eeked  under  the nearest  table and
exclaimed ruefully: 'No, he's not there!'
     Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly:
     That's it. Delirium tremens.'
     And the second, a woman's, frightened, uttered the words:
     'How could the police let him walk the streets like that?'
     This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied:
     They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but  I
hopped  over  the  fence  and,  as you  can see,  cut  my cheek!'  Here Ivan
Nikolaevich  raised the candle and cried out: 'Brethren in literature!' (His
hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) 'Listen to me everyone! He has
appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he'll do untold harm!'
     'What? What?  What did he say? Who  has appeared?' voices came from all
sides.
     The  consultant,' Ivan replied, `and this consultant just  killed Misha
Berlioz at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
     Here people came flocking to  the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd
gathered around Ivan's flame.
     `Excuse me, excuse me, be  more precise,' a soft and polite voice  said
over Ivan Nikolaevich's ear, 'tell me, what do you mean "killed"?
     Who killed?'
     'A  foreign  consultant, a professor, and a  spy,'  Ivan  said, looking
around.
     'And what is his name?' came softly to Ivan's ear. That's just it - his
name!' Ivan  cried in anguish. 'If only I knew  his  name! I didn't make out
his name on his visiting card... I only remember  the first letter, "W", his
name begins with "W"! What last  name begins  with "W"?' Ivan asked himself,
clutching his forehead, and suddenly  started muttering: 'Wi, we,  wa ... Wu
... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?' The hair on Ivan's head
began to crawl with the tension.
     'Wolf?' some woman cried pitifully.
     Ivan became angry.
     'Fool!' he cried, seeking the  woman with his  eyes. "What has Wolf got
to do  with it? Wolf's  not to blame for anything! Wo, wa... No,  I'll never
remember this way! Here's what, citizens: call the police at once,  let them
send  out  five motor  cycles with machine-guns to catch the  professor. And
don't  forget  to tell them  that  there are  two  others with  him:  a long
checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black  and fat... And meanwhile
I'll search Griboedov's, I sense that he's here!'
     Ivan  became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving
the  candle,  pouring  wax on  himself, and looking under  the tables.  Here
someone said:  `Call a  doctor!'  and  someone's benign, fleshy face,  clean
shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.
     'Comrade  Homeless,' the face began in  a guest speaker's voice,  'calm
down! You're upset at the death of  our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich... no,
say  just  Misha  Berlioz. We all  understand that perfectly well. You  need
rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you'll forget...'
     'You,' Ivan  interrupted, baring his teeth, "but  don't  you understand
that  the  professor  has to  be  caught?  And  you come  at  me  with  your
foolishness! Cretin!'
     `Pardon  me,   Comrade  Homeless!...'   the  face  replied,   blushing,
retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.
     'No, anyone else, but  you  I will not  pardon,' Ivan Nikolaevich  said
with quiet hatred.
     A spasm distorted  his  face,  he quickly  shifted  the candle from his
right  hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the
ear.
     Here  it occurred  to them  to  fall upon  Ivan - and so they did.  The
candle  went out,  and  the  glasses  that had  fallen  from  the  face were
instantly  trampled.  Ivan  let  out  a  terrible  war  cry,  heard,  to the
temptation of all,  even  on the boulevard, and set about defending himself.
Dishes fell clattering from the tables, women screamed.
     All  the while the waiters  were tying  up the  poet  with  napkins,  a
conversation was going on in the coatroom between the commander  of the brig
and the doorman.
     'Didn't you see he was in his underpants?' the pirate inquired coldly.
     'But, Archibald  Archibaldovich,'  the doorman replied, cowering,  'how
could I not let him in, if he's a  member of Massolit?' 'Didn't  you see  he
was  in  his  underpants?'  the  pirate  repeated.   'Pardon  me,  Archibald
Archibaldovich,' the doorman said, turning purple,  'but what  could I do? I
understand, there are ladies sitting on the veranda...'
     `Ladies  have nothing  to do with it,  it makes  no  difference to  the
ladies,' the pirate replied, literally burning the doorman up with his eyes,
'but it does  to the police! A man in his underwear can walk the  streets of
Moscow only in this one case,  that he's accompanied by the police, and only
to one place - the police station!  And  you, if  you're a doorman, ought to
know that on seeing  such a man, you must,  without a  moment's delay, start
blowing  your whistle.  Do you  hear? Do  you hear  what's going on  on  the
veranda?'
     Here the half-crazed doorman heard some sort of hooting coming from the
veranda, the smashing of dishes and women's screams.
     'Now, what's to be done with you for that?' the freebooter asked.
