In response to JM: "Simultaneously
his real feet kicked off and away the false head with its crumpled cap
and bearded mask." (1.30)
She [Rita]
sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod znoynym nebom
Argentiny,
Pod strastnyi govor
mandoliny.
The same tango Ostap Bender dances in Ilf
& Petrov's "The Golden Calf." Golovotyapstvo ("bungling;"
golova, "head" + tyapat', "to chop [off]") is
mentioned several times in the novel.
One of the novel's characters says: Brian
- eto golova (Briand has a good head indeed). It happens in
Chernomorsk (in Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila Chernomor is an
evil dwarf who beheaded his brother).
In an avant-garde stage version
of Gogol's play "The Marriage" that Bender and Vorob'yaninov watch in
the Columbus Theatre (in "The 12 Chairs") the actor who plays Stepan
(the valet) appears on the stage (and gives his cues) standing on his
hands.
Alexey Sklyarenko