experiment for us. Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed banknotes disappear as suddenly as they appeared.’
Here he applauded, but quite alone, while a confident smile played on his face, yet in his eyes there was no such confidence, but rather an expression of entreaty.
The audience did not like Bengalsky’s speech. Total silence fell, which was broken by the checkered Fagott.
‘And this is a case of so-called lying,’ he announced in a loud, goatish tenor. ‘The notes, citizens, are genuine.’
‘Bravo!’ a bass barked from somewhere on high.
This one, incidentally,‘ here Fagott pointed to Bengalsky, ’annoys me. Keeps poking his nose where nobody’s asked him, spoils the seance with false observations! What’re we going to do with him?‘
Tear his head off!‘ someone up in the gallery said severely.
‘What’s that you said? Eh?’ Fagott responded at once to this outrageous suggestion. Tear his head off? There’s an idea! Behemoth!‘ he shouted to the cat. ’Go to it! Ein, zwei, drei!!‘
And an unheard-of thing occurred. The fur bristled on the cat’s back, and he gave a rending miaow. Then he compressed himself into a ball and shot like a panther straight at Bengalsky’s chest, and from there on to his head. Growling, the cat sank his plump paws into the skimpy chevelure of the master of ceremonies and in two twists tore the head from the thick neck with a savage howl.
The two and a half thousand people in the theatre cried out as one. Blood spurted in fountains from the torn neck arteries and poured over the shirt-front and tailcoat. The headless body paddled its feet somehow absurdly and sat down on the floor. Hysterical women’s cries came from the audience. The cat handed the head to Fagott, who lifted it up by the hair and showed it to the audience, and the head cried desperately for all the theatre to hear:
‘A doctor!’
‘Will you pour out such drivel in the future?’ Fagott asked the weeping head menacingly.
‘Never again!’ croaked the head.
‘For God’s sake, don’t torture him!’ a woman’s voice from a box seat suddenly rose above the clamour, and the magician turned in the direction of that voice.
‘So, what then, citizens, shall we forgive him?’ Fagott asked, addressing the audience.
‘Forgive him, forgive him!’ separate voices, mostly women‘s, spoke first, then merged into one chorus with the men’s.
‘What are your orders, Messire?’ Fagott asked the masked man.
‘Well, now,’ the latter replied pensively, ‘they’re people like any other people ... They love money, but that has always been so ... Mankind loves money, whatever it’s made of — leather, paper, bronze, gold. Well, they’re light- minded ... well, what of it ... mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts ... ordinary people ... In general, reminiscent of the former ones ... only the housing problem has corrupted them...’ And he ordered loudly: Tut the head on.‘
The cat, aiming accurately, planted the head on the neck, and it sat exactly in its place, as if it had never gone anywhere. Above all, there was not even any scar left on the neck. The cat brushed Bengalsky’s tailcoat and shirt- front with his paws, and all traces of blood disappeared from them. Fagott got the sitting Bengalsky to his feet, stuck a packet of money into his coat pocket, and sent him from the stage with the words:
‘Buzz off, it’s more fun without you!’
Staggering and looking around senselessly, the master of ceremonies had plodded no farther than the fire post when he felt sick. He cried out pitifully:
‘My head, my head! ...’
Among those who rushed to him was Rimsky. The master of ceremonies wept, snatched at something in the air with his hands, and muttered:
‘Give me my head, give me back my head ... Take my apartment, take my paintings, only give me back my head! ...’
A messenger ran for a doctor. They tried to lie Bengalsky down on a sofa in the dressing room, but he began to struggle, became violent. They had to call an ambulance. When the unfortunate master of ceremonies was taken away, Rimsky ran back to the stage and saw that new wonders were taking place on it. Ah, yes, incidentally, either then or a little earlier, the magician disappeared from the stage together with his faded armchair, and it must be said that the public took absolutely no notice of it, carried away as it was by the extraordinary things Fagott was unfolding on stage.
And Fagott, having packed off the punished master of ceremonies, addressed the public thus:
‘All righty, now that we’ve kicked that nuisance out, let’s open a ladies’ shop!’
And all at once the floor of the stage was covered with Persian carpets, huge mirrors appeared, lit by greenish tubes at the sides, and between the mirrors — display windows, and in them the merrily astonished spectators saw Parisian ladies’ dresses of various colours and cuts. In some of the windows, that is, while in others there appeared hundreds of ladies’ hats, with feathers and without feathers, and — with buckles or without - hundreds of shoes, black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, with straps, with stones. Among the shoes there appeared cases of perfume, mountains of handbags of antelope hide, suede, silk, and among these, whole heaps of little elongated cases of gold metal such as usually contain lipstick.
A red-headed girl appeared from devil knows where in a black evening dress — a girl nice in all respects, had she not been marred by a queer scar on her neck — smiling a proprietary smile by the display windows.
Fagott, grinning sweetly, announced that the firm was offering perfectly gratis an exchange of the ladies’ old dresses and shoes for Parisian models and Parisian shoes. The same held, he added, for the handbags and other things.
The cat began scraping with his hind paw, while his front paw performed the gestures appropriate to a
