The Master and Margarita

          Mikhail Bulgakov

             TRANSLATED AND WITH NOTES BY RICHARD PEVEAR

             AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY, PENGUIN BOOKS 1997

             WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD PEVEAR

Contents

             Introduction

             A Note on the Text and Acknowledgements

          BOOK ONE

             Never Talk with Strangers

             Pontius Pilate

             The Seventh Proof

             The Chase

             There were Doings at Griboedov's

             Schizophrenia, as was Said

             A Naughty Apartment

             The Combat between the Professor and the Poet

             Koroviev's Stunts

             News From Yalta

             Ivan Splits in Two

             Black Magic and Its Exposure

             The Hero Enters

             Glory to the Cock!

             Nikanor Ivanovich's Dream

             The Execution

             An Unquiet Day

             Hapless Visitors

          BOOK TWO

             Margarita

             Azazello's Cream

             Flight

             By Candlelight

             The Great Ball at Satan's

             The Extraction of the Master

             How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath

             The Burial

             The End of Apartment No.50

             The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth

             The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided

             It's Time! It's Time!

             On Sparrow Hills

             Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge

             Epilogue

             Notes

Introduction

             Mikhail Bulgakov  worked on this luminous book throughout  one  of  the

        darkest decades of the century. His last revisions were dictated to his wife

        a  few  weeks before his death in 1940 at  the age  of forty-nine.  For him,

        there was never any  question of publishing the novel. The mere existence of

        the  manuscript,  had  it come to  the knowledge of Stalin's  police,  would

        almost certainly have led to  the permanent disappearance of its author. Yet

        the book was of great importance to him, and he clearly believed that a time

        would come when it could be published. Another twenty-six years had  to pass

        before events bore  out  that  belief and The Master and  Margarita, by what

        seems a surprising  oversight in Soviet literary politics,  finally appeared

        in print. The effect was electrifying.

             The  monthly  magazine  Moskva, otherwise a  rather cautious and  quiet

        publication,  carried  the  first  part of The  Master and Margarita  in its

        November 1966 issue. The 150,000  copies sold out within hours.
In the weeks

        that followed, group readings were held,  people  meeting  each  other would

        quote and compare favourite passages, there was talk of little else. Certain

        sentences from the novel immediately became proverbial. The very language of

        the novel  was a  contradiction of everything wooden, official,  imposed. It

        was a joy to speak.

             When the second part appeared in  the January  1967 issue of Moskva, it

        was greeted with the same enthusiasm. Yet this was not the excitement caused

        by the emergence of a new  writer, as when  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day

          in the  Life of Ivan Denisovich

          appeared in the magazine Novy Mir in  1962.

        Bulgakov  was neither  unknown  nor forgotten.  His plays  had begun  to  be

        revived in theatres during the late fifties and were  published in 1962. His

        superb  Life of Monsieur de  Moliere  came out  in that same year. His early

        stories were reprinted. Then,  in 1965, came the  Theatrical Novel, based on

        his years of experience with Stanislavsky's renowned Moscow Art Theatre. And

        finally
in  1966  a volume of Selected Prose was published,  containing  the

        complete text  of  Bulgakov's first novel. The  White  Guard, written in the

        twenties  and  dealing with nearly contemporary events of  the Russian civil

        war in  his  native Kiev  and the Ukraine, a book which in its clear-sighted

        portrayal of human courage and weakness ranks among the truest depictions of

        war in all of literature.

             Bulgakov was known well enough, then. But, outside a very  small group,

        the existence of The  Master and  Margarita was completely unsuspected. That

        certainly  accounts  for some of the amazement caused by its publication. It

        was thought that virtually all of Bulgakov had found its way into print. And

        here  was not some  minor literary remains but  a major novel, the  author's

        crowning  work.  Then  there were the qualities of  the  novel itself--  its

        formal originality,  its devastating  satire of  Soviet life, and  of Soviet

        literary  life in particular, its 'theatrical' rendering of the Great Terror

        of the thirties,  the
audacity of its portrayal of Jesus  Christ and Pontius

        Pilate,  not to mention Satan. But, above all, the  novel breathed an air of

        freedom, artistic  and spiritual, which had  become rare indeed, not only in

        Soviet Russia. We  sense  it in  the special tone  of  Bulgakov's writing, a

        combination  of  laughter  (satire,  caricature,  buffoonery)  and  the most

        unguarded vulnerability. Two aphorisms detachable from the novel may suggest

        something of the complex  nature of this freedom and  how it may have struck

        the novel's first readers. One is the much-quoted 'Manuscripts  don't burn',

        which  seems  to  express  an  absolute  trust  in  the triumph  of  poetry,

        imagination, the  free word,  over terror  and oppression,  and  could  thus

        become a watchword  of the intelligentsia. The publication of The Master and

          Margarita

         was taken as a proof of the assertion. In fact, during a moment of

        fear early in his work on the novel,  Bulgakov did burn what he had written.

        And yet, as we see, it refused to stay burned. This moment of
fear, however,

        brings me to the second aphorism - 'Cowardice is the most terrible of vices'

        - which  is repeated with slight variations several times in the novel. More

        penetrating than the defiant 'Manuscripts don't burn', this word touched the

        inner experience of generations of Russians. To portray that experience with

        such candour required another sort of freedom and a love  for something more

        than 'culture'. Gratitude for such perfect expression  of this other, deeper

        freedom must surely have  been part of  the enthusiastic response of readers

        to the novel's first appearance.

             And then  there was the sheer  unlikeliness of its publication. By 1966

        the 'thaw' that had followed Stalin's death was over and  a  new freeze  was

        coming. The hopes awakened by the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan

          Denisovich,

         the first public acknowledgement of  the existence of the Gulag,

        had been disappointed.  In 1964 came the notorious trial of the  poet Joseph

        Brodsky, and a year later the trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky
and Yuli

        Daniel, both sentenced to terms  in that same Gulag. Solzhenitsyn saw a  new

        Stalinization approaching, made worse by the terrible  sense of  repetition,

        stagnation and  helplessness. Such  was the monotonously  grim atmosphere of

        the Brezhnev era. And in the midst of it there suddenly burst The Master and

          Margarita,

         not only an anomaly but an impossibility, a sort of cosmic error,

        evidence  of  some  hidden  but fatal crack in the  system of Soviet  power.

        People kept asking, how could they have let it happen?

             Bulgakov began work on the first version of the novel early in 1929, or

        possibly  at the  end of 1928.  It  was  abandoned, taken up  again, burned,

        resurrected,  recast and revised many times. It accompanied Bulgakov through

        the period of greatest  suffering for his  people  -- the  period  of forced

        collectivization and  the  first  five-year  plan, which decimated  Russia's

        peasantry and  destroyed her  agriculture, the period of  expansion  of  the

        system of 'corrective labour camps', of the penetration
of the secret police

        into all areas of life,  of  the liquidation of the intelligentsia,  of vast

        party purges and  the  Moscow 'show trials'. In literature the same struggle

        went  on in miniature, and with the same results. Bulgakov was not arrested,

        but by 1930 he found himself so far excluded that he could no longer publish

        or produce  his work. In an extraordinarily forthright letter to the central

        government, he asked for permission to emigrate, since the hostility  of the

        literary  powers made it  impossible for him  to live. If emigration was not

        permitted, 'and if I am condemned to keep silent in the Soviet Union for the

        rest of my  days, then I  ask the Soviet government  to give me  a job in my

        speciality and assign me to a theatre as a titular director.' Stalin himself

        answered this letter by telephone  on  17  April, and shortly afterwards the

        Moscow  Art Theatre  hired  Bulgakov  as an assistant  director and literary

        consultant.  However,  during  the  thirties only his  stage adaptations  of

        Gogol's Dead Souls
and Cervantes' Don Quixote were granted a normal run. His

        own plays either  were not staged at  all or were quickly withdrawn, and his

          Life  of Monsieur de Moliere,

         written in 1932--5 for the collection Lives of

        Illustrious  Men,  was rejected  by the publisher. These  circumstances  are

        everywhere present in The Master and Margarita, which was in part Bulgakov's

        challenge to the rule  of terror in literature. The successive stages of his

        work  on the novel, his  changing evaluations of the nature of the book  and

        its characters, reflect events  in his life and his  deepening grasp of what

        was at stake in the struggle.  I will  briefly  sketch what the study of his

        archives has made known of this process.

             The  novel in its definitive  version is  composed of two distinct  but

        interwoven  parts,  one  set  in  contemporary Moscow, the other in  ancient

        Jerusalem (called Yershalaim). Its central characters are Woland (Satan) and

        his retinue, the poet Ivan Homeless, Pontius Pilate, an unnamed writer known

        as  'the master',
and  Margarita.  The  Pilate story is condensed into  four

        chapters and focused on four  or  five large-scale figures. The Moscow story

        includes a whole array of minor characters.  The Pilate  story, which passes

        through a  succession  of narrators, finally joins the Moscow  story  at the

        end, when the fates of Pilate and the master are simultaneously decided. The

        earliest version, narrated by  a first-person  'chronicler' and entitled The

          Engineer's Hoof,

         was written  in the first few months  of 1929. It contained

        no trace  of  Margarita and  only a faint  hint of  the  master in  a  minor

        character representing the old intelligentsia. The Pilate story was confined

        to a single  chapter. This version  included the  essentials  of  the Moscow

        satire, which afterwards underwent  only minor revisions and rearrangements.

        It began in much the  same way  as  the  definitive version, with a dialogue

        between a people's poet and an  editor (here  of an anti-religious magazine.

          The  Godless)

          on the correct portrayal  of  Christ  as
an exploiter of the

        proletariat.  A  stranger (Woland) appears and, surprised at their unbelief,

        astounds  them  with  an  eyewitness account of  Christ's crucifixion.  This

        account forms the second chapter, entitled 'The Gospel of Woland'.

             Clearly, what first spurred Bulgakov to write the novel was his outrage

        at the portrayals of Christ in Soviet anti-religious propaganda (The Godless

        was an actual monthly magazine of atheism, published from 1922 to 1940). His

        response was based on a  simple reversal -- a vivid circumstantial narrative

        of what  was thought to  be a  'myth' invented by  the ruling class,  and  a

        breaking down of the self-evident reality of Moscow life by the intrusion of

        the  'stranger'. This device, fundamental to the novel, would be  more fully

        elaborated in  its final  form.  Literary  satire was  also present from the

        start. The  fifth chapter of  the  definitive version, entitled  There  were

        Doings at  Griboedov's', already appeared  intact in  this  earliest  draft,

        where it  was entitled 'Mania
Furibunda'. In May of 1929, Bulgakov sent this

        chapter  to a  publisher, who  rejected it.  This was  his  only  attempt to

        publish anything from the novel.

