Makeup. Hair care. Skin care

Retelling

Part I

Chapter 1. Never talk to strangers

“At the hour of a hot spring sunset, two citizens appeared on the Patriarch’s Ponds.” One of them is Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, “editor of a thick art magazine and chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations (Massolit). “His young companion is the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny.”

Berlioz convinces Bezdomny that the poem he commissioned has a significant flaw. The hero of the poem, Jesus, outlined by Bezdomny “in very black colors,” still turned out “well, completely alive,” and Berlioz’s goal is to prove that Jesus “did not exist in the world at all.” In the midst of Berlioz's speech, a man appeared in a deserted alley. “He was wearing an expensive gray suit and foreign shoes. He sported a gray beret draped over his ear and carried a cane with a black knob under his arm... He looked to be over forty years old. The mouth is kind of crooked. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other. In a word - a foreigner." The “foreigner” intervened in the conversation, found out that his interlocutors were atheists, and for some reason was happy about this. He surprised them by mentioning that he once had breakfast with Kant and argued about the evidence for the existence of God. The stranger asks: “If there is no God, then who controls human life and all order on earth in general?” “The man himself controls,” answers Bezdomny. The stranger claims that a person is deprived of the opportunity to plan even for tomorrow: “what if he slips and gets hit by a tram.” He predicts to Berlioz, confident that in the evening he will preside over the Massolit meeting, that the meeting will not take place: “Your head will be cut off!” And this will be done by a “Russian woman, a Komsomol member.” Annushka has already spilled the oil. Berlioz and Ponyrev wonder: who is this man? Crazy? Spy? As if having heard them, the person introduces himself as a consulting professor, a specialist in black magic. He beckoned the editor and the poet over and whispered, “Keep in mind that Jesus existed.” They protested: “Some kind of proof is required...” In response, the “consultant” began to tell: “It’s simple: in a white cloak with a bloody lining...”

Chapter 2. Pontius Pilate

“In a white cloak with a bloody lining and a shuffling cavalry gait, early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, the procurator Pontius Pilate came out into the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.” He had an excruciating headache. He had to approve the death sentence of the Sanhedrin for the defendant from Galilee. Two legionnaires brought a man of about twenty-seven, dressed in an old tunic, with a bandage on his head, and his hands tied behind his back. “The man had a large bruise under his left eye and an abrasion with dried blood in the corner of his mouth.” “So it was you who persuaded the people to destroy the Yershalaim temple?” - asked the procurator. The arrested man began to say: “Good man! Trust me...” The procurator interrupted him: “In Yershalaim everyone whispers about me that I am a ferocious monster, and this is absolutely true,” and ordered to call the Rat-Slayer. A centurion warrior entered, a huge, broad-shouldered man. Ratboy hit the arrested man with a whip, and he instantly fell to the ground. Then Ratboy ordered: “Call the Roman procurator hegemon. Don’t say any other words.”

The man was again brought before the procurator. From the interrogation it turned out that his name is Yeshua Ha-Nozri, that he does not remember his parents, he is alone, he does not have a permanent home, he travels from city to city, he knows literacy and Greek. Yeshua denies that he persuaded people to destroy the temple, talks about a certain Levi Matthew, a former tax collector, who, after talking with him, threw money on the road and has since become his companion. He said this about the temple: “The temple of the old faith will collapse and a new temple of truth will be created.” The procurator, who was tormented by an unbearable headache, said: “Why did you, tramp, confuse the people by telling about the truth about which you have no idea. What is truth? And I heard: “The truth, first of all, is that you have a headache, and it hurts so much that you are cowardly thinking about death... But your torment will now end, your headache will go away.” The prisoner continued: “The trouble is that you are too closed and have completely lost faith in people. Your life is meager, hegemon.” Instead of being angry with the impudent tramp, the procurator unexpectedly ordered him to be untied. “Confess, are you a great doctor?” - he asked. The pain went away from the procurator. He is increasingly interested in the arrested person. It turns out that he also knows Latin, he is smart, insightful, he makes strange speeches about how all people are kind, even people like the cruel Mark the Ratboy. The prosecutor decided that he would declare Yeshua mentally ill and would not approve the death sentence. But then the denunciation of Judah from Kiriath surfaced that Yeshua opposed the power of Caesar. Yeshua confirms: “I said that all power is violence against people and that the time will come when there will be no power of Caesars or any other power. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice...” Pilate cannot believe his ears: “And the kingdom of truth will come?” And when Yeshua says with conviction: “It will come,” the procurator shouts in a terrible voice: “It will never come!” Criminal! Criminal!"

Pilate signs the death warrant and reports this to the high priest Kaifa. According to the law, in honor of the upcoming Easter holiday, one of the two criminals must be released. Kaifa says that the Sanhedrin is asking to release the robber Bar-Rabban. Pilate tries to convince Kaifa to have mercy on Yeshua, who committed less serious crimes, but he is adamant. Pilata is forced to agree. He is strangled by the anger of powerlessness, he even threatens Kaifa: “Take care of yourself, high priest... From now on you will have no peace! Neither you nor your people." When in the square in front of the crowd he announced the name of the pardoned man - Bar-Rabban, it seemed to him “that the sun, ringing, burst above him and filled his ears with fire.”

Chapter 3. Seventh proof

The editor and the poet woke up when the “foreigner” finished his speech,” and were surprised to see that evening had come. They are increasingly convinced that the “consultant” is crazy. Still, Homeless cannot resist arguing with him: he claims that there is no devil. The answer was the laughter of the “foreigner.” Berlioz decides to call where he should. The “foreigner” suddenly passionately asks him: “I beg you, at least believe that the devil exists! There is a seventh proof for this. And it will be presented to you now.”

Berlioz runs to ring the bell, runs up to the turnstile, and then a tram runs into him. He slips, falls on the rails, and the last thing he sees is “the face of the female tram driver, completely white with horror... The tram covered Berlioz, and a round dark object was thrown under the bars of the Patriarchal Alley... it jumped on the cobblestones of Bronnaya. It was Berlioz's severed head."

Chapter 4. The Chase

“Something like paralysis happened to Homeless.” He heard women screaming about some Annushka who had spilled oil, and with horror he remembered the “foreigner’s” prediction. “With a cold heart, Ivan approached the professor: Confess, who are you?” But he pretended not to understand. Nearby was another guy in checkered clothing who looked like the regent. Ivan unsuccessfully tries to detain the criminals, but they suddenly find themselves far from him, and with them “a cat who came from nowhere, huge as a hog, black as soot, and with a desperate cavalry mustache.” Ivan rushes after him, but the distance does not decrease. He sees the trio leaving in all directions, with the cat jumping onto the rear arch of the tram.

A homeless man rushes around the city, looking for the “professor”, for some reason he even throws himself into the Moscow River. Then it turns out that his clothes have disappeared, and Ivan, without documents, barefoot, wearing only underpants, with an icon and a candle, under the mocking glances of passersby, sets off through the city to the Griboedov restaurant.

Chapter 5. There was an affair in Griboedov

The “House of Griboyedov” was owned by Massolit, headed by Berlioz. “A casual visitor’s eyes began to run wild from the inscriptions that were colorful on the doors: “Registration in the queue for paper ...”, “Fish and dacha section”, “Housing issue” ... Anyone understood “how good life is for the lucky members of Massolit " The entire lower floor was occupied by the best restaurant in Moscow, open only to holders of a “Massolit membership card.”

Twelve writers, having waited in vain at Berlioz's meeting, went down to the restaurant. At midnight jazz started playing, both halls danced, and suddenly the terrible news about Berlioz spread. Grief and confusion quickly gave way to cynical: “Yes, he died, he died... But we are alive!” And the restaurant began to live its normal life. Suddenly a new incident: Ivan Bezdomny, a famous poet, appeared, in white underpants, with an icon and a lit wedding candle. He announces that Berlioz was killed by a certain consultant. They take him for a drunk, they think he has delirium tremens, they don’t believe him. Ivan becomes more and more worried, starts a fight, they tie him up and take him to a psychiatric clinic.

Chapter 6. Schizophrenia, as was said

Ivan is angry: he, a healthy man, was “grabbed and dragged by force to a madhouse.” The poet Ryukhin, who was accompanying Ivan, suddenly realizes that “there was no madness in his eyes.” Ivan tries to tell the doctor how it all happened, but it’s obvious that this is some kind of nonsense. He decides to call the police: “Says the poet Bezdomny from a madhouse.” Ivan is furious and wants to leave, but the orderlies grab him and the doctor calms him down with an injection. Ryukhin hears the doctor’s conclusion: “Schizophrenia, I guess. And then there’s alcoholism...”

Ryukhin goes back. He is gnawed by resentment at the words uttered by Bezdomny about his, Ryukhin’s, mediocrity. He admits that Homeless is right. Driving past the monument to Pushkin, he thinks: “This is an example of real luck... But what did he do? Is there anything special in these words: “Storm with darkness...”? I don’t understand!.. Lucky, lucky!” Returning to the restaurant, he drinks “glass after glass, understanding and admitting that nothing can be corrected in his life, but can only be forgotten.”

Chapter 7. Bad apartment

“Styopa Likhodeev, director of the variety theater, woke up in the morning in the very apartment that he occupied in half with the late Berlioz... Apartment No. 50 had long enjoyed, if not a bad, then at least a strange reputation... For two years ago, inexplicable incidents began in the apartment: people began to disappear from this apartment without a trace.” Styopa groaned: he could not recover from yesterday, he was tormented by a hangover. Suddenly he noticed an unknown person dressed in black by the bed: “Good afternoon, handsome Stepan Bogdanovich!” But Styopa could not remember the stranger. He suggested that Styopa get some treatment: out of nowhere vodka appeared in a foggy decanter and a snack. Stepa felt better. The unknown person introduced himself: “Professor of black magic Woland” and said that yesterday Styopa had signed a contract with him for seven performances in the Variety Show and that he had come to clarify the details. He also presented a contract with Styopa’s signature. Unhappy Styopa decided that he had memory lapses and called financial director Rimsky. He confirmed that the black magician was performing in the evening. Styopa notices some vague figures in the mirror: a long man wearing pince-nez and a huge black cat. Soon the company settled around Stepa. “This is how people go crazy,” he thought.

