The Master and Margarita

CHAPTER 13. The Hero Enters       And so,  the  unknown  man shook  his finger  at  Ivan  and  whispered:'Shhh!.. .'     Ivan lowered his legs from the bed and  peered. Cautiously looking intothe  room  from  the   balcony  was  a  clean-shaven,   dark-haired  man  ofapproximately  thirty-eight, with a sharp nose, anxious  eyes, and a wisp ofhair hanging down on his forehead.     Having  listened and  made  sure  that Ivan was  alone, the  mysteriousvisitor took heart and stepped into the room. Here Ivan saw that the man wasdressed  as a patient. He  was wearing long underwear,  slippers on his barefeet, and a brown dressing-gown thrown over his shoulders.     The visitor winked at Ivan, hid a bunch of keys in his pocket, inquiredin a whisper: 'May I sit down?' --  and receiving an affirmative nod, placedhimself in an armchair.     'How did you get here?' Ivan asked in a whisper, obeying the dry fingershaken at him. 'Aren't the balcony grilles locked?'     The grilles are locked,' the guest agreed,  'but  Praskovya Fyodorovna,while the  dearest person, is also, alas, quite absent-minded. A month ago Istole a bunch of keys from her, and so gained the opportunity of getting outon  to  the common balcony, which runs around the entire  floor,  and  so ofoccasionally calling on a neighbour.'     'If you can get out  on to the balcony,  you  can escape. Or is it highup?' Ivan was interested.     'No,' the guest replied firmly, 'I cannot escape from here, not becauseit's high up, but because I have nowhere to escape to.' And  he added, aftera pause: 'So, here we sit.'     'Here  we sit,'  Ivan replied,  peering into the man's  brown and  veryrestless eyes.     'Yes .  .  .' here the guest suddenly became alarmed,  'but you're  notviolent, I hope? Because, you know, I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, orother things like that. Especially hateful to me are people's cries, whethercries of  rage, suffering, or anything else. Set me at ease, tell me, you'renot violent?'     'Yesterday  in  a  restaurant  I  socked  one  type  in the  mug,'  thetransformed poet courageously confessed.     'Your grounds?' the guest asked sternly.     "No grounds, I must confess,' Ivan answered, embarrassed.     'Outrageous,' the  guest denounced Ivan and added: 'And besides, what away to express yourself: "socked  in the mug" ...  It is not known preciselywhether a man  has a mug or a  face. And, after all,  it may well be a face.So, you know, using fists ... No, you should give that up, and for good.'     Having thus reprimanded Ivan, the guest inquired:     'Your profession?'     'Poet,' Ivan confessed, reluctantly for some reason.     The visitor became upset.     'Ah, just my luck!' he exclaimed, but at once reconsidered, apologized,and asked: 'And what is your name?'     'Homeless.'     'Oh-oh

...' the guest said, wincing.     'What, you mean you dislike my poetry?' Ivan asked with curiosity.     'I dislike it terribly.'     'And what have you read.'     'I've never read any of your poetry!' the visitor exclaimed nervously.     Then how can you say that?'     'Well, what of it?' the guest replied. 'As if I haven't read others. Orelse  .. .  maybe there's some miracle? Very well, I'm ready to take  it  onfaith. Is your poetry good? You tell me yourself.'     'Monstrous!' Ivan suddenly spoke boldly and frankly.     'Don't write any more!' the visitor asked beseechingly.     'I promise and I swear!' Ivan said solemnly.     The  oath  was sealed with a handshake,  and  here soft  footsteps  andvoices were heard in the corridor.     'Shh!' the guest whispered and,  jumping out to the balcony, closed thegrille behind him.     Praskovya  Fyodorovna  peeked  in, asked Ivan how he  was  feeling  andwhether he wished  to sleep in the dark or  with a light. Ivan  asked her toleave the light on, and Praskovya Fyodorovna withdrew, wishing the patient agood night. And when everything was quiet, the guest came back again.     He informed Ivan in a whisper that  there was a new arrival in room 119-- some  fat man with a  purple  physiognomy,  who kept muttering  somethingabout  currency in  the  ventilation and swearing that unclean  powers  wereliving in their place on Sadovaya.     