CHAPTER 1. Never Talk with Strangers At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at thePatriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in agrey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried hisrespectable fedora hat in his hand. His neady shaven face was adorned withblack horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The odier, abroad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered capcocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousersand black sneakers. The first was none other than Mikhail AlexandrovichBerlioz,[2] editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of theboard of one of the major Moscow literary associations, calledMassolit[3] for short, and his young companion was the poet IvanNikolaevich Ponyrev, who wrote under the pseudonym ofHomeless.[4] Once in the shade of the barely greening lindens, the writers dashedfirst thing to a brighdy
painted stand with the sign: 'Beer and SoftDrinks.' Ah, yes, note must be made of the first oddity of this dreadful Mayevening. There was not a single person to be seen, not only by the stand,but also along the whole walk parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street. At thathour when it seemed no longer possible to breathe, when the sun, havingscorched Moscow, was collapsing in a dry haze somewhere beyond SadovoyeRing, no one came under the lindens, no one sat on a bench, the walk wasempty. 'Give us seltzer,' Berlioz asked. 'There is no seltzer,' die woman in the stand said, and for some reasonbecame offended. 'Is there beer?' Homeless inquired in a rasping voice. 'Beer'll be delivered towards evening,' the woman replied. 'Then what is there?' asked Berlioz. 'Apricot soda, only warm,' said the woman. 'Well, let's have it, let's have it! . . .' The soda produced an abundance of yellow foam, and the air began tosmell of a barber-shop. Having finished drinking,
the writers immediatelystarted to hiccup, paid, and sat down on a bench face to the pond and backto Bronnaya. Here the second oddity occurred, touching Berlioz alone. He suddenlystopped hiccuping, his heart gave a thump and dropped away somewhere for aninstant, then came back, but with a blunt needle lodged in it. Besides that,Berlioz was gripped by fear, groundless, yet so strong that he wanted toflee the Ponds at once without looking back. Berlioz looked around in anguish, not understanding what had frightenedhim. He paled, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, thought: "What's the matter with me? This has never happened before. My heart'sacting up ... I'm overworked . .. Maybe it's time to send it all to thedevil and go to Kislovodsk . . .'[5] And here the sweltering air thickened before him, and a transparentcitizen of the strangest appearance wove himself out of it. A peakedjockey's cap on his little head, a short checkered jacket also made of air... A
citizen seven feet tall, but narrow in the shoulders, unbelievablythin, and, kindly note, with a jeering physiognomy. The life of Berlioz had taken such a course that he was unaccustomed toextraordinary phenomena. Turning paler still, he goggled his eyes andthought in consternation: 'This can't be! . . .' But, alas, it was, and the long, see-through citizen was swaying beforehim to the left and to the right without touching the ground. Here terror took such possession of Berlioz that he shut his eyes. Whenhe opened them again, he saw that it was all over, the phantasm haddissolved, the checkered one had vanished, and with that the blunt needlehad popped out of his heart. 'Pah, the devil!' exclaimed the editor. 'YOU know, Ivan, I nearly hadheatstroke just now! There was even something like a hallucination . ..' Heattempted to smile, but alarm still jumped in his eyes and his handstrembled. However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with hishandkerchief
and, having said rather cheerfully: 'Well, and so . . .', wenton with the conversation interrupted by their soda-drinking. This conversation, as was learned afterwards, was about Jesus Christ.The thing was that the editor had commissioned from the poet a longanti-religious poem for the next issue of his journal. Ivan Nikolaevich hadwritten this poem, and in a very short time, but unfortunately the editorwas not at all satisfied with it. Homeless had portrayed the main characterof his poem - that is, Jesus - in very dark colours, but nevertheless thewhole poem, in the editor's opinion, had to be written over again. And sothe editor was now giving the poet something of a lecture on Jesus, with theaim of underscoring the poet's essential error. It is hard to say what precisely had let Ivan Nikolaevich down - thedescriptive powers of his talent or a total unfamiliarity with the questionhe was writing about - but his Jesus came out, well, completely alive, theonce-existing Jesus,
