فصل 28

XXVIII

The Final Adventures of Korovyov and Behemoth

WHETHER the silhouettes were actually there or were merely fantasies of the terror-stricken residents of the ill-starred building on Sadovaya Street is, of course, impossible to say with exactitude. If they were there, then where they were headed is also unknown. Nor can we say at what point they separated, but we do know that approximately fifteen minutes before the fire started on Sadovaya Street, a tall man in a checked suit and a huge black cat showed up at the plate-glass doors of the Torgsin Store at the Smolensk Market.

After winding his way deftly through the crowd of passersby, the man opened the outer door of the store. But here a short, bony, and extremely inhospitable doorman barred his way and said angrily, “No cats allowed.” “I beg your pardon,” crackled the tall man, and put his gnarled hand to his ear as if he were hard of hearing, “Cats, did you say? Where do you see any cat?” The doorman’s eyes bulged, and with good reason: there was no longer any cat at the man’s feet, but instead, from behind his shoulder a fat man in a torn cap, whose face did look a bit catlike, was pushing and shoving his way into the store. In the fat man’s hands was a primus stove.

For some reason the doorman-misanthrope took an instant dislike to these two.

“Foreign currency only,” he rasped, looking out angrily from beneath his shaggy, gray eyebrows, which looked moth-eaten.

“My dear man,” crackled the tall man, his eye sparkling through his cracked pince-nez, “and how do you know I don’t have foreign currency? Are you judging by my suit? Don’t ever do that, my precious watchman! You might make a mistake and a very serious one at that. If you don’t believe me, have another look at the story of the famous caliph, Harun al-Rashid. But leaving that aside for the moment, let me say that in the present instance I shall lodge a complaint against you with your superior and shall tell him some things about you that might force you to give up your post here between these shiny plate-glass doors.” “Maybe I have a whole primus full of foreign currency,” joined in the catlike fat man in a whiny voice as he pushed his way into the store.

The people in back of him were angry and already pushing to get in. Looking at the odd pair with hatred and uncertainty, the doorman moved aside, and our friends, Korovyov and Behemoth, found themselves inside the store. Here they first got their bearings, and then Korovyov announced in a booming voice that could be heard throughout the store, “A splendid store! A very, very, fine store!” Customers turned away from the counters and for some reason stared at the speaker in astonishment even though his praise of the store was completely justified.

Hundreds of bolts of the most richly colored chintz were on display in floor cases. Behind them towered piles of calico, chiffon, and cloth for uniforms. Stacks of shoe boxes stretched into the distance, and several women were sitting on low stools trying on shoes—their right feet in their old, worn-down shoes, and their left ones in shiny new little boats which they tapped anxiously on the carpet. Somewhere around the corner, in the bowels of the store, gramophones played and sang.

But shunning all these delights, Korovyov and Behemoth headed straight for the specialty food and confectionery departments. Here there was plenty of room, and women in kerchiefs and berets were not crowding against the counters, as they were in the dry-goods department.

A shortish, completely square little man in horn-rimmed glasses was standing in front of the counter, bellowing something in a commanding voice. His face was shaven to a blue sheen and he was wearing a crisp, new hat with an immaculate headband, a lilac-colored overcoat, and red kid gloves. A clerk in a fresh white coat and dark-blue cap was waiting on the lilac customer. With an extremely sharp knife, very similar to the one stolen by Levi Matvei, he was removing the snakelike, silver-flecked skin from a fat, juicy, rose-colored salmon.

“This department is magnificent too,” acknowledged Korovyov in solemn tones, “and the foreigner is nice,” he said, pointing a well-meaning finger at the lilac back.

“No, Fagot, no,” replied Behemoth pensively. “You’re wrong, my friend. In my opinion there’s something lacking in the lilac gentleman’s face.” The lilac back shuddered, but it was probably just a coincidence since a foreigner could not possibly have understood what Korovyov and his companion were saying in Russian.

“Iz goot?” asked the lilac customer sternly.

