Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997)
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...! Hewill hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear, he will protect us from Pilate
the destroyer!'
'Oh, no!' Pilate exclaimed, and he felt lighter and lighter with every
word: there was no more need to pretend, no more need to choose his words,
`you have complained about me too much to Caesar, and now my hour has come,
Kaifa! Now the message will fly from me, and not to the governor in Antioch,
and not to Rome, but directly to Capreae, to the emperor himself, the
message of how you in Yershalaim are sheltering known criminals from death.
And then it will not be water from Solomon's Pool that I give Yershalaim to
drink, as I wanted to do for your own good! No, not water! Remember how on
account of you I had to remove the shields with the emperor's insignia from
the walls, had to transfer troops, had, as you see, to come in person to
look into what goes on with you here! Remember my words: it is not just one
cohort that you will see here in Yershalaim, High Priest - no! The whole
Fulminata legion will come under the city walls, the Arabian cavalry will
arrive, and then you will hear bitter weeping and wailing! You will remember
Bar-Rabban then, whom you saved, and you will regret having sent to his
death a philosopher with his peaceful preaching!'
The high priest's face became covered with blotches, his eyes burned.
Like the procurator, he smiled, baring his teeth, and replied:
`Do you yourself believe what you are saying now, Procurator? No, you
do not! It is not peace, not peace, that the seducer of the people of
Yershalaim brought us, and you, equestrian, understand that perfectly well.
You wanted to release him so that he could disturb the people, outrage the
faith, and bring the people under Roman swords! But I, the high priest of
the Jews, as long as I live, will not allow the faith to be outraged and
will protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?' And Kaifa raised his arm
menacingly: 'Listen, Procurator!'
Kaifa fell silent, and the procurator again heard a noise as if of the
sea, rolling up to the very walls of the garden of Herod the Great. The
noise rose from below to the feet and into the face of the procurator. And
behind his back, there, beyond the wings of the palace, came alarming
trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clanking of iron.
The procurator understood that the Roman infantry was already setting
out, on his orders, speeding to the parade of death so terrible for rebels
and robbers.
`Do you hear, Procurator?' the high priest repeated quietly. 'Are you
going to tell me that all this' - here the high priest raised both arms and
the dark hood fell from his head - 'has been caused by the wretched robber
Bar-Rabban?'
The procurator wiped his wet, cold forehead with the back of his hand,
looked at the ground, then, squinting at the sky, saw that the red-hot ball
was almost over his head and that Kaifa's shadow had shrunk to nothing by
the lion's tail, and said quietly and indifferently:
'It's nearly noon. We got carried away by our conversation, and yet we
must proceed.'
Having apologized in refined terms before the high priest, he invited
him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and wait until he
summoned the other persons needed for the last brief conference and gave one
more instruction connected with the execution.
Kaifa bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and stayed in the
garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he told the secretary,
who had been waiting for him, to invite to the garden the legate of the
legion and the tribune of the cohort, as well as the two members of the
Sanhedrin and the head of the temple guard, who had been awaiting his
summons on the lower garden terrace, in a round gazebo with a fountain. To
this Pilate added that he himself would come out to the garden at once, and
withdrew into the palace.
While the secretary was gathering the conference, the procurator met,
in a room shielded from the sun by dark curtains, with a certain man, whose
face was half covered by a hood, though he could not have been bothered by
the sun's rays in this room. The meeting was a very short one. The
procurator quietly spoke a few words to the man, after which he withdrew and
Pilate walked out through the colonnade to the garden.
There, in the presence of all those he had desired to see, the
procurator solemnly and dryly stated that he confirmed the death sentence on
Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and officially inquired of the members of the Sanhedrin as
to whom among the criminals they would like to grant life. Having received
the reply that it was Bar-Rabban, the procurator said:
Very well,' and told the secretary to put it into the record at once,
clutched in his hand the clasp that the secretary had picked up from the
sand, and said solemnly: It is time!'
Here all those present started down the wide marble stairway between
walls of roses that exuded a stupefying aroma, descending lower and lower
towards the palace wall, to the gates opening on to the big, smoothly paved
square, at the end of which could be seen the columns and statues of the
Yershalaim stadium.
As soon as the group entered the square from the garden and mounted the
spacious stone platform that dominated the square, Pilate, looking around
through narrowed eyelids, assessed the situation.
The space he had just traversed, that is, the space from the palace
wall to the platform, was empty, but before him Pilate could no longer see
the square - it had been swallowed up by the crowd, which would have poured
over the platform and the cleared space as well, had it not been kept at bay
by a triple row of Sebastean soldiers to the left of Pilate and soldiers of
the auxiliary Iturean cohort to his right.
And so, Pilate mounted the platform, mechanically clutching the useless
clasp in his fist and squinting his eyes. The procurator was squinting not
because the sun burned his eyes - no! For some reason he did not want to see
the group of condemned men who, as he knew perfectly well, were now being
brought on to the platform behind him.