     The skin on the doorman's face acquired a typhoid tinge, his eyes  went
dead.  It  seemed to him  that  the black hair,  now combed and parted,  was
covered  with  flaming silk. The shirt-front and  tailcoat disappeared and a
pistol  butt  emerged,  tucked  into  a leather belt. The  doorman  pictured
himself hanging from  the  fore-topsail yard.  His eyes saw his  own  tongue
sticking  out and his lifeless head  lolling on his shoulder, and even heard
the splash of waves against the hull. The doorman's knees gave way. But here
the freebooter took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.
     `Watch out,  Nikolai, this  is the last  time! We have no need  of such
doormen in the restaurant. Go find yourself  a job as a beadle.' Having said
this,  the commander  commanded precisely,  clearly,  rapidly: `Get Pantelei
from the snack bar. Police. Protocol. A car. To the psychiatric clinic.' And
added: 'Blow your whistle!'
     In a quarter of an hour an extremely  astounded public, not only in the
restaurant but on the  boulevard itself and in the windows of houses looking
on  to the restaurant  garden, saw Pantelei,  the doorman,  a  policeman,  a
waiter and the poet  Riukhin carry through the gates of Griboedov's a  young
man swaddled like  a doll, dissolved in tears, who spat, aiming precisely at
Riukhin, and shouted for all the boulevard to hear:
     'You bastard! ... You bastard!...'
     A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him
a coachman, rousing his  horse, slapping it on  the croup with violet reins,
shouted:
     'Have a run for your money! I've taken `em to the psychics before!'
     Around them the crowd buzzed,  discussing the unprecedented  event.  In
short, there  was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only
when  the truck carried away from  the gates of  Griboedov's the unfortunate
Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin.

        CHAPTER 6. Schizophrenia, as was Said


     It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and
wearing  a  white  coat  came  out  to  the  examining room  of  the  famous
psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of
the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich,  who
was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there.
     The  napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been bed up lay in  a pile
on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free.
     Seeing  the  entering  man,  Riukhin  turned  pale, coughed,  and  said
timidly:
     'Hello, Doctor.'
     The  doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at
Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with  an  angry  face
and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor's entrance.
     'Here,  Doctor,'  Riukhin  began  speaking,   for  some  reason,  in  a
mysterious  whisper,  glancing  timorously  at  Ivan  Nikolaevich,  `is  the
renowned  poet Ivan Homeless  ... well, you see ... we're afraid it might be
delirium tremens...'
     'Was he drinking hard?' the doctor said through his teeth.
     'No, he drank, but not really so...'
     'Did  he  chase after cockroaches,  rats,  little devils,  or  slinking
dogs?'
     'No,' Riukhin replied with a  shudder,  `I saw him  yesterday  and this
morning ... he was perfectly well.'
     'And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?'
     'No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way...'
     'Aha, aha,'  the doctor said with  great  satisfaction,  'and  why  the
scratches? Did he have a fight?'
     'He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody... and
then somebody else...'
     'So, so, so,'  the  doctor said  and, turning  to Ivan,  added:  'Hello
there!'
     'Greetings, saboteur! [1]' Ivan replied spitefully and loudly.
     Riukhin was so embarrassed that  he did not dare raise his eyes to  the
courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended  in  the least,  took off his
glasses with  a habitual, deft movement,  raised the skirt of his coat,  put
them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:
     'How old are you?'
     'You can all go to the devil!' Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.
     'But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?'
     'I'm twenty-three years old,' Ivan began excitedly,  'and  I'll file  a
complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!' he adverted
separately to Riukhin.
     'And what do you want to complain about?'
     'About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized  and dragged by force
to a madhouse!' Ivan replied wrathfully.
     Here Riukhin looked closely at  Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly
no  insanity  in  the  man's eyes.  No  longer  dull  as  they  had been  at
Griboedov's, they were now clear as ever.
     `Good  God!'  Riukhin  thought fearfully. 'So he's  really normal! What
nonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He's normal,  normal, only his
mug got scratched...'
     'You are,' the doctor began calmly, sitting down  on a white stool with
a shiny foot, `not in a  madhouse,  but in a  clinic, where no one will keep
you if it's not necessary.'
     Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the  corner of his
eye, but still grumbled:
     'Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots,
of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!'
     'Who is this giftless Sashka?' the doctor inquired.
     'This one here -  Riukhin,' Ivan replied, jabbing  his  dirty finger in
Riukhin's direction.
     The  latter  flushed with indignation. That's the  thanks  I  get,'  he
thought bitterly, 'for showing concern for him! What trash, really!'
