gravely, and
seeing Stepa was still in difficulties he described their meeting in detail.
     He had arrived in Moscow from abroad yesterday, had  immediately called
on Stepa and offered himself as a  guest artiste at the Variety.  Stepa  had
telephoned the  Moscow  District  Theatrical  Commission, had agreed to  the
proposal (Stepa  turned  pale and  blinked) and  had  signed a contract with
Professor  Woland  for  seven  performances (Stepa's  mouth  dropped  open),
inviting Woland to call on him at  ten o'clock the next morning to  conclude
the  details.  ... So Woland  had come. When  he arrived he had  been met by
Grunya the  maid,  who explained  that she  herself  had  only just  arrived
because she lived out, that Berlioz wasn't at home and that if the gentleman
wanted  to see  Stepan Bogdanovich he  should  go into  the bedroom.. Stepan
Bogdanovich had been sleeping so  soundly  that she had been  unable to wake
him. Seeing the condition that Stepa was in, the artiste had sent Grunya out
to the nearest delicatessen  for some vodka and snacks, to  the chemist  for
some ice and . . .
     'You must  let  me  settle up  with you,'  moaned  Stepa,  thoroughly
crushed, and began hunting for his wallet.
     'Oh, what  nonsense! ' exclaimed the artiste and would hear no more of
it.
     So that explained the vodka  and the  food;  but  Stepa  was  miserably
confused: he could remember absolutely nothing about a contract and he would
die  before admitting to having seen  Woland the  previous day. Khustov  had
been there all right, but not Woland.
     'Would you mind showing me the contract?' asked Stepa gently.
     'Oh, but of course. . . .'
     Stepa looked  at  the sheet of paper and went numb. It  was all there :
his  own  bold signature,  the  backward-sloping  signature  of Rimsky,  the
treasurer,  sanctioning  the payment  to  Woland  of a cash  advance  of ten
thousand roubles against his total  fee of thirty-five thousand roubles  for
seven performances. And what was more--Woland's  receipt  for  ten  thousand
roubles!
     'What the hell? ' thought the miserable Stepa. His head began to spin.
Was this one of his  lapses of memory? Well, of  course, now that the actual
contract had been produced any  further signs of  disbelief  would merely be
rude.  Stepa  excused  himself for a moment  and ran to the telephone in the
hall,. On the way he shouted towards the kitchen :
     'Grunya! '
     There was no  reply. He glanced at the  door of Berlioz's study,  which
opened off the hall, and stopped, as they  say, dumbfounded. There,  tied to
the door-handle, hung an enormous wax seal.
     'My God!  ' said a voice  in  Stepa's head.  ' If that isn't the last
straw! ' It would be difficult  to  describe Stepa's mental confusion. First
this  diabolical  character  with his black  beret, the iced vodka and  that
incredible contract. . . . And then, if you  please, a seal on the door! Who
could ever imagine Berlioz getting into  any sort of  trouble? No  one.  Yet
there it was--a seal. H'm.
     Stepa was at once assailed by a number of uncomfortable little thoughts
about an  article  which he had  recently talked Mikhail  Alexandrovich into
printing  in  his  magazine.  Frankly the  article  had been  awful--stupid,
politically dubious and badly paid. Hard on the heels of his recollection of
the article came a memory  of  a slightly  equivocal conversation which  had
taken place,  as  far as he  could  remember,  on 24th  April  here  in  the
dining-room when Stepa and Berlioz  had  been  having  supper  together.  Of
course their talk  had not really  been dubious (Stepa would not have joined
in any such conversation) but it had  been on a  rather unnecessary subject.
They could easily have avoided  having it altogether. Before the  appearance
of  this  seal  the  conversation would undoubtedly  have been dismissed  as
utterly trivial, but since the seal . . .
     'Oh, Berlioz, Berlioz,' buzzed the  voice in  Stepa's head.  '  Surely
he'll never mention it!'
     But there was  no time for regrets. Stepa dialled the office of Rimsky,
the  Variety Theatre's treasurer. Stepa was in a  delicate position: for one
thing, the foreigner  might be offended at Stepa ringing up to check  on him
after he had been shown the contract and for another,  the treasurer  was an
extremely  difficult man to deal with. After all he couldn't just say to him
: ' Look  here,  did J  sign  a contract  yesterday for thirty-five thousand
roubles with a professor of black magic? ' It simply wouldn't do!
     'Yes? ' came Rimsky's harsh, unpleasant voice in the earphone.
     'Hello, Grigory Danilovich,' said Stepa gently. ' Likhodeyev speaking.
It's  about  this ...  er ...  this  fellow .  . . this artiste, in my flat,
called, er, Woland  . . .  I  just wanted to ask  you about this evening--is
everything O.K.? '
     'Oh, the black  magician? ' replied Rimsky. ' The posters will be here
any minute now.'
     'Uhuh . . .' said Stepa weakly. ' O.K., so long . . .'
     'Will you be coming over soon? ' asked Rimsky.
