The Master and Margarita

CHAPTER 1 Never Talk with Strangers

At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch’s Ponds.[2] One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers and black sneakers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz,[3] editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the board of one of the major Moscow literary associations, called Massolit[4] for short, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, who wrote under the pseudonym of Homeless.[5]

Once in the shade of the barely greening lindens, the writers dashed first thing to a brightly painted stand with the sign: ‘Beer and Soft Drinks.’

Ah, yes, note must be made of the first oddity of this dreadful May evening. There was not a single person to be seen, not only by the stand, but also along the whole walk parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street. At that hour when it seemed no longer possible to breathe, when the sun, having scorched Moscow, was collapsing in a dry haze somewhere beyond Sadovoye Ring, no one came under the lindens, no one sat on a bench, the walk was empty.

‘Give us seltzer,’ Berlioz asked.

‘There is no seltzer,’ the woman in the stand said, and for some reason became offended.

‘Is there beer?’ Homeless inquired in a rasping voice.

‘Beer’ll be delivered towards evening,’ the woman replied.

‘Then what is there?’ asked Berlioz.

‘Apricot soda, only warm,’ said the woman.

‘Well, let’s have it, let’s have it! ...’

The soda produced an abundance of yellow foam, and the air began to smell of a barber-shop. Having finished drinking, the writers immediately started to hiccup, paid, and sat down on a bench face to the pond and back to Bronnaya.

Here the second oddity occurred, touching Berlioz alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart gave a thump and dropped away somewhere for an instant, then came back, but with a blunt needle lodged in it. Besides that, Berlioz was gripped by fear, groundless, yet so strong that he wanted to flee the Ponds at once without looking back.

Berlioz looked around in anguish, not understanding what had frightened him. He paled, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, thought: ‘What’s the matter with me? This has never happened before. My heart’s acting up ... I’m overworked ... Maybe it’s time to send it all to the devil and go to Kislovodsk ...’[6]

And here the sweltering air thickened before him, and a transparent citizen of the strangest appearance wove himself out of it. A peaked jockey’s cap on his little head, a short checkered jacket also made of air ... A citizen seven feet tall, but narrow in the shoulders, unbelievably thin, and, kindly note, with a jeering physiognomy.

The life of Berlioz had taken such a course that he was unaccustomed to extraordinary phenomena. Turning paler still, he goggled his eyes and thought in consternation: ‘This can’t be!...’

But, alas, it was, and the long, see-through citizen was swaying before him to the left and to the right without touching the ground.

Here terror took such possession of Berlioz that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw that it was all over, the phantasm had dissolved, the checkered one had vanished, and with that the blunt needle had popped out of his heart.

‘Pah, the devil!’ exclaimed the editor. ‘You know, Ivan, I nearly had heatstroke just now! There was even something like a hallucination ...’ He attempted to smile, but alarm still jumped in his eyes and his hands trembled. However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with his handkerchief and, having said rather cheerfully: ‘Well, and so ...’ went on with the conversation interrupted by their soda-drinking.

This conversation, as was learned afterwards, was about Jesus Christ. The thing was that the editor had commissioned from the poet a long anti-religious poem for the next issue of his journal. Ivan Nikolaevich had written this poem, and in a very short time, but unfortunately the editor was not at all satisfied with it. Homeless had portrayed the main character of his poem — that is, Jesus — in very dark colours, but nevertheless the whole poem, in the editor’s opinion, had to be written over again. And so the editor was now giving the poet something of a lecture on Jesus, with the aim of underscoring the poet’s essential error.

It is hard to say what precisely had let Ivan Nikolaevich down — the descriptive powers of his talent or a total unfamiliarity with the question he was writing about — but his Jesus came out, well, completely alive, the once-existing Jesus, though, true, a Jesus furnished with all negative features.

Now, Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing was not how Jesus was, good or bad, but that this same Jesus, as a person, simply never existed in the world, and all the stories about him were mere fiction, the most ordinary mythology.

It must be noted that the editor was a well-read man and in his conversation very skilfully pointed to ancient historians — for instance, the famous Philo of Alexandria[7] and the brilliantly educated Flavius Josephus[8] — who never said a word about the existence of Jesus. Displaying a solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich also informed the poet, among other things, that the passage in the fifteenth book of Tacitus’s famous Annals,[9] the forty-fourth chapter, where mention is made of the execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later spurious interpolation.

The poet, for whom everything the editor was telling him was new, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his pert green eyes on him, and merely hiccuped from time to time, cursing the apricot soda under his breath.

‘There’s not a single Eastern religion,’ Berlioz was saying, ‘in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin did not give birth to a god. And in just the same way, without inventing anything new, the Christians created their Jesus, who in fact never lived. It’s on this that the main emphasis should be placed ...’

Berlioz’s high tenor rang out in the deserted walk, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich went deeper into the maze, which only a highly educated man can go into without risking a broken neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris,[10] a benevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Tammuz,[11] and about Marduk,[12] and even about a lesser known, terrible god, Vitzliputzli,[13] once greatly venerated by the Aztecs in Mexico. And just at the moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to fashion figurines of Vitzliputzli out of dough — the first man appeared in the walk.

Afterwards, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, various institutions presented reports describing this man. A comparison of them cannot but cause amazement. Thus, the first of them said that the man was short, had gold teeth, and limped on his right leg. The second, that the man was enormously tall, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. The third laconically averred that the man had no distinguishing marks. It must be acknowledged that none of these reports is of any value.

First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg, and was neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle’s head.[14] He looked to be a little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left — for some reason — green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner.[15]

Having passed by the bench on which the editor and the poet were placed, the foreigner gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends.

‘A German...’ thought Berlioz. ‘An Englishman ...’ thought Homeless. ‘My, he must be hot in those gloves.’

And the foreigner gazed around at the tall buildings that rectangularly framed the pond, making it obvious that he was seeing the place for the first time and that it interested him. He rested his glance on the upper floors, where the glass dazzlingly reflected the broken-up sun which was for ever departing from Mikhail Alexandrovich, then shifted it lower down to where the windows were beginning to darken before evening, smiled condescendingly at something, narrowed his eyes, put his hands on the knob and his chin on his hands.

‘For instance, Ivan,’ Berlioz was saying, ‘you portrayed the birth of Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is that a whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus, like, say, the Phoenician Adonis,[16] the Phrygian Attis,[17] the Persian Mithras.[18] And, to put it briefly, not one of them was born or ever existed, Jesus included, and what’s necessary is that, instead of portraying his birth or, suppose, the coming of the Magi,[19] you portray the absurd rumours of their coming. Otherwise it follows from your story that he really was born! ...’

Here Homeless made an attempt to stop his painful hiccuping by holding his breath, which caused him to hiccup more painfully and loudly, and at that same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreigner suddenly got up and walked towards the writers. They looked at him in surprise.

‘Excuse me, please,’ the approaching man began speaking, with a foreign accent but without distorting the words, ‘if, not being your acquaintance, I allow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that ...’

Here he politely took off his beret, and the friends had nothing left but to stand up and make their bows.

‘No, rather a Frenchman ...’ thought Berlioz.

‘A Pole? ...’ thought Homeless.

It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him — that is, not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever.

‘May I sit down?’ the foreigner asked politely, and the friends somehow involuntarily moved apart; the foreigner adroitly sat down between them and at once entered into the conversation:

‘Unless I heard wrong, you were pleased to say that Jesus never existed?’ the foreigner asked, turning his green left eye to Berlioz.

‘No, you did not hear wrong,’ Berlioz replied courteously, ‘that is precisely what I was saying.’

‘Ah, how interesting!’ exclaimed the foreigner.

‘What the devil does he want?’ thought Homeless, frowning.

‘And you were agreeing with your interlocutor?’ inquired the stranger, turning to Homeless on his right.

‘A hundred per cent!’ confirmed the man, who was fond of whimsical and figurative expressions.

‘Amazing!’ exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, casting a thievish glance around and muffling his low voice for some reason, he said: ‘Forgive my importunity, but, as I understand, along with everything else, you also do not believe in God?’ He made frightened eyes and added: ‘I swear I won’t tell anyone!’

‘No, we don’t believe in God,’ Berlioz replied, smiling slightly at the foreign tourist’s fright, ‘but we can speak of it quite freely.’

The foreigner sat back on the bench and asked, even with a slight shriek of curiosity:

‘You are — atheists?!’

‘Yes, we’re atheists,’ Berlioz smilingly replied, and Homeless thought, getting angry: ‘Latched on to us, the foreign goose!’

‘Oh, how lovely!’ the astonishing foreigner cried out and began swivelling his head, looking from one writer to the other.

‘In our country atheism does not surprise anyone,’ Berlioz said with diplomatic politeness. ‘The majority of our population consciously and long ago ceased believing in the fairy tales about God.’

Here the foreigner pulled the following stunt: he got up and shook the amazed editor’s hand, accompanying it with these words:

‘Allow me to thank you with all my heart!’

‘What are you thanking him for?’ Homeless inquired, blinking.

‘For some very important information, which is of great interest to me as a traveller,’ the outlandish fellow explained, raising his finger significantly.

The important information apparently had indeed produced a strong impression on the traveller, because he passed his frightened glance over the buildings, as if afraid of seeing an atheist in every window.

‘No, he’s not an Englishman ...’ thought Berlioz, and Homeless thought: ‘Where’d he pick up his Russian, that’s the interesting thing!’ and frowned again.

‘But, allow me to ask you,’ the foreign visitor spoke after some anxious reflection, ‘what, then, about the proofs of God’s existence, of which, as is known, there are exactly five?’

‘Alas!’ Berlioz said with regret. ‘Not one of these proofs is worth anything, and mankind shelved them long ago. You must agree that in the realm of reason there can be no proof of God’s existence.’

‘Bravo!’ cried the foreigner. ‘Bravo! You have perfectly repeated restless old Immanuel’s[20] thought in this regard. But here’s the hitch: he roundly demolished all five proofs, and then, as if mocking himself, constructed a sixth of his own.’

‘Kant’s proof,’ the learned editor objected with a subtle smile, ‘is equally unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller[21] say that the Kantian reasoning on this question can satisfy only slaves, and Strauss[22] simply laughed at this proof.’

Berlioz spoke, thinking all the while: ‘But, anyhow, who is he? And why does he speak Russian so well?’

‘They ought to take this Kant and give him a three-year stretch in Solovki[23] for such proofs!’ Ivan Nikolaevich plumped quite unexpectedly.

‘Ivan!’ Berlioz whispered, embarrassed.

But the suggestion of sending Kant to Solovki not only did not shock the foreigner, but even sent him into raptures.

‘Precisely, precisely,’ he cried, and his green left eye, turned to Berlioz, flashed. ‘Just the place for him! Didn’t I tell him that time at breakfast: “As you will, Professor, but what you’ve thought up doesn’t hang together. It’s clever, maybe, but mighty unclear. You’ll be laughed at.”’

Berlioz goggled his eyes. ‘At breakfast ... to Kant? ... What is this drivel?’ he thought.

‘But,’ the outlander went on, unembarrassed by Berlioz’s amazement and addressing the poet, ‘sending him to Solovki is unfeasible, for the simple reason that he has been abiding for over a hundred years now in places considerably more remote than Solovki, and to extract him from there is in no way possible, I assure you.’

‘Too bad!’ the feisty poet responded.

‘Yes, too bad!’ the stranger agreed, his eye flashing, and went on: ‘But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?’

‘Man governs it himself,’ Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.

‘Pardon me,’ the stranger responded gently, ‘but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period — well, say, a thousand years - but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?

‘And in fact,’ here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ‘imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ... hem ... hem ... lung cancer ...’ — here the foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure — ‘yes, cancer’ — narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word — ’and so your governing is over!

‘You are no longer interested in anyone’s fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven.

‘And sometimes it’s worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk’ — here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz - ’a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was governed by someone else entirely?‘ And here the unknown man burst into a strange little laugh.

Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about the cancer and the tram-car, and certain alarming thoughts began to torment him. ‘He’s not a foreigner ... he’s not a foreigner ...’ he thought, ‘he’s a most peculiar specimen ... but, excuse me, who is he then?...’

‘You’d like to smoke, I see?’ the stranger addressed Homeless unexpectedly. ‘Which kind do you prefer?’

‘What, have you got several?’ the poet, who had run out of cigarettes, asked glumly.

‘Which do you prefer?’ the stranger repeated.

‘Okay — Our Brand,’ Homeless replied spitefully.

The unknown man immediately took a cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to Homeless:

‘Our Brand ...’

Editor and poet were both struck, not so much by Our Brand precisely turning up in the cigarette case, as by the cigarette case itself. It was of huge size, made of pure gold, and, as it was opened, a diamond triangle flashed white and blue fire on its lid.

Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: ‘No, a foreigner!’, and Homeless: ‘Well, devil take him, eh! ...’

The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit up, but the non-smoker Berlioz declined.

‘I must counter him like this,’ Berlioz decided, ‘yes, man is mortal, no one disputes that. But the thing is ...’

However, before he managed to utter these words, the foreigner spoke:

‘Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he’s sometimes unexpectedly mortal — there’s the trick! And generally he’s unable to say what he’s going to do this same evening.’

‘What an absurd way of putting the question ...’ Berlioz thought and objected:

‘Well, there’s some exaggeration here. About this same evening I do know more or less certainly. It goes without saying, if a brick should fall on my head on Bronnaya ...’

‘No brick,’ the stranger interrupted imposingly, ‘will ever fall on anyone’s head just out of the blue. In this particular case, I assure you, you are not in danger of that at all. You will die a different death.’

‘Maybe you know what kind precisely?’ Berlioz inquired with perfectly natural irony, getting drawn into an utterly absurd conversation. ‘And will tell me?’

‘Willingly,’ the unknown man responded. He looked Berlioz up and down as if he were going to make him a suit, muttered through his teeth something like: ‘One, two ... Mercury in the second house ... moon gone ... six — disaster ... evening — seven ...’ then announced loudly and joyfully: ‘Your head will be cut off!’

Homeless goggled his eyes wildly and spitefully at the insouciant stranger, and Berlioz asked, grinning crookedly:

‘By whom precisely? Enemies? Interventionists?’[24]

‘No,’ replied his interlocutor, ‘by a Russian woman, a Komsomol[25] girl.’

‘Hm ...’ Berlioz mumbled, vexed at the stranger’s little joke, ‘well, excuse me, but that’s not very likely.’

‘And I beg you to excuse me,’ the foreigner replied, ‘but it’s so. Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, what are you going to do tonight, if it’s not a secret?’

‘It’s not a secret. Right now I’ll stop by my place on Sadovaya, and then at ten this evening there will be a meeting at Massolit, and I will chair it.’

‘No, that simply cannot be,’ the foreigner objected firmly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ the foreigner replied and, narrowing his eyes, looked into the sky, where, anticipating the cool of the evening, black birds were tracing noiselessly, ‘Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it. So the meeting will not take place.’

Here, quite understandably, silence fell under the lindens.

‘Forgive me,’ Berlioz spoke after a pause, glancing at the drivel-spouting foreigner, ‘but what has sunflower oil got to do with it ... and which Annushka?’

‘Sunflower oil has got this to do with it,’ Homeless suddenly spoke, obviously deciding to declare war on the uninvited interlocutor. ‘Have you ever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill?’

‘Ivan! ...’ Mikhail Alexandrovich exclaimed quietly.

But the foreigner was not a bit offended and burst into the merriest laughter.

‘I have, I have, and more than once!’ he cried out, laughing, but without taking his unlaughing eye off the poet. ‘Where haven’t I been! Only it’s too bad I didn’t get around to asking the professor what schizophrenia is. So you will have to find that out from him yourself, Ivan Nikolaevich!’

‘How do you know my name?’

‘Gracious, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn’t know you?’ Here the foreigner took out of his pocket the previous day’s issue of the Literary Gazette, and Ivan Nikolaevich saw his own picture on the very first page and under it his very own verses. But the proof of fame and popularity, which yesterday had delighted the poet, this time did not delight him a bit.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, and his face darkened, ‘could you wait one little moment? I want to say a couple of words to my friend.’

‘Oh, with pleasure!’ exclaimed the stranger. ‘It’s so nice here under the lindens, and, by the way, I’m not in any hurry.’

‘Listen here, Misha,’ the poet whispered, drawing Berlioz aside, ‘he’s no foreign tourist, he’s a spy. A Russian émigré[26] who has crossed back over. Ask for his papers before he gets away...’

‘You think so?’ Berlioz whispered worriedly, and thought: ‘Why, he’s right ...’

‘Believe me,’ the poet rasped into his ear, ‘he’s pretending to be a fool in order to find out something or other. Just hear how he speaks Russian.’ As he spoke, the poet kept glancing sideways, to make sure the stranger did not escape. ‘Let’s go and detain him, or he’ll get away ...’

And the poet pulled Berlioz back to the bench by the arm.

The unknown man was not sitting, but was standing near it, holding in his hands some booklet in a dark-grey binding, a sturdy envelope made of good paper, and a visiting card.

‘Excuse me for having forgotten, in the heat of our dispute, to introduce myself. Here is my card, my passport, and an invitation to come to Moscow for a consultation,’ the stranger said weightily, giving both writers a penetrating glance.

They were embarrassed. ‘The devil, he heard everything ...’ Berlioz thought, and with a polite gesture indicated that there was no need to show papers. While the foreigner was pushing them at the editor, the poet managed to make out the word ‘Professor’ printed in foreign type on the card, and the initial letter of the last name — a double ’V’ — ‘W’.

‘My pleasure,’ the editor meanwhile muttered in embarrassment, and the foreigner put the papers back in his pocket.

Relations were thus restored, and all three sat down on the bench again.

‘You’ve been invited here as a consultant, Professor?’ asked Berlioz.

‘Yes, as a consultant.’

‘You’re German?’ Homeless inquired.

‘I? ...’ the professor repeated and suddenly fell to thinking. ‘Yes, perhaps I am German...’ he said.

‘You speak real good Russian,’ Homeless observed.

‘Oh, I’m generally a polyglot and know a great number of languages,’ the professor replied.

‘And what is your field?’ Berlioz inquired.

‘I am a specialist in black magic.’

‘There he goes! ...’ struck in Mikhail Alexandrovich’s head.

‘And ... and you’ve been invited here in that capacity?’ he asked, stammering.

‘Yes, in that capacity,’ the professor confirmed, and explained: ‘In a state library here some original manuscripts of the tenth-century necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac[27] have been found. So it is necessary for me to sort them out. I am the only specialist in the world.’

‘Aha! You’re a historian?’ Berlioz asked with great relief and respect.

‘I am a historian,’ the scholar confirmed, and added with no rhyme or reason: ‘This evening there will be an interesting story at the Ponds!’

Once again editor and poet were extremely surprised, but the professor beckoned them both to him, and when they leaned towards him, whispered:

‘Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.’

‘You see, Professor,’ Berlioz responded with a forced smile, ‘we respect your great learning, but on this question we hold to a different point of view.’

‘There’s no need for any points of view,’ the strange professor replied, ‘he simply existed, that’s all.’

‘But there’s need for some proof...’ Berlioz began.

‘There’s no need for any proofs,’ replied the professor, and he began to speak softly, while his accent for some reason disappeared: ‘It’s all very simple: In a white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan...’[28]

CHAPTER 2 Pontius Pilate

In a white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, there came out to the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great[29] the procurator of Judea,[30] Pontius Pilate.[31]

More than anything in the world the procurator hated the smell of rose oil, and now everything foreboded a bad day, because this smell had been pursuing the procurator since dawn.

It seemed to the procurator that a rosy smell exuded from the cypresses and palms in the garden, that the smell of leather trappings and sweat from the convoy was mingled with the cursed rosy flux.

From the outbuildings at the back of the palace, where the first cohort of the Twelfth Lightning legion,[32] which had come to Yershalaim[33] with the procurator, was quartered, a whiff of smoke reached the colonnade across the upper terrace of the palace, and this slightly acrid smoke, which testified that the centuries’ mess cooks had begun to prepare dinner, was mingled with the same thick rosy scent.

‘Oh, gods, gods, why do you punish me? ... Yes, no doubt, this is it, this is it again, the invincible, terrible illness ... hemicrania, when half of the head aches ... there’s no remedy for it, no escape ... I’ll try not to move my head ...’

On the mosaic floor by the fountain a chair was already prepared, and the procurator, without looking at anyone, sat in it and reached his hand out to one side. His secretary deferentially placed a sheet of parchment in this hand. Unable to suppress a painful grimace, the procurator ran a cursory, sidelong glance over the writing, returned the parchment to the secretary, and said with difficulty:

‘The accused is from Galilee?[34] Was the case sent to the tetrarch?’

‘Yes, Procurator,’ replied the secretary.

‘And what then?’

‘He refused to make a decision on the case and sent the Sanhedrin’s[35] death sentence to you for confirmation,‘ the secretary explained.

The procurator twitched his cheek and said quietly:

‘Bring in the accused.’

And at once two legionaries brought a man of about twenty-seven from the garden terrace to the balcony under the columns and stood him before the procurator’s chair. The man was dressed in an old and torn light-blue chiton. His head was covered by a white cloth with a leather band around the forehead, and his hands were bound behind his back. Under the man’s left eye there was a large bruise, in the comer of his mouth a cut caked with blood. The man gazed at the procurator with anxious curiosity.

The latter paused, then asked quietly in Aramaic:[36]

‘So it was you who incited the people to destroy the temple of Yershalaim?’[37]

The procurator sat as if made of stone while he spoke, and only his lips moved slightly as he pronounced the words. The procurator was as if made of stone because he was afraid to move his head, aflame with infernal pain.

The man with bound hands leaned forward somewhat and began to speak:

‘Good man! Believe me ...’

But the procurator, motionless as before and not raising his voice in the least, straight away interrupted him:

‘Is it me that you are calling a good man? You are mistaken. It is whispered about me in Yershalaim that I am a fierce monster, and that is perfectly correct.’ And he added in the same monotone: ‘Bring the centurion Ratslayer.’

It seemed to everyone that it became darker on the balcony when the centurion of the first century, Mark, nicknamed Ratslayer, presented himself before the procurator. Ratslayer was a head taller than the tallest soldier of the legion and so broad in the shoulders that he completely blocked out the still-low sun.

The procurator addressed the centurion in Latin:

‘The criminal calls me “good man”. Take him outside for a moment, explain to him how I ought to be spoken to. But no maiming.’

And everyone except the motionless procurator followed Mark Ratslayer with their eyes as he motioned to the arrested man, indicating that he should go with him. Everyone generally followed Ratslayer with their eyes wherever he appeared, because of his height, and those who were seeing him for the first time also because the centurion’s face was disfigured: his nose had once been smashed by a blow from a Germanic club.

Mark’s heavy boots thudded across the mosaic, the bound man noiselessly went out with him, complete silence fell in the colonnade, and one could hear pigeons cooing on the garden terrace near the balcony and water singing an intricate, pleasant song in the fountain.

The procurator would have liked to get up, put his temple under the spout, and stay standing that way. But he knew that even that would not help him.

Having brought the arrested man from under the columns out to the garden, Ratslayer took a whip from the hands of a legionary who was standing at the foot of a bronze statue and, swinging easily, struck the arrested man across the shoulders. The centurion’s movement was casual and light, yet the bound man instantly collapsed on the ground as if his legs had been cut from under him; he gasped for air, the colour drained from his face, and his eyes went vacant.

With his left hand only, Mark heaved the fallen man into the air like an empty sack, set him on his feet, and spoke nasally, in poorly pronounced Aramaic:

‘The Roman procurator is called Hegemon.[38] Use no other words. Stand at attention. Do you understand me, or do I hit you?’

The arrested man swayed, but got hold of himself, his colour returned, he caught his breath and answered hoarsely:

‘I understand. Don’t beat me.’

A moment later he was again standing before the procurator.

A lustreless, sick voice sounded:

‘Name?’

‘Mine?’ the arrested man hastily responded, his whole being expressing a readiness to answer sensibly, without provoking further wrath.

The procurator said softly:

‘I know my own. Don’t pretend to be stupider than you are. Yours.’

‘Yeshua,’[39] the prisoner replied promptly.

‘Any surname?’

‘Ha-Nozri.’

‘Where do you come from?’

‘The town of Gamala,’[40] replied the prisoner, indicating with his head that there, somewhere far off to his right, in the north, was the town of Gamala.

‘Who are you by blood?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ the arrested man replied animatedly, ‘I don’t remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian ...’

‘Where is your permanent residence?’

‘I have no permanent home,’ the prisoner answered shyly, ‘I travel from town to town.’

‘That can be put more briefly, in a word — a vagrant,’ the procurator said, and asked:

‘Any family?’

‘None. I’m alone in the world.’

‘Can you read and write?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know any language besides Aramaic?’

‘Yes. Greek.’

A swollen eyelid rose, an eye clouded with suffering fixed the arrested man. The other eye remained shut.

Pilate spoke in Greek.

‘So it was you who was going to destroy the temple building and called on the people to do that?’

Here the prisoner again became animated, his eyes ceased to show fear, and he spoke in Greek:

‘Never, goo ...’ Here terror flashed in the prisoner’s eyes, because he had nearly made a slip. ‘Never, Hegemon, never in my life was I going to destroy the temple building, nor did I incite anyone to this senseless act.’

Surprise showed on the face of the secretary, hunched over a low table and writing down the testimony. He raised his head, but immediately bent it to the parchment again.

‘All sorts of people gather in this town for the feast. Among them there are magicians, astrologers, diviners and murderers,’ the procurator spoke in monotone, ‘and occasionally also liars. You, for instance, are a liar. It is written clearly: “Incited to destroy the temple”. People have testified to it.’

‘These good people,’ the prisoner spoke and, hastily adding ‘Hegemon’, went on: ‘... haven’t any learning and have confused everything I told them. Generally, I’m beginning to be afraid that this confusion may go on for a very long time. And all because he writes down the things I say incorrectly.’

Silence fell. By now both sick eyes rested heavily on the prisoner.

‘I repeat to you, but for the last time, stop pretending that you’re a madman, robber,’ Pilate said softly and monotonously, ‘there’s not much written in your record, but what there is is enough to hang you.’

‘No, no, Hegemon,’ the arrested man said, straining all over in his wish to convince, ‘there’s one with a goatskin parchment who follows me, follows me and keeps writing all the time. But once I peeked into this parchment and was horrified. I said decidedly nothing of what’s written there. I implored him: “Burn your parchment, I beg you!” But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.’

‘Who is that?’ Pilate asked squeamishly and touched his temple with his hand.

‘Matthew Levi,’[41] the prisoner explained willingly. ‘He used to be a tax collector, and I first met him on the road in Bethphage,[42] where a fig grove juts out at an angle, and I got to talking with him. He treated me hostilely at first and even insulted me — that is, thought he insulted me - by calling me a dog.’ Here the prisoner smiled. ‘I personally see nothing bad about this animal, that I should be offended by this word ...’

The secretary stopped writing and stealthily cast a surprised glance, not at the arrested man, but at the procurator.

‘... However, after listening to me, he began to soften,’ Yeshua went on, ‘finally threw the money down in the road and said he would go journeying with me ...’

Pilate grinned with one cheek, baring yellow teeth, and said, turning his whole body towards the secretary:

‘Oh, city of Yershalaim! What does one not hear in it! A tax collector, do you hear, threw money down in the road!’

Not knowing how to reply to that, the secretary found it necessary to repeat Pilate’s smile.

‘He said that henceforth money had become hateful to him,’ Yeshua explained Matthew Levi’s strange action and added: ‘And since then he has been my companion.’

His teeth still bared, the procurator glanced at the arrested man, then at the sun, steadily rising over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome, which lay far below to the right, and suddenly, in some sickening anguish, thought that the simplest thing would be to drive this strange robber off the balcony by uttering just two words: ‘Hang him.’ To drive the convoy away as well, to leave the colonnade, go into the palace, order the room darkened, collapse on the bed, send for cold water, call in a plaintive voice for his dog Banga, and complain to him about the hemicrania. And the thought of poison suddenly flashed temptingly in the procurator’s sick head.

He gazed with dull eyes at the arrested man and was silent for a time, painfully trying to remember why there stood before him in the pitiless morning sunlight of Yershalaim this prisoner with his face disfigured by beating, and what other utterly unnecessary questions he had to ask him.

‘Matthew Levi?’ the sick man asked in a hoarse voice and dosed his eyes.

‘Yes, Matthew Levi,’ the high, tormenting voice came to him.

‘And what was it in any case that you said about the temple to the crowd in the bazaar?’

The responding voice seemed to stab at Pilate’s temple, was inexpressibly painful, and this voice was saying:

‘I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would fall and a new temple of truth would be built. I said it that way so as to make it more understandable.’

‘And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?’[43]

And here the procurator thought: ‘Oh, my gods! I’m asking him about something unnecessary at a trial ... my reason no longer serves me ...’ And again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. ‘Poison, bring me poison ...’

And again he heard the voice:

‘The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, and aches so badly that you’re having faint-hearted thoughts of death. You’re not only unable to speak to me, but it is even hard for you to look at me. And I am now your unwilling torturer, which upsets me. You can’t even think about anything and only dream that your dog should come, apparently the one being you are attached to. But your suffering will soon be over, your headache will go away.’

The secretary goggled his eyes at the prisoner and stopped writing in mid-word.

Pilate raised his tormented eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun already stood quite high over the hippodrome, that a ray had penetrated the colonnade and was stealing towards Yeshua’s worn sandals, and that the man was trying to step out of the sun’s way.

Here the procurator rose from his chair, clutched his head with his hands, and his yellowish, shaven face expressed dread. But he instantly suppressed it with his will and lowered himself into his chair again.

The prisoner meanwhile continued his speech, but the secretary was no longer writing it down, and only stretched his neck like a goose, trying not to let drop a single word.

‘Well, there, it’s all over,’ the arrested man said, glancing benevolently at Pilate, ‘and I’m extremely glad of it. I’d advise you, Hegemon, to leave the palace for a while and go for a stroll somewhere in the vicinity — say, in the gardens on the Mount of Olives.[44] A storm will come ...’ the prisoner turned, narrowing his eyes at the sun, ‘... later on, towards evening. A stroll would do you much good, and I would be glad to accompany you. Certain new thoughts have occurred to me, which I think you might find interesting, and I’d willingly share them with you, the more so as you give the impression of being a very intelligent man.’

The secretary turned deathly pale and dropped the scroll on the floor.

‘The trouble is,’ the bound man went on, not stopped by anyone, ‘that you are too closed off and have definitively lost faith in people.

‘You must agree, one can’t place all one’s affection in a dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.’ And here the speaker allowed himself to smile.

The secretary now thought of only one thing, whether to believe his ears or not. He had to believe. Then he tried to imagine precisely what whimsical form the wrath of the hot-tempered procurator would take at this unheard-of impudence from the prisoner. And this the secretary was unable to imagine, though he knew the procurator well.

Then came the cracked, hoarse voice of the procurator, who said in Latin:

‘Unbind his hands.’

One of the convoy legionaries rapped with his spear, handed it to another, went over and took the ropes off the prisoner. The secretary picked up his scroll, having decided to record nothing for now, and to be surprised at nothing.

‘Admit,’ Pilate asked softly in Greek, ‘that you are a great physician?’

‘No, Procurator, I am not a physician,’ the prisoner replied, delightedly rubbing a crimped and swollen purple wrist.

Scowling deeply, Pilate bored the prisoner with his eyes, and these eyes were no longer dull, but flashed with sparks familiar to all.

‘I didn’t ask you,’ Pilate said, ‘maybe you also know Latin?’

‘Yes, I do,’ the prisoner replied.

Colour came to Pilate’s yellowish cheeks, and he asked in Latin:

‘How did you know I wanted to call my dog?’

‘It’s very simple,’ the prisoner replied in Latin. ‘You were moving your hand in the air’ — and the prisoner repeated Pilate’s gesture — ‘as if you wanted to stroke something, and your lips ...’

‘Yes,’ said Pilate.

There was silence. Then Pilate asked a question in Greek:

‘And so, you are a physician?’

‘No, no,’ the prisoner replied animatedly, ‘believe me, I’m not a physician.’

‘Very well, then, if you want to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct bearing on the case. So you maintain that you did not incite anyone to destroy ... or set fire to, or in any other way demolish the temple?’

‘I repeat, I did not incite anyone to such acts, Hegemon. Do I look like a halfwit?’

‘Oh, no, you don’t look like a halfwit,’ the procurator replied quietly and smiled some strange smile. ‘Swear, then, that it wasn’t so.’

‘By what do you want me to swear?’ the unbound man asked, very animated.

‘Well, let’s say, by your life,’ the procurator replied. ‘It’s high time you swore by it, since it’s hanging by a hair, I can tell you.’

‘You don’t think it was you who hung it, Hegemon?’ the prisoner asked. ‘If so, you are very mistaken.’

Pilate gave a start and replied through his teeth:

‘I can cut that hair.’

‘In that, too, you are mistaken,’ the prisoner retorted, smiling brightly and shielding himself from the sun with his hand. ‘You must agree that surely only he who hung it can cut the hair?’

‘So, so,’ Pilate said, smiling, ‘now I have no doubts that the idle loafers of Yershalaim followed at your heels. I don’t know who hung such a tongue on you, but he hung it well. Incidentally, tell me, is it true that you entered Yershalaim by the Susa gate[45] riding on an ass,[46] accompanied by a crowd of riff-raff who shouted greetings to you as some kind of prophet?’ Here the procurator pointed to the parchment scroll.

The prisoner glanced at the procurator in perplexity.

‘I don’t even have an ass, Hegemon,’ he said. ‘I did enter Yershalaim by the Susa gate, but on foot, accompanied only by Matthew Levi, and no one shouted anything to me, because no one in Yershalaim knew me then.’

‘Do you happen to know,’ Pilate continued without taking his eyes off the prisoner, ‘such men as a certain Dysmas, another named Gestas, and a third named Bar-Rabban?’[47]

‘I do not know these good people,’ the prisoner replied.

‘Truly?’

‘Truly.’

‘And now tell me, why is it that you use the words “good people” all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?’

‘Everyone,’ the prisoner replied. ‘There are no evil people in the world.’

‘The first I hear of it,’ Pilate said, grinning. ‘But perhaps I know too little of life! ... You needn’t record any more,’ he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner. ‘You read that in some Greek book?’

‘No, I figured it out for myself.’

‘And you preach it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer - is he good?’

‘Yes,’ replied the prisoner. ‘True, he’s an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him, he has become cruel and hard. I’d be curious to know who maimed him.’

‘I can willingly tell you that,’ Pilate responded, ‘for I was a witness to it. The good people fell on him like dogs on a bear. There were Germani fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn’t been cut by a cavalry turm, of which I was the commander — you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Ratslayer. That was at the battle of Idistaviso,[48] in the Valley of the Virgins.’

‘If I could speak with him,’ the prisoner suddenly said musingly, ‘I’m sure he’d change sharply.’

‘I don’t suppose,’ Pilate responded, ‘that you’d bring much joy to the legate of the legion if you decided to talk with any of his officers or soldiers. Anyhow, it’s also not going to happen, fortunately for everyone, and I will be the first to see to it.’

At that moment a swallow swiftly flitted into the colonnade, described a circle under the golden ceiling, swooped down, almost brushed the face of a bronze statue in a niche with its pointed wing, and disappeared behind the capital of a column. It may be that it thought of nesting there.

During its flight, a formula took shape in the now light and lucid head of the procurator. It went like this: the hegemon has looked into the case of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, alias Ha-Nozri, and found in it no grounds for indictment. In particular, he has found not the slightest connection between the acts of Yeshua and the disorders that have lately taken place in Yershalaim. The vagrant philosopher has proved to be mentally ill. Consequently, the procurator has not confirmed the death sentence on Ha-Nozri passed by the Lesser Sanhedrin. But seeing that Ha-Nozri’s mad utopian talk might cause disturbances in Yershalaim, the procurator is removing Yeshua from Yershalaim and putting him under confinement in Stratonian Caesarea on the Mediterranean — that is, precisely where the procurator’s residence was.

It remained to dictate it to the secretary.

The swallow’s wings whiffled right over the hegemon’s head, the bird darted to the fountain basin and then flew out into freedom. The procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw the dust blaze up in a pillar around him.

‘Is that all about him?’ Pilate asked the secretary.

‘Unfortunately not,’ the secretary replied unexpectedly and handed Pilate another piece of parchment.

‘What’s this now?’ Pilate asked and frowned.

Having read what had been handed to him, he changed countenance even more. Either the dark blood rose to his neck and face, or something else happened, only his skin lost its yellow tinge, turned brown, and his eyes seemed to sink.

Again it was probably owing to the blood rising to his temples and throbbing in them, only something happened to the procurator’s vision. Thus, he imagined that the prisoner’s head floated off somewhere, and another appeared in its place.[49] On this bald head sat a scant-pointed golden diadem. On the forehead was a round canker, eating into the skin and smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a pendulous, capricious lower lip. It seemed to Pilate that the pink columns of the balcony and the rooftops of Yershalaim far below, beyond the garden, vanished, and everything was drowned in the thickest green of Caprean gardens. And something strange also happened to his hearing: it was as if trumpets sounded far away, muted and menacing, and a nasal voice was very clearly heard, arrogantly drawling: ‘The law of lese-majesty ...’

Thoughts raced, short, incoherent and extraordinary: ‘I’m lost! ...’ then: ‘We’re lost! ...’ And among them a totally absurd one, about some immortality, which immortality for some reason provoked unendurable anguish.

Pilate strained, drove the apparition away, his gaze returned to the balcony, and again the prisoner’s eyes were before him.

‘Listen, Ha-Nozri,’ the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow strangely: the procurator’s face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed, ‘did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you? ... Yes ... or ... no?’ Pilate drew the word ‘no’ out somewhat longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to instil in the prisoner.

‘To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,’ the prisoner observed.

‘I have no need to know,’ Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, ‘whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh every word, unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.’

No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the prisoner some sort of prompting look.

‘Answer, then,’ he went on speaking, ‘do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath,[50] and what precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?’

‘It was like this,’ the prisoner began talking eagerly. ‘The evening before last, near the temple, I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and treated me to ...’

‘A good man?’ Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.

‘A very good man and an inquisitive one,’ the prisoner confirmed. ‘He showed the greatest interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially ...’

‘Lit the lamps ...’[51] Pilate spoke through his teeth, in the same tone as the prisoner, and his eyes glinted.

‘Yes,’ Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so well informed, ‘and asked me to give my view of state authority. He was extremely interested in this question.’

‘And what did you say?’ asked Pilate. ‘Or are you going to reply that you’ve forgotten what you said?’ But there was already hopelessness in Pilate’s tone.

‘Among other things,’ the prisoner recounted, ‘I said that all authority is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any authority.’

‘Go on!’

‘I didn’t go on,’ said the prisoner. ‘Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.’

The secretary, trying not to let drop a single word, rapidly traced the words on his parchment.

‘There never has been, is not, and never will be any authority in this world greater or better for people than the authority of the emperor Tiberius!’ Pilate’s cracked and sick voice swelled. For some reason the procurator looked at the secretary and the convoy with hatred.

‘And it is not for you, insane criminal, to reason about it!’ Here Pilate shouted: ‘Convoy, off the balcony!’ And turning to the secretary, he added: ‘Leave me alone with the criminal, this is a state matter!’

The convoy raised their spears and with a measured tramp of hob-nailed caligae walked off the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed the convoy.

For some time the silence on the balcony was broken only by the water singing in the fountain. Pilate saw how the watery dish blew up over the spout, how its edges broke off, how it fell down in streams.

The prisoner was the first to speak.

‘I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief, and I am very sorry for him.’

‘I think,’ the procurator replied, grinning strangely, ‘that there is now someone else in the world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than for Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! ... So, then, Mark Ratslayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see,’ the procurator pointed to Yeshua’s disfigured face, ‘beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confrères killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas — are all good people?’

‘Yes,’ said the prisoner.

‘And the kingdom of truth will come?’

‘It will, Hegemon,’ Yeshua answered with conviction.

‘It will never come!’ Pilate suddenly cried out in such a terrible voice that Yeshua drew back. Thus, many years before, in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate had cried to his horsemen the words: ‘Cut them down! Cut them down! The giant Ratslayer is trapped!’ He raised his voice, cracked with commanding, still more, and called out so that his words could be heard in the garden: ‘Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!’ And then, lowering his voice, he asked: ‘Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?’

‘God is one,’ replied Yeshua, ‘I believe in him.’

‘Then pray to him! Pray hard! However ...’ here Pilate’s voice gave out, ‘that won’t help. No wife?’ Pilate asked with anguish for some reason, not understanding what was happening to him.

‘No, I’m alone.’

‘Hateful city ...’ the procurator suddenly muttered for some reason, shaking his shoulders as if he were cold, and rubbing his hands as though washing them, ‘if they’d put a knife in you before your meeting with Judas of Kiriath, it really would have been better.’

‘Why don’t you let me go, Hegemon?’ the prisoner asked unexpectedly, and his voice became anxious. ‘I see they want to kill me.’

A spasm contorted Pilate’s face, he turned to Yeshua the inflamed, red-veined whites of his eyes and said:

‘Do you suppose, wretch, that the Roman procurator will let a man go who has said what you have said? Oh, gods, gods! Or do you think I’m ready to take your place? I don’t share your thoughts! And listen to me: if from this moment on you say even one word, if you speak to anyone at all, beware of me! I repeat to you — beware!’

‘Hegemon...’

‘Silence!’ cried Pilate, and his furious gaze followed the swallow that had again fluttered on to the balcony. ‘To me!’ Pilate shouted.

And when the secretary and the convoy returned to their places, Pilate announced that he confirmed the death sentence passed at the meeting of the Lesser Sanhedrin on the criminal Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the secretary wrote down what Pilate said.

A moment later Mark Ratslayer stood before the procurator. The procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the head of the secret service, along with the procurator’s directive that Yeshua Ha-Nozri was to be separated from the other condemned men, and also that the soldiers of the secret service were to be forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, to talk with Yeshua about anything at all or to answer any of his questions.

At a sign from Mark, the convoy closed around Yeshua and led him from the balcony.

Next there stood before the procurator a handsome, light-bearded man with eagle feathers on the crest of his helmet, golden lions’ heads shining on his chest, and golden plaques on his sword belt, wearing triple-soled boots laced to the knees, and with a purple cloak thrown over his left shoulder. This was the legate in command of the legion.

The procurator asked him where the Sebastean cohort was stationed at the moment. The legate told him that the Sebasteans had cordoned off the square in front of the hippodrome, where the sentencing of the criminals was to be announced to the people.

Then the procurator ordered the legate to detach two centuries from the Roman cohort. One of them, under the command of Ratslayer, was to convoy the criminals, the carts with the implements for the execution and the executioners as they were transported to Bald Mountain,[52] and on arrival was to join the upper cordon. The other was to be sent at once to Bald Mountain and immediately start forming the cordon. For the same purpose, that is, to guard the mountain, the procurator asked the legate to send an auxiliary cavalry regiment — the Syrian ala.

After the legate left the balcony, the procurator ordered the secretary to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its members, and the head of the temple guard in Yershalaim, adding that he asked things to be so arranged that before conferring with all these people, he could speak with the president previously and alone.

The procurator’s order was executed quickly and precisely, and the sun, which in those days was scorching Yershalaim with an extraordinary fierceness, had not yet had time to approach its highest point when, on the upper terrace of the garden, by the two white marble lions that guarded the stairs, a meeting took place between the procurator and the man fulfilling the duties of president of the Sanhedrin, the high priest of the Jews, Joseph Kaifa.[53]

It was quiet in the garden. But when he came out from under the colonnade to the sun-drenched upper level of the garden with its palm trees on monstrous elephant legs, from which there spread before the procurator the whole of hateful Yershalaim, with its hanging bridges, fortresses, and, above all, that utterly indescribable heap of marble with golden dragon scales for a roof — the temple of Yershalaim — the procurator’s sharp ear caught, far below, where the stone wall separated the lower terraces of the palace garden from the city square, a low rumble over which from time to time there soared feeble, thin moans or cries.

The procurator understood that there, on the square, a numberless crowd of Yershalaim citizens, agitated by the recent disorders, had already gathered, that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the announcement of the sentences, and that restless water sellers were crying in its midst.

The procurator began by inviting the high priest on to the balcony, to take shelter from the merciless heat, but Kaifa politely apologized[54] and explained that he could not do that on the eve of the feast. Pilate covered his slightly balding head with a hood and began the conversation. This conversation took place in Greek.

Pilate said that he had looked into the case of Yeshua Ha-Nozri and confirmed the death sentence.

Thus, three robbers - Dysmas, Gestas and Bar-Rabban — and this Yeshua Ha-Nozri besides, were condemned to be executed, and it was to be done that day. The first two, who had ventured to incite the people to rebel against Caesar, had been taken in armed struggle by the Roman authorities, were accounted to the procurator, and, consequently, would not be talked about here. But the second two, Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri, had been seized by the local authorities and condemned by the Sanhedrin. According to the law, according to custom, one of these two criminals had to be released in honour of the great feast of Passover, which would begin that day. And so the procurator wished to know which of the two criminals the Sanhedrin intended to set free: Bar-Rabban or Ha-Nozri?[55]

Kaifa inclined his head to signify that the question was clear to him, and replied:

‘The Sanhedrin asks that Bar-Rabban be released.’

The procurator knew very well that the high priest would give precisely that answer, but his task consisted in showing that this answer provoked his astonishment.

This Pilate did with great artfulness. The eyebrows on the arrogant face rose, the procurator looked with amazement straight into the high priest’s eyes.

