فصل 13

XIII

Enter the Hero

AND so, the stranger pressed a warning finger to his lips and whispered “Shh!” to Ivan.

Ivan lowered his feet over the side of the bed and stared. Peering cautiously into the room from the balcony was a clean-shaven, dark-haired man of about thirty-eight; he had anxious eyes, a sharp nose, and a shock of hair hanging over his forehead.

After making certain that Ivan was alone, the mysterious visitor listened intently, then mustered his courage and entered the room. Ivan noticed that he was wearing hospital clothes: underwear, slippers on bare feet, and a dark brown robe thrown over his shoulders.

The newcomer winked at Ivan, stuck a bunch of keys in his pocket and asked in a whisper, “May I sit down?” When he received a nod of assent; he settled into the armchair.

“How did you get in here?” said Ivan in a whisper, obeying his guest’s warning gesture. “Aren’t the window grilles locked?” “They are locked,” confirmed the guest, “but Praskovya Fyodorovna is an extremely nice, if, alas, absentminded person. I pinched her keys a month ago, which allows me to go out onto the balcony that encircles the entire floor and thus visit a neighbor on occasion.” “But if you can go out onto the balcony, you can get out of here. Or is it too high up?” queried Ivan.

“No,” was the guest’s firm reply. “It’s not because it’s too high that I can’t get out, but because there’s nowhere for me to get out to.” After a pause he added, “So, we’re stuck sitting here?” “Yes, stuck,” replied Ivan, gazing into the newcomer’s anxious-looking brown eyes.

“Yes …”—here the guest suddenly became agitated. “I hope you’re not violent, are you? Because, you see, I can’t tolerate noise, rows, violence, or anything of that sort. And I especially can’t stand people screaming, whether in suffering, rage, or for any other reason. Reassure me, tell me—you’re not violent, are you?” “Yesterday in a restaurant I smashed some guy in the puss,” confessed the transformed poet manfully.

“The reason?” the guest asked sternly.

“None really, I admit,” answered Ivan, becoming embarrassed.

“Disgraceful,” the guest scolded and added, “And besides, why do you say things like ‘smash some guy in the puss’? After all, nobody knows exactly what it is that a man has, a face or a puss. Most likely, it’s still a face. So, when it comes to fists … No, you should stop doing that sort of thing once and for all.” After giving Ivan this lecture, the guest inquired, “Your profession?”

“Poet,” Ivan acknowledged somewhat unwillingly.

The newcomer became distressed.

“Oh, how unlucky I am!” he exclaimed, but then caught himself, apologized, and asked, “And what is your name?”

“Bezdomny.”

“Uh-oh,” said the guest with a frown.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like my poetry?” asked Ivan with curiosity.

“Emphatically not.”

“And what have you read?”

“I haven’t read any of your poetry!” retorted the visitor irritably.

“Then how can you tell?”

“Well,” replied the guest, “it’s not as if I haven’t read other things like it, now is it? But maybe, by some miracle, yours is different? All right, I’m ready to take it on faith. Tell me yourself, are your poems any good?” “Horrible!” Ivan blurted out boldly and frankly.

“Don’t write anymore!” the newcomer implored.

“I promise you, I swear I won’t!” was Ivan’s solemn reply.

They sealed the vow with a handshake, and then the sounds of soft footsteps and voices were heard from the corridor.

“Shh,” whispered the guest, jumping out onto the balcony and closing the grille behind him.

Praskovya Fyodorovna looked in and asked how Ivan was feeling and whether he wanted to sleep in the dark or with a light. Ivan asked her to leave the light on, and Praskovya Fyodorovna exited after wishing the patient good night. And when everything had quieted down, the guest came back again.

He told Ivan in a whisper that a new patient had just been brought into Room 119, a fat fellow with a purple face who kept muttering something about foreign currency in the ventilator shaft, and who swore that evil powers had settled into his building on Sadovaya Street.

“He’s cursing out Pushkin for all he’s worth and shouting, ‘Kurolesov, encore, encore!’” said the guest, twitching anxiously. When he calmed down, he took a seat and said, “But, never mind about him,” and continued his conversation with Ivan, “So how did you end up here?” “Because of Pontius Pilate,” Ivan replied, looking sullenly down at the floor.

