The smooth operator stood with his friend and closest associate, Pussy Vorobyaninov, on the left of the passenger landing-stage of the state-owned Volga River Transport System under a sign which said: "Use the rings for mooring, mind the grating, and keep clear of the wall".
Flags fluttered above the quay.
Smoke as curly as a cauliflower poured from the funnels.
The S.S. Anton Rubinstein was being loaded at pier No. 2.
Dock workers dug their iron claws into bales of cotton; iron pots were stacked in a square on the quayside, which was littered with treated hides, bundles of wire, crates of sheet glass, rolls of cord for binding sheaves, mill-stones, two-colour bony agricultural implements, wooden forks, sack-lined baskets of early cherries, and casks of herrings.
The Scriabin was not in, which greatly disturbed Ippolit Matveyevich.
"Why worry about it?" asked Ostap. "Suppose the Scriabin were here.
How would you get aboard?
Even if you had the money to buy a ticket, it still wouldn't be any use.
The boat doesn't take passengers."
While still on the train, Ostap had already had a chance to talk to Mechnikov, the fitter in charge of the hydraulic press, and had found out everything.
The S.S. Scriabin had been chartered by the Ministry of Finance and was due to sail from Nizhni to Tsaritsin, calling at every river port, and holding a government-bond lottery.
A complete government department had left Moscow for the trip, including a lottery committee, an office staff, a brass band, a cameraman, reporters from the central press and the Columbus Theatre.
The theatre was there to perform plays which popularised the idea of government loans.
Up to Stalingrad the Columbus Theatre was on the establishment of the lottery committee, after which the theatre had decided to tour the Caucasus and the Crimea with The Marriage at its own risk.
The Scriabin was late.
A promise was given that she would leave the backwater, where last-minute preparations were being made, by evening.
So the whole department from Moscow set up camp on the quayside and waited to go aboard.
Tender creatures with attache1 cases and hold-alls sat on the bundles of wire, guarding their Underwoods, and glancing apprehensively at the stevedores.
A citizen with a violet imperial positioned himself on a mill-stone.
On his knees was a pile of enamel plates.
A curious person could have read the uppermost one:
Mutual Settlement Department
Desks with ornamental legs and other, more modest, desks stood on top of one another.
A guard sauntered up and down by a sealed safe.
Persidsky, who was representing the Lathe, gazed at the fairground through Zeiss binoculars with eightfold magnification. The S.S. Scriabin approached, turning against the stream.
Her sides were decked with plyboard sheets showing brightly coloured pictures of giant-sized bonds.
The ship gave a roar, imitating the sound of a mammoth, or possibly some other animal used in prehistoric times, as a substitute for the sound of a ship's hooter.
The finance-and-theatre camp came to life.
Down the slopes to the quay came the lottery employees.
Platon Plashuk, a fat little man, toddled down to the ship in a cloud of dust.
Galkin, Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin and Zalkind flew out of the Raft beer-hall.
Dockers were already loading the safe.
Georgetta Tiraspolskikh, the acrobatics instructress, hurried up the gangway with a springy walk, while Simbievich-Sindievich, still worried about the scenic effects, raised his hands, at one moment to the Kremlin heights, and at another towards the captain standing on the bridge.
The cameraman carried his camera high above the heads of the crowd, and as he went he demanded a separate cabin in which to set up a darkroom.
Amid the general confusion, Ippolit Matveyevich made his way over to the chairs and was about to drag one away to one side.
"Leave the chair alone!" snarled Bender. "Are you crazy?
Even if we take one, the others will disappear for good.
You'd do better to think of a way to get aboard the ship."
Belted with brass tubes, the band passed along the landing-stage.
The musicians looked with distaste at the saxophones, flexotones, beer bottles and Esmarch douches, with which the sound effects were armed.
The lottery wheels arrived in a Ford station wagon.
They were built into a complicated device composed of six rotating cylinders with shining brass and glass.
It took some time to set them up on the lower deck.
The stamping about and exchange of abuse continued until late evening.
In the lottery hall people were erecting a stage, fixing notices and slogans to the walls, arranging benches for the visitors, and joining electric cables to the lottery wheels.
The desks were in the stern, and the tapping of typewriters, interspersed with laughter, could be heard from the typists' cabin.
The pale man in the violet imperial walked the length of the ship, hanging his enamel plates on the relevant doors.
Mutual Settlement Department
Personnel Department