5. There Were Goings-on at Griboyedov

The old cream-coloured two-storey house was situated on the Boulevard Ring in the depths of a sorry-looking garden, separated from the pavement of the ring by fretted cast-iron railings. The small open area in front of the house was asphalted, and there, in the wintertime, a snowdrift with a spade in it towered up, while in the summertime it turned into the most magnificent section of a summer restaurant beneath a canvas awning.

The house was called The Griboyedov House on the grounds that at one time it had ostensibly been owned by the writer’s auntie, Alexandra Sergeyevna Griboyedova. Well, did she or didn’t she own it? – we don’t know for sure. If memory serves, Griboyedov never even seems to have had any such house-owning auntie… However, that is what the house was called. And what is more, one mendacious Muscovite used to tell how, allegedly, there on the first floor, in the circular columned hall, the renowned writer used to read extracts from The Misfortune of Wit to that same auntie as she lounged on a sofa. But then the devil knows – perhaps he did, it’s not important!

But what is important is that this house was owned at the present time by that same MASSOLIT, at the head of which stood the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, until his appearance at Patriarch’s Ponds.

Following the example of the members of MASSOLIT, nobody called the house “The Griboyedov House”: everyone simply said “Griboyedov”: “I was hanging about for two hours at Griboyedov yesterday.” – “Well, and?” – “I got myself a month in Yalta.” – “Good for you!” Or: “Go and talk to Berlioz, he’s seeing people between four and five today at Griboyedov.” and so on.

MASSOLIT had settled into Griboyedov so well that nothing better or cosier could be imagined. Anyone going into Griboyedov involuntarily became acquainted first of all with the notices of various sports clubs, and with group and also individual photographs of members of MASSOLIT, hanging (the photographs) all over the walls of the staircase leading to the first floor.

On the doors of the very first room on that upper floor could be seen the large inscription: “Fishing and Dacha Section”, and there too was a picture of a crucian caught on the end of a rod.

On the doors of room No. 2 was written something not entirely comprehensible: “One-day writing trip. Apply to M. V. Podlozhnaya”.

The next door bore the brief but this time completely incomprehensible inscription “Perelygino”. Then Griboyedov’s chance visitor would start to be dazzled by the inscriptions abounding on the auntie’s walnut doors: “Registration for Waiting List for Paper at Poklyovkina’s”, “Cashier’s Office. Sketch-writers’ Personal Accounts”…

Cutting through the longest queue, which had already started downstairs in the doorman’s room, one could see the inscription on the door people were trying to force their way into at every moment: “Housing Question”.

Beyond the Housing Question there opened up a splendid poster on which was depicted a crag, and along its crest rode a horseman in a Caucasian cloak with a rifle over his shoulders. A little lower down were palm trees and a balcony, and on the balcony sat a young man with a little tuft of hair, gazing upwards with ever such lively eyes, and holding a fountain pen in his hand. The caption: “Fully inclusive writing holidays from two weeks (short story-novella) to one year (novel, trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoye, Tsikhidziry, Makhindzhaury, Leningrad (Winter Palace)”. At this door there was also a queue, but not an excessive one: of about a hundred and fifty people.

Further on there followed, obeying the fanciful twists and ups and downs of the Griboyedov House, “MASSOLIT Board”, "Cashiers’ Offices Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5”, "Editorial Board”, "MASSOLIT Chairman”, "Billiards Room”, various ancillary organizations and, finally, that very hall with the colonnade where the auntie had enjoyed her brilliant nephew’s comedy.

Any visitor who got into Griboyedov – if, of course, he wasn’t a complete dimwit – grasped at once how good a life those lucky members of MASSOLIT enjoyed, and sullen envy would immediately begin to torture him. And immediately he would address words of bitter reproach to the Heavens for their having failed to endow him at birth with literary talent, without which, naturally, there was no point even dreaming of securing a MASSOLIT membership card – brown, smelling of expensive leather and with a broad gold border – a card known to the whole of Moscow.

