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natural. It was the first time in his life that he had met with such a
circumstance. Everybody knows how hard it is to get money; obstacles to it
can always be found. But there had been no case in the bookkeeper's thirty
years of experience when anyone, either an official or a private person, had
had a hard time accepting money.
But at last the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again
leaned to the window.
'Do you have a lot?' the clerk asked.
'Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eleven roubles.'
'Oho!' the clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the
bookkeeper a green slip.
Knowing the form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began
to untie the string on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything
swam before his eyes, he murmured something painfully.
Foreign money flitted before his eyes: there were stacks of Canadian
dollars, British pounds, Dutch guldens, Latvian lats, Estonian kroons...
'There he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety!' a menacing
voice resounded over the dumbstruck bookkeeper. And straight away Vassily
Stepanovich was arrested.
At the same time that the zealous bookkeeper was racing in a cab to his
encounter with the self-writing suit, from first-class sleeping car no. 9 of
the Kiev train, on its arrival in Moscow, there alighted, among others, a
decent-looking passenger carrying a small fibreboard suitcase. This
passenger was none other than the late Berlioz's uncle, Maximilian
Andreevich Poplavsky, an industrial economist, who lived in Kiev on the
former Institutsky Street. The reason for Maximilian Andreevich's coming to
Moscow was a telegram received late in the evening two days before with the
following content:
Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday
three pm come. Berlioz.
Maximilian Andreevich was considered one of the most intelligent men in
Kiev, and deservedly so. But even the most intelligent man might have been
nonplussed by such a telegram. If someone sends a telegram saying he has
been run over, it is clear that he has not died of it. But then, what was
this about a funeral? Or was he in a bad way and foreseeing death? That was
possible, but such precision was in the highest degree strange: how could he
know he would be buried on Friday at three pm? An astonishing telegram!
However, intelligence is granted to intelligent people so as to sort
out entangled affairs. Very simple. A mistake had been made, and the message
had been distorted. The word 'have' had undoubtedly come there from some
other telegram in place of the word 'Berlioz', which got moved and wound up
at the end of the telegram. With such an emendation, the meaning of the
telegram became clear, though, of course, tragic.
When the outburst of grief that struck Maximilian Andreevich's wife
subsided, he at once started preparing to go to Moscow.
One secret about Maximilian Andreevich ought to be revealed. There is
no arguing that he felt sorry for his wife's nephew, who had died in the
bloom of life. But, of course, being a practical man, he realized that there
was no special need for his presence at the funeral. And nevertheless
Maximilian Andreevich was in great haste to go to Moscow. What was the
point? The point was the apartment. An apartment in Moscow is a serious
thing! For some unknown reason, Maximilian Andreevich did not like Kiev [1],
and the thought of moving to Moscow had been gnawing at him so much lately
that he had even begun to sleep badly.
He did not rejoice in the spring flooding of the Dnieper, when,
overflowing the islands by the lower bank, the water merged with the
horizon. He did not rejoice in the staggeringly beautiful view which opened
out from the foot of the monument to Prince Vladimir. He did not take
delight in patches of sunlight playing in springtime on the brick paths of
Vladimir's Hill. He wanted none of it, he wanted only one thing - to move to
Moscow.
Advertising in the newspapers about exchanging an apartment on
Institutsky Street in Kiev for smaller quarters in Moscow brought no
results. No takers were found, or if they occasionally were, their offers
were disingenuous.
The telegram staggered Maximilian Andreevich. This was a moment it
would be sinful to let slip. Practical people know that such moments do not
come twice.
In short, despite all obstacles, he had to succeed in inheriting his
nephew's apartment on Sadovaya. Yes, it was difficult, very difficult, but
these difficulties had to be overcome at whatever cost. The experienced
Maximilian Andreevich knew that the first and necessary step towards that
had to be the following: he must get himself registered, at least
temporarily, as the tenant of his late nephew's three rooms.
On Friday afternoon, Maximilian Andreevich walked through the door of
the room which housed the management of no.502-bis on Sadovava Street in
Moscow.
In the narrow room, with an old poster hanging on the wall illustrating
in several pictures the ways of resuscitating people who have drowned in the
river, an unshaven, middle-aged man with anxious eyes sat in perfect
solitude at a wooden table.
'May I see the chairman?' the industrial economist inquired politely,
taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on a vacant chair.
This seemingly simple little question for some reason so upset the
seated man that he even changed countenance. Looking sideways in anxiety, he
muttered unintelligibly that the chairman was not there.
`Is he at home?' asked Poplavsky. `I've come on the most urgent
business.'
The seated man again replied quite incoherently, but all the same one
could guess that the chairman was not at home.
'And when will he be here?'
The seated man made no reply to this and looked with a certain anguish
out the window.
'Aha! ...' the intelligent Poplavsky said to himself and inquired about
the secretary.
The strange man at the table even turned purple with strain and said,
again unintelligibly, that the secretary was not there either ... he did not
know when he would be back, and ... that the secretary was sick...
'Aha! ...' Poplavsky said to himself. `But surely there's somebody in
the management?'
'Me,' the man responded in a weak voice.
'You see,' Poplavsky began to speak imposingly, 'I am the sole heir of
the late Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at the Patriarch's
Ponds, and I am obliged, in accordance with the law, to take over the
inheritance contained in our apartment no.50...'
'I'm not informed, comrade ...' the man interrupted in anguish.
'But, excuse me,' Poplavsky said in a sonorous voice, 'you are a member
of the management and are obliged ...'
And here some citizen entered the room. At the sight of the entering
man, the man seated at the table turned pale.
'Management member Pyatnazhko?' the entering man asked the seated man.
'Yes,' the latter said, barely audibly.
The entering one whispered something to the seated one, and he,
thoroughly upset, rose from his chair, and a few seconds later Poplavsky
found himself alone in the empty management room.
'Eh, what a complication! As if on purpose, all of them at once ...'
Poplavsky thought in vexation, crossing the asphalt courtyard and
hurrying to apartment no.50.
As soon as the industrial economist rang, the door was opened, and
Maximilian Andreevich entered the semi-dark front hall. It was a somewhat
surprising circumstance that he could not figure out who had let him in:
there was no one in the front hall except an enormous black cat sitting on a
chair.
Maximilian Andreevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the door of
the study opened and Koroviev came out to the front hall. Maximilian
Andreevich bowed politely, but with dignity, and said:
'My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle...'
But before he could finish, Koroviev snatched a dirty handkerchief from
his pocket, buried his nose in it, and began to weep.
'... of the late Berlioz ...'
'Of course, of course!' Koroviev interrupted, taking his handkerchief
away from his face. `Just one look and I knew it was you!' Here he was
shaken with tears and began to exclaim: 'Such a calamity, eh? What's going
on here, eh?'
'Run over by a tram-car?' Poplavsky asked in a whisper.
'Clean!' cried Koroviev, and tears flowed in streams from under his
pince-nez. 'Run clean over! I was a witness. Believe me - bang! and the
head's gone! Crunch - there goes the right leg! Crunch - there goes the left
leg! That's what these trams have brought us to!' And, obviously unable to
control himself, Koroviev pecked the wall beside the mirror with his nose
and began to shake with sobs.
Berlioz's uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger's behaviour. 'And
they say there are no warm-hearted people in our time!' he thought, feeling
his own eyes beginning to itch. However, at the same time, an unpleasant
little cloud came over his soul, and straight away the snake-like thought
flashed in him that this warm-hearted man might perchance have registered
himself in the deceased man's apartment, for such examples have been known
in this life.
'Forgive me, were you a friend of my late Misha?' he asked, wiping his
dry left eye with his sleeve, and with his right eye studying the
racked-with-grief Koroviev. But the man was sobbing so much that one could
understand nothing except the repeated word 'crunch!' Having sobbed his
fill, Koroviev finally unglued himself from the wall and said:
'No, I can't take any more! I'll go and swallow three hundred drops of
tincture of valerian...' And turning his completely tear-bathed face to
Poplavsky, he added: That's trams for you!'
'Pardon me, but did you send me the telegram?' Maximilian Andreevich
asked, painfully puzzling over who this astonishing cry-baby might be.
'He did!' replied Koroviev, and he pointed his finger at the cat.
Poplavsky goggled his eyes, assuming he had not heard right.
'No, it's too much, I just can't,' Koroviev went on, snuffing his nose,
'when I remember: the wheel over the leg ... the wheel alone weighs three
hundred pounds ... Crunch! ... I'll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.'
And here he disappeared from the hall.
The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs,
front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said:
'Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?'
Maximilian Andreevich's head at once began to spin, his arms and legs
went numb, he dropped the suitcase and sat down on a chair facing the cat.
'I believe I asked in good Russian?' the cat said sternly. 'What of
it?'
But Poplavsky made no reply.
'Passport!'[2] barked the cat, holding out a plump paw.
Understanding nothing and seeing nothing except the two sparks burning
in the cat's eyes, Poplavsky snatched the passport from his pocket like a
dagger. The cat picked up a pair of glasses in thick black frames from the
pier-glass table, put them on his muzzle, thus acquiring a still more
imposing air, and took the passport from Poplavsky's twitching hand.
