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in the infernal light, said softly and gaily:
'Kiriushka! Stop this tomfoolery! Have you lost your mind?... Fyodor
Ivanych will be back any minute. Get out right now!' and she waved at Ivan
with the scrubber.
The misunderstanding was evident, and Ivan Nikolaevich was, of course,
to blame for it. But he did not want to admit it and, exclaiming
reproachfully: 'Ah, wanton creature! ...', at once found himself for some
reason in the kitchen. No one was there, and on the oven in the
semi-darkness silently stood about a dozen extinguished primuses [1].' A
single moonbeam, having seeped through the dusty, perennially unwashed
window, shone sparsely into the corner where, in dust and cobwebs, a
forgotten icon hung, with the ends of two wedding candles [2] peeking out
from behind its casing. Under the big icon, pinned to it, hung a little one
made of paper.
No one knows what thought took hold of Ivan here, but before running
out the back door, he appropriated one of these candles, as well as the
paper icon. With these objects, he left the unknown apartment, muttering
something, embarrassed at the thought of what he had just experienced in the
bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this impudent Kiriushka might be
and whether the disgusting hat with ear-flaps belonged to him.
In the desolate, joyless lane the poet looked around, searching for the
fugitive, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said firmly to himself:
'Why, of course, he's at the Moscow River! Onward!'
Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed
that the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other
place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome
lane was completely empty.
In the very shortest time, Ivan Nikolaevich could be seen on the
granite steps of the Moscow River amphitheatre. [3]
Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant,
bearded fellow who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting beside a
torn white Tolstoy blouse and a pair of unlaced, worn boots. After waving
his arms to cool off, Ivan dived swallow-fashion into the water.
It took his breath away, so cold the water was, and the thought even
flashed in him that he might not manage to come up to the surface. However,
he did manage to come up, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes rounded in
terror, Ivan Nikolaevich began swimming through the black, oil-smelling
water among the broken zigzags of street lights on the bank.
When the wet Ivan came dancing back up the steps to the place where the
bearded fellow was guarding his clothes, it became clear that not only the
latter, but also the former - that is, the bearded fellow himself - had been
stolen. In the exact spot where the pile of clothes had been, a pair of
striped drawers, the torn Tolstoy blouse, the candle, the icon and a box of
matches had been left. After threatening someone in the distance with his
fist in powerless anger, Ivan put on what was left for him.
Here two considerations began to trouble him: first, that his Massolit
identification card, which he never parted with, was gone, and, second,
whether he could manage to get through Moscow unhindered looking the way he
did now? In striped drawers, after all ... True, it was nobody's business,
but still there might be some hitch or delay.
Ivan tore off the buttons where the drawers fastened at the ankle,
figuring that this way they might pass for summer trousers, gathered up the
icon, the candle and the matches, and started off, saying to himself:
'To Griboedov's! Beyond all doubt, he's there.'
The city was already living its evening life. Trucks flew through the
dust, chains clanking, and on their platforms men lay sprawled belly up on
sacks. All windows were open. In each of these windows a light burned under
an orange lampshade, and from every window, every door, every gateway, roof,
and attic, basement and courtyard blared the hoarse roar of the polonaise
from the opera Evgeny Onegin. [4]
Ivan Nikolaevich's apprehensions proved fully justified: passers-by did
pay attention to him and turned their heads. As a result, he took the
decision to leave the main streets and make his way through back lanes,
where people are not so importunate, where there were fewer chances of them
picking on a barefoot man, pestering him with questions about his drawers,
which stubbornly refused to look like trousers.
This Ivan did, and, penetrating the mysterious network of lanes around
the Arbat, he began making his way along the walls, casting fearful sidelong
glances, turning around every moment, hiding in gateways from time to time,
avoiding intersections with traffic lights and the grand entrances of
embassy mansions.
And all along his difficult way, he was for some reason inexpressibly
tormented by the ubiquitous orchestra that accompanied the heavy basso
singing about his love for Tatiana.
The old, two-storeyed, cream-coloured house stood on the ring
boulevard, in the depths of a seedy garden, separated from the sidewalk by a
fancy cast-iron fence. The small terrace in front of the house was paved
with asphalt, and in wintertime was dominated by a snow pile with a shovel
stuck in it, but in summertime turned into the most magnificent section of
the summer restaurant under a canvas tent.
The house was called `The House of Griboedov' on the grounds that it
was alleged to have once belonged to an aunt of the writer Alexander
Sergeevich Griboedov. [1] Now, whether it did or did not belong to her, we
do not exactly know. On recollection, it even seems that Griboedov never had
any such house-owning aunt... Nevertheless, that was what the house was
called. Moreover, one Moscow liar had it that there, on the second floor, in
a round hall with columns, the famous writer had supposedly read passages
from Woe From Wit to this very aunt while she reclined on a sofa.
However, devil knows, maybe he did, it's of no importance.
What is important is that at the present time this house was owned by
that same Massolit which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail
Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch's Ponds.
In the casual manner of Massolit members, no one called the house The
House of Griboedov', everyone simply said 'Griboedov's': 'I spent two hours
yesterday knocking about Griboedov's.' 'Well, and so?' `Got myself a month
in Yalta.' 'Bravo!' Or: 'Go to Berlioz, he receives today from four to five
at Griboedov's...' and so on.
Massolit had settled itself at Griboedov's in the best and cosiest way
imaginable. Anyone entering Griboedov's first of all became involuntarily
acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs, and with group as
well as individual photographs of the members of Massolit, hanging (the
photographs) on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.
On the door to the very first room of this upper floor one could see a
big sign: 'Fishing and Vacation Section', along with the picture of a carp
caught on a line.
On the door of room no. 2 something not quite comprehensible was
written: 'One-day Creative Trips. Apply to M. V. Spurioznaya.'
The next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible
inscription: 'Perelygino'. [2] After which the chance visitor to Griboedov's
would not know where to look from the motley inscriptions on the aunt's
walnut doors: `Sign up for Paper with Poklevkina', `Cashier', 'Personal
Accounts of Sketch-Writers'...
If one cut through the longest line, which already went downstairs and
out to the doorman's lodge, one could see the sign 'Housing Question' on a
door which people were crashing every second.
Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on
which a cliff was depicted and, riding on its crest, a horseman in a felt
cloak with a rifle on his shoulder. A little lower - palm trees and a
balcony; on the balcony - a seated young man with a forelock, gazing
somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand.
The inscription: 'Full-scale Creative Vacations from Two Weeks
(Story/Novella) to One Year (Novel/Trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe,
Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).'[3] There was also a
line at this door, but not an excessive one - some hundred and fifty people.
Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the
Griboedov house, came the `Massolit Executive Board', 'Cashiers nos. 2, 3,
4, 5', 'Editorial Board', 'Chairman of Massolit', 'Billiard Room', various
auxiliary institutions and, finally, that same hall with the colonnade where
the aunt had delighted in the comedy other genius nephew.
Any visitor finding himself in Griboedov's, unless of course he was a
total dim-wit, would realize at once what a good life those lucky fellows,
the Massolit members, were having, and black envy would immediately start
gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven
for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which
there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Massolit membership card, brown,
smelling of costly leather, with a wide gold border - a card known to all
Moscow.
Who will speak in defence of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty
category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor's position.
For what he had seen on the upper floor was not all, and was far from
all.
