The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

3. The Seventh Proof

Yes, it was about ten o’clock in the morning, illustrious Ivan Nikolayevich,” said the Professor.

The poet passed his hand across his face like a man who has just come to, and saw that it was evening at Patriarch’s.

The water in the pond had blackened, and a light skiff was already sliding across it, and the splashing of an oar and the giggles of some citizeness in the skiff could be heard. People had appeared on the benches in the avenues, but again, on each ofthe three sides of the square apart from the one where our interlocutors were.

It was as if the sky above Moscow had faded, and the full moon could be seen perfectly distinctly on high, not yet golden, but white. Breathing had become much easier, and the voices beneath the lime trees now sounded softer, suited to the evening.

“How on earth did I fail to notice he’d managed to spin an entire story?” thought Bezdomny in amazement. “I mean, it’s already evening now! Yet perhaps it wasn’t even him telling it, simply I fell asleep and dreamt it all?”

But it must be supposed that it was, after all, the Professor who had been telling it, otherwise it would have to be allowed that Berlioz had had the same dream too, because the latter, peering attentively into the foreigner’s face, said:

“Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, although it doesn’t coincide at all with the stories in the Gospels^[118].”

“Pardon me,” responded the Professor with a condescending smile, “but you of all people ought to know that absolutely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually happened, and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source^[119]…” Again he smiled, and Berlioz was taken aback^[120], because he had been saying word for word the same thing to Bezdomny while walking along Bronnaya towards Patriarch’s Ponds.

“That is so,” replied Berlioz, “but I’m afraid no one can confirm that what you’ve told us actually happened either.”

“Oh no! One can confirm it!” responded the Professor with extreme confidence, beginning to speak in broken Russian, and in an unexpectedly mysterious way he beckoned the two friends a little closer towards him.

They leant in towards him from both sides, and he said, but now without any accent (which, the devil knows why, was forever coming and going):

“The fact is…” – here the Professor looked around fearfully and began speaking in a whisper – "I was personally present during it all. I was on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he was talking with Caipha, and on the platform – only secretly, incognito, so to speak, so I beg you – not a word to anyone, and in absolute confidence!. Ssh!”

Silence fell, and Berlioz turned pale.

"How. how long have you been in Moscow?” he asked in a faltering voice^[121].

"I’ve only just this moment arrived in Moscow,” replied the Professor, perplexed, and only at this point did the friends think to look properly into his eyes, and they satisfied themselves that the left, the green one, was completely mad, while the right one was empty, black and dead.

"And there’s everything explained for you!” thought Berlioz in confusion. "There’s an insane German come here, or else he’s just gone barmy at Patriarch’s. There’s a thing!”

Yes, everything was, indeed, explained: the very strange breakfast with the late philosopher, Kant, and the ridiculous talk about sunflower oil and Annushka, and the predictions about his head being chopped off, and all the rest – the Professor was insane.

Berlioz immediately grasped what was to be done. Reclining against the back of the bench, he started winking at^[122] Bezdomny behind the Professor’s back – as if to say, don’t contradict him – but the bewildered poet failed to understand these signals.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Berlioz excitedly. “Actually, it’s all possible!. Perfectly possible, even – Pontius Pilate, the balcony and so forth. And are you here alone or with your wife?”

'Alone, alone, I’m always alone,” replied the Professor bitterly.

“But where are your things, Professor?” asked Berlioz, fishing. “At the Metropole? Where have you put up?”

“Me? Nowhere,” replied the crazy German, with his green eye wandering mournfully and wildly over Patriarch’s Ponds.

“How’s that? But. where are you going to be staying?”

“In your apartment,” the madman suddenly replied in an overfamiliar tone, and gave a wink.

“I. I’m delighted,” mumbled Berlioz, “but truly, you’ll find my place inconvenient. And there are wonderful rooms at the Metropole – it’s a first-class hotel…”

“And is there no Devil either?” the sick man cheerfully enquired all of a sudden of Ivan Nikolayevich.

“The Devil too.”

“Don’t contradict him!” Berlioz whispered with his lips alone as he slumped down^[123] behind the Professor’s back, grimacing.

