28. The Final Adventures of Korovyev and Behemoth

Whether these silhouettes existed, or whether they had just been imagined by the terror-stricken residents of the ill-starred building on Sadovaya, cannot, of course, be said for certain. If they did exist, no one knows what their immediate destination was either. Nor can we say where they split up, but we do know that about a quarter of an hour after the start of the fire on Sadovaya there appeared at the mirrored doors of Torgsin at the Smolensk Market a lanky citizen in a checked suit, and with him a large black cat.

Winding his way deftly between passers-by, the citizen opened the outer door of the shop. But here the small, bony and extremely ill-disposed doorman blocked his path and said irritably:

“You can’t come in with cats!”

“I’m sorry,” the lanky one began jangling, and put a gnarled hand to his ear, as though hard of hearing, “with cats, you say? And where ever do you see a cat?”

The doorman opened his eyes wide, and with good reason: there was no longer any cat at the citizen’s feet, but instead of that, from behind his shoulder, a fat man in a ripped cap, with a face that really did smack a little of a cat, was thrusting himself forward and straining to enter the shop. The fat man had a Primus in his hands.

For some reason the misanthropic doorman did not take to this funny pair of visitors.

“We only sell for foreign currency,” he wheezed irritably, looking out from under scraggy, as though moth-eaten, greying eyebrows.

“My dear man,” the lanky one began jangling, his eye flashing from a broken pince-nez, “but how on earth do you know I don’t have any? Are you judging by my dress? Never do that, most precious custodian! You may be mistaken, and very much so at that. Reread once again if only the story of the renowned Caliph Harun al-Rashid. But in the given instance, casting that story aside for the time being, I’d like to tell you that I shall complain about you to the manager and shall tell him such things about you that you might be obliged to abandon your post between the gleaming mirrored doors.”

“Maybe I have a Primus full of foreign currency,” the fat, catlike man butted in irascibly, still trying to barge his way into the shop.

Customers behind them were already pushing forward and getting angry. Looking at the weird pair with hatred and doubt, the doorman stood aside, and our acquaintances, Korovyev and Behemoth, found themselves inside the shop. Here they first and foremost looked around, and then, in a ringing voice that could be heard in absolutely every corner, Korovyev declared:

“A splendid shop! A very, very good shop!”

The customers turned around from the counters and for some reason looked at the man who had spoken with amazement, although he had every reason to praise the shop.

Hundreds of rolls of cotton cloth in the richest of colours could be seen on squared shelf units. Beyond them were piles of calico and chiffon and cloth for dress suits. Whole stacks of shoeboxes stretched away into the distance, and several citizenesses were sitting on low chairs with their right feet in old, battered shoes, and their left in gleaming new court shoes, which they proceeded to stamp anxiously into the rug. Somewhere in the depths of the shop around a corner, gramophones were singing and playing.

But, passing all these delights by, Korovyev and Behemoth headed straight for the point where the grocery and confectionery departments met. There was a lot of room here, there were no citizenesses in headscarves and berets pressing against the counters as in the fabrics department.

A rather short, perfectly square man in horn-rimmed glasses – so well-shaven he was blue, wearing a brand-new hat, uncrumpled and without any stains on the ribbon, a lilac overcoat and gingery kid gloves – was standing by the counter and bellowing something imperiously. A shop assistant in a clean white coat and a blue hat was serving the lilac client. With the sharpest of knives, very similar to the knife stolen by Levi Matthew, he was removing the skin, which looked like a snake’s with its silvery shine, from a piece of pink salmon, which was oozing fat.

“And this department’s magnificent too,” Korovyev solemnly declared, “and the foreigner’s a likeable one.” He pointed his finger benevolently at the lilac back.

“No, Fagot, no,” replied Behemoth pensively, “you’re mistaken, old chum. There’s something lacking in the lilac gentleman’s face, in my view.”

The lilac back shuddered, but probably by chance, for the foreigner could not possibly have understood what Korovyev and his companion were saying in Russian.

“Is good?” asked the lilac customer sternly.

“World-class!” replied the shop assistant, wiggling the blade of the knife around coquettishly under the skin.

