ck hair had been tied up  in a scarlet kerchief and  that  his brig
had sailed the Caribbean under the Jolly Roger.
     But that, of  course, is pure fantasy--the Caribbean  doesn't exist, no
desperate  buccaneers sail it,  no  corvette ever chases  them, no  puffs of
cannon-smoke  ever  roll across  the waves.  Pure  invention.  Look  at that
scraggy tree, look at the iron railings, the boulevard. . . . And the ice is
floating in the  wine-bucket and  at  the  next table  there's  a  man  with
ox-like, bloodshot  eyes and it's pandemonium. . . . Oh gods--poison, I need
poison! . . .
     Suddenly  from  one of the tables the  word ' Berlioz!!  ' flew  up and
exploded in the air.  Instantly the band  collapsed  and stopped, as  though
someone had punched it. ' What, what, what--what?!! '
     'Berlioz!!! '
     Everybody began rushing about and screaming.
     A  wave  of  grief  surged  up  at  the  terrible  news  about  Mikhail
Alexandrovich.   Someone   fussed  around   shouting  that  they  must   all
immediately,  here and now,  without delay compose a collective telegram and
send it off.
     But what telegram, you may ask? And why  send  it? Send  it  where? And
what  use is  a telegram to the man whose  battered skull is being mauled by
the  rubber  hands of  a  dissector,  whose neck  is being  pierced  by  the
professor's crooked needles? He's dead, he doesn't want a telegram. It's all
over, let's not overload the post office.
     Yes, he's dead . . . but we are still alive!
     The wave of grief rose, lasted  for a while and then  began  to recede.
Somebody  went  back  to their  table  and--furtively to  begin  with,  then
openly--drank a glass of vodka and took a bite to eat. After all, what's the
point of wasting the  cotelettes de volatile?  What good are we going  to do
Mikhail Alexandrovich by going hungry? We're still alive, aren't we?
     Naturally the piano was shut  and locked, the  band went home and a few
journalists left for their newspaper offices  to write obituaries. The  news
spread  that Zheldybin was back from  the  morgue.  He moved  into Berlioz's
upstairs office and at once  a rumour started that he was going to take over
from Berlioz.  Zheldybin  summoned  all  twelve  members  of the  management
committee  from  the  restaurant and  in  an  emergency session  they  began
discussing such urgent questions  as the preparation of the colonnaded hall,
the transfer of  the body  from the morgue, the times at which members could
attend the lying-in-state and other matters connected with the tragic event.
     Downstairs in the restaurant life had returned to normal and would have
continued on its usual nocturnal course  until closing time at four, had not
something quite abnormal occurred which shocked the diners considerably more
than the news of Berlioz's death.
     The first to be alarmed were the cab drivers  waiting outside the gates
of Griboyedov. Jerking up with a start one of them shouted:
     'Hey! Look at that!' A little glimmer flared up near the iron railings
and started to bob towards the verandah. Some of the diners stood up, stared
and saw that  the nickering light was accompanied  by a white apparition. As
it  approached  the  verandah  trellis  every  diner  froze,  eyes  bulging,
sturgeon-laden forks motionless  in  mid-air.  The  club porter, who at that
moment had just left the restaurant cloakroom  to  go outside  for a  smoke,
stubbed  out his cigarette  and  was just going to advance on the apparition
with  the aim of barring its way into the restaurant when for some reason he
changed his mind, stopped and grinned stupidly.
     The apparition, passing through an  opening in the trellis, mounted the
verandah  unhindered. As it did so  everyone saw that this was no apparition
but the distinguished poet Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny.
     He was barefoot and wearing a torn, dirty white Russian blouse.  To its
front was safety-pinned  a paper ikon with a picture  of some unknown saint.
He was  wearing long  white underpants with a lighted candle in his hand and
his  right cheek bore a fresh scratch. It would be hard to fathom  the depth
of the silence which reigned on the verandah.  Beer poured  on to the  floor
from a mug held sideways by one of the waiters.
     The poet raised the candle above his head and said in a loud voice :
     'Greetings,  friends!'  He then looked  under  the  nearest table  and
exclaimed with disappointment:
     'No, he's not there.'
     Two voices were heard. A bass voice said pitilessly : ' An obvious case
of D.Ts.'
     The second, a frightened woman's voice enquired nervously :
     'How did the police let him on to the streets in that state? '
     Ivan Nikolayich heard this and replied :
     'They tried to arrest me twice, once in Skatertny Street and once here
on Bronnaya, but  I climbed over the fence  and  that's  how  I scratched my
cheek!  ' Ivan  Nikolayich  lifted  up his  candle  and  shouted:  '  Fellow
artists!' (His squeaky voice grew stronger and more urgent.) ' Listen to me,
all of you! He's come! Catch him at once or he'll do untold harm! '
     'What's that? What? What did  he say? Who's come? ' came the questions
from all sides.
