...G. A. Vronsky, the movie man, had left Marina for another long-lashed Khristosik as he called all pretty starlets... (1.3)
 
The word Khristosik (little Christ) was coined by Osip Mandelshtam's friend and schoolfellow Boris Sinani (like VN, OM and BS had graduated from the Tenishev school). Sinani used to call thus certain members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party: "Христосики” были русачки с нежными лицами, носители “идеи личности в истории”, – и в самом деле многие из них походили на нестеровских Иисусов ("The Khristosiks were soft-faced young Russians, the bearers of "the idea of the role of the individual in history" - and, indeed, many of them resembled Jesus in Nesterov's paintings).*
 
Like "Rita", Van's partner in the tango he dances, as Mascodagama, on his hands (1.30), Boris Sinani (1889-1910) was a Karaite (Crimean Tartar). He was a son of Boris Naumovich Sinani, the famous St. Petersburg psychiatrist (Van's colleague!) who attempted to cure the writer Gleb Uspensky of his mental illness. Isaak Sinani, the keeper of a book-store in Yalta and a friend of Chekhov, was probably his namesake.
 
Sinani + Rita + b = istina + barin = sani + Britain
 
istina - Russ., truth; cf. Chto est' istina? (What is truth?), the question Pilate asks Jesus; cf. istina v vine (in wine is truth), the final words in Blok's poem Incognita (1906)
barin - Russ., master; cf. Trofim Fartukov's words to Van: "Barin, a barin..." (1.41); barin = brain = Brian = barn + i (Brian is Aristide Briand, a French statesman, 1862-1932; according to Funt, a character in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf", Brian - eto golova, "Briand is a head")
sani - Russ., sledge; sani = anis (Russ., anise) = Saint/stain/satin - t
 
Khristosik is a diminutive form of Khristos (Christ). Jesus appears in the closing lines of Blok's poem "The Twelve" (1918). In fact, the poem ends in the name Isus Khristos (Jesus Christ; the standard Russian spelling of "Jesus" is Иисус).
 
The numeral twelve also occurs in the title of Ilf and Petrov's novel "The Twelve Chairs" (1928). Its hero is Ostap Bender, a rogue. In "The Golden Calf" (1931), the sequel novel to "The 12 Chairs", Bender solo dances tango, while the samovar and the typewriter sing:
 
Под знойным небом Аргентины,
Где небо южное так сине,
Где женщины как на картине,
Танцуют все танго.
 
('Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
Where the southern skies are so blue,
Where women are as if painted by an artist,
Everybody is dancing tango.)
 
In Ada (1.30), Van dances on his hands, while Rita sings the tango tune:
 
Под знойным небом Аргентины,
Под страстный говор мандолины
 
('Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
To the hot hum of mandolina).
 
Pod sladkiy lepet mandoliny ("to a mandolin's sweet murmur", as Bender puts it) the priests Kushakovski and Moroshek, the characters in "The Golden Calf", try to revert to Roman Catholicism Adam Kozlevich, the driver of the Antelope Gnu car. Incidentally, in the disputation with the priests the atheist Bender confesses that he once impersonated Jesus Christ in some godforsaken city.
 
Isus Khristos + k = sus + Khristosik
 
sus - Lat., pig; "Gavronsky" (as Ada once calls G. A. Vronsky: 1.3) hints at khavron'ya, obsolete Russian word for "pig"  
 
*See Mandelshtam's essay The Sinani Family in his book "Шум времени" (Time's Hum, 1925). M. V. Nesterov (1862-1942) was an artist who often addressed religious subjects and depicted Jesus in his paintings.
 
Alexey Sklyarenko
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