etty
women.
     However, one thing baffled the police completely--what could  have been
the  gang's  motive for abducting a  mental patient,  who called himself the
master, from a psychiatric clinic? This  completely  eluded them, as did the
abducted patient's real name. He was therefore filed away for ever under the
pseudonym of 'No. 118, Block i.'
     Thus nearly everything was explained away and the investigation, as all
good things must, came to an end.
     Years passed  and people began to forget about Woland, Koroviev and the
rest.  Many things  changed in the lives  of  those who  had suffered at the
hands of Woland and his associates, and however minor these changes may have
been they are still worth following up.
     George  Bengalsky,  for  example,  after  three  months   in  hospital,
recovered and was sent home, but he had to give up his job at the Variety at
the busiest time of the season, when the public was storming the theatre for
tickets  :  the  memory of  the  black magic  and  its  revelations was  too
unbearable. Bengalsky gave up the  Variety because he realised that he could
not stand  the agony  of standing  up in front of two  thousand people every
evening,  being  inevitably recognised  and endlessly  subjected  to jeering
questions about how he preferred to be--with or without his head? Apart from
that  the compere  had lost a lot of the cheerfulness which  is essential in
his job. He developed a nasty, compulsive habit of falling into a depression
every spring at the full moon, of suddenly  grabbing his neck, staring round
in terror and bursting into  tears. These attacks did not last for long, but
nevertheless since he did have them he could hardly go on doing his old job,
and the compere retired and began living on his savings which, by his modest
reckoning, were enough to keep him for fifty years.
     He left and never again saw Varenukha, who had acquired  universal love
and popularity for  his incredible charm and politeness, remarkable even for
a theatre  manager. The  free-ticket  hounds,  for instance, regarded him as
their patron  saint.  At  whatever  hour they rang the Variety, through  the
receiver would always come his  soft, sad: ' Hello,' and if the caller asked
for  Varenukha to  be  brought to the  telephone the same  voice hastened to
reply : '  Speaking--at your  service.' But how  Ivan Savyelich had suffered
for his politeness!
     You  can  no  longer speak to Stepa  Likhodeyev  if you  telephone  the
Variety.   Immediately   after  his  week's  stay  in  hospital,  Stepa  was
transferred to Rostov  where he was made the manager of a large delicatessen
store. There are rumours that he never touches port these days, that he only
drinks vodka distilled from blackcurrants and is much healthier for it. They
say, too, that he is very silent these days and avoids women.
     Stepan Bogdanovich's removal  from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the
joy he  had dreamed  of for  so  many years. After  hospital and a  cure  at
Kislovodsk, the treasurer, now an old, old man with a shaking head, tendered
his resignation. It was Rimsky's wife who brought his letter of  resignation
to the theatre :  Grigory  Danilovich himself could not  find  the strength,
even  in daytime, to  revisit  the  building where he had seen  the  moonlit
windowpane rattling and the long arm reaching down to grasp the catch.
     Having retired from the  Variety,  Rimsky  got a job at the  children's
marionette  theatre on the far side of  the Moscow River. Here he never even
had to deal with  Arkady Apollonich Sempleyarov on the subject of acoustics,
because he in turn had  been transferred to Bryansk and put  in charge of  a
mushroom-canning plant. Now Muscovites eat his  salted chanterelles  and his
pickled  button-mushrooms  and  they  are  so  delicious  that everybody  is
delighted with Arkady Apollonich's  change of job. It is all so long ago now
that  there  is  no  harm in saying that Arkady Appollonich  never  had much
success at improving  the  acoustics of  Moscow's theatres anyway,  and  the
situation is much the same today.
     Apart from Arkady  Apollonich, several  other people  have given up the
theatre for good,  among them Nikanor Ivanovich  Bosoi, even though his only
link  with  the  theatre  was a fondness for  free tickets. Nowadays Nikanor
Ivanovich not  only refuses to accept  free  tickets : he wouldn't set  foot
inside a theatre if you paid him and he even turns pale if the subject crops
up in conversation.  More than the theatre  he now loathes both Pushkin  and
that gifted artiste, Savva Potapovich Kurolesov;
     in fact he detests that actor to such a degree that last year, catching
sight of a black-bordered announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovicb
had been struck  down  in  the prime  of life  by  a  heart attack,  Nikanor
Ivanovich turned such a violent shade of  purple that he almost joined Savva
Potapovich, and he roared:
     'Serve him right! '
     What is  more, the actor's death stirred so  many painful memories  for
Nikanor Ivanovich that  he went out and, with the full moon for company, got
blind drunk.  With  every  glass  that  he drank the  row of  hated  figures
lengthened in front of him-- there  stood Sergei Gerardovich Dunchill, there
stood the beautiful Ida  Herkulanovna, there  stood the  red-bearded man and
his herd of fearsome geese.
