Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Mr. Adams was worried about something. Before him lay a long piece of paper covered all over with figures and with all kinds of other markings, and a small parcel.

"In other words, Becky, the hat has not arrived in San Francisco. And yet, we sent directions to Santa Fe for them to send the hat directly to San Francisco."

"Are you sure that it was San Francisco?" asked Mrs. Adams. "For some reason, it seems to me that the last time you asked that the hat be sent to Los Angeles."

"No, no, Becky, don't talk like that. I have it all written down." Mr. Adams took off his spectacles and, bringing the paper close to his eyes, began to decipher his notations.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, "there! According to the last notations the hat was sent from Detroit to Chicago. Then to St. Louis. But since we didn't go to St. Louis, I wrote them to send the hat to Kansas City. When we were in Kansas City the hat had not yet come there . . ."

"Very well," said Mrs. Adams. "That I remember. In Santa Fe we forgot to go to the post office for some reason and you wrote them a letter from Las Vegas. Remember? At the same time you sent the key to the Grand Canyon. Didn't you get the addresses mixed up?"

"Oh, Becky, how could you think anything like that?" Mr. Adams moaned.

"Then what is this package?" exclaimed Becky. "It is so small that there cannot possibly be a hat in it."

The Adamses had come from the post office a little while ago and had not yet had time to open the parcel. It took them a long time to open it. They opened it very carefully, talking at the same time about what it could contain.

"But suppose it is my watch from Grand Canyon?" Mr. Adams suggested.

"How can it be your watch from Grand Canyon when the box was mailed in Santa Fe?"

Finally, they opened the parcel. In it lay a key with a round brass disk on which was hammered out the figure "82." "Just as I thought!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams.

"What do you mean: 'just as I thought,' Becky?" Mr. Adams asked ingratiatingly.

"Just as I thought! This is the key of our room in Grand Canyon which you sent by mistake to the Santa Fe post office, while the directions for shipping the hat you evidently sent to the Grand Canyon, to the camp. I think that the request to return your gold watch, which is I gift from me, instead of going to Grand Canyon went to Santa Fe."

"But, Becky, don't talk so rashly," Mr. Adams muttered. "Am I to blame for everything? Becky, I appeal to your sense of justice. Especially, since it is so easy to correct it all. We shall write ... Yes ... Where shall we write ? "

"First of all, we will have to return this key and this plaid blanket, which you took by mistake in Fresno."

"But, Becky, I left my binoculars in Fresno, and I should think they're more expensive than the blanket."

"All right, that means that the key goes to the Grand Canyon, the blanket goes to Fresno, and we write to Santa Fe for the watch. That is, no, we write to Grand Canyon for the watch, but before all, we write an apology to Santa Fe. Then ..."

"But what about the hat, Becky ?" Mr. Adams asked sweetly.

"Now, wait a minute, you! Yes, the hat. This is what we'll do with the hat..."

At that moment there was a knocking at the door, and into the room came a man of immense proportions—with broad thick shoulders and a large round head on which sat a small cap with a little button.

This man, evidently sensing the hugeness of his body, tried to take very short steps and to walk as quietly as possible. Nevertheless, the hardwood floor creaked under him, as if suddenly a grand piano had been rolled into the room. Having stopped, the stranger, speaking in a thin voice, said in excellent Russian:

"Good day! I have come to you from the Molokan community. Forgive my intrusion. It is a custom of ours, when anyone comes from Russia ... We extend our welcome to you and ask you to come and have tea with us. I have an automobile here, so don't worry about that."

We had heard a lot about Russian Molokans in San Francisco, torn away from their homeland, who, like the Indians, preserved their lan-guage, their habits and customs.

In five minutes Mr. Adams and the messenger of the Molokan community were friends. Mr. Adams showed good knowledge of the subject, and not once did he get the Molokans confused with the Dukhobors or the Subbotniks.

On the way to "Russian Hill," where the San Francisco Molokans live, our guide told us the history of their migration.

