فصل 5

V

The Incident at Griboyedov

ON the ring boulevard there was an old cream-colored two-storey house that stood in the depths of a withered garden which was separated from the sidewalk by a carved wrought-iron fence. The small area in front of the house was paved over with asphalt, and in winter a mound of snow with a shovel on top towered above it; in summer it was shaded by a canvas awning and became the outdoor pavilion of a summer restaurant.

The house was called “Griboyedov House” because it was supposed to have been owned at one time by an aunt of the writer Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov. Whether she owned it or not, we don’t know for sure. I even seem to recall that Griboyedov did not have an aunt who owned property … However, that was what the house was called. What’s more, a certain Moscow prevaricator would relate how the famous writer read excerpts from his Woe from Wit to this very same aunt while she reclined on a sofa in the round colonnaded hall on the second floor. And, the devil knows, maybe he did, but that’s not the point!

The point is that at the present time the house was owned by that very same MASSOLIT which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at Patriarch’s Ponds.

Following the example of MASSOLIT’s members, no one called the place “Griboyedov House,” but simply—“Griboyedov”: “Yesterday I hung around Griboyedov for two hours.”—“Well, so how did you make out?”—“I managed to get a month in Yalta.”—“Good for you!” Or, “Go talk to Berlioz, he’s seeing people at Griboyedov today from four to five,” and so on.

MASSOLIT’s quarters at Griboyedov were the best and most comfortable imaginable. The first thing a visitor saw upon entering Griboyedov were the notices of various sports clubs, and the individual and group photos of MASSOLIT members which hung on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.

The first room on the upper floor had a sign on the door in bold letters which said, “Fishing and Dacha Section,” accompanied by a picture of a carp jumping into a net.

The sign on Room No. 2 was not entirely clear, “Creative Day-Trips. See M. V. Podlozhnaya.”

The next room had a brief but utterly baffling sign, “Perelygino,” and the array of signs that adorned the rest of the aunt’s walnut doors would make your eyes swim, “Sign up with Polevkina for supplies,” “Cashier. Personal Accounts for Theatrical Sketch Writers …” If one cut through the very long line that began downstairs in the entryhall, one could see the sign, “Housing Concerns,” on a door that people were constantly bombarding.

Behind “Housing Concerns” was a lush poster depicting a horseman in a Caucasian cloak riding along the crest of a mountain cliff with a rifle slung over his shoulders. Lower on the poster were palm trees and a balcony, and on the balcony a young man with a cowlick was seated and looking upward into space with incredibly alert eyes while holding a fountain pen in his hand. The caption read, “Creative Package Vacations from two weeks (for a short story or novella) to one year (for a novel or trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoye, Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).” This door also had a line, but not a very long one, only about one hundred and fifty people.

Then there followed, conforming to the whimsical curves, rises, and falls of Griboyedov House—“MASSOLIT Administration,” “Cashiers: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5,” “Editorial Board,” “MASSOLIT President,” “Billiard Room,” various auxiliary offices, and finally, that same colonnaded room where Griboyedov’s aunt had enjoyed listening to her brilliant nephew’s comedy.

Any visitor who came to Griboyedov immediately realized, unless, of course, he was a complete ninny, how good life was for the fortunates who were members of MASSOLIT. He would soon become green with envy and curse the heavens for not having blessed him at birth with literary talent, without which, naturally, one could not even dream of possessing the brown, gold-bordered MASSOLIT membership card that smelled of expensive leather, and was known to all of Moscow.

Who will say anything in defense of envy? As a feeling it falls into the category of worthless, but even so, one has to put oneself in the position of our visitor. After all, what he saw on the upper floor was merely the icing on the cake. The entire bottom floor of the aunt’s house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant it was! Griboyedov was considered the best restaurant in Moscow and with good reason. Not only because of its layout in two large rooms with vaulted ceilings that were adorned with lilac-colored, Assyrian-maned horses, or because each table had its own shawl-shaded lamp, or because it was exclusive and closed to the general public, but also because it served better-quality food than any restaurant in Moscow and at reasonable, by no means prohibitive, prices as well.

This explains why the author of these most truthful lines found nothing surprising in the following exchange which he once overheard at Griboyedov’s wrought-iron fence: “Where will you be dining today, Amvrosy?”

“Why, what a question! Here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich let me in on a secret: the à la carte special today is perch au naturel, a real virtuoso dish!” “You know how to live, Amvrosy!” sighed Foka, a skinny and unkempt fellow with a carbuncle on his neck, to Amvrosy, a pudgy-cheeked, rosy-lipped, golden-haired giant of a poet.

