Chapter – 9
Koroviev's Stunts
So, Woland’s activities have started in Moscow.
First he occupies flat No. 50 of building No. 302, in which Berlioz used to
live along with Stepan Likhodeev.
Woland and his team stay in this flat for three
days and we shall see what all they do; how they make Moscow feel about their
presence.
We shall see what happens the very next day
after Berlioz’s tragic death:
·
Stepan Likhodeev is thrown into Yalta;
·
A transformation has started taking place in Ivan’s
thinking.
All this happens at around twelve in
the morning.
What happens in building No. 302?
The president of housing society of
building No. 302, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, was busy during the intermittent
night of Wednesday and Thursday. At around midnight a committee comes to the
building No. 302. Jheldibin, who was going to be the president of MASSOLIT in
place of late Berlioz was also there in the committee. They informed Nikanor
Ivanovich about Berlioz’s death. His papers and other things are sealed, the
two rooms which he was using, were also sealed.
And the news about Berlioz’s death
spreads like wild fire. Everyone is trying to take advantage of this opportunity.
President’s office is flooded with applications for these two rooms.
From here we come to know that the
action of the novel has started on Wednesday – Berlioz is killed, Ivan is sent
to Stravinsky’s clinic. On Thursday Stepan Likhodeev is flung out of flat No.
50 and thrown into Yalta.
Coming back to Nikanor Ivanovich.
From the applications that Nikanor
Ivanovich received, readers come to know in what circumstances people lived in
community buildings, and what all they were doing to procure some reasonable
sort of accommodation.
They were requesting the president
of the housing society to give them Berlioz’s two rooms; they were threatening
him; they were putting conditions; they were trying to bribe him; they were
telling to carry out repairs with their own money.
They found that their co-dwellers
were thieves and robbers; they were illiterate, uncultured people:
In the period
of two hours, Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such declarations.
They
contained pleas, threats, libels, denunciations, promises to do renovations at
their own expense, references to unbearable overcrowding and the impossibility
of living in the same apartment with bandits. Among others there were a
description, staggering in its artistic power, of the theft from apartment no.
51 of some meat dumplings, tucked directly into the pocket of a suit jacket,
two vows to end life by suicide and one confession of secret pregnancy.
Nikanor
Ivanovich was called out to the front hall of his apartment, plucked by the
sleeve, whispered to, winked at, promised that he would not be left the loser.
This torture
went on until noon, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply fled his apartment for the
management office by the gate, but when he saw them lying in wait for him
there, too, he fled that place as well. Having somehow shaken off those who
followed on his heels across the asphalt-paved courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich
disappeared into the sixth entrance and went up to the fifth floor, where this
vile apartment no.50 was located.
…
After catching
his breath on the landing, the corpulent Nikanor Ivanovich rang, but no one opened
for him. He rang again, and then again, and started grumbling and swearing
quietly. Even then no one opened. His patience exhausted, Nikanor Ivanovich
took from his pocket a bunch of duplicate keys belonging to the house
management, opened the door with a sovereign hand, and went in.
'Hey,
housekeeper!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried in the semi-dark front hall. 'Grunya, or
whatever your name is! ... Are you here?'
No one
responded.
Then Nikanor
Ivanovich took a folding ruler from his briefcase, removed the seal from the
door to the study, and stepped in. Stepped in, yes, but halted in amazement in
the doorway and even gave a start.
At the
deceased's desk sat an unknown, skinny, long citizen in a little checkered
jacket, a jockey's cap, and a pince-nez... well, in short, that same one.
'And who
might you be, citizen?' Nikanor Ivanovich asked fearfully.
'Hah! Nikanor
Ivanovich!' the unexpected citizen yelled in a rattling tenor and, jumping up, greeted
the chairman with a forced and sudden handshake. This greeting by no means
gladdened Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Excuse me,'
he said suspiciously, 'but who might you be? Are you an official person?'
'Eh, Nikanor
Ivanovich!' the unknown man exclaimed soulfully. "What are official and
unofficial persons? It all depends on your point of view on the subject. It's
all fluctuating and relative, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I'm an unofficial
person, and tomorrow, lo and behold, I'm an official one! And it also happens
the other way round - oh, how it does!'
This argument
in no way satisfied the chairman of the house management. Being a generally suspicious
person by nature, he concluded that the man holding forth in front of him was
precisely an unofficial person, and perhaps even an idle one.
"Yes,
but who might you be? What's your name?' the chairman inquired with increasing severity
and even began to advance upon the unknown man.
