‘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. 302-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.[80]
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!’ Rimsky 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
Seances 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 subtle 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.[81] 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!’[82] 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?
80
81
A
82