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away. Two ambulances drove on, one bearing the body and the decapitated head
to the morgue, the other carrying the beautiful tram-driver who had been
wounded by slivers of glass. Street sweepers in white overalls swept up the
broken glass and poare'd sand on the pools of blood. Ivan Nikolayich, who
had failed to reach the turnstile in time, collapsed on a bench and remained
there. Several times he tried to ge:t up, but his legs refuse d to obey him,
stricken by a kind of paralysis.
The moment he had heard the first cry the poet had rushed towards the
turnstile and seen the head bouncing on the pavement. The sight unnerved him
so much that he bit his hand until it drew blood. He had naturally forgotten
all about the mad German and could do nothing but wonder how one minute he
coald have been talking to Berlioz and the next... his head ...
Excited people were running along the avenue past the poet shouting
something, but Ivan Nikolayich did not hear them. Suddenly two women
collided alongside him and one of them, witlh a pointed nose and straight
hair, shouted to the other woman just above his ear :
'.. . Anna, it was our Anna! She was coming from Sadovaya! It's her
job, you see . . . she was carrying a litre of sunflower-seed oil to the
grocery and she broke her jug on. the turnstile! It went all over her skirt
amd ruined it and she swore and swore....! And that poor man must have
slipped on the oil and fallen under the tram....'
One word stuck in Ivan Nikolayich's brain--' Anna' . . . ' Anna? . . .
Anna? ' muttered the poet, looking round in alarm. ' Hey, what was that you
said . . .? '
The name ' Anna ' evoked the words ' sunflower-seed oil' and ' Pontius
Pilate '. Bezdomny rejected 'Pilate' and began linking together a chain of
associations starting with ' Anna'. Very soon the chain was complete and it
led straight back to the mad professor.
'Of course! He said the meeting wouldn't take place because Anna had
spilled the oil. And, by God, it won't take place now! And what's more he
said Berlioz would have his head cut off by a woman!! Yes--and the
tram-driver was a woman!!! Who the hell is he? '
There was no longer a grain of doubt that the mysterious professor had
foreseen every detail of Berlioz's death before it had occurred. Two
thoughts struck the poet: firstly--' he's no madman ' and secondly--' did he
arrange the whole thing himself?'
'But how on earth could he? We've got to look into this! '
With a tremendous effort Ivan Nikolayich got up from the bench and ran
back to where he had been talking to the professor, who was fortunately
still there.
The lamps were already lit on Bronnaya Street and a golden moon was
shining over Patriarch's Ponds. By the light of the moon, deceptive as it
always is, it seemed to Ivan Nikolayich that the thing under the professor's
arm was not a stick but a sword.
The ex-choirmaster was sitting on the seat occupied a short while
before by Ivan Nikolayich himself. The choirmaster had now clipped on to his
nose an obviously useless pince-nez. One lens was missing and the other
rattled in its frame. It made the check-suited man look even more repulsive
than when he had shown Berlioz the way to the tramlines. With a chill of
fear Ivan walked up to the professor. A glance at his face convinced him
that there was not a trace of insanity in it.
'Confess--who are you? ' asked Ivan grimly.
The stranger frowned, looked at the poet as if seeing him for the first
time, and answered disagreeably :
'No understand ... no speak Russian . . . '
'He doesn't understand,' put in the choirmaster from his bench,
although no one had asked him.
'Stop pretending! ' said Ivan threateningly, a cold feeling growing in
the pit of his stomach. ' Just now you spoke Russian perfectly well. You're
no German and you're not a professor! You're a spy and a murderer! Show me
your papers! ' cried Ivan angrily.
The enigmatic professor gave his already crooked mouth a further twist
and shrugged his shoulders.
'Look here, citizen,' put in the horrible choirmaster again. ' What do
you mean by upsetting this foreign tourist? You'll have the police after
you! '
The dubious professor put on a haughty look, turned and walked away
from Ivan, who felt himself beginning to lose his head. Gasping, he turned
to the choirmaster :
'Hey, you, help me arrest this criminal! It's your duty! '
The choirmaster leaped eagerly to his feet and bawled :
'What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal? ' His eyes lit up
joyfully. ' That man? If he's a criminal the first thing to do is to shout "
Stop thief! " Otherwise he'll get away. Come on, let's shout together! ' And
the choirmaster opened his mouth wide.
The stupefied Ivan obeyed and shouted ' Stop thief! ' but the
choirmaster fooled him by not making a sound.
Ivan's lonely, hoarse cry was worse than useless. A couple of girls
dodged him and he heard them say ' . .. drunk.'
'So you're in league with him, are you? ' shouted Ivan, helpless with
anger. ' Make fun of me, would you? Out of my way!'
Ivan set off towards his right and the choirmaster did the opposite,
blocking his way. Ivan moved leftward, the other to his right and the same
thing happened.
'Are you trying to get in my way on purpose?' screamed Ivan,
infuriated. ' You're the one I'm going to report to the police!'
Ivan tried to grab the choirmaster by the sleeve, missed and found
himself grasping nothing : it was as if the choirmaster had been swallowed
up by the ground.
With a groan Ivan looked ahead and saw the hated stranger. He had
already reached the exit leading on to Patriarch's Street and he was no
longer alone. The weird choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was
not all. The third member of the company was a cat the size of a pig, black
as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers' whiskers. The threesome was
walking towards Patriarch's Street, the cat trotting along on its hind legs.
As he set off after the villains Ivan realised at once that it was
going to be very hard to catch them up. In a flash the three of them were
across the street and on the Spiridonovka. Ivan quickened his pace, but the
distance between him and his quarry grew no less. Before the poet had
realised it they had left the quiet Spiridonovka and were approaching Nikita
Gate, where his difficulties increased. There was a crowd and to make
matters worse the evil band had decided to use the favourite trick of
bandits on the run and split up.
With great agility the choirmaster jumped on board a moving bus bound
for Arbat Square and vanished. Having lost one of them, Ivan concentrated
his attention on the cat and saw how the strange animal walked up to the
platform of an ' A ' tram waiting at a stop, cheekily pushed off a screaming
woman, grasped the handrail and offered the conductress a ten-kopeck piece.
Ivan was so amazed by the cat's behaviour that he was frozen into
immobility beside a street corner grocery. He was struck with even greater
amazement as he watched the reaction of the conductress. Seeing the cat
board her tram, she yelled, shaking with anger:
'No cats allowed! I'm not moving with a cat on board! Go on--shoo! Get
off, or I'll call the police! '
Both conductress and passengers seemed completely oblivious of the most
extraordinary thing of all: not that a cat had boarded a tramcar--that was
after all possible--but the fact that the animal was offering to pay its
fare!
The cat proved to be not only a fare-paying but a law-abiding animal.
At the first shriek from the conductress it retreated, stepped off the
platform and sat down at the tram-stop, stroking its whiskers with the
ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress yanked the bell-rope and
the car begun to move off, than the cat acted like anyone else who has been
pushed off a tram and is still determined to get to his destination. Letting
all three cars draw past it, the cat jumped on to the coupling-hook of the
last car, latched its paw round a pipe sticking out of one of the windows
and sailed away, having saved itself ten kopecks.
Fascinated by the odious cat, Ivan almost lost sight of the most
important of the three--the professor. Luckily he had not managed to slip
away. Ivan spotted his grey beret in the crowd at the top of Herzen Street.
In a flash Ivan was there too, but in vain. The poet speeded up to a run and
began shoving people aside, but it brought him not an inch nearer the
professor.
Confused though Ivan was, he was nevertheless astounded by the
supernatural speed of the pursuit. Less than twenty seconds after leaving
Nikita Gate Ivan Nikolayich was dazzled by the lights of Arbat Square. A few
more seconds and he was in a dark alleyway with uneven pavements where he
tripped and hurt his knee. Again a well-lit main road--Kropotkin Street--
another side-street, then Ostozhenka Street, then another grim, dirty and
badly-lit alley. It was here that Ivan Nikolayich finally lost sight of his
quarry. The professor had disappeared.
Disconcerted, but not for long, for no apparent reason Ivan Nikolayich
had a sudden intuition that the professor must be in house No. 13, flat 47.
Bursting through the front door, Ivan Nikolayich flew up the stairs,
found the right flat and impatiently rang the bell. He did not have to wait
long. The door was opened by a little girl of about five, who silently
disappeared inside again. The hall was a vast, incredibly neglected room
feebly lit by a tiny electric light that dangled in one corner from a
ceiling black with dirt. On the wall hung a bicycle without any tyres,
beneath it a huge iron-banded trunk. On the shelf over the coat-rack was a
winter
fur cap, its long earflaps untied and hanging down. From behind one of
the doors a man's voice could be heard booming from the radio, angrily
declaiming poetry.
Not at all put out by these unfamiliar surroundings, Ivan Nikolayich
made straight for the corridor, thinking to himself:
'He's obviously hiding in the bathroom.' The passage was dark. Bumping
into the walls, Ivan saw a faint streak of light under a doorway. He groped
for the handle and gave it a gentle turn. The door opened and Ivan found
himself in luck--it was the bathroom.
However it wasn't quite the sort of luck he had hoped for. Amid the
damp steam and by the light of the coals smouldering in the geyser, he made
out a large basin attached to the wall and a bath streaked with black where
the enamel had chipped off. There in the bath stood a naked woman, covered
in soapsuds and holding a loofah. She peered short-sightedly at Ivan as he
came in and obviously mistaking him for someone else in the hellish light
she whispered gaily :
'Kiryushka! Do stop fooling! You must be crazy . . . Fyodor Ivanovich
will be back any minute now. Go on--out you go! ' And she waved her loofah
at Ivan.
