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drainpipes, foamy streams ran from gateways. Everything living got washed
off Sadovaya, and there was no one to save Ivan Savelyevich. Leaping through
muddy rivers, under flashes of lightning, the bandits dragged the half-alive
administrator in a split second to no.502-bis, flew with him through the
gateway, where two barefoot women, holding their shoes and stockings in
their hands, pressed themselves to the wall. Then they dashed into the sixth
entrance, and Varenukha, nearly insane, was taken up to the fifth floor and
thrown down in the semi-dark front hall, so well known to him, of Styopa
Likhodeev's apartment.
Here the two robbers vanished, and in their place there appeared in the
front hall a completely naked girl - red-haired, her eyes burning with a
phosphorescent gleam.
Varenukha understood that this was the most terrible of all things that
had ever happened to him and, moaning, recoiled against the wall. But the
girl came right up to the administrator and placed the palms of her hands on
his shoulders. Varenukha's hair stood on end, because even through the cold,
water-soaked cloth of his Tolstoy blouse he could feel that those palms were
still colder, that their cold was the cold of ice.
`Let me give you a kiss,' the girl said tenderly, and there were
shining eyes right in front of his eyes. Then Varenukha fainted and never
felt the kiss.
The woods on the opposite bank of the river, still lit up by the May
sun an hour earlier, turned dull, smeary, and dissolved.
Water fell down in a solid sheet outside the window. In the sky,
threads flashed every moment, the sky kept bursting open, and the patient's
room was flooded with a tremulous, frightening light.
Ivan quietly wept, sitting on his bed and looking out at the muddy
river boiling with bubbles. At every clap of thunder, he cried out pitifully
and buried his face in his hands. Pages covered with Ivan's writing lay
about on the floor. They had been blown down by the wind that flew into the
room before the storm began.
The poet's attempts to write a statement concerning the terrible
consultant had gone nowhere. As soon as he got the pencil stub and paper
from the fat attendant, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna, he rubbed his
hands in a business-like way and hastily settled himself at the little
table. The beginning came out quite glibly.
To the police. From Massolit member Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless. A
statement. Yesterday evening I came to the Patriarch's Ponds with the
deceased M. A. Berlioz...'
And right there the poet got confused, mainly owing to the word
'deceased'. Some nonsensicality emerged at once: what's this - came with the
deceased? The deceased don't go anywhere! Really, for all he knew, they
might take him for a madman!
Having reflected thus, Ivan Nikolaevich began to correct what he had
written. What came out this time was: '... with M. A. Berlioz, subsequently
deceased ...' This did not satisfy the author either. He had to have
recourse to a third redaction, which proved still worse than the first two:
'Berlioz, who fell under the tram-car...' - and that namesake composer,
unknown to anyone, was also dangling here, so he had to put in: 'not the
composer...'
After suffering over these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed it all out and
decided to begin right off with something very strong, in order to attract
the reader's attention at once, so he wrote that a cat had got on a
tram-car, and then went back to the episode with the severed head. The head
and the consultant's prediction led him to the thought of Pontius Pilate,
and for greater conviction Ivan decided to tell the whole story of the
procurator in full, from the moment he walked out in his white cloak with
blood-red lining to the colonnade of Herod's palace.
Ivan worked assiduously, crossing out what he had written, putting in
new words, and even attempted to draw Pontius Pilate and then a cat standing
on its hind legs. But the drawings did not help, and the further it went,
the more confusing and incomprehensible the poet's statement became.
By the time the frightening cloud with smoking edges appeared from far
off and covered the woods, and the wind began to blow, Ivan felt that he was
strengthless, that he would never be able to manage with the statement, and
he would not pick up the scattered pages, and he wept quietly and bitterly.
The good-natured nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna visited the poet during the
storm, became alarmed on seeing him weeping, closed the blinds so that the
lightning would not frighten the patient, picked up the pages from the
floor, and ran with them for the doctor.
He came, gave Ivan an injection in the arm, and assured him that he
would not weep any more, that everything would pass now, everything would
change, everything would be forgotten.
The doctor proved right. Soon the woods across the river became as
before. It was outlined to the last tree under the sky, which cleared to its
former perfect blue, and the river grew calm. Anguish had begun to leave
Ivan right after the injection, and now the poet lay calmly and looked at
the rainbow that stretched across the sky.
So it went till evening, and he did not even notice how the rainbow
melted away, how the sky saddened and faded, how the woods turned black.
Having drunk some hot milk, Ivan lay down again and marvelled himself
at how changed his thinking was. The accursed, demonic cat somehow softened
in his memory, the severed head did not frighten him any more, and,
abandoning all thought of it, Ivan began to reflect that, essentially, it
was not so bad in the clinic, that Stravinsky was a clever man and a famous
one, and it was quite pleasant to deal with him. Besides, the evening air
was sweet and fresh after the storm.
The house of sorrow was falling asleep. In quiet corridors the frosted
white lights went out, and in their place, according to regulations, faint
blue night-lights were lit, and the careful steps of attendants were heard
more and more rarely on the rubber matting of the corridor outside the door.
Now Ivan lay in sweet languor, glancing at the lamp under its shade,
shedding a softened light from the ceiling, then at the moon rising behind
the black woods, and conversed with himself.
'Why, actually, did I get so excited about Berlioz falling under a
tram-car?' the poet reasoned. `In the final analysis, let him sink! What am
I, in fact, his chum or in-law? If we air the question properly, it turns
out that, in essence, I really did not even know the deceased. What, indeed,
did I know about him? Nothing except that he was bald and terribly eloquent.
And furthermore, citizens,' Ivan continued his speech, addressing someone or
other, `let's sort this out: why, tell me, did I get furious at this
mysterious consultant, magician and professor with the black and empty eye?
Why all this absurd chase after him in underpants and with a candle in
my hand, and then those wild shenanigans in the restaurant?'
'Uh-uh-uh!' the former Ivan suddenly said sternly somewhere, either
inside or over his ear, to the new Ivan. `He did know beforehand that
Berlioz's head would be cut off, didn't he? How could I not get excited?'
'What are we talking about, comrades?' the new Ivan objected to the
old, former Ivan. That things are not quite proper here, even a child can
understand. He's a one-hundred-per-cent outstanding and mysterious person!
But that's the most interesting thing! The man was personally
acquainted with Pontius Pilate, what could be more interesting than that?
And, instead of raising a stupid rumpus at the Ponds, wouldn't it have been
more intelligent to question him politely about what happened further on
with Pilate and his prisoner Ha-Nozri? And I started devil knows what! A
major occurrence, really - a magazine editor gets run over! And so, what, is
the magazine going to shut down for that? Well, what can be done about it?
Man is mortal and, as has rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal. Well, may
he rest in peace! Well, so there'll be another editor, and maybe even more
eloquent than the previous one!'
After dozing for a while, the new Ivan asked the old Ivan
sarcastically:
'And what does it make me, in that case?'
'A fool!' a bass voice said distinctly somewhere, a voice not belonging
to either of the Ivans and extremely like the bass of the consultant.
Ivan, for some reason not offended by the word 'fool', but even
pleasantly surprised at it, smiled and drowsily grew quiet. Sleep was
stealing over Ivan, and he was already picturing a palm tree on its
elephant's leg, and a cat passing by - not scary, but merry - and, in short,
sleep was just about to come over Ivan, when the grille suddenly moved
noiselessly aside, and a mysterious figure appeared on the balcony, hiding
from the moonlight, and shook its finger at Ivan.
Not frightened in the least, Ivan sat up in bed and saw that there was
a man on the balcony. And this man, pressing a finger to his lips,
whispered:
'Shhh! ...'
A small man in a yellow bowler-hat full of holes and with a
pear-shaped, raspberry-coloured nose, in checkered trousers and
patent-leather shoes, rolled out on to the stage of the Variety on an
ordinary two-wheeled bicycle. To the sounds of a foxtrot he made a circle,
and then gave a triumphant shout, which caused his bicycle to rear up. After
riding around on the back wheel, the little man turned upside down,
contrived while in motion to unscrew the front wheel and send it backstage,
and then proceeded on his way with one wheel, turning the pedals with his
hands.
On a tall metal pole with a seat at the top and a single wheel, a plump
blonde rolled out in tights and a little skirt strewn with silver stars, and
began riding in a circle. As he met her, the little man uttered cries of
greeting, doffing his bowler-hat with his foot.
Finally, a little eight-year-old with an elderly face came rolling out
and began scooting about among the adults on a tiny two-wheeler furnished
with an enormous automobile horn.
After making several loops, the whole company, to the alarming
drum-beats of the orchestra, rolled to the very edge of the stage, and the
spectators in the front rows gasped and drew back, because it seemed to the
public that the whole trio with its vehicles was about to crash down into
the orchestra pit.
But the bicycles stopped just at the moment when the front wheels
threatened to slide into the abyss on the heads of the musicians. With a
loud shout of 'Hup!' the cyclists jumped off their vehicles and bowed, the
blonde woman blowing kisses to the public, and the little one tooting a
funny signal on his horn.
Applause shook the building, the light-blue curtain came from both
sides and covered the cyclists, the green `Exit' lights by the doors went
out, and in the web of trapezes under the cupola white spheres lit up like
the sun. It was the intermission before the last part.
The only man who was not the least bit interested in the wonders of the
Giulli family's cycling technique was Grigory Danilovich Rimsky.