“What?!” shouted the guest, abandoning caution, and then clamping his hand over his mouth. “A striking coincidence! I beg you, I beg you, tell me all about it!” Feeling for some reason that he could trust the stranger, Ivan began telling him about yesterday’s happenings at Patriarch’s Ponds, starting out haltingly and timidly, but then growing bolder as he went along. And indeed, Ivan Nikolayevich found a sympathetic listener in this mysterious key thief! The guest did not treat Ivan as if he were a madman, showed the greatest interest in what he was saying, and became ecstatic as the story progressed. He kept interrupting Ivan with exclamations, “Well, well, go on, go on, I beg you! Only in the name of all that’s holy, don’t leave anything out!” Ivan left nothing out, for he himself found it easier to tell the story that way, and gradually he got to the point where Pontius Pilate came out onto the balcony in his white cloak with the blood-red lining.

The guest then folded his hands as if in prayer and whispered, “Oh, I guessed right! I guessed everything right!”

Following the description of Berlioz’s horrible death the listener made a puzzling remark, and his eyes flashed with hatred, “I’m just sorry that it wasn’t Latunsky, the critic, or that hack Mstislav Lavrovich instead of Berlioz.” And in a frenzy, but noiselessly, he exclaimed, “Go on!” The cat who paid his fare was a big hit with the guest, and he choked with silent laughter as he watched Ivan, excited by the success of his storytelling, jump down on his haunches and pantomime the cat holding a coin up to his whiskers.

“And so,” Ivan concluded, after telling about the events at Griboyedov and again becoming gloomy and sad, “that’s how I wound up here.” The guest laid a sympathetic hand on the poor poet’s shoulder and said, “Unhappy poet! But you, dear fellow, brought it all on yourself! You shouldn’t have acted so carelessly, even rudely, with him. Now you’re paying the price. Why, you should be grateful you got off relatively cheaply.” “But who was he anyway?” asked Ivan, shaking his fists in agitation.

The guest stared at Ivan and answered with a question “You’re not going to get all upset now, are you? All of us here are unstable … There won’t be any calls for the doctor, or injections, or other stuff like that, will there?” “No, no!” exclaimed Ivan, “just tell me who he is.”

“All right then,” replied the guest, weighing his words and speaking distinctly, “Yesterday at Patriarch’s Ponds you had a meeting with Satan.” As he had promised, Ivan did not go berserk, but he was nevertheless totally flabbergasted.

“That can’t be! He doesn’t exist!”

“I beg your pardon! You’re the last person in the world who should say such a thing. You were obviously one of the first ones to suffer at his hands. And here you are, as you very well know, in a mental hospital, and yet you still claim that he doesn’t exist. I find that really rather strange!” Completely befuddled, Ivan fell silent.

“As soon as you began describing him,” the guest continued, “I guessed who it was you had the pleasure of conversing with yesterday. And I’m really surprised at Berlioz! You, of course, are still an innocent,” here the guest again apologized, “but he, at least, from what I’ve heard, had read a thing or two! The very first words the professor spoke confirmed all my suspicions. It’s impossible not to recognize him, my friend! And besides, you’re … forgive me for saying so, you’re, if I’m not mistaken, an ignorant man, are you not?” “Absolutely,” agreed the now unrecognizable Ivan.

“So there you see … why even the face you described … the dissimilar eyes, the eyebrows! By the way, forgive me, but you probably haven’t even heard the opera Faust, have you?” Ivan became terribly strangely embarrassed for some reason, and with a flushed face started mumbling something about a trip to a sanitarium in Yalta.

“There you are, there you are … it’s not surprising! But Berlioz, I repeat, amazes me … He’s not only very well-read, he’s also very shrewd. Although I must say in his defense that Woland could certainly pull the wool over the eyes of someone far shrewder than he.” “What?!” Ivan shouted out in return.

“Quiet!”

Ivan slapped himself on the forehead and said in a croak, “Now I understand, now I understand. He had the letter ‘W’ on his visiting card. Well I’ll be, so that’s how it is!” He fell into a state of befuddled silence for a while, gazing out at the moon floating beyond the window grille, and then he said, “So that means he really could have been with Pontius Pilate, doesn’t it? Since he was already born then, right? And they call me a madman!” Ivan added, pointing in outrage at the door.

A bitter grimace distorted the guest’s mouth.

“Let’s look truth straight in the eye,” said the guest, turning his face toward the nocturnal orb passing through the clouds beyond the window grille. “You and I are both mad, there’s no denying it! You see, he shook you up—and you lost your mind because you obviously had tendencies in that direction to begin with. But there’s no doubt at all that what you told me really did happen. But it’s so bizarre that even a psychiatrist of genius like Stravinsky naturally didn’t believe you. Was he the one who examined you?” (Ivan nodded). “The man you conversed with was at Pilate’s, and he was also at Kant’s for breakfast, and now he’s paying a visit to Moscow.” “Yes, and the devil only knows what mischief he’ll do here! Shouldn’t we try and catch him?” said the not-entirely suppressed old Ivan, rearing his head from inside the new one, although without much confidence.

