I get it now . . .
So have you found a recipe?
Of course not.
You might as well have shown up in a three-car motorcade!
Obviously, people think you’re officials.
I can assure you that you’ll never find a recipe this way.”
The interpreter began to complain about the foreigners again.
“You won’t believe it, but they’ve even started pestering me: ‘Just tell us the secret of the moonshine!’
For God’s sake, I’m not a moonshiner.
I’m a member of the education workers’ union.
I have an elderly mother in Moscow.”
“And how badly do you want to go back to Moscow?
To be with your mother?”
The interpreter sighed dejectedly.
“In that case, our deliberations continue,” declared Ostap. “How much will your bosses pay for a recipe?
150, perhaps?”
“They’ll pay two hundred,” whispered the interpreter.
“Do you really have a recipe?”
“I can give it to you this very moment—I mean, the moment I get the money.
Made from anything you want: potatoes, wheat, apricots, barley, mulberry, buckwheat.
One can even brew moonshine from an ordinary chair.
Some people enjoy the chair brew.
Or you can have a simple raisin or plum brew.
In other words, any of the 150 kinds of moonshine known to me.”
Ostap was introduced to the Americans.
Their politely raised hats floated in the air for a long time.
Then they got down to business.
The Americans chose the wheat moonshine—the simplicity of the brewing process appealed to them.
They painstakingly recorded the recipe in their notebooks.
As a bonus, Ostap sketched out a design for a compact still that could be hidden in an office desk.
The seekers assured Ostap that, given American technology, making such a still would be a breeze.
For his part, Ostap assured the Americans that the device he described would produce two gallons of beautiful, fragrant pervach per day.
“Oh!” cried the Americans.
They had already heard this word in a very respectable home in Chicago, where pervach was highly recommended.
The man of the house had been in Archangel, with the American expeditionary force. He drank pervach there and never forgot the alluring sensation that it gave him.
On the lips of the enchanted tourists, the crude word pervach sounded both tender and enticing.
The Americans easily parted with two hundred rubles and endlessly shook Bender’s hand.
Panikovsky and Balaganov also got to shake hands with the citizens of the transatlantic republic, who had been suffering under Prohibition for so long.
The interpreter was thrilled; he pecked Ostap on his cheek and invited him to stop by, adding that his elderly mother would be delighted.
For some reason, however, he neglected to give his address.
The new friends climbed into their respective cars.
Kozlevich played a farewell maxixe, and to the accompaniment of these cheerful sounds, the cars flew off in opposite directions.
“See,” said Ostap when the American car disappeared in a cloud of dust, “everything happened just like I told you.
We were driving.
Money was lying on the road.
I picked it up.
Look, it didn’t even get dusty.”
And he crackled the stack of bills in his hand.
“Actually, this isn’t much to brag about, a trivial job.
But it was clean and honest, that’s what counts.