Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

In every small town are the excellent buildings of elementary and middle schools. It may even be regarded as a rule that the best building in a small town will inevitably be a school building. But after school the boys go to the motion-picture theatre, where they watch the adventures of gangsters, play gangsters in the streets, and tirelessly wield revolvers and machine-guns manufactured in incredible quantities by toy factories.

Everlasting is the automobile and petrol tedium of small cities.

Many of the rebellious writers of America have come from the small towns of the Middle West. Theirs is a revolt against sameness, against the deadly and futile quest of the dollar.

Some of the towns make heroic efforts to distinguish themselves from their brethren of the same type. Signs are hung at the entrance to the town, quite, let us say, like signs over the entrance to a store, so that the customer may know what is being sold there.

"Redwood City!"

And under it in verse is written: " Climate best by government test!" Here they trade in climate.

The climate may be the best, but the life is the same as in the cities that have no splendid climate.

Main Street. In large show windows stand automobiles wrapped, for the occasion of the approaching New Year, in cellophane and tied with coloured ribbons. Behind somewhat smaller windows learned druggists squeeze the juice out of oranges, or fry eggs with bacon, and through the heart of the city, not on a mound or over a bridge, but right through the main street, a long freight train passes at full-speed. The engine bell swings and rings out sonorously.

Such is the small town, be it Paris or Moscow or Cairo or one of the innumerable American Springfields.

12 A Big Little Town

AN AUTOMOBILE journey across America is like a journey across an ocean, monotonous and magnificent. Whenever you go out on deck, in the morning or in the evening, in a storm or a calm, on Monday or on Thursday, you will always find water, of which there is no end. Whenever you look out the window of an automobile there will always be an excellent smooth road, with petrol stations, tourist houses, and billboards on the sides. You saw all this yesterday and the day before, and you know that you will see the very same thing tomorrow and the day after. And the dinner in the state of Ohio will be the same as yesterday's when you passed through the state of New York—quite as on a steamer, where the change of latitude and longitude introduces no changes in the menu of your dinner, or in the disposition of the passengers' day. It is in this consistent sameness that the colossal dimensions and the incalculable wealth of the United States are expressed. Before saying about Eastern America that this is a mountainous or a desert or a forest land, one wants to say the main thing, the most important thing, about it—it is the land of automobiles and electricity.

The journey was scarcely begun when we managed to violate the principal point of our daily itinerary as worked out by Mr. Adams.

"Gentlemen!" he had said before our departure. "Travel on American roads is a serious and dangerous thing."

"But American roads are the best in the world," we countered.

"That is precisely why they are the most dangerous. No, no, don't contradict me! You simply do not want to understand! The better the roads, the greater the speed with which the automobiles travel over them. No, no, no, gentlemen! This is very, very dangerous! We must agree definitely that with the approach of evening we retire for the night, and that's tire end of it! Finished!"

That is exactly how we agreed to behave.

But now an evening found us on the road, and we not only did not stop as Mr. Adams demanded, but put on the lights and continued to fly across the long state of New York.

We were approaching the world centre of the electrical industry, the town of Schenectady.

It is frightful to race at night over an American highway. Darkness to the right and to the left. But the face is struck by the lightning flashes of automobile headlights coming at you. They fly past, one after the other, like small hurricanes of light, with a curt and irate feline spit. The speed is the same as in the daytime, but it seems to have doubled. In front, on a long incline, stretches the mobile prospect of display lights, which seem to put out of sight the red lights of the automobiles immediately in front of us. Through the rear window of the machine constantly penetrates the impatient light of the vehicles that are catching up with us. It is impossible to stop or to decrease speed. You must race ahead, ever ahead. The measured, blinding spurts of light cause a man to begin yawning. The indifference of sleep possesses him. It is no longer comprehensible whither you are riding or what for, and only somewhere in the nethermost depth of the brain persists the frightful thought: any minute now some gay and drunken idiot with an optimistic grin will cut into our machine, and there will be an accident, a catastrophe.

