standing
behind the counter,  asked  her  for  a  loaf  from the top  shelf  which he
affected to  prefer to all the rest and as she turned round, he silently and
quickly snatched off the counter the very  thing he had been looking  for--a
long, ra2or-sharp breadknife--and fled from the shop.
     A few minutes later  he  was back on the Jaffa road, but the procession
was out of sight. He ran. Once or twice he had to drop and lie motionless to
regain his breath,  to  the astonishment of all  the  passers-by making  for
Jerusalem on  mule-back or on foot. As he lay he could hear the beat of  his
heart in  his chest, in his head and his ears. Rested, he stood up and began
running again, although his  pace  grew slower  and slower.  When he finally
caught sight again of the long, dusty procession, it had already reached the
foot of the hill.
     'Oh, God! ' groaned the Levite. He knew he was too late.
     With the passing of the fourth hour of the execution Matthew's torments
reached their climax and drove  him to a  frenzy.  Rising from his stone, he
hurled the stolen knife to the ground, crushed his flask with his foot, thus
depriving himself  of water, snatched  the  kefiyeh from his  head, tore his
flowing  hair  and  cursed  himself. As he  cursed  in streams of gibberish,
bellowed  and spat, Matthew slandered his father and  mother  for  begetting
such a fool.
     Since cursing and swearing had no apparent effect  at  all and  changed
nothing in  that sun-scorched inferno, he clenched his  dry fists and raised
them heavenwards to  the sun as it slowly descended, lengthening the shadows
before setting into the Mediterranean. The Levite  begged  God  to perform a
miracle and allow Yeshua to die.
     When he opened his eyes again nothing on  the hill  had changed, except
that the light no longer flashed from the badges  on the  centurion's chest.
The sun was  shining on the victims' backs, as their faces were turned  east
towards Jerusalem. Then the Levite cried out:
     'I curse you. God! '
     In a  hoarse  voice he shouted  that God  was unjust and that he  would
believe in him no more.
     'You are deaf! ' roared Matthew. ' If you were not deaf you would have
heard me and killed him in the instant!'
     His eyes tight shut, the Levite waited for the fire to strike  him from
heaven. Nothing happened. Without opening his eyes, he vented his spite in a
torrent  of insults  to heaven. He  shouted  that his faith was ruined, that
there were other gods and better. No other god would have allowed a man like
Yeshua to be scorched to death on a pole.
     'No--I was wrong! ' screamed the Levite, now quite hoarse. ' You are a
God of evil! Or have your eyes been blinded by the smoke  of sacrifices from
the temple and have your ears grown deaf to everything but the trumpet-calls
of the priests? You are not an almighty  God--you  are an evil God!  I curse
you. God of robbers, their patron and protector! '
     At that  moment  there  was a  puff  of  air in  his face and something
rustled under his feet. Then came another puff and as he opened his eyes the
Levite saw that everything, either  as a result of his  imprecations or from
some other cause, had changed. The sun had been swallowed by a  thundercloud
looming up, threatening and inexorable, from the west. Its edges  were white
and ragged, its rumbling black paunch tinged with sulphur.  White pillars of
dust, raised by the sudden wind, flew  along  the Jaffa road. The Levite was
silent, wondering if the storm which was about to break over Jerusalem might
alter the fate of the  wretched  Yeshua. Watching  the  tongues of lightning
that flickered  round  the  edges of the cloud,  he began to pray for one to
strike Yeshua's gibbet. Glancing penitently up  at the remaining  patches of
blue sky in which the vultures were winging away to avoid the storm, Matthew
knew that he had cursed too soon: God would not listen to him now.
     Turning round to look at the foot of the hill, the Levite stared at the
cavalry lines and saw that they  were on the move. From  his height he had a
good view of  the soldiers'  hasty preparations as they pulled  their lances
out  of the  ground and threw their cloaks over their  shoulders. The grooms
were running towards the path, leading strings of troop horses. The regiment
was moving out. Shielding his face with  his hand and spitting out the  sand
that blew into his mouth, the Levite tried to think  why the  cavalry should
be preparing to go. He shifted his glance higher up  the hill and made out a
figure  in a  purple  military  chlamys  climbing up  towards  the place  of
execution. Matthew's heart leaped : he sensed  a quick end. The man climbing
Mount Golgotha in the victims' fifth  hour  of suffering was the  Tribune of
the Cohort, who had galloped from Jerusalem accompanied by an orderly.  At a
signal from Muribellum the  cordon  of soldiers  opened  and  the  centurion
saluted  the Tribune, who took  Muribellum aside and whispered something  to
him. The centurion saluted again and walked over to the executioners, seated
on stones under the gibbets. The Tribune meanwhile turned towards the man on
the three-legged  stool.  The  seated  man  rose  politely  as  the  Tribune
approached  him.  The officer said something to  him in a low voice and both
walked over to the gallows, where they  were joined  by the  captain of  the
temple guard.