‘I confess, this answer stuns me,’ the procurator began softly, ‘I’m afraid there may be some misunderstanding here.’

Pilate explained himself. Roman authority does not encroach in the least upon the rights of the local spiritual authorities, the high priest knows that very well, but in the present case we are faced with an obvious error. And this error Roman authority is, of course, interested in correcting.

In fact, the crimes of Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri are quite incomparable in their gravity. If the latter, obviously an insane person, is guilty of uttering preposterous things in Yershalaim and some other places, the former’s burden of guilt is more considerable. Not only did he allow himself to call directly for rebellion, but he also killed a guard during the attempt to arrest him. Bar-Rabban is incomparably more dangerous than Ha-Nozri.

On the strength of all the foregoing, the procurator asks the high priest to reconsider the decision and release the less harmful of the two condemned men, and that is without doubt Ha-Nozri. And so?...

Kaifa said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had thoroughly familiarized itself with the case and informed him a second time that it intended to free Bar-Rabban.

‘What? Even after my intercession? The intercession of him through whose person Roman authority speaks? Repeat it a third time, High Priest.’

‘And a third time I repeat that we are setting Bar-Rabban free,’ Kaifa said softly.

It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about. Ha-Nozri was departing for ever, and there was no one to cure the dreadful, wicked pains of the procurator, there was no remedy for them except death. But it was not this thought which now struck Pilate. The same incomprehensible anguish that had already visited him on the balcony pierced his whole being. He tried at once to explain it, and the explanation was a strange one: it seemed vaguely to the procurator that there was something he had not finished saying to the condemned man, and perhaps something he had not finished hearing.

Pilate drove this thought away, and it flew off as instantly as it had come flying. It flew off, and the anguish remained unexplained, for it could not well be explained by another brief thought that flashed like lightning and at once went out — ‘Immortality ... immortality has come ...’ Whose immortality had come? That the procurator did not understand, but the thought of this enigmatic immortality made him grow cold in the scorching sun.

‘Very well,’ said Pilate, ‘let it be so.’

Here he turned, gazed around at the world visible to him, and was surprised at the change that had taken place. The bush laden with roses had vanished, vanished were the cypresses bordering the upper terrace, and the pomegranate tree, and the white statue amidst the greenery, and the greenery itself. In place of it all there floated some purple mass,[56] water weeds swayed in it and began moving off somewhere, and Pilate himself began moving with them. He was carried along now, smothered and burned, by the most terrible wrath — the wrath of impotence.

‘Cramped,’ said Pilate, ‘I feel cramped!’

With a cold, moist hand he tore at the clasp on the collar of his cloak, and it fell to the sand.

‘It’s sultry today, there’s a storm somewhere,’ Kaifa responded, not taking his eyes off the procurator’s reddened face, and foreseeing all the torments that still lay ahead, he thought: ‘Oh, what a terrible month of Nisan we’re having this year!’

‘No,’ said Pilate, ‘it’s not because of the sultriness, I feel cramped with you here, Kaifa.’ And, narrowing his eyes, Pilate smiled and added: ‘Watch out for yourself, High Priest.’

The high priest’s dark eyes glinted, and with his face - no less artfully than the procurator had done earlier — he expressed amazement.

‘What do I hear, Procurator?’ Kaifa replied proudly and calmly. ‘You threaten me after you yourself have confirmed the sentence passed? Can that be? We are accustomed to the Roman procurator choosing his words before he says something. What if we should be overheard, Hegemon?’

Pilate looked at the high priest with dead eyes and, baring his teeth, produced a smile.

‘What’s your trouble, High Priest? Who can hear us where we are now? Do you think I’m like that young vagrant holy fool who is to be executed today? Am I a boy, Kaifa? I know what I say and where I say it. There is a cordon around the garden, a cordon around the palace, so that a mouse couldn’t get through any crack! Not only a mouse, but even that one, what’s his name ... from the town of Kiriath, couldn’t get through. Incidentally, High Priest, do you know him? Yes ... if that one got in here, he’d feel bitterly sorry for himself, in this you will, of course, believe me? Know, then, that from now on, High Priest, you will have no peace! Neither you nor your people’ — and Pilate pointed far off to the right, where the temple blazed on high — ’it is I who tell you so, Pontius Pilate, equestrian of the Golden Spear!‘[57]

‘I know, I know!’ the black-bearded Kaifa fearlessly replied, and his eyes flashed. He raised his arm to heaven and went on: ‘The Jewish people know that you hate them with a cruel hatred, and will cause them much suffering, but you will not destroy them utterly! God will protect them! He will hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear, he will protect us from Pilate the destroyer!’

‘Oh, no!’ Pilate exclaimed, and he felt lighter and lighter with every word: there was no more need to pretend, no more need to choose his words. ‘You have complained about me too much to Caesar, and now my hour has come, Kaifa! Now the message will fly from me, and not to the governor in Antioch, and not to Rome, but directly to Capreae, to the emperor himself, the message of how you in Yershalaim are sheltering known criminals from death. And then it will not be water from Solomon’s Pool that I give Yershalaim to drink, as I wanted to do for your own good! No, not water! Remember how on account of you I had to remove the shields with the emperor’s insignia from the walls, had to transfer troops, had, as you see, to come in person to look into what goes on with you here! Remember my words: it is not just one cohort that you will see here in Yershalaim, High Priest - no! The whole Fulminata legion will come under the city walls, the Arabian cavalry will arrive, and then you will hear bitter weeping and wailing! You will remember Bar-Rabban then, whom you saved, and you will regret having sent to his death a philosopher with his peaceful preaching!’

The high priest’s face became covered with blotches, his eyes burned. Like the procurator, he smiled, baring his teeth, and replied:

‘Do you yourself believe what you are saying now, Procurator? No, you do not! It is not peace, not peace, that the seducer of the people of Yershalaim brought us, and you, equestrian, understand that perfectly well. You wanted to release him so that he could disturb the people, outrage the faith, and bring the people under Roman swords! But I, the high priest of the Jews, as long as I live, will not allow the faith to be outraged and will protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?’ And Kaifa raised his arm menacingly: ‘Listen, Procurator!’

Kaifa fell silent, and the procurator again heard a noise as if of the sea, rolling up to the very walls of the garden of Herod the Great. The noise rose from below to the feet and into the face of the procurator. And behind his back, there, beyond the wings of the palace, came alarming trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clanking of iron. The procurator understood that the Roman infantry was already setting out, on his orders, speeding to the parade of death so terrible for rebels and robbers.

‘Do you hear, Procurator?’ the high priest repeated quietly. ‘Are you going to tell me that all this’ — here the high priest raised both arms and the dark hood fell from his head — ‘as been caused by the wretched robber Bar-Rabban?’

The procurator wiped his wet, cold forehead with the back of his hand, looked at the ground, then, squinting at the sky, saw that the red-hot ball was almost over his head and that Kaifa’s shadow had shrunk to nothing by the lion’s tail, and said quietly and indifferently:

‘It’s nearly noon. We got carried away by our conversation, and yet we must proceed.’

Having apologized in refined terms before the high priest, he invited him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and wait until he summoned the other persons needed for the last brief conference and gave one more instruction connected with the execution.

Kaifa bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and stayed in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he told the secretary, who had been waiting for him, to invite to the garden the legate of the legion and the tribune of the cohort, as well as the two members of the Sanhedrin and the head of the temple guard, who had been awaiting his summons on the lower garden terrace, in a round gazebo with a fountain. To this Pilate added that he himself would come out to the garden at once, and withdrew into the palace.

While the secretary was gathering the conference, the procurator met, in a room shielded from the sun by dark curtains, with a certain man, whose face was half covered by a hood, though he could not have been bothered by the sun’s rays in this room. The meeting was a very short one. The procurator quietly spoke a few words to the man, after which he withdrew and Pilate walked out through the colonnade to the garden.

There, in the presence of all those he had desired to see, the procurator solemnly and drily stated that he confirmed the death sentence on Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and officially inquired of the members of the Sanhedrin as to whom among the criminals they would like to grant life. Having received the reply that it was Bar-Rabban, the procurator said:

‘Very well,’ and told the secretary to put it into the record at once, clutched in his hand the clasp that the secretary had picked up from the sand, and said solemnly: ‘It is time!’

Here all those present started down the wide marble stairway between walls of roses that exuded a stupefying aroma, descending lower and lower towards the palace wall, to the gates opening on to the big, smoothly paved square, at the end of which could be seen the columns and statues of the Yershalaim stadium.

As soon as the group entered the square from the garden and mounted the spacious stone platform that dominated the square, Pilate, looking around through narrowed eyelids, assessed the situation.

The space he had just traversed, that is, the space from the palace wall to the platform, was empty, but before him Pilate could no longer see the square - it had been swallowed up by the crowd, which would 38 have poured over the platform and the cleared space as well, had it not been kept at bay by a triple row of Sebastean soldiers to the left of Pilate and soldiers of the auxiliary Iturean cohort to his right.

And so, Pilate mounted the platform, mechanically clutching the useless clasp in his fist and squinting his eyes. The procurator was squinting not because the sun burned his eyes - no! For some reason he did not want to see the group of condemned men who, as he knew perfectly well, were now being brought on to the platform behind him.

As soon as the white cloak with crimson lining appeared high up on the stone cliff over the verge of the human sea, the unseeing Pilate was struck in the ears by a wave of sound: ‘Ha-a-a...’ It started mutedly, arising somewhere far away by the hippodrome, then became thunderous and, having held out for a few seconds, began to subside. ‘They’ve seen me,’ the procurator thought. The wave had not reached its lowest point before it started swelling again unexpectedly and, swaying, rose higher than the first, and as foam boils up on the billows of the sea, so a whistling boiled up on this second wave and, separate, distinguishable from the thunder, the wails of women. ‘They’ve been led on to the platform,’ thought Pilate, ‘and the wails mean that several women got crushed as the crowd surged forward.’

He waited for some time, knowing that no power could silence the crowd before it exhaled all that was pent up in it and fell silent of itself.

And when this moment came, the procurator threw up his right arm, and the last noise was blown away from the crowd.

Then Pilate drew into his breast as much of the hot air as he could and shouted, and his cracked voice carried over thousands of heads:

‘In the name of the emperor Caesar! ...’

Here his ears were struck several times by a clipped iron shout: the cohorts of soldiers raised high their spears and standards and shouted out terribly:

‘Long live Caesar!’

Pilate lifted his face and thrust it straight into the sun. Green fire flared up behind his eyelids, his brain took flame from it, and hoarse Aramaic words went flying over the crowd:

‘Four criminals, arrested in Yershalaim for murder, incitement to rebellion, and outrages against the laws and the faith, have been sentenced to a shameful execution — by hanging on posts! And this execution will presently be carried out on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are Dysmas, Gestas, Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri. Here they stand before you!’

Pilate pointed to his right, not seeing any criminals, but knowing they were there, in place, where they ought to be.

The crowd responded with a long rumble as if of surprise or relief. When it died down, Pilate continued:

‘But only three of them will be executed, for, in accordance with law and custom, in honour of the feast of Passover, to one of the condemned, as chosen by the Lesser Sanhedrin and confirmed by Roman authority, the magnanimous emperor Caesar will return his contemptible life!’

Pilate cried out the words and at the same time listened as the rumble was replaced by a great silence. Not a sigh, not a rustle reached his ears now, and there was even a moment when it seemed to Pilate that everything around him had vanished altogether. The hated city died, and he alone is standing there, scorched by the sheer rays, his face set against the sky. Pilate held the silence a little longer, and then began to cry out:

‘The name of the one who will now be set free before you is ...’

He made one more pause, holding back the name, making sure he had said all, because he knew that the dead city would resurrect once the name of the lucky man was spoken, and no further words would be heard.

‘All?’ Pilate whispered soundlessly to himself. ‘All. The name!’

And, rolling the letter ‘r’ over the silent city, he cried:

‘Bar-Rabban!’

Here it seemed to him that the sun, clanging, burst over him and flooded his ears with fire. This fire raged with roars, shrieks, wails, guffaws and whistles.

Pilate turned and walked back across the platform to the stairs, looking at nothing except the multicoloured squares of the flooring under his feet, so as not to trip. He knew that behind his back the platform was being showered with bronze coins, dates, that people in the howling mob were climbing on shoulders, crushing each other, to see the miracle with their own eyes - how a man already in the grip of death escaped that grip! How the legionaries take the ropes off him, involuntarily causing him burning pain in his arms, dislocated during his interrogation; how he, wincing and groaning, nevertheless smiles a senseless, crazed smile.

He knew that at the same time the convoy was already leading the three men with bound arms to the side stairs, so as to take them to the road going west from the city, towards Bald Mountain. Only when he was off the platform, to the rear of it, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was now safe — he could no longer see the condemned men.

Mingled with the wails of the quieting crowd, yet distinguishable from them, were the piercing cries of heralds repeating, some in Aramaic, others in Greek, all that the procurator had cried out from the platform. Besides that, there came to his ears the tapping, clattering and approaching thud of hoofs, and a trumpet calling out something brief and merry. These sounds were answered by the drilling whistles of boys on the roofs of houses along the street that led from the bazaar to the hippodrome square, and by cries of ‘Look out!’

A soldier, standing alone in the cleared space of the square with a standard in his hand, waved it anxiously, and then the procurator, the legate of the legion, the secretary and the convoy stopped.

A cavalry ala, at an ever-lengthening trot, flew out into the square, so as to cross it at one side, bypassing the mass of people, and ride down a lane under a stone wall covered with creeping vines, taking the shortest route to Bald Mountain.

At a flying trot, small as a boy, dark as a mulatto, the commander of the ala, a Syrian, coming abreast of Pilate, shouted something in a high voice and snatched his sword from its sheath. The angry, sweating black horse shied and reared. Thrusting his sword back into its sheath, the commander struck the horse’s neck with his crop, brought him down, and rode off into the lane, breaking into a gallop. After him, three by three, horsemen flew in a cloud of dust, the tips of their light bamboo lances bobbing, and faces dashed past the procurator - looking especially swarthy under their white turbans — with merrily bared, gleaming teeth.

Raising dust to the sky, the ala burst into the lane, and the last to ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet slung on his back, blazing in the sun.

Shielding himself from the dust with his hand and wrinkling his face discontentedly, Pilate started on in the direction of the gates to the palace garden, and after him came the legate, the secretary, and the convoy.

It was around ten o’clock in the morning.

CHAPTER 3 The Seventh Proof

‘Yes, it was around ten o’clock in the morning, my esteemed Ivan Nikolaevich,‘ said the professor.

The poet passed his hand over his face like a man just coming to his senses, and saw that it was evening at the Patriarch’s Ponds. The water in the pond had turned black, and a light boat was now gliding on it, and one could hear the splash of oars and the giggles of some citizeness in the little boat. The public appeared on the benches along the walks, but again on the other three sides of the square, and not on the side where our interlocutors were.

The sky over Moscow seemed to lose colour, and the full moon could be seen quite distinctly high above, not yet golden but white. It was much easier to breathe, and the voices under the lindens now sounded softer, eveningish.

‘How is it I didn’t notice that he’d managed to spin a whole story? ...’ Homeless thought in amazement. ‘It’s already evening! ... Or maybe he wasn’t telling it, but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it all?’

But it must be supposed that the professor did tell the story after all, otherwise it would have to be assumed that Berlioz had had the same dream, because he said, studying the foreigner’s face attentively:

‘Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not coincide at all with the Gospel stories.’

‘Good heavens,’ the professor responded, smiling condescendingly, ‘you of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually took place, and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source...’ he smiled once more, and Berlioz stopped short, because this was literally the same thing he had been saying to Homeless as they walked down Bronnaya towards the Patriarch’s Ponds.

‘That’s so,’ Berlioz replied, ‘but I’m afraid no one can confirm that what you’ve just told us actually took place either.’

‘Oh, yes! That there is one who can!’ the professor, beginning to speak in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer.

They leaned towards him from both sides, and he said, but again without any accent, which with him, devil knows why, now appeared, now disappeared:

‘The thing is ...’ here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke in a whisper, ‘that I was personally present at it all. I was on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the platform, only secretly, incognito, so to speak, and therefore I beg you - not a word to anyone, total secrecy, shh ...’

Silence fell, and Berlioz paled.

‘You ... how long have you been in Moscow?’ he asked in a quavering voice.

‘I just arrived in Moscow this very minute,’ the professor said perplexedly, and only here did it occur to the friends to take a good look in his eyes, at which they became convinced that his left eye, the green one, was totally insane, while the right one was empty, black and dead.

‘There’s the whole explanation for you!’ Berlioz thought in bewilderment. ‘A mad German has turned up, or just went crazy at the Ponds. What a story!’

Yes, indeed, that explained the whole thing: the most strange breakfast with the late philosopher Kant, the foolish talk about sunflower oil and Annushka, the predictions about his head being cut off and all the rest — the professor was mad.

Berlioz realized at once what had to be done. Leaning back on the bench, he winked to Homeless behind the professor’s back — meaning, don’t contradict him — but the perplexed poet did not understand these signals.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Berlioz said excitedly, ‘incidentally it’s all possible ... even very possible, Pontius Pilate, and the balcony, and so forth ... Did you come alone or with your wife?’

‘Alone, alone, I’m always alone,’ the professor replied bitterly.

‘And where are your things, Professor?’ Berlioz asked insinuatingly. ‘At the Metropol?[58] Where are you staying?’

‘I? ... Nowhere,’ the half-witted German answered, his green eye wandering in wild anguish over the Patriarch’s Ponds.

‘How’s that? But ... where are you going to live?’

‘In your apartment,’ the madman suddenly said brashly, and winked.

‘I ... I’m very glad ...’ Berlioz began muttering, ‘but, really, you won’t be comfortable at my place ... and they have wonderful rooms at the Metropol, it’s a first-class hotel ...’

‘And there’s no devil either?’ the sick man suddenly inquired merrily of Ivan Nikolaevich.

‘No devil...’

‘Don’t contradict him,’ Berlioz whispered with his lips only, dropping behind the professor’s back and making faces.

‘There isn’t any devil!’ Ivan Nikolaevich, at a loss from all this balderdash, cried out not what he ought. ‘What a punishment! Stop playing the psycho!’

Here the insane man burst into such laughter that a sparrow flew out of the linden over the seated men’s heads.

‘Well, now that is positively interesting!’ the professor said, shaking with laughter. ‘What is it with you — no matter what one asks for, there isn’t any!’ He suddenly stopped laughing and, quite understandably for a mentally ill person, fell into the opposite extreme after laughing, became vexed and cried sternly: ‘So you mean there just simply isn’t any?’

‘Calm down, calm down, calm down, Professor,’ Berlioz muttered, for fear of agitating the sick man. ‘You sit here for a little minute with Comrade Homeless, and I’ll just run to the comer to make a phone call, and then we’ll take you wherever you like. You don’t know the city ...’

Berlioz’s plan must be acknowledged as correct: he had to run to the nearest public telephone and inform the foreigners’ bureau, thus and so, there’s some consultant from abroad sitting at the Patriarch’s Ponds in an obviously abnormal state. So it was necessary to take measures, lest some unpleasant nonsense result.

‘To make a call? Well, then make your call,’ the sick man agreed sadly, and suddenly begged passionately: ‘But I implore you, before you go, at least believe that the devil exists! I no longer ask you for anything more. Mind you, there exists a seventh proof of it, the surest of all! And it is going to be presented to you right now!’

‘Very good, very good,’ Berlioz said with false tenderness and, winking to the upset poet, who did not relish at all the idea of guarding the mad German, set out for the exit from the Ponds at the comer of Bronnaya and Yermolaevsky Lane.

And the professor seemed to recover his health and brighten up at once.

‘Mikhail Alexandrovich!’ he shouted after Berlioz.

The latter gave a start, looked back, but reassured himself with the thought that the professor had also learned his name and patronymic from some newspaper.

Then the professor called out, cupping his hands like a megaphone:

‘Would you like me to have a telegram sent at once to your uncle in Kiev?’

And again Berlioz winced. How does the madman know about the existence of a Kievan uncle? That has certainly never been mentioned in any newspapers. Oh-oh, maybe Homeless is right after all? And suppose his papers are phoney? Ah, what a strange specimen ... Call, call! Call at once! They’ll quickly explain him!

And, no longer listening to anything, Berlioz ran on.

Here, just at the exit to Bronnaya, there rose from a bench to meet the editor exactly the same citizen who in the sunlight earlier had formed himself out of the thick swelter. Only now he was no longer made of air, but ordinary, fleshly, and Berlioz clearly distinguished in the beginning twilight that he had a little moustache like chicken feathers, tiny eyes, ironic and half drunk, and checkered trousers pulled up so high that his dirty white socks showed.

Mikhail Alexandrovich drew back, but reassured himself by reflecting that it was a stupid coincidence and that generally there was no time to think about it now.

‘Looking for the turnstile, citizen?’ the checkered type inquired in a cracked tenor. ‘This way, please! Straight on and you’ll get where you’re going. How about a little pint pot for my information ... to set up an ex-choirmaster!...’ Mugging, the specimen swept his jockey’s cap from his head.

Berlioz, not stopping to listen to the cadging and clowning choirmaster, ran up to the turnstile and took hold of it with his hand. He turned it and was just about to step across the rails when red and white light splashed in his face. A sign lit up in a glass box: ‘Caution Tram-Car!’

And right then this tram-car came racing along, turning down the newly laid line from Yermolaevsky to Bronnaya. Having turned, and coming to the straight stretch, it suddenly lit up inside with electricity, whined, and put on speed.

The prudent Berlioz, though he was standing in a safe place, decided to retreat behind the stile, moved his hand on the crossbar, and stepped back. And right then his hand slipped and slid, one foot, unimpeded, as if on ice, went down the cobbled slope leading to the rails, the other was thrust into the air, and Berlioz was thrown on to the rails.

Trying to get hold of something, Berlioz fell backwards, the back of his head lightly striking the cobbles, and had time to see high up — but whether to right or left he no longer knew — the gold-tinged moon. He managed to turn on his side, at the same moment drawing his legs to his stomach in a frenzied movement, and, while turning, to make out the face, completely white with horror, and the crimson armband of the woman driver bearing down on him with irresistible force. Berlioz did not cry out, but around him the whole street screamed with desperate female voices.

The woman driver tore at the electric brake, the car dug its nose into the ground, then instantly jumped up, and glass flew from the windows with a crash and a jingle. Here someone in Berlioz’s brain cried desperately: ‘Can it be? ...’ Once more, and for the last time, the moon flashed, but now breaking to pieces, and then it became dark.

The tram-car went over Berlioz, and a round dark object was thrown up the cobbled slope below the fence of the Patriarch’s walk. Having rolled back down this slope, it went bouncing along the cobblestones of the street.

It was the severed head of Berlioz.

CHAPTER 4 The Chase

The hysterical women’s cries died down, the police whistles stopped drilling, two ambulances drove off - one with the headless body and severed head, to the morgue, the other with the beautiful driver, wounded by broken glass; street sweepers in white aprons removed the broken glass and poured sand on the pools of blood, but Ivan Nikolaevich just stayed on the bench as he had dropped on to it before reaching the turnstile. He tried several times to get up, but his legs would not obey him — something akin to paralysis had occurred with Homeless.

The poet had rushed to the turnstile as soon as he heard the first scream, and had seen the head go bouncing along the pavement. With that he so lost his senses that, having dropped on to the bench, he bit his hand until it bled. Of course, he forgot about the mad German and tried to figure out one thing only: how it could be that he had just been talking with Berlioz, and a moment later - the head ...

Agitated people went running down the walk past the poet, exclaiming something, but Ivan Nikolaevich was insensible to their words. However, two women unexpectedly ran into each other near him, and one of them, sharp-nosed and bare-headed, shouted the following to the other, right next to the poet’s ear:

‘... Annushka, our Annushka! From Sadovaya! It’s her work ... She bought sunflower oil at the grocery, and went and broke the whole litre-bottle on the turnstile! Messed her skirt all up, and swore and swore! ... And he, poor man, must have slipped and - right on to the rails ...’

Of all that the woman shouted, one word lodged itself in Ivan Nikolaevich’s upset brain: ‘Annushka’...

‘Annushka ... Annushka?’ the poet muttered, looking around anxiously. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute ...’

The word ‘Annushka’ got strung together with the words ’sunflower oil‘, and then for some reason with ’Pontius Pilate‘. The poet dismissed Pilate and began linking up the chain that started from the word ’Annushka‘. And this chain got very quickly linked up and led at once to the mad professor.

‘Excuse me! But he did say the meeting wouldn’t take place because Annushka had spilled the oil. And, if you please, it won’t take place! What’s more, he said straight out that Berlioz’s head would be cut off by a woman?! Yes, yes, yes! And the driver was a woman! What is all this, eh?!’

There was not a grain of doubt left that the mysterious consultant had known beforehand the exact picture of the terrible death of Berlioz. Here two thoughts pierced the poet’s brain. The first: ‘He’s not mad in the least, that’s all nonsense!’ And the second: ‘Then didn’t he set it all up himself?’

‘But in what manner, may we ask?! Ah, no, this we’re going to find out!’

Making a great effort, Ivan Nikolaevich got up from the bench and rushed back to where he had been talking with the professor. And, fortunately, it turned out that the man had not left yet.

The street lights were already lit on Bronnaya, and over the Ponds the golden moon shone, and in the ever-deceptive light of the moon it seemed to Ivan Nikolaevich that he stood holding a sword, not a walking stick, under his arm.

The ex-choirmaster was sitting in the very place where Ivan Nikolaevich had sat just recently. Now the busybody had perched on his nose an obviously unnecessary pince-nez, in which one lens was missing altogether and the other was cracked. This made the checkered citizen even more repulsive than he had been when he showed Berlioz the way to the rails.

With a chill in his heart, Ivan approached the professor and, glancing into his face, became convinced that there were not and never had been any signs of madness in that face.

‘Confess, who are you?’ Ivan asked in a hollow voice.

The foreigner scowled, looked at the poet as if he were seeing him for the first time, and answered inimically:

‘No understand ... no speak Russian ...’

‘The gent don’t understand,’ the choirmaster mixed in from the bench, though no one had asked him to explain the foreigner’s words.

‘Don’t pretend!’ Ivan said threateningly, and felt cold in the pit of his stomach. ‘You spoke excellent Russian just now. You’re not a German and you’re not a professor! You’re a murderer and a spy! ... Your papers!’ Ivan cried fiercely.

The mysterious professor squeamishly twisted his mouth, which was twisted to begin with, then shrugged his shoulders.

‘Citizen!’ the loathsome choirmaster butted in again. ‘What’re you doing bothering a foreign tourist? For that you’ll incur severe punishment!’

And the suspicious professor made an arrogant face, turned, and walked away from Ivan. Ivan felt himself at a loss. Breathless, he addressed the choirmaster.

‘Hey, citizen, help me to detain the criminal! It’s your duty!’

The choirmaster became extraordinarily animated, jumped up and hollered:

‘What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal?’ The choirmaster’s eyes sparkled gleefully. That one? If he’s a criminal, the first thing to do is shout “Help!” Or else he’ll get away. Come on, together now, one, two!‘ - and here the choirmaster opened his maw.

Totally at a loss, Ivan obeyed the trickster and shouted ‘Help!’ but the choirmaster bluffed him and did not shout anything.

Ivan’s solitary, hoarse cry did not produce any good results. Two girls shied away from him, and he heard the word ‘drunk’.

‘Ah, so you’re in with him!’ Ivan cried out, waxing wroth. ‘What are you doing, jeering at me? Out of my way!’

Ivan dashed to the right, and so did the choirmaster; Ivan dashed to the left, and the scoundrel did the same.

‘Getting under my feet on purpose?’ Ivan cried, turning ferocious. ‘I’ll hand you over to the police!’

Ivan attempted to grab the blackguard by the sleeve, but missed and caught precisely nothing: it was as if the choirmaster fell through the earth.

Ivan gasped, looked into the distance, and saw the hateful stranger. He was already at the exit to Patriarch’s Lane; moreover, he was not alone. The more than dubious choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was still not all: the third in this company proved to be a tom-cat, who appeared out of nowhere, huge as a hog, black as soot or as a rook, and with a desperate cavalryman’s whiskers. The trio set off down Patriarch’s Lane, the cat walking on his hind legs.

Ivan sped after the villains and became convinced at once that it would be very difficult to catch up with them.

The trio shot down the lane in an instant and came out on Spiridonovka. No matter how Ivan quickened his pace, the distance between him and his quarry never diminished. And before the poet knew it, he emerged, after the quiet of Spiridonovka, by the Nikitsky Gate, where his situation worsened. The place was swarming with people. Besides, the gang of villains decided to apply the favourite trick of bandits here: a scattered getaway.

The choirmaster, with great dexterity, bored his way on to a bus speeding towards the Arbat Square and slipped away. Having lost one of his quarry, Ivan focused his attention on the cat and saw this strange cat go up to the footboard of an ‘A’ tram waiting at a stop, brazenly elbow aside a woman, who screamed, grab hold of the handrail, and even make an attempt to shove a ten-kopeck piece into the conductress’s hand through the window, open on account of the stuffiness.

Ivan was so struck by the cat’s behaviour that he froze motionless by the grocery store on the comer, and here he was struck for a second time, but much more strongly, by the conductress’s behaviour. As soon as she saw the cat getting into the tram-car, she shouted with a malice that even made her shake:

‘No cats allowed! Nobody with cats allowed! Scat! Get off, or I’ll call the police!’

Neither the conductress nor the passengers were struck by the essence of the matter: not just that a cat was boarding a tram-car, which would have been good enough, but that he was going to pay!

The cat turned out to be not only a solvent but also a disciplined animal. At the very first shout from the conductress, he halted his advance, got off the footboard, and sat down at the stop, rubbing his whiskers with the ten-kopeck piece. But as soon as the conductress yanked the cord and the tram-car started moving off, the cat acted like anyone who has been expelled from a tram-car but still needs a ride. Letting all three cars go by, the cat jumped on to the rear coupling-pin of the last one, wrapped its paws around some hose sticking out of the side, and rode off, thus saving himself ten kopecks.

Occupied with the obnoxious cat, Ivan almost lost the main one of the three — the professor. But, fortunately, the man had not managed to slip away. Ivan saw the grey beret in the throng at the head of Bolshaya Nikitskaya, now Herzen, Street. In the twinkling of an eye, Ivan arrived there himself. However, he had no luck. The poet would quicken his pace, break into a trot, shove passers-by, yet not get an inch closer to the professor.

Upset as he was, Ivan was still struck by the supernatural speed of the chase. Twenty seconds had not gone by when, after the Nikitsky Gate, Ivan Nikolaevich was already dazzled by the lights of the Arbat Square. Another few seconds, and here was some dark lane with slanting sidewalks, where Ivan Nikolaevich took a tumble and hurt his knee. Again a lit-up thoroughfare — Kropotkin Street — then a lane, then Ostozhenka, then another lane, dismal, vile and sparsely lit. And it was here that Ivan Nikolaevich definitively lost him whom he needed so much. The professor disappeared.

Ivan Nikolaevich was perplexed, but not for long, because he suddenly realized that the professor must unfailingly be found in house no. 13, and most assuredly in apartment 47.

Bursting into the entrance, Ivan Nikolaevich flew up to the second floor, immediately found the apartment, and rang impatiently. He did not have to wait long. Some little girl of about five opened the door for Ivan and, without asking him anything, immediately went away somewhere.

In the huge, extremely neglected front hall, weakly lit by a tiny carbon arc lamp under the high ceiling, black with grime, a bicycle without tyres hung on the wall, a huge iron-bound trunk stood, and on a shelf over the coat rack a winter hat lay, its long ear-flaps hanging down. Behind one of the doors, a resonant male voice was angrily shouting something in verse from a radio set.

Ivan Nikolaevich was not the least at a loss in the unfamiliar surroundings and rushed straight into the corridor, reasoning thus: ‘Of course, he’s hiding in the bathroom.’ The corridor was dark. Having bumped into the wall a few times, Ivan saw a faint streak of light under a door, felt for the handle, and pulled it gently. The hook popped out, and Ivan found himself precisely in the bathroom and thought how lucky he was.

However, his luck was not all it might have been! Ivan met with a wave of humid heat and, by the light of the coals smouldering in the boiler, made out big basins hanging on the walls, and a bath tub, all black frightful blotches where the enamel had chipped off. And there, in this bath tub, stood a naked citizeness, all soapy and with a scrubber in her hand. She squinted near-sightedly at the bursting-in Ivan and, obviously mistaking him in the infernal light, said softly and gaily:

‘Kiriushka! Stop this tomfoolery! Have you lost your mind? ... Fyodor Ivanych will be back any minute. Get out right now!’ and she waved at Ivan with the scrubber.

The misunderstanding was evident, and Ivan Nikolaevich was, of course, to blame for it. But he did not want to admit it and, exclaiming reproachfully: ‘Ah, wanton creature! ...’, at once found himself for some reason in the kitchen. No one was there, and on the oven in the semi-darkness silently stood about a dozen extinguished primuses.[59] A single moonbeam, having seeped through the dusty, perennially unwashed window, shone sparsely into the comer where, in dust and cobwebs, a forgotten icon hung, with the ends of two wedding candles[60] peeking out from behind its casing. Under the big icon, pinned to it, hung a little one made of paper.

No one knows what thought took hold of Ivan here, but before running out the back door, he appropriated one of these candles, as well as the paper icon. With these objects, he left the unknown apartment, muttering something, embarrassed at the thought of what he had just experienced in the bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this impudent Kiriushka might be and whether the disgusting hat with ear-flaps belonged to him.

In the desolate, joyless lane the poet looked around, searching for the fugitive, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said firmly to himself:

‘Why, of course, he’s at the Moscow River! Onward!’

Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed that the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome lane was completely empty.

In the very shortest time, Ivan Nikolaevich could be seen on the granite steps of the Moscow River amphitheatre.[61]

Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant, bearded fellow who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting beside a torn white Tolstoy blouse and a pair of unlaced, worn boots. After waving his arms to cool off, Ivan dived swallow-fashion into the water. It took his breath away, so cold the water was, and the thought even flashed in him that he might not manage to come up to the surface. However, he did manage to come up, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes rounded in terror, Ivan Nikolaevich began swimming through the black, oil-smelling water among the broken zigzags of street lights on the bank.

When the wet Ivan came dancing back up the steps to the place where the bearded fellow was guarding his clothes, it became clear that not only the latter, but also the former — that is, the bearded fellow himself — had been stolen. In the exact spot where the pile of clothes had been, a pair of striped drawers, the torn Tolstoy blouse, the candle, the icon and a box of matches had been left. After threatening someone in the distance with his fist in powerless anger, Ivan put on what was left for him.

Here two considerations began to trouble him: first, that his Massolit identification card, which he never parted with, was gone, and, second, whether he could manage to get through Moscow unhindered looking the way he did now? In striped drawers, after all ... True, it was nobody’s business, but still there might be some hitch or delay.

Ivan tore off the buttons where the drawers fastened at the ankle, figuring that this way they might pass for summer trousers, gathered up the icon, the candle and the matches, and started off, saying to himself:

‘To Griboedov’s! Beyond all doubt, he’s there.’

The city was already living its evening life. Trucks flew through the dust, chains clanking, and on their platforms men lay sprawled belly up on sacks. All windows were open. In each of these windows a light burned under an orange lampshade, and from every window, every door, every gateway, roof, and attic, basement and courtyard blared the hoarse roar of the polonaise from the opera Evgeny Onegin.[62]

Ivan Nikolaevich’s apprehensions proved fully justified: passers-by did pay attention to him and turned their heads. As a result, he took the decision to leave the main streets and make his way through back lanes, where people are not so importunate, where there were fewer chances of them picking on a barefoot man, pestering him with questions about his drawers, which stubbornly refused to look like trousers.

This Ivan did, and, penetrating the mysterious network of lanes around the Arbat, he began making his way along the walls, casting fearful sidelong glances, turning around every moment, hiding in gateways from time to time, avoiding intersections with traffic lights and the grand entrances of embassy mansions.

And all along his difficult way, he was for some reason inexpressibly tormented by the ubiquitous orchestra that accompanied the heavy basso singing about his love for Tatiana.

CHAPTER 5 There were Doings at Griboedov’s

The old, two-storeyed, cream-coloured house stood on the ring boulevard, in the depths of a seedy garden, separated from the sidewalk by a fancy cast-iron fence. The small terrace in front of the house was paved with asphalt, and in wintertime was dominated by a snow pile with a shovel stuck in it, but in summertime turned into the most magnificent section of the summer restaurant under a canvas tent.

The house was called ‘The House of Griboedov’ on the grounds that it was alleged to have once belonged to an aunt of the writer Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov.[63] Now, whether it did or did not belong to her, we do not exactly know. On recollection, it even seems that Griboedov never had any such house-owning aunt ... Nevertheless, that was what the house was called. Moreover, one Moscow liar had it that there, on the second floor, in a round hall with columns, the famous writer had supposedly read passages from Woe From Wit to this very aunt while she reclined on a sofa. However, devil knows, maybe he did, it’s of no importance.

What is important is that at the present time this house was owned by that same Massolit which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch’s Ponds.

In the casual manner of Massolit members, no one called the house ‘The House of Griboedov’, everyone simply said ‘Griboedov’s‘: ’I spent two hours yesterday knocking about Griboedov’s.‘ ’Well, and so?‘ ’Got myself a month in Yalta.‘ ’Bravo!‘ Or: ’Go to Berlioz, he receives today from four to five at Griboedov’s ...‘ and so on.

Massolit had settled itself at Griboedov’s in the best and cosiest way imaginable. Anyone entering Griboedov’s first of all became involuntarily acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs, and with group as well as individual photographs of the members of Massolit, hanging (the photographs) on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.

On the door to the very first room of this upper floor one could see a big sign: ‘Fishing and Vacation Section’, along with the picture of a carp caught on a line.

On the door of room no. 2 something not quite comprehensible was written: ‘One-day Creative Trips. Apply to M. V. Spurioznaya.’

The next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible inscription: ‘Perelygino’.[64] After which the chance visitor to Griboedov’s would not know where to look from the motley inscriptions on the aunt’s walnut doors: ‘Sign up for Paper with Poklevkina’, ‘Cashier’, ‘Personal Accounts of Sketch-Writers’ ...

If one cut through the longest line, which already went downstairs and out to the doorman’s lodge, one could see the sign ‘Housing Question’ on a door which people were crashing every second.

Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on which a cliff was depicted and, riding on its crest, a horseman in a felt cloak with a rifle on his shoulder. A little lower — palm trees and a balcony; on the balcony — a seated young man with a forelock, gazing somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand. The inscription: ‘Full-scale Creative Vacations from Two Weeks (Story/Novella) to One Year (Novel/Trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe, Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).’[65] There was also a line at this door, but not an excessive one - some hundred and fifty people.

Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the Griboedov house, came the ‘Massolit Executive Board’, ‘Cashiers nos. 2, 3, 4, 5’, ’Editorial Board‘, ’Chairman of Massolit‘, ’Billiard Room‘, various auxiliary institutions and, finally, that same hall with the colonnade where the aunt had delighted in the comedy of her genius nephew.

Any visitor finding himself in Griboedov’s, unless of course he was a total dim-wit, would realize at once what a good life those lucky fellows, the Massolit members, were having, and black envy would immediately start gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Massolit membership card, brown, smelling of costly leather, with a wide gold border — a card known to all Moscow.

Who will speak in defence of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor’s position. For what he had seen on the upper floor was not all, and was far from all. The entire ground floor of the aunt’s house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in Moscow. And not only because it took up two vast halls with arched ceilings, painted with violet, Assyrian-maned horses, not only because on each table there stood a lamp shaded with a shawl, not only because it was not accessible to just anybody coming in off the street, but because in the quality of its fare Griboedov’s beat any restaurant in Moscow up and down, and this fare was available at the most reasonable, by no means onerous, price.

Hence there was nothing surprising, for instance, in the following conversation, which the author of these most truthful lines once heard near the cast-iron fence of Griboedov’s:

‘Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?’

‘What a question! Why, here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there will be perch au naturel done to order. A virtuoso little treat!’

‘You sure know how to live, Amvrosy!’ skinny, run-down Foka, with a carbuncle on his neck, replied with a sigh to the ruddy-lipped giant, golden-haired, plump-cheeked Amvrosy-the-poet.

‘I have no special knowledge,’ Amvrosy protested, ‘just the ordinary wish to live like a human being. You mean to say, Foka, that perch can be met with at the Coliseum as well. But at the Coliseum a portion of perch costs thirteen roubles fifteen kopecks, and here — five-fifty! Besides, at the Coliseum they serve three-day-old perch, and, besides, there’s no guarantee you won’t get slapped in the mug with a bunch of grapes at the Coliseum by the first young man who bursts in from Theatre Alley. No, I’m categorically opposed to the Coliseum,’ the gastronome Amvrosy boomed for the whole boulevard to hear. ‘Don’t try to convince me, Foka!’

‘I’m not trying to convince you, Amvrosy,’ Foka squeaked. ‘One can also dine at home.’

‘I humbly thank you,’ trumpeted Amvrosy, ‘but I can imagine your wife, in the communal kitchen at home, trying to do perch au naturel to order in a saucepan! Hee, hee, hee! ... Aurevwar, Foka!’ And, humming, Amvrosy directed his steps to the veranda under the tent.

Ahh, yes! ... Yes, there was a time! ... Old Muscovites will remember the renowned Griboedov’s! What is poached perch done to order! Cheap stuff, my dear Amvrosy! But sterlet, sterlet in a silvery chafing dish, sterlet slices interlaid with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? And eggs en cocotte with mushroom purée in little dishes? And how did you like the fillets of thrush? With truffles? Quail à la génoise? Nine-fifty! And the jazz, and the courteous service! And in July, when the whole family is in the country, and you are kept in the city by urgent literary business - on the veranda, in the shade of the creeping vines, in a golden spot on the cleanest of tablecloths, a bowl of soup printanier? Remember, Amvrosy? But why ask! I can see by your lips that you do. What is your whitefish, your perch! But the snipe, the great snipe, the jack snipe, the woodcock in their season, the quail, the curlew? Cool seltzer fizzing in your throat?! But enough, you are getting distracted, reader! Follow me! ...

At half past ten on the evening when Berlioz died at the Patriarch’s Ponds, only one room was lit upstairs at Griboedov’s, and in it languished twelve writers who had gathered for a meeting and were waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Sitting on chairs, and on tables, and even on the two window-sills in the office of the Massolit executive board, they suffered seriously from the heat. Not a single breath of fresh air came through the open windows. Moscow was releasing the heat accumulated in the asphalt all day, and it was clear that night would bring no relief. The smell of onions came from the basement of the aunt’s house, where the restaurant kitchen was at work, they were all thirsty, they were all nervous and angry.

The belletrist Beskudnikov - a quiet, decently dressed man with attentive and at the same time elusive eyes — took out his watch. The hand was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the face and showed it to the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting next to him on the table and in boredom dangling his feet shod in yellow shoes with rubber treads.

‘Anyhow,’ grumbled Dvubratsky.

‘The laddie must’ve got stuck on the Klyazma,’ came the thick-voiced response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant, who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the pen-name of Bos’n George.

‘Excuse me!’ boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches, ‘but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in here. The meeting was set for ten o’clock, wasn’t it?’

‘It’s nice now on the Klyazma,’ Bos’n George needled those present, knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was everybody’s sore spot. ‘There’s nightingales singing already. I always work better in the country, especially in spring.’

‘It’s the third year I’ve paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to this paradise, but there’s nothing to be spied amidst the waves,’ the novelist Ieronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.

‘Some are lucky and some aren’t,‘ the critic Ababkov droned from the window-sill.

Bos’n George’s little eyes lit up with glee, and she said, softening her contralto:

‘We mustn’t be envious, comrades. There’s twenty-two dachas[66] in all, and only seven more being built, and there’s three thousand of us in Massolit.’

‘Three thousand one hundred and eleven,’ someone put in from the corner.

‘So you see,’ the Bos’n went on, ‘what can be done? Naturally, it’s the most talented of us that got the dachas ...’

‘The generals!’ Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.

Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.

‘Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,’ Glukharev said behind him.

‘Lavrovich has six to himself,’ Deniskin cried out, ‘and the dining room’s panelled in oak!’

‘Eh, that’s not the point right now,’ Ababkov droned, ‘it’s that it’s half past eleven.’

A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich’s, found out that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 930, and of course found no one there.

‘He might have called!’ shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.

Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov’s, in an enormous room lit by thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had still recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.

On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on the third, a pile of stiffened rags.

Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich’s assistant in Massolit, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife’s side.

A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man’s apartment, where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all went to the morgue.

And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov’s after simply covering the dead man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?

No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally, were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but airless halls.

And exactly at midnight, in the first of these halls, something crashed, jangled, spilled, leaped. And all at once a high male voice desperately cried out ‘Hallelujah!’ to the music. The famous Griboedov jazz band struck up. Sweat-covered faces seemed to brighten, it was as if the horses painted on the ceiling came alive, the lamps seemed to shine with added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance, and following them the veranda broke into dance.

Glukharev danced with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Quant danced, Zhukopov the novelist danced with some movie actress in a yellow dress. Dragunsky danced, Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin danced with the enormous Bos’n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited guests danced, Muscovites and out-of-towners, the writer Johann from Kronstadt, a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director, with a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent representatives of the poetry section of Massolit danced — that is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky, Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Adelphina Buzdyak - young men of unknown profession, in crew cuts, with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very elderly danced, a shred of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him danced a sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.

Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: ‘Excuse me, citizen!’ Somewhere through a megaphone a voice commanded: ‘One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas! Home-style tripe!’ The high voice no longer sang, but howled ‘Hallelujah!’ The clashing of golden cymbals in the band sometimes even drowned out the clashing of dishes which the dishwashers sent down a sloping chute to the kitchen. In short - hell.

And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.

But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it ... And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone’s bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you’re afraid, afraid ... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison! ...

And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table: ‘Berlioz!!’ The jazz broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. ‘What, what, what, what?!!’ ‘Berlioz!!!’ And they began jumping up, exclaiming ...

Yes, a wave of grief billowed up at the terrible news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once, straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram 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 volaille perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? By going hungry? But, after all, we’re alive!

Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the jazz 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[67] waiting at the gates of the Griboedov house. One of them, rising on his box, was heard to cry out:

‘Hoo-ee! Just look at that!’

After which, from God knows where, a little light flashed by the cast-iron fence and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the tables began to get up and peer at it, and saw that along with the little light a white ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right up to the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at their tables, chunks of sterlet on their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who at that moment had stepped out of the restaurant coat room to have a smoke in the yard, stamped out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and stopped, smiling stupidly.

And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all, but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.

He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon bearing the image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich’s right cheek was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter’s hand.

The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly:

‘Hail, friends!’ After which he peeked under the nearest table and exclaimed ruefully: ‘No, he’s not there!’

Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly:

‘That’s it. Delirium tremens.’

And the second, a woman’s, frightened, uttered the words:

‘How could the police let him walk the streets like that?’

This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied:

‘They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but I hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!’ Here Ivan Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: ‘Brethren in literature!’ (His hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) ‘Listen to me everyone! He has appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he’ll do untold harm!’

‘What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?’ voices came from all sides.

‘The consultant,’ Ivan replied, ‘and this consultant just killed Misha Berlioz at the Patriarch’s Ponds.’

Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd gathered around Ivan’s flame.

‘Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,’ a soft and polite voice said over Ivan Nikolaevich’s ear, ‘tell me, what do you mean “killed”? Who killed?’

‘A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,’ Ivan said, looking around.

‘And what is his name?’ came softly to Ivan’s ear.

‘That’s just it - his name!’ Ivan cried in anguish. ‘If only I knew his name! I didn’t make out his name on his visiting card ... I only remember the first letter, “W”, his name begins with “W”! What last name begins with “W”?’ Ivan asked himself, clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: ‘Wi, we, wa ... Wu ... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?’ The hair on Ivan’s head began to crawl with the tension.

‘Wolf?’ some woman cried pitifully.

Ivan became angry.

‘Fool!’ he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. ‘What has Wolf got to do with it? Wolf’s not to blame for anything! Wo, wa ... No, I’ll never remember this way! Here’s what, citizens: call the police at once, let them send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And don’t forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat ... And meanwhile I’ll search Griboedov’s, I sense that he’s here!’

Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here someone said: ‘Call a doctor!’ and someone’s benign, fleshy face, clean shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.

‘Comrade Homeless,’ the face began in a guest speaker’s voice, ‘calm down! You’re upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich ... no, say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you’ll forget ...’

‘You,’ Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, ‘but don’t you understand that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your foolishness! Cretin!’

‘Pardon me, Comrade Homeless!...’ the face replied, blushing, retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.

‘No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said with quiet hatred.

A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the ear.

Here it occurred to them to fall upon Ivan — and so they did. The candle went out, and the glasses that had fallen from the face were instantly trampled. Ivan let out a terrible war cry, heard, to the temptation of all, even on the boulevard, and set about defending himself. Dishes fell clattering from the tables, women screamed.

All the while the waiters were tying up the poet with napkins, a conversation was going on in the coat room between the commander of the brig and the doorman.

‘Didn’t you see he was in his underpants?’ the pirate inquired coldly.

‘But, Archibald Archibaldovich,’ the doorman replied, cowering, ‘how could I not let him in, if he’s a member of Massolit?’

‘Didn’t you see he was in his underpants?’ the pirate repeated.

‘Pardon me, Archibald Archibaldovich,’ the doorman said, turning purple, ‘but what could I do? I understand, there are ladies sitting on the veranda ...’

‘Ladies have nothing to do with it, it makes no difference to the ladies,’ the pirate replied, literally burning the doorman up with his eyes, ‘but it does to the police! A man in his underwear can walk the streets of Moscow only in this one case, that he’s accompanied by the police, and only to one place — the police station! And you, if you’re a doorman, ought to know that on seeing such a man, you must, without a moment’s delay, start blowing your whistle. Do you hear? Do you hear what’s going on on the veranda?’

Here the half-crazed doorman heard some sort of hooting coming from the veranda, the smashing of dishes and women’s screams.

‘Now, what’s to be done with you for that?’ the freebooter asked.

The skin on the doorman’s face acquired a typhoid tinge, his eyes went dead. It seemed to him that the black hair, now combed and parted, was covered with flaming silk. The shirt-front and tailcoat disappeared and a pistol butt emerged, tucked into a leather belt. The doorman pictured himself hanging from the fore-topsail yard. His eyes saw his own tongue sticking out and his lifeless head lolling on his shoulder, and even heard the splash of waves against the hull. The doorman’s knees gave way. But here the freebooter took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.

‘Watch out, Nikolai, this is the last time! We have no need of such doormen in the restaurant. Go find yourself a job as a beadle.’ Having said this, the commander commanded precisely, clearly, rapidly: ‘Get Pantelei from the snack bar. Police. Protocol. A car. To the psychiatric clinic.’ And added: ‘Blow your whistle!’

In a quarter of an hour an extremely astounded public, not only in the restaurant but on the boulevard itself and in the windows of houses looking on to the restaurant garden, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Riukhin carry through the gates of Griboedov’s a young man swaddled like a doll, dissolved in tears, who spat, aiming precisely at Riukhin, and shouted for all the boulevard to hear:

‘You bastard! ... You bastard! ...’

A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins, shouted:

‘Have a run for your money! I’ve taken ’em to the psychics before!’

Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov’s the unfortunate Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin.

CHAPTER 6 Schizophrenia, as was Said

It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there. The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been tied up lay in a pile on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich’s arms and legs were free.

Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said timidly:

‘Hello, Doctor.’

The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor’s entrance.

‘Here, Doctor,’ Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, ‘is the renowned poet Ivan Homeless ... well, you see ... we’re afraid it might be delirium tremens ...’

‘Was he drinking hard?’ the doctor said through his teeth.

‘No, he drank, but not really so ...’

‘Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking dogs?’

‘No,’ Riukhin replied with a shudder, ‘I saw him yesterday and this morning ... he was perfectly well.’

‘And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?’

‘No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way...’

‘Aha, aha,’ the doctor said with great satisfaction, ‘and why the scratches? Did he have a fight?’

‘He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody ... and then somebody else ...’

‘So, so, so,’ the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: ‘Hello there!’

‘Greetings, saboteur!’[68] Ivan replied spitefully and loudly.

Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:

‘How old are you?’

‘You can all go to the devil!’ Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.

‘But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?’

‘I’m twenty-three years old,’ Ivan began excitedly, ‘and I’ll file a complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!’ he adverted separately to Riukhin.

‘And what do you want to complain about?’

‘About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force to a madhouse!’ Ivan replied wrathfully.

Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly no insanity in the man’s eyes. No longer dull as they had been at Griboedov’s, they were now clear as ever.

‘Good God!’ Riukhin thought fearfully. ‘So he’s really normal! What nonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He’s normal, normal, only his mug got scratched ...’

‘You are,’ the doctor began calmly, sitting down on a white stool with a shiny foot, ‘not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will keep you if it’s not necessary.’

Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the comer of his eye, but still grumbled:

‘Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots, of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!’

‘Who is this giftless Sashka?’ the doctor inquired.

‘This one here - Riukhin,’ Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger in Riukhin’s direction.

The latter flushed with indignation. ‘That’s the thanks I get,’ he thought bitterly, ‘for showing concern for him! What trash, really!’

‘Psychologically, a typical little kulak,’[69] Ivan Nikolaevich began, evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin, ‘and, what’s more, a little kulak carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for the First of May[70] — heh, heh, heh ... “Soaring up!” and “Soaring down!!” But if you could look inside him and see what he thinks ... you’d gasp!’ And Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.

Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just one thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern for a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there was nothing to be done: there’s no arguing with the mentally ill!

‘And why, actually, were you brought here?’ the doctor asked, after listening attentively to Homeless’s denunciations.

‘Devil take them, the numskulls! They seized me, tied me up with some rags, and dragged me away in a truck!’

‘May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?’

‘There’s nothing surprising about that,’ Ivan replied. ‘I went for a swim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash! I couldn’t very well walk around Moscow naked! I put it on because I was hurrying to Griboedov’s restaurant.’

The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly:

‘The name of the restaurant.’

‘Aha,’ said the doctor, ‘and why were you in such a hurry? Some business meeting?’

‘I’m trying to catch the consultant,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked around anxiously.

‘What consultant?’

‘Do you know Berlioz?’ Ivan asked significantly.

‘The ... composer?’

Ivan got upset.

‘What composer? Ah, yes ... Ah, no. The composer has the same name as Misha Berlioz.’

Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain:

‘The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight at the Patriarch’s Ponds.’

‘Don’t blab about what you don’t know!’ Ivan got angry with Riukhin. ‘I was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!’

‘Pushed him?’

‘“Pushed him”, nothing!’ Ivan exclaimed, angered by the general obtuseness. ‘His kind don’t need to push! He can perform such stunts - hold on to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under the tram-car!’

‘And did anyone besides you see this consultant?’

‘That’s the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.’

‘So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?’ Here the doctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who was sitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and began filling in the blank spaces in its columns.

‘Here’s what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen ...’

‘That one?’ asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on the table in front of the woman, next to the icon.

‘That very one, and ...’

‘And why the icon?’

‘Ah, yes, the icon ...’ Ivan blushed. ‘It was the icon that frightened them most of all.’ He again jabbed his finger in the direction of Riukhin. ‘But the thing is that he, the consultant, he ... let’s speak directly ... is mixed up with the unclean powers ... and you won’t catch him so easily.’

The orderlies for some reason snapped to attention and fastened their eyes on Ivan.

‘Yes, sirs,’ Ivan went on, ‘mixed up with them! An absolute fact. He spoke personally with Pontius Pilate. And there’s no need to stare at me like that. I’m telling the truth! He saw everything - the balcony and the palm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate’s, I can vouch for it.’

‘Come, come...’

‘Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran...’

Here the clock suddenly struck twice.

‘Oh-oh!’ Ivan exclaimed and got up from the couch. ‘It’s two o’clock, and I’m wasting time with you! Excuse me, where’s the telephone?’

‘Let him use the telephone,’ the doctor told the orderlies.

Ivan grabbed the receiver, and the woman meanwhile quietly asked Riukhin:

‘Is he married?’

‘Single,’ Riukhin answered fearfully.

‘Member of a trade union?’

‘Yes.’

‘Police?’ Ivan shouted into the receiver. ‘Police? Comrade officer-on-duty, give orders at once for five motor cycles with machine-guns to be sent out to catch the foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me up, I’ll go with you ... It’s the poet Homeless speaking from the madhouse ... What’s your address?’ Homeless asked the doctor in a whisper, covering the receiver with his hand, and then again shouting into it: ‘Are you listening? Hello! ... Outrageous!’ Ivan suddenly screamed and hurled the receiver against the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, offered him his hand, said ‘Goodbye’ drily, and made as if to leave.

‘For pity’s sake, where do you intend to go?’ the doctor said, peering into Ivan’s eyes. ‘In the dead of night, in your underwear ... You’re not feeling well, stay with us.’

‘Let me pass,’ Ivan said to the orderlies, who closed ranks at the door. ‘Will you let me pass or not?’ the poet shouted in a terrible voice.

Riukhin trembled, but the woman pushed a button on the table and a shiny little box with a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface.

‘Ah, so?!’ Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look. ‘Well, then ... Goodbye!’ And he rushed head first into the window-blind.

The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave no crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted:

‘So that’s the sort of windows you’ve got here! Let me go! Let me go! ...’

A syringe flashed in the doctor’s hand, with a single movement the woman slit the threadbare sleeve of the shirt and seized the arm with unwomanly strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the hands of the four people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuck the needle into Ivan’s arm. They held Ivan for another few seconds and then lowered him on to the couch.

‘Bandits!’ Ivan shouted and jumped up from the couch, but was installed on it again. The moment they let go of him, he again jumped up, but sat back down by himself. He paused, gazing around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned, then smiled maliciously.

‘Locked me up after all,’ he said, yawned again, unexpectedly lay down, put his head on the pillow, his fist under his head like a child, and muttered now in a sleepy voice, without malice: ‘Very well, then ... you’ll pay for it yourselves ... I’ve warned you, you can do as you like ... I’m now interested most of all in Pontius Pilate ... Pilate ...’, and he closed his eyes.

‘A bath, a private room, number 117, and a nurse to watch him,’ the doctor ordered as he put his glasses on. Here Riukhin again gave a start: the white door opened noiselessly, behind it a corridor could be seen, lit by blue night-lights. Out of the corridor rolled a stretcher on rubber wheels, to which the quieted Ivan was transferred, and then he rolled off down the corridor and the door closed behind him.

‘Doctor,’ the shaken Riukhin asked in a whisper, ‘it means he’s really ill?’

‘Oh, yes,’ replied the doctor.

‘But what’s wrong with him, then?’ Riukhin asked timidly.

The tired doctor glanced at Riukhin and answered listlessly:

‘Locomotor and speech excitation ... delirious interpretations ... A complex case, it seems. Schizophrenia, I suppose. Plus this alcoholism ...’

Riukhin understood nothing from the doctor’s words, except that things were evidently not so great with Ivan Nikolaevich. He sighed and asked:

‘But what’s all this talk of his about some consultant?’

‘He must have seen somebody who struck his disturbed imagination. Or maybe a hallucination ...’

A few minutes later the truck was carrying Riukhin off to Moscow. Day was breaking, and the light of the street lights still burning along the highway was now unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was vexed at having wasted the night, drove the truck as fast as he could, and skidded on the turns.

Now the woods dropped off, stayed somewhere behind, and the river went somewhere to the side, and an omnium gatherum came spilling to meet the truck: fences with sentry boxes and stacks of wood, tall posts and some sort of poles, with spools strung on the poles, heaps of rubble, the earth scored by canals — in short, you sensed that she was there, Moscow, right there, around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you.

Riukhin was jolted and tossed about; the sort of stump he had placed himself on kept trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant napkins, thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier by bus, moved all around the flatbed. Riukhin tried to collect them, but then, for some reason hissing spitefully: ‘Devil take them! What am I doing fussing like a fool? ...’, he spurned them aside with his foot and stopped looking at them.

The rider’s state of mind was terrible. It was becoming clear that his visit to the house of sorrow had left the deepest mark on him. Riukhin tried to understand what was tormenting him. The corridor with blue lights, which had stuck itself to his memory? The thought that there is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason? Yes, yes, of course, that, too. But that - that’s only a general thought. There’s something else. What is it? An insult, that’s what. Yes, yes, insulting words hurled right in his face by Homeless. And the trouble is not that they were insulting, but that there was truth in them.

The poet no longer looked around, but, staring into the dirty, shaking floor, began muttering something, whining, gnawing at himself.

Yes, poetry ... He was thirty-two years old! And, indeed, what then? So then he would go on writing his several poems a year. Into old age? Yes, into old age. What would these poems bring him? Glory? ‘What nonsense! Don’t deceive yourself, at least. Glory will never come to someone who writes bad poems. What makes them bad? The truth, he was telling the truth!’ Riukhin addressed himself mercilessly. ‘I don’t believe in anything I write! ...’

Poisoned by this burst of neurasthenia, the poet swayed, the floor under him stopped shaking. Riukhin raised his head and saw that he had long been in Moscow, and, what’s more, that it was dawn over Moscow, that the cloud was underlit with gold, that his truck had stopped, caught in a column of other vehicles at the turn on to the boulevard, and that very close to him on a pedestal stood a metal man,[71] his head inclined slightly, gazing at the boulevard with indifference.

Some strange thoughts flooded the head of the ailing poet. ‘There’s an example of real luck ...’ Here Riukhin rose to his full height on the flatbed of the truck and raised his arm, for some reason attacking the cast-iron man who was not bothering anyone. ‘Whatever step he made in his life, whatever happened to him, it all turned to his benefit, it all led to his glory! But what did he do? I can’t conceive ... Is there anything special in the words: “The snowstorm covers ...”? I don’t understand! ... Luck, sheer luck!’ Riukhin concluded with venom, and felt the truck moving under him. ‘He shot him, that white guard shot him, smashed his hip, and assured his immortality ...’

The column began to move. In no more than two minutes, the completely ill and even aged poet was entering the veranda of Griboedov’s. It was now empty. In a comer some company was finishing its drinks, and in the middle the familiar master of ceremonies was bustling about, wearing a skullcap, with a glass of Abrau wine in his hand.

Riukhin, laden with napkins, was met affably by Archibald Archibaldovich and at once relieved of the cursed rags. Had Riukhin not become so worn out in the clinic and on the truck, he would certainly have derived pleasure from telling how everything had gone in the hospital and embellishing the story with invented details. But just then he was far from such things, and, little observant though Riukhin was, now, after the torture on the truck, he peered keenly at the pirate for the first time and realized that, though the man asked about Homeless and even exclaimed ‘Ai-yai-yai!’, he was essentially quite indifferent to Homeless’s fate and did not feel a bit sorry for him. ‘And bravo! Right you are!’ Riukhin thought with cynical, self-annihilating malice and, breaking off the story about the schizophrenia, begged:

‘Archibald Archibaldovich, a drop of vodka ...’

The pirate made a compassionate face and whispered:

‘I understand ... this very minute ...’ and beckoned to a waiter.

A quarter of an hour later, Riukhin sat in complete solitude, hunched over his bream, drinking glass after glass, understanding and recognizing that it was no longer possible to set anything right in his life, that it was only possible to forget.

The poet had wasted his night while others were feasting and now understood that it was impossible to get it back. One needed only to raise one’s head from the lamp to the sky to understand that the night was irretrievably lost. Waiters were hurriedly tearing the tablecloths from the tables. The cats slinking around the veranda had a morning look. Day irresistibly heaved itself upon the poet.

CHAPTER 7 A Naughty Apartment

If Styopa Likhodeev had been told the next morning: ‘Styopa! You’ll be shot if you don’t get up this minute!’ — Styopa would have replied in a languid, barely audible voice: ‘Shoot me, do what you like with me, I won’t get up.’

Not only not get up, it seemed to him that he could not open his eyes, because if he were to do so, there would be a flash of lightning, and his head would at once be blown to pieces. A heavy bell was booming in that head, brown spots rimmed with fiery green floated between his eyeballs and his closed eyelids, and to crown it all he was nauseous, this nausea, as it seemed to him, being connected with the sounds of some importunate gramophone.

Styopa tried to recall something, but only one thing would get recalled — that yesterday, apparently, and in some unknown place, he had stood with a napkin in his hand and tried to kiss some lady, promising her that the next day, and exactly at noon, he would come to visit her. The lady had declined, saying: ‘No, no, I won’t be home!’, but Styopa had stubbornly insisted: ‘And I’ll just up and come anyway!’

Who the lady was, and what time it was now, what day, of what month, Styopa decidedly did not know, and, worst of all, he could not figure out where he was. He attempted to learn this last at least, and to that end unstuck the stuck-together lids of his left eye. Something gleamed dully in the semi-darkness. Styopa finally recognized the pier-glass and realized that he was lying on his back in his own bed — that is, the jeweller’s wife’s former bed — in the bedroom. Here he felt such a throbbing in his head that he closed his eyes and moaned.

Let us explain: Styopa Likhodeev, director of the Variety Theatre, had come to his senses that morning at home, in the very apartment which he shared with the late Berlioz, in a big, six-storeyed, U-shaped building on Sadovaya Street.

It must be said that this apartment - no. 50 — had long had, if not a bad, at least a strange reputation. Two years ago it had still belonged to the widow of the jeweller de Fougeray. Anna Frantsevna de Fougeray, a respectable and very practical fifty-year-old woman, let out three of the five rooms to lodgers: one whose last name was apparently Belomut, and another with a lost last name.

And then two years ago inexplicable events began to occur in this apartment: people began to disappear[72] from this apartment without a trace.

Once, on a day off, a policeman came to the apartment, called the second lodger (the one whose last name got lost) out to the front hall, and said he was invited to come to the police station for a minute to put his signature to something. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantsevna’s long-time and devoted housekeeper, to say, in case he received any telephone calls, that he would be back in ten minutes, and left together with the proper, white-gloved policeman. He not only did not come back in ten minutes, but never came back at all. The most surprising thing was that the policeman evidently vanished along with him.

The pious, or, to speak more frankly, superstitious Anfisa declared outright to the very upset Anna Frantsevna that it was sorcery and that she knew perfectly well who had stolen both the lodger and the policeman, only she did not wish to talk about it towards night-time.

Well, but with sorcery, as everyone knows, once it starts, there’s no stopping it. The second lodger is remembered to have disappeared on a Monday, and that Wednesday Belomut seemed to drop from sight, though, true, under different circumstances. In the morning a car came, as usual, to take him to work, and it did take him to work, but it did not bring anyone back or come again itself.

Madame Belomut’s grief and horror defied description. But, alas, neither the one nor the other continued for long. That same night, on returning with Anfisa from her dacha, which Anna Frantsevna had hurried off to for some reason, she did not find the wife of citizen Belomut in the apartment. And not only that: the doors of the two rooms occupied by the Belomut couple turned out to be sealed.

Two days passed somehow. On the third day, Anna Frantsevna, who had suffered all the while from insomnia, again left hurriedly for her dacha ... Needless to say, she never came back!

Left alone, Anfisa, having wept her fill, went to sleep past one o’clock in the morning. What happened to her after that is not known, but lodgers in other apartments told of hearing some sort of knocking all night in no. 50 and of seeing electric light burning in the windows till morning. In the morning it turned out that there was also no Anfisa!

For a long time all sorts of legends were repeated in the house about these disappearances and about the accursed apartment, such as, for instance, that this dry and pious little Anfisa had supposedly carried on her dried-up breast, in a suede bag, twenty-five big diamonds belonging to Anna Frantsevna. That in the woodshed of that very dacha to which Anna Frantsevna had gone so hurriedly, there supposedly turned up, of themselves, some inestimable treasures in the form of those same diamonds, plus some gold coins of tsarist minting ... And so on, in the same vein. Well, what we don’t know, we can’t vouch for.

However it may have been, the apartment stood empty and sealed for only a week. Then the late Berlioz moved in with his wife, and this same Styopa, also with his wife. It was perfectly natural that, as soon as they got into the malignant apartment, devil knows what started happening with them as well! Namely, within the space of a month both wives vanished. But these two not without a trace. Of Berlioz’s wife it was told that she had supposedly been seen in Kharkov with some ballet-master, while Styopa’s wife allegedly turned up on Bozhedomka Street, where wagging tongues said the director of the Variety, using his innumerable acquaintances, had contrived to get her a room, but on the one condition that she never show her face on Sadovaya ...

And so, Styopa moaned. He wanted to call the housekeeper Grunya and ask her for aspirin, but was still able to realize that it was foolish, and that Grunya, of course, had no aspirin. He tried to call Berlioz for help, groaned twice: ‘Misha ... Misha ...’, but, as you will understand, received no reply. The apartment was perfectly silent.

Moving his toes, Styopa realized that he was lying there in his socks, passed his trembling hand down his hip to determine whether he had his trousers on or not, but failed. Finally, seeing that he was abandoned and alone, and there was no one to help him, he decided to get up, however inhuman the effort it cost him.

Styopa unstuck his glued eyelids and saw himself reflected in the pier-glass as a man with hair sticking out in all directions, with a bloated physiognomy covered with black stubble, with puffy eyes, a dirty shirt, collar and necktie, in drawers and socks.

So he saw himself in the pier-glass, and next to the mirror he saw an unknown man, dressed in black and wearing a black beret.

Styopa sat up in bed and goggled his bloodshot eyes as well as he could at the unknown man. The silence was broken by this unknown man, who said in a low, heavy voice, and with a foreign accent, the following words:

‘Good morning, my most sympathetic Stepan Bogdanovich!’

There was a pause, after which, making a most terrible strain on himself, Styopa uttered:

‘What can I do for you?’ — and was amazed, not recognizing his own voice. He spoke the word ‘what’ in a treble, ’can I’ in a bass, and his ‘do for you’ did not come off at all.

The stranger smiled amicably, took out a big gold watch with a diamond triangle on the lid, rang eleven times, and said:

‘Eleven. And for exactly an hour I’ve been waiting for you to wake up, since you made an appointment for me to come to your place at ten. Here I am!’[73]

Styopa felt for his trousers on the chair beside his bed, whispered: ‘Excuse me ...’, put them on, and asked hoarsely: ‘Tell me your name, please?’

He had difficulty speaking. At each word, someone stuck a needle into his brain, causing infernal pain.

‘What! You’ve forgotten my name, too?’ Here the unknown man smiled.

‘Forgive me ...’ Styopa croaked, feeling that his hangover had presented him with a new symptom: it seemed to him that the floor beside his bed went away, and that at any moment he would go flying down to the devil’s dam in the nether world.

‘My dear Stepan Bogdanovich,’ the visitor said, with a perspicacious smile, ‘no aspirin will help you. Follow the wise old rule - cure like with like. The only thing that will bring you back to life is two glasses of vodka with something pickled and hot to go with it.’

Styopa was a shrewd man and, sick as he was, realized that since he had been found in this state, he would have to confess everything.

‘Frankly speaking,’ he began, his tongue barely moving, ‘yesterday I got a bit...’

‘Not a word more!’ the visitor answered and drew aside with his chair.

Styopa, rolling his eyes, saw that a tray had been set on a small table, on which tray there were sliced white bread, pressed caviar in a little bowl, pickled mushrooms on a dish, something in a saucepan, and, finally, vodka in a roomy decanter belonging to the jeweller’s wife. What struck Styopa especially was that the decanter was frosty with cold. This, however, was understandable: it was sitting in a bowl packed with ice. In short, the service was neat, efficient.

The stranger did not allow Styopa’s amazement to develop to a morbid degree, but deftly poured him half a glass of vodka.

‘And you?’ Styopa squeaked.

‘With pleasure!’

His hand twitching, Styopa brought the glass to his lips, while the stranger swallowed the contents of his glass at one gulp. Chewing a lump of caviar, Styopa squeezed out of himself the words:

‘And you ... a bite of something?’

‘Much obliged, but I never snack,’ the stranger replied and poured seconds. The saucepan was opened and found to contain frankfurters in tomato sauce.

And then the accursed green haze before his eyes dissolved, the words began to come out clearly, and, above all, Styopa remembered a thing or two. Namely, that it had taken place yesterday in Skhodnya, at the dacha of the sketch-writer Khustov, to which this same Khustov had taken Styopa in a taxi. There was even a memory of having hired this taxi by the Metropol, and there was also some actor, or not an actor ... with a gramophone in a little suitcase. Yes, yes, yes, it was at the dacha! The dogs, he remembered, had howled from this gramophone. Only the lady Styopa had wanted to kiss remained unexplained ... devil knows who she was ... maybe she was in radio, maybe not ...

The previous day was thus coming gradually into focus, but right now Styopa was much more interested in today’s day and, particularly, in the appearance in his bedroom of a stranger, and with hors d’œuvres and vodka to boot. It would be nice to explain that!

‘Well, I hope by now you’ve remembered my name?’

But Styopa only smiled bashfully and spread his arms.

‘Really! I get the feeling that you followed the vodka with port wine! Good heavens, it simply isn’t done!’

‘I beg you to keep it between us,’ Styopa said fawningly.

‘Oh, of course, of course! But as for Khustov, needless to say, I can’t vouch for him.’

‘So you know Khustov?’

‘Yesterday, in your office, I saw this individuum briefly, but it only takes a fleeting glance at his face to understand that he is a bastard, a squabbler, a trimmer and a toady.’

‘Perfectly true!’ thought Styopa, struck by such a true, precise and succinct definition of Khustov.

Yes, the previous day was piecing itself together, but, even so, anxiety would not take leave of the director of the Variety. The thing was that a huge black hole yawned in this previous day. Say what you will, Styopa simply had not seen this stranger in the beret in his office yesterday.

‘Professor of black magic Woland,’[74] the visitor said weightily, seeing Styopa’s difficulty, and he recounted everything in order.

Yesterday afternoon he arrived in Moscow from abroad, went immediately to Styopa, and offered his show to the Variety. Styopa telephoned the Moscow Regional Entertainment Commission and had the question approved (Styopa turned pale and blinked), then signed a contract with Professor Woland for seven performances (Styopa opened his mouth), and arranged that Woland should come the next morning at ten o’clock to work out the details ... And so Woland came. Having come, he was met by the housekeeper Grunya, who explained that she had just come herself, that she was not a live-in maid, that Berlioz was not home, and that if the visitor wished to see Stepan Bogdanovich, he should go to his bedroom himself. Stepan Bogdanovich was such a sound sleeper that she would not undertake to wake him up. Seeing what condition Stepan Bogdanovich was in, the artiste sent Grunya to the nearest grocery store for vodka and hors d’œuvres, to the druggist’s for ice, and ...

‘Allow me to reimburse you,’ the mortified Styopa squealed and began hunting for his wallet.

‘Oh, what nonsense!’ the guest performer exclaimed and would hear no more of it.

And so, the vodka and hors d’œuvres got explained, but all the same Styopa was a pity to see: he remembered decidedly nothing about the contract and, on his life, had not seen this Woland yesterday. Yes, Khustov had been there, but not Woland.

‘May I have a look at the contract?’ Styopa asked quietly.

‘Please do, please do ...’

Styopa looked at the paper and froze. Everything was in place: first of all, Styopa’s own dashing signature ... aslant the margin a note in the hand of the findirector[75] Rimsky authorizing the payment of ten thousand roubles to the artiste Woland, as an advance on the thirty-five thousand roubles due him for seven performances. What’s more, Woland’s signature was right there attesting to his receipt of the ten thousand!

‘What is all this?!’ the wretched Styopa thought, his head spinning. Was he starting to have ominous gaps of memory? Well, it went without saying, once the contract had been produced, any further expressions of surprise would simply be indecent. Styopa asked his visitor’s leave to absent himself for a moment and, just as he was, in his stocking feet, ran to the front hall for the telephone. On his way he called out in the direction of the kitchen:

‘Grunya!’

But no one responded. He glanced at the door to Berlioz’s study, which was next to the front hall, and here he was, as they say, flabbergasted. On the door-handle he made out an enormous wax seal[76] on a string.

‘Hel-lo!’ someone barked in Styopa’s head. ‘Just what we needed!’ And here Styopa’s thoughts began running on twin tracks, but, as always happens in times of catastrophe, in the same direction and, generally, devil knows where. It is even difficult to convey the porridge in Styopa’s head. Here was this devilry with the black beret, the chilled vodka, and the incredible contract ... And along with all that, if you please, a seal on the door as well! That is, tell anyone you like that Berlioz has been up to no good — no one will believe it, by Jove, no one will believe it! Yet look, there’s the seal! Yes, sir ...

And here some most disagreeable little thoughts began stirring in Styopa’s brain, about the article which, as luck would have it, he had recently inflicted on Mikhail Alexandrovich for publication in his journal. The article, just between us, was idiotic! And worthless. And the money was so little ...

Immediately after the recollection of the article, there came flying a recollection of some dubious conversation that had taken place, he recalled, on the twenty-fourth of April, in the evening, right there in the dining room, while Styopa was having dinner with Mikhail Alexandrovich. That is, of course, this conversation could not have been called dubious in the full sense of the word (Styopa would not have ventured upon such a conversation), but it was on some unnecessary subject. He had been quite free, dear citizens, not to begin it. Before the seal, this conversation would undoubtedly have been considered a perfect trifle, but now, after the seal ...

‘Ah, Berlioz, Berlioz!’ boiled up in Styopa’s head. ‘This is simply too much for one head!’

But it would not do to grieve too long, and Styopa dialled the number of the office of the Variety’s findirector, Rimsky. Styopa’s position was ticklish: first, the foreigner might get offended that Styopa was checking on him after the contract had been shown, and then to talk with the findirector was also exceedingly difficult. Indeed, he could not just ask him like that: ‘Tell me, did I sign a contract for thirty-five thousand roubles yesterday with a professor of black magic?’ It was no good asking like that!

‘Yes!’ Rimsky’s sharp, unpleasant voice came from the receiver.

‘Hello, Grigory Danilovich,’ Styopa began speaking quietly, ‘it’s Likhodeev. There’s a certain matter ... hm ... hm ... I have this ... er ... artiste Woland sitting here ... So you see ... I wanted to ask, how about this evening? ...’

‘Ah, the black magician?’ Rimsky’s voice responded in the receiver. ‘The posters will be ready shortly.’

‘Uh-huh ...’ Styopa said in a weak voice, ‘well, ’bye ...’

‘And you’ll be coming in soon?’ Rimsky asked.

‘In half an hour,’ Styopa replied and, hanging up the receiver, pressed his hot head in his hands. Ah, what a nasty thing to have happen! What was wrong with his memory, citizens? Eh?

However, to go on lingering in the front hall was awkward, and Styopa formed a plan straight away: by all means to conceal his incredible forgetfulness, and now, first off, contrive to get out of the foreigner what, in fact, he intended to show that evening in the Variety, of which Styopa was in charge.

Here Styopa turned away from the telephone and saw distinctly in the mirror that stood in the front hall, and which the lazy Grunya had not wiped for ages, a certain strange specimen, long as a pole, and in a pince-nez (ah, if only Ivan Nikolaevich had been there! He would have recognized this specimen at once!). The figure was reflected and then disappeared. Styopa looked further down the hall in alarm and was rocked a second time, for in the mirror a stalwart black cat passed and also disappeared.

Styopa’s heart skipped a beat, he staggered.

‘What is all this?’ he thought. ‘Am I losing my mind? Where are these reflections coming from?!’ He peeked into the front hall and cried timorously:

‘Grunya! What’s this cat doing hanging around here?! Where did he come from? And the other one?!’

‘Don’t worry, Stepan Bogdanovich,’ a voice responded, not Grunya’s but the visitor’s, from the bedroom. The cat is mine. Don’t be nervous. And Grunya is not here, I sent her off to Voronezh. She complained you diddled her out of a vacation.’

These words were so unexpected and preposterous that Styopa decided he had not heard right. Utterly bewildered, he trotted back to the bedroom and froze on the threshold. His hair stood on end and small beads of sweat broke out on his brow.

The visitor was no longer alone in the bedroom, but had company: in the second armchair sat the same type he had imagined in the front hall. Now he was clearly visible: the feathery moustache, one lens of the pince-nez gleaming, the other not there. But worse things were to be found in the bedroom: on the jeweller’s wife’s ottoman, in a casual pose, sprawled a third party - namely, a black cat of uncanny size, with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had managed to spear a pickled mushroom, in the other.

The light, faint in the bedroom anyway, now began to grow quite dark in Styopa’s eyes. ‘This is apparently how one loses one’s mind ...’ he thought and caught hold of the doorpost.

‘I see you’re somewhat surprised, my dearest Stepan Bogdanovich?’ Woland inquired of the teeth-chattering Styopa. ‘And yet there’s nothing to be surprised at. This is my retinue.’

Here the cat tossed off the vodka, and Styopa’s hand began to slide down the doorpost.

‘And this retinue requires room,’ Woland continued, ‘so there’s just one too many of us in the apartment. And it seems to us that this one too many is precisely you.’

‘Theirself, theirself!’ the long checkered one sang in a goat’s voice, referring to Styopa in the plural. ‘Generally, theirself has been up to some terrible swinishness lately. Drinking, using their position to have liaisons with women, don’t do devil a thing, and can’t do anything, because they don’t know anything of what they’re supposed to do. Pulling the wool over their superiors’ eyes.’

‘Availing hisself of a government car!’ the cat snitched, chewing a mushroom.

And here occurred the fourth and last appearance in the apartment, as Styopa, having slid all the way to the floor, clawed at the doorpost with an enfeebled hand.

Straight from the pier-glass stepped a short but extraordinarily broad-shouldered man, with a bowler hat on his head and a fang sticking out of his mouth, which made still uglier a physiognomy unprecedentedly loathsome without that. And with flaming red hair besides.

‘Generally,’ this new one entered into the conversation, ‘I don’t understand how he got to be a director,’ the redhead’s nasal twang was growing stronger and stronger, ‘he’s as much a director as I’m a bishop.’

‘You don’t look like a bishop, Azazello,’[77] the cat observed, heaping his plate with frankfurters.

‘That’s what I mean,’ twanged the redhead and, turning to Woland, he added deferentially: ‘Allow me, Messire, to chuck him the devil out of Moscow?’

‘Scat!’ the cat barked suddenly, bristling his fur.

And then the bedroom started spinning around Styopa, he hit his head against the doorpost, and, losing consciousness, thought: ‘I’m dying ...’

But he did not die. Opening his eyes slightly, he saw himself sitting on something made of stone. Around him something was making noise. When he opened his eyes properly, he realized that the noise was being made by the sea and, what’s more, that the waves were rocking just at his feet, that he was, in short, sitting at the very end of a jetty, that over him was a brilliant blue sky and behind him a white city on the mountains.

Not knowing how to behave in such a case, Styopa got up on his trembling legs and walked along the jetty towards the shore.

Some man was standing on the jetty, smoking and spitting into the sea. He looked at Styopa with wild eyes and stopped spitting.

Then Styopa pulled the following stunt: he knelt down before the unknown smoker and said:

‘I implore you, tell me what city is this?’

‘Really!’ said the heartless smoker.

‘I’m not drunk,’ Styopa replied hoarsely, ‘something’s happened to me ... I’m ill ... Where am I? What city is this?’

‘Well, it’s Yalta ...’

Styopa quietly gasped and sank down on his side, his head striking the warm stone of the jetty. Consciousness left him.

CHAPTER 8 The Combat between the Professor and the Poet

At the same time that consciousness left Styopa in Yalta, that is, around half past eleven in the morning, it returned to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, who woke up after a long and deep sleep. He spent some time pondering how it was that he had wound up in an unfamiliar room with white walls, with an astonishing night table made of some light metal, and with white blinds behind which one could sense the sun.

Ivan shook his head, ascertained that it did not ache, and remembered that he was in a clinic. This thought drew after it the remembrance of Berlioz’s death, but today it did not provoke a strong shock in Ivan. Having had a good sleep, Ivan Nikolaevich became calmer and began to think more clearly. After lying motionless for some time in this most clean, soft and comfortable spring bed, Ivan noticed a bell button beside him. From a habit of touching things needlessly, Ivan pressed it. He expected the pressing of the button to be followed by some ringing or appearance, but something entirely different happened. A frosted glass cylinder with the word ‘Drink’ on it lit up at the foot of Ivan’s bed. After pausing for a while, the cylinder began to rotate until the word ’Nurse’ popped out. It goes without saying that the clever cylinder amazed Ivan. The word ‘Nurse’ was replaced by the words ‘Call the Doctor.’

‘Hm...’ said Ivan, not knowing how to proceed further with this cylinder. But here he happened to be lucky. Ivan pressed the button a second time at the word ‘Attendant’. The cylinder rang quietly in response, stopped, the light went out, and a plump, sympathetic woman in a clean white coat came into the room and said to Ivan:

‘Good morning!’

Ivan did not reply, considering such a greeting inappropriate under the circumstances. Indeed, they lock up a healthy man in a clinic, and pretend that that is how it ought to be!

The woman meanwhile, without losing her good-natured expression, brought the blinds up with one push of a button, and sun flooded the room through a light and wide-meshed grille which reached right to the floor. Beyond the grille a balcony came into view, beyond that the bank of a meandering river, and on its other bank a cheerful pine wood.

‘Time for our bath,’ the woman invited, and under her hands the inner wall parted, revealing behind it a bathroom and splendidly equipped toilet.

Ivan, though he had resolved not to talk to the woman, could not help himself and, on seeing the water gush into the tub in a wide stream from the gleaming faucet, said ironically:

‘Looky there! Just like the Metropol! ...’

‘Oh, no,’ the woman answered proudly, ‘much better. There is no such equipment even anywhere abroad. Scientists and doctors come especially to study our clinic. We have foreign tourists every day.’

At the words ‘foreign tourists’, Ivan at once remembered yesterday’s consultant. Ivan darkened, looked sullen, and said:

‘Foreign tourists ... How you all adore foreign tourists! But among them, incidentally, you come across all sorts. I, for instance, met one yesterday - quite something!’

And he almost started telling about Pontius Pilate, but restrained himself, realizing that the woman had no use for these stories, that in any case she could not help him.

The washed Ivan Nikolaevich was straight away issued decidedly everything a man needs after a bath: an ironed shirt, drawers, socks. And not only that: opening the door of a cupboard, the woman pointed inside and asked:

‘What would you like to put on — a dressing gown or some nice pyjamas?’

Attached to his new dwelling by force, Ivan almost clasped his hands at the woman’s casualness and silently pointed his finger at the crimson flannel pyjamas.

After this, Ivan Nikolaevich was led down the empty and noiseless corridor and brought to an examining room of huge dimensions. Ivan, having decided to take an ironic attitude towards everything to be found in this wondrously equipped building, at once mentally christened this room the ‘industrial kitchen’.

And with good reason. Here stood cabinets and glass cases with gleaming nickel-plated instruments. There were chairs of extraordinarily complex construction, some pot-bellied lamps with shiny shades, a myriad of phials, Bunsen burners, electric cords and appliances quite unknown to anyone.

In the examining room Ivan was taken over by three persons — two women and a man - all in white. First, they led Ivan to a comer, to a little table, with the obvious purpose of getting something or other out of him.

Ivan began to ponder the situation. Three ways stood before him. The first was extremely tempting: to hurl himself at all these lamps and sophisticated little things, make the devil’s own wreck of them, and thereby express his protest at being detained for nothing. But today’s Ivan already differed significantly from the Ivan of yesterday, and this first way appeared dubious to him: for all he knew, the thought might get rooted in them that he was a violent madman. Therefore Ivan rejected the first way. There was a second: immediately to begin his account of the consultant and Pontius Pilate. However, yesterday’s experience showed that this story either was not believed or was taken somehow perversely. Therefore Ivan renounced this second way as well, deciding to choose the third way — withdrawal into proud silence.

He did not succeed in realizing it fully, and had willy-nilly to answer, though charily and glumly, a whole series of questions. Thus they got out of Ivan decidedly everything about his past life, down to when and how he had fallen ill with scarlet fever fifteen years ago. A whole page having been covered with writing about Ivan, it was turned over, and the woman in white went on to questions about Ivan’s relatives. Some sort of humdrum started: who died when and why, and whether he drank or had venereal disease, and more of the same. In conclusion he was asked to tell about yesterday’s events at the Patriarch’s Ponds, but they did not pester him too much, and were not surprised at the information about Pontius Pilate.

Here the woman yielded Ivan up to the man, who went to work on him differently and no longer asked any questions. He took the temperature of Ivan’s body, counted his pulse, looked in Ivan’s eyes, directing some sort of lamp into them. Then the second woman came to the man’s assistance, and they pricked Ivan in the back with something, but not painfully, drew some signs on the skin of his chest with the handle of a little hammer, tapped his knees with the hammer, which made Ivan’s legs jump, pricked his finger and took his blood, pricked him inside his bent elbow, put some rubber bracelets on his arms ...

Ivan just smiled bitterly to himself and reflected on how stupidly and strangely it had all happened. Just think! He had wanted to warn them all of the danger threatening from the unknown consultant, had intended to catch him, and all he had achieved was to wind up in some mysterious room, telling all sorts of hogwash about Uncle Fyodor, who had done some hard drinking in Vologda. Insufferably stupid!

Finally Ivan was released. He was escorted back to his room, where he was given a cup of coffee, two soft-boiled eggs and white bread with butter. Having eaten and drunk all that was offered him, Ivan decided to wait for whoever was chief of this institution, and from this chief to obtain both attention for himself and justice.

And he did come, and very soon after Ivan’s breakfast. Unexpectedly, the door of Ivan’s room opened, and in came a lot of people in white coats. At their head walked a man of about forty-five, as carefully shaven as an actor, with pleasant but quite piercing eyes and courteous manners. The whole retinue showed him tokens of attention and respect, and his entrance therefore came out very solemn. ‘Like Pontius Pilate!’ thought Ivan.

Yes, this was unquestionably the chief. He sat down on a stool, while everyone else remained standing.

‘Doctor Stravinsky,’ the seated man introduced himself to Ivan and gave him a friendly look.

‘Here, Alexander Nikolaevich,’ someone with a trim beard said in a low voice, and handed the chief Ivan’s chart, all covered with writing.

‘They’ve sewn up a whole case!’ Ivan thought. And the chief ran through the chart with a practised eye, muttered ‘Mm-hm, mm-hm ...’, and exchanged a few phrases with those around him in a little-known language. ‘And he speaks Latin like Pilate,’ Ivan thought sadly. Here one word made him jump; it was the word ‘schizophrenia’ — alas, already uttered yesterday by the cursed foreigner at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and now repeated today by Professor Stravinsky. ’And he knew that, too!‘ Ivan thought anxiously.

The chief apparently made it a rule to agree with and rejoice over everything said to him by those around him, and to express this with the words ‘Very nice, very nice ...’

‘Very nice!’ said Stravinsky, handing the chart back to someone, and he addressed Ivan:

‘You are a poet?’