In complete solitude he sat in his office, biting his thin lips, a
spasm passing over his face from time to time. To the extraordinary
disappearance of Likhodeev had now been added the wholly unforeseen
disappearance of Varenukha.
Rimsky knew where he had gone, but he had gone and ... not come back!
Rimsky shrugged his shoulders and whispered to himself:
'But what for?'
And it was strange: for such a practical man as the findirector, the
simplest thing would, of course, have been to call the place where Varenukha
had gone and find out what had befallen him, yet until ten o'clock at night
he had been unable to force himself to do it.
At ten, doing outright violence to himself, Rimsky picked up the
receiver and here discovered that his telephone was dead. The messenger
reported that the other telephones in the building were also out of order.
This certainly unpleasant, though hardly supernatural, occurrence for
some reason thoroughly shocked the findirector, but at the same time he was
glad: the need to call fell away.
Just as the red light over the findirector's head lit up and blinked,
announcing the beginning of the intermission, a messenger came in and
informed him of the foreign artiste's arrival. The findirector cringed for
some reason, and, blacker than a storm cloud, went backstage to receive the
visitor, since there was no one else to receive him.
Under various pretexts, curious people kept peeking into the big
dressing room from the corridor, where the signal bell was already ringing.
Among them were conjurers in bright robes and turbans, a skater in a
white knitted jacket, a storyteller pale with powder and the make-up man.
The newly arrived celebrity struck everyone by his marvellously cut
tailcoat, of a length never seen before, and by his having come in a black
half-mask. But most remarkable of all were the black magician's two
companions: a long checkered one with a cracked pince-nez, and a fat black
cat who came into the dressing room on his hind legs and quite nonchalantly
sat on the sofa squinting at the bare make-up lights.
Rimsky attempted to produce a smile on his face, which made it look
sour and spiteful, and bowed to the silent black magician, who was seated on
the sofa beside the cat. There was no handshake. Instead, the easygoing
checkered one made his own introductions to the fin-director, calling
himself 'the gent's assistant'. This circumstance surprised the findirector,
and unpleasantly so: there was decidedly no mention of any assistant in the
contract.
Quite stiffly and drily, Grigory Danilovich inquired of this
fallen-from-the-sky checkered one where the artiste's paraphernalia was.
'Our heavenly diamond, most precious mister director,' the magician's
assistant replied in a rattling voice, 'the paraphernalia is always with us.
Here it is! Ein, zwei, drei!' And, waving his knotty fingers before Rimsky's
eyes, he suddenly took from behind the cat's ear Rimsky's own gold watch and
chain, hitherto worn by the findirector in his waistcoat pocket, under his
buttoned coat, with the chain through a buttonhole.
Rimsky inadvertently clutched his stomach, those present gasped, and
the make-up man, peeking in the doorway, grunted approvingly.
Your little watchie? Kindly take it,' the checkered one said, smiling
casually and offering the bewildered Rimsky his own property on a dirty
palm.
'No getting on a tram with that one,' the storyteller whispered quietly
and merrily to the make-up man.
But the cat pulled a neater trick than the number with the stolen
watch. Getting up from the sofa unexpectedly, he walked on his hind legs to
the dressing table, pulled the stopper out of the carafe with his front paw,
poured water into a glass, drank it, installed the stopper in its place, and
wiped his whiskers with a make-up cloth.
Here no one even gasped, their mouths simply fell open, and the make-up
man whispered admiringly:
'That's class!'
Just then the bells rang alarmingly for the third time, and everyone,
agitated and anticipating an interesting number, thronged out of the
dressing room.
A moment later the spheres went out in the theatre, the footlights
blazed up, lending a reddish glow to the base of the curtain, and in the
lighted gap of the curtain there appeared before the public a plump man,
merry as a baby, with a clean-shaven face, in a rumpled tailcoat and
none-too-fresh shirt. This was the master of ceremonies, well known to all
Moscow - Georges Bengalsky.
'And now, citizens,' Bengalsky began, smiling his baby smile, 'there is
about to come before you ...' Here Bengalsky interrupted himself and spoke
in a different tone: 'I see the audience has grown for the third part. We've
got half the city here! I met a friend the other day and said to him: "Why
don't you come to our show? Yesterday we had half the city." And he says to
me: "I live in the other half!"' Bengalsky paused, waiting for a burst of
laughter, but as no one laughed, he went on: '... And so, now comes the
famous foreign artiste. Monsieur Woland, with a s a wise smile, 'that there's no
such thing in the world, and that it's all just superstition, and Maestro
Woland is simply a perfect master of the technique of conjuring, as we shall
see from the most interesting part, that is, the exposure of this technique,
and since we're all of us to a man both for technique and for its exposure,
let's bring on Mr Woland! ...'
After uttering all this claptrap, Bengalsky pressed his palms together
and waved them in greeting through the slit of the curtain, which caused it
to part with a soft rustic.
The entrance of the magician with his long assistant and the cat, who
came on stage on his hind legs, pleased the audience greatly.
'An armchair for me,' Woland ordered in a low voice, and that same
second an armchair appeared on stage, no one knew how or from where, in
which the magician sat down. 'Tell me, my gentle Fagott,' Woland inquired of
the checkered clown, who evidently had another appellation than Koroviev,
`what do you think, the Moscow populace has changed significantly, hasn't
it?'
The magician looked out at the hushed audience, struck by the
appearance of the armchair out of nowhere.
"That it has, Messire,' Fagott-Koroviev replied in a low voice.
"You're right. The city folk have changed greatly ... externally, that
is ... as has the city itself, incidentally... Not to mention their
clothing, these ... what do you call them ... trams, automobiles ... have
appeared ...'
'Buses ...'-Fagott prompted deferentially.
The audience listened attentively to this conversation, thinking it
constituted a prelude to the magic tricks. The wings were packed with
performers and stage-hands, and among their faces could be seen the tense,
pale face of Rimsky.
The physiognomy of Bengalsky, who had retreated to the side of the
stage, began to show some perplexity. He raised one eyebrow slightly and,
taking advantage of a pause, spoke:
"The foreign artiste is expressing his admiration for Moscow and its
technological development, as well as for the Muscovites.' Here Bengalsky
smiled twice, first to the stalls, then to the gallery.
Woland, Fagott and the cat turned their heads in the direction of the
master of ceremonies.
'Did I express admiration?' the magician asked the checkered Fagott.
'By no means, Messire, you never expressed any admiration,' came the
reply.
Then what is the man saying?'
'He quite simply lied!' the checkered assistant declared sonorously,
for the whole theatre to hear, and turning to Bengalsky, he added:
'Congrats, citizen, you done lied!'
Tittering spattered from the gallery, but Bengalsky gave a start and
goggled his eyes.
'Of course, I'm not so much interested in buses, telephones and other
...'
'Apparatuses,' the checkered one prompted.
'Quite right, thank you,' the magician spoke slowly in a heavy bass,
`as in a question of much greater importance: have the city folk changed
inwardly?'
"Yes, that is the most important question, sir.'
There was shrugging and an exchanging of glances in the wings,
Bengalsky stood all red, and Rimsky was pale. But here, as if sensing the
nascent alarm, the magician said:
'However, we're talking away, my dear Fagott, and the audience is
beginning to get bored. My gentle Fagott, show us some simple little thing
to start with.'
The audience stirred. Fagott and the cat walked along the footlights to
opposite sides of the stage. Fagott snapped his fingers, and with a
rollicking Three, four!' snatched a deck of cards from the air, shuffled it,
and sent it in a long ribbon to the cat. The cat intercepted it and sent it
back. The satiny snake whiffled, Fagott opened his mouth like a nestling and
swallowed it all card by card. After which the cat bowed, scraping his right
hind paw, winning himself unbelievable applause.
'Class! Real class!' rapturous shouts came from the wings.
And Fagott jabbed his finger at the stalls and announced:
'You'll find that same deck, esteemed citizens, on citizen Parchevsky
in the seventh row, just between a three-rouble bill and a summons to court
in connection with the payment of alimony to citizen Zeikova.'
There was a stirring in the stalls, people began to get up, and finally
some citizen whose name was indeed Parchevsky, all crimson with amazement,
extracted the deck from his wallet and began sticking it up in the air, not
knowing what to do with it.
'You may keep it as a souvenir!' cried Fagott. 'Not for nothing did you
say at dinner yesterday that if it weren't for poker your life in Moscow
would be utterly unbearable.'
`An old trick!' came from the gallery. The one in the stalls is from
the same company.'
'You think so?' shouted Fagott, squinting at the gallery. 'In that case
you're also one of us, because the deck is now in your pocket!'
There was movement in the balcony, and a joyful voice said:
'Right! He's got it! Here, here! ... Wait! It's ten-rouble bills!'
Those sitting in the stalls turned their heads. In the gallery a
bewildered citizen found in his pocket a bank-wrapped packet with 'One
thousand roubles' written on it. His neighbours hovered over him, and he, in
amazement, picked at the wrapper with his fingernail, trying to find out if
the bills were real or some sort of magic ones.
'By God, they're real! Ten-rouble bills!' joyful cries came from the
gallery.
'I want to play with the same kind of deck,' a fat man in the middle of
the stalls requested merrily.
`Avec playzeer!' Fagott responded. `But why just you? Everyone will
warmly participate!' And he commanded: 'Look up, please! ... One!' There was
a pistol in his hand. He shouted: 'Two!' The pistol was pointed up. He
shouted: 'Three!' There was a flash, a bang, and all at once, from under the
cupola, bobbing between the trapezes, white strips of paper began falling
into the theatre.
