Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita
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© Mikhail Bulgakov
© Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny
© 1967 Collins and Harvill Press, London
OCR: Scout
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The Master and Margarita. Mikhail bulgakov
Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny
Collins and Harvill Press, London
Printed in Great Britain by Collins Clear-Type Press London and Glasgow
© 1967 in the English translation
The Harvill Press, London, and
Harper air Row Publishers Inc., New York
OCR: Scout
BOOK ONE
1 Never Talk to Strangers
2 Pontius Pilate
3 The Seventh Proof
4 The Pursuit
5 The Affair at Griboyedov
6 Schizophrenia
7 The Haunted Flat
8 A Duel between Professor and Poet
9 Koroviev's Tricks
10 News from Yalta
11 The Two Ivans
12. Black Magic Revealed
13 Enter the Hero
14 Saved by Cock-Crow
15 The Dream of Nikanor Ivanovich
16 The Execution
17 A Day of Anxiety
18 Unwelcome Visitors
book two
19 Margarita
20 Azazello's Cream
21 The Flight
22 By Candlelight
23 Satan's Rout
24 The Master is Released
25 How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Karioth
26 The Burial
27 The Last of Flat No. 50
28 The Final Adventure of Koroviev and Behemoth
29 The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided
30 Time to Go
31 On Sparrow Hills
32 Absolution and Eternal Refuge
Epilogue
'Say at last--who art thou?'
'That Power I serve
Which wills forever evil
Yet does forever good.'
Goethe, Faust
1. Never Talk to Strangers
At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at
Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them--aged about forty, dressed in a greyish
summer suit--was short, dark-haired, well-fed and bald. He carried his
decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly shaven face was embellished
by black hornrimmed spectacles of preternatural dimensions. The other, a
broad-shouldered young man with curly reddish hair and a check cap pushed
back to the nape of his neck, was wearing a tartan shirt, chewed white
trousers and black sneakers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of
a highbrow literary magazine and chairman of the management cofnmittee of
one of the biggest Moscow literary clubs, known by its abbreviation as
massolit; his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov who
wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny.
Reaching the shade of the budding lime trees, the two writers went
straight to a gaily-painted kiosk labelled'Beer and Minerals'.
There was an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth
recording : not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to
Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of
the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a
dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard--yet no one had
come out for a walk under the limes, no one was sitting on a bench, the
avenue was empty.
'A glass of lemonade, please,'said Berlioz.
'There isn't any,'replied the woman in the kiosk. For some reason the
request seemed to offend her.
'Got any beer?' enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
'Beer's being delivered later this evening' said the woman.
'Well what have you got?' asked Berlioz.
'Apricot juice, only it's warm' was the answer.
'All right, let's have some.'
The apricot juice produced a rich yellow froth, making the air smell
like a hairdresser's. After drinking it the two writers immediately began to
hiccup. They paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond, their backs to
Bronnaya Street.Then occurred the second oddness, which affected Berlioz
alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart thumped and for a moment
vanished, then returned but with a blunt needle sticking into it. In
addition Berlioz was seized by a fear that was groundless but so powerful
that he had an immediate impulse to run away from Patriarch's Ponds without
looking back.
Berlioz gazed miserably about him, unable to say what had frightened
him. He went pale, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and thought: '
What's the matter with me? This has never happened before. Heart playing
tricks . . . I'm overstrained ... I think it's time to chuck everything up
and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk. . . .'
Just then the sultry air coagulated and wove itself into the shape of a
man--a transparent man of the strangest appearance. On his small head was a
jockey-cap and he wore a short check bum-freezer made of air. The man was
seven feet tall but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin and with a face
made for derision.
Berlioz's life was so arranged that he was not accustomed to seeing
unusual phenomena. Paling even more, he stared and thought in consternation
: ' It can't be!'
But alas it was, and the tall, transparent gentleman was swaying from
left to right in front of him without touching the ground.
Berlioz was so overcome with horror that he shut his eyes. When he
opened them he saw that it was all over, the mirage had dissolved, the
chequered figure had vanished and the blunt needle had simultaneously
removed itself from his heart.
'The devil! ' exclaimed the editor. ' D'you know, Ivan, the heat
nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw something like a hallucination
. . . ' He tried to smile but his eyes were still blinking with fear and his
hands trembled. However he gradually calmed down, flapped his handkerchief
and with a brave enough ' Well, now. . . ' carried on the conversation that
had been interrupted by their drink of apricot juice.
They had been talking, it seemed, about Jesus Christ. The fact was that
the editor had commissioned the poet to write a long anti-religious poem for
one of the regular issues of his magazine. Ivan Nikolayich had written this
poem in record time, but unfortunately the editor did not care for it at
all. Bezdomny had drawn the chief figure in his poem, Jesus, in very black
colours, yet in the editor's opinion the whole poem had to be written again.
And now he was reading Bezdomny a lecture on Jesus in order to stress the
poet's fundamental error.
It was hard to say exactly what had made Bezdomny write as he
had--whether it was his great talent for graphic description or complete
ignorance of the subject he was writing on, but his Jesus had come out,
well, completely alive, a Jesus who had really existed, although admittedly
a Jesus who had every possible fault.
Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet that the main object was
not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, but that as a person Jesus
had never existed at all and that all the stories about him were mere
invention, pure myth.
The editor was a well-read man and able to make skilful reference to
the ancient historians, such as the famous Philo of Alexandria and the
brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom mentioned a word of
Jesus' existence. With a display of solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich
informed the poet that incidentally, the passage in Chapter 44 of the
fifteenth book of Tacitus' Annals, where he describes the execution of
Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery.
The poet, for whom everything the editor was saying was a novelty,
listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing him with his bold
green eyes, occasionally hiccuping and cursing the apricot juice under his
breath.
'There is not one oriental religion,' said Berlioz, ' in which an
immaculate virgin does not bring a god into the world. And the Christians,
lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In
fact he never lived at all. That's where the stress has got to lie.
Berlioz's high tenor resounded along the empty avenue and as Mikhail
Alexandrovich picked his way round the sort of historical pitfalls that can
only be negotiated safely by a highly educated man, the poet learned more
and more useful and instructive facts about the Egyptian god Osiris, son of
Earth and Heaven, about the Phoenician god Thammuz, about Marduk and even
about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, who had once been held in
great veneration by the Aztecs of Mexico. At the very moment when Mikhail
Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to model figurines of
Vitzli-Putzli out of dough-- the first man appeared in the avenue.
Afterwards, when it was frankly too late, various bodies collected
their data and issued descriptions of this man. As to his teeth, he haid
platinum crowns on his left side and gold ones on his tight. He wore an
expensive grey suit and foreign shoes of the same colour as his suit. His
grey beret was stuck jauntily over one ear and under his arm he carried a
walking-stick with a knob in the shape of a poodle's head. He looked
slightly over forty. Crooked sort of mouth. Clean-shav-n. Dark hair. Right
eye black, left ieye for some reason green. Eyebrows black, but one higher
than the other. In short--a foreigner.
As he passed the bench occupied by the editor and the poet, the
foreigner gave them a sidelong glance, stopped and suddenly sat down on the
next bench a couple of paces away from the two friends.
'A German,'' thought Berlioz. ' An Englishman. ...' thought Bezdomny.
' Phew, he must be hot in those gloves!'
The stranger glanced round the tall houses that formed a square round
the pond, from which it was obvious that he seeing this locality for the
first time and that it interested him. His gaze halted on the upper storeys,
whose panes threw back a blinding, fragmented reflection of the sun which
was setting on Mikhail Alexandrovich for ever ; he then looked downwards to
where the windows were turning darker in the early evening twilight, smiled
patronisingly at something, frowned, placed his hands on the knob of his
cane and laid his chin on his hands.
'You see, Ivan,' said Berlioz,' you have written a marvellously
satirical description of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the whole
joke lies in the fact that there had already been a whole series of sons of
God before Jesus, such as the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the
Persian Mithras. Of course not one of these ever existed, including Jesus,
and instead of the nativity or the arrival of the Magi you should have
described the absurd rumours about their arrival. But according to your
story the nativity really took place! '
Here Bezdomny made an effort to stop his torturing hiccups and held his
breath, but it only made him hiccup more loudly and painfully. At that
moment Berlioz interrupted his speech because the foreigner suddenly rose
and approached the two writers. They stared at him in astonishment.
'Excuse me, please,' said the stranger with a foreign accent, although
in correct Russian, ' for permitting myself, without an introduction . . .
but the subject of your learned conversation was so interesting that. . .'
Here he politely took off his beret and the two friends had no
alternative but to rise and bow.
'No, probably a Frenchman.. . .' thought Berlioz.
'A Pole,' thought Bezdomny.
I should add that the poet had found the stranger repulsive from first
sight, although Berlioz had liked the look of him, or rather not exactly
liked him but, well. . . been interested by him.
'May I join you? ' enquired the foreigner politely, and as the two
friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitly placed himself 'between
them and at once joined the conversation. ' If I am not mistaken, you were
saying that Jesus never existed, were you not? ' he asked, turning his green
left eye on Berlioz.
'No, you were not mistaken,' replied Berlioz courteously. ' I did
indeed say that.'
'Ah, how interesting! ' exclaimed the foreigner.
'What the hell does he want?' thought Bezdomny and frowned.
'And do you agree with your friend? ' enquired the unknown man,
turning to Bezdomny on his right.
'A hundred per cent! ' affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious
numerical expressions.
'Astounding! ' cried their unbidden companion. Glancing furtively
round and lowering his voice he said : ' Forgive me for being so rude, but
am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either? ' He gave a
horrified look and said: ' I swear not to tell anyone! '
'Yes, neither of us believes in God,' answered Berlioz with a faint
smile at this foreign tourist's apprehension. ' But we can talk about it
with absolute freedom.'
The foreigner leaned against the backrest of the bench and asked, in a
voice positively squeaking with curiosity :
'Are you . . . atheists? '
'Yes, we're atheists,' replied Berlioz, smiling, and Bezdomny thought
angrily : ' Trying to pick an argument, damn foreigner! '
'Oh, how delightful!' exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swivelled
his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn.
'In our country there's nothing surprising about atheism,' said
Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. ' Most of us have long ago and quite
consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God.'
At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thing--he stood up and shook
the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so :
'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!'
'What are you thanking him for? ' asked Bezdomny, blinking.
'For some very valuable information, which as a traveller I find
extremely interesting,' said the eccentric foreigner, raising his forefinger
meaningfully.
This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful
impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as
though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
'No, he's not an Englishman,' thought Berlioz. Bezdomny thought: '
What I'd like to know is--where did he manage to pick up such good Russian?
' and frowned again.
'But might I enquire,' began the visitor from abroad after some
worried reflection, ' how you account for the proofs of the existence of
God, of which there are, as you know, five? '
'Alas! ' replied Berlioz regretfully. ' Not one of these proofs is
valid, and mankind has long since relegated them to the archives. You must
agree that rationally there can be no proof of the existence of God.'
'Bravo!' exclaimed the stranger. ' Bravo! You have exactly repeated
the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here's the oddity of
it: he completely demolished all five proofs and then, as though to deride
his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own.'
'Kant's proof,' objected the learned editor with a thin smile, ' is
also unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that Kant's reasoning on
this question would only satisfy slaves, and Strauss simply laughed at his
proof.'
As Berlioz spoke he thought to himself: ' But who on earth is he? And
how does he speak such good Russian? '
'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for
that " proof " of his! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly.
'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed.
But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not
surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. ' Exactly, exactly! ' he
cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. ' That's exactly
the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: " If
you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but
it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad." '
Berlioz's eyes bulged. ' At breakfast ... to Kant? What is he rambling
about? ' he thought.
'But,' went on the foreigner, unperturbed by Berlioz's amazement and
turning to the poet, ' sending him to Solovki is out of the question,
because for over a hundred years now he has been somewhere far away from
Solovki and I assure you that it is totally impossible to bring him back.'
'What a pity!' said the impetuous poet.
'It is a pity,' agreed the unknown man with a glint in his eye, and
went on: ' But this is the question that disturbs me--if there is no God,
then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order? '
'Man rules himself,' said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an
obviously absurd question.
