Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997)
страница №4
...me aren't,' the critic Ababkov droned from thewindow-sill.
Bos'n George's little eyes lit up with glee, and she said, softening
her contralto:
We mustn't be envious, comrades. There's twenty-two dachas [4] in all,
and only seven more being built, and there's three thousand of us in
Massolit.'
`Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' someone put in from the
corner.
'So you see,' the Bos'n went on, 'what can be done? Naturally, it's the
most talented of us that got the dachas...'
'The generals!' Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.
Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.
'Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,' Glukharev said behind him.
`Lavrovich has six to himself,' Deniskin cried out, `and the dining
room's panelled in oak!'
'Eh, that's not the point right now,' Ababkov droned, 'it's that it's
half past eleven.'
A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started
telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich's, found out
that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They
called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 950, and of
course found no one there.
'He might have called!' shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.
Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call
anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov's, in an enormous room lit by
thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had still recently been
Mikhail Alexandrovich.
On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm
broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth
knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on
the third, a pile of stiffened rags.
Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a
pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the
investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich's assistant in Massolit, the writer
Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife's side.
A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with
the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man's apartment,
where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all
went to the morgue.
And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating
what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to
lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov's after simply covering the dead
man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?
No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin,
Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and
shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the
upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently
berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally,
were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but
airless halls.
And exactly at midnight, in the first of these halls, something
crashed, jangled, spilled, leaped. And all at once a high male voice
desperately cried out 'Hallelujah!' to the music. The famous Griboedov jazz
band struck up. Sweat-covered faces seemed to brighten, it was as if the
horses painted on the ceiling came alive, the lamps seemed to shine with
added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance,
and following them the veranda broke into dance.
Glukharev danced with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Quant danced,
Zhukopov the novelist danced with some movie actress in a yellow dress.
Dragunsky danced, Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin danced with the
enormous Bos'n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in
the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited
guests danced, Muscovites and out-of-towners, the writer Johann from
Kronstadt, a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director,
with a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent representatives of
the poetry section of Massolit danced - that is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky,
Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak - young men of unknown profession,
in crew cuts, with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very elderly
danced, a shred of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him danced a
sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.
Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer over their
heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: 'Excuse me, citizen!' Somewhere
through a megaphone a voice commanded: `One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas!
Home-style tripe!' The high voice no longer sang, but howled 'Hallelujah!'
The clashing of golden cymbals in the band sometimes even drowned out
the clashing of dishes, which the dishwashers sent down a sloping chute to
the kitchen. In short - hell.
And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed
man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and
cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to
say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a
wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was
tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean
under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean
Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases
after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and
there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the
cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it... And the ice is melting in
the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes,
and you're afraid, afraid... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!...
And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table: 'Berlioz!!' The jazz
broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. 'What, what,
what, what?!!' 'Berlioz!!!' And they began jumping up, exclaiming...
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once,
straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram
and send it off immediately.
But what telegram, may we ask, and where? And why send it? And where,
indeed? And what possible need for any telegram does someone have whose
flattened pate is now clutched in the dissector's rubber hands, whose neck
the professor is now piercing with curved needles? He's dead, and has no
need of any telegrams. It's all over, let's not burden the telegraph wires
any more.
Yes, he's dead, dead... But, as for us, we're alive!
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began
to subside, and somebody went back to his table and - sneakily at first,
then openly - drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let
chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?
By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!
Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the jazz band dispersed, several
journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that
Zheldybin had come from the morgue. He had installed himself in the
deceased's office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who
would replace Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned from the restaurant all twelve
members of the board, and at the urgently convened meeting in Berlioz's
office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the
hall with columns at Griboedov's, of transporting the body from the morgue
to that hall, of opening it to the public, and all else connected with the
sad event.
And the restaurant began to live its usual nocturnal life and would
have gone on living it until closing time, that is, until four o'clock in
the morning, had it not been for an occurrence which was completely out of
the ordinary and which struck the restaurant's clientele much more than the
news of Berlioz's death.
The first to take alarm were the coachmen [5] waiting at the gates of
the Griboedov house. One of them, rising on his box, was heard to cry out:
'Hoo-ee! Just look at that!'
After which, from God knows where, a little light flashed by the
cast-iron fence and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the
tables began to get up and peer at it, and saw that along with the little
light a white ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right
up to the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at their tables, chunks of
sterlet on their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who at that moment had
stepped out of the restaurant coatroom to have a smoke in the yard, stamped
out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of
barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and
stopped, smiling stupidly.