“The best,” replied the clerk, teasing the skin up playfully with his knife.

“Goot I like, bat, no,” said the foreigner sharply.

“But of course!” was the salesman’s enthusiastic reply.

At this point our friends moved away from the foreigner and his salmon and walked over to the confectionery counter.

“It’s hot today,” said Korovyov to a young, red-cheeked salesgirl and received no response from her. “How much are the tangerines?” he then asked her.

“Thirty kopecks a kilo,” replied the salesgirl.

“Outrageous,” remarked Korovyov with a sigh. “Oh well, too bad …” After some further deliberation, he said to his companion, “Try one, Behemoth.” The fat man tucked his primus under his arm, grabbed the tangerine at the top of the pyramid, gobbled it down, skin and all, and then reached for another.

The salesgirl was seized with mortal terror.

“You’ve gone out of your mind!” she screamed, the color draining from her cheeks. “Give me your receipt! Your receipt!” she said dropping the pair of tongs she was holding.

“My dear, my sweet girl, my beauty,” rasped Korovyov, leaning himself over the counter and winking at the salesgirl, “We’re all out of foreign currency today … what can you do! But I give you my word, we’ll settle everything in cash next time, by Monday at the latest! We live close by, on Sadovaya, where the fire was …” After gulping down a third tangerine, Behemoth thrust his paw into an ingenious arrangement of chocolate bars, pulled one out from the bottom, causing the whole pyramid to collapse, and swallowed it whole along with its gold wrapper.

The clerks at the fish counter stood petrified, their knives in their hands, the lilac foreigner turned to face the thieves, thereby revealing that Behemoth had been mistaken: rather than lacking something, his face, on the contrary, had rather more than was needed—of hanging jowls and darting eyes.

Turning completely yellow, the salesgirl shouted out miserably to the whole store, “Palosich! Palosich!”

Customers from the dry-goods department came running in response to her screams while Behemoth, abandoning the seductions of the confectionery counter, thrust his paw into a barrel of “Choice Kerch Herring,” pulled out a pair and gulped them down, spitting out the tails.

“Palosich!” came another desperate cry from the confectionery counter, and at the fish counter a clerk with a goatee barked out, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, scum?!” Pavel Iosifovich was already hurrying to the scene. He was an imposing man in a clean white coat, like a surgeon, and with a pencil sticking out of his pocket. Pavel Iosifovich was clearly an experienced man. When he saw the tail of a third herring sticking out of Behemoth’s mouth, he sized up the situation immediately, knew exactly what was going on, and forswearing any altercation with the brazen creatures, waved into the distance and gave the order, “Blow your whistle!” The doorman flew out of the plate-glass doors to the corner of Smolensk Boulevard and burst out with an ominous whistle. The customers surrounded the scoundrels, and then Korovyov entered the fray.

“Citizens!” he shouted in a thin, tremulous voice, “What’s this all about? Huh? Let me ask you that! This poor man,” Korovyov added a quaver to his voice and pointed to Behemoth, who then put on a pathetic expression, “this poor man’s been fixing primus stoves all day long; he’s starved … and where can he get foreign currency?” In response, Pavel Iosifovich, usually calm and restrained, shouted sternly, “Oh come off it!” and waved furiously to the doorman. The whistles at the entrance trilled more gaily.

But Korovyov, unperturbed by Pavel Iosifovich’s rebuke, continued. “Where can he get it? I’m asking you that! He’s tortured by hunger and thirst! He’s hot. So the poor guy goes and samples a tangerine. A tangerine that costs all of three kopecks. And already they’re whistling like nightingales in spring, disturbing the police, taking them away from their jobs. But that guy over there can have what he wants, right?” and here Korovyov pointed to the lilac fat man, causing the latter’s face to register extreme alarm. “Who is he anyway? Huh? Where did he come from? And what for? Were we too bored without him? Did we invite him to come? Of course,” the former choirmaster bellowed at the top of his lungs, twisting his mouth sarcastically, “he, you see, is wearing a fancy lilac suit and is all bloated with salmon, stuffed to the gills with foreign currency, but what about our fellow citizen here, our compatriot?! This makes me bitter! Bitter! Bitter!” wailed Korovyov like the best man at an old-fashioned wedding.