Who will say anything in defence of envy? It is a rotten category of feeling, but all the same, one must put oneself in the visitor’s shoes too. After all, what he saw on the upper floor was not everything – was still far from everything. The entire lower floor of auntie’s house was occupied by the restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was rightly considered the best in Moscow. And not only because it was accommodated in two large halls with vaulted ceilings, decorated with lilac horses with Assyrian manes, not only because on each table there stood a lamp covered with a shawl, not only because it could not be penetrated by the first person you came across in the street, but also because Griboyedov could beat any restaurant in Moscow at will with the quality of its provisions, and because those provisions were served at the most reasonable, by no means burdensome prices.

Thus there is nothing surprising in a conversation such as this, for example, which was once heard by the author of these most truthful lines beside the cast-iron railings of Griboyedov:

“Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?”

“What a question! Here of course, dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there’s going to be portions of pikeperch au naturel. The work of a virtuoso!”

“You really know how to live, Amvrosy!” sighed Foka, emaciated, run-down and with a carbuncle on his neck, in reply to the rosy-lipped giant, the golden-haired, plump-cheeked poet Amvrosy.

“I don’t have any particular know-how,” Amvrosy objected, “just an ordinary desire to live like a human being. What you mean to say, Foka, is that you can come across pikeperch at the Coliseum too. But at the Coliseum a portion of pikeperch costs thirteen roubles fifteen copecks, whereas here it’s five fifty! Apart from that, at the Coliseum the pikeperch is three days old, and apart from that, you have no guarantee either that at The Coliseum you won’t get a bunch of grapes in the face from the first young man that comes bursting in from Teatralny Passage. No, I’m categorically against the Coliseum!” the gourmet Amvrosy thundered for the whole boulevard to hear. “Don’t try and persuade me, Foka!”

“I’m not trying to persuade you, Amvrosy,” squealed Foka. “We can have dinner at home.”

“Your humble servant,” trumpeted Amvrosy. “I can imagine your wife attempting to construct portions of pikeperch au naturel in a little saucepan in the communal kitchen at home. Tee-hee-hee!.. Au revoir, Foka!” And, humming away, Amvrosy headed towards the veranda beneath the awning.

Oh-ho-ho… Yes, it was so, it was so! Long-time residents of Moscow remember the renowned Griboyedov! Never mind boiled portions of pikeperch! That’s cheap stuff, dear Amvrosy! What about the sterlet, sterlet in a silver saucepan, pieces of sterlet interlaid with crayfish necks and fresh caviar? What about eggs en cocotte with champignon purée in little bowls? And did you like the little fillets of thrush? With truffles? The quail Genoese style? Nine roubles fifty! And the jazz band, and the polite service! And in July, when the whole family is at the dacha and urgent literary matters are keeping you in town – on the veranda, in the shade of the climbing vine, a patch of gold on the cleanest of tablecloths, is a bowl of soup printanier? Remember, Amvrosy? But why ask! I can see by your lips you remember. Never mind your white salmon, your pikeperch! What about the snipe, the great snipe, the common snipe, the woodcock according to season, the quail, the sandpipers? The Narzan that fizzed in your throat?! But that’s enough: you’re being distracted, Reader! Follow me!.

At half-past ten on the evening when Berlioz was killed at Patriarch’s, only one upstairs room in Griboyedov was lit, and in it languished the twelve writers who had gathered for their meeting and were waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Those sitting on the chairs, and on the tables, and even on the two window sills in MASSOLIT’s boardroom were suffering dreadfully from the stifling heat. Not a single breath of fresh air was penetrating through the open windows. Moscow was emitting the heat accumulated in the asphalt during the course of the day, and it was clear that the night would bring no relief. There was a smell of onions from the basement of auntie’s house where the restaurant’s kitchen was at work, and everyone wanted a drink – everyone was on edge and getting angry.