Woland hints that Styopa is superfluous here. The long checkered one denounces Styopa: “In general, they’ve been terribly piggy lately. They drink, don’t do a damn thing, and they can’t do anything, because they don’t understand anything. The bosses are being bullied!” To top it all off, another guy with a nasty face came straight out of the mirror: fiery red-haired, small, wearing a bowler hat and with a fang sticking out of his mouth. The guy whom the cat called Azazello said: “Will you allow me, sir, to throw him the hell out of Moscow?” “Scram!!” - the cat suddenly barked. “And then the bedroom spun around Styopa, and he hit his head on the ceiling and, losing consciousness, thought: “I’m dying...”

But he didn't die. When he opened his eyes, he realized that the sea was roaring, he was sitting at the very end of the pier, that above him was a blue sparkling sky, and behind him was a white city on the mountains... A man stood on the pier, smoking and spitting into the sea. Styopa knelt in front of him and said: “I beg you, tell me, what city is this?” "However!" - said the soulless smoker. “I’m not drunk,” Styopa answered hoarsely, something happened to me... I’m sick... Where am I? What city is this?" “Well, Yalta...” Styopa sighed quietly, fell on his side, and hit his head on the heated stone of the pier. Consciousness left him."

Chapter 8. The duel between the professor and the poet

At that same moment, consciousness returned to Ivan Nikolaevich Bezdomny, and he remembered that he was in a hospital. Having slept, Ivan began to think more clearly. The hospital was equipped with the latest technology. When he was brought to the doctors, he decided not to go on a rampage and not talk about yesterday’s events, but “to withdraw into proud silence.” I had to answer some questions from the doctors who examined him for a long time. Finally the “chief” arrived, surrounded by a retinue in white coats, a man with “piercing eyes and polite manners.” “Like Pontius Pilate!” - Ivan thought. The man introduced himself as Dr. Stravinsky. He got acquainted with the medical history and exchanged a few Latin phrases with the other doctors. Ivan again remembered Pilate. Ivan tried, while remaining calm, to tell the professor about the “consultant” and his company, to convince him that he needed to act immediately before they caused more trouble. The professor did not argue with Ivan, but gave such arguments (Ivan’s inappropriate behavior yesterday) that Ivan was confused: “So what to do?” Stravinsky convinced Bezdomny that someone had greatly frightened him yesterday, that he absolutely needed to stay in the hospital, come to his senses, rest, and the police would catch the criminals - he just had to put all his suspicions on paper. The doctor, looking straight into Ivan’s eyes for a long time, repeated: “They will help you here... everything is calm,” and Ivan’s expression suddenly softened, he quietly agreed with the professor...

Chapter 9. Koroviev's things

“The news of Berlioz’s death spread throughout the house with supernatural speed,” and the chairman of the housing association of building No. 302 bis, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosy, was inundated with statements claiming the living space of the deceased. The tortured Nikanor Ivanovich went to apartment No. 50. In the empty apartment, he unexpectedly discovered an unknown skinny gentleman in checkered clothing. Skinny expressed extraordinary joy at the sight of Nikanor Ivanovich and introduced himself as Koroviev, a translator for the foreign artist Woland, who was invited to live in the apartment by the director of the variety show Likhodeev during the tour. The astonished Nikanor Ivanovich found in his briefcase a corresponding statement from Likhodeev. Koroviev persuaded Nikanor Ivanovich to rent out the entire apartment for a week, i.e. and the rooms of the late Berlioz, and promised the housing association a large sum. The offer was so tempting that Nikanor Ivanovich could not resist. The contract was signed immediately and the money was received. Koroviev, at Nikanor Ivanovich’s request, gave him countermarks for the evening performance and “put a thick, crunchy packet into the chairman’s hand.” He blushed and began to push the money away from him, but Koroviev was persistent, and “the pack itself crawled into the briefcase.”

When the chairman found himself on the stairs, Woland’s voice came from the bedroom: “I didn’t like this Nikanor Ivanovich. He is a scoundrel and a rogue. Is it possible to make sure he doesn’t come again?” Koroviev responded: “Sir, you should order this!...” and immediately “typed out” the phone number: “I consider it my duty to inform you that our chairman is speculating in currency... in his apartment in the ventilation, in the restroom, in newsprint - four hundred dollars..."

At home, Nikanor Ivanovich locked himself in the restroom, pulled out a wad of rubles, which turned out to be four hundred rubles, wrapped it in a piece of newspaper and stuck it in the ventilation. He prepared to dine with gusto, but had just drunk a glass when the doorbell rang. Two citizens entered, went straight to the restroom and pulled out not rubles, but “unknown money” from the ventilation duct. To the question “Your bag?” Nikanor Ivanovich answered in a terrible voice: “No! The enemies planted it!” He frantically opened the briefcase, but there was no contract, no money, no countermarks... “Five minutes later... the chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceeded straight to the gates of the house. They said that Nikanor Ivanovich had no face.”

Chapter 10. News from Yalta

At this time, Rimsky himself and the administrator Varenukha were in the office of the financial director of Variety. Both were worried: Likhodeev had disappeared, papers were waiting for him to sign, and besides Likhodeev, no one had seen the magician who was supposed to perform in the evening. The posters were ready: “Professor Woland. Sessions of black magic with its complete exposure." Then they brought a telegram from Yalta: “The threat appeared, a brown-haired man in a nightgown, trousers, without boots, a mental person who called himself Likhodeev. Please tell me where director Likhodeev is.” Varenukha responded with a telegram: “Likhodeev is in Moscow.” A new telegram immediately followed: “I beg you to believe that Yalta was abandoned by Woland’s hypnosis,” then the next one, with a sample of Likhodeev’s handwriting and signature. Rimsky and Varenukha refused to believe: “This cannot be! I don't understand!" No super-fast plane could deliver Styopa to Yalta so lightning fast. The next telegram from Yalta contained a request to send money for the trip. Rimsky decided to send money and deal with Styopa, who was clearly fooling them. He sent Varenukha with telegrams to the relevant authorities. Suddenly the phone rang and a “disgusting nasal voice” ordered Varenukha not to carry the telegrams anywhere or show them to anyone. Varenukha was indignant at the impudent call and hurried off.

A thunderstorm was approaching. On the way, he was intercepted by some fat man with a cat's face. He unexpectedly hit Varenukha so hard on the ear that the cap flew off his head. Just as unexpectedly, a redhead with a mouth like a fang appeared and hit the administrator on the other ear. And then Varenukha received a third blow, so that blood gushed from his nose. The unknown people grabbed the briefcase from the shaking hands of the administrator, picked it up and rushed arm in arm with Varenukha along Sadovaya. The storm was raging. The bandits dragged the administrator into Styopa Likhodeev’s apartment and threw him on the floor. Instead of them, a completely naked girl appeared in the hallway - red-haired, with burning eyes. Varenukha realized that this was the worst thing that had happened to him. “Let me kiss you,” the girl said tenderly. Varenukha fainted and did not feel the kiss.

Chapter 11. Ivan's split

The storm continued to rage. Ivan cried quietly: the poet’s attempts to compose a statement about the terrible consultant led to nothing. The doctor gave an injection, and the melancholy began to leave Ivan. He lay down and began to think that “it’s very nice in the clinic, that Stravinsky is smart and famous, and that it’s extremely pleasant to deal with him... The House of Sorrows fell asleep...” Ivan talked to himself. Either he decided that he shouldn’t worry so much about Berlioz, who was essentially a stranger, then he remembered that the “professor” still knew in advance that Berlioz’s head would be cut off. Then he regretted that he had not asked the “consultant” about Pontius Pilate in more detail. Ivan fell silent, half asleep. “The dream was creeping towards Ivan, and suddenly a mysterious figure appeared on the balcony and shook its finger at Ivan. Ivan, without any fear, rose up in bed and saw that there was a man on the balcony. And this man, pressing his finger to his lips, whispered: “Shh!”

Chapter 12. Black magic and its exposure

There was a performance at the Variety Show. “There was an intermission before the last part. Rimsky sat in his office, and a spasm passed over his face every now and then. The extraordinary disappearance of Likhodeev was joined by the completely unexpected disappearance of Varenukha. The phone was silent. All telephones in the building were damaged.

A “foreign artist” arrived in a black half mask with two companions: a long checkered one with pince-nez and a black fat cat. The entertainer, Georges of Bengal, announced the start of the black magic session. From somewhere unknown, a chair appeared on the stage, and the magician sat down in it. In a heavy bass voice, he asked Koroviev, whom he called Fagot, whether the Moscow population had changed significantly, whether the townspeople had changed internally. As if having come to his senses, Woland began the performance. Fagot-Koroviev and the cat showed tricks with cards. When the ribbon of cards thrown through the air was swallowed by Fagot, he announced that this deck was now in the possession of one of the spectators. The amazed spectator actually found the deck in his pocket. The others doubted whether this was a trick with a decoy. Then the deck of cards turned into a pack of chervonets in the pocket of another citizen. And then pieces of paper flew out from under the dome, the audience began to catch them and examine them in the light. There was no doubt: it was real money.

