The Master and Margarita

CHAPTER 10. News From Yalta       At the same rime that  disaster struck. Nikanor Ivanovich, not far awayfrom no.502-bis, on the same Sadovaya Street, in the office of the financialdirector of the  Variety Theatre, Rimsky, there sat two men: Rimsky himself,and the administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.'     The big office  on the second floor of  the theatre  had two windows onSadovaya and one, just  behind the back  of the findirector, who was sittingat his  desk,  facing  the  summer garden of  the  Variety, where there wererefreshment   stands,  a  shooting  gallery  and  an  open-air  stage.   Thefurnishings of the office, apart from the desk, consisted  of a bunch of oldposters  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-coveredscale model  of some  past review. Well,  it  goes without  saying  that, inaddition, 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 especiallyrestlessly active. Yet there was no outlet for his energy.     Varenukha was presently  hiding in. the findirector's office to  escapethe seekers of free passes, who  poisoned  his life, especially on days whenthe programme changed.  And today  was  precisely such a day. As soon as thetelephone started to' ring,  Varenukha would  pick up the receiver  and  lieinto it:     "Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He stepped out.' 'Please call Likhodeevagain,' Rimsky asked vexedly. 'He's not home. I even sent Karpov, there's noone  in  the  apartment.'  'Devil  knows what's going on!'  Rimisky  hissed,clacking on the adding machine.     The  door opened  and an  usher dragged  in  a  thick stack of  freshlyprinted 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 thescale model, admired it, and told  the  usher  to send  all the  posters outimmediately to be pasted up.     'Good . . . Loud!' Varenukha observed on the usher's departure.     'And  I  dislike this undertaking extremely,' Rimsky grumbled, glancingspitefully at the poster through his horn-rimmed glasses, 'and generally I'msurprised he's been allowed to present it.'     'No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say so! This  is  a very subde step. Thesalt is all in the exposure.'     'I  don't know,  I  don't know, there's no salt, in my opinion  ... andhe's always coming  up with  things like this! ... He might at least show ushis magician! Have you seen him? Where he dug him up, devil knows!'     It turned out  that Varenukha had not seen  the  magician any more thanRimsky had. Yesterday Styopa  had  come running  ('like crazy',  in Rimsky'sexpression) to the findirector with the already written draft of a contract,ordered it copied straight away  and  the  money handed  over to Woland. Andthis  magician  had cleared  out,  and no  one had seen  him  except  Styopahimself.     Rimsky took out his  watch, saw that it read five minutes past two, andflew 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  haddisappeared from his apartment.     'He's holding up my  business!' Rimsky  was  roaring  now,  jabbing hisfinger at a pile of unsigned papers.     'Might he have fallen under a tram-car like Berlioz?' Varenukha said ashe held his ear to the  receiver, from which came low, prolonged and utterlyhopeless signals.     "Wouldn't be a bad  thing  ...' Rimsky said barely  audibly through histeeth.     At that same moment a  woman  in a uniform  jacket, visored cap,  blackskirt and sneakers came  into the office. From a small pouch at her belt thewoman took a small white square and a notebook and asked:     "Who  here is Variety?  A super-lightning telegram.^[2]  Signhere.'     Varenukha scribbled some flourish in the woman's notebook, and  as soonas  the door slammed behind  her, he  opened  the square. After  reading thetelegram, he blinked and handed the square to Rimsky.     The  telegram contained the following: 'Yalta  to Moscow Variety. Todayeleven  thirty  brown-haired  man  came  criminal  investigation  nightshirttrousers shoeless  mental  case gave  name Likhodeev Director  Variety  WireYalta criminal investigation where Director Likhodeev.'     'Hello  and how  do  you  do!'  Rimsky exclaimed, and  added:  'Anothersurprise!'     'A false Dmitri!'^[3] said Varenukha,  and he spoke into  thereceiver.  Telegraph   office?  Variety  account.   Take  a  super-lightningtelegram.  Are  you  listening?  "Yalta  criminal  investigation.   DirectorLikhodeev Moscow Findirector Rimsky."'     Irrespective  of  the news  about  the  Yalta impostor, Varenukha againbegan searching all over for Styopa by telephone, and naturally did not findhim anywhere.     Just as Varenukha,  receiver in hand, was pondering where else he mightcall, the same  woman who had brought the first telegram came  in and handedVarenukha a  new envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read the  messageand whistled.     'What now?' Rimsky asked, twitching nervously.     Varenukha  silently  handed  him the  telegram, and the findirector sawthere the words: 'Beg  believe thrown  Yalta  Woland hypnosis  wire criminalinvestigation confirm identity Likhodeev.'     