bidden  . . .' whispered  the  chairman in  a  tiny
voice, with a furtive glance around.
     'Where are the witnesses? ' hissed  Koroviev into his  other ear. ' I
ask you--where are they? Come, now . . .'
     There then happened what the chairman later described as a miracle--the
package jumped  into his briefcase of its own accord,  after which  he found
himself,  feeling weak and battered, on the staircase. A storm  of  thoughts
was whirling round inside his head. Among  them were the villa in Nice,  the
trained cat, relief that there had been no witnesses and his wife's pleasure
at  the complimentary tickets. Yet despite these mostly comforting thoughts,
in the depths of  his soul the chairman still felt the  pricking of a little
needle. It was the needle of unease. Suddenly,  halfway down  the staircase,
something else occurred to him-- how had that interpreter found his way into
the study past a  sealed  door? And why on earth had  he, Nikanor Ivanovich,
forgotten to ask him about it? For a while  the chairman stared at the steps
like a  sheep,  then  decided to  forget it and not  to  bother himself with
imaginary problems . . .
     As soon as the  chairman  had left the  flat a low voice  came from the
bedroom:
     'I don't care for that Nikanor  Ivanovich. He's a sly rogue.  Why  not
fix it so that he doesn't come here again? '
     'Messire, you only have to  give the order . . .' answered Koroviev in
a firm, clear voice that no longer quavered.
     At  once  the diabolical  interpreter  was in the  hall,  had dialled a
number and started to speak in a whining voice :
     'Hullo!  I consider it my  duty to report  that  the  chairman  of our
tenants'  association  at No. 302á Sadovaya Street, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi,
is  dealing in  black-market  foreign currency.  He has  just  stuffed  four
hundred dollars  wrapped  in  newspaper  into  the ventilation shaft  of the
lavatory in his flat. No. 3 5. My name is Timothy Kvastsov and I live in the
same block, flat No. 11.  But please keep my name  a  secret.  I'm afraid of
what that man may do if he finds out . . .'
     And with that the scoundrel hung up.
     What happened after that in No. 50 is a mystery, although what happened
to Nikanor  Ivanovich is common knowledge. Locking himself in the  lavatory,
he pulled the package out of his briefcase  and found that it contained four
hundred roubles. He wrapped it up  in a sheet of old newspaper and pushed it
into the ventilation  shaft. Five minutes later he was sitting down at table
in his  little dining-room. From the kitchen his  wife brought in a  pickled
herring,  sliced and thickly  sprinkled  with raw onion.  Nikanor  Ivanovich
poured himself  a wineglassful of vodka, drank it, poured out another, drank
that, speared three  slices of  herring  on his  fork  . .  . and  then  the
doorbell rang. Pelagea Antonovna was just  bringing in a steaming casserole,
one glance at which was enough to  tell  you that in the  midst of  all that
hot, thick  borsch was  one  of the most  delicious  things in the world --a
marrow bone.
     Gulping down his running saliva, Nikanor Ivanovich snarled :
     'Who  the hell is that--at this hour!  They won't even allow  a man to
eat  his  supper. . .  . Don't let anybody in--I'm  not  at home.... If it's
about the  flat  tell them to stop worrying. There'll be a committee meeting
about it in a week's time.'
     His wife ran  into the  hall and Nikanor Ivanovich ladled the quivering
marrow bone out of its steaming lake. At that moment three men came into the
dining-room, followed by a very pale Pelagea Antonovna. At the sight of them
Nikanor Ivanovich turned white and got up.
     'Where's the W.C.?  '  enquired  the first man  urgently. There was  a
crash as Nikanor Ivanovich dropped the ladle on to the oilcloth table-top.
     'Here,  in here,' babbled Pelagea  Antonovna. The visitors  turned and
rushed back into the passage.
     'What's going on? ' asked Nikanor Ivanovich as he followed them. ' You
can't just burst into our flat like that . . . Where's your identity card if
you don't mind? '
     The first man showed  Nikanor Ivanovich  his  identity card  while  the
second clambered  up on to a stool in  the lavatory and thrust his  arm into
the ventilation shaft. Nikanor Ivanovich began to feel faint. They unwrapped
the sheet of newspaper  to  find that the banknotes  in the package were not
roubles  but  some unknown  foreign  money--bluish-green  in colour  with  a
picture  of an  old  man.  Nikanor Ivanovich, however,  saw none of  it very
clearly because spots were swimming in front of his eyes.
     'Dollars  in  the  ventilation  shaft.  . .  .'  said  the  first man
thoughtfully and asked Nikanor Ivanovich  politely :  * Is this your  little
parcel? '
     'No! ' replied Nikanor  Ivanovich  in a terrified voice.  ' It's been
planted on me!'
     'Could be,' agreed the first man, adding as quietly as before :
     'Still, you'd better give up the rest.'