     'Psychologically, a  typical little  kulak,'[2] Ivan Nikolaevich began,
evidently from an irresistible urge to  denounce Riukhin, 'and, what's more,
a little kulak carefully  disguising himself as a  proletarian.  Look at his
lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for
the First of May [3] - heh, heh, heh ... "Soaring up!" and "Soaring  down!!"
But  if you could look inside him and see what he thinks... you'd gasp!' And
Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.
     Riukhin  was  breathing  heavily, turned red,  and thought of  just one
thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern
for  a man  who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all,  there was
nothing to be done: there's no arguing with the mentally ill!
     `And  why, actually, were  you  brought here?' the  doctor asked, after
listening attentively to Homeless's denunciations.
     'Devil take them, the numskulls! They  seized  me, tied me up with some
rags, and dragged me away in a truck!'
     'May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?'
     There's nothing surprising about  that,' Ivan  replied.  `I went  for a
swim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash!
     I couldn't very well walk around Moscow naked!  I put it  on  because I
was hurrying to Griboedov.'
     The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly:
     'The name of the restaurant.'
     `Aha,' said  the  doctor,  `and  why  were  you in  such a  hurry? Some
business meeting?'
     'I'm  trying to catch the consultant,' Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked
around anxiously.
     'What consultant?'
     'Do you know Berlioz?' Ivan asked significantly.
     The... composer?'
     Ivan got upset.
     'What composer?  Ah, yes... Ah, no. The composer  has  the same name as
Misha Berlioz.'
     Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain:
     The secretary  of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight
at the Patriarch's Ponds.'
     'Don't blab about what you don't know!' Ivan got angry with Riukhin. 'I
was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!'
     'Pushed him?'
     '"Pushed  him",  nothing!'  Ivan  exclaimed,  angered  by  the  general
obtuseness. 'His kind don't need to push! He  can perform such stunts - hold
on  to your  hat! He  knew  beforehand  that  Berlioz  would get  under  the
tram-car!'
     'And did anyone besides you see this consultant?'
     That's the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.'
     'So. And  what measures did you take to catch this  murderer?' Here the
doctor turned and sent  a glance towards  a woman  in a white  coat, who was
sitting  at a  table to one side.  She  took out a sheet of  paper and began
filling in the blank spaces in its columns.
     'Here's what measures: I took a little candle from the kitchen...'
     That one?' asked the doctor, pointing to the broken candle lying on the
table in front of the woman, next to the icon.
     That very one, and...'
     'And why the icon?'
     'Ah, yes, the icon...' Ivan  blushed. `It was the icon that  frightened
them most of all.' He again jabbed his finger in  the direction of  Riukhin.
'But the thing is that he,  the consultant, he... let's speak directly... is
mixed up with the unclean powers... and you won't catch him so easily.'
     The  orderlies  for some reason snapped to attention and fastened their
eyes on Ivan.
     Yes, sirs,' Ivan went on,  'mixed  up with them! An  absolute  fact. He
spoke personally with Pontius  Pilate.  And there's  no need to  stare at me
like  that.  I'm  telling the truth! He saw everything - the balcony and the
palm trees. In short, he was at Pontius Pilate's, I can vouch for it.'
     'Come, come...'
     'Well, so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran...'
     Here the clock suddenly struck twice.
     'Oh-oh!'  Ivan exclaimed  and got up from the couch. `It's two o'clock,
and I'm wasting time with you! Excuse me, where's the telephone?'
     'Let him use the telephone,' the doctor told the orderlies.
     Ivan  grabbed  the  receiver,  and  the  woman meanwhile  quietly asked
Riukhin:
     'Is he married?'
     'Single,' Riukhin answered fearfully.
     'Member of a trade union?'
     'Yes.'
     'Police?'  Ivan   shouted   into   the   receiver.   'Police?   Comrade
officer-on-duty, give orders at once for five motor cycles with machine-guns
to be sent out to catch the  foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me  up,
I'll go with you... It's the poet Homeless speaking from the madhouse...
     What's your address?' Homeless asked the doctor in  a whisper, covering
the  receiver  with  his hand,  and  then  again  shouting into it: 'Are you
listening?
     Hello!... Outrageous!' Ivan suddenly screamed  and hurled  the receiver
against the  wall. Then he  turned to the doctor, offered him his hand, said
'Goodbye' drily, and made as if to leave.
     `For pity's sake, where do you intend  to go?' the doctor said, peering
into  Ivan's eyes.  'In  the dead of night, in  your underwear... You're not
feeling well, stay with us.'
