-footed as a jeiran (mountain sheep), fell deeply in love with a young guardsman named Ai-Bulak.
The elderly khan was devastated when he learned that his beloved wife had been unfaithful.
The old man prayed for twelve moons; then, with tears in his eyes, he had his beautiful wife sealed up in a wooden cask, attached to it a bullion of pure gold weighing seven jasasyn (39 lbs), and threw the precious cargo into a mountain lake.
That’s how the lake received its name—Issyk Kul, which means
“Beautiful women aren’t very faithful . . .”
—Ian Benchikov-Sarmatsky (The Piston)
“Isn’t that right?” Gargantua was asking, holding up the papers he had wrestled from the brothers.
“Isn’t it true?”
“It’s an outrage!” said Palamidov. “How dare you write a legend after everything we talked about?
So you think Issyk Kul translates as
‘Beautiful women aren’t very faithful?’
Really?
Are you sure your phony Karakalpak wasn’t pulling your leg?
Are you sure it doesn’t mean
‘Don’t throw young beauties into the lake, instead throw the gullible journalists who can’t resist the noxious spell of exoticism?’”
The writer in the casual jacket blushed.
His notebook already contained Uzun Kulak, along with two flowery legends that were rich with Oriental flavor.
“I don’t see any crime in it,” he said.
“As long as Uzun Kulak exists, shouldn’t someone be writing about it?”
“But it’s been done a thousand times!” said Lavoisian.
“But Uzun Kulak exists,” sighed the writer, “and one has to take that into account.”
CHAPTER 30 ALEXANDER BIN IVANOVICH
The hot and dark freight car was filled with thick, stagnant air that smelled of leather and feet, like an old shoe.
Koreiko turned on a conductor’s lantern and crawled under the bed.
Ostap sat on an empty macaroni crate and watched him pensively.
Both strategists were exhausted by their struggle and approached the event that Koreiko had greatly feared and that Bender had been waiting for his whole life with the indifference of government officials.
It almost felt like it was taking place in a cooperative store: the customer asks for a hat, the salesperson lazily throws a fuzzy mud-colored cap on the counter.
He couldn’t care less if the customer buys the cap or not.
Actually, the customer himself doesn’t seem to be particularly engaged, and asks “Do you have anything else?” only because he’s expected to. And usually this elicits the response: “Take this one, or else it’ll be gone, too.”
And both of them look at each other with complete lack of interest.
Koreiko rummaged under the bed for a long time, apparently opening the suitcase and going through it blindly.