     'There isn't any  more! I  swear to  God I've  never even seen any! '
screamed the  chairman in desperation. He rushed  to a  chest, pulled out  a
drawer and out of that his briefcase, shouting distractedly as he did so :
     'It's all in here . . . the contract . . .  that interpreter must have
planted them on me . . . Koroviev, the man in the pince-nez!'
     He opened the briefcase, looked inside, thrust his hand in, turned blue
in the face and dropped his briefcase  into the borsch. There was nothing in
it--no  letter  from  Stepan,  no contract,  no  passport,  no money  and no
complimentary tickets. Nothing, in short, except a folding ruler.
     *  Comrades!'  screamed  the  chairman frantically. ' Arrest them!  The
forces of evil are in this house!'
     Something odd happened to Pelagea Antonovna at this point. Wringing her
hands she cried :
     'Confess, Nikanor! They'll reduce your sentence if you do! '
     Eyes  bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich  raised his  clenched fists over his
wife's head and screamed :
     'Aaah! You stupid bitch! '
     Then he crumpled and fell into a chair, having obviously decided to bow
to the  inevitable.  Meanwhile,  out on  the landing, Timothy  Kondratievich
Kvastsov was  pressing  first his ear then  his  eye to  the keyhole  of the
chairman's front door, burning with curiosity.
     Five  minutes later  the  tenants  saw  the chairman led out  into  the
courtyard  by  two  men.  Nikanor  Ivanovich, so  they said later, had  been
scarcely recognisable--staggering like a drunkard and muttering to himself.
     Another  hour after that a stranger appeared  at flat No. n  just  when
Timothy Kondratievich, gulping with pleasure, was  describing to  some other
tenants  how  the  chairman had  been whisked  away; the  stranger  beckoned
Timothy Kondratievich out  of his kitchen into  the hall, said something and
took him away.




        10. News from Yalta


     As disaster overtook Nikanor Ivanovich in Sadovaya Street, not far from
No. 302á two men were sitting in  the office  of Rimsky the treasurer of the
Variety Theatre : Rimsky himself and the house manager, Varenukha.
     From this  large office on  the  second  floor two windows gave  on  to
Sadovaya and  another,  just behind the treasurer's  back  as he sat at  his
desk,  on  to  the  Variety's  garden;  it was  used in summer and contained
several  bars  for  serving cold drinks,  a  shooting gallery  and  an  open
promenade.  The furniture  of the room, apart from the desk,  consisted of a
collection of old  posters hanging on the wall,  a small table with a carafe
of  water,  four  chairs  and  a stand  in one corner  supporting  a  dusty,
long-forgotten model of a stage set. Naturally the  office also  contained a
small, battered fireproof safe standing to the left of Rimsky's desk.
     Rimsky had been in a bad mood all morning. Varenukha, by contrast,  was
extremely cheerful and  lively,  if  somewhat nervous. Today, however, there
was no outlet for his energy.
     Varenukha had just  taken  refuge in  the  treasurer's office  from the
complimentary ticket hounds who made his  life a misery,  especially on  the
days when there  was a change of programme. And today was one of those days.
As soon as the telephone started  to ring Varenukha picked  up the  receiver
and lied into it:
     'Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He's left the theatre.'
     'Please try and ring Likhodeyev once more,' said Rimsky testily.
     'But he's not at home. I've already sent Karpov; the Hat's empty.'
     'I  wish to God  I knew what was going on!  ' hissed Rimsky, fidgeting
with his adding machine.
     The  door opened and a  theatre  usher  dragged  in a  thick package of
newly-printed fly-posters, which announced  in large red letters on a  green
background :
     Tonight and All This Week in the Variety Theatre
     A Special Act
     PROFESSOR WOLAND
     Black Magic All Mysteries revealed


     As Varenukha stepped back from  the poster, which  he had propped up on
the model, he admired it and ordered the usher to have all the copies posted
up.
     'All right--look sharp,' said Varenukha to the departing usher.
     'I don't care for  this  project at all,' growled Rimsky disagreeably,
staring at the poster through his horn-rims. ' I'm  amazed that  he was ever
engaged.'
     'No, Grigory Danilovich, don't  say that! It's a very smart  move. All
the fun is in showing how it's done--" the mysteries revealed ".'
     'I  don't know, I don't know. I don't  see any fun in that myself. . .
just like him to dream up something of this sort. If only he'd shown us this
magician. Did you see him? God knows where he's dug him up from.'
     It transpired that  Varenukha, like Rimsky,  had not seen the  magician
either. Yesterday Stepa had  rushed (' like a madman ',  in Rimsky's  words)
into  the treasurer's office clutching a draft contract, had  ordered him to
countersign  it  and pay Woland his money. The magician had  vanished and no
one except Stepa himself had seen him.
     Rimsky pulled out his watch, saw that it was five minutes to  three and
was seized with fury.  Really, this  was  too much!  Likhodeyev  had rung at
about eleven o'clock, had said that he would come  in about half an hour and
now he had not only failed to appear but had disappeared from his flat.