     Muribellum, with  a fastidious grimace  at the filthy rags lying on the
ground near the crosses--the  prisoners' clothes which even the executioners
had spurned--called to two of them and gave an order:
     'Follow me!'
     A  hoarse, incoherent song could just be heard coming from  the nearest
gibbet. Hestas had been driven  out of  his mind two  hours ago by the flies
and  the heat and was  now softly  croaking something  about a vineyard. His
turbaned head still nodded occasionally, sending up  a lazy  cloud of  flies
from his face.
     Dismas  on the second cross  was suffering  more  than  the  other  two
because he was still conscious and shaking his head  regularly from side  to
side.
     Yeshua was luckier.  He had begun to faint  during the first hour,  and
had  then  lapsed  into unconsciousness,  his  head  drooping in  its ragged
turban. As a result the  mosquitoes and horse-flies  had settled on  him  so
thickly that his face was entirely hidden by a black, heaving mask. All over
his groin, his stomach and under his armpits sat bloated horseflies, sucking
at the yellowing naked body.
     At a gesture from the man in the hood one of the executioners picked up
a lance and the other carried a bucket and sponge to the  gibbet.  The first
executioner raised the lance and used it to hit Yeshua first on one extended
arm and then on the other.
     The emaciated body gave a twitch. The executioner  then poked Yeshua in
the stomach with the handle of the  lance. At  this Yeshua  raised his head,
the flies rose with a buzz and the  victim's face was revealed, swollen with
bites, puff-eyed, unrecognisable.
     Forcing open his eyelids, Ha-Notsri looked down. His usually clear eyes
were now dim and glazed.
     'Ha-Notsri!' said the executioner.
     Ha-Notsri moved his swollen lips and answered in a hoarse croak:
     'What do you want? Why have you come? '
     'Drink! ' said the executioner and a water-soaked sponge was raised to
Yeshua's lips on the point of a lance. Joy lit up his eyes, he put his mouth
to the sponge and greedily sucked its moisture.  From  the next  gibbet came
the voice of Dismas :
     'It's unjust! He's as much a crook as me! '
     Dismas strained ineffectually, his  arms being lashed to the  cross-bar
in three places. He arched his stomach, clawed the end of the crossbeam with
his  nails  and  tried  to  turn his eyes,  full of envy and hatred, towards
Yeshua's cross.
     'Silence on the second gibbet! '
     Dismas was  silent.  Yeshua turned aside  from  the sponge. He tried to
make his voice  sound kind and persuasive,  but failed and could only  croak
huskily :
     'Give him a drink too.'
     It was growing darker.  The cloud now  filled half the sky as it surged
towards  Jerusalem;  smaller  white  clouds  fled before  the black  monster
charged  with fire and water.  There was a flash and a  thunderclap directly
over the hill. The executioner took the sponge from the lance.
     'Hail to the  merciful  hegemon!  '  he whispered solemnly and gently
pierced Yeshua through the heart. Yeshua shuddered and whispered:
     'Hegemon . . .'
     Blood ran down his stomach, his lower jaw twitched convulsively and his
head dropped. At  the  second thunderclap the executioner gave the sponge to
Dismas with the same words :
     'Hail, hegemon . . .' and killed him.
     Hestas,  his  reason  gone,  cried  out  in  fear  as  the  executioner
approached him, but when the sponge touched his lips he gave a roar and sank
his teeth into it. A few seconds later his body was hanging as limply as the
ropes would allow.
     The man in the hood  followed the executioner and the centurion; behind
him in  turn came  the captain of  the  temple  guard. Stopping at the first
gibbet  the hooded  man  carefully  inspected  Yeshua's  bloodstained  body,
touched the pole with his white hand and said to his companions :
     'Dead.'
     The same was repeated at the other two gallows.
     After  this the  Tribune gestured to the  centurion and turned to  walk
down the hill with the captain of the temple guard and the hooded man.
     It was now twilight and lightning was furrowing the black sky. Suddenly
there  was a brilliant  flash and the centurion's  shout of'  Fall out,  the
cordon! '  was  drowned in thunder.  The delighted  soldiers started running
down hill, buckling on their helmets as they went.
     A mist had covered Jerusalem.
     The downpour struck suddenly and caught the centurion  halfway down the
hill. The rain  fell with such force that turbulent streams  began  catching
them up as they ran. The troops slithered and fell on the muddy soil as they
hurried to reach the  main road. Moving fast, now scarcely visible in a veil
of water, the rain-soaked cavalry was already on its  way back to Jerusalem.