The mistake was plain and it was, of course, Ivan Nikolayich's fault,
but rather than admit it he gave a shocked cry of ' Brazen hussy! ' and
suddenly found himself in the kitchen. It was empty. In the gloom a silent
row of ten or so Primuses stood on a marble slab. A single ray of moonlight,
struggling through a dirty window that had not been cleaned for years, cast
a dim light into one corner where there hung a forgotten ikon, the stubs of
two candles still stuck in its frame. Beneath the big ikon was another made
of paper and fastened to the wall with tin-tacks.
Nobody knows what came over Ivan but before letting himself out by the
back staircase he stole one of the candles and the little paper ikon.
Clutching these objects he left the strange apartment, muttering,
embarrassed by his recent experience in the bathroom. He could not help
wondering who the shameless Kiryushka might be and whether he was the owner
of the nasty fur cap with dangling ear-flaps.
In the deserted, cheerless alleyway Bezdomny looked round for the
fugitive but there was no sign of him. Ivan said firmly to himself:
'Of course! He's on the Moscow River! Come on! '
Somebody should of course have asked Ivan Nikolayich why he imagined
the professor would be on the Moscow River of all places, but unfortunately
there was no one to ask him--the nasty little alley was completely empty.
In no time at all Ivan Nikolayich was to be seen on the granite steps
of the Moscow lido. Taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a kindly
old man with a beard, dressed in a torn white Russian blouse and patched,
unlaced boots. Waving him aside, Ivan took a swallow-dive into the water.
The water was so cold that it took his breath away and for a moment he even
doubted whether he would reach the surface again. But reach it he did, and
puffing and snorting, his eyes round with terror, Ivan Nikolayich began
swimming in the black, oily-smelling water towards the shimmering zig-zags
of the embankment lights reflected in the water.
When Ivan clambered damply up the steps at the place where he had left
his clothes in the care of the bearded man, not only his clothes but their
venerable guardian had apparently been spirited away. On the very spot where
the heap of clothes had been there was now a pair of check underpants, a
torn Russian blouse, a candle, a paper ikon and a box of matches. Shaking
his fist into space with impotent rage, Ivan clambered into what was left.
As he did so two thoughts worried him. To begin with he had now lost
his MASSOLIT membership card; normally he never went anywhere without it.
Secondly it occurred to him that he might be arrested for walking around
Moscow in this state. After all, he had practically nothing on but a pair of
underpants. . . .
Ivan tore the buttons off the long underpants where they were fastened
at the ankles, in the hope that people might think they were a pair of
lightweight summer trousers. He then picked up the ikon, the candle and
matches and set off, saying to himself:
'I must go to Griboyedov! He's bound to be there.' Ivan Nikolayich's
fears were completely justified--passers-by noticed him and turned round to
stare, so he decided to leave the main streets and make Us way through the
side-roads where people were not so inquisitive, where there was less chance
of them stopping a barefoot man and badgering him with questions about his
underpants--which obstinately refused to look like trousers.
Ivan plunged into a maze of sidestreets round the Arbat and began to
sidle along the walls, blinking fearfully, glancing round, occasionally
hiding in doorways, avoiding crossroads with traffic lights and the elegant
porticos of embassy mansions.
It was an old two-storied house, painted cream, that stood on the ring
boulevard behind a ragged garden, fenced off from the pavement by
wrought-iron railings. In winter the paved front courtyard was usually full
of shovelled snow, whilst in summer, shaded by a canvas awning, it became a
delightful outdoor extension to the club restaurant.
The house was called ' Griboyedov House ' because it might once have
belonged to an aunt of the famous playwright Alexander Sergeyevich
Griboyedov. Nobody really knows for sure whether she ever owned it or not.
People even say that Griboyedov never had an aunt who owned any such
property. . . . Still, that was its name. What is more, a dubious tale used
to circulate in Moscow of how in the round, colonnaded salon on the second
floor the famous writer had once read extracts from Woe From Wit to that
same aunt as she reclined on a sofa. Perhaps he did ; in any case it doesn't
matter.
It matters much more that this house now belonged to MASSOLIT, which
until his excursion to Patriarch's Ponds was headed by the unfortunate
Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz. No one, least of all the members of MASSOLIT,
called the place ' Griboyedov House '. Everyone simply called it' Griboyedov
' :
'I spent a couple of hours lobbying at Griboyedov yesterday.'
'Well?'
'Wangled myself a month in Yalta.'
'Good for you! '
Or : ' Go to Berlioz--he's seeing people from four to five this
afternoon at Griboyedov . . .'--and so on.
MASSOLIT had installed itself in Griboyedov very comfortably indeed. As
you entered you were first confronted with a notice-board full of
announcements by the various sports clubs, then with the photographs of
every individual member of MASSOLIT, who were strung up (their photographs,
of course) along the walls of the staircase leading to the first floor.
On the door of the first room on the upper storey was a large notice :
' Angling and Weekend Cottages ', with a picture of a carp caught on a hook.
On the door of the second room was a slightly confusing notice: '
Writers' day-return rail warrants. Apply to M.V. Podlozhnaya.'
The next door bore a brief and completely incomprehensible legend: '
Perelygino'. From there the chance visitor's eye would be caught by
countless more notices pinned to the aunt's walnut doors : ' Waiting List
for Paper--Apply to Poklevkina ';
'Cashier's Office '; ' Sketch-Writers : Personal Accounts ' . . .
At the head of the longest queue, which started downstairs at the
porter's desk, was a door under constant siege labelled ' Housing Problem'.
Past the housing problem hung a gorgeous poster showing a cliff, along
whose summit rode a man on a chestnut horse with a rifle slung over his
shoulder. Below were some palm-trees and a balcony. On it sat a shock-haired
young man gazing upwards with a bold, urgent look and holding a fountain pen
in his hands. The wording read : ' All-in Writing Holidays, from two weeks
(short story, novella) to one year (novel, trilogy): Yalta, Suuk-Su,
Borovoye, Tsikhidziri, Makhinjauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).' There was a
queue at this door too, but not an excessively long one--only about a
hundred and fifty people.
Following the erratic twists, the steps up and steps down of
Griboyedov's corridors, one found other notices : 'MASSOLIT-Management',
'Cashiers Nos. 2, 5, 4, 5,' 'Editorial Board', ' MASSOLIT-Chairman',
'Billiard Room', then various subsidiary organisations and finally that
colonnaded salon where the aunt had listened with such delight to the
readings of his comedy by her brilliant nephew.
Every visitor to Griboyedov, unless of course he were completely
insensitive, was made immediately aware of how good life was for the lucky
members of MASSOLIT and he would at once be consumed with black envy. At
once, too, he would curse heaven for having failed to endow him at birth
with literary talent, without which, of course, no one could so much as
dream of acquiring a MASSOLIT membership card--that brown card known to all
Moscow, smelling of expensive leather and embellished with a wide gold
border.
Who is prepared to say a word in defence of envy? It is a despicable
emotion, but put yourself in the visitor's place : what he had seen on the
upper flоог was by no means all. The entire ground floor of the aunt's house
was occupied by a restaurant-- and what a restaurant! It was rightly
considered the best in Moscow. Not only because it occupied two large rooms
with vaulted ceilings and lilac-painted horses with flowing manes, not only
because every table had a lamp shaded with lace, not only because it was
barred to the hoi polloi, but above all for the quality of its food.
Griboyedov could beat any restaurant in Moscow you cared to name and its
prices were extremely moderate.
There is therefore nothing odd in the conversation which the author of
these lines actually overheard once outside the iron railings of Griboyedov
:
'Where are you dining today, Ambrose? '
'What a question! Here, of course, Vanya! Archibald Archibaldovich
whispered to me this morning that there's filets de perche an naturel on the
menu tonight. Sheer virtuosity! '
'You do know how to live, Ambrose! ' sighed Vanya, a thin pinched man
with a carbuncle on his neck, to Ambrose, a strapping, red-lipped,
golden-haired, ruddy-cheeked poet.
'It's no special talent,' countered Ambrose. ' Just a perfectly normal
desire to live a decent, human existence. Now I suppose you're going to say
that you can get perch at the Coliseum. So you can. But a helping of perch
at the Coliseum costs thirty roubles fifty kopecks and here it costs five
fifty! Apart from that the perch at the Coliseum are three days old and
what's more if you go to the Coliseum there's no guarantee you won't get a
bunch of grapes thrown in your face by the first young man to burst in from
Theatre Street. No, I loathe the Coliseum,' shouted Ambrose the gastronome
at the top of his voice. ' Don't try and talk me into liking it, Vanya! '
'I'm not trying to talk you into it, Ambrose,' squeaked Vanya. ' You
might have been dining at home.'
'Thank you very much,' trumpeted Ambrose. ' Just imagine your wife
trying to cook filets de perche an naturel in a saucepan, in the kitchen you
share with half a dozen other people! He, he, he! ... Aurevoir, Vanya! ' And
humming to himself Ambrose hurried oft to the verandah under the awning.
Ha, ha, ha! ... Yes, that's how it used to be! ... Some of us old
inhabitants of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov. But boiled
fillets of perch was nothing, my dear Ambrose! What about the sturgeon,
sturgeon in a silver-plated pan, sturgeon filleted and served between
lobsters' tails and fresh caviar? And oeufs en cocotte with mushroom puree
in little bowls? And didn't you like the thrushes' breasts? With truffles?
