11. Ivan Splits in Two

The wood on the opposite bank of the river, lit up just an hour before by the May sunshine, had grown dim, become blurred, and dissolved.

The water was coming down outside the window in an unbroken sheet. In the sky, filaments kept on flashing out, the sky would split open, the patient’s room was flooded with a flickering, frightening light.

Ivan quietly wept, sitting on the bed and gazing at the muddy river boiling and bubbling. At every clap of thunder he cried out piteously and hid his face in his hands. The sheets of paper Ivan had covered in writing lay scattered on the floor. They had been blown down there by the wind that had flown into the room just before the start of the thunderstorm.

The poet’s attempts to compose a statement regarding the terrible consultant had come to nothing. As soon as he had got a stub of pencil and paper from the fat medical attendant, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna, he had rubbed his hands together in a businesslike way and settled himself hurriedly at the table. The beginning he had depicted quite boldly:

“To the police. The statement of MASSOLIT member Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny. Yesterday evening I arrived with the deceased M. A. Berlioz at Patriarch’s Ponds…”

And immediately the poet got into a tangle, mainly because of the word “deceased”. It came out as some sort of nonsense right from the start: how do you mean – arrived with the deceased? The deceased don’t go walking around! Who knows, they might indeed take him for a madman!

Thinking like that, Ivan Nikolayevich began amending what he had written. The result was the following: "… with M. A. Berlioz, subsequently deceased…” Nor did this satisfy the author. He had to use a third wording, and that turned out even worse than the first two: ". Berlioz, who fell under a tram.” and here that composer of the same name whom no one knew started bothering him too, and he had to insert". not the composer.”

After much agonizing over the two Berliozes, Ivan crossed everything out and decided to begin with something very powerful straight away, so as to attract the attention of the person reading at once, and he wrote that the cat had boarded a tram, and then went back to the episode with the severed head. The head and the consultant’s prediction set him thinking about Pontius Pilate, and for greater persuasiveness Ivan decided to set out in full the entire story of the Procurator right from the moment when he emerged wearing the white cloak with the blood-red lining into the colonnade of Herod’s palace.

Ivan worked diligently, and he would cross through what he had written, and insert new words, and he even tried to draw Pontius Pilate, and then the cat on its hind legs. But the drawings did not help either, and the further he went, the more muddled and incomprehensible the poet’s statement became.

By the time a frightening storm cloud with billowing edges appeared from afar and covered the wood, and the wind blew, Ivan felt his strength had gone and he could not cope with the statement, and he did not bother picking up the sheets of paper that had scattered all around, but began crying quietly and bitterly.

The good-natured medical attendant Praskovya Fyodorovna called in on the poet during the thunderstorm, grew alarmed when she saw he was crying, closed the blind so that the lightning flashes did not frighten the patient, picked the sheets of paper up from the floor and ran off with them to fetch a doctor.

The latter came, gave Ivan an injection in the arm and assured him he would not cry any more, that it would all be over now, it would all change and would all be forgotten.

The doctor proved right. Soon the wood across the river had become its former self. It stood out sharply to the very last tree under a sky that had cleared to its former perfect blue, while the river had grown calm. The anguish had started to leave Ivan immediately after the injection, and now the poet lay calmly and gazed at the rainbow that stretched across the sky.

It continued thus until the evening, and he did not even notice how the rainbow melted away, and how the sky grew sad and colourless, and how the wood blackened.

After drinking his fill of hot milk, Ivan again lay down and was surprised himself at how his thoughts had changed. The damned diabolical cat had somehow mellowed in his memory, the severed head frightened him no more, and, abandoning thoughts of the head, Ivan started reflecting on how, as a matter of fact, it was not at all bad at the clinic, that Stravinsky was a clever chap and a celebrity, and it was extremely pleasant having dealings with him. The evening air, what’s more, was both sweet and fresh after the thunderstorm.

The mental asylum was falling asleep. In the quiet corridors the white pearl lamps went out, and in their place, following the routine, weak blue night lights lit up, and more and more rarely could the cautious little footsteps of the medical attendants be heard on the rubber mats of the corridor outside the doors.

Now Ivan lay in sweet languor and cast looks first at the bulb under the lampshade pouring a softened light from the ceiling, then at the moon coming out from behind the black wood, and he conversed with himself.