‘A poet,’ Ivan replied glumly, and for the first time suddenly felt some inexplicable loathing for poetry, and his own verses, coming to mind at once, seemed to him for some reason distasteful.

Wrinkling his face, he asked Stravinsky in turn:

‘You are a professor?’

To this, Stravinsky, with obliging courtesy, inclined his head.

‘And you’re the chief here?’ Ivan continued.

Stravinsky nodded to this as well.

‘I must speak with you,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said meaningly.

‘That is what I’m here for,’ returned Stravinsky.

‘The thing is,’ Ivan began, feeling his hour had come, ‘that I’ve been got up as a madman, and nobody wants to listen to me! ...’

‘Oh, no, we shall hear you out with great attention,’ Stravinsky said seriously and soothingly, ‘and by no means allow you to be got up as a madman.’

‘Listen, then: yesterday evening I met a mysterious person at the Patriarch’s Ponds, maybe a foreigner, maybe not, who knew beforehand about Berlioz’s death and has seen Pontius Pilate in person.’

The retinue listened to the poet silently and without stirring.

‘Pilate? The Pilate who lived in the time of Jesus Christ?’ Stravinsky asked, narrowing his eyes at Ivan.

The same.‘

‘Aha,’ said Stravinsky, ‘and this Berlioz died under a tram-car?’

‘Precisely, he’s the one who in my presence was killed by a tram-car yesterday at the Ponds, and this same mysterious citizen ...’

The acquaintance of Pontius Pilate?‘ asked Stravinsky, apparently distinguished by great mental alacrity.

‘Precisely him,’ Ivan confirmed, studying Stravinsky. ‘Well, so he said beforehand that Annushka had spilled the sunflower oil ... And he slipped right on that place! How do you like that?’ Ivan inquired significantly, hoping to produce a great effect with his words.

But the effect did not ensue, and Stravinsky quite simply asked the following question:

‘And who is this Annushka?’

This question upset Ivan a little; his face twitched.

‘Annushka is of absolutely no importance here,’ he said nervously. ‘Devil knows who she is. Just some fool from Sadovaya. What’s important is that he knew beforehand, you see, beforehand, about the sunflower oil! Do you understand me?’

‘Perfectly,’ Stravinsky replied seriously and, touching the poet’s knee, added: ‘Don’t get excited, just continue.’

‘To continue,’ said Ivan, trying to fall in with Stravinsky’s tone, and knowing already from bitter experience that only calm would help him, ‘so, then, this horrible type (and he’s lying that he’s a consultant) has some extraordinary power! ... For instance, you chase after him and it’s impossible to catch up with him ... And there’s also a little pair with him — good ones, too, but in their own way: some long one in broken glasses and, besides him, a cat of incredible size who rides the tram all by himself. And besides,’ interrupted by no one, Ivan went on talking with ever increasing ardour and conviction, ‘he was personally on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, there’s no doubt of it. So what is all this, eh? He must be arrested immediately, otherwise he’ll do untold harm.’

‘So you’re trying to get him arrested? Have I understood you correctly?’ asked Stravinsky.

‘He’s intelligent,’ thought Ivan. ‘You’ve got to admit, even among intellectuals you come across some of rare intelligence, there’s no denying it,’ and he replied:

‘Quite correctly! And how could I not be trying, just consider for yourself! And meanwhile I’ve been forcibly detained here, they poke lamps into my eyes, give me baths, question me for some reason about my Uncle Fedya! ... And he departed this world long ago! I demand to be released immediately!’

‘Well, there, very nice, very nice!’ Stravinsky responded. ‘Now everything’s clear. Really, what’s the sense of keeping a healthy man in a clinic? Very well, sir, I’ll check you out of here right now, if you tell me you’re normal. Not prove, but merely tell. So, then, are you normal?’

Here complete silence fell, and the fat woman who had taken care of Ivan in the morning looked at the professor with awe. Ivan thought once again: ‘Positively intelligent!’

The professor’s offer pleased him very much, yet before replying he thought very, very hard, wrinkling his forehead, and at last said firmly:

‘I am normal.’

‘Well, how very nice,’ Stravinsky exclaimed with relief, ‘and if so, let’s reason logically. Let’s take your day yesterday.’ Here he turned and Ivan’s chart was immediately handed to him. ‘In search of an unknown man who recommended himself as an acquaintance of Pontius Pilate, you performed the following actions yesterday.’ Here Stravinsky began holding up his long fingers, glancing now at the chart, now at Ivan. ‘You hung a little icon on your chest. Did you?’

‘I did,’ Ivan agreed sullenly.

‘You fell off a fence and hurt your face. Right? Showed up in a restaurant carrying a burning candle in your hand, in nothing but your underwear, and in the restaurant you beat somebody. You were brought here-tied up. Having come here, you called the police and asked them to send out machine-guns. Then you attempted to throw yourself out the window. Right? The question is: can one, by acting in such fashion, catch or arrest anyone? And if you’re a normal man, you yourself will answer: by no means. You wish to leave here? Very well, sir. But allow me to ask, where are you going to go?’

To the police, of course,‘ Ivan replied, no longer so firmly, and somewhat at a loss under the professor’s gaze.

‘Straight from here?’

‘Mm-hm...’

‘Without stopping at your place?’ Stravinsky asked quickly.

‘I have no time to stop anywhere! While I’m stopping at places, he’ll slip away!’

‘So. And what will you tell the police to start with?’

‘About Pontius Pilate,’ Ivan Nikolaevich replied, and his eyes clouded with a gloomy mist.

‘Well, how very nice!’ the won-over Stravinsky exclaimed and, turning to the one with the little beard, ordered: ‘Fyodor Vassilyevich, please check Citizen Homeless out for town. But don’t put anyone in his room or change the linen. In two hours, Citizen Homeless will be back here. So, then,’ he turned to the poet, ‘I won’t wish you success, because I don’t believe one iota in that success. See you soon!’ He stood up, and his retinue stirred.

‘On what grounds will I be back here?’ Ivan asked anxiously.

Stravinsky was as if waiting for this question, immediately sat down, and began to speak:

‘On the grounds that as soon as you show up at the police station in your drawers and tell them you’ve seen a man who knew Pontius Pilate personally, you’ll instantly be brought here, and you’ll find yourself again in this very same room.’

‘What have drawers got to do with it?’ Ivan asked, gazing around in bewilderment.

‘It’s mainly Pontius Pilate. But the drawers, too. Because we’ll take the clinic underwear from you and give you back your clothes. And you were delivered here in your drawers. And yet you were by no means going to stop at your place, though I dropped you a hint. Then comes Pilate ... and that’s it.’

Here something strange happened with Ivan Nikolaevich. His will seemed to crack, and he felt himself weak, in need of advice.

‘What am I to do, then?’ he asked, timidly this time.

‘Well, how very nice!’ Stravinsky replied. ‘A most reasonable question. Now I am going to tell you what actually happened to you. Yesterday someone frightened you badly and upset you with a story about Pontius Pilate and other things. And so you, a very nervous and high-strung man, started going around the city, telling about Pontius Pilate. It’s quite natural that you’re taken for a madman. Your salvation now lies in just one thing - complete peace. And you absolutely must remain here.’

‘But he has to be caught!’ Ivan exclaimed, imploringly now.

‘Very good, sir, but why should you go running around yourself? Explain all your suspicions and accusations against this man on paper. Nothing could be simpler than to send your declaration to the proper quarters, and if, as you think, we are dealing with a criminal, it will be clarified very quickly. But only on one condition: don’t strain your head, and try to think less about Pontius Pilate. People say all kinds of things! One mustn’t believe everything.’

‘Understood!’ Ivan declared resolutely. ‘I ask to be given pen and paper.’

‘Give him paper and a short pencil,’ Stravinsky ordered the fat woman, and to Ivan he said: ‘But I don’t advise you to write today.’

‘No, no, today, today without fail!’ Ivan cried out in alarm.

‘Well, all right. Only don’t strain your head. If it doesn’t come out today, it will tomorrow.’

‘Hell escape.’

‘Oh, no,’ Stravinsky objected confidently, ‘he won’t escape anywhere, I guarantee that. And remember that here with us you’ll be helped in all possible ways, and without us nothing will come of it. Do you hear me?’ Stravinsky suddenly asked meaningly and took Ivan Nikolaevich by both hands. Holding them in his own, he repeated for a long time, his eyes fixed on Ivan’s: ‘You’ll be helped here ... do you hear me? ... You’ll be helped here ... you’ll get relief ... it’s quiet here, all peaceful ... you’ll be helped here ...’

Ivan Nikolaevich unexpectedly yawned, and the expression on his face softened.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said quietly.

‘Well, how very nice!’ Stravinsky concluded the conversation in his usual way and stood up: ‘Goodbye!’ He shook Ivan’s hand and, on his way out, turned to the one with the little beard and said: ‘Yes, and try oxygen ... and baths.’

A few moments later there was no Stravinsky or his retinue before Ivan. Beyond the window grille, in the noonday sun, the joyful and springtime pine wood stood beautiful on the other bank and, closer by, the river sparkled.

CHAPTER 9 Koroviev’s Stunts

Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the tenants’ association[79] of no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow, where the late Berlioz used to reside, had been having the most terrible troubles, starting from that Wednesday night.

At midnight, as we already know, a commission of which Zheldybin formed a part came to the house, summoned Nikanor Ivanovich, told him about the death of Berlioz, and together with him went to apartment no. 50.

There the sealing of the deceased’s manuscripts and belongings was carried out. Neither Grunya, the daytime housekeeper, nor the light-minded Stepan Bogdanovich was there at the time. The commission announced to Nikanor Ivanovich that it would take the deceased’s manuscripts for sorting out, that his living space, that is, three rooms (the former study, living room and dining room of the jeweller’s wife), reverted to the disposal of the tenants’ association, and that the belongings were to be kept in the aforementioned living space until the heirs were announced.

The news of Berlioz’s death spread through the whole house with a sort of supernatural speed, and as of seven o’clock Thursday morning, Bosoy began to receive telephone calls and then personal visits with declarations containing claims to the deceased’s living space. In the period of two hours, Nikanor Ivanovich received thirty-two such declarations.

They contained pleas, threats, libels, denunciations, promises to do renovations at their own expense, references to unbearable overcrowding and the impossibility of living in the same apartment with bandits. Among others there were a description, staggering in its artistic power, of the theft from apartment no. 31 of some meat dumplings, tucked directly into the pocket of a suit jacket, two vows to end life by suicide and one confession of secret pregnancy.

Nikanor Ivanovich was called out to the front hall of his apartment, plucked by the sleeve, whispered to, winked at, promised that he would not be left the loser.

This torture went on until noon, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply fled his apartment for the management office by the gate, but when he saw them lying in wait for him there, too, he fled that place as well. Having somehow shaken off those who followed on his heels across the asphalt-paved courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich disappeared into the sixth entrance and went up to the fifth floor, where this vile apartment no. 50 was located.

After catching his breath on the landing, the corpulent Nikanor Ivanovich rang, but no one opened for him. He rang again, and then again, and started grumbling and swearing quietly. Even then no one opened. His patience exhausted, Nikanor Ivanovich took from his pocket a bunch of duplicate keys belonging to the house management, opened the door with a sovereign hand, and went in.

‘Hey, housekeeper!’ Nikanor Ivanovich cried in the semi-dark front hall. ‘Grunya, or whatever your name is! ... Are you here?’

No one responded.

Then Nikanor Ivanovich took a folding ruler from his briefcase, removed the seal from the door to the study, and stepped in. Stepped in, yes, but halted in amazement in the doorway and even gave a start.

At the deceased’s desk sat an unknown, skinny, long citizen in a little checkered jacket, a jockey’s cap, and a pince-nez ... well, in short, that same one.

‘And who might you be, citizen?’ Nikanor Ivanovich asked fearfully.

‘Hah! Nikanor Ivanovich!’ the unexpected citizen yelled in a rattling tenor and, jumping up, greeted the chairman with a forced and sudden handshake. This greeting by no means gladdened Nikanor Ivanovich.

‘Excuse me,’ he said suspiciously, ‘but who might you be? Are you an official person?’

‘Eh, Nikanor Ivanovich!’ the unknown man exclaimed soulfully. ‘What are official and unofficial persons? It all depends on your point of view on the subject. It’s all fluctuating and relative, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I’m an unofficial person, and tomorrow, lo and behold, I’m an official one! And it also happens the other way round — oh, how it does!’

This argument in no way satisfied the chairman of the house management. Being a generally suspicious person by nature, he concluded that the man holding forth in front of him was precisely an unofficial person, and perhaps even an idle one.

‘Yes, but who might you be? What’s your name?’ the chairman inquired with increasing severity and even began to advance upon the unknown man.

‘My name,’ the citizen responded, not a bit put out by the severity, ‘well, let’s say it’s Koroviev. But wouldn’t you like a little snack, Nikanor Ivanovich? No formalities, eh?’

‘Excuse me,’ Nikanor Ivanovich began, indignantly now, ‘what have snacks got to do with it!’ (We must confess, unpleasant as it is, that Nikanor Ivanovich was of a somewhat rude nature.) ‘Sitting in the deceased’s half is not permitted! What are you doing here?’

‘Have a seat, Nikanor Ivanovich,’ the citizen went on yelling, not a bit at a loss, and began fussing about offering the chairman a seat.

Utterly infuriated, Nikanor Ivanovich rejected the seat and screamed:

‘But who are you?’

‘I, if you please, serve as interpreter for a foreign individual who has taken up residence in this apartment,’ the man calling himself Koroviev introduced himself and clicked the heels of his scuffed, unpolished shoes.

Nikanor Ivanovich opened his mouth. The presence of some foreigner in this apartment, with an interpreter to boot, came as a complete surprise to him, and he demanded explanations.

The interpreter explained willingly. A foreign artiste, Mr Woland, had been kindly invited by the director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev, to spend the time of his performances, a week or so, in his apartment, about which he had written to Nikanor Ivanovich yesterday, requesting that he register the foreigner as a temporary resident, while Likhodeev himself took a trip to Yalta.

‘He never wrote me anything,’ the chairman said in amazement.

‘Just look through your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,’ Koroviev suggested sweetly.

Nikanor Ivanovich, shrugging his shoulders, opened the briefcase and found Likhodeev’s letter in it.

‘How could I have forgotten about it?’ Nikanor Ivanovich muttered, looking dully at the opened envelope.

‘All sorts of things happen, Nikanor Ivanovich, all sorts!’ Koroviev rattled. ‘Absent-mindedness, absent-mindedness, fatigue and high blood pressure, my dear friend Nikanor Ivanovich! I’m terribly absent-minded myself! Someday, over a glass, I’ll tell you a few facts from my biography — you’ll die laughing!’

‘And when is Likhodeev going to Yalta?’

‘He’s already gone, gone!’ the interpreter cried. ‘He’s already wheeling along, you know! He’s already devil knows where!’ And here the interpreter waved his arms like the wings of a windmill.

Nikanor Ivanovich declared that he must see the foreigner in person, but got a refusal on that from the interpreter. quite impossible. He’s busy. Training the cat.

The cat I can show you, if you like,‘ Koroviev offered.

This Nikanor Ivanovich refused in his turn, and the interpreter straight away made the chairman an unexpected but quite interesting proposal: seeing that Mr Woland had no desire whatsoever to live in a hotel, and was accustomed to having a lot of space, why shouldn’t the tenants’ association rent to him, Woland, for one little week, the time of his performances in Moscow, the whole of the apartment, that is, the deceased’s rooms as well?

‘It’s all the same to him — the deceased — you must agree, Nikanor Ivanovich,’ Koroviev whispered hoarsely. ‘He doesn’t need the apartment now, does he?’

Nikanor Ivanovich, somewhat perplexed, objected that foreigners ought to live at the Metropol, and not in private apartments at all ...

‘I’m telling you, he’s capricious as devil knows what!’ Koroviev whispered. ‘He just doesn’t want to! He doesn’t like hotels! I’ve had them up to here, these foreign tourists!’ Koroviev complained confidentially, jabbing his finger at his sinewy neck. ‘Believe me, they wring the soul right out of you! They come and either spy on you like the lowest son of a bitch, or else torment you with their caprices - this isn’t right and that isn’t right! ... And for your association, Nikanor Ivanovich, it’s a sheer gain and an obvious profit. He won’t stint on money.’ Koroviev looked around and then whispered into the chairman’s ear: ‘A millionaire!’

The interpreter’s offer made clear practical sense, it was a very solid offer, yet there was something remarkably unsolid in his manner of speaking, and in his clothes, and in that loathsome, good-for-nothing pince-nez. As a result, something vague weighed on the chairman’s soul, but he nevertheless decided to accept the offer. The thing was that the tenants’ association, alas, had quite a sizeable deficit. Fuel had to be bought for the heating system by fall, but who was going to shell out for it — no one knew. But with the foreign tourist’s money, it might be possible to wriggle out of it. However, the practical and prudent Nikanor Ivanovich said he would first have to settle the question with the foreign tourist bureau.

‘I understand!’ Koroviev cried out. ‘You’ve got to settle it! Absolutely! Here’s the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, settle it at once! And don’t be shy about the money,’ he added in a whisper, drawing the chairman to the telephone in the front hall, ‘if he won’t pay, who will! You should see the villa he’s got in Nice! Next summer, when you go abroad, come especially to see it — you’ll gasp!’

The business with the foreign tourist bureau was arranged over the phone with an extraordinary speed, quite amazing to the chairman. It turned out that they already knew about Mr Woland’s intention of staying in Likhodeev’s private apartment and had no objections to it.

‘That’s wonderful!’ Koroviev yelled. Somewhat stunned by his chatter, the chairman announced that the tenants’ association agreed to rent apartment no. 50 for a week to the artiste Woland, for ... Nikanor Ivanovich faltered a little, then said:

‘For five hundred roubles a day.’

Here Koroviev utterly amazed the chairman. Winking thievishly in the direction of the bedroom, from which the soft leaps of a heavy cat could be heard, he rasped out:

‘So it comes to three thousand five hundred for the week?’

To which Nikanor Ivanovich thought he was going to add: ‘Some appetite you’ve got, Nikanor Ivanovich!’ but Koroviev said something quite different:

‘What kind of money is that? Ask five, he’ll pay it.’

Grinning perplexedly, Nikanor Ivanovich, without noticing how, found himself at the deceased’s writing desk, where Koroviev with great speed and dexterity drew up a contract in two copies. Then he flew to the bedroom with them and came back, both copies now bearing the foreigner’s sweeping signature. The chairman also signed the contract. Here Koroviev asked for a receipt for five ...

‘Write it out, write it out, Nikanor Ivanovich! ... thousand roubles ...’ And with words somehow unsuited to serious business - ‘Ein, zwei, drei!’ — he laid out for the chairman five stacks of new banknotes.

The counting-up took place, interspersed with Koroviev’s quips and quiddities, such as ‘Cash loves counting’, ‘Your own eye won’t lie’, and others of the same sort.

After counting the money, the chairman received from Koroviev the foreigner’s passport for temporary registration, put it, together with the contract and the money, into his briefcase, and, somehow unable to help himself, sheepishly asked for a free pass ...

‘Don’t mention it!’ bellowed Koroviev. ‘How many tickets do you want, Nikanor Ivanovich — twelve, fifteen?’

The flabbergasted chairman explained that all he needed was a couple of passes, for himself and Pelageya Antonovna, his wife.

Koroviev snatched out a notebook at once and dashed off a pass for Nikanor Ivanovich, for two persons in the front row. And with his left hand the interpreter deftly slipped this pass to Nikanor Ivanovich, while with his right he put into the chairman’s other hand a thick, crackling wad. Casting an eye on it, Nikanor Ivanovich blushed deeply and began to push it away.

‘It isn’t done ...’ he murmured.

‘I won’t hear of it,’ Koroviev whispered right in his ear. ‘With us it’s not done, but with foreigners it is. You’ll offend him, Nikanor Ivanovich, and that’s embarrassing. You’ve worked hard ...’

‘It’s severely punishable,’ the chairman whispered very, very softly and glanced over his shoulder.

‘But where are the witnesses?’ Koroviev whispered into his other ear. ‘I ask you, where are they? You don’t think ... ?’

Here, as the chairman insisted afterwards, a miracle occurred: the wad crept into his briefcase by itself. And then the chairman, somehow limp and even broken, found himself on the stairs. A whirlwind of thoughts raged in his head. There was the villa in Nice, and the trained cat, and the thought that there were in fact no witnesses, and that Pelageya Antonovna would be delighted with the pass. They were incoherent thoughts, but generally pleasant. But, all the same, somewhere, some little needle kept pricking the chairman in the very bottom of his soul. This was the needle of anxiety. Besides, right then on the stairs the chairman was seized, as with a stroke, by the thought: ‘But how did the interpreter get into the study if the door was sealed?! And how was it that he, Nikanor Ivanovich, had not asked about it?’ For some time the chairman stood staring like a sheep at the steps of the stairway, but then he decided to spit on it and not torment himself with intricate questions ...

As soon as the chairman left the apartment, a low voice came from the bedroom:

‘I didn’t like this Nikanor Ivanovich. He is a chiseller and a crook. Can it be arranged so that he doesn’t come any more?’

‘Messire, you have only to say the word ...’ Koroviev responded from somewhere, not in a rattling but in a very clear and resounding voice.

And at once the accursed interpreter turned up in the front hall, dialled a number there, and for some reason began speaking very tearfully into the receiver:

‘Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that the chairman of our tenants’ association at no. 302-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is speculating in foreign currency.[80] At the present moment, in his apartment no. 35, he has four hundred dollars wrapped up in newspaper in the ventilation of the privy. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the said house, apartment no. 11. But I adjure you to keep my name a secret. I fear the vengeance of the above-stated chairman.’

And he hung up, the scoundrel!

What happened next in apartment no. 50 is not known, but it is known what happened at Nikanor Ivanovich’s. Having locked himself in the privy with the hook, he took from his briefcase the wad foisted on him by the interpreter and satisfied himself that it contained four hundred roubles. Nikanor Ivanovich wrapped this wad in a scrap of newspaper and put it into the ventilation duct.

Five minutes later the chairman was sitting at the table in his small dining room. His wife brought pickled herring from the kitchen, neatly sliced and thickly sprinkled with green onion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured himself a dram of vodka, drank it, poured another, drank it, picked up three pieces of herring on his fork ... and at that moment the doorbell rang. Pelageya Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming pot which, one could tell at once from a single glance, contained, amidst a fiery borscht, that than which there is nothing more delicious in the world — a marrow bone.

Swallowing his spittle, Nikanor Ivanovich growled like a dog:

‘Damn them all! Won’t allow a man to eat ... Don’t let anyone in, I’m not here, not here ... If it’s about the apartment, tell them to stop blathering, there’ll be a meeting next week.’

His wife ran to the front hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, using a ladle, drew from the fire-breathing lake - it, the bone, cracked lengthwise. And at that moment two citizens entered the dining room, with Pelageya Antonovna following them, for some reason looking very pale. Seeing the citizens, Nikanor Ivanovich also turned white and stood up.

‘Where’s the jakes?’ the first one, in a white side-buttoned shirt, asked with a preoccupied air.

Something thudded against the dining table (this was Nikanor Ivanovich dropping the ladle on to the oilcloth).

This way, this way,‘ Pelageya Antonovna replied in a patter.

And the visitors immediately hastened to the corridor.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nikanor Ivanovich asked quietly, going after the visitors. ‘There can’t be anything like that in our apartment ... And — your papers ... begging your pardon...’

The first, without stopping, showed Nikanor Ivanovich a paper, and the second was at the same moment standing on a stool in the privy, his arm in the ventilation duct. Everything went dark in Nikanor Ivanovich’s eyes. The newspaper was removed, but in the wad there were not roubles but some unknown money, bluish-greenish, and with the portrait of some old man. However, Nikanor Ivanovich saw it all dimly, there were some sort of spots floating in front of his eyes.

‘Dollars in the ventilation ...’ the first said pensively and asked Nikanor Ivanovich gently and courteously: ‘Tour little wad?’

‘No!’ Nikanor Ivanovich replied in a dreadful voice. ‘Enemies stuck me with it!’

‘That happens,’ the first agreed and added, again gently: ‘Well, you’re going to have to turn in the rest.’

‘I haven’t got any! I swear to God, I never laid a finger on it!’ the chairman cried out desperately.

He dashed to the chest, pulled a drawer out with a clatter, and from it the briefcase, crying out incoherently:

‘Here’s the contract... that vermin of an interpreter stuck me with it ... Koroviev ... in a pince-nez! ...’

He opened the briefcase, glanced into it, put a hand inside, went blue in the face, and dropped the briefcase into the borscht. There was nothing in the briefcase: no letter from Styopa, no contract, no foreigner’s passport, no money, no theatre pass. In short, nothing except a folding ruler.

‘Comrades!’ the chairman cried frenziedly. ‘Catch them! There are unclean powers in our house!’

It is not known what Pelageya Antonovna imagined here, only she clasped her hands and cried:

‘Repent, Ivanych! You’ll get off lighter.’

His eyes bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich raised his fists over his wife’s head, croaking:

‘Ohh, you damned fool!’

Here he went slack and sank down on a chair, evidently resolved to submit to the inevitable.

During this time, Timofei Kondratievich Kvastsov stood on the landing, placing now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole of the door to the chairman’s apartment, melting with curiosity.

Five minutes later the tenants of the house who were in the courtyard saw the chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceed directly to the gates of the house. It was said that Nikanor Ivanovich looked awful, staggered like a drunk man as he passed, and was muttering something.

And an hour after that an unknown citizen appeared in apartment no. 11, just as Timofei Kondratievich, spluttering with delight, was telling some other tenants how the chairman got pinched, motioned to Timofei Kondratievich with his finger to come from the kitchen to the front hall, said something to him, and together they vanished.

CHAPTER 10 News From Yalta

At the same time that disaster struck Nikanor Ivanovich, not far away from no. 302-bis, on the same Sadovaya Street, in the office of the financial director of the Variety Theatre, Rimsky, there sat two men: Rimsky himself, and the administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.[80]

The big office on the second floor of the theatre had two windows on Sadovaya and one, just behind the back of the findirector, who was sitting at his desk, facing the summer garden of the Variety, where there were refreshment stands, a shooting gallery and an open-air stage. The furnishings of the office, apart from the desk, consisted of a bunch of old posters hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water on it, four armchairs and, in the corner, a stand on which stood a dust-covered scale model of some past review. Well, it goes without saying that, in addition, there was in the office a small, shabby, peeling fireproof safe, to Rimsky’s left, next to the desk.

Rimsky, now sitting at his desk, had been in bad spirits since morning, while Varenukha, on the contrary, was very animated and somehow especially restlessly active. Yet there was no outlet for his energy.

Varenukha was presently hiding in the findirector’s office to escape the seekers of free passes, who poisoned his life, especially on days when the programme changed. And today was precisely such a day. As soon as the telephone started to ring, Varenukha would pick up the receiver and lie into it:

‘Who? Varenukha? He’s not here. He stepped out.’

‘Please call Likhodeev again,’ Rimsky asked vexedly.

‘He’s not home. I even sent Karpov, there’s no one in the apartment.’

‘Devil knows what’s going on!’ Rimsky hissed, clacking on the adding machine.

The door opened and an usher dragged in a thick stack of freshly printed extra posters; in big red letters on a green background was printed:

Varenukha stepped back from the poster, which he had thrown on to the scale model, admired it, and told the usher to send all the posters out immediately to be pasted up.

‘Good ... Loud!’ Varenukha observed on the usher’s departure.

‘And I dislike this undertaking extremely,’ Rimsky grumbled, glancing spitefully at the poster through his horn-rimmed glasses, ‘and generally I’m surprised he’s been allowed to present it.’

‘No, Grigory Danilovich, don’t say so! This is a very subtle step. The salt is all in the exposure.’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know, there’s no salt, in my opinion ... and he’s always coming up with things like this! ... He might at least show us his magician! Have you seen him? Where he dug him up, devil knows!’

It turned out that Varenukha had not seen the magician any more than Rimsky had. Yesterday Styopa had come running (‘like crazy’, in Rimsky’s expression) to the findirector with the already written draft of a contract, ordered it copied straight away and the money handed over to Woland. And this magician had cleared out, and no one had seen him except Styopa himself.

Rimsky took out his watch, saw that it read five minutes past two, and flew into a complete rage. Really! Likhodeev had called at around eleven, said he’d come in half an hour, and not only had not come, but had disappeared from his apartment.

‘He’s holding up my business!’ Rimsky was roaring now, jabbing his finger at a pile of unsigned papers.

‘Might he have fallen under a tram-car like Berlioz?’ Varenukha said as he held his ear to the receiver, from which came low, prolonged and utterly hopeless signals.

‘Wouldn’t be a bad thing ...’ Rimsky said barely audibly through his teeth.

At that same moment a woman in a uniform jacket, visored cap, black skirt and sneakers came into the office. From a small pouch at her belt the woman took a small white square and a notebook and asked:

‘Who here is Variety? A super-lightning telegram.[81] Sign here.’

Varenukha scribbled some flourish in the woman’s notebook, and as soon as the door slammed behind her, he opened the square. After reading the telegram, he blinked and handed the square to Rimsky.

The telegram contained the following: ‘

Yalta to Moscow Variety. Today eleven thirty brown-haired man came criminal investigation nightshirt trousers shoeless mental case gave name Likhodeev Director Variety Wire Yalta criminal investigation where Director Likhodeev.

‘Hello and how do you do!’ Rimsky exclaimed, and added: ‘Another surprise!’

‘A false Dmitri!’[82] said Varenukha, and he spoke into the receiver. Telegraph office? Variety account. Take a super-lightning telegram. Are you listening? “Yalta criminal investigation. Director Likhodeev Moscow Findirector Rimsky.”’

Irrespective of the news about the Yalta impostor, Varenukha again began searching all over for Styopa by telephone, and naturally did not find him anywhere.

Just as Varenukha, receiver in hand, was pondering where else he might call, the same woman who had brought the first telegram came in and handed Varenukha a new envelope. Opening it hurriedly, Varenukha read the message and whistled.

‘What now?’ Rimsky asked, twitching nervously.

Varenukha silently handed him the telegram, and the findirector saw there the words: ‘

Beg believe thrown Yalta Woland hypnosis wire criminal investigation confirm identity Likhodeev.

Rimsky and Varenukha, their heads touching, reread the telegram, and after rereading it, silently stared at each other.

‘Citizens!’ the woman got angry. ‘Sign, and then be silent as much as you like! I deliver lightnings!’

Varenukha, without taking his eyes off the telegram, made a crooked scrawl in the notebook, and the woman vanished.

‘Didn’t you talk with him on the phone at a little past eleven?’ the administrator began in total bewilderment.

‘No, it’s ridiculous!’ Rimsky cried shrilly. ‘Talk or not, he can’t be in Yalta now! It’s ridiculous!’

‘He’s drunk ...’ said Varenukha.

‘Who’s drunk?’ asked Rimsky, and again the two stared at each other.

That some impostor or madman had sent telegrams from Yalta, there was no doubt. But the strange thing was this: how did the Yalta mystifier know Woland, who had come to Moscow just the day before? How did he know about the connection between Likhodeev and Woland?

‘Hypnosis...’ Varenukha kept repeating the word from the telegram. ‘How does he know about Woland?’ He blinked his eyes and suddenly cried resolutely: ‘Ah, no! Nonsense! ... Nonsense, nonsense!’

‘Where’s he staying, this Woland, devil take him?’ asked Rimsky.

Varenukha immediately got connected with the foreign tourist bureau and, to Rimsky’s utter astonishment, announced that Woland was staying in Likhodeev’s apartment. Dialling the number of the Likhodeev apartment after that, Varenukha listened for a long time to the low buzzing in the receiver. Amidst the buzzing, from somewhere far away, came a heavy, gloomy voice singing: ‘... rocks, my refuge...’[83] and Varenukha decided that the telephone lines had crossed with a voice from a radio show.

‘The apartment doesn’t answer,’ Varenukha said, putting down the receiver, ‘or maybe I should call ...’

He did not finish. The same woman appeared in the door, and both men, Rimsky and Varenukha, rose to meet her, while she took from her pouch not a white sheet this time, but some sort of dark one.

This is beginning to get interesting,‘ Varenukha said through his teeth, his eyes following the hurriedly departing woman. Rimsky was the first to take hold of the sheet.

On a dark background of photographic paper, some black handwritten lines were barely discernible:

‘Proof my handwriting my signature wire urgently confirmation place secret watch Woland Likhodeev.’

In his twenty years of work in the theatre, Varenukha had seen all kinds of sights, but here he felt his mind becoming obscured as with a veil, and he could find nothing to say but the at once mundane and utterly absurd phrase:

‘This cannot be!’

Rimsky acted otherwise. He stood up, opened the door, barked out to the messenger girl sitting on a stool:

‘Let no one in except postmen!’ — and locked the door with a key.

Then he took a pile of papers out of the desk and began carefully to compare the bold, back-slanting letters of the photogram with the letters in Styopa’s resolutions and signatures, furnished with a corkscrew flourish. Varenukha, leaning his weight on the table, breathed hotly on Rimsky’s cheek.

‘It’s his handwriting,’ the findirector finally said firmly, and Varenukha repeated like an echo:

‘His.’

Peering into Rimsky’s face, the administrator marvelled at the change that had come over this face. Thin to begin with, the findirector seemed to have grown still thinner and even older, his eyes in their horn rims had lost their customary prickliness, and there appeared in them not only alarm, but even sorrow.

Varenukha did everything that a man in a moment of great astonishment ought to do. He raced up and down the office, he raised his arms twice like one crucified, he drank a whole glass of yellowish water from the carafe and exclaimed:

‘I don’t understand! I don’t understand! I don’t un-der-stand!’

Rimsky meanwhile was looking out the window, thinking hard about something. The findirector’s position was very difficult. It was necessary at once, right on the spot, to invent ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena.

Narrowing his eyes, the findirector pictured to himself Styopa, in a nightshirt and shoeless, getting into some unprecedented super-highspeed airplane at around half past eleven that morning, and then the same Styopa, also at half past eleven, standing in his stocking feet at the airport in Yalta ... devil knew what to make of it!

Maybe it was not Styopa who talked with him this morning over the phone from his own apartment? No, it was Styopa speaking! Who if not he should know Styopa’s voice? And even if it was not Styopa speaking today, it was no earlier than yesterday, towards evening, that Styopa had come from his office to this very office with this idiotic contract and annoyed the findirector with his light-mindedness. How could he have gone or flown away without leaving word at the theatre? But if he had flown away yesterday evening - he would not have arrived by noon today. Or would he?

‘How many miles is it to Yalta?’ asked Rimsky.

Varenukha stopped his running and yelled:

‘I thought of that! I already thought of it! By train it’s over nine hundred miles to Sebastopol, plus another fifty to Yalta! Well, but by air, of course, it’s less.’

Hm ... Yes ... There could be no question of any trains. But what then? Some fighter plane? Who would let Styopa on any fighter plane without his shoes? What for? Maybe he took his shoes off when he got to Yalta? It’s the same thing: what for? And even with his shoes on they wouldn’t have let him on a fighter! And what has the fighter got to do with it? It’s written that he came to the investigators at half past eleven in the morning, and he talked on the telephone in Moscow ... excuse me ... (the face of Rimsky’s watch emerged before his eyes).

Rimsky tried to remember where the hands had been ... Terrible! It had been twenty minutes past eleven!

So what does it boil down to? If one supposes that after the conversation Styopa instantly rushed to the airport, and reached it in, say, five minutes (which, incidentally, was also unthinkable), it means that the plane, taking off at once, covered nearly a thousand miles in five minutes. Consequently, it was flying at twelve thousand miles an hour!!! That cannot be, and that means he’s not in Yalta!

What remains, then? Hypnosis? There’s no hypnosis in the world that can fling a man a thousand miles away! So he’s imagining that he’s in Yalta? He may be imagining it, but are the Yalta investigators also imagining it? No, no, sorry, that can’t be! ... Yet they did telegraph from there?

The findirector’s face was literally dreadful. The door handle was all the while being turned and pulled from outside, and the messenger girl could be heard through the door crying desperately:

‘Impossible! I won’t let you! Cut me to pieces! It’s a meeting!’

Rimsky regained control of himself as well as he could, took the receiver of the phone, and said into it:

‘A super-urgent call to Yalta, please.’

‘Clever!’ Varenukha observed mentally.

But the conversation with Yalta did not take place. Rimsky hung up the receiver and said:

‘As luck would have it, the line’s broken.’

It could be seen that the broken line especially upset him for some reason, and even made him lapse into thought. Having thought a little, he again took the receiver in one hand, and with the other began writing down what he said into it:

Take a super-lightning. Variety. Yes. Yalta criminal investigation. Yes. “Today around eleven thirty Likhodeev talked me phone Moscow stop After that did not come work unable locate by phone stop Confirm handwriting stop Taking measures watch said artiste Findirector Rimsky.”‘

‘Very clever!’ thought Varenukha, but before he had time to think well, the words rushed through his head: ‘Stupid! He can’t be in Yalta!’

Rimsky meanwhile did the following: he neatly stacked all the received telegrams, plus the copy of his own, put the stack into an envelope, sealed it, wrote a few words on it, and handed it to Varenukha, saying:

‘Go right now, Ivan Savelyevich, take it there personally.[84] Let them sort it out.’

‘Now that is really clever!’ thought Varenukha, and he put the envelope into his briefcase. Then, just in case, he dialled Styopa’s apartment number on the telephone, listened, and began winking and grimacing joyfully and mysteriously. Rimsky stretched his neck.

‘May I speak with the artiste Woland?’ Varenukha asked sweetly.

‘Mister’s busy,’ the receiver answered in a rattling voice, ‘who’s calling?’

The administrator of the Variety, Varenukha.‘

‘Ivan Savelyevich?’ the receiver cried out joyfully. ‘Terribly glad to hear your voice! How’re you doing?’

‘Merci,’ Varenukha replied in amazement, ‘and with whom am I speaking?’

‘His assistant, his assistant and interpreter, Koroviev!’ crackled the receiver. ‘I’m entirely at your service, my dearest Ivan Savelyevich! Order me around as you like. And so?’

‘Excuse me, but ... what, is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev not at home now?’

‘Alas, no! No!’ the receiver shouted. ‘He left!’

‘For where?’

‘Out of town, for a drive in the car.’

‘Wh ... what? A dr ... drive? And when will he be back?’

‘He said, I’ll get a breath of fresh air and come back.’

‘So ...’ said the puzzled Varenukha, ‘merci ... kindly tell Monsieur Woland that his performance is tonight in the third part of the programme.’

‘Right. Of course. Absolutely. Urgently. Without fail. I’ll tell him,’ the receiver rapped out abruptly.

‘Goodbye,’ Varenukha said in astonishment.

‘Please accept,’ said the receiver, ‘my best, warmest greetings and wishes! For success! Luck! Complete happiness! Everything!’

‘But of course! Didn’t I say so!’ the administrator cried agitatedly. ‘It’s not any Yalta, he just went to the country!’

‘Well, if that’s so,’ the findirector began, turning pale with anger, ‘it’s real swinishness, there’s even no name for it!’

Here the administrator jumped up and shouted so that Rimsky gave a start:

‘I remember! I remember! They’ve opened a new Georgian tavern in Pushkino called “Yalta”! It’s all clear! He went there, got drunk, and now he’s sending telegrams from there!’

‘Well, now that’s too much!’ Rimsky answered, his cheek twitching, and deep, genuine anger burned in his eyes. ‘Well, then, he’s going to pay dearly for this little excursion! ...’ He suddenly faltered and added irresolutely: ‘But what about the criminal investlgation ...’

‘It’s nonsense! His own little jokes,’ the expansive administrator interrupted, and asked: ‘Shall I take the envelope?’

‘Absolutely,’ replied Rimsky.

And again the door opened and in came that same ... ‘Her!’ thought Rimsky, for some reason with anguish. And both men rose to meet the postwoman.

This time the telegram contained the words:

‘

Thank you confirmation send five hundred urgently criminal investigation my name tomorrow fly Moscow Likhodeev.

‘He’s lost his mind ...’ Varenukha said weakly.

Rimsky jingled his key, took money from the fireproof safe, counted out five hundred roubles, rang the bell, handed the messenger the money, and sent him to the telegraph office.

‘Good heavens, Grigory Danilovich,’ Varenukha said, not believing his eyes, ‘in my opinion you oughtn’t to send the money.’

‘It’ll come back,’ Rimsky replied quietly, ‘but he’ll have a hard time explaining this little picnic.’ And he added, indicating the briefcase to Varenukha: ‘Go, Ivan Savelyevich, don’t delay.’

And Varenukha ran out of the office with the briefcase.

He went down to the ground floor, saw the longest line at the box office, found out from the box-office girl that she expected to sell out within the hour, because the public was simply pouring in since the additional poster had been put up, told the girl to earmark and hold thirty of the best seats in the gallery and the stalls, popped out of the box office, shook off importunate pass-seekers as he ran, and dived into his little office to get his cap. At that moment the telephone rattled.

‘Yes!’ Varenukha shouted.

‘Ivan Savelyevich?’ the receiver inquired in a most repulsive nasal voice.

‘He’s not in the theatre!’ Varenukha was shouting, but the receiver interrupted him at once:

‘Don’t play the fool, Ivan Savelyevich, just listen. Do not take those telegrams anywhere or show them to anyone.’

‘Who is this?’ Varenukha bellowed. ‘Stop these jokes, citizen! You’ll be found out at once! What’s your number?’

‘Varenukha,’ the same nasty voice returned, ‘do you understand Russian? Don’t take the telegrams anywhere.’

‘Ah, so you won’t stop?’ the administrator cried furiously. ‘Look out, then! You’re going to pay for it!’ He shouted some other threat, but fell silent, because he sensed that no one was listening to him any longer in the receiver.

Here it somehow began to grow dark very quickly in his little office. Varenukha ran out, slammed the door behind him, and rushed through the side entrance into the summer garden.

The administrator was agitated and full of energy. After the insolent phone call he had no doubts that it was a band of hooligans playing nasty tricks, and that these tricks were connected with the disappearance of Likhodeev. The administrator was choking with the desire to expose the malefactors, and, strange as it was, the anticipation of something enjoyable was born in him. It happens that way when a man strives to become the centre of attention, to bring sensational news somewhere.

In the garden the wind blew in the administrator’s face and flung sand in his eyes, as if blocking his way, as if cautioning him. A window on the second floor slammed so that the glass nearly broke, the tops of the maples and lindens rustled alarmingly. It became darker and colder. The administrator rubbed his eyes and saw that a yellow-bellied storm cloud was creeping low over Moscow. There came a dense, distant rumbling.

However great Varenukha’s hurry, an irrepressible desire pulled at him to run over to the summer toilet for a second on his way, to check whether the repairman had put a wire screen over the light-bulb.

Running past the shooting gallery, Varenukha came to a thick growth of lilacs where the light-blue toilet building stood. The repairman turned out to be an efficient fellow, the bulb under the roof of the gentlemen’s side was covered with a wire screen, but the administrator was upset that even in the pre-storm darkness one could make out that the walls were already written all over in charcoal and pencil.

‘Well, what sort of...’ the administrator began and suddenly heard a voice purring behind him:

‘Is that you, Ivan Savelyevich?’

Varenukha started, turned around, and saw before him a short, fat man with what seemed to him a cat-like physiognomy.

‘So, it’s me, Varenukha answered hostilely.’

‘Very, very glad,’ the cat-like fat man responded in a squeaky voice and, suddenly swinging his arm, gave Varenukha such a blow on the ear that the cap flew off the administrator’s head and vanished without a trace down the hole in the seat.

At the fat man’s blow, the whole toilet lit up momentarily with a tremulous light, and a roll of thunder echoed in the sky. Then came another flash and a second man emerged before the administrator — short, but with athletic shoulders, hair red as fire, albugo in one eye, a fang in his mouth ... This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the other ear. In response there was another roll of thunder in the sky, and rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet.

‘What is it, comr ...’ the half-crazed administrator whispered, realized at once that the word ‘comrades’ hardly fitted bandits attacking a man in a public toilet, rasped out: ’citiz ...‘ — figured that they did not merit this appellation either, and received a third terrible blow from he did not know which of them, so that blood gushed from his nose on to his Tolstoy blouse.

‘What you got in the briefcase, parasite?’ the one resembling a cat cried shrilly. ‘Telegrams? Weren’t you warned over the phone not to take them anywhere? Weren’t you warned, I’m asking you?’

‘I was wor ... wer ... warned ...’ the administrator answered, suffocating.

‘And you skipped off anyway? Gimme the briefcase, vermin!’ the second one cried in the same nasal voice that had come over the telephone, and he yanked the briefcase from Varenukha’s trembling hands.

And the two picked the administrator up under the arms, dragged him out of the garden, and raced down Sadovaya with him. The storm raged at full force, water streamed with a noise and howling down the drains, waves bubbled and billowed everywhere, water gushed from the roofs past the drainpipes, foamy streams ran from gateways. Everything living got washed off Sadovaya, and there was no one to save Ivan Savelyevich. Leaping through muddy rivers, under flashes of lightning, the bandits dragged the half-alive administrator in a split second to no. 302-bis, flew with him through the gateway, where two barefoot women, holding their shoes and stockings in their hands, pressed themselves to the wall. Then they dashed into the sixth entrance, and Varenukha, nearly insane, was taken up to the fifth floor and thrown down in the semi-dark front hall, so well known to him, of Styopa Likhodeev’s apartment.

Here the two robbers vanished, and in their place there appeared in the front hall a completely naked girl — red-haired, her eyes burning with a phosphorescent gleam.