`My name,'
the citizen responded, not a bit put out by the severity, 'well, let's say it's
Koroviev. But wouldn't you like a little snack, Nikanor Ivanovich? No
formalities, eh?'
`Excuse me,'
Nikanor Ivanovich began, indignantly now, `what have snacks got to do with it!'
(We must
confess, unpleasant as it is, that Nikanor Ivanovich was of a somewhat rude
nature.)
'Sitting in
the deceased's half is not permitted! What are you doing here?'
`Have a seat,
Nikanor Ivanovich,' the citizen went on yelling, not a bit at a loss, and began
fussing about offering the chairman a seat.
Utterly infuriated,
Nikanor Ivanovich rejected the seat and screamed:
'But who are
you?'
'I, if you
please, serve as interpreter for a foreign individual who has taken up
residence in this apartment,' the man calling himself Koroviev introduced
himself and clicked the heels of his scuffed, unpolished shoes.
Nikanor
Ivanovich opened his mouth. The presence of some foreigner in this apartment,
with an interpreter to boot, came as a complete surprise to him, and he
demanded explanations.
The
interpreter explained willingly. A foreign artiste, Mr Woland, had been kindly
invited by the director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev, to spend
the time of his performances, a week or so, in his apartment, about which he
had written to Nikanor Ivanovich yesterday, requesting that he register the
foreigner as a temporary resident, while Likhodeev himself took a trip to
Yalta.
'He never
wrote me anything,' the chairman said in amazement.
`Just look
through your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,' Koroviev suggested sweetly.
Nikanor
Ivanovich, shrugging his shoulders, opened the briefcase and found Likhodeev's
letter in it.
`How could I
have forgotten about it?' Nikanor Ivanovich muttered, looking dully at the
opened envelope.
Nikanor Ivanovich informs the
tourist bureau about this strange foreigner and he is told that they already
have information about him and have no objection to his staying in
Likhodeev’s flat for one week.
Nikanor Ivanovich is paid rent
towards the flat:
…And for your
association, Nikanor Ivanovich, it's a sheer gain and an obvious profit. He
won't stint on money.' Koroviev looked around and then whispered into the
chairman's ear: 'A millionaire!'
The
interpreter's offer made clear practical sense, it was a very solid offer, yet
there was something remarkably unsolid in his manner of speaking, and in his
clothes, and in that loathsome, good-for-nothing pince-nez. As a result,
something vague weighed on the chairman's soul, but he nevertheless decided to
accept the offer. The thing was that the tenants' association, alas, had quite
a sizeable deficit. Fuel had to be bought for the heating system by fall, but
who was going to shell out for it - no one knew. But with the foreign tourist's
money, it might be possible to wriggle out of it.
However, the
practical and prudent Nikanor Ivanovich said he would first have to settle the question
with the foreign tourist bureau.
`I
understand!' Koroviev cried out. `You've got to settle it! Absolutely! Here's
the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, settle it at once! And don't be shy about the
money,' he added in a whisper, drawing the chairman to the telephone in the
front hall, 'if he won't pay, who will! You should see the villa he's got in
Nice! Next summer, when you go abroad, come especially to see it - you'll
gasp!'
The business
with the foreign tourist bureau was arranged over the phone with an extraordinary
speed, quite amazing to the chairman. It turned out that they already knew
about Mr Woland's intention of staying in Likhodeev's private apartment and had
no objections to it.
`That's
wonderful!' Koroviev yelled. Somewhat stunned by his chatter, the chairman announced
that the tenants' association agreed to rent apartment no.50 for a week to the
artiste Woland, for... Nikanor Ivanovich faltered a little, then said:
'For five
hundred roubles a day.'
Here Koroviev
utterly amazed the chairman. Winking thievishly in the direction of the
bedroom, from which the soft leaps of a heavy cat could be heard, he rasped
out:
'So it comes
to three thousand five hundred for the week?'
To which
Nikanor Ivanovich thought he was going to add: 'Some appetite you've got,
Nikanor Ivanovich!' but Koroviev said something quite different:
'What kind of
money is that? Ask five, he'll pay it.'
Grinning
perplexedly, Nikanor Ivanovich, without noticing how, found himself at the
deceased's writing desk, where Koroviev with great speed and dexterity drew up
a contract in two copies.
Then he flew
to the bedroom with them and came back, both copies now bearing the foreigner's
sweeping signature. The chairman also signed the contract. Here Koroviev asked
for a receipt for five...
