by Lazar Lagin
When Mr. Moneybags noticed that he was being watched he slowed down and continued on nonchalantly, as if he were in no hurry at all, as if he were merely strolling along to get away from the city noises. When he came up close, his red face contorted into a sickeningly sweet smile and he said:
“Oh, my goodness! How pleasant and unexpected meetings!”
As he approaches our friends to shake their hands enthusiastically, we shall explain why he has again appeared in our story.
It so happened that Mrs. Moneybags was in a black temper that day, and that is why she tossed the ring out of the window so hastily. After she had tossed it out, she remained standing at the window to calm her nerves. It was then that she noticed with interest an old man picking the ring up from the gutter and dashing off as fast as he could.
“Did you see that?” she said to her crestfallen husband. “What a funny old man! He grabbed up that cheap ring as if it had an emerald in it and scampered off.”
“Oh, that was a very bothersome old man!” her husband answered in a more lively tone. “He came up to me back in the second-hand shop and hung on to me right to our doorstep, and just imagine, my dear, he kept falling to his knees before me and shouting, ‘I am your slave, because you have Sulayman’s ring!’ and I said, ‘Sir, you are greatly mistaken. I have just bought this ring and it belongs to no one but me.’ But he was stubborn as a mule and kept on saying, ‘No, it’s Sulayman’s ring! It’s a magic ring!’ And I said, ‘No, it’s not a magic ring, its a platinum one!’ And he said, ‘No, my master, it’s not platinum, it’s a magic ring!’ and he pretended he wanted to kiss the flap of my jacket.”
His wife gazed at him with loathing and then, apparently unable to stand his smug expression, she looked away. Her eyes came upon a copy of Arabian Nights lying on the couch. Suddenly she was struck by an idea. Mrs. Moneybags collapsed into the nearest armchair and whispered bitterly:
“My God! How unlucky I am to be obliged to live with such a man! Someone with your imagination, Sir, should be an undertaker, not a businessman. A lizard has more brains than you!”
“What’s the matter, my dear?” her husband asked anxiously.
“Gentlemen,” Mrs. Moneybags wailed tragically, though there was no one save themselves in the room. “Gentlemen, this man wants to know what’s the matter! Sir, will you be kind enough to catch up with the old man immediately and get the ring back before it’s too late!”
“But what do we want it for? It’s a cheap little silver ring, and a home-made one at that.”
“This man will surely drive me to my grave! He keeps asking me why I want King Solomon’s magic ring! Gentlemen, he wants to know why I need a ring that can fulfil one’s any wish, that can make one the richest and most powerful man in the world!”
“But, my dove, where have you ever seen a magic ring before?”
“And where have you ever seen anyone in this country fall on his knees before another and try to kiss his hand?”
“Not my hand, my sweet, my jacket!”
“All the more so! Will you please be so kind as to catch up with the old man immediately and take back the ring! And I don’t envy you if you come back without it!”
Such were the events which caused the red-faced husband of the terrible Mrs. Moneybags to appear so suddenly before Hottabych and his friends.
Had Mr. Moneybags been in Hottabych’s place, he would never have returned the ring, even if it were an ordinary one, and especially so if it were a magic one. That is why he decided to begin from afar.
“Oh, my goodness! How happy and unexpected surprise!” he cried with so sweet a smile that one would think he had dreamed of becoming their friend all his life. “What a wonderful weather! How you feel?”
Hottabych bowed silently.
“Oh!” Mr. Moneybags exclaimed with feigned surprise. “I see on your finger one silver ring. You give me look at this silver ring?”
“With the utmost of pleasure,” Hottabych answered, extending his hand with the ring on it.
Instead of admiring the ring, Mr. Moneybags suddenly snatched it off Hottabych’s finger and squeezed it onto his own fleshy finger.
“I thanking you! I thanking you!” he wheezed and his already purple face became still redder, so that Hottabych feared Mr. Moneybags might even have a stroke.
