The Master and Margarita

CHAPTER 14. Glory to the Cock!       His nerves gave out, as they say, and Rimsky fled to his office  beforethey finished drawing  up the report.  He sat  at his  desk and  stared withinflamed eyes at  the magic banknotes  lying before  him. The  findirector'swits were addled. A steady  hum came  from  outside. The  audience poured instreams  from  the  Variety building  into  the  street.  Rimsky's extremelysharpened hearing  suddenly caught the distant trill of a policeman. That initself  never  bodes anything pleasant. But  when it  was  repeated and,  toassist  it, another joined in, more authoritative and prolonged, and to themwas added a clearly audible guffawing and even some hooting, the findirectorunderstood at once that  something else scandalous  and vile had happened inthe street. And that, however much he wanted to wave it away, it was closelyconnected with  the repulsive seance presented by the black magician and hisassistants.     The keen-eared findirector was not mistaken in the least. As soon as hecast a  glance  out the window on to Sadovaya, his face  twisted, and he didnot whisper but hissed:     'So I thought!'     In  the bright glare of the  strongest street lights he saw, just belowhim on  the sidewalk, a  lady in nothing  but  a  shift and violet bloomers.True, there  was a little hat on  the lady's head  and  an  umbrella  in herhands. The lady,  who was in a state  of utter consternation,  now crouchingdown, now making as if  to run off somewhere, was surrounded by an  agitatedcrowd, which produced the very guffawing that  had  sent a  shiver down  thefin-director's  spine. Next  to  the lady  some  citizen was flitting about,trying . to tear off his summer coat, and in his agitation simply  unable tomanage the sleeve in which his arm was stuck.     Shouts and roaring guffaws came from yet another  place  -- namely, theleft entrance - and turning his head in that  direction,  Grigory Danilovichsaw a  second lady,  in pink underwear.  She  leaped from the street to  thesidewalk,  striving  to  hide in  the hallway,  but the audience pouring outblocked the way,  and the poor victim  other own flightiness and passion fordressing up, deceived by vile  Fagott's firm,  dreamed of only one thing  --falling  through  the earth. A  policeman  made for  the  unfortunate woman,drilling the  air with his  whisde,  and  after the policeman hastened  somemerry young men in caps. It was they who produced the guffawing and hoodng.     A skinny, moustachioed  cabby flew  up to the first undressed woman anddashingly  reined  in his  bony, broken-down nag.  The  moustached face  wasgrinning gleefully.     Rimsky  beat  himself on the  head with his fist, spat, and leaped backfrom the  window. For some time he sat at his desk listening to the  street.The whistling  at  various points reached its highest  pitch, then  began tosubside.  The scandal,  to Rimsky's  surprise,  was somehow liquidated  withunexpected swiftness.     It came time to act. He had to drink  the bitter cup of responsibility.The telephones  had been repaired  during  the third  part. He had  to  makecalls, to tell what had happened, to  ask for  help, lie his  way out of it,heap everything  on  Likhodeev,  cover up for himself, and so  on. Pah,  thedevil!     Twice the upset director  put  his  hand  on the receiver, and twice hedrew it back. And suddenly, in the dead silence of the office, the telephoneburst out ringing by itself right in  the findirector's face, and he  gave astart and went cold. 'My nerves are really upset, though!'  he  thought, andpicked up the receiver. He recoiled from it instantly and turned whiter thanpaper.  A  soft  but  at  the same time insinuating  and  lewd female  voicewhispered into the receiver:     'Don't call anywhere, Rimsky, it'll be bad . ..'     The  receiver straight away went  empty. With goose-flesh prickling  onhis back, the findirector hung up  the telephone and  for some reason turnedto look  at the  window  behind  him.  Through the scant  and  still  barelygreening branches of a maple, he saw the moon racing in a transparent cloud.His  eyes fixed  on the  branches for some reason, Rimsky went  on gazing atthem, and the longer he gazed, the more strongly he was gripped by fear.     With great effort, the findirector finally turned away from the moonlitwindow  and stood up. There could no  longer be any question of phone calls,and now the findirector was thinking of only one thing -- getting out of thetheatre as quickly as possible.     He listened: the theatre building  was  silent. Rimsky realized that hehad  long  been  the  only one on  the whole second  floor, and a  childish,irrepressible fear came over him at this thought. He could not think withoutshuddering  of having to  walk alone now along  the empty corridors and downthe stairs.  