Varenukha understood that this was the most terrible of all things that had ever happened to him and, moaning, recoiled against the wall. But the girl came right up to the administrator and placed the palms of her hands on his shoulders. Varenukha’s hair stood on end, because even through the cold, water-soaked cloth of his Tolstoy blouse he could feel that those palms were still colder, that their cold was the cold of ice.

‘Let me give you a kiss,’ the girl said tenderly, and there were shining eyes right in front of his eyes. Then Varenukha fainted and never felt the kiss.

CHAPTER 11 Ivan Splits in Two

The woods on the opposite bank of the river, still lit up by the May sun an hour earlier, turned dull, smeary, and dissolved.

Water fell down in a solid sheet outside the window. In the sky, threads flashed every moment, the sky kept bursting open, and the patient’s room was flooded with a tremulous, frightening light.

Ivan quietly wept, sitting on his bed and looking out at the muddy river boiling with bubbles. At every clap of thunder, he cried out pitifully and buried his face in his hands. Pages covered with Ivan’s writing lay about on the floor. They had been blown down by the wind that flew into the room before the storm began.

The poet’s attempts to write a statement concerning the terrible consultant had gone nowhere. As soon as he got the pencil stub and paper from the fat attendant, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna, he rubbed his hands in a business-like way and hastily settled himself at the little table. The beginning came out quite glibly.

‘To the police. From Massolit member Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless. A statement. Yesterday evening I came to the Patriarch’s Ponds with the deceased M. A. Berlioz ...’

And right there the poet got confused, mainly owing to the word ‘deceased’. Some nonsensicality emerged at once: what’s this - came with the deceased? The deceased don’t go anywhere! Really, for all he knew, they might take him for a madman!

Having reflected thus, Ivan Nikolaevich began to correct what he had written. What came out this time was: ‘... with M. A. Berlioz, subsequently deceased...’ This did not satisfy the author either. He had to have recourse to a third redaction, which proved still worse than the first two: ‘Berlioz, who fell under the tram-car ...’ — and that namesake composer, unknown to anyone, was also dangling here, so he had to put in: ‘not the composer...’

After suffering over these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed it all out and decided to begin right off with something very strong, in order to attract the reader’s attention at once, so he wrote that a cat had got on a tram-car, and then went back to the episode with the severed head. The head and the consultant’s prediction led him to the thought of Pontius Pilate, and for greater conviction Ivan decided to tell the whole story of the procurator in full, from the moment he walked out in his white cloak with blood-red lining to the colonnade of Herod’s palace.

Ivan worked assiduously, crossing out what he had written, putting in new words, and even attempted to draw Pontius Pilate and then a cat standing on its hind legs. But the drawings did not help, and the further it went, the more confusing and incomprehensible the poet’s statement became.

By the time the frightening cloud with smoking edges appeared from far off and covered the woods, and the wind began to blow, Ivan felt that he was strengthless, that he would never be able to manage with the statement, and he would not pick up the scattered pages, and he wept quietly and bitterly. The good-natured nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna visited the poet during the storm, became alarmed on seeing him weeping, closed the blinds so that the lightning would not frighten the patient, picked up the pages from the floor, and ran with them for the doctor.

He came, gave Ivan an injection in the arm, and assured him that he would not weep any more, that everything would pass now, everything would change, everything would be forgotten.

The doctor proved right. Soon the woods across the river became as before. It was outlined to the last tree under the sky, which cleared to its former perfect blue, and the river grew calm. Anguish had begun to leave Ivan right after the injection, and now the poet lay calmly and looked at the rainbow that stretched across the sky.

So it went till evening, and he did not even notice how the rainbow melted away, how the sky saddened and faded, how the woods turned black.

Having drunk some hot milk, Ivan lay down again and marvelled himself at how changed his thinking was. The accursed, demonic cat somehow softened in his memory, the severed head did not frighten him any more, and, abandoning all thought of it, Ivan began to reflect that, essentially, it was not so bad in the clinic, that Stravinsky was a clever man and a famous one, and it was quite pleasant to deal with him. Besides, the evening air was sweet and fresh after the storm.

The house of sorrow was falling asleep. In quiet corridors the frosted white lights went out, and in their place, according to regulations, faint blue night-lights were lit, and the careful steps of attendants were heard more and more rarely on the rubber matting of the corridor outside the door.

Now Ivan lay in sweet languor, glancing at the lamp under its shade, shedding a softened light from the ceiling, then at the moon rising behind the black woods, and conversed with himself.

‘Why, actually, did I get so excited about Berlioz falling under a tram-car?’ the poet reasoned. ‘In the final analysis, let him sink! What am I, in fact, his chum or in-law? If we air the question properly, it turns out that, in essence, I really did not even know the deceased. What, indeed, did I know about him? Nothing except that he was bald and terribly eloquent. And furthermore, citizens,’ Ivan continued his speech, addressing someone or other, ‘let’s sort this out: why, tell me, did I get furious at this mysterious consultant, magician and professor with the black and empty eye? Why all this absurd chase after him in underpants and with a candle in my hand, and then those wild shenanigans in the restaurant?’

‘Uh-uh-uh!’ the former Ivan suddenly said sternly somewhere, either inside or over his ear, to the new Ivan. ‘He did know beforehand that Berlioz’s head would be cut off, didn’t he? How could I not get excited?’

‘What are we talking about, comrades?’ the new Ivan objected to the old, former Ivan. ‘That things are not quite proper here, even a child can understand. He’s a one-hundred-per-cent outstanding and mysterious person! But that’s the most interesting thing! The man was personally acquainted with Pontius Pilate, what could be more interesting than that? And, instead of raising a stupid rumpus at the Ponds, wouldn’t it have been more intelligent to question him politely about what happened further on with Pilate and his prisoner Ha-Nozri? And I started devil knows what! A major occurrence, really — a magazine editor gets run over! And so, what, is the magazine going to shut down for that? Well, what can be done about it? Man is mortal and, as has rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal. Well, may he rest in peace! Well, so there’ll be another editor, and maybe even more eloquent than the previous one!’

After dozing for a while, the new Ivan asked the old Ivan sarcastically:

‘And what does it make me, in that case?’

‘A fool!’ a bass voice said distinctly somewhere, a voice not belonging to either of the Ivans and extremely like the bass of the consultant.

Ivan, for some reason not offended by the word ‘fool’, but even pleasantly surprised at it, smiled and drowsily grew quiet. Sleep was stealing over Ivan, and he was already picturing a palm tree on its elephant’s leg, and a cat passing by - not scary, but merry — and, in short, sleep was just about to come over Ivan, when the grille suddenly moved noiselessly aside, and a mysterious figure appeared on the balcony, hiding from the moonlight, and shook its finger at Ivan.

Not frightened in the least, Ivan sat up in bed and saw that there was a man on the balcony. And this man, pressing a finger to his lips, whispered:

‘Shhh!...’

CHAPTER 12 Black Magic and Its Exposure

A small man in a yellow bowler-hat full of holes and with a pear-shaped, raspberry-coloured nose, in checkered trousers and patent-leather shoes, rolled out on to the stage of the Variety on an ordinary two-wheeled bicycle. To the sounds of a foxtrot he made a circle, and then gave a triumphant shout, which caused his bicycle to rear up. After riding around on the back wheel, the little man turned upside down, contrived while in motion to unscrew the front wheel and send it backstage, and then proceeded on his way with one wheel, turning the pedals with his hands.

On a tall metal pole with a seat at the top and a single wheel, a plump blonde rolled out in tights and a little skirt strewn with silver stars, and began riding in a circle. As he met her, the little man uttered cries of greeting, doffing his bowler-hat with his foot.

Finally, a little eight-year-old with an elderly face came rolling out and began scooting about among the adults on a tiny two-wheeler furnished with an enormous automobile horn.

After making several loops, the whole company, to the alarming drum-beats of the orchestra, rolled to the very edge of the stage, and the spectators in the front rows gasped and drew back, because it seemed to the public that the whole trio with its vehicles was about to crash down into the orchestra pit.

But the bicycles stopped just at the moment when the front wheels threatened to slide into the abyss on the heads of the musicians. With a loud shout of ‘Hup!’ the cyclists jumped off their vehicles and bowed, the blonde woman blowing kisses to the public, and the little one tooting a funny signal on his horn.

Applause shook the building, the light-blue curtain came from both sides and covered the cyclists, the green ‘Exit’ lights by the doors went out, and in the web of trapezes under the cupola white spheres lit up like the sun. It was the intermission before the last part.

The only man who was not the least bit interested in the wonders of the Giulli family’s cycling technique was Grigory Danilovich Rimsky. In complete solitude he sat in his office, biting his thin lips, a spasm passing over his face from time to time. To the extraordinary disappearance of Likhodeev had now been added the wholly unforeseen disappearance of Varenukha.

Rimsky knew where he had gone, but he had gone and ... not come back! Rimsky shrugged his shoulders and whispered to himself:

‘But what for?’

And it was strange: for such a practical man as the findirector, the simplest thing would, of course, have been to call the place where Varenukha had gone and find out what had befallen him, yet until ten o’clock at night he had been unable to force himself to do it.

At ten, doing outright violence to himself, Rimsky picked up the receiver and here discovered that his telephone was dead. The messenger reported that the other telephones in the building were also out of order. This certainly unpleasant, though hardly supernatural, occurrence for some reason thoroughly shocked the findirector, but at the same time he was glad: the need to call fell away.

Just as the red light over the findirector’s head lit up and blinked, announcing the beginning of the intermission, a messenger came in and informed him of the foreign artiste’s arrival. The findirector cringed for some reason, and, blacker than a storm cloud, went backstage to receive the visitor, since there was no one else to receive him.

Under various pretexts, curious people kept peeking into the big dressing room from the corridor, where the signal bell was already ringing. Among them were conjurers in bright robes and turbans, a skater in a white knitted jacket, a storyteller pale with powder and the make-up man.

The newly arrived celebrity struck everyone by his marvellously cut tailcoat, of a length never seen before, and by his having come in a black half-mask. But most remarkable of all were the black magician’s two companions: a long checkered one with a cracked pince-nez, and a fat black cat who came into the dressing room on his hind legs and quite nonchalantly sat on the sofa squinting at the bare make-up lights.

Rimsky attempted to produce a smile on his face, which made it look sour and spiteful, and bowed to the silent black magician, who was seated on the sofa beside the cat. There was no handshake. Instead, the easygoing checkered one made his own introductions to the findirector, calling himself ‘the gent’s assistant’. This circumstance surprised the findirector, and unpleasantly so: there was decidedly no mention of any assistant in the contract.

Quite stiffly and drily, Grigory Danilovich inquired of this fallen-from-the-sky checkered one where the artiste’s paraphernalia was.

‘Our heavenly diamond, most precious mister director,’ the magician’s assistant replied in a rattling voice, ‘the paraphernalia is always with us. Here it is! Ein, zwei, drei!’ And, waving his knotty fingers before Rimsky’s eyes, he suddenly took from behind the cat’s ear Rimsky’s own gold watch and chain, hitherto worn by the findirector in his waistcoat pocket, under his buttoned coat, with the chain through a buttonhole.

Rimsky inadvertently clutched his stomach, those present gasped, and the make-up man, peeking in the doorway, grunted approvingly.

‘Your little watchie? Kindly take it,’ the checkered one said, smiling casually and offering the bewildered Rimsky his own property on a dirty palm.

‘No getting on a tram with that one,’ the storyteller whispered quietly and merrily to the make-up man.

But the cat pulled a neater trick than the number with the stolen watch. Getting up from the sofa unexpectedly, he walked on his hind legs to the dressing table, pulled the stopper out of the carafe with his front paw, poured water into a glass, drank it, installed the stopper in its place, and wiped his whiskers with a make-up cloth.

Here no one even gasped, their mouths simply fell open, and the make-up man whispered admiringly:

‘That’s class!’

Just then the bells rang alarmingly for the third time, and everyone, agitated and anticipating an interesting number, thronged out of the dressing room.

A moment later the spheres went out in the theatre, the footlights blazed up, lending a reddish glow to the base of the curtain, and in the lighted gap of the curtain there appeared before the public a plump man, merry as a baby, with a clean-shaven face, in a rumpled tailcoat and none-too-fresh shirt. This was the master of ceremonies, well known to all Moscow - Georges Bengalsky.

‘And now, citizens,’ Bengalsky began, smiling his baby smile, ‘there is about to come before you ...’ Here Bengalsky interrupted himself and spoke in a different tone: ‘I see the audience has grown for the third part. We’ve got half the city here! I met a friend the other day and said to him: “Why don’t you come to our show? Yesterday we had half the city.” And he says to me: “I live in the other half!” ’ Bengalsky paused, waiting for a burst of laughter, but as no one laughed, he went on: ‘... And so, now comes the famous foreign artiste, Monsieur Woland, with a seance of black magic. Well, both you and I know,’ here Bengalsky smiled a wise smile, ‘that there’s no such thing in the world, and that it’s all just superstition, and Maestro Woland is simply a perfect master of the technique of conjuring, as we shall see from the most interesting part, that is, the exposure of this technique, and since we’re all of us to a man both for technique and for its exposure, let’s bring on Mr Woland! ...’

After uttering all this claptrap, Bengalsky pressed his palms together and waved them in greeting through the slit of the curtain, which caused it to part with a soft rustle.

The entrance of the magician with his long assistant and the cat, who came on stage on his hind legs, pleased the audience greatly.

‘An armchair for me,’ Woland ordered in a low voice, and that same second an armchair appeared on stage, no one knew how or from where, in which the magician sat down. ‘Tell me, my gentle Fagott,’ Woland inquired of the checkered clown, who evidently had another appellation than Koroviev, ‘what do you think, the Moscow populace has changed significantly, hasn’t it?’

The magician looked out at the hushed audience, struck by the appearance of the armchair out of nowhere.

‘That it has, Messire,’ Fagott-Koroviev replied in a low voice.

‘You’re right. The city folk have changed greatly ... externally, that is ... as has the city itself, incidentally ... Not to mention their clothing, these ... what do you call them ... trams, automobiles ... have appeared ...’

‘Buses...’ Fagott prompted deferentially.

The audience listened attentively to this conversation, thinking it constituted a prelude to the magic tricks. The wings were packed with performers and stage-hands, and among their faces could be seen the tense, pale face of Rimsky.

The physiognomy of Bengalsky, who had retreated to the side of the stage, began to show some perplexity. He raised one eyebrow slightly and, taking advantage of a pause, spoke:

‘The foreign artiste is expressing his admiration for Moscow and its technological development, as well as for the Muscovites.’ Here Bengalsky smiled twice, first to the stalls, then to the gallery.

Woland, Fagott and the cat turned their heads in the direction of the master of ceremonies.

‘Did I express admiration?’ the magician asked the checkered Fagott.

‘By no means, Messire, you never expressed any admiration,’ came the reply.

‘Then what is the man saying?’

‘He quite simply lied!’ the checkered assistant declared sonorously, for the whole theatre to hear, and turning to Bengalsky, he added: ‘Congrats, citizen, you done lied!’

Tittering spattered from the gallery, but Bengalsky gave a start and goggled his eyes.

‘Of course, I’m not so much interested in buses, telephones and other...’

‘Apparatuses,’ the checkered one prompted.

‘Quite right, thank you,’ the magician spoke slowly in a heavy bass, ‘as in a question of much greater importance: have the city folk changed inwardly?’

‘Yes, that is the most important question, sir.’

There was shrugging and an exchanging of glances in the wings, Bengalsky stood all red, and Rimsky was pale. But here, as if sensing the nascent alarm, the magician said:

‘However, we’re talking away, my dear Fagott, and the audience is beginning to get bored. My gentle Fagott, show us some simple little thing to start with.’

The audience stirred. Fagott and the cat walked along the footlights to opposite sides of the stage. Fagott snapped his fingers, and with a rollicking ‘Three, four!’ snatched a deck of cards from the air, shuffled it, and sent it in a long ribbon to the cat. The cat intercepted it and sent it back. The satiny snake whiffled, Fagott opened his mouth like a nestling and swallowed it all card by card. After which the cat bowed, scraping his right hind paw, winning himself unbelievable applause.

‘Class! Real class!’ rapturous shouts came from the wings.

And Fagott jabbed his finger at the stalls and announced:

‘You’ll find that same deck, esteemed citizens, on citizen Parchevsky in the seventh row, just between a three-rouble bill and a summons to court in connection with the payment of alimony to citizen Zelkova.’

There was a stirring in the stalls, people began to get up, and finally some citizen whose name was indeed Parchevsky, all crimson with amazement, extracted the deck from his wallet and began sticking it up in the air, not knowing what to do with it.

‘You may keep it as a souvenir!’ cried Fagott. ‘Not for nothing did you say at dinner yesterday that if it weren’t for poker your life in Moscow would be utterly unbearable.’

‘An old trick!’ came from the gallery. ‘The one in the stalls is from the same company.’

‘You think so?’ shouted Fagott, squinting at the gallery. ‘In that case you’re also one of us, because the deck is now in your pocket!’

There was movement in the balcony, and a joyful voice said:

‘Right! He’s got it! Here, here! ... Wait! It’s ten-rouble bills!’ Those sitting in the stalls turned their heads. In the gallery a bewildered citizen found in his pocket a bank-wrapped packet with ‘One thousand roubles’ written on it. His neighbours hovered over him, and he, in amazement, picked at the wrapper with his fingernail, trying to find out if the bills were real or some sort of magic ones.

‘By God, they’re real! Ten-rouble bills!’ joyful cries came from the gallery.

‘I want to play with the same kind of deck,’ a fat man in the middle of the stalls requested merrily.

‘Avec playzeer!’ Fagott responded. ‘But why just you? Everyone will warmly participate!’ And he commanded: ‘Look up, please! ... One!’ There was a pistol in his hand. He shouted: ‘Two!’ The pistol was pointed up. He shouted: ‘Three!’ There was a flash, a bang, and all at once, from under the cupola, bobbing between the trapezes, white strips of paper began falling into the theatre.

They twirled, got blown aside, were drawn towards the gallery, bounced into the orchestra and on to the stage. In a few seconds, the rain of money, ever thickening, reached the seats, and the spectators began snatching at it.

Hundreds of arms were raised, the spectators held the bills up to the lighted stage and saw the most true and honest-to-God watermarks. The smell also left no doubts: it was the incomparably delightful smell of freshly printed money. The whole theatre was seized first with merriment and then with amazement. The word ‘money, money!’ hummed everywhere, there were gasps of ‘ah, ah!’ and merry laughter. One or two were already crawling in the aisles, feeling under the chairs. Many stood on the seats, trying to catch the flighty, capricious notes.

Bewilderment was gradually coming to the faces of the policemen, and performers unceremoniously began sticking their heads out from the wings.

In the dress circle a voice was heard: ‘What’re you grabbing at? It’s mine, it flew to me!’ and another voice: ‘Don’t shove me, or you’ll get shoved back!’ And suddenly there came the sound of a whack. At once a policeman’s helmet appeared in the dress circle, and someone from the dress circle was led away.

The general agitation was increasing, and no one knows where it all would have ended if Fagott had not stopped the rain of money by suddenly blowing into the air.

Two young men, exchanging significant and merry glances, took off from their seats and made straight for the buffet. There was a hum in the theatre, all the spectators’ eyes glittered excitedly. Yes, yes, no one knows where it all would have ended if Bengalsky had not summoned his strength and acted. Trying to gain better control of himself, he rubbed his hands, as was his custom, and in his most resounding voice spoke thus:

‘Here, citizens, you and I have just beheld a case of so-called mass hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, proving in the best way possible that there are no miracles in magic. Let us ask Maestro Woland to expose this experiment for us. Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed banknotes disappear as suddenly as they appeared.’

Here he applauded, but quite alone, while a confident smile played on his face, yet in his eyes there was no such confidence, but rather an expression of entreaty.

The audience did not like Bengalsky’s speech. Total silence fell, which was broken by the checkered Fagott.

‘And this is a case of so-called lying,’ he announced in a loud, goatish tenor. ‘The notes, citizens, are genuine.’

‘Bravo!’ a bass barked from somewhere on high.

‘This one, incidentally,’ here Fagott pointed to Bengalsky, ‘annoys me. Keeps poking his nose where nobody’s asked him, spoils the seance with false observations! What’re we going to do with him?’

‘Tear his head off!’ someone up in the gallery said severely.

‘What’s that you said? Eh?’ Fagott responded at once to this outrageous suggestion. ‘Tear his head off? There’s an idea! Behemoth!’ he shouted to the cat. ‘Go to it! Ein, zwei, drei!!’

And an unheard-of thing occurred. The fur bristled on the cat’s back, and he gave a rending miaow. Then he compressed himself into a ball and shot like a panther straight at Bengalsky’s chest, and from there on to his head. Growling, the cat sank his plump paws into the skimpy chevelure of the master of ceremonies and in two twists tore the head from the thick neck with a savage howl.

The two and a half thousand people in the theatre cried out as one. Blood spurted in fountains from the torn neck arteries and poured over the shirt-front and tailcoat. The headless body paddled its feet somehow absurdly and sat down on the floor. Hysterical women’s cries came from the audience. The cat handed the head to Fagott, who lifted it up by the hair and showed it to the audience, and the head cried desperately for all the theatre to hear:

‘A doctor!’

‘Will you pour out such drivel in the future?’ Fagott asked the weeping head menacingly.

‘Never again!’ croaked the head.

‘For God’s sake, don’t torture him!’ a woman’s voice from a box seat suddenly rose above the clamour, and the magician turned in the direction of that voice.

‘So, what then, citizens, shall we forgive him?’ Fagott asked, addressing the audience.

‘Forgive him, forgive him!’ separate voices, mostly women’s, spoke first, then merged into one chorus with the men’s.

‘What are your orders, Messire?’ Fagott asked the masked man.

‘Well, now,’ the latter replied pensively, ‘they’re people like any other people ... They love money, but that has always been so ... Mankind loves money, whatever it’s made of — leather, paper, bronze, gold. Well, they’re light-minded ... well, what of it ... mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts ... ordinary people ... In general, reminiscent of the former ones ... only the housing problem has corrupted them...’ And he ordered loudly: ‘Tut the head on.’

The cat, aiming accurately, planted the head on the neck, and it sat exactly in its place, as if it had never gone anywhere. Above all, there was not even any scar left on the neck. The cat brushed Bengalsky’s tailcoat and shirt-front with his paws, and all traces of blood disappeared from them. Fagott got the sitting Bengalsky to his feet, stuck a packet of money into his coat pocket, and sent him from the stage with the words:

‘Buzz off, it’s more fun without you!’

Staggering and looking around senselessly, the master of ceremonies had plodded no farther than the fire post when he felt sick. He cried out pitifully:

‘My head, my head! ...’

Among those who rushed to him was Rimsky. The master of ceremonies wept, snatched at something in the air with his hands, and muttered:

‘Give me my head, give me back my head ... Take my apartment, take my paintings, only give me back my head! ...’

A messenger ran for a doctor. They tried to lie Bengalsky down on a sofa in the dressing room, but he began to struggle, became violent. They had to call an ambulance. When the unfortunate master of ceremonies was taken away, Rimsky ran back to the stage and saw that new wonders were taking place on it. Ah, yes, incidentally, either then or a little earlier, the magician disappeared from the stage together with his faded armchair, and it must be said that the public took absolutely no notice of it, carried away as it was by the extraordinary things Fagott was unfolding on stage.

And Fagott, having packed off the punished master of ceremonies, addressed the public thus:

‘All righty, now that we’ve kicked that nuisance out, let’s open a ladies’ shop!’

And all at once the floor of the stage was covered with Persian carpets, huge mirrors appeared, lit by greenish tubes at the sides, and between the mirrors — display windows, and in them the merrily astonished spectators saw Parisian ladies’ dresses of various colours and cuts. In some of the windows, that is, while in others there appeared hundreds of ladies’ hats, with feathers and without feathers, and — with buckles or without - hundreds of shoes, black, white, yellow, leather, satin, suede, with straps, with stones. Among the shoes there appeared cases of perfume, mountains of handbags of antelope hide, suede, silk, and among these, whole heaps of little elongated cases of gold metal such as usually contain lipstick.

A red-headed girl appeared from devil knows where in a black evening dress — a girl nice in all respects, had she not been marred by a queer scar on her neck — smiling a proprietary smile by the display windows.

Fagott, grinning sweetly, announced that the firm was offering perfectly gratis an exchange of the ladies’ old dresses and shoes for Parisian models and Parisian shoes. The same held, he added, for the handbags and other things.

The cat began scraping with his hind paw, while his front paw performed the gestures appropriate to a doorman opening a door.

The girl sang out sweetly, though with some hoarseness, rolling her r’s, something not quite comprehensible but, judging by the women’s faces in the stalls, very tempting:

‘Guérlain, Chanel, Mitsouko, Narcisse Noir, Chanel No. 5, evening gowns, cocktail dresses ...’

Fagott wriggled, the cat bowed, the girl opened the glass windows.

‘Welcome!’ yelled Fagott. ‘With no embarrassment or ceremony!’

The audience was excited, but as yet no one ventured on stage. Finally some brunette stood up in the tenth row of the stalls and, smiling as if to say it was all the same to her and she did not give a hoot, went and climbed on stage by the side stairs.

‘Bravo!’ Fagott shouted. ‘Greetings to the first customer! Behemoth, a chair! Let’s start with the shoes, madame.’

The brunette sat in the chair, and Fagott at once poured a whole heap of shoes on the rug in front of her. The brunette removed her right shoe, tried a lilac one, stamped on the rug, examined the heel.

‘They won’t pinch?’ she asked pensively.

To this Fagott exclaimed with a hurt air:

‘Come, come!’ and the cat miaowed resentfully.

‘I’ll take this pair, m’sieur,’ the brunette said with dignity, putting on the second shoe as well.

The brunette’s old shoes were tossed behind a curtain, and she proceeded there herself, accompanied by the red-headed girl and Fagott, who was carrying several fashionable dresses on hangers. The cat bustled about, helped, and for greater importance hung a measuring tape around his neck.

A minute later the brunette came from behind the curtain in such a dress that the stalls all let out a gasp. The brave woman, who had become astonishingly prettier, stopped at the mirror, moved her bare shoulders, touched the hair on her nape and, twisting, tried to peek at her back.

‘The firm asks you to accept this as a souvenir,’ said Fagott, and he offered the brunette an open case with a flacon in it.

‘Merci,’ the brunette said haughtily and went down the steps to the stalls. As she walked, the spectators jumped up and touched the case.

And here there came a clean breakthrough, and from all sides women marched on to the stage. Amid the general agitation of talk, chuckles and gasps, a man’s voice was heard: ‘I won’t allow it!’ and a woman’s: ‘Despot and philistine! Don’t break my arm!’ Women disappeared behind the curtain, leaving their dresses there and coming out in new ones. A whole row of ladies sat on stools with gilded legs, stamping the carpet energetically with newly shod feet. Fagott was on his knees, working away with a metal shoehorn; the cat, fainting under piles of purses and shoes, plodded back and forth between the display windows and the stools; the girl with the disfigured neck appeared and disappeared, and reached the point where she started rattling away entirely in French, and, surprisingly, the women all understood her from half a word, even those who did not know a single word of French.

General amazement was aroused by a man edging his way on-stage. He announced that his wife had the flu, and he therefore asked that something be sent to her through him. As proof that he was indeed married, the citizen was prepared to show his passport. The solicitous husband’s announcement was met with guffaws. Fagott shouted that he believed him like his own self, even without the passport, and handed the citizen two pairs of silk stockings, and the cat for his part added a little tube of lipstick.

Late-coming women tore on to the stage, and off the stage the lucky ones came pouring down in ball gowns, pyjamas with dragons, sober formal outfits, little hats tipped over one eyebrow.

Then Fagott announced that owing to the lateness of the hour, the shop would close in exactly one minute until the next evening, and an unbelievable scramble arose on-stage. Women hastily grabbed shoes without trying them on. One burst behind the curtain like a storm, got out of her dress there, took possession of the first thing that came to hand - a silk dressing-gown covered with huge bouquets — and managed to pick up two cases of perfume besides.

Exactly a minute later a pistol shot rang out, the mirrors disappeared, the display windows and stools dropped away, the carpet melted into air, as did the curtain. Last to disappear was the high mountain of old dresses and shoes, and the stage was again severe, empty and bare.

And it was here that a new character mixed into the affair. A pleasant, sonorous, and very insistent baritone came from box no. 2:

‘All the same it is desirable, citizen artiste, that you expose the technique of your tricks to the spectators without delay, especially the trick with the paper money. It is also desirable that the master of ceremonies return to the stage. The spectators are concerned about his fate.’

The baritone belonged to none other than that evening’s guest of honour, Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission of the Moscow theatres.

Arkady Apollonovich was in his box with two ladies: the older one dressed expensively and fashionably, the other one, young and pretty, dressed in a simpler way. The first, as was soon discovered during the drawing up of the report, was Arkady Apollonovich’s wife, and the second was his distant relation, a promising debutante, who had come from Saratov and was living in the apartment of Arkady Apollonovich and his wife.

‘Pardone!’ Fagott replied. ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing here to expose, it’s all clear.’

‘No, excuse me! The exposure is absolutely necessary. Without it your brilliant numbers will leave a painful impression. The mass of spectators demands an explanation.’

‘The mass of spectators,’ the impudent clown interrupted Sempleyarov, ‘doesn’t seem to be saying anything. But, in consideration of your most esteemed desire, Arkady Apollonovich, so be it - I will perform an exposure. But, to that end, will you allow me one more tiny number?’

‘Why not?’ Arkady Apollonovich replied patronizingly. ‘But there must be an exposure.’

‘Very well, very well, sir. And so, allow me to ask, where were you last evening, Arkady Apollonovich?’

At this inappropriate and perhaps even boorish question, Arkady Apollonovich’s countenance changed, and changed quite drastically.

‘Last evening Arkady Apollonovich was at a meeting of the Acoustics Commission,’ Arkady Apollonovich’s wife declared very haughtily, ‘but I don’t understand what that has got to do with magic.’

‘Ouee, madame!’ Fagott agreed. ‘Naturally you don’t understand. As for the meeting, you are totally deluded. After driving off to the said meeting, which incidentally was not even scheduled for last night, Arkady Apollonovich dismissed his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission building on Clean Ponds’ (the whole theatre became hushed), ‘and went by bus to Yelokhovskaya Street to visit an actress from the regional itinerant theatre, Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko, with whom he spent some four hours.’

‘Aie!’ someone cried out painfully in the total silence.

Arkady Apollonovich’s young relation suddenly broke into a low and terrible laugh.

‘It’s all clear!’ she exclaimed. ‘And I’ve long suspected it. Now I see why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa!’[85]

And, swinging suddenly, she struck Arkady Apollonovich on the head with her short and fat violet umbrella.

Meanwhile, the scoundrelly Fagott, alias Koroviev, was shouting:

‘Here, honourable citizens, is one case of the exposure Arkady Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!’

‘How dare you touch Arkady Apollonovich, you vile creature!’ Arkady Apollonovich’s wife asked threateningly, rising in the box to all her gigantic height.

A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation.

‘Who else should dare touch him,’ she answered, guffawing, ‘if not me!’ And for the second time there came the dry, crackling sound of the umbrella bouncing off the head of Arkady Apollonovich.

‘Police! Seize her!!’ Sempleyarov’s wife shouted in such a terrible voice that many hearts went cold.

And here the cat also leaped out to the footlights and suddenly barked in a human voice for all the theatre to hear:

‘The seance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!’

The half-crazed conductor, unaware of what he was doing, waved his baton, and the orchestra did not play, or even strike up, or even bang away at, but precisely, in the cat’s loathsome expression, hacked out some incredible march of an unheard-of brashness.

For a moment there was an illusion of having heard once upon a time, under southern stars, in a café-chantant, some barely intelligible, half-blind, but rollicking words to this march:

Or maybe these were not the words at all, but there were others to the same music, extremely indecent ones. That is not the important thing, the important thing is that, after all this, something like babel broke loose in the Variety. The police went running to Sempleyarov’s box, people were climbing over the barriers, there were bursts of infernal guffawing and furious shouts, drowned in the golden clash of the orchestra’s cymbals.

And one could see that the stage was suddenly empty, and that the hoodwinker Fagott, as well as the brazen tom-cat Behemoth, had melted into air, vanished as the magician had vanished earlier in his armchair with the faded upholstery.

CHAPTER 13 The Hero Enters

And so, the unknown man shook his finger at Ivan and whispered: ‘Shhh! ...’

Ivan lowered his legs from the bed and peered. Cautiously looking into the room from the balcony was a clean-shaven, dark-haired man of approximately thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes, and a wisp of hair hanging down on his forehead.

Having listened and made sure that Ivan was alone, the mysterious visitor took heart and stepped into the room. Here Ivan saw that the man was dressed as a patient. He was wearing long underwear, slippers on his bare feet, and a brown dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders.

The visitor winked at Ivan, hid a bunch of keys in his pocket, inquired in a whisper: ‘May I sit down?’ — and receiving an affirmative nod, placed himself in an armchair.

‘How did you get here?’ Ivan asked in a whisper, obeying the dry finger shaken at him. ‘Aren’t the balcony grilles locked?’

‘The grilles are locked,’ the guest agreed, ‘but Praskovya Fyodorovna, while the dearest person, is also, alas, quite absent-minded. A month ago I stole a bunch of keys from her, and so gained the opportunity of getting out on to the common balcony, which runs around the entire floor, and so of occasionally calling on a neighbour.’

‘If you can get out on to the balcony, you can escape. Or is it high up?’ Ivan was interested.

‘No,’ the guest replied firmly, ‘I cannot escape from here, not because it’s high up, but because I have nowhere to escape to.’ And he added, after a pause: ‘So, here we sit.’

‘Here we sit,’ Ivan replied, peering into the man’s brown and very restless eyes.

‘Yes ...’ here the guest suddenly became alarmed, ‘but you’re not violent, I hope? Because, you know, I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or other things like that. Especially hateful to me are people’s cries, whether cries of rage, suffering, or anything else. Set me at ease, tell me, you’re not violent?’

‘Yesterday in a restaurant I socked one type in the mug,’ the transformed poet courageously confessed.

‘Your grounds?’ the guest asked sternly.

‘No grounds, I must confess,’ Ivan answered, embarrassed.

‘Outrageous,’ the guest denounced Ivan and added: ‘And besides, what a way to express yourself: “socked in the mug” ... It is not known precisely whether a man has a mug or a face. And, after all, it may well be a face. So, you know, using fists ... No, you should give that up, and for good.’

Having thus reprimanded Ivan, the guest inquired:

‘Your profession?’

‘Poet,’ Ivan confessed, reluctantly for some reason.

The visitor became upset.

‘Ah, just my luck!’ he exclaimed, but at once reconsidered, apologized, and asked: ‘And what is your name?’

‘Homeless.’

‘Oh-oh ...’ the guest said, wincing.

‘What, you mean you dislike my poetry?’ Ivan asked with curiosity.

‘I dislike it terribly.’

‘And what have you read.’

‘I’ve never read any of your poetry!’ the visitor exclaimed nervously.

‘Then how can you say that?’

‘Well, what of it?’ the guest replied. ‘As if I haven’t read others. Or else ... maybe there’s some miracle? Very well, I’m ready to take it on faith. Is your poetry good? You tell me yourself.’

‘Monstrous!’ Ivan suddenly spoke boldly and frankly.

‘Don’t write any more!’ the visitor asked beseechingly.

‘I promise and I swear!’ Ivan said solemnly.

The oath was sealed with a handshake, and here soft footsteps and voices were heard in the corridor.

‘Shh!’ the guest whispered and, jumping out to the balcony, closed the grille behind him.

Praskovya Fyodorovna peeked in, asked Ivan how he was feeling and whether he wished to sleep in the dark or with a light. Ivan asked her to leave the light on, and Praskovya Fyodorovna withdrew, wishing the patient a good night. And when everything was quiet, the guest came back again.

He informed Ivan in a whisper that there was a new arrival in room 119 — some fat man with a purple physiognomy, who kept muttering something about currency in the ventilation and swearing that unclean powers were living in their place on Sadovaya.

‘He curses Pushkin up and down and keeps shouting: “Kurolesov, encore, encore!”’ the guest said, twitching nervously. Having calmed himself, he sat down, said: ‘Anyway, God help him,’ and continued his conversation with Ivan: ‘So, how did you wind up here?’

‘On account of Pontius Pilate,’ Ivan replied, casting a glum look at the floor.

‘What?!’ the guest cried, forgetting all caution, and clapped his hand over his own mouth. ‘A staggering coincidence! Tell me about it, I beg you, I beg you!’

Feeling trust in the unknown man for some reason, Ivan began, falteringly and timorously at first, then more boldly, to tell about the previous day’s story at the Patriarch’s Ponds. Yes, it was a grateful listener that Ivan Nikolaevich acquired in the person of the mysterious stealer of keys! The guest did not take Ivan for a madman, he showed great interest in what he was being told, and, as the story developed, finally became ecstatic. Time and again he interrupted Ivan with exclamations:

‘Well, well, go on, go on, I beg you! Only, in the name of all that’s holy, don’t leave anything out!’

Ivan left nothing out in any case, it was easier for him to tell it that way, and he gradually reached the moment when Pontius Pilate, in a white mantle with blood-red lining, came out to the balcony.

Then the visitor put his hands together prayerfully and whispered:

‘Oh, how I guessed! How I guessed it all!’

The listener accompanied the description of Berlioz’s terrible death with an enigmatic remark, while his eyes flashed with spite:

‘I only regret that it wasn’t the critic Latunsky or the writer Mstislav Lavrovich instead of this Berlioz!’, and he cried out frenziedly but soundlessly: ‘Go on!’

The cat handing money to the woman conductor amused the guest exceedingly, and he choked with quiet laughter watching as Ivan, excited by the success of his narration, quietly hopped on bent legs, portraying the cat holding the coin up next to his whiskers.

‘And so,’ Ivan concluded, growing sad and melancholy after telling about the events at Griboedov’s, ‘I wound up here.’

The guest sympathetically placed a hand on the poor poet’s shoulder and spoke thus:

‘Unlucky poet! But you yourself, dear heart, are to blame for it all. You oughtn’t to have behaved so casually and even impertinently with him. So you’ve paid for it. And you must still say thank you that you got off comparatively cheaply.’

‘But who is he, finally?’ Ivan asked, shaking his fists in agitation.

The guest peered at Ivan and answered with a question:

‘You’re not going to get upset? We’re all unreliable here ... There won’t be any calling for the doctor, injections, or other fuss?’

‘No, no!’ Ivan exclaimed. ‘Tell me, who is he?’

‘Very well,’ the visitor replied, and he said weightily and distinctly: ‘Yesterday at the Patriarch’s Ponds you met Satan.’

Ivan did not get upset, as he had promised, but even so he was greatly astounded.

‘That can’t be! He doesn’t exist!’

‘Good heavens! Anyone else might say that, but not you. You were apparently one of his first victims. You’re sitting, as you yourself understand, in a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying he doesn’t exist. Really, it’s strange!’

Thrown off, Ivan fell silent.

‘As soon as you started describing him,’ the guest went on, ‘I began to realize who it was that you had the pleasure of talking with yesterday. And, really, I’m surprised at Berlioz! Now you, of course, are a virginal person,’ here the guest apologized again, ‘but that one, from what I’ve heard about him, had after all read at least something! The very first things this professor said dispelled all my doubts. One can’t fail to recognize him, my friend! Though you ... again I must apologize, but I’m not mistaken, you are an ignorant man?’

‘Indisputably,’ the unrecognizable Ivan agreed.

‘Well, so ... even the face, as you described it, the different eyes, the eyebrows! ... Forgive me, however, perhaps you’ve never even heard the opera Faust?’

Ivan became terribly embarrassed for some reason and, his face aflame, began mumbling something about some trip to a sanatorium ... to Yalta ...

‘Well, so, so ... hardly surprising! But Berlioz, I repeat, astounds me ... He’s not only a well-read man but also a very shrewd one. Though I must say in his defence that Woland is, of course, capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of an even shrewder man.’

‘What?!’ Ivan cried out in his turn.

‘Hush!’

Ivan slapped himself roundly on the forehead with his palm and rasped:

‘I see, I see. He had the letter “W” on his visiting card. Ai-yai-yai, what a thing!’ He lapsed into a bewildered silence for some time, peering at the moon floating outside the grille, and then spoke: ‘So that means he might actually have been at Pontius Pilate’s? He was already born then? And they call me a madman!’ Ivan added indignantly, pointing to the door.

A bitter wrinkle appeared on the guest’s lips.

‘Let’s look the truth in the eye.’ And the guest turned his face towards the nocturnal luminary racing through a cloud. ‘You and I are both madmen, there’s no denying that! You see, he shocked you - and you came unhinged, since you evidently had the ground prepared for it. But what you describe undoubtedly took place in reality. But it’s so extraordinary that even Stravinsky, a psychiatrist of genius, did not, of course, believe you. Did he examine you?’ (Ivan nodded.) ‘Your interlocutor was at Pilate’s, and had breakfast with Kant, and now he’s visiting Moscow.’

‘But he’ll be up to devil knows what here! Oughtn’t we to catch him somehow?’ the former, not yet definitively quashed Ivan still raised his head, though without much confidence, in the new Ivan.

‘You’ve already tried, and that will do for you,’ the guest replied ironically. ‘I don’t advise others to try either. And as for being up to something, rest assured, he will be! Ah, ah! But how annoying that it was you who met him and not I. Though it’s all burned up, and the coals have gone to ashes, still, I swear, for that meeting I’d give Praskovya Fyodorovna’s bunch of keys, for I have nothing else to give. I’m destitute.’

‘But what do you need him for?’

The guest paused ruefully for a long time and twitched, but finally spoke:

‘You see, it’s such a strange story, I’m sitting here for the same reason you are - namely, on account of Pontius Pilate.’ Here the guest looked around fearfully and said: ‘The thing is that a year ago I wrote a novel about Pilate.’

‘You’re a writer?’ the poet asked with interest.

The guest’s face darkened and he threatened Ivan with his fist, then said:

‘I am a master.’ He grew stem and took from the pocket of his dressing-gown a completely greasy black cap with the letter ‘M’ embroidered on it in yellow silk. He put this cap on and showed himself to Ivan both in profile and full face, to prove that he was a master. ’She sewed it for me with her own hands,‘ he added mysteriously.

‘And what is your name?’

‘I no longer have a name,’ the strange guest answered with gloomy disdain. ‘I renounced it, as I generally did everything in life. Let’s forget it.’

‘Then at least tell me about the novel,’ Ivan asked delicately.

‘If you please, sir. My life, it must be said, has taken a not very ordinary course,’ the guest began.

... A historian by education, he had worked until two years ago at one of the Moscow museums, and, besides that, had also done translations.

‘From what languages?’ Ivan interrupted curiously.

‘I know five languages besides my own,’ replied the guest, ‘English, French, German, Latin and Greek. Well, I can also read Italian a little.’

‘Oh, my!’ Ivan whispered enviously.

... The historian had lived solitarily, had no family anywhere and almost no acquaintances in Moscow. And, just think, one day he won a hundred thousand roubles.

‘Imagine my astonishment,’ the guest in the black cap whispered, ‘when I put my hand in the basket of dirty laundry and, lo and behold, it had the same number as in the newspaper. A state bond,’[86] he explained, ‘they gave it to me at the museum.’

... Having won a hundred thousand roubles, Ivan’s mysterious guest acted thus: bought books, gave up his room on Myasnitskaya ...

‘Ohh, that accursed hole! ...’ he growled.

... and rented from a builder, in a lane near the Arbat, two rooms in the basement of a little house in the garden. He left his work at the museum and began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate.

‘Ah, that was a golden age!’ the narrator whispered, his eyes shining. ‘A completely private little apartment, plus a front hall with a sink in it,’ he underscored for some reason with special pride, ‘little windows just level with the paved walk leading from the gate. Opposite, only four steps away, near the fence, lilacs, a linden and a maple. Ah, ah, ah! In winter it was very seldom that I saw someone’s black feet through my window and heard the snow crunching under them. And in my stove a fire was eternally blazing! But suddenly spring came and through the dim glass I saw lilac bushes, naked at first, then dressing themselves up in green. And it was then, last spring, that something happened far more delightful than getting a hundred thousand roubles. And that, you must agree, is a huge sum of money!’

That’s true,‘ acknowledged the attentively listening Ivan.

‘I opened my little windows and sat in the second, quite minuscule room.’ The guest began measuring with his arms: ‘Here’s the sofa, and another sofa opposite, and a little table between them, with a beautiful night lamp on it, and books nearer the window, and here a small writing table, and in the first room - a huge room, one hundred and fifty square feet! — books, books and the stove. Ah, what furnishings I had! The extraordinary smell of the lilacs! And my head was getting light with fatigue, and Pilate was flying to the end ...’

‘White mantle, red lining! I understand!’ Ivan exclaimed.

‘Precisely so! Pilate was flying to the end, to the end, and I already knew that the last words of the novel would be: “... the fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate”. Well, naturally, I used to go out for a walk. A hundred thousand is a huge sum, and I had an excellent suit. Or I’d go and have dinner in some cheap restaurant. There was a wonderful restaurant on the Arbat, I don’t know whether it exists now.’ Here the guest’s eyes opened wide, and he went on whispering, gazing at the moon: ‘She was carrying repulsive, alarming yellow flowers in her hand. Devil knows what they’re called, but for some reason they’re the first to appear in Moscow. And these flowers stood out clearly against her black spring coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! Not a nice colour. She turned down a lane from Tverskaya and then looked back. Well, you know Tverskaya! Thousands of people were walking along Tverskaya, but I can assure you that she saw me alone, and looked not really alarmed, but even as if in pain. And I was struck not so much by her beauty as by an extraordinary loneliness in her eyes, such as no one had ever seen before! Obeying this yellow sign, I also turned down the lane and followed her. We walked along the crooked, boring lane silently, I on one side, she on the other. And, imagine, there was not a soul in the lane. I was suffering, because it seemed to me that it was necessary to speak to her, and I worried that I wouldn’t utter a single word, and she would leave, and I’d never see her again. And, imagine, suddenly she began to speak:

‘“Do you like my flowers?”