'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one
must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow
me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only
incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a
thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow? '
'In fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ' imagine what would
happen if you, for instance, were to start organising others and yourself,
and you developed a taste for it--then suddenly you got. . . he, he ... a
slight heart attack . . . ' at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though
the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure. . . . ' Yes, a heart
attack,' he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat, ' and that's
the end of you as an organiser! No one's fate except your own interests you
any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is
amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a
fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know
perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was in
charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and
his fellow men, realising that there is no more sense to be had of him,
incinerate him.
'Sometimes it can be even worse : a man decides to go to
Kislovodsk,'--here the stranger stared at Berlioz--' a trivial matter you
may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and
falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that
himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different
was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter.
Berlioz had been following the unpleasant story about the heart attack
and the tram with great attention and some uncomfortable thoughts had begun
to worry him. ' He's not a foreigner . . . he's not a foreigner,' he
thought, ' he's a very peculiar character . . . but I ask you, who is he? .
. . '
'I see you'd like to smoke,' said the stranger unexpectedly, turning
to Bezdomny, ' what sort do you prefer? '
'Do you mean you've got different sorts? ' glumly asked the poet, who
had run out of cigarettes.
'Which do you prefer? ' repeated the mysterious stranger.
'Well, then " Our Brand ",' replied Bezdomny, irritated.
The unknown man immediately pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket
and offered it to Bezdomny.
• " Our Brand " . . .'
The editor and the poet were not so much surprised by the fact that the
cigarette case actually contained ' Our Brand' as by the cigarette case
itself. It was of enormous dimensions, made of solid gold and on the inside
of the cover a triangle of diamonds flashed with blue and white fire.
Their reactions were different. Berlioz thought: ' No, he's a
foreigner.' Bezdomny thought: ' What the hell is he . . .? '
The poet and the owner of the case lit their cigarettes and Berlioz,
who did not smoke, refused.
'I shall refute his argument by saying' Berlioz decided to himself, '
that of course man is mortal, no one will argue with that. But the fact is
that . . .'
However he was not able to pronounce the words before the stranger
spoke:
'Of course man is mortal, but that's only half the problem. The trouble
is that mortality sometimes comes to him so suddenly! And he cannot even say
what he will be doing this evening.'
'What a stupid way of putting the question. ' thought Berlioz and
objected :
'Now there you exaggerate. I know more or less exactly what I'm going
to be doing this evening. Provided of course that a brick doesn't fall on my
head in the street. . .'
'A brick is neither here nor there,' the stranger interrupted
persuasively. ' A brick never falls on anyone's head. You in particular, I
assure you, are in no danger from that. Your death will be different.'
'Perhaps you know exactly how I am going to die? ' enquired Berlioz
with understandable sarcasm at the ridiculous turn that the conversation
seemed to be taking. ' Would you like to tell me?'
'Certainly,' rejoined the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down as
though he were measuring him for a suit and muttered through his teeth
something that sounded like : ' One, two . . . Mercury in the second house .
. . the moon waning . . . six-- accident . . . evening--seven . . . ' then
announced loudly and cheerfully : ' Your 'head will be cut off!'
Bezdomny turned to the stranger with a wild, furious stare and Berlioz
asked with a sardonic grin :
'By whom? Enemies? Foreign spies? '
'No,' replied their companion, ' by a Russian woman, a member of the
Komsomol.'
'Hm,' grunted Berlioz, upset by the foreigner's little joke. ' That,
if you don'c mind my saying so, is most improbable.'
'I beg your pardon,' replied the foreigner, ' but it is so. Oh yes, I
was going to ask you--what are you doing this evening, if it's not a secret?
'
'It's no secret. From here I'm going home, and then at ten o'clock
this evening there's a meeting at the massolit and I shall be in the chair.'
'No, that is absolutely impossible,' said the stranger firmly.
'Why?'
'Because,' replied the foreigner and frowned up at the sky where,
sensing the oncoming cool of the evening, the birds were flying to roost, '
Anna has already bought the sunflower-seed oil, in fact she has not only
bought it, but has already spilled it. So that meeting will not take place.'
With this, as one might imagine, there was silence beneath the lime
trees.
'Excuse me,' said Berlioz after a pause with a glance at the
stranger's jaunty beret, ' but what on earth has sunflower-seed oil got to
do with it... and who is Anna? '
'I'll tell you what sunflower-seed oil's got to do with it,' said
Bezdomny suddenly, having obviously decided to declare war on their
uninvited companion. ' Have you, citizen, ever had to spend any time in a
mental hospital? '
'Ivan! ' hissed Mikhail Alexandrovich.
But the stranger was not in the least offended and gave a cheerful
laugh. ' Yes, I have, I have, and more than once! ' he exclaimed laughing,
though the stare that he gave the poet was mirthless. ' Where haven't I
been! My only regret is that I didn't stay long enough to ask the professor
what schizophrenia was. But you are going to find that out from him
yourself, Ivan Nikolayich!'
'How do you know my name? '
'My dear fellow, who doesn't know you? ' With this the foreigner
pulled the previous day's issue of The Literary Gazette out of his pocket
and Ivan Nikolayich saw his own picture on the front page above some of his
own verse. Suddenly what had delighted him yesterday as proof of his fame
and popularity no longer gave the poet any pleasure at all.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, his face darkening. ' Would you excuse
us for a minute? I should like a word or two with my friend.'
'Oh, with pleasure! ' exclaimed the stranger. ' It's so delightful
sitting here under the trees and I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere, as it
happens.'
'Look here, Misha,' whispered the poet when he had drawn Berlioz
aside. ' He's not just a foreign tourist, he's a spy. He's a Russian emigre
and he's trying to catch us out. Ask him for his papers and then he'll go
away . . .'
'Do you think we should? ' whispered Berlioz anxiously, thinking to
himself--' He's right, of course . . .'
'Mark my words,' the poet whispered to him. ' He's pretending to be an
idiot so that he can trap us with some compromising question. You can hear
how he speaks Russian,' said the poet, glancing sideways and watching to see
that the stranger was not eavesdropping. ' Come on, let's arrest him and
then we'll get rid of him.'
The poet led Berlioz by the arm back to the bench.
The unknown man was no longer sitting on it but standing beside it,
holding a booklet in a dark grey binding, a fat envelope made of good paper
and a visiting card.
'Forgive me, but in the heat of our argument I forgot to introduce
myself. Here is my card, my passport and a letter inviting me to come to
Moscow for consultations,' said the stranger gravely, giving both writers a
piercing stare.
The two men were embarrassed. ' Hell, he overheard us . . . ' thought
Berlioz, indicating with a polite gesture that there was no need for this
show of documents. Whilst the stranger was offering them to the editor, the
poet managed to catch sight of the visiting card. On it in foreign lettering
was the word ' Professor ' and the initial letter of a surname which began
with a'W'.
'Delighted,' muttered the editor awkwardly as the foreigner put his
papers back into his pocket. Good relations having been re-established, all
three sat down again on the bench.
'So you've been invited here as a consultant, have you, professor? '
asked Berlioz.
'Yes, I have.'
'Are you German? ' enquired Bezdomny.
'I? ' rejoined the professor and thought for a moment. ' Yes, I
suppose I am German. . . . ' he said.
'You speak excellent Russian,' remarked Bezdomny.
'Oh, I'm something of a polyglot. I know a great number of languages,'
replied the professor.
'And what is your particular field of work? ' asked Berlioz.
'I specialise in black magic.'
'Like hell you do! . . . ' thought Mikhail Alexandrovich.
'And ... and you've been invited here to give advice on that? ' he
asked with a gulp.
'Yes,' the professor assured him, and went on : ' Apparently your
National Library has unearthed some original manuscripts of the
ninth-century necromancer Herbert Aurilachs. I have been asked to decipher
them. I am the only specialist in the world.'
'Aha! So you're a historian? ' asked Berlioz in a tone of considerable
relief and respect.
' Yes, I am a historian,' adding with apparently complete
inconsequence, ' this evening a historic event is going to take place here
at Patriarch's Ponds.'
Again the editor and the poet showed signs of utter amazement, but the
professor beckoned to them and when both had bent their heads towards him he
whispered :
'Jesus did exist, you know.'
'Look, professor,' said Berlioz, with a forced smile, ' With all
respect to you as a scholar we take a different attitude on that point.'
'It's not a question of having an attitude,' replied the strange
professor. ' He existed, that's all there is to it.'
'But one must have some proof. . . . ' began Berlioz.
'There's no need for any proof,' answered the professor. In a low
voice, his foreign accent vanishing altogether, he began :
'It's very simple--early in the morning on the fourteenth of the
spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white
cloak lined with blood-red...
Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the
Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red,
emerged with his shuffling cavalryman's walk into the arcade connecting the
two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.
More than anything else in the world the Procurator hated the smell of
attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been
haunting him since dawn.
It seemed to the Procurator that the very cypresses and palms in the
garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this damned stench of roses was
even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted
bodyguard.
A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper
courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at the rear of the palace, the
quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; known as the ' Lightning',
it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procurator's arrival. The same
oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid smoke that showed that the
centuries' cooks had started to prepare breakfast.
'Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there's no doubt, I
have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the
head aches . . . there's no cure for it, nothing helps. ... I must try not
to move my head. . . . '
A chair had already been placed on the mosaic floor by the fountain;
without a glance round, the Procurator sat in it and stretched out his hand
to one side. His secretary deferentially laid a piece of parchment in his
hand. Unable to restrain a grimace of agony the Procurator gave a fleeting
sideways look at its contents, returned the parchment to his secretary and
said painfully:
'The accused comes from Galilee, does he? Was the case sent to the
tetrarch? '
'Yes, Procurator,' replied the secretary. ' He declined to confirm the
finding of the court and passed the Sanhedrin's sentence of death to you for
confirmation.'
The Procurator's cheek twitched and he said quietly :
'Bring in the accused.'
At once two legionaries escorted a man of about twenty-seven from the
courtyard, under the arcade and up to the balcony, where they placed him
before the Procurator's chair. The man was dressed in a shabby, torn blue
chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage fastened round his
forehead, his hands tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the
man's left eye and a scab of dried blood in one corner of his mouth. The
prisoner stared at the Procurator with anxious curiosity.
The Procurator was silent at first, then asked quietly in Aramaic:
'So you have been inciting the people to destroy the temple of
Jerusalem? '
The Procurator sat as though carved in stone, his lips barely moving as
he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like stone from fear of shaking
his fiendishly aching head.
The man with bound hands made a slight move forwards and began
speaking:
'Good man! Believe me . . . '
But the Procurator, immobile as before and without raising his voice,
at once interrupted him :
'You call me good man? You are making a mistake. The rumour about me
in Jerusalem is that I am a raving monster and that is absolutely correct,'
and he added in the same monotone :
'Send centurion Muribellum to me.'
The balcony seemed to darken when the centurion of the first century.
Mark surnamed Muribellum, appeared before the Procurator. Muribellum was a
head taller than the tallest soldier in the legion and so broad in the
shoulders that he completely obscured the rising sun.
The Procurator said to the centurion in Latin:
'This criminal calls me " good man ". Take him away for a minute and
show him the proper way to address me. But do not mutilate him.'
All except the motionless Procurator watched Mark Muribellum as he
gestured to the prisoner to follow him. Because of his height people always
watched Muribellum wherever he went. Those who saw him for the first time
were inevitably fascinated by his disfigured face : his nose had once been
smashed by a blow from a German club.
Mark's heavy boots resounded on the mosaic, the bound man followed him
noiselessly. There was complete silence under the arcade except for the
cooing of doves in the garden below and the water singing its seductive tune
in the fountain.
The Procurator had a sudden urge to get up and put his temples under
the stream of water until they were numb. But he knew that even that would
not help.
Having led the prisoner out of the arcade into the garden, Muribellum
took a whip from the hands of a legionary standing by the plinth of a bronze
statue and with a gentle swing struck the prisoner across the shoulders. The
centurion's movement was slight, almost negligent, but the bound man
collapsed instantly as though his legs had been struck from under him and he
gasped for air. The colour fled from his face and his eyes clouded.
With only his left hand Mark lifted the fallen man into the air as
lightly as an empty sack, set him on his feet and said in broken, nasal
Aramaic:
'You call a Roman Procurator " hegemon " Don't say anything else.
Stand to attention. Do you understand or must I hit you again? '
The prisoner staggered helplessly, his colour returned, he gulped and
answered hoarsely :
'I understand you. Don't beat me.'
A minute later he was again standing in front of the Procurator. The
harsh, suffering voice rang out:
'Name?'
'Mine? ' enquired the prisoner hurriedly, his whole being expressing
readiness to answer sensibly and to forestall any further anger.
The Procurator said quietly :
'I know my own name. Don't pretend to be stupider than you are. Your
name.'
'Yeshua,' replied the prisoner hastily.
'Surname?'
'Ha-Notsri.'
'Where are you from? '
'From the town of Gamala,' replied the prisoner, nodding his head to
show that far over there to his right, in the north, was the town of Gamala.
'Who are you by birth? '
'I don't know exactly,' promptly answered the prisoner, ' I don't
remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian. . . .'
'Where is your fixed abode? '
'I have no home,' said the prisoner shamefacedly, ' I move from town
to town.'
'There is a shorter way of saying that--in a word you are a vagrant,'
said the Procurator and asked: ' Have you any relations?'
'No, none. Not one in the world.'
'Can you read and write? ' ' Yes.'
'Do you know any language besides Aramaic?
'' Yes. Greek.'
One swollen eyelid was raised and a pain-clouded eye stared at the
prisoner. The other eye remained closed. Pilate said in Greek :
'So you intended to destroy the temple building and incited the people
to do so?'
'Never, goo . . . ' Terror flashed across the prisoner's face for
having so nearly said the wrong word. ' Never in my life, hegemon, have I
intended to destroy the temple. Nor have I ever tried to persuade anyone to
do such a senseless thing.'
A look of amazement came over the secretary's face as he bent over a
low table recording the evidence. He raised his head but immediately lowered
it again over his parchment.
'People of all kinds are streaming into the city for the feast-day.
Among them there are magicians, astrologers, seers and murderers,' said the
Procurator in a monotone. ' There are also liars. You, for instance, are a
liar. It is clearly written down : he incited people to destroy the temple.
Witnesses have said so.'
'These good people,' the prisoner began, and hastily adding '
hegemon', he went on, ' are unlearned and have confused everything I said. I
am beginning to fear that this confusion will last for a very long time. And
all because he untruthfully wrote down what I said.'
There was silence. Now both pain-filled eyes stared heavily at the
prisoner.
'I repeat, but for the last time--stop pretending to be mad,
scoundrel,' said Pilate softly and evenly. ' What has been written down
about you is little enough, but it is sufficient to hang you.'
'No, no, hegemon,' said the prisoner, straining with the desire to
convince. ' This man follows me everywhere with nothing but his goatskin
parchment and writes incessantly. But I once caught a glimpse of that
parchment and I was horrified. I had not said a word of what was written
there. I begged him-- please burn this parchment of yours! But he tore it
out of my hands and ran away.'
'Who was he? ' enquired Pilate in a strained voice and put his hand to
his temple.
'Matthew the Levite,' said the prisoner eagerly. ' He was a
tax-collector. I first met him on the road to Bethlehem at the corner where
the road skirts a fig orchard and I started talking to him. At first he was
rude and even insulted me, or rather he thought he was insulting me by
calling me a dog.' The prisoner laughed. ' Personally I see nothing wrong
with that animal so I was not offended by the word. . . .'
The secretary stopped taking notes and glanced surreptitiously, not at
the prisoner, but at the Procurator.
'However, when he had heard me out he grew milder,' went on Yeshua,'
and in the end he threw his money into the road and said that he would go
travelling with me. . . .'
Pilate laughed with one cheek. Baring his yellow teeth and turning
fully round to his secretary he said :
'Oh, city of Jerusalem! What tales you have to tell! A tax-collector,
did you hear, throwing away his money!'
Not knowing what reply was expected of him, the secretary chose to
return Pilate's smile.
'And he said that henceforth he loathed his money,' said Yeshua in
explanation of Matthew the Levite's strange action, adding : ' And since
then he has been my companion.'
His teeth still bared in a grin, the Procurator glanced at the
prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over the equestrian statues of
the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising
nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing would be to dismiss this
curious rascal from his balcony with no more than two words : ' Hang him. '
Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and go indoors, order the room
to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog
Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the dog about his hemicrania.
Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's
mind.
He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, trying painfully to recall
why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the
pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what further useless questions he
should put to him.
'Matthew the Levite? ' asked the suffering man in a hoarse voice,
closing his eyes.
'Yes, Matthew the Levite,' came the grating, high-pitched reply.
'So you did make a speech about the temple to the crowd in the temple
forecourt? '
The voice that answered seemed to strike Pilate on the forehead,
causing him inexpressible torture and it said:
'I spoke, hegemon, of how the temple of the old beliefs would fall
down and the new temple of truth would be built up. I used those words to
make my meaning easier to understand.'
'Why should a tramp like you upset the crowd in the bazaar by talking
about truth, something of which you have no conception? What is truth? '
At this the Procurator thought: ' Ye gods! This is a court of law and I
am asking him an irrelevant question . . . my mind no longer obeys me. . . .
' Once more he had a vision of a goblet of dark liquid. ' Poison, I need
poison.. .. ' And again he heard the voice :
'At this moment the truth is chiefly that your head is aching and
aching so hard that you are having cowardly thoughts about death. Not only
are you in no condition to talk to me, but it even hurts you to look at me.
This makes me seem to be your torturer, which distresses me. You cannot even
think and you can only long for your dog, who is clearly the only creature
for whom you have any affection. But the pain will stop soon and your
headache will go.'
The secretary stared at the prisoner, his note-taking abandoned. Pilate
raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw how high the sun now stood
above the hippodrome, how a ray had penetrated the arcade, had crept towards
Yeshua's patched sandals and how the man moved aside from the sunlight. The
Procurator stood up and clasped his head in his hands. Horror came over his
yellowish, clean-shaven face. With an effort of will he controlled his
expression and sank back into his chair.
Meanwhile the prisoner continued talking, but the secretary had stopped
writing, craning his neck like a goose in the effort not to miss a single
word.
'There, it has gone,' said the prisoner, with a kindly glance at
Pilate. ' I am so glad. I would advise you, hegemon, to leave the palace for
a while and take a walk somewhere nearby, perhaps in the gardens or on Mount
Eleona. There will be thunder . . .' The prisoner turned and squinted into
the sun . . . ' later, towards evening. A walk would do you a great deal of
good and I should be happy to go with you. Some new thoughts have just come
into my head which you might, I think, find interesting and I should like to
discuss them with you, the more so as you strike me as a man of great
intelligence.' The secretary turned mortally pale and dropped his scroll to
the ground. ' Your trouble is,' went on the unstoppable prisoner, ' that
your mind is too closed and you have finally lost your faith in human
beings. You must admit that no one ought to lavish all their devotion on a
dog. Your life is a cramped one, hegemon.' Here the speaker allowed himself
to smile.
The only thought in the secretary's mind now was whether he could
believe his ears. He had to believe them. He then tried to guess in what
strange form the Procurator's fiery temper might break out at the prisoner's
unheard-of insolence. Although he knew the Procurator well the secretary's
imagination failed him.
Then the hoarse, broken voice of the Procurator barked out in Latin:
'Untie his hands.'
One of the legionary escorts tapped the ground with his lance, gave it
to his neighbour, approached and removed the prisoner's bonds. The secretary
picked up his scroll, decided to take no more notes for a while and to be
astonished at nothing he might hear.
'Tell me,' said Pilate softly in Latin, ' are you a great physician?'
'No, Procurator, I am no physician,' replied the prisoner, gratefully
rubbing his twisted, swollen, purpling wrist.
Staring from beneath his eyelids, Pilate's eyes bored into the prisoner
and those eyes were no longer dull. They now flashed with their familiar
sparkle. ' I did not ask you,' said Pilate. ' Do you know Latin too? '
'Yes, I do,' replied the prisoner.
The colour flowed back into Pilate's yellowed cheeks and he asked in
Latin:
'How did you know that I wanted to call my dog? '
'Quite simple,' the prisoner answered in Latin. ' You moved your hand
through the air . . . ' the prisoner repeated Pilate's gesture . . . ' as
though to stroke something and your lips . . .'
'Yes,' said Pilate.
There was silence. Then Pilate put a question in Greek :
'So you are a physician? '
'No, no,' was the prisoner's eager reply. ' Believe me I am not.'
'Very well, if you wish to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct
bearing on the case. So you maintain that you never incited people to tear
down ... or burn, or by any means destroy the temple?'
'I repeat, hegemon, that I have never tried to persuade anyone to
attempt any such thing. Do I look weak in the head? '
'Oh no, you do not,' replied the Procurator quietly, and smiled an
ominous smile. ' Very well, swear that it is not so.'
'What would you have me swear by? ' enquired the unbound prisoner with
great urgency.
'Well, by your life,' replied the Procurator. ' It is high time to
swear by it because you should know that it is hanging by a thread.'
'You do not believe, do you, hegemon, that it is you who have strung
it up?' asked the prisoner. ' If you do you are mistaken.'
Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth :
'I can cut that thread.'
'You are mistaken there too,' objected the prisoner, beaming and
shading himself from the sun with his hand. ' You must agree, I think, that
the thread can only be cut by the one who has suspended it? '
'Yes, yes,' said Pilate, smiling. ' I now have no doubt that the idle
gapers of Jerusalem have been pursuing you. I do not know who strung up your
tongue, but he strung it well. By the way. tell me, is it true that you
entered Jerusalem by the Susim Gate mounted on a donkey, accompanied by a
rabble who greeted you as though you were a prophet? ' Here the Procurator
pointed to a scroll of parchment.
The prisoner stared dubiously at the Procurator.
'I have no donkey, hegemon,' he said. ' I certainly came into
Jerusalem through the Susim Gate, but I came on foot alone except for
Matthew the Levite and nobody shouted a word to me as no one in Jerusalem
knew me then.'
'Do you happen to know,' went on Pilate without taking his eyes off
the prisoner, ' anyone called Dismas? Or Hestas? Or a third--Bar-Abba? '
'I do not know these good men,' replied the prisoner.
'Is that the truth? '
'It is.'
'And now tell me why you always use that expression " good men "? Is
that what you call everybody? '
'Yes, everybody,' answered the prisoner. ' There are no evil people on
earth.'
'That is news to me,' said Pilate with a laugh. ' But perhaps I am too
ignorant of life. You need take no further notes,' he said to the secretary,
although the man had taken none for some time. Pilate turned back to the
prisoner :
'Did you read about that in some Greek book? '
'No, I reached that conclusion in my own mind.'
'And is that what you preach? '
‘ Yes.'
'Centurion Mark Muribellum, for instance--is he good? '
'Yes,' replied the prisoner. ' He is, it is true, an unhappy man.
Since the good people disfigured him he has become harsh and callous. It
would be interesting to know who mutilated him.'
'That I will gladly tell you,' rejoined Pilate, ' because I was a
witness to it. These good men threw themselves at him like dogs at a bear.
The Germans clung to his neck, his arms, his legs. An infantry maniple had
been ambushed and had it not been for a troop of cavalry breaking through
from the flank--a troop commanded by me--you, philosopher, would not have
been talking to Muribellum just now. It happened at the battle of Idistavizo
in the Valley of the Virgins.'
'If I were to talk to him,' the prisoner suddenly said in a reflective
voice, ' I am sure that he would change greatly.'
'I suspect,' said Pilate, ' that the Legate of the Legion would not be
best pleased if you took it into your head to talk to one of his officers or
soldiers. Fortunately for us all any such thing is forbidden and the first
person to ensure that it cannot occur would be myself.'
At that moment a swallow darted into the arcade, circled under the
gilded ceiling, flew lower, almost brushed its pointed wingtip over the face
of a bronze statue in a niche and disappeared behind the capital of a
column, perhaps with the thought of nesting there.
As it flew an idea formed itself in the Procurator's mind, which was
now bright and clear. It was thus : the hegemon had examined the case of the
vagrant philosopher Yeshua, surnamed Ha-Notsri, and could not substantiate
the criminal charge made against him. In particular he could not find the
slightest connection between Yeshua's actions and the recent disorders in
Jerusalem. The vagrant philosopher was mentally ill, as a result of which
the sentence of death pronounced on Ha-Notsri by the Lesser Sanhedrin would
not be confirmed. But in view of the danger of unrest liable to be caused by
Yeshua's mad, Utopian preaching, the Procurator would remove the man from
Jerusalem and sentence him to imprisonment in Caesarea Stratonova on the
Mediterranean--the place of the Procurator's own residence. It only remained
to dictate this to the secretary.
The swallow's wings fluttered over the hegemon's head, the bird flew
towards the fountain and out into freedom.
The Procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw that a column of
dust had swirled up beside him.
'Is that all there is on this man? ' Pilate asked the secretary.
'No, unfortunately,' replied the secretary unexpectedly, and handed
Pilate another parchment.
'What else is there? ' enquired Pilate and frowned.
Having read the further evidence a change came over his expression.
Whether it was blood flowing back into his neck and face or from something
else that occurred, his skin changed from yellow to red-brown and his eyes
appeared to collapse. Probably caused by the increased blood-pressure in his
temples, something happened to the Procurator's sight. He seemed to see the
prisoner's head vanish and another appear in its place, bald and crowned
with a spiked golden diadem. The skin of the forehead was split by a round,
livid scar smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a
capricious, pendulous lower lip. Pilate had the sensation that the pink
columns of his balcony and the roofscape of Jerusalem below and beyond the
garden had all vanished, drowned in the thick foliage of cypress groves. His
hearing, too, was strangely affected--there was a sound as of distant
trumpets, muted and threatening, and a nasal voice could clearly be heard
arrogantly intoning the words: ' The law pertaining to high treason . . .'
Strange, rapid, disconnected thoughts passed through his mind. ' Dead!
' Then : ' They have killed him! . . .' And an absurd notion about
immortality, the thought of which aroused a sense of unbearable grief.
Pilate straightened up, banished the vision, turned his gaze back to
the balcony and again the prisoner's eyes met his.
'Listen, Ha-Notsri,' began the Procurator, giving Yeshua a strange
look. His expression was grim but his eyes betrayed anxiety. ' Have you ever
said anything about great Caesar? Answer! Did you say anything of the sort?
Or did you . . . not? ' Pilate gave the word 'not' more emphasis than was
proper in a court of law and his look seemed to be trying to project a
particular thought into the prisoner's mind. ' Telling the truth is easy and
pleasant,' remarked the prisoner.
'I do not want to know,' replied Pilate in a voice of suppressed
anger, ' whether you enjoy telling the truth or not. You are obliged to tell
me the truth. But when you speak weigh every word, if you wish to avoid a
painful death.'
No one knows what passed through the mind of the Procurator of Judaea,
but he permitted himself to raise his hand as though shading himself from a
ray of sunlight and, shielded by that hand, to throw the prisoner a glance
that conveyed a hint.
'So,' he said, ' answer this question : do you know a certain Judas of
Karioth and if you have ever spoken to him what did you say to him about
Caesar? '
'It happened thus,' began the prisoner readily. ' The day before
yesterday, in the evening, I met a young man near the temple who called
himself Judas, from the town of Karioth. He invited me to his home in the
Lower City and gave me supper...'
'Is he a good man? ' asked Pilate, a diabolical glitter in his eyes.
'A very good man and eager to learn,' affirmed the prisoner. ' He
expressed the greatest interest in my ideas and welcomed me joyfully .. . '
'Lit the candles. . . .' said Pilate through clenched teeth to the
prisoner, his eyes glittering.
'Yes,' said Yeshua, slightly astonished that the Procurator should be
so well informed, and went on : ' He asked me for my views on the
government. The question interested him very much.'
'And so what did you say? ' asked Pilate. ' Or are you going to reply
that you have forgotten what you said? ' But there was already a note of
hopelessness in Pilate's voice.
'Among other things I said,' continued the prisoner, ' that all power
is a form of violence exercised over people and that the time will come when
there will be no rule by Caesar nor any other form of rule. Man will pass
into the kingdom of truth and justice where no sort of power will be
needed.'
'Go on!'
'There is no more to tell,' said the prisoner. ' After that some men
came running in, tied me up and took me to prison.'
The secretary, straining not to miss a word, rapidly scribbled the
statement on his parchment.
'There never has been, nor yet shall be a greater and more perfect
government in this world than the rule of the emperor Tiberius!' Pilate's
voice rang out harshly and painfully. The Procurator stared at his secretary
and at the bodyguard with what seemed like hatred. ' And what business have
you, a criminal lunatic, to discuss such matters! ' Pilate shouted. ' Remove
the guards from the balcony! ' And turning to his secretary he added: '
Leave me alone with this criminal. This is a case of treason.'
The bodyguard raised their lances and with the measured tread of their
iron-shod caligae marched from the balcony towards the garden followed by
the secretary.
For a while the silence on the balcony was only disturbed bv the
splashing of the fountain. Pilate watched the water splay out at the apex of
the jet and drip downwards.
The prisoner was the first to speak :
'I see that there has been some trouble as a result of my conversation
with that young man from Karioth. I have a presentiment, hegemon, that some
misfortune will befall him and I feel very sorry for him.'
'I think,' replied the Procurator with a strange smile, ' that there
is someone else in this world for whom you should feel sorrier than for
Judas of Karioth and who is destined for a fate much worse than Judas'! ...
So Mark Muribellum, a coldblooded killer, the people who I see '--the
Procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face--' beat you for what you
preached, the robbers Dismas and Hestas who with their confederates killed
four soldiers, and finally this dirty informer Judas--are they all good men?
'
'Yes,' answered the prisoner.
'And will the kingdom of truth come? ' ' It will, hegemon,' replied
Yeshua with conviction.
'It will never come! ' Pilate suddenly shouted in a voice so terrible
that Yeshua staggered back. Many years ago in the Valley of the Virgins
Pilate had shouted in that same voice to his horsemen : ' Cut them down! Cut
them down! They have caught the giant Muribellum!' And again he raised his
parade-ground voice, barking out the words so that they would be heard in
the garden : ' Criminal! Criminal! Criminal! ' Then lowering his voice he
asked : ' Yeshua Ha-Notsri, do you believe in any gods?'
'God is one,' answered Yeshua. ' I believe in Him.'
'Then pray to him! Pray hard! However,' at this Pilate's voice fell
again, ' it will do no good. Have you a wife? ' asked Pilate with a sudden
inexplicable access of depression.
'No, I am alone.'
'I hate this city,' the Procurator suddenly mumbled, hunching his
shoulders as though from cold and wiping his hands as though washing them. '
If they had murdered you before your meeting with Judas of Karioth I really
believe it would have been better.'
'You should let me go, hegemon,' was the prisoner's unexpected
request, his voice full of anxiety. ' I see now that they want to kill me.'
A spasm distorted Pilate's face as he turned his blood-shot eyes on
Yeshua and said :
'Do you imagine, you miserable creature, that a Roman Procurator could
release a man who has said what you have said to me? Oh gods, oh gods! Or do
you think I'm prepared to take your place? I don't believe in your ideas!
And listen to me : if from this moment onward you say so much as a word or
try to talk to anybody, beware! I repeat--beware!'
'Hegemon . ..'
'Be quiet! ' shouted Pilate, his infuriated stare following the
swallow which had flown on to the balcony again. ' Here!' shouted Pilate.
The secretary and the guards returned to their places and Pilate
announced that he confirmed the sentence of death pronounced by the Lesser
Sanhedrin on the accused Yeshua Ha-Notsri and the secretary recorded
Pilate's words.
A minute later centurion Mark Muribellum stood before the Procurator.
He was ordered by the Procurator to hand the felon over to the captain of
the secret service and in doing so to transmit the Procurator's directive
that Yeshua Ha-Notsri was to be segregated from the other convicts, also
that the captain of the secret service was forbidden on pain of severe
punishment to talk to Yeshua or to answer any questions he might ask.
At a signal from Mark the guard closed ranks around Yeshua and escorted
him from the balcony.
Later the Procurator received a call from a handsome man with a blond
beard, eagles' feathers in the crest of his helmet, glittering lions'
muzzles on his breastplate, a gold-studded sword belt, triple-soled boots
laced to the knee and a purple cloak thrown over his left shoulder. He was
the commanding officer, the Legate of the Legion.
The Procurator asked him where the Sebastian cohort was stationed. The
Legate reported that the Sebastian was on cordon duty in the square in front
of the hippodrome, where the sentences on the prisoners would be announced
to the crowd.
Then the Procurator instructed the Legate to detach two centuries from
the Roman cohort. One of them, under the command of Muribellum, was to
escort the convicts, the carts transporting the executioners' equipment and
the executioners themselves to Mount Golgotha and on arrival to cordon off
the summit area. The other was to proceed at once to Mount Golgotha and to
form a cordon immediately on arrival. To assist in the task of guarding the
hill, the Procurator asked the Legate to despatch an auxiliary cavalry
regiment, the Syrian ala.
When the Legate had left the balcony, the Procurator ordered his
secretary to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its
members and the captain of the Jerusalem temple guard, but added that he
wished arrangements to be made which would allow him, before conferring with
all these people, to have a private meeting with the president of the
Sanhedrin.
The Procurator's orders were carried out rapidly and precisely and the
sun, which had lately seemed to scorch Jerusalem with such particular
vehemence, had not yet reached its zenith when the meeting took place
between the Procurator and the president of the Sanhedrin, the High Priest
of Judaea, Joseph Caiaphas. They met on the upper terrace of the garden
between two white marble lions guarding the staircase.
It was quiet in the garden. But as he emerged from the arcade on to the
sun-drenched upper terrace of the garden with its palms on their monstrous
elephantine legs, the terrace from which the whole of Pilate's detested city
of Jerusalem lay spread out before the Procurator with its suspension
bridges, its fortresses and over it all that indescribable lump of marble
with a golden dragon's scale instead of a roof--the temple of Jerusalem--the
Procurator's sharp hearing detected far below, down there where a stone wall
divided the lower terraces of the palace garden from the city square, a low
rumbling broken now and again by faint sounds, half groans, half cries.
The Procurator realised that already there was assembling in the square
a numberless crowd of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, excited by the recent
disorders; that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the pronouncement of
sentence and that the water-sellers were busily shouting their wares.
The Procurator began by inviting the High Priest on to the balcony to
find some shade from the pitiless heat, but Caiaphas politely excused
himself, explaining that he could not do that on the eve of a feast-day.
Pilate pulled his cowl over his slightly balding head and began the
conversation, which was conducted in Greek.
Pilate remarked that he had examined the case of Yeshua Ha-Notsri and
had confirmed the sentence of death. Consequently those due for execution
that day were the three robbers--Hestas, Dismas and Bar-Abba--and now this
other man, Yeshua Ha- Notsri. The first two, who had tried to incite the
people to rebel against Caesar, had been forcibly apprehended by the Roman
authorities; they were therefore the Procurator's responsibility and there
was no reason to discuss their case. The last two, however, Bar-Abba and
Ha-Notsri, had been arrested by the local authorities and tried before the
Sanhedrin. In accordance with law and custom, one of these two criminals
should be released in honour of the imminent great feast of Passover. The
Procurator therefore wished to know which of these two felons the Sanhedrin
proposed to discharge--Bar-Abba or Ha-Notsri?
Caiaphas inclined his head as a sign that he understood the question
and replied:
'The Sanhedrin requests the release of Bar-Abba.' The Procurator well
knew that this would be the High Priest's reply; his problem was to show
that the request aroused his astonishment.
This Pilate did with great skill. The eyebrows rose on his proud
forehead and the Procurator looked the High Priest straight in the eye with
amazement.
'I confess that your reply surprises me,' began the Procurator softly.
' I fear there may have been some misunderstanding here.'
Pilate stressed that the Roman government wished to make no inroads
into the prerogatives of the local priestly authority, the High Priest was
well aware of that, but in this particular case an obvious error seemed to
have occurred. And the Roman government naturally had an interest in
correcting such an error. The crimes of Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri were after
all not comparable in gravity. If the latter, a man who was clearly insane,
were guilty of making some absurd speeches in Jerusalem and various other
localities, the former stood convicted of offences that were infinitely more
serious. Not only had he permitted himself to make direct appeals to
rebellion, but he had killed a sentry while resisting arrest. Bar-Abba was
immeasurably more dangerous than Ha-Notsri. In view of all these facts, the
Procurator requested the High Priest to reconsider his decision and to
discharge the least dangerous of the two convicts and that one was
undoubtedly Ha-Notsri . . . Therefore?
Caiaphas said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had taken
due cognisance of the case and repeated its intention to release Bar-Abba.
'What? Even after my intervention? The intervention of the
representative of the Roman government? High Priest, say it for the third
time.'
'And for the third time I say that we shall release Bar-Abba,' said
Caiaphas softly.
It was over and there was no more to be discussed. Ha-Notsri had gone
for ever and there was no one to heal the Procurator's terrible, savage
pains ; there was no cure for them now except death. But this thought did
not strike Pilate immediately. At first his whole being was seized with the
same incomprehensible sense of grief which had come to him on the balcony.
He at once sought for its explanation and its cause was a strange one : the
Procurator was obscurely aware that he still had something to say to the
prisoner and that perhaps, too, he had more to learn from him.
Pilate banished the thought and it passed as quickly as it had come. It
passed, yet that grievous ache remained a mystery, for it could not be
explained by another thought that had flashed in and out of his mind like
lightning--' Immortality ... immortality has come . . .' Whose immortality
had come? The Procurator could not understand it, but that puzzling thought
of immortality sent a chill over him despite the sun's heat.
'Very well,' said Pilate. ' So be it.'
With that he looked round. The visible world vanished from his sight
and an astonishing change occurred. The flower-laden rosebush disappeared,
the cypresses fringing the upper terrace disappeared, as did the pomegranate
tree, the white statue among the foliage and the foliage itself. In their
place came a kind of dense purple mass in which seaweed waved and swayed and
Pilate himself was swaying with it. He was seized, suffocating and burning,
by the most terrible rage of all rage--the rage of impotence.
'I am suffocating,' said Pilate. ' Suffocating! '
With a cold damp hand he tore the buckle from the collar of his cloak
and it fell on to the sand.
'It is stifling today, there is a thunderstorm brewing,' said
Caiaphas, his gaze fixed on the Procurator's reddening face, foreseeing all
the discomfort that the weather was yet to bring. ' The month of Nisan has
been terrible this year! '
'No,' said Pilate. ' That is not why I am suffocating. I feel stifled
by your presence, Caiaphas.' Narrowing his eyes Pilate added : ' Beware,
High Priest! '
The High Priest's dark eyes flashed and--no less cunningly than the
Procurator--his face showed astonishment.
'What do I hear, Procurator? ' Caiaphas answered proudly and calmly. '
Are you threatening me--when sentence has been duly pronounced and confirmed
by yourself? Can this be so? We are accustomed to the Roman Procurator
choosing his words carefully before saying anything. I trust no one can have
overheard us, hegemon?'
With lifeless eyes Pilate gazed at the High Priest and manufactured a
smile.
'Come now. High Priest! Who can overhear us here? Do you take me for a
fool, like that crazy young vagrant who is to be executed today? Am I a
child, Caiphas? I know what I'm saying and where I'm saying it. This garden,
this whole palace is so well cordoned that there's not a crack for a mouse
to slip through. Not a mouse--and not even that man--what's his name . .?
That man from Karioth. You do know him, don't you, High Priest? Yes ... if
someone like that were to get in here, he would bitterly regret it. You
believe me when I say that, don't you? I tell you, High Priest, that from
henceforth you shall have no peace! Neither you nor your people '--Pilate
pointed to the right where the pinnacle of the temple flashed in the
distance. ' I, Pontius Pilate, knight of the Golden Lance, tell you so! ' '
I know it! ' fearlessly replied the bearded Caiaphas. His eyes flashed as he
raised his hand to the sky and went on : ' The Jewish people knows that you
hate it with a terrible hatred and that you have brought it much
suffering--but you will never destroy it! God will protect it. And he shall
hear us--mighty Caesar shall hear us and protect us from Pilate the
oppressor! '
'Oh no! ' rejoined Pilate, feeling more and more relieved with every
word that he spoke; there was no longer any need to dissemble, no need to
pick his words : ' You have complained of me to Caesar too often and now my
hour has come, Caiaphas! Now I shall send word--but not to the viceroy in
Antioch, not even to Rome but straight to Capreia, to the emperor himself,
word of how you in Jerusalem are saving convicted rebels from death. And
then it will not be water from Solomon's pool, as I once intended for your
benefit, that I shall give Jerusalem to drink--no, it will not be water!
Remember how thanks to you I was made to remove the shields with the
imperial cipher from the walls, to transfer troops, to come and take charge
here myself! Remember my words. High Priest: you are going to see more than
one cohort here in Jerusalem! Under the city walls you are going to see the
Fulminata legion at full strength and Arab cavalry too. Then the weeping and
lamentation will be bitter! Then you will remember that you saved Bar-Abba
and you will regret that you sent that preacher of peace to his death!
Flecks of colour spread over the High Priest's face, his eyes burned.
Like the Procurator he grinned mirthlessly and replied:
'Do you really believe what you have just said, Procurator? No, you do
not! It was not peace that this rabble-rouser brought to Jerusalem and of
that, hegamon, you are well aware. You wanted to release him so that he
could stir up the people, curse our faith and deliver the people to your
Roman swords! But as long as I, the High Priest of Judaea, am alive I shall
not allow the faith to be defamed and I shall protect the people! Do you
hear, Pilate?' With this Caiaphas raised his arm threateningly;
'Take heed. Procurator! '
Caiaphas was silent and again the Procurator heard a murmuring as of
the sea, rolling up to the very walls of Herod the Great's garden. The sound
flowed upwards from below until it seemed to swirl round the Procurator's
legs and into his face. Behind his back, from beyond the wings of the
palace, came urgent trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the
clank of metal. It told the Procurator that the Roman infantry was marching
out, on his orders, to the execution parade that was to strike terror into
the hearts of all thieves and rebels
'Do you hear. Procurator? ' the High Priest quietly repeated his
words. ' Surely you are not trying to tell me that all this '-- here the
High Priest raised both arms and his dark cowl slipped from his head--' can
have been evoked by that miserable thief Bar-Abba?'
With the back of his wrist the Procurator wiped his damp, cold
forehead, stared at the ground, then frowning skywards he saw that the
incandescent ball was nearly overhead, that Caiaphas' shadow had shrunk to
almost nothing and he said in a calm, expressionless voice :
'The execution will be at noon. We have enjoyed this conversation, but
matters must proceed.'
Excusing himself to the High Priest in a few artificial phrases, he
invited him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and to wait
while he summoned the others necessary for the final short consultation and
to give one more order concerning the execution.
Caiaphas bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and remained in
the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he ordered his
waiting secretary to call the Legate of the Legion and the Tribune of the
cohort into the garden, also the two members of the Sanhedrin and the
captain of the temple guard, who were standing grouped round the fountain on
the lower terrace awaiting his call. Pilate added that he would himself
shortly return to join them in the garden, and disappeared inside the
palace.
While the secretary convened the meeting, inside his darken-ed,
shuttered room the Procurator spoke to a man whose face, despite the
complete absence of sunlight from the room, remained half covered by a hood.
The interview was very short. The Procurator whispered a few words to the
man, who immediately departed. Pilate passed through the arcade into the
garden.
There in the presence of all the men he had asked to see, the
Procurator solemnly and curtly repeated that he confirmed the sentence of
death on Yeshua Ha-Notsri and enquired officially of the Sanhedrin members
as to which of the prisoners it had pleased them to release. On being told
that it was Bar-Abba, the Procurator said:
'Very well,' and ordered the secretary to enter it in the minutes. He
clutched the buckle which the secretary had picked up from the sand and
announced solemnly : ' It is time! '
At this all present set off down the broad marble staircase between the
lines of rose bushes, exuding their stupefying aroma, down towards the
palace wall, to a gate leading to the smoothly paved square at whose end
could be seen the columns and statues of the Jerusalem hippodrome.
As soon as the group entered the square and began climbing up to the
broad temporary wooden platform raised high above the square, Pilate
assessed the situation through narrowed eyelids.
The cleared passage that he had just crossed between the palace walls
and the scaffolding platform was empty, but in front of Pilate the square
could no longer be seen--it had been devoured by the crowd. The mob would
have poured on to the platform and the passage too if there had not been two
triple rows of soldiers, one from the Sebastian cohort on Pilate's left and
on his right another from the Ituraean auxiliary cohort, to keep it clear.
Pilate climbed the platform, mechanically clenching and unclenching his
fist on the useless buckle and frowning hard. The Procurator was not
frowning because the sun was blinding him but to somehow avoid seeing the
group of prisoners which, as he well knew, would shortly be led out on the
platform behind him.
The moment the white cloak with the blood-red lining appeared atop the
stone block at the edge of that human sea a wave of sound--' Aaahh '--struck
the unseeing Pilate's ears. It began softly, far away at the hippodrome end
of the square, then grew to thunderous volume and after a few seconds, began
to diminish again. ' They have seen me,' thought the Procurator. The wave of
sound did not recede altogether and began unexpectedly to grow again and
waveringly rose to a higher pitch than the first and on top of the second
surge of noise, like foam on the crest of a wave at sea, could be heard
whistles and the shrieks of several women audible above the roar. ' That
means they have led them out on to the platform,' thought Pilate, ' and
those screams are from women who were crushed when the crowd surged
forward.'
He waited for a while, knowing that nothing could silence the crowd
until it had let loose its pent-up feelings and quietened of its own accord.
When that moment came tlie Procurator threw up his right hand and the
last murmurings of the crowd expired. Then Pilate took as deep a breath as
he could of the hot air and his cracked voice rang out over the thousands of
heads :
'In the name of imperial Caesar! . . .'
At once his ears were struck by a clipped, metallic chorus as the
cohorts, raising lances and standards, roared out their fearful response:
'Hail, Caesar! '
Pilate jerked his head up straight at the sun. He had a sensation of
green fire piercing his eyelids, his brain seemed to burn. In hoarse Aramaic
he flung his words out over the crowd :
'Four criminals, arrested in Jerusalem for murder, incitement to
rebellion, contempt of the law and blasphemy, have been condemned to the
most shameful form of execution--crucifixion! Their execution will be
carried out shortly on Mount Golgotha The names of these felons are Dismas,
Hestas, Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri and there they stand before you! '
Pilate pointed to the right, unable to see the prisoners but knowing
that they were standing where they should be.
The crowd responded with a long rumble that could have been surprise or
relief. When it had subsided Pilate went on :
'But only three of them are to be executed for, in accordance with law
and custom, in honour of the great feast of Passover the emperor Caesar in
his magnanimity will, at the choice of the Lesser Sanhedrin and with the
approval of the Roman government, render back to one of these convicted men
his contemptible life!'
As Pilate rasped out his words he noticed that the rumbling had given
way to a great silence. Now not a sigh, not a rustle reached his ears and
there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate that the people around him
had vanished altogether. The city he so hated might have died and only he
alone stood there, scorched by the vertical rays of the sun, his face
craning skywards. Pilate allowed the silence to continue and then began to
shout again: ' The name of the man who is about to be released before you .
. .'
He paused once more, holding back the name, mentally confirming that he
had said everything, because he knew that as soon as he pronounced the name
of the fortunate man the lifeless city would awaken and nothing more that he
might say would be audible.
'Is that everything? ' Pilate whispered soundlessly to himself. ' Yes,
it is. Now the name! ' And rolling his ' r 's over the heads of the silent
populace he roared : ' Bar-Abba! '
It was as though the sun detonated above him and drowned his ears in
fire, a fire that roared, shrieked, groaned, laughed and whistled.
Pilate turned and walked back along the platform towards the steps,
glancing only at the parti-coloured wooden blocks of the steps beneath his
feet to save himself from stumbling. He knew that behind his back a hail of
bronze coins and dates was showering the platform, that people in the
whooping crowd, elbowing each other aside, were climbing on to shoulders to
see a miracle with their own eyes--a man already in the arms of death and
torn from their grasp! They watched the legionaries as they untied his
bonds, involuntarily causing him searing pain in his swollen arms, watched
as grimacing and complaining he nevertheless smiled an insane, senseless
smile.
Pilate knew that the escort was now marching the three bound prisoners
to the side steps of the platform to lead them off on the road westward, out
of the city, towards Mount Golgotha. Only when he stood beneath and behind
the platform did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was now safe--he
could no longer see the convicted men.
As the roar of the crowd began to die down the separate, piercing
voices of the heralds could be heard repeating, one in Aramaic, the others
in Greek, the announcement that the Procurator had just made from the
platform. Besides that his ears caught the approaching irregular clatter of
horses' hoofs and the sharp, bright call of a trumpet. This sound was echoed
by the piercing whistles of boys from the rooftops and by shouts of ' Look
out! '
A lone soldier, standing in the space cleared in the square, waved his
standard in warning, at which the Procurator, the Legate of the Legion and
their escort halted.
A squadron of cavalry entered the square at a fast trot, cutting across
it diagonally, past a knot of people, then down a side-street along a
vine-covered stone wall in order to gallop on to Mount Golgotha by the
shortest route.
As the squadron commander, a Syrian as small as a boy and as dark as a
mulatto, trotted past Pilate he gave a high-pitched cry and drew his sword
from its scabbard. His sweating, ugly-tempered black horse snorted and
reared up on its hind legs. Sheathing his sword the commander struck the
horse's neck with his whip, brought its forelegs down and moved off down the
side street, breaking into a gallop. Behind him in columns of three galloped
the horsemen in a ha2e of dust, the tips of their bamboo lances bobbing
rhythmically. They swept past the Procurator, their faces unnaturally dark
in contrast with their white turbans, grinning cheerfully, teeth flashing.
Raising a cloud of dust the squadron surged down the street, the last
trooper to pass Pilate carrying a glinting trumpet slung across his back.
Shielding his face from the dust with his hand and frowning with
annoyance Pilate walked on, hurrying towards the gate of the palace garden
followed by the Legate, the secretary and the escort.
It was about ten o'clock in the morning.
'Yes, it was about ten o'clock in the morning, my dear Ivan
Nikolayich,' said the professor.
The poet drew his hand across his face like a man who has just woken up
and noticed that it was now evening. The water in the pond had turned black,
a little boat was gliding across it and he could hear the splash of an oar
and a girl's laughter in the boat. People were beginning to appear in the
avenues and were sitting on the benches on all sides of the square except on
the side where our friends were talking.
Over Moscow it was as if the sky had blossomed : a clear, full moon had
risen, still white and not yet golden. It was much less stuffy and the
voices under the lime trees now had an even-tide softness.
'Why didn't I notice what a long story he's been telling us? ' thought
Bezdomny in amazement. ' It's evening already! Perhaps he hasn't told it at
all but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it?'
But if the professor had not told the story Berlioz must have been
having the identical dream because he said, gazing attentively into the
stranger's face :
'Your story is extremely interesting, professor, but it diners
completely from the accounts in the gospels.'
'But surely,' replied the professor with a condescending smile, ' you
of all people must realise that absolutely nothing written in the gospels
actually happened. If you want to regard the gospels as a proper historical
source . . .' He smiled again and Berlioz was silenced. He had just been
saying exactly the same thing to Bezdomny on their walk from Bronnaya Street
to Patriarch's Ponds.
'I agree,' answered Berlioz, ' but I'm afraid that no one is in a
position to prove the authenticity of your version either.'
'Oh yes! I can easily confirm it! ' rejoined the professor with great
confidence, lapsing into his foreign accent and mysteriously beckoning the
two friends closer. They bent towards him from both sides and he began, this
time without a trace of his accent which seemed to come and go without rhyme
or reason :
'The fact is . . .' here the professor glanced round nervously and
dropped his voice to a whisper, ' I was there myself. On the balcony with
Pontius Pilate, in the garden when he talked to Caiaphas and on the
platform, but secretly, incognito so to speak, so don't breathe a word of it
to anyone and please keep it an absolute secret, sshhh . . .'
There was silence. Berlioz went pale.
'How . . . how long did you say you'd been in Moscow? ' he asked in a
shaky voice.
'I have just this minute arrived in Moscow,' replied the professor,
slightly disconcerted. Only then did it occur to the two friends to look him
properly in the eyes. They saw that his green left eye was completely mad,
his right eye black, expressionless and dead.
'That explains it all,' thought Berlioz perplexedly. ' He's some mad
German who's just arrived or else he's suddenly gone out of his mind here at
Patriarch's. What an extraordinary business! ' This really seemed to account
for everything--the mysterious breakfast with the philosopher Kant, the
idiotic ramblings about sunflower-seed oil and Anna, the prediction about
Berlioz's head being cut off and all the rest: the professor was a lunatic.
Berlioz at once started to think what they ought to do. Leaning back on
the bench he winked at Bezdomny behind the professor's back, meaning '
Humour him! ' But the poet, now thoroughly confused, failed to understand
the signal.
'Yes, yes, yes,' said Berlioz with great animation. ' It's quite
possible, of course. Even probable--Pontius Pilate, the balcony, and so on.
. . . Have you come here alone or with your wife? '
'Alone, alone, I am always alone,' replied the professor bitterly.
'But where is your luggage, professor?' asked Berlioz cunningly. ' At
the Metropole? Where are you staying? '
'Where am I staying? Nowhere. . . .' answered the mad German, staring
moodily around Patriarch's Ponds with his g:reen eye
'What! . . . But . . . where are you going to live? '
'In your flat,' the lunatic suddenly replied casually and winked.
'I'm ... I should be delighted . . .' stuttered Berlioz, : ‘but I'm
afraid you wouldn't be very comfortable at my place . . - the rooms at the
Metropole are excellent, it's a first-class hotel . . .'
'And the devil doesn't exist either, I suppose? ' the madman suddenly
enquired cheerfully of Ivan Nikolayich.
'And the devil . . .'
'Don't contradict him,' mouthed Berlioz silently, leaning back and
grimacing behind the professor's back.
'There's no such thing as the devil! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out,
hopelessly muddled by all this dumb show, ruining all Berlioz's plans by
shouting: ' And stop playing the amateur psychologist! '
At this the lunatic gave such a laugh that it startled the sparrows out
of the tree above them.
'Well now, that is interesting,' said the professor, quaking with
laughter. ' Whatever I ask you about--it doesn't exist! ' He suddenly
stopped laughing and with a typical madman's reaction he immediately went to
the other extreme, shouting angrily and harshly : ' So you think the devil
doesn't exist? '
'Calm down, calm down, calm down, professor,' stammered Berlioz,
frightened of exciting this lunatic. ' You stay here a minute with comrade
Bezdomny while I run round the corner and make a 'phone call and then we'll
take you where you want to go. You don't know your way around town, sitter
all... .' Berlioz's plan was obviously right--to run to the nearest
telephone box and tell the Aliens' Bureau that there was a foreign professor
sitting at Patriarch's Ponds who was clearly insane. Something had to be
done or there might be a nasty scene.
'Telephone? Of course, go and telephone if you want to,' agreed the
lunatic sadly, and then suddenly begged with passion :
'But please--as a farewell request--at least say you believe in the
devil! I won't ask anything more of you. Don't forget that there's still the
seventh proof--the soundest! And it's just about to be demonstrated to you!
'
'All right, all right,' said Berlioz pretending to agree. With a wink
to the wretched Bezdomny, who by no means relished the thought of keeping
watch on this crazy German, he rushed towards the park gates at the corner
of Bronnaya and Yermolay-evsky Streets.
At once the professor seemed to recover his reason and good spirits.
'Mikhail Alexandrovich! ' he shouted after Berlioz, who shuddered as
he turned round and then remembered that the professor could have learned
his name from a newspaper.
The professor, cupping his hands into a trumpet, shouted :
'Wouldn't you like me to send a telegram to your uncle in Kiev? '
Another shock--how did this madman know that he had an uncle in Kiev?
Nobody had ever put that in any newspaper. Could Bezdomny be right about him
after all? And what about those phoney-looking documents of his? Definitely
a weird character . . . ring up, ring up the Bureau at once . . . they'll
come and sort it all out in no time.
Without waiting to hear any more, Berlioz ran on.
At the park gates leading into Bronnaya Street, the identical man, whom
a short while ago the editor had seen materialise out of a mirage, got up
from a bench and walked toward him. This time, however, he was not made of
air but of flesh and blood. In the early twilight Berlioz could clearly
distinguish his feathery little moustache, his little eyes, mocking and half
drunk, his check trousers pulled up so tight that his dirty white socks were
showing.
Mikhail Alexandrovich stopped, but dismissed it as a ridiculous
coincidence. He had in any case no time to stop and puzzle it out now.
'Are you looking for the turnstile, sir? ' enquired the check-clad man
in a quavering tenor. ' This way, please! Straight on for the exit. How
about the price of a drink for showing you the way, sir? ... church
choirmaster out of work, sir ... need a helping hand, sir. . . .' Bending
double, the weird creature pulled off his jockey cap in a sweeping gesture.
Without stopping to listen to the choirmaster's begging and whining,
Berlioz ran to the turnstile and pushed it. Having passed through he was
just about to step off the pavement and cross the tramlines when a white and
red light flashed in his face and the pedestrian signal lit up with the
words ' Stop! Tramway!' A tram rolled into view, rocking slightly along the
newly-laid track that ran down Yermolayevsky Street and into Bronnaya. As it
turned to join the main line it suddenly switched its inside lights on,
hooted and accelerated.
Although he was standing in safety, the cautious Berlioz decided to
retreat behind the railings. He put his hand on the turnstile and took a
step backwards. He missed his grip and his foot slipped on the cobbles as
inexorably as though on ice. As it slid towards the tramlines his other leg
gave way and Berlioz was thrown across the track. Grabbing wildly, Berlioz
fell prone. He struck his head violently on the cobblestones and the gilded
moon flashed hazily across his vision. He just had time to turn on his back,
drawing his legs up to his stomach with a frenzied movement and as he turned
over he saw the woman tram-driver's face, white with horror above her red
necktie, as she bore down on him with irresistible force and speed. Berlioz
made no sound, but all round him the street rang with the desperate shrieks
of women's voices. The driver grabbed the electric brake, the car pitched
forward, jumped the rails and with a tinkling crash the glass broke in all
its windows. At this moment Berlioz heard a despairing voice: ' Oh, no . .
.! ' Once more and for the last time the moon flashed before his eyes but it
split into fragments and then went black.
Berlioz vanished from sight under the tramcar and a round, dark object
rolled across the cobbles, over the kerbstone and bounced along the
pavement.
It was a severed head.
The women's hysterical shrieks and the sound, of police whistles died
away. Two ambulances drove on, one bearing the body and the decapitated head
to the morgue, the other carrying the beautiful tram-driver who had been
wounded by slivers of glass. Street sweepers in white overalls swept up the
broken glass and poare'd sand on the pools of blood. Ivan Nikolayich, who
had failed to reach the turnstile in time, collapsed on a bench and remained
there. Several times he tried to ge:t up, but his legs refuse d to obey him,
stricken by a kind of paralysis.
The moment he had heard the first cry the poet had rushed towards the
turnstile and seen the head bouncing on the pavement. The sight unnerved him
so much that he bit his hand until it drew blood. He had naturally forgotten
all about the mad German and could do nothing but wonder how one minute he
coald have been talking to Berlioz and the next... his head ...
Excited people were running along the avenue past the poet shouting
something, but Ivan Nikolayich did not hear them. Suddenly two women
collided alongside him and one of them, witlh a pointed nose and straight
hair, shouted to the other woman just above his ear :
'.. . Anna, it was our Anna! She was coming from Sadovaya! It's her
job, you see . . . she was carrying a litre of sunflower-seed oil to the
grocery and she broke her jug on. the turnstile! It went all over her skirt
amd ruined it and she swore and swore....! And that poor man must have
slipped on the oil and fallen under the tram....'
One word stuck in Ivan Nikolayich's brain--' Anna' . . . ' Anna? . . .
Anna? ' muttered the poet, looking round in alarm. ' Hey, what was that you
said . . .? '
The name ' Anna ' evoked the words ' sunflower-seed oil' and ' Pontius
Pilate '. Bezdomny rejected 'Pilate' and began linking together a chain of
associations starting with ' Anna'. Very soon the chain was complete and it
led straight back to the mad professor.
'Of course! He said the meeting wouldn't take place because Anna had
spilled the oil. And, by God, it won't take place now! And what's more he
said Berlioz would have his head cut off by a woman!! Yes--and the
tram-driver was a woman!!! Who the hell is he? '
There was no longer a grain of doubt that the mysterious professor had
foreseen every detail of Berlioz's death before it had occurred. Two
thoughts struck the poet: firstly--' he's no madman ' and secondly--' did he
arrange the whole thing himself?'
'But how on earth could he? We've got to look into this! '
With a tremendous effort Ivan Nikolayich got up from the bench and ran
back to where he had been talking to the professor, who was fortunately
still there.
The lamps were already lit on Bronnaya Street and a golden moon was
shining over Patriarch's Ponds. By the light of the moon, deceptive as it
always is, it seemed to Ivan Nikolayich that the thing under the professor's
arm was not a stick but a sword.
The ex-choirmaster was sitting on the seat occupied a short while
before by Ivan Nikolayich himself. The choirmaster had now clipped on to his
nose an obviously useless pince-nez. One lens was missing and the other
rattled in its frame. It made the check-suited man look even more repulsive
than when he had shown Berlioz the way to the tramlines. With a chill of
fear Ivan walked up to the professor. A glance at his face convinced him
that there was not a trace of insanity in it.
'Confess--who are you? ' asked Ivan grimly.
The stranger frowned, looked at the poet as if seeing him for the first
time, and answered disagreeably :
'No understand ... no speak Russian . . . '
'He doesn't understand,' put in the choirmaster from his bench,
although no one had asked him.
'Stop pretending! ' said Ivan threateningly, a cold feeling growing in
the pit of his stomach. ' Just now you spoke Russian perfectly well. You're
no German and you're not a professor! You're a spy and a murderer! Show me
your papers! ' cried Ivan angrily.
The enigmatic professor gave his already crooked mouth a further twist
and shrugged his shoulders.
'Look here, citizen,' put in the horrible choirmaster again. ' What do
you mean by upsetting this foreign tourist? You'll have the police after
you! '
The dubious professor put on a haughty look, turned and walked away
from Ivan, who felt himself beginning to lose his head. Gasping, he turned
to the choirmaster :
'Hey, you, help me arrest this criminal! It's your duty! '
The choirmaster leaped eagerly to his feet and bawled :
'What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal? ' His eyes lit up
joyfully. ' That man? If he's a criminal the first thing to do is to shout "
Stop thief! " Otherwise he'll get away. Come on, let's shout together! ' And
the choirmaster opened his mouth wide.
The stupefied Ivan obeyed and shouted ' Stop thief! ' but the
choirmaster fooled him by not making a sound.
Ivan's lonely, hoarse cry was worse than useless. A couple of girls
dodged him and he heard them say ' . .. drunk.'
'So you're in league with him, are you? ' shouted Ivan, helpless with
anger. ' Make fun of me, would you? Out of my way!'
Ivan set off towards his right and the choirmaster did the opposite,
blocking his way. Ivan moved leftward, the other to his right and the same
thing happened.
'Are you trying to get in my way on purpose?' screamed Ivan,
infuriated. ' You're the one I'm going to report to the police!'
Ivan tried to grab the choirmaster by the sleeve, missed and found
himself grasping nothing : it was as if the choirmaster had been swallowed
up by the ground.
With a groan Ivan looked ahead and saw the hated stranger. He had
already reached the exit leading on to Patriarch's Street and he was no
longer alone. The weird choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was
not all. The third member of the company was a cat the size of a pig, black
as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers' whiskers. The threesome was
walking towards Patriarch's Street, the cat trotting along on its hind legs.
As he set off after the villains Ivan realised at once that it was
going to be very hard to catch them up. In a flash the three of them were
across the street and on the Spiridonovka. Ivan quickened his pace, but the
distance between him and his quarry grew no less. Before the poet had
realised it they had left the quiet Spiridonovka and were approaching Nikita
Gate, where his difficulties increased. There was a crowd and to make
matters worse the evil band had decided to use the favourite trick of
bandits on the run and split up.
With great agility the choirmaster jumped on board a moving bus bound
for Arbat Square and vanished. Having lost one of them, Ivan concentrated
his attention on the cat and saw how the strange animal walked up to the
platform of an ' A ' tram waiting at a stop, cheekily pushed off a screaming
woman, grasped the handrail and offered the conductress a ten-kopeck piece.
Ivan was so amazed by the cat's behaviour that he was frozen into
immobility beside a street corner grocery. He was struck with even greater
amazement as he watched the reaction of the conductress. Seeing the cat
board her tram, she yelled, shaking with anger:
'No cats allowed! I'm not moving with a cat on board! Go on--shoo! Get
off, or I'll call the police! '
Both conductress and passengers seemed completely oblivious of the most
extraordinary thing of all: not that a cat had boarded a tramcar--that was
after all possible--but the fact that the animal was offering to pay its
fare!
The cat proved to be not only a fare-paying but a law-abiding animal.
At the first shriek from the conductress it retreated, stepped off the
platform and sat down at the tram-stop, stroking its whiskers with the
ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress yanked the bell-rope and
the car begun to move off, than the cat acted like anyone else who has been
pushed off a tram and is still determined to get to his destination. Letting
all three cars draw past it, the cat jumped on to the coupling-hook of the
last car, latched its paw round a pipe sticking out of one of the windows
and sailed away, having saved itself ten kopecks.
Fascinated by the odious cat, Ivan almost lost sight of the most
important of the three--the professor. Luckily he had not managed to slip
away. Ivan spotted his grey beret in the crowd at the top of Herzen Street.
In a flash Ivan was there too, but in vain. The poet speeded up to a run and
began shoving people aside, but it brought him not an inch nearer the
professor.
Confused though Ivan was, he was nevertheless astounded by the
supernatural speed of the pursuit. Less than twenty seconds after leaving
Nikita Gate Ivan Nikolayich was dazzled by the lights of Arbat Square. A few
more seconds and he was in a dark alleyway with uneven pavements where he
tripped and hurt his knee. Again a well-lit main road--Kropotkin Street--
another side-street, then Ostozhenka Street, then another grim, dirty and
badly-lit alley. It was here that Ivan Nikolayich finally lost sight of his
quarry. The professor had disappeared.
Disconcerted, but not for long, for no apparent reason Ivan Nikolayich
had a sudden intuition that the professor must be in house No. 13, flat 47.
Bursting through the front door, Ivan Nikolayich flew up the stairs,
found the right flat and impatiently rang the bell. He did not have to wait
long. The door was opened by a little girl of about five, who silently
disappeared inside again. The hall was a vast, incredibly neglected room
feebly lit by a tiny electric light that dangled in one corner from a
ceiling black with dirt. On the wall hung a bicycle without any tyres,
beneath it a huge iron-banded trunk. On the shelf over the coat-rack was a
winter
fur cap, its long earflaps untied and hanging down. From behind one of
the doors a man's voice could be heard booming from the radio, angrily
declaiming poetry.
Not at all put out by these unfamiliar surroundings, Ivan Nikolayich
made straight for the corridor, thinking to himself:
'He's obviously hiding in the bathroom.' The passage was dark. Bumping
into the walls, Ivan saw a faint streak of light under a doorway. He groped
for the handle and gave it a gentle turn. The door opened and Ivan found
himself in luck--it was the bathroom.
However it wasn't quite the sort of luck he had hoped for. Amid the
damp steam and by the light of the coals smouldering in the geyser, he made
out a large basin attached to the wall and a bath streaked with black where
the enamel had chipped off. There in the bath stood a naked woman, covered
in soapsuds and holding a loofah. She peered short-sightedly at Ivan as he
came in and obviously mistaking him for someone else in the hellish light
she whispered gaily :
'Kiryushka! Do stop fooling! You must be crazy . . . Fyodor Ivanovich
will be back any minute now. Go on--out you go! ' And she waved her loofah
at Ivan.
The mistake was plain and it was, of course, Ivan Nikolayich's fault,
but rather than admit it he gave a shocked cry of ' Brazen hussy! ' and
suddenly found himself in the kitchen. It was empty. In the gloom a silent
row of ten or so Primuses stood on a marble slab. A single ray of moonlight,
struggling through a dirty window that had not been cleaned for years, cast
a dim light into one corner where there hung a forgotten ikon, the stubs of
two candles still stuck in its frame. Beneath the big ikon was another made
of paper and fastened to the wall with tin-tacks.
Nobody knows what came over Ivan but before letting himself out by the
back staircase he stole one of the candles and the little paper ikon.
Clutching these objects he left the strange apartment, muttering,
embarrassed by his recent experience in the bathroom. He could not help
wondering who the shameless Kiryushka might be and whether he was the owner
of the nasty fur cap with dangling ear-flaps.
In the deserted, cheerless alleyway Bezdomny looked round for the
fugitive but there was no sign of him. Ivan said firmly to himself:
'Of course! He's on the Moscow River! Come on! '
Somebody should of course have asked Ivan Nikolayich why he imagined
the professor would be on the Moscow River of all places, but unfortunately
there was no one to ask him--the nasty little alley was completely empty.
In no time at all Ivan Nikolayich was to be seen on the granite steps
of the Moscow lido. Taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a kindly
old man with a beard, dressed in a torn white Russian blouse and patched,
unlaced boots. Waving him aside, Ivan took a swallow-dive into the water.
The water was so cold that it took his breath away and for a moment he even
doubted whether he would reach the surface again. But reach it he did, and
puffing and snorting, his eyes round with terror, Ivan Nikolayich began
swimming in the black, oily-smelling water towards the shimmering zig-zags
of the embankment lights reflected in the water.
When Ivan clambered damply up the steps at the place where he had left
his clothes in the care of the bearded man, not only his clothes but their
venerable guardian had apparently been spirited away. On the very spot where
the heap of clothes had been there was now a pair of check underpants, a
torn Russian blouse, a candle, a paper ikon and a box of matches. Shaking
his fist into space with impotent rage, Ivan clambered into what was left.
As he did so two thoughts worried him. To begin with he had now lost
his MASSOLIT membership card; normally he never went anywhere without it.
Secondly it occurred to him that he might be arrested for walking around
Moscow in this state. After all, he had practically nothing on but a pair of
underpants. . . .
Ivan tore the buttons off the long underpants where they were fastened
at the ankles, in the hope that people might think they were a pair of
lightweight summer trousers. He then picked up the ikon, the candle and
matches and set off, saying to himself:
'I must go to Griboyedov! He's bound to be there.' Ivan Nikolayich's
fears were completely justified--passers-by noticed him and turned round to
stare, so he decided to leave the main streets and make Us way through the
side-roads where people were not so inquisitive, where there was less chance
of them stopping a barefoot man and badgering him with questions about his
underpants--which obstinately refused to look like trousers.
Ivan plunged into a maze of sidestreets round the Arbat and began to
sidle along the walls, blinking fearfully, glancing round, occasionally
hiding in doorways, avoiding crossroads with traffic lights and the elegant
porticos of embassy mansions.
5. The Affair at Griboyedov
It was an old two-storied house, painted cream, that stood on the ring
boulevard behind a ragged garden, fenced off from the pavement by
wrought-iron railings. In winter the paved front courtyard was usually full
of shovelled snow, whilst in summer, shaded by a canvas awning, it became a
delightful outdoor extension to the club restaurant.
The house was called ' Griboyedov House ' because it might once have
belonged to an aunt of the famous playwright Alexander Sergeyevich
Griboyedov. Nobody really knows for sure whether she ever owned it or not.
People even say that Griboyedov never had an aunt who owned any such
property. . . . Still, that was its name. What is more, a dubious tale used
to circulate in Moscow of how in the round, colonnaded salon on the second
floor the famous writer had once read extracts from Woe From Wit to that
same aunt as she reclined on a sofa. Perhaps he did ; in any case it doesn't
matter.
It matters much more that this house now belonged to MASSOLIT, which
until his excursion to Patriarch's Ponds was headed by the unfortunate
Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz. No one, least of all the members of MASSOLIT,
called the place ' Griboyedov House '. Everyone simply called it' Griboyedov
' :
'I spent a couple of hours lobbying at Griboyedov yesterday.'
'Well?'
'Wangled myself a month in Yalta.'
'Good for you! '
Or : ' Go to Berlioz--he's seeing people from four to five this
afternoon at Griboyedov . . .'--and so on.
MASSOLIT had installed itself in Griboyedov very comfortably indeed. As
you entered you were first confronted with a notice-board full of
announcements by the various sports clubs, then with the photographs of
every individual member of MASSOLIT, who were strung up (their photographs,
of course) along the walls of the staircase leading to the first floor.
On the door of the first room on the upper storey was a large notice :
' Angling and Weekend Cottages ', with a picture of a carp caught on a hook.
On the door of the second room was a slightly confusing notice: '
Writers' day-return rail warrants. Apply to M.V. Podlozhnaya.'
The next door bore a brief and completely incomprehensible legend: '
Perelygino'. From there the chance visitor's eye would be caught by
countless more notices pinned to the aunt's walnut doors : ' Waiting List
for Paper--Apply to Poklevkina ';
'Cashier's Office '; ' Sketch-Writers : Personal Accounts ' . . .
At the head of the longest queue, which started downstairs at the
porter's desk, was a door under constant siege labelled ' Housing Problem'.
Past the housing problem hung a gorgeous poster showing a cliff, along
whose summit rode a man on a chestnut horse with a rifle slung over his
shoulder. Below were some palm-trees and a balcony. On it sat a shock-haired
young man gazing upwards with a bold, urgent look and holding a fountain pen
in his hands. The wording read : ' All-in Writing Holidays, from two weeks
(short story, novella) to one year (novel, trilogy): Yalta, Suuk-Su,
Borovoye, Tsikhidziri, Makhinjauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).' There was a
queue at this door too, but not an excessively long one--only about a
hundred and fifty people.
Following the erratic twists, the steps up and steps down of
Griboyedov's corridors, one found other notices : 'MASSOLIT-Management',
'Cashiers Nos. 2, 5, 4, 5,' 'Editorial Board', ' MASSOLIT-Chairman',
'Billiard Room', then various subsidiary organisations and finally that
colonnaded salon where the aunt had listened with such delight to the
readings of his comedy by her brilliant nephew.
Every visitor to Griboyedov, unless of course he were completely
insensitive, was made immediately aware of how good life was for the lucky
members of MASSOLIT and he would at once be consumed with black envy. At
once, too, he would curse heaven for having failed to endow him at birth
with literary talent, without which, of course, no one could so much as
dream of acquiring a MASSOLIT membership card--that brown card known to all
Moscow, smelling of expensive leather and embellished with a wide gold
border.
Who is prepared to say a word in defence of envy? It is a despicable
emotion, but put yourself in the visitor's place : what he had seen on the
upper flÏÏÇ was by no means all. The entire ground floor of the aunt's house
was occupied by a restaurant-- and what a restaurant! It was rightly
considered the best in Moscow. Not only because it occupied two large rooms
with vaulted ceilings and lilac-painted horses with flowing manes, not only
because every table had a lamp shaded with lace, not only because it was
barred to the hoi polloi, but above all for the quality of its food.
Griboyedov could beat any restaurant in Moscow you cared to name and its
prices were extremely moderate.
There is therefore nothing odd in the conversation which the author of
these lines actually overheard once outside the iron railings of Griboyedov
:
'Where are you dining today, Ambrose? '
'What a question! Here, of course, Vanya! Archibald Archibaldovich
whispered to me this morning that there's filets de perche an naturel on the
menu tonight. Sheer virtuosity! '
'You do know how to live, Ambrose! ' sighed Vanya, a thin pinched man
with a carbuncle on his neck, to Ambrose, a strapping, red-lipped,
golden-haired, ruddy-cheeked poet.
'It's no special talent,' countered Ambrose. ' Just a perfectly normal
desire to live a decent, human existence. Now I suppose you're going to say
that you can get perch at the Coliseum. So you can. But a helping of perch
at the Coliseum costs thirty roubles fifty kopecks and here it costs five
fifty! Apart from that the perch at the Coliseum are three days old and
what's more if you go to the Coliseum there's no guarantee you won't get a
bunch of grapes thrown in your face by the first young man to burst in from
Theatre Street. No, I loathe the Coliseum,' shouted Ambrose the gastronome
at the top of his voice. ' Don't try and talk me into liking it, Vanya! '
'I'm not trying to talk you into it, Ambrose,' squeaked Vanya. ' You
might have been dining at home.'
'Thank you very much,' trumpeted Ambrose. ' Just imagine your wife
trying to cook filets de perche an naturel in a saucepan, in the kitchen you
share with half a dozen other people! He, he, he! ... Aurevoir, Vanya! ' And
humming to himself Ambrose hurried oft to the verandah under the awning.
Ha, ha, ha! ... Yes, that's how it used to be! ... Some of us old
inhabitants of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov. But boiled
fillets of perch was nothing, my dear Ambrose! What about the sturgeon,
sturgeon in a silver-plated pan, sturgeon filleted and served between
lobsters' tails and fresh caviar? And oeufs en cocotte with mushroom puree
in little bowls? And didn't you like the thrushes' breasts? With truffles?
The quails alia Genovese? Nine roubles fifty! And oh, the band, the polite
waiters! And in July when the whole family's in the country and pressing
literary business is keeping you in town--out on the verandah, in the shade
of a climbing vine, a plate of potage printaniere looking like a golden
stain on the snow-white table-cloth? Do you remember, Ambrose? But of course
you do--I can see from your lips you remember. Not just your salmon or your
perch either--what about the snipe, the woodcock in season, the quail, the
grouse? And the sparkling wines! But I digress, reader.
At half past ten on the evening that Berlioz died at Patriarch's Ponds,
only one upstairs room at Griboyedov was lit. In it sat twelve weary
authors, gathered for a meeting and still waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.
Sitting on chairs, on tables and even on the two window ledges, the
management committee of MASSOLIT was suffering badly from the heat and
stuffiness. Not a single fresh breeze penetrated the open window. Moscow was
The Master and Margarita
exuding the heat of the day accumulated in its asphalt and it was
obvious that the night was not going to bring; any relief. There was a smell
of onion coming from the restaurant kitchen in the cellar, everybody wanted
a drink, everybody was nervous and irritable.
Beskudnikov, a quiet, well-dressed essayist with eyes that were at once
attentive yet shifty, took out his watch. The hands were just creeping up to
eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the watch face with his finger and showed it to
his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting on the table, bored and
swinging his feet shod in yellow rubber-soled slippers.
'Well, really . . .' muttered Dvubratsky.
'I suppose the lad's got stuck out at Klyazma,' said Nastasya
Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphaned daughter of a Moscow business man, who had
turned writer and wrote naval war stories under the pseudonym of ' Bo'sun
George '.
'Look here! ' burst out Zagrivov, a writer of popular short stories. '
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be drinking tea out on the balcony
right now instead of stewiing in here. Was this meeting called for ten
o'clock or wasn't it? '
'It must be nice out at Klyazma now,' said IBo'sun George in a tone of
calculated innocence, knowing that the writers' summer colony out at
Perelygino near Klyazma was a sore point. ' I expect the nightingales are
singing there now. Somehow I always seem to work better out of town,
especially in the spring.'
'I've been paying my contributions for three years now to send my sick
wife to that paradise but somehow nothing ever appears on the horizon,' said
Hieronymus Poprikhin the novelist, with bitter venom.
'Some people are lucky and others aren't, that's all,' boomed the
critic Ababkov from the window-ledge.
Bos'un George's little eyes lit up, and softening her contralto rasp
she said:
'We mustn't be jealous, comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas,
only seven more are being built, and there are three thousand of us in
MASSOLIT.'
'Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' put in someone from a corner.
'Well, there you are,' the Bo'sun went on. ' What can one do?
Naturally the dachas are allocated to those with the most talent. . .'
'They're allocated to the people at the top! ' barked Gluk-haryov, a
script writer.
Beskudnikov, yawning artificially, left the room.
'One of them has five rooms to himself at Perelygino,' Glukharyov
shouted after him.
'Lavrovich has six rooms to himself,' shouted Deniskin, ' and the
dining-room's panelled in oak! '
'Well, at the moment that's not the point,' boomed Ababkov. ' The
point is that it's half past eleven.'
A noise began, heralding mutiny. Somebody rang up the hated Perelygino
but got through to the wrong dacha, which turned out to belong to Lavrovich,
where they were told that Lavrovich was out on the river. This produced
utter confusion. Somebody made a wild telephone call to the Fine Arts and
Literature Commission, where of course there was no reply.
'He might have rung up! ' shouted Deniskin, Glukharyov and Quant.
Alas, they shouted in vain. Mikhail Alexandrovich was in no state to
telephone anyone. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a vast hall lit by
thousand-candle-power lamps, what had recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich
was lying on three zinc-topped tables. On the first was the naked,
blood-caked body with. a fractured arm and smashed rib-cage, on the second
the head, it;s front teeth knocked in, its vacant open eyes undisturbed by
the blinding light, and on the third--a heap of mangled rags. Round the
decapitated corpse stood the professor of forensic medicine, the
pathological anatomist and his dissector, a few detectives and Mikhail
Alexandrovich's deputy as chairman of MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin,
summoned by telephone from the bedside of his sick wife.
A car had been sent for Zheldybin and had first taken him and the
detectives (it was about midnight) to the dead man's flat where his papers
were placed under seal, after which they all drove to the morgue.
The group round the remains of the deceased were conferring on the best
course to take--should they sew the severed head back on to the neck or
allow the body to lie in state in the main hall of Griboyedov covered by a
black cloth as far as the chin?
Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was quite incapable of telephoning and
Deniskin, Glukharyov, Quant and Beskudnikov were exciting themselves for
nothing. On the stroke of midnight all twelve writers left the upper storey
and went down to the restaurant. There they said more unkind things about
Mikhail Alexandrovich : all the tables on the verandah were full and they
were obliged to dine in the beautiful but stifling indoor rooms.
On the stroke of midnight the first of these rooms suddenly woke up and
leaped into life with a crash and a roar. A thin male voice gave a desperate
shriek of ' Alleluia!! ' Music. It was the famous Griboyedov jazz band
striking up. Sweat-covered faces lit up, the painted horses on the ceiling
came to life, the lamps seemed to shine brighter. Suddenly, as though
bursting their chains, everybody in the two rooms started dancing, followed
by everybody on the verandah.
Glukharyov danced away with the poetess Tamara Polumesy-atz. Quant
danced, Zhukopov the novelist seized a film actress in a yellow dress and
danced. They all danced--Dragunsky and Cherdakchi danced, little Deniskin
danced with the gigantic Bo'sun George and the beautiful girl architect
Semeikin-Hall was grabbed by a stranger in white straw-cloth trousers.
Members and guests, from Moscow and from out of town, they all danced--the
writer Johann from Kronstadt, a producer called Vitya Kuftik from Rostov
with lilac-coloured eczema all over his face, the leading lights of the
poetry section of MASSOLIT-- Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Shpichkin and
Adelfina Buzdyak, young men of unknown occupation with cropped hair and
shoulders padded with cotton wool, an old, old man with a chive sticking out
of his beard danced with a thin, anaemic girl in an orange silk dress.
Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the
dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously ' Sorry, sir! ' Somewhere a
man bellowed through a megaphone:
'Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King! ' The vocalist was no
longer singing--he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in the
band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping chute to the
scullery. In short--hell.
At midnight there appeared a vision in this hell. On to the verandah
strode a handsome, black-eyed man with a pointed beard and wearing a tail
coat. With regal gaze he surveyed his domain. According to some romantics
there had once been a time when this noble figure had worn not tails but a
broad leather belt round his waist, stuck with pistol-butts, that his
raven-black 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 wit