CHAPTER 14. Glory to the Cock!

     His nerves gave out, as  they say, and Rimsky fled to his office before
they finished  drawing up the  report. He  sat at  his desk  and stared with
inflamed eyes  at the magic banknotes lying  before  him. The  findirector's
wits were  addled.  A steady hum came  from outside. The audience poured  in
streams from  the  Variety  building  into  the street.  Rimsky's  extremely
sharpened hearing suddenly  caught the distant trill of a policeman. That in
itself  never  bodes  anything pleasant. But when  it  was repeated  and, to
assist it, another joined  in, more authoritative and prolonged, and to them
was added a clearly audible guffawing and even some hooting, the findirector
understood at once  that something else scandalous and  vile had happened in
the street. And that, however much he wanted to wave it away, it was closely
connected  with the repulsive sance presented by the black magician and his
assistants.
     The keen-eared findirector was not mistaken in the least. As soon as he
cast a glance out the window on  to Sadovaya,  his face twisted, and he  did
not whisper but hissed:
     'So I thought!'
     In the bright glare  of the  strongest street lights he saw, just below
him on the sidewalk, a  lady in  nothing  but a shift  and violet  bloomers.
True, there  was a little  hat on the lady's  head  and  an  umbrella in her
hands. The lady, who was in a  state  of utter  consternation, now crouching
down, now  making as if to run off  somewhere, was surrounded by an agitated
crowd, which produced  the very  guffawing that had  sent a  shiver down the
fin-director's spine. Next to  the  lady  some  citizen  was flitting about,
trying to  tear off his summer coat, and  in his  agitation simply unable to
manage the sleeve in which his arm was stuck.
     Shouts and  roaring guffaws came from  yet  another place - namely, the
left entrance  - and turning his head in that  direction, Grigory Danilovich
saw a  second lady, in pink underwear. She  leaped  from the street  to  the
sidewalk,  striving to hide  in the  hallway,  but the audience pouring  out
blocked  the way,  and the poor victim other own flightiness and passion for
dressing up, deceived  by  vile  Fagott's firm, dreamed of only one  thing -
falling  through  the earth. A  policeman  made  for the unfortunate  woman,
drilling the  air with his whistle,  and  after  the policeman hastened some
merry young men in caps. It was they who produced the guffawing and hooting.
     A skinny, moustachioed cabby  flew up to  the first undressed woman and
dashingly  reined  in his bony, broken-down  nag.  The  moustached  face was
grinning gleefully.
     Rimsky beat himself on  the head  with his fist, spat,  and leaped back
from the window. For some  time he sat at his desk listening  to the street.
The  whistling at  various points reached  its  highest pitch, then began to
subside.  The  scandal, to  Rimsky's  surprise, was somehow liquidated  with
unexpected swiftness.
     It came time to act. He had to drink the  bitter cup of responsibility.
The telephones had been  repaired  during the third  part. He  had  to  make
calls, to tell what had happened, to  ask for help,  lie  his way out of it,
heap  everything  on Likhodeev, cover up  for himself, and  so on. Pah,  the
devil!
     Twice  the upset director put his hand  on the  receiver,  and twice he
drew it back. And suddenly, in the dead silence of the office, the telephone
burst out ringing  by itself right in the findirector's  face, and he gave a
start and went cold. 'My  nerves  are really upset, though!' he thought, and
picked up the receiver. He recoiled from it instantly and turned whiter than
paper.  A soft  but at the  same  time  insinuating  and  lewd  female voice
whispered into the receiver:
     'Don't call anywhere, Rimsky, it'll be bad ...'
     The  receiver  straight away went empty. With  goose-flesh prickling on
his back, the findirector  hung up  the telephone and for some reason turned
to look at  the  window  behind  him.  Through the  scant  and still  barely
greening branches of a maple, he saw the moon racing in a transparent cloud.
     His eyes fixed on the branches for  some reason, Rimsky went  on gazing
at them, and the longer he gazed, the more strongly he was gripped by fear.
     With great effort, the findirector finally turned away from the moonlit
window and stood up.  There could no longer be any question of phone  calls,
and now the findirector was thinking of only one thing  - getting out of the
theatre as quickly as possible.
     He listened: the theatre building was  silent. Rimsky realized that  he
had long  been  the only  one  on the whole  second floor,  and  a childish,
irrepressible fear came over him at this thought. He could not think without
shuddering of having to walk alone  now along the  empty corridors and  down
the stairs. Feverishly he seized the  hypnotist's banknotes from  the table,
put them in his briefcase, and  coughed so as to cheer himself up at least a
little. The cough came out slightly hoarse, weak.