As soon as the white cloak with crimson lining appeared high up on the
stone cliff over the verge of the human sea, the unseeing Pilate was struck
in the ears by a wave of sound: 'Ha-a-a...' It started mutedly, arising
somewhere far away by the hippodrome, then became thunderous and, having
held out for a few seconds, began to subside. They've seen me,' the
procurator thought. The wave had not reached its lowest point before it
started swelling again unexpectedly and, swaying, rose higher than the
first, and as foam boils up on the billows of the sea, so a whistling boiled
up on this second wave and, separate, distinguishable from the thunder, the
wails of women. They've been led on to the platform,' thought Pilate, `and
the wails mean that several women got crushed as the crowd surged forward.'
He waited for some time, knowing that no power could silence the crowd
before it exhaled all that was pent up in it and fell silent of itself.
And when this moment came, the procurator threw up his right arm, and
the last noise was blown away from the crowd.
Then Pilate drew into his breast as much of the hot air as he could and
shouted, and his cracked voice carried over thousands of heads:
'In the name of the emperor Caesar! ...'
Here his ears were struck several times by a clipped iron shout: the
cohorts of soldiers raised high their spears and standards and shouted out
terribly:
'Long live Caesar!'
Pilate lifted his face and thrust it straight into the sun. Green fire
flared up behind his eyelids, his brain took flame from it, and hoarse
Aramaic words went flying over the crowd:
`Four criminals, arrested in Yershalaim for murder, incitement to
rebellion, and outrages against the laws and the faith, have been sentenced
to a shameful execution - by hanging on posts! And this execution will
presently be carried out on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are
Dysmas, Gestas, Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri. Here they stand before you!'
Pilate pointed to his right, not seeing any criminals, but knowing they
were there, in place, where they ought to be.
The crowd responded with a long rumble as if of surprise or relief.
When it died down, Pilate continued:
'But only three of them will be executed, for, in accordance with law
and custom, in honour of the feast of Passover, to one of the condemned, as
chosen by the Lesser Sanhedrin and confirmed by Roman authority, the
magnanimous emperor Caesar will return his contemptible life!'
Pilate cried out the words and at the same time listened as the rumble
was replaced by a great silence. Not a sigh, not a rustle reached his ears
now, and there was even a moment when it seemed to Pilate that everything
around him had vanished altogether. The hated city died, and he alone is
standing there, scorched by the sheer rays, his face set against the sky.
Pilate held the silence a little longer, and then began to cry out:
'The name of the one who will now be set free before you is...' He made
one more pause, holding back the name, making sure he had said all, because
he knew that the dead city would resurrect once the name of the lucky man
was spoken, and no further words would be heard. 'All?' Pilate whispered
soundlessly to himself. 'All. The name!' And, rolling the letter 'r' over
the silent city, he cried:
'Bar-Rabban!'
Here it seemed to him that the sun, clanging, burst over him and
flooded his ears with fire. This fire raged with roars, shrieks, wails,
guffaws and whistles.
Pilate turned and walked back across the platform to the stairs,
looking at nothing except the multicoloured squares of the flooring under
his feet, so as not to trip. He knew that behind his back the platform was
being showered with bronze coins, dates, that people in the howling mob were
climbing on shoulders, crushing each other, to see the miracle with their
own eyes - how a man already in the grip of death escaped that grip! How the
legionaries take the ropes off him, involuntarily causing him burning pain
in his arms, dislocated during his interrogation; how he, wincing and
groaning, nevertheless smiles a senseless, crazed smile.
He knew that at the same time the convoy was already leading the three
men with bound arms to the side stairs, so as to take them to the road going
west from the city, towards Bald Mountain. Only when he was off the
platform, to the rear of it, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was
now safe - he could no longer see the condemned men.
Mingled with the wails of the quieting crowd, yet distinguishable from
them, were the piercing cries of heralds repeating, some in Aramaic, others
in Greek, all that the procurator had cried out from the platform. Besides
that, there came to his ears the tapping, clattering and approaching thud of
hoofs, and a trumpet calling out something brief and merry. These sounds
were answered by the drilling whistles of boys on the roofs of houses along
the street that led from the bazaar to the hippodrome square, and by cries
of 'Look out!'
A soldier, standing alone in the cleared space of the square with a
standard in his hand, waved it anxiously, and then the procurator, the
legate of the legion, the secretary and the convoy stopped.
A cavalry ala, at an ever-lengthening trot, flew out into the square,
so as to cross it at one side, bypassing the mass of people, and ride down a
lane under a stone wall covered with creeping vines, taking the shortest
route to Bald Mountain.
At a flying trot, small as a boy, dark as a mulatto, the commander of
the ala, a Syrian, coming abreast of Pilate, shouted something in a high
voice and snatched his sword from its sheath. The angry, sweating black
horse shied and reared. Thrusting his sword back into its sheath, the
commander struck the horse's neck with his crop, brought him down, and rode
off into the lane, breaking into a gallop. After him, three by three,
horsemen flew in a cloud of dust, the tips of their light bamboo lances
bobbing, and faces dashed past the procurator - looking especially swarthy
under their white turbans - with merrily bared, gleaming teeth.
Raising dust to the sky, the ala burst into the lane, and the last to
ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet slung on his back, blazing in
the sun.
Shielding himself from the dust with his hand and wrinkling his face
discontentedly, Pilate started on in the direction of the gates to the
palace garden, and after him came the legate, the secretary, and the convoy.
It was around ten o'clock in the morning.
