telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz"

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Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red, emerged with his shuffling cavalryman's walk into the arcade connecting the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.

More than anything else in the world the Procurator hated the smell of attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been haunting him since dawn.

It seemed to the Procurator that the very cypresses and palms in the garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this damned stench of roses was even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted bodyguard.

A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at the rear of the palace, the quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; known as the ' Lightning', it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procurator's arrival. The same oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid smoke that showed that the centuries' cooks had started to prepare breakfast.

' Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there's no doubt, I have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the head aches . . . there's no cure for it, nothing helps. ... I must try not to move my head. . . . '

A chair had already been placed on the mosaic floor by the fountain; without a glance round, the Procurator sat in it and stretched out his hand to one side. His secretary deferentially laid a piece of parchment in his hand. Unable to restrain a grimace of agony the Procurator gave a fleeting sideways look at its contents, returned the parchment to his secretary and said painfully:

' The accused comes from Galilee, does he? Was the case sent to the tetrarch? '

' Yes, Procurator,' replied the secretary. ' He declined to confirm the finding of the court and passed the Sanhedrin's sentence of death to you for confirmation.'

The Procurator's cheek twitched and he said quietly :

' Bring in the accused.'

At once two legionaries escorted a man of about twenty-seven from the courtyard, under the arcade and up to the balcony, where they placed him before the Procurator's chair. The man was dressed in a shabby, torn blue chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage fastened round his forehead, his hands tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the man's left eye and a scab of dried blood in one corner of his mouth. The prisoner stared at the Procurator with anxious curiosity.

The Procurator was silent at first, then asked quietly in Aramaic:

' So you have been inciting the people to destroy the temple of Jerusalem? '

The Procurator sat as though carved in stone, his lips barely moving as he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like stone from fear of shaking his fiendishly aching head.

The man with bound hands made a slight move forwards and began speaking:

' Good man! Believe me . . . '

But the Procurator, immobile as before and without raising his voice, at once interrupted him :

' You call me good man? You are making a mistake. The rumour about me in Jerusalem is that I am a raving monster and that is absolutely correct,' and he added in the same monotone :

' Send centurion Muribellum to me.'

The balcony seemed to darken when the centurion of the first century. Mark surnamed Muribellum, appeared before the Procurator. Muribellum was a head taller than the tallest soldier in the legion and so broad in the shoulders that he completely obscured the rising sun.

The Procurator said to the centurion in Latin:

' This criminal calls me " good man ". Take him away for a minute and show him the proper way to address me. But do not mutilate him.'

All except the motionless Procurator watched Mark Muribellum as he gestured to the prisoner to follow him. Because of his height people always watched Muribellum wherever he went. Those who saw him for the first time were inevitably fascinated by his disfigured face : his nose had once been smashed by a blow from a German club.

Mark's heavy boots resounded on the mosaic, the bound man followed him noiselessly. There was complete silence under the arcade except for the cooing of doves in the garden below and the water singing its seductive tune in the fountain.

The Procurator had a sudden urge to get up and put his temples under the stream of water until they were numb. But he knew that even that would not help.

Having led the prisoner out of the arcade into the garden, Muribellum took a whip from the hands of a legionary standing by the plinth of a bronze statue and with a gentle swing struck the prisoner across the shoulders. The centurion's movement was slight, almost negligent, but the bound man collapsed instantly as though his legs had been struck from under him and he gasped for air. The colour fled from his face and his eyes clouded.

With only his left hand Mark lifted the fallen man into the air as lightly as an empty sack, set him on his feet and said in broken, nasal Aramaic:

' You call a Roman Procurator " hegemon " Don't say anything else. Stand to attention. Do you understand or must I hit you again? '

The prisoner staggered helplessly, his colour returned, he gulped and answered hoarsely :

' I understand you. Don't beat me.'

A minute later he was again standing in front of the Procurator. The harsh, suffering voice rang out:

' Name?'

' Mine? ' enquired the prisoner hurriedly, his whole being expressing readiness to answer sensibly and to forestall any further anger.

The Procurator said quietly :

' I know my own name. Don't pretend to be stupider than you are. Your name.'

' Yeshua,' replied the prisoner hastily.

' Surname?'

' Ha-Notsri.'

' Where are you from? '

' From the town of Gamala,' replied the prisoner, nodding his head to show that far over there to his right, in the north, was the town of Gamala.

' Who are you by birth? '

' I don't know exactly,' promptly answered the prisoner, ' I don't remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian. . . .'

' Where is your fixed abode? '

' I have no home,' said the prisoner shamefacedly, ' I move from town to town.'

' There is a shorter way of saying that–in a word you are a vagrant,' said the Procurator and asked: ' Have you any relations?'

' No, none. Not one in the world.'

' Can you read and write? ' ' Yes.'

' Do you know any language besides Aramaic?

' ' Yes. Greek.'

One swollen eyelid was raised and a pain-clouded eye stared at the prisoner. The other eye remained closed. Pilate said in Greek :

' So you intended to destroy the temple building and incited the people to do so?'

' Never, goo . . . ' Terror flashed across the prisoner's face for having so nearly said the wrong word. ' Never in my life, hegemon, have I intended to destroy the temple. Nor have I ever tried to persuade anyone to do such a senseless thing.'

A look of amazement came over the secretary's face as he bent over a low table recording the evidence. He raised his head but immediately lowered it again over his parchment.

' People of all kinds are streaming into the city for the feast-day. Among them there are magicians, astrologers, seers and murderers,' said the Procurator in a monotone. ' There are also liars. You, for instance, are a liar. It is clearly written down : he incited people to destroy the temple. Witnesses have said so.'

' These good people,' the prisoner began, and hastily adding ' hegemon', he went on, ' are unlearned and have confused everything I said. I am beginning to fear that this confusion will last for a very long time. And all because he untruthfully wrote down what I said.'

There was silence. Now both pain-filled eyes stared heavily at the prisoner.

' I repeat, but for the last time–stop pretending to be mad, scoundrel,' said Pilate softly and evenly. ' What has been written down about you is little enough, but it is sufficient to hang you.'

' No, no, hegemon,' said the prisoner, straining with the desire to convince. ' This man follows me everywhere with nothing but his goatskin parchment and writes incessantly. But I once caught a glimpse of that parchment and I was horrified. I had not said a word of what was written there. I begged him– please burn this parchment of yours! But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.'

' Who was he? ' enquired Pilate in a strained voice and put his hand to his temple.

' Matthew the Levite,' said the prisoner eagerly. ' He was a tax-collector. I first met him on the road to Bethlehem at the corner where the road skirts a fig orchard and I started talking to him. At first he was rude and even insulted me, or rather he thought he was insulting me by calling me a dog.' The prisoner laughed. ' Personally I see nothing wrong with that animal so I was not offended by the word. . . .'

The secretary stopped taking notes and glanced surreptitiously, not at the prisoner, but at the Procurator.

' However, when he had heard me out he grew milder,' went on Yeshua,' and in the end he threw his money into the road and said that he would go travelling with me. . . .'

Pilate laughed with one cheek. Baring his yellow teeth and turning fully round to his secretary he said :

' Oh, city of Jerusalem! What tales you have to tell! A tax-collector, did you hear, throwing away his money!'

Not knowing what reply was expected of him, the secretary chose to return Pilate's smile.

' And he said that henceforth he loathed his money,' said Yeshua in explanation of Matthew the Levite's strange action, adding : ' And since then he has been my companion.'

His teeth still bared in a grin, the Procurator glanced at the prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing would be to dismiss this curious rascal from his balcony with no more than two words : ' Hang him. ' Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and go indoors, order the room to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the dog about his hemicrania. Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's mind.

He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, trying painfully to recall why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what further useless questions he should put to him.

' Matthew the Levite? ' asked the suffering man in a hoarse voice, closing his eyes.

' Yes, Matthew the Levite,' came the grating, high-pitched reply.

' So you did make a speech about the temple to the crowd in the temple forecourt? '

The voice that answered seemed to strike Pilate on the forehead, causing him inexpressible torture and it said:

' I spoke, hegemon, of how the temple of the old beliefs would fall down and the new temple of truth would be built up. I used those words to make my meaning easier to understand.'

' Why should a tramp like you upset the crowd in the bazaar by talking about truth, something of which you have no conception? What is truth? '

At this the Procurator thought: ' Ye gods! This is a court of law and I am asking him an irrelevant question . . . my mind no longer obeys me. . . . ' Once more he had a vision of a goblet of dark liquid. ' Poison, I need poison.. .. ' And again he heard the voice :

' At this moment the truth is chiefly that your head is aching and aching so hard that you are having cowardly thoughts about death. Not only are you in no condition to talk to me, but it even hurts you to look at me. This makes me seem to be your torturer, which distresses me. You cannot even think and you can only long for your dog, who is clearly the only creature for whom you have any affection. But the pain will stop soon and your headache will go.'

The secretary stared at the prisoner, his note-taking abandoned. Pilate raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw how high the sun now stood above the hippodrome, how a ray had penetrated the arcade, had crept towards Yeshua's patched sandals and how the man moved aside from the sunlight. The Procurator stood up and clasped his head in his hands. Horror came over his yellowish, clean-shaven face. With an effort of will he controlled his expression and sank back into his chair.

Meanwhile the prisoner continued talking, but the secretary had stopped writing, craning his neck like a goose in the effort not to miss a single word.

' There, it has gone,' said the prisoner, with a kindly glance at Pilate. ' I am so glad. I would advise you, hegemon, to leave the palace for a while and take a walk somewhere nearby, perhaps in the gardens or on Mount Eleona. There will be thunder . . .' The prisoner turned and squinted into the sun . . . ' later, towards evening. A walk would do you a great deal of good and I should be happy to go with you. Some new thoughts have just come into my head which you might, I think, find interesting and I should like to discuss them with you, the more so as you strike me as a man of great intelligence.' The secretary turned mortally pale and dropped his scroll to the ground. ' Your trouble is,' went on the unstoppable prisoner, ' that your mind is too closed and you have finally lost your faith in human beings. You must admit that no one ought to lavish all their devotion on a dog. Your life is a cramped one, hegemon.' Here the speaker allowed himself to smile.

The only thought in the secretary's mind now was whether he could believe his ears. He had to believe them. He then tried to guess in what strange form the Procurator's fiery temper might break out at the prisoner's unheard-of insolence. Although he knew the Procurator well the secretary's imagination failed him.

Then the hoarse, broken voice of the Procurator barked out in Latin:

' Untie his hands.'

One of the legionary escorts tapped the ground with his lance, gave it to his neighbour, approached and removed the prisoner's bonds. The secretary picked up his scroll, decided to take no more notes for a while and to be astonished at nothing he might hear.

' Tell me,' said Pilate softly in Latin, ' are you a great physician?'

' No, Procurator, I am no physician,' replied the prisoner, gratefully rubbing his twisted, swollen, purpling wrist.

Staring from beneath his eyelids, Pilate's eyes bored into the prisoner and those eyes were no longer dull. They now flashed with their familiar sparkle. ' I did not ask you,' said Pilate. ' Do you know Latin too? '

' Yes, I do,' replied the prisoner.

The colour flowed back into Pilate's yellowed cheeks and he asked in Latin:

' How did you know that I wanted to call my dog? '

' Quite simple,' the prisoner answered in Latin. ' You moved your hand through the air . . . ' the prisoner repeated Pilate's gesture . . . ' as though to stroke something and your lips . . .'

' Yes,' said Pilate.

There was silence. Then Pilate put a question in Greek :

' So you are a physician? '

' No, no,' was the prisoner's eager reply. ' Believe me I am not.'

' Very well, if you wish to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct bearing on the case. So you maintain that you never incited people to tear down ... or burn, or by any means destroy the temple?'

' I repeat, hegemon, that I have never tried to persuade anyone to attempt any such thing. Do I look weak in the head? '

' Oh no, you do not,' replied the Procurator quietly, and smiled an ominous smile. ' Very well, swear that it is not so.'

' What would you have me swear by? ' enquired the unbound prisoner with great urgency.

' Well, by your life,' replied the Procurator. ' It is high time to swear by it because you should know that it is hanging by a thread.'

' You do not believe, do you, hegemon, that it is you who have strung it up?' asked the prisoner. ' If you do you are mistaken.'

Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth :

' I can cut that thread.'

' You are mistaken there too,' objected the prisoner, beaming and shading himself from the sun with his hand. ' You must agree, I think, that the thread can only be cut by the one who has suspended it? '

' Yes, yes,' said Pilate, smiling. ' I now have no doubt that the idle gapers of Jerusalem have been pursuing you. I do not know who strung up your tongue, but he strung it well. By the way. tell me, is it true that you entered Jerusalem by the Susim Gate mounted on a donkey, accompanied by a rabble who greeted you as though you were a prophet? ' Here the Procurator pointed to a scroll of parchment.

The prisoner stared dubiously at the Procurator.

' I have no donkey, hegemon,' he said. ' I certainly came into Jerusalem through the Susim Gate, but I came on foot alone except for Matthew the Levite and nobody shouted a word to me as no one in Jerusalem knew me then.'

