10. News from Yalta

At the time misfortune overtook Nikanor Ivanovich, in the office of the Financial Director of the Variety, Rimsky, not far from No. 302 bis and on that same Sadovaya Street, there were two men: Rimsky himself, and the Variety’s manager, Varenukha.

The large office on the first floor of the theatre looked out onto Sadovaya from two windows, and from another – right behind the back of the Financial Director, who was sitting at the desk – onto The Variety’s summer garden, where there were refreshment bars, a shooting gallery and an open-air stage. The office’s furnishing, besides the desk, consisted of a bundle of old playbills hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water, four armchairs and a stand in a corner on which there stood an ancient dust-covered model of some revue. Well, and it goes without saying that, apart from all that, there was in the office a battered, peeling, fireproof safe of small size, to Rimsky’s lefthand side, next to the desk.

Rimsky, sitting at the desk, had been in a bad frame of mind since first thing in the morning, while Varenukha, in contrast, had been very animated and active in an especially restless sort of way. Yet at the same time there had been no outlet for his energy.

Varenukha was now hiding in the Financial Director’s office from the people seeking complimentary tickets, who made his life a misery, particularly on days when the programme changed. And today was just such a day.

As soon as the telephone started ringing, Varenukha would pick up the receiver and lie into it:

“Who? Varenukha? He’s not here. He’s left the theatre.”

“Will you please ring Likhodeyev again,” said Rimsky irritably.

“But he isn’t at home. I sent Karpov earlier. There’s nobody at the apartment.”

“The devil knows what’s going on,” hissed Rimsky, clicking away on the adding machine.

The door opened, and an usher dragged in a thick bundle of newly printed additional playbills. On the green sheets, in large red letters, was printed:

TODAY AND EVERY DAY

AT THE VARIETY THEATRE

AN ADDITION TO THE PROGRAMME

PROFESSOR WOLAND

PERFORMANCES OF BLACK MAGIC

WITH ITS COMPLETE EXPOSURE

Stepping back from the playbill he had thrown over the model, Varenukha admired it for a moment and ordered the usher to have all copies pasted up immediately.

“It’s good, garish,” remarked Varenukha after the usher’s departure.

“Well, I find this undertaking displeasing in the extreme,” grumbled Rimsky, casting malicious looks at the playbill through horn-rimmed spectacles, “and in general I’m surprised he’s been allowed to put it on!”

“No, Grigory Danilovich, you can’t say that: it’s a very shrewd move. The whole point here is the exposure.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, there’s no point here at all, and he’ll always go thinking up something of the sort! He could at least have shown us this magician. You, have you seen him? Where he dug him up from the devil only knows!”

It transpired that Varenukha, just like Rimsky, had not seen the magician. The day before, Styopa had come running (“like a madman” in Rimsky’s expression) to the Financial Director with a draft agreement already written, had ordered him there and then to copy it out and to issue the money. And this magician had cleared off, and nobody had seen him except Styopa himself.

Rimsky took out his watch, saw that it said five past two, and flew into an absolute fury. Really! Likhodeyev had rung at about eleven o’clock, said he would be arriving in half an hour, and not only had he not arrived, he had also vanished from his apartment!

“My work’s being held up!” Rimsky was now growling, jabbing his finger at a heap of unsigned papers.

“He hasn’t fallen under a tram, like Berlioz, has he?” said Varenukha, holding up to his ear a receiver in which could be heard ringing tones, rich, prolonged and completely hopeless.

“That would be a good thing, actually…” said Rimsky, scarcely audibly through his teeth.

At that very moment a woman came into the office wearing a uniform jacket, peaked cap, a black skirt and soft shoes. From a small bag on her belt the woman took a little white square and a notebook and asked:

“Who’s Variety? Super-lightning for you. Signature.”

Varenukha dashed off some sort of squiggle in the woman’s notebook and, as soon as the door had slammed behind her, he opened up the little square.

Having read the telegram, he blinked his eyes a bit and passed the little square to Rimsky.

Printed in the telegram was the following: “Yalta. Moscow. Variety. Today half eleven appeared CID nightshirted trousered bootless mental brunet claimed Likhodeyev Director Variety. Lightning-wire Yalta CID whereabouts Director Likhodeyev.”

“Well I never!” exclaimed Rimsky, and added: “Another surprise!”