'He curses Pushkin up and down and keeps shouting: "Kurolesov,  encore,encore!"' the guest said, twitching nervously. Having calmed himself, he satdown,  said: 'Anyway, God  help him,'  and continued  his  conversation withIvan: 'So, how did you wind up here?'     'On account of Pontius  Pilate,'  Ivan replied, casting  a glum look atthe floor.     'What?!'  the guest cried, forgetting all caution, and clapped his handover  his own mouth. 'A staggering coincidence! Tell me about it, I beg you,I beg you!'     Feeling  trust  in  the  unknown  man  for  some  reason,  Ivan  began,falteringly  and timorously  at first,  then more boldly, to tell about  theprevious day's  story  at the  Patriarch's  Ponds. Yes,  it  was  a gratefullistener that  Ivan  Nikolaevich  acquired in the person  of  the mysteriousstealer  of keys! The guest did not  take Ivan for a madman, he showed greatinterest in what  he  was being told, and, as  the  story developed, finallybecame ecstatic. Time and again he interrupted Ivan with exclamations:     'Well, well, go on, go  on, I beg you! Only,  in the name of all that'sholy, don't leave anything out!'     Ivan left nothing out in any  case, it was easier for  him  to tell  itthat  way,  and he  gradually  reached the moment when Pontius  Pilate, in awhite mantle with blood-red lining, came out to the balcony.     Then the visitor put his hands together prayerfully and whispered:     'Oh, how I guessed! How I guessed it all!'     The  listener  accompanied the  description of Berlioz's terrible deathwith an enigmatic remark, while his eyes flashed with spite:     'I only regret  that  it  wasn't  the  critic  Latunsky  or the  writerMstislav Lavrovich instead of this  Berlioz!', and  he cried  out frenziedlybut soundlessly: 'Go on!'     The  cat  handing  money  to  the  woman  conductor  amused  the  guestexceedingly,  and he choked with quiet laughter watching as Ivan, excited bythe  success of his narration, quietly hopped on  bent legs, portraying  thecat holding the coin up next to his whiskers.     'And  so,'  Ivan concluded, growing  sad  and melancholy  after tellingabout the events at Griboedov's, 'I wound up here.'     The guest sympathetically placed a hand on the poor poet's shoulder andspoke thus:     'Unlucky poet! But you yourself,  dear heart, are to blame for it  all.You oughtn't to have behaved so casually and even impertinently with him. Soyou've paid  for  it. And  you  must still  say thank you  that you got  offcomparatively cheaply.'     'But who is he, finally?' Ivan asked, shaking his fists in agitation.     The guest peered at Ivan and answered with a question:     'You're  not going to get  upset? We're  all  unreliable here ... Therewon't be any calling for the doctor, injections, or other fuss?'     'No, no!' Ivan exclaimed. 'Tell me, who is he?'     'Very well,' the visitor replied, and he said weightily and distinctly:     "Yesterday at the Patriarch's Ponds you met Satan.'     Ivan did not get upset, as he had  promised, but even so he was greatlyastounded.     'That can't be! He doesn't exist!'     'Good  heavens! Anyone  else might say  that,  but not  you.  You  wereapparently one  of  his  first  victims. You're  sitting,  as  you  yourselfunderstand, in  a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying  he doesn't exist.Really, it's strange!'     Thrown off, Ivan fell silent.     'As soon as you started describing him,' the guest went on, 'I began torealize who it was that you had the pleasure of talking with yesterday. And,really, I'm  surprised  at  Berlioz!  Now  you,  of course,  are a  virginalperson,'  here  the  guest apologized again, 'but  that  one, from what I'veheard  about him,  had  after all read at least  something! The  very  firstthings  this  professor said dispelled  all my  doubts.  One can't  fail  torecognize him,  my friend! Though  you . .. again I  must apologize, but I'mnot mistaken, you are an ignorant man?'     'Indisputably,' the unrecognizable Ivan agreed.     'Well, so  ... even  the face, as you described it, the different eyes,the eyebrows! . .. Forgive me, however, perhaps you've never even heard  theopera Faust?