And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped
unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all,
but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.
He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon
bearing the image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a
safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan
Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich's right cheek
was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the
silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to
the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter's hand.
The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly:
'Hail, friends!' After which he peeked under the nearest table and
exclaimed ruefully: 'No, he's not there!'
Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly:
That's it. Delirium tremens.'
And the second, a woman's, frightened, uttered the words:
'How could the police let him walk the streets like that?'
This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied:
They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but I
hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!' Here Ivan
Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: 'Brethren in literature!' (His
hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) 'Listen to me everyone! He has
appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he'll do untold harm!'
'What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?' voices came from all
sides.
The consultant,' Ivan replied, `and this consultant just killed Misha
Berlioz at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd
gathered around Ivan's flame.
`Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,' a soft and polite voice said
over Ivan Nikolaevich's ear, 'tell me, what do you mean "killed"?
Who killed?'
'A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,' Ivan said, looking
around.
'And what is his name?' came softly to Ivan's ear. That's just it - his
name!' Ivan cried in anguish. 'If only I knew his name! I didn't make out
his name on his visiting card... I only remember the first letter, "W", his
name begins with "W"! What last name begins with "W"?' Ivan asked himself,
clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: 'Wi, we, wa ... Wu
... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?' The hair on Ivan's head
began to crawl with the tension.
'Wolf?' some woman cried pitifully.
Ivan became angry.
'Fool!' he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. "What has Wolf got
to do with it? Wolf's not to blame for anything! Wo, wa... No, I'll never
remember this way! Here's what, citizens: call the police at once, let them
send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And
don't forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long
checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat... And meanwhile
I'll search Griboedov's, I sense that he's here!'
Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving
the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here
someone said: `Call a doctor!' and someone's benign, fleshy face, clean
shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.
'Comrade Homeless,' the face began in a guest speaker's voice, 'calm
down! You're upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich... no,
say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need
rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you'll forget...'
'You,' Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, "but don't you understand
that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your
foolishness! Cretin!'
`Pardon me, Comrade Homeless!...' the face replied, blushing,
retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.
'No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,' Ivan Nikolaevich said
with quiet hatred.
A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his
right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the
ear.
Here it occurred to them to fall upon Ivan - and so they did. The
candle went out, and the glasses that had fallen from the face were
instantly trampled. Ivan let out a terrible war cry, heard, to the
temptation of all, even on the boulevard, and set about defending himself.
Dishes fell clattering from the tables, women screamed.
All the while the waiters were tying up the poet with napkins, a
conversation was going on in the coatroom between the commander of the brig
and the doorman.
'Didn't you see he was in his underpants?' the pirate inquired coldly.
'But, Archibald Archibaldovich,' the doorman replied, cowering, 'how
could I not let him in, if he's a member of Massolit?' 'Didn't you see he
was in his underpants?' the pirate repeated. 'Pardon me, Archibald
Archibaldovich,' the doorman said, turning purple, 'but what could I do? I
understand, there are ladies sitting on the veranda...'
`Ladies have nothing to do with it, it makes no difference to the
ladies,' the pirate replied, literally burning the doorman up with his eyes,
'but it does to the police! A man in his underwear can walk the streets of
Moscow only in this one case, that he's accompanied by the police, and only
to one place - the police station! And you, if you're a doorman, ought to
know that on seeing such a man, you must, without a moment's delay, start
blowing your whistle. Do you hear? Do you hear what's going on on the
veranda?'
Here the half-crazed doorman heard some sort of hooting coming from the
veranda, the smashing of dishes and women's screams.
'Now, what's to be done with you for that?' the freebooter asked.
The skin on the doorman's face acquired a typhoid tinge, his eyes went
dead. It seemed to him that the black hair, now combed and parted, was
covered with flaming silk. The shirt-front and tailcoat disappeared and a
pistol butt emerged, tucked into a leather belt. The doorman pictured
himself hanging from the fore-topsail yard. His eyes saw his own tongue
sticking out and his lifeless head lolling on his shoulder, and even heard
the splash of waves against the hull. The doorman's knees gave way. But here
the freebooter took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.
`Watch out, Nikolai, this is the last time! We have no need of such
doormen in the restaurant. Go find yourself a job as a beadle.' Having said
this, the commander commanded precisely, clearly, rapidly: `Get Pantelei
from the snack bar. Police. Protocol. A car. To the psychiatric clinic.' And
added: 'Blow your whistle!'
