The Chose 41
ing bus going to Arbat Square, and disappeared. After losing one of the pack, Ivan focused all his attention on the cat He saw the bizarre feline walk over to the steps of an "A" streetcar that was standing at the stop, rudely push aside a woman who let out a shriek, grab onto the handrail, and even try to thrust a ten-kopeck piece at the conductress through the window, open because of the heat.
The cat's behavior so amazed Ivan that he froze in his tracks next to a grocery store on the corner, only then to become even more amazed by the behavior of the conductress. As soon as she saw the cat climbing onto the streetcar, she began shouting with such fury that she shook all over, "Cats aren't allowed! No passengers with cats! Shoo! Get off, or I'll call the police!"
But neither the conductress nor the passengers were amazed by the most important thing of all, namely, that a cat was not merely getting on a streetcar, which wasn't so bad, but that he intended to pay his fare!
The cat turned out to be not only a fare-paying beast, but a disciplined one as well. At the first yell from the conductress, he stopped in his tracks, got off the streetcar, and sat down at the stop, stroking his whiskers with his ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner did the conductress pull the cord and the streetcar start to move, than the cat did just what anyone who has been kicked off a streetcar and still has somewhere to go would do. He let all three cars go by, then jumped onto the coupler in back of the last one, grabbed on to a piece of tubing that stuck out of the back with his paw and sailed off, saving himself ten kopecks in the bargain.
Preoccupied with the revolting cat, Ivan almost lost track of the most important one of the three, the professor. But, fortunately, he had not managed to slip away. Ivan caught sight of his gray beret in the midst of the crowd swarming into Bolshaya Nikitskaya or Herzen Street In the flash of an eye Ivan himself was there, but to no avail. Although he quickened his pace and began running at jogging speed, jostling pedestrians in the process, he never managed to get any closer to the professor.
However distraught he was, Ivan Nikolayevich could not help but be struck by the supernatural speed of the chase. Twenty seconds after leaving Nikitsky Gates, he was blinded by the lights on Arbat Square, and a few seconds after that, he was on a dark side street with sloping sidewalks, where he fell with a crash and hit his knee. Again a brightly lit thoroughfare—Kropotkin Street, then a side-street, then Ostozhenka and yet another side street, bleak, nasty, and poorly lit. It was here that Ivan Nikolayevich finally lost the man who was so important to him. The professor had vanished.
Ivan Nikolayevich grew discouraged, but not for long. It suddenly hit him that the professor would definitely turn up in building No. 13, and without fail in apartment 47.
Ivan Nikolayevich tore through the entranceway and flew up the stairs to the second floor. He found the apartment immediately and rang the
42 The Master and Margarita
bell impatiently. He did not have to wait long because a little girl of five or so opened the door for him, and then went off without a word.
The vast and extremely neglected entrance hall was dimly lit by a tiny corner lamp that hung from a ceiling black with dirt. A bicycle without tires hung on the wall, and on the floor there was an enormous iron-studded chest; on the shelf above the coatrack there was a winter hat, with long drooping earflaps. Behind one of the doors a booming masculine voice was angrily declaiming verses on the radio.
Ivan Nikolayevich was not in the least bit flustered by these unfamiliar surroundings and headed straight for the hallway, reasoning thus, "Naturally, he's hidden himself in the bathroom." It was dark in the hallway, and as he bumped against the wall, Ivan saw a faint streak of light coming from under the doorway. He grabbed the doorknob and gave it a slight tug. The latch unfastened, and Ivan found himself precisely in the bathroom, and thought what luck that was.
But it wasn't the right kind of luck! The moist warmth of the bath enveloped Ivan, and in the light of the coals smouldering in the water heater, he could see large basins hanging on the wall and a bathtub, pitted with horrible black spots where the enamel had chipped off. There in the tub stood a naked woman, covered in soap and with a loofah in her hands. She squinted nearsightedly at Ivan's intruding figure, and clearly mistaking him for someone else in the hellish light, said sofdy and cheerily, "Kiryushkal Quit fooling aroundl Have you gone out of your mind? Fyodor Ivanovich will be back any minute. Get out of here this instant!"—and she waved her loofah at Ivan.
It was an obvious misunderstanding, and Ivan Nikolayevich was, of course, to blame. But not wanting to admit it, he yelled reproachfully, "Whore!..."—and then somehow ended up in the kitchen. There was no one there. Standing silently on top of the stove in the semidarkness were a number of unlit primus stoves. A single ray of moonlight filtered through the dusty window, which had not been cleaned for years, and feebly illumined the corner, where amidst the dust and cobwebs hung a forgotten icon, the stubs of two wedding candles still sticking out of its case. Tacked to the wall beneath the large icon was a small paper one.
