He thought the guards were smiling.
“Long live great Romania!” repeated Ostap in Russian. “I’m an old professor who escaped from the Moscow Cheka!
I barely made it, I swear!
Allow me to greet you as representatives . . .”
One of the guards came right up to Ostap and, without saying a word, took the fur tiara off his head.
Ostap made a motion to reclaim his headgear, but the guard pushed his hand back, again without a word.
“Come on,” said the captain good-naturedly, “please keep your hands to yourself!
Or I’ll report you to the Sfatul T?a?rii, your Supreme Soviet!”
Meanwhile, another guard began unbuttoning Ostap’s stupendous, almost unbelievable supercoat with the speed and ease of an experienced lover.
The captain jerked.
As a result, a large woman’s bracelet fell from one of his pockets and rolled away.
“Branzuletka!” shrieked the guards’ officer in a short coat with a dog-fur collar and large metal buttons on his prominent behind.
“Branzuletka!” cried the others, rushing Ostap.
Getting entangled in his coat, the grand strategist fell on the ground and immediately sensed that they were pulling the precious platter out of his pants.
When he got up, he saw that the officer, with a devilish smile on his face, was holding up the platter, trying to determine how much it weighed.
Ostap grabbed his possession and tore it out of the officer’s hands, then immediately received a blinding blow to the face.
The scene unfolded with military swiftness.
Trapped in his coat, for a while the grand strategist stood on his knees and fought off the attackers, hurling medals for bravery at them.
Then he suddenly felt an immense relief, which enabled him to deliver a few crushing blows.
As it turned out, they had managed to rip the one-hundred-thousand-ruble coat off his back.
“Oh, so that’s how you treat people!” shrieked Ostap, casting wild glances around.
There was a moment when he was standing with his back against a tree and bashed his foes over the head with the gleaming platter.
There was a moment when they were trying to rip the Order of the Golden Fleece from his neck, and the captain swung his head around like a horse.
There was another moment, when he held the bishop’s cross with the words IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT high above his head and screamed hysterically:
“Oppressors of the working masses!
Bloodsuckers!
Capitalist stooges!
Bastards!”
As he screamed, pink saliva ran from his mouth.
Ostap fought like a gladiator for his million.
Again and again, he threw the attackers off his back and rose up from the ground, looking ahead with bleary eyes.
He came back to his senses on the ice, his face smashed up, wearing only one boot, without the fur coat, without the engraved cigarette cases, without the watch collection, without the platter, without the foreign money, without the cross or the diamonds, without his million.
The officer with the dog-fur collar stood high on the bank and looked down at Ostap.
“Bloody persecutors!” shouted Ostap, raising his bare foot. “Parasites!”
The officer slowly pulled out his pistol and cocked it.
The grand strategist realized that the interview was over.
Hunching over, he started limping back toward the Soviet shore.
Smoky white fog was rising from the river.
Bender opened his fist and saw a flat copper button, a lock of someone’s coarse black hair, and the Order of the Golden Fleece, which had miraculously survived the battle.
The grand strategist gave his trophies and what was left of his riches a blank stare and continued on, slipping into ice pits and flinching from pain.
A lengthy and loud cannon-like boom made the surface of the ice tremble.
The warm wind was blowing hard.
Bender looked down and saw a large green crack running through the ice.
The ice field under him rocked and began to tilt into the water.
“The ice has broken!” cried the grand strategist in horror. “Gentlemen of the jury, the ice has broken!”
He began leaping over the widening cracks between the ice floes, desperately trying to reach the same country he had bid farewell to so arrogantly just an hour earlier.
The fog was lifting sedately and slowly, revealing ice-free marshes.
Ten minutes later, an odd-looking man with no hat and only one boot stepped onto the Soviet shore.
Without addressing anyone in particular, he loudly announced:
“Hold the applause!