CHAPTER 3. The Seventh Proof
'Yes, it was around ten o'clock in the morning, my esteemed Ivan
Nikolaevich,' said the professor.
The poet passed his hand over his face like a man just coming to his
senses, and saw that it was evening at the Patriarch's Ponds. The water in
the pond had turned black, and a light boat was now gliding on it, and one
could hear the splash of oars and the giggles of some citizeness in the
little boat. The public appeared on the benches along the walks, but again
on the other three sides of the square, and not on the side where our
interlocutors were.
The sky over Moscow seemed to lose colour, and the full moon could be
seen quite distinctly high above, not yet golden but white. It was much
easier to breathe, and the voices under the lindens now sounded softer,
eveningish.
`How is it I didn't notice that he'd managed to spin a whole story?...'
Homeless thought in amazement. 'It's already evening! ... Or maybe he wasn't
telling it, but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it all?'
But it must be supposed that the professor did tell the story after
all, otherwise it would have to be assumed that Berlioz had had the same
dream, because he said, studying the foreigner's face attentively:
'Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not
coincide at all with the Gospel stories.'
'Good heavens,' the professor responded, smiling condescendingly, 'you
of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the
Gospels ever actually took place, and if we start referring to the Gospels
as a historical source...' he smiled once more, and Berlioz stopped short,
because this was literally the same thing he had been saying to Homeless as
they walked down Bronnaya towards the Patriarch's Ponds.
'That's so,' Berlioz replied, 'but I'm afraid no one can confirm that
what you've just told us actually took place either.'
'Oh, yes! That there is one who can!' the professor, beginning to speak
in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected
mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer.
They leaned towards him from both sides, and he said, but again without
any accent, which with him, devil knows why, now appeared, now disappeared:
The thing is...' here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke
in a whisper, `that I was personally present at it all. I was on Pontius
Pilate's balcony, and in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the
platform, only secretly, incognito, so to speak, and therefore I beg you -
not a word to anyone, total secrecy, shh...'
Silence fell, and Berlioz paled.
'YOU ... how long have you been in Moscow?' he asked in a quavering
voice.
'I just arrived in Moscow this very minute,' the professor said
perplexedly, and only here did it occur to the friends to take a good look
in his eyes, at which they became convinced that his left eye, the green
one, was totally insane, while the right one was empty, black and dead.
'There's the whole explanation for you!' Berlioz thought in
bewilderment. 'A mad German has turned up, or just went crazy at the Ponds.
What a story!'
Yes, indeed, that explained the whole thing: the strangest breakfast
with the late philosopher Kant, the foolish talk about sunflower oil and
Annushka, the predictions about his head being cut off and all the rest -
the professor was mad.
Berlioz realized at once what had to be done. Leaning back on the
bench, he winked to Homeless behind the professor's back - meaning, don't
contradict him - but the perplexed poet did not understand these signals.
'Yes, yes, yes,' Berlioz said excitedly, `incidentally it's all
possible... even very possible, Pontius Pilate, and the balcony, and so
forth... Did you come alone or with your wife?'
'Alone, alone, I'm always alone,' the professor replied bitterly.
'And where are your things, Professor?' Berlioz asked insinuatingly.
'At the Metropol?* Where are you staying?'
'I? ... Nowhere,' the half-witted German answered, his green eye
wandering in wild anguish over the Patriarch's Ponds.
'How's that? But ... where are you going to live?'
'In your apartment,' the madman suddenly said brashly, and winked.
'I ... I'm very glad ...' Berlioz began muttering, 'but, really, you
won't be comfortable at my place ... and they have wonderful rooms at the
Metropol, it's a first-class hotel...'
'And there's no devil either?' the sick man suddenly inquired merrily
of Ivan Nikolaevich.
'No devil...'
'Don't contradict him,' Berlioz whispered with his lips only, dropping
behind the professor's back and making faces.
There isn't any devil!' Ivan Nikolaevich, at a loss from all this
balderdash, cried out not what he ought. 'What a punishment! Stop playing
the psycho!'
Here the insane man burst into such laughter that a sparrow flew out of
the linden over the seated men's heads.
'Well, now that is positively interesting!' the professor said, shaking
with laughter. 'What is it with you - no matter what one asks for, there
isn't any!' He suddenly stopped laughing and, quite understandably for a
mentally ill person, fell into the opposite extreme after laughing, became
vexed and cried sternly: 'So you mean there just simply isn't any?'
'Calm down, calm down, calm down, Professor,' Berlioz muttered, for
fear of agitating the sick man. 'You sit here for a little minute with
comrade Homeless, and I'll just run to the corner to make a phone call, and
then we'll take you wherever you like. You don't know the city...'
Berlioz's plan must be acknowledged as correct: he had to run to the
nearest public telephone and inform the foreigners' bureau, thus and so,
there's some consultant from abroad sitting at the Patriarch's Ponds in an
obviously abnormal state. So it was necessary to take measures, lest some
unpleasant nonsense result.
To make a call? Well, then make your call,' the sick man agreed sadly,
and suddenly begged passionately: `But I implore you, before you go, at
least believe that the devil exists! I no longer ask you for anything more.
Mind you, there exists a seventh proof of it, the surest of all! And it
is going to be presented to you right now!'