Rimsky  and Varenukha, their  heads touching, reread  the telegram, andafter rereading it, silently stared at each other.     'Citizens!' the woman got angry.  'Sign, and then be  silent as much asyou like! I deliver lightnings!'     Varenukha, without taking his eyes  off the  telegram,  made  a crookedscrawl in the notebook, and the woman vanished.     'Didn't you talk with him on  the phone at a little past  eleven?'  theadministrator began in total bewilderment.     'No, it's  ridiculous!' Rimsky cried shrilly. Talk or  not, he can't bein 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 wasno doubt. But the  strange thing was this:  how did the Yalta mystifier knowWoland,  who had come to Moscow  just the  day before? How did he know aboutthe connection between Likhodeev and Woland?     'Hypnosis  ..  .' Varenukha kept repeating the  word from the telegram.'How does he  know  about  Woland?' He blinked  his eyes  and suddenly criedresolutely: 'Ah, no! Nonsense! . .. Nonsense, nonsense!'     'Where's he staying, this Woland, devil take him?' asked Rimsky.     Varenukha  immediately got  connected with the  foreign tourist  bureauand, to Rimsky's utter  astonishment, announced  that  Woland was staying inLikhodeev's apartment.  Dialling the number of the Likhodeev apartment afterthat, Varenukha listened for a long time to the low buzzing in the receiver.Amidst the  buzzing,  from somewhere far away, came  a  heavy, gloomy  voicesinging: '..  . rocks, my refuge  .. .'^[4]  and Varenukha decidedthat the telephone lines had crossed with a voice from a radio show.     The  apartment  doesn't  answer,'  Varenukha  said,  putting  down  thereceiver, 'or maybe I should call...'     He  did not finish. The same  woman appeared in the door, and both men,Rimsky and Varenukha,  rose to meet her, while she took from her pouch not awhite sheet this time, but some sort of dark one.     This  is  beginning  to  get interesting,'  Varenukha said through  histeeth,  his eyes following the  hurriedly  departing  woman.  Rimsky was thefirst to take hold of the sheet.     On  a dark  background of  photographic  paper,  some black handwrittenlines were barely discernible:     'Proof my  handwriting  my signature  wire urgendy  confirmation  placesecret watch Woland Likhodeev.'     In his twenty  years  of  work in the  theatre, Varenukha had seen  allkinds of sights, but here he felt his mind becoming obscured as with a veil,and he could find nothing to say but the at once mundane and  utterly absurdphrase:     This cannot be!'     Rimsky acted otherwise. He stood up, opened the door, barked out to themessenger 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  tocompare the bold, back-slanting letters of the photogram with the letters inStyopa's resolutions and  signatures,  furnished  with a corkscrew flourish.Varenukha,  leaning his weight  on the table,  breathed  hotly  on  Rimsky'scheek.     'It's  his  handwriting,'  the  findirector finally  said  firmly,  andVarenukha repeated like an echo:     'His.'     Peering  into Rimsky's face, the administrator marvelled at  the changethat had come over  this face. Thin to begin with, the findirector seemed tohave grown still thinner and even older, hi^[6] eyes in their hornrims  had lost their  customary prickliness, and there appeared in  them notonly alarm, but even sorrow.     Varenukha did everything  that a man in a moment of  great astonishmentought to do. He raced  up and down the office, he raised his arms twice likeone crucified, he drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe andexclaimed:     'I don't understand! I don't understand! I don't un-der-stand!'     Rimsky  meanwhile was  looking  out  the  window,  thinking hard  aboutsomething. The  findirector's  position was very difficult. It was necessaryat   once,   right  on  the   spot,  to  invent  ordinary  explanations  forextraordinary phenomena.     Narrowing his eyes, the  findirector  pictured to himself  Styopa, in anightshirt and  shoeless,  getting into some  unprecedented super-high-speedairplane 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  inYalta . . . devil knew what to make of it!     Maybe it was not Styopa who talked with him this morning over the phonefrom his own apartment? No,  it was Styopa  speaking! Who if  not he  shouldknow Styopa's voice? And even if it was not Styopa speaking today, it was noearlier  than yesterday, towards  evening,  that Styopa  had  come  from hisoffice  to this  very office  with this idiotic  contract  and  annoyed  thefindirector with his light-mindedness. How could he have  gone or flown awaywithout leaving  word at  the  theatre? But if he  had flown away  yesterdayevening - 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 diought of it! By train it's  over ninehundred 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  whatthen? Some fighter plane?  Who would let Styopa on any fighter plane withouthis shoes? What for?  