فصل 18

XVIII

Unlucky Visitors

AT the same time as the conscientious bookkeeper was in the taxi 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 3 p.m. 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 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 “I” 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.

After the attack of grief which struck his wife had subsided, Maximilian Andreyevich began to make plans to go to Moscow.

Maximilian Andreyevich had a secret that must be revealed. Although he did indeed feel sorry for his wife’s nephew, who had died in the prime of his life, he was a practical man and saw that there was no particular need for him to attend the funeral. Nevertheless, Maximilian Andreyevich had been in a great hurry to get to Moscow. What made him do it? Only one thing—the apartment. An apartment in Moscow! That’s serious business! No one knows why, but Maximilian Andreyevich didn’t like Kiev, and the thought of moving to Moscow had gnawed at him so persistently recently that he had begun to lose sleep over it.

He got no pleasure from the Dnieper overflowing in spring, when the islands on the lower shore became flooded, and the water merged with the horizon. He got no pleasure from the striking beauty of the view from the base of the Prince Vladimir statue. The patches of sunlight that played on the brick paths of Vladimir Hill in spring gave him no joy. He wanted none of that, he wanted just one thing—to move to Moscow.

The ads he placed in the papers, offering to exchange his Institute Street apartment in Kiev for a smaller flat in Moscow, had produced no results. There were no takers, and if someone did turn up once in a while, the offer was made in bad faith.

The telegram had given Maximilian Andreyevich a shock. It would be a sin to pass up such an opportunity. Practical people know that opportunity doesn’t knock twice.

In a word, come hell or high water, he had to make sure he inherited his nephew’s apartment on Sadovaya Street. True, it would be difficult, very difficult, but the difficulties had to be overcome, no matter what. As an experienced man of the world, Maximilian Andreyevich knew the first thing he had to do to accomplish this goal was to get registered, if only on a temporary basis, in his late nephew’s three-room apartment.

On Friday afternoon Maximilian Andreyevich walked into the office of the housing committee of No. 302B Sadovaya Street in Moscow.

In a narrow room, where there was an old poster on the wall showing in several drawings ways of reviving someone drowned in the river, an unshaven middle-aged man with frightened-looking eyes sat behind a wooden desk all by himself.

“May I see the chairman of the housing committee?” the economic planner inquired politely, taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on the chair by the doorway.

This, it would seem, simplest of questions so unnerved the man at the desk that a change came over his face. Squinting with alarm, he mumbled incomprehensibly that the chairman was not there.

“Is he in his apartment?” asked Poplavsky. “I’m here on a very urgent matter.”

The seated man’s reply was again incoherent. But even so, the implication was that the chairman was not in his apartment either.

“When will he be back?”

The seated man said nothing in reply, and looked out the window with a kind of anguish.

“Aha!” said the smart Poplavsky to himself and inquired after the secretary.

The strange man at the desk turned purple from the strain and, again incomprehensibly, said that the secretary wasn’t there either … that he was ill … and that no one knew when he’d be back … “Aha!” said Poplavsky to himself, “But is there anyone here from the housing committee?”

“Me,” the man answered in a weak voice.

“You see,” Poplavsky began impressively, “I am the sole heir of the deceased Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at Patriarch’s Ponds, and I am bound by the law to assume the inheritance that consists of our apartment, No. 50 …” “I don’t know anything about it, comrade,” interrupted the man glumly.

“But, see here,” said Poplavsky in resonant tones. “You are a member of the committee and are obliged to …” At this point a man walked into the room. The man at the desk took one look at him and turned pale.

“Committee member Pyatnazhko?” asked the new arrival.

“Yes,” answered the man at the desk in barely audible tones.

The newcomer whispered something to him, and the latter became completely flustered, got up from the desk, and seconds later, Poplavsky was left alone in the empty housing committee office.

“Oh, what a complication! All I needed was to have them all suddenly be …,” thought Poplavsky with annoyance, as he crossed the asphalt courtyard and hurried to apartment No. 50.

As soon as the economic planner rang the bell, the door opened. Maximilian Andreyevich entered the darkened hallway. He was a little surprised that he couldn’t tell who had opened the door. There was no one in the hallway except a huge black cat who was sitting on a chair.

Maximilian Andreyevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the study door opened, and out walked Korovyov into the hallway. Maximilian Andreyevich bowed politely to him, but said with dignity, “My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle …” But before he could finish, Korovyov pulled a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket, buried his nose in it, and burst into tears.

