9. Korovyev's Tricks

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, Chairman of the Housing Association of No. 302 bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow – where the late Berlioz had been resident – had been having the most dreadfully busy time, starting from the previous night, between Wednesday and Thursday.

At midnight, as we already know, the commission of which Zheldybin was a part came to the building, summoned Nikanor Ivanovich, informed him of Berlioz’s death, and set off with him for apartment No. 50.

There the sealing of the dead man’s manuscripts and property was carried out. Neither Grunya, the maid, who lived out, nor the frivolous Stepan Bogdanovich was in the apartment at that time. The commission announced to Nikanor Ivanovich that it would take the dead man’s manuscripts away for sorting, that his living space – that is, three rooms (the jeweller’s wife’s former study, living room and dining room) – was to pass into the hands of the Housing Association and that his property was subject to storage in the space referred to pending the announcement of the heirs.

The news of Berlioz’s death spread throughout the entire building with a sort of supernatural speed, and from seven o’clock in the morning of the Thursday people began ringingBosoi on the telephone and then also appearing in person with statements containing claims to the dead man’s living space. And in the course of two hours Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such statements.

In them were included entreaties, threats, slanders, denunciations, promises to carry out refurbishment at people’s own expense, references to unbearably crowded conditions and the impossibility of living in the same apartment as villains. Among other things, there was a description, stunning in its artistic power, of the theft of some ravioli, which had been stuffed directly into a jacket pocket, in apartment No. 31, two vows to commit suicide and one confession to a secret pregnancy.

People called Nikanor Ivanovich out into the hallway of his apartment, took him by the sleeve, whispered things to him, winked and promised not to remain in his debt.

This torment continued until just after midday, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply fled from his apartment to the House Committee’s office by the gates, but when he saw they were lying in wait for him there too, he ran away from there as well. Having somehow beaten off those who followed on his heels across the asphalted courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich gave them the slip in entrance No. 6 and went up to the fourth floor, which was where this damned apartment No. 50 was located.

After recovering his breath on the landing, the corpulent Nikanor Ivanovich rang the bell, but nobody opened the door to him. He rang again and then again, and started grumbling and quietly cursing. But even then nobody opened up. Nikanor Ivanovich’s patience cracked, and, taking from his pocket a bunch of duplicate keys that belonged to the House Committee, he opened the door with his masterful hand and went in.

“Hey, housemaid!” shouted Nikanor Ivanovich in the semidarkness of the hallway. “What’s your name? Grunya, is it? Are you here?”

No one responded.

Nikanor Ivanovich then got a folding measuring rod from his briefcase, after that freed the study door from its seal, and took a stride into the study. Take a stride he certainly did, but he stopped in astonishment in the doorway and even gave a start.

At the dead man’s desk sat a stranger – a skinny, lanky citizen in a little checked jacket, a jockey’s cap and a pince-nez… well, in short, him.

“Who would you be, Citizen?” asked Nikanor Ivanovich in fright.

“Well I never! Nikanor Ivanovich!” yelled the unexpected citizen in a jangling tenor, and, leaping up, he greeted the Chairman with a forcible and sudden handshake. This greeting did not gladden Nikanor Ivanovich in the slightest.

“I’m sorry,” he began suspiciously, “who would you be? Are you someone official?”

“Oh dear, Nikanor Ivanovich!” exclaimed the stranger earnestly. “What is someone official or someone unofficial? It all depends on the point of view you look at the matter from. It’s all variable and conditional, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I’m someone unofficial, but tomorrow, lo and behold, I’m official! And sometimes it’s the other way round, and how!”

This disquisition did not satisfy the Chairman of the House Committee in the slightest. Being by nature a suspicious man generally, he concluded that the citizen expatiating before him was actually someone unofficial, and quite likely had no business being there.

“Just who would you be? What’s your name?” asked the Chairman more and more sternly, and he even began advancing on the stranger.

“My name,” responded the citizen, quite undismayed by the sternness, “is, well, let’s say Korovyev. Would you like a bite to eat, Nikanor Ivanovich? No standing on ceremony! Eh?”

“I’m sorry,” began the now indignant Nikanor Ivanovich, “what talk can there be of food!” (It must be admitted, unpleasant as it might be, that Nikanor Ivanovich was by nature somewhat on the rude side.) “Sitting in a dead man’s rooms isn’t allowed! What are you doing here?”

“Won’t you take a seat, Nikanor Ivanovich?” yelled the citizen, completely unabashed, and began fussing around, offering the Chairman an armchair.

