After the attack of grief which struck his wife had subsided, Maximilian Andreyevich began to make plans to go to Moscow.

Maximilian Andreyevich had a secret that must be revealed. Although he did indeed feel sorry for his wife's nephew, who had died in the prime of his life, he was a practical man and saw that there was no particular need for him to attend the funeral. Nevertheless, Maximilian Andreye-

166 The Master and Margarita

vich had been in a great hurry to get to Moscow. What made him do it? Only one thing—the apartment An apartment in Moscow! That's serious business! No one knows why, but Maximilian Andreyevich didn't like Kiev, and the thought of moving to Moscow had gnawed at him so persistently recently that he had begun to lose sleep over it.

He got no pleasure from the Dnieper overflowing in spring, when the islands on the lower shore became flooded, and the water merged with the horizon. He got no pleasure from the striking beauty of the view from the base of the Prince Vladimir statue. The patches of sunlight that played on the brick paths of Vladimir Hill in spring gave him no joy. He wanted none ofthat, he wanted just one thing—to move to Moscow.

The ads he placed in the papers, offering to exchange his Institute Street apartment in Kiev for a smaller flat in Moscow, had produced no results. There were no takers, and if someone did turn up once in a while, the offer was made in bad faith.

The telegram had given Maximilian Andreyevich a shock. It would be a sin to pass up such an opportunity. Practical people know that opportunity doesn't knock twice.

In a word, come hell or high water, he had to make sure he inherited his nephew's apartment on Sadovaya Street. True, it would be difficult, very difficult, but the difficulties had to be overcome, no matter what. As an experienced man of the world, Maximilian Andreyevich knew the first thing he had to do to accomplbh this goal was to get registered, if only on a temporary basis, in his late nephew's three-room apartment.

On Friday afternoon Maximilian Andreyevich walked into the office of the housing committee of No. 302B Sadovaya Street in Moscow.

In a narrow room, where there was an old poster on the wall showing in several drawings ways of reviving someone drowned in the river, an unshaven middle-aged man with frightened-looking eyes sat behind a wooden desk all by himself.

" May I see the chairman of the housing committee? " the economic planner inquired politely, taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on the chair by the doorway.

This, it would seem, simplest of questions so unnerved the man at the desk that a change came over his face. Squinting with alarm, he mumbled incomprehensibly that the chairman was not there.

" Is he in his apartment? " asked Poplavsky. " I'm here on a very urgent matter."

The seated man's reply was again incoherent. But even so, the implication was that the chairman was not in his apartment either.

" When will he be back? "