The interpreter's proposition made a lot of practical sense. It was a very solid proposal, but there was something decidedly unsolid about his manner of speaking, his attire, and that sickening, totally useless pince-nez. As a result, a vague sense of uneasiness troubled the chairman's soul, but he decided to accept the offer anyway. The fact of the matter was that the house committee had incurred, alas, an enormous deficit. They had to buy heating oil for the fall, and where the money would come from was a mystery. Maybe the foreign visitor's money would get them out of the hole. Even so, the businesslike and cautious Nikanor Ivanovich said that he would first have to clear the matter with the Intourist Office.
"I understand!" screeched Korovyov. "How could you not sort things out! It's essential! Here's the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, why don't you sort them out right away. And don't be embarrassed to ask for money," he added in a whisper, as he drew the chairman toward the phone in the hall. "Who can you get money from if not from him! If you could only see the villa he has in Nice! Next summer when you go abroad, make sure you go and have a look—you'll faint!"
All the arrangements with the Intourist Office were made over the phone with a swiftness that amazed the chairman. It turned out that they already knew about Mr. Woland's plans to stay in Likhodeyev's private apartment, and they had no objections whatsoever.
"Marvelous!" cried Korovyov.
A bit dazed by his constant chatter, the chairman said that the house committee agreed to rent apartment No. 50 for a week to the artiste Woland at the rate of... Nikanor Ivanovich stammered somewhat and said, "Five hundred rubles a day."
82 The Master and Margarita
At this point Korovyov really bowled the chairman over. Winking roguishly in the direction of the bedroom, where the cushioned leaps of a heavy cat could be heard, he hissed, "That comes to thirty-five hundred for the week, right?"
Nikanor Ivanovich quite expected him to add, "You've got quite an appetite, don't you, Nikanor Ivanovich!" but again Korovyov surprised him. "You call that money! Ask for five thou, he'll pay it."
Nikanor Ivanovich gave a confused grin and failed to notice that he was standing next to the deceased's writing desk, where Korovyov was drawing up two copies of a contract with great speed and agility. Next, he whisked them into the bedroom and returned with both copies signed in the foreigner's scrawling hand. The chairman signed the contract too. Here Korovyov asked for a receipt for the five thousand...
"Write it out, Nikanor Ivanovich, write it out! Five thousand rubles..." And then, in a manner ill-suited to the seriousness of the occasion, he said, "eins, zwei, drei! "as he counted out five stacks of fresh banknotes for the chairman.
This was done to the accompaniment of Korovyov's little jokes and quips, such as, "A penny saved is a penny earned," "A fool and his money are soon parted," and other things ofthat sort.
After re-counting the money, the chairman took the foreigner's passport from Korovyov in order to make out a temporary residence permit, and then put it, along with the contract and the money, into his briefcase. Unable to control himself, he bashfully asked for a free pass to the show...
"Why, of course!" bellowed Korovyov. "How many tickets would you like, Nikanor Ivanovich, twelve, Fifteen?"
The dumbfounded chairman explained that he needed only two tickets, for himself and his wife, Pelageya Antonovna.
Korovyov grabbed a notepad and jauntily wrote out a pass for two in the front row. As the interpreter thrust the free pass at Nikanor Ivanovich with his left hand, he used his right to press a fat wad of crisp bills into the chairman's other hand. The latter took one look at them, blushed hard, and tried to push them away.
"We're not supposed to..." he muttered.
"I won't take no for an answer," Korovyov whispered in his ear. "We're not supposed to, but foreigners are. You'll offend him, Nikanor Ivanovich, and that would be unfortunate. After all the trouble you went to..."
"It's strictly enforced," the chairman whispered in the softest of tones and looked furtively around.
"But where are the witnesses?" Korovyov whispered in his other ear. "I ask you, where are they? What's your problem?"
And it was then, as the chairman insisted afterwards, that the miracle took place: the wad of bills crawled into his briefcase all on its own.
Korovjov's Tricks 83
Then, in a weakened and even disoriented state, the chairman found himself on the staircase. A jumble of thoughts whirled around in his head: the villa in Nice, the trained cat, the thought that there had indeed been no witnesses and that Pelageya Antonovna would be thrilled about the free pass. They were disjointed thoughts, but pleasant on the whole. And still, the chairman felt a pinprick somewhere in the depths of his soul. A pinprick of disquietude. A thought hit him like a blow on the head, right there on the staircase, "How did the interpreter get into the study if there was a seal on the door?!" And why hadn't he, Nikanor Ivanovich, asked about that? For a while the chairman gazed goggle-eyed at the stairs like a sheep, but then he decided to forget the whole thing and not to torture himself over something so complicated...