' Do you happen to know,' went on Pilate without taking his eyes off the prisoner, ' anyone called Dismas? Or Hestas? Or a third–Bar-Abba? '

' I do not know these good men,' replied the prisoner.

' Is that the truth? '

' It is.'

' And now tell me why you always use that expression " good men "? Is that what you call everybody? '

' Yes, everybody,' answered the prisoner. ' There are no evil people on earth.'

' That is news to me,' said Pilate with a laugh. ' But perhaps I am too ignorant of life. You need take no further notes,' he said to the secretary, although the man had taken none for some time. Pilate turned back to the prisoner :

' Did you read about that in some Greek book? '

' No, I reached that conclusion in my own mind.'

' And is that what you preach? '

‘ Yes.'

' Centurion Mark Muribellum, for instance–is he good? '

' Yes,' replied the prisoner. ' He is, it is true, an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him he has become harsh and callous. It would be interesting to know who mutilated him.'

' That I will gladly tell you,' rejoined Pilate, ' because I was a witness to it. These good men threw themselves at him like dogs at a bear. The Germans clung to his neck, his arms, his legs. An infantry maniple had been ambushed and had it not been for a troop of cavalry breaking through from the flank–a troop commanded by me–you, philosopher, would not have been talking to Muribellum just now. It happened at the battle of Idistavizo in the Valley of the Virgins.'

' If I were to talk to him,' the prisoner suddenly said in a reflective voice, ' I am sure that he would change greatly.'

' I suspect,' said Pilate, ' that the Legate of the Legion would not be best pleased if you took it into your head to talk to one of his officers or soldiers. Fortunately for us all any such thing is forbidden and the first person to ensure that it cannot occur would be myself.'

At that moment a swallow darted into the arcade, circled under the gilded ceiling, flew lower, almost brushed its pointed wingtip over the face of a bronze statue in a niche and disappeared behind the capital of a column, perhaps with the thought of nesting there.

As it flew an idea formed itself in the Procurator's mind, which was now bright and clear. It was thus : the hegemon had examined the case of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, surnamed Ha-Notsri, and could not substantiate the criminal charge made against him. In particular he could not find the slightest connection between Yeshua's actions and the recent disorders in Jerusalem. The vagrant philosopher was mentally ill, as a result of which the sentence of death pronounced on Ha-Notsri by the Lesser Sanhedrin would not be confirmed. But in view of the danger of unrest liable to be caused by Yeshua's mad, Utopian preaching, the Procurator would remove the man from Jerusalem and sentence him to imprisonment in Caesarea Stratonova on the Mediterranean–the place of the Procurator's own residence. It only remained to dictate this to the secretary.

The swallow's wings fluttered over the hegemon's head, the bird flew towards the fountain and out into freedom.

The Procurator raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw that a column of dust had swirled up beside him.

' Is that all there is on this man? ' Pilate asked the secretary.

' No, unfortunately,' replied the secretary unexpectedly, and handed Pilate another parchment.

' What else is there? ' enquired Pilate and frowned.

Having read the further evidence a change came over his expression. Whether it was blood flowing back into his neck and face or from something else that occurred, his skin changed from yellow to red-brown and his eyes appeared to collapse. Probably caused by the increased blood-pressure in his temples, something happened to the Procurator's sight. He seemed to see the prisoner's head vanish and another appear in its place, bald and crowned with a spiked golden diadem. The skin of the forehead was split by a round, livid scar smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a capricious, pendulous lower lip. Pilate had the sensation that the pink columns of his balcony and the roofscape of Jerusalem below and beyond the garden had all vanished, drowned in the thick foliage of cypress groves. His hearing, too, was strangely affected–there was a sound as of distant trumpets, muted and threatening, and a nasal voice could clearly be heard arrogantly intoning the words: ' The law pertaining to high treason . . .'

Strange, rapid, disconnected thoughts passed through his mind. ' Dead! ' Then : ' They have killed him! . . .' And an absurd notion about immortality, the thought of which aroused a sense of unbearable grief.

Pilate straightened up, banished the vision, turned his gaze back to the balcony and again the prisoner's eyes met his.

' Listen, Ha-Notsri,' began the Procurator, giving Yeshua a strange look. His expression was grim but his eyes betrayed anxiety. ' Have you ever said anything about great Caesar? Answer! Did you say anything of the sort? Or did you . . . not? ' Pilate gave the word 'not' more emphasis than was proper in a court of law and his look seemed to be trying to project a particular thought into the prisoner's mind. ' Telling the truth is easy and pleasant,' remarked the prisoner.

' I do not want to know,' replied Pilate in a voice of suppressed anger, ' whether you enjoy telling the truth or not. You are obliged to tell me the truth. But when you speak weigh every word, if you wish to avoid a painful death.'

No one knows what passed through the mind of the Procurator of Judaea, but he permitted himself to raise his hand as though shading himself from a ray of sunlight and, shielded by that hand, to throw the prisoner a glance that conveyed a hint.

' So,' he said, ' answer this question : do you know a certain Judas of Karioth and if you have ever spoken to him what did you say to him about Caesar? '

' It happened thus,' began the prisoner readily. ' The day before yesterday, in the evening, I met a young man near the temple who called himself Judas, from the town of Karioth. He invited me to his home in the Lower City and gave me supper...'

' Is he a good man? ' asked Pilate, a diabolical glitter in his eyes.

' A very good man and eager to learn,' affirmed the prisoner. ' He expressed the greatest interest in my ideas and welcomed me joyfully .. . '

' Lit the candles. . . .' said Pilate through clenched teeth to the prisoner, his eyes glittering.

' Yes,' said Yeshua, slightly astonished that the Procurator should be so well informed, and went on : ' He asked me for my views on the government. The question interested him very much.'

' And so what did you say? ' asked Pilate. ' Or are you going to reply that you have forgotten what you said? ' But there was already a note of hopelessness in Pilate's voice.

' Among other things I said,' continued the prisoner, ' that all power is a form of violence exercised over people and that the time will come when there will be no rule by Caesar nor any other form of rule. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice where no sort of power will be needed.'

' Go on!'

' There is no more to tell,' said the prisoner. ' After that some men came running in, tied me up and took me to prison.'

The secretary, straining not to miss a word, rapidly scribbled the statement on his parchment.

' There never has been, nor yet shall be a greater and more perfect government in this world than the rule of the emperor Tiberius!' Pilate's voice rang out harshly and painfully. The Procurator stared at his secretary and at the bodyguard with what seemed like hatred. ' And what business have you, a criminal lunatic, to discuss such matters! ' Pilate shouted. ' Remove the guards from the balcony! ' And turning to his secretary he added: ' Leave me alone with this criminal. This is a case of treason.'

The bodyguard raised their lances and with the measured tread of their iron-shod caligae marched from the balcony towards the garden followed by the secretary.

For a while the silence on the balcony was only disturbed bv the splashing of the fountain. Pilate watched the water splay out at the apex of the jet and drip downwards.

The prisoner was the first to speak :

' I see that there has been some trouble as a result of my conversation with that young man from Karioth. I have a presentiment, hegemon, that some misfortune will befall him and I feel very sorry for him.'

' I think,' replied the Procurator with a strange smile, ' that there is someone else in this world for whom you should feel sorrier than for Judas of Karioth and who is destined for a fate much worse than Judas'! ... So Mark Muribellum, a coldblooded killer, the people who I see '–the Procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face–' beat you for what you preached, the robbers Dismas and Hestas who with their confederates killed four soldiers, and finally this dirty informer Judas–are they all good men? '

' Yes,' answered the prisoner.

' And will the kingdom of truth come? ' ' It will, hegemon,' replied Yeshua with conviction.

' It will never come! ' Pilate suddenly shouted in a voice so terrible that Yeshua staggered back. Many years ago in the Valley of the Virgins Pilate had shouted in that same voice to his horsemen : ' Cut them down! Cut them down! They have caught the giant Muribellum!' And again he raised his parade-ground voice, barking out the words so that they would be heard in the garden : ' Criminal! Criminal! Criminal! ' Then lowering his voice he asked : ' Yeshua Ha-Notsri, do you believe in any gods?'

' God is one,' answered Yeshua. ' I believe in Him.'

' Then pray to him! Pray hard! However,' at this Pilate's voice fell again, ' it will do no good. Have you a wife? ' asked Pilate with a sudden inexplicable access of depression.

' No, I am alone.'

' I hate this city,' the Procurator suddenly mumbled, hunching his shoulders as though from cold and wiping his hands as though washing them. ' If they had murdered you before your meeting with Judas of Karioth I really believe it would have been better.'

' You should let me go, hegemon,' was the prisoner's unexpected request, his voice full of anxiety. ' I see now that they want to kill me.'

A spasm distorted Pilate's face as he turned his blood-shot eyes on Yeshua and said :

' Do you imagine, you miserable creature, that a Roman Procurator could release a man who has said what you have said to me? Oh gods, oh gods! Or do you think I'm prepared to take your place? I don't believe in your ideas! And listen to me : if from this moment onward you say so much as a word or try to talk to anybody, beware! I repeat–beware!'

' Hegemon . ..'

' Be quiet! ' shouted Pilate, his infuriated stare following the swallow which had flown on to the balcony again. ' Here!' shouted Pilate.

The secretary and the guards returned to their places and Pilate announced that he confirmed the sentence of death pronounced by the Lesser Sanhedrin on the accused Yeshua Ha-Notsri and the secretary recorded Pilate's words.

A minute later centurion Mark Muribellum stood before the Procurator. He was ordered by the Procurator to hand the felon over to the captain of the secret service and in doing so to transmit the Procurator's directive that Yeshua Ha-Notsri was to be segregated from the other convicts, also that the captain of the secret service was forbidden on pain of severe punishment to talk to Yeshua or to answer any questions he might ask.

At a signal from Mark the guard closed ranks around Yeshua and escorted him from the balcony.

Later the Procurator received a call from a handsome man with a blond beard, eagles' feathers in the crest of his helmet, glittering lions' muzzles on his breastplate, a gold-studded sword belt, triple-soled boots laced to the knee and a purple cloak thrown over his left shoulder. He was the commanding officer, the Legate of the Legion.

The Procurator asked him where the Sebastian cohort was stationed. The Legate reported that the Sebastian was on cordon duty in the square in front of the hippodrome, where the sentences on the prisoners would be announced to the crowd.

Then the Procurator instructed the Legate to detach two centuries from the Roman cohort. One of them, under the command of Muribellum, was to escort the convicts, the carts transporting the executioners' equipment and the executioners themselves to Mount Golgotha and on arrival to cordon off the summit area. The other was to proceed at once to Mount Golgotha and to form a cordon immediately on arrival. To assist in the task of guarding the hill, the Procurator asked the Legate to despatch an auxiliary cavalry regiment, the Syrian ala.

When the Legate had left the balcony, the Procurator ordered his secretary to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its members and the captain of the Jerusalem temple guard, but added that he wished arrangements to be made which would allow him, before conferring with all these people, to have a private meeting with the president of the Sanhedrin.

The Procurator's orders were carried out rapidly and precisely and the sun, which had lately seemed to scorch Jerusalem with such particular vehemence, had not yet reached its zenith when the meeting took place between the Procurator and the president of the Sanhedrin, the High Priest of Judaea, Joseph Caiaphas. They met on the upper terrace of the garden between two white marble lions guarding the staircase.

It was quiet in the garden. But as he emerged from the arcade on to the sun-drenched upper terrace of the garden with its palms on their monstrous elephantine legs, the terrace from which the whole of Pilate's detested city of Jerusalem lay spread out before the Procurator with its suspension bridges, its fortresses and over it all that indescribable lump of marble with a golden dragon's scale instead of a roof–the temple of Jerusalem–the Procurator's sharp hearing detected far below, down there where a stone wall divided the lower terraces of the palace garden from the city square, a low rumbling broken now and again by faint sounds, half groans, half cries.

The Procurator realised that already there was assembling in the square a numberless crowd of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, excited by the recent disorders; that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the pronouncement of sentence and that the water-sellers were busily shouting their wares.

The Procurator began by inviting the High Priest on to the balcony to find some shade from the pitiless heat, but Caiaphas politely excused himself, explaining that he could not do that on the eve of a feast-day.

Pilate pulled his cowl over his slightly balding head and began the conversation, which was conducted in Greek.

Pilate remarked that he had examined the case of Yeshua Ha-Notsri and had confirmed the sentence of death. Consequently those due for execution that day were the three robbers–Hestas, Dismas and Bar-Abba–and now this other man, Yeshua Ha- Notsri. The first two, who had tried to incite the people to rebel against Caesar, had been forcibly apprehended by the Roman authorities; they were therefore the Procurator's responsibility and there was no reason to discuss their case. The last two, however, Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri, had been arrested by the local authorities and tried before the Sanhedrin. In accordance with law and custom, one of these two criminals should be released in honour of the imminent great feast of Passover. The Procurator therefore wished to know which of these two felons the Sanhedrin proposed to discharge–Bar-Abba or Ha-Notsri?