“ …of the deceased Berlioz …”

“I know, I know,” interrupted Korovyov, removing the handkerchief from his face. “The minute I laid eyes on you, I guessed it was you!” Then he was convulsed with tears and cried out, “What a tragedy, huh? How could such a thing happen, huh?” “Run over by a streetcar?” asked Poplavsky in a whisper.

“Killed instantly,” shouted Korovyov, and the tears started streaming from under his pince-nez. “Instantly! I was there and saw it. Believe me, it happened in a flash! Off went the head! Then the right leg—crunch, right in two! Then the left—crunch, right in two! That’s what you get with streetcars!” Apparently unable to control himself, Korovyov turned his face to the wall next to the mirror and began shaking with sobs.

Berlioz’s uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger’s behavior. “And they say people aren’t sensitive nowadays!” he thought, feeling his own eyes begin to smart. However, at just that moment a bothersome little cloud settled over his soul and a reptilian thought flickered: Could this sincere and sensitive fellow already have registered himself in the deceased’s apartment? Such things have been known to happen, after all.

“Excuse me, but were you a friend of my dear departed Misha?” he asked, wiping his dry left eye with his sleeve and studying the grief-stricken Korovyov with his right. But the latter was in such a paroxysm of tears that nothing he said was intelligible except for “crunch, right in two!” which he kept repeating. After he had cried himself out, Korovyov finally unglued himself from the wall and said, “No, I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to take 300 drops of valerian! …” and turning his utterly tear-drenched face to Poplavsky, he added, “Those damned streetcars!” “Pardon me, but was it you who sent me the telegram?” asked Maximilian Andreyevich, agonizing over who this amazing crybaby could be.

“He did!” answered Korovyov, pointing to the cat.

Poplavsky, his eyes bulging, thought he had misheard.

“No, I can’t go on, I haven’t the strength,” Korovyov went on, sniffling. “When I think of the wheel going over his leg … one wheel alone weighs about 360 pounds … Crunch! I’ll go lie down and lose myself in sleep,” at which point he vanished from the hallway.

The cat stirred, jumped down from the chair, stood on its hind legs, spread its forepaws, opened its jaws and said, “Well, I sent the telegram. Now what?” Maximilian Andreyevich’s head started spinning, his arms and legs became paralyzed, he dropped his suitcase and sat down on a chair opposite the cat.

“I believe I asked you in Russian,” the cat said sternly. “Now what?”

But Poplavsky gave no reply.

“Passport!” snapped the cat and stretched out a chubby paw.

Completely at a loss and unable to see anything but the sparks burning in the cat’s eyes, Poplavsky pulled his passport out of his pocket as if it were a dagger. The cat removed a pair of black thick-rimmed glasses from the table under the mirror, put them on his snout, which made it look even more impressive, and took the passport from Poplavsky’s trembling hand.

“I wonder: will I faint or not?” thought Poplavsky. Korovyov’s sobbing could be heard in the distance, and the smells of ether, valerian, and some other nauseating abomination filled the entire hallway.

“Which department issued this document?” asked the cat, staring at it intently. No answer was forthcoming.

“Department 412,” replied the cat himself, tracing his paw over the passport, which he held upside down. “But, of course! I know that department very well! They give passports to anyone who walks in! But I, on the other hand, wouldn’t give a passport to someone like you! Not on your life! One look at you and I’d refuse on the spot!” At this point the cat became so enraged that he threw the passport on the floor. “Permission to attend the funeral is hereby revoked,” the cat continued in an official-sounding voice. “Be so kind as to return to your place of residence.” He then bellowed through the door, “Azazello!” In answer to his call a short little man ran out into the hallway—he walked with a limp, wore black tights, had a knife stuck inside his leather belt, was red-haired, had a yellow fang, and a cataract clouding his left eye.

Poplavsky felt he was suffocating, got up from his chair and staggered backward, his hand clutching his heart.

“Azazello, show him out!” ordered the cat and walked out.

“Poplavsky,” the recent arrival said softly, with a nasal twang, “I hope by now everything is completely clear?” Poplavsky nodded.

“Return to Kiev immediately,” Azazello continued. “Stay quiet as a mouse and stop dreaming about apartments in Moscow, is that clear?” This short little man, who scared Poplavsky to death with his fang, his knife, and his cataract, only came up to the economist’s shoulders, but his actions were smooth, efficient, and forceful.

First he picked up the passport and handed it to Maximilian Andreyevich, and the latter took it with a lifeless hand. Then the one called Azazello picked up the suitcase with one hand, and threw open the door with the other. Taking Berlioz’s uncle by the arm, he escorted him out to the landing. Poplavsky leaned against the wall. Azazello opened the suitcase without benefit of a key, took out a huge roast chicken with only one drumstick, wrapped in greasy newspaper, and put it down on the top of the stairs. Then he pulled out two pair of underwear, a razor strop, a book, and a case and kicked everything except the chicken down the stairs. The empty suitcase was also sent flying. Judging by the sound it made when it crashed below, its top had come off.