‘I remember clearly the sound of her voice; rather low, slightly husky, and, stupid as it is, it seemed that the echo resounded in the lane and bounced off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed to her side and, coming up to her, answered:

‘“No!”

‘She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, understood that all my life I had loved precisely this woman! Quite a thing, eh? Of course, you’ll say I’m mad?’

‘I won’t say anything,’ Ivan exclaimed, and added: ‘I beg you, go on!’

And the guest continued.

‘Yes, she looked at me in surprise, and then, having looked, asked thus:

‘“You generally don’t like flowers?”

‘It seemed to me there was hostility in her voice. I was walking beside her, trying to keep in step, and, to my surprise, did not feel the least constraint.

‘“No, I like flowers, but not this kind,” I said.

‘“Which, then?”

‘“I like roses.”

‘Then I regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily and threw the flowers into the gutter. Slightly at a loss, I nevertheless picked them up and gave them to her, but she, with a smile, pushed the flowers away, and I carried them in my hand.

‘So we walked silently for some time, until she took the flowers from my hand and threw them to the pavement, then put her own hand in a black glove with a bell-shaped cuff under my arm, and we walked on side by side.’

‘Go on,’ said Ivan, ‘and please don’t leave anything out!’

‘Go on?’ repeated the visitor. ‘Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on.’ He suddenly wiped an unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued: ‘Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other, and that she was living with a different man ... as I was, too, then ... with that, what’s her...’

‘With whom?’ asked Homeless.

‘With that ... well ... with ...’replied the guest, snapping his fingers.

‘You were married?’

‘Why, yes, that’s why I’m snapping ... With that ... Varenka ... Manechka ... no, Varenka ... striped dress, the museum ... Anyhow, I don’t remember.

‘Well, so she said she went out that day with yellow flowers in her hand so that I would find her at last, and that if it hadn’t happened, she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.

‘Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that same day, an hour later, when, without having noticed the city, we found ourselves by the Kremlin wall on the embankment.

‘We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years. We arranged to meet the next day at the same place on the Moscow River, and we did. The May sun shone down on us. And soon, very soon, this woman became my secret wife.

‘She used to come to me every afternoon, but I would begin waiting for her in the morning. This waiting expressed itself in the moving around of objects on the table. Ten minutes before, I would sit down by the little window and begin to listen for the banging of the decrepit gate. And how curious: before my meeting with her, few people came to our yard — more simply, no one came — but now it seemed to me that the whole city came flocking there.

‘Bang goes the gate, bang goes my heart, and, imagine, it’s inevitably somebody’s dirty boots level with my face behind the window. A knife-grinder. Now, who needs a knife-grinder in our house? To sharpen what? What knives?

‘She would come through the gate once, but my heart would pound no less than ten times before that, I’m not lying. And then, when her hour came and the hands showed noon, it even wouldn’t stop pounding until, almost without tapping, almost noiselessly, her shoes would come even with my window, their black suede bows held tightly by steel buckles.

‘Sometimes she would get mischievous, pausing at the second window and tapping the glass with her toe. That same instant I would be at the window, but the shoe would be gone, the black silk blocking the light would be gone — I’d go and open the door for her.

‘No one knew of our liaison, I assure you of that, though it never happens. Her husband didn’t know, her acquaintances didn’t know. In the old house where I had that basement, people knew, of course, they saw that some woman visited me, but they didn’t know her name.’

‘But who is she?’ asked Ivan, intrigued in the highest degree by this love story.

The guest made a gesture signifying that he would never tell that to anyone, and went on with his story.

Ivan learned that the master and the unknown woman loved each other so deeply that they became completely inseparable. Ivan could clearly picture to himself the two rooms in the basement of the house, where it was always twilight because of the lilacs and the fence. The worn red furniture, the bureau, the clock on it which struck every half hour, and books, books, from the painted floor to the sooty ceiling, and the stove.

Ivan learned that his guest and his secret wife, from the very first days of their liaison, had come to the conclusion that fate itself had thrown them together at the corner of Tverskaya and that lane, and that they had been created for each other for all time.

Ivan learned from the guest’s story how the lovers would spend the day. She would come, and put on an apron first thing, and in the narrow front hall where stood that same sink of which the poor patient was for some reason so proud, would light the kerosene stove on the wooden table, prepare lunch, and set it out on the oval table in the first room. When the May storms came and water rushed noisily through the gateway past the near-sighted windows, threatening to flood their last refuge, the lovers would light the stove and bake potatoes in it. Steam rose from the potatoes, the black potato skins dirtied their fingers. Laughter came from the basement, the trees in the garden after rain shed broken twigs, white clusters.

When the storms ended and sultry summer came, there appeared in the vase the long-awaited roses they both loved. The man who called himself a master worked feverishly on his novel, and this novel also absorbed the unknown woman.

‘Really, there were times when I’d begin to be jealous of it on account of her,’ the night visitor come from the moonlit balcony whispered to Ivan.

Her slender fingers with sharply filed nails buried in her hair, she endlessly reread what he had written, and after rereading it would sit sewing that very same cap. Sometimes she crouched down by the lower shelves or stood by the upper ones and wiped the hundreds of dusty spines with a cloth. She foretold fame, she urged him on, and it was then that she began to call him a master. She waited impatiently for the already promised last words about the fifth procurator of Judea, repeated aloud in a sing-song voice certain phrases she liked, and said that her life was in this novel.

It was finished in the month of August, was given to some unknown typist, and she typed it in five copies. And finally the hour came when he had to leave his secret refuge and go out into life.

‘And I went out into life holding it in my hands, and then my life ended,’ the master whispered and drooped his head, and for a long time nodded the woeful black cap with the yellow letter ‘M’ on it. He continued his story, but it became somewhat incoherent, one could only understand that some catastrophe had then befallen Ivan’s guest.

‘For the first time I found myself in the world of literature, but now, when it’s all over and my ruin is clear, I recall it with horror!’ the master whispered solemnly and raised his hand. ‘Yes, he astounded me greatly, ah, how he astounded me!’

‘Who?’ Ivan whispered barely audibly, fearing to interrupt the agitated narrator.

‘Why, the editor, I tell you, the editor! Yes, he read it all right. He looked at me as if I had a swollen cheek, looked sidelong into the corner, and even tittered in embarrassment. He crumpled the manuscript needlessly and grunted. The questions he asked seemed crazy to me. Saying nothing about the essence of the novel, he asked me who I was, where I came from, and how long I had been writing, and why no one had heard of me before, and even asked what in my opinion was a totally idiotic question: who had given me the idea of writing a novel on such a strange theme? Finally I got sick of him and asked directly whether he would publish the novel or not. Here he started squirming, mumbled something, and declared that he could not decide the question on his own, that other members of the editorial board had to acquaint themselves with my work — namely, the critics Latunsky and Ariman, and the writer Mstislav Lavrovich.[87] He asked me to come in two weeks. I came in two weeks and was received by some girl whose eyes were crossed towards her nose from constant lying.’

‘That’s Lapshennikova, the editorial secretary,’ Ivan said with a smirk. He knew very well the world described so wrathfully by his guest.

‘Maybe,’ the other snapped, ‘and so from her I got my novel back, already quite greasy and dishevelled. Trying to avoid looking me in the eye, Lapshennikova told me that the publisher was provided with material for two years ahead, and therefore the question of printing my novel, as she put it, “did not arise”.

‘What do I remember after that?’ the master muttered, rubbing his temple. ‘Yes, red petals strewn across the title page, and also the eyes of my friend. Yes, those eyes I remember.’

The story of Ivan’s guest was becoming more confused, more filled with all sorts of reticences. He said something about slanting rain and despair in the basement refuge, about having gone elsewhere. He exclaimed in a whisper that he did not blame her in the least for pushing him to fight — oh, no, he did not blame her!

Further on, as Ivan heard, something sudden and strange happened. One day our hero opened a newspaper and saw in it an article by the critic Ariman,[88] in which Ariman warned all and sundry that he, that is, our hero, had attempted to foist into print an apology for Jesus Christ.

‘Ah, I remember, I remember!’ Ivan cried out. ‘But I’ve forgotten your name^!’

‘Let’s leave my name out of it, I repeat, it no longer exists,’ replied the guest. ‘That’s not the point. Two days later in another newspaper, over the signature of Mstislav Lavrovich, appeared another article, in which its author recommended striking, and striking hard, at Pilatism and at the icon-dauber who had ventured to foist it (again that accursed word!) into print.

‘Dumbfounded by this unheard-of word “Pilatism”, I opened a third newspaper. There were two articles in it, one by Latunsky, the other signed with the initials “N.E.” I assure you, the works of Ariman and Lavrovich could be counted as jokes compared with what Latunsky wrote. Suffice it to say that Latunsky’s article was entitled “A Militant Old Believer”.[89] I got so carried away reading the article about myself that I didn’t notice (I had forgotten to lock the door) how she came in and stood before me with a wet umbrella in her hand and wet newspapers as well. Her eyes flashed fire, her trembling hands were cold. First she rushed to kiss me, then, in a hoarse voice, and pounding the table with her fist, she said she would poison Latunsky.’

Ivan grunted somewhat embarrassedly, but said nothing.

‘Joyless autumn days set in,’ the guest went on. The monstrous failure with this novel seemed to have taken out a part of my soul. Essentially speaking, I had nothing more to do, and I lived from one meeting with her to the next. And it was at that time that something happened to me. Devil knows what, Stravinsky probably figured it out long ago. Namely, anguish came over me and certain forebodings appeared.

‘The articles, please note, did not cease. I laughed at the first of them. But the more of them that appeared, the more my attitude towards them changed. The second stage was one of astonishment. Some rare falsity and insecurity could be sensed literally in every line of these articles, despite their threatening and confident tone. I had the feeling, and I couldn’t get rid of it, that the authors of these articles were not saying what they wanted to say, and that their rage sprang precisely from that. And then, imagine, a third stage came - of fear. No, not fear of these articles, you understand, but fear of other things totally unrelated to them or to the novel. Thus, for instance, I began to be afraid of the dark. In short, the stage of mental illness came. It seemed to me, especially as I was falling asleep, that some very cold and pliant octopus was stealing with its tentacles immediately and directly towards my heart. And I had to sleep with the light on.

‘My beloved changed very much (of course, I never told her about the octopus, but she could see that something was going wrong with me), she became thinner and paler, stopped laughing, and kept asking me to forgive her for having advised me to publish an excerpt She said I should drop everything and go to the south, to the Black Sea, and spend all that was left of the hundred thousand on the trip.

‘She was very insistent, and to avoid an argument (something told me I was not to go to the Black Sea), I promised her that I’d do it one of those days. But she said she would buy me the ticket herself. Then I took out all my money - that is, about ten thousand roubles - and gave it to her.

‘“Why so much?” she was surprised.

‘I said something or other about being afraid of thieves and asked her to keep the money until my departure. She took it, put it in her purse, began kissing me and saying that it would be easier for her to die than to leave me alone in such a state, but that she was expected, that she must bow to necessity, that she would come the next day. She begged me not to be afraid of anything.

‘This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep without turning on the light. I was awakened by the feeling that the octopus was there. Groping in the dark, I barely managed to turn on the light. My pocket watch showed two o’clock in the morning. I was falling ill when I went to bed, and I woke up sick. It suddenly seemed to me that the autumn darkness would push through the glass and pour into the room, and I would drown in it as in ink. I got up a man no longer in control of himself. I cried out, the thought came to me of running to someone, even if it was my landlord upstairs. I struggled with myself like a madman. I had strength enough to get to the stove and start a fire in it. When the wood began to crackle and the stove door rattled, I seemed to feel slightly better. I dashed to the front room, turned on the light there, found a bottle of white wine, uncorked it and began drinking from the bottle. This blunted the fear somewhat — at least enough to keep me from running to the landlord — and I went back to the stove. I opened the little door, so that the heat began to burn my face and hands, and whispered:

‘“Guess that trouble has befallen me ... Come, come, come! ...”

‘But no one came. The fire roared in the stove, rain lashed at the windows. Then the final thing happened. I took the heavy manuscript of the novel and the draft notebooks from the desk drawer and started burning them. This was terribly hard to do, because written-on paper burns reluctantly. Breaking my fingernails, I tore up the notebooks, stuck them vertically between the logs, and ruffled the pages with the poker. At times the ashes got the best of me, choking the flames, but I struggled with them, and the novel, though stubbornly resisting, was nevertheless perishing. Familiar words flashed before me, the yellow climbed steadily up the pages, but the words still showed through it. They would vanish only when the paper turned black, and I finished them off with the poker.

‘Just then someone began scratching quietly at the window. My heart leaped, and having stuffed the last notebook into the fire, I rushed to open the door. Brick steps led up from the basement to the door on the yard. Stumbling, I ran up to it and asked quietly:

‘“Who’s there?”

‘And that voice, her voice, answered:

‘“It’s me ...

I don’t remember how I managed with the chain and hook. As soon as she stepped inside, she clung to me, trembling, all wet, her cheeks wet and her hair uncurled. I could only utter the word:

‘“You ... you? ...”, and my voice broke, and we ran downstairs.

‘She freed herself of her overcoat in the front hall, and we quickly went into the first room. With a soft cry, she pulled out of the stove with her bare hands and threw on to the floor the last of what was there, a sheaf that had caught fire from below. Smoke filled the room at once. I stamped out the fire with my feet, and she collapsed on the sofa and wept irrepressibly and convulsively.

‘When she calmed down, I said:

‘“I came to hate this novel, and I’m afraid. I’m ill. Frightened.”

‘She stood up and said:

‘“God, how sick you are. Why is it, why? But I’ll save you, I’ll save you. What is all this?”

‘I saw her eyes swollen with smoke and weeping, felt her cold hands stroke my forehead.

‘“I’ll cure you, I’ll cure you,” she was murmuring, clutching my shoulders. “You’ll restore it. Why, why didn’t I keep a copy?”

‘She bared her teeth with rage, she said something else inarticulately. Then, compressing her lips, she began to collect and smooth out the burnt-edged pages. It was some chapter from the middle of the novel, I don’t remember which. She neatly stacked the pages, wrapped them in paper, tied them with a ribbon. All her actions showed that she was full of determination, and that she had regained control of herself. She asked for wine and, having drunk it, spoke more calmly:

‘“This is how one pays for lying,” she said, “and I don’t want to lie any more. I’d stay with you right now, but I’d rather not do it that way. I don’t want it to remain for ever in his memory that I ran away from him in the middle of the night. He’s never done me any wrong ... He was summoned unexpectedly, there was a fire at the factory. But he’ll be back soon. I’ll talk with him tomorrow morning, I’ll tell him that I love another man and come back to you for ever. Or maybe you don’t want that? Answer me.”

‘“Poor dear, my poor dear,” I said to her. “I won’t allow you to do it. Things won’t go well for me, and I don’t want you to perish with me.”

‘“Is that the only reason?” she asked, and brought her eyes close to mine.

‘“The only one.”

‘She became terribly animated, she clung to me, put her arms around my neck and said:

‘“I’m perishing with you. In the morning I’ll be here.”

‘And so, the last thing I remember from my life is a strip of light from my front hall, and in that strip of light an uncurled strand of hair, her beret and her eyes filled with determination. I also remember the black silhouette in the outside doorway and the white package.

‘“I’d see you home, but it’s beyond my strength to come back alone. I’m afraid.”

‘“Don’t be afraid. Bear with it for a few hours. Tomorrow morning I’ll be here.”

‘Those were her last words in my life ... ·Shh!...’ the patient suddenly interrupted himself and raised a finger. ‘It’s a restless moonlit night tonight.’

He disappeared on to the balcony. Ivan heard little wheels roll down the corridor, someone sobbed or cried out weakly.

When everything grew still, the guest came back and announced that room 120 had received an occupant. Someone had been brought, and he kept asking to be given back his head. The two interlocutors fell anxiously silent, but, having calmed down, they returned to the interrupted story. The guest was just opening his mouth, but the night was indeed a restless one. There were still voices in the corridor, and the guest began to speak into Ivan’s ear, so softly that what he told him was known only to the poet, apart from the first phrase:

‘A quarter of an hour after she left me, there came a knock at my window ...’

What the patient whispered into Ivan’s ear evidently agitated him very much. Spasms repeatedly passed over his face. Fear and rage swam and flitted in his eyes. The narrator pointed his hand somewhere in the direction of the moon, which had long since left the balcony. Only when all sounds from outside ceased to reach them did the guest move away from Ivan and begin to speak more loudly:

‘Yes, and so in mid-January, at night, in the same coat but with the buttons torn off,[90] I was huddled with cold in my little yard. Behind me were snowdrifts that hid the lilac bushes, and before me and below - my little windows, dimly lit, covered with shades. I bent down to the first of them and listened - a gramophone was playing in my rooms. That was all I heard, but I could not see anything. I stood there a while, then went out the gate to the lane. A blizzard was frolicking in it. A dog, dashing under my feet, frightened me, and I ran away from it to the other side. The cold, and the fear that had become my constant companion, were driving me to frenzy. I had nowhere to go, and the simplest thing, of course, would have been to throw myself under a tram-car on the street where my lane came out. From far off I could see those light-filled, ice-covered boxes and hear their loathsome screeching in the frost. But, my dear neighbour, the whole thing was that fear possessed every cell of my body. And, just as I was afraid of the dog, so I was afraid of the tram-car. Yes, there is no illness in this place worse than mine, I assure you!’

‘But you could have let her know,’ said Ivan, sympathizing with the poor patient. ‘Besides, she has your money. She did keep it, of course?’

‘You needn’t doubt that, of course she kept it. But you evidently don’t understand me. Or, rather, I’ve lost the ability I once had for describing things. However, I’m not very sorry about that, since I no longer have any use for it. Before her,’ the guest reverently looked out at the darkness of the night, ‘there would lie a letter from a madhouse. How can one send letters from such an address ... a mental patient? ... You’re joking, my friend! Make her unhappy? No, I’m not capable of that.’

Ivan was unable to object to this, but the silent Ivan sympathized with the guest, he commiserated with him. And the other, from the pain of his memories, nodded his head in the black cap and spoke thus:

‘Poor woman ... However, I have hopes that she has forgotten me...’

‘But you may recover ...’ Ivan said timidly.

‘I am incurable,’ the guest replied calmly. ‘When Stravinsky says he will bring me back to life, I don’t believe him. He is humane and simply wants to comfort me. I don’t deny, however, that I’m much better now. Yes, so where did I leave off? Frost, those flying trams ... I knew that this clinic had been opened, and set out for it on foot across the entire city. Madness! Outside the city I probably would have frozen to death, but chance saved me. A truck had broken down, I came up to the driver, it was some three miles beyond the city limits, and to my surprise he took pity on me. The truck was coming here. And he took me along. I got away with having my left toes frostbitten. But they cured that. And now this is the fourth month that I’ve been here. And, you know, I find it not at all bad here. One mustn’t make grandiose plans, dear neighbour, really! I, for instance, wanted to go all around the globe. Well, so it turns out that I’m not going to do it. I see only an insignificant piece of that globe. I suppose it’s not the very best there is on it, but, I repeat, it’s not so bad. Summer is coming, the ivy will twine up on to the balcony. So Praskovya Fyodorovna promises. The keys have broadened my possibilities. There’ll be the moon at night. Ah, it’s gone! Freshness. It’s falling past midnight. Time to go.’

‘Tell me, what happened afterwards with Yeshua and Pilate?’ Ivan asked. ‘I beg you, I want to know.’

‘Ah, no, no,’ the guest replied with a painful twitch. ‘I cannot recall my novel without trembling. And your acquaintance from the Patriarch’s Ponds would do it better than I. Thank you for the conversation. Goodbye.’

And before Ivan could collect his senses, the grille closed with a quiet clang, and the guest vanished.

CHAPTER 14 Glory to the Cock!

His nerves gave out, as they say, and Rimsky fled to his office before they finished drawing up the report. He sat at his desk and stared with inflamed eyes at the magic banknotes lying before him. The findirector’s wits were addled. A steady hum came from outside. The audience poured in streams from the Variety building into the street. Rimsky’s extremely sharpened hearing suddenly caught the distant trill of a policeman. That in itself never bodes anything pleasant. But when it was repeated and, to assist it, another joined in, more authoritative and prolonged, and to them was added a clearly audible guffawing and even some hooting, the findirector understood at once that something else scandalous and vile had happened in the street. And that, however much he wanted to wave it away, it was closely connected with the repulsive seance presented by the black magician and his assistants.

The keen-eared findirector was not mistaken in the least. As soon as he cast a glance out the window on to Sadovaya, his face twisted, and he did not whisper but hissed:

‘So I thought!’

In the bright glare of the strongest street lights he saw, just below him on the sidewalk, a lady in nothing but a shift and violet bloomers. True, there was a little hat on the lady’s head and an umbrella in her hands. The lady, who was in a state of utter consternation, now crouching down, now making as if to run off somewhere, was surrounded by an agitated crowd, which produced the very guffawing that had sent a shiver down the findirector’s spine. Next to the lady some citizen was flitting about, trying to tear off his summer coat, and in his agitation simply unable to manage the sleeve in which his arm was stuck.

Shouts and roaring guffaws came from yet another place - namely, the left entrance — and turning his head in that direction, Grigory Danilovich saw a second lady, in pink underwear. She leaped from the street to the sidewalk, striving to hide in the hallway, but the audience pouring out blocked the way, and the poor victim of her own flightiness and passion for dressing up, deceived by vile Fagott’s firm, dreamed of only one thing — falling through the earth. A policeman made for the unfortunate woman, drilling the air with his whistle, and after the policeman hastened some merry young men in caps. It was they who produced the guffawing and hooting.

A skinny, moustachioed cabby flew up to the first undressed woman and dashingly reined in his bony, broken-down nag. The moustached face was grinning gleefully.

Rimsky beat himself on the head with his fist, spat, and leaped back from the window. For some time he sat at his desk listening to the street. The whistling at various points reached its highest pitch, then began to subside. The scandal, to Rimsky’s surprise, was somehow liquidated with unexpected swiftness.

It came time to act. He had to drink the bitter cup of responsibility. The telephones had been repaired during the third part. He had to make calls, to tell what had happened, to ask for help, lie his way out of it, heap everything on Likhodeev, cover up for himself, and so on. Pah, the devil!

Twice the upset director put his hand on the receiver, and twice he drew it back. And suddenly, in the dead silence of the office, the telephone burst out ringing by itself right in the findirector’s face, and he gave a start and went cold. ‘My nerves are really upset, though!’ he thought, and picked up the receiver. He recoiled from it instantly and turned whiter than paper. A soft but at the same time insinuating and lewd female voice whispered into the receiver:

‘Don’t call anywhere, Rimsky, it’ll be bad ...’

The receiver straight away went empty. With goose-flesh prickling on his back, the findirector hung up the telephone and for some reason turned to look at the window behind him. Through the scant and still barely greening branches of a maple, he saw the moon racing in a transparent cloud. His eyes fixed on the branches for some reason, Rimsky went on gazing at them, and the longer he gazed, the more strongly he was gripped by fear.

With great effort, the findirector finally turned away from the moonlit window and stood up. There could no longer be any question of phone calls, and now the findirector was thinking of only one thing — getting out of the theatre as quickly as possible.

He listened: the theatre building was silent. Rimsky realized that he had long been the only one on the whole second floor, and a childish, irrepressible fear came over him at this thought. He could not think without shuddering of having to walk alone now along the empty corridors and down the stairs. Feverishly he seized the hypnotist’s banknotes from the table, put them in his briefcase, and coughed so as to cheer himself up at least a little. The cough came out slightly hoarse, weak.

And here it seemed to him that a whiff of some putrid dankness was coming in under the office door. Shivers ran down the findirector’s spine. And then the clock also rang out unexpectedly and began to strike midnight. And even its striking provoked shivers in the findirector. But his heart definitively sank when he heard the English key turning quietly in the lock. Clutching his briefcase with damp, cold hands, the findirector felt that if this scraping in the keyhole were to go on any longer, he would break down and give a piercing scream.

Finally the door yielded to someone’s efforts, opened, and Varenukha noiselessly entered the office. Rimsky simply sank down into the armchair where he stood, because his legs gave way. Drawing a deep breath, he smiled an ingratiating smile, as it were, and said quietly:

‘God, you frightened me ...’

Yes, this sudden appearance might have frightened anyone you like, and yet at the same time it was a great joy: at least one little end peeped out in this tangled affair.

‘Well, tell me quickly! Well? Well?’ Rimsky wheezed, grasping at this little end. ‘What does it all mean?!’

‘Excuse me, please,’ the entering man replied in a hollow voice, closing the door, ‘I thought you had already left.’

And Varenukha, without taking his cap off, walked to the armchair and sat on the other side of the desk.

It must be said that Varenukha’s response was marked by a slight oddity which at once needled the findirector, who could compete in sensitivity with the seismograph of any of the world’s best stations. How could it be? Why did Varenukha come to the findirector’s office if he thought he was not there? He had his own office, first of all. And second, whichever entrance to the building Varenukha had used, he would inevitably have met one of the night-watchmen, to all of whom it had been announced that Grigory Danilovich was staying late in his office. But the findirector did not spend long pondering this oddity - he had other problems.

‘Why didn’t you call? What are all these shenanigans about Yalta?’

‘Well, it’s as I was saying,’ the administrator replied, sucking as if he were troubled by a bad tooth. ‘He was found in the tavern in Pushkino.’

‘In Pushkino?! You mean just outside Moscow?! What about the telegrams from Yalta?!’

‘The devil they’re from Yalta! He got a telegrapher drunk in Pushkino, and the two of them started acting up, sending telegrams marked “Yalta”, among other things.’

‘Aha ... aha ... Well, all right, all right...’ Rimsky did not say but sang out. His eyes lit up with a yellow light. In his head there formed the festive picture of Styopa’s shameful dismissal from his job. Deliverance! The findirector’s long-awaited deliverance from this disaster in the person of Likhodeev! And maybe Stepan Bogdanovich would achieve something worse than dismissal... ‘The details!’ said Rimsky, banging the paperweight on the desk.

And Varenukha began giving the details. As soon as he arrived where the findirector had sent him, he was received at once and given a most attentive hearing. No one, of course, even entertained the thought that Styopa could be in Yalta. Everyone agreed at once with Varenukha’s suggestion that Likhodeev was, of course, at the Yalta in Pushkino.

‘Then where is he now?’ the agitated findirector interrupted the administrator.

‘Well, where else could he be?’ the administrator replied, grinning crookedly. ‘In a sobering-up cell, naturally!’

‘Well, well. How nice!’

Varenukha went on with his story, and the more he told, the more vividly there unfolded before the findirector the long chain of Likhodeev’s boorish and outrageous acts, and every link in this chain was worse than the one before. The drunken dancing in the arms of the telegrapher on the lawn in front of the Pushkino telegraph office to the sounds of some itinerant barrel-organ was worth something! The chase after some female citizens shrieking with terror! The attempt at a fight with the barman in the Yalta itself! Scattering green onions all over the floor of the same Yalta. Smashing eight bottles of dry white Ai-Danil. Breaking the meter when the taxi-driver refused to take Styopa in his cab. Threatening to arrest the citizens who attempted to stop Styopa’s obnoxiousness ... In short, black horror!

Styopa was well known in Moscow theatre circles, and everyone knew that the man was no gift. But all the same, what the administrator was telling about him was too much even for Styopa. Yes, too much. Even much too much ...

Rimsky’s needle-sharp glance pierced the administrator’s face from across the desk, and the longer the man spoke, the grimmer those eyes became. The more lifelike and colourful the vile details with which the administrator furnished his story, the less the findirector believed the storyteller. And when Varenukha told how Styopa had let himself go so far as to try to resist those who came to bring him back to Moscow, the findirector already knew firmly that everything the administrator who had returned at midnight was telling him, everything, was a lie! A lie from first word to last!

Varenukha never went to Pushkino, and there was no Styopa in Pushkino. There was no drunken telegrapher, there was no broken glass in the tavern, Styopa did not get tied up with ropes ... none of it happened.

As soon as the findirector became firmly convinced that the administrator was lying to him, fear crept over his body, starting from the legs, and twice again the findirector fancied that a putrid malarial dankness was wafting across the floor. Never for a moment taking his eyes off the administrator — who squirmed somehow strangely in his armchair, trying not to get out of the blue shade of the desk lamp, and screening himself with a newspaper in some remarkable fashion from the bothersome light - the findirector was thinking of only one thing: what did it all mean? Why was he being lied to so brazenly, in the silent and deserted building, by the administrator who was so late in coming back to him? And the awareness of danger, an unknown but menacing danger, began to gnaw at Rimsky’s soul. Pretending to ignore Varenukha’s dodges and tricks with the newspaper, the findirector studied his face, now almost without listening to the yarn Varenukha was spinning. There was something that seemed still more inexplicable than the calumny invented, God knows why, about adventures in Pushkino, and that something was the change in the administrator’s appearance and manners.

No matter how the man pulled the duck-like visor of his cap over his eyes, so as to throw a shadow on his face, no matter how he fidgeted with the newspaper, the findirector managed to make out an enormous bruise on the right side of his face just by the nose. Besides that, the normally full-blooded administrator was now pale with a chalk-like, unhealthy pallor, and on this stifling night his neck was for some reason wrapped in an old striped scarf. Add to that the repulsive manner the administrator had acquired during the time of his absence of sucking and smacking, the sharp change in his voice, which had become hollow and coarse, and the furtiveness and cowardliness in his eyes, and one could boldly say that Ivan Savelyevich Varenukha had become unrecognizable.

Something else burningly troubled the findirector, but he was unable to grasp precisely what it was, however much he strained his feverish mind, however hard he peered at Varenukha. One thing he could affirm, that there was something unprecedented, unnatural in this combination of the administrator and the familiar armchair.

‘Well, we finally overpowered him, loaded him into the car,’ Varenukha boomed, peeking from behind the paper and covering the bruise with his hand.

Rimsky suddenly reached out and, as if mechanically, tapping his fingers on the table at the same time, pushed the electric-bell button with his palm and went numb. The sharp signal ought to have been heard without fail in the empty building. But no signal came, and the button sank lifelessly into the wood of the desk. The button was dead, the bell broken.

The findirector’s stratagem did not escape the notice of Varenukha, who asked, twitching, with a clearly malicious fire flickering in his eyes:

‘What are you ringing for?’

‘Mechanically,’ the findirector replied hollowly, jerking his hand back, and asked in turn, in an unsteady voice: ‘What’s that on your face?’

‘The car skidded, I bumped against the door-handle,’ Varenukha said, looking away.

‘He’s lying!’ the findirector exclaimed mentally. And here his eyes suddenly grew round and utterly insane, and he stared at the back of the armchair.

Behind the chair on the floor two shadows lay criss-cross, one more dense and black, the other faint and grey. The shadow of the back of the chair and of its tapering legs could be seen distinctly on the floor, but there was no shadow of Varenukha’s head above the back of the chair, or of the administrator’s legs under its legs.

‘He casts no shadow!’ Rimsky cried out desperately in his mind. He broke into shivers.

Varenukha, following Rimsky’s insane gaze, looked furtively behind him at the back of the chair, and realized that he had been found out. He got up from the chair (the findirector did likewise) and made one step back from the desk, clutching his briefcase in his hands.

‘He’s guessed, damn him! Always was clever,’ Varenukha said, grinning spitefully right in the findirector’s face, and he sprang unexpectedly from the chair to the door and quickly pushed down the catch on the lock. The findirector looked desperately behind him, as he retreated to the window giving on to the garden, and in this window, flooded with moonlight, saw the face of a naked girl pressed against the glass and her naked arm reaching through the vent-pane and trying to open the lower latch. The upper one was already open.

It seemed to Rimsky that the light of the desk lamp was going out and the desk was tilting. An icy wave engulfed Rimsky, but — fortunately for him - he got control of himself and did not fall. He had enough strength left to whisper, but not cry out:

‘Help ...’

Varenukha, guarding the door, hopped up and down by it, staying in air for a long time and swaying there. Waving his hooked fingers in Rimsky’s direction, he hissed and smacked, winking to the girl in the window.

She began to hurry, stuck her red-haired head through the vent, reached her arm down as far as she could, her nails clawing at the lower latch and shaking the frame. Her arm began to lengthen, rubber-like, and became covered with a putrid green. Finally the dead woman’s green fingers got hold of the latch knob, turned it, and the frame began to open. Rimsky cried out weakly, leaned against the wall, and held his briefcase in front of him like a shield. He realized that his end had come.

The frame swung wide open, but instead of the night’s freshness and the fragrance of the lindens, the smell of a cellar burst into the room. The dead woman stepped on to the window-sill. Rimsky clearly saw spots of decay on her breast.

And just then the joyful, unexpected crowing of a cock came from the garden, from that low building beyond the shooting gallery where birds participating in the programme were kept. A loud, trained cock trumpeted, announcing that dawn was rolling towards Moscow from the east.

Savage fury distorted the girl’s face, she emitted a hoarse oath, and at the door Varenukha shrieked and dropped from the air to the floor.

The cock-crow was repeated, the girl clacked her teeth, and her red hair stood on end. With the third crowing of the cock, she turned and flew out. And after her, jumping up and stretching himself horizontally in the air, looking like a flying cupid, Varenukha slowly floated over the desk and out the window.

White as snow, with not a single black hair on his head, the old man who still recently had been Rimsky rushed to the door, undid the catch, opened the door, and ran hurtling down the dark corridor. At the turn to the stairs, moaning with fear, he felt for the switch, and the stairway lighted up. On the stairs the shaking, trembling old man fell because he imagined that Varenukha had softly tumbled on top of him.

Having run downstairs, Rimsky saw a watchman asleep on a chair by the box office in the lobby. Rimsky stole past him on tiptoe and slipped out the main entrance. Outside he felt slightly better. He recovered his senses enough to realize, clutching his head, that his hat had stayed behind in the office.

Needless to say, he did not go back for it, but, breathless, ran across the wide street to the opposite comer by the movie theatre, near which a dull reddish light hovered. In a moment he was there. No one had time to intercept the cab.

‘Make the Leningrad express, I’ll tip you well,’ the old man said, breathing heavily and clutching his heart.

‘I’m going to the garage,’ the driver answered hatefully and turned away.

Then Rimsky unlatched his briefcase, took out fifty roubles, and handed them to the driver through the open front window.

A few moments later, the rattling car was flying like the wind down Sadovoye Ring. The passenger was tossed about on his seat, and in the fragment of mirror hanging in front of the driver, Rimsky saw now the driver’s happy eyes, now his own insane ones.

Jumping out of the car in front of the train station, Rimsky cried to the first man he saw in a white apron with a badge:

‘First class, single, I’ll pay thirty,’ he was pulling the banknotes from his briefcase, crumpling them, ‘no first class, get me second ... if not - a hard bench!’

The man with the badge kept glancing up at the lighted clock face as he tore the banknotes from Rimsky’s hand.

Five minutes later the express train disappeared from under the glass vault of the train station and vanished clean away in the darkness. And with it vanished Rimsky.

CHAPTER 15 Nikanor Ivanovich’s Dream

It is not difficult to guess that the fat man with the purple physiognomy who was put in room 119 of the clinic was Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy.

He got to Professor Stravinsky not at once, however, but after first visiting another place.[91] Of this other place little remained in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory. He recalled only a desk, a bookcase and a sofa.

There a conversation was held with Nikanor Ivanovich, who had some sort of haze before his eyes from the rush of blood and mental agitation, but the conversation came out somehow strange, muddled, or, better to say, did not come out at all.

The very first question put to Nikanor Ivanovich was the following-.

‘Are you Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the house committee at no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street?’

To this Nikanor Ivanovich, bursting into terrible laughter, replied literally thus:

‘I’m Nikanor, of course I’m Nikanor! But what the deuce kind of chairman am I?’

‘Meaning what?’ the question was asked with a narrowing of eyes.

‘Meaning,’ he replied, ‘that if I was chairman, I should have determined at once that he was an unclean power! Otherwise — what is it? A cracked pince-nez, all in rags ... what kind of foreigner’s interpreter could he be?’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Nikanor Ivanovich was asked.

‘Koroviev!’ Nikanor Ivanovich cried out. ‘Got himself lodged in our apartment number fifty. Write it down — Koroviev! He must be caught at once. Write it down — the sixth entrance. He’s there.’

‘Where did you get the currency?’ Nikanor Ivanovich was asked soulfully.

‘As God is true, as God is almighty,’ Nikanor Ivanovich began, ‘he sees everything, and it serves me right. I never laid a finger on it, never even suspected what it was, this currency! God is punishing me for my iniquity,’ Nikanor Ivanovich went on with feeling, now buttoning, now unbuttoning his shirt, now crossing himself. ‘I took! I took, but I took ours, Soviet money! I’d register people for money, I don’t argue, it happened. Our secretary Bedsornev is a good one, too, another good one! Frankly speaking, there’s nothing but thieves in the house management ... But I never took currency!’

To the request that he stop playing the fool and tell how the dollars got into the ventilation, Nikanor Ivanovich went on his knees and swayed, opening his mouth as if he meant to swallow a section of the parquet.

‘If you want,’ he mumbled, ‘I’ll eat dirt that I didn’t do it! And Koroviev - he’s the devil!’

All patience has its limits, and the voice at the desk was now raised, hinting to Nikanor Ivanovich that it was time he began speaking in human language.

Here the room with that same sofa resounded with Nikanor Ivanovich’s wild roaring, as he jumped up from his knees:

‘There he is! There, behind the bookcase! He’s grinning! And his pince-nez ... Hold him! Spray the room with holy water!’

The blood left Nikanor Ivanovich’s face. Trembling, he made crosses in the air, rushing to the door and back, intoned some prayer, and finally began spouting sheer gibberish.

It became perfectly clear that Nikanor Ivanovich was unfit for any conversation. He was taken out and put in a separate room, where he calmed down somewhat and only prayed and sobbed.

They did, of course, go to Sadovaya and visit apartment no. 50. But they did not find any Koroviev there, and no one in the house either knew or had seen any Koroviev. The apartment occupied by the late Berlioz, as well as by the Yalta-visiting Likhodeev, was empty, and in the study wax seals hung peacefully on the bookcases, unbroken by anyone. With that they left Sadovaya, and there also departed with them the perplexed and dispirited secretary of the house management, Bedsornev.

In the evening Nikanor Ivanovich was delivered to Stravinsky’s clinic. There he became so agitated that an injection, made according to Stravinsky’s recipe, had to be given him, and only after midnight did Nikanor Ivanovich fall asleep in room 119, every now and then emitting a heavy, painful moan.

But the longer he slept, the easier his sleep became. He stopped tossing and groaning, his breathing became easy and regular, and he was left alone. Then Nikanor Ivanovich was visited by a dream, at the basis of which undoubtedly lay the experience of that day. It began with Nikanor Ivanovich seeing as it were some people with golden trumpets in their hands leading him, and very solemnly, to a big lacquered door. At this door his companions played as it were a flourish for Nikanor Ivanovich, and then from the sky a resounding bass said merrily:

‘Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich, turn over your currency!’

Exceedingly astonished, Nikanor Ivanovich saw a black loudspeaker above him.

Then he found himself for some reason in a theatre house, where crystal chandeliers blazed under a gilded ceiling and Quinquet lamps[92] on the walls. Everything was as it ought to be in a small-sized but very costly theatre. There was a stage closed off by a velvet curtain, its dark cerise background spangled, as if with stars, with oversized gold pieces, there was a prompter’s box, and there was even an audience.

What surprised Nikanor Ivanovich was that this audience was all of the same sex - male - and all for some reason bearded. Besides that, it was striking that there were no seats in the theatre, and the audience was all sitting on the floor, splendidly polished and slippery.

Abashed in this new and big company, Nikanor Ivanovich, after a brief hesitation, followed the general example and sat down on the parquet Turkish-fashion, huddled between some stalwart, bearded redhead and another citizen, pale and quite overgrown. None of the sitters paid any attention to the newly arrived spectator.

Here the soft ringing of a bell was heard, the lights in the house went out, and the curtain opened to reveal a lighted stage with an armchair, a little table on which stood a golden bell, and a solid black velvet backdrop.

An artiste came out from the wings in an evening jacket, smoothly shaven, his hair neatly parted, young and with very pleasant features. The audience in the house livened up, and everyone turned towards the stage. The artiste advanced to the prompter’s box and rubbed his hands.

‘All sitting?’[93] he asked in a soft baritone and smiled to the house.

‘Sitting, sitting,’ a chorus of tenors and basses answered from the house.

‘Hm ...’ the artiste began pensively, ‘and how you’re not sick of it I just don’t understand! Everybody else is out walking around now, enjoying the spring sun and the warmth, and you’re stuck in here on the floor of a stuffy theatre! Is the programme so interesting? Tastes differ, however,’ the artiste concluded philosophically.

Then he changed both the timbre of his voice and its intonation, and announced gaily and resoundingly:

‘And now for the next number on our programme - Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of a house committee and director of a dietetic kitchen. Nikanor Ivanovich, on-stage!’

General applause greeted the artiste. The surprised Nikanor Ivanovich goggled his eyes, while the master of ceremonies, blocking the glare of the footlights with his hand, located him among the sitters and tenderly beckoned him on-stage with his finger. And Nikanor Ivanovich, without knowing how, found himself on-stage. Beams of coloured light struck his eyes from in front and below, which at once caused the house and the audience to sink into darkness.

‘Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, set us a good example, sir,’ the young artiste said soulfully, ‘turn over your currency.’

Silence ensued. Nikanor Ivanovich took a deep breath and quietly began to speak:

‘I swear to God that I ...’

But before he had time to get the words out, the whole house burst into shouts of indignation. Nikanor Ivanovich got confused and fell silent.

‘As far as I understand you,’ said the programme announcer, ‘you wanted to swear to God that you haven’t got any currency?’, and he gazed sympathetically at Nikanor Ivanovich.

‘Exactly right, I haven’t,‘ replied Nikanor Ivanovich.

‘Right,’ responded the artiste, ‘and ... excuse the indiscretion, where did the four hundred dollars that were found in the privy of the apartment of which you and your wife are the sole inhabitants come from?’

‘Magic!’ someone in the dark house said with obvious irony.

‘Exactly right — magic,’ Nikanor Ivanovich timidly replied, vaguely addressing either the artiste or the dark house, and he explained: ‘Unclean powers, the checkered interpreter stuck me with them.’

And again the house raised an indignant roar. When silence came, the artiste said:

‘See what La Fontaine fables I have to listen to! Stuck him with four hundred dollars! Now, all of you here are currency dealers, so I address you as experts: is that conceivable?’

‘We’re not currency dealers,’ various offended voices came from the theatre, ‘but, no, it’s not conceivable!’

‘I’m entirely of the same mind,’ the artiste said firmly, ‘and let me ask you: what is it that one can be stuck with?’

‘A baby!’ someone cried from the house.

‘Absolutely correct,’ the programme announcer confirmed, ‘a baby, an anonymous letter, a tract, an infernal machine, anything else, but no one will stick you with four hundred dollars, for such idiots don’t exist in nature.’ And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, the artiste added reproachfully and sorrowfully: ‘You’ve upset me, Nikanor Ivanovich, and I was counting on you. So, our number didn’t come off.’

Whistles came from the house, addressed to Nikanor Ivanovich.

‘He’s a currency dealer,’ they shouted from the house, ‘and we innocent ones have to suffer for the likes of him!’

‘Don’t scold him,’ the master of ceremonies said softly, ‘he’ll repent.’ And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, his blue eyes filled with tears, he added: ‘Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, you may go to your place.’

After that the artiste rang the bell and announced loudly:

‘Intermission, you blackguards!’

The shaken Nikanor Ivanovich, who unexpectedly for himself had become a participant in some sort of theatre programme, again found himself in his place on the floor. Here he dreamed that the house was plunged in total darkness, and fiery red words leaped out on the walls: ‘Turn over your currency!’ Then the curtain opened again and the master of ceremonies invited:

‘I call Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil to the stage.’

Dunchil turned out to be a fine-looking but rather unkempt man of about fifty.

‘Sergei Gerardovich,’ the master of ceremonies addressed him, ‘you’ve been sitting here for a month and a half now, stubbornly refusing to turn over the currency you still have, while the country is in need of it, and you have no use for it whatsoever. And still you persist. You’re an intelligent man, you understand it all perfectly well, and yet you don’t want to comply with me.’

‘To my regret, there is nothing I can do, since I have no more currency,’ Dunchil calmly replied.

‘Don’t you at least have some diamonds?’ asked the artiste.

‘No diamonds either.’

The artiste hung his head and pondered, then clapped his hands. A middle-aged lady came out from the wings, fashionably dressed - that is, in a collarless coat and a tiny hat. The lady looked worried, but Dunchil glanced at her without moving an eyebrow.

‘Who is this lady?’ the programme announcer asked Dunchil.

‘That is my wife,’ Dunchil replied with dignity and looked at the lady’s long neck with a certain repugnance.

‘We have troubled you, Madame Dunchil,’ the master of ceremonies adverted to the lady, ‘with regard to the following: we wanted to ask you, does your husband have any more currency?’

