And it went very smoothly.
I even fed several thousand of the faithful with five loaves of bread.
I did that all right, but imagine the mayhem!”
The debate continued in the same oddball vein.
Ostap’s arguments, unconvincing yet funny, had the most invigorating effect on Kozlevich.
Color appeared on the driver’s cheeks, and the tips of his mustache gradually started to look up.
“You tell them!” Cries of encouragement came from behind the spirals and the crosses of the fence, where a sizable crowd of onlookers had already gathered. “Tell them about the Pope, tell them about the Crusade!”
Ostap told them about the Pope.
He condemned Alexander Borgia for bad behavior, mentioned St. Seraphim of Sarov for no apparent reason, and laid particularly hard into the Inquisition that persecuted Galileo.
He got so carried away that he ended up laying the blame for the great scientist’s misfortunes directly on the shoulders of Kuszakowski and Moroszek.
That was the last straw.
When he heard about Galileo’s terrible fate, Adam quickly put the prayer book down on the steps and fell into Balaganov’s bear-like embrace.
Panikovsky was right there, stroking the prodigal son’s scratchy cheeks.
The air was filled with happy kissing.
“Pan Kozlewicz!” groaned the priests.
“Where are you going?
Come to your senses, Pan!”
But the heroes of the auto rally were already getting into their car.
“See!” shouted Ostap to the disconsolate priests while settling into the captain’s seat, “I told you there’s no God!
It’s a scientific fact.
Farewell, Fathers!
See you later!”
Hailed by the crowd, the Antelope took off, and soon the tin flags and the tiled roofs of the cathedral disappeared from view.
To celebrate, the Antelopeans stopped at a beer joint.
“Thank you so much, guys!” said Kozlevich, holding a heavy beer mug in his hand. “I was as good as gone.
Those priests really put a spell on me, especially Kuszakowski.
He’s one sneaky devil!
He forced me to fast, can you believe it?
Or else, he said, I wouldn’t make it to heaven.”
“Heaven!” said Ostap. “There’s nothing going on in heaven these days.
Wrong times, wrong historic period.
The angels want to come down to earth now.
It’s nice down here: we have municipal services, the planetarium. You can watch the stars and listen to an anti-religious lecture all at once.”
After the eighth mug Kozlevich ordered a ninth, raised it high above his head, sucked on his conductor’s mustache, and asked excitedly:
“So there’s no God?”
“No,” answered Ostap.
“No?
Well, to our health then.”
And that’s how he continued drinking, preceding each new mug with:
“Is there God?
No?
To our health then.”
Panikovsky drank along with everybody else but kept mum on the subject of God.
He didn’t want to get involved in a controversy.
The return of the prodigal son, and the Antelope, gave the Chernomorsk Branch of the Arbatov Bureau for the Collection of Horns and Hoofs the glamor it had been lacking.
The car was always waiting by the door of what used to be the five-merchant commune.
It wasn’t quite the same as a blue Buick or a stretch Lincoln, of course, or even a little Ford coupe, but it was still a car, an automobile, a vehicle which, in Ostap’s words, despite all its flaws, could occasionally move around without the aid of horses.
Ostap immersed himself in his work.
Had he devoted all his energies to the collection of horns or hoofs, the manufacturers of cigarette holders and combs would likely have had enough supplies to last them through the end of the current fiscal century.
But the Branch President was involved in something totally different.