     'A professor,' answered  Ivan, ' and it was  this professor who killed
Misha Berlioz this evening at Patriarch's.'
     By now people were streaming on  to the verandah  from the indoor rooms
and a crowd began milling round Ivan.
     'I beg  your pardon, would you say that again more clearly? ' said  a
low, courteous voice  right beside Ivan Nikolayich's ear. ' Tell me, how was
he killed? Who killed him? '
     'A foreigner--he's a professor  and  a spy,'  replied  Ivan,  looking
round.
     'What's his name? ' said the voice again into his ear.
     'That's just the trouble!' cried Ivan in frustration. ' If only I knew
his name!  I  couldn't read it  properly  on his  visiting card  ...  I only
remember the letter ' W '--the name began  with a ' W  '. What could it have
been? ' Ivan asked himself aloud,  clutching his forehead with his  hand.  '
We, wi,  wa .  . . wo . . . Walter? Wagner?  Weiner?  Wegner? Winter? '  The
hairs on Ivan's head started to stand on end from the effort.
     'Wolff? ' shouted a woman, trying to help him.
     Ivan lost his temper.
     'You fool!' he shouted, looking for the  woman in  the crowd. ' What's
Wolff  got to  do with it? He didn't do it ...  Wo, wa  . . . No, I'll never
remember it like this. Now look,  everybody-- ring up the police at once and
tell them to  send five motorcycles and sidecars with machine-guns to  catch
the professor. And don't forget to say that there are two others with him--a
tall fellow in checks with a wobbly  pince-nez and a  great black cat. . . .
Meanwhile I'm going to search Griboyedov--I can sense that he's here! '
     Ivan was by now in a state  of some  excitement. Pushing the bystanders
aside he began waving his candle about,  pouring wax on himself, and started
to look under the tables. Then somebody said ' Doctor!  ' and a  fat, kindly
face,  clean-shaven,  smelling  of drink  and  with  horn-rimmed spectacles,
appeared in front of Ivan.
     'Comrade Bezdomny,' said  the face solemnly, ' calm down! You're upset
by  the death of our beloved  Mikhail Alexandrovich  . . . no, I  mean plain
Misha  Berlioz.  We all realise how you feel. You need rest. You'll be taken
home to bed in a moment and then you can relax and forget all about it. . .'
     'Don't you realise,'  Ivan interrupted, scowling, ' that we've got to
catch the professor? And all  you can  do is  come creeping up to me talking
all this rubbish! Cretin! '
     'Excuse me. Comrade Bezdomny! ' replied the face, blushing, retreating
and already wishing it had never let itself get involved in this affair.
     'No,  I  don't  care  who  you are--I  won't excuse you,'  said  Ivan
Nikolayich with quiet hatred.
     A  spasm distorted his  face, he rapidly switched the  candle from  his
right to his left hand,  swung his arm and punched the sympathetic  face  on
the ear.
     Several  people  reached  the  same  conclusion  at   once  and  hurled
themselves at Ivan. The candle went out, the horn-rims fell off the face and
were instantly smashed underfoot. Ivan let out a dreadful war-whoop audible,
to  everybody's embarrassment, as far as the boulevard, and began  to defend
himself. There came a tinkle of breaking crockery, women screamed.
     While the waiters tied up the poet with dish-cloths, a conversation was
in progress in the cloakroom between the porter and the captain of the brig.
     'Didn't  you see that he was  wearing underpants? ' asked  the  pirate
coldly.
     'But  Archibald Archibaldovich--I'm a coward,' replied the porter,  '
how could I stop him from coming in? He's a member!'
     'Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' repeated the pirate.
     'Please, Archibald Archibaldovich,--' said the porter, turning purple,
' what could I do? I know there are ladies on the ver-andah, but...'
     'The ladies  don't matter.  They don't  mind,'  replied  the  pirate,
roasting the  porter with his glare. ' But the police mind! There's only one
way  a man can walk round Moscow in his  underwear--when he's being escorted
by the  police on the way to a police station! And you, if you call yourself
a  porter, ought to  know that if you see a man in that state it's your duty
not to waste a moment but to start blowing your whistle I Do you hear? Can't
you hear what's happening on the verandah? '
     The wretched  porter could hear the sounds of smashing crockery, groans
and women's screams from the verandah only too well.
     'Now what do you propose to do about it? ' enquired the buccaneer.
     The skin on the porter's face took on a leprous shade and his eyes went
blank. It  seemed to him that the other man's black hair, now neatly parted,
was  covered by  a fiery silk  kerchief.  Starched shirtfront  and tail-coat
vanished, a  pistol was  sticking  out of his leather belt.  The porter  saw
himself  dangling from the foretop yard-arm,  his tongue protruding from his
lifeless, drooping head. He could  even hear  the  waves lapping against the
ship's side. The porter's knees trembled. But the buccaneer took pity on him
and switched off his terrifying glare.
