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The Master and Margarita. Poles and masts threaded with spools, piles of crushed stone, land slashed by canals—in short, one had the feeling that it






Poles and masts threaded with spools, piles of crushed stone, land slashed by canals—in short, one had the feeling that it, Moscow, was lying in wait just around the next bend, and was about to fall on one and engulf one.

Ryukhin was having a bumpy ride, since the stump he was sitting on kept trying to slide out from under him. The towels from the restaurant, which the policeman and Pantelei had tossed into the truck before leaving earlier on the trolleybus, were sliding all over the floor of the truck. Ryukhin had started to try and pick them up, but for some reason he hissed in fury, " The devil with them! Why am I making an ass of myself? " —and he kicked the towels aside and stopped looking at them.

The passenger was in a terrible mood. It was obvious that his visit to the insane asylum had had a most oppressive effect on him. He was trying to understand what was tormenting him. Was it the corridor with the blue lights that had stuck his mind? Was it the thought that there was nothing worse in the world than to lose your mind? Yes, yes, of course, it was that too. But that, after all, was a universal response. There must be something else. But what was it? It was the insult, that was it. Yes, yes, the insulting words that Bezdomny had thrown in his face. And the worst thing was not that they were insulting, but that they were true.

The poet had stopped looking off to the sides, and staring at the dirty, rattling floor of the truck, he began muttering and whining, gnawing away at himself.

Yes, his poetry... He was thirty-two! What did lie ahead? He would go on composing a few poems a year. Until he was old? Yes, until he was old. What would these poems bring him? Fame? " What nonsense! At least don't deceive yourself. Fame never comes to someone who writes bad poetry. But why are my poems bad? It was true what he said, true! " —Ryukhin showed himself no mercy—" I don't believe in anything I've ever written! "

Poisoned by this attack of neurasthenia, the poet gave a lurch as the floor beneath him stopped shaking. Ryukhin raised his head and saw that he had long since arrived in Moscow, and, moreover, that a new day was dawning over the city, that the cloud above was outlined in gold, that his truck was stuck in a column of traffic at the turn onto the boulevard, and that close by there was a metal man on a pedestal, his head slightly bent, looking indifferently at the boulevard.

Strange thoughts poured into the stricken poet's head. " There's an example of real luck..." Here Ryukhin stood up in the truck and raised his fist in an attack against the cast-iron man who wasn't harming anyone. " Whatever step he took in life, whatever happened to him, everything worked to his advantage, everything added to his fame! But what did he do? I don't get it... What's so special about the words: 'Storm with mist the heavens covers...'? I don't understand!... He was lucky, lucky, that's all! " Ryukhin concluded with sudden venom, just as he felt


Schizophrenia, as Predicted 61

the truck stir beneath him. " He was shot, shot by that white guard, who smashed his hip and guaranteed his immortality..."

The column of traffic began to move. Not more than two minutes later, the poet, utterly ill and visibly older, was stepping onto the veranda of Griboyedov. It had already cleared out. There was a group in the corner, finishing up their drinks, presided over by a master of ceremonies Ryukhin knew who was wearing an embroidered skullcap and holding a glass of Abrau champagne in his hand.

Ryukhin, laden with towels, was met politely by Archibald Archi-baldovich and immediately relieved of the accursed rags. Had Ryukhin not had such an agonizing time at the clinic and in the truck, he probably would have enjoyed recounting what had happened at the hospital, embellishing the story with a few details of his own invention. But now he wasn't in the mood for it and however unobservant Ryukhin was, now, after the torture in the truck, he looked sharply into the pirate's face for the first time and realized that despite his inquiries about Bezdomny and even his exclamations of " How awful! " he was at heart completely indifferent to Bezdomny's fate and did not even feel sorry for him. " Good man! That's right! " thought Ryukhin with cynical, self-lacerating malice. Cutting short his story about schizophrenia, he asked, " Archibald Archibaldovich, may I have a little vodka? "

The pirate put on a sympathetic face and whispered, " I understand... right away, " and he signalled a waiter.

A quarter of an hour later Ryukhin was sitting all by himself, hunched over a plate of carp, downing glass after glass. He was coming to realize and to acknowledge that he could not rectify anything in his life, he could only forget.

The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and now he realized it could never be brought back. He had only to raise his head from the table lamp up to the sky to realize that the night was gone forever. The waiters were hurriedly pulling the tablecoths off the tables. The cats nosing about the veranda had a morning look about them. Day was bearing down on the poet with full force.


VII

The Evil Apartment

I

F on the following morning anyone had said to Styopa Likhodeyev, " Styopa! You'll be shot if you don't get up this minute! " Styopa would have replied in a numb, faintly audible voice, " Shoot me, do whatever you like to me, but I'm not getting up."

It wasn't just a matter of getting up—he didn't even think he could open his eyes, because if he did, lightning would strike and blast his head to bits. A heavy bell was clanging inside his head, brown spots with fiery-green rims were floating between his eyeballs and his closed lids, and to cap things off, he felt nauseated, and his nausea seemed to be related to the sounds coming from a persistent phonograph.