“You have buy this ring someplace?”
He expected the old man to lie, or at least to try every means possible to get back the almighty ring. Mr. Moneybags sized up the skinny old man and the two boys and decided he would be more than a match for them if things took a bad turn.
However, to his great surprise the old man did not lie. Instead, he said quite calmly:
“I did not buy the ring, I picked it up in the gutter near your house. It is your ring, O grey-haired foreigner!”
“Oh!” Mr. Moneybags exclaimed happily. “You are very honest old man! You will be my favourite servant!”
At these words the boys winced, but said nothing. They were interested to know what would follow.
“You have very good explained to me before that this ring is magic ring. I can actually have fulfil any wish?” Hottabych nodded. The boys giggled. They decided that Hottabych was about to play a trick on this unpleasant man and were ready to have a good laugh.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” Mr. Moneybags said. “You will be explaining how I use magic ring.”
“With the greatest of pleasure, O most ruddy-faced of foreigners!” Hottabych answered, bowing low. “You take the magic ring, put it on the index finger of your left hand, turn it and say your wish.”
“And it has to by all means come true?”
“Exactly.”
“Most different various kind of wish?”
“Any wish at all.”
“Ah, so?” Mr. Moneybags said with satisfaction and his face at once became cold and arrogant. He turned the ring around quickly and shouted to Hottabych, “Hey, you foolish old man! Coming here! You be packing my moneys!”
His insolent tone enraged Volka and Zhenya. They moved a step forward and were about to open their mouths to reprimand him, but Hottabych waved them away angrily and approached Mr. Moneybags.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” the old man said humbly. “I don’t know what kind of money you mean. Show me some, so I know what it looks like.”
“Cultured man must know how moneys look,” Mr. Moneybags muttered.
And taking a foreign bill from his pocket, he waved it in front of Hottabych and then put it back.
Hottabych bowed.
“And now. Now is time to begin business,” said Mr. Moneybags. “Let me have now one hundred bags of moneys!”
“You have a long wait coming!” Volka snickered and winked at Zhenya. “That Mr. Moneybags has got his teeth into the magic ring. ‘Wear it, Katya, and remember me.’ ”
“Let me have immediately coming one thousand bags of moneys,” Mr. Moneybags repeated.
He was disappointed: the money did not appear. The boys watched him with open malice.
“I can’t see moneys! Where is my one thousand bags of moneys?” Mr. Moneybags bellowed and immediately fell senseless to the ground, having been struck by a huge sack which dropped out of the blue.
While Hottabych was bringing him back to his senses, the boys opened the sack.
One hundred carefully tied bags of money were stuffed in side. Each bag contained one hundred bills.
“What a funny ring!” Zhenya muttered unhappily. “It won’ even give a decent person a bike, but this character gets hundred bags of money just for nothing! That sure is some ‘Wear it, Katya, and remember me,’ for you!”
“It sure is strange,” Volka shrugged.
Mr. Moneybags opened his eyes, saw the bags of money; jumped to his feet, counted the bags and saw that there were exactly one hundred of them. However, his happy smile soon vanished. No sooner had his shaking hands tied the valuable sack than his eyes once again began to glitter greedily.
He pressed the sack to his fat chest, turned the ring around again and shouted heatedly:
“One hundred bags is little! I want immediately one million! Right away now!”
He barely had time to jump aside when a huge sack weighing at least ten tons crashed to the ground. The force of the crash split the canvas sack and a million bags of money spilled out on the grass. Each bag contained a hundred bills.
These bills in no way differed from real money, except for the fact that they all had the same serial number. This was the number Hottabych had seen on the bill the greedy owner of the magic ring had shown him.
Mr. Moneybags would certainly have been grieved to discover this, for any bank-teller would have noticed that all the numbers were the same, and that would mean it was counterfeit money. However, Mr. Moneybags had no time to check the serial numbers just now. Pale from excitement, he climbed to the top of the precious pile and stood up to his full height like a monument, like a living embodiment of greed. Mr. Moneybag’s hair was dishevelled, his eyes burned with insane fire, his hands trembled and his heart thundered in his breast.