The belletrist Beskudnikov – a quiet, respectably dressed man with attentive and at the same time elusive eyes – took out his watch. The hand was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the face with his finger and showed it to his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting on a table, and out of boredom swinging his feet, shod in yellow rubber-soled shoes.

“Really,” grumbled Dvubratsky.

“The guy probably got stuck on the Klyazma,” responded the rich voice of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, a Moscow merchant’s orphan who had become a writer composing maritime battle stories under the pseudonym “Navigator George”.

“Forgive me!” the author of popular sketches Zagrivov began boldly. “I’d be happy to be drinking some tea on a balcony myself just now, instead of stewing in here. The meeting was arranged for ten, wasn’t it?”

“It’s nice on the Klyazma now,” Navigator George egged the company on, knowing that the literary dacha village of Perelygino on the River Klyazma was a shared sore point. “The nightingales are probably already singing. My work always goes better out of town somehow, especially in the spring.”

“I’m in my third year of paying in money to send my wife and her Basedow’s disease to that paradise, but there doesn’t seem to be anything visible on the horizon,” said the novelist Ieronym Poprikhin with venom and bitterness.

“It’s just a matter of who gets lucky,” droned the critic Ababkov from the window sill.

Navigator George’s little eyes lit up with joy, and, softening her contralto, she said:

“You mustn’t be envious, Comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas, and there are only seven more being built, and there are three thousand of us in MASSOLIT”

“Three thousand one hundred and eleven,” someone put in from the corner.

“Well, you see,” continued the Navigator, “what’s to be done? It’s natural that the dachas were given to the most talented among us…”

“The generals!” the scriptwriter Glukharev butted into the squabble bluntly.

Beskudnikov left the room with an artificial yawn.

“Alone in five rooms in Perelygino,” said Glukharev in his wake.

“Lavrovich is alone in six,” cried Deniskin, “and the dining room’s panelled in oak.”

“Oh, that isn’t the point at the moment,” droned Ababkov, “the point is that it’s half-past eleven.”

A din started up – something akin to a revolt was brewing. They began ringing the hateful Perelygino, got through to the wrong dacha, to Lavrovich, learnt that Lavrovich had gone off to the river, and were thoroughly put out by that. Off the tops of their heads they rang the Commission for Belles-Lettres plus the extension 930, and, of course, found nobody there.

“He could have telephoned!” cried Deniskin, Glukharev and Kvant.

Ah, they cried unjustly: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not have telephoned anywhere. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a huge hall lit by thousand-candle bulbs, on three zinc tables there lay what had until only recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.

On the first was his naked body, covered in dried blood, with a broken arm and a crushed ribcage, on the second was his head, with the front teeth knocked out and with dulled, open eyes, unperturbed by the extremely harsh light, and on the third was a heap of stiffened rags.

Alongside the decapitated man stood a professor of forensic medicine, a pathological anatomist and his prosector, representatives of the investigation team, and Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz’s deputy at MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone away from his sick wife.

A car had called for Zheldybin and, as a first priority, he had been taken, along with the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man’s apartment, where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, and only then had they all come to the morgue.

And now the men standing beside the remains of the deceased were conferring as to what would be better: to sew the severed head back onto the neck or to display the body in the Griboyedov hall with the dead man simply covered with a black cloth right up to the chin?

No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not have telephoned anywhere, and Deniskin, Glukharev, Kvant and Beskudnikov were quite wrong to be shouting and indignant. At exactly midnight all twelve writers left the upper floor and went down to the restaurant. Here again they spoke ill of Mikhail Alexandrovich to themselves: all the tables on the veranda turned out, naturally, to be already occupied, and they had to stay and have dinner in those beautiful but stuffy halls.

And at exactly midnight in the first of those halls something crashed, rang out, rained down, began jumping. And straight away a thin male voice shouted out recklessly to the music: “Hallelujah!” It was the renowned Griboyedov jazz band striking up. Faces covered in perspiration seemed to light up; the horses drawn on the ceiling appeared to come to life; there seemed to be added light in the lamps; and suddenly, as though they had broken loose, both halls began to dance, and after them the veranda began to dance as well.

