In my previous posts I forgot to point out that the phrase k chertyam sobach'im also occurs in Ilf & Petrov's "The Golden Calf:" one of the restless inhabitants of Voron'ya slobodka ("the crow's nest"), a former Georgian prince and now Oriental working man, citizen Gigienishvili, suggests that the belongings of the brave airman Sevryugov, who got lost in a Polar expedition, should be thrown away to the stair-case landing, k chertyam sobach’im (to the devils).

Another inhabitant of Voron'ya slobodka is nich'ya babushka (no one's grandmother) who doesn't trust electricity and uses a kerosene lamp in her entresol lodgings. One is reminded of la baboulinka (Franco-Russ., grandmother), a character in Dostoevsky's Igrok ("The Gambler," 1867) who plays roulette and wins fantastic sums by staking on zero.

The name Bess, of Dan's nurse, reminds one of Dostoevsky's novel Besy ("The Possessed," 1872) - but also brings to mind the saying sedina v borodu, bes v rebro ("one’s beard is turning grey, a demon settles in one’s rib" - meaning that one often becomes lecherous, or falls in love, in one's mature or even old age). This saying is quoted by Ostap Bender in "The Twelve Chairs" as he beats up Vorob’yaninov who had a crush on Liza Kalachov. In the same novel Bender and Vorob’yaninov are compared to gamblers who are “playing a kind of roulette in which zero could come up eleven out of twelve times."

(see also my articles "ПОЛУЧИТ ЛИ БАБУШКА РОЖДЕСТВЕНСКУЮ ОТКРЫТКУ, ИЛИ ОТЧЕГО ЗАГОРЕЛСЯ БАРОНСКИЙ АМБАР В «АДЕ»?" and "NABOKOV’S ANTHROPOMORPHIC ZOO: THE LEPORINE FAMILY OF DOCTORS IN ADA" available in Zembla)