The exposure of Arkady Apollonovich

The exposure of Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov is the climactic public unmasking that concludes the black magic seance at the Variety Theatre, transforming a night of spectacular trickery into a devastating satire of Soviet officialdom. As the chairman of the Acoustics Commission of the Moscow theatres, Sempleyarov occupies a position of cultural authority, yet the seance reveals him as a hypocrite whose private life contradicts his public role. The scene functions as the novel's most direct assault on the moral pretensions of the Soviet establishment, using the demonic stage as a platform for truth-telling that the official press would never permit.

The Demand for Exposure

As the seance winds down, with the stage stripped of its magical shop and the audience still buzzing from the rain of money, Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov intervenes from box no. 2. In a pleasant, sonorous baritone, he demands that the foreign artiste expose the technique of his tricks, especially the trick with the paper money, and that the master of ceremonies be returned to the stage. Sempleyarov speaks with the authority of a guest of honour, flanked by two ladies: the older one dressed expensively and fashionably, his wife, and the younger, prettier one in simpler dress, his distant relation, a promising debutante from Saratov living in his apartment. His demand is couched in the language of public concern — the mass of spectators, he claims, requires an explanation. Fagott, the checkered clown, replies that there is nothing to expose, but Sempleyarov insists, and Fagott agrees to perform an exposure, asking for permission to do one more tiny number first.

The Revelation of Adultery

Fagott turns the tables on Sempleyarov by asking where he was the previous evening. Sempleyarov's wife declares that he was at a meeting of the Acoustics Commission, but Fagott contradicts her, revealing that after dismissing his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission building on Clean Ponds, Sempleyarov went by bus to Yelokhovskaya Street to visit an actress from the regional itinerant theatre, Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko, with whom he spent some four hours. The revelation is delivered with theatrical precision, and the theatre falls into total silence. A cry of "Aie!" comes from somewhere in the audience, and Sempleyarov's young relation suddenly breaks into a low and terrible laugh, exclaiming that she has long suspected it and now sees why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa.

The Violent Confrontation

The young relation's laughter turns to action. Swinging suddenly, she strikes Arkady Apollonovich on the head with her short and fat violet umbrella. Fagott, alias Koroviev, shouts to the audience that this is one case of the exposure Sempleyarov so importunately insisted on. Sempleyarov's wife rises in the box to her full height, demanding to know how the young relation dares to touch him. The young relation, seized by a second wave of satanic laughter, replies that if not her, then who else should dare, and strikes Sempleyarov a second time with the umbrella. Sempleyarov's wife shouts for the police to seize her, her voice so terrible that many hearts go cold. The cat Behemoth then leaps to the footlights and barks in a human voice that the seance is over, commanding the orchestra to hack out a march. The half-crazed conductor obeys, and the orchestra plays an incredible march of unheard-of brashness, with rollicking words about His Excellency and barnyard fowl.

The Aftermath and Thematic Significance

The theatre descends into babel. The police run to Sempleyarov's box, people climb over barriers, and bursts of infernal guffawing and furious shouts drown in the golden clash of the orchestra's cymbals. The stage is suddenly empty, and Fagott and the cat Behemoth melt into air, vanishing as the magician had earlier. The exposure of Arkady Apollonovich is not merely a personal humiliation but a symbolic dismantling of the Soviet cultural hierarchy. Sempleyarov, who represents the official apparatus that controls and censors artistic expression, is himself exposed as a fraud. The scene echoes the novel's broader critique of a society where public virtue masks private vice, and where the only truth-teller is the devil. The violence of the young relation's response — her umbrella blows — suggests a pent-up rage against the patriarchal order that Sempleyarov embodies, a rage that the demonic intervention liberates but cannot resolve. The exposure thus serves as a microcosm of the novel's method: using supernatural means to strip away the veils of official hypocrisy and reveal the human reality beneath.