In a quarter of an hour an extremely astounded public, not only in the
restaurant but on the boulevard itself and in the windows of houses looking
on to the restaurant garden, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a
waiter and the poet Riukhin carry through the gates of Griboedov's a young
man swaddled like a doll, dissolved in tears, who spat, aiming precisely at
Riukhin, and shouted for all the boulevard to hear:
'You bastard! ... You bastard!...'
A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him
a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins,
shouted:
'Have a run for your money! I've taken `em to the psychics before!'
Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In
short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only
when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov's the unfortunate
Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin.
CHAPTER 6. Schizophrenia, as was Said
It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and
wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous
psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of
the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who
was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there.
The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been bed up lay in a pile
on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free.
Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said
timidly:
'Hello, Doctor.'
The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at
Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face
and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor's entrance.
'Here, Doctor,' Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a
mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, `is the
renowned poet Ivan Homeless ... well, you see ... we're afraid it might be
delirium tremens...'
'Was he drinking hard?' the doctor said through his teeth.
'No, he drank, but not really so...'
'Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking
dogs?'
'No,' Riukhin replied with a shudder, `I saw him yesterday and this
morning ... he was perfectly well.'
'And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?'
'No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way...'
'Aha, aha,' the doctor said with great satisfaction, 'and why the
scratches? Did he have a fight?'
'He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody... and
then somebody else...'
'So, so, so,' the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: 'Hello
there!'
'Greetings, saboteur! [1]' Ivan replied spitefully and loudly.
Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the
courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his
glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put
them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:
'How old are you?'
'You can all go to the devil!' Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.
'But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?'
'I'm twenty-three years old,' Ivan began excitedly, 'and I'll file a
complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!' he adverted
separately to Riukhin.
'And what do you want to complain about?'
'About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force
to a madhouse!' Ivan replied wrathfully.
Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly
no insanity in the man's eyes. No longer dull as they had been at
Griboedov's, they were now clear as ever.
`Good God!' Riukhin thought fearfully. 'So he's really normal! What
nonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He's normal, normal, only his
mug got scratched...'
'You are,' the doctor began calmly, sitting down on a white stool with
a shiny foot, `not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will keep
you if it's not necessary.'
Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the corner of his
eye, but still grumbled:
'Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots,
of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!'
'Who is this giftless Sashka?' the doctor inquired.
'This one here - Riukhin,' Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger in
Riukhin's direction.
The latter flushed with indignation. That's the thanks I get,' he
thought bitterly, 'for showing concern for him! What trash, really!'
'Psychologically, a typical little kulak,'[2] Ivan Nikolaevich began,
evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin, 'and, what's more,
a little kulak carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his
lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for
the First of May [3] - heh, heh, heh ... "Soaring up!" and "Soaring down!!"
But if you could look inside him and see what he thinks... you'd gasp!' And
Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.
Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just one
thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern
for a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there was
nothing to be done: there's no arguing with the mentally ill!
`And why, actually, were you brought here?' the doctor asked, after
listening attentively to Homeless's denunciations.
'Devil take them, the numskulls! They seized me, tied me up with some
rags, and dragged me away in a truck!'
'May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?'
There's nothing surprising about that,' Ivan replied. `I went for a
swim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash!
I couldn't very well walk around Moscow naked! I put it on because I
was hurrying to Griboedov.'
The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly:
'The name of the restaurant.'
`Aha,' said the doctor, `and why were you in such a hurry? Some
business meeting?'
'I'm trying to catch the consultant,' Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked
around anxiously.
'What consultant?'
'Do you know Berlioz?' Ivan asked significantly.
The... composer?'
Ivan got upset.
'What composer? Ah, yes... Ah, no. The composer has the same name as
Misha Berlioz.'
Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain:
The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight
at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
'Don't blab about what you don't know!' Ivan got angry with Riukhin. 'I
was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!'
'Pushed him?'
'"Pushed him", nothing!' Ivan exclaimed, angered by the general
obtuseness. 'His kind don't need to push! He can perform such stunts - hold
on to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under the
tram-car!'
'And did anyone besides you see this consultant?'
That's the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.'
'So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?' Here the
doctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who was
sitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and began
filling in the blank spaces in its columns.
'Here's what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen...'
That one?' asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on the
table in front of the woman, next to the icon.
That very one, and...'
'And why the icon?'
'Ah, yes, the icon...' Ivan blushed. `It was the icon that frightened
them most of all.' He again jabbed his finger in the direction of Riukhin.