             The second version, from later in the same year, was a reworking of the

        first four chapters, filling out certain episodes and  adding the  death  of

        Judas to the second chapter, which also  began to detach  itself from Woland

        and  become  a more autonomous narrative.  According to  the author's  wife,

        Elena  Sergeevna, Bulgakov partially destroyed  these  two versions  in  the

        spring of 1930  -- 'threw them in the fire', in the writer's own words. What

        survived were two large notebooks with many pages  torn out. This was at the

        height of the  attacks on Bulgakov . in the press,  the moment of his letter

        to the government.

             After  that  came  some  scattered   notes  in   two  notebooks,   kept

        intermittently over the next two years, which was a very difficult time  for

        Bulgakov. In the upper-right-hand corner of the second, he wrote:

             'Lord,  help  me to finish
my novel, 1931.' In  a  fragment of a later

        chapter,  entitled 'Woland's  Flight',  there  is  a  reference  to  someone

        addressed familiarly as ty, who is told that he 'will meet with Schubert and

        clear mornings'. This is obviously  the master, though he is not  called so.

        There  is also  the  first mention of the name of  Margarita. In  Bulgakov's

        mind, the  main outlines of a new  conception  of  the  novel were evidently

        already clear.

             This  new version  he  began  to  write in  earnest in October of 1932,

        during a visit to Leningrad with Elena  Sergeevna, whom he had just married.

        (The 'model' for Margarita,  who had  now entered  the  composition, she was

        previously married to a high-ranking  military  official, who for  some time

        opposed her wish to leave him for the  writer, leading  Bulgakov to think he

        would never see her again.) His wife was surprised that he could set to work

        without having any notes or earlier drafts with him, but Bulgakov explained,

        'I  know it by heart.' He continued working, not without
long interruptions,

        until  1936. Various new tides occurred to him, all still referring to Satan

        as the central figure -- The Great Chancellor, Satan,  Here I Am,  The Black

          Theologian, He Has Come, The  Hoofed Consultant.

         As in the earliest version,

        the time of the action is 24-- 5 June, the feast of St John, traditionally a

        time of magic enchantments (later  it  was moved to  the time of  the spring

        full  moon). The nameless  friend  of  Margarita is  called  'Faust' in some

        notes, though not in the text itself. He  is also called 'the  poet', and is

        made the author of a novel which corresponds to the  'Gospel of Woland' from

        the  first  drafts. This  historical section is now broken up and moved to a

        later place in the novel, coming closer to what would  be the arrangement in

        the final version.

             Bulgakov laboured especially  over the conclusion of the novel and what

        reward  to give the  master.  The ending  appears  for  the first time  in a

        chapter entitled 'Last Flight',  dating  from July  1956.  It differs little

        from
the  final version. In it, however,  the master is told explicitly and

        directly:

             The house  on  Sadovaya  and the horrible Bosoy  will vanish from  your

        memory, but  with  them will go Ha-Nozri  and  the forgiven  hegemon.  These

        things are not  for your spirit. You will never raise  yourself  higher, you

        will not see Yeshua, you will never leave your refuge.

             In an earlier note, Bulgakov had written even more tellingly: 'You will

        not hear the  liturgy.  But you  will listen to the  romantics . .  .' These

        words,  which do not appear  in the definitive text, tell us  how  painfully

        Bulgakov weighed the question of cowardice and guilt in considering the fate

        of  his hero, and how we should understand the ending of the final  version.

        They  also  indicate a  thematic link  between  Pilate, the master, and  the

        author  himself, connecting  the  historical  and  contemporary parts of the

        novel.

             In  a brief reworking from 1936--7, Bulgakov  brought the  beginning of

        the  Pilate story back to the second chapter, where
it would remain, and  in

        another reworking  from 1937-8 he finally  found the definitive tide for the

        novel. In this version, the original narrator, a characterized 'chronicler',

        is  removed.  The  new narrator is  that fluid voice  -- moving freely  from

        detached  observation  to  ironic  double  voicing,  to  the  most  personal

        interjection - which is perhaps the finest achievement of Bulgakov's art.

             The  first typescript of The  Master and Margarita, dating to 1958, was

        dictated  to  the typist  by  Bulgakov  from this last revision,  with  many

        changes  along  the  way.  In  1939  he  made  further  alterations  in  the

        typescript, the  most important of which concerns the fate  of the hero  and

        heroine.  In  the  last  manuscript  version, the  fate  of  the  master and

        Margarita, announced to  them by  Woland, is to follow Pilate up the path of

        moonlight to find  Yeshua  and  peace.  In the typescript, the fate  of  the

        master,  announced to Woland by Matthew Levi, speaking for Yeshua, is not to

        follow Pilate but
to go to his 'eternal refuge' with Margarita, in a  rather

        German-Romantic setting, with Schubert's music and blossoming cherry  trees.

        Asked by Woland, 'But why don't you take him with you into the  light?' Levi

        replies in a sorrowful voice, 'He  does  not deserve the  light, he deserves

        peace.' Bulgakov, still pondering the problem of the master's guilt (and his

        own, for what  he  considered  various compromises, including his  work on a

        play about Stalin's youth), went  back to his notes and revisions from 1936,

        but  lightened  their severity with an enigmatic irony. This was to  be  the

        definitive resolution. Clearly, the master is  not to be  seen as  a  heroic

        martyr  for art or  a 'Christ-figure'. Bulgakov's gentle  irony is a warning

        against the  mistake,  more  common in  our  time than  we might  think,  of

        equating artistic mastery with a  sort of saintliness, or,  in Kierkegaard's

        terms, of confusing the aesthetic with the ethical.