Caiaphas inclined his head as a sign that he understood the question and replied:

' The Sanhedrin requests the release of Bar-Abba.' The Procurator well knew that this would be the High Priest's reply; his problem was to show that the request aroused his astonishment.

This Pilate did with great skill. The eyebrows rose on his proud forehead and the Procurator looked the High Priest straight in the eye with amazement.

' I confess that your reply surprises me,' began the Procurator softly. ' I fear there may have been some misunderstanding here.'

Pilate stressed that the Roman government wished to make no inroads into the prerogatives of the local priestly authority, the High Priest was well aware of that, but in this particular case an obvious error seemed to have occurred. And the Roman government naturally had an interest in correcting such an error. The crimes of Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri were after all not comparable in gravity. If the latter, a man who was clearly insane, were guilty of making some absurd speeches in Jerusalem and various other localities, the former stood convicted of offences that were infinitely more serious. Not only had he permitted himself to make direct appeals to rebellion, but he had killed a sentry while resisting arrest. Bar-Abba was immeasurably more dangerous than Ha-Notsri. In view of all these facts, the Procurator requested the High Priest to reconsider his decision and to discharge the least dangerous of the two convicts and that one was undoubtedly Ha-Notsri . . . Therefore?

Caiaphas said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had taken due cognisance of the case and repeated its intention to release Bar-Abba.

' What? Even after my intervention? The intervention of the representative of the Roman government? High Priest, say it for the third time.'

' And for the third time I say that we shall release Bar-Abba,' said Caiaphas softly.

It was over and there was no more to be discussed. Ha-Notsri had gone for ever and there was no one to heal the Procurator's terrible, savage pains ; there was no cure for them now except death. But this thought did not strike Pilate immediately. At first his whole being was seized with the same incomprehensible sense of grief which had come to him on the balcony. He at once sought for its explanation and its cause was a strange one : the Procurator was obscurely aware that he still had something to say to the prisoner and that perhaps, too, he had more to learn from him.

Pilate banished the thought and it passed as quickly as it had come. It passed, yet that grievous ache remained a mystery, for it could not be explained by another thought that had flashed in and out of his mind like lightning–' Immortality ... immortality has come . . .' Whose immortality had come? The Procurator could not understand it, but that puzzling thought of immortality sent a chill over him despite the sun's heat.

' Very well,' said Pilate. ' So be it.'

With that he looked round. The visible world vanished from his sight and an astonishing change occurred. The flower-laden rosebush disappeared, the cypresses fringing the upper terrace disappeared, as did the pomegranate tree, the white statue among the foliage and the foliage itself. In their place came a kind of dense purple mass in which seaweed waved and swayed and Pilate himself was swaying with it. He was seized, suffocating and burning, by the most terrible rage of all rage–the rage of impotence.

' I am suffocating,' said Pilate. ' Suffocating! '

With a cold damp hand he tore the buckle from the collar of his cloak and it fell on to the sand.

' It is stifling today, there is a thunderstorm brewing,' said Caiaphas, his gaze fixed on the Procurator's reddening face, foreseeing all the discomfort that the weather was yet to bring. ' The month of Nisan has been terrible this year! '

' No,' said Pilate. ' That is not why I am suffocating. I feel stifled by your presence, Caiaphas.' Narrowing his eyes Pilate added : ' Beware, High Priest! '

The High Priest's dark eyes flashed and–no less cunningly than the Procurator–his face showed astonishment.

' What do I hear, Procurator? ' Caiaphas answered proudly and calmly. ' Are you threatening me–when sentence has been duly pronounced and confirmed by yourself? Can this be so? We are accustomed to the Roman Procurator choosing his words carefully before saying anything. I trust no one can have overheard us, hegemon?'

With lifeless eyes Pilate gazed at the High Priest and manufactured a smile.

' Come now. High Priest! Who can overhear us here? Do you take me for a fool, like that crazy young vagrant who is to be executed today? Am I a child, Caiphas? I know what I'm saying and where I'm saying it. This garden, this whole palace is so well cordoned that there's not a crack for a mouse to slip through. Not a mouse–and not even that man–what's his name . .? That man from Karioth. You do know him, don't you, High Priest? Yes ... if someone like that were to get in here, he would bitterly regret it. You believe me when I say that, don't you? I tell you, High Priest, that from henceforth you shall have no peace! Neither you nor your people '–Pilate pointed to the right where the pinnacle of the temple flashed in the distance. ' I, Pontius Pilate, knight of the Golden Lance, tell you so! ' ' I know it! ' fearlessly replied the bearded Caiaphas. His eyes flashed as he raised his hand to the sky and went on : ' The Jewish people knows that you hate it with a terrible hatred and that you have brought it much suffering–but you will never destroy it! God will protect it. And he shall hear us–mighty Caesar shall hear us and protect us from Pilate the oppressor! '

' Oh no! ' rejoined Pilate, feeling more and more relieved with every word that he spoke; there was no longer any need to dissemble, no need to pick his words : ' You have complained of me to Caesar too often and now my hour has come, Caiaphas! Now I shall send word–but not to the viceroy in Antioch, not even to Rome but straight to Capreia, to the emperor himself, word of how you in Jerusalem are saving convicted rebels from death. And then it will not be water from Solomon's pool, as I once intended for your benefit, that I shall give Jerusalem to drink–no, it will not be water! Remember how thanks to you I was made to remove the shields with the imperial cipher from the walls, to transfer troops, to come and take charge here myself! Remember my words. High Priest: you are going to see more than one cohort here in Jerusalem! Under the city walls you are going to see the Fulminata legion at full strength and Arab cavalry too. Then the weeping and lamentation will be bitter! Then you will remember that you saved Bar-Abba and you will regret that you sent that preacher of peace to his death!

Flecks of colour spread over the High Priest's face, his eyes burned. Like the Procurator he grinned mirthlessly and replied:

' Do you really believe what you have just said, Procurator? No, you do not! It was not peace that this rabble-rouser brought to Jerusalem and of that, hegamon, you are well aware. You wanted to release him so that he could stir up the people, curse our faith and deliver the people to your Roman swords! But as long as I, the High Priest of Judaea, am alive I shall not allow the faith to be defamed and I shall protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?' With this Caiaphas raised his arm threateningly;

' Take heed. Procurator! '

Caiaphas was silent and again the Procurator heard a murmuring as of the sea, rolling up to the very walls of Herod the Great's garden. The sound flowed upwards from below until it seemed to swirl round the Procurator's legs and into his face. Behind his back, from beyond the wings of the palace, came urgent trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clank of metal. It told the Procurator that the Roman infantry was marching out, on his orders, to the execution parade that was to strike terror into the hearts of all thieves and rebels

' Do you hear. Procurator? ' the High Priest quietly repeated his words. ' Surely you are not trying to tell me that all this '– here the High Priest raised both arms and his dark cowl slipped from his head–' can have been evoked by that miserable thief Bar-Abba?'

With the back of his wrist the Procurator wiped his damp, cold forehead, stared at the ground, then frowning skywards he saw that the incandescent ball was nearly overhead, that Caiaphas' shadow had shrunk to almost nothing and he said in a calm, expressionless voice :

' The execution will be at noon. We have enjoyed this conversation, but matters must proceed.'

Excusing himself to the High Priest in a few artificial phrases, he invited him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and to wait while he summoned the others necessary for the final short consultation and to give one more order concerning the execution.

Caiaphas bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and remained in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he ordered his waiting secretary to call the Legate of the Legion and the Tribune of the cohort into the garden, also the two members of the Sanhedrin and the captain of the temple guard, who were standing grouped round the fountain on the lower terrace awaiting his call. Pilate added that he would himself shortly return to join them in the garden, and disappeared inside the palace.

While the secretary convened the meeting, inside his darken-ed, shuttered room the Procurator spoke to a man whose face, despite the complete absence of sunlight from the room, remained half covered by a hood. The interview was very short. The Procurator whispered a few words to the man, who immediately departed. Pilate passed through the arcade into the garden.

There in the presence of all the men he had asked to see, the Procurator solemnly and curtly repeated that he confirmed the sentence of death on Yeshua Ha-Notsri and enquired officially of the Sanhedrin members as to which of the prisoners it had pleased them to release. On being told that it was Bar-Abba, the Procurator said:

' Very well,' and ordered the secretary to enter it in the minutes. He clutched the buckle which the secretary had picked up from the sand and announced solemnly : ' It is time! '

At this all present set off down the broad marble staircase between the lines of rose bushes, exuding their stupefying aroma, down towards the palace wall, to a gate leading to the smoothly paved square at whose end could be seen the columns and statues of the Jerusalem hippodrome.

As soon as the group entered the square and began climbing up to the broad temporary wooden platform raised high above the square, Pilate assessed the situation through narrowed eyelids.

The cleared passage that he had just crossed between the palace walls and the scaffolding platform was empty, but in front of Pilate the square could no longer be seen–it had been devoured by the crowd. The mob would have poured on to the platform and the passage too if there had not been two triple rows of soldiers, one from the Sebastian cohort on Pilate's left and on his right another from the Ituraean auxiliary cohort, to keep it clear.

Pilate climbed the platform, mechanically clenching and unclenching his fist on the useless buckle and frowning hard. The Procurator was not frowning because the sun was blinding him but to somehow avoid seeing the group of prisoners which, as he well knew, would shortly be led out on the platform behind him.

The moment the white cloak with the blood-red lining appeared atop the stone block at the edge of that human sea a wave of sound–' Aaahh '–struck the unseeing Pilate's ears. It began softly, far away at the hippodrome end of the square, then grew to thunderous volume and after a few seconds, began to diminish again. ' They have seen me,' thought the Procurator. The wave of sound did not recede altogether and began unexpectedly to grow again and waveringly rose to a higher pitch than the first and on top of the second surge of noise, like foam on the crest of a wave at sea, could be heard whistles and the shrieks of several women audible above the roar. ' That means they have led them out on to the platform,' thought Pilate, ' and those screams are from women who were crushed when the crowd surged forward.'

He waited for a while, knowing that nothing could silence the crowd until it had let loose its pent-up feelings and quietened of its own accord.

When that moment came tlie Procurator threw up his right hand and the last murmurings of the crowd expired. Then Pilate took as deep a breath as he could of the hot air and his cracked voice rang out over the thousands of heads :

' In the name of imperial Caesar! . . .'

At once his ears were struck by a clipped, metallic chorus as the cohorts, raising lances and standards, roared out their fearful response:

' Hail, Caesar! '

Pilate jerked his head up straight at the sun. He had a sensation of green fire piercing his eyelids, his brain seemed to burn. In hoarse Aramaic he flung his words out over the crowd :

' Four criminals, arrested in Jerusalem for murder, incitement to rebellion, contempt of the law and blasphemy, have been condemned to the most shameful form of execution–crucifixion! Their execution will be carried out shortly on Mount Golgotha The names of these felons are Dismas, Hestas, Bar-Abba and Ha-Notsri and there they stand before you! '

Pilate pointed to the right, unable to see the prisoners but knowing that they were standing where they should be.

The crowd responded with a long rumble that could have been surprise or relief. When it had subsided Pilate went on :

' But only three of them are to be executed for, in accordance with law and custom, in honour of the great feast of Passover the emperor Caesar in his magnanimity will, at the choice of the Lesser Sanhedrin and with the approval of the Roman government, render back to one of these convicted men his contemptible life!'

As Pilate rasped out his words he noticed that the rumbling had given way to a great silence. Now not a sigh, not a rustle reached his ears and there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate that the people around him had vanished altogether. The city he so hated might have died and only he alone stood there, scorched by the vertical rays of the sun, his face craning skywards. Pilate allowed the silence to continue and then began to shout again: ' The name of the man who is about to be released before you . . .'

He paused once more, holding back the name, mentally confirming that he had said everything, because he knew that as soon as he pronounced the name of the fortunate man the lifeless city would awaken and nothing more that he might say would be audible.

' Is that everything? ' Pilate whispered soundlessly to himself. ' Yes, it is. Now the name! ' And rolling his ' r 's over the heads of the silent populace he roared : ' Bar-Abba! '

It was as though the sun detonated above him and drowned his ears in fire, a fire that roared, shrieked, groaned, laughed and whistled.

Pilate turned and walked back along the platform towards the steps, glancing only at the parti-coloured wooden blocks of the steps beneath his feet to save himself from stumbling. He knew that behind his back a hail of bronze coins and dates was showering the platform, that people in the whooping crowd, elbowing each other aside, were climbing on to shoulders to see a miracle with their own eyes–a man already in the arms of death and torn from their grasp! They watched the legionaries as they untied his bonds, involuntarily causing him searing pain in his swollen arms, watched as grimacing and complaining he nevertheless smiled an insane, senseless smile.

Pilate knew that the escort was now marching the three bound prisoners to the side steps of the platform to lead them off on the road westward, out of the city, towards Mount Golgotha. Only when he stood beneath and behind the platform did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was now safe–he could no longer see the convicted men.

