Reading Master & Margarita 27

Chapter 27

End of Apartment No.50

We are coming back to Moscow episodes and as usual, the transition is smooth…end of previous chapter marks the beginning of this chapter. Well, we understand now, that Bulgakov was always thus trying to make clear that the two epochs were one and the same, the differentiating line almost vanishes!

So, Margarita and Master are back in the basement of Arbat House, Margarita was reading the most favourite lines from Master’s novel and it was already dawn when she reached the lines, “Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.”

She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan's ball, or that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything was as if it ought to have been so.

She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old, torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder's whole little house was silent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.

But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness, cutting through the light of the rising sun.

The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case, and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.

Essentially speaking, the matter had already become clear on the previous day, Friday, when the Variety had had to be closed, owing to the disappearance of its administration and all sorts of outrages which had taken place during the notorious séance of black magic the day before. But the thing was that more and more new material kept arriving all the time and incessantly on the sleepless floor.

Now the investigators of this strange case, which smacked of obvious devilry, with an admixture of some hypnotic tricks and distinct criminality, had to shape into one lump all the many-sided and tangled events that had taken place in various parts of Moscow.

The first to appear in this office was Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission.

Arkady Apollonovich spent the whole evening on that same floor where the investigation was being conducted.

It was a difficult conversation, a most unpleasant conversation, for he had to tell with complete sincerity not only about this obnoxious séance and the fight in the box, but along with that - as was indeed necessary - also about Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, and about the Saratov niece, and about much else, the telling of which caused Arkady Apollonovich inexpressible torments.

Needless to say, the testimony of Arkady Apollonovich, an intelligent and cultivated man, who had been a witness to the outrageous séance, a sensible and qualified witness, who gave an excellent description of the mysterious masked magician himself and of his two scoundrelly assistants, a witness who remembered perfectly well that the magician's name was indeed Woland, advanced the investigation considerably. And the juxtaposition of Arkady Apollonovich's testimony with the testimony of others - among whom were some ladies who had suffered after the séance and the messenger Karpov, who had been sent to apartment no.50 on Sadovaya Street - at once essentially established the place where the culprit in all these adventures was to be sought.

Apartment no.50 was visited, and not just once, and not only was it looked over with extreme thoroughness, but the walls were also tapped and the fireplace flues checked, in search of hiding places. However, none of these measures yielded any results, and no one was discovered in the apartment during any of these visits, though it was perfectly clear that there was someone in the apartment, despite the fact that all persons who in one way or another were supposed to be in charge of foreign artistes coming to Moscow decidedly and categorically insisted that there was not and could not be any black magician Woland in Moscow.

He had decidedly not registered anywhere on arrival, had not shown anyone his passport or other papers, contracts, or agreements, and no one had heard anything about him! Kitaitsev, head of the programme department of the Spectacles Commission, swore to God that the vanished Styopa Likhodeev had never sent him any performance programme of any Woland for approval and had never telephoned him about the arrival of such a Woland. So that he, Kitaitsev, utterly failed to see and understand how Styopa could have allowed such a séance in the Variety. And when told that Arkady Apollonovich had seen this magician at the séance with his own eyes, Kitaitsev only spread his arms and raised his eyes to heaven. And from Kitaitsev's eyes alone one could see and say confidently that he was as pure as crystal.

Prokhor Petrovich who had reappeared in his suit as soon as the police entered his cabinet, could not tell anything.

Rimsky was traced in Leningrad, he denied to depose anything, he was brought back to Moscow in tight security; Likhodeev also reached Moscow by plane from Yalta…Varenukha was traced two days later.

Despite the promise he had given Azazello not to lie any more, the administrator began precisely with a lie.

The administrator spoke without the assistance of this apparatus. His eyes wandering, Ivan Savelyevich declared that on Thursday afternoon he had got drunk in his office at the Variety, all by himself, after which he went somewhere, but where he did not remember, drank starka somewhere, but where he did not remember, lay about somewhere under a fence, but where he again did not remember. Only after the administrator was told that with his behaviour, stupid and senseless, he was hindering the investigation of an important case and would of course have to answer for it, did Varenukha burst into sobs and whisper in a trembling voice, looking around him, that he had lied solely out of fear, apprehensive of the revenge of Woland's gang, into whose hands he had already fallen, and that he begged, implored and yearned to be locked up in a bullet-proof cell.