“And now … and now… and now I want ten thousand gold watches strewn with diamonds, twenty thousand gold cigarette cases, thirty . … no, fifty thousand strings of pearls, fifteen thousand antique China services!” he shouted darting back and forth in order to dodge the great treasures falling from all sides.
“O red-faced foreigner, don’t you think what you have received is enough?” Hottabych asked sternly.
“Silence!” Mr. Moneybags yelled and stamped his feet in rage. “When the boss do business, the servant must silence! Ring, do as my wish is! Fast!”
“Go back where you came from, you old grabber!” Volka shouted. “Out of our country! We’ll propel you out of here!”
“May it be so,” Hottabych agreed and yanked four hairs from his beard.
That very moment the sacks of money, the crates of china, watches and necklaces, everything the silver ring had brought — disappeared. Mr. Moneybags himself rolled down the grass and along the path very quickly, heading in the direction from which he had recently come so full of hopes. In no time he was gone with just a little puff of dust to show where he had been.
After the boys had regained their composure and calmed down, Volka said in a thoughtful tone, “I can’t understand what sort of a ring it is — a plain one or a magic one?”
“Why, a plain one, of course,” Hottabych answered kindly.
“Then why did it fulfil that robber’s wishes?”
“It was I who fulfilled them, not the ring.”
“You? Why?”
“It was just a matter of politeness, O curious youth. I felt indebted to the man, because I bothered him in the shop and annoyed him on the way home, right up to his very doorstep. 1 felt it wouldn’t be fair not to fulfil a few of his wishes, but his greed and his black soul turned my stomach.”
“That’s right!”
When they left the river bank and walked along the street, Hottabych stepped on a small round object. It was the ring with the inscription: “Wear it, Katya, and remember me,” which Mr. Moneybags must have lost as he rolled away.
The old man picked it up, wiped it with his huge, bright-blue handkerchief, and put it on his right small finger.
The boys and the old man came home, went to bed and woke up the next morning, but Mr. Moneybags was still rolling and rolling away home to where he had come from.
EXTRA TICKETS
On a bright and sunny summer day our friends set out to see a football game. During the soccer season the entire population of Moscow is divided into two alien camps. In the one are the football fans; in the other are those queer people who are entirely indifferent to this fascinating sport.
Long before the beginning of the game, these first stream towards the high entrance gates of the Central Stadium from all parts of the city.
They look upon those who are heading in the opposite direction with a feeling of superiority.
In turn, these other Muscovites shrug in amazement when they see hundreds of crowded buses and trolley-buses and thousands of cars crawling through the turbulent sea of pedestrian fans.
But the army of fans which appears so unified to an onlooker is actually torn into two camps. This is unnoticeable while the fans are making their way to the stadium. However, as they approach the gates, this division appears in all its ugliness. It suddenly becomes evident that some people have tickets, while others do not. The possessors of tickets pass through the gates confidently; the others dart back and forth excitedly, rushing at new arrivals with the same plaintive plea: “D’you have an extra ticket?” or “You don’t have an extra ticket, do you?”
As a rule, there are so few extra tickets and so many people in need of them, that if not for Hottabych, Volka and Zhenya would have certainly been left outside the gates.
“With the greatest of pleasure,” Hottabych murmured in reply to Volka’s request. “You’ll have as many as you need in a minute.”
No sooner were these words out of his mouth, than the boy saw him holding a whole sheaf of blue, green and yellow tickets. “Will this be enough, O wonderful Volka? If not, I’ll…” He waved the tickets. This gesture nearly cost him his life. “Look, extra tickets!” a man shouted, making a dash for him. A few seconds later no less than a hundred and fifty excited people were pressing Hottabych’s back against the concrete fence. The old man would have been as good as dead if not for Volka. He ran to a side and shouted at the top of his voice:
“Over here! Who needs an extra ticket? Who needs some extra tickets?”