“You already tried and look where it got you,” was the guest’s ironic response. “I wouldn’t advise others to try it either. But rest assured that he’ll cause more trouble. Oh, how annoying it is that you were the one to meet him, and not I. Even though I’m all burnt-out and the coals have turned to ash, I swear, I would have given up Praskovya Fyodorovna’s keys for a meeting like that, and they’re all I have to give up. I’m a poor man!” “But what do you need him for?”

The guest was sad for a long time, and his face twitched, but finally he said, “You see, strangely enough, I’m in here for the same reason you are, namely, because of Pontius Pilate.” Here the guest looked around anxiously and said, “The fact is that a year ago I wrote a novel about Pilate.” “You’re a writer?” asked the poet with interest.

The guest’s face darkened, and he shook his fist at Ivan and then said, “I am the Master.” He became stern, reached into the pocket of his robe and took out a grimy black cap that had the letter “M” embroidered on it in yellow silk. He put the cap on and modeled it for Ivan in profile and full face, in order to prove that he was the Master. “She sewed this for me with her own hands,” he added mysteriously.

“What’s your name?”

“I no longer have a name,” the strange guest replied with gloomy disdain. “I gave it up, just as I’ve given up everything else in life. Let’s drop the subject.” “Well, then at least tell me about your novel,” requested Ivan tactfully.

“By all means. My life has turned out to be anything but ordinary, if I do say so myself,” the guest began.

… A historian by training, he had worked until two years ago at one of the Moscow museums and had also done translations … “From what language?” Ivan inquired with interest.

“I know five languages besides my own,” answered the guest, “English, French, German, Latin, and Greek. And I also read a little Italian.” “Wow!” whispered Ivan with envy.

The historian had lived a solitary life. He had no family anywhere and virtually no friends in Moscow. And then, imagine, one day he won 100,000 rubles.

“You can imagine my surprise,” whispered the guest in the black cap, “when I rummaged around in the dirty laundry basket and found out I had the same number that was printed in the paper! A ticket given to me at the museum,” he explained.

After winning 100,000, Ivan’s mysterious guest did the following: he bought some books, moved out of his room on Myasnitskaya Street … “Ugh, what a damned hole that was!” snarled the guest.

… He rented two rooms from a private home builder in the basement of a small house in a garden on a small street near the Arbat. He quit his job at the museum and began to write a novel about Pontius Pilate.

“Ah, that was a golden age!” the narrator whispered, his eyes shining. “It was a completely private apartment, with its own entrance and a sink with running water,” he emphasized with particular pride, for some reason, “and small windows looking out over the path leading to the gate. Just opposite, in front of the fence, not more than four steps away, there were lilac bushes, a linden tree, and a maple. Ah! Ah! Ah! Once in a while in winter I’d see someone’s black feet through the window and I’d hear the snow crunching as they walked by. And there was always a fire burning in my stove! But then spring came suddenly, and through the dim glass I saw the lilac branches, which had first been bare, now dressed in green. And then, last spring something happened that was far more entrancing than winning 100,000 rubles. And that, you will agree, is a huge sum of money!” “Yes it is,” agreed Ivan, who was listening attentively.

“I had opened the window and was sitting in the second and tinier of the two rooms,”—the guest used his hands to illustrate—“a couch and across from it, another couch, and between them a small table with a beautiful night lamp on it, and closer to the window, books. Here, a small desk, and in the first room—an enormous room, fourteen square meters—books, more books, and a stove. Ah, what a great place I had! The smell of the lilacs was extraordinary! And I was becoming lightheaded from exhaustion, and Pilate was flying to an end …” “White cloak, blood-red lining! I understand!” exclaimed Ivan.

“Exactly! Pilate was flying to an end, an end, and I already knew that the last words of the novel would be: ‘… The fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.’ Well, naturally, I’d go for walks. 100,000 is a huge sum, and I had a handsome suit. Or I’d dine at some inexpensive restaurant. There was a marvelous restaurant on the Arbat, I don’t know if it’s still there.” Here the guest’s eyes opened wide, and he continued whispering as he gazed at the moon, “She was carrying some hideous, disturbing yellow flowers. The devil only knows what they’re called, but for some reason they’re the first ones to bloom in Moscow. And those flowers stood out very distinctly against her black spring coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! A bad color. She turned off Tverskaya into a side street and then looked back. Do you know Tverskaya? Thousands of people were walking along Tverskaya, but I assure you, she saw only me and she gave me a look that was not merely anxious, but even pained. And I was struck not so much by her beauty as by the extraordinary, incomparable loneliness in her eyes!