This whole extremely foolish, tactless, and no doubt politically dangerous speech made Pavel Iosifovich shake with rage, but, strange as it may seem, one could tell from the eyes of many of the other customers that Korovyov’s words had aroused their sympathy! And when Behemoth put his torn and dirty sleeve up to his eye and cried out tragically, “Thank you, true friend, for standing up for a victim!” a miracle took place. A quiet, very proper little old man, poorly but neatly dressed, who was buying three almond pastries at the confectionery counter, was suddenly transfigured. His eyes flashed with martial fire, he turned crimson, threw his package of pastries on the floor, and shouted, “It’s the truth!” in a thin, childlike voice. Then he grabbed a tray, threw down what was left of the chocolate Eiffel Tower destroyed by Behemoth, brandished it, tore the foreigner’s hat off with his left hand, and used his right to hit him flat on top of his bald head with the tray. A sound rang out like that of sheet metal being thrown off a truck. The fat man paled, fell backward, and plopped down in the barrel of Kerch herring, sending up a fountain of brine. Then came a second miracle. The lilac fellow who had fallen into the barrel was screaming in perfect Russian with no trace of an accent, “They’re trying to kill me! Police! Bandits are trying to kill me!” The shock of what had happened had obviously given him instantaneous mastery of a language previously unknown to him.

Then the doorman’s whistle stopped blowing, and two police helmets were seen advancing through the crowds of excited customers. But the perfidious Behemoth poured kerosene from the primus over the confectionery counter, just as water is poured from a tub over the bench in a steam bath, and it ignited spontaneously. The flame flared up and began running down the counter, devouring the pretty paper ribbons on the baskets of fruit. The salesgirls rushed out from behind the counter with shrieks and just as they did, the linen blinds on the windows caught fire, and the kerosene on the floor started burning. The customers let out a desperate shriek, dashed out of the confectionery department, crushing the now unnecessary Pavel Iosifovich, and the clerks from the fish department trotted single-file out the service exit with their sharpened knives. The lilac fellow extricated himself from the barrel, and, covered with herring brine, rolled over the salmon on the counter and followed the clerks out. The plate-glass entrance doors tinkled and shattered, as they were crushed by the people trying to get out of the store, while both scoundrels—Korovyov, and the arsonist Behemoth—disappeared somewhere, but where—it was impossible to figure out. Later, eyewitnesses who were present when the fire started in the Torgsin at the Smolensk Market said that both hooligans seemed to fly up to the ceiling and then burst there like children’s balloons. It is, of course, doubtful that that was what happened, but we can’t tell what we don’t know.

We do know, however, that a minute after the incident at the Smolensk Market, Behemoth and Korovyov turned up on the sidewalk of the boulevard outside the house of Griboyedov’s aunt. Korovyov stopped at the wrought-iron fence and said, “Well! So this is the writers’ house! You know, Behemoth, I’ve heard many good and flattering things about this house. Take a look at it, my friend! How nice to think that a veritable multitude of talent is sheltered and ripening under this roof.” “Like pineapples in a hothouse,” said Behemoth, and in order to get a better view of the cream-colored house and its columns, he crawled up onto the cement base of the iron railing.

“Quite true,” chimed in Korovyov, agreeing with his inseparable companion, “And a sweet terror clutches your heart when you think that at this very minute the author of a future Don Quixote, or Faust, or, the devil take me, Dead Souls may be ripening inside that house! Huh?” “A terrifying thought,” confirmed Behemoth.

“Yes,” continued Korovyov, “one can expect astonishing things from the seedbeds of this house, under whose roof have gathered thousands of devotees selflessly resolved to dedicate their lives to serving Melpomene, Polyhymnia, and Thalia. Just imagine what a sensation it will be when, for starters, one of them presents the reading public with an Inspector General, or, at the very least, a Eugene Onegin!” “I can easily imagine that,” again confirmed Behemoth.

