Илья Ильф
Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America
8. A New York Arena
THE MEMBERS of the Dutch Treat Club meet every Tuesday in a white salon of the New York Hotel Ambassador.
The very name of the club gives a precise conception of the rights and duties of its members. Everyone pays for himself. On this powerful economic basis quite a number of journalists and writers joined together. Yet there is an exception. Guests of honour do not pay. But they are obliged to deliver an amusing speech. It does not matter what the subject is, so long as the speech is amusing and brief. If it turns out not to be funny, then at any rate it must be short, because the meeting is at lunch-time and the entire celebration lasts only one hour.
In reward for his speech the guest receives a light lunch and a large plaster-of-Paris medal of the club on which is portrayed a reveller, in a crushed top-hat, who has fallen asleep under the club’s initials.
While all applaud, the medal is hung around the neck of the guest, and all quickly depart. Tuesday is a business day. All the members of the Dutch Treat Club are business people. At the stroke of two they are already sitting in their offices and doing business. They advance culture or simply make money.
At such a gathering we met the manager of Madison Square Garden, the largest New York arena, where boxing matches of importance are held, where the very biggest meetings and the very biggest of everything take place.
On this particular Tuesday the guests were ourselves, the newly arrived Soviet authors, a famous American motion-picture actor, and the manager of Madison Square Garden whom we have just mentioned.
We prepared a speech, emphasizing chiefly not its humour but its brevity, and we attained the latter completely. The speech was translated into English and one of us, in no way embarrassed by the fact that he found himself in such a large gathering of experts of the English language, read it from a sheet of paper.
Here it is:
“Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen:
“We have come on a great journey from Moscow to see America. Besides New York we have had time to be in Washington and in Hartford. After living a month in New York we felt the pangs of love for your great and purely American city.
“Suddenly we were doused with cold water.
“’New York is not America,’ we were told by our New York friends. ‘New York is only the bridge betweenEurope and America. You are still on the bridge.’
“Then we went to Washington, District of Columbia, the capital of the United States, assuming thoughtlessly that surely this city was America. By the evening of the second day we felt with satisfaction that we were beginning to discriminate a little in matters American.
“’Washington is not America,’ we were told. ‘It is a city of government officials. If you really want to see America, you are wasting your time here.’
“We dutifully put our scratched suitcases into an automobile and went to Hartford, in the state of Connecticut, where the great American writer, Mark Twain, spent his mature years.
“Here we were again honestly warned:
“’Bear in mind that Hartford is not yet America.’
“When we began to ask about the location of America, the Hartfordites pointed vaguely to the side.
“Now we have come to you, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, and ask you to show where America really is located, because we have come here in order to learn as much as we can about it.”
The speech was a great success. The members of the Dutch Treat Club applauded it a long time. Only much later we learned that most of the members of the club did not understand a single word of this speech, because the strange Russo-English accent of the orator drowned out completely the profound thoughts concealed in it.
Mr. Chairman, however, who sat near us, had evidently caught the sense of the speech. Turning his thin and clever face to us, he struck his little gavel and, stopping thus the storm of applause, said in the ensuing silence:
“I regret very much that I myself cannot tell you at the moment where America is located. Come here again on the sixth of November, 1936, for it will be clear then what is America and where it is located.”
This was a witty and the only correct answer to our question. On November 6th was to be held the presidential election, and Americans felt that it would determine the path along which America was to proceed.
Then the tall man whom the chairman called “Colonel” was given the floor. The colonel began to bark at once, looking ironically at those forgathered here.
“My business,” he said, “consists of renting Madison Square Garden to all-comers, and anything in the world that may happen there suits me. The Communists want it for a meeting against Hitler, so I rent the hall to the Communists. The Hitlerites want a meeting against the Communists, I rent the hall to the Hitlerites. In my building the Democrats may be cursing the Republicans today, but tomorrow the Republicans contend from the same platform that Mr. Roosevelt is a Bolshevik and leads America to anarchy. My hall is for everybody. I do my business. I nevertheless do have my convictions. Not long ago the defenders of Bruno Hauptmann, who killed the Lindbergh baby, wanted to rent my hall for agitation in favour of Hauptmann. I refused to rent my hall to those people. But anybody else is welcome to come. Pay your money and take your places, no matter who you are, Bolsheviks, anarchists, reactionaries, Baptists, it’s all the same to me.”