After  a  few  minutes  only  one man was left  on  the hill in  the smoking
cauldron of wind, water and fire.
     Brandishing his stolen  knife,  for  which he  now had a use after all,
leaping over  the slippery rocks, grasping whatever  came  to hand, at times
crawling on  his knees, he stumbled towards  the gallows in alternate spells
of complete darkness and flashes of light. When he reached  the  gallows  he
was already ankle-deep  in water  and threw off his soaking tallith. Wearing
only his shirt  Matthew  fell at Yeshua's feet. He cut  the  ropes round his
knees, climbed on to the  lower crossbar, embraced Yeshua and freed his arms
from  their  bonds. Yeshua's wet,  naked  body collapsed on to  Matthew  and
dragged him to the ground.  The Levite was just about to hoist him on to his
shoulders when another thought stopped him. He left the body on  the  watery
ground, its head thrown back and arms outstretched,  and ran, slithering, to
the other gibbet-posts. He  cut their  ropes and the two bodies  fell to the
ground.
     A few minutes later only those two water-lashed bodies  and three empty
gibbets remained on Mount Golgotha. Matthew the Levite and Yeshua were gone.




        17. A Day of Anxiety


     On Friday morning,  the  day after the  disastrous show, the  permanent
staff of the Variety Theatre--Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin the accountant,
two   bookkeepers,  three  typists,  the  two  cashiers,  the   ushers,  the
commissionaires and the cleaners-- were not at work but were instead sitting
on the window-ledges looking out on to Sadovaya Street and watching what was
happening outside  the  theatre.  There  beneath  the  theatre walls wound a
double queue of several thousand people whose  tail-end had  already reached
Kudrinskaya Square. At the head  of the queue stood a couple of dozen of the
leading lights of the Moscow theatrical world.
     The queue was in a  state of high excitement,  attracting the attention
of  the  passers-by  and busily  swapping  hair-raising  stories  about  the
previous   evening's  incredible   performance   of  black   magic.  Vassily
Stepanovich  the  accountant,  who had  not been at  yesterday's  show,  was
growing more and more uneasy. The  commissionaires were saying  unbelievable
things, such as how after the show  a  number of ladies had been seen on the
street  in  a  highly  improper  state.  The  shy  and  unassuming   Vassily
Stepanovich could only blink as  he listened to the description of all these
sensations and felt  utterly  unable  to  decide  what  to  do  ;  meanwhile
something had to  be done and it was he who had to do it, as he  was now the
senior remaining member of the Variety's management.
     By ten o'clock the ticket queue  had  swollen to such  a size that  the
police came to hear of it  and rapidly  sent  some detachments of  horse and
foot to  reduce  the queue to order.  Unfortunately the  mere existence of a
mile-long queue was enough to cause a minor riot in spite of all the  police
could do.
     Inside the Variety things were  as confused  as they were  outside. The
telephone had been  ringing  since early morning-- ringing  in  Likhodeyev's
office,  in Rimsky's office, in the  accounts  department, in the box-office
and  in Varenukha's office.  At  first Vassily  Stepanovich had attempted to
answer,  the cashier  had  tried to cope,  the  commissionaires  had mumbled
something into the telephone when it  rang, but soon they  stopped answering
altogether because there was simply  no answer  to  give  the people  asking
where Likhodeyev, Rimsky and Varenukha were. They  had been able to put them
off  the scent for a while by  saying that Likhodeyev was in his  flat,  but
this  only  produced  more angry calls later, declaring that they  had  rung
Likhodeyev's flat and been told that he was at the Variety.
     One  agitated lady rang  up and demanded to  speak  to  Rimsky and  was
advised to ring  his  wife at  home, at which the earpiece, sobbing, replied
that she was Rimsky's wife and he was nowhere to be found. Odd stories began
to  circulate.  One of the charwomen was telling everyone  that when she had
gone to clean the treasurer's office she had found the door ajar, the lights
burning,  the window  on  to the garden smashed,  a chair  overturned on the
floor and no one in the room.
     At  eleven o'clock Madame Rimsky descended on  the Variety, weeping and
wringing  her hands. Vassily  Stepanovich was by  now utterly bewildered and
unable  to  offer  her  any  advice.  Then  at half  past eleven the  police
appeared. Their first and very reasonable question was :
     'What's happening here? What is all this? '
     The staff"  retreated, pushing  forward the pale  and  agitated Vassily
Stepanovich. Describing the situation as it really was, he had to admit that
the entire  management  of the Variety, including the  general  manager, the
treasurer  and the  house manager,  had  vanished without trace,  that  last
night's compere had  been  removed  to a lunatic asylum and that,  in short,
yesterday's show had been a catastrophe.