     'It's holding  up  all  my  work' snarled Rimsky, tapping  a  pile of
unsigned papers.
     'I suppose he  hasn't  fallen  under  a  tram, like  Berlioz? '  said
Varenukha, holding  the  receiver  to  his  ear  and  hearing nothing but  a
continual, hopeless buzz as Stepa's telephone rang unanswered.
     'It would  be a damned good  thing if he has . . .' said Rimsky softly
between his teeth.
     At that moment in came a woman  in a uniform jacket, peaked  cap, black
skirt and sneakers. She took a square of white paper and a notebook out of a
little pouch on her belt and enquired :
     'Which of you is Variety? Priority telegram for you. Sign here.'
     Varenukha scrawled some  hieroglyphic  in  the woman's notebook  and as
soon as the door  had slammed behind her, opened the envelope.  Having  read
the telegram he blinked and handed it to Rimsky.
     The telegram read as follows: 'yalta ÔÏ moscow
     VARIETY  STOP  TODAY  1130  PSYCHIATRIC  CASE  NIGHT-SHIRTED  TROUSERED
SHOELESS STAGGERED  POLICE STATION  ALLEGING SELF LIKHODEYEV MANAGER VARIETY
WIRE YALTA POLICE WHERE LIKHODEYEV.'
     'Thanks--and I'm a Dutchman! '  exclaimed Rimsky and added : ' Another
little surprise package! '
     'The False Dimitry! ' said Varenukha and spoke into the telephone :  '
Telegrams, please.  On account.  Variety  Theatre.  Priority. Ready? " Yalta
Police stop Likhodeyev Moscow Rimsky Treasurer."'
     Disregarding the Pretender of Yalta,  Varenukha tried again  to  locate
Stepa by telephone and could not, of course, find him anywhere. While he was
still holding the receiver in his hand and wondering where to ring next, the
same  woman came  in  again and  handed  Varenukha a  new envelope.  Hastily
opening it Varenukha  read the text and whistled. ' What is it now? '  asked
Rimsky, twitching nervously. Varenukha silently passed him  the telegram and
the treasurer read the words :
     ' BEG  BELIEVE  TRANSPORTED   YALTA  WOLANDS   HYPNOSIS  WIRE  POLICE
CONFIRMATION MY IDENTITY LIKHODEYEV.'
     Rimsky and Varenukha put their heads together,  read the telegram again
and stared at one another in silence.
     'Come on, come  on! ' said  the woman irritably. ' Sign here. Then you
can sit and stare at  it  as long as  you like. I've got urgent telegrams to
deliver!'
     Without taking his  eyes  off the  telegram Varenukha scribbled  in her
book and the woman disappeared.
     'You  say you spoke to him on the telephone just after  eleven? ' said
the house manager in complete bewilderment.
     'Yes, extraordinary as  it may seem! ' shouted Rimsky. ' But whether I
did or not, he can't be in Yalta now. It's funny.'
     'He's drunk . . .' said Varenukha.
     'Who's drunk? ' asked Rimsky and they stared at each other again.
     There  was   no  doubt  that  some  lunatic   or  practical  joker  was
telegraphing from Yalta.  But  the strange  thing was--how did this  wit  in
Yalta know about  Woland, who had only arrived in Moscow the evening before?
How did he know of the connection between Likhodeyev and Woland?
     '" Hypnosis ",' muttered Varenukha, repeating  one of the words in the
telegram. ' How does he know about Woland? ' He blinked and suddenly shouted
firmly : ' No, of course not. It can't be! Rubbish! '
     'Where the hell has this man Woland got to, damn him? ' asked Rimsky.
     Varenukha at once got in touch with the tourist bureau and announced to
Rimsky's utter astonishment  that Woland was staying in  Likhodeyev's  flat.
Having  then  dialled Likhodeyev's flat yet again, Varenukha listened  for a
long time as the ringing tone buzzed thickly in the earpiece. In between the
buzzes a distant baritone voice could be heard singing and Varenukha decided
that somewhere the telephone system had got its wires crossed with the radio
station.
     'No reply  from his flat,'  said  Varenukha, replacing the receiver on
its rest. ' I'll try once more . . .'
     Before he could  finish in  came the  same  woman and both men rose  to
greet her  as  this time she took out of her pouch not  a white, but a black
sheet of paper.
     'This  is getting interesting,' said Varenukha through  gritted teeth,
watching the woman as she hurried  out. Rimsky was the first to look at  the
message.
     On a dark  sheet of photographic paper the following lines were clearly
visible :
     'As  proof  herewith  specimen  my  handwriting  and  signature  wire
confirmation my identity. Have Woland secretly followed. Likhodeyev.'
     In twenty years of experience in the theatre Varenukha had seen plenty,
but now he felt his mind becoming paralysed and he could find nothing to say
beyond the commonplace and absurd remark:
     ‘ It can't be!'