Having roared this out. the manly colonel sat down and took to finishing his coffee.
In Madison Square Garden, in this “hall for all,” to use the colonel’s expression, we saw a feature boxing match between the former world champion, the Italian Carnera, and a German boxer, not the best but a first-rate one.
The arena of Madison Square Garden is not a circle like the usual circus arenas, but an elongated rectangle. At a very sharp incline around the rectangle rise rows of chairs. Even before the match begins the eyes of the onlooker are presented with an inspiring spectacle – he sees twenty-five thousand chairs at once, he sees twenty-five thousand seats in one theatre. In the event of a boxing match, chairs are placed also in the arena, surrounding the entire ring.
A strong white light fell on the platform of the ring. The rest of the place was in twilight. Raucous cries of vendors in white two-horned caps resounded throughout the huge building. The vendors, making their way between the rows of chairs, offered salted nuts, salted biscuits, chewing gum, and small bottles of whisky. Americans are by their nature a chewing people: they chew gum, candy, the ends of cigars; their jaws are always moving, clicking, and snapping.
Camera appeared in the next to the last match. Amid deafening greetings he walked into the ring and looked around with that sullen and apprehensive glance which is the attribute of all extremely tall and exceedingly strong men. It is the look of a man who is constantly fearful of crushing something or of mangling it.
Carnera is not known in his native Italy by his surname. There he has a nickname: “Il Gigante”. “Il Gigante” is an exceedingly rangy and long-armed person. If he were a conductor of a Moscow street-car, he would very easily collect fares from people all over the car while standing on the front platform. “Il Gigante’’ threw off a bright-coloured robe and displayed himself in all his beauty – long, bony, looking like an unfinished Gothiccathedral. His opponent was a sturdy blond German of middle height.
The signal sounded, the managers ran out of the ring, and Camera quietly began to beat up the German. And he did not so much beat him as thrash him. The peasant Camera seemed to be performing the agricultural work customary to him. His two-metre-long arms rose and fell with the regularity of flails. Most frequently they struck the air, but on those rare occasions when they fell on the German the New York public shouted: “Carnera, boo!” The inequality of strength between the opponents was altogether too evident. Camera was much taller and heavier than the German.
The audience was excited, nevertheless, and yelled as if the issue of this fight had not been predetermined. Americans make a very noisy audience. At times it seems that they come to boxing and football matches not to look on, but to yell. The roar was constant throughout the match. Whenever the fans did not like something or thought that one of the boxers was not fighting fairly, was being cowardly or dishonest, they yelled in chorus: “Boo, boo!” and the auditorium was transformed into a drove of nice bisons in soft hats. The onlookers helped the fighters with their outcries. For the three and a half rounds of the fight between Camera and the German the fans expended so much energy, made so many motions, that had this potential been properly utilized, it would have sufficed to build a six-story house with a flat sun roof and a cafeteria on the first floor.
In the third round the German finished almost blind. His eye had been badly hurt. In the middle of the fourth round he suddenly swung out his arms like a card player who was losing and walked out of the ring, refusing to continue the fight.
A frightful “Boo! boo!” filled the vast spaces of the Garden. It was not considered sporting to walk out of the ring. Boxers must be carried out of the ring; which is exactly what the audience expects for its money.
But the German was evidently so nauseated by the prospect of being knocked out in another minute or two that he decided to stop fighting.
The onlookers booed all the time that the unfortunate boxer was making his way back-stage. They were so indignant at the behaviour of the German that they did not even bother to cheer the victor. “Il Gigante” clasped his hands overhead, then put on his beautiful silken robe, befitting a courtesan, dived under the ropes of the ring, and in a dignified manner returned to the dressing-room, walking like an old work horse returning to the stable to shove its long muzzle into a bag of oats.
