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 some  aren't,' the critic  Ababkov droned from the
window-sill.
     Bos'n George's little eyes lit up with glee,  and  she said,  softening
her contralto:
     We mustn't be envious, comrades. There's  twenty-two dachas [4] in all,
and  only  seven more  being  built,  and  there's  three thousand of  us in
Massolit.'
     `Three thousand  one  hundred  and  eleven,'  someone  put in from  the
corner.
     'So you see,' the Bos'n went on, 'what can be done? Naturally, it's the
most talented of us that got the dachas...'
     'The generals!' Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble.
     Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room.
     'Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,' Glukharev said behind him.
     `Lavrovich  has six  to himself,'  Deniskin cried  out, `and the dining
room's panelled in oak!'
     'Eh,  that's not the point right now,' Ababkov droned, 'it's that  it's
half past eleven.'
     A clamour  arose,  something like  rebellion was brewing. They  started
telephoning hated Perelygino,  got the wrong  dacha, Lavrovich's, found  out
that Lavrovich  had gone to the river, which made them  totally  upset. They
called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 950, and of
course found no one there.
     'He might have called!' shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant.
     Ah,  they were shouting in  vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not  call
anywhere.   Far,   far   from  Griboedov's,  in  an  enormous  room  lit  by
thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had  still recently been
Mikhail Alexandrovich.
     On the  first  lay the  naked body,  covered with dried blood,  one arm
broken,  the  chest  caved in; on the  second, the head with the front teeth
knocked out, with dull, open  eyes unafraid of  the brightest light;  and on
the third, a pile of stiffened rags.
     Near the  beheaded body  stood  a  professor  of  forensic medicine,  a
pathological  anatomist   and   his  dissector,   representatives   of   the
investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich's assistant in Massolit, the writer
Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife's side.
     A car had come  for Zheldybin and first of  all taken him together with
the  investigators  (this was around midnight) to the  dead man's apartment,
where the sealing of his papers had  been  carried out, after which they all
went to the morgue.
     And now those standing by the remains of  the  deceased  were  debating
what was the  better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to
lay out  the body in  the hall at Griboedov's after simply covering the dead
man snugly to the chin with a black cloth?
     No, Mikhail  Alexandrovich  could  not  call  anywhere,  and  Deniskin,
Glukharev  and  Quant,  along  with Beskudnikov, were  being  indignant  and
shouting quite  in vain.  Exactly at  midnight, all  twelve writers left the
upper  floor  and  descended  to the  restaurant. Here again  they  silently
berated Mikhail  Alexandrovich: all the  tables on  the  veranda, naturally,
were  occupied, and  they  had to stay for  supper  in those  beautiful  but
airless halls.
     And  exactly  at  midnight,  in  the first of  these  halls,  something
crashed, jangled,  spilled,  leaped.  And  all  at once a  high  male  voice
desperately cried out 'Hallelujah!' to the music. The  famous Griboedov jazz
band  struck up. Sweat-covered  faces  seemed to brighten,  it was as if the
horses painted on the  ceiling  came alive, the lamps  seemed to  shine with
added light, and suddenly, as if tearing loose, both halls broke into dance,
and following them the veranda broke into dance.
     Glukharev danced  with  the poetess  Tamara Polumesyats, Quant  danced,
Zhukopov the novelist danced with some movie actress in a yellow dress.
     Dragunsky  danced, Cherdakchi danced,  little  Deniskin danced with the
enormous Bos'n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in
the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited
guests  danced,  Muscovites  and  out-of-towners,  the  writer  Johann  from
Kronstadt, a certain Vitya  Kuftik from Rostov, apparently a stage director,
with  a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent  representatives of
the  poetry  section  of  Massolit danced - that  is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky,
Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak - young men of unknown profession,
in  crew  cuts,  with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very  elderly
danced,  a shred  of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him  danced  a
sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.
     Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer  over their
heads, shouting hoarsely and  with hatred:  'Excuse  me, citizen!' Somewhere
through a  megaphone a voice commanded: `One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas!
Home-style tripe!' The high voice no longer sang, but howled 'Hallelujah!'
     The clashing of  golden cymbals in  the band sometimes even drowned out
the  clashing of dishes, which the dishwashers sent down a sloping  chute to
the kitchen. In short - hell.
     And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome  dark-eyed
man with a  dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat,  stepped on to the veranda and
cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to  say, the mystics  used to
say, that there was  a  time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a
wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was
tied with  scarlet  silk, and under his command a  brig sailed the Caribbean
under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
     But no, no!  The  seductive  mystics  are lying, there are no Caribbean
Seas  in the  world, no  desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases
after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the  waves. There  is nothing, and
there was nothing!  There  is that sickly linden over  there,  there is  the
cast-iron  fence, and  the boulevard beyond it... And the  ice is melting in
the bowl, and at  the  next table you see someone's  bloodshot, bovine eyes,
and you're afraid, afraid... Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!...
     And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table:  'Berlioz!!' The jazz
broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. 'What, what,
what, what?!!' 'Berlioz!!!' And they began jumping up, exclaiming...
     Yes,  a  wave of grief billowed up  at the  terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about,  crying  that it was necessary at once,
straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram
and send it off immediately.
     But what telegram, may we ask,  and where? And why  send it? And where,
indeed?  And  what possible  need for  any telegram  does someone have whose
flattened pate  is now clutched  in the dissector's rubber hands, whose neck
the  professor is now  piercing with curved  needles? He's dead, and has  no
need of any telegrams. It's  all  over, let's not burden the telegraph wires
any more.
     Yes, he's dead, dead... But, as for us, we're alive!
     Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for  a while, but then began
to subside, and somebody  went back to his  table and  -  sneakily at first,
then openly - drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really,  can one let
chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?
     By going hungry? But, after all, we're alive!
     Naturally, the grand piano was locked, the jazz band dispersed, several
journalists left for their offices to write obituaries. It became known that
Zheldybin  had  come  from  the  morgue.  He  had  installed himself in  the
deceased's office upstairs, and the rumour spread at once that it was he who
would  replace Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned from the  restaurant  all  twelve
members of  the  board, and at  the  urgently convened meeting in  Berlioz's
office they started a discussion of the pressing questions of decorating the
hall  with columns at  Griboedov's, of transporting the body from the morgue
to that hall, of opening it to the public, and all else  connected with  the
sad event.
     And  the  restaurant began to live  its usual nocturnal  life and would
have gone on living it  until closing  time, that is, until four o'clock  in
the morning, had it not  been for an  occurrence which was completely out of
the  ordinary and which struck the restaurant's clientele much more than the
news of Berlioz's death.
     The first to  take alarm were the coachmen  [5] waiting at the gates of
the Griboedov house. One of them, rising on his box, was heard to cry out:
     'Hoo-ee! Just look at that!'
     After  which, from God knows  where,  a  little  light flashed  by  the
cast-iron fence and began  to  approach the  veranda.  Those sitting at  the
tables began  to get up and peer at  it, and saw  that along with the little
light a white  ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right
up  to  the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at  their tables, chunks  of
sterlet on  their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who  at that  moment had
stepped out of the  restaurant coatroom to have a smoke in the yard, stamped
out  his  cigarette and  made  for the  ghost with  the obvious intention of
barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so,  and
stopped, smiling stupidly.
     And  the  ghost, passing  through  an  opening in  the trellis, stepped
unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all,
but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.
     He was barefoot,  in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse,  with a paper icon
bearing  the image of an  unknown saint pinned to  the  breast of it  with a
safety  pin, and  was  wearing striped  white  drawers.  In  his  hand  Ivan
Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich's right cheek
was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the
silence that reigned on the  veranda. Beer could be seen  running down on to
the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter's hand.
     The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly:
     'Hail,  friends!'  After which he p