Next the red-haired thug grabbed the chicken by its leg and slammed it so roughly and savagely across Poplavsky’s neck that the carcass flew apart, leaving Azazello with only the drumstick in his hand. “Everything was in a state of confusion in the Oblonsky household,” as the famous writer Lev Tolstoy so justly put it. He would have said the same thing here too. Indeed! Everything in Poplavsky’s vision became jumbled. A long spark flashed before his eyes which then converted into a black serpent, which for an instant blotted out the May sun. Poplavsky then went flying down the stairs, passport in hand. When he reached the turn on the stairs, he smashed in the windowpane with his foot and sat down on the step. The legless chicken tumbled past him and fell into the stairwell. Azazello, still at the top of the stairs, devoured the drumstick in a flash and stuck the bone in the side pocket of his tights, after which he went back to the apartment and shut the door with a bang.

It was then that the cautious footsteps of someone coming up the stairs were heard.

After running down another flight, Poplavsky sat down on a small wooden bench on the landing to catch his breath.

A diminutive elderly gentleman with an unusually sad face, wearing an old-fashioned tussore-silk suit and a stiff straw hat with a green band, was coming up the stairs. He stopped near Poplavsky.

“May I ask you, citizen,” the man in tussore-silk inquired sadly, “where is apartment No. 50?”

“Upstairs,” was Poplavsky’s abrupt reply.

“My humble thanks, sir,” the man replied, equally as sadly, and proceeded up the stairs, while Poplavsky got up from the bench and ran downstairs.

The question arises: did Maximilian Andreyevich rush off to the police station to lodge a complaint against the thugs who had brutalized him so savagely in broad daylight? Emphatically no, not at all, that can be said with confidence. To go to the police and say that a cat wearing glasses had just examined your passport, and that a man in tights, with a knife had … No citizens, Maximilian Andreyevich was far too smart for that!

When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw a door off the exit leading to a closetlike room. The window on the door had been knocked out. Poplavsky put his passport away in his pocket and looked around, hoping to spot his scattered belongings. But there was no trace of them. Poplavsky himself was surprised at how little that upset him. There was something else on his mind, an intriguing and tempting thought: to use the little man to test the apartment again. He had asked where it was, which meant it was his first visit. This, in turn, meant that he would fall into the clutches of the gang who had taken over apartment No. 50. Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be exiting the apartment momentarily. Naturally Maximilian Andreyevich no longer had any plans to attend his nephew’s funeral, but there was still time before his train departed for Kiev. The economist looked around and slipped into the closet.

At this moment a door banged far upstairs. “That’s him going in …” thought Poplavsky, his heart sinking. It was cool in the closet, and it smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreyevich sat down on some kind of wood stump and decided to wait. From the closet he had a good view of the door of main entrance No. 6.

The Kievan had to wait longer than he expected, however. For some reason the staircase remained deserted. He could hear well, and finally a door banged on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Yes, those were his footsteps. “He’s coming down.” A door opened on the floor below. The footsteps halted. A woman’s voice. A sad voice in reply … yes, it was his voice … It said something like, “Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake …” Poplavsky’s ear was pressed close to the broken window. It caught the sound of a woman laughing. Brisk and determined steps came down the stairs; then a woman’s back flashed by. The woman was carrying a green oilcloth bag and she went out the entrance into the courtyard. The footsteps of the little man started up again. “That’s strange! He’s going back up to the apartment! Could he himself be one of the gang? Yes, he’s going back. That’s the door opening again upstairs. Oh well, we’ll wait a little longer.” This time he did not have long to wait. The sounds of a door. Steps. Steps halting. A desperate cry. The meowing of a cat. Quick rapid footsteps coming down, down, down!

Poplavsky got what he had waited for. The sad little man flew by, crossing himself and muttering something. He was hatless, looked crazed, his bald head was scratched, and his trousers were soaking wet. He began pulling at the doorknob, so traumatized that he could not tell whether the door opened in or out. He finally managed to get it right and flew out into the sunshine of the courtyard.

His test of the apartment concluded, Poplavsky lost all interest in both his deceased nephew and the apartment. Trembling at the thought of the danger to which he had subjected himself, Maximilian Andreyevich ran out into the courtyard, mumbling just three words, “It’s all clear!” It’s all clear!” Minutes later a trolley was carrying the economic planner in the direction of Kiev Station.

