catch anyone. We must repeat, there undoubtedly was someone in the
thrice-cursed apartment no.50. Occasionally the apartment answered telephone
calls, now in a rattling, now in a nasal voice, occasionally one of its
windows was opened, what's more, the sounds of a gramophone came from it.
And yet each time it was visited, decidedly no one was found there. And it
had already been visited more than once and at different times of day. And
not only that, but they had gone through it with a net, checking every
corner. The apartment had long been under suspicion. Guards were placed not
just at the way to the courtyard through the gates, but at the back entrance
as well. Not only that, but guards were placed on the roof by the chimneys.
Yes, apartment no.50 was acting up, and it was impossible to do anything
about it.
So the thing dragged on until midnight on Friday, when Baron Meigel,
dressed in evening clothes and patent-leather shoes, solemnly proceeded into
apartment no.50 in the quality of a guest. One could hear the baron being
let in to the apartment. Exactly ten minutes later, without any ringing of
bells, the apartment was visited, yet not only were the hosts not found in
it, but, which was something quite bizarre, no signs of Baron Meigel were
found in it either.
And so, as was said, the thing dragged on in this fashion until dawn on
Saturday. Here new and very interesting data were added. A six-place
passenger plane, coming from the Crimea, landed at the Moscow airport. Among
the other passengers, one strange passenger got out of it. This was a young
citizen, wildly overgrown with stubble, unwashed for three days, with
inflamed and frightened eyes, carrying no luggage and dressed somewhat
whimsically. The citizen was wearing a tall sheepskin hat, a Georgian felt
cape over a nightshirt, and new, just-purchased, blue leather bedroom
slippers. As soon as he separated from the ladder by which they descended
from the plane, he was approached. This citizen had been expected, and in a
little while the unforgettable director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich
Likhodeev, was standing before the investigators. He threw in some new data.
It now became clear that Woland had penetrated the Variety in the guise of
an artiste, having hypnotized Styopa Likhodeev, and had then contrived to
fling this same Styopa out of Moscow and God knows how many miles away. The
material was thus augmented, yet that did not make things easier, but
perhaps even a bit harder, because it was becoming obvious that to lay hold
of a person who could perform such stunts as the one of which Stepan
Bogdanovich had been the victim would not be so easy. Incidentally,
Likhodeev, at his own request, was confined in a secure cell, and next
before the investigators stood Varenukha, just arrested in his own
apartment, to which he had returned after a blank disappearance of almost
two days.
Despite the promise he had given Azazello not to lie any more, the
administrator began precisely with a lie. Though, by the way, he cannot be
judged very harshly for it. Azazello had forbidden him to lie and be rude on
the telephone, but in the present case the administrator spoke without the
assistance of this apparatus. His eyes wandering, Ivan Savelyevich declared
that on Thursday afternoon he had got drunk in his office at the Variety,
all by himself, after which he went somewhere, but where he did not
remember, drank starka [2] somewhere, but where he did not remember, lay
about somewhere under a fence, but where he again did not remember. Only
after the administrator was told that with his behaviour, stupid and
senseless, he was hindering the investigation of an important case and would
of course have to answer for it, did Varenukha burst into sobs and whisper
in a trembling voice, looking around him, that he had lied solely out of
fear, apprehensive of the revenge of Woland's gang, into whose hands he had
already fallen, and that he begged, implored and yearned to be locked up in
a bullet-proof cell.
'Pah, the devil! Really, them and their bulletproof cells!' grumbled
one of the investigators.
`They've been badly frightened by those scoundrels,' said the
investigator who had visited Ivanushka.
They calmed Varenukha down the best they could, said they would protect
him without any cell, and here it was learned that he had not drunk any
starka under a fence, and that he had been beaten by two, one red-haired and
with a fang, the other fat...
'Ah, resembling a cat?'
'Yes, yes, yes,' whispered the administrator, sinking with fear and
looking around him every second, coming out with further details of how he
had existed for some two days in apartment no.50 in the quality of a tip-off
vampire, who had all but caused the death of the findirector Rimsky...
Just then Rimsky, brought on the Leningrad train, was being led in.
However, this mentally disturbed, grey-haired old man, trembling with
fear, in whom it was very difficult to recognize the former findirector,
would not tell the truth for anything, and proved to be very stubborn in
this respect. Rimsky insisted that he had not seen any Hella in his office
window at night, nor any Varenukha, but had simply felt bad and in a state
of unconsciousness had left for Leningrad. Needless to say, the ailing
findirector concluded his testimony with a request that he be confined to a
bulletproof cell.
Annushka was arrested just as she made an attempt to hand a ten-dollar
bill to the cashier of a department store on the Arbat. Annushka's story
about people flying out the window of the house on Sadovaya and about the
little horseshoe which Annushka, in her own words, had picked up in order to
present it to the police, was listened to attentively.