'I wonder, am I going to faint or not? ...' thought Poplavsky. From far
away came Koroviev's snivelling, the whole front hall filled with the smell
of ether, valerian and some other nauseating vileness.
'What office issued this document?' the cat asked, peering at the page.
No answer came.
`The 412th,' the cat said to himself, tracing with his paw on the
passport, which he was holding upside down. 'Ah, yes, of course! I know that
office, they issue passports to anybody. Whereas I, for instance, wouldn't
issue one to the likes of you! Not on your life I wouldn't! I'd just take
one look at your face and instantly refuse!' The cat got so angry that he
flung the passport on the floor. `Your presence at the funeral is
cancelled,' the cat continued in an official voice. 'Kindly return to your
place of residence.' And he barked through the door 'Azazello!'
At his call a small man ran out to the front hall, limping, sheathed in
black tights, with a knife tucked into his leather belt, red-haired, with a
yellow fang and with albugo in his left eye.
Poplavsky felt he could not get enough air, rose from his seat and
backed away, clutching his heart.
'See him off, Azazello!' the cat ordered and left the hall.
'Poplavsky,' the other twanged softly, 'I hope everything's understood
now?'
Poplavsky nodded.
'Return immediately to Kiev,' Azazello went on. 'Sit there stiller than
water, lower than grass, and don't dream of any apartments in Moscow.
Clear?'
This small man, who drove Poplavsky to mortal terror with his fang,
knife and blind eye, only came up to the economist's shoulder, but his
actions were energetic, precise and efficient.
First of all, he picked up the passport and handed it to Maximilian
Andreevich, and the latter took the booklet with a dead hand. Then the one
named Azazello picked up the suitcase with one hand, with the other flung
open the door, and, taking Berlioz's uncle under the arm, led him out to the
landing of the stairway. Poplavsky leaned against the wall. Without any key,
Azazello opened the suitcase, took out of it a huge roast chicken with a
missing leg wrapped in greasy newspaper, and placed it on the landing. Then
he took out two pairs of underwear, a razor-strop, some book and a case, and
shoved it all down the stairwell with his foot, except for the chicken. The
emptied suitcase went the same way. There came a crash from below and,
judging by the sound of it, the lid broke off.
Then the red-haired bandit grabbed the chicken by the leg, and with
this whole chicken hit Poplavsky on the neck, flat, hard, and so terribly
that the body of the chicken tore off and the leg remained in Azazello's
hand. 'Everything was confusion in the Oblonskys' home,'[3] as the famous
writer Leo Tolstoy correctly put it. Precisely so he might have said on this
occasion. Yes, everything was confusion in Poplavsky's eyes. A long spark
flew before his eyes, then gave place to some funereal snake that
momentarily extinguished the May day, and Poplavsky went hurtling down the
stairs, clutching his passport in his hand.
Reaching the turn, he smashed the window on the landing with his foot
and sat on a step. The legless chicken went bouncing past him and fell down
the stairwell. Azazello, who stayed upstairs, instantly gnawed the chicken
leg dean, stuck the bone into the side pocket of his tights, went back to
the apartment, and shut the door behind him with a bang.
At that moment there began to be heard from below the cautious steps of
someone coming up.
Having run down one more flight of stairs, Poplavsky sat on a wooden
bench on the landing and caught his breath.
Some tiny elderly man with an extraordinarily melancholy face, in an
old-fashioned tussore silk suit and a hard straw hat with a green band, on
his way upstairs, stopped beside Poplavsky.
'May I ask you, citizen,' the man in tussore silk asked sadly, 'where
apartment no.50 is?'
'Further up,' Poplavsky replied curtly.
'I humbly thank you, citizen,' the little man said with the same
sadness and went on up, while Poplavsky got to his feet and ran down.
The question arises whether it might have been the police that
Maximilian Andreevich was hastening to, to complain about the bandits who
had perpetrated savage violence upon him in broad daylight? No, by no means,
that can be said with certainty. To go into a police station and tell them,
look here, just now a cat in eyeglasses read my passport, and then a man in
tights, with a knife ... no, citizens, Maximilian Andreevich was indeed an
intelligent man.
He was already downstairs and saw just by the exit a door leading to
some closet. The glass in the door was broken. Poplavsky hid his passport in
his pocket and looked around, hoping to see his thrown-down belongings. But
there was no trace of them. Poplavsky was even surprised himself at how
little this upset him. He was occupied with another interesting and tempting
thought: of testing the accursed apartment one more time on this little man.
In fact, since he had inquired after its whereabouts, it meant he was
going there for the first time. Therefore he was presently heading straight
into the clutches of the company that had ensconced itself in apartment
no.50.
Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be leaving this
apartment very soon. Maximilian Andreevich was, of course, no longer going
to any funeral of any nephew, and there was plenty of time before the train
to Kiev. The economist looked around and ducked into the closet.
At that moment way upstairs a door banged. That's him going in...'
Poplavsky thought, his heart skipping a beat. The closet was cool, it
smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreevich settled on some stump of
wood and decided to wait. The position was convenient, from the closet one
looked directly on to the exit from the sixth stairway.
However, the man from Kiev had to wait longer than he supposed. The
stairway was for some reason deserted all the while. One could hear well,
and finally a door banged on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Yes, those
were his little steps. 'He's coming down ...' A door one flight lower
opened. The little steps ceased. A woman's voice. The voice of the sad man -
yes, it's his voice... Saying something like 'leave me alone, for Christ's
sake ...' Poplavsky's ear stuck through the broken glass. This ear caught a
woman's laughter. Quick and brisk steps coming down. And now a woman's back
flashed by. This woman, carrying a green oilcloth bag, went out through the
front hall to the courtyard. And the little man's steps came anew. 'Strange!
He's going back up to the apartment! Does it mean he's part of the gang
himself? Yes, he's going back. They've opened the door again upstairs. Well,
then, let's wait a little longer ...'
This time he did not have to wait long. The sound of the door. The
little steps. The little steps cease. A desperate cry. A cat's miaowing. The
little steps, quick, rapid, down, down, down!
Poplavsky had not waited in vain. Crossing himself and muttering
something, the melancholy little man rushed past him, hatless, with a
completely crazed face, his bald head all scratched and his trousers
completely wet. He began tearing at the handle of the front door, unable in
his fear to determine whether it opened out or in, managed at last, and flew
out into the sun in the courtyard.
The testing of the apartment had been performed. Thinking no more
either of the deceased nephew or of the apartment, shuddering at the thought
of the risk he had been running, Maximilian Andreevich, whispering only the
three words 'It's all clear, it's all clear!', ran out to the courtyard. A
few minutes later the bus was carrying the industrial economist in the
direction of the Kiev station.
As for the tiny little man, a most unpleasant story had gone on with
him while the economist was sitting in the closet downstairs. The little man
was barman at the Variety, and was called Andrei Foldch Sokov. While the
investigation was going on in the Variety, Andrei Fokich kept himself apart
from all that was happening, and only one thing could be noticed, that he
became still sadder than he generally was, and, besides, that he inquired of
the messenger Karpov where the visiting magician was staying.
And so, after parting with the economist on the landing, the barman
went up to the fifth floor and rang at apartment no.50.
The door was opened for him immediately, but the barman gave a start,
backed away, and did not enter at once. This was understandable. The door
had been opened by a girl who was wearing nothing but a coquettish little
lacy apron and a white fichu on her head. On her feet, however, she had
golden slippers. The girl was distinguished by an irreproachable figure, and
the only thing that might have been considered a defect in her appearance
was the purple scar on her neck.
'Well, come in then, since you rang,' said the girl, fixing her lewd
green eyes on the barman.
Andrei Fokich gasped, blinked his eyes, and stepped into the front
hall, taking off his hat. Just then the telephone in the front hall rang.
The shameless maid put one foot on a chair, picked up the receiver, and
into it said:
'Hello!'
The barman, not knowing where to look, stood shifting from one foot to
the other, thinking: 'Some maid this foreigner's got! Pah, nasty thing!' And
to save himself from the nasty thing, he began casting sidelong glances
around him.
The whole big and semi-dark hall was cluttered with unusual objects and
clothing. Thus, thrown over the back of a chair was a funereal cloak lined
with fiery cloth, on the pier-glass table lay a long sword with a gleaming
gold hilt. Three swords with silver hilts stood in the corner like mere
umbrellas or canes. And on the stag-horns hung berets with eagle feathers.
`Yes,' the maid was saying into the telephone. 'How's that? Baron
Meigel? I'm listening. Yes. Mister artiste is at home today. Yes, he'll be
glad to see you. Yes, guests... A tailcoat or a black suit. What? By twelve
midnight.' Having finished the conversation, the maid hung up the receiver
and turned to the barman: 'What would you like?'
'I must see the citizen artiste.'
'What? You mean him himself?'
'Himself,' the barman replied sorrowfully.
'I'll ask,' the maid said with visible hesitation and, opening the door
to the late Berlioz's study, announced: 'Knight, there's a little man here
who says he must see Messire.'
'Let him come in,' Koroviev's cracked voice came from the study.
'Go into the living room,' the girl said as simply as if she were
dressed like anyone else, opened the door to the living room, and herself
left the hall.
