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Yekaterina was lying on a couch in apartment number 50 of house 302B on Bolshaya Sadovaya street. She was in deep sleep, stirring about periodically. She didn’t need sleep at this point of her life, if one could call it that, but she liked to play mortal sometimes.
Yekaterina Ektova hadn’t been mortal for about a hundred years now.
A sudden noise woke her up. “Katya!”
It was Koroviev, the demon in a checkered suit, a jockey’s cap, and broken pince-nez. He and Behemoth, the ever-mouthy black cat, had come in.
“What’s going on?” Katya asked and hitched herself into a more of a sitting position. She stretched her arms in a cat-like manner that slightly resembled Behemoth’s.
“We got back with Behemoth. Aren’t you glad to see us?” Koroviev explained. He made his way to Yekaterina and loomed over her on the couch.
“One should always appreciate feline companion,” Behemoth quipped in solemnly. Katyusha rolled her eyes.
“I do enjoy you keeping me company most of the time, but I would have liked to continue on with my nap.”
Koroviev leaned against the back of the couch. He gazed at Yekaterina’s face intently.
“Don’t you want to hear what we’ve been up to?”
“If you must tell me,” she said and closed her eyes again.
Koroviev went on animatedly about how he and Behemoth had terrorized a local grade school. They’d barged in on a mathematics class, claiming to be from the militia. The female teacher had angrily told them that animals were not allowed in the school nor had she ever heard of a cat employed by the state. Behemoth had transformed into a short and stubby man and complained about the inequality and outright hatred towards different species deeply rooted in the structure of the state.
“This is a mathematics class, not sociology or biology,” the citizen had said. “You must be in the wrong place, and now you should leave.”
“Oh, but this is a biology class, dear,” had Koroviev answered, and while explaining that, he gauged Yekaterina’s reaction to it. Yekaterina, however, still had her eyes closed and her expression pretty much unreadable. “By then every poster and teaching board in the room had changed to display and explain different plants and flowers, and the teacher was taken aback. I thought her eyes would pop out of her head, so surprised she was!”
“And I was already teaching the schoolgirls about pussy willows, so she could not have not-believed us”, Behemoth chimed in.
The teacher had had to sit down and hold her head for a headache. Then, the bell had rang and dismissed all the students. Koroviev and Behemoth had disappeared from the scene.
“That’s quite an afternoon,” Yekaterina Ektova said after Koroviev had ended his well-demonstrated explanation of their previous activities. Behemoth had sat down on a short stool and had now a glass of vodka in hand.
“I am so tired of the blatant disrespect of us cats in our society,” he said but got shot a murderous glance from Koroviev.
“This is not a sociology class,” the former choirleader said, mimicking what the teacher had argued. “And don’t even think of trying my own trick against me!”
The cat muttered something with an offended tone but shut up and drank the vodka.
Koroviev was still posed over Yekaterina by the couch. The nymphet opened her eyes to find him closer to her than she had expected.
She swallowed.
“Are you… hungry?” she asked when nothing else came to mind.
“I could use a bite!” Behemoth exclaimed, but the silence that ensued made the cat realize Yekaterina had not spoken to him, but Koroviev instead. He found it his place to leave now, his company apparently not appreciated enough. Yekaterina and Koroviev were left alone.
The rugged translator shook his head. “How long do you figure messire will be gone for?” He asked with a voice that seemed to get stuck in his throat.
Katyusha searched Koroviev’s face for any signals she could possibly be misinterpreting, but couldn’t find any. Oh how hard navigating relationships between two honest comrades could be, even in the demonic realm of the afterlife!
“He won’t be back for hours. Besides, what’s it to him what we do.”
“Azazello could get upset and snitch us.”
“My point stands.”
Yekaterina reached her hand forward and took the jockey’s cap off of Koroviev’s head. She slipped her hand into his hair.
“I don’t enjoy being pet like Behemoth.”
“Don’t talk about him now, Fagot.”
Katya pulled the former choirleader closer. Their lips met in a kiss.
—
It was midnight, as always. Woland was slumped languidly on the couch. The rest of the entourage occupied random pieces of furniture – Behemoth was on the rug by the fireplace, Hella was sat on a small stool in front of Woland, Azazello lurked the shadows and Koroviev, surprisingly enough, had found a normal wooden chair to sit on. Yekaterina Ektova sat on the desk by a window that was so greasy no one could see through it. She was wearing a white cotton dress that laced up with a corset over it. Her sock-clad feet tangled over the edge of the desk.
“Let the feast begin,” said Woland, and the bunch dug into a delicious meal set on the table. Vodka flowed freely. Katyusha asked Behemoth to hand her a glass of it, which he declined.
“I don’t serve vodka to women,” he said, and promptly got a kick to his head from Koroviev.
“Let me,” the translator tried, but the nymphet shook her head.
“I can get it myself.”
