Voice Continues.
“It is not enough to be scum, one has to be
scum openly.”
Alexander
Sergeevich. Pushkin.
Remembering Pushkin’s words “It is not enough to be scum, one has to be scum openly,” we
will be well served in this segment to take a closer look under this angle at
the antihero of the short story Cockroach
Vasili Rogov.
How
skillfully Bulgakov inserts the words “small and brown” in reference to
Cockroach. Vasili Rogov is a labor union official in his bakery, that is, he
enjoys a leadership position, calling himself “Delegate.” An important person,
he attends conferences, representing his guild. It so looks that he got his
offensive nickname on account of his careerism, his ability to adapt.
Just
like he calls them roosters, hens, naked gads, anacondas, crocodiles, garter
snakes, ostriches, cats, dogs, and also rooks, owls, sparrows, nightingales,
swallows, Bulgakov calls people cockroaches for their certain qualities.
The
fact that his own coworkers at the bakery call Vasili Rogov the offensive
nickname “Cockroach” indicates that
they never elected him to his leadership position, but that he was imposed on
them by their superiors. Indeed, too many so-called leaders are never really
elected, but are in fact installed by the “fat cats,” or “people who know
people.” This may be the biggest reason why election turnouts in such places
are low. People understand that nothing much depends on their choice, that they
are going to be swindled anyway.
It
is rather strange that Bulgakov makes a baker his antihero. It is most likely
that Vasili Rogov was a bad baker. In his novella Fateful Eggs, Bulgakov calls bakers “the most backward part of the proletariat.”
To some extent, Rogov serves as a prototype of Andrei Fokich Sokov (see my
posted segment XXXIX), the buffet vendor in Master
and Margarita, who has been poisoning people with spoiled food all his professional
life, at his buffet.
By
the same token, Vasili Rogov, despised by his coworkers and adored by his
superiors, must have been pushing inadequate products at his bakery: spoiled
flour, butter and oil, etc., which he was receiving from the bakery’s suppliers.
And he probably made others in the bakery do the same. [Ill-baked bread is bad
for one’s health!]
Bulgakov
shows this by using the following words in Cockroach:
“Cockroach felt sorry for Cap, and for some reason for that crook
with the crate… ‘An understandable thing…
He earns his bread… Yes he is a crook, but then each of us spins like a top…’”
Here
Bulgakov shows not only Vasili Rogov’s remorse for killing a man, but also why
he has been given such an insulting nickname. It takes one to know one.
Cockroach was also “spinning like a top.”
That
is, Cockroach was sorry for Cap and even for Voice for all the wrong reasons.
There was no genuine remorse in him, like, say, Varenukha in Master and Margarita was remorseful. Varenukha
did not like his boss Rimsky, nor did he like Stepa Likhodeev, yet he hated his
role of the bloodsucking vampire even more, and his wholehearted remorse saved
him. [More on this in my segment XL.]
Vasili
Rogov is not just a cockroach, but, as we know, Bulgakov calls him “small and
brown.” This is already a most interesting turn. Vasili Rogov not just kills
Cap, but he does it with special cruelty. Bulgakov likes to give small height
to his killers, starting with the character of Kalsoner in Diaboliada. Although “gray
caps, gray coats were dropping like peas, rushing onto the roof,” it was
only Kalsoner who started shooting at the presumably unarmed Korotkov: “A flame came out of Kalsoner’s mouth,” writes
Bulgakov. It is only then that Korotkov produces his Mauser, to put all five
bullets into Kalsoner. Self-defense is the right of every man.
Concerning
Kalsoner, Bulgakov writes that “this stranger was of
such short height that he only reached up to the waist of the tall Korotkov.”
From
Diaboliada in 1923, the image of the
small-sized assassin moves into Fateful
Eggs in 1924, otherwise, why would Alexander Semyonovich Rokk walk around
Moscow in the future year 1928 with a revolver in a yellow holster? Bulgakov
describes him quite amusingly:
“The little eyes were looking at the world with amazement, yet at
the same time confidently; some kind of bluster was in his short legs with flat
feet… Judging by his little eyes, he was primarily struck by the bookcase,
counting twelve rows of shelves, rising up to the ceiling, and crammed with
books.”
An
amazing picture, as A. S. Rokk earlier “served as the editor in chief of a huge
newspaper in Turkestan.”