No one knows what thought possessed Ivan at that moment, only that he grabbed the paper icon and one of the candles before running out the back door. With these objects in hand, he left the strange apartment, mumbling in embarrassment over what had just happened to him in the bathroom, and wondering, despite himself, who the insolent Kiryushka might be and whether the repulsive hat with the earflaps belonged to him.
Ivan looked all around for the fugitive in the dreary, deserted back street, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said to himself firmly, "But, of course, he's on the Moscow River! Onward!"
Perhaps Ivan Nikolayevich should have been asked why he thought
The Ou«43
the professor was on the Moscow River and not somewhere else. But there was, alas, no one to ask him. The foul and odious street was completely deserted.
In no time at all Ivan Nikolayevich could be seen on the granite steps of the amphitheater by the Moscow River.
After taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant-looking fellow with a beard who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Next to him was a torn, white Tolstoyan-style shirt and a pair of worn-down, unlaced shoes. Waving his arms in order to cool off, Ivan plunged into the water like a swallow. The water was so cold it took his breath away, and the thought even flashed through his mind that he might not be able to surface. But surface he did, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes bulging with terror, Ivan Nikolayevich began swimming in the black, oil-reeking water between the broken zigzags of light cast by the street-lamps along the bank.
When a wet Ivan came tripping up the steps to the spot where the bearded fellow had been safeguarding his clothes, it soon became clear that not only the latter had been kidnapped, but the former as well, that is, the bearded fellow himself. Where the pile of clothes had been, there was now only a pair of striped long Johns, a torn Tolstoyan-style shirt, a candle, a paper icon, and a box of matches. After shaking his fist at someone in the distance in a gesture of feeble outrage, Ivan proceeded to put on what had been left behind.
It was then that two thoughts began to plague him: first, his MAS-SOLIT ID, which he was never without, was gone, and second, would he be able to walk around Moscow the way he was dressed without being stopped? Long underwear was a bit... True, it was nobody's business, but someone might make a fuss or try to stop him.
Ivan tore the ankle buttons off his long Johns, thinking that might make them look more like summer trousers. He then gathered up the icon, candle, and matches and set off, saying to himself, To Gribo-yedov! No doubt he's there."
The evening life of the city had already begun. Trucks sped by in clouds of dust, their chains rattling, and on their platforms men lay on sacks, their stomachs sticking up in the air. Everyone's windows were open, and shining in each one was a lamp with an orange shade; from all the windows, doors, gateways, rooftops, attics, cellars, and courtyards came the hoarse strains of the polonaise from the opera Eugene Onegin.
Ivan Nikolayevich's fears were completely justified: passersby took one look at him and laughed and turned to stare. As a result he decided to abandon the main thoroughfares and make his way through the side streets and back alleys where people were less nosy, and there was less chance that a barefoot man would be pestered about long Johns that stubbornly refused to look like trousers.
So Ivan plunged into the mysterious network of back alleys around
44 The Master and Margarita
the ArbaL He slinked along the walls, casting fearful glances and turning around every minute. From time to time, he hid in entranceways. He avoided intersections lit up by traffic lights, and the plush doorways of embassy residences.
Throughout his difficult journey, he was, for some reason, inexpressibly tormented by the omnipresent orchestra accompanying the deep bass who was singing of his love for Tatyana.
V
The Incident at Griboyedov
O |
N the ring boulevard there was an old cream-colored two-storey house that stood in the depths of a withered garden which was separated from the sidewalk by a carved wrought-iron fence. The small area in front of the house was paved over with asphalt, and in winter a mound of snow with a shovel on top towered above it; in summer it was shaded by a canvas awning and became the outdoor pavilion of a summer restaurant.
The house was called "Griboyedov House" because it was supposed to have been owned at one time by an aunt of the writer Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov. Whether she owned it or not, we don't know for sure. I even seem to recall that Griboyedov did not have an aunt who owned property... However, that was what the house was called. What's more, a certain Moscow prevaricator would relate how the famous writer read excerpts from his Woe from Wit to this very same aunt while she reclined on a sofa in the round colonnaded hall on the second floor. And, the devil knows, maybe he did, but that's not the pointl The point is that at the present time the house was owned by that very same MASSOLIT which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at Patriarch's Ponds.
