فصل 4

IV

The Chase

THE women’s hysterical screams died down, the police whistles stopped drilling, and two ambulances drove off, one to the morgue carrying the headless body and severed head, the other—the beautiful streetcar driver who had been injured by the shattered glass. Street cleaners in white aprons cleared away the broken glass and sprinkled sand on the pools of blood, and Ivan Nikolayevich, who had collapsed onto a bench before reaching the turnstile, stayed where he was.

He had tried to get up several times, but his legs would not obey him—Bezdomny seemed to be paralyzed.

As soon as he heard the first scream, the poet had rushed to the turnstile and seen the head bouncing over the pavement. This made him so deranged that he collapsed onto a bench and bit his hand till it bled. He had forgotten all about the mad German, naturally, and was trying to make sense out of just one thing: how could it be that he had just been talking to Berlioz and a minute later—the head … Distraught people kept running down the path past the poet, shouting various things, but Ivan Nikolayevich could not comprehend what they were saying.

But then, suddenly two women collided with each other right in front of him, and one of them, sharp-nosed and bareheaded, shouted to the other practically in the poet’s ear, “Annushka, our Annushka! She was coming from Sadovaya Street! It’s her doing! She got some sunflower oil at the store, then went and smashed a liter of it on the turnstile! Made a mess of her skirt … she swore and swore! And he, poor man, must have slipped and fallen on the rails …” Of all the words the woman had shouted, only one impressed itself on Ivan Nikolayevich’s disordered brain, “Annushka …”

“Annushka … Annushka?” the poet mumbled, turning around anxiously, “Excuse me, excuse me …”

Attached to the word “Annushka” was “sunflower oil” and then, for some reason, “Pontius Pilate.” The poet rejected Pilate and began forming a chain, beginning with the word “Annushka.” The chain was formed very quickly and led straight to the mad professor.

He was to blame! Hadn’t he said the meeting wouldn’t take place because Annushka had spilled the oil? And now, if you please, it won’t take place! And that was the least of it: hadn’t he said straight out that Berlioz’s head would be cut off by a woman? Yes, yes, yes! And the streetcar driver was a woman! What was all this about? Huh?

There was no longer even a shadow of a doubt that the mysterious consultant had known beforehand, and in exact detail, the entire scenario of Berlioz’s horrible death. Two thoughts then penetrated the poet’s brain. The first was, “He’s certainly no madman! That’s all nonsense!” And the second was, “Could he have engineered the whole thing himself?!” But how, pray tell, did he do it?!

“Yes, that’s what we’ll find out!”

Ivan Nikolayevich exerted great effort, got up from the bench and rushed back to where he had been talking with the professor. And, fortunately, it turned out that he was still there.

On Bronnaya Street the streetlights had come on, and a golden moon was shining over Patriarch’s Ponds. In the moonlight, which is always deceptive, Ivan Nikolayevich thought he saw the professor standing there, holding a sword, rather than a walking stick under his arm.

The unctuous retired choirmaster was sitting exactly where Ivan Nikolayevich had been sitting not long before. Now the choirmaster had an obviously useless pince-nez perched on his nose. One lens was cracked, and the other was missing. This made the checked fellow look even more repellent than he had when he was showing Berlioz the way to the tracks.

Feeling his heart grow cold, Ivan walked over to the professor and looked him straight in the face. He was convinced that it showed no signs of madness, and never had.

“Confess, who are you?” Ivan asked hollowly.

The foreigner frowned, looked as if he were seeing the poet for the first time, and answered hostilely, “No understand … no speak Russian …” “The gentleman doesn’t understand you,” interjected the choirmaster from the bench, although no one had asked him to explain the foreigner’s words.

“Don’t play games!” said Ivan in a threatening tone and felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. “You were speaking Russian perfectly before. You’re not a German and not a professor! You’re—a murderer and a spy! Show me your papers!” screamed Ivan in a fury.

The enigmatic professor squeamishly twisted his already twisted mouth and shrugged his shoulders.

“Citizen!” said the loathsome choirmaster, butting in once again, “Why are you disturbing a foreign tourist? You can be severely penalized for that!” And the suspicious professor then put on an arrogant face, turned, and walked away from Ivan.

Ivan felt as if he were losing his mind. Gasping, he turned to the choirmaster, “Hey, citizen, help detain a criminal! It’s your duty.”

The choirmaster became very animated, leaped off the bench and yelled, “What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal?” The choirmaster’s beady eyes sparkled mirthfully. “This one here? If he’s a criminal, then the first thing to do is shout ‘Help!’ Or else he’ll get away. C’mon, let’s do it together! Both at once!” at which point the choirmaster opened his jaws wide.

The flustered Ivan obeyed the buffoonlike choirmaster and shouted “Help!” but the choirmaster fooled him and didn’t say a word.

