which came low, prolonged and utterly hopeless signals.
‘Wouldn’t be a bad thing ...’ Rimsky said barely audibly through his teeth.
At that same moment a woman in a uniform jacket, visored cap, black skirt and sneakers came into the office. From a small pouch at her belt the woman took a small white square and a notebook and asked:
‘Who here is Variety? A super-lightning telegram.2 Sign here.’
Varenukha scribbled some flourish in the woman’s notebook, and as soon as the door slammed behind her, he opened the square. After reading the telegram, he blinked and handed the square to Rimsky.
The telegram contained the following: ‘Yalta to Moscow Variety. Today eleven thirty brown-haired man came criminal investigation nightshirt trousers shoeless mental case gave name Likhodeev Director Variety Wire Yalta criminal investigation where Director Likhodeev.’
‘Hello and how do you do!’ Rimsky exclaimed, and added: ‘Another surprise!’
‘A false Dmitri!’3 said Varenukha, and he spoke into the receiver. Telegraph office? Variety account. Take a super-lightning telegram. Are you listening? “Yalta criminal investigation. Director Likhodeev Moscow Findirector Rimsky.”‘
Irrespective of the news about the Yalta impostor, Varenukha again began searching all over for Styopa by telephone, and naturally did not find him anywhere.
Just as Varenukha, receiver in hand, was pondering where else he might call, the same woman who had brought the first telegram came in and handed Varenukha a new envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read the message and whistled.
‘What now?’ Rimsky asked, twitching nervously.
Varenukha silently handed him the telegram, and the findirector saw there the words: ‘Beg believe thrown Yalta Woland hypnosis wire criminal investigation confirm identity Likhodeev.’
Rimsky and Varenukha, their heads touching, reread the telegram, and after rereading it, silently stared at each other.
‘Citizens!’ the woman got angry. ‘Sign, and then be silent as much as you like! I deliver lightnings!’
Varenukha, without taking his eyes off the telegram, made a crooked scrawl in the notebook, and the woman vanished.
‘Didn’t you talk with him on the phone at a little past eleven?’ the administrator began in total bewilderment.
‘No, it’s ridiculous!’ Rimsky cried shrilly. Talk or not, he can’t be in Yalta now! It’s ridiculous!‘
‘He’s drunk ...’ said Varenukha.
‘Who’s drunk?’ asked Rimsky, and again the two stared at each other.
That some impostor or madman had sent telegrams from Yalta, there was no doubt. But the strange thing was this: how did the Yalta mystifier know Woland, who had come to Moscow just the day before? How did he know about the connection between Likhodeev and Woland?
‘Hypnosis...’ Varenukha kept repeating the word from the telegram. ‘How does he know about Woland?’ He blinked his eyes and suddenly cried resolutely: ‘Ah, no! Nonsense! ... Nonsense, nonsense!’
‘Where’s he staying, this Woland, devil take him?’ asked Rimsky.
Varenukha immediately got connected with the foreign tourist bureau and, to Rimsky’s utter astonishment, announced that Woland was staying in Likhodeev’s apartment. Dialling the number of the Likhodeev apartment after that, Varenukha listened for a long time to the low buzzing in the receiver. Amidst the buzzing, from somewhere far away, came a heavy, gloomy voice singing: ‘... rocks, my refuge...’4 and Varenukha decided that the telephone lines had crossed with a voice from a radio show.
‘The apartment doesn’t answer,’ Varenukha said, putting down the receiver, ‘or maybe I should call ...’
He did not finish. The same woman appeared in the door, and both men, Rimsky and Varenukha, rose to meet her, while she took from her pouch not a white sheet this time, but some sort of dark one.
This is beginning to get interesting,‘ Varenukha said through his teeth, his eyes following the hurriedly departing woman. Rimsky was the first to take hold of the sheet.
On a dark background of photographic paper, some black handwritten lines were barely discernible:
‘Proof my handwriting my signature wire urgently confirmation place secret watch Woland Likhodeev.’
In his twenty years of work in the theatre, Varenukha had seen all kinds of sights, but here he felt his mind becoming obscured as with a veil, and he could find nothing to say but the at once mundane and utterly absurd phrase:
‘This cannot be!’
Rimsky acted otherwise. He stood up, opened the door, barked out to the messenger girl sitting on a stool:
‘Let no one in except postmen!’ — and locked the door with a key.
Then he took a pile of papers out of the desk and began carefully to compare the bold, back-slanting letters of the photogram with the letters in Styopa’s resolutions and signatures, furnished with a corkscrew flourish. Varenukha, leaning his weight on the table, breathed hotly on Rimsky’s cheek.
‘It’s his handwriting,’ the findirector finally said firmly, and Varenukha repeated like an echo:
‘His.’
Peering into Rimsky’s face, the administrator marvelled at the change that had come over this face. Thin to begin with, the findirector seemed to have grown still thinner and even older, his eyes in their horn rims had lost
