However, his luck was not all it might have been! Ivan met with a wave of humid heat and, by the light of the coals smouldering in the boiler, made out big basins hanging on the walls, and a bath tub, all black frightful blotches where the enamel had chipped off. And there, in this bath tub, stood a naked cidzeness, all soapy and with a scrubber in her hand. She squinted near-sightedly at the bursting-in Ivan and, obviously mistaking him in the infernal light, said sofdy and gaily: “Kiriushka! Stop this tomfoolery! Have you lost your mind? ... Fyodor Ivanych will be back any minute. Get out right now!” and she waved at Ivan with the scrubber.
The misunderstanding was evident, and Ivan Nikolaevich was, of course, to blame for it. But he did not want to admit it and, exclaiming reproachfully: “Ah, wanton creature! ...” at once found himself for some reason in the kitchen. No one was there, and on the oven in the semi-darkness silently stood about a dozen extinguished primuses.[59] A single moonbeam, having seeped through the dusty, perennially unwashed window, shone sparsely into the corner where, in dust and cobwebs, a forgotten icon hung, with the ends of two wedding candles[60] peeking out from behind its casing. Under the big icon, pinned to it, hung a little one made of paper.
No one knows what thought took hold of Ivan here, but before running out the back door, he appropriated one of these candles, as well as the paper icon. With these objects, he left the unknown apartment, muttering something, embarrassed at the thought of what he had just experienced in the bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this impudent Kiriushka might be and whether the disgusting hat with ear-flaps belonged to him.
In the desolate, joyless lane the poet looked around, searching for the fugitive, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said firmly to himself: “Why, of course, he’s at the Moscow River! Onward!”
Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed that the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome lane was completely empty.
In the very shortest time, Ivan Nikolaevich could be seen on the granite steps of the Moscow River amphitheatre.[61]
Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant, bearded fellow who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting beside a torn white Tolstoy blouse and a pair of unlaced, worn boots. After waving his arms to cool off, Ivan dived swallow-fashion into the water.
It took his breath away, so cold the water was, and the thought even flashed in him that he might not manage to come up to the surface. However, he did manage to come up, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes rounded in terror, Ivan Nikolaevich began swimming through the black, oil-smelling water among the broken zigzags of street lights on the bank.
When the wet Ivan came dancing back up the steps to the place where the bearded fellow was guarding his clothes, it became clear that not only the latter, but also the former – that is, the bearded fellow himself – had been stolen. In the exact spot where the pile of clothes had been, a pair of striped drawers, the torn Tolstoy blouse, the candle, the icon and a box of matches had been left. After threatening someone in the distance with his fist in powerless anger, Ivan put on what was left for him.
Here two considerations began to trouble him: first, that his Massolit identification card, which he never parted with, was gone, and, second, whether he could manage to get through Moscow unhindered looking the way he did now? In striped drawers, after all ... True, it was nobody’s business, but still there might be some hitch or delay.
Ivan tore off the buttons where the drawers fastened at the ankle, figuring that this way they might pass for summer trousers, gathered up the icon, the candle and the matches, and started off, saying to himself: “To Griboedov’s! Beyond all doubt, he’s there.”
The city was already living its evening life. Trucks flew through the dust, chains clanking, and on their platforms men lay sprawled belly up on sacks. All windows were open. In each of these windows a light burned under an orange lampshade, and from every window, every door, every gateway, roof, and attic, basement and courtyard blared the hoarse roar of the polonaise from the opera Evgeny Onegin.[62]
Ivan Nikolaevich’s apprehensions proved fully justified: passers-by did pay attention to him and turned their heads. As a result, he took the decision to leave the main streets and make his way through back lanes, where people are not so importunate, where there were fewer chances of them picking on a barefoot man, pestering him with questions about his drawers, which stubbornly refused to look like trousers.
This Ivan did, and, penetrating the mysterious network of lanes around the Arbat, he began making his way along the walls, casting fearful sidelong glances, turning around every moment, hiding in gateways frori time to time, avoiding intersections with traffic lights and the grand entrances of embassy mansions.
And all along his difficult way, he was for some reason inexpressibly tormented by the ubiquitous orchestra that accompanied the heavy basso singing about his love for Tatiana.