As the roar of the crowd began to die down the separate, piercing voices of the heralds could be heard repeating, one in Aramaic, the others in Greek, the announcement that the Procurator had just made from the platform. Besides that his ears caught the approaching irregular clatter of horses' hoofs and the sharp, bright call of a trumpet. This sound was echoed by the piercing whistles of boys from the rooftops and by shouts of ' Look out! '

A lone soldier, standing in the space cleared in the square, waved his standard in warning, at which the Procurator, the Legate of the Legion and their escort halted.

A squadron of cavalry entered the square at a fast trot, cutting across it diagonally, past a knot of people, then down a side-street along a vine-covered stone wall in order to gallop on to Mount Golgotha by the shortest route.

As the squadron commander, a Syrian as small as a boy and as dark as a mulatto, trotted past Pilate he gave a high-pitched cry and drew his sword from its scabbard. His sweating, ugly-tempered black horse snorted and reared up on its hind legs. Sheathing his sword the commander struck the horse's neck with his whip, brought its forelegs down and moved off down the side street, breaking into a gallop. Behind him in columns of three galloped the horsemen in a ha2e of dust, the tips of their bamboo lances bobbing rhythmically. They swept past the Procurator, their faces unnaturally dark in contrast with their white turbans, grinning cheerfully, teeth flashing.

Raising a cloud of dust the squadron surged down the street, the last trooper to pass Pilate carrying a glinting trumpet slung across his back.

Shielding his face from the dust with his hand and frowning with annoyance Pilate walked on, hurrying towards the gate of the palace garden followed by the Legate, the secretary and the escort.

It was about ten o'clock in the morning.

' Yes, it was about ten o'clock in the morning, my dear Ivan Nikolayich,' said the professor.

The poet drew his hand across his face like a man who has just woken up and noticed that it was now evening. The water in the pond had turned black, a little boat was gliding across it and he could hear the splash of an oar and a girl's laughter in the boat. People were beginning to appear in the avenues and were sitting on the benches on all sides of the square except on the side where our friends were talking.

Over Moscow it was as if the sky had blossomed : a clear, full moon had risen, still white and not yet golden. It was much less stuffy and the voices under the lime trees now had an even-tide softness.

' Why didn't I notice what a long story he's been telling us? ' thought Bezdomny in amazement. ' It's evening already! Perhaps he hasn't told it at all but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it?'

But if the professor had not told the story Berlioz must have been having the identical dream because he said, gazing attentively into the stranger's face :

' Your story is extremely interesting, professor, but it diners completely from the accounts in the gospels.'

' But surely,' replied the professor with a condescending smile, ' you of all people must realise that absolutely nothing written in the gospels actually happened. If you want to regard the gospels as a proper historical source . . .' He smiled again and Berlioz was silenced. He had just been saying exactly the same thing to Bezdomny on their walk from Bronnaya Street to Patriarch's Ponds.

' I agree,' answered Berlioz, ' but I'm afraid that no one is in a position to prove the authenticity of your version either.'

' Oh yes! I can easily confirm it! ' rejoined the professor with great confidence, lapsing into his foreign accent and mysteriously beckoning the two friends closer. They bent towards him from both sides and he began, this time without a trace of his accent which seemed to come and go without rhyme or reason :

' The fact is . . .' here the professor glanced round nervously and dropped his voice to a whisper, ' I was there myself. On the balcony with Pontius Pilate, in the garden when he talked to Caiaphas and on the platform, but secretly, incognito so to speak, so don't breathe a word of it to anyone and please keep it an absolute secret, sshhh . . .'

There was silence. Berlioz went pale.

' How . . . how long did you say you'd been in Moscow? ' he asked in a shaky voice.

' I have just this minute arrived in Moscow,' replied the professor, slightly disconcerted. Only then did it occur to the two friends to look him properly in the eyes. They saw that his green left eye was completely mad, his right eye black, expressionless and dead.

' That explains it all,' thought Berlioz perplexedly. ' He's some mad German who's just arrived or else he's suddenly gone out of his mind here at Patriarch's. What an extraordinary business! ' This really seemed to account for everything–the mysterious breakfast with the philosopher Kant, the idiotic ramblings about sunflower-seed oil and Anna, the prediction about Berlioz's head being cut off and all the rest: the professor was a lunatic.

Berlioz at once started to think what they ought to do. Leaning back on the bench he winked at Bezdomny behind the professor's back, meaning ' Humour him! ' But the poet, now thoroughly confused, failed to understand the signal.

' Yes, yes, yes,' said Berlioz with great animation. ' It's quite possible, of course. Even probable–Pontius Pilate, the balcony, and so on. . . . Have you come here alone or with your wife? '

' Alone, alone, I am always alone,' replied the professor bitterly.

' But where is your luggage, professor?' asked Berlioz cunningly. ' At the Metropole? Where are you staying? '

' Where am I staying? Nowhere. . . .' answered the mad German, staring moodily around Patriarch's Ponds with his g:reen eye

' What! . . . But . . . where are you going to live? '

' In your flat,' the lunatic suddenly replied casually and winked.

' I'm ... I should be delighted . . .' stuttered Berlioz, : ‘but I'm afraid you wouldn't be very comfortable at my place . . - the rooms at the Metropole are excellent, it's a first-class hotel . . .'

' And the devil doesn't exist either, I suppose? ' the madman suddenly enquired cheerfully of Ivan Nikolayich.

' And the devil . . .'

' Don't contradict him,' mouthed Berlioz silently, leaning back and grimacing behind the professor's back.

' There's no such thing as the devil! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out, hopelessly muddled by all this dumb show, ruining all Berlioz's plans by shouting: ' And stop playing the amateur psychologist! '

At this the lunatic gave such a laugh that it startled the sparrows out of the tree above them.

' Well now, that is interesting,' said the professor, quaking with laughter. ' Whatever I ask you about–it doesn't exist! ' He suddenly stopped laughing and with a typical madman's reaction he immediately went to the other extreme, shouting angrily and harshly : ' So you think the devil doesn't exist? '

' Calm down, calm down, calm down, professor,' stammered Berlioz, frightened of exciting this lunatic. ' You stay here a minute with comrade Bezdomny while I run round the corner and make a 'phone call and then we'll take you where you want to go. You don't know your way around town, sitter all... .' Berlioz's plan was obviously right–to run to the nearest telephone box and tell the Aliens' Bureau that there was a foreign professor sitting at Patriarch's Ponds who was clearly insane. Something had to be done or there might be a nasty scene.

' Telephone? Of course, go and telephone if you want to,' agreed the lunatic sadly, and then suddenly begged with passion :

' But please–as a farewell request–at least say you believe in the devil! I won't ask anything more of you. Don't forget that there's still the seventh proof–the soundest! And it's just about to be demonstrated to you! '

' All right, all right,' said Berlioz pretending to agree. With a wink to the wretched Bezdomny, who by no means relished the thought of keeping watch on this crazy German, he rushed towards the park gates at the corner of Bronnaya and Yermolay-evsky Streets.

At once the professor seemed to recover his reason and good spirits.

' Mikhail Alexandrovich! ' he shouted after Berlioz, who shuddered as he turned round and then remembered that the professor could have learned his name from a newspaper.

The professor, cupping his hands into a trumpet, shouted :

' Wouldn't you like me to send a telegram to your uncle in Kiev? '

Another shock–how did this madman know that he had an uncle in Kiev? Nobody had ever put that in any newspaper. Could Bezdomny be right about him after all? And what about those phoney-looking documents of his? Definitely a weird character . . . ring up, ring up the Bureau at once . . . they'll come and sort it all out in no time.

Without waiting to hear any more, Berlioz ran on.

At the park gates leading into Bronnaya Street, the identical man, whom a short while ago the editor had seen materialise out of a mirage, got up from a bench and walked toward him. This time, however, he was not made of air but of flesh and blood. In the early twilight Berlioz could clearly distinguish his feathery little moustache, his little eyes, mocking and half drunk, his check trousers pulled up so tight that his dirty white socks were showing.

Mikhail Alexandrovich stopped, but dismissed it as a ridiculous coincidence. He had in any case no time to stop and puzzle it out now.

' Are you looking for the turnstile, sir? ' enquired the check-clad man in a quavering tenor. ' This way, please! Straight on for the exit. How about the price of a drink for showing you the way, sir? ... church choirmaster out of work, sir ... need a helping hand, sir. . . .' Bending double, the weird creature pulled off his jockey cap in a sweeping gesture.

Without stopping to listen to the choirmaster's begging and whining, Berlioz ran to the turnstile and pushed it. Having passed through he was just about to step off the pavement and cross the tramlines when a white and red light flashed in his face and the pedestrian signal lit up with the words ' Stop! Tramway!' A tram rolled into view, rocking slightly along the newly-laid track that ran down Yermolayevsky Street and into Bronnaya. As it turned to join the main line it suddenly switched its inside lights on, hooted and accelerated.

Although he was standing in safety, the cautious Berlioz decided to retreat behind the railings. He put his hand on the turnstile and took a step backwards. He missed his grip and his foot slipped on the cobbles as inexorably as though on ice. As it slid towards the tramlines his other leg gave way and Berlioz was thrown across the track. Grabbing wildly, Berlioz fell prone. He struck his head violently on the cobblestones and the gilded moon flashed hazily across his vision. He just had time to turn on his back, drawing his legs up to his stomach with a frenzied movement and as he turned over he saw the woman tram-driver's face, white with horror above her red necktie, as she bore down on him with irresistible force and speed. Berlioz made no sound, but all round him the street rang with the desperate shrieks of women's voices. The driver grabbed the electric brake, the car pitched forward, jumped the rails and with a tinkling crash the glass broke in all its windows. At this moment Berlioz heard a despairing voice: ' Oh, no . . .! ' Once more and for the last time the moon flashed before his eyes but it split into fragments and then went black.

Berlioz vanished from sight under the tramcar and a round, dark object rolled across the cobbles, over the kerbstone and bounced along the pavement.

It was a severed head.

The women's hysterical shrieks and the sound, of police whistles died away. Two ambulances drove on, one bearing the body and the decapitated head to the morgue, the other carrying the beautiful tram-driver who had been wounded by slivers of glass. Street sweepers in white overalls swept up the broken glass and poare'd sand on the pools of blood. Ivan Nikolayich, who had failed to reach the turnstile in time, collapsed on a bench and remained there. Several times he tried to ge:t up, but his legs refuse d to obey him, stricken by a kind of paralysis.

The moment he had heard the first cry the poet had rushed towards the turnstile and seen the head bouncing on the pavement. The sight unnerved him so much that he bit his hand until it drew blood. He had naturally forgotten all about the mad German and could do nothing but wonder how one minute he coald have been talking to Berlioz and the next... his head ...

Excited people were running along the avenue past the poet shouting something, but Ivan Nikolayich did not hear them. Suddenly two women collided alongside him and one of them, witlh a pointed nose and straight hair, shouted to the other woman just above his ear :

' .. . Anna, it was our Anna! She was coming from Sadovaya! It's her job, you see . . . she was carrying a litre of sunflower-seed oil to the grocery and she broke her jug on. the turnstile! It went all over her skirt amd ruined it and she swore and swore....! And that poor man must have slipped on the oil and fallen under the tram....'

One word stuck in Ivan Nikolayich's brain–' Anna' . . . ' Anna? . . . Anna? ' muttered the poet, looking round in alarm. ' Hey, what was that you said . . .? '

The name ' Anna ' evoked the words ' sunflower-seed oil' and ' Pontius Pilate '. Bezdomny rejected 'Pilate' and began linking together a chain of associations starting with ' Anna'. Very soon the chain was complete and it led straight back to the mad professor.

' Of course! He said the meeting wouldn't take place because Anna had spilled the oil. And, by God, it won't take place now! And what's more he said Berlioz would have his head cut off by a woman!! Yes–and the tram-driver was a woman!!! Who the hell is he? '

There was no longer a grain of doubt that the mysterious professor had foreseen every detail of Berlioz's death before it had occurred. Two thoughts struck the poet: firstly–' he's no madman ' and secondly–' did he arrange the whole thing himself?'

' But how on earth could he? We've got to look into this! '

With a tremendous effort Ivan Nikolayich got up from the bench and ran back to where he had been talking to the professor, who was fortunately still there.

The lamps were already lit on Bronnaya Street and a golden moon was shining over Patriarch's Ponds. By the light of the moon, deceptive as it always is, it seemed to Ivan Nikolayich that the thing under the professor's arm was not a stick but a sword.

The ex-choirmaster was sitting on the seat occupied a short while before by Ivan Nikolayich himself. The choirmaster had now clipped on to his nose an obviously useless pince-nez. One lens was missing and the other rattled in its frame. It made the check-suited man look even more repulsive than when he had shown Berlioz the way to the tramlines. With a chill of fear Ivan walked up to the professor. A glance at his face convinced him that there was not a trace of insanity in it.

' Confess–who are you? ' asked Ivan grimly.

The stranger frowned, looked at the poet as if seeing him for the first time, and answered disagreeably :

' No understand ... no speak Russian . . . '

' He doesn't understand,' put in the choirmaster from his bench, although no one had asked him.

' Stop pretending! ' said Ivan threateningly, a cold feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. ' Just now you spoke Russian perfectly well. You're no German and you're not a professor! You're a spy and a murderer! Show me your papers! ' cried Ivan angrily.