     Rimsky reacted differently.  He  got up,  opened the  door and bellowed
through it to the usher sitting outside on a stool:
     'Don't let anybody in except the telegraph girl,' and locked the door.
     He then pulled a  sheaf of papers out of  his desk drawer  and  began a
careful  comparison  of the thick, backward-sloping letters in the photogram
with  the  writing  in Stepa's  memoranda  and  his signatures,  with  their
typically curly-tailed  script.  Varenukha,  sprawling on the desk, breathed
hotly on Rimsky's cheek.
     'It's  his  handwriting,'  the  treasurer  finally said and  Varenukha
echoed him:
     'It's his all right.'
     Looking at Rimsky's  face the house manager noticed a  change  in it. A
thin man, the treasurer seemed to  have grown even thinner and to have aged.
Behind their hornrims his eyes had lost their usual aggressiveness. Now they
showed only anxiety, even alarm.
     Varenukha  did everything that  people are supposed to do in moments of
great stress.  He  paced  up and down the  office, twice spread  his arms as
though he were  being crucified, drank a whole glass of brackish  water from
the carafe and exclaimed :
     'I  don't understand it! I  don't understand  it! I don't under-stand
it!'
     Rimsky stared out of the window, thinking hard. The treasurer was in an
extremely perplexing situation.  He had to find an  immediate,  on-the-spot,
natural solution for a number of very unusual phenomena.
     Frowning, the  treasurer  tried to  imagine  Stepa  in a nightshirt and
without his shoes, climbing that morning at about half past eleven into some
incredibly super-rapid aeroplane and then the same  Stepa, also at half past
eleven, standing on Yalta airport in his socks. ...
     Perhaps it wasn't Stepa who had telephoned him from his flat? No,  that
was Stepa all  right! As if he didn't know Stepa's voice. Even if  it hadn't
been  Stepa talking  to him that morning, he  had actually seen the  man  no
earlier than the evening  before,  when  Stepa  had rushed  in from his  own
office  waving that  idiotic  contract and  had  so  annoyed Rimsky  by  his
irresponsible behaviour.  How could  he  have flown  out  of Moscow  without
saying a word to the theatre? And  if he had flown away yesterday evening he
couldn't have reached Yalta before noon today. Or could he?
     'How far is it to Yalta? ' asked Rimsky.
     Varenukha stopped pacing and cried :
     'I've already  thought  of  that! To  Sebastopol  by  rail it's  about
fifteen  hundred kilometres  and  it's about  another  eighty kilometres  to
Yalta. It's less by air, of course.' îÀ . . . Yes  . . . No question of  his
having gone by train. What then? An Air Force fighter plane? Who'd let Stepa
on board a fighter in his  stockinged feet? And why? Perhaps he'd  taken his
shoes  off when he got to Yalta?  Same problem-- •why? Anyhow, the Air Force
wouldn't let him board a  fighter  even with his shoes on! No, a fighter was
out of  the question too.  But the telegram said  that he'd  appeared at the
police station at  half past  eleven in the morning and he'd been in Moscow,
talking  on the telephone,  at ...  Just a moment (his  watch-face  appeared
before Rimsky's eyes) ... He  remembered where the hands had been pointing .
. . Horrors! It had been twenty past eleven!
     So what was  the  answer? Supposing that the moment after his telephone
call  Stepa had rushed to the airport  and  got there in, say, five  minutes
(which was impossible anyway), then  if  the aeroplane had taken off at once
it  must  have  covered  over   a  thousand  kilometres   in  five  minutes.
Consequently  it  had been flying at a  speed of more  than twelve  thousand
kilometres per hour! Impossible, ergo--he wasn't in Yalta!
     What  other  explanation could there be? Hypnosis?  There ä was no such
hypnosis which could hurl a man a thousand kilometres. Could he be imagining
that he  was in Yalta? He might, but would the Yalta police imagine it?  No,
no, really, it was absurd! ... But they had telegraphed  from  Yalta, hadn't
they?
     The treasurer's face was  dreadful to see. By  now someone outside  was
twisting  and rattling the door handle and the usher could be heard shouting
desperately :
     'No, you can't! I wouldn't  let you in even if  you  were to kill  me!
They're in conference! '
     Rimsky  pulled  himself together  as well as  he could, picked  up  the
telephone receiver and said into it:
     'I want to put through a priority call to Yalta.'
     'Clever! ' thought Varenukha.
     But the call to Yalta never went through.  Rimsky put back the receiver
and said :
     'The line's out of order--as if on purpose.'
     For some reason the faulty line disturbed him a great deal and made him
reflect. After some thought  he  picked up the receiver again  with one hand
and  with the  other  started writing down what  he was  dictating into  the
telephone :
     'Priority telegram. From Variety. Yes.  To  Yalta police. Yes.  "Today
approximately 1130 Likhodeyev  telephoned me Moscow. Stop. Thereafter failed
appear theatre and unreach-able  telephone. Stop. Confirm handwriting. Stop.