Feverishly  he seized the hypnotist's banknotes from the table,put them in his briefcase, and coughed so as to cheer himself  up at least alittle. The cough came out slightly hoarse, weak.     And here it  seemed  to  him that  a whiff of  some putrid dankness wascoming in  under the office  door. Shivers ran down the findirector's spine.And  then the clock also rang out unexpectedly and began to strike midnight.And  even  its striking provoked  shivers  in the findirector. But his heartdefinitively sank when he heard the English  key turning quiedy in the lock.Clutching his briefcase  with damp, cold hands, the findirector felt that ifthis  scraping in the keyhole were to  go on any longer, he would break downand give a piercing scream.     Finally the door  yielded to someone's efforts, opened,  and  Varenukhanoiselessly  entered the  office. Rimsky simply sank down into  the armchairwhere he stood, because his legs gave  way. Drawing a deep breath, he smiledan ingratiating smile, as it were, and said quiedy:     'God, you frightened me . . .'     Yes, this sudden appearance might have frightened anyone  you like, andyet at the same time it was a great joy: at least one little  end peeped outin this tangled affair.     Well,  tell me quickly! Well? Well?' Rimsky wheezed,  grasping  at thislittle end. 'What does it all mean?!'     'Excuse  me,  please,'  the  entering man replied  in a  hollow  voice,closing the door, 'I thought you had already left.'     And Varenukha,  without taking  his cap off, walked to the armchair andsat on the other side of the desk.     It must be said that Varenukha's response was marked by a slight odditywhich at once needled the findirector, who could compete in sensitivity withthe seismograph of any  of the world's best stations.  How could it be? W'lwdid Varenukha come to  the findirector's office if he  thought  he  was  notthere?  He had his own office, first of all. And  second, whichever entranceto the building Varenukha had used, he would inevitably  have met one of thenight-watchmen, to all of whom it had been announced that Grigory Danilovichwas staying  late in  his office. But  the findirector  did  not spend  longpondering this oddity - he had other problems.     'Why didn't you call? What are all these shenanigans about Yalta?'     "Well, it's as I was saying,' the administrator  replied, sucking as ifhe were troubled by a bad tooth. 'He was found in the tavern in Pushkino.'     'In  Pushkino?! You mean just outside Moscow?! What about the telegramsfrom Yalta?!'     'The devil they're from Yalta! He got a telegrapher drunk in  Pushkino,and  the two  of them  started acting up, sending  telegrams marked "Yalta",among other things.'     'Aha ... aha ... Well, all right, all right.. .' Rimsky did not say butsang out.  His eyes lit up with a yellow light. In his head there formed thefestive picture  of Styopa's shameful  dismissal  from his job. Deliverance!The findirector's long-awaited deliverance from this  disaster in the personof Likhodeev!  And  maybe Stepan  Bogdanovich would achieve something  worsethan dismissal  . .. The details!' said Rimsky,  banging the paperweight  onthe desk.     And Varenukha began giving the details. As soon as he arrived where thefindirector had sent him, he was received at once and given a most attentivehearing.  No one, of course, even entertained the  thought that Styopa couldbe  in  Yalta. Everyone agreed  at once  with  Varenukha's  suggestion  thatLikhodeev was, of course, at the Yalta in Pushkino.     'Then  where  is he now?'  the  agitated  findirector  interrupted  theadministrator.     'Well,  where else  could he  be?' the administrator  replied, grinningcrookedly. 'In a sobering-up cell, naturally!'     'Well, well. How nice!'     Varenukha  went on  with  his story, and  the  more he  told, the  morevividly  there unfolded before the findirector the long chain of Likhodeev'sboorish and outrageous acts, and every link in this chain was worse than theone before. The  drunken dancing  in the arms of the telegrapher on the lawnin front of  the Pushkino telegraph office to the sounds of  some  itinerantbarrel-organ  was  worth  something!  The  chase after some female  citizensshrieking with terror! The attempt at a fight with the  barman in the  Yaltaitself! Scattering  green  onions  all  over the  floor of  the  same Yalta.Smashing  eight  bottles of dry white  Ai-Danil. Breaking the meter when thetaxi-driver  refused to  take Styopa in his  cab. Threatening to  arrest thecitizens who attempted to stop  Styopa's obnoxiousness  ... In short,  blackhorror!     Styopa was well known in Moscow theatre circles, and everyone knew thatthe man was  no gift.  But all the  same, what the administrator was tellingabout  him was too much even for Styopa. Yes, too much. Even much too much ...     