him,  Nikanor
Ivanovich, and that's embarrassing. You've worked hard...'
     `It's  severely punishable,' the chairman  whispered very, very  softly
and glanced over his shoulder.
     'But where are the witnesses?' Koroviev whispered into his other ear.
     'I ask you, where are they? You don't think... ?'
     Here, as the chairman insisted afterwards, a  miracle occurred: the wad
crept into his briefcase by itself. And then the  chairman, somehow limp and
even broken, found  himself  on the stairs. A whirlwind of thoughts raged in
his head. There was the villa in  Nice, and the trained cat, and the thought
that there were  in fact no witnesses, and that Pelageya Antonovna would  be
delighted  with  the pass. They  were  incoherent  thoughts,  but  generally
pleasant. But, all the same, somewhere, some little needle kept pricking the
chairman in the very bottom of his soul. This was the needle of anxiety.
     Besides, right  then on the stairs  the chairman was  seized, as with a
stroke,  by the thought:  'But how did the interpreter get into the study if
the  door was  sealed?! And how  was it that  he, Nikanor Ivanovich, had not
asked about  it?' For some time  the chairman stood staring like a  sheep at
the steps of the stairway, but then he decided to spit on it and not torment
himself with intricate questions...
     As soon as  the chairman left the apartment, a low  voice came from the
bedroom:
     'I  didn't like this Nikanor Ivanovich. He is a  chiseller and a crook.
Can it be arranged so that he doesn't come any more?'
     'Messire,  you  have only to say  the word...'  Koroviev responded from
somewhere, not in a rattling but in a very clear and resounding voice.
     And  at once the accursed  interpreter  turned  up  in the  front hall,
dialled a number  there, and for some  reason  began speaking very tearfully
into the receiver:
     'Hello! I consider it  my duty  to  inform you that the chairman of our
tenants' association  at no.502-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is
speculating in foreign currency. [2] At the present moment, in his apartment
no.  55,  he  has four hundred  dollars  wrapped  up  in  newspaper  in  the
ventilation of the privy. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the
said  house, apartment no. 11. But I adjure you to keep  my name a secret. I
fear the vengeance of the above-stated chairman.'
     And he hung up, the scoundrel!
     What happened  next  in apartment  no.50  is not known, but it is known
what happened  at  Nikanor Ivanovich's. Having locked  himself in the  privy
with  the hook, he took from his briefcase the  wad  foisted  on him by  the
interpreter and satisfied himself that it contained four hundred roubles.
     Nikanor Ivanovich  wrapped this wad  in a scrap of newspaper and put it
into the ventilation duct.
     Five  minutes later the chairman  was sitting at the table in his small
dining room. His  wife brought  pickled  herring from  the  kitchen,  neatly
sliced  and  thickly  sprinkled  with green onion. Nikanor Ivanovich  poured
himself a dram of vodka, drank it, poured another, drank it, picked up three
pieces of herring on his fork... and at that moment the doorbell rang.
     Pelageya Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming pot which, one could
tell at once  from a single  glance, contained, amidst a fiery borscht, that
than which there is nothing more delicious in the world - a marrow bone.
     Swallowing his spittle, Nikanor Ivanovich growled like a dog:
     'Damn them  all! Won't  allow a man to eat... Don't let anyone  in, I'm
not here,  not here...  If  it's about  the  apartment,  tell them  to  stop
blathering, there'll be a meeting next week.'
     His wife ran to the front hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, using a ladle,
drew from the fire-breathing lake - it, the bone, cracked lengthwise. And at
that moment  two  citizens entered  the dining room, with Pelageya Antonovna
following them,  for some  reason looking  very  pale.  Seeing the citizens,
Nikanor Ivanovich also turned white and stood up.
     'Where's  the Jakes?'  the  first one, in  a white side-buttoned shirt,
asked with a preoccupied air.
     Something  thudded against the dining table (this was Nikanor Ivanovich
dropping the ladle on to the oilcloth).
     'This way, this way,' Pelageya Antonovna replied in a patter.
     And the visitors immediately hastened to the corridor.
     ^What's the matter?' Nikanor  Ivanovich asked quietly,  going after the
visitors. `There can't be anything like that in  our apartment... And - your
papers... begging your pardon...'
     The first, without stopping, showed Nikanor Ivanovich a paper,  and the
second  was at the same moment standing  on a stool in the privy, his arm in
the ventilation duct.  Everything went dark in Nikanor Ivanovich's eyes. The
newspaper  was removed,  but  in the wad  there were  not  roubles but  some
unknown money, bluish-greenish, and with the portrait of some old man.
     However, Nikanor Ivanovich saw it all  dimly, there  were some  sort of
spots floating in front of his eyes.
     'Dollars  in  the  ventilation...' the  first said  pensively and asked
Nikanor Ivanovich gently and courteously: 'Your little wad?'