'Very good, very good,' Berlioz said with false tenderness and, winking
to the upset poet, who did not relish at all the idea of guarding the mad
German, set out for the exit from the Ponds at the corner of Bronnaya and
Yermolaevsky Lane.
And the professor seemed to recover his health and brighten up at once.
'Mikhail Alexandrovich!' he shouted after Berlioz.
The latter gave a start, looked back, but reassured himself with the
thought that the professor had also learned his name and patronymic from
some newspaper.
Then the professor called out, cupping his hands like a megaphone:
`Would you like me to have a telegram sent at once to your uncle in
Kiev?'
And again Berlioz winced. How does the madman know about the existence
of a Kievan uncle? That has certainly never been mentioned in any
newspapers. Oh-oh, maybe Homeless is right after all? And suppose his papers
are phoney? Ah, what a strange specimen ... Call, call! Call at once!
They'll quickly explain him!
And, no longer listening to anything, Berlioz ran on.
Here, just at the exit to Bronnaya, there rose from a bench to meet the
editor exactly the same citizen who in the sunlight earlier had formed
himself out of the thick swelter. Only now he was no longer made of air, but
ordinary, fleshly, and Berlioz clearly distinguished in the beginning
twilight that he had a little moustache like chicken feathers, tiny eyes,
ironic and half drunk, and checkered trousers pulled up so high that his
dirty white socks showed.
Mikhail Alexandrovich drew back, but reassured himself by reflecting
that it was a stupid coincidence and that generally there was no time to
think about it now.
'Looking for the turnstile, citizen?' the checkered type inquired in a
cracked tenor. This way, please! Straight on and you'll get where you're
going. How about a little pint pot for my information ... to set up an
ex-choirmaster!...' Mugging, the specimen swept his jockey's cap from his
head.
Berlioz, not stopping to listen to the cadging and clowning
choirmaster, ran up to the turnstile and took hold of it with his hand. He
turned it and was just about to step across the rails when red and white
light splashed in his face. A sign lit up in a glass box: 'Caution
Tram-Car!'
And right then this tram-car came racing along, turning down the newly
laid line from Yermolaevsky to Bronnaya. Having turned, and coming to the
straight stretch, it suddenly lit up inside with electricity, whined, and
put on speed.
The prudent Berlioz, though he was standing in a safe place, decided to
retreat behind the stile, moved his hand on the crossbar, and stepped back.
And right then his hand slipped and slid, one foot, unimpeded, as if on
ice, went down the cobbled slope leading to the rails, the other was thrust
into the air, and Berlioz was thrown on to the rails.
Trying to get hold of something, Berlioz fell backwards, the back of
his head lightly striking the cobbles, and had time to see high up - but
whether to right or left he no longer knew - the gold-tinged moon. He
managed to turn on his side, at the same moment drawing his legs to his
stomach in a frenzied movement, and, while turning, to make out the face,
completely white with horror, and the crimson armband of the woman driver
bearing down on him with irresistible force. Berlioz did not cry out, but
around him the whole street screamed with desperate female voices.
The woman driver tore at the electric brake, the car dug its nose into
the ground, then instantly jumped up, and glass flew from the windows with a
crash and a jingle. Here someone in Berlioz's brain cried desperately: 'Can
it be?...' Once more, and for the last time, the moon flashed, but now
breaking to pieces, and then it became dark.
The tram-car went over Berlioz, and a round dark object was thrown up
the cobbled slope below the fence of the Patriarch's walk. Having rolled
back down this slope, it went bouncing along the cobblestones of the street.
It was the severed head of Berlioz.
CHAPTER 4. The Chase
The hysterical women's cries died down, the police whistles stopped
drilling, two ambulances drove off - one with the headless body and severed
head, to the morgue, the other with the beautiful driver, wounded by broken
glass; street sweepers in white aprons removed the broken glass and poured
sand on the pools of blood, but Ivan Nikolaevich just stayed on the bench as
he had dropped on to it before reaching the turnstile. He tried several
times to get up, but his legs would not obey him - something akin to
paralysis had occurred with Homeless.
The poet had rushed to the turnstile as soon as he heard the first
scream, and had seen the head go bouncing along the pavement. With that he
so lost his senses that, having dropped on to the bench, he bit his hand
until it bled. Of course, he forgot about the mad German and tried to figure
out one thing only: how it could be that he had just been talking with
Berlioz, and a moment later - the head...
Agitated people went running down the walk past the poet, exclaiming
something, but Ivan Nikolaevich was insensible to their words. However, two
women unexpectedly ran into each other near him, and one of them,
sharp-nosed and bare-headed, shouted the following to the other, right next
to the poet's ear:
'...Annushka, our Annushka! From Sadovaya! It's her work... She bought
sunflower oil at the grocery, and went and broke the whole litre-bottle on
the turnstile! Messed her skirt all up, and swore and swore!
... And he, poor man, must have slipped and - right on to the rails...'
Of all that the woman shouted, one word lodged itself in Ivan
Nikolaevich's upset brain: 'Annushka'...
'Annushka... Annushka?' the poet muttered, looking around anxiously.
Wait a minute, wait a minute...'