“Is good, I like, is bad – no,” said the foreigner sternly.

“Of course!” replied the shop assistant enthusiastically.

Here our acquaintances moved away from the foreigner and his salmon towards the edge of the confectionery counter.

“It’s hot today,” Korovyev said, addressing the red-cheeked young shop girl, and to this got no reply from her. “How much are the mandarins?” Korovyev then enquired of her.

“Thirty copecks a kilo,” the shop girl replied.

“Everything’s so pricey,” remarked Korovyev with a sigh, “oh dear, oh dear…” Then he thought for a bit and invited his companion: “Eat up, Behemoth.”

The fat man clasped his Primus under his arm, took possession of the mandarin at the top of the pyramid and, gobbling it down there and then with the peel on, he set about a second one.

The shop girl was gripped by deathly horror.

“Are you out of your mind?” she exclaimed, losing her rosiness. “Give me the receipt! The receipt!” and she dropped the sweet-tongs.

“My darling, my dear, my beauty,” Korovyev began hoarsely, lurching across the counter and winking at the shop girl, “we’ve got no foreign currency with us today… well, what’s to be done! But I swear to you, the very next time, and certainly no later than Monday, we’ll pay up in full in readies! We’re not far from here, on Sadovaya, where the fire is.”

Having swallowed a third mandarin, Behemoth poked his paw into an intricate structure of chocolate bars and pulled out one at the bottom – as a result of which, of course, it all collapsed – and he swallowed the bar together with the gold wrapping.

While the shop assistants at the fish counter turned to stone with their knives in their hands, the lilac foreigner turned towards the robbers, and it was immediately revealed that Behemoth was wrong: the lilac man did not have something lacking in his face – on the contrary, there was rather something superfluous: drooping cheeks and darting eyes.

Having turned quite yellow, the shop girl cried mournfully for the whole shop to hear:

“Palosich! Palosich!”

Customers from the fabrics department came in a rush at this call, and Behemoth moved away from the confectionery temptations and thrust a paw into a barrel with the inscription “Selected Kerch herring”, pulled out a couple of herrings and, swallowing them, spat out the bones.

“Palosich!” the desperate cry behind the confectionery counter was repeated, while behind the fish counter a shop assistant with an imperial beard bawled:

“What do you think you’re doing, you scum?!”

Pavel Iosifovich was already hurrying to the scene of the action. He was an imposing man in a clean white coat, like a surgeon, and with a pencil poking out of his pocket. Seeing the tail of a third herring in Behemoth’s mouth, he appraised the situation in an instant, understood absolutely everything and, without entering into any debates with the insolent fellows, he waved an arm into the distance and commanded:

“Whistle!”

Out from the mirrored doors onto the corner of Smolensk Market flew the doorman, and burst into ominous whistling. The customers started to surround the villains, and then Korovyev entered into the matter.

“Citizens!” he cried in a quavering, thin voice. “What ever is going on? Eh? Permit me to ask you that! A poor man” – Korovyev added a quaver into his voice and indicated Behemoth, who had immediately put on a tearful face – “a poor man is mending Primuses all day long; he’s hungry… and where on earth is he to get foreign currency from?”

Pavel Iosifovich, usually restrained and calm, shouted sternly at this: “You stop that!” and waved into the distance, impatiently now. Then the trills at the doors began to ring out a little more merrily.

But Korovyev, not put off by Pavel Iosifovich’s utterance, continued:

“Where from? I’m asking everyone the question! He’s wearied by hunger and thirst! He’s hot. Well, the hapless fellow took a mandarin to taste. And the total price of that mandarin is three copecks. And here they are already whistling like nightingales in a wood in the springtime, disturbing the police, taking them away from their work. While he can? Eh?” and here Korovyev indicated the fat lilac man, and the greatest anxiety was expressed on the latter’s face as a result. “Who’s he? Eh? Where’s he come from? What for? Were we pining without him, or something? Did we invite him, or something? Of course” – twisting his mouth sarcastically, the former precentor was yelling at the top of his voice – “he, you see, in his best lilac suit, he’s all swollen up from eating salmon, he’s completely stuffed with foreign currency, but what about our Russian fellow, our Russian fellow?! It makes me bitter! Bitter! Bitter!” Korovyev howled, like an usher at an old-time wedding.