Long, long ago the Molokans lived on the Volga. They were oppressed by the Tsar's government, which sent priests and missionaries to them. The Molokans would not yield. Then they were moved to the Caucasus, somewhere in the region of Kars. There, too, in the new place they did exactly what they had done for ages. They raised grain. But it became more and more difficult to live. The persecutions became increasingly cruel. So the Molokans decided to forsake their native land, which had become a stepmother to them. Where could they go ? People went to America. So they, too, went to America—five hundred families of them. That was in the year 1902. How did they come to San Francisco? In one way or another. People were going to San Francisco. So they, too, went to San Francisco. Our giant who guided us seemed to be about forty years old. That meant that he had come to America as a six year-old boy. Yet, he was so decidedly Russian that it was impossible to believe that he could talk English. In America the Molokans wanted to raise grain, as was their custom. But they did not have enough money to buy the land. Thus they began to work in the port. From that time on the San Francisco Molokans have been stevedores, the purest kind of proletarians. In the city the Molokans settled apart, on a hill, gradually built small houses, built a small prayer-house which they solemnly called the "Molokan Church," built a Russian school, and the hill began to be called "Russian Hill." The October Revolution the Molokans greeted not as Molokans but as proletarians. In the first place it awakened the stevedores in them, and only after that the Molokans. For the first time in life, these people felt that they have a homeland, that it stopped being a stepmother to them. At the time of collectivization, one of the respected Molokan elders received from his nephews in the U.S.S.R. a letter in which his advice was asked about the advisability of joining a collective farm. They wrote that another Molokan elder in the U.S.S.R. tried to tell them not to enter a collective farm. And the old man, who had become less of a Molokan preacher and more of a San Francisco stevedore, in replying, advised them to join the collective. This old man told us with pride that now he frequently receives grateful letters from his nephews. When Troyanovsky came to San Francisco, and later Schmidt, the Molokans met them with flowers.

We drove through the city for a long time, rising from hill to hill. It seems that we passed through Chinatown.

"And here is Russian Hill," said our mighty driver, shifting gears into second. The machine rattled and began to climb up the cobbled roadway.

No, there was nothing here reminiscent of San Francisco. This street looked more like the end of Old Tula or Kaluga. We stopped near a small house with a portico and went in. The first room, where on the wall hung old photographs and pictures cut out of magazines, was crowded with people. Here were bearded old men in spectacles. Here were men somewhat younger in coats that disclosed Russian shirts. It was just such clothes that prerevolutionary Russian workers wore on a holiday. But the strongest impression of all was made by the women. We wanted to rub our eyes, just to make sure that such women could exist in the year 1935, and not only somewhere in some old forsaken Russian hole, but in the petrol and electric San Francisco, at the other end of the world. Among them we saw Russian peasant women, white-faced and pink-cheeked, in good holiday waists with puff sleeves and full skirts, the cut of which had years ago been brought from Russia and without any changes had become petrified in San Francisco, and we saw large old women with weird prophetic eyes. The old women wore calico kerchiefs. It was hard enough to accept that. But where did they get calico print in this polka-dot design! The women spoke softly and roundly, in chanting voices, emphasizing "o's" and, as it should be, offered their hands spade-fashion.

Many of them could not speak any English at all, although they had lived almost all of their lives in San Francisco. The gathering reminded us of an old village wedding at the point when all the guests are on hand and the celebration is about to begin.

Almost all the men were as tall and broad-shouldered as the one who had brought us here. They had tremendous arms and hands, the arms and hands of stevedores.

We were asked to come downstairs. Down there was a very spacious basement. A long narrow table was laden with pirozhki, salted pickles, sweet bread, and apples. On the wall hung the portraits of Stalin, Kalinin, and Voroshilov. Everyone took his place at the table, and a conversation began. We were asked about collective farms, about factories, about Moscow. 'They served us tea in glasses. Suddenly the ] very largest of the Molokans, a rather elderly man in steel-rimmed spectacles and with a greyish little beard, deeply inhaled a goodly quantity of air and began to sing in a voice so extraordinarily sonorous that at first he seemed to be not singing but shouting:

"Exhausted I am by sorrow,

The accursed viper!

Burn to the end, my matchwood!

I, too, will burn down with you."

