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ecstatically : ' Go on! '
The visitor was highly amused by the story of how the cat had paid the
conductress and he was choking with suppressed laughter as Ivan, stimulated
by the success of his story-telling, hopped about on his haunches, imitating
the cat stroking his whiskers with a ten-kopeck piece.
'And so,' said Ivan, saddening as he described the scene at
Griboyedov, ' here I am.'
The visitor laid a sympathetic hand on the wretched poet's shoulder and
said:
'Unhappy poet! But it's your own fault, my dear fellow. You shouldn't
have treated him so carelessly and rudely. Now you're paying for it. You
should be thankful that you got off comparatively lightly.'
'But who on earth is he? ' asked Ivan, clenching his fists in
excitement.
The visitor stared at Ivan and answered with a question :
'You won't get violent, will you? We're all unstable people here . . .
There won't be any calls for the doctor, injections or any disturbances of
that sort, will there? '
'No, no! ' exclaimed Ivan. ' Tell me, who is he? '
'Very well,' replied the visitor, and said slowly and gravely :
'At Patriarch's Ponds yesterday you met Satan.'
As he had promised, Ivan did not become violent, but he was powerfully
shaken.
'It can't be! He doesn't exist!'
'Come, come! Surely you of all people can't say that. You were
apparently one of the first to suffer from him. Here you are, shut up in a
psychiatric clinic, and you still say he doesn't exist. How strange! '
Ivan was reduced to speechlessness.
'As soon as you started to describe him,' the visitor went on, ' I
guessed who it was that you were talking to yesterday. I must say I'm
surprised at Berlioz! You, of course, are an innocent,' again the visitor
apologised for his expression, ' but he, from what I've heard of him, was at
least fairly well read. The first remarks that this professor made to you
dispelled all my doubts. He's unmistakeable, my friend! You are ... do
forgive me again, but unless I'm wrong, you are an ignorant person, aren't
you? '
'I am indeed,' agreed the new Ivan.
'Well, you see, even the face you described, the different-coloured
eyes, the eyebrows . . . Forgive me, but have you even seen the opera Faust?
'
Ivan mumbled an embarrassed excuse.
'There you are, it's not surprising! But, as I said before, I'm
surprised at Berlioz. He's not only well read but extremely cunning.
Although in his defence I must say that Woland is quite capable of throwing
dust in the eyes of men who are even cleverer than Berlioz.'
'What? ' shouted Ivan.
Quiet!'
With a sweeping gesture Ivan smacked his forehead with his palm and
croaked:
'I see it now. There was a letter " W " on his visiting card. Well I'm
damned! ' He sat for a while in perplexity, staring at the moon floating
past the grille and then said: ' So he really might have known Pontius
Pilate? He was alive then, I suppose? And they call me mad! ' he added,
pointing indignantly towards the door.
The visitor's mouth set in a fold of bitterness.
'We must look the facts in the face.' The visitor turned his face
towards the moon as it raced through a cloud. ' Both you and I are mad,
there's no point in denying it. He gave you a shock and it sent you mad,
because you were temperamentally liable to react in that way. Nevertheless
what you have described unquestionably happened in fact. But it is so
unusual that even Stravinsky, a psychiatrist of genius, naturally didn't
believe you. Has he examined you? (Ivan nodded.) The man you were talking to
was with Pontius Pilate, he did have breakfast with Kant and now he has paid
a call on Moscow.' ' But God knows what he may do here! Shouldn't we try and
catch him somehow! ' The old Ivan raised his head, uncertain but not yet
quite extinguished.
'You've already tried and look where it's got you,' said the visitor
ironically. ' I don't advise others to try. But he will cause more trouble,
you may be sure of that. How infuriating, though, that you met him and not
I. Although I'm a burnt-out man and the embers have died away to ash, I
swear that I would have given up Praskovya Fyodorovna's bunch of keys in
exchange for that meeting. Those keys are all I have. I am destitute.' ' Why
do you want to see him so badly? ' After a long, gloomy silence the visitor
said at last:
'You see, it's most extraordinary, but I am in here for exactly the
same reason that you are, I mean because of Pontius Pilate.' The visitor
glanced uneasily round and said : ' The fact is that a year ago I wrote a
novel about Pilate.'
'Are you a writer? ' asked the poet with interest. The visitor
frowned, threatened Ivan with his fist and said:
'I am a master.' His expression hardened and he pulled out of his
dressing gown pocket a greasy black cap with the letter ' M ' embroidered on
it in yellow silk. He put the cap on and showed himself to Ivan in profile
and full face to prove that he was a master. ' She sewed it for me with her
own hands,' he added mysteriously. ' What is your name? '
'I no longer have a name,' replied the curious visitor with grim
contempt. ' I have renounced it, as I have renounced life itself. Let us
forget it.'
'At least tell me about your novel,' asked Ivan tactfully. ' If you
wish. I should say that my life has been a somewhat unusual one,' began the
visitor.
A historian by training, two years ago he had, it seemed, been employed
in one of the Moscow museums. He was also a translator.
'From which language? ' asked Ivan.
'I know five languages beside my own,' replied the visitor. ' English,
French, German, Latin and Greek. And I read Italian a little.'
'Phew! ' Ivan whistled with envy.
This historian lived alone, had no relatives and knew almost no one in
Moscow. One day he won a hundred thousand roubles.
'Imagine my astonishment,' whispered the visitor in his black cap, '
when I fished my lottery ticket out of the laundry basket and saw that it
had the same number as the winning draw printed in the paper! The museum,'
he explained, ' had given me the ticket.'
Having won his hundred thousand, Ivan's mysterious guest bought some
books, gave up his room on Myasnitskaya Street...
'Ugh, it was a filthy hole! ' he snarled.
. . . and rented two rooms in the basement of a small house with a
garden near the Arbat. He gave up his job in the museum and began writing
his novel about Pontius Pilate.
'Ah, that was a golden age! ' whispered the narrator, his eyes
shining. ' A completely self-contained little flat and a hall with a sink
and running water,' he emphasised proudly, ' little windows just above the
level of the path leading from the garden gate. Only a few steps away, by
the garden fence, was a lilac, a lime tree and a maple. Ah, me! In winter I
rarely saw anyone walking up the garden path or heard the crunch of snow.
And there was always a blaze in my little stove! But suddenly it was spring
and through the muddied panes of my windows I saw first the bare branches
then the green of the first leaves. And then, last spring, something
happened which was far more delightful than winning a hundred thousand
roubles. And that, you must agree, is an enormous sum of money! '
'It is,' Ivan agreed, listening intently.
'I had opened the windows and was sitting in the second room, which
was quite tiny.' The visitor made measuring gestures. ' Like this--the divan
here, another divan along the other wall, a beautiful lamp on a little table
between them, a bookcase by the window and over here a little bureau. The
main room was huge--fourteen square metres!--books, more books and a stove.
It was a marvellous little place. How deliciously the lilac used to smell! I
was growing light-headed with fatigue and Pilate was coming to an end . . .'
'White cloak, red lining! How I know the feeling! ' exclaimed Ivan.
'Precisely! Pilate was rushing to a conclusion and I already knew what
the last words of the novel would be--" the fifth Procurator of Judaea, the
knight Pontius Pilate ". Naturally I used to go out for walks. A hundred
thousand is a huge sum and I had a handsome suit. Or I would go out for
lunch to a restaurant. There used to be a wonderful restaurant in the Arbat,
I don't know whether it's still there.'
Here his eyes opened wide and as he whispered he gazed at the moon.
'She was carrying some of those repulsive yellow flowers. God knows
what they're called, but they are somehow always the first to come out in
spring. They stood out very sharply against her black dress. She was
carrying yellow flowers! It's an ugly colour. She turned off Tverskaya into
a side-street and turned round. You know the Tverskaya, don't you? There
must have been a thousand people on it but I swear to you that she saw no
one but me. She had a look of suffering and I was struck less by her beauty
than by the extraordinary loneliness in her eyes. Obeying that yellow signal
I too turned into the side-street and followed her. We walked in silence
down that dreary, winding little street without saying a word, she on one
side, I on the other. There was not another soul in the street. I was in
agony because I felt I had to speak to her and was worried that I might not
be able to utter a word, she would disappear and I should never see her
again. Then, if you can believe it, she said :
" Do you like my flowers? "
'I remember exactly how her voice sounded. It was pitched fairly low
but with a catch in it and stupid as it may sound I had the impression that
it echoed across the street and reverberated from the dirty yellow wall. I
quickly crossed to her side and going up to her replied : " No ' She looked
at me in surprise and suddenly, completely unexpectedly, I realised that I
had been in love with this woman all my life. Extraordinary, isn't it?
You'll say I was mad, I expect.'
'I say nothing of the sort,' exclaimed Ivan, adding : ' Please, please
go on.'
The visitor continued:
'Yes, she looked at me in surprise and then she said : " Don't you
like flowers at all? "
'There was, I felt, hostility in her voice. I walked on alongside her,
trying to walk in step with her and to my amazement I felt completely free
of shyness.
'" No, I like flowers, only not these," I said.
'" Which flowers do you like? "
'" I love roses."
'I immediately regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily
and threw her flowers into the gutter. Slightly embarrassed, I picked them
up and gave them to her but she pushed them away with a smile and I had to
carry them.
'We walked on in silence for a while until she pulled the flowers out
of my hand and threw them in the roadway, then slipped her black-gloved hand
into mine and we went on.'