though, true, a Jesus furnished with all negativefeatures. Now, Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing was nothow Jesus was, good or bad, but that this same Jesus, as a person, simplynever existed in the world, and all the stories about him were mere fiction,the most ordinary mythology. It must be noted that the editor was a well-read man and in hisconversation very skilfully pointed to ancient historians - for instance,the famous Philo of Alexandria[6] and the brilliantly educatedFlavius Josephus[7] - who never said a word about the existenceof Jesus. Displaying a solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich also informedthe poet, among other things, that the passage in the fifteenth book ofTacitus's famous Annals, the forty-fourth chapter, where mention is made ofthe execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later spurious interpolation. The poet, for whom everything the editor was telling him was new,listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing
his pert green eyes onhim, and merely hiccuped from time to time, cursing the apricot soda underhis breath. There's not a single Eastern religion,' Berlioz was saying, 'in which,as a rule, an immaculate virgin did not give birth to a god. And in just thesame wav, without inventing anything new, the Christians created theirJesus, who in fact never lived. It's on this that the main emphasis shouldbe placed . . .' Berlioz's high tenor rang out in the deserted walk, and as MikhailAlexandrovich went deeper into the maze, which only a highly educated mancan go into without risking a broken neck, the poet learned more and moreinteresting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris,[9] abenevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician godTammoz,[10] and about Marduk," and even about a lesser known,terrible god, Vitzliputzli,'[2] once greatly venerated by theAztecs in Mexico. And just at the moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich wastelling the poet
how the Aztecs used to fashion figurines of Vitzli-putzliout of dough -- the first man appeared in the walk. Afterwards, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, variousinstitutions presented reports describing this man. A comparison of themcannot but cause amazement. Thus, the first of them said that the man wasshort, had gold teeth, and limped on his right leg. The second, that the manwas enormously tall, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. Thethird laconically averred that the man had no distinguishing marks. It mustbe acknowledged that none of these reports is of any value. First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg, and wasneither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he hadplatinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing anexpensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beretwas cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm 1-e carried a stick with ablack knob shaped like
a poodle's head.[13] He looked to be alittle over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Righteye black, left -- for some reason -- green. Dark eyebrows, but one higherthan the other. In short, a foreigner.[14] Having passed by the bench on which the editor and the poet wereplaced, the foreigner gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and suddenly satdown on the next bench, two steps away from the friends. 'A German . . .' thought Berlioz. 'An Englishman . . .' thoughtHomeless. 'My, he must be hot in those gloves.' And the foreigner gazed around at the tall buildings that rectangularlyframed the pond, making it obvious that he was seeing the place for thefirst time and that it interested him. He rested his glance on the upperfloors, where the glass dazzlinglv reflected the broken-up sun which was forever departing from Mikhail Alexandrovich, then shifted it lower down towhere the windows were beginning to darken before evening, smiledcondescendingly
at something, narrowed his eves, put his hands on the knoband his chin on his hands. 'For instance, Ivan,' Berlioz was saying, 'you portrayed the birth ofJesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is thata whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus, like, say, thePhoenician Adonis,[15] the Phrygian Atris,[16] thePersian Mithras.[17] And, to put it briefly, not one of them wasborn or ever existed, Jesus included, and what's necessary is that, insteadof portraying his birth or, suppose, the coming of the Magi,'[8]you portray the absurd rumours of their coming. Otherwise it follows fromyour story that he really was born! . . .' Here Homeless made an attempt to stop his painful hiccuping by holdinghis breath, which caused him to hiccup more painfully and loudly, and atthat same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreignersuddenly got up and walked towards the writers. They looked at him insurprise. 'Excuse me, please,'