     'No!' Nikanor Ivanovich replied  in a dreadful voice. 'Enemies stuck me
with it!'
     'That happens,' the first agreed and added, again gently: 'Well, you're
going to have to turn in the rest.'
     'I haven't got  any! I swear to God, I never laid a  finger on it!' the
chairman cried out desperately.
     He dashed to the chest, pulled a drawer out with a clatter, and from it
the briefcase, crying out incoherently:
     'Here's  the  contract... that vermin of an  interpreter stuck  me with
it... Koroviev... in a pince-nez!...'
     He opened the briefcase, glanced  into it, put a hand inside, went blue
in  the face, and dropped  the briefcase into the borscht. There was nothing
in  the  briefcase:  no  letter  from  Styopa,  no contract, no  foreigner's
passport,  no  money, no theatre  pass. In  short, nothing except a  folding
ruler.
     'Comrades!'  the  chairman  cried  frenziedly. `Catch them!  There  are
unclean powers in our house!'
     It is not known what Pelageya Antonovna imagined here, only she clasped
her hands and cried:
     'Repent, Ivanych! You'll get off lighter.'
     His eyes bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich raised his fists  over his wife's
head, croaking:
     'Ohh, you damned fool!'
     Here he went slack and  sank  down  on a  chair, evidently  resolved to
submit to the inevitable.
     During this  time, Timofei Kondratievich Kvastsov stood on the landing,
placing now his  ear,  now  his  eye to the  keyhole  of  the  door  to  the
chairman's apartment, melting with curiosity.
     Five  minutes later the tenants of the house  who were in the courtyard
saw the  chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceed directly to the
gates  of the  house. It  was  said  that Nikanor  Ivanovich  looked  awful,
staggered like a drunk man as he passed, and was muttering something.
     And an hour after that an unknown citizen appeared in apartment no. 11,
just as Timofei Kondratievich, spluttering with delight,  was  telling  some
other   tenants   how  the  chairman   got  pinched,  motioned   to  Timofei
Kondratievich with his finger  to come  from  the kitchen to the front hall,
said something to him, and together they vanished.


        CHAPTER 10. News From Yalta


     At the  same time that disaster struck Nikanor  Ivanovich, not far away
from no.502-bis, on the same Sadovaya Street, in the office of the financial
director of the Variety Theatre,  Rimsky, there sat two men: Rimsky himself,
and the administrator of the Variety, Varenukha [1].'
     The  big office on the second floor of the  theatre  had two windows on
Sadovaya and one, just behind the  back of the findirector,  who was sitting
at his desk,  facing the  summer  garden  of the Variety,  where  there were
refreshment   stands,  a  shooting  gallery   and  an  open-air  stage.  The
furnishings of the office,  apart from the desk, consisted of a bunch of old
posters hanging on the  wall, a small table  with  a carafe of water  on it,
four armchairs and, in  the corner,  a stand  on which  stood a dust-covered
scale model of  some  past review.  Well,  it goes  without saying that,  in
addition,  there was in the office a  small, shabby, peeling fireproof safe,
to Rimsky's left, next to the desk.
     Rimsky, now sitting at his desk, had been in bad spirits since morning,
while Varenukha, on the contrary, was very animated and  somehow  especially
restlessly active. Yet there was no outlet for his energy.
     Varenukha was presently  hiding in the findirector's  office to  escape
the seekers  of free passes, who poisoned his life,  especially on days when
the programme  changed. And today  was precisely such a day. As  soon as the
telephone started to ring, Varenukha would pick up the receiver and lie into
it:
     "Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He stepped out.'
     'Please call Likhodeev again,' Rimsky asked vexedly.
     'He's  not home. I even sent Karpov, there's no  one in the apartment.'
`Devil  knows what's  going on!'  Rimisky  hissed,  clacking  on  the adding
machine.
     The  door  opened  and  an usher  dragged in a  thick stack of  freshly
printed extra posters; in big red letters on a green background was printed:
     Today and Every Day at the Variety Theatre
     an Additional Programme
     PROFESSOR WOLAND
     Sances of Black Magic and its Full Exposure
     Varenukha stepped back from the poster,  which  he had thrown on to the
scale model, admired it, and  told  the usher  to send  all the posters  out
immediately to be pasted up.
     'Good... Loud!' Varenukha observed on the usher's departure.
     `And  I  dislike this undertaking extremely,' Rimsky grumbled, glancing
spitefully at the poster through his horn-rimmed glasses, 'and generally I'm
surprised he's been allowed to present it.'
     'No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say so! This is a very subdue  step. The
salt is all in the exposure.'
     `I don't know, I don't know, there's no salt, in my opinion... and he's
always  coming up with things  like this! ... He might at  least show us his
magician! Have you seen him? Where he dug him up, devil knows!'