     And  here it seemed to  him that  a whiff of some  putrid dankness  was
coming in under  the office  door. Shivers ran down the findirector's spine.
And then the clock also  rang out unexpectedly and began to strike midnight.
And even its striking  provoked  shivers in the  findirector. But his  heart
definitively sank when he heard the English key turning quietly in the lock.
Clutching his briefcase with damp, cold hands,  the findirector felt that if
this scraping in the keyhole were to go  on  any longer, he would break down
and give a piercing scream.
     Finally the door yielded to someone's  efforts,  opened, and  Varenukha
noiselessly entered  the office. Rimsky simply sank  down  into the armchair
where he  stood, because his legs gave way. Drawing a deep breath, he smiled
an ingratiating smile, as it were, and said quietly:
     'God, you frightened me...'
     Yes, this sudden appearance might have frightened anyone you  like, and
yet at the same time it was a great joy: at least one  little end peeped out
in this tangled affair.
     Well, tell me quickly!  Well? Well?'  Rimsky wheezed, grasping  at this
little end. 'What does it all mean?!'
     `Excuse  me,  please,' the  entering  man replied  in  a hollow  voice,
closing the door, 'I thought you had already left.'
     And Varenukha, without taking  his cap off, walked to  the armchair and
sat on the other side of the desk.
     It must be said that Varenukha's response was marked by a slight oddity
which at once needled the findirector, who could compete in sensitivity with
the seismograph of any  of  the world's best stations. How could it  be? Why
did Varenukha  come to  the  findirector's  office if  he thought he was not
there? He had his own  office, first of all. And  second, whichever entrance
to the building Varenukha had used, he  would inevitably have met one of the
night-watchmen, to all of whom it had been announced that Grigory Danilovich
was  staying  late  in his  office. But the findirector  did not spend  long
pondering this oddity - he had other problems.
     'Why didn't you call? What are all these shenanigans about Yalta?'
     "Well, it's as  I was saying,' the administrator replied, sucking as if
he were troubled by a bad tooth. 'He was found in the tavern in Pushkino.'
     `In Pushkino?! You mean just outside Moscow?! What  about the telegrams
from Yalta?!'
     'The devil they're from Yalta!  He got a telegrapher drunk in Pushkino,
and  the two of them  started acting up, sending  telegrams  marked "Yalta",
among other things.'
     'Aha ... aha ... Well, all right, all right...'  Rimsky did not say but
sang out. His eyes lit up with a yellow  light. In his head there formed the
festive picture of Styopa's  shameful dismissal  from  his job. Deliverance!
The findirector's long-awaited deliverance  from this disaster in the person
of  Likhodeev!  And maybe  Stepan  Bogdanovich would achieve something worse
than dismissal... The details!' said Rimsky, banging  the paperweight on the
desk.
     And Varenukha began giving the details. As soon as he arrived where the
findirector had sent him, he was received at once and given a most attentive
hearing.  No one, of course, even entertained the thought  that Styopa could
be in  Yalta.  Everyone  agreed  at once  with  Varenukha's  suggestion that
Likhodeev was, of course, at the Yalta in Pushkino.
     `Then where  is he  now?'  the  agitated  findirector  interrupted  the
administrator.
     'Well,  where else could  he be?'  the administrator replied,  grinning
crookedly. 'In a sobering-up cell, naturally!'
     'Well, well. How nice!'
     Varenukha  went on  with  his  story, and the  more he told,  the  more
vividly there unfolded  before the findirector the long chain of Likhodeev's
boorish and outrageous acts, and every link in this chain was worse than the
one before.  The drunken dancing  in the arms of the telegrapher on the lawn
in front  of the Pushkino  telegraph office to  the sounds of some itinerant
barrel-organ  was  worth something!  The chase  after  some female  citizens
shrieking with  terror! The attempt at a  fight with the barman in the Yalta
itself! Scattering green onions all over the floor of the same Yalta.
     Smashing eight bottles of  dry white Ai-Danil. Breaking the meter  when
the taxi-driver refused to take Styopa in his cab. Threatening to arrest the
citizens  who  attempted to stop Styopa's obnoxiousness...  In  short, black
horror!
     Styopa was well known in Moscow theatre circles, and everyone knew that
the man  was  no gift.  But all the same, what the administrator was telling
about him was too much even for Styopa. Yes, too much. Even much too much...
