. 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. 4. The Pursuit 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-bla