In short, despite all obstacles, he had to succeed in inheriting his nephew’s apartment on Sadovaya. Yes, it was difficult, very difficult, but these difficulties had to be overcome at whatever cost. The experienced Maximilian Andreevich knew that the first and necessary step towards that had to be the following: he must get himself registered, at least temporarily, as the tenant of his late nephew’s three rooms.
On Friday afternoon, Maximilian Andreevich walked through the door of the room which housed the management of no.502-bis on Sadovava Street in Moscow.
In the narrow room, with an old poster hanging on the wall illustrating in several pictures the ways of resuscitating people who have drowned in the river, an unshaven, middle-aged man with anxious eyes sat in perfect solitude at a wooden table.
“May I see the chairman?” the industrial economist inquired politely, taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on a vacant chair.
This seemingly simple little question for some reason so upset the seated man that he even changed countenance. Looking sideways in anxiety, he muttered unintelligibly that the chairman was not there.
“Is he at home?” asked Poplavsky. “I’ve come on the most urgent business.”
The seated man again replied quite incoherently, but all the same one could guess that the chairman was not at home.
“And when will he be here?”
The seated man made no reply to this and looked with a certain anguish out the window.
“Aha! ...” the intelligent Poplavsky said to himself and inquired about the secretary.
The strange man at the table even turned purple with strain and said, again unintelligibly, that the secretary was not there either ... he did not know when he would be back, and ... that the secretary was sick ...
“Aha!...” Poplavsky said to himself. “But surely there’s somebody in the management?”
“Me,” the man responded in a weak voice.
“You see,” Poplavsky began to speak imposingly, “I am the sole heir of the late Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and I am obliged, in accordance with the law, to take over the inheritance contained in our apartment no.50 ...”
“I’m not informed, comrade ...” the man interrupted in anguish.
“But, excuse me,” Poplavsky said in a sonorous voice, “you are a member of the management and are obliged ...”
And here some citizen entered the room. At the sight of the entering man, the man seated at the table turned pale.
“Management member Pyatnazhko?” the entering man asked the seated man.
“Yes,” the latter said, barely audibly.
The entering one whispered something to the seated one, and he, thoroughly upset, rose from his chair, and a few seconds later Poplavsky found himself alone in the empty management room.
“Eh, what a complication! As if on purpose, all of them at once ...”
Poplavsky thought in vexation, crossing the asphalt courtyard and hurrying to apartment no.50.
As soon as the industrial economist rang, the door was opened, and Maximilian Andreevich entered the semi-dark front hall. It was a somewhat surprising circumstance that he could not figure out who had let him in: there was no one in the front hall except an enormous black cat sitting on a chair.
Maximilian Andreevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the door of the study opened and Koroviev came out to the front hall. Maximilian Andreevich bowed politely, but with dignity, and said: “My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle ...”
But before he could finish, Koroviev snatched a dirty handkerchief from his pocket, buried his nose in it, and began to weep.
“... of the late Berlioz ...”
“Of course, of course!” Koroviev interrupted, taking his handkerchief away from his face. “Just one look and I knew it was you!” Here he was shaken with tears and began to exclaim: ‘such a calamity, eh? What’s going on here, eh?”
“Run over by a tram-car?” Poplavsky asked in a whisper.
“Clean!” cried Koroviev, and tears flowed in streams from under his pince-nez. “Run clean over! I was a witness. Believe me – bang! and the head’s gone! Crunch – there goes the right leg! Crunch -there goes the left leg! That’s what these trams have brought us to!” And, obviously unable to control himself, Koroviev pecked the wall beside the mirror with his nose and began to shake with sobs.
Berlioz’s uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger’s behaviour. “And they say there are no warm-hearted people in our time!” he thought, feeling his own eyes beginning to itch. However, at the same time, an unpleasant little cloud came over his soul, and straight away the snake-like thought flashed in him that this warm-hearted man might perchance have registered himself in the deceased man’s apartment, for such examples have been known in this life.