Ivan’s hoarse and solitary shout accomplished nothing. Two girls recoiled from him, and he heard the word “drunk.”

“Ah, so you’re in league with him?” shouted Ivan, becoming enraged, “What are you trying to do, make fun of me? Let me by!”

Ivan went to the right, and the choirmaster followed suit. Ivan went to the left, and the scoundrel did the same.

“Are you purposely trying to trip me up?” screamed Ivan, furious. “I’ll turn you over to the police too.”

Ivan tried to grab the rascal by the sleeve, but missed and caught hold of nothing. The choirmaster seemed to have vanished into the ground.

Ivan groaned, looked off into the distance and saw the hateful stranger. He was already at the exit to Patriarch’s Lane, and he wasn’t alone. The more than dubious choirmaster had managed to catch up with him. And that wasn’t all: the third member of the company, who had appeared out of nowhere, turned out to be a cat, big as a hog and pitch-black, like a crow, or like soot, and sporting a mustache like a reckless cavalryman’s. The threesome set off down Patriarch’s Lane, with the cat walking on his hind legs.

Ivan rushed off in pursuit of the villains and soon realized that catching up with them was going to be very difficult.

The threesome tore down the lane in a flash and were on Spiridonovka. No matter how much Ivan quickened his pace, the distance between pursuer and pursued never shortened. Before the poet could realize what was happening, he had left the peaceful Spiridonovka behind, and found himself at Nikitsky Gates where his plight worsened. Here there was a huge crowd, and when Ivan ran into one of the passersby, he was showered with curses. It was here, moreover, that the villainous gang resorted to that favorite outlaw strategy—they split up and went in different directions.

With great agility the choirmaster corkscrewed himself into a moving bus going to Arbat Square, and disappeared. After losing one of the pack, Ivan focused all his attention on the cat. He saw the bizarre feline walk over to the steps of an “A” streetcar that was standing at the stop, rudely push aside a woman who let out a shriek, grab onto the handrail, and even try to thrust a ten-kopeck piece at the conductress through the window, open because of the heat.

The cat’s behavior so amazed Ivan that he froze in his tracks next to a grocery store on the corner, only then to become even more amazed by the behavior of the conductress. As soon as she saw the cat climbing onto the streetcar, she began shouting with such fury that she shook all over, “Cats aren’t allowed! No passengers with cats! Shoo! Get off, or I’ll call the police!” But neither the conductress nor the passengers were amazed by the most important thing of all, namely, that a cat was not merely getting on a streetcar, which wasn’t so bad, but that he intended to pay his fare!

The cat turned out to be not only a fare-paying beast, but a disciplined one as well. At the first yell from the conductress, he stopped in his tracks, got off the streetcar, and sat down at the stop, stroking his whiskers with his ten-kopeck piece. But no sooner did the conductress pull the cord and the streetcar start to move, than the cat did just what anyone who has been kicked off a streetcar and still has somewhere to go would do. He let all three cars go by, then jumped onto the coupler in back of the last one, grabbed on to a piece of tubing that stuck out of the back with his paw and sailed off, saving himself ten kopecks in the bargain.

Preoccupied with the revolting cat, Ivan almost lost track of the most important one of the three, the professor. But, fortunately, he had not managed to slip away. Ivan caught sight of his gray beret in the midst of the crowd swarming into Bolshaya Nikitskaya or Herzen Street. In the flash of an eye Ivan himself was there, but to no avail. Although he quickened his pace and began running at jogging speed, jostling pedestrians in the process, he never managed to get any closer to the professor.

However distraught he was, Ivan Nikolayevich could not help but be struck by the supernatural speed of the chase. Twenty seconds after leaving Nikitsky Gates, he was blinded by the lights on Arbat Square, and a few seconds after that, he was on a dark side street with sloping sidewalks, where he fell with a crash and hit his knee. Again a brightly lit thoroughfare—Kropotkin Street, then a side-street, then Ostozhenka and yet another side street, bleak, nasty, and poorly lit. It was here that Ivan Nikolayevich finally lost the man who was so important to him. The professor had vanished.

Ivan Nikolayevich grew discouraged, but not for long. It suddenly hit him that the professor would definitely turn up in building No. 13, and without fail in apartment 47.

Ivan Nikolayevich tore through the entranceway and flew up the stairs to the second floor. He found the apartment immediately and rang the bell impatiently. He did not have to wait long because a little girl of five or so opened the door for him, and then went off without a word.

The vast and extremely neglected entrance hall was dimly lit by a tiny corner lamp that hung from a ceiling black with dirt. A bicycle without tires hung on the wall, and on the floor there was an enormous iron-studded chest; on the shelf above the coatrack there was a winter hat, with long drooping earflaps. Behind one of the doors a booming masculine voice was angrily declaiming verses on the radio.