The last pair presented no special interest, and soon with others we were walking out. At the exit the news vendors were selling the night editions of Daily News and Daily Mirror, on the first pages of which in large letters was printed the news that Camera won over his opponent in the fourth round. Between the minute this event occurred and the moment we bought the newspaper containing the news about the match no more than ‘half an hour had elapsed.
In the nocturnal sky flamed the electric sign “Jack Dempsey”. Having finished his career in the ring, the great boxing champion opened near Madison Square Garden a bar and restaurant where sport fans gather. It would never occur to any American to blame Dempsey for turning from a sportsman into a barman. The man is making money, he is doing business. Does it make any difference how he earns his money? That money is best of which there is most!
Boxing may be liked or disliked. That is the private affair of every man. Boxing is a sport, perhaps a rough and even an unnecessary sport, but still a sport. As for the American wrestling match, that is a spectacle which is in no way sporting, however astounding it may be.
We saw such a wrestling match in the same Madison Square Garden.
According to the rules of American wrestling… As a matter of fact, why speak of rules, when the peculiarity of this combat consists precisely in that it has no rules whatever? You may do anything you like: break your opponent’s arm; shove fingers into his mouth in an effort to tear it, while at the same time the opponent tries to bite off the fingers; pull the hair; simply beat him up; tear the face with finger-nails, pull off ears; choke his throat – everything is permitted. This form of combat is called wrestling, and there are actually people who evince a genuine interest in it.
The fighters roll in the ring, pressing against each other, and lie like that for ten minutes at a stretch. They weep in anguish and anger, they snort, spit, scream, and in general carry on in a disgusting and shameless manner – like sinners in hell.
The disgust is increased when a half-hour later you begin to understand that all this is the silliest kind of sham, that it is not even a street light between two drunken hooligans. When one strong man really wants to break the arm of another he can do it at any time with a certain twist. In wrestling, however, despite all the frightful gestures, there is never any harm done to the parts of the body. But Americans, like children, believe this naive deception and are frantic with delight.
Even if wrestling were carried on seriously it would merit nothing but contempt.
Certainly, this vulgar spectacle cannot compare with the competition of the cowboys! In this same rectangular arena, sullied by wrestling, we once saw a rodeo, a competition of Western cowherds.
This time there was no ring and there were no chairs. Clean sand lay from one end to the other of the huge arena. On a stand sat musicians in cowboy hats and blew for all they were worth into their horns and fifes. The gates opened into the wooden enclosure, and out came the parade of the participants.
On fine little horses rode the representatives of the romantic states of America, cowboys and cowgirls from Texas, Arizona, Nevada. The brims of the heroic hats swayed. The girls greeted the public by raising their arms in a mannish salute. There were already several hundred riders in the arena, yet more cowboys continued to ride in.
When the gala part of the performance was over, the artistic part began.
The cowboys took their turns in riding out of the gates atop short, but wildly jumping, steers. In all probability these steers had been hurt before and were brought into the arena because they bucked with incredible persistence. The task of the rider was to stay on the back of the animal as long as possible, without catching on with his hands and while holding his hat in his right hand. From the ceiling hung a huge stop clock which the entire hall could watch. One cowboy held on to an infuriated bull for seventeen seconds, another for twenty-five. Some riders were thrown to the ground after two or three seconds. The winner managed to hang on for something like forty seconds. The cowboys had the intent, bashful faces of country lads who did not want to disgrace themselves before their guests.
Later, one after the other, the cowboys rode out on their horses, swinging a lasso wound in a circle. In front of the horse, its little tail up, a calf hopped around in an exhilarating gallop. Again the stop clock went into action. Unexpectedly the rope flew out from the hands of the cowboys. The loop hung in the air like something alive. For a second the calf lay on the ground, and the cowboy hurried to it in order as quickly as possible to bind it according to all the rules of the Texas science and to transform it into a well-tied, although a desperately bellowing, bundle.
The rodeo fans yelled and put down in their little books the seconds and fractions of seconds.