     `Let  me  pass,'  Ivan said to the orderlies,  who closed ranks at  the
door. 'Will you let me pass or not?' the poet shouted in a terrible voice.
     Riukhin  trembled,  but  the woman  pushed  a button on the table and a
shiny little box with a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface.
     'Ah, so?!' Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look.
     'Well,   then...  Goodbye!'  And   he  rushed   head  first   into  the
window-blind.
     The crash was rather forceful, but the glass  behind the blind  gave no
crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the
orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted:
     'So that's the  sort  of  windows you've  got here! Let me go!  Let  me
go!...'
     A syringe flashed  in the doctor's  hand,  with  a single  movement the
woman  slit the threadbare  sleeve  of  the shirt  and  seized the  arm with
unwomanly strength. There was a  smell of ether, Ivan went limp in the hands
of the four  people, the deft doctor took advantage of this moment and stuck
the needle into Ivan's arm. They  held Ivan for another few seconds and then
lowered him on to the couch.
     'Bandits!' Ivan shouted and jumped up from the couch, but was installed
on it again. The moment they let go of him, he again jumped up, but sat back
down  by himself. He paused, gazing around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned,
then smiled maliciously.
     'Locked me up after all,' he said, yawned again, unexpectedly lay down,
put  his head  on the pillow, his fist  under  his  head  like a  child, and
muttered now in  a sleepy voice,  without malice: 'Very well, then... you'll
pay for it yourselves... I've warned you, you  can do as you like... I'm now
interested most of all in Pontius Pilate ...  Pilate...', and he closed  his
eyes.
     'A bath,  a private  room, number  117, and  a nurse to watch him,' the
doctor  ordered  as he put his glasses  on. Here Riukhin again gave a start:
the white door opened  noiselessly, behind  it a corridor could be seen, lit
by  blue night-lights. Out of  the  corridor rolled  a  stretcher  on rubber
wheels, to which  the quieted Ivan  was  transferred, and then he rolled off
down the corridor and the door closed behind him.
     'Doctor,' the  shaken Riukhin asked in a whisper, 'it means he's really
ill?'
     'Oh, yes,' replied the doctor.
     'But what's wrong with him, then?' Riukhin asked timidly.
     The tired doctor glanced at Riukhin and answered listlessly:
     'Locomotor  and  speech  excitation...  delirious  interpretations... A
complex case, it seems. Schizophrenia, I suppose. Plus this alcoholism...'
     Riukhin  understood nothing from the doctor's words, except that things
were evidently not so great with Ivan Nikolaevich. He sighed and asked:
     'But what's all this talk of his about some consultant?'
     `He must have seen  somebody who  struck his  disturbed imagination. Or
maybe a hallucination...'
     A few minutes later the truck was carrying Riukhin  off to  Moscow. Day
was  breaking, and the  light of  the street  lights still burning along the
highway was now unnecessary and unpleasant.  The  driver was vexed at having
wasted the  night, drove the truck as  fast as he  could, and skidded on the
turns.
     Now the woods dropped off, stayed somewhere behind, and  the river went
somewhere to the  side, and  an  omnium gatherum came spilling  to  meet the
truck: fences with sentry boxes and stacks of wood, tall posts and some sort
of poles, with spools strung on the poles, heaps of rubble, the earth scored
by  canals - in short, you sensed that  she was there, Moscow, right  there,
around the turn, and about to heave herself upon you and engulf you.
     Riukhin was jolted  and tossed about;  the sort of stump  he had placed
himself  on kept trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant napkins,
thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier  by bus, moved
all  around the flatbed. Riukhin tried to collect them, but then,  for  some
reason hissing spitefully: 'Devil take them! What am  I doing fussing like a
fool?...', he spumed them aside with his foot and stopped looking at them.
     The rider's state of mind was  terrible. It was becoming clear that his
visit to the house of sorrow had left the deepest mark on him. Riukhin tried
to understand what was tormenting  him. The corridor with blue lights, which
had  stuck  itself  to  his memory?  The  thought that  there  is no greater
misfortune in  the world than the loss of reason? Yes, yes, of course, that,
too. But that - that's only a general thought. There's  something else. What
is it? An insult, that's what. Yes, yes, insulting words hurled right in his
face by Homeless. And the trouble is not that they were insulting,  but that
there was truth in them.
     The poet no longer looked  around, but, staring into the dirty, shaking
floor, began muttering something, whining, gnawing at himself.
