And it was here that a new character mixed into the affair. A pleasant, sonorous, and very insistent baritone came from box no. 2:
‘All the same it is desirable, citizen artiste, that you expose the technique of your tricks to the spectators without delay, especially the trick with the paper money. It is also desirable that the master of ceremonies return to the stage. The spectators are concerned about his fate.’
The baritone belonged to none other than that evening’s guest of honour, Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission of the Moscow theatres.
Arkady Apollonovich was in his box with two ladies: the older one dressed expensively and fashionably, the other one, young and pretty, dressed in a simpler way. The first, as was soon discovered during the drawing up of the report, was Arkady Apollonovich’s wife, and the second was his distant relation, a promising debutante, who had come from Saratov and was living in the apartment of Arkady Apollonovich and his wife.
‘Pardone!’ Fagott replied. ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing here to expose, it’s all clear.’
‘No, excuse me! The exposure is absolutely necessary. Without it your brilliant numbers will leave a painful impression. The mass of spectators demands an explanation.’
The mass of spectators,‘ the impudent clown interrupted Sempleyarov, ’doesn’t seem to be saying anything. But, in consideration of your most esteemed desire, Arkady Apollonovich, so be it - I will perform an exposure. But, to that end, will you allow me one more tiny number?‘
‘Why not?’ Arkady Apollonovich replied patronizingly. ‘But there must be an exposure.’
‘Very well, very well, sir. And so, allow me to ask, where were you last evening, Arkady Apollonovich?’
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 café-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
