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frightened you badly and upset you with a story about Pontius Pilate and
other things. And so you, a very nervous and high-strung man, started going
around the city, telling about Pontius Pilate. It's quite natural that
you're taken for a madman. Your salvation now lies in just one thing -
complete peace. And you absolutely must remain here.'
'But he has to be caught!' Ivan exclaimed, imploringly now.
'Very good, sir, but why should you go running around yourself? Explain
all your suspicions and accusations against this man on paper. Nothing could
be simpler than to send your declaration to the proper quarters, and if, as
you think, we are dealing with a criminal, it will be clarified very
quickly. But only on one condition: don't strain your head, and try to think
less about Pontius Pilate. People say all kinds of things! One mustn't
believe everything.'
'Understood!' Ivan declared resolutely. `I ask to be given pen and
paper.'
'Give him paper and a short pencil,' Stravinsky ordered the fat woman,
and to Ivan he said: 'But I don't advise you to write today.'
'No, no, today, today without fail!' Ivan cried out in alarm.
'Well, all right. Only don't strain your head. If it doesn't come out
today, it will tomorrow.'
'He'll escape.'
'Oh, no,' Stravinsky objected confidently, 'he won't escape anywhere, I
guarantee that. And remember that here with us you'll be helped in all
possible ways, and without us nothing will come of it. Do you hear me?'
Stravinsky suddenly asked meaningly and took Ivan Nikolaevich by both hands.
Holding them in his own, he repeated for a long time, his eyes fixed on
Ivan's:
'You'll be helped here... do you hear me?... You'll be helped here...
you'll get relief... it's quiet here, all peaceful... you'll be helped
here...'
Ivan Nikolaevich unexpectedly yawned, and the expression on his face
softened.
'Yes, yes,' he said quietly.
'Well, how very nice!' Stravinsky concluded the conversation in his
usual way and stood up: 'Goodbye!' He shook Ivan's hand and, on his way out,
turned to the one with the little beard and said: 'Yes, and try oxygen...
and baths.'
A few moments later there was no Stravinsky or his retinue before Ivan.
Beyond the window grille, in the noonday sun, the joyful and springtime
pine wood stood beautiful on the other bank and, closer by, the river
sparkled.
Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the tenants' association' [1] of
no.302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow, where the late Berlioz used to
reside, had been having the most terrible troubles, starting from that
Wednesday night.
At midnight, as we already know, a commission of which Zheldybin formed
a part came to the house, summoned Nikanor Ivanovich, told him about the
death of Berlioz, and together with him went to apartment no.50.
There the sealing of the deceased's manuscripts and belongings was
carried out. Neither Grunya, the daytime housekeeper, nor the light-minded
Stepan Bogdanovich was there at the time. The commission announced to
Nikanor Ivanovich that it would take the deceased's manuscripts for sorting
out, that his living space, that is, three rooms (the former study, living
room and dining room of the jeweller's wife), reverted to the disposal of
the tenants' association, and that the belongings were to be kept in the
aforementioned living space until the heirs were announced.
The news of Berlioz's death spread through the whole house with a sort
of supernatural speed, and as of seven o'clock Thursday morning, Bosoy began
to receive telephone calls and then personal visits with declarations
containing claims to the deceased's living space. In the period of two
hours, Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such declarations.
They contained pleas, threats, libels, denunciations, promises to do
renovations at their own expense, references to unbearable overcrowding and
the impossibility of living in the same apartment with bandits. Among others
there were a description, staggering in its artistic power, of the theft
from apartment no. 51 of some meat dumplings, tucked directly into the
pocket of a suit jacket, two vows to end life by suicide and one confession
of secret pregnancy.
Nikanor Ivanovich was called out to the front hall of his apartment,
plucked by the sleeve, whispered to, winked at, promised that he would not
be left the loser.
This torture went on until noon, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply fled his
apartment for the management office by the gate, but when he saw them lying
in wait for him there, too, he fled that place as well. Having somehow
shaken off those who followed on his heels across the asphalt-paved
courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich disappeared into the sixth entrance and went up
to the fifth floor, where this vile apartment no.50 was located.
After catching his breath on the landing, the corpulent Nikanor
Ivanovich rang, but no one opened for him. He rang again, and then again,
and started grumbling and swearing quietly. Even then no one opened. His
patience exhausted, Nikanor Ivanovich took from his pocket a bunch of
duplicate keys belonging to the house management, opened the door with a
sovereign hand, and went in.
'Hey, housekeeper!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried in the semi-dark front
hall. 'Grunya, or whatever your name is! ... Are you here?'
No one responded.
Then Nikanor Ivanovich took a folding ruler from his briefcase, removed
the seal from the door to the study, and stepped in. Stepped in, yes, but
halted in amazement in the doorway and even gave a start.
At the deceased's desk sat an unknown, skinny, long citizen in a little
checkered jacket, a jockey's cap, and a pince-nez... well, in short, that
same one.
'And who might you be, citizen?' Nikanor Ivanovich asked fearfully.
'Hah! Nikanor Ivanovich!' the unexpected citizen yelled in a rattling
tenor and, jumping up, greeted the chairman with a forced and sudden
handshake. This greeting by no means gladdened Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Excuse me,' he said suspiciously, 'but who might you be? Are you an
official person?'
'Eh, Nikanor Ivanovich!' the unknown man exclaimed soulfully. "What are
official and unofficial persons? It all depends on your point of view on the
subject. It's all fluctuating and relative, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I'm an
unofficial person, and tomorrow, lo and behold, I'm an official one! And it
also happens the other way round - oh, how it does!'
This argument in no way satisfied the chairman of the house management.
Being a generally suspicious person by nature, he concluded that the man
holding forth in front of him was precisely an unofficial person, and
perhaps even an idle one.
"Yes, but who might you be? What's your name?' the chairman inquired
with increasing severity and even began to advance upon the unknown man.
`My name,' the citizen responded, not a bit put out by the severity,
'well, let's say it's Koroviev. But wouldn't you like a little snack,
Nikanor Ivanovich? No formalities, eh?'
`Excuse me,' Nikanor Ivanovich began, indignantly now, `what have
snacks got to do with it!' (We must confess, unpleasant as it is, that
Nikanor Ivanovich was of a somewhat rude nature.) 'Sitting in the deceased's
half is not permitted! What are you doing here?'
`Have a seat, Nikanor Ivanovich,' the citizen went on yelling, not a
bit at a loss, and began fussing about offering the chairman a seat.
Utterly infuriated, Nikanor Ivanovich rejected the seat and screamed:
'But who are you?'
'I, if you please, serve as interpreter for a foreign individual who
has taken up residence in this apartment,' the man calling himself Koroviev
introduced himself and clicked the heels of his scuffed, unpolished shoes.
Nikanor Ivanovich opened his mouth. The presence of some foreigner in
this apartment, with an interpreter to boot, came as a complete surprise to
him, and he demanded explanations.
The interpreter explained willingly. A foreign artiste, Mr Woland, had
been kindly invited by the director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich
Likhodeev, to spend the time of his performances, a week or so, in his
apartment, about which he had written to Nikanor Ivanovich yesterday,
requesting that he register the foreigner as a temporary resident, while
Likhodeev himself took a trip to Yalta.
'He never wrote me anything,' the chairman said in amazement.
`Just look through your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,' Koroviev
suggested sweetly.
Nikanor Ivanovich, shrugging his shoulders, opened the briefcase and
found Likhodeev's letter in it.
`How could I have forgotten about it?' Nikanor Ivanovich muttered,
looking dully at the opened envelope.
`All sorts of things happen, Nikanor Ivanovich, all sorts!' Koroviev
rattled. 'Absent-mindedness, absent-mindedness, fatigue and high blood
pressure, my dear friend Nikanor Ivanovich! I'm terribly absent-minded
myself! Someday, over a glass, I'll tell you a few facts from my biography -
you'll die laughing!'
'And when is Likhodeev going to Yalta?'
`He's already gone, gone!' the interpreter cried. `He's already
wheeling along, you know! He's already devil knows where!' And here the
interpreter waved his arms like the wings of a windmill.
Nikanor Ivanovich declared that he must see the foreigner in person,
but got a refusal on that from the interpreter: quite impossible. He's busy.
Training the cat.
'The cat I can show you, if you like,' Koroviev offered.
This Nikanor Ivanovich refused in his turn, and the interpreter
straight away made the chairman an unexpected but quite interesting
proposal: seeing that Mr Woland had no desire whatsoever to live in a hotel,
and was accustomed to having a lot of space, why shouldn't the tenants'
association rent to him, Woland, for one little week, the time of his
performances in Moscow, the whole of the apartment, that is, the deceased's
rooms as well?
'It's all the same to him - the deceased - you must agree, Nikanor
Ivanovich,' Koroviev whispered hoarsely. 'He doesn't need the apartment now,
does he?'
Nikanor Ivanovich, somewhat perplexed, objected that foreigners ought
to live at the Metropol, and not in private apartments at all...
`I'm telling you, he's capricious as devil knows what!' Koroviev
whispered. 'He just doesn't want to! He doesn't like hotels! I've had them
up to here, these foreign tourists!' Koroviev complained confidentially,
jabbing his finger at his sinewy neck. 'Believe me, they wring the soul
right out of you! They come and either spy on you like the lowest son of a
bitch, or else torment you with their caprices - this isn't right and that
isn't right!... And for your association, Nikanor Ivanovich, it's a sheer
gain and an obvious profit. He won't stint on money.' Koroviev looked around
and then whispered into the chairman's ear: 'A millionaire!'
