Ilya Ilf - Little Golden America: Two Famous Soviet Humourists Survey the United States

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Routledge Revivals

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LITTLE GOLDEN
AMERICA

LITTLE GOLDEN
AMERICA

Two famous Soviet humourists
survey the United States

by

ILYA ILF and EUGENE PETROV

First published in 1944 by Routledge

This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1944 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer

The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 44032401

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-55680-5 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-12432-2 (ebk)

LITTLE GOLDEN
AMERICA

LITTLE GOLDEN
AMERICA

Two famous Soviet humourists
survey the United States

by

ILYA ILF and EUGENE PETROV

LONDON

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LTD.

BROADWAY HOUSE, 6874 CARTER LANE, E.C.

ODNOETAZHNYA AMERIKA (One-storied America)

First published in the U.S.S.R. 1936

LITTLE GOLDEN AMERICA.First published in England May 1944

Reprinted August 1944

Reprinted March 1946

Translated from the Russian by Charles Malamuth

Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold & Sons, Ltd., Norwich

THIS BOOK IS PRODUCED IN COMPLETE
CONFORMITY WITH THE AUTHORIZED
ECONOMY STANDARDS

Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold & Sons, Ltd., Norwich

CONTENTS

PART I
FROM A TWENTY-SEVENTH-STORY WINDOW

PART II
THROUGH THE EASTERN STATES

PART III
TOWARD THE PACIFIC OCEAN

PART IV
THE GOLDEN STATE

PART V
BACK TO THE ATLANTIC

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AT NINE oclock a special train leaves Paris for Le Havre with passengers for the Normandie. This train makes no stops. Three hours after its departure it rolls into the large structure which is in the Havre maritime station. Here the passengers descend to a shut-in platform, are lifted by escalators to the upper floor of the station, walk through halls and along passageways, all completely enclosed, and finally find themselves in a large vestibule where they take their places in elevators and depart for their various decks. At last they are on the Normandie. They have not the slightest idea what it looks like, for throughout this journey they had not even caught a glimpse of its outer contours.

We, too, walked into an elevator. A lad in a red tunic with gold buttons gracefully lifted his arm and pressed a knob. The shining new elevator rose a little, stopped and suddenly moved down, paying no heed whatever to the uniformed operator who desperately continued to press the knob. After falling three floors instead of rising two, we heard the painfully familiar phraseon this occasion pronounced in impeccable French: The elevator is out of order!

We took the stairway to our cabin, a stairway covered throughout with a non-inflammable rubber carpet of bright green. The corridors and vestibules of the ship were covered with the same carpeting, which makes each footfall soft and soundless. But one does not fully appreciate the merits of rubber carpeting until the ship begins to roll in earnest. Then the carpeting seems to grip the soles. True, that does not save one from being seasick, but it does keep one from falling.

The stairway was not at all of the steamship type. It was broad, slanting, with runs and landings of dimensions generous enough for a mansion.

The cabin was likewise quite unsteamerlike. A spacious room with two ample windows, two broad wooden beds, easy-chairs, wall closets, tables, mirrorsin fact, all the blessings of a communal dwelling, even unto a telephone.

Only in a storm does the Normandie resemble a ship. But in good weather it is a large hotel, with a sweeping view of the ocean, which, having suddenly torn loose from its moorings in a modern seaside health resort, is floating away at the rate of thirty-odd knots an hour.

Down below, from the platforms of the various floors of the station people who were seeing the passengers off shouted their final good wishes and farewells. They shouted in French, in English, in Spanish. They also shouted in Russian. A strange chap in a black seafaring uniform with a silver anchor and a shield of David on one sleeve, a beret on his head and a sad little beard on his chin, was shouting something in Jewish. Later we learned that he was the ships rabbi; the General Transatlantic Company had engaged him to minister to the spiritual needs of a certain portion of its passengers. Other passengers had at their disposal Catholic and Protestant priests. Moslems, fire worshippers, and Soviet engineers travelled without benefit of clergy; on that score the General Transatlantic Company left them entirely to their own devices.

The Normandie has a spacious church with dim electric lights; it is designed primarily for Catholic services, but may be adjusted to suit other denominational needs. Thus, the altar and the icons may be covered with special shields designed for that purpose and the Catholic church converted automatically into a Protestant house of worship. As for the rabbi of the sad little beard, there being no available room for him, the childrens nursery was assigned for the performance of his rites. Whereupon the company provided him with a tallith and even with special drapery for covering temporarily the mundane representations of bunnies and kittens.

The ship left the harbour. On the pier, at the mole, everywhere were crowds of people. The Normandie was still a novelty to the citizens of Le Havre. They forgathered from all corners of the city to greet the transatlantic titan and bid it bon voyage.

But the French shore was finally lost in the smoky mists of the murky day. Toward evening we saw the lights of Southampton. For an hour and a half the Normandie stood in its roadstead there, taking on passengers from England, surrounded on three sides by the distant and mysterious lights of a strange city. Then again she put out to sea, and again began the seething tumult of unseen waves aroused by tempestuous winds.

In the stern, where we were located, everything trembled. The deck and the walls and the lights and the easy-chairs and the glasses on the washstand and the washstand itself trembled. The ships vibration was so pronounced that even objects from which one did not expect any sound made a noise. For the first time we heard the sound of towels, soap, the carpet on the floor, the paper on the table, the electric bulb, the curtain, the collar thrown on the bed. Everything in the cabin resounded, and some things even thundered. If a passenger became thoughtful for a moment and relaxed his facial muscles, his teeth at once began to chatter of their own free will. All through the night it seemed to us that someone was trying to break down the door of our cabin and someone else was constantly rapping at our window-pane and laughing ominously. We discovered no less than a hundred different sounds inside our cabin.

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