The horseshoe was really made of gold and diamonds?' Annushka was
asked.
'As if I don't know diamonds,' replied Annushka.
'But he gave you ten-rouble bills, you say?'
'As if I don't know ten-rouble bills,' replied Annushka.
'Well, and when did they turn into dollars?'
'I don't know anything about any dollars, I never saw any dollars!'
Annushka replied shrilly. 'I'm in my rights! I got recompensed, I was buying
cloth with it,' and she went off into some balderdash about not being
answerable for the house management that allowed unclean powers on to the
fifth floor, making life unbearable.
Here the investigator waved at Annushka with his pen, because everyone
was properly sick of her, and wrote a pass for her to get out on a green
slip of paper, after which, to everyone's pleasure, Annushka disappeared
from the building.
Then there followed one after another a whole series of people, Nikolai
Ivanovich among them, just arrested owing solely to the foolishness of his
jealous wife, who towards morning had informed the police that her husband
had vanished. Nikolai Ivanovich did not surprise the investigators very much
when he laid on the table the clownish certificate of his having spent the
time at Satan's ball. In his stories of how he had carried Margarita
Nikolaevna's naked housekeeper on his back through the air, somewhere to
hell and beyond, for a swim in a river, and of the preceding appearance of
the bare Margarita Nikolaevna in the window, Nikolai Ivanovich departed
somewhat from the truth. Thus, for instance, he did not consider it
necessary to mention that he had arrived in the bedroom with the discarded
shift in his hands, or that he had called Natasha 'Venus'. From his words it
looked as if Natasha had flown out the window, got astride him, and dragged
him away from Moscow ...
'Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit,' Nikolai Ivanovich
said, and finished his tale with a request that not a word of it be told to
his wife. Which was promised him.
The testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich provided an opportunity for
establishing that Margarita Nikolaevna as well as her housekeeper Natasha
had vanished without a trace. Measures were taken to find them.
Thus every second of Saturday morning was marked by the unrelenting
investigation. In the city during that time, completely impossible rumours
emerged and floated about, in which a tiny portion of truth was embellished
with the most luxuriant lies. It was said that there had been a seance at
the Variety after which all two thousand spectators ran out to the street in
their birthday suits, that a press for making counterfeit money of a magic
sort had been nabbed on Sadovaya Street, that some gang had kidnapped five
managers from the entertainment sector, but the police had immediately found
them all, and many other things that one does not even wish to repeat.
Meanwhile it was getting on towards dinner time, and then, in the place
where the investigation was being conducted, the telephone rang. From
Sadovaya came a report that the accursed apartment was again showing signs
of life. It was said that its windows had been opened from inside, that
sounds of a piano and singing were coming from it, and that a black cat had
been seen in a window, sitting on the sill and basking in the sun.
At around four o'clock on that hot day, a big company of men in
civilian clothes got out of three cars a short distance from no.502-bis on
Sadovaya Street. Here the big group divided into two small ones, the first
going under the gateway of the house and across the courtyard directly to
the sixth entrance, while the second opened the normally boarded-up little
door leading to the back entrance, and both started up separate stairways to
apartment no.50.
Just then Koroviev and Azazello - Koroviev in his usual outfit and not
the festive tailcoat - were sitting in the dining room of the apartment
finishing breakfast. Woland, as was his wont, was in the bedroom, and where
the cat was nobody knew. But judging by the clatter of dishes coming from
the kitchen, it could be supposed that Behemoth was precisely there, playing
the fool, as was his wont.
'And what are those footsteps on the stairs?' asked Koroviev, toying
with the little spoon in his cup of black coffee.
`That's them coming to arrest us,' Azazello replied and drank off a
glass of cognac.
'Ahh ... well, well...' Koroviev replied to that.
The ones going up the front stairway were already on the third-floor
landing. There a couple of plumbers were pottering over the harmonica of the
steam heating. The newcomers exchanged significant glances with the
plumbers.
'They're all at home,' whispered one of the plumbers, tapping a pipe
with his hammer.
Then the one walking at the head openly took a black Mauser from under
his coat, and another beside him took out the skeleton keys. Generally,
those going to apartment no.50 were properly equipped. Two of them had fine,
easily unfolded silk nets in their pockets. Another of them had a lasso,
another had gauze masks and ampoules of chloroform.
In a second the front door to apartment no.50 was open and all the
visitors were in the front hall, while the slamming of the door in the
kitchen at the same moment indicated the timely arrival of the second group
from the back stairs.
This time there was, if not complete, at least some sort of success.
The men instantly dispersed through all the rooms and found no one
anywhere, but instead on the table of the dining room they discovered the
remains of an apparently just-abandoned breakfast, and in the living room,
on the mantelpiece, beside a crystal pitcher, sat an enormous black cat. He
was holding a primus in his paws.