     It turned  out that Varenukha  had not seen  the magician any more than
Rimsky  had. Yesterday  Styopa had  come running ('like  crazy', in Rimsky's
expression) to the findirector with the already written draft of a contract,
ordered  it copied straight away and  the money  handed over  to Woland. And
this  magician  had  cleared out, and  no  one  had  seen him  except Styopa
himself.
     Rimsky took out his watch, saw that it read five minutes past two,  and
flew into a  complete rage. Really! Likhodeev  had called at around  eleven,
said he'd  come  in  half  an  hour, and  not  only had  not  come, but  had
disappeared from his apartment.
     'He's holding up  my business!' Rimsky  was  roaring  now, jabbing  his
finger at a pile of unsigned papers.
     'Might he have fallen under a tram-car like Berlioz?' Varenukha said as
he held his ear to the  receiver, from which came low, prolonged and utterly
hopeless signals.
     "Wouldn't be a bad  thing...' Rimsky  said barely  audibly  through his
teeth.
     At that same  moment a  woman in a uniform  jacket,  visored cap, black
skirt and sneakers came into the office. From a small pouch  at her belt the
woman took a small white square and a notebook and asked:
     "Who here is Variety? A super-lightning telegram. [2] Sign here.'
     Varenukha  scribbled some flourish in the woman's notebook, and as soon
as the door slammed  behind  her,  he  opened the square. After reading  the
telegram, he blinked and handed the square to Rimsky.
     The telegram contained  the following: `Yalta to Moscow  Variety. Today
eleven  thirty  brown-haired  man  came  criminal  investigation  nightshirt
trousers  shoeless mental case  gave name Likhodeev  Director  Variety  Wire
Yalta criminal investigation where Director Likhodeev.'
     `Hello  and how do  you  do!'  Rimsky  exclaimed,  and added:  'Another
surprise!'
     'A  false Dmitri!'[3] said Varenukha,  and he  spoke into the receiver.
Telegraph office? Variety account. Take a  super-lightning telegram. Are you
listening?  "Yalta   criminal  investigation.  Director   Likhodeev   Moscow
Findirector Rimsky."'
     Irrespective  of the  news  about the  Yalta impostor,  Varenukha again
began searching all over for Styopa by telephone, and naturally did not find
him anywhere.
     Just as Varenukha, receiver in hand, was pondering  where else he might
call, the same woman who had brought the first  telegram came in  and handed
Varenukha  a new envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read the  message
and whistled.
     'What now?' Rimsky asked, twitching nervously.
     Varenukha silently  handed  him the  telegram,  and the findirector saw
there the  words: `Beg believe  thrown  Yalta Woland hypnosis  wire criminal
investigation confirm identity Likhodeev.'
     Rimsky  and Varenukha,  their heads  touching, reread the telegram, and
after rereading it, silently stared at each other.
     'Citizens!' the  woman got angry. 'Sign, and then be silent  as much as
you like! I deliver lightnings!'
     Varenukha,  without  taking his eyes off the  telegram, made a  crooked
scrawl in the notebook, and the woman vanished.
     'Didn't you  talk with  him on the phone at a  little past eleven?' the
administrator began in total bewilderment.
     'No, it's  ridiculous!' Rimsky cried  shrilly. Talk or not, he can't be
in Yalta now! It's ridiculous!'
     'He's drunk...' said Varenukha.
     "Who's drunk?' asked Rimsky, and again the two stared at each other.
     That some  impostor or madman had sent telegrams  from Yalta, there was
no  doubt. But the strange thing was this: how did the Yalta mystifier  know
Woland,  who had  come  to Moscow just the day before? How did he know about
the connection between Likhodeev and Woland?
     'Hypnosis...' Varenukha kept repeating the word from the telegram.
     'How does he know about Woland?' He blinked his eyes and suddenly cried
resolutely: 'Ah, no! Nonsense! ... Nonsense, nonsense!'
     'Where's he staying, this Woland, devil take him?' asked Rimsky.
     Varenukha  immediately got  connected with the  foreign  tourist bureau
and, to Rimsky's utter astonishment, announced  that Woland was  staying  in
Likhodeev's apartment. Dialling the number of the Likhodeev  apartment after
that, Varenukha listened for a long time to the low buzzing in the receiver.
     Amidst the buzzing, from somewhere far away, came a heavy, gloomy voice
singing:  '...  rocks, my refuge ...'[4]  and  Varenukha  decided  that  the
telephone lines had crossed with a voice from a radio show.
     The  apartment  doesn't  answer,'  Varenukha  said,  putting  down  the
receiver, 'or maybe I should call...'
     He did  not finish. The same woman appeared in the door, and  both men,
Rimsky and Varenukha, rose  to meet her, while she took from her pouch not a
white sheet this time, but some sort of dark one.
