The Master and Margarita (11 page)

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

“Anyhow,” grumbled Dvubratsky.

"The laddie must’ve got stuck on the Klyazma,” came the thick-voiced response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant, who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the pen-name of Bos”n George.

“Excuse me!” boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches, “but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in here. The meeting was set for ten o’clock, wasn’t it?”

“It’s nice now on the Klyazma,” Bos”n George needled those present, knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was everybody’s sore spot. “There’s nightingales singing already. I always work better in the country, especially in spring.”

“It’s the third year I’ve paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to this paradise, but there’s nothing to be spied amidst the waves,” the novelist leronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.

“Some are lucky and some aren’t,” the critic Ababkov droned from the window-sill.

Bos”n George’s little eyes lit up wim glee, and she said, softening her contralto: We mustn’t be envious, comrades. There’s twenty-two dachas[66] in all, and only seven more being built, and there’s three thousand of us in Massolit.”

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

“So you see,” the Bos”n went on, “what can be done? Naturally, it’s the most talented of us that got the dachas ...”

“The generals!” Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.

Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.

“Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,” Glukharev said behind him.

“Lavrovich has six to himself,” Deniskin cried out, “and the dining room’s panelled in oak!”

“Eh, that’s not the point right now,” Ababkov droned, “it’s that it’s half past eleven.”

A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich’s, found out that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 950, and of course found no one there.

“He might have called!” shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.

Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov’s, in an enormous room lit by thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had still recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.

On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on the third, a pile of stiffened rags.

Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich’s assistant in Massolit, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife’s side.

A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man’s apartment, where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all went to the morgue.

And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov’s after simply covering the dead man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?

No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally, were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but airless halls.

And exactly at midnight, in the first of these halls, something crashed, jangled, spilled, leaped. And all at once a high male voice desperately cried out “Hallelujah!” to the music. The famous Griboedov jazz band struck up. Sweat-covered faces seemed to brighten, it was as if the horses painted on the ceiling came alive, the lamps seemed to shine with added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance, and following them the veranda broke into dance.

Glukharev danced with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Quant danced, Zhukopov the novelist danced with some movie actress in a yellow dress.

Dragunsky danced, Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin danced with the enormous Bos”n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited guests danced, Muscovites and out-of-towners, the writer Johann from Kronstadt, a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director, with a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent representatives of the poetry section of Massolit danced – that is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky, Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak — young men of unknown profession, in crew cuts, with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very elderly danced, a shred of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him danced a sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.

Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: “Excuse me, citizen!” Somewhere through a megaphone a voice commanded: “One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas!

Home-style tripe!” The high voice no longer sang, but howled “Hallelujah!”

The clashing of golden cymbals in the band sometimes even drowned out the clashing of dishes which the dishwashers sent down a sloping chute to the kitchen. In short – hell.

And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.

But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it ... And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone’s bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you’re afraid, afraid ... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison! ...

And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table: “Berlioz!!” The jazz broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. “What, what, what, what?!!” “Berlioz!!!” And they began jumping up, exclaiming...

Yes, a wave of grief billowed up at the terrible news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once, straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram and send it off immediately.

But what telegram, may we ask, and where? And why send it? And where, indeed? And what possible need for any telegram does someone have whose flattened pate is now clutched in the dissector’s rubber hands, whose neck the professor is now piercing with curved needles? He’s dead, and has no need of any telegrams. It’s all over, let’s not burden the telegraph wires any more.

Yes, he’s dead, dead ... But, as for us, we’re alive!

Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began to subside, and somebody went back to his table and — sneakily at first, then openly – drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?

By going hungry? But, after all, we’re alive!

Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the jazz band dispersed, several journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that Zheldybin had come from the morgue. He had installed himself in the deceased’s office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who would replace Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned from the restaurant all twelve members of the board, and at the urgently convened meeting in Berlioz’s office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the hall with columns at Griboedov’s, of transporting the body from the morgue to that hall, of opening it to the public, and all else connected with the sad event.

And the restaurant began to live its usual nocturnal life and would have gone on living it until closing time, that is, until four o’clock in the morning, had it not been for an occurrence which was completely out of the ordinary and which struck the restaurant’s clientele much more than the news of Berlioz’s death.

The first to take alarm were the coachmen[67] waiting at the gates of the Griboedov house. One of them, rising on his box, was heard to cry out: “Hoo-ee! Just look at that!”

After which, from God knows where, a little light flashed by the cast-iron fence and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the tables began to get up and peer at it, and saw that along with the little light a white ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right up to the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at their tables, chunks of sterlet on their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who at that moment had stepped out of the restaurant coat room to have a smoke in the yard, stamped out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and stopped, smiling stupidly.

And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all, but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.

He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon bearing the image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich’s right cheek was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter’s hand.

The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly: “Hail, friends!” After which he peeked under the nearest table and exclaimed ruefully: “No, he’s not there!”

Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly: That’s it. Delirium tremens.”

And the second, a woman’s, frightened, uttered the words: “How could the police let him walk the streets like that?”

This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied: They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but I hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!” Here Ivan Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: “Brethren in literature!” (His hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) “Listen to me everyone! He has appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he’ll do untold harm!”

“What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?” voices came from all sides.

The consultant,” Ivan replied, “and this consultant just killed Misha Berlioz at the Patriarch’s Ponds.”

Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd gathered around Ivan’s flame.

“Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,” a soft and polite voice said over Ivan Nikolaevich’s ear, “tell me, what do you mean "killed"?

Who killed?”

“A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,” Ivan said, looking around.

“And what is his name?” came sofdy to Ivan’s ear. That’s just it – his name!” Ivan cried in anguish. “If only I knew his name! I didn’t make out his name on his visiting card ... I only remember the first letter, "W", his name begins with "W"! What last name begins with "W"?” Ivan asked himself, clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: “Wi, we, wa ... Wu

... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?” The hair on Ivan’s head began to crawl with the tension.

“Wolf?” some woman cried pitifully.

Ivan became angry.

“Fool!” he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. "What has Wolf got to do with it? Wolf’s not to blame for anything! Wo, wa ... No, I’ll never remember this way! Here’s what, citizens: call the police at once, let them send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And don’t forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat ... And meanwhile I’ll search Griboedov’s, I sense that he’s here!”

Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here someone said: “Call a doctor!” and someone’s benign, fleshy face, clean shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.

“Comrade Homeless,” the face began in a guest speaker’s voice, “calm down! You’re upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich ...

no, say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you’ll forget...”

“You,” Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, "but don’t you understand that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your foolishness! Cretin!”

“Pardon me. Comrade Homeless!...” the face replied, blushing, retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.

“No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,” Ivan Nikolaevich said with quiet hatred.

A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the ear.