Those who entered the living room contemplated this cat for quite a
long time in total silence.
'Hm, yes ... that's quite something ...' one of the men whispered.
'Ain't misbehaving, ain't bothering anybody, just reparating my
primus,' said the cat with an unfriendly scowl, `and I also consider it my
duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient and inviolable animal.'
'Exceptionally neat job,' whispered one of the men, and another said
loudly and distinctly:
"Well, come right in, you inviolable, ventriloquous cat!' The net
unfolded and soared upwards, but the man who cast it, to everyone's utter
astonishment, missed and only caught the pitcher, which straight away
smashed ringingly.
'You lose!' bawled the cat. 'Hurrah!' and here, setting the primus
aside, he snatched a Browning from behind his back. In a trice he aimed it
at the man standing closest, but before the cat had time to shoot, fire
blazed in the man's hand, and at the blast of the Mauser the cat plopped
head first from the mantelpiece on to the floor, dropping the Browning and
letting go of the primus.
'It's all over,' the cat said in a weak voice, sprawled languidly in a
pool of blood, 'step back from me for a second, let me say farewell to the
earth. Oh, my friend Azazello,' moaned the cat, bleeding profusely, 'where
are you?' The cat rolled his fading eyes in the direction of the dining-room
door. `You did not come to my aid in the moment of unequal battle, you
abandoned poor Behemoth, exchanging him for a glass of - admittedly very
good - cognac! Well, so, let my death be on your conscience, and I bequeath
you my Browning...'
The net, the net, the net ...' was anxiously whispered around the cat.
But the net, devil knows why, got caught in someone's pocket and refused to
come out.
The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat,' said the cat, 'is
a swig of benzene.' And taking advantage of the confusion, he bent to the
round opening in the primus and had a good drink of benzene. The blood at
once stopped flowing from under his left front leg. The cat jumped up, alive
and cheerful, seized the primus under his paw, shot back on to the
mantelpiece with it, and from there, shredding the wallpaper, climbed the
wall and some two seconds later was high above the visitors and sitting on a
metal curtain rod.
- Hands instantly clutched the curtain and tore it off together with
the rod, causing sunlight to flood the shaded room. But neither the
fraudulently recovered cat nor the primus fell down. The cat, without
parting with his primus, managed to shoot through the air and land on the
chandelier hanging in the middle of the room.
'A stepladder!' came from below.
'I challenge you to a duel!' bawled the cat, sailing over their heads
on the swinging chandelier, and the Browning was again in his paw, and the
primus was lodged among the branches of the chandelier. The cat took aim
and, flying like a pendulum over the heads of the visitors, opened fire on
them. The din shook the apartment. Crystal shivers poured down from the
chandelier, the mantelpiece mirror was cracked into stars, plaster dust
flew, spent cartridges bounced over the floor, window-panes shattered,
benzene spouted from the bullet-pierced primus. Now there was no question of
taking the cat alive, and the visitors fiercely and accurately returned his
fire from the Mausers, aiming at his head, stomach, chest and back. The
shooting caused panic on the asphalt courtyard.
But this shooting did not last long and began to die down of itself.
The thing was that it caused no harm either to the cat or to the
visitors. Not only was no one killed, but no one was even wounded. Everyone,
including the cat, remained totally unharmed. One of the visitors, to verify
it definitively, sent some five bullets at the confounded animal's head,
while the cat smartly responded with a full clip, but it was the same - no
effect was produced on anybody. The cat swayed on the chandelier, which
swung less and less, blowing into the muzzle of his Browning and spitting on
his paw for some reason. The faces of those standing silently below acquired
an expression of utter bewilderment. This was the only case, or one of the
only cases, when shooting proved to be entirely inefficacious. One might
allow, of course, that the cat's Browning was some sort of toy, but one
could by no means say the same of the visitors' Mausers. The cat's very
first wound - there obviously could not be the slightest doubt of it - was
nothing but a trick and a swinish sham, as was the drinking of the benzene.
One more attempt was made to get hold of the cat. The lasso was thrown,
it caught on one of the candles, the chandelier fell down. The crash seemed
to shake the whole structure of the house, but it was no use. Those present
were showered with splinters, and the cat flew through the air over them and
settled high under the ceiling on the upper part of the mantelpiece mirror's
gilded frame. He had no intention of escaping anywhere, but, on the
contrary, while sitting in relative safety, even started another speech:
`I utterly fail to comprehend,' he held forth from on high, 'the
reasons for such harsh treatment of me...'
And here at its very beginning this speech was interrupted by a heavy,
low voice coming from no one knew where:
"What's going on in the apartment? They prevent me from working...'
Another voice, unpleasant and nasal, responded:
'Well, it's Behemoth, of course, devil take him!'