             In the  evolution of The  Master  and Margarita,  the Moscow  satire of

        Woland
and  his retinue versus the literary powers and the imposed normality

        of Soviet life in general is there from the first, and  comes to involve the

        master when  he appears, acquiring details  from the  writer's own life  and

        with them a more personal  tone alongside the  bantering  irreverence of the

        demonic retinue. The Pilate story, on the other hand, the story of an act of

        cowardice  and an interrupted dialogue, gains in weight and independence  as

        Bulgakov's  work  progresses. From a single inset episode,  it  becomes  the

        centrepiece of the novel, setting off the contemporary events and serving as

        their measure.  In style and form it is a counterpoint  to the  rest  of the

        book. Finally, rather late in the process, the master  and Margarita appear,

        with Margarita coming to dominate the second part of the novel. Her story is

        a romance in the old sense - the celebration of a beautiful woman, of a true

        love, and of personal courage.

             These three stories, in form as  well as content, embrace virtually all

        that was  excluded
from official Soviet ideology  and its literature. But if

        the  confines  of  'socialist  realism' are  utterly  exploded,  so are  the

        confines of more traditional novelistic realism. The Master and Margarita as

        a  whole is a consistently  free verbal construction which,  true to its own

        premises, can re-create ancient Jerusalem  in the smallest  physical detail,

        but can also alter the specifics of the New Testament and play variations on

        its  principal  figures,  can combine  the  realities of  Moscow  life  with

        witchcraft, vampirism, the tearing off and replacing  of heads, can describe

        for several  pages the sensation of flight on a broomstick  or the gathering

        of the infamous  dead at Satan's annual  spring  ball,  can combine the most

        acute  sense  of  the  fragility  of  human  life  with  confidence  in  its

        indestructibility. Bulgakov  underscores the continuity of this verbal world

        by having certain  phrases  -- 'Oh, gods, my gods', 'Bring me poison', 'Even

        by moonlight I have  no peace' -- migrate from one character
to another,  or

        to  the  narrator.  A  more  conspicuous case  is the  Pilate  story itself,

        successive parts of which are told by Woland, dreamed by the  poet Homeless,

        written by the master, and read  by Margarita, while the whole preserves its

        stylistic unity.  Narrow notions of  the  'imitation  of reality' break down

        here. But The Master and Margarita is true to the broader sense of the novel

        as a freely developing form embodied in  the works of Dostoevsky  and Gogol,

        of Swift and  Sterne, of  Cervantes, Rabelais and Apuleius.  The mobile  but

        personal  narrative voice of the novel, the closest model for which Bulgakov

        may  have  found  in  Gogol's Dead Souls, is  the  perfect  medium for  this

        continuous verbal construction. There is no multiplicity of narrators in the

        novel. The voice is always  the same. But  it has unusual range, picking up,

        parodying,  or  ironically  undercutting  the  tones  of  the  novel's  many

        characters, with undertones of lyric and epic poetry and old popular tales.

             Bulgakov  always  loved
clowning and agreed with E. T. A. Hoffmann that

        irony and  buffoonery are expressions  of 'the deepest contemplation of life

        in all its  conditionality'. It is not  by chance that his stage adaptations

        of the  comic masterpieces of Gogol and Cervantes coincided with the writing

        of The Master and Margarita.  Behind such specific 'influences'  stands  the

        age-old  tradition  of  folk humour with  its  carnivalized world-view,  its

        reversals  and  dethronings, its  relativizing of  worldly  absolutes  --  a

        tradition  that  was  the  subject  of  a  monumental  study  by  Bulgakov's

        countryman  and  contemporary Mikhail  Bakhtin. Bakhtin's  Rabelais  and His

          World,

          which in its way  was as  much an explosion  of  Soviet  reality  as

        Bulgakov's novel, appeared in 1965, a year before The  Master and Margarita.

        The  coincidence  was  not  lost  on  Russian  readers.  Commenting  on  it,

        Bulgakov's  wife noted  that,  while there  had never  been any direct  link

        between the  two  men,  they were  both responding to  the  same  historical

        situation
from the same cultural basis.

             Many observations  from Bakhtin's  study seem to  be aimed  directly at

        Bulgakov's intentions,  none more so than his comment on Rabelais's travesty

        of the  'hidden  meaning',  the  'secret',  the  'terrifying  mysteries'  of

        religion, politics and  economics:  'Laughter must liberate the gay truth of

        the world  from the  veils of  gloomy lies  spun by the seriousness of fear,

        suffering,  and  violence.'  The settling  of  scores  is also  part  of the

        tradition  of  carnival  laughter. Perhaps the  most  pure  example  is  the

          Testament

         of the poet Francois Villon, who in the liveliest verse handed out

        appropriate 'legacies' to all his enemies, thus entering into tradition  and

        even earning himself a place in the fourth book of  Rabelais's Gargantua and

          Pantagruel.

         So, too, Bakhtin says of Rabelais:

             In his novel  ... he uses the popular-festive system of images with its

        charter of freedoms consecrated by many centuries; and he uses it to inflict

        a severe punishment upon  his foe, the
Gothic  age  ...  In this setting  of

        consecrated rights Rabelais  attacks  the fundamental dogmas and sacraments,

        the holy of holies of medieval ideology.

             And he comments further on the broad nature of this tradition:

             For thousands of years the people have  used these festive comic images

        to express their criticism, their deep distrust of official truth, and their

        highest hopes and aspirations. Freedom was  not so much an exterior right as

        it  was  the  inner  content  of  these images. It was the thousand-year-old

        language  of  feariessness,  a language with no reservations  and omissions,

        about the world and about power.

             Bulgakov drew on  this same source  in  settling  his  scores  with the

        custodians of official literature and official reality.

             The  novel's   form  excludes  psychological  analysis  and  historical

        commentary. Hence the quickness  and pungency  of Bulgakov's writing. At the

        same time, it allows Bulgakov to  exploit all the theatricality of its great

        scenes -- storms, flight, the attack
of vampires, all  the  antics  of  the

        demons Koroviev and Behemoth, the seance in the Variety theatre, the ball at

        Satan's,  but also the  meeting  of  Pilate and  Yeshua, the crucifixion  as

        witnessed  by Matthew  Levi, the murder  of Judas in  the moonlit garden  of

        Gethsemane.

             Bulgakov's treatment of Gospel figures is the most controversial aspect

        of  The Master  and Margarita and has met with the greatest incomprehension.

        Yet his premises are made clear in the very first pages of the novel, in the

        dialogue between  Woland and the atheist  Berlioz. By the deepest  irony  of

        all, the 'prince of this world' stands as guarantor of the 'other' world. It

        exists, since he exists. But he says nothing  directly about it. Apart  from

        divine revelation, the only language  able to speak of the 'other' world  is

        the language of parable. Of  this  language Kafka wrote, in his  parable 'On

        Parables':

             Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and

        of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have.
When the sage says:

        'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which

        we  could  do  anyhow  if  it was worth the trouble; he means  some fabulous

        yonder, something unknown to us,  something, too,  that he cannot  designate

        more  precisely, and  therefore cannot  help us here in the least. All these

        parables  really  set  out  to  say  simply  that  the  incomprehensible  is

        incomprehensible,  and  we  know  that already.  But  the  cares we have  to

        struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

             Concerning this a  man  once said:  Why such reluctance?  If  you  only

        followed the parables, you yourselves would become parables and with that nd

        of all your daily cares.

             Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

             The first said: You win.

             The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

             The first said: No, in reality. In parable you lose.

             A similar  dialogue lies at the heart of  Bulgakov's novel. In it there

        are those who belong to parable and those who belong  to
reality.  There are

        those  who  go over and those who do not. There are those who win in parable

        and become parables themselves, and there are those who  win in reality. But

        this reality belongs to Woland. Its  nature is made chillingly  clear in the

        brief  scene when  he and Margarita  contemplate  his special  globe. Woland

        says:

             'For instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the

        ocean?  Look, it's filling with  fire. A war has started there. If you  look

        closer, you'll see the details.'

             Margarita leaned towards  the  globe and saw the  little square of land

        spread out, get  painted in many colours, and turn as  it were into a relief

        map. And then she  saw the little ribbon of  a river, and some village  near

        it. A little house the size of a pea grew and became the size of a matchbox.

        Suddenly and  noiselessly the roof of this house flew  up along with a cloud

        of black smoke, and  the  walls collapsed, so that nothing was  left of  the

        little two-storey box except a small heap  with black smoke
pouring from it.

        Bringing her eye stffl  closer,  Margarita  made  out a small  female figure

        lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool  of blood,  a  little  child

        with outstretched arms.

             That's  it,'  Woland  said, smiling, 'he had no time to sin.  Abaddon's

        work is impeccable.'

             When Margarita asks which side this Abaddon is on, Woland replies:

             'He  is of  a rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides

        of the  fight. Owing  to  that, the results are always  the  same  for  both

        sides.'

             There are others who dispute Woland's claim to the power of this world.

        They are  absent  or all but  absent from  The Master and Margarita. But the

        reality of the world seems to be at their disposal, to be shaped by them and

        to bear their imprint. Their names are Caesar  and Stalin. Though absent  in

        person, they  are omnipresent.  Their imposed will has become the measure of

        normality and self-evidence. In other  words, the normality of this world is

        imposed terror. And,  as the story of  Pilate  shows,
this is by  no means a

        twentieth-century  phenomenon. Once terror  is identified with the world, it

        becomes invisible.  Bulgakov's portrayal of Moscow under Stalin's  terror is

        remarkable precisely for its weightless,  circus-like theatricality and lack

        of pathos. It is a sub-stanceless reality, an empty suit writing  at a desk.

        The  citizens  have adjusted to  it and learned to play along as they always

        do.  The  mechanism  of  this forced adjustment  is revealed in the  chapter

        recounting 'Nikanor  Ivanovich's Dream', in  which prison,  denunciation and

        betrayal  become yet  another theatre with  a  kindly and helpful master  of

        ceremonies. Berlioz,  the comparatist, is the  spokesman  for  this 'normal'

        state of  affairs,  which  is what  makes his  conversation  with Woland  so

        interesting. In  it he  is confronted  with another reality which  he cannot

        recognize.  He  becomes  'unexpectedly  mortal'.  In the  story  of  Pilate,

        however,  a  moment  of  recognition  does come. It occurs  during  Pilate's

        conversation  with
Yeshua, when  he sees  the wandering  philosopher's  head

        float off and in its  place the toothless head of the aged  Tiberius Caesar.