     Yes, poetry... He was thirty-two years old! And, indeed, what  then? So
then he  would  go  on writing his several poems a year. Into old  age? Yes,
into old age. What would these poems bring him? Glory? 'What nonsense! Don't
deceive  yourself, at least. Glory will never come to someone who writes bad
poems.  What makes  them bad? The truth, he was telling the truth!'  Riukhin
addressed himself mercilessly. 'I don't believe in anything I write!...'
     Poisoned  by this  burst of  neurasthenia, the poet swayed,  the  floor
under him stopped shaking. Riukhin raised his head  and saw that he had long
been in Moscow,  and, what's more,  that  it was dawn over  Moscow, that the
cloud was underlit with gold, that his truck had stopped, caught in a column
of other  vehicles at the turn  on  to the boulevard, and that very close to
him on a pedestal stood a metal man [4], his head inclined  slightly, gazing
at the boulevard with indifference.
     Some strange thoughts flooded  the head of the ailing poet. 'There's an
example of real luck...' Here Riukhin rose to his full height on the flatbed
of the truck and raised his arm, for some reason attacking the cast-iron man
who was not bothering anyone.  'Whatever step  he made in his life, whatever
happened to him, it all turned to his benefit, it all led to his  glory! But
what did he do? I can't  conceive... Is there anything special in the words:
"The snowstorm covers..."? I don't understand!...
     Luck, sheer  luck!'  Riukhin concluded  with venom, and  felt the truck
moving under him. `He shot him,  that white guard shot him, smashed his hip,
and assured his immortality...'
     The column began  to move. In no more than two minutes, the  completely
ill and  even aged poet was entering the veranda of Griboedov's.  It was now
empty. In a corner some company was finishing its drinks, and  in the middle
the familiar master  of  ceremonies was bustling  about, wearing a skullcap,
with a glass of Abrau wine in his hand.
     Riukhin,  laden   with  napkins,   was   met   affably   by   Archibald
Archibaldovich  and at once  relieved of  the  cursed  rags. Had Riukhin not
become so worn  out in the clinic and on the  truck, he would certainly have
derived pleasure  from telling  how everything had  gone in the hospital and
embellishing the story with invented details. But just  then he was far from
such  things, and,  little observant though  Riukhin  was,  now,  after  the
torture on the truck, he peered keenly at the pirate for the first time  and
realized  that,  though the  man asked  about  Homeless  and even  exclaimed
'Ai-yai-yai!', he was essentially quite  indifferent to Homeless's fate  and
did not feel a bit sorry for him.
     'And   bravo!  Right   you  are!'   Riukhin   thought   with   cynical,
self-annihilating  malice   and,  breaking   off   the   story   about   the
schizophrenia, begged:
     `Archibald  Archibaldovich,  a  drop of  vodka...'  The pirate  made  a
compassionate face and whispered:
     'I  understand...  this very  minute...' and  beckoned  to a waiter.  A
quarter of an hour later, Riukhin sat in complete solitude, hunched over his
bream, drinking glass after glass, understanding and recognizing that it was
no longer  possible  to  set anything right in his  life,  that it was  only
possible to forget.
     The  poet  had wasted  his night  while  others were feasting  and  now
understood that it was impossible to  get it  back. One needed only to raise
one's  head from the lamp  to  the  sky  to  understand that  the night  was
irretrievably lost. Waiters were hurriedly tearing the tablecloths from  the
tables. The  cats  slinking  around  the  veranda  had  a morning  look. Day
irresistibly heaved itself upon the poet.


        CHAPTER 7. A Naughty Apartment


     If Styopa Likhodeev had been  told the next morning: 'Styopa! You'll be
shot  if  you don't  get up  this  minute!' - Styopa would have replied in a
languid, barely audible voice:
     'Shoot me, do what you like with me, I won't get up.'
     Not only not get up,  it seemed to him that he could not open his eyes,
because  if he were to  do so,  there would be a flash of lightning, and his
head would at  once be blown  to pieces.  A heavy bell  was booming in  that
head, brown  spots rimmed with fiery green floated  between his eyeballs and
his closed eyelids, and to crown  it all he was nauseous, this nausea, as it
seemed  to  him,  being  connected  with  the  sounds  of  some  importunate
gramophone.
     Styopa tried to recall something, but only one thing would get recalled
- that yesterday, apparently, and in some unknown place, he had stood with a
napkin in his hand and tried to kiss  some lady, promising her that the next
day, and exactly at noon, he would come to visit her. The lady had declined,
saying: 'No, no, I won't be home!', but Styopa had stubbornly insisted: 'And
I'll just up and come anyway!'