Maybe he took his shoes off when he got to Yalta? It'sthe  same thing: what for? And even with his shoes on they wouldn't have lethim on a fighter! And what has the fighter  got to do with  it? It's writtenthat he came to the investigators at half past eleven in the morning, and hetalked  on the telephone in Moscow. . . excuse me .. . (the face of Rimsky'swatch emerged before his eyes).     Rimsky tried to remember where the hands had been .. . Terrible! It hadbeen twenty minutes past eleven!     So  what  does it  boil  down  to?  If  one  supposes  that  after  theconversation Styopa instantly rushed to the airport, and reached it in, say,five minutes (which, incidentally, was also unthinkable), it  means mat  dieplane, taking off at once, covered nearly a thousand miles  in five minutes.Consequently, it was flying at twelve thousand miles an hour!!! That  cannotbe, and that means he's not in Yalta!     What remains, then? Hypnosis? There's no hypnosis in the world that canfling a man a  thousand miles away! So he's imagining that he's in Yalta? Hemay  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 allthe while being turned and pulled from outside, and the messenger girl couldbe 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 diereceiver 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 thereceiver and said:     'As luck would have it, the line's broken.'     It could be  seen that the broken  line  especially  upset him for somereason, and  even made him  lapse into diought. Having diought  a little, heagain  took die receiver in one hand, and with  the other began writing downwhat he said into it:     Take  a super-lightning. Variety.  Yes.  Yalta criminal  investigation.Yes. 'Today around eleven thirty Likhodeev talked me phone Moscow stop Afterthat did not  come work unable locate by phone stop Confirm handwriting stopTaking 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 receivedtelegrams, plus the copy of his own, put the stack into an  envelope, sealedit, wrote a few words on it, and handed it to Varenukha, saying:     'Go     right     now,     Ivan    Savelyevich,    take    it     therepersonally.^[5] Let them sort it out.'     'Now that is really clever!' thought Varenukha, and he put the envelopeinto his briefcase. Then, just in case, he dialled Styopa's apartment numberon  the  telephone, listened, and  began winking and  grimacing joyfully andmysteriously. 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'scalling?'     The administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.'     'Ivan  Savelyevich?' the receiver cried out joyfully. Terribly  glad tohear 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 thereceiver. 'I'm entirely at your service, my  dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Orderme around as you like. And so?'     'Excuse  me, but..  . what, is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at homenow?'     '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  MonsieurWoland 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  andwishes! 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  astart:     'I  remember!  I  remember! They've opened a  new  Georgian  tavern  inPushkino called "Yalta"! It's all  clear! He went there, got  drunk, and nowhe's sending telegrams from there!'     'Well, now that's too much!' Rimsky answered,  his cheek twitching, anddeep, genuine anger burned  in  his eyes.  'Well, then,  he's  going to  paydearly for  this little  excursion! .  . .' He  suddenly  faltered and addedirresolutely: 'But what about the criminal investigation ...'     'It's nonsense!  His  own  little jokes,'  the  expansive administratorinterrupted, and asked: 'Shall I take the envelope?'     'Absolutely,' replied Rimsky.     And again  the  door opened and in  came that same ..  . 'Her!' thoughtRimsky,  for some reason with  anguish.  And  both  men  rose  to  meet  thepostwoman.     This time the telegram contained the words:     Thank  you   confirmation   send   five   hundred   urgently   criminalinvestigation 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 outfive  hundred roubles, rang the  bell, handed the messenger  the  money, andsent him to the telegraph office.     'Good heavens, Grigory Danilovich,'  Varenukha said, not  believing hiseyes, 'in my opinion you oughtn't to send the money.'     'It'll come  back,' Rimsky replied quietly, 'but he'll have a hard timeexplaining  this little picnic.' And he added,  indicating the briefcase  toVarenukha: '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 boxoffice,  found  out  from  the box-office girl that she expected to sell outwithin  the  hour, because  the  public was  simply  pouring  in  since  theadditional poster had been put up, told the girl to earmark and hold  thirtyof  the  best seats in the gallery and  the stalls,  popped out  of the  boxoffice, shook off importunate  pass-seekers as  he  ran, and  dived into hislittle office to get his cap. At that moment the telephone ratded.     'Yes!' Varenukha shouted.     'Ivan Savelyevich?' the  receiver inquired in a  most  repulsive  nasalvoice.     'He's not in the  theatre!'  Varenukha was  shouting, but  the receiverinterrupted him at once:     'Don't play the fool, Ivan Savelyevich, just listen.  