They twirled, got blown aside, were drawn towards the gallery, bounced
into the orchestra and on to the stage. In a few seconds, the rain of money,
ever thickening, reached the seats, and the spectators began snatching at
it.
Hundreds of arms were raised, the spectators held the bills up to the
lighted stage and saw the most true and honest-to-God watermarks. The smell
also left no doubts: it was the incomparably delightful smell of freshly
printed money. The whole theatre was seized first with merriment and then
with amazement. The word 'money, money!' hummed everywhere, there were gasps
of 'ah, ah!' and merry laughter. One or two were already crawling in the
aisles, feeling under the chairs. Many stood on the seats, trying to catch
the flighty, capricious notes.
Bewilderment was gradually coming to the faces of the policemen, and
performers unceremoniously began sticking their heads out from the wings.
In the dress circle a voice was heard: `What're you grabbing at? It's
mine, it flew to me!' and another voice: 'Don't shove me, or you'll get
shoved back!' And suddenly there came the sound of a whack. At once a
policeman's helmet appeared in the dress circle, and someone from the dress
circle was led away.
The general agitation was increasing, and no one knows where it all
would have ended if Fagott had not stopped the rain of money by suddenly
blowing into the air.
Two young men, exchanging significant and merry glances, took off from
their seats and made straight for the buffet. There was a hum in the
theatre, all the spectators' eyes glittered excitedly. Yes, yes, no one
knows where it all would have ended if Bengalsky had not summoned his
strength and acted. Trying to gain better control of himself, he rubbed his
hands, as was his custom, and in his most resounding voice spoke thus:
'Here, citizens, you and I have just beheld a case of so-called mass
hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, proving in the best way possible
that there are no miracles in magic. Let us ask Maestro Woland to expose
this experiment for us. Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed
banknotes disappear as suddenly as they appeared.'
Here he applauded, but quite alone, while a confident smile played on
his face, yet in his eyes there was no such confidence, but rather an
expression of entreaty.
The audience did not like Bengalsky's speech. Total silence fell, which
was broken by the checkered Fagott.
`And this is a case of so-called lying,' he announced in a loud,
goatish tenor. The notes, citizens, are genuine.'
'Bravo!' a bass barked from somewhere on high.
This one, incidentally,' here Fagott pointed to Bengalsky, 'annoys me.
Keeps poking his nose where nobody's asked him, spoils the s
suggestion. Tear his head off? There's an idea! Behemoth!' he shouted to the
cat. 'Go to it! Ein, zwei, drei!!'
And an unheard-of thing occurred. The fur bristled on the cat's back,
and he gave a rending miaow. Then he compressed himself into a ball and shot
like a panther straight at Bengalsky's chest, and from there on to his head.
Growling, the cat sank his plump paws into the skimpy chevelure of the
master of ceremonies and in two twists tore the head from the thick neck
with a savage howl.
The two and a half thousand people in the theatre cried out as one.
Blood spurted in fountains from the torn neck arteries and poured over
the shirt-front and tailcoat. The headless body paddled its feet somehow
absurdly and sat down on the floor. Hysterical women's cries came from the
audience. The cat handed the head to Fagott, who lifted it up by the hair
and showed it to the audience, and the head cried desperately for all the
theatre to hear:
'A doctor!'
'Will you pour out such drivel in the future?' Fagott asked the weeping
head menacingly.
'Never again!' croaked the head.
'For God's sake, don't torture him!' a woman's voice from a box seat
suddenly rose above the clamour, and the magician turned in the direction of
that voice.
'So, what then, citizens, shall we forgive him?' Fagott asked,
addressing the audience.
'Forgive him, forgive him!' separate voices, mostly women's, spoke
first, then merged into one chorus with the men's.
'What are your orders, Messire?' Fagott asked the masked man.
'Well, now,' the latter replied pensively, 'they're people like any
other people... They love money, but that has always been so... Mankind
loves money, whatever it's made of- leather, paper, bronze, gold. Well,
they're light-minded ... well, what of it ... mercy sometimes knocks at
their hearts ... ordinary people... In general, reminiscent of the former
ones ... only the housing problem has corrupted them...' And he ordered
loudly: 'Put the head on.'
The cat, aiming accurately, planted the head on the neck, and it sat
exactly in its place, as if it had never gone anywhere. Above all, there was
not even any scar left on the neck. The cat brushed Bengalsky's tailcoat and
shirt-front with his paws, and all traces of blood disappeared from them.
Fagott got the sitting Bengalsky to his feet, stuck a packet of money
into his coat pocket, and sent him from the stage with the words:
'Buzz off, it's more fun without you!'
Staggering and looking around senselessly, the master of ceremonies had
plodded no farther than the fire post when he felt sick. He cried out
pitifully:
'My head, my head! ...'
Among those who rushed to him was Rimsky. The master of ceremonies
wept, snatched at something in the air with his hands, and muttered:
'Give me my head, give me back my head ... Take my apartment, take my
paintings, only give me back my head! ...'
A messenger ran for a doctor. They tried to lie Bengalsky down on a
sofa in the dressing room, but he began to struggle, became violent. They
had to call an ambulance. When the unfortunate master of ceremonies was
taken away, Rimsky ran back to the stage and saw that new wonders were
taking place on it. Ah, yes, incidentally, either then or a little earlier,
the magician disappeared from the stage together with his faded armchair,
and it must be said that the public took absolutely no notice of it, carried
away as it was by the extraordinary things Fagott was unfolding on stage.
And Fagott, having packed off the punished master of ceremonies,
addressed the public thus:
`All righty, now that we've kicked that nuisance out, let's open a
ladies' shop!'
And all at once the floor of the stage was covered with Persian
carpets, huge mirrors appeared, lit by greenish tubes at the sides, and
between the mirrors - display windows, and in them the merrily astonished
spectators saw Parisian ladies' dresses of various colours and cuts. In some
of the windows, that is, while in others there appeared hundreds of ladies'
hats, with feathers and without feathers, and - with buckles or without -
hundreds of shoes, black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, with straps,
with stones. Among the shoes there appeared cases of perfume, mountains of
handbags of antelope hide, suede, silk, and among these, whole heaps of
little elongated cases of gold metal such as usually contain lipstick.
A red-headed girl appeared from devil knows where in a black evening
dress - a girl nice in all respects, had she not been marred by a queer scar
on her neck - smiling a proprietary smile by the display windows.
Fagott, grinning sweetly, announced that the firm was offering
perfectly gratis an exchange of the ladies' old dresses and shoes for
Parisian models and Parisian shoes. The same held, he added, for the
handbags and other things.
The cat began scraping with his hind paw, while his front paw performed
the gestures appropriate to a doorman opening a door.
The girl sang out sweetly, though with some hoarseness, rolling her
r's, something not quite comprehensible but, judging by the women's faces in
the stalls, very tempting:
'Gueriain, Chanel, Mitsouko, Narcisse Noir, Chanel No. 5, evening
gowns, cocktail dresses ...'
Fagott wriggled, the cat bowed, the girl opened the glass windows.
'Welcome!' yelled Fagott. With no embarrassment or ceremony!'
The audience was excited, but as yet no one ventured on stage. Finally
some brunette stood up in the tenth row of the stalls and, smiling as if to
say it was all the same to her and she did not give a hoot, went and climbed
on stage by the side stairs.
'Bravo!' Fagott shouted. 'Greetings to the first customer! Behemoth, a
chair! Let's start with the shoes, madame.'
The brunette sat in the chair, and Fagott at once poured a whole heap
of shoes on the rug in front of her. The brunette removed her right shoe,
tried a lilac one, stamped on the rug, examined the heel.
They won't pinch?' she asked pensively.
To this Fagott exclaimed with a hurt air:
'Come, come!' and the cat miaowed resentfully.
'I'll take this pair, m'sieur,' the brunette said with dignity, putting
on the second shoe as well.
The brunette's old shoes were tossed behind a curtain, and she
proceeded there herself, accompanied by the red-headed girl and Fagott, who
was carrying several fashionable dresses on hangers. The cat bustled about,
helped, and for greater importance hung a measuring tape around his neck.
A minute later the brunette came from behind the curtain in such a
dress that the stalls all let out a gasp. The brave woman, who had become
astonishingly prettier, stopped at the mirror, moved her bare shoulders,
touched the hair on her nape and, twisting, tried to peek at her back.
The firm asks you to accept this as a souvenir,' said Fagott, and he
offered the brunette an open case with a flacon in it.
`Merci,' the brunette said haughtily and went down the steps to the
stalls. As she walked, the spectators jumped up and touched the case.
And here there came a clean breakthrough, and from all sides women
marched on to the stage. Amid the general agitation of talk, chuckles and
gasps, a man's voice was heard: 'I won't allow it!' and a woman's:
`Despot and philistine! Don't break my arm!' Women disappeared behind
the curtain, leaving their dresses there and coming out in new ones. A whole
row of ladies sat on stools with gilded legs, stamping the carpet
energetically with newly shod feet. Fagott was on his knees, working away
with a metal shoehorn; the cat, fainting under piles of purses and shoes,
plodded back and forth between the display windows and the stools; the girl
with the disfigured neck appeared and disappeared, and reached the point
where she started rattling away entirely in French, and, surprisingly, the
women all understood her from half a word, even those who did not know a
single word of French.
