“Grandpa Pakhom and His Tractor on the Night Shift.”
It was such a mischievous painting they really didn’t know what to do with it.
Sometimes, the hair on it would literally stand on end.
And one day it turned completely gray, so Grandpa Pakhom and his tractor disappeared without a trace.
But the author was fast enough to collect some fifteen hundred for his bright idea.
So don’t get too confident, Comrade Smarmeladov!
The oats might germinate, your painting will start sprouting, and then you’ll never harvest again.”
The Dialectical Easelists laughed supportively, but Feofan was unfazed.
“This sounds like a paradox,” he remarked, returning to his sowing.
“All right,” said Ostap, “keep sowing the seeds of reason, good, and the everlasting, and then we’ll see.
And you, fellows, goodbye to you, too.
Forget your oils.
Switch to mosaics made of screws, nuts, and spikes.
A portrait in nuts!
What a splendid idea!”
The Antelopeans spent the whole day painting their car.
By evening, it was unrecognizable and glistened with all the different colors of an egg-yolk.
At sunrise the next morning, the transformed Antelope left the cozy shed and set a course toward the south.
“Too bad we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to our host.
But he was sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to wake him.
Perhaps at this very moment, he’s finally dreaming of Archbishop Inclement, blessing the Ministry of Education officials on the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov.”
And then they heard the howling cries that were already familiar to Ostap. They came from the little log house.
“The same dream!” cried old Khvorobyov.
“Lord, oh Lord!”
“I was wrong,” observed Ostap. “Instead of Archbishop Inclement, he must have seen a plenary session of The Forge and the Farm literary group.
To hell with him, though.
Business calls us to Chernomorsk.”
CHAPTER 9 ANOTHER ARTISTIC CRISIS
It’s amazing what some people do for a living.
Parallel to the big world inhabited by big people and big things, there’s a small world with small people and small things.
In the big world, they invented the diesel engine, wrote the novel Dead Souls, built the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, and flew around the globe.
In the small world, they invented the blowout noisemaker, wrote the song Little Bricks, and built Soviet Ambassador-style pants.
People in the big world aspire to improve the lives of all humanity.
The small world is far from such high-mindedness.
Its inhabitants have only one desire—to get by without going hungry.
The small people try to keep up with the big people.
They understand that they must be in tune with the times, since only then will their small offerings find a market.
In Soviet times, when ideological monoliths have been created in the big world, the small world is in a state of commotion.
All the small inventions from the world of ants are given rock-solid foundations of Communist ideology.
The noisemaker is adorned with the likeness of Chamberlain, very similar to the one that appears in Izvestiya cartoons.
In a popular song, a savvy metalworker wins the love of a Young Communist League girl by meeting, and even exceeding, his quotas in three stanzas.
And while the big world is torn by vehement arguments about what the new life should look like, the small world has already figured everything out: there’s the Shockworker’s Dream necktie; the Fyodor Gladkov tunic; the plaster statuette, called A Collective Farm Woman Bathing; and the Love of the Worker Bees brand ladies’ absorbent armpit pads.
Fresh winds are blowing in the field of riddles, puzzles, anagrams, and other brainteasers.
The old ways are out.
The newspaper and magazine sections like At Your Leisure or Use Your Brain flatly refuse to accept non-ideological material.
And while the great country was moving and shaking, building assembly lines for tractors and creating giant state farms, old man Sinitsky, a puzzle-maker by trade, sat in his room, his glazed eyes on the ceiling, and worked on a riddle based on the fashionable word industrialisation.
Sinitsky looked like a garden gnome.
Such gnomes often appeared on the signs of umbrella stores.
They wear pointy red hats and wink amicably at the passers-by, as if inviting them to hurry up and buy a silk parasol or a walking stick with a silver dog-head knob.
Sinitsky’s long yellowish beard descended below the desk right into the waste basket.