The song was caught up by all the men and women. They sang in full voices, just like their choir leader. There were no nuances in their singing. They sang fortissimo, only fortissimo, with all their might, trying to outshout one another. It made a strange and a somewhat unpleasant first impression. The singing did become a little more composed as it went on. The eardrums soon became accustomed to it. Despite its sonorousness, there was something sad in it. Particularly good were the

voices of the women, who brought out the high notes almost hysterically. Such sad and penetrating voices had resounded across the fields at twilight after haying, ringing tirelessly, quieting down slowly, and finally inter mingling with the chirrup of the crickets. These people had sung this song on the Volga, later among the Kurds and Armenians near Kars.

Now they were singing it in San Francisco, in the state of California. Were they to be driven off into Australia, into Patagonia, into the Fiji Islands, they would sing that song even there.

That song was all that was left to them of Russia.

Then the man in spectacles winked at us and began to sing:

"All of us have come from the people,

Children of labour are we.

Brotherly union and freedom —

Such is our slogan for war."

Mr. Adams, who had wiped his eyes several times and was now even more profoundly affected than during conversation with the former missionary about the manly Navajo Indians, could not contain himself any longer and began to sing in chorus with the Molokans.

But here a surprise awaited us. The Molokans introduced their own ideological correction when they came to the words: "The dark days are over; the hour of deliverance has struck." They sang it thus: " The dark days are over; Christ has shown us the way." Mr. Adams, the old atheist and materialist, did not make out the words and continued to sing loudly, opening wide his mouth.

When the song was over we asked why they had changed the text.

The choir leader again winked at us significantly and said :

"We have a songbook. We sing according to the songbook. Only this is a Baptist song. We sang it especially this way for you."

He showed us a badly thumbed book. In its preface it said:

"Songs may be solemn, sad, or middling."

"Christ Has Shown Us the Way" was evidently a middling song.

In order to please us, the Molokans with great inspiration began singing Demian Biedny's song entitled "How My Own Mother Saw Me Off." They sang it in full, line by line, and for a long time after that they sang other Russian songs.

Then again we talked. We talked about various things. They asked us whether it would be possible to arrange for the return of the Molokans to their native land.

Two old men who sat beside us got into an argument.

"All the slavery under the sun has come from the priests," said one old man.

The old man agreed with this, but he agreed contentiously.

"For two hundred years we haven't paid the priests anything!" exclaimed the first old man.

The second one agreed with that, too, but again in a contentious tone of voice. We did not intervene in this two-hundred-year-old argument.

It was time to go. We bade our hospitable hosts farewell. Toward the end, already standing, the Molokans repeated for us the song "How My Own Mother Saw Me Off," and we went out into the street.

From Russian Hill there was a good view of the lighted city. It spread far and wide on all sides. Below seethed American, Italian, Chinese, and simply sailor passions, wonderful bridges were being built, on the little island of the federal prison was Al Capone, while here in a kind of voluntary prison were people, with their own Russian songs, Russian women and Russian tea, sitting there with their Russian nostalgia, huge people, almost giants in size, who had lost their homeland, hut who remembered it every minute, and who in remembrance of it had hung a portrait of Stalin.

34 Captain X

WE WERE very sorry to leave San Francisco. But the Adamses were implacable. The entire journey had to be consummated within two I months and not one day more.

"Yes, yes, gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, beaming. "We must not torment our Baby more than sixty days. Today we received a letter. Last week Baby was taken to the zoo and she was shown the aquarium. When Baby saw so many fish at once she cried out `No more fish`. Our Baby is lonesome. No, no, we must go as soon as possible."

Full of compassion and regrets, we drove for the last time across the picturesque hunchbacked streets of San Francisco. In this little square 1 we could have sat on the bench and did not sit. On this noisy street we could have promenaded but we had not been there even once. And in this Chinese restaurant we could have had a wonderful lunch but for some reason we did not have lunch there. And the dives, the dives! We forgot the main thing: the famous dives of Old Frisco, where! skippers smashed each other's thick heads with bottles of rum, where Malayans danced with white girls, where quiet Chinamen go insane smoking opium! Oh, we forgot it, we forgot it all! And there was nothing more we could do about it: we had to go!