     'All right, Nikolai--but mind it  never happens  again! We can't  have
porters  like you  in a restaurant--you'd better go  and be  a  verger  in a
church.' Having said this the captain gave a few rapid, crisp, clear orders:
' Send the barman.  Police. Statement. Car. Mental hospital.' And he added :
'Whistle!'
     A quarter of an hour later, to  the astonishment  of  the people in the
restaurant, on the  boulevard and at the  windows of the surrounding houses,
the  barman, the  porter, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Ryukhin were to
be seen emerging from  the gates  of Griboyedov dragging a young man trussed
up like a  mummy, who was weeping, spitting,  lashing  out  at  Ryukhin  and
shouting for the whole street to hear :
     'You swine! . . . You swine! . . . '
     A buzzing  crowd collected, discussing  the incredible scene. It was of
course an  abominable,  disgusting, thrilling,  revolting scandal which only
ended when  a  lorry drove  away from the gates  of Griboyedov carrying  the
unfortunate Ivan Nikolayich, the policeman, the barman and Ryukhin.



        6. Schizophrenia



     At half past one in the morning  a man with a pointed beard and wearing
a  white overall  entered the reception hall of a  famous psychiatric clinic
recently completed in  the  suburbs of Moscow. Three orderlies  and the poet
Ryukhin  stood nervously watching Ivan Nikolayich as he sat on  a divan. The
dish-cloths that had been used to  pinion  Ivan Nikolayich now lay in a heap
on the same divan, leaving his arms and legs free.
     As the man came in Ryukhin turned pale, coughed and said timidly:
     'Good morning, doctor.'
     The  doctor  bowed  to Ryukhin but looked  at Ivan Nikolayich,  who was
sitting completely immobile and  scowling furiously. He  did not  even  move
when the doctor appeared.
     'This,  doctor,' began  Ryukhin  in  a  mysterious  whisper, glancing
anxiously at Ivan Nikolayich,  ' is the  famous  poet  Ivan  Bezdomny. We're
afraid he may have D.Ts.'
     'Has he been drinking heavily? ' enquired the doctor through  clenched
teeth.
     'No, he's had a few drinks, but not enough . . .'
     'Has he been trying to catch spiders, rats, little devils or dogs? '
     'No,'  replied Ryukhin,  shuddering. '  I saw  him yesterday  and this
morning ... he was perfectly well then.'
     'Why is he in his underpants? Did you have to pull him out of bed?'
     'He came into a restaurant like this, doctor'
     'Aha, aha,' said the doctor in a tone of great satisfaction. ' And why
the scratches? Has he been fighting? '
     'He fell off the fence and then he hit someone in the restaurant , . .
and someone else, too  .  . .' ' I see, I see, I  see,' said the doctor  and
added, turning to Ivan :
     'Good morning! '
     'Hello, you quack! ' said Ivan, loudly and viciously.
     Ryukhin  was so  embarrassed that  he  dared  not  raise  his eyes. The
courteous doctor, however, showed no signs  of offence and with a  practised
gesture took off  his spectacles, lifted the skirt  of his overall, put them
in his hip pocket and then asked Ivan:
     'How old are you? '
     'Go to hell! ' shouted Ivan rudely and turned away.
     'Why are  you being so disagreeable?  Have  I said anything to  upset
you?'
     'I'm twenty-three,'  said  Ivan excitedly, ' and I'm  going to lodge a
complaint against all of you--and you in particular, you louse! ' He spat at
Ryukhin.
     'What will your complaint be? '
     'That you arrested  me, a perfectly healthy man, and forcibly dragged
me off to the madhouse! ' answered Ivan in fury.
     At this  Ryukhin took a  close look at Ivan and felt  a chill  down his
spine  : there was not a trace of insanity in the man's eyes.  They had been
slightly clouded at Griboyedov, but now they were as clear as before.
     'Godfathers! ' thought Ryukhin in  terror. '  He really  is perfectly
normal! What  a ghastly  business!  Why  have  we brought him here?  There's
nothing the matter with him except a few scratches on his face . . .'
     'You are not,' said the doctor calmly, sitting down  on a stool on  a
single chromium-plated stalk, ' in  a madhouse but in a clinic, where nobody
is  going to keep you  if it  isn't necessary.'  Ivan  gave him a suspicious
scowl, but muttered :
     'Thank  God for that!  At last I've found one  normal person among all
these idiots and the worst idiot of the lot is that incompetent fraud Sasha!
'
     'Who is this incompetent  Sasha? ' enquired  the doctor. ' That's him,
Ryukhin,' replied Ivan, jabbing a dirty finger in
     Ryukhin's direction, who spluttered in protest. ' That's all the thanks
I get,'  he  thought bitterly, ' for  showing  him  some  sympathy!  What  a
miserable swine he is! '
     * A  typical kulak mentality,' said Ivan Nikolayich, who obviously felt
a sudden urge to attack Ryukhin. ' And what's more he's a kulak masquerading
as a proletarian. Look at his mean face and compare it with all that pompous
verse he writes for  May Day ... all that stuff about  "onwards and upwards"
and  "banners  waving  "! If  you could  look inside  him and  see what he's
thinking you'd be sickened! ' And Ivan Nikolayich  gave a hoot  of malicious
laughter.
