Chapter
17
An Unquiet Day
Well,
you remember that after the black-magic show in Variety hundreds of women were
seen running on the Sadovaya without any clothes – their clothes were handed
over to Fagot’s firm and they were wearing the most fashionable dresses
provided to them by the firm;
Rimsky
had a terrible encounter with Varenukha who was trying to kill him with the
help of that green eyed, naked woman – he was saved thanks to the rooster!
Let us
see what happens to the currency notes which were raining in the hall and
picked up by the audience.
As the
posters had declared, the show of black-magic was to take place for two days
and so there were serpentine queues in front of Variety.
It was
Friday.
All
the officers of Variety had, as we know, vanished…Rimsky, Styopa Likhodeyev,
Varenukha, and the only officer present there now was the book keeper Vasily Stepanovich
Lastochkin.
As the
confusion inside Variety was growing, people were constantly ringing and they
wanted to find out where are the officers. Rimsky’s wife came rushing and
started pleading that her husband be found…
Something
unbelievable had happened…police started inquiring about the scandalous show…
Who
was the magician? What was his name? No one knew. When someone reported that it
could be Foland or Woland, the in-tourist bureau was contacted and they had
just no information about any Foland or Woland;
The
posters were there, but over the night new posters were pasted on them, not a
single copy of them was available;
Who
gave permission for the show? Who gave the advance amount to the magician?
Where are papers related to this transaction? Nothing was available.
The
courier boy informed that Woland was put up in Styopa’s flat, they went there:
Styopa had already disappeared; his maid Grunya had disappeared, president of
the housing society had disappeared; even the secretary had disappeared.
A
sniffer dog was taken to Rimsky’s cabinet…she started howling, climbed up the
window frame, tried to jump out of it , started growling…then she went to the
taxi stand and lost track of everything….
A big
notice was put up on the gate of Variety that there will be no shows for a few
days…the crowd dispersed angrily; they asked Vasily Stepanovich to deposit
21,711 roubles, that was the collection from yesterday’s show, into the
recreation commission, and give them a report about last evening’s show.
Vasily
Stepanovich decided to go by a taxi. To his surprise, all the cars that were
standing at the Taxi stand ran away from there as soon as they noticed the
passenger with a bloated bag in his hands. A third cab driver inquired whether
he has any change with him and when Vasily Stepanovich showed smaller currency
notes to the driver, was he allowed to sit inside the cab. And this is what he
found out from the driver:
“No change, is that it?' the bookkeeper asked
timidly.
`A
pocket full of change!' the driver bawled, and the eyes in the mirror went
bloodshot. 'It's my third case today. And the same thing happened with the
others, too. Some son of a bitch gives me a tenner, I give him change -
four-fifty. He gets out, the scum! About five minutes later, I look: instead of
a tenner, it's a label from a seltzer bottle!' Here the driver uttered several
unprintable words. 'Another one, beyond Zubovskaya. A tenner. I give him three
rubles change. He leaves. I go to my wallet, there's a bee there - zap in the
finger! Ah, you! ...' and again the driver pasted on some unprintable words. 'And no tenner. Yesterday, in the Variety
here' (unprintable words), 'some vermin of a conjurer did a séance with
ten-rouble bills' (unprintable words)...
The
bookkeeper went numb, shrank into himself, and pretended it was the first time
he had heard even the word 'Variety', while thinking to himself:
'Oh-oh!
...'
So,
that is what was happening to the currency notes which people had grabbed in
the Variety.
When
Vasily Stepanovich reached the recreation commission’s office he noticed
complete turmoil in this office.
The
secretary of the Chief was howling, there was an empty suit sitting in the
chair behind the huge table and writing with a dry pen. There was neither head
nor neck above the collar of the suit, there were no hands peeping out of the
sleeves…
He was
told by the secretary of the Commission-Chief :
“Imagine,
I'm sitting here,' Anna Richardovna recounted, shaking with agitation, again clutching
at the bookkeeper's sleeve, 'and a cat walks in. Black, big as a behemoth. Of
course, I shout "scat" to it. Out it goes, and in comes a fat fellow
instead, also with a sort of cat-like mug, and says:
"What
are you doing, citizen, shouting 'scat' at visitors?" And - whoosh -
straight to Prokhor Petrovich. Of course, I run after him, shouting: "Are
you out of your mind?"
And this brazen-face goes straight to Prokhor
Petrovich and sits down opposite him in the armchair. Well, that one ... he's
the kindest-hearted man, but edgy. He blew up, I don't deny it. An edgy man,
works like an ox - he blew up. "Why do you barge in here
unannounced?" he says. And that brazen-face, imagine, sprawls in the armchair
and says, smiling:
"I've
come," he says, "to discuss a little business with you."
Prokhor Petrovich blew up again:
"I'm
busy." And the other one, just think, answers: "You're not busy with
anything ..."
Eh? Well, here, of course, Prokhor Petrovich's
patience ran out, and he shouted: "What is all this? Get him out of here,
devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take
you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang! Before I had time to scream,
I look: the one with the cat's mug is gone, and th ... there ... sits ... the
suit ... Waaa! ...'
