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

THE PARABLE OF THE SINNER


Having heard the dying Claudia Ivanovna's confession, Father Theodore
Vostrikov, priest of the Church of St. Frol and St. Laurence, left
Vorobyaninov's house in a complete daze and the whole way home kept looking
round him distractedly and smiling to himself in confusion. His bewilderment
became so great in the end that he was almost knocked down by the
district-executive-committee motor-car, Gos. No. 1. Struggling out of the
cloud of purple smoke issuing from the infernal machine, Father Vostrikov
reached the stage of complete distraction, and, despite his venerable rank
and middle age, finished the journey at a frivolous half-gallop.
His wife, Catherine, was laying the table for supper. On the days when
there was no evening service to conduct, Father Theodore liked to have his
supper early. This time, however, to his wife's surprise, the holy father,
having taken off his hat and warm padded cassock, skipped past into the
bedroom, locked himself in and began chanting the prayer "It Is Meet" in a
tuneless voice.
His wife sat down on a chair and whispered in alarm:
"He's up to something again."
Father Theodore's tempestuous soul knew no rest, nor had ever known it.
Neither at the time when he was Theo, a pupil of the Russian Orthodox Church
school, nor when he was Theodore Ivanych, a bewhiskered student at the
college. Having left the college and studied law at the university for three
years in 1915 Vostrikov became afraid of the possibility of mobilization and
returned to the Church. He was first anointed a deacon, then ordained a
priest and appointed to the regional centre of N. But the whole time, at
every stage of his clerical and secular career, Father Theodore never lost
interest in worldly possessions.
He cherished the dream of possessing his own candle factory. Tormented
by the vision of thick ropes of wax winding on to the factory drums, Father
Theodore devised various schemes that would bring in enough basic capital to
buy a little factory in Samara which he had had his eye on for some time.
Ideas occurred to Father Theodore unexpectedly, and when they did he
used to get down to work on the spot. He once started making a marble-like
washing-soap; he made pounds and pounds of it, but despite an enormous fat
content, the soap would not lather, and it cost twice as much as the Hammer
and Plough brand, to boot. For a long time after it remained in the liquid
state gradually decomposing on the porch of the house, and whenever his
wife, Catherine, passed it, she would wipe away a tear. The soap was
eventually thrown into the cesspool.
Reading in a farming magazine that rabbit meat was as tender as
chicken, that rabbits were highly prolific, and that a keen farmer could
make a mint of money breeding them, Father Theodore immediately acquired
half a dozen stud rabbits, and two months later, Nerka the dog, terrified by
the incredible number of long-eared creatures filling the yard and house,
fled to an unknown destination. However, the wretchedly provincial citizens
of the town of N. proved extraordinarily conservative and, with unusual