     Ryukhin, breathing heavily, turned red. There was  only  one thought in
his mind--that he had nourished a serpent in his bosom, that he had tried to
help someone who when it came to the pinch had treacherously rounded on him.
The worst of it was that  he could not answer back--one  mustn't swear at  a
lunatic!
     'Exactly why have they brought you here?  ' asked the  doctor, who had
listened to Bezdomny's outburst with great attention.
     'God knows, the blockheads! They  grabbed me,  tied  me  up  with some
filthy rags and dumped me in a lorry!'
     'May  I ask  why you  came  into  the restaurant in  nothing but your
underwear?'
     'There's nothing odd about it,' answered Ivan. '  I went for a swim in
the  Moscow  River  and  someone pinched my  clothes  and left me this  junk
instead! I  couldn't  walk round Moscow naked, could I? I had to put on what
there was, because I was in a hurry to get to the Griboyedov restaurant.'
     The doctor glanced questioningly at Ryukhin, who mumbled sulkily:
     'Yes, that's the name of the restaurant.'
     'Aha,' said the doctor, ' but why were you in  such a hurry?  Did  you
have an appointment there? '
     'I  had  to catch the  professor,'  replied  Ivan Nikolayich, glancing
nervously round.
     'What professor? ' ' Do you  know Berlioz? ' asked Ivan with a meaning
look.
     'You mean . . . the composer? '
     Ivan  looked  puzzled. ' What  composer?  Oh,  yes  . . . no,  no.  The
composer just happens to have the same name as Misha Berlioz.'
     Ryukhin was still feeling too offended to speak, but he had to explain:
     'Berlioz,  the  chairman  of  MASSOLIT, was  run over by a  tram  this
evening at Patriarch's.'
     'Don't lie, you--you don't know anything  about it,' Ivan burst out at
Ryukhin. '  I was there,  not you!  He made  him fall  under  that  tram  on
purpose! '
     'Did he push him? '
     'What  are  you  talking  about?'  exclaimed Ivan,  irritated by  his
listener's failure to grasp the situation. ' He didn't have to push  him! He
can do things you'd never believe! He knew in advance that Berlioz was going
to fall under a tram! '
     'Did anybody see this professor apart from you? '
     'No, that's the trouble. Only Berlioz and myself.'
     'I see.  What steps  did  you take  to arrest this murderer?' At this
point the  doctor turned  and threw a glance at a woman  in a  white overall
sitting behind a desk.
     'This is what I did : I took this candle from the kitchen . . .'
     'This  one? ' asked the doctor, pointing to  a broken candle lying  on
the desk beside the ikon.
     'Yes, that's the one, and . . .'
     'Why the ikon? '
     'Well, er, the  ikon. . . .' Ivan blushed. ' You see an ikon frightens
them more than  anything else.' He again pointed at Ryukhin.  ' But the fact
is that the professor is ... well, let's be frank . . . he's  in league with
the powers of evil . . . and it's not so easy to catch someone like him.'
     The orderlies stretched their hands down their trouser-seams and stared
even harder at Ivan.
     'Yes,'  went  on Ivan. ' He's in league with them. There's no arguing
about it.  He once talked to Pontius Pilate. It's no good looking at me like
that,  I'm telling  you  the  truth!  He saw  it all --the balcony, the palm
trees. He was actually with Pontius Pilate, I'll swear it.'
     'Well, now . . .'
     'So, as I was saying, I pinned the ikon to my chest and ran .,.'
     Here the clock struck twice.
     'Oh, my  God!  ' exclaimed Ivan and rose  from the divan.  ' It's two
o'clock  and here am I wasting  time talking to you! Would you mind--where's
the telephone? '
     'Show him the telephone,' the doctor said to the orderlies.
     As Ivan grasped the receiver the woman quietly asked Ryukhin:
     'Is he married? '
     'No, he's a bachelor,' replied Ryukhin, startled.
     'Is he a union member? '
     'Yes.'
     'Police? ' shouted Ivan into  the  mouthpiece.  ' Police? Is that the
duty  officer?  Sergeant,  please  arrange  to send five  motor  cycles with
sidecars,  armed  with machine-guns  to  arrest the foreign professor. What?
Take me with you, I'll show you where to go. .  . . This is  Bezdomny, I'm a
poet, and I'm speaking from the lunatic asylum. . . . What's your address? '
Bezdomny whispered to the doctor, covering the mouthpiece with his palm, and
then yelled back into the receiver: ' Are you listening? Hullo! . . . Fools!
.  . .' Ivan suddenly roared, hurling  the  receiver at  the  wall. Then  he
turned  round to  the doctor, offered him  his hand, said a curt goodbye and
started to go.