“Forgive me, were you a friend of my late Misha?” he asked, wiping his dry left eye with his sleeve, and with his right eye studying the racked-with-grief Koroviev. But the man was sobbing so much that one could understand nothing except the repeated word “crunch!” Having sobbed his fill, Koroviev finally unglued himself from the wall and said: “No, I can’t take any more! I’ll go and swallow three hundred drops of tincture of valerian ...” And turning his completely tear-bathed face to Poplavsky, he added: That’s trams for you!”
“Pardon me, but did you send me the telegram?” Maximilian Andreevich asked, painfully puzzling over who this astonishing cry-baby might be.
“He did!” replied Koroviev, and he pointed his finger at the cat.
Poplavsky goggled his eyes, assuming he had not heard right.
“No, it’s too much, I just can’t,” Koroviev went on, snuffing his nose, “when I remember: the wheel over the leg ... the wheel alone weighs three hundred pounds ... Crunch! ... I’ll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.”
And here he disappeared from the hall.
The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs, front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said: “Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?”
Maximilian Andreevich’s head at once began to spin, his arms and legs went numb, he dropped the suitcase and sat down on a chair facing the cat.
“I believe I asked in good Russian?” the cat said sternly. “What of it?”
But Poplavsky made no reply.
“Passport!”[104] barked the cat, holding out a plump paw.
Understanding nothing and seeing nothing except the two sparks burning in the cat’s eyes, Poplavsky snatched the passport from his pocket like a dagger. The cat picked up a pair of glasses in thick black frames from the pier-glass table, put them on his muzzle, thus acquiring a still more imposing air, and took the passport from Poplavsky’s twitching hand.
“I wonder, am I going to faint or not? ...” thought Poplavsky. From far away came Koroviev’s snivelling, the whole front hall filled with the smell of ether, valerian and some other nauseating vileness.
“What office issued this document?” the cat asked, peering at the page.
No answer came.
“The 412th,” the cat said to himself, tracing with his paw on the passport, which he was holding upside down. “Ah, yes, of course! I know that office, they issue passports to anybody. Whereas I, for instance, wouldn’t issue one to the likes of you! Not on your life I wouldn’t! I’d just take one look at your face and instantly refuse!” The cat got so angry that he flung the passport on the floor. “Your presence at the funeral is cancelled,” the cat continued in an official voice. “Kindly return to your place of residence.” And he barked through the door “Azazello!”
At his call a small man ran out to the front hall, limping, sheathed in black rights, with a knife tucked into his leather belt, red-haired, with a yellow fang and with albugo in his left eye.
Poplavsky felt he could not get enough air, rose from his seat and backed away, clutching his heart.
“See him off, Azazello!” the cat ordered and left the hall.
&n
bsp; “Poplavsky,” the other twanged softly, “I hope everything’s understood now?”
Poplavsky nodded.
“Return immediately to Kiev,” Azazello went on. “Sit there stiller than water, lower than grass, and don’t dream of any apartments in Moscow.
Clear?”
This small man, who drove Poplavsky to mortal terror with his fang, knife and blind eye, only came up to the economist’s shoulder, but his actions were energetic, precise and efficient.
First of all, he picked up the passport and handed it to Maximilian Andreevich, and the latter took the booklet with a dead hand. Then the one named Azazello picked up the suitcase with one hand, with the other flung open the door, and, taking Berlioz’s uncle under the arm, led him out to the landing of the stairway. Poplavsky leaned against the wall. Without any key, Azazello opened the suitcase, took out of it a huge roast chicken with a missing leg wrapped in greasy newspaper, and placed it on the landing. Then he took out two pairs of underwear, a razor-strop, some book and a case, and shoved it all down the stairwell with his foot, except for the chicken. The emptied suitcase went the same way. There came a crash from below and, judging by the sound of it, the lid broke off.