Chapter 5. There were Doings at Griboedov’s
The old, two-storeyed, cream-coloured house stood on the ring boulevard, in the depths of a seedy garden, separated from the sidewalk by a fancy cast-iron fence. The small terrace in front of the house was paved with asphalt, and in wintertime was dominated by a snow pile with a shovel stuck in it, but in summertime turned into the most magnificent section of the summer restaurant under a canvas tent.
The house was called “The House of Griboedov” on the grounds that it was alleged to have once belonged to an aunt of the writer Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov.[63] Now, whether it did or did not belong to her, we do not exactly know. On recollection, it even seems that Griboedov never had any such house-owning aunt ... Nevertheless, that was what the house was called. Moreover, one Moscow liar had it that there, on the second floor, in a round hall with columns, the famous writer had supposedly read passages from Woe From Wit to this very aunt while she reclined on a sofa.
However, devil knows, maybe he did, it’s of no importance.
What is important is that at the present time this house was owned by that same Massolit which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch’s Ponds.
In the casual manner of Massolit members, no one called the house The House of Griboedov”, everyone simply said “Griboedov’s”: “I spent two hours yesterday knocking about Griboedov’s.” “Well, and so?” “Got myself a month in Yalta.” “Bravo!” Or: “Go to Berlioz, he receives today from four to five at Griboedov’s ...” and so on.
Massolit had settled itself at Griboedov’s in the best and cosiest way imaginable. Anyone entering Griboedov’s first of all became involuntarily acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs, and with group as well as individual photographs of the members of Massolit, hanging (the photographs) on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.
On the door to the very first room of this upper floor one could see a big sign: “Fishing and Vacation Section”, along with the picture of a carp caught on a line.
On the door of room no. 2 something not quite comprehensible was written: “One-day Creative Trips. Apply to M. V. Spurioznaya.”
The next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible inscription: “Perelygino”.[64] After which the chance visitor to Griboedov’s would not know where to look from the motley inscriptions on the aunt’s walnut doors: ‘sign up for Paper with Poklevkina”, “Cashier”, “Personal Accounts of Sketch-Writers”...
If one cut through the longest line, which already went downstairs and out to the doorman’s lodge, one could see the sign “Housing Question” on a door which people were crashing every second.
Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on which a cliff was depicted and, riding on its crest, a horseman in a felt cloak with a rifle on his shoulder. A little lower — palm trees and a balcony; on the balcony — a seated
young man with a forelock, gazing somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand.
The inscription: “Full-scale Creative Vacations from Two Weeks (Story/Novella) to One Year (Novel/Trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe, Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).”[65] There was also a line at this door, but not an excessive one — some hundred and fifty people.
Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the Griboedov house, came the “Massolit Executive Board”, “Cashiers nos. 2, 3, 4, 5”, “Editorial Board”, “Chairman of Massolit”, “Billiard Room”, various auxiliary institutions and, finally, that same hall with the colonnade where the aunt had delighted in the comedy other genius nephew.
Any visitor finding himself in Griboedov’s, unless of course he was a total dim-wit, would realize at once what a good life those lucky fellows, the Massolit members, were having, and black envy would immediately start gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Massolit membership card, brown, smelling of costly leather, with a wide gold border — a card known to all Moscow.
Who will speak in defence of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor’s position.
For what he had seen on the upper floor was not all, and was far from all.
The entire ground floor of the aunt’s house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in Moscow. And not only because it took up two vast halls with arched ceilings, painted with violet, Assyrian-maned horses, not only because on each table there stood a lamp shaded with a shawl, not only because it was not accessible to just anybody coming in off the street, but because in the quality of its fare Griboedov’s beat any restaurant in Moscow up and down, and this fare was available at the most reasonable, by no means onerous, price.
Hence there was nothing surprising, for instance, in the following conversation, which the author of these most truthful lines once heard near the cast-iron fence of Griboedov’s: “Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?”
“What a question! Why, here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there will be perch au naturel done to order. A virtuoso little treat!”
“You sure know how to live, Amvrosy!” skinny, run-down Foka, with a carbuncle on his neck, replied with a sigh to the ruddy-lipped giant, golden-haired, plump-cheeked Amvrosy-the-poet.
“I have no special knowledge,” Amvrosy protested, “just the ordinary wish to live like a human being. You mean to say, Foka, that perch can be met with at the Coliseum as well. But at the Coliseum a portion of perch costs thirteen roubles fifteen kopecks, and here — five-fifty! Besides, at the Coliseum they serve three-day-old perch, and, besides, there’s no guarantee you won’t get slapped in the mug with a bunch of grapes at the Coliseum by the first young man who bursts in from Theatre Alley. No, I’m categorically opposed to the Coliseum,” the gastronome Amvrosv boomed for the whole boulevard to hear. “Don’t try to convince me, Foka!”