“Obeying that yellow sign, I, too, turned into the side street and followed her. We walked silently along the dull winding lane, I on one side, and she on the other. And, imagine, there wasn’t a soul in the street. I was in torment because I felt that I had to talk to her, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to utter a word, and she would go away, and I would never see her again.

“And then, imagine, she said unexpectedly, ‘Do you like my flowers?’

“I distinctly remember the sound of her voice, rather low, but halting, and however silly this may seem, I felt that an echo sounded in the lane and reverberated off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed over to her side of the street and, walking up to her, replied, ‘No.’ “She looked at me with surprise, and I suddenly and completely unexpectedly realized that this was the woman I had loved my whole life! Amazing, isn’t it? Naturally, you’ll say I’m a madman, right?” “I’m not saying anything,” Ivan exclaimed, adding, “Please, go on!”

And the guest continued, “Yes, she gave me a look of surprise, and then she asked, ‘Is it that you just don’t like flowers?’ “I thought I detected hostility in her voice. I walked alongside her, trying to keep in step with her, and to my surprise, I felt no constraint whatsoever.

“’No, I like flowers, but not those,’ I said.

“’What kind do you like?’

“’I like roses.’

“Then I regretted having said that because she smiled guiltily and threw her flowers into the gutter. A bit flustered, I retrieved them nonetheless, and handed them back to her, but she pushed them away with a smile, and I ended up carrying them.

“Thus we walked in silence for a while until she took the flowers out of my hand and threw them on the pavement. Then she put her hand, in a flared black glove, through my arm, and we walked off together.” “Go on,” said Ivan, “and please don’t leave anything out.”

“Go on?” the guest echoed. “Well, you yourself can guess what happened next.” Suddenly he wiped away an unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued, “Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once! The way lightning strikes, or a Finnish knife! She, by the way, would later say that it wasn’t like that, that we had, of course, loved each other for a very long time, without knowing or ever having seen each other, and that she was living with another man … and I was then … with that … what’s her name …” “With whom?” asked Bezdomny.

“With that … well … with that … well …” the guest answered, snapping his fingers.

“You were married?”

“Well, yes, that’s why I’m snapping my fingers … To that Varenka … Manechka … no, Varenka … with the striped dress, at the museum … But I can’t remember.

“And so she used to say that she had gone out that day carrying the yellow flowers so that I would at last find her, and that if it hadn’t happened, she would have poisoned herself because her life was empty.

“Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that very day, an hour later, when we lost track of where we were and found ourselves on the embankment by the Kremlin wall.

“We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years. We agreed to meet the next day on the same spot by the Moscow River, and we did. The May sun was shining for us. And very, very soon afterward, that woman became my secret wife.

“She would come to me every day, and from morning on I’d start waiting for her. My impatience expressed itself in the way I endlessly rearranged the things on my table. Ten minutes before she arrived I would sit by the window and start listening for the creaking sound of the decrepit gate. And, oddly, before I met her, hardly anyone—in fact, no one—ever visited our little yard, but now it seemed that the whole city was beating a path to our door. The gate would creak, my heart would jump, and, imagine, I’d look through the window and there, level with my head, I’d see a pair of dirty boots. A knife grinder. Who in my house would need a knife grinder? What was there to sharpen? What sort of knives?

“She would come through the gate only once, but until that happened, my heart would suffer at least ten palpitations, I’m not lying. And then, when it was time for her arrival and the hands were pointing to noon, my heart wouldn’t stop pounding until her shoes, noiselessly, without tapping, with their black suede bows and steel buckles, drew level with the window.

“Sometimes she’d play games and stop at the second window and tap her toe against the glass. I’d be at the window in a second, only to find that the shoes had disappeared along with the black silk dress that blocked the sun, and I’d go and let her in.

“Nobody knew about our affair, I can swear to that, although that rarely happens. Her husband didn’t know and neither did her friends. Of course, the people in the old house where my basement apartment was knew, they could see a woman was coming to visit me, but they did not know her name.” “And what was her name?” asked Ivan, who was totally mesmerized by the love story.

The guest made a gesture indicating that he would never tell anyone her name, and went on with his story.

Ivan learned that the Master and the unknown woman fell in love so intensely that they became absolutely inseparable. Ivan could clearly visualize the two rooms in the basement apartment, where it was always twilight because of the lilacs and the fence. The shabby red furniture, the writing desk with the clock on it that chimed every half hour, and the books, books that went from the painted floor to the soot-covered ceiling, and the stove.

Ivan learned that his guest and his secret wife had decided, from the very beginning of their intimacy, that it was fate which had brought them together on the corner of Tverskaya and that side street, and that they were meant to be together forever.