the approaching man began speaking, with a foreignaccent but without distorting the words, 'if, not being your acquaintance, Iallow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is sointeresting that. . .' Here he politely took off his beret, and the friends had nothing leftbut to stand up and make their bows. 'No, rather a Frenchman .. .' thought Berlioz. 'A Pole? . . .' thought Homeless. It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made arepellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him - that is,not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever. 'May I sit down?' the foreigner asked politely, and the friends somehowinvoluntarily moved apart; the foreigner adroidy sat down between them andat once entered into the conversation: 'Unless I heard wrong, you were pleased to say that Jesus neverexisted?' the foreigner asked, turning his green left eye to Berlioz. 'No, you did not hear wrong,' Berlioz replied
courteously, 'that isprecisely what I was saying.' 'Ah, how interesting!' exclaimed the foreigner. 'What the devil does he want?' thought Homeless, frowning. 'And you were agreeing with your interlocutor?' inquired the stranger,turning to Homeless on his right. 'A hundred per cent!' confirmed the man, who was fond of whimsical andfigurative expressions. 'Amazing!' exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, casting a thievishglance around and muffling his low voice for some reason, he said: 'Forgive my importunity, but, as I understand, along with everythingelse, you also do not believe in God?' tie made frightened eyes and added:'I swear I won't tell anyone!' 'No, we don't believe in God,' Berlioz replied, smiling slightly at theforeign tourist's fright, but we can speak of it quite freely.' The foreigner sat back on the bench and asked, even with a slightshriek of curiosity: 'You are - atheists?!' Yes, we're atheists,' Berlioz smilingly replied, and Homeless
thought,getting angry: 'Latched on to us, the foreign goose!' 'Oh, how lovely!' the astonishing foreigner cried out and beganswivelling his head, looking from one writer to the other. 'In our country atheism does not surprise anyone,' Berlioz said withdiplomatic politeness. 'The majority of our population consciously and longago ceased believing in the fairytales about God.' Here the foreigner pulled the following stunt: he got up and shook theamazed editor's hand, accompanying it with these words: 'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!' 'What are you thanking himfor?' Homeless inquired, blinking. 'For some very important information,which is of great interest to me as a traveller,' the outlandish fellowexplained, raising his finger significantly. The important information apparendy had indeed produced a strongimpression on the traveller, because he passed his frightened glance overthe buildings, as if afraid of seeing an atheist in every window. 'No,
he's not an Englishman ...' thought Berlioz, and Homeless thought:'Where'd he pick up his Russian, that's the interesting thing!' and frownedagain. 'But, allow me to ask you,' the foreign visitor spoke after someanxious reflection, 'what, then, about the proofs of God's existence, ofwhich, as is known, there are exactly five?' 'Alas!' Berlioz said with regret. 'Not one of these proofs is worthanything, and mankind shelved them long ago. You must agree that in therealm of reason there can be no proof of God's existence.' 'Bravo!' cried the foreigner. 'Bravo! You have perfectly repeatedrestless old Immanuel's[19] thought in this regard. But here'sthe hitch: he roundly demolished all five proofs, and then, as if mockinghimself, constructed a sixth of his own.' 'Kant's proof,' the learned editor objected with a subtle smile, 'isequally unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that the Kantianreasoning on this question can satisfy only slaves, and
Strauss simplylaughed at this proof.' Berlioz spoke, thinking all the while: 'But, anyhow,who is he? And why does he speak Russian so well?' They ought to take this Kant and give him a three-year stretch inSolovki[22] for such proofs!' Ivan Nikolaevich plumped quiteunexpectedly. 'Ivan!' Berlioz whispered, embarrassed. But the suggestion of sending Kant to Solovki not only did not shockthe foreigner, but even sent him into raptures. 'Precisely, precisely,' he cried, and his green left eye, turned toBerlioz, flashed. 'Just the place for him! Didn't I tell him that time atbreakfast: "As you will. Professor, but what you've thought up doesn't hangtogether. It's clever, maybe, but mighty unclear. You'll be laughed at."' Berlioz goggled his eyes. 'At breakfast... to Kant? . . . What is thisdrivel?' he thought. 'But,' the oudander went on, unembarrassed by Berlioz's amazement andaddressing the poet, 'sending him to Solovki is unfeasible, for the simplereason
that he has been abiding for over a hundred years now in placesconsiderably more remote than Solovki, and to extract him from there is inno way possible, I assure you.' 'Too bad!' the feisty poet responded. 'Yes, too bad!' the stranger agreed, his eye flashing, and went on: 'But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then,one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order ofthings on earth?' 'Man governs it himself,' Homeless angrily hastened to reply to thisadmittedly none-too-clear question. 'Pardon me,' the stranger responded gently, 'but in order to govern,one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at leastsomewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can mangovern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan forat least some ridiculously short period - well, say, a thousand years - butcannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? 'And in fact,' here the stranger