The quails alia Genovese? Nine roubles fifty! And oh, the band, the polite
waiters! And in July when the whole family's in the country and pressing
literary business is keeping you in town--out on the verandah, in the shade
of a climbing vine, a plate of potage printaniere looking like a golden
stain on the snow-white table-cloth? Do you remember, Ambrose? But of course
you do--I can see from your lips you remember. Not just your salmon or your
perch either--what about the snipe, the woodcock in season, the quail, the
grouse? And the sparkling wines! But I digress, reader.
At half past ten on the evening that Berlioz died at Patriarch's Ponds,
only one upstairs room at Griboyedov was lit. In it sat twelve weary
authors, gathered for a meeting and still waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, on tables and even on the two window ledges, the
management committee of MASSOLIT was suffering badly from the heat and
stuffiness. Not a single fresh breeze penetrated the open window. Moscow was
The Master and Margarita
exuding the heat of the day accumulated in its asphalt and it was
obvious that the night was not going to bring; any relief. There was a smell
of onion coming from the restaurant kitchen in the cellar, everybody wanted
a drink, everybody was nervous and irritable.
Beskudnikov, a quiet, well-dressed essayist with eyes that were at once
attentive yet shifty, took out his watch. The hands were just creeping up to
eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the watch face with his finger and showed it to
his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting on the table, bored and
swinging his feet shod in yellow rubber-soled slippers.
'Well, really . . .' muttered Dvubratsky.
'I suppose the lad's got stuck out at Klyazma,' said Nastasya
Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphaned daughter of a Moscow business man, who had
turned writer and wrote naval war stories under the pseudonym of ' Bo'sun
George '.
'Look here! ' burst out Zagrivov, a writer of popular short stories. '
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be drinking tea out on the balcony
right now instead of stewiing in here. Was this meeting called for ten
o'clock or wasn't it? '
'It must be nice out at Klyazma now,' said IBo'sun George in a tone of
calculated innocence, knowing that the writers' summer colony out at
Perelygino near Klyazma was a sore point. ' I expect the nightingales are
singing there now. Somehow I always seem to work better out of town,
especially in the spring.'
'I've been paying my contributions for three years now to send my sick
wife to that paradise but somehow nothing ever appears on the horizon,' said
Hieronymus Poprikhin the novelist, with bitter venom.
'Some people are lucky and others aren't, that's all,' boomed the
critic Ababkov from the window-ledge.
Bos'un George's little eyes lit up, and softening her contralto rasp
she said:
'We mustn't be jealous, comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas,
only seven more are being built, and there are three thousand of us in
MASSOLIT.'
'Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' put in someone from a corner.
'Well, there you are,' the Bo'sun went on. ' What can one do?
Naturally the dachas are allocated to those with the most talent. . .'
'They're allocated to the people at the top! ' barked Gluk-haryov, a
script writer.
Beskudnikov, yawning artificially, left the room.
'One of them has five rooms to himself at Perelygino,' Glukharyov
shouted after him.
'Lavrovich has six rooms to himself,' shouted Deniskin, ' and the
dining-room's panelled in oak! '
'Well, at the moment that's not the point,' boomed Ababkov. ' The
point is that it's half past eleven.'
A noise began, heralding mutiny. Somebody rang up the hated Perelygino
but got through to the wrong dacha, which turned out to belong to Lavrovich,
where they were told that Lavrovich was out on the river. This produced
utter confusion. Somebody made a wild telephone call to the Fine Arts and
Literature Commission, where of course there was no reply.
'He might have rung up! ' shouted Deniskin, Glukharyov and Quant.
Alas, they shouted in vain. Mikhail Alexandrovich was in no state to
telephone anyone. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a vast hall lit by
thousand-candle-power lamps, what had recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich
was lying on three zinc-topped tables. On the first was the naked,
blood-caked body with. a fractured arm and smashed rib-cage, on the second
the head, it;s front teeth knocked in, its vacant open eyes undisturbed by
the blinding light, and on the third--a heap of mangled rags. Round the
decapitated corpse stood the professor of forensic medicine, the
pathological anatomist and his dissector, a few detectives and Mikhail
Alexandrovich's deputy as chairman of MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin,
summoned by telephone from the bedside of his sick wife.
A car had been sent for Zheldybin and had first taken him and the
detectives (it was about midnight) to the dead man's flat where his papers
were placed under seal, after which they all drove to the morgue.
The group round the remains of the deceased were conferring on the best
course to take--should they sew the severed head back on to the neck or
allow the body to lie in state in the main hall of Griboyedov covered by a
black cloth as far as the chin?
Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was quite incapable of telephoning and
Deniskin, Glukharyov, Quant and Beskudnikov were exciting themselves for
nothing. On the stroke of midnight all twelve writers left the upper storey
and went down to the restaurant. There they said more unkind things about
Mikhail Alexandrovich : all the tables on the verandah were full and they
were obliged to dine in the beautiful but stifling indoor rooms.
On the stroke of midnight the first of these rooms suddenly woke up and
leaped into life with a crash and a roar. A thin male voice gave a desperate
shriek of ' Alleluia!! ' Music. It was the famous Griboyedov jazz band
striking up. Sweat-covered faces lit up, the painted horses on the ceiling
came to life, the lamps seemed to shine brighter. Suddenly, as though
bursting their chains, everybody in the two rooms started dancing, followed
by everybody on the verandah.
Glukharyov danced away with the poetess Tamara Polumesy-atz. Quant
danced, Zhukopov the novelist seized a film actress in a yellow dress and
danced. They all danced--Dragunsky and Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin
danced with the gigantic Bo'sun George and the beautiful girl architect
Semeikin-Hall was grabbed by a stranger in white straw-cloth trousers.
Members and guests, from Moscow and from out of town, they all danced--the
writer Johann from Kronstadt, a producer called Vitya Kuftik from Rostov
with lilac-coloured eczema all over his face, the leading lights of the
poetry section of MASSOLIT-- Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Shpichkin and
Adelfina Buzdyak, young men of unknown occupation with cropped hair and
shoulders padded with cotton wool, an old, old man with a chive sticking out
of his beard danced with a thin, anaemic girl in an orange silk dress.
Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the
dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously ' Sorry, sir! ' Somewhere a
man bellowed through a megaphone:
'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King! ' The vocalist was no
longer singing--he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the
band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the
scullery. In short--hell.
At midnight there appeared a vision in this hell. On to the verandah
strode a handsome, black-eyed man with a pointed beard and wearing a tail
coat. With regal gaze he surveyed his domain. According to some romantics
there had once been a time when this noble figure had worn not tails but a
broad leather belt round his waist, stuck with pistol-butts, that his
raven-black hair had been tied up in a scarlet kerchief and that his brig
had sailed the Caribbean under the Jolly Roger.
But that, of course, is pure fantasy--the Caribbean doesn't exist, no
desperate buccaneers sail it, no corvette ever chases them, no puffs of
cannon-smoke ever roll across the waves. Pure invention. Look at that
scraggy tree, look at the iron railings, the boulevard. . . . And the ice is
floating in the wine-bucket and at the next table there's a man with
ox-like, bloodshot eyes and it's pandemonium. . . . Oh gods--poison, I need
poison! . . .
Suddenly from one of the tables the word ' Berlioz!! ' flew up and
exploded in the air. Instantly the band collapsed and stopped, as though
someone had punched it. ' What, what, what--what?!! '
'Berlioz!!! '
Everybody began rushing about and screaming.
A wave of grief surged up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed around shouting that they must all
immediately, here and now, without delay compose a collective telegram and
send it off.
But what telegram, you may ask? And why send it? Send it where? And
what use is a telegram to the man whose battered skull is being mauled by
the rubber hands of a dissector, whose neck is being pierced by the
professor's crooked needles? He's dead, he doesn't want a telegram. It's all
over, let's not overload the post office.
Yes, he's dead . . . but we are still alive!
The wave of grief rose, lasted for a while and then began to recede.
Somebody went back to their table and--furtively to begin with, then
openly--drank a glass of vodka and took a bite to eat. After all, what's the
point of wasting the cotelettes de volatile? What good are we going to do
Mikhail Alexandrovich by going hungry? We're still alive, aren't we?
Naturally the piano was shut and locked, the band went home and a few
journalists left for their newspaper offices to write obituaries. The news
spread that Zheldybin was back from the morgue. He moved into Berlioz's
upstairs office and at once a rumour started that he was going to take over
from Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members of the management
committee from the restaurant and in an emergency session they began
discussing such urgent questions as the preparation of the colonnaded hall,
the transfer of the body from the morgue, the times at which members could
attend the lying-in-state and other matters connected with the tragic event.
Downstairs in the restaurant life had returned to normal and would have
continued on its usual nocturnal course until closing time at four, had not
something quite abnormal occurred which shocked the diners considerably more
than the news of Berlioz's death.
The first to be alarmed were the cab drivers waiting outside the gates
of Griboyedov. Jerking up with a start one of them shouted:
'Hey! Look at that!' A little glimmer flared up near the iron railings
and started to bob towards the verandah. Some of the diners stood up, stared
and saw that the nickering light was accompanied by a white apparition. As
it approached the verandah trellis every diner froze, eyes bulging,
sturgeon-laden forks motionless in mid-air. The club porter, who at that
moment had just left the restaurant cloakroom to go outside for a smoke,
stubbed out his cigarette and was just going to advance on the apparition
with the aim of barring its way into the restaurant when for some reason he
changed his mind, stopped and grinned stupidly.
The apparition, passing through an opening in the trellis, mounted the
verandah unhindered. As it did so everyone saw that this was no apparition
but the distinguished poet Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny.
He was barefoot and wearing a torn, dirty white Russian blouse. To its
front was safety-pinned a paper ikon with a picture of some unknown saint.
He was wearing long white underpants with a lighted candle in his hand and
his right cheek bore a fresh scratch. It would be hard to fathom the depth
of the silence which reigned on the verandah. Beer poured on to the floor
from a mug held sideways by one of the waiters.