In an absolute fury, Nikanor Ivanovich refused the armchair and shrieked:

“Just who are you?”

“I am acting, don’t you know, as interpreter to a foreign personage who has his residence in this Kpapartment,” said the man who had called himself Korovyev by way of introduction, and he clicked the heel of his unpolished, ginger-coloured boot.

Nikanor Ivanovich let his jaw drop. The presence in this apartment of some sort of foreigner, with an interpreter besides, was the most complete surprise for him, and he demanded explanations.

The interpreter explained willingly. The foreign artiste, Mr Woland, had been kindly invited by the Director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev, to spend the period of his engagement, approximately a week, in his apartment, about which he had already written to Nikanor Ivanovich the day before, with a request to arrange temporary registration for the foreigner while Likhodeyev himself went away to Yalta.

“He hasn’t written anything to me,” said the Chairman in amazement.

“You have a rummage-around in your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,” Korovyev suggested sweetly.

Shrugging his shoulders, Nikanor Ivanovich opened his briefcase and inside it discovered Likhodeyev’s letter.

“How can I possibly have forgotten about it?” mumbled Nikanor Ivanovich, gazing obtusely at the opened envelope.

“These things happen, these things happen, Nikanor Ivanovich!” Korovyev began jabbering. “Absent-mindedness, absent-mindedness and exhaustion, and high blood pressure, Nikanor Ivanovich, dear friend of ours! I’m dreadfully absentminded myself. I’ll tell you a few facts from my life story over a glass sometime – you’ll die laughing!”

“And when is Likhodeyev going to Yalta?”

“He’s already gone, he’s gone!” cried the interpreter. “He’s already on his way, you know! He’s already the devil knows where!” and here the interpreter began waving his arms about like the sails of a windmill.

Nikanor Ivanovich declared it was essential for him to see the foreigner in person, but to this he got a refusal from the interpreter: quite impossible. Busy. Training the cat.

“The cat I can show you, if you wish,” offered Korovyev.

Nikanor Ivanovich refused this in his turn, but the interpreter immediately put to the Chairman an unexpected, yet extremely interesting proposal.

In view of the fact that Mr Woland did not wish to stay in a hotel at any price, and was accustomed to expansive living, would the House Committee not let to him for a week, for the duration of Woland’s engagement in Moscow, the whole of the apartment – that is, the rooms of the dead man too?

“After all, it doesn’t matter to him, the dead man,” whispered Korovyev hoarsely. “This apartment, you must agree, Nikanor Ivanovich, is no use to him now.”

Nikanor Ivanovich objected, in something of a quandary, that, well, foreigners were supposed to stay at the Metropole, and certainly not in private apartments…

“I’m telling you, he’s as capricious as the devil knows what!” began Korovyev in a whisper. “He just doesn’t want to! He doesn’t like hotels! I’ve had them up to here, these foreign tourists!” Korovyev complained intimately, jabbing a finger at his sinewy neck. “Can you believe it, they’ve worn me out! They come here. and they’ll either do a load of spying, like the worst sons of bitches, or else they’ll get you down with their caprices: this isn’t right, and that isn’t right! But for your Association, Nikanor Ivanovich, it’ll be entirely beneficial and obviously profitable. And the money won’t hold him back.” Korovyev looked around, and then whispered in the Chairman’s ear: “A millionaire!”

There was clear, practical sense in the interpreter’s proposal; the proposal was very sound, but there was something amazingly unsound in the way the interpreter spoke and in his clothing, and in that loathsome, utterly useless pince-nez. As a consequence of this, there was some vague thing tormenting the Chairman’s soul, yet he nonetheless decided to accept the proposal. The fact of the matter is that the Housing Association was, alas, very much in deficit. Oil for the central heating needed to be laid in before the autumn, and where the money was to come from was unclear. But with the foreign tourist’s money they could quite likely manage.

Still, the businesslike and cautious Nikanor Ivanovich declared that first of all he would have to tie things up with the Foreign Tourist Office.

“I understand!” exclaimed Korovyev. “It’s got to be tied up! Without fail! Here’s the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, you tie things up straight away! And regarding the money, don’t be shy,” he added in a whisper, drawing the Chairman towards the telephone in the hall, “who on earth are you to take from, if not him? If you could see what a villa he has in Nice! When you go abroad next summer, make a special trip to take a look – you’ll be amazed!”

The business with the Foreign Tourist Office was settled over the telephone with an extraordinary speed that staggered the Chairman. It turned out that they already knew there of Mr Woland’s intention to stay in Likhodeyev’s private apartment, and had not the slightest objection to it.