A third, rattling voice said:
'Messire! It's Saturday. The sun is setting. Time to go.'
'Excuse me, I can't talk any more,' the cat said from the mirror, 'time
to go.' He hurled his Browning and knocked out both panes in the window.
Then he splashed down some benzene, and this benzene caught fire by itself,
throwing a wave of flame up to the very ceiling. Things caught fire somehow
unusually quickly and violently, as does not happen even with benzene. The
wallpaper at once began to smoke, the torn-down curtain started burning on
the floor, and the frames of the broken windows began to smoulder. The cat
crouched, miaowed, shot from the mirror to the window-sill, and disappeared
through it together with his primus.
Shots rang out outside. A man sitting on the iron fire-escape at the
level of the jeweller's wife's windows fired at the cat as he flew from one
window-sill to another, making for the corner drainpipe of the house which,
as has been said, was built in the form of a 'U'. By way of this pipe, the
cat climbed up to the roof. There, unfortunately also without any result, he
was shot at by the sentries guarding the chimneys, and the cat cleared off
into the setting sun that was flooding the city.
Just then in the apartment the parquet blazed up under the visitors'
feet, and in that fire, on the same spot where the cat had sprawled with his
sham wound, there appeared, growing more and more dense, the corpse of the
former Baron Meigel with upthrust chin and glassy eyes. To get him out was
no longer possible.
Leaping over the burning squares of parquet, slapping themselves on
their smoking chests and shoulders, those who were in the living room
retreated to the study and front hall. Those who were in the dining room and
bedroom ran out through the corridor. Those in the kitchen also came running
and rushed into the front hall. The living room was already filled with fire
and smoke. Someone managed, in flight, to dial the number of the fire
department and shout briefly into the receiver:
'Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis! ...'
To stay longer was impossible. Flames gushed out into the front hall.
Breathing became difficult.
As soon as the first little spurts of smoke pushed through the broken
windows of the enchanted apartment, desperate human cries arose in the
courtyard:
'Fire! Fire! We're burning!'
In various apartments of the house, people began shouting into
telephones:
'Sadovaya! Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis!'
Just then, as the heart-quailing bells were heard on Sadovaya, ringing
from long red engines racing quickly from all parts of the city, the people
rushing about the yard saw how, along with the smoke, there flew out of the
fifth-storey window three dark, apparently male silhouettes and one
silhouette of a naked woman.


    CHAPTER 28. The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth




Whether these silhouettes were there, or were only imagined by the
fear-struck tenants of the ill-fated house on Sadovaya, is, of course,
impossible to say precisely. If they were there, where they set out for is
also known to no one. Nor can we say where they separated, but we do know
that approximately a quarter of an hour after the fire started on Sadovaya,
there appeared by the mirrored doors of a currency store' on the Smolensky
market-place a long citizen in a checkered suit, and with him a big black
cat.
Deftly slithering between the passers-by, - the citizen opened the
outer door of the shop. But here a small, bony and extremely ill-disposed
doorman barred his way and said irritably:
'No cats allowed!'
'I beg your pardon,' rattled the long one, putting his gnarled hand to
his ear as if he were hard of hearing, 'no cats, you say? And where do you
see any cats?'
The doorman goggled his eyes, and well he might: there was no cat at
the citizen's feet now, but instead, from behind his shoulder, a fat fellow
in a tattered cap, whose mug indeed somewhat resembled a cat's, stuck out,
straining to get into the store. There was a primus in the fat fellow's
hands.
The misanthropic doorman for some reason disliked this pair of
customers.
`We only accept currency,' he croaked, gazing vexedly from under his
shaggy, as if moth-eaten, grizzled eyebrows.
`My dear man,' rattled the long one, flashing his eye through the
broken pince-nez, 'how do you know I don't have any? Are you judging by my
clothes? Never do so, my most precious custodian! You may make a mistake,
and a big one at that. At least read the story of the famous caliph Harun
al-Rashid [2] over again. But in the present case, casting that story aside
temporarily, I want to tell you that I am going to make a complaint about
you to the manager and tell him such tales about you that you may have to
surrender your post between the shining mirrored doors.'
'Maybe I've got a whole primus full of currency,' the cat-like fat
fellow, who was simply shoving his way into the store, vehemently butted
into the conversation.
Behind them the public was already pushing and getting angry. Looking
at the prodigious pair with hatred and suspicion, the doorman stepped aside,
and our acquaintances, Koroviev and Behemoth, found themselves in the store.
Here they first of all looked around, and then, in a ringing voice
heard decidedly in every corner, Koroviev announced:
'A wonderful store! A very, very fine store!'
The public turned away from the counters and for some reason looked at
the speaker in amazement, though he had all grounds for praising the store.
Hundreds of bolts of cotton in the richest assortment of colours could
be seen in the pigeonholes of the shelves. Next to them were piled calicoes,
and chiffons, and flannels for suits. In receding perspective endless stacks
of shoeboxes could be seen, and several citizenesses sat on little low
chairs, one foot shod in an old, worn-out shoe, the other in a shiny new
pump, which they stamped on the carpet with a preoccupied air.
Somewhere in the depths, around a corner, gramophones sang and played
music.
But, bypassing all these enchantments, Koroviev and Behemoth made
straight for the junction of the grocery and confectionery departments. Here
there was plenty of room, no cidzenesses in scarves and little berets were
pushing against the counters, as in the fabric department.
A short, perfectly square man with blue shaven jowls, horn-rimmed
glasses, a brand-new hat, not crumpled and with no sweat stains on the band,
in a lilac coat and orange kid gloves, stood by the counter grunting
something peremptorily. A sales clerk in a clean white smock and a blue hat
was waiting on the lilac client. With the sharpest of knives, much like the
knife stolen by Matthew Levi, he was removing from a weeping, plump pink
salmon its snake-like, silvery skin.
`This department is splendid, too,' Koroviev solemnly acknowledged,
'and the foreigner is a likeable fellow,' he benevolently pointed his finger
at the lilac back.
'No, Fagott, no,' Behemoth replied pensively, `you're mistaken, my
friend: the lilac gendeman's face lacks something, in my opinion.'
The lilac back twitched, but probably by chance, for the foreigner was
surely unable to understand what Koroviev and his companion were saying in
Russian.
'Is good?' the lilac purchaser asked sternly.
Top-notch!' replied the sales clerk, cockily slipping the edge of the
knife under the skin.
'Good I like, bad I don't,' the foreigner said sternly.
'Right you are!' the sales clerk rapturously replied.
Here our acquaintances walked away from the foreigner and his salmon to
the end of the confectionery counter.
'It's hot today,' Koroviev addressed a young, red-cheeked salesgirl and
received no reply to his words. 'How much are the mandarins?' Koroviev then
inquired of her.
'Fifteen kopecks a pound,' replied the salesgirl.
'Everything's so pricey,' Koroviev observed with a sigh, 'hm ... hm
...' He thought a little longer and then invited his companion: 'Eat up,
Behemoth.'
The fat fellow put his primus under his arm, laid hold of the top
mandarin on the pyramid, straight away gobbled it up skin and all, and began
on a second.
The salesgirl was overcome with mortal terror.
'You're out of your mind!' she shouted, losing her colour. 'Give me the
receipt! The receipt!' and she dropped the confectionery tongs.
'My darling, my dearest, my beauty,' Koroviev rasped, leaning over the
counter and winking at the salesgirl, 'we're out of currency today ... what
can we do? But I swear to you, by next time, and no later than Monday, we'll
pay it all in pure cash! We're from near by, on Sadovaya, where they're
having the fire ...'
Behemoth, after swallowing a third mandarin, put his paw into a clever
construction of chocolate bars, pulled out the bottom one, which of course
made the whole thing collapse, and swallowed it together with its gold
wrapper.
The sales clerks behind the fish counter stood as if petrified, their
knives in their hands, the lilac foreigner swung around to the robbers, and
here it turned out that Behemoth was mistaken: there was nothing lacking in
the lilac one's face, but, on the contrary, rather some superfluity of
hanging jowls and furtive eyes.
Turning completely yellow, the salesgirl anxiously cried for the whole
store to hear:
'Palosich! [3] Palosich!'
The public from the fabric department came thronging at this cry, while
Behemoth, stepping away from the confectionery temptations, thrust his paw
into a barrel labelled 'Choice Kerch Herring', [4] pulled out a couple of
herring, and swallowed them, spitting out the tails.
'Palosich!' the desperate cry came again from behind the confectionery
counter, and from behind the fish counter a sales clerk with a goatee
barked:
'What's this you're up to, vermin?'
Pavel Yosifovich was already hastening to the scene of the action. He
was an imposing man in a clean white smock, like a surgeon, with a pencil
sticking out of the pocket. Pavel Yosifovich was obviously an experienced
man. Seeing the tail of the third herring in Behemoth's mouth, he instantly
assessed the situation, understood decidedly everything, and, without
getting into any arguments with the insolent louts, waved his arm into the
distance, commanding:
'Whistle!'
The doorman flew from the mirrored door out to the corner of the
Smolensky market-place and dissolved in a sinister whisding. The public
began to surround the blackguards, and then Koroviev stepped into the
affair.
'Citizens!' he called out in a high, vibrating voice, 'what's going on
here? Eh? Allow me to ask you that! The poor man' - Koroviev let some tremor
into his voice and pointed to Behemoth, who immediately concocted a woeful
physiognomy - 'the poor man spends all day reparating primuses. He got
hungry ... and where's he going to get currency?'