“I’m not trying to convince you, Amvrosy,” Foka squeaked. “One can also dine at home.”
“I humbly thank you,” trumpeted Amvrosy, “but I can imagine your wife, in the communal kitchen at home, trying to do perch au naturel to order in a saucepan! Hee, hee, hee! ... Aurevwar, Foka!” And, humming, Amvrosy directed his steps to the veranda under the tent.
Ahh, yes! ... Yes, there was a time! ... Old Muscovites will remember the renowned Griboedov’s! What is poached perch done to order!
Cheap stuff, my dear Amvrosy! But sterlet, sterlet in a silvery chafing dish, sterlet slices interiaid with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? And eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree in little dishes? And how did you like the fillets of thrush? With truffles? Quail a la genoise? Nine-fifty! And the jazz, and the courteous service! And in July, when the whole family is in the country, and you are kept in the city by urgent literary business on the veranda, in the shade of the creeping vines, in a golden spot on the cleanest of tablecloths, a bowl of soup printanier? Remember, Amvrosy? But why ask! I can see by your lips that you do. What is your whitefish, your perch! But the snipe, the great snipe, the jack snipe, the woodcock in their season, the quail, the curlew? Cool seltzer fizzing in your throat?! But enough, you are getting distracted, reader! Follow me!...
At half past ten on the evening when Berlioz died at the Patriarch’s Ponds, only one room was lit upstairs at Griboedov’s, and in it languished twelve writers who had gathered for a meeting and were waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, and on tables, and even on the two window-sills in the office of the Massolit executive board, they suffered seriously from the heat. Not a single breath of fresh air came through the open windows. Moscow was releasing the heat accumulated in the asphalt all day, and it was clear that night would bring no relief. The smell of onions came from the basement of the aunt’s house, where the restaurant kitchen was at work, they were all thirsty, they were all nervous and angry.
The belletrist Beskudnikov – a quiet, decently dressed man with attentive and at the same time elusive eyes – took out his watch. The hand was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the face and showed it to the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting next to him on the table and in boredom dangling his feet shod in yellow shoes with rubber treads.
“Anyhow,” grumbled Dvubratsky.
"The laddie must’ve got stuck on the Klyazma,” came the thick-voiced response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant, who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the pen-name of Bos”n George.
“Excuse me!” boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches, “but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in here. The meeting was set for ten o’clock, wasn’t it?”
“It’s nice now on the Klyazma,” Bos”n George needled those present, knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was everybody’s sore spot. “There’s nightingales singing already. I always work better in the country, especially in spring.”
“It’s the third year I’ve paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to this paradise, but there’s nothing to be spied amidst the waves,” the novelist leronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.
“Some are lucky and some aren’t,” the critic Ababkov droned from the window-sill.
Bos”n George’s little eyes lit up wim glee, and she said, softening her contralto: We mustn’t be envious, comrades. There’s twenty-two dachas[66] in all, and only seven more being built, and there’s three thousand of us in Massolit.”
“Three thousand one hundred and eleven,” someone put in from the corner.
“So you see,” the Bos”n went on, “what can be done? Naturally, it’s the most talented of us that got the dachas ...”
“The generals!” Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.
Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.
“Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,” Glukharev said behind him.
“Lavrovich has six to himself,” Deniskin cried out, “and the dining room’s panelled in oak!”
“Eh, that’s not the point right now,” Ababkov droned, “it’s that it’s half past eleven.”
A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich’s, found out that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 950, and of course found no one there.
“He might have called!” shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.
Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov’s, in an enormous room lit by thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tabl
es, lay what had still recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.
On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on the third, a pile of stiffened rags.
Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich’s assistant in Massolit, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife’s side.
A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man’s apartment, where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all went to the morgue.
And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov’s after simply covering the dead man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?
No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally, were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but airless halls.
And exactly at midnight, in the first of these halls, something crashed, jangled, spilled, leaped. And all at once a high male voice desperately cried out “Hallelujah!” to the music. The famous Griboedov jazz band struck up. Sweat-covered faces seemed to brighten, it was as if the horses painted on the ceiling came alive, the lamps seemed to shine with added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance, and following them the veranda broke into dance.