‘He turned it all over the other time,’ Madame Dunchil replied nervously.

‘Right,’ said the artiste, ‘well, then, if it’s so, it’s so. If he turned it all over, then we ought to part with Sergei Gerardovich immediately, there’s nothing else to do! If you wish, Sergei Gerardovich, you may leave the theatre.’ And the artiste made a regal gesture.

Dunchil turned calmly and with dignity, and headed for the wings.

‘Just a moment!’ the master of ceremonies stopped him. ‘Allow me on parting to show you one more number from our programme.’ And again he clapped his hands.

The black backdrop parted, and on to the stage came a young beauty in a ball gown, holding in her hands a golden tray on which lay a fat wad tied with candy-box ribbon and a diamond necklace from which blue, yellow and red fire leaped in all directions.

Dunchil took a step back and his face went pale. The house froze.

‘Eighteen thousand dollars and a necklace worth forty thousand in gold,’ the artiste solemnly announced, ‘kept by Sergei Gerardovich in the city of Kharkov, in the apartment of his mistress, Ida Herkulanovna Vors, whom we have the pleasure of seeing here before us and who so kindly helped in discovering these treasures — priceless, yet useless in the hands of a private person. Many thanks, Ida Herkulanovna!’

The beauty smiled, flashing her teeth, and her lush eyelashes fluttered.

‘And under your so very dignified mask,’ the artiste adverted to Dunchil, ‘is concealed a greedy spider and an astonishing bamboozler and liar. You wore everyone out during this month and a half with your dull obstinacy. Go home now, and let the hell your wife sets up for you be your punishment.’

Dunchil swayed and, it seems, wanted to fall down, but was held up by someone’s sympathetic hands. Here the front curtain dropped and concealed all those on-stage.

Furious applause shook the house, so much so that Nikanor Ivanovich fancied the lights were leaping in the chandeliers. When the front curtain went up, there was no one on-stage except the lone artiste. Greeted with a second burst of applause, he bowed and began to speak:

‘In the person of this Dunchil, our programme has shown you a typical ass. I did have the pleasure of saying yesterday that the concealing of currency is senseless. No one can make use of it under any circumstances, I assure you. Let’s take this same Dunchil. He gets a splendid salary and doesn’t want for anything. He has a splendid apartment, a wife and a beautiful mistress. But no, instead of living quietly and peacefully without any troubles, having turned over the currency and stones, this mercenary blockhead gets himself exposed in front of everybody, and to top it off contracts major family trouble. So, who’s going to turn over? Any volunteers? In that case, for the next number on our programme, a famous dramatic talent, the actor Kurolesov, Savva Potapovich, especially invited here, will perform excerpts from The Covetous Knight[94] by the poet Pushkin.’

The promised Kurolesov was not slow in coming on stage and turned out to be a strapping and beefy man, clean-shaven, in a tailcoat and white tie. Without any preliminaries, he concocted a gloomy face, knitted his brows, and began speaking in an unnatural voice, glancing sidelong at the golden bell:

‘As a young scapegrace awaits a tryst with some sly strumpet ...’[95]

And Kurolesov told many bad things about himself. Nikanor Ivanovich heard Kurolesov confess that some wretched widow had gone on her knees to him, howling, in the rain, but had failed to move the actor’s callous heart.

Before his dream, Nikanor Ivanovich had been completely ignorant of the poet Pushkin’s works, but the man himself he knew perfectly well and several times a day used to say phrases like: ‘And who’s going to pay the rent — Pushkin?’[96] or ‘Then who did unscrew the bulb on the stairway — Pushkin?’ or ‘So who’s going to buy the fuel — Pushkin?’

Now, having become acquainted with one of his works, Nikanor Ivanovich felt sad, imagined the woman on her knees, with her orphaned children, in the rain, and involuntarily thought: ‘What a type, though, this Kurolesov!’

And the latter, ever raising his voice, went on with his confession and got Nikanor Ivanovich definitively muddled, because he suddenly 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, now formally, and now familiarly.

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 the accompaniment of thin applause. And the master of ceremonies began speaking thus:

‘We have just heard The Covetous Knight wonderfully performed by Savva Potapovich. This knight hoped that frolicking nymphs would come running to him, and that many other pleasant things in the same vein would occur. But, as you see, none of it happened, no nymphs came running to him, and the muses paid him no tribute, and he raised no mansions, but, on the contrary, ended quite badly, died of a stroke, devil take him, on his chest of currency and jewels. I warn you that the same sort of thing, if not worse, is going to happen to you if you don’t turn over your currency!’

Whether Pushkin’s poetry produced such an effect, or it was the prosaic speech of the master of ceremonies, in any case a shy voice suddenly came from the house:

‘I’ll turn over my currency.’

‘Kindly come to the stage,’ the master of ceremonies courteously invited, peering into the dark house.

On-stage appeared a short, fair-haired citizen, who, judging by his face, had not shaved in about three weeks.

‘Beg pardon, what is your name?’ the master of ceremonies inquired.

‘Kanavkin, Nikolai,’ the man responded shyly.

‘Ah! Very pleased, Citizen Kanavkin. And so? ...’

‘I’ll turn it over,’ Kanavkin said quietly.

‘How much?’

‘A thousand dollars and twenty ten-rouble gold pieces.’

‘Bravo! That’s all, then?’

The programme announcer stared straight into Kanavkin’s eyes, and it even seemed to Nikanor Ivanovich that those eyes sent out rays that penetrated Kanavkin like X-rays. The house stopped breathing.

‘I believe you!’ the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguished his gaze. ‘I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don’t even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but — alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it’s all over! They see it, and you’re caught!’

Having delivered, and with great ardour, this highly convincing speech, the artiste tenderly inquired of Kanavkin:

‘And where is it hidden?’

‘With my aunt, Porokhovnikova, on Prechistenka.’

‘Ah! That’s ... wait ... that’s Klavdia Ilyinishna, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes! A separate little house? A little front garden opposite? Of course, I know, I know! And where did you put it there?’

‘In the cellar, in a candy tin ...’

The artiste clasped his hands.

‘Have you ever seen the like?’ he cried out, chagrined. ‘Why, it’ll get damp and mouldy there! Is it conceivable to entrust currency to such people? Eh? Sheer childishness! By God! ...’

Kanavkin himself realized he had fouled up and was in for it, and he hung his tufty head.

‘Money,’ the artiste went on, ‘must be kept in the state bank, in special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt’s cellar, where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for shame! You’re a grown-up!’

Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at the lapel of his jacket with his finger.

‘Well, all right,’ the artiste relented, ‘let bygones be ...’ And he suddenly added unexpectedly: ‘Ah, by the way ... so that in one ... to save a trip ... this same aunt also has some, eh?’

Kanavkin, never expecting such a turn of affairs, wavered, and the theatre fell silent.

‘Ehh, Kanavkin ...’ the master of ceremonies said in tender reproach, ‘and here I was praising him! Look, he just went and messed it up for no reason at all! It’s absurd, Kanavkin! Wasn’t I just talking about eyes? Can’t we see that the aunt has got some? Well, then why do you torment us for nothing?’

‘She has!’ Kanavkin cried dashingly.

‘Bravo!’ cried the master of ceremonies.

‘Bravo!’ the house roared frightfully.

When things quieted down, the master of ceremonies congratulated Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home to the city in a car, and told someone in the wings to go in that same car to fetch the aunt and ask her kindly to come for the programme at the women’s theatre.

‘Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she hides hers?’ the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned somehow wistfully.

‘I believe you, I believe you,’ the artiste responded with a sigh. ‘Not just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn’t tell the devil himself! Well, so, we’ll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!’

And the happy Kanavkin drove off. The artiste inquired whether there were any others who wished to turn over their currency, but was answered with silence.

‘Odd birds, by God!’ the artiste said, shrugging, and the curtain hid him.

The lights went out, there was darkness for a while, and in it a nervous tenor was heard singing from far away:

‘There great heaps of gold do shine, and all those heaps of gold are Mine ...’[97]

Then twice the sound of subdued applause came from somewhere.

‘Some little lady in the women’s theatre is turning hers over,’ Nikanor Ivanovich’s red-bearded neighbour spoke up unexpectedly, and added with a sigh: ‘Ah, if it wasn’t for my geese! ... I’ve got fighting geese in Lianozovo, my dear fellow ... they’ll die without me, I’m afraid. A fighting bird’s delicate, it needs care ... Ah, if it wasn’t for my geese! ... They won’t surprise me with Pushkin ...’ And again he began to sigh.

Here the house lit up brightly, and Nikanor Ivanovich dreamed that cooks in white chef’s hats and with ladles in their hands came pouring from all the doors. Scullions dragged in a cauldron of soup and a stand with cut-up rye bread. The spectators livened up. The jolly cooks shuttled among the theatre buffs, ladled out bowls of soup, and distributed bread.

‘Dig in, lads,’ the cooks shouted, ‘and turn over your currency! What’s the point of sitting here? Who wants to slop up this swill! Go home, have a good drink, a little bite, that’s the way!’

‘Now, you, for instance, what’re you doing sitting here, old man?’ Nikanor Ivanovich was directly addressed by a fat cook with a raspberry-coloured neck, as he offered him a bowl in which a lone cabbage leaf floated in some liquid.

‘I don’t have any! I don’t! I don’t!’ Nikanor Ivanovich cried out in a terrible voice. ‘You understand, I don’t!’

‘You don’t?’ the cook bellowed in a menacing bass. ‘You don’t?’ he asked in a tender woman’s voice. ‘You don’t, you don’t,’ he murmured soothingly, turning into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna.

She was gently shaking Nikanor Ivanovich by the shoulder as he moaned in his sleep. Then 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 two people in white coats, who were by no means casual cooks getting at people with their advice, but the doctor and that same Praskovya Fyodorovna, who was holding not a bowl but a little dish covered with gauze, with a syringe lying on it.

‘What is all this?’ Nikanor Ivanovich said bitterly, as they were giving him the injection. ‘I don’t have any and that’s that! Let Pushkin turn over his currency for them. I don’t have any!’

‘No, you don’t, you don’t,’ the kind-hearted Praskovya Fyodorovna soothed him, ‘and if you don’t, there’s no more to be said.’

After the injection, Nikanor Ivanovich felt better and fell asleep without any dreams.

But, thanks to his cries, alarm was communicated to room 120, where the patient woke up and began looking for his head, and to room 118, where the unknown master became restless and wrung his hands in anguish, looking at the moon, remembering the last bitter autumn night of his life, a strip of light under the basement door, and uncurled hair.

From room 118, the alarm flew by way of the balcony to Ivan, and he woke up and began to weep.

But the doctor quickly calmed all these anxious, sorrowing heads, and they began to fall asleep. Ivan was the last to become oblivious, as dawn was already breaking over the river. After the medicine, which suffused his whole body, calm came like a wave and covered him. His body grew lighter, his head basked in the warm wind of reverie. He fell asleep, and the last waking thing he heard was the pre-dawn chirping of birds in the woods. But they soon fell silent, and he began dreaming that the sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was cordoned off by a double cordon ...

CHAPTER 16 The Execution

The sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was cordoned off by a double cordon.

The cavalry ala that had cut across the procurator’s path around noon came trotting up to the Hebron gate of the city. Its way had already been prepared. The infantry of the Cappadocian cohort had pushed the conglomeration of people, mules and camels to the sides, and the ala, trotting and raising white columns of dust in the sky, came to an intersection where two roads met: the south road leading to Bethlehem, and the north-west road to Jaffa. The ala raced down the north-west road. The same Cappadocians were strung out along the sides of the road, and in good time had driven to the sides of it all the caravans hastening to the feast in Yershalaim. Crowds of pilgrims stood behind the Cappadocians, having abandoned their temporary striped tents, pitched right on the grass. Going on for about a half-mile, the ala caught up with the second cohort of the Lightning legion and, having covered another half-mile, was the first to reach the foot of Bald Mountain. Here they dismounted. The commander broke the ala up into squads, and they cordoned off the whole foot of the small hill, leaving open only the way up from the Jaffa road.

After some time, the ala was joined at the hill by the second cohort, which climbed one level higher and also encircled the hill in a wreath.

Finally the century under the command of Mark Ratslayer arrived. It went stretched out in files along the sides of the road, and between these files, convoyed by the secret guard, the three condemned men rode in a cart, white boards hanging around their necks with ‘robber and rebel’ written on each of them in two languages — Aramaic and Greek.

The cart with the condemned men was followed by others laden with freshly hewn posts with crosspieces, ropes, shovels, buckets and axes. Six executioners rode in these carts. They were followed on horseback by the centurion Mark, the chief of the temple guard of Yershalaim, and that same hooded man with whom Pilate had had a momentary meeting in a darkened room of the palace.

A file of soldiers brought up the rear of the procession, and behind it walked about two thousand of the curious, undaunted by the infernal heat and wishing to be present at the interesting spectacle. The curious from the city were now joined by the curious from among the pilgrims, who were admitted without hindrance to the tail of the procession. Under the shrill cries of the heralds who accompanied the column and cried aloud what Pilate had cried out at around noon, the procession drew itself up Bald Mountain.

The ala admitted everyone to the second level, but the second century let only those connected with the execution go further up, and then, manoeuvring quickly, spread the crowd around the entire hill, so that people found themselves between the cordons of infantry above and cavalry below. Now they could watch the execution through the sparse line of the infantry.

And so, more than three hours had gone by since the procession climbed the mountain, and the sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, but the heat was still unbearable, and the soldiers in both cordons suffered from it, grew weary with boredom, and cursed the three robbers in their hearts, sincerely wishing them the speediest death.

The little commander of the ala, his brow moist and the back of his white shirt dark with sweat, having placed himself at the foot of the hill by the open passage, went over to the leather bucket of the first squad every now and then, scooped handfuls of water from it, drank and wetted his turban. Somewhat relieved by that, he would step away and again begin pacing back and forth on the dusty road leading to the top. His long sword slapped against his laced leather boot. The commander wished to give his cavalrymen an example of endurance, but, pitying his soldiers, he allowed them to stick their spears pyramid-like in the ground and throw their white cloaks over them. Under these tents, the Syrians hid from the merciless sun. The buckets were quickly emptied, and cavalrymen from different squads took turns going to fetch water in the gully below the hill, where in the thin shade of spindly mulberries a muddy brook was living out its last days in the devilish heat. There, too, catching the unsteady shade, stood the bored horse-handlers, holding the quieted horses.

The weariness of the soldiers and the abuse they aimed at the robbers were understandable. The procurator’s apprehensions concerning the disorders that might occur at the time of the execution in the city of Yershalaim, so hated by him, fortunately were not borne out. And when the fourth hour of the execution came, there was, contrary to all expectations, not a single person left between the two files, the infantry above and the cavalry below. The sun had scorched the crowd and driven it back to Yershalaim. Beyond the file of two Roman centuries there were only two dogs that belonged to no one knew whom and had for some reason ended up on the hill. But the heat got to them, too, and they lay down with their tongues hanging out, panting and paying no attention to the green-backed lizards, the only beings not afraid of the sun, darting among the scorching stones and some sort of big-thorned plants that crept on the ground.

No one attempted to rescue the condemned men either in Yershalaim itself, flooded with troops, or here on the cordoned-off hill, and the crowd went back to the city, for indeed there was absolutely nothing interesting in this execution, while there in the city preparations were under way for the great feast of Passover, which was to begin that evening.

The Roman infantry on the second level suffered still more than the cavalry. The only thing the centurion Ratslayer allowed his soldiers was to take off their helmets and cover their heads with white headbands dipped in water, but he kept them standing, and with their spears in their hands. He himself, in the same kind of headband, but dry, not wet, walked about not far from the group of executioners, without even taking the silver plaques with lions’ muzzles off his shirt, or removing his greaves, sword and knife. The sun beat straight down on the centurion without doing him any harm, and the lions’ muzzles were impossible to look at — the eyes were devoured by the dazzling gleam of the silver which was as if boiling in the sun.

Ratslayer’s mutilated face expressed neither weariness nor displeasure, and it seemed that the giant centurion was capable of pacing like that all day, all night and the next day - in short, for as long as necessary. Of pacing in the same way, holding his hands to the heavy belt with its bronze plaques, glancing in the same stem way now at the posts with the executed men, now at the file of soldiers, kicking aside with the toe of a shaggy boot in the same indifferent way human bones whitened by time or small flints that happened under his feet.

That man in the hood placed himself not far from the posts on a three-legged stool and sat there in complacent motionlessness, though poking the sand with a twig from time to time out of boredom.

What has been said about there not being a single person beyond the file of legionaries is not quite true. There was one person, but he simply could not be seen by everyone. He had placed himself, not on the side where the way up the mountain was open and from where it would have been most convenient to watch the execution, but on the north side, where the slope was not gentle and accessible, but uneven, with gaps and clefts, where in a crevice, clutching at the heaven-cursed waterless soil, a sickly fig tree was trying to live.

Precisely under it, though it gave no shade, this sole spectator who was not a participant in the execution had established himself, and had sat on a stone from the very beginning, that is, for over three hours now. Yes, he had chosen not the best but the worst position for watching the execution. But still, even from there the posts could be seen, and there could also be seen, beyond the file of soldiers, the two dazzling spots on the centurion’s chest, and that was apparently quite enough for a man who obviously wished to remain little noticed and not be bothered by anyone.

But some four hours ago, at the start of the execution, this man had behaved quite differently, and might have been noticed very well, which was probably why he had now changed his behaviour and secluded himself.

It was only when the procession came to the very top, beyond the file, that he had first appeared, and as an obvious latecomer at that. He was breathing hard, and did not walk but ran up the hill, pushing his way, and, seeing the file close together before him as before everyone else, made a naive attempt, pretending he did not understand the angry shouts, to break through the soldiers to the very place of execution, where the condemned men were already being taken from the cart. For that he received a heavy blow in the chest with the butt end of a spear, and he leaped back from the soldiers, crying out not in pain but in despair. At the legionary who had dealt the blow he cast a dull glance, utterly indifferent to everything, like a man insensible to physical pain.

Coughing and breathless, clutching his chest, he ran around the hill, trying to find some gap in the file on the north side where he could slip through. But it was too late, the ring was closed. And the man, his face distorted with grief, was forced to renounce his attempts to break through to the carts, from which the posts had already been unloaded. These attempts would have led nowhere, except that he would have been seized, and to be arrested on that day by no means entered his plans.

And so he went to the side, towards the crevice, where it was quieter and nobody bothered him.

Now, sitting on the stone, this black-bearded man, his eyes festering from the sun and lack of sleep, was in anguish. First he sighed, opening his tallith, worn out in his wanderings, gone from light-blue to dirty grey, and bared his chest, which had been hurt by the spear and down which ran dirty sweat; then, in unendurable pain, he raised his eyes to the sky, following the three vultures that had long been floating in great circles on high, anticipating an imminent feast; then he peered with hopeless eyes into the yellow earth, and saw on it the half-destroyed skull of a dog and lizards scurrying around it.

The man’s sufferings were so great that at times he began talking to himself.

‘Oh, fool that I am ...’ he muttered, swaying on the stone in the pain of his heart and clawing his swarthy chest with his nails. ‘Fool, senseless woman, coward! I’m not a man, I’m carrion!’

He would fall silent, hang his head, then, after drinking some warm water from a wooden flask, he would revive again and clutch now at the knife hidden on his chest under the tallith, now at the piece of parchment lying before him on the stone next to a stylus and a pot of ink.

On this parchment some notes had already been scribbled:

‘The minutes run on, and I, Matthew Levi, am here on Bald Mountain, and still no death!’

Further:

‘The sun is sinking, but no death.’

Now Matthew Levi wrote hopelessly with the sharp stylus:

‘God! Why are you angry with him? Send him death.’

Having written this, he sobbed tearlessly and again wounded his chest with his nails.

The reason for Levi’s despair lay in the terrible misfortune that had befallen Yeshua and him and, besides that, in the grave error that he, Levi, in his own opinion, had committed. Two days earlier, Yeshua and Levi had been in Bethphage near Yershalaim, where they had visited a certain gardener who liked Yeshua’s preaching very much. The two visitors had spent the whole morning working in the garden, helping their host, and planned to go to Yershalaim towards evening when it cooled off. But Yeshua began to hurry for some reason, said he had urgent business in the city, and left alone around noontime. Here lay Matthew Levi’s first error. Why, why had he let him go alone!

Nor was Matthew Levi to go to Yershalaim that evening. He was struck by some unexpected and terrible ailment. He began to shake, his whole body was filled with fire, his teeth chattered, and he kept asking to drink all the time.

He could not go anywhere. He collapsed on a horse blanket in the gardener’s shed and lay there till dawn on Friday, when the illness released Levi as unexpectedly as it had fallen upon him. Though he was still weak and his legs trembled, he took leave of his host and, oppressed by some foreboding of disaster, went to Yershalaim. There he learned that his foreboding had not deceived him — the disaster occurred. Levi was in the crowd and heard the procurator announce the sentence.

When the condemned men were led off to the mountain, Matthew Levi ran alongside the file in the crowd of the curious, trying to let Yeshua know in some inconspicuous way that at least he, Levi, was there with him, that he had not abandoned him on his last journey, and that he was praying that death would overtake Yeshua as soon as possible. But Yeshua, who was looking into the distance towards where he was being taken, of course did not see Levi.

And then, when the procession had gone about a half-mile along the road, a simple and ingenious thought dawned on Matthew, who was being jostled by the crowd just next to the file, and in his excitement he at once showered himself with curses for not having thought of it earlier. The file of soldiers was not solid, there were spaces between them. Given great dexterity and a precise calculation, one could bend down, slip between two legionaries, make it to the cart and jump into it. Then Yeshua would be saved from suffering.

One instant would be enough to stab Yeshua in the back with a knife, crying to him: ‘Yeshua! I save you and go with you! I, Matthew, your faithful and only disciple!’

And if God granted him one more free instant, he would also have time to stab himself and avoid death on a post. This last, however, was of little interest to Levi, the former tax collector. He was indifferent to how he died. He wanted one thing, that Yeshua, who had never in his life done the least evil to anyone, should escape torture.

The plan was a very good one, but the fact of the matter was that Levi had no knife with him. Nor did he have a single piece of money.

Furious with himself, Levi got out of the crowd and ran back to the city. A single feverish thought was leaping in his burning head: how to procure a knife there in the city, in any way possible, and have time to overtake the procession.

He ran up to the city gate, manoeuvring amid the throng of caravans being sucked into the city, and saw to his left the open door of a little shop where bread was sold. Breathing hard after running down the scorched road, Levi got control of himself, entered the shop very sedately, greeted the woman behind the counter, asked her to take the top loaf from the shelf, which for some reason he liked better than the others, and when she turned around, silently and quickly took from the counter that than which there could be nothing better - a long, razor-sharp bread knife — and at once dashed out of the shop.

A few moments later he was again on the Jaffa road. But the procession was no longer in sight. He ran. At times he had to drop down right in the dust and lie motionless to recover his breath. And so he would lie there, to the astonishment of people riding on mules or walking on foot to Yershalaim. He would lie listening to his heart pounding not only in his chest but in his head and ears. Having recovered his breath a little, he would jump up and continue running, but ever slower and slower. When he finally caught sight of the long procession raising dust in the distance, it was already at the foot of the hill.

‘Oh, God !...’ Levi moaned, realizing that he was going to be too late. And he was too late.

When the fourth hour of the execution had gone by, Levi’s torments reached their highest degree and he fell into a rage. Getting up from the stone, he flung to the ground the stolen knife — stolen in vain, as he now thought — crushed the flask with his foot, depriving himself of water, threw off his kefia, seized his thin hair, and began cursing himself.

He cursed himself, calling out meaningless words, growled and spat, abused his father and mother for bringing a fool into the world.

Seeing that curses and abuse had no effect and nothing in the sun-scorched place was changed by them, he clenched his dry fists, raised them, squinting, to the sky, to the sun that was sliding ever lower, lengthening the shadows and going to fall into the Mediterranean, and demanded an immediate miracle from God. He demanded that God at once send Yeshua death.

Opening his eyes, he became convinced that everything on the hill was unchanged, except that the blazing spots on the centurion’s chest had gone out. The sun was sending its rays into the backs of the executed men, who were facing Yershalaim. Then Levi shouted:

‘I curse you, God!’

In a rasping voice he shouted that he was convinced of God’s injustice and did not intend to believe in him any longer.

‘You are deaf!’ growled Levi. ‘If you were not deaf, you would have heard me and killed him straight away!’

Shutting his eyes, Levi waited for the fire that would fall from the sky and strike him instead. This did not happen, and Levi, without opening his eyes, went on shouting offensive and sarcastic things at the sky. He shouted about his total disappointment, about the existence of other gods and religions. Yes, another god would not have allowed it, he would never have allowed a man like Yeshua to be burnt by the sun on a post.

‘I was mistaken!’ Levi cried in a completely hoarse voice. ‘You are a god of evil! Or are your eyes completely clouded by smoke from the temple censers, and have your ears ceased to hear anything but the trumpeting noises of the priests? You are not an almighty god! You are a black god! I curse you, god of robbers, their soul and their protector!’

Here something blew into the face of the former tax collector, and something rustled under his feet. It blew once more, and then, opening his eyes, Levi saw that, either under the influence of his curses, or owing to other reasons, everything in the world was changed. The sun had disappeared before reaching the sea, where it sank every evening. Having swallowed it, a storm cloud was rising menacingly and inexorably against the sky in the west. Its edges were already seething with white foam, its black smoky belly was tinged with yellow. The storm cloud was growling, threads of fire fell from it now and again. Down the Jaffa road, down the meagre Hinnom valley, over the tents of the pilgrims, driven by the suddenly risen wind, pillars of dust went flying.

Levi fell silent, trying to grasp whether the storm that was about to cover Yershalaim would bring any change in the fate of the unfortunate Yeshua. And straight away, looking at the threads of fire cutting up the cloud, he began to ask that lightning strike Yeshua’s post. Repentantly looking into the clear sky that had not yet been devoured by the cloud, and where the vultures were veering on one wing to escape the storm, Levi thought he had been insanely hasty with his curses: now God was not going to listen to him.

Turning his gaze to the foot of the hill, Levi fixed on the place where the strung-out cavalry regiment stood, and saw that considerable changes had taken place there. From above, Levi was able to distinguish very well the soldiers bustling about, pulling spears out of the ground, throwing cloaks on, the horse-handlers trotting towards the road leading black horses by their bridles. The regiment was moving off, that was clear. Spitting and shielding himself with his hand from the dust blowing in his face, Levi tried to grasp what it might mean if the cavalry was about to leave. He shifted his gaze further up and made out a little figure in a crimson military chlamys climbing towards the place of execution. And here a chill came over the heart of the former tax collector in anticipation of the joyful end.

The man climbing the mountain in the fifth hour of the robbers’ sufferings was the commander of the cohort, who had come galloping from Yershalaim accompanied by an aide. At a gesture from Ratslayer, the file of soldiers parted, and the centurion saluted the tribune. The latter, taking Ratslayer aside, whispered something to him. The centurion saluted him a second time and moved towards the group of executioners, who were sitting on stones at the foot of the posts. The tribune meanwhile directed his steps towards the one sitting on the three-legged stool, and the seated man politely rose to meet the tribune. And the tribune said something to him in a low voice, and the two went over to the posts. They were joined by the head of the temple guard.

Ratslayer, casting a squeamish sidelong glance at the dirty rags lying on the ground near the posts, rags that had recently been the criminals’ clothing, and which the executioners had rejected, called two of them and ordered:

‘Follow me!’

From the nearest post came a hoarse, senseless song. Gestas, hanging on it, had lost his mind from the flies and sun towards the end of the third hour, and was now quietly singing something about grapes, but his head, covered with a turban, occasionally swayed all the same, and then the flies rose sluggishly from his face and settled on it again.

Dysmas, on the second post, suffered more than the other two because he did not lose consciousness, and he swung his head constantly and rhythmically, right and left, so that his ears struck his shoulders.

Yeshua was more fortunate than the other two. In the very first hour, he began to have blackouts, and then he fell into oblivion, hanging his head in its unwound turban. The flies and horseflies therefore covered him completely, so that his face disappeared under the black swarming mass. In his groin, and on his belly, and in his armpits, fat horseflies sat sucking at his yellow naked body.

Obeying the gestures of the man in the hood, one of the executioners took a spear and another brought a bucket and a sponge to the post. The first executioner raised the spear and with it tapped first one, then the other of Yeshua’s arms, stretched out and bound with ropes to the crossbar of the post. The body, with its protruding ribs, gave a start. The executioner passed the tip of the spear over the belly. Then Yeshua raised his head, and the flies moved off with a buzz, revealing the face of the hanged man, swollen with bites, the eyes puffy, an unrecognizable face.

Ungluing his eyelids, Ha-Nozri looked down. His eyes, usually clear, were slightly clouded.

‘Ha-Nozri!’ said the executioner.

Ha-Nozri moved his swollen lips and answered in a hoarse robber’s voice:

‘What do you want? Why have you come to me?’

‘Drink!’ said the executioner, and a water-soaked sponge on the tip of a spear rose to Yeshua’s lips. Joy flashed in his eyes, he clung to the sponge and began greedily imbibing the moisture. From the neighbouring post came the voice of Dysmas:

‘Injustice! I’m a robber just like him!’

Dysmas strained but was unable to move, his arms being bound to the crossbar in three places with loops of rope. He drew in his belly, clawed the ends of the crossbar with his nails, kept his head turned towards Yeshua’s post, malice blazed in the eyes of Dysmas.

A dusty cloud covered the place, it became much darker. When the dust blew away, the centurion shouted:

‘Silence on the second post!’

Dysmas fell silent. Yeshua tore himself away from the sponge, and trying to make his voice sound gentle and persuasive, but not succeeding, he begged the executioner hoarsely:

‘Give him a drink.’

It was growing ever darker. The storm cloud had already poured across half the sky, aiming towards Yershalaim, boiling white clouds raced ahead of the storm cloud suffused with black moisture and fire. There was a flash and a thunderclap right over the hill. The executioner removed the sponge from the spear.

‘Praise the magnanimous hegemon!’ he whispered solemnly, and gently pricked Yeshua in the heart. He twitched and whispered:

‘Hegemon...’

Blood ran down his belly, his lower jaw twitched convulsively and his head dropped.

At the second thunderclap, the executioner was already giving Dysmas a drink, and with the same words:

‘Praise the hegemon!’ — killed him as well.

Gestas, deprived of reason, cried out fearfully as soon as the executioner came near him, but when the sponge touched his lips, he growled something and seized it with his teeth. A few seconds later his body, too, slumped as much as the ropes would allow.

The man in the hood followed the executioner and the centurion, and after him came the head of the temple guard. Stopping at the first post, the man in the hood examined the blood-covered Yeshua attentively, touched his foot with his white hand, and said to his companions:

‘Dead.’

The same was repeated at the other two posts.

After that the tribune motioned to the centurion and, turning, started off the hilltop together with the head of the temple guard and the man in the hood. Semi-darkness set in, and lightning furrowed the black sky. Fire suddenly sprayed out of it, and the centurion’s shout: ‘Raise the cordon!’, was drowned in rumbling. The happy soldiers rushed headlong down the hill, putting on their helmets.

Darkness covered Yershalaim.

Torrents of rain poured down suddenly and caught the centuries halfway down the hill. The deluge fell so terribly that the soldiers were already pursued by raging streams as they ran downhill. Soldiers slipped and fell in the sodden clay, hurrying to get to the level road, along which - now barely visible through the sheet of water — the thoroughly drenched cavalry was heading for Yershalaim. A few minutes later only one man remained in the smoky brew of storm, water and fire on the hill.

Shaking the not uselessly stolen knife, falling from slippery ledges, clutching at whatever was there, sometimes crawling on his knees, he strained towards the posts. He now vanished in total darkness, now was suddenly illumined by a tremulous light.

Having made his way to the posts, already up to his ankles in water, he tore off his heavy water-soaked tallith, remaining just in his shirt, and clung to Yeshua’s feet. He cut the ropes on his shins, stepped up on the lower crossbar, embraced Yeshua and freed his arms from the upper bonds. The naked, wet body of Yeshua collapsed on Levi and brought him to the ground. Levi wanted to heave it on to his shoulders straight away, but some thought stopped him. He left the body with its thrown-back head and outspread arms on the ground in the water, and ran, his feet slithering apart in the clayey mire, to the other posts. He cut the ropes on them as well, and the two bodies collapsed on the ground.

Several minutes passed, and all that remained on the top of the hill was these two bodies and the three empty posts. Water beat on the bodies and rolled them over.

By that time both Levi and the body of Yeshua were gone from the hilltop.

CHAPTER 17 An Unquiet Day

On Friday morning, that is, the day after the accursed seance, all the available staff of the Variety - the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin, two accountants, three typists, both box-office girls, the messengers, ushers, cleaning women — in short, all those available, were not at their places doing their jobs, but were all sitting on the window-sills looking out on Sadovaya and watching what was going on by the wall of the Variety. By this wall a queue of many thousands clung in two rows, its tail reaching to Kudrinskaya Square. At the head of the line stood some two dozen scalpers well known to theatrical Moscow.

The line behaved with much agitation, attracting the notice of the citizens streaming past, and was occupied with the discussion of inflammatory tales about yesterday’s unprecedented seance of black magic. These same tales caused the greatest consternation in the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich, who had not been present at the previous evening’s performance. The ushers told of God knows what, among other things that after the conclusion of the famous seance, some female citizens went running around in the street looking quite indecent, and so on in the same vein. The modest and quiet Vassily Stepanovich merely blinked his eyes, listening to the tall tales of these wonders, and decidedly did not know what to undertake, and yet something had to be undertaken, and precisely by him, because he now turned out to be the senior member of the whole Variety team.

By ten o’clock the line of people desiring tickets had swelled so much that rumour of it reached the police, and with astonishing swiftness detachments were sent, both on foot and mounted, to bring this line into some sort of order. However, in itself even an orderly snake a half-mile long presented a great temptation, and caused utter amazement in the citizens on Sadovaya.

That was outside, but inside the Variety things were also none too great. Early in the morning the telephones began to ring and went on ringing without interruption in Likhodeev’s office, in Rimsky’s office, at the bookkeeper’s, in the box office, and in Varenukha’s office. Vassily Stepanovich at first made some answer, the box-office girl also answered, the ushers mumbled something into the telephones, but then they stopped altogether, because to questions of where Likhodeev, Varenukha and Rimsky were, there was decidedly no answer. At first they tried to get off by saying ’Likhodeev’s at home‘, but the reply to this was that they had called him at home, and at home they said Likhodeev was at the Variety.

An agitated lady called, started asking for Rimsky, was advised to call his wife, to which the receiver, sobbing, answered that she was his wife and that Rimsky was nowhere to be found. Some sort of nonsense was beginning. The cleaning woman had already told everybody that when she came to the findirector’s office to clean, she saw the door wide open, the lights on, the window to the garden broken, the armchair lying on the floor, and no one in the office.

Shortly after ten o’clock, Madame Rimsky burst into the Variety. She was sobbing and wringing her hands. Vassily Stepanovich was utterly at a loss and did not know how to counsel her. Then at half past ten came the police. Their first and perfectly reasonable question was:

‘What’s going on here, citizens? What’s this all about?’

The team stepped back, bringing forward the pale and agitated Vassily Stepanovich. He had to call things by their names and confess that the administration of the Variety in the persons of the director, the findirector and the administrator had vanished and no one knew where, that the master of ceremonies had been taken to a psychiatric hospital after yesterday’s seance, and that, to put it briefly, this seance yesterday had frankly been a scandalous seance.

The sobbing Madame Rimsky, having been calmed down as much as possible, was sent home, and the greatest interest was shown in the cleaning woman’s story about the shape in which the findirector’s office had been found. The staff were asked to go to their places and get busy, and in a short while the investigation appeared in the Variety building, accompanied by a sharp-eared, muscular, ash-coloured dog with extremely intelligent eyes. The whisper spread at once among the Variety staff that the dog was none other than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And so it was. His behaviour amazed them all. The moment Ace of Diamonds ran into the findirector’s office, he growled, baring his monstrous yellow fangs, then crouched on his belly and, with some sort of look of anguish and at the same time of rage in his eyes, crawled towards the broken window. Overcoming his fear, he suddenly jumped up on the window-sill and, throwing back his sharp muzzle, howled savagely and angrily. He refused to leave the window, growled and twitched, and kept trying to jump out.

The dog was taken from the office and turned loose in the lobby, whence he walked out through the main entrance to the street and led those following him to the cab stand. There he lost the trail he had been pursuing. After that Ace of Diamonds was taken away.

The investigation settled in Varenukha’s office, where they began summoning in turn all the Variety staff members who had witnessed yesterday’s events during the seance. It must be said that the investigation had at every step to overcome unforeseen difficulties. The thread kept snapping off in their hands.

There had been posters, right? Right. But during the night they had been pasted over with new ones, and now, strike me dead, there wasn’t a single one to be found! And the magician himself, where had he come from? Ah, who knows! But there was a contract drawn up with him?

‘I suppose so,’ the agitated Vassily Stepanovich replied.

‘And if one was drawn up, it had to go through bookkeeping?’

‘Most assuredly,’ responded the agitated Vassily Stepanovich.

‘Then where is it?’

‘Not here,’ the bookkeeper replied, turning ever more pale and spreading his arms.

And indeed no trace of the contract was found in the files of the bookkeeping office, nor at the findirector’s, nor at Likhodeev’s or Varenukha’s.

And what was this magician’s name? Vassily Stepanovich did not know, he had not been at the seance yesterday. The ushers did not know, the box-office girl wrinkled her brow, wrinkled it, thought and thought, and finally said:

‘Wo ... Woland, seems like ...’

Or maybe not Woland? Maybe not Woland. Maybe Faland.

It turned out that in the foreigners’ bureau they had heard precisely nothing either about any Woland, or for that matter any Faland, the magician.

The messenger Karpov said that this same magician was supposedly staying in Likhodeev’s apartment. The apartment was, of course, visited at once — no magician was found there. Likhodeev himself was not there either. The housekeeper Grunya was not there, and where she had gone nobody knew. The chairman of the management, Nikanor Ivanovich, was not there, Bedsornev was not there!

Something utterly preposterous was coming out: the whole top administration had vanished, a strange, scandalous seance had taken place the day before, but who had produced it and at whose prompting, no one knew.

And meanwhile it was drawing towards noon, when the box office was to open. But, of course, there could be no talk of that! A huge piece of cardboard was straight away posted on the doors of the Variety reading: ‘Today’s Show Cancelled’. The line became agitated, beginning at its head, but after some agitation, it nevertheless began to break up, and about an hour later no trace of it remained on Sadovaya. The investigation departed to continue its work elsewhere, the staff was sent home, leaving only the watchmen, and the doors of the Variety were locked.

The bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich had urgently to perform two tasks. First, to go to the Commission on Spectacles and Entertainment of the Lighter Type with a report on yesterday’s events and, second, to visit the Finspectacle sector so as to turn over yesterday’s receipts — 21,711 roubles.

The precise and efficient Vassily Stepanovich wrapped the money in newspaper, criss-crossed it with string, put it in his briefcase, and, knowing his instructions very well, set out, of course, not for a bus or a tram, but for the cab stand.

The moment the drivers of the three cabs saw a passenger hurrying towards the stand with a tightly stuffed briefcase, all three left empty right under his nose, looking back at him angrily for some reason.

Struck by this circumstance, the bookkeeper stood like a post for a long time, trying to grasp what it might mean.

About three minutes later, an empty cab drove up, but the driver’s face twisted the moment he saw the passenger.

‘Are you free?’ Vassily Stepanovich asked with a cough of surprise.

‘Show your money,’ the driver replied angrily, without looking at the passenger.

With increasing amazement, the bookkeeper, pressing the precious briefcase under his arm, pulled a ten-rouble bill from his wallet and showed it to the driver.

‘I won’t go!’ the man said curtly.

‘I beg your pardon ...’ the bookkeeper tried to begin, but the driver interrupted him.

‘Got any threes?’

The completely bewildered bookkeeper took two three-rouble bills from his wallet and showed them to the driver.

‘Get in,’ he shouted, and slapped down the flag of the meter so that he almost broke it. ‘Let’s go!’

‘No change, is that it?’ the bookkeeper asked timidly.

‘A pocket full of change!’ the driver bawled, and the eyes in the mirror went bloodshot. ‘It’s my third case today. And the same thing happened with the others, too. Some son of a bitch gives me a tenner, I give him change - four-fifty. He gets out, the scum! About five minutes later, I look: instead of a tenner, it’s a label from a seltzer bottle!’ Here the driver uttered several unprintable words. ‘Another one, beyond Zubovskaya. A tenner. I give him three roubles change. He leaves. I go to my wallet, there’s a bee there — zap in the finger! Ah, you! ...’ and again the driver pasted on some unprintable words. ‘And no tenner. Yesterday, in the Variety here’ (unprintable words), ’some vermin of a conjurer did a seance with ten-rouble bills’ (unprintable words) ...

The bookkeeper went numb, shrank into himself, and pretended it was the first time he had heard even the word ‘Variety’, while thinking to himself: ‘Oh-oh! ...’

Having got where he had to go, having paid satisfactorily, the bookkeeper entered the building and went down the corridor towards the manager’s office, and realized on his way that he had come at the wrong time. Some sort of tumult reigned in the offices of the Spectacles Commission. A messenger girl ran past the bookkeeper, her kerchief all pushed back on her head and her eyes popping.

‘Nothing, nothing, nothing, my dears!’ she shouted, addressing no one knew whom. ‘The jacket and trousers are there, but inside the jacket there’s nothing!’

She disappeared through some door, and straight away from behind it came the noise of smashing dishes. The manager of the commission’s first sector, whom the bookkeeper knew, ran out of the secretary’s room, but he was in such a state that he did not recognize the bookkeeper and disappeared without a trace.

Shaken by all this, the bookkeeper reached the secretary’s room, which was the anteroom to the office of the chairman of the commission, and here he was definitively dumbfounded.

From behind the closed door of the office came a terrible voice, undoubtedly belonging to Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the commission. ‘Must be scolding somebody!’ the consternated bookkeeper thought and, looking around, saw something else: in a leather armchair, her head thrown back, sobbing unrestrainedly, a wet handkerchief in her hand, legs stretched out into the middle of the room, lay Prokhor Petrovich’s personal secretary — the beautiful Anna Richardovna.

Anna Richardovna’s chin was all smeared with lipstick, and down her peachy cheeks black streams of sodden mascara flowed from her eyelashes.

Seeing someone come in, Anna Richardovna jumped up, rushed to the bookkeeper, clutched the lapels of his jacket, began shaking him and shouting:

‘Thank God! At least one brave man has been found! Everybody ran away, everybody betrayed us! Let’s go, let’s go to him, I don’t know what to do!’ And, still sobbing, she dragged the bookkeeper into the office.

Once in the office, the bookkeeper first of all dropped his briefcase, and all the thoughts in his head turned upside-down. And, it must be said, not without reason.

At a huge writing desk with a massive inkstand an empty suit sat and with a dry pen, not dipped in ink, traced on a piece of paper. The suit was wearing a necktie, a fountain pen stuck from its pocket, but above the collar there was neither neck nor head, just as there were no hands sticking out of the sleeves. The suit was immersed in work and completely ignored the turmoil that reigned around it. Hearing someone come in, the suit leaned back and from above the collar came the voice, quite familiar to the bookkeeper, of Prokhor Petrovich:

‘What is this? Isn’t it written on the door that I’m not receiving?’

The beautiful secretary shrieked and, wringing her hands, cried out:

‘You see? You see?! He’s not there! He’s not! Bring him back, bring him back!’

Here someone peeked in the door of the office, gasped, and flew out. The bookkeeper felt his legs trembling and sat on the edge of a chair, but did not forget to pick up his briefcase. Anna Richardovna hopped around the bookkeeper, worrying his jacket, and exclaiming:

‘I always, always stopped him when he swore by the devil! So now the devil’s got him!’ Here the beauty ran to the writing desk and in a tender, musical voice, slightly nasal from weeping, called out:

‘Prosha! Where are you!’

‘Who here is “Prosha” to you?’ the suit inquired haughtily, sinking still deeper into the armchair.

‘He doesn’t recognize me! Me he doesn’t! Do you understand? ...‘ the secretary burst into sobs.

‘I ask you not to sob in the office!’ the hot-tempered striped suit now said angrily, and with its sleeve it drew to itself a fresh stack of papers, with the obvious aim of appending its decision to them.

‘No, I can’t look at it, I can’t!‘ cried Anna Richardovna, and she ran out to the secretary’s room, and behind her, like a shot, flew the bookkeeper.

‘Imagine, I’m sitting here,’ Anna Richardovna recounted, shaking with agitation, again clutching at the bookkeeper’s sleeve, ‘and a cat walks in. Black, big as a behemoth. Of course, I shout “scat” to it. Out it goes, and in comes a fat fellow instead, also with a sort of cat-like mug, and says: “What are you doing, citizeness, shouting ’scat’ at visitors?” And — whoosh — straight to Prokhor Petrovich. Of course, I run after him, shouting: “Are you out of your mind?” And this brazen-face goes straight to Prokhor Petrovich and sits down opposite him in the armchair. Well, that one ... he’s the kindest-hearted man, but edgy. He blew up, I don’t deny it. An edgy man, works like an ox — he blew up. “Why do you barge in here unannounced?” he says. And that brazen-face, imagine, sprawls in the armchair and says, smiling: “I’ve come,” he says, “to discuss a little business with you.” Prokhor Petrovich blew up again: “I’m busy.” And the other one, just think, answers: “You’re not busy with anything ...” Eh? Well, here, of course, Prokhor Petrovich’s patience ran out, and he shouted: “What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!” And that one, imagine, smiles and says: “Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And - bang! Before I had time to scream, I look: the one with the cat’s mug is gone, and th ... there ... sits ... the suit ... Waaa! ...‘ Stretching her mouth, which had lost all shape entirely, Anna Richardovna howled.