“There is no Devil!” Ivan Nikolayevich exclaimed something unnecessary, bewildered by all this nonsense. “What a pain! Just stop behaving like a madman!”

At this point the madman burst into such laughter that a sparrow flitted out from the lime tree above the heads of the seated men.

“Well, now that is positively interesting,” said the Professor, shaking with laughter. “What is it with you? Whatever you try, nothing exists!” He suddenly stopped chuckling and, as is quite understandable in a case of mental illness, after the laughter he went to the other extreme – became irritated and cried out sternly: “So, there really isn’t one, then?”

“Relax, relax, relax, Professor,” muttered Berlioz, fearful of agitating the sick man, “you sit here for a minute with Comrade Bezdomny, and I’ll just run down to the corner, make a telephone call, and then we’ll see you to wherever you like. After all, you don’t know the city…”

Berlioz’s plan has to be acknowledged as the correct one: he needed to run to the nearest public telephone and inform the Foreigners’ Bureau of the fact that there was a visiting consultant from abroad sitting at Patriarch’s Ponds in an obvious state of madness. So it was essential to take measures, or else the result would be some kind of unpleasant nonsense.

“Make a telephone call? Well, all right, make a call,” the sick man consented sadly, then suddenly made a passionate request: “But I implore you in farewell, do at least believe that the Devil exists! I really don’t ask anything greater of you. Bear in mind that for this there exists the seventh proof, and the most reliable one, too! And it will now be put before you.”

“Very well, very well,” said Berlioz in a tone of feigned friendliness^[124]; and, with a wink to the disconcerted poet, who did not at all fancy the idea of guarding the mad German, he headed for the exit from Patriarch’s on the corner of Bronnaya and Yermolayevsky Lane.

But the Professor immediately seemed to feel better and brighten up.

“Mikhail Alexandrovich!” he cried in Berlioz’s wake^[125].

The latter gave a start, turned, but calmed himself with the thought that his name and patronymic were also known to the Professor from some newspaper or other. But the Professor called out, cupping his hands into a megaphone:

“Would you like me to give instructions for a telegram to be sent to your uncle in Kiev now?”

And again Berlioz was flabbergasted. “How on earth does the madman know of the existence of my uncle in Kiev? After all, there’s nothing said about that in any newspapers, that’s for sure. Aha, perhaps Bezdomny’s right? And what if those documents are false? Oh, what a queer sort… Phone, phone! Phone at once! He’ll soon be sorted out!”

And, listening to nothing more, Berlioz ran on.

Here, at the very exit to Bronnaya, rising from a bench to meet the editor was that exact same citizen who, back then in the sunlight, had issued from the heavy, sultry air. Only now he was no longer airy, but ordinary, fleshly, and in the beginnings of the twilight Berlioz distinctly made out that his little moustache was like chicken feathers, his eyes were small, ironic and half drunk, and his trousers were checked, and pulled up to such an extent that his dirty white socks could be seen.

Mikhail Alexandrovich was simply staggered, but comforted himself with the thought that this was a silly coincidence, and that anyway there was no time to reflect upon it now.

“Looking for the turnstile, Citizen?” enquired the character in checks in a cracked tenor. “Right this way! You’ll come out just where you need to be. How about the price of a quarter of a litre for the directions. for an ex-precentor. to set himself to rights^[126]!” Bending low, the fellow swept off his jockey’s cap.

Berlioz did not bother listening to the cadging pseudo-precentor, but ran up to the turnstile and took hold of it with his hand. Having turned it, he was already about to take a step onto the rails when red and white lights sprayed into his face: in the glass box the inscription “Beware of the tram!” lit up.

And the tram did come rushing up straight away, turning on the newly laid line from Yermolayevsky into Bronnaya. Having rounded the bend and come out onto the straight, it suddenly lit up with electricity inside, howled and picked up speed.

