An Upsetting Day 161
above the other voices. Accompanying the choir, was the intensified clanging of the telephones.
Hey, northeast wind... roll out the breakers!...
roared the messenger on the staircase.
Tears streamed down the young woman's face, she tried to clench her teeth, but her mouth opened of its own accord, and at an octave higher than the messenger, she sang:
The fine fellow ham 'tfar to go!
The speechless visitors were struck by the fact that although the choristers were scattered throughout different rooms, they sang very harmoniously, as if the whole chorus were standing in one place with its eyes glued to an invisible conductor.
Pedestrians on Vagankovsky Lane stopped by the courtyard gates and marveled at the gaiety that reigned in the branch office.
As soon as the first verse came to an end, the singing stopped abruptly, as if it were again obeying a conductor's baton. The messenger swore under his breath and ran off somewhere.
Here the front doors opened, and a man appeared in a summer overcoat, a white robe showing below the hem. He was in the company of a policeman.
"Do something, Doctor, I beg youl" The young woman cried hysterically.
The secretary of the branch office ran out onto the staircase, obviously ashamed and embarrassed. He started stammering, "Don't you see, Doctor, we have a case here of mass hypnosis of some kind... So, it's essential that..." He didn't finish his sentence, began to choke on his words, and suddenly sang out in a tenon
Shilka and Nerchinsk...
"Fool," the young woman managed to yell, but rather than explain whom she was calling a fool, she broke into a forced roulade and started singing about Shilka and Nerchinsk herself.
"Get a hold of yourself! Stop singing!" said the doctor to the secretary.
It was obvious that the secretary would have given anything in the world to be able to stop singing, but he could not. And together with the chorus, his voice rang out with the news, heard by pedestrians out on the street, that in the wilds he was untouched by voracious beasts and unscathed by marksmen's bullets!
At the end of the verse the young woman was the first to receive a
162 The Master and Margarita
dose of valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary and the others so that he could do the same for them.
"Excuse me, my young citizeness," said Vasily Stepanovich suddenly, addressing the young woman, "but has a black cat been here by any chance?"
"What cat?" she screamed angrily. "It's an ass we've got in this office, a real assl" and then she added, "Let him hear! I'll tell the whole story," and she did, in fact, go on to relate what had happened.
It turned out that the director of the Moscow branch office, "who had made a complete mess of the leisure activities program" (the young woman's words exactly), had a mania for organizing all kinds of clubs and circles.
"He was trying to butter up his superiors!" yelled the young woman.
In just a year's time the director had managed to organize a Lermontov study group, a chess-and-checkers club, a ping-pong club, and a horseback-riding club. And he threatened to have two additional clubs in place by summen one for fresh-water rowing and the other for mountain climbing.
And then today, during the lunch break, the director walks in and...
"And he's leading some sonof-a-bitch by the hand," related the young woman, "who comes from nobody knows where, and who's wearing tight checked trousers and a cracked pince-nez... with an unbelievable mug on him!"
And then, according to the young woman, he introduced him to everyone in the cafeteria as a noted specialist in the organization of choral groups.
The faces of the would-be mountain climbers clouded over, but the director encouraged everyone to be enthusiastic, and the specialist cracked jokes and showed off his wit, and gave his solemn word that the singing would take up hardly any time and would, incidentally, be extremely advantageous for everyone.
Well, naturally, as the young woman reported, the first to jump up were Fanov and Kosarchuk, notorious office toadies, who announced that they were going to join the chorus. The rest of the staff then realized that there was no way to escape it; so they said they would join too. It was decided that the singing would take place during the lunch break since the rest of the time was taken up with Lermontov and checkers. The director, in order to set a good example, announced that he was a tenor, and that was the beginning of the nightmare. The choirmaster-specialist in checks intoned, "Do-mi-sol-do!" He dragged the shy ones out of the closets where they were hiding to avoid singing, and told Kosarchuk that he had absolute pitch. Then he started to whine and bare his teeth, asked everyone to humor an old choirmaster, struck a tuning fork, and begged them to strike up a chorus of "Glorious Sea."
They did. And gloriously. The fellow in checks really did know his
An Upsetting Doy 163
business. When they had finished the first verse, the choirmaster excused himself and said, Til be back in a minutel"-and... disappeared. They thought he really would return in a minute. But then ten minutes passed, and he still wasn't back. They were overcome with joy—he'd run away.
