- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Well, I'm going now.
- Ostap Bender: You don't need to hurry anywhere. The secret police will come for you.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: I don't know what you mean.
- Ostap Bender: You soon will.
- Narrator: In a provincial town N, where the ex marshal of nobility worked as a clerk at the registration office, there were so many hairdressing parlors and funeral homes, that the inhabitants seemed to be born merely in order to have a shave, get their hair cut, freshen up their heads with toilet water, and then die.
- Narrator: Never before had Bartholomew Korobelnikov been so wretchedly deceived. He could deceive anyone he liked. But now he had been cheated at his own game, a business from which he expected great profits and a secure old age.
- Narrator: Anyway, it might be difficult without an accomplice, he thought to himself, and this fellow seems to be a really shady character. He might be useful...
- Ostap Bender: They have a very strange custom in Berlin. They eat so late that you can't tell whether it's an early supper or a late lunch.
- Ostap Bender: You owe me 2 roubles for the shave and haircut.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Why so expensive? It should only cost 40 kopeks.
- Ostap Bender: For reasons of security, Comrade Field Marshal!
- Narrator: Pot luck that day happened to be a bottle of Zubrovka vodka, home-pickled mushrooms, black caviar, minced herring, Ukrainian beet soup, chicken and rice, fruits, and so on and so forth.
- Dvornik Tikhon: Master! Back from Paris!
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Hello, Tikhon. I certainly haven't come from Paris. Where did you get that strange idea from?
- Ostap Bender: This isn't Paris, but you're welcome to our abode.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: I haven't come from Paris.
- Ostap Bender: Splendid, of course you haven't come from Paris. You've no doubt come from Kologriv to visit your deceased grandmother. My name's Bender. You may have heard of me.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: No, I haven't.
- Ostap Bender: No, how could the name of Ostap-Suleiman-Bertha-Maria Bender Bey be known in Paris?
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Bertha-Maria Bender... Sounds weird... I haven't come from Paris.
- Ostap Bender: Marvelous. You've come from Morshansk! Is it warm in Paris now?
- Ostap Bender: Are you a nobleman?
- Kislyarskiy: Yes. No.
- Ostap Bender: Yes or no?
- Kislyarskiy: I don't know. Whatever would please you.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Honestly, I'm a Soviet citizen. I can show you my passport. Here.
- Ostap Bender: With printing being so developed in the West, the forgery of a Soviet passport is nothing.
- Narrator: The Assistant Warden of Stavropol's Retirement Home N 2 was a shy little thief. His whole being protested against stealing, yet it was impossible for him not to steal. He stole and was ashamed of himself. He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed of himself. The world has never seen such a bashful chiseller as Alexander Yakovlevich.
- Ostap Bender: You're a rather nasty man. You're too fond of money.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: And I suppose you aren't?
- Ostap Bender: No, I'm not.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: They why do you want 60 thousand?
- Ostap Bender: On principle.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: What? 70 thousand roubles' worth of jewels hidden in a chair! Heaven knows who may sit on that chair!
- Ostap Bender: Citizens, I am not going to talk about the aim of our gathering... you all know it. Our aim is sacred. From every corner of our huge country, people are calling for help. Some of you have work and eat bread and butter. Some eat sandwiches with black caviar, and some even... with red caviar. Some of you even have privilege ration. It is only the young waifs who are not looked after. We must help them, gentlemen of the jury, and, gentlemen of the jury, we will do so. Let us remember that children are the flowers of life. I now invite you to make your contributions and help the children, the children alone and no one else. Do you understand me? Please make your contributions, in order of seniority.
- Ostap Bender: You can leave.
- Kislyarskiy: I think I'd better leave.
- Ostap Bender: But I warn you, we have a long reach.
- Kislyarskiy: Then I'd better stay.
- Yelena Stanislavovna Bour: Do you think he's in danger?
- Polesov: Who... Who isn't in danger in Soviet Russia? Moustaches, Elena Stanislavovna, are not shaved off for nothing.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: When will you bring the chairs?
- Mechnikov - montyor: Money in advance. The money in the morning, the chairs in the afternoon. The money in the afternoon, the chairs in the evening. The money in the evening, the chairs in the nighttime. The money in the nighttime, the chairs in the morning.
- Ostap Bender: All right, all right. What about the chairs this morning, the money in the afternoon?
- Mechnikov - montyor: No problem. But the money should be paid in advance. The money in the morning, and in the evening...