     'In half  an  hour,'  answered  Stepa and  replacing  the  receiver he
clasped his feverish head. God, how embarrassing! What an appalling thing to
forget!
     As it  would  be rude to  stay  in  the  hall  for  much longer,  Stepa
concocted  a  plan. He had  to use every  possible  means of  concealing his
incredible forgetfulness and begin by cunningly  persuading the foreigner to
tell him exactly what he proposed to do in his act at the Variety.
     With this Stepan turned away from the telephone and in the hall mirror,
which  the  lazy  Grunya  had  not  dusted  for  years,  he  clearly  saw  a
weird-looking man, as  thin as a bean-pole and wearing a pince-nez. Then the
apparition vanished. Stepa peered anxiously down the hallway and immediately
had another shock  as a huge  black  cat  appeared  in  the mirror  and also
vanished.
     Stepa's heart gave a jump and he staggered back.
     'What in  God's name . . .? ' he thought. ' Am I going out of my mind?
Where  are these  reflections coming from? ' He gave another  look round the
hall and shouted in alarm :
     'Grunya! What's this cat doing,  sneaking in here? Where does it  come
from? And who's this other character? '
     'Don't  worry,  Stepan  Bogdanovich,'  came   a   voice,  though  not
Grunya's--it was the visitor speaking  from  the bedroom. ' The cat is mine.
Don't be nervous.  And Grunya's not  here--I  sent her away to her family in
Voronezh. She complained that you had cheated her out of her leave.'
     These words were  so unexpected and so absurd that Stepa decided he had
not heard them. In utter bewilderment he bounded back  into the bedroom  and
froze on the threshold.  His  hair  rose and a  mild sweat broke out on  his
forehead.
     The visitor was no longer alone in the bedroom. The second armchair was
now occupied by the creature who had materialised in the hall. He was now to
be seen  quite  plainly--feathery  moustache,  one  lens  of  his  pince-nez
glittering, the  other missing. But  worst of all wa:s the third invader : a
black cat of revolting proportions sprawled in a nonchalant attitude on  the
pouffe, a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had just speared
a pickled mushroom, in the other.
     Stepa  felt  the light in  the bedroom,  already  weak enough, begin to
fade. ' This must be  what it's like to go mad .  . .' he thought, clutching
the doorpost.
     'You  seem  slightly astonished,  my dear Stepan  Bogdanovich,'  said
Woland. Stepai's teeth were  chattering. ' But I assure you there is nothing
to be surprised at. These are my assistants.'
     Here  the  cat drank  its  vodka  and Stepa's  hand  dropped  from  the
doorpost.
     'And my assistants need a  place  to stay,' went on  Woland, '  so  it
seems  that  there is  one too many  of us in this flat.  That one, I rather
think, is you.'
     'Yes, that's them! ' said the tall man in a goatish voice, speaking of
Stepa in  the plural. ' They've been  behaving disgustingly  lately. Getting
drunk,  carrying on with women, trading on  their position  and not  doing a
stroke of work--not that they could do  anything even  if they tried because
they're  completely  incompetent.  Pulling  the  wool over  the boss's eyes,
that's what they've been doing! '
     'Drives  around in a free car! ' said the cat slanderously, chewing  a
mushroom.
     Then occurred the  fourth and last phenomenon at which  Stepa collapsed
entirely,  his weakened hand scraping down the doorpost as he  slid  to  the
floor.
     Straight  from the  full-length mirror  stepped a short  but  unusually
broad-she uldered man with a  bowler hat on his head. A fang protruding from
his  mouth  disfigured an  already  hideous physiognomy that was topped with
fiery red hair.
     'I cannot,' put  in the new arrival, '  understand how he ever came to
be manager'--his voice grew  more and more nasal-- ' he's as much  a manager
as I am a bishop.'
     'You  don't  look much  like  a bishop,  Azazello,' remarked the  cat,
piling sausages on his plate.
     'That's what I  mean,' snarled the man with red hair  and turning  to
Woland he added  in  a voice of respect:  ' Will  you permit us, messire, to
kick him out of Moscow? '
     'Shoo!! ' suddenly hissed the cat, its hair standing on end.
     The bedroom  began to spin round Stepa, he hit his head on the doorpost
and as he lost consciousness he thought, ' I'm dying . . .'
     But he did not die. Opening  his eyes slightly he found himself sitting
on something made of stone. There was a roaring sound nearby. When he opened
his eyes fully he realised that the roaring was the sea; that the waves were
breaking at his feet, that he was in fact sitting on the very end of a stone
pier,  a shining blue sky above  him and behind him a white town climbing up
the mountainside.
     Not knowing quite what to do  in a case like this, Stepa raised himself
on to his shaking legs and walked down the pier to the shore.
     On the pier stood a man, smoking and spitting into the  sea. He  glared
at Stepa and stopped spitting.