General amazement was aroused by a man edging his way on-stage. He
announced that his wife had the flu, and he therefore asked that something
be sent to her through him. As proof that he was indeed married, the citizen
was prepared to show his passport. The solicitous husband's announcement was
met with guffaws. Fagott shouted that he believed him like his own self,
even without the passport, and handed the citizen two pairs of silk
stockings, and the cat for his part added a little tube of lipstick.
Late-coming women tore on to the stage, and off the stage the lucky
ones came pouring down in ball gowns, pyjamas with dragons, sober formal
outfits, little hats tipped over one eyebrow.
Then Fagott announced that owing to the lateness of the hour, the shop
would close in exactly one minute until the next evening, and an
unbelievable scramble arose on-stage. Women hastily grabbed shoes without
trying them on. One burst behind the curtain like a storm, got out of her
dress there, took possession of the first thing that came to hand - a silk
dressing-gown covered with huge bouquets - and managed to pick up two cases
of perfume besides.
Exactly a minute later a pistol shot rang out, the mirrors disappeared,
the display windows and stools dropped away, the carpet melted into air, as
did the curtain. Last to disappear was the high mountain of old dresses and
shoes, and the stage was again severe, empty and bare.
And it was here that a new character mixed into the affair. A pleasant,
sonorous, and very insistent baritone came from box no. 2:
'All the same it is desirable, citizen artiste, that you expose the
technique of your tricks to the spectators without delay, especially the
trick with the paper money. It is also desirable that the master of
ceremonies return to the stage. The spectators are concerned about his
fate.'
The baritone belonged to none other than that evening's guest of
honour, Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics
Commission of the Moscow theatres.
Arkady Apollonovich was in his box with two ladies: the older one
dressed expensively and fashionably, the other one, young and pretty,
dressed in a simpler way. The first, as was soon discovered during the
drawing up of the report, was Arkady Apollonovich's wife, and the second was
his distant relation, a promising debutante, who had come from Saratov and
was living in the apartment of Arkady Apollonovich and his wife.
Pardone!' Fagott replied. 'I'm sorry, there's nothing here to expose,
it's all clear.'
'No, excuse me! The exposure is absolutely necessary. Without it your
brilliant numbers will leave a painful impression. The mass of spectators
demands an explanation.'
'The mass of spectators,' the impudent clown interrupted Sempleyarov,
`doesn't seem to be saying anything. But, in consideration of your most
esteemed desire, Arkady Apollonovich, so be it - I will perform an exposure.
But, to that end, will you allow me one more tiny number?'
'Why not?' Arkady Apollonovich replied patronizingly. 'But there must
be an exposure.'
'Very well, very well, sir. And so, allow me to ask, where were you
last evening, Arkady Apollonovich?'
At this inappropriate and perhaps even boorish question, Arkady
Apollonovich's countenance changed, and changed quite drastically.
`Last evening Arkady Apollonovich was at a meeting of the Acoustics
Commission,' Arkady Apollonovich's wife declared very haughtily, "but I
don't understand what that has got to do with magic.'
'Ouee, madame!' Fagott agreed. 'Naturally you don't understand. As for
the meeting, you are totally deluded. After driving off to the said meeting,
which incidentally was not even scheduled for last night, Arkady
Apollonovich dismissed his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission building on
Clean Ponds' (the whole theatre became hushed), `and 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.'
'Aie!' someone cried out painfully in the total silence. Arkady
Apollonovich's young relation suddenly broke into a low and terrible laugh.
'It's all clear!' she exclaimed. 'And I've long suspected it. Now I see
why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa [1]!''
And, swinging suddenly, she struck Arkady Apollonovich on the head with
her short and fat violet umbrella.
Meanwhile, the scoundrelly Fagott, alias Koroviev, was shouting:
'Here, honourable citizens, is one case of the exposure Arkady
Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!'
'How dare you touch Arkady Apollonovich, you vile creature?' Arkady
Apollonovich's wife asked threateningly, rising in the box to all her
gigantic height.
A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation. 'Who
else should dare touch him,' she answered, guffawing, 'if not me!' And for
the second time there came the dry, crackling sound of the umbrella bouncing
off the head of Arkady Apollonovich.
'Police! Seize her!!' Sempleyarov's wife shouted in such a terrible
voice that many hearts went cold.
And here the cat also leaped out to the footlights and suddenly barked
in a human voice for all the theatre to hear:
The seance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!' The half-crazed
conductor, unaware of what he was doing, waved his baton, and the orchestra
did not play, or even strike up, or even bang away at, but precisely, in the
cat's loathsome expression, hacked out some incredible march of an
unheard-of brashness.
For a moment there was an illusion of having heard once upon a time,
under southern stars, in a cafe-chantant, some barely intelligible,
half-blind, but rollicking words to this march:
His Excellency reached the stage
Of liking barnyard fowl.
He took under his patronage
Three young girls and an owl!!!
Or maybe these were not the words at all, but there were others to the
same music, extremely indecent ones. That is not the important thing, the
important thing is that, after all this, something like Babel broke loose in
the Variety. The police went running to Sempleyarov's box, people were
climbing over the barriers, there were bursts of infernal guffawing and
furious shouts, drowned in the golden clash of the orchestra's cymbals.
And one could see that the stage was suddenly empty, and that the
hoodwinker Fagott, as well as the brazen tom-cat Behemoth, had melted into
air, vanished as the magician had vanished earlier in his armchair with the
faded upholstery.
And so, the unknown man shook his finger at Ivan and whispered:
'Shhh! ...'
Ivan lowered his legs from the bed and peered. Cautiously looking into
the room from the balcony was a clean-shaven, dark-haired man of
approximately thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes, and a wisp of
hair hanging down on his forehead.
Having listened and made sure that Ivan was alone, the mysterious
visitor took heart and stepped into the room. Here Ivan saw that the man was
dressed as a patient. He was wearing long underwear, slippers on his bare
feet, and a brown dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders.
The visitor winked at Ivan, hid a bunch of keys in his pocket, inquired
in a whisper: 'May I sit down?' - and receiving an affirmative nod, placed
himself in an armchair.
'How did you get here?' Ivan asked in a whisper, obeying the dry finger
shaken at him. 'Aren't the balcony grilles locked?'
The grilles are locked,' the guest agreed, `but Praskovya Fyodorovna,
while the dearest person, is also, alas, quite absent-minded. A month ago I
stole a bunch of keys from her, and so gained the opportunity of getting out
on to the common balcony, which runs around the entire floor, and so of
occasionally calling on a neighbour.'
'If you can get out on to the balcony, you can escape. Or is it high
up?' Ivan was interested.
'No,' the guest replied firmly, 'I cannot escape from here, not because
it's high up, but because I have nowhere to escape to.' And he added, after
a pause: 'So, here we sit.'
`Here we sit,' Ivan replied, peering into the man's brown and very
restless eyes.
'Yes ...' here the guest suddenly became alarmed, 'but you're not
violent, I hope? Because, you know, I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or
other things like that. Especially hateful to me are people's cries, whether
cries of rage, suffering, or anything else. Set me at ease, tell me, you're
not violent?'
`Yesterday in a restaurant I socked one type in the mug,' the
transformed poet courageously confessed.
'Your grounds?' the guest asked sternly.
"No grounds, I must confess,' Ivan answered, embarrassed.
'Outrageous,' the guest denounced Ivan and added: 'And besides, what a
way to express yourself: "socked in the mug"... It is not known precisely
whether a man has a mug or a face. And, after all, it may well be a face.
So, you know, using fists ... No, you should give that up, and for good.'
Having thus reprimanded Ivan, the guest inquired:
'Your profession?'
'Poet,' Ivan confessed, reluctantly for some reason.
The visitor became upset.
'Ah, just my luck!' he exclaimed, but at once reconsidered, apologized,
and asked: 'And what is your name?'
'Homeless.'
'Oh-oh ...' the guest said, wincing.
'What, you mean you dislike my poetry?' Ivan asked with curiosity.
'I dislike it terribly.'
'And what have you read.'
'I've never read any of your poetry!' the visitor exclaimed nervously.
Then how can you say that?'
'Well, what of it?' the guest replied. 'As if I haven't read others? Or
else ... maybe there's some miracle? Very well, I'm ready to take it on
faith. Is your poetry good? You tell me yourself.'
'Monstrous!' Ivan suddenly spoke boldly and frankly.
'Don't write any more!' the visitor asked beseechingly.
'I promise and I swear!' Ivan said solemnly.
The oath was sealed with a handshake, and here soft footsteps and
voices were heard in the corridor.
'Shh!' the guest whispered and, jumping out to the balcony, closed the
grille behind him.
Praskovya Fyodorovna peeked in, asked Ivan how he was feeling and
whether he wished to sleep in the dark or with a light. Ivan asked her to
leave the light on, and Praskovya Fyodorovna withdrew, wishing the patient a
good night. And when everything was quiet, the guest came back again.
He informed Ivan in a whisper that there was a new arrival in room 119
- some fat man with a purple physiognomy, who kept muttering something about
currency in the ventilation and swearing that unclean powers were living in
their place on Sadovaya.
'He curses Pushkin up and down and keeps shouting: "Kurolesov, encore,
encore!"' the guest said, twitching nervously. Having calmed himself, he sat
down, said: 'Anyway, God help him,' and continued his conversation with
Ivan: 'So, how did you wind up here?'
'On account of Pontius Pilate,' Ivan replied, casting a glum look at
the floor.