And suddenly they started singing the second verse as if of their own accord, following the lead of Kosarchuk, whose pitch may not have been perfect, but who did have quite a pleasant high tenor. They finished the second verse. Still no choirmaster! They went back to their places, but before they could manage to sit down, they started singing against their will. It was beyond their power to stop. They would be quiet for three minutes or so, and then start up again. At this point they realized that something bad had happened. Mortified, the director locked himself in his office.
It was here that the young woman's story broke off. The valerian had been no help at all.
Fifteen minutes later three trucks drove up to the gates on Vagankovsky Lane and the director of the branch office and the rest of his staff got in.
Just as the first truck came to a pitching halt at the gates, and then pulled out into the lane, the office staff, who were standing in the back, their arms around each other, opened their mouths and filled the street with song. The second truck followed suit, and then the third. And they all drove off. Pedestrians going about their business cast only a fleeting glance at the trucks, manifesting no curiosity whatsoever and assuming that they were going on an excursion outside the city. And they were, in fact, going outside the city, only not on an excursion. They were going to Professor Stravinsky's clinic.
Halfan hour later the bookkeeper arrived at the finance office in a completely befuddled state, with hopes of finally divesting himself of yesterday's receipts. Having learned from experience, he peered cautiously into the oblong office where the clerks sat behind frosted glass windows with gold lettering. The bookkeeper could see no signs of upset or disarray. Everything was quiet, just as one would expect in a proper establishment.
Vasily Stepanovich stuck his head in the window which had a sign above it saying, "Deposits," said hello to the clerk, whom he did not know, and politely asked for a deposit slip.
"Why do you need one?" asked the clerk behind the window.
The bookkeeper was perplexed.
"I want to hand over my cash receipts. I'm from the Variety."
"Just a minute," replied the clerk and then proceeded to put a screen over the hole in his window.
"That's odd," thought the bookkeeper. His perplexity was natural under the circumstances. It was the first time he had ever encountered such a thing. Everyone knows how hard it is to acquire money; obsta-
164 The Master and Margarita
des to that can always be found. But not once in his thirty years of experience had the bookkeeper ever found anyone, whether an oflicial or a private citizen, who had difficulty accepting money.
But at last the screen was moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned up to the window.
"Do you have a lot?" asked the clerk.
"21,711 rubles."
"Wow!" replied the clerk with inexplicable irony and handed him a green slip of paper.
Having seen the form a hundred times, the bookkeeper filled it out instantly and began untying his package. When he removed the wrapping, his eyes glazed over, and he let out an agonizing groan.
Foreign currency flashed before his eyes. Packets of Canadian dollars, English pounds, Dutch guilders, Latvian lats, and Estonian crowns...
"Here he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety," boomed an intimidating voice at the stunned bookkeeper's back. And Vasily Stepano-vich was then taken into custody.
XVIII
Unlucky Visitors
A |
T the same time as the conscientious bookkeeper was in the taxj enroute to his encounter with the writing suit, a respectably dressed man with a small imitation-leather suitcase was getting off the reserved-seat first-class car of the No. 9 train from Kiev. This passenger was none other than Maximilian Andreyevich Poplavsky, the uncle of the late Berlioz, an economic planner who lived in Kiev on what was formerly Institute Street The reason for his trip to Moscow was a telegram received late in the evening two days before. It said, "I have just been cut in half by a streetcar at Patriarch's. Funeral Friday S PM. Come. Berlioz."
Maximilian Andreyevich was considered one of the smartest men in Kiev and justifiably so. But even the smartest man would be befuddled by a telegram like that. If a man can wire that he has been cut in half, it's obvious it wasn't a fatal accident. But then why mention a funeral? Or, could it be that he's in very bad shape and foresees that he is going to die? That was a distinct possibility, but the preciseness of the information was odd nonetheless. How could he know that his funeral was going to be at precisely 3 p.m. on Friday? An amazing telegram!
But what are smart people smart for, if not to untangle tangled things? It was very simple. There had been a mistake, and the message had been transmitted in garbled form. The word T had obviously come from another telegram and been put where "Berlioz" should have been, at the beginning of the telegram, instead of at the end where it ended up. After such a correction the telegram became intelligible, albeit, of course, tragic.
