The writer often went to Nirnzee’s famous house (named after its architect and owner) as the editorial section of the Moscow office of the Berlin-based newspaper Nakanune, in which he had works published, was located on the ground floor. The final scene of the short story Diaboliad (1924) unfolds on the rooftop of this building.

Bulgakov’s stories and essays appeared in practically every edition of the paper from 1922-1923. Nonetheless, the writer was bored by working for a publication which had an openly pro-soviet slant. In September 1923, he bitterly wrote in his diary, ‘Oh, later it will be absolutely necessary for me to scrape away the dirt from my name. However, I can say one thing with a clean conscience before myself. Dire need forced me to publish in that paper. If it weren’t for Nakanune, neither Notes on the Cuffs nor many other works in which I can truthfully write literature, would have seen the light of day’.