“A False Dmitry,” Varenukha said, and began speaking into the mouthpiece of the telephone: “Telegraph Office? The Variety’s account. Take a super-lightning. Are you listening?. “Yalta CID. Director Likhodeyev Moscow. Financial Director Rimsky’.”

Regardless of the communication about the impostor in Yalta, Varenukha once more set about hunting for Styopa on the telephone anywhere and everywhere, and naturally could find him nowhere.

At the precise time when Varenukha, holding the receiver in his hand, was pondering over where else he might phone, that same woman who had brought the first lightning telegram came in and handed Varenukha a new little envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read through what was printed on it and then whistled.

“What else?” asked Rimsky with a nervous jerk.

Varenukha handed him the telegram in silence, and the Financial Director saw in it the words: “Implore believe. Cast Yalta by hypnosis Woland. Lightning-wire CID confirmation identity. Likhodeyev”.

Rimsky and Varenukha reread the telegram with their heads touching, and when they had reread it, they stared at one another in silence.

“Citizens!” the woman suddenly grew angry. “Sign for it, and then you can be silent for as long as you like! It’s lightning telegrams I’m delivering, you know.”

Without taking his eyes off the telegram, Varenukha dashed off a wonky signature in the notebook and the woman disappeared.

“But you were talking to him on the telephone just after eleven?” began the manager in complete bewilderment.

“What a ridiculous idea!” cried Rimsky stridently. “Whether I was talking to him or not, he cannot be in Yalta now! It’s ridiculous!”

“He’s drunk…” said Varenukha.

“Who’s drunk?” asked Rimsky, and again they both stared at one another.

Some impostor or madman was sending telegrams from Yalta, of that there was no doubt. But this is what was strange: how ever did the hoaxer in Yalta know Woland, who had arrived in Moscow only yesterday? How did he know about the link between Likhodeyev and Woland?

“‘Hypnosis.’” Varenukha repeated the word from the telegram. “How on earth does he know about Woland?” He blinked his eyes for a bit and suddenly exclaimed decisively. “No, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!”

“Where’s he staying, this Woland, damn him?” asked Rimsky.

Varenukha got through to the Foreign Tourist Office without delay and, to Rimsky’s utter amazement, announced that Woland was staying in Likhodeyev’s apartment. After that, having dialled the number of Likhodeyev’s apartment, Varenukha spent a long time listening to the intense ringing tones in the receiver. From somewhere in the distance in the midst of those tones a grave, gloomy voice could be heard singing: "… the cliffs, my refuge.” and Varenukha decided that a voice from a radio play had broken through into the telephone network from somewhere.

"The apartment’s not answering,” said Varenukha, hanging up the receiver, "perhaps we might try ringing.”

He did not finish the sentence. In the doorway appeared that same woman again, and the two of them, both Rimsky and Varenukha, stood up to meet her, while she took out from her bag this time not a white, but some sort of dark little sheet of paper.

"Now this is getting interesting,” said Varenukha through his teeth, while his eyes followed the hastily departing woman. The first to take possession of the sheet was Rimsky.

Against the dark background of the photographic paper the black lines of writing stood out distinctly:

"Proof my handwriting my signature. Wire confirmation establish secret surveillance Woland. Likhodeyev”.

Over the twenty years of his work in theatres Varenukha had seen all sorts of things, but here he felt as if his mind were being covered with a shroud, and he did not manage to utter anything but the everyday and, moreover, completely absurd phrase:

"This cannot be!”

But Rimsky acted differently. He rose, opened the door and bellowed through it to the messenger-girl sitting on a stool: "Don’t admit anyone except postmen!” and locked the door.

Next he got a heap of papers out of the desk and began painstakingly comparing the thick, left-sloping letters from the photogram with the letters in Styopa’s resolutions and in his signatures, complete with a spiralling squiggle. Varenukha, dropping onto the desk, breathed hotly on Rimsky’s cheek.

“The handwriting’s his,” the Financial Director said firmly at last, and Varenukha responded like an echo:

“His.”

Peering into Rimsky’s face, the manager wondered at the change that had taken place in that face. It was as if the Financial Director, thin as he was, had become still thinner and had even aged, and his eyes in their horn rims had lost their normal prickliness, with not only alarm appearing in them, but even sadness too.

Varenukha did all the things a man is supposed to do at moments of great astonishment. He ran around the office, he twice raised his arms like a man being crucified, he drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe, and he exclaimed:

“I don’t understand! I don’t understand! I do not un-der-stand!”