'Go on,' said Ivan, ' and please don't leave anything out! '
'Well,' said the visitor, ' you can guess what happened after that.'
He wiped away a sudden tear with his right sleeve and went on. ' Love leaped
up out at us like a murderer jumping out of a dark alley. It shocked us
both--the shock of a stroke of lightning, the shock of a flick-knife. Later
she said that this wasn't so, that we had of course been in love for years
without knowing each other and never meeting, that she had merely been
living with another man and I had been living with . . . that girl, what was
her name . . .? '
'With whom? ' asked Bezdomny.
'With . . . er, that girl . . . she was called . . .' said the
visitor, snapping his fingers in a vain effort to remember.
'Were you married to her? ' ' Yes, of course I was, that's why it's so
embarrassing to forget ... I think it was Varya ... or was it Manya? . . .
no, Varya, that's it ... she wore a striped dress, worked at the museum. . .
. No good, can't remember. So, she used to say, she had gone out that
morning carrying those yellow flowers for me to find her at last and that if
it hadn't happened she would have committed suicide because her life was
empty.
'Yes, the shock of love struck us both at once. I knew it within the
hour when we found ourselves, quite unawares, on the embankment below the
Kremlin wall. We talked as though we had only parted the day before, as
though we had known each other for years. We agreed to meet the next day at
the same place by the Moscow River and we did. The May sun shone on us and
soon that woman became my mistress.
'She came to me every day at noon. I began waiting for her from early
morning. The strain of waiting gave me hallucinations of seeing things on
the table. After ten minutes I would sit at my little window and start to
listen for the creak of that ancient garden gate. It was curious : until I
met her no one ever came into our little yard. Now it seemed to me that the
whole town was crowding in. The gate would creak, my heart would bound and
outside the window a pair of muddy boots would appear level with my head. A
knife-grinder. Who in our house could possibly need a knife-grinder? What
was there for him to sharpen? Whose knives?
'She only came through that gate once a day, but my heart would beat
faster from at least ten false alarms every morning. Then when her time came
and the hands were pointing to noon, my heart went on thumping until her
shoes with their black patent-leather straps and steel buckles drew level,
almost soundlessly, with my basement window.
'Sometimes for fun she would stop at the second window and tap the
pane with her foot. In a second I would appear at that window but always her
shoe and her black silk dress that blocked the light had vanished and I
would turn instead to the hall to let her in.
'Nobody knew about our liaison, I can swear to that, although as a
rule no one can keep such affairs a complete secret. Her husband didn't
know, our friends didn't know. The other tenants in that forgotten old house
knew, of course, because they could see that a woman called on me every day,
but they never knew her name.'
'Who was she?' asked Ivan, deeply fascinated by this love story.
The visitor made a sign which meant that he would never reveal this to
anyone and went on with his narrative.
The master and his unknown mistress loved one another so strongly that
they became utterly inseparable. Ivan could clearly see for himself the two
basement rooms, where it was always twilight from the shade of the lilac
bush and the fence : the shabby red furniture, the bureau, the clock on top
of it which struck the half-hours and books, books from the painted floor to
the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the stove.
Ivan learned that from the very first days of their affair the man and
his mistress decided that fate had brought them together on the corner of
the Tverskaya and that side-street and that they were made for each other to
eternity.
Ivan heard his visitor describe how the lovers spent their day. Her
first action on arrival was to put on an apron and light an oil stove on a
wooden table in the cramped hall, with its tap and sink that the wretched
patient had recalled with such pride. There she cooked lunch and served it
on an oval table in the living-room. When the May storms blew and the water
slashed noisily past the dim little windows, threatening to flood their
home, the lovers stoked up the stove and baked potatoes in it. Steam poured
out of the potatoes as they cut them open, the charred skins blackened their
fingers. There was laughter in the basement, after the rain the trees in the
garden scattered broken branches and white blossom.
When the storms were past and the heat of summer came, the vase was
filled with the long-awaited roses that they both loved so much. The man who
called himself the master worked feverishly at his novel and the book cast
its spell over the unknown woman.
'At times I actually felt jealous of it,' the moonlight visitor
whispered to Ivan.
Running her sharp, pointed fingernails through her hair, she
ceaselessly read and re-read the manuscript, sewing that same black cap as
she did so. Sometimes she would squat down by the lower bookshelves or stand
by the topmost ones and wipe the hundreds of dusty spines. Sensing fame, she
drove him on and started to call him ' the master '. She waited impatiently
for the promised final words about the fifth Procurator of Judaea, reading
out in a loud sing-song random sentences that pleased her and saying that
the novel was her life.
It was finished in August and handed to a typist who transcribed it in
five copies. At last came the moment to leave the secret refuge and enter
the outside world.
'When I emerged into the world clutching my novel, my life came to an
end,' whispered the master. He hung his head and for a long while wagged the
black cap with its embroidered yellow ' M '. He went on with his story but
it grew more disjointed and Ivan could only gather that his visitor had
suffered some disaster.
'It was my first sortie into the literary world, but now that it's all
over and I am ruined for everyone to see, it fills me with horror to think
of it! ' whispered the master solemnly, raising his hand. ' God, what a
shock he gave me! '
'Who? ' murmured Ivan, scarcely audibly, afraid to disturb the
master's inspiration.
'The editor, of course, the editor! Oh yes, he read it. He looked at
me as if I had a swollen face, avoided my eyes and even giggled with
embarrassment. He had smudged and creased the typescript quite
unnecessarily. He asked me questions which I thought were insane. He said
nothing about the substance of the novel but asked me who I was and where I
came from, had I been writing for long, why had nothing been heard of me
before and finally asked what struck me as the most idiotic question of
all--who had given me the idea of writing a novel on such a curious subject?
Eventually I lost patience with him and asked him straight out whether he
was going to print my novel or not. This embarrassed him. He began mumbling
something, then announced that he personally was not competent to decide and
that the other members of the editorial board would have to study the book,
in particular the critics Latunsky and Ariman and the author Mstislav
Lavrovich. He asked me to come back a fortnight later. I did so and was
received by a girl who had developed a permanent squint from having to tell
so many lies.'
'That's Lapshennikova, the editor's secretary,' said Ivan with a
smile, knowing the world that his visitor was describing with such rancour.
'Maybe,' he cut in. ' Anyway, she gave me back my novel thoroughly
tattered and covered in grease-marks. Trying not to look at me, the girl
informed me that the editors had enough material for two years ahead and
therefore the question of printing my novel became, as she put it, "
redundant". What ^Ise do I remember?' murmured the visitor, wiping his
forehead. ' Oh yes, the red blobs spattered all over the title page and the
eyes of my mistress. Yes, I remember those eyes.'
The story grew more and more confused, full of more and more disjointed
remarks that trailed off unfinished. He said something about slanting rain
and despair in their basement home, about going somewhere else. He whispered
urgently that he would never, never blame her, the woman who had urged him
on into the struggle.
After that, as far as Ivan could tell, something strange and sudden
happened. One day he opened a newspaper and saw an article by Ariman,
entitled ' The Enemy Makes a Sortie,' where the critic warned all and sundry
that he, that is to say our hero had tried to drag into print an apologia
for Jesus Christ.
'I remember that! ' cried Ivan. ' But I've forgotten what your name
was.' ' I repeat, let's leave my name out of it, it no longer exists,'
replied the visitor. ' It's not important. A day or two later another
article appeared in a different paper signed by Mstislav Lavrovich, in which
the writer suggested striking and striking hard at all this pilatism and
religiosity which I was trying to drag (that damned word again!) into print.
Stunned by that unheard-of word " pilatism " I opened the third newspaper.
In it were two articles, one by Latunsky, the other signed with the initials
" N.E." Believe me, Ariman's and Lavrovich's stuff was a mere joke by
comparison with Latunsky's article. Suffice it to say that it was entitled "
A Militant Old Believer ". I was so absorbed in reading the article about
myself that I did not notice her standing in front of me with a wet umbrella
and a sodden copy of the same newspaper. Her eyes were flashing fire, her
hands cold and trembling. First she rushed to kiss me then she said in a
strangled voice, thumping the table, that she was going to murder Latunsky.'
Embarrassed, Ivan gave a groan but said nothing. ' The joyless autumn
days came,' the visitor went on, ' the appalling failure of my novel seemed
to have withered part of my soul. In fact I no longer had anything to do and
I only lived for my meetings with her. Then something began to happen to me.
God knows what it was; I expect Stravinsky has unravelled it long ago. I
began to suffer from depression and strange forebodings. The articles,
incidentally, did not stop. At first I simply laughed at them, then came the
second stage : amazement. In literally every line of those articles one
could detect a sense of falsity, of unease, in spite of their confident and
threatening tone. I couldn't help feeling--and the conviction grew stronger
the more I read--that the people writing those articles were not saying what
they had really wanted to say and that this was the cause of their fury. And
then came the third stage--fear. Don't misunderstand me, I was not afraid of
the articles ; I was afraid of something else which had nothing to do with
them or with my novel. I started, for instance, to be afraid of the dark. I
was reaching the stage of mental derangement. I felt, especially just before
going to sleep, that some very cold, supple octopus was fastening its
tentacles round my heart. I had to sleep with the light on.
'My beloved had changed too. I told her nothing about the octopus, of
course, but she saw that something was wrong with me. She lost weight, grew
paler, stopped laughing and kept begging me to have that excerpt from the
novel printed. She said I should forget everything and go south to the Black
Sea, paying for the journey with what was left of the hundred thousand
roubles.