     Ivan became terribly embarrassed for some reason and, his face  aflame,began mumbling something about some trip to a sanatorium ... to Yalta . . .     'Well, so, so ... hardly surprising! But Berlioz, I repeat, astounds me... He's  not only a well-read man but also a very shrewd one. Though I mustsay in his defence that Woland is, of course, capable  of pulling  the  woolover the eyes of an even shrewder man.'     'What?!' Ivan cried out in his turn.     'Hush!'     Ivan slapped himself roundly on the forehead with his palm and rasped:     'I see, I see. He had the letter "W" on his visiting card.  Ai-yai-yai,what a thing!' He lapsed into a bewildered silence for some time, peering atthe moon floating  outside the  grille, and then  spoke:  'So that means  hemight actually have been at Pontius Pilate's? He was already born  then? Andthey call me a madman!' Ivan added indignantly, pointing to the door.     A bitter wrinkle appeared on the guest's lips.     'Let's  look the truth  in  the  eye.'  And the guest  turned  his facetowards the nocturnal luminary racing through  a cloud.  'You and I are bothmadmen, there's  no denying  that!  You see, he shocked  you -  and you cameunhinged, since  you evidently had the ground prepared  for it. But what youdescribe undoubtedly  took place in reality. But  it's so extraordinary thateven Stravinsky, a psychiatrist of genius, did  not, of course, believe you.Did he examine you?' (Ivan  nodded.) 'Your interlocutor was at Pilate's, andhad breakfast with Kant, and now he's visiting Moscow.'     'But he'll  be up to devil knows  what  here! Oughtn't we to catch  himsomehow?' the  former,  not yet  definitively quashed Ivan still raised  hishead, though without much confidence, in the new Ivan.     'You've already tried, and  that  will do for you,'  the  guest repliedironically. 'I don't advise others  to try  either. And as for being  up  tosomething, rest  assured,  he will be! Ah, ah! But how annoying  that it wasyou who met him and not I. Though  it's all  burned up,  and  the coals havegone  to  ashes,  still,  I  swear,  for  that meeting  I'd  give  PraskovyaFyodorovna's bunch of keys, for I have nothing else to give. I'm destitute.'     'But what do you need him for?'     The  guest paused  ruefully  for a long time and  twitched, but finallyspoke:     'YOU  see,  it's  such a  strange story, I'm sitting here  for the samereason  you  are -  namely, on  account of  Pontius Pilate.' Here  the guestlooked around fearfully and said: The  thing is that  a  year  ago I wrote anovel about Pilate.'     'You're a writer?' the poet asked with interest.     The guest's face darkened and he threatened  Ivan  with his fist,  thensaid:     'I  am a  master.'  He  grew stern  and  took  from  the pocket  of hisdressing-gown a completely greasy black cap with  the letter 'M' embroideredon it in yellow silk. He put this cap on  and showed himself to Ivan both inprofile and full face, to prove that he was a  master. 'She  sewed it for mewith her own hands,' he added mysteriously.     'And what is your name?'     'I no  longer  have  a  name,'  the strange guest answered  with gloomydisdain.  'I  renounced  it, as I  generally  did everything  in life. Let'sforget it.'     Then at least tell me about the novel,' Ivan asked delicately.     'If you please,  sir. My life, it must be  said, has  taken  a not veryordinary course,' the guest began.     ...  A historian by education, he had worked until two years ago at oneof the Moscow museums, and, besides that, had also done translations.     'From what languages?' Ivan interrupted curiously.     'I know  five languages  besides my own,' replied the guest,  'English,French, German, Latin and Greek. Well, I can also read Italian a little.'     'Oh, my!' Ivan whispered enviously.     . .  . The historian had lived solitarily,  had no family anywhere  andalmost no acquaintances in Moscow. And, just think, one day he won a hundredthousand roubles.     'Imagine my  astonishment,' the guest in the black cap whispered, 'whenI put my hand in the basket of dirty laundry and, lo and  behold, it had thesame number as in the newspaper. A state bond,'' he explained, 'they gave itto me at the museum.'     .. .  Having won a  hundred  thousand roubles, Ivan's mysterious  guestacted thus: bought books, gave up his room on Myasnitskaya .. .     'Ohh, that accursed hole! . . .' he growled.     . . . and rented from a builder, in a lane near the Arbat, two rooms inthe basement of a little house in the garden. He left his work at the museumand began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate.     'Ah, that was a golden age!' the narrator whispered,  his eyes shining.'A  completely private little  apartment,  plus  a front hall with a sink init,' he underscored for some reason with special pride, 'little windows justlevel  with the paved walk leading  from the gate. Opposite, only four stepsaway, near the fence, lilacs, a linden and a maple. Ah, ah, ah! In winter itwas very seldom  that I saw someone's black feet through my window and heardthe snow crunching under them. And in my stove a fire was eternally blazing!But suddenly spring came and through the dim glass I saw lilac bushes, nakedat first,  then  dressing  themselves  up  in green.  And it was  then, lastspring, that  something  happened far more delightful than getting a hundredthousand roubles. And that, you must agree, is a huge sum of money!'     