And Rimsky looked out of the window, thinking hard about something. The Financial Director’s position was a very difficult one. There was a need, here and now, on the spot, to come up with ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena.

Narrowing his eyes a little, the Financial Director pictured Styopa, in his nightshirt and bootless, clambering at around eleven thirty that day into some unprecedented super-high-speed aeroplane, and then him, Styopa, again, and also at eleven thirty, standing in his socks at the aerodrome in Yalta… The devil knew what was going on!

Perhaps it had not been Styopa who had spoken to him on the telephone today from his very own apartment? No, it had been Styopa talking! How could he fail to recognize Styopa’s voice! And even if it had not been Styopa talking today, it had after all been no further back than yesterday, towards evening, that Styopa had come from his own office into this very office with that idiotic agreement and had irritated the Financial Director with his frivolity. How could he have gone away or flown off without saying anything at the theatre? And even if he had flown off yesterday evening, he would not have arrived by midday today. Or would he?

“How many kilometres to Yalta?” asked Rimsky.

Varenukha ceased his running and yelled:

“Thought of it! Thought of it already! To Sevastopol by rail is about fifteen hundred kilometres. And to Yalta add on another eighty kilometres. Well, by air, of course, it" s less.”

Hm. Yes… There could be no question of any trains. But what then? A fighter plane? Who’d allow a bootless Styopa into what kind of fighter plane? Why? Perhaps he took his boots off after flying into Yalta? But again: why? And he wouldn’t be allowed into a fighter plane even with his boots on! And anyway, a fighter plane was neither here nor there. It had been written, after all, that he had appeared at the CID at half-past eleven in the morning, but he’d been speaking on the telephone in Moscow. hang on. here the face of his watch arose before Rimsky’s eyes. He was trying to recall where the hands had been. Shocking! It was at twenty past eleven. So what’s the upshot, then? If one assumes that instantly after the conversation Styopa had dashed to the aerodrome and reached it in, say, five minutes, which is also, incidentally, unthinkable, then the upshot is that the aeroplane, after getting under way at once, had, in five minutes, covered more than a thousand kilometres. In an hour, therefore, it covers more than twelve thousand kilometres!! That cannot be, and so he is not in Yalta.

So what remains? Hypnosis? There is no such hypnosis on earth that could fling a man a thousand kilometres away! Accordingly, is he imagining he’s in Yalta? Maybe he is indeed imagining it, but is the Yalta CID imagining it too?! Well, no, excuse me, that doesn’t happen!.. But they’re sending telegrams from there, aren’t they?

The Financial Director’s face was absolutely terrible. At this time the door handle was being turned and tugged from without, and the messenger-girl could be heard shouting desperately outside the doors:

“You can’t! I won’t let you in! You’ll have to kill me first! There’s a meeting!”

Rimsky gained control of himself as best he could, picked up the telephone receiver and said into it:

“I want to make a call of priority urgency to Yalta.”

“Clever!” exclaimed Varenukha in his mind.

But the call to Yalta did not take place. Rimsky hung up the receiver and said:

“As if on purpose, the line’s out of order.”

It was evident that for some reason the damage to the line had particularly upset him and even made him pause for thought. After a little think, he again took hold of the receiver with one hand, and with the other began noting down what he said into the receiver:

“Take a super-lightning. The Variety. Yes. Yalta. The CID. Yes. ‘Today around eleven thirty Likhodeyev spoke me telephone Moscow, stop. Afterwards not come work and unable find him telephones, stop. Handwriting confirmed, stop. Surveillance named artiste undertaken. Financial Director Rimsky’.”

“Very clever!” thought Varenukha, but he had not had time to have a proper think before these words ran through his head: “It’s stupid! He can’t be in Yalta!”

Rimsky, in the mean time, had done the following: put all the telegrams that had been received and a copy of his own neatly together into a bundle, placed the bundle in an envelope, sealed it, inscribed a few words on it and entrusted it to Varenukha, saying:

“Deliver this personally, Ivan Savelyevich, right away. Let them sort it out there.”

“Now that really is clever!” Varenukha thought, and he put the envelope away in his briefcase. Then he once again dialled the number of Styopa’s apartment on the telephone, just in case, listened closely, and began joyfully and mysteriously winking and pulling faces. Rimsky craned his neck.

“Can I speak to the artiste Woland?” asked Varenukha sweetly.