Stretching
her mouth, which had lost all shape entirely, Anna Richardovna howled.
Vasily
Stepanovich rushes out of this office and goes to its branch which was situated
nearby.
There
too, complete disorder…
People
were going on singing…nonstop…against their wish…but in a coordinated way, as
if someone is directing them. And this is what he found out from them:
'Excuse me, dear citizen,' Vassily Stepanovich
addressed the girl, 'did a black cat pay you a visit?'
`What
cat?' the girl cried in anger. 'An ass, it's an ass we've got sitting in the
affiliate!' And adding to that: `Let him hear, I'll tell everything' - she
indeed told what had happened.
It
turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, 'who has made a perfect mess
of lightened entertainment' (the girl's words), suffered from a mania for
organizing all sorts of little clubs. 'Blew smoke in the authorities' eyes!'
screamed the girl.
In the
course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club of Lermontov
studies, of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of horseback riding. For the
summer, he was threatening to organize clubs of fresh-water canoeing and
alpinism. And so today, during lunch-break, this manager comes in ...' ...with
some son of a bitch on his arm,' the girl went on, 'hailing from nobody knows
where, in wretched checkered trousers, a cracked pince-nez, and ... with a
completely impossible mug! ...'
And
straight away, the girl said, he recommended him to all those eating in the
affiliate's dining room as a prominent specialist in organizing choral-singing
clubs.
The
faces of the future alpinists darkened, but the manager immediately called on
everyone to cheer up, while the specialist joked a little, laughed a little,
and swore an oath that singing takes no time at all, but that, incidentally,
there was a whole load of benefits to be derived from it.
Well,
of course, as the girl said, the first to pop up were Fanov and Kosarchuk,
well-known affiliate toadies,
who announced that they would sign up. Here the rest of the staff realized that
there was no way around the singing, and they, too, had to sign up for the
club. They decided to sing during the lunch break, since the rest of the time
was taken up by Lermontov and checkers.
The
manager, to set an example, declared that he was a tenor, and everything after
that went as in a bad dream. The checkered specialist-choirmaster bawled out:
'Do,
mi, sol, do!' - dragged the most bashful from behind the bookcases, where they
had tried to save themselves from singing, told Kosarchuk he had perfect pitch,
began whining, squealing, begging them to be kind to an old singing-master,
tapped the tuning fork on his knuckle, beseeched them to strike up 'Glorious
Sea'.
Strike
up they did. And gloriously. The checkered one really knew his business. They
finished the first verse. Here the director excused himself, said: `Back in a
minute...', and disappeared.
They
thought he would actually come back in a minute. But ten minutes went by and he
was not there. The staff was overjoyed - he had run away!
Then
suddenly, somehow of themselves, they began the second verse. They were all led
by Kosarchuk, who may not have had perfect pitch, but did have a rather
pleasant high tenor. They sang it through. No director! They moved to their
places, but had not managed to sit down when, against their will, they began to
sing. To stop was impossible. After three minutes of silence, they would strike
up again. Silence - strike up! Then they realized that they were in trouble.
The manager locked himself in his office from shame!”
The
doctors administer some tranquilisers to the singers and they are taken to
Stravinsky’s clinic!
So,
this was another character of the black magic show, who had created havoc here.
Half an hour
later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely, reached the financial
sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office money. Having learned from
experience by now, he first peeked cautiously into the oblong hall where,
behind frosted-glass windows with gold lettering, the staff was sitting. Here
the bookkeeper discovered no signs of alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it
ought to be in a decent institution.
Vassily
Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with 'Cash Deposits' written over
it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked for a deposit slip.
'What do you
need it for?' the clerk in the window asked.
The
bookkeeper was amazed.
'I want to
turn over some cash. I'm from the Variety.'
'One moment,'
the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the window with a grille.
'Strange!...'
thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly natural. It was the first
time in his life that he had met with such a circumstance. Everybody knows how
hard it is to get money; obstacles to it can always be found. But there had
been no case in the bookkeeper's thirty years of experience when anyone, either
an official or a private person, had had hard time accepting money.
But at last
the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned to the window.
'Do you have
a lot?' the clerk asked.
'Twenty-one
thousand seven hundred and eleven rubles.'
'Oho!' the
clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the bookkeeper a green
slip.
Knowing the
form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began to untie the string
on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything swam before his eyes, he
murmured something painfully.
Foreign money
flitted before his eyes: there were stacks of Canadian dollars, British pounds,
Dutch guldens, Latvian lats, Estonian kroons...
'There he is,
one of those tricksters from the Variety!' a menacing voice resounded over the
dumbstruck bookkeeper. And straight away Vassily Stepanovich was arrested.
Bulgakov
has disclosed what all happens in the recreation commission.
You
may wonder what was Vasily Stepanovich’s fault? Why was he arrested?
Well,
because he was going to REPORT about the black magic show to the authorities….the
last of the officers of Variety too disappears!
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें
टिप्पणी: केवल इस ब्लॉग का सदस्य टिप्पणी भेज सकता है.