Once Ostap even saw the reflection of Sardinevich in a stairwell mirror.
He leaped forward, but the mirror promptly emptied, and it only reflected the window and a distant cloud.
“Holy Mother of Divine Interception!” exclaimed Ostap, trying to catch his breath. “What a useless, disgusting bureaucracy!
Of course, our Chernomorsk Branch is not without its flaws, all those little deficiencies and inefficiencies, but it’s nothing like here at the Hercules . . .
Right, Shura?”
The Vice President for Hoofs emitted a deep pump-like sigh.
They were back in the cool second-floor hallway where they had been some fifteen times before.
And so, for the fifteenth time that day, they walked past the wooden bench that stood outside Polykhaev’s office.
A German engineer named Heinrich Maria Sause, brought in from Germany at considerable expense, had been sitting on the bench since the morning.
He wore the usual European suit, and his embroidered Ukrainian shirt was the only sign that the engineer had already spent a few weeks in Russia—he had had enough time to visit a gift shop.
He sat still, his head resting on the wooden back of the bench, his eyes closed, as if he was about to get a shave.
One might even think he was snoozing.
But the half-brothers, who had repeatedly raced past him in pursuit of Sardinevich, noticed that the complexion of the foreign guest was constantly changing.
At the beginning of the day, when the engineer took his position outside Polykhaev’s door, his face was fairly rosy.
The color grew in intensity with every passing hour, and by the first break it had taken on the color of postal sealing wax.
By that time, Comrade Polykhaev had probably only reached the second flight of stairs.
After the break, his complexion started changing in the opposite direction.
The sealing wax turned into scarlet-fever spots.
Heinrich Maria started going pale, and toward the end of the day, when the director of the Hercules had probably broken through to the second floor, the face of the foreign specialist became snow-white.
“What’s with him?” Ostap whispered to Balaganov. “Such a huge spectrum of emotions!”
The moment Ostap uttered these words, Heinrich Maria Sause jumped up from his bench and looked at Polykhaev’s door furiously. Behind it, the phone was ringing off the hook.
“Obstrukzionizm!” shrieked the engineer in a high-pitched voice, grabbing the grand strategist by the shoulders and shaking him as hard as he could.
“Genosse Polihaeff!” he shouted, jumping in front of Ostap. “Genosse Polihaeff!”
He took out his pocket watch, thrust it in Balaganov’s face, and then went after Bender again.
“Was machen Sie?” asked the dumbfounded Ostap, demonstrating a certain level of familiarity with the German language.
“Was wollen Sie from a poor visitor?”
But Heinrich Maria Sause wouldn’t let go.
Keeping his left hand on Bender’s shoulder, he dragged Balaganov closer with his right hand and gave them both a long, passionate speech. While he was at it, Ostap looked around impatiently, in the hope of getting hold of Sardinevich, while the Vice President for Hoofs hiccuped quietly, covering his mouth respectfully and staring mindlessly at the foreigner’s shoes.
The engineer Heinrich Maria Sause had signed a year-long contract to work in the Soviet Union, or, as he put it with his usual precision, at the Hercules Corporation.
“Watch out, Mr. Sause,” warned his friend Bernhard Gerngross, a Doctor of Mathematics, “the Bolsheviks will make you work hard for their money.”
But Sause explained that he wasn’t afraid of work and that he had long been looking for a good chance to apply his expertise in the field of mechanized forestry.
When Sardinevich informed Polykhaev that the foreign engineer had arrived, the director of the Hercules got all excited under his palm trees.
“We need him badly!
Where is he?”
“Right now, at the hotel.
Resting after his trip.”
“Resting? You must be kidding!” exclaimed Polykhaev. “All that money we’re paying him, all that hard currency!
He’s to report here tomorrow, at 10 A.M. sharp.”
At five to ten, Heinrich Maria Sause entered Polykhaev’s office, sporting coffee-colored pants and smiling at the thought of putting his expertise to good use.
The boss wasn’t in yet.
He wasn’t in an hour later either, or two hours later.
Sause started losing patience.
His only distraction came from Sardinevich, who would turn up every now and then and ask with an innocent smile:
“So, Genosse Polykhaev isn’t in yet?
That’s odd.”
Two hours later Sardinevich approached Bomze, who was eating breakfast in the hallway, and started whispering:
“I don’t know what to do.
Polykhaev told the German to be here at 10, but then he left for Moscow to see about the building.
He’ll be gone for at least a week.
Do me a favor, Adolf Nikolaevich!