'But the thing is that he, the consultant, he... let's speak directly... is
mixed up with the unclean powers... and you won't catch him so easily.'
The orderlies for some reason snapped to attention and fastened their
eyes on Ivan.
Yes, sirs,' Ivan went on, 'mixed up with them! An absolute fact. He
spoke personally with Pontius Pilate. And there's no need to stare at me
like that. I'm telling the truth! He saw everything - the balcony and the
palm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate's, I can vouch for it.'
'Come, come...'
'Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran...'
Here the clock suddenly struck twice.
'Oh-oh!' Ivan exclaimed and got up from the couch. `It's two o'clock,
and I'm wasting time with you! Excuse me, where's the telephone?'
'Let him use the telephone,' the doctor told the orderlies.
Ivan grabbed the receiver, and the woman meanwhile quietly asked
Riukhin:
'Is he married?'
'Single,' Riukhin answered fearfully.
'Member of a trade union?'
'Yes.'
'Police?' Ivan shouted into the receiver. 'Police? Comrade
officer-on-duty, give orders at once for five motor cycles with machine-guns
to be sent out to catch the foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me up,
I'll go with you... It's the poet Homeless speaking from the madhouse...
What's your address?' Homeless asked the doctor in a whisper, covering
the receiver with his hand, and then again shouting into it: 'Are you
listening?
Hello!... Outrageous!' Ivan suddenly screamed and hurled the receiver
against the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, offered him his hand, said
'Goodbye' drily, and made as if to leave.
`For pity's sake, where do you intend to go?' the doctor said, peering
into Ivan's eyes. 'In the dead of night, in your underwear... You're not
feeling well, stay with us.'
`Let me pass,' Ivan said to the orderlies, who closed ranks at the
door. 'Will you let me pass or not?' the poet shouted in a terrible voice.
Riukhin trembled, but the woman pushed a button on the table and a
shiny little box with a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface.
'Ah, so?!' Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look.
'Well, then... Goodbye!' And he rushed head first into the
window-blind.
The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave no
crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the
orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted:
'So that's the sort of windows you've got here! Let me go! Let me
go!...'
A syringe flashed in the doctor's hand, with a single movement the
woman slit the threadbare sleeve of the shirt and seized the arm with
unwomanly strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the hands
of the four people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuck
the needle into Ivan's arm. They held Ivan for another few seconds and then
lowered him on to the couch.
'Bandits!' Ivan shouted and jumped up from the couch, but was installed
on it again. The moment they let go of him, he again jumped up, but sat back
down by himself. He paused, gazing around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned,
then smiled maliciously.
'Locked me up after all,' he said, yawned again, unexpectedly lay down,
put his head on the pillow, his fist under his head like a child, and
muttered now in a sleepy voice, without malice: 'Very well, then... you'll
pay for it yourselves... I've warned you, you can do as you like... I'm now
interested most of all in Pontius Pilate ... Pilate...', and he closed his
eyes.
'A bath, a private room, number 117, and a nurse to watch him,' the
doctor ordered as he put his glasses on. Here Riukhin again gave a start:
the white door opened noiselessly, behind it a corridor could be seen, lit
by blue night-lights. Out of the corridor rolled a stretcher on rubber
wheels, to which the quieted Ivan was transferred, and then he rolled off
down the corridor and the door closed behind him.
'Doctor,' the shaken Riukhin asked in a whisper, 'it means he's really
ill?'
'Oh, yes,' replied the doctor.
'But what's wrong with him, then?' Riukhin asked timidly.
The tired doctor glanced at Riukhin and answered listlessly:
'Locomotor and speech excitation... delirious interpretations... A
complex case, it seems. Schizophrenia, I suppose. Plus this alcoholism...'
Riukhin understood nothing from the doctor's words, except that things
were evidently not so great with Ivan Nikolaevich. He sighed and asked:
'But what's all this talk of his about some consultant?'
`He must have seen somebody who struck his disturbed imagination. Or
maybe a hallucination...'
A few minutes later the truck was carrying Riukhin off to Moscow. Day
was breaking, and the light of the street lights still burning along the
highway was now unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was vexed at having
wasted the night, drove the truck as fast as he could, and skidded on the
turns.
Now the woods dropped off, stayed somewhere behind, and the river went
somewhere to the side, and an omnium gatherum came spilling to meet the
truck: fences with sentry boxes and stacks of wood, tall posts and some sort
of poles, with spools strung on the poles, heaps of rubble, the earth scored
by canals - in short, you sensed that she was there, Moscow, right there,
around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you.
Riukhin was jolted and tossed about; the sort of stump he had placed
himself on kept trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant napkins,
thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier by bus, moved
all around the flatbed. Riukhin tried to collect them, but then, for some
reason hissing spitefully: 'Devil take them! What am I doing fussing like a
fool?...', he spumed them aside with his foot and stopped looking at them.
The rider's state of mind was terrible. It was becoming clear that his
visit to the house of sorrow had left the deepest mark on him. Riukhin tried
to understand what was tormenting him. The corridor with blue lights, which
had stuck itself to his memory? The thought that there is no greater
misfortune in the world than the loss of reason? Yes, yes, of course, that,
too. But that - that's only a general thought. There's something else. What
is it? An insult, that's what. Yes, yes, insulting words hurled right in his
face by Homeless. And the trouble is not that they were insulting, but that
there was truth in them.
The poet no longer looked around, but, staring into the dirty, shaking
floor, began muttering something, whining, gnawing at himself.
Yes, poetry... He was thirty-two years old! And, indeed, what then? So
then he would go on writing his several poems a year. Into old age? Yes,
into old age. What would these poems bring him? Glory? 'What nonsense! Don't
deceive yourself, at least. Glory will never come to someone who writes bad
poems. What makes them bad? The truth, he was telling the truth!' Riukhin
addressed himself mercilessly. 'I don't believe in anything I write!...'
Poisoned by this burst of neurasthenia, the poet swayed, the floor
under him stopped shaking. Riukhin raised his head and saw that he had long
been in Moscow, and, what's more, that it was dawn over Moscow, that the
cloud was underlit with gold, that his truck had stopped, caught in a column
of other vehicles at the turn on to the boulevard, and that very close to
him on a pedestal stood a metal man [4], his head inclined slightly, gazing
at the boulevard with indifference.
Some strange thoughts flooded the head of the ailing poet. 'There's an
example of real luck...' Here Riukhin rose to his full height on the flatbed
of the truck and raised his arm, for some reason attacking the cast-iron man
who was not bothering anyone. 'Whatever step he made in his life, whatever
happened to him, it all turned to his benefit, it all led to his glory! But
what did he do? I can't conceive... Is there anything special in the words:
"The snowstorm covers..."? I don't understand!...
Luck, sheer luck!' Riukhin concluded with venom, and felt the truck
moving under him. `He shot him, that white guard shot him, smashed his hip,
and assured his immortality...'
The column began to move. In no more than two minutes, the completely
ill and even aged poet was entering the veranda of Griboedov's. It was now
empty. In a corner some company was finishing its drinks, and in the middle
the familiar master of ceremonies was bustling about, wearing a skullcap,
with a glass of Abrau wine in his hand.
Riukhin, laden with napkins, was met affably by Archibald
Archibaldovich and at once relieved of the cursed rags. Had Riukhin not
become so worn out in the clinic and on the truck, he would certainly have
derived pleasure from telling how everything had gone in the hospital and
embellishing the story with invented details. But just then he was far from
such things, and, little observant though Riukhin was, now, after the
torture on the truck, he peered keenly at the pirate for the first time and
realized that, though the man asked about Homeless and even exclaimed
'Ai-yai-yai!', he was essentially quite indifferent to Homeless's fate and
did not feel a bit sorry for him.
'And bravo! Right you are!' Riukhin thought with cynical,
self-annihilating malice and, breaking off the story about the
schizophrenia, begged:
`Archibald Archibaldovich, a drop of vodka...' The pirate made a
compassionate face and whispered:
'I understand... this very minute...' and beckoned to a waiter. A
quarter of an hour later, Riukhin sat in complete solitude, hunched over his
bream, drinking glass after glass, understanding and recognizing that it was
no longer possible to set anything right in his life, that it was only
possible to forget.
The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and now
understood that it was impossible to get it back. One needed only to raise
one's head from the lamp to the sky to understand that the night was
irretrievably lost. Waiters were hurriedly tearing the tablecloths from the
tables. The cats slinking around the veranda had a morning look. Day
irresistibly heaved itself upon the poet.
CHAPTER 7. A Naughty Apartment
If Styopa Likhodeev had been told the next morning: 'Styopa! You'll be
shot if you don't get up this minute!' - Styopa would have replied in a
languid, barely audible voice:
'Shoot me, do what you like with me, I won't get up.'