'She was very insistent, so to avoid arguing with her (something told
me that I never would go to the Black Sea) I promised to arrange the trip
soon. However, she announced that she would buy me the ticket herself. I
took out all my money, which was about ten thousand roubles, and gave it to
her.
'" Why so much? " she said in surprise.
'I said something about being afraid of burglars and asked her to keep
the money until my departure. She took it, put it in her handbag, began to
kiss me and said that she would rather die than leave me alone in this
condition, but people were expecting her, she had to go but would come back
the next day. She begged me not to be afraid.
'It was twilight, in mid-October. She went. I lay down on my divan and
fell asleep without putting on the light. I was awakened by the feeling that
the octopus was there. Fumbling in the dark I just managed to switch on the
lamp. My watch showed two o'clock in the morning. When I had gone to bed I
had been sickening; when I woke up I was an ill man. I had a sudden feeling
that the autumn murk was about to burst the window-panes, run into the room
and I would drown in it as if it were ink. I had lost control of myself. I
screamed, I wanted to run somewhere, if only to my landlord upstairs.
Wrestling with myself as one struggles with a lunatic, I had just enough
strength to crawl to the stove and re-light it. When I heard it begin to
crackle and the fire-door started rattling in the draught, I felt slightly
better. I rushed into the hall, switched on the light, found a bottle of
white wine and began gulping it down from the bottle. This calmed my fright
a little, at least enough to stop me from running to my landlord. Instead, I
went back to the stove. I opened the fire-door. The heat began to warm my
hands and face and I whispered :
'" Something terrible has happened to me . . . Come, come, please come
. . .! "
'But nobody came. The fire roared in the stove, rain whipped against
the windows. Then I took the heavy typescript copies of the novel and my
handwritten drafts out of the desk drawer and started to burn them. It was
terribly hard to do because paper that has been written over in ink doesn't
burn easily. Breaking my fingernails I tore up the manuscript books, stuffed
them down between the logs and stoked the burning pages with the poker.
Occasionally there was so much ash that it put the flames out, but I
struggled with it until finally the whole novel, resisting fiercely to the
end, was destroyed. Familiar words flickered before me, the yellow crept
inexorably up the pages yet I could still read the words through it. They
only vanished when the paper turned black and I had given it a savage
beating with the poker.
'There was a sound of someone scratching gently at the window. My
heart leaped and thrusting the last manuscript book into the fire I rushed
up the brick steps from the basement to the door that opened on to the yard.
Panting, I reached the door and asked softly:
'" Who's there? "
'And a voice, her voice, answered :
'" It's me . . ."
'I don't remember how I managed the chain and the key. As soon as she
was indoors she fell into my arms, all wet, cheek wet, hair bedraggled,
shivering. I could only say :
'" Is it really you? . . ." then my voice broke off and we ran
downstairs into the flat.
'She took off her coat in the hall and we went straight into the
living-room. Gasping, she pulled the last bundle of paper out of the stove
with her bare hands. The room at once filled with smoke. I stamped out the
flames with my foot and she collapsed on the divan and burst into
convulsive, uncontrollable tears.
'When she was calm again I said :
'" I suddenly felt I hated the novel and I was afraid. I'm sick. I
feel terrible."
'She sat up and said :
'" God how ill you look. Why, why? But I'm going to save you. What's
the matter? "
'I could see her eyes swollen from smoke and weeping, felt her cool
hands smoothing my brow.
'" I shall make you better," she murmured, burying her head in my
shoulder. " You're going to write it again. Why, oh why didn't I keep one
copy myself? "
'She ground her teeth with fury and said something indistinct. Then
with clamped lips she started to collect and sort the burnt sheets of paper.
It was a chapter from somewhere in the middle of the book, I forget which.
She carefully piled up the sheets, wrapped them up into a parcel and tied it
with string. All her movements showed that she was a determined woman who
was in absolute command of herself. She asked for a glass of wine and having
drunk it said calmly :
'" This is how one pays for lying," she said, " and I don't want to go
on lying any more. I would have stayed with you this evening, but I didn't
want to do it like that. I don't want his last memory of me to be that I ran
out on him in the middle of the night. He has never done me any harm ... He
was suddenly called out, there's a fire at his factory. But he'll be back
soon. I'll tell him tomorrow morning, tell him I love someone else and then
come back to you for ever. If you don't want me to do that, tell me."
'" My poor, poor girl," I said to her. " I won't allow you to do it.
It will be hell living with me and I don't want you to perish here as I
shall perish."
'" Is that the only reason? " she asked, putting her eyes close to
mine. ' " That's the only reason."
'She grew terribly excited, hugged me, embraced my neck and said:
'" Then I shall die with you. I shall be here tomorrow morning."
'The last that I remember seeing of her was the patch of light from my
hall and in that patch of light a loose curl of her hair, her beret and her
determined eyes, her dark silhouette in the doorway and a parcel wrapped in
white paper.
'" I'd see you out, but I don't trust myself to come back alone, I'm
afraid."
'" Don't be afraid. Just wait a few hours. I'll be back tomorrow
morning."
'Those were the last words that I heard her say.
'Sshh! ' The patient suddenly interrupted himself and raised Ms
finger. ' It's a restless moonlit night.' He disappeared on to the balcony.
Ivan heard the sound of wheels along the corridor, there was a faint groan
or cry.
When all was quiet again, the visitor came back and reported that a
patient had been put into room No. 120, a man who kept asking for his head
back. Both men relapsed into anxious silence for a while, but soon resumed
their interrupted talk. The visitor had just opened his mouth but the night,
as he had said, was a restless one : voices were heard in the corridor and
the visitor began to whisper into Ivan's ear so softly that only the poet
could hear what he was saying, with the exception of the first sentence :
'A quarter of an hour after she had left me there came a knock at my
window . . .'
The man was obviously very excited by what he was whispering into
Ivan's ear. Now and again a spasm would cross his face. Fear and anger
sparkled in his eyes. The narrator pointed in the direction of the moon,
which had long ago disappeared from the balcony. Only when all the noises
outside had stopped did the visitor move away from Ivan and speak louder :
'Yes, so there I stood, out in my little yard, one night in the middle
of January, wearing the same overcoat but without any buttons now and I was
freezing with cold. Behind me the lilac bush was buried in snowdrifts, below
and in front of me were my feebly lit windows with drawn blinds. I knelt
down to the first of them and listened--a gramophone was playing in my room.
I could hear it but see nothing. After a slight pause I went out of the gate
and into the street. A snowstorm was howling along it. A dog which ran
between my legs frightened me, and to get away from it I crossed to the
other side. Cold and fear, which had become my inseparable companions, had
driven me to desperation. I had nowhere to go and the simplest thing would
have been to throw myself under a tram then and there where my side street
joined the main road. In the distance I could see the approaching tramcars,
looking like ice-encrusted lighted boxes, and hear the fearful scrunch of
their wheels along the frostbound tracks. But the joke, my dear friend, was
that every cell of my body was in the grip of fear. I was as afraid of the
tram as I had been of the dog. I'm the most hopeless case in this building,
I assure you! '
'But you could have let her know, couldn't you?' said Ivan
sympatherically. ' Besides, she had all your money. I suppose she kept it,
did she? '
'Don't worry, of course she kept it. But you obviously don't
understand me. Or rather I have lost the powers of description that I once
had. I don't feel very sorry for her, as she is of no more use to me. Why
should I write to her? She would be faced,' said the visitor gazing
pensively at the night sky, ' by a letter from the madhouse. Can one really
write to anyone from an address like this? ... I--a mental patient? How
could I make her so unhappy? I ... I couldn't do it.'
Ivan could only agree. The poet's silence was eloquent of his sympathy
and compassion for his visitor, who bowed his head in pain at his memories
and said :
'Poor woman ... I can only hope she has forgotten me . . .'
'But you may recover,' said Ivan timidly.
'I am incurable,' said the visitor calmly. ' Even though Stravinsky
says that he will send me back to normal life, I don't believe him. He's a
humane man and he only wants to comfort me. I won't deny, though, that I'm a
great deal better now than I was. Now, where was I? Oh yes. The frost, the
moving tram-cars ... I knew that this clinic had just been opened and I
crossed the whole town on foot to come here. It was madness! I would
probably have frozen to death but for a lucky chance. A lorry had broken
down on the road and I approached the driver. It was four kilometres past
the city limits and to my surprise he took pity on me. He was driving here
and he took me ... The toes of my left foot were frost-bitten, but they
cured them. I've been here four months now. And do you know, I think this is
not at all a bad place. I shouldn't bother to make any great plans for the
future if I were you. I, for example, wanted to travel all over the world.
Well, it seems that I was not fated to have my wish. I shall only see an
insignificant little corner of the globe. I don't think it's necessarily the
best bit, but I repeat, it's not so bad. Summer's on the way and the balcony
will be covered in ivy, so Praskovya Fyodorovna tells me. These keys have
enlarged my radius of action. There'll be a moon at night. Oh, it has set!
It's freshening. Midnight is on the way. It's time for me to go.'
'Tell me, what happened afterwards with Yeshua and Pilate? ' begged
Ivan. ' Please, I want to know.'
'Oh no, I couldn't,' replied the visitor, wincing painfully. ' I can't
think about my novel without shuddering. Your friend from Patriarch's Ponds
could have done it better than I can. Thanks for the talk. Goodbye.'