Going in where he was invited, the barman even forgot his business, so
greatly was he struck by the decor of the room. Through the stained glass of
the big windows (a fantasy of the jeweller's utterly vanished wife) poured
an unusual, church-like light. Logs were blazing in the huge antique
fireplace, despite the hot spring day. And yet it was not the least bit hot
in the room, and even quite the contrary, on entering one was enveloped in
some sort of dankness as in a cellar. On a tiger skin in front of the
fireplace sat a huge black tom-cat, squinting good-naturedly at the fire.
There was a table at the sight of which the God-fearing barman gave a
start: the table was covered with church brocade. On the brocade tablecloth
stood a host of bottles - round-bellied, mouldy and dusty. Among the bottles
gleamed a dish, and it was obvious at once that it was of pure gold. At the
fireplace a small red-haired fellow with a knife in his belt was roasting
pieces of meat on a long steel sword, and the juice dripped into the fire,
and the smoke went up the flue. There was a smell not only of roasting meat,
but also of some very strong perfume and incense, and it flashed in the
barman's mind, for he already knew of Berlioz's death and his place of
residence from the newspapers, that this might, for all he knew, be a church
panikhida [4] that was being served for Berlioz, which thought, however, he
drove away at once as a priori absurd.
The astounded barman unexpectedly heard a heavy bass:
'Well, sir, what can I do for you?'
And here the barman discovered in the shadows the one he wanted.
The black magician was sprawled on some boundless sofa, low, with
pillows scattered over it. As it seemed to the barman, the artiste was
wearing only black underwear and black pointed shoes.
'I,' the barman began bitterly, 'am the manager of the buffet at the
Variety Theatre...'
The artiste stretched out his hand, stones flashing on its fingers, as
if stopping the barman's mouth, and spoke with great ardour:
'No, no, no! Not a word more! Never and by no means! Nothing from your
buffet will ever pass my lips! I, my esteemed sir, walked past your stand
yesterday, and even now I am unable to forget either the sturgeon or the
feta cheese! My precious man! Feta cheese is never green in colour, someone
has tricked you. It ought to be white. Yes, and the tea? It's simply swill!
I saw with my own eyes some slovenly girl add tap water from a bucket to
your huge samovar, while the tea went on being served. No, my dear, it's
impossible!'
'I beg your pardon,' said Andrei Fokich, astounded by this sudden
attack, 'but I've come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do
with it...'
'How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it's spoiled!'
"They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness,' the barman said.
'My dear heart, that is nonsense!'
'What is nonsense?'
`Second freshness - that's what is nonsense! There is only one
freshness - the first - and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the
second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.'
'I beg your pardon...' the barman again tried to begin, not knowing how
to shake off the cavilling artiste.
'I cannot pardon you,' the other said firmly.
'I have come about something else,' the barman said, getting quite
upset.
'About something else?' the foreign magician was surprised. 'And what
else could have brought you to me? Unless memory deceives me, among people
of a profession similar to yours, I have had dealings with only one
sutler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet in this world.
However, I'm glad. Azazello! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!'
The one who was roasting meat turned, horrifying the barman with his
fangs, and deftly offered him one of the dark oaken tabourets. There were no
other seats in the room.
The barman managed to say:
'I humbly thank you,' and lowered himself on to the stool. Its back leg
broke at once with a crack, and the barman, gasping, struck his backside
most painfully on the floor. As he fell, he kicked another stool in front of
him with his foot, and from it spilled a full cup of red wine on his
trousers.
The artiste exclaimed:
'Oh! Are you hurt?'
Azazello helped the barman up and gave him another seat. In a voice
filled with grief, the barman declined his host's suggestion that he take
off his trousers and dry them before the fire, and, feeling unbearably
uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothing, cautiously sat down on the
other stool.
'I like sitting low down,' the artiste said, `it's less dangerous
falling from a low height. Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon.
Freshness, dear heart, freshness, freshness! That should be the motto of
every barman. Here, wouldn't you like to try...'
In the crimson light of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the
barman, and Azazello laid a sizzling piece of meat on the golden dish,
squeezed lemon juice over it, and handed the barman a golden two-pronged
fork.
'My humble... I ...'
'No, no, try it!'
The barman put a piece into his mouth out of politeness, and understood
at once that he was chewing something very fresh indeed, and, above all,
extraordinarily delicious. But as he was chewing the fragrant, juicy meat,
the barman nearly choked and fell a second time. From the neighbouring room
a big, dark bird flew in and gently brushed the barman's bald head with its
wing. Alighting on the mantelpiece beside the clock, the bird turned out to
be an owl. 'Oh, Lord God! ...' thought Andrei Fokich, nervous like all
barmen. 'A nice little apartment! ...'
'A cup of wine? White, red? What country's wine do you prefer at this
time of day?'
'My humble ... I don't drink ...'
'A shame! What about a game of dice, then? Or do you have some other
favourite game? Dominoes? Cards?'
'I don't play games,' the already weary barman responded.
`Altogether bad,' the host concluded. 'As you will, but there's
something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of
charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly
hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons
sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion
some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business.'
'Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks ...'
'I?' the magician exclaimed in amazement. 'Good gracious, it's somehow
even unbecoming to me!'
'I'm sorry,' said the barman, taken aback. 'I mean the svites en masse, and that
could be done most conveniently in a theatre. And so my retinue,' he nodded
in the direction of the cat, 'arranged for this s
what is it in connection with this sthem all up. And then a young man comes to my
bar and gives me a ten-rouble bill, I give him eight-fifty in change... Then
another one ...'
'Also a young man?'
'No, an older one. Then a third, and a fourth ... I keep giving them
change. And today I went to check the cash box, and there, instead of money
- cut-up paper. They hit the buffet for a hundred and nine roubles.'
'Ai-yai-yai!' the artiste exclaimed. 'But can they have thought those
were real bills? I can't admit the idea that they did it knowingly.'
The barman took a somehow hunched and anguished look around him, but
said nothing.
'Can they be crooks?' the magician asked worriedly of his visitor. 'Can
there be crooks among the Muscovites?'
The barman smiled so bitterly in response that all doubts fell away:
yes, there were crooks among the Muscovites.
'That is mean!' Woland was indignant. 'You're a poor man ... You are a
poor man?'
The barman drew his head down between his shoulders, making it evident
that he was a poor man.
'How much have you got in savings?'
The question was asked in a sympathetic tone, but even so such a
question could not but be acknowledged as indelicate. The barman faltered.
Two hundred and forty-nine thousand roubles in five savings banks,' a
cracked voice responded from the neighbouring room, `and two hundred
ten-rouble gold pieces at home under the floor.'
The barman became as if welded to his tabouret.
'Well, of course, that's not a great sum,' Woland said condescendingly
to his visitor, 'though, as a matter of fact, you have no need of it anyway.
When are you going to die?'
Here the barman became indignant.
'Nobody knows that and it's nobody's concern,' he replied.
'Sure nobody knows,' the same trashy voice came from the study. The
binomial theorem, you might think! He's going to die in nine months, next
February, of liver cancer, in the clinic of the First Moscow State
University, in ward number four.'
The barman's face turned yellow.
'Nine months...' Woland calculated pensively. Two hundred and
forty-nine thousand... rounding it off that comes to twenty-seven thousand a
month... Not a lot, but enough for a modest life ... Plus those gold
pieces... '
`He won't get to realize the gold pieces,' the same voice mixed in,
turning the barman's heart to ice. 'On Andrei Fokich's demise, the house
will immediately be torn down, and the gold will be sent to the State Bank.'
'And I wouldn't advise you to go to the clinic,' the artiste went on.
'What's the sense of dying in a ward to the groans and wheezes of the
hopelessly ill? Isn't it better to give a banquet on the twenty-seven
thousand, then take poison and move on to the other world to the sounds of
strings, surrounded by drunken beauties and dashing friends?'
The barman sat motionless and grew very old. Dark rings surrounded his
eyes, his cheeks sagged, and his lower jaw hung down.
'However, we've started day-dreaming,' exclaimed the host. To business!
Show me your cut-up paper.'
The barman, agitated, pulled a package from his pocket, unwrapped it,
and was dumbfounded: the piece of paper contained ten-rouble bills.
'My dear, you really are unwell,' Woland said, shrugging his shoulders.
The barman, grinning wildly, got up from the tabouret.
'A-and...' he said, stammering, 'and if they ... again ... that is...'
`Hm...' the artiste pondered, 'well, then come to us again. You're
always welcome. I'm glad of our acquaintance ...'
Straight away Koroviev came bounding from the study, clutched the
barman's hand, and began shaking it, begging Andrei Fokich to give his
regards to everybody, everybody. Not thinking very well, the barman started
for the front hall.
'Hella, see him out!' Koroviev shouted.
Again that naked redhead in the front hall! The barman squeezed through
the door, squeaked 'Goodbye!', and went off like a drunk man. Having gone
down a little way, he stopped, sat on a step, took out the packet and
checked - the ten-rouble bills were in place.
Here a woman with a green bag came out of the apartment on that
landing. Seeing a man sitting on a step and staring dully at some money, she
smiled and said pensively:
'What a house we've got... Here's this one drunk in the morning... And
the window on the stairway is broken again!'
Peering more attentively at the barman, she added:
'And you, dozen, are simply rolling in money! ... Give some to me, eh?'
