The dream of Nikanor Ivanovich

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, the chairman of the tenants' association at no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street, had been having the most terrible troubles since the Wednesday night when Berlioz died. After a series of events involving the mysterious interpreter Koroviev, a bribe of four hundred dollars that turned into foreign currency, and his subsequent arrest, Nikanor Ivanovich found himself in Professor Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic. There, heavily sedated, he fell into a dream that was to become one of the novel's most vivid and disturbing satirical set-pieces: a dream that laid bare the mechanisms of Soviet state terror by transforming the interrogation of a currency speculator into a grotesque theatrical performance.

The Currency Theatre

Nikanor Ivanovich's dream began with a solemn procession: people with golden trumpets led him to a big lacquered door, where a resounding bass voice from the sky announced, "Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich, turn over your currency!" He then found himself in a small, costly theatre with crystal chandeliers, a gilded ceiling, and a stage closed off by a velvet curtain spangled with oversized gold pieces. The audience was exclusively male and all bearded, sitting on the polished parquet floor Turkish-fashion. A young, smoothly shaven artiste in an evening jacket came out from the wings, rubbed his hands, and announced the next number on the programme: Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of a house committee and director of a dietetic kitchen. The surprised Nikanor Ivanovich found himself on stage, beams of coloured light striking his eyes. The artiste asked him to set a good example and turn over his currency. When Nikanor Ivanovich began to swear he had none, the whole house burst into shouts of indignation. The artiste, with feigned sympathy, asked where the four hundred dollars found in the privy of his apartment had come from. Nikanor Ivanovich timidly replied, "Magic! Unclean powers, the checkered interpreter stuck me with them," which only provoked another roar of indignation. The artiste then delivered a lecture on the impossibility of being "stuck" with four hundred dollars, concluding that such idiots do not exist in nature, and dismissed Nikanor Ivanovich with the words, "You've upset me."

The Exposure of Dunchil

The dream continued with the artiste calling Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil to the stage, a fine-looking but unkempt man of about fifty who had been stubbornly refusing to turn over his currency for a month and a half. Dunchil calmly replied that he had no more currency. The artiste clapped his hands, and a middle-aged lady came out from the wings, fashionably dressed, who was introduced as Dunchil's wife. She nervously confirmed that her husband had turned over all his currency. The artiste then made a regal gesture, seemingly ready to release Dunchil, but stopped him for one more number. The black backdrop parted, and a young beauty in a ball gown appeared, holding a golden tray with a fat wad of money and a diamond necklace. The artiste solemnly announced that these were eighteen thousand dollars and a necklace worth forty thousand in gold, kept by Dunchil in the city of Kharkov, in the apartment of his mistress, Ida Herkulanovna Vors, who had so kindly helped in discovering these treasures. The beauty smiled, flashing her teeth, and the artiste denounced Dunchil as a greedy spider and an astonishing bamboozler and liar, sending him home to the hell his wife would set up for him. The house erupted in furious applause.

The Performance of The Covetous Knight

After Dunchil's exposure, the artiste announced the next number: a famous dramatic talent, the actor Sawa Potapovich Kurolesov, who would perform excerpts from "The Covetous Knight" by the poet Pushkin. Kurolesov, a strapping and beefy man in a tailcoat and white tie, concocted a gloomy face and began speaking in an unnatural voice, confessing that some wretched widow had gone on her knees to him, howling, in the rain, but had failed to move his callous heart. Nikanor Ivanovich, who had been completely ignorant of Pushkin's works but used phrases like "And who's going to pay the rent — Pushkin?" several times a day, now felt sad, imagining the woman on her knees with her orphaned children in the rain. Kurolesov's confession grew ever more confusing, as he started addressing someone who was not on stage and responded for this absent one himself, calling himself now dear sir, now baron, now father, now son. Nikanor Ivanovich understood only one thing: that the actor died an evil death, crying out "Keys! My keys!" after which he collapsed on the floor, gasping and carefully tearing off his tie. Having died, Kurolesov got up, brushed the dust from his trousers, bowed with a false smile, and withdrew to thin applause.

The Confession of Kanavkin and the Promise of Release

The artiste then delivered a speech about the futility of hoarding currency, warning that the same sort of thing, if not worse, was going to happen to the audience if they did not turn over their currency. A shy voice came from the house: "I'll turn over my currency." On stage appeared a short, fair-haired citizen named Nikolai Kanavkin, who confessed to having a thousand dollars and twenty ten-rouble gold pieces. The artiste, after a penetrating stare, declared he believed Kanavkin, delivering a highly convincing speech about how the truth leaps into the eyes and cannot be concealed. He then tenderly inquired where the money was hidden, and Kanavkin revealed it was with his aunt, Klavdia Ilyinishna Porokhovnikova, on Prechistenka, in a candy tin in the cellar. The artiste chided him for entrusting currency to such a place, where it might suffer damage from rats, and then, with a sudden question, extracted the information that the aunt also had some. Kanavkin, after a moment of hesitation, cried out "She has!" and the house roared "Bravo!" The artiste congratulated Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home, and told someone in the wings to go fetch the aunt for the programme at the women's theatre. The happy Kanavkin drove off.

The Return to Reality and the Thematic Significance

The dream then shifted: the house lit up brightly, and cooks in white chef's hats with ladles in their hands came pouring from all the doors, dragging in a cauldron of soup and a stand with cut-up rye bread. The jolly cooks shuttled among the theatre buffs, ladling out bowls of soup and distributing bread, shouting, "Dig in, lads, and turn over your currency!" One fat cook directly addressed Nikanor Ivanovich, who cried out in a terrible voice, "I don't have any! I don't! I don't!" The cook then turned into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna, who was gently shaking him as he moaned in his sleep. The cooks melted away, and the theatre with its curtain broke up. Through his tears, Nikanor Ivanovich made out his room in the hospital and the doctor and Praskovya Fyodorovna, who was holding a syringe. He said bitterly, "Let Pushkin turn over his currency for them. I don't have any!" The dream, as the novel's narrator suggests, was undoubtedly based on the experience of that day. It is a masterpiece of satirical inversion, where the state's coercive apparatus is revealed as a grotesque theatre, complete with a master of ceremonies, a chorus of indignant spectators, and a repertoire of humiliating performances designed to break the will of the accused. The dream exposes the mechanism of forced adjustment that the novel elsewhere describes: prison, denunciation and betrayal become yet another theatre with a kindly and helpful master of ceremonies. Nikanor Ivanovich's dream is not merely a personal nightmare but a collective one, a vision of a society where even the most private thoughts and fears are subject to public scrutiny and punishment, and where the only escape is through confession and surrender.