Do not take thosetelegrams anywhere or show them to anyone.'     'Who is this?'  Varenukha bellowed.  'Stop these jokes, citizen! You'llbe 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 fellsilent, because he sensed that no one was listening to him any longer in thereceiver.     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  sideentrance into the summer garden.     The administrator was agitated and full  of energy. After  the insolentphone  call he had no  doubts that it  was a band of hooligans playing nastytricks, and  that  these tricks  were connected with  the  disappearance  ofLikhodeev.  The  administrator  was choking  with  the desire to expose  themalefactors, and, strange as it was, the anticipation of something enjoyablewas born in him. It happens that way when a man strives to become the centreof attention, to bring sensational news somewhere.     In the  garden the wind blew in the administrator's face and flung sandin his eyes, as if blocking his way, as if cautioning him.  A window on  thesecond floor slammed so that the glass nearly broke,  the tops of the maplesand  lindens  rustled   alarmingly.  It   became  darker   and  colder.  Theadministrator rubbed his  eyes and saw that a yellow-bellied storm cloud wascreeping low over Moscow. There came a dense, distant rumbling.     However great Varenukha's hurry, an irrepressible desire pulled  at himto run over to the summer  toilet for a second on his way, to check  whetherthe repairman had put a wire screen over the light-bulb.     Running past the  shooting gallery, Varenukha came to a thick growth oflilacs where  the light-blue toilet building stood. The repairman turned outto  be an efficient fellow, the bulb under the roof of the  gentlemen's sidewas covered with a wire screen, but the administrator was upset that even inthe  pre-storm  darkness  one could  make  out that the  walls were  alreadywritten all over in charcoal and pencil.     'Well, what sort of. . .' the administrator began and  suddenly heard avoice purring behind him:     'Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?'     Varenukha started, turned around, and  saw before him  a short, fat manwith 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 voiceand, suddenly swinging his arm, gave Varenukha such a blow on  the  ear thatthe  cap flew off the administrator's head and vanished without a trace downthe hole in the seat.     At  the  fat  man's blow, the whole  toilet lit  up momentarily with  atremulous light, and a  roll of thunder echoed in the sky. Then came anotherflash and a second man emerged before  the administrator -- short, but  withathletic shoulders, hair red as fire, albugo in one eye, a fang in his mouth. . . This second  one, evidently a lefty, socked  the administrator on  theother ear. In response there  was another roll  of  thunder  in the sky, andrain 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 aman in a public  toilet, rasped out: 'citiz . . .' -- figured  that they didnot  merit this appellation either, and received a third  terrible blow fromhe did not know which of them, so that blood gushed from his nose on  to hisTolstoy blouse.     'What you got in  the  briefcase,  parasite?' the  one resembling a catcried shrilly. 'Telegrams? Weren't  you  warned over the  phone not to  takethem 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 secondone  cried in the same nasal voice that had  come over the telephone, and heyanked the briefcase from Varenukha's trembling hands.     And the two picked the administrator up under the arms, dragged him outof the  garden, and raced down  Sadovaya with him. The  storm  raged at fullforce,  water streamed  with  a noise and  howling  down  the  drains, wavesbubbled  and  billowed  everywhere, water  gushed  from  the roofs  past thedrainpipes,  foamy streams  ran from gateways. Everything living  got washedoff Sadovaya, and there was no one to save Ivan Savelyevich. Leaping throughmuddy rivers, under flashes of lightning, the bandits dragged the half-aliveadministrator in a  split  second  to  no.502-bis, flew with him through thegateway,  where two barefoot  women, holding  their shoes and  stockings  intheir hands, pressed themselves to the wall. Then they dashed into the sixthentrance, and Varenukha, nearly  insane, was taken up to the fifth floor andthrown  down in  the  semi-dark front hall, so well known to him,  of StyopaLikhodeev's apartment.     Here the two robbers vanished, and in their place there appeared in thefront hall a completely naked girl  --  red-haired, her  eyes burning with aphosphorescent gleam.     Varenukha understood that this was the most terrible of all things thathad ever happened  to him and,  moaning, recoiled against the  wall. But thegirl came right up to the administrator and placed the palms of her hands onhis 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 werestill colder, that their cold was the cold of ice.     'Let  me give  you  a kiss,'  the girl  said tenderly,  and there  wereshining eyes right  in front  of his eyes. Then Varenukha fainted  and neverfelt the kiss.