While the economist was sitting downstairs in the closetlike room, the little old man was having a most unpleasant experience upstairs. He was the bartender at the Variety Theater, and his name was Andrei Fokich Sokov. While the investigation was in progress at the theater, Andrei Fokich had kept apart from the proceedings, and the only thing noticeable about him was that he seemed sadder than usual, and, in addition, that he had tried to find out from Karpov, the messenger, where the visiting magician was staying.

And so, after leaving the economist on the landing, the bartender had gone up to the fifth floor and rung the bell of apartment No. 50.

The door was opened immediately, but the bartender shuddered, stumbled back, and did not go in immediately. An understandable reaction: the door had been opened by a girl wearing nothing but a white maid’s cap and a coquettish lace apron. She did, however, have gold slippers on her feet. The girl’s figure was superb, and the only thing wrong with her otherwise flawless exterior was the purplish scar on her neck.

“Well, come in, since you rang!” said the girl, fixing her lecherous green eyes on the bartender.

Andrei Fokich gulped, blinked, and took off his hat as he stepped into the entrance hall. Just then the telephone in the entrance hall started to ring. The shameless maid put one leg up on a chair, picked up the receiver and said, “Hello!” Not knowing where to put his eyes, the bartender shifted from one foot to the other and thought, “That’s some maid the foreigner’s got! Phew! What filth!” And to save himself from such filth, he looked off to the side.

The entire large, semidark entrance hall was crammed with unusual objects and articles of clothing. A funereal cape with a fiery-red lining was slung over the back of a chair, and on the table under the mirror there was a long sword with a shiny gold hilt. Standing in the corner as nonchalantly as canes or umbrellas, were three swords with silver hilts. And hanging on deer antlers were berets with eagle feathers.

“Yes,” the maid was saying into the phone, “Who is it? Baron Maigel? Hullo. Yes! The artiste is at home today. Yes, he’ll be happy to see you. Yes, there’ll be guests … Tails or a black dinner jacket. What? Before midnight.” After finishing her conversation, the maid put back the receiver and turned to the bartender, “What can I do for you?” “I have to see the citizen artiste.”

“Is that so? In person?”

“Yes,” answered the bartender sadly.

“I’ll ask,” said the maid, evidently hesitating, and barely opening the door into the late Berlioz’s study, she announced, “Sir, there’s a little man out here who says he needs to see Messire.” “Show him in,” came Korovyov’s cracked voice from the study.

“Go into the parlor,” the girl said simply, as if she were dressed like a normal person, and she opened the door to the parlor and left the entrance hall.

When he entered the room he had been invited into, the bartender was so struck by the furnishings that he forgot why he had come. Streaming through the large stained-glass windows (the whim of the jeweller’s wife who had vanished without a trace) was an extraordinary light, similar to the light in a church. Wood was burning in the huge old-fashioned fireplace despite the hot spring day. Yet it was not the least bit hot in the room; in fact, quite the opposite. A cellarlike dampness enveloped the man entering the room. Sitting on a tiger skin in front of the fireplace was a huge black cat, squinting contentedly at the fire. There was a table that made the God-fearing bartender shudder when he saw it: the table was covered with a brocaded altar cloth. On the altar cloth numerous bottles were arranged—potbellied, dusty, and moldy. Amidst the bottles a plate gleamed, and it was immediately obvious that the plate was made of pure gold. By the fireplace a short redheaded man with a knife in his belt was roasting pieces of meat skewered on a long steel sword, and the juice from the meat dripped in the fire, and the smoke went up the chimney. It smelled not only of roast meat, but of very strong perfume and incense, which made the bartender, who had learned of Berlioz’s death and his place of residence from the newspapers, wonder if they weren’t performing some kind of requiem mass for him. However, that notion was so preposterous that he dismissed it out of hand.

The stunned bartender suddenly heard a deep bass say, “Well, sir, how can I help you?”

There in the shadows was the one whom the bartender needed to see.

The black magician lay sprawled on an immense couch that was low to the floor and strewn with pillows. It seemed to the bartender that the artiste was wearing nothing but black underwear and black pointed slippers.