        This is the pivotal moment of the novel. Pilate breaks off his dialogue with

        Yeshua, he does not 'go over', and afterwards must sit like  a stone for two

        thousand years waiting to continue their conversation.

             Parable cuts through the normality of this world only at moments.

             These  moments  are  preceded by  a  sense  of  dread,  or  else  by  a

        presentiment  of  something  good. The first variation is Berlioz's  meeting

        with Woland. The second is Pilate's meeting  with Yeshua.  The  third is the

        'self-baptism' of the poet  Ivan Homeless before he  goes in  pursuit of the

        mysterious  stranger. The fourth is the meeting of the master and Margarita.

        These chance encounters have eternal consequences, depending on the response

        of  the  person,  who must act without  foreknowledge and then  becomes  the

        consequences of that action.

             The touchstone character of the novel is Ivan Homeless,
who is there at

        the start,  is  radically changed  by  his encounters  with  Woland and  the

        master, becomes the latter's 'disciple' and  continues his  work, is present

        at  almost every  turn of the novel's  action,  and appears  finally  in the

        epilogue.  He  remains  an  uneasy  inhabitant  of 'normal'  reality,  as  a

        historian  who 'knows everything',  but  each year,  with the coming of  the

        spring  full moon, he returns to the parable which for this world looks like

        folly.

             Richard Pevear

          A Note on the Text and Acknowledgements

             At his  death,  Bulgakov  left The  Master and Margarita  in a slightly

        unfinished state.  It contains, for instance, certain  inconsistencies - two

        versions  of  the 'departure' of the master  and Margarita, two  versions of

        Yeshua's  entry into  Yershalaim, two  names for  Yeshua's native  town. His

        final revisions, undertaken in October of 1939, broke off  near the start of

        Book Two. Later  he dictated  some additions  to his  wife, Elena Sergeevna,

        notably the
opening  paragraph  of Chapter 32 ('Gods, my  gods! How sad  the

        evening earth!').  Shortly  after his death  in 1940, Elena Sergeevna made a

        new  typescript of the novel. In 1965, she  prepared  another typescript for

        publication, which differs slightly from her 1940 text. This  1965  text was

        published by Moskva in  November 1966 and January 1967. However, the editors

        of the magazine made cuts  in it  amounting to some sixty typed pages. These

        cut  portions   immediately   appeared   in   samizdat   (unofficial  Soviet

        'self-publishing'), were published by Scherz Verlag in Switzerland in  1967,

        and were then included  in the  Possev  Verlag  edition  (Frankfurt-am-Main,

        1969) and the  YMCA-Press edition  (Paris,  1969). In  1975  a  new  and now

        complete  edition came out in  Russia,  the result  of a  comparison  of the

        already  published  editions  with  materials  in the Bulgakov  archive.  It

        included  additions  and  changes taken  from  written corrections on  other

        existing typescripts. The latest Russian edition (1990)
has removed the most

        important of  those additions, bringing  the text close  once again to Elena

        Sergeevna's 1965 typescript.  Given  the absence of  a  definitive authorial

        text, this process  of revision is virtually  endless.  However, it involves

        changes that in most cases have little bearing for a translator.

             The  present translation  has  been  made from the text of the original

        magazine publication,  based on  Elena Sergeevna's 1965 typescript, with all

        cuts restored as in the  Possev and YMCA-Press  editions. It is complete and

        unabridged.

             The  translators wish to express their gratitude to M. 0. Chudakova for

        her  advice on the text and to  Irina Kronrod for  her help in preparing the

        Further Reading.

          R. P., L. V.

          The Master and Margarita

             '... who are you, then?'

             'I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works

        good.'

             Goethe, Faust

 * BOOK ONE *

CHAPTER 1. Never Talk with Strangers

     At the  hour of  the hot  spring  sunset two citizens appeared  at  the

Patriarch's Ponds. 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 neady shaven  face was adorned  with

black  horn-rimmed   glasses  of   a   supernatural  size.   The   odier,  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,[2] editor of a  fat literary journal and chairman of the

board   of   one  of  the  major  Moscow   literary   associations,   called

Massolit[3] for short, and  his young companion was the poet Ivan

Nikolaevich    Ponyrev,    who    wrote    under    the     pseudonym     of

Homeless.[4]

     Once in the  shade of the barely greening  lindens, the writers  dashed

first  thing  to a brighdy
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,' die 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 . . .'[5]

     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[6]  and  the brilliantly  educated

Flavius Josephus[7]  - 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, 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  wav,  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,[9]  a

benevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god

Tammoz,[10] and  about Marduk,"  and  even about a  lesser known,

terrible  god, Vitzliputzli,'[2] 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 Vitzli-putzli

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 1-e  carried a stick with a

black knob shaped  like
a poodle's head.[13]  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.[14]

     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 dazzlinglv 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 eves, 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,[15]  the  Phrygian  Atris,[16] the

Persian Mithras.[17] 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,'[8]

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 adroidy 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?' tie 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 fairytales 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  apparendy  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[19] 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 say that  the  Kantian

reasoning  on this  question can  satisfy  only  slaves, and
Strauss 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[22] 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  oudander 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, and 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?'[23]

     'No,' replied his interlocutor, 'by a Russian woman, a Komsomol[24

]girl.'

     'Hm .  . .' Berlioz mumbled, vexed at the stranger's Utde 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 sav 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  emigre[25] 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[26] 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 .  .