Following the example of MASSOLIT's members, no one called the place "Griboyedov House," but simply—"Griboyedov": "Yesterday I hung around Griboyedov for two hours." —"Well, so how did you make out?" —"I managed to get a month in Yalta." — "Good for you!" Or, "Go talk to Berlioz, he's seeing people at Griboyedov today from four to five," and so on.
MASSOLIT's quarters at Griboyedov were the best and most comfortable imaginable. The first thing a visitor saw upon entering Griboyedov were the notices of various sports clubs, and the individual and group photos of MASSOLIT members which hung on the walls of the
46 The Master and Margarita
staircase leading to the second floor.
The first room on the upper floor had a sign on the door in bold letters which said, "Fishing and Dacha Section," accompanied by a picture of a carp jumping into a net.
The sign on Room No. 2 was not entirely clear, "Creative Day-Trips. See M. V. Podlozhnaya."
The next room had a brief but utterly baffling sign, "Perelygino," and the array of signs that adorned the rest of the aunt's walnut doors would make your eyes swim, "Sign up with Folevkina for supplies," "Cashier. Personal Accounts for Theatrical Sketch Writers..."
If one cut through the very long line that began downstairs in the en-tryhall, one could see the sign, "Housing Concerns," on a door that people were constantly bombarding.
Behind "Housing Concerns" was a lush poster depicting a horseman in a Caucasian cloak riding along the crest of a mountain cliff with a rifle slung over his shoulders. Lower on the poster were palm trees and a balcony, and on the balcony a young man with a cowlick was seated and looking upward into space with incredibly alert eyes while holding a fountain pen in his hand. The caption read, "Creative Package Vacations from two weeks (for a short story or novella) to one year (for a novel or trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoye, Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace)." This door also had a line, but not a very long one, only about one hundred and fifty people.
Then there followed, conforming to the whimsical curves, rises, and falls of Griboyedov House—"MASSOLIT Administration," "Cashiers: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5," "Editorial Board," "MASSOLIT President," "Billiard Room," various auxiliary offices, and finally, that same colonnaded room where Griboyedov's aunt had enjoyed listening to her brilliant nephew's comedy.
Any visitor who came to Griboyedov immediately realized, unless, of course, he was a complete ninny, how good life was for the fortunates who were members of MASSOLIT. He would soon become green with envy and curse the heavens for not having blessed him at birth with literary talent, without which, naturally, one could not even dream of possessing the brown, gold-bordered MASSOLIT membership card that smelled of expensive leather, and was known to all of Moscow.
Who will say anything in defense of envy? As a feeling it falls into the category of worthless, but even so, one has to put oneself in the position of our visitor. After all, what he saw on the upper floor was merely the icing on the cake. The entire bottom floor of the aunt's house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant it was! Griboyedov was considered the best restaurant in Moscow and with good reason. Not only because of its layout in two large rooms with vaulted ceilings that were adorned with lilac-colored, Assyrian-maned horses, or because each table had its own shawl-shaded lamp, or because it was exclusive
The Incident at Griboyedov 47
and closed to the general public, but also because it served better-quality food than any restaurant in Moscow and at reasonable, by no means prohibitive, prices as well.
This explains why the author of these most truthful lines found nothing surprising in the following exchange which he once overheard at Griboyedov's wrought-iron fence:
"Where will you be dining today, Amvrosy?"
"Why, what a question! Here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich let me in on a secret: the à la carte special today is perch au naturel, a real virtuoso dish!"
"You know how to live, Amvrosy!" sighed Foka, a skinny and unkempt fellow with a carbuncle on his neck, to Amvrosy, a pudgy-cheeked, rosy-lipped, golden-haired giant of a poet.
"I don't have any special talents," retorted Amvrosy, "just an ordinary desire to live like a human being. Now you'll say, Foka, that you can get perch at the Coliseum. But a serving there costs 13 rubles, 15 kopecks, and here it's only 5, 50! Besides, at the Coliseum the perch is three days old, not to mention the fact that at the Coliseum there's no guarantee you won't get smacked in the kisser with a bunch of grapes by the first young scamp who bursts in from Theater Passage. No, Foka, I'm categorically opposed to the Coliseum," boomed the gourmet Amvrosy for the benefit of the whole boulevard. "Don't try to change my mind!"
"I'm not trying to, Amvrosy," squeaked Foka. "One can also dine at home."
"Thank you, no," trumpeted Amvrosy, "I can just imagine your wife, trying to cook perch au naturel in the frying pan of your communal kitchen! Ha-ha-ha! Au revoir, Foka!" And, humming a tune, Amvrosy headed for the canopied veranda.