“He’s busy,” the receiver replied in a jangling voice. “Who is it enquiring?”

“The manager of the Variety, Varenukha.”

“Ivan Savelyevich?” the receiver exclaimed joyfully. “Dreadfully pleased to hear your voice! How are you?”

“Merci” replied Varenukha in astonishment, “and who am I talking to?”

“His assistant, assistant and interpreter, Korovyev,” the receiver crackled, “entirely at your service, dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Do with me as you will. And so?”

“Forgive me, but is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev at home just now?”

“Alas, he isn’t! He isn’t!” cried the receiver. “He’s gone away.”

“Where to?”

“Into the country for a drive.”

“Wh… what? Dr… drive?… And when will he be back?”

“He said, ‘I’ll get a breath of fresh air and be back’!”

“Right…” said Varenukha in bewilderment, “merci. Be so kind as to tell Monsieur Woland that his performance today is in part three.”

“Certainly. Of course. Absolutely. Immediately. Most definitely. I’ll tell him,” the receiver rapped out jerkily.

“All the best,” said Varenukha in surprise.

“Please accept,” said the receiver, “my very best, warmest greetings and wishes! Success! Good luck! Perfect happiness! Best!”

“Well, of course! Like I said!” shouted the manager in excitement. “No Yalta whatsoever: he’s gone off to the country!”

“Well, if that’s so,” began the Financial Director, turning white with anger, “then that really is the sort of swinish trick there’s no name for!”

At this point the manager jumped up into the air and shouted in such a way that Rimsky gave a start:

“Now I remember! Now I remember! A café called ‘Yalta’ has opened in Pushkino selling meat pasties! Everything becomes clear! He’s gone there, got drunk, and now he’s sending telegrams from there!”

“Well, this really is too much,” replied Rimsky with a twitch in his cheek, and in his eyes there burned a genuine, serious malice. “Well then, this trip is going to cost him dear!” Suddenly he faltered and added uncertainly: “But then how, I mean, the CID…”

“That’s nonsense! His own little pranks,” the expansive manager interrupted, then asked: “And the packet, shall I take it?”

“Definitely.”

And again the door opened, and that same woman came in. “Her!” thought Rimsky, for some reason with anguish. And they both rose to meet the postwoman.

In the telegram this time were the words:

“Thanks confirmation. Send me five hundred urgently CID. Flying Moscow tomorrow. Likhodeyev”.

“He’s out of his mind.” said Varenukha weakly.

But Rimsky jangled a key, took the money from a drawer in the safe, counted off five hundred roubles, rang the bell, entrusted the money to a messenger and sent him to the telegraph office.

“Pardon me, Grigory Danilovich,” said Varenukha, unable to believe his eyes, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to send the money.”

“It’ll come back,” responded Rimsky quietly, “but he’s going to pay dearly for this little picnic.” And, indicating Varenukha’s briefcase, he added: “Go, Ivan Savelyevich, don’t delay.”

And Varenukha ran out of the office with the briefcase.

He went down to the ground floor and, seeing the longest of queues at the box office, he learnt from the cashier that she was expecting the house to be full in an hour’s time, because the public had simply poured in just as soon as it had seen the additional playbill; he ordered the cashier to reserve from sale the thirty best seats in the boxes and the stalls, and then, slipping out of the box office, and there beating off the importunate complimentary ticket seekers as he went, he dived into his little office to grab his cap. At that moment the telephone started crackling.

“Yes!” cried Varenukha.

“Ivan Savelyevich?” the receiver enquired in the most repellent nasal voice.

“He’s not in the theatre!” Varenukha was about to cry, but the receiver immediately interrupted him:

“Don’t act the fool, Ivan Savelyevich, just listen. Don’t take those telegrams anywhere and don’t show them to anyone.”

“Who’s this speaking?” roared Varenukha. “Stop these tricks, Citizen! You’ll be detected straight away! Your number?”

“Varenukha,” still that same vile voice responded, “do you understand Russian? Don’t take the telegrams anywhere.”

“Ah, so you’re not giving up?” shouted the manager in fury. “Well, look out then! You’ll pay for this!” He shouted out some further threat, but fell silent, because he sensed there was no longer anyone in the receiver listening to him.

At this point it somehow began getting dark quickly in the little office. Varenukha ran out, slammed the door behind him and headed through the side entrance into the summer garden.