After choking with sobs, she caught her breath, but then began pouring out something completely incoherent:

‘And it writes, writes, writes! You could lose your mind! Talks on the telephone! A suit! They all ran away like rabbits!’

The bookkeeper only stood and shook. But here fate came to his aid. Into the secretary’s room, with calm, business-like strides, marched the police, to the number of two men. Seeing them, the beauty sobbed still harder, jabbing towards the door of the office with her hand.

‘Let’s not cry now, citizeness,’ the first said calmly, and the bookkeeper, feeling himself quite superfluous there, ran out of the secretary’s room and a minute later was already in the fresh air. There was some sort of draught in his head, a soughing as in a chimney, and through this soughing he heard scraps of the stories the ushers told about yesterday’s cat, who had taken part in the seance. ‘Oh-ho-ho! Might that not be our same little puss?’

Having got nowhere with the commission, the conscientious Vassily Stepanovich decided to visit its affiliate, located in Vagankovsky Lane, and to calm himself a little he walked the distance to the affiliate on foot.

The affiliate for city spectacles was housed in a peeling old mansion set back from the street, and was famous for the porphyry columns in its vestibule. But it was not the columns that struck visitors to the affiliate that day, but what was going on at the foot of them.

Several visitors stood in stupefaction and stared at a weeping girl sitting behind a small table on which lay special literature about various spectacles, which the girl sold. At that moment, the girl was not offering any of this literature to anyone, and only waved her hand at sympathetic inquiries, while at the same time, from above, from below, from the sides, and from all sections of the affiliate poured the ringing of at least twenty overwrought telephones.

After weeping for a while, the girl suddenly gave a start and cried out hysterically:

‘Here it comes again!’ and unexpectedly began singing in a tremulous soprano:

‘Glorious sea, sacred Baikal ...’[98]

A messenger appeared on the stairs, shook his fist at someone, and began singing along with the girl in a dull, weak-voiced baritone:

‘Glorious boat, a barrel of cisco ...’[99]

The messenger’s voice was joined by distant voices, the choir began to swell, and finally the song resounded in all comers of the affiliate. In the neighbouring room no. 6, which housed the account comptroller’s section, one powerful, slightly husky octave stood out particularly.

‘Hey, Barguzin[100] ... make the waves rise and fall! ...’ bawled the messenger on the stairs.

Tears flowed down the girl’s face, she tried to clench her teeth, but her mouth opened of itself, as she sang an octave higher than the messenger:

‘This young lad’s ready to frisk-o!’

What struck the silent visitors to the affiliate was that the choristers, scattered in various places, sang quite harmoniously, as if the whole choir stood there with its eyes fixed on some invisible director.

Passers-by in Vagankovsky Lane stopped by the fence of the yard, wondering at the gaiety that reigned in the affiliate.

As soon as the first verse came to an end, the singing suddenly ceased, again as if to a director’s baton. The messenger quietly swore and disappeared.

Here the front door opened, and in it appeared a citizen in a summer jacket, from under which protruded the skirts of a white coat, and with him a policeman.

‘Take measures, doctor, I implore you!’ the girl cried hysterically.

The secretary of the affiliate ran out to the stairs and, obviously burning with shame and embarrassment, began falteringly:

‘You see, doctor, we have a case of some sort of mass hypnosis, and so it’s necessary that ...’ He did not finish the sentence, began to choke on his words, and suddenly sang out in a tenor.

‘Shilka and Nerchinsk ...’[101]

‘Fool!’ the girl had time to shout, but, without explaining who she was abusing, produced instead a forced roulade and herself began singing about Shilka and Nerchinsk.

‘Get hold of yourself! Stop singing!’ the doctor addressed the secretary.

There was every indication that the secretary would himself have given anything to stop singing, but stop singing he could not, and together with the choir he brought to the hearing of passers-by in the lane the news that ‘in the wilderness he was not touched by voracious beast, nor brought down by bullet of shooters.’

The moment the verse ended, the girl was the first to receive a dose of valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary to give the others theirs.

‘Excuse me, dear citizeness,’ Vassily Stepanovich addressed the girl, ‘did a black cat pay you a visit?’

‘What cat?’ the girl cried in anger. ‘An ass, it’s an ass we’ve got sitting in the affiliate!’ And adding to that: ‘Let him hear, I’ll tell everything’ - she indeed told what had happened.

It turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, ‘who has made a perfect mess of lightened entertainment’ (the girl’s words), suffered from a mania for organizing all sorts of little clubs.

‘Blew smoke in the authorities’ eyes!’ screamed the girl.

In the course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club of Lermontov studies,[102] of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of horseback riding. For the summer, he was threatening to organize clubs of fresh-water canoeing and alpinism. And so today, during lunch-break, this manager comes in ...

‘... with some son of a bitch on his arm,’ the girl went on, ‘hailing from nobody knows where, in wretched checkered trousers, a cracked pince-nez, and ... with a completely impossible mug! ...’

And straight away, the girl said, he recommended him to all those eating in the affiliate’s dining room as a prominent specialist in organizing choral-singing clubs.

The faces of the future alpinists darkened, but the manager immediately called on everyone to cheer up, while the specialist joked a little, laughed a little, and swore an oath that singing takes no time at all, but that, incidentally, there was a whole load of benefits to be derived from it.

Well, of course, as the girl said, the first to pop up were Fanov and Kosarchuk, well-known affiliate toadies, who announced that they would sign up. Here the rest of the staff realized that there was no way around the singing, and they, too, had to sign up for the club. They decided to sing during the lunch break, since the rest of the time was taken up by Lermontov and checkers. The manager, to set an example, declared that he was a tenor, and everything after that went as in a bad dream. The checkered specialist-choirmaster bawled out:

‘Do, mi, sol, do!’ - dragged the most bashful from behind the bookcases, where they had tried to save themselves from singing, told Kosarchuk he had perfect pitch, began whining, squealing, begging them to be kind to an old singing-master, tapped the tuning fork on his knuckle, beseeched them to strike up ‘Glorious Sea’.

Strike up they did. And gloriously. The checkered one really knew his business. They finished the first verse. Here the director excused himself, said: ‘Back in a minute ...’, and disappeared. They thought he would actually come back in a minute. But ten minutes went by and he was not there. The staff was overjoyed - he had run away!

Then suddenly, somehow of themselves, they began the second verse. They were all led by Kosarchuk, who may not have had perfect pitch, but did have a rather pleasant high tenor. They sang it through. No director! They moved to their places, but had not managed to sit down when, against their will, they began to sing. To stop was impossible. After three minutes of silence, they would strike up again. Silence — strike up! Then they realized that they were in trouble. The manager locked himself in his office from shame!

Here the girl’s story was interrupted — the valerian had not done much good.

A quarter of an hour later, three trucks drove up to the fence in Vagankovsky, and the entire staff of the affiliate, the manager at its head, was loaded on to them.

As soon as the first truck, after lurching in the gateway, drove out into the lane, the staff members, who were standing on the platform holding each other’s shoulders, opened their mouths, and the whole lane resounded with the popular song. The second truck picked it up, then the third. And so they drove on. Passers-by hurrying about their own business would cast only a fleeting glance at the trucks, not surprised in the least, thinking it was a group excursion to the country. And they were indeed going to the country, though not on an excursion, but to Professor Stravinsky’s clinic.

Half an hour later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely, reached the financial sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office money. Having learned from experience by now, he first peeked cautiously into the oblong hall where, behind frosted-glass windows with gold lettering, the staff was sitting. Here the bookkeeper discovered no signs of alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it ought to be in a decent institution.

Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with ‘Cash Deposits’ written over it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked for a deposit slip.

‘What do you need it for?’ the clerk in the window asked.

The bookkeeper was amazed.

‘I want to turn over some cash. I’m from the Variety.’

‘One moment,’ the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the window with a grille.

‘Strange! ...’ thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly natural. It was the first time in his life that he had met with such a circumstance. Everybody knows how hard it is to get money; obstacles to it can always be found. But there had been no case in the bookkeeper’s thirty years of experience when anyone, either an official or a private person, had had a hard time accepting money.

But at last the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned to the window.

‘Do you have a lot?’ the clerk asked.

‘Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eleven roubles.’

‘Oho!’ the clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the bookkeeper a green slip.

Knowing the form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began to untie the string on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything swam before his eyes, he murmured something painfully.

Foreign money flitted before his eyes: there were stacks of Canadian dollars, British pounds, Dutch guldens, Latvian lats, Estonian kroons ...

‘There he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety!’ a menacing voice resounded over the dumbstruck bookkeeper. And straight away Vassily Stepanovich was arrested.

CHAPTER 18 Hapless Visitors

At the same time that the zealous bookkeeper was racing in a cab to his encounter with the self-writing suit, from first-class sleeping car no. 9 of the Kiev train, on its arrival in Moscow, there alighted, among others, a decent-looking passenger carrying a small fibreboard suitcase. This passenger was none other than the late Berlioz’s uncle, Maximilian Andreevich Poplavsky, an industrial economist, who lived in Kiev on the former Institutsky Street. The reason for Maximilian Andreevich’s coming to Moscow was a telegram received late in the evening two days before with the following content:

Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch’s Ponds

funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz.

Maximilian Andreevich was considered one of the most intelligent men in Kiev, and deservedly so. But even the most intelligent man might have been nonplussed by such a telegram. If someone sends a telegram saying he has been run over, it is clear that he has not died of it. But then, what was this about a funeral? Or was he in a bad way and foreseeing death? That was possible, but such precision was in the highest degree strange: how could he know he would be buried on Friday at three pm? An astonishing telegram!

However, intelligence is granted to intelligent people so as to sort out entangled affairs. Very simple. A mistake had been made, and the message had been distorted. The word ‘have’ had undoubtedly come there from some other telegram in place of the word Berlioz’, which got moved and wound up at the end of the telegram. With such an emendation, the meaning of the telegram became clear; though, of course, tragic.

When the outburst of grief that struck Maximilian Andreevich’s wife subsided, he at once started preparing to go to Moscow.

One secret about Maximilian Andreevich ought to be revealed. There is no arguing that he felt sorry for his wife’s nephew, who had died in the bloom of life. But, of course, being a practical man, he realized that there was no special need for his presence at the funeral. And nevertheless Maximilian Andreevich was in great haste to go to Moscow. What was the point? The point was the apartment. An apartment in Moscow is a serious thing! For some unknown reason, Maximilian Andreevich did not like Kiev,[103] and the thought of moving to Moscow had been gnawing at him so much lately that he had even begun to sleep badly.

He did not rejoice in the spring flooding of the Dnieper, when, overflowing the islands by the lower bank, the water merged with the horizon. He did not rejoice in the staggeringly beautiful view which opened out from the foot of the monument to Prince Vladimir. He did not take delight in patches of sunlight playing in springtime on the brick paths of Vladimir’s Hill. He wanted none of it, he wanted only one thing - to move to Moscow.

Advertising in the newspapers about exchanging an apartment on Institutsky Street in Kiev for smaller quarters in Moscow brought no results. No takers were found, or if they occasionally were, their offers were disingenuous.

The telegram staggered Maximilian Andreevich. This was a moment it would be sinful to let slip. Practical people know that such moments do not come twice.

In short, despite all obstacles, he had to succeed in inheriting his nephew’s apartment on Sadovaya. Yes, it was difficult, very difficult, but these difficulties had to be overcome at whatever cost. The experienced Maximilian Andreevich knew that the first and necessary step towards that had to be the following: he must get himself registered, at least temporarily, as the tenant of his late nephew’s three rooms.

On Friday afternoon, Maximilian Andreevich walked through the door of the room which housed the management of no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street in Moscow.

In the narrow room, with an old poster hanging on the wall illustrating in several pictures the ways of resuscitating people who have drowned in the river, an unshaven, middle-aged man with anxious eyes sat in perfect solitude at a wooden table.

‘May I see the chairman?’ the industrial economist inquired politely, taking off his hat and putting his suitcase on a vacant chair.

This seemingly simple little question for some reason so upset the seated man that he even changed countenance. Looking sideways in anxiety, he muttered unintelligibly that the chairman was not there.

‘Is he at home?’ asked Poplavsky. ‘I’ve come on the most urgent business.’

The seated man again replied quite incoherently, but all the same one could guess that the chairman was not at home.

‘And when will he be here?’

The seated man made no reply to this and looked with a certain anguish out the window.

‘Aha !...’ the intelligent Poplavsky said to himself and inquired about the secretary.

The strange man at the table even turned purple with strain and said, again unintelligibly, that the secretary was not there either ... he did not know when he would be back, and ... that the secretary was sick ...

‘Aha! ...’ Poplavsky said to himself. ‘But surely there’s somebody in the management?’

‘Me,’ the man responded in a weak voice.

‘You see,’ Poplavsky began to speak imposingly, ‘I am the sole heir of the late Berlioz, my nephew, who, as you know, died at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and I am obliged, in accordance with the law, to take over the inheritance contained in our apartment no. 50 ...’

‘I’m not informed, comrade ...’ the man interrupted in anguish.

‘But, excuse me,’ Poplavsky said in a sonorous voice, ‘you are a member of the management and are obliged ...’

And here some citizen entered the room. At the sight of the entering man, the man seated at the table turned pale.

‘Management member Pyatnazhko?’ the entering man asked the seated man.

‘Yes,’ the latter said, barely audibly.

The entering one whispered something to the seated one, and he, thoroughly upset, rose from his chair, and a few seconds later Poplavsky found himself alone in the empty management room.

‘Eh, what a complication! As if on purpose, all of them at once ...’ Poplavsky thought in vexation, crossing the asphalt courtyard and hurrying to apartment no. 50.

As soon as the industrial economist rang, the door was opened, and Maximilian Andreevich entered the semi-dark front hall. It was a somewhat surprising circumstance that he could not figure out who had let him in: there was no one in the front hall except an enormous black cat sitting on a chair.

Maximilian Andreevich coughed, stamped his feet, and then the door of the study opened and Koroviev came out to the front hall. Maximilian Andreevich bowed politely, but with dignity, and said:

‘My name is Poplavsky. I am the uncle ...’

But before he could finish, Koroviev snatched a dirty handkerchief from his pocket, buried his nose in it, and began to weep.

‘... of the late Berlioz ...’

‘Of course, of course!’ Koroviev interrupted, taking his handkerchief away from his face. ‘Just one look and I knew it was you!’ Here he was shaken with tears and began to exclaim: ‘Such a calamity, eh? What’s going on here, eh?’

‘Run over by a tram-car?’ Poplavsky asked in a whisper.

‘Clean!’ cried Koroviev, and tears flowed in streams from under his pince-nez. ‘Run clean over! I was a witness. Believe me - bang! and the head’s gone! Crunch — there goes the right leg! Crunch — there goes the left leg! That’s what these trams have brought us to!’ And, obviously unable to control himself, Koroviev pecked the wall beside the mirror with his nose and began to shake with sobs.

Berlioz’s uncle was genuinely struck by the stranger’s behaviour. ‘And they say there are no warm-hearted people in our time!’ he thought, feeling his own eyes beginning to itch. However, at the same time, an unpleasant little cloud came over his soul, and straight away the snake-like thought flashed in him that this warm-hearted man might perchance have registered himself in the deceased man’s apartment, for such examples have been known in this life.

‘Forgive me, were you a friend of my late Misha?’ he asked, wiping his dry left eye with his sleeve, and with his right eye studying the racked-with-grief Koroviev. But the man was sobbing so much that one could understand nothing except the repeated word ‘crunch!’ Having sobbed his fill, Koroviev finally unglued himself from the wall and said:

‘No, I can’t take any more! I’ll go and swallow three hundred drops of tincture of valerian ...’ And turning his completely tear-bathed face to Poplavsky, he added: ‘That’s trams for you!’

‘Pardon me, but did you send me the telegram?’ Maximilian Andreevich asked, painfully puzzling over who this astonishing cry-baby might be.

‘He did!’ replied Koroviev, and he pointed his finger at the cat.

Poplavsky goggled his eyes, assuming he had not heard right.

‘No, it’s too much, I just can’t,‘ Koroviev went on, snuffing his nose, ’when I remember: the wheel over the leg ... the wheel alone weighs three hundred pounds ... Crunch! ... I’ll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.‘ And here he disappeared from the hall.

The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs, front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said:

‘Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?’

Maximilian Andreevich’s head at once began to spin, his arms and legs went numb, he dropped the suitcase and sat down on a chair facing the cat.

‘I believe I asked in good Russian?’ the cat said sternly. ‘What of it?’

But Poplavsky made no reply.

‘Passport!’[104] barked the cat, holding out a plump paw.

Understanding nothing and seeing nothing except the two sparks burning in the cat’s eyes, Poplavsky snatched the passport from his pocket like a dagger. The cat picked up a pair of glasses in thick black frames from the pier-glass table, put them on his muzzle, thus acquiring a still more imposing air, and took the passport from Poplavsky’s twitching hand.

‘I wonder, am I going to faint or not? ...’ thought Poplavsky. From far away came Koroviev’s snivelling, the whole front hall filled with the smell of ether, valerian and some other nauseating vileness.

‘What office issued this document?’ the cat asked, peering at the page. No answer came.

‘The 412^th,’ the cat said to himself, tracing with his paw on the passport, which he was holding upside down. ’Ah, yes, of course! I know that office, they issue passports to anybody. Whereas I, for instance, wouldn’t issue one to the likes of you! Not on your life I wouldn’t! I’d just take one look at your face and instantly refuse!’ The cat got so angry that he flung the passport on the floor, ‘Your presence at the funeral is cancelled,’ the cat continued in an official voice. ‘Kindly return to your place of residence.’ And he barked through the door: ‘Azazello!’

At his call a small man ran out to the front hall, limping, sheathed in black tights, with a knife tucked into his leather belt, red-haired, with a yellow fang and with albugo in his left eye.

Poplavsky felt he could not get enough air, rose from his seat and backed away, clutching his heart.

‘See him off, Azazello!’ the cat ordered and left the hall.

‘Poplavsky,’ the other twanged softly, ‘I hope everything’s understood now?’

Poplavsky nodded.

‘Return immediately to Kiev,’ Azazello went on. ‘Sit there stiller than water, lower than grass, and don’t dream of any apartments in Moscow. Clear?’

This small man, who drove Poplavsky to mortal terror with his fang, knife and blind eye, only came up to the economist’s shoulder, but his actions were energetic, precise and efficient.

First of all, he picked up the passport and handed it to Maximilian Andreevich, and the latter took the booklet with a dead hand. Then the one named Azazello picked up the suitcase with one hand, with the other flung open the door, and, taking Berlioz’s uncle under the arm, led him out to the landing of the stairway. Poplavsky leaned against the wall. Without any key, Azazello opened the suitcase, took out of it a huge roast chicken with a missing leg wrapped in greasy newspaper, and placed it on the landing. Then he took out two pairs of underwear, a razor-strop, some book and a case, and shoved it all down the stairwell with his foot, except for the chicken. The emptied suitcase went the same way. There came a crash from below and, judging by the sound of it, the lid broke off.

Then the red-haired bandit grabbed the chicken by the leg, and with this whole chicken hit Poplavsky on the neck, flat, hard, and so terribly that the body of the chicken tore off and the leg remained in Azazello’s hand. ‘Everything was confusion in the Oblonskys’ home,’[105] as the famous writer Leo Tolstoy correctly put it. Precisely so he might have said on this occasion. Yes, everything was confusion in Poplavsky’s eyes. A long spark flew before his eyes, then gave place to some funereal snake that momentarily extinguished the May day, and Poplavsky went hurtling down the stairs, clutching his passport in his hand.

Reaching the turn, he smashed the window on the landing with his foot and sat on a step. The legless chicken went bouncing past him and fell down the stairwell. Azazello, who stayed upstairs, instantly gnawed the chicken leg clean, stuck the bone into the side pocket of his tights, went back to the apartment, and shut the door behind him with a bang.

At that moment there began to be heard from below the cautious steps of someone coming up.

Having run down one more flight of stairs, Poplavsky sat on a wooden bench on the landing and caught his breath.

Some tiny elderly man with an extraordinarily melancholy face, in an old-fashioned tussore silk suit and a hard straw hat with a green band, on his way upstairs, stopped beside Poplavsky.

‘May I ask you, citizen,’ the man in tussore silk asked sadly, ‘where apartment no. 50 is?’

‘Further up,’ Poplavsky replied curtly.

‘I humbly thank you, citizen,’ the little man said with the same sadness and went on up, while Poplavsky got to his feet and ran down.

The question arises whether it might have been the police that Maximilian Andreevich was hastening to, to complain about the bandits who had perpetrated savage violence upon him in broad daylight? No, by no means, that can be said with certainty. To go into a police station and tell them, look here, just now a cat in eyeglasses read my passport, and then a man in tights, with a knife ... no, citizens, Maximilian Andreevich was indeed an intelligent man.

He was already downstairs and saw just by the exit a door leading to some closet. The glass in the door was broken. Poplavsky hid his passport in his pocket and looked around, hoping to see his thrown-down belongings. But there was no trace of them. Poplavsky was even surprised himself at how little this upset him. He was occupied with another interesting and tempting thought: of testing the accursed apartment one more time on this little man. In fact, since he had inquired after its whereabouts, it meant he was going there for the first time. Therefore he was presently heading straight into the clutches of the company that had ensconced itself in apartment no. 50. Something told Poplavsky that the little man would be leaving this apartment very soon. Maximilian Andreevich was, of course, no longer going to any funeral of any nephew, and there was plenty of time before the train to Kiev. The economist looked around and ducked into the closet.

At that moment way upstairs a door banged. ‘That’s him going in ...’ Poplavsky thought, his heart skipping a beat. The closet was cool, it smelled of mice and boots. Maximilian Andreevich settled on some stump of wood and decided to wait. The position was convenient, from the closet one looked directly on to the exit from the sixth stairway.

However, the man from Kiev had to wait longer than he supposed. The stairway was for some reason deserted all the while. One could hear well, and finally a door banged on the fifth floor. Poplavsky froze. Yes, those were his little steps. ‘He’s coming down ...’ A door one flight lower opened. The little steps ceased. A woman’s voice. The voice of the sad man — yes, it’s his voice ... Saying something like ‘leave me alone, for Christ’s sake ...’ Poplavsky’s ear stuck through the broken glass. This ear caught a woman’s laughter. Quick and brisk steps coming down. And now a woman’s back flashed by. This woman, carrying a green oilcloth bag, went out through the front hall to the courtyard. And the little man’s steps came anew. ‘Strange! He’s going back up to the apartment! Does it mean he’s part of the gang himself? Yes, he’s going back. They’ve opened the door again upstairs. Well, then, let’s wait a little longer ...’

This time he did not have to wait long. The sound of the door. The little steps. The little steps cease. A desperate cry. A cat’s miaowing. The little steps, quick, rapid, down, down, down!

Poplavsky had not waited in vain. Crossing himself and muttering something, the melancholy little man rushed past him, hatless, with a completely crazed face, his bald head all scratched and his trousers completely wet. He began tearing at the handle of the front door, unable in his fear to determine whether it opened out or in, managed at last, and flew out into the sun in the courtyard.

The testing of the apartment had been performed. Thinking no more either of the deceased nephew or of the apartment, shuddering at the thought of the risk he had been running, Maximilian Andreevich, whispering only the three words ‘It’s all clear, it’s all clear!’, ran out to the courtyard. A few minutes later the bus was carrying the industrial economist in the direction of the Kiev station.

As for the tiny little man, a most unpleasant story had gone on with him while the economist was sitting in the closet downstairs. The little man was barman at the Variety, and was called Andrei Fokich Sokov. While the investigation was going on in the Variety, Andrei Fokich kept himself apart from all that was happening, and only one thing could be noticed, that he became still sadder than he generally was, and, besides, that he inquired of the messenger Karpov where the visiting magician was staying.

And so, after parting with the economist on the landing, the barman went up to the fifth floor and rang at apartment no. 50.

The door was opened for him immediately, but the barman gave a start, backed away, and did not enter at once. This was understandable. The door had been opened by a girl who was wearing nothing but a coquettish little lacy apron and a white fichu on her head. On her feet, however, she had golden slippers. The girl was distinguished by an irreproachable figure, and the only thing that might have been considered a defect in her appearance was the purple scar on her neck.

‘Well, come in then, since you rang,’ said the girl, fixing her lewd green eyes on the barman.

Andrei Fokich gasped, blinked his eyes, and stepped into the front hall, taking off his hat. Just then the telephone in the front hall rang. The shameless maid put one foot on a chair, picked up the receiver, and into it said:

‘Hello!’

The barman, not knowing where to look, stood shifting from one foot to the other, thinking: ‘Some maid this foreigner’s got! Pah, nasty thing!’ And to save himself from the nasty thing, he began casting sidelong glances around him.

The whole big and semi-dark hall was cluttered with unusual objects and clothing. Thus, thrown over the back of a chair was a funereal cloak lined with fiery cloth, on the pier-glass table lay a long sword with a gleaming gold hilt. Three swords with silver hilts stood in the corner like mere umbrellas or canes. And on the stag-horns hung berets with eagle feathers.

‘Yes,’ the maid was saying into the telephone. ‘How’s that? Baron Meigel? I’m listening. Yes. Mister artiste is at home today. Yes, he’ll be glad to see you. Yes, guests ... A tailcoat or a black suit. What? By twelve midnight.’ Having finished the conversation, the maid hung up the receiver and turned to the barman: ‘What would you like?’

‘I must see the citizen artiste.’

‘What? You mean him himself?’

‘Himself,’ the barman replied sorrowfully.

‘I’ll ask,’ the maid said with visible hesitation and, opening the door to the late Berlioz’s study, announced: ‘Knight, there’s a little man here who says he must see Messire.’

‘Let him come in,’ Koroviev’s cracked voice came from the study.

‘Go into the living room,’ the girl said as simply as if she were dressed like anyone else, opened the door to the living room, and herself left the hall.

Going in where he was invited, the barman even forgot his business, so greatly was he struck by the decor of the room. Through the stained glass of the big windows (a fantasy of the jeweller’s utterly vanished wife) poured an unusual, church-like light. Logs were blazing in the huge antique fireplace, despite the hot spring day. And yet it was not the least bit hot in the room, and even quite the contrary, on entering one was enveloped in some sort of dankness as in a cellar. On a tiger skin in front of the fireplace sat a huge black tom-cat, squinting good-naturedly at the fire. There was a table at the sight of which the God-fearing barman gave a start: the table was covered with church brocade. On the brocade tablecloth stood a host of bottles - round-bellied, mouldy and dusty. Among the bottles gleamed a dish, and it was obvious at once that it was of pure gold. At the fireplace a small red-haired fellow with a knife in his belt was roasting pieces of meat on a long steel sword, and the juice dripped into the fire, and the smoke went up the flue. There was a smell not only of roasting meat, but also of some very strong perfume and incense, and it flashed in the barman’s mind, for he already knew of Berlioz’s death and his place of residence from the newspapers, that this might, for all he knew, be a church panikhida[106] that was being served for Berlioz, which thought, however, he drove away at once as a priori absurd.

The astounded barman unexpectedly heard a heavy bass:

‘Well, sir, what can I do for you?’

And here the barman discovered in the shadows the one he wanted.

The black magician was sprawled on some boundless sofa, low, with pillows scattered over it. As it seemed to the barman, the artiste was wearing only black underwear and black pointed shoes.

‘I,’ the barman began bitterly, ‘am the manager of the buffet at the Variety Theatre ...’

The artiste stretched out his hand, stones flashing on its fingers, as if stopping the barman’s mouth, and spoke with great ardour:

‘No, no, no! Not a word more! Never and by no means! Nothing from your buffet will ever pass my lips! I, my esteemed sir, walked past your stand yesterday, and even now I am unable to forget either the sturgeon or the feta cheese! My precious man! Feta cheese is never green in colour, someone has tricked you. It ought to be white. Yes, and the tea? It’s simply swill! I saw with my own eyes some slovenly girl add tap water from a bucket to your huge samovar, while the tea went on being served. No, my dear, it’s impossible!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Andrei Fokich, astounded by this sudden attack, ‘but I’ve come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do with it ...’

‘How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it’s spoiled!’

‘They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness,’ the barman said.

‘My dear heart, that is nonsense!’

‘What is nonsense?’

‘Second freshness — that’s what is nonsense! There is only one freshness — the first — and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.’

‘I beg your pardon ...’ the barman again tried to begin, not knowing how to shake off the cavilling artiste.

‘I cannot pardon you,’ the other said firmly.

‘I have come about something else,’ the barman said, getting quite upset.

‘About something else?’ the foreign magician was surprised. ‘And what else could have brought you to me? Unless memory deceives me, among people of a profession similar to yours, I have had dealings with only one sutler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet in this world. However, I’m glad. Azazello! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!’

The one who was roasting meat turned, horrifying the barman with his fangs, and deftly offered him one of the dark oaken tabourets. There were no other seats in the room.

The barman managed to say:

‘I humbly thank you,’ and lowered himself on to the stool. Its back leg broke at once with a crack, and the barman, gasping, struck his backside most painfully on the floor. As he fell, he kicked another stool in front of him with his foot, and from it spilled a full cup of red wine on his trousers.

The artiste exclaimed:

‘Oh! Are you hurt?’

Azazello helped the barman up and gave him another seat. In a voice filled with grief, the barman declined his host’s suggestion that he take off his trousers and dry them before the fire, and, feeling unbearably uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothing, cautiously sat down on the other stool.

‘I like sitting low down,’ the artiste said, ‘it’s less dangerous falling from a low height. Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon. Freshness, dear heart, freshness, freshness! That should be the motto of every barman. Here, wouldn’t you like to try ...’

In the crimson light of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the barman, and Azazello laid a sizzling piece of meat on the golden dish, squeezed lemon juice over it, and handed the barman a golden two-pronged fork.

‘My humble ... I ...’

‘No, no, try it!’

The barman put a piece into his mouth out of politeness, and understood at once that he was chewing something very fresh indeed, and, above all, extraordinarily delicious. But as he was chewing the fragrant, juicy meat, the barman nearly choked and fell a second time. From the neighbouring room a big, dark bird flew in and gently brushed the barman’s bald head with its wing. Alighting on the mantelpiece beside the clock, the bird turned out to be an owl. ‘Oh, Lord God! ...’ thought Andrei Fokich, nervous like all barmen. ‘A nice little apartment! ...’

‘A cup of wine? White, red? What country’s wine do you prefer at this time of day?’

‘My humble ... I don’t drink ...’

‘A shame! What about a game of dice, then? Or do you have some other favourite game? Dominoes? Cards?’

‘I don’t play games,’ the already weary barman responded.

‘Altogether bad,’ the host concluded. ‘As you will, but there’s something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business.’

‘Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks ...’

‘I?’ the magician exclaimed in amazement. ‘Good gracious, it’s somehow even unbecoming to me!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the barman, taken aback. ‘I mean the seance of black magic ...’

‘Ah, yes, yes, yes! My dear, I’ll reveal a secret to you. I’m not an artiste at all, I simply wanted to see the Muscovites en masse, and that could be done most conveniently in a theatre. And so my retinue,’ he nodded in the direction of the cat, ‘arranged for this seance, and I merely sat and looked at the Muscovites. Now, don’t go changing countenance, but tell me, what is it in connection with this seance that has brought you to me?’

‘If you please, you see, among other things there were banknotes flying down from the ceiling ...’ The barman lowered his voice and looked around abashedly. ‘So they snatched them all up. And then a young man comes to my bar and gives me a ten-rouble bill, I give him eight-fifty in change ... Then another one...’

‘Also a young man?’

‘No, an older one. Then a third, and a fourth ... I keep giving them change. And today I went to check the cash box, and there, instead of money — cut-up paper. They hit the buffet for a hundred and nine roubles.’

‘Ai-yai-yai!’ the artiste exclaimed. ‘But can they have thought those were real bills? I can’t admit the idea that they did it knowingly.’

The barman took a somehow hunched and anguished look around him, but said nothing.

‘Can they be crooks?’ the magician asked worriedly of his visitor. ‘Can there be crooks among the Muscovites?’

The barman smiled so bitterly in response that all doubts fell away: yes, there were crooks among the Muscovites.

‘That is mean!’ Woland was indignant. ‘You’re a poor man ... You are a poor man?’

The barman drew his head down between his shoulders, making it evident that he was a poor man.

‘How much have you got in savings?’

The question was asked in a sympathetic tone, but even so such a question could not but be acknowledged as indelicate. The barman faltered.

‘Two hundred and forty-nine thousand roubles in five savings banks,’ a cracked voice responded from the neighbouring room, ‘and two hundred ten-rouble gold pieces at home under the floor.’

The barman became as if welded to his tabouret.

‘Well, of course, that’s not a great sum,’ Woland said condescendingly to his visitor, ‘though, as a matter of fact, you have no need of it anyway. When are you going to die?’

Here the barman became indignant.

‘Nobody knows that and it’s nobody’s concern,’ he replied.

‘Sure nobody knows,’ the same trashy voice came from the study. ‘The binomial theorem, you might think! He’s going to die in nine months, next February, of liver cancer, in the clinic of the First Moscow State University, in ward number four.’

The barman’s face turned yellow.

‘Nine months ...’ Woland calculated pensively. ‘Two hundred and forty-nine thousand ... rounding it off that comes to twenty-seven thousand a month ... Not a lot, but enough for a modest life ... Plus those gold pieces ...’

‘He won’t get to realize the gold pieces,’ the same voice mixed in, turning the barman’s heart to ice. ‘On Andrei Fokich’s demise, the house will immediately be torn down, and the gold will be sent to the State Bank.’

‘And I wouldn’t advise you to go to the clinic,’ the artiste went on. ‘What’s the sense of dying in a ward to the groans and wheezes of the hopelessly ill? Isn’t it better to give a banquet on the twenty-seven thousand, then take poison and move on to the other world to the sounds of strings, surrounded by drunken beauties and dashing friends?’

The barman sat motionless and grew very old. Dark rings surrounded his eyes, his cheeks sagged, and his lower jaw hung down.

‘However, we’ve started day-dreaming,’ exclaimed the host. ‘To business! Show me your cut-up paper.’

The barman, agitated, pulled a package from his pocket, unwrapped it, and was dumbfounded: the piece of paper contained ten-rouble bills.

‘My dear, you really are unwell,’ Woland said, shrugging his shoulders.

The barman, grinning wildly, got up from the tabouret.

‘A-and ...’ he said, stammering, ‘and if they ... again ... that is ...’

‘Hm ...’ the artiste pondered, ‘well, then come to us again. You’re always welcome. I’m glad of our acquaintance ...’

Straight away Koroviev came bounding from the study, clutched the barman’s hand, and began shaking it, begging Andrei Fokich to give his regards to everybody, everybody. Not thinking very well, the barman started for the front hall.

‘Hella, see him out!’ Koroviev shouted.

Again that naked redhead in the front hall! The barman squeezed through the door, squeaked ‘Goodbye!’, and went off like a drunk man. Having gone down a little way, he stopped, sat on a step, took out the packet and checked — the ten-rouble bills were in place.

Here a woman with a green bag came out of the apartment on that landing. Seeing a man sitting on a step and staring dully at some money, she smiled and said pensively:

‘What a house we’ve got ... Here’s this one drunk in the morning ... And the window on the stairway is broken again!’

Peering more attentively at the barman, she added:

‘And you, citizen, are simply rolling in money! ... Give some to me, eh?’

‘Let me alone, for Christ’s sake!’ the barman got frightened and quickly hid the money.

The woman laughed.

‘To the hairy devil with you, skinflint! I was joking...’ And she went downstairs.

The barman slowly got up, raised his hand to straighten his hat, and realized that it was not on his head. He was terribly reluctant to go back, but he was sorry about the hat. After some hesitation, he nevertheless went back and rang.

‘What else do you want?’ the accursed Hella asked him.

‘I forgot my hat ...’ the barman whispered, pointing to his bald head. Hella turned around. The barman spat mentally and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Hella was holding out his hat to him and a sword with a dark hilt.

‘Not mine ...’ the barman whispered, pushing the sword away and quickly putting on his hat.

‘You came without a sword?’ Hella was surprised.

The barman growled something and quickly went downstairs. His head for some reason felt uncomfortable and too warm in the hat. He took it off and, jumping from fear, cried out softly: in his hands was a velvet beret with a dishevelled cock’s feather. The barman crossed himself. At the same moment, the beret miaowed, turned into a black kitten and, springing back on to Andrei Fokich’s head, sank all its claws into his bald spot. Letting out a cry of despair, the barman dashed downstairs, and the kitten fell off and spurted back up the stairway.

Bursting outside, the barman trotted to the gates and left the devilish no. 302-bis for ever.

What happened to him afterwards is known perfectly well. Running out the gateway, the barman looked around wildly, as if searching for something. A minute later he was on the other side of the street in a pharmacy. He had no sooner uttered the words:

‘Tell me, please ...’ when the woman behind the counter exclaimed:

‘Citizen, your head is cut all over!’

Some five minutes later the barman was bandaged with gauze, knew that the best specialists in liver diseases were considered to be professors Bernadsky and Kuzmin, asked who was closer, lit up with joy on learning that Kuzmin lived literally across the courtyard in a small white house, and some two minutes later was in that house.

The premises were antiquated but very, very cosy. The barman remembered that the first one he happened to meet was an old nurse who wanted to take his hat, but as he turned out to have no hat, the nurse went off somewhere, munching with an empty mouth.

Instead of her, there turned up near the mirror and under what seemed some sort of arch, a middle-aged woman who said straight away that it was possible to make an appointment only for the nineteenth, not before. The barman at once grasped what would save him. Peering with fading eyes through the arch, where three persons were waiting in what was obviously some sort of anteroom, he whispered:

‘Mortally ill ...’

The woman looked in perplexity at the barman’s bandaged head, hesitated, and said:

‘Well, then ...’ and allowed the barman through the archway.

At that same moment the opposite door opened, there was the flash of a gold pince-nez. The woman in the white coat said:

‘Citizens, this patient will go out of turn.’

And before the barman could look around him, he was in Professor Kuzmin’s office. There was nothing terrible, solemn or medical in this oblong room.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Professor Kuzmin asked in a pleasant voice, and glanced with some alarm at the bandaged head.

‘I’ve just learned from reliable hands,’ the barman replied, casting wild glances at some group photograph under glass, ‘that I’m going to die of liver cancer in February of this coming year. I beg you to stop it.’

Professor Kuzmin, as he sat there, threw himself against the high Gothic leather back of his chair.

‘Excuse me, I don’t understand you ... you’ve, what, been to the doctor? Why is your head bandaged?’

‘Some doctor! ... You should’ve seen this doctor ...’ the barman replied, and his teeth suddenly began to chatter. ‘And don’t pay any attention to the head, it has no connection ... Spit on the head, it has nothing to do with it ... Liver cancer, I beg you to stop it! ...’

‘Pardon me, but who told you?!’

‘Believe him!’ the barman ardently entreated. ‘He knows!’

‘I don’t understand a thing!’ the professor said, shrugging his shoulders and pushing his chair back from the desk. ‘How can he know when you’re going to die? The more so as he’s not a doctor!’

‘In ward four of the clinic of the First MSU,’ replied the barman.

Here the professor looked at his patient, at his head, at his damp trousers, and thought: ‘Just what I needed, a madman ...’ He asked:

‘Do you drink vodka?’

‘Never touch it,’ the barman answered.

A moment later he was undressed, lying on the cold oilcloth of the couch, and the professor was kneading his stomach. Here, it must be said, the barman cheered up considerably. The professor categorically maintained that presently, at least for the given moment, the barman had no symptoms of cancer, but since it was so ... since he was afraid and had been frightened by some charlatan, he must perform all the tests ...

The professor was scribbling away on some sheets of paper, explaining where to go, what to bring. Besides that, he gave him a note for Professor Bouret, a neurologist, telling the barman that his nerves were in complete disorder.

‘How much do I owe you, Professor?’ the barman asked in a tender and trembling voice, pulling out a fat wallet.

‘As much as you like,’ the professor said curtly and drily.

The barman took out thirty roubles and placed them on the table, and then, with an unexpected softness, as if operating with a cat’s paw, he placed on top of the bills a clinking stack wrapped in newspaper.

‘And what is this?’ Kuzmin asked, twirling his moustache.

‘Don’t scorn it, citizen Professor,’ the barman whispered. ‘I beg you — stop the cancer!’

‘Take away your gold this minute,’ said the professor, proud of himself. ‘You’d better look after your nerves. Tomorrow have your urine analysed, don’t drink a lot of tea, and don’t put any salt in your food.’

‘Not even in soup?’ the barman asked.

‘Not in anything,’ ordered Kuzmin.

‘Ahh! ...’ the barman exclaimed wistfully, gazing at the professor with tenderness, gathering up his gold pieces and backing towards the door.

That evening the professor had few patients, and as twilight approached the last one left. Taking off his white coat, the professor glanced at the spot where the barman had left his money and saw no banknotes there but only three labels from bottles of Abrau-Durso wine.

‘Devil knows what’s going on!’ Kuzmin muttered, trailing the flap of his coat on the floor and feeling the labels. ‘It turns out he’s not only a schizophrenic but also a crook! But I can’t understand what he needed me for! Could it be the prescription for the urine analysis? Oh-oh! ... He’s stolen my overcoat!’ And the professor rushed for the front hall, one arm still in the sleeve of his white coat. ‘Xenia Nikitishna!’ he cried shrilly through the door to the front hall. ‘Look and see if all the coats are there!’

The coats all turned out to be there. But instead, when the professor went back to his desk, having peeled off his white coat at last, he stopped as if rooted to the parquet beside his desk, his eyes riveted to it. In the place where the labels had been there sat an orphaned black kitten with a sorry little muzzle, miaowing over a saucer of milk.

‘Wh-what’s this, may I ask?! Now this is ...’ And Kuzmin felt the nape of his neck go cold.

At the professor’s quiet and pitiful cry, Xenia Nikitishna came running and at once reassured him completely, saying that it was, of course, one of the patients who had abandoned the kitten, as happens not infrequently to professors.

‘They probably have a poor life,’ Xenia Nikitishna explained, ‘well, and we, of course ...’

They started thinking and guessing who might have abandoned it. Suspicion fell on a little old lady with a stomach ulcer.

‘It’s she, of course,’ Xenia Nikitishna said. ‘She thinks: “I’ll die anyway, and it’s a pity for the kitten.”’

‘But excuse me!’ cried Kuzmin. ‘What about the milk? ... Did she bring that, too? And the saucer, eh?’

‘She brought it in a little bottle, and poured it into the saucer here,’ Xenia Nikitishna explained.

‘In any case, take both the kitten and the saucer away,’ said Kuzmin, and he accompanied Xenia Nikitishna to the door himself. When he came back, the situation had altered.

As he was hanging his coat on a nail, the professor heard guffawing in the courtyard. He glanced out and, naturally, was struck dumb. A lady was running across the yard to the opposite wing in nothing but a shift. The professor even knew her name — Marya Alexandrovna. The guffawing came from a young boy.

‘What’s this?’ Kuzmin said contemptuously.

Just then, behind the wall, in the professor’s daughter’s room, a gramophone began to play the foxtrot ‘Hallelujah,’ and at the same moment a sparrow’s chirping came from behind the professor’s back. He turned around and saw a large sparrow hopping on his desk.

‘Hm ... keep calm!’ the professor thought. ‘It flew in as I left the window. Everything’s in order!’ the professor told himself, feeling that everything was in complete disorder, and that, of course, owing chiefly to the sparrow. Taking a closer look at him, the professor became convinced at once that this was no ordinary sparrow. The obnoxious little sparrow dipped on its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation — in short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramophone, like a drunkard in a bar, saucy as could be, casting impudent glances at the professor.

Kuzmin’s hand fell on the telephone, and he decided to call his old schoolmate Bouret, to ask what such little sparrows might mean at the age of sixty, especially when one’s head suddenly starts spinning?

The sparrow meanwhile sat on the presentation inkstand, shat in it (I’m not joking!), then flew up, hung in the air, and, swinging a steely beak, pecked at the glass covering the photograph portraying the entire university graduating class of ‘94, broke the glass to smithereens, and only then flew out the window.

The professor dialled again, and instead of calling Bouret, called a leech bureau,[107] said he was Professor Kuzmin, and asked them to send some leeches to his house at once. Hanging up the receiver, the professor turned to his desk again and straight away let out a scream. At this desk sat a woman in a nurse’s headscarf, holding a handbag with the word ‘Leeches’ written on it. The professor screamed as he looked at her mouth: it was a man’s mouth, crooked, stretching from ear to ear, with a single fang. The nurse’s eyes were dead.

‘This bit of cash I’ll just pocket,’ the nurse said in a male basso, ‘no point in letting it lie about here.’ She raked up the labels with a bird’s claw and began melting into air.

Two hours passed. Professor Kuzmin sat in his bedroom on the bed, with leeches hanging from his temples, behind his ears, and on his neck. At Kuzmin’s feet, on a quilted silk blanket, sat the grey-moustached Professor Bouret, looking at Kuzmin with condolence and comforting him, saying it was all nonsense. Outside the window it was already night.

What other prodigies occurred in Moscow that night we do not know and certainly will not try to find out — especially as it has come time for us to go on to the second part of this truthful narrative. Follow me, reader!