The most difficult feat was left to the end. Here the cowboys had something to work on. An angry, bucking cow was led out of the gates. She dashed over the arena with a speed one would never expect of any domesticated animal. The mounted cowboy pursued the cow, jumped on her neck at full gallop, and, seizing her by the horns, forced her to the ground. The most important and the most difficult part was to throw the cow to the ground. Many did not succeed in that. Having felled the cow, it was necessary to bind all her four legs and to milk a little milk into a little bottle, which the cowboy hurriedly pulled out of his pocket. He was allowed only one minute for all this. Having milked the cow, the cowboy triumphantly lifted the little bottle over his head and cheerily ran behind the barrier.
The brilliant exercises of the cowboys, their songs sung in a minor key, and their black guitars, made us forget the heavy thuds of boxing gloves, the dripping maws, and the tear-smeared faces of the wrestlers.
The colonel was right. In his arena one could see both the good and the bad.
9. We Purchase an Automobile and Depart
ON THE way to Sing Sing and even before that, during lunch with Mr. Adams, we began urging him to join us in a great trip across America. Since we had no real arguments to offer, we repeated monotonously one and the same refrain:
“Come, come with us! It will be very interesting.”
We coaxed him just as a young man coaxes a young girl to love him. There is no reason for it, but he wants someone to fall in love with him, so he presses his suit.
Mr. Adams did not say anything to it. He looked as coy as a young girl and tried to change the subject.
Then we increased the pressure. We even thought up a torture to which we subjected this good-natured elderly gentleman throughout an entire week.
“Remember, Mr. Adams, that you will be responsible if we come to a bad end. We are likely to get lost in that country filled with gangsters, petrol pumps, and ham and eggs. We shall get lousy right before your eyes in this New York, and that will be the end of us.”
“No, no, gentlemen!” said Mr. Adams. “No! You mustn’t press me so hard. It is most inconsiderate of you. You don’t understand that, Mr. Ilf and Mr. Petrov!”
But we persisted, pitilessly egging our new friend on to the point of wavering, and then as soon as possible we would strike this fat iron, incased in a neat grey suit, while it was hot.
Mr. Adams and his wife belonged to that sort of loving couples who understand each other from the first glance.
In Mrs. Adams’s glance could be read:
“I know that you want very much to go. You are scarcely able to contain yourself from starting on a journey with the first people you meet. Such is your nature. It means nothing to you to abandon Baby and me. You are as curious as a little piccaninny, although you are already sixty-three years old. Just think of the number of times you have crossed America by automobile and by train! You know the country as well as you know your own apartment. But if you want to take another look at it, go ahead; I am ready to do anything for you. But one thing I cannot understand: which one of you will drive the car? However, do the best you can and don’t bother about me at all!”
“No, no, Becky!” One could read the response in Mr. Adams’s glance. “It would be unfair and presumptuous to think of me so harshly. I don’t want to go anywhere at all. I merely want to help these people. Besides, I would be lost without you. You had better go with us – that would be best. You are ever so much more curious than I. Everybody knows that. Come along. Incidentally, you will drive the car.”
“And the baby?” replied Mrs. Adams’s glance.
“Yes, yes! The baby! That’s terrible! I quite forgot!”
Whenever the wordless conversation reached that point, Mr. Adams turned toward us and exclaimed:
“No, no! “It is quite impossible!”
“Why impossible?” we asked plaintively. “Everything is possible. It will be so nice, so very nice. We’ll travel, stop to see places, stay in hotels.”
“Whoever heard of anybody stopping in hotels?” Mr. Adams suddenly cried out. “We will stop in tourist houses or in camps.”
“There! You see!” we caught him up. “You know everything! Come along with us! Please come with us! We beg you! Mrs. Adams, you come with us! Come with the whole family!”
“And the baby?” cried both parents.
We answered cavalierly:
“You can put the baby in a public nursery.”
“No, no, gentlemen! Oh, no! You forgot; there are no nurseries here. You are not in Moscow!”
That was right. We were not in Moscow. From the windows of the Adams apartment could be seen the denuded trees of Central Park and from the Zoological Garden came the hoarse cries of parrots in imitation of automobile horns.
“Then leave her with your friends,” we continued.
Husband and wife became thoughtful. At this point everything was spoiled by the baby herself entering the room in a night-suit with a Mickey Mouse embroidered on the chest. She came to say good-night before going to bed. With groans the parents ran to their little daughter. They embraced her, kissed her, and each time turned to us. Now you could read the same thing in the glances of both of them:
“What? To exchange this beautiful little daughter of ours for these two foreigners? Never!”