After the attack of grief which struck his wife had subsided, Maximilian Andreyevich began to make plans to go to Moscow.
Maximilian Andreyevich had a secret that must be revealed. Although he did indeed feel sorry for his wife's nephew, who had died in the prime of his life, he was a practical man and saw that there was no particular need for him to attend the funeral. Nevertheless, Maximilian Andreye-
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vich had been in a great hurry to get to Moscow. What made him do it? Only one thing—the apartment An apartment in Moscow! That's serious business! No one knows why, but Maximilian Andreyevich didn't like Kiev, and the thought of moving to Moscow had gnawed at him so persistently recently that he had begun to lose sleep over it.
He got no pleasure from the Dnieper overflowing in spring, when the islands on the lower shore became flooded, and the water merged with the horizon. He got no pleasure from the striking beauty of the view from the base of the Prince Vladimir statue. The patches of sunlight that played on the brick paths of Vladimir Hill in spring gave him no joy. He wanted none ofthat, he wanted just one thing—to move to Moscow.
The ads he placed in the papers, offering to exchange his Institute Street apartment in Kiev for a smaller flat in Moscow, had produced no results. There were no takers, and if someone did turn up once in a while, the offer was made in bad faith.
The telegram had given Maximilian Andreyevich a shock. It would be a sin to pass up such an opportunity. Practical people know that opportunity doesn't knock twice.
In a word, come hell or high water, he had to make sure he inherited his nephew's apartment on Sadovaya Street. True, it would be difficult, very difficult, but the difficulties had to be overcome, no matter what. As an experienced man of the world, Maximilian Andreyevich knew the first thing he had to do to accomplbh this goal was to get registered, if only on a temporary basis, in his late nephew's three-room apartment.
On Friday afternoon Maximilian Andreyevich walked into the office of the housing committee of No. 302B Sadovaya Street in Moscow.
In a narrow room, where there was an old poster on the wall showing in several drawings ways of reviving someone drowned in the river, an unshaven middle-aged man with frightened-looking eyes sat behind a wooden desk all by himself.
"May I see the chairman of the housing committee?" the economic planner inquired politely, taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on the chair by the doorway.
This, it would seem, simplest of questions so unnerved the man at the desk that a change came over his face. Squinting with alarm, he mumbled incomprehensibly that the chairman was not there.
"Is he in his apartment?" asked Poplavsky. "I'm here on a very urgent matter."
The seated man's reply was again incoherent. But even so, the implication was that the chairman was not in his apartment either.
"When will he be back?"
The seated man said nothing in reply, and looked out the window with a kind of anguish.
"Aha!" said the smart Poplavsky to himself and inquired after the secretary.
Unlucky Visitón 167
The strange man at the desk turned purple from the strain and, again incomprehensibly, said that the secretary wasn't there either... that he was ill... and that no one knew when he'd be back...
"Aha!" said Poplavsky to himself, "But is there anyone here from the housing committee?"
"Me," the man answered in a weak voice.
"You see," Poplavsky began impressively, "I am the sole heir of the deceased Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at Patriarch's Ponds, and I am bound by the law to assume the inheritance that consists of our apartment, No. 50..."
"I don't know anything about it, comrade," interrupted the man glumly.
"But, see here," said Poplavsky in resonant tones. "You are a member of the committee and are obliged to..."
At this point a man walked into the room. The man at the desk took one look at him and turned pale.
"Committee member Pyatnazhko?" asked the new arrival.
"Yes," answered the man at the desk in barely audible tones.
The newcomer whispered something to him, and the latter became completely flustered, got up from the desk, and seconds later, Poplavsky was left alone in the empty housing committee office.
"Oh, what a complication! All I needed was to have them all suddenly be...," thought Poplavsky with annoyance, as he crossed the asphalt courtyard and hurried to apartment No. 50.
As soon as the economic planner rang the bell, the door opened. Maximilian Andreyevich entered the darkened hallway. He was a little surprised that he couldn't tell who had opened the door. There was no one in the hallway except a huge black cat who was sitting on a chair.
Maximilian Andreyevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the study door opened, and out walked Korovyov into the hallway. Maximilian Andreyevich bowed politely to him, but said with dignity, "My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle..."
But before he could finish, Korovyov pulled a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket, buried his nose in it, and burst into tears.
"...of the deceased Berlioz..."