'What?!' the guest cried, forgetting all caution, and clapped his hand
off Sadovaya, and there was no one to save Ivan Savelyevich. Leaping through
muddy rivers, under flashes of lightning, the bandits dragged the half-alive
administrator in a split second to no.502-bis, flew with him through the
gateway, where two barefoot women, holding their shoes and stockings in
their hands, pressed themselves to the wall. Then they dashed into the sixth
entrance, and Varenukha, nearly insane, was taken up to the fifth floor and
thrown down in the semi-dark front hall, so well known to him, of Styopa
Likhodeev's apartment.
Here the two robbers vanished, and in their place there appeared in the
front hall a completely naked girl - red-haired, her eyes burning with a
phosphorescent gleam.
Varenukha understood that this was the most terrible of all things that
had ever happened to him and, moaning, recoiled against the wall. But the
girl came right up to the administrator and placed the palms of her hands on
his shoulders. Varenukha's hair stood on end, because even through the cold,
water-soaked cloth of his Tolstoy blouse he could feel that those palms were
still colder, that their cold was the cold of ice.
`Let me give you a kiss,' the girl said tenderly, and there were
shining eyes right in front of his eyes. Then Varenukha fainted and never
felt the kiss.
The woods on the opposite bank of the river, still lit up by the May
sun an hour earlier, turned dull, smeary, and dissolved.
Water fell down in a solid sheet outside the window. In the sky,
threads flashed every moment, the sky kept bursting open, and the patient's
room was flooded with a tremulous, frightening light.
Ivan quietly wept, sitting on his bed and looking out at the muddy
river boiling with bubbles. At every clap of thunder, he cried out pitifully
and buried his face in his hands. Pages covered with Ivan's writing lay
about on the floor. They had been blown down by the wind that flew into the
room before the storm began.
The poet's attempts to write a statement concerning the terrible
consultant had gone nowhere. As soon as he got the pencil stub and paper
from the fat attendant, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna, he rubbed his
hands in a business-like way and hastily settled himself at the little
table. The beginning came out quite glibly.
To the police. From Massolit member Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless. A
statement. Yesterday evening I came to the Patriarch's Ponds with the
deceased M. A. Berlioz...'
And right there the poet got confused, mainly owing to the word
'deceased'. Some nonsensicality emerged at once: what's this - came with the
deceased? The deceased don't go anywhere! Really, for all he knew, they
might take him for a madman!
Having reflected thus, Ivan Nikolaevich began to correct what he had
written. What came out this time was: '... with M. A. Berlioz, subsequently
deceased ...' This did not satisfy the author either. He had to have
recourse to a third redaction, which proved still worse than the first two:
'Berlioz, who fell under the tram-car...' - and that namesake composer,
unknown to anyone, was also dangling here, so he had to put in: 'not the
composer...'
After suffering over these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed it all out and
decided to begin right off with something very strong, in order to attract
the reader's attention at once, so he wrote that a cat had got on a
tram-car, and then went back to the episode with the severed head. The head
and the consultant's prediction led him to the thought of Pontius Pilate,
and for greater conviction Ivan decided to tell the whole story of the
procurator in full, from the moment he walked out in his white cloak with
blood-red lining to the colonnade of Herod's palace.
Ivan worked assiduously, crossing out what he had written, putting in
new words, and even attempted to draw Pontius Pilate and then a cat standing
on its hind legs. But the drawings did not help, and the further it went,
the more confusing and incomprehensible the poet's statement became.
By the time the frightening cloud with smoking edges appeared from far
off and covered the woods, and the wind began to blow, Ivan felt that he was
strengthless, that he would never be able to manage with the statement, and
he would not pick up the scattered pages, and he wept quietly and bitterly.
The good-natured nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna visited the poet during the
storm, became alarmed on seeing him weeping, closed the blinds so that the
lightning would not frighten the patient, picked up the pages from the
floor, and ran with them for the doctor.
He came, gave Ivan an injection in the arm, and assured him that he
would not weep any more, that everything would pass now, everything would
change, everything would be forgotten.
The doctor proved right. Soon the woods across the river became as
before. It was outlined to the last tree under the sky, which cleared to its
former perfect blue, and the river grew calm. Anguish had begun to leave
Ivan right after the injection, and now the poet lay calmly and looked at
the rainbow that stretched across the sky.
So it went till evening, and he did not even notice how the rainbow
melted away, how the sky saddened and faded, how the woods turned black.
Having drunk some hot milk, Ivan lay down again and marvelled himself
at how changed his thinking was. The accursed, demonic cat somehow softened
in his memory, the severed head did not frighten him any more, and,
abandoning all thought of it, Ivan began to reflect that, essentially, it
was not so bad in the clinic, that Stravinsky was a clever man and a famous
one, and it was quite pleasant to deal with him. Besides, the evening air
was sweet and fresh after the storm.
The house of sorrow was falling asleep. In quiet corridors the frosted
white lights went out, and in their place, according to regulations, faint
blue night-lights were lit, and the careful steps of attendants were heard
more and more rarely on the rubber matting of the corridor outside the door.
Now Ivan lay in sweet languor, glancing at the lamp under its shade,
shedding a softened light from the ceiling, then at the moon rising behind
the black woods, and conversed with himself.
'Why, actually, did I get so excited about Berlioz falling under a
tram-car?' the poet reasoned. `In the final analysis, let him sink! What am
I, in fact, his chum or in-law? If we air the question properly, it turns
out that, in essence, I really did not even know the deceased. What, indeed,
did I know about him? Nothing except that he was bald and terribly eloquent.
And furthermore, citizens,' Ivan continued his speech, addressing someone or
other, `let's sort this out: why, tell me, did I get furious at this
mysterious consultant, magician and professor with the black and empty eye?
Why all this absurd chase after him in underpants and with a candle in
my hand, and then those wild shenanigans in the restaurant?'
'Uh-uh-uh!' the former Ivan suddenly said sternly somewhere, either
inside or over his ear, to the new Ivan. `He did know beforehand that
Berlioz's head would be cut off, didn't he? How could I not get excited?'
'What are we talking about, comrades?' the new Ivan objected to the
old, former Ivan. That things are not quite proper here, even a child can
understand. He's a one-hundred-per-cent outstanding and mysterious person!
But that's the most interesting thing! The man was personally
acquainted with Pontius Pilate, what could be more interesting than that?
And, instead of raising a stupid rumpus at the Ponds, wouldn't it have been
more intelligent to question him politely about what happened further on
with Pilate and his prisoner Ha-Nozri? And I started devil knows what! A
major occurrence, really - a magazine editor gets run over! And so, what, is
the magazine going to shut down for that? Well, what can be done about it?
Man is mortal and, as has rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal. Well, may
he rest in peace! Well, so there'll be another editor, and maybe even more
eloquent than the previous one!'
After dozing for a while, the new Ivan asked the old Ivan
sarcastically:
'And what does it make me, in that case?'
'A fool!' a bass voice said distinctly somewhere, a voice not belonging
to either of the Ivans and extremely like the bass of the consultant.
Ivan, for some reason not offended by the word 'fool', but even
pleasantly surprised at it, smiled and drowsily grew quiet. Sleep was
stealing over Ivan, and he was already picturing a palm tree on its
elephant's leg, and a cat passing by - not scary, but merry - and, in short,
sleep was just about to come over Ivan, when the grille suddenly moved
noiselessly aside, and a mysterious figure appeared on the balcony, hiding
from the moonlight, and shook its finger at Ivan.
Not frightened in the least, Ivan sat up in bed and saw that there was
a man on the balcony. And this man, pressing a finger to his lips,
whispered:
'Shhh! ...'
A small man in a yellow bowler-hat full of holes and with a
pear-shaped, raspberry-coloured nose, in checkered trousers and
patent-leather shoes, rolled out on to the stage of the Variety on an
ordinary two-wheeled bicycle. To the sounds of a foxtrot he made a circle,
and then gave a triumphant shout, which caused his bicycle to rear up. After
riding around on the back wheel, the little man turned upside down,
contrived while in motion to unscrew the front wheel and send it backstage,
and then proceeded on his way with one wheel, turning the pedals with his
hands.
On a tall metal pole with a seat at the top and a single wheel, a plump
blonde rolled out in tights and a little skirt strewn with silver stars, and
began riding in a circle. As he met her, the little man uttered cries of
greeting, doffing his bowler-hat with his foot.
Finally, a little eight-year-old with an elderly face came rolling out
and began scooting about among the adults on a tiny two-wheeler furnished
with an enormous automobile horn.
After making several loops, the whole company, to the alarming
drum-beats of the orchestra, rolled to the very edge of the stage, and the
spectators in the front rows gasped and drew back, because it seemed to the
public that the whole trio with its vehicles was about to crash down into
the orchestra pit.
But the bicycles stopped just at the moment when the front wheels
threatened to slide into the abyss on the heads of the musicians. With a
loud shout of 'Hup!' the cyclists jumped off their vehicles and bowed, the
blonde woman blowing kisses to the public, and the little one tooting a
funny signal on his horn.
Applause shook the building, the light-blue curtain came from both
sides and covered the cyclists, the green `Exit' lights by the doors went
out, and in the web of trapezes under the cupola white spheres lit up like
the sun. It was the intermission before the last part.
The only man who was not the least bit interested in the wonders of the
Giulli family's cycling technique was Grigory Danilovich Rimsky.