     This is  beginning  to  get  interesting,' Varenukha  said through  his
teeth, his  eyes  following the  hurriedly  departing woman. Rimsky  was the
first to take hold of the sheet.
     On  a  dark background  of  photographic paper, some black  handwritten
lines were barely discernible:
     'Proof my handwriting  my  signature wire  urgently  confirmation place
secret watch Woland Likhodeev.'
     In his  twenty  years of work in  the theatre,  Varenukha had seen  all
kinds of sights, but here he felt his mind becoming obscured as with a veil,
and he could find nothing to say but the  at once mundane and utterly absurd
phrase:
     This cannot be!'
     Rimsky acted otherwise. He stood up, opened the door, barked out to the
messenger girl sitting on a stool:
     'Let no one in except postmen!' - and locked the door with a key.
     Then  he took a pile of papers out of the desk  and began carefully  to
compare the bold, back-slanting letters of the photogram with the letters in
Styopa's resolutions and signatures, furnished with a corkscrew flourish.
     Varenukha,  leaning his weight on the table, breathed hotly on Rimsky's
cheek.
     `It's  his  handwriting,'  the  findirector finally  said  firmly,  and
Varenukha repeated like an echo:
     'His.'
     Peering into Rimsky's face, the administrator  marvelled  at the change
that had come over this face. Thin to begin with, the findirector seemed  to
have  grown still thinner and  even older,  his eyes in  their horn rims had
lost their customary prickliness, and there appeared in them not only alarm,
but even sorrow.
     Varenukha  did everything that a man in a moment  of great astonishment
ought to do. He raced up and down the office, he raised his  arms twice like
one crucified, he drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe and
exclaimed:
     'I don't understand! I don't understand! I don't un-der-stand!'
     Rimsky  meanwhile  was looking out  the  window,  thinking  hard  about
something. The findirector's position was  very difficult.  It was necessary
at   once,  right  on  the  spot,  to   invent   ordinary  explanations  for
extraordinary phenomena.
     Narrowing  his eyes,  the  findirector pictured to himself Styopa, in a
nightshirt and shoeless,  getting into  some unprecedented  super-high-speed
airplane at around  half past eleven that morning, and then the same Styopa,
also at half past eleven,  standing in his stocking feet at the  airport  in
Yalta ... devil knew what to make of it!
     Maybe it was not Styopa who talked with him this morning over the phone
from his  own apartment?  No, it  was Styopa speaking! Who if not  he should
know Styopa's voice? And even if it was not Styopa speaking today, it was no
earlier  than  yesterday,  towards  evening, that Styopa  had  come from his
office to this very  office  with  this  idiotic  contract  and  annoyed the
findirector with his light-mindedness. How could  he have gone or flown away
without leaving word  at  the  theatre?  But if  he had flown away yesterday
evening - he would not have arrived by noon today. Or would he?
     'How many miles is it to Yalta?' asked Rimsky.
     Varenukha stopped his running and yelled:
     'I thought  of that! I already thought  of it!  By train it's over nine
hundred miles to Sebastopol, plus another fifty to Yalta! Well, but by  air,
of course, it's less.'
     Hm ... Yes ... There could be no question of any trains. But what then?
Some fighter  plane? Who would let Styopa on any fighter  plane  without his
shoes? What for? Maybe he took his shoes off when he got to  Yalta? It's the
same thing: what for? And even with his shoes on they  wouldn't have let him
on a fighter! And what has the fighter got to do with it? It's  written that
he  came to the  investigators at half past  eleven in  the  morning, and he
talked on the  telephone in Moscow ... excuse  me ... (the  face of Rimsky's
watch emerged before his eyes).
     Rimsky tried to remember where the  hands had been ... Terrible! It had
been twenty minutes past eleven!
     So  what  does  it  boil  down  to?  If one  supposes  that  after  the
conversation Styopa instantly rushed to the airport, and reached it in, say,
five minutes (which, incidentally, was also unthinkable), it  means that the
plane, taking off at once, covered nearly a thousand miles in five minutes.
     Consequently, it was  flying  at twelve thousand  miles an hour!!! That
cannot be, and that means he's not in Yalta!
     What remains, then? Hypnosis? There's no hypnosis in the world that can
fling  a man a thousand miles away! So he's imagining that he's in Yalta? He
may be  imagining it, but are the Yalta investigators also imagining it? No,
no, sorry, that can't be! ... Yet they did telegraph from there?
     The findirector's face was literally dreadful. The door  handle was all
the while being turned and pulled from outside, and the messenger girl could
be heard through the door crying desperately:
     'Impossible! I won't let you! Cut me to pieces! It's a meeting!'
