The Antelope has acquired a dicey reputation; it needs to be repainted.”
They decided to enter the city on foot and find some paint, leaving the car in a safe place outside the city limits.
Ostap walked briskly down the road along the edge of the bluff and soon saw a lopsided log house, its tiny windows gleaming river-blue.
A shed behind the house looked like the perfect hiding place for the Antelope.
The grand strategist was thinking up a good excuse to enter the little house and make friends with its residents when the door flew open and a respectable-looking man, in soldier’s underwear with black metal buttons, ran out onto the porch.
His paraffin-pale cheeks sported neatly styled gray sideburns.
At the end of the nineteenth century, a face like this would have been common.
In those times, most men cultivated such government-issue, conformist hair devices on their faces.
But when the sideburns were not sitting above a dark-blue uniform, or some civilian medal on a silk ribbon, or the golden stars of a high-ranking imperial official, this kind of face seemed unnatural.
“Oh my Lord,” mumbled the toothless log house dweller, his arms outstretched toward the rising sun.
“Lord, oh Lord!
The same dreams!
Those very same dreams!”
After this lament, the old man started crying and ran, shuffling his feet, along the footpath around the house.
An ordinary rooster, who was about to sing for the third time, and who had already positioned itself in the middle of the yard for that purpose, darted away. In the heat of the moment it took several hurried steps and even dropped a feather, but soon composed itself, climbed on top of the wattle fence, and from this safe position finally notified the world that morning had come.
Its voice, however, betrayed the anxiety that the untoward behavior of the owner of the little house had caused.
“Those goddamn dreams,” the old man’s voice reached Ostap.
Bender was staring in surprise at the strange man and his sideburns—nowadays, the only place to see sideburns like that is on the imperious face of a doorman at the symphony hall, if anywhere.
Meanwhile, the extraordinary gentleman completed a full circle and once again appeared near the porch.
Here he lingered for a moment and then went inside, saying, “I’ll go try again.”
“I love old people,” whispered Ostap to himself, “they’re always entertaining.
I have to wait and see how this mysterious test will turn out.”
He didn’t have to wait long.
Shortly thereafter, howling could be heard from the house, and the old man crawled out onto the porch, moving backwards, like Boris Godunov in the final act of Mussorgsky’s opera.
“Begone! Begone!” he cried out, sounding like Shalyapin. “That same dream!
Aaaa!”
He turned around and started walking straight towards Ostap, stumbling over his own feet.
Deciding that it was the time to act, the grand strategist stepped out from behind the tree and took the Sideburner into his powerful embrace.
“What?
Who’s that?
What’s that?” cried the restless old man. “What?”
Ostap carefully opened his embrace, grabbed the old man’s hand, and shook it warmly.
“I feel for you!” he declared.
“Really?” asked the owner of the little house, leaning against Bender’s shoulder.
“Of course I do,” replied Ostap. “I myself have dreams quite often.”
“And what do you dream about?”
“This and that.”
“No, seriously?” insisted the old man.
“Well, all kinds of things.
A mishmash really.
What the newspapers call
‘All things from all places’ or
‘World panorama.’
The other day, for example, I dreamed of the Mikado’s funeral, and yesterday it was the anniversary celebration at the Sushchevsky Fire Brigade headquarters.”
“My God!” said the old man.
“My God, what a lucky man you are!
A lucky man!
Tell me, have you ever dreamt of a Governor General or . . . maybe even an imperial minister?”
Bender wasn’t going to be difficult.
“I have,” he said playfully. “I sure have.