We were going farther and farther from San Francisco down a road that ran along the ocean. The day before we had been at the University of California. We had seen the professor of Russian literature, Mr. Alexander Kaun, and he, holding in his hands a book of Leo Tolstoy's stories in the Tatar language, told his students about the U.S.S.R. policy of nationalities, about the culture and development of the minority nations. Small, grey, and elegant, the professor interspersed his lecture with witticisms, while a hundred-odd students listened attentively to his speech about a distant land with a new and amazing tenor of life. We spent the evening in the professor's house on the shores of San Francisco Bay, near Berkeley. Mr. Kaun had invited about fifteen of his best students. The fireplace glowed, the young men and girls sat on the floor, chattered, cracked Chinese nuts. From the bookshelf loomed the bronze head of Maxim Gorky, made by Valeria Kaun from life, while her husband was working on Gorky's biography at Sorrento. One of the girls rose, went somewhere, and about ten minutes later returned, her hair wet and flowing, like a naiad's. She had been swimming in the bay. In a large wooden box in the kitchen slept six newborn puppies. The professor would go there frequently and, his hands folded touchingly, look at the puppies. Then we went to the shore of the bay, and, under the light of the moon, wandered along the sandy beach. The

young men arranged themselves in a circle and sang several student songs in chorus. They began by rendering their fighting song, "Our Sturdy Golden Bear," directed against Stanford students, sworn enemies of the University of California in the football field. The students of the University of California call themselves "Bears." Having sung their fill (they sang quite tunefully but rather weakly—the voice of one Molokan could have drowned them all out), they told us that a student eighty-four years old was enrolled at the University of California. He is moved not merely by an extraordinary love of knowledge. There is still another consideration. Long long ago, when this exceedingly old student was a youth, he received a bequest from an uncle. According to the literal meaning of the will, the beneficiary might utilize the income from the enormous capital so long as he did not graduate from the University. After that the inheritance was to pass to charity. Thus the businessman uncle wanted to kill two rabbits with one shot—give his nephew an education and placate before God his sins, which were inescapably connected with rapid enrichment. But the nephew proved to be no less a businessman than his uncle. He enrolled at the University and ever since then he has been listed as a student, enjoying the income from the capital. This outrage has been going on now for sixty-five years, and the departed businessman of an uncle still cannot move from Hades to Paradise. In a word, an amusing incident in the history of the University of California.

All of that was yesterday. But today, blown by the ocean wind, we raced down the length of the Golden State toward Los Angeles. Passing the town of Monterey, we saw near one wooden house a memorable sign: "Here lived Robert Louis Stevenson during the second half of the year 1879." We drove on a road which was not only comfortable and beautiful, but even somewhat flamboyant. The bright bungalows and the palms, their leaves gleaming as if covered with green enamel, and the sky, so clear that any expectation of the flimsiest cloudlet upon it was patently absurd—all of it seemed like flaunting to us. Only the ocean thundered and rolled like an ill-mannered kinsman waxing boisterous during a birthday celebration in a respectable family.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, "you are driving through one of the few places in the United States where people retired from business live on their incomes. America is not France, where such people are met in every city. Americans almost never stop when they accumulate some previously agreed upon sum of money. They continue to acquire and to acquire more and more money. But occasionally you find some queer fellows who suddenly decide to retire. More often than not, they are not very rich people, because a rich man can arrange a little California all his own even in his New York house. California attracts because of its cheapness and its climate. Look, look! In these little houses which we are now passing live the petty rentiers. But not only rentiers live in California. Occasionally you find here representatives of a special human breed—American liberals. Gentlemen, our radical intellectuals are good, honest people. It would be foolish to think that America is all standardized and that it consists only of dollar-chasing, only of bridge games or poker. Please remember the young gentleman with whom we recently spent an evening."

The "young gentleman" was an old friend of Adams's who came of an aristocratic family. His parents were very wealthy. He received a splendid education, and ahead of him was an easy, refined life, without care or thought, with three automobiles, golf, a beautiful and devoted wife—in fact, everything that only wealth and descent from a pioneer family, whose ancestors had disembarked from the Mayflower several centuries ago, can secure in America. But he spurned it all.