That's true,' acknowledged the attentively listening Ivan. 'I opened mylittle windows and sat in the second, quite minuscule room.' The guest beganmeasuring with his arms: 'Here's the sofa, and another sofa  opposite, and alittle  table  between them,  with a  beautiful night lamp on  it, and booksnearer the window, and here a small writing table, and in the  first room --a  huge  room, one hundred and  fifty square feet! --  books, books and  thestove.  Ah, what furnishings I  had! The extraordinary smell of the  lilacs!And my head was getting light with fatigue, and Pilate was flying to the end. . .'     'White mantle,  red  lining! I understand!' Ivan exclaimed.  'Preciselyso! Pilate  was flying to the end,  to the end,  and I already knew that thelast words of the novel would be: ". . . the fifth procurator  of Judea, theequestrian Pontius Pilate". Well, naturally, I  used to go out for a walk. Ahundred thousand is a huge sum, and I  had an  excellent suit. Or I'd go andhave  dinner  in some cheap restaurant. There was a wonderful  restaurant onthe Arbat, I don't know whether it exists now.' Here the guest's eyes openedw^de, and he  went on  whispering,  gazing  at the  moon:  'She was carryingrepulsive, alarming yellow  flowers in her  hand. Devil knows  what  they'recalled, but for some reason they're the first to appear in Moscow. And theseflowers  stood out clearly  against her black spring  coat. She was carryingyellow flowers! Not a nice colour. She turned down a lane from Tverskaya andthen looked back. Well, you know Tverskaya! Thousands of people were walkingalong Tverskaya, but I can assure you that  she saw me alone, and looked notreally alarmed, but even  as if in pain. And I was struck not so much by herbeauty as  by an extraordinary loneliness  in  her eyes,  such as no one hadever seen  before! Obeying this yellow sign, I also turned down the lane andfollowed her.  We  walked along the  crooked, boring lane silendy, I  on oneside, she on the other.  And,  imagine, there  was not a soul in the lane. Iwas suffering,  because it seemed  to  me that it  was necessary to speak toher, and I worried that I wouldn't utter a single word, and she would leave,and I'd never see her again. And, imagine, suddenly she began to speak:     ' "Do you like my flowers?"     'I remember clearly the sound other voice, rather low,  slightly husky,and, stupid as  it is,  it seemed that the echo  resounded  in  the lane andbounced off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed to her side and, comingup to her, answered:     '"No!"     'She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly,  and quite unexpectedly,understood that all my life I had loved precisely this woman! Quite a thing,eh? Of course, you'll say I'm mad?'     'I won't say anything,' Ivan exclaimed, and added: 'I beg you, go on!'     And the guest continued.     'Yes, she looked at  me  in  surprise, and  then, having  looked, askedthus:     '"You generally don't like flowers?"     'It seemed to me there was hostility in her voice. I was walking besideher, trying to  keep  in step, and,  to my surprise,  did not feel the leastconstraint.     ' "No, I like flowers, but not this kind," I said.     '"Which, then?"     '"I like roses."     'Then I regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily and threwthe flowers into the gutter.  Slightly at a loss, I nevertheless picked themup and gave them to her, but she, with a smile, pushed the flowers away, andI carried them in my hand.     'So we  walked silently for some time, until she  took the flowers frommy  hand and threw them to  the pavement, then put her own  hand in a  blackglove with a bell-shaped cuff under my arm, and we walked on side by side.'     'Go on,' said Ivan, 'and please don't leave anything out!'     'Go on?' repeated the visitor. 'Why, you can guess  for yourself how itwent on.'  He  suddenly wiped  an  unexpected tear with his right sleeve andcontinued: 'Love  leaped out  in front  of us like  a murderer in  an  alleyleaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, asa Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn'tso, that we had, of course, loved each other  for a long, long time, withoutknowing  each other, never having seen each other, and  that she  was livingwith a different man ... as I was,  too, then .. . with that, what's her . ..'     'With whom?' asked Homeless.     With that.  . .  well. . . with .. .'  replied the  guest, snapping hisfingers.     'YOU were married?'     'Why,  yes,  that's  why I'm snapping  .. .  With that  ... Varenka ...Manechka . . . no, Varenka ... striped dress, the museum ... Anyhow, I don'tremember.     'Well, so she  said she  went out  that day with yellow flowers  in herhand  so that I would find her at last, and that if  it hadn't happened, shewould have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.     'Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that same day, an hour later,when,  without having noticed  the city,  we found  ourselves by the Kremlinwall on the embankment.     We talked as if we had parted only the  day before, as if we  had knowneach other  for many years. We arranged to  meet  the  next day  at the sameplace  on  the Moscow River, and we did. The  May sun shone down on us.  Andsoon, very soon, this woman became my secret wife.     'She used to come to  me every afternoon, but I would begin waiting forher in the morning.  