     Having done their best to calm her, the police sent the sobbing
     Madame Rimsky home, then turned with  interest to the charwoman's story
about the state of the treasurer's office. The staff were told to go and get
on with  their jobs  and after a short  while the detective squad turned up,
leading a sharp-eared  muscular dog, the colour  of cigarette  ash  and with
extremely  intelligent  eyes.  At  once a  rumour spread  among  the Variety
Theatre staff that the dog  was none other  than the famous Ace of Diamonds.
It was. Its behaviour amazed everybody. No sooner had the animal walked into
the treasurer's office than it growled, bared its monstrous yellowish teeth,
then crouched on its stomach and crept towards the broken window with a look
of mingled terror and hostility.  Mastering its fear the dog suddenly leaped
on to  the window  ledge,  raised its great muzzle and gave an eerie, savage
howl.  It refused to leave  the  window, growled,  trembled and crouched  as
though wanting to jump out of the window.
     The dog was led out of the office to the entrance hall, from whence  it
went  out  of the  main  doors into the  street and across the road  to  the
taxi-rank.  There  it lost the  scent.  After that Ace of Diamonds was taken
away.
     The detectives  settled into  Varenukha's office, where  one  after the
other, they called in all the members of the Variety staff who had witnessed
the events of the previous evening. At every step the detectives were  beset
with unforeseen difficulties. The thread kept breaking in their hands.
     Had there been any posters advertising the performance? Yes, there had.
But since last night new ones had been  pasted over them and  now  there was
not a single  one to  be  found anywhere. Where did this magician come from?
Nobody knew. Had a contract been signed?
     'I suppose so,' replied Vassily Stepanovich miserably.
     'And if so it will have gone through the books, won't it? '
     'Certainly,' replied Vassily Stepanovich in growing agitation.
     'Then where is it? '
     'It's not here,' replied  the accountant, turning paler  and spreading
his hands. It  was true  : there was no trace of a contract  in the accounts
department files, the treasurer's office, Likhodeyev's office or Varenukha's
office.
     What was  the  magician's surname? Vassily Stepanovich did not know, he
had  not been  at  yesterday's show. The  commissionaires did not  know, the
box-office  cashier frowned  and frowned, thought  and  thought, and finally
said :
     'Wo ... I think it was Woland. . . .'
     Perhaps it wasn't Woland? Perhaps it wasn't. Perhaps it was Poland.
     The  Aliens'  Bureau,  it appeared, had  never  heard of anyone  called
Woland or Poland or any other black magician. Karpov, an usher, said that as
far as he knew the magician was staying at Likhodeyev's flat. Naturally they
immediately went to the  flat, but there was  no sign of a  magician  living
there.  Likhodeyev  himself  was also missing. The maid Grunya was not there
and  nobody  knew where she  was. Both the house committee chairman, Nikanor
Ivanovich, and the secretary, Prolezhnev, had also vanished.
     The investigation so far appeared to amount to a total  absurdity : the
entire  management  had  vanished,  there  had been  a  scandalous  show the
previous evening--but who had arranged it? Nobody knew.
     Meanwhile it was nearly noon, time for the box office to open. This, of
course, was out of  the question. A large piece of cardboard was hung on the
Variety's doors with the announcement:

     today's
     PERFORMANCE
     CANCELLED

     This caused a  stir  in  the  queue,  beginning at  its  head, but  the
excitement subsided and the queue began to disperse. After an hour there was
scarcely  a  trace of it on Sadovaya Street.  The detectives  left to pursue
their  inquiries  elsewhere,  the  staff,  except  for  the  watchmen,  were
dismissed and the doors of the Variety were closed.
     Vassily  Stepanovich  the accountant had  two urgent tasks  to perform.
Firstly  to  go  to  the  Commission  for  Theatrical  Spectacles and  Light
Entertainment with a report on the previous day's events and then to deposit
yesterday's  takings   of  21,711  roubles   at  the   Commission's  finance
department.
     The meticulous and efficient Vassily Stepanovich wrapped  the money  in
newspaper,  tied it up with  string, put it into his briefcase and following
his standing instructions avoided  taking a bus or tram but  went instead to
the nearby taxi-rank.
     As  soon as  the three  cab-drivers on the rank saw a  fare approaching
with a chock-full briefcase under his arm, all three of them instantly drove
off  empty, scowling back as  they went. Amazed, the accountant stood for  a
while  wondering what  this odd  behaviour  could  mean.  After  about three
minutes  an  empty cab drove  up the the  rank,  the  driver grimacing  with
hostility when he saw his fare.
     'Are you free? ' asked Vassily Stepanovich with an anxious cough.
     'Show me your money,' snarled the driver.
     Even more amazed, the accountant clutched his precious briefcase  under
one  arm, pulled a ten-rouble  note  out of his  wallet and showed it to the
driver.