The poet raised the candle above his head and said in a loud voice :
'Greetings, friends!' He then looked under the nearest table and
exclaimed with disappointment:
'No, he's not there.'
Two voices were heard. A bass voice said pitilessly : ' An obvious case
of D.Ts.'
The second, a frightened woman's voice enquired nervously :
'How did the police let him on to the streets in that state? '
Ivan Nikolayich heard this and replied :
'They tried to arrest me twice, once in Skatertny Street and once here
on Bronnaya, but I climbed over the fence and that's how I scratched my
cheek! ' Ivan Nikolayich lifted up his candle and shouted: ' Fellow
artists!' (His squeaky voice grew stronger and more urgent.) ' Listen to me,
all of you! He's come! Catch him at once or he'll do untold harm! '
'What's that? What? What did he say? Who's come? ' came the questions
from all sides.
'A professor,' answered Ivan, ' and it was this professor who killed
Misha Berlioz this evening at Patriarch's.'
By now people were streaming on to the verandah from the indoor rooms
and a crowd began milling round Ivan.
'I beg your pardon, would you say that again more clearly? ' said a
low, courteous voice right beside Ivan Nikolayich's ear. ' Tell me, how was
he killed? Who killed him? '
'A foreigner--he's a professor and a spy,' replied Ivan, looking
round.
'What's his name? ' said the voice again into his ear.
'That's just the trouble!' cried Ivan in frustration. ' If only I knew
his name! I couldn't read it properly on his visiting card ... I only
remember the letter ' W '--the name began with a ' W '. What could it have
been? ' Ivan asked himself aloud, clutching his forehead with his hand. '
We, wi, wa . . . wo . . . Walter? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter? ' The
hairs on Ivan's head started to stand on end from the effort.
'Wolff? ' shouted a woman, trying to help him.
Ivan lost his temper.
'You fool!' he shouted, looking for the woman in the crowd. ' What's
Wolff got to do with it? He didn't do it ... Wo, wa . . . No, I'll never
remember it like this. Now look, everybody-- ring up the police at once and
tell them to send five motorcycles and sidecars with machine-guns to catch
the professor. And don't forget to say that there are two others with him--a
tall fellow in checks with a wobbly pince-nez and a great black cat. . . .
Meanwhile I'm going to search Griboyedov--I can sense that he's here! '
Ivan was by now in a state of some excitement. Pushing the bystanders
aside he began waving his candle about, pouring wax on himself, and started
to look under the tables. Then somebody said ' Doctor! ' and a fat, kindly
face, clean-shaven, smelling of drink and with horn-rimmed spectacles,
appeared in front of Ivan.
'Comrade Bezdomny,' said the face solemnly, ' calm down! You're upset
by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich . . . no, I mean plain
Misha Berlioz. We all realise how you feel. You need rest. You'll be taken
home to bed in a moment and then you can relax and forget all about it. . .'
'Don't you realise,' Ivan interrupted, scowling, ' that we've got to
catch the professor? And all you can do is come creeping up to me talking
all this rubbish! Cretin! '
'Excuse me. Comrade Bezdomny! ' replied the face, blushing, retreating
and already wishing it had never let itself get involved in this affair.
'No, I don't care who you are--I won't excuse you,' said Ivan
Nikolayich with quiet hatred.
A spasm distorted his face, he rapidly switched the candle from his
right to his left hand, swung his arm and punched the sympathetic face on
the ear.
Several people reached the same conclusion at once and hurled
themselves at Ivan. The candle went out, the horn-rims fell off the face and
were instantly smashed underfoot. Ivan let out a dreadful war-whoop audible,
to everybody's embarrassment, as far as the boulevard, and began to defend
himself. There came a tinkle of breaking crockery, women screamed.
While the waiters tied up the poet with dish-cloths, a conversation was
in progress in the cloakroom between the porter and the captain of the brig.
'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' asked the pirate
coldly.
'But Archibald Archibaldovich--I'm a coward,' replied the porter, '
how could I stop him from coming in? He's a member!'
'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' repeated the pirate.
'Please, Archibald Archibaldovich,--' said the porter, turning purple,
' what could I do? I know there are ladies on the ver-andah, but...'
'The ladies don't matter. They don't mind,' replied the pirate,
roasting the porter with his glare. ' But the police mind! There's only one
way a man can walk round Moscow in his underwear--when he's being escorted
by the police on the way to a police station! And you, if you call yourself
a porter, ought to know that if you see a man in that state it's your duty
not to waste a moment but to start blowing your whistle I Do you hear? Can't
you hear what's happening on the verandah? '
The wretched porter could hear the sounds of smashing crockery, groans
and women's screams from the verandah only too well.
'Now what do you propose to do about it? ' enquired the buccaneer.
The skin on the porter's face took on a leprous shade and his eyes went
blank. It seemed to him that the other man's black hair, now neatly parted,
was covered by a fiery silk kerchief. Starched shirtfront and tail-coat
vanished, a pistol was sticking out of his leather belt. The porter saw
himself dangling from the foretop yard-arm, his tongue protruding from his
lifeless, drooping head. He could even hear the waves lapping against the
ship's side. The porter's knees trembled. But the buccaneer took pity on him
and switched off his terrifying glare.
'All right, Nikolai--but mind it never happens again! We can't have
porters like you in a restaurant--you'd better go and be a verger in a
church.' Having said this the captain gave a few rapid, crisp, clear orders:
' Send the barman. Police. Statement. Car. Mental hospital.' And he added :
'Whistle!'
A quarter of an hour later, to the astonishment of the people in the
restaurant, on the boulevard and at the windows of the surrounding houses,
the barman, the porter, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Ryukhin were to
be seen emerging from the gates of Griboyedov dragging a young man trussed
up like a mummy, who was weeping, spitting, lashing out at Ryukhin and
shouting for the whole street to hear :
'You swine! . . . You swine! . . . '
A buzzing crowd collected, discussing the incredible scene. It was of
course an abominable, disgusting, thrilling, revolting scandal which only
ended when a lorry drove away from the gates of Griboyedov carrying the
unfortunate Ivan Nikolayich, the policeman, the barman and Ryukhin.
At half past one in the morning a man with a pointed beard and wearing
a white overall entered the reception hall of a famous psychiatric clinic
recently completed in the suburbs of Moscow. Three orderlies and the poet
Ryukhin stood nervously watching Ivan Nikolayich as he sat on a divan. The
dish-cloths that had been used to pinion Ivan Nikolayich now lay in a heap
on the same divan, leaving his arms and legs free.
As the man came in Ryukhin turned pale, coughed and said timidly:
'Good morning, doctor.'
The doctor bowed to Ryukhin but looked at Ivan Nikolayich, who was
sitting completely immobile and scowling furiously. He did not even move
when the doctor appeared.
'This, doctor,' began Ryukhin in a mysterious whisper, glancing
anxiously at Ivan Nikolayich, ' is the famous poet Ivan Bezdomny. We're
afraid he may have D.Ts.'
'Has he been drinking heavily? ' enquired the doctor through clenched
teeth.
'No, he's had a few drinks, but not enough . . .'
'Has he been trying to catch spiders, rats, little devils or dogs? '
'No,' replied Ryukhin, shuddering. ' I saw him yesterday and this
morning ... he was perfectly well then.'
'Why is he in his underpants? Did you have to pull him out of bed?'
'He came into a restaurant like this, doctor'
'Aha, aha,' said the doctor in a tone of great satisfaction. ' And why
the scratches? Has he been fighting? '
'He fell off the fence and then he hit someone in the restaurant , . .
and someone else, too . . .' ' I see, I see, I see,' said the doctor and
added, turning to Ivan :
'Good morning! '
'Hello, you quack! ' said Ivan, loudly and viciously.
Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he dared not raise his eyes. The
courteous doctor, however, showed no signs of offence and with a practised
gesture took off his spectacles, lifted the skirt of his overall, put them
in his hip pocket and then asked Ivan:
'How old are you? '
'Go to hell! ' shouted Ivan rudely and turned away.
'Why are you being so disagreeable? Have I said anything to upset
you?'
'I'm twenty-three,' said Ivan excitedly, ' and I'm going to lodge a
complaint against all of you--and you in particular, you louse! ' He spat at
Ryukhin.
'What will your complaint be? '
'That you arrested me, a perfectly healthy man, and forcibly dragged
me off to the madhouse! ' answered Ivan in fury.
At this Ryukhin took a close look at Ivan and felt a chill down his
spine : there was not a trace of insanity in the man's eyes. They had been
slightly clouded at Griboyedov, but now they were as clear as before.
'Godfathers! ' thought Ryukhin in terror. ' He really is perfectly
normal! What a ghastly business! Why have we brought him here? There's
nothing the matter with him except a few scratches on his face . . .'
'You are not,' said the doctor calmly, sitting down on a stool on a
single chromium-plated stalk, ' in a madhouse but in a clinic, where nobody
is going to keep you if it isn't necessary.' Ivan gave him a suspicious
scowl, but muttered :
'Thank God for that! At last I've found one normal person among all
these idiots and the worst idiot of the lot is that incompetent fraud Sasha!
'
'Who is this incompetent Sasha? ' enquired the doctor. ' That's him,
Ryukhin,' replied Ivan, jabbing a dirty finger in
Ryukhin's direction, who spluttered in protest. ' That's all the thanks
I get,' he thought bitterly, ' for showing him some sympathy! What a
miserable swine he is! '
* A typical kulak mentality,' said Ivan Nikolayich, who obviously felt
a sudden urge to attack Ryukhin. ' And what's more he's a kulak masquerading
to the morgue, the other carrying the beautiful tram-driver who had been
wounded by slivers of glass. Street sweepers in white overalls swept up the
broken glass and poare'd sand on the pools of blood. Ivan Nikolayich, who
had failed to reach the turnstile in time, collapsed on a bench and remained
there. Several times he tried to ge:t up, but his legs refuse d to obey him,
stricken by a kind of paralysis.