The excitement grew. The entertainer Bengalsky tried to intervene, but Fagot, pointing his finger at him, said: “I’m tired of this one. He pokes his nose around all the time where no one asks him. What would you do with him?” “Tear off your head,” they said sternly from the gallery. "That's an idea!" - and the cat, rushing at Bengalsky’s chest, tore his head from his neck in two turns. Blood came out in fountains. The people in the hall screamed hysterically. The head croaked: “Doctors!” Finally, the head, which promised “not to talk about any nonsense,” was put back in place. Bengalsky was escorted from the stage. He felt bad: he kept screaming for his head to be returned. I had to call an ambulance.

On stage, the miracles continued: a chic ladies' store opened there, with Persian carpets, huge mirrors, Parisian dresses, hats, shoes and other things in the windows. The public was in no hurry. Finally, one lady made up her mind and went up on stage. The red-haired girl with the scar led her backstage, and soon the brave woman came out in such a dress that everyone gasped. And then it exploded, women came onto the stage from all sides. They left old dresses behind the curtain and went out in new ones. Latecomers rushed onto the stage, grabbing whatever they could. A pistol shot rang out and the magazine melted.

And then the voice of the chairman of the Acoustic Commission of Moscow Theaters Sempleyarov, sitting in a box with two ladies, was heard: “It is still desirable, citizen artist, that you expose the technique of your tricks, especially with banknotes... Exposure is absolutely necessary.” Bassoon replied: “So be it, I will conduct an expose... Let me ask you, where were you last night?” Sempleyarov's face changed greatly. His wife arrogantly stated that he was at a meeting of the commission, but Fagot stated that in fact Sempleyarov went to see one artist and spent about four hours with her.” A scandal arose. Fagot shouted: “Here, respectable citizens, is one of the cases of exposure that Arkady Apollonovich so persistently sought!” The cat jumped out and barked: “The session is over! Maestro! Shorten the march! The orchestra cut into some march that was unlike anything else in its swagger. Something like Babylonian pandemonium began at Variety. The stage suddenly became empty. The “artists” melted into thin air.

Chapter 13. The appearance of a hero

“So, the unknown person shook his finger at Ivan and whispered: “Shh!” A shaven, dark-haired man of about thirty-eight years old, with a sharp nose, anxious eyes and a tuft of hair hanging over his forehead, looked in from the balcony.” The visitor was dressed in sick clothes. He sat down in a chair and asked if Ivan was violent and what his profession was. Having learned that Ivan was a poet, he was upset: “Are your poems good, tell me yourself?” “Monstrous!” - Ivan suddenly said boldly and frankly. "Do not write anymore!" - the newcomer asked pleadingly. “I promise and swear!” - Ivan said solemnly. Having learned that Ivan came here because of Pontius Pilate, the guest cried out: “A stunning coincidence! I beg you, tell me!” For some reason, having confidence in the unknown, Ivan told him everything. The guest folded his hands prayerfully and whispered: “Oh, how I guessed right! Oh, how I guessed everything!” He revealed that yesterday at the Patriarch’s Ponds Ivan met with Satan and that he himself was also sitting here because of Pontius Pilate: “The fact is that a year ago I wrote a novel about Pilate.” To Ivan’s question: “Are you a writer?”, he shook his fist at him and answered: “I am a master.” The master began to tell...

He is a historian, worked in museums, speaks five languages, lived alone. One day he won a hundred thousand rubles, bought books, rented two rooms in the basement in an alley near Arbat, quit his job and began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate. The novel was coming to an end, and then he accidentally met a woman on the street: “She was carrying disgusting, alarming, yellow flowers in her hands. She turned around and saw me alone. And I was struck not so much by her beauty as by the extraordinary, unprecedented loneliness in her eyes!.. She suddenly spoke: “Do you like my flowers?” “No,” I replied. She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly realized that I had loved this woman all my life!.. Love jumped out in front of us, like a killer jumps out of the ground in an alley, and struck us both at once... She said that she came out that day, so that I would finally find her, and that if this had not happened, she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty... And soon, soon this woman became my secret wife.”

“Ivan learned that the master and the stranger fell in love with each other so deeply that they became completely inseparable. The master worked feverishly on his novel, and this novel also absorbed the stranger. She promised glory, she urged him on, and that’s when she began to call him a master. The novel was finished, the time came when it was necessary to “come out into life.” And then disaster struck. From the incoherent story it became clear that the editor, followed by the critics Datunsky and Ariman and the writer Lavrovich, members of the editorial board, rejected the novel. The persecution of the master began. An article “The Enemy's Foray” appeared in the newspaper, which warned that the author (master) had made an attempt to smuggle Christ's apology into print; this article was followed by another, a third...

The master continued: “The monstrous failure with the novel seemed to take out part of my soul... Melancholy came over me... My beloved has changed a lot, she has lost weight and turned pale.” More and more often, the master experienced attacks of fear... One night he burned the novel. When the novel was almost burnt out, she came, snatched the remains from the fire and said that in the morning she would finally come to the master, forever. But he objected: “It will be bad for me, and I don’t want you to die with me.” Then she said: “I am dying with you. I'll be with you in the morning." These were the last words he heard from her. And a quarter of an hour later there was a knock on the window... What the master whispered in Homeless’s ear is unknown. It is only clear that the master ended up on the street. There was nowhere to go, “fear controlled every cell of the body.” So he ended up in a madhouse and hoped that she would forget about him...

Chapter 14. Glory to the Rooster!

CFO Rimsky heard a steady hum: the audience was leaving the variety show building. Suddenly there was a police whistle, cackling and hooting. He looked out the window: in the bright light of the street lamps, he saw a lady in one shirt and purple trousers, and nearby, another, in pink underwear. The crowd cheered, the ladies rushed about in confusion. Rimsky realized that the black magician’s tricks were continuing. Just as he was about to call somewhere, to explain himself, the phone rang and a depraved female voice said: “Don’t call, Roman, anywhere, it will be bad...” Rimsky went cold. He was already thinking only about how to leave the theater as quickly as possible. It struck midnight. There was a rustling sound, a creaking well, and Varenukha entered the office. He behaved somewhat strangely. He reported that Likhodeev was found in the Yalta tavern near Moscow and is now in the sobering station. Varenukha reported such vile details of Stepa’s spree that Rimsky stopped believing him, and fear immediately crept through his body. The consciousness of danger began to torment his soul. Varenukha tried to cover his face, but the findirector was able to see a huge bruise near his nose, pallor, thievery and cowardice in his eyes. And suddenly Rimsky realized what was bothering him so much: Varenukha did not cast a shadow! A shiver hit him. Varenukha, guessing that it had been opened, jumped to the door and locked the lock. Rimsky looked back to the window - outside, a naked girl was trying to open the latch. With the last of his strength, Rimsky whispered: “Help...” The girl’s hand became covered with corpse green, lengthened and pulled the latch. Rimsky realized that his death had come. The frame swung open and the smell of decay rushed into the room...

At this time, the joyful, unexpected cry of a rooster came from the garden. Wild rage distorted the girl’s face, and Varenukha slowly flew out the window after her. An old man gray as snow, who had recently been Rimsky, ran to the door and rushed along the corridor, caught a car on the street, rushed to the station and, in Leningrad courier, completely disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 15. Nikanor Ivanovich's dream

Nikanor Ivanovich also ended up in a psychiatric hospital, having previously visited another place, where he was sincerely asked: “Where did you get the currency from?” Nikanor Ivanovich repented that he had taken it, but only with Soviet money, shouting that Koroviev was a devil and he needed to be caught. No Koroviev was found in apartment No. 50 - it was empty. Nikanor Ivanovich was taken to the clinic. It wasn't until midnight that he fell asleep. He dreamed of people with golden pipes, then a theater hall, where for some reason men with beards were sitting on the floor. Nikanor Ivanovich also sat down, and then the artist in a tuxedo announced: “The next number on our program is Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the house committee. Let’s ask!” Shocked Nikanor Ivanovich unexpectedly became a participant in some theater program. I dreamed that he was called on stage and asked to hand over his currency, but he swore that he had no currency. The same thing was done with another person who claimed that he had handed over all the currency. He was immediately exposed: the hidden currency and diamonds were given away by his mistress. The actor Kurolesov came out and read excerpts from Pushkin’s “The Miserly Knight,” right up to the scene of the baron’s death. After this speech, the entertainer spoke: “...I warn you that something like this will happen to you, if not worse, if you do not hand over the currency!” “It was Pushkin’s poetry that made such an impression or the prosaic speech of the entertainer, but suddenly a shy voice was heard from the audience: “I’m handing over the currency.” It turned out that the entertainer sees through everyone present and knows everything about them. But no one wanted to part with their secret savings anymore. It turned out that there was a women's theater next door and the same thing was happening there...

Finally Nikanor Ivanovich woke up from his terrible dream. While the paramedic was giving him an injection, he said bitterly: “No! I do not have! Let Pushkin hand over the currency to them...” Nikanor Ivanovich’s cries alarmed the inhabitants of the neighboring wards: in one the patient woke up and began to look for his head, in another the unknown master remembered “the bitter, last autumn night in his life”, in the third Ivan woke up and cried. The doctor quickly calmed everyone who was worried, and they began to fall asleep. Ivan “began to dream that the sun was already setting over Bald Mountain, and this mountain was cordoned off with a double cordon...”

Chapter 16. Execution

“The sun was already setting over Bald Mountain, and this mountain was cordoned off with a double cordon...” Between the chains of soldiers, “three convicts were riding in a cart with white boards around their necks, on each of which was written: “Robber and rebel.” Behind them were six executioners. “The procession closed with a soldier’s chain, and behind it walked about two thousand curious people who were not afraid of the hellish heat and wanted to be present at the interesting spectacle.” “The procurator’s fears about the unrest that could occur during the execution in the city of Yershalaim, which he hated, were not justified: no one made an attempt to repel the convicts.” At the fourth hour of the execution, the crowd returned to the city: in the evening the great holiday of Easter began.

Behind the chain of legionnaires there was still one person left. For the fourth hour he secretly watched what was happening. Before the execution began, he tried to break through to the carts, but was hit in the chest. Then he went to the side where no one bothered him. “The man’s torment was so great that at times he spoke to himself: “Oh, I’m a fool! I am carrion, not a man." There was a parchment in front of him, and he wrote down: “The minutes are passing, and I, Matthew Levi, am on Bald Mountain, but there is still no death!”, “God! Why are you angry with him? Send him death."

The night before yesterday, Yeshua and Matthew Levi visited near Er-shalaim, and Yeshua the next day went into the city alone. “Why, why did he let him go alone!” Levi Matthew was struck by an “unexpected and terrible illness.” When he was able to get to Yershalaim, he learned that trouble had happened: Matthew Levi heard the procurator announce the verdict. As the procession moved towards the place of execution, a brilliant idea struck him: to break through to the cart, jump on it, stab Yeshua in the back and thereby save him from torment on the stake. It would be nice to have time to inject yourself. The plan was good, but there was no knife. Levi Matthew rushed into the city, stole a knife sharpened like a razor from a bread shop and ran to catch up with the procession. But he was late. The execution has already begun.

And now he cursed himself, cursed God, who did not send Yeshua death. A thunderstorm was gathering over Yershalaim. A messenger galloped from the city with some news for Ratboy. He and two executioners went up to the pillars. On one pillar, the hanged Gestas went mad from flies and the sun. On the second, Dismas suffered more: he was not overcome by oblivion. “Yeshua was happier. In the first hour he began to experience fainting spells, and then he fell into oblivion. One of the executioners raised a sponge moistened with water on a spear to Yeshua’s lips: “Drink!” Yeshua clung to the sponge. “It flashed and hit right over the hill. The executioner removed the sponge from the spear. “Glory to the magnanimous hegemon!” “he solemnly whispered and quietly stabbed Yeshua in the heart.” He killed Dismas and Gestas in the same way.

The cordon was lifted. “The happy soldiers rushed to run down the hill. Darkness covered Yershalaim. The rain came suddenly." Levi Matthew got out of his hiding place, cut the ropes holding Yeshua’s body, then the ropes at the other pillars. Several minutes passed and only two bodies remained on the top of the hill. “Neither Levi nor Yeshua’s body was at the top of the hill at that time.”

Chapter 17. Restless day

The day after the damned session, there was a line of thousands of people at Variety: everyone dreamed of getting to a session of black magic. They told God knows what: how after the end of the session some citizens ran down the street in an indecent manner and so on. There was also trouble inside Variety. Likhodeev, Rimsky, Varenukha disappeared. The police arrived, began questioning the employees, and set a dog on the trail. But the investigation reached a dead end: there was not a single poster left, there was no contract in the accounting department, the foreigners’ bureau had not heard of any Woland, no one was found in Likhodeev’s apartment... Something completely absurd was coming out. They immediately put up a sign saying “Today’s performance is cancelled.” The line became agitated, but gradually melted away.

Accountant Vasily Stepanovich went to the Entertainment Commission to hand over yesterday's proceeds. For some reason, all the taxi drivers, seeing his briefcase, looked angrily and drove away from under their noses. One taxi driver explained: there have already been several cases in the city when a passenger paid the driver with a chervonets, and then this chervonets turned out to be either a piece of paper from a bottle or a bee... “Yesterday in this Variety Show some viper-magician performed a session with chervonets. ..”

Some kind of turmoil reigned in the office of the Entertainment Commission: women were hysterical, screaming and sobbing. His menacing voice could be heard from the chairman’s office, but the chairman himself was not there: “an empty suit sat behind a huge desk and moved a dry pen across the paper with a dry pen that had not been dipped in ink.” Shaking with excitement, the secretary told Vasily Stepanovich that in the morning “a cat, healthy as a hippopotamus,” entered the reception room and went straight into the office. He lounged in his chair: “I came to talk to you about some business,” he said. The chairman impudently replied that he was busy, and he: “You are not busy with anything!” Here Prokhor Petrovich’s patience snapped: “Take him out, the devil would take me!” And then the secretary saw how the cat had disappeared, and in the place of the chairman an empty suit was sitting: “And he writes, he writes! Wow! He's talking on the phone!"

Then the police came, and Vasily Stepanovich hurried away. He went to the commission branch. The unimaginable was happening in the branch building: as soon as one of the employees opened his mouth, a song flowed from his lips: “Glorious sea, sacred Baikal...” “The choir began to grow, and, finally, the song thundered in all corners of the branch.” It was amazing that the choristers sang very smoothly. Passers-by stopped, surprised by the fun reigning in the branch. The doctor appeared, and with him a policeman. The employees were given valerian to drink, but they kept singing and singing. Finally the secretary was able to explain. The manager “suffered from a mania for organizing all kinds of circles” and “rubbed points at his superiors.” And today he came with some unknown person in checkered trousers and a cracked pince-nez and introduced him as a specialist in organizing choir clubs. During the lunch break, the manager forced everyone to sing. Checkered began to lead the choir. The "Glorious Sea" sounded. Then the guy disappeared somewhere, but it was no longer possible to stop the song. That's how they still sing. Trucks arrived, and the entire staff of the branch was sent to the Stravinsky clinic.

Finally, Vasily Stepanovich got to the “Accepting amounts” window and announced that he wanted to hand over money from Variety. But when he unpacked the package, “foreign money flashed before his eyes.” “Here he is, one of those guys from Variety,” a menacing voice was heard above the dumbfounded accountant. And then Vasily Stepanovich was arrested.”

Chapter 18. Unsuccessful visitors

At this very time, Berlioz’s uncle, Poplavsky, arrived in Moscow from Kyiv, having received a strange telegram: “I was just killed by a tram on the Patriarchs. Funeral Friday, three o'clock in the afternoon. Come. Berlioz."

Poplavsky came with one goal - “an apartment in Moscow!” This is serious... I had to inherit my nephew’s apartment.” Having appeared at the board, he discovered that there was neither a traitor nor a secretary. Poplavsky went to his nephew’s apartment. The door was open. Koroviev came out of the office. He shook with tears, telling how Berlioz was crushed: “Clean up! Believe - once! Head off!..” - and began to shudder in sobs. Poplavsky asked if he had sent the telegram, but Korviev pointed to the cat. The cat stood on its hind legs and opened its mouth: “Well, I gave a telegram. What's next?" Poplavsky felt dizzy, his arms and legs were paralyzed. "Passport!" - the cat barked and extended his plump paw. Poplavsky grabbed his passport. The cat put on his glasses: “Which department issued the document?.. Your presence at the funeral is cancelled! Take the trouble to go to your place of residence.” Azazello ran out, small, red-haired, with a yellow fang: “Go back to Kyiv immediately, sit there quieter than water, lower than the grass and don’t dream of any apartments in Moscow, okay?” Red took Poplavsky out onto the landing, pulled a chicken out of his suitcase and hit him in the neck so hard that “everything was confused in Poplavsky’s eyes,” and he flew down the stairs. “Some tiny elderly man” stood up and asked where apartment No. 50 was. Poplavsky showed and decided to see what would happen. After a while, “crossing himself and muttering something, a little man with a completely insane face, a scratched bald head and completely wet pants flew by... and flew into the yard.” Poplavsky rushed to the station.

The little man was Variety's bartender. A girl with a scar, wearing nothing but an apron, opened the door for him. The barman, not knowing where to put his eyes, said: “I need to see the citizen artist.” He was led into the living room, which was striking in its decoration. The fireplace was burning, but for some reason the person who entered was doused with funeral dampness. It smelled of the strongest perfume and incense. The black magician was sitting in the shadows on the sofa. As soon as the barman introduced himself, the magician spoke: “I won’t take anything in your mouth in your buffet!” Cheese cheese does not come in green color. What about tea? This is slop!” The barman began to make excuses: “The sturgeon was sent a second freshness...”, to which the magician responded: “There is only one freshness - the first. If the sturgeon is second freshness, then this means that it is rotten!” The upset barman tried to say that he had come on another matter. Then he was offered to sit down, but the stool gave way, he fell and spilled red wine on his pants. Finally, the barman managed to say that the money with which the visitors paid yesterday turned out to be cut paper in the morning. The magician was indignant: “This is low! After all, you are a poor person? How much savings do you have? The barman hesitated. “Two hundred and forty-nine thousand rubles in five savings banks,” a cracked voice responded from the next room, “and two hundred gold tens under the floor at home.” To this Woland said: “Well, of course, this is not the amount, although, by the way, you don’t actually need it. When will you die? The barman was indignant. The same trashy voice said: “He will die in nine months from liver cancer in the clinic of the First Moscow State University, in the fourth ward.” The barman sat motionless and looked very old... his cheeks sagged and his lower jaw fell off. He barely made it out of the apartment, but realized that he had forgotten his hat and returned. Putting on his hat, he suddenly felt something was wrong. The hat turned out to be a velvet beret. Beret meowed, turned into a cat and grabbed the barman's bald head. Breaking out into the street, the barman rushed to the doctors. The professor found no signs of cancer in him, but ordered him to get tested. Having paid in chervonets, the delighted barman left the office, and the professor saw wine labels instead of chervonets, which soon turned into a black kitten, and then a sparrow, which shit in the inkwell, broke the glass into smithereens and flew out the window. The professor was slowly going crazy...

Part II

Chapter 19. Margarita

“Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in the world? May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, reader, and only me, and I will show you such love!”

The master's beloved was called Margarita Nikolaevna. She was beautiful and smart. Childless thirty-year-old Margarita was the wife of a very prominent specialist. The husband was young, handsome, kind, honest and adored his wife. Together they occupied the top of a beautiful mansion near Arbat. In a word... was she happy? Not one minute! What did this woman need, in whose eyes some incomprehensible light always burned? Obviously, he is a master, and not a Gothic mansion, and not money. She loved him.

Not finding the master, she tried to find out about him, but in vain. She returned to the mansion and became sad. She cried and did not know who she loved: living or dead? You had to either forget him or die yourself...

On the very day when the ridiculous chaos was happening in Moscow, Margarita woke up with a premonition that today something would finally happen. In a dream, she saw the master for the first time. Margarita took out her treasures: a photograph of the master, dried rose petals and burnt sheets of the manuscript and began turning over the surviving pages: “The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator...”

She left the house, rode a trolleybus along Arbat and heard passengers talking about the funeral of some dead man whose head had been stolen from his coffin. She had to go out, and soon she was sitting on a bench under the Kremlin wall and thinking about the master. A funeral procession passed by. The people's faces were strangely confused. “What a strange funeral,” thought Margarita. “Oh, really, I would pledge my soul to the devil just to find out whether he’s alive or not?.. It’s interesting to know who they’re burying?” “Berlioz, chairman of Massolit,” a voice was heard, and the surprised Margarita saw a small red-haired man with a fang sitting next to him on a bench. He said that the dead man’s head had been stolen and that he knew all the writers who were following the fob. Margarita asked to see the critic Latunsky, and the red-haired man pointed to a man who looked like a priest. The unknown person addressed Margarita by name and said that he had been sent to her on business. Margarita did not immediately understand his goals. And only when she heard the familiar words: “The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea...”, she turned white and spoke: “Do you know anything about him? Is he alive? “Well, he’s alive, he’s alive,” Azazello responded reluctantly. He gave Margarita an invitation from “a foreigner” from whom she could learn about the master. She agreed: “I’m going! I’ll go anywhere!” Then Azazello handed her a jar: “In the evening, at exactly half past ten, take the trouble to undress naked and rub your face and whole body with this ointment. You won’t have to worry about anything, you will be taken wherever you need to go.” The mysterious interlocutor disappeared, and Margarita hurriedly ran out of the Alexander Garden.

Chapter 20. Azazello cream

Margarita did everything as the stranger ordered. She looked in the mirror: a curly, black-haired woman of about twenty was looking back at her, laughing uncontrollably. Margarita’s body lost weight: she jumped and hung in the air. “Oh yes cream!” - Margarita screamed. She felt free, free from everything. She realized that she was leaving her old life forever. She wrote a note to her husband: “Forgive me and forget me as soon as possible. I'm leaving you forever. Don't look for me, it's useless. I became a witch because of the grief and disasters that struck me. I have to go. Goodbye".

Margarita left all her outfits to the housekeeper Natasha, who was crazy from such a change, and finally decided to play a joke on her neighbor, Nikolai Ivanovich, who was returning home. She sat sideways on the windowsill, the moonlight licking her. Seeing Margarita, Nikolai Ivanovich sank limply onto the bench. She spoke to him as if nothing had happened, but he could not utter a word out of embarrassment. The phone rang, Margarita grabbed the receiver. “It's time! Fly out,” Azazello spoke. When you fly over the gate, shout: “Invisible!” Fly over the city, get used to it, and then south, out of the city, and straight to the river. Offers!"

Margarita hung up, and then in the next room something wooden began to bang on the door. A floor brush flew into the bedroom. Margarita squealed with delight, jumped on top of her and flew out the window. Nikolai Ivanovich froze on the bench. "Goodbye forever! I'm flying away! - Margarita shouted. - Invisible! Invisible! She flew into the alley. A completely distraught waltz flew after her.

Chapter 21. Flight

"Invisible and free!" Margarita flew along the alleys, crossed the Arbat, looking into the windows of the houses. The inscription on the luxurious house, “House of Drumlit,” caught her attention. She found a list of residents and found out that the hated critic Latunsky, who killed the master, lives here. I went upstairs, but no one answered the calls in the apartment. Latunsky was lucky that he was not at home; this saved him from meeting Margarita, “who became a witch this Friday.” Then Margarita flew to the windows of the eighth floor and entered the apartment. “They say that to this day the critic Latunsky turns pale, remembering this terrible evening...” Margarita broke a piano and a mirror cabinet with a hammer, opened the taps in the bathroom, carried water in buckets and poured it into the drawers of the desk... The destruction she caused , gave her burning pleasure, but everything seemed to her not enough. Finally, she broke the chandelier and all the window glass in the apartment. She began to destroy other windows as well. There was panic in the house. Suddenly the wild destruction stopped. On the third floor, Margarita saw a frightened boy of about four years old. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, little one! - she said. “It was the boys who broke the glass.” “Where are you, aunt?” “But I’m not there, you’re dreaming about me.” She laid the boy down, lulled him to sleep and flew out the window.

Margarita flew higher and higher and soon saw “that she was alone with the moon flying above her and to the left.” She realized that she was flying at a monstrous speed: the lights of cities and rivers flashed below... She sank lower and flew more slowly, peering into the blackness of the night, inhaling the smells of the earth. Suddenly some “complex dark object” flew past: Natasha caught up with Margarita. She flew naked on a fat hog, clutching a briefcase in its front hooves. The hog was wearing a hat and pince-nez. Margarita recognized Nikolai Ivanovich. “Her laughter thundered over the forest, mingling with Natasha’s laughter.” Natasha admitted that she had smeared herself with the remains of the cream and the same thing happened to her as to her mistress. When Nikolai Ivanovich appeared, he was stunned by her sudden beauty and began to seduce her and promise her money. Then Natasha smeared him with cream, and he turned into a hog. Natasha shouted: “Margarita! Queen! Beg them to leave me! They will do everything to you, power has been given to you!”, she squeezed the hog’s sides with her heels and soon both disappeared in the darkness.

Margarita felt the proximity of the water and guessed that the goal was close. She flew up to the river and threw herself into the water. Having swam enough in the warm water, she ran out, straddled the brush and was transported to the opposite bank. Music began to sound under the willows: thick-faced frogs played a bravura march in honor of Margarita on wooden pipes. She was given the most solemn reception. Transparent mermaids waved seaweed at Margarita, naked witches began to crouch and bow with courtly bows. “Someone with goat legs flew up and fell to my hand, spread silk on the grass, and offered to lie down and rest. Margarita did just that.” Goat-legged, having learned that Margarita had arrived on a brush, called somewhere and ordered to send a car. Out of nowhere a “damn open car” appeared, with a rook at the wheel. Margarita sank into the wide back seat, the car howled and rose almost to the moon. Margarita rushed to Moscow.

Chapter 22. By candlelight

“After all the magic and miracles of this evening, Margarita already guessed who exactly they were taking her to visit, but this did not frighten her. The hope that there she would be able to achieve the return of her happiness made her fearless.” Soon the rook lowered the car into a completely deserted cemetery. The fang sparkled in the moonlight: Azazello looked out from behind the tombstone. He sat on the rapier, Margarita on the brush, and soon both landed on Sadovaya near house No. 302 bis. They unimpededly passed the guards posted by the police and entered apartment No. 50. It was dark, like a dungeon. They went up some steps, and Margarita realized that she was standing on the landing. A light illuminated Fagot-Koroviev’s face. He bowed and invited Margarita to follow him. Margarita was amazed by the size of the room: “How can all this fit into a Moscow apartment?” Finding himself in the vast hall, Koroviev told Margarita that the sir gives one ball every year. It is called the spring full moon ball, or the ball of the hundred kings. But we need a hostess. She must bear the name Margaret and must be a local native. “We found one hundred and twenty-one Margaritas in Moscow - not a single one fits! And finally, a happy fate..."

They walked between the columns and found themselves in a small room. It smelled of sulfur and resin. Margarita recognized Azazello, dressed in a tailcoat. The naked witch, Gella, was stirring something in a saucepan. A huge cat was sitting in front of the chess table. On the bed sat “the one whom poor Ivan recently convinced that the devil does not exist. This non-existent one was sitting on the bed.” Two eyes fixed on Margarita's face. The right one with a golden spark at the bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of the soul, and the left one is empty and black...

Finally Volanl spoke: “Greetings to you, queen!.. I recommend my retinue to you...” He asked if Margarita had any sadness, melancholy poisoning her soul. “No, sir, there’s nothing like that,” answered the clever Margarita, “and now that I’m with you, I feel very good.” Woland showed Margarita a globe on which one could see the smallest details: somewhere there was a war going on, houses were exploding, people were dying...

Midnight was approaching. Woland turned to Margarita: “Don’t get lost and don’t be afraid of anything... It’s time!”

Chapter 23. Satan's Great Ball

Margarita dimly saw her surroundings. She was washed in a pool of blood, doused with rose oil, and rubbed with some green leaves until she shined. On her feet were shoes with gold buckles made of pale rose petals, in her hair was a royal diamond crown, on her chest was an image of a black poodle on a heavy chain. Koroviev gave her advice: “There will be different guests among the guests... but no advantage to anyone!” And one more thing. : don’t miss anyone! Even a smile, even a turn of the head. Anything but inattention.”

"Ball!" - the cat squealed shrilly. Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest, its stuffiness was replaced by the coolness of the ballroom. An orchestra of one and a half hundred people played a polonaise. The conductor was Johann Strauss. In the next room there were walls of roses and camellias, with fountains of champagne flowing between them. On the stage, a man in a red tailcoat was conducting jazz. We flew out onto the site. Margarita was installed in place, and a low amethyst column was at hand. “Margarita was tall, and a grand staircase, covered with a carpet, went down from under her feet.” Suddenly something crashed below in the huge fireplace, and a gallows with ashes dangling from it jumped out. The ashes hit the floor, and a handsome black-haired man in a tailcoat jumped out of it. A coffin jumped out of the fireplace, the lid bounced off; the second ashes formed into a naked, fidgety woman... These were the first guests; as Koroviev explained, Mr. Jacques is a convinced counterfeiter, a state traitor, but a very good alchemist...

One by one, other guests began to appear from the fireplace, and each one kissed Margarita’s knee and admired the queen. Among them were poisoners, murderers, robbers, traitors, suicides, cheaters, executioners... One of the women, unusually beautiful, thirty years ago killed her own illegitimate child: she put a handkerchief in his mouth and buried him in the forest. Now the maid puts this scarf on her table. The woman burned it, drowned it in the river - the scarf ended up on the table every morning. Margarita spoke to the woman (her name was Frida): “Do you like champagne? Get drunk today, Frida, and don’t think about anything.”

“Every second Margarita felt the touch of her lips on her knee, every second she stretched her hand forward for a kiss, her face was pulled into a motionless mask of hello.” An hour passed, then another... Margarita’s legs were giving way, she was afraid to cry. At the end of the third hour the flow of guests began to dry up. The stairs were empty. Margarita again found herself in the room with the pool and fell to the floor from pain in her arm and leg. They rubbed her, kneaded her body, and she came to life.

She flew around the halls: in one, monkey jazz was raging, in another, guests were swimming in a pool with champagne... “In all this chaos, I remember one completely drunk woman’s face with meaningless, but also meaningless, pleading eyes” - Frida’s face. Then Margarita flew over the hellish furnaces, saw some dark basements, polar bears playing harmonicas... And for the second time her strength began to dry out...

On her third appearance, she found herself in a ballroom. Midnight struck and she saw Woland. A severed head lay on a platter in front of him. It was Berlioz's head with lively eyes, full of thought and suffering. Woland turned to her: “...everyone will be given according to his faith. You are going into oblivion, but I will be happy to drink to being from the cup into which you are turning!” And then on the platter there appeared a skull on a golden leg. The lid of the skull fell back...

A new lonely guest entered the hall, Baron Meigel, an employee of the Entertainment Commission in the position of introducing foreigners to the sights of Moscow, an earpiece and a spy. He came to the ball “with the goal of spying and eavesdropping on everything

what is possible." At that very moment, Meigel was shot, blood sprayed out, Koroviev placed the cup under the beating stream and handed it to Woland. Woland brought the cup to Margarita and commandingly said: “Drink!” Margarita felt dizzy and staggered. She took a sip, and a sweet current ran through her veins, and a ringing began in her ears. It seemed to her that roosters were crowing. The crowds of guests began to lose their appearance and crumbled into dust. Everything shrank, there were no fountains, tulips or camellias. “But it was just what it was - a modest living room” with the door ajar. “And Margarita entered through this slightly open door.”

Chapter 24. Extracting the Master

“Everything in Woland’s bedroom turned out to be as it was before the ball.” “Well, are you very exhausted?” - Woland asked. “Oh no, sir,” Margarita answered barely audibly. Woland ordered her to drink a glass of alcohol: “The night of the full moon is a festive night, and I dine in the close company of close associates and servants. How are you feeling? How was the ball?" Koroviev crackled: “Amazing! Everyone is enchanted, in love... So much tact, charm and charm!” Woland clinked glasses with Margarita. She dutifully drank, but nothing bad happened. Her strength returned, she felt ravenous hunger, but there was no intoxication. The whole company started eating dinner...

The candles were floating. Margarita, who had eaten her fill, was overcome with a feeling of bliss. She thought that morning was approaching, and timidly said: “I guess it’s time for me to go...” Her nakedness suddenly began to embarrass her. Woland gave her his greasy robe. Black melancholy somehow immediately rolled up to Margarita’s heart. She felt deceived. No one, apparently, was going to offer her any reward; no one was holding her back. She had nowhere to go. “Just to get out of here,” she thought, “and then I’ll reach the river and drown myself.”

Woland asked: “Perhaps you’d like to say something in parting?” “No, nothing, sir,” Margarita answered proudly. “I wasn’t at all tired and had a lot of fun at the ball.” So, if it continued any longer, I would willingly offer my knee so that thousands of hanged men and murderers would apply it to it.” Her eyes filled with tears. "Right! That's how it should be! “We tested you,” Woland said, “never ask for anything!” Never and nothing, especially among those who are stronger than you. They will offer and give everything themselves... What do you want for being my hostess today?” Margarita’s breath was taken away, and she was about to utter the cherished words, when she suddenly turned pale, widened her eyes and spoke: “I want Frida to stop giving that handkerchief with which she strangled her child.” Woland grinned: “Apparently, you are a man of exceptional kindness?” “No,” answered Margarita, “I gave Frida firm hope, she believes in my power. And if she remains deceived, I will not have peace all my life. It's nothing you can do! It just happened that way.”

Woland said that Margarita herself could fulfill her promise. Margarita shouted: “Frida!”, and when she appeared and stretched out her hands to her, she said majestically: “You are forgiven. They will no longer serve the handkerchief.” Woland repeated his question to Margarita: “What do you want for yourself?” And she said: “I want my lover, the master, to be returned to me right now, this very second.” Then the wind rushed into the room, the window opened, and the master appeared in the night light. Margarita ran up to him, kissed him on the forehead, on the lips, pressed herself to his prickly cheek... Tears ran down her face. The master pulled her away from him and said dully: “Don’t cry, Margot, don’t torment me. I am seriously ill. I’m scared... I’m hallucinating again...”

They gave the master a drink - his gaze became less wild and restless. He introduced himself as mentally ill, but Margarita cried out: “Terrible words! He is a master, sir! Cure him!” The master realized who was in front of him. When asked why Margarita calls him a master, he replied that he wrote a novel about Pontius Pilate, but burned it. “This cannot be,” Woland replied. — Manuscripts don’t burn. Come on, Behemoth, give me the novel.” The novel ended up in Woland's hands. But the master fell into depression and anxiety: “No, it’s too late. I don't want anything more in life. Besides seeing you. But I advise you again - leave me. You will disappear with me." Margarita replied: “No, I won’t leave,” and turned to Woland: “I ask you to return us to the basement in the alley on Arbat again, and for everything to be as it was.” The master laughed: “Poor woman! Another person has been living in this basement for a long time..."

And suddenly a confused citizen wearing only his underwear and carrying a suitcase fell from the ceiling onto the floor. He shook and crouched out of fear. It was Aloysius Mogarych, who wrote a complaint against the master with a message that he kept illegal literature, and then occupied his rooms. Margarita grabbed his face with her nails, he made excuses in horror. Azazello ordered: “Get out!”, and Mogarych was turned upside down and carried out the window. Woland made sure that the master’s medical history disappeared from the hospital, and Apoisius’ registration from the house register; provided the master and Margarita with documents.

At parting, the fates of those involved in this story were decided: Natasha, at her request, was left among the witches, Nikolai Ivanovich was returned home, Varenukha begged to be released from the vampires and promised never to lie or be rude again.

The master said: “I no longer have any dreams and I have no inspiration either, nothing around me interests me except her,” he put his hand on Margarita’s head. “I’ve been broken, I’m bored, and I want to go to the basement... I hate my novel, I’ve experienced too much because of it.” He is ready to beg and hopes that Margarita will come to her senses and leave him. Woland objected: “I don’t think so... And your novel will bring you more surprises... I wish you happiness!”

The Master and Margarita left apartment No. 50 and were soon already in their basement. Margarita turned over the pages of the resurrected manuscript: “The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator...”

Chapter 25. How the procurator tried to save Judah from Kiriath

“The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. A strange cloud came from the sea towards the end of the day... The rain came unexpectedly... A hurricane tormented the garden. The procurator lay on a bed under the columns of the palace. Finally, he heard the long-awaited steps, and a hooded man with a very pleasant face and sly slits of eyes appeared. The procurator started talking about how he dreamed of returning to Caesarea, that there was no more hopeless place on earth than Yershalaim: “All the time shuffling troops, reading denunciations and sneaking around,” dealing with fanatics waiting for the Messiah... The procurator was interested in whether there was by the crowd attempting to riot during the execution and whether the condemned were given a drink before being hanged on poles. The guest, whose name was Afranius, replied that there were no disturbances and that Ga-Notsri refused the drink and said that he did not blame him for having his life taken away. Ha-Notsri also said that “among human vices, he considers cowardice to be one of the most important.” The procurator ordered the bodies of all three executed to be buried secretly and proceeded to the most delicate issue. It was about Judas from Kiriath, who “supposedly received money for hosting this crazy philosopher so cordially.” The guest replied that the money should be given to Judas that evening in the palace of Caiaphas. The procurator asked to characterize this Judas. Afranius said: he is a young man, very handsome, not a fanatic, has one passion - for money, works in a money changer. Then the procurator hinted to Afranius that Judas should be stabbed to death that night by one of Ha-Notsri’s secret friends, outraged by the monstrous betrayal of the money changer, and the money should be thrown to the high priest with a note: “I am returning the damned money.” Afranius took note of the indirect instructions from the procurator.

Chapter 26. Burial

The procurator seemed to have aged before his eyes, hunched over, and became anxious. He tried to understand the reason for his mental torment. He quickly realized this, but tried to deceive himself. He called the dog, the giant dog Bunga, the only creature he loved. The dog realized that the owner was in trouble...