Not only not get up, it seemed to him that he could not open his eyes,
because if he were to do so, there would be a flash of lightning, and his
head would at once be blown to pieces. A heavy bell was booming in that
head, brown spots rimmed with fiery green floated between his eyeballs and
his closed eyelids, and to crown it all he was nauseous, this nausea, as it
seemed to him, being connected with the sounds of some importunate
gramophone.
Styopa tried to recall something, but only one thing would get recalled
- that yesterday, apparently, and in some unknown place, he had stood with a
napkin in his hand and tried to kiss some lady, promising her that the next
day, and exactly at noon, he would come to visit her. The lady had declined,
saying: 'No, no, I won't be home!', but Styopa had stubbornly insisted: 'And
I'll just up and come anyway!'
Who the lady was, and what time it was now, what day, of what month,
Styopa decidedly did not know, and, worst of all, he could not figure out
where he was. He attempted to learn this last at least, and to that end
unstuck the stuck-together lids of his left eye. Something gleamed dully in
the semi-darkness. Styopa finally recognized the pier-glass and realized
that he was lying on his back in his own bed - that is, the jeweller's
wife's former bed - in the bedroom. Here he felt such a throbbing in his
head that he closed his eyes and moaned.
Let us explain: Styopa Likhodeev, director of the Variety Theatre, had
come to his senses that morning at home, in the very apartment which he
shared with the late Berlioz, in a big, six-storeyed, U-shaped building on
Sadovaya Street.
It must be said that this apartment - no.50 - had long had, if not a
bad, at least a strange reputation. Two years ago it had still belonged to
the widow of the jeweller de Fougeray. Anna Frantsevna de Fougeray, a
respectable and very practical fifty-year-old woman, let out three of the
five rooms to lodgers: one whose last name was apparently Belomut, and
another with a lost last name.
And then two years ago inexplicable events began to occur in this
apartment: people began to disappear [1] from this apartment without a
trace.
Once, on a day off, a policeman came to the apartment, called the
second lodger (the one whose last name got lost) out to the front hall, and
said he was invited to come to the police station for a minute to put his
signature to something. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantsevna's long-time
and devoted housekeeper, to say, in case he received any telephone calls,
that he would be back in ten minutes, and left together with the proper,
white-gloved policeman. He not only did not come back in ten minutes, but
never came back at all. The most surprising thing was that the policeman
evidently vanished along with him.
The pious, or, to speak more frankly, superstitious Anfisa declared
outright to the very upset Anna Frantsevna that it was sorcery and that she
knew perfectly well who had stolen both the lodger and the policeman, only
she did not wish to talk about it towards night-time.
Well, but with sorcery, as everyone knows, once it starts, there's no
stopping it. The second lodger is remembered to have disappeared on a
Monday, and that Wednesday Belomut seemed to drop from sight, though, true,
under different circumstances. In the morning a car came, as usual, to take
him to work, and it did take him to work, but it did not bring anyone back
or come again itself.
Madame Belomut's grief and horror defied description. But, alas,
neither the one nor the other continued for long. That same night, on
returning with Anfisa from her dacha, which Anna Frantsevna had hurried off
to for some reason, she did not find the wife of citizen Belomut in the
apartment. And not only that: the doors of the two rooms occupied by the
Belomut couple turned out to be sealed.
Two days passed somehow. On the third day, Anna Frantsevna, who had
suffered all the while from insomnia, again left hurriedly for her dacha...
Needless to say, she never came back!
Left alone, Anfisa, having wept her fill, went to sleep past one
o'clock in the morning. What happened to her after that is not known, but
lodgers in other apartments told of hearing some sort of knocking all night
in no.50 and of seeing electric light burning in the windows till morning.
In the morning it turned out that there was also no Anfisa!
For a long time all sorts of legends were repeated in the house about
these disappearances and about the accursed apartment, such as, for
instance, 'that this dry and pious little Anfisa had supposedly carried on
her dried-up breast, in a suede bag, twenty-five big diamonds belonging to
Anna Frantsevna. That in the woodshed of that very dacha to which Anna
Frantsevna had gone so hurriedly, there supposedly turned up, of themselves,
some inestimable treasures in the form of those same diamonds, plus some
gold coins of tsarist minting... And so on, in the same vein. Well, what we
don't know, we can't vouch for.