`Let me alone, for Christ's sake!' the barman got frightened and
quickly hid the money.
The woman laughed.
To the hairy devil with you, skinflint! I was joking...' And she went
downstairs.
The barman slowly got up, raised his hand to straighten his hat, and
realized that it was not on his head. He was terribly reluctant to go back,
but he was sorry about the hat. After some hesitation, he nevertheless went
back and rang.
'What else do you want?' the accursed Hella asked him.
'I forgot my hat...' the barman whispered, pointing to his bald head.
Hella turned around. The barman spat mentally and dosed his eyes. When
he opened them, Hella was holding out his hat to him and a sword with a dark
hilt.
'Not mine ...' the barman whispered, pushing the sword away and quickly
putting on his hat.
'You came without a sword?' Hella was surprised.
The barman growled something and quickly went downstairs. His head for
some reason felt uncomfortable and too warm in the hat. He took it off and,
jumping from fear, cried out softly: in his hands was a velvet beret with a
dishevelled cock's feather. The barman crossed himself. At the same moment,
the beret miaowed, turned into a black kitten and, springing back on to
Andrei Fokich's head, sank all its claws into his bald spot. Letting out a
cry of despair, the barman dashed downstairs, and the kitten fell off and
spurted back up the stairway.
Bursting outside, the barman trotted to the gates and left the devilish
no.502-bis for ever.
What happened to him afterwards is known perfectly well. Running out
the gateway, the barman looked around wildly, as if searching for something.
A minute later he was on the other side of the street in a pharmacy. He had
no sooner uttered the words:
'Tell me, please ...' when the woman behind the counter exclaimed:
'Citizen, your head is cut all over!'
Some five minutes later the barman was bandaged with gauze, knew that
the best specialists in liver diseases were considered to be professors
Bernadsky and Kuzmin, asked who was closer, lit up with joy on learning that
Kuzmin lived literally across the courtyard in a small white house, and some
two minutes later was in that house.
The premises were antiquated but very, very cosy. The barman remembered
that the first one he happened to meet was an old nurse who wanted to take
his hat, but as he turned out to have no hat, the nurse went off somewhere,
munching with an empty mouth.
Instead of her, there turned up near the mirror and under what seemed
some sort of arch, a middle-aged woman who said straight away that it was
possible to make an appointment only for the nineteenth, not before. The
barman at once grasped what would save him. Peering with fading eyes through
the arch, where three persons were waiting in what was obviously some sort
of anteroom, he whispered:
'Mortally ill...'
The woman looked in perplexity at the barman's bandaged head,
hesitated, and said:
'Well, then ...' and allowed the barman through the archway.
At that same moment the opposite door opened, there was the flash of a
gold pince-nez. The woman in the white coat said:
'Citizens, this patient will go out of turn.'
And before the barman could look around him, he was in Professor
Kuzmin's office. There was nothing terrible, solemn or medical in this
oblong room.
"What's wrong with you?' Professor Kuzmin asked in a pleasant voice,
and glanced with some alarm at the bandaged head.
`I've just learned from reliable hands,' the barman replied, casting
wild glances at some group photograph under glass, 'that I'm going to die of
liver cancer in February of this corning year. I beg you to stop it.'
Professor Kuzmin, as he sat there, threw himself against the high
Gothic leather back of his chair.
`Excuse me, I don't understand you... you've, what, been to the doctor?
Why is your head bandaged?'
`Some doctor! ... You should've seen this doctor...' the barman
replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. 'And don't pay any
attention to the head, it has no connection ... Spit on the head, it has
nothing to do with it... Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it! ...'
'Pardon me, but who told you?!'
'Believe him!' the barman ardently entreated. 'He knows!'
`I don't understand a thing!' the professor said, shrugging his
shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. 'How can he know when
you're going to die? The more so as he's not a doctor!'
'In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,' replied the barman.
Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp
trousers, and thought: 'Just what I needed, a madman...' He asked:
'Do you drink vodka?'
'Never touch it,' the barman answered.
A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the
couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said,
the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained
that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of
cancer, but since it was so ... since he was afraid and had been frightened
by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests ...
The professor was scribbling away on some sheets of paper, explaining
where to go, what to bring. Besides that, he gave him a note for Professor
Bouret, a neurologist, telling the barman that his nerves were in complete
disorder.
'How much do I owe you. Professor?' the barman asked in a tender and
trembling voice, pulling out a fat wallet.
'As much as you like,' the professor said curtly and drily.
The barman took out thirty roubles and placed them on the table, and
then, with an unexpected softness, as if operating with a cat's paw, he
placed on top of the bills a clinking stack wrapped in newspaper.
'And what is this?' Kuzmin asked, twirling his moustache.
'Don't scorn it, citizen Professor,' the barman whispered. 'I beg you -
stop the cancer!'
Take away your gold this minute,' said the professor, proud of himself.
'You'd better look after your nerves. Tomorrow have your urine
analysed, don't drink a lot of tea, and don't put any salt in your food.'
'Not even in soup?' the barman asked.
'Not in anything,' ordered Kuzmin.
'Ahh! ...' the barman exclaimed wistfully, gazing at the professor with
tenderness, gathering up his gold pieces and backing towards the door.
That evening the professor had few patients, and as twilight approached
the last one left. Taking off his white coat, the professor glanced at the
spot where the barman had left his money and saw no banknotes there but only
three labels from bottles of Abrau-Durso wine.
`Devil knows what's going on!' Kuzmin muttered, trailing the flap of
his coat on the floor and feeling the labels. 'It turns out he's not only a
schizophrenic but also a crook! But I can't understand what he needed me
for! Could it be the prescription for the urine analysis? Oh-oh! ... He's
stolen my overcoat!' And the professor rushed for the front hall, one arm
still in the sleeve of his white coat. 'Xenia Nikitishna!' he cried shrilly
through the door to the front hall. 'Look and see if all the coats are
there!'
The coats all turned out to be there. But instead, when the professor
went back to his desk, having peeled off his white coat at last, he stopped
as if rooted to the parquet beside his desk, his eyes riveted to it. In the
place where the labels had been there sat an orphaned black kitten with a
sorry little muzzle, miaowing over a saucer of milk.
'Wh-what's this, may I ask?! Now this is...' And Kuzmin felt the nape
of his neck go cold.
At the professor's quiet and pitiful cry, Xenia Nikitishna came running
and at once reassured him completely, saying that it was, of course, one of
the patients who had abandoned the kitten, as happens not infrequently to
professors.
They probably have a poor life,' Xenia Nikitishna explained, "well, and
we, of course...'
They started thinking and guessing who might have abandoned it.
Suspicion fell on a little old lady with a stomach ulcer.
`It's she, of course,' Xenia Nikitishna said. 'She thinks: "I'll die
anyway, and it's a pity for the kitten.'"
'But excuse me!' cried Kuzmin. 'What about the milk? ... Did she bring
that, too? And the saucer, eh?'
`She brought it in a little bottle, and poured it into the saucer
here,' Xenia Nikitishna explained.
'In any case, take both the kitten and the saucer away,' said Kuzmin,
and he accompanied Xenia Nikitishna to the door himself. When he came back,
the situation had altered.
As he was hanging his coat on a nail, the professor heard guffawing in
the courtyard. He glanced out and, naturally, was struck dumb. A lady was
running across the yard to the opposite wing in nothing but a shift. The
professor even knew her name - Marya Alexandrovna. The guffawing came from a
young boy.
'What's this?' Kuzmin said contemptuously.
Just then, behind the wall, in the professor's daughter's room, a
gramophone began to play the foxtrot 'Hallelujah,' and at the same moment a
sparrow's chirping came from behind the professor's back. He turned around
and saw a large sparrow hopping on his desk.
'Hm ... keep calm!' the professor thought. 'It flew in as I left the
window. Everything's in order!' the professor told himself, feeling that
everything was in complete disorder, and that, of course, owing chiefly to
the sparrow. Taking a closer look at him, the professor became convinced at
once that this was no ordinary sparrow. The obnoxious little sparrow dipped
on its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation
- in short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramophone, like
a drunkard in a bar, saucy as could be, casting impudent glances at the
professor.
Kuzmin's hand fell on the telephone, and he decided to call his old
schoolmate Bouret, to ask what such little sparrows might mean at the age of
sixty, especially when one's head suddenly starts spinning?
The sparrow meanwhile sat on the presentation inkstand, shat in it (I'm
not joking!), then flew up, hung in the air, and, swinging a steely beak,
pecked at the glass covering the photograph portraying the entire university
graduating class of '94, broke the glass to smithereens, and only then flew
out the window.
The professor dialled again, and instead of calling Bouret, called a
leech bureau, [5] said he was Professor Kuzmin, and asked them to send some
leeches to his house at once. Hanging up the receiver, the professor turned
to his desk again and straight away let out a scream. At this desk sat a
woman in a nurse's headscarf, holding a handbag with the word 'Leeches'
written on it. The professor screamed as he looked at her mouth: it was a
man's mouth, crooked, stretching from ear to ear, with a single fang. The
nurse's eyes were dead.
