فصل 7

VII

The Evil Apartment

IF on the following morning anyone had said to Styopa Likhodeyev, “Styopa! You’ll be shot if you don’t get up this minute!” Styopa would have replied in a numb, faintly audible voice, “Shoot me, do whatever you like to me, but I’m not getting up.” It wasn’t just a matter of getting up—he didn’t even think he could open his eyes, because if he did, lightning would strike and blast his head to bits. A heavy bell was clanging inside his head, brown spots with fiery-green rims were floating between his eyeballs and his closed lids, and to cap things off, he felt nauseated, and his nausea seemed to be related to the sounds coming from a persistent phonograph.

Styopa was trying to remember something, but the only thing he could remember was that yesterday—he didn’t know where—he had been standing, napkin in hand, trying to kiss a lady and promising that he would visit her the next day at noon on the dot. The lady had refused him, saying, “Don’t, I won’t be home!”—but Styopa had been insistent, “I think I’ll just come anyway!” Who this lady was, what time it was now, or what the day or month—Styopa hadn’t the slightest idea. Even worse, he couldn’t remember where he was. That, at least, he tried to figure out by ungluing the lid of his left eye. In the semidarkness something glowed dimly. Styopa finally recognized the mirror, and realized he was in his own room, lying flat on his back on his own bed, that is, in the bedroom on the bed that used to belong to the jeweller’s widow. At this point his head started to pound so badly that he closed his eye and began groaning.

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

It should be said that the apartment—No. 50—had long had, if not a bad, then at least an odd reputation. Two years before it had belonged to the widow of the jeweller de Fougeret. Anna Frantsevna de Fougeret, a very businesslike and respectable woman of fifty, let out three of her five rooms to lodgers. One of them was apparently named Belomut—the other’s name has been lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All kinds of tales circulated in the building about the accursed apartment and the people who had disappeared. For example, according to one of them, the dry and pious Anfisa had allegedly worn a chamois pouch on her emaciated breast which contained twenty-five large diamonds that had belonged to Anna Frantsevna. According to another story, the dacha which Anna Frantsevna had hurriedly visited allegedly had a woodshed where priceless valuables were found, including those same diamonds as well as tsarist gold coins … And there were other such stories. But we cannot vouch for what we do not know.

In any event, the apartment stood vacant and under seal for only a week, and then who moved in but the late Berlioz and his wife and the aforementioned Styopa and his wife. Not unexpectedly, as soon as they settled into the accursed apartment, devilish things started happening to them too. In the space of a month, both wives disappeared. But not without a trace. Berlioz’s wife was said to have been seen in Kharkov with a ballet master, and Styopa’s wife supposedly turned up on Bozhedomka Street, where, word had it, the director of the Variety Theater had used his many connections to get her a room, on the condition that she never set foot on Sadovaya Street again … And so, Styopa groaned. He wanted to call Grunya the maid and ask her for some Pyramidon, but he was sufficiently in touch with reality to realize that was pointless, but he was sufficiently in touch with reality to realize that was pointless, since she naturally would not have any Pyramidon. He tried calling Berlioz for help, groaning two times, “Misha, Misha,” but as you yourself can understand, he got no reply. The most total silence reigned in the apartment.

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

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

That was how he saw himself in the mirror, and next to the mirror he saw a man he did not know who was dressed in black and wearing a black beret.

Styopa sat down on the bed and tried as hard as he could to focus his bloodshot eyes on the stranger.

It was he who broke the silence, intoning in a low, somber voice with a foreign accent, “Good day, most kind Stepan Bogdanovich!” There was a pause, after which Styopa made a huge effort and said, “What do you want?” He was shocked not to recognize his own voice. The word “what” came out in a treble, “you” in a bass, and “want” did not come out at all.

The stranger gave a friendly smile, took out a large gold watch with a diamond triangle on the cover, listened to it ring eleven times and then said, “Eleven o’clock! I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for exactly an hour because you told me to be here at ten. And here I am!” Styopa felt for his trousers on the chair next to the bed and whispered, Excuse me …,” put on his trousers, and asked hoarsely, “Would you kindly tell me your name?” It was hard for him to talk. With every word he spoke, someone stuck a needle in his brain, causing him hellish pain.

“What? You’ve forgotten my name too?” Here the stranger smiled.

“Sorry …” croaked Styopa, sensing that his hangover was blessing him with a new symptom: the floor by the bed seemed to him to have vanished somewhere, and he was just on the verge of flying headfirst down to the devil’s mother in the underworld.