Rimsky's  needle-sharp  glance  pierced  the administrator's  face fromacross  the desk, and  the  longer the  man spoke,  the grimmer  those  eyesbecame. The  more lifelike  and  colourful  the  vile details with which theadministrator  furnished his story, the  less the  findirector  believed thestoryteller. And when Varenukha told how Styopa had let himself go so far asto try to resist those who came to bring him back to Moscow, the findirectoralready knew  firmly that everything the  administrator  who had returned atmidnight was telling him, everything, was a  lie! A lie from first  word  tolast!     Varenukha never went to  Pushkino, and there was no Styopa in Pushkino.There was no drunken telegrapher, there  was no broken  glass in the tavern,Styopa did not get tied up with ropes ... none of it happened.     As  soon   as  the  findirector  became   firmly   convinced  that  theadministrator was lying to him, fear crept over his body, starting from  thelegs,  and  twice  again the  findirector fancied  that  a  putrid  malarialdankness was  wafting  across the  floor. Never for a moment taking his eyesoff the administrator  -- who squirmed somehow  strangely  in  his armchair,trying not to  get out  of the blue shade of the  desk  lamp, and  screeninghimself with a newspaper  in  some  remarkable  fashion from the  bothersomelight -- the findirector was thinking  of only one thing:  what did  it  allmean? Why was he  being lied  to  so brazenly,  in  the silent and  desertedbuilding,  by  the administrator who was so late in  coming back to him? Andthe awareness of danger,  an unknown but  menacing danger, began  to gnaw atRimsky's soul.  Pretending to ignore Varenukha's dodges and tricks with  thenewspaper, the findirector studied his face, now almost without listening tothe yarn Varenukha was spinning. There  was something that seemed still moreinexplicable  than the calumny invented.  God knows why, about adventures inPushkino,  and  that   something  was  the  change  in  the  administrator'sappearance and manners.     No matter how the  man pulled  the duck-like visor of his cap over  hiseyes,  so as to throw a shadow on his  face, no matter how he fidgeted  withthe newspaper, the findirector managed to make out an enormous bruise on theright  side  of  his  face  just  by the  nose.  Besides that, the  normallyfull-blooded administrator was now pale with a chalk-like, unhealthy pallor,and on  this stifling night  his neck was for  some reason wrapped in an oldstriped  scarf.  Add  to that  the repulsive manner  the  administrator  hadacquired during the rime of his  absence of  sucking and smacking, the sharpchange in his voice, which had become hollow and coarse, and the furtivenessand cowardliness in his eyes, and one could boldly say that Ivan SavelyevichVarenukha had become unrecognizable.     Something else burningly troubled the findirector, but he was unable tograsp precisely what it  was, however much  he strained  his feverish  mind,however hard he peered at Varenukha. One thing he  could affirm, that  therewas  something   unprecedented,  unnatural  in   this  combination  of   theadministrator and the familiar armchair.     "Well, we finally overpowered him, loaded him into the car,'  Varenukhaboomed, peeking from behind the paper and covering the bruise with his hand.     Rimsky suddenly  reached  out and,  as  if  mechanically,  tapping  hisfingers on the table at the same time, pushed  the electric-bell button withhis palm and went numb.  The sharp signal ought to have been  heard  withoutfail  in  the  empty  building.  But no signal came,  and  the  button  sanklifelessly into the wood of the desk. The button was dead, the bell broken.     The findirector's stratagem did not escape the notice of Varenukha, whoasked, twitching, with a clearly malicious fire flickering in his eyes:     "What are you ringing for?'     'Mechanically,' the  findirector  replied  hollowly,  jerking  his handback, and asked in turn, in an unsteady voice: "What's that on your face?'     'The car skidded,  I bumped  against the door-handle,' Varenukha  said,looking away.     'He's lying!'  the findirector  exclaimed mentally.  And here  his eyessuddenly  grew round and utterly insane, and he stared  at  the back of  thearmchair.     Behind the chair  on the floor two shadows  lay  criss-cross, one  moredense and  black, the  other faint and grey. The  shadow of the back  of thechair and  of its tapering legs  could be seen distinctly on the floor,  butthere was  no shadow of Varenukha's head  above the back of the chair, or ofthe administrator's legs under its legs.     'He  casts no shadow!'  Rimsky  cried out  desperately in his mind.  Hebroke into shivers.     Varenukha,  following Rimsky's insane gaze, looked furtively behind himat the back of the chair, and realized that he had been found out.     