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The bookkeeper was perplexed.






" I want to hand over my cash receipts. I'm from the Variety."

" Just a minute, " replied the clerk and then proceeded to put a screen over the hole in his window.

" That's odd, " thought the bookkeeper. His perplexity was natural under the circumstances. It was the first time he had ever encountered such a thing. Everyone knows how hard it is to acquire money; obsta-


The Master and Margarita

Des to that can always be found. But not once in his thirty years of experience had the bookkeeper ever found anyone, whether an oflicial or a private citizen, who had difficulty accepting money.

But at last the screen was moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned up to the window.

" Do you have a lot? " asked the clerk.

" 21, 711 rubles."

" Wow! " replied the clerk with inexplicable irony and handed him a green slip of paper.

Having seen the form a hundred times, the bookkeeper filled it out instantly and began untying his package. When he removed the wrapping, his eyes glazed over, and he let out an agonizing groan.

Foreign currency flashed before his eyes. Packets of Canadian dollars, English pounds, Dutch guilders, Latvian lats, and Estonian crowns...

" Here he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety, " boomed an intimidating voice at the stunned bookkeeper's back. And Vasily Stepano-vich was then taken into custody.


XVIII

Unlucky Visitors

A

T the same time as the conscientious bookkeeper was in the taxj enroute to his encounter with the writing suit, a respectably dressed man with a small imitation-leather suitcase was getting off the reserved-seat first-class car of the No. 9 train from Kiev. This passenger was none other than Maximilian Andreyevich Poplavsky, the uncle of the late Berlioz, an economic planner who lived in Kiev on what was formerly Institute Street The reason for his trip to Moscow was a telegram received late in the evening two days before. It said, " I have just been cut in half by a streetcar at Patriarch's. Funeral Friday S PM. Come. Berlioz."

Maximilian Andreyevich was considered one of the smartest men in Kiev and justifiably so. But even the smartest man would be befuddled by a telegram like that. If a man can wire that he has been cut in half, it's obvious it wasn't a fatal accident. But then why mention a funeral? Or, could it be that he's in very bad shape and foresees that he is going to die? That was a distinct possibility, but the preciseness of the information was odd nonetheless. How could he know that his funeral was going to be at precisely 3 p.m. on Friday? An amazing telegram!

But what are smart people smart for, if not to untangle tangled things? It was very simple. There had been a mistake, and the message had been transmitted in garbled form. The word T had obviously come from another telegram and been put where " Berlioz" should have been, at the beginning of the telegram, instead of at the end where it ended up. After such a correction the telegram became intelligible, albeit, of course, tragic.


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