Begemot
Legacy Name: Begemot

"Your identification cards?" asked the citizeness at the door.

"My lovely" Korovyev began tenderly.

"I'm not lovely," the citizeness interrupted him.

"Oh, isn't that a pity," said Korovyev, disenchanted, and continued: "Well, all right, if you don't wish to be lovely, which would have been most pleasant, you don't have to be. So then, to be satisfied that Dostoevsky is a writer, surely it's not necessary to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from any of his novels, and you'll be satisfied without any identification card that you're dealing with a writer. I actually suspect that he didn't even have an identification card."

"You're not Dostoevsky," said the citizeness, knocked out of her stride by Korovyev.

"Well, who knows, who knows?" Korovyev yelled back at the door as he began his rampage through the store.

"Dostoevsky is dead," said the citizenship, but not very confidently somehow.

"I protest!" exclaimed Behemoth heatedly. "Dostoevsky is immortal!"

Korovyev can be heard throughout the store, proclaiming his revelry of the establishment. His gaze turns to the debonair woman behind the confections counter. Subtlety was not a characteristic Korovyev possessed and the woman continued to ignore his every word.

Korovyev hissed, "I would desire to know the price of the oranges on the floor display."

Only now did the sales woman acknowledge his presence. Lifting her head to respond to Korovyev she catches a glimpse of a dark, unkempt figure coursing past the citrus fruit; the display is in shambles.

Korovyev attempts to placate her, while Begemot makes his way to another display labeled "Chocolate: Do Not Touch".

"Security!"

The sales woman attempts to secure Begemot before any more damage is caused. Begemot sly in form, bustles his way to the fish counter; ravenously gorging himself on the delicate white flesh.

A whistle sounds and Begemot is quickly apprehended. Korovyev steps forward to defend his cohort.

"This man has no ticket!" announced security, frisking all of Begemot's pockets.

Korovyev responded, "And where is he to get such a ticket?" Korovyev quickly tosses the blame to a nearby bystander.

"It's true!" shouts an old man from across the store. A riot ensues. Begemot breaks free of his bonds quickly clutching his Browning, Korovyev also opens fire. The sounds of bullets ricochets through the stone enclosure, piercing produce and people in their paths.

Begemot turns to his Primus which he had placed upon the floor during the riot, and quickly kicks it over. A roaring fire engulfs the building whilst Begemot and Korovyev make their way through the window to the safety of the streets.

*"On the oven in the semi-darkness silently stood about a dozen extinguished primuses". The shortage of living space after the revolution led to the typical Soviet phenomenon of the communal apartment, in which several families would have one or two private rooms and share kitchen and toilet facilities. The primus stove, a portable one-burner stove fueled with pressurized benzene, made its appearance at the same time and became a symbol of communal-apartment life. Each family would have its own primus.

Begemot is based off of Mikhail Bulgakov's, "The Master and Margarita"; a classic of Russia's literary "Silver Age". It is a delightful satire of Moscow life in the early 1920s. The book was rumored to have sold more copies than the bible in it's published time in Soviet Russia. The above story is my own annotated version of the events in Chapter 28: The Last Adventures of Korovyev and Begemot". The story itself is in Russian and not simple to translate to English.

The story originates in Moscow, which is visited by Satan in the guise of Woland or Voland, a mysterious gentleman of uncertain origin, along with 3 demon companions. The most popular and distinctive of these being a mischievous, gun-happy, fast-talking black cat Begemot, or Behemoth in the English language (the name referring at once to the Biblical monster and the Russian word for Hippopotamus).

Chaper 4: "Flight"
"But that wasn't all: as a third in that company appeared a cat, from who knows where, huge like a pig, black like soot or a raven, and with outrageous cavalryman's whiskers."

Chapter 17: "A Restless Day"
"Black, sturdy, like a hippopotamus."

Chapter 22: "By Candlelight"
"The cat, standing on his back paws and powdered, bowed before Margarita. Now on the cat's neck appeared a white dress tie, and on his chest a mother-of-pearl lady's binoculars on a thin strap. In addition, the cat's whiskers were gilded."

Chapter 27: "The End of Apartment 50"
"Putting aside the primus, he then grabbed a Browning from behind his back."

Begemot's overlay was done by the wonderful and talented hagane!

Profile designed and coded by Ringo, she is amazing, I know!