“Well, marvellous!” yelled Korovyev.

Somewhat battered by his jabbering, the Chairman declared that the Housing Association agreed to let apartment No. 50 to the artiste Woland for a week for a payment of… Nikanor Ivanovich stumbled a little and said:

“For five hundred roubles a day.”

At this point Korovyev stunned the Chairman conclusively. With a furtive wink in the direction of the bedroom, from where the soft jumping of a heavy cat could be heard, he croaked:

“So, over a week, that works out as three and a half thousand?”

Nikanor Ivanovich thought he would add on: “Well, that’s quite an appetite you have there, Nikanor Ivanovich!” but Korovyev said something else entirely:

“What sort of sum is that? Ask for five, he’ll give it.”

Smirking in bewilderment, Nikanor Ivanovich himself failed to notice how he came to be at the dead man’s desk, where Korovyev, with the greatest speed and dexterity, drew up two copies of a contract. After that he flew into the bedroom with it and returned, whereupon both copies proved already to have been signed with a flourish by the foreigner. The Chairman too signed the contract. Here Korovyev asked for a receipt for five…

“In full, in full, Nikanor Ivanovich!.. Thousand roubles…” And with the words, unsuitable somehow for a serious matter, “Eins, zwei, drei!" he laid out five wads of nice new banknotes for the Chairman.

Counting took place, interspersed with Korovyev’s little jokes and silly remarks, such as “cash loves to be counted", “your own eye’s the best spy" and others of a similar kind.

When he had finished counting the money, the Chairman received the foreigner’s passport from Korovyev for the temporary registration, put it, and the contract, and the money away in his briefcase, and, somehow unable to restrain himself, asked bashfully for a complimentary ticket.

“Why of course!" roared Korovyev. “How many do you want, Nikanor Ivanovich, twelve, fifteen?"

The stunned Chairman explained that he only needed a couple of tickets, for himself and Pelageya Antonovna, his wife.

Korovyev immediately whipped out a notepad and dashed off a complimentary pass for two persons in the front row for Nikanor Ivanovich. And with his left hand the interpreter deftly thrust this pass upon Nikanor Ivanovich, while with his right he placed in the Chairman’s other hand a thick wad that made a crackling noise. Casting a look at it, Nikanor Ivanovich blushed deeply and began pushing it away.

“That’s not appropriate…” he mumbled.

“I simply won’t hear of it,” Korovyev started whispering right in his ear. “It’s not appropriate here, but it is among foreigners. You’ll offend him, Nikanor Ivanovich, and that’s awkward. You took the trouble…”

“It’s strictly prohibited,” whispered the Chairman very, very quietly, and he looked behind him.

“And where are the witnesses?” Korovyev whispered in the other ear. “I’m asking you, where are they? What’s the matter?”

It was then, as the Chairman subsequently maintained, that a miracle took place: the wad crawled into his briefcase all by itself. And next, somehow weak and even worn out, the Chairman found himself on the stairs. A whirlwind of thoughts was raging in his head. There, spinning around, were that villa in Nice and the trained cat, and the thought that there had indeed been no witnesses, and that Pelageya Antonovna would be pleased about the complimentary tickets. They were incoherent thoughts, but, all in all, pleasant ones. And nevertheless, from time to time, somewhere in the very depths of his soul some sort of needle would prick the Chairman. This was the needle of disquiet. Apart from that, right there on the stairs the Chairman was struck, as if by a seizure, by the thought: “But how on earth did the interpreter get into the study if there was a seal on the doors?! And how had he, Nikanor Ivanovich, not asked about it?” For some time the Chairman gazed like a lost sheep at the steps of the staircase, but then he decided to give it up as a bad job and not torment himself with such a complicated question.

As soon as the Chairman had left the apartment, a low voice was heard from the bedroom:

“I didn’t like that Nikanor Ivanovich. He’s a rogue and a cheat. Can something be done so he doesn’t come here again?”

“Messire, you only have to give the order!” Korovyev responded from somewhere, only not in a jangling, but in a very clear and sonorous voice.

And straight away the accursed interpreter turned up in the hall, dialled a number there and began speaking for some reason very piteously into the receiver:

“Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that the Chairman of our Housing Association at No. 302 bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, is speculating in foreign currency. At the present moment in his apartment, No. 35, there’s four hundred dollars wrapped in newspaper in the ventilation pipe in the lavatory. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant from apartment No. 11 of the aforesaid building. But I conjure you to keep my name a secret. I fear the revenge of the aforementioned Chairman.”