This waiting expressed itself in the  moving around  ofobjects  on the table. Ten minutes  before, I  would sit  down by the littlewindow and begin to  listen  for the banging of  the decrepit gate.  And howcurious: before  my meeting with her, few people came  to  our  yard -- moresimply, no  one  came -- but now it seemed to me that  the  whole  city cameflocking there.     'Bang goes the  gate, bang goes my heart, and, imagine, it's inevitablysomebody's  dirty  boots  level  with  my   face   behind   the  window.   Aknife-grinder. Now, who needs a knife-grinder in our house? To sharpen what?What knives?     'She would come through the gate once, but my heart would pound no lessthan ten  times before that, I'm not lying. And then, when her hour came andthe hands showed  noon, it even wouldn't stop pounding until, almost withouttapping, almost noiselessly, her shoes would come even with my window, theirblack suede bows held tightly by steel buckles.     'Sometimes she would get mischievous, pausing at the second window  andtapping the glass with her toe. That same instant  I would be at the window,but the shoe would be gone, the  black silk blocking the light would be gone-- I'd go and open the door for her.     'No  one knew  of  our liaison,  I assure you of that, though  it neverhappens. Her husband didn't know, her acquaintances  didn't know. In the oldhouse where I had that  basement, people knew, of course, they saw that somewoman visited me, but they didn't know her name.'     'But  who is she?' asked Ivan, intrigued  in the highest degree by thislove story.     The  guest made a gesture signifying  that he would never tell that  toanyone, and went on with his story.     Ivan learned that the master and the  unknown woman loved each other sodeeply that they  became  completely inseparable. Ivan could clearly pictureto himself  the two  rooms in the basement of the house, where it was alwaystwilight because  of the lilacs and the fence. The  worn  red furniture, thebureau, the clock on it which struck every half hour, and books, books, fromthe painted floor to the sooty ceiling, and the stove.     Ivan  learned that his  guest and his secret wife, from  the very firstdays  of their  liaison,  had  come to the conclusion  that  fate itself hadthrown them together at the corner of Tverskaya and that lane, and that theyhad been created for each other for all time.     Ivan learned from the guest's story how the lovers would spend the day.She would come, and  put on an  apron first thing,  and  in the narrow fronthall  where  stood that  same  sink of which the poor patient  was  for somereason so proud, would light the kerosene stove on the wooden table, preparelunch, and  set it out  on  the oval table in  the first  room. When the Maystorms   came  and  water  rushed  noisily  through  the  gateway  past  thenear-sighted windows, threatening to flood  their last  refuge,  the  loverswould light the stove and bake potatoes in it. Steam rose from the potatoes,the  black  potato skins  dirtied  their  fingers.  Laughter  came from  thebasement,  the trees  in  the  garden after rain  shed broken  twigs,  whiteclusters.     When  the  storms  ended and  sultry summer came, there appeared in thevase  the long-awaited roses they both  loved. The  man who called himself amaster worked  feverishly  on  his  novel, and this novel  also absorbed theunknown woman.     'Really, there were times when I'd begin to be jealous of it on accountof her,' the night visitor come from the moonlit balcony whispered to Ivan.     Her  slender fingers with  sharply filed nails buried in her  hair, sheendlessly reread what he had  written,  and  after rereading  it  would  sitsewing that very same cap. Sometimes she crouched down by  the lower shelvesor stood  by  the upper ones and  wiped  the hundreds of dusty spines with acloth. She foretold fame, she urged him on, and it  was then that she  beganto call him  a master.  She waited impatiently for the already promised lastwords about  the fifth procurator ofJudea,  repeated aloud  in  a  sing-songvoice certain phrases she liked, and said that her life was in this novel.     It  was finished in  the month  of  August, was  given to some  unknowntypist, and she typed it in five copies. And finally  the  hour came when hehad to leave his secret refuge and go out into life.     'And  I went  out  into life holding  it in my hands, and then my  lifeended,'  the master whispered  and  drooped his  head, and for  a long  timenodded the woeful black cap with the yellow letter  'M' on it.  He continuedhis story, but it became somewhat incoherent, one could only understand thatsome catastrophe had then befallen Ivan's guest.     'For the first time I found myself in the world of literature, but now,when  it's  all over  and my ruin  is  clear, I recall it with horror!'  themaster  whispered  solemnly and  raised  his  hand.  'Yes,  he  astounded megreatly, ah, how he astounded me!'     'Who?' Ivan whispered barely audibly, fearing to interrupt the agitatednarrator.     'Why, the editor, I tell you, the editor! Yes, he read it all right. Helooked at me as if I  had a swollen  cheek, looked sidelong into the corner,and even  tittered  in embarrassment. He crumpled  the manuscript needlesslyand grunted. The questions he asked seemed crazy to me. Saving nothing aboutthe essence of the novel, he asked me who I was, where I came from,  and howlong  I  had been writing, and why no one  had heard of  me before, and evenasked  what in  my opinion was a totally idiotic question: who had given  methe  idea  of writing a novel on such a strange theme? Finally I got sick ofhim and  asked directly whether  he would publish the novel or not. Here  hestarted squirming, mumbled something, and  declared that he could not decidethe question  on his own, that other members  of the editorial board  had toacquaint themselves  with my work -- namely, the cridcs Latunsky and Ariman,and the writer  Mstislav Lavrovich.