The enigmatic professor gave his already crooked mouth a further twist and shrugged his shoulders.

' Look here, citizen,' put in the horrible choirmaster again. ' What do you mean by upsetting this foreign tourist? You'll have the police after you! '

The dubious professor put on a haughty look, turned and walked away from Ivan, who felt himself beginning to lose his head. Gasping, he turned to the choirmaster :

' Hey, you, help me arrest this criminal! It's your duty! '

The choirmaster leaped eagerly to his feet and bawled :

' What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal? ' His eyes lit up joyfully. ' That man? If he's a criminal the first thing to do is to shout " Stop thief! " Otherwise he'll get away. Come on, let's shout together! ' And the choirmaster opened his mouth wide.

The stupefied Ivan obeyed and shouted ' Stop thief! ' but the choirmaster fooled him by not making a sound.

Ivan's lonely, hoarse cry was worse than useless. A couple of girls dodged him and he heard them say ' . .. drunk.'

' So you're in league with him, are you? ' shouted Ivan, helpless with anger. ' Make fun of me, would you? Out of my way!'

Ivan set off towards his right and the choirmaster did the opposite, blocking his way. Ivan moved leftward, the other to his right and the same thing happened.

' Are you trying to get in my way on purpose?' screamed Ivan, infuriated. ' You're the one I'm going to report to the police!'

Ivan tried to grab the choirmaster by the sleeve, missed and found himself grasping nothing : it was as if the choirmaster had been swallowed up by the ground.

With a groan Ivan looked ahead and saw the hated stranger. He had already reached the exit leading on to Patriarch's Street and he was no longer alone. The weird choirmaster had managed to join him. But that was not all. The third member of the company was a cat the size of a pig, black as soot and with luxuriant cavalry officers' whiskers. The threesome was walking towards Patriarch's Street, the cat trotting along on its hind legs.

As he set off after the villains Ivan realised at once that it was going to be very hard to catch them up. In a flash the three of them were across the street and on the Spiridonovka. Ivan quickened his pace, but the distance between him and his quarry grew no less. Before the poet had realised it they had left the quiet Spiridonovka and were approaching Nikita Gate, where his difficulties increased. There was a crowd and to make matters worse the evil band had decided to use the favourite trick of bandits on the run and split up.

With great agility the choirmaster jumped on board a moving bus bound for Arbat Square and vanished. Having lost one of them, Ivan concentrated his attention on the cat and saw how the strange animal walked up to the platform of an ' A ' tram waiting at a stop, cheekily pushed off a screaming woman, grasped the handrail and offered the conductress a ten-kopeck piece.

Ivan was so amazed by the cat's behaviour that he was frozen into immobility beside a street corner grocery. He was struck with even greater amazement as he watched the reaction of the conductress. Seeing the cat board her tram, she yelled, shaking with anger:

' No cats allowed! I'm not moving with a cat on board! Go on–shoo! Get off, or I'll call the police! '

Both conductress and passengers seemed completely oblivious of the most extraordinary thing of all: not that a cat had boarded a tramcar–that was after all possible–but the fact that the animal was offering to pay its fare!

The cat proved to be not only a fare-paying but a law-abiding animal. At the first shriek from the conductress it retreated, stepped off the platform and sat down at the tram-stop, stroking its whiskers with the ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner had the conductress yanked the bell-rope and the car begun to move off, than the cat acted like anyone else who has been pushed off a tram and is still determined to get to his destination. Letting all three cars draw past it, the cat jumped on to the coupling-hook of the last car, latched its paw round a pipe sticking out of one of the windows and sailed away, having saved itself ten kopecks.

Fascinated by the odious cat, Ivan almost lost sight of the most important of the three–the professor. Luckily he had not managed to slip away. Ivan spotted his grey beret in the crowd at the top of Herzen Street. In a flash Ivan was there too, but in vain. The poet speeded up to a run and began shoving people aside, but it brought him not an inch nearer the professor.

Confused though Ivan was, he was nevertheless astounded by the supernatural speed of the pursuit. Less than twenty seconds after leaving Nikita Gate Ivan Nikolayich was dazzled by the lights of Arbat Square. A few more seconds and he was in a dark alleyway with uneven pavements where he tripped and hurt his knee. Again a well-lit main road–Kropotkin Street– another side-street, then Ostozhenka Street, then another grim, dirty and badly-lit alley. It was here that Ivan Nikolayich finally lost sight of his quarry. The professor had disappeared.

Disconcerted, but not for long, for no apparent reason Ivan Nikolayich had a sudden intuition that the professor must be in house No. 13, flat 47.

Bursting through the front door, Ivan Nikolayich flew up the stairs, found the right flat and impatiently rang the bell. He did not have to wait long. The door was opened by a little girl of about five, who silently disappeared inside again. The hall was a vast, incredibly neglected room feebly lit by a tiny electric light that dangled in one corner from a ceiling black with dirt. On the wall hung a bicycle without any tyres, beneath it a huge iron-banded trunk. On the shelf over the coat-rack was a winter fur cap, its long earflaps untied and hanging down. From behind one of the doors a man's voice could be heard booming from the radio, angrily declaiming poetry.

Not at all put out by these unfamiliar surroundings, Ivan Nikolayich made straight for the corridor, thinking to himself:

' He's obviously hiding in the bathroom.' The passage was dark. Bumping into the walls, Ivan saw a faint streak of light under a doorway. He groped for the handle and gave it a gentle turn. The door opened and Ivan found himself in luck–it was the bathroom.

However it wasn't quite the sort of luck he had hoped for. Amid the damp steam and by the light of the coals smouldering in the geyser, he made out a large basin attached to the wall and a bath streaked with black where the enamel had chipped off. There in the bath stood a naked woman, covered in soapsuds and holding a loofah. She peered short-sightedly at Ivan as he came in and obviously mistaking him for someone else in the hellish light she whispered gaily :

' Kiryushka! Do stop fooling! You must be crazy . . . Fyodor Ivanovich will be back any minute now. Go on–out you go! ' And she waved her loofah at Ivan.

The mistake was plain and it was, of course, Ivan Nikolayich's fault, but rather than admit it he gave a shocked cry of ' Brazen hussy! ' and suddenly found himself in the kitchen. It was empty. In the gloom a silent row of ten or so Primuses stood on a marble slab. A single ray of moonlight, struggling through a dirty window that had not been cleaned for years, cast a dim light into one corner where there hung a forgotten ikon, the stubs of two candles still stuck in its frame. Beneath the big ikon was another made of paper and fastened to the wall with tin-tacks.

Nobody knows what came over Ivan but before letting himself out by the back staircase he stole one of the candles and the little paper ikon. Clutching these objects he left the strange apartment, muttering, embarrassed by his recent experience in the bathroom. He could not help wondering who the shameless Kiryushka might be and whether he was the owner of the nasty fur cap with dangling ear-flaps.

In the deserted, cheerless alleyway Bezdomny looked round for the fugitive but there was no sign of him. Ivan said firmly to himself:

' Of course! He's on the Moscow River! Come on! '

Somebody should of course have asked Ivan Nikolayich why he imagined the professor would be on the Moscow River of all places, but unfortunately there was no one to ask him–the nasty little alley was completely empty.

In no time at all Ivan Nikolayich was to be seen on the granite steps of the Moscow lido. Taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a kindly old man with a beard, dressed in a torn white Russian blouse and patched, unlaced boots. Waving him aside, Ivan took a swallow-dive into the water. The water was so cold that it took his breath away and for a moment he even doubted whether he would reach the surface again. But reach it he did, and puffing and snorting, his eyes round with terror, Ivan Nikolayich began swimming in the black, oily-smelling water towards the shimmering zig-zags of the embankment lights reflected in the water.

When Ivan clambered damply up the steps at the place where he had left his clothes in the care of the bearded man, not only his clothes but their venerable guardian had apparently been spirited away. On the very spot where the heap of clothes had been there was now a pair of check underpants, a torn Russian blouse, a candle, a paper ikon and a box of matches. Shaking his fist into space with impotent rage, Ivan clambered into what was left.

As he did so two thoughts worried him. To begin with he had now lost his MASSOLIT membership card; normally he never went anywhere without it. Secondly it occurred to him that he might be arrested for walking around Moscow in this state. After all, he had practically nothing on but a pair of underpants. . . .

Ivan tore the buttons off the long underpants where they were fastened at the ankles, in the hope that people might think they were a pair of lightweight summer trousers. He then picked up the ikon, the candle and matches and set off, saying to himself:

' I must go to Griboyedov! He's bound to be there.' Ivan Nikolayich's fears were completely justified–passers-by noticed him and turned round to stare, so he decided to leave the main streets and make Us way through the side-roads where people were not so inquisitive, where there was less chance of them stopping a barefoot man and badgering him with questions about his underpants–which obstinately refused to look like trousers.

Ivan plunged into a maze of sidestreets round the Arbat and began to sidle along the walls, blinking fearfully, glancing round, occasionally hiding in doorways, avoiding crossroads with traffic lights and the elegant porticos of embassy mansions.

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 flîîã was by no means all. The entire ground floor of the
aunt's house was occupied by a restaurant– and what a restaurant! It
was rightly considered the best in Moscow. Not only because it
occupied two large rooms with vaulted ceilings and lilac-painted
horses with flowing manes, not only because every table had a lamp
shaded with lace, not only because it was barred to the hoi polloi,
but above all for the quality of its food. Griboyedov could beat any
restaurant in Moscow you cared to name and its prices were extremely
moderate.

There is therefore nothing odd in the conversation which the author of
these lines actually overheard once outside the iron railings of
Griboyedov :

' Where are you dining today, Ambrose? '

' What a question! Here, of course, Vanya! Archibald Archibaldovich
whispered to me this morning that there's filets de perche an naturel
on the menu tonight. Sheer virtuosity! '

' You do know how to live, Ambrose! ' sighed Vanya, a thin pinched man
with a carbuncle on his neck, to Ambrose, a strapping, red-lipped,
golden-haired, ruddy-cheeked poet.

' It's no special talent,' countered Ambrose. ' Just a perfectly
normal desire to live a decent, human existence. Now I suppose you're
going to say that you can get perch at the Coliseum. So you can. But a
helping of perch at the Coliseum costs thirty roubles fifty kopecks
and here it costs five fifty! Apart from that the perch at the
Coliseum are three days old and what's more if you go to the Coliseum
there's no guarantee you won't get a bunch of grapes thrown in your
face by the first young man to burst in from Theatre Street. No, I
loathe the Coliseum,' shouted Ambrose the gastronome at the top of his
voice. ' Don't try and talk me into liking it, Vanya! '

' I'm not trying to talk you into it, Ambrose,' squeaked Vanya. ' You
might have been dining at home.'

' Thank you very much,' trumpeted Ambrose. ' Just imagine your wife
trying to cook filets de perche an naturel in a saucepan, in the
kitchen you share with half a dozen other people! He, he, he! ...
Aurevoir, Vanya! ' And humming to himself Ambrose hurried oft to the
verandah under the awning.

Ha, ha, ha! ... Yes, that's how it used to be! ... Some of us old
inhabitants of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov. But boiled
fillets of perch was nothing, my dear Ambrose! What about the
sturgeon, sturgeon in a silver-plated pan, sturgeon filleted and
served between lobsters' tails and fresh caviar? And oeufs en cocotte
with mushroom puree in little bowls? And didn't you like the thrushes'
breasts? With truffles? The quails alia Genovese? Nine roubles fifty!
And oh, the band, the polite waiters! And in July when the whole
family's in the country and pressing literary business is keeping you
in town–out on the verandah, in the shade of a climbing vine, a plate
of potage printaniere looking like a golden stain on the snow-white
table-cloth? Do you remember, Ambrose? But of course you do–I can see
from your lips you remember. Not just your salmon or your perch
either–what about the snipe, the woodcock in season, the quail, the
grouse? And the sparkling wines! But I digress, reader.

At half past ten on the evening that Berlioz died at Patriarch's
Ponds, only one upstairs room at Griboyedov was lit. In it sat twelve
weary authors, gathered for a meeting and still waiting for Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Sitting on chairs, on tables and even on the two window
ledges, the management committee of MASSOLIT was suffering badly from
the heat and stuffiness. Not a single fresh breeze penetrated the open
window. Moscow was The Master and Margarita

exuding the heat of the day accumulated in its asphalt and it was
obvious that the night was not going to bring; any relief. There was a
smell of onion coming from the restaurant kitchen in the cellar,
everybody wanted a drink, everybody was nervous and irritable.

Beskudnikov, a quiet, well-dressed essayist with eyes that were at
once attentive yet shifty, took out his watch. The hands were just
creeping up to eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the watch face with his
finger and showed it to his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was
sitting on the table, bored and swinging his feet shod in yellow
rubber-soled slippers.

' Well, really . . .' muttered Dvubratsky.

' I suppose the lad's got stuck out at Klyazma,' said Nastasya
Lukinishna Nepremenova, orphaned daughter of a Moscow business man,
who had turned writer and wrote naval war stories under the pseudonym
of ' Bo'sun George '.