The word 'Annushka' got strung together with the words 'sunflower oil',
and then for some reason with 'Pontius Pilate'. The poet dismissed Pilate
and began linking up the chain that started from the word `Annushka'. And
this chain got very quickly linked up and led at once to the mad professor.
`Excuse me! But he did say the meeting wouldn't take place because
Annushka had spilled the oil. And, if you please, it won't take place!
What's more, he said straight out that Berlioz's head would be cut off by a
woman?! Yes, yes, yes! And the driver was a woman! What is all this, eh?!'
There was not a grain of doubt left that the mysterious consultant had
known beforehand the exact picture of the terrible death of Berlioz. Here
two thoughts pierced the poet's brain. The first: 'He's not mad in the
least, that's all nonsense!' And the second: Then didn't he set it all up
himself?'
'But in what manner, may we ask?! Ah, no, this we're going to find
out!'
Making a great effort, Ivan Nikolaevich got up from the bench and
rushed back to where he had been talking with the professor. And,
fortunately, it turned out that the man had not left yet.
The street lights were already lit on Bronnaya, and over the Ponds the
golden moon shone, and in the ever-deceptive light of the moon it seemed to
Ivan Nikolaevich that he stood holding a sword, not a walking stick, under
his arm.
The ex-choirmaster was sitting in the very place where Ivan Nikolaevich
had sat just recently. Now the busybody had perched on his nose an obviously
unnecessary pince-nez, in which one lens was missing altogether and the
other was cracked. This made the checkered citizen even more repulsive than
he had been when he showed Berlioz the way to the rails.
With a chill in his heart, Ivan approached the professor and, glancing
into his face, became convinced that there were not and never had been any
signs of madness in that face.
'Confess, who are you?' Ivan asked in a hollow voice.
The foreigner scowled, looked at the poet as if he were seeing him for
the first time, and answered inimically:
'No understand ... no speak Russian. ..'
The gent don't understand,' the choirmaster mixed in from the bench,
though no one had asked him to explain the foreigner's words.
'Don't pretend!' Ivan said threateningly, and felt cold in the pit of
his stomach. 'You spoke excellent Russian just now. You're not a German and
you're not a professor! You're a murderer and a spy!... Your papers!' Ivan
cried fiercely.
The mysterious professor squeamishly twisted his mouth, which was
twisted to begin with, then shrugged his shoulders.
'Citizen!' the loathsome choirmaster butted in again. "What're you
doing bothering a foreign tourist? For that you'll incur severe punishment!'
And the suspicious professor made an arrogant face, turned, and walked
away from Ivan. Ivan felt himself at a loss. Breathless, he addressed the
choirmaster:
'Hey, citizen, help me to detain the criminal! It's your duty!'
The choirmaster became extraordinarily animated, jumped up and
hollered:
`What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal?' The choirmaster's
eyes sparkled gleefully. That one? If he's a criminal, the first thing to do
is shout "Help!" Or else he'll get away. Come on, together now, one, two!'
— and here the choirmaster opened his maw.
Totally at a loss, Ivan obeyed the trickster and shouted 'Help!' but
the choirmaster bluffed him and did not shout anything.
Ivan's solitary, hoarse cry did not produce any good results. Two girls
shied away from him, and he heard the word 'drunk'.
'Ah, so you're in with him!' Ivan cried out, waxing wroth. "What are
you doing, jeering at me? Out of my way!'
Ivan dashed to the right, and so did the choirmaster; Ivan dashed to
the left, and the scoundrel did the same.
`Getting under my feet on purpose?' Ivan cried, turning ferocious.
'I'll hand you over to the police!'
Ivan attempted to grab the blackguard by the sleeve, but missed and
caught precisely nothing: it was as if the choirmaster fell through the
earth.
Ivan gasped, looked into the distance, and saw the hateful stranger. He
was already at the exit to Patriarch's Lane; moreover, he was not alone. The
more than dubious choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was still
not all: the third in this company proved to be a tom-cat, who appeared out
of nowhere, huge as a hog, black as soot or as a rook, and with a desperate
cavalryman's whiskers. The trio set off down Patriarch's Lane, the cat
walking on his hind legs.
Ivan sped after the villains and became convinced at once that it -
would be very difficult to catch up with them.
The trio shot down the lane in an instant and came out on Spiridonovka.
No matter how Ivan quickened his pace, the distance between him and his
quarry never diminished. And before the poet knew it, he emerged, after the
quiet of Spiridonovka, by the Nikitsky Gate, where his situation worsened.
The place was swarming with people. Besides, the gang of villains decided to
apply the favourite trick of bandits here: a scattered getaway.
The choirmaster, with great dexterity, bored his way on to a bus
speeding towards the Arbat Square and slipped away. Having lost one of his
quarries, Ivan focused his attention on the cat and saw this strange cat go
up to the footboard of an 'A' tram waiting at a stop, brazenly elbow aside a
woman, who screamed, grab hold of the handrail, and even make an attempt to
shove a ten-kopeck piece into the conductress's hand through the window,
open on account of the stuffiness.
Ivan was so struck by the cat's behaviour that he froze motionless by
the grocery store on the corner, and here he was struck for a second time,
but much more strongly, by the conductress's behaviour. As soon as she saw
the cat getting into the tram-car, she shouted with a malice that even made
her shake:
'No cats allowed! Nobody with cats allowed! Scat! Get off, or I'll call
the police!'