Glukharev began to dance with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Kvant began to dance, Zhukopov the novelist began to dance with some film actress in a yellow dress. Dragoonsky and Cherdakchy were dancing, little Deniskin was dancing with the gigantic Navigator George, the beautiful architect Semyeikina-Gall was dancing in the tight grasp of a stranger in white canvas trousers. The regulars and invited guests were dancing, Muscovites and visitors, the writer Johann from Kronstadt, some Vitya Kuftik or other from Rostov, a director, apparently, with a purple rash completely covering his cheek, the most eminent representatives of the poetry subsection of MASSOLIT – that is, Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Shpichkin and Adelphina Buzdyak – were dancing, young men of unknown profession with crew cuts and padded shoulders were dancing, some very elderly man with a beard in which a little bit of spring onion had become lodged was dancing, and dancing with him was a sickly young girl, being eaten up by anaemia, in a crumpled little orange silk dress.

Bathed in sweat, waiters carried misted mugs of beer above their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: “Sorry, Citizen!” Somewhere through a megaphone a voice commanded: “Karsky kebab, one! Venison, two! Imperial chitterlings!” The thin voice was no longer singing, but howling “Hallelujah!” The crashing of the golden cymbals in the jazz band at times drowned out the crashing of the crockery which the dishwashers slid down a sloping surface into the kitchen. In a word, hell.

And at midnight there was a vision in hell. Onto the veranda emerged a handsome black-eyed man in tails with a dagger of a beard who cast a regal gaze over his domains. It was said, it was said by mystics, that there was a time when the handsome man had not worn tails, but had been girdled with a broad leather belt, from which had protruded the butts of pistols, and his hair, black as a raven’s wing, had been tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig had sailed the Caribbean beneath a funereal black flag bearing a skull.

But no, no! The seductive mystics lie: there are no Caribbean Seas on earth, and desperate filibusters do not sail them, and a corvette does not give chase, and cannon smoke does not spread above the waves. There is nothing, and never was there anything either! There is, look, a sorry lime tree, there is a cast-iron railing and, beyond it, the boulevard… And the ice is melting in a bowl, and at the next table someone’s bloodshot, bull-like eyes can be seen, and it’s terrible, terrible. O gods, my gods, give me poison, poison!.

And suddenly at a table a word flew up: “Berlioz!” Suddenly the jazz band went to pieces and fell quiet, as though somebody had thumped it with their fist. “What, what, what, what?!” – “Berlioz!!!” And people started leaping up, started crying out.

Yes, a wave of grief surged up at the fearful news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone was making a fuss, shouting that it was essential, at once, here and now, right on the spot, to compose some collective telegram and send it off immediately.

But what telegram, we’ll ask, and where to? And why should it be sent? Indeed, where to? And what good is any sort of telegram at all to the man whose flattened-out occiput is now squeezed in the prosector’s rubber hands, whose neck is now being pricked by the curved needles of the professor? He’s dead, and no telegram is any good to him. It’s all over, we won’t burden the telegraph office any more.

Yes, he’s dead, dead. But us, we’re alive, you know!

Yes, a wave of grief surged up, but it held, held and started to abate, and someone had already returned to his table, and – at first stealthily, but then quite openly – had drunk some vodka and had taken a bite to eat. Indeed, chicken cutlets de volaille weren’t to go to waste, were they? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? By staying hungry? But us, you know, we’re alive!

Naturally, the piano was locked, the jazz band dispersed, a number of journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that Zheldybin had arrived from the morgue. He settled himself in the dead man’s office upstairs, and straight away the rumour spread that it would be him replacing Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members of the board from the restaurant, and, at a meeting begun immediately in Berlioz’s office, they got down to a discussion of the pressing questions of the decoration of Griboyedov’s columned hall, of the transportation of the body to that hall from the morgue, of opening it to visitors, and of other things connected with the regrettable event.