“Why precisely did I get so agitated about Berlioz falling under a tram?” reflected the poet. “In the final analysis, to hell with him! Who am I, when it comes down to it, the godfather to his child or an in-law? If you give the question a proper airing, it emerges that, in essence, I didn’t even really know the dead man. Truly, what did I know about him? Nothing at all, except that he was bald and terribly eloquent. And then, Citizens,” Ivan continued his speech, addressing someone, “here’s what we’ll look into: do explain why it was I went mad at that enigmatic consultant, magician and professor with the empty black eye? What was the point of that whole absurd pursuit of him, wearing long johns and with a candle in my hands, and then the ridiculous malarkey in the restaurant?”

“But, but, but,” the former Ivan suddenly said sternly from somewhere to the new Ivan, perhaps inside, perhaps right by his ear, “he did, after all, know in advance that Berlioz’s head was going to be cut off, didn’t he? How could you not get agitated?”

“What are you talking about, Comrades!” the new Ivan retorted to the old, former Ivan. “That it’s all a dirty business can be grasped even by a child. He’s an exceptional and mysterious personality, one hundred per cent. But then it’s precisely that that’s the most interesting bit! A man who was personally acquainted with Pontius Pilate – what ever could you want more interesting than that? And instead of kicking up the most stupid fuss at Patriarch’s, wouldn’t it have been cleverer to ask politely about what happened afterwards to Pilate and that arrested man, Ha-Nozri? But I got started on the devil knows what! An important event, truly – the editor of a magazine got run over! So what of it – will the journal be closed down or something? Well, what can be done? Man is mortal, and, as was rightly said, suddenly mortal. Well, may he rest in peace! So there’ll be a different editor, and perhaps he’ll even be still more eloquent than the previous one.”

After dozing a little, the new Ivan asked venomously of the old Ivan:

“So what do I turn out to be in that case?”

“A fool!” a bass not belonging to either of the Ivans, and extremely like the bass of the consultant, said distinctly from somewhere.

For some reason not taking offence at the word “fool”, and even being pleasantly surprised by it, Ivan grinned and, half asleep, fell quiet. Sleep was stealing up on Ivan, and he had already imagined that he saw the palm tree on the elephantine leg, and that the cat had passed by – not frightening, but jolly – and, in short, sleep was right on the point of enveloping Ivan, when suddenly the grille moved soundlessly aside, and on the balcony there appeared a mysterious figure, hiding from the moonlight, that wagged its finger at Ivan.

Without any fear at all, Ivan raised himself on the bed and saw there was a man on the balcony. And this man, pressing a finger to his lips, whispered:

“Shhh!”

12. Black Magic and Its Exposure

A small man in a holey yellow bowler hat, with a pearshaped, raspberry-coloured nose and wearing checked trousers and patent-leather boots, rode out onto the stage of the Variety on an ordinary two-wheeled bicycle. To the strains of a foxtrot he made a circuit, and then uttered a triumphant shriek, at which the bicycle reared. Having travelled some distance on one wheel, the little man turned upside down, contrived while on the move to unscrew the front wheel and launch it into the wings, and thencontinued on his way on one wheel, turning the pedals with his hands.

A plump blonde in a leotard and a little skirt, spangled with silver stars, rode out on a tall metal mast with one wheel and a saddle at the top and began riding round in a circle. Meeting up with her, the little man emitted cries of greeting and removed the bowler hat from his head with his foot.

Finally, a wee mite, a little fellow of about eight with an old man’s face, rolled up and began darting between the adults on a minute two-wheeler with a huge car horn attached to it.

After doing several loops, the whole company, to the alarming roll of a drum from the orchestra, rode up to the very edge of the stage, and the spectators in the front rows gasped and leant back, because it seemed to the audience that the entire trio and their vehicles would fall with a crash into the orchestra pit.

But the cycles stopped at precisely the moment when the front wheels were already threatening to slip off into the chasm and onto the heads of the musicians. With a loud cry of “Up!” the cyclists leapt off their vehicles and, bowing, took their leave, with the blonde blowing kisses to the audience and the wee mite sounding a funny call on his horn.

The applause shook the building; the blue curtain set off from both sides and hid the cyclists; the green lights by the doors with the inscription “EXIT” went out, and in the web of trapezes beneath the dome, white spheres lit up like the sun. The interval before the final part had begun.

