News from Yalta At the same time as disaster struck Nikanor Ivanovich, not far from 302B, on that same Sadovaya Street, two men sat in the office of the financial director of the Variety Theater: Rimsky himself and Varenukha, the theater manager. Two windows of the large second-floor office looked out on Sadovaya Street, and another, behind the financial director, who was sitting at his desk, looked out on the Variety's summer garden, where there were soft-drink stands, a shooting gallery, and an open-air stage. Apart from the desk, the office furnishings included a bunch of old theater bills hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water, four armchairs, and a dusty, time-worn scale model of some stage revue set up on a stand in the corner. Well, it goes without saying that the office also contained a small fireproof safe, battered and chipped, which stood on Rimsky's left, next to the desk. Rimsky, who was sitting at the desk, had been in a foul mood since morning. Varenukha, on the other hand, was very animated and somehow especially restless and energetic. For the time being he had no outlet for his nervous energy. Varenukha had taken refuge in the financial director's office in order to escape from the free-ticket hounds who poisoned his existence, especially on days when there was a change of program. And today was just such a day. As soon as the phone began to ring, Varenukha picked up the receiver and lied into it, "Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He's left the theater." "Call Likhodeyev again, please," said Rimsky in irritation. "He's not home. I already sent Karpov over. There's no one in his apartment." The devil knows what's going on," hissed Rimsky, clicking his adding machine. The door opened, and an usher came in dragging a thick stack of additional theater bills hot off the press. Printed in large red letters on green sheets of paper was: Today and Every Day at the Variety Theater an Added Attraction: PROFESSOR WOLAND Performs Black Magic with an Expose in Full Varenukha stepped back from the playbill, which he had draped over the scale model, admired it, and ordered the usher to paste them up everywhere. "It looks good, eye-catching," noted Varenukha as the usher was leaving. "Well, I don't like this venture at all," grumbled Rimsky, gazing angrily at the playbill through his horn-rimmed glasses. "And, I'm amazed they've allowed him to perform at all!" "No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say that, it was a very shrewd move. The whole point of it is the expose." "I don't know, I don't know, it has no point at all, as far as I'm concerned, and besides, Styopa's always dreaming up things like this! If only he'd let us have a look at the magician. Have you seen him? Where the hell did they dig him up?" It was obvious that neither Varenukha nor Rimsky had seen the magician. Yesterday Styopa ("like a madman," to quote Rimsky) had run in to see the financial director with the draft of a contract, ordered him to draw it up and to authorize payment. And, the magician had disappeared, and no one had seen him except Styopa. Rimsky took out his watch, saw it was five after two, and became positively enraged. This was the limit! Likhodeyev had called around eleven and said that he would be there in half an hour. Not only had he not come, he had disappeared from his apartment! "I've got work to do!" snarled Rimsky, poking his finger at a pile of unsigned papers. "Maybe he's fallen under a streetcar, like Berlioz?" said Varenukha, holding the receiver to his ear and listening to the deep, prolonged, and utterly hopeless ringing. "Wouldn't be so bad," said Rimsky through his teeth, in barely audible tones. At that very moment a woman walked into the office, wearing a uniform jacket, a cap, a black skirt, and sneakers. She removed a small white square and a notebook from her waist-pouch and asked, "Is this the Variety? Express telegram for you. Sign please." Varenukha left a scrawl in the woman's notebook, and as soon as the door closed behind her, he opened the square. After reading the telegram, he blinked, and handed it to Rimsky. The telegram read as follows, "Yalta-Moscow. Variety. Today eleven thirty Criminal Investigation Department appeared nightshirt-trouser-clad brown-haired psycho allegedly Likhodeyev Director Variety Wire Yalta CID whereabouts Director likhodeyev." "Yeah, sure, and I'm your Aunt Mary!" exclaimed Rimsky, and added, "One more surprise!" "A False Dmitri," said Varenukha and he began speaking into the phone, "Telegraph office? Charge to Variety. Take a telegram... Are you listening? 