'This bit of cash I'll just pocket,' the nurse said in a male basso,
`no point in letting it lie about here.' She raked up the labels with a
circumstance. Everybody knows how hard it is to get money; obstacles to it
can always be found. But there had been no case in the bookkeeper's thirty
years of experience when anyone, either an official or a private person, had
had a hard time accepting money.
But at last the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again
leaned to the window.
'Do you have a lot?' the clerk asked.
'Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eleven roubles.'
'Oho!' the clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the
bookkeeper a green slip.
Knowing the form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began
to untie the string on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything
swam before his eyes, he murmured something painfully.
Foreign money flitted before his eyes: there were stacks of Canadian
dollars, British pounds, Dutch guldens, Latvian lats, Estonian kroons...
'There he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety!' a menacing
voice resounded over the dumbstruck bookkeeper. And straight away Vassily
Stepanovich was arrested.
At the same time that the zealous bookkeeper was racing in a cab to his
encounter with the self-writing suit, from first-class sleeping car no. 9 of
the Kiev train, on its arrival in Moscow, there alighted, among others, a
decent-looking passenger carrying a small fibreboard suitcase. This
passenger was none other than the late Berlioz's uncle, Maximilian
Andreevich Poplavsky, an industrial economist, who lived in Kiev on the
former Institutsky Street. The reason for Maximilian Andreevich's coming to
Moscow was a telegram received late in the evening two days before with the
following content:
Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday
three pm come. Berlioz.
Maximilian Andreevich was considered one of the most intelligent men in
Kiev, and deservedly so. But even the most intelligent man might have been
nonplussed by such a telegram. If someone sends a telegram saying he has
been run over, it is clear that he has not died of it. But then, what was
this about a funeral? Or was he in a bad way and foreseeing death? That was
possible, but such precision was in the highest degree strange: how could he
know he would be buried on Friday at three pm? An astonishing telegram!
However, intelligence is granted to intelligent people so as to sort
out entangled affairs. Very simple. A mistake had been made, and the message
had been distorted. The word 'have' had undoubtedly come there from some
other telegram in place of the word 'Berlioz', which got moved and wound up
at the end of the telegram. With such an emendation, the meaning of the
telegram became clear, though, of course, tragic.
When the outburst of grief that struck Maximilian Andreevich's wife
subsided, he at once started preparing to go to Moscow.
One secret about Maximilian Andreevich ought to be revealed. There is
no arguing that he felt sorry for his wife's nephew, who had died in the
bloom of life. But, of course, being a practical man, he realized that there
was no special need for his presence at the funeral. And nevertheless
Maximilian Andreevich was in great haste to go to Moscow. What was the
point? The point was the apartment. An apartment in Moscow is a serious
thing! For some unknown reason, Maximilian Andreevich did not like Kiev [1],
and the thought of moving to Moscow had been gnawing at him so much lately
that he had even begun to sleep badly.
He did not rejoice in the spring flooding of the Dnieper, when,
overflowing the islands by the lower bank, the water merged with the
horizon. He did not rejoice in the staggeringly beautiful view which opened
out from the foot of the monument to Prince Vladimir. He did not take
delight in patches of sunlight playing in springtime on the brick paths of
Vladimir's Hill. He wanted none of it, he wanted only one thing - to move to
Moscow.
Advertising in the newspapers about exchanging an apartment on
Institutsky Street in Kiev for smaller quarters in Moscow brought no
results. No takers were found, or if they occasionally were, their offers
were disingenuous.
The telegram staggered Maximilian Andreevich. This was a moment it
would be sinful to let slip. Practical people know that such moments do not
come twice.
In short, despite all obstacles, he had to succeed in inheriting his
nephew's apartment on Sadovaya. Yes, it was difficult, very difficult, but
these difficulties had to be overcome at whatever cost. The experienced
Maximilian Andreevich knew that the first and necessary step towards that
had to be the following: he must get himself registered, at least
temporarily, as the tenant of his late nephew's three rooms.
On Friday afternoon, Maximilian Andreevich walked through the door of
the room which housed the management of no.502-bis on Sadovava Street in
Moscow.
In the narrow room, with an old poster hanging on the wall illustrating
in several pictures the ways of resuscitating people who have drowned in the
river, an unshaven, middle-aged man with anxious eyes sat in perfect
solitude at a wooden table.
'May I see the chairman?' the industrial economist inquired politely,
taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on a vacant chair.
This seemingly simple little question for some reason so upset the
seated man that he even changed countenance. Looking sideways in anxiety, he
muttered unintelligibly that the chairman was not there.
`Is he at home?' asked Poplavsky. `I've come on the most urgent
business.'
The seated man again replied quite incoherently, but all the same one
could guess that the chairman was not at home.
'And when will he be here?'
The seated man made no reply to this and looked with a certain anguish
out the window.
'Aha! ...' the intelligent Poplavsky said to himself and inquired about
the secretary.
The strange man at the table even turned purple with strain and said,
again unintelligibly, that the secretary was not there either ... he did not
know when he would be back, and ... that the secretary was sick...
'Aha! ...' Poplavsky said to himself. `But surely there's somebody in
the management?'
'Me,' the man responded in a weak voice.
'You see,' Poplavsky began to speak imposingly, 'I am the sole heir of
the late Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at the Patriarch's
Ponds, and I am obliged, in accordance with the law, to take over the
inheritance contained in our apartment no.50...'
'I'm not informed, comrade ...' the man interrupted in anguish.
'But, excuse me,' Poplavsky said in a sonorous voice, 'you are a member
of the management and are obliged ...'
And here some citizen entered the room. At the sight of the entering
man, the man seated at the table turned pale.
'Management member Pyatnazhko?' the entering man asked the seated man.
'Yes,' the latter said, barely audibly.
The entering one whispered something to the seated one, and he,
thoroughly upset, rose from his chair, and a few seconds later Poplavsky
found himself alone in the empty management room.
'Eh, what a complication! As if on purpose, all of them at once ...'
Poplavsky thought in vexation, crossing the asphalt courtyard and
hurrying to apartment no.50.
As soon as the industrial economist rang, the door was opened, and
Maximilian Andreevich entered the semi-dark front hall. It was a somewhat
surprising circumstance that he could not figure out who had let him in:
there was no one in the front hall except an enormous black cat sitting on a
chair.
Maximilian Andreevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the door of
the study opened and Koroviev came out to the front hall. Maximilian
Andreevich bowed politely, but with dignity, and said:
'My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle...'
But before he could finish, Koroviev snatched a dirty handkerchief from
his pocket, buried his nose in it, and began to weep.
'... of the late Berlioz ...'
'Of course, of course!' Koroviev interrupted, taking his handkerchief
away from his face. `Just one look and I knew it was you!' Here he was
shaken with tears and began to exclaim: 'Such a calamity, eh? What's going
on here, eh?'
'Run over by a tram-car?' Poplavsky asked in a whisper.
'Clean!' cried Koroviev, and tears flowed in streams from under his
pince-nez. 'Run clean over! I was a witness. Believe me - bang! and the
head's gone! Crunch - there goes the right leg! Crunch - there goes the left
leg! That's what these trams have brought us to!' And, obviously unable to
control himself, Koroviev pecked the wall beside the mirror with his nose
and began to shake with sobs.
Berlioz's uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger's behaviour. 'And
they say there are no warm-hearted people in our time!' he thought, feeling
his own eyes beginning to itch. However, at the same time, an unpleasant
little cloud came over his soul, and straight away the snake-like thought
flashed in him that this warm-hearted man might perchance have registered
himself in the deceased man's apartment, for such examples have been known
in this life.
'Forgive me, were you a friend of my late Misha?' he asked, wiping his
dry left eye with his sleeve, and with his right eye studying the
racked-with-grief Koroviev. But the man was sobbing so much that one could
understand nothing except the repeated word 'crunch!' Having sobbed his
fill, Koroviev finally unglued himself from the wall and said:
'No, I can't take any more! I'll go and swallow three hundred drops of
tincture of valerian...' And turning his completely tear-bathed face to
Poplavsky, he added: That's trams for you!'
'Pardon me, but did you send me the telegram?' Maximilian Andreevich
asked, painfully puzzling over who this astonishing cry-baby might be.
'He did!' replied Koroviev, and he pointed his finger at the cat.
Poplavsky goggled his eyes, assuming he had not heard right.
'No, it's too much, I just can't,' Koroviev went on, snuffing his nose,
'when I remember: the wheel over the leg ... the wheel alone weighs three
hundred pounds ... Crunch! ... I'll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.'
And here he disappeared from the hall.
The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs,
front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said:
'Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?'
Maximilian Andreevich's head at once began to spin, his arms and legs
went numb, he dropped the suitcase and sat down on a chair facing the cat.
'I believe I asked in good Russian?' the cat said sternly. 'What of
it?'
But Poplavsky made no reply.
'Passport!'[2] barked the cat, holding out a plump paw.
Understanding nothing and seeing nothing except the two sparks burning
in the cat's eyes, Poplavsky snatched the passport from his pocket like a
dagger. The cat picked up a pair of glasses in thick black frames from the
pier-glass table, put them on his muzzle, thus acquiring a still more
imposing air, and took the passport from Poplavsky's twitching hand.