The moment he had heard the first cry the poet had rushed towards the
turnstile and seen the head bouncing on the pavement. The sight unnerved him
so much that he bit his hand until it drew blood. He had naturally forgotten
all about the mad German and could do nothing but wonder how one minute he
coald have been talking to Berlioz and the next... his head ...
Excited people were running along the avenue past the poet shouting
something, but Ivan Nikolayich did not hear them. Suddenly two women
collided alongside him and one of them, witlh a pointed nose and straight
hair, shouted to the other woman just above his ear :
'.. . Anna, it was our Anna! She was coming from Sadovaya! It's her
job, you see . . . she was carrying a litre of sunflower-seed oil to the
grocery and she broke her jug on. the turnstile! It went all over her skirt
amd ruined it and she swore and swore....! And that poor man must have
slipped on the oil and fallen under the tram....'
One word stuck in Ivan Nikolayich's brain--' Anna' . . . ' Anna? . . .
Anna? ' muttered the poet, looking round in alarm. ' Hey, what was that you
said . . .? '
The name ' Anna ' evoked the words ' sunflower-seed oil' and ' Pontius
Pilate '. Bezdomny rejected 'Pilate' and began linking together a chain of
associations starting with ' Anna'. Very soon the chain was complete and it
led straight back to the mad professor.
'Of course! He said the meeting wouldn't take place because Anna had
spilled the oil. And, by God, it won't take place now! And what's more he
said Berlioz would have his head cut off by a woman!! Yes--and the
tram-driver was a woman!!! Who the hell is he? '
There was no longer a grain of doubt that the mysterious professor had
foreseen every detail of Berlioz's death before it had occurred. Two
thoughts struck the poet: firstly--' he's no madman ' and secondly--' did he
arrange the whole thing himself?'
'But how on earth could he? We've got to look into this! '
With a tremendous effort Ivan Nikolayich got up from the bench and ran
back to where he had been talking to the professor, who was fortunately
still there.
The lamps were already lit on Bronnaya Street and a golden moon was
shining over Patriarch's Ponds. By the light of the moon, deceptive as it
always is, it seemed to Ivan Nikolayich that the thing under the professor's
arm was not a stick but a sword.
The ex-choirmaster was sitting on the seat occupied a short while
before by Ivan Nikolayich himself. The choirmaster had now clipped on to his
nose an obviously useless pince-nez. One lens was missing and the other
rattled in its frame. It made the check-suited man look even more repulsive
than when he had shown Berlioz the way to the tramlines. With a chill of
fear Ivan walked up to the professor. A glance at his face convinced him
that there was not a trace of insanity in it.
'Confess--who are you? ' asked Ivan grimly.
The stranger frowned, looked at the poet as if seeing him for the first
time, and answered disagreeably :
'No understand ... no speak Russian . . . '
'He doesn't understand,' put in the choirmaster from his bench,
although no one had asked him.
'Stop pretending! ' said Ivan threateningly, a cold feeling growing in
the pit of his stomach. ' Just now you spoke Russian perfectly well. You're
no German and you're not a professor! You're a spy and a murderer! Show me
your papers! ' cried Ivan angrily.
The enigmatic professor gave his already crooked mouth a further twist
and shrugged his shoulders.
'Look here, citizen,' put in the horrible choirmaster again. ' What do
you mean by upsetting this foreign tourist? You'll have the police after
you! '
The dubious professor put on a haughty look, turned and walked away
from Ivan, who felt himself beginning to lose his head. Gasping, he turned
to the choirmaster :
'Hey, you, help me arrest this criminal! It's your duty! '
The choirmaster leaped eagerly to his feet and bawled :
'What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal? ' His eyes lit up
joyfully. ' That man? If he's a criminal the first thing to do is to shout "
Stop thief! " Otherwise he'll get away. Come on, let's shout together! ' And
the choirmaster opened his mouth wide.
The stupefied Ivan obeyed and shouted ' Stop thief! ' but the
choirmaster fooled him by not making a sound.
Ivan's lonely, hoarse cry was worse than useless. A couple of girls
dodged him and he heard them say ' . .. drunk.'
'So you're in league with him, are you? ' shouted Ivan, helpless with
anger. ' Make fun of me, would you? Out of my way!'
Ivan set off towards his right and the choirmaster did the opposite,
blocking his way. Ivan moved leftward, the other to his right and the same
thing happened.
'Are you trying to get in my way on purpose?' screamed Ivan,
infuriated. ' You're the one I'm going to report to the police!'
Ivan tried to grab the choirmaster by the sleeve, missed and found
himself grasping nothing : it was as if the choirmaster had been swallowed
up by the ground.
With a groan Ivan looked ahead and saw the hated stranger. He had
already reached the exit leading on to Patriarch's Street and he was no
longer alone. The weird choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was
not all. The third member of the company was a cat the size of a pig, black
as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers' whiskers. The threesome was
walking towards Patriarch's Street, the cat trotting along on its hind legs.
As he set off after the villains Ivan realised at once that it was
going to be very hard to catch them up. In a flash the three of them were
across the street and on the Spiridonovka. Ivan quickened his pace, but the
distance between him and his quarry grew no less. Before the poet had
realised it they had left the quiet Spiridonovka and were approaching Nikita
Gate, where his difficulties increased. There was a crowd and to make
matters worse the evil band had decided to use the favourite trick of
bandits on the run and split up.
With great agility the choirmaster jumped on board a moving bus bound
for Arbat Square and vanished. Having lost one of them, Ivan concentrated
his attention on the cat and saw how the strange animal walked up to the
platform of an ' A ' tram waiting at a stop, cheekily pushed off a screaming
woman, grasped the handrail and offered the conductress a ten-kopeck piece.
Ivan was so amazed by the cat's behaviour that he was frozen into
immobility beside a street corner grocery. He was struck with even greater
amazement as he watched the reaction of the conductress. Seeing the cat
board her tram, she yelled, shaking with anger:
'No cats allowed! I'm not moving with a cat on board! Go on--shoo! Get
off, or I'll call the police! '
Both conductress and passengers seemed completely oblivious of the most
extraordinary thing of all: not that a cat had boarded a tramcar--that was
after all possible--but the fact that the animal was offering to pay its
fare!
The cat proved to be not only a fare-paying but a law-abiding animal.
At the first shriek from the conductress it retreated, stepped off the
platform and sat down at the tram-stop, stroking its whiskers with the
ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress yanked the bell-rope and
the car begun to move off, than the cat acted like anyone else who has been
pushed off a tram and is still determined to get to his destination. Letting
all three cars draw past it, the cat jumped on to the coupling-hook of the
last car, latched its paw round a pipe sticking out of one of the windows
and sailed away, having saved itself ten kopecks.
Fascinated by the odious cat, Ivan almost lost sight of the most
important of the three--the professor. Luckily he had not managed to slip
away. Ivan spotted his grey beret in the crowd at the top of Herzen Street.
In a flash Ivan was there too, but in vain. The poet speeded up to a run and
began shoving people aside, but it brought him not an inch nearer the
professor.
Confused though Ivan was, he was nevertheless astounded by the
supernatural speed of the pursuit. Less than twenty seconds after leaving
Nikita Gate Ivan Nikolayich was dazzled by the lights of Arbat Square. A few
more seconds and he was in a dark alleyway with uneven pavements where he
tripped and hurt his knee. Again a well-lit main road--Kropotkin Street--
another side-street, then Ostozhenka Street, then another grim, dirty and
badly-lit alley. It was here that Ivan Nikolayich finally lost sight of his
quarry. The professor had disappeared.
Disconcerted, but not for long, for no apparent reason Ivan Nikolayich
had a sudden intuition that the professor must be in house No. 13, flat 47.
Bursting through the front door, Ivan Nikolayich flew up the stairs,
found the right flat and impatiently rang the bell. He did not have to wait
long. The door was opened by a little girl of about five, who silently
disappeared inside again. The hall was a vast, incredibly neglected room
feebly lit by a tiny electric light that dangled in one corner from a
ceiling black with dirt. On the wall hung a bicycle without any tyres,
beneath it a huge iron-banded trunk. On the shelf over the coat-rack was a
winter
fur cap, its long earflaps untied and hanging down. From behind one of
the doors a man's voice could be heard booming from the radio, angrily
declaiming poetry.
Not at all put out by these unfamiliar surroundings, Ivan Nikolayich
made straight for the corridor, thinking to himself:
'He's obviously hiding in the bathroom.' The passage was dark. Bumping
into the walls, Ivan saw a faint streak of light under a doorway. He groped
for the handle and gave it a gentle turn. The door opened and Ivan found
himself in luck--it was the bathroom.
However it wasn't quite the sort of luck he had hoped for. Amid the
damp steam and by the light of the coals smouldering in the geyser, he made
out a large basin attached to the wall and a bath streaked with black where
the enamel had chipped off. There in the bath stood a naked woman, covered
in soapsuds and holding a loofah. She peered short-sightedly at Ivan as he
came in and obviously mistaking him for someone else in the hellish light
she whispered gaily :
'Kiryushka! Do stop fooling! You must be crazy . . . Fyodor Ivanovich
will be back any minute now. Go on--out you go! ' And she waved her loofah
at Ivan.