“At this time, the procurator’s guest was in great trouble.” He commanded the procurator's secret guard. He ordered to send a team for the secret funeral of those executed, and he himself went to the city, found a woman named Nisa, stayed with her for no more than five minutes and left the house. “His further path is unknown to anyone.” The woman hurried, got dressed and left the house.

At this very time, a handsome, hook-nosed young man came out of another alley and headed towards the palace of the high priest Caiaphas. After visiting the palace, the man happily hurried back. On the way he met a woman he knew. It was Nisa. She worried Judas, he tried to see her off. After resisting a little, the woman made an appointment for Judas outside the city, in a secluded grotto, and quickly left. Judas burned with impatience, his feet carried him out of the city. Now he had already left the city gates, now he had climbed up the mountain... Judas’ goal was close. He quietly shouted: “Niza!” But instead of Niza, two dark figures blocked his way and demanded to know how much money he received. Judas cried out: “Thirty tetradrachms! Take everything, but give your life!” One man snatched Judas’s wallet, another stabbed the lover under the shoulder blade with a knife. Immediately the first one thrust his knife into his heart. A third man came out - a man in a hood. After making sure that Judas was dead, he headed to the palace of Herod the Great, where the procurator lived.

Pontius Pilate was sleeping at that time. In a dream, he saw himself ascending a luminous road straight to the moon, accompanied by Banga, and a wandering philosopher walking next to him. They were arguing about something complex and important. It would be terrible to even think that such a person could be executed. There was no execution! Yeshua said that cowardice is one of the most terrible vices, but Pilate objected: cowardice is the most terrible vice. He was already ready to do anything to save an innocent, crazy dreamer and doctor from execution. The cruel procurator cried and laughed outside with joy. The awakening was even more terrible: he immediately remembered the execution.

It was reported that the head of the secret guard had arrived. He showed the procurator a bag of money soaked in the blood of Judas and thrown into the house of the high priest. This bag caused great excitement among Caiaphas; he immediately invited Afranius, and the head of the secret guard took up the investigation. According to Afranius' hints, Pilate was convinced that his wish was fulfilled: Judas was dead, Kaifa was humiliated, the killers would not be found. Pilate even suggested that Judas committed suicide: “I’m ready to bet that in a very short time rumors about this will spread throughout the city.”

The second task remained. Afranius reported that the burial of those executed had taken place, but that the third body was found with difficulty: a certain Matthew Levi hid it. The bodies were buried in a deserted gorge, and Matthew Levi was taken to the procurator. Levi Matvey “was black, ragged, looked like a wolf, looked like a city beggar.” The prosecutor invited him to sit down, but he refused: “I’m dirty.” The procurator asked why he needed the knife, Levi Matvey answered. Then the procurator began the main thing: “Show me the charter where the words of Yeshua are written.” Matthew Levi decided that they wanted to take away the charter, but Pilate calmed him down and began to parse the words written by Matthew Levi on parchment: “There is no death... we will see a clean river of water of life... a greater vice... cowardice.” The procurator offered Matthew Levi a position in his rich library, but he refused: “No, you will be afraid of me. It won’t be very easy for you to look me in the face after you killed him.” Then Pilate offered him money, but he again refused. Suddenly Levi Matthew admitted that he was going to kill one person today, Judas. Imagine his surprise when the procurator said that Judas had already been stabbed to death and Pontius Pilate himself had done it...

Chapter 27. The end of apartment No. 50

It was morning in the basement. Margarita put down the manuscript. Her soul was in perfect order. Everything was as if it should be so. She lay down and fell into a dreamless sleep.

But at this time, at dawn on Saturday, they did not sleep in one institution where the investigation into the Woland case was being conducted. Testimonies were taken from the chairman of the acoustic commission Sempleyarov, some of the ladies who suffered after the session, and the courier who visited apartment No. 50. The apartment was thoroughly examined, but it turned out to be empty. They questioned Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the Entertainment Commission, who returned to his suit as soon as the police entered his office, and even approved all the resolutions imposed by his empty suit.

It was incredible: thousands of people saw this magician, but there was no way to find him. The missing Rimsky (in Leningrad) and Likhodeev (in Yalta) were discovered; Varenukha showed up two days later. We managed to put the employees singing “The Glorious Sea” in order. Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy and the entertainer Bengalsky, whose head was torn off, were found in a madhouse. They also came there to interrogate Ivan Bezdomny.

The investigator affectionately introduced himself and said that he had come to talk about the incidents at the Patriarch's Ponds. But, alas, Ivanushka had completely changed: indifference was felt in his gaze, he was no longer touched by Berlioz’s fate. Before the investigator arrived, Ivan saw in a dream an ancient city, Roman centuries, a man in a white robe with red lining, a yellow hill with empty pillars... Having achieved nothing, the investigator left. There was undoubtedly someone in the thrice-cursed apartment: from time to time the sounds of a gramophone were heard, telephone calls were answered, but every time there was no one in the apartment. The interrogated Likhodeev, Varenukha and Rimsky looked terribly frightened and all as one begged to be imprisoned in armored cells. The testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich made it “possible to establish that Margarita Nikolaevna, as well as her housekeeper Natasha, disappeared without any trace.” Completely impossible rumors arose and spread throughout the city.

When a large company of men in civilian clothes, separated, surrounded apartment No. 50, Koroviev and Azazello were sitting in the dining room. “What are those steps on the stairs,” asked Koroviev. “And they are coming to arrest us,” Azazello replied. The door opened, people instantly scattered throughout all the rooms, but they found no one anywhere, only a huge black cat was sitting on the mantelpiece in the living room. He held a primus stove in his paws. “I’m not being naughty, I’m not hurting anyone, I’m fixing the primus,” the cat said, frowning unfriendly. The silk net flew up, but for some reason the one throwing it missed and broke the jug. "Hooray!" - the cat yelled and snatched the Browning from behind his back, but they beat him to it: a Mauser shot hit the cat, he fell down and said in a weak voice, sprawled in a bloody puddle: “It’s all over, get away from me for a second, let me say goodbye to the earth... The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat is a sip of gasoline...” He touched the hole of the primus and took a sip of gasoline. Immediately the blood stopped flowing. The cat jumped up alive and vigorous and in the blink of an eye found himself high above those who had entered, on the ledge. The cornice was torn off, but the cat was already on the chandelier. Taking aim, flying like a pendulum, he opened fire. Those who came fired back accurately, but no one was not only killed, but even wounded. An expression of complete bewilderment appeared on their faces. A lasso was thrown, the chandelier was torn off, and the cat moved again to the ceiling: “I absolutely do not understand the reasons for such harsh treatment of me...” Other voices were heard: “Messer! Saturday. The sun is bowing. It is time". The cat said: “Sorry, I can’t talk anymore, we have to go.” He splashed gasoline down, and the gasoline caught fire on its own. It caught fire unusually quickly and intensely. The cat jumped out the window, climbed onto the roof and disappeared. The apartment was on fire. The firefighters were called. “People rushing about in the courtyard saw how, along with the smoke, three dark, as it seemed, male silhouettes and one silhouette of a naked woman flew out of the fifth floor window.”

Chapter 28. The last adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth

A quarter of an hour after the fire on Sadovaya, a citizen in checkered clothing and with him a large black cat appeared near a store on the Smolensky market. The doorman was about to block the way: “Cats are not allowed!”, but then he saw a fat man with a primus stove, who really looked like a cat. The doorman did not immediately like this couple. Koroviev began loudly praising the store, then went to the gastronomy department, then to the confectionery shop and suggested to his companion: “Eat, Behemoth.” The fat man took his primus stove under his arm and began to destroy the tangerines right with the peel. The saleswoman was overcome with horror: “Are you crazy! Submit the check!” But Hippopotamus pulled the bottom one out of the mountain of chocolate bars and put it in his mouth with its wrapper, then stuck his paw into a barrel of herring and swallowed a couple. The store manager called the police. Until she appeared, Koroviev and Behemoth provoked a scandal and a fight in the store, and then the insidious Behemoth doused the counter with gasoline from the primus stove, and it burst into flames on its own. The saleswomen screamed, the public rushed back from the confectionery department, the glass in the mirrored doors rang and fell, and both scoundrels disappeared somewhere...

Exactly a minute later they found themselves near the writer's house. Koroviev dreamily said: “It’s nice to think that under this roof a whole abyss of talents is hiding and ripening... Amazing things can be expected in the greenhouses of this house, which united under its roof several thousand associates who decided to selflessly give their lives to the service of Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Thalia ..." They decided to have a snack at the Griboedov restaurant before their further journey, but at the entrance they were stopped by a citizen who demanded their identification. "Are you writers?" “Of course,” Koroviev answered with dignity. “To make sure that Dostoevsky is a writer, is it really necessary to ask him for his identification?” “You are not Dostoevsky... Dostoevsky is dead!” - said the confused citizen. “I protest! - Behemoth exclaimed hotly. “Dostoevsky is immortal!”

Finally, the chef of the restaurant, Archibald Archibaldovich, ordered not only to let the dubious ragamuffins through, but also to serve them in the highest class. He himself hovered around the couple, trying in every possible way to please. Archibald Archibaldovich was smart and observant. He immediately guessed who his visitors were and did not quarrel with them.

Three men with revolvers in their hands quickly came out onto the veranda, the front one shouted loudly and terribly: “Don’t move!” and all three opened fire, aiming for the heads of Koroviev and Behemoth. Both immediately melted in the air, and a column of fire shot out from the primus. The fire rose to the very roof and went inside the writer's house...