At these magic words the people who had been closing in on a distraught Hottabych rushed towards Volka, but the boy darted into the crowd and disappeared. A moment later he and his two friends handed the gate-keeper three tickets and passed through the North Gate to the stadium, leaving thousands of inconsolable fans behind.
ICE-CREAM AGAIN
No sooner had the friends found their seats, than a girl in a white apron carrying a white lacquered box approached them.
“Would you like some ice-cream?” she asked and shrieked. We must be fair. Anyone else in her place would have been just as frightened, for what answer could an ice-cream vendor expect?
In the best of cases: “Yes, thank you. Two, please.” In the worst of cases: “No, thank you.”
Now, just imagine that upon hearing the young lady’s polite question, a little old man in a straw boater turned as red as a beet, his eyes became bloodshot and he bristled all over. He leaned over to her and whispered in a fierce voice:
“A-a-ah! You want to kill me with your foul ice-cream! Well, you won’t, despicable thing! The forty-six ice-creams which I, old fool that I am, ate in the circus nearly sent me to my grave.
They have been enough to last me the rest of my life. Tremble, wretch, for I’ll turn you into a hideous toad!”
At this, he rose and raised his dry wrinkled arms over his head. Suddenly a boy with sun-bleached eyebrows on his freckled face hung onto the old man’s arms and shouted in a frightened voice, “She’s not to blame if you were greedy and stuffed yourself with ice-cream! Please sit down, and don’t be silly!”
“I hear and I obey,” the old man answered obediently. He let down his arms and resumed his seat. Then he addressed the frightened young lady as follows, “You can go now. I forgive you. Live in peace and be grateful to this youth till the end of your days, for he has saved your life.”
The young lady did not appear in their section again for the remainder of the afternoon.
HOW MANY FOOTBALLS DO YOU NEED?
Meanwhile, the stadium was full of that very special festive atmosphere which pervades it during decisive football matches. Loud-speakers blared. A hundred thousand people were heatedly discussing the possible outcome of the game, thus giving rise to a hum of human voices incomparable to anything else. Everyone was impatiently awaiting the umpire’s whistle.
Finally, the umpir
e and the linesmen appeared on the emerald-green field. The umpire was carrying a ball which was to be kicked back and forth — thus covering quite a few miles on land and in the air — and, finally, having landed in one goal more times than in the other, was to decide which team was the winner that day. He put the ball down in the centre of the field. The two teams appeared from their locker rooms and lined up opposite each other. The captains shook hands and drew lots to see which team was to play against the sun. The unfortunate lot fell to the Zubilo team, to the great satisfaction of the Shaiba team 4 and a portion of the fans.
“Will you, O Volka, consider it possible to explain to your unworthy servant what these twenty-two pleasant young men are going to do with the ball?” Hottabych asked respectfully.
Volka waved his hand impatiently and said, “You’ll see for yourself in a minute.”
At that very moment a Zubilo player kicked the ball smartly and the game was on.
“Do you mean that these twenty-two nice young men will have to run about such a great field, get tired, fall and shove each other, only to have a chance to kick this plain-looking leather ball around for a few seconds? And all because they gave them just this one ball for all twenty-two of them?” Hottabych asked in a very displeased voice a few minutes later.
Volka was completely engrossed in the game and did not reply. He could not be bothered with Hottabych at a time when the Shaiba’s forwards had got possession of the ball and were approaching the Zubilo goal.
“You know what, Volka?” Zhenya whispered. “It’s real luck Hottabych doesn’t know a thing about football, because he’d surely stick his finger in the pie!”
“I know,” Volka agreed. Suddenly, he gasped and jumped to his feet.
At that very moment, the other hundred thousand fans also jumped to their feet and began to shout. The umpire’s whistle pierced the air, but the players had already come to a standstill.