This whole speech, extremely silly, tactless and probably politically dangerous, made Pavel Iosifovich shake with rage,but, strange as it might seem, it could be seen from the eyes of the crowd of customers that had gathered that it had aroused sympathy in very many people! And when, putting a dirty, torn sleeve to his eye, Behemoth tragically exclaimed: “Thank you, faithful friend, you have taken the part of a man who has suffered!” a miracle occurred. The most respectable, quiet, little old man, dressed poorly, but nice and clean – a little old man who had been buying three almond cakes in the confectionery department – was suddenly transfigured. His eyes flashed with the fire of battle; he turned crimson, flung the little bag of cakes onto the floor and cried: “It’s true!” in the thin voice of a child. Then he snatched up a tray, throwing from it the remnants of the chocolate Eiffel Tower that Behemoth had destroyed, waved it in the air, pulled off the foreigner’s hat with his left hand, and with his right, with all his might, hit the foreigner on his bald head with the flat of the tray. There rang out the sort of sound there is when sheet iron is thrown onto the ground from a truck. The fat man, turning white, collapsed backwards and sat down in the vat of Kerch herring, squirting out from it a fountain of herring brine. And straight away a second miracle too came about. The lilac man, having fallen into the vat, exclaimed in perfect Russian without a trace of any accent: “Murder! Police! I’m being murdered by bandits!” evidently having suddenly mastered in consequence of the shock a language previously unknown to him.

Then the doorman’s whistling ceased, and in the crowds of agitated customers there were now glimpses, as they approached, of two policemen’s helmets. But just as in a bathhouse they pour water over a bench from a tub, so the perfidious Behemoth poured petrol from the Primus over the confectionery counter, and it burst into flames all by itself. The flame struck upwards and ran along the counter, devouring the pretty paper ribbons on the baskets of fruit. Squealing, the shop girls hastened to escape from behind the counter, and as soon as they had slipped out from behind it, the linen blinds on the windows burst into flames and the petrol on the floor caught fire. Immediately raising a desperate clamour, the customers lurched back out of the confectioner’s, crushing Pavel Iosifovich, who was no longer needed, and from behind the fish counter the shop assistants with their sharpened knives trotted in single file towards the doors of the back entrance. The lilac citizen, having extricated himself from the vat, but all covered in herring slush, rolled over the salmon on the counter and followed after them. The glass in the mirrored exit doors began to ring and then rained down, knocked out by the escaping people, while the two villains, Korovyev and the glutton Behemoth, were off somewhere – but where, that could not be fathomed. Only later did eyewitnesses who had been present at the start of the fire in Torgsin on Smolensk Market say that the hooligans had apparently both flown up to just below the ceiling, and there had apparently both burst like balloons. It is doubtful, of course, that that is how it actually was, but what we don’t know, we don’t know.

But we do know that exactly one minute after the incident at Smolensk Market both Behemoth and Korovyev were already on the pavement of the boulevard, just by Griboyedov’s auntie’s house. Korovyev stopped by the railings and began:

“Well I never! I mean, this is the writers’ house! You know, Behemoth, I’ve heard a great many good and complimentary things about this house. Turn your attention, my friend, to this house. It’s nice to think that, hidden under that roof, a whole host of talents is ripening.”

"Like pineapples in hothouses,” said Behemoth and, in order better to admire the cream house with the columns, he climbed onto the concrete base of the cast-iron railings.

"Quite right,” Korovyev concurred with his inseparable companion, "and a delicious wave of awe floods through your heart when you think that maturing in that house now is the future author of Don Quixote or Faust, or, the devil take me, Dead Souls! Eh?”

"It’s a terrifying thought,” Behemoth confirmed.

“Yes,” Korovyev continued, “amazing things can be expected from the hotbeds of that house, which has united under its roof several thousand zealots, who have resolved to devote their lives selflessly to the service of Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Thalia. Can you imagine what a clamour there’ll be when one of them, for a start, presents the reading public with The Government Inspector or, at the very worst, Eugene Onegin!"