Will take suggested measures observe Woland Rimsky Treasurer." '
     'Very  clever!  ' thought Varenukha, but the  instant  afterwards  he
changed his mind : ' No, it's absurd! He can't be in Yalta! '
     Rimsky  was  meanwhile  otherwise engaged. He  carefully  laid  all the
telegrams into a pile and together with a copy of his own telegram, put them
into an  envelope, sealed  it  up, wrote a few words on it and handed it  to
Varenukha, saying :
     'Take this and deliver it  at once, Ivan Savyelich. Let them puzzle it
out.'
     'Now that really is  smart! ' thought Varenukha as he put the envelope
into his briefcase. Then just to be absolutely sure he dialled the number of
Stepa's flat, listened, then  winked  mysteriously  and made a joyful  face.
Rimsky craned his neck to listen.
     'May I speak to Monsieur Woland, please? ' asked Varenukha sweetly.
     'He's busy,' answered the receiver  in a quavering voice.  ' Who wants
him? '
     'Varenukha, house manager of the Variety Theatre.'
     'Ivan Savyelich? ' squeaked the earpiece delightedly. '  How very nice
to hear your voice! How are you? '
     'Merci,' replied Varenukha in some consternation. ' Who's speaking? '
     'This  is  Koroviev,  his  assistant  and interpreter,'  trilled  the
receiver. ' At your service, my dear Ivan Savyelich! Just tell me what I can
do for you. What is it? '
     'I'm sorry ... is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev at home? '
     'Alas, no, he isn't,' cried the telephone. ' He's gone out.'
     'Where to? '
     'He went out of town for a car-ride.'
     'Wha-at? Car-ride? When is he coming back? '
     'He said he just wanted a breath of fresh air and then he'd be back.'
     'I see . . .' said Varenukha, perplexed. '  Merci.  .  .  please tell
Monsieur Woland that his act this evening starts after the second interval.'
     'Very  good.  Of course.  At  once. Immediately.  Certainly. I'll tell
him,' came the staccato reply from the earpiece.
     'Goodbye,' said Varenukha, in amazement.
     'Please  accept,' said the telephone, ' my warmest  and  most  sincere
good wishes for a brilliant success! It will be a great show--great! '
     'There you are--I  told you  so! ' said the house manager excitedly. '
He hasn't gone to Yalta, he's just gone out of town for a drive.'
     'Well,  if  that's the case,'  said the treasurer, turning pale  with
anger, ' he has behaved like an absolute swine!'
     Here the manager leaped into the air and gave such a shout that  Rimsky
shuddered.
     'I remember!  I remember now! There's a new  Turkish restaurant out at
Pushkino--it's just opened--and it's called the " Yalta "! Don't you see? He
went there, got drunk and he's been sending us telegrams from there!'
     'Well, he really has overdone it this time,' replied Rimsky, his cheek
twitching and real anger flashing  in his eyes. ' This little jaunt is going
to cost him dear.' He  suddenly stopped  and  added uncertainly : ' But what
about those telegrams from the police?'
     'A  lot of  rubbish! More  of  his practical  jokes,'  said  Varenukha
confidently and asked : ' Shall I take this envelope all the same? '
     'You must,' replied Rimsky.
     Again the door opened to admit the same woman.  ' Oh, not her! ' sighed
Rimsky to himself. Both men got up and walked towards her.
     This time the telegram said :
     'THANKS  CONFIRMATION  IDENTITY  WIRE ME  FIVE  HUNDRED  ROUBLES POLICE
STATION FLYING MOSCOW TOMORROW LIKHODEYEV.'
     'He's gone  mad,' said Varenukha weakly. Rimsky rattled his key-chain,
took some money out of the safe,  counted out five hundred roubles, rang the
bell, gave the money to the usher and sent her off to the post office.
     'But Grigory Danilovich,' said Varenukha, unable to believe  his eyes,
' if you ask me you're throwing that money away.'
     'It'll come back,' replied Rimsky quietly, ' and then he'll pay dearly
for this little picnic.' And pointing at Varenukha's briefcase he said :
     'Go on, Ivan Savyelich, don't waste any time.' Varenukha picked up his
briefcase and trotted off. He went down to the ground floor, saw a very long
queue outside  the  box  office and heard  from  the  cashier that  she  was
expecting to have  to put up the ' House Full' notices that evening  because
they  were  being positively  overwhelmed  since the  special  bill had been
posted up.  Varenukha told her  to be sure not to sell the thirty best seats
in the boxes and stalls,  then rushed out of  the box office, fought off the
people  begging for free tickets  and slipped into his own office to pick up
his cap. At that moment the telephone rang. ' Yes? ' he shouted.
     'Ivan Savyelich? ' enquired the receiver in an odious nasal voice.