Ivan learned from his guest’s story how the lovers spent their days. She would arrive, and the first thing she would do was put on an apron and light the oil-stove on the wooden table in the narrow entryway, which also contained the sink that for some reason the poor patient was so proud of. Then she would prepare lunch and serve it on the oval table in the first room. When the May thunderstorms came, and water rushed past the blurred windows and through the gateway, threatening to inundate the lovers’ last refuge, they would light the stove and bake potatoes. Steam poured off the potatoes, the charred potato skins made their fingers black. There was laughter in the basement, and after the rain the trees in the garden would shed broken twigs and clusters of white flowers.

When the storms were over and steamy summer arrived, the long-awaited roses they both loved appeared in the vase. The man who called himself the Master worked feverishly on his novel, and the novel also enthralled the unknown woman.

“Really, at times her fascination with it would make me jealous,” whispered Ivan’s nocturnal guest who had come from the moonlit balcony.

Running her slender fingers and pointed nails through her hair, she endlessly reread what he had written, and then she sewed the very cap he had shown Ivan. Sometimes she would squat down next to the lower shelves or stand up on a chair next to the upper ones and dust the hundreds of books. She predicted fame, urged him on, and started calling him Master. She waited eagerly for the promised final words about the fifth procurator of Judea, recited the parts she especially liked in a loud singsong voice, and said that the novel was her life.

It was finished in August and given to an obscure typist who typed up five copies. And, finally, the time came when they had to leave their secret refuge and go out into the world.

“And I went out into the world, with the novel in my hands, and then my life ended,” whispered the Master, dropping his head—and his sad black cap with the yellow “M” shook for a long time. He went on with his story, but it became somewhat disjointed. The only thing that was clear was that some kind of catastrophe had befallen Ivan’s guest.

“It was my first venture into the literary world, but now that it’s all over and my ruin is at hand, I think back on it with horror!” said the Master in a solemn whisper, raising his hand. “Yes, he dealt me a staggering blow, a staggering blow!” “Who?” asked Ivan in a barely audible whisper, afraid of interrupting the distraught narrator.

“The editor, I tell you, the editor. Yes, well, he read it. He kept looking at me as if an abscess had blown up my cheek, looked off into the corner, and even giggled with embarrassment. He wheezed and crumpled the manuscript unnecessarily. The questions he asked me seemed insane. He said nothing about the novel itself but asked me who I was, where I came from, whether I’d been writing for a long time, and why nothing had been heard of me before. And then he asked what I thought was a totally idiotic question: who had given me the idea of writing a novel on such a strange subject?

“Finally, I got sick and tired of him, and I asked him straight out whether he was going to publish the novel or not.

“He got flustered at this point, began mumbling something and declared that he could not decide the matter alone and that the other members of the editorial board, namely, the critics Latunsky and Ariman and the writer Mstislav Lavrovich, would have to see my work as well. He asked me to come back in two weeks.

“So I went back in two weeks and was greeted by some spinster whose eyes had a cross-eyed squint from chronic lying.” “That’s Lapshyonnikova, the editor’s secretary,” said Ivan, smiling, only too familiar with the world his guest was describing with such anger.

“Maybe so,” cut in the guest. “In any event, she returned my novel, which was now really tattered and soiled. Trying not to look me in the eye, Lapshyonnikova informed me that they had enough material to last them for two more years and therefore, the question of their publishing my novel was, as she put it, ‘not relevant.’ “What do I remember after that?” mumbled the Master, wiping his brow. “Oh yes, the red petals scattered on the title page and my beloved’s eyes. Yes, I remember those eyes.” The story of Ivan’s guest was becoming more and more muddled and full of gaps. He said something about slanting rain and despair in their basement refuge, and about taking the novel somewhere else. He cried out in a whisper that he didn’t blame her for pushing him into the fray, not one bit, oh no, he didn’t blame her!

“I remember it, I remember that damned insert page in the newspaper,” muttered the guest, drawing a newspaper page in the air with two fingers, and Ivan guessed from further confused phrases that some other editor had published a large fragment from the novel by the man who called himself the Master.

In his words, not two days passed before an article written by the critic Ariman, entitled “An Enemy under the Editor’s Wing,” appeared in another paper, which said that Ivan’s guest, taking advantage of the editor’s carelessness and ignorance, had tried to sneak in to print an apologia for Jesus Christ.

“Ah, I remember,” cried Ivan, “but I forget your name!”