“Very easily," Behemoth confirmed once again.

“Yes," Korovyev continued, and raised a finger anxiously, “but! But, I say, and I repeat it – but! Only if some microorganism or other doesn’t attack those tender hothouse plants, doesn’t eat away at their roots, only if they don’t begin to rot! And that can happen with pineapples! Dear, oh dear, can’t it just happen!"

“By the way," enquired Behemoth, poking his round head through a gap in the railings, “what’s that they’re doing on the veranda?"

“Having lunch," explained Korovyev, “and to that I can add, my friend, that there’s a restaurant here that’s inexpensive and not at all bad. And meanwhile, like any tourist before onward travel, I am experiencing the desire to have a bite to eat and to drink down a large, ice-cold mug of beer."

“Me too," replied Behemoth, and the pair of villains strode off down the asphalt path beneath the limes straight to the veranda of the unsuspecting restaurant.

A pale and bored citizeness with a ponytail, wearing little white socks and a little beret, also white, was sitting on a bentwood chair at the corner entrance to the veranda, where an opening had been made in the greenery of the trellis. In front of her on an extensive kitchen table lay a thick, register-style book in which, for reasons unknown, the citizeness was making a note of those who came into the restaurant. And it was by precisely this citizeness that Korovyev and Behemoth were stopped.

“Your identification cards?” She was looking in surprise at Korovyev’s pince-nez, and also at Behemoth’s Primus and at his torn elbow.

“A thousand apologies, what identification cards?” Korovyev asked in surprise.

“Are you writers?” asked the citizeness in her turn.

“Undoubtedly,” Korovyev answered with dignity.

“Your identification cards?” the citizeness repeated.

“My lovely…” Korovyev began tenderly.

“I’m not lovely,” the citizeness interrupted him.

“Oh, isn’t that a pity,” said Korovyev, disappointed, and continued: “Well, all right, if you don’t wish to be lovely, which would have been most pleasant, you don’t have to be. So then, to be satisfied that Dostoevsky is a writer, surely it s not necessary to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from any of his novels, and you’ll be satisfied without any identification card that you’re dealing with a writer. I actually suspect that he didn’t even have an identification card! What do you think?” Korovyev turned to Behemoth.

“I bet he didn’t,” the latter replied, standing the Primus on the table next to the book and wiping away the sweat on his smoke-blackened forehead with his hand.

“You’re not Dostoevsky,” said the citizeness, knocked out of her stride by Korovyev.

“Well, who knows, who knows?” he replied.

“Dostoevsky’s dead,” said the citizeness, but not very confidently somehow.

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

“Your identification cards, Citizens,” said the citizeness.

“For pity’s sake, this is ultimately ridiculous,” Korovyev would not give in, “it’s not by an identification card that a writer is defined at all, but by what he writes! How do you know what ideas are crowding inside my head? Or in this head?” and he indicated Behemoth’s head, from which the latter immediately removed his cap, as if for the citizeness to be better able to examine it.

“Make way, Citizens,” she said, already feeling fraught.

Korovyev and Behemoth stepped aside and made way for some writer in a grey suit, in a tieless, white summer shirt whose collar lay spread out wide on the collar of his jacket, and with a newspaper under his arm. The writer nodded affably to the citizeness, put some sort of squiggle in the book held out for him as he went and proceeded onto the veranda.

“Alas, it’s not us, not us,” Korovyev began sadly, “but him who’ll be getting that ice-cold mug of beer of which you and I, poor rovers, so dreamt. Our position is sad and difficult, and I don’t know what to do.”

Behemoth only spread his arms and put the cap back on his round head with its thick growth of hair, very like the fur of a cat. And at that moment a soft but masterful voice was heard above the citizeness’s head:

“Let them in, Sofya Pavlovna.”

