a big one at that. At least read the story of the famous caliph Harun al-Rashid2 over again. But in the present case, casting that story aside temporarily, I want to tell you that I am going to make a complaint about you to the manager and tell him such tales about you that you may have to surrender your post between the shining mirrored doors.’
‘Maybe I’ve got a whole primus full of currency,’ the cat-like fat fellow, who was simply shoving his way into the store, vehemently butted into the conversation.
Behind them the public was already pushing and getting angry. Looking at the prodigious pair with hatred and suspicion, the doorman stepped aside, and our acquaintances, Koroviev and Behemoth, found themselves in the store. Here they first of all looked around, and then, in a ringing voice heard decidedly in every comer, Koroviev announced:
‘A wonderful store! A very, very fine store!’
The public turned away from the counters and for some reason looked at the speaker in amazement, though he had all grounds for praising the store.
Hundreds of bolts of cotton in the richest assortment of colours could be seen in the pigeon-holes of the shelves. Next to them were piled calicoes, and chiffons, and flannels for suits. In receding perspective endless stacks of shoeboxes could be seen, and several citizenesses sat on little low chairs, one foot shod in an old, worn- out shoe, the other in a shiny new pump, which they stamped on the carpet with a preoccupied air. Somewhere in the depths, around a comer, gramophones sang and played music.
But, bypassing all these enchantments, Koroviev and Behemoth made straight for the junction of the grocery and confectionery departments. Here there was plenty of room, no citizenesses in scarves and little berets were pushing against the counters, as in the fabric department.
A short, perfectly square man with blue shaven jowls, horn-rimmed glasses, a brand-new hat, not crumpled and with no sweat stains on the band, in a lilac coat and orange kid gloves, stood by the counter grunting something peremptorily. A sales clerk in a clean white smock and a blue hat was waiting on the lilac client. With the sharpest of knives, much like the knife stolen by Matthew Levi, he was removing from a weeping, plump pink salmon its snake-like, silvery skin.
‘This department is splendid, too,’ Koroviev solemnly acknowledged, ‘and the foreigner is a likeable fellow,’ he benevolently pointed his finger at the lilac back.
‘No, Fagott, no,’ Behemoth replied pensively, ‘you’re mistaken, my friend: the lilac gentleman’s face lacks something, in my opinion.’
The lilac back twitched, but probably by chance, for the foreigner was surely unable to understand what Koroviev and his companion were saying in Russian.
‘Is good?’ the lilac purchaser asked sternly.
‘Top-notch!’ replied the sales clerk, cockily slipping the edge of the knife under the skin.
‘Good I like, bad I don’t,‘ the foreigner said sternly.
‘Right you are!’ the sales clerk rapturously replied.
Here our acquaintances walked away from the foreigner and his salmon to the end of the confectionery counter.
‘It’s hot today,’ Koroviev addressed a young, red-cheeked salesgirl and received no reply to his words. ‘How much are the mandarins?’ Koroviev then inquired of her.
‘Fifteen kopecks a pound,’ replied the salesgirl.
‘Everything’s so pricey,’ Koroviev observed with a sigh, ‘hm ... hm ...’ He thought a little longer and then invited his companion: ‘Eat up, Behemoth.’
The fat fellow put his primus under his arm, laid hold of the top mandarin on the pyramid, straight away gobbled it up skin and all, and began on a second.
The salesgirl was overcome with mortal terror.
‘You’re out of your mind!’ she shouted, losing her colour. ‘Give me the receipt! The receipt!’ and she dropped the confectionery tongs.
‘My darling, my dearest, my beauty,’ Koroviev rasped, leaning over the counter and winking at the salesgirl, ‘we’re out of currency today ... what can we do? But I swear to you, by next time, and no later than Monday, we’ll pay it all in pure cash! We’re from near by, on Sadovaya, where they’re having the fire ...’
Behemoth, after swallowing a third mandarin, put his paw into a clever construction of chocolate bars, pulled out the bottom one, which of course made the whole thing collapse, and swallowed it together with its gold wrapper.
The sales clerks behind the fish counter stood as if petrified, their knives in their hands, the lilac foreigner swung around to the robbers, and here it turned out that Behemoth was mistaken: there was nothing lacking in the lilac one’s face, but, on the contrary, rather some superfluity of hanging jowls and furtive eyes.
Turning completely yellow, the salesgirl anxiously cried for the whole store to hear:
‘Palosich!3 Palosich!’
The public from the fabric department came thronging at this cry, while Behemoth, stepping away from the confectionery temptations, thrust his paw into a barrel labelled ‘Choice Kerch Herring’,4 pulled out a couple of herring, and swallowed them, spitting out the tails.
‘Palosich!’ the desperate cry came again from behind the confectionery counter, and from behind the fish counter a sales clerk with a goatee barked:
‘What’s this you’re up to, vermin?’
Pavel Yosifovich was already hastening to the scene of the action. He was an imposing man in a clean white smock, like a surgeon, with a pencil sticking out of the pocket. Pavel Yosifovich was obviously an experienced man. Seeing the tail of the third herring in Behemoth’s mouth, he instantly assessed the situation, understood decidedly everything, and, without getting into any arguments with the insolent louts, waved his arm into the distance,