' Look here! ' burst out Zagrivov, a writer of popular short stories.
' I don't know about you, but I'd rather be drinking tea out on the
balcony right now instead of stewiing in here. Was this meeting called
for ten o'clock or wasn't it? '

' It must be nice out at Klyazma now,' said IBo'sun George in a tone
of calculated innocence, knowing that the writers' summer colony out
at Perelygino near Klyazma was a sore point. ' I expect the
nightingales are singing there now. Somehow I always seem to work
better out of town, especially in the spring.'

' I've been paying my contributions for three years now to send my
sick wife to that paradise but somehow nothing ever appears on the
horizon,' said Hieronymus Poprikhin the novelist, with bitter venom.

' Some people are lucky and others aren't, that's all,' boomed the
critic Ababkov from the window-ledge.

Bos'un George's little eyes lit up, and softening her contralto rasp she said:

' We mustn't be jealous, comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas,
only seven more are being built, and there are three thousand of us in
MASSOLIT.'

' Three thousand one hundred and eleven,' put in someone from a corner.

' Well, there you are,' the Bo'sun went on. ' What can one do?
Naturally the dachas are allocated to those with the most talent. . .'

' They're allocated to the people at the top! ' barked Gluk-haryov, a
script writer.

Beskudnikov, yawning artificially, left the room.

' One of them has five rooms to himself at Perelygino,' Glukharyov
shouted after him.

' Lavrovich has six rooms to himself,' shouted Deniskin, ' and the
dining-room's panelled in oak! '

' Well, at the moment that's not the point,' boomed Ababkov. ' The
point is that it's half past eleven.'

A noise began, heralding mutiny. Somebody rang up the hated Perelygino
but got through to the wrong dacha, which turned out to belong to
Lavrovich, where they were told that Lavrovich was out on the river.
This produced utter confusion. Somebody made a wild telephone call to
the Fine Arts and Literature Commission, where of course there was no
reply.

' He might have rung up! ' shouted Deniskin, Glukharyov and Quant.

Alas, they shouted in vain. Mikhail Alexandrovich was in no state to
telephone anyone. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a vast hall lit by
thousand-candle-power lamps, what had recently been Mikhail
Alexandrovich was lying on three zinc-topped tables. On the first was
the naked, blood-caked body with. a fractured arm and smashed
rib-cage, on the second the head, it;s front teeth knocked in, its
vacant open eyes undisturbed by the blinding light, and on the third–a
heap of mangled rags. Round the decapitated corpse stood the professor
of forensic medicine, the pathological anatomist and his dissector, a
few detectives and Mikhail Alexandrovich's deputy as chairman of
MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from the bedside
of his sick wife.

A car had been sent for Zheldybin and had first taken him and the
detectives (it was about midnight) to the dead man's flat where his
papers were placed under seal, after which they all drove to the
morgue.

The group round the remains of the deceased were conferring on the
best course to take–should they sew the severed head back on to the
neck or allow the body to lie in state in the main hall of Griboyedov
covered by a black cloth as far as the chin?

Yes, Mikhail Alexandrovich was quite incapable of telephoning and
Deniskin, Glukharyov, Quant and Beskudnikov were exciting themselves
for nothing. On the stroke of midnight all twelve writers left the
upper storey and went down to the restaurant. There they said more
unkind things about Mikhail Alexandrovich : all the tables on the
verandah were full and they were obliged to dine in the beautiful but
stifling indoor rooms.

On the stroke of midnight the first of these rooms suddenly woke up
and leaped into life with a crash and a roar. A thin male voice gave a
desperate shriek of ' Alleluia!! ' Music. It was the famous Griboyedov
jazz band striking up. Sweat-covered faces lit up, the painted horses
on the ceiling came to life, the lamps seemed to shine brighter.
Suddenly, as though bursting their chains, everybody in the two rooms
started dancing, followed by everybody on the verandah.

Glukharyov danced away with the poetess Tamara Polumesy-atz. Quant
danced, Zhukopov the novelist seized a film actress in a yellow dress
and danced. They all danced–Dragunsky and Cherdakchi danced, little
Deniskin danced with the gigantic Bo'sun George and the beautiful girl
architect Semeikin-Hall was grabbed by a stranger in white straw-cloth
trousers. Members and guests, from Moscow and from out of town, they
all danced–the writer Johann from Kronstadt, a producer called Vitya
Kuftik from Rostov with lilac-coloured eczema all over his face, the
leading lights of the poetry section of MASSOLIT– Pavianov,
Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Shpichkin and Adelfina Buzdyak, young men of
unknown occupation with cropped hair and shoulders padded with cotton
wool, an old, old man with a chive sticking out of his beard danced
with a thin, anaemic girl in an orange silk dress.

Pouring sweat, the waiters carried dripping mugs of beer over the
dancers' heads, yelling hoarsely and venomously ' Sorry, sir! '
Somewhere a man bellowed through a megaphone:

' Chops once! Kebab twice! Chicken a la King! ' The vocalist was no
longer singing–he was howling. Now and again the crash of cymbals in
the band drowned the noise of dirty crockery flung down a sloping
chute to the scullery. In short–hell.

At midnight there appeared a vision in this hell. On to the verandah
strode a handsome, black-eyed man with a pointed beard and wearing a
tail coat. With regal gaze he surveyed his domain. According to some
romantics there had once been a time when this noble figure had worn
not tails but a broad leather belt round his waist, stuck with
pistol-butts, that his raven-black hair had been tied up in a scarlet
kerchief and that his brig had sailed the Caribbean under the Jolly
Roger.

But that, of course, is pure fantasy–the Caribbean doesn't exist, no
desperate buccaneers sail it, no corvette ever chases them, no puffs
of cannon-smoke ever roll across the waves. Pure invention. Look at
that scraggy tree, look at the iron railings, the boulevard. . . . And
the ice is floating in the wine-bucket and at the next table there's a
man with ox-like, bloodshot eyes and it's pandemonium. . . . Oh
gods–poison, I need poison! . . .

Suddenly from one of the tables the word ' Berlioz!! ' flew up and
exploded in the air. Instantly the band collapsed and stopped, as
though someone had punched it. ' What, what, what–what?!! '

' Berlioz!!! '

Everybody began rushing about and screaming.

A wave of grief surged up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed around shouting that they must all
immediately, here and now, without delay compose a collective telegram
and send it off.

But what telegram, you may ask? And why send it? Send it where? And
what use is a telegram to the man whose battered skull is being mauled
by the rubber hands of a dissector, whose neck is being pierced by the
professor's crooked needles? He's dead, he doesn't want a telegram.
It's all over, let's not overload the post office.

Yes, he's dead . . . but we are still alive!

The wave of grief rose, lasted for a while and then began to recede.
Somebody went back to their table and–furtively to begin with, then
openly–drank a glass of vodka and took a bite to eat. After all,
what's the point of wasting the cotelettes de volatile? What good are
we going to do Mikhail Alexandrovich by going hungry? We're still
alive, aren't we?

Naturally the piano was shut and locked, the band went home and a few
journalists left for their newspaper offices to write obituaries. The
news spread that Zheldybin was back from the morgue. He moved into
Berlioz's upstairs office and at once a rumour started that he was
going to take over from Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members
of the management committee from the restaurant and in an emergency
session they began discussing such urgent questions as the preparation
of the colonnaded hall, the transfer of the body from the morgue, the
times at which members could attend the lying-in-state and other
matters connected with the tragic event.

Downstairs in the restaurant life had returned to normal and would
have continued on its usual nocturnal course until closing time at
four, had not something quite abnormal occurred which shocked the
diners considerably more than the news of Berlioz's death.

The first to be alarmed were the cab drivers waiting outside the gates
of Griboyedov. Jerking up with a start one of them shouted:

' Hey! Look at that!' A little glimmer flared up near the iron
railings and started to bob towards the verandah. Some of the diners
stood up, stared and saw that the nickering light was accompanied by a
white apparition. As it approached the verandah trellis every diner
froze, eyes bulging, sturgeon-laden forks motionless in mid-air. The
club porter, who at that moment had just left the restaurant cloakroom
to go outside for a smoke, stubbed out his cigarette and was just
going to advance on the apparition with the aim of barring its way
into the restaurant when for some reason he changed his mind, stopped
and grinned stupidly.

The apparition, passing through an opening in the trellis, mounted the
verandah unhindered. As it did so everyone saw that this was no
apparition but the distinguished poet Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny.

He was barefoot and wearing a torn, dirty white Russian blouse. To its
front was safety-pinned a paper ikon with a picture of some unknown
saint. He was wearing long white underpants with a lighted candle in
his hand and his right cheek bore a fresh scratch. It would be hard to
fathom the depth of the silence which reigned on the verandah. Beer
poured on to the floor from a mug held sideways by one of the waiters.

The poet raised the candle above his head and said in a loud voice :

' Greetings, friends!' He then looked under the nearest table and
exclaimed with disappointment:

' No, he's not there.'

Two voices were heard. A bass voice said pitilessly : ' An obvious
case of D.Ts.'

The second, a frightened woman's voice enquired nervously :

' How did the police let him on to the streets in that state? '

Ivan Nikolayich heard this and replied :

' They tried to arrest me twice, once in Skatertny Street and once
here on Bronnaya, but I climbed over the fence and that's how I
scratched my cheek! ' Ivan Nikolayich lifted up his candle and
shouted: ' Fellow artists!' (His squeaky voice grew stronger and more
urgent.) ' Listen to me, all of you! He's come! Catch him at once or
he'll do untold harm! '

' What's that? What? What did he say? Who's come? ' came the questions
from all sides.

' A professor,' answered Ivan, ' and it was this professor who killed
Misha Berlioz this evening at Patriarch's.'

By now people were streaming on to the verandah from the indoor rooms
and a crowd began milling round Ivan.

' I beg your pardon, would you say that again more clearly? ' said a
low, courteous voice right beside Ivan Nikolayich's ear. ' Tell me,
how was he killed? Who killed him? '

' A foreigner–he's a professor and a spy,' replied Ivan, looking round.

' What's his name? ' said the voice again into his ear.

' That's just the trouble!' cried Ivan in frustration. ' If only I
knew his name! I couldn't read it properly on his visiting card ... I
only remember the letter ' W '–the name began with a ' W '. What could
it have been? ' Ivan asked himself aloud, clutching his forehead with
his hand. ' We, wi, wa . . . wo . . . Walter? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner?
Winter? ' The hairs on Ivan's head started to stand on end from the
effort.

' Wolff? ' shouted a woman, trying to help him.

Ivan lost his temper.

' You fool!' he shouted, looking for the woman in the crowd. ' What's
Wolff got to do with it? He didn't do it ... Wo, wa . . . No, I'll
never remember it like this. Now look, everybody– ring up the police
at once and tell them to send five motorcycles and sidecars with
machine-guns to catch the professor. And don't forget to say that
there are two others with him–a tall fellow in checks with a wobbly
pince-nez and a great black cat. . . . Meanwhile I'm going to search
Griboyedov–I can sense that he's here! '

Ivan was by now in a state of some excitement. Pushing the bystanders
aside he began waving his candle about, pouring wax on himself, and
started to look under the tables. Then somebody said ' Doctor! ' and a
fat, kindly face, clean-shaven, smelling of drink and with horn-rimmed
spectacles, appeared in front of Ivan.

' Comrade Bezdomny,' said the face solemnly, ' calm down! You're upset
by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich . . . no, I mean
plain Misha Berlioz. We all realise how you feel. You need rest.
You'll be taken home to bed in a moment and then you can relax and
forget all about it. . .'

' Don't you realise,' Ivan interrupted, scowling, ' that we've got to
catch the professor? And all you can do is come creeping up to me
talking all this rubbish! Cretin! '

' Excuse me. Comrade Bezdomny! ' replied the face, blushing,
retreating and already wishing it had never let itself get involved in
this affair.

' No, I don't care who you are–I won't excuse you,' said Ivan
Nikolayich with quiet hatred.

A spasm distorted his face, he rapidly switched the candle from his
right to his left hand, swung his arm and punched the sympathetic face
on the ear.

Several people reached the same conclusion at once and hurled
themselves at Ivan. The candle went out, the horn-rims fell off the
face and were instantly smashed underfoot. Ivan let out a dreadful
war-whoop audible, to everybody's embarrassment, as far as the
boulevard, and began to defend himself. There came a tinkle of
breaking crockery, women screamed.

While the waiters tied up the poet with dish-cloths, a conversation
was in progress in the cloakroom between the porter and the captain of
the brig.

' Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' asked the pirate coldly.

' But Archibald Archibaldovich–I'm a coward,' replied the porter, '
how could I stop him from coming in? He's a member!'

' Didn't you see that he was wearing underpants? ' repeated the pirate.

' Please, Archibald Archibaldovich,–' said the porter, turning purple,
' what could I do? I know there are ladies on the ver-andah, but...'

' The ladies don't matter. They don't mind,' replied the pirate,
roasting the porter with his glare. ' But the police mind! There's
only one way a man can walk round Moscow in his underwear–when he's
being escorted by the police on the way to a police station! And you,
if you call yourself a porter, ought to know that if you see a man in
that state it's your duty not to waste a moment but to start blowing
your whistle I Do you hear? Can't you hear what's happening on the
verandah? '

The wretched porter could hear the sounds of smashing crockery, groans
and women's screams from the verandah only too well.

