The Master and Margarita (33 page)

“I beg your pardon,” said Andrei Fokich, astounded by this sudden attack, “but I’ve come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do with it...”

“How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it’s spoiled!”

"They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness,” the barman said.

“My dear heart, that is nonsense!”

“What is nonsense?”

“Second freshness — that’s what is nonsense! There is only one freshness – the first – and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.”

“I beg your pardon ...” the barman again tried to begin, not knowing how to shake off the cavilling artiste.

“I cannot pardon you,” the other said firmly.

“I have come about something else,” the barman said, getting quite upset.

“About something else?” the foreign magician was surprised. “And what else could have brought you to me? Unless memory deceives me, among people of a profession similar to yours, I have had dealings with only one butler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet in this world.

However, I’m glad. Azazello! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!”

The one who was roasting meat turned, horrifying the barman with his fangs, and deftly offered him one of the dark oaken tabourets. There were no other seats in the room.

The barman managed to say: “I humbly thank you,” and lowered himself on to the stool. Its back leg broke at once with a crack, and the barman, gasping, struck his backside most painfully on the floor. As he fell, he kicked another stool in front of him with his foot, and from it spilled a full cup of red wine on his trousers.

The artiste exclaimed: “Oh! Are you hurt?”

Azazello helped the barman up and gave him another seat. In a voice filled with grief, the barman declined his host’s suggestion that he take off his trousers and
dry
them before the fire, and, feeling unbearably uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothing, cautiously sat down on the other stool.

“I like sitting low down,” the artiste said, “it’s less dangerous falling from a low height. Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon.

Freshness, dear heart, freshness, freshness! That should be the motto of every barman. Here, wouldn’t you like to try...”

In the crimson light of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the barman, and Azazello laid a sizzling piece of meat on the golden dish, squeezed lemon juice over it, and handed the barman a golden two-pronged fork.

“My humble ... I ...”

“No, no, try it!”

The barman put a piece into his mouth out of politeness, and understood at once that he was chewing something very fresh indeed, and, above all, extraordinarily delicious. But as he was chewing the fragrant, juicy meat, the barman nearly choked and fell a second time. From the neighbouring room a big, dark bird flew in and gently brushed the barman’s bald head with its wing. Alighting on the mantelpiece beside the clock, the bird turned out to be an owl. “Oh, Lord God! ...” thought Andrei Fokich, nervous like all barmen. “A nice little apartment!...”

“A cup of wine? White, red? What country’s wine do you prefer at this time of day?”

“My humble ... I don’t drink ...”

“A shame! What about a game of dice, then?
Or do
you have some other favourite game? Dominoes? Cards?”

“I don’t play games,” the already weary barman responded.

“Altogether bad,” the host concluded. “As you will, but there’s something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business.”

“Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks ...”

“I?” the magician exclaimed in amazement. “Good gracious, it’s somehow even unbecoming to me!”

“I’m sorry,” said the barman, taken aback. “I mean the séance of black magic ...”

“Ah, yes, yes, yes! My dear, I’ll reveal a secret to you. I’m not an artiste at all, I simply wanted to see the Muscovites
en masse,
and that could be done most conveniently in a theatre. And so my retinue,” he nodded in the direction of the cat, “arranged for this séance, and I merely sat and looked at the Muscovites. Now, don’t go changing countenance, but tell me, what is it in connection with this séance that has brought you to me?”

“If you please, you see, among other things there were banknotes flying down from the ceiling...” The barman lowered his voice and looked around abashedly. “So they snatched them all up. And then a young man comes to my bar and gives me a ten-rouble bill, I give him eight-fifty in change ...

Then another one ...”

“Also a young man?”

“No, an older one. Then a third, and a fourth ... I keep giving them change. And today I went to check the cash box, and there, instead of money – cut-up paper. They hit the buffet for a hundred and nine roubles.”

“Ai-yai-yai!” the artiste exclaimed. “But can they have thought those were real bills? I can’t admit the idea that they did it knowingly.”

The barman took a somehow hunched and anguished look around him, but said nothing.

“Can they be crooks?” the magician asked worriedly of his visitor. “Can there be crooks among the Muscovites?”

The barman smiled so bitterly in response that all doubts fell away: yes, there were crooks among the Muscovites.

“That is mean!” Woland was indignant. “You’re a poor man ... You are a poor man?”

The barman drew his head down between his shoulders, making it evident that he was a poor man.

“How much have you got in savings?”

The question was asked in a sympathetic tone, but even so such a question could not but be acknowledged as indelicate. The barman faltered.

Two hundred and forty-nine thousand roubles in five savings banks,” a cracked voice responded from the neighbouring room, “and two hundred ten-rouble gold pieces at home under the floor.”

The barman became as if welded to his tabouret.

“Well, of course, that’s not a great sum,” Woland said condescendingly to his visitor, “though, as a matter of fact, you have no need of it anyway.

When are you going to die?”

Here the barman became indignant.

“Nobody knows that and it’s nobody’s concern,” he replied.

“Sure nobody knows,” the same trashy voice came from the study. The binomial theorem, you might think! He’s going to die in nine months, next February, of liver cancer, in the clinic of the First Moscow State University, in ward number four.”

The barman’s face turned yellow.

“Nine months ...” Woland calculated pensively. Two hundred and forty-nine thousand ... rounding it off that comes to twenty-seven thousand a month ... Not a lot, but enough for a modest life ... Plus those gold pieces ...”

“He won’t get to realize the gold pieces,” the same voice mixed in, turning the barman’s heart to ice. “On Andrei Fokich’s demise, the house will immediately be torn down, and the gold will be sent to the State Bank.”

“And I wouldn’t advise you to go to the clinic,” the artiste went on.