Ha-ha-ha... Yes, those were the days! Oldtime residents of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov! As for the perch au naturel, that was nothing, my dear Amvrosy! What about the sterlet, the sterlet in a silver pan, the sterlet filets layered with crayfish and fresh caviar? And the eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree? And didn't you like the filet of thrush? With truffles? The quail á la génoise? Ten rubles fifty! And the jazz, and the gracious service! And in July, when the whole family's away at the dacha and pressing literary matters keep you in the city—out on the veranda in the shades of twisting grapevines, a bowl of soup print-anier sitting in a sunspot on the most immaculate tablecloth imaginable? Do you remember, Amvrosy? Well, why ask! I can see by your lips that you do remember. So much for the whitefish and perch! What about the snipe, great snipe, jacksnipe, woodcock in season, quail, and sandpipers? The Narzan water fizzing in your throat?! But enough, your eyes, dear reader, are becoming glazed! Follow me!
At 10:30 p.m., on the evening when Berlioz was killed at Patriarch's
48 The Master and Margarita
Ponds, the lights were on in only one of the upper rooms at Gribo-yedov, where the twelve writers who had been summoned to a meeting languished, as they waited for Mikhail Alexandrovich to arrive.
They were sitting on chairs, tables, and even on both windowsills of the MASSOLIT administration room and were suffering intensely from the stifling heat. Not a breath of fresh air came through the open windows. All the heat that had accumulated on Moscow's pavement during the day was being released, and it was clear that the night would bring no relief. The smell of onions wafted up from the basement of the aunt's house, where the restaurant kitchen was, and everyone was thirsty, edgy, and irritable.
The fiction writer Beskudnikov—a quiet, neatly dressed man with keen, yet unfocused eyes-took out his watch. The hour hand was creeping towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the dial, and showed it to his neighbor, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting at the table and shuffling his yellow rubber-soled shoes out of boredom.
"Well, really," muttered Dvubratsky.
"The lad must have gotten held up on the Klyazma," said the thick-voiced Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, an orphan from a Moscow merchant family, who had become a writer and turned out naval battle stories under the pen name "Bosun George."
"If I may!" boldly began Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches. "I too would rather be sipping tea on the balcony than stewing around here. Wasn't the meeting called for ten?"
"It's nice on the Klyazma now," said Bosun George, egging everyone on because she knew the writers* colony in Perelygino on the Klyazma was a universal sore spot. "The nightingales are probably singing by now. Somehow I always work better in the country, especially in spring."
"For three years now I've been paying in money, so I can send my wife to that paradise for her Grave's disease, but so far it's no go," said the novelist Hieronymus Poprikhin venomously and bitterly.
"It's just the luck of the draw," rang out the critic Ababkov from the windowsill.
Joy blazed in Bosun George's little eyes, and softening her heavy contralto she said, "No need for envy, comrades. There are twenty-two dachas in all, and only seven more are being built, and there are 3,000 of us in MASSOLIT."
"3,111," interjected someone from the corner.
"Well, there you have it," continued the Bosun, "what's to be done? It's natural that the most talented people got dachas..."
"The generals!" cut in the dramatist Glukharyov, joining the fray.
Beskudnikov gave a theatrical yawn and walked out of the room.
"Five rooms in Perelygino all to himself," said Glukharyov in his wake.
The incident at Griboyedov 49
"Lavrovich has six," exclaimed Deniskin, "and an oak-paneled dining room!"
"Right now that's not the issue," rang out Ababkov, "the issue is that it's eleven-thirty."
It got noisy, something like a mutiny was brewing. They put in a call to the hateful Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, namely, Lavrovich's, where they learned that Lavrovich had gone off to the river. That threw them into a complete muddle. For no reason at all they called the Commission for Belles Lettres (extension 930) and naturally found no one there.
"He could at least have called!" shouted Deniskin, Glukharyov, and Kvant.
Alas, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a cavernous room illuminated by 1000-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables lay the remains of what once had been Mikhail Alexandrovich.
On the first table lay his naked body, covered in dried blood, with a broken arm and crushed rib cage; on the second lay his head with smashed-in front teeth and glazed, wide-open eyes, undisturbed by the most glaring light; on the third lay a pile of encrusted rags.
Standing near the headless body were a professor of forensic medicine, a pathologist and his dissector, members of the investigating team, and the writer Zheldybin, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz's assistant at MASSOLTT, who had been called away from his wife's sickbed.
A car had gone to get Zheldybin and to take him first (this was around midnight), together with the investigators, to the apartment of the deceased, where the latter's papers were put under seal, and then, to the morgue.