The only person not interested to any extent in the wonders of the cycling art of the Giulli family was Grigory Danilovich Rimsky. He sat in complete solitude in his office, biting his thin lips, and a spasm kept on passing over his face. To the extraordinary disappearance of Likhodeyev had been added the completely unforeseen disappearance of the manager, Varenukha.

Rimsky knew where he had gone, but he had gone and… had not come back! Rimsky was shrugging his shoulders and whispering to himself:

“But what for?!”

And it was a strange thing: for a businesslike man such as the Financial Director it was, of course, the simplest thing of all to telephone the place for which Varenukha had set out and discover what had befallen him, and yet he had been unable, until ten o’clock in the evening, to compel himself to do so.

But at ten, positively forcing himself, Rimsky took the receiver from the apparatus, and at that point found out that his telephone was dead. A messenger reported that the other telephones in the building were faulty too. This event – unpleasant, of course, but not supernatural – for some reason completely stunned the Financial Director, but at the same time delighted him too: the need to phone receded.

At the same time as a red lamp above the Financial Director’s head flared up and started flashing to proclaim the start of the interval, a messenger came in and announced that the foreign artiste had arrived. The Financial Director came over unwell for some reason and, now quite definitely gloomier than a storm cloud, set off into the wings to greet the touring performer, since there was no one else there to greet him.

From the corridor, where the warning bells were already crackling, the curious, under various pretexts, were glancing into the large dressing room. Here were conjurors in bright oriental robes and turbans, a skater in a white knitted jacket, a storyteller, white with powder, and a make-up artist.

The newly arrived celebrity struck everyone with the unprecedented length of his wonderfully cut tailcoat and the fact that he had turned up in a black half-mask. But most surprising of all were the black magician’s two companions: a lanky man in checks wearing a cracked pince-nez and a fat black cat who, upon entering the dressing room on his hind legs, sat down on a couch, perfectly relaxed, squinting at the bare bulbs of the make-up mirror.

Rimsky tried to put on a smile, which made his face look sour and angry, and he exchanged bows with the silent magician sitting on the couch beside the cat. There was no handshake. And yet the unduly familiar man in checks introduced himself to the Financial Director, calling himself “their assistant”. This circumstance surprised the Financial Director, and, once again, unpleasantly: there was absolutely no mention in the contract of any assistant.

Very stiffly and drily Grigory Danilovich enquired of the man in checks, who had come upon him like a bolt from the blue, where the artiste’s equipment was.

“Celestial diamond of ours, most precious Mr Director,” the magician’s assistant replied in a jangling voice, “our equipment is always with us. Here it is! Eins, zwei, drei!" And, twirling his gnarled fingers around in front of Rimsky’s eyes, he suddenly pulled out from behind the cat’s ear Rimsky’s very own gold watch and chain, which had previously been in the Financial Director’s waistcoat pocket, beneath his buttoned jacket, and with the chain passed through a buttonhole.

Rimsky grabbed involuntarily at his stomach; those present gasped, and the make-up artist, who was looking in through the door, grunted approvingly.

“Your watch? Please have it," said the man in checks with a free-and-easy smile, and handed the bewildered Rimsky his property on a dirty palm.

“Don’t get on a tram with anyone like that," the storyteller whispered quietly and cheerily to the make-up artist.

But then the cat performed a stunt rather slicker than the trick with someone else’s watch. Rising unexpectedly from the couch, he went over on his hind legs to the little dressing table, pulled the stopper from a carafe with his front paw, poured some water into a glass, drank it, fitted the stopper back in place and wiped his whiskers with a make-up cloth.

At this point nobody even gasped, they just opened their mouths wide, and the make-up artist whispered admiringly:

“Wow, class!”

At that moment the bells began clanging in warning for the third time, and, excited and looking forward to an interesting act, everyone flocked out of the dressing room.

A minute later the lights were put out in the auditorium; the footlights flared up and gave a reddish glow to the bottom of the curtain, and in the illuminated gap in the curtain there appeared before the audience a plump man with a clean-shaven face, as cheerful as a child, in a crumpled tailcoat and less than fresh linen. It was the compère, George Bengalsky, well known to the whole of Moscow.