“I,” the bartender began bitterly, “am the chief bartender and buffet manager of the Variety Theater …” The artiste stretched out a hand sparkling with precious stones, as if to seal the bartender’s lips, and began speaking heatedly, “No, no, no! Not another word! Not in any circumstances, never! I wouldn’t put a thing from that buffet of yours into my mouth! I, most venerable sir, passed your counter yesterday, and I still can’t forget the sturgeon and the brynza cheese. My good man! Brynza isn’t supposed to be green, someone must have deceived you. It’s supposed to be white. And that tea? It’s dishwater! With my own eyes I saw some sloppy girl pour unboiled water out of a pail into your huge samovar, yet they continued pouring tea from it anyway. No, my dear fellow, that’s not the way to do things.” “Excuse me,” began Andrei Fokich, stunned by this sudden attack, “but I didn’t come about that, the sturgeon’s not the issue.” “How can it not be the issue if it’s spoiled?”

“They sent us sturgeon that’s second-grade fresh,” said the bartender.

“Dear fellow, that’s absurd!”

“What’s absurd?”

“Second-grade fresh—that’s absurd! Freshness comes in only one grade—first-grade, and that’s it. And if the sturgeon’s second-grade fresh, that means it’s rotten!” “Excuse me,” the bartender said once again, not knowing how to escape the artiste’s tongue lashing.

“I cannot excuse you,” the latter said firmly.

“But I didn’t come about that,” said the bartender, now completely at a loss.

“You didn’t?” the foreign magician asked in amazement. “What was it, then, that brought you here? If my memory doesn’t deceive me, I’ve known only one other person in your line of work, and that was a lady sutler, but that was long before you were even born. However, I’m glad you’ve come. Azazello! A stool for the bar manager.” The one roasting the meat turned around, terrifying the bartender with his fangs, and deftly handed him one of the low, dark oak stools. There was nothing else in the room to sit on.

“Thank you very much,” said the bartender, lowering himself onto the stool, the back leg of which then caved in with a crash. The bartender let out a groan and hit his rump painfully against the floor. As he fell, his leg upset another stool nearby, spilling a full glass of red wine all over his trousers.

The artiste exclaimed, “Oops! Did you hurt yourself?”

Azazello helped the bartender get up and offered him another seat. In a grief-stricken voice the bartender refused his host’s suggestion that he remove his trousers and dry them in front of the fire. Feeling extremely uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothes, he sat down gingerly on the other stool.

“I love sitting low to the ground,” said the artiste, “because then falling off isn’t so dangerous. Now then, we were talking about the sturgeon, were we not? My dear fellow! Freshness, freshness, and more freshness—that should be every buffet manager’s motto. Yes, well, wouldn’t you like to have a taste …” Here, in the crimson glow of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the bartender, and Azazello put a sizzling piece of meat on a gold platter. He sprinkled it with lemon juice and handed the bartender a two-pronged gold fork.

“Thank you very much … but I …”

“No, no, try it!”

Out of politeness the bartender put a piece in his mouth and realized immediately that he was eating something that was truly very fresh and, what’s more, unusually tasty. But even so, as the bartender chewed the fragrant, succulent meat, he almost choked and fell a second time. A large dark bird flew in from the adjoining room, softly brushing its wing against the bartender’s bald head. Alighting on the mantelpiece, next to the clock, it turned out to be an owl. “Oh, my God!” thought Andrei Fokich, who, like all bartenders, was nervous and edgy. “This is some apartment!” “A glass of wine? White? Red? Which imported wine do you prefer at this hour?”

“Thank you … but I don’t drink …”

“How unfortunate! How about a game of dice? Or do you like some other games? Dominoes? Cards?”

“I don’t play,” replied the already weary bartender.

“That’s the limit,” concluded the host. “There is, if you don’t mind my saying so, something sinister about men who avoid wine, games, the company of charming women, and good dinner-table conversation. People like that are either seriously ill or they secretly disdain their fellow men. True, there are exceptions. Among those who have feasted with me there have sometimes been extraordinary cads! And so, tell me what brings you here.” “Yesterday you had occasion to perform some tricks …”

“I?” the magician exclaimed in amazement. “I beg your pardon. That isn’t my sort of thing!”

“Sorry,” said the bartender, taken aback. “But what about the performance of black magic …”

“Oh that, well, of course! My dear man! I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not a stage performer at all. I just wanted to see the citizens of Moscow enmasse, and the easiest way to do it was in a theater. So my retinue here,” he nodded at the cat, “arranged the performance, while I merely sat and watched the Muscovites. But don’t look like that. Just tell me what it was about the performance that brought you here.” “If you recall, among other things, paper money flew down from the ceiling …” the bartender lowered his voice and looked around in embarrassment. “Well, everybody started grabbing the bills. And a young man comes up to me at the bar and gives me a ten-ruble bill, and I give him eight-fifty in change … Then someone else …” “Also a young man?”

