فصل 15

XV

Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream

IT’S not hard to guess that the fat man with the purple face who had been put into Room No. 119 at the clinic was Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi.

Before coming to Professor Stravinsky, however, he had spent some time in another place.

Very little of that other place remained in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory. All he could remember was a desk, a bookcase, and a couch.

The people there had tried to engage Nikanor Ivanovich in conversation, but since his head was spinning from an influx of blood and from extreme emotional distress, the conversation had been strange and muddled. In fact, it had not really been a conversation at all.

The first question Nikanor Ivanovich had been asked was, “Are you Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, chairman of the house committee at 302B Sadovaya Street?” Which made Nikanor Ivanovich burst out into a horrible cackle and answer, “Of course I’m Nikanor Ivanovich! But what the devil kind of a chairman am I!” “Meaning what?” they asked Nikanor Ivanovich with narrowed eyes.

“Meaning,” he replied, “that if I were a real chairman, I would have seen immediately that he was an evil power! How else can you explain it? The cracked pince-nez, his being dressed in rags … What kind of a foreign interpreter looks like that!” “Who are you talking about?” they asked Nikanor Ivanovich.

“Korovyov!” cried Nikanor Ivanovich. “The one who’s moved into apartment No. 50 in our building! Write it down: Korovyov! You have to catch him right away! Write it down: entrance No. 6. That’s where he is.” “Where did you get the foreign currency?” they asked Nikanor Ivanovich in cordial tones.

“Almighty God,” Nikanor Ivanovich began, “sees everything and that is the path I should take. I never touched any foreign currency or had the slightest idea what it looked like! The Lord is punishing me for my sins,” Nikanor Ivanovich went on heatedly, buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt, and crossing himself. “I took bribes! I did, but I took them in our own Soviet money! I took money for registering people in the apartment house, I won’t deny it, it happened. Our secretary Prolezhnyov is a fine one too, that he is! Let’s face it, everyone in the house management office is a crook. But I didn’t take any foreign currency!” When they told Nikanor Ivanovich to stop playing games and explain how the dollars got into the ventilation shaft, he got down on his knees and rocked back and forth with his mouth open wide, as if he wanted to swallow one of the parquet panels.

“Do you want me” he wailed, “to eat the floor to prove I didn’t take it? But that Korovyov, he’s a devil.” There is a limit to everyone’s patience, and a voice was raised behind the desk, hinting to the effect that it was time for Nikanor Ivanovich to start speaking in a human tongue.

At this point Nikanor Ivanovich jumped to his feet, and the room with the couch resounded with his roar, “There he is! There he is behind the bookcase! Look at him smirk! And his pince-nez … Grab him! Sprinkle the room with holy water!” The blood drained from Nikanor Ivanovich’s face, shaking, he kept making the sign of the cross in the air, rushed over to the door and then back again, started to recite some prayer, and then finally started spouting complete gibberish.

It was quite clear that Nikanor Ivanovich was unfit for any kind of conversation. They led him out and put him in a separate room, where he calmed down somewhat and merely sobbed and prayed.

Naturally, they made a trip to Sadovaya Street and paid a visit to apartment No. 50. But they did not find any Korovyov there, nor had anyone in the building ever seen or heard of any such person. The apartment, which had been occupied by the deceased Berlioz and by Likhodeyev who had gone to Yalta, was empty, and the wax seals hung peacefully and undisturbed on the cabinets in the study. When they left Sadovaya Street, they took with them the disoriented and dispirited secretary of the house management committee, Prolezhnyov.

In the evening Nikanor Ivanovich was taken to Stravinsky’s clinic. There his behavior became so violent that they had to give him an injection prescribed by Stravinsky, and it wasn’t until after midnight that Nikanor Ivanovich finally fell asleep in Room 119, occasionally emitting a deep, anguished moan.

But the longer he slept, the calmer his sleep became. He stopped tossing and moaning, his breathing became easier and more even, and he was left alone.

Then Nikanor Ivanovich had a dream which doubtlessly had its source in the day’s experiences. The dream began with some people with golden trumpets leading Nikanor Ivanovich most solemnly over to a pair of huge polished doors. When they got there, his companions saluted him with a kind of fanfare, and then a booming bass was heard coming from on high, saying merrily, “Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich! Hand over your foreign currency.” Taken totally by surprise, Nikanor Ivanovich noticed a black loudspeaker above his head.