,'[27]

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'  the  procurator of  Judea,[2]

Pontius Pilate.[3]

     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,[4]  which   had   come   to

Yershalaim[5  ]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?[6] 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[7  ]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 corner of his mouth a cut caked with blood.

The man gazed at the procurator with anxious curiosity.

     The latter paused, then asked quiedy in Aramaic:[8]

     'So  it was  you  who  incited  the people  to  destroy  the temple  of

Yershalaim?'[9]

     The procurator  sat  as if made of stone  while he spoke,  and only his

lips moved slighdy 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 me 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

perfecdv 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 ait, 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.[10] 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:

     T 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,'" the prisoner replied prompdy.

     'Any surname?'

     'Ha-Nozri.'

     'Where do you come from?'

     The town  of Gamala,'[12] 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 incorrecdy.'

     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,'[13]  the prisoner  explained  willingly.
'He

used  to  be  a  tax  collector,  and  I  first  met  him  on  the  road  in

Bethphage,'[4] 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 ofYershalaim! 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 closed  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?'[15]

     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.[16] 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 quiedy

and smiled some strange smile. 'Swear, men, 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[17]  riding  on  an

ass,[18  ]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 wimout taking  his  eyes off

the  prisoner, 'such  men  as a certain Dysmas, another named  Gestas, and a

third named Bar-Rabban?'[19]

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

     Truly?'

     Truly.'

     'And now tell me, why is it that you use me 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

Rat-slayer - 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 German!

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,[20] 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.[21]  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  ofCaprean

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, arrogandy 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,[22] 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 . . .'[23] Pilate spoke through his teeth, in

the same tone as the prisoner, and his eyes glinted.

     Tes,' Yeshua went on, slighdy 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  die 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 die

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  die

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 widi the criminal, this is a state matter!'

     The convoy raised dieir spears and with a measured  tramp  of hobnailed

caligae  walked off die 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, die people who, as

I see,' the procurator pointed  to  Yeshua's disfigured face,  'beat you for

your  preaching,  the robbers  Dysmas  and Gestas, who widi  their confreres

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 dien, 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 . . .' die 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,[24] 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.[25]

     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[26

]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?[27]

     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,[28]

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!'[29]

'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,

"fou 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 - 'has 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 bv

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 irir

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: Tt 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 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 bv 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 bovs 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  secredy, 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?* 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

choir-master,  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 'Pondus Pilate'. The poet dismissed Pilate and

began Unking 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

Spiri-donovka. 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 corner, 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 sail 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. 15, 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  gendy.  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  cidzeness,  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 sofdy 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.' A single

moonbeam,  having  seeped through  the  dusty,
perennially unwashed window,

shone sparsely  into the corner where, in dust and cobwebs, a forgotten icon

hung,  with the ends  of two wedding candles[2 ]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.[3]

     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.[4]

     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 frori 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.[1] 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'.[2] 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).'[3] 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 other 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 Amvrosv 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 interiaid  with crayfish tails and  fresh caviar?  And

eggs en  cocotte
with mushroom puree in little dishes? And how did you like

the  fillets of thrush?  With truffles? Quail  a la genoise? 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 rime 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 leronym 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 wim glee, and she said, softening her

contralto:

     We    mustn't     be    envious,     comrades.    There's    twenty-two

dachas[4] 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 950, 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 silendy 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, apparendy 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   Addphina  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 volatile perish? How  can  we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?

By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!

     Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the ja2z band dispersed,
several

journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that

Zheldybin  had  come  from  the  morgue.  He  had  installed himself  in the

deceased's office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who

would replace Berlioz. Zheldybin  summoned from  the  restaurant all  twelve

members  of the  board, and  at the urgently  convened meeting in  Berlioz's

office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the

hall with columns  at  Griboedov's, of transporting the body from the morgue

to that hall, of opening  it  to the public, and all else connected with the

sad event.

     And the restaurant  began to live  its  usual nocturnal life  and would

have gone on living it until  closing time, that is,  until four  o'clock in

the morning, had it not been for  an  occurrence which was completely out of

the ordinary and which  struck the restaurant's clientele much more than the

news of Berlioz's death.

     The first to take alarm were the coachmen[5] waiting  at the

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 sofdy 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 bed 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 perfecdy 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!'' 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  dicy  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,'[2]   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[3] -  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

ofRiukhin. '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 spumed 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  bv 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, 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 corner 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

Archi-baldovich 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' 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!'[2]

     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'oeuvres 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,'[3]  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'oeuvres,  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'oeuvres 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[4]  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[5] 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  quiedy,  '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  distincdy 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,'[6]  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 silendy 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 corner, 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 instandy 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 vou 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.'

     'He'll 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' 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.  51 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.

     "fes,  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,  Svhat  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

Ukhodeev 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  setde  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 --'Bin, 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.502-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy,  is

speculating in foreign currency.[2] At the present moment, in his

apartment no. 55, 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 quiedy, 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 Ivano-vich'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: 'Your little wad?'

     'No!' Nikanor Ivanovich replied in a dreadful  voice. 'Enemies stuck me

with it!'

     'That happens,' the first agreed and added, again gendy:  '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,  evidendy 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 rime that  disaster struck. Nikanor Ivanovich, not far away

from no.502-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.'