“Yes,” continued Korovyov, and raised a cautionary finger, “but! But—I say and I repeat it—but! Only if some microorganism doesn’t attack these tender hothouse plants and eat away at their roots, only if they don’t rot! And that can happen with pineapples! Oh, yes, indeed it can!” “By the way,” said Behemoth in an inquiring tone, sticking his round head through a hole in the railing, “what are they doing there on the veranda?” “They’re dining,” explained Korovyov, “I forgot to mention, dear fellow, that there’s a rather decent and inexpensive restaurant here. And it just so happens that I, like any tourist about to begin a long journey, would like a bite to eat and a large, frosty mug of beer.” “Me too,” replied Behemoth, and the two scoundrels set off along the asphalt path under the lindens, heading straight for the veranda of the restaurant, which was as yet oblivious of the disaster to come.

A pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a tassel was sitting on a bentwood chair at the corner entrance to the veranda, where an opening had been created in the greenery of the trellis. In front of her on a plain kitchen table lay a thick, office-style register in which, for reasons unknown, she was writing down the names of those entering the restaurant. It was this citizeness who stopped Korovyov and Behemoth.

“Your ID cards?” she asked, looking with astonishment at Korovyov’s pince-nez and at Behemoth’s primus stove and his torn elbow.

“I beg a thousand pardons, but what ID cards?” asked a surprised Korovyov.

“Are you writers?” asked the woman in turn.

“Of course we are,” replied Korovyov with dignity.

“May I see your ID’s?” repeated the woman.

“My charming creature …” began Korovyov, tenderly.

“I am not a charming creature,” interrupted the woman.

“Oh, what a pity,” said Korovyov with disappointment, and he continued, “Well, then, if you do not care to be a charming creature, which would have been quite nice, you don’t have to be. But, here’s my point, in order to ascertain that Dostoevsky is a writer, do you really need to ask him for an ID? Just look at any five pages of any of his novels, and you will surely know, even without any ID, that you’re dealing with a writer. And I don’t suppose that he ever had any ID! What do you think?” Korovyov turned to Behemoth.

“I’ll bet he didn’t,” replied the latter, standing the primus stove on the table next to the register and wiping the sweat from his sooty brow.

“You are not Dostoevsky,” said the citizeness, who was becoming addled by Korovyov.

“Well, but how do you know, how do you know?” replied the latter.

“Dostoevsky is dead,” said the citizeness, but not very confidently.

“I protest!” exclaimed Behemoth hotly. “Dostoevsky is immortal!”

“Your ID’s, citizens,” said the citizeness.

“Excuse me, but this is, after all, absurd,” said Korovyov, refusing to give in. “It isn’t an ID that defines a writer, but what he has written! How can you know what ideas are fermenting in my brain? Or in his?” and he pointed at Behemoth’s head, whereupon the latter immediately removed his cap so that the citizeness could get a better look at it.

“Let people in, citizens,” she said, already nervous.

Korovyov and Behemoth stepped aside and let some writer pass who was wearing a gray suit and a tieless white summer shirt, the collar of which was open and splayed over the collar of his jacket, and who had a newspaper tucked under his arm. The writer gave the woman a friendly nod, scribbled something in the register she held out for him as he passed, and proceeded to the veranda.

“Alas, not to us,” began Korovyov sadly, “but to him will go that frosty mug of beer that we, poor wanderers, so dreamed of. Our situation is a sad and difficult one, and I do not know what to do.” Behemoth merely shrugged bitterly and put his cap back on his round head, which was covered all over with thick hair very like cat fur. At that moment a soft but commanding voice sounded above the woman’s head, “Let them in, Sophia Pavlovna.” The citizeness with the register gave a startled look: in the greenery of the trellis the white dress-shirt and wedge-shaped beard of the pirate had appeared. He gave the two dubious ragamuffins a welcoming look and even gestured for them to come inside. Archibald Archibaldovich made his authority felt in the restaurant he managed, and Sophia Pavlovna asked Korovyov submissively, “What is your name?” “Panayev,” replied the latter politely. The citizeness wrote it down and looked questioningly at Behemoth.

