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

so much in love with the secretary of the communal-service workers' local
committee that she found difficulty in collecting their subscriptions.
Matters of life and death did not worry Ippolit Matveyevich
Vorobyaninov, although by the nature of his work he dealt with them from
nine till five every day, with a half-hour break for lunch.
Each morning, having drunk his ration of hot milk brought to him by
Claudia Ivanovna in a streaky frosted-glass tumbler, he left the dingy
little house and went outside into the vast street bathed in weird spring
sunlight; it was called Comrade Gubernsky Street. It was the nicest kind of
street you can find in regional centres. On the left you could see the
coffins of the Nymph Funeral Home glittering with silver through undulating
green-glass panes. On the right, the dusty, plain oak coffins of Bezenchuk,
the undertaker, reclined sadly behind small windows from which the putty was
peeling off. Further up, "Master Barber Pierre and Constantine" promised
customers a "manicure" and "home curlings". Still further on was a hotel
with a hairdresser's, and beyond it a large open space in which a
straw-coloured calf stood tenderly licking the rusty sign propped up against
a solitary gateway. The sign read: Do-Us-the-Honour Funeral Home.
Although there were many funeral homes, their clientele was not
wealthy. The Do-Us-the-Honour had gone broke three years before Ippolit
Matveyevich settled in the town of N., while Bezenchuk drank like a fish and
had once tried to pawn his best sample coffin.
People rarely died in the town of N. Ippolit Matveyevich knew this
better than anyone because he worked in the registry office, where he was in
charge of the registration of deaths and marriages.
The desk at which Ippolit Matveyevich worked resembled an ancient
gravestone. The left-hand corner had been eaten away by rats. Its wobbly
legs quivered under the weight of bulging tobacco-coloured files of notes,
which could provide any required information on the origins of the town
inhabitants and the family trees that had grown up in the barren regional
soil.
On Friday, April 15, 1927, Ippolit Matveyevich woke up as usual at half
past seven and immediately slipped on to his nose an old-fashioned pince-nez
with a gold nosepiece. He did not wear glasses. At one time, deciding that
it was not hygienic to wear pince-nez, he went to the optician and bought
himself a pair of frameless spectacles with gold-plated sidepieces. He liked
the spectacles from the very first, but his wife (this was shortly before
she died) found that they made him look the spitting image of Milyukov, and
he gave them to the man who cleaned the yard. Although he was not
shortsighted, the fellow grew accustomed to the glasses and enjoyed wearing
them.
"Bonjour!" sang Ippolit Matveyevich to himself as he lowered his legs
from the bed. "Bonjour" showed that he had woken up in a. good humour. If he
said "Guten Morgen" on awakening, it usually meant that his liver was
playing tricks, that it was no joke being fifty-two, and that the weather
was damp at the time.
Ippolit Matveyevich thrust his legs into pre-revolutionary trousers,
tied the ribbons around his ankles, and pulled on short, soft-leather boots
with narrow, square toes. Five minutes later he was neatly arrayed in a
yellow waistcoat decorated with small silver stars and a lustrous silk