The interpreter's offer made clear practical sense, it was a very solid
offer, yet there was something remarkably unsolid in his manner of speaking,
and in his clothes, and in that loathsome, good-for-nothing pince-nez. As a
result, something vague weighed on the chairman's soul, but he nevertheless
decided to accept the offer. The thing was that the tenants' association,
alas, had quite a sizeable deficit. Fuel had to be bought for the heating
system by fall, but who was going to shell out for it - no one knew. But
with the foreign tourist's money, it might be possible to wriggle out of it.
However, the practical and prudent Nikanor Ivanovich said he would
first have to settle the question with the foreign tourist bureau.
`I understand!' Koroviev cried out. `You've got to settle it!
Absolutely! Here's the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, settle it at once!
And don't be shy about the money,' he added in a whisper, drawing the
chairman to the telephone in the front hall, 'if he won't pay, who will! You
should see the villa he's got in Nice! Next summer, when you go abroad, come
especially to see it - you'll gasp!'
The business with the foreign tourist bureau was arranged over the
phone with an extraordinary speed, quite amazing to the chairman. It turned
out that they already knew about Mr Woland's intention of staying in
Likhodeev's private apartment and had no objections to it.
`That's wonderful!' Koroviev yelled. Somewhat stunned by his chatter,
the chairman announced that the tenants' association agreed to rent
apartment no.50 for a week to the artiste Woland, for... Nikanor Ivanovich
faltered a little, then said:
'For five hundred roubles a day.'
Here Koroviev utterly amazed the chairman. Winking thievishly in the
direction of the bedroom, from which the soft leaps of a heavy cat could be
heard, he rasped out:
'So it comes to three thousand five hundred for the week?'
To which Nikanor Ivanovich thought he was going to add: 'Some appetite
you've got, Nikanor Ivanovich!' but Koroviev said something quite different:
'What kind of money is that? Ask five, he'll pay it.'
Grinning perplexedly, Nikanor Ivanovich, without noticing how, found
himself at the deceased's writing desk, where Koroviev with great speed and
dexterity drew up a contract in two copies. Then he flew to the bedroom with
them and came back, both copies now bearing the foreigner's sweeping
signature. The chairman also signed the contract. Here Koroviev asked for a
receipt for five...
Write it out, write it out, Nikanor Ivanovich!... thousand roubles...'
And with words somehow unsuited to serious business - 'Bin, zwei, drei!' -
he laid out for the chairman five stacks of new banknotes.
The counting-up took place, interspersed with Koroviev's quips and
quiddities, such as 'Cash loves counting', 'Your own eye won't lie', and
others of the same sort.
After counting the money, the chairman received from Koroviev the
foreigner's passport for temporary registration, put it, together with the
contract and the money, into his briefcase, and, somehow unable to help
himself, sheepishly asked for a free pass...
'Don't mention it!' bellowed Koroviev. 'How many tickets do you want,
Nikanor Ivanovich - twelve, fifteen?'
The flabbergasted chairman explained that all he needed was a couple of
passes, for himself and Pelageya Antonovna, his wife.
Koroviev snatched out a notebook at once and dashed off a pass for
Nikanor Ivanovich, for two persons in the front row. And with his left hand
the interpreter deftly slipped this pass to Nikanor Ivanovich, while with
his right he put into the chairman's other hand a thick, crackling wad.
Casting an eye on it, Nikanor Ivanovich blushed deeply and began to
push it away.
'It isn't done...' he murmured.
'I won't hear of it,' Koroviev whispered right in his ear. 'With us
it's not done, but with foreigners it is. You'll offend him, Nikanor
Ivanovich, and that's embarrassing. You've worked hard...'
`It's severely punishable,' the chairman whispered very, very softly
and glanced over his shoulder.
'But where are the witnesses?' Koroviev whispered into his other ear.
'I ask you, where are they? You don't think... ?'
Here, as the chairman insisted afterwards, a miracle occurred: the wad
crept into his briefcase by itself. And then the chairman, somehow limp and
even broken, found himself on the stairs. A whirlwind of thoughts raged in
his head. There was the villa in Nice, and the trained cat, and the thought
that there were in fact no witnesses, and that Pelageya Antonovna would be
delighted with the pass. They were incoherent thoughts, but generally
pleasant. But, all the same, somewhere, some little needle kept pricking the
chairman in the very bottom of his soul. This was the needle of anxiety.
Besides, right then on the stairs the chairman was seized, as with a
stroke, by the thought: 'But how did the interpreter get into the study if
the door was sealed?! And how was it that he, Nikanor Ivanovich, had not
asked about it?' For some time the chairman stood staring like a sheep at
the steps of the stairway, but then he decided to spit on it and not torment
himself with intricate questions...
As soon as the chairman left the apartment, a low voice came from the
bedroom:
'I didn't like this Nikanor Ivanovich. He is a chiseller and a crook.
Can it be arranged so that he doesn't come any more?'
'Messire, you have only to say the word...' Koroviev responded from
somewhere, not in a rattling but in a very clear and resounding voice.
And at once the accursed interpreter turned up in the front hall,
dialled a number there, and for some reason began speaking very tearfully
into the receiver:
'Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that the chairman of our
tenants' association at no.502-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is
speculating in foreign currency. [2] At the present moment, in his apartment
no. 55, he has four hundred dollars wrapped up in newspaper in the
ventilation of the privy. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the
said house, apartment no. 11. But I adjure you to keep my name a secret. I
fear the vengeance of the above-stated chairman.'
And he hung up, the scoundrel!
What happened next in apartment no.50 is not known, but it is known
what happened at Nikanor Ivanovich's. Having locked himself in the privy
with the hook, he took from his briefcase the wad foisted on him by the
interpreter and satisfied himself that it contained four hundred roubles.
Nikanor Ivanovich wrapped this wad in a scrap of newspaper and put it
into the ventilation duct.
Five minutes later the chairman was sitting at the table in his small
dining room. His wife brought pickled herring from the kitchen, neatly
sliced and thickly sprinkled with green onion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured
himself a dram of vodka, drank it, poured another, drank it, picked up three
pieces of herring on his fork... and at that moment the doorbell rang.
Pelageya Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming pot which, one could
tell at once from a single glance, contained, amidst a fiery borscht, that
than which there is nothing more delicious in the world - a marrow bone.
Swallowing his spittle, Nikanor Ivanovich growled like a dog:
'Damn them all! Won't allow a man to eat... Don't let anyone in, I'm
not here, not here... If it's about the apartment, tell them to stop
blathering, there'll be a meeting next week.'
His wife ran to the front hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, using a ladle,
drew from the fire-breathing lake - it, the bone, cracked lengthwise. And at
that moment two citizens entered the dining room, with Pelageya Antonovna
following them, for some reason looking very pale. Seeing the citizens,
Nikanor Ivanovich also turned white and stood up.
'Where's the Jakes?' the first one, in a white side-buttoned shirt,
asked with a preoccupied air.
Something thudded against the dining table (this was Nikanor Ivanovich
dropping the ladle on to the oilcloth).
'This way, this way,' Pelageya Antonovna replied in a patter.
And the visitors immediately hastened to the corridor.
^What's the matter?' Nikanor Ivanovich asked quietly, going after the
visitors. `There can't be anything like that in our apartment... And - your
papers... begging your pardon...'
The first, without stopping, showed Nikanor Ivanovich a paper, and the
second was at the same moment standing on a stool in the privy, his arm in
the ventilation duct. Everything went dark in Nikanor Ivanovich's eyes. The
newspaper was removed, but in the wad there were not roubles but some
unknown money, bluish-greenish, and with the portrait of some old man.
However, Nikanor Ivanovich saw it all dimly, there were some sort of
spots floating in front of his eyes.
'Dollars in the ventilation...' the first said pensively and asked
Nikanor Ivanovich gently and courteously: 'Your little wad?'
'No!' Nikanor Ivanovich replied in a dreadful voice. 'Enemies stuck me
with it!'
'That happens,' the first agreed and added, again gently: 'Well, you're
going to have to turn in the rest.'
'I haven't got any! I swear to God, I never laid a finger on it!' the
chairman cried out desperately.
He dashed to the chest, pulled a drawer out with a clatter, and from it
the briefcase, crying out incoherently:
'Here's the contract... that vermin of an interpreter stuck me with
it... Koroviev... in a pince-nez!...'
He opened the briefcase, glanced into it, put a hand inside, went blue
in the face, and dropped the briefcase into the borscht. There was nothing
in the briefcase: no letter from Styopa, no contract, no foreigner's
passport, no money, no theatre pass. In short, nothing except a folding
ruler.
'Comrades!' the chairman cried frenziedly. `Catch them! There are
unclean powers in our house!'
It is not known what Pelageya Antonovna imagined here, only she clasped
her hands and cried:
'Repent, Ivanych! You'll get off lighter.'
His eyes bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich raised his fists over his wife's
head, croaking:
'Ohh, you damned fool!'
Here he went slack and sank down on a chair, evidently resolved to
submit to the inevitable.
During this time, Timofei Kondratievich Kvastsov stood on the landing,
placing now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole of the door to the
chairman's apartment, melting with curiosity.
Five minutes later the tenants of the house who were in the courtyard
saw the chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceed directly to the
gates of the house. It was said that Nikanor Ivanovich looked awful,
staggered like a drunk man as he passed, and was muttering something.
And an hour after that an unknown citizen appeared in apartment no. 11,
just as Timofei Kondratievich, spluttering with delight, was telling some
other tenants how the chairman got pinched, motioned to Timofei
Kondratievich with his finger to come from the kitchen to the front hall,
said something to him, and together they vanished.