The citizeness with the book was astonished; in the greenery of the trellis appeared the white tail-suited chest and the wedgeshaped beard of the filibuster. He was looking affably at the two dubious ragamuffins and, even more than that, was making gestures of invitation to them. Archibald Archibaldovich’s authority was a thing taken seriously in the restaurant which he managed, and Sofya Pavlovna asked Korovyev obediently:

“What’s your name?”

“Panayev,” he replied politely. The citizeness wrote this name down and raised an enquiring gaze to Behemoth.

“Skabichevsky,” he squeaked, for some reason pointing to his Primus. Sofya Pavlovna wrote that down too, and moved the book towards the visitors for them to put their signatures in it. Korovyev wrote “Skabichevsky” opposite the name “Panayev”, and Behemoth wrote “Panayev” opposite “Skabichevsky”.

Archibald Archibaldovich completely stunned Sofia Pavlovna as, with a captivating smile, he led the guests to the best table at the opposite end of the veranda, where the deepest shade was, to the table beside which the sun was playing merrily in one of the slits in the greenery of the trellis. And Sofya Pavlovna, blinking in astonishment, spent a long time studying the strange entries made in the book by the unexpected visitors.

Archibald Archibaldovich surprised the waiters no less than he had Sofya Pavlovna. He personally moved a chair away from the table, inviting Korovyev to sit down, gave a wink to one, whispered something to another, and the two waiters began making a fuss around the new guests, one of whom put his Primus on the floor next to his now ginger, discoloured boot.

The old tablecloth with yellow stains immediately disappeared from the table, up into the air flew another, crackling with starch and brilliant white, like a Bedouin’s burnous, and Archibald Archibaldovich was already whispering quietly, but very expressively, bending right down to Korovyev’s ear:

“What am I to regale you with? I have a very special cured fillet of sturgeon… snatched it away from the architects’ congress…”

“Will you. er. let us generally have some hors d’oeuvres. er.” Korovyev mumbled benevolently, stretching out on his chair.

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

Seeing how the restaurant boss treated these most dubious visitors, the waiters abandoned all their doubts and set about things seriously. One was already bringing a match for Behemoth, who had taken a cigarette stub from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth, the other had flown up with a tinkling of green glass and was laying out by the place settings vodka glasses, wine glasses and the delicate ones from which Narzan goes down so well beneath the awning. no, jumping ahead, let us say: Narzan used to go down so well beneath the awning of the unforgettable Griboyedov veranda.

“I can treat you to a nice fillet of hazel grouse,” Archibald Archibaldovich purred musically. The guest in the cracked pince-nez gave his full approval to the commander of the brig’s suggestions and gazed at him graciously through his useless lens.

With the powers of observation characteristic of all writers, the belletrist Petrakov-Sukhovei, dining at the next table with his wife, who was just finishing off a pork cutlet, noticed Archibald Archibaldovich’s attentions and was very, very surprised. And his wife, a most venerable lady, simply begrudged the pirate’s attitude to Korovyev, and even tapped with her teaspoon, as if to say: “Why on earth are we being held up… it’s time the ice cream was served! What’s going on?”

However, having given Petrakova a captivating smile, Archibald Archibaldovich directed a waiter to her and did not himself abandon his dear guests. Ah, Archibald Archibaldovich was clever! And perhaps no less observant than the writers themselves. Archibald Archibaldovich knew about the show at the Variety, and about many of the other incidents of these days, and had heard – but, in contrast to others, had not failed to pay heed to – both the word "checked”, and the word "cat”. Archibald Archibaldovich had guessed at once who his visitors were. And having guessed, naturally had not dreamt of arguing with them. But that Sofya Pavlovna was a fine one! I mean, what a thing to dream up – barring the path onto the veranda to those two! But then what could you expect from her?

Haughtily prodding her teaspoon into the melting ice cream, Petrakova watched with discontented eyes as the table in front of these two men dressed like clowns of some sort filled up with victuals as if by magic. Lettuce leaves that had been washed until they shone were already poking out of a bowl of fresh caviar. another moment, and there appeared on a separate side table, set up specially, a little silver bucket covered in condensation.

Only when satisfied that everything had been done conscientiously, only when there flew up in the hands of the waiters a covered pan in which something was growling, did Archibald Archibaldovich allow himself to abandon the two enigmatic visitors, and even then after a prior whisper to them:

"Excuse me! For a moment! I’ll see to the fillets personally.”