'I wonder, am I going to faint or not? ...' thought Poplavsky. From far
away came Koroviev's snivelling, the whole front hall filled with the smell
of ether, valerian and some other nauseating vileness.
'What office issued this document?' the cat asked, peering at the page.
No answer came.
`The 412th,' the cat said to himself, tracing with his paw on the
passport, which he was holding upside down. 'Ah, yes, of course! I know that
office, they issue passports to anybody. Whereas I, for instance, wouldn't
issue one to the likes of you! Not on your life I wouldn't! I'd just take
one look at your face and instantly refuse!' The cat got so angry that he
flung the passport on the floor. `Your presence at the funeral is
cancelled,' the cat continued in an official voice. 'Kindly return to your
place of residence.' And he barked through the door 'Azazello!'
At his call a small man ran out to the front hall, limping, sheathed in
black tights, with a knife tucked into his leather belt, red-haired, with a
yellow fang and with albugo in his left eye.
Poplavsky felt he could not get enough air, rose from his seat and
backed away, clutching his heart.
'See him off, Azazello!' the cat ordered and left the hall.
'Poplavsky,' the other twanged softly, 'I hope everything's understood
now?'
Poplavsky nodded.
'Return immediately to Kiev,' Azazello went on. 'Sit there stiller than
water, lower than grass, and don't dream of any apartments in Moscow.
Clear?'
This small man, who drove Poplavsky to mortal terror with his fang,
knife and blind eye, only came up to the economist's shoulder, but his
actions were energetic, precise and efficient.
First of all, he picked up the passport and handed it to Maximilian
Andreevich, and the latter took the booklet with a dead hand. Then the one
named Azazello picked up the suitcase with one hand, with the other flung
open the door, and, taking Berlioz's uncle under the arm, led him out to the
landing of the stairway. Poplavsky leaned against the wall. Without any key,
Azazello opened the suitcase, took out of it a huge roast chicken with a
missing leg wrapped in greasy newspaper, and placed it on the landing. Then
he took out two pairs of underwear, a razor-strop, some book and a case, and
shoved it all down the stairwell with his foot, except for the chicken. The
emptied suitcase went the same way. There came a crash from below and,
judging by the sound of it, the lid broke off.
Then the red-haired bandit grabbed the chicken by the leg, and with
this whole chicken hit Poplavsky on the neck, flat, hard, and so terribly
that the body of the chicken tore off and the leg remained in Azazello's
hand. 'Everything was confusion in the Oblonskys' home,'[3] as the famous
writer Leo Tolstoy correctly put it. Precisely so he might have said on this
occasion. Yes, everything was confusion in Poplavsky's eyes. A long spark
flew before his eyes, then gave place to some funereal snake that
momentarily extinguished the May day, and Poplavsky went hurtling down the
stairs, clutching his passport in his hand.
Reaching the turn, he smashed the window on the landing with his foot
and sat on a step. The legless chicken went bouncing past him and fell down
the stairwell. Azazello, who stayed upstairs, instantly gnawed the chicken
leg dean, stuck the bone into the side pocket of his tights, went back to
the apartment, and shut the door behind him with a bang.
At that moment there began to be heard from below the cautious steps of
someone coming up.
Having run down one more flight of stairs, Poplavsky sat on a wooden
bench on the landing and caught his breath.
Some tiny elderly man with an extraordinarily melancholy face, in an
old-fashioned tussore silk suit and a hard straw hat with a green band, on
his way upstairs, stopped beside Poplavsky.
'May I ask you, citizen,' the man in tussore silk asked sadly, 'where
apartment no.50 is?'
'Further up,' Poplavsky replied curtly.
'I humbly thank you, citizen,' the little man said with the same
sadness and went on up, while Poplavsky got to his feet and ran down.
The question arises whether it might have been the police that
Maximilian Andreevich was hastening to, to complain about the bandits who
had perpetrated savage violence upon him in broad daylight? No, by no means,
that can be said with certainty. To go into a police station and tell them,
look here, just now a cat in eyeglasses read my passport, and then a man in
tights, with a knife ... no, citizens, Maximilian Andreevich was indeed an
intelligent man.
He was already downstairs and saw just by the exit a door leading to
some closet. The glass in the door was broken. Poplavsky hid his passport in
his pocket and looked around, hoping to see his thrown-down belongings. But
there was no trace of them. Poplavsky was even surprised himself at how
little this upset him. He was occupied with another interesting and tempting
thought: of testing the accursed apartment one more time on this little man.
In fact, since he had inquired after its whereabouts, it meant he was
going there for the first time. Therefore he was presently heading straight
into the clutches of the company that had ensconced itself in apartment
no.50.
Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be leaving this
apartment very soon. Maximilian Andreevich was, of course, no longer going
to any funeral of any nephew, and there was plenty of time before the train
to Kiev. The economist looked around and ducked into the closet.
At that moment way upstairs a door banged. That's him going in...'
Poplavsky thought, his heart skipping a beat. The closet was cool, it
smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreevich settled on some stump of
wood and decided to wait. The position was convenient, from the closet one
looked directly on to the exit from the sixth stairway.
However, the man from Kiev had to wait longer than he supposed. The
stairway was for some reason deserted all the while. One could hear well,
and finally a door banged on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Yes, those
were his little steps. 'He's coming down ...' A door one flight lower
opened. The little steps ceased. A woman's voice. The voice of the sad man -
yes, it's his voice... Saying something like 'leave me alone, for Christ's
sake ...' Poplavsky's ear stuck through the broken glass. This ear caught a
woman's laughter. Quick and brisk steps coming down. And now a woman's back
flashed by. This woman, carrying a green oilcloth bag, went out through the
front hall to the courtyard. And the little man's steps came anew. 'Strange!
He's going back up to the apartment! Does it mean he's part of the gang
himself? Yes, he's going back. They've opened the door again upstairs. Well,
then, let's wait a little longer ...'
This time he did not have to wait long. The sound of the door. The
little steps. The little steps cease. A desperate cry. A cat's miaowing. The
little steps, quick, rapid, down, down, down!
Poplavsky had not waited in vain. Crossing himself and muttering
something, the melancholy little man rushed past him, hatless, with a
completely crazed face, his bald head all scratched and his trousers
completely wet. He began tearing at the handle of the front door, unable in
his fear to determine whether it opened out or in, managed at last, and flew
out into the sun in the courtyard.
The testing of the apartment had been performed. Thinking no more
either of the deceased nephew or of the apartment, shuddering at the thought
of the risk he had been running, Maximilian Andreevich, whispering only the
three words 'It's all clear, it's all clear!', ran out to the courtyard. A
few minutes later the bus was carrying the industrial economist in the
direction of the Kiev station.
As for the tiny little man, a most unpleasant story had gone on with
him while the economist was sitting in the closet downstairs. The little man
was barman at the Variety, and was called Andrei Foldch Sokov. While the
investigation was going on in the Variety, Andrei Fokich kept himself apart
from all that was happening, and only one thing could be noticed, that he
became still sadder than he generally was, and, besides, that he inquired of
the messenger Karpov where the visiting magician was staying.
And so, after parting with the economist on the landing, the barman
went up to the fifth floor and rang at apartment no.50.
The door was opened for him immediately, but the barman gave a start,
backed away, and did not enter at once. This was understandable. The door
had been opened by a girl who was wearing nothing but a coquettish little
lacy apron and a white fichu on her head. On her feet, however, she had
golden slippers. The girl was distinguished by an irreproachable figure, and
the only thing that might have been considered a defect in her appearance
was the purple scar on her neck.
'Well, come in then, since you rang,' said the girl, fixing her lewd
green eyes on the barman.
Andrei Fokich gasped, blinked his eyes, and stepped into the front
hall, taking off his hat. Just then the telephone in the front hall rang.
The shameless maid put one foot on a chair, picked up the receiver, and
into it said:
'Hello!'
The barman, not knowing where to look, stood shifting from one foot to
the other, thinking: 'Some maid this foreigner's got! Pah, nasty thing!' And
to save himself from the nasty thing, he began casting sidelong glances
around him.
The whole big and semi-dark hall was cluttered with unusual objects and
clothing. Thus, thrown over the back of a chair was a funereal cloak lined
with fiery cloth, on the pier-glass table lay a long sword with a gleaming
gold hilt. Three swords with silver hilts stood in the corner like mere
umbrellas or canes. And on the stag-horns hung berets with eagle feathers.
`Yes,' the maid was saying into the telephone. 'How's that? Baron
Meigel? I'm listening. Yes. Mister artiste is at home today. Yes, he'll be
glad to see you. Yes, guests... A tailcoat or a black suit. What? By twelve
midnight.' Having finished the conversation, the maid hung up the receiver
and turned to the barman: 'What would you like?'
'I must see the citizen artiste.'
'What? You mean him himself?'
'Himself,' the barman replied sorrowfully.
'I'll ask,' the maid said with visible hesitation and, opening the door
to the late Berlioz's study, announced: 'Knight, there's a little man here
who says he must see Messire.'
'Let him come in,' Koroviev's cracked voice came from the study.
'Go into the living room,' the girl said as simply as if she were
dressed like anyone else, opened the door to the living room, and herself
left the hall.
