The Master and Margarita

Here the woman yielded Ivan up to the man, who went to work on him differently and no longer asked any questions. He took the temperature of Ivan’s body, counted his pulse, looked in Ivan’s eyes, directing some sort of lamp into them. Then the second woman came to the man’s assistance, and they pricked Ivan in the back with something, but not painfully, drew some signs on the skin of his chest with the handle of a little hammer, tapped his knees with the hammer, which made Ivan’s legs jump, pricked his finger and took his blood, pricked him inside his bent elbow, put some rubber bracelets on his arms ...

Ivan just smiled bitterly to himself and reflected on how stupidly and strangely it had all happened. Just think! He had wanted to warn them all of the danger threatening from the unknown consultant, had intended to catch him, and all he had achieved was to wind up in some mysterious room, telling all sorts of hogwash about Uncle Fyodor, who had done some hard drinking in Vologda. Insufferably stupid!

Finally Ivan was released. He was escorted back to his room, where he was given a cup of coffee, two soft-boiled eggs and white bread with butter. Having eaten and drunk all that was offered him, Ivan decided to wait for whoever was chief of this institution, and from this chief to obtain both attention for himself and justice.

And he did come, and very soon after Ivan’s breakfast. Unexpectedly, the door of Ivan’s room opened, and in came a lot of people in white coats. At their head walked a man of about forty-five, as carefully shaven as an actor, with pleasant but quite piercing eyes and courteous manners. The whole retinue showed him tokens of attention and respect, and his entrance therefore came out very solemn. ‘Like Pontius Pilate!’ thought Ivan.

Yes, this was unquestionably the chief. He sat down on a stool, while everyone else remained standing.

‘Doctor Stravinsky,’ the seated man introduced himself to Ivan and gave him a friendly look.

‘Here, Alexander Nikolaevich,’ someone with a trim beard said in a low voice, and handed the chief Ivan’s chart, all covered with writing.

‘They’ve sewn up a whole case!’ Ivan thought. And the chief ran through the chart with a practised eye, muttered ‘Mm-hm, mm-hm ...’, and exchanged a few phrases with those around him in a little-known language. ‘And he speaks Latin like Pilate,’ Ivan thought sadly. Here one word made him jump; it was the word ‘schizophrenia’ — alas, already uttered yesterday by the cursed foreigner at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and now repeated today by Professor Stravinsky. ’And he knew that, too!‘ Ivan thought anxiously.

The chief apparently made it a rule to agree with and rejoice over everything said to him by those around him, and to express this with the words ‘Very nice, very nice ...’

‘Very nice!’ said Stravinsky, handing the chart back to someone, and he addressed Ivan:

‘You are a poet?’

‘A poet,’ Ivan replied glumly, and for the first time suddenly felt some inexplicable loathing for poetry, and his own verses, coming to mind at once, seemed to him for some reason distasteful.

Wrinkling his face, he asked Stravinsky in turn:

‘You are a professor?’

To this, Stravinsky, with obliging courtesy, inclined his head.

‘And you’re the chief here?’ Ivan continued.

Stravinsky nodded to this as well.

‘I must speak with you,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said meaningly.

That is what I’m here for,‘ returned Stravinsky.

The thing is,‘ Ivan began, feeling his hour had come, ’that I’ve been got up as a madman, and nobody wants to listen to me! ...‘

‘Oh, no, we shall hear you out with great attention,’ Stravinsky said seriously and soothingly, ‘and by no means allow you to be got up as a madman.’

‘Listen, then: yesterday evening I met a mysterious person at the Patriarch’s Ponds, maybe a foreigner, maybe not, who knew beforehand about Berlioz’s death and has seen Pontius Pilate in person.’

The retinue listened to the poet silently and without stirring.

‘Pilate? The Pilate who lived in the time of Jesus Christ?’ Stravinsky asked, narrowing his eyes at Ivan.

The same.‘

‘Aha,’ said Stravinsky, ‘and this Berlioz died under a tram-car?’

‘Precisely, he’s the one who in my presence was killed by a tram-car yesterday at the Ponds, and this same mysterious citizen ...’

The acquaintance of Pontius Pilate?‘ asked Stravinsky, apparently distinguished by great mental alacrity.

‘Precisely him,’ Ivan confirmed, studying Stravinsky. ‘Well, so he said beforehand that Annushka had spilled the sunflower oil ... And he slipped right on that place! How do you like that?’ Ivan inquired significantly, hoping to produce a great effect with his words.

But the effect did not ensue, and Stravinsky quite simply asked the following question:

‘And who is this Annushka?’

This question upset Ivan a little; his face twitched.