In complete solitude he sat in his office, biting his thin lips, a
spasm passing over his face from time to time. To the extraordinary
disappearance of Likhodeev had now been added the wholly unforeseen
disappearance of Varenukha.
Rimsky knew where he had gone, but he had gone and ... not come back!
Rimsky shrugged his shoulders and whispered to himself:
'But what for?'
And it was strange: for such a practical man as the findirector, the
simplest thing would, of course, have been to call the place where Varenukha
had gone and find out what had befallen him, yet until ten o'clock at night
he had been unable to force himself to do it.
At ten, doing outright violence to himself, Rimsky picked up the
receiver and here discovered that his telephone was dead. The messenger
reported that the other telephones in the building were also out of order.
This certainly unpleasant, though hardly supernatural, occurrence for
some reason thoroughly shocked the findirector, but at the same time he was
glad: the need to call fell away.
Just as the red light over the findirector's head lit up and blinked,
announcing the beginning of the intermission, a messenger came in and
informed him of the foreign artiste's arrival. The findirector cringed for
some reason, and, blacker than a storm cloud, went backstage to receive the
visitor, since there was no one else to receive him.
Under various pretexts, curious people kept peeking into the big
dressing room from the corridor, where the signal bell was already ringing.
Among them were conjurers in bright robes and turbans, a skater in a
white knitted jacket, a storyteller pale with powder and the make-up man.
The newly arrived celebrity struck everyone by his marvellously cut
tailcoat, of a length never seen before, and by his having come in a black
half-mask. But most remarkable of all were the black magician's two
companions: a long checkered one with a cracked pince-nez, and a fat black
cat who came into the dressing room on his hind legs and quite nonchalantly
sat on the sofa squinting at the bare make-up lights.
Rimsky attempted to produce a smile on his face, which made it look
sour and spiteful, and bowed to the silent black magician, who was seated on
the sofa beside the cat. There was no handshake. Instead, the easygoing
checkered one made his own introductions to the fin-director, calling
himself 'the gent's assistant'. This circumstance surprised the findirector,
and unpleasantly so: there was decidedly no mention of any assistant in the
contract.
Quite stiffly and drily, Grigory Danilovich inquired of this
fallen-from-the-sky checkered one where the artiste's paraphernalia was.
'Our heavenly diamond, most precious mister director,' the magician's
assistant replied in a rattling voice, 'the paraphernalia is always with us.
Here it is! Ein, zwei, drei!' And, waving his knotty fingers before Rimsky's
eyes, he suddenly took from behind the cat's ear Rimsky's own gold watch and
chain, hitherto worn by the findirector in his waistcoat pocket, under his
buttoned coat, with the chain through a buttonhole.
Rimsky inadvertently clutched his stomach, those present gasped, and
the make-up man, peeking in the doorway, grunted approvingly.
Your little watchie? Kindly take it,' the checkered one said, smiling
casually and offering the bewildered Rimsky his own property on a dirty
palm.
'No getting on a tram with that one,' the storyteller whispered quietly
and merrily to the make-up man.
But the cat pulled a neater trick than the number with the stolen
watch. Getting up from the sofa unexpectedly, he walked on his hind legs to
the dressing table, pulled the stopper out of the carafe with his front paw,
poured water into a glass, drank it, installed the stopper in its place, and
wiped his whiskers with a make-up cloth.
Here no one even gasped, their mouths simply fell open, and the make-up
man whispered admiringly:
'That's class!'
Just then the bells rang alarmingly for the third time, and everyone,
agitated and anticipating an interesting number, thronged out of the
dressing room.
A moment later the spheres went out in the theatre, the footlights
blazed up, lending a reddish glow to the base of the curtain, and in the
lighted gap of the curtain there appeared before the public a plump man,
merry as a baby, with a clean-shaven face, in a rumpled tailcoat and
none-too-fresh shirt. This was the master of ceremonies, well known to all
Moscow - Georges Bengalsky.
'And now, citizens,' Bengalsky began, smiling his baby smile, 'there is
about to come before you ...' Here Bengalsky interrupted himself and spoke
in a different tone: 'I see the audience has grown for the third part. We've
got half the city here! I met a friend the other day and said to him: "Why
don't you come to our show? Yesterday we had half the city." And he says to
me: "I live in the other half!"' Bengalsky paused, waiting for a burst of
laughter, but as no one laughed, he went on: '... And so, now comes the
famous foreign artiste. Monsieur Woland, with a s a wise smile, 'that there's no
such thing in the world, and that it's all just superstition, and Maestro
Woland is simply a perfect master of the technique of conjuring, as we shall
see from the most interesting part, that is, the exposure of this technique,
and since we're all of us to a man both for technique and for its exposure,
let's bring on Mr Woland! ...'
After uttering all this claptrap, Bengalsky pressed his palms together
and waved them in greeting through the slit of the curtain, which caused it
to part with a soft rustic.
The entrance of the magician with his long assistant and the cat, who
came on stage on his hind legs, pleased the audience greatly.
'An armchair for me,' Woland ordered in a low voice, and that same
second an armchair appeared on stage, no one knew how or from where, in
which the magician sat down. 'Tell me, my gentle Fagott,' Woland inquired of
the checkered clown, who evidently had another appellation than Koroviev,
`what do you think, the Moscow populace has changed significantly, hasn't
it?'
The magician looked out at the hushed audience, struck by the
appearance of the armchair out of nowhere.
"That it has, Messire,' Fagott-Koroviev replied in a low voice.
"You're right. The city folk have changed greatly ... externally, that
is ... as has the city itself, incidentally... Not to mention their
clothing, these ... what do you call them ... trams, automobiles ... have
appeared ...'
'Buses ...'-Fagott prompted deferentially.
The audience listened attentively to this conversation, thinking it
constituted a prelude to the magic tricks. The wings were packed with
performers and stage-hands, and among their faces could be seen the tense,
pale face of Rimsky.
The physiognomy of Bengalsky, who had retreated to the side of the
stage, began to show some perplexity. He raised one eyebrow slightly and,
taking advantage of a pause, spoke:
"The foreign artiste is expressing his admiration for Moscow and its
technological development, as well as for the Muscovites.' Here Bengalsky
smiled twice, first to the stalls, then to the gallery.
Woland, Fagott and the cat turned their heads in the direction of the
master of ceremonies.
'Did I express admiration?' the magician asked the checkered Fagott.
'By no means, Messire, you never expressed any admiration,' came the
reply.
Then what is the man saying?'
'He quite simply lied!' the checkered assistant declared sonorously,
for the whole theatre to hear, and turning to Bengalsky, he added:
'Congrats, citizen, you done lied!'
Tittering spattered from the gallery, but Bengalsky gave a start and
goggled his eyes.
'Of course, I'm not so much interested in buses, telephones and other
...'
'Apparatuses,' the checkered one prompted.
'Quite right, thank you,' the magician spoke slowly in a heavy bass,
`as in a question of much greater importance: have the city folk changed
inwardly?'
"Yes, that is the most important question, sir.'
There was shrugging and an exchanging of glances in the wings,
Bengalsky stood all red, and Rimsky was pale. But here, as if sensing the
nascent alarm, the magician said:
'However, we're talking away, my dear Fagott, and the audience is
beginning to get bored. My gentle Fagott, show us some simple little thing
to start with.'
The audience stirred. Fagott and the cat walked along the footlights to
opposite sides of the stage. Fagott snapped his fingers, and with a
rollicking Three, four!' snatched a deck of cards from the air, shuffled it,
and sent it in a long ribbon to the cat. The cat intercepted it and sent it
back. The satiny snake whiffled, Fagott opened his mouth like a nestling and
swallowed it all card by card. After which the cat bowed, scraping his right
hind paw, winning himself unbelievable applause.
'Class! Real class!' rapturous shouts came from the wings.
And Fagott jabbed his finger at the stalls and announced:
'You'll find that same deck, esteemed citizens, on citizen Parchevsky
in the seventh row, just between a three-rouble bill and a summons to court
in connection with the payment of alimony to citizen Zeikova.'
There was a stirring in the stalls, people began to get up, and finally
some citizen whose name was indeed Parchevsky, all crimson with amazement,
extracted the deck from his wallet and began sticking it up in the air, not
knowing what to do with it.
'You may keep it as a souvenir!' cried Fagott. 'Not for nothing did you
say at dinner yesterday that if it weren't for poker your life in Moscow
would be utterly unbearable.'
`An old trick!' came from the gallery. The one in the stalls is from
the same company.'
'You think so?' shouted Fagott, squinting at the gallery. 'In that case
you're also one of us, because the deck is now in your pocket!'
There was movement in the balcony, and a joyful voice said:
'Right! He's got it! Here, here! ... Wait! It's ten-rouble bills!'
Those sitting in the stalls turned their heads. In the gallery a
bewildered citizen found in his pocket a bank-wrapped packet with 'One
thousand roubles' written on it. His neighbours hovered over him, and he, in
amazement, picked at the wrapper with his fingernail, trying to find out if
the bills were real or some sort of magic ones.
'By God, they're real! Ten-rouble bills!' joyful cries came from the
gallery.
'I want to play with the same kind of deck,' a fat man in the middle of
the stalls requested merrily.
`Avec playzeer!' Fagott responded. `But why just you? Everyone will
warmly participate!' And he commanded: 'Look up, please! ... One!' There was
a pistol in his hand. He shouted: 'Two!' The pistol was pointed up. He
shouted: 'Three!' There was a flash, a bang, and all at once, from under the
cupola, bobbing between the trapezes, white strips of paper began falling
into the theatre.