Then he found himself inside a theater with a gilt ceiling, crystal chandeliers, and sconces on the walls. Everything was as one would expect in a small but richly appointed theater. There was a stage draped with a deepcerise velvet curtain with depictions of enlarged ten-ruble gold pieces scattered across it like stars, a prompter’s box, and even an audience.

What amazed Nikanor Ivanovich was that the audience consisted of men only, and for some reason, they all had beards. No less striking was the fact that there were no chairs in the theater, and the entire audience was sitting on the slippery, magnificently polished floor.

Feeling out of place in this large and unfamiliar company, Nikanor Ivanovich hesitated for a while and then followed everyone’s example and sat down Turkish-style on the parquet floor, in between a robust, red-bearded fellow and a pale hairy one. Neither of the two paid much attention to the new arrival.

At this point the soft sound of a bell was heard, the lights went out in the theater, the curtains parted, and an illuminated stage came into view with an armchair and a small table topped by a golden bell. The back of the stage was draped in thick black velvet.

An actor wearing a dinner jacket came out on stage. He was young, clean-shaven, very good-looking, and wore his hair parted down the middle. The audience stirred, and everyone turned their eyes to the stage. The actor walked over to the prompter’s box and rubbed his hands.

“Are you all seated?” he asked in a soft baritone and smiled at the audience.

“Yes, yes,” the audience of tenors and basses replied in unison.

“Hm …” the actor began thoughtfully. “And how is it you’re not bored, that’s what puzzles me? Real people are outside on the streets right now, enjoying the spring sun and the warmth, and you’re stuck here on the floor in a stuffy theater! Is the program really that interesting? However, to each his own,” the actor concluded philosophically.

Then he changed the timbre and intonation of his voice and boomed out merrily, “And so, the next act on our program is Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, the chairman of a house committee and the head of a special-diet cafeteria. Please come up onstage, Nikanor Ivanovich!” The audience responded with friendly applause. Nikanor Ivanovich’s eyes bulged with astonishment, and the emcee, shielding his eyes from the glare of the footlights, spotted him in the audience and coaxed him tenderly up onstage. And then, without knowing how, Nikanor Ivanovich found himself on the stage. The glare of the colored lights hit his eyes from in front and below, plunging the theater and audience beyond into darkness.

“Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, set a good example,” began the young actor sincerely, “and hand over your foreign currency.” Silence ensued. Nikanor Ivanovich took a deep breath and began quietly, “I swear to God that …” But before he could finish, the whole theater broke out in disgruntled cries. Nikanor Ivanovich was disconcerted and fell silent.

“If I understand you correctly,” began the man in charge of the program, “you wish to swear to God that you have no foreign currency?” He shot Nikanor Ivanovich a sympathetic look.

“That’s exactly right. I don’t have any,” replied Nikanor Ivanovich.

“Of course,” said the actor, “but forgive my indiscretion: how, then, did four hundred dollars end up in the bathroom of the apartment of which you and your wife are the sole residents?” “By magic!” said someone in the darkened hall with obvious irony.

“Precisely so, by magic,” Nikanor Ivanovich replied timidly, not to anyone in particular, neither the actor nor the invisible audience, and he went on to elaborate, “An evil power, the interpreter in checks, planted them there.” And again the audience roared in disapproval. When quiet had been restored, the actor said, “That fairy tale puts La Fontaine to shame! Four hundred dollars were planted in your bathroom! You, audience, are all foreign-currency speculators, I ask you, as specialists, does this case make sense?” “We are not speculators,” shouted various offended parties from the floor, “but it doesn’t make any sense.” “I agree with you completely,” said the actor firmly. “And I ask you, what sorts of things are planted on people?” “Babies!” shouted someone from the floor.

“Absolutely right,” affirmed the emcee. “Babies, anonymous letters, proclamations, time bombs, and a lot of other things, but four hundred dollars isn’t one of them because nobody’s that stupid.” And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, the actor added mournfully and reproachfully, “You’re a disappointment to me, Nikanor Ivanovich! I had such faith in you. So then, this particular act has not been a success.” The audience began to hiss and boo at Nikanor Ivanovich.

“He’s the foreign-currency speculator!” the audience screamed. “It’s guys like that who make us innocent folk suffer!” “Don’t chastise him,” said the emcee softly. “He’ll repent.” He then turned his blue eyes, brimming with tears, to Nikanor Ivanovich and added, “Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, go back to your place!” After this the actor rang the bell and announced loudly, “Intermission, you scoundrels!”