No sooner had the chairman left the apartment, than a low voice came from the bedroom, "I didn't like that Nikanor Ivanovich. He's a skinflint and a swindler. Can't we make sure he doesn't come round here again?"
"Messire, your wish is my command!" Korovyov replied from somewhere, but in a pure and resonant voice, not a quavering one.
And immediately the accursed interpreter appeared in the hall, dialed a number, and began to whine into the phone, "Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that our house committee chairman here at 302B Sadovaya Street, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, is speculating in foreign currency. At the present moment there are four hundred dollars wrapped in newspaper in the ventilator shaft of his toilet in apartment No. 35. My name is Timofei Kvastsov, and I live in apartment No. 11 in the same building. But I ask that you not reveal my name. I am afraid that the aforementioned chairman will try to get even."
Then he hung up, the scoundrel!
What happened next in apartment No. 50 is unknown, but what happened next in Nikanor Ivanovich's apartment is known. The chairman locked himself in the toilet and took out of his briefcase the packet of bills that had been forced on him by the interpreter, and checked to make sure that it contained four hundred rubles. He then wrapped the packet in a piece of newspaper and stuffed it into the ventilator shaft.
Five minutes later the chairman was sitting at the table in his small dining room. From the kitchen his wife brought him a plate of neatly sliced herring smothered with chopped scallions. Nikanor Ivanovich poured himself a small carafe of vodka, drank it down, poured another, drank that down, speared three pieces of herring on his fork... and at that moment the doorbell rang. Pelageya Antonovna had just brought in a steaming saucepan, one glance at which was enough to guess that the pan contained, in the very thick of the piping hot borshch, the most delicious thing in the world, a marrow bone.
His mouth watering, Nikanor Ivanovich began howling like a dog, "Damn you to hell! They won't even let you eat. Don't let anyone in, I'm
84 The Master and Margarita
not here, I'm not here. If it's about the apartment, tell them to stop hounding me. There'll be a meeting in a week..."
His wife ran into the entry hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich dipped a ladle into the fire-breathing lake and fished out the bone, which was cracked lengthwise. At that moment two men walked into the dining room, accompanied by a very pale Pelageya Antonovna. One look at the men and Nikanor Ivanovich turned pale too, and got up from the table.
"Where's the toilet?" asked the first man with an air of concern. He was wearing a white Russian-style shirt.
Something knocked against the dining table (it was Nikanor Ivanovich who had dropped his spoon on the oilcloth).
"Over here, here," babbled Pelageya Antonovna.
And the visitors headed straight into the hall.
"What's this all about?" asked Nikanor Ivanovich, trailing behind the men. "Nothing like that could be in our apartment... And can I see your ID... excuse me..."
The first man handed Nikanor Ivanovich his ID, and the second one proceeded to stand up on a stool in the toilet and thrust his hand into the ventilator shaft. Nikanor Ivanovich's eyes grew dim. They removed the newspaper, but the package turned out to contain not rubles, but some unknown currency that was blue-green in color and had a picture on it of an old man. Nikanor Ivanovich saw all this in a haze, however— spots were swimming in front of his eyes.
"There are dollars in the ventilator shaft," said the first man thoughtfully. In a soft and polite voice he asked Nikanor Ivanovich, "Does this packet belong to you?"
"No!" replied Nikanor Ivanovich in a terrified voice. "My enemies planted it there."
"That does sometimes happen," agreed the first man and added, again softly, "But you'll have to hand over the rest of it too."
"I don't have any! Nothing at all! I swear to God, I've never even touched the stuff!" screamed the chairman in desperation.
He rushed over to the bureau, pulled out a creaky drawer and took out his briefcase, all the while crying out disconnected phrases, "Here's the contract... that filthy interpreter planted it there... Korovyov... the guy with the pince-nez!"
He opened the briefcase, looked inside, and thrust his hand in. His face turned blue and he dropped the briefcase into the borshch. There was nothing in the briefcase: neither Styopa's letter, nor the contract, nor the foreigner's passport, nor the money, nor the free pass. In short, nothing but the folding ruler.
"Comrades!" shouted the chairman in a fury. Take them into custody! There are evil powers in this building!"
No one knows what came over Pelageya Antonovna at that point, but
KoTOvyov's Triclu 85
she waved her arms and shouted, "Confess, Ivanovich! You'll get off easier!"