     'Excuse  me, but  where are you  proposing to go?'  said  the doctor,
looking Ivan in the eye. ' At  this hour of night, in your  underwear .  . .
You're not well, stay with us.'
     'Come on, let me through,' said Ivan to the orderlies who had lined up
to  block the doorway. ' Are you  going  to let me go or not?  ' shouted the
poet in a terrible voice.
     Ryukhin  shuddered.  The  woman  pressed  a  button on  the  desk  ;  a
glittering  metal box  and  a  sealed  ampoule  popped out  on to its  glass
surface.
     'Ah,  so that's  your game, is  it?  ' said Ivan with  a wild, hunted
glance around. ' All  right then . . . Goodbye!! ' And he threw himself head
first at the shuttered window.
     There was a loud crash, but the glass  did not even crack, and a moment
later  Ivan Nikolayich  was  struggling  in  the arms  of  the orderlies. He
screamed, tried to bite, then shouted :
     'Fine sort of glass you put in your windows! Let me go! Let me go! '
     A hypodermic syringe glittered in the doctor's hand, with one sweep the
woman pushed back the tattered sleeve of  Ivan's blouse  and clamped his arm
in a most  un-feminine  grip.  There  was a  smell of ether,  Ivan  weakened
slightly  in the grasp of the  four men and the  doctor skilfully seized the
moment to  jab the  needle into Ivan's arm. Ivan kept up  the struggle for a
few more seconds, then collapsed on to the divan.
     'Bandits! ' cried Ivan and leaped up, only to be  pushed back. As soon
as they  let him go he jumped up again, but sat down of  his  own accord. He
said nothing, staring  wildly about him, then gave a sudden  unexpected yawn
and smiled malevolently :
     'So you're going to lock me up after all,' he said, yawned again, lay
down with his head on the cushion, his fist under his cheek like a child and
muttered in a sleepy voice but without malice : '  All right, then . . . but
you'll pay for it ... I warned you, but if you want to ... What interests me
most now is Pontius Pilate . . .  Pilate . .  .' And with that he closed his
eyes.
     'Vanna, put him in No. 117 by himself and with someone to watch him.'
The doctor gave his  instructions and replaced his spectacles. Then  Ryukhin
shuddered again : a pair of white  doors  opened without a sound  and beyond
them stretched  a  corridor lit  by  a row of  blue night-bulbs. Out  of the
corridor rolled a couch on rubber wheels. The sleeping Ivan was lifted on to
it, he was pushed off down the corridor and the doors closed after him.
     'Doctor,' asked the shaken Ryukhin in a whisper, ' is he really ill?'
     'Oh yes,' replied the doctor.
     'Then what's the matter with him?' enquired Rvukhin timidly.
     The exhausted doctor looked at Ryukhin and answered wearily:
     'Overstimulation  of the motor  nerves  and  speech  centres  .  .  .
delirious  illusions. . .  . Obviously a complicated case.  Schizophrenia, I
should think . . . touch of alcoholism, too. . . .'
     Ryukhin  understood  nothing of this, except that Ivan  Nikolayich  was
obviously in poor shape. He sighed and asked :
     'What was that he said about some professor? '
     'I  expect  he  saw  someone  who  gave  a  shock  to  his  disturbed
imagination. Or maybe it was a hallucination. . . .'
     A few  minutes later a lorry  was taking Ryukhin back into Moscow. Dawn
was  breaking  and  the  still-lit  street  lamps   seemed  superfluous  and
unpleasant. The driver, annoyed at missing a night's sleep, pushed his lorry
as hard as it would go, making it skid round the corners.
     The woods fell  away in  the  distance and  the river  wandered off  in
another direction. As the lorry drove on the scenery slowly changed: fences,
a  watchman's  hut,  piles of  logs, dried  and split  telegraph  poles with
bobbins strung  on  the wires  between  them,  heaps of  stones, ditches--in
short, a feeling that Moscow was about to appear round  the  next corner and
would rise up and engulf them at any moment.
     The  log  of  wood on  which  Ryukhin  was sitting  kept  wobbling  and
slithering  about and now and again it  tried to slide away  from  under him
altogether.  The restaurant dish-cloths, which the policeman and the  barman
had  thrown  on  to  the  back  of  the  lorry  before  leaving  earlier  by
trolley-bus, were  being flung about all over the back of the lorry. Ryukhin
started to  try and pick them up, but  with a sudden burst  of ill-temper he
hissed :
     'To hell with them! Why should I crawl around after  them? ' He pushed
them away with his foot and turned away from them.
     Ryukhin was in a state of depression. It was  obvious that his visit to
the asylum had affected him deeply. He tried  to think  what it was that was
disturbing him. Was it the corridor with its blue lamps, which had lodged so
firmly in  his memory? Was  it the  thought that the worst misfortune in the
world was to lose  one's reason? Yes, it was that, of course--but that after
all was a generalisation, it applied to everybody. There was something else,
though.  What was it? The  insult--that  was it. Yes, those insulting  words
that Bezdomny had flung into his face. And the agony of it was not that they
were insulting but that they were true.