“No, an older man. Then a third came, a fourth … I give them all change. And today when I went to check the cash register, I look and what do I see but strips of paper instead of money. The bar was a hundred and nine rubles short.” “Dear oh dear!” exclaimed the artiste. “Can they truly have thought it was real money? I can’t believe they did it on purpose.” The bartender looked around wryly and miserably, but said nothing.

“Can there really have been swindlers?” the magician asked his guest anxiously. “Can there really be swindlers in Moscow?” The bartender smiled so bitterly in reply that no doubts remained: there were indeed swindlers in Moscow!

“That’s beneath contempt!” said Woland in outrage. “You’re a poor man … you are a poor man—aren’t you?” The bartender drew his head into his shoulders, so that it would become obvious that he was a poor man.

“How much do you have in savings?”

Although the question was asked sympathetically, it was impossible not to view a question like that as indelicate. The bartender squirmed.

“Two hundred and forty-nine thousand rubles in five separate savings accounts,” came a cracked voice from the next room. “And two hundred ten-ruble gold pieces under the floor at home.” The bartender seemed to be riveted to his stool.

“Well, that isn’t so large a sum, of course,” said Woland indulgently to his guest. “Although, strictly speaking, it is of no use to you. When will you die?” Here the bartender became indignant.

“Nobody knows that and it’s nobody’s business,” he replied.

“True, nobody knows,” came the same noxious voice from the study, “but it’s hardly Newton’s binomial theorem! He’ll die in nine months, that is, next February, from cancer of the liver, in the First Moscow State University Clinic, Ward No. 4.” The bartender’s face turned yellow.

“Nine months,” Woland calculated thoughtfully. “249,000 … In round numbers that comes out to 27,000 a month, isn’t that right? Not a lot, but enough if one lives modestly … And there’s still the gold rubles …” “He won’t manage to cash those in,” broke in the same voice, sending a chill through the bartender’s heart. “After Andrei Fokich dies, they’ll tear down the house right away and the gold rubles will be sent to the State Bank.” “And I wouldn’t advise you to go to the clinic either,” the artiste continued. “What point is there in dying in a ward, listening to the moans and rasps of the terminally ill? Wouldn’t it be better to spend the twenty-seven thousand on a banquet, then, after taking poison, depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by intoxicated beautiful women and dashing friends?” The bartender sat motionless, and seemed to have gotten much older. His eyes had dark circles around them, his cheeks drooped, and his lower jaw sagged.

“But we’ve gotten off the track,” exclaimed the host. “Back to business. Show me your strips of paper.” Shaken, the bartender pulled a package out of his pocket, untied it and froze. Wrapped in the newspaper were ten-ruble bills.

“My dear fellow, you really are ill,” said Woland, shrugging his shoulders.

The bartender got up from the stool, a strange smile on his face.

“But,” he said, stuttering, “but what if they try to … again …”

“Hmm …” the artiste grew pensive. “Well, then, come back and see us again. By all means! Happy to have made your acquaintance.” Here Korovyov popped out of the study, grabbed the bartender’s hand and started shaking it, begging Andrei Fokich to give everyone, everyone his regards. Completely befuddled, the bartender headed for the entrance hall.

“Hella, show him out!” shouted Korovyov.

Again the naked redhead appeared in the hall! The bartender squeezed through the door, squeaked out a “good-bye,” and staggered on his way like a drunk. After going down a few steps, he stopped and sat down on the stairs. He pulled out the package to check the contents: the ten-ruble bills were still there. At that point a woman with a green bag came out of the apartment facing the landing. Seeing a man sitting on the step, staring dully at ten-ruble bills, she smiled and said pensively, “What a building we have … Only morning and this guy’s already drunk. The window on the stairs is smashed again!” She studied the bartender more carefully and added, “Hey citizen, you’re up to your ears in ten-ruble bills. How about throwing some my way! Huh?” “Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake,” said the bartender fearfully and quickly hid the money. The woman laughed, “Go to hell, you old skinflint! I was just joking …” and she started down the stairs.

The bartender got up slowly, raised his hand to adjust his hat, and found that it wasn’t on his head. The thought of going back was horrible, but he regretted the loss of his hat. He hesitated for a moment, but then went back and rang the bell.

“What do you want now?” asked the hellish Hella.

“I forgot my hat,” whispered the bartender, poking at his bald head. Hella turned away, the bartender mentally spat and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Hella was handing him his hat and a sword with a dark hilt.

“That’s not mine,” whispered the bartender, pushing the sword aside and quickly putting on his hat.

“Did you really come without a sword?” marveled Hella.