     Who the lady  was, and what time it was now, what  day,  of what month,
Styopa decidedly did not know,  and,  worst of  all, he could not figure out
where  he was. He attempted to  learn  this last at  least, and to  that end
unstuck the stuck-together  lids of his left eye. Something gleamed dully in
the  semi-darkness. Styopa  finally recognized  the pier-glass  and realized
that he was lying  on his  back  in his own  bed  - that is, the  jeweller's
wife's former  bed  -  in the bedroom. Here he felt such a  throbbing in his
head that he closed his eyes and moaned.
     Let us  explain: Styopa Likhodeev, director of the Variety Theatre, had
come to  his senses that morning at  home,  in  the very  apartment which he
shared with the  late Berlioz, in a  big, six-storeyed, U-shaped building on
Sadovaya Street.
     It must  be said that  this apartment - no.50 - had long  had, if not a
bad, at least a  strange reputation. Two  years ago it had still belonged to
the widow  of  the  jeweller de  Fougeray. Anna  Frantsevna de  Fougeray,  a
respectable and  very practical fifty-year-old woman, let out  three  of the
five rooms to  lodgers: one  whose  last  name  was apparently  Belomut, and
another with a lost last name.
     And then  two  years ago  inexplicable  events began  to  occur in this
apartment: people  began  to disappear [1]  from this  apartment  without  a
trace.
     Once,  on  a  day off, a policeman came to the  apartment,  called  the
second lodger (the one whose last name  got lost) out to the front hall, and
said  he was invited  to come to the police station for a  minute to put his
signature to  something. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantsevna's long-time
and devoted housekeeper,  to say, in case he received any  telephone  calls,
that  he would be back in ten  minutes, and left together  with the  proper,
white-gloved policeman. He  not  only  did not come back in ten minutes, but
never  came back at  all. The most surprising  thing was that  the policeman
evidently vanished along with him.
     The  pious,  or, to speak  more  frankly, superstitious Anfisa declared
outright to the very upset Anna Frantsevna that it was sorcery  and that she
knew perfectly  well who had stolen both the lodger and the policeman,  only
she did not wish to talk about it towards night-time.
     Well, but with  sorcery, as everyone knows, once it starts,  there's no
stopping  it. The  second  lodger is remembered to  have  disappeared  on  a
Monday, and  that Wednesday Belomut seemed to drop from sight, though, true,
under different circumstances. In the  morning a car came, as usual, to take
him to work, and it did take him to  work, but it  did not bring anyone back
or come again itself.
     Madame  Belomut's  grief  and  horror  defied description.  But,  alas,
neither  the  one  nor the other continued for  long. That  same  night,  on
returning with Anfisa from her dacha, which Anna Frantsevna  had hurried off
to  for some reason,  she did not  find the  wife of citizen  Belomut in the
apartment.  And not only that:  the doors of the two rooms  occupied  by the
Belomut couple turned out to be sealed.
     Two days passed somehow. On the third  day,  Anna Frantsevna,  who  had
suffered all the while  from insomnia, again left hurriedly for her dacha...
Needless to say, she never came back!
     Left  alone,  Anfisa,  having wept her  fill,  went to  sleep past  one
o'clock in the morning. What  happened to her after  that  is not known, but
lodgers in other apartments told of hearing some sort of  knocking all night
in no.50 and of seeing electric light burning in the windows till morning.
     In the morning it turned out that there was also no Anfisa!
     For a long time all sorts of legends  were repeated in the  house about
these  disappearances  and  about  the  accursed  apartment,  such  as,  for
instance, 'that  this dry and pious little Anfisa had supposedly carried  on
her dried-up breast, in a suede  bag,  twenty-five big diamonds belonging to
Anna Frantsevna.  That  in  the woodshed  of  that  very dacha to which Anna
Frantsevna had gone so hurriedly, there supposedly turned up, of themselves,
some  inestimable treasures in the form of  those same  diamonds,  plus some
gold  coins of tsarist minting... And so on, in the same vein. Well, what we
don't know, we can't vouch for.
     However it may have been, the apartment stood empty and sealed for only
a week. Then the late Berlioz moved in  with his wife, and this same Styopa,
also with his wife. It was perfectly natural that, as soon as they got  into
the malignant  apartment,  devil  knows what started happening with them  as
well! Namely, within the space of a month both wives vanished. But these two
not without a trace. Of  Berlioz's wife it was told that  she had supposedly
been seen in Kharkov with some ballet-master, while Styopa's  wife allegedly
turned up on Bozhedomka Street, where  wagging  tongues said the director of
the Variety, using his innumerable acquaintances, had contrived to get her a
room, but on the one condition that she never show her face on Sadovaya...
