‘Dostoevsky’s dead,’ said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently. ‘Well, who knows, who knows,’ he replied.

‘You’re not Dostoevsky,’ said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev. ‘I’ll bet he didn’t,‘ replied Behemoth, setting the primus down on the table beside the ledger and wiping the sweat from his sooty forehead with his hand. And I don’t think he even had any identification card! What do you think?’ Koroviev turned to Behemoth. So, then, to convince yourself that Dostoevsky was a writer, do you have to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from any one of his novels and you’ll be convinced, without any identification card, that you’re dealing with a writer. ‘More’s the pity,’ Koroviev said disappointedly and went on: ‘Well, so, if you don’t want to be a sweetie, which would be quite pleasant, you don’t have to be.

‘I’m no sweetie,’ interrupted the citizeness. ‘Your identification cards?’ the citizeness repeated. ‘Unquestionably,’ Koroviev answered with dignity. ‘You’re writers?’ the citizeness asked in her turn. ‘A thousand pardons, but what identification cards?’ asked Koroviev in surprise. ‘Your identification cards?’ She was gazing in amazement at Koroviev’s pince-nez, and also at Behemoth’s primus and Behemoth’s torn elbow. It was precisely this citizeness who stopped Koroviev and Behemoth. In front of her on a simple kitchen table lay a fat book of the ledger variety, in which the citizeness, for unknown reasons, wrote down all those who entered the restaurant. ‘Me, too,’ replied Behemoth, and the two blackguards marched down the asphalt path under the lindens straight to the veranda of the unsuspecting restaurant.Ī pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a nib sat on a Viennese chair at the comer entrance to the veranda, where amid the greenery of the trellis an opening for the entrance had been made. And, by the way, like any tourist before continuing his trip, I feel a desire to have a bite and drink a big, ice-cold mug of beer.’ ‘Having dinner,’ explained Koroviev, ‘and to that I will add, my dear, that the restaurant here is inexpensive and not bad at all. ‘Incidentally,’ inquired Behemoth, putting his round head through an opening in the fence, ‘what are they doing on the veranda?’ Only if these tender hothouse plants are not attacked by some micro-organism that gnaws at their roots so that they rot! And it does happen with pineapples! Oh, my, does it!’ ‘Yes,’ Koroviev went on, anxiously raising his finger, ‘but!. You can imagine the noise that will arise when one of them, for starters, offers the reading public The Inspector General or, if worse comes to worst, Evgeny Onegin.’ ‘Yes,’ Koroviev went on, ‘one can expect astonishing things from the hotbeds of this house, which has united under its roof several thousand zealots resolved to devote their lives to the service of Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Thalia. ‘Frightful to think of,’ agreed Behemoth. ‘Perfectly correct,’ Koroviev agreed with his inseparable companion, ‘and a sweet awe creeps into one’s heart at the thought that in this house there is now ripening the future author of a Don Quixote or a Faust, or, devil take me, a Dead Souls! Eh?’

‘Like pineapples in a greenhouse,’ said Behemoth and, the better to admire the cream-coloured building with columns, he climbed the concrete footing of the cast-iron fence. It’s pleasant to think how under this roof no end of talents are being sheltered and nurtured.’ ‘Hah! This is the writers’ house! You know, Behemoth, I’ve heard many good and flattering things about this house.

Behemoth master and margarita