The bartender mumbled something and started swiftly down the stairs. For some reason his head felt hot and uncomfortable in the hat; he took it off and jumping with fright, let out a soft yelp. In his hands was a velvet beret with a rumpled cock’s feather. The bartender crossed himself. At that very moment the beret meowed and turned into a black kitten, which then leapt back onto Andrei Fokich’s head and dug its claws into his bald spot. Letting out a desperate scream, the bartender plunged down the stairs, and the kitten fell off his head and scooted back up the stairs.

Bursting out into the open air, the bartender ran over to the gates at a trot and left devils’ den No. 302B forever.

What happened to him next is well known. After bursting through the gateway, the bartender looked around wildly, as if searching for something. A minute later he was in a drugstore across the street. Just as he uttered the words, “Tell me, please …” the woman behind the counter yelled out, “Citizen! Your head is all cut up!” Five minutes later the bartender, wearing a gauze bandage, found out that the leading specialists in liver disease were considered to be Professors Bernadsky and Kuzmin. When he asked which one was closer, he lit up with joy when he learned the Kuzmin lived literally across the yard in a little white house. Two minutes later he was there.

The house was old, but very comfortable, very cozy. Thinking about it later, the bartender recalled that the first person to greet him was an elderly nurse, who wanted to take his hat, but since he did not have one, she shuffled off somewhere, chewing on her toothless gums.

Next came a middle-aged woman, who materialized next to a mirror and under what appeared to be an archway. She told him that the earliest appointment she could give him was the nineteenth, no sooner. The bartender realized immediately how he could get around that. After glancing with a fading eye through the archway, where three men were sitting in what was manifestly a waiting room, he whispered, “I’m terminally ill …” The woman looked perplexedly at his bandaged head, hesitated, and said, “Well, then …” and let the bartender pass through the arch.

At that moment the door across the way opened, a gold pince-nez sparkled, and a woman in a white coat said, “Citizens, this patient has priority.” Before he could turn his head, the bartender found himself in Doctor Kuzmin’s office. The room was rather long, and there was nothing frightening, medical, or solemn about it.

“What seems to be the problem?” inquired Doctor Kuzmin in a pleasant voice, looking a bit apprehensively at the bandaged head.

“I’ve just learned from a reliable source,” the bartender replied, staring wildly at a framed group photograph, “that I’m going to die of cancer of the liver next February. Please stop that from happening.” Professor Kuzmin arched himself against the high back of his Gothic leather chair.

“Excuse me, but I don’t understand … you mean you’ve been to a doctor? Why is your head bandaged?” “What doctor? You should have seen this doctor!” replied the bartender and suddenly his teeth began to chatter. “Don’t bother about my head, it has nothing to do with this. The hell with my head, it’s beside the point. It’s the liver cancer I want you to stop.” “But who was it who told you?”

“You better believe him!” the bartender implored impassionedly. “Because he knows!”

“I don’t understand any of this,” said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders and moving his chair back from the desk. “How can he know when you’re going to die? Especially when he’s not even a doctor!” “In Ward No. 4,” the bartender replied.

The doctor then stared at his patient, at his head, at his damp trousers, and thought, “That’s all I need! A madman!” He asked, “Do you drink vodka?” “Never touch the stuff,” the bartender replied.

A minute later he was undressed, lying on a cold oilskin couch, and the doctor was kneading his stomach. Here it must be said, the bartender cheered up considerably. The doctor stated categorically that the bartender showed absolutely no signs, at least at the present time, of liver cancer. But that since … since he was afraid, and some charlatan had scared him to death, he should have all the necessary tests … The doctor wrote out instructions for him, explaining where he was to go and what he was to bring. In addition, he gave him a referral slip for a neuropathologist, Doctor Burye, saying that his nerves were completely shot.

“How much do I owe you, Doctor?” the bartender asked in a soft, trembling voice as he pulled out a thick wallet.

“Whatever you wish,” the doctor replied dryly and brusquely.

The bartender took out thirty rubles and put them on the desk, and then, with unexpected softness, as if with a cat’s paw, he placed a jingling stack of gold coins, wrapped in newspaper, on top of them.

“And what is that?” asked Kuzmin, twirling his mustache.

“Don’t turn your nose up at it, Doctor,” the bartender whispered. “I beg you—stop the cancer.”

“Take back your gold,” said the professor, feeling proud of himself. “You’d do better to look after your nerves. Bring in a urine sample tomorrow, don’t drink a lot of tea, and don’t use any salt on your food.” “Not even in my soup?” asked the bartender.

“Don’t put salt on anything,” ordered Kuzmin.

“Oh!” the bartender exclaimed dejectedly, looking entreatingly at the doctor as he gathered up his coins and backed away toward the door.