     'I'm not taking you,' he said curtly.
     'Excuse me,  but  .  .  .'  The  accountant  began,  but  the  driver
interrupted him:
     'Got a three-rouble note? '
     The  bewildered  accountant  took  out two  three-rouble notes from his
wallet and showed them to the driver.
     'O.K.,  get in,'  he  shouted, slamming down the flag of his meter so
hard that he almost broke it. ' Let's go.'
     'Are you short of change? ' enquired the accountant timidly.
     'Plenty  of change! ' roared the driver  and  his eyes, reddened with
fury, glared  at Vassily Stepanovich  from  the  mirror. '  Third time  it's
happened to me today. Just  the same  with the others.  Some son of  a bitch
gives  me  a  tenner  and  I  give him four-fifty  change. Out he  gets, the
bastard! Five minutes later I look--instead of a tenner there's a  label off
a soda-water bottle!  '  Here the driver  said several unprintable words.  '
Picked up another fare on Zaborskaya. Gives me a  tenner--I give  him  three
roubles change. Gets out. I look in my bag and out flies a bee! Stings me on
the finger!  I'll . .  .'  The driver spat out more unprintable words. ' And
there was  no tenner. There  was a show  on  at  that  (unprintable) Variety
yesterday evening  and some (unprintable) conjurer did  a turn with a lot of
(unprintable) ten-rouble notes . . .'
     The accountant was  dumbstruck. He hunched himself up and tried to look
as if he  was hearing the  very word ' Variety '  for the first time  in his
life as he thought to himself: ' Well I'm damned! '
     Arrived at his destination and paying in proper  money,  the accountant
went into one building and hurried along the corridor to the chief cashier's
office, but even before he  reached it he realised that he had come at a bad
moment. A rumpus was going on in the offices of the Theatrical Commission. A
cleaner ran past him with her headscarf awry and bulging eyes.
     'He's not there!  He's  not  there, dear,' she screamed,  turning  to
another man hurrying along the passage. ' His jacket and trousers  are there
but there's nobody in 'em! '
     She disappeared through a door, from which there at once came the sound
of  smashing crockery. Vassily Stepanovich then  saw the familiar figure  of
the chief cashier come  running out of the  secretaries' office and  vanish,
but  the man  was  in such  a  state  that  he failed to  recognise  Vasilly
Stepanovich.
     Slightly shaken,  the accountant reached  the door  of the secretaries'
office, which  was the ante-room to the chairman's office, where he had  the
greatest shock of all.
     Through the far door came a terrible  voice, unmistakably  belonging to
Prokhor  Petrovich, the chairman of the Commission. ' I suppose he's telling
somebody  off,'  thought  the  puzzled  accountant.  Looking  round, he  saw
something else--there, in a leather armchair, her head  resting on the back,
sobbing uncontrollably  and clutching a wet handkerchief, her legs stretched
out  to the middle  of the  floor,  lay  Prokhor Petrovich's  secretary, the
beautiful Anna Richardovna.  Her chin  was smeared with lipstick and streaks
of dissolved mascara were running down her peach-skin cheeks.
     Seeing  him come  in,  Anna  Richardovna  jumped  up,  ran  to  Vassily
Stepanovich, clutched his lapels and began to shake him, howling:
     'Thank God! At least there's one of you brave enough!  They've all run
away, they've all let us down! Come and see him, I don't know  what to do! '
Still sobbing she dragged him into the chairman's office.
     Once inside Vassily Stepanovich dropped his briefcase in horror.
     Behind the huge desk with its massive inkwell sat an empty  suit. A dry
pen was hurrying, unheld, across a sheet of paper. The suit had a shirt  and
tie, a fountain  pen was clipped in its breast-pocket,  but above the collar
there was no neck  and no head and there were no wrists protruding from  the
cuffs. The  suit  was hard at work  and oblivious of the uproar round about.
Hearing  someone  come  in,  the  suit  leaned  back in  its chair and  from
somewhere  just  above  the  collar  came  the  familiar  voice  of  Prokhor
Petrovich:
     'What is it? There's a  notice on the door saying that I'm not  seeing
visitors.'
     The beautiful secretary moaned and cried, wringing her hands :
     'Don't you see? He's not there! Bring him back, oh bring him back!'
     Someone  peeped round  the door, groaned  and flew out  again.  Vassily
Stepanovich  felt  his  legs  shaking  and  he sat down  on  the  edge of  a
chair--not forgetting, though, to hold on to his briefcase. Anna Richardovna
pranced round Vassily Stepanovich, pulling at his coat and shrieking :
     'I've always, always  stopped him whenever he began swearing! Now he's
sworn once too often!' The girl  ran to the desk and exclaimed  in a tender,
musical voice, slightly nasal from so much weeping: ' Prosha dear, where are
you? '
     'Who are you addressing as " Prosha "? '  enquired the suit haughtily,
drawing further back into the chair.