     And what  happened to them?  Nothing. Nothing could ever happen to them
because  they never existed, just as the  compere,  the  theatre itself, the
miserly  old aunt hoarding  currency in her cellar and the rude  cooks never
existed  either.  Nikanor  Ivanovich  had  dreamed  it all  under  the  evil
influence of  the  beastly Koroviev. The only real  person in his  dream was
Sawa Potapovich the actor, who got involved merely  because Ivanor Ivanovich
had so often heard him on the radio. Unlike all the others, he was real.
     So  perhaps  Aloysius Mogarych  did not  exist  either?  Far  from  it.
Aloysius  Mogarych  is  still with  us,  in  the very  job that  Rimsky gave
up--treasurer of the Variety Theatre.
     About twenty-four hours after his call on Woland, Aloysius had regained
consciousness  in  a  train somewhere  near  Vyatka.  Finding  that  he  had
absentmindedly  left Moscow without his trousers but had somehow brought his
landlord's rent-book with him,  Aloysius had given the conductor  a colossal
tip, borrowed a  pair  of  filthy old trousers  from him and turned back  to
Moscow from Vyatka. But he failed to find  his landlord's house. The ancient
pile  had  been  burnt  to  the  ground.  Aloysius,  however,  was extremely
ingenious. Within a fortnight he had moved into an excellent room in Bryusov
Street and a few months later  he was installed in Rimsky's office.  Just as
Rimsky had suffered under Stepa,  Varenukha's  life was now made a misery by
Aloysius. Ivan Savyelich's  one and only wish  is for Aloysius to be removed
as far away from  the Variety as possible  because,  as  Varenukha sometimes
whispers among his close  friends, ' he has never met such  a  swine  in his
life as  that Aloysius  and he wouldn't be  surprised  at anything  Aloysius
might do '.
     The house manager is perhaps biased. Aloysius is not known to have done
anything suspicious--indeed he does not appear to have done anything at all,
except of course  to appoint another barman in place of Sokov. Andrei Fokich
died of cancer of the liver nine months after Woland's visit to Moscow.  . .
.
     More years passed  and the events  described in  this  truthful account
have faded from most people's memories--with a few exceptions.
     Every  year, at  the approach of the vernal full moon,  a man of  about
thirty  or  a  little more  can be seen walking  towards the  lime  trees of
Patriarch's Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is
Professor  Ivan  Nikolayich   Poniryov  of  the  Institute  of  History  and
Philosophy.
     When he reaches the lime trees he always sits down on the same bench on
which he sat that evening when Berlioz, now long forgotten by everybody, saw
the moon shatter to  fragments for the last time in his life. Now that moon,
whole and in one piece, white in the early evening and later golden with its
outline of  a dragon-horse, floats over the erstwhile poet  Ivan  Nikolayich
while seeming to stand still.
     Ivan Nikolayich now knows and understands everything. He  knows that as
a young man he fell victim to some crooked hypnotists, went to hospital  and
was cured. But  he  knows that there  is still  something that is beyond his
control. He cannot control what happens at the springtime full moon. As soon
as  it  draws  near, as  soon as that heavenly body  begins  to  reach  that
fullness  it  once  had  when  it  hung  in  the  sky  high  above  the  two
seven-branched  candlesticks,  Ivan Nikolayich grows  uneasy  and irritable,
loses his appetite,  cannot sleep and waits for the moon  to wax. When  full
moon comes nothing can  keep  Ivan  Nikolayich  at home.  Towards evening he
leaves home and goes to Patriarch's Ponds.
     As  he  sits  on  the bench  Ivan Nikolayich  openly talks to  himself,
smokes, peers at the moon or at the familiar turnstile.
     Ivan Nikolayich spends an hour or two  there, then  gets up and  walks,
always following the  same  route, across Spiridonovka Street  with unseeing
eyes towards the side-streets near the Arbat.
     He passes an oil-shop, turns by a crooked old gas lamp and creeps up to
some railings through which he can see a garden that is splendid, though not
yet in flower, and in it--lit on one  side by moonlight,  dark on the other,
with  an attic  that has  a  triple-casement  window--a house  in the Gothic
style.
     The professor never knows what draws him to those railings or who lives
in that house, but he knows that it is useless to fight his instinct at full
moon. He  knows,  too,  that  in the  garden beyond  the  railings  he  will
inevitably see the same thing every time.
     He sees a stout, elderly man sitting on a bench, a  man with a beard, a
pince-nez and very, very slightly piggish features.  Ivan  Nikolayich always
finds that tenant of the Gothic house in the same  dreamy attitude, his gaze
turned  towards the moon.  Ivan Nikolayich knows that having stared  at  the
moon the  seated man will turn and look hard at the attic windows, as though
expecting  them to  be  flung open and  something  unusual  to appear on the
windowsill.
     The rest, too, Ivan Nikolayich knows by heart. At this point he  has to
duck down behind the railings, because the man on the  bench begins to twist
his head anxiously,  his wandering  eyes seeking something  in  the  air. He
smiles in triumph,  then suddenly clasps  his  hands in delicious agony  and
mutters quite distinctly:
     'Venus! Venus! Oh, what a fool I was . . .!'
