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.