Write it out,
write it out, Nikanor Ivanovich!... thousand roubles...' And with words somehow
unsuited to serious business - 'Bin, zwei, drei!' - he laid out for the chairman
five stacks of new banknotes.
The
counting-up took place, interspersed with Koroviev's quips and quiddities, such
as 'Cash loves counting', 'Your own eye won't lie', and others of the same
sort.
Another bundle of rubles is also
offered to him for his ‘services’, which he accepts after confirming that there
is no ‘witness’ to this transaction:
After
counting the money, the chairman received from Koroviev the foreigner's
passport for temporary registration, put it, together with the contract and the
money, into his briefcase, and, somehow unable to help himself, sheepishly
asked for a free pass...
'Don't
mention it!' bellowed Koroviev. 'How many tickets do you want, Nikanor
Ivanovich -twelve, fifteen?'
The
flabbergasted chairman explained that all he needed was a couple of passes, for
himself and Pelageya Antonovna, his wife.
Koroviev
snatched out a notebook at once and dashed off a pass for Nikanor Ivanovich,
for two persons in the front row. And with his left hand the interpreter deftly
slipped this pass to Nikanor Ivanovich, while with his right he put into the
chairman's other hand a thick, crackling wad.
Casting an
eye on it, Nikanor Ivanovich blushed deeply and began to push it away.
'It isn't
done...' he murmured.
'I won't hear
of it,' Koroviev whispered right in his ear. 'With us it's not done, but with foreigners
it is. You'll offend him, Nikanor Ivanovich, and that's embarrassing. You've
worked hard...'
`It's
severely punishable,' the chairman whispered very, very softly and glanced over
his shoulder.
'But where
are the witnesses?' Koroviev whispered into his other ear.
'I ask you,
where are they? You don't think... ?'
Here, as the
chairman insisted afterwards, a miracle occurred: the wad crept into his
briefcase by itself. And then the chairman, somehow limp and even broken, found
himself on the stairs. A whirlwind of thoughts raged in his head. There was the
villa in Nice, and the trained cat, and the thought that there were in fact no
witnesses, and that Pelageya Antonovna would be delighted with the pass. They
were incoherent thoughts, but generally pleasant. But, all the same, somewhere, some little
needle kept pricking the chairman in the very bottom of his soul. This was the
needle of anxiety.
After coming home Nikanor Ivanovich wraps the notes in a
newspaper and hides them in the ventilator of his lavatory.
But, then, the roubles get converted
into foreign currency; someone informs the authorities that Nikanor Ivanovich
takes bribe in foreign denominations. The Secret Service men come to his flat
and find the bundle of notes in the ventilator of lavatory of Nikanor
Ivanovich’s flat. This is how it had happened:
As soon as
the chairman left the apartment, a low voice came from the bedroom:
'I didn't
like this Nikanor Ivanovich. He is a chiseller and a crook. Can it be arranged
so that he doesn't come any more?'
'Messire, you
have only to say the word...' Koroviev responded from somewhere, not in a rattling
but in a very clear and resounding voice.
And at once
the accursed interpreter turned up in the front hall, dialled a number there,
and for some reason began speaking very tearfully into the receiver:
'Hello! I
consider it my duty to inform you that the chairman of our tenants' association
at no.502-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is speculating in foreign
currency. At the present moment, in his apartment no. 55, he has four hundred
dollars wrapped up in newspaper in the ventilation of the privy. This is
Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the said house, apartment no. 11. But I
adjure you to keep my name a secret. I fear the vengeance of the above-stated
chairman.'
And he hung
up, the scoundrel!
Actually, Koroviev had informed the authorities using
the name of Secretary of housing society, Timofei Kvastsov…NIkanor Ivanovich is
arrested…he tries to explain that he had taken roubles towards rent for the flat
in which the mysterious professor was going to stay for one week; he tries to
show Styopa Likhodeev’s letter, the contract signed between him and Woland, his
passport…but everything had vanished…the contract, the passport, the money, the
tickets for the evening show had vanished in the thin air.
From now on wards the things are
getting complicated. Many unbelievable and magical, many serious things
happen…those who are guilty in some way or other are punished…like Styopa was
punished for his incompetence and misuse of official position, Nikanor
Ivanovich is punished for taking bribe; interestingly, every victim of Woland’s
gang exclaims in vain that the Devil has entered Moscow…
The chain of events that started
with Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomnyi has now taken Styopa and Nikanor Ivanovich into
its folds.
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