Before Ivan had time to notice it, the grille had shut with a gentle
click and the visitor was gone.
His nerves in shreds, Rimsky did not stay for the completion of the
police report on the incident but took refuge in his own office. He sat down
at the desk and with bloodshot eyes stared at the magic rouble notes spread
out in front of him. The treasurer felt his reason slipping. A steady
rumbling could be heard from outside as the public streamed out of the
theatre on to the street. Suddenly Rimsky's acute hearing distinctly caught
the screech of a police whistle, always a sound of ill-omen. When it was
repeated and answered by another, more prolonged and authoritative, followed
by a clearly audible bellow of laughter and a kind of ululating noise, the
treasurer realised at once that something scandalous was happening in the
street. However much he might like to disown it, the noise was bound to be
closely connected with the terrible act put on that evening by the black
magician and his assistants.
The treasurer was right. As he glanced out of the window on to Sadovaya
Street he gave a grimace and hissed :
'I knew it! '
In the bright light of the street lamps he saw below him on the
pavement a woman wearing nothing but a pair of violet knickers, a hat and an
umbrella. Round the painfully embarrassed woman, trying desperately to
crouch down and run away, surged the crowd laughing in the way that had sent
shivers down Rimsky's spine. Beside the woman was a man who was ripping off
his coat and getting his arm hopelessly tangled in the sleeve.
Shouts and roars of laughter were also coming from the side entrance,
and as he turned in that direction Grigory Danilovich saw another woman,
this time in pink underwear. She was struggling across the pavement in an
attempt to hide in the doorway, but the people coming out barred her way and
the wretched victim of her own rashness and vanity, cheated by the sinister
Faggot, could do nothing but hope to be swallowed up by the ground. A
policeman ran towards the unfortunate woman, splitting the air with his
whistle. He was closely followed by some cheerful, cloth-capped young men,
the source of the ribald laughter and wolf-whistles.
A thin, moustached horse-cab driver drove up alongside the first
undressed woman and smiling all over his whiskered face, reined in his horse
with a flourish.
Rimsky punched himself on the head, spat with fury and jumped back from
the window. He sat at his desk for a while listening to the noise in the
street. The sound of whistles from various directions rose to a climax and
then began to fade out. To Rimsky's astonishment the uproar subsided
unexpectedly soon.
The time had come to act, to drink the bitter cup of responsibility.
The telephones had been repaired during the last act and he now had to ring
up, report the incident, ask for help, blame it all on Likhodeyev and
exculpate himself.
Twice Rimsky nervously picked up the receiver and twice put it down.
Suddenly the deathly silence of the office was broken by the telephone
itself ringing. He jumped and went cold. ' My nerves are in a terrible
state,' he thought as he lifted the telephone. Immediately he staggered back
and turned whiter than paper. A soft, sensual woman's voice whispered into
the earpiece :
'Don't ring up, Rimsky, or you'll regret it . . .'
The line went dead. Feeling gooseflesh spreading over his skin, the
treasurer replaced the receiver and glanced round to the window behind his
back. Through the sparse leaves of a sycamore tree he saw the moon flying
through a translucent cloud. He seemed to be mesmerised by the branches of
the tree and the longer Rimsky stared at them the more strongly he felt the
grip of fear.
Pulling himself together the treasurer finally turned away from the
moonlit window and stood up. There was now no longer any question of
telephoning and Rimsky could only think of one thing--how to get out of the
theatre as quickly as possible.
He listened : the building was silent. He realised that for some time
now he had been the only person left on the second floor and a childish,
uncontrollable fear overcame him at the thought. He shuddered to think that
he would have to walk alone through the empty passages and down the
staircase. He feverishly grabbed the magic roubles from his desk, stuffed
them into his briefcase and coughed to summon up a little courage. His cough
sounded hoarse and weak.
At this moment he noticed what seemed to be a damp, evil-smelling
substance oozing under the door and into his office. A tremor ran down the
treasurer's spine. Suddenly a clock began to strike midnight and even this
made him shudder. But his heart sank completely when he heard the sound of a
latch-key being softly turned in the lock. Clutching his briefcase with
damp, cold hands Rimsky felt that if that scraping noise in the keyhole were
to last much longer his nerves would snap and he would scream.
At last the door gave way and Varenukha slipped noiselessly into the
office. Rimsky collapsed into an armchair. Gasping for air, he smiled what
was meant to be an ingratiating smile and whispered :
'God, what a fright you gave me. . . .'
Terrifying as this sudden appearance was, it had its hopeful side--it
cleared up at least one little mystery in this whole baffling affair.
'Tell me, tell me, quickly! . . .' croaked Rimsky, clutching at his
one straw of certainty in a world gone mad. ' What does this all mean? "
'I'm sorry,' mumbled Varenukha, closing the door. ' I thought you
would have left by now.' Without taking his cap off he crossed to an
armchair and sat down beside the desk, facing Rimsky. There was a trace of
something odd in Varenukha's reply, immediately detected by Rimsky, whose
sensitivity was now on a par with the world's most delicate seismograph. For
one thing, why had Varenukha come to the treasurer's office if he thought he
wasn't there? He had his own office, after all. For another, no matter which
entrance Varenukha might have used to come into the theatre he must have met
one of the night watchmen, who had all been told that Grigory Danilovich was
working late in his office. Rimsky, however, did not dwell long on these
peculiarities--this was not the moment.
'Why didn't you ring me? And what the hell was all that pantomime
about Yalta? '
'It was what I thought,' replied the house manager, making a sucking
noise as though troubled by an aching tooth. ' They found him in a bar out
at Pushkino.'
'Pushkino? But that's just outside Moscow! What about those telegrams
from Yalta? '
'Yalta--hell! He got the Pushkino telegraphist drunk and they started
playing the fool, which included sending us those telegrams marked " Yalta
".'
'Aha, aha ... I see now . . .' crooned Rimsky, his yellowish eyes
flashing. In his mind's eye he saw Stepa being solemnly dismissed from his
job. Freedom! At last Rimsky would be rid of that idiot Likhodeyev! Perhaps
something even worse than the sack was in store for Stepan Bogdanovich . . .
' Tell me all the details! ' cried Rimsky, banging his desk with a
paper-weight.
Varenukha began telling the story. As soon as he had arrived at the
place where the treasurer had sent him, he was immediately shown in and
listened to with great attention. No one, of course, believed for a moment
that Stepa was in Yalta. Everybody at once agreed with Varenukha's
suggestion that Likhodeyev was obviously at the ' Yalta ' restaurant in
Pushkino. ' Where is he now? ' Rimsky interrupted excitedly. ' Where do you
think? ' replied the house manager with a twisted smile. ' In the police
cells, of course, being sobered up! '
'Ah! Thank God for that! '
Varenukha went on with his story and the more he said the clearer
Rimsky saw the long chain of Likhodeyev's misdeeds, each succeeding link in
it worse than the last. What a price he was going to pay for one drunken
afternoon at Pushkino! Dancing with the telegraphist. Chasing terrified
women. Picking a fight with the barman at the ' Yalta'. Throwing onions on
to the floor. Breaking eight bottles of white wine. Smashing a cab-driver's
taximeter for refusing to take him. Threatening to arrest people who tried
to stop him. . . .
Stepa was well known in the Moscow theatre world and everybody knew
that the man was a menace, but this story was just a shade too much, even
for Stepa. . . . Rimsky's sharp eyes bored into Varenukha's face across the
desk and the longer the story went on the grimmer those eyes became. The
more Varenukha embroidered his account with picturesque and revolting
details, the less Rimsky believed him. When Varenukha described how Stepa
was so far gone that he tried to resist the men who had been sent to bring
him back to Moscow, Rimsky was quite certain that everything the house
manager was telling him was a lie--a lie from beginning to end.
Varenukha had never gone to Pushkino, and Stepa had never been there
either. There was no drunken telegraphist, no broken glass in the bar and
Stepa had not been hauled away with ropes-- none of it had ever happened.
As soon as Rimsky felt sure that his colleague was lying to him, a
feeling of terror crawled over his body, beginning with his feet and for the
second time he had the weird feeling that a kind of malarial damp was oozing
across the floor. The house manager was sitting in a curious hunched
attitude in the armchair, trying constantly to stay in the shadow of the
blue-shaded table lamp and ostensibly shading his eyes from the light with a
folded newspaper. Without taking his eyes off Varenukha for a moment,
Rimsky's mind was working furiously to unravel this new mystery. Why should
the man be lying to him at this late hour in the totally empty and silent
building? Slowly a consciousness of danger, of an unknown but terrible
danger took hold of Rimsky. Pretending not to notice Varenukha's fidgeting
and tricks with the newspaper, the treasurer concentrated on his face,
scarcely listening to what he was saying. There was something else that
Rimsky found even more sinister than this slanderous and completely bogus
yarn about the goings-on in Pushkino, and that something was a change in the
house manager's appearance and manner.
However hard Varenukha tried to pull down the peak of his cap to shade
his face and however much he waved the newspaper, Rimsky managed to discern
an enormous bruise that covered most of the right side of his face, starting
at his nose. What was more, this normally ruddy-cheeked man now had an
unhealthy chalky pallor and although the night was hot, he was wearing an
old-fashioned striped cravat tied round his neck. If one added to this his
newly acquired and repulsive habit of sucking his teeth, a distinct lowering
The visitor was highly amused by the story of how the cat had paid the
conductress and he was choking with suppressed laughter as Ivan, stimulated
by the success of his story-telling, hopped about on his haunches, imitating
the cat stroking his whiskers with a ten-kopeck piece.