The manager was excited and full of energy. After the insolent telephone call he was in no doubt that a band of hooligans was playing dirty tricks, and that these tricks were connected to Likhodeyev’s disappearance. A desire to expose the villains was choking the manager, and, strange as it might seem, there arose in him a sense of anticipation of something pleasant. This can happen when a man seeks to become the centre of attention, to bear some sensational piece of news.

In the garden the wind blew into the manager’s face and threw sand in his eyes, as though trying to block his path, as though in warning. On the first floor a window frame slammed so hard that the panes almost flew out, and there was an alarming rustling in the tops of the maples and limes. It grew darker and fresher. The manager wiped his eyes and saw that crawling low over Moscow was a yellow-bellied storm cloud. A deep grumbling began in the distance.

No matter how much of a hurry Varenukha was in, an insuperable desire drew him to pop into the summertime public convenience for a second to check in passing whether the electrician had put a bulb in behind the grille.

After running past the shooting gallery, Varenukha entered the dense thicket of lilac bushes in which stood the bluish building of the public convenience. The electrician had proved to be a thorough man, for a bulb beneath the roof in the men’s section already had the metal grille fitted over it, but the manager was distressed by the fact that even in the darkness before the storm it was possible to make out that the walls were covered in writing in charcoal and pencil.

“Well, what ever is this for a…” the manager was about to begin, when suddenly he heard a voice behind him purring:

“Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?”

Varenukha gave a start, turned around and saw before him some short fat man with the physiognomy, as it appeared, of a cat.

“It’s me,” replied Varenukha inimically.

“Very, very pleased to meet you,” responded the fat, catlike man in a squeaky voice, and suddenly, swinging around, he clapped Varenukha on the ear so hard that the cap flew off the manager’s head and vanished without trace into the opening of a toilet seat.

The fat man’s clap made the whole toilet light up for a moment with a flickering light, and a clap of thunder echoed it in the sky. Then there was another flash, and a second man appeared before the manager – small, but with athletic shoulders, flaming-red hair, a cataract in one eye and a fang in his mouth. This second one, evidently being left-handed, whacked the manager’s other ear. In response there was once again a crash in the sky, and torrential rain tumbled down onto the toilet’s wooden roof.

“What is it, Comra…” the manager whispered, half out of his mind, but realizing straight away that the word “Comrades” was not at all suitable for bandits who had attacked a man in a public convenience, he croaked: “Citiz…” then grasped that they did not deserve this appellation either, and received a third terrible blow from who knows which of the two, so that blood gushed out of his nose onto his tolstovka.

“What have you got in your briefcase, you parasite?” the one like a cat cried shrilly. “Telegrams? And were you warned over the phone not to take them anywhere? Were you warned, I’m asking you?”

“I war… were… werned…” replied the manager, gasping for breath.

“And you still ran along? Give the briefcase here, you scum!” cried the second one in that same nasal voice that he had heard on the telephone, wrenching the briefcase out of Varenukha’s shaking hands.

And together they picked the manager up by the arms, dragged him out of the garden and tore down Sadovaya with him. The thunderstorm was raging at full power, the water was being hurled down into the drain holes with a crashing and a howling, there was a bubbling everywhere, waves were swelling, it lashed down from roofs, without using the drainpipes, its foaming torrents running out from gateways. Every living thing had cleared off out of Sadovaya, and there was no one to save Ivan Savelyevich. Jumping through murky rivers and lit up by streaks of lightning, in one second the bandits had dragged the half-dead manager as far as building No. 302 bis and had flown with him into the gateway, where two barefooted women were pressed up against the wall, holding their shoes and stockings in their hands. Then they dashed into entrance No. 6, and Varenukha, close to madness, was carried up to the fourth floor and thrown onto the ground in the semi-darkness of the very familiar hallway of Styopa Likhodeyev’s apartment.

Here both brigands scarpered, and in their place there appeared in the hallway a completely naked girl – red-haired, with burning, phosphorescent eyes.

Varenukha realized that this was the most terrible of all the things that had happened to him and, starting to moan, he recoiled towards the wall. But the girl came right up close to the manager and put the palms of her hands on his shoulders. Varenukha’s hair stood up on end, because even through the cloth of his tolstovka, cold and soaked with water, he felt that these hands were colder still, that they were cold with the cold of ice.

“Let me give you a kiss,” the girl said tenderly, and there were shining eyes right next to his. Then Varenukha fainted away and did not feel any kiss.