They twirled, got blown aside, were drawn towards the gallery, bounced
into the orchestra and on to the stage. In a few seconds, the rain of money,
ever thickening, reached the seats, and the spectators began snatching at
it.
Hundreds of arms were raised, the spectators held the bills up to the
lighted stage and saw the most true and honest-to-God watermarks. The smell
also left no doubts: it was the incomparably delightful smell of freshly
printed money. The whole theatre was seized first with merriment and then
with amazement. The word 'money, money!' hummed everywhere, there were gasps
of 'ah, ah!' and merry laughter. One or two were already crawling in the
aisles, feeling under the chairs. Many stood on the seats, trying to catch
the flighty, capricious notes.
Bewilderment was gradually coming to the faces of the policemen, and
performers unceremoniously began sticking their heads out from the wings.
In the dress circle a voice was heard: `What're you grabbing at? It's
mine, it flew to me!' and another voice: 'Don't shove me, or you'll get
shoved back!' And suddenly there came the sound of a whack. At once a
policeman's helmet appeared in the dress circle, and someone from the dress
circle was led away.
The general agitation was increasing, and no one knows where it all
would have ended if Fagott had not stopped the rain of money by suddenly
blowing into the air.
Two young men, exchanging significant and merry glances, took off from
their seats and made straight for the buffet. There was a hum in the
theatre, all the spectators' eyes glittered excitedly. Yes, yes, no one
knows where it all would have ended if Bengalsky had not summoned his
strength and acted. Trying to gain better control of himself, he rubbed his
hands, as was his custom, and in his most resounding voice spoke thus:
'Here, citizens, you and I have just beheld a case of so-called mass
hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, proving in the best way possible
that there are no miracles in magic. Let us ask Maestro Woland to expose
this experiment for us. Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed
banknotes disappear as suddenly as they appeared.'
Here he applauded, but quite alone, while a confident smile played on
his face, yet in his eyes there was no such confidence, but rather an
expression of entreaty.
The audience did not like Bengalsky's speech. Total silence fell, which
was broken by the checkered Fagott.
`And this is a case of so-called lying,' he announced in a loud,
goatish tenor. The notes, citizens, are genuine.'
'Bravo!' a bass barked from somewhere on high.
This one, incidentally,' here Fagott pointed to Bengalsky, 'annoys me.
Keeps poking his nose where nobody's asked him, spoils the s
suggestion. Tear his head off? There's an idea! Behemoth!' he shouted to the
cat. 'Go to it! Ein, zwei, drei!!'
And an unheard-of thing occurred. The fur bristled on the cat's back,
and he gave a rending miaow. Then he compressed himself into a ball and shot
like a panther straight at Bengalsky's chest, and from there on to his head.
Growling, the cat sank his plump paws into the skimpy chevelure of the
master of ceremonies and in two twists tore the head from the thick neck
with a savage howl.
The two and a half thousand people in the theatre cried out as one.
Blood spurted in fountains from the torn neck arteries and poured over
the shirt-front and tailcoat. The headless body paddled its feet somehow
absurdly and sat down on the floor. Hysterical women's cries came from the
audience. The cat handed the head to Fagott, who lifted it up by the hair
and showed it to the audience, and the head cried desperately for all the
theatre to hear:
'A doctor!'
'Will you pour out such drivel in the future?' Fagott asked the weeping
head menacingly.
'Never again!' croaked the head.
'For God's sake, don't torture him!' a woman's voice from a box seat
suddenly rose above the clamour, and the magician turned in the direction of
that voice.
'So, what then, citizens, shall we forgive him?' Fagott asked,
addressing the audience.
'Forgive him, forgive him!' separate voices, mostly women's, spoke
first, then merged into one chorus with the men's.
'What are your orders, Messire?' Fagott asked the masked man.
'Well, now,' the latter replied pensively, 'they're people like any
other people... They love money, but that has always been so... Mankind
loves money, whatever it's made of- leather, paper, bronze, gold. Well,
they're light-minded ... well, what of it ... mercy sometimes knocks at
their hearts ... ordinary people... In general, reminiscent of the former
ones ... only the housing problem has corrupted them...' And he ordered
loudly: 'Put the head on.'
The cat, aiming accurately, planted the head on the neck, and it sat
exactly in its place, as if it had never gone anywhere. Above all, there was
not even any scar left on the neck. The cat brushed Bengalsky's tailcoat and
shirt-front with his paws, and all traces of blood disappeared from them.
Fagott got the sitting Bengalsky to his feet, stuck a packet of money
into his coat pocket, and sent him from the stage with the words:
'Buzz off, it's more fun without you!'
Staggering and looking around senselessly, the master of ceremonies had
plodded no farther than the fire post when he felt sick. He cried out
pitifully:
'My head, my head! ...'
Among those who rushed to him was Rimsky. The master of ceremonies
wept, snatched at something in the air with his hands, and muttered:
'Give me my head, give me back my head ... Take my apartment, take my
paintings, only give me back my head! ...'
A messenger ran for a doctor. They tried to lie Bengalsky down on a
sofa in the dressing room, but he began to struggle, became violent. They
had to call an ambulance. When the unfortunate master of ceremonies was
taken away, Rimsky ran back to the stage and saw that new wonders were
taking place on it. Ah, yes, incidentally, either then or a little earlier,
the magician disappeared from the stage together with his faded armchair,
and it must be said that the public took absolutely no notice of it, carried
away as it was by the extraordinary things Fagott was unfolding on stage.
And Fagott, having packed off the punished master of ceremonies,
addressed the public thus:
`All righty, now that we've kicked that nuisance out, let's open a
ladies' shop!'
And all at once the floor of the stage was covered with Persian
carpets, huge mirrors appeared, lit by greenish tubes at the sides, and
between the mirrors - display windows, and in them the merrily astonished
spectators saw Parisian ladies' dresses of various colours and cuts. In some
of the windows, that is, while in others there appeared hundreds of ladies'
hats, with feathers and without feathers, and - with buckles or without -
hundreds of shoes, black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, with straps,
with stones. Among the shoes there appeared cases of perfume, mountains of
handbags of antelope hide, suede, silk, and among these, whole heaps of
little elongated cases of gold metal such as usually contain lipstick.
A red-headed girl appeared from devil knows where in a black evening
dress - a girl nice in all respects, had she not been marred by a queer scar
on her neck - smiling a proprietary smile by the display windows.
Fagott, grinning sweetly, announced that the firm was offering
perfectly gratis an exchange of the ladies' old dresses and shoes for
Parisian models and Parisian shoes. The same held, he added, for the
handbags and other things.
The cat began scraping with his hind paw, while his front paw performed
the gestures appropriate to a doorman opening a door.
The girl sang out sweetly, though with some hoarseness, rolling her
r's, something not quite comprehensible but, judging by the women's faces in
the stalls, very tempting:
'Gueriain, Chanel, Mitsouko, Narcisse Noir, Chanel No. 5, evening
gowns, cocktail dresses ...'
Fagott wriggled, the cat bowed, the girl opened the glass windows.
'Welcome!' yelled Fagott. With no embarrassment or ceremony!'
The audience was excited, but as yet no one ventured on stage. Finally
some brunette stood up in the tenth row of the stalls and, smiling as if to
say it was all the same to her and she did not give a hoot, went and climbed
on stage by the side stairs.
'Bravo!' Fagott shouted. 'Greetings to the first customer! Behemoth, a
chair! Let's start with the shoes, madame.'
The brunette sat in the chair, and Fagott at once poured a whole heap
of shoes on the rug in front of her. The brunette removed her right shoe,
tried a lilac one, stamped on the rug, examined the heel.
They won't pinch?' she asked pensively.
To this Fagott exclaimed with a hurt air:
'Come, come!' and the cat miaowed resentfully.
'I'll take this pair, m'sieur,' the brunette said with dignity, putting
on the second shoe as well.
The brunette's old shoes were tossed behind a curtain, and she
proceeded there herself, accompanied by the red-headed girl and Fagott, who
was carrying several fashionable dresses on hangers. The cat bustled about,
helped, and for greater importance hung a measuring tape around his neck.
A minute later the brunette came from behind the curtain in such a
dress that the stalls all let out a gasp. The brave woman, who had become
astonishingly prettier, stopped at the mirror, moved her bare shoulders,
touched the hair on her nape and, twisting, tried to peek at her back.
The firm asks you to accept this as a souvenir,' said Fagott, and he
offered the brunette an open case with a flacon in it.
`Merci,' the brunette said haughtily and went down the steps to the
stalls. As she walked, the spectators jumped up and touched the case.
And here there came a clean breakthrough, and from all sides women
marched on to the stage. Amid the general agitation of talk, chuckles and
gasps, a man's voice was heard: 'I won't allow it!' and a woman's:
`Despot and philistine! Don't break my arm!' Women disappeared behind
the curtain, leaving their dresses there and coming out in new ones. A whole
row of ladies sat on stools with gilded legs, stamping the carpet
energetically with newly shod feet. Fagott was on his knees, working away
with a metal shoehorn; the cat, fainting under piles of purses and shoes,
plodded back and forth between the display windows and the stools; the girl
with the disfigured neck appeared and disappeared, and reached the point
where she started rattling away entirely in French, and, surprisingly, the
women all understood her from half a word, even those who did not know a
single word of French.