“My dear Stepan Bogdanovich,” said the visitor with a piercing smile, “Pyramidon will not help you. Follow the wise old rule: cure like with like. The only thing that will restore you to life is two shots of vodka with some hot and spicy hors d’oeuvres.” However sick he was, Styopa was shrewd enough to know that once he had been found in such a state, it was better to admit to everything.

“To be honest,” he began, barely able to move his tongue, “yesterday I may have had a bit too …”

“Not another word!” the visitor replied, moving his armchair over to the side.

Styopa, his eyes bulging, saw a small table and a tray, covered with sliced white bread, pressed caviar in a glass bowl, white marinated mushrooms on a plate, something in a saucepan and finally, vodka in a mammoth decanter that had belonged to the jeweller’s wife. Styopa was particularly struck by the fact that the decanter was sweating with frost, which was understandable since it had been placed in a shallow bowl packed with ice. In a word, the table was set flawlessly, impeccably.

The stranger prevented Styopa’s astonishment from assuming morbid proportions by deftly pouring him half a glass of vodka.

“Won’t you have some?” squeaked Styopa.

“With pleasure!”

Styopa raised his glass to his lips with a wobbly hand while the stranger downed the contents of his in a single gulp. As he was munching on some caviar, Styopa managed to get out the words, “Wouldn’t you like some hors d’oeuvres?” “Thank you, I never eat hors d’oeuvres,” the stranger replied and poured a second round. They uncovered the saucepan and found sausages in tomato sauce.

And soon the accursed greenness which had been floating in front of Styopa’s eyes melted away, words started to come out, and most important of all, Styopa began remembering things: namely, that yesterday he had been in Skhodnya at the dacha of the sketch writer Khustov and had been taken there in a taxicab by Khustov himself. He even remembered that they had hired the taxicab at the Metropole and that some actor had been there too, or maybe he wasn’t an actor … with a portable phonograph. Yes, yes, yes, it had all happened at the dacha! Then he recalled that the dogs had howled because of the phonograph. Only the lady whom Styopa had wanted to kiss remained a mystery … the devil only knew who she was … maybe she worked in radio, maybe not.

Thus the events of the previous day gradually became clearer, although at the moment the present day interested Styopa more, especially the stranger in his bedroom, with vodka and hors d’oeuvres to boot. It would be a good idea to clear that up!

“Well, I hope you can remember my name now?”

But Styopa merely smiled shamefacedly and shrugged.

“Really! I have the feeling that you drank port after vodka! Forgive me, but how could you do such a thing!”

“May I ask that this go no further?” said Styopa obsequiously.

“Of course, of course! But, naturally, I can’t speak for Khustov.”

“Do you know Khustov too?”

“I saw the man briefly in your office yesterday, but one quick look at his face was enough to convince me that he’s a bastard, a wrecker, a toady, and a yes-man.” “Absolutely true!” thought Styopa, who was struck by the accuracy, precision, and pithiness of this characterization of Khustov.

So, although the previous day was reassembling itself, piece by piece, the director of the Variety Theater still felt anxious. There was still a huge, gaping hole to be accounted for. And there was no way that Styopa could have seen the stranger in the beret in his office yesterday.

“Professor of black magic, Woland,” said the visitor weightily, seeing Styopa’s consternation, and he gave him a precise account of what had happened.

He had arrived in Moscow from abroad yesterday and had gone to see Styopa immediately to propose a performance at the Variety Theater. Styopa had phoned the Moscow Regional Entertainment Commission to receive approval (Styopa grew pale and blinked his eyes), signed a contract with Professor Woland for seven performances (Styopa’s mouth opened) and arranged for Woland to come by this morning at ten o’clock to iron out the details … And so Woland had come! When he arrived he was met by the maid Grunya, who explained that she came in daily and had only just arrived herself, that Berlioz was not at home, and that if the visitor wished to see Stepan Bogdanovich, then he could go into his bedroom himself. Stepan Bogdanovich was such a sound sleeper that she would not try to wake him up. Seeing the condition Stepan Bogdanovich was in, the artiste sent Grunya to the nearest specialty store for vodka and hors d’oeuvres, to the drugstore for ice and … “Let me settle up with you,” whispered the crushed Styopa as he tried to find his wallet.

“Oh, don’t be silly!” exclaimed the guest artiste and would hear nothing more of it.