     Rimsky  regained  control of  himself  as well  as  he could, took  the
receiver of the phone, and said into it:
     'A super-urgent call to Yalta, please.'
     'Clever!' Varenukha observed mentally.
     But the conversation with  Yalta did not take place. Rimsky hung up the
receiver and said:
     'As luck would have it, the line's broken.'
     It could  be  seen  that the  broken line especially upset him for some
reason,  and even made him lapse into  thought. Having  thought a little, he
again took  the receiver  in one hand, and with the other began writing down
what he said into it:
     Take  a super-lightning.  Variety.  Yes.  Yalta criminal investigation.
Yes. 'Today around eleven thirty Likhodeev talked me phone Moscow stop After
that did not come work unable locate by phone stop Confirm  handwriting stop
Taking measures watch said artiste Findirector Rimsky.'"
     'Very clever!' thought Varenukha, but before he had time to think well,
the words rushed through his head: 'Stupid! He can't be in Yalta!'
     Rimsky meanwhile did the following:  he neatly stacked all the received
telegrams, plus the copy of his own, put the stack into an  envelope, sealed
it, wrote a few words on it, and handed it to Varenukha, saying:
     'Go right now, Ivan Savelyevich, take it there personally. [5] Let them
sort it out.'
     'Now that is really clever!' thought Varenukha, and he put the envelope
into his briefcase. Then, just in case, he dialled Styopa's apartment number
on the  telephone, listened, and  began winking and  grimacing  joyfully and
mysteriously. Rimsky stretched his neck.
     'May I speak with the artiste Woland?' Varenukha asked sweetly.
     `Mister's  busy,' the receiver answered  in  a  rattling  voice, 'who's
calling?'
     The administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.'
     `Ivan Savelyevich?' the receiver  cried out joyfully. Terribly  glad to
hear your voice! How're you doing?'
     'Merci,' Varenukha replied in amazement, 'and with whom am I speaking?'
     'His assistant, his  assistant and interpreter, Koroviev!' crackled the
receiver. 'I'm entirely at  your service, my dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Order
me around as you like. And so?'
     `Excuse me,  but ... what,  is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at home
now?'
     'Alas, no! No!' the receiver shouted. 'He left!'
     'For where?'
     'Out of town, for a drive in the car.'
     'Wh ... what? A dr ... drive? And when will he be back?'
     'He said, I'll get a breath of fresh air and come back.'
     `So...'  said  the puzzled Varenukha, 'merci  ...  kindly tell Monsieur
Woland that his performance is tonight in the third part of the programme.'
     'Right.  Of  course.  Absolutely.  Urgently.  Without fail.  I'll  tell
him,'the receiver rapped out abruptly.
     'Goodbye,' Varenukha said in astonishment.
     'Please  accept,'  said the receiver, 'my best,  warmest  greetings and
wishes! For success! Luck! Complete happiness! Everything!'
     'But of course! Didn't I say so!' the administrator cried agitatedly.
     'It's not any Yalta, he just went to the country!'
     'Well, if that's so,' the findirector  began,  turning pale with anger,
'it's real swinishness, there's even no name for it!'
     Here the  administrator  jumped up and  shouted  so  that Rimsky gave a
start:
     `I  remember! I  remember!  They've opened  a  new Georgian  tavern  in
Pushkino called  "Yalta"! It's all clear! He went  there, got drunk, and now
he's sending telegrams from there!'
     'Well, now that's too much!'  Rimsky answered, his cheek twitching, and
deep,  genuine anger burned  in  his  eyes. 'Well,  then, he's  going to pay
dearly  for  this  little excursion!  ...'  He  suddenly faltered and  added
irresolutely: 'But what about the criminal investigation ...'
     'It's  nonsense! His  own  little jokes,'  the  expansive administrator
interrupted, and asked: 'Shall I take the envelope?'
     'Absolutely,' replied Rimsky.
     And again the  door  opened  and  in came that same  ... 'Her!' thought
Rimsky,  for  some reason with  anguish.  And  both  men  rose to  meet  the
postwoman.
     This time the telegram contained the words:
     Thank   you   confirmation   send   five  hundred   urgently   criminal
investigation my name tomorrow fly Moscow Likhodeev.'
     'He's lost his mind...' Varenukha said weakly.
     Rimsky jingled his key, took money from the fireproof safe, counted out
five hundred roubles,  rang  the bell,  handed the messenger the money,  and
sent him to the telegraph office.
     'Good heavens, Grigory  Danilovich,' Varenukha said,  not believing his
eyes, 'in my opinion you oughtn't to send the money.'
     'It'll come  back,' Rimsky replied quietly, 'but he'll have a hard time
explaining  this  little picnic.' And he  added, indicating the briefcase to
Varenukha: 'Go, Ivan Savelyevich, don't delay.'
     And Varenukha ran out of the office with the briefcase.
