There were even photographs and account statements in the folder.
It contained the complete story of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, along with palms, girls, the azure ocean, a white ship, the Blue Express, a gleaming automobile, and Rio de Janeiro, a magical city on the bay inhabited by friendly mulattos, where the vast majority of citizens wear white pants.
The grand strategist had finally found the kind of individual he’d been dreaming about all his life.
“And no one can even appreciate this heroic effort of mine,” sighed Ostap, getting up and tying the laces on the thick folder. “Balaganov is very nice, but dumb.
Panikovsky is just a cranky old man.
Kozlevich is an angel without wings.
He’s still convinced that we do collect horns for the manufacturers of cigarette-holders.
Where are my friends, my wives, my children?
I only hope that the esteemed Alexander Ivanovich appreciates my great effort and rewards it with some five hundred thousand, in consideration of my poverty.
Wait a minute!
After all this, I won’t take less than a million, or else the friendly mulattos will have no respect for me.”
Ostap got up from his desk, picked up his remarkable folder and started pacing around the empty office, thinking. He skirted the typewriter with the German accent and the ticket punch, and nearly brushed his head against the deer antlers.
The white scar on Ostap’s throat turned pink.
His motions gradually grew slower, and his feet, clad in the red shoes he bought from a Greek sailor, started sliding silently across the floor.
Without realizing it, he began to sidestep.
His right arm held the folder to his chest in a tender embrace, like a woman, while his left arm stretched forward.
The squeaky Wheel of Fortune was clearly heard above the city.
It produced a gentle musical tone that suddenly turned into a gentle string harmony.
The poignant, long-forgotten tune gave voices to all the objects found at the Chernomorsk Branch of the Arbatov Bureau for the Collection of Horns and Hoofs.
The samovar was the first to begin.
A flaming ember suddenly fell out of it onto the tray.
The samovar broke into a song:
Under the sun of Argentina, Where the skies are blue and steamy . . .
The grand strategist was dancing a tango.
His coin-like face appeared in profile.
He would get down on his knee, then get up quickly, turn, and slide forward again, stepping lightly.
His invisible coattails flew apart during the sudden turns.
Meanwhile, the typewriter with the German accent picked up the tune:
. . .
Where the zkiez are blue and zteamy, With picture-perfect ladiez gleaming . . .
The lumbering cast-iron ticket punch, who had been around, sighed quietly about times gone by:
. . .
With picture-perfect ladies gleaming, The tango’s danced by all.
Ostap was dancing a classical provincial tango; it had been a feature of variety shows twenty years earlier, when Berlaga wore his first bowler hat, when Sardinevich worked in the Mayor’s Office, when Polykhaev was taking his first test for the Imperial Civil Service, and the dummy chairman Funt was a sprightly seventy-year-old who sat in the Florida Cafe with other Pique Vests and discussed the shocking news that the Dardanelles were closed due to the Italo-Turkish War.
The Pique Vests, who still had red cheeks and smooth skin back then, were going over the current political figures of the time.
“Enver Pasha is a brain.
Yuan Shikai is a brain.
Purishkevich is also a brain, after all!” they said. And even that far back, they claimed that Briand was a brain, for he was already serving in the government.
Ostap was dancing.
Palms crackled above his head; colorful birds fluttered over him.
Ocean liners brushed against the piers of Rio de Janeiro.
Savvy Brazilian dealers undercut coffee prices in broad daylight, while local youths enjoyed alcoholic beverages in open-air restaurants.
“I am commanding the parade!” exclaimed the grand strategist.
He turned off the lights, went out, and took the shortest possible route to Lesser Tangential Street.
Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, then descended, slicing across buildings and suddenly revealing a balcony or a glass-covered porch where a startled couple would freeze up.
Two small tanks with round mushroom caps swayed from around the corner toward Ostap, their tracks clattering.
A cavalryman bent down from his saddle and asked a pedestrian how to get to the Old Market.
In one place, Ostap’s path was blocked by moving cannons.
He rushed through between two artillery batteries.
At another spot, policemen were hastily nailing a black GAS SHELTER sign to the door.