Chapter summary
Korovyov and Behemoth reappear in central Moscow, fifteen minutes after the fire in Apartment 50, and set off two fires in succession. In the first, the Torgsin store, the doorman tries to stop them and warns that sales there are only for foreign currency, and Korovyov replies that no one can tell who has foreign money just by looking at their suit. Inside the store, Behemoth eats tangerines, chocolates, and herrings from the counter without paying. When the salesclerks call the manager and the police, Korovyov makes a speech in defense of the "poor hungry man" before the public, and the confusion ends with the store in flames after the cat spills the stove's benzine over the counter. In the speech, Korovyov feigns indignation before a customer in a lilac suit, bloated with salmon, who has foreign money, and asks: "And ours, what about ours?"
A minute later, the two are standing before the Griboyedov House, headquarters of the writers' association. At the entrance, the lady from the register demands their writer's identity cards, and Korovyov replies that it is not identity cards that define a writer, but what he writes. The restaurant manager, Archibald Archibaldovich, who knew of the sessions at the Variety Theater and recognized the chess player and the cat, has them let in. The two sign the book with the names of Panaev and Skabichevsky, two nineteenth-century Russian literary critics, each signing the other's surname. Archibald treats them with suspicious courtesy, anticipating that lunch will be lavish but brief: he serves them a table full of delicacies and then hastily wraps two pieces of smoked salmon for himself. It happens: three armed men burst onto the veranda and shoot at the two, who vanish into the air, and the stove's flame sets the whole house on fire while the writers and waiters flee to the boulevard.
Analysis
Korovyov and Behemoth reappear to collect from the city on the rules it has itself established: the shop accepts only foreign currency, and the writers' house requires a membership card. Each one enforces the rule aloud, and the cat sets the fire. Korovyov defends the poor hungry man before the public in the shop, and at the Griboyedov House he asks that a writer be judged by what he writes, not by his card. The fire is the consequence of their having exposed these rules.
The shop's rule is stated right at the door, by the doorman, and it is that rule which makes the shop a target.
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