A shaken Nikanor Ivanovich, who, to his surprise, had somehow become part of a theatrical program, again found himself in his place on the floor. Then he dreamed that the theater plunged into total darkness, and the walls were lit up with bright red lights, flashing the words, “Hand over your foreign currency!” Then the curtains parted again, and the emcee said invitingly, “Would Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil please come up onstage.” Dunchil turned out to be a good-looking, but very stout man of about fifty.

“Sergei Gerardovich,” said the emcee. “You’ve been sitting here for more than a month now, and yet you still refuse to hand over the rest of your foreign currency; now, when your country is in need of it, and it’s of absolutely no use to you, you still refuse to comply. You’re an intelligent fellow and understand all this perfectly, and yet you still don’t want to meet me halfway.” “Unfortunately, I can’t do anything, since I don’t have any more foreign currency,” Dunchil replied calmly.

“Don’t you have any diamonds at least?” asked the actor.

“No diamonds either.”

The actor hung his head and looked pensive, and then he clapped his hands. A middle-aged woman emerged from the wings and came out onstage. She was fashionably dressed, that is, in a tiny hat and a coat with no collar. She had an anxious air, and Dunchil stared at her without moving a muscle.

“Who is this woman?” the man in charge of the program asked Dunchil.

“She’s my wife,” Dunchil answered with dignity, as he looked at the woman’s long neck with a flicker of disgust.

“We have disturbed you, Madame Dunchil, for the following reason: we wished to ask you if your husband still has any foreign currency?” “He’s already handed over everything he had,” was her nervous reply.

“Indeed,” said the actor. “Well, if you say so. And if he’s handed everything over, then we shouldn’t keep him any longer, should we! You may leave the theater, if you wish, Sergei Gerardovich,” said the actor with an imperious wave of his hand.

Calmly and with dignity, Dunchil turned and walked toward the wings.

“Just one minute!” the emcee stopped him. “As a farewell, let me show you one last number from our program.” Again he clapped his hands.

The black curtains at the back of the stage parted, and out came a beautiful young woman in a ball gown carrying a gold tray on which there was a thick package tied with striped ribbon and a diamond necklace which gave off blue, yellow, and red sparkles.

Dunchil stepped backward, and his face blanched. The audience fell silent.

“Eighteen thousand dollars and a necklace worth forty thousand gold rubles,” announced the actor solemnly, “has been kept by Sergei Gerardovich in Kharkov in the apartment of his mistress, Ida Gerkulanovna Vors, who is honoring us with her presence here, and who graciously helped us to locate these treasures, which, though priceless, are worthless when in private hands. Many thanks to you, Ida Gerkulanovna.” The beauty flashed a toothsome smile and fluttered her thick eyelashes.

“And hiding behind your mask of dignity,” said the actor, now addressing Dunchil, “is a bloodthirsty spider, an astounding liar, and a cheat. Your six weeks of dogged stubbornness has exhausted us all. Go on home now, and may the hell that your wife is preparing for you be your punishment.” Dunchil swayed and seemed about to collapse, but a pair of sympathetic hands reached out and steadied him. The curtain then fell and blocked everyone onstage from view.

Wild applause so shook the hall that it seemed to Nikanor Ivanovich that the light bulbs in the chandeliers were jumping out of their sockets. And when the curtain went up, there was no one left onstage except the actor. He cut off a second burst of applause, bowed and said, “The Dunchil who appeared before you in our program represents a typical ass. Why just yesterday I had the pleasure of telling you how senseless it is to try and keep a secret cache of foreign currency. There are, I assure you, absolutely no circumstances in which you can use it. Take that same Dunchil, for example. He earns a splendid salary and has everything he needs. A beautiful apartment, a wife, and a beautiful mistress. But no! Instead of living a peaceful, quiet life free of unpleasantness, after handing over his foreign currency and precious stones, he, greedy blockhead that he is, ended up being publicly exposed and earned himself a major family crisis as well. This being the case, who will come forward? Nobody wants to? In that case, the next number in our program is that well-known dramatic talent, the actor Savva Potapovich Kurolesov, who has been invited to perform excerpts from The Covetous Knight by the poet Pushkin.” Kurolesov appeared onstage immediately and turned out to be a tall, beefy, clean-shaven fellow in a white tie and tails.

With no preamble whatsoever, he assumed a gloomy-looking expression, raised his eyebrows, and while looking at the gold bell out of the corner of his eye, began reciting in an unnatural voice: “While awaiting a tryst with a sly temptress, the young rake …”

And Kurolesov told a lot of bad things about himself. Nikanor Ivanovich heard Kurolesov confess how an unhappy widow, moaning, had gone down on her knees before him in the rain, but had failed to touch the actor’s hard heart.

