Read Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories Online

Authors: Mikhail Bulgakov

Tags: #Literary, #General, #Short Stories (Single Author), #Fiction

Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories (5 page)

BOOK: Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories
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Moscow
, 1923

 

 

 

THE
MOSCOW
ABYSS.
TWANVLAM

 

Pitch dark.
Clanging.
Rumbling.
Wheels still turning, but slower
and slower.
Now they've stopped. That's it. The end to end all ends.
Nowhere else to go.
This is
Moscow
.
M-O-S-C-O-W.

A moment's attention to a long powerful
sound swelling up in the darkness.
Mind-splitting reverberations in my brain:

 

C'est
la
lu-u-tte
fina
-a-le!

...
L'lnternationa
-a-a-le!!

 

Here too. Just as hoarse and terrifying:

 

The
Internationale
!

 

A row of goods vans in the dark. The students'
carriage had gone quiet...

I took the plunge at last and jumped down. A soft body
slipped away from under me with a groan. Then I got caught on a rail and fell
even deeper down. Heavens, was there really an abyss below me?

Grey bodies heaved monstrous loads onto their
shoulders and flowed off.

A woman's voice:

"Oh, dear, I can't..."

In the misty darkness I made out a medical student.
She had travelled with me, hunched up, for three days.

"Allow me to carry that."

For a moment the black abyss seemed to shudder and
turn green. How much had she got in there?

"A hundredweight of flour... They trod it
down."

Staggered along, zigzagging, spots before the eyes,
towards the lights.

They broke into beams. The weird grey snake crawled
towards them.
A glass dome.
A long
roaring sound.
Blinding light.
A ticket.
A gate.
Exploding voices.
Curses falling heavily.
More darkness.
More light.
Darkness.
Moscow
!
Moscow
.

The cart was loaded up to the church domes, to the
stars in velvet. It clattered along, while the demonic voices of grey bodies
cursed it and the man urging on the horse. A flock followed behind. The medical
student's long whitish coat appeared now to one side, now to the other. But in
the end we emerged from the tangle of wheels, and left the bearded faces
behind. We rattled on over the potholed pavement. Pitch black. Where were we?
What place was this? Never mind. What did it matter?
Moscow
was all black, black,
black
. Silent buildings stared tightly and coldly. A church
loomed, looking confused and worried. It was swallowed up in the dark.

Two in the morning.
Where can I spend the night? All those houses! What
could be easier
...
Just knock at any door. Could you
put me up for the night? I can just imagine it!

Voice of the medical student:

"Where're you going?"

"Don't know."

"What do you mean?"

There are some good souls in this world. "The
person who rents the next room is still away in the country, see. You could
stay there for one night..."

"Oh, how kind of you.
I'll find my friends tomorrow."
Cheered up a bit after that.
And it's funny, but as soon as
I'd found somewhere to
stay,
I began to feel the
effects of losing three nights' sleep.

 

*

 

Two bulbs fracture the shadows on a bridge. We plunge
into darkness again.
A street-lamp.
A
grey fence with a poster.
Huge garish letters.
Goodness, what's that word?
Twanvlam
.
What on earth does it mean?

Twelfth Anniversary of Vladimir
Mayakovsky
.

The cart stopped. They took off some luggage. I stared
at the word, entranced. A good word! And I, provincial wretch that I am, had
sniggered in the mountains at the ASS head! What the blazes! But
Moscow
is not as black as
its papooses. Sudden urge to imagine
Vlam
. Never seen
him, but I know ... I know. He's about forty, very short and bald, wears
glasses and is always dashing about. Short trousers turned up.
Works in an office.
Doesn't smoke.
Has a large flat with portieres, now compulsorily shared with a lawyer, who is
a lawyer no longer, but the commandant of a government
building.
Lives in a study with an unheated fireplace.
Likes
butter, comic verse and a tidy room.
Favourite writer — Conan
Doyle.
Favourite opera —
Eugene One-gin.
Cooks himself rissoles on a primus-stove.
Can't stand the
lawyer-commandant, and dreams of getting him out some day, marrying and living
happily ever after in five rooms.

The cart creaked, shuddered, moved on for a bit,
then
stopped again. Neither storm nor tempest could daunt
the immortal citizen Ivan
Ivanovich
Ivanov
. By a building, which seemed in the darkness and
fear to have about fifteen storeys, the cartload grew perceptibly thinner. In
the inky blackness a figure rushed from it into an entrance and whispered:
"What about the butter, Dad?
And the lard, Dad?
And the flour, Dad?"

Dad stood in the darkness, muttering: "That's the
lard, and the butter, and the wheat, and the rye..."

Then out of the pitch dark flashed Dad's
thumb, which peeled off twenty banknotes for the drayman.

There will be other tempests. Raging tempests! And
everyone may perish.
But not Dad.

The cart turned into a huge platform which engulfed
the medical student's sack and my travelling-bag. And we sat down, legs
dangling, and rode off into the darkness.