He flew away from the table and disappeared in the restaurant’s inner passageway. If some observer could have followed Archibald Archibaldovich’s subsequent actions, they would doubtless have seemed to him somewhat enigmatic.

The boss headed not into the kitchen to watch over the fillets at all, but into the restaurant’s pantry. He opened it with his key, shut himself in it, carefully, so as not to dirty his cuff, took two weighty pieces of cured sturgeon out of a bin of ice, packed them in newspaper, tied them up neatly with string and put them to one side. Then in the next room he checked whether his summer, silk-lined coat and hat were in their places, and only after that he proceeded into the kitchen, where the chef was painstakingly preparing the nice fillets the pirate had promised the guests.

It must be said that in all Archibald Archibaldovich’s actions there was nothing strange or enigmatic whatsoever, and only a superficial observer could have considered such actions strange. Archibald Archibaldovich’s conduct followed perfectly logically from all that had gone before. Knowledge of the latest events and, chiefly, Archibald Archibaldovich’s phenomenal sixth sense suggested to the boss of the Griboyedov restaurant that his two visitors’ lunch might well be ample and sumptuous, and yet extremely fleeting. And the sixth sense that had never deceived the former filibuster did not let him down on this occasion either.

At the moment when Korovyev and Behemoth were clinking their glasses of splendid, cold, twice-distilled Moscow vodka for the second time, there appeared on the veranda the sweaty and agitated news reporter Boba Kandalupsky, famous in Moscow for his amazing omniscience, who straight away joined the Petrakovs. Putting his swollen briefcase on the table, Boba immediately stuck his lips in Petrakov’s ear and began whispering into it some very enticing things. Madame Petrakova, dying of curiosity, put her ear up to Boba’s plump, greasy lips as well. And the latter, glancing around occasionally like a thief, kept on whispering and whispering, and individual words could be heard, such as these:

“I swear to you on my honour! On Sadovaya, on Sadovaya” – Boba lowered his voice still more – “bullets have no effect! Bullets… bullets… petrol… fire. bullets…”

“Now, these liars who spread vile rumours,” Madam Petrakova’s contralto voice started droning indignantly, and rather louder than Boba would have liked, “now they ought to be brought to light! Well, it’s all right, that’s what will happen, they’ll be sorted out! What dangerous drivel!”

“What do you mean ‘drivel’, Antonida Porfiryevna!” Boba exclaimed, aggrieved by the disbelief of the writer’s wife, and again began hissing: “I tell you, bullets have no effect. And now there’s a fire. Through the air they. through the air,” Boba hissed, not suspecting the fact that those he was talking about were sitting next to him, enjoying his hissing.

However, that enjoyment soon ceased. There swiftly emerged from the inner passageway of the restaurant onto the veranda three men with tightly belted waists, wearing leather gaiters and with revolvers in their hands. The one in front’s cry was resonant and terrifying: “Don’t move!” and immediately all three opened fire on the veranda, aiming at Korovyev and Behemoth’s heads. Both of those being shot at disappeared into thin air at once, and a column of fire from the Primus struck straight at the awning. It was as if gaping jaws with black edges appeared in the awning and began spreading in all directions. Leaping through them, the fire went right up to the roof of the Griboyedov House. The files of papers lying on the first-floor window sill of the editorial office suddenly burst into flames, and after them the blind caught too, and then, humming as though someone were fanning it, the fire went in columns into the inside of auntie’s house.

A few seconds later, down the asphalt paths leading to the cast-iron railings of the boulevard, whence on Wednesday evening the first herald of misfortune, understood by no one, Ivanushka, had come, there now ran writers leaving meals unfinished, waiters, Sofya Pavlovna, Boba, Petrakova and Petrakov. Having left in good time through the side entrance, fleeing nowhere and hurrying nowhere, like the captain who is duty-bound to abandon the burning brig last, Archibald Archibaldovich stood calmly in his silk-lined summer coat with two logs of cured sturgeon under his arm.