'And so,' said Ivan, saddening as he described the scene at
Griboyedov, ' here I am.'
The visitor laid a sympathetic hand on the wretched poet's shoulder and
said:
'Unhappy poet! But it's your own fault, my dear fellow. You shouldn't
have treated him so carelessly and rudely. Now you're paying for it. You
should be thankful that you got off comparatively lightly.'
'But who on earth is he? ' asked Ivan, clenching his fists in
excitement.
The visitor stared at Ivan and answered with a question :
'You won't get violent, will you? We're all unstable people here . . .
There won't be any calls for the doctor, injections or any disturbances of
that sort, will there? '
'No, no! ' exclaimed Ivan. ' Tell me, who is he? '
'Very well,' replied the visitor, and said slowly and gravely :
'At Patriarch's Ponds yesterday you met Satan.'
As he had promised, Ivan did not become violent, but he was powerfully
shaken.
'It can't be! He doesn't exist!'
'Come, come! Surely you of all people can't say that. You were
apparently one of the first to suffer from him. Here you are, shut up in a
psychiatric clinic, and you still say he doesn't exist. How strange! '
Ivan was reduced to speechlessness.
'As soon as you started to describe him,' the visitor went on, ' I
guessed who it was that you were talking to yesterday. I must say I'm
surprised at Berlioz! You, of course, are an innocent,' again the visitor
apologised for his expression, ' but he, from what I've heard of him, was at
least fairly well read. The first remarks that this professor made to you
dispelled all my doubts. He's unmistakeable, my friend! You are ... do
forgive me again, but unless I'm wrong, you are an ignorant person, aren't
you? '
'I am indeed,' agreed the new Ivan.
'Well, you see, even the face you described, the different-coloured
eyes, the eyebrows . . . Forgive me, but have you even seen the opera Faust?
'
Ivan mumbled an embarrassed excuse.
'There you are, it's not surprising! But, as I said before, I'm
surprised at Berlioz. He's not only well read but extremely cunning.
Although in his defence I must say that Woland is quite capable of throwing
dust in the eyes of men who are even cleverer than Berlioz.'
'What? ' shouted Ivan.
Quiet!'
With a sweeping gesture Ivan smacked his forehead with his palm and
croaked:
'I see it now. There was a letter " W " on his visiting card. Well I'm
damned! ' He sat for a while in perplexity, staring at the moon floating
past the grille and then said: ' So he really might have known Pontius
Pilate? He was alive then, I suppose? And they call me mad! ' he added,
pointing indignantly towards the door.
The visitor's mouth set in a fold of bitterness.
'We must look the facts in the face.' The visitor turned his face
towards the moon as it raced through a cloud. ' Both you and I are mad,
there's no point in denying it. He gave you a shock and it sent you mad,
because you were temperamentally liable to react in that way. Nevertheless
what you have described unquestionably happened in fact. But it is so
unusual that even Stravinsky, a psychiatrist of genius, naturally didn't
believe you. Has he examined you? (Ivan nodded.) The man you were talking to
was with Pontius Pilate, he did have breakfast with Kant and now he has paid
a call on Moscow.' ' But God knows what he may do here! Shouldn't we try and
catch him somehow! ' The old Ivan raised his head, uncertain but not yet
quite extinguished.
'You've already tried and look where it's got you,' said the visitor
ironically. ' I don't advise others to try. But he will cause more trouble,
you may be sure of that. How infuriating, though, that you met him and not
I. Although I'm a burnt-out man and the embers have died away to ash, I
swear that I would have given up Praskovya Fyodorovna's bunch of keys in
exchange for that meeting. Those keys are all I have. I am destitute.' ' Why
do you want to see him so badly? ' After a long, gloomy silence the visitor
said at last:
'You see, it's most extraordinary, but I am in here for exactly the
same reason that you are, I mean because of Pontius Pilate.' The visitor
glanced uneasily round and said : ' The fact is that a year ago I wrote a
novel about Pilate.'
'Are you a writer? ' asked the poet with interest. The visitor
frowned, threatened Ivan with his fist and said:
'I am a master.' His expression hardened and he pulled out of his
dressing gown pocket a greasy black cap with the letter ' M ' embroidered on
it in yellow silk. He put the cap on and showed himself to Ivan in profile
and full face to prove that he was a master. ' She sewed it for me with her
own hands,' he added mysteriously. ' What is your name? '
'I no longer have a name,' replied the curious visitor with grim
contempt. ' I have renounced it, as I have renounced life itself. Let us
forget it.'
'At least tell me about your novel,' asked Ivan tactfully. ' If you
wish. I should say that my life has been a somewhat unusual one,' began the
visitor.
A historian by training, two years ago he had, it seemed, been employed
in one of the Moscow museums. He was also a translator.
'From which language? ' asked Ivan.
'I know five languages beside my own,' replied the visitor. ' English,
French, German, Latin and Greek. And I read Italian a little.'
'Phew! ' Ivan whistled with envy.
This historian lived alone, had no relatives and knew almost no one in
Moscow. One day he won a hundred thousand roubles.
'Imagine my astonishment,' whispered the visitor in his black cap, '
when I fished my lottery ticket out of the laundry basket and saw that it
had the same number as the winning draw printed in the paper! The museum,'
he explained, ' had given me the ticket.'
Having won his hundred thousand, Ivan's mysterious guest bought some
books, gave up his room on Myasnitskaya Street...
'Ugh, it was a filthy hole! ' he snarled.
. . . and rented two rooms in the basement of a small house with a
garden near the Arbat. He gave up his job in the museum and began writing
his novel about Pontius Pilate.
'Ah, that was a golden age! ' whispered the narrator, his eyes
shining. ' A completely self-contained little flat and a hall with a sink
and running water,' he emphasised proudly, ' little windows just above the
level of the path leading from the garden gate. Only a few steps away, by
the garden fence, was a lilac, a lime tree and a maple. Ah, me! In winter I
rarely saw anyone walking up the garden path or heard the crunch of snow.
And there was always a blaze in my little stove! But suddenly it was spring
and through the muddied panes of my windows I saw first the bare branches
then the green of the first leaves. And then, last spring, something
happened which was far more delightful than winning a hundred thousand
roubles. And that, you must agree, is an enormous sum of money! '
'It is,' Ivan agreed, listening intently.
'I had opened the windows and was sitting in the second room, which
was quite tiny.' The visitor made measuring gestures. ' Like this--the divan
here, another divan along the other wall, a beautiful lamp on a little table
between them, a bookcase by the window and over here a little bureau. The
main room was huge--fourteen square metres!--books, more books and a stove.
It was a marvellous little place. How deliciously the lilac used to smell! I
was growing light-headed with fatigue and Pilate was coming to an end . . .'
'White cloak, red lining! How I know the feeling! ' exclaimed Ivan.
'Precisely! Pilate was rushing to a conclusion and I already knew what
the last words of the novel would be--" the fifth Procurator of Judaea, the
knight Pontius Pilate ". Naturally I used to go out for walks. A hundred
thousand is a huge sum and I had a handsome suit. Or I would go out for
lunch to a restaurant. There used to be a wonderful restaurant in the Arbat,
I don't know whether it's still there.'
Here his eyes opened wide and as he whispered he gazed at the moon.
'She was carrying some of those repulsive yellow flowers. God knows
what they're called, but they are somehow always the first to come out in
spring. They stood out very sharply against her black dress. She was
carrying yellow flowers! It's an ugly colour. She turned off Tverskaya into
a side-street and turned round. You know the Tverskaya, don't you? There
must have been a thousand people on it but I swear to you that she saw no
one but me. She had a look of suffering and I was struck less by her beauty
than by the extraordinary loneliness in her eyes. Obeying that yellow signal
I too turned into the side-street and followed her. We walked in silence
down that dreary, winding little street without saying a word, she on one
side, I on the other. There was not another soul in the street. I was in
agony because I felt I had to speak to her and was worried that I might not
be able to utter a word, she would disappear and I should never see her
again. Then, if you can believe it, she said :
" Do you like my flowers? "
'I remember exactly how her voice sounded. It was pitched fairly low
but with a catch in it and stupid as it may sound I had the impression that
it echoed across the street and reverberated from the dirty yellow wall. I
quickly crossed to her side and going up to her replied : " No ' She looked
at me in surprise and suddenly, completely unexpectedly, I realised that I
had been in love with this woman all my life. Extraordinary, isn't it?
You'll say I was mad, I expect.'
'I say nothing of the sort,' exclaimed Ivan, adding : ' Please, please
go on.'
The visitor continued:
'Yes, she looked at me in surprise and then she said : " Don't you
like flowers at all? "
'There was, I felt, hostility in her voice. I walked on alongside her,
trying to walk in step with her and to my amazement I felt completely free
of shyness.
'" No, I like flowers, only not these," I said.
'" Which flowers do you like? "
'" I love roses."
'I immediately regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily
and threw her flowers into the gutter. Slightly embarrassed, I picked them
up and gave them to her but she pushed them away with a smile and I had to
carry them.
'We walked on in silence for a while until she pulled the flowers out
of my hand and threw them in the roadway, then slipped her black-gloved hand
into mine and we went on.'
