o,  something  preposterous  was  coming  out:
thousands  of spectators, the  whole  staff  of  the  Variety,  and  finally
Sempleyarov,  Arkady  Apollonovich,  a  most  educated  man,  had seen  this
magician, as well as his thrice-cursed assistants, and yet it was absolutely
impossible  to find  him anywhere. What was  it, may  I  ask, had  he fallen
through  the ground  right after his disgusting  sance, or, as some affirm,
had  he not  come  to  Moscow  at all? But  if  the first is  allowed,  then
undoubtedly,  in  falling  through,  he  had  taken  along  the  entire  top
administration  of the Variety,  and if  the second,  then would it not mean
that  the  administration  of  the  luckless  theatre  itself,  after  first
committing some vileness (only recall the broken window in the study and the
behaviour of Ace of Diamonds!), had disappeared from Moscow without a trace?
     We  must do  justice to  the  one who  headed  the  investigation.  The
vanished Rimsky was found with  amazing speed.  One had only to put together
the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds at the cab stand by the movie theatre  with
certain given  times,  such as  when the  seance  ended, and  precisely when
Rimsky  could  have  disappeared, and then immediately  send a  telegram  to
Leningrad.  An hour  later (towards evening on Friday)  came the  reply that
Rimsky had been discovered in number four-twelve on the fourth floor of  the
Hotel Astoria, next to the room in which the repertory manager of one of the
Moscow theatres,  then on tour in  Leningrad, was staying  - that  same room
which,  as  is  known,  had  gilded  grey-blue  furniture  and  a  wonderful
bathroom.'
     Discovered hiding in the wardrobe of number four-twelve of the Astoria,
Rimsky was questioned  right there in Leningrad. After which a telegram came
to Moscow reporting  that findirector Rimsky was  in  an unanswerable state,
that he could not or did not wish to give sensible replies to questions  and
begged  only to be hidden in a bulletproof  room and provided  with an armed
guard.
     A telegram from Moscow ordered that Rimsky be delivered to Moscow under
guard, as a  result  of  which  Rimsky departed  Friday evening, under  said
guard, on the evening train.
     Towards evening on that  same Friday, Likhodeev's trail was also found.
Telegrams of inquiry about Likhodeev were sent to all cities, and from Yalta
came the reply that Likhodeev had been in Yalta but had left on a  plane for
Moscow.
     The  only one  whose  trail they  failed to pick up was Varenukha.  The
famous theatre administrator known to  decidedly all of Moscow had  vanished
into thin air.
     In  the meantime, there  was some bother with things happening in other
parts of  Moscow, outside  the Variety  Theatre. It was necessary to explain
the  extraordinary   case  of   the   staff   all  singing  `Glorious   Sea'
(incidentally:  Professor Stravinsky managed  to  put them  right within two
hours,  by means  of  some subcutaneous  injections),  of persons presenting
other  persons or  institutions with devil knows what in the guise of money,
and also of persons who had suffered from such presentations.
     As goes  without saying,  the most unpleasant,  the most scandalous and
insoluble  of all these cases  was the case of the theft of  the head of the
deceased  writer Berlioz right from  the coffin in the hall of  Griboedov's,
carried out in broad daylight.
     Twelve   men   conducted   the  investigation,  gathering   as   on   a
knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case scattered all
over Moscow.
     One of the investigators arrived  at Professor Stravinsky's clinic  and
first  of all asked to be shown a list of the persons who  had checked in to
the clinic over  the past three days. Thus they discovered Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy and the unfortunate master of ceremonies whose head had been torn off.
     However,  little attention  was  paid  to them. By  now it was easy  to
establish that these two had fallen victim  to the same gang, headed by that
mysterious magician. But to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless the investigator  paid
great attention.
     The  door of Ivanushka's room  no.117 opened towards evening on Friday,
and into the room came a young, round-faced, calm and mild-mannered man, who
looked quite unlike an investigator and yet was  one of the best in  Moscow.
