Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997) -
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and send it off immediately.
But what telegram, may we ask, and where? And why send it? And where,
indeed? And what possible need for any telegram does someone have whose
flattened pate is now clutched in the dissector's rubber hands, whose neck
the professor is now piercing with curved needles? He's dead, and has no
need of any telegrams. It's all over, let's not burden the telegraph wires
any more.
Yes, he's dead, dead . . . But, as for us, we're alive!
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began
to subside, and somebody went back to his table and -- sneakily at first,
then openly - drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let
chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?
By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!
Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the ja2z band dispersed, several
journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that
Zheldybin had come from the morgue. He had installed himself in the
deceased's office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who
would replace Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned from the restaurant all twelve
members of the board, and at the urgently convened meeting in Berlioz's
office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the
hall with columns at Griboedov's, of transporting the body from the morgue
to that hall, of opening it to the public, and all else connected with the
sad event.
And the restaurant began to live its usual nocturnal life and would
have gone on living it until closing time, that is, until four o'clock in
the morning, had it not been for an occurrence which was completely out of
the ordinary and which struck the restaurant's clientele much more than the
news of Berlioz's death.
The first to take alarm were the coachmen[5] waiting at the