“What the hell is that?” thundered Ostap. “Just three days ago, I was as free as a mountain eagle, I flapped my wings wherever I pleased, and now look at this—attendance is mandatory!
Turns out there’s plenty of people in this city who can’t do without Ostap Bender.
Plus, who’s going to take care of all this amicable correspondence?
We’ll have to incur additional expenses and revise our staffing structure.
We need an experienced secretary.
Let her deal with all this.”
Two hours later, a new disaster struck.
A peasant showed up carrying a heavy sack.
“Who’s taking horns here?” he asked, dumping his load on the floor.
The grand strategist looked at the visitor and his offerings without any enthusiasm.
The horns were small, crooked, and dirty. Ostap was disgusted.
“But are these any good?” asked the branch president cautiously.
“Just look at them horns!” The man grew agitated and held up a yellow horn to the grand strategist’s nose. “Beauties, first class!
Meets the standards.”
They had no choice but to accept such high-quality merchandise.
After that, the man endlessly drank tea with Panikovsky and talked about life in the country. Bender was understandably irked, like anybody who had just wasted fifteen rubles.
“If Panikovsky lets in one more of those horn blowers,” said Ostap the moment the visitor finally left, “he’s out of here.
I’ll fire him without severance pay.
Either way, enough of these official pursuits.
Time to get down to business.”
The branch president put the LUNCH BREAK sign on the glass door and took out the folder that ostensibly contained the azure ocean and a white ship, gave it a slap and announced:
“This is what our bureau will be working on.
Right now, there’s nothing here, but we’ll dig up the leads even if we have to dispatch Panikovsky and Balaganov to collect evidence in the Karakum Desert, or Kremenchug, or some such place.”
At this point, the door handle started rattling.
Behind the glass stood an old man wearing a panama hat that had been mended with white thread and a large woven silk jacket with a pique vest showing underneath.
The old man stretched out his chicken neck and held his large ear to the glass.
“We’re closed!” shouted Ostap hastily.
“The collection of hoofs is temporarily suspended.”
But the old man continued to gesture.
Had Ostap not let the old White Vest in, the novel could have gone in a totally different direction. Many of the amazing events featuring the grand strategist, his irritable messenger, his carefree Vice President for Hoofs, and lots of other people, including a certain sage from the East, the granddaughter of the old puzzle-maker, a prominent activist, the boss of the Hercules, as well as numerous Soviet and foreign citizens, could never have taken place.
But Ostap opened the door.
Smiling mournfully, the old man walked past the barrier and lowered himself into a chair.
Then he closed his eyes and said nothing for about five minutes.
One could only hear a faint whistling that his pale nose emitted from time to time.
When the staff finally concluded that the visitor wouldn’t utter another word ever again, and started whispering about the best ways to dispose of the body, the old man raised his brown eyelids and said in a low-pitched voice:
“My name is Funt.
Funt.”
“And you think this is reason enough to barge into offices that are closed for lunch?” asked Ostap light-heartedly.
“I see you’re laughing,” replied the old man, “but my name is Funt.
I’m ninety years old.”
“So what can I do for you?” asked Ostap, starting to lose his patience.
But then Citizen Funt fell silent again, and he remained silent for quite a while.
“You have a bureau,” he said finally.
“That’s right, a bureau,” encouraged Ostap.
“Go on.”
But the old man just patted his knee.
“You see these pants I’m wearing?” he said after a long silence. “These are my Easter pants.
I used to wear them only for Easter, but now I wear them every day.”
And even though Panikovsky slapped him on the back, in an effort to help the old man’s words flow without interruption, Funt fell silent again.
He spoke quickly, but his sentences were separated by pauses that occasionally lasted as long as three minutes.