| "Don't you need a chairman?" Funt asked. "What chairman?" Bender exclaimed. "An official one - in a word, the chief of the establishment." "I am the chief myself." "In other words, you expect to do time yourself? Why didn't you say so in the first place? Why did you take up two hours of my valuable time?" The old man in the Passover trousers became exceedingly angry, foamed at the mouth, fumed, emitted explosive noises, but the pauses between his sentences did not diminish. "I am Funt!" he said emphatically. "I am ninety years old! All my life I've done time for others! Such is my profession - to suffer for others!" "Oh, so you're professional figure-head!" "Yes," said the old man, tossing his head boastfully. "I am Substitute-chairman Funt! I've always done time. At the time of Alexander the Second, the Liberator, at the time of Alexander the Third, the Peacemaker, at the time of Nicholas the Second, the Bloody." And the old man slowly bent back his fingers, counting the tsars. "At the time of Kerensky I also did time. At the time of Military Communism, I did no time, to tell the truth, because clean business disappeared and there was no work for me. But how I did time in the days of the NEP! How I did time in the days of the NEP! Those were the best days of my life..." Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov, The little golden calf. https://archive.org/details/littlegoldencalf0000unse |