^[2] He asked me to come in twoweeks. I  came in two  weeks and was  received by  some girl whose eyes werecrossed towards her nose from constant lying.'     That's Lapshennikova, the editorial secretary,' Ivan said with a smirk.He knew very well the world described so wrathfully by his guest.     'Maybe,'  the other  snapped,  'and so  from  her I got my novel  back,already quite greasy and dishevelled. Trying to avoid looking me in the eye,Lapshennikova told me that the publisher was provided with material for  twoyears ahead, and therefore the question of printing my novel, as she put it,"did not arise".     'What  do  I remember  after  that?' the  master muttered,  rubbing histemple. 'Yes, red petals strewn across  the tide page,  and also the eyes ofmy friend. Yes, those eyes I remember.'     The story of Ivan's guest was becoming more confused, more filled  withall  sorts of reticences. He said something about  slanting rain and despairin  the basement  refuge,  about having  gone  elsewhere. He  exclaimed in awhisper that he did not blame her in the  least for pushing him to fight  --oh, no, he did not blame her!     Further on,  as Ivan  heard, something sudden and strange happened. Oneday our  hero  opened  a newspaper  and  saw  in it an article by the criticAriman,

^[3] in which  Ariman  warned all and sundry that  he, thatis, our hero, had attempted to foist into print an apology for Jesus Christ.     'Ah, I remember, I remember!' Ivan cried out.  'But I've forgotten yourname!'     'Let's leave my name out of it, I repeat, it no longer exists,' repliedthe guest. 'That's not the point. Two days  later in another newspaper, overthe  signature of Mstislav Lavrovich, appeared another article, in which itsauthor recommended striking,  and striking hard,  at  Pilatism  and  at  theicon-dauber who had  ventured to foist  it  (again that accursed word!) intoprint.     'Dumbfounded by  this  unheard-of  word "Pilatism",  I  opened  a thirdnewspaper.  There were two articles in it, one by Latunsky, the other signedwith  the  initials  "N.E." I assure you, the works  of Ariman and Lavrovichcould be counted  as jokes compared with what Latunsky wrote. Suffice it  tosay    that   Latunsky's   article    was   entitled    "A   Militant    OldBeliever".^[4]

I got so  carried away  reading  the article  aboutmyself that I didn't notice (I had  forgotten to lock the door) how she camein and stood before me with a wet umbrella in her hand and wet newspapers aswell. Her eyes flashed fire, her trembling hands were cold. First she rushedto kiss me, then, in a  hoarse voice, and  pounding the table with her fist,she said she would poison Latunsky.'     Ivan grunted somewhat embarrassedly, but said nothing.     'Joyless autumn days set in,' the guest went on. 'The monstrous failurewith  this  novel  seemed to have  taken out a part  of my soul. Essentiallyspeaking, I had nothing more to do, and I lived from one meeting with her tothe next. And it was at that time that something happened to me. Devil knowswhat, Stravinsky probably figured it out long ago. Namely, anguish came overme and certain forebodings appeared.     "The articles, please  note, did  not cease. I laughed  at the first ofthem. But the more of them that appeared,  the more my attitude towards themchanged.  The second  stage was one of astonishment. Some  rare falsity  andinsecurity  could  be  sensed  literally in every line  of  these  articles,despite  their threatening  and confident  tone.  I had  the feeling,  and Icouldn't get rid of it, that the authors of  these articles were not  sayingwhat they wanted to say, and that their rage sprang precisely from that. Andthen, imagine, a third stage came - of fear. No, not fear of these articles,you understand, but fear of other things totally unrelated to them or to thenovel. Thus, for instance, I began to  be afraid of  the dark. In short, thestage of  mental illness came. It seemed to  me, especially as I was fallingasleep,  that  some  very  cold  and  pliant  octopus was stealing with  itstentacles immediately and directly towards my heart. And I had to sleep withthe light on.     'My beloved changed  very much (of course, I  never told  her about theoctopus,  but she  could see that  something was  going wrong with  me), shebecame thinner and paler, stopped laughing, and kept asking  me  to  forgiveher for  having advised  me to publish  an excerpt.  She said  I should dropeverything and go  to the south,  to the  Black Sea,  and spend all that wasleft of the hundred thousand on the trip.     'She was very insistent, and to avoid  an argument (something told me Iwas not to go to the Black Sea),  I promised her that I'd do it one of thosedays. But she said she would buy me  the ticket herself. Then I took out allmy money - that is, about ten thousand roubles - and gave it to her.     ' "Why so much?" she was surprised.     'I said something or  other about being afraid of thieves and asked herto keep the money until my  departure.  