     Stepa then did an odd  thing--he  kneeled down in  front of the unknown
smoker and said :
     'Tell me, please, where am I? '
     'Well, I'm damned! ' said the unsympathetic smoker.
     'I'm not drunk,' said Stepa hoarsely.  ' Something's happened  to me,
I'm ill. . . . Where am I? What town is this? '
     'Yalta, of course. . . .'
     Stepa  gave a gentle sigh, collapsed and fainted  as he struck his head
on the warm stonework of the pier.




        8. A. Duel between Professor and Poet



     At  about   half  past  eleven  that  morning,  just  as   Stepa   lost
consciousness in  Yalta, Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny regained it, waking from a
deep and  prolonged sleep. For a while he tried to think why  he was in this
strange  room  with  its white walls,  its  odd little bedside table made of
shiny metal and its white  shutters,  through  which the sun  appeared to be
shining.
     Ivan  shook his  head  to  convince himself that it was not  aching and
remembered that he was in a hospital. This in turn reminded him of Berlioz's
death, but today Ivan no longer found  this  very disturbing. After his long
sleep  Ivan Nikolayich  felt  calmer and able to think more  clearly.  After
lying for a while motionless in his spotlessly clean and  comfortably sprung
bed, Ivan noticed  a bell-push  beside  him.  Out  of a habit  of  fingering
anything in sight, Ivan pressed it. He expected a bell to ring  or a  person
to appear, but something quite different happened.
     At the foot of Ivan's bed a frosted-glass cylinder lit up with the word
'DRINK'. After a short  spell in that position, the cylinder  began  turning
until it stopped at another word:
     'NANNY '. Ivan found this clever machine slightly confusing. ' NANNY '
was replaced by ' CALL THE DOCTOR '.
     'H'm . . .' said Ivan, at a loss to know what the machine expected him
to do. Luck came to his rescue. Ivan pressed the button at the  word ' NURSE
'.  In reply the machine gave a faint tinkle, stopped and went out. Into the
room came a kind-looking woman in a clean white overall and said to Ivan :
     'Good morning!'
     Ivan  did  not  reply,  as he  felt the  greeting out of  place  in the
circumstances. They  had,  after all,  dumped  a  perfectly healthy  man  in
hospital  and were making it worse  by pretending it was necessary! With the
same kind  look  the woman  pressed a  button and raised the blind. Sunlight
poured into the room  through a light, wide-mesh grille that extended to the
floor. Beyond the grille was a balcony, beyond that the bank of a meandering
river and on the far side a cheerful pine forest.
     'Bath  time! ' said  the woman invitingly and  pushed  aside a folding
partition to reveal a magnificently equipped bathroom.
     Although  Ivan had  made up his mind not to talk to the  woman, when he
saw a broad stream of water thundering into the  bath from a glittering  tap
he could not help saying sarcastically :
     'Look at that! Just like in the Metropole! '
     'Oh, no,'  replied the  woman  proudly.  '  Much  better.  There's  no
equipment like this  anywhere, even abroad. Professors and doctors come here
specially to inspect our clinic. We have foreign tourists here every day.'
     At the  words ' foreign tourist' Ivan at once remembered the mysterious
professor of the day before. He scowled and said :
     'Foreign tourists  . . . why  do you  all think they're so  wonderful?
There  are some pretty odd  specimens among them,  I can tell you. I met one
yesterday--he was a charmer! '
     He was  just  going  to  start  telling her about Pontius  Pilate,  but
changed his  mind. The  woman would never  understand and  it was useless to
expect any help from her.
     Washed  and  clean,  Ivan  Nikolayich  was  immediately  provided  with
everything a man needs after a bath--a freshly ironed shirt, underpants  and
socks. That was only a beginning : opening the door of a wardrobe, the woman
pointed inside and asked him:
     'What would you like to wear--a dressing gown or pyjamas? '
     Although  he  was a  prisoner in his new home,  Ivan found it  hard  to
resist the woman's easy, friendly manner and he pointed to a pair of crimson
flannelette pyjamas.
     After that Ivan Nikolayich  was led along an empty,  soundless corridor
into a  room of vast dimensions. He had decided  to treat everything in this
wonderfully equipped building with
     sarcasm and  he at  once  mentally  christened this room '  the factory
kitchen'.
     And with good reason.  There were  cupboards and glass-fronted cabinets
full  of  gleaming   nickel-plated  instruments.  There  were  armchairs  of
strangely complex  design,  lamps  with  shiny, bulbous  shades,  a  mass of
phials,  bunsen  burners, electric  cables and  various  totally  mysterious
pieces of apparatus.
     Three people came into the room to see Ivan, two women and one man, all
in  white. They began by taking Ivan to a desk  in the corner to interrogate
him.