In the meantime, there was some bother with things happening in other parts of Moscow, outside the Variety Theatre. It was necessary to explain the extraordinary case of the staff all singing `Glorious Sea' (incidentally: Professor Stravinsky managed to put them right within two hours, by means of some subcutaneous injections), of persons presenting other persons or institutions with devil knows what in the guise of money, and also of persons who had suffered from such presentations.

As goes without saying, the most unpleasant, the most scandalous and insoluble of all these cases was the case of the theft of the head of the deceased writer Berlioz right from the coffin in the hall of Griboedov's, carried out in broad daylight.

Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case scattered all over Moscow.

One of the investigators arrived at Professor Stravinsky's clinic and first of all asked to be shown a list of the persons who had checked in to the clinic over the past three days. Thus they discovered Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy and the unfortunate master of ceremonies whose head had been torn off.

However, little attention was paid to them. By now it was easy to establish that these two had fallen victim to the same gang, headed by that mysterious magician. But to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless the investigator paid great attention.

Ivan was now quite indifferent to things happening around him, but still he gave a correct version of Berlioz’s death.

There was already a lot of material, and it was known who had to be caught and where.

But the thing was that it proved in no way possible to catch anyone. We must repeat, there undoubtedly was someone in the thrice-cursed apartment no.50. Occasionally the apartment answered telephone calls, now in a rattling, now in a nasal voice, occasionally one of its windows was opened, and what’s more, the sounds of a gramophone came from it. And yet each time it was visited, decidedly no one was found there. And it had already been visited more than once and at different times of day. And not only that, but they had gone through it with a net, checking every corner. The apartment had long been under suspicion. Guards were placed not just at the way to the courtyard through the gates, but at the back entrance as well. Not only that, but guards were placed on the roof by the chimneys. Yes, apartment no.50 was acting up, and it was impossible to do anything about it.

So the thing dragged on until midnight on Friday, when Baron Meigel, dressed in evening clothes and patent-leather shoes, solemnly proceeded into apartment no.50 in the quality of a guest. One could hear the baron being let in to the apartment. Exactly ten minutes later, without any ringing of bells, the apartment was visited, yet not only were the hosts not found in it, but, which was something quite bizarre, no signs of Baron Meigel were found in it either.

Annushka was arrested just as she made an attempt to hand a ten-dollar bill to the cashier of a department store on the Arbat. Annushka's story about people flying out the window of the house on Sadovaya and about the little horseshoe which Annushka, in her own words, had picked up in order to present it to the police, was listened to attentively.

The horseshoe was really made of gold and diamonds?' Annushka was asked.

'As if I don't know diamonds,' replied Annushka.

'But he gave you ten-rouble bills, you say?'

'As if I don't know ten-rouble bills,' replied Annushka.

'Well, and when did they turn into dollars?'

'I don't know anything about any dollars, I never saw any dollars!' Annushka replied shrilly.

'I'm in my rights! I got recompensed, I was buying cloth with it,' and she went off into some balderdash about not being answerable for the house management that allowed unclean powers on to the fifth floor, making life unbearable.

Here the investigator waved at Annushka with his pen, because everyone was properly sick of her, and wrote a pass for her to get out on a green slip of paper, after which, to everyone's pleasure, Annushka disappeared from the building.

Then there followed one after another a whole series of people, Nikolai Ivanovich among them, just arrested owing solely to the foolishness of his jealous wife, who towards morning had informed the police that her husband had vanished. Nikolai Ivanovich did not surprise the investigators very much when he laid on the table the clownish certificate of his having spent the time at Satan's ball.

In his stories of how he had carried Margarita Nikolaevna's naked housekeeper on his back through the air, somewhere to hell and beyond, for a swim in a river, and of the preceding appearance of the bare Margarita Nikolaevna in the window, Nikolai Ivanovich departed somewhat from the truth.

At around four o'clock on that hot day, a big company of men in civilian clothes got out of three cars a short distance from no.502-bis on Sadovaya Street. Here the big group divided into two small ones, the first going under the gateway of the house and across the courtyard directly to the sixth entrance, while the second opened the normally boarded-up little door leading to the back entrance, and both started up separate stairways to apartment no.50.