Neither the conductress nor the passengers were struck by the essence
of the matter: not just that a cat was boarding a tram-car, which would have
been good enough, but that he was going to pay!
The cat turned out to be not only a solvent but also a disciplined
animal. At the very first shout from the conductress, he halted his advance,
got off the footboard, and sat down at the stop, rubbing his whiskers with
the ten-kopeck piece. But as soon as the conductress yanked the cord and the
tram-car started moving off, the cat acted like anyone who has been expelled
from a tram-car but still needs a ride. Letting all three cars go by, the
cat jumped on to the rear coupling-pin of the last one, wrapped its paws
around some hose sticking out of the side, and rode off, thus saving himself
ten kopecks.
Occupied with the obnoxious cat, Ivan almost lost the main one of the
three - the professor. But, fortunately, the man had not managed to slip
away. Ivan saw the grey beret in the throng at the head of Bolshaya
Nikitskaya, now Herzen, Street. In the twinkling of an eye, Ivan arrived
there himself. However, he had no luck. The poet would quicken his pace,
break into a trot, shove passers-by, yet not get an inch closer to the
professor.
Upset as he was, Ivan was still struck by the supernatural speed of the
chase. Twenty seconds had not gone by when, after the Nikitsky Gate, Ivan
Nikolayevich was already dazzled by the lights of the Arbat Square. Another
few seconds, and here was some dark lane with slanting sidewalks, where Ivan
Nikolaevich took a tumble and hurt his knee. Again a lit-up thoroughfare -
Kropotkin Street - then a lane, then Ostozhenka, then another lane, dismal,
vile and sparsely lit. And it was here that Ivan Nikolaevich definitively
lost him whom he needed so much. The professor disappeared.
Ivan Nikolaevich was perplexed, but not for long, because he suddenly
realized that the professor must unfailingly be found in house no. 15, and
most assuredly in apartment 47.
Bursting into the entrance, Ivan Nikolaevich flew up to the second
floor, immediately found the apartment, and rang impatiently. He did not
have to wait long. Some little girl of about five opened the door for Ivan
and, without asking him anything, immediately went away somewhere.
In the huge, extremely neglected front hall, weakly lit by a tiny
carbon arc lamp under the high ceiling, black with grime, a bicycle without
tyres hung on the wall, a huge iron-bound trunk stood, and on a shelf over
the coat rack a winter hat lay, its long ear-flaps hanging down. Behind one
of the doors, a resonant male voice was angrily shouting something in verse
from a radio set.
Ivan Nikolaevich was not the least at a loss in the unfamiliar
surroundings and rushed straight into the corridor, reasoning thus: 'Of
course, he's hiding in the bathroom.' The corridor was dark. Having bumped
into the wall a few times, Ivan saw a faint streak of light under a door,
felt for the handle, and pulled it gently. The hook popped out, and Ivan
found himself precisely in the bathroom and thought how lucky he was.
However, his luck was not all it might have been! Ivan met with a wave
of humid heat and, by the light of the coals smouldering in the boiler, made
out big basins hanging on the walls, and a bath tub, all black frightful
blotches where the enamel had chipped off. And there, in this bath tub,
stood a naked citizeness, all soapy and with a scrubber in her hand. She
squinted near-sightedly at the bursting-in Ivan and, obviously mistaking him
in the infernal light, said softly and gaily:
'Kiriushka! Stop this tomfoolery! Have you lost your mind?... Fyodor
Ivanych will be back any minute. Get out right now!' and she waved at Ivan
with the scrubber.
The misunderstanding was evident, and Ivan Nikolaevich was, of course,
to blame for it. But he did not want to admit it and, exclaiming
reproachfully: 'Ah, wanton creature! ...', at once found himself for some
reason in the kitchen. No one was there, and on the oven in the
semi-darkness silently stood about a dozen extinguished primuses [1].' A
single moonbeam, having seeped through the dusty, perennially unwashed
window, shone sparsely into the corner where, in dust and cobwebs, a
forgotten icon hung, with the ends of two wedding candles [2] peeking out
from behind its casing. Under the big icon, pinned to it, hung a little one
made of paper.
No one knows what thought took hold of Ivan here, but before running
out the back door, he appropriated one of these candles, as well as the
paper icon. With these objects, he left the unknown apartment, muttering
something, embarrassed at the thought of what he had just experienced in the
bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this impudent Kiriushka might be
and whether the disgusting hat with ear-flaps belonged to him.
In the desolate, joyless lane the poet looked around, searching for the
fugitive, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said firmly to himself:
'Why, of course, he's at the Moscow River! Onward!'
Someone ought, perhaps, to have asked Ivan Nikolaevich why he supposed
that the professor was precisely at the Moscow River and not in some other
place. But the trouble was that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome
lane was completely empty.
In the very shortest time, Ivan Nikolaevich could be seen on the
granite steps of the Moscow River amphitheatre. [3]
Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant,
bearded fellow who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting beside a
torn white Tolstoy blouse and a pair of unlaced, worn boots. After waving
his arms to cool off, Ivan dived swallow-fashion into the water.