     'Oh God,' Ivan  Nikolayich starts  to whisper as he hides  behind the
railings with his  burning gaze fixed on the mysterious stranger.  ' Another
victim of the moon . . . Another one like me . . .'
     And the man goes on talking :
     'Oh, what a fool I  was! Why, why didn't I fly away with her? What was
I afraid of, stupid old ass that I am? I had to ask for that document! . . .
Well, you must  just put up with it, you old cretin!' So it  goes on until a
window opens  on the dark side of the  house, something white  appears in it
and an unpleasant female voice rings out:
     'Where  are  you, Nikolai Ivanovich? What the  hell are you doing out
there? Do you want to catch malaria? Come and drink your tea! '
     At this the man blinks and says in a lying voice :
     'I'm just having a breath of fresh air,  my dear! The air  out here is
so nice! '
     Then he gets up from his bench, furtively shakes his fist at the window
which has just closed and stumps indoors.
     'He's  lying, he's  lying!  Oh  God, how he's lying! '  mumbles  Ivan
Nikolayich  as he walks from the railings. ' He  doesn't  come  down to  the
garden  for  the  fresh  air--he  sees something  in  that  springtime  sky,
something  high above  the garden!  What  wouldn't  I give to find  out  his
secret, to know  who the Venus is that he lost and now tries vainly to catch
by waving his arms in the air.'
     The  professor returns home a sick man. His wife pretends not to notice
it  and hurries him into bed, but  she stays up and sits by  the lamp with a
book,  watching the sleeping  man with a bitter look. She knows that at dawn
Ivan Nikolayich  will wake up  with  an agonised cry, will start to weep and
rave. That is why  she keeps in front of her on the  tablecloth a hypodermic
syringe  ready in a dish of spirit and  an ampoule of  liquid the  colour of
strong tea.
     Later the poor woman is free to go to  sleep without  misgiving.  After
his  injection  Ivan  Nikolayich  will  sleep  until  morning  with  a  calm
expression and  he  will dream, unknown  to her,  dreams that  are sublimely
happy.
     It  is always the same thing that wakens the  scholar  and wrings  that
pitiful cry from him. He sees a  strange, noseless executioner who,  jumping
up  and  uttering a grunt as he  does so, pierces  the heart of the maddened
Hestas, lashed  to a gibbet. But what  makes the dream so horrible is not so
much the executioner as the lurid, unnatural light  that comes from a cloud,
seething and drenching the earth, of the  kind that only accompanies natural
disasters.
     After his injection the sleeper's vision changes. From the  bed  to the
moon stretches a broad path of  moonlight  and up it is climbing a man in  a
white cloak with a blood-red lining. Beside him walks a young man  in a torn
chiton and with a  disfigured face. The two  are talking heatedly,  arguing,
trying to agree about something.
     'Ye  gods! ' says the man  in the cloak, turning his proud face to his
companion.  ' What  a  disgusting method  of  execution!  But  please,  tell
me,'--here the pride  in his face turns to supplication--'  it did  not take
place, did it? I beg you--tell me that it never took place? '
     'No, of course it  never took place,' answers his companion in a husky
voice. ' It was merely your imagination.'
     'Can you swear to that? ' begged the man in the cloak.
     'I swear it! ' answers his companion, his eyes smiling.
     'That  is  all I need to  know! ' gasps the man in  the  cloak  as  he
strides on towards the moon, beckoning his companion on. Behind them walks a
magnificently calm, gigantic dog with pointed ears.
     Then the moonbeam  begins to  shake, a river of moonlight floods out of
it and pours in all  directions. From  the  flood materialises  a  woman  of
incomparable beauty and leads towards Ivan a man with a  stubble-grown face,
gazing  fearfully round him. Ivan  Nikolayich recognises  him at once. It is
No. 118, his  nocturnal visitor. In  his dream Ivan  stretches  out his arms
towards him and asks greedily :
     'So was that how it ended? '
     'That  is  how it ended,  disciple,'  replies No.  118 as  the  woman
approaches Ivan and says :
     'Of course.  It has ended ;  and everything has an end . . . I'll kiss
you on the forehead and everything will be as it should be . . .'
     She leans  over  Ivan  and kisses him on  the forehead and Ivan strains
towards her to  look into her eyes, but she draws back, draws back and walks
away towards the moon with her companion. . . .
     Then the  moon  goes mad,  deluges Ivan  with streams of light,  sprays
light everywhere,  a  moonlight  flood invades  the room, the  light  sways,
rises, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan  sleeps with a look of happiness
on his face.
     In the  morning he  wakes silent, but quite calm  and well. His bruised
memory has  subsided again and until the next  full moon no one will trouble
the professor--neither the  noseless  man who killed Hestas  nor  the  cruel
Procurator of Judaea, fifth in that office, the knight Pontius Pilate.