They set up a small mattress for Basilius on the last remaining free spot, which only an hour earlier had been good enough for happiness.
The window was closed, the lights were turned off, and night entered the room.
Everyone was quiet for about twenty minutes, just tossing and sighing deeply from time to time.
And then Lokhankin’s whiny whisper came from the floor:
“Barbara!
Barbara!
Hey, Barbara!”
“What now?” asked the ex-wife angrily.
“Why did you leave me, Barbara?”
Receiving no answer to this fundamental question, Basilius started whining:
“You’re a floozy, Barbara!
You’re a she-wolf!
You she-wolf you, I truly do despise you . . .”
The engineer lay in bed quietly, livid with rage and clenching his fists.
The Rookery caught fire at midnight, at exactly the same time when Ostap Bender was dancing a tango in the empty office, and while the half-brothers Balaganov and Panikovsky were walking out of town, stooped under the weight of the golden kettlebells.
Nobody’s grandma was the first link in the long chain of events that ultimately led to the fire in apartment No. 3.
She, as we know, had been burning kerosene in her loft because she didn’t believe in electricity.
For a long time after Basilius Andreevich was flogged, nothing exciting happened in the apartment, and the restless mind of Chamberlain Mitrich suffered from the idleness.
So he thought long and hard about the grandma’s ways and became alarmed.
“The old bat will burn the whole place down!” he grumbled. “What does she care?
And my grand piano alone is probably worth two thousand.”
With that in mind, Mitrich had all his belongings insured against fire.
That way, he didn’t have to worry about it anymore, and so he watched calmly as the grandma dragged a large murky bottle of kerosene up to her loft, holding it like a baby.
The first to find out about Mitrich’s prudent move was Citizen Hygienishvili, who immediately interpreted it in his own peculiar way.
He came up to Mitrich in the hallway, grabbed him by the chest, and said threateningly:
“You want to burn the whole place down?
You want to get the insurance money?
You think Hygienishvili is a fool?
Hygienishvili understands everything.”
And so the hot-blooded tenant took out a large insurance policy for himself on the very same day.
The Rookery was terrified.
Lucia Franzevna Pferd came running into the kitchen with her eyes bulging.
“These bastards will burn us all down.
Whatever you say, people, I’m off to buy my own insurance right now.
We’ll have a fire anyway, but at least I’ll get some money.
I have no desire to go penniless because of them.”
The next day, everybody bought insurance, with the exception of Lokhankin and nobody’s grandma.
Lokhankin was busy reading Motherland magazine and wasn’t paying attention, while the grandma didn’t believe in insurance any more than she did in electricity.
Nikita Pryakhin brought home his purple-edged insurance policy and studied its watermarks against the light at length.
“So the government gives us a helping hand?” he said glumly. “Offers aid to the tenants?
Well, thank you kindly!
So now we’ll do as we wish.”
He stuck the policy under his shirt and went into his room.
His words made people so fearful that no one at the Rookery went to bed that night.
Dunya was packing, while the other bed renters went off to stay with their friends.
During the day, everyone watched everyone else, and the building was being slowly emptied of belongings, piece by piece.
There was no longer any doubt.
The house was doomed.
It simply had to burn down.
And indeed, it went up in flames at midnight, set ablaze on six sides simultaneously.