     Rimsky's  needle-sharp glance  pierced  the  administrator's face  from
across  the desk, and the  longer  the man  spoke,  the  grimmer  those eyes
became. The  more lifelike  and  colourful the  vile details with  which the
administrator  furnished  his story, the less  the  findirector believed the
storyteller. And when Varenukha told how Styopa had let himself go so far as
to try to resist those who came to bring him back to Moscow, the findirector
already knew  firmly  that everything the  administrator who had returned at
midnight  was telling him,  everything, was a lie! A  lie from first word to
last!
     Varenukha never went to Pushkino, and there was no Styopa in Pushkino.
     There was  no drunken  telegrapher, there  was no broken glass  in  the
tavern, Styopa did not get tied up with ropes ... none of it happened.
     As  soon   as  the   findirector  became   firmly  convinced  that  the
administrator was lying to him, fear crept over  his body, starting from the
legs,  and  twice again  the  findirector  fancied that  a  putrid  malarial
dankness was wafting across the  floor.  Never for  a moment taking his eyes
off  the administrator  -  who  squirmed somehow strangely in  his armchair,
trying not to get out  of  the blue  shade  of  the desk lamp, and screening
himself  with a newspaper in some remarkable  fashion  from  the  bothersome
light  -  the  findirector was thinking of only one thing:  what did it  all
mean? Why was  he  being lied  to  so brazenly,  in the  silent and deserted
building, by the administrator  who  was so  late in coming back to him? And
the  awareness of danger, an  unknown but menacing danger,  began to gnaw at
Rimsky's soul. Pretending to ignore Varenukha's dodges  and tricks with  the
newspaper, the findirector studied his face, now almost without listening to
the yarn Varenukha was spinning. There was something that seemed  still more
inexplicable  than the  calumny invented. God knows why, about adventures in
Pushkino,  and  that  something   was  the  change  in  the  administrator's
appearance and manners.
     No  matter how the man pulled the duck-like visor of his cap  over  his
eyes, so as to  throw a shadow on his  face, no  matter how he fidgeted with
the newspaper, the findirector managed to make out an enormous bruise on the
right  side  of his face  just  by  the  nose.  Besides  that,  the normally
full-blooded administrator was now pale with a chalk-like, unhealthy pallor,
and  on this stifling night his neck  was for  some reason wrapped in an old
striped  scarf.  Add to that the  repulsive  manner  the  administrator  had
acquired during the time of his absence of  sucking  and smacking, the sharp
change in his voice, which had become hollow and coarse, and the furtiveness
and cowardliness in his eyes, and one could boldly say that Ivan Savelyevich
Varenukha had become unrecognizable.
     Something else burningly troubled the findirector, but he was unable to
grasp precisely what  it  was,  however much  he strained his feverish mind,
however hard he peered at Varenukha. One thing he could affirm,  that  there
was   something  unprecedented,   unnatural  in  this  combination  of   the
administrator and the familiar armchair.
     "Well, we  finally overpowered him, loaded him into the car,' Varenukha
boomed, peeking from behind the paper and covering the bruise with his hand.
     Rimsky  suddenly  reached  out  and,  as  if  mechanically, tapping his
fingers on the table at the  same time, pushed the electric-bell button with
his palm and went numb.  The sharp  signal ought  to have been heard without
fail  in  the  empty  building.  But no  signal came, and  the  button  sank
lifelessly into the wood of the desk. The button was dead, the bell broken.
     The findirector's stratagem did not escape the notice of Varenukha, who
asked, twitching, with a clearly malicious fire flickering in his eyes:
     "What are you ringing for?'
     'Mechanically,'  the  findirector replied  hollowly,  jerking  his hand
back, and asked in turn, in an unsteady voice: "What's that on your face?'
     'The car skidded, I  bumped  against  the door-handle,' Varenukha said,
looking away.
     'He's lying!'  the findirector  exclaimed  mentally. And here his  eyes
suddenly grew round  and utterly  insane, and he stared  at the back of  the
armchair.
     Behind  the chair  on the floor two  shadows  lay criss-cross, one more
dense and  black,  the other faint and grey. The shadow  of the  back of the
chair  and of its tapering legs could be seen distinctly on  the  floor, but
there was no shadow of Varenukha's head  above  the back of the chair, or of
the administrator's legs under its legs.
     `He  casts  no  shadow!'  Rimsky cried  out desperately in his mind. He
broke into shivers.
     Varenukha, following  Rimsky's insane gaze, looked furtively behind him
at the back of the chair, and realized that he had been found out.