Mr. Adams was restless in his seat beside his wife, who with true American self-assurance entered into the mad tempo of this nocturnal race.

"Why, Becky, Becky!" he muttered in desperation. "What are you doing? It's impossible!"

He turned to us. His spectacles flared with alarm.

"Gentlemen!" he pronounced in the voice of a prophet. "You do not understand the meaning of an automobile catastrophe in America!"

Finally he managed to persuade Mrs. Adams to decrease her speed considerably and to deny herself the pleasure of outracing trucks. He accustomed us to the monastic routine of genuine automobile travellers, whose aim is to study the country and not to lay down their bones in a neatly dug trench beside the road.

Only a good deal later, toward the end of the journey, did we begin to appreciate the value of his advice. During its one and a half year's participation in the World War America lost fifty thousand killed, while during the past year and a half fifty-six thousand of America's peaceful inhabitants perished as a consequence of automobile catastrophes. And there is no power in America that can prevent this mass murder.

We were still about twenty miles from Schenectady, but the city was already demonstrating its electrical might. Street lamps appeared on the highway. Elongated, like melons, they gave off a strong, yet at the same time not a blinding, yellow light. One could see it gathering in those lamps—that which was not a light but an amazing luminous thing.

The city came upon us unnoticeably. That is a peculiarity of American cities when you approach them by automobile. The road is the same, only there are presently more bill-boards and petrol stations.

One American town hung before the entrance to its main street the placard:

THE BIGGEST SMALL TOWN IN THE UNITED STATES

This description—the biggest small town—splendidly suits Schenectady, and, as a matter of fact, also the majority of American towns that have risen around large factories, grain elevators, or oil wells. It is the same as the other small towns, with its business centre and residential part, with its Broadway or Main Street, but only bigger in length and

width. As a matter of fact, it is a large city. It has much asphalt, brick, and many electric lights, probably more than Rome, and certainly it is bound to have more electric refrigerators than Rome, and more washing machines, vacuum cleaners, baths, and automobiles. But this city is exceedingly small spiritually, and in that regard it could very well dispose of itself in one of our little lanes.

In this city where, with amazing skill, are manufactured the smallest and the largest electrical machines that have ever existed in the world, from an egg-beater to electric generators for the Boulder Dam Hydroelectric Station on the Colorado River, the following incident happened:

A certain engineer fell in love with the wife of another engineer. It ended with her divorcing her husband and marrying the man she loved. The entire big small town knew that this was an ideally pure romance, that the wife had not been unfaithful to her husband, that she patiently waited for the divorce. The American god himself, as demanding as a new district attorney, could not have found any fault. The newly-weds began to lead a new life, happy in the thought that their tribulations were over. As a matter of fact,, their tribulations were only beginning. People stopped going to their home, people ceased to invite them out. Everybody turned away from them. It was a real boycott, the more devastating because it happened in a big small town, where the principal recreation consists of calling and receiving callers for a game of bridge or poker. Essentially, all these people who drove the young couple out of their midst were in their heart of hearts quite indifferent to the problem of who lives with whom, but—a decent American must not get divorced. That is indecent. All this led to the driving out of town of the man who permitted himself to fall in love with a woman and to marry her. It was a good thing that at that time there was no depression and he could easily find another job.

The society of a town which grew up around a large industrial enterprise and is entirely connected with its interests, or rather with the interests of the bosses of the enterprise, is invested with a terrible power. Officially a man is never dismissed because of his convictions. In America one is free to profess any views, any beliefs. He is a free citizen. However, let him try not to go to church or let him try to praise communism, and something will happen whereby he will stop working in the big little town. He himself will not even notice how it happened. The people who will get rid of him themselves do not believe in God, but they go to church. It is indecent to refrain from going to church. As for communism, that is something for dirty Mexicans, Slavs, and Negroes. It is no business for Americans.