To this Pavel Yosifovich, usually restrained and calm, shouted sternly:
'You just stop that!' and waved into the distance, impatiently now.
Then the trills by the door resounded more merrily. But Koroviev, unabashed
by Pavel Yosifovich's pronouncement, went on:
'Where? - I ask you this entire question! He's languishing with hunger
and thirst, he's hot. So the hapless fellow took and sampled a mandarin. And
the total worth of that mandarin is three kopecks. And here they go
whistling like spring nightingales in the woods, bothering the police,
tearing them away from their business. But he's allowed, eh?' and here
Koroviev pointed to the lilac fat man, which caused the strongest alarm to
appear on his face. `Who is he? Eh? Where did he come from? And why?
Couldn't we do widiout him? Did we invite him, or what? Of course,' the
ex-choirmaster bawled at the top of his lungs, twisting his mouth
sarcastically, 'just look at him, in his smart lilac suit, all swollen with
salmon, all stuffed with currency - and us, what about the likes of us?! ...
I'm bitter! Bitter, bitter!'[5] Koroviev wailed, like the best man at an
old-fashioned wedding.
This whole stupid, tacdess, and probably politically harmful speech
made Pavel Yosifovich shake with wrath, but, strange as it may seem, one
could see by the eyes of the crowding public mat it provoked sympathy in a
great many people. And when Behemom, putting a torn, dirty sleeve to his
eyes, exclaimed tragically:
`Thank you, my faithful friend, you stood up for the sufferer!' - a
miracle occurred. A most decent, quiet little old man, poorly but cleanly
dressed, a little old man buying three macaroons in the confectionery
department, was suddenly transformed. His eyes flashed with bellicose fire,
he turned purple, hurled the little bag of macaroons on the floor, and
shouted 'True!' in a child's high voice. Then he snatched up a tray,
dirowing from it the remains of the chocolate Eiffel Tower demolished by
Behemoth, brandished it, tore the foreigner's hat off with his left hand,
and with his right swung and struck the foreigner flat on his bald head with
the tray. There was a roll as of the noise one hears when sheets of metal
are thrown down from a truck. The fat man, turning white, fell backwards and
sat in the barrel of Kerch herring, spouting a fountain of brine from it.
Straight away a second miracle occurred. The lilac one, having fallen into
the barrel, shouted in pure Russian, with no trace of any accent:
'Murder! Police! The bandits are murdering me!' evidently having
mastered, owing to the shock, this language hitherto unknown to him.
Then the doorman's whistling ceased, and amid the crowds of agitated
shoppers two military helmets could be glimpsed approaching. But the
perfidious Behemoth doused the confectionery counter with benzene from his
primus, as one douses a bench in a bathhouse with a tub of water, and it
blazed up of itself. The flame spurted upwards and ran along the counter,
devouring the beautiful paper ribbons on the fruit baskets. The salesgirls
dashed shrieking from behind the counters, and as soon as they came from
behind them, the linen curtains on the windows blazed up and the benzene on
the floor ignited.
The public, at once raising a desperate cry, shrank back from the
confectionery department, running down the no longer needed Pavel
Yosifovich, and from behind the fish counter the sales clerks with their
whetted knives trotted in single file towards the door of the rear exit.
The lilac citizen, having extracted himself from the barrel, thoroughly
drenched with herring juice, heaved himself over the salmon on the counter
and followed after them. The glass of the mirrored front doors clattered and
spilled down, pushed out by fleeing people, while the two blackguards,
Koroviev and the glutton Behemoth, got lost somewhere, but where - it was
impossible to grasp. Only afterwards did eyewitnesses who had been present
at the starting of the fire in the currency store in Smolensky market-place
tell how the two hooligans supposedly flew up to the ceiling and there
popped like children's balloons. It is doubtful, of course, that things
happened that way, but what we don't know, we don't know.
But we do know that exactly one minute after the happening in Smolensky
market-place, Behemoth and Koroviev both turned up on the sidewalk of the
boulevard just by the house of Griboedov's aunt. Koroviev stood by the fence
and spoke:
'Hah! This is the writers' house! You know, Behemoth, I've heard many
good and flattering things about this house. Pay attention to this house, my
friend. It's pleasant to think how under this roof no end of talents are
being sheltered and nurtured.'
'Like pineapples in a greenhouse,' said Behemoth and, the better to
admire the cream-coloured building with columns, he climbed the concrete
footing of the cast-iron fence.
`Perfectly correct,' Koroviev agreed with his inseparable companion,
'and a sweet awe creeps into one's heart at the thought that in this house
there is now ripening the future author of a Don Quixote or a Faust, or,
devil take me, a Dead Souls. Eh?'
'Frightful to think of,' agreed Behemoth.