     'He's not in the theatre! ' Varenukha was just about to shout, but the
telephone cut him short:
     'Don't play the fool, Ivan Savyelich, and listen. You are not  to take
those telegrams anywhere or show them to anybody.'
     'Who's that? ' roared Varenukha. '  Kindly stop  playing these tricks!
You're going to be shown up before long. What's your telephone number? '
     'Varenukha,' insisted the horrible  voice.  '  You understand  Russian
don't you? Don't take those telegrams.'
     'So you refuse to stop this game  do you? ' shouted the  house manager
in a rage.  '  Now listen to me--you're  going to pay for this!'  He went on
shouting threats but  stopped when he  realised that no one was listening to
him on the other end.
     At that moment his office began to  darken. Varenukha ran out,  slammed
the door behind him and went out into the garden through the side door.
     He felt excited and full of energy. After  that last insolent telephone
call he no longer had any doubt that some gang of hooligans was playing some
nasty  practical joke and  that the  joke was  connected  with  Likhodeyev's
disappearance. The house manager felt inspired with  the urge to  unmask the
villains and, strange as it may seem, he had a premonition that he was going
to  enjoy  it.  It  was a  longing  to be in the limelight,  the  bearer  of
sensational news.
     Out in the garden the  wind blew in his face and threw sand in his eyes
as if it were trying to bar his way or warn him. A window-pane on the second
floor slammed shut with  such force that it nearly broke the glass, the tops
of the  maples and poplars rustled alarmingly.  It  grew darker and  colder.
Varenukha  wiped his eyes and noticed that  a yellowish-centred thundercloud
was scudding low over Moscow. From the distance came a low rumble.
     Although Varenukha was in  a hurry, an  irresistible urge made him turn
aside for  a second  into the  open-air men's toilet just to check  that the
electrician had replaced a missing electric lamp.
     Running  past the shooting gallery, he passed  through a thick clump of
lilac which screened the  blue-painted  lavatory. The electrician seemed  to
have done his job : the lamp in the men's  toilet had been  screwed into its
socket and the  protective wire screen replaced, but  the house manager  was
annoyed  to  notice  that  even  in  the dark before  the  thunderstorm  the
pencilled graffiti on the walls were still clearly visible.
     'What a .  .  .' he began, then suddenly heard a purring  voice behind
him:
     'Is that you, Ivan Savyelich? '
     Varenukha  shuddered, turned round and saw  before  him a shortish, fat
creature with what seemed like the face of a cat.
     'Yes . . .' replied Varenukha coldly.
     'Delighted  to  meet you,'  answered the  stout, cat-like  personage.
Suddenly it swung round  and gave  Varenukha such a  box on the ear that his
cap flew off and vanished without trace into one of the lavatory pans.
     For a moment the blow  made the toilet shimmer with a flickering light.
A clap  of  thunder  came from the sky.  Then there was  a second flash  and
another  figure  materialised, short but athletically built, with fiery  red
hair . . . one wall eye, a fang protruding from his mouth ... He appeared to
be  left-handed, as he fetched the house manager a  shattering  clout on his
other  ear. The  sky  rumbled again in reply and rain started  to drench the
wooden roof.
     'Look here, corn .  .  .' whispered Varenukha, staggering. It at  once
occurred to  him that the word ' comrades '  hardly fitted these bandits who
went around assaulting people in public conveniences, so  he groaned instead
'. . . citizens . . . ', realised that they didn't even deserve to be called
that and  got a  third fearful punch. This time he could not see who had hit
him, as blood was spurting from his nose and down his shirt.
     'What have you got in your briefcase, louse? ' shouted the cat-figure.
' Telegrams? Weren't  you warned by telephone not to take them anywhere? I'm
asking you--weren't you warned?'
     'Yes ... I was . . . warned,' panted Varenukha.
     'And you still went? Gimme the briefcase, you skunk!  ' said the other
creature in  the same nasal  voice that had come through the  telephone, and
wrenched the briefcase out of Varenukha's trembling hands.
     Then they both grabbed  the house manager by the arms  and frog-marched
him  out  of the garden and  along  Sadovaya  Street. The storm was  in full
spate, water was roaring and gurgling down the drain-holes in great bubbling
waves, it  poured off the roofs from the  overflowing gutters and out of the
drain pipes in foaming torrents.  Every living person  had vanished from the
street and there was no one to help  Ivan Savyelich. In second, leaping over
muddy  streams and lit by flashes of lightning  the bandits had  dragged the
half-dead Varenukha to No302-A and fled into the doorway, where two barefoot
women stood  pressed against the wall, holding their shoes and  stockings in
their hands. Then  they  rushed across  to staircase  6,  carried the nearly
insane Varenukha up  to the fifth floor  and threw him to  the ground in the
familiar semi-darkness of the hallway of Stepa Likhodeyev's flat.
     The two robbers vanished and in their place appeared a completely naked
girl--a redhead with eyes that burned with a phosphorescent glitter.