Woland watched this exchange curiously.
“Fagot, Katya, do you two know something that should come to all of our attention?”
Hella stopped chewing momentarily and focused all of her attention on those two. Yekaterina, the demonic maiden, and Koroviev, the shabbily clothed older demon.
Koroviev took off his pince-nez. “There is nothing, messire.”
Simultaneously Azazello emerged from the shadows and said, “Messire, I saw the two kiss the other day.”
Yekaterina willed her face to stay cool but failed miserably. Her otherwise beautiful features withered into a red humiliation.
Woland’s lips turned into an amused smile. “Oh, I see.”
“Messire, Azazello must have misseen, it was nothing!”
Yekaterina raised her eyebrows with a hurtful expression. It was not ‘nothing’! They had kissed! And Koroviev had all but practically initiated it.
“Yes, it was a comradely handshake,” she assured Woland and hopped off the desk. Hella watched her tiptoe across the room. She felt bad for Yekaterina. She knew exactly what was going on. Katyusha made her way to the hallway and then to the door leading out of apartment number 50.
“Excuse me, I need some fresh air. Don’t bother to save me any of that food.” With those words she left the house.
“Messire, maybe I should go after her?” Hella suggested, but Woland waved his hand at her.
“We should let her cool off for a moment. But Koroviev,” he said and turned to the man with the checkered suit and jockey’s cap but no longer pince-nez, “why did you do that?”
“Why did I do what, messire?” Koroviev asked anxiously. He was sure Behemoth was the only entity not interested in this debacle at the moment, and that was only because the cat was too busy showing entire fish down his throat.
“Why did you make her upset?”
Woland sat up and reached for something, but when he felt nothing on his fingertips, he softly called ‘Hella’. Hella gave him his magical globe.
Woland rotated the globe for a moment before settling on what was going outside of the apartment. An angry Yekaterina Ektova was marching the streets. She had previously knocked a couple of loitering men down the stairs and through the window of the stairwell while making her way out of apartment 50, building 302B on Bolshaya Sadovaya street. She was visibly seething.
Down on the street, Yekaterina didn’t know where she was going. She only knew that she had to get away. Koroviev had made her feel so betrayed, so let down that she didn’t know what to do. Those words, it was nothing, had reminded her of the time she had been sitting in school, her teacher explaining some now-bizarre concepts about theology and a militia man had come in. Of the time when he had taken her out of her classroom in the middle of the lecture and locked her in a small supply room. And done terrible things to her. When he had said it was nothing afterwards.
That was the day she had died and turned into a demon.
It was over a century ago, but it still affected her. She knew she was weak because of it. Finding Woland and getting to be a part of his entourage was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Because Woland was kind and asked only easy things of her. And she’d found a family through him, Azazello and Behemoth and Hella, and… And Koroviev. And she had thought Koroviev could be the next best thing to happen to her.
If only that Berlioz hadn’t been decapitated by the tram, Yekaterina would’ve done exactly the same. But a weird occurrence was only weird if it happened once, and a second decapitation by a tram wouldn’t have been nearly as shocking or conspicuous to the people of Moscow. She knew that. And attention was what she wanted now.
So instead she settled on merely kicking rocks out of her way as she walked down Sadovaya. Some people looked at her weird, she had left without shoes, after all. But she didn’t care. She considered leaving Moscow entirely, but she didn’t want to make Woland mad.
Woland twiddled with the globe for a moment longer before setting it aside again. “You didn’t have to upset her, not really, Fagot.”
Koroviev rubbed his face with his hands and then put his pince-nez back on. He was devastated.
“I didn’t mean to, messire.”
“If I was Katya, I would have beaten you up, Koroviev,” said Azazello, the demon with a really ugly fang hanging out of his mouth and red, gross hair.
“I would’ve shot at you with my Mauser,” Behemoth inserted. He had a fish tail hanging out of his mouth and had now laid down on the rug.
“Shut up, Behemoth…” Koroviev mumbled. The cat was his best friend, but sometimes he got on his nerves really bad.
“Fagot, you could have just admitted to it. We aren’t bound by the moral rules that you once used to be,” Woland said, but lied then back down. His stained nightgown rustled.
“Yeah, you knight, go get your princess!” laughed Hella, and all their words made Koroviev feel a little better. But then he remembered how rueful Yekaterina had looked outside, and his stomach twisted again.
—
Yekaterina Ektova had wandered around for quite some time now, and she wasn’t quite sure where she was. She was sulking, but sitting down and crying felt like a childish option to a demoness. And besides, a friendly kiss meant surely nothing. Yekaterina had been foolish to think it could’ve led to something more.
She came to a park and saw a small stand where a grumpy-looking older woman was selling narzan and other refreshments. Katyusha wasn’t thirsty, but she walked up to it anyway.
“Good evening, comrade,” she told the woman who nodded in response. “Do you have narzan?”
