Reading Master & Margarita - 17

Chapter 17

An Unquiet Day

Well, you remember that after the black-magic show in Variety hundreds of women were seen running on the Sadovaya without any clothes – their clothes were handed over to Fagot’s firm and they were wearing the most fashionable dresses provided to them by the firm;

Rimsky had a terrible encounter with Varenukha who was trying to kill him with the help of that green eyed, naked woman – he was saved thanks to the rooster!

Let us see what happens to the currency notes which were raining in the hall and picked up by the audience.

As the posters had declared, the show of black-magic was to take place for two days and so there were serpentine queues in front of Variety.

It was Friday.

All the officers of Variety had, as we know, vanished…Rimsky, Styopa Likhodeyev, Varenukha, and the only officer present there now was the book keeper Vasily Stepanovich Lastochkin.

As the confusion inside Variety was growing, people were constantly ringing and they wanted to find out where are the officers. Rimsky’s wife came rushing and started pleading that her husband be found…

Something unbelievable had happened…police started inquiring about the scandalous show…

Who was the magician? What was his name? No one knew. When someone reported that it could be Foland or Woland, the in-tourist bureau was contacted and they had just no information about any Foland or Woland;

The posters were there, but over the night new posters were pasted on them, not a single copy of them was available;

Who gave permission for the show? Who gave the advance amount to the magician? Where are papers related to this transaction? Nothing was available.

The courier boy informed that Woland was put up in Styopa’s flat, they went there: Styopa had already disappeared; his maid Grunya had disappeared, president of the housing society had disappeared; even the secretary had disappeared.

A sniffer dog was taken to Rimsky’s cabinet…she started howling, climbed up the window frame, tried to jump out of it , started growling…then she went to the taxi stand and lost track of everything….

A big notice was put up on the gate of Variety that there will be no shows for a few days…the crowd dispersed angrily; they asked Vasily Stepanovich to deposit 21,711 roubles, that was the collection from yesterday’s show, into the recreation commission, and give them a report about last evening’s show.

Vasily Stepanovich decided to go by a taxi. To his surprise, all the cars that were standing at the Taxi stand ran away from there as soon as they noticed the passenger with a bloated bag in his hands. A third cab driver inquired whether he has any change with him and when Vasily Stepanovich showed smaller currency notes to the driver, was he allowed to sit inside the cab. And this is what he found out from the driver:

 “No change, is that it?' the bookkeeper asked timidly.

`A pocket full of change!' the driver bawled, and the eyes in the mirror went bloodshot. 'It's my third case today. And the same thing happened with the others, too. Some son of a bitch gives me a tenner, I give him change - four-fifty. He gets out, the scum! About five minutes later, I look: instead of a tenner, it's a label from a seltzer bottle!' Here the driver uttered several unprintable words. 'Another one, beyond Zubovskaya. A tenner. I give him three rubles change. He leaves. I go to my wallet, there's a bee there - zap in the finger! Ah, you! ...' and again the driver pasted on some unprintable words. 'And no tenner. Yesterday, in the Variety here' (unprintable words), 'some vermin of a conjurer did a séance with ten-rouble bills' (unprintable words)...

The bookkeeper went numb, shrank into himself, and pretended it was the first time he had heard even the word 'Variety', while thinking to himself:

'Oh-oh! ...'

So, that is what was happening to the currency notes which people had grabbed in the Variety.

When Vasily Stepanovich reached the recreation commission’s office he noticed complete turmoil in this office.

The secretary of the Chief was howling, there was an empty suit sitting in the chair behind the huge table and writing with a dry pen. There was neither head nor neck above the collar of the suit, there were no hands peeping out of the sleeves…

He was told by the secretary of the Commission-Chief :

  “Imagine, I'm sitting here,' Anna Richardovna recounted, shaking with agitation, again clutching at the bookkeeper's sleeve, 'and a cat walks in. Black, big as a behemoth. Of course, I shout "scat" to it. Out it goes, and in comes a fat fellow instead, also with a sort of cat-like mug, and says:

"What are you doing, citizen, shouting 'scat' at visitors?" And - whoosh - straight to Prokhor Petrovich. Of course, I run after him, shouting: "Are you out of your mind?"

 And this brazen-face goes straight to Prokhor Petrovich and sits down opposite him in the armchair. Well, that one ... he's the kindest-hearted man, but edgy. He blew up, I don't deny it. An edgy man, works like an ox - he blew up. "Why do you barge in here unannounced?" he says. And that brazen-face, imagine, sprawls in the armchair and says, smiling:

"I've come," he says, "to discuss a little business with you."

 Prokhor Petrovich blew up again:

"I'm busy." And the other one, just think, answers: "You're not busy with anything ..."