In Schenectady we stopped at a hotel that provided three kinds of. Water—hot, cold, and iced—and went for a walk through the city. It was only about ten o'clock in the evening, yet there were almost no pedestrians. Against the kerbs stood dark automobiles. At the left of the hotel was a deserted field overgrown with grass. It was quite dark there. Beyond the field, on the roof of a six-story building, a sign lit up and went outslowly—G.E.—General Electric Company. It was like the monogram of an emperor. But never did emperors have such might at their disposal as these electrical gentlemen who have conquered Asia, Africa, who have firmly implanted their trade-mark over the Old and the New World, for everything in the world which is in any way connected with electricity is in the end connected with General Electric.

Beyond the hotel on the principal thoroughfare wavered strips of light. There a feverish automobile life was on. But here was an excellent concrete road running around the field, which was dark and deserted. There was not even a sidewalk here. It seemed that the builders of the road thought it improbable that there could be found people in the world who would approach the office of the General Electric on foot instead of driving up in an automobile.

Opposite the office was a glass booth on wheels attached to an ancient trucklike automobile. In it sat an elderly, moustached man. He was selling popcorn, a roasted corn which bursts open in the form of white boutonnieres. On the counter glowed a gasoline flare with three bright wicks. We tried to guess what popcorn was made of.

"This is corn," the vendor said unexpectedly in Ukrainian Russian. "Can't you see? It's ordinary corn. But where are you from that you speak Russian?" "From Moscow." "No fooling?" "No."

The popcorn vendor became quite excited and walked out of his booth. "Well, now, let's see—are you here as delegates from the Soviet government," he asked, "or did you come here to work, to perfect yourselves?"

We explained that we were merely travelling.

"I see, I see. Just taking a look at how things are going in our United States?"

We stood a long time at the glass booth, eating popcorn and listening to the vendor's story, which was full of English words.

This man had come to the United States some thirty years ago from a small village in the government of Volhynia. Now this little village is in Polish territory. At first he worked in mines, digging coal. Then he was a labourer on a farm. Then workers were being hired for the locomotive works in Schenectady, so he went to work in the locomotive works.

"That's how my life passed, like one day," he said sadly. But now for six years he had been without work. He sold everything he had. He was evicted from his home.

"I have a Pole as my manager. We sell popcorn together."

"Do you earn much?"

"Why, no, hardly enough for dinner. I'm starving. My clothes—you can see for yourself what they're like. I haven't anything to wear for going out into the street."

"Why don't you go back to Volhynia?"

"It is even worse there. People write it's very bad. But tell me how is it with you, in Russia? People say different things about you. I simply don't know whom to believe and whom to disbelieve."

We found out that this man who had left Russia in the dim past attentively follows everything that is said and written in Schenectady about his former homeland.

"Various lecturers come here," he said, "and speak at the high school. Some are for the Soviet government, others are against it. And whoever speaks for the Soviet government, they write bad things about him, very bad. "For example, Colonel Cooper spoke well about the Soviet government, so they wrote about him that he sold out. Got two million for it. A millionaire farmer returned and praised the Soviet state farms. It was said that they built a special Soviet state farm for him. Not long ago a woman school teacher from Schenectady went to Leningrad, lived there, and then came back and praised Russia. Even about her they said that she left a boy friend there, that she loves him, and that is why she doesn't want to say anything against the Soviet government." "But what do you think yourself? "

"What difference does it make what I think—would anybody ask me? I only know one thing—I'm going to the dogs here in Schenectady."

He looked at the slowly glowing initials of the electric rulers of the world and added:

"They have built machines. Everything is made with machines. The working man hasn't a chance to live."

"What do you think—what should be done so that the working man may live an easier life? "

"Break up and destroy all machines!" replied the vendor of popcorn firmly and with conviction.

More than once in America we heard talk of destroying machines. This may seem incredible, but in a land where the building of machines has reached the point of virtuosity, where the national genius has expressed itself in the invention and production of machines which replace completely and improve many times the labour of man – it is precisely in this country that you hear talk that would seem insane even in a madhouse.