She  took it, put  it in her  purse,began kissing  me and saying that it would  be easier for her to die than toleave me alone in such a state, but that she was expected, that she must bowto necessity,  that she  would come the  next day. She begged  me  not to beafraid of anything.     'This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. I lay down on die sofaand  fell asleep without turning on the light. I was awakened by die feelingdiat the octopus was there. Groping in the dark, I barely managed to turn onthe light. My pocket watch showed  two o'clock in the morning. I was fallingill  when I went to bed, and I woke up  sick.  It suddenly seemed to me thatthe autumn darkness would push through the glass and pour into the room, andI  would  drown in it  as in  ink. I got  up a  man  no longer in control ofhimself.  I cried out, the thought came to me of running to someone, even ifit was  my landlord upstairs. I  struggled widi myself like a  madman. I hadstrength enough to get to  the stove and start a fire  in it.  When die woodbegan to  crackle and  the  stove door  rattled, I seemed  to  feel  slighdybetter. I dashed to the front room, turned on die light diere, found a botdeof white wine, uncorked it and began drinking from the  botde.  This bluntedthe fear somewhat -- at  least enough to keep me from running to me landlord-- and  I  went back to me stove. I opened the little door, so that the heatbegan to burn my face and hands, and whispered:     ' "Guess that trouble has befallen me . . . Come, come, come!..."     'But no  one  came. The fire  roared  in the  stove, rain lashed at diewindows. Then the final thing happened. I took the  heavy manuscript  of thenovel and the draft notebooks from the desk drawer and started burning them.This was terribly  hard to do,  because written-on paper  burns  reluctandy.Breaking  my fingernails, I  tore  up the notebooks, stuck  them  verticallybetween the logs, and ruffled the pages  with the  poker. At times the ashesgot die best of me, choking the flames, but I  struggled with them, and  thenovel,  though stubbornly  resisting,  was nevertheless  perishing. Familiarwords flashed before  me,  the yellow climbed steadily up the pages, but thewords  still showed dirough it. They would vanish only when die paper turnedblack, and I finished diem off with die poker.     'Just  dien  someone  began  scratching quiedy at the window.  My heartleaped, and having stuffed the last notebook into the fire, I rushed to openthe door. Brick  steps led up  from  die  basement to  the door on the yard.Stumbling, I ran up to it and asked quiedy:     ' "Who's there?"     'And that voice, her voice, answered:     'It's me...'     'I don't remember how I managed with the chain and hook. As soon as shestepped inside, she clung to me, trembling, all wet, her cheeks  wet and herhair uncurled. I could only utter the word:     ' "You . . . you? . . .", and my voice broke, and we ran downstairs.     'She  freed herself of her overcoat in  the front hall,  and we quicklywent into  the first room. With a soft cry, she pulled out of the stove withher bare hands and threw on to the floor the last of what was there, a sheafthat had caught fire from  below. Smoke filled  the room at once.  I stampedout  the  fire with  my  feet,  and  she  collapsed  on  the  sofa and  weptirrepressibly and convulsively.     'When she calmed down, I said:     ' "I came to hate this novel, and I'm afraid. I'm ill. Frightened."     'She stood up and said:     ' "God, how sick  you are. Why is it, why? But I'll save you.  111 saveyou. What is all this?"     'I  saw  her eyes swollen widi  smoke and weeping, felt her  cold handsstroke my forehead.     '"I'll  cure you,  I'll cure  you," she  was  murmuring,  clutching  myshoulders. "You'll restore it. Why, why didn't I keep a copy?"     'She bared her teeth with rage, she said something else inarticulately.Then,  compressing  her  lips,  she  began to  collect  and  smoodi  out theburnt-edged pages. It was some chapter from die middle of the novel, I don'tremember which.  She  neady stacked die  pages, wrapped them in  paper, tiedthem   with  a  ribbon.  All  her  actions  showed  that  she  was  full  ofdetermination, and diat she had regained  control of herself. She asked  forwine and, having drunk it, spoke more calmly:     ' "This is  how one pays for lying," she said, "and I don't want to lieany more. I'd stay with you right now,  but I'd radier not do it diat way. Idon't want it to  remain for  ever in his memory diat I ran away from him inthe middle of  the night. He's never done me any  wrong ... He  was summonedunexpectedly, there was a fire at the factory.     But he'll  be back soon. I'll talk with him tomorrow morning, I'll tellhim that I love  another  man and  come back to you for ever.  Or maybe  youdon't want that? Answer me."     '  "Poor dear, my poor dear," I  said to her. "I won't allow you  to doit. Things won't go well for me, and I don't want you to perish with me."     '  "Is that the only reason?"  she  asked, and brought her eyes dose tomine.     '"The only one."     'She became  terribly animated, she dung to me, put her arms  around myneck and said:     ' "I'm perishing with you. In the morning I'll be here."     'And so,  the last thing  I remember  from  my life is a strip of lightfrom my front  hall, and in that strip of light an uncurled strand  of hair,her beret  and her eyes filled with determination. I also remember the blacksilhouette in the outside doorway and the white package.     ' "I'd  see you home, but it's beyond my strength  to come  back alone.I'm afraid."     ' "Don't be afraid. Bear with it for a few hours. Tomorrow morning I'llbe here."     'Those  were  her  last words  in my life  ...  Shh! ...'  the  patientsuddenly interrupted himself  and raised a  finger. 'It's a restless moonlitnight tonight.'     He disappeared on to  the balcony. Ivan heard little  wheels roll  downthe corridor, someone sobbed or cried out weakly.     When everything grew still, the guest came back and announced that room120 had received  an occupant. Someone had been brought,  and he kept askingto be given back his head. The two interlocutors fell anxiously silent, but,having  calmed down, they returned to the interrupted story. The  guest  wasjust opening his  mouth, but the night was indeed a restless one. There werestill voices in the corridor, and the guest began to speak into Ivan's  ear,so softly that what he told  him  was known only to the poet, apart from thefirst phrase:     'A quarter of an hour  after  she  left me, there came  a knock  at  mywindow. . .'     What the patient whispered into Ivan's  ear evidently agitated him verymuch. Spasms repeatedly passed over his face. Fear and rage swam and flittedin his eyes. The narrator pointed his hand somewhere in the direction of themoon, which  had long  since left  the  balcony.  Only when  all sounds fromoutside ceased to reach them did the guest move away from Ivan and  begin tospeak more loudly:     'Yes, and so in  mid-January,  at night, in the same coat but with  thebuttons torn off,^[5] I was huddled with cold in  my  little yard.Behind me were snowdrifts that hid the lilac bushes, and before me and below-  my little windows,  dimly lit, covered  with  shades. I bent  down to thefirst  of them and listened - a gramophone was playing in my rooms. That wasall I heard, but I could not see anything. I stood  there a while, then wentout  the gate to the lane. A blizzard  was frolicking in it. A dog,  dashingunder my feet, frightened me, and I ran  away from it to the other side. Thecold, and the fear that had become my constant companion, were driving me tofrenzy. I had nowhere to go, and the simplest thing, of course,  would  havebeen to throw myself under a  tram-car on the street where my lane came out.From far off  I could see  those light-filled, ice-covered  boxes  and  heartheir loathsome screeching in the frost.  But, my  dear neighbour, the wholething was that  fear  possessed  every cell of  my body. And,  just as I wasafraid of the dog, so I was afraid of the tram-car. Yes, there is no illnessin this place worse than mine, I assure you!'     'But  you could have let  her  know,' said Ivan, sympathizing  with thepoor patient. 'Besides, she has your money. She did keep it, of course?'     'You needn't doubt that, of course she kept it. But you evidently don'tunderstand me. Or, rather, I've lost the  ability I once  had for describingthings.  However, I'm not  very sorry about that, since I no longer have anyuse for it. Before her,' the guest reverently looked  out at the darkness ofthe  night, 'there  would  lie a letter from a  madhouse. How  can  one sendletters from such  an address ... a mental  patient? . .. You're  joking, myfriend! Make her unhappy? No, I'm not capable of that.'     Ivan was unable to object to this, but the silent Ivan sympathized withthe guest,  he commiserated with him.  And  the other, from  the pain of hismemories, nodded his head in the black cap and spoke thus:     'Poor woman . .. However, I have hopes that she has forgotten me .. .'     'But you may recover.. .' Ivan said timidly.     'I am incurable,' the guest replied  calmly.  'When Stravinsky says  hewill bring me  back to life, I don't believe  him. He is  humane  and simplywants to comfort me.  I don't deny, however, that I'm  much better now. Yes,so where did I leave  off? Frost,  those flying trams  ... I knew that  thisclinic had been opened, and set  out for it on foot across the entire  city.Madness! Outside  the city I probably would have frozen to death, but chancesaved me.  A truck had broken down,  I came  up to the  driver, it was  somethree miles beyond the city limits, and to my surprise he  took pity  on me.The truck was coming here. And he took me  along. I got away with having  myleft toes frostbitten. But they cured that. And now this is the fourth monththat I've been here. And,  you know,  I find  it not at  all  bad here.  Onemustn't make  grandiose plans,  dear neighbour,  really!  I,  for  instance,wanted to go all around the globe. Well, so it turns out that I'm not  goingto do it. I see  only an insignificant piece of that  globe.  I suppose it'snot the very best there is on it, but, I repeat, it's not  so bad. Summer iscoming,  the  ivy will  twine up on to the  balcony. So Praskovya Fyodorovnapromises. The keys have broadened my  possibilities. There'll be the moon atnight. Ah, it's gone! Freshness. It's falling past midnight. Time to go.'     Tell me, what happened afterwards with  Yeshua and Pilate?' Ivan asked.'I beg you, I want to know.'     'Ah, no, no,' the guest replied with a painful twitch. 'I cannot recallmy novel without trembling. And your acquaintance from the Patriarch's Pondswould do it better than I. Thank you for the conversation. Goodbye.'     And  before Ivan  could collect his  senses, the grille  closed  with aquiet clang, and the guest vanished.