The appearance of the baby threw us back to where we had started. We had to begin all over again. So we launched new attacks.
“What a fine baby! How old is she? Is she really only two years old? Why, she looks as if she were eight! What an amazingly independent child! You should really give her more freedom! Don’t you think that the constant care of parents retards the development of a child?”
“Yes, yes, gentlemen!” said the happy father, pressing the child to his stomach. “You are only joking!”
When the child was put to bed we talked for about five minutes of [his and that, for the sake of appearances, and then we again began to press our suit.
We proposed a number of things about the baby, but not one of them was suitable. In utter despair we suddenly said, as if remarking, idly:
“Don’t you know some respectable lady who could live with the baby during our absence?”
There was, it seemed, such a lady. We began to develop the idea, when Mr. Adams rose suddenly. The lenses of his spectacles began to gleam. He grew serious.
“Gentlemen, we need two days to decide this question.”
For two days we wandered around New York, annoying each other with questions as to what might happen in case the Adamses refused to go on the journey with us. Where will we then find our ideal creature? And we spent a long time in front of stores that sold things for the road. Scotch cloth bags with zippers, rucksacks of sailcloth, soft leather suitcases, plaids, and thermos bottles – everything reminded one of a journey and lured one to start on it.
Exactly at the appointed hour, Mr. Adams appeared in our hotel room. He was unrecognizable. He was solemn and deliberate. All the buttons of his vest were buttoned. Thus the ambassador of a neighbouring friendly power comes to call on the minister of foreign affairs and declares that the government of his excellency considers itself now in a state of war with the power the representative of which is the above-mentioned minister of foreign affairs.
“Mr. Ilf and Mr. Petrov,” said the little fat man, puffing and wiping icy sweat off his bald head, “we have decided to accept your proposal.”
We wanted to embrace him, but he wouldn’t let us, saying:
“This is too serious an occasion, gentlemen. We cannot lose any more time. You must understand it.”
In the course of those two days Mr. Adams not only made up his mind and reached a decision, but he worked out our itinerary in detail. The itinerary made our heads go around.
At first we were to cross the long and narrow state of New York throughout its length, stopping in Schenectady, the city of the electric industry. The next important stop was to be Buffalo.
“It may seem too trivial to take a look at Niagara Falls, gentlemen, but it must be seen.”
Then, along the shore of Lake Erie, we were to proceed to Detroit. There we were to examine the Ford plants. Then on to Chicago. After that the road was to take us into Kansas City. Through Oklahoma we would drive into Texas. From Texas to Santa Fe in the state of New Mexico. Here we visit the Indian territory. Beyond Albuquerque we cross the Rocky Mountains and drive into the Grand Canyon. Then Las Vegas and the famous dam on the Colorado River, Boulder Dam. Then on to California after crossing the Sierra Nevada range. Coming back from the shores of the Pacific Ocean we return along the Mexican border through El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston. Here we go along the Gulf of Mexico. We are now in the Black Belt: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. We stop in New Orleans, and across the northern corner of Florida, through Tallahassee, Savannah, and Charleston, we move toward Washington, the capital of the United States.
Now it is easy to write about it. But then… how many shouts, arguments, attempts to persuade one another! We wanted to go everywhere, but we were limited by time. The entire automobile journey had to be made in two months, not a day longer. The Adamses declared firmly that they could part from their baby for sixty days and no more.
The difficulty now was an automobile: what kind of an automobile to buy?
Although we knew beforehand that we would buy the cheapest automobile that we could find anywhere in the United States, we nevertheless decided to visit the automobile show of 1936. It was the month of November, 1935, and the show had just opened.
On the two stories of the exhibition building, as if by sleight-of-hand, were gathered all the fairy-tale constellations of the American automobile world. There were no orchestras, no palms, no refreshment stands – in a word, there were no additional attractions. The automobiles themselves were so beautiful that nothing else was needed. The chastity of the American technical style consists in this: that the essence of the thing is not spoiled with anything extraneous. An automobile is the object for which people came here, so only that was here. One was free to touch it, one could sit in it, turn its wheel, light its lamps, examine its motor.