At the same time that disaster struck Nikanor Ivanovich, not far away
from no.502-bis, on the same Sadovaya Street, in the office of the financial
director of the Variety Theatre, Rimsky, there sat two men: Rimsky himself,
and the administrator of the Variety, Varenukha [1].'
The big office on the second floor of the theatre had two windows on
Sadovaya and one, just behind the back of the findirector, who was sitting
at his desk, facing the summer garden of the Variety, where there were
refreshment stands, a shooting gallery and an open-air stage. The
furnishings of the office, apart from the desk, consisted of a bunch of old
posters hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water on it,
four armchairs and, in the corner, a stand on which stood a dust-covered
scale model of some past review. Well, it goes without saying that, in
addition, there was in the office a small, shabby, peeling fireproof safe,
to Rimsky's left, next to the desk.
Rimsky, now sitting at his desk, had been in bad spirits since morning,
while Varenukha, on the contrary, was very animated and somehow especially
restlessly active. Yet there was no outlet for his energy.
Varenukha was presently hiding in the findirector's office to escape
the seekers of free passes, who poisoned his life, especially on days when
the programme changed. And today was precisely such a day. As soon as the
telephone started to ring, Varenukha would pick up the receiver and lie into
it:
"Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He stepped out.'
'Please call Likhodeev again,' Rimsky asked vexedly.
'He's not home. I even sent Karpov, there's no one in the apartment.'
`Devil knows what's going on!' Rimisky hissed, clacking on the adding
machine.
The door opened and an usher dragged in a thick stack of freshly
printed extra posters; in big red letters on a green background was printed:
Today and Every Day at the Variety Theatre
an Additional Programme
PROFESSOR WOLAND
Sposters out
immediately to be pasted up.
'Good... Loud!' Varenukha observed on the usher's departure.
`And I dislike this undertaking extremely,' Rimsky grumbled, glancing
spitefully at the poster through his horn-rimmed glasses, 'and generally I'm
surprised he's been allowed to present it.'
'No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say so! This is a very subdue step. The
salt is all in the exposure.'
`I don't know, I don't know, there's no salt, in my opinion... and he's
always coming up with things like this! ... He might at least show us his
magician! Have you seen him? Where he dug him up, devil knows!'
It turned out that Varenukha had not seen the magician any more than
Rimsky had. Yesterday Styopa had come running ('like crazy', in Rimsky's
expression) to the findirector with the already written draft of a contract,
ordered it copied straight away and the money handed over to Woland. And
this magician had cleared out, and no one had seen him except Styopa
himself.
Rimsky took out his watch, saw that it read five minutes past two, and
flew into a complete rage. Really! Likhodeev had called at around eleven,
said he'd come in half an hour, and not only had not come, but had
disappeared from his apartment.
'He's holding up my business!' Rimsky was roaring now, jabbing his
finger at a pile of unsigned papers.
'Might he have fallen under a tram-car like Berlioz?' Varenukha said as
he held his ear to the receiver, from which came low, prolonged and utterly
hopeless signals.
"Wouldn't be a bad thing...' Rimsky said barely audibly through his
teeth.
At that same moment a woman in a uniform jacket, visored cap, black
skirt and sneakers came into the office. From a small pouch at her belt the
woman took a small white square and a notebook and asked:
"Who here is Variety? A super-lightning telegram. [2] Sign here.'
Varenukha scribbled some flourish in the woman's notebook, and as soon
as the door slammed behind her, he opened the square. After reading the
telegram, he blinked and handed the square to Rimsky.
The telegram contained the following: `Yalta to Moscow Variety. Today
eleven thirty brown-haired man came criminal investigation nightshirt
trousers shoeless mental case gave name Likhodeev Director Variety Wire
Yalta criminal investigation where Director Likhodeev.'
`Hello and how do you do!' Rimsky exclaimed, and added: 'Another
surprise!'
'A false Dmitri!'[3] said Varenukha, and he spoke into the receiver.
Telegraph office? Variety account. Take a super-lightning telegram. Are you
listening? "Yalta criminal investigation. Director Likhodeev Moscow
Findirector Rimsky."'
Irrespective of the news about the Yalta impostor, Varenukha again
began searching all over for Styopa by telephone, and naturally did not find
him anywhere.
Just as Varenukha, receiver in hand, was pondering where else he might
call, the same woman who had brought the first telegram came in and handed
Varenukha a new envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read the message
and whistled.
'What now?' Rimsky asked, twitching nervously.
Varenukha silently handed him the telegram, and the findirector saw
there the words: `Beg believe thrown Yalta Woland hypnosis wire criminal
investigation confirm identity Likhodeev.'
Rimsky and Varenukha, their heads touching, reread the telegram, and
after rereading it, silently stared at each other.
'Citizens!' the woman got angry. 'Sign, and then be silent as much as
you like! I deliver lightnings!'
Varenukha, without taking his eyes off the telegram, made a crooked
scrawl in the notebook, and the woman vanished.
'Didn't you talk with him on the phone at a little past eleven?' the
administrator began in total bewilderment.
'No, it's ridiculous!' Rimsky cried shrilly. Talk or not, he can't be
in Yalta now! It's ridiculous!'
'He's drunk...' said Varenukha.
"Who's drunk?' asked Rimsky, and again the two stared at each other.
That some impostor or madman had sent telegrams from Yalta, there was
no doubt. But the strange thing was this: how did the Yalta mystifier know
Woland, who had come to Moscow just the day before? How did he know about
the connection between Likhodeev and Woland?
'Hypnosis...' Varenukha kept repeating the word from the telegram.
'How does he know about Woland?' He blinked his eyes and suddenly cried
resolutely: 'Ah, no! Nonsense! ... Nonsense, nonsense!'
'Where's he staying, this Woland, devil take him?' asked Rimsky.
Varenukha immediately got connected with the foreign tourist bureau
and, to Rimsky's utter astonishment, announced that Woland was staying in
Likhodeev's apartment. Dialling the number of the Likhodeev apartment after
that, Varenukha listened for a long time to the low buzzing in the receiver.
Amidst the buzzing, from somewhere far away, came a heavy, gloomy voice
singing: '... rocks, my refuge ...'[4] and Varenukha decided that the
telephone lines had crossed with a voice from a radio show.
The apartment doesn't answer,' Varenukha said, putting down the
receiver, 'or maybe I should call...'
He did not finish. The same woman appeared in the door, and both men,
Rimsky and Varenukha, rose to meet her, while she took from her pouch not a
white sheet this time, but some sort of dark one.
This is beginning to get interesting,' Varenukha said through his
teeth, his eyes following the hurriedly departing woman. Rimsky was the
first to take hold of the sheet.
On a dark background of photographic paper, some black handwritten
lines were barely discernible:
'Proof my handwriting my signature wire urgently confirmation place
secret watch Woland Likhodeev.'
In his twenty years of work in the theatre, Varenukha had seen all
kinds of sights, but here he felt his mind becoming obscured as with a veil,
and he could find nothing to say but the at once mundane and utterly absurd
phrase:
This cannot be!'
Rimsky acted otherwise. He stood up, opened the door, barked out to the
messenger girl sitting on a stool:
'Let no one in except postmen!' - and locked the door with a key.
Then he took a pile of papers out of the desk and began carefully to
compare the bold, back-slanting letters of the photogram with the letters in
Styopa's resolutions and signatures, furnished with a corkscrew flourish.
Varenukha, leaning his weight on the table, breathed hotly on Rimsky's
cheek.
`It's his handwriting,' the findirector finally said firmly, and
Varenukha repeated like an echo:
'His.'
Peering into Rimsky's face, the administrator marvelled at the change
that had come over this face. Thin to begin with, the findirector seemed to
have grown still thinner and even older, his eyes in their horn rims had
lost their customary prickliness, and there appeared in them not only alarm,
but even sorrow.
Varenukha did everything that a man in a moment of great astonishment
ought to do. He raced up and down the office, he raised his arms twice like
one crucified, he drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe and
exclaimed:
'I don't understand! I don't understand! I don't un-der-stand!'
Rimsky meanwhile was looking out the window, thinking hard about
something. The findirector's position was very difficult. It was necessary
at once, right on the spot, to invent ordinary explanations for
extraordinary phenomena.
Narrowing his eyes, the findirector pictured to himself Styopa, in a
nightshirt and shoeless, getting into some unprecedented super-high-speed
airplane at around half past eleven that morning, and then the same Styopa,
also at half past eleven, standing in his stocking feet at the airport in
Yalta ... devil knew what to make of it!
Maybe it was not Styopa who talked with him this morning over the phone
from his own apartment? No, it was Styopa speaking! Who if not he should
know Styopa's voice? And even if it was not Styopa speaking today, it was no
earlier than yesterday, towards evening, that Styopa had come from his
office to this very office with this idiotic contract and annoyed the
findirector with his light-mindedness. How could he have gone or flown away
without leaving word at the theatre? But if he had flown away yesterday
evening - he would not have arrived by noon today. Or would he?
'How many miles is it to Yalta?' asked Rimsky.
Varenukha stopped his running and yelled:
'I thought of that! I already thought of it! By train it's over nine
hundred miles to Sebastopol, plus another fifty to Yalta! Well, but by air,
of course, it's less.'
Hm ... Yes ... There could be no question of any trains. But what then?
Some fighter plane? Who would let Styopa on any fighter plane without his
shoes? What for? Maybe he took his shoes off when he got to Yalta? It's the
same thing: what for? And even with his shoes on they wouldn't have let him
on a fighter! And what has the fighter got to do with it? It's written that
he came to the investigators at half past eleven in the morning, and he
talked on the telephone in Moscow ... excuse me ... (the face of Rimsky's
watch emerged before his eyes).