'Yes,' Koroviev went on, 'one can expect astonishing things from the
hotbeds of this house, which has united under its roof several thousand
zealots resolved to devote their lives to the service of Melpomene,
Polyhymnia and Thalia. [7] You can imagine the noise that will arise when
one of them, for starters, offers the reading public The Inspector General
or, if worse comes to worst, Evgeny Onegin.'[9]
'Quite easily,' Behemoth again agreed.
'Yes,' Koroviev went on, anxiously raising his finger, 'but! ... But, I
say, and I repeat this but ... Only if these tender hothouse plants are not
attacked by some microorganism that gnaws at their roots so that they rot!
And it does happen with pineapples! Oh, my, does it!'
'Incidentally,' inquired Behemoth, putting his round head through an
opening in the fence, 'what are they doing on the veranda?'
'Having dinner,' explained Koroviev, 'and to that I will add, my dear,
that the restaurant here is inexpensive and not bad at all. And, by the way,
like any tourist before continuing his trip, I feel a desire to have a bite
and drink a big, ice-cold mug of beer.'
'Me, too,' replied Behemoth, and the two blackguards marched down the
asphalt path under the lindens straight to the veranda of the unsuspecting
restaurant.
A pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a nib
sat on a Viennese chair at the corner entrance to the veranda, where amid
the greenery of the trellis an opening for the entrance had been made. In
front of her on a simple kitchen table lay a fat book of the ledger variety,
in which the citizeness, for unknown reasons, wrote down all those who
entered the restaurant. It was precisely this citizeness who stopped
Koroviev and Behemoth.
'Your identification cards?' She was gazing in amazement at Koroviev's
pince-nez, and also at Behemoth's primus and Behemoth's torn elbow.
`A thousand pardons, but what identification cards?' asked Koroviev in
surprise.
'You're writers?' the cidzeness asked in her turn.
'Unquestionably,' Koroviev answered with dignity.
"Your identification cards?' the citizeness repeated.
'My sweetie ...' Koroviev began tenderly.
'I'm no sweetie,' interrupted the citizeness.
'More's the pity,' Koroviev said disappointedly and went on; 'Well, so,
if you don't want to be a sweetie, which would be quite pleasant, you don't
have to be. So, then, to convince yourself that Dostoevsky was a writer, do
you have to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from
any one of his novels and you'll be convinced, without any identification
card, that you're dealing with a writer. And I don't think he even had any
identification card! What do you think? ' Koroviev turned to Behemoth.
'I'll bet he didn't,' replied Behemoth, setting the primus down on the
table beside the ledger and wiping the sweat from his sooty forehead with
his hand.
'You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled
by Koroviev.
'Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
`Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very
confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!'
'Your identification cards, citizens,' said the citizeness.
'Good gracious, this is getting to be ridiculous!' Koroviev would not
give in. 'A writer is defined not by any identity card, but by what he
writes. How do you know what plots are swarming in my head? Or in this
head?' and he pointed at Behemoth's head, from which the latter at once
removed the cap, as if to let the citizeness examine it better.
'Step aside, citizens,' she said, nervously now.
Koroviev and Behemoth stepped aside and let pass some writer in a grey
suit with a tie-less, summer white shirt, the collar of which lay wide open
on the lapels of his jacket, and with a newspaper under his arm. The writer
nodded affably to the citizeness, in passing put some nourish in the
proffered ledger, and proceeded to the veranda.
'Alas, not to us, not to us,' Koroviev began sadly, 'but to him will go
that ice-cold mug of beer, which you and I, poor wanderers, so dreamed of
together. Our position is woeful and difficult, and I don't know what to
do.'
Behemoth only spread his arms bitterly and put his cap on his round
head, covered with thick hair very much resembling a cat's fur.
And at that moment a low but peremptory voice sounded over the head of
the citizeness:
'Let them pass, Sofya Pavlovna.'[10]
The citizeness with the ledger was amazed. Amidst the greenery, of the
trellis appeared the white tailcoated chest and wedge-shaped beard of the
freebooter. He was looking affably at the two dubious ragamuffins and,
moreover, even making inviting gestures to them. Archibald Archibaldovich's
authority was something seriously felt in the restaurant under his
management, and Sofya Pavlovna obediently asked Koroviev:
'What is your name?'
'Panaev,'" he answered courteously. The citizeness wrote this name down
and raised a questioning glance to Behemoth.
'Skabichevsky,'[12] the latter squeaked, for some reason pointing to
his primus. Sofya Pavlovna wrote this down, too, and pushed the book towards
the visitors for them to sign. Koroviev wrote 'Skabichevsky' next to the
name 'Panaev', and Behemoth wrote `Panaev' next to 'Skabichevsky'.