And now they were all standing around the remains of the deceased, discussing how best to proceed: should they sew the severed head back on the neck or lay the body out in Griboyedov's hall with a black cloth drawn tightly up to the chin?
Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was unable to make any calls; so Deniskin, Glukharyov, Kvant, and Beskudnikov ranted and raved in vain. At precisely midnight all twelve writers quit the upper floor and went down to the restaurant. Here again they had cause to think unkindly about Mikhail Alexandrovich: naturally, all the tables on the veranda were already taken, and they were forced to have supper in the beautiful but stuffy rooms inside.
At exactly midnight, something in the first room crashed, followed by ringing, shattering, and thumping sounds. And at once a thin male voice began to shout despairingly to the music, "Hallelujah!" These were the sounds of the renowned Griboyedov jazz ensemble. Sweat-covered faces seemed to light up, the horses painted on the ceiling seemed to come to life, the light in the lamps seemed to glow brighter, and sud-
50 The Master and Margarita
denly, as if freed from their chains, both rooms started to dance, with the veranda following suit.
Glukharyov began dancing with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Kvant began to dance, as did the novelist Zhukopov, with a movie actress in a yellow dress; Dragunsky, Cherdakchi, tiny Deniskin, and gigantic Bosun George all danced, and the architect Semeikina-Gall, a beauty, danced in the tight embrace of an unknown man in white burlap trousers. The regulars danced and so did their guests, Muscovites and out-of-towners too, the writer Ioann from Kronstadt, someone called Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, who was apparently a director and had a purple birthmark covering his entire cheek; representatives of the poetry subsection of MASSOLIT, that is, Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Spichkin, and Adelfina Buzdyak; young men of dubious profession wearing jackets with shoulder pads; and a very elderly man with a piece of green onion stuck in his beard, who danced with an anemic girl in a crumpled orange dress.
Bathed in sweat, the waiters carried foaming mugs of beer above the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously, "Sorry, sir!" Somewhere, orders were being shouted through a megaphone, "One shash-lykl Two zubrovkas! Tripe polonaise!" The thin voice no longer sang but wailed, "Hallelujah!" The crash of the jazz band's bold cymbals was sometimes muffled by the crash the dishes made as the dishwashers sent them down a slide into the kitchen. In a word, hell.
And at midnight a vision appeared in hell. A handsome, dark-eyed fellow with a dagger-shaped beard stepped out onto the veranda in full dress and cast an imperial glance over his domain. They said, the mystics did, that there was once a time when this handsome fellow wore a broad leather belt with pistols instead of a tailcoat, and tied his raven hair with red silk, and the brig he commanded sailed the Caribbean under a black flag with skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics lie, the Caribbeans of this world are gone—desperate marauders do not sail across them, chased by corvettes, and cannon smoke does not hang low over the waves. There is nothing, and there never was anything! The stunted linden tree over there is all there is, and the iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it... And the ice melting in the little bowl, and someone's bloodshot bulllike eyes at a neighboring table, and it's awful, awful... O gods, my gods, give me poison, poison!
And suddenly the name "Berlioz" fluttered up from a table. The band broke off abruptly and fell silent, as if punched with a fist "What, what, what, what?"—"Berlioz!!!" And people jumped up and started screaming...
Indeed, a wave of grief surged up in response to the terrible news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone ran around yelling that a collective telegram had to be composed right then and there, before anyone could leave, and sent off right away.
The Incident at GriboyeJov 51
But what kind of a telegram, may we ask, and where should it be sent? And why send it? And indeed, where? And what use is a telegram to a man whose flattened occiput was at that very minute being squeezed by the dissector's rubber gloves and whose neck a professor is probing with curved needles? He is dead and has no need of telegrams. It's all over, so let's not burden the telegraph system.
Yes, he's dead, he's dead... But we are alive!
Yes, a wave of grief did arise and lasted for a time, but then it began to subside and one fellow had already returned to his table and, furtively at first, but then openly downed some vodka and taken a bite to eat. And indeed, why waste supreme de volaille? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? By staying hungry? After all, we are alive!
Naturally, the piano was locked shut, the band went home, and several of the journalists went off to their offices to write obituaries. Word spread that Zheldybin had returned from the morgue. He ensconced himself in the upstairs office of the deceased, which started the rumor that he would be Berlioz's replacement. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members of the board from the restaurant, and at the meeting which began immediately in Berlioz's office they moved to discuss a number of urgent matters: decorations for the colonnaded Griboyedov hall, transport of the body from the morgue to the hall, the establishment of visiting hours, and various other things connected with the regrettable occurence.
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