'Go on,' said Ivan, ' and please don't leave anything out! '
'Well,' said the visitor, ' you can guess what happened after that.'
He wiped away a sudden tear with his right sleeve and went on. ' Love leaped
up out at us like a murderer jumping out of a dark alley. It shocked us
both--the shock of a stroke of lightning, the shock of a flick-knife. Later
she said that this wasn't so, that we had of course been in love for years
without knowing each other and never meeting, that she had merely been
living with another man and I had been living with . . . that girl, what was
her name . . .? '
'With whom? ' asked Bezdomny.
'With . . . er, that girl . . . she was called . . .' said the
visitor, snapping his fingers in a vain effort to remember.
'Were you married to her? ' ' Yes, of course I was, that's why it's so
embarrassing to forget ... I think it was Varya ... or was it Manya? . . .
no, Varya, that's it ... she wore a striped dress, worked at the museum. . .
. No good, can't remember. So, she used to say, she had gone out that
morning carrying those yellow flowers for me to find her at last and that if
it hadn't happened she would have committed suicide because her life was
empty.
'Yes, the shock of love struck us both at once. I knew it within the
hour when we found ourselves, quite unawares, on the embankment below the
Kremlin wall. We talked as though we had only parted the day before, as
though we had known each other for years. We agreed to meet the next day at
the same place by the Moscow River and we did. The May sun shone on us and
soon that woman became my mistress.
'She came to me every day at noon. I began waiting for her from early
morning. The strain of waiting gave me hallucinations of seeing things on
the table. After ten minutes I would sit at my little window and start to
listen for the creak of that ancient garden gate. It was curious : until I
met her no one ever came into our little yard. Now it seemed to me that the
whole town was crowding in. The gate would creak, my heart would bound and
outside the window a pair of muddy boots would appear level with my head. A
knife-grinder. Who in our house could possibly need a knife-grinder? What
was there for him to sharpen? Whose knives?
'She only came through that gate once a day, but my heart would beat
faster from at least ten false alarms every morning. Then when her time came
and the hands were pointing to noon, my heart went on thumping until her
shoes with their black patent-leather straps and steel buckles drew level,
almost soundlessly, with my basement window.
'Sometimes for fun she would stop at the second window and tap the
pane with her foot. In a second I would appear at that window but always her
shoe and her black silk dress that blocked the light had vanished and I
would turn instead to the hall to let her in.
'Nobody knew about our liaison, I can swear to that, although as a
rule no one can keep such affairs a complete secret. Her husband didn't
know, our friends didn't know. The other tenants in that forgotten old house
knew, of course, because they could see that a woman called on me every day,
but they never knew her name.'
'Who was she?' asked Ivan, deeply fascinated by this love story.
The visitor made a sign which meant that he would never reveal this to
anyone and went on with his narrative.
The master and his unknown mistress loved one another so strongly that
they became utterly inseparable. Ivan could clearly see for himself the two
basement rooms, where it was always twilight from the shade of the lilac
bush and the fence : the shabby red furniture, the bureau, the clock on top
of it which struck the half-hours and books, books from the painted floor to
the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the stove.
Ivan learned that from the very first days of their affair the man and
his mistress decided that fate had brought them together on the corner of
the Tverskaya and that side-street and that they were made for each other to
eternity.
Ivan heard his visitor describe how the lovers spent their day. Her
first action on arrival was to put on an apron and light an oil stove on a
wooden table in the cramped hall, with its tap and sink that the wretched
patient had recalled with such pride. There she cooked lunch and served it
on an oval table in the living-room. When the May storms blew and the water
slashed noisily past the dim little windows, threatening to flood their
home, the lovers stoked up the stove and baked potatoes in it. Steam poured
out of the potatoes as they cut them open, the charred skins blackened their
fingers. There was laughter in the basement, after the rain the trees in the
garden scattered broken branches and white blossom.
When the storms were past and the heat of summer came, the vase was
filled with the long-awaited roses that they both loved so much. The man who
called himself the master worked feverishly at his novel and the book cast
its spell over the unknown woman.
'At times I actually felt jealous of it,' the moonlight visitor
whispered to Ivan.
Running her sharp, pointed fingernails through her hair, she
ceaselessly read and re-read the manuscript, sewing that same black cap as
she did so. Sometimes she would squat down by the lower bookshelves or stand
by the topmost ones and wipe the hundreds of dusty spines. Sensing fame, she
drove him on and started to call him ' the master '. She waited impatiently
for the promised final words about the fifth Procurator of Judaea, reading
out in a loud sing-song random sentences that pleased her and saying that
the novel was her life.
It was finished in August and handed to a typist who transcribed it in
five copies. At last came the moment to leave the secret refuge and enter
the outside world.
'When I emerged into the world clutching my novel, my life came to an
end,' whispered the master. He hung his head and for a long while wagged the
black cap with its embroidered yellow ' M '. He went on with his story but
it grew more disjointed and Ivan could only gather that his visitor had
suffered some disaster.
'It was my first sortie into the literary world, but now that it's all
over and I am ruined for everyone to see, it fills me with horror to think
of it! ' whispered the master solemnly, raising his hand. ' God, what a
shock he gave me! '
'Who? ' murmured Ivan, scarcely audibly, afraid to disturb the
master's inspiration.
'The editor, of course, the editor! Oh yes, he read it. He looked at
me as if I had a swollen face, avoided my eyes and even giggled with
embarrassment. He had smudged and creased the typescript quite
unnecessarily. He asked me questions which I thought were insane. He said
nothing about the substance of the novel but asked me who I was and where I
came from, had I been writing for long, why had nothing been heard of me
before and finally asked what struck me as the most idiotic question of
all--who had given me the idea of writing a novel on such a curious subject?
Eventually I lost patience with him and asked him straight out whether he
was going to print my novel or not. This embarrassed him. He began mumbling
something, then announced that he personally was not competent to decide and
that the other members of the editorial board would have to study the book,
in particular the critics Latunsky and Ariman and the author Mstislav
Lavrovich. He asked me to come back a fortnight later. I did so and was
received by a girl who had developed a permanent squint from having to tell
so many lies.'
'That's Lapshennikova, the editor's secretary,' said Ivan with a
smile, knowing the world that his visitor was describing with such rancour.
'Maybe,' he cut in. ' Anyway, she gave me back my novel thoroughly
tattered and covered in grease-marks. Trying not to look at me, the girl
informed me that the editors had enough material for two years ahead and
therefore the question of printing my novel became, as she put it, "
redundant". What ^Ise do I remember?' murmured the visitor, wiping his
forehead. ' Oh yes, the red blobs spattered all over the title page and the
eyes of my mistress. Yes, I remember those eyes.'
The story grew more and more confused, full of more and more disjointed
remarks that trailed off unfinished. He said something about slanting rain
and despair in their basement home, about going somewhere else. He whispered
urgently that he would never, never blame her, the woman who had urged him
on into the struggle.
After that, as far as Ivan could tell, something strange and sudden
happened. One day he opened a newspaper and saw an article by Ariman,
entitled ' The Enemy Makes a Sortie,' where the critic warned all and sundry
that he, that is to say our hero had tried to drag into print an apologia
for Jesus Christ.
'I remember that! ' cried Ivan. ' But I've forgotten what your name
was.' ' I repeat, let's leave my name out of it, it no longer exists,'
replied the visitor. ' It's not important. A day or two later another
article appeared in a different paper signed by Mstislav Lavrovich, in which
the writer suggested striking and striking hard at all this pilatism and
religiosity which I was trying to drag (that damned word again!) into print.
Stunned by that unheard-of word " pilatism " I opened the third newspaper.
In it were two articles, one by Latunsky, the other signed with the initials
" N.E." Believe me, Ariman's and Lavrovich's stuff was a mere joke by
comparison with Latunsky's article. Suffice it to say that it was entitled "
A Militant Old Believer ". I was so absorbed in reading the article about
myself that I did not notice her standing in front of me with a wet umbrella
and a sodden copy of the same newspaper. Her eyes were flashing fire, her
hands cold and trembling. First she rushed to kiss me then she said in a
strangled voice, thumping the table, that she was going to murder Latunsky.'
Embarrassed, Ivan gave a groan but said nothing. ' The joyless autumn
days came,' the visitor went on, ' the appalling failure of my novel seemed
to have withered part of my soul. In fact I no longer had anything to do and
I only lived for my meetings with her. Then something began to happen to me.
God knows what it was; I expect Stravinsky has unravelled it long ago. I
began to suffer from depression and strange forebodings. The articles,
incidentally, did not stop. At first I simply laughed at them, then came the
second stage : amazement. In literally every line of those articles one
could detect a sense of falsity, of unease, in spite of their confident and
threatening tone. I couldn't help feeling--and the conviction grew stronger
the more I read--that the people writing those articles were not saying what
they had really wanted to say and that this was the cause of their fury. And
then came the third stage--fear. Don't misunderstand me, I was not afraid of
the articles ; I was afraid of something else which had nothing to do with
them or with my novel. I started, for instance, to be afraid of the dark. I
was reaching the stage of mental derangement. I felt, especially just before
going to sleep, that some very cold, supple octopus was fastening its
tentacles round my heart. I had to sleep with the light on.
'My beloved had changed too. I told her nothing about the octopus, of
course, but she saw that something was wrong with me. She lost weight, grew
paler, stopped laughing and kept begging me to have that excerpt from the
novel printed. She said I should forget everything and go south to the Black
Sea, paying for the journey with what was left of the hundred thousand
roubles.