 

HOUSE No. 4, ENTRANCE 6, 2ND FLOOR, FLAT 50, ROOM 7

 

To tell the truth I've no idea why I crossed the whole
of
Moscow
to
get to this huge building. The document I had carefully brought with me from
the mountain kingdom was valid for all six-storey buildings, or rather, for
none.

The cage of the dead lift in entrance six.
Got my breath back here.
A door with two notices.
One says "Flat 50".
The other an enigmatic "F. Arts".
Must get my breath back again.
My fate is about to be
decided.

I pushed open the unlocked door. In the semi-dark hall
was a huge box full of papers and a grand-piano top. A room flashed past, full
of women and wreathed in smoke. There was a short burst of typing.
Silence.
Then a deep voice said: "
Meyerhold
."

"Where's ASS Lit.?" I asked, leaning on the wooden
barrier.

The woman by the barrier shrugged her shoulders
irritably. She didn't know. The other one didn't know either.
A long dark corridor.
I groped my way along by guesswork.
Opened one door — a bathroom. The next door had a scrap of paper nailed to it.
Askew, one corner turned up.
AS.
Thank the Lord. Yes,
ASS Lit. My pulse started racing again. Voices inside: mumble-mumble-mumble...

I closed my eyes and imagined the inside. This is what
I saw.
In the first room — a carpet, an enormous writing desk
and a bookcase.
Awesome silence.
At the desk a
secretary — probably one of the names I know from magazines.
Then
other doors.
The section head's office.
Even more awesome silence.
Bookcases.
Who's that sitting in an armchair?
ASS Lit.?
In
Moscow
?
Yes, Maxim Gorky.
The
Lower Depths.
Mother.
Who else?
Mumble-mumble-mumble.
They're having a talk. Or perhaps it's
Bryusov
and
Bely
?
(17)

I knock lightly on the door. The mumble-mumble stops
to be followed by a hollow "Come in!"
Then more
mumble-mumble.
I turn the knob and it comes off in my hand. I'm
petrified. A fine start to my career! Breaking the door knob! I knock again.
"Come in!"

"I can't!" I shout.

A voice comes through the keyhole:

"Turn the knob right, then left. You've locked us
in..."

Right, left, the door gives slightly, and...

 

 

 

I'M TOP MAN AFTER
GORKY

 

I was in the wrong place! This couldn't be ASS Lit!
A summer-cottage wicker chair, an empty wooden desk, an open
cupboard, a small table upside down in the corner.
And
two men.
One was tall and very young in a pince-nez. His puttees stood
out. They were white, and he was holding a battered briefcase and a sack. The
other man, greying and elderly with bright, almost smiling
eyes,
wore a Caucasian fur cap and an army greatcoat. The coat was covered with holes
and the pockets were hanging in tatters. He wore grey puttees and patent
leather dancing shoes with little bows.

My lack-lustre gaze passed over the faces, then the
walls, looking for another door. But there was none. The room with the broken
wires had no windows.
Tout.
In a
rather thick voice:

"Is this ASS Lit.?"

"Yes."

"Could I see the head, please?"

"That's me," the old man replied
affectionately.

He picked up a large page of a
Moscow
newspaper from the desk, tore a piece
off, sprinkled some tobacco on it, rolled himself a cigarette and asked me:

"Got a match?"

I struck a match automatically, and then under the old
man's affectionately enquiring gaze took the precious paper out of my pocket.

The old man bent over it, and I racked my brains
wondering who he could be. Most of all he looked like Emile Zola without a
beard.

The young man also read the paper over the old man's
shoulder. They finished and looked at me with a kind of puzzled respect.

Old man:

"So you
?..
"

"I'd like a job in ASS Lit.," I replied.

"Splendid! Well, I never!" the young man
exclaimed in delight.

He took the old man aside and started whispering.
Mumble-mumble-mumble.

The old man spun round on his heels and grabbed a pen
off the desk. The young man said quickly:

"Write an application."

I had an application in my breast pocket. I handed it
over.

The old man flourished the pen. It made a scratching
sound and jerked, tearing the paper. He dipped it in a small bottle. But the
bottle was dry.

"Got a pencil?"

I handed him a pencil, and the head scrawled:

"Please appoint as Secretary of ASS Lit.
Signed..."

I stared open-mouthed at the dashing squiggle.

The young man plucked my sleeve.

"Hurry upstairs, before he goes. Quick."

I shot upstairs. Barged through the door, tore across
the room with the women and went into the office. The man sitting in the office
took my paper and scribbled: "Appt. seer."
Letter.
Squiggle. He yawned and said: "Downstairs."

I raced downstairs again in a tizzy.
Past the typewriter.
Then instead of a bass, a silvery soprano
said: "
Meyerhold
. October in the
Theatre..."

The young man was storming round the old man and
chortling.

"Did they appoint you? Fine! We'll see to it.
We'll see to everything!"

Then he clapped me on the shoulder:

"Don't worry! You'll get everything."

I have always detested familiarity and always been a
victim of it. But now I was so overwhelmed by what had
happened,
that all I could do was say weakly:

BOOK: Notes on the Cuff and Other Stories
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