“Let’s leave my name out of it,” replied the guest. “I repeat, it does not exist anymore. That’s not what’s important. The next day another article appeared in another paper signed by Mstislav Lavrovich, in which the author proposed striking a blow, and a strong one at that, against Pilatism and against that religious freak who had tried to sneak (that damned word again) it into print.

“Stunned by that unheard-of word ‘Pilatism,’ I opened a third newspaper. There I saw two articles: one by Latunsky, and the other signed with the initials M. Z. Believe me, Ariman’s and Lavrovich’s writings seemed like child’s play compared with Latunsky’s. Suffice it to say, his article was called ‘A Militant Old Believer.’ I was so absorbed in reading about myself that I didn’t even notice her standing in front of me (I’d forgotten to shut the door), holding a wet umbrella and wet newspapers. Her eyes flashed with fire, her hands trembled and were cold. First she rushed over to kiss me, then, pounding her fist on the table, she told me in a hoarse voice that she was going to poison Latunsky.” Ivan gave an embarrassed grunt but said nothing.

“Completely joyless autumn days followed. The novel was written, there was nothing more to be done, and our life consisted of sitting on the rug next to the stove, staring at the fire. Besides, we started spending more time apart than we had before. She began going out for walks. And something strange happened, as had often been the case in my life … I suddenly made a friend. Yes, yes, imagine, I don’t make friends easily as a rule, due to a devilish peculiarity of mine: it’s a strain for me to be with people, and I’m distrustful and suspicious. But—imagine, despite all that, some unlikely, unexpected fellow, who looks like the devil knows what, will unfailingly make his way into my heart, and he’ll be the one I like more than anyone else.

“So, one day during that accursed time the gate to our garden opened. It was, as I recall, a pleasant fall day. She was out. And a man came through the gate who had some sort of business to discuss with my landlord. After it was over, he came down into the garden and quickly introduced himself to me. He said he was a journalist. I took such a liking to him that, imagine, I sometimes think of him even now and miss him. So we got to be friends, and he started to visit me. I found out he was a bachelor and lived next door, in an apartment very like mine, but that he felt cramped there, and so on. He never invited me over. My wife took an extreme dislike to him. But I stood up for him. She told me, ‘Do as you like, but that man strikes me as repulsive.’ “That made me laugh. Yes, but strictly speaking, what was it about him that made him so appealing to me? The fact is that a man who has no surprises inside, up his sleeve, is uninteresting. But Aloisy (oh, I forgot to say that my new acquaintance was named Aloisy Mogarych) did have a surprise up his sleeve. Namely, that up until then I had never met, nor did I think I ever would meet, someone with a mind like his. If I didn’t understand the meaning of some remark in the paper, Aloisy explained it to me in literally a minute. And it was obvious that such explanations came easily to him. It was the same with things and issues in everyday life. But that was the least of it. Aloisy won my heart because of his passion for literature. He didn’t rest until he had persuaded me to let him read my novel from cover to cover. Moreover, his response was very flattering, but he said everything the editor had said to me about the novel, with striking precision, just as if he’d been there himself. He hit the mark ten times out of ten. He even explained to me, and I suspect faultlessly, why my novel couldn’t be published. He didn’t mince words either: such and such a chapter will not do … “The articles, take note, did not cease. The first ones made me laugh, but the more of them there were, the more my attitude to them changed. The next stage was amazement. There was something uncommonly fake and uncertain in every line of these articles, despite their threatening and self-assured tone. I kept thinking—and I couldn’t rid myself of the thought—that the authors of these articles weren’t saying what they wanted to say, and that that was why they were so furious. And then, imagine, a third stage set in: fear. No, not fear of the articles, mind you, but fear of things totally unrelated to either the articles or the novel. For example, I started being afraid of the dark. In short, the stage of mental illness had set in. It seemed to me, especially when I was going to sleep, that some octopus with supple and cold tentacles was stealing up to me, coming straight for my heart. So I had to sleep with the light on.

“My beloved had changed greatly (naturally, I didn’t say a word to her about the octopus, but she could see that something was wrong with me): she had become thin and pale, had stopped laughing, and was always asking me to forgive her for advising me to publish the excerpt from the novel. She said that I should give everything up and spend what remained of the 100,000 on a trip south to the Black Sea.

“She was very insistent, and so as to avoid a quarrel with her (something told me that I wouldn’t make it to the Black Sea), I promised to do it right away. But she said she would get me the ticket herself. Then I took out all my money, that is, around 10,000 rubles, and gave it to her.

“’Why so much?’ she asked me in amazement.

“I told her something about my being afraid of thieves and wanting her to take care of the money for me until my departure. She took it, put it in her bag, and began kissing me, saying that she would rather die than leave me alone in the condition I was in, but that she was expected at home, was bowing to necessity, and would be back the next day. She begged me not to be afraid of anything.