Then the red-haired bandit grabbed the chicken by the leg, and with this whole chicken hit Poplavsky on the neck, flat, hard, and so terribly that the body of the chicken tore off and the leg remained in Azazello’s hand. “Everything was confusion in the Oblonskys’ home,”[105] as the famous writer Leo Tolstoy correctly put it. Precisely so he might have said on this occasion. Yes, everything was confusion in Poplavsky’s eyes. A long spark flew before his eyes, then gave place to some funereal snake that momentarily extinguished the May day, and Poplavsky went hurtling down the stairs, clutching his passport in his hand.
Reaching the turn, he smashed the window on the landing with his foot and sat on a step. The legless chicken went bouncing past him and fell down the stairwell. Azazello, who stayed upstairs, instantly gnawed the chicken leg dean, stuck the bone into the side pocket of his tights, went back to the apartment, and shut the door behind him with a bang.
At that moment there began to be heard from below the cautious steps of someone coming up.
Having run down one more flight of stairs, Poplavsky sat on a wooden bench on the landing and caught his breath.
Some tiny elderly man with an extraordinarily melancholy face, in an old-fashioned tussore silk suit and a hard straw hat with a green band, on his way upstairs, stopped beside Poplavsky.
“May I ask you, citizen,” the man in tussore silk asked sadly, “where apartment no.50 is?”
“Further up,” Poplavsky replied curtly.
“I humbly thank you, citizen,” the little man said with the same sadness and went on up, while Poplavsky got to his feet and ran down.
The question arises whether it might have been the police that Maximilian Andreevich was hastening to, to complain about the bandits who had perpetrated savage violence upon him in broad daylight? No, by no means, that can be said with certainty. To go into a police station and tell them, look here, just now a cat in eyeglasses read my passport, and then a man in tights, with a knife ... no, citizens, Maximilian Andreevich was indeed an intelligent man.
He was already downstairs and saw just by the exit a door leading to some closet. The glass in the door was broken. Poplavsky hid his passport in his pocket and looked around, hoping to see his thrown-down belongings. But there was no trace of them. Poplavsky was even surprised himself at how little this upset him. He was occupied with another interesting and tempting thought: of testing the accursed apartment one more time on this little man.
In fact, since he had inquired after its whereabouts, it meant he was going there for the first time. Therefore he was presently heading straight into the clutches of the company that had ensconced itself in apartment no.50.
Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be leaving this apartment very soon. Maximilian Andreevich was, of course, no longer going to any funeral of any nephew, and there was plenty of time before the train to Kiev. The economist looked around and ducked into the closet.
At that moment way upstairs a door banged. That’s him going in ...”
Poplavsky thought, his heart skipping a beat. The closet was cool, it smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreevich settled on some stump of wood and decided to wait. The position was convenient, from the closet one looked directly on to the exit from the sixth stairway.
However, the man from Kiev had to wait longer than he supposed. The stairway was for some reason deserted all the while. One could hear well, and finally a door banged on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Yes, those were his little steps. “He’s coming down ...” A door one flight lower opened. The little steps ceased. A woman’s voice. The voice of the sad man yes, it’s his voice ... Saying something like “leave me alone, for Christ’s sake ...” Poplavsky’s ear stuck through the broken glass. This ear caught a woman’s laughter. Quick and brisk steps coming down. And now a woman’s back flashed by. This woman, carrying a green oilcloth bag, went out through the front hall to the courtyard. And the little man’s steps came anew. “Strange! He’s going back up to the apartment! Does it mean he’s part of the gang himself? Yes, he’s going back. They’ve opened the door again upstairs. Well, then, let’s wait a little longer ...”
This time he did not have to wait long. The sound of the door. The little steps. The little steps cease. A desperate cry. A cat’s meowing. The little steps, quick, rapid, down, down, down!
Poplavsky had not waited in vain. Crossing himself and muttering something, the melancholy little man rushed past him, hatless, with a completely crazed face, his bald head all scratched and his trousers completely wet. He began tearing at the handle of the front door, unable in his fear to determine whether it opened out or in, managed at last, and flew out into the sun in the courtyard.