The mistake was plain and it was, of course, Ivan Nikolayich's fault,
but rather than admit it he gave a shocked cry of ' Brazen hussy! ' and
suddenly found himself in the kitchen. It was empty. In the gloom a silent
row of ten or so Primuses stood on a marble slab. A single ray of moonlight,
struggling through a dirty window that had not been cleaned for years, cast
a dim light into one corner where there hung a forgotten ikon, the stubs of
two candles still stuck in its frame. Beneath the big ikon was another made
of paper and fastened to the wall with tin-tacks.
Nobody knows what came over Ivan but before letting himself out by the
back staircase he stole one of the candles and the little paper ikon.
Clutching these objects he left the strange apartment, muttering,
embarrassed by his recent experience in the bathroom. He could not help
wondering who the shameless Kiryushka might be and whether he was the owner
of the nasty fur cap with dangling ear-flaps.
In the deserted, cheerless alleyway Bezdomny looked round for the
fugitive but there was no sign of him. Ivan said firmly to himself:
'Of course! He's on the Moscow River! Come on! '
Somebody should of course have asked Ivan Nikolayich why he imagined
the professor would be on the Moscow River of all places, but unfortunately
there was no one to ask him--the nasty little alley was completely empty.
In no time at all Ivan Nikolayich was to be seen on the granite steps
of the Moscow lido. Taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a kindly
old man with a beard, dressed in a torn white Russian blouse and patched,
unlaced boots. Waving him aside, Ivan took a swallow-dive into the water.
The water was so cold that it took his breath away and for a moment he even
doubted whether he would reach the surface again. But reach it he did, and
puffing and snorting, his eyes round with terror, Ivan Nikolayich began
swimming in the black, oily-smelling water towards the shimmering zig-zags
of the embankment lights reflected in the water.
When Ivan clambered damply up the steps at the place where he had left
his clothes in the care of the bearded man, not only his clothes but their
venerable guardian had apparently been spirited away. On the very spot where
the heap of clothes had been there was now a pair of check underpants, a
torn Russian blouse, a candle, a paper ikon and a box of matches. Shaking
his fist into space with impotent rage, Ivan clambered into what was left.
As he did so two thoughts worried him. To begin with he had now lost
his MASSOLIT membership card; normally he never went anywhere without it.
Secondly it occurred to him that he might be arrested for walking around
Moscow in this state. After all, he had practically nothing on but a pair of
underpants. . . .
Ivan tore the buttons off the long underpants where they were fastened
at the ankles, in the hope that people might think they were a pair of
lightweight summer trousers. He then picked up the ikon, the candle and
matches and set off, saying to himself:
'I must go to Griboyedov! He's bound to be there.' Ivan Nikolayich's
fears were completely justified--passers-by noticed him and turned round to
stare, so he decided to leave the main streets and make Us way through the
side-roads where people were not so inquisitive, where there was less chance
of them stopping a barefoot man and badgering him with questions about his
underpants--which obstinately refused to look like trousers.
Ivan plunged into a maze of sidestreets round the Arbat and began to
sidle along the walls, blinking fearfully, glancing round, occasionally
hiding in doorways, avoiding crossroads with traffic lights and the elegant
porticos of embassy mansions.
It was an old two-storied house, painted cream, that stood on the ring
boulevard behind a ragged garden, fenced off from the pavement by
wrought-iron railings. In winter the paved front courtyard was usually full
of shovelled snow, whilst in summer, shaded by a canvas awning, it became a
delightful outdoor extension to the club restaurant.
The house was called ' Griboyedov House ' because it might once have
belonged to an aunt of the famous playwright Alexander Sergeyevich
Griboyedov. Nobody really knows for sure whether she ever owned it or not.
People even say that Griboyedov never had an aunt who owned any such
property. . . . Still, that was its name. What is more, a dubious tale used
to circulate in Moscow of how in the round, colonnaded salon on the second
floor the famous writer had once read extracts from Woe From Wit to that
same aunt as she reclined on a sofa. Perhaps he did ; in any case it doesn't
matter.
It matters much more that this house now belonged to MASSOLIT, which
until his excursion to Patriarch's Ponds was headed by the unfortunate
Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz. No one, least of all the members of MASSOLIT,
called the place ' Griboyedov House '. Everyone simply called it' Griboyedov
' :
'I spent a couple of hours lobbying at Griboyedov yesterday.'
'Well?'
'Wangled myself a month in Yalta.'
'Good for you! '
Or : ' Go to Berlioz--he's seeing people from four to five this
afternoon at Griboyedov . . .'--and so on.
MASSOLIT had installed itself in Griboyedov very comfortably indeed. As
you entered you were first confronted with a notice-board full of
announcements by the various sports clubs, then with the photographs of
every individual member of MASSOLIT, who were strung up (their photographs,
of course) along the walls of the staircase leading to the first floor.
On the door of the first room on the upper storey was a large notice :
' Angling and Weekend Cottages ', with a picture of a carp caught on a hook.
On the door of the second room was a slightly confusing notice: '
Writers' day-return rail warrants. Apply to M.V. Podlozhnaya.'
The next door bore a brief and completely incomprehensible legend: '
Perelygino'. From there the chance visitor's eye would be caught by
countless more notices pinned to the aunt's walnut doors : ' Waiting List
for Paper--Apply to Poklevkina ';
'Cashier's Office '; ' Sketch-Writers : Personal Accounts ' . . .
At the head of the longest queue, which started downstairs at the
porter's desk, was a door under constant siege labelled ' Housing Problem'.
Past the housing problem hung a gorgeous poster showing a cliff, along
whose summit rode a man on a chestnut horse with a rifle slung over his
shoulder. Below were some palm-trees and a balcony. On it sat a shock-haired
young man gazing upwards with a bold, urgent look and holding a fountain pen
in his hands. The wording read : ' All-in Writing Holidays, from two weeks
(short story, novella) to one year (novel, trilogy): Yalta, Suuk-Su,
Borovoye, Tsikhidziri, Makhinjauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).' There was a
queue at this door too, but not an excessively long one--only about a
hundred and fifty people.
Following the erratic twists, the steps up and steps down of
Griboyedov's corridors, one found other notices : 'MASSOLIT-Management',
'Cashiers Nos. 2, 5, 4, 5,' 'Editorial Board', ' MASSOLIT-Chairman',
'Billiard Room', then various subsidiary organisations and finally that
colonnaded salon where the aunt had listened with such delight to the
readings of his comedy by her brilliant nephew.
Every visitor to Griboyedov, unless of course he were completely
insensitive, was made immediately aware of how good life was for the lucky
members of MASSOLIT and he would at once be consumed with black envy. At
once, too, he would curse heaven for having failed to endow him at birth
with literary talent, without which, of course, no one could so much as
dream of acquiring a MASSOLIT membership card--that brown card known to all
Moscow, smelling of expensive leather and embellished with a wide gold
border.
Who is prepared to say a word in defence of envy? It is a despicable
emotion, but put yourself in the visitor's place : what he had seen on the
upper flоог was by no means all. The entire ground floor of the aunt's house
was occupied by a restaurant-- and what a restaurant! It was rightly
considered the best in Moscow. Not only because it occupied two large rooms
with vaulted ceilings and lilac-painted horses with flowing manes, not only
because every table had a lamp shaded with lace, not only because it was
barred to the hoi polloi, but above all for the quality of its food.
Griboyedov could beat any restaurant in Moscow you cared to name and its
prices were extremely moderate.
There is therefore nothing odd in the conversation which the author of
these lines actually overheard once outside the iron railings of Griboyedov
:
'Where are you dining today, Ambrose? '
'What a question! Here, of course, Vanya! Archibald Archibaldovich
whispered to me this morning that there's filets de perche an naturel on the
menu tonight. Sheer virtuosity! '
'You do know how to live, Ambrose! ' sighed Vanya, a thin pinched man
with a carbuncle on his neck, to Ambrose, a strapping, red-lipped,
golden-haired, ruddy-cheeked poet.
'It's no special talent,' countered Ambrose. ' Just a perfectly normal
desire to live a decent, human existence. Now I suppose you're going to say
that you can get perch at the Coliseum. So you can. But a helping of perch
at the Coliseum costs thirty roubles fifty kopecks and here it costs five
fifty! Apart from that the perch at the Coliseum are three days old and
what's more if you go to the Coliseum there's no guarantee you won't get a
bunch of grapes thrown in your face by the first young man to burst in from
Theatre Street. No, I loathe the Coliseum,' shouted Ambrose the gastronome
at the top of his voice. ' Don't try and talk me into liking it, Vanya! '
'I'm not trying to talk you into it, Ambrose,' squeaked Vanya. ' You
might have been dining at home.'
'Thank you very much,' trumpeted Ambrose. ' Just imagine your wife
trying to cook filets de perche an naturel in a saucepan, in the kitchen you
share with half a dozen other people! He, he, he! ... Aurevoir, Vanya! ' And
humming to himself Ambrose hurried oft to the verandah under the awning.
Ha, ha, ha! ... Yes, that's how it used to be! ... Some of us old
inhabitants of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov. But boiled
fillets of perch was nothing, my dear Ambrose! What about the sturgeon,
sturgeon in a silver-plated pan, sturgeon filleted and served between
lobsters' tails and fresh caviar? And oeufs en cocotte with mushroom puree
in little bowls? And didn't you like the thrushes' breasts? With truffles?
The quails alia Genovese? Nine roubles fifty! And oh, the band, the polite
waiters! And in July when the whole family's in the country and pressing
literary business is keeping you in town--out on the verandah, in the shade
of a climbing vine, a plate of potage printaniere looking like a golden
stain on the snow-white table-cloth? Do you remember, Ambrose? But of course
you do--I can see from your lips you remember. Not just your salmon or your
perch either--what about the snipe, the woodcock in season, the quail, the
grouse? And the sparkling wines! But I digress, reader.