' Now what do you propose to do about it? ' enquired the buccaneer.

The skin on the porter's face took on a leprous shade and his eyes
went blank. It seemed to him that the other man's black hair, now
neatly parted, was covered by a fiery silk kerchief. Starched
shirtfront and tail-coat vanished, a pistol was sticking out of his
leather belt. The porter saw himself dangling from the foretop
yard-arm, his tongue protruding from his lifeless, drooping head. He
could even hear the waves lapping against the ship's side. The
porter's knees trembled. But the buccaneer took pity on him and
switched off his terrifying glare.

' All right, Nikolai–but mind it never happens again! We can't have
porters like you in a restaurant–you'd better go and be a verger in a
church.' Having said this the captain gave a few rapid, crisp, clear
orders: ' Send the barman. Police. Statement. Car. Mental hospital.'
And he added : 'Whistle!'

A quarter of an hour later, to the astonishment of the people in the
restaurant, on the boulevard and at the windows of the surrounding
houses, the barman, the porter, a policeman, a waiter and the poet
Ryukhin were to be seen emerging from the gates of Griboyedov dragging
a young man trussed up like a mummy, who was weeping, spitting,
lashing out at Ryukhin and shouting for the whole street to hear :

' You swine! . . . You swine! . . . '

A buzzing crowd collected, discussing the incredible scene. It was of
course an abominable, disgusting, thrilling, revolting scandal which
only ended when a lorry drove away from the gates of Griboyedov
carrying the unfortunate Ivan Nikolayich, the policeman, the barman
and Ryukhin.

At half past one in the morning a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white overall entered the reception hall of a famous psychiatric clinic recently completed in the suburbs of Moscow. Three orderlies and the poet Ryukhin stood nervously watching Ivan Nikolayich as he sat on a divan. The dish-cloths that had been used to pinion Ivan Nikolayich now lay in a heap on the same divan, leaving his arms and legs free.

As the man came in Ryukhin turned pale, coughed and said timidly:

' Good morning, doctor.'

The doctor bowed to Ryukhin but looked at Ivan Nikolayich, who was sitting completely immobile and scowling furiously. He did not even move when the doctor appeared.

' This, doctor,' began Ryukhin in a mysterious whisper, glancing anxiously at Ivan Nikolayich, ' is the famous poet Ivan Bezdomny. We're afraid he may have D.Ts.'

' Has he been drinking heavily? ' enquired the doctor through clenched teeth.

' No, he's had a few drinks, but not enough . . .'

' Has he been trying to catch spiders, rats, little devils or dogs? '

' No,' replied Ryukhin, shuddering. ' I saw him yesterday and this morning ... he was perfectly well then.'

' Why is he in his underpants? Did you have to pull him out of bed?'

' He came into a restaurant like this, doctor'

' Aha, aha,' said the doctor in a tone of great satisfaction. ' And why the scratches? Has he been fighting? '

' He fell off the fence and then he hit someone in the restaurant , . . and someone else, too . . .' ' I see, I see, I see,' said the doctor and added, turning to Ivan :

' Good morning! '

' Hello, you quack! ' said Ivan, loudly and viciously.

Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he dared not raise his eyes. The courteous doctor, however, showed no signs of offence and with a practised gesture took off his spectacles, lifted the skirt of his overall, put them in his hip pocket and then asked Ivan:

' How old are you? '

' Go to hell! ' shouted Ivan rudely and turned away.

' Why are you being so disagreeable? Have I said anything to upset you?'

' I'm twenty-three,' said Ivan excitedly, ' and I'm going to lodge a complaint against all of you–and you in particular, you louse! ' He spat at Ryukhin.

' What will your complaint be? '

' That you arrested me, a perfectly healthy man, and forcibly dragged me off to the madhouse! ' answered Ivan in fury.

At this Ryukhin took a close look at Ivan and felt a chill down his spine : there was not a trace of insanity in the man's eyes. They had been slightly clouded at Griboyedov, but now they were as clear as before.

' Godfathers! ' thought Ryukhin in terror. ' He really is perfectly normal! What a ghastly business! Why have we brought him here? There's nothing the matter with him except a few scratches on his face . . .'

' You are not,' said the doctor calmly, sitting down on a stool on a single chromium-plated stalk, ' in a madhouse but in a clinic, where nobody is going to keep you if it isn't necessary.' Ivan gave him a suspicious scowl, but muttered :

' Thank God for that! At last I've found one normal person among all these idiots and the worst idiot of the lot is that incompetent fraud Sasha! '

' Who is this incompetent Sasha? ' enquired the doctor. ' That's him, Ryukhin,' replied Ivan, jabbing a dirty finger in

Ryukhin's direction, who spluttered in protest. ' That's all the thanks I get,' he thought bitterly, ' for showing him some sympathy! What a miserable swine he is! '

* A typical kulak mentality,' said Ivan Nikolayich, who obviously felt a sudden urge to attack Ryukhin. ' And what's more he's a kulak masquerading as a proletarian. Look at his mean face and compare it with all that pompous verse he writes for May Day ... all that stuff about "onwards and upwards" and "banners waving "! If you could look inside him and see what he's thinking you'd be sickened! ' And Ivan Nikolayich gave a hoot of malicious laughter.

Ryukhin, breathing heavily, turned red. There was only one thought in his mind–that he had nourished a serpent in his bosom, that he had tried to help someone who when it came to the pinch had treacherously rounded on him. The worst of it was that he could not answer back–one mustn't swear at a lunatic!

' Exactly why have they brought you here? ' asked the doctor, who had listened to Bezdomny's outburst with great attention.

' God knows, the blockheads! They grabbed me, tied me up with some filthy rags and dumped me in a lorry!'

' May I ask why you came into the restaurant in nothing but your underwear?'

' There's nothing odd about it,' answered Ivan. ' I went for a swim in the Moscow River and someone pinched my clothes and left me this junk instead! I couldn't walk round Moscow naked, could I? I had to put on what there was, because I was in a hurry to get to the Griboyedov restaurant.'

The doctor glanced questioningly at Ryukhin, who mumbled sulkily:

' Yes, that's the name of the restaurant.'

' Aha,' said the doctor, ' but why were you in such a hurry? Did you have an appointment there? '

' I had to catch the professor,' replied Ivan Nikolayich, glancing nervously round.

' What professor? ' ' Do you know Berlioz? ' asked Ivan with a meaning look.

' You mean . . . the composer? '

Ivan looked puzzled. ' What composer? Oh, yes . . . no, no. The composer just happens to have the same name as Misha Berlioz.'

Ryukhin was still feeling too offended to speak, but he had to explain:

' Berlioz, the chairman of MASSOLIT, was run over by a tram this evening at Patriarch's.'

' Don't lie, you–you don't know anything about it,' Ivan burst out at Ryukhin. ' I was there, not you! He made him fall under that tram on purpose! '

' Did he push him? '

' What are you talking about?' exclaimed Ivan, irritated by his listener's failure to grasp the situation. ' He didn't have to push him! He can do things you'd never believe! He knew in advance that Berlioz was going to fall under a tram! '

' Did anybody see this professor apart from you? '

' No, that's the trouble. Only Berlioz and myself.'

' I see. What steps did you take to arrest this murderer?' At this point the doctor turned and threw a glance at a woman in a white overall sitting behind a desk.

' This is what I did : I took this candle from the kitchen . . .'

' This one? ' asked the doctor, pointing to a broken candle lying on the desk beside the ikon.

' Yes, that's the one, and . . .'

' Why the ikon? '

' Well, er, the ikon. . . .' Ivan blushed. ' You see an ikon frightens them more than anything else.' He again pointed at Ryukhin. ' But the fact is that the professor is ... well, let's be frank . . . he's in league with the powers of evil . . . and it's not so easy to catch someone like him.'

The orderlies stretched their hands down their trouser-seams and stared even harder at Ivan.

' Yes,' went on Ivan. ' He's in league with them. There's no arguing about it. He once talked to Pontius Pilate. It's no good looking at me like that, I'm telling you the truth! He saw it all –the balcony, the palm trees. He was actually with Pontius Pilate, I'll swear it.'

' Well, now . . .'

' So, as I was saying, I pinned the ikon to my chest and ran .,.'

Here the clock struck twice.

' Oh, my God! ' exclaimed Ivan and rose from the divan. ' It's two o'clock and here am I wasting time talking to you! Would you mind–where's the telephone? '

' Show him the telephone,' the doctor said to the orderlies.

As Ivan grasped the receiver the woman quietly asked Ryukhin:

' Is he married? '

' No, he's a bachelor,' replied Ryukhin, startled.

' Is he a union member? '

' Yes.'

' Police? ' shouted Ivan into the mouthpiece. ' Police? Is that the duty officer? Sergeant, please arrange to send five motor cycles with sidecars, armed with machine-guns to arrest the foreign professor. What? Take me with you, I'll show you where to go. . . . This is Bezdomny, I'm a poet, and I'm speaking from the lunatic asylum. . . . What's your address? ' Bezdomny whispered to the doctor, covering the mouthpiece with his palm, and then yelled back into the receiver: ' Are you listening? Hullo! . . . Fools! . . .' Ivan suddenly roared, hurling the receiver at the wall. Then he turned round to the doctor, offered him his hand, said a curt goodbye and started to go.

' Excuse me, but where are you proposing to go?' said the doctor, looking Ivan in the eye. ' At this hour of night, in your underwear . . . You're not well, stay with us.'

' Come on, let me through,' said Ivan to the orderlies who had lined up to block the doorway. ' Are you going to let me go or not? ' shouted the poet in a terrible voice.

Ryukhin shuddered. The woman pressed a button on the desk ; a glittering metal box and a sealed ampoule popped out on to its glass surface.

' Ah, so that's your game, is it? ' said Ivan with a wild, hunted glance around. ' All right then . . . Goodbye!! ' And he threw himself head first at the shuttered window.

There was a loud crash, but the glass did not even crack, and a moment later Ivan Nikolayich was struggling in the arms of the orderlies. He screamed, tried to bite, then shouted :

' Fine sort of glass you put in your windows! Let me go! Let me go! '

A hypodermic syringe glittered in the doctor's hand, with one sweep the woman pushed back the tattered sleeve of Ivan's blouse and clamped his arm in a most un-feminine grip. There was a smell of ether, Ivan weakened slightly in the grasp of the four men and the doctor skilfully seized the moment to jab the needle into Ivan's arm. Ivan kept up the struggle for a few more seconds, then collapsed on to the divan.

' Bandits! ' cried Ivan and leaped up, only to be pushed back. As soon as they let him go he jumped up again, but sat down of his own accord. He said nothing, staring wildly about him, then gave a sudden unexpected yawn and smiled malevolently :

' So you're going to lock me up after all,' he said, yawned again, lay down with his head on the cushion, his fist under his cheek like a child and muttered in a sleepy voice but without malice : ' All right, then . . . but you'll pay for it ... I warned you, but if you want to ... What interests me most now is Pontius Pilate . . . Pilate . . .' And with that he closed his eyes.

' Vanna, put him in No. 117 by himself and with someone to watch him.' The doctor gave his instructions and replaced his spectacles. Then Ryukhin shuddered again : a pair of white doors opened without a sound and beyond them stretched a corridor lit by a row of blue night-bulbs. Out of the corridor rolled a couch on rubber wheels. The sleeping Ivan was lifted on to it, he was pushed off down the corridor and the doors closed after him.

' Doctor,' asked the shaken Ryukhin in a whisper, ' is he really ill?'

' Oh yes,' replied the doctor.

' Then what's the matter with him?' enquired Rvukhin timidly.

The exhausted doctor looked at Ryukhin and answered wearily:

' Overstimulation of the motor nerves and speech centres . . . delirious illusions. . . . Obviously a complicated case. Schizophrenia, I should think . . . touch of alcoholism, too. . . .'

Ryukhin understood nothing of this, except that Ivan Nikolayich was obviously in poor shape. He sighed and asked :

' What was that he said about some professor? '

' I expect he saw someone who gave a shock to his disturbed imagination. Or maybe it was a hallucination. . . .'

A few minutes later a lorry was taking Ryukhin back into Moscow. Dawn was breaking and the still-lit street lamps seemed superfluous and unpleasant. The driver, annoyed at missing a night's sleep, pushed his lorry as hard as it would go, making it skid round the corners.

The woods fell away in the distance and the river wandered off in another direction. As the lorry drove on the scenery slowly changed: fences, a watchman's hut, piles of logs, dried and split telegraph poles with bobbins strung on the wires between them, heaps of stones, ditches–in short, a feeling that Moscow was about to appear round the next corner and would rise up and engulf them at any moment.

The log of wood on which Ryukhin was sitting kept wobbling and slithering about and now and again it tried to slide away from under him altogether. The restaurant dish-cloths, which the policeman and the barman had thrown on to the back of the lorry before leaving earlier by trolley-bus, were being flung about all over the back of the lorry. Ryukhin started to try and pick them up, but with a sudden burst of ill-temper he hissed :

' To hell with them! Why should I crawl around after them? ' He pushed them away with his foot and turned away from them.