Styopa was trying to remember something, but the only thing he could remember was that yesterday-he didn't know where—he had been standing, napkin in hand, trying to kiss a lady and promising he would visit her the next day at noon on the dot. The lady had refused him, saying, " Don't, don't, I won't be home! " —but Styopa had been insistent, " I think I'll just come anyway! "

Who this lady was, what time it was now, or what the day or month— Styopa hadn't the slightest idea. Even worse, he couldn't remember where he was. That, at least, he tried to figure out by ungluing the lids of his left eye. In the semidarkness something glowed dimly. Styopa finally recognized the mirror, and realized he was in his own room, lying flat on his back on his own bed, that is, in the bedroom on the bed that used to belong to the jeweller's widow. At this point his head started to pound so badly that he closed his eyes and began groaning.

Let us explain: Styopa Likhodeyev, the director of the Variety Theater, regained consciousness that morning in the apartment that he shared with the late Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz in a large six-storey building on Sadovaya Street.

It should be said that the apartment-No. 50—had long had, if not a bad, then at least an odd reputation. Two years before it had belonged to the widow of the jeweller de Fougeret. Anna Frantsevna de Fougeret,


The Evil Apartment 63

a very businesslike and respectable woman of fifty, let out three of her five rooms to lodgers. One of them was apparently named Belomut— the other's name has been lost

And it was two years ago that inexplicable things began happening in the apartment: people started disappearing without a trace.

Once, on a day off, a policeman appeared, summoned the second lodger (whose name has been lost) into the front hall, and said that he had been asked to come down to the police station for a minute in order to sign something. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantsevna's longtime, devoted housekeeper, to tell anyone who called that he would be back in ten minutes, whereupon he went off with the policeman who was correctly attired in white gloves. Not only did he not return in ten minutes, he never returned at all. And the most astonishing thing was that the policeman evidently disappeared along with him.

The pious and, to be blunt, superstitious Anfisa came right out and told the distressed Anna Frantsevna that it was witchcraft pure and simple, and that she knew exactly who it was that had spirited away both the lodger and the policeman, only she didn't want to say because it was almost nighttime.

Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there's no stopping it. The second lodger disappeared, I recall, on a Monday, and on Wednesday Belomut vanished as if he had fallen through the earth, albeit in different circumstances. In the morning a car came to take him to work as usual, and the car did leave with him, but it did not bring anyone back, and never returned again.

Madame Belomut's grief and horror defied description. But both, alas, were of short duration. On the night when she and Anfisa returned from her dacha, where Anna Frantsevna had hurried off to for some reason, she discovered that Belomut's wife was no longer in the apartment And what is more, the two rooms occupied by the Belomuts had both been sealed.

Two days passed somehow. On the third, a sleepless Anna Frantsevna again left hurriedly for her dacha... It hardly needs to be said that she did not return either!

Left all alone, Anfisa cried her eyes out and then went to bed after one in the morning. What happened to her after that is a mystery, but the residents of the other apartments said they thought they had heard knocking sounds in No. 50 all night long and they thought the lights were on until daybreak. In the morning it turned out that Anfisa was missing too!

All kinds of tales circulated in the building about the accursed apartment and the people who had disappeared. For example, according to one of them, the dry and pious Anfisa had allegedly worn a chamob pouch on her emaciated breast which contained twenty-five large diamonds that had belonged to Anna Frantsevna. According to another


64 The Master and Margarita

Story, the dacha which Anna Frantsevna had hurriedly visited allegedly had a woodshed where priceless valuables were found, including those same diamonds as well as tsarist gold coins... And there were other such stories. But we cannot vouch for what we do not know.

In any event, the apartment stood vacant and under seal for only a week, and then who moved in but the late Berlioz and his wife and the aforementioned Styopa and his wife. Not unexpectedly, as soon as they settled into the accursed apartment, devilish things started happening to them, too. In the space of a month, both wives disappeared. But not without a trace. Berlioz's wife was said to have been seen in Kharkov with a ballet master, and Styopa's wife supposedly turned up on Bozhe-domka Street, where, word had it, the director of the Variety Theater had used his many connections to get her a room, on the condition that she never set foot on Sadovaya Street again...

And so, Styopa groaned. He wanted to call Grunya the maid and ask her for some Pyramidon, but he was sufficiently in touch with reality to realize that was pointless, since she naturally would not have any Pyramidon. He tried calling Berlioz for help, groaning two times, " Misha, Misha, " but as you yourself can understand, he got no reply. The most total silence reigned in the apartment.

After wiggling his toes, Styopa could tell that he was still in his socks. He palpated his thigh with a trembling hand to determine if he had his trousers on, but he couldn't be sure. Finally, seeing that he was abandoned and alone and that there was no one to help him, he decided to get up, whatever the superhuman effort it cost.

Styopa unglued his eyelids, looked in the mirror and saw a man with hair sticking up all over his head, with swollen eyelids in a bloated face covered with black stubble; the man was wearing a dirty shirt with a collar and tie, long Johns, and socks.


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