     'He doesn't  recognise me!  He doesn't recognise me!  Don't you see? '
sobbed the girl.
     'Kindly stop crying in  my  office!' said  the striped suit irritably,
stretching out its sleeve for a fresh pile of paper.
     'No, I can't look, I can't look! ' cried Anna Richardovna and ran back
into her office, followed, like a bullet, by the accountant.
     'Just imagine--I was  sitting  here,' began Anna Richardovna trembling
with  horror and clutching  Vassily  Stepanovich's sleeve, '  when in came a
cat. A great black animal as  big as Behemoth. Naturally I shooed it out and
it  went, but then a fat man came in who also had a face  like a cat, said "
Do you  always  say ' shoo  ' to visitors?"  and went straight in to Prokhor
Petrovich. So I shouted " What  d'you mean by going in there --have you gone
crazy? " But the cheeky brute  marched  straight in to Prokhor Petrovich and
sat down in the chair facing him. Well, Prokhor is the nicest man alive, but
he's nervous. He lost his temper. He works like a trojan, but he's apt to be
nervy  and he  just  flared  up. "  Why have you  come in here without being
announced?  " he said.  And  then,  if  you please,  that impudent  creature
stretched  out in his  chair and said  with a smile : "  I've come to have a
chat with you on a little matter  of business." Prokhor Petrovich snapped at
him again :
     " I'm busy," to which the beast said: " You're not busy at all ..." How
d'you like  that? Well, of course, Prokhor Petrovich lost all patience  then
and shouted: " What is all this?  Damn me if I don't have you thrown  out of
here! " The beast just smiled  and said: " Damn you, I think  you said? Very
well!  " And--bang! Before  I  could even scream,  I looked and cat-face had
gone and there was this . . . suit . . . sitting .  . . Oooooh! ' Stretching
her mouth into a shapeless cavity Anna Richardovna gave a howl. Choking back
her sobs she took a deep breath but could only gulp nonsensically:
     'And  it goes on writing and writing and writing!  I must be going off
my  head!  It talks on the telephone! The suit!  They've  all run  away like
rabbits! '
     Vassily Stepanovich  could  only  stand there, trembling. Fate  rescued
him. Into  the  secretaries' office with  a firm,  regular tread marched two
policemen. Catching sight of  them the lovely girl began sobbing even harder
and pointed towards the office door.
     'Now, now, miss, let's not cry,'  said  the  first man calmly. Vassily
Stepanovich,  deciding that he was superfluous, skipped  away  and a  minute
later was out  in the fresh air. His  head felt  hollow, something inside it
was booming like a  trumpet and the noise  reminded him of the story told by
one of the commissionaires about a cat which  had taken part in  yesterday's
show. ' Aha! Perhaps it's our little pussy up to his tricks again? '
     Having failed to hand in the money at the Commission's head office, the
conscientious Vassily Stepanovich decided  to go to the branch office, which
was in Vagankovsky Street and to calm himself a little he made his way there
on foot.
     The  branch  office  of  the Theatrical  Commission  was quartered in a
peeling old  house at the far  end of a  courtyard, which was famous for the
porphyry  columns in its hallway. That day,  however,  the visitors  to  the
house were not paying much attention to the porphyry columns.
     Several  visitors were standing  numbly  in the hall  and  staring at a
weeping  girl seated behind a desk full of theatrical brochures which it was
her job to sell. The girl seemed to have lost interest in her literature and
only  waved  sympathetic enquirers  away,  whilst  from above, below and all
sides  of the  building  came  the pealing  of  at  least  twenty  desperate
telephones.
     Weeping, the girl suddenly gave a start and screamed hysterically :
     'There it is again! ' and began singing in a wobbly soprano :
     'Yo-o, heave-ho! Yo-o heave-ho! '

     A messenger,  who  had  appeared  on the staircase, shook  his fist  at
somebody and joined the girl, singing in a rough, tuneless baritone:
     'One more heave, lads, one more heave . . .'
     Distant voices chimed in,  the  choir began to swell until finally  the
song  was  booming out  all over the  building. In nearby room  No.  6,  the
auditor's  department,  a powerful hoarse bass  voice  boomed out an  octave
below the rest. The chorus was  accompanied crescendo by a peal of telephone
bells.
     'All day lo-ong we must trudge the sbore,' roared the messenger on the
staircase.
     Tears poured down the girl's face as she tried to clench her teeth, but
her mouth opened  of  its own  accord  and  she sang  an  octave  above  the
messenger :
     'Work all da-ay and then work more . . .'