And so, the vodka and hors d’oeuvres were accounted for, but even so, it was still painful to look at Styopa: he had absolutely no recollection of a contract and could have sworn that he had not seen this Woland fellow yesterday. Yes, Khustov had been there, but Woland had not.

“May I have a look at the contract,” asked Styopa softly.

“By all means, by all means …”

Styopa took a look at the paper and froze. Everything was in order. First, there was Styopa’s own dashing signature! And then a note written slantwise in the margin in the financial director Rimsky’s hand, authorizing an advance payment to Woland of ten thousand rubles from the thirty-five thousand due him for seven appearances. Finally, there was Woland’s signature confirming his receipt of the ten thousand ruble advance!

“What is all this?!” thought the miserable Styopa, and his head began to spin. Was he beginning to have ominous memory lapses? But, it goes without saying, after he had been shown the contract, any further expression of surprise would be simply impolite. Styopa asked his guest’s permission to step out for a moment and, as he was, in his socks, he ran to the phone in the front hall. On the way he shouted in the direction of the kitchen, “Grunya!” But nobody answered. Here he glanced at the door to Berlioz’s study, which was close to the front hall, and at that point, he was, as they say, struck dumb. There was a huge wax seal hanging on a string attached to the door handle. “Oh, great!” roared a voice in Styopa’s head. “That’s all I need!” And at this point Styopa’s thoughts began racing down two tracks, but as always happens in a catastrophe, they were both going in the same direction, and only the devil knows where they were headed. It is hard even to convey the confusion that reigned in Styopa’s head. First there was the devilish character with the black beret, the cold vodka, and the improbable contract, and now, if you please, to top it all off, a seal on the door! If you told anyone that Berlioz had done something bad, no one would believe it, truly, no one would believe it! But a seal is a seal! Yes indeed … And here some highly unpleasant little thoughts began stirring in Styopa’s brain regarding an article which, as luck would have it, he had recently foisted on Mikhail Alexandrovich for publication in his journal. And just between us, it was a stupid article! And pointless too, and it paid a pittance … The recollection of the article triggered another recollection, of a questionable conversation which had taken place here in the dining room on the evening of April 24 when Styopa was having supper with Mikhail Alexandrovich. That is, of course, one would never call the conversation “questionable” in the full sense of the word (Styopa would never have entered into such a conversation), but it had been a conversation on a needless topic. It would have been just as easy, citizens, for him not to have engaged in it at all. Before the seal appeared, that conversation could doubtlessly have been considered totally inconsequential, but after the seal … “Oh, Berlioz, Berlioz!” Styopa’s brain was seething. “The thought would never have entered my head!”

But this was not the time for prolonged grief, and Styopa dialed the office number of Rimsky, the financial director of the Variety Theater. Styopa was in a delicate situation: first of all, the foreigner might be offended that Styopa was checking up on him after he had shown him the contract, and besides, it was extraordinarily hard for him to broach the subject to the financial director. After all, he could hardly come right out and ask, “Tell me, did I sign a contract yesterday for thirty-five thousand rubles with a professor of black magic?” That would hardly do!

“Yes!” sounded Rimsky’s sharp, unpleasant voice in the receiver.

“Hello, Grigory Danilovich,” said Styopa softly, “this is Likhodeyev. This is the situation … umm … umm … I have this, uh, artiste Woland here and I, uh … I wanted to ask about this evening?” “Oh, the fellow who does black magic?” echoed Rimsky’s voice in the receiver, “The posters will be ready right away.”

“OK,” said Styopa in a weak voice, “Well, bye then.”

“Will you be in soon?” asked Rimsky.

“In half an hour,” Styopa replied and, hanging up the phone, he pressed his hands to his burning head. Oh, what a nasty business it all was! And what, citizens, was happening to his memory? Huh?

However, it was becoming awkward to stay in the hall any longer, and Styopa devised a plan on the spot: do everything necessary to conceal his incredible forgetfulness, and now, first of all, subtly pump the foreigner for information regarding the kind of act he intended to perform that night in Styopa’s Variety Theater.

As Styopa turned away from the phone, he looked in the hall mirror, which the lazy Grunya had not cleaned for some time, and distinctly saw a weird-looking fellow—thin as a lath and wearing a pince-nez (oh, if only Ivan Nikolayevich had been there! He would have recognized the fellow right away!). His reflection appeared and disappeared in an instant. Anxious, Styopa peered into the depths of the hallway and reeled a second time, for he saw a hefty black cat pass by in the mirror and also disappear.