“That was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. I lay down on the couch and fell asleep without turning on the light. I woke up with the feeling that the octopus was nearby. Fumbling around in the dark, I barely managed to put on the light. My pocket watch said it was 2 a.m. When I went to bed, I felt as if I was getting sick, and when I woke up, I was sick. It suddenly seemed to me as if the autumn darkness would break through the windowpanes and pour into the room, and that I would drown in it as in ink. When I got out of bed, I was no longer in control of myself. I let out a scream and thought of running to someone for help, if only to my landlord upstairs. I struggled with myself the way a madman does. I had just enough strength to crawl over to the stove and light the wood. When the logs began to crackle, and the stove door began to knock, I seemed to feel a little better … I ran out into the hallway and turned on the light. Then I found a bottle of white wine, uncorked it and started drinking it straight out of the bottle. That helped my fear abate somewhat, enough, at least, to stop me from running off to my landlord and to return to the stove instead. I opened the stovedoor so that the heat began to warm my face and hands, and I whispered, ‘Guess that something awful has happened to me … Come to me, come, come!!’ “But nobody came. The fire roared in the stove, and the rain beat against the windows. Then came the final blow. I took the heavy type-scripts and notebook drafts of the novel out of the desk drawer and started to burn them. It’s a fiendishly difficult thing to do because paper that has been written on doesn’t burn easily. I broke my nails tearing the notebooks apart, then I stood the pages upright between the logs and jabbed at them with the poker. At times the ashes would get the best of me and choke out the fire, but I fought back, and the novel, despite stubborn resistance, was perishing. Familiar words flashed before me, and a yellowness crept relentlessly up the pages, but you could still make out the words. They disappeared only when the paper turned black and I beat them viciously with the poker.

“It was then that someone began scratching softly at the window. My heart gave a leap, I hurled the last notebook into the flames and rushed to open the door. Brick steps led up from the basement to the door into the yard. I stumbled up to the door and asked quietly, ‘Who’s there?’ “And a voice, her voice, answered me, ‘It’s me …’

“I don’t remember how I managed the key and chain. The minute she stepped inside, she fell against me, completely soaked, shivering, with wet cheeks and tousled hair. The only thing I could say was, ‘Is it you?’ and then my voice broke, and we ran downstairs. She left her coat in the hall, and we went quickly into the first room. She let out a soft cry, and with her bare hands threw what was left in the stove onto the floor, a packet of sheets burning on the bottom. Smoke immediately filled the room. I stamped out the flames and she threw herself on the couch and started to cry convulsively and uncontrollably.

“When she calmed down, I said, ‘I came to hate that novel, and I’m afraid. I’m sick. I’m terrified.’

“She got up and started to speak. ‘My God, you are sick. Why did you do it, why? But I’ll save you. I’ll save you. What’s this all about?’ “I saw her eyes, swollen from smoke and tears, and I felt her cold hands stroking my forehead.

“’I’ll cure you, I’ll cure you,’ she murmured, clutching me by the shoulders. ‘You’ll reconstruct it. Why, oh why didn’t I keep a copy myself!’ “She bared her teeth in fury and said something else that I couldn’t make out. Then, with her lips pursed, she started gathering and sorting the burnt pages. It was a chapter from the middle of the novel, I don’t remember which. She stacked the pages neatly, wrapped them in paper and tied them with a ribbon. All her movements showed decisiveness and self-control. She asked for some wine and after drinking it, began to speak more calmly.

“’This is what we get for lying,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to lie anymore. I’d stay with you right now, but that’s not the way I want to do it. I don’t want to leave him with the memory of my running off at night. He never did me any harm … He was called out suddenly, there was a fire at his factory. But he’ll be back soon. I’ll tell him everything in the morning, I’ll tell him that I love someone else, and then I’ll come back to you forever. Tell me, though, perhaps that isn’t what you want?’ “’My poor thing, my poor dear,’ I said to her. ‘I won’t let you do that. Things will go badly for me, and I don’t want you to perish with me.’ “’Is that the only reason?’ she asked, drawing her eyes close to mine.

“’The only one.’

“She became terribly animated, pressed herself against me, wrapped her arms around my neck and said, ‘I will perish with you. And I’ll be back with you in the morning.’ “The last thing that I remember in my life is the strip of light coming from the entryway, and in that light a loosened curl, her beret, and her eyes, full of determination. I also remember a black silhouette in the outer doorway and a white package.

“’I’d see you home, but I don’t have the strength to come back here alone, I’m afraid.’