“And so, Citizens,” Bengalsky began, smiling his infantile smile, “you are now about to see…” here Bengalsky interrupted himself and continued with a different intonation: “I see the size of the audience has increased still further for the third part of the show. Half the city is with us today! A few days ago I happen to meet a friend, and I say to him: ‘Why don’t you come and see us? Half the city was with us yesterday!’ And he answers me: ‘Well, I live in the other half!’” Bengalsky paused, expecting an explosion of laughter to take place, but since nobody laughed, he continued: “. And so, you are about to see the renowned foreign artiste Monsieur Woland with a performance of black magic.

Well, you and I understand ” – here Bengalsky smiled a wise smile – “that there’s no such thing on earth at all and it’s nothing other than a superstition: it’s simply that the maestro Woland has a command of the art of conjuring at the highest level, as will be evident from the most interesting part, that is, the exposure of that art, and since we are as one in being in favour of both the art and its exposure, we shall call on Mr Woland!”

Having uttered all this drivel, Bengalsky joined both hands palm to palm and started waving them in welcome into the slit in the curtain – as a result of which, with a quiet swish, it duly parted and moved aside.

The entrance of the magician with his lanky assistant and the cat, who stepped onto the stage on his hind legs, delighted the audience.

“An armchair for me,” ordered Woland in a low voice, and at that same second, from who knows where and how, on the stage there appeared an armchair in which the magician duly sat down. “Tell me, dear Fagot,” Woland enquired of the buffoon in checks, who evidently bore another name apart from Korovyev, “what’s your opinion, the population of Moscow has altered significantly, has it not?”

The magician looked at the audience, which had fallen quiet, stunned by the appearance of the armchair out of thin air.

“Quite so, Messire,” replied Fagot-Korovyev in a low voice.

“You’re right. The people of this city have altered greatly… outwardly, I mean, like the city itself, by the way. The costumes, needless to say, but those. what are they called. trams, cars have appeared.”

“Buses,” prompted Fagot deferentially.

The audience listened attentively to this conversation, supposing it to be a prelude to the magic tricks. The wings were packed with artistes and stagehands, and among their faces could be seen the tense, pale one of Rimsky.

The physiognomy of Bengalsky, who had taken shelter at the side of the stage, started to express bewilderment. He raised an eyebrow just a very little and, taking advantage of a pause, began to speak:

“The foreign artiste is expressing his admiration for Moscow, which has grown up in a technological respect, and also for the Muscovites,” and here Bengalsky smiled twice, first to the stalls, and then to the gallery.

Woland, Fagot and the cat turned their heads in the direction of the compère.

“Did I really express admiration?” the magician asked Fagot.

“Not at all, Messire, you expressed no admiration,” the latter replied.

“So what ever is that man saying?”

“He simply lied!” the assistant in checks declared sonorously, for the whole theatre to hear, and, turning to Bengalsky, he added: “Congratulations, Citizen, on lying!”

There was a splash of tittering from the gallery, while Bengalsky gave a start and opened his eyes wide.

“But of course, I’m not so much interested in buses, telephones and other…”

“Equipment!” prompted the man in checks.

“Absolutely correct, thank you,” said the magician slowly in a heavy bass, “as in the much more important question: have the people of this city altered inwardly?”

“Yes, that? s the most important question, sir.”

In the wings they started exchanging glances and shrugging their shoulders; Bengalsky stood red-faced, while Rimsky was pale. But at this point, as though having guessed at the unease that was developing, the magician said:

“However, we’ve talked too much, dear Fagot, and the audience is starting to get bored. Show us something nice and simple to begin with.”

The auditorium stirred in relief. Fagot and the cat went in different directions along the footlights. Fagot clicked his fingers and gave a raffish cry:

“Three, four!” and caught a pack of cards from out of thin air, shuffled it and sent it in a ribbon towards the cat. The cat caught the ribbon and sent it back again. The satin snake snorted; Fagot opened his mouth wide like a baby bird and swallowed the whole of it, card by card.

After that, the cat took a bow, scraping his right hind paw, and provoked an unbelievable round of applause.

“Class! Class!” they cried in admiration in the wings.

But Fagot jabbed a finger at the stalls and announced:

“That pack is now to be found, respected Citizens, on Citizen Parchevsky in row seven, right between a three-rouble note and a court summons on the matter of alimony payments to Citizeness Zelkova.”

People began stirring in the stalls, half-rising from their seats, and finally a citizen who was indeed called Parchevsky, perfectly crimson in amazement, extracted the pack from his wallet and started jabbing it into the air, not knowing what to do with it.