The entire ground floor of the aunt's house was occupied by a
restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in
Moscow. And not only because it took up two vast halls with arched ceilings,
painted with violet, Assyrian-maned horses, not only because on each table
there stood a lamp shaded with a shawl, not only because it was not
accessible to just anybody coming in off the street, but because in the
quality of its fare Griboedov's beat any restaurant in Moscow up and down,
and this fare was available at the most reasonable, by no means onerous,
price.
Hence there was nothing surprising, for instance, in the following
conversation, which the author of these most truthful lines once heard near
the cast-iron fence of Griboedov's:
'Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?'
`What a question! Why, here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald
Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there will be perch au naturel
done to order. A virtuoso little treat!'
`You sure know how to live, Amvrosy!' skinny, run-down Foka, with a
carbuncle on his neck, replied with a sigh to the ruddy-lipped giant,
golden-haired, plump-cheeked Amvrosy-the-poet.
`I have no special knowledge,' Amvrosy protested, 'just the ordinary
wish to live like a human being. You mean to say, Foka that perch can be met
with at the Coliseum as well. But at the Coliseum a portion of perch costs
thirteen roubles fifteen kopecks, and here - five-fifty! Besides, at the
Coliseum they serve three-day-old perch, and, besides, there's no guarantee
you won't get slapped in the mug with a bunch of grapes at the Coliseum by
the first young man who bursts in from Theatre Alley. No, I'm categorically
opposed to the Coliseum,' the gastronome Amvrosy boomed for the whole
boulevard to hear. 'Don't try to convince me, Foka!'
'I'm not trying to convince you, Amvrosy,' Foka squeaked. 'One can also
dine at home.'
`I humbly thank you,' trumpeted Amvrosy, 'but I can imagine your wife,
in the communal kitchen at home, trying to do perch au naturel to order in a
saucepan! Hee, hee, hee! ... Aurevwar, Foka!' And, humming, Amvrosy directed
his steps to the veranda under the tent.
Ahh, yes! ... Yes, there was a time! ... Old Muscovites will remember
the renowned Griboedov's! What is poached perch done to order!
Cheap stuff, my dear Amvrosy! But sterlet, sterlet in a silvery chafing
dish, sterlet slices interlaid with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? And
eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree in little dishes? And how did you like
the fillets of thrush? With truffles? Quail a la genoise? Nine-fifty! And
the jazz, and the courteous service! And in July, when the whole family is
in the country, and you are kept in the city by urgent literary business -
on the veranda, in the shade of the creeping vines, in a golden spot on the
cleanest of tablecloths, a bowl of soup printanier? Remember, Amvrosy? But
why ask! I can see by your lips that you do. What is your whitefish, your
perch! But the snipe, the great snipe, the jack snipe, the woodcock in their
season, the quail, the curlew? Cool seltzer fizzing in your throat?! But
enough, you are getting distracted, reader! Follow me!...
At half past ten on the evening when Berlioz died at the Patriarch's
Ponds, only one room was lit upstairs at Griboedov's, and in it languished
twelve writers who had gathered for a meeting and were waiting for Mikhail
Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, and on tables, and even on the two window-sills in
the office of the Massolit executive board, they suffered seriously from the
heat. Not a single breath of fresh air came through the open windows. Moscow
was releasing the heat accumulated in the asphalt all day, and it was clear
that night would bring no relief. The smell of onions came from the basement
of the aunt's house, where the restaurant kitchen was at work, they were all
thirsty, they were all nervous and angry.
The belletrist Beskudnikov - a quiet, decently dressed man with
attentive and at the same time elusive eyes - took out his watch. The hand
was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the face and
showed it to the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting next to him on the table
and in boredom dangling his feet shod in yellow shoes with rubber treads.
'Anyhow,' grumbled Dvubratsky.
"The laddie must've got stuck on the Klyazma,' came the thick-voiced
response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant,
who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the
pen-name of Bos'n George.
'Excuse me!' boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches,
'but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in
here. The meeting was set for ten o'clock, wasn't it?'
'It's nice now on the Klyazma,' Bos'n George needled those present,
knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was
everybody's sore spot. 'There's nightingales singing already. I always work
better in the country, especially in spring.'
'It's the third year I've paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to
this paradise, but there's nothing to be spied amidst the waves,' the
novelist Ieronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.
'Some are lucky and some aren't,' the critic Ababkov droned from the
window-sill.
Bos'n George's little eyes lit up with glee, and she said, softening
her contralto:
We mustn't be envious, comrades. There's twenty-two dachas [4] in all,
and only seven more being built, and there's three thousand of us in
Massolit.'
`Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' someone put in from the
corner.
'So you see,' the Bos'n went on, 'what can be done? Naturally, it's the
most talented of us that got the dachas...'
'The generals!' Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.
Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.
'Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,' Glukharev said behind him.
`Lavrovich has six to himself,' Deniskin cried out, `and the dining
room's panelled in oak!'
'Eh, that's not the point right now,' Ababkov droned, 'it's that it's
half past eleven.'
A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started
telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich's, found out
that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They
called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 950, and of
course found no one there.
'He might have called!' shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.
Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call
anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov's, in an enormous room lit by
thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had still recently been
Mikhail Alexandrovich.
On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm
broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth
knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on
the third, a pile of stiffened rags.
Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a
pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the
investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich's assistant in Massolit, the writer
Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife's side.
A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with
the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man's apartment,
where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all
went to the morgue.
And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating
what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to
lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov's after simply covering the dead
man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?
No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin,
Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and
shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the
upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently
berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally,
were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but
airless halls.
And exactly at midnight, in the first of these halls, something
crashed, jangled, spilled, leaped. And all at once a high male voice
desperately cried out 'Hallelujah!' to the music. The famous Griboedov jazz
band struck up. Sweat-covered faces seemed to brighten, it was as if the
horses painted on the ceiling came alive, the lamps seemed to shine with
added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance,
and following them the veranda broke into dance.
Glukharev danced with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Quant danced,
Zhukopov the novelist danced with some movie actress in a yellow dress.
Dragunsky danced, Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin danced with the
enormous Bos'n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in
the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited
guests danced, Muscovites and out-of-towners, the writer Johann from
Kronstadt, a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director,
with a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent representatives of
the poetry section of Massolit danced - that is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky,
Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak - young men of unknown profession,
in crew cuts, with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very elderly
danced, a shred of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him danced a
sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.
Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer over their
heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: 'Excuse me, citizen!' Somewhere
through a megaphone a voice commanded: `One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas!
Home-style tripe!' The high voice no longer sang, but howled 'Hallelujah!'
The clashing of golden cymbals in the band sometimes even drowned out
the clashing of dishes, which the dishwashers sent down a sloping chute to
the kitchen. In short - hell.
And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed
man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and
cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to
say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a
wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was
tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean
under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean
Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases
after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and
there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the
cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it... And the ice is melting in
the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes,
and you're afraid, afraid... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!...
And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table: 'Berlioz!!' The jazz
broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. 'What, what,
what, what?!!' 'Berlioz!!!' And they began jumping up, exclaiming...
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once,
straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram
and send it off immediately.
But what telegram, may we ask, and where? And why send it? And where,
indeed? And what possible need for any telegram does someone have whose
flattened pate is now clutched in the dissector's rubber hands, whose neck
the professor is now piercing with curved needles? He's dead, and has no
need of any telegrams. It's all over, let's not burden the telegraph wires
any more.
Yes, he's dead, dead... But, as for us, we're alive!
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began
to subside, and somebody went back to his table and - sneakily at first,
then openly - drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let
chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?
By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!
Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the jazz band dispersed, several
journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that
Zheldybin had come from the morgue. He had installed himself in the
deceased's office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who
would replace Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned from the restaurant all twelve
members of the board, and at the urgently convened meeting in Berlioz's
office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the
hall with columns at Griboedov's, of transporting the body from the morgue
to that hall, of opening it to the public, and all else connected with the
sad event.
And the restaurant began to live its usual nocturnal life and would
have gone on living it until closing time, that is, until four o'clock in
the morning, had it not been for an occurrence which was completely out of
the ordinary and which struck the restaurant's clientele much more than the
news of Berlioz's death.
The first to take alarm were the coachmen [5] waiting at the gates of
the Griboedov house. One of them, rising on his box, was heard to cry out:
'Hoo-ee! Just look at that!'
After which, from God knows where, a little light flashed by the
cast-iron fence and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the
tables began to get up and peer at it, and saw that along with the little
light a white ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right
up to the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at their tables, chunks of
sterlet on their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who at that moment had
stepped out of the restaurant coatroom to have a smoke in the yard, stamped
out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of
barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and
stopped, smiling stupidly.
And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped
unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all,
but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.
He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon
bearing the image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a
safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan
Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich's right cheek
was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the
silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to
the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter's hand.
The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly:
'Hail, friends!' After which he peeked under the nearest table and
exclaimed ruefully: 'No, he's not there!'
Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly:
That's it. Delirium tremens.'
And the second, a woman's, frightened, uttered the words:
'How could the police let him walk the streets like that?'
This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied:
They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but I
hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!' Here Ivan
Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: 'Brethren in literature!' (His
hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) 'Listen to me everyone! He has
appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he'll do untold harm!'
'What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?' voices came from all
sides.
The consultant,' Ivan replied, `and this consultant just killed Misha
Berlioz at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd
gathered around Ivan's flame.
`Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,' a soft and polite voice said
over Ivan Nikolaevich's ear, 'tell me, what do you mean "killed"?
Who killed?'
'A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,' Ivan said, looking
around.
'And what is his name?' came softly to Ivan's ear. That's just it - his
name!' Ivan cried in anguish. 'If only I knew his name! I didn't make out
his name on his visiting card... I only remember the first letter, "W", his
name begins with "W"! What last name begins with "W"?' Ivan asked himself,
clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: 'Wi, we, wa ... Wu
... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?' The hair on Ivan's head
began to crawl with the tension.
'Wolf?' some woman cried pitifully.
Ivan became angry.
'Fool!' he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. "What has Wolf got
to do with it? Wolf's not to blame for anything! Wo, wa... No, I'll never
remember this way! Here's what, citizens: call the police at once, let them
send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And
don't forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long
checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat... And meanwhile
I'll search Griboedov's, I sense that he's here!'
Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving
the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here
someone said: `Call a doctor!' and someone's benign, fleshy face, clean
shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.
'Comrade Homeless,' the face began in a guest speaker's voice, 'calm
down! You're upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich... no,
say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need
rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you'll forget...'
'You,' Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, "but don't you understand
that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your
foolishness! Cretin!'
`Pardon me, Comrade Homeless!...' the face replied, blushing,
retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.
'No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,' Ivan Nikolaevich said
with quiet hatred.
A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his
right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the
ear.
Here it occurred to them to fall upon Ivan - and so they did. The
candle went out, and the glasses that had fallen from the face were
instantly trampled. Ivan let out a terrible war cry, heard, to the
temptation of all, even on the boulevard, and set about defending himself.
Dishes fell clattering from the tables, women screamed.
All the while the waiters were tying up the poet with napkins, a
conversation was going on in the coatroom between the commander of the brig
and the doorman.
'Didn't you see he was in his underpants?' the pirate inquired coldly.
'But, Archibald Archibaldovich,' the doorman replied, cowering, 'how
could I not let him in, if he's a member of Massolit?' 'Didn't you see he
was in his underpants?' the pirate repeated. 'Pardon me, Archibald
Archibaldovich,' the doorman said, turning purple, 'but what could I do? I
understand, there are ladies sitting on the veranda...'
`Ladies have nothing to do with it, it makes no difference to the
ladies,' the pirate replied, literally burning the doorman up with his eyes,
'but it does to the police! A man in his underwear can walk the streets of
Moscow only in this one case, that he's accompanied by the police, and only
to one place - the police station! And you, if you're a doorman, ought to
know that on seeing such a man, you must, without a moment's delay, start
blowing your whistle. Do you hear? Do you hear what's going on on the
veranda?'
Here the half-crazed doorman heard some sort of hooting coming from the
veranda, the smashing of dishes and women's screams.
'Now, what's to be done with you for that?' the freebooter asked.
The skin on the doorman's face acquired a typhoid tinge, his eyes went
dead. It seemed to him that the black hair, now combed and parted, was
covered with flaming silk. The shirt-front and tailcoat disappeared and a
pistol butt emerged, tucked into a leather belt. The doorman pictured
himself hanging from the fore-topsail yard. His eyes saw his own tongue
sticking out and his lifeless head lolling on his shoulder, and even heard
the splash of waves against the hull. The doorman's knees gave way. But here
the freebooter took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.
`Watch out, Nikolai, this is the last time! We have no need of such
doormen in the restaurant. Go find yourself a job as a beadle.' Having said
this, the commander commanded precisely, clearly, rapidly: `Get Pantelei
from the snack bar. Police. Protocol. A car. To the psychiatric clinic.' And
added: 'Blow your whistle!'
In a quarter of an hour an extremely astounded public, not only in the
restaurant but on the boulevard itself and in the windows of houses looking
on to the restaurant garden, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a
waiter and the poet Riukhin carry through the gates of Griboedov's a young
man swaddled like a doll, dissolved in tears, who spat, aiming precisely at
Riukhin, and shouted for all the boulevard to hear:
'You bastard! ... You bastard!...'
A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him
a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins,
shouted:
'Have a run for your money! I've taken `em to the psychics before!'
Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In
short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only
when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov's the unfortunate
Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin.
It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and
wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous
psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of
the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who
was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there.
The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been bed up lay in a pile
on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free.
Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said
timidly:
'Hello, Doctor.'
The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at
Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face
and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor's entrance.
'Here, Doctor,' Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a
mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, `is the
renowned poet Ivan Homeless ... well, you see ... we're afraid it might be
delirium tremens...'
'Was he drinking hard?' the doctor said through his teeth.
'No, he drank, but not really so...'
'Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking
dogs?'
'No,' Riukhin replied with a shudder, `I saw him yesterday and this
morning ... he was perfectly well.'
'And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?'
'No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way...'
'Aha, aha,' the doctor said with great satisfaction, 'and why the
scratches? Did he have a fight?'
'He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody... and
then somebody else...'
'So, so, so,' the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: 'Hello
there!'
'Greetings, saboteur! [1]' Ivan replied spitefully and loudly.
Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the
courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his
glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put
them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:
'How old are you?'
'You can all go to the devil!' Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.
'But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?'
'I'm twenty-three years old,' Ivan began excitedly, 'and I'll file a
complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!' he adverted
separately to Riukhin.
'And what do you want to complain about?'
'About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force
to a madhouse!' Ivan replied wrathfully.
Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly
no insanity in the man's eyes. No longer dull as they had been at
Griboedov's, they were now clear as ever.
`Good God!' Riukhin thought fearfully. 'So he's really normal! What
nonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He's normal, normal, only his
mug got scratched...'
'You are,' the doctor began calmly, sitting down on a white stool with
a shiny foot, `not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will keep
you if it's not necessary.'
Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the corner of his
eye, but still grumbled:
'Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots,
of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!'
'Who is this giftless Sashka?' the doctor inquired.
'This one here - Riukhin,' Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger in
Riukhin's direction.
The latter flushed with indignation. That's the thanks I get,' he
thought bitterly, 'for showing concern for him! What trash, really!'
'Psychologically, a typical little kulak,'[2] Ivan Nikolaevich began,
evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin, 'and, what's more,
a little kulak carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his
lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for
the First of May [3] - heh, heh, heh ... "Soaring up!" and "Soaring down!!"
But if you could look inside him and see what he thinks... you'd gasp!' And
Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.
Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just one
thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern
for a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there was
nothing to be done: there's no arguing with the mentally ill!
`And why, actually, were you brought here?' the doctor asked, after
listening attentively to Homeless's denunciations.
'Devil take them, the numskulls! They seized me, tied me up with some
rags, and dragged me away in a truck!'
'May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?'
There's nothing surprising about that,' Ivan replied. `I went for a
swim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash!
I couldn't very well walk around Moscow naked! I put it on because I
was hurrying to Griboedov.'
The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly:
'The name of the restaurant.'
`Aha,' said the doctor, `and why were you in such a hurry? Some
business meeting?'
'I'm trying to catch the consultant,' Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked
around anxiously.
'What consultant?'
'Do you know Berlioz?' Ivan asked significantly.
The... composer?'
Ivan got upset.
'What composer? Ah, yes... Ah, no. The composer has the same name as
Misha Berlioz.'
Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain:
The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight
at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
'Don't blab about what you don't know!' Ivan got angry with Riukhin. 'I
was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!'
'Pushed him?'
'"Pushed him", nothing!' Ivan exclaimed, angered by the general
obtuseness. 'His kind don't need to push! He can perform such stunts - hold
on to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under the
tram-car!'
'And did anyone besides you see this consultant?'
That's the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.'
'So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?' Here the
doctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who was
sitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and began
filling in the blank spaces in its columns.
'Here's what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen...'
That one?' asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on the
table in front of the woman, next to the icon.
That very one, and...'
'And why the icon?'
'Ah, yes, the icon...' Ivan blushed. `It was the icon that frightened
them most of all.' He again jabbed his finger in the direction of Riukhin.
'But the thing is that he, the consultant, he... let's speak directly... is
mixed up with the unclean powers... and you won't catch him so easily.'
The orderlies for some reason snapped to attention and fastened their
eyes on Ivan.
Yes, sirs,' Ivan went on, 'mixed up with them! An absolute fact. He
spoke personally with Pontius Pilate. And there's no need to stare at me
like that. I'm telling the truth! He saw everything - the balcony and the
palm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate's, I can vouch for it.'
'Come, come...'
'Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran...'
Here the clock suddenly struck twice.
'Oh-oh!' Ivan exclaimed and got up from the couch. `It's two o'clock,
and I'm wasting time with you! Excuse me, where's the telephone?'
'Let him use the telephone,' the doctor told the orderlies.
Ivan grabbed the receiver, and the woman meanwhile quietly asked
Riukhin:
'Is he married?'
'Single,' Riukhin answered fearfully.
'Member of a trade union?'
'Yes.'
'Police?' Ivan shouted into the receiver. 'Police? Comrade
officer-on-duty, give orders at once for five motor cycles with machine-guns
to be sent out to catch the foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me up,
I'll go with you... It's the poet Homeless speaking from the madhouse...
What's your address?' Homeless asked the doctor in a whisper, covering
the receiver with his hand, and then again shouting into it: 'Are you
listening?
Hello!... Outrageous!' Ivan suddenly screamed and hurled the receiver
against the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, offered him his hand, said
'Goodbye' drily, and made as if to leave.
`For pity's sake, where do you intend to go?' the doctor said, peering
into Ivan's eyes. 'In the dead of night, in your underwear... You're not
feeling well, stay with us.'
`Let me pass,' Ivan said to the orderlies, who closed ranks at the
door. 'Will you let me pass or not?' the poet shouted in a terrible voice.
Riukhin trembled, but the woman pushed a button on the table and a
shiny little box with a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface.
'Ah, so?!' Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look.
'Well, then... Goodbye!' And he rushed head first into the
window-blind.
The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave no
crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the
orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted:
'So that's the sort of windows you've got here! Let me go! Let me
go!...'
A syringe flashed in the doctor's hand, with a single movement the
woman slit the threadbare sleeve of the shirt and seized the arm with
unwomanly strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the hands
of the four people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuck
the needle into Ivan's arm. They held Ivan for another few seconds and then
lowered him on to the couch.
'Bandits!' Ivan shouted and jumped up from the couch, but was installed
on it again. The moment they let go of him, he again jumped up, but sat back
down by himself. He paused, gazing around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned,
then smiled maliciously.
'Locked me up after all,' he said, yawned again, unexpectedly lay down,
put his head on the pillow, his fist under his head like a child, and
muttered now in a sleepy voice, without malice: 'Very well, then... you'll
pay for it yourselves... I've warned you, you can do as you like... I'm now
interested most of all in Pontius Pilate ... Pilate...', and he closed his
eyes.
'A bath, a private room, number 117, and a nurse to watch him,' the
doctor ordered as he put his glasses on. Here Riukhin again gave a start:
the white door opened noiselessly, behind it a corridor could be seen, lit
by blue night-lights. Out of the corridor rolled a stretcher on rubber
wheels, to which the quieted Ivan was transferred, and then he rolled off
down the corridor and the door closed behind him.
'Doctor,' the shaken Riukhin asked in a whisper, 'it means he's really
ill?'
'Oh, yes,' replied the doctor.
'But what's wrong with him, then?' Riukhin asked timidly.
The tired doctor glanced at Riukhin and answered listlessly:
'Locomotor and speech excitation... delirious interpretations... A
complex case, it seems. Schizophrenia, I suppose. Plus this alcoholism...'
Riukhin understood nothing from the doctor's words, except that things
were evidently not so great with Ivan Nikolaevich. He sighed and asked:
'But what's all this talk of his about some consultant?'
`He must have seen somebody who struck his disturbed imagination. Or
maybe a hallucination...'
A few minutes later the truck was carrying Riukhin off to Moscow. Day
was breaking, and the light of the street lights still burning along the
highway was now unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was vexed at having
wasted the night, drove the truck as fast as he could, and skidded on the
turns.
Now the woods dropped off, stayed somewhere behind, and the river went
somewhere to the side, and an omnium gatherum came spilling to meet the
truck: fences with sentry boxes and stacks of wood, tall posts and some sort
of poles, with spools strung on the poles, heaps of rubble, the earth scored
by canals - in short, you sensed that she was there, Moscow, right there,
around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you.
Riukhin was jolted and tossed about; the sort of stump he had placed
himself on kept trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant napkins,
thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier by bus, moved
all around the flatbed. Riukhin tried to collect them, but then, for some
reason hissing spitefully: 'Devil take them! What am I doing fussing like a
fool?...', he spumed them aside with his foot and stopped looking at them.
'Kiriushka! Stop this tomfoolery! Have you lost your mind?... Fyodor
Ivanych will be back any minute. Get out right now!' and she waved at Ivan
with the scrubber.
The misunderstanding was evident, and Ivan Nikolaevich was, of course,
to blame for it. But he did not want to admit it and, exclaiming
reproachfully: 'Ah, wanton creature! ...', at once found himself for some
reason in the kitchen. No one was there, and on the oven in the
semi-darkness silently stood about a dozen extinguished primuses [1].' A
single moonbeam, having seeped through the dusty, perennially unwashed
window, shone sparsely into the corner where, in dust and cobwebs, a
forgotten icon hung, with the ends of two wedding candles [2] peeking out
from behind its casing. Under the big icon, pinned to it, hung a little one
made of paper.
No one knows what thought took hold of Ivan here, but before running
out the back door, he appropriated one of these candles, as well as the
paper icon. With these objects, he left the unknown apartment, muttering
something, embarrassed at the thought of what he had just experienced in the
bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this impudent Kiriushka might be
and whether the disgusting hat with ear-flaps belonged to him.
In the desolate, joyless lane the poet looked around, searching for the
fugitive, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said firmly to himself:
'Why, of course, he's at the Moscow River! Onward!'
Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed
that the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other
place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome
lane was completely empty.
In the very shortest time, Ivan Nikolaevich could be seen on the
granite steps of the Moscow River amphitheatre. [3]
Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant,
bearded fellow who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting beside a
torn white Tolstoy blouse and a pair of unlaced, worn boots. After waving
his arms to cool off, Ivan dived swallow-fashion into the water.
It took his breath away, so cold the water was, and the thought even
flashed in him that he might not manage to come up to the surface. However,
he did manage to come up, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes rounded in
terror, Ivan Nikolaevich began swimming through the black, oil-smelling
water among the broken zigzags of street lights on the bank.
When the wet Ivan came dancing back up the steps to the place where the
bearded fellow was guarding his clothes, it became clear that not only the
latter, but also the former - that is, the bearded fellow himself - had been
stolen. In the exact spot where the pile of clothes had been, a pair of
striped drawers, the torn Tolstoy blouse, the candle, the icon and a box of
matches had been left. After threatening someone in the distance with his
fist in powerless anger, Ivan put on what was left for him.
Here two considerations began to trouble him: first, that his Massolit
identification card, which he never parted with, was gone, and, second,
whether he could manage to get through Moscow unhindered looking the way he
did now? In striped drawers, after all ... True, it was nobody's business,
but still there might be some hitch or delay.
Ivan tore off the buttons where the drawers fastened at the ankle,
figuring that this way they might pass for summer trousers, gathered up the
icon, the candle and the matches, and started off, saying to himself:
'To Griboedov's! Beyond all doubt, he's there.'
The city was already living its evening life. Trucks flew through the
dust, chains clanking, and on their platforms men lay sprawled belly up on
sacks. All windows were open. In each of these windows a light burned under
an orange lampshade, and from every window, every door, every gateway, roof,
and attic, basement and courtyard blared the hoarse roar of the polonaise
from the opera Evgeny Onegin. [4]
Ivan Nikolaevich's apprehensions proved fully justified: passers-by did
pay attention to him and turned their heads. As a result, he took the
decision to leave the main streets and make his way through back lanes,
where people are not so importunate, where there were fewer chances of them
picking on a barefoot man, pestering him with questions about his drawers,
which stubbornly refused to look like trousers.
This Ivan did, and, penetrating the mysterious network of lanes around
the Arbat, he began making his way along the walls, casting fearful sidelong
glances, turning around every moment, hiding in gateways from time to time,
avoiding intersections with traffic lights and the grand entrances of
embassy mansions.
And all along his difficult way, he was for some reason inexpressibly
tormented by the ubiquitous orchestra that accompanied the heavy basso
singing about his love for Tatiana.
The old, two-storeyed, cream-coloured house stood on the ring
boulevard, in the depths of a seedy garden, separated from the sidewalk by a
fancy cast-iron fence. The small terrace in front of the house was paved
with asphalt, and in wintertime was dominated by a snow pile with a shovel
stuck in it, but in summertime turned into the most magnificent section of
the summer restaurant under a canvas tent.
The house was called `The House of Griboedov' on the grounds that it
was alleged to have once belonged to an aunt of the writer Alexander
Sergeevich Griboedov. [1] Now, whether it did or did not belong to her, we
do not exactly know. On recollection, it even seems that Griboedov never had
any such house-owning aunt... Nevertheless, that was what the house was
called. Moreover, one Moscow liar had it that there, on the second floor, in
a round hall with columns, the famous writer had supposedly read passages
from Woe From Wit to this very aunt while she reclined on a sofa.
However, devil knows, maybe he did, it's of no importance.
What is important is that at the present time this house was owned by
that same Massolit which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail
Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch's Ponds.
In the casual manner of Massolit members, no one called the house The
House of Griboedov', everyone simply said 'Griboedov's': 'I spent two hours
yesterday knocking about Griboedov's.' 'Well, and so?' `Got myself a month
in Yalta.' 'Bravo!' Or: 'Go to Berlioz, he receives today from four to five
at Griboedov's...' and so on.
Massolit had settled itself at Griboedov's in the best and cosiest way
imaginable. Anyone entering Griboedov's first of all became involuntarily
acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs, and with group as
well as individual photographs of the members of Massolit, hanging (the
photographs) on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.
On the door to the very first room of this upper floor one could see a
big sign: 'Fishing and Vacation Section', along with the picture of a carp
caught on a line.
On the door of room no. 2 something not quite comprehensible was
written: 'One-day Creative Trips. Apply to M. V. Spurioznaya.'
The next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible
inscription: 'Perelygino'. [2] After which the chance visitor to Griboedov's
would not know where to look from the motley inscriptions on the aunt's
walnut doors: `Sign up for Paper with Poklevkina', `Cashier', 'Personal
Accounts of Sketch-Writers'...
If one cut through the longest line, which already went downstairs and
out to the doorman's lodge, one could see the sign 'Housing Question' on a
door which people were crashing every second.
Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on
which a cliff was depicted and, riding on its crest, a horseman in a felt
cloak with a rifle on his shoulder. A little lower - palm trees and a
balcony; on the balcony - a seated young man with a forelock, gazing
somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand.
The inscription: 'Full-scale Creative Vacations from Two Weeks
(Story/Novella) to One Year (Novel/Trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe,
Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).'[3] There was also a
line at this door, but not an excessive one - some hundred and fifty people.
Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the
Griboedov house, came the `Massolit Executive Board', 'Cashiers nos. 2, 3,
4, 5', 'Editorial Board', 'Chairman of Massolit', 'Billiard Room', various
auxiliary institutions and, finally, that same hall with the colonnade where
the aunt had delighted in the comedy other genius nephew.
Any visitor finding himself in Griboedov's, unless of course he was a
total dim-wit, would realize at once what a good life those lucky fellows,
the Massolit members, were having, and black envy would immediately start
gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven
for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which
there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Massolit membership card, brown,
smelling of costly leather, with a wide gold border - a card known to all
Moscow.
Who will speak in defence of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty
category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor's position.
For what he had seen on the upper floor was not all, and was far from
all.
The entire ground floor of the aunt's house was occupied by a
restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in
Moscow. And not only because it took up two vast halls with arched ceilings,
painted with violet, Assyrian-maned horses, not only because on each table
there stood a lamp shaded with a shawl, not only because it was not
accessible to just anybody coming in off the street, but because in the
quality of its fare Griboedov's beat any restaurant in Moscow up and down,
and this fare was available at the most reasonable, by no means onerous,
price.
Hence there was nothing surprising, for instance, in the following
conversation, which the author of these most truthful lines once heard near
the cast-iron fence of Griboedov's:
'Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?'
`What a question! Why, here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald
Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there will be perch au naturel
done to order. A virtuoso little treat!'
`You sure know how to live, Amvrosy!' skinny, run-down Foka, with a
carbuncle on his neck, replied with a sigh to the ruddy-lipped giant,
golden-haired, plump-cheeked Amvrosy-the-poet.
`I have no special knowledge,' Amvrosy protested, 'just the ordinary
wish to live like a human being. You mean to say, Foka that perch can be met
with at the Coliseum as well. But at the Coliseum a portion of perch costs
thirteen roubles fifteen kopecks, and here - five-fifty! Besides, at the
Coliseum they serve three-day-old perch, and, besides, there's no guarantee
you won't get slapped in the mug with a bunch of grapes at the Coliseum by
the first young man who bursts in from Theatre Alley. No, I'm categorically
opposed to the Coliseum,' the gastronome Amvrosy boomed for the whole
boulevard to hear. 'Don't try to convince me, Foka!'
'I'm not trying to convince you, Amvrosy,' Foka squeaked. 'One can also
dine at home.'
`I humbly thank you,' trumpeted Amvrosy, 'but I can imagine your wife,
in the communal kitchen at home, trying to do perch au naturel to order in a
saucepan! Hee, hee, hee! ... Aurevwar, Foka!' And, humming, Amvrosy directed
his steps to the veranda under the tent.
Ahh, yes! ... Yes, there was a time! ... Old Muscovites will remember
the renowned Griboedov's! What is poached perch done to order!
Cheap stuff, my dear Amvrosy! But sterlet, sterlet in a silvery chafing
dish, sterlet slices interlaid with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? And
eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree in little dishes? And how did you like
the fillets of thrush? With truffles? Quail a la genoise? Nine-fifty! And
the jazz, and the courteous service! And in July, when the whole family is
in the country, and you are kept in the city by urgent literary business -
on the veranda, in the shade of the creeping vines, in a golden spot on the
cleanest of tablecloths, a bowl of soup printanier? Remember, Amvrosy? But
why ask! I can see by your lips that you do. What is your whitefish, your
perch! But the snipe, the great snipe, the jack snipe, the woodcock in their
season, the quail, the curlew? Cool seltzer fizzing in your throat?! But
enough, you are getting distracted, reader! Follow me!...
At half past ten on the evening when Berlioz died at the Patriarch's
Ponds, only one room was lit upstairs at Griboedov's, and in it languished
twelve writers who had gathered for a meeting and were waiting for Mikhail
Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, and on tables, and even on the two window-sills in
the office of the Massolit executive board, they suffered seriously from the
heat. Not a single breath of fresh air came through the open windows. Moscow
was releasing the heat accumulated in the asphalt all day, and it was clear
that night would bring no relief. The smell of onions came from the basement
of the aunt's house, where the restaurant kitchen was at work, they were all
thirsty, they were all nervous and angry.
The belletrist Beskudnikov - a quiet, decently dressed man with
attentive and at the same time elusive eyes - took out his watch. The hand
was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the face and
showed it to the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting next to him on the table
and in boredom dangling his feet shod in yellow shoes with rubber treads.
'Anyhow,' grumbled Dvubratsky.
"The laddie must've got stuck on the Klyazma,' came the thick-voiced
response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant,
who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the
pen-name of Bos'n George.
'Excuse me!' boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches,
'but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in
here. The meeting was set for ten o'clock, wasn't it?'
'It's nice now on the Klyazma,' Bos'n George needled those present,
knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was
everybody's sore spot. 'There's nightingales singing already. I always work
better in the country, especially in spring.'
'It's the third year I've paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to
this paradise, but there's nothing to be spied amidst the waves,' the
novelist Ieronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.
'Some are lucky and some aren't,' the critic Ababkov droned from the
window-sill.
Bos'n George's little eyes lit up with glee, and she said, softening
her contralto:
We mustn't be envious, comrades. There's twenty-two dachas [4] in all,
and only seven more being built, and there's three thousand of us in
Massolit.'
`Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' someone put in from the
corner.
'So you see,' the Bos'n went on, 'what can be done? Naturally, it's the
most talented of us that got the dachas...'
'The generals!' Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.
Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.
'Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,' Glukharev said behind him.
`Lavrovich has six to himself,' Deniskin cried out, `and the dining
room's panelled in oak!'
'Eh, that's not the point right now,' Ababkov droned, 'it's that it's
half past eleven.'
A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started
telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich's, found out
that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They
called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 950, and of
course found no one there.
'He might have called!' shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.
Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call
anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov's, in an enormous room lit by
thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had still recently been
Mikhail Alexandrovich.
On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm
broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth
knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on
the third, a pile of stiffened rags.
Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a
pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the
investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich's assistant in Massolit, the writer
Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife's side.
A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with
the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man's apartment,
where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all
went to the morgue.
And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating
what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to
lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov's after simply covering the dead
man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?
No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin,
Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and
shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the
upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently
berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally,
were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but
airless halls.
And exactly at midnight, in the first of these halls, something
crashed, jangled, spilled, leaped. And all at once a high male voice
desperately cried out 'Hallelujah!' to the music. The famous Griboedov jazz
band struck up. Sweat-covered faces seemed to brighten, it was as if the
horses painted on the ceiling came alive, the lamps seemed to shine with
added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance,
and following them the veranda broke into dance.
Glukharev danced with the poetess Tamara Polumesyats, Quant danced,
Zhukopov the novelist danced with some movie actress in a yellow dress.
Dragunsky danced, Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin danced with the
enormous Bos'n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in
the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited
guests danced, Muscovites and out-of-towners, the writer Johann from
Kronstadt, a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director,
with a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent representatives of
the poetry section of Massolit danced - that is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky,
Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak - young men of unknown profession,
in crew cuts, with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very elderly
danced, a shred of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him danced a
sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.
Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer over their
heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: 'Excuse me, citizen!' Somewhere
through a megaphone a voice commanded: `One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas!
Home-style tripe!' The high voice no longer sang, but howled 'Hallelujah!'
The clashing of golden cymbals in the band sometimes even drowned out
the clashing of dishes, which the dishwashers sent down a sloping chute to
the kitchen. In short - hell.
And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed
man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and
cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to
say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a
wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was
tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean
under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean
Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases
after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and
there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the
cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it... And the ice is melting in
the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes,
and you're afraid, afraid... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!...
And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table: 'Berlioz!!' The jazz
broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. 'What, what,
what, what?!!' 'Berlioz!!!' And they began jumping up, exclaiming...
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once,
straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram
and send it off immediately.
But what telegram, may we ask, and where? And why send it? And where,
indeed? And what possible need for any telegram does someone have whose
flattened pate is now clutched in the dissector's rubber hands, whose neck
the professor is now piercing with curved needles? He's dead, and has no
need of any telegrams. It's all over, let's not burden the telegraph wires
any more.
Yes, he's dead, dead... But, as for us, we're alive!
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began
to subside, and somebody went back to his table and - sneakily at first,
then openly - drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let
chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?
By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!
Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the jazz band dispersed, several
journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that
Zheldybin had come from the morgue. He had installed himself in the
deceased's office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who
would replace Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned from the restaurant all twelve
members of the board, and at the urgently convened meeting in Berlioz's
office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the
hall with columns at Griboedov's, of transporting the body from the morgue
to that hall, of opening it to the public, and all else connected with the
sad event.
And the restaurant began to live its usual nocturnal life and would
have gone on living it until closing time, that is, until four o'clock in
the morning, had it not been for an occurrence which was completely out of
the ordinary and which struck the restaurant's clientele much more than the
news of Berlioz's death.
The first to take alarm were the coachmen [5] waiting at the gates of
the Griboedov house. One of them, rising on his box, was heard to cry out:
'Hoo-ee! Just look at that!'
After which, from God knows where, a little light flashed by the
cast-iron fence and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the
tables began to get up and peer at it, and saw that along with the little
light a white ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right
up to the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at their tables, chunks of
sterlet on their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who at that moment had
stepped out of the restaurant coatroom to have a smoke in the yard, stamped
out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of
barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and
stopped, smiling stupidly.
And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped
unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all,
but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.
He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon
bearing the image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a
safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan
Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich's right cheek
was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the
silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to
the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter's hand.
The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly:
'Hail, friends!' After which he peeked under the nearest table and
exclaimed ruefully: 'No, he's not there!'
Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly:
That's it. Delirium tremens.'
And the second, a woman's, frightened, uttered the words:
'How could the police let him walk the streets like that?'
This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied:
They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but I
hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!' Here Ivan
Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: 'Brethren in literature!' (His
hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) 'Listen to me everyone! He has
appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he'll do untold harm!'
'What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?' voices came from all
sides.
The consultant,' Ivan replied, `and this consultant just killed Misha
Berlioz at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd
gathered around Ivan's flame.
`Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,' a soft and polite voice said
over Ivan Nikolaevich's ear, 'tell me, what do you mean "killed"?
Who killed?'
'A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,' Ivan said, looking
around.
'And what is his name?' came softly to Ivan's ear. That's just it - his
name!' Ivan cried in anguish. 'If only I knew his name! I didn't make out
his name on his visiting card... I only remember the first letter, "W", his
name begins with "W"! What last name begins with "W"?' Ivan asked himself,
clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: 'Wi, we, wa ... Wu
... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?' The hair on Ivan's head
began to crawl with the tension.
'Wolf?' some woman cried pitifully.
Ivan became angry.
'Fool!' he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. "What has Wolf got
to do with it? Wolf's not to blame for anything! Wo, wa... No, I'll never
remember this way! Here's what, citizens: call the police at once, let them
send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And
don't forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long
checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat... And meanwhile
I'll search Griboedov's, I sense that he's here!'
Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving
the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here
someone said: `Call a doctor!' and someone's benign, fleshy face, clean
shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.
'Comrade Homeless,' the face began in a guest speaker's voice, 'calm
down! You're upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich... no,
say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need
rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you'll forget...'
'You,' Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, "but don't you understand
that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your
foolishness! Cretin!'
`Pardon me, Comrade Homeless!...' the face replied, blushing,
retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.
'No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,' Ivan Nikolaevich said
with quiet hatred.
A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his
right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the
ear.
Here it occurred to them to fall upon Ivan - and so they did. The
candle went out, and the glasses that had fallen from the face were
instantly trampled. Ivan let out a terrible war cry, heard, to the
temptation of all, even on the boulevard, and set about defending himself.
Dishes fell clattering from the tables, women screamed.
All the while the waiters were tying up the poet with napkins, a
conversation was going on in the coatroom between the commander of the brig
and the doorman.
'Didn't you see he was in his underpants?' the pirate inquired coldly.
'But, Archibald Archibaldovich,' the doorman replied, cowering, 'how
could I not let him in, if he's a member of Massolit?' 'Didn't you see he
was in his underpants?' the pirate repeated. 'Pardon me, Archibald
Archibaldovich,' the doorman said, turning purple, 'but what could I do? I
understand, there are ladies sitting on the veranda...'
`Ladies have nothing to do with it, it makes no difference to the
ladies,' the pirate replied, literally burning the doorman up with his eyes,
'but it does to the police! A man in his underwear can walk the streets of
Moscow only in this one case, that he's accompanied by the police, and only
to one place - the police station! And you, if you're a doorman, ought to
know that on seeing such a man, you must, without a moment's delay, start
blowing your whistle. Do you hear? Do you hear what's going on on the
veranda?'
Here the half-crazed doorman heard some sort of hooting coming from the
veranda, the smashing of dishes and women's screams.
'Now, what's to be done with you for that?' the freebooter asked.
The skin on the doorman's face acquired a typhoid tinge, his eyes went
dead. It seemed to him that the black hair, now combed and parted, was
covered with flaming silk. The shirt-front and tailcoat disappeared and a
pistol butt emerged, tucked into a leather belt. The doorman pictured
himself hanging from the fore-topsail yard. His eyes saw his own tongue
sticking out and his lifeless head lolling on his shoulder, and even heard
the splash of waves against the hull. The doorman's knees gave way. But here
the freebooter took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.
`Watch out, Nikolai, this is the last time! We have no need of such
doormen in the restaurant. Go find yourself a job as a beadle.' Having said
this, the commander commanded precisely, clearly, rapidly: `Get Pantelei
from the snack bar. Police. Protocol. A car. To the psychiatric clinic.' And
added: 'Blow your whistle!'
In a quarter of an hour an extremely astounded public, not only in the
restaurant but on the boulevard itself and in the windows of houses looking
on to the restaurant garden, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a
waiter and the poet Riukhin carry through the gates of Griboedov's a young
man swaddled like a doll, dissolved in tears, who spat, aiming precisely at
Riukhin, and shouted for all the boulevard to hear:
'You bastard! ... You bastard!...'
A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him
a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins,
shouted:
'Have a run for your money! I've taken `em to the psychics before!'
Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In
short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only
when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov's the unfortunate
Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin.
It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and
wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous
psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of
the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who
was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there.
The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been bed up lay in a pile
on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free.
Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said
timidly:
'Hello, Doctor.'
The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at
Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face
and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor's entrance.
'Here, Doctor,' Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a
mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, `is the
renowned poet Ivan Homeless ... well, you see ... we're afraid it might be
delirium tremens...'
'Was he drinking hard?' the doctor said through his teeth.
'No, he drank, but not really so...'
'Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking
dogs?'
'No,' Riukhin replied with a shudder, `I saw him yesterday and this
morning ... he was perfectly well.'
'And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?'
'No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way...'
'Aha, aha,' the doctor said with great satisfaction, 'and why the
scratches? Did he have a fight?'
'He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody... and
then somebody else...'
'So, so, so,' the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: 'Hello
there!'
'Greetings, saboteur! [1]' Ivan replied spitefully and loudly.
Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the
courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his
glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put
them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:
'How old are you?'
'You can all go to the devil!' Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.
'But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?'
'I'm twenty-three years old,' Ivan began excitedly, 'and I'll file a
complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!' he adverted
separately to Riukhin.
'And what do you want to complain about?'
'About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force
to a madhouse!' Ivan replied wrathfully.
Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly
no insanity in the man's eyes. No longer dull as they had been at
Griboedov's, they were now clear as ever.
`Good God!' Riukhin thought fearfully. 'So he's really normal! What
nonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He's normal, normal, only his
mug got scratched...'
'You are,' the doctor began calmly, sitting down on a white stool with
a shiny foot, `not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will keep
you if it's not necessary.'
Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the corner of his
eye, but still grumbled:
'Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots,
of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!'
'Who is this giftless Sashka?' the doctor inquired.
'This one here - Riukhin,' Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger in
Riukhin's direction.
The latter flushed with indignation. That's the thanks I get,' he
thought bitterly, 'for showing concern for him! What trash, really!'
'Psychologically, a typical little kulak,'[2] Ivan Nikolaevich began,
evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin, 'and, what's more,
a little kulak carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his
lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for
the First of May [3] - heh, heh, heh ... "Soaring up!" and "Soaring down!!"
But if you could look inside him and see what he thinks... you'd gasp!' And
Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.
Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just one
thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern
for a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there was
nothing to be done: there's no arguing with the mentally ill!
`And why, actually, were you brought here?' the doctor asked, after
listening attentively to Homeless's denunciations.
'Devil take them, the numskulls! They seized me, tied me up with some
rags, and dragged me away in a truck!'
'May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?'
There's nothing surprising about that,' Ivan replied. `I went for a
swim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash!
I couldn't very well walk around Moscow naked! I put it on because I
was hurrying to Griboedov.'
The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly:
'The name of the restaurant.'
`Aha,' said the doctor, `and why were you in such a hurry? Some
business meeting?'
'I'm trying to catch the consultant,' Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked
around anxiously.
'What consultant?'
'Do you know Berlioz?' Ivan asked significantly.
The... composer?'
Ivan got upset.
'What composer? Ah, yes... Ah, no. The composer has the same name as
Misha Berlioz.'
Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain:
The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight
at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
'Don't blab about what you don't know!' Ivan got angry with Riukhin. 'I
was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!'
'Pushed him?'
'"Pushed him", nothing!' Ivan exclaimed, angered by the general
obtuseness. 'His kind don't need to push! He can perform such stunts - hold
on to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under the
tram-car!'
'And did anyone besides you see this consultant?'
That's the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.'
'So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?' Here the
doctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who was
sitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and began
filling in the blank spaces in its columns.
'Here's what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen...'
That one?' asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on the
table in front of the woman, next to the icon.
That very one, and...'
'And why the icon?'
'Ah, yes, the icon...' Ivan blushed. `It was the icon that frightened
them most of all.' He again jabbed his finger in the direction of Riukhin.
'But the thing is that he, the consultant, he... let's speak directly... is
mixed up with the unclean powers... and you won't catch him so easily.'
The orderlies for some reason snapped to attention and fastened their
eyes on Ivan.
Yes, sirs,' Ivan went on, 'mixed up with them! An absolute fact. He
spoke personally with Pontius Pilate. And there's no need to stare at me
like that. I'm telling the truth! He saw everything - the balcony and the
palm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate's, I can vouch for it.'
'Come, come...'
'Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran...'
Here the clock suddenly struck twice.
'Oh-oh!' Ivan exclaimed and got up from the couch. `It's two o'clock,
and I'm wasting time with you! Excuse me, where's the telephone?'
'Let him use the telephone,' the doctor told the orderlies.
Ivan grabbed the receiver, and the woman meanwhile quietly asked
Riukhin:
'Is he married?'
'Single,' Riukhin answered fearfully.
'Member of a trade union?'
'Yes.'
'Police?' Ivan shouted into the receiver. 'Police? Comrade
officer-on-duty, give orders at once for five motor cycles with machine-guns
to be sent out to catch the foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me up,
I'll go with you... It's the poet Homeless speaking from the madhouse...
What's your address?' Homeless asked the doctor in a whisper, covering
the receiver with his hand, and then again shouting into it: 'Are you
listening?
Hello!... Outrageous!' Ivan suddenly screamed and hurled the receiver
against the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, offered him his hand, said
'Goodbye' drily, and made as if to leave.
`For pity's sake, where do you intend to go?' the doctor said, peering
into Ivan's eyes. 'In the dead of night, in your underwear... You're not
feeling well, stay with us.'
`Let me pass,' Ivan said to the orderlies, who closed ranks at the
door. 'Will you let me pass or not?' the poet shouted in a terrible voice.
Riukhin trembled, but the woman pushed a button on the table and a
shiny little box with a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface.
'Ah, so?!' Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look.
'Well, then... Goodbye!' And he rushed head first into the
window-blind.
The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave no
crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the
orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted:
'So that's the sort of windows you've got here! Let me go! Let me
go!...'
A syringe flashed in the doctor's hand, with a single movement the
woman slit the threadbare sleeve of the shirt and seized the arm with
unwomanly strength. There was a smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the hands
of the four people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuck
the needle into Ivan's arm. They held Ivan for another few seconds and then
lowered him on to the couch.
'Bandits!' Ivan shouted and jumped up from the couch, but was installed
on it again. The moment they let go of him, he again jumped up, but sat back
down by himself. He paused, gazing around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned,
then smiled maliciously.
'Locked me up after all,' he said, yawned again, unexpectedly lay down,
put his head on the pillow, his fist under his head like a child, and
muttered now in a sleepy voice, without malice: 'Very well, then... you'll
pay for it yourselves... I've warned you, you can do as you like... I'm now
interested most of all in Pontius Pilate ... Pilate...', and he closed his
eyes.
'A bath, a private room, number 117, and a nurse to watch him,' the
doctor ordered as he put his glasses on. Here Riukhin again gave a start:
the white door opened noiselessly, behind it a corridor could be seen, lit
by blue night-lights. Out of the corridor rolled a stretcher on rubber
wheels, to which the quieted Ivan was transferred, and then he rolled off
down the corridor and the door closed behind him.
'Doctor,' the shaken Riukhin asked in a whisper, 'it means he's really
ill?'
'Oh, yes,' replied the doctor.
'But what's wrong with him, then?' Riukhin asked timidly.
The tired doctor glanced at Riukhin and answered listlessly:
'Locomotor and speech excitation... delirious interpretations... A
complex case, it seems. Schizophrenia, I suppose. Plus this alcoholism...'
Riukhin understood nothing from the doctor's words, except that things
were evidently not so great with Ivan Nikolaevich. He sighed and asked:
'But what's all this talk of his about some consultant?'
`He must have seen somebody who struck his disturbed imagination. Or
maybe a hallucination...'
A few minutes later the truck was carrying Riukhin off to Moscow. Day
was breaking, and the light of the street lights still burning along the
highway was now unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was vexed at having
wasted the night, drove the truck as fast as he could, and skidded on the
turns.
Now the woods dropped off, stayed somewhere behind, and the river went
somewhere to the side, and an omnium gatherum came spilling to meet the
truck: fences with sentry boxes and stacks of wood, tall posts and some sort
of poles, with spools strung on the poles, heaps of rubble, the earth scored
by canals - in short, you sensed that she was there, Moscow, right there,
around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you.
Riukhin was jolted and tossed about; the sort of stump he had placed
himself on kept trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant napkins,
thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier by bus, moved
all around the flatbed. Riukhin tried to collect them, but then, for some
reason hissing spitefully: 'Devil take them! What am I doing fussing like a
fool?...', he spumed them aside with his foot and stopped looking at them.