It took his breath away, so cold the water was, and the thought even
flashed in him that he might not manage to come up to the surface. However,
he did manage to come up, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes rounded in
terror, Ivan Nikolaevich began swimming through the black, oil-smelling
water among the broken zigzags of street lights on the bank.
When the wet Ivan came dancing back up the steps to the place where the
bearded fellow was guarding his clothes, it became clear that not only the
latter, but also the former - that is, the bearded fellow himself - had been
stolen. In the exact spot where the pile of clothes had been, a pair of
striped drawers, the torn Tolstoy blouse, the candle, the icon and a box of
matches had been left. After threatening someone in the distance with his
fist in powerless anger, Ivan put on what was left for him.
Here two considerations began to trouble him: first, that his Massolit
identification card, which he never parted with, was gone, and, second,
whether he could manage to get through Moscow unhindered looking the way he
did now? In striped drawers, after all ... True, it was nobody's business,
but still there might be some hitch or delay.
Ivan tore off the buttons where the drawers fastened at the ankle,
figuring that this way they might pass for summer trousers, gathered up the
icon, the candle and the matches, and started off, saying to himself:
'To Griboedov's! Beyond all doubt, he's there.'
The city was already living its evening life. Trucks flew through the
dust, chains clanking, and on their platforms men lay sprawled belly up on
sacks. All windows were open. In each of these windows a light burned under
an orange lampshade, and from every window, every door, every gateway, roof,
and attic, basement and courtyard blared the hoarse roar of the polonaise
from the opera Evgeny Onegin. [4]
Ivan Nikolaevich's apprehensions proved fully justified: passers-by did
pay attention to him and turned their heads. As a result, he took the
decision to leave the main streets and make his way through back lanes,
where people are not so importunate, where there were fewer chances of them
picking on a barefoot man, pestering him with questions about his drawers,
which stubbornly refused to look like trousers.
This Ivan did, and, penetrating the mysterious network of lanes around
the Arbat, he began making his way along the walls, casting fearful sidelong
glances, turning around every moment, hiding in gateways from time to time,
avoiding intersections with traffic lights and the grand entrances of
embassy mansions.
And all along his difficult way, he was for some reason inexpressibly
tormented by the ubiquitous orchestra that accompanied the heavy basso
singing about his love for Tatiana.
CHAPTER 5. There were Doings at Griboedov's
The old, two-storeyed, cream-coloured house stood on the ring
boulevard, in the depths of a seedy garden, separated from the sidewalk by a
fancy cast-iron fence. The small terrace in front of the house was paved
with asphalt, and in wintertime was dominated by a snow pile with a shovel
stuck in it, but in summertime turned into the most magnificent section of
the summer restaurant under a canvas tent.
The house was called `The House of Griboedov' on the grounds that it
was alleged to have once belonged to an aunt of the writer Alexander
Sergeevich Griboedov. [1] Now, whether it did or did not belong to her, we
do not exactly know. On recollection, it even seems that Griboedov never had
any such house-owning aunt... Nevertheless, that was what the house was
called. Moreover, one Moscow liar had it that there, on the second floor, in
a round hall with columns, the famous writer had supposedly read passages
from Woe From Wit to this very aunt while she reclined on a sofa.
However, devil knows, maybe he did, it's of no importance.
What is important is that at the present time this house was owned by
that same Massolit which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail
Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch's Ponds.
In the casual manner of Massolit members, no one called the house The
House of Griboedov', everyone simply said 'Griboedov's': 'I spent two hours
yesterday knocking about Griboedov's.' 'Well, and so?' `Got myself a month
in Yalta.' 'Bravo!' Or: 'Go to Berlioz, he receives today from four to five
at Griboedov's...' and so on.
Massolit had settled itself at Griboedov's in the best and cosiest way
imaginable. Anyone entering Griboedov's first of all became involuntarily
acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs, and with group as
well as individual photographs of the members of Massolit, hanging (the
photographs) on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor.
On the door to the very first room of this upper floor one could see a
big sign: 'Fishing and Vacation Section', along with the picture of a carp
caught on a line.
On the door of room no. 2 something not quite comprehensible was
written: 'One-day Creative Trips. Apply to M. V. Spurioznaya.'
The next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible
inscription: 'Perelygino'. [2] After which the chance visitor to Griboedov's
would not know where to look from the motley inscriptions on the aunt's
walnut doors: `Sign up for Paper with Poklevkina', `Cashier', 'Personal
Accounts of Sketch-Writers'...
If one cut through the longest line, which already went downstairs and
out to the doorman's lodge, one could see the sign 'Housing Question' on a
door which people were crashing every second.
Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on
which a cliff was depicted and, riding on its crest, a horseman in a felt
cloak with a rifle on his shoulder. A little lower - palm trees and a
balcony; on the balcony - a seated young man with a forelock, gazing
somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand.
The inscription: 'Full-scale Creative Vacations from Two Weeks
(Story/Novella) to One Year (Novel/Trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe,
Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).'[3] There was also a
line at this door, but not an excessive one - some hundred and fifty people.
Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the
Griboedov house, came the `Massolit Executive Board', 'Cashiers nos. 2, 3,
4, 5', 'Editorial Board', 'Chairman of Massolit', 'Billiard Room', various
auxiliary institutions and, finally, that same hall with the colonnade where
the aunt had delighted in the comedy other genius nephew.
Any visitor finding himself in Griboedov's, unless of course he was a
total dim-wit, would realize at once what a good life those lucky fellows,
the Massolit members, were having, and black envy would immediately start
gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven
for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which
there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Massolit membership card, brown,
smelling of costly leather, with a wide gold border - a card known to all
Moscow.
Who will speak in defence of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty
category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor's position.
For what he had seen on the upper floor was not all, and was far from
all.
The entire ground floor of the aunt's house was occupied by a
restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in
Moscow. And not only because it took up two vast halls with arched ceilings,
painted with violet, Assyrian-maned horses, not only because on each table
there stood a lamp shaded with a shawl, not only because it was not
accessible to just anybody coming in off the street, but because in the
quality of its fare Griboedov's beat any restaurant in Moscow up and down,
and this fare was available at the most reasonable, by no means onerous,
price.
Hence there was nothing surprising, for instance, in the following
conversation, which the author of these most truthful lines once heard near
the cast-iron fence of Griboedov's:
'Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?'
`What a question! Why, here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald
Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there will be perch au naturel
done to order. A virtuoso little treat!'
`You sure know how to live, Amvrosy!' skinny, run-down Foka, with a
carbuncle on his neck, replied with a sigh to the ruddy-lipped giant,
golden-haired, plump-cheeked Amvrosy-the-poet.
`I have no special knowledge,' Amvrosy protested, 'just the ordinary
wish to live like a human being. You mean to say, Foka that perch can be met
with at the Coliseum as well. But at the Coliseum a portion of perch costs
thirteen roubles fifteen kopecks, and here - five-fifty! Besides, at the
Coliseum they serve three-day-old perch, and, besides, there's no guarantee
you won't get slapped in the mug with a bunch of grapes at the Coliseum by
the first young man who bursts in from Theatre Alley. No, I'm categorically
opposed to the Coliseum,' the gastronome Amvrosy boomed for the whole
boulevard to hear. 'Don't try to convince me, Foka!'
'I'm not trying to convince you, Amvrosy,' Foka squeaked. 'One can also
dine at home.'
`I humbly thank you,' trumpeted Amvrosy, 'but I can imagine your wife,
in the communal kitchen at home, trying to do perch au naturel to order in a
saucepan! Hee, hee, hee! ... Aurevwar, Foka!' And, humming, Amvrosy directed
his steps to the veranda under the tent.
Ahh, yes! ... Yes, there was a time! ... Old Muscovites will remember
the renowned Griboedov's! What is poached perch done to order!
Cheap stuff, my dear Amvrosy! But sterlet, sterlet in a silvery chafing
dish, sterlet slices interlaid with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? And
eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree in little dishes? And how did you like
the fillets of thrush? With truffles? Quail a la genoise? Nine-fifty! And
the jazz, and the courteous service! And in July, when the whole family is
in the country, and you are kept in the city by urgent literary business -
on the veranda, in the shade of the creeping vines, in a golden spot on the
cleanest of tablecloths, a bowl of soup printanier? Remember, Amvrosy? But
why ask! I can see by your lips that you do. What is your whitefish, your
perch! But the snipe, the great snipe, the jack snipe, the woodcock in their
season, the quail, the curlew? Cool seltzer fizzing in your throat?! But
enough, you are getting distracted, reader! Follow me!...
At half past ten on the evening when Berlioz died at the Patriarch's
Ponds, only one room was lit upstairs at Griboedov's, and in it languished
twelve writers who had gathered for a meeting and were waiting for Mikhail
Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, and on tables, and even on the two window-sills in
the office of the Massolit executive board, they suffered seriously from the
heat. Not a single breath of fresh air came through the open windows. Moscow
was releasing the heat accumulated in the asphalt all day, and it was clear
that night would bring no relief. The smell of onions came from the basement
of the aunt's house, where the restaurant kitchen was at work, they were all
thirsty, they were all nervous and angry.
The belletrist Beskudnikov - a quiet, decently dressed man with
attentive and at the same time elusive eyes - took out his watch. The hand
was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the face and
showed it to the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting next to him on the table
and in boredom dangling his feet shod in yellow shoes with rubber treads.
'Anyhow,' grumbled Dvubratsky.
"The laddie must've got stuck on the Klyazma,' came the thick-voiced
response of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphan of a Moscow merchant,
who had become a writer and wrote stories about sea battles under the
pen-name of Bos'n George.
'Excuse me!' boldly exclaimed Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches,
'but I personally would prefer a spot of tea on the balcony to stewing in
here. The meeting was set for ten o'clock, wasn't it?'
'It's nice now on the Klyazma,' Bos'n George needled those present,
knowing that Perelygino on the Klyazma, the country colony for writers, was
everybody's sore spot. 'There's nightingales singing already. I always work
better in the country, especially in spring.'
'It's the third year I've paid in so as to send my wife with goitre to
this paradise, but there's nothing to be spied amidst the waves,' the
novelist Ieronym Poprikhin said venomously and bitterly.
'Some are lucky and so...