Ryukhin was in a state of depression. It was obvious that his visit to the asylum had affected him deeply. He tried to think what it was that was disturbing him. Was it the corridor with its blue lamps, which had lodged so firmly in his memory? Was it the thought that the worst misfortune in the world was to lose one's reason? Yes, it was that, of course–but that after all was a generalisation, it applied to everybody. There was something else, though. What was it? The insult–that was it. Yes, those insulting words that Bezdomny had flung into his face. And the agony of it was not that they were insulting but that they were true.

The poet stopped looking about him and instead stared gloomily at the dirty, shaking floor of the lorry in an agony of self-reproach.

Yes, his poetry . . . He was thirty-two! And what were his prospects? To go on writing a few poems every year. How long–until he was an old man? Yes, until he was an old man. What would these poems do for him? Make him famous? ' What rubbish! Don't fool yourself. Nobody ever gets famous from writing bad poetry. Why is it bad, though? He was right –he was telling the truth! ' said Ryukhin pitilessly to himself. I don't believe in a single word of what I've written . . .! '

Embittered by an upsurge of neurasthenia, the poet swayed. The floor beneath had stopped shaking. Ryukhin lifted his head and saw that he was in the middle of Moscow, that day had dawned, that his lorry had stopped in a traffic-jam at a boulevard intersection and that right near him stood a metal man on a plinth, his head inclined slightly forward, staring blankly down the street.

Strange thoughts assailed the poet, who was beginning to feel ill. ' Now there's an example of pure luck .'–Ryukhin stood up on the lorry's platform and raised his fist in an inexplicable urge to attack the harmless cast-iron man–'. . . everything he did in life, whatever happened to him, it all went his way, everything conspired to make him famous! But what did he achieve? I've never been able to discover . . . What about that famous phrase of his that begins " A storm of mist. . ."? What a load of rot! He was lucky, that's all, just lucky! '–Ryukhin concluded venomously, feeling the lorry start to move under him–' and just because that White officer shot at him and smashed his hip, he's famous for ever . . .'

The jam was moving. Less than two minutes later the poet, now not only ill but ageing, walked on to the Griboyedov verandah. It was nearly empty.

Ryukhin, laden with dish-cloths, was greeted warmly by Archibald Archibaldovich and immediately relieved of the horrible rags. If Ryukhin had not been so exhausted by the lorry-ride and by his experiences at the clinic, he would probably have enjoyed describing everything that had happened in the hospital and would have embellished the story with some invented details. But for the moment he was incapable. Although Ryukhin was not an observant man, now, after his agony on the lorry, for the first time be looked really hard at the pirate and realised that although the man was asking questions about Bezdomny and even exclaiming ' Oh, poor fellow! ' he was in reality totally indifferent to Bezdomny's fate and did not feel sorry for him at all. ' Good for him! He's right! ' thought Ryukhin with cynical, masochistic relish and breaking off his description of the symptoms of schizophrenia, he asked :

' Archibald Archibaldovich, could I possibly have a glass of vodka. . .? '

The pirate put on a sympathetic expression and whispered :

' Of course, I quite understand . . . right away . . .' and signalled to a waiter.

A quarter of an hour later Ryukhin was sitting in absolute solitude hunched over a dish of sardines, drinking glass after glass of vodka, understanding more and more about himself and admitting that there was nothing in his life that he could put right–he could only try to forget.

The poet had wasted his night while others had spent it enjoying themselves and now he realised that it was lost forever. He only had to lift his head up from the lamp and look at the sky to see that the night had gone beyond return. Waiters were hurriedly jerking the cloths off the tables. The cats pacing the verandah had a morning look about them. Day broke inexorably over the poet.

If next day someone had said to Stepa Likhodeyev 'Stepa! If vou don't get up this minute you're going to be shot,' he would have replied in a faint, languid voice : ' All right, shoot me. Do what you like to me, but I'm not getting up! '

The worst of it was that he could not open his eyes, because when he did so there would be a flash of lightning and his head would shiver to fragments. A great bell was tolling in his head, brown spots with livid green edges were swimming around somewhere between his eyeballs and his closed lids. To cap it all he felt sick and the nausea was somehow connected with the sound of a gramophone.

Stepa tried to remember what had happened, but could only recall one thing–yesterday, somewhere. God knows where, he had been holding a table napkin and trying to kiss a woman, promising her that he would come and visit her tomorrow at the stroke of noon. She had refused, saying ' No, no, I won't be at home,' but Stepa had insisted ' I don't care–I'll come anyway!'

Stepa had now completely forgotten who that woman had been, what the time was, what day of what month it was, and worst of all he had no idea where he was. In an effort to find out, he unstuck his gummed-up left eyelid. Something glimmered in the semi-darkness. At last Stepa recognised it as a mirror. He was lying cross-wise on the bed in his own bedroom. Then something hit him on the head and he closed his eyes and groaned.

Stepa Likhodeyev, manager of the Variety Theatre, had woken up thait morning in the flat that he shared with Berlioz in a big six-stoirey block of flats on Sadovaya Street. This flat–No. 50– had a strange reputation. Two years before, it had been owned by the widow of a jeweller called de Fougere, Anna Frantzevna, a respectable and very business-like lady of fifty, who let three of her five rooms to lodgers. One of them was, it seems, called Belomut; the other's name has been lost.

Two years ago odd things began happening in that apartment– people started to vanish from it without trace. One Monday afternoon a policeman called, invited the second lodger (the one whose name is no longer known) into the hall and asked him to come along to the police station for a minute or two to sign a document. The lodger told Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna's devoted servant of many years, to say that if anybody rang him up he would be back in ten minutes. He then went out accompanied by the courteous policeman in white gloves. But he not only failed to come back in ten minutes; he never came back at all. Odder still, the policeman appeared to have vanished with him.

Anfisa, a devout and frankly rather a superstitious woman, informed the distraught Anna Frantsevna that it was witchcraft, that she knew perfectly well who had enticed away the lodger and the policeman, only she dared not pronounce the name at night-time.

Witchcraft once started, as we all know, is virtually unstoppable. The anonymous lodger disappeared, you will remember, on a Monday ; the following Wednesday Belomut, too, vanished from the face of the earth, although admittedly in different circumstances. He was fetched as usual in the morning by the car which took him to work, but it never brought him back and never called again.

Words cannot describe the pain and distress which this caused to madame Belomut, but alas for her, she was not fated to endure even this unhappy state for long. On returning from her dacha that evening, whither she had hastily gone with Anfisa, Anna Frantzevna found no trace of madame Belomut in the flat and what was more, the doors of both rooms occupied by the Belomuts had been sealed. Two days of uncertainty and insomnia passed for Anna Frantzevna ; on the third day she made another hasty visit to her dacha from whence, it need hardly be said, she never returned. Anfisa, left alone, cried her eye s out and finally went to bed at two-o'clock in the morning. Nobody knows what happened to her after that, but tenants of the neighbouring flat described having heard knocking coming from No. 50 and having seen lights burning in the windows all night. By morning Anfisa too was gone. Legends of all kinds about the mysterious flat and its vanishing lodgers circulated in the building for some time. According to one of them the devout and spinsteriy Anfisa used to carry twenty-five large diamonds, belonging to Anna Frantzevna, in a chamois-leather bag between her withered breasts. It was said, too, that among other things a priceless treasure consisting of those same diamonds and a hoard of tsarist gold coins were somehow found in the coal-she'd behind Anna Frantzevna's dacha. Lacking proof, of course, we shall never know how true these rumours were. However, the flat only remained empty for a week before Berlioz and his wife and Stepa and his wife moved into it. Naturally as soon as they took possession of the haunted flat the oddest things started happening to them too. Within a single month both wives had disappeared, although not without trace. Rumour had it that Berlioz's wife had been seen in Kharkov with a ballet-master, whilst Stepa's wife had apparently found her way to an orphanage where, the story went, the manager of the Variety had used his connections to get her a room on condition that she never showed her face in Sadovaya Street again. . . .

So Stepa groaned. He wanted to call his maid, Grunya, and ask her for an aspirin but he was conscious enough to realise that it would be useless because Grunya most probably had no aspirin. He tried to call for Berlioz's help and twice moaned ' Misha . . . Misha . . .', but as you will have guessed, there was no reply. There was complete silence in the flat.

Wriggling his toes, Stepa deduced that he was lying in his socks. He ran a trembling hand down his hip to test whether he had his trousers on or not and found that he had not. At last, realising that he was alone and abandoned, that there was nobody to help him, he decided to get up, whatever superhuman effort it might cost him.

Stepa prised open his eyelids and saw himself reflected in the long mirror in the shape of a man whose hair stuck out in all directions, with a puffy, stubble-grown face, with watery eyes and wearing a dirty shirt, a collar, tie, underpants and socks.

As he looked at himself in the mirror, he also noticed standing beside it a strange man dressed in a black suit and a black beret.

Stepa sat up on the bed and did his best to focus his bloodshot eyes on the stranger. The silence was broken by the unknown visitor, who said gravely, in a low voice with a foreign accent:

' Good morning, my dear Stepan Bogdanovich! '

There was a pause. Pulling himself together with fearful effort Stepa said:

' What do you want?' He did not recognise his own voice. He had spoken the word ' what' in a treble, ' do you ' in a bass and ' want' had simply not emerged at all.

The stranger gave an amiable smile, pulled out a large gold watch with a diamond triangle on the cover, listened to it strike eleven times and said :

' Eleven. I have been waiting exactly an hour for you to wake up. You gave me an appointment to see you at your flat at ten so here I am!'

Stepa fumbled for his trousers on the chair beside his bed and whispered:

' Excuse me. . . .' He put on his trousers and asked hoarsely :

' Please tell me–who are you? '

He found talking difficult, as with every word someone stuck a needle into his brain, causing him infernal agony.

' What! Have you forgotten my name too? ' The stranger smiled.

' Sorry . . .' said Stepa huskily. He could feel his hangover developing a new symptom : the floor beside his bed seemed to be on the move and any moment now he was liable to take a dive head first down into hell.

' My dear Stepan Bogdanovich,' said the visitor with a shrewd smile. ' Aspirin will do you no good. Follow a wise old rule– the hair of the dog. The only thing that will bring you back to life is two measures of vodka with something sharp and peppery to eat.'

Ill though Stepa was he had enough sense to realise that since he had been found in this state he had better tell all.

' Frankly . . .' he began, scarcely able to move his tongue, ' I did have a bit too . . .'

' Say no more! ' interrupted the visitor and pushed the armchair to one side.

Stepa's eyes bulged. There on a little table was a tray, laid with slices of white bread and butter, pressed caviare in a glass bowl, pickled mushrooms on a saucer, something in a little saucepan and finally vodka in one of the jeweller's ornate decanters. The decanter was so chilled that it was wet with condensation from standing in a finger-bowl full of cracked ice.

The stranger cut Stepa's astonishment short by deftly pouring him out half a glass of vodka.

' What about you? ' croaked Stepa.

' With pleasure! '

With a shaking hand Stepa raised the glass to his lips and the mysterious guest swallowed his at one gulp. As he munched his caviare Stepa was able to squeeze out the words :

' Won't you have a bite to eat too? '

' Thank you, but I never eat when I'm drinking,' replied the stranger, pouring out a second round. He lifted the lid of the saucepan. It contained little frankfurters in tomato sauce.

Slowly the awful green blobs in front of his eyes dissolved, words started to form and most important of all Stepa's memory began to come back. That was it–he had been at Khustov's dacha at Skhodna and Khustov had driven Stepa out there by taxi. He even remembered hailing the taxi outside the Metropole. There had been another man with them–an actor ... or was he an actor? . . . anyhow he had a portable gramophone. Yes, yes, they had all gone to the dacha! And the dogs, he remembered, had started howling when they played the gramophone. Only the woman Stepa had tried to kiss remained a complete blank . . . who the hell was she? . . . Didn't she work for the radio? Or perhaps she didn't. . . .

Gradually the previous day came back into focus, but Stepa was much more interested in today and in particular in this odd stranger who had materialised in his bedroom complete with snacks and vodka. If only someone would explain it all!

' Well, now, I hope, you've remembered my name? '

Stepa could only grin sheepishly and spread his hands.

' Well, really! I suspect you drank port on top of vodka last night. What a way to behave!'

' Please keep this to yourself,' said Stepa imploringly.

' Oh, of course, of course! But naturally I can't vouch for Khustov.'

' Do you know Khustov? '

' I saw that individual for a moment or two in your office yesterday, but one cursory glance at his face was enough to convince me that he was a scheming, quarrelsome, sycophantic swine.'

' He's absolutely right! ' thought Stepa, amazed at such a truthful, precise and succinct description of Khustov.

The ruins of yesterday were piecing themselves together now, but the manager of the Variety still felt vaguely anxious. There was still a gaping black void in his memory. He had absolutely no recollection of having seen this stranger in his office the day before.

' Woland, professor of black magic,' said the visitor 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.

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.