“I don’t have any special talents,” retorted Amvrosy, “just an ordinary desire to live like a human being. Now you’ll say, Foka, that you can get perch at the Coliseum. But a serving there costs 13 rubles, 15 kopecks, and here it’s only 5. 50! Besides, at the Coliseum the perch is three days old, not to mention the fact that at the Coliseum there’s no guarantee you won’t get smacked in the kisser with a bunch of grapes by the first young scamp who bursts in from Theater Passage. No, Foka, I’m categorically opposed to the Coliseum,” boomed the gourmet Amvrosy for the benefit of the whole boulevard. “Don’t try to change my mind!” “I’m not trying to, Amvrosy,” squeaked Foka. “One can also dine at home.”

“Thank you, no,” trumpeted Amvrosy, “I can just imagine your wife, trying to cook perch au naturel in the frying pan of your communal kitchen! Ha-ha-ha! Au revoir, Foka!” And, humming a tune, Amvrosy headed for the canopied veranda.

Ha-ha-ha … Yes, those were the days! Oldtime residents of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov! As for the perch au naturel, that was nothing, my dear Amvrosy! What about the sterlet, the sterlet in a silver pan, the sterlet filets layered with crayfish and fresh caviar? And the eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree? And didn’t you like the filet of thrush? With truffles? The quail à la genoise? Ten rubles fifty! And the jazz, and the gracious service! And in July, when the whole family’s away at the dacha and pressing literary matters keep you in the city—out on the veranda in the shades of twisting grapevines, a bowl of soup printanier sitting in a sunspot on the most immaculate tablecloth imaginable? Do you remember, Amvrosy? Well, why ask! I can see by your lips that you do remember. So much for the whitefish and perch! What about the snipe, great snipe, jacksnipe, woodcock in season, quail, and sandpipers? The Narzan water fizzing in your throat?! But enough, your eyes, dear reader, are becoming glazed! Follow me!

At 10:30 p.m., on the evening when Berlioz was killed at Patriarch’s Ponds, the lights were on in only one of the upper rooms at Griboyedov, where the twelve writers who had been summoned to a meeting languished, as they waited for Mikhail Alexandrovich to arrive.

They were sitting on chairs, tables, and even on both windowsills of the MASSOLIT administration room and were suffering intensely from the stifling heat. Not a breath of fresh air came through the open windows. All the heat that had accumulated on Moscow’s pavement during the day was being released, and it was clear that the night would bring no relief. The smell of onions wafted up from the basement of the aunt’s house, where the restaurant kitchen was, and everyone was thirsty, edgy, and irritable.

The fiction writer Beskudnikov—a quiet, neatly dressed man with keen, yet unfocused eyes—took out his watch. The hour hand was creeping toward eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the dial, and showed it to his neighbor, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting at the table and shuffling his yellow rubber-soled shoes out of boredom.

“Well, really,” muttered Dvubratsky.

“The lad must have gotten held up on the Klyazma,” said the thick-voiced Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, an orphan from a Moscow merchant family, who had become a writer and turned out naval battle stories under the pen name Bosun George.

“If I may!” boldly began Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches. “I too would rather be sipping tea on the balcony than stewing around here. Wasn’t the meeting called for ten?” “It’s nice on the Klyazma now,” said Bosun George, egging everyone on because she knew the writers’ colony in Perelygino on the Klyazma was a universal sore spot. “The nightingales are probably singing by now. Somehow I always work better in the country, especially in spring.” “For three years now I’ve been paying in money, so I can send my wife to that paradise for her Grave’s disease, but so far it’s no go,” said the novelist Hieronymus Poprikhin venomously and bitterly.

“It’s just the luck of the draw,” rang out the critic Ababkov from the windowsill.

Joy blazed in Bosun George’s little eyes, and softening her heavy contralto she said, “No need for envy, comrades. There are twenty-two dachas in all, and only seven more are being built, and there are 3,000 of us in MASSOLIT.” “3,111,” interjected someone from the corner.

“Well, there you have it,” continued the Bosun, “what’s to be done? It’s natural that the most talented people got dachas …” “The generals!” cut in the dramatist Glukharyov, joining the fray.

Beskudnikov gave a theatrical yawn and walked out of the room.

“Five rooms in Perelygino all to himself,” said Glukharyov in his wake.

“Lavrovich has six,” exclaimed Deniskin, “and an oak-paneled dining room!”