     He got  up  from  the chair (the findirector did likewise) and made one
step back from the desk, clutching his briefcase in his hands.
     'He's  guessed, damn him!  Always was clever,' Varenukha said, grinning
spitefully right in the findirector's face, and  he sprang unexpectedly from
the chair to the  door and quickly  pushed  down the catch on the lock.  The
findirector looked  desperately  behind him, as  he retreated  to the window
giving on to the garden, and in this window, flooded with moonlight, saw the
face of a naked girl  pressed  against the glass and her naked arm  reaching
through the vent-pane and trying  to open the lower latch. The upper one was
already open.
     It seemed to Rimsky that the light of the desk lamp was  going  out and
the desk was tilting. An icy wave engulfed Rimsky, but - fortunately for him
- he got control of himself and did not fall. He had enough strength left to
whisper, but not cry out:
     'Help...'
     Varenukha, guarding the door, hopped up  and down by it, staying in air
for a  long time  and  swaying there. Waving  his hooked fingers in Rimsky's
direction, he hissed and smacked, winking to the girl in the window.
     She began to hurry, stuck her red-haired head through the vent, reached
her arm down as far as she could, her nails clawing at  the  lower latch and
shaking  the  frame.  Her  arm began  to lengthen,  rubber-like, and  became
covered with a putrid green. Finally the dead woman's green fingers got hold
of the latch knob, turned it, and the  frame began to open. Rimsky cried out
weakly, leaned against the wall, and held his briefcase in front of him like
a shield. He realized that his end had come.
     The frame swung wide open, but instead of the night's freshness and the
fragrance  of the lindens, the smell of  a cellar burst into the  room.  The
dead  woman stepped on to the window-sill. Rimsky clearly saw spots of decay
on her breast.
     And just then the joyful,  unexpected crowing  of a cock came from  the
garden, from that  low building  beyond  the  shooting gallery  where  birds
participating  in the programme were kept. A  loud,  trained cock trumpeted,
announcing that dawn was rolling towards Moscow from the east.
     Savage  fury distorted the girl's  face, she emitted a hoarse oath, and
at the door Varenukha shrieked and dropped from the air to the floor.
     The cock-crow was repeated, the girl  clacked her  teeth,  and her  red
hair stood on end. With the third  crowing of the cock, she turned and  flew
out and  after her,  jumping  up and stretching himself horizontally  in the
air, looking like a flying cupid, Varenukha slowly floated over the desk and
out the window.
     White  as snow, with not a single black  hair on his  head, the old man
who  still  recently had  been Rimsky rushed to  the door, undid the  catch,
opened the door, and ran hurtling down the dark corridor. At the turn to the
stairs, moaning with fear, he felt  for the switch, and the stairway lighted
up. On the  stairs the  shaking, trembling old  man fell because he imagined
that Varenukha had softly tumbled on top of him.
     Having run downstairs, Rimsky saw a watchman asleep  on a  chair by the
box office in the lobby. Rimsky stole past him on tiptoe and slipped out the
main  entrance. Outside he felt  slightly  better.  He  recovered his senses
enough to realize, clutching his head, that his hat had stayed behind in the
office.
     Needless to say, he did not go back for it, but, breathless, ran across
the  wide street to the  opposite corner by the movie theatre, near  which a
dull  reddish light hovered. In a moment he  was there.  No one had  time to
intercept the cab.
     `Make  the  Leningrad  express, I'll  tip you well,' the old  man said,
breathing heavily and clutching his heart.
     'I'm  going to  the garage,' the  driver answered  hatefully and turned
away.
     Then Rimsky unlatched his briefcase, took out fifty roubles, and handed
them to the driver through the open front window.
     A few  moments  later,  the rattling car  was flying like the wind down
Sadovoye  Ring.  The  passenger was  tossed about  on  his seat,  and in the
fragment  of mirror  hanging in  front of  the driver,  Rimsky saw  now  the
driver's happy eyes,  now  his own insane ones.  Jumping  out of the car  in
front of the  train station, Rimsky cried to the first man he saw in a white
apron with a badge:
     'First class, single, I'll pay  thirty,'  he was pulling  the banknotes
from  his briefcase, crumpling them,  'no first class, get  me second ... if
not -- a hard bench!'
     The man with the badge kept glancing up at the lighted clock face as he
tore the banknotes from Rimsky's hand.
     Five minutes  later the express train  disappeared from under the glass
vault of the train station and vanished clean away in the darkness. And with
it vanished Rimsky.