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 over 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 tiger skin 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 panikhida4 that was being served for Berlioz, which thought, however, he drove away at once as a priori absurd.
The astounded barman unexpectedly heard a heavy bass:
‘Well, sir, what can I do for you?’
And here the barman discovered in the shadows the one he wanted.
The black magician was sprawled on some boundless sofa, low, with pillows scattered over it. As it seemed to the barman, the artiste was wearing only black underwear and black pointed shoes.
‘I,’ the barman began bitterly, ‘am the manager of the buffet at the Variety Theatre …’
The artiste stretched out his hand, stones flashing on its fingers, as if stopping the barman’s mouth, and spoke with great ardour:
‘No, no, no! Not a word more! Never and by no means! Nothing from your buffet will ever pass my lips! I, my esteemed sir, walked past your stand yesterday, and even now I am unable to forget either the sturgeon or the feta cheese! My precious man! Feta cheese is never green in colour, someone has tricked you. It ought to be white. Yes, and the tea? It’s simply swill! I saw with my own eyes some slovenly girl add tap water from a bucket to your huge samovar, while the tea went on being served. No, my dear, it’s impossible!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Andrei Fokich, astounded by this sudden attack, ‘but I’ve come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do with it …’
‘How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it’s spoiled!’
‘They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness,’ the barman said.
‘My dear heart, that is nonsense!’
‘What is nonsense?’
‘Second freshness — that’s what is nonsense! There is only one freshness — the first — and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.’
‘I beg your pardon …’ the barman again tried to begin, not knowing how to shake off the cavilling artiste.
‘I cannot pardon you,’ the other said firmly.
‘I have come about something else,’ the barman said, getting quite upset.
‘About something else?’ the foreign magician was surprised. ‘And what else could have brought you to me? Unless memory deceives me, among people of a profession similar to yours, I have had dealings with only one sutler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet in this world. However, I’m glad. Azazello! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!’
The one who was roasting meat turned, horrifying the barman with his fangs, and deftly offered him one of the dark oaken tabourets. There were no other seats in the room.
The barman managed to say:
‘I humbly thank you,’ and lowered himself on to the stool. Its back leg broke at once with a crack, and the barman, gasping, struck his backside most painfully on the floor. As he fell, he kicked another stool in front of him with his foot, and from it spilled a full cup of red wine on his trousers.
The artiste exclaimed:
‘Oh! Are you hurt?’
Azazello helped the barman up and gave him another seat. In a voice filled with grief, the barman declined his host’s suggestion that he take off his trousers and dry them before the fire, and, feeling unbearably uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothing, cautiously sat down on the other stool.
‘I like sitting low down,’ the artiste said, ‘it’s less dangerous falling from a low height. Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon. Freshness, dear heart, freshness, freshness! That should be the motto of every barman. Here, wouldn’t you like to try …’
In the crimson light of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the barman, and Azazello laid a sizzling piece of meat on the golden dish, squeezed lemon juice over it, and handed the barman a golden two-pronged fork.
‘My humble … I …’
‘No, no, try it!’
The barman put a piece into his mouth out of politeness, and understood at once that he was chewing something very fresh indeed, and, above all, extraordinarily delicious. But as he was chewing the fragrant, juicy meat, the barman nearly choked and fell a second time. From the neighbouring room a big, dark bird flew in and gently brushed the barman’s bald head with its wing. Alighting on the mantelpiece beside the clock, the bird turned out to be an owl. ‘Oh, Lord God! …’ thought Andrei Fokich, nervous like all barmen. ‘A nice little apartment! …’
‘A cup of wine? White, red? What country’s wine do you prefer at this time of day?’
‘My humble … I don’t drink …’
‘A shame! What about a game of dice, then? Or do you have some other favourite game? Dominoes? Cards?’
‘I don’t play games,’ the already weary barman responded.
‘Altogether bad,’ the host concluded. ‘As you will, but there’s something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! … And so, let me hear your business.’
‘Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks …’
‘I?’ the magician exclaimed in amazement. ‘Good gracious, it’s somehow even unbecoming to me!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the barman, taken aback. ‘I mean the seance of black magic …’
‘Ah, yes, yes, yes! My dear, I’ll reveal a secret to you. I’m not an artiste at all, I simply wanted to see the Muscovites en masse, and that could be done most conveniently in a theatre. And so my retinue,’ he nodded in the direction of the cat, ‘arranged for this seance, and I merely sat and looked at the Muscovites. Now, don’t go changing countenance, but tell me, what is it in connection with this seance that has brought you to me?’
‘If you please, you see, among other things there were banknotes flying down from the ceiling …’ The barman lowered his voice and looked around abashedly. ‘So they snatched them all up. And then a young man comes to my bar and gives me a ten-rouble bill, I give him eight-fifty in change … Then another one…’
‘Also a young man?’
‘No, an older one. Then a third, and a fourth … I keep giving them change. And today I went to check the cash box, and there, instead of money — cut-up paper. They