At half past ten on the evening that Berlioz died at Patriarch's Ponds,
only one upstairs room at Griboyedov was lit. In it sat twelve weary
authors, gathered for a meeting and still waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, on tables and even on the two window ledges, the
management committee of MASSOLIT was suffering badly from the heat and
stuffiness. Not a single fresh breeze penetrated the open window. Moscow was
The Master and Margarita
exuding the heat of the day accumulated in its asphalt and it was
obvious that the night was not going to bring; any relief. There was a smell
of onion coming from the restaurant kitchen in the cellar, everybody wanted
a drink, everybody was nervous and irritable.
Beskudnikov, a quiet, well-dressed essayist with eyes that were at once
attentive yet shifty, took out his watch. The hands were just creeping up to
eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the watch face with his finger and showed it to
his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting on the table, bored and
swinging his feet shod in yellow rubber-soled slippers.
'Well, really . . .' muttered Dvubratsky.
'I suppose the lad's got stuck out at Klyazma,' said Nastasya
Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphaned daughter of a Moscow business man, who had
turned writer and wrote naval war stories under the pseudonym of ' Bo'sun
George '.
'Look here! ' burst out Zagrivov, a writer of popular short stories. '
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be drinking tea out on the balcony
right now instead of stewiing in here. Was this meeting called for ten
o'clock or wasn't it? '
'It must be nice out at Klyazma now,' said IBo'sun George in a tone of
calculated innocence, knowing that the writers' summer colony out at
Perelygino near Klyazma was a sore point. ' I expect the nightingales are
singing there now. Somehow I always seem to work better out of town,
especially in the spring.'
'I've been paying my contributions for three years now to send my sick
wife to that paradise but somehow nothing ever appears on the horizon,' said
Hieronymus Poprikhin the novelist, with bitter venom.
'Some people are lucky and others aren't, that's all,' boomed the
critic Ababkov from the window-ledge.
Bos'un George's little eyes lit up, and softening her contralto rasp
she said:
'We mustn't be jealous, comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas,
only seven more are being built, and there are three thousand of us in
MASSOLIT.'
'Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' put in someone from a corner.
'Well, there you are,' the Bo'sun went on. ' What can one do?
Naturally the dachas are allocated to those with the most talent. . .'
'They're allocated to the people at the top! ' barked Gluk-haryov, a
script writer.
Beskudnikov, yawning artificially, left the room.
'One of them has five rooms to himself at Perelygino,' Glukharyov
shouted after him.
'Lavrovich has six rooms to himself,' shouted Deniskin, ' and the
dining-room's panelled in oak! '
'Well, at the moment that's not the point,' boomed Ababkov. ' The
point is that it's half past eleven.'
A noise began, heralding mutiny. Somebody rang up the hated Perelygino
but got through to the wrong dacha, which turned out to belong to Lavrovich,
where they were told that Lavrovich was out on the river. This produced
utter confusion. Somebody made a wild telephone call to the Fine Arts and
Literature Commission, where of course there was no reply.
'He might have rung up! ' shouted Deniskin, Glukharyov and Quant.
Alas, they shouted in vain. Mikhail Alexandrovich was in no state to
telephone anyone. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a vast hall lit by
thousand-candle-power lamps, what had recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich
was lying on three zinc-topped tables. On the first was the naked,
blood-caked body with. a fractured arm and smashed rib-cage, on the second
the head, it;s front teeth knocked in, its vacant open eyes undisturbed by
the blinding light, and on the third--a heap of mangled rags. Round the
decapitated corpse stood the professor of forensic medicine, the
pathological anatomist and his dissector, a few detectives and Mikhail
Alexandrovich's deputy as chairman of MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin,
summoned by telephone from the bedside of his sick wife.
A car had been sent for Zheldybin and had first taken him and the
detectives (it was about midnight) to the dead man's flat where his papers
were placed under seal, after which they all drove to the morgue.
The group round the remains of the deceased were conferring on the best
course to take--should they sew the severed head back on to the neck or
allow the body to lie in state in the main hall of Griboyedov covered by a
black cloth as far as the chin?
Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was quite incapable of telephoning and
Deniskin, Glukharyov, Quant and Beskudnikov were exciting themselves for
nothing. On the stroke of midnight all twelve writers left the upper storey
and went down to the restaurant. There they said more unkind things about
Mikhail Alexandrovich : all the tables on the verandah were full and they
were obliged to dine in the beautiful but stifling indoor rooms.
On the stroke of midnight the first of these rooms suddenly woke up and
leaped into life with a crash and a roar. A thin male voice gave a desperate
shriek of ' Alleluia!! ' Music. It was the famous Griboyedov jazz band
striking up. Sweat-covered faces lit up, the painted horses on the ceiling
came to life, the lamps seemed to shine brighter. Suddenly, as though
bursting their chains, everybody in the two rooms started dancing, followed
by everybody on the verandah.
Glukharyov danced away with the poetess Tamara Polumesy-atz. Quant
danced, Zhukopov the novelist seized a film actress in a yellow dress and
danced. They all danced--Dragunsky and Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin
danced with the gigantic Bo'sun George and the beautiful girl architect
Semeikin-Hall was grabbed by a stranger in white straw-cloth trousers.
Members and guests, from Moscow and from out of town, they all danced--the
writer Johann from Kronstadt, a producer called Vitya Kuftik from Rostov
with lilac-coloured eczema all over his face, the leading lights of the
poetry section of MASSOLIT-- Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Shpichkin and
Adelfina Buzdyak, young men of unknown occupation with cropped hair and
shoulders padded with cotton wool, an old, old man with a chive sticking out
of his beard danced with a thin, anaemic girl in an orange silk dress.
Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the
dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously ' Sorry, sir! ' Somewhere a
man bellowed through a megaphone:
'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King! ' The vocalist was no
longer singing--he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the
band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the
scullery. In short--hell.
At midnight there appeared a vision in this hell. On to the verandah
strode a handsome, black-eyed man with a pointed beard and wearing a tail
coat. With regal gaze he surveyed his domain. According to some romantics
there had once been a time when this noble figure had worn not tails but a
broad leather belt round his waist, stuck with pistol-butts, that his
raven-black hair had been tied up in a scarlet kerchief and that his brig
had sailed the Caribbean under the Jolly Roger.
But that, of course, is pure fantasy--the Caribbean doesn't exist, no
desperate buccaneers sail it, no corvette ever chases them, no puffs of
cannon-smoke ever roll across the waves. Pure invention. Look at that
scraggy tree, look at the iron railings, the boulevard. . . . And the ice is
floating in the wine-bucket and at the next table there's a man with
ox-like, bloodshot eyes and it's pandemonium. . . . Oh gods--poison, I need
poison! . . .
Suddenly from one of the tables the word ' Berlioz!! ' flew up and
exploded in the air. Instantly the band collapsed and stopped, as though
someone had punched it. ' What, what, what--what?!! '
'Berlioz!!! '
Everybody began rushing about and screaming.
A wave of grief surged up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed around shouting that they must all
immediately, here and now, without delay compose a collective telegram and
send it off.
But what telegram, you may ask? And why send it? Send it where? And
what use is a telegram to the man whose battered skull is being mauled by
the rubber hands of a dissector, whose neck is being pierced by the
professor's crooked needles? He's dead, he doesn't want a telegram. It's all
over, let's not overload the post office.
Yes, he's dead . . . but we are still alive!
The wave of grief rose, lasted for a while and then began to recede.
Somebody went back to their table and--furtively to begin with, then
openly--drank a glass of vodka and took a bite to eat. After all, what's the
point of wasting the cotelettes de volatile? What good are we going to do
Mikhail Alexandrovich by going hungry? We're still alive, aren't we?
Naturally the piano was shut and locked, the band went home and a few
journalists left for their newspaper offices to write obituaries. The news
spread that Zheldybin was back from the morgue. He moved into Berlioz's
upstairs office and at once a rumour started that he was going to take over
from Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members of the management
committee from the restaurant and in an emergency session they began
discussing such urgent questions as the preparation of the colonnaded hall,
the transfer of the body from the morgue, the times at which members could
attend the lying-in-state and other matters connected with the tragic event.
Downstairs in the restaurant life had returned to normal and would have
continued on its usual nocturnal course until closing time at four, had not
something quite abnormal occurred which shocked the diners considerably more
than the news of Berlioz's death.
The first to be alarmed were the cab drivers waiting outside the gates
of Griboyedov. Jerking up with a start one of them shouted:
'Hey! Look at that!' A little glimmer flared up near the iron railings
and started to bob towards the verandah. Some of the diners stood up, stared
and saw that the nickering light was accompanied by a white apparition. As
it approached the verandah trellis every diner froze, eyes bulging,
sturgeon-laden forks motionless in mid-air. The club porter, who at that
moment had just left the restaurant cloakroom to go outside for a smoke,
stubbed out his cigarette and was just going to advance on the apparition
with the aim of barring its way into the restaurant when for some reason he
changed his mind, stopped and grinned stupidly.
The apparition, passing through an opening in the trellis, mounted the
verandah unhindered. As it did so everyone saw that this was no apparition
but the distinguished poet Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny.
He was barefoot and wearing a torn, dirty white Russian blouse. To its
front was safety-pinned a paper ikon with a picture of some unknown saint.
He was wearing long white underpants with a lighted candle in his hand and
his right cheek bore a fresh scratch. It would be hard to fathom the depth
of the silence which reigned on the verandah. Beer poured on to the floor
from a mug held sideways by one of the waiters.