     Ivan  considered the situation. He  had a choice of  three courses. The
first  was  extremely  tempting--to hurl himself  at these  lamps  and other
ingenious gadgets and smash them  all to  pieces as a  way of expressing his
protest at being locked up for nothing. But today's  Ivan  was significantly
different from the Ivan of yesterday and he found the first course dubious ;
it  would  only make them more convinced that he was a dangerous lunatic, so
he abandoned it. There was a second--to begin at once telling them the story
about the professor and  Pontius  Pilate. However yesterday's experience had
shown  him  that  people either  refused to believe the  story or completely
misunderstood it, so Ivan  rejected that course too,  deciding to  adopt the
third: he would wrap himself in proud silence.
     It  proved  impossible to keep it up, and willy-nilly he  found himself
answering,  albeit curtly and  sulkily, a  whole series  of questions.  They
carefully  extracted from Ivan  everything about his  past life,  down to an
attack of scarlet fever  fifteen years before. Having filled a whole page on
Ivan they turned it  over and  one of the women in white started questioning
him about his  relatives. It was a  lengthy  performance--who had died, when
and  why,  did they  drink, had they suffered  from venereal  disease and so
forth. Finally they asked him  to describe what had happened on the previous
day at Patriarch's Ponds, but they did not pay  much attention to it and the
story about Pontius Pilate left them cold.
     The woman then handed Ivan  over to the man, who  took a different line
with him, this time in silence. He  took  Ivan's temperature, felt his pulse
and looked into his eyes while he  shone a lamp  into them. The other  woman
came to  the  man's  assistance and  they hit Ivan on  the  back  with  some
instrument, though not painfully, traced some signs on the skin of his chest
with  the handle of a  little hammer, hit  him on the knees with more little
hammers, making Ivan's legs jerk, pricked his finger and drew blood from it,
pricked his elbow joint, wrapped rubber bracelets round his arm . . .
     Ivan could  only smile bitterly to himself and ponder on  the absurdity
of it all. He  had  wanted to warn them  all  of the danger threatening them
from  the mysterious  professor,  and had tried to catch him, yet all he had
achieved  was to land up  in this  weird laboratory  just to talk a  lot  of
rubbish about his uncle Fyodor who had died of drink in Vologda.
     At last they let  Ivan  go. He was  led  back to his room where he  was
given a cup  of coffee, two soft-boiled eggs and a slice of white  bread and
butter. When  he  had eaten his breakfast, Ivan made up his mind to wait for
someone  in charge of the clinic to arrive, to  make him listen and to plead
for justice.
     The man came soon after Ivan's  breakfast.  The door  into  Ivan's room
suddenly opened and in swept a crowd of people  in white  overalls. In front
strode a man of about  forty-five, with a  clean-shaven, actorish face, kind
but extremely piercing eyes and a courteous manner. The whole retinue showed
him  signs  of  attention and respect, which  gave  his  entrance  a certain
solemnity. ' Like Pontius Pilate! ' thought Ivan.
     Yes, he  was undoubtedly the man  in  charge. He  sat  down on a stool.
Everybody else remained standing.
     'How do you do. My name is doctor Stravinsky,' he said as he sat down,
looking amiably at Ivan.
     'Here you are, Alexander Nikolayich,'  said a neatly bearded man  and
handed the chief Ivan's filled-in questionnaire.
     'They've got it all sewn up,'  thought Ivan.  The man in charge  ran a
practised eye over the sheet of paper,  muttered' Mm'hh' and exchanged a few
words  with  his colleagues in  a strange  language.  '  And he speaks Latin
too--like Pilate ',  mused Ivan sadly. Suddenly a word made him shudder.  It
was the word  '  schizophrenia ', which the sinister stranger had spoken  at
Patriarch's Ponds.  Now  professor Stravinsky  was  saying it. '  So he knew
about this, too! ' thought Ivan uneasily.
     The chief had adopted the  rule of agreeing with  everybody  and  being
pleased with whatever other  people might say,  expressing  it by the word '
Splendid . . .'
     'Splendid! '  said  Stravinsky, handing back the  sheet  of paper.  He
turned to Ivan.
     'Are you a poet? '
     'Yes, I am,' replied Ivan glumly and for the  first  time he suddenly
felt an inexplicable revulsion to poetry. Remembering some of his own poems,
they struck him as vaguely unpleasant.
     Frowning, he returned Stravinsky's question by asking:
     'Are you a professor? '
     To this Stravinsky, with engaging courtesy, inclined his head.
     'Are you in charge here? ' Ivan went on.
     To this, too, Stravinsky nodded.
     'I must talk to you,' said Ivan Nikolayich in a significant tone.
     'That's why I'm here,' answered Stravinsky.
     'Well  this is the  situation,' Ivan began,  sensing that his hour had
come. ' They say I'm mad and nobody wants to listen to me!'
     'Oh no, we will listen very carefully  to everything you have to say,'
said  Stravinsky seriously and reassuringly, ' and on  no  account shall  we
allow anyone to say you're mad.'
     'All right, then, listen: yesterday evening at Patriarch's Ponds I met
a mysterious person,  who  may or may not have been  a  foreigner, who  knew
about Berlioz's death before it happened, and had met Pontius Pilate.'