Styopa’s heart skipped a beat, he lost his balance.

“What’s going on?” he thought, “Could I be losing my mind? Where are these reflections coming from?!” He peered into the hall and shouted in fright, “Grunya! What’s that cat doing in our house? Where did he come from? And who’s the fellow with him?” “Don’t be upset, Stepan Bogdanovich,” a voice sounded, not Grunya’s, but that of the guest in the bedroom. “That cat belongs to me. Don’t be nervous. And Grunya isn’t here, I sent her to Voronezh. She was complaining that you hadn’t let her go on vacation for a long time.” These words were so unexpected and absurd that Styopa decided he had not heard them correctly. In a state of total confusion, he trotted back to the bedroom and froze in the doorway. His hair stood on end, and fine drops of sweat appeared on his brow.

His guest was no longer alone in the bedroom but had been joined by a retinue. Sitting in the other chair was the same oddball who seemed to have appeared in the hall. Now he was clearly visible: a feathery mustache, one lens of his pince-nez glistening and the other missing entirely. But there were worse things to be seen in the bedroom: sprawled in a relaxed pose on the pouffe that had once belonged to the jeweller’s wife was a third creature, namely, a black cat of horrific proportions with a glass of vodka in one paw and in the other a fork on which he had speared a pickled mushroom.

The light, dim as it was in the bedroom, began to fade altogether in Styopa’s eyes. “So this is what it’s like to go crazy!” he thought and grabbed onto the door frame.

“Do I note a touch of surprise, my dearest Stepan Bogdanovich?” Woland inquired of Styopa whose teeth were chattering, “But there is nothing to be surprised about. This is my retinue.” At this point the cat drank down his vodka, and Styopa’s hand began to slip down the doorframe.

“And my retinue needs space,” Woland continued, “which means that one of us in this apartment is superfluous. And I think that someone is—you!” “It’s them, it’s them,” crooned the thin checked man in a bleating voice, referring to Styopa in the plural. “In general, they’ve been acting like swine lately. They get drunk, use their position to have affairs with women, don’t do a damn thing, and can’t do anything because they don’t know the first thing about their jobs. They hoodwink their bosses!” “And he runs the official car ragged!” tattled the cat while chewing on a mushroom.

And at this point, the fourth, and last, phenomenon occurred in the apartment, just as Styopa, who had already slid down to the floor, was clutching feebly at the doorframe.

Right out of the mirror stepped a short, but unusually broad-shouldered man. He was wearing a bowler hat and had a fang sticking out of his mouth, which made his already loathsome face look even uglier. To top it all off, he had fiery-red hair.

“I,” the newcomer joined in the conversation, “don’t really understand how he ended up a director,” the redhead’s voice became more and more nasal, “He’s as much a director as I’m a bishop!” “You don’t look like a bishop, Azazello,” noted the cat as he piled his plate with sausages.

“That’s just what I’m saying,” said the redhead through his nose, and turning to Woland, he added respectfully, “May I have permission, Messire, to throw him out of Moscow straight to hell?” “Shoo!!” roared the cat suddenly, his fur standing on end.

And then the bedroom began to spin around Styopa, he hit his head on the doorframe, and as he was losing consciousness, he thought, “I’m dying …” But he did not die. He opened his eyes slightly and saw that he was sitting on something made of stone. A sound could be heard nearby. When he opened his eyes properly, he realized that it was the sound of the sea and that a wave was, in fact, breaking at his very feet, that, to be brief, he was sitting at the end of a jetty, and that a blue sky was sparkling above him, and behind him was a white city nestled in the hills.

Not knowing the proper behavior in such circumstances, Styopa raised himself on his shaky legs and set off down the jetty to the shore.

A man was standing on the jetty, smoking a cigarette and spitting into the sea. He gave Styopa a strange look and stopped spitting.

Then Styopa resorted to the following maneuver: he dropped on his knees in front of the unknown smoker and said, “Please tell me, what city is this?” “Are you kidding?!” said the heartless smoker.

“I’m not drunk,” Styopa replied hoarsely, “Something’s happened to me … I’m sick … Where am I? What city is this?”

“Well, Yalta …”

Styopa sighed softly, fell over on his side and struck his head against the warm stone of the jetty. He lost consciousness.