"I know, I know," interrupted Korovyov, removing the handkerchief from his face. "The minute I laid eyes on you, I guessed it was you!" Then he was convulsed with tears and cried out, "What a tragedy, huh? How could such a thing happen, huh?"
"Run over by a streetcar?" asked Poplavsky in a whisper.
"Killed instantly," shouted Korovyov, and the tears started streaming from under his pince-nez. "Instantly! I was there and saw it. Believe me, it happened in a flash! Off went the head! Then the right leg—crunch, right in two! Then the left-crunch, right in two! That's what you get with streetcars!" Apparently unable to control himself, Korovyov turned
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his face to the wall next to the mirror and began shaking with sobs.
Berlioz's uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger's behavior. "And they say people aren't sensitive nowadays!" he thought, feeling his own eyes begin to smart. However, at just that moment a bothersome little cloud settled over his soul and a reptilian thought flickered: Could this sincere and sensitive fellow already have registered himself in the deceased's apartment? Such things have been known to happen, after all.
"Excuse me, but were you a friend of my dear departed Misha?" he asked, wiping his dry left eye with his sleeve and studying the grief-stricken Korovyov with his right. But the latter was in such a paroxysm of tears that nothing he said was intelligible except for "crunch, right in two!" which he kept repeating. After he had cried himself out, Korovyov finally unglued himself from the wall and said, "No, I can't take it anymore! I'm going to take 300 drops of valerian!..." and turning his utterly tear-drenched face to Poplavsky, he added, "Those damned streetcars!"
"Pardon me, but was it you who sent me the telegram?" asked Maximilian Andreyevich, agonizing over who this amazing crybaby could be.
"He did!" answered Korovyov, pointing to the cat.
Poplavsky, his eyes bulging, thought he had misheard.
"No, I can't go on, I haven't the strength," Korovyov went on, sniffling. "When I think of the wheel going over his leg... one wheel alone weighs about 360 pounds... Crunch! I'll go lie down and lose myself in sleep," at which point he vanished from the hallway.
The cat stirred, jumped down from the chair, stood on its hind legs, spread its forepaws, opened its jaws and said, "Well, I sent the telegram. Now what?"
Maximilian Andreyevich's head started spinning, his arms and legs became paralyzed, he dropped his suitcase and sat down on a chair opposite the cat.
"I believe I asked you in Russian," the cat said sternly. "Now what?"
But Poplavsky gave no reply.
"Passport!" snapped the cat and stretched out a chubby paw.
Completely at a loss and unable to see anything but the sparks burning in the cat's eyes, Poplavsky pulled his passport out of his pocket as if it were a dagger. The cat removed a pair of black thick-rimmed glasses from the table under the mirror, put them on his snout, which made it look even more impressive, and took the passport from Poplavsky's trembling hand.
"I wonder will I faint or not?" thought Poplavsky. Korovyov's sobbing could be heard in the distance, and the smells of ether, valerian, and some other nauseating abomination filled the entire hallway.
"Which department issued this document?" asked the cat, staring at it intently. No answer was forthcoming.
"Department 412," replied the cat himself, tracing his paw over the passport, which he held upside down. "But, of course! I know that de-
Unlucky Visitors 169
partaient very well! They give passports to anyone who walks in! But I, on the other hand, wouldn't give a passport to someone like you! Not on your life! One look at you and I'd refuse on the spot!" At this point the cat became so enraged that he threw the passport on the floor. "Permission to attend the funeral is hereby revoked," the cat continued in an official-sounding voice. "Be so kind as to return to your place of residence." He then bellowed through the door, "Azazello!"
In answer to his call a short little man ran out into the hallway—he walked with a limp, wore black tights, had a knife stuck inside his leather belt, was red-haired, had a yellow fang, and a cataract clouding his left eye.
Poplavsky felt he was suffocating, got up from his chair and staggered backwards, his hand clutching his heart.
"Azazello, show him out!" ordered the cat and walked out.
"Poplavsky," the recent arrival said softly, with a nasal twang, "I hope by now everything is completely clear?"
Poplavsky nodded.
"Return to Kiev immediately," Azazello continued. "Stay quiet as a mouse and stop dreaming about apartments in Moscow, is that dear?"
This short little man, who scared Poplavsky to death with his fang, his knife, and his cataract, only came up to the economist's shoulders, but his actions were smooth, efficient, and forceful.