     The retinue listened to Ivan, silent and unmoving.
     'Pilate? Is that the Pilate who  lived  at  the time of Jesus Christ?'
enquired Stravinsky, peering at Ivan. ' Yes.'
     'Aha,' said Stravinsky. ' And this Berlioz is the one who died falling
under a tram? '
     'Yes. I was there yesterday evening when the tram killed him, and this
mysterious character was there too .'
     'Pontius  Pilate's friend?  '  asked Stravinsky,  obviously a  man of
exceptional intelligence.
     'Exactly,' said  Ivan, studying  Stravinsky.  '  He told us, before it
happened,  that  Anna had spilt the sunflower-seed oil ... and that  was the
very  spot  where Berlioz slipped!  How d'you  like that?!' Ivan  concluded,
expecting his story to produce a big effect.
     But it produced none. Stravinsky simply asked :
     'And who is this Anna? '
     Slightly disconcerted by the question, Ivan frowned.
     'Anna doesn't matter,' he  said irritably. '  God knows  who  she  is.
Simply some  stupid girl from Sadovaya  Street. What's important,  don't you
see, is that he knew  about the sunflower-seed oil beforehand. Do you follow
me? '
     'Perfectly,' replied Stravinsky seriously. Patting the  poet's knee he
added : ' Relax and go on.'
     'All right,' said Ivan,  trying  to  fall  into Stravinsky's tone and
knowing from bitter experience that only calm would help him. ' So obviously
this terrible  man (he's  lying,  by  the way--he's no  professor)  has some
unusual power .  . . For instance, if  you chase him you can't catch up with
him . . . and there's a couple of others with him, just as peculiar in their
way: a tall  fellow with broken spectacles  and an enormous cat who rides on
the  tram  by  himself. What's  more,'  went on Ivan  with  great  heat  and
conviction, ' he was on the balcony with Pontius Pilate, there's no doubt of
it. What about that, eh? He must be arrested immediately or he'll  do untold
harm.'
     'So  you think he should be arrested? Have I understood you correctly?
' asked Stravinsky.
     ‘  He's  clever,' thought  Ivan, ' I must admit  there are a few bright
ones among the intellectuals,' and he replied :
     'Quite correct. It's  obvious--he must be arrested! And meanwhile I'm
being kept here by force while they flash lamps  at me, bath  me and  ask me
idiotic questions about uncle Fyodor! He's been dead for years! I  demand to
be let out at once! '
     'Splendid,  splendid! ' cried Stravinsky. '  I see it all  now. You're
right--what is the use of keeping a healthy man in hospital? Very well, I'll
discharge you at once if you  tell me you're normal. You don't have to prove
it--just say it. Well, are you normal? '
     There  was complete  silence. The fat woman  who had examined Ivan that
morning glanced reverently at the professor and once again Ivan thought:
     'Extremely clever! '
     The professor's offer pleased him a great deal, but  before replying he
thought hard, frowning, until at last he announced firmly:
     'I am normal.'
     'Splendid,' exclaimed Stravinsky with relief.  ' In that  case let us
reason  logically.  We'll  begin  by  considering  what   happened   to  you
yesterday.' Here  he turned and was immediately handed Ivan's questionnaire.
' Yesterday, while  in search of an unknown man, who had introduced  himself
as  a friend  of Pontius Pilate, you did  the following:  ' Here  Stravinsky
began  ticking  off the points on his long fingers, glancing back and  forth
from the paper to Ivan. ' You pinned an ikon to your chest. Right? '
     'Right,' Ivan agreed sulkily.
     'You fell off a  fence and scratched your face. Right? You appeared in
a restaurant carrying a lighted candle, wearing only underpants, and you hit
somebody in the  restaurant. You were  tied  up and brought  here, where you
rang the police and asked them to send some machine-guns. You then attempted
to throw yourself out of the window. Right? The question--is that the way to
set about  catching or  arresting somebody? If you're normal you're bound to
reply--no, it isn't. You want  to leave here? Very well.  But where,  if you
don't mind my asking, do you propose to go? ' ' To  the police,  of course,'
replied Ivan, although rather less firmly and  slightly disconcerted by  the
professor's stare.
     'Straight from here? '
     'Mm'hh.'
     'Won't you go home first? ' Stravinsky asked quickly.
     'Why should I go there? While I'm going home he might get away!'
     'I see. And what will you tell the police? '
     'I'll tell them about  Pontius Pilate,'  replied Ivan  Nikolayich, his
eyes clouding.
     'Splendid!  ' exclaimed Stravinsky, defeated, and turning  to the man
with  the  beard he  said: ' Fyodor Vasilievich,  please arrange for citizen
Bezdomny to be discharged. But don't put anybody else in this room and don't
change the bedclothes. Citizen  Bezdomny will  be back  here  again  in  two
hours. Well,' he said to the poet, ‘I won't wish you success  because I  see
no chance  whatever  of your succeeding.  See you soon!' He  got up  and his
retinue started to go.