'Yalta Criminal Investigation Department... Director Likhodeyev Moscow Financial Director Rimsky.' " Taking no heed of the communique about the Yalta impostor, Varenukha again picked up the phone to try to find out where Styopa was and, naturally, he could not locate him anywhere. Just as he was holding the receiver in his hand, trying to figure out where to call next, the same woman who had brought the first telegram reappeared and handed him a new envelope. Varenukha opened it in haste, read what was written, and whistled. "What now?" asked Rimsky, twitching nervously. Varenukha handed him the telegram in silence, and the financial director read the following words: "Please believe transported Yalta Woland's hypnosis wire CID confirmation identity Likhodeyev." Rimsky and Varenukha, their heads touching, reread the telegram, and when they finished, they stared at each other in silence. "Citizens!" said the woman angrily. "Sign for it and then you can be quiet for as long as you want! I've got telegrams to deliver." Varenukha, still staring at the telegram, scribbled something in the notebook, and the woman disappeared. "Weren't you talking to him on the phone just after eleven?" asked the director in complete bewilderment. "Oddly enough, yes!" cried Rimsky in piercing tones. "But whether I talked to him or not is irrelevant, he can't possibly be in Yalta now! That's absurd!" "He's drunk," said Varenukha. "Who's drunk?" asked Rimsky, and again they both stared at each other. That an impostor or lunatic had sent a telegram from Yalta was beyond doubt. What was odd, though, was how the Yalta jokester could have known about Woland, who had arrived in Moscow only yesterday. How could he know about the connection between Likhodeyev and Woland? "Hypnosis..." said Varenukha, repeating the word in the telegram. "How did he hear about Woland?" He crinkled up his eyes and suddenly announced decisively, "No, this is nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!" "Where the devil is this Woland staying?" asked Rimsky. Varenukha got in touch with the Intourist Office immediately and reported, to Rimsky's complete surprise, that Woland was staying in Likhodeyev's apartment. He then dialed Likhodeyev's apartment and listened to the phone ring repeatedly and insistently. In between rings he could hear from somewhere far away a deep, somber voice singing, "the cliffs, my refuge..." and Varenukha decided that a voice from some radio station had somehow cut into the telephone circuit. "There's no answer at the apartment," said Varenukha, hanging up the phone. "Perhaps I should try again..." He didn't finish his sentence. The same woman appeared in the door again, and both Rimsky and Varenukha got up to meet her, but this time it was a dark sheet of paper that she removed from her bag, rather than a small white square. "This is beginning to get interesting," said Varenukha through his teeth, staring after the woman as she made a quick exit Rimsky was the first to get hold of the sheet Against the dark background of the photographic paper, one could clearly make out black, handwritten lines: "Proof my handwriting my signature Wire confirmation put Woland under secret surveillance. Likhodeyev." During his twenty years in the theater Varenukha had seen a lot of things, but now he felt as if a shroud were covering his brain, and he was unable to say anything except the trite and, moreover, utterly absurd phrase, "This can't be!" Rimsky, on the other hand, reacted differently. He got up, opened the door, and roared at the messenger girl sitting on the stool outside, "Don't let anyone in unless they have mail to deliver)"?and locked the door. Then he took a pile of papers out of his desk and began a careful comparison of the bold, backward-slanting letters in the photogram and the letters in Styopa's memoranda and in his signatures, which were embellished with a spiral flourish. Varenukha leaned over the desk and breathed hotly on Rimsky's cheek. "It's his handwriting, all right," the financial director finally pronounced, and Varenukha echoed him, "His, indeed." When Varenukha looked into Rimsky's face, he was amazed by the change that had taken place. The already thin financial director seemed to have gotten even thinner and to have aged, and the eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses had lost their customary sharpness, and expressed not only alarm, but sorrow as well. Varenukha did everything you expect someone to do who is in a state of shock: he ran around the office and raised his arms up twice, like someone crucified, drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe, and exclaimed, "I don't understand! I don't understand! I do not understand!" Rimsky stared out the window, thinking intensely about something. The financial director was in a very difficult position: he had to devise, right on the spot, an ordinary explanation for out-of-the-ordinary happenings. The financial director narrowed his eyes and tried to imagine Styopa, shoeless and in a nightshirt, getting on some unheard-of, super-fast plane at around 11:30 in the morning and then, also at 11:30, the same Styopa standing in his socks at the airport in Yalta... The...
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