Looking at this vendor, we involuntarily remembered a New York cafeteria on Lexington Avenue where we used to go for lunch every day. There at the entrance used to stand a pleasant girl in an orange calico apron, marcelled and rouged (she undoubtedly had to be up at six in the morning in order to have time to arrange her hair), who distributed punch tickets. Six days later, in the very same place, we saw a metal machine doing the work of the girl automatically—and at the same time it gave off pleasant chimes, which, of course, one could not very well expect from the girl We remembered also the story we heard in New York of a certain Negro who worked on a wharf as a controller, counting bales of cotton. The work suggested to him the idea of inventing a machine that would count the bales. He invented such a machine. His boss took advantage of this invention gladly, but dismissed the Negro, who henceforth was jobless.

The next day we visited the factories of the General Electric. We are not specialists; therefore, we cannot describe the factories as they deserve to be described. We don't want to give the reader an artistic ornament instead of the real thing. We ourselves would read with pleasure a description of these factories made by a Soviet engineer. We did, however, carry away from there an impression of high technical wisdom and organization.

In the laboratories we saw several of the best physicists in the world, who sat at their work with their coats off. They are working for the General Electric Company. The company doesn't give them very much money—not more than twenty thousand dollars a year. Such salaries are received only by the most prominent scientists. There are few of these people. But there are no limits to the means necessary for experiment and investigation. If a million is needed, they'll give a million. That is why the company has managed to get the best physicists in the world. No university can give them such opportunities for research as they receive here in a factory laboratory.

But then, everything that these idealists invent remains the property of the firm. The scientists advance science. The firm makes money.

At a luncheon in a cosy and beautiful engineers' club, several of the engineers, to our great surprise, expressed thoughts that reminded us very much of what the unemployed vendor of popcorn had been saying. Naturally they were not expressed in such primitive form, but the essence remained the same.

"Too many machines! Too much technique! The machines are responsible for the difficulties that confront the country."

This was said by people who themselves produce all kinds of remarkable machines. Perhaps they were already foreseeing the moment when the machine will deprive of work not only workers but even themselves, the engineers.

Toward the end of the luncheon we were introduced to a thin and tall grey-haired gentleman on whose cheeks played a healthy tomato-coloured flush. He proved to be an old friend of Mr. Adams's. Little fat Adams and his friend whacked each other's shoulders for a long time, as if they wanted to beat the dust out of each other's coats.

"Gentlemen," the beaming Mr. Adams told us, "I present to you Mr. Ripley. You can get a lot of good out of this man if you want to understand the meaning of American electrical industry. But, but! You must ask Mr. Ripley to show you his electric house."

We asked.

"Very well," said Mr. Ripley. "I will show you my electric house."

And Mr, Ripley asked us to follow him.

13 Mr. Ripley's Electric House

MR. RIPLEY led us to the entrance of his little house and asked us to press the button of an electric bell.

Instead of the usual bell we heard melodic sounds as if issuing from a music-box'. The door opened by itself, and we found ourselves in the anteroom.

Mr. Ripley walked up to a box hanging on the wall, opened a small door with an accustomed gesture, and showed us an electric machine.

"Five types of electric bells," he said, with a smile. "If a guest rings at the door, you hear the melody that you have just heard. If you press the button in order to call for a servant from the room, you hear an aria from Carmen."

Mr. Ripley pressed a button and the apparatus actually played "Love like a bird, but unearthly ..."

"The bell for breakfast is the Yale University March, and the bell for dinner is an English Christmas carol. There is also an alarm signal. Altogether there are five types of electric bells. It's a pity that our firm has not yet invented a signal which could tell what kind of guest was ringing—pleasant or unpleasant," said the master of the house.

Having made this joke, Mr. Ripley laughed.

"But this is nothing—merely an electrical curiosity. Now I will ask you to come into my office."

Mr. Ripley represented a widely scattered type in America, the pink-cheeked and grey-haired business man. This type is made up of Americans between forty and fifty years old, prospering on good incomes, a good appetite, and a tremendous reserve of optimism. Having at the age of forty become pink-cheeked and grey-haired, the gentleman remains so to the end of his days, and after that it is no longer possible to say how old he is, whether fifty or sixty-eight. Arriving in his office, Mr. Ripley sat down at once in an easy-chair between his writing-table and a shelf of books, and, placing his feet on a chair, lit a cigarette.