The testing of the apartment had been performed. Thinking no more either of the deceased nephew or of the apartment, shuddering at the thought of the risk he had been running, Maximilian Andreevich, whispering only the three words “It’s all clear, it’s all clear!”, ran out to the courtyard. A few minutes later the bus was carrying the industrial economist in the direction of the Kiev station.
As for the tiny little man, a most unpleasant story had gone on with him while the economist was sitting in the closet downstairs. The little man was barman at the Variety, and was called Andrei Folkich Sokov. While the investigation was going on in the Variety, Andrei Fokich kept himself apart from all that was happening, and only one thing could be noticed, that he became still sadder than he generally was, and, besides, that he inquired of the messenger Karpov where the visiting magician was staying.
And so, after parting with the economist on the landing, the barman went up to the fifth floor and rang at apartment no.50.
The door was opened for him immediately, but the barman gave a start, backed away, and did not enter at once. This was understandable. The door had been opened by a girl who was wearing nothing but a coquettish little lacy apron and a white fichu on her head. On her feet, however, she had golden slippers. The girl was distinguished by an irreproachable figure, and the only thing that might have been considered a defect in her appearance was the purple scar on her neck.
“Well, come in then, since you rang,” said the girl, fixing her lewd green eyes on the barman.
Andrei Fokich gasped, blinked his eyes, and stepped into the front hall, taking off his hat. Just then the telephone in the front hall rang.
The shameless maid put one foot on a chair, picked up the receiver, and into it said: “Hello!”
The barman, not knowing where to look, stood shifting from one foot to the other, thinking: ‘some maid this foreigner’s got! Pah, nasty thing!” And to save himself from the nasty thing, he began casting sidelong glances around him.
The whole big and semi-dark hall was cluttered with unusual objects and clothing. Thus, thrown ove
r the back of a chair was a funereal cloak lined with fiery cloth, on the pier-glass table lay a long sword with a gleaming gold hilt. Three swords with silver hilts stood in the corner like mere umbrellas or canes. And on the stag-horns hung berets with eagle feathers.
“Yes,” the maid was saying into the telephone. “How’s that? Baron Meigel? I’m listening. Yes. Mister artiste is at home today. Yes, he’ll be glad to see you. Yes, guests ... A tailcoat or a black suit. What? By twelve midnight.” Having finished the conversation, the maid hung up the receiver and turned to the barman: “What would you like?”
“I must see the citizen artiste.”
“What? You mean him himself?”
“Himself,” the barman replied sorrowfully.
“I’ll ask,” the maid said with visible hesitation and, opening the door to the late Berlioz’s study, announced: “Knight, there’s a little man here who says he must see Messire.”
“Let him come in,” Koroviev’s cracked voice came from the study.
“Go into the living room,” the girl said as simply as if she were dressed like anyone else, opened the door to the living room, and herself left the hall.
Going in where he was invited, the barman even forgot his business, so greatly was he struck by the decor of the room. Through the stained glass of the big windows (a fantasy of the jeweller’s utterly vanished wife) poured an unusual, church-like light. Logs were blazing in the huge antique fireplace, despite the hot spring day. And yet it was not the least bit hot in the room, and even quite the contrary, on entering one was enveloped in some sort of dankness as in a cellar. On a deerskin in front of the fireplace sat a huge black tom-cat, squinting good-naturedly at the fire.
There was a table at the sight of which the God-fearing barman gave a start: the table was covered with church brocade. On the brocade tablecloth stood a host of bottles – round-bellied, mouldy and dusty. Among the bottles gleamed a dish, and it was obvious at once that it was of pure gold. At the fireplace a small red-haired fellow with a knife in his belt was roasting pieces of meat on a long steel sword, and the juice dripped into the fire, and the smoke went up the flue. There was a smell not only of roasting meat, but also of some very strong perfume and incense, and it flashed in the barman’s mind, for he already knew of Berlioz’s death and his place of residence from the newspapers, that this might, for all he knew, be a church panikhida[106] that was being served for Berlioz, which thought, however, he drove away at once as a priori absurd.