Up until his dream Nikanor Ivanovich had not known the works of Pushkin at all, although he had been well acquainted with Pushkin himself, since he made daily use of such expressions as, “Will Pushkin be paying for the apartment?” or “I suppose it was Pushkin who unscrewed the bulb on the staircase?” or “So Pushkin will be buying the oil, right?” Now that Nikanor Ivanovich had been introduced to one of Pushkin’s works, he felt sad and imagined the woman down on her knees in the rain with her orphans, and he found himself thinking, “That Kurolesov must be a real bastard!” Meanwhile, Kurolesov, his voice getting higher and higher, continued to repent, and he befuddled Nikanor Ivanovich completely when he suddenly began to address someone who wasn’t there and then answered for this invisible person, calling himself, in turn, “lord,” “baron,” “father,” “son,” and addressing himself with both the formal and intimate forms of “you.” Nikanor Ivanovich was sure of only one thing: the actor died a horrible death, screaming, “My keys! My keys!” whereupon he fell wheezing onto the floor, while carefully removing his necktie.

After he had died, Kurolesov got up from the floor, shook the dust off his dress trousers, smiled a fake smile, and withdrew to lukewarm applause. The emcee then began to speak, “We have just heard Savva Potapovich’s remarkable performance of The Covetous Knight. That knight had high hopes that frolicsome nymphs would flock around him and that he would enjoy many similar delights. But as you can see, nothing of the sort came to pass. No nymphs flocked around him, the muses paid him no tribute, he did not erect any castles. On the contrary, he ended up in disgrace and died from a damned stroke while sitting on top of a chest full of foreign currency and precious stones. May this be a warning to you: something similar will happen to you, maybe even worse, if you don’t hand over your foreign currency!” It is difficult to say whether it was Pushkin’s poetry or the emcee’s prose that made the greatest impression, but suddenly a timid voice was heard in the audience, “I’ll hand mine over.” “By all means, please come up onstage,” invited the emcee, staring out at the dark auditorium.

Onstage there appeared a short, fair-haired fellow who, by the looks of him, hadn’t shaved for about three weeks.

“I’m sorry, what is your name?” queried the emcee.

“Kanavkin, Nikolai,” answered the shy newcomer.

“Ah! Pleased to meet you, Citizen Kanavkin, and what would you like to tell us?”

“I’ll hand mine over,” was Kanavkin’s timid reply.

“How much?”

“A thousand dollars and twenty gold ten-ruble coins.”

“Bravo! Is that all there is?”

The man in charge of the program stared straight into Kanavkin’s eyes, and in so doing, seemed to be bombarding him with rays. The audience held its breath.

“I believe you!” exclaimed the actor at last, lowering his eyes. “I believe you! Those eyes aren’t lying. After all, how many times have I told you that your biggest mistake is underestimating the significance of people’s eyes. The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You’re asked an unexpected question, you don’t even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost. The truth is detected and you are caught!” After delivering this very convincing speech, the actor cordially questioned Kanavkin, “So where is it hidden?” “At Porokhovnikova’s, my aunt’s, on Prechistenka …”

“Ah! That’s … just a minute … that’s Klavdiya Ilinichna’s place, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Ah yes, yes, yes, yes! A small private residence? With the gardens across the street? Well of course! I know the place, I know it well! And where did you put the money?” “In the cellar, in an Einem candy box …”

The actor clapped his hands.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” he cried out in exasperation. “Where it’s certain to get moldy and rot! Can you imagine entrusting people like this with foreign currency? Huh? By God, they’re as innocent as children!” Kanavkin himself realized that he had ruined things and was completely at fault, and he hung his tufted head.

“Money,” continued the actor, “should be kept in the State Bank, in special, moisture-free safe-deposit boxes, and not in your aunty’s cellar where the rats can get at it! Shame on you, Kanavkin! You’re a grown man.” Not having any hole to drop through, Kanavkin settled for fingering the hem of his jacket.

“Well, all right then,” said the actor in less harsh tones, “no point in rubbing it in …” Then suddenly he added, “Oh, by the way, while we’re at it … let’s kill two birds with one stone … Doesn’t your aunty have some foreign currency too? Huh?” Kanavkin, who had not expected things to take such a turn, shuddered and the theater fell silent.