“Skabichevsky,” squeaked the latter, pointing at his primus stove for some reason. Sophia Pavlovna wrote that down too and pushed the register over to the guests to get their signatures. Korovyov wrote “Skabichevsky” opposite “Panayev,” and Behemoth wrote “Panayev” opposite “Skabichevsky.” To Sophia Pavlovna’s utter amazement, Archibald Archibaldovich smiled seductively and led the guests to the best table at the other end of the veranda, the table where there was the most shade and where the sunlight played merrily through one of the openings in the trellis. Blinking with astonishment, Sophia Pavlovna spent a long time studying the strange inscriptions left in the register by the unexpected visitors.

Archibald Archibaldovich astonished the waiters as much as he had Sophia Pavlovna. He personally pulled the chair back from the table when inviting Korovyov to be seated, winked at one waiter, whispered to the other, and both of the waiters then began fussing over the new guests, one of whom had put his primus stove down on the floor beside his rusty-brown boot.

The old tablecloth with yellow stains immediately disappeared from the table, and another one, as white as a Bedouin’s burnous and crackling with starch, billowed in the breeze, while Archibald Archibaldovich leaned over and whispered softly but expressively into Korovyov’s ear, “What can I get for you? I have some choice smoked sturgeon fillet … I salvaged it from the architects’ convention …” “You … um … can just give us some hors d’oeuvres … um …” murmured Korovyov cordially as he made himself comfortable in his chair.

“I understand,” replied Archibald Archibaldovich significantly, closing his eyes.

Seeing the treatment these dubious-looking visitors were getting from the boss, the waiters put all their suspicions aside and got down to serious work. One offered a match to Behemoth, who had pulled a butt out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth; the other flew up to the table with tinkling green glassware and began setting it with liqueur and wineglasses, and those delicate goblets one so enjoyed sipping Narzan from under the awning of the unforgettable Griboyedov veranda.

“May I offer you some fillet of grouse,” purred Archibald Archibaldovich musically. The guest in the cracked pince-nez fully concurred with the frigate commander’s suggestion and gazed benignly at him through his useless lens.

At a neighboring table the writer Petrakov-Sukhovei, dining with his wife, who was finishing her escallop of pork, noticed with a writer’s keen powers of observation that Archibald Archibaldovich was showering attention on the guests at the next table, and was very surprised indeed. But his wife, a most honorable lady, simply became jealous of the pirate’s attention to Korovyov and even began tapping her spoon on the table, as if to say, “What’s the delay … It’s time for our ice cream! What’s the problem?” Archibald Archibaldovich, however, merely gave Madame Petrakov a seductive smile and sent a waiter over to her, choosing himself to stay with his dear guests. Ah, Archibald Archibaldovich was smart, all right! And not one whit less observant than the writers themselves. Archibald Archibaldovich knew about the performance at the Variety Theater and had heard about many of the events that had occurred recently, but unlike everyone else, he had not let the words, “checked” and “cat” pass unnoticed. He had guessed immediately who his visitors were. And as a result, he naturally had no desire to quarrel with them. But what a prize that Sophia Pavlovna was! Imagine trying to bar those two from the veranda! But what could you expect from her anyway!

Haughtily poking her spoon into the melting ice cream, Madame Petrakov looked on disgruntledly as the table in front of the two apparent buffoons piled up, as if by magic, with delicacies. Shining wet lettuce leaves, washed to a sheen, protruded from a bowl of fresh caviar, a minute later a sweating silver bucket appeared on a small, separate table that had been moved over especially for this purpose.