Rimsky tried to remember where the hands had been ... Terrible! It had
been twenty minutes past eleven!
So what does it boil down to? If one supposes that after the
conversation Styopa instantly rushed to the airport, and reached it in, say,
five minutes (which, incidentally, was also unthinkable), it means that the
plane, taking off at once, covered nearly a thousand miles in five minutes.
Consequently, it was flying at twelve thousand miles an hour!!! That
cannot be, and that means he's not in Yalta!
What remains, then? Hypnosis? There's no hypnosis in the world that can
fling a man a thousand miles away! So he's imagining that he's in Yalta? He
may be imagining it, but are the Yalta investigators also imagining it? No,
no, sorry, that can't be! ... Yet they did telegraph from there?
The findirector's face was literally dreadful. The door handle was all
the while being turned and pulled from outside, and the messenger girl could
be heard through the door crying desperately:
'Impossible! I won't let you! Cut me to pieces! It's a meeting!'
Rimsky regained control of himself as well as he could, took the
receiver of the phone, and said into it:
'A super-urgent call to Yalta, please.'
'Clever!' Varenukha observed mentally.
But the conversation with Yalta did not take place. Rimsky hung up the
receiver and said:
'As luck would have it, the line's broken.'
It could be seen that the broken line especially upset him for some
reason, and even made him lapse into thought. Having thought a little, he
again took the receiver in one hand, and with the other began writing down
what he said into it:
Take a super-lightning. Variety. Yes. Yalta criminal investigation.
Yes. 'Today around eleven thirty Likhodeev talked me phone Moscow stop After
that did not come work unable locate by phone stop Confirm handwriting stop
Taking measures watch said artiste Findirector Rimsky.'"
'Very clever!' thought Varenukha, but before he had time to think well,
the words rushed through his head: 'Stupid! He can't be in Yalta!'
Rimsky meanwhile did the following: he neatly stacked all the received
telegrams, plus the copy of his own, put the stack into an envelope, sealed
it, wrote a few words on it, and handed it to Varenukha, saying:
'Go right now, Ivan Savelyevich, take it there personally. [5] Let them
sort it out.'
'Now that is really clever!' thought Varenukha, and he put the envelope
into his briefcase. Then, just in case, he dialled Styopa's apartment number
on the telephone, listened, and began winking and grimacing joyfully and
mysteriously. Rimsky stretched his neck.
'May I speak with the artiste Woland?' Varenukha asked sweetly.
`Mister's busy,' the receiver answered in a rattling voice, 'who's
calling?'
The administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.'
`Ivan Savelyevich?' the receiver cried out joyfully. Terribly glad to
hear your voice! How're you doing?'
'Merci,' Varenukha replied in amazement, 'and with whom am I speaking?'
'His assistant, his assistant and interpreter, Koroviev!' crackled the
receiver. 'I'm entirely at your service, my dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Order
me around as you like. And so?'
`Excuse me, but ... what, is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at home
now?'
'Alas, no! No!' the receiver shouted. 'He left!'
'For where?'
'Out of town, for a drive in the car.'
'Wh ... what? A dr ... drive? And when will he be back?'
'He said, I'll get a breath of fresh air and come back.'
`So...' said the puzzled Varenukha, 'merci ... kindly tell Monsieur
Woland that his performance is tonight in the third part of the programme.'
'Right. Of course. Absolutely. Urgently. Without fail. I'll tell
him,'the receiver rapped out abruptly.
'Goodbye,' Varenukha said in astonishment.
'Please accept,' said the receiver, 'my best, warmest greetings and
wishes! For success! Luck! Complete happiness! Everything!'
'But of course! Didn't I say so!' the administrator cried agitatedly.
'It's not any Yalta, he just went to the country!'
'Well, if that's so,' the findirector began, turning pale with anger,
'it's real swinishness, there's even no name for it!'
Here the administrator jumped up and shouted so that Rimsky gave a
start:
`I remember! I remember! They've opened a new Georgian tavern in
Pushkino called "Yalta"! It's all clear! He went there, got drunk, and now
he's sending telegrams from there!'
'Well, now that's too much!' Rimsky answered, his cheek twitching, and
deep, genuine anger burned in his eyes. 'Well, then, he's going to pay
dearly for this little excursion! ...' He suddenly faltered and added
irresolutely: 'But what about the criminal investigation ...'
'It's nonsense! His own little jokes,' the expansive administrator
interrupted, and asked: 'Shall I take the envelope?'
'Absolutely,' replied Rimsky.
And again the door opened and in came that same ... 'Her!' thought
Rimsky, for some reason with anguish. And both men rose to meet the
postwoman.
This time the telegram contained the words:
Thank you confirmation send five hundred urgently criminal
investigation my name tomorrow fly Moscow Likhodeev.'
'He's lost his mind...' Varenukha said weakly.
Rimsky jingled his key, took money from the fireproof safe, counted out
five hundred roubles, rang the bell, handed the messenger the money, and
sent him to the telegraph office.
'Good heavens, Grigory Danilovich,' Varenukha said, not believing his
eyes, 'in my opinion you oughtn't to send the money.'
'It'll come back,' Rimsky replied quietly, 'but he'll have a hard time
explaining this little picnic.' And he added, indicating the briefcase to
Varenukha: 'Go, Ivan Savelyevich, don't delay.'
And Varenukha ran out of the office with the briefcase.
He went down to the ground floor, saw the longest line at the box
office, found out from the box-office girl that she expected to sell out
within the hour, because the public was simply pouring in since the
additional poster had been put up, told the girl to earmark and hold thirty
of the best seats in the gallery and the stalls, popped out of the box
office, shook off importunate pass-seekers as he ran, and dived into his
little office to get his cap. At that moment the telephone rattled.
'Yes!' Varenukha shouted.
'Ivan Savelyevich?' the receiver inquired in a most repulsive nasal
voice.
'He's not in the theatre!' Varenukha was shouting, but the receiver
interrupted him at once:
'Don't play the fool, Ivan Savelyevich, just listen. Do not take those
telegrams anywhere or show them to anyone.'
'Who is this?' Varenukha bellowed. 'Stop these jokes, citizen! You'll
be found out at once! What's your number?'
'Varenukha,' the same nasty voice returned, 'do you understand Russian?
Don't take the telegrams anywhere.'
'Ah, so you won't stop?' the administrator cried furiously. 'Look out,
then! You're going to pay for it!' He shouted some other threat, but fell
silent, because he sensed that no one was listening to him any longer in the
receiver.
Here it somehow began to grow dark very quickly in his little office.
Varenukha ran out, slammed the door behind him, and rushed through the
side entrance into the summer garden.
The administrator was agitated and full of energy. After the insolent
phone call he had no doubts that it was a band of hooligans playing nasty
tricks, and that these tricks were connected with the disappearance of
Likhodeev. The administrator was choking with the desire to expose the
malefactors, and, strange as it was, the anticipation of something enjoyable
was born in him. It happens that way when a man strives to become the centre
of attention, to bring sensational news somewhere.
In the garden the wind blew in the administrator's face and flung sand
in his eyes, as if blocking his way, as if cautioning him. A window on the
second floor slammed so that the glass nearly broke, the tops of the maples
and lindens rustled alarmingly. It became darker and colder. The
administrator rubbed his eyes and saw that a yellow-bellied storm cloud was
creeping low over Moscow. There came a dense, distant rumbling.
However great Varenukha's hurry, an irrepressible desire pulled at him
to run over to the summer toilet for a second on his way, to check whether
the repairman had put a wire screen over the light-bulb.
Running past the shooting gallery, Varenukha came to a thick growth of
lilacs where the light-blue toilet building stood. The repairman turned out
to be an efficient fellow, the bulb under the roof of the gentlemen's side
was covered with a wire screen, but the administrator was upset that even in
the pre-storm darkness one could make out that the walls were already
written all over in charcoal and pencil.
'Well, what sort of...' the administrator began and suddenly heard a
voice purring behind him:
'Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?'
Varenukha started, turned around, and saw before him a short, fat man
with what seemed to him a cat-like physiognomy.
'So, it's me', Varenukha answered hostilely.
'Very, very glad,' the cat-like fat man responded in a squeaky voice
and, suddenly swinging his arm, gave Varenukha such a blow on the ear that
the cap flew off the administrator's head and vanished without a trace down
the hole in the seat.
At the fat man's blow, the whole toilet lit up momentarily with a
tremulous light, and a roll of thunder echoed in the sky. Then came another
flash and a second man emerged before the administrator - short, but with
athletic shoulders, hair red as fire, albugo in one eye, a fang in his
mouth... This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the
other ear. In response there was another roll of thunder in the sky, and
rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet.
`What is it, comr...' the half-crazed administrator whispered, realized
at once that the word 'comrades' hardly fitted bandits attacking a man in a
public toilet, rasped out: 'citiz...' - figured that they did not merit this
appellation either, and received a third terrible blow from he did not know
which of them, so that blood gushed from his nose on to his Tolstoy blouse.
'What you got in the briefcase, parasite?' the one resembling a cat
cried shrilly. 'Telegrams? Weren't you warned over the phone not to take
them anywhere? Weren't you warned, I'm asking you?'
`I was wor... wer... warned...' the administrator answered,
suffocating.
`And you skipped off anyway? Gimme the briefcase, vermin!' the second
one cried in the same nasal voice that had come over the telephone, and he
yanked the briefcase from Varenukha's trembling hands.
