Chapter summary
Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the building's residents' association, receives, after Berlioz's death, thirty-two declarations from neighbors who want to occupy his rooms, with pleas, threats and denunciations. To escape the pursuit, he climbs to Apartment 50 and enters the sealed office with the administration's keys, where he finds seated at the desk a thin, tall man in a checked jacket and pince-nez, who introduces himself as Korovyov, interpreter for Woland, a foreign artist whom the director Stepan Likhodeyev had supposedly invited to stay there during the tour. Nikanor finds the letter from Stepan that he had forgotten in the folder and, after confirming with the tourism agency, which already knew everything, agrees to rent the entire apartment to Woland for a week, at five hundred rubles a day. The association's deficit weighs on the decision: it must buy fuel for the autumn. Korovyov drafts the contract, pays in rubles against a receipt and gives him two free tickets to the show. Then he slips him, along with the tickets, an extra bundle, which Nikanor accepts after saying that the punishment is severe and hearing that there are no witnesses, and which he hides in the bathroom ventilation duct.
As soon as Nikanor leaves, Woland says from the bedroom that he did not like him, that he is a swindler and a crook, and asks him not to come back; Korovyov phones and denounces him, posing as the tenant Kvastsov, saying that the chairman keeps dollars in the ventilation duct. Two men arrive at the apartment during lunch, find a bundle of dollars in the duct (see the foreign money) and discover that Nikanor's folder holds only a tape measure: the letter, the contract, the passport and the tickets have vanished. Nikanor shouts that there are unclean spirits in the building and is taken away under arrest for currency speculation, which he never practiced.
Analysis
Nikanor enters the sealed apartment fleeing the thirty-two declarations, and Korovyov's proposal arrives when the association has a deficit for autumn fuel. He hesitates and demands confirmation from the tourist agency; the confirmation comes in minutes. He accepts the bundle after saying that the punishment is severe and hearing that there are no witnesses: what moves him is the certainty that no one will see, and the thoughts that accompany him on the stairs are personal: the villa in Nice that Korovyov says the foreigner owns, the cat the foreigner is supposedly training, and the free tickets for his wife.
What does it mean to be an official or an unofficial representative? All of this depends on which point of view you look at the object from. All of this, Nikanor Ivanovich, is relative and unstable.
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