“’Don’t be afraid. Just be patient for a few hours. I’ll be back with you in the morning.’

“Those were her last words in my life … Shh!” the sick man interrupted himself suddenly and raised his finger. “This moonlit night is restless.” He disappeared out onto the balcony. Ivan heard the sound of wheels in the corridor and a faint cry or sob.

When everything had quieted down, the guest came back and told Ivan that Room 120 had a new occupant. Someone had been brought in who kept asking to have his head returned. An anxious silence passed between the interlocutors, but once they calmed down, they returned to the story that had been interrupted. The guest was about to open his mouth, but the night was indeed a restless one. Voices could still be heard in the corridor, and the guest whispered in Ivan’s ear so quietly that what he was saying was heard only by the poet, with the exception of the opening sentence, “Fifteen minutes after she left me, there was a knock at the window …” What the sick man was whispering into Ivan’s ear obviously made the sick man very upset. Convulsive spasms kept contorting his face. Fear and fury swam and raged in his eyes. The storyteller pointed toward the moon which had long since disappeared from the balcony. Only after all the outside noises ceased did the guest move away from Ivan and start speaking a little more loudly.

“Yes, so there I was in my yard in the middle of January, at night, wearing the same coat, but with the buttons torn off, shivering from the cold. Behind me were snow drifts, covering the lilac bushes, and in front of me and down below—my feebly lit, blind-covered windows. I leaned over and listened at the first window: a phonograph was playing inside my apartment. That was all I could hear, and I couldn’t see anything. After standing there for a while, I went out through the gate into the lane. The snow was falling heavily. A dog dashed under my feet and frightened me, and I ran across the street to get away from it. The cold and the fear, which had become my constant companion, had brought me to the breaking point. I had nowhere to go, and the simplest thing for me to do, of course, would have been to throw myself under one of the streetcars that passed along the main street at the end of my lane. I could see those light-filled, iced-over boxes in the distance and could hear the ghastly grating sound that they made on the frost and ice. But, my dear neighbor, the whole point was that fear had invaded every cell in my body. And I was as afraid of the streetcar as I had been of the dog. Yes, my illness is the worst in the building, I assure you.” “But you could have let her know,” said Ivan, sympathizing with the poor patient. “Besides, didn’t she have your money? Naturally, she kept it, didn’t she?” “Don’t worry, of course she kept it. But you don’t seem to understand me. Either that, or I’ve lost the facility I once had for describing things. However, I don’t miss it very much, since I have no further use for it. If I had let her know,” the guest stared reverently into the darkness of the night, “the letter she received would have come from an insane asylum. How can you send letters with an address like that? A mental patient? Surely you’re joking, my friend! Make her unhappy? No, I’m not capable of that.” Ivan could offer no objection to that, but he sympathized with his guest in silence and felt compassion for him. And the latter, feeling the pain of his memories, nodded his black-capped head and said, “Poor woman … But I’m hoping that she’s forgotten me …” “But you may get well …” said Ivan timidly.

“I’m incurable,” the guest replied calmly. “When Stravinsky says that he’ll bring me back to life, I don’t believe him. He’s humane and simply wants to comfort me. I don’t deny, by the way, that I’m much better now. But where was I? Oh, yes, the ice and cold, the speeding streetcars. I knew that this clinic had already opened, and I set out for it on foot across the whole city. What madness! I would certainly have frozen to death when I got outside the city if a chance occurrence hadn’t saved me. A truck had broken down about four kilometers outside the city, and I went over to speak to the driver. To my surprise, he took pity on me. He was on his way here, and he gave me a lift. The worst thing that happened to me was that I got frostbite on the toes of my left foot. But they fixed that. And this is my fourth month here. And, you know, I don’t find it so bad here, not bad at all. One really shouldn’t make big plans for oneself, dear neighbor. Take me, for example, I wanted to travel around the globe. Well, it turned out that wasn’t meant to be. I can see only an insignificant little piece of it. I don’t think it’s the best piece of it either, but, as I said, it’s not so bad. Summer will be here soon, and the balcony will be covered with ivy, just as Praskovya Fyodorovna promises. Having her keys has given me new possibilities. There’ll be a moon at night. Ah, it’s gone! The air is fresher. It’s getting on past midnight. It’s time for me to go.” “Tell me,” asked Ivan, “what happened next to Yeshua and Pilate. Please, I want to know.”

“Oh, no, no,” the guest answered, twitching painfully, “I can’t think of my novel without a shudder. Your friend from Patriarch’s Ponds could have done it better than I. Thanks for the conversation. Good-bye.” And before Ivan could realize what was happening, the window grille shut softly, and the guest was gone.