but those were very different from the ones Adam had pictured. No children, no fluttering scarves, no merry chatter.
On the very first evening, when the dim kerosene street lamps were already lit, Adam was approached by four men. He had spent the whole day pointlessly waiting on Holy Cooperative Square. The men stared at the car for a long time without saying a word. Then one of them, a hunchback, asked uncertainly:
“Can anybody take a ride?”
“Yes, anybody,” replied Kozlevich, surprised by the timidity of the citizens of Arbatov.
“Five rubles an hour.”
The men whispered among themselves. The chauffeur heard some strange sighs and a few words: “Why don’t we do it after the meeting, Comrades…? Would that be appropriate…? One twenty-five per person is not too much… Why would it be inappropriate…?”
And so for the first time, the spacious car took a few locals into its upholstered lap. For a few minutes, the passengers were silent, overwhelmed by the speed, the smell of gasoline, and the whistling wind. Then, as if having a vague premonition, they started quietly singing: “The time of our lives, it’s fast as waves…” Kozlevich shifted into third gear. The sombre silhouette of a boarded-up roadside stand flew by, and the car tore out into the fields on the moonlit highway.
“Every day brings the grave ever closer to us,” crooned the passengers plaintively. They felt sorry for themselves, sorry that they had never gone to university and had never sung student songs. They belted out the chorus rather loudly:
“Let’s have a glass, a little one, tra-la-la-la, tra-la-la-la.”
“Stop!” shouted the hunchback suddenly. “Turn around! I can’t take it any more!”
Back in town, the riders picked up a large number of bottles that were filled with clear liquid, as well as a broad-shouldered woman from somewhere. Out in the fields, they set up a picnic, ate dinner with vodka, and danced the polka without music.
Exhausted from the night’s adventures, Kozlevich spent the next day dozing off behind the wheel at his stand. Towards evening, the same gang showed up, already tipsy. They climbed into the car and drove like mad through the fields surrounding the city all night long. The third night saw a repeat of the whole thing. The nighttime feasts of the fun-loving gang, headed by the hunchback, went on for two weeks in a row. The joys of automotive recreation affected Adam’s clients in a most peculiar way: in the dark, their pale and swollen faces resembled pillows. The hunchback, with a piece of sausage hanging from his mouth, looked like a vampire.
They grew anxious and, at the height of the fun, occasionally wept. One night, the adventurous hunchback arrived at the taxi stand in a horse-drawn carriage with a big sack of rice. At sunrise, they took the rice to a village, swapped it for moonshine, and didn’t bother going back to the city. They sat on haystacks and drank with the peasants, hugging them and swearing eternal friendship. At night, they set up bonfires and wept more pitifully than ever.
The following morning was gray and dull, and the railroad-affiliated Lineman Co-op closed for inventory. The hunchback was its director, his fun-loving friends members of the board and the control commission. The auditors were bitterly disappointed to discover that the store had no flour, no pepper, no coarse soap, no water troughs, no textiles, and no rice. The shelves, the counters, the boxes, and the barrels had all been completely emptied. A pair of enormous hip boots, size fifteen with yellow glued-leather soles, towered in the middle of the store. A National cash register, its lady-like nickel-plated bosom covered with numerous keys, sat in a glass booth. That was all that was left. Kozlevich, for his part, received a subpoena from a police detective; the driver was wanted as a witness in the case of the Lineman Co-op.
The hunchback and his friends never showed up again, and the green car stood idle for three days.
All subsequent passengers, like the first bunch, would appear under the cover of darkness. They would also start with an innocent drive to the country, but their thoughts would turn to vodka after the first half-mile. Apparently, the people of Arbatov could not imagine staying sober in an automobile. They clearly regarded Adam’s vehicle as a refuge for sinful pleasures, where one ought to behave recklessly, make loud obscene noises, and generally live one’s life to the fullest.
Kozlevich finally understood why the men who walked past his stand during the day winked at one another and smiled wryly.
Things were very different from what Adam had envisioned. At night, he was whizzing past the woods with his headlights on, listening to the passengers’ drunken fussing and hollering behind him. During the day, in a stupor from lack of sleep, he sat in detectives’ offices giving statements. For some reason, the citizens of Arbatov paid for their high living with money that belonged to the state, society, or the co-ops. Against his will, Kozlevich was once again deeply entangled with the Criminal code, this time its Part III, the part that informatively discusses white-collar crimes.
The trials soon commenced. In all of them, the main witness for the prosecution was Adam Kozlevich. His truthful accounts knocked the defendants off their feet, and they confessed everything, choking on tears and snot. He ruined countless organizations. His last victim was a branch of the regional film studio, which was shooting a historical movie, Stenka Razin and the Princess, in Arbatov. The entire staff of the branch was locked up for six years, while the film, which was of legal interest only, joined the pirate boots from the Lineman Co-op at the material evidence exhibit.
After that, Adam’s business crashed. People avoided the green vehicle like the plague. They made wide circles around Holy Cooperative Square, where Kozlevich had erected a tall sign: AUTOMOBILE FOR HIRE. He earned nothing at all for several months and lived off the savings from earlier nocturnal rides.
Then he had to make a few sacrifices. He painted a white sign on the car’s door that said LET’S RIDE! and lowered the fare from five to three rubles an hour. The sign looked rather enticing to him, but people resisted anyway. He would drive slowly around town, approaching office buildings and yelling into open windows:
“The air is so fresh! Why not go for a ride?”
Officials would stick their heads out and yell back over the clatter of the Underwood typewriters:
“Go take a ride yourself, you hangman!”
“Hangman?” Kozlevich asked, on the verge of tears.
“Of course you are,” answered the officials, “you’d put us all in the slammer.”
“Then why don’t you pay with your own money?” asked the driver. “For the rides?”
At this point the officials would exchange funny looks and shut the windows. They thought it was ridiculous to use their own money to pay for car rides.
The owner of LET’S RIDE! was at loggerheads with the entire city. He no longer exchanged greetings with anybody. He became edgy and mean-spirited. Seeing an office worker in a long Caucasus-style shirt with puffy sleeves, he would drive up and yell, laughing bitterly:
“Thieves! Just wait, I’m going to set all of you up! Article 109!”
The office worker shuddered, pulled up his silver-studded belt (that looked like it belonged on a draft horse), pretended that the shouting had nothing to do with him, and started walking faster. But vindictive Kozlevich would continue to follow him and goad the enemy by monotonously reading from a pocket edition of the Criminal code, as if from a prayer book:
“Misappropriation of funds, valuables, or other property by a person in a