- Storozh kluba: And here, dear citizens, is that very surprise... that very chair I was talking about. Get up, soldier boy. I used to be the watchman. A no-good club it was. Then, in the spring, Comrade Krasilnikov bought a new chair. Once I clambered onto it to fix a placard to the wall, I slipped off the chair and the coverin' was torn off. It turned out, them bourgeois people hid their jewelry there.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: It can't be!
- Storozh kluba: Believe it or not. The club was built with them. And I was paid a bonus of 50 silver roubles. I bought this costume on that money. Let's go on. I'll show you our gymnasium. Come on.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: It can't be! It can't be!
- Ostap Bender: The chairs are crawling away like cockroaches. Four chairs are leaving. One chair stays somewhere in the city. Out of two hares we should choose the fattest one.
- Ostap Bender: Do you know that your club Four Knights, given a clever approach, can change the status of the town Vasyuki? That's why I suggest that you hold an international chess tournament here! Chess enthusiasts will come from all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of well-to-do people will head for Vasyuki. So the state will have to build a main line from Moscow to Vasyuki. They'll build hotels and skyscrapers to accommodate the visitors, a palace where the tournament will be held. An extra high-power radio station will be broadcasting the sensational results of the tournament. Airport Bigger Vasyuki from where planes and airships will fly to all parts of the world including Rio de Janeiro and Melbourne. Just imagine! Just think what will happen when the tournament is over and the visitors have left. Muscovites crowded together on account of the housing shortage will come flocking to your beautiful town. The capital will automatically be transferred to Vasyuki. Vasyuki will be renamed New Moscow, and Moscow will become Old Vasyuki. Chess thinking will become an applied science and will invent ways of inter-planetary communication. Communication with Venus will be as easy as going from Rybinsk to Yaroslavl. And the first interplanetary chess tournament will be held in Vasyuki. The first interplanetary tournament between the teams of Vasyuki and Great Bear will end with a confounding victory of Vasyukians! Hurrah, comrades!
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: The weather's so wonderful at present. It's mischievous May, it's magical May, who is waving his fan of freshness!
- Ostap Bender: 500 can save the master-mind.
- Kislyarskiy: Won't 200 save the master-mind?
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: I consider that haggling is somewhat out of place here.
- Narrator: It was a famous university hostel named after the monk Brother Berthold Schwartz. At first only chemistry students lived here, but now it had formed something between a housing co-operative and a feudal settlement.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Oh, my God, what are you doing? My jacket! I've been wearing it for 15 years, and it's as good as new.
- Ostap Bender: Don't get excited, it soon won't be. Give me your hat.
- Narrator: This Drop was considered one of the sights of Pyatigorsk. It seemed to be the only place where the summer people could come for free. Ostap intended to remove that regrettable omission.
- Narrator: By ho-ho! Ellochka could express all kind of things. In this particular case she meant the following: I swear by my honor, I can make a gorgeous gown from the shirt of my husband... not even worse than that snooty American girl has! Men will tremble when they see me like this. They will follow me to the edge of the world, hiccupping with love. But I shall be cold.
- Ekskursovod: Only deformed imagination of the decaying classes could create this bulky furniture, let alone the fact there is nothing common people can do on such so-to-say beds.
- Ekskursovod: A bed. Or rather, a piece of furniture. What does it bespeak? It bespeaks immense fortune which was not earned, but which was owned by the corrupt aristocracy!
- Narrator: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Part 1.
- Kisa Vorobyaninov: Never, never has Vorobyaninov held out his hand.
- Ostap Bender: Then you can stretch out your feet, you silly old ass!
- Ostap Bender: You know, Vorobyaninov, that chair reminds me of our life. We're also floating with the tide. People push us under and we come up again, although they aren't too pleased about it. No one likes us, except for the criminal investigation department, which doesn't like us either.
- Liza: I won't go to that vegetarian canteen anymore. Enough of that mock rabbit made from carrots, or pea sausages.
- Narrator: On the remaining boards Ostap made the same move, pawn to king four. At the third move it became clear that in 18 games the Grossmeister was playing a Spanish gambit. In the other 12 the blacks played the old-fashioned, thought fairly reliable, Philidor defense. If Ostap had known he was using such cunning gambits and countering such tested defenses, he would have been most surprised. The truth of the matter was that he was playing chess for the second time in his life.
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