"This is how I rest after work," he remarked, exhaling the smoke through his mouth.

He puffed hastily, without inhaling, intent on blowing out as much smoke as possible.

"It is not so harmful to smoke," he informed us, "as it is to breathe in the smoke which has gathered in a room, isn't that so? Most harmful of all is bad air."

Here we noticed that the smoke did not spread through the room and did not gather as usual, but before our eyes it drifted in the direction of the bookshelf and disappeared among the books. Having noted the effect produced by his actions, Mr. Ripley began to smoke harder than ever. In the most miraculous way the smoke crept to the bookshelf, momentarily surrounded the edges of the books, and immediately disappeared. Not even the smell of tobacco remained in the room.

"Behind the books is hidden an electrical ventilation system," Mr. Ripley explained.

He walked to a round glass mechanism containing several arrows and said:

"The electrical instrument for regulating the temperature of the room. You like to have it cool at night—let's say, about fifty-three degrees. And from seven o'clock in the morning you want it to be about sixty-five, or anything else you may desire. You turn the arrow like that, and this arrow like this, and you may calmly go to sleep. The instrument will carry out your desire. It will be warm here when it is cold in the street, and cool here when it is hot in the street. It will be done automatically. Everything else in this office is a trifle. This lamp shade throws a comfortable light at the writing-desk. If you turn it, the lamp will illuminate the ceiling, which will reflect the light and spread it over the entire room. Now the room is softly lighted, while the source of light is hidden and does not cut the eyes."

Then Mr. Ripley went into the dining-room. Here were various electrical instruments which were well made, although they did not astound us with their novelty: a coffee-pot, a toaster, a tea-kettle with a whistle, and a frying-pan for cooking America's national dish, bacon or ham and eggs. All these were the latest models. On the buffet, apparently for contrast, was an old spirit lamp. Americans like to demonstrate graphically the history of technique. Ford, side by side with his modern factory, has a museum where are exhibited old automobiles and engines. In the yard of the factory of General Electric stands one of the first electrical machines as a kind of monument; and in the cable shop, beside a lathe from which uninterruptedly crawls the latest model of cable that is automatically covered with a silvery lead casing, is exhibited Edison's first cable encased in a clumsy cast-iron pipe.

But Mr. Ripley delivered the main blow to his visitors in the kitchen. Here stood an electric stove of amazingly clear creamy whiteness.

"In the lower part of the stove is a drawer for dishes," said Mr. Ripley. "Here the plates are always warm and it is not necessary to heat them specially before dinner. You want to cook dinner, soup, and roast. You prepare the soup meat and the vegetables, put them in the pot, add water, and put it on top of the stove. Then you prepare the meat for the roast and put it in the oven. Then you go up to a special apparatus on the right side of the stove and move one arrow to 'soup' and the other to 'roast.' After that you can calmly go to work. The dinner will not be spoiled, even if you do not return until evening. As soon as it is ready, the heating automatically decreases. Only a low temperature will be kept up, so that the dinner should not be cold by the time of your arrival. There is never any soot in my kitchen, because there is an electric draught right over the stove."

Mr. Ripley quickly took a piece of paper out of his pocket and lit it. The smoke and the soot disappeared immediately.

"But one thing is bad! After all the cooking there are many bones, potato peelings, and other garbage."

Mr. Ripley's face expressed suffering, but a second later it was lighted up with an optimistic smile. He walked up to a square metallic drum placed beside the stove and raised its lid.

"Here you throw all the refuse and garbage and, after closing the lid, turn on the electricity. In a few minutes the drum will be empty and clean. The refuse is ground and carried away through the drains."

Mr. Ripley quickly seized a Sunday newspaper, which weighed five pounds, crumpled it with difficulty, threw it into the drum. We heard a brief clatter, and the pink-cheeked gentleman lifted the lid with triumph. The drum was empty.