The doctor had only a few patients that evening, and by dusk the last one had left. As he was taking off his robe, he glanced at the place where the bartender had left the three ten-ruble notes, and instead of rubles, he saw three Abrau-Dyurso champagne labels.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” muttered Kuzmin, trailing his robe over the floor and fingering the pieces of paper. “Not only was he a schizophrenic, he was a swindler too! But I still can’t understand what he wanted from me? All that for a urine analysis? Oh! I bet he stole my coat!” And the doctor rushed into the entrance hall, dragging his robe by one sleeve. “Ksenya Nikitishna!” he shouted shrilly in the doorway, “Check and see, are the coats still there?” As it turned out, they all were. But when the doctor returned to his office and finally took off his robe, he stood rooted to the parquet floor, his eyes trained on the desk. There where the labels had been sat a stray black kitten, looking very forlorn and meowing over a saucer of milk.

“What is this, pray tell?! This is really too …” Kuzmin felt a chill at the back of his neck.

Ksenya Nikitishna rushed in when she heard the doctor’s whimpering cry and calmed him down completely by telling him that one of the patients had obviously left the kitten there, and that such things often happen to doctors.

“They’re probably poor,” explained Ksenya Nikitishna, “whereas we, of course …”

They tried to figure out who had left the kitten surreptitiously. Suspicion fell on an old woman with stomach ulcers.

“Of course, she’s the one,” said Ksenya Nikitishna. “She probably thought: I don’t care if I live or die, but I feel sorry for the poor kitten.” “But really!” cried Kuzmin. “And what about the milk?! Did she bring that too? And the saucer as well?” “She brought it in a bottle and poured it into a saucer here,” volunteered Ksenya Nikitishna.

“No matter, take the kitten and the saucer away,” said Kuzmin, escorting Ksenya Nikitishna to the door. When he went back, the situation had changed.

As he was hanging up his robe, the doctor heard laughter in the courtyard. He looked out and was naturally struck dumb. A woman wearing only a chemise was running across the yard to the building opposite. The doctor even knew who it was: Marya Alexandrovna. A boy was giggling.

“What’s going on?” said Kuzmin contemptuously.

Just then, on the other side of the wall in his daughter’s room, the foxtrot “Hallelujah” started playing on the phonograph, and at the same moment a sparrow started chirping behind Kuzmin’s back. He turned around and saw a huge sparrow hopping on top of his desk.

“Hmm … just keep calm …,” the doctor said to himself. “It must have flown in when I had my back to the window. Everything’s OK!” the doctor told himself, feeling in his heart that everything was not OK, and mainly, of course, because of the sparrow. When he looked at it more closely, the doctor realized immediately that it was not exactly an ordinary sparrow. The filthy bird was lame in its left foot and was behaving in an obviously affected way, dragging the foot in syncopated rhythm. In a word, the sparrow was doing a foxtrot to the music playing on the phonograph, like a drunk at a bar. The bird acted as rudely as it knew how, staring insolently at the doctor.

Kuzmin reached for the phone, thinking that he would call his old classmate and colleague Burye, to ask him what it meant when you started seeing sparrows like that at age sixty, and when your head was spinning to boot.

Meanwhile the sparrow landed on the inkstand, which had been given to the doctor as a gift, befouled it (I’m not kidding!), flew up in the air, hovered briefly, and then with a steely beak pecked furiously at the glass on the graduation photo of the class of 1894, shattering it to bits. After that, it flew out the window.

Instead of calling Burye, the professor decided to call the Bureau of Leeches, saying that he, Doctor Kuzmin, wanted them to send him over some leeches right away.

After putting down the receiver, the doctor turned back to his desk, and immediately let out a wail. Sitting at his desk, wearing a nurse’s kerchief, was a woman with a bag that said “Leeches.” The doctor screamed when he saw her mouth. It was a man’s mouth, crooked, open to the ears, with one fang sticking out. The nurse’s eyes were dead.

“I’ll take the money,” said the nurse in a man’s bass voice. “No point in it lying around here.” She raked up the champagne labels with a bird’s claw and melted into thin air.

Two hours went by. Doctor Kuzmin was sitting in bed in his room, with leeches stuck to his temples, his neck, and behind his ears. On the silk quilt at his feet sat the gray-whiskered Doctor Burye, looking at him with sympathy and trying to reassure him that it was all nonsense. Outside the window, it was already night.

We have no idea whether there were any other strange occurrences in Moscow that night, and we have no intention of trying to find out, since the time has come for us to proceed to Part Two of this true narrative. Follow me, reader!