Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita -
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Stepa tried to remember what had happened, but could only recall one
thing--yesterday, somewhere. God knows where, he had been holding a table
napkin and trying to kiss a woman, promising her that he would come and
visit her tomorrow at the stroke of noon. She had refused, saying ' No, no,
I won't be at home,' but Stepa had insisted ' I don't care--I'll come
anyway!'
Stepa had now completely forgotten who that woman had been, what the
time was, what day of what month it was, and worst of all he had no idea
where he was. In an effort to find out, he unstuck his gummed-up left
eyelid. Something glimmered in the semi-darkness. At last Stepa recognised
it as a mirror. He was lying cross-wise on the bed in his own bedroom. Then
something hit him on the head and he closed his eyes and groaned.
Stepa Likhodeyev, manager of the Variety Theatre, had woken up thait
morning in the flat that he shared with Berlioz in a big six-stoirey block
of flats on Sadovaya Street. This flat--No. 50-- had a strange reputation.
Two years before, it had been owned by the widow of a jeweller called de
Fougere, Anna Frantzevna, a respectable and very business-like lady of
fifty, who let three of her five rooms to lodgers. One of them was, it
seems, called Belomut; the other's name has been lost.
Two years ago odd things began happening in that apartment-- people
started to vanish from it without trace. One Monday afternoon a policeman
called, invited the second lodger (the one whose name is no longer known)
into the hall and asked him to come along to the police station for a minute
or two to sign a document. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna's devoted
servant of many years, to say that if anybody rang him up he would be back
in ten minutes. He then went out accompanied by the courteous policeman in