And the two picked the administrator up under the arms, dragged him out
of the garden, and raced down Sadovaya with him. The storm raged at full
force, water streamed with a noise and howling down the drains, waves
bubbled and billowed everywhere, water gushed from the roofs past the
other things. And so you, a very nervous and high-strung man, started going
around the city, telling about Pontius Pilate. It's quite natural that
you're taken for a madman. Your salvation now lies in just one thing -
complete peace. And you absolutely must remain here.'
'But he has to be caught!' Ivan exclaimed, imploringly now.
'Very good, sir, but why should you go running around yourself? Explain
all your suspicions and accusations against this man on paper. Nothing could
be simpler than to send your declaration to the proper quarters, and if, as
you think, we are dealing with a criminal, it will be clarified very
quickly. But only on one condition: don't strain your head, and try to think
less about Pontius Pilate. People say all kinds of things! One mustn't
believe everything.'
'Understood!' Ivan declared resolutely. `I ask to be given pen and
paper.'
'Give him paper and a short pencil,' Stravinsky ordered the fat woman,
and to Ivan he said: 'But I don't advise you to write today.'
'No, no, today, today without fail!' Ivan cried out in alarm.
'Well, all right. Only don't strain your head. If it doesn't come out
today, it will tomorrow.'
'He'll escape.'
'Oh, no,' Stravinsky objected confidently, 'he won't escape anywhere, I
guarantee that. And remember that here with us you'll be helped in all
possible ways, and without us nothing will come of it. Do you hear me?'
Stravinsky suddenly asked meaningly and took Ivan Nikolaevich by both hands.
Holding them in his own, he repeated for a long time, his eyes fixed on
Ivan's:
'You'll be helped here... do you hear me?... You'll be helped here...
you'll get relief... it's quiet here, all peaceful... you'll be helped
here...'
Ivan Nikolaevich unexpectedly yawned, and the expression on his face
softened.
'Yes, yes,' he said quietly.
'Well, how very nice!' Stravinsky concluded the conversation in his
usual way and stood up: 'Goodbye!' He shook Ivan's hand and, on his way out,
turned to the one with the little beard and said: 'Yes, and try oxygen...
and baths.'
A few moments later there was no Stravinsky or his retinue before Ivan.
Beyond the window grille, in the noonday sun, the joyful and springtime
pine wood stood beautiful on the other bank and, closer by, the river
sparkled.
Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the tenants' association' [1] of
no.302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow, where the late Berlioz used to
reside, had been having the most terrible troubles, starting from that
Wednesday night.
At midnight, as we already know, a commission of which Zheldybin formed
a part came to the house, summoned Nikanor Ivanovich, told him about the
death of Berlioz, and together with him went to apartment no.50.
There the sealing of the deceased's manuscripts and belongings was
carried out. Neither Grunya, the daytime housekeeper, nor the light-minded
Stepan Bogdanovich was there at the time. The commission announced to
Nikanor Ivanovich that it would take the deceased's manuscripts for sorting
out, that his living space, that is, three rooms (the former study, living
room and dining room of the jeweller's wife), reverted to the disposal of
the tenants' association, and that the belongings were to be kept in the
aforementioned living space until the heirs were announced.
The news of Berlioz's death spread through the whole house with a sort
of supernatural speed, and as of seven o'clock Thursday morning, Bosoy began
to receive telephone calls and then personal visits with declarations
containing claims to the deceased's living space. In the period of two
hours, Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such declarations.
They contained pleas, threats, libels, denunciations, promises to do
renovations at their own expense, references to unbearable overcrowding and
the impossibility of living in the same apartment with bandits. Among others
there were a description, staggering in its artistic power, of the theft
from apartment no. 51 of some meat dumplings, tucked directly into the
pocket of a suit jacket, two vows to end life by suicide and one confession
of secret pregnancy.
Nikanor Ivanovich was called out to the front hall of his apartment,
plucked by the sleeve, whispered to, winked at, promised that he would not
be left the loser.
This torture went on until noon, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply fled his
apartment for the management office by the gate, but when he saw them lying
in wait for him there, too, he fled that place as well. Having somehow
shaken off those who followed on his heels across the asphalt-paved
courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich disappeared into the sixth entrance and went up
to the fifth floor, where this vile apartment no.50 was located.
After catching his breath on the landing, the corpulent Nikanor
Ivanovich rang, but no one opened for him. He rang again, and then again,
and started grumbling and swearing quietly. Even then no one opened. His
patience exhausted, Nikanor Ivanovich took from his pocket a bunch of
duplicate keys belonging to the house management, opened the door with a
sovereign hand, and went in.
'Hey, housekeeper!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried in the semi-dark front
hall. 'Grunya, or whatever your name is! ... Are you here?'
No one responded.
Then Nikanor Ivanovich took a folding ruler from his briefcase, removed
the seal from the door to the study, and stepped in. Stepped in, yes, but
halted in amazement in the doorway and even gave a start.
At the deceased's desk sat an unknown, skinny, long citizen in a little
checkered jacket, a jockey's cap, and a pince-nez... well, in short, that
same one.
'And who might you be, citizen?' Nikanor Ivanovich asked fearfully.
'Hah! Nikanor Ivanovich!' the unexpected citizen yelled in a rattling
tenor and, jumping up, greeted the chairman with a forced and sudden
handshake. This greeting by no means gladdened Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Excuse me,' he said suspiciously, 'but who might you be? Are you an
official person?'
'Eh, Nikanor Ivanovich!' the unknown man exclaimed soulfully. "What are
official and unofficial persons? It all depends on your point of view on the
subject. It's all fluctuating and relative, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I'm an
unofficial person, and tomorrow, lo and behold, I'm an official one! And it
also happens the other way round - oh, how it does!'
This argument in no way satisfied the chairman of the house management.
Being a generally suspicious person by nature, he concluded that the man
holding forth in front of him was precisely an unofficial person, and
perhaps even an idle one.
"Yes, but who might you be? What's your name?' the chairman inquired
with increasing severity and even began to advance upon the unknown man.
`My name,' the citizen responded, not a bit put out by the severity,
'well, let's say it's Koroviev. But wouldn't you like a little snack,
Nikanor Ivanovich? No formalities, eh?'
`Excuse me,' Nikanor Ivanovich began, indignantly now, `what have
snacks got to do with it!' (We must confess, unpleasant as it is, that
Nikanor Ivanovich was of a somewhat rude nature.) 'Sitting in the deceased's
half is not permitted! What are you doing here?'
`Have a seat, Nikanor Ivanovich,' the citizen went on yelling, not a
bit at a loss, and began fussing about offering the chairman a seat.
Utterly infuriated, Nikanor Ivanovich rejected the seat and screamed:
'But who are you?'
'I, if you please, serve as interpreter for a foreign individual who
has taken up residence in this apartment,' the man calling himself Koroviev
introduced himself and clicked the heels of his scuffed, unpolished shoes.
Nikanor Ivanovich opened his mouth. The presence of some foreigner in
this apartment, with an interpreter to boot, came as a complete surprise to
him, and he demanded explanations.
The interpreter explained willingly. A foreign artiste, Mr Woland, had
been kindly invited by the director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich
Likhodeev, to spend the time of his performances, a week or so, in his
apartment, about which he had written to Nikanor Ivanovich yesterday,
requesting that he register the foreigner as a temporary resident, while
Likhodeev himself took a trip to Yalta.
'He never wrote me anything,' the chairman said in amazement.
`Just look through your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,' Koroviev
suggested sweetly.
Nikanor Ivanovich, shrugging his shoulders, opened the briefcase and
found Likhodeev's letter in it.
`How could I have forgotten about it?' Nikanor Ivanovich muttered,
looking dully at the opened envelope.
`All sorts of things happen, Nikanor Ivanovich, all sorts!' Koroviev
rattled. 'Absent-mindedness, absent-mindedness, fatigue and high blood
pressure, my dear friend Nikanor Ivanovich! I'm terribly absent-minded
myself! Someday, over a glass, I'll tell you a few facts from my biography -
you'll die laughing!'
'And when is Likhodeev going to Yalta?'
`He's already gone, gone!' the interpreter cried. `He's already
wheeling along, you know! He's already devil knows where!' And here the
interpreter waved his arms like the wings of a windmill.
Nikanor Ivanovich declared that he must see the foreigner in person,
but got a refusal on that from the interpreter: quite impossible. He's busy.
Training the cat.
'The cat I can show you, if you like,' Koroviev offered.
This Nikanor Ivanovich refused in his turn, and the interpreter
straight away made the chairman an unexpected but quite interesting
proposal: seeing that Mr Woland had no desire whatsoever to live in a hotel,
and was accustomed to having a lot of space, why shouldn't the tenants'
association rent to him, Woland, for one little week, the time of his
performances in Moscow, the whole of the apartment, that is, the deceased's
rooms as well?
'It's all the same to him - the deceased - you must agree, Nikanor
Ivanovich,' Koroviev whispered hoarsely. 'He doesn't need the apartment now,
does he?'
Nikanor Ivanovich, somewhat perplexed, objected that foreigners ought
to live at the Metropol, and not in private apartments at all...
`I'm telling you, he's capricious as devil knows what!' Koroviev
whispered. 'He just doesn't want to! He doesn't like hotels! I've had them
up to here, these foreign tourists!' Koroviev complained confidentially,
jabbing his finger at his sinewy neck. 'Believe me, they wring the soul
right out of you! They come and either spy on you like the lowest son of a
bitch, or else torment you with their caprices - this isn't right and that
isn't right!... And for your association, Nikanor Ivanovich, it's a sheer
gain and an obvious profit. He won't stint on money.' Koroviev looked around
and then whispered into the chairman's ear: 'A millionaire!'