Nikanor Ivanovich's eyes became bloodshot, and he raised his fists over his wife's head, shouting hoarsely, "Oh, you damned fool!" Then he felt weak and sank into a chair, evidently deciding to bow to the inevitable.
In the meantime, out on the landing, Timofei Kondratyevich Kvastsov was putting first his ear and then his eye to the keyhole of the chairman's apartment, dying of curiosity.
Five minutes later the residents of the building who were in the courtyard at the time saw the chairman being led to the entrance-gates by two men. It was reported that Nikanor Ivanovich looked terrible, tottered like a drunk as he passed by, and was mumbling something.
An hour later an unknown man appeared in apartment No. 11 just as Timofei Kondratyevich was choking with glee and telling the other residents how the chairman had been carted off to jail. The stranger beckoned with his finger for Timofei Kondratyevich to come out of the kitchen and into the hall. He said something to him, and then they both vanished.
X
News from Yalta
A |
T the same time as disaster struck Nikanor Ivanovich, not far from 302B, on that same Sadovaya Street, two men sat in the office of the financial director of the Variety Theater: Rimsky himself and Varenukha, the theater manager.
Two windows of the large second-floor office looked out on Sadovaya Street, and another, behind the financial director, who was sitting at his desk, looked out on the Variety's summer garden, where there were soft-drink stands, a shooting gallery, and an open-air stage. Apart from the desk, the office furnishings included a bunch of old theater bills hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water, four armchairs, and a dusty, time-worn scale model of some stage revue set up on a stand in the corner. Well, it goes without saying that the office also contained a small fireproof safe, battered and chipped, which stood on Rimsky's left, next to the desk.
Rimsky, who was sitting at the desk, had been in a foul mood since morning. Varenukha, on the other hand, was very animated and somehow especially restless and energetic. For the time being he had no outlet for his nervous energy.
Varenukha had taken refuge in the financial director's office in order to escape from the free-ticket hounds who poisoned his existence, especially on days when there was a change of program. And today was just such a day.
As soon as the phone began to ring, Varenukha picked up the receiver and lied into it, "Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He's left the theater."
"Call Likhodeyev again, please," said Rimsky in irritation.
"He's not home. I already sent Karpov over. There's no one in his apartment."
The devil knows what's going on," hissed Rimsky, clicking his adding machine.
The door opened, and an usher came in dragging a thick stack of additional theater bills hot off the press. Printed in large red letters on green sheets of paper was:
Neu«/ram Yalta 87
Today and Every Day at the Variety Theater an Added Attraction:
PROFESSOR WOLAND
Performs Black Magic with an Exposé in Full
Varenukha stepped back from the playbill, which he had draped over the scale model, admired it, and ordered the usher to paste them up everywhere.
"It looks good, eye-catching," noted Varenukha as the usher was leaving.
"Well, I don't like this venture at all," grumbled Rimsky, gazing angrily at the playbill through his horn-rimmed glasses. "And, I'm amazed they've allowed him to perform at all!"
"No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say that, it was a very shrewd move. The whole point of it is the exposé."
"I don't know, I don't know, it has no point at all, as far as I'm concerned, and besides, Styopa's always dreaming up things like this! If only he'd let us have a look at the magician. Have you seen him? Where the hell did they dig him up?"
It was obvious that neither Varenukha nor Rimsky had seen the magician. Yesterday Styopa ("like a madman," to quote Rimsky) had run in to see the financial director with the draft of a contract, ordered him to draw it up and to authorize payment. And, the magician had disappeared, and no one had seen him except Styopa.
Rimsky took out his watch, saw it was five after two, and became positively enraged. This was the limit! Likhodeyev had called around eleven and said that he would be there in half an hour. Not only had he not come, he had disappeared from his apartment!
"I've got work to do!" snarled Rimsky, poking his finger at a pile of unsigned papers.
"Maybe he's fallen under a streetcar, like Berlioz?" said Varenukha, holding the receiver to his ear and listening to the deep, prolonged, and utterly hopeless ringing.
"Wouldn't be so bad," said Rimsky through his teeth, in barely audible tones.
At that very moment a woman walked into the office, wearing a uniform jacket, a cap, a black skirt, and sneakers. She removed a small white square and a notebook from her waist-pouch and asked, "Is this the Variety? Express telegram for you. Sign please."
Varenukha left a scrawl in the woman's notebook, and as soon as the door closed behind her, he opened the square.
After reading the telegram, he blinked, and handed it to Rimsky.