     Varenukha  felt  that this  was the most terrible thing that  had  ever
happened to him.  With a groan he turned  and leaned  on the wall.  The girl
came  right up to him and  put her hands on his shoulders. Varenukha's  hair
stood  on end. Even  through the cold, soaking wet  material  of his coat he
could feel that those palms were even colder, that they were as cold as ice.
     'Let me give  you a kiss,' said the girl  tenderly,  her gleaming eyes
close to his. Varenukha lost consciousness before he could feel her kiss.




        11. The Two Ivans



     The wood on the far bank of the river, which an hour before had  glowed
in the May sunshine, had now grown dim, had blurred and dissolved.
     Outside, water was  pouring down  in solid sheets. Now and  again there
came a rift in the sky, the heavens split and the patient's room was flooded
with a terrifying burst of light.
     Ivan  was  quietly weeping  as he sat on his bed and stared out  at the
boiling,  muddied  river. At every  clap  of  thunder he cried miserably and
covered his face with his hands. Sheets of paper,  covered with his writing,
blew about on the floor.
     The poet's efforts  to compose a report on the  terrible professor  had
come to  nothing. As  soon as  he had been given a stub of a pencil and some
paper by the fat nurse, whose name was  Pras-kovya Fyodorovna, he had rubbed
his hands in a businesslike way and arranged his bedside table for work. The
beginning sounded rather well:
     'To  the Police. From  Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny,  Member of  massolit.
Statement. Yesterday evening I arrived at Patriarch's Ponds with the late M.
A. Berlioz. . . .'
     Here the  poet stumbled, chiefly  because of the words ' the late '. It
sounded wrong--how could he  have ' arrived' with ' the late  '? Dead people
can't  walk. If he wrote like this they really would think he  was  mad.  So
Ivan Nikolayich made some corrections, which resulted in : '. . . with M. A.
Berlioz,  later deceased.' He did not like  that either, so he wrote a third
version and that was even worse than the previous two:
     '. . . with Berlioz, who fell under a tram  . . .'  Here he  thought of
the composer  of  the same  name  and felt obliged to  add : '  ... not  the
composer.'
     Struggling with  these two  Berliozes,  Ivan  crossed  it  all out  and
decided  to  begin  straight  away   with  a  striking  phrase  which  would
immediately catch the reader's attention, so he  first described how the cat
had jumped on the  tram and then described the episode of  the severed head.
The head and the professor's forecast reminded him  of Pontius Pilate, so to
sound more convincing Ivan  decided to give the story  of the  Procurator in
full, from the moment when he had emerged in his white, red-lined cloak into
the arcade of Herod's palace.
     Ivan worked hard. He crossed out what he had written, put in new  words
and even tried to  draw a sketch of Pontius Pilate, then one showing the cat
walking on its hind legs.  But his drawings were hopeless and the further he
went the more confused his statement grew.
     By the time the  storm had  begun, Ivan felt  that he was exhausted and
would never be able to write a statement. His windblown sheets of paper were
in  a complete muddle  and he began to weep, quietly and  bitterly. The kind
nurse  Praskovya  Fyodorovna  called on the poet  during  the  storm and was
worried  to find  him crying. She closed  the blinds  so that  the lightning
should not frighten the patient, picked up the sheets of paper and  went off
with them to look for the doctor.
     The doctor appeared, gave Ivan an injection in  his arm and assured him
that he would soon stop crying, that it would pass, everything would  be all
right and he would forget all about it.
     The doctor was  right. Soon  the wood  across  the  river looked as  it
always did. The  weather cleared until every single tree stood out against a
sky which  was as blue as  before and  the  river subsided. His injection at
once made Ivan feel  less depressed. The poet lay quietly down and  gazed at
the rainbow stretched across the sky.
     He  lay  there  until evening  and did  not even notice how the rainbow
dissolved, how the sky faded and saddened, how the wood turned to black.
     When he had drunk his hot milk,  Ivan  lay down again. He was amazed to
notice how  his  mental condition had changed. The  memory of the diabolical
cat had grown indistinct, he was no longer frightened by  the thought of the
decapitated head.  Ivan started to muse on  the fact that  the clinic really
wasn't such a bad place, that Stravinsky was very clever and famous and that
he was an  extremely pleasant man  to deal with. The evening  air,  too, was
sweet and fresh after the storm.
     The  asylum was asleep. The white  frosted-glass  bulbs in  the  silent
corridors  were extinguished  and  in  their  place  glowed  the  weak  blue
night-lights. The  nurses'  cautious  footsteps  were  heard  less and  less
frequently walking the rubber-tiled floor of the corridor.
     Ivan now lay in sweet lassitude ; glancing at his bedside lamp, then at
the dim  ceiling  light and at the moon rising in the  dark,  he  talked  to
himself.
     'I wonder why I got so excited about Berlioz  falling under that tram?