     He  went down to  the ground floor,  saw  the longest  line at  the box
office,  found  out from the  box-office girl that  she expected to sell out
within  the  hour,  because  the  public  was  simply  pouring in  since the
additional poster had been put up, told the girl to  earmark and hold thirty
of  the best  seats in  the gallery and  the stalls, popped out  of the  box
office,  shook  off  importunate pass-seekers as  he ran, and dived into his
little office to get his cap. At that moment the telephone rattled.
     'Yes!' Varenukha shouted.
     'Ivan  Savelyevich?'  the receiver  inquired in a most  repulsive nasal
voice.
     'He's not in the  theatre!' Varenukha was  shouting,  but  the receiver
interrupted him at once:
     'Don't play the fool, Ivan  Savelyevich, just listen. Do not take those
telegrams anywhere or show them to anyone.'
     'Who  is  this?' Varenukha bellowed. 'Stop these jokes, citizen! You'll
be found out at once! What's your number?'
     'Varenukha,' the same nasty voice returned, 'do you understand Russian?
Don't take the telegrams anywhere.'
     'Ah, so you won't stop?'  the administrator cried furiously. 'Look out,
then!  You're going to  pay for it!' He shouted some other threat, but  fell
silent, because he sensed that no one was listening to him any longer in the
receiver.
     Here it somehow began to grow dark very quickly in his little office.
     Varenukha ran out, slammed the door behind him, and rushed  through the
side entrance into the summer garden.
     The  administrator was agitated and full of energy. After the  insolent
phone call  he had no doubts that it was a band  of hooligans  playing nasty
tricks,  and that  these tricks were  connected  with  the  disappearance of
Likhodeev.  The administrator  was  choking  with  the desire to  expose the
malefactors, and, strange as it was, the anticipation of something enjoyable
was born in him. It happens that way when a man strives to become the centre
of attention, to bring sensational news somewhere.
     In the garden the wind blew in the administrator's  face and flung sand
in his eyes, as if blocking his way,  as  if cautioning him. A window on the
second floor slammed so that the  glass nearly broke, the tops of the maples
and   lindens   rustled  alarmingly.   It  became  darker  and  colder.  The
administrator rubbed his eyes and saw that  a yellow-bellied storm cloud was
creeping low over Moscow. There came a dense, distant rumbling.
     However  great Varenukha's hurry, an irrepressible desire pulled at him
to run over to the summer toilet for a second on his way,  to check  whether
the repairman had put a wire screen over the light-bulb.
     Running past the shooting  gallery, Varenukha came to a thick growth of
lilacs where the light-blue toilet  building stood. The repairman turned out
to be an efficient fellow, the bulb under  the roof  of the gentlemen's side
was covered with a wire screen, but the administrator was upset that even in
the  pre-storm  darkness one  could make  out  that the walls  were  already
written all over in charcoal and pencil.
     'Well, what sort  of...' the  administrator began  and suddenly heard a
voice purring behind him:
     'Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?'
     Varenukha started,  turned around, and saw before him a short, fat  man
with what seemed to him a cat-like physiognomy.
     'So, it's me', Varenukha answered hostilely.
     'Very, very  glad,' the  cat-like fat man responded  in a squeaky voice
and, suddenly swinging his arm, gave Varenukha  such a blow on the ear  that
the cap flew off the administrator's head  and vanished without a trace down
the hole in the seat.
     At the fat  man's  blow, the  whole  toilet  lit up momentarily with  a
tremulous light, and a roll of  thunder echoed in the sky. Then came another
flash  and a second man  emerged  before the administrator - short, but with
athletic  shoulders,  hair red as  fire, albugo  in  one eye, a fang in  his
mouth... This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the
other ear.  In response there was another roll  of  thunder in  the sky, and
rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet.
     `What is it, comr...' the half-crazed administrator whispered, realized
at once that the word 'comrades' hardly fitted bandits attacking a man  in a
public toilet, rasped out: 'citiz...' - figured that they did not merit this
appellation either, and received a third terrible blow  from he did not know
which of them, so that blood gushed from his nose on to his Tolstoy blouse.
     'What  you  got  in the briefcase, parasite?' the one  resembling a cat
cried shrilly. 'Telegrams?  Weren't you warned  over the phone  not to  take
them anywhere? Weren't you warned, I'm asking you?'
     `I   was   wor...   wer...   warned...'   the  administrator  answered,
suffocating.
     `And you  skipped off anyway? Gimme the briefcase, vermin!' the  second
one cried in the same nasal  voice that had come over  the telephone, and he
yanked the briefcase from Varenukha's trembling hands.