In the course of ten minutes Mr. Ripley, as deftly as a juggler, solved with the aid of electricity two more great kitchen problems—the preservation of supplies and the washing of dishes.

He showed us an electric refrigerator, which not only needed no ice but, on the contrary, prepared it in a special little white bath-tub, which looked like a photographer's, in the shape of neat transparent little cubes. In this refrigerator were compartments for meat, milk, fish, eggs, and fruit. Then the lid of another drum was taken off. It had a number of various shelves, shelvelets, and hooks.

"Here you place the soiled dishes, spoons, plates, pots. Then you close the lid and turn on the electric current. From all sides streams of hot water beat against the dishes, and a few minutes later they are clean. Now it is necessary to dry them. Oh, what a job that is and how unpleasant to wipe dishes! Isn't that true? But no! After washing, the supply of water automatically stops and in its place dry air pours out of special jets. A few more minutes—and your dishes, gentlemen, are clean and dry."

Mr. Ripley quickly showed us an electric machine for beating eggs, and then asked us to go upstairs to the bedroom. There he quickly took off his coat and lay down on the bed.

"Imagine that I am asleep."

Without any effort we painted in our imagination the restful picture entitled, "Papa Sleeps."

"But now it is morning. It is time to rise. Oh, oh, oh!" He rose and yawned quite naturally.

"Pay attention to this lamp. I turn on the electricity, and while I, stretching and yawning, take off my pyjamas, the lamp shines on my body. But this is no ordinary lamp. It is an artificial sun, which gives a normal tan. There are ten minutes at my disposal. I rise from my bed and walk up to this gymnastic apparatus. Here I turn on another quartz lamp and, continuing to be tanned while lying in the sun, I begin my gymnastics. People don't like to do gymnastics in the morning. Our firm took that into consideration. Therefore, you don't have to make any movements. You only put these belts around you and turn on the electricity. The apparatus massages you in the most conscientious manner. However, according to the physicians, it is harmful to do this for more than five minutes. But man, gentlemen, is far from being a perfect instrument. He might forget to look at his watch and to turn off the electricity. The apparatus will not let him forget. It will stop its activity of its own volition, and it will do so precisely in five minutes."

We had more than once met with this type of phenomenon in American technique. It is called "foolproof"—protection from the fool. High technique distrusts man, has no faith in his resourcefulness. Wherever possible it tries to protect itself from errors native to a living creature. The term which was invented to describe it is cruel, ruthless—foolproof —protection from the fool! At the construction of the largest hydroelectric station in the world, Boulder Dam, we saw a crane which lowered wagon-loads of materials into a deep ravine. It is easy to imagine all the complexity and danger of such an operation. It is sufficient merely to confuse the electric buttons that regulate this apparatus to cause a catastrophe. But there can be no mistake. In the steering booth where the mechanic sits there is only one button. The machine does everything on its own. It will never come to work in a state of inebriety. It is always composed, and its resourcefulness is beyond all praise.

Mr. Ripley continued to show us more and more new electric wonders of his little house. Here were an electric razor and the latest model vacuum cleaner and a washing machine and a special ironing press, which has taken the place of the electric iron, that anachronism of the twentieth century. When from under a smoothly polished table he pulled an electric sewing machine, we were already worn out. If at that moment Mr. Ripley would have led us into the yard and, turning to the house, had said: "Stand, little house, with your back to New York, with your front facing me," and the little house, like the little hut on hen's legs, would have fulfilled this request with the aid of electricity, we would not have been much surprised.

It is time to tell who this Mr. Ripley is. He is in charge of the publicity department of the General Electric Company. Translated into Russian, publicity means advertising, yet this is too simple an explanation. Publicity is a much broader concept. In American life it plays a role perhaps no less important than that of technique itself.

We have come to associate with American publicity the vociferousness of barkers, countless placards, premiums, gleaming electric signs, and so forth. There is, of course, that kind of advertising in America. However, this method of uninterruptedly stunning the consumer is used only by manufacturers of cigarettes, chewing gum, alcohol, or that cooling drink, Coca-Cola.