The interpreter's offer made clear practical sense, it was a very solid
offer, yet there was something remarkably unsolid in his manner of speaking,
and in his clothes, and in that loathsome, good-for-nothing pince-nez. As a
result, something vague weighed on the chairman's soul, but he nevertheless
decided to accept the offer. The thing was that the tenants' association,
alas, had quite a sizeable deficit. Fuel had to be bought for the heating
system by fall, but who was going to shell out for it - no one knew. But
with the foreign tourist's money, it might be possible to wriggle out of it.
However, the practical and prudent Nikanor Ivanovich said he would
first have to settle the question with the foreign tourist bureau.
`I understand!' Koroviev cried out. `You've got to settle it!
Absolutely! Here's the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, settle it at once!
And don't be shy about the money,' he added in a whisper, drawing the
chairman to the telephone in the front hall, 'if he won't pay, who will! You
should see the villa he's got in Nice! Next summer, when you go abroad, come
especially to see it - you'll gasp!'
The business with the foreign tourist bureau was arranged over the
phone with an extraordinary speed, quite amazing to the chairman. It turned
out that they already knew about Mr Woland's intention of staying in
Likhodeev's private apartment and had no objections to it.
`That's wonderful!' Koroviev yelled. Somewhat stunned by his chatter,
the chairman announced that the tenants' association agreed to rent
apartment no.50 for a week to the artiste Woland, for... Nikanor Ivanovich
faltered a little, then said:
'For five hundred roubles a day.'
Here Koroviev utterly amazed the chairman. Winking thievishly in the
direction of the bedroom, from which the soft leaps of a heavy cat could be
heard, he rasped out:
'So it comes to three thousand five hundred for the week?'
To which Nikanor Ivanovich thought he was going to add: 'Some appetite
you've got, Nikanor Ivanovich!' but Koroviev said something quite different:
'What kind of money is that? Ask five, he'll pay it.'
Grinning perplexedly, Nikanor Ivanovich, without noticing how, found
himself at the deceased's writing desk, where Koroviev with great speed and
dexterity drew up a contract in two copies. Then he flew to the bedroom with
them and came back, both copies now bearing the foreigner's sweeping
signature. The chairman also signed the contract. Here Koroviev asked for a
receipt for five...
Write it out, write it out, Nikanor Ivanovich!... thousand roubles...'
And with words somehow unsuited to serious business - 'Bin, zwei, drei!' -
he laid out for the chairman five stacks of new banknotes.
The counting-up took place, interspersed with Koroviev's quips and
quiddities, such as 'Cash loves counting', 'Your own eye won't lie', and
others of the same sort.
After counting the money, the chairman received from Koroviev the
foreigner's passport for temporary registration, put it, together with the
contract and the money, into his briefcase, and, somehow unable to help
himself, sheepishly asked for a free pass...
'Don't mention it!' bellowed Koroviev. 'How many tickets do you want,
Nikanor Ivanovich - twelve, fifteen?'
The flabbergasted chairman explained that all he needed was a couple of
passes, for himself and Pelageya Antonovna, his wife.
Koroviev snatched out a notebook at once and dashed off a pass for
Nikanor Ivanovich, for two persons in the front row. And with his left hand
the interpreter deftly slipped this pass to Nikanor Ivanovich, while with
his right he put into the chairman's other hand a thick, crackling wad.
Casting an eye on it, Nikanor Ivanovich blushed deeply and began to
push it away.
'It isn't done...' he murmured.
'I won't hear of it,' Koroviev whispered right in his ear. 'With us
it's not done, but with foreigners it is. You'll offend him, Nikanor
Ivanovich, and that's embarrassing. You've worked hard...'
`It's severely punishable,' the chairman whispered very, very softly
and glanced over his shoulder.
'But where are the witnesses?' Koroviev whispered into his other ear.
'I ask you, where are they? You don't think... ?'
Here, as the chairman insisted afterwards, a miracle occurred: the wad
crept into his briefcase by itself. And then the chairman, somehow limp and
even broken, found himself on the stairs. A whirlwind of thoughts raged in
his head. There was the villa in Nice, and the trained cat, and the thought
that there were in fact no witnesses, and that Pelageya Antonovna would be
delighted with the pass. They were incoherent thoughts, but generally
pleasant. But, all the same, somewhere, some little needle kept pricking the
chairman in the very bottom of his soul. This was the needle of anxiety.
Besides, right then on the stairs the chairman was seized, as with a
stroke, by the thought: 'But how did the interpreter get into the study if
the door was sealed?! And how was it that he, Nikanor Ivanovich, had not
asked about it?' For some time the chairman stood staring like a sheep at
the steps of the stairway, but then he decided to spit on it and not torment
himself with intricate questions...
As soon as the chairman left the apartment, a low voice came from the
bedroom:
'I didn't like this Nikanor Ivanovich. He is a chiseller and a crook.
Can it be arranged so that he doesn't come any more?'
'Messire, you have only to say the word...' Koroviev responded from
somewhere, not in a rattling but in a very clear and resounding voice.
And at once the accursed interpreter turned up in the front hall,
dialled a number there, and for some reason began speaking very tearfully
into the receiver:
'Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that the chairman of our
tenants' association at no.502-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is
speculating in foreign currency. [2] At the present moment, in his apartment
no. 55, he has four hundred dollars wrapped up in newspaper in the
ventilation of the privy. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the
said house, apartment no. 11. But I adjure you to keep my name a secret. I
fear the vengeance of the above-stated chairman.'
And he hung up, the scoundrel!
What happened next in apartment no.50 is not known, but it is known
what happened at Nikanor Ivanovich's. Having locked himself in the privy
with the hook, he took from his briefcase the wad foisted on him by the
interpreter and satisfied himself that it contained four hundred roubles.
Nikanor Ivanovich wrapped this wad in a scrap of newspaper and put it
into the ventilation duct.
Five minutes later the chairman was sitting at the table in his small
dining room. His wife brought pickled herring from the kitchen, neatly
sliced and thickly sprinkled with green onion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured
himself a dram of vodka, drank it, poured another, drank it, picked up three
pieces of herring on his fork... and at that moment the doorbell rang.
Pelageya Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming pot which, one could
tell at once from a single glance, contained, amidst a fiery borscht, that
than which there is nothing more delicious in the world - a marrow bone.
Swallowing his spittle, Nikanor Ivanovich growled like a dog:
'Damn them all! Won't allow a man to eat... Don't let anyone in, I'm
not here, not here... If it's about the apartment, tell them to stop
blathering, there'll be a meeting next week.'
His wife ran to the front hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, using a ladle,
drew from the fire-breathing lake - it, the bone, cracked lengthwise. And at
that moment two citizens entered the dining room, with Pelageya Antonovna
following them, for some reason looking very pale. Seeing the citizens,
Nikanor Ivanovich also turned white and stood up.
'Where's the Jakes?' the first one, in a white side-buttoned shirt,
asked with a preoccupied air.
Something thudded against the dining table (this was Nikanor Ivanovich
dropping the ladle on to the oilcloth).
'This way, this way,' Pelageya Antonovna replied in a patter.
And the visitors immediately hastened to the corridor.
^What's the matter?' Nikanor Ivanovich asked quietly, going after the
visitors. `There can't be anything like that in our apartment... And - your
papers... begging your pardon...'
The first, without stopping, showed Nikanor Ivanovich a paper, and the
second was at the same moment standing on a stool in the privy, his arm in
the ventilation duct. Everything went dark in Nikanor Ivanovich's eyes. The
newspaper was removed, but in the wad there were not roubles but some
unknown money, bluish-greenish, and with the portrait of some old man.
However, Nikanor Ivanovich saw it all dimly, there were some sort of
spots floating in front of his eyes.
'Dollars in the ventilation...' the first said pensively and asked
Nikanor Ivanovich gently and courteously: 'Your little wad?'
'No!' Nikanor Ivanovich replied in a dreadful voice. 'Enemies stuck me
with it!'
'That happens,' the first agreed and added, again gently: 'Well, you're
going to have to turn in the rest.'
'I haven't got any! I swear to God, I never laid a finger on it!' the
chairman cried out desperately.
He dashed to the chest, pulled a drawer out with a clatter, and from it
the briefcase, crying out incoherently:
'Here's the contract... that vermin of an interpreter stuck me with
it... Koroviev... in a pince-nez!...'
He opened the briefcase, glanced into it, put a hand inside, went blue
in the face, and dropped the briefcase into the borscht. There was nothing
in the briefcase: no letter from Styopa, no contract, no foreigner's
passport, no money, no theatre pass. In short, nothing except a folding
ruler.
'Comrades!' the chairman cried frenziedly. `Catch them! There are
unclean powers in our house!'
It is not known what Pelageya Antonovna imagined here, only she clasped
her hands and cried:
'Repent, Ivanych! You'll get off lighter.'
His eyes bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich raised his fists over his wife's
head, croaking:
'Ohh, you damned fool!'
Here he went slack and sank down on a chair, evidently resolved to
submit to the inevitable.
During this time, Timofei Kondratievich Kvastsov stood on the landing,
placing now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole of the door to the
chairman's apartment, melting with curiosity.
Five minutes later the tenants of the house who were in the courtyard
saw the chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceed directly to the
gates of the house. It was said that Nikanor Ivanovich looked awful,
staggered like a drunk man as he passed, and was muttering something.
And an hour after that an unknown citizen appeared in apartment no. 11,
just as Timofei Kondratievich, spluttering with delight, was telling some
other tenants how the chairman got pinched, motioned to Timofei
Kondratievich with his finger to come from the kitchen to the front hall,
said something to him, and together they vanished.