We came to him late one evening (that was in a large industrial city). He had rented an apartment which consisted of one large room with a gas fireplace, a typewriter, and a telephone, and was almost without furniture. The host and his wife, a German communist, were pale in an un-American way. Theirs was the pallor of people whose working day is not regulated and too frequently goes beyond midnight, of people who have neither the time nor the money needed for indulgence in sports, of people who eat any old way, any old place and devote themselves completely to their chosen cause.

Convinced of the injustice of the capitalist order, the young man did not limit his reading to uplifting books, he drew the necessary inferences, and carried on to the bitter end—abandoned his rich papa and joined the Communist party. Now he is a party worker.

A half-hour after we came, another guest arrived. He was the secretary of the district committee of the party. There was not enough furniture, so our host sat on the floor. Before us were two typical representatives of American communism – a worker communist and an intellectual communist.

The secretary was a young man with high cheekbones who looked like any young Moscow communist. It seemed that the only thing lacking to complete the resemblance was a cap with a long peak that hangs over like a cornice. He was a dockworker, and at the moment was leading a strike of stevedores at the port.

"We have already lost several people. They were shot. But we'll fight to the bitter end," he said. "Last night the police tried to bring strike-breakers to the ships. They began to crowd our pickets, took their revolvers out, started firing. The police flooded the place where the fighting was going on with searchlights. Many workers were threatened with arrest. Then one of our fellows broke through to the searchlight and threw a rock into its lens. The searchlight was snuffed out. In the dark the workers managed to protect their positions and not let the strike-breakers through. It is hard to carry on this strike, because we do not have trade-union unity. While the stevedores strike, the sailors work! On our coast a strike goes on, but on the Atlantic coast there is no strike. Of course, the bosses take advantage of this and send their freight to the Atlantic ports. It costs them more, but at the moment money doesn't matter to them. They've got to break us. Nevertheless, we work hard to establish trade-union unity, and we hope for success."

He suddenly became thoughtful and said:

"If we could only get hold of some kind of automobile, even as old as can be. I have a tremendous district. When I have to go some place on party business, I go out on the road and raise my thumb. A thumb is all the means that has been allotted to me for transportation. It wouldn't be bad if American communists had only one-millionth part of that Moscow gold about which Hearst writes in his papers every day."

He began to talk about the thirty dollars which are needed in order to begin the fight against the medieval exploitation of Mexicans and Filipinos on onion plantations. But he couldn't get hold of that thirty dollars. And he had to get that money.

Certain party workers live on two dollars a week. A funny figure for a country of millionaires. But what could you do about it? With their pathetic little bit they manfully began a fight with the Morgans and are succeeding. The Morgans, who have billions, in spite of their powerful press, are afraid of them and detest them.

Mrs. Adams and the wife of our host had long ago gone somewhere and only now returned with bread and sausage. While we were finishing our conversation, they were making sandwiches on a shaky little table. Here was a spectacle of the kind we know only from museum pictures which portray the life of Russian revolutionists on the eve of 1905.

"Yes, Mr. Ilf and Mr. Petrov, I see you recall those good people," continued Mr. Adams. "Americans know how to be carried away by ideals. And since in general they are business people and know how to work, they are just as efficient in the revolutionary movement, when they also attend to business and not to a lot of talk. You saw the secretary. He is a very businesslike young man. I advise you, gentlemen, to stop in Carmel. You will see there even more interesting people. In Carmel lives Lincoln Steffens. He is one of the best people in America."

The road now came close to the ocean, now drifted away from it. At times we passed through long lanes of tall palms. At other times we drove up small hills in green orchards and summer resort houses. In the small quiet town of Carmel we lunched in a restaurant on the walls of which were hung autographed photographs of famous motion-picture actors. Here was already the odour of Hollywood, although it was still about two hundred miles away.

The streets of Carmel, overgrown with greensward, descend to the very shore of the ocean. Here, as in Santa Fe and in Taos, live many famous painters and writers.