turned to Berlioz, 'imagine that you,for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself,generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem... hem ... lung cancer ...' -- here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and ifthe thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure -- 'yes, cancer' -- narrowinghis eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word -- 'and so your governingis over! 'You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own. Yourfamily starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush tolearned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well.Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as youunderstand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought hewas governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box,and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer goodfor anything, burn him in an oven. 'And sometimes it's worse still:
the man has just decided to go toKislovodsk' - here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz - 'a trifling matter,it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knowswhy, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he whogoverned himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he wasgoverned by someone else entirely?' And here the unknown man burst into astrange little laugh. Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about thecancer and the tram-car, and certain alarming thoughts began to torment him.'He's not a foreigner .. . he's not a foreigner . ..' he thought, 'he's amost peculiar specimen ... but, excuse me, who is he then?...' You'd like to smoke, I see?' the stranger addressed Homelessunexpectedly. "Which kind do you prefer?' 'What, have you got several?' the poet, who had run out of cigarettes,asked glumly. 'Which do you prefer?' the stranger repeated. 'Okay -- Our Brand,' Homeless replied
spitefully. The unknown man immediately took a cigarette case from his pocket andoffered it to Homeless: 'Our Brand . . .' Editor and poet were both struck, not so much by Our Brand preciselyturning up in the cigarette case, as by the cigarette case itself. It was ofhuge size, made of pure gold, and, as it was opened, a diamond triangleflashed white and blue fire on its lid. Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: 'No, a foreigner!', andHomeless: 'Well, devil take him, eh!...' The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit up, but the non-smokerBerlioz declined. 'I must counter him like this,' Berlioz decided, 'yes, man is mortal,no one disputes that. But the thing is . ..' However, before he managed to utter these words, the foreigner spoke: 'Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worstof it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal -- there's the trick! Andgenerally he's unable to say what he's going to do this same evening.'
'What an absurd way of putting the question ...' Berlioz thought andobjected: 'Well, there's some exaggeration here. About this same evening I doknow more or less certainly. It goes without saying, if a brick should fallon my head on Bronnaya . . ' 'No brick,' the stranger interrupted imposingly, 'will ever fall onanyone's head just out of the blue. In this particular case, I assure you,you are not in danger of that at all. You will die a different death.' 'Maybe you know what kind precisely?' Berlioz inquired with perfectlynatural irony, getting drawn into an utterly absurd conversation. 'And willtell me?' 'Willingly,' the unknown man responded. He looked Berlioz up and downas if he were going to make him a suit, muttered through his teeth somethinglike: 'One, two . . . Mercury in the second house . . . moon gone ... six -disaster . . . evening - seven . . .' then announced loudly and joyfully:'Your head will be cut off!' Homeless goggled his eyes wildly and spitefully
at the insouciantstranger, and Berlioz asked, grinning crookedly: 'By whom precisely? Enemies? Interventionists?'[23] 'No,' replied his interlocutor, 'by a Russian woman, a Komsomol[24]girl.' 'Hm . . .' Berlioz mumbled, vexed at the stranger's Utde joke, 'well,excuse me, but that's not very likely.' 'And I beg you to excuse me,' the foreigner replied, 'but it's so. Ah,yes, I wanted to ask you, what are you going to do tonight, if it's not asecret?' 'It's not a secret. Right now I'll stop by my place on Sadovaya, andthen at ten this evening there will be a meeting at Massolit, and I willchair it.' 'No, that simply cannot be,' the foreigner objected firmly. 'Why not?' 'Because,' the foreigner replied and, narrowing his eyes, looked intothe sky, where, anticipating the cool of the evening, black birds weretracing noiselessly, 'Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and hasnot only bought it, but has already spilled it. So the meeting will not takeplace.'