At the same time that disaster struck Nikanor Ivanovich, not far away
from no.502-bis, on the same Sadovaya Street, in the office of the financial
director of the Variety Theatre, Rimsky, there sat two men: Rimsky himself,
and the administrator of the Variety, Varenukha [1].'
The big office on the second floor of the theatre had two windows on
Sadovaya and one, just behind the back of the findirector, who was sitting
at his desk, facing the summer garden of the Variety, where there were
refreshment stands, a shooting gallery and an open-air stage. The
furnishings of the office, apart from the desk, consisted of a bunch of old
posters hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water on it,
four armchairs and, in the corner, a stand on which stood a dust-covered
scale model of some past review. Well, it goes without saying that, in
addition, there was in the office a small, shabby, peeling fireproof safe,
to Rimsky's left, next to the desk.
Rimsky, now sitting at his desk, had been in bad spirits since morning,
while Varenukha, on the contrary, was very animated and somehow especially
restlessly active. Yet there was no outlet for his energy.
Varenukha was presently hiding in the findirector's office to escape
the seekers of free passes, who poisoned his life, especially on days when
the programme changed. And today was precisely such a day. As soon as the
telephone started to ring, Varenukha would pick up the receiver and lie into
it:
"Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He stepped out.'
'Please call Likhodeev again,' Rimsky asked vexedly.
'He's not home. I even sent Karpov, there's no one in the apartment.'
`Devil knows what's going on!' Rimisky hissed, clacking on the adding
machine.
The door opened and an usher dragged in a thick stack of freshly
printed extra posters; in big red letters on a green background was printed:
Today and Every Day at the Variety Theatre
an Additional Programme
PROFESSOR WOLAND
Sposters out
immediately to be pasted up.
'Good... Loud!' Varenukha observed on the usher's departure.
`And I dislike this undertaking extremely,' Rimsky grumbled, glancing
spitefully at the poster through his horn-rimmed glasses, 'and generally I'm
surprised he's been allowed to present it.'
'No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say so! This is a very subdue step. The
salt is all in the exposure.'
`I don't know, I don't know, there's no salt, in my opinion... and he's
always coming up with things like this! ... He might at least show us his
magician! Have you seen him? Where he dug him up, devil knows!'
It turned out that Varenukha had not seen the magician any more than
Rimsky had. Yesterday Styopa had come running ('like crazy', in Rimsky's
expression) to the findirector with the already written draft of a contract,
ordered it copied straight away and the money handed over to Woland. And
this magician had cleared out, and no one had seen him except Styopa
himself.
Rimsky took out his watch, saw that it read five minutes past two, and
flew into a complete rage. Really! Likhodeev had called at around eleven,
said he'd come in half an hour, and not only had not come, but had
disappeared from his apartment.
'He's holding up my business!' Rimsky was roaring now, jabbing his
finger at a pile of unsigned papers.
'Might he have fallen under a tram-car like Berlioz?' Varenukha said as
he held his ear to the receiver, from which came low, prolonged and utterly
hopeless signals.
"Wouldn't be a bad thing...' Rimsky said barely audibly through his
teeth.
At that same moment a woman in a uniform jacket, visored cap, black
skirt and sneakers came into the office. From a small pouch at her belt the
woman took a small white square and a notebook and asked:
"Who here is Variety? A super-lightning telegram. [2] Sign here.'
Varenukha scribbled some flourish in the woman's notebook, and as soon
as the door slammed behind her, he opened the square. After reading the
telegram, he blinked and handed the square to Rimsky.
The telegram contained the following: `Yalta to Moscow Variety. Today
eleven thirty brown-haired man came criminal investigation nightshirt
trousers shoeless mental case gave name Likhodeev Director Variety Wire
Yalta criminal investigation where Director Likhodeev.'
`Hello and how do you do!' Rimsky exclaimed, and added: 'Another
surprise!'
'A false Dmitri!'[3] said Varenukha, and he spoke into the receiver.
Telegraph office? Variety account. Take a super-lightning telegram. Are you
listening? "Yalta criminal investigation. Director Likhodeev Moscow
Findirector Rimsky."'
Irrespective of the news about the Yalta impostor, Varenukha again
began searching all over for Styopa by telephone, and naturally did not find
him anywhere.
Just as Varenukha, receiver in hand, was pondering where else he might
call, the same woman who had brought the first telegram came in and handed
Varenukha a new envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read the message
and whistled.
'What now?' Rimsky asked, twitching nervously.
Varenukha silently handed him the telegram, and the findirector saw
there the words: `Beg believe thrown Yalta Woland hypnosis wire criminal
investigation confirm identity Likhodeev.'
Rimsky and Varenukha, their heads touching, reread the telegram, and
after rereading it, silently stared at each other.
'Citizens!' the woman got angry. 'Sign, and then be silent as much as
you like! I deliver lightnings!'
Varenukha, without taking his eyes off the telegram, made a crooked
scrawl in the notebook, and the woman vanished.
'Didn't you talk with him on the phone at a little past eleven?' the
administrator began in total bewilderment.
'No, it's ridiculous!' Rimsky cried shrilly. Talk or not, he can't be
in Yalta now! It's ridiculous!'
'He's drunk...' said Varenukha.
"Who's drunk?' asked Rimsky, and again the two stared at each other.
That some impostor or madman had sent telegrams from Yalta, there was
no doubt. But the strange thing was this: how did the Yalta mystifier know
Woland, who had come to Moscow just the day before? How did he know about
the connection between Likhodeev and Woland?
'Hypnosis...' Varenukha kept repeating the word from the telegram.
'How does he know about Woland?' He blinked his eyes and suddenly cried
resolutely: 'Ah, no! Nonsense! ... Nonsense, nonsense!'
'Where's he staying, this Woland, devil take him?' asked Rimsky.
Varenukha immediately got connected with the foreign tourist bureau
and, to Rimsky's utter astonishment, announced that Woland was staying in
Likhodeev's apartment. Dialling the number of the Likhodeev apartment after
that, Varenukha listened for a long time to the low buzzing in the receiver.
Amidst the buzzing, from somewhere far away, came a heavy, gloomy voice
singing: '... rocks, my refuge ...'[4] and Varenukha decided that the
telephone lines had crossed with a voice from a radio show.
The apartment doesn't answer,' Varenukha said, putting down the
receiver, 'or maybe I should call...'
He did not finish. The same woman appeared in the door, and both men,
Rimsky and Varenukha, rose to meet her, while she took from her pouch not a
white sheet this time, but some sort of dark one.
This is beginning to get interesting,' Varenukha said through his
teeth, his eyes following the hurriedly departing woman. Rimsky was the
first to take hold of the sheet.
On a dark background of photographic paper, some black handwritten
lines were barely discernible:
'Proof my handwriting my signature wire urgently confirmation place
secret watch Woland Likhodeev.'
In his twenty years of work in the theatre, Varenukha had seen all
kinds of sights, but here he felt his mind becoming obscured as with a veil,
and he could find nothing to say but the at once mundane and utterly absurd
phrase:
This cannot be!'
Rimsky acted otherwise. He stood up, opened the door, barked out to the
messenger girl sitting on a stool:
'Let no one in except postmen!' - and locked the door with a key.
Then he took a pile of papers out of the desk and began carefully to
compare the bold, back-slanting letters of the photogram with the letters in
Styopa's resolutions and signatures, furnished with a corkscrew flourish.
Varenukha, leaning his weight on the table, breathed hotly on Rimsky's
cheek.
`It's his handwriting,' the findirector finally said firmly, and
Varenukha repeated like an echo:
'His.'
Peering into Rimsky's face, the administrator marvelled at the change
that had come over this face. Thin to begin with, the findirector seemed to
have grown still thinner and even older, his eyes in their horn rims had
lost their customary prickliness, and there appeared in them not only alarm,
but even sorrow.
Varenukha did everything that a man in a moment of great astonishment
ought to do. He raced up and down the office, he raised his arms twice like
one crucified, he drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe and
exclaimed:
'I don't understand! I don't understand! I don't un-der-stand!'
Rimsky meanwhile was looking out the window, thinking hard about
something. The findirector's position was very difficult. It was necessary
at once, right on the spot, to invent ordinary explanations for
extraordinary phenomena.
Narrowing his eyes, the findirector pictured to himself Styopa, in a
nightshirt and shoeless, getting into some unprecedented super-high-speed
airplane at around half past eleven that morning, and then the same Styopa,
also at half past eleven, standing in his stocking feet at the airport in
Yalta ... devil knew what to make of it!
Maybe it was not Styopa who talked with him this morning over the phone
from his own apartment? No, it was Styopa speaking! Who if not he should
know Styopa's voice? And even if it was not Styopa speaking today, it was no
earlier than yesterday, towards evening, that Styopa had come from his
office to this very office with this idiotic contract and annoyed the
findirector with his light-mindedness. How could he have gone or flown away
without leaving word at the theatre? But if he had flown away yesterday
evening - he would not have arrived by noon today. Or would he?
'How many miles is it to Yalta?' asked Rimsky.
Varenukha stopped his running and yelled:
'I thought of that! I already thought of it! By train it's over nine
hundred miles to Sebastopol, plus another fifty to Yalta! Well, but by air,
of course, it's less.'
Hm ... Yes ... There could be no question of any trains. But what then?
Some fighter plane? Who would let Styopa on any fighter plane without his
shoes? What for? Maybe he took his shoes off when he got to Yalta? It's the
same thing: what for? And even with his shoes on they wouldn't have let him
on a fighter! And what has the fighter got to do with it? It's written that
he came to the investigators at half past eleven in the morning, and he
talked on the telephone in Moscow ... excuse me ... (the face of Rimsky's
watch emerged before his eyes).