Albert Rhys Williams, the American writer and friend of John Reed, who had travelled with him through Russia during the Revolution, a large grey-haired man with a young face and good-natured squinting eyes,, met us in the yard of his little old house which he rents by the ] month. His house looked like all other American houses only in that it had a fireplace. Nothing else in it looked like the rest of them. Here was a Bohemian couch covered with a rug, many books, on a table lay pamphlets and newspapers. At once one thing struck the eye—in this house people actually read. In his workroom Williams opened a large reed basket and a trunk. They were full of manuscripts and newspaper clippings.

"Here," said Williams, "is the material for my book about the Soviet Union, which I am now finishing. I have several other baskets and trunks filled with material. I want my book to be completely exhaustive, and I want it to give the American reader a full and precise idea of how life is organized in the Soviet Union."

Williams has been several times in our country, and on one of his journeys lived a whole year in a village.

With Williams and with his wife, the scenario writer, Lucita Squier, we went to call on Lincoln Steffens. Lucita Squier wore a homespun linen Mordovian dress with cross-stitch embroidery.

"I am wearing this in remembrance of Russia," she said. We were walking along the shore of the ocean and did not tire of admiring it.

"The Black Sea is better," remarked Lucita Squier.

We praised Carmel, its houses, its trees, its tranquillity.

"I like Moscow better," remarked Lucita Squier dryly. "Don't listen to her," said Williams. "She is simply frantic. She is always thinking of Moscow. She doesn't like anything in the world except Moscow. After being there for a while she has come to prefer everything Russian. You have heard her speak! She said that the Black Sea is more beautiful than the Pacific Ocean. She is even capable of saying that the Black Sea is bigger than the Pacific Ocean, only because the Black Sea is Soviet."

"Yes," said Lucita stubbornly. "I say it and I shall continue to say it. I want to go to Moscow! We should not stay here another minute!"

Conversing thus, we walked up to the home of Lincoln Steffens, which was not visible from the street because of its thick greenery.

Steffens is a famous American writer. His autobiography in two volumes has become a classical work in America.

Heart disease would not let him get out of bed. We went into his room, where a white iron bedstead stood with its head against the window. On this bed, resting against pillows, reclined an old man in gold spectacles. A little lower than his chest, on the comforter, stood a low bench on which was a portable typewriter. Steffens was finishing an article.

Steffens's illness was incurable. But like all doomed people, even those who understand their situation, he dreamed of the future, talked about it. made plans. As a matter of fact, he had only one plan for himself– to go to Moscow, so as to see before his death the land of socialism and to die there.

"I can no longer remain here," he said quietly, turning his head to the window, as if the free and easy nature of California were choking him. "I cannot bear to hear any longer this idiotic optimistic laughter."

This was said by a man who all his life had believed in American democracy, supporting it with his talents as writer, journalist, and orator. All his life he reckoned that the social structure of the United States was ideal and might secure for the people freedom and happiness. And no matter what blows he received on the way, he remained ever true to it. He was wont to say: "The whole point is that in our administration there are not enough honest people. Our social system is good, what we need is honest people."

But now he said to us:

"I wanted to write a book for my son, in which I would tell the whole truth about myself. And on the very first page I had to ..."

Suddenly we heard curt, dismal sobs. It was Lincoln Steffens weeping. With his hands he covered his thin and nervous face, the face of a scholar.

His wife raised his head and gave him a handkerchief. But, no longer embarrassed by his tears, he continued:

"I had to disclose to my son how difficult it is to regard yourself all your life as an honest man, when as a matter of fact you have been a bribetaker. Yes, without realizing it, I had been bribed by bourgeois society. I did not understand that the fame and respect with which I was rewarded were only a bribe for the support I gave to this iniquitous organization of life."

For a long time we discussed how best to transport Steffens to the Soviet Union. He could not go by train, because his weak heart would not allow that. Could he go by boat from California by way of the Panama Canal to New York, and from there through the Mediterranean to the Black Sea coast? While we were making these plans, Steffens, exhausted by the conversation, lay in bed, his hands resting on the typewriter. Having calmed down now, in his white shirt with its sailor collar, thin, with his little beard and his thin neck, he looked like the dying Don Quixote.