From
Fateful Eggs, this image of a
small-sized killer moves next into the 1925 short story Cockroach. Bulgakov even makes a comparison between Alexander
Semyonovich Rokk and Vasili Rogov, when he describes Rokk as “old-fashioned,”
and compares him to bakers… Et voila! Here, in Cockroach, we have our next small-sized killer: the baker Vasili
Rogov…
And,
of course, as we already know, the image of the small-sized killer next moves
to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita,
in the person of Azazello, who is not only a very short man, but he has the
habit of transforming himself into a small bird (a sparrow, see segment XLVII)
or a small kitten, rather than into a cat of either gender, as part of Woland’s
retinue. (More about it in Cats, to
be posted later on.)
Why is Bulgakov so faithful
to this image of the small-sized killer? There is an old Russian proverb (it
exists in several versions amounting to the same thing): “small but daring.” As the reader undoubtedly remembers, there was
in Russian history an infamous henchman of Tsar Ivan Grozny, named Malyuta
Skuratov. (See my posted segment XXVI for the sense of history.) It was an
assumed name, as Malyuta is a nickname indicating small size. Malyuta was
indeed of very short height. It was he, a nobleman, who organized the
Oprichnina. He was daring and cruel: the
ultimate qualities of a killer. Malyuta was greatly respected for his courage;
he was always fighting in the first rank of his warriors, and he was eventually
killed in battle. He was a terrible, ruthless man, but at least he never hid
behind the backs of his soldiers. Too bad that in our time many national
leaders pushing their countries into frivolous wars never deign to taste these
wars in person. There would have been far fewer wars if they did.
It is Malyuta Skuratov’s
face, that Margarita remembers out of the rest of the innumerable crowd of
guests at Satan’s Ball of the full spring moon.
***
By
the same token as he plays with size, Bulgakov likes to play with different
colors. “Small and brown cockroach.”
What
is absolutely clear is that in Cockroach Bulgakov
uses the adjective “brown” not to refer to the color of the clothes [Vasili
Rogov could not possibly wear the same brown clothes, like Hitler, all the
time?!], but to the color of the man’s skin.
This
fact is extremely important to note, as near the end of Master and Margarita Bulgakov stuns the reader by the remarkable
transformation of the lax Koroviev into a somber “dark-violet knight,” which
immediately puts everything in its place, showing that we are dealing with a
serious work.
Bulgakov
particularly engages in this in Diaboliada, using the image of the “very
fat and pink in a top hat,” who changes color several times, out of fear. As
Bulgakov writes,---
“Lord Jesus, said the fat
man, crossed himself with a trembling hand, and changed from pink to yellow.”
Then,
just as Korotkov starts interrogating him abruptly about Kalsoner, “the fat man changes his yellow color to drab gray.”
Bulgakov’s
Jan Sobiesky is so white that even his eyes are white, whereas his
secretary is for some reason a “golden woman.” Perhaps Bulgakov wanted
us to understand it as her tan? Or else it could be a particularly beautiful
color of her hair?
Already
on the first page of the first chapter of his novel White Guard Bulgakov gives us an indication that he is using
unusual colors to describe skin colors:
“…And the deacon, purple in face and neck, all forged-gold
down to the toes of his boots…”
This
is the first mention in White Guard
of the color purple. Later, Bulgakov uses the same color in giving the name “Purple Negro” to a “famous theater” in
the City. (He calls Kiev, where the action of the novel takes place, “The City.”) There is a good reason why
he uses this fictitious name. More about it in the posted segment XI of the
chapter Dark-Violet Knight.
All
this proves once again that Bulgakov not only thought through his works very
carefully, but the fact itself that unlike other writers, he never parted with
them, proudly walking in the crowd of the images he had created, higher and
higher ascending his Olympus. That’s why it is so important to perceive
Bulgakov as a whole, that is, to read all his works, not only for his admirers,
but also for those of his readers who are interested in Russia, for a better
understanding of this “undiscovered country,” for all those who like to solve
riddles and other puzzles. (See more about this in my segment Cats, to be posted later on.) The chief
attraction for the puzzle-solvers is that in all his works Bulgakov leaves
behind a plethora of exciting clues, and one only needs to recognize them as
such, and to read all his creations under this angle, in order to understand
Bulgakov, a writer extraordinaire. [And at the same time to increase one’s
IQ?..]
To be continued tomorrow...
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