     What surprised the dumbfounded visitors was the fact that the  singers,
spread all through the building, were keeping excellent  time, as though the
whole choir were standing together and watching an invisible conductor.
     Passers-by in Vagankovsky  Street  stopped outside the courtyard gates,
amazed to hear such sounds of harmony coming from the Commission.
     As soon as the first verse  was  over, the singing  stopped at once, as
though in obedience to  a conductor's baton. The messenger  swore  under his
breath and ran off.
     The front door opened and in walked a man wearing a  light coat  on top
of a white overall, followed by a policeman.
     'Do something, doctor, please! ' screamed the hysterical girl.
     The secretary  of  the branch  office ran out on to  the staircase  and
obviously burning with embarrassment and shame said between hiccups:
     'Look doctor,  we have a  case of some kind of mass hypnosis, so  you
must. .  .' He  could not  finish  his sentence, stuttered and began singing
'Shilka and Nerchinsk . . .'
     'Fool! ' the  girl managed to shout, but never managed to say who she
meant and instead found  herself  forced into a trill and joined in the song
about Shilka and Nerchinsk.
     'Pull  yourselves together! Stop  singing!'  said the  doctor  to the
secretary.
     It was  obvious  that the secretary  would have given anything  to stop
singing but could not.
     When the verse was finished  the girl at  the desk received a  dose  of
valerian from the doctor, who hurried off to give the secretary and the rest
the same treatment.
     'Excuse me, miss,' Vassily Stepanovich suddenly asked the girl,  ' has
a black cat been in here? '
     'What  cat? '  cried  the girl angrily.  ' There's  a donkey in  this
office--a  donkey! ' And she went on : 'If you  want to  hear about it  I'll
tell you exactly what's happened.'
     Apparently the director of the branch office had a mania for organising
clubs.
     'He does it all without permission  from  head office! ' said the girl
indignantly.
     In the course of a year the branch director had succeeded in organising
a  Lermontov Club, a  Chess and Draughts Club, a Ping-Pong Club and a Riding
Club. In summer he threatened to organise a rowing club and a mountaineering
club. And then this morning in came the director at lunch time . . .
     '. . . arm in arm with some villain,' said the girl, ' that he'd picked
up God knows where, wearing check  trousers, with a wobbling pince-nez . . .
and an absolutely impossible face! '
     There and then, according to the girl, he had introduced him to all the
lunchers  in  the dining-room  as a  famous  specialist in organising choral
societies.
     The faces of the budding  mountaineers  darkened, but the director told
them to cheer up and the specialist made jokes and assured them  on his oath
that  singing  would take up very  little time  and was a wonderfully useful
accomplishment.
     Well, of course, the girl  went on, the first two to jump up were Fanov
and Kosarchuk,  both well-known  toadies,  and announced that they wanted to
join.  The  rest of the staff realised that there was no way  out of  it, so
they  all joined the  choral society too. It was decided to  practise during
the lunch break, because all the rest of their  spare time was already taken
up with Lermontov  and  draughts. To  set an  example the director announced
that he  sang tenor. What happened then was like a bad dream. The check-clad
chorus  master bellowed: ' Do, mi, sol, do!'  He  dragged  some of  the  shy
members  out  from  behind a cupboard where they had  been  trying  to avoid
having to sing, told Kosarchuk that he had perfect pitch, whined, whimpered,
begged them to show him some respect as an old choirmaster, struck  a tuning
fork on his finger and announced  that  they would begin with '  The Song of
the Volga Boatmen '.
     They struck up. And  they sang very  well--the man  in  the  check suit
really did know his job.  They sang to the end of  the first verse. Then the
choirmaster excused himself, saying : ' I'll be back in a moment . . .'--and
vanished. Everybody  expected him back in a minute  or two,  but ten minutes
went by and there was still no sign of him. The staff were delighted--he had
run away!
     Then suddenly, as if to order, they all began singing the second verse,
led by Kosarchuk, who  may  not have had perfect  pitch  but who had quite a
pleasant high tenor. They finished the verse. Still  no conductor. Everybody
started to go back to their tables, but they had no time to eat before quite
against their will they all started singing again. And they  could not stop.
There would  be three minutes' silence and  they  would burst  out into song
again.  Silence--then  more  singing!  Soon  people  began  to  realise that
something terrible was happening. The director locked himself in his  office
out of shame.
     With this the girl's story broke off--even valerian was no use,
     A  quarter of an hour  later  three  lorries drove up to the gateway on
Vagankovsky Street and the entire branch staff,  headed by the director, was
put into them. Just as  the first  lorry drove through the gate and out into
the  street, the staff, standing in the back  of the lorry and holding  each
other round  the shoulders, all opened  their  mouths and deafened the whole
street with a song. The second lorry-load joined in and then  the  third. On
they drove, singing. The passers-by hurrying past on their own business gave
the  lorries no more than a glance and took no notice, thinking  that it was
some works  party going on an  excursion out  of  town. They were  certainly
heading  out of town,  but not  for an outing: they were bound for Professor
Stravinsky's clinic.
