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

The top row was composed of four drawings with meaningful and consolatory
captions in Church Slavonic: Shem saith a prayer, Ham soweth wheat, Japheth
enjoyeth power, Death overtaketh all. The figure of Death carried a scythe
and a winged hour-glass and looked as if made of artificial limbs and
orthopaedic appliances; he was standing on deserted hilly ground with his
legs wide apart, and his general appearance made it clear that the fiasco
with the rabbits was a mere trifle.
At this moment Father Theodore preferred "Japheth enjoyeth power". The
drawing showed a fat, opulent man with a beard sitting on a throne in a
small room.
Father Theodore smiled and, looking closely at himself in the mirror,
began snipping at his fine beard. The scissors clicked, the hairs fell to
the floor, and five minutes later Father Theodore knew he was absolutely no
good at beard-clipping. His beard was all askew; it looked unbecoming and
even suspicious.
Fiddling about for a while longer, Father Theodore became highly
irritated, called his wife, and, handing her the scissors, said peevishly:
"You can help me, Mother. I can't do anything with these rotten hairs."
His wife threw up her hands in astonishment.
"What have you done to yourself?" she finally managed to say.
"I haven't done anything. I'm trimming my beard. It seems to have gone
askew just here. . . ."
"Heavens!" said his wife, attacking his curls. "Surely you're not
joining the Renovators, Theo dear?"
Father Theodore was delighted that the conversation had taken this
turn.
"And why shouldn't I join the Renovators, Mother? They're human-beings,
aren't they?"
"Of course they're human-beings," conceded his wife venomously, "but
they go to the cinema and pay alimony."
"Well, then, I'll go to the cinema as well."
"Go on then!"
•Twill!"
"You'll get tired of it. Just look at yourself in the mirror."
And indeed, a lively black-eyed countenance with a short, odd-looking
beard and an absurdly long moustache peered out of the mirror at Father
Theodore. They trimmed down the moustache to the right proportions.
What happened next amazed Mother still more. Father Theodore declared
that he had to go off on a business trip that very evening, and asked his
wife to go round to her brother, the baker, and borrow his fur-collared coat
and duck-billed cap for a week.
"I won't go," said his wife and began weeping.
Father Theodore walked up and down the room for half an hour,
frightening his wife by the change in his expression and telling her all
sorts of rubbish. Mother could understand only one thing-for no apparent
reason Father Theodore had cut his hair, intended to go off somewhere in a
ridiculous cap, and was leaving her for good.
"I'm not leaving you," he kept saying. "I'm not. I'll be back in a
week. A man can have a job to do, after all. Can he or can't he?"
"No, he can't," said his wife.