But the restaurant began living its usual nocturnal life, and would have lived it until closing time – that is, until four o’clock in the morning – had there not occurred something really completely out of the ordinary that startled the restaurant’s guests much more than the news of Berlioz’s death.

The first to become agitated were the cab drivers in attendance at the gates of the Griboyedov House. One of them was heard to shout out, half-rising on his box:

“Cor! Just look at that!”

Following which, from out of the blue, a little light flared up by the cast-iron railings and began approaching the veranda. Those sitting at the tables began half-rising and peering, and saw that proceeding towards the restaurant together with the little light was a white apparition. When it got right up to the trellis, it was as if everyone became ossified at the tables, with pieces of sterlet on their forks and their eyes popping out. The doorman, who had at that moment come out through the doors of the restaurant’s cloakroom into the yard for a smoke, stamped out his cigarette and made to move towards the apparition with the obvious aim of barring its access to the restaurant, but for some reason failed to do so and stopped, smiling rather foolishly.

And the apparition, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped unimpeded onto the veranda. At that point everyone saw it was no apparition at all, but Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny, the very well-known poet.

He was barefooted, in a ripped, off-white tolstovka, fastened onto the breast of which with a safety pin was a paper icon with a faded image of an unknown saint, and he was wearing striped white long johns. In his hand Ivan Nikolayevich was carrying a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolayevich’s right cheek was covered in fresh scratches. It is difficult even to measure the depth of the silence that had come over the veranda. One of the waiters was seen to have beer flowing onto the floor from a mug that had tipped sideways.

The poet raised the candle above his head and said loudly:

“Hi, mates!” after which he glanced underneath the nearest table and exclaimed despondently: “No, he’s not here!”

Two voices were heard. A bass said pitilessly:

“A clear-cut case. Delirium tremens.”

And the second, female and frightened, uttered the words:

“How on earth did the police let him walk the streets looking like that?”

Ivan Nikolayevich heard this and responded:

“Twice they tried to detain me, in Skatertny and here on Bronnaya, but I hopped over a fence and, see, scratched my cheek!” At this point Ivan Nikolayevich raised the candle and exclaimed: “Brothers in literature!” (His hoarsened voice strengthened and became fervent.) “Listen to me, everyone! He has appeared! You must catch him straight away, or else he will bring about indescribable calamities!”

“What? What? What did he say? Who’s appeared?” came a rush of voices from all sides.

“A consultant!” replied Ivan. “And this consultant has just killed Misha Berlioz at Patriarch’s.”

Here the people from the hall indoors poured onto the veranda. The crowd moved closer around Ivan’s light.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, be more precise,” a quiet and polite voice was heard right by Ivan Nikolayevich’s ear. “Say what it is you mean, ‘killed’? Who killed him?”

“A foreign consultant, a professor and spy,” responded Ivan, looking round.

“And what is his name?” came the quiet question in his ear.

“That’s just it, the name!” cried Ivan in anguish. “If only I knew the name! I didn’t see the name on the visiting card properly… I can only remember the first letter, W, the name begins with a W! Whatever is that name beginning with a W?” Ivan asked of himself, clutching his forehead with his hand, and suddenly began muttering: “W, w, w. Wa… Wo. Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?” The hair on Ivan’s head started shifting with the effort.

“Wulf?” some woman shouted out compassionately.

Ivan got angry.

“Idiot!” he shouted, his eyes searching for the woman. “What’s Wulf got to do with it? Wulf’s not to blame for anything! Wo, what. No! I won’t remember like this! But I’ll tell you what, Citizens, ring the police straight away so they send out five motorcycles with machine guns to catch the Professor. And don’t forget to say there are two others with him: some lanky one in checks. a cracked pince-nez. and a fat black cat! And in the mean time I’ll search Griboyedov. I sense he’s here!”

Ivan lapsed into agitation, pushed those surrounding him away, began waving the candle about, spilling the wax over himself, and looking under the tables. At this point the words: “Get a doctor!” were heard, and somebody’s kindly, fleshy face, cleanshaven and well fed, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, appeared before Ivan.