'  the poet reasoned.  ' After all he's dead, and we all die some time. It's
not as if I  were a relation or  a really close friend either. When you come
to think of it  I didn't even know the man very well. What did I really know
about  him? Nothing, except that  he was bald  and horribly  talkative.  So,
gentlemen,' went on Ivan, addressing an imaginary audience,' let us consider
the following problem : why, I should like to know, did I get in such a rage
with  that mysterious professor or magician with his empty,  black  eye? Why
did I  chase after him like a fool in those underpants and holding a candle?
Why the ridiculous scene in the restaurant? '
     'Wait a  moment, though! ' said the old  Ivan severely to the new Ivan
in  a voice that was not  exactly inside him and not  quite by his ear. ' He
did know in advance that Berlioz  was going to have his head cut off, didn't
he? Isn't that something to get upset about? '
     'What do you mean? ' objected  the new Ivan. ' I quite agree that it's
a nasty  business--a child could see  that.  But he's a mysterious, superior
being--that's what makes it so  interesting. Think  of it--a  man  who  knew
Pontius Pilate!  Instead of creating  that ridiculous scene  at  Patriarch's
wouldn't it have been
     rather more intelligent  to  ask  him  politely what  happened  next to
Pilate and that prisoner Ha-Notsri? And I had  to behave like  an  idiot! Of
course  it's a  serious  matter  to  kill  the  editor  of  a magazine.  But
still--the magazine won't close down  just because of that,  will it? Man is
mortal and as  the professor so rightly said mortality can come so suddenly.
So God  rest his soul and let's  get ourselves another editor,  perhaps  one
who's even more of a chatterbox than Berlioz!'
     After dozing for a while the new Ivan said spitefully to the old Ivan:
     'And how do I look after this affair? '
     'A fool,' distinctly said a bass voice that belonged to neither of the
Ivans and was extremely like the professor's.
     Ivan,  somehow not offended by  the word  'fool'  but  even  pleasantly
surprised by it, smiled and sank into a half-doze. Sleep crept up on him. He
had a vision of a palm tree on its elephantine leg and  a cat passed by--not
a  terrible cat but a  nice one  and Ivan was just about to fall asleep when
suddenly the grille slid noiselessly  aside. A mysterious figure appeared on
the moonlit balcony and pointed a threatening finger at Ivan.
     Quite  unafraid  Ivan  sat  up  in bed and  saw  a  man on the balcony.
Pressing his finger to his lips the man whispered : ' Shh!'




        12.Black Magic Revealed



     A  little  man  with  a crimson  pear-shaped nose, in a battered yellow
bowler hat,  check trousers  and  patent  leather boots  pedalled  on to the
Variety stage on a  bicycle. As  the band played a foxtrot he rode round  in
circles a few times, then gave a triumphant yelp at which the bicycle reared
up  with its front wheel in  the air. After  a  few rounds on the back wheel
alone,  the man stood  on his head, unscrewed  the  front wheel and threw it
into the wings. He  then carried on  with one wheel, turning the pedals with
his hands.
     Next a fat blonde girl, wearing a sweater and a very brief skirt strewn
with sequins, came in riding a long metal pole with a  saddle on the top and
a single wheel at the  bottom. As they met the man gave  a welcoming cry and
doffed his bowler hat with his foot.
     Finally a little boy of about seven with the face of an old man sneaked
in  between  the  two adults  on a  tiny  two-wheeler to which was  fixed an
enormous motor-car horn.
     After a few  figures  of  eight the whole troupe,  to an urgent roll of
drums from the orchestra, rode at  full tilt towards the front of the stage.
The  spectators in the front  rows gasped and  ducked, fully  expecting  all
three to crash, cycles and all,  into the orchestra pit, but they stopped at
the very  second that their front wheels threatened to skid into the  pit on
to the heads of the  musicians. With a loud  cry of' Allez-oop! ' the  three
cyclists leaped from their machines and  bowed, while the blonde blew kisses
to the audience and the little boy played a funny tune on his horn.
     The  auditorium rocked  with applause, the blue curtain  fell  and  the
cyclists vanished. The  lighted green  ' Exit'  signs went out and the white
globes began to  glow brighter and brighter in the web of girders  under the
dome. The second and last interval had begun.
     The  only  man  unaffected by  the Giulli family's  marvels of  cycling
technique was Grigory Danilovich Rimsky.  He sat alone in his office, biting
his  thin lips,  his face  twitching  spasmodically.  First  Likhodeyev  had
vanished in  the  most bizarre circumstances and  now Varenukha had suddenly
disappeared. Rinsky knew where Varenukha had  been going to--but the man had
simply gone and had never come back.  He shrugged his shoulders and muttered
to himself:
     • But why?!'
     Nothing  would have  been simpler  for  a  sensible, practical man like
Rimsky  to  have  telephoned the place where Varenukha  had gone and to have
found  out what  had  happened to him, yet it was ten  o'clock t