General amazement was aroused by a man edging his way on-stage. He
announced that his wife had the flu, and he therefore asked that something
be sent to her through him. As proof that he was indeed married, the citizen
was prepared to show his passport. The solicitous husband's announcement was
met with guffaws. Fagott shouted that he believed him like his own self,
even without the passport, and handed the citizen two pairs of silk
stockings, and the cat for his part added a little tube of lipstick.
Late-coming women tore on to the stage, and off the stage the lucky
ones came pouring down in ball gowns, pyjamas with dragons, sober formal
outfits, little hats tipped over one eyebrow.
Then Fagott announced that owing to the lateness of the hour, the shop
would close in exactly one minute until the next evening, and an
unbelievable scramble arose on-stage. Women hastily grabbed shoes without
trying them on. One burst behind the curtain like a storm, got out of her
dress there, took possession of the first thing that came to hand - a silk
dressing-gown covered with huge bouquets - and managed to pick up two cases
of perfume besides.
Exactly a minute later a pistol shot rang out, the mirrors disappeared,
the display windows and stools dropped away, the carpet melted into air, as
did the curtain. Last to disappear was the high mountain of old dresses and
shoes, and the stage was again severe, empty and bare.
And it was here that a new character mixed into the affair. A pleasant,
sonorous, and very insistent baritone came from box no. 2:
'All the same it is desirable, citizen artiste, that you expose the
technique of your tricks to the spectators without delay, especially the
trick with the paper money. It is also desirable that the master of
ceremonies return to the stage. The spectators are concerned about his
fate.'
The baritone belonged to none other than that evening's guest of
honour, Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics
Commission of the Moscow theatres.
Arkady Apollonovich was in his box with two ladies: the older one
dressed expensively and fashionably, the other one, young and pretty,
dressed in a simpler way. The first, as was soon discovered during the
drawing up of the report, was Arkady Apollonovich's wife, and the second was
his distant relation, a promising debutante, who had come from Saratov and
was living in the apartment of Arkady Apollonovich and his wife.
Pardone!' Fagott replied. 'I'm sorry, there's nothing here to expose,
it's all clear.'
'No, excuse me! The exposure is absolutely necessary. Without it your
brilliant numbers will leave a painful impression. The mass of spectators
demands an explanation.'
'The mass of spectators,' the impudent clown interrupted Sempleyarov,
`doesn't seem to be saying anything. But, in consideration of your most
esteemed desire, Arkady Apollonovich, so be it - I will perform an exposure.
But, to that end, will you allow me one more tiny number?'
'Why not?' Arkady Apollonovich replied patronizingly. 'But there must
be an exposure.'
'Very well, very well, sir. And so, allow me to ask, where were you
last evening, Arkady Apollonovich?'
At this inappropriate and perhaps even boorish question, Arkady
Apollonovich's countenance changed, and changed quite drastically.
`Last evening Arkady Apollonovich was at a meeting of the Acoustics
Commission,' Arkady Apollonovich's wife declared very haughtily, "but I
don't understand what that has got to do with magic.'
'Ouee, madame!' Fagott agreed. 'Naturally you don't understand. As for
the meeting, you are totally deluded. After driving off to the said meeting,
which incidentally was not even scheduled for last night, Arkady
Apollonovich dismissed his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission building on
Clean Ponds' (the whole theatre became hushed), `and 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.'
'Aie!' someone cried out painfully in the total silence. Arkady
Apollonovich's young relation suddenly broke into a low and terrible laugh.
'It's all clear!' she exclaimed. 'And I've long suspected it. Now I see
why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa [1]!''
And, swinging suddenly, she struck Arkady Apollonovich on the head with
her short and fat violet umbrella.
Meanwhile, the scoundrelly Fagott, alias Koroviev, was shouting:
'Here, honourable citizens, is one case of the exposure Arkady
Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!'
'How dare you touch Arkady Apollonovich, you vile creature?' Arkady
Apollonovich's wife asked threateningly, rising in the box to all her
gigantic height.
A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation. 'Who
else should dare touch him,' she answered, guffawing, 'if not me!' And for
the second time there came the dry, crackling sound of the umbrella bouncing
off the head of Arkady Apollonovich.
'Police! Seize her!!' Sempleyarov's wife shouted in such a terrible
voice that many hearts went cold.
And here the cat also leaped out to the footlights and suddenly barked
in a human voice for all the theatre to hear:
The seance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!' The half-crazed
conductor, unaware of what he was doing, waved his baton, and the orchestra
did not play, or even strike up, or even bang away at, but precisely, in the
cat's loathsome expression, hacked out some incredible march of an
unheard-of brashness.
For a moment there was an illusion of having heard once upon a time,
under southern stars, in a cafe-chantant, some barely intelligible,
half-blind, but rollicking words to this march:
His Excellency reached the stage
Of liking barnyard fowl.
He took under his patronage
Three young girls and an owl!!!
Or maybe these were not the words at all, but there were others to the
same music, extremely indecent ones. That is not the important thing, the
important thing is that, after all this, something like Babel broke loose in
the Variety. The police went running to Sempleyarov's box, people were
climbing over the barriers, there were bursts of infernal guffawing and
furious shouts, drowned in the golden clash of the orchestra's cymbals.
And one could see that the stage was suddenly empty, and that the
hoodwinker Fagott, as well as the brazen tom-cat Behemoth, had melted into
air, vanished as the magician had vanished earlier in his armchair with the
faded upholstery.
And so, the unknown man shook his finger at Ivan and whispered:
'Shhh! ...'
Ivan lowered his legs from the bed and peered. Cautiously looking into
the room from the balcony was a clean-shaven, dark-haired man of
approximately thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes, and a wisp of
hair hanging down on his forehead.
Having listened and made sure that Ivan was alone, the mysterious
visitor took heart and stepped into the room. Here Ivan saw that the man was
dressed as a patient. He was wearing long underwear, slippers on his bare
feet, and a brown dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders.
The visitor winked at Ivan, hid a bunch of keys in his pocket, inquired
in a whisper: 'May I sit down?' - and receiving an affirmative nod, placed
himself in an armchair.
'How did you get here?' Ivan asked in a whisper, obeying the dry finger
shaken at him. 'Aren't the balcony grilles locked?'
The grilles are locked,' the guest agreed, `but Praskovya Fyodorovna,
while the dearest person, is also, alas, quite absent-minded. A month ago I
stole a bunch of keys from her, and so gained the opportunity of getting out
on to the common balcony, which runs around the entire floor, and so of
occasionally calling on a neighbour.'
'If you can get out on to the balcony, you can escape. Or is it high
up?' Ivan was interested.
'No,' the guest replied firmly, 'I cannot escape from here, not because
it's high up, but because I have nowhere to escape to.' And he added, after
a pause: 'So, here we sit.'
`Here we sit,' Ivan replied, peering into the man's brown and very
restless eyes.
'Yes ...' here the guest suddenly became alarmed, 'but you're not
violent, I hope? Because, you know, I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or
other things like that. Especially hateful to me are people's cries, whether
cries of rage, suffering, or anything else. Set me at ease, tell me, you're
not violent?'
`Yesterday in a restaurant I socked one type in the mug,' the
transformed poet courageously confessed.
'Your grounds?' the guest asked sternly.
"No grounds, I must confess,' Ivan answered, embarrassed.
'Outrageous,' the guest denounced Ivan and added: 'And besides, what a
way to express yourself: "socked in the mug"... It is not known precisely
whether a man has a mug or a face. And, after all, it may well be a face.
So, you know, using fists ... No, you should give that up, and for good.'
Having thus reprimanded Ivan, the guest inquired:
'Your profession?'
'Poet,' Ivan confessed, reluctantly for some reason.
The visitor became upset.
'Ah, just my luck!' he exclaimed, but at once reconsidered, apologized,
and asked: 'And what is your name?'
'Homeless.'
'Oh-oh ...' the guest said, wincing.
'What, you mean you dislike my poetry?' Ivan asked with curiosity.
'I dislike it terribly.'
'And what have you read.'
'I've never read any of your poetry!' the visitor exclaimed nervously.
Then how can you say that?'
'Well, what of it?' the guest replied. 'As if I haven't read others? Or
else ... maybe there's some miracle? Very well, I'm ready to take it on
faith. Is your poetry good? You tell me yourself.'
'Monstrous!' Ivan suddenly spoke boldly and frankly.
'Don't write any more!' the visitor asked beseechingly.
'I promise and I swear!' Ivan said solemnly.
The oath was sealed with a handshake, and here soft footsteps and
voices were heard in the corridor.
'Shh!' the guest whispered and, jumping out to the balcony, closed the
grille behind him.
Praskovya Fyodorovna peeked in, asked Ivan how he was feeling and
whether he wished to sleep in the dark or with a light. Ivan asked her to
leave the light on, and Praskovya Fyodorovna withdrew, wishing the patient a
good night. And when everything was quiet, the guest came back again.
He informed Ivan in a whisper that there was a new arrival in room 119
- some fat man with a purple physiognomy, who kept muttering something about
currency in the ventilation and swearing that unclean powers were living in
their place on Sadovaya.
'He curses Pushkin up and down and keeps shouting: "Kurolesov, encore,
encore!"' the guest said, twitching nervously. Having calmed himself, he sat
down, said: 'Anyway, God help him,' and continued his conversation with
Ivan: 'So, how did you wind up here?'
'On account of Pontius Pilate,' Ivan replied, casting a glum look at
the floor.
'What?!' the guest cried, forgetting all caution, and clapped his hand