The Theme of Violence Against Human
Dignity. Part III.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself.
Matthew 22:39.
Returning
to Varenukha, his was a sincere act of repentance for the act of betrayal of
his colleague Rimsky. Granted, Varenukha was not in control of his will, but
betrayal it was nevertheless.
From
Varenukha we get straight to Rimsky, the betrayed. Bulgakov calls his
experience silent horror, from which,
unlike Varenukha, Rimsky never recovers to the end of his life, probably
because Rimsky is smarter than the other one.
Neither
Rimsky nor Varenukha are totally innocent in the story. Varenukha believed
Koroviev, the man whom he had never seen or known before, over the desperate
pleas for help from his longterm superior and colleague Stepa Likhodeev.
Rimsky
is an interesting figure in conjunction with Varenukha, as the two of them
complement each other. Rimsky is dry and clever. Varenukha is easily
susceptible to influence. Like Annushka, he has “blizzard in his head,” that is, his thoughts are contradictory and
random.
Rimsky
always drives at the same point. He is unemotional, dry; despite the sheer
horror of his position he does not cry, or faint. No matter what, he is kind of
“in control.” The only thing that we hear out of him in this scene of horror is
the soft whisper: “Help…” As a matter
of fact, Rimsky is the kind of man who does not usually cry for help. He is a
man of numbers, a rational man. In the story with Woland he quickly senses that
something must be wrong, and the worst thing about it is that he is the only
senior administrator in the theater at the moment (Stepa is faraway wherever he
is, and Varenukha never returned from his mission of delivering the papers),
and when the troubles happen, as they sure are about to, he will be the fall
guy by default. When the hell does indeed break loose, he must come up in a
hurry with a convenient and credible lie, and it is his inability to come up
with it that keeps him late in his office.
Rimsky
never liked Stepa Likhodeev. He just could not wait when the man would be fired
from his job for his dissipated way of life. When Stepa got into trouble,
neither Rimsky nor Varenukha wanted to believe a single word from him. In
Rimsky’s case, even though he had been witness to all the incredible stuff
going on at the séance of black magic, he wanted to believe the worst about
Stepa… His punishment--- a bunch of unbelievable lies told by Varenukha, until
at last Rimsky himself realized that it was too much.
No,
Bulgakov could not see around him what could be qualified as love for your
neighbor. In fact, he only saw malice. That’s what the Rimsky chapter is all about. Even when Varenukha “disappears,”
Rimsky has no sympathy for the man’s fate, but that his own life may be in
peril, once the other man has been arrested. He cannot muster his presence of
mind to make a phone call explaining that he was not at fault, putting all the
blame on Likhodeev.
The
fantastic element comes on full blast when the phone “burst into ringing right
into Financial Director’s [Rimsky’s] face. Rimsky “froze,” realizing that his
nerves were awfully strung. A soft, wanton woman’s voice whispered into the
receiver: “Don’t call anywhere, Rimsky,
there will be trouble.” Rimsky turned whiter than paper and for some reason
started looking into the window, and the more he looked, the more fear overtook
him. He thought of just one thing: how to get out of the theater as soon as
possible. A child’s inescapable fear filled him through at the thought that he
could be left all alone on the whole second floor. He shuddered imagining
himself going through the empty corridors… The clock started striking midnight,
causing the financial director to shudder… His heart sank when he heard the key
turning in the lock… The finance director felt as though just a little more of
this and he wouldn’t take it anymore, and let out a shrill cry.
But
that was Varenukha who started telling Rimsky the latest tall news of Stepa
Likhodeev. At first Rimsky listened with great approval. Bulgakov masterfully
explains how easy it is to badmouth a man. Here is the main reason why both of
them got into their big trouble.
(To
be continued…)
No comments:
Post a Comment