The telegram read as follows, "Yalta-Moscow. Variety. Today eleven-
88 The Master and Margarita
thirty Criminal Investigation Department appeared nightshirt-trouser-clad brown-haired psycho allegedly Likhodeyev Director Variety Wire Yalta CID whereabouts Director likhodeyev."
"Yeah, sure, and I'm your Aunt Mary!" exclaimed Rimsky, and added, "One more surprise!"
"A False Dmitri," said Varenukha and he began speaking into the phone, "Telegraph office? Charge to Variety. Take a telegram... Are you listening? 'Yalta Criminal Investigation Department... Director Likhodeyev Moscow Financial Director Rimsky.' "
Taking no heed of the communiqué about the Yalta impostor, Varenukha again picked up the phone to try to find out where Styopa was and, naturally, he could not locate him anywhere.
Just as he was holding the receiver in his hand, trying to figure out where to call next, the same woman who had brought the first telegram reappeared and handed him a new envelope. Varenukha opened it in haste, read what was written, and whistled.
"What now?" asked Rimsky, twitching nervously.
Varenukha handed him the telegram in silence, and the financial director read the following words: "Please believe transported Yalta Woland's hypnosis wire CID confirmation identity Likhodeyev."
Rimsky and Varenukha, their heads touching, reread the telegram, and when they finished, they stared at each other in silence.
"Citizens!" said the woman angrily. "Sign for it and then you can be quiet for as long as you want! I've got telegrams to deliver."
Varenukha, still staring at the telegram, scribbled something in the notebook, and the woman disappeared.
"Weren't you talking to him on the phone just after eleven?" asked the director in complete bewilderment.
"Oddly enough, yes!" cried Rimsky in piercing tones. "But whether I talked to him or not is irrelevant, he can't possibly be in Yalta now! That's absurd!"
"He's drunk," said Varenukha.
"Who's drunk?" asked Rimsky, and again they both stared at each other.
That an impostor or lunatic had sent a telegram from Yalta was beyond doubt. What was odd, though, was how the Yalta jokester could have known about Woland, who had arrived in Moscow only yesterday. How could he know about the connection between Likhodeyev and Woland?
"Hypnosis..." said Varenukha, repeating the word in the telegram. "How did he hear about Woland?" He crinkled up his eyes and suddenly announced decisively, "No, this is nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!"
"Where the devil is this Woland staying?" asked Rimsky.
Varenukha got in touch with the Intourist Office immediately and reported, to Rimsky's complete surprise, that Woland was staying in Likhodeyev's apartment. He then dialed Likhodeyev's apartment and listened to the phone ring repeatedly and insistently. In between rings
News from Yalta 89
he could hear from somewhere far away a deep, somber voice singing, "the cliffs, my refuge..." and Varenukha decided that a voice from some radio station had somehow cut into the telephone circuit.
"There's no answer at the apartment," said Varenukha, hanging up the phone. "Perhaps I should try again..."
He didn't finish his sentence. The same woman appeared in the door again, and both Rimsky and Varenukha got up to meet her, but this time it was a dark sheet of paper that she removed from her bag, rather than a small white square.
"This is beginning to get interesting," said Varenukha through his teeth, staring after the woman as she made a quick exit Rimsky was the first to get hold of the sheet
Against the dark background of the photographic paper, one could clearly make out black, handwritten lines: "Proof my handwriting my signature Wire confirmation put Woland under secret surveillance. Likhodeyev."
During his twenty years in the theater Varenukha had seen a lot of things, but now he felt as if a shroud were covering his brain, and he was unable to say anything except the trite and, moreover, utterly absurd phrase, "This can't be!"
Rimsky, on the other hand, reacted differently. He got up, opened the door, and roared at the messenger girl sitting on the stool outside, "Don't let anyone in unless they have mail to deliver)"—and locked the door.
Then he took a pile of papers out of his desk and began a careful comparison of the bold, backward-slanting letters in the photogram and the letters in Styopa's memoranda and in his signatures, which were embellished with a spiral flourish. Varenukha leaned over the desk and breathed hotly on Rimsky's cheek.
"It's his handwriting, all right," the financial director finally pronounced, and Varenukha echoed him, "His, indeed."
When Varenukha looked into Rimsky's face, he was amazed by the change that had taken place. The already thin financial director seemed to have gotten even thinner and to have aged, and the eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses had lost their customary sharpness, and expressed not only alarm, but sorrow as well.
