The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf

Author:Ilya Ilf [Ilf, Ilya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Dramas & Plays, Regional & Cultural, Russian, Drama & Plays
Amazon: B00H22VXB4
Published: 2016-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ELLOCHKA THE CANNIBAL

William Shakespeare's vocabulary has been estimated by the experts at twelve thousand words. The vocabulary of a Negro from the Mumbo Jumbo tribe amounts to three hundred words. Ellochka Shukin managed easily and fluently on thirty. Here are the words, phrases and interjections which she fastidiously picked from the great, rich and expressive Russian language: 1. You're being vulgar. 2. Ho-ho (expresses irony, surprise, delight, loathing, joy, contempt and satisfaction, according to the circumstances). 3. Great! 4. Dismal (applied to everything-for example: "dismal Pete has arrived", "dismal weather", or a "dismal cat"). 5. Gloom. 6. Ghastly (for example: when meeting a close female acquaintance, "a ghastly meeting"). 7. Kid (applied to all male acquaintances, regardless of age or social position). 8. Don't tell me how to live! 9. Like a babe ("I whacked him like a babe" when playing cards, or "I brought him down like a babe," evidently when talking to a legal tenant). 10.Ter-r-rific! 11. Fat and good-looking (used to describe both animate and inanimate objects). 12. Let's go by horse-cab (said to her husband). 13. Let's go by taxi (said to male acquaintances). 14. You're all white at the back! (joke). 15. Just imagine! 16. Ula (added to a name to denote affection-for example: Mishula, Zinula). 17. Oho! (irony, surprise, delight, loathing, joy, contempt and satisfaction). The extraordinary small number of words remaining were used as connecting links between Ellochka and department-store assistants. If you looked at the photographs of Ellochka Shukin which her husband, engineer Ernest Pavlovich Shukin, had hanging over his bed (one profile and the other full-face), you would easily see her pleasantly high and curved forehead, big liquid eyes, the cutest little nose in the whole of the province of Moscow, and a chin with a small beauty spot. Men found Ellochka's height nattering. She was petite, and even the puniest little men looked hefty he-men beside her. She had no particular distinguishing features; she did not need them. She was pretty. The two hundred roubles which her husband earned each month at the Electrolustre works was an insult to Ellochka. It was of no help at all in the tremendous battle which she had been waging for the past four years, from the moment she acquired the social status of housewife and Shukin's spouse. The battle was waged at full pressure. It absorbed all her resources. Ernest Pavlovich took home work to do in the evening, refused to have servants, lit the primus himself, put out the refuse, and even cooked meat balls. But it was all useless. A dangerous enemy was ruining the household more and more every year. Four years earlier Ellochka had noticed she had a rival across the ocean. The misfortune had come upon Ellochka one happy evening while she was trying on a very pretty crepe de Chine blouse. It made her look almost a goddess. "Ho-ho!" she exclaimed, summing up by that cannibal cry the amazingly complex emotions which had overcome her. More

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