Here, quite understandably, silence fell under the lindens. 'Forgive me,' Berlioz spoke after a pause, glancing at thedrivel-spouting foreigner, 'but what has sunflower oil got to do with it ...and which Annushka?' 'Sunflower oil has got this to do with it,' Homeless suddenly spoke,obviously deciding to declare war on the uninvited interlocutor. 'Have youever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill?' 'Ivan!.. .' Mikhail Alexandrovich exclaimed quietly. But the foreignerwas not a bit offended and burst into the merriest laughter. 'I have, I have, and more than once!' he cried out, laughing, butwithout taking his unlaughing eye off the poet. 'Where haven't I been! Onlyit's too bad I didn't get around to asking the professor what schizophreniais. So you will have to find that out from him yourself, Ivan Nikolaevich!' 'How do you know my name?' 'Gracious, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn't know you?' Here the foreignertook out of his pocket the previous
day's issue of the Literary Gazette, andIvan Nikolaevich saw his own picture on the very first page and under it hisvery own verses. But the proof of fame and popularity, which yesterday haddelighted the poet, this time did not delight him a bit. 'Excuse me,' he said, and his face darkened, 'could you wait one littlemoment? I want to sav a couple of words to my friend.' 'Oh, with pleasure!' exclaimed the stranger. 'It's so nice here underthe lindens, and, by the way, I'm not in any hurry.' 'Listen here, Misha,' the poet whispered, drawing Berlioz aside, 'he'sno foreign tourist, he's a spy. A Russian emigre[25] who hascrossed back over. Ask for his papers before he gets away...' 'YOU think so?' Berlioz whispered worriedly, and thought: 'Why, he'sright...' 'Believe me,' the poet rasped into his ear, 'he's pretending to be afool in order to find out something or other. Just hear how he speaksRussian.' As he spoke, the poet kept glancing sideways, to make sure thestranger
did not escape. 'Let's go and detain him, or he'll get away . . .' And the poet pulled Berlioz back to the bench by the arm. The unknown man was not sitting, but was standing near it, holding inhis hands some booklet in a dark-grey binding, a sturdy envelope made ofgood paper, and a visiting card. 'Excuse me for having forgotten, in the heat of our dispute, tointroduce myself. Here is my card, my passport, and an invitation to come toMoscow for a consultation,' the stranger said weightily, giving both writersa penetrating glance. They were embarrassed. 'The devil, he heard everything .. .' Berliozthought, and with a polite gesture indicated that there was no need to showpapers. While the foreigner was pushing them at the editor, the poet managedto make out the word 'Professor' printed in foreign type on the card, andthe initial letter of the last name - a double 'V' - 'W'. 'My pleasure,' the editor meanwhile muttered in embarrassment, and theforeigner put the papers back
in his pocket. Relations were thus restored, and all three sat down on the benchagain. 'You've been invited here as a consultant. Professor?' asked Berlioz. 'Yes, as a consultant.' "You're German?' Homeless inquired. 'I? . ..' the professor repeated and suddenly fell to thinking. 'Yes,perhaps I am German .. .' he said. 'YOU speak real good Russian,' Homeless observed. 'Oh, I'm generally a polyglot and know a great number of languages,'the professor replied. 'And what is your field?' Berlioz inquired. 'I am a specialist in black magic.' There he goes!...' struck in Mikhail Alexandrovich's head. 'And . .. and you've been invited here in that capacity?' he asked,stammering. 'Yes, in that capacity,' the professor confirmed, and explained: 'In astate library here some original manuscripts of the tenth-centurynecromancer Gerbert of Aurillac[26] have been found. So it isnecessary for me to sort them out. I am the only specialist in the
world.' 'Aha! You're a historian?' Berlioz asked with great relief and respect. 'I am a historian,' the scholar confirmed, and added with no rhyme orreason: This evening there will be an interesting story at the Ponds!' Once again editor and poet were extremely surprised, but the professorbeckoned them both to him, and when they leaned towards him, whispered: 'Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.' 'You see. Professor,' Berlioz responded with a forced smile, 'werespect your great learning, but on this question we hold to a differentpoint of view.' 'There's no need for any points of view,' the strange professorreplied, 'he simply existed, that's all.' 'But there's need for some proof. . .' Berlioz began. "There's no needfor any proofs,' replied the professor, and he began to speak softly, whilehis accent for some reason disappeared: 'It's all very simple: In a whitecloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, earlyin the morning
of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan . .,'[27]