“You keep it as a memento!” cried Fagot. “Not for nothing did you say over dinner yesterday that if it weren’t for poker, your life in Moscow would be utterly unbearable.”

“That’s an old trick,” was heard from the gods, “that fellow in the stalls is one of their troupe.”

“Do you suppose so?” yelled Fagot, squinting at the gallery. “In that case you too are in the same gang as us, because you have a pack in your pocket!”

A movement took place in the gods and a joyful voice was heard:

“It’s true! He has! Here, here… Hang on! But they’re ten-rouble notes!”

Those sitting in the stalls turned their heads. In the gallery a perturbed citizen had discovered in his pocket a wad, bound together in the way used by banks and with an inscription on the cover: “One thousand roubles”.

His neighbours were leaning on him, and he in amazement was picking at the cover with a fingernail, trying to ascertain whether these were genuine ten-rouble notes or some sort of magic ones.

“Honest to God, they’re genuine! Tenners!” they cried joyfully from the gods.

“Play some cards like that with me too,” a fat man requested cheerfully in the middle of the stalls.

“Avec plaisir!" responded Fagot. “But why on earth with just you? Everyone will play an active part!” And he commanded: “Please look up! One!” In his hand there appeared a pistol, and he cried: “Two!” The pistol was jerked upwards. He cried: “Three!” There was a flash, a bang, and immediately, from beneath the dome, fluttering between the trapezes, white notes began falling into the auditorium.

They span, they drifted sideways, they piled up in the gallery, they dropped into the orchestra pit and onto the stage. After a few seconds the rain of money, growing ever thicker, reached the seats, and the audience began catching the notes.

Hundreds of arms were raised, the audience looked through the notes at the lighted stage and saw the most true and righteous watermarks. The smell too left no doubt: it was the smell, comparable to nothing in its charm, of freshly printed money. At first merriment, and then amazement gripped the whole theatre. Everywhere the word “tenners, tenners” was buzzing, exclamations of “oh, oh!” could be heard, and merry laughter. Some were already crawling in the aisles, groping under the chairs. Many were standing on the seats, catching the flighty, whimsical notes.

Bewilderment gradually began to be expressed on the faces of the police, while the artistes started pushing forward unceremoniously out of the wings.

In the dress circle a voice was heard: “What are you doing, snatching? That’s mine! It was coming towards me!” And another voice: “Just you stop pushing, I’ll give you such a shove myself!” And suddenly a slap was heard. A policeman’s helmet immediately appeared in the dress circle, and someone was led out of the dress circle.

In general, the excitement was growing, and there is no knowing what would have sprung from it all if Fagot had not stopped the rain of money by suddenly blowing into the air.

Two young men exchanged meaningful and merry looks, left their seats and headed directly for the bar. The theatre was abuzz, the eyes of the entire audience were shining with excitement. No, no, there is no knowing what would have sprung from it all if Bengalsky had not found some strength within himself and stirred. Trying to take a good, firm hold on himself, he rubbed his hands out of habit and in the most sonorous of voices began speaking thus:

“There, Citizens, we have just now seen an instance of so-called mass hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment providing the best possible proof that there are no miracles or magic. Let’s ask maestro Woland to expose this experiment for us. You will now, Citizens, see those notes, ostensibly banknotes, disappear just as suddenly as they appeared.”

At this point he started to applaud, but in complete isolation, and as he did so there was a confident smile playing on his face, yet that confidence was by no means there in his eyes, in which was expressed rather supplication.

The audience did not like Bengalsky’s speech. Complete silence fell, which was interrupted by the checked Fagot.

“That is once again an instance of so-called lying,” he declared in a loud, goat-like tenor. “The notes, Citizens, are genuine!”

“Bravo!” roared a bass abruptly somewhere high up.

“Incidentally, I’m fed up with this fellow” – here Fagot indicated Bengalsky. “He pokes his nose in where he’s not asked all the time and spoils the show with false observations. Now, what should we do with him?”

“Rip his head off!” someone said sternly from the gallery.

“What’s that you say? Huh?” Fagot immediately responded to this outrageous suggestion. “Rip off his head? That’s an idea! Behemoth!” he cried to the cat. “Do it! Eins, zwei, drei!"