     And so, Styopa moaned. He wanted to call the housekeeper Grunya and ask
her for aspirin, but was still able to realize that it was foolish, and that
Grunya,  of  course,  had  no aspirin.  He tried to  call Berlioz for  help,
groaned twice: 'Misha... Misha...', but, as you will understand, received no
reply. The apartment was perfectly silent.
     Moving his toes, Styopa realized that he was  lying there in his socks,
passed his  trembling  hand  down  his hip  to determine whether he  had his
trousers on or not, but  failed. Finally, seeing  that  he was abandoned and
alone, and  there was  no one to  help  him, he  decided to get up,  however
inhuman the effort it cost him.
     Styopa unstuck  his  glued  eyelids  and  saw  himself reflected in the
pier-glass as a man with hair sticking out in all directions, with a bloated
physiognomy  covered with black  stubble, with puffy  eyes,  a dirty  shirt,
collar and necktie, in drawers and socks.
     So he saw himself  in the pier-glass, and next to the mirror he  saw an
unknown man, dressed in black and wearing a black beret.
     Styopa sat up in bed and goggled his bloodshot eyes as well as he could
at the unknown man. The silence was broken by this unknown  man, who said in
a low, heavy voice, and with a foreign accent, the following words:
     'Good morning, my most sympathetic Stepan Bogdanovich!'
     There  was  a  pause,  after  which,  making a  most terrible strain on
himself, Styopa uttered:
     "What  can  I do  for  you?' - and was amazed, not recognizing his  own
voice. He spoke the word 'what'  in a treble, 'can I' in a bass, and his 'do
for you' did not come off at all.
     The stranger smiled amicably,  took out a big gold watch with a diamond
triangle on the lid, rang eleven times, and said:
     'Eleven. And for  exactly an hour I've been waiting for you to wake up,
since you made  an appointment for me  to come to your place  at ten. Here I
am!'[2]
     Styopa felt for his trousers on the chair beside his bed, whispered:
     'Excuse me...', put them on,  and asked hoarsely:  'Tell me your  name,
please?'
     He had difficulty speaking. At each  word, someone stuck  a needle into
his brain, causing infernal pain.
     'What! You've forgotten my name, too?' Here the unknown man smiled.
     `Forgive me...' Styopa croaked, feeling that his hangover had presented
him with a new symptom: it seemed to  him that the floor beside his bed went
away, and that at  any moment he would go flying down to  the devil's dam in
the nether world.
     `My  dear Stepan  Bogdanovich,' the  visitor said, with a perspicacious
smile, 'no aspirin will help  you. Follow the wise old rule - cure like with
like. The only thing  that  will bring you back to life  is  two glasses  of
vodka with something pickled and hot to go with it.'
     Styopa was a shrewd man and, sick as he was, realized that since he had
been found in this state, he would have to confess everything.
     `Frankly  speaking,'  he began, his  tongue barely moving, 'yesterday I
got a bit...'
     'Not a word more!' the visitor answered and drew aside with his  chair.
Styopa, rolling his eyes, saw  that a tray had been set on a small table, on
which tray there  were sliced white bread,  pressed caviar in a little bowl,
pickled mushrooms on a dish, something in a saucepan, and, finally, vodka in
a roomy  decanter  belonging to  the jeweller's  wife.  What  struck  Styopa
especially was that the decanter  was  frosty with cold.  This, however, was
understandable: it  was sitting in a  bowl packed with  ice.  In  short, the
service was neat, efficient.
     The stranger  did  not allow  Styopa's amazement to develop to a morbid
degree, but deftly poured him half a glass of vodka.
     'And you?' Styopa squeaked.
     'With pleasure!'
     His hand twitching,  Styopa brought the  glass to  his  lips, while the
stranger swallowed the contents of his glass at one  gulp. Chewing a lump of
caviar, Styopa squeezed out of himself the words:
     'And you... a bite of something?'
     `Much obliged,  but  I never snack,' the  stranger replied  and  poured
seconds. The saucepan was opened and found to contain frankfurters in tomato
sauce.
     And then the accursed  green haze before his eyes dissolved, the  words
began to come out clearly, and, above all, Styopa remembered a thing or two.
Namely, that it had  taken place yesterday in Skhodnya, at the dacha of  the
sketch-writer  Khustov, to which  this same Khustov had  taken  Styopa in  a
taxi. There was even a memory of having hired this taxi by the Metropol, and
there was also some  actor, or not an actor... with a gramophone in a little
suitcase. Yes, yes, yes, it was at the dacha! The  dogs,  he remembered, had
howled  from  this  gramophone.  Only  the lady  Styopa  had wanted  to kiss
remained unexplained... devil knows who she was...  maybe  she was in radio,
maybe not...