He got  up from the  chair (the findirector  did likewise) and made onestep back from the desk, clutching his briefcase in his hands.     'He's guessed, damn him! Always was  clever,' Varenukha said,  grinningspitefully right in the findirector's face, and he sprang unexpectedly  fromthe  chair to  the door  and quickly pushed down  the catch on the lock. Thefindirector  looked desperately behind  him,  as  he retreated to the windowgiving on to the garden, and in this window, flooded with moonlight, saw theface of a naked  girl pressed against the  glass and her naked arm  reachingthrough the vent-pane and trying  to open the lower latch. The upper one wasalready open.     It seemed  to Rimsky that the light of  the desk lamp was going out andthe desk was tilting. An icy wave engulfed Rimsky, but - fortunately for him-- he got control of himself and did  not  fall. He had enough strength leftto whisper, but not cry out:     'Help .. .'     Varenukha, guarding the door,  hopped up and down by it, staying in airfor  a long  rime and swaying there.  Waving his hooked  fingers in Rimsky'sdirection, he hissed and smacked, winking to the girl in the window.     She began to hurry, stuck her red-haired head through the vent, reachedher arm  down as far as she could, her nails clawing at  the lower latch andshaking  the  frame.  Her  arm began  to  lengthen,  rubber-like, and becamecovered with a putrid green. Finally the dead woman's green fingers got holdof the latch knob, turned  it, and the frame began to open. Rimsky cried outweakly, leaned against the wall, and held his briefcase in front of him likea shield. He realized that his end had come.     The frame swung wide open, but instead of the night's freshness and thefragrance of the  lindens, the smell  of  a cellar burst into the room.  Thedead woman  stepped on to the window-sill. Rimsky clearly saw spots of decayon her breast.     And just then the joyful, unexpected crowing of  a cock  came  from thegarden,  from  that  low building  beyond the shooting  gallery  where birdsparticipating in  the  programme were kept. A  loud, trained cock trumpeted,announcing that dawn was rolling towards Moscow from the east.     Savage fury distorted the girl's face,  she emitted a hoarse oath,  andat the door Varenukha shrieked and dropped from the air to the floor.     The  cock-crow  was repeated, the girl  clacked  her teeth, and her redhair stood on end.  With  the third crowing of the cock, she turned and flewout  And  after her, jumping up and  stretching himself horizontally in  theair, looking like a flying cupid, Varenukha slowly floated over the desk andout the window.     White  as snow,  with not a single black hair on his head, the old  manwho still recently  had been  Rimsky  rushed to  the door,  undid the catch,opened the door, and ran hurtling down the dark corridor. At the turn to thestairs, moaning with fear, he felt for the switch, and the stairway  lightedup. On the stairs the shaking, trembling old  man  fell because  he imaginedthat Varenukha had softly tumbled on top of him.     Having  run downstairs,  Rimsky saw a watchman asleep on a chair by thebox office in the lobby. Rimsky stole past him on tiptoe and  ' slipped  outthe main entrance. Outside he felt slighdy better. He  recovered his  sensesenough to realize, clutching his head, that his hat had stayed behind in theoffice.     Needless to say, he did not go back for it, but, breathless, ran acrossthe wide street to  the opposite corner  by the movie theatre, near which  adull  reddish light hovered. In a  moment he was there.  No one had time  tointercept the cab.     'Make  the Leningrad express, I'll tip you  well,' the  old  man  said,breathing heavily and clutching his heart.     'I'm going to  the  garage,' the driver  answered hatefully  and turnedaway.     Then Rimsky unlatched his briefcase, took out fifty roubles, and handedthem to the driver through the open front window.     A few moments  later,  the rattling car  was flying  like the wind downSadovoye Ring.  The passenger  was  tossed about  on  his seat, and  in  thefragment of mirror  hanging  in front  of  the driver,  Rimsky saw  now  thedriver's happy eyes, now his own insane ones.     Jumping out of the car in front  of the train station, Rimsky cried  tothe first man he saw in a white apron with a badge:     'First class, single, I'll pay  thirty,' he  was pulling  the banknotesfrom  his briefcase, crumpling  them, 'no first  class, get me second ... ifnot -- a hard bench!'     The man with the badge kept glancing up at the lighted clock face as hetore the banknotes from Rimsky's hand.     Five  minutes later the express train disappeared from under  the glassvault of the train station and vanished clean away in the darkness. And withit vanished Rimsky.