Rimsky tried to remember where the hands had been ... Terrible! It had
been twenty minutes past eleven!
So what does it boil down to? If one supposes that after the
conversation Styopa instantly rushed to the airport, and reached it in, say,
five minutes (which, incidentally, was also unthinkable), it means that the
plane, taking off at once, covered nearly a thousand miles in five minutes.
Consequently, it was flying at twelve thousand miles an hour!!! That
cannot be, and that means he's not in Yalta!
What remains, then? Hypnosis? There's no hypnosis in the world that can
fling a man a thousand miles away! So he's imagining that he's in Yalta? He
may be imagining it, but are the Yalta investigators also imagining it? No,
no, sorry, that can't be! ... Yet they did telegraph from there?
The findirector's face was literally dreadful. The door handle was all
the while being turned and pulled from outside, and the messenger girl could
be heard through the door crying desperately:
'Impossible! I won't let you! Cut me to pieces! It's a meeting!'
Rimsky regained control of himself as well as he could, took the
receiver of the phone, and said into it:
'A super-urgent call to Yalta, please.'
'Clever!' Varenukha observed mentally.
But the conversation with Yalta did not take place. Rimsky hung up the
receiver and said:
'As luck would have it, the line's broken.'
It could be seen that the broken line especially upset him for some
reason, and even made him lapse into thought. Having thought a little, he
again took the receiver in one hand, and with the other began writing down
what he said into it:
Take a super-lightning. Variety. Yes. Yalta criminal investigation.
Yes. 'Today around eleven thirty Likhodeev talked me phone Moscow stop After
that did not come work unable locate by phone stop Confirm handwriting stop
Taking measures watch said artiste Findirector Rimsky.'"
'Very clever!' thought Varenukha, but before he had time to think well,
the words rushed through his head: 'Stupid! He can't be in Yalta!'
Rimsky meanwhile did the following: he neatly stacked all the received
telegrams, plus the copy of his own, put the stack into an envelope, sealed
it, wrote a few words on it, and handed it to Varenukha, saying:
'Go right now, Ivan Savelyevich, take it there personally. [5] Let them
sort it out.'
'Now that is really clever!' thought Varenukha, and he put the envelope
into his briefcase. Then, just in case, he dialled Styopa's apartment number
on the telephone, listened, and began winking and grimacing joyfully and
mysteriously. Rimsky stretched his neck.
'May I speak with the artiste Woland?' Varenukha asked sweetly.
`Mister's busy,' the receiver answered in a rattling voice, 'who's
calling?'
The administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.'
`Ivan Savelyevich?' the receiver cried out joyfully. Terribly glad to
hear your voice! How're you doing?'
'Merci,' Varenukha replied in amazement, 'and with whom am I speaking?'
'His assistant, his assistant and interpreter, Koroviev!' crackled the
receiver. 'I'm entirely at your service, my dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Order
me around as you like. And so?'
`Excuse me, but ... what, is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at home
now?'
'Alas, no! No!' the receiver shouted. 'He left!'
'For where?'
'Out of town, for a drive in the car.'
'Wh ... what? A dr ... drive? And when will he be back?'
'He said, I'll get a breath of fresh air and come back.'
`So...' said the puzzled Varenukha, 'merci ... kindly tell Monsieur
Woland that his performance is tonight in the third part of the programme.'
'Right. Of course. Absolutely. Urgently. Without fail. I'll tell
him,'the receiver rapped out abruptly.
'Goodbye,' Varenukha said in astonishment.
'Please accept,' said the receiver, 'my best, warmest greetings and
wishes! For success! Luck! Complete happiness! Everything!'
'But of course! Didn't I say so!' the administrator cried agitatedly.
'It's not any Yalta, he just went to the country!'
'Well, if that's so,' the findirector began, turning pale with anger,
'it's real swinishness, there's even no name for it!'
Here the administrator jumped up and shouted so that Rimsky gave a
start:
`I remember! I remember! They've opened a new Georgian tavern in
Pushkino called "Yalta"! It's all clear! He went there, got drunk, and now
he's sending telegrams from there!'
'Well, now that's too much!' Rimsky answered, his cheek twitching, and
deep, genuine anger burned in his eyes. 'Well, then, he's going to pay
dearly for this little excursion! ...' He suddenly faltered and added
irresolutely: 'But what about the criminal investigation ...'
'It's nonsense! His own little jokes,' the expansive administrator
interrupted, and asked: 'Shall I take the envelope?'
'Absolutely,' replied Rimsky.
And again the door opened and in came that same ... 'Her!' thought
Rimsky, for some reason with anguish. And both men rose to meet the
postwoman.
This time the telegram contained the words:
Thank you confirmation send five hundred urgently criminal
investigation my name tomorrow fly Moscow Likhodeev.'
'He's lost his mind...' Varenukha said weakly.
Rimsky jingled his key, took money from the fireproof safe, counted out
five hundred roubles, rang the bell, handed the messenger the money, and
sent him to the telegraph office.
'Good heavens, Grigory Danilovich,' Varenukha said, not believing his
eyes, 'in my opinion you oughtn't to send the money.'
'It'll come back,' Rimsky replied quietly, 'but he'll have a hard time
explaining this little picnic.' And he added, indicating the briefcase to
Varenukha: 'Go, Ivan Savelyevich, don't delay.'
And Varenukha ran out of the office with the briefcase.
He went down to the ground floor, saw the longest line at the box
office, found out from the box-office girl that she expected to sell out
within the hour, because the public was simply pouring in since the
additional poster had been put up, told the girl to earmark and hold thirty
of the best seats in the gallery and the stalls, popped out of the box
office, shook off importunate pass-seekers as he ran, and dived into his
little office to get his cap. At that moment the telephone rattled.
'Yes!' Varenukha shouted.
'Ivan Savelyevich?' the receiver inquired in a most repulsive nasal
voice.
'He's not in the theatre!' Varenukha was shouting, but the receiver
interrupted him at once:
'Don't play the fool, Ivan Savelyevich, just listen. Do not take those
telegrams anywhere or show them to anyone.'
'Who is this?' Varenukha bellowed. 'Stop these jokes, citizen! You'll
be found out at once! What's your number?'
'Varenukha,' the same nasty voice returned, 'do you understand Russian?
Don't take the telegrams anywhere.'
'Ah, so you won't stop?' the administrator cried furiously. 'Look out,
then! You're going to pay for it!' He shouted some other threat, but fell
silent, because he sensed that no one was listening to him any longer in the
receiver.
Here it somehow began to grow dark very quickly in his little office.
Varenukha ran out, slammed the door behind him, and rushed through the
side entrance into the summer garden.
The administrator was agitated and full of energy. After the insolent
phone call he had no doubts that it was a band of hooligans playing nasty
tricks, and that these tricks were connected with the disappearance of
Likhodeev. The administrator was choking with the desire to expose the
malefactors, and, strange as it was, the anticipation of something enjoyable
was born in him. It happens that way when a man strives to become the centre
of attention, to bring sensational news somewhere.
In the garden the wind blew in the administrator's face and flung sand
in his eyes, as if blocking his way, as if cautioning him. A window on the
second floor slammed so that the glass nearly broke, the tops of the maples
and lindens rustled alarmingly. It became darker and colder. The
administrator rubbed his eyes and saw that a yellow-bellied storm cloud was
creeping low over Moscow. There came a dense, distant rumbling.
However great Varenukha's hurry, an irrepressible desire pulled at him
to run over to the summer toilet for a second on his way, to check whether
the repairman had put a wire screen over the light-bulb.
Running past the shooting gallery, Varenukha came to a thick growth of
lilacs where the light-blue toilet building stood. The repairman turned out
to be an efficient fellow, the bulb under the roof of the gentlemen's side
was covered with a wire screen, but the administrator was upset that even in
the pre-storm darkness one could make out that the walls were already
written all over in charcoal and pencil.
'Well, what sort of...' the administrator began and suddenly heard a
voice purring behind him:
'Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?'
Varenukha started, turned around, and saw before him a short, fat man
with what seemed to him a cat-like physiognomy.
'So, it's me', Varenukha answered hostilely.
'Very, very glad,' the cat-like fat man responded in a squeaky voice
and, suddenly swinging his arm, gave Varenukha such a blow on the ear that
the cap flew off the administrator's head and vanished without a trace down
the hole in the seat.
At the fat man's blow, the whole toilet lit up momentarily with a
tremulous light, and a roll of thunder echoed in the sky. Then came another
flash and a second man emerged before the administrator - short, but with
athletic shoulders, hair red as fire, albugo in one eye, a fang in his
mouth... This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the
other ear. In response there was another roll of thunder in the sky, and
rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet.
`What is it, comr...' the half-crazed administrator whispered, realized
at once that the word 'comrades' hardly fitted bandits attacking a man in a
public toilet, rasped out: 'citiz...' - figured that they did not merit this
appellation either, and received a third terrible blow from he did not know
which of them, so that blood gushed from his nose on to his Tolstoy blouse.
'What you got in the briefcase, parasite?' the one resembling a cat
cried shrilly. 'Telegrams? Weren't you warned over the phone not to take
them anywhere? Weren't you warned, I'm asking you?'
`I was wor... wer... warned...' the administrator answered,
suffocating.
`And you skipped off anyway? Gimme the briefcase, vermin!' the second
one cried in the same nasal voice that had come over the telephone, and he
yanked the briefcase from Varenukha's trembling hands.
And the two picked the administrator up under the arms, dragged him out
of the garden, and raced down Sadovaya with him. The storm raged at full
force, water streamed with a noise and howling down the drains, waves
bubbled and billowed everywhere, water gushed from the roofs past the