The poet raised the candle above his head and said in a loud voice :
'Greetings, friends!' He then looked under the nearest table and
exclaimed with disappointment:
'No, he's not there.'
Two voices were heard. A bass voice said pitilessly : ' An obvious case
of D.Ts.'
The second, a frightened woman's voice enquired nervously :
'How did the police let him on to the streets in that state? '
Ivan Nikolayich heard this and replied :
'They tried to arrest me twice, once in Skatertny Street and once here
on Bronnaya, but I climbed over the fence and that's how I scratched my
cheek! ' Ivan Nikolayich lifted up his candle and shouted: ' Fellow
artists!' (His squeaky voice grew stronger and more urgent.) ' Listen to me,
all of you! He's come! Catch him at once or he'll do untold harm! '
'What's that? What? What did he say? Who's come? ' came the questions
from all sides.
'A professor,' answered Ivan, ' and it was this professor who killed
Misha Berlioz this evening at Patriarch's.'
By now people were streaming on to the verandah from the indoor rooms
and a crowd began milling round Ivan.
'I beg your pardon, would you say that again more clearly? ' said a
low, courteous voice right beside Ivan Nikolayich's ear. ' Tell me, how was
he killed? Who killed him? '
'A foreigner--he's a professor and a spy,' replied Ivan, looking
round.
'What's his name? ' said the voice again into his ear.
'That's just the trouble!' cried Ivan in frustration. ' If only I knew
his name! I couldn't read it properly on his visiting card ... I only
remember the letter ' W '--the name began with a ' W '. What could it have
been? ' Ivan asked himself aloud, clutching his forehead with his hand. '
We, wi, wa . . . wo . . . Walter? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter? ' The
hairs on Ivan's head started to stand on end from the effort.
'Wolff? ' shouted a woman, trying to help him.
Ivan lost his temper.
'You fool!' he shouted, looking for the woman in the crowd. ' What's
Wolff got to do with it? He didn't do it ... Wo, wa . . . No, I'll never
remember it like this. Now look, everybody-- ring up the police at once and
tell them to send five motorcycles and sidecars with machine-guns to catch
the professor. And don't forget to say that there are two others with him--a
tall fellow in checks with a wobbly pince-nez and a great black cat. . . .
Meanwhile I'm going to search Griboyedov--I can sense that he's here! '
Ivan was by now in a state of some excitement. Pushing the bystanders
aside he began waving his candle about, pouring wax on himself, and started
to look under the tables. Then somebody said ' Doctor! ' and a fat, kindly
face, clean-shaven, smelling of drink and with horn-rimmed spectacles,
appeared in front of Ivan.
'Comrade Bezdomny,' said the face solemnly, ' calm down! You're upset
by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich . . . no, I mean plain
Misha Berlioz. We all realise how you feel. You need rest. You'll be taken
home to bed in a moment and then you can relax and forget all about it. . .'
'Don't you realise,' Ivan interrupted, scowling, ' that we've got to
catch the professor? And all you can do is come creeping up to me talking
all this rubbish! Cretin! '
'Excuse me. Comrade Bezdomny! ' replied the face, blushing, retreating
and already wishing it had never let itself get involved in this affair.
'No, I don't care who you are--I won't excuse you,' said Ivan
Nikolayich with quiet hatred.
A spasm distorted his face, he rapidly switched the candle from his
right to his left hand, swung his arm and punched the sympathetic face on
the ear.
Several people reached the same conclusion at once and hurled
themselves at Ivan. The candle went out, the horn-rims fell off the face and
were instantly smashed underfoot. Ivan let out a dreadful war-whoop audible,
to everybody's embarrassment, as far as the boulevard, and began to defend
himself. There came a tinkle of breaking crockery, women screamed.
While the waiters tied up the poet with dish-cloths, a conversation was
in progress in the cloakroom between the porter and the captain of the brig.
'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' asked the pirate
coldly.
'But Archibald Archibaldovich--I'm a coward,' replied the porter, '
how could I stop him from coming in? He's a member!'
'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' repeated the pirate.
'Please, Archibald Archibaldovich,--' said the porter, turning purple,
' what could I do? I know there are ladies on the ver-andah, but...'
'The ladies don't matter. They don't mind,' replied the pirate,
roasting the porter with his glare. ' But the police mind! There's only one
way a man can walk round Moscow in his underwear--when he's being escorted
by the police on the way to a police station! And you, if you call yourself
a porter, ought to know that if you see a man in that state it's your duty
not to waste a moment but to start blowing your whistle I Do you hear? Can't
you hear what's happening on the verandah? '
The wretched porter could hear the sounds of smashing crockery, groans
and women's screams from the verandah only too well.
'Now what do you propose to do about it? ' enquired the buccaneer.
The skin on the porter's face took on a leprous shade and his eyes went
blank. It seemed to him that the other man's black hair, now neatly parted,
was covered by a fiery silk kerchief. Starched shirtfront and tail-coat
vanished, a pistol was sticking out of his leather belt. The porter saw
himself dangling from the foretop yard-arm, his tongue protruding from his
lifeless, drooping head. He could even hear the waves lapping against the
ship's side. The porter's knees trembled. But the buccaneer took pity on him
and switched off his terrifying glare.
'All right, Nikolai--but mind it never happens again! We can't have
porters like you in a restaurant--you'd better go and be a verger in a
church.' Having said this the captain gave a few rapid, crisp, clear orders:
' Send the barman. Police. Statement. Car. Mental hospital.' And he added :
'Whistle!'
A quarter of an hour later, to the astonishment of the people in the
restaurant, on the boulevard and at the windows of the surrounding houses,
the barman, the porter, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Ryukhin were to
be seen emerging from the gates of Griboyedov dragging a young man trussed
up like a mummy, who was weeping, spitting, lashing out at Ryukhin and
shouting for the whole street to hear :
'You swine! . . . You swine! . . . '
A buzzing crowd collected, discussing the incredible scene. It was of
course an abominable, disgusting, thrilling, revolting scandal which only
ended when a lorry drove away from the gates of Griboyedov carrying the
unfortunate Ivan Nikolayich, the policeman, the barman and Ryukhin.
At half past one in the morning a man with a pointed beard and wearing
a white overall entered the reception hall of a famous psychiatric clinic
recently completed in the suburbs of Moscow. Three orderlies and the poet
Ryukhin stood nervously watching Ivan Nikolayich as he sat on a divan. The
dish-cloths that had been used to pinion Ivan Nikolayich now lay in a heap
on the same divan, leaving his arms and legs free.
As the man came in Ryukhin turned pale, coughed and said timidly:
'Good morning, doctor.'
The doctor bowed to Ryukhin but looked at Ivan Nikolayich, who was
sitting completely immobile and scowling furiously. He did not even move
when the doctor appeared.
'This, doctor,' began Ryukhin in a mysterious whisper, glancing
anxiously at Ivan Nikolayich, ' is the famous poet Ivan Bezdomny. We're
afraid he may have D.Ts.'
'Has he been drinking heavily? ' enquired the doctor through clenched
teeth.
'No, he's had a few drinks, but not enough . . .'
'Has he been trying to catch spiders, rats, little devils or dogs? '
'No,' replied Ryukhin, shuddering. ' I saw him yesterday and this
morning ... he was perfectly well then.'
'Why is he in his underpants? Did you have to pull him out of bed?'
'He came into a restaurant like this, doctor'
'Aha, aha,' said the doctor in a tone of great satisfaction. ' And why
the scratches? Has he been fighting? '
'He fell off the fence and then he hit someone in the restaurant , . .
and someone else, too . . .' ' I see, I see, I see,' said the doctor and
added, turning to Ivan :
'Good morning! '
'Hello, you quack! ' said Ivan, loudly and viciously.
Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he dared not raise his eyes. The
courteous doctor, however, showed no signs of offence and with a practised
gesture took off his spectacles, lifted the skirt of his overall, put them
in his hip pocket and then asked Ivan:
'How old are you? '
'Go to hell! ' shouted Ivan rudely and turned away.
'Why are you being so disagreeable? Have I said anything to upset
you?'
'I'm twenty-three,' said Ivan excitedly, ' and I'm going to lodge a
complaint against all of you--and you in particular, you louse! ' He spat at
Ryukhin.
'What will your complaint be? '
'That you arrested me, a perfectly healthy man, and forcibly dragged
me off to the madhouse! ' answered Ivan in fury.
At this Ryukhin took a close look at Ivan and felt a chill down his
spine : there was not a trace of insanity in the man's eyes. They had been
slightly clouded at Griboyedov, but now they were as clear as before.
'Godfathers! ' thought Ryukhin in terror. ' He really is perfectly
normal! What a ghastly business! Why have we brought him here? There's
nothing the matter with him except a few scratches on his face . . .'
'You are not,' said the doctor calmly, sitting down on a stool on a
single chromium-plated stalk, ' in a madhouse but in a clinic, where nobody
is going to keep you if it isn't necessary.' Ivan gave him a suspicious
scowl, but muttered :
'Thank God for that! At last I've found one normal person among all
these idiots and the worst idiot of the lot is that incompetent fraud Sasha!
'
'Who is this incompetent Sasha? ' enquired the doctor. ' That's him,
Ryukhin,' replied Ivan, jabbing a dirty finger in
Ryukhin's direction, who spluttered in protest. ' That's all the thanks
I get,' he thought bitterly, ' for showing him some sympathy! What a
miserable swine he is! '
* A typical kulak mentality,' said Ivan Nikolayich, who obviously felt
a sudden urge to attack Ryukhin. ' And what's more he's a kulak masquerading