And an unprecedented thing occurred. The black cat’s fur stood up on end and he gave a harrowing miaow. Then he compressed himself into a ball and, like a panther, leapt straight onto Bengalsky’s chest, and from there skipped onto his head. Making a grumbling noise, the cat caught hold of the compère’s sparse chevelure with his chubby paws and, with a savage howl, in two turns he had pulled that head right off its the plump neck.

Two and a half thousand people in the theatre cried out as one. Fountains of blood spurted up from the torn arteries in the neck and drenched both the dicky and the tailcoat. The headless body shuffled its feet in an absurd sort of way and sat down on the floor. Women’s hysterical cries could be heard in the auditorium. The cat passed the head to Fagot, the latter raised it up by the hair and showed it to the audience, and the head shouted desperately for the whole theatre to hear:

“A doctor!”

“Are you going to spout all sorts of nonsense in future?” Fagot asked threateningly of the crying head.

“I won’t do it any more!” wheezed the head.

“For God’s sake, stop tormenting him!” a woman’s voice suddenly resounded from a box, drowning the din, and the magician turned his face in the direction of this voice.

“So then, Citizens, be forgiven, should he?” asked Fagot, addressing the auditorium.

“Forgive him! Forgive him!” rang out at first individual and primarily women’s voices, but then they merged into a single chorus with the men’s.

“What is your command, Messire?” Fagot asked the masked one.

“Well,” the latter replied pensively, “they’re the same as any other people. They like money, but that was always the case, you know… Mankind likes money, no matter what it might be made of, whether of leather, whether of paper, of bronze or gold. So, they’re frivolous. well. and mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts. ordinary people. All in all they’re reminiscent of the previous ones. it’s just the housing question that’s ruined them.” And in a loud voice he ordered: “Put the head back on.”

The cat, taking good and careful aim, plonked the head onto the neck, and it settled exactly in its place as though it had not even been away anywhere. And the main thing was, there was not even any scar left on the neck. The cat brushed off Bengalsky’s tailcoat and the shirt front with his paws, and the traces of blood vanished from them. Fagot raised the seated Bengalsky to his feet, shoved a wad of ten-rouble notes into the pocket of his tailcoat and sent him packing from the stage with the words:

“Get out of here! It’s more fun without you.”

Gazing around foolishly and staggering, the compère only got as far as the fire post, and there he had a bad turn. He let out a piteous cry:

“My head, my head!”

Rimsky, among others, rushed up to him. The compère was crying, trying to catch something in the air in his hands, and muttering:

“Give my head back! Give it back! Take my apartment, take my pictures, only give me back my head!”

A messenger ran off for a doctor. They tried to lay Bengalsky down on a couch in the dressing room, but he started fighting them off and became violent. An ambulance had to be called. When the unfortunate compère had been taken away, Rimsky ran back to the stage and saw that new wonders were taking place upon it. Yes, incidentally, it may have been at this time, or maybe a little earlier, only the magician, together with his faded armchair, had vanished from the stage – and, moreover, it has to be said, the audience had completely failed to notice it, distracted by the extraordinary things that Fagot had unfurled on the stage.

And Fagot, having sent the traumatized compère on his way, had made this announcement to the audience:

“Now we’ve got rid of that pain in the neck, led s open a ladies’ boutique!”

And the floor of the stage was immediately covered with Persian carpets; huge mirrors appeared, lit from the sides by greenish strip lights, and between the mirrors… showcases, and in them the audience in cheerful stupefaction saw women’s dresses of various colours and styles from Paris. That was in just some of the showcases. And in the others there appeared hundreds of women’s hats, with feathers and without feathers, with clasps and without them, and hundreds of shoes – black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, both with straps and with little stones. Between the shoes there appeared boxes of perfume, mountains of handbags made of antelope leather, of suede, of silk, and between them. whole heaps of the small, chased gold, oblong holders in which lipstick is sometimes found.

A red-haired girl in black evening dress, who had appeared from the devil knows where – a nice girl in every way, had a weird scar on her neck not spoilt her – began smiling a proprietorial smile by the showcases.

Fagot announced with a sugary grin that the firm was carrying out a completely free exchange of ladies’ old dresses and footwear for Parisian fashions and also Parisian footwear. He added the same regarding handbags and so on.

The cat began scraping a hind paw, and at the same time making with a fore paw gestures of the sort characteristic of doormen opening a door.

