The Master and Margarita

The first, without stopping, showed Nikanor Ivanovich a paper, and the second was at the same moment standing on a stool in the privy, his arm in the ventilation duct. Everything went dark in Nikanor Ivanovich’s eyes. The newspaper was removed, but in the wad there were not roubles but some unknown money, bluish-greenish, and with the portrait of some old man. However, Nikanor Ivanovich saw it all dimly, there were some sort of spots floating in front of his eyes.

‘Dollars in the ventilation ...’ the first said pensively and asked Nikanor Ivanovich gently and courteously: Tour little wad?‘

‘No!’ Nikanor Ivanovich replied in a dreadful voice. ‘Enemies stuck me with it!’

That happens,‘ the first agreed and added, again gently: ’Well, you’re going to have to turn in the rest.‘

‘I haven’t got any! I swear to God, I never laid a finger on it!’ the chairman cried out desperately.

He dashed to the chest, pulled a drawer out with a clatter, and from it the briefcase, crying out incoherently:

‘Here’s the contract... that vermin of an interpreter stuck me with it ... Koroviev ... in a pince-nez! ...’

He opened the briefcase, glanced into it, put a hand inside, went blue in the face, and dropped the briefcase into the borscht. There was nothing in the briefcase: no letter from Styopa, no contract, no foreigner’s passport, no money, no theatre pass. In short, nothing except a folding ruler.

‘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.¹

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.