And he hung up, the villain!

What happened thereafter in apartment No. 50 is unknown, but what happened at Nikanor Ivanovich’s is known. Locking himself in his lavatory, he pulled the wad thrust upon him by the interpreter from his briefcase and checked that there were four hundred roubles in it. Nikanor Ivanovich wrapped this wad in a scrap of newspaper and stuck it into the ventilation passage.

Five minutes later the Chairman was sitting at the table in his little dining room. His wife brought in from the kitchen a neatly sliced herring, liberally sprinkled with spring onion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured out a wineglassful of vodka, drank it, poured out a second, drank it, caught up three pieces of herring on his fork… and just then there was a ring. But Pelageya Antonovna brought in a steaming saucepan, from a single glance at which it could immediately be guessed that inside, at the heart of the fiery borsch, was to be found the thing than which there is nothing more delicious in the world – a marrowbone.

Swallowing his saliva, Nikanor Ivanovich started growling like a dog:

“The devil take you! They don’t let you have a bite to eat. Don’t let anyone in – I’m out, out. Regarding the apartment, tell them to stop hanging around. There’ll be a meeting in a week.”

His wife ran into the hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, with a serving spoon, dragged it, the bone, now cracked along its length, out of the fire-spitting lake. And at that moment into the dining room came two citizens, and with them Pelageya Antonovna, for some reason very pale. One glance at the citizens, and Nikanor Ivanovich turned white as well and stood up.

“Where’s the loo?” asked the first man, concerned, and wearing a traditional white Russian shirt.

Something made a bang on the dining table (Nikanor Ivanovich had dropped the spoon onto the oilcloth).

“Here, here,” Pelageya Antonovna replied rapidly.

And the callers immediately headed for the corridor.

“But what’s the matter?” Nikanor Ivanovich asked quietly, following after the callers. “There can’t be anything untoward in our apartment. And your papers. I’m sorry…”

Without stopping, the first man showed Nikanor Ivanovich his papers, while at that same moment the second proved to be standing on a stool in the lavatory with his arm stuck into the ventilation passage. Nikanor Ivanovich’s eyes grew dim. The newspaper was removed, but in the wad there turned out to be not roubles, but some unknown currency, blue or green, and with pictures of some old man. Nikanor Ivanovich made it all out only vaguely, however, as he had spots of some sort swimming before his eyes.

“Dollars in the ventilation,” the first man said pensively, and asked Nikanor Ivanovich gently and politely: “Your little package?”

“No!” replied Nikanor Ivanovich in a terrible voice. “Planted by enemies!”

“It happens,” he, the first one, agreed, and, once again gently, he added: “Well then, you must hand in the rest.”

“I haven’t got any! I haven’t, I swear to God, I’ve never had them in my hands!” the Chairman exclaimed despairingly.

He rushed to the chest of drawers, pulled out a drawer with a crash, and from it his briefcase, exclaiming incoherently as he did so:

“Here’s the contract… that snake of an interpreter planted them… Korovyev. in the pince-nez!”

He opened the briefcase, looked into it, stuck his hand into it, turned blue in the face and dropped the briefcase into the borsch. There was nothing in the briefcase: not Styopa’s letter, nor the contract, nor the foreigner’s passport, nor the money, nor the complimentary tickets. In short, nothing except a folding measuring rod.

“Comrades!” cried the Chairman in a frenzy. “Arrest them! We’ve got unclean spirits in our building!”

And then at that point Pelageya Antonovna imagined who knows what; she clasped her hands together and exclaimed:

“Confess, Ivanych! You’ll get a reduction!”

With bloodshot eyes, Nikanor Ivanovich brought his fists up above his wife’s head, wheezing:

“Ooh, you damned fool!”

At this point he grew weak and dropped onto a chair, evidently deciding to submit to the inevitable.

At the same time, on the staircase landing, Timofei Kondratyevich Kvastsov was pressing first his ear, then his eye to the keyhole of the door of the Chairman’s apartment, racked with curiosity.

Five minutes later, the residents of the building who were in the courtyard saw the Chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceeding straight towards the gates of the building. They said Nikanor Ivanovich looked awful, that he was staggering like a drunken man as he passed by and was muttering something.

And another hour later, an unknown citizen came to apartment No. 11, at the very time when Timofei Kondratyevich was panting with pleasure as he told some other residents how the Chairman had been swept away; he beckoned with his finger for Timofei Kondratyevich to come out of the kitchen into the hall, said something to him, and together they disappeared.