Bender found a pair of scissors and in a flash snipped off the moustache, which fell silently to the floor.
When the hair had been cropped, the technical adviser took a yellowed Gillette razor from his pocket and a spare blade from his wallet, and began shaving Ippolit Matveyevich, who was almost in tears by this time.
"I'm using my last blade on you, so don't forget to credit me with two roubles for the shave and haircut."
"Why so expensive?" Ippolit managed to ask, although he was convulsed with grief.
"It should only cost forty kopeks."
"For reasons of security, Comrade Field Marshal!" promptly answered Ostap.
The sufferings of a man whose head is being shaved with a safety razor are incredible.
This became clear to Ippolit Matveyevich from the very beginning of the operation.
But all things come to an end.
"There!
The hearing continues!
Those suffering from nerves shouldn't look."
Ippolit Matveyevich shook himself free of the nauseating tufts that until so recently had been distinguished grey hair, washed himself and, feeling a strong tingling sensation all over his head, looked at himself in the mirror for the hundredth time that day.
He was unexpectedly pleased by what he saw.
Looking at him was the careworn, but rather youthful, face of an unemployed actor.
"Right, forward march, the bugle is sounding!" cried Ostap. "I'll make tracks for the housing division, while you go to the old women."
"I can't," said Ippolit Matveyevich. "It's too painful for me to enter my own house."
"I see.
A touching story.
The exiled baron!
All right, you go to the housing division, and I'll get busy here.
Our rendezvous will be here in the caretaker's room.
Platoon: 'shun!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BASHFUL CHISELLER
The Assistant Warden of the Second Home of Stargorod Social Security Administration was a shy little thief.
His whole being protested against stealing, yet it was impossible for him not to steal.
He stole and was ashamed of himself.
He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed of himself, which was why his smoothly shaven cheeks always burned with a blush of confusion, shame, bashfulness and embarrassment.
The assistant warden's name was Alexander Yakovlevich, and his wife's name was Alexandra Yakovlevna.
He used to call her Sashchen, and she used to call him Alchen.
The world has never seen such a bashful chiseller as Alexander Yakovlevich.
He was not only the assistant warden, but also the chief warden.
The previous one had been dismissed for rudeness to the inmates, and had been appointed conductor of a symphony orchestra.
Alchen was completely different from his ill-bred boss.
Under the system of fuller workdays, he took upon himself the running of the home, treating the pensioners with marked courtesy, and introducing important reforms and innovations.
Ostap Bender pulled the heavy oak door of the Vorobyaninov home and found himself in the hall.
There was a smell of burnt porridge.
From the upstairs rooms came the confused sound of voices, like a distant "hooray" from a line of troops.
There was no one about and no one appeared.
An oak staircase with two flights of once-lacquered stairs led upward.
Only the rings were now left; there was no sign of the stair rods that had once held the carpet in place.
"The Comanche chief lived in vulgar luxury," thought Ostap as he went upstairs.
In the first room, which was spacious and light, fifteen or so old women in dresses made of the cheapest mouse-grey woollen cloth were sitting in a circle.
Craning their necks and keeping their eyes on a healthy-looking man in the middle, the old women were singing:
"We hear the sound of distant jingling,
The troika's on its round;
Far into the distant stretches
The sparkling snowy ground."
The choirmaster, wearing a shirt and trousers of the same mouse-grey material, was beating time with both hands and, turning from side to side, kept shouting: