Shaken by all this, the bookkeeper reached the secretary’s room, which was the anteroom to the office of the chairman of the commission, and here he was definitively dumbfounded.
From behind the closed door of the office came a terrible voice, undoubtedly belonging to Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the commission.
“Must be scolding somebody!” the consternated bookkeeper thought and, looking around, saw something else: in a leather armchair, her head thrown back, sobbing unrestrainedly, a wet handkerchief in her hand, legs stretched out into the middle of the room, lay Prokhor Petrovich’s personal secretary — the beautiful Anna Richardovna.
Anna Richardovna’s chin was all smeared with lipstick, and down her peachy cheeks black streams of sodden mascara flowed from her eyelashes.
Seeing someone come in, Anna Richardovna jumped up, rushed to the bookkeeper, clutched the lapels of his jacket, began shaking him and shouting: “Thank God! At least one brave man has been found! Everybody ran away, everybody betrayed us! Let’s go, let’s go to him, I don’t know what to do!”
And, still sobbing, she dragged the bookkeeper into the office.
Once in the office, the bookkeeper first of all dropped his briefcase, and all the thoughts in his head turned upside-down. And, it must be said, not without reason.
At a huge writing desk with. a massive inkstand an empty suit sat and with a dry pen, not dipped in ink, traced on a piece of paper. The suit was wearing a necktie, a fountain pen stuck from its pocket, but above the collar there was neither neck nor head, just as there were no hands sticking out of the sleeves. The suit was immersed in work and completely ignored the turmoil that reigned around it. Hearing someone come in, the suit leaned back and from above the collar came the voice, quite familiar to the bookkeeper, of Prokhor Petrovich: “What is this? Isn’t it written on the door that I’m not receiving?”
The beautiful secretary shrieked and, wringing her hands, cried out: “You see? You see?! He’s not there! He’s not! Bring him back, bring him back!”
Here someone peeked in the door of the office, gasped, and flew out.
The bookkeeper felt his legs trembling and sat on the edge of a chair, but did not forget to pick up his briefcase. Anna Richardovna hopped around the bookkeeper, worrying his jacket, and exclaiming: “I always, always stopped him when he swore by the devil! So now the devil’s got him!” Here the beauty ran to the writing desk and in a tender, musical voice, slightly nasal from weeping, called out: “Prosha! Where are you!”
“Who here is "Prosha" to you?” the suit inquired haughtily, sinking still deeper into the armchair.
“He doesn’t recognize me! Me he doesn’t! Do you understand? ...” the secretary burst into sobs.
“I ask you not to sob in the office!” the hot-tempered striped suit now said angrily, and with its sleeve it drew to itself a fresh stack of papers, with the obvious aim of appending its decision to them.
“No, I can’t look at it, I can’t!” cried Anna Richardovna, and she ran out to the secretary’s room, and behind her, like a shot, flew the bookkeeper.
“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, citizeness, 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.
After choking with sobs, she caught her breath, but then began pouring out something completely incoherent: “And it writes, writes, writes! You could lose your mind! Talks on the telephone! A suit! They all ran away like rabbits!”
The bookkeeper only stood and shook. But here fate came to his aid.
Into the secretary’s room, with calm, business-like strides, marched the police, to the number of two men. Seeing them, the beauty sobbed still harder, jabbing towards the door of the office with her hand.
“Let’s not cry now, citizeness,” the first said calmly, and the bookkeeper, feeling himself quite superfluous there, ran out of the secretary’s room and a minute later was already in the fresh air. There was some sort of draught in his head, a soughing as in a chimney, and through this soughing he heard scraps of the stories the ushers told about yesterday’s cat, who had taken part in the séance. “Oh-ho-ho! Might that not be our same little puss?”
Having got nowhere with the commission, the conscientious Vassily Stepanovich decided to visit its affiliate, located in Vagankovsky Lane, and to calm himself a little he walked the distance to the affiliate on foot.
The affiliate for city spectacles was housed in a peeling old mansion set back from the street, and was famous for the porphyry columns in its vestibule. But it was not the columns that struck visitors to the affiliate that day, but what was going on at the foot of them.
Several visitors stood in stupefaction and stared at a weeping girl sitting behind a small table on which lay special literature about various spectacles, which the girl sold. At that moment, the girl was not offering any of this literature to anyone, and only waved her hand at sympathetic inquiries, while at the same time, from above, from below, from the sides, and from all sections of the affiliate poured the ringing of at least twenty overwrought telephones.
After weeping for a while, the girl suddenly gave a start and cried out hysterically: “Here it comes again!” and unexpectedly began singing in a tremulous soprano: “Glorious sea, sacred Baikal...”[98]
A messenger appeared on the stairs, shook his fist at someone, and began singing along with the girl in a dull, weak-voiced baritone: “Glorious boat, a barrel of cisco ...”[99]
The messenger’s voice was joined by distant voices, the choir began to swell, and finally the song resounded in all corners of the affiliate. In the neighbouring room no. 6, which housed the account comptroller’s section, one powerful, slightly husky octave stood out particularly.
“Hey, Barguzin[100] ... make the waves rise and fall! ...” bawled the messenger on the stairs.
Tears flowed down the girl’s face, she tried to clench her teeth, but her mouth opened of itself, as she sang an octave higher than the messenger: “This young lad’s ready to frisk-o!”
What struck the silent visitors to the affiliate was that the choristers, scattered in various places, sang quite harmoniously, as if the whole choir stood there with its eyes fixed on some invisible director.
Passers-by in Vagankovsky Lane stopped by the fence of the yard, wondering at the gaiety that reigned in the affiliate.
As soon as the first verse came to an end, the singing suddenly ceased, again as if to a director’s baton. The messenger quietly swore and disappeared.
Here the front door opened, and in it appeared a citizen in a summer jacket, from under which protruded the skirts of a white coat, and with him a policeman.
“Take measures, doctor, I implore you!” the girl cried hysterically.
The secr
etary of the affiliate ran out to the stairs and, obviously burning with shame and embarrassment, began falteringly: “You see, doctor, we have a case of some sort of mass hypnosis, and so it’s necessary that...” He did not finish the sentence, began to choke on his words, and suddenly sang out in a tenor: “Shilka and Nerchinsk ...”[101]
“Fool!” the girl had time to shout, but, without explaining who she was abusing, produced instead a forced roulade and herself began singing about Shilka and Nerchinsk.
“Get hold of yourself! Stop singing!” the doctor addressed the secretary.
There was every indication that the secretary would himself have given anything to stop singing, but stop singing he could not, and together with the choir he brought to the hearing of passers-by in the lane the news that “in the wilderness he was not touched by voracious beast, nor brought down by bullet of shooters.”
The moment the verse ended, the girl was the first to receive a dose of valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary to give the others theirs.
“Excuse me, dear citizeness,” 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 dub of Lermontov studies,[102] 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!
Here the girl’s story was interrupted — the valerian had not done much good.
A quarter of an hour later, three trucks drove up to the fence in Vagankovsky, and the entire staff of the affiliate, the manager at its head, was loaded on to them.
As soon as the first truck, after lurching in the gateway, drove out into the lane, the staff members, who were standing on the platform holding each other’s shoulders, opened their mouths, and the whole lane resounded with the popular song. The second truck picked it up, then the third. And so they drove on. Passers-by hurrying about their own business would cast only a fleeting glance at the trucks, not surprised in the least, thinking it was a group excursion to the country. And they were indeed going to the country, though not on an excursion, but to Professor Stravinsky’s clinic.
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 a 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 roubles.”
“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.
Chapter 18. Hapless Visitors
At the same time that the zealous bookkeeper was racing in a cab to his encounter with the self-writing suit, from first-class sleeping car no. 9 of the Kiev train, on its arrival in Moscow, there alighted, among others, a decent-looking passenger carrying a small fibreboard suitcase. This passenger was none other than the late Berlioz’s uncle, Maximilian Andreevich Poplavsky, an industrial economist, who lived in Kiev on the former Institutsky Street. The reason for Maximilian Andreevich’s coming to Moscow was a telegram received late in the evening two days before with the following content: Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch’s “Ponds funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz.
Maximilian Andreevich was considered one of the most intelligent men in Kiev, and deservedly so. But even the most intelligent man might have been nonplussed by such a telegram. If someone sends a telegram saying he has been run over, it is clear that he has not died of it. But then, what was this about a fu
neral? Or was he in a bad way and foreseeing death? That was possible, but such precision was in the highest degree strange: how could he know he would be buried on Friday at three pm? An astonishing telegram!
However, intelligence is granted to intelligent people so as to sort out entangled affairs. Very simple. A mistake had been made, and the message had been distorted. The word “have” had undoubtedly come there from some omer telegram in place of the word “Berlioz”, which got moved and wound up at the end of the telegram. With such an emendation, the meaning of the telegram became clear, though, of course, tragic.
When the outburst of grief that struck Maximilian Andreevich’s wife subsided, he at once started preparing to go to Moscow.
One secret about Maximilian Andreevich ought to be revealed. There is no arguing that he felt sorry for his wife’s nephew, who had died in the bloom of life. But, of course, being a practical man, he realized that there was no special need for his presence at the funeral. And nevertheless Maximilian Andreevich was in great haste to go to Moscow. What was the point? The point was the apartment. An apartment in Moscow is a serious thing! For some unknown reason, Maximilian Andreevich did not like Kiev,[103] and the thought of moving to Moscow had been gnawing at him so much lately that he had even begun to sleep badly.
He did not rejoice in the spring flooding of the Dnieper, when, overflowing the islands by the lower bank, the water merged with the horizon. He did not rejoice in the staggeringly beautiful view which opened out from the foot of the monument to Prince Vladimir. He did not take delight in patches of sunlight playing in springtime on the brick paths of Vladimir’s Hill. He wanted none of it, he wanted only one thing — to move to Moscow.
Advertising in the newspapers about exchanging an apartment on Institutsky Street in Kiev for smaller quarters in Moscow brought no results. No takers were found, or if they occasionally were, their offers were disingenuous.
The telegram staggered Maximilian Andreevich. This was a moment it would be sinful to let slip. Practical people know that such moments do not come twice.