'She was very insistent, so to avoid arguing with her (something told
me that I never would go to the Black Sea) I promised to arrange the trip
soon. However, she announced that she would buy me the ticket herself. I
took out all my money, which was about ten thousand roubles, and gave it to
her.
'" Why so much? " she said in surprise.
'I said something about being afraid of burglars and asked her to keep
the money until my departure. She took it, put it in her handbag, began to
kiss me and said that she would rather die than leave me alone in this
condition, but people were expecting her, she had to go but would come back
the next day. She begged me not to be afraid.
'It was twilight, in mid-October. She went. I lay down on my divan and
fell asleep without putting on the light. I was awakened by the feeling that
the octopus was there. Fumbling in the dark I just managed to switch on the
lamp. My watch showed two o'clock in the morning. When I had gone to bed I
had been sickening; when I woke up I was an ill man. I had a sudden feeling
that the autumn murk was about to burst the window-panes, run into the room
and I would drown in it as if it were ink. I had lost control of myself. I
screamed, I wanted to run somewhere, if only to my landlord upstairs.
Wrestling with myself as one struggles with a lunatic, I had just enough
strength to crawl to the stove and re-light it. When I heard it begin to
crackle and the fire-door started rattling in the draught, I felt slightly
better. I rushed into the hall, switched on the light, found a bottle of
white wine and began gulping it down from the bottle. This calmed my fright
a little, at least enough to stop me from running to my landlord. Instead, I
went back to the stove. I opened the fire-door. The heat began to warm my
hands and face and I whispered :
'" Something terrible has happened to me . . . Come, come, please come
. . .! "
'But nobody came. The fire roared in the stove, rain whipped against
the windows. Then I took the heavy typescript copies of the novel and my
handwritten drafts out of the desk drawer and started to burn them. It was
terribly hard to do because paper that has been written over in ink doesn't
burn easily. Breaking my fingernails I tore up the manuscript books, stuffed
them down between the logs and stoked the burning pages with the poker.
Occasionally there was so much ash that it put the flames out, but I
struggled with it until finally the whole novel, resisting fiercely to the
end, was destroyed. Familiar words flickered before me, the yellow crept
inexorably up the pages yet I could still read the words through it. They
only vanished when the paper turned black and I had given it a savage
beating with the poker.
'There was a sound of someone scratching gently at the window. My
heart leaped and thrusting the last manuscript book into the fire I rushed
up the brick steps from the basement to the door that opened on to the yard.
Panting, I reached the door and asked softly:
'" Who's there? "
'And a voice, her voice, answered :
'" It's me . . ."
'I don't remember how I managed the chain and the key. As soon as she
was indoors she fell into my arms, all wet, cheek wet, hair bedraggled,
shivering. I could only say :
'" Is it really you? . . ." then my voice broke off and we ran
downstairs into the flat.
'She took off her coat in the hall and we went straight into the
living-room. Gasping, she pulled the last bundle of paper out of the stove
with her bare hands. The room at once filled with smoke. I stamped out the
flames with my foot and she collapsed on the divan and burst into
convulsive, uncontrollable tears.
'When she was calm again I said :
'" I suddenly felt I hated the novel and I was afraid. I'm sick. I
feel terrible."
'She sat up and said :
'" God how ill you look. Why, why? But I'm going to save you. What's
the matter? "
'I could see her eyes swollen from smoke and weeping, felt her cool
hands smoothing my brow.
'" I shall make you better," she murmured, burying her head in my
shoulder. " You're going to write it again. Why, oh why didn't I keep one
copy myself? "
'She ground her teeth with fury and said something indistinct. Then
with clamped lips she started to collect and sort the burnt sheets of paper.
It was a chapter from somewhere in the middle of the book, I forget which.
She carefully piled up the sheets, wrapped them up into a parcel and tied it
with string. All her movements showed that she was a determined woman who
was in absolute command of herself. She asked for a glass of wine and having
drunk it said calmly :
'" This is how one pays for lying," she said, " and I don't want to go
on lying any more. I would have stayed with you this evening, but I didn't
want to do it like that. I don't want his last memory of me to be that I ran
out on him in the middle of the night. He has never done me any harm ... He
was suddenly called out, there's a fire at his factory. But he'll be back
soon. I'll tell him tomorrow morning, tell him I love someone else and then
come back to you for ever. If you don't want me to do that, tell me."
'" My poor, poor girl," I said to her. " I won't allow you to do it.
It will be hell living with me and I don't want you to perish here as I
shall perish."
'" Is that the only reason? " she asked, putting her eyes close to
mine. ' " That's the only reason."
'She grew terribly excited, hugged me, embraced my neck and said:
'" Then I shall die with you. I shall be here tomorrow morning."
'The last that I remember seeing of her was the patch of light from my
hall and in that patch of light a loose curl of her hair, her beret and her
determined eyes, her dark silhouette in the doorway and a parcel wrapped in
white paper.
'" I'd see you out, but I don't trust myself to come back alone, I'm
afraid."
'" Don't be afraid. Just wait a few hours. I'll be back tomorrow
morning."
'Those were the last words that I heard her say.
'Sshh! ' The patient suddenly interrupted himself and raised Ms
finger. ' It's a restless moonlit night.' He disappeared on to the balcony.
Ivan heard the sound of wheels along the corridor, there was a faint groan
or cry.
When all was quiet again, the visitor came back and reported that a
patient had been put into room No. 120, a man who kept asking for his head
back. Both men relapsed into anxious silence for a while, but soon resumed
their interrupted talk. The visitor had just opened his mouth but the night,
as he had said, was a restless one : voices were heard in the corridor and
the visitor began to whisper into Ivan's ear so softly that only the poet
could hear what he was saying, with the exception of the first sentence :
'A quarter of an hour after she had left me there came a knock at my
window . . .'
The man was obviously very excited by what he was whispering into
Ivan's ear. Now and again a spasm would cross his face. Fear and anger
sparkled in his eyes. The narrator pointed in the direction of the moon,
which had long ago disappeared from the balcony. Only when all the noises
outside had stopped did the visitor move away from Ivan and speak louder :
'Yes, so there I stood, out in my little yard, one night in the middle
of January, wearing the same overcoat but without any buttons now and I was
freezing with cold. Behind me the lilac bush was buried in snowdrifts, below
and in front of me were my feebly lit windows with drawn blinds. I knelt
down to the first of them and listened--a gramophone was playing in my room.
I could hear it but see nothing. After a slight pause I went out of the gate
and into the street. A snowstorm was howling along it. A dog which ran
between my legs frightened me, and to get away from it I crossed to the
other side. Cold and fear, which had become my inseparable companions, had
driven me to desperation. I had nowhere to go and the simplest thing would
have been to throw myself under a tram then and there where my side street
joined the main road. In the distance I could see the approaching tramcars,
looking like ice-encrusted lighted boxes, and hear the fearful scrunch of
their wheels along the frostbound tracks. But the joke, my dear friend, was
that every cell of my body was in the grip of fear. I was as afraid of the
tram as I had been of the dog. I'm the most hopeless case in this building,
I assure you! '
'But you could have let her know, couldn't you?' said Ivan
sympatherically. ' Besides, she had all your money. I suppose she kept it,
did she? '
'Don't worry, of course she kept it. But you obviously don't
understand me. Or rather I have lost the powers of description that I once
had. I don't feel very sorry for her, as she is of no more use to me. Why
should I write to her? She would be faced,' said the visitor gazing
pensively at the night sky, ' by a letter from the madhouse. Can one really
write to anyone from an address like this? ... I--a mental patient? How
could I make her so unhappy? I ... I couldn't do it.'
Ivan could only agree. The poet's silence was eloquent of his sympathy
and compassion for his visitor, who bowed his head in pain at his memories
and said :
'Poor woman ... I can only hope she has forgotten me . . .'
'But you may recover,' said Ivan timidly.
'I am incurable,' said the visitor calmly. ' Even though Stravinsky
says that he will send me back to normal life, I don't believe him. He's a
humane man and he only wants to comfort me. I won't deny, though, that I'm a
great deal better now than I was. Now, where was I? Oh yes. The frost, the
moving tram-cars ... I knew that this clinic had just been opened and I
crossed the whole town on foot to come here. It was madness! I would
probably have frozen to death but for a lucky chance. A lorry had broken
down on the road and I approached the driver. It was four kilometres past
the city limits and to my surprise he took pity on me. He was driving here
and he took me ... The toes of my left foot were frost-bitten, but they
cured them. I've been here four months now. And do you know, I think this is
not at all a bad place. I shouldn't bother to make any great plans for the
future if I were you. I, for example, wanted to travel all over the world.
Well, it seems that I was not fated to have my wish. I shall only see an
insignificant little corner of the globe. I don't think it's necessarily the
best bit, but I repeat, it's not so bad. Summer's on the way and the balcony
will be covered in ivy, so Praskovya Fyodorovna tells me. These keys have
enlarged my radius of action. There'll be a moon at night. Oh, it has set!
It's freshening. Midnight is on the way. It's time for me to go.'
'Tell me, what happened afterwards with Yeshua and Pilate? ' begged
Ivan. ' Please, I want to know.'
'Oh no, I couldn't,' replied the visitor, wincing painfully. ' I can't
think about my novel without shuddering. Your friend from Patriarch's Ponds
could have done it better than I can. Thanks for the talk. Goodbye.'
