Chapter
15
On
Thursday evening, when Nikanor Ivanovich was arrested for hiding foreign
currency in his apartment, he finally landed up in Stravinsky’s clinic.
But
he was not brought here directly. He was first taken to some other place.
Bulgakov does not mention the name of this place but it is understood that it
was the office of secret service. They ask him questions: first in a loving
manner and then in angry tone.
Suddenly
Nikanor Ivanovich spots Koroviev in a corner of this office, who was mocking at
him from behind an almirah.
Nikanor
Ivanovich’s mental condition deteriorates to such an extent that he had to be
taken to Stravinsky’s clinic.
Nikanor
Ivanovich was given a sedative and in his sleep he sees a dream…a trial was going
on in a theatre…people were giving foreign currency which they had hoarded somewhere.
Here,
we should notice a few things about this chapter:
The
inquiry officers use affectionate as well as terrorizing means of extracting
information from under trials;
The
interrogations would often take place in open theatres and people would invariably
confess to the crimes (this was the practice in Stalin’s time);
Bulgakov
emphasizes the importance of eyes, saying that eyes are mirror of the soul, no
matter how hard core the criminal is, the moment a question is put to him, his
eyes give some sort of indication of the turmoil that is taking place in his
heart, and then he is caught;
Bulgakov
points towards the craze for foreign currency, the tendency for hoarding and
stresses that the foreign currency is going to be of no use to them hence it is
better to surrender it to the authorities.
Nikanor
Ivanovich, though had not accepted any foreign currency but he had taken bribe,
he makes sure that there are no witnesses and then he hides this amount in the
ventilator of his lavatory. There was a general tendency towards earning easy
money, but they were also scared of witnesses.
The
final paragraph of the chapter is very beautiful. It says that Nikanor
Ivanovich sees a dream in the early hours of Friday that the Sun was going down
behind the bald mountain and double rows of the armed forces had surrounded this
mountain….
A
smooth transition from the modern times to the ancient times….the reader is
taken back to Yerushalem…
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें
टिप्पणी: केवल इस ब्लॉग का सदस्य टिप्पणी भेज सकता है.