     The previous day was thus coming gradually  into  focus,  but right now
Styopa  was  much more  interested  in today's day and, particularly, in the
appearance  in his bedroom  of a stranger, and with hors d'oeuvres and vodka
to boot. It would be nice to explain that!
     'Well, I hope by now you've remembered my name?'
     But Styopa only smiled bashfully and spread his arms.
     'Really!  I get the feeling that you followed the vodka with port wine!
Good heavens, it simply isn't done!'
     'I beg you to keep it between us,' Styopa said fawningly.
     'Oh, of course, of course! But as for Khustov, needless to say, I can't
vouch for him.'
     'So you know Khustov?'
     "Yesterday, in your office, I saw  this individuum briefly, but it only
takes  a fleeting glance at his  face  to understand that he is a bastard, a
squabbler, a trimmer and a toady.'
     `Perfectly  true!' thought Styopa, struck  by  such a true, precise and
succinct definition of Khustov.
     Yes,  the  previous day was  piecing  itself  together, but,  even  so,
anxiety would  not  take leave of the director of the Variety. The thing was
that  a  huge  black hole yawned in this  previous  day.  Say what you will,
Styopa  simply  had not  seen this  stranger  in the  beret  in  his  office
yesterday.
     'Professor  of black magic  Woland,'[3]  the  visitor  said  weightily,
seeing Styopa's difficulty, and he recounted everything in order.
     Yesterday afternoon he arrived in Moscow from abroad,  went immediately
to Styopa, and offered his show to the Variety. Styopa telephoned the Moscow
Regional  Entertainment  Commission and  had the  question  approved (Styopa
turned  pale and blinked), then signed a contract  with Professor Woland for
seven performances  (Styopa  opened his mouth),  and  arranged  that  Woland
should come the next morning at ten o'clock to work out the details...
     And so Woland came. Having come, he  was met by the housekeeper Grunya,
who explained  that she had just  come  herself, that  she was not a live-in
maid, that Berlioz  was not home, and  that if  the  visitor  wished  to see
Stepan Bogdanovich,  he should go to his bedroom himself. Stepan Bogdanovich
was such a sound sleeper that she would not undertake to wake him up. Seeing
what  condition  Stepan Bogdanovich was in, the  artiste sent  Grunya to the
nearest  grocery  store for vodka and hors d'oeuvres, to the  druggist's for
ice, and...
     `Allow me  to reimburse  you,' the mortified Styopa  squealed and began
hunting for his wallet.
     'Oh,  what nonsense!' the guest  performer  exclaimed and would hear no
more of it.
     And  so, the vodka and hors d'oeuvres got explained,  but all the  same
Styopa was a pity to see: he remembered decidedly nothing about the contract
and, on his life, had  not seen this Woland yesterday. Yes, Khustov had been
there, but not Woland.
     'May I have a look at the contract?' Styopa asked quietly.
     'Please do, please do...'
     Styopa looked at the paper and froze. Everything was in place: first of
all, Styopa's own dashing  signature... aslant the margin a note in the hand
of  the  findirector  [4] Rimsky  authorizing  the payment of  ten  thousand
roubles to the artiste Woland, as  an advance  on the  thirty-five  thousand
roubles due him for seven performances. What's more, Woland's  signature was
right there attesting to his receipt of the ten thousand!
     `What is all this?!'  the wretched  Styopa  thought, his head spinning.
Was  he  starting to  have ominous gaps  of  memory? Well, it  went  without
saying,  once  the contract had  been produced, any further  expressions  of
surprise  would  simply  be  indecent. Styopa asked  his  visitor's leave to
absent himself for a  moment and, just as he was,  in his stocking feet, ran
to  the  front  hall for the telephone.  On  his way he  called  out in  the
direction of the kitchen:
     'Grunya!'
     But no one responded. He glanced at the door  to Berlioz's study, which
was next to the front hall, and here  he was, as they say, flabbergasted. On
the door-handle he made out an enormous wax seal [5] on a string.
     'Hel-lo!' someone barked in Styopa's head. 'Just  what we  needed!' And
here  Styopa's thoughts began running on twin tracks, but, as always happens
in times of catastrophe, in the  same  direction and, generally, devil knows
where. It is  even  difficult to convey  the porridge in Styopa's head. Here
was this devilry with the black beret, the chilled vodka, and the incredible
contract...  And along with all that, if you  please, a seal on the  door as
well! That is, tell anyone you like that Berlioz has been up to no good - no
one will believe  it, by Jove, no one will believe it! Yet look, there's the