He saw  lying on the  bed  a pale and pinched young  man, in whose eyes  one
could read a lack of interest in what went on around him,  whose eyes looked
now somewhere into  the distance, over his surroundings,  now into the young
man  himself.  The investigator gently introduced  himself and  said he  had
stopped  at Ivan Nikolaevich's  to talk  over  the events at the Patriarch's
Ponds two days ago.
     Oh, how triumphant Ivan would have been if the investigator had come to
him  earlier - say, on  Wednesday night, when Ivan had striven so  violently
and passionately  to make his story about  the Patriarch's  Ponds heard! Now
his dream  of helping  to  catch  the consultant had come true, there was no
longer any need to  run  after anyone, they had  come  to  him on their own,
precisely to hear his story about what had happened on Wednesday evening.
     But, alas, Ivanushka had changed completely in the time that had passed
since the moment  of Berlioz's  death:  he was  ready  to answer all of  the
investigator's questions willingly and politely,  but  indifference could be
sensed both  in  Ivan's eyes and in  his intonation. The  poet was no longer
concerned with Berlioz's fate.
     Before  the investigator's arrival, Ivanushka  lay  dozing, and certain
visions passed before him. Thus, he saw a  city,  strange, incomprehensible,
non-existent, with marble masses, eroded colonnades,  roofs gleaming in  the
sun, with the black, gloomy  and merciless Antonia Tower, with the palace on
the western hill sunk almost up  to its rooftops in the tropical greenery of
the garden, with bronze statues blazing  in the  sunset above this greenery,
and he  saw armour-clad Roman centuries moving along  under the walls of the
ancient city.
     As  he dozed, there  appeared  before  Ivan a  man,  motionless  in  an
armchair, clean-shaven, with a harried yellow face, a man  in a white mantle
with red lining, gazing hatefully into the luxurious and alien  garden. Ivan
also saw a treeless yellow hill with empty cross-barred posts. And what  had
happened at  the  Patriarch's  Ponds  no longer  interested  the  poet  Ivan
Homeless.
     Tell me, Ivan Nikolaevich, how far were you from the turnstile yourself
when Berlioz slipped under the tram-car?'
     A barely  noticeable,  indifferent smile touched Ivan's  lips  for some
reason, and he replied:
     'I was far away.'
     'And the checkered one was right by the turnstile?'
     'No, he was sitting on a little bench nearby.'
     `You clearly  recall  that  he did not go  up to the turnstile  at  the
moment when Berlioz fell?'
     'I recall. He didn't go up to it. He sat sprawled on the bench.'
     These  questions  were the investigator's last.  After them he  got up,
gave Ivanushka  his  hand, wished him  a speedy  recovery, and expressed the
hope that he would soon be reading his poetry again.
     'No,' Ivan quietly replied, I won't write any more poetry.'
     The investigator  smiled  politely,  allowed  himself  to  express  his
certainty that, while the poet was presently in a  state of some depression,
it would soon pass.
     'No,'  Ivan  responded, looking  not  at the investigator but  into the
distance, at the fading sky,  'it will never pass. The poems I used to write
were bad poems, and now I understand it.'
     The investigator left Ivanushka, having  obtained  some quite important
material. Following the thread of events from the end to the beginning, they
finally succeeded in reaching the source from which all the events had come.
     The investigator had no  doubt that  these events began with the murder
at the Patriarch's Ponds. Of  course,  neither Ivanushka nor  this checkered
one  had  pushed the unfortunate  chairman of  Massolit under  the tram-car;
physically,  so to  speak,  no one had  contributed to his failing under the
wheels. But the  investigator was convinced that  Berlioz had thrown himself
under the tram-car (or tumbled under it) while hypnotized.
     Yes,  there was already a lot of material, and it  was known who had to
be caught and where. But the thing was that  it proved in no way possible to
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