"Ilf and Petrov. The Twelve Chairs" - читать интересную книгу автора

Ippolit Matveyevich jumped up and, taking a close look at Claudia
Ivanovna's stony face lit by the paraffin lamp, saw she was not raving.
"Your jewels!" he cried, startled at the loudness of his own voice. "In
a chair? Who induced you to do that? Why didn't you give them to me?"
"Why should I have given them to you when you squandered away my
daughter's estate?" said the old woman quietly and viciously. Ippolit
Matveyevich sat down and immediately stood up again.
His heart was noisily sending the blood coursing around his body. He
began to hear a ringing in his ears.
"But you took them out again, didn't you? They're here, aren't they?"
The old woman shook her head.
"I didn't have time. You remember how quickly and unexpectedly we had
to flee. They were left in the chair . .. the one between the terracotta
lamp and the fireplace."
"But that was madness! You're just like your daughter," shouted Ippolit
Matveyevich loudly.
And no longer concerned for the fact that he was at the bedside of a
dying woman, he pushed back his chair with a crash and began prancing about
the room.
"I suppose you realize what may have happened to the chairs? Or do you
think they're still there in the drawing-room in my house, quietly waiting
for you to come and get your jewellery? " The old woman did not answer.
The registry clerk's wrath was so great that the pince-nez fell of his
nose and landed on the floor with a tinkle, the gold nose-piece glittering
as it passed his knees.
"What? Seventy thousand roubles' worth of jewellery hidden in a chair!
Heaven knows who may sit on that chair!"
At this point Claudia Ivanovna gave a sob and leaned forward with her
whole body towards the edge of the bed. Her hand described a semi-circle and
reached out to grasp Ippolit Matveyevich, but then fell back on to the
violet down quilt. Squeaking with fright, Ippolit Matveyevich ran to fetch
his neighbour. "I think she's dying," he cried.
The agronomist crossed herself in a businesslike way and, without
hiding her curiosity, hurried into Ippolit Matveyevich's house, accompanied
by her bearded husband, also an agronomist. In distraction Vorobyaninov
wandered into the municipal park.
While the two agronomists and their servants tidied up the deceased
woman's room, Ippolit Matveyevich roamed around the park, bumping into
benches and mistaking for bushes the young couples numb with early spring
love.
The strangest things were going on in Ippolit Matveyevich's head. He
could hear the sound of gypsy choirs and orchestras composed of big-breasted
women playing the tango over and over again; he imagined the Moscow winter
and a long-bodied black trotter that snorted contemptuously at the
passers-by. He imagined many different things: a pair of deliriously
expensive orange-coloured panties, slavish devotion, and a possible trip to
Cannes. Ippolit Matveyevich began walking more slowly and suddenly stumbled
over the form of Bezenchuk the undertaker. The latter was asleep, lying in
the middle of the path in his fur coat. The jolt woke him up. He sneezed and
stood up briskly.