“What’s the sense of dying in a ward to the groans and wheezes of the hopelessly ill? Isn’t it better to give a banquet on the twenty-seven thousand, then take poison and move on to the other world to the sounds of strings, surrounded by drunken beauties and dashing friends?”

The barman sat motionless and grew very old. Dark rings surrounded his eyes, his cheeks sagged, and his lower jaw hung down.

“However, we’ve started day-dreaming,” exclaimed the host. To business!

Show me your cut-up paper.”

The barman, agitated, pulled a package from his pocket, unwrapped it, and was dumbfounded: the piece of paper contained ten-rouble bills.

“My dear, you really are unwell,” Woland said, shrugging his shoulders.

The barman, grinning wildly, got up from the tabouret.

“A-and ...” he said, stammering, “and if they ... again
...
that is...”

“Hm ...” the artiste pondered, “well, then come to us again. You’re always welcome. I’m glad of our acquaintance ...”

Straight away Koroviev came bounding from the study, clutched the barman’s hand, and began shaking it, begging Andrei Fokich to give his regards to everybody, everybody. Not thinking very well, the barman started for the front hall.

“Hella, see him out!” Koroviev shouted.

Again that naked redhead in the front hall! The barman squeezed through the door, squeaked “Goodbye!”, and went off like a drunk man. Having gone down a little way, he stopped, sat on a step, took out the packet and checked — the ten-rouble bills were in place.

Here a woman with a green bag came out of the apartment on that landing. Seeing a man sitting on a step and staring dully at some money, she smiled and said pensively: “What a house we’ve got ... Here’s this one drunk in the morning ...

And the window on the stairway is broken again!”

Peering more attentively at the barman, she added: “And you, dozen, are simply rolling in money! ... Give some to me, eh?”

“Let me alone, for Christ’s sake!” the barman got frightened and quickly hid the money.

The woman laughed.

To the hairy devil with you, skinflint! I was joking...” And she went downstairs.

The barman slowly got up, raised his hand to straighten his hat, and realized that it was not on his head. He was terribly reluctant to go back, but he was sorry about the hat. After some hesitation, he nevertheless went back and rang.

“What else do you want?” the accursed Hella asked him.

“I forgot my hat...” the barman whispered, pointing to his bald head.

Hella turned around. The barman spat mentally and dosed his eyes. When he opened them, Hella was holding out his hat to him and a sword with a dark hilt.

“Not mine ...” the barman whispered, pushing the sword away and quickly putting on his hat.

“You came without a sword?” Hella was surprised.

The barman growled something and quickly went downstairs. His head for some reason felt uncomfortable and too warm in the hat. He took it off and, jumping from fear, cried out softly: in his hands was a velvet beret with a dishevelled cock’s feather. The barman crossed himself. At the same moment, the beret miaowed, turned into a black kitten and, springing back on to Andrei Fokich’s head, sank all its claws into his bald spot. Letting out a cry of despair, the barman dashed downstairs, and the kitten fell off and spurted back up the stairway.

Bursting outside, the barman trotted to the gates and left the devilish no.502-bis for ever.

What happened to him afterwards is known perfectly well. Running out the gateway, the barman looked around wildly, as if searching for something.

A minute later he was on the other side of the street in a pharmacy. He had no sooner uttered the words: “Tell me, please ...” when the woman behind the counter exclaimed: “Citizen, your head is cut all over!”

Some five minutes later the barman was bandaged with gauze, knew that the best specialists in liver diseases were considered to be professors Bernadsky and Kuzmin, asked who was closer, lit up with joy on learning that Kuzmin lived literally across the courtyard in a small white house, and some two minutes later was in that house.

The premises were antiquated but very, very cosy. The barman remembered that the first one he happened to meet was an old nurse who wanted to take his hat, but as he turned out to have no hat, the nurse went off somewhere, munching with an empty mouth.

Instead of her, there turned up near the mirror and under what seemed some sort of arch, a middle-aged woman who said straight away that it was possible to make an appointment only for the nineteenth, not before. The barman at once grasped what would save him. Peering with fading eyes through the arch, where three persons were waiting in what was obviously some sort of anteroom, he whispered: “Mortally ill...”

The woman looked in perplexity at the barman’s bandaged head, hesitated, and said: “Well, then ...” and allowed the barman through the archway.

At that same moment the opposite door opened, there was the flash of a gold pince-nez. The woman in the white coat said: “Citizens, this patient will go out of turn.”

And before the barman could look around him, he was in Professor Kuzmin’s office. There was nothing terrible, solemn or medical in this oblong room.

"What’s wrong with you?” Professor Kuzmin asked in a pleasant voice, and glanced with some alarm at the bandaged head.

“I’ve just learned from reliable hands,” the barman replied, casting wild glances at some group photograph under glass, “that I’m going to die of liver cancer in February of this corning year. I beg you to stop it.”

Professor Kuzmin, as he sat there, threw himself against the high Gothic leather back of his chair.

“Excuse me, I don’t understand you ... you’ve, what, been to the doctor? Why is your head bandaged?”

“Some doctor! ... You should’ve seen this doctor...” the barman replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. “And don’t pay any attention to the head, it has no connection ... Spit on the head, it has nothing to do with it ... Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it!...”

“Pardon me, but who told you?!”

“Believe him!” the barman ardently entreated. “He knows!”

“I don’t understand a thing!” the professor said, shrugging his shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. “How can he know when you’re going to die? The more so as he’s not a doctor!”

“In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,” replied the barman.

Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp trousers, and thought: “Just what I needed, a madman ...” He asked: “Do you drink vodka?”

“Never touch it,” the barman answered.

A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said, the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of cancer, but since it was so ... since he was afraid and had been frightened by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests...