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The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny. Publ ished by Collins and Harvill Press, London, 1967 From the archive section of The Master and Margarita http://www.masterandmargarita.eu Webmaster Jan Vanhellemont Klein Begijnhof 6 B-3000 Leuven +3216583866 +32475260793 BOOK ONE 1 Never Talk to Strangers 2 Pontius Pilate 3 The Seventh Proof 4 The Pursuit 5 The Affair at Griboyedov 6 Schizophrenia 7 The Haunted Flat 8 A Duel between Professor and Poet 9 Koroviev's Tricks 10 News from Yalta 11 The Two Ivans 12. Black Magic Revealed 13 Enter the Hero 14 Saved by Cock-Crow 15 The Dream of Nikanor Ivanovich 16 The Execution 17 A Day of Anxiety 18 Unwelcome Visitors BOOK TWO 19 Margarita 20 Azazello's Cream 21 The Flight 22 By Candlelight 23 Satan's Rout 24 The Master is Released 25 How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Karioth 26 The Burial 27 The Last of Flat No. 50 28 The Final Adventure of Koroviev and Behemot h 29 The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Dec ided 30 Time to Go 31 On Sparrow Hills 32 Absolution and Eternal Refuge Epilogue 'Say at last--who art thou?' 'That Power I serve Which wills forever evil Yet does forever good.' Goethe, Faust * BOOK ONE * 1. Never Talk to Strangers At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them--aged about fo rty, dressed in a greyish summer suit--was short, dark-haired, well-fed and bald. He carried his decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly sh aven face was embellished by black hornrimmed spectacles of preternatural dimensions. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with curly reddish hai r and a check cap pushed back to the nape of his neck, was wearing a tar tan shirt, chewed white trousers and black sneakers. The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandr ovich Berlioz, editor of a highbrow literary magazine and chairman of the management cofnmittee of one of the biggest Moscow literary clubs, known by its abbreviation as massolit; his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov who wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny. Reaching the shade of the budding lime tree s, the two writers went straight to a gaily-painted kiosk labelled'Beer and Minerals'. There was an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth recording : not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of the day when people feel too exhausted to breath e, when Moscow glows in a dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard--yet no one had come out for a walk under the limes, no one was sitting on a bench, the avenue was empty. 'A glass of lemonade, please,'said Berlioz. 'There isn't any,'replied the woman in the ki osk. For some reason the request seemed to offend her. 'Got any beer?' enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice. 'Beer's being delivered later this evening' sa id the woman. 'Well what have you got?' asked Berlioz. 'Apricot juice, only it's warm' was the answer . 'All right, let's have some.' The apricot juice produced a rich yellow frot h, making the air smell like a hairdresser's. After drinking it the two wri ters immediately began to hiccup. They paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond, their backs to Bronnaya Street.Then occurred the second oddness, which affected Berlioz alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart thumped and for a moment vanished, then returned but with a blunt need le sticking into it. In addition Berlioz was seized by a fear that was g roundless but so powerful that he had an immediate impulse to run away from Patriarch's Ponds without looking back. Berlioz gazed miserably about him, unable t o say what had frightened him. He went pale, wiped his forehead with his ha ndkerchief and thought: ' What's the matter with me? This has never happen ed before. Heart playing tricks . . . I'm overstrained ... I think it's tim e to chuck everything up and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk. . . .' Just then the sultry air coagulated and wove i tself into the shape of a man--a transparent man of the strangest appearance . On his small head was a jockey-cap and he wore a short check bum-freezer ma de of air. The man was seven feet tall but narrow in the shoulders, incred ibly thin and with a face made for derision. Berlioz's life was so arranged that he was not accustomed to seeing unusual phenomena. Paling even more, he stared and thought in consternation : ' It can't be!' But alas it was, and the tall, transparent ge ntleman was swaying from left to right in front of him without touching the ground. Berlioz was so overcome with horror that he shut his eyes. When he opened them he saw that it was all over, the m irage had dissolved, the chequered figure had vanished and the blunt ne edle had simultaneously removed itself from his heart. 'The devil! ' exclaimed the editor. ' D'you know, Ivan, the heat nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw somet hing like a hallucination . . . ' He tried to smile but his eyes were still b linking with fear and his hands trembled. However he gradually calmed down, flapped his handkerchief and with a brave enough ' Well, now. . . ' carried on the conversation that had been interrupted by their drink of apricot juic e. They had been talking, it seemed, about Jesus Christ. The fact was that the editor had commissioned the poet to write a lon g anti-religious poem for one of the regular issues of his magazine. Ivan Ni kolayich had written this poem in record time, but unfortunately the editor did not care for it at all. Bezdomny had drawn the chief figure in his p oem, Jesus, in very black colours, yet in the editor's opinion the whole poem had to be written again. And now he was reading Bezdomny a lecture on Jesus in order to stress the poet's fundamental error. It was hard to say exactly what had mad e Bezdomny write as he had--whether it was his great talent for graphi c description or complete ignorance of the subject he was writing on, but his Jesus had come out, well, completely alive, a Jesus who had really exi sted, although admittedly a Jesus who had every possible fault. Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet t hat the main object was not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, bu t that as a person Jesus had never existed at all and that all the stor ies about him were mere invention, pure myth. The editor was a well-read man and able to m ake skilful reference to the ancient historians, such as the famous Phil o of Alexandria and the brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom mentioned a word of Jesus' existence. With a display of solid eruditio n, Mikhail Alexandrovich informed the poet that incidentally, the passa ge in Chapter 44 of the fifteenth book of Tacitus' Annals, where he des cribes the execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery. The poet, for whom everything the editor wa s saying was a novelty, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, f ixing him with his bold green eyes, occasionally hiccuping and cursing the apricot juice under his breath. 'There is not one oriental religion,' said Berlioz, ' in which an immaculate virgin does not bring a god into the w orld. And the Christians, lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In fact he never lived at all. That's where the stress has got to lie. Berlioz's high tenor resounded along the empt y avenue and as Mikhail Alexandrovich picked his way round the sort of his torical pitfalls that can only be negotiated safely by a highly educated ma n, the poet learned more and more useful and instructive facts about the Egy ptian god Osiris, son of Earth and Heaven, about the Phoenician god Thamm uz, about Marduk and even about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, wh o had once been held in great veneration by the Aztecs of Mexico. At the very moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs u sed to model figurines of Vitzli-Putzli out of dough-- the first man appeared in the avenue. Afterwards, when it was frankly too late, various bodies collected their data and issued descriptions of this man. As to his teeth, he haid platinum crowns on his left side and gold ones on his tight. He wore an expensive grey suit and foreign shoes of the sam e colour as his suit. His grey beret was stuck jauntily over one ear and un der his arm he carried a walking-stick with a knob in the shape of a po odle's head. He looked slightly over forty. Crooked sort of mouth. Clean-s hav-n. Dark hair. Right eye black, left ieye for some reason green. Eyebro ws black, but one higher than the other. In short--a foreigner. As he passed the bench occupied by the e ditor and the poet, the foreigner gave them a sidelong glance, stopped and suddenly sat down on the next bench a couple of paces away from the two frie nds. 'A German,'' thought Berlioz. ' An Englishman. ...' thought Bezdomny. ' Phew, he must be hot in those gloves!' The stranger glanced round the tall houses t hat formed a square round the pond, from which it was obvious that he seei ng this locality for the first time and that it interested him. His gaze halted on the upper storeys, whose panes threw back a blinding, fragmented re flection of the sun which was setting on Mikhail Alexandrovich for ever ; he then looked downwards to where the windows were turning darker in the early evening twilight, smiled patronisingly at something, frowned, placed his h ands on the knob of his cane and laid his chin on his hands. 'You see, Ivan,' said Berlioz,' you have written a marvellously satirical description of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the whole joke lies in the fact that there had already been a whole series of sons of God before Jesus, such as the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the Persian Mithras. Of course not one of these ever e xisted, including Jesus, and instead of the nativity or the arrival of th e Magi you should have described the absurd rumours about their arrival . But according to your story the nativity really took place! ' Here Bezdomny made an effort to stop his tortu ring hiccups and held his breath, but it only made him hiccup more loudly and painfully. At that moment Berlioz interrupted his speech because the foreigner suddenly rose and approached the two writers. They stared at him in astonishment. 'Excuse me, please,' said the stranger with a foreign accent, although in correct Russian, ' for permitting myself, witho ut an introduction . . . but the subject of your learned conversation was so interesting that. . .' Here he politely took off his beret and the two friends had no alternative but to rise and bow. 'No, probably a Frenchman.. . .' thought Berli oz. 'A Pole,' thought Bezdomny. I should add that the poet had found the stra nger repulsive from first sight, although Berlioz had liked the look of hi m, or rather not exactly liked him but, well. . . been interested by him. 'May I join you? ' enquired the foreigner p olitely, and as the two friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitl y placed himself 'between them and at once joined the conversation. ' If I am not mistaken, you were saying that Jesus never existed, were you not? ' he asked, turning his green left eye on Berlioz. 'No, you were not mistaken,' replied Berlioz courteously. ' I did indeed say that.' 'Ah, how interesting! ' exclaimed the foreigne r. 'What the hell does he want?' thought Bezdomny and frowned. 'And do you agree with your friend? ' enqu ired the unknown man, turning to Bezdomny on his right. 'A hundred per cent! ' affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious numerical expressions. 'Astounding! ' cried their unbidden compani on. Glancing furtively round and lowering his voice he said : ' Forgive m e for being so rude, but am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either? ' He gave a horrified look and said: ' I swear not to tell anyo ne! ' 'Yes, neither of us believes in God,' answere d Berlioz with a faint smile at this foreign tourist's apprehension. ' But we can talk about it with absolute freedom.' The foreigner leaned against the backrest of t he bench and asked, in a voice positively squeaking with curiosity : 'Are you . . . atheists? ' 'Yes, we're atheists,' replied Berlioz, smilin g, and Bezdomny thought angrily : ' Trying to pick an argument, damn foreig ner! ' 'Oh, how delightful!' exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swivelled his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn. 'In our country there's nothing surprising about atheism,' said Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. ' Most of u s have long ago and quite consciously given up believing in all those fairy-t ales about God.' At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thi ng--he stood up and shook the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so : 'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!' 'What are you thanking him for? ' asked Bezdom ny, blinking. 'For some very valuable information, which as a traveller I find extremely interesting,' said the eccentric foreigne r, raising his forefinger meaningfully. This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightene d glance at the houses as though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window. 'No, he's not an Englishman,' thought Berlio z. Bezdomny thought: ' What I'd like to know is--where did he manage to p ick up such good Russian? ' and frowned again. 'But might I enquire,' began the visitor from abroad after some worried reflection, ' how you account for the pro ofs of the existence of God, of which there are, as you know, five? ' 'Alas! ' replied Berlioz regretfully. ' Not one of these proofs is valid, and mankind has long since relegated them t o the archives. You must agree that rationally there can be no proof of the existence of God.' 'Bravo!' exclaimed the stranger. ' Bravo! You have exactly repeated the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here's the oddity of it: he completely demolished all five proofs and t hen, as though to deride his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own.' 'Kant's proof,' objected the learned editor with a thin smile, ' is also unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that Kant's reasoning on this question would only satisfy slaves, and Straus s simply laughed at his proof.' As Berlioz spoke he thought to himself: ' Bu t who on earth is he? And how does he speak such good Russian? ' 'Kant ought to be arrested and given three yea rs in Solovki asylum for that " proof " of his! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an a sylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. ' Exactly, exactly! ' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz gli ttered. ' That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that mor ning at breakfast: " If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no go od. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think y ou're mad." ' Berlioz's eyes bulged. ' At breakfast ... to K ant? What is he rambling about? ' he thought. 'But,' went on the foreigner, unperturbed by Berlioz's amazement and turning to the poet, ' sending him to Solovki i s out of the question, because for over a hundred years now he has been somewhere far away from Solovki and I assure you that it is totally impossi ble to bring him back.' 'What a pity!' said the impetuous poet. 'It is a pity,' agreed the unknown man with a glint in his eye, and went on: ' But this is the question that disturbs me--if there is no God, then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and ke eps the world in order? ' 'Man rules himself,' said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an obviously absurd question. 'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger qu ietly,' but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reaso nable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affai rs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably sh ort term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will h appen to him tomorrow? ' 'In fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlio z, ' imagine what would happen if you, for instance, were to start organi sing others and yourself, and you developed a taste for it--then suddenly y ou got. . . he, he ... a slight heart attack . . . ' at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure. . . . ' Yes, a heart attack,' he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat, ' and that's the end of you as an organiser! No one's fate exce pt your own interests you any longer. Your relations start lying to you. S ensing that something is amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlat an, and even perhaps to a fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the ma n who thought he was in charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motio nless in a wooden box and his fellow men, realising that there is no more sense to be had of him, incinerate him. 'Sometimes it can be even worse : a m an decides to go to Kislovodsk,'--here the stranger stared at Berlioz--' a trivial matter you may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me th at he arranged to do that himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say tha t someone quite different was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter. Berlioz had been following the unpleasant sto ry about the heart attack and the tram with great attention and some uncomfo rtable thoughts had begun to worry him. ' He's not a foreigner . . . he 's not a foreigner,' he thought, ' he's a very peculiar character . . . but I ask you, who is he? . . . ' 'I see you'd like to smoke,' said the strange r unexpectedly, turning to Bezdomny, ' what sort do you prefer? ' 'Do you mean you've got different sorts? ' gl umly asked the poet, who had run out of cigarettes. 'Which do you prefer? ' repeated the mysteriou s stranger. 'Well, then " Our Brand ",' replied Bezdomny, i rritated. The unknown man immediately pulled a cigarett e case out of his pocket and offered it to Bezdomny. • " Our Brand " . . .' The editor and the poet were not so much surpr ised by the fact that the cigarette case actually contained ' Our Brand' as by the cigarette case itself. It was of enormous dimensions, made of sol id gold and on the inside of the cover a triangle of diamonds flashed with bl ue and white fire. Their reactions were different. Berlioz t hought: ' No, he's a foreigner.' Bezdomny thought: ' What the hell is he . . .? ' The poet and the owner of the case lit thei r cigarettes and Berlioz, who did not smoke, refused. 'I shall refute his argument by saying' Berlio z decided to himself, ' that of course man is mortal, no one will argue wi th that. But the fact is that . . .' However he was not able to pronounce the w ords before the stranger spoke: 'Of course man is mortal, but that's only half the problem. The trouble is that mortality sometimes comes to him so suddenl y! And he cannot even say what he will be doing this evening.' 'What a stupid way of putting the question. ' thought Berlioz and objected : 'Now there you exaggerate. I know more or less exactly what I'm going to be doing this evening. Provided of course that a brick doesn't fall on my head in the street. . .' 'A brick is neither here nor there,' the stranger interrupted persuasively. ' A brick never falls on anyone's h ead. You in particular, I assure you, are in no danger from that. Your death will be different.' 'Perhaps you know exactly how I am going to d ie? ' enquired Berlioz with understandable sarcasm at the ridiculous tur n that the conversation seemed to be taking. ' Would you like to tell me?' 'Certainly,' rejoined the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down as though he were measuring him for a suit and mut tered through his teeth something that sounded like : ' One, two . . . Merc ury in the second house . . . the moon waning . . . six-- accident . . . eve ning--seven . . . ' then announced loudly and cheerfully : ' Your 'head will be cut off!' Bezdomny turned to the stranger with a wild, f urious stare and Berlioz asked with a sardonic grin : 'By whom? Enemies? Foreign spies? ' 'No,' replied their companion, ' by a Russian woman, a member of the Komsomol.' 'Hm,' grunted Berlioz, upset by the foreigner' s little joke. ' That, if you don'c mind my saying so, is most improbable. ' 'I beg your pardon,' replied the foreigner, ' but it is so. Oh yes, I was going to ask you--what are you doing this eveni ng, if it's not a secret? ' 'It's no secret. From here I'm going home, and then at ten o'clock this evening there's a meeting at the massolit and I shall be in the chair.' 'No, that is absolutely impossible,' said the stranger firmly. 'Why?' 'Because,' replied the foreigner and frowned up at the sky where, sensing the oncoming cool of the evening, the bird s were flying to roost, ' Anna has already bought the sunflower-seed oil, i n fact she has not only bought it, but has already spilled it. So that meet ing will not take place.' With this, as one might imagine, there was s ilence beneath the lime trees. 'Excuse me,' said Berlioz after a pause with a glance at the stranger's jaunty beret, ' but what on earth has sunflower-seed oil got to do with it... and who is Anna? ' 'I'll tell you what sunflower-seed oil's got to do with it,' said Bezdomny suddenly, having obviously decided to declare war on their uninvited companion. ' Have you, citizen, ever had to spend any time in a mental hospital? ' 'Ivan! ' hissed Mikhail Alexandrovich. But the stranger was not in the least offend ed and gave a cheerful laugh. ' Yes, I have, I have, and more than once! ' he exclaimed laughing, though the stare that he gave the poet was mirt hless. ' Where haven't I been! My only regret is that I didn't stay long en ough to ask the professor what schizophrenia was. But you are going to find that out from him yourself, Ivan Nikolayich!' 'How do you know my name? ' 'My dear fellow, who doesn't know you? ' With this the foreigner pulled the previous day's issue of The Literary G azette out of his pocket and Ivan Nikolayich saw his own picture on the fro nt page above some of his own verse. Suddenly what had delighted him yester day as proof of his fame and popularity no longer gave the poet any pleasure at all. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, his face darken ing. ' Would you excuse us for a minute? I should like a word or two with m y friend.' 'Oh, with pleasure! ' exclaimed the stranger . ' It's so delightful sitting here under the trees and I'm not in a hurr y to go anywhere, as it happens.' 'Look here, Misha,' whispered the poet whe n he had drawn Berlioz aside. ' He's not just a foreign tourist, he's a s py. He's a Russian emigre and he's trying to catch us out. Ask him for his papers and then he'll go away . . .' 'Do you think we should? ' whispered Berlioz anxiously, thinking to himself--' He's right, of course . . .' 'Mark my words,' the poet whispered to him. ' He's pretending to be an idiot so that he can trap us with some compromisin g question. You can hear how he speaks Russian,' said the poet, glancing sid eways and watching to see that the stranger was not eavesdropping. ' Come o n, let's arrest him and then we'll get rid of him.' The poet led Berlioz by the arm back to the be nch. The unknown man was no longer sitting on it but standing beside it, holding a booklet in a dark grey binding, a fat env elope made of good paper and a visiting card. 'Forgive me, but in the heat of our argumen t I forgot to introduce myself. Here is my card, my passport and a lette r inviting me to come to Moscow for consultations,' said the stranger gravel y, giving both writers a piercing stare. The two men were embarrassed. ' Hell, he over heard us . . . ' thought Berlioz, indicating with a polite gesture that the re was no need for this show of documents. Whilst the stranger was offerin g them to the editor, the poet managed to catch sight of the visiting card. On it in foreign lettering was the word ' Professor ' and the initial letter of a surname which began with a'W'. 'Delighted,' muttered the editor awkwardly a s the foreigner put his papers back into his pocket. Good relations having been re-established, all three sat down again on the bench. 'So you've been invited here as a consultant, have you, professor? ' asked Berlioz. 'Yes, I have.' 'Are you German? ' enquired Bezdomny. 'I? ' rejoined the professor and thought for a moment. ' Yes, I suppose I am German. . . . ' he said. 'You speak excellent Russian,' remarked Bezdom ny. 'Oh, I'm something of a polyglot. I know a grea t number of languages,' replied the professor. 'And what is your particular field of work? ' asked Berlioz. 'I specialise in black magic.' 'Like hell you do! . . . ' thought Mikhail Ale xandrovich. 'And ... and you've been invited here to give advice on that? ' he asked with a gulp. 'Yes,' the professor assured him, and went on : ' Apparently your National Library has unearthed some origin al manuscripts of the ninth-century necromancer Herbert Aurilachs. I ha ve been asked to decipher them. I am the only specialist in the world.' 'Aha! So you're a historian? ' asked Berlioz i n a tone of considerable relief and respect. ' Yes, I am a historian,' adding wit h apparently complete inconsequence, ' this evening a historic event is going to take place here at Patriarch's Ponds.' Again the editor and the poet showed signs of utter amazement, but the professor beckoned to them and when both had bent t heir heads towards him he whispered : 'Jesus did exist, you know.' 'Look, professor,' said Berlioz, with a for ced smile, ' With all respect to you as a scholar we take a different att itude on that point.' 'It's not a question of having an attitude, ' replied the strange professor. ' He existed, that's all there is to it. ' 'But one must have some proof. . . . ' began B erlioz. 'There's no need for any proof,' answered the professor. In a low voice, his foreign accent vanishing altogether, he began : 'It's very simple--early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Po ntius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red... 2. Pontius Pilate Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cl oak lined with blood-red, emerged with his shuffling cavalryman's walk into the arcade connecting the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great. More than anything else in the world the Procu rator hated the smell of attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been haunting him since dawn. It seemed to the Procurator that the very cy presses and palms in the garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this d amned stench of roses was even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted bodyguard. A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at th e rear of the palace, the quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; k nown as the ' Lightning', it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procu rator's arrival. The same oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid sm oke that showed that the centuries' cooks had started to prepare breakfast. 'Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there's no doubt, I have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the head aches . . . there's no cure for it, nothing helps. ... I must try not to move my head. . . . ' A chair had already been placed on the mosai c floor by the fountain; without a glance round, the Procurator sat in it a nd stretched out his hand to one side. His secretary deferentially laid a piece of parchment in his hand. Unable to restrain a grimace of agony the Pr ocurator gave a fleeting sideways look at its contents, returned the parch ment to his secretary and said painfully: 'The accused comes from Galilee, does he? W as the case sent to the tetrarch? ' 'Yes, Procurator,' replied the secretary. ' He declined to confirm the finding of the court and passed the Sanhedrin's sen tence of death to you for confirmation.' The Procurator's cheek twitched and he said qu ietly : 'Bring in the accused.' At once two legionaries escorted a man of ab out twenty-seven from the courtyard, under the arcade and up to the balcon y, where they placed him before the Procurator's chair. The man was dresse d in a shabby, torn blue chiton. His head was covered with a white ban dage fastened round his forehead, his hands tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the man's left eye and a scab of dried blood in one corner of his mouth. The prisoner stared at the Procurator with anxious curi osity. The Procurator was silent at first, then asked quietly in Aramaic: 'So you have been inciting the people to d estroy the temple of Jerusalem? ' The Procurator sat as though carved in stone, his lips barely moving as he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like st one from fear of shaking his fiendishly aching head. The man with bound hands made a slight m ove forwards and began speaking: 'Good man! Believe me . . . ' But the Procurator, immobile as before and wi thout raising his voice, at once interrupted him : 'You call me good man? You are making a mista ke. The rumour about me in Jerusalem is that I am a raving monster and that is absolutely correct,' and he added in the same monotone : 'Send centurion Muribellum to me.' The balcony seemed to darken when the centur ion of the first century. Mark surnamed Muribellum, appeared before the Pro curator. Muribellum was a head taller than the tallest soldier in the legi on and so broad in the shoulders that he completely obscured the rising su n. The Procurator said to the centurion in Latin: 'This criminal calls me " good man ". Take h im away for a minute and show him the proper way to address me. But do not m utilate him.' All except the motionless Procurator watch ed Mark Muribellum as he gestured to the prisoner to follow him. Because of his height people always watched Muribellum wherever he went. Those who s aw him for the first time were inevitably fascinated by his disfigured face : his nose had once been smashed by a blow from a German club. Mark's heavy boots resounded on the mosaic, th e bound man followed him noiselessly. There was complete silence under t he arcade except for the cooing of doves in the garden below and the water s inging its seductive tune in the fountain. The Procurator had a sudden urge to get up and put his temples under the stream of water until they were numb. But he k new that even that would not help. Having led the prisoner out of the arcade in to the garden, Muribellum took a whip from the hands of a legionary standing by the plinth of a bronze statue and with a gentle swing struck the prisoner across the shoulders. The centurion's movement was slight, almost neglig ent, but the bound man collapsed instantly as though his legs had been str uck from under him and he gasped for air. The colour fled from his face and h is eyes clouded. With only his left hand Mark lifted the fall en man into the air as lightly as an empty sack, set him on his feet an d said in broken, nasal Aramaic: 'You call a Roman Procurator " hegemon " Do n't say anything else. Stand to attention. Do you understand or must I hit you again? ' The prisoner staggered helplessly, his colour returned, he gulped and answered hoarsely : 'I understand you. Don't beat me.' A minute later he was again standing in front of the Procurator. The harsh, suffering voice rang out: 'Name?' 'Mine? ' enquired the prisoner hurriedly, his whole being expressing readiness to answer sensibly and to forestall any f urther anger. The Procurator said quietly : 'I know my own name. Don't pretend to be stu pider than you are. Your name.' 'Yeshua,' replied the prisoner hastily. 'Surname?' 'Ha-Notsri.' 'Where are you from? ' 'From the town of Gamala,' replied the priso ner, nodding his head to show that far over there to his right, in the north , was the town of Gamala. 'Who are you by birth? ' 'I don't know exactly,' promptly answered th e prisoner, ' I don't remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian. . . .' 'Where is your fixed abode? ' 'I have no home,' said the prisoner shameface dly, ' I move from town to town.' 'There is a shorter way of saying that--in a word you are a vagrant,' said the Procurator and asked: ' Have you any relat ions?' 'No, none. Not one in the world.' 'Can you read and write? ' ' Yes.' 'Do you know any language besides Aramaic? '' Yes. Greek.' One swollen eyelid was raised and a pain-cl ouded eye stared at the prisoner. The other eye remained closed. Pilate sai d in Greek : 'So you intended to destroy the temple buildin g and incited the people to do so?' 'Never, goo . . . ' Terror flashed across t he prisoner's face for having so nearly said the wrong word. ' Never in my life, hegemon, have I intended to destroy the temple. Nor have I ever tri ed to persuade anyone to do such a senseless thing.' A look of amazement came over the secretary's face as he bent over a low table recording the evidence. He raised his hea d but immediately lowered it again over his parchment. 'People of all kinds are streaming into the city for the feast-day. Among them there are magicians, astrologers, seers and murderers,' said the Procurator in a monotone. ' There are also liars. You, for instance, are a liar. It is clearly written down : he incited peop le to destroy the temple. Witnesses have said so.' 'These good people,' the prisoner began, and hastily adding ' hegemon', he went on, ' are unlearned and have conf used everything I said. I am beginning to fear that this confusion will last for a very long time. And all because he untruthfully wrote down what I said. ' There was silence. Now both pain-filled eye s stared heavily at the prisoner. 'I repeat, but for the last time--stop p retending to be mad, scoundrel,' said Pilate softly and evenly. ' Wha t has been written down about you is little enough, but it is sufficient to hang you.' 'No, no, hegemon,' said the prisoner, straini ng with the desire to convince. ' This man follows me everywhere with nothing but his goatskin parchment and writes incessantly. But I once ca ught a glimpse of that parchment and I was horrified. I had not said a word of what was written there. I begged him-- please burn this parchment of yours! But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.' 'Who was he? ' enquired Pilate in a strained v oice and put his hand to his temple. 'Matthew the Levite,' said the prisoner eagerly. ' He was a tax-collector. I first met him on the road to Beth lehem at the corner where the road skirts a fig orchard and I started talkin g to him. At first he was rude and even insulted me, or rather he thought he was insulting me by calling me a dog.' The prisoner laughed. ' Perso nally I see nothing wrong with that animal so I was not offended by the word. . . .' The secretary stopped taking notes and glance d surreptitiously, not at the prisoner, but at the Procurator. 'However, when he had heard me out he grew m ilder,' went on Yeshua,' and in the end he threw his money into the road a nd said that he would go travelling with me. . . .' Pilate laughed with one cheek. Baring his y ellow teeth and turning fully round to his secretary he said : 'Oh, city of Jerusalem! What tales you have to tell! A tax-collector, did you hear, throwing away his money!' Not knowing what reply was expected of him, the secretary chose to return Pilate's smile. 'And he said that henceforth he loathed his m oney,' said Yeshua in explanation of Matthew the Levite's strange action , adding : ' And since then he has been my companion.' His teeth still bared in a grin, the Pr ocurator glanced at the prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over t he equestrian statues of the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing w ould be to dismiss this curious rascal from his balcony with no more than t wo words : ' Hang him. ' Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and g o indoors, order the room to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the d og about his hemicrania. Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's mind. He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, t rying painfully to recall why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what furth er useless questions he should put to him. 'Matthew the Levite? ' asked the suffering m an in a hoarse voice, closing his eyes. 'Yes, Matthew the Levite,' came the grating, h igh-pitched reply. 'So you did make a speech about the temple to the crowd in the temple forecourt? ' The voice that answered seemed to strike Pilate on the forehead, causing him inexpressible torture and it said: 'I spoke, hegemon, of how the temple of the o ld beliefs would fall down and the new temple of truth would be built up . I used those words to make my meaning easier to understand.' 'Why should a tramp like you upset the crowd i n the bazaar by talking about truth, something of which you have no concept ion? What is truth? ' At this the Procurator thought: ' Ye gods! Thi s is a court of law and I am asking him an irrelevant question . . . my mind no longer obeys me. . . . ' Once more he had a vision of a goblet of dark l iquid. ' Poison, I need poison.. .. ' And again he heard the voice : 'At this moment the truth is chiefly that your head is aching and aching so hard that you are having cowardly though ts about death. Not only are you in no condition to talk to me, but it even hurts you to look at me. This makes me seem to be your torturer, which distr esses me. You cannot even think and you can only long for your dog, who is c learly the only creature for whom you have any affection. But the pain will stop soon and your headache will go.' The secretary stared at the prisoner, his note -taking abandoned. Pilate raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw ho w high the sun now stood above the hippodrome, how a ray had penetrated the arcade, had crept towards Yeshua's patched sandals and how the man moved asi de from the sunlight. The Procurator stood up and clasped his head in his ha nds. Horror came over his yellowish, clean-shaven face. With an effort of will he controlled his expression and sank back into his chair. Meanwhile the prisoner continued talking, but the secretary had stopped writing, craning his neck like a goose in the eff ort not to miss a single word. 'There, it has gone,' said the prisoner, with a kindly glance at Pilate. ' I am so glad. I would advise you, hegemon , to leave the palace for a while and take a walk somewhere nearby, perhaps i n the gardens or on Mount Eleona. There will be thunder . . .' The prisoner t urned and squinted into the sun . . . ' later, towards evening. A walk wou ld do you a great deal of good and I should be happy to go with you. Some ne w thoughts have just come into my head which you might, I think, find interes ting and I should like to discuss them with you, the more so as you stri ke me as a man of great intelligence.' The secretary turned mortally pale and dropped his scroll to the ground. ' Your trouble is,' went on the uns toppable prisoner, ' that your mind is too closed and you have finally l ost your faith in human beings. You must admit that no one ought to lavish all their devotion on a dog. Your life is a cramped one, hegemon.' Here th e speaker allowed himself to smile. The only thought in the secretary's mind now was whether he could believe his ears. He had to believe them. He then tried to guess in what strange form the Procurator's fiery temper might br eak out at the prisoner's unheard-of insolence. Although he knew the Procura tor well the secretary's imagination failed him. Then the hoarse, broken voice of the Procurato r barked out in Latin: 'Untie his hands.' One of the legionary escorts tapped the ground with his lance, gave it to his neighbour, approached and removed the prison er's bonds. The secretary picked up his scroll, decided to take no more note s for a while and to be astonished at nothing he might hear. 'Tell me,' said Pilate softly in Latin, ' are you a great physician?' 'No, Procurator, I am no physician,' replied t he prisoner, gratefully rubbing his twisted, swollen, purpling wrist. Staring from beneath his eyelids, Pilate's eye s bored into the prisoner and those eyes were no longer dull. They now fla shed with their familiar sparkle. ' I did not ask you,' said Pilate. ' Do yo u know Latin too? ' 'Yes, I do,' replied the prisoner. The colour flowed back into Pilate's yellowe d cheeks and he asked in Latin: 'How did you know that I wanted to call my dog ? ' 'Quite simple,' the prisoner answered in Latin . ' You moved your hand through the air . . . ' the prisoner repeated Pil ate's gesture . . . ' as though to stroke something and your lips . . .' 'Yes,' said Pilate. There was silence. Then Pilate put a question in Greek : 'So you are a physician? ' 'No, no,' was the prisoner's eager reply. ' Be lieve me I am not.' 'Very well, if you wish to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct bearing on the case. So you maintain that you nev er incited people to tear down ... or burn, or by any means destroy the templ e?' 'I repeat, hegemon, that I have never tried to persuade anyone to attempt any such thing. Do I look weak in the head? ' 'Oh no, you do not,' replied the Procurator q uietly, and smiled an ominous smile. ' Very well, swear that it is not so .' 'What would you have me swear by? ' enquired t he unbound prisoner with great urgency. 'Well, by your life,' replied the Procurator . ' It is high time to swear by it because you should know that it is hang ing by a thread.' 'You do not believe, do you, hegemon, that i t is you who have strung it up?' asked the prisoner. ' If you do you are mis taken.' Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth : 'I can cut that thread.' 'You are mistaken there too,' objected t he prisoner, beaming and shading himself from the sun with his hand. ' You must agree, I think, that the thread can only be cut by the one who has suspe nded it? ' 'Yes, yes,' said Pilate, smiling. ' I now hav e no doubt that the idle gapers of Jerusalem have been pursuing you. I do no t know who strung up your tongue, but he strung it well. By the way. tell me, is it true that you entered Jerusalem by the Susim Gate mounted on a donkey, accompanied by a rabble who greeted you as though you were a prophe t? ' Here the Procurator pointed to a scroll of parchment. The prisoner stared dubiously at the Procurato r. 'I have no donkey, hegemon,' he said. ' I certainly came into Jerusalem through the Susim Gate, but I came on foot alone except for Matthew the Levite and nobody shouted a word to m e as no one in Jerusalem knew me then.' 'Do you happen to know,' went on Pilate witho ut taking his eyes off the prisoner, ' anyone called Dismas? Or Hestas? Or a third--Bar-Abba? ' 'I do not know these good men,' replied the pr isoner. 'Is that the truth? ' 'It is.' 'And now tell me why you always use that expr ession " good men "? Is that what you call everybody? ' 'Yes, everybody,' answered the prisoner. ' The re are no evil people on earth.' 'That is news to me,' said Pilate with a laugh . ' But perhaps I am too ignorant of life. You need take no further notes,' he said to the secretary, although the man had taken none for some time. Pi late turned back to the prisoner : 'Did you read about that in some Greek book? ' 'No, I reached that conclusion in my own mind. ' 'And is that what you preach? ' ‘ Yes.' 'Centurion Mark Muribellum, for instance--is h e good? ' 'Yes,' replied the prisoner. ' He is, it is true, an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him he has becom e harsh and callous. It would be interesting to know who mutilated him.' 'That I will gladly tell you,' rejoined Pil ate, ' because I was a witness to it. These good men threw themselves at him like dogs at a bear. The Germans clung to his neck, his arms, his legs. An infantry maniple had been ambushed and had it not been for a troop of cavalry breaking through from the flank--a troop commanded by me--you, ph ilosopher, would not have been talking to Muribellum just now. It happened at the battle of Idistavizo in the Valley of the Virgins.' 'If I were to talk to him,' the prisoner sudde nly said in a reflective voice, ' I am sure that he would change greatly.' 'I suspect,' said Pilate, ' that the Legate of the Legion would not be best pleased if you took it into your head to talk to one of his officers or soldiers. Fortunately for us all any such thing is forbidden and the first person to ensure that it cannot occur would be myse lf.' At that moment a swallow darted into the ar cade, circled under the gilded ceiling, flew lower, almost brushed its poin ted wingtip over the face of a bronze statue in a niche and disappeared b ehind the capital of a column, perhaps with the thought of nesting there. As it flew an idea formed itself in the Pro curator's mind, which was now bright and clear. It was thus : the hegemon had examined the case of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, surnamed Ha-Notsri, an d could not substantiate the criminal charge made against him. In particul ar he could not find the slightest connection between Yeshua's actions and the recent disorders in Jerusalem. The vagrant philosopher was mentally i ll, as a result of which the sentence of death pronounced on Ha-Notsri by t he Lesser Sanhedrin would not be confirmed. But in view of the danger of unre st liable to be caused by Yeshua's mad, Utopian preaching, the Procurator wou ld remove the man from Jerusalem and sentence him to imprisonment in Cae sarea Stratonova on the Mediterranean--the place of the Procurator's own re sidence. It only remained to dictate this to the secretary. The swallow's wings fluttered over the hege mon's head, the bird flew towards the fountain and out into freedom. The Procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw that a column of dust had swirled up beside him. 'Is that all there is on this man? ' Pilate as ked the secretary. 'No, unfortunately,' replied the secretary un expectedly, and handed Pilate another parchment. 'What else is there? ' enquired Pilate and frowned. Having read the further evidence a change c ame over his expression. Whether it was blood flowing back into his neck an d face or from something else that occurred, his skin changed from yellow to red-brown and his eyes appeared to collapse. Probably caused by the increa sed blood-pressure in his temples, something happened to the Procurator's si ght. He seemed to see the prisoner's head vanish and another appear in its place, bald and crowned with a spiked golden diadem. The skin of the foreh ead was split by a round, livid scar smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a capricious, pendulous lower lip. Pilate had the sensation that the pink columns of his balcony and the roofscape of Jerusa lem below and beyond the garden had all vanished, drowned in the thick folia ge of cypress groves. His hearing, too, was strangely affected--there was a sound as of distant trumpets, muted and threatening, and a nasal voic e could clearly be heard arrogantly intoning the words: ' The law pertaining to high treason . . .' Strange, rapid, disconnected thoughts passed t hrough his mind. ' Dead! ' Then : ' They have killed him! . . .' And an absurd notion about immortality, the thought of which aroused a sense o f unbearable grief. Pilate straightened up, banished the vision, turned his gaze back to the balcony and again the prisoner's eyes met his. 'Listen, Ha-Notsri,' began the Procurator, g iving Yeshua a strange look. His expression was grim but his eyes betrayed anxiety. ' Have you ever said anything about great Caesar? Answer! Did you s ay anything of the sort? Or did you . . . not? ' Pilate gave the word 'not ' more emphasis than was proper in a court of law and his look seemed to be trying to project a particular thought into the prisoner's mind. ' Tell ing the truth is easy and pleasant,' remarked the prisoner. 'I do not want to know,' replied Pilate in a voice of suppressed anger, ' whether you enjoy telling the truth or not . You are obliged to tell me the truth. But when you speak weigh every word , if you wish to avoid a painful death.' No one knows what passed through the mind of the Procurator of Judaea, but he permitted himself to raise his hand as thou gh shading himself from a ray of sunlight and, shielded by that hand, to thr ow the prisoner a glance that conveyed a hint. 'So,' he said, ' answer this question : do you know a certain Judas of Karioth and if you have ever spoken to him what did you say to him about Caesar? ' 'It happened thus,' began the prisoner read ily. ' The day before yesterday, in the evening, I met a young man nea r the temple who called himself Judas, from the town of Karioth. He invite d me to his home in the Lower City and gave me supper...' 'Is he a good man? ' asked Pilate, a diabolica l glitter in his eyes. 'A very good man and eager to learn,' affir med the prisoner. ' He expressed the greatest interest in my ideas and wel comed me joyfully .. . ' 'Lit the candles. . . .' said Pilate through clenched teeth to the prisoner, his eyes glittering. 'Yes,' said Yeshua, slightly astonished that t he Procurator should be so well informed, and went on : ' He asked me for my views on the government. The question interested him very much.' 'And so what did you say? ' asked Pilate. ' Or are you going to reply that you have forgotten what you said? ' But th ere was already a note of hopelessness in Pilate's voice. 'Among other things I said,' continued the pr isoner, ' that all power is a form of violence exercised over people and tha t the time will come when there will be no rule by Caesar nor any other form of rule. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice where no sort of power will be needed.' 'Go on!' 'There is no more to tell,' said the prisone r. ' After that some men came running in, tied me up and took me to prison.' The secretary, straining not to miss a wor d, rapidly scribbled the statement on his parchment. 'There never has been, nor yet shall be a greater and more perfect government in this world than the rule of the emp eror Tiberius!' Pilate's voice rang out harshly and painfully. The Procurato r stared at his secretary and at the bodyguard with what seemed like hatred. ' And what business have you, a criminal lunatic, to discuss such matters! ' Pilate shouted. ' Remove the guards from the balcony! ' And turning to hi s secretary he added: ' Leave me alone with this criminal. This is a case o f treason.' The bodyguard raised their lances and with th e measured tread of their iron-shod caligae marched from the balcony toward s the garden followed by the secretary. For a while the silence on the balcony w as only disturbed bv the splashing of the fountain. Pilate watched the water splay out at the apex of the jet and drip downwards. The prisoner was the first to speak : 'I see that there has been some trouble as a r esult of my conversation with that young man from Karioth. I have a presenti ment, hegemon, that some misfortune will befall him and I feel very sorry fo r him.' 'I think,' replied the Procurator with a stra nge smile, ' that there is someone else in this world for whom you shoul d feel sorrier than for Judas of Karioth and who is destined for a fate mu ch worse than Judas'! ... So Mark Muribellum, a coldblooded killer, the p eople who I see '--the Procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face-- ' beat you for what you preached, the robbers Dismas and Hestas who with their confederates killed four soldiers, and finally this dirty informer Juda s--are they all good men? ' 'Yes,' answered the prisoner. 'And will the kingdom of truth come? ' ' It will, hegemon,' replied Yeshua with conviction. 'It will never come! ' Pilate suddenly shouted in a voice so terrible that Yeshua staggered back. Many years ago in t he Valley of the Virgins Pilate had shouted in that same voice to his horsem en : ' Cut them down! Cut them down! They have caught the giant Muribellum! ' And again he raised his parade-ground voice, barking out the words so tha t they would be heard in the garden : ' Criminal! Criminal! Criminal! ' Th en lowering his voice he asked : ' Yeshua Ha-Notsri, do you believe in any g ods?' 'God is one,' answered Yeshua. ' I believe in Him.' 'Then pray to him! Pray hard! However,' at th is Pilate's voice fell again, ' it will do no good. Have you a wife? ' a sked Pilate with a sudden inexplicable access of depression. 'No, I am alone.' 'I hate this city,' the Procurator suddenly mumbled, hunching his shoulders as though from cold and wiping his hands as though washing them. ' If they had murdered you before your meeting with J udas of Karioth I really believe it would have been better.' 'You should let me go, hegemon,' was the prisoner's unexpected request, his voice full of anxiety. ' I see now tha t they want to kill me.' A spasm distorted Pilate's face as he turned his blood-shot eyes on Yeshua and said : 'Do you imagine, you miserable creature, that a Roman Procurator could release a man who has said what you have said to me ? Oh gods, oh gods! Or do you think I'm prepared to take your place? I don 't believe in your ideas! And listen to me : if from this moment onward you say so much as a word or try to talk to anybody, beware! I repeat--beware!' 'Hegemon . ..' 'Be quiet! ' shouted Pilate, his infuriat ed stare following the swallow which had flown on to the balcony again. ' Here!' shouted Pilate. The secretary and the guards returned to their places and Pilate announced that he confirmed the sentence of death pronounced by the Lesser Sanhedrin on the accused Yeshua Ha-Notsri and the secretary recorded Pilate's words. A minute later centurion Mark Muribellum sto od before the Procurator. He was ordered by the Procurator to hand the felo n over to the captain of the secret service and in doing so to transmit t he Procurator's directive that Yeshua Ha-Notsri was to be segregated from the other convicts, also that the captain of the secret service was forbidden on pain of severe punishment to talk to Yeshua or to answer any quest ions he might ask. At a signal from Mark the guard closed ranks a round Yeshua and escorted him from the balcony. Later the Procurator received a call from a h andsome man with a blond beard, eagles' feathers in the crest of his he lmet, glittering lions' muzzles on his breastplate, a gold-studded sword belt, triple-soled boots laced to the knee and a purple cloak thrown over hi s left shoulder. He was the commanding officer, the Legate of the Legion. The Procurator asked him where the Sebastian cohort was stationed. The Legate reported that the Sebastian was on cordon du ty in the square in front of the hippodrome, where the sentences on the priso ners would be announced to the crowd. Then the Procurator instructed the Legate to detach two centuries from the Roman cohort. One of them, under the comman d of Muribellum, was to escort the convicts, the carts transporting the ex ecutioners' equipment and the executioners themselves to Mount Golgotha and on arrival to cordon off the summit area. The other was to proceed at once to Mount Golgotha and to form a cordon immediately on arrival. To assist in the task of guarding the hill, the Procurator asked the Legate to despatc h an auxiliary cavalry regiment, the Syrian ala. When the Legate had left the balcony, the Procurator ordered his secretary to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its members and the captain of the Jerusalem temple g uard, but added that he wished arrangements to be made which would allow hi m, before conferring with all these people, to have a private meeting wi th the president of the Sanhedrin. The Procurator's orders were carried out rapid ly and precisely and the sun, which had lately seemed to scorch Jerusale m with such particular vehemence, had not yet reached its zenith when the meeting took place between the Procurator and the president of the S anhedrin, the High Priest of Judaea, Joseph Caiaphas. They met on the uppe r terrace of the garden between two white marble lions guarding the stairca se. It was quiet in the garden. But as he emerged from the arcade on to the sun-drenched upper terrace of the garden with its palms on their monstrous elephantine legs, the terrace from which the whole of Pilate's detested city of Jerusalem lay spread out before the Procur ator with its suspension bridges, its fortresses and over it all that inde scribable lump of marble with a golden dragon's scale instead of a roof--the temple of Jerusalem--the Procurator's sharp hearing detected far below, down there where a stone wall divided the lower terraces of the palace garden fr om the city square, a low rumbling broken now and again by faint sounds, half groans, half cries. The Procurator realised that already there was assembling in the square a numberless crowd of the inhabitants of Jerusalem , excited by the recent disorders; that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the pronouncement of sentence and that the water-sellers were busily sho uting their wares. The Procurator began by inviting the High Prie st on to the balcony to find some shade from the pitiless heat, but C aiaphas politely excused himself, explaining that he could not do that on th e eve of a feast-day. Pilate pulled his cowl over his slightly bal ding head and began the conversation, which was conducted in Greek. Pilate remarked that he had examined the case of Yeshua Ha-Notsri and had confirmed the sentence of death. Consequently those due for execution that day were the three robbers--Hestas, Dismas an d Bar-Abba--and now this other man, Yeshua Ha- Notsri. The first two, who h ad tried to incite the people to rebel against Caesar, had been forcibly apprehended by the Roman authorities; they were therefore the Procurator's responsibility and there was no reason to discuss their case. The last t wo, however, Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri, had been arrested by the local authorit ies and tried before the Sanhedrin. In accordance with law and custom, on e of these two criminals should be released in honour of the imminent great feast of Passover. The Procurator therefore wished to know which of these two felons the Sanhedrin proposed to discharge--Bar-Abba or Ha-Notsri? Caiaphas inclined his head as a sign that he understood the question and replied: 'The Sanhedrin requests the release of Bar-Abba.' The Procurator well knew that this would be the High Priest's reply; his problem was to show that the request aroused his astonishment. This Pilate did with great skill. The ey ebrows rose on his proud forehead and the Procurator looked the High Priest straight in the eye with amazement. 'I confess that your reply surprises me,' bega n the Procurator softly. ' I fear there may have been some misunderstanding here.' Pilate stressed that the Roman government wi shed to make no inroads into the prerogatives of the local priestly autho rity, the High Priest was well aware of that, but in this particular case a n obvious error seemed to have occurred. And the Roman government natura lly had an interest in correcting such an error. The crimes of Bar-Abba a nd Ha-Notsri were after all not comparable in gravity. If the latter, a ma n who was clearly insane, were guilty of making some absurd speeches in Jerus alem and various other localities, the former stood convicted of offences that were infinitely more serious. Not only had he permitted himself to make direct appeals to rebellion, but he had killed a sentry while resist ing arrest. Bar-Abba was immeasurably more dangerous than Ha-Notsri. In vie w of all these facts, the Procurator requested the High Priest to reconsi der his decision and to discharge the least dangerous of the two conv icts and that one was undoubtedly Ha-Notsri . . . Therefore? Caiaphas said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had taken due cognisance of the case and repeated its intenti on to release Bar-Abba. 'What? Even after my intervention? The intervention of the representative of the Roman government? High Prie st, say it for the third time.' 'And for the third time I say that we shall release Bar-Abba,' said Caiaphas softly. It was over and there was no more to be discu ssed. Ha-Notsri had gone for ever and there was no one to heal the Procu rator's terrible, savage pains ; there was no cure for them now except de ath. But this thought did not strike Pilate immediately. At first his whole being was seized with the same incomprehensible sense of grief which had come to him on the balcony. He at once sought for its explanation and its caus e was a strange one : the Procurator was obscurely aware that he still had s omething to say to the prisoner and that perhaps, too, he had more to lear n from him. Pilate banished the thought and it passed as q uickly as it had come. It passed, yet that grievous ache remained a myster y, for it could not be explained by another thought that had flashed in and out of his mind like lightning--' Immortality ... immortality has come . . .' Whose immortality had come? The Procurator could not understand it, b ut that puzzling thought of immortality sent a chill over him despite the su n's heat. 'Very well,' said Pilate. ' So be it.' With that he looked round. The visible world vanished from his sight and an astonishing change occurred. The flower-lad en rosebush disappeared, the cypresses fringing the upper terrace disappeare d, as did the pomegranate tree, the white statue among the foliage and the foliage itself. In their place came a kind of dense purple mass in which sea weed waved and swayed and Pilate himself was swaying with it. He was seized, suffocating and burning, by the most terrible rage of all rage--the rage of impotence. 'I am suffocating,' said Pilate. ' Suffocating ! ' With a cold damp hand he tore the buckle from the collar of his cloak and it fell on to the sand. 'It is stifling today, there is a thunde rstorm brewing,' said Caiaphas, his gaze fixed on the Procurator's redde ning face, foreseeing all the discomfort that the weather was yet to bring. ' The month of Nisan has been terrible this year! ' 'No,' said Pilate. ' That is not why I am suf focating. I feel stifled by your presence, Caiaphas.' Narrowing his eyes P ilate added : ' Beware, High Priest! ' The High Priest's dark eyes flashed and--no less cunningly than the Procurator--his face showed astonishment. 'What do I hear, Procurator? ' Caiaphas answered proudly and calmly. ' Are you threatening me--when sentence has been duly pronounced and confirmed by yourself? Can this be so? We are accustomed to the Roman Procurator choosing his words carefully before saying anything . I trust no one can have overheard us, hegemon?' With lifeless eyes Pilate gazed at the High Priest and manufactured a smile. 'Come now. High Priest! Who can overhear us he re? Do you take me for a fool, like that crazy young vagrant who is to be executed today? Am I a child, Caiphas? I know what I'm saying and where I' m saying it. This garden, this whole palace is so well cordoned that there's not a crack for a mouse to slip through. Not a mouse--and not even that m an--what's his name . .? That man from Karioth. You do know him, don't you, High Priest? Yes ... if someone like that were to get in here, he would bitterly regret it. You believe me when I say that, don't you? I tell you, High Priest, that from henceforth you shall have no peace! Neither you n or your people '--Pilate pointed to the right where the pinnacle of t he temple flashed in the distance. ' I, Pontius Pilate, knight of the Golde n Lance, tell you so! ' ' I know it! ' fearlessly replied the bearded Caiapha s. His eyes flashed as he raised his hand to the sky and went on : ' The Jew ish people knows that you hate it with a terrible hatred and that you have brought it much suffering--but you will never destroy it! God will protect it. And he shall hear us--mighty Caesar shall hear us and prot ect us from Pilate the oppressor! ' 'Oh no! ' rejoined Pilate, feeling more and mo re relieved with every word that he spoke; there was no longer any need t o dissemble, no need to pick his words : ' You have complained of me to Ca esar too often and now my hour has come, Caiaphas! Now I shall send word--b ut not to the viceroy in Antioch, not even to Rome but straight to Capreia , to the emperor himself, word of how you in Jerusalem are saving convicte d rebels from death. And then it will not be water from Solomon's pool, as I once intended for your benefit, that I shall give Jerusalem to drink--n o, it will not be water! Remember how thanks to you I was made to remov e the shields with the imperial cipher from the walls, to transfer troops, to come and take charge here myself! Remember my words. High Priest: you a re going to see more than one cohort here in Jerusalem! Under the city walls you are going to see the Fulminata legion at full strength and Arab cavalry too. Then the weeping and lamentation will be bitter! Then you will remembe r that you saved Bar-Abba and you will regret that you sent that preacher of peace to his death! Flecks of colour spread over the High Priest' s face, his eyes burned. Like the Procurator he grinned mirthlessly and repl ied: 'Do you really believe what you have just said , Procurator? No, you do not! It was not peace that this rabble-rouser bro ught to Jerusalem and of that, hegamon, you are well aware. You wanted to release him so that he could stir up the people, curse our faith and de liver the people to your Roman swords! But as long as I, the High Priest of Judaea, am alive I shall not allow the faith to be defamed and I shall pr otect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?' With this Caiaphas raised his arm th reateningly; 'Take heed. Procurator! ' Caiaphas was silent and again the Procurator heard a murmuring as of the sea, rolling up to the very walls of Herod the Great's garden. The sound flowed upwards from below until it seemed to swir l round the Procurator's legs and into his face. Behind his back, from beyond the wings of the palace, came urgent trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clank of metal. It told the Procurator that the Ro man infantry was marching out, on his orders, to the execution parade that was to strike terror into the hearts of all thieves and rebels 'Do you hear. Procurator? ' the High Pries t quietly repeated his words. ' Surely you are not trying to tell me th at all this '-- here the High Priest raised both arms and his dark cowl sli pped from his head--' can have been evoked by that miserable thief Bar-Abba?' With the back of his wrist the Procurator wiped his damp, cold forehead, stared at the ground, then frowning sk ywards he saw that the incandescent ball was nearly overhead, that Caiap has' shadow had shrunk to almost nothing and he said in a calm, expressionless voice : 'The execution will be at noon. We have enjoye d this conversation, but matters must proceed.' Excusing himself to the High Priest in a few artificial phrases, he invited him to sit down on a bench in the shade o f a magnolia and to wait while he summoned the others necessary for the fin al short consultation and to give one more order concerning the execution. Caiaphas bowed politely, placing his hand on h is heart, and remained in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcon y. There he ordered his waiting secretary to call the Legate of the Legio n and the Tribune of the cohort into the garden, also the two members o f the Sanhedrin and the captain of the temple guard, who were standing grou ped round the fountain on the lower terrace awaiting his call. Pilate add ed that he would himself shortly return to join them in the garden, an d disappeared inside the palace. While the secretary convened the meeting, inside his darken-ed, shuttered room the Procurator spoke to a man whose face, despite the complete absence of sunlight from the room, remaine d half covered by a hood. The interview was very short. The Procurator whisp ered a few words to the man, who immediately departed. Pilate passed thro ugh the arcade into the garden. There in the presence of all the men he had asked to see, the Procurator solemnly and curtly repeated that he co nfirmed the sentence of death on Yeshua Ha-Notsri and enquired officially of the Sanhedrin members as to which of the prisoners it had pleased them t o release. On being told that it was Bar-Abba, the Procurator said: 'Very well,' and ordered the secretary to ente r it in the minutes. He clutched the buckle which the secretary had pick ed up from the sand and announced solemnly : ' It is time! ' At this all present set off down the broad mar ble staircase between the lines of rose bushes, exuding their stupefying aroma, down towards the palace wall, to a gate leading to the smoothly pa ved square at whose end could be seen the columns and statues of the Jerusa lem hippodrome. As soon as the group entered the square and began climbing up to the broad temporary wooden platform raised high a bove the square, Pilate assessed the situation through narrowed eyelids. The cleared passage that he had just crossed between the palace walls and the scaffolding platform was empty, but in fr ont of Pilate the square could no longer be seen--it had been devoured by the crowd. The mob would have poured on to the platform and the passage too if there had not been two triple rows of soldiers, one from the Sebastian co hort on Pilate's left and on his right another from the Ituraean auxiliary co hort, to keep it clear. Pilate climbed the platform, mechanically clen ching and unclenching his fist on the useless buckle and frowning hard. The Procurator was not frowning because the sun was blinding him but to somehow avoid seeing the group of prisoners which, as he well knew, would s hortly be led out on the platform behind him. The moment the white cloak with the blood-red lining appeared atop the stone block at the edge of that human sea a wave of sound--' Aaahh '--struck the unseeing Pilate's ears. It began softly, far a way at the hippodrome end of the square, then grew to thunderous volume and a fter a few seconds, began to diminish again. ' They have seen me,' thought th e Procurator. The wave of sound did not recede altogether and began unexpec tedly to grow again and waveringly rose to a higher pitch than the first a nd on top of the second surge of noise, like foam on the crest of a wave at sea, could be heard whistles and the shrieks of several women audibl e above the roar. ' That means they have led them out on to the platform ,' thought Pilate, ' and those screams are from women who were crushed when the crowd surged forward.' He waited for a while, knowing that nothing could silence the crowd until it had let loose its pent-up feelings and qui etened of its own accord. When that moment came tlie Procurator threw u p his right hand and the last murmurings of the crowd expired. Then Pilate took as deep a breath as he could of the hot air and his cracked voice rang out over the thousands of heads : 'In the name of imperial Caesar! . . .' At once his ears were struck by a clipped, metallic chorus as the cohorts, raising lances and standards, roared out t heir fearful response: 'Hail, Caesar! ' Pilate jerked his head up straight at the su n. He had a sensation of green fire piercing his eyelids, his brain seemed t o burn. In hoarse Aramaic he flung his words out over the crowd : 'Four criminals, arrested in Jerusalem for murder, incitement to rebellion, contempt of the law and blasphemy, h ave been condemned to the most shameful form of execution--crucifixion! T heir execution will be carried out shortly on Mount Golgotha The names of these felons are Dismas, Hestas, Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri and there they stand before you! ' Pilate pointed to the right, unable to see t he prisoners but knowing that they were standing where they should be. The crowd responded with a long rumble that co uld have been surprise or relief. When it had subsided Pilate went on : 'But only three of them are to be executed for , in accordance with law and custom, in honour of the great feast of Passov er the emperor Caesar in his magnanimity will, at the choice of the Lesse r Sanhedrin and with the approval of the Roman government, render back to o ne of these convicted men his contemptible life!' As Pilate rasped out his words he noticed tha t the rumbling had given way to a great silence. Now not a sigh, not a rus tle reached his ears and there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate t hat the people around him had vanished altogether. The city he so hated mig ht have died and only he alone stood there, scorched by the vertical ra ys of the sun, his face craning skywards. Pilate allowed the silence to co ntinue and then began to shout again: ' The name of the man who is about to be released before you . . .' He paused once more, holding back the name, me ntally confirming that he had said everything, because he knew that as soon as he pronounced the name of the fortunate man the lifeless city would awaken and nothing more that he might say would be audible. 'Is that everything? ' Pilate whispered soundl essly to himself. ' Yes, it is. Now the name! ' And rolling his ' r 's ove r the heads of the silent populace he roared : ' Bar-Abba! ' It was as though the sun detonated above him and drowned his ears in fire, a fire that roared, shrieked, groaned, laughe d and whistled. Pilate turned and walked back along the plat form towards the steps, glancing only at the parti-coloured wooden blocks of the steps beneath his feet to save himself from stumbling. He knew that behind his back a hail of bronze coins and dates was showering the platf orm, that people in the whooping crowd, elbowing each other aside, were cli mbing on to shoulders to see a miracle with their own eyes--a man already i n the arms of death and torn from their grasp! They watched the legion aries as they untied his bonds, involuntarily causing him searing pain in h is swollen arms, watched as grimacing and complaining he nevertheless smi led an insane, senseless smile. Pilate knew that the escort was now marching the three bound prisoners to the side steps of the platform to lead them off on the road westward, out of the city, towards Mount Golgotha. Only when he s tood beneath and behind the platform did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was now safe--he could no longer see the convicted men. As the roar of the crowd began to die do wn the separate, piercing voices of the heralds could be heard repeating, on e in Aramaic, the others in Greek, the announcement that the Procurator had just made from the platform. Besides that his ears caught the approac hing irregular clatter of horses' hoofs and the sharp, bright call of a trump et. This sound was echoed by the piercing whistles of boys from the rooftop s and by shouts of ' Look out! ' A lone soldier, standing in the space cleared in the square, waved his standard in warning, at which the Procurator, the Legate of the Legion and their escort halted. A squadron of cavalry entered the square at a fast trot, cutting across it diagonally, past a knot of people, then dow n a side-street along a vine-covered stone wall in order to gallop on t o Mount Golgotha by the shortest route. As the squadron commander, a Syrian as small a s a boy and as dark as a mulatto, trotted past Pilate he gave a high-pitche d cry and drew his sword from its scabbard. His sweating, ugly-tempered b lack horse snorted and reared up on its hind legs. Sheathing his sword t he commander struck the horse's neck with his whip, brought its forelegs do wn and moved off down the side street, breaking into a gallop. Behind him in columns of three galloped the horsemen in a ha2e of dust, the tips of th eir bamboo lances bobbing rhythmically. They swept past the Procurator, thei r faces unnaturally dark in contrast with their white turbans, grinning chee rfully, teeth flashing. Raising a cloud of dust the squadron surged d own the street, the last trooper to pass Pilate carrying a glinting trumpet slung across his back. Shielding his face from the dust with his hand and frowning with annoyance Pilate walked on, hurrying towards the gate of the palace garden followed by the Legate, the secretary and the escor t. It was about ten o'clock in the morning. 3. The Seventh Proof 'Yes, it was about ten o'clock in the m orning, my dear Ivan Nikolayich,' said the professor. The poet drew his hand across his face like a man who has just woken up and noticed that it was now evening. The water in t he pond had turned black, a little boat was gliding across it and he could hear the splash of an oar and a girl's laughter in the boat. People were be ginning to appear in the avenues and were sitting on the benches on all side s of the square except on the side where our friends were talking. Over Moscow it was as if the sky had blossomed : a clear, full moon had risen, still white and not yet golden. It was m uch less stuffy and the voices under the lime trees now had an even-tide so ftness. 'Why didn't I notice what a long story he's be en telling us? ' thought Bezdomny in amazement. ' It's evening already! Perh aps he hasn't told it at all but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it?' But if the professor had not told the stor y Berlioz must have been having the identical dream because he said, gazin g attentively into the stranger's face : 'Your story is extremely interesting, prof essor, but it diners completely from the accounts in the gospels.' 'But surely,' replied the professor with a con descending smile, ' you of all people must realise that absolutely nothin g written in the gospels actually happened. If you want to regard the gospe ls as a proper historical source . . .' He smiled again and Berlioz was sil enced. He had just been saying exactly the same thing to Bezdomny on their walk from Bronnaya Street to Patriarch's Ponds. 'I agree,' answered Berlioz, ' but I'm afr aid that no one is in a position to prove the authenticity of your version either.' 'Oh yes! I can easily confirm it! ' rejoined t he professor with great confidence, lapsing into his foreign accent and my steriously beckoning the two friends closer. They bent towards him from both sides and he began, this time without a trace of his accent which seemed to come and go without rhyme or reason : 'The fact is . . .' here the professor glance d round nervously and dropped his voice to a whisper, ' I was there mys elf. On the balcony with Pontius Pilate, in the garden when he talked to Caiaphas and on the platform, but secretly, incognito so to speak, so d on't breathe a word of it to anyone and please keep it an absolute secret, sshhh . . .' There was silence. Berlioz went pale. 'How . . . how long did you say you'd been in Moscow? ' he asked in a shaky voice. 'I have just this minute arrived in Moscow,' replied the professor, slightly disconcerted. Only then did it occur to the two friends to look him properly in the eyes. They saw that his green left eye was completely mad, his right eye black, expressionless and dead. 'That explains it all,' thought Berlioz perpl exedly. ' He's some mad German who's just arrived or else he's suddenly gon e out of his mind here at Patriarch's. What an extraordinary business! ' This really seemed to account for everything--the mysterious breakfast with th e philosopher Kant, the idiotic ramblings about sunflower-seed oil and An na, the prediction about Berlioz's head being cut off and all the rest: the professor was a lunatic. Berlioz at once started to think what they oug ht to do. Leaning back on the bench he winked at Bezdomny behind the pr ofessor's back, meaning ' Humour him! ' But the poet, now thoroughly confuse d, failed to understand the signal. 'Yes, yes, yes,' said Berlioz with great an imation. ' It's quite possible, of course. Even probable--Pontius Pilate, the balcony, and so on. . . . Have you come here alone or with your wife? ' 'Alone, alone, I am always alone,' replied the professor bitterly. 'But where is your luggage, professor?' asked Berlioz cunningly. ' At the Metropole? Where are you staying? ' 'Where am I staying? Nowhere. . . .' answered the mad German, staring moodily around Patriarch's Ponds with his g:reen ey e 'What! . . . But . . . where are you going to live? ' 'In your flat,' the lunatic suddenly replied c asually and winked. 'I'm ... I should be delighted . . .' stutt ered Berlioz, : ‘but I'm afraid you wouldn't be very comfortable at my plac e . . - the rooms at the Metropole are excellent, it's a first-class hotel . . .' 'And the devil doesn't exist either, I suppos e? ' the madman suddenly enquired cheerfully of Ivan Nikolayich. 'And the devil . . .' 'Don't contradict him,' mouthed Berlioz silen tly, leaning back and grimacing behind the professor's back. 'There's no such thing as the devil! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out, hopelessly muddled by all this dumb show, ruinin g all Berlioz's plans by shouting: ' And stop playing the amateur psychologi st! ' At this the lunatic gave such a laugh that it startled the sparrows out of the tree above them. 'Well now, that is interesting,' said the professor, quaking with laughter. ' Whatever I ask you about--it doesn 't exist! ' He suddenly stopped laughing and with a typical madman's reacti on he immediately went to the other extreme, shouting angrily and harshly : ' So you think the devil doesn't exist? ' 'Calm down, calm down, calm down, professo r,' stammered Berlioz, frightened of exciting this lunatic. ' You stay h ere a minute with comrade Bezdomny while I run round the corner and make a ' phone call and then we'll take you where you want to go. You don't know you r way around town, sitter all... .' Berlioz's plan was obviously right-- to run to the nearest telephone box and tell the Aliens' Bureau that ther e was a foreign professor sitting at Patriarch's Ponds who was clearly insa ne. Something had to be done or there might be a nasty scene. 'Telephone? Of course, go and telephone if y ou want to,' agreed the lunatic sadly, and then suddenly begged with passio n : 'But please--as a farewell request--at least say you believe in the devil! I won't ask anything more of you. Don't forg et that there's still the seventh proof--the soundest! And it's just about t o be demonstrated to you! ' 'All right, all right,' said Berlioz pretendin g to agree. With a wink to the wretched Bezdomny, who by no means relishe d the thought of keeping watch on this crazy German, he rushed towards the park gates at the corner of Bronnaya and Yermolay-evsky Streets. At once the professor seemed to recover his reason and good spirits. 'Mikhail Alexandrovich! ' he shouted after Ber lioz, who shuddered as he turned round and then remembered that the pro fessor could have learned his name from a newspaper. The professor, cupping his hands into a trumpe t, shouted : 'Wouldn't you like me to send a telegram to yo ur uncle in Kiev? ' Another shock--how did this madman know that he had an uncle in Kiev? Nobody had ever put that in any newspaper. Could Be zdomny be right about him after all? And what about those phoney-looking docu ments of his? Definitely a weird character . . . ring up, ring up the Bure au at once . . . they'll come and sort it all out in no time. Without waiting to hear any more, Berlioz ran on. At the park gates leading into Bronnaya Street , the identical man, whom a short while ago the editor had seen materialise out of a mirage, got up from a bench and walked toward him. This time, how ever, he was not made of air but of flesh and blood. In the early twiligh t Berlioz could clearly distinguish his feathery little moustache, his litt le eyes, mocking and half drunk, his check trousers pulled up so tight that h is dirty white socks were showing. Mikhail Alexandrovich stopped, but dismiss ed it as a ridiculous coincidence. He had in any case no time to stop and puzzle it out now. 'Are you looking for the turnstile, sir? ' enq uired the check-clad man in a quavering tenor. ' This way, please! Straig ht on for the exit. How about the price of a drink for showing you the way, sir? ... church choirmaster out of work, sir ... need a helping ha nd, sir. . . .' Bending double, the weird creature pulled off his jockey ca p in a sweeping gesture. Without stopping to listen to the choirmaste r's begging and whining, Berlioz ran to the turnstile and pushed it. Havin g passed through he was just about to step off the pavement and cross the t ramlines when a white and red light flashed in his face and the pedestria n signal lit up with the words ' Stop! Tramway!' A tram rolled into view, ro cking slightly along the newly-laid track that ran down Yermolayevsky Street and into Bronnaya. As it turned to join the main line it suddenly switch ed its inside lights on, hooted and accelerated. Although he was standing in safety, the ca utious Berlioz decided to retreat behind the railings. He put his hand on t he turnstile and took a step backwards. He missed his grip and his foot slipped on the cobbles as inexorably as though on ice. As it slid towards th e tramlines his other leg gave way and Berlioz was thrown across the track. Grabbing wildly, Berlioz fell prone. He struck his head violently on the co bblestones and the gilded moon flashed hazily across his vision. He just had time to turn on his back, drawing his legs up to his stomach with a frenzied movement and as he turned over he saw the woman tram-driver's face, white wi th horror above her red necktie, as she bore down on him with irresistible force and speed. Berlioz made no sound, but all round him the street rang w ith the desperate shrieks of women's voices. The driver grabbed the electric brake, the car pitched forward, jumped the rails and with a tinkling cras h the glass broke in all its windows. At this moment Berlioz heard a despai ring voice: ' Oh, no . . .! ' Once more and for the last time the moon flashe d before his eyes but it split into fragments and then went black. Berlioz vanished from sight under the tramcar and a round, dark object rolled across the cobbles, over the kerbstone and bounced along the pavement. It was a severed head. 4. The Pursuit The women's hysterical shrieks and the sound, of police whistles died away. Two ambulances drove on, one bearing the body and the decapitated head to the morgue, the other carrying the beautiful tram-driver who had been wounded by slivers of glass. Street sweepers in white overalls swept up the broken glass and poare'd sand on the pools of bloo d. Ivan Nikolayich, who had failed to reach the turnstile in time, collapse d on a bench and remained there. Several times he tried to ge:t up, but his l egs refuse d to obey him, stricken by a kind of paralysis. The moment he had heard the first cry the po et had rushed towards the turnstile and seen the head bouncing on the pavemen t. The sight unnerved him so much that he bit his hand until it drew blood. H e had naturally forgotten all about the mad German and could do nothing but wonder how one minute he coald have been talking to Berlioz and the next... his head ... Excited people were running along the avenu e past the poet shouting something, but Ivan Nikolayich did not hear them. Suddenly two women collided alongside him and one of them, witlh a pointed nose and straight hair, shouted to the other woman just above his ear : '.. . Anna, it was our Anna! She was coming from Sadovaya! It's her job, you see . . . she was carrying a litre of s unflower-seed oil to the grocery and she broke her jug on. the turnstile! It went all over her skirt amd ruined it and she swore and swore....! And that poor man must have slipped on the oil and fallen under the tram....' One word stuck in Ivan Nikolayich's brain--' A nna' . . . ' Anna? . . . Anna? ' muttered the poet, looking round in alarm. ' Hey, what was that you said . . .? ' The name ' Anna ' evoked the words ' sunflower -seed oil' and ' Pontius Pilate '. Bezdomny rejected 'Pilate' and began lin king together a chain of associations starting with ' Anna'. Very soon the chain was complete and it led straight back to the mad professor. 'Of course! He said the meeting wouldn't take place because Anna had spilled the oil. And, by God, it won't take place now! And what's more he said Berlioz would have his head cut off by a woman!! Yes--and the tram-driver was a woman!!! Who the hell is he? ' There was no longer a grain of doubt that the mysterious professor had foreseen every detail of Berlioz's death before it had occurred. Two thoughts struck the poet: firstly--' he's no madman ' and secondly--' did he arrange the whole thing himself?' 'But how on earth could he? We've got to look into this! ' With a tremendous effort Ivan Nikolayich got up from the bench and ran back to where he had been talking to the profe ssor, who was fortunately still there. The lamps were already lit on Bronnaya Stree t and a golden moon was shining over Patriarch's Ponds. By the light of t he moon, deceptive as it always is, it seemed to Ivan Nikolayich that the th ing under the professor's arm was not a stick but a sword. The ex-choirmaster was sitting on the seat occupied a short while before by Ivan Nikolayich himself. The choirmaster had now clipped on to his nose an obviously useless pince-nez. One lens w as missing and the other rattled in its frame. It made the check-suited man look even more repulsive than when he had shown Berlioz the way to the t ramlines. With a chill of fear Ivan walked up to the professor. A glance at his face convinced him that there was not a trace of insanity in it. 'Confess--who are you? ' asked Ivan grimly. The stranger frowned, looked at the poet as if seeing him for the first time, and answered disagreeably : 'No understand ... no speak Russian . . . ' 'He doesn't understand,' put in the choir master from his bench, although no one had asked him. 'Stop pretending! ' said Ivan threateningly, a cold feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. ' Just now you spoke Russi an perfectly well. You're no German and you're not a professor! You're a spy and a murderer! Show me your papers! ' cried Ivan angrily. The enigmatic professor gave his already croo ked mouth a further twist and shrugged his shoulders. 'Look here, citizen,' put in the horrible choi rmaster again. ' What do you mean by upsetting this foreign tourist? You' ll have the police after you! ' The dubious professor put on a haughty look, turned and walked away from Ivan, who felt himself beginning to lose his head. Gasping, he turned to the choirmaster : 'Hey, you, help me arrest this criminal! It's your duty! ' The choirmaster leaped eagerly to his feet and bawled : 'What criminal? Where is he? A foreign crim inal? ' His eyes lit up joyfully. ' That man? If he's a criminal the first thing to do is to shout " Stop thief! " Otherwise he'll get away. Come on, let 's shout together! ' And the choirmaster opened his mouth wide. The stupefied Ivan obeyed and shouted ' Stop thief! ' but the choirmaster fooled him by not making a sound. Ivan's lonely, hoarse cry was worse than use less. A couple of girls dodged him and he heard them say ' . .. drunk.' 'So you're in league with him, are you? ' shou ted Ivan, helpless with anger. ' Make fun of me, would you? Out of my way!' Ivan set off towards his right and the choi rmaster did the opposite, blocking his way. Ivan moved leftward, the other t o his right and the same thing happened. 'Are you trying to get in my way on pur pose?' screamed Ivan, infuriated. ' You're the one I'm going to report to the police!' Ivan tried to grab the choirmaster by the sleeve, missed and found himself grasping nothing : it was as if the choir master had been swallowed up by the ground. With a groan Ivan looked ahead and saw t he hated stranger. He had already reached the exit leading on to Patriarc h's Street and he was no longer alone. The weird choirmaster had managed t o join him. But that was not all. The third member of the company was a cat the size of a pig, black as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers' whi skers. The threesome was walking towards Patriarch's Street, the cat trottin g along on its hind legs. As he set off after the villains Ivan real ised at once that it was going to be very hard to catch them up. In a flas h the three of them were across the street and on the Spiridonovka. Ivan qu ickened his pace, but the distance between him and his quarry grew no le ss. Before the poet had realised it they had left the quiet Spiridonovka an d were approaching Nikita Gate, where his difficulties increased. There was a crowd and to make matters worse the evil band had decided to use the favourite trick of bandits on the run and split up. With great agility the choirmaster jumped on board a moving bus bound for Arbat Square and vanished. Having lost one of them, Ivan concentrated his attention on the cat and saw how the strange animal walked up to the platform of an ' A ' tram waiting at a stop, cheeki ly pushed off a screaming woman, grasped the handrail and offered the conduct ress a ten-kopeck piece. Ivan was so amazed by the cat's behaviour that he was frozen into immobility beside a street corner grocery. He was struck with even greater amazement as he watched the reaction of the con ductress. Seeing the cat board her tram, she yelled, shaking with anger: 'No cats allowed! I'm not moving with a cat on board! Go on--shoo! Get off, or I'll call the police! ' Both conductress and passengers seemed complet ely oblivious of the most extraordinary thing of all: not that a cat had bo arded a tramcar--that was after all possible--but the fact that the animal was offering to pay its fare! The cat proved to be not only a fare-paying b ut a law-abiding animal. At the first shriek from the conductress it re treated, stepped off the platform and sat down at the tram-stop, stroking its whiskers with the ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress yanked the bell-rope and the car begun to move off, than the cat acted like anyone else who has been pushed off a tram and is still determined to get to his destination. Letting all three cars draw past it, the cat jumped on to the coupling-hook of the last car, latched its paw round a pipe sticking out of one of the windows and sailed away, having saved itself ten kopecks. Fascinated by the odious cat, Ivan almost lost sight of the most important of the three--the professor. Luckily he had not managed to slip away. Ivan spotted his grey beret in the crowd at t he top of Herzen Street. In a flash Ivan was there too, but in vain. The poet speeded up to a run and began shoving people aside, but it brought hi m not an inch nearer the professor. Confused though Ivan was, he was neverth eless astounded by the supernatural speed of the pursuit. Less than twe nty seconds after leaving Nikita Gate Ivan Nikolayich was dazzled by the ligh ts of Arbat Square. A few more seconds and he was in a dark alleyway with uneven pavements where he tripped and hurt his knee. Again a well-lit main road--Kropotkin Street-- another side-street, then Ostozhenka Street, then an other grim, dirty and badly-lit alley. It was here that Ivan Nikolayich f inally lost sight of his quarry. The professor had disappeared. Disconcerted, but not for long, for no appare nt reason Ivan Nikolayich had a sudden intuition that the professor must be i n house No. 13, flat 47. Bursting through the front door, Ivan Nikola yich flew up the stairs, found the right flat and impatiently rang the bell. He did not have to wait long. The door was opened by a little girl of about five, who silently disappeared inside again. The hall was a vast, incredibly neglected room feebly lit by a tiny electric light that dangle d in one corner from a ceiling black with dirt. On the wall hung a bicy cle without any tyres, beneath it a huge iron-banded trunk. On the shelf over the coat-rack was a winter fur cap, its long earflaps untied and hanging down. From behind one of the doors a man's voice could be heard booming from the radio, angrily declaiming poetry. Not at all put out by these unfamiliar surr oundings, Ivan Nikolayich made straight for the corridor, thinking to himself : 'He's obviously hiding in the bathroom.' The p assage was dark. Bumping into the walls, Ivan saw a faint streak of light u nder a doorway. He groped for the handle and gave it a gentle turn. The doo r opened and Ivan found himself in luck--it was the bathroom. However it wasn't quite the sort of luck he had hoped for. Amid the damp steam and by the light of the coals smoulderi ng in the geyser, he made out a large basin attached to the wall and a bath streaked with black where the enamel had chipped off. There in the bath sto od a naked woman, covered in soapsuds and holding a loofah. She peered shor t-sightedly at Ivan as he came in and obviously mistaking him for someone el se in the hellish light she whispered gaily : 'Kiryushka! Do stop fooling! You must be crazy . . . Fyodor Ivanovich will be back any minute now. Go on--out you go! ' And she waved her loofah at Ivan. The mistake was plain and it was, of course, Ivan Nikolayich's fault, but rather than admit it he gave a shocked cry of ' Brazen hussy! ' and suddenly found himself in the kitchen. It was empt y. In the gloom a silent row of ten or so Primuses stood on a marble slab. A single ray of moonlight, struggling through a dirty window that had not bee n cleaned for years, cast a dim light into one corner where there hung a for gotten ikon, the stubs of two candles still stuck in its frame. Beneath the b ig ikon was another made of paper and fastened to the wall with tin-tacks. Nobody knows what came over Ivan but before l etting himself out by the back staircase he stole one of the candles an d the little paper ikon. Clutching these objects he left the strang e apartment, muttering, embarrassed by his recent experience in the bath room. He could not help wondering who the shameless Kiryushka might be and whether he was the owner of the nasty fur cap with dangling ear-flaps. In the deserted, cheerless alleyway Bezdomny looked round for the fugitive but there was no sign of him. Ivan said fi rmly to himself: 'Of course! He's on the Moscow River! Come on! ' Somebody should of course have asked Ivan N ikolayich why he imagined the professor would be on the Moscow River of all places, but unfortunately there was no one to ask him--the nasty little alley was completely empty. In no time at all Ivan Nikolayich was to be s een on the granite steps of the Moscow lido. Taking off his clothes, Ivan e ntrusted them to a kindly old man with a beard, dressed in a torn white Rus sian blouse and patched, unlaced boots. Waving him aside, Ivan took a swa llow-dive into the water. The water was so cold that it took his breath away and for a moment he even doubted whether he would reach the surface again. But reach it he did, and puffing and snorting, his eyes round with terro r, Ivan Nikolayich began swimming in the black, oily-smelling water towards the shimmering zig-zags of the embankment lights reflected in the water. When Ivan clambered damply up the steps at th e place where he had left his clothes in the care of the bearded man, not o nly his clothes but their venerable guardian had apparently been spirited awa y. On the very spot where the heap of clothes had been there was now a pai r of check underpants, a torn Russian blouse, a candle, a paper ikon and a box of matches. Shaking his fist into space with impotent rage, Ivan clambe red into what was left. As he did so two thoughts worried him. To be gin with he had now lost his MASSOLIT membership card; normally he never went anywhere without it. Secondly it occurred to him that he might be arre sted for walking around Moscow in this state. After all, he had practically nothing on but a pair of underpants. . . . Ivan tore the buttons off the long underpants where they were fastened at the ankles, in the hope that people might th ink they were a pair of lightweight summer trousers. He then picked up th e ikon, the candle and matches and set off, saying to himself: 'I must go to Griboyedov! He's bound to be th ere.' Ivan Nikolayich's fears were completely justified--passers-by notice d him and turned round to stare, so he decided to leave the main streets and make Us way through the side-roads where people were not so inquisitive, wh ere there was less chance of them stopping a barefoot man and badgering him with questions about his underpants--which obstinately refused to look like trousers. Ivan plunged into a maze of sidestreets roun d the Arbat and began to sidle along the walls, blinking fearfully, glan cing round, occasionally hiding in doorways, avoiding crossroads with traff ic lights and the elegant porticos of embassy mansions. 5. The Affair at Griboyedov It was an old two-storied house, painted crea m, that stood on the ring boulevard behind a ragged garden, fenced off from the pavement by wrought-iron railings. In winter the paved front c ourtyard was usually full of shovelled snow, whilst in summer, shaded by a c anvas awning, it became a delightful outdoor extension to the club restaurant . The house was called ' Griboyedov House ' be cause it might once have belonged to an aunt of the famous playwright Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov. Nobody really knows for sure whether sh e ever owned it or not. People even say that Griboyedov never had an a unt who owned any such property. . . . Still, that was its name. What is more, a dubious tale used to circulate in Moscow of how in the round, colon naded salon on the second floor the famous writer had once read extracts fr om Woe From Wit to that same aunt as she reclined on a sofa. Perhaps he did ; in any case it doesn't matter. It matters much more that this house now belo nged to MASSOLIT, which until his excursion to Patriarch's Ponds was he aded by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz. No one, least of all the members of MASSOLIT, called the place ' Griboyedov House '. Everyone sim ply called it' Griboyedov ' : 'I spent a couple of hours lobbying at Griboye dov yesterday.' 'Well?' 'Wangled myself a month in Yalta.' 'Good for you! ' Or : ' Go to Berlioz--he's seeing people f rom four to five this afternoon at Griboyedov . . .'--and so on. MASSOLIT had installed itself in Griboyedov very comfortably indeed. As you entered you were first confronted with a notice-board full of announcements by the various sports clubs, then w ith the photographs of every individual member of MASSOLIT, who were strung up (their photographs, of course) along the walls of the staircase leading to the first floor. On the door of the first room on the upper sto rey was a large notice : ' Angling and Weekend Cottages ', with a picture of a carp caught on a hook. On the door of the second room was a sligh tly confusing notice: ' Writers' day-return rail warrants. Apply to M.V. Po dlozhnaya.' The next door bore a brief and completely inc omprehensible legend: ' Perelygino'. From there the chance visitor's eye would be caught by countless more notices pinned to the aunt's waln ut doors : ' Waiting List for Paper--Apply to Poklevkina '; 'Cashier's Office '; ' Sketch-Writers : Persona l Accounts ' . . . At the head of the longest queue, which st arted downstairs at the porter's desk, was a door under constant siege labe lled ' Housing Problem'. Past the housing problem hung a gorgeous poste r showing a cliff, along whose summit rode a man on a chestnut horse with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Below were some palm-trees and a balcony. On it sat a shock-haired young man gazing upwards with a bold, urgent look a nd holding a fountain pen in his hands. The wording read : ' All-in Writing Holidays, from two weeks (short story, novella) to one year (novel, tr ilogy): Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoye, Tsikhidziri, Makhinjauri, Leningrad (Win ter Palace).' There was a queue at this door too, but not an excessively long one--only about a hundred and fifty people. Following the erratic twists, the steps up and steps down of Griboyedov's corridors, one found other notices : 'MASSOLIT-Management', 'Cashiers Nos. 2, 5, 4, 5,' 'Editorial Board' , ' MASSOLIT-Chairman', 'Billiard Room', then various subsidiary organis ations and finally that colonnaded salon where the aunt had listened wi th such delight to the readings of his comedy by her brilliant nephew. Every visitor to Griboyedov, unless of co urse he were completely insensitive, was made immediately aware of how good life was for the lucky members of MASSOLIT and he would at once be consu med with black envy. At once, too, he would curse heaven for having faile d to endow him at birth with literary talent, without which, of course, n o one could so much as dream of acquiring a MASSOLIT membership card--that brown card known to all Moscow, smelling of expensive leather and embell ished with a wide gold border. Who is prepared to say a word in defence of envy? It is a despicable emotion, but put yourself in the visitor's place : what he had seen on the upper flоог was by no means all. The entire ground floor of the aunt's house was occupied by a restaurant-- and what a res taurant! It was rightly considered the best in Moscow. Not only because it occupied two large rooms with vaulted ceilings and lilac-painted horses wit h flowing manes, not only because every table had a lamp shaded with lace, n ot only because it was barred to the hoi polloi, but above all for th e quality of its food. Griboyedov could beat any restaurant in Moscow y ou cared to name and its prices were extremely moderate. There is therefore nothing odd in the convers ation which the author of these lines actually overheard once outside the iro n railings of Griboyedov : 'Where are you dining today, Ambrose? ' 'What a question! Here, of course, Vanya! Archibald Archibaldovich whispered to me this morning that there's filets de perche an naturel on the menu tonight. Sheer virtuosity! ' 'You do know how to live, Ambrose! ' sighed V anya, a thin pinched man with a carbuncle on his neck, to Ambrose, a strapping, red-lipped, golden-haired, ruddy-cheeked poet. 'It's no special talent,' countered Ambrose. ' Just a perfectly normal desire to live a decent, human existence. Now I sup pose you're going to say that you can get perch at the Coliseum. So you can . But a helping of perch at the Coliseum costs thirty roubles fifty kopeck s and here it costs five fifty! Apart from that the perch at the Coliseu m are three days old and what's more if you go to the Coliseum there's no guarantee you won't get a bunch of grapes thrown in your face by the first yo ung man to burst in from Theatre Street. No, I loathe the Coliseum,' shout ed Ambrose the gastronome at the top of his voice. ' Don't try and talk me in to liking it, Vanya! ' 'I'm not trying to talk you into it, Ambrose, ' squeaked Vanya. ' You might have been dining at home.' 'Thank you very much,' trumpeted Ambrose. ' J ust imagine your wife trying to cook filets de perche an naturel in a sau cepan, in the kitchen you share with half a dozen other people! He, he, he! . .. Aurevoir, Vanya! ' And humming to himself Ambrose hurried oft to the veran dah under the awning. Ha, ha, ha! ... Yes, that's how it used to be! ... Some of us old inhabitants of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov. But boiled fillets of perch was nothing, my dear Ambrose! W hat about the sturgeon, sturgeon in a silver-plated pan, sturgeon fill eted and served between lobsters' tails and fresh caviar? And oeufs en coc otte with mushroom puree in little bowls? And didn't you like the thrushes ' breasts? With truffles? The quails alia Genovese? Nine roubles fifty! And oh, the band, the polite waiters! And in July when the whole family's in the country and pressing literary business is keeping you in town--out on t he verandah, in the shade of a climbing vine, a plate of potage printanier e looking like a golden stain on the snow-white table-cloth? Do you remembe r, Ambrose? But of course you do--I can see from your lips you remember. Not just your salmon or your perch either--what about the snipe, the woodcock i n season, the quail, the grouse? And the sparkling wines! But I digress, rea der. At half past ten on the evening that Berlioz d ied at Patriarch's Ponds, only one upstairs room at Griboyedov was lit. In it sat twelve weary authors, gathered for a meeting and still waiting f or Mikhail Alexandrovich. Sitting on chairs, on tables and even on the two window ledges, the management committee of MASSOLIT was suffering badly from the heat and stuffiness. Not a single fresh breeze penetrated th e open window. Moscow was The Master and Margarita exuding the heat of the day accumulated in its asphalt and it was obvious that the night was not going to bring; any relief. There was a smell of onion coming from the restaurant kitchen in the cellar, everybody wanted a drink, everybody was nervous and irritable. Beskudnikov, a quiet, well-dressed essayist wi th eyes that were at once attentive yet shifty, took out his watch. The hands were just creeping up to eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the watch face with his finger and showed it to his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sittin g on the table, bored and swinging his feet shod in yellow rubber-soled slipp ers. 'Well, really . . .' muttered Dvubratsky. 'I suppose the lad's got stuck out at K lyazma,' said Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphaned daughter of a Mos cow business man, who had turned writer and wrote naval war stories under t he pseudonym of ' Bo'sun George '. 'Look here! ' burst out Zagrivov, a writer of popular short stories. ' I don't know about you, but I'd rather be drinki ng tea out on the balcony right now instead of stewiing in here. Was thi s meeting called for ten o'clock or wasn't it? ' 'It must be nice out at Klyazma now,' said IBo 'sun George in a tone of calculated innocence, knowing that the writers' summer colony out at Perelygino near Klyazma was a sore point. ' I exp ect the nightingales are singing there now. Somehow I always seem to w ork better out of town, especially in the spring.' 'I've been paying my contributions for three y ears now to send my sick wife to that paradise but somehow nothing ever appe ars on the horizon,' said Hieronymus Poprikhin the novelist, with bitter veno m. 'Some people are lucky and others aren't, th at's all,' boomed the critic Ababkov from the window-ledge. Bos'un George's little eyes lit up, and soft ening her contralto rasp she said: 'We mustn't be jealous, comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas, only seven more are being built, and there are three thousand of us in MASSOLIT.' 'Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' put in someone from a corner. 'Well, there you are,' the Bo'sun went on . ' What can one do? Naturally the dachas are allocated to those with th e most talent. . .' 'They're allocated to the people at the top! ' barked Gluk-haryov, a script writer. Beskudnikov, yawning artificially, left the ro om. 'One of them has five rooms to himself at P erelygino,' Glukharyov shouted after him. 'Lavrovich has six rooms to himself,' shout ed Deniskin, ' and the dining-room's panelled in oak! ' 'Well, at the moment that's not the point,' boomed Ababkov. ' The point is that it's half past eleven.' A noise began, heralding mutiny. Somebody ran g up the hated Perelygino but got through to the wrong dacha, which turned ou t to belong to Lavrovich, where they were told that Lavrovich was out on the river. This produced utter confusion. Somebody made a wild telephone c all to the Fine Arts and Literature Commission, where of course there was no reply. 'He might have rung up! ' shouted Deniskin, Gl ukharyov and Quant. Alas, they shouted in vain. Mikhail Alexand rovich was in no state to telephone anyone. Far, far from Griboyedov, i n a vast hall lit by thousand-candle-power lamps, what had recently be en Mikhail Alexandrovich was lying on three zinc-topped tables. On the first was the naked, blood-caked body with. a fractured arm and smashed rib-cage, on the second the head, it;s front teeth knocked in, its vacant open eyes undisturbed by the blinding light, and on the third--a heap of mangled rags. Round the decapitated corpse stood the professor of forensic medicine, the pathological anatomist and his dissector, a few detectives and Mikhail Alexandrovich's deputy as chairman of MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from the bedside of his sick wife. A car had been sent for Zheldybin and had first taken him and the detectives (it was about midnight) to the dead ma n's flat where his papers were placed under seal, after which they all drove to the morgue. The group round the remains of the deceased we re conferring on the best course to take--should they sew the severed head back on to the neck or allow the body to lie in state in the main hall o f Griboyedov covered by a black cloth as far as the chin? Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was quite incap able of telephoning and Deniskin, Glukharyov, Quant and Beskudnikov were exciting themselves for nothing. On the stroke of midnight all twelve write rs left the upper storey and went down to the restaurant. There they said more unkind things about Mikhail Alexandrovich : all the tables on the ve randah were full and they were obliged to dine in the beautiful but stifling indoor rooms. On the stroke of midnight the first of these ro oms suddenly woke up and leaped into life with a crash and a roar. A thin ma le voice gave a desperate shriek of ' Alleluia!! ' Music. It was the famou s Griboyedov jazz band striking up. Sweat-covered faces lit up, the pain ted horses on the ceiling came to life, the lamps seemed to shine brigh ter. Suddenly, as though bursting their chains, everybody in the two rooms started dancing, followed by everybody on the verandah. Glukharyov danced away with the poetess Tam ara Polumesy-atz. Quant danced, Zhukopov the novelist seized a film actres s in a yellow dress and danced. They all danced--Dragunsky and Cherdakch i danced, little Deniskin danced with the gigantic Bo'sun George and the beautiful girl architect Semeikin-Hall was grabbed by a stranger in whi te straw-cloth trousers. Members and guests, from Moscow and from out of to wn, they all danced--the writer Johann from Kronstadt, a producer called Vitya Kuftik from Rostov with lilac-coloured eczema all over his face, th e leading lights of the poetry section of MASSOLIT-- Pavianov, Bogokhulsky , Sladky, Shpichkin and Adelfina Buzdyak, young men of unknown occupatio n with cropped hair and shoulders padded with cotton wool, an old, old man with a chive sticking out of his beard danced with a thin, anaemic girl in an orange silk dress. Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously ' Sorry, sir! ' Somewhere a man bellowed through a megaphone: 'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King! ' The vocalist was no longer singing--he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung dow n a sloping chute to the scullery. In short--hell. At midnight there appeared a vision in this hell. On to the verandah strode a handsome, black-eyed man with a pointed beard and wearing a tail coat. With regal gaze he surveyed his domain. Ac cording to some romantics there had once been a time when this noble figure had worn not tails but a broad leather belt round his waist, stuck with pistol-butts, that his raven-black hair had been tied up in a scarlet ker chief and that his brig had sailed the Caribbean under the Jolly Roger. But that, of course, is pure fantasy--the Car ibbean doesn't exist, no desperate buccaneers sail it, no corvette ever c hases them, no puffs of cannon-smoke ever roll across the waves. Pure invention. Look at that scraggy tree, look at the iron railings, the boulev ard. . . . And the ice is floating in the wine-bucket and at the next tab le there's a man with ox-like, bloodshot eyes and it's pandemonium. . . . Oh gods--poison, I need poison! . . . Suddenly from one of the tables the word ' Berlioz!! ' flew up and exploded in the air. Instantly the band collapsed and stopped, as though someone had punched it. ' What, what, what--what?!! ' 'Berlioz!!! ' Everybody began rushing about and screaming. A wave of grief surged up at the terri ble news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone fussed around shoutin g that they must all immediately, here and now, without delay compose a collective telegram and send it off. But what telegram, you may ask? And why send it? Send it where? And what use is a telegram to the man whose battered skull is being mauled by the rubber hands of a dissector, whose neck i s being pierced by the professor's crooked needles? He's dead, he doesn't want a telegram. It's all over, let's not overload the post office. Yes, he's dead . . . but we are still alive! The wave of grief rose, lasted for a while an d then began to recede. Somebody went back to their table and--furtive ly to begin with, then openly--drank a glass of vodka and took a bite to e at. After all, what's the point of wasting the cotelettes de volatile? What good are we going to do Mikhail Alexandrovich by going hungry? We're still alive, aren't we? Naturally the piano was shut and locked, the band went home and a few journalists left for their newspaper offices to wr ite obituaries. The news spread that Zheldybin was back from the morgue. He moved into Berlioz's upstairs office and at once a rumour started that he was going to take over from Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned all twelve me mbers of the management committee from the restaurant and in an emerg ency session they began discussing such urgent questions as the preparatio n of the colonnaded hall, the transfer of the body from the morgue, the tim es at which members could attend the lying-in-state and other matters connect ed with the tragic event. Downstairs in the restaurant life had returned to normal and would have continued on its usual nocturnal course until clos ing time at four, had not something quite abnormal occurred which shocked the diners considerably more than the news of Berlioz's death. The first to be alarmed were the cab drivers waiting outside the gates of Griboyedov. Jerking up with a start one of them shouted: 'Hey! Look at that!' A little glimmer flared u p near the iron railings and started to bob towards the verandah. Some of th e diners stood up, stared and saw that the nickering light was accompanied by a white apparition. As it approached the verandah trellis every dine r froze, eyes bulging, sturgeon-laden forks motionless in mid-air. The club porter, who at that moment had just left the restaurant cloakroom to go outside for a smoke, stubbed out his cigarette and was just going to advance on the apparition with the aim of barring its way into the restauran t when for some reason he changed his mind, stopped and grinned stupidly. The apparition, passing through an opening in the trellis, mounted the verandah unhindered. As it did so everyone saw th at this was no apparition but the distinguished poet Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny. He was barefoot and wearing a torn, dirty whit e Russian blouse. To its front was safety-pinned a paper ikon with a pictur e of some unknown saint. He was wearing long white underpants with a light ed candle in his hand and his right cheek bore a fresh scratch. It would be hard to fathom the depth of the silence which reigned on the verandah. Beer poured on to the floor from a mug held sideways by one of the waiters. The poet raised the candle above his head and said in a loud voice : 'Greetings, friends!' He then looked under the nearest table and exclaimed with disappointment: 'No, he's not there.' Two voices were heard. A bass voice said pitil essly : ' An obvious case of D.Ts.' The second, a frightened woman's voice enquire d nervously : 'How did the police let him on to the streets in that state? ' Ivan Nikolayich heard this and replied : 'They tried to arrest me twice, once in Skater tny Street and once here on Bronnaya, but I climbed over the fence and th at's how I scratched my cheek! ' Ivan Nikolayich lifted up his candle and shouted: ' Fellow artists!' (His squeaky voice grew stronger and more urgent.) ' Listen to me, all of you! He's come! Catch him at once or he'll d o untold harm! ' 'What's that? What? What did he say? Who's co me? ' came the questions from all sides. 'A professor,' answered Ivan, ' and it was t his professor who killed Misha Berlioz this evening at Patriarch's.' By now people were streaming on to the verand ah from the indoor rooms and a crowd began milling round Ivan. 'I beg your pardon, would you say that again more clearly? ' said a low, courteous voice right beside Ivan Nikolayich' s ear. ' Tell me, how was he killed? Who killed him? ' 'A foreigner--he's a professor and a spy,' replied Ivan, looking round. 'What's his name? ' said the voice again into his ear. 'That's just the trouble!' cried Ivan in frust ration. ' If only I knew his name! I couldn't read it properly on his v isiting card ... I only remember the letter ' W '--the name began with a ' W '. What could it have been? ' Ivan asked himself aloud, clutching his fo rehead with his hand. ' We, wi, wa . . . wo . . . Walter? Wagner? Weiner ? Wegner? Winter? ' The hairs on Ivan's head started to stand on end from t he effort. 'Wolff? ' shouted a woman, trying to help him. Ivan lost his temper. 'You fool!' he shouted, looking for the woman in the crowd. ' What's Wolff got to do with it? He didn't do it ... Wo, wa . . . No, I'll never remember it like this. Now look, everybody-- ring up the police at once and tell them to send five motorcycles and sidecars wi th machine-guns to catch the professor. And don't forget to say that there a re two others with him--a tall fellow in checks with a wobbly pince-nez and a great black cat. . . . Meanwhile I'm going to search Griboyedov--I can sen se that he's here! ' Ivan was by now in a state of some excitemen t. Pushing the bystanders aside he began waving his candle about, pouring wa x on himself, and started to look under the tables. Then somebody said ' Doct or! ' and a fat, kindly face, clean-shaven, smelling of drink and with horn-rimmed spectacles, appeared in front of Ivan. 'Comrade Bezdomny,' said the face solemnly, ' calm down! You're upset by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich . . . no, I mean plain Misha Berlioz. We all realise how you feel. You n eed rest. You'll be taken home to bed in a moment and then you can relax and forget all about it. . .' 'Don't you realise,' Ivan interrupted, scowli ng, ' that we've got to catch the professor? And all you can do is come creeping up to me talking all this rubbish! Cretin! ' 'Excuse me. Comrade Bezdomny! ' replied the fa ce, blushing, retreating and already wishing it had never let itself get inv olved in this affair. 'No, I don't care who you are--I won't e xcuse you,' said Ivan Nikolayich with quiet hatred. A spasm distorted his face, he rapidly switched the candle from his right to his left hand, swung his arm and punched the sympathetic face on the ear. Several people reached the same conclusio n at once and hurled themselves at Ivan. The candle went out, the horn-r ims fell off the face and were instantly smashed underfoot. Ivan let out a dr eadful war-whoop audible, to everybody's embarrassment, as far as the boulev ard, and began to defend himself. There came a tinkle of breaking crockery, women screamed. While the waiters tied up the poet with dish-c loths, a conversation was in progress in the cloakroom between the porter and the captain of the brig. 'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpan ts? ' asked the pirate coldly. 'But Archibald Archibaldovich--I'm a coward,' replied the porter, ' how could I stop him from coming in? He's a member! ' 'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants ? ' repeated the pirate. 'Please, Archibald Archibaldovich,--' said the porter, turning purple, ' what could I do? I know there are ladies on the v er-andah, but...' 'The ladies don't matter. They don't mind,' replied the pirate, roasting the porter with his glare. ' But the poli ce mind! There's only one way a man can walk round Moscow in his underwear- -when he's being escorted by the police on the way to a police station! And you, if you call yourself a porter, ought to know that if you see a man in that state it's your duty not to waste a moment but to start blowing your whi stle I Do you hear? Can't you hear what's happening on the verandah? ' The wretched porter could hear the sounds of smashing crockery, groans and women's screams from the verandah only too well . 'Now what do you propose to do about it? ' enq uired the buccaneer. The skin on the porter's face took on a leprou s shade and his eyes went blank. It seemed to him that the other man's black hair, now neatly parted, was covered by a fiery silk kerchief. Starched shirtfront and tail-coat vanished, a pistol was sticking out of his leath er belt. The porter saw himself dangling from the foretop yard-arm, his t ongue protruding from his lifeless, drooping head. He could even hear the waves lapping against the ship's side. The porter's knees trembled. But the b uccaneer took pity on him and switched off his terrifying glare. 'All right, Nikolai--but mind it never happen s again! We can't have porters like you in a restaurant--you'd better go and be a verger in a church.' Having said this the captain gave a few ra pid, crisp, clear orders: ' Send the barman. Police. Statement. Car. Mental hospital.' And he added : 'Whistle!' A quarter of an hour later, to the astonishme nt of the people in the restaurant, on the boulevard and at the windows o f the surrounding houses, the barman, the porter, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Ryukhin were to be seen emerging from the gates of Griboyedov dra gging a young man trussed up like a mummy, who was weeping, spitting, lashi ng out at Ryukhin and shouting for the whole street to hear : 'You swine! . . . You swine! . . . ' A buzzing crowd collected, discussing the in credible scene. It was of course an abominable, disgusting, thrilling, rev olting scandal which only ended when a lorry drove away from the gates of Griboyedov carrying the unfortunate Ivan Nikolayich, the policeman, the bar man and Ryukhin. 6. Schizophrenia At half past one in the morning a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white overall entered the reception hall of a famous psychiatric clinic recently completed in the suburbs of Moscow. Thre e orderlies and the poet Ryukhin stood nervously watching Ivan Nikolayich a s he sat on a divan. The dish-cloths that had been used to pinion Ivan Nik olayich now lay in a heap on the same divan, leaving his arms and legs free. As the man came in Ryukhin turned pale, coughed and said timidly: 'Good morning, doctor.' The doctor bowed to Ryukhin but looked at Ivan Nikolayich, who was sitting completely immobile and scowling furiously . He did not even move when the doctor appeared. 'This, doctor,' began Ryukhin in a myster ious whisper, glancing anxiously at Ivan Nikolayich, ' is the famous po et Ivan Bezdomny. We're afraid he may have D.Ts.' 'Has he been drinking heavily? ' enquired the doctor through clenched teeth. 'No, he's had a few drinks, but not enough . . .' 'Has he been trying to catch spiders, rats, li ttle devils or dogs? ' 'No,' replied Ryukhin, shuddering. ' I saw him yesterday and this morning ... he was perfectly well then.' 'Why is he in his underpants? Did you have to pull him out of bed?' 'He came into a restaurant like this, doctor' 'Aha, aha,' said the doctor in a tone of great satisfaction. ' And why the scratches? Has he been fighting? ' 'He fell off the fence and then he hit someone in the restaurant , . . and someone else, too . . .' ' I see, I see, I s ee,' said the doctor and added, turning to Ivan : 'Good morning! ' 'Hello, you quack! ' said Ivan, loudly and vic iously. Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he dared not raise his eyes. The courteous doctor, however, showed no signs of offe nce and with a practised gesture took off his spectacles, lifted the skirt of his overall, put them in his hip pocket and then asked Ivan: 'How old are you? ' 'Go to hell! ' shouted Ivan rudely and turned away. 'Why are you being so disagreeable? Have I said anything to upset you?' 'I'm twenty-three,' said Ivan excitedly, ' a nd I'm going to lodge a complaint against all of you--and you in particular , you louse! ' He spat at Ryukhin. 'What will your complaint be? ' 'That you arrested me, a perfectly healthy ma n, and forcibly dragged me off to the madhouse! ' answered Ivan in fury. At this Ryukhin took a close look at Ivan an d felt a chill down his spine : there was not a trace of insanity in the m an's eyes. They had been slightly clouded at Griboyedov, but now they were a s clear as before. 'Godfathers! ' thought Ryukhin in terror. ' He really is perfectly normal! What a ghastly business! Why have we b rought him here? There's nothing the matter with him except a few scratches on his face . . .' 'You are not,' said the doctor calmly, sitting down on a stool on a single chromium-plated stalk, ' in a madhouse but in a clinic, where nobody is going to keep you if it isn't necessary.' Iv an gave him a suspicious scowl, but muttered : 'Thank God for that! At last I've found one normal person among all these idiots and the worst idiot of the lot is that incompetent fraud Sasha! ' 'Who is this incompetent Sasha? ' enquired t he doctor. ' That's him, Ryukhin,' replied Ivan, jabbing a dirty finger in Ryukhin's direction, who spluttered in protest . ' That's all the thanks I get,' he thought bitterly, ' for showing him some sympathy! What a miserable swine he is! ' * A typical kulak mentality,' said Ivan Nikol ayich, who obviously felt a sudden urge to attack Ryukhin. ' And what's more he's a kulak masquerading as a proletarian. Look at his mean face and compare it with all that pompous verse he writes for May Day ... all that stuff abo ut "onwards and upwards" and "banners waving "! If you could look insid e him and see what he's thinking you'd be sickened! ' And Ivan Nikolayich gave a hoot of malicious laughter. Ryukhin, breathing heavily, turned red. There was only one thought in his mind--that he had nourished a serpent in his bosom, that he had tried to help someone who when it came to the pinch had trea cherously rounded on him. The worst of it was that he could not answer back- -one mustn't swear at a lunatic! 'Exactly why have they brought you here? ' as ked the doctor, who had listened to Bezdomny's outburst with great attentio n. 'God knows, the blockheads! They grabbed me, tied me up with some filthy rags and dumped me in a lorry!' 'May I ask why you came into the restaura nt in nothing but your underwear?' 'There's nothing odd about it,' answered Ivan. ' I went for a swim in the Moscow River and someone pinched my clothe s and left me this junk instead! I couldn't walk round Moscow naked, coul d I? I had to put on what there was, because I was in a hurry to get to the G riboyedov restaurant.' The doctor glanced questioningly at Ryukhin, w ho mumbled sulkily: 'Yes, that's the name of the restaurant.' 'Aha,' said the doctor, ' but why were you in such a hurry? Did you have an appointment there? ' 'I had to catch the professor,' replied I van Nikolayich, glancing nervously round. 'What professor? ' ' Do you know Berlioz? ' a sked Ivan with a meaning look. 'You mean . . . the composer? ' Ivan looked puzzled. ' What composer? Oh, yes . . . no, no. The composer just happens to have the same name as Mish a Berlioz.' Ryukhin was still feeling too offended to spea k, but he had to explain: 'Berlioz, the chairman of MASSOLIT, was ru n over by a tram this evening at Patriarch's.' 'Don't lie, you--you don't know anything abou t it,' Ivan burst out at Ryukhin. ' I was there, not you! He made him fa ll under that tram on purpose! ' 'Did he push him? ' 'What are you talking about?' exclaimed I van, irritated by his listener's failure to grasp the situation. ' He did n't have to push him! He can do things you'd never believe! He knew in advan ce that Berlioz was going to fall under a tram! ' 'Did anybody see this professor apart from you ? ' 'No, that's the trouble. Only Berlioz and mysel f.' 'I see. What steps did you take to arrest this murderer?' At this point the doctor turned and threw a glance at a w oman in a white overall sitting behind a desk. 'This is what I did : I took this candle from the kitchen . . .' 'This one? ' asked the doctor, pointing to a broken candle lying on the desk beside the ikon. 'Yes, that's the one, and . . .' 'Why the ikon? ' 'Well, er, the ikon. . . .' Ivan blushed. ' Y ou see an ikon frightens them more than anything else.' He again pointed at Ryukhin. ' But the fact is that the professor is ... well, let's be frank . . . he's in league with the powers of evil . . . and it's not so easy to ca tch someone like him.' The orderlies stretched their hands down their trouser-seams and stared even harder at Ivan. 'Yes,' went on Ivan. ' He's in league with t hem. There's no arguing about it. He once talked to Pontius Pilate. It's n o good looking at me like that, I'm telling you the truth! He saw it al l --the balcony, the palm trees. He was actually with Pontius Pilate, I'll sw ear it.' 'Well, now . . .' 'So, as I was saying, I pinned the ikon to my chest and ran .,.' Here the clock struck twice. 'Oh, my God! ' exclaimed Ivan and rose from the divan. ' It's two o'clock and here am I wasting time talking to you ! Would you mind--where's the telephone? ' 'Show him the telephone,' the doctor said to t he orderlies. As Ivan grasped the receiver the woman quietly asked Ryukhin: 'Is he married? ' 'No, he's a bachelor,' replied Ryukhin, startled. 'Is he a union member? ' 'Yes.' 'Police? ' shouted Ivan into the mouthpiece. ' Police? Is that the duty officer? Sergeant, please arrange to send five motor cycles with sidecars, armed with machine-guns to arrest the foreign professor. What? Take me with you, I'll show you where to go. . . . This is Bezdomny, I'm a poet, and I'm speaking from the lunatic asylum. . . . What's your address? ' Bezdomny whispered to the doctor, covering the mout hpiece with his palm, and then yelled back into the receiver: ' Are you liste ning? Hullo! . . . Fools! . . .' Ivan suddenly roared, hurling the receive r at the wall. Then he turned round to the doctor, offered him his hand , said a curt goodbye and started to go. 'Excuse me, but where are you proposing to go?' said the doctor, looking Ivan in the eye. ' At this hour of night, in your underwear . . . You're not well, stay with us.' 'Come on, let me through,' said Ivan to the or derlies who had lined up to block the doorway. ' Are you going to let me go or not? ' shouted the poet in a terrible voice. Ryukhin shuddered. The woman pressed a b utton on the desk ; a glittering metal box and a sealed ampoule pop ped out on to its glass surface. 'Ah, so that's your game, is it? ' said Iv an with a wild, hunted glance around. ' All right then . . . Goodbye!! ' And he threw himself head first at the shuttered window. There was a loud crash, but the glass did not even crack, and a moment later Ivan Nikolayich was struggling in the ar ms of the orderlies. He screamed, tried to bite, then shouted : 'Fine sort of glass you put in your windows! L et me go! Let me go! ' A hypodermic syringe glittered in the doctor's hand, with one sweep the woman pushed back the tattered sleeve of Ivan's bl ouse and clamped his arm in a most un-feminine grip. There was a smell of ether, Ivan weakened slightly in the grasp of the four men and the do ctor skilfully seized the moment to jab the needle into Ivan's arm. Ivan ke pt up the struggle for a few more seconds, then collapsed on to the divan. 'Bandits! ' cried Ivan and leaped up, only to be pushed back. As soon as they let him go he jumped up again, but sat dow n of his own accord. He said nothing, staring wildly about him, then gave a sudden unexpected yawn and smiled malevolently : 'So you're going to lock me up after all,' he said, yawned again, lay down with his head on the cushion, his fist under h is cheek like a child and muttered in a sleepy voice but without malice : ' All right, then . . . but you'll pay for it ... I warned you, but if you want to ... What interests me most now is Pontius Pilate . . . Pilate . . .' An d with that he closed his eyes. 'Vanna, put him in No. 117 by himself and with someone to watch him.' The doctor gave his instructions and replaced his spectacles. Then Ryukhin shuddered again : a pair of white doors opened wi thout a sound and beyond them stretched a corridor lit by a row of blue night-bulbs. Out of the corridor rolled a couch on rubber wheels. The sleep ing Ivan was lifted on to it, he was pushed off down the corridor and the doo rs closed after him. 'Doctor,' asked the shaken Ryukhin in a whispe r, ' is he really ill?' 'Oh yes,' replied the doctor. 'Then what's the matter with him?' enquired Rv ukhin timidly. The exhausted doctor looked at Ryukhin and ans wered wearily: 'Overstimulation of the motor nerves and sp eech centres . . . delirious illusions. . . . Obviously a complicated case. Schizophrenia, I should think . . . touch of alcoholism, too. . . .' Ryukhin understood nothing of this, except t hat Ivan Nikolayich was obviously in poor shape. He sighed and asked : 'What was that he said about some professor? ' 'I expect he saw someone who gave a sh ock to his disturbed imagination. Or maybe it was a hallucination. . . .' A few minutes later a lorry was taking Ryukhin back into Moscow. Dawn was breaking and the still-lit street lamps seemed superfluous and unpleasant. The driver, annoyed at missing a night' s sleep, pushed his lorry as hard as it would go, making it skid round the co rners. The woods fell away in the distance and th e river wandered off in another direction. As the lorry drove on the scener y slowly changed: fences, a watchman's hut, piles of logs, dried and spl it telegraph poles with bobbins strung on the wires between them, heap s of stones, ditches--in short, a feeling that Moscow was about to appear ro und the next corner and would rise up and engulf them at any moment. The log of wood on which Ryukhin was sit ting kept wobbling and slithering about and now and again it tried to sl ide away from under him altogether. The restaurant dish-cloths, which the policeman and the barman had thrown on to the back of the lorry bef ore leaving earlier by trolley-bus, were being flung about all over the b ack of the lorry. Ryukhin started to try and pick them up, but with a sudde n burst of ill-temper he hissed : 'To hell with them! Why should I crawl around after them? ' He pushed them away with his foot and turned away from them. Ryukhin was in a state of depression. It was obvious that his visit to the asylum had affected him deeply. He tried to th ink what it was that was disturbing him. Was it the corridor with its blue l amps, which had lodged so firmly in his memory? Was it the thought that th e worst misfortune in the world was to lose one's reason? Yes, it was that, of course--but that after all was a generalisation, it applied to everybody. There was something else, though. What was it? The insult--that was it. Ye s, those insulting words that Bezdomny had flung into his face. And the agon y of it was not that they were insulting but that they were true. The poet stopped looking about him and instea d stared gloomily at the dirty, shaking floor of the lorry in an agony of se lf-reproach. Yes, his poetry . . . He was thirty-two! And what were his prospects? To go on writing a few poems every year. How long- -until he was an old man? Yes, until he was an old man. What would these po ems do for him? Make him famous? ' What rubbish! Don't fool yourself. Nobo dy ever gets famous from writing bad poetry. Why is it bad, though? He was r ight --he was telling the truth! ' said Ryukhin pitilessly to himself. I do n't believe in a single word of what I've written . . .! ' Embittered by an upsurge of neurasthenia, th e poet swayed. The floor beneath had stopped shaking. Ryukhin lifted his he ad and saw that he was in the middle of Moscow, that day had dawned, that hi s lorry had stopped in a traffic-jam at a boulevard intersection and that right near him stood a metal man on a plinth, his head inclined slightly forward, staring blankly down the street. Strange thoughts assailed the poet, who was beginning to feel ill. ' Now there's an example of pure luck .'--Ryukhin s tood up on the lorry's platform and raised his fist in an inexplicable ur ge to attack the harmless cast-iron man--'. . . everything he did in life, whatever happened to him, it all went his way, everything conspired to make him famous! But what did he achieve? I've never been able to discover . . . What about that famous phrase of his that begins " A storm of mist. . ." ? What a load of rot! He was lucky, that's all, just lucky! '--Ryukhin conc luded venomously, feeling the lorry start to move under him--' and just bec ause that White officer shot at him and smashed his hip, he's famous for ev er . . .' The jam was moving. Less than two minutes late r the poet, now not only ill but ageing, walked on to the Griboyedov veranda h. It was nearly empty. Ryukhin, laden with dish-cloths, was greet ed warmly by Archibald Archibaldovich and immediately relieved of the horr ible rags. If Ryukhin had not been so exhausted by the lorry-ride and by his experiences at the clinic, he would probably have enjoyed describi ng everything that had happened in the hospital and would have embellis hed the story with some invented details. But for the moment he was incapab le. Although Ryukhin was not an observant man, now, after his agony on the lorry, for the first time be looked really hard at the pirate and realised that although the man was asking questions about Bezdomny and even exclaimin g ' Oh, poor fellow! ' he was in reality totally indifferent to Bezdomny's fate and did not feel sorry for him at all. ' Good for him! He's right! ' thou ght Ryukhin with cynical, masochistic relish and breaking off his descrip tion of the symptoms of schizophrenia, he asked : 'Archibald Archibaldovich, could I possibly have a glass of vodka. . .? ' The pirate put on a sympathetic expression and whispered : 'Of course, I quite understand . . . right awa y . . .' and signalled to a waiter. A quarter of an hour later Ryukhin was sit ting in absolute solitude hunched over a dish of sardines, drinking glass after glass of vodka, understanding more and more about himself and a dmitting that there was nothing in his life that he could put right--he cou ld only try to forget. The poet had wasted his night while others had spent it enjoying themselves and now he realised that it was lost for ever. He only had to lift his head up from the lamp and look at the sky to se e that the night had gone beyond return. Waiters were hurriedly jerking the c loths off the tables. The cats pacing the verandah had a morning look about t hem. Day broke inexorably over the poet. 7.The Haunted Flat If next day someone had said to Stepa Likhode yev 'Stepa! If vou don't get up this minute you're going to be shot,' he would have replied in a faint, languid voice : ' All right, shoot me. Do what you like to me, but I'm not getting up! ' The worst of it was that he could not open his eyes, because when he did so there would be a flash of lightning and h is head would shiver to fragments. A great bell was tolling in his head, brown spots with livid green edges were swimming around somewhere betwe en his eyeballs and his closed lids. To cap it all he felt sick and the nau sea was somehow connected with the sound of a gramophone. Stepa tried to remember what had happened, but could only recall one thing--yesterday, somewhere. God knows where, he had been holding a table napkin and trying to kiss a woman, promising her that he would come and visit her tomorrow at the stroke of noon. She had refused, saying ' No, no, I won't be at home,' but Stepa had insisted ' I don't care--I'll come anyway!' Stepa had now completely forgotten who that woman had been, what the time was, what day of what month it was, and wor st of all he had no idea where he was. In an effort to find out, he u nstuck his gummed-up left eyelid. Something glimmered in the semi-darkness. At last Stepa recognised it as a mirror. He was lying cross-wise on the bed in his own bedroom. Then something hit him on the head and he closed his eye s and groaned. Stepa Likhodeyev, manager of the Variety Th eatre, had woken up thait morning in the flat that he shared with Berlioz in a big six-stoirey block of flats on Sadovaya Street. This flat--No. 50-- had a strange reputation. Two years before, it had been owned by the widow of a jeweller called de Fougere, Anna Frantzevna, a respectable and ver y business-like lady of fifty, who let three of her five rooms to lodge rs. One of them was, it seems, called Belomut; the other's name has been lo st. Two years ago odd things began happening in that apartment-- people started to vanish from it without trace. One Mond ay afternoon a policeman called, invited the second lodger (the one whose name is no longer known) into the hall and asked him to come along to the po lice station for a minute or two to sign a document. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna's devoted servant of many years, to say that if anybody rang him up he would be back in ten minutes. He then went out accompanied by the courteous policeman in white gloves. But he not only failed to come back in ten minutes; he never came back at all. Odder still, the policeman appear ed to have vanished with him. Anfisa, a devout and frankly rather a supersti tious woman, informed the distraught Anna Frantsevna that it was witchcraft, that she knew perfectly well who had enticed away the lodger and the polic eman, only she dared not pronounce the name at night-time. Witchcraft once started, as we all know, is v irtually unstoppable. The anonymous lodger disappeared, you will remember, on a Monday ; the following Wednesday Belomut, too, vanished from the face of the earth, although admittedly in different circumstances. He was f etched as usual in the morning by the car which took him to work, but it n ever brought him back and never called again. Words cannot describe the pain and distress wh ich this caused to madame Belomut, but alas for her, she was not fated to endure even this unhappy state for long. On returning from her dacha that evening, whither she had hastily gone with Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna found no trace of madame Belomut in the flat and what was more, the doors of bo th rooms occupied by the Belomuts had been sealed. Two days of uncertainty and insomnia passed for Anna Frantzevna ; on the third day she made another hasty visit to her dacha from whence, it need hardly be said, she never retu rned. Anfisa, left alone, cried her eye s out and finally went to bed at two -o'clock in the morning. Nobody knows what happened to her after that , but tenants of the neighbouring flat described having heard knockin g coming from No. 50 and having seen lights burning in the windows all nig ht. By morning Anfisa too was gone. Legends of all kinds about the mysterio us flat and its vanishing lodgers circulated in the building for some time. According to one of them the devout and spinsteriy Anfisa used to carry twe nty-five large diamonds, belonging to Anna Frantzevna, in a chamois-leather bag between her withered breasts. It was said, too, that among other thi ngs a priceless treasure consisting of those same diamonds and a hoard of tsarist gold coins were somehow found in the coal-she'd behind Anna Fran tzevna's dacha. Lacking proof, of course, we shall never know how true the se rumours were. However, the flat only remained empty for a week before B erlioz and his wife and Stepa and his wife moved into it. Naturally as soon as they took possession of the haunted flat the oddest things started happ ening to them too. Within a single month both wives had disappeared, altho ugh not without trace. Rumour had it that Berlioz's wife had been s een in Kharkov with a ballet-master, whilst Stepa's wife had apparent ly found her way to an orphanage where, the story went, the manager of the Variety had used his connections to get her a room on condition that she never showed her face in Sadovaya Street again. . . . So Stepa groaned. He wanted to call his maid, Grunya, and ask her for an aspirin but he was conscious enough to realise that it would be useless because Grunya most probably had no aspirin. He tr ied to call for Berlioz's help and twice moaned ' Misha . . . Misha . . .', but as you will have guessed, there was no reply. There was complete sil ence in the flat. Wriggling his toes, Stepa deduced that he wa s lying in his socks. He ran a trembling hand down his hip to test whether he had his trousers on or not and found that he had not. At last, realising that he was alone and abandoned, that there was nobody to help him, he de cided to get up, whatever superhuman effort it might cost him. Stepa prised open his eyelids and saw himse lf reflected in the long mirror in the shape of a man whose hair stuck out in all directions, with a puffy, stubble-grown face, with watery eyes and wearing a dirty shirt, a collar, tie, underpants and socks. As he looked at himself in the mirror, he also noticed standing beside it a strange man dressed in a black suit and a blac k beret. Stepa sat up on the bed and did his best to fo cus his bloodshot eyes on the stranger. The silence was broken by the unk nown visitor, who said gravely, in a low voice with a foreign accent: 'Good morning, my dear Stepan Bogdanovich! ' There was a pause. Pulling himself together with fearful effort Stepa said: 'What do you want?' He did not recognise his own voice. He had spoken the word ' what' in a treble, ' do you ' in a bas s and ' want' had simply not emerged at all. The stranger gave an amiable smile, pulled ou t a large gold watch with a diamond triangle on the cover, listened to it str ike eleven times and said : 'Eleven. I have been waiting exactly an hour for you to wake up. You gave me an appointment to see you at your flat at t en so here I am!' Stepa fumbled for his trousers on the ch air beside his bed and whispered: 'Excuse me. . . .' He put on his trousers and asked hoarsely : 'Please tell me--who are you? ' He found talking difficult, as with every wor d someone stuck a needle into his brain, causing him infernal agony. 'What! Have you forgotten my name too? ' The s tranger smiled. 'Sorry . . .' said Stepa huskily. He co uld feel his hangover developing a new symptom : the floor beside his bed seemed to be on the move and any moment now he was liable to take a dive hea d first down into hell. 'My dear Stepan Bogdanovich,' said the visito r with a shrewd smile. ' Aspirin will do you no good. Follow a wise old rul e-- the hair of the dog. The only thing that will bring you back to life i s two measures of vodka with something sharp and peppery to eat.' Ill though Stepa was he had enough sense to r ealise that since he had been found in this state he had better tell all. 'Frankly . . .' he began, scarcely able to mov e his tongue, ' I did have a bit too . . .' 'Say no more! ' interrupted the visitor and pu shed the armchair to one side. Stepa's eyes bulged. There on a little tabl e was a tray, laid with slices of white bread and butter, pressed caviare in a glass bowl, pickled mushrooms on a saucer, something in a little saucep an and finally vodka in one of the jeweller's ornate decanters. The decante r was so chilled that it was wet with condensation from standing in a fi nger-bowl full of cracked ice. The stranger cut Stepa's astonishment short b y deftly pouring him out half a glass of vodka. 'What about you? ' croaked Stepa. 'With pleasure! ' With a shaking hand Stepa raised the gla ss to his lips and the mysterious guest swallowed his at one gulp. As he m unched his caviare Stepa was able to squeeze out the words : 'Won't you have a bite to eat too? ' 'Thank you, but I never eat when I'm drinking, ' replied the stranger, pouring out a second round. He lifted the lid of t he saucepan. It contained little frankfurters in tomato sauce. Slowly the awful green blobs in front of h is eyes dissolved, words started to form and most important of all Stepa's m emory began to come back. That was it--he had been at Khustov's dacha at Skhodna and Khustov had driven Stepa out there by taxi. He even remembered hailing the taxi outside the Metropole. There had been another man with the m--an actor ... or was he an actor? . . . anyhow he had a portable gramophon e. Yes, yes, they had all gone to the dacha! And the dogs, he remembered, had started howling when they played the gramophone. Only the woman Stepa ha d tried to kiss remained a complete blank . . . who the hell was she? . . . Didn't she work for the radio? Or perhaps she didn't. . . . Gradually the previous day came back into fo cus, but Stepa was much more interested in today and in particular in th is odd stranger who had materialised in his bedroom complete with snacks an d vodka. If only someone would explain it all! 'Well, now, I hope, you've remembered my name? ' Stepa could only grin sheepishly and spread hi s hands. 'Well, really! I suspect you drank port on to p of vodka last night. What a way to behave!' 'Please keep this to yourself,' said Stepa imploringly. 'Oh, of course, of course! But naturally I can' t vouch for Khustov.' 'Do you know Khustov? ' 'I saw that individual for a moment or two i n your office yesterday, but one cursory glance at his face was enough to convince me that he was a scheming, quarrelsome, sycophantic swine.' 'He's absolutely right! ' thought Stepa, ama zed at such a truthful, precise and succinct description of Khustov. The ruins of yesterday were piecing themselve s together now, but the manager of the Variety still felt vaguely anxious. There was still a gaping black void in his memory. He had absolutely no re collection of having seen this stranger in his office the day before. 'Woland, professor of black magic,' said th e visitor gravely, and seeing Stepa was still in difficulties he described their meeting in detail. He had arrived in Moscow from abroad yesterday , had immediately called on Stepa and offered himself as a guest artiste at the Variety. Stepa had telephoned the Moscow District Theatrical Commi ssion, had agreed to the proposal (Stepa turned pale and blinked) and ha d signed a contract with Professor Woland for seven performances (Stepa' s mouth dropped open), inviting Woland to call on him at ten o'clock the next morning to conclude the details. ... So Woland had come. When he ar rived he had been met by Grunya the maid, who explained that she herself had only just arrived because she lived out, that Berlioz wasn't at home and that if the gentleman wanted to see Stepan Bogdanovich he should go i nto the bedroom.. Stepan Bogdanovich had been sleeping so soundly that she had been unable to wake him. Seeing the condition that Stepa was in, the ar tiste had sent Grunya out to the nearest delicatessen for some vodka and sna cks, to the chemist for some ice and . . . 'You must let me settle up with you,' moa ned Stepa, thoroughly crushed, and began hunting for his wallet. 'Oh, what nonsense! ' exclaimed the artiste an d would hear no more of it. So that explained the vodka and the food; b ut Stepa was miserably confused: he could remember absolutely nothing abou t a contract and he would die before admitting to having seen Woland the p revious day. Khustov had been there all right, but not Woland. 'Would you mind showing me the contract?' aske d Stepa gently. 'Oh, but of course. . . .' Stepa looked at the sheet of paper and went numb. It was all there : his own bold signature, the backward-sloping s ignature of Rimsky, the treasurer, sanctioning the payment to Woland o f a cash advance of ten thousand roubles against his total fee of thirty-f ive thousand roubles for seven performances. And what was more--Woland's re ceipt for ten thousand roubles! 'What the hell? ' thought the miserable Stepa. His head began to spin. Was this one of his lapses of memory? Well, of co urse, now that the actual contract had been produced any further signs of d isbelief would merely be rude. Stepa excused himself for a moment and ra n to the telephone in the hall,. On the way he shouted towards the kitchen : 'Grunya! ' There was no reply. He glanced at the door o f Berlioz's study, which opened off the hall, and stopped, as they say, dum bfounded. There, tied to the door-handle, hung an enormous wax seal. 'My God! ' said a voice in Stepa's head. ' If that isn't the last straw! ' It would be difficult to describe Stepa' s mental confusion. First this diabolical character with his black beret, the iced vodka and that incredible contract. . . . And then, if you please , a seal on the door! Who could ever imagine Berlioz getting into any sort o f trouble? No one. Yet there it was--a seal. H'm. Stepa was at once assailed by a number of unco mfortable little thoughts about an article which he had recently talked Mi khail Alexandrovich into printing in his magazine. Frankly the article had been awful--stupid, politically dubious and badly paid. Hard on the hee ls of his recollection of the article came a memory of a slightly equivoca l conversation which had taken place, as far as he could remember, on 24th April here in the dining-room when Stepa and Berlioz had been havi ng supper together. Of course their talk had not really been dubious (St epa would not have joined in any such conversation) but it had been on a ra ther unnecessary subject. They could easily have avoided having it altogethe r. Before the appearance of this seal the conversation would undoubtedly have been dismissed as utterly trivial, but since the seal . . . 'Oh, Berlioz, Berlioz,' buzzed the voice in S tepa's head. ' Surely he'll never mention it!' But there was no time for regrets. Stepa dial led the office of Rimsky, the Variety Theatre's treasurer. Stepa was in a d elicate position: for one thing, the foreigner might be offended at Stepa ri nging up to check on him after he had been shown the contract and for anothe r, the treasurer was an extremely difficult man to deal with. After all he couldn't just say to him : ' Look here, did J sign a contract yesterday for thirty-five thousand roubles with a professor of black magic? ' It simpl y wouldn't do! 'Yes? ' came Rimsky's harsh, unpleasant voice in the earphone. 'Hello, Grigory Danilovich,' said Stepa gently . ' Likhodeyev speaking. It's about this ... er ... this fellow . . . this artiste, in my flat, called, er, Woland . . . I just wanted to ask y ou about this evening--is everything O.K.? ' 'Oh, the black magician? ' replied Rimsky. ' T he posters will be here any minute now.' 'Uhuh . . .' said Stepa weakly. ' O.K., so long . . .' 'Will you be coming over soon? ' asked Rimsky. 'In half an hour,' answered Stepa and rep lacing the receiver he clasped his feverish head. God, how embarrassing! W hat an appalling thing to forget! As it would be rude to stay in the hall for much longer, Stepa concocted a plan. He had to use every possible means of concealing his incredible forgetfulness and begin by cunningly pe rsuading the foreigner to tell him exactly what he proposed to do in his act at the Variety. With this Stepan turned away from the telephon e and in the hall mirror, which the lazy Grunya had not dusted for ye ars, he clearly saw a weird-looking man, as thin as a bean-pole and wear ing a pince-nez. Then the apparition vanished. Stepa peered anxiously down th e hallway and immediately had another shock as a huge black cat appeared in the mirror and also vanished. Stepa's heart gave a jump and he staggered bac k. 'What in God's name . . .? ' he thought. ' Am I going out of my mind? Where are these reflections coming from? ' He gav e another look round the hall and shouted in alarm : 'Grunya! What's this cat doing, sneaking in h ere? Where does it come from? And who's this other character? ' 'Don't worry, Stepan Bogdanovich,' came a voice, though not Grunya's--it was the visitor speaking from the be droom. ' The cat is mine. Don't be nervous. And Grunya's not here--I sent her away to her family in Voronezh. She complained that you had cheated her o ut of her leave.' These words were so unexpected and so absurd that Stepa decided he had not heard them. In utter bewilderment he bounded ba ck into the bedroom and froze on the threshold. His hair rose and a mil d sweat broke out on his forehead. The visitor was no longer alone in the bedroom . The second armchair was now occupied by the creature who had materialised i n the hall. He was now to be seen quite plainly--feathery moustache, one lens of his pince-nez glittering, the other missing. But worst of all w a:s the third invader : a black cat of revolting proportions sprawled in a no nchalant attitude on the pouffe, a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had just speared a pickled mushroom, in the other. Stepa felt the light in the bedroom, alrea dy weak enough, begin to fade. ' This must be what it's like to go mad . . .' he thought, clutching the doorpost. 'You seem slightly astonished, my dear Step an Bogdanovich,' said Woland. Stepai's teeth were chattering. ' But I as sure you there is nothing to be surprised at. These are my assistants.' Here the cat drank its vodka and Stepa's hand dropped from the doorpost. 'And my assistants need a place to stay,' we nt on Woland, ' so it seems that there is one too many of us in this flat. That one, I rather think, is you.' 'Yes, that's them! ' said the tall man in a go atish voice, speaking of Stepa in the plural. ' They've been behaving disg ustingly lately. Getting drunk, carrying on with women, trading on their p osition and not doing a stroke of work--not that they could do anything ev en if they tried because they're completely incompetent. Pulling the wo ol over the boss's eyes, that's what they've been doing! ' 'Drives around in a free car! ' said the cat slanderously, chewing a mushroom. Then occurred the fourth and last phenomenon at which Stepa collapsed entirely, his weakened hand scraping down the door post as he slid to the floor. Straight from the full-length mirror steppe d a short but unusually broad-she uldered man with a bowler hat on his hea d. A fang protruding from his mouth disfigured an already hideous physiog nomy that was topped with fiery red hair. 'I cannot,' put in the new arrival, ' unders tand how he ever came to be manager'--his voice grew more and more nasal-- ' he's as much a manager as I am a bishop.' 'You don't look much like a bishop, Azaze llo,' remarked the cat, piling sausages on his plate. 'That's what I mean,' snarled the man with re d hair and turning to Woland he added in a voice of respect: ' Will y ou permit us, messire, to kick him out of Moscow? ' 'Shoo!! ' suddenly hissed the cat, its hair st anding on end. The bedroom began to spin round Stepa, he hit his head on the doorpost and as he lost consciousness he thought, ' I'm dyin g . . .' But he did not die. Opening his eyes slightly he found himself sitting on something made of stone. There was a roaring sou nd nearby. When he opened his eyes fully he realised that the roaring was the sea; that the waves were breaking at his feet, that he was in fact sitting o n the very end of a stone pier, a shining blue sky above him and behind him a white town climbing up the mountainside. Not knowing quite what to do in a case like t his, Stepa raised himself on to his shaking legs and walked down the pier to the shore. On the pier stood a man, smoking and spitting i nto the sea. He glared at Stepa and stopped spitting. Stepa then did an odd thing--he kneeled down in front of the unknown smoker and said : 'Tell me, please, where am I? ' 'Well, I'm damned! ' said the unsympathetic sm oker. 'I'm not drunk,' said Stepa hoarsely. ' Somet hing's happened to me, I'm ill. . . . Where am I? What town is this? ' 'Yalta, of course. . . .' Stepa gave a gentle sigh, collapsed and faint ed as he struck his head on the warm stonework of the pier. 8. A. Duel between Professor and Poet At about half past eleven that morning, just as Stepa lost consciousness in Yalta, Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny r egained it, waking from a deep and prolonged sleep. For a while he tried to think why he was in this strange room with its white walls, its odd lit tle bedside table made of shiny metal and its white shutters, through which the sun appeared to be shining. Ivan shook his head to convince himself th at it was not aching and remembered that he was in a hospital. This in turn reminded him of Berlioz's death, but today Ivan no longer found this very d isturbing. After his long sleep Ivan Nikolayich felt calmer and able to th ink more clearly. After lying for a while motionless in his spotlessly clea n and comfortably sprung bed, Ivan noticed a bell-push beside him. Out o f a habit of fingering anything in sight, Ivan pressed it. He expected a b ell to ring or a person to appear, but something quite different happened. At the foot of Ivan's bed a frosted-glass cyli nder lit up with the word 'DRINK'. After a short spell in that position, the cylinder began turning until it stopped at another word: 'NANNY '. Ivan found this clever machine sligh tly confusing. ' NANNY ' was replaced by ' CALL THE DOCTOR '. 'H'm . . .' said Ivan, at a loss to know what the machine expected him to do. Luck came to his rescue. Ivan pressed the bu tton at the word ' NURSE '. In reply the machine gave a faint tinkle, stopp ed and went out. Into the room came a kind-looking woman in a clean white ove rall and said to Ivan : 'Good morning!' Ivan did not reply, as he felt the greet ing out of place in the circumstances. They had, after all, dumped a p erfectly healthy man in hospital and were making it worse by pretending i t was necessary! With the same kind look the woman pressed a button and r aised the blind. Sunlight poured into the room through a light, wide-mesh gr ille that extended to the floor. Beyond the grille was a balcony, beyond that the bank of a meandering river and on the far side a cheerful pine forest. 'Bath time! ' said the woman invitingly and pushed aside a folding partition to reveal a magnificently equipped bathro om. Although Ivan had made up his mind not to ta lk to the woman, when he saw a broad stream of water thundering into the ba th from a glittering tap he could not help saying sarcastically : 'Look at that! Just like in the Metropole! ' 'Oh, no,' replied the woman proudly. ' Muc h better. There's no equipment like this anywhere, even abroad. Profess ors and doctors come here specially to inspect our clinic. We have foreign to urists here every day.' At the words ' foreign tourist' Ivan at once remembered the mysterious professor of the day before. He scowled and said : 'Foreign tourists . . . why do you all thin k they're so wonderful? There are some pretty odd specimens among them, I can tell you. I met one yesterday--he was a charmer! ' He was just going to start telling her ab out Pontius Pilate, but changed his mind. The woman would never understa nd and it was useless to expect any help from her. Washed and clean, Ivan Nikolayich was im mediately provided with everything a man needs after a bath--a freshly iron ed shirt, underpants and socks. That was only a beginning : opening the door of a wardrobe, the woman pointed inside and asked him: 'What would you like to wear--a dressing gown or pyjamas? ' Although he was a prisoner in his new home, Ivan found it hard to resist the woman's easy, friendly manner and he poi nted to a pair of crimson flannelette pyjamas. After that Ivan Nikolayich was led along an e mpty, soundless corridor into a room of vast dimensions. He had decided to treat everything in this wonderfully equipped building with sarcasm and he at once mentally christened this room ' the factory kitchen'. And with good reason. There were cupboards a nd glass-fronted cabinets full of gleaming nickel-plated instruments. T here were armchairs of strangely complex design, lamps with shiny, bul bous shades, a mass of phials, bunsen burners, electric cables and var ious totally mysterious pieces of apparatus. Three people came into the room to see Ivan, t wo women and one man, all in white. They began by taking Ivan to a desk in the corner to interrogate him. Ivan considered the situation. He had a choice of three courses. The first was extremely tempting--to hurl himself a t these lamps and other ingenious gadgets and smash them all to pieces as a way of expressing his protest at being locked up for nothing. But today's Ivan was significantly different from the Ivan of yesterday and he found t he first course dubious ; it would only make them more convinced that he wa s a dangerous lunatic, so he abandoned it. There was a second--to begin at on ce telling them the story about the professor and Pontius Pilate. However y esterday's experience had shown him that people either refused to believe the story or completely misunderstood it, so Ivan rejected that course too , deciding to adopt the third: he would wrap himself in proud silence. It proved impossible to keep it up, and will y-nilly he found himself answering, albeit curtly and sulkily, a whole se ries of questions. They carefully extracted from Ivan everything about hi s past life, down to an attack of scarlet fever fifteen years before. Havi ng filled a whole page on Ivan they turned it over and one of the women in white started questioning him about his relatives. It was a lengthy perfor mance--who had died, when and why, did they drink, had they suffered from venereal disease and so forth. Finally they asked him to describe what had happened on the previous day at Patriarch's Ponds, but they did not pay muc h attention to it and the story about Pontius Pilate left them cold. The woman then handed Ivan over to the man, w ho took a different line with him, this time in silence. He took Ivan's te mperature, felt his pulse and looked into his eyes while he shone a lamp in to them. The other woman came to the man's assistance and they hit Ivan on the back with some instrument, though not painfully, traced some signs on the skin of his chest with the handle of a little hammer, hit him on t he knees with more little hammers, making Ivan's legs jerk, pricked his finge r and drew blood from it, pricked his elbow joint, wrapped rubber bracelets r ound his arm . . . Ivan could only smile bitterly to himself and ponder on the absurdity of it all. He had wanted to warn them all of th e danger threatening them from the mysterious professor, and had tried to catch him, yet all he had achieved was to land up in this weird laboratory just to talk a lot of rubbish about his uncle Fyodor who had died of drin k in Vologda. At last they let Ivan go. He was led back to his room where he was given a cup of coffee, two soft-boiled eggs and a slice of white bread and butter. When he had eaten his breakfast, Ivan mad e up his mind to wait for someone in charge of the clinic to arrive, to mak e him listen and to plead for justice. The man came soon after Ivan's breakfast. Th e door into Ivan's room suddenly opened and in swept a crowd of people in white overalls. In front strode a man of about forty-five, with a clean-sh aven, actorish face, kind but extremely piercing eyes and a courteous manner. The whole retinue showed him signs of attention and respect, which gave his entrance a certain solemnity. ' Like Pontius Pilate! ' thought Ivan. Yes, he was undoubtedly the man in charge. He sat down on a stool. Everybody else remained standing. 'How do you do. My name is doctor Stravinsky,' he said as he sat down, looking amiably at Ivan. 'Here you are, Alexander Nikolayich,' said a neatly bearded man and handed the chief Ivan's filled-in questionnaire. 'They've got it all sewn up,' thought Ivan. The man in charge ran a practised eye over the sheet of paper, muttered' M m'hh' and exchanged a few words with his colleagues in a strange language . ' And he speaks Latin too--like Pilate ', mused Ivan sadly. Suddenly a w ord made him shudder. It was the word ' schizophrenia ', which the siniste r stranger had spoken at Patriarch's Ponds. Now professor Stravinsky was saying it. ' So he knew about this, too! ' thought Ivan uneasily. The chief had adopted the rule of agreeing wi th everybody and being pleased with whatever other people might say, exp ressing it by the word ' Splendid . . .' 'Splendid! ' said Stravinsky, handing back t he sheet of paper. He turned to Ivan. 'Are you a poet? ' 'Yes, I am,' replied Ivan glumly and for the first time he suddenly felt an inexplicable revulsion to poetry. Rememberi ng some of his own poems, they struck him as vaguely unpleasant. Frowning, he returned Stravinsky's question by asking: 'Are you a professor? ' To this Stravinsky, with engaging courtesy, in clined his head. 'Are you in charge here? ' Ivan went on. To this, too, Stravinsky nodded. 'I must talk to you,' said Ivan Nikolayich in a significant tone. 'That's why I'm here,' answered Stravinsky. 'Well this is the situation,' Ivan began, s ensing that his hour had come. ' They say I'm mad and nobody wants to listen to me!' 'Oh no, we will listen very carefully to every thing you have to say,' said Stravinsky seriously and reassuringly, ' and on no account shall we allow anyone to say you're mad.' 'All right, then, listen: yesterday evening at Patriarch's Ponds I met a mysterious person, who may or may not have been a foreigner, who knew about Berlioz's death before it happened, and had m et Pontius Pilate.' The retinue listened to Ivan, silent and unmov ing. 'Pilate? Is that the Pilate who lived at th e time of Jesus Christ?' enquired Stravinsky, peering at Ivan. ' Yes.' 'Aha,' said Stravinsky. ' And this Berlioz is the one who died falling under a tram? ' 'Yes. I was there yesterday evening when the t ram killed him, and this mysterious character was there too .' 'Pontius Pilate's friend? ' asked Stravinsk y, obviously a man of exceptional intelligence. 'Exactly,' said Ivan, studying Stravinsky. ' He told us, before it happened, that Anna had spilt the sunflower-seed oil ... and that was the very spot where Berlioz slipped! How d'you like that?!' Ivan concluded, expecting his story to produce a big effect. But it produced none. Stravinsky simply asked : 'And who is this Anna? ' Slightly disconcerted by the question, Ivan fr owned. 'Anna doesn't matter,' he said irritably. ' God knows who she is. Simply some stupid girl from Sadovaya Street. Wha t's important, don't you see, is that he knew about the sunflower-seed oil beforehand. Do you follow me? ' 'Perfectly,' replied Stravinsky seriously. Pat ting the poet's knee he added : ' Relax and go on.' 'All right,' said Ivan, trying to fall int o Stravinsky's tone and knowing from bitter experience that only calm would help him. ' So obviously this terrible man (he's lying, by the way--he's no professor) has some unusual power . . . For instance, if you chase hi m you can't catch up with him . . . and there's a couple of others with him, just as peculiar in their way: a tall fellow with broken spectacles and an enormous cat who rides on the tram by himself. What's more,' went on Iva n with great heat and conviction, ' he was on the balcony with Pontius Pi late, there's no doubt of it. What about that, eh? He must be arrested immedi ately or he'll do untold harm.' 'So you think he should be arrested? Have I u nderstood you correctly? ' asked Stravinsky. ‘ He's clever,' thought Ivan, ' I must admi t there are a few bright ones among the intellectuals,' and he replied : 'Quite correct. It's obvious--he must be arres ted! And meanwhile I'm being kept here by force while they flash lamps at me, bath me and ask me idiotic questions about uncle Fyodor! He's been dea d for years! I demand to be let out at once! ' 'Splendid, splendid! ' cried Stravinsky. ' I see it all now. You're right--what is the use of keeping a healthy man in hospital? Very well, I'll discharge you at once if you tell me you're normal . You don't have to prove it--just say it. Well, are you normal? ' There was complete silence. The fat woman w ho had examined Ivan that morning glanced reverently at the professor and once again Ivan thought: 'Extremely clever! ' The professor's offer pleased him a great deal , but before replying he thought hard, frowning, until at last he announced firmly: 'I am normal.' 'Splendid,' exclaimed Stravinsky with relief. ' In that case let us reason logically. We'll begin by considering what happened to you yesterday.' Here he turned and was immediately han ded Ivan's questionnaire. ' Yesterday, while in search of an unknown man, wh o had introduced himself as a friend of Pontius Pilate, you did the follo wing: ' Here Stravinsky began ticking off the points on his long fingers, glancing back and forth from the paper to Ivan. ' You pinned an ikon to you r chest. Right? ' 'Right,' Ivan agreed sulkily. 'You fell off a fence and scratched your face . Right? You appeared in a restaurant carrying a lighted candle, wearing onl y underpants, and you hit somebody in the restaurant. You were tied up and brought here, where you rang the police and asked them to send some machine -guns. You then attempted to throw yourself out of the window. Right? The que stion--is that the way to set about catching or arresting somebody? If you' re normal you're bound to reply--no, it isn't. You want to leave here? Very well. But where, if you don't mind my asking, do you propose to go? ' ' To the police, of course,' replied Ivan, although rather less firmly and slig htly disconcerted by the professor's stare. 'Straight from here? ' 'Mm'hh.' 'Won't you go home first? ' Stravinsky asked q uickly. 'Why should I go there? While I'm going home h e might get away!' 'I see. And what will you tell the police? ' 'I'll tell them about Pontius Pilate,' repli ed Ivan Nikolayich, his eyes clouding. 'Splendid! ' exclaimed Stravinsky, defeated, and turning to the man with the beard he said: ' Fyodor Vasilievich, p lease arrange for citizen Bezdomny to be discharged. But don't put anybody el se in this room and don't change the bedclothes. Citizen Bezdomny will be b ack here again in two hours. Well,' he said to the poet, ‘I won't wish yo u success because I see no chance whatever of your succeeding. See you s oon!' He got up and his retinue started to go. 'Why will I come back here? ' asked Ivan anxio usly. 'Because as soon as you appear at a police station dressed in your underpants and say yom've met a man who knew Pontius Pilate, you'll immediately be brought back here and put in this ro om again.' 'Because of my underpants? ' asked Ivan, sta ring distractedly about him. 'Chiefly because of Pontims Pilate. But the underpants will help. We shall have to take a.way your hospital clothes and give you back your own. And you came here wearing underpants. Incidentally you said nothing about going home first, despite my hint. After that you o nly have to start talking about Pontius Pilate . . . and you're done for.' At this point something odd happened to Ivan N ikolayich. His will-power seemed to crumple. He felt himself weak and in need of advice. 'What should I do, then? ' he asked, timidly t his time. 'Splendid! ' said Stravinsky. ' A most reasona ble question. Now I'll tell you what has really happened t o you. Yesterday someone gave you a bad fright and upset you with this story about Pontius Pilate and other things. So you, worn out and nerve-racked, wandered round the town talking about Pontius Pilate. Quite naturally people took you for a lunatic. Your only salvation now is complete rest. And you m ust stay here.' 'But somebody must arrest him! ' cried Ivan, i mploringly. 'Certainly, but why should you have to do it? Put down all your suspicions and accusations against this man on a piece of paper. Nothing could be simpler than to send your statement to t he proper authorities and if, as you suspect, the man is a criminal, it will come to light soon enough. But on one condition--don't over-exert your mind and try to think a bit less about Pontius Pilate. If you harp on that story I don't think many people are going to believe you.' 'Right you are! ' announced Ivan firmly. ' Please give me pen and paper.' 'Give him some paper and a short pencil,' sa id Stravinsky to the fat woman, then turning to Ivan : ' But I don't advi se you to start writing today.' 'No, no, today! I must do it today! ' cried Iv an excitedly. 'All right. Only don't overtax your brain. If you don't get it quite right today, tomorrow will do.' 'But he'll get away! ' 'Oh no,' countered Stravinsky. ' I assure you he's not going to get away. And remember--we are here to help you in ev ery way we can and unless we do, nothing will come of your plan. D'you hear ? ' Stravinsky suddenly asked, seizing Ivan Nikolay-ich by both hands. As h e held them in his own he stared intently into Ivan's eyes, repeating : ' We shall help you ... do you hear? . . . We shall help you . . . you will be able to relax . . . it's quiet here, everything's going to be all right ... all right . . . we shall help you . . .' Ivan Nikolayich suddenly yawned and his expres sion softened. 'Yes, I see,' he said quietly. 'Splendid! ' said Stravinsky, closing the conversation in his no habitual way and getting up. ' Goodbye!' He shook I van by the hand and as he went out he turned to the man with the beard a nd said : ' Yes, and try oxygen . . . and baths.' A few moments later Stravinsky and his retin ue were gone. Through the window and the grille the gay, springtime wood gle amed brightly on the far bank and the river sparkled in the noon sunshine. 9. Koroviev's Tricks Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, chairman of the tena nts' association of No. 302A, Sadovaya Street, Moscow, where the late B erlioz had lived, was in trouble. It had all begun on the previous Wednesday night. At midnight, as we already know, the police ha d arrived with Zheldybin, had hauled Nikanor Ivanovich out of bed, told him of Berlioz's death and followed him to flat No. 50. There they had sealed the deceased's papers and personal effects. Neither Grunya the maid, who live d out, nor the imprudent Stepan Bogdanovich were in the flat at the time. Th e police informed Nikanor Ivanovich that they would call later to collect Berlioz's manuscripts for sorting and examination and that his accommodatio n, consisting of three rooms (the jeweller's study, drawing-room and dini ng-room) would revert to the tenants' association for disposal. His effect s were to be kept under seal until the legatees' claims were proved by the court. The news of Berlioz's death spread thro ugh the building with supernatural speed and from seven o'clock on Thursd ay morning Bosoi started to get telephone calls. After that people began calling in person with written pleas of their urgent need of vacant housin g space. Within the space of two hours Nikanor Ivanovich had collected thirty -two such statements. They contained entreaties, threats, intrigue, denunciations, promises to redecorate the flat, remarks about overcrowding and the impossibility of sharing a flat with bandits. Among them was a descr iption, shattering in its literary power, of the theft of some meat-balls fro m someone's jacket pocket in flat No. 31, two threats of suicide and o ne confession of secret pregnancy. Nikanor Ivanovich was again and again take n aside with a wink and assured in whispers that he would do well on the de al.... This torture lasted until one o'clock, when Nikanor Ivanovich simply ran out of his flat by the main entrance, only t o run away again when he found them lying in wait for him outside. Somehow contriving to throw off the people who chased him across the asphalt courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich took refuge in staircase 6 and climbed to the fatal apartment. Panting with exertion, the stout Nikanor Ivano vich rang the bell on the fifth-floor landing. No one opened. He rang again and again and began to swear quietly. Still no answer. Nikanor Ivanovich 's patience gave way and pulling a bunch of duplicate keys from his pocket he opened the door with a masterful flourish and walked in. 'Hello, there! ' shouted Nikanor Ivanovich in the dim hallway. ' Are you there, Grunya? ' No reply. Nikanor Ivanovich then took a folding ruler o ut of his pocket, used it to prise the seal from the study door and strode in. At least he began by striding in, but stopped in the doorway with a star t of amazement. Behind Berlioz's desk sat a tall, thin stra nger in a check jacket, jockey cap and pince-nez. . . . 'And who might you be, citizen? ' asked Nikano r Ivanovich. 'Nikanor Ivanovich! ' cried the mysterious stranger in a quavering tenor. He leaped up and greeted the chairman with an unexpectedly powerful handshake which Nikanor Ivanovich found extremely p ainful. 'Pardon me,' he said suspiciously, ' but who a re you? Are you somebody official? ' 'Ah, Nikanor Ivanovich! ' said the stranger i n a man-to-man voice. ' Who is official and who is unofficial these days? It all depends on your point of view. It's all so vague and changeable, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I'm unofficial, tomorrow, hey presto! I'm official! Or maybe vice-versa--who knows? ' None of this satisfied the chairman. By natu re a suspicious man, he decided that this voluble individual was not onl y unofficial but had no business to be there. 'Who are you? What's your name? ' said the ch airman firmly, advancing on the stranger. 'My name,' replied the man, quite unmoved by t his hostile reception, ' is . . . er . . . let's say . . . Koroviev. Wouldn' t you like a bite to eat, Nikanor Ivanovich? As we're friends? ' 'Look here,' said Nikanor Ivanovich disagreeab ly, ' what the hell do you mean--eat? ' (Sad though it is to admit, Nikanor Ivanovich had no manners.) ' You're not allowed to come into a dead man's flat! What are you doing here? ' 'Now just sit down, Nikanor Ivanovich,' said the imperturbable stranger in a wheedling voice, offering Nikanor Iva novich a chair. Infuriated, Nikanor Ivanovich kicked the chair away and yelled: 'Who are you? ' 'I am employed as interpreter to a foreign ge ntleman residing in this flat,' said the self-styled Koroviev by way of in troduction as he clicked the heels of his dirty brown boots. Nikanor Ivanovich's mouth fell open. A foreign er in this flat, complete with interpreter, was a total surprise to h im and he demanded an explanation. This the interpreter willingly supplied. Mon sieur Woland, an artiste from abroad, had been kindly invited by the manage r of the Variety Theatre, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev, to spend his stay as a guest artiste, about a week, in his flat. Likhodeyev had written to Nik anor Ivanovich about it yesterday, requesting him to register the gent lemen from abroad as a temporary resident while Likhodeyev himself was awa y in Yalta. 'But he hasn't written to me,' said the bewild ered chairman. 'Take a look in your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanov ich,' suggested Koroviev amiably. Shrugging his shoulders Nikanor Ivanovich o pened his briefcase and found a letter from Likhodeyev. ' Now how could I have forgotten that? ' mumbled Nikanor Ivanovich, gazing stupidly at the o pened envelope. 'It happens to the best of us, Nikanor Ivanovi ch! ' cackled Koroviev. ' Absent-mindedness, overstrain and high blood-p ressure, my dear friend! Why, I'm horribly absent-minded. Some time over a g lass or two I'll tell you a few things that have happened to me--you'll die w ith laughter! ' 'When is Likhodeyev going to Yalta? ' 'He's already gone,' cried the interpreter. ' He's on his way there. God knows where he is by now.' And the interprete r waved his arms like windmill sails. Nikanor Ivanovich announced that he had to see the foreign gentleman in person, but this was refused. It was quite out o f the question. Monsieur Woland was busy. Training his cat. 'You can see the cat if you like,' suggested K oroviev. This Nikanor Ivanovich declined and the inte rpreter then made him an unexpected but most interesting proposal: since M onsieur Woland could not bear staying in hotels and was used to spaciou s quarters, couldn't the tenants' association lease him the whole flat for h is week's stay, including the dead man's rooms? 'After all, what does he care? He's dead,' hissed Koroviev in a whisper. ' You must admit the flat's no use to him now, is it?' In some perplexity Nikanor Ivanovich object ed that foreigners were normally supposed to stay at the Metropole and not in private accommodation . . . 'I tell you he's so fussy, you'd never b elieve it,' whispered Koroviev. ' He simply refuses! He hates hotels! I can tell you I'm fed up with these foreign tourists,' complained Korovi ev confidentially. ' They wear me out. They come here and either they go sp ying and snooping or they send me mad with their whims and fancies--this isn 't right, that isn't just so! And there'd be plenty in it for your associa tion, Nikanor Ivanovich. He's not short of money.' Koroviev glanced round a nd then whispered in the chairman's ear : ' He's a millionaire!' The suggestion was obviously a sensible one, but there was something ridiculous about his manner, his clothes and that absurd, useless pince-nez that all combined to make Nikanor Ivanovich va guely uneasy. However he agreed to the suggestion. The tenants' associati on, alas, was showing an enormous deficit. In the autumn they would have t o buy oil for the steam heating plant and there was not a kopeck in th e till, but with this foreigner's money they might just manage it. Nik anor Ivanovich, however, practical and cautious as ever, insisted on clear ing the matter with the tourist bureau. 'Of course! ' cried Koroviev. ' It must be done properly. There's the telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, ring them up right aw ay! And don't worry about money,' he added in a whisper as he led the chairma n to the telephone in the hall, ' if anyone can pay handsomely, he can. If y ou could see his villa in Nice! When you go abroad next summer you must go t here specially and have a look at it--you'll be amazed! ' The matter was fixed with the tourist bureau with astonishing ease and speed. The bureau appeared to know all about Monsi eur Woland's intention to stay in Likodeyev's flat and raised no objections. 'Excellent! ' cried Koroviev. Slightly stupefied by this man's incessant cackling, the chairman announced that the tenants' association was prepare d to lease flat No. 50 to Monsieur Woland the artiste at a rent of ... Nikan or Ivanovich stammered a little and said : 'Five hundred roubles a day.' At this Koroviev surpassed himself. Winking conspiratorially towards the bedroom door, through which they could hear a series of soft thumps as the cat practised its leaps, he said : 'So for a week that would amount to thre e and a half thousand, wouldn't it? ' Nikanor Ivanovich quite expected the man to add ' Greedy, aren't you, Nikanor Ivanovich? ' but instead he said: 'That's not much. Ask him for five thousand, h e'll pay.' Grinning with embarrassment, Nikanor Ivanovic h did not even notice how he suddenly came to be standing beside Berlioz's desk and how Koroviev had managed with such incredible speed and dexterity to draft a contract in duplicate. This done, he flew into the bedroom a nd returned with the two copies signed in the stranger's florid hand. The ch airman signed in turn and Koroviev asked him to make out a receipt for five . . . 'Write it out in words, Nikanor Ivanovich. " Five thousand roubles ".' Then with a flourish which seemed vaguely out of place in such a serious matter--' Eins! 'yvei! drei! '--he laid five bundle s of brand-new banknotes on the table. Nikanor Ivanovich checked them, to an accompan iment of witticisms from Koroviev of the ' better safe than sorry ' variety. Having counted the money the chairman took the stranger's passport to be st amped with his temporary residence permit, put contract, passport and mone y into his briefcase and asked shyly for a free ticket to the show . . . 'But of course! ' exclaimed Koroviev. ' How m any do you want, Nikanor Ivanovich--twelve, fifteen? ' Overwhelmed, the chairman explained that he o nly wanted two, one for his wife Pelagea Antonovna and one for himself. Koroviev seized a note-pad and dashed off an order to the box office for two complimentary tickets in the front row. As the interpreter handed it to Nikanor Ivanovich with his left hand, with his r ight he gave him a thick, crackling package. Glancing at it Nikanor Ivanovich blushed hard and started to push it away. 'It's not proper . . .' 'I won't hear any objection,' Koroviev whispe red right in his ear. ' We don't do this sort of thing but foreigners do. Y ou'll offend him, Nikanor Ivanovich, and that might be awkward. You've earned it . . .' 'It's strictly forbidden . . .' whispered th e chairman in a tiny voice, with a furtive glance around. 'Where are the witnesses? ' hissed Koroviev i nto his other ear. ' I ask you--where are they? Come, now . . .' There then happened what the chairman later de scribed as a miracle--the package jumped into his briefcase of its own accor d, after which he found himself, feeling weak and battered, on the stairca se. A storm of thoughts was whirling round inside his head. Among them wer e the villa in Nice, the trained cat, relief that there had been no witnesse s and his wife's pleasure at the complimentary tickets. Yet despite these mo stly comforting thoughts, in the depths of his soul the chairman still felt the pricking of a little needle. It was the needle of unease. Suddenly, hal fway down the staircase, something else occurred to him-- how had that inter preter found his way into the study past a sealed door? And why on earth ha d he, Nikanor Ivanovich, forgotten to ask him about it? For a while the cha irman stared at the steps like a sheep, then decided to forget it and not to bother himself with imaginary problems . . . As soon as the chairman had left the flat a low voice came from the bedroom: 'I don't care for that Nikanor Ivanovich. He' s a sly rogue. Why not fix it so that he doesn't come here again? ' 'Messire, you only have to give the order . . .' answered Koroviev in a firm, clear voice that no longer quavered. At once the diabolical interpreter was in the hall, had dialled a number and started to speak in a whining voice : 'Hullo! I consider it my duty to report tha t the chairman of our tenants' association at No. 302А Sadovaya Street, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, is dealing in black-market foreign currency. He has just stuffed four hundred dollars wrapped in newspaper into the ventilation shaft of the lavatory in his flat. No. 3 5. My name is Timothy K vastsov and I live in the same block, flat No. 11. But please keep my name a secret. I'm afraid of what that man may do if he finds out . . .' And with that the scoundrel hung up. What happened after that in No. 50 is a myster y, although what happened to Nikanor Ivanovich is common knowledge. Locking himself in the lavatory, he pulled the package out of his briefcase and fou nd that it contained four hundred roubles. He wrapped it up in a sheet of ol d newspaper and pushed it into the ventilation shaft. Five minutes later he was sitting down at table in his little dining-room. From the kitchen his w ife brought in a pickled herring, sliced and thickly sprinkled with raw o nion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured himself a wineglassful of vodka, drank it, poured out another, drank that, speared three slices of herring on his fo rk . . . and then the doorbell rang. Pelagea Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming casserole, one glance at which was enough to tell you that i n the midst of all that hot, thick borsch was one of the most delicious things in the world --a marrow bone. Gulping down his running saliva, Nikanor Ivano vich snarled : 'Who the hell is that--at this hour! They wo n't even allow a man to eat his supper. . . . Don't let anybody in--I'm not at home.... If it's about the flat tell them to stop worrying. There' ll be a committee meeting about it in a week's time.' His wife ran into the hall and Nikanor Ivano vich ladled the quivering marrow bone out of its steaming lake. At that momen t three men came into the dining-room, followed by a very pale Pelagea Antono vna. At the sight of them Nikanor Ivanovich turned white and got up. 'Where's the W.C.? ' enquired the first man urgently. There was a crash as Nikanor Ivanovich dropped the ladle on to the oilcloth table-top. 'Here, in here,' babbled Pelagea Antonovna. The visitors turned and rushed back into the passage. 'What's going on? ' asked Nikanor Ivanovich as he followed them. ' You can't just burst into our flat like that . . . Wher e's your identity card if you don't mind? ' The first man showed Nikanor Ivanovich his identity card while the second clambered up on to a stool in the lavatory and thrust his arm into the ventilation shaft. Nikanor Ivanovich began to f eel faint. They unwrapped the sheet of newspaper to find that the banknotes in the package were not roubles but some unknown foreign money--bluish- green in colour with a picture of an old man. Nikanor Ivanovich, howev er, saw none of it very clearly because spots were swimming in front of his eyes. 'Dollars in the ventilation shaft. . . . ' said the first man thoughtfully and asked Nikanor Ivanovich politely : * Is this your little parcel? ' 'No! ' replied Nikanor Ivanovich in a terrif ied voice. ' It's been planted on me!' 'Could be,' agreed the first man, adding as qu ietly as before : 'Still, you'd better give up the rest.' 'There isn't any more! I swear to God I've never even seen any! ' screamed the chairman in desperation. He rushed t o a chest, pulled out a drawer and out of that his briefcase, shouting dist ractedly as he did so : 'It's all in here . . . the contract . . . th at interpreter must have planted them on me . . . Koroviev, the man in the p ince-nez!' He opened the briefcase, looked inside, thrust his hand in, turned blue in the face and dropped his briefcase into the bor sch. There was nothing in it--no letter from Stepan, no contract, no pa ssport, no money and no complimentary tickets. Nothing, in short, except a folding ruler. * Comrades!' screamed the chairman frantic ally. ' Arrest them! The forces of evil are in this house!' Something odd happened to Pelagea Antonovna at this point. Wringing her hands she cried : 'Confess, Nikanor! They'll reduce your sentenc e if you do! ' Eyes bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich raised his clenched fists over his wife's head and screamed : 'Aaah! You stupid bitch! ' Then he crumpled and fell into a chair, having obviously decided to bow to the inevitable. Meanwhile, out on the landin g, Timothy Kondratievich Kvastsov was pressing first his ear then his ey e to the keyhole of the chairman's front door, burning with curiosity. Five minutes later the tenants saw the ch airman led out into the courtyard by two men. Nikanor Ivanovich, so t hey said later, had been scarcely recognisable--staggering like a drunkard a nd muttering to himself. Another hour after that a stranger appeared at flat No. n just when Timothy Kondratievich, gulping with pleasure, was describing to some other tenants how the chairman had been whisked away ; the stranger beckoned Timothy Kondratievich out of his kitchen into the hall, said something and took him away. 10. News from Yalta As disaster overtook Nikanor Ivanovich in Sadovaya Street, not far from No. 302А two men were sitting in the office of Ri msky the treasurer of the Variety Theatre : Rimsky himself and the house mana ger, Varenukha. From this large office on the second floor two windows gave on to Sadovaya and another, just behind the treasurer's back as he sat at his desk, on to the Variety's garden; it was use d in summer and contained several bars for serving cold drinks, a shooti ng gallery and an open promenade. The furniture of the room, apart from the desk, consisted of a collection of old posters hanging on the wall, a small table with a carafe of water, four chairs and a stand in one corn er supporting a dusty, long-forgotten model of a stage set. Naturally the office also contained a small, battered fireproof safe standing to the left of Rimsky's desk. Rimsky had been in a bad mood all morning. Var enukha, by contrast, was extremely cheerful and lively, if somewhat nervo us. Today, however, there was no outlet for his energy. Varenukha had just taken refuge in the tre asurer's office from the complimentary ticket hounds who made his life a mi sery, especially on the days when there was a change of programme. And tod ay was one of those days. As soon as the telephone started to ring Varenukha picked up the receiver and lied into it: 'Who? Varenukha? He's not here. He's left the theatre.' 'Please try and ring Likhodeyev once more,' sa id Rimsky testily. 'But he's not at home. I've already sent Karpo v; the Hat's empty.' 'I wish to God I knew what was going on! ' hissed Rimsky, fidgeting with his adding machine. The door opened and a theatre usher dragge d in a thick package of newly-printed fly-posters, which announced in larg e red letters on a green background : Tonight and All This Week in the Variety Theat re A Special Act PROFESSOR WOLAND Black Magic All Mysteries revealed As Varenukha stepped back from the poster, wh ich he had propped up on the model, he admired it and ordered the usher to h ave all the copies posted up. 'All right--look sharp,' said Varenukha to the departing usher. 'I don't care for this project at all,' grow led Rimsky disagreeably, staring at the poster through his horn-rims. ' I'm amazed that he was ever engaged.' 'No, Grigory Danilovich, don't say that! It's a very smart move. All the fun is in showing how it's done--" the mysterie s revealed ".' 'I don't know, I don't know. I don't see any fun in that myself. . . just like him to dream up something of this sort. I f only he'd shown us this magician. Did you see him? God knows where he's dug him up from.' It transpired that Varenukha, like Rimsky, h ad not seen the magician either. Yesterday Stepa had rushed (' like a madma n ', in Rimsky's words) into the treasurer's office clutching a draft cont ract, had ordered him to countersign it and pay Woland his money. The magi cian had vanished and no one except Stepa himself had seen him. Rimsky pulled out his watch, saw that it was f ive minutes to three and was seized with fury. Really, this was too much! Likhodeyev had rung at about eleven o'clock, had said that he would come in about half an hour and now he had not only failed to appear but had disapp eared from his flat. 'It's holding up all my work' snarled Rims ky, tapping a pile of unsigned papers. 'I suppose he hasn't fallen under a tram, like Berlioz? ' said Varenukha, holding the receiver to his ear an d hearing nothing but a continual, hopeless buzz as Stepa's telephone rang unanswered. 'It would be a damned good thing if he has . . .' said Rimsky softly between his teeth. At that moment in came a woman in a uniform j acket, peaked cap, black skirt and sneakers. She took a square of white pape r and a notebook out of a little pouch on her belt and enquired : 'Which of you is Variety? Priority telegram fo r you. Sign here.' Varenukha scrawled some hieroglyphic in the woman's notebook and as soon as the door had slammed behind her, opened th e envelope. Having read the telegram he blinked and handed it to Rimsky. The telegram read as follows: 'yalta то moscow VARIETY STOP TODAY 1130 PSYCHIATRIC CASE N IGHT-SHIRTED TROUSERED SHOELESS STAGGERED POLICE STATION ALLEGING SELF LIKH ODEYEV MANAGER VARIETY WIRE YALTA POLICE WHERE LIKHODEYEV.' 'Thanks--and I'm a Dutchman! ' exclaimed Rims ky and added : ' Another little surprise package! ' 'The False Dimitry! ' said Varenukha and spoke into the telephone : ' Telegrams, please. On account. Variety Theatre. Priority. Ready? " Yalta Police stop Likhodeyev Moscow Rimsky Treasurer."' Disregarding the Pretender of Yalta, Varenukh a tried again to locate Stepa by telephone and could not, of course, find h im anywhere. While he was still holding the receiver in his hand and wonderin g where to ring next, the same woman came in again and handed Varenukha a new envelope. Hastily opening it Varenukha read the text and whistled. ' What is it now? ' asked Rimsky, twitching nervously. Varenukha silently pas sed him the telegram and the treasurer read the words : ' BEG BELIEVE TRANSPORTED YALTA WOLANDS H YPNOSIS WIRE POLICE CONFIRMATION MY IDENTITY LIKHODEYEV.' Rimsky and Varenukha put their heads together, read the telegram again and stared at one another in silence. 'Come on, come on! ' said the woman irritabl y. ' Sign here. Then you can sit and stare at it as long as you like. I'v e got urgent telegrams to deliver!' Without taking his eyes off the telegram Va renukha scribbled in her book and the woman disappeared. 'You say you spoke to him on the telephone ju st after eleven? ' said the house manager in complete bewilderment. 'Yes, extraordinary as it may seem! ' shouted Rimsky. ' But whether I did or not, he can't be in Yalta now. It's funny.' 'He's drunk . . .' said Varenukha. 'Who's drunk? ' asked Rimsky and they stared a t each other again. There was no doubt that some lunatic or practical joker was telegraphing from Yalta. But the strange thing w as--how did this wit in Yalta know about Woland, who had only arrived in M oscow the evening before? How did he know of the connection between Likhodeye v and Woland? '" Hypnosis ",' muttered Varenukha, repeating one of the words in the telegram. ' How does he know about Woland? ' He bli nked and suddenly shouted firmly : ' No, of course not. It can't be! Rubbish! ' 'Where the hell has this man Woland got to, da mn him? ' asked Rimsky. Varenukha at once got in touch with the touris t bureau and announced to Rimsky's utter astonishment that Woland was stayin g in Likhodeyev's flat. Having then dialled Likhodeyev's flat yet again, Varenukha listened for a long time as the ringing tone buzzed thickly in the earpiece. In between the buzzes a distant baritone voice could be heard sing ing and Varenukha decided that somewhere the telephone system had got its wir es crossed with the radio station. 'No reply from his flat,' said Varenukha, r eplacing the receiver on its rest. ' I'll try once more . . .' Before he could finish in came the same wo man and both men rose to greet her as this time she took out of her pouch not a white, but a black sheet of paper. 'This is getting interesting,' said Varenukha through gritted teeth, watching the woman as she hurried out. Rimsky was the first to look at the message. On a dark sheet of photographic paper the foll owing lines were clearly visible : 'As proof herewith specimen my handwritin g and signature wire confirmation my identity. Have Woland secretly foll owed. Likhodeyev.' In twenty years of experience in the theatre V arenukha had seen plenty, but now he felt his mind becoming paralysed and he could find nothing to say beyond the commonplace and absurd remark: ‘ It can't be!' Rimsky reacted differently. He got up, open ed the door and bellowed through it to the usher sitting outside on a stool: 'Don't let anybody in except the telegraph gir l,' and locked the door. He then pulled a sheaf of papers out of his desk drawer and began a careful comparison of the thick, backward-sloping letters in the photogram with the writing in Stepa's memoranda and his signatures, with their typically curly-tailed script. Varenukha, sprawl ing on the desk, breathed hotly on Rimsky's cheek. 'It's his handwriting,' the treasurer fin ally said and Varenukha echoed him: 'It's his all right.' Looking at Rimsky's face the house manager no ticed a change in it. A thin man, the treasurer seemed to have grown even thinner and to have aged. Behind their hornrims his eyes had lost their usual aggressiveness. Now they showed only anxiety, even alarm. Varenukha did everything that people are sup posed to do in moments of great stress. He paced up and down the office, twice spread his arms as though he were being crucified, drank a whole glas s of brackish water from the carafe and exclaimed : 'I don't understand it! I don't understand it! I don't under-stand it!' Rimsky stared out of the window, thinking hard . The treasurer was in an extremely perplexing situation. He had to find an immediate, on-the-spot, natural solution for a number of very unusual pheno mena. Frowning, the treasurer tried to imagine S tepa in a nightshirt and without his shoes, climbing that morning at about h alf past eleven into some incredibly super-rapid aeroplane and then the same Stepa, also at half past eleven, standing on Yalta airport in his socks. ... Perhaps it wasn't Stepa who had telephoned him from his flat? No, that was Stepa all right! As if he didn't know Stepa's voice. Even if it hadn't been Stepa talking to him that morning, he had a ctually seen the man no earlier than the evening before, when Stepa had rushed in from his own office waving that idiotic contract and had so annoyed Rimsky by his irresponsible behaviour. How could he have flown out of Moscow without saying a word to the theatre? And if he had flown away yesterday evening he couldn't have reached Yalta before noon today. Or co uld he? 'How far is it to Yalta? ' asked Rimsky. Varenukha stopped pacing and cried : 'I've already thought of that! To Sebastop ol by rail it's about fifteen hundred kilometres and it's about anoth er eighty kilometres to Yalta. It's less by air, of course.' Ню . . . Yes . . . No question of his having gone by train. What then? An Air Force fight er plane? Who'd let Stepa on board a fighter in his stockinged feet? And why ? Perhaps he'd taken his shoes off when he got to Yalta? Same problem-- •w hy? Anyhow, the Air Force wouldn't let him board a fighter even with his sh oes on! No, a fighter was out of the question too. But the telegram said t hat he'd appeared at the police station at half past eleven in the morning and he'd been in Moscow, talking on the telephone, at ... Just a moment ( his watch-face appeared before Rimsky's eyes) ... He remembered where the hands had been pointing . . . Horrors! It had been twenty past eleven! So what was the answer? Supposing that the m oment after his telephone call Stepa had rushed to the airport and got the re in, say, five minutes (which was impossible anyway), then if the aeropl ane had taken off at once it must have covered over a thousand kilome tres in five minutes. Consequently it had been flying at a speed of more than twelve thousand kilometres per hour! Impossible, ergo--he wasn't in Yalta! What other explanation could there be? Hypno sis? There Д was no such hypnosis which could hurl a man a thousand kilometr es. Could he be imagining that he was in Yalta? He might, but would the Yalt a police imagine it? No, no, really, it was absurd! ... But they had telegra phed from Yalta, hadn't they? The treasurer's face was dreadful to see. By now someone outside was twisting and rattling the door handle and the ushe r could be heard shouting desperately : 'No, you can't! I wouldn't let you in even if you were to kill me! They're in conference! ' Rimsky pulled himself together as well as he could, picked up the telephone receiver and said into it: 'I want to put through a priority call to Yalt a.' 'Clever! ' thought Varenukha. But the call to Yalta never went through. Rim sky put back the receiver and said : 'The line's out of order--as if on purpose.' For some reason the faulty line disturbed him a great deal and made him reflect. After some thought he picked up the rece iver again with one hand and with the other started writing down what he was dictating into the telephone : 'Priority telegram. From Variety. Yes. To Ya lta police. Yes. "Today approximately 1130 Likhodeyev telephoned me Moscow . Stop. Thereafter failed appear theatre and unreach-able telephone. Stop. C onfirm handwriting. Stop. Will take suggested measures observe Woland Rimsky Treasurer." ' 'Very clever! ' thought Varenukha, but the instant afterwards he changed his mind : ' No, it's absurd! He can't be i n Yalta! ' Rimsky was meanwhile otherwise engaged. He carefully laid all the telegrams into a pile and together with a copy of h is own telegram, put them into an envelope, sealed it up, wrote a few word s on it and handed it to Varenukha, saying : 'Take this and deliver it at once, Ivan Savye lich. Let them puzzle it out.' 'Now that really is smart! ' thought Varenukh a as he put the envelope into his briefcase. Then just to be absolutely sure he dialled the number of Stepa's flat, listened, then winked mysteriously and made a joyful face. Rimsky craned his neck to listen. 'May I speak to Monsieur Woland, please? ' ask ed Varenukha sweetly. 'He's busy,' answered the receiver in a quave ring voice. ' Who wants him? ' 'Varenukha, house manager of the Variety Theat re.' 'Ivan Savyelich? ' squeaked the earpiece delig htedly. ' How very nice to hear your voice! How are you? ' 'Merci,' replied Varenukha in some consternati on. ' Who's speaking? ' 'This is Koroviev, his assistant and inte rpreter,' trilled the receiver. ' At your service, my dear Ivan Savyelich ! Just tell me what I can do for you. What is it? ' 'I'm sorry ... is Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeye v at home? ' 'Alas, no, he isn't,' cried the telephone. ' H e's gone out.' 'Where to? ' 'He went out of town for a car-ride.' 'Wha-at? Car-ride? When is he coming back? ' 'He said he just wanted a breath of fresh air and then he'd be back.' 'I see . . .' said Varenukha, perplexed. ' Me rci. . . please tell Monsieur Woland that his act this evening starts af ter the second interval.' 'Very good. Of course. At once. Immediately . Certainly. I'll tell him,' came the staccato reply from the earpiece. 'Goodbye,' said Varenukha, in amazement. 'Please accept,' said the telephone, ' my war mest and most sincere good wishes for a brilliant success! It will be a g reat show--great! ' 'There you are--I told you so! ' said the ho use manager excitedly. ' He hasn't gone to Yalta, he's just gone out of town for a drive.' 'Well, if that's the case,' said the treasurer, turning pale with anger, ' he has behaved like an absolute swine!' Here the manager leaped into the air and gave such a shout that Rimsky shuddered. 'I remember! I remember now! There's a new T urkish restaurant out at Pushkino--it's just opened--and it's called the " Y alta "! Don't you see? He went there, got drunk and he's been sending us tele grams from there!' 'Well, he really has overdone it this time,' r eplied Rimsky, his cheek twitching and real anger flashing in his eyes. ' T his little jaunt is going to cost him dear.' He suddenly stopped and added uncertainly : ' But what about those telegrams from the police?' 'A lot of rubbish! More of his practical jokes,' said Varenukha confidently and asked : ' Shall I take this envelop e all the same? ' 'You must,' replied Rimsky. Again the door opened to admit the same woman. ' Oh, not her! ' sighed Rimsky to himself. Both men got up and walked towar ds her. This time the telegram said : 'THANKS CONFIRMATION IDENTITY WIRE ME FIVE HUNDRED ROUBLES POLICE STATION FLYING MOSCOW TOMORROW LIKHODEYEV.' 'He's gone mad,' said Varenukha weakly. Rimsk y rattled his key-chain, took some money out of the safe, counted out five hundred roubles, rang the bell, gave the money to the usher and sent her off to the post office. 'But Grigory Danilovich,' said Varenukha, unab le to believe his eyes, ' if you ask me you're throwing that money away.' 'It'll come back,' replied Rimsky quietly, ' a nd then he'll pay dearly for this little picnic.' And pointing at Varenukha' s briefcase he said : 'Go on, Ivan Savyelich, don't waste any time.' Varenukha picked up his briefcase and trotted off. He went down to the grou nd floor, saw a very long queue outside the box office and heard from th e cashier that she was expecting to have to put up the ' House Full' noti ces that evening because they were being positively overwhelmed since th e special bill had been posted up. Varenukha told her to be sure not to s ell the thirty best seats in the boxes and stalls, then rushed out of the b ox office, fought off the people begging for free tickets and slipped into his own office to pick up his cap. At that moment the telephone rang. ' Yes? ' he shouted. 'Ivan Savyelich? ' enquired the receiver in an odious nasal voice. 'He's not in the theatre! ' Varenukha was just about to shout, but the telephone cut him short: 'Don't play the fool, Ivan Savyelich, and list en. You are not to take those telegrams anywhere or show them to anybody.' 'Who's that? ' roared Varenukha. ' Kindly sto p playing these tricks! You're going to be shown up before long. What's you r telephone number? ' 'Varenukha,' insisted the horrible voice. ' You understand Russian don't you? Don't take those telegrams.' 'So you refuse to stop this game do you? ' sh outed the house manager in a rage. ' Now listen to me--you're going to p ay for this!' He went on shouting threats but stopped when he realised tha t no one was listening to him on the other end. At that moment his office began to darken. Va renukha ran out, slammed the door behind him and went out into the garden th rough the side door. He felt excited and full of energy. After tha t last insolent telephone call he no longer had any doubt that some gang of h ooligans was playing some nasty practical joke and that the joke was conn ected with Likhodeye