First he picked up the passport and handed it to Maximilian Andreye-vich, and die latter took it with a lifeless hand. Then the one called Azazello picked up the suitcase with one hand, and threw open the door with the other. Taking Berlioz's unde by the arm, he escorted him out to the landing. Poplavsky leaned against the wall. Azazello opened the suitcase without benefit of a key, took out a huge roast chicken with only one drumstick, wrapped in greasy newspaper, and put it down on the top of the stairs. Then he pulled out two pair of underwear, a razor strop, a book, and a case and kicked everything except the chicken down the stairs. The empty suitcase was also sent flying. Judging by the sound it made when it crashed below, its top had come off.
Next the red-haired thug grabbed the chicken by its leg and slammed it so roughly and savagely across Poplavsky's neck that the carcass flew apart, leaving Azazello with only the drumstick in his hand. "Everything was in a state of confusion in the Oblonsky household," as the famous writer Lev Tolstoy so justly put it. He would have said the same thing here, too. Indeed! Everything in Poplavsky's vision became jumbled. A long spark flashed before his eyes which then converted into a black serpent, which for an instant blotted out the May sun. Poplavsky then went flying down the stairs, passport in hand. When he reached the turn on the stairs, he smashed in the windowpane with his foot and sat down on the step. The legless chicken tumbled past him and fell into the stairwell. Azazello, still at the top of the stairs, devoured the drumstick in a flash and stuck the bone in the side pocket of his tights, after
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which he went back to the apartment and shut the door with a bang.
It was then that the cautious footsteps of someone coming up the stairs were heard.
After running down another flight, Poplavsky sat down on a small wooden bench on the landing to catch his breath.
A diminutive elderly gentleman with an unusually sad face, wearing an old-fashioned tussore-silk suit and a stiff straw hat with a green band, was coming up the stairs. He stopped near Poplavsky.
"May I ask you, citizen," the man in tussore-silk inquired sadly, "where is apartment No. 50?"
"Upstairs," was Poplavsky's abrupt reply.
"My humble thanks, sir," the man replied, equally as sadly, and proceeded up the stairs, while Poplavsky got up from the bench and ran downstairs.
The question arises: did Maximilian Andreyevich rush off to the police station to lodge a complaint against the thugs who had brutalized him so savagely in broad daylight? Emphatically no, not at all, that can be said with confidence. To go to the police and say that a cat wearing glasses had just examined your passport, and that a man in tights, with a knife had... No citizens, Maximilian Andreyevich was far too smart for that!
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw a door off the exit leading to a closetlike room. The window on the door had been knocked out. Poplavsky put his passport away in his pocket and looked around, hoping to spot his scattered belongings. But there was no trace of them. Poplavsky himself was surprised at how little that upset him. There was something else on his mind, an intriguing and tempting thought: to use the little man to test the apartment again. He had asked where it was, which meant it was his first visit. This, in turn, meant that he would fall into the clutches of the gang who had taken over apartment No. 50. Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be exiting the apartment momentarily. Naturally Maximilian Andreyevich no longer had any plans to attend his nephew's funeral, but there was still time before his train departed for Kiev. The economist looked around and slipped into the closet.
At this moment a door banged far upstairs. "That's him going in..." thought Poplavsky, his heart sinking. It was cool in the closet, and it smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreyevich sat down on some kind of wood stump and decided to wait. From the closet he had a good view of the door of main entrance No. 6.
The Kievan had to wait longer than he expected, however. For some reason the staircase remained deserted. He could hear well, and finally a door banged on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Yes, those were his footsteps. "He's coming down." A door opened on the floor below. The footsteps halted. A woman's voice. A sad voice in reply... yes, it was his voice... It said something like, "Leave me alone, for Christ's sake..."
Unlucky Visitón 171
Poplavsky's ear was pressed close to the broken window. It caught the sound of a woman laughing. Brisk and determined steps came down the stairs; then a woman's back flashed by. The woman was carrying a green oilcloth bag and she went out the entrance into the courtyard. The footsteps of the little man started up again. "That's strange! He's going back up to the apartment! Could he himself be one of the gang? Yes, he's going back. That's the door opening again upstairs. Oh well, we'll wait a little longer."
This time he did not have long to wait. The sounds of a door. Steps. Steps halting. A desperate cry. The meowing of a cat. Quick rapid footsteps coming down, down, down!
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