Before Ivan had time to notice it, the grille had shut with a gentle
click and the visitor was gone.
His nerves in shreds, Rimsky did not stay for the completion of the
police report on the incident but took refuge in his own office. He sat down
at the desk and with bloodshot eyes stared at the magic rouble notes spread
out in front of him. The treasurer felt his reason slipping. A steady
rumbling could be heard from outside as the public streamed out of the
theatre on to the street. Suddenly Rimsky's acute hearing distinctly caught
the screech of a police whistle, always a sound of ill-omen. When it was
repeated and answered by another, more prolonged and authoritative, followed
by a clearly audible bellow of laughter and a kind of ululating noise, the
treasurer realised at once that something scandalous was happening in the
street. However much he might like to disown it, the noise was bound to be
closely connected with the terrible act put on that evening by the black
magician and his assistants.
The treasurer was right. As he glanced out of the window on to Sadovaya
Street he gave a grimace and hissed :
'I knew it! '
In the bright light of the street lamps he saw below him on the
pavement a woman wearing nothing but a pair of violet knickers, a hat and an
umbrella. Round the painfully embarrassed woman, trying desperately to
crouch down and run away, surged the crowd laughing in the way that had sent
shivers down Rimsky's spine. Beside the woman was a man who was ripping off
his coat and getting his arm hopelessly tangled in the sleeve.
Shouts and roars of laughter were also coming from the side entrance,
and as he turned in that direction Grigory Danilovich saw another woman,
this time in pink underwear. She was struggling across the pavement in an
attempt to hide in the doorway, but the people coming out barred her way and
the wretched victim of her own rashness and vanity, cheated by the sinister
Faggot, could do nothing but hope to be swallowed up by the ground. A
policeman ran towards the unfortunate woman, splitting the air with his
whistle. He was closely followed by some cheerful, cloth-capped young men,
the source of the ribald laughter and wolf-whistles.
A thin, moustached horse-cab driver drove up alongside the first
undressed woman and smiling all over his whiskered face, reined in his horse
with a flourish.
Rimsky punched himself on the head, spat with fury and jumped back from
the window. He sat at his desk for a while listening to the noise in the
street. The sound of whistles from various directions rose to a climax and
then began to fade out. To Rimsky's astonishment the uproar subsided
unexpectedly soon.
The time had come to act, to drink the bitter cup of responsibility.
The telephones had been repaired during the last act and he now had to ring
up, report the incident, ask for help, blame it all on Likhodeyev and
exculpate himself.
Twice Rimsky nervously picked up the receiver and twice put it down.
Suddenly the deathly silence of the office was broken by the telephone
itself ringing. He jumped and went cold. ' My nerves are in a terrible
state,' he thought as he lifted the telephone. Immediately he staggered back
and turned whiter than paper. A soft, sensual woman's voice whispered into
the earpiece :
'Don't ring up, Rimsky, or you'll regret it . . .'
The line went dead. Feeling gooseflesh spreading over his skin, the
treasurer replaced the receiver and glanced round to the window behind his
back. Through the sparse leaves of a sycamore tree he saw the moon flying
through a translucent cloud. He seemed to be mesmerised by the branches of
the tree and the longer Rimsky stared at them the more strongly he felt the
grip of fear.
Pulling himself together the treasurer finally turned away from the
moonlit window and stood up. There was now no longer any question of
telephoning and Rimsky could only think of one thing--how to get out of the
theatre as quickly as possible.
He listened : the building was silent. He realised that for some time
now he had been the only person left on the second floor and a childish,
uncontrollable fear overcame him at the thought. He shuddered to think that
he would have to walk alone through the empty passages and down the
staircase. He feverishly grabbed the magic roubles from his desk, stuffed
them into his briefcase and coughed to summon up a little courage. His cough
sounded hoarse and weak.
At this moment he noticed what seemed to be a damp, evil-smelling
substance oozing under the door and into his office. A tremor ran down the
treasurer's spine. Suddenly a clock began to strike midnight and even this
made him shudder. But his heart sank completely when he heard the sound of a
latch-key being softly turned in the lock. Clutching his briefcase with
damp, cold hands Rimsky felt that if that scraping noise in the keyhole were
to last much longer his nerves would snap and he would scream.
At last the door gave way and Varenukha slipped noiselessly into the
office. Rimsky collapsed into an armchair. Gasping for air, he smiled what
was meant to be an ingratiating smile and whispered :
'God, what a fright you gave me. . . .'
Terrifying as this sudden appearance was, it had its hopeful side--it
cleared up at least one little mystery in this whole baffling affair.
'Tell me, tell me, quickly! . . .' croaked Rimsky, clutching at his
one straw of certainty in a world gone mad. ' What does this all mean? "
'I'm sorry,' mumbled Varenukha, closing the door. ' I thought you
would have left by now.' Without taking his cap off he crossed to an
armchair and sat down beside the desk, facing Rimsky. There was a trace of
something odd in Varenukha's reply, immediately detected by Rimsky, whose
sensitivity was now on a par with the world's most delicate seismograph. For
one thing, why had Varenukha come to the treasurer's office if he thought he
wasn't there? He had his own office, after all. For another, no matter which
entrance Varenukha might have used to come into the theatre he must have met
one of the night watchmen, who had all been told that Grigory Danilovich was
working late in his office. Rimsky, however, did not dwell long on these
peculiarities--this was not the moment.
'Why didn't you ring me? And what the hell was all that pantomime
about Yalta? '
'It was what I thought,' replied the house manager, making a sucking
noise as though troubled by an aching tooth. ' They found him in a bar out
at Pushkino.'
'Pushkino? But that's just outside Moscow! What about those telegrams
from Yalta? '
'Yalta--hell! He got the Pushkino telegraphist drunk and they started
playing the fool, which included sending us those telegrams marked " Yalta
".'
'Aha, aha ... I see now . . .' crooned Rimsky, his yellowish eyes
flashing. In his mind's eye he saw Stepa being solemnly dismissed from his
job. Freedom! At last Rimsky would be rid of that idiot Likhodeyev! Perhaps
something even worse than the sack was in store for Stepan Bogdanovich . . .
' Tell me all the details! ' cried Rimsky, banging his desk with a
paper-weight.
Varenukha began telling the story. As soon as he had arrived at the
place where the treasurer had sent him, he was immediately shown in and
listened to with great attention. No one, of course, believed for a moment
that Stepa was in Yalta. Everybody at once agreed with Varenukha's
suggestion that Likhodeyev was obviously at the ' Yalta ' restaurant in
Pushkino. ' Where is he now? ' Rimsky interrupted excitedly. ' Where do you
think? ' replied the house manager with a twisted smile. ' In the police
cells, of course, being sobered up! '
'Ah! Thank God for that! '
Varenukha went on with his story and the more he said the clearer
Rimsky saw the long chain of Likhodeyev's misdeeds, each succeeding link in
it worse than the last. What a price he was going to pay for one drunken
afternoon at Pushkino! Dancing with the telegraphist. Chasing terrified
women. Picking a fight with the barman at the ' Yalta'. Throwing onions on
to the floor. Breaking eight bottles of white wine. Smashing a cab-driver's
taximeter for refusing to take him. Threatening to arrest people who tried
to stop him. . . .
Stepa was well known in the Moscow theatre world and everybody knew
that the man was a menace, but this story was just a shade too much, even
for Stepa. . . . Rimsky's sharp eyes bored into Varenukha's face across the
desk and the longer the story went on the grimmer those eyes became. The
more Varenukha embroidered his account with picturesque and revolting
details, the less Rimsky believed him. When Varenukha described how Stepa
was so far gone that he tried to resist the men who had been sent to bring
him back to Moscow, Rimsky was quite certain that everything the house
manager was telling him was a lie--a lie from beginning to end.
Varenukha had never gone to Pushkino, and Stepa had never been there
either. There was no drunken telegraphist, no broken glass in the bar and
Stepa had not been hauled away with ropes-- none of it had ever happened.
As soon as Rimsky felt sure that his colleague was lying to him, a
feeling of terror crawled over his body, beginning with his feet and for the
second time he had the weird feeling that a kind of malarial damp was oozing
across the floor. The house manager was sitting in a curious hunched
attitude in the armchair, trying constantly to stay in the shadow of the
blue-shaded table lamp and ostensibly shading his eyes from the light with a
folded newspaper. Without taking his eyes off Varenukha for a moment,
Rimsky's mind was working furiously to unravel this new mystery. Why should
the man be lying to him at this late hour in the totally empty and silent
building? Slowly a consciousness of danger, of an unknown but terrible
danger took hold of Rimsky. Pretending not to notice Varenukha's fidgeting
and tricks with the newspaper, the treasurer concentrated on his face,
scarcely listening to what he was saying. There was something else that
Rimsky found even more sinister than this slanderous and completely bogus
yarn about the goings-on in Pushkino, and that something was a change in the
house manager's appearance and manner.
However hard Varenukha tried to pull down the peak of his cap to shade
his face and however much he waved the newspaper, Rimsky managed to discern
an enormous bruise that covered most of the right side of his face, starting
at his nose. What was more, this normally ruddy-cheeked man now had an
unhealthy chalky pallor and although the night was hot, he was wearing an
old-fashioned striped cravat tied round his neck. If one added to this his
newly acquired and repulsive habit of sucking his teeth, a distinct lowering