The telegram staggered Maximilian Andreevich. This was a moment it would be sinful to let slip. Practical people know that such moments do not come twice.
In short, despite all obstacles, he had to succeed in inheriting his nephew’s apartment on Sadovaya. Yes, it was difficult, very difficult, but these difficulties had to be overcome at whatever cost. The experienced Maximilian Andreevich knew that the first and necessary step towards that had to be the following: he must get himself registered, at least temporarily, as the tenant of his late nephew’s three rooms.
On Friday afternoon, Maximilian Andreevich walked through the door of the room which housed the management of no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow.
In the narrow room, with an old poster hanging on the wall illustrating in several pictures the ways of resuscitating people who have drowned in the river, an unshaven, middle-aged man with anxious eyes sat in perfect solitude at a wooden table.
‘May I see the chairman?’ the industrial economist inquired politely, taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on a vacant chair.
This seemingly simple little question for some reason so upset the seated man that he even changed countenance. Looking sideways in anxiety, he muttered unintelligibly that the chairman was not there.
‘Is he at home?’ asked Poplavsky. ‘I’ve come on the most urgent business.’
The seated man again replied quite incoherently, but all the same one could guess that the chairman was not at home.
‘And when will he be here?’
The seated man made no reply to this and looked with a certain anguish out the window.
‘Aha !...’ the intelligent Poplavsky said to himself and inquired about the secretary.
The strange man at the table even turned purple with strain and said, again unintelligibly, that the secretary was not there either ... he did not know when he would be back, and ... that the secretary was sick ...
‘Aha! ...’ Poplavsky said to himself. ‘But surely there’s somebody in the management?’
‘Me,’ the man responded in a weak voice.
‘You see,’ Poplavsky began to speak imposingly, ‘I am the sole heir of the late Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and I am obliged, in accordance with the law, to take over the inheritance contained in our apartment no. 50 ...’
‘I’m not informed, comrade ...’ the man interrupted in anguish.
‘But, excuse me,’ Poplavsky said in a sonorous voice, ‘you are a member of the management and are obliged ...’
And here some citizen entered the room. At the sight of the entering man, the man seated at the table turned pale.
‘Management member Pyatnazhko?’ the entering man asked the seated man.
‘Yes,’ the latter said, barely audibly.
The entering one whispered something to the seated one, and he, thoroughly upset, rose from his chair, and a few seconds later Poplavsky found himself alone in the empty management room.
‘Eh, what a complication! As if on purpose, all of them at once ...’ Poplavsky thought in vexation, crossing the asphalt courtyard and hurrying to apartment no. 50.
As soon as the industrial economist rang, the door was opened, and Maximilian Andreevich entered the semi-dark front hall. It was a somewhat surprising circumstance that he could not figure out who had let him in: there was no one in the front hall except an enormous black cat sitting on a chair.
Maximilian Andreevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the door of the study opened and Koroviev came out to the front hall. Maximilian Andreevich bowed politely, but with dignity, and said:
‘My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle ...’
But before he could finish, Koroviev snatched a dirty handkerchief from his pocket, buried his nose in it, and began to weep.
‘... of the late Berlioz ...’
‘Of course, of course!’ Koroviev interrupted, taking his handkerchief away from his face. ‘Just one look and I knew it was you!’ Here he was shaken with tears and began to exclaim: ‘Such a calamity, eh? What’s going on here, eh?’
‘Run over by a tram-car?’ Poplavsky asked in a whisper.
‘Clean!’ cried Koroviev, and tears flowed in streams from under his pince-nez. ‘Run clean over! I was a witness. Believe me - bang! and the head’s gone! Crunch — there goes the right leg! Crunch — there goes the left leg! That’s what these trams have brought us to!’ And, obviously unable to control himself, Koroviev pecked the wall beside the mirror with his nose and began to shake with sobs.
Berlioz’s uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger’s behaviour. ‘And they say there are no warm-hearted people in our time!’ he thought, feeling his own eyes beginning to itch. However, at the same time, an unpleasant little cloud came over his soul, and straight away the snake-like thought flashed in him that this warm-hearted man might perchance have registered himself in the deceased man’s apartment, for such examples have been known in this life.
‘Forgive me, were you a friend of my late Misha?’ he asked, wiping his dry left eye with his sleeve, and with his right eye studying the racked-with-grief Koroviev. But the man was sobbing so much that one could understand nothing except the repeated word ‘crunch!’ Having sobbed his fill, Koroviev finally unglued himself from the wall and said:
‘No, I can’t take any more! I’ll go and swallow three hundred drops of tincture of valerian ...’ And turning his completely tear-bathed face to Poplavsky, he added: ‘That’s trams for you!’
‘Pardon me, but did you send me the telegram?’ Maximilian Andreevich asked, painfully puzzling over who this astonishing cry-baby might be.
‘He did!’ replied Koroviev, and he pointed his finger at the cat.
Poplavsky goggled his eyes, assuming he had not heard right.
‘No, it’s too much, I just can’t,‘ Koroviev went on, snuffing his nose, ’when I remember: the wheel over the leg ... the wheel alone weighs three hundred pounds ... Crunch! ... I’ll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.‘ And here he disappeared from the hall.
The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs, front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said:
‘Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?’
Maximilian Andreevich’s head at once began to spin, his arms and legs went numb, he dropped the suitcase and sat down on a chair facing the cat.
‘I believe I asked in good Russian?’ the cat said sternly. ‘What of it?’
But Poplavsky made no reply.
‘Passport!’[104] barked the cat, holding out a plump paw.
Understanding nothing and seeing nothing except the two sparks burning in the cat’s eyes, Poplavsky snatched the passport from his pocket like a dagger. The cat picked up a pair of glasses in thick black frames from the pier-glass table, put them on his muzzle, thus acquiring a still more imposing air, and took the passport from Poplavsky’s twitching hand.
‘I wonder, am I going to faint or not? ...’ thought Poplavsky. From far away came Koroviev’s snivelling, the whole front hall filled with the smell of ether, valerian and some other nauseating vileness.
‘What office issued this document?’ the cat asked, peering at the page. No answer came.
‘The 412th,’ the cat said to himself, tracing with his paw on the passport, which he was holding upside down. ’Ah, yes, of course! I know that office, they issue passports to anybody. Whereas I, for instance, wouldn’t issue one to the likes of you! Not on your life I wouldn’t! I’d just take one look at your face and instantly refuse!’ The cat got so angry that he flung the passport on the floor, ‘Your presence at the funeral is cancelled,’ the cat continued in an official voice. ‘Kindly return to your place of residence.’ And he barked through the door: ‘Azazello!’
104