Going in where he was invited, the barman even forgot his business, so
greatly was he struck by the decor of the room. Through the stained glass of
the big windows (a fantasy of the jeweller's utterly vanished wife) poured
an unusual, church-like light. Logs were blazing in the huge antique
fireplace, despite the hot spring day. And yet it was not the least bit hot
in the room, and even quite the contrary, on entering one was enveloped in
some sort of dankness as in a cellar. On a tiger skin in front of the
fireplace sat a huge black tom-cat, squinting good-naturedly at the fire.
There was a table at the sight of which the God-fearing barman gave a
start: the table was covered with church brocade. On the brocade tablecloth
stood a host of bottles - round-bellied, mouldy and dusty. Among the bottles
gleamed a dish, and it was obvious at once that it was of pure gold. At the
fireplace a small red-haired fellow with a knife in his belt was roasting
pieces of meat on a long steel sword, and the juice dripped into the fire,
and the smoke went up the flue. There was a smell not only of roasting meat,
but also of some very strong perfume and incense, and it flashed in the
barman's mind, for he already knew of Berlioz's death and his place of
residence from the newspapers, that this might, for all he knew, be a church
panikhida [4] that was being served for Berlioz, which thought, however, he
drove away at once as a priori absurd.
The astounded barman unexpectedly heard a heavy bass:
'Well, sir, what can I do for you?'
And here the barman discovered in the shadows the one he wanted.
The black magician was sprawled on some boundless sofa, low, with
pillows scattered over it. As it seemed to the barman, the artiste was
wearing only black underwear and black pointed shoes.
'I,' the barman began bitterly, 'am the manager of the buffet at the
Variety Theatre...'
The artiste stretched out his hand, stones flashing on its fingers, as
if stopping the barman's mouth, and spoke with great ardour:
'No, no, no! Not a word more! Never and by no means! Nothing from your
buffet will ever pass my lips! I, my esteemed sir, walked past your stand
yesterday, and even now I am unable to forget either the sturgeon or the
feta cheese! My precious man! Feta cheese is never green in colour, someone
has tricked you. It ought to be white. Yes, and the tea? It's simply swill!
I saw with my own eyes some slovenly girl add tap water from a bucket to
your huge samovar, while the tea went on being served. No, my dear, it's
impossible!'
'I beg your pardon,' said Andrei Fokich, astounded by this sudden
attack, 'but I've come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do
with it...'
'How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it's spoiled!'
"They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness,' the barman said.
'My dear heart, that is nonsense!'
'What is nonsense?'
`Second freshness - that's what is nonsense! There is only one
freshness - the first - and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the
second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.'
'I beg your pardon...' the barman again tried to begin, not knowing how
to shake off the cavilling artiste.
'I cannot pardon you,' the other said firmly.
'I have come about something else,' the barman said, getting quite
upset.
'About something else?' the foreign magician was surprised. 'And what
else could have brought you to me? Unless memory deceives me, among people
of a profession similar to yours, I have had dealings with only one
sutler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet in this world.
However, I'm glad. Azazello! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!'
The one who was roasting meat turned, horrifying the barman with his
fangs, and deftly offered him one of the dark oaken tabourets. There were no
other seats in the room.
The barman managed to say:
'I humbly thank you,' and lowered himself on to the stool. Its back leg
broke at once with a crack, and the barman, gasping, struck his backside
most painfully on the floor. As he fell, he kicked another stool in front of
him with his foot, and from it spilled a full cup of red wine on his
trousers.
The artiste exclaimed:
'Oh! Are you hurt?'
Azazello helped the barman up and gave him another seat. In a voice
filled with grief, the barman declined his host's suggestion that he take
off his trousers and dry them before the fire, and, feeling unbearably
uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothing, cautiously sat down on the
other stool.
'I like sitting low down,' the artiste said, `it's less dangerous
falling from a low height. Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon.
Freshness, dear heart, freshness, freshness! That should be the motto of
every barman. Here, wouldn't you like to try...'
In the crimson light of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the
barman, and Azazello laid a sizzling piece of meat on the golden dish,
squeezed lemon juice over it, and handed the barman a golden two-pronged
fork.
'My humble... I ...'
'No, no, try it!'
The barman put a piece into his mouth out of politeness, and understood
at once that he was chewing something very fresh indeed, and, above all,
extraordinarily delicious. But as he was chewing the fragrant, juicy meat,
the barman nearly choked and fell a second time. From the neighbouring room
a big, dark bird flew in and gently brushed the barman's bald head with its
wing. Alighting on the mantelpiece beside the clock, the bird turned out to
be an owl. 'Oh, Lord God! ...' thought Andrei Fokich, nervous like all
barmen. 'A nice little apartment! ...'
'A cup of wine? White, red? What country's wine do you prefer at this
time of day?'
'My humble ... I don't drink ...'
'A shame! What about a game of dice, then? Or do you have some other
favourite game? Dominoes? Cards?'
'I don't play games,' the already weary barman responded.
`Altogether bad,' the host concluded. 'As you will, but there's
something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of
charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly
hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons
sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion
some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business.'
'Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks ...'
'I?' the magician exclaimed in amazement. 'Good gracious, it's somehow
even unbecoming to me!'
'I'm sorry,' said the barman, taken aback. 'I mean the svites en masse, and that
could be done most conveniently in a theatre. And so my retinue,' he nodded
in the direction of the cat, 'arranged for this s
what is it in connection with this sthem all up. And then a young man comes to my
bar and gives me a ten-rouble bill, I give him eight-fifty in change... Then
another one ...'
'Also a young man?'
'No, an older one. Then a third, and a fourth ... I keep giving them
change. And today I went to check the cash box, and there, instead of money
- cut-up paper. They hit the buffet for a hundred and nine roubles.'
'Ai-yai-yai!' the artiste exclaimed. 'But can they have thought those
were real bills? I can't admit the idea that they did it knowingly.'
The barman took a somehow hunched and anguished look around him, but
said nothing.
'Can they be crooks?' the magician asked worriedly of his visitor. 'Can
there be crooks among the Muscovites?'
The barman smiled so bitterly in response that all doubts fell away:
yes, there were crooks among the Muscovites.
'That is mean!' Woland was indignant. 'You're a poor man ... You are a
poor man?'
The barman drew his head down between his shoulders, making it evident
that he was a poor man.
'How much have you got in savings?'
The question was asked in a sympathetic tone, but even so such a
question could not but be acknowledged as indelicate. The barman faltered.
Two hundred and forty-nine thousand roubles in five savings banks,' a
cracked voice responded from the neighbouring room, `and two hundred
ten-rouble gold pieces at home under the floor.'
The barman became as if welded to his tabouret.
'Well, of course, that's not a great sum,' Woland said condescendingly
to his visitor, 'though, as a matter of fact, you have no need of it anyway.
When are you going to die?'
Here the barman became indignant.
'Nobody knows that and it's nobody's concern,' he replied.
'Sure nobody knows,' the same trashy voice came from the study. The
binomial theorem, you might think! He's going to die in nine months, next
February, of liver cancer, in the clinic of the First Moscow State
University, in ward number four.'
The barman's face turned yellow.
'Nine months...' Woland calculated pensively. Two hundred and
forty-nine thousand... rounding it off that comes to twenty-seven thousand a
month... Not a lot, but enough for a modest life ... Plus those gold
pieces... '
`He won't get to realize the gold pieces,' the same voice mixed in,
turning the barman's heart to ice. 'On Andrei Fokich's demise, the house
will immediately be torn down, and the gold will be sent to the State Bank.'
'And I wouldn't advise you to go to the clinic,' the artiste went on.
'What's the sense of dying in a ward to the groans and wheezes of the
hopelessly ill? Isn't it better to give a banquet on the twenty-seven
thousand, then take poison and move on to the other world to the sounds of
strings, surrounded by drunken beauties and dashing friends?'
The barman sat motionless and grew very old. Dark rings surrounded his
eyes, his cheeks sagged, and his lower jaw hung down.
'However, we've started day-dreaming,' exclaimed the host. To business!
Show me your cut-up paper.'
The barman, agitated, pulled a package from his pocket, unwrapped it,
and was dumbfounded: the piece of paper contained ten-rouble bills.
'My dear, you really are unwell,' Woland said, shrugging his shoulders.
The barman, grinning wildly, got up from the tabouret.
'A-and...' he said, stammering, 'and if they ... again ... that is...'
`Hm...' the artiste pondered, 'well, then come to us again. You're
always welcome. I'm glad of our acquaintance ...'
Straight away Koroviev came bounding from the study, clutched the
barman's hand, and began shaking it, begging Andrei Fokich to give his
regards to everybody, everybody. Not thinking very well, the barman started
for the front hall.
'Hella, see him out!' Koroviev shouted.
Again that naked redhead in the front hall! The barman squeezed through
the door, squeaked 'Goodbye!', and went off like a drunk man. Having gone
down a little way, he stopped, sat on a step, took out the packet and
checked - the ten-rouble bills were in place.
Here a woman with a green bag came out of the apartment on that
landing. Seeing a man sitting on a step and staring dully at some money, she
smiled and said pensively:
'What a house we've got... Here's this one drunk in the morning... And
the window on the stairway is broken again!'
Peering more attentively at the barman, she added:
'And you, dozen, are simply rolling in money! ... Give some to me, eh?'