The long bodies of expensive Packards, Cadillacs, and Rolls-Royces stood on mirrored stands. On special platforms were specially polished chassis and motors. Nickelled wheels, displaying the elasticity of the springs, were spun around, and gears were shifted to demonstrate their smooth meshing.
Each firm demonstrated its own technical trick, its one improvement, designed to clinch the enticement of the purchaser – upset his, but chiefly his wife’s, equanimity. All the automobiles displayed by the Chrysler firm were gold coloured – there are such bugs, coffee-gold in colour. These automobiles were surrounded by one huge moan. Thin pretty little American women with the blue eyes of vestal virgins were ready to commit murder for the sake of owning such a machine. Their husbands turned pale at the thought that that night they would have to remain alone with their wives, with nowhere to run to. Many, many are the conversations in New York at night after the opening of an automobile show! It goes ill with a man on the opening day of such an exhibit. He will wander for a long time around the marital couch where, cuddling like a kitten, the beloved creature sobs while he pleads:
“But, Mabel, our Plymouth has gone only twenty thousand miles. It’s an ideal car.”
But the lovely creature does not even listen to her husband. She will repeat one thing over and over:
“I want a golden Chrysler!”
And that night the marital couch will be transformed for the husband into an Indian fakir’s couch covered with spikes.
But the low powerful Cords with crystal lights, which during the day are hidden in the fenders for better streamlining, compel one to forget the golden bugs. American women walk into these machines and sit in them by the hour. But they have not the strength to walk out. Their emotions are completely disturbed. They press a button, and the lamps triumphantly creep out of the fenders. They again touch the button, and the lamps hide in their nests, and again nothing is seen on the outside, except the chaste, shining fender.
But everything dims – even the gold and the crystal – before the rare and apparently old-fashioned forms of the huge Rolls-Royces. At first you want to go past these machines. At first you are even surprised that, in the midst of these slick models, hidden lights and golden colours, stand these black simple machines. But on looking closely you discover that therein precisely lies their distinctiveness. Here is a machine for the rest of your life, the machine for exceedingly wealthy old ladies, the machine for princes. Here Mabel discovers that she will never attain complete happiness, that she will never be a princess. Her Frank earns altogether too little money in his office.
Never will this automobile be out of fashion. Never will it grow old, just as diamonds and sables never grow old. Ah, it is terrible even to sit in it! You feel like the lord protector of the seal who has lost the seal and will be instantly dismissed.
We sat a while in a Rolls-Royce, but decided not to buy it. It was too luxurious for us. It would have been of hardly any use on that trying journey which was before us. Besides, it cost many thousands of dollars.
Then we moved from automobile to automobile. We sat in a blue Buick and in a small and cheap Chevrolet. We called forth Cord lights out of their hiding places by pressing a button, we passed our hands over Plymouths, Oldsmobiles, Studebakers, Hudsons, Nashes. We even pressed the horn of a Cadillac, assuming the air that on that alone depended our decision to buy or not to buy. But after evoking a truly marvellous and mighty roar of the steppes from the nether regions of the machine, we walked away. No! We would not buy it! It was not within our means!
We visited other automobile showrooms. They were located for the most part under the open sky on vacant city lots, but all their grandeur was spoiled by a huge sign reading, “Used Automobiles”.
Here also were Studebakers, Oldsmobiles, Hudsons, and Plymouths. But what time had done to them! No repair work could hide their respectable old age.
“These machines are for very wealthy people,” Mr. Adams said suddenly. “I advise you to buy a new Ford. A used car costs little, but you never can tell how many times you will have to repair it on the road nor how much petrol and oil it consumes. No, no, gentlemen! It would be a foolish thing to buy second-hand stuff.”
Although in every one of these markets under a special shed stood an automobile decorated with the attractive placard “Today’s Bargain,” and although we were insanely intent on acquiring this bargain (the price was incredibly low and it looked simply remarkable), Mr. Adams was implacable and restrained us from a dangerous purchase.