     The poet stopped looking about him and  instead stared gloomily at  the
dirty, shaking floor of the lorry in an agony of self-reproach.
     Yes, his poetry . . . He  was thirty-two! And  what were his prospects?
To go on  writing a few poems every year. How long--until he was an old man?
Yes,  until he was an old man.  What would these poems do for  him? Make him
famous? ' What rubbish! Don't fool  yourself.  Nobody ever gets famous  from
writing bad poetry. Why is it bad, though? He was right --he was telling the
truth! '  said  Ryukhin pitilessly to himself. I don't believe in  a  single
word of what I've written . . .! '
     Embittered by  an upsurge  of neurasthenia, the poet swayed. The  floor
beneath had stopped shaking. Ryukhin  lifted his head and saw that he was in
the middle of Moscow, that day had dawned, that  his lorry had stopped in  a
traffic-jam at  a boulevard  intersection  and that right near  him stood  a
metal man on  a plinth, his  head inclined slightly forward, staring blankly
down the street.
     Strange  thoughts  assailed the poet, who was beginning to  feel ill. '
Now  there's an example of pure  luck .'--Ryukhin stood  up  on  the lorry's
platform and raised  his fist in an inexplicable urge to attack the harmless
cast-iron man--'. . .  everything he did in life,  whatever happened to him,
it all went his way, everything conspired  to make him famous! But what  did
he  achieve?  I've  never been able to discover . . . What about that famous
phrase of his that begins " A storm of  mist.  . ."? What  a load of rot! He
was lucky, that's all, just lucky!  '--Ryukhin concluded venomously, feeling
the lorry start to move under him--'  and just  because  that White  officer
shot at him and smashed his hip, he's famous for ever . . .'
     The jam was moving. Less than two minutes later the poet, now  not only
ill but ageing, walked on to the Griboyedov verandah. It was nearly empty.
     Ryukhin, laden  with  dish-cloths,  was  greeted  warmly  by  Archibald
Archibaldovich and immediately relieved of the horrible rags. If Ryukhin had
not been  so exhausted  by the  lorry-ride  and  by  his experiences  at the
clinic,  he would  probably  have  enjoyed describing  everything  that  had
happened  in  the hospital and  would have embellished  the story with  some
invented details. But for the moment he was incapable. Although Ryukhin  was
not an observant man, now, after his  agony on the lorry, for the first time
be looked really hard at  the pirate and  realised that although the man was
asking  questions about Bezdomny and even exclaiming ' Oh, poor fellow! ' he
was in reality totally indifferent to Bezdomny's fate and did not feel sorry
for him at  all. ' Good for him! He's right! ' thought Ryukhin with cynical,
masochistic  relish and breaking  off  his  description of  the  symptoms of
schizophrenia, he asked :
     'Archibald Archibaldovich,  could  I possibly have a glass of vodka. .
.? '
     The pirate put on a sympathetic expression and whispered :
     'Of course, I quite understand . . . right  away .  . .' and signalled
to a waiter.
     A  quarter  of an  hour later Ryukhin  was sitting in absolute solitude
hunched  over  a dish  of sardines, drinking  glass  after  glass  of vodka,
understanding  more  and more about  himself  and admitting  that  there was
nothing in his life that he could put right--he could only try to forget.
     The  poet  had wasted  his night while  others had  spent  it  enjoying
themselves and now he realised that it was lost forever. He only had to lift
his head up from the lamp and look at the sky to see that the night had gone
beyond return. Waiters were hurriedly jerking the cloths off the tables. The
cats pacing the verandah had a morning look about them. Day broke inexorably
over the poet.





        7.The Haunted Flat



     If next day someone had said  to Stepa Likhodeyev  'Stepa! If vou don't
get  up  this minute you're going  to be shot,' he would have  replied  in a
faint, languid  voice : '  All right, shoot me. Do  what you like to me, but
I'm not getting up! '
     The worst of it was  that he could  not  open his eyes, because when he
did  so there would  be a flash of lightning  and his head  would  shiver to
fragments.  A great bell was  tolling in his head, brown  spots  with  livid
green edges  were  swimming around somewhere  between his  eyeballs  and his
closed lids. To cap it all he felt sick and the nausea was somehow connected
with the sound of a gramophone.
     Stepa  tried to remember  what had happened,  but could only recall one
thing--yesterday, somewhere. God  knows  where, he had been holding a  table
napkin  and trying  to kiss a woman,  promising her  that he would  come and
visit her tomorrow at the stroke  of noon. She had refused, saying ' No, no,
I won't  be  at  home,'  but Stepa  had insisted ' I don't  care--I'll  come
anyway!'