`Let me alone, for Christ's sake!' the barman got frightened and
quickly hid the money.
The woman laughed.
To the hairy devil with you, skinflint! I was joking...' And she went
downstairs.
The barman slowly got up, raised his hand to straighten his hat, and
realized that it was not on his head. He was terribly reluctant to go back,
but he was sorry about the hat. After some hesitation, he nevertheless went
back and rang.
'What else do you want?' the accursed Hella asked him.
'I forgot my hat...' the barman whispered, pointing to his bald head.
Hella turned around. The barman spat mentally and dosed his eyes. When
he opened them, Hella was holding out his hat to him and a sword with a dark
hilt.
'Not mine ...' the barman whispered, pushing the sword away and quickly
putting on his hat.
'You came without a sword?' Hella was surprised.
The barman growled something and quickly went downstairs. His head for
some reason felt uncomfortable and too warm in the hat. He took it off and,
jumping from fear, cried out softly: in his hands was a velvet beret with a
dishevelled cock's feather. The barman crossed himself. At the same moment,
the beret miaowed, turned into a black kitten and, springing back on to
Andrei Fokich's head, sank all its claws into his bald spot. Letting out a
cry of despair, the barman dashed downstairs, and the kitten fell off and
spurted back up the stairway.
Bursting outside, the barman trotted to the gates and left the devilish
no.502-bis for ever.
What happened to him afterwards is known perfectly well. Running out
the gateway, the barman looked around wildly, as if searching for something.
A minute later he was on the other side of the street in a pharmacy. He had
no sooner uttered the words:
'Tell me, please ...' when the woman behind the counter exclaimed:
'Citizen, your head is cut all over!'
Some five minutes later the barman was bandaged with gauze, knew that
the best specialists in liver diseases were considered to be professors
Bernadsky and Kuzmin, asked who was closer, lit up with joy on learning that
Kuzmin lived literally across the courtyard in a small white house, and some
two minutes later was in that house.
The premises were antiquated but very, very cosy. The barman remembered
that the first one he happened to meet was an old nurse who wanted to take
his hat, but as he turned out to have no hat, the nurse went off somewhere,
munching with an empty mouth.
Instead of her, there turned up near the mirror and under what seemed
some sort of arch, a middle-aged woman who said straight away that it was
possible to make an appointment only for the nineteenth, not before. The
barman at once grasped what would save him. Peering with fading eyes through
the arch, where three persons were waiting in what was obviously some sort
of anteroom, he whispered:
'Mortally ill...'
The woman looked in perplexity at the barman's bandaged head,
hesitated, and said:
'Well, then ...' and allowed the barman through the archway.
At that same moment the opposite door opened, there was the flash of a
gold pince-nez. The woman in the white coat said:
'Citizens, this patient will go out of turn.'
And before the barman could look around him, he was in Professor
Kuzmin's office. There was nothing terrible, solemn or medical in this
oblong room.
"What's wrong with you?' Professor Kuzmin asked in a pleasant voice,
and glanced with some alarm at the bandaged head.
`I've just learned from reliable hands,' the barman replied, casting
wild glances at some group photograph under glass, 'that I'm going to die of
liver cancer in February of this corning year. I beg you to stop it.'
Professor Kuzmin, as he sat there, threw himself against the high
Gothic leather back of his chair.
`Excuse me, I don't understand you... you've, what, been to the doctor?
Why is your head bandaged?'
`Some doctor! ... You should've seen this doctor...' the barman
replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. 'And don't pay any
attention to the head, it has no connection ... Spit on the head, it has
nothing to do with it... Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it! ...'
'Pardon me, but who told you?!'
'Believe him!' the barman ardently entreated. 'He knows!'
`I don't understand a thing!' the professor said, shrugging his
shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. 'How can he know when
you're going to die? The more so as he's not a doctor!'
'In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,' replied the barman.
Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp
trousers, and thought: 'Just what I needed, a madman...' He asked:
'Do you drink vodka?'
'Never touch it,' the barman answered.
A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the
couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said,
the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained
that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of
cancer, but since it was so ... since he was afraid and had been frightened
by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests ...
The professor was scribbling away on some sheets of paper, explaining
where to go, what to bring. Besides that, he gave him a note for Professor
Bouret, a neurologist, telling the barman that his nerves were in complete
disorder.
'How much do I owe you. Professor?' the barman asked in a tender and
trembling voice, pulling out a fat wallet.
'As much as you like,' the professor said curtly and drily.
The barman took out thirty roubles and placed them on the table, and
then, with an unexpected softness, as if operating with a cat's paw, he
placed on top of the bills a clinking stack wrapped in newspaper.
'And what is this?' Kuzmin asked, twirling his moustache.
'Don't scorn it, citizen Professor,' the barman whispered. 'I beg you -
stop the cancer!'
Take away your gold this minute,' said the professor, proud of himself.
'You'd better look after your nerves. Tomorrow have your urine
analysed, don't drink a lot of tea, and don't put any salt in your food.'
'Not even in soup?' the barman asked.
'Not in anything,' ordered Kuzmin.
'Ahh! ...' the barman exclaimed wistfully, gazing at the professor with
tenderness, gathering up his gold pieces and backing towards the door.
That evening the professor had few patients, and as twilight approached
the last one left. Taking off his white coat, the professor glanced at the
spot where the barman had left his money and saw no banknotes there but only
three labels from bottles of Abrau-Durso wine.
`Devil knows what's going on!' Kuzmin muttered, trailing the flap of
his coat on the floor and feeling the labels. 'It turns out he's not only a
schizophrenic but also a crook! But I can't understand what he needed me
for! Could it be the prescription for the urine analysis? Oh-oh! ... He's
stolen my overcoat!' And the professor rushed for the front hall, one arm
still in the sleeve of his white coat. 'Xenia Nikitishna!' he cried shrilly
through the door to the front hall. 'Look and see if all the coats are
there!'
The coats all turned out to be there. But instead, when the professor
went back to his desk, having peeled off his white coat at last, he stopped
as if rooted to the parquet beside his desk, his eyes riveted to it. In the
place where the labels had been there sat an orphaned black kitten with a
sorry little muzzle, miaowing over a saucer of milk.
'Wh-what's this, may I ask?! Now this is...' And Kuzmin felt the nape
of his neck go cold.
At the professor's quiet and pitiful cry, Xenia Nikitishna came running
and at once reassured him completely, saying that it was, of course, one of
the patients who had abandoned the kitten, as happens not infrequently to
professors.
They probably have a poor life,' Xenia Nikitishna explained, "well, and
we, of course...'
They started thinking and guessing who might have abandoned it.
Suspicion fell on a little old lady with a stomach ulcer.
`It's she, of course,' Xenia Nikitishna said. 'She thinks: "I'll die
anyway, and it's a pity for the kitten.'"
'But excuse me!' cried Kuzmin. 'What about the milk? ... Did she bring
that, too? And the saucer, eh?'
`She brought it in a little bottle, and poured it into the saucer
here,' Xenia Nikitishna explained.
'In any case, take both the kitten and the saucer away,' said Kuzmin,
and he accompanied Xenia Nikitishna to the door himself. When he came back,
the situation had altered.
As he was hanging his coat on a nail, the professor heard guffawing in
the courtyard. He glanced out and, naturally, was struck dumb. A lady was
running across the yard to the opposite wing in nothing but a shift. The
professor even knew her name - Marya Alexandrovna. The guffawing came from a
young boy.
'What's this?' Kuzmin said contemptuously.
Just then, behind the wall, in the professor's daughter's room, a
gramophone began to play the foxtrot 'Hallelujah,' and at the same moment a
sparrow's chirping came from behind the professor's back. He turned around
and saw a large sparrow hopping on his desk.
'Hm ... keep calm!' the professor thought. 'It flew in as I left the
window. Everything's in order!' the professor told himself, feeling that
everything was in complete disorder, and that, of course, owing chiefly to
the sparrow. Taking a closer look at him, the professor became convinced at
once that this was no ordinary sparrow. The obnoxious little sparrow dipped
on its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation
- in short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramophone, like
a drunkard in a bar, saucy as could be, casting impudent glances at the
professor.
Kuzmin's hand fell on the telephone, and he decided to call his old
schoolmate Bouret, to ask what such little sparrows might mean at the age of
sixty, especially when one's head suddenly starts spinning?
The sparrow meanwhile sat on the presentation inkstand, shat in it (I'm
not joking!), then flew up, hung in the air, and, swinging a steely beak,
pecked at the glass covering the photograph portraying the entire university
graduating class of '94, broke the glass to smithereens, and only then flew
out the window.
The professor dialled again, and instead of calling Bouret, called a
leech bureau, [5] said he was Professor Kuzmin, and asked them to send some
leeches to his house at once. Hanging up the receiver, the professor turned
to his desk again and straight away let out a scream. At this desk sat a
woman in a nurse's headscarf, holding a handbag with the word 'Leeches'
written on it. The professor screamed as he looked at her mouth: it was a
man's mouth, crooked, stretching from ear to ear, with a single fang. The
nurse's eyes were dead.
'This bit of cash I'll just pocket,' the nurse said in a male basso,
`no point in letting it lie about here.' She raked up the labels with a