“Right now that’s not the issue,” rang out Ababkov. “The issue is that it’s eleven-thirty.”

It got noisy, something like a mutiny was brewing. They put in a call to the hateful Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, namely, Lavrovich’s, where they learned that Lavrovich had gone off to the river. That threw them into a complete muddle. For no reason at all they called the Commission for Belles Lettres (extension 930) and naturally found no one there.

“He could at least have called!” shouted Deniskin, Glukharyov, and Kvant.

Alas, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a cavernous room illuminated by 1000-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables lay the remains of what once had been Mikhail Alexandrovich.

On the first table lay his naked body, covered in dried blood, with a broken arm and crushed rib cage; on the second lay his head with smashed-in front teeth and glazed, wide-open eyes, undisturbed by the most glaring light; on the third lay a pile of encrusted rags.

Standing near the headless body were a professor of forensic medicine, a pathologist and his dissector, members of the investigating team, and the writer Zheldybin, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz’s assistant at MASSOLIT, who had been called away from his wife’s sickbed.

A car had gone to get Zheldybin and to take him first (this was around midnight), together with the investigators, to the apartment of the deceased, where the latter’s papers were put under seal, and then, to the morgue.

And now they were all standing around the remains of the deceased, discussing how best to proceed: should they sew the severed head back on the neck or lay the body out in Griboyedov’s hall with a black cloth drawn tightly up to the chin?

Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was unable to make any calls; so Deniskin, Glukharyov, Kvant, and Beskudnikov ranted and raved in vain. At precisely midnight all twelve writers quit the upper floor and went down to the restaurant. Here again they had cause to think unkindly about Mikhail Alexandrovich: naturally, all the tables on the veranda were already taken, and they were forced to have supper in the beautiful but stuffy rooms inside.

At exactly midnight, something in the first room crashed, followed by ringing, shattering, and thumping sounds. And at once a thin male voice began to shout despairingly to the music, “Hallelujah!” These were the sounds of the renowned Griboyedov jazz ensemble. Sweat-covered faces seemed to light up, the horses painted on the ceiling seemed to come to life, the light in the lamps seemed to glow brighter, and suddenly, as if freed from their chains, both rooms started to dance, with the veranda following suit.

Glukharyov began dancing with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Kvant began to dance, as did the novelist Zhukopov, with a movie actress in a yellow dress; Dragunsky, Cherdakchi, tiny Deniskin, and gigantic Bosun George all danced, and the architect Semeikina-Gall, a beauty, danced in the tight embrace of an unknown man in white burlap trousers. The regulars danced and so did their guests, Muscovites and out-of-towners too, the writer Ioann from Kronstadt, someone called Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, who was apparently a director and had a purple birthmark covering his entire cheek; representatives of the poetry subsection of MASSOLIT, that is, Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Spichkin, and Adelfina Buzdyak; young men of dubious profession wearing jackets with shoulder pads; and a very elderly man with a piece of green onion stuck in his beard, who danced with an anemic girl in a crumpled orange dress.

Bathed in sweat, the waiters carried foaming mugs of beer above the dancers’ heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously, “Sorry, sir!” Somewhere, orders were being shouted through a megaphone, “One shashlyk! Two zubrovkas! Tripe polonaise!” The thin voice no longer sang but wailed, “Hallelujah!” The crash of the jazz band’s bold cymbals was sometimes muffled by the crash the dishes made as the dishwashers sent them down a slide into the kitchen. In a word, hell.

And at midnight a vision appeared in hell. A handsome, dark-eyed fellow with a dagger-shaped beard stepped out onto the veranda in full dress and cast an imperial glance over his domain. They said, the mystics did, that there was once a time when this handsome fellow wore a broad leather belt with pistols instead of a tailcoat, and tied his raven hair with red silk, and the brig he commanded sailed the Caribbean under a black flag with skull and crossbones.

But no, no! The seductive mystics lie, the Caribbeans of this world are gone—desperate marauders do not sail across them, chased by corvettes, and cannon smoke does not hang low over the waves. There is nothing, and there never was anything! The stunted linden tree over there is all there is, and the iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it … And the ice melting in the little bowl, and someone’s bloodshot bull-like eyes at a neighboring table, and it’s awful, awful … O gods, my gods, give me poison, poison!

And suddenly the name “Berlioz” fluttered up from a table. The band broke off abruptly and fell silent, as if punched with a fist. “What, what, what, what?”—“Berlioz!!!” And people jumped up and started screaming … Indeed, a wave of grief surged up in response to the terrible news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone ran around yelling that a collective telegram had to be composed right then and there, before anyone could leave, and sent off right away.