     Stepa had now completely  forgotten who  that woman had been,  what the
time  was, what  day  of what month it was, and worst of all  he had no idea
where  he was.  In an effort  to  find  out,  he  unstuck his gummed-up left
eyelid. Something glimmered  in the semi-darkness. At  last Stepa recognised
it as a  mirror. He was lying cross-wise on the bed in his own bedroom. Then
something hit him on the head and he closed his eyes and groaned.
     Stepa Likhodeyev,  manager  of the  Variety Theatre, had woken up thait
morning in the flat that he shared with Berlioz  in a  big six-stoirey block
of  flats on Sadovaya Street. This flat--No. 50--  had a strange reputation.
Two years  before, it had been owned by the widow  of  a  jeweller called de
Fougere, Anna  Frantzevna,  a  respectable and  very  business-like lady  of
fifty, who let  three of  her five  rooms  to lodgers. One  of  them was, it
seems, called Belomut; the other's name has been lost.
     Two  years  ago odd things began happening  in that apartment--  people
started to vanish  from it  without trace.  One Monday afternoon a policeman
called, invited  the  second lodger (the one whose name  is no longer known)
into the hall and asked him to come along to the police station for a minute
or two to sign a document. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna's devoted
servant of many years, to say that if anybody rang  him up he would be  back
in ten minutes. He then went out accompanied  by  the courteous policeman in
white  gloves.  But he not only failed to come back in ten minutes; he never
came back  at all. Odder still, the policeman appeared to have vanished with
him.
     Anfisa, a devout and frankly rather a superstitious woman, informed the
distraught  Anna Frantsevna that it was witchcraft,  that she knew perfectly
well who had enticed  away the lodger and the policeman, only  she dared not
pronounce the name at night-time.
     Witchcraft once started, as  we all know, is virtually unstoppable. The
anonymous lodger disappeared, you will remember, on a Monday ; the following
Wednesday  Belomut, too,  vanished  from  the  face of  the earth,  although
admittedly  in  different  circumstances. He  was fetched as  usual  in  the
morning by the car which took him to work, but it never brought him back and
never called again.
     Words cannot describe the pain and distress which this caused to madame
Belomut,  but  alas for her, she was not  fated  to endure even this unhappy
state for  long.  On returning from her dacha  that evening, whither she had
hastily gone with  Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna found no trace of madame  Belomut
in  the  flat  and what was  more, the doors  of both rooms occupied  by the
Belomuts had been sealed. Two days of  uncertainty and  insomnia passed  for
Anna Frantzevna ; on the third day she made another hasty visit to her dacha
from whence, it need hardly be said, she never returned. Anfisa, left alone,
cried her eye s out and finally went to bed at  two-o'clock in  the morning.
Nobody  knows  what  happened  to  her  after  that,   but  tenants  of  the
neighbouring  flat described having  heard  knocking coming from No. 50  and
having seen lights burning  in the  windows all night. By morning Anfisa too
was gone. Legends of all  kinds about  the mysterious flat and its vanishing
lodgers circulated in the building  for some time. According  to one of them
the devout and spinsteriy Anfisa used to  carry twenty-five large  diamonds,
belonging to Anna Frantzevna, in a chamois-leather bag  between her withered
breasts.  It was  said,  too,  that among other things a priceless  treasure
consisting of those same diamonds  and  a hoard of  tsarist gold  coins were
somehow found  in the  coal-she'd behind Anna  Frantzevna's  dacha.  Lacking
proof, of course, we shall never  know how true these rumours were. However,
the  flat only  remained empty for  a week before Berlioz and  his wife  and
Stepa and his wife moved into it. Naturally as soon as  they took possession
of  the haunted flat the oddest things started happening to them too. Within
a single month  both wives had  disappeared,  although  not  without  trace.
Rumour  had  it  that  Berlioz's  wife had  been  seen  in  Kharkov  with  a
ballet-master,  whilst  Stepa's  wife had  apparently  found  her way to  an
orphanage  where, the  story went, the  manager of the Variety had used  his
connections to get her a room on condition that she never showed her face in
Sadovaya Street again. . . .
     So Stepa groaned. He  wanted to call his maid, Grunya,  and ask her for
an  aspirin but he was conscious enough  to realise that it would be useless
because Grunya most probably  had no aspirin. He tried to call for Berlioz's
help  and  twice  moaned '  Misha . . . Misha  . . .', but as you will  have
guessed, there was no reply. There was complete silence in the flat.
     Wriggling his  toes, Stepa deduced that he  was  lying in his socks. He
ran a trembling hand down his hip to  test whether he had his trousers on or
not and found  that  he had not. At last, realising  that he  was alone  and
abandoned, that there was nobody to help him, he decided to get up, whatever
superhuman effort it might cost him.
     Stepa prised open his  eyelids and  saw  himself  reflected in the long
mirror in the  shape of a man whose hair stuck out in all directions, with a
puffy,  stubble-grown face,  with  watery eyes and wearing a  dirty shirt, a
collar, tie, underpants and socks.
     As he looked at himself in the mirror, he also noticed standing  beside
it a strange man dressed in a black suit and a black beret.
     Stepa sat up on the bed and did his best to focus his bloodshot eyes on
the  stranger.  The  silence was  broken by the unknown  visitor,  who  said
gravely, in a low voice with a foreign accent:
     'Good morning, my dear Stepan Bogdanovich! '
     There was a  pause. Pulling himself  together with fearful effort Stepa
said:
     'What  do you want?' He did not recognise his own voice. He had spoken
the  word ' what' in a treble, ' do you  ' in a bass and ' want' had  simply
not emerged at all.
     The stranger gave an amiable smile,  pulled out a large gold watch with
a diamond triangle on the cover, listened to it strike eleven times and said
:
     'Eleven. I have been waiting exactly  an hour for you  to wake up. You
gave me an appointment to see you at your flat at ten so here I am!'
     Stepa  fumbled  for  his  trousers  on  the chair  beside his  bed  and
whispered:
     'Excuse me. . . .' He put on his trousers and asked hoarsely :
     'Please tell me--who are you? '
     He found talking  difficult, as with every word  someone stuck a needle
into his brain, causing him infernal agony.
     'What! Have you forgotten my name too? ' The stranger smiled.
     'Sorry  . .  .'  said  Stepa  huskily.  He  could  feel his  hangover
developing a new symptom : the floor beside his bed seemed to be on the move
and any moment now he was liable to take a dive head first down into hell.
     'My dear  Stepan Bogdanovich,' said the visitor with a shrewd smile. '
Aspirin will do you no good. Follow a  wise old rule--  the hair of the dog.
The only thing that  will bring you back to  life is two measures  of  vodka
with something sharp and peppery to eat.'
     Ill though Stepa was he  had enough sense to realise  that since he had
been found in this state he had better tell all.
     'Frankly . . .' he began, scarcely able to move  his tongue,  ' I did
have a bit too . . .'
     'Say no more! ' interrupted the visitor and pushed the armchair to one
side.
     Stepa's eyes  bulged. There on  a little  table was a  tray, laid  with
slices of white bread  and  butter, pressed caviare in a glass bowl, pickled
mushrooms on a saucer, something in a little saucepan  and  finally vodka in
one of the jeweller's ornate decanters. The decanter was  so chilled that it
was  wet  with condensation  from standing in a  finger-bowl full of cracked
ice.
     The stranger cut Stepa's astonishment  short by deftly pouring him  out
half a glass of vodka.
     'What about you? ' croaked Stepa.
     'With pleasure! '
     With  a  shaking  hand  Stepa raised  the  glass to  his  lips  and the
mysterious guest swallowed his at one gulp. As he munched his  caviare Stepa
was able to squeeze out the words :
     'Won't you have a bite to eat too? '
     'Thank you, but I never eat when I'm drinking,' replied the  stranger,
pouring out a second round.  He lifted the lid of the saucepan. It contained
little frankfurters in tomato sauce.
     Slowly  the  awful  green blobs in front of  his eyes  dissolved, words
started to form and most important of all Stepa's memory began to come back.
That  was it--he  had  been  at Khustov's  dacha at Skhodna and  Khustov had
driven Stepa out there by taxi.  He even remembered hailing the taxi outside
the Metropole. There had been another man  with them--an actor ... or was he
an actor? . . . anyhow he  had a portable gramophone. Yes, yes, they had all
gone  to the dacha! And the dogs,  he remembered,  had started  howling when
they played  the gramophone. Only the woman Stepa had tried to kiss remained
a complete blank . . . who the  hell was she? . . .  Didn't she work for the
radio? Or perhaps she didn't. . . .
     Gradually the previous day  came  back into focus, but Stepa  was  much
more interested in  today and in particular  in  this  odd  stranger who had
materialised in his bedroom complete with snacks and vodka.  If only someone
would explain it all!
     'Well, now, I hope, you've remembered my name? '
     Stepa could only grin sheepishly and spread his hands.
     'Well,  really! I suspect you drank port on top of vodka last  night.
What a way to behave!'
     'Please keep this to yourself,' said Stepa imploringly.
     'Oh, of course, of course! But naturally I can't vouch for Khustov.'
     'Do you know Khustov? '
     'I saw that individual  for a moment or two  in your office yesterday,
but one cursory  glance  at his face was enough to convince me that he was a
scheming, quarrelsome, sycophantic swine.'
     'He's absolutely  right! '  thought Stepa, amazed at such  a truthful,
precise and succinct description of Khustov.
     The ruins of yesterday  were piecing themselves  together now,  but the
manager of the Variety still felt vaguely anxious. There was still  a gaping
black void in his memory. He had  absolutely no  recollection of having seen
this stranger in his office the day before.
     'Woland,  professor of black  magic,'  said the  visitor