However it may have been, the apartment stood empty and sealed for only
a week. Then the late Berlioz moved in with his wife, and this same Styopa,
also with his wife. It was perfectly natural that, as soon as they got into
the malignant apartment, devil knows what started happening with them as
well! Namely, within the space of a month both wives vanished. But these two
not without a trace. Of Berlioz's wife it was told that she had supposedly
been seen in Kharkov with some ballet-master, while Styopa's wife allegedly
turned up on Bozhedomka Street, where wagging tongues said the director of
the Variety, using his innumerable acquaintances, had contrived to get her a
room, but on the one condition that she never show her face on Sadovaya...
And so, Styopa moaned. He wanted to call the housekeeper Grunya and ask
her for aspirin, but was still able to realize that it was foolish, and that
Grunya, of course, had no aspirin. He tried to call Berlioz for help,
groaned twice: 'Misha... Misha...', but, as you will understand, received no
reply. The apartment was perfectly silent.
Moving his toes, Styopa realized that he was lying there in his socks,
passed his trembling hand down his hip to determine whether he had his
trousers on or not, but failed. Finally, seeing that he was abandoned and
alone, and there was no one to help him, he decided to get up, however
inhuman the effort it cost him.
Styopa unstuck his glued eyelids and saw himself reflected in the
pier-glass as a man with hair sticking out in all directions, with a bloated
physiognomy covered with black stubble, with puffy eyes, a dirty shirt,
collar and necktie, in drawers and socks.
So he saw himself in the pier-glass, and next to the mirror he saw an
unknown man, dressed in black and wearing a black beret.
Styopa sat up in bed and goggled his bloodshot eyes as well as he could
at the unknown man. The silence was broken by this unknown man, who said in
a low, heavy voice, and with a foreign accent, the following words:
'Good morning, my most sympathetic Stepan Bogdanovich!'
There was a pause, after which, making a most terrible strain on
himself, Styopa uttered:
"What can I do for you?' - and was amazed, not recognizing his own
voice. He spoke the word 'what' in a treble, 'can I' in a bass, and his 'do
for you' did not come off at all.
The stranger smiled amicably, took out a big gold watch with a diamond
triangle on the lid, rang eleven times, and said:
'Eleven. And for exactly an hour I've been waiting for you to wake up,
since you made an appointment for me to come to your place at ten. Here I
am!'[2]
Styopa felt for his trousers on the chair beside his bed, whispered:
'Excuse me...', put them on, and asked hoarsely: 'Tell me your name,
please?'
He had difficulty speaking. At each word, someone stuck a needle into
his brain, causing infernal pain.
'What! You've forgotten my name, too?' Here the unknown man smiled.
`Forgive me...' Styopa croaked, feeling that his hangover had presented
him with a new symptom: it seemed to him that the floor beside his bed went
away, and that at any moment he would go flying down to the devil's dam in
the nether world.
`My dear Stepan Bogdanovich,' the visitor said, with a perspicacious
smile, 'no aspirin will help you. Follow the wise old rule - cure like with
like. The only thing that will bring you back to life is two glasses of
vodka with something pickled and hot to go with it.'
Styopa was a shrewd man and, sick as he was, realized that since he had
been found in this state, he would have to confess everything.
`Frankly speaking,' he began, his tongue barely moving, 'yesterday I
got a bit...'
'Not a word more!' the visitor answered and drew aside with his chair.
Styopa, rolling his eyes, saw that a tray had been set on a small table, on
which tray there were sliced white bread, pressed caviar in a little bowl,
pickled mushrooms on a dish, something in a saucepan, and, finally, vodka in
a roomy decanter belonging to the jeweller's wife. What struck Styopa
especially was that the decanter was frosty with cold. This, however, was
understandable: it was sitting in a bowl packed with ice. In short, the
service was neat, efficient.
The stranger did not allow Styopa's amazement to develop to a morbid
degree, but deftly poured him half a glass of vodka.
'And you?' Styopa squeaked.
'With pleasure!'
His hand twitching, Styopa brought the glass to his lips, while the
stranger swallowed the contents of his glass at one gulp. Chewing a lump of
caviar, Styopa squeezed out of himself the words:
'And you... a bite of something?'
`Much obliged, but I never snack,' the stranger replied and poured
seconds. The saucepan was opened and found to contain frankfurters in tomato
sauce.
And then the accursed green haze before his eyes dissolved, the words
began to come out clearly, and, above all, Styopa remembered a thing or two.