     Half  an hour  later  the  distracted  Vassily Stepanovich reached  the
accounts department hoping at last to be able to get rid of his large sum of
money. Having learned from experience, he first  gave a cautious glance into
the long hall, where the cashiers sat behind frosted-glass windows with gilt
markings. He  found no sign of  disturbance or upheaval. All was as quiet as
it should be in such a respectable establishment.
     Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head  through the  window marked ' Paying
In ', said good-day to the clerk and politely asked for a paying-in slip.
     'What do you want? ' asked the clerk behind the window.
     The accountant looked amazed.
     'I want to pay in, of course. I'm from the Variety.'
     'One minute,' replied the clerk and instantly shut his little window.
     'Funny! ' thought Vassily Stepanovich. This was  the first time in his
life that he had been treated like  this. We all  know  how  hard it  is  to
acquire money--the process is  strewn  with obstacles  ; but  in  his thirty
years' experience Vassily Stepanovich had  never  yet found anyone  who  had
made the least objection to taking money when offered it.
     At last  the window was  pushed  open again  and the accountant  leaned
forward again.
     'How much have you got? ' asked the clerk.
     'Twenty-one thousand, seven hundred and eleven roubles.'
     'Oho! ' replied the clerk ironically and handed Vassily  Stepanovich a
green  form. Thoroughly familiar with  it,  he filled it out in a moment and
began untying the string  on his package. As he unpacked it a red  film came
over his eyes and he groaned in  agony. In front of him lay heaps of foreign
money--Canadian dollars,  English  pounds,  Dutch  guilders,  Latvian latts,
Esthonian crowns . . .
     'Here's another of  these jokers from the Variety! ' said a grim voice
behind the accountant.  And  Vassily Stepanovich  was  immediately put under
arrest.






        18. Unwelcome Visitors



     Just as Vassily Stepanovich was  taking  a  taxi-ride to  meet the suit
that  wrote  by  itself,  among  the  passengers  from  the Kiev  express  a
respectably  dressed  man carrying  a little fibre suitcase  emerged from  a
first-class sleeper on to the Moscow platform. This passenger was none other
than the uncle of the late Misha Berlioz, Maximilian Andreyevich  Poplavsky,
an  economist who worked in the Planning Commission and lived  in Kiev.  The
cause of his arrival in Moscow was a telegram  that  he had received late in
the evening two days earlier:

     have been run over BY  TRAM AT PATRIARCHS FUNERAL THREE  O'CLOCK FRIDAY
PLEASE COME BERLIOZ

     Maximilian Andreyevich was regarded, and rightly so, as one of the most
intelligent  men  in Kiev, but a telegram like this  would  be liable to put
even the brightest of us in a dilemma. If a  man telegraphs that he has been
run over, obviously he  has not been killed. But then why the funeral? Or is
he so desperately ill that he can foresee his own death? It is possible, but
extremely odd to be quite so precise--even if he can predict  his death, how
does he know that he's going to be buried  at three  o'clock on Friday? What
an astonishing telegram!
     Intelligent people, however, become intelligent by solving  complicated
problems.  It  was  very simple. There had been a  mistake and  the wire had
arrived in garbled form. Obviously the word ' have ' belonged to  some other
telegram and had been transmitted in error instead of the  word ' Berlioz ',
which had been put  by mistake at  the  end of the telegram. Thus corrected,
the meaning was quite clear, though, of course, tragic.
     When  his  wife   had  recovered   from  her  first  grief,  Maximilian
Andreyevich at once prepared to go to Moscow.
     Here  I  should  reveal  a  secret  about  Maximilian  Andreyevich.  He
genuinely mourned the death of  his wife's cousin,  cut off in the prime  of
life,  but  at the same time, being a practical  man, he fully realised that
there was no  special need  for  his presence at the funeral. Yet Maximilian
Andreyevich  was  in  a  great hurry to go  to  Moscow.  What  for? For  one
thing--the flat. A flat in Moscow was a serious matter. He did not know why,
but Maximilian  Andreyevich  did not like  Kiev and the thought of moving to
Moscow  had lately begun to nag at  him with  such  insistence that  it  was
affecting his sleep.
     He took no  delight in the spring floods of  the Dnieper  when,  as  it
drowned the islands on  the  lower shore, the water  spread until it  merged
with the  horizon. He found no pleasure in the staggeringly  beautiful  view
from the foot of the monume