News from Yalta

Chapter summary

At the Variety Theater, the financial director Rimsky and the administrator Varenukha try to locate Stepan Likhodeyev, who vanished after promising to return in half an hour, while the posters of the magician Woland arrive from the print shop. Then increasingly delirious telegrams arrive from Yalta: the first, from the local police, reports that a barefoot man who calls himself Likhodeyev has appeared at the station; the second, signed by him, says he was dumped in Yalta under Woland's hypnosis; the third, on photographic paper, bears the handwriting and signature of Stepan, which Rimsky recognizes by comparing them with the minutes and signatures on file. The distance between Moscow and Yalta makes the story logically impossible: Rimsky calculates that a plane would have to travel at twelve thousand kilometers an hour to cover the route after the telephone call Stepan made to him at eleven-twenty, and the two never reach an explanation. They then telephone Stepan's apartment, where a supposed interpreter, Korovyov, answers with exaggerated politeness that Stepan has gone out for fresh air. Varenukha concludes that he is drunk in a tavern in Pushkino called Yalta; then a fourth telegram arrives, requesting five hundred rubles for the Yalta police station, and Rimsky sends them anyway. Varenukha leaves with the envelope in which Rimsky, before the telephone call, had gathered the telegrams to take to the police.

Shortly before leaving, Varenukha receives a phone call from a nasal voice, ordering him not to take the telegrams anywhere. He ignores the warning and, in the bathroom of the theater garden, is approached by two men, a chubby man with a cat's face and a redhead with bared canines and a cloudy eye, who slap him and seize his briefcase. The two are Behemoth and Azazello, although the chapter does not name them. They drag him through the storm to Apartment 50, where a young naked redhead intercepts him in the vestibule. It is Hella, still unnamed in this part. She places her icy hands on his shoulders and says "Let me give you a little kiss"; Varenukha faints before the kiss.