Alpha And Omega.
Posting #36.
“…I would never have
issued a passport to
someone like you!.. Just one look at this
face,
and I would have rejected!”
M. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
M.
A. Bulgakov’s emphasis on the hetman’s transformation of appearance, including
a change of clothes, in chapter 7 of White
Guard, starts at the very end of chapter 6, when he writes:
“A man delivered to Colonel [Malyshev] a sizable bundle wrapped
in a bed sheet, tied crisscross-wise with ropes.”
By
now the reader is aware that the bundle contained among other articles of
clothing, a student’s black overcoat into which Malyshev changed in the morning
of December 14th.
Thus
it is quite legitimate to assume that both these changes of clothes were
necessary so that the researcher would pay attention to them and also to the
strange wording, already quoted earlier:
“…In a small narrow room on the ground floor of the palace, a man
in the uniform of an artillery colonel found himself at the telephone
apparatus. He warily closed the door to the small whitewashed communications
room which looked like none of the other palace rooms, and only then picked up
the receiver. He asked the sleepless girl at the station to connect him to the
number 212. Having been put through, he said merci,” sternly and discomposedly pinched his eyebrows and asked
intimately and somewhat hollowly: Is this
the Headquarters of the Mortar Division?”
The
only conclusion we can come to is that it was someone in disguise.
But
timewise, this man could not be M. S. Shpolyansky. That’s why it had to be
Shervinsky, the only mysterious character in White Guard, who serves as a precursor of the character of Bombardov
in the Theatrical Novel, but differs
from him in the sense that Shervinsky is a real character in White Guard, whereas Bombardov is merely
a figment of imagination of the main character of the Theatrical Novel S. L. Maksudov, appearing when the hero is having
a particularly hard time.
Having
remained in the City in the capacity of an intelligence officer, Shervinsky is
now wearing civilian clothes, and he has a “documentik”
in his pocket to go with the suit, identifying him as an “Artist with the Kramskoy Opera Studio.”
There
is a reason why in chapter 18 of Master
and Margarita: The Hapless Visitors Kot Begemot is engaged in a
conversation with Maximilian Andreevich Poplavsky, uncle of the now deceased M.
A. Berlioz, who has come to Moscow from Kiev to inherit whatever his nephew had
left behind, most importantly his half of the apartment he used to share with
Stepa Likhodeev.
“Passport! – yapped the
cat and stretched out a plump paw.
Understanding nothing and seeing nothing but the two sparks burning
in the cat’s eyes, Poplavsky pulled his passport out of his pocket like a
dagger. The cat picked up from the console table a pair of eyeglasses in a
thick black frame, put them on his muzzle, which made him look even more
imposing, and pulled the passport from Poplavsky’s jumping hand.
I wonder if I am going to
faint? – thought Poplavsky…
Which precinct issued this
document? – asked the cat
peering into the page. There was no answer.
Number four hundred twelve! – the cat answered himself, tracing the
passport with his paw, while holding it upside down. – But yes, of course. This precinct is known to me. They are issuing passports
to just anybody. And I for instance would never have issued a passport to
someone like you! No way I would! Just one look at this face, and I would have
rejected! – The cat became so angry that he threw the passport on the
floor.”
This
strikingly comical scene not only implies that in Tsarist times M. Lermontov
was precluded from going abroad, but it also tells the researcher that
Shervinsky could indeed obtain any kind of document in the “Serpent’s City.”
Shervinsky
is the opposite of Shpolyansky. Even their last names sound kind of alike. As
opposed to Shpolyansky, who has Shklovsky as his prototype, other personages
mostly have features of dead people, but not all of them. That’s why when I say
that in Bulgakov’s White Guard not
only M. Yu. Lermontov is present, but A. S. Pushkin as well, what I mean is
that certain features given them by Bulgakov are giving them away to the
researcher.
Other
personages had indeed been living in Bulgakov’s time, but he enriches them with
features of Russian poets, to make them more intriguing.
From
Kot Begemot in Master and Margarita to
the third visitor from Lubyanka to Professor Persikov in Fateful Eggs there is just one step.
“The third guest behaved in a peculiar
manner; he did not enter Professor Persikov’s study, but remained in the
semi-dark anteroom. Meanwhile, the well-lit and filled with streams of tobacco
smoke study could be observed by him throughout. The face of the third [agent],
who was also dressed in civilian clothes, was adorned by a smoked-glass
pince-nez…
Vasenka!
– softly called Angel (the
first agent) addressing the one sitting in the anteroom. That one got up
sluggishly and, as though unhinged, dragged himself into the study. The
smoky glasses had completely consumed his eyes.
Nu?
– he asked laconically and
sleepily.
Galoshes.
The smoky eyes slid over the galoshes, and
at that moment Persikov felt as though from under the glasses, askance, for
just one moment, there sparkled by no means sleepy, but, quite the contrary,
amazingly prickly eyes. However they lit off right away.
Nu,
Vasenka?
The one they called “Vasenka” replied in a
sluggish voice:
Nu,
what’s there, nu. These are Pelenzhakov’s galoshes.”
I
already wrote about “Vasenka” in my chapter Cats.
Vas’ka or Vasenka is a common name given in Russia to male cats.
As
for the prototype of Professor Persikov, he will be revealed in my chapter Varia.
To
be continued…
***
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