“Comrade Bezdomny,” this face began in a gala voice, “calm down! You’re upset by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich… no, simply Misha Berlioz. We all understand it perfectly. You need a rest. Some comrades will see you to bed now, and you’ll doze off.”

“Do you understand,” Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, “that the Professor must be caught? And you come pestering me with your stupid remarks! Cretin!”

“Comrade Bezdomny, pardon me,” the face replied, flushing, backing away, and already repenting getting mixed up in the matter.

“No, someone else, maybe, but you I won’t pardon,” said Ivan Nikolayevich with quiet hatred.

A spasm distorted his face; he quickly moved the candle from his right hand to his left, swung his arm out wide and struck the sympathetic face on the ear.

At this point it occurred to people to throw themselves upon Ivan – and they did. The candle went out, and a pair of spectacles, flying off a face, were instantly trampled upon. Ivan emitted a terrifying war whoop – audible, to the excitement of all, even on the boulevard – and started to defend himself. The crockery falling from the tables began ringing, women began shouting.

While the waiters were tying the poet up with towels, a conversation was going on in the cloakroom between the commander of the brig and the doorman.

“Did you see he was in his underpants?” the pirate asked coldly.

“But after all, Archibald Archibaldovich,” replied the doorman in cowardly fashion, “how on earth can I not let them in if they’re members of MASSOLIT?”

“Did you see he was in his underpants?” repeated the pirate.

“For pity’s sake, Archibald Archibaldovich,” said the doorman, turning purple, “what ever can I do? I understand for myself there are ladies sitting on the veranda…”

“The ladies have nothing to do with it: it’s all one to the ladies,” replied the pirate, literally scorching the doorman with his eyes, “but it’s not all one to the police! A man in his underwear can proceed through the streets of Moscow only in one instance: if he’s going under police escort, and only to one place – the police station! And you, if you’re a doorman, ought to know that when you see such a man, you ought to begin whistling without a moment’s delay. Can you hear? Can you hear what’s happening on the veranda?”

At this point the doorman, beside himself, caught the sounds of some sort of rumbling, the crashing of crockery and women’s cries coming from the veranda.

“Well, and what am I to do with you for this?” the filibuster asked.

The skin on the doorman’s face assumed a typhoid hue, and his eyes were benumbed. He imagined that the black hair, now combed into a parting, had been covered in fiery silk. The dicky and tails had disappeared, and, tucked into a belt, the handle of a pistol had appeared. The doorman pictured himself hanged from the foretop yardarm. With his own eyes he saw his own tongue poking out and his lifeless head fallen onto his shoulder, and he even heard the splashing of the waves over the ship’s side. The doorman’s knees sagged. But here the filibuster took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.

“Watch out, Nikolai! This is the last time. We don’t need such doormen in the restaurant at any price. Go and get a job as a watchman in a church.” Having said this, the commander gave precise, clear, rapid commands: “Pantelei from the pantry. Policeman. Charge sheet. Vehicle. Psychiatric hospital.” And added: “Whistle!”

A quarter of an hour later an extremely astonished audience, not only in the restaurant, but on the boulevard itself as well, and in the windows of the houses looking out onto the garden of the restaurant, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Ryukhin carrying out of Griboyedov’s gates a young man swaddled like a doll who, in floods of tears, was spitting, attempting to hit specifically Ryukhin, and shouting for the entire boulevard to hear:

“Bastard!.. Bastard!”

The driver of a goods vehicle with an angry face was starting up his engine. Alongside, a cab driver was geeing up his horse, hitting it across the crupper with his lilac reins and shouting:

“Come and use the racehorse! I’ve taken people to the mental hospital before!”

All around the crowd was buzzing, discussing the unprecedented occurrence. In short, there was a vile, foul, seductive, swinish, scandalous scene, which ended only when the truck carried off from the gates of Griboyedov the unfortunate Ivan Nikolayevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Ryukhin.