But what kind of a telegram, may we ask, and where should it be sent? And why send it? And indeed, where? And what use is a telegram to a man whose flattened occiput was at that very minute being squeezed by the dissector’s rubber gloves and whose neck a professor is probing with curved needles? He is dead and has no need of telegrams. It’s all over, so let’s not burden the telegraph system.

Yes, he’s dead, he’s dead … But we are alive!

Yes, a wave of grief did arise and lasted for a time, but then it began to subside and one fellow had already returned to his table and, furtively at first, but then openly downed some vodka and taken a bite to eat. And indeed, why waste suprème de volaille? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? By staying hungry? After all, we are alive!

Naturally, the piano was locked shut, the band went home, and several of the journalists went off to their offices to write obituaries. Word spread that Zheldybin had returned from the morgue. He ensconced himself in the upstairs office of the deceased, which started the rumor that he would be Berlioz’s replacement. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members of the board from the restaurant, and at the meeting which began immediately in Berlioz’s office they moved to discuss a number of urgent matters: decorations for the colonnaded Griboyedov hall, transport of the body from the morgue to the hall, the establishment of visiting hours, and various other things connected with the regrettable occurence.

Meanwhile, the restaurant resumed its usual nighttime routine, which would have gone on until closing time, that is, 4 a.m., if something had not happened that was truly out of the ordinary and made a much bigger impression on the patrons than the news of Berlioz’s death.

The first to become agitated were the cabdrivers on call at the entrance to Griboyedov. One of them climbed up on the coach box and was heard to cry, “Wow! Take a look at that!” It was then that a small light suddenly flashed near the wrought-iron fence and began moving toward the veranda. People who were seated got up to have a look and saw that a white apparition was accompanying the small light as it moved toward the restaurant. When it got as far as the trellis, everyone stiffened in their chairs, bits of sterlet stuck on their forks and their eyes opened wide. The doorman, who at that moment had emerged from the restaurant coatroom in order to go out into the courtyard for a smoke, stamped out his cigarette and was about to move toward the apparition with the intention of barring its entrance to the restaurant. But, instead of doing this, he stopped, for some reason, a foolish smile on his face.

Thus the apparition passed through the opening in the trellis and stepped unimpeded onto the veranda. Then everyone saw that it was no apparition at all, but Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny—an extremely well-known poet.

He was barefoot and dressed in white striped long johns and a torn, once-white Tolstoyan peasant blouse which had a paper icon with the faded picture of an unknown saint pinned to its front with a safety pin. He was carrying a lighted wedding candle in one hand. There was a fresh scratch on his right cheek. It would be hard to measure the depth of the silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen spilling onto the floor from a mug that one of the waiters was holding sideways.

The poet raised his candle over his head and said in a loud voice, “Greetings, friends!” after which he glanced under the nearest table and exclaimed in anguish, “No, he isn’t here!” Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly, “A clear-cut case. The DT’s.”

The second, a frightened woman’s voice, said, “How could the police let him out on the street looking like that?”

Ivan Nikolayevich heard that and replied, “They tried to stop me twice, in Skatertny Lane and here, on Bronnaya Street, but I jumped over a fence and, as you see, scraped my cheek!” Here Ivan Nikolayevich raised the candle and cried out, “Brothers in literature!” (His hoarse voice grew strong and impassioned.) “Listen to me everyone! He has appeared! Catch him immediately or else he will do indescribable harm!” “What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?” came voices from all sides.

“The consultant!” answered Ivan, “And he’s the one who killed Misha Berlioz at Patriarch’s Ponds.”

At this point people from the inner room began to pour out onto the veranda and a crowd gathered around Ivan’s candle.

“Sorry! Give us more details,” said a soft and polite voice above Ivan Nikolayevich’s ear. “Tell us, how was he killed, and who killed him?” “A foreign consultant, a professor and a spy!” replied Ivan, looking all around.

“And what’s his name?” people whispered in his ear.

“That’s the problem!” Ivan cried in anguish, “If only I knew his name! I couldn’t make out the name on his visiting card … I only remember it began with ‘W’! But what was the name beginning with ‘W’?” Ivan asked himself, clutching his forehead. Suddenly he began to mumble, “W, W, W! Wa … Wo … Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?” Ripples ran through his hair from the tension he was under.

“Wolf?” a woman cried out sympathetically.

Ivan got angry.