Sweetly, albeit a little hoarsely and with a burr, the girl started singing something scarcely comprehensible, but, judging by the women’s faces in the stalls, very seductive:

“Guerlain, Chanel No. 5, Mitsuko, Narcisse Noir, evening dresses, cocktail dresses.”

Fagot was writhing around, the cat was bowing, the girl was opening the glass showcases.

“Please!” Fagot yelled. “Without any inhibitions or ceremony!”

The audience was excited, but nobody as yet dared to go onto the stage. Finally a brunette left row ten of the stalls and, smiling in a way that said it was absolutely all the same to her and she didn’t really care, went forward and up a side stairway onto the stage.

“Bravo!” exclaimed Fagot. “I welcome the first customer! Behemoth, an armchair! Let’s start with footwear, madam!”

The brunette sat down in an armchair and Fagot immediately tossed out onto the carpet in front of her a whole pile of shoes. The brunette took off her right shoe, tried on a lilac one, stamped her foot into the carpet and examined the heel.

“They won’t be too tight, will they?” she asked pensively. To that Fagot exclaimed resentfully:

“Oh, come, come!” and the cat miaowed in resentment.

“I’ll take this pair, monsieur,” said the brunette with dignity, putting on the left shoe as well.

The brunette’s old shoes were thrown away behind the curtain, and she herself proceeded that way too, accompanied by the red-haired girl and Fagot, who was carrying several fashionable dresses on his small shoulders. The cat fussed about, helping, and for greater show hung a measuring tape around his neck.

A minute later the brunette emerged from behind the curtain in such a dress that a sigh rolled right across the stalls. The courageous woman, who had grown prettier to an amazing degree, stopped by a mirror, moved her bared shoulders, touched at the hair on the back of her head and bent her body, trying to get a look behind her back.

“The firm requests you to accept this as a memento,” said Fagot, and handed the brunette an open box with a flacon.

“Merci” replied the brunette haughtily, and went down the steps into the stalls. As she went, members of the audience leapt up to get a touch of the box.

And it was at this point that people completely lost control, and from all sides women set off for the stage. In the general sound of excited voices, giggles and sighs, a man’s voice was heard: “I’m not letting you!” and a woman’s: “Despot and philistine! You’re breaking my arm!” The women disappeared behind the curtain, left their dresses there and came out in new ones. On stools with gilt legs sat a whole row of ladies, energetically stamping newly shod feet into the carpet. Fagot was kneeling down and being active with a metal shoehorn; the cat, exhausted beneath piles of handbags and shoes, dragged himself from showcase to stools and back again; the girl with the disfigured neck now appeared, now disappeared, and got to the point where she started rattling on completely in French, and the amazing thing was that all the women understood her straight away, even those of them who did not know a single word of French.

General astonishment was caused by the man who wormed his way onto the stage. He announced that his wife had flu, and so he was asking for something to be passed on to her through him. And as proof of the fact that he really was married, the citizen was prepared to produce his passport. The caring husband’s declaration was greeted with loud laughter, Fagot yelled out that he believed him as he would believe himself, even without the passport, and handed the citizen two pairs of silk stockings, and the cat added a case with a lipstick from himself.

Women who were late coming forward were bursting to get onto the stage, and from the stage there was a flow of lucky females in ball dresses, in pyjamas with dragons on them, in formal business suits, in nice little hats tilted over one eyebrow.

Then Fagot announced that, on account of the late hour, the shop was closing until the next evening in exactly one minute, and an unbelievable commotion started up on the stage. Women hurriedly grabbed shoes without trying them on. One tore behind the curtain like a hurricane, there threw off her costume and took possession of the first thing that came to hand – a silk dressing gown covered in huge bouquets – and managed to pick up two boxes of perfume besides.

After exactly a minute a pistol shot cracked out, the mirrors vanished, the showcases and stools disappeared, the carpet melted into thin air, as did the curtain too. Last to vanish was the great high mountain of old dresses and footwear, and the stage again became stark, empty and bare.

And it was here that a new character got involved in things.

A pleasant, sonorous and very insistent baritone was heard from box No. 2:

“It is nonetheless desirable, Citizen artiste, that you should without delay expose before the audience the technique of your tricks, in particular the trick with the banknotes. Also desirable is the return of the compère to the stage. His fate is worrying the audience.”