Archibald Archibaldovich, to the utter amazement of Sofya Pavlovna,
smiled seductively, and led the guests to the best table, at the opposite
end of the veranda, where the deepest shade lay, a table next to which the
sun played merrily through one of the gaps in the trellis greenery, while
Sofya Pavlovna, blinking with amazement, studied for a long time the strange
entry made in the book by the unexpected visitors.
Archibald Archibaldovich surprised the waiters no less than he had
Sofya Pavlovna. He personally drew a chair back from the table, inviting
Koroviev to sit down, winked to one, whispered something to the other, and
the two waiters began bustling around the new guests, one of whom set his
primus down on the floor next to his scuffed shoe.
The old yellow-stained tablecloth immediately disappeared from the
table, another shot up into the air, crackling with starch, white as a
Bedouin's burnous, and Archibald Archibaldovich was already whispering
softly but very significantly, bending right to Koroviev's ear:
What may I treat you to? I have a special little balyk here ... bagged
at the architects' congress...'
'Oh ... just give us a bite of something ... eh? ...' Koroviev mumbled
good-naturedly, sprawling on the chair.
`I understand ...' Archibald Archibaldovich replied meaningfully,
closing his eyes.
Seeing the way the chief of the restaurant treated the rather dubious
visitors, the waiters laid aside their suspicions and got seriously down to
business. One was already offering a match to Behemoth, who had taken a butt
from his pocket and put it in his mouth, the other raced up clinking with
green glass and at their places arranged goblets, tumblers, and those
thin-walled glasses from which it is so nice to drink seltzer under the
awning ... no, skipping ahead, let us say: it used to be so nice to drink
seltzer under the awning of the unforgettable Griboedov veranda.
`I might recommend a little fillet of hazel-grouse,' Archibald
Archibaldovich murmured musically. The guest in the cracked pince-nez fully
approved the commander of the brig's suggestions and gazed at him
benevolently through the useless bit of glass.
The fiction writer Petrakov-Sukhovey, dining at the next table with his
wife, who was finishing a pork chop, noticed with the keenness of
observation proper to all writers the wooing of Archibald Archibaldovich,
and was quite, quite surprised. And his wife, a very respectable lady, even
simply became jealous of Koroviev over the pirate, and even rapped with her
teaspoon, as if to say: why are we kept waiting? ... It's time the ice cream
was served. What's the matter? ...
However, after sending Mrs Petrakov a seductive smile, Archibald
Archibaldovich dispatched a waiter to her, but did not leave his dear guests
himself. Ah, how intelligent Archibald Archibaldovich was! And his powers of
observation were perhaps no less keen than those of the writers themselves!
Archibald Archibaldovich knew about the seance at the Variety, and
about many other events of those days; he had heard, but, unlike the others,
had not closed his ears to, the word 'checkered' and the word 'cat'.
Archibald Archibaldovich guessed at once who his visitors were. And, having
guessed, naturally did not start quarrelling with them. And that Sofya
Pavlovna was a good one! To come up with such a thing - barring the way to
the veranda for those two! Though what could you expect of her! ...
Haughtily poking her little spoon into the slushy ice cream, Mrs
Petrakov, with displeased eyes, watched the table in front of the two motley
buffoons become overgrown with dainties as if by magic. Shiny clean lettuce
leaves were already sticking from a bowl of fresh caviar ... an instant
later a sweating silver bucket appeared, brought especially on a separate
little table...
Only when convinced that everything had been done impeccably, only when
there came flying in the waiter's hands a covered pan with something
gurgling in it, did Archibald Archibaldovich allow himself to leave the two
mysterious visitors, and that after having first whispered to them:
'Excuse me! One moment! I'll see to the fillets personally!'
He flew away from the table and disappeared into an inner passage of
the restaurant. If any observer had been able to follow the further actions
of Archibald Archibaldovich, they would undoubtedly have seemed somewhat
mysterious to him.
The chief did not go to the kitchen to supervise the fillets at all,
but went to the restaurant pantry. He opened it with his own key, locked
himself inside, took two hefty balyks from the icebox, carefully, so as not
to soil his cuffs, wrapped them in newspaper, tied them neatly with string,
and set them aside. Then he made sure that his hat and silk-lined summer
coat were in place in the next room, and only after that proceeded to the
kitchen, where the chef was carefully boning the fillets the pirate had
promised his visitors.
It must be said that there was nothing strange or incomprehensible in
any of Archibald Archibaldovich's actions, and that they could seem strange
only to a superficial observer. Archibald Archibaldovich's behaviour was the
perfectly logical result of all that had gone before. A knowledge of the
latest events, and above all Archibald Archibaldovich's phenomenal
intuition, told the chief of the Griboedov restaurant that his two visitors'
dinner, while abundant and sumptuous, would be of extremely short duration.
And his intuition, which had never yet deceived the former freebooter, did
not let him down this time either.
Just as Koroviev and Behemoth were clinking their second glasses of