“Fool!” he yelled, trying to locate the woman. “What’s Wolf got to do with it? Wolf is beside the point! Wo, Wo … No! I just can’t remember! But this is the main thing, citizens: call the police right away and tell them to send five motorcycles armed with machine guns to catch the professor. And don’t forget to mention he’s got two accomplices: a tall fellow in checks … with a cracked pince-nez … and a fat black cat. Meanwhile I’ll go search Griboyedov … I have a feeling he’s here!” Ivan became agitated, pushed aside the crowd of onlookers, began waving his candle around, covering himself with wax, and then peering under the tables. At this point a voice called out, “Get a doctor!” and there appeared in front of Ivan a tender, fleshy, clean-shaven, well-fed face with horn-rimmed glasses.

“Comrade Bezdomny,” said the face in a voice suited to anniversary celebrations, “Calm down! You’re upset over the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich … Misha Berlioz, to us. We all understand perfectly. You need rest. Now your comrades are going to take you to bed, and you’ll go to sleep.” “You,” interrupted Ivan, baring his teeth, “Don’t you understand that the professor must be caught? And here you are weaseling up to me with your nonsense! Cretin!” “Comrade Bezdomny, forgive me,” he replied, turning red and edging away, already regretting that he had gotten involved in the affair.

“No, I’ll forgive anyone but you,” said Ivan Nikolayevich with calm hatred.

A spasm contorted his face, he quickly switched the candle from his right hand to his left, took a broad swing, and punched the sympathetic face on its ear.

At this point they decided to take Ivan by force, and they did. The candle went out, and his glasses fell off and were immediately trampled. Ivan let out a terrible battle cry which was heard to everyone’s titillation even on the boulevard. Then Ivan began to defend himself. Dishes clattered to the floor, women began to scream.

While the waiters were tying the poet up with towels, the commander of the brig was conversing with the doorman in the coatroom.

“You saw, didn’t you, that he was in his underwear?” asked the pirate coldly.

“But, Archibald Archibaldovich,” replied the doorman timidly, “how could I not admit the gentleman if he is a member of MASSOLIT?” “But you saw he was in his underwear?” the pirate repeated.

“For pity’s sake, Archibald Archibaldovich,” the doorman said, turning crimson, “What could I do? I know there are ladies on the veranda …” “The ladies are not the issue, they don’t care,” replied the pirate, his eyes literally setting the doorman on fire, “but the police do care! A man in his underwear can tramp around Moscow only if he’s in police custody, and only if he’s going to one place—the police station! And you as a doorman should know that when you see such a man, you should begin blowing your whistle without a moment’s delay. Do you hear me? Do you hear what’s happening on the veranda?” Here the half-crazed doorman could hear the oohs and ahs, crashing dishes, and women’s shrieks coming from the veranda.

“Well, how should you be punished for what you did?” asked the pirate.

The skin on the doorman’s face took on a typhoid tinge and his eyes became dead. The pirate’s black hair, now parted down the middle, seemed to be covered with fiery silk. Gone were his dress shirt and dinner jacket, and sticking out of his leather belt was the butt of a pistol. The doorman imagined himself hanging from the foremast. With his own eyes he saw his tongue hanging out and his lifeless head slumped on his shoulder, and he could even hear the waves splashing against the side of the ship. His knees gave way from under him. But just then, the pirate took pity on him and extinguished his piercing gaze.

“Watch out, Nikolai! This is the last time. We don’t need that kind of a doorman in this restaurant. Go be a watchman in a church.” Having said this, the commander gave quick, precise, clear orders: “Get Pantelei from the pantry. Call a policeman. Write a report. Order a car. Send it to the asylum.” And he added, “Blow your whistle!” A quarter of an hour later a flabbergasted crowd—not only inside the restaurant, but outside on the boulevard and in the windows of the buildings overlooking the restaurant pavilion—watched as Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a waiter, and the poet Ryukhin came out of Griboyedov’s gates, carrying a young man swaddled like a doll, with tears running down his face, who tried to spit on Ryukhin, and was screaming the length of the boulevard, “Bastard! Bastard!” The driver of the van had a malicious look on his face as he started the motor. Alongside him a cabdriver urged on his horse, beating her hindquarters with lilac-colored reins, and shouting, “I’ll go fast! I’ve taken guys to the nuthouse before!” The crowd buzzed as they discussed this unprecedented event. In short, it was a filthy, vile, titillating, beastly scandal which ended only when the van carting off the unfortunate Ivan Nikolayevich, the policeman, Pantelei, and Ryukhin drove away from the gates of Griboyedov.