The baritone belonged to none other than the evening’s guest of honour, Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, the Chairman of the Acoustics Commission of Moscow Theatres.

Arkady Apollonovich was in the box with two ladies: one elderly, expensively and fashionably dressed, and the other, young and pretty, dressed rather more simply. The first of them, as soon became clear when the statement was being drawn up, was Arkady Apollonovich’s wife, and the second was a distant relative of his, a novice, but promising actress who had arrived from Saratov and was staying in Arkady Apollonovich and his wife’s apartment.

"Pardon me!” responded Fagot. "My apologies, there’s nothing to expose here, everything’s clear.”

“No, I’m sorry! Exposure is absolutely essential. Without it your brilliant turns will leave a distressing impression. The watching mass demands an explanation.”

“The watching mass,” the rude clown interrupted Sempleyarov, “doesn’t seem to have made any declaration. But, taking into consideration your deeply respected desire, Arkady Apollonovich, so be it, I shall perform an exposure. But to do that, will you allow me one more tiny little turn?”

“Why of course,” replied Arkady Apollonovich patronizingly, “but there should without fail be an exposure!”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir. And so, may I ask you where you were yesterday evening, Arkady Apollonovich?”

At this inappropriate and even perhaps boorish question, Arkady Apollonovich’s countenance changed, and changed very greatly too.

'Arkady Apollonovich was at a meeting of the Acoustics Commission yesterday evening,” declared Arkady Apollonovich’s wife very haughtily, “but I don’t understand what that has to do with magic.”

“Oui, madame” confirmed Fagot. “Naturally you don’t understand. And as to the meeting, you’re utterly deluded. After leaving for the meeting referred to – which, by the way, wasn’t even arranged for yesterday – Arkady Apollonovich let his driver go by the building of the Acoustics Commission at Pure Ponds” – the whole theatre had fallen silent – “and went himself in a bus to Yelokhovskaya Street to visit Militsa Andreyevna Pokobatko, an actress from the District Travelling Theatre, and spent about four hours at her apartment.”

“Oh!” someone exclaimed dolefully in the absolute silence.

But Arkady Apollonovich’s young relative suddenly broke into low and terrible laughter.

“I see it all!” she exclaimed. “And I’d already been suspecting it for a long time. Now it’s clear to me why that third-rater got the part of Louisa!”

And with a sudden swing of her arm, she struck Arkady Apollonovich on the head with a short, thick, lilac umbrella.

And the ignoble Fagot, who was also Korovyev, cried out:

"There, estimable Citizens, is one instance of the exposure that Arkady Apollonovich so insistently sought!”

“How could you have dared, you good-for-nothing, to touch Arkady Apollonovich?” Arkady Apollonovich’s wife asked menacingly, rising in the box to her full, gigantic height.

A second short tide of satanic laughter took hold of the young relative.

“If there’s anyone,” she replied, chuckling, “then I’m the one who can dare to touch him!” and there rang out for a second time the dry crack of the umbrella rebounding off Arkady Apollonovich’s head.

“Police! Seize her!” Sempleyarov’s wife cried out in such a terrible voice that the hearts of many turned cold.

And at this point too, the cat leapt out towards the footlights and suddenly roared in a human voice for the whole theatre to hear:

“The show’s over! Maestro! Saw out a march!”

The conductor, half out of his mind and not aware of what he was doing, waved his baton, and the orchestra started not to play, and not even to crash out, and not even to strike up, but indeed, in the cat’s loathsome expression, to saw out some incredible march, unlike anything on earth in its abandon.

It seemed for an instant as if some time in the past, beneath southern stars in a café chantant, some scarcely comprehensible, purblind, but very dashing words had been heard to this march:

 

His Royal Majesty the King

Admired domestic fowl

And took under his ample wing

The cutest girls in town!

 

Yet perhaps there had been none of these words at all, but others to the same music, and extremely indecent ones too. That is not important; the important thing is that after all this, something akin to Babel started up at the Variety. The police were running to the Sempleyarovs’ box, the curious were climbing onto the barrier, hellish explosions of laughter were heard, and mad cries, drowned out by the golden ringing of the cymbals from the orchestra.

And it could be seen that the stage had suddenly emptied, and that the swindler Fagot, as well as the insolent great tomcat Behemoth, had melted into thin air, vanished, just as the magician in the armchair with the faded upholstery had vanished earlier on.