     And the two picked the administrator up under the arms, dragged him out
of the  garden, and  raced  down Sadovaya with him. The  storm raged at full
force,  water streamed  with  a  noise and howling  down  the  drains, waves
bubbled and billowed  everywhere,  water  gushed  from  the  roofs past  the
drainpipes, foamy streams  ran  from gateways. Everything living got  washed
off Sadovaya, and there was no one to save Ivan Savelyevich. Leaping through
muddy rivers, under flashes of lightning, the bandits dragged the half-alive
administrator  in a  split second to no.502-bis,  flew with  him through the
gateway, where two  barefoot  women, holding their shoes  and  stockings  in
their hands, pressed themselves to the wall. Then they dashed into the sixth
entrance, and Varenukha, nearly insane, was taken  up to the fifth floor and
thrown  down  in the  semi-dark front hall, so well known to  him, of Styopa
Likhodeev's apartment.
     Here the two robbers vanished, and in their place there appeared in the
front  hall a  completely naked girl -  red-haired, her eyes burning  with a
phosphorescent gleam.
     Varenukha understood that this was the most terrible of all things that
had  ever happened to him and, moaning, recoiled against  the wall. But  the
girl came right up to the administrator and placed the palms of her hands on
his shoulders. Varenukha's hair stood on end, because even through the cold,
water-soaked cloth of his Tolstoy blouse he could feel that those palms were
still colder, that their cold was the cold of ice.
     `Let  me  give you  a  kiss,' the  girl said tenderly, and  there  were
shining eyes  right in front of his  eyes. Then Varenukha  fainted and never
felt the kiss.

        CHAPTER 11. Ivan Splits in Two


     The woods  on the  opposite bank of the river,  still lit up by the May
sun an hour earlier, turned dull, smeary, and dissolved.
     Water  fell down  in  a solid sheet  outside  the  window. In the  sky,
threads flashed every moment, the sky kept  bursting open, and the patient's
room was flooded with a tremulous, frightening light.
     Ivan quietly  wept, sitting on his  bed  and looking  out at  the muddy
river boiling with bubbles. At every clap of thunder, he cried out pitifully
and buried his face  in  his hands. Pages covered  with  Ivan's writing  lay
about  on the floor. They had been blown down by the wind that flew into the
room before the storm began.
     The poet's  attempts  to  write a  statement  concerning  the  terrible
consultant  had gone nowhere. As  soon as he got the  pencil  stub and paper
from  the fat attendant, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna,  he rubbed his
hands in  a business-like  way and  hastily  settled himself at  the  little
table. The beginning came out quite glibly.
     To the police.  From  Massolit  member  Ivan  Nikolaevich  Homeless.  A
statement.  Yesterday evening  I  came  to  the Patriarch's Ponds  with  the
deceased M. A. Berlioz...'
     And  right  there the  poet  got  confused, mainly  owing  to the  word
'deceased'. Some nonsensicality emerged at once: what's this - came with the
deceased? The deceased  don't  go  anywhere!  Really, for all  he knew, they
might take him for a madman!
     Having  reflected thus, Ivan Nikolaevich began to correct what  he  had
written. What came out this time was: '...  with M. A. Berlioz, subsequently
deceased  ...' This  did  not  satisfy the  author either.  He  had to  have
recourse to a third redaction, which proved still worse than  the first two:
'Berlioz, who  fell under the  tram-car...'  - and  that namesake  composer,
unknown to  anyone, was also  dangling  here, so  he had to put in: 'not the
composer...'
     After suffering over these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed  it all  out and
decided to begin right off with something  very strong,  in order to attract
the  reader's attention  at  once,  so  he wrote that  a  cat  had got on  a
tram-car, and  then went back to the episode with the severed head. The head
and the consultant's prediction led  him  to the thought of  Pontius Pilate,
and for  greater conviction  Ivan  decided to tell  the  whole story  of the
procurator in full, from the  moment he walked out  in  his white cloak with
blood-red lining to the colonnade of Herod's palace.
     Ivan worked assiduously,  crossing out what  he had written, putting in
new words, and even attempted to draw Pontius Pilate and then a cat standing
on  its hind legs. But the  drawings did not help, and the further it  went,
the more confusing and incomprehensible the poet's statement became.
     By the time the frightening  cloud with smoking edges appeared from far
off and covered the woods, and the wind began to blow, Ivan felt that he was
strengthless, that he would  never be able to manage with the statement, and
he would not pick up the scattered pages, and he wept quietly and bitterly.
     The good-natured nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna visited the poet during the
storm, became alarmed  on seeing him weeping, closed the  blinds so that the
lightning would  not frighten  the patient, picked up  the  pages  from  the
floor, and ran with them for the doctor.
     He came, gave  Ivan  an injection in the  arm, and  assured him that he
would  not weep any  more, that  everything would pass now, everything would
change, everything would be forgotten.