“Oh, Kanavkin,” said the emcee in a mildly reproachful tone, “and I was just singing his praises! And he had to go and spoil everything! That was not smart, Kanavkin! After what I just said about eyes. It’s obvious your aunty has some foreign currency too. So why go on torturing us for no reason?” “She does have some!” Kanavkin shouted brashly.

“Bravo!” cried the emcee.

“Bravo!” roared the audience.

When the roar subsided, the emcee congratulated Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered to have a car drive him home and then ordered someone in the wings to pick up the aunt in the same car and invite her to attend a performance at the women’s theater.

“Oh, by the way, your aunt didn’t say where she hid hers, did she?” inquired the emcee, as he kindly offered Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. Kanavkin lit up and managed a woebegone grin.

“I believe you, I do,” sighed the actor. “That old skinflint wouldn’t tell the devil where she put it, so why would she tell her nephew. Well, never mind, we’ll try and arouse her finer feelings. Perhaps not all the strings in her usurious heart have rotted away. All the best, Kanavkin!” And a happy Kanavkin departed. The actor then inquired if anyone else wanted to hand over any foreign currency, and he was answered by silence.

“Peculiar birds, I swear!” he said, shrugging his shoulders, and the curtains closed.

The lights went out, it was dark for a while, and then a nervous tenor could be heard singing from afar, “There are piles of gold there and they all belong to me!” Then came two bursts of muffled applause from somewhere.

“Somebody’s handing over her money in the women’s theater,” burst out Nikanor Ivanovich’s red-bearded neighbor. He heaved a sigh and added, “Oh, if it weren’t for my geese! … You see, I keep some fighting-geese out at Lianozovo … I’m afraid they’ll die without me. A fighting-bird is delicate and needs a lot of attention … Oh, if it weren’t for my geese! Pushkin can’t catch me off guard!” And he heaved another sigh.

At this point bright lights came on in the hall, and Nikanor Ivanovich began to dream that cooks in white hats carrying ladles in their hands came streaming through all the doors into the theater. The cooks were dragging in a vat of soup and a tray filled with slices of black bread. The audience came to life. The merry cooks pushed through the rows of spectators, ladling the soup into bowls and doling out bread.

“Eat up, guys,” cried the cooks, “and hand over your foreign currency! Why sit here for nothing? Who wants to eat this filthy gruel! Go home and have a real drink and some hors d’oeuvres, and feel good!” “Let’s take you, dad, what are you in for?” asked a fat, red-necked cook, addressing Nikanor Ivanovich and passing him a bowl of soup with one lone cabbage leaf floating on top.

“I haven’t got any! I haven’t got any!” screamed Nikanor Ivanovich in a terrible voice. “Can’t you understand? I haven’t got any!” “You don’t?” roared the cook in a threatening bass, “You don’t?” he crooned tenderly like a woman. “You don’t, you don’t,” he murmured soothingly, as he metamorphosed into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna.

She was softly shaking Nikanor Ivanovich by the shoulder as he moaned in his sleep. Then the cooks melted away and the theater with the curtains fell to pieces. Through his tears Nikanor Ivanovich could make out his room in the clinic and two people in white coats, but they were nothing like the smarmy cooks who had dished out unwanted advice. They were doctors, and with them was Praskovya Fyodorovna, who was holding a gauze-covered dish with a syringe instead of a soup bowl.

“But what’s this for,” said Nikanor Ivanovich bitterly as they gave him the injection. “I don’t have any! None! Let Pushkin hand over his foreign currency. I don’t have any!” “Of course you don’t,” said the kindhearted Praskovya Fyodorovna soothingly, “and no one can blame you for it.” Nikanor Ivanovich felt better after the injection and then fell into a dreamless sleep.

But thanks to his cries, his anxiety communicated itself, first to Room 120, where the patient woke up and started to look for his head, and then to Room 118, where the unknown Master became upset and started wringing his hands in anguish, while gazing at the moon and recalling that bitter autumn night, the last in his life, and the strip of light coming from under the door to his basement, and her loosened hair.

From Room 118 anxiety spread along the balcony to Ivan, and he woke up and burst into tears.

But the doctor quickly calmed all his distraught and afflicted patients, and they began to doze off. Oblivion came to Ivan last of all, just as dawn was breaking over the river. After the medicine had filtered through his entire body, peace and calm engulfed him like a wave. His body felt lighter, and the warm breeze of sleep caressed his head. The last thing he heard before he fell asleep was the pre-dawn twittering of the birds in the wood. But they soon fell silent, and he began to dream that the sun was already sinking behind Bald Mountain, and the mountain was encircled by a double cordon …