Varenukha did everything you expect someone to do who is in a state of shock: he ran around the office and raised his arms up twice, like someone crucified, drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe, and exclaimed, "I don't understand! I don't understand! I do not understand!"
Rimsky stared out the window, thinking intensely about something. The financial director was in a very difficult position: he had to devise, right on the spot, an ordinary explanation for out-of-the-ordinary happenings.
The financial director narrowed his eyes and tried to imagine Styopa, shoeless and in a nightshirt, getting on some unheard-of, super-fast plane
90 The Master and Margarita
at around 11:30 in the morning and then, also at 11:30, the same Styopa standing in his socks at the airport in Yalta... The devil knew how!
Maybe it wasn't Styopa who called him from his apartment? No, it was Styopa! As if he didn't know Styopa's voice! And even if it hadn't been Styopa on the phone that morning, it was certainly Styopa who appeared in his office as recently as yesterday evening, bringing that foolish contract and annoying the financial director with his thoughtlessness. How could he have left town or taken a plane without telling the theater? And even if he had taken a plane last night, he couldn't have gotten there by noon today. Or could he?
"How many kilometers is it to Yalta?" asked Rimsky. Varenukha stopped his running about and shouted, "I thought of that! I already thought of that! By train to Sevastopol it's about 1500 kilometers. And it's another eighty kilometers from there to Yalta. But, by air, of course, it's less."
Hm... Yes... Trains were out of the question. But what then? A fighter plane? Who would let Styopa on a fighter plane without shoes? Why? Maybe he took off his shoes when he arrived in Yalta. Again: why? Besides, they wouldn't have let him on a fighter plane even with shoes! And what did a fighter plane have to do with it? Still, they had it in writing that he appeared at the Criminal Investigation Department at 11:30 in the morning, but he was talking on the phone in Moscow... wait a minute... at that point the face of Rimsky's watch suddenly appeared before his eyes... He remembered where the hands had been. God! It had been 11:20. So where does that leave us? If we assume that Styopa left for the airport right after our conversation and got there in, say, five minutes, which, by the way, is also inconceivable, then we are left to conclude that the plane took off right on the spot and covered more than 1000 kilometers in just five minutes?! Meaning that it traveled at more than 1200 kilometers per hour!! That's impossible, so he can't be in Yalta.
What other explanation was there? Hypnosis? There was no hypnosis in the world that could propel someone more than 1000 kilometers! So is he only imagining that he's in Yalta? He's imagining it, perhaps, and the Yalta CID is imagining it too?! No, you'll have to excuse me, but things like that don't happen. But hadn't they sent a wire from there?
The financial director's face looked literally horror-struck. Meanwhile, the doorknob was being pulled and twisted from the outside, and the messenger girl was heard shouting desperately, "You can't go in! I won't let you! Even if you kill me! There's a meeting!"
Rimsky did his utmost to control himself, picked up the phone, and said, "Connect me with Yalta, it's urgent."
"Smart!" Varenukha exclaimed to himself.
But the call to Yalta did not go through. Rimsky hung up the phone and said, "The line's out of order, as if out of spite."
News from Yalta 91
It was obvious that the faulty line had a particularly devastating effect on Rimsky and even made him reflective. After musing for a while, he again picked up the receiver with one hand and with the other began writing down what he was saying into the phone.
"Take an express telegram. Variety. Yes. Yalta. Criminal Investigation Department. Yes. 'Today around 11:30 Likhodeyev phoned me in Moscow. Stop. After that missed work and cannot be located by phone. Stop. Handwriting confirmed. Stop. Steps taken to put said artiste under surveillance. Financial Director Rimsky.'"
"Very smart!" thought Varenukha, but before he could think it properly these words echoed in his head, "It's stupid! He can't be in Yalta!"
Meanwhile, Rimsky did the following: he neatly folded all the telegrams that had been received, put them in a packet along with a copy of the telegram he had sent, put the packet into an envelope, sealed it, wrote something on it, and then handed it to Varenukha saying, "Ivan Savelyevich, take this over in person right away. Let them figure it out."
"Now that's really smart!" thought Varenukha, and he stuffed the envelope into his briefcase. Then, just in case, he dialed Styopa's apartment again, listened, winked joyously and mysteriously, and smirked. Rimsky stretched his neck to listen.
"May I speak to the artiste Woland?" Varenukha asked sweetly.
"They're busy," a crackling voice replied, "Who may I say is calling?"
"The manager of the Variety Theater, Varenukha."
"Ivan Savelyevich?" the receiver exclaimed joyously. "I'm terribly happy to hear your voice! How's your health?"
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