‘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-highspeed 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.[84] 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 irresolutel
‘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. 302-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.
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