     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!'  Rimisky  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:

     Today and Every Day at the Variety Theatre

     an Additional Programme

     PROFESSOR WOLAND

     Seances of Black
Magic and its Full Exposure

     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 subde 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.[2]  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!'[3] 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  .. .'[4]  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 urgendy  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, hi[6] 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-high-speed

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 diought 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 mat  die

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 die

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 diought. Having diought  a little, he

again  took die 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.[5] 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 investigation
...'

     '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 ratded.

     '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.502-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, sdll 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 die intermission before die 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  fin-director, 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.

     Tour  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 rustic.

     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 slighdy  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 gende 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 Zeikova.'

     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. Presendy,  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! Bin, 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: 'Put 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:

     'Gueriain,  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 busded 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.

     Tardone!'  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!''

     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  cafe-chantant,  some  barely   intelligible,

half-blind, but rollicking words to this march:

     His Excellency reached the stage

     Of liking barnyard fowl.

     He took under his patronage

     Three young girls and an owl!!!

     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 stern  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,'' 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

w^de, 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 silendy, 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 other 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 ofJudea,  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. Saving 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 cridcs Latunsky and Ariman,

and the writer  Mstislav Lavrovich.[2] 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 tide 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,[3] 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".[4] 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 die sofa

and  fell asleep without turning on the light. I was awakened by die feeling

diat 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 widi myself like a  madman. I had

strength enough to get to  the stove and start a fire  in it.  When die wood

began to  crackle and  the  stove door  rattled, I seemed  to  feel  slighdy

better. I dashed to the front room, turned on die light diere, found a botde

of white wine, uncorked it and began drinking from the  botde.  This blunted

the fear somewhat -- at  least enough to keep me from running to me landlord

-- and  I  went back
to me 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 die

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  reluctandy.

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 die 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 dirough it. They would vanish only when die paper turned

black, and I finished diem off with die poker.

     'Just  dien  someone  began  scratching
quiedy 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  die  basement to  the door on the yard.

Stumbling, I ran up to it and asked quiedy:

     ' "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.  111 save

you. What is all this?"

     'I  saw  her eyes swollen widi  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  smoodi  out the

burnt-edged pages. It was some chapter from die middle of the novel, I don't

remember which.  She  neady stacked die  pages, wrapped them in  paper, tied

them   with  a  ribbon.  All  her  actions  showed  that  she  was  full  of

determination, and diat 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 radier not do it diat way. I

don't want it to  remain for  ever in his memory diat 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 dose to

mine.

     '"The only one."

     'She became  terribly animated, she dung 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,[5] 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

fin-director'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  other 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  whisde,  and  after the policeman hastened  some

merry young men in caps. It was they who produced the guffawing and hoodng.

     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 quiedy 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 quiedy:

     '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? W'lw

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 rime 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  rime 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 slighdy 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 corner  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 I 5. 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.'  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.502-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 soul

fully.

     'As God is true, as God is almighty,' Nikanor Ivanovich began, Tie 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 nourish 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[2

]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?'[3] 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 quiedy 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, vet  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 Ivano-vich

fancied  the lights  were  leaping in the chandeLers. 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, Sawa  Potapovich, especially invited

here, will perform excerpts from The Covetous Knight 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..

.'[5]

     And Kurolesov  told many  bad things about  himself. Nikanor Ivano-vich

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?'[6] 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 Sawa

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 quiedy.

     '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 ..."

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 dme, 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 stern 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 morionlessness, 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, silendy  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.

     Tou  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 quiedy  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 setded on it again.

     Dysmas, on the second post, suffered more than die other two because he

did  not   lose   consciousness,  and  he  swung  his  head  constantly  and

rhythmically, right and left, so diat his ears struck his shoulders.

     Yeshua  was more fortunate than the other two. In  die 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  dierefore covered  him

completely, so that his face disappeared under die 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 anodier brought a bucket and  a  sponge  to die post.  The

first executioner raised the spear  and  with it  tapped first one, then the

other of Yeshua's arms,  stretched out and bound widi  ropes to die crossbar

of  the  post.  The  body,  with  its  protruding  ribs, gave a  start.  The

executioner passed die 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 slighdy
clouded.

     'Ha-Nozri!' said the executioner.

     Ha-Nozri moved his swollen Ups 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 die dp of a

spear rose to Yeshua's lips. Joy flashed in his eyes, he clung to die 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  widi his  nails,  kept  his head  turned  towards

Yeshua's post, malice blazed in die eyes of Dysmas.

     A dusty cloud covered the place, it became much  darker. When die  dust

blew away, die centurion shouted:

     'Silence on the second post!'

     Dysmas fell  silent.  Yeshua  tore himself away from  die  sponge,  and

trying to make his  voice sound gende 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  gendy

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  widi 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 die first post, the

man  in die 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 die odier two posts.

     After that the  tribune motioned to the centurion and, turning, started

off die hilltop together with die head of the temple guard and the man in me

hood.  Semi-darkness  set  in, and lightning farrowed  the black  sky.  Fire

suddenly sprayed out of it, and die 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  taUith,  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 Vassilv

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  amaze-ment  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  Rimskv 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 perfecdy reasonable question was:

     "What's going on here, dozens? 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  dme 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?

     T 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 Ukhodeev'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 Sadovava. 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 tighdy  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 die 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. . .'[1]

     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 .. .'[2]

     The messenger's voice was joined by  distant voices, the choir began to

swell, and  finally the song resounded in  all corners 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[3] ...  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  quiedy  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 . . .'[4]

     '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  die

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 dub

of Lermontov studies,' 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 rime 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 rime 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

omer 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,'

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 wa