     The  doctor proved  right.  Soon  the woods across the river  became as
before. It was outlined to the last tree under the sky, which cleared to its
former perfect blue,  and the  river grew  calm.  Anguish had begun to leave
Ivan  right after the  injection, and now the  poet lay calmly and looked at
the rainbow that stretched across the sky.
     So it went  till  evening, and  he did not even  notice how the rainbow
melted away, how the sky saddened and faded, how the woods turned black.
     Having drunk some hot milk, Ivan  lay  down again and marvelled himself
at how  changed his thinking was. The accursed, demonic cat somehow softened
in  his  memory,  the  severed  head did not  frighten him  any  more,  and,
abandoning all thought of  it, Ivan  began to reflect that,  essentially, it
was not so bad in the clinic, that Stravinsky was  a clever man and a famous
one,  and it was  quite pleasant to deal with him. Besides,  the evening air
was sweet and fresh after the storm.
     The house of sorrow was falling  asleep. In quiet corridors the frosted
white lights went out, and in their  place, according  to regulations, faint
blue night-lights  were lit, and  the careful steps of attendants were heard
more and more rarely on the rubber matting of the corridor outside the door.
     Now Ivan lay in  sweet languor, glancing  at the  lamp under its shade,
shedding a softened light  from the ceiling, then  at the moon rising behind
the black woods, and conversed with himself.
     'Why, actually, did I  get so  excited  about  Berlioz falling  under a
tram-car?' the poet reasoned. `In the  final analysis, let him sink! What am
I, in fact, his chum or in-law? If  we air the  question properly,  it turns
out that, in essence, I really did not even know the deceased. What, indeed,
did I know about him? Nothing except that he was bald and terribly eloquent.
And furthermore, citizens,' Ivan continued his speech, addressing someone or
other,  `let's  sort this out:  why,  tell  me,  did  I  get furious at this
mysterious consultant, magician and professor with the black and empty eye?
     Why all this absurd chase after him in underpants  and with a candle in
my hand, and then those wild shenanigans in the restaurant?'
     'Uh-uh-uh!'  the  former Ivan suddenly said sternly  somewhere,  either
inside  or  over his  ear,  to the new  Ivan. `He  did  know beforehand that
Berlioz's head would be cut off, didn't he? How could I not get excited?'
     'What are we talking about, comrades?' the  new  Ivan  objected  to the
old,  former  Ivan. That things  are not quite proper here, even a child can
understand. He's a one-hundred-per-cent outstanding and mysterious person!
     But  that's   the  most  interesting  thing!  The  man  was  personally
acquainted with Pontius  Pilate,  what could be more interesting  than that?
And,  instead of raising a stupid rumpus at the Ponds, wouldn't it have been
more  intelligent to  question him politely  about what happened  further on
with Pilate  and his  prisoner Ha-Nozri?  And I started devil knows  what! A
major occurrence, really - a magazine editor gets run over! And so, what, is
the magazine going to shut down for that? Well,  what  can be done about it?
Man is mortal and, as has  rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal. Well, may
he rest in peace! Well, so  there'll be another editor, and maybe even  more
eloquent than the previous one!'
     After  dozing  for   a  while,  the   new   Ivan  asked  the  old  Ivan
sarcastically:
     'And what does it make me, in that case?'
     'A fool!' a bass voice said distinctly somewhere, a voice not belonging
to either of the Ivans and extremely like the bass of the consultant.
     Ivan,  for  some  reason  not offended  by  the  word 'fool', but  even
pleasantly  surprised at  it,  smiled and  drowsily  grew quiet.  Sleep  was
stealing  over  Ivan,  and  he  was  already picturing  a palm tree  on  its
elephant's leg, and a cat passing by - not scary, but merry - and, in short,
sleep was  just about  to  come  over  Ivan,  when the grille suddenly moved
noiselessly aside,  and a mysterious figure appeared on  the balcony, hiding
from the moonlight, and shook its finger at Ivan.
     Not frightened in the least,  Ivan sat up in bed and saw that there was
a  man on the  balcony.  And  this  man,  pressing a  finger  to  his  lips,
whispered:
     'Shhh! ...'


        CHAPTER 12. Black Magic and Its Exposure


     A  small  man  in  a  yellow  bowler-hat  full  of  holes  and  with  a
pear-shaped,    raspberry-coloured   nose,   in   checkered   trousers   and
patent-leather  shoes,  rolled out  on to  the  stage  of  the Variety on an
ordinary two-wheeled bicycle. To the sounds of a foxtrot  he  made a circle,
and then gave a triumphant shout, which caused his bicycle to rear up. After
riding around  on  the  back wheel,  the  little  man  turned  upside  down,
contrived while in motion to unscrew the front wheel and send it  backstage,
and then  proceeded on his  way with one wheel, turning the pedals with  his
hands.
     On a tall metal pole with a seat at the top and a single wheel, a plum