The cautious Berlioz, although he was safe where he was standing, decided to go back behind the turnpike; he changed the position of his hand on the revolving part and took a step backwards. And immediately his hand abruptly slipped and came away; his foot, as though on ice, travelled uncontrollably across the cobbles sloping down^[127] towards the rails; the other foot flew up into the air, and Berlioz was thrown out onto the rails.

Trying to catch hold of something^[128], Berlioz fell onto his back, striking his head a light blow on the cobbles, and he had time to see, high up – but whether to the right or to the left he could no longer comprehend – the gilt moon. He had time to turn onto his side, at the same instant drawing his legs up with a violent movement towards his stomach, and, having turned, he made out the face of the female tram driver – completely white with horror and hurtling towards him with unstoppable power – and her scarlet armband. Berlioz did not cry out, but around him the entire street began screaming in despairing women’s voices. The driver tugged at the electric brake; the nose of the carriage went down onto the ground, and then, an instant afterwards, bounced up^[129], and with a crashing and a ringing the panes flew out of the windows. At this point someone in Berlioz’s brain cried out despairingly: “Surely not?” One more time, and for the last time, there was a glimpse of the moon, but already it was falling to pieces, and then it became dark.

The tram covered Berlioz, and a round, dark object was thrown out under the railings of Patriarch’s avenue onto the cobbled, sloping verge^[130]. Rolling down off the slope, it started bouncing along the cobblestones of Bronnaya.

It was Berlioz’s severed head.

4. The Pursuit

The women’s hysterical cries had died away; police whistles had finished their drilling, one ambulance had taken the headless body and the severed head to the morgue, another had taken away the beautiful driver, wounded by splinters of glass; yardmen in white aprons had cleared up the splinters of glass and scattered sand on the puddles of blood; but Ivan Nikolayevich remained there on a bench, just as he had fallen onto it without ever having reached the turnstile.

He had tried to get up several times, but his legs would not obey – Bezdomny had suffered something in the nature of paralysis.

The poet had rushed off^[131] towards the turnstile as soon as he had heard the first shriek, and had seen the head bouncing on the roadway. This had made him lose his senses to such a degree that, falling onto a bench, he had bitten his hand and drawn blood. He had, of course, forgotten about the mad German and was trying to understand just one thing: how it could possibly be that he had just been there, talking with Berlioz, and a minute later… the head…

Agitated people were running along the avenue past the poet, exclaiming something, but Ivan Nikolayevich did not take their words in^[132].

However, two women unexpectedly bumped into each other beside him, and one of them, sharp-nosed and bare-headed, shouted to the other woman right in the poet’s ear:

“Annushka, our Annushka! From Sadovaya! It’s her doing! She bought some sunflower oil at the grocer’s, and she went and smashed a litre bottle on the revolving bit of the turnstile! Made a mess all over her skirt. She was really cursing, she was! And he must have slipped, poor thing, and gone over onto the rails.”

Of everything that the woman shouted out, one word took a hold on Ivan Nikolayevich’s deranged mind^[133]: “Annushka…”

''Annushka… Annushka?” mumbled the poet, gazing around uneasily. “Permit me, permit me.”

To the word “Annushka” became attached the words “sunflower oil”, and then for some reason “Pontius Pilate”. The poet rejected Pilate and began linking together a chain, beginning with the word “Annushka”. And that chain linked up very quickly, and led at once to the mad Professor.

I’m sorry! I mean, he said the meeting wouldn’t take place because Annushka had spilt the oil. And, if you’d be so kind, it would not take place! And that’s not all: didn’t he say straight out that a woman would cut off Berlioz’s head?! Yes, yes, yes! And the driver was, after all, a woman! What on earth is all this? Eh?

Not even a grain of doubt remained that the mysterious consultant had definitely known in advance the whole picture of Berlioz’s terrible death. At this point two thoughts penetrated the poet’s brain. The first: “He’s far from mad! That’s all nonsense!” And the second: “Did he perhaps arrange it all himself?!”

But permit me to ask how?!

“Oh no! That we shall find out!”

Making a great effort with himself, Ivan Nikolayevich rose from the bench and rushed back to where he had been talking with the Professor. And it turned out that, fortunately, the latter had not yet left.

On Bronnaya the street lamps had already lit up, and above Patriarch’s the golden moon was shining, and in the always deceptive moonlight it seemed to Ivan Nikolayevich that the man was standing there holding not a cane under his arm, but a rapier.

The retired precentor-cum-trickster was sitting in the very spot where Ivan Nikolayevich had himself just recently been sitting. Now the precentor fastened onto his nose an obviously unnecessary pince-nez, which had one lens missing completely and the other cracked. This made the citizen in checks even more repulsive than he had been when showing Berlioz the way to the rails.

With his heart turning cold, Ivan approached the Professor and, looking into his face, satisfied himself that there were not, and had not been, any signs of madness in that face at all.

“Confess, who are you?” asked Ivan in a muffled voice^[134].

The foreigner knitted his brows, gave a look as if he were seeing the poet for the first time and replied with hostility:

“No understand… no speak Russian…”

“The gentleman doesn’t understand!” the precentor chimed in from the bench, though nobody had actually asked him to explain the foreigner’s words.

“Stop pretending!” Ivan said sternly, and felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. “You were speaking excellent Russian just now. You’re not a German or a professor! You’re a murderer and a spy! Your papers!” Ivan cried fiercely.

The enigmatic Professor twisted in disgust a mouth that was twisted enough already and shrugged his shoulders.

“Citizen!” the loathsome precentor butted in^[135] again. “What are you doing, disturbing a foreign tourist? You’ll be called to account most severely for this!” And the suspicious Professor pulled a haughty face, turned and started to walk away from Ivan.

Ivan sensed he was losing his self-control. Gasping for breath, he turned to the precentor:

“Hey, Citizen, help me detain a criminal! It’s your duty to do it!”

The precentor became extremely animated, leapt up^[136] and started yelling:

“What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal?” The precentor’s little eyes began to sparkle. “This one? If he’s a criminal, then one’s first duty should be to shout ‘Help!’ Otherwise he’ll get away. Come on, let’s do it together! Both at once!” And here the precentor spread his jaws wide open.

The bewildered Ivan obeyed the joker of a precentor and shouted “Help!” but the precentor had duped him and did not shout anything.

Ivan’s lone, hoarse cry brought no good results. Two young women of some sort shied away from him, and he heard the word “Drunk!”

“Ah, so you’re in league with him?” shouted Ivan, flying into a rage. “What are you doing, making fun of me? Let me pass!”

Ivan threw himself to the right, and the precentor… went to the right as well! Ivan. to the left, and that swine went the same way too!

“Are you getting under my feet deliberately?” cried Ivan, going wild. “I’ll put you in the hands of the police too!”

Ivan made an attempt to grab the good-for-nothing^[137] by the sleeve, but missed and caught hold of precisely nothing. The precentor had vanished into thin air.

Ivan gasped, looked into the distance and caught sight of the hateful stranger. He was already at the exit into Patriarch’s Lane – and, moreover, was not alone. The more than dubious precentor had managed to join him. But there was more: the third figure in the group turned out to be a tomcat that had appeared from out of the blue, huge as a hog, black as soot or as a rook, and with the dashing whiskers of a cavalryman. The trio moved out into Patriarch’s Lane with the cat setting off on its hind legs.

Ivan hurried after the villains and immediately realized it would be very hard to catch up with^[138] them.

In an instant the trio had slipped down the lane and come out on Spiridonovka. However much Ivan increased his pace, the distance between him and his quarry did not decrease in the slightest. And the poet had not managed to collect himself before, after quiet Spiridonovka, he found himself at the Nikitsky Gates, where his situation worsened. Now there was already a crush. Ivan hurtled into^[139] one of the passers-by and was sworn at. And what is more, here the gang of villains decided to employ that favourite trick of bandits – going off in different directions.

With great agility, while on the move, the precentor darted into a bus speeding towards Arbat Square and slipped away^[140]. Having lost one of his quarry, Ivan concentrated his attention on the cat, and saw this strange cat go up to the footboard of an “A” tram that was standing at a stop, impertinently move a woman aside – she let out a yelp – catch hold of the handrail and even make an attempt to force a ten-copeck piece on the conductress through the window, which was open on account of the heat.

Ivan was so struck by the behaviour of the cat that he froze in immobility^[141] by a grocer’s shop on a corner, and here he was struck for a second time, but much more forcefully, by the behaviour of the conductress. As soon as she caught sight of the cat clambering onto the tram, she shouted with an anger that even made her shake:

“No cats! Cats aren’t allowed! Shoo! Get off, or I’ll call the police!”

Neither the conductress nor the passengers were struck by the real essence of the matter: not the fact that a cat was clambering onto a tram, which would not have been so bad, but the fact that he was intending to pay!

The cat turned out to be not only a solvent, but also a disciplined beast. At the very first cry from the conductress he ceased his advance, took himself off the footboard and alighted at a stop, rubbing his whiskers with the ten-copeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress tugged at the cord and the tram moved off than the cat behaved like anyone who is expelled from a tram, but who does after all need to get somewhere. Letting all three cars go past him, the cat leapt up^[142] onto the rear bumper of the last one, latched his paw onto some kind of hose that was protruding from the side and rode off^[143], thus saving his ten-copeck piece.

In concerning himself with the vile cat, Ivan had almost lost the most important of the three – the Professor. But fortunately, the latter had not managed to slip away. Ivan caught sight of a grey beret in the dense mass at the top of Bolshaya Nikitskaya or Herzen Street. In the twinkling of an eye Ivan was there himself. However, he had no success. The poet increased his pace, and was even beginning to jog, bumping into passers-by, but not by a centimetre did he get closer to the Professor.

However upset Ivan might have been, still he was struck by the supernatural speed at which the pursuit was taking place. Not twenty seconds had passed after leaving the Nikitsky Gates before Ivan Nikolayevich was already blinded by the lights on Arbat Square. A few seconds more, and here was some dark lane with sloping pavements where Ivan Nikolayevich went crashing down and injured his knee. Again a well-lit main road – Kropotkin Street – then a side street, then Ostozhenka and another side street – cheerless, ugly and poorly lit. And it was here that Ivan Nikolayevich finally lost the man he so needed. The Professor had vanished.

Ivan Nikolayevich grew troubled, but not for long, because he suddenly realized the Professor was absolutely certain to be found in house number 13 and in apartment 47 for sure.

Bursting in through the doorway, Ivan Nikolayevich flew up to the first floor, found the apartment straight away and impatiently rang the bell. He did not have long to wait: some little girl of five or so opened the door to Ivan and, without asking the caller anything, immediately went away somewhere.

In the huge hallway – neglected in the extreme and weakly lit by a tiny little carbon lamp beneath a high ceiling, black with dirt – there was a bicycle without tyres hanging on the wall, a huge iron-bound coffer and, on the shelf above the coat rack, a winter hat with its long earflaps hanging down over the edge. Behind one of the doors a booming male voice in a radio set was shouting something angrily in verse.

Ivan Nikolayevich was not in the least disconcerted in the unfamiliar setting and headed straight into the corridor, reasoning thus: "He’s hiding in the bathroom, of course.” The corridor was dark. After banging against the walls for a bit, Ivan saw a weak little strip of light below a door, groped for the handle and tugged on it gently. The catch came away, and Ivan did indeed find himself in the bathroom, and he thought how lucky he had been.

However, he had not been quite as lucky as he might have wished! Ivan was hit by a wave of moist warmth, and, by the light of the coals smouldering in the geyser, he made out the large washtubs hanging on the wall and the bath, covered in ugly black spots because of the chipped enamel. And so, in this bath stood a naked citizeness, covered in soap and with a loofah in her hands. She squinted myopically at Ivan bursting in and, evidently mistaking him for another in the hellish light, said quietly and cheerily:

“Kiryushka! Stop messing around^[144]! What are you doing – are you out of your mind?… Fyodor Ivanovich will be back at any moment. Get out of here this minute!” and she waved the loofah at Ivan.

There was an evident misunderstanding, and Ivan Nikolayevich was, of course, to blame for^[145] it. But he did not mean to acknowledge it and, with the reproachful exclamation: “You wanton woman!” he for some reason found himself straight away in the kitchen. There was nobody in it, and mute on the cooker in the semi-darkness stood about a dozen extinguished Primus stoves. The one moonbeam that had filtered through the dusty window – a window unwiped for years – threw a meagre light on the corner where, cobwebbed and covered in dust, there hung a forgotten icon; poking out from behind its case were the ends of two wedding candles^[146].^[147] Beneath the large icon hung a small paper one, stuck up with a pin.

Nobody knows what idea took possession of Ivan at this point, but before running out to the back entrance, he appropriated one of those candles, and also the little paper icon. Together with these objects he abandoned the unknown apartment, muttering something and embarrassed at the thought of what he had just been through in the bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this brazen Kiryushka might be, and whether the offensive hat with the earflaps belonged to him.

In the deserted, cheerless lane the poet gazed around, looking for the fugitive, but he was nowhere about. Then Ivan said firmly to himself:

“But of course, he’s on the Moscow River! Onwards!”

It would quite likely have been the right thing to ask Ivan Nikolayevich why he supposed the Professor was specifically on the Moscow River and not in some other place elsewhere. But the trouble is that there was no one to ask him. The loathsome lane was completely empty.

In the very shortest time Ivan Nikolayevich could be seen on the granite steps of the amphitheatre of the Moscow River.

Having removed his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to some pleasant bearded man who was smoking a roll-up beside a torn white tolstovka^[148] and unlaced worn-down ankle boots. After waving his arms around to cool down, Ivan did a swallow dive into the water. The water was so cold it took his breath away, and it even flashed through his mind that he would quite likely not succeed in coming to the surface. However, he did succeed in doing so, and, blowing and snorting, with eyes round from horror, Ivan Nikolayevich began to swim about in the black water, smelling of oil, between the broken zigzags of the street lights on the banks.

When the wet Ivan danced up the steps to the spot where his clothing had remained under the protection of the bearded man, it transpired that not only had the former been carried off, but the latter had too – the bearded man himself, that is. On the precise spot where there had been a heap of clothing, there remained a pair of striped long johns, a torn tolstovka, a candle, an icon and a box of matches. Shaking his fist in impotent fury at someone in the distance, Ivan robed himself in what had been left.

At this point he began to be troubled by two considerations: the first was that the MASSOLIT identity card with which he never parted had disappeared, and the second was: would he succeed in getting across Moscow unhindered looking like this? Wearing long johns, after all… True, it was nobody’s business, but all the same, he hoped there would be no kind of gripe or hold-up.

Ivan tore the buttons off the long johns where they fastened at the ankle, reckoning that, looking like that, they would perhaps pass for summer trousers, and, gathering up the icon, candle and matches, he moved off, saying to himself:

“To Griboyedov! Beyond all doubt, he’s there.”

The city was already living its evening life. Trucks flew by in clouds of dust with their chains clanking, and on their open platforms, sprawling on sacks with their bellies up, lay men of some sort. All the windows were open. In each of those windows burned a light beneath an orange lampshade, and, bursting out from all the windows, from all the doors, from all the gateways, from the roofs and attics, from the basements and courtyards, was the hoarse roar of the polonaise from the opera Eugene Onegin.^[149]

Ivan Nikolayevich’s misgivings fully justified themselves: passers-by took notice of him and laughed and turned their heads. As a consequence of this, he took the decision to forsake the major streets and steal along little side streets, where people were not so importunate, where there was less chance they would pester a barefooted man, vexing him with questions about his long johns, which stubbornly declined to resemble trousers.

Ivan did just that, and plunged into the secretive network of the Arbat’s lanes, and began stealing along by the sides of walls, casting fearful sidelong glances, constantly looking around, hiding at times in doorways and avoiding crossroads with traffic lights and the magnificent doors of embassy mansions.

And during the whole of his difficult journey he was for some reason inexpressibly tormented by the ubiquitous orchestra, to the accompaniment of which a ponderous bass sang of his love for Tatyana.^[150]