Namely, that it had taken place yesterday in Skhodnya, at the dacha of the
sketch-writer Khustov, to which this same Khustov had taken Styopa in a
taxi. There was even a memory of having hired this taxi by the Metropol, and
there was also some actor, or not an actor... with a gramophone in a little
suitcase. Yes, yes, yes, it was at the dacha! The dogs, he remembered, had
howled from this gramophone. Only the lady Styopa had wanted to kiss
remained unexplained... devil knows who she was... maybe she was in radio,
maybe not...
The previous day was thus coming gradually into focus, but right now
Styopa was much more interested in today's day and, particularly, in the
appearance in his bedroom of a stranger, and with hors d'oeuvres and vodka
to boot. It would be nice to explain that!
'Well, I hope by now you've remembered my name?'
But Styopa only smiled bashfully and spread his arms.
'Really! I get the feeling that you followed the vodka with port wine!
Good heavens, it simply isn't done!'
'I beg you to keep it between us,' Styopa said fawningly.
'Oh, of course, of course! But as for Khustov, needless to say, I can't
vouch for him.'
'So you know Khustov?'
"Yesterday, in your office, I saw this individuum briefly, but it only
takes a fleeting glance at his face to understand that he is a bastard, a
squabbler, a trimmer and a toady.'
`Perfectly true!' thought Styopa, struck by such a true, precise and
succinct definition of Khustov.
Yes, the previous day was piecing itself together, but, even so,
anxiety would not take leave of the director of the Variety. The thing was
that a huge black hole yawned in this previous day. Say what you will,
Styopa simply had not seen this stranger in the beret in his office
yesterday.
'Professor of black magic Woland,'[3] the visitor said weightily,
seeing Styopa's difficulty, and he recounted everything in order.
Yesterday afternoon he arrived in Moscow from abroad, went immediately
to Styopa, and offered his show to the Variety. Styopa telephoned the Moscow
Regional Entertainment Commission and had the question approved (Styopa
turned pale and blinked), then signed a contract with Professor Woland for
seven performances (Styopa opened his mouth), and arranged that Woland
should come the next morning at ten o'clock to work out the details...
And so Woland came. Having come, he was met by the housekeeper Grunya,
who explained that she had just come herself, that she was not a live-in
maid, that Berlioz was not home, and that if the visitor wished to see
Stepan Bogdanovich, he should go to his bedroom himself. Stepan Bogdanovich
was such a sound sleeper that she would not undertake to wake him up. Seeing
what condition Stepan Bogdanovich was in, the artiste sent Grunya to the
nearest grocery store for vodka and hors d'oeuvres, to the druggist's for
ice, and...
`Allow me to reimburse you,' the mortified Styopa squealed and began
hunting for his wallet.
'Oh, what nonsense!' the guest performer exclaimed and would hear no
more of it.
And so, the vodka and hors d'oeuvres got explained, but all the same
Styopa was a pity to see: he remembered decidedly nothing about the contract
and, on his life, had not seen this Woland yesterday. Yes, Khustov had been
there, but not Woland.
'May I have a look at the contract?' Styopa asked quietly.
'Please do, please do...'
Styopa looked at the paper and froze. Everything was in place: first of
all, Styopa's own dashing signature... aslant the margin a note in the hand
of the findirector [4] Rimsky authorizing the payment of ten thousand
roubles to the artiste Woland, as an advance on the thirty-five thousand
roubles due him for seven performances. What's more, Woland's signature was
right there attesting to his receipt of the ten thousand!
`What is all this?!' the wretched Styopa thought, his head spinning.
Was he starting to have ominous gaps of memory? Well, it went without
saying, once the contract had been produced, any further expressions of
surprise would simply be indecent. Styopa asked his visitor's leave to
absent himself for a moment and, just as he was, in his stocking feet, ran
to the front hall for the telephone. On his way he called out in the
direction of the kitchen:
'Grunya!'
But no one responded. He glanced at the door to Berlioz's study, which
was next to the front hall, and here he was, as they say, flabbergasted. On
the door-handle he made out an enormous wax seal [5] on a string.
'Hel-lo!' someone barked in Styopa's head. 'Just what we needed!' And
here Styopa's thoughts began running on twin tracks, but, as always happens
in times of catastrophe, in the same direction and, generally, devil knows
where. It is even difficult to convey the porridge in Styopa's head. Here
was this devilry with the black beret, the chilled vodka, and the incredible
contract... And along with all that, if you please, a seal on the door as
well! That is, tell anyone you like that Berlioz has been up to no good - no
one will believe it, by Jove, no one will believe it! Yet look, th...