Ivan Nikolayevich was not in the least bit flustered by these unfamiliar surroundings and headed straight for the hallway, reasoning thus, “Naturally, he’s hidden himself in the bathroom.” It was dark in the hallway, and as he bumped against the wall, Ivan saw a faint streak of light coming from under the doorway. He grabbed the doorknob and gave it a slight tug. The latch unfastened, and Ivan found himself precisely in the bathroom, and thought what luck that was.

But it wasn’t the right kind of luck! The moist warmth of the bath enveloped Ivan, and in the light of the coals smouldering in the water heater, he could see large basins hanging on the wall and a bathtub, pitted with horrible black spots where the enamel had chipped off. There in the tub stood a naked woman, covered in soap and with a loofah in her hands. She squinted nearsightedly at Ivan’s intruding figure, and clearly mistaking him for someone else in the hellish light, said softly and cheerily, “Kiryushka! Quit fooling around! Have you gone out of your mind? Fyodor Ivanovich will be back any minute. Get out of here this instant!”—and she waved her loofah at Ivan.

It was an obvious misunderstanding, and Ivan Nikolayevich was, of course, to blame. But not wanting to admit it, he yelled reproachfully, “Whore! …”—and then somehow ended up in the kitchen. There was no one there. Standing silently on top of the stove in the semidarkness were a number of unlit primus stoves. A single ray of moonlight filtered through the dusty window, which had not been cleaned for years, and feebly illumined the corner, where amidst the dust and cobwebs hung a forgotten icon, the stubs of two wedding candles still sticking out of its case. Tacked to the wall beneath the large icon was a small paper one.

No one knows what thought possessed Ivan at that moment, only that he grabbed the paper icon and one of the candles before running out the back door. With these objects in hand, he left the strange apartment, mumbling in embarrassment over what had just happened to him in the bathroom, and wondering, despite himself, who the insolent Kiryushka might be and whether the repulsive hat with the earflaps belonged to him.

Ivan looked all around for the fugitive in the dreary, deserted back street, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then Ivan said to himself firmly, “But, of course, he’s on the Moscow River! Onward!” Perhaps Ivan Nikolayevich should have been asked why he thought the professor was on the Moscow River and not somewhere else. But there was, alas, no one to ask him. The foul and odious street was completely deserted.

In no time at all Ivan Nikolayevich could be seen on the granite steps of the amphitheater by the Moscow River.

After taking off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to a pleasant-looking fellow with a beard who was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Next to him was a torn, white Tolstoyan-style shirt and a pair of worn-down, unlaced shoes. Waving his arms in order to cool off, Ivan plunged into the water like a swallow. The water was so cold it took his breath away, and the thought even flashed through his mind that he might not be able to surface. But surface he did, and, puffing and snorting, his eyes bulging with terror, Ivan Nikolayevich began swimming in the black, oil-reeking water between the broken zigzags of light cast by the streetlamps along the bank.

When a wet Ivan came tripping up the steps to the spot where the bearded fellow had been safeguarding his clothes, it soon became clear that not only the latter had been kidnapped, but the former as well, that is, the bearded fellow himself. Where the pile of clothes had been, there was now only a pair of striped long johns, a torn Tolstoyan-style shirt, a candle, a paper icon, and a box of matches. After shaking his fist at someone in the distance in a gesture of feeble outrage, Ivan proceeded to put on what had been left behind.

It was then that two thoughts began to plague him: first, his MASSOLIT ID, which he was never without, was gone, and second, would he be able to walk around Moscow the way he was dressed without being stopped? Long underwear was a bit … True, it was nobody’s business, but someone might make a fuss or try to stop him.

Ivan tore the ankle buttons off his long johns, thinking that might make them look more like summer trousers. He then gathered up the icon, candle, and matches and set off, saying to himself, “To Griboyedov! No doubt he’s there.” The evening life of the city had already begun. Trucks sped by in clouds of dust, their chains rattling, and on their platforms men lay on sacks, their stomachs sticking up in the air. Everyone’s windows were open, and shining in each one was a lamp with an orange shade; from all the windows, doors, gateways, rooftops, attics, cellars, and courtyards came the hoarse strains of the polonaise from the opera Eugene Onegin.

Ivan Nikolayevich’s fears were completely justified: passersby took one look at him and laughed and turned to stare. As a result he decided to abandon the main thoroughfares and make his way through the side streets and back alleys where people were less nosy, and there was less chance that a barefoot man would be pestered about long johns that stubbornly refused to look like trousers.

So Ivan plunged into the mysterious network of back alleys around the Arbat. He slinked along the walls, casting fearful glances and turning around every minute. From time to time, he hid in entranceways. He avoided intersections lit up by traffic lights, and the plush doorways of embassy residences.

Throughout his difficult journey, he was, for some reason, inexpressibly tormented by the omnipresent orchestra accompanying the deep bass who was singing of his love for Tatyana.