     'Why will I come back here? ' asked Ivan anxiously.
     'Because  as soon as you  appear at a  police station dressed in  your
underpants  and say  yom've  met a  man  who  knew  Pontius  Pilate,  you'll
immediately be brought back here and put in this room again.'
     'Because of my underpants? '  asked Ivan,  staring  distractedly about
him.
     'Chiefly because of  Pontims Pilate. But the  underpants will help. We
shall have to take a.way your hospital clothes  and give you back your  own.
And you came here wearing  underpants. Incidentally  you said nothing  about
going home first, despite my hint. After that you only have to start talking
about Pontius Pilate . . . and you're done for.'
     At this point something odd happened to Ivan Nikolayich. His will-power
seemed to crumple. He felt himself weak and in need of advice.
     'What should I do, then? ' he asked, timidly this time.
     'Splendid! ' said Stravinsky. ' A most reasonable question.
     Now I'll tell  you what  has really happened to  you. Yesterday someone
gave you a bad fright and upset you with this story about Pontius Pilate and
other things. So  you, worn out and nerve-racked,  wandered  round  the town
talking about Pontius Pilate. Quite naturally people took you for a lunatic.
Your only salvation now is complete rest. And you must stay here.'
     'But somebody must arrest him! ' cried Ivan, imploringly.
     'Certainly,  but  why  should  you have to do it?  Put down  all  your
suspicions  and accusations against  this  man on a piece  of paper. Nothing
could  be simpler than  to send your statement to the proper authorities and
if,  as  you suspect,  the man is  a criminal,  it will come to  light  soon
enough. But on one condition--don't over-exert your  mind and try to think a
bit less about Pontius Pilate. If  you harp on that story I don't think many
people are going to believe you.'
     'Right  you  are!  ' announced Ivan firmly.  ' Please give me  pen and
paper.'
     'Give him some paper and a  short  pencil,' said Stravinsky to the fat
woman, then turning  to Ivan : '  But I don't  advise  you to  start writing
today.'
     'No, no, today! I must do it today! ' cried Ivan excitedly.
     'All right. Only don't overtax  your brain. If you don't get it quite
right today, tomorrow will do.'
     'But he'll get away! '
     'Oh no,' countered  Stravinsky. ' I assure you  he's  not going to get
away.  And remember--we are here to help you  in every way we can and unless
we  do,  nothing will come of your plan. D'you hear? '  Stravinsky  suddenly
asked, seizing Ivan Nikolay-ich by both hands. As he held them in his own he
stared intently into Ivan's eyes, repeating : ' We shall help you ... do you
hear? . .  . We shall help you  .  . . you will be  able to relax . . . it's
quiet here, everything's going to be all right ... all right .  . . we shall
help you . . .'
     Ivan Nikolayich suddenly yawned and his expression softened.
     'Yes, I see,' he said quietly.
     'Splendid!  '  said  Stravinsky, closing  the conversation  in his no
habitual way and getting up. ' Goodbye!' He shook Ivan by the hand and as he
went out he  turned to  the  man with  the beard  and said :  ' Yes, and try
oxygen . . . and baths.'
     A  few moments  later Stravinsky and his retinue were gone. Through the
window and the grille  the gay, springtime wood gleamed  brightly on the far
bank and the river sparkled in the noon sunshine.



        9. Koroviev's Tricks



     Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, chairman of  the tenants'  association  of No.
302A, Sadovaya  Street,  Moscow,  where the  late Berlioz had lived, was  in
trouble. It had all begun on the previous Wednesday night.
     At midnight, as we already know, the police had arrived with Zheldybin,
had  hauled Nikanor Ivanovich out of  bed, told him  of Berlioz's death  and
followed him to flat No. 50. There they had sealed the deceased's papers and
personal effects. Neither Grunya the maid, who lived out,  nor the imprudent
Stepan Bogdanovich were in the flat at the time. The police informed Nikanor
Ivanovich that they would call  later  to collect  Berlioz's manuscripts for
sorting and examination  and that his  accommodation,  consisting  of  three
rooms (the jeweller's study, drawing-room and  dining-room) would  revert to
the  tenants' association for disposal. His  effects were to  be  kept under
seal until the legatees' claims were proved by the court.
     The  news  of  Berlioz's  death   spread  through  the   building  with
supernatural speed and from seven o'clock on Thursday morning  Bosoi started
to get telephone  calls.  After  that people  began  calling in  person with
written pleas of their urgent need of vacant housing space. Within the space
of two hours Nikanor Ivanovich had collected thirty-two such statements.
     They contained entreaties, threats,  intrigue, denunciations,  promises
to redecorate the flat, remarks  about overcrowding and the impossibility of
sharing a flat with bandits. Among them was a description, shattering in its
literary power, of the theft of some meat-balls from someone's jacket pocket
in  flat No.  31,  two  threats  of  suicide  and one  confession  of secret
pregnancy.
     Nikanor Ivanovich  was  again  and  again taken aside with  a  wink and
assured in whispers that he would do well on the deal....
     This torture  lasted until one o'clock,  when Nikanor  Ivanovich simply
ran out of his flat by  the  main entrance,  only to run away again  when he
found them lying in  wait for him outside.  Somehow contriving to throw  off
the  people who chased him  across the  asphalt courtyard, Nikanor Ivanovich
took refuge in staircase 6 and climbed to the fatal apartment.
     Panting with exertion, the stout Nikanor Ivanovich rang the bell on the
fifth-floor landing. No  one opened. He  rang again and  again and began  to
swear  quietly. Still no answer. Nikanor  Ivanovich's  patience gave way and
pulling a bunch of duplicate keys from his  pocket he opened the door with a
masterful flourish and walked in.
     'Hello, there! ' shouted  Nikanor Ivanovich in the dim hallway.  ' Are
you there, Grunya? '
     No reply.
     Nikanor Ivanovich then took  a folding ruler out of his pocket, used it
to prise the seal from the  study  door and  strode in. At least he began by
striding in, but stopped in the doorway with a start of amazement.
     Behind Berlioz's  desk sat  a tall,  thin stranger  in a  check jacket,
jockey cap and pince-nez. . . .
     'And who might you be, citizen? ' asked Nikanor Ivanovich.
     'Nikanor Ivanovich!  ' cried  the mysterious  stranger in a  quavering
tenor. He leaped up and greeted the chairman  with an  unexpectedly powerful
handshake which Nikanor Ivanovich found extremely painful.
     'Pardon me,' he said suspiciously, ' but who are you? Are you somebody
official? '
     'Ah, Nikanor Ivanovich!  ' said the stranger in  a man-to-man voice. '
Who  is official and who is unofficial  these days? It  all depends on  your
point of view. It's  all so vague and changeable,  Nikanor Ivanovich.  Today
I'm unofficial, tomorrow, hey presto! I'm official! Or maybe vice-versa--who
knows? '
     None  of  this satisfied the chairman. By nature  a suspicious  man, he
decided that this voluble individual  was  not  only  unofficial  but had no
business to be there.
     'Who are you? What's your name? ' said  the chairman firmly, advancing
on the stranger.
     'My name,' replied the man, quite unmoved by this hostile reception, '
is . . . er . . . let's say . . . Koroviev. Wouldn't you like a bite to eat,
Nikanor Ivanovich? As we're friends? '
     'Look here,' said Nikanor Ivanovich disagreeably, ' what  the hell  do
you  mean--eat?  '  (Sad  though  it  is to admit, Nikanor Ivanovich  had no
manners.) ' You're not allowed to come into a dead man's flat!  What are you
doing here? '
     'Now  just  sit  down,  Nikanor  Ivanovich,'  said the  imperturbable
stranger in a wheedling voice, offering Nikanor Ivanovich a chair.
     Infuriated, Nikanor Ivanovich kicked the chair away and yelled:
     'Who are you? '
     'I am employed  as interpreter to a foreign gentleman residing in this
flat,'  said the self-styled Koroviev by  way of introduction  as he clicked
the heels of his dirty brown boots.
     Nikanor Ivanovich's mouth fell open. A foreigner in this flat, complete
with  interpreter,  was   a  total  surprise  to  him  and  he  demanded  an
explanation.
     This  the interpreter willingly  supplied. Monsieur Woland, an  artiste
from abroad, had  been kindly invited by the manager of the Variety Theatre,
Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev, to spend his stay as a guest artiste, about a
week, in  his flat. Likhodeyev  had written  to Nikanor  Ivanovich about  it
yesterday,  requesting  him  to register  the  gentlemen  from abroad  as  a
temporary resident while Likhodeyev himself was away in Yalta.
     'But he hasn't written to me,' said the bewildered chairman.
     'Take a look in your briefcase, Nikanor Ivanovich,' suggested Koroviev
amiably.
     Shrugging  his  shoulders Nikanor Ivanovich  opened  his  briefcase and
found a  letter  from  Likhodeyev. ' Now how could I  have forgotten that? '
mumbled Nikanor Ivanovich, gazing stupidly at the opened envelope.
     'It happens to the best of us, Nikanor Ivanovich! ' cackled Koroviev.
'  Absent-mindedness,  overstrain  and high blood-pressure, my  dear friend!
Why, I'm horribly absent-minded. Some time over a glass or two I'll tell you
a few things that have happened to me--you'll die with laughter! '
     'When is Likhodeyev going to Yalta? '
     'He's already gone,' cried the interpreter. ' He's on his way  there.
God knows  where  he is by now.' And the interpreter  waved  his  arms  like
windmill sails.
     Nikanor Ivanovich announced that he had to see the foreign gentleman in
person, but  this was  refused. It  was quite out of  the question. Monsieur
Woland was busy. Training his cat.
     'You can see the cat if you like,' suggested Koroviev.
     This  Nikanor  Ivanovich declined and the interpreter then made him  an
unexpected  but most  interesting proposal: since Monsieur Woland could  not
bear staying  in  hotels  and was used  to  spacious quarters,  couldn't the
tenants' association lease him the whole flat for his week's stay, including
the dead man's rooms?
     'After  all, what  does he care? He's  dead,'  hissed  Koroviev  in  a
whisper. ' You must admit the flat's no use to him now, is it?'
     In  some  perplexity Nikanor  Ivanovich objected that  foreigners  were
normally supposed to stay at the Metropole and not in private  accommodation
. . .
     'I  tell  you  he's  so fussy,  you'd never  believe  it,'  whispered
Koroviev. ' He simply refuses! He hates  hotels! I can  tell you I'm  fed up
with  these  foreign  tourists,' complained  Koroviev confidentially. ' They
wear me out. They  come here and either they  go spying and snooping or they
send me mad with their whims  and fancies--this isn't right, that isn't just
so! And there'd be  plenty in it  for  your association,  Nikanor Ivanovich.
He's not short of money.' Koroviev  glanced round and then whispered in  the
chairman's ear : ' He's a millionaire!'
     The suggestion  was obviously a sensible  one,  but there was something
ridiculous about his manner,  his clothes and that absurd, useless pince-nez
that  all combined  to make  Nikanor  Ivanovich  vaguely uneasy. However  he
agreed  to  the suggestion. The  tenants' association, alas, was showing  an
enormous  deficit. In the autumn they would  have to buy oil  for the  steam
heating  plant and  there was  not a kopeck  in  the  till,  but  with  this
foreigner's  money they might  just manage  it. Nikanor Ivanovich,  however,
practical and  cautious as ever,  insisted on clearing the  matter with  the
tourist bureau.
     'Of course! ' cried Koroviev. ' It must be done  properly. There's the
telephone, Nikanor Ivanovich, ring them up right away! And don't worry about
money,' he added in a whisper as he led the chairman to the telephone in the
hall, ' if anyone can pay handsomely,  he can. If you could see his villa in
Nice! When you go abroad next  summer you must go there specially and have a
look at it--you'll be amazed! '
     The matter was fixed with  the tourist bureau with astonishing ease and
speed. The  bureau appeared to know all about Monsieur Woland's intention to
stay in Likodeyev's flat and raised no objections.
     'Excellent! ' cried Koroviev.
     Slightly  stupefied  by this  man's  incessant cackling,  the  chairman
announced that the tenants' association was prepared to lease flat No. 50 to
Monsieur Woland the artiste at a rent of ...  Nikanor Ivanovich stammered  a
little and said :
     'Five hundred roubles a day.'
     At this Koroviev  surpassed himself.  Winking  conspiratorially towards
the bedroom  door,  through which they could hear a series of soft thumps as
the cat practised its leaps, he said :
     'So for  a  week  that  would  amount to  three  and a half thousand,
wouldn't it? '
     Nikanor Ivanovich  quite expected the man  to add ' Greedy, aren't you,
Nikanor Ivanovich? ' but instead he said:
     'That's not much. Ask him for five thousand, he'll pay.'
     Grinning with  embarrassment, Nikanor Ivanovich did not even notice how
he suddenly came to be  standing beside Berlioz's  desk and how Koroviev had
managed  with  such incredible  speed and dexterity  to draft a contract  in
duplicate.  This  done, he flew  into the bedroom and returned with  the two
copies signed in the stranger's florid hand. The chairman signed in turn and
Koroviev asked him to make out a receipt for five . . .
     'Write it out in words, Nikanor Ivanovich. " Five thousand roubles ".'
Then with  a  flourish which seemed vaguely  out of place  in such a serious
matter--' Eins! 'yvei! drei! '--he laid five bundles  of brand-new banknotes
on the table.
     Nikanor Ivanovich checked them, to an accompaniment of  witticisms from
Koroviev of the ' better safe than sorry ' variety. Having counted the money
the chairman took the stranger's passport  to be stamped with his  temporary
residence  permit, put contract, passport  and money  into his briefcase and
asked shyly for a free ticket to the show . . .
     'But of course! ' exclaimed Koroviev.  ' How many do you want, Nikanor
Ivanovich--twelve, fifteen? '
     Overwhelmed,  the chairman explained that  he only wanted two, one  for
his wife Pelagea Antonovna and one for himself.
     Koroviev seized a note-pad and dashed  off  an order  to the box office
for two complimentary tickets in the front row. As the interpreter handed it
to Nikanor Ivanovich with his left hand, with his right he gave him a thick,
crackling package. Glancing at it Nikanor Ivanovich blushed hard and started
to push it away.
     'It's not proper . . .'
     'I won't  hear any objection,' Koroviev whispered right in his ear.  '
We don't do this sort of thing but foreigners do. You'll offend him, Nikanor
Ivanovich, and that might be awkward. You've earned it . . .'
     'It's strictly for