The ones going up the front stairway were already on the third-floor landing. There a couple of plumbers were pottering over the harmonica of the steam heating. The newcomers exchanged significant glances with the plumbers.

'They're all at home,' whispered one of the plumbers, tapping a pipe with his hammer.

Then the one walking at the head openly took a black Mauser from under his coat, and another beside him took out the skeleton keys. Generally, those going to apartment no.50 were properly equipped. Two of them had fine, easily unfolded silk nets in their pockets. Another of them had a lasso; another had gauze masks and ampoules of chloroform.

In a second the front door to apartment no.50 was open and all the visitors were in the front hall, while the slamming of the door in the kitchen at the same moment indicated the timely arrival of the second group from the back stairs.

This time there was, if not complete, at least some sort of success.

The men instantly dispersed through all the rooms and found no one anywhere, but instead on the table of the dining room they discovered the remains of an apparently just-abandoned breakfast, and in the living room, on the mantelpiece, beside a crystal pitcher, sat an enormous black cat. He was holding a primus in his paws.

A very fierce firing takes place between the cat and the investigators, in which, strangely, no one is injured.

The Sun is about to set.

One more attempt was made to get hold of the cat. The lasso was thrown, it caught on one of the candles, the chandelier fell down. The crash seemed to shake the whole structure of the house, but it was no use. Those present were showered with splinters, and the cat flew through the air over them and settled high under the ceiling on the upper part of the mantelpiece mirror's gilded frame. He had no intention of escaping anywhere, but, on the contrary, while sitting in relative safety, even started another speech:

`I utterly fail to comprehend,' he held forth from on high, 'the reasons for such harsh treatment of me...'

And here at its very beginning this speech was interrupted by a heavy, low voice coming from no one knew where:

"What's going on in the apartment? They prevent me from working...'

Another voice, unpleasant and nasal, responded:

'Well, it's Behemoth, of course, devil take him!'

A third, rattling voice said:

'Messire! It's Saturday. The Sun is setting. Time to go.'

'Excuse me, I can't talk anymore,' the cat said from the mirror, 'time to go.' He hurled his Browning and knocked out both panes in the window. Then he splashed down some benzene, and this benzene caught fire by itself, throwing a wave of flame up to the very ceiling. Things caught fire somehow unusually quickly and violently, as does not happen even with benzene. The wallpaper at once began to smoke, the torn-down curtain started burning on the floor, and the frames of the broken windows began to smoulder. The cat crouched, miaowed, shot from the mirror to the window-sill, and disappeared through it together with his primus.

Shots rang out outside. A man sitting on the iron fire-escape at the level of the jeweller's wife's windows fired at the cat as he flew from one window-sill to another, making for the corner drainpipe of the house which, as has been said, was built in the form of a 'U'. By way of this pipe, the cat climbed up to the roof. There, unfortunately also without any result, he was shot at by the sentries guarding the chimneys, and the cat cleared off into the setting sun that was flooding the city.

Just then in the apartment the parquet blazed up under the visitors' feet, and in that fire, on the same spot where the cat had sprawled with his sham wound, there appeared, growing more and more dense, the corpse of the former Baron Meigel with upthrust chin and glassy eyes. To get him out was no longer possible.

Leaping over the burning squares of parquet, slapping themselves on their smoking chests and shoulders, those who were in the living room retreated to the study and front hall. Those who were in the dining room and bedroom ran out through the corridor. Those in the kitchen also came running and rushed into the front hall. The living room was already filled with fire and smoke.

Someone managed, in flight, to dial the number of the fire department and shout briefly into the receiver:

'Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis! ...'

To stay longer was impossible. Flames gushed out into the front hall. Breathing became difficult.

As soon as the first little spurts of smoke pushed through the broken windows of the enchanted apartment, desperate human cries arose in the courtyard:

'Fire! Fire! We're burning!'

In various apartments of the house, people began shouting into telephones:

'Sadovaya! Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis!'

Just then, as the heart-quailing bells were heard on Sadovaya, ringing from long red engines racing quickly from all parts of the city, the people rushing about the yard saw how, along with the smoke, there flew out of the fifth-storey window three dark, apparently male silhouettes and one silhouette of a naked woman.