Only when he was convinced that everything had been done to perfection, only when the waiters had brought in a bubbling, covered skillet did Archibald Archibaldovich permit himself to leave the two mysterious visitors, but only after whispering to them, “Excuse me! I’ll only be a minute! I want to see to the grouse fillets myself.” He flew from the table and disappeared into the inner passageway of the restaurant. If anyone had observed Archibald Archibaldovich’s subsequent movements, he would certainly have found them rather mystifying.

Rather than head for the kitchen to see to the grouse, the boss went directly to the storeroom. He opened it with his key, locked himself inside, and carefully, so as not to soil his cuffs, removed two heavy smoked sturgeon from the ice-chest, wrapped them up in newspaper, tied them carefully with a string, and put them aside. After that he checked in the next room to see if his hat and silk-lined summer coat were in their proper place, and only then did he proceed to the kitchen where the cook was zealously preparing the grouse promised the guests by the pirate.

It must be said that there was nothing the least bit strange or mystifying about any of Archibald Archibaldovich’s actions, and only a superficial observer could have found them so. Archibald Archibaldovich’s actions followed logically from everything that had preceded. His knowledge of recent events, to say nothing of his phenomenal intuition, told the boss of the Griboyedov restaurant that his two visitors’ dinner, though lavish and extravagant, would nevertheless be of extremely short duration. And that intuition, which had never deceived the former pirate, did not deceive him now.

Just as Korovyov and Behemoth were clinking their second glass of splendid, ice-cold, double-filtered Moscow vodka, the reporter Boba Kandalupsky, famous in Moscow for his startling omniscience, appeared on the veranda in a state of sweaty excitement, and proceeded to join the Petrakovs at their table. After laying his bulging briefcase on the table, he put his lips to Petrakov’s ear and began whispering some extremely juicy tidbits. Dying of curiosity, Madame Petrakov also pressed her ear to Boba’s puffy, fleshy lips. And he, looking around furtively from time to time, kept on whispering and whispering, and occasionally one could catch a separate word or two, such as, “I swear! On Sadovaya, Sadovaya,” Boba lowered his voice even more, “bullets don’t stop them! Bullets … bullets … kerosene … fire … bullets …” “They ought to take those liars who spread filthy rumors,” bellowed Madame Petrakov in a louder contralto than Boba would have wished, “and give them a good talking to! Oh, well, never mind, that will happen in good time, they’ll be set straight! What vicious liars!” “What liars are you talking about, Antonida Porfiryevna!” exclaimed Boba, distressed by her refusal to believe what he was saying, and he began hissing again, “I’m telling you, bullets don’t stop them … And now the fire … They flew through the air … the air,” hissed Boba, having no suspicion that the people he was talking about were sitting at the next table and thoroughly enjoying his hissings.

However, their enjoyment was short-lived. Three men, coming from inside the restaurant, dashed out on the veranda, their waists tightly buckled, wearing leggings and carrying revolvers. The one in front gave a loud, terrifying shout, “Nobody move!” Then all three opened fire on the veranda, aiming at Korovyov’s and Behemoth’s heads. Both targets immediately dissolved into the air, and a column of flame shot up from the primus to the awning. A kind of gaping maw with black edges appeared in the awning and began spreading all over it. Leaping through the awning, the fire rose up to the very roof of Griboyedov House. Some folders with papers that were on the second-floor windowsill of the editorial room suddenly burst into flame, followed by the blind, and then the fire, roaring as if someone were fanning it, swept in columns into the aunt’s house.

Just seconds later, writers who had not finished their dinners, the waiters, Sophia Pavlovna, Boba, and the Petrakovs were running down the asphalt paths out to the iron railings on the boulevard, from whence Ivanushka, the first harbinger of misfortune, who could not get anyone to understand him, had come on Wednesday evening.

Having exited through a side door, without running or hurrying, and with time to spare, like a captain obliged to be the last to leave his burning ship, Archibald Archibaldovich stood calmly in his silk-lined summer coat, two logs of smoked Balyk sturgeon tucked under his arm.