“No narzan, no,” the citizen said.
“How is that possible when the stand literally markets itself with narzan?”
“We’re out. You can come back tomorrow.” The woman was very disinterested in this conversation.
“I cannot believe that!” Anger bubbled up within Yekaterina, and she hit the woman. Before the citizen could do anything, she had already barged inside and started to wreck things. Down went different bottles and containers of food and drink items. The citizen shouted something about calling the militia, but Katya didn’t listen. Shards of glass covered the floor. Katya left the now almost destroyed stand and the woman was left bleeding on the ground.
Ten minutes later Koroviev walked by the unfortunate narzan stand.
“Oh, comrade, have you by chance seen a short, young woman walking by lately?” he asked the narzan vendor. Blood had stained about every centimeter of the floor of the stand.
“Call the militia. And I need a doctor,” the citizen managed to utter out from the floor.
“But dear, have you seen the girl?”
“An evil woman came by and did all this to me, but please, for the love of life, would you help me?”
The vendor slumped on the ground. Koroviev heard her breathing wheeze.
“This’ll all be handled, don’t worry.”
Koroviev left. The good woman lost her consciousness, but five minutes later the militia arrived.
—
Some time after walking past the narzan incident, Koroviev saw a small figure sat by the Patriach’s Ponds. He knew instinctively that it was Katya. They must’ve walked in a circle to find their ways back to the Ponds, not too far away from Bolshaya Sadovaya.
Yekaterina wasn’t crying. She just stared ahead. Her clothes and socks were still perfectly white, the hand-woven fabric clean as a dove.
“Katyusha,” Koroviev called when he was only a few dozen steps away from her. She trembled and turned around, definitely not having expected to find Koroviev behind her. Her breathing picked up and she felt anxious.
“I have nothing to say to you, Fagot,” she said and turned herself back to the Ponds. “You said everything yourself already.”
“Please, Katyusha, let me explain,” the ex choirleader said and sat down next to her. “If I may?”
“No, Fagot, I’m tired of this,” she cried. “We’ve been courting for years. And then you said it was nothing. That hurts, you know.”
“We’ve been courting?”
“Essentially.”
Koroviev sat silent for a while. He had not realized it before. Yes, they had sat closer to each other than he had ever sat with anyone, except maybe Behemoth. Yes, they had joked about having a demonic marriage. Yes, there had always been an undercurrent of sexual tension between the two of them. But he had never thought he could get Yekaterina.
“I’m so sorry, Katyusha. I… I panicked. I didn’t know how messire was going to react.”
“You don’t think demons are allowed to have sex?”
The nymphet’s casually said words sent now a jolt of something through the translator. Something he had not felt in a long time.
“I never considered it,” Koroviev said thoughtfully. “But… but have you, then?”
“No,” Katya answered truthfully in turn. “I’ve been with messire and you four the whole time. It’s not like I want to do it with Azazello. I’m not crazy. Though Hella…”
“Oh dear.”
Yekaterina couldn’t fight back a smile anymore, and now she let herself turn towards Koroviev. She extended out a hand to smooth over his suit’s jacket from where it had crinkled up from all the walking and running.
This was why Yekaterina spent so much more time with him than anyone else. This was why she always insisted on making sure his clothes were neat. This was why she blushed and got embarrassed when he caught her rereading the old romance novels she had first picked up when she was still mortal.
She cared for him.
“Fagot,” the nymphet said softly and looked at his eyes with her brown ones. “Can I kiss you?”
Koroviev couldn’t have said ‘no’ even if he wanted to.
The ex choirleader took her hand and pulled her in. Yekaterina positioned herself to sit on his lap, straddling him. He looked at her gleaming face, but didn’t have much time before Yekaterina closed the distance between them and their lips touched.
It was the greatest kiss Koroviev had ever gotten.
“You’re the first man I trust this much,” Katya whispered in between their sweet, sticky kisses. Her lips started to wander around his face, and he just closed his eyes and enjoyed it. She caressed his nose, cheeks, jaw, and finally both of his eyelids. He just slid his hands around her waist and held her closer, and when she nibbled his earlobe he lightly squeezed one of her breasts.
It evoked a small noise from her.
“Do you think we should be getting back?” the nymphet said at some point.
“I don’t want messire and the others to be around for what I’m wanting to do to you.”
Yekaterina laughed. “We could still go somewhere else. It’s getting late.”
Koroviev agreed and lifted her up in his arms while standing up himself.
“I’ll carry you,” he said. She just wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight.
That night, two figures vanished into thin air in the shadows cast by the trees around the Patriach’s Ponds. If one got a glimpse of how they looked, they might’ve seen a sword hanging around the taller one’s hips. The hems of the shorter and smaller one’s dress fluttered in the cool evening air, but one wasn’t to worry about either one of them tripping. The taller one kept the shorter in their arms.