 Eh? Well, here, of course, Prokhor Petrovich's patience ran out, and he shouted: "What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang! Before I had time to scream, I look: the one with the cat's mug is gone, and th ... there ... sits ... the suit ... Waaa! ...'

Stretching her mouth, which had lost all shape entirely, Anna Richardovna howled.

Vasily Stepanovich rushes out of this office and goes to its branch which was situated nearby.

There too, complete disorder…

People were going on singing…nonstop…against their wish…but in a coordinated way, as if someone is directing them. And this is what he found out from them:

 'Excuse me, dear citizen,' Vassily Stepanovich addressed the girl, 'did a black cat pay you a visit?'

`What cat?' the girl cried in anger. 'An ass, it's an ass we've got sitting in the affiliate!' And adding to that: `Let him hear, I'll tell everything' - she indeed told what had happened.

It turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, 'who has made a perfect mess of lightened entertainment' (the girl's words), suffered from a mania for organizing all sorts of little clubs. 'Blew smoke in the authorities' eyes!' screamed the girl.

In the course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club of Lermontov studies, of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of horseback riding. For the summer, he was threatening to organize clubs of fresh-water canoeing and alpinism. And so today, during lunch-break, this manager comes in ...' ...with some son of a bitch on his arm,' the girl went on, 'hailing from nobody knows where, in wretched checkered trousers, a cracked pince-nez, and ... with a completely impossible mug! ...'

And straight away, the girl said, he recommended him to all those eating in the affiliate's dining room as a prominent specialist in organizing choral-singing clubs.

The faces of the future alpinists darkened, but the manager immediately called on everyone to cheer up, while the specialist joked a little, laughed a little, and swore an oath that singing takes no time at all, but that, incidentally, there was a whole load of benefits to be derived from it.

Well, of course, as the girl said, the first to pop up were Fanov and Kosarchuk, well-known affiliate toadies, who announced that they would sign up. Here the rest of the staff realized that there was no way around the singing, and they, too, had to sign up for the club. They decided to sing during the lunch break, since the rest of the time was taken up by Lermontov and checkers.

The manager, to set an example, declared that he was a tenor, and everything after that went as in a bad dream. The checkered specialist-choirmaster bawled out:

'Do, mi, sol, do!' - dragged the most bashful from behind the bookcases, where they had tried to save themselves from singing, told Kosarchuk he had perfect pitch, began whining, squealing, begging them to be kind to an old singing-master, tapped the tuning fork on his knuckle, beseeched them to strike up 'Glorious Sea'.

Strike up they did. And gloriously. The checkered one really knew his business. They finished the first verse. Here the director excused himself, said: `Back in a minute...', and disappeared.

They thought he would actually come back in a minute. But ten minutes went by and he was not there. The staff was overjoyed - he had run away!

Then suddenly, somehow of themselves, they began the second verse. They were all led by Kosarchuk, who may not have had perfect pitch, but did have a rather pleasant high tenor. They sang it through. No director! They moved to their places, but had not managed to sit down when, against their will, they began to sing. To stop was impossible. After three minutes of silence, they would strike up again. Silence - strike up! Then they realized that they were in trouble. The manager locked himself in his office from shame!”

The doctors administer some tranquilisers to the singers and they are taken to Stravinsky’s clinic!  

So, this was another character of the black magic show, who had created havoc here.

Half an hour later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely, reached the financial sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office money. Having learned from experience by now, he first peeked cautiously into the oblong hall where, behind frosted-glass windows with gold lettering, the staff was sitting. Here the bookkeeper discovered no signs of alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it ought to be in a decent institution.

Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with 'Cash Deposits' written over it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked for a deposit slip.

'What do you need it for?' the clerk in the window asked.

The bookkeeper was amazed.

'I want to turn over some cash. I'm from the Variety.'

'One moment,' the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the window with a grille.

'Strange!...' thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly natural. It was the first time in his life that he had met with such a circumstance. Everybody knows how hard it is to get money; obstacles to it can always be found. But there had been no case in the bookkeeper's thirty years of experience when anyone, either an official or a private person, had had hard time accepting money.

But at last the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned to the window.

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

'Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eleven rubles.'

'Oho!' the clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the bookkeeper a green slip.

Knowing the form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began to untie the string on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything swam before his eyes, he murmured something painfully.

Foreign money flitted before his eyes: there were stacks of Canadian dollars, British pounds, Dutch guldens, Latvian lats, Estonian kroons...

'There he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety!' a menacing voice resounded over the dumbstruck bookkeeper. And straight away Vassily Stepanovich was arrested.

Bulgakov has disclosed what all happens in the recreation commission.

You may wonder what was Vasily Stepanovich’s fault? Why was he arrested? 

Well, because he was going to REPORT about the black magic show to the authorities….the last of the officers of Variety too disappears!