At this inappropriate and perhaps even boorish question, Arkady Apollonovich’s countenance changed, and changed quite drastically.
‘Last evening Arkady Apollonovich was at a meeting of the Acoustics Commission,’ Arkady Apollonovich’s wife declared very haughtily, ‘but I don’t understand what that has got to do with magic.’
‘Ouee, madame!’ Fagott agreed. ‘Naturally you don’t understand. As for the meeting, you are totally deluded. After driving off to the said meeting, which incidentally was not even scheduled for last night, Arkady Apollonovich dismissed his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission building on Clean Ponds’ (the whole theatre became hushed), ’and went by bus to Yelokhovskaya Street to visit an actress from the regional itinerant theatre, Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko, with whom he spent some four hours.‘
‘Aie!’ someone cried out painfully in the total silence.
Arkady Apollonovich’s young relation suddenly broke into a low and terrible laugh.
‘It’s all clear!’ she exclaimed. ‘And I’ve long suspected it. Now I see why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa!’1
And, swinging suddenly, she struck Arkady Apollonovich on the head with her short and fat violet umbrella.
Meanwhile, the scoundrelly Fagott, alias Koroviev, was shouting:
‘Here, honourable citizens, is one case of the exposure Arkady Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!’
‘How dare you touch Arkady Apollonovich, you vile creature!’ Arkady Apollonovich’s wife asked threateningly, rising in the box to all her gigantic height.
A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation.
‘Who else should dare touch him,’ she answered, guffawing, ‘if not me!’ And for the second time there came the dry, crackling sound of the umbrella bouncing off the head of Arkady Apollonovich.
‘Police! Seize her!!’ Sempleyarov’s wife shouted in such a terrible voice that many hearts went cold.
And here the cat also leaped out to the footlights and suddenly barked in a human voice for all the theatre to hear:
The seance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!‘
The half-crazed conductor, unaware of what he was doing, waved his baton, and the orchestra did not play, or even strike up, or even bang away at, but precisely, in the cat’s loathsome expression, hacked out some incredible march of an unheard-of brashness.
For a moment there was an illusion of having heard once upon a time, under southern stars, in a cafe-chantant, some barely intelligible, half-blind, but rollicking words to this march:His Excellency reached the stage
Of liking barnyard fowl.
He took under his patronage
Three young girls and an owl!!!
Or maybe these were not the words at all, but there were others to the same music, extremely indecent ones. That is not the important thing, the important thing is that, after all this, something like babel broke loose in the Variety. The police went running to Sempleyarov’s box, people were climbing over the barriers, there were bursts of infernal guffawing and furious shouts, drowned in the golden clash of the orchestra’s cymbals.
And one could see that the stage was suddenly empty, and that the hoodwinker Fagott, as well as the brazen tom-cat Behemoth, had melted into air, vanished as the magician had vanished earlier in his armchair with the faded upholstery.
CHAPTER 13
And so, the unknown man shook his finger at Ivan and whispered: ‘Shhh! ...’
Ivan lowered his legs from the bed and peered. Cautiously looking into the room from the balcony was a clean- shaven, dark-haired man of approximately thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes, and a wisp of hair hanging down on his forehead.
Having listened and made sure that Ivan was alone, the mysterious visitor took heart and stepped into the room. Here Ivan saw that the man was dressed as a patient. He was wearing long underwear, slippers on his bare feet, and a brown dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders.
The visitor winked at Ivan, hid a bunch of keys in his pocket, inquired in a whisper: ‘May I sit down?’ — and receiving an affirmative nod, placed himself in an armchair.
‘How did you get here?’ Ivan asked in a whisper, obeying the dry finger shaken at him. ‘Aren’t the balcony grilles locked?’
The grilles are locked,‘ the guest agreed, ’but Praskovya Fyodorovna, while the dearest person, is also, alas, quite absent-minded. A month ago I stole a bunch of keys from her, and so gained the opportunity of getting out on to the common balcony, which runs around the entire floor, and so of occasionally calling on a neighbour.‘
‘If you can get out on to the balcony, you can escape. Or is it high up?’ Ivan was interested.
‘No,’ the guest replied firmly, ‘I cannot escape from here, not because it’s high up, but because I have nowhere to escape to.’ And he added, after a pause: ‘So, here we sit.’
‘Here we sit,’ Ivan replied, peering into the man’s brown and very restless eyes.
‘Yes ...’ here the guest suddenly became alarmed, ‘but you’re not violent, I hope? Because, you know, I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or other things like that. Especially hateful to me are people’s cries, whether cries of rage, suffering, or anything else. Set me at ease, tell me, you’re not violent?’
‘Yesterday in a restaurant I socked one type in the mug,’ the transformed poet courageously confessed.
‘Your grounds?’ the guest asked sternly.
‘No grounds, I must confess,’ Ivan answered, embarrassed.
‘Outrageous,’ the guest denounced Ivan and added: ‘And besides, what a way to express yourself: “socked in the mug” ... It is not known precisely whether a man has a mug or a face. And, after all, it may well be a face. So,