Chapter 29. The fate of the master and Margarita is determined

On the stone terrace of one of the most beautiful buildings in Moscow sat Woland and Azazello, both dressed in black. They watched the fire in Griboedov. Woland turned around and saw a ragged, gloomy man in a chiton approaching them. It was a former tax collector, Matthew Levi: “I come to you, the spirit of evil and the lord of shadows.” He did not greet Voland: “I don’t want you to be well,” to which he grinned: “What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if the shadows disappeared from it? » Levi Matthew said: “He sent me... He read the master’s work and asks you to take the master with you and reward him with peace.” “Why don’t you take him into the world?” - Woland asked. “He didn’t deserve light, he deserved peace,” Levi said sadly.

Woland sent Azazello to fulfill the request, and Koroviev and Behemoth were already standing in front of him. They vied with each other to talk about the fire in Griboedov - the building burned to the ground for no apparent reason: “I don’t understand! They sat peacefully, completely quietly, having a snack... And suddenly - fuck, fuck! Shots..." Woland stopped their chatter, stood up, walked up to the balustrade and silently looked into the distance for a long time. Then he said: “Now a thunderstorm will come, the last thunderstorm, it will complete everything that needs to be completed, and we will set off.”

Soon darkness coming from the west covered the huge city. Everything disappeared, as if it had never existed in the world. Then the city was rocked by a blow. It happened again, and a thunderstorm began.

Chapter 30. It's time! It's time!

The Master and Margarita ended up in their basement. The master can’t believe that they were with Satan yesterday: “Now instead of one crazy person, there are two! No, this is the devil knows what it is, damn it, damn it!” Margarita replies: “You just unwittingly told the truth, the devil knows what it is, and the devil, believe me, will arrange everything! How happy I am that I entered into a deal with him! You, my dear, will have to live with a witch!” “I was kidnapped from the hospital, returned here... Let’s assume that they won’t miss us... But tell me, what and how will we live?” At that moment, blunt-toed boots appeared in the window and a voice from above asked: “Aloysius, are you home?” Margarita went to the window: “Aloysius? He was arrested yesterday. Who is asking him? What's your last name?" At the same instant, the man outside the window disappeared.

The master still does not believe that they will be left alone: ​​“Come to your senses! Why would you ruin your life with a sick and poor person? Come back to yourself! Margarita shook her head: “Oh, you little-faithful, unhappy person. Because of you, I was shaking naked all night yesterday, I lost my nature and replaced it with a new one, I cried my eyes out, and now, when happiness has fallen, are you persecuting me?” Then the master wiped his eyes and said firmly: “Enough! You shamed me. I will never allow cowardice again... I know that we are both victims of our mental illness... Well, together we will bear it.”

A voice was heard at the window: “Peace be with you!” - Azazello came. He sat for a while, drank cognac and finally said: “What a cozy cellar! Just one question, what to do in it, in this cellar?.. Messire invites you to take a short walk... He sent you a gift - a bottle of wine. This is the same wine that the procurator of Judea drank...” All three took a long sip. “Immediately the pre-storm light began to fade in the master’s eyes, his breath caught, he felt that the end was coming.” The deathly pale Margarita, stretching out her arms to him, slid to the floor... “Poisoner...” - the master managed to shout.

Azazello began to act. A few moments later he was in the mansion where Margarita Nikolaevna lived. He saw how the gloomy woman waiting for her husband suddenly turned pale, clutched her heart and fell to the floor... A moment later he was again in the basement, unclenched the teeth of the poisoned Margarita and poured in a few drops of the same wine. Margarita came to her senses. He also revived the master. “It’s time for us,” Azazello said. “The thunderstorm is already thundering... Say goodbye to the basement, say goodbye quickly.”

Azazello pulled out a burning brand from the stove and set the tablecloth on fire. The Master and Margarita got involved in what they started. “Burn, old life!.. Burn, suffering!” All three ran out of the basement along with the smoke. Three black horses snored in the courtyard, exploding the ground with fountains. Jumping onto their horses, Azazello, the master and Margarita soared towards the clouds. They flew over the city. Lightning flashed above them. All that remained was to say goodbye to Ivan. We flew up to Stravinsky’s clinic and entered Ivanushka’s, invisible and unnoticed. Ivan was not surprised, but was delighted: “And I’m still waiting, waiting for you... I’ll keep my word, I won’t write any more poems. Now I’m interested in something else... While I was lying there, I understood a lot.” The master got excited: “But this is good... You write a sequel about it!” It was time to fly away. Margarita kissed Ivan goodbye: “Poor, poor... everything will be as it should be... believe me.” The master said in a barely audible voice: “Farewell, student!” - and both melted...

Ivanushka became restless. He called the paramedic and asked: “What just happened there, nearby, in room one hundred and eighteen?” “In the eighteenth? - Praskovya Fedorovna asked again, and her eyes darted. “But nothing happened there...” But Ivan could not be deceived: “You better speak directly. I feel everything through the wall.” “Your neighbor has just died,” she whispered. "I knew it! - Ivan answered. “I assure you that one more person has now died in the city.” I even know who it is – a woman.”

Chapter 31. On the Sparrow Hills

The thunderstorm was carried away, and a multi-colored rainbow stood in the sky, drinking water from the Moscow River. Three silhouettes were visible at the height: Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth. Azazello dropped down next to them with the master and Margarita. “I had to disturb you,” Woland spoke, “but I don’t think you will regret it... Say goodbye to the city. It is time".

The master ran to the cliff, the hill: “Forever!” This needs to be understood." The aching sadness gave way to a sweetish anxiety, the excitement turned into a feeling of deep and bloody resentment. It was replaced by proud indifference, and this was replaced by a premonition of constant peace...

The hippopotamus broke the silence: “Allow me, master, to whistle goodbye before the race.” “You can scare the lady,” Woland replied. But Margarita asked: “Allow him to whistle. I was overcome with sadness before the long journey. Isn’t it true that it is quite natural, even when a person knows that happiness awaits him at the end of this road?”

Woland nodded to Behemoth, who put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Margarita’s ears began to ring, the horse reared, dry branches fell from the trees, and several passengers on the river bus had their caps blown into the water. Koroviev also decided to whistle. Margarita and her horse were thrown ten fathoms to the side, an oak tree next to her was uprooted, the water in the river boiled, and a river tram was carried to the opposite bank.

“Well, well,” Woland turned to the master. - Are all bills paid? Farewell is over?.. It’s time!!” The horses rushed, and the riders rose up and galloped. Margarita turned around: the city had sunk into the ground and left behind only fog.”

Chapter 32. Forgiveness and Eternal Shelter

“Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth is!.. Those who suffered a lot before death know this. And he leaves the mists of the earth without regret, he surrenders with a light heart into the hands of death..."

The magic horses were tired and carried their riders slowly. The night thickened and flew nearby... When the crimson and full moon began to come out towards us, all the deceptions disappeared, the witch’s unstable clothes drowned in the mists. Koroviev-Fagot turned into a dark purple knight with a gloomy, never smiling face... The night also tore off Behemoth’s fluffy tail. The one who was the cat turned out to be a thin young man, a demon page, the best jester in the world. The moon also changed Azazello’s face: both eyes became the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold - it was a demon killer. Woland also flew in his real guise... So they flew in silence for a long time. We stopped on a rocky flat top. The moon flooded the area and illuminated the white figure of a man in a chair and a huge dog lying next to him. The man and the dog kept looking at the moon.

“They read your novel,” Woland turned to the master, “and they said only one thing, that, unfortunately, it is not finished.” Here is your hero. For about two thousand years he sits on this platform and sleeps, but during the full moon he is tormented by insomnia. When he sleeps, he sees the same thing: he wants to go along the lunar road with Ga-Notsri, but he just can’t, he has to talk to himself. He says that he hates his immortality and unheard-of glory, that he would willingly exchange fate with the vagabond Levi Matthew. Woland turned to the master again: “Well, now you can end your novel with one phrase!” And the master shouted so that the echo jumped across the mountains: “Free! Free! He is waiting for you!" The damn rocky mountains have fallen. The lunar road long awaited by the procurator stretched out, and the dog ran along it first, and then the man himself in a white cloak with bloody lining.

Woland directed the master along the road, where a house under the cherry trees awaited him and Margarita. He himself and his retinue rushed into the hole and disappeared. The Master and Margarita saw the dawn. They walked across a rocky bridge over a stream, along a sandy road, enjoying the silence. Margarita said: “Look, your eternal home is ahead. I can already see the Venetian window and climbing grapes... You will fall asleep with a smile on your lips, you will begin to reason wisely. And you won’t be able to drive me away. I will take care of your sleep." It seemed to the master that her words were flowing like a stream, and the master’s memory, restless, pricked by needles, began to fade. Someone released the master, just as he himself released the hero he created. This hero went into the abyss, forgiven on the night of the resurrection by the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, horseman Pontius Pilate.

Epilogue

What happened next in Moscow? For a long time there was a heavy hum of the most incredible rumors about evil spirits. “Cultural people took the point of view of the investigation: a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists was working.” The investigation lasted a long time. After Woland’s disappearance, hundreds of black cats suffered, which vigilant citizens exterminated or dragged to the police. Several arrests took place: the detainees were people with surnames similar to Woland, Koroviev... In general, there was a great ferment of minds...

Several years passed, and citizens began to forget what happened. Much has changed in the lives of those who suffered from Woland and his associates. Zhor Bengalsky recovered, but was forced to leave his service in Variety. Varenukha gained universal popularity and love for his incredible responsiveness and politeness. Styopa Likhodeev began managing a grocery store in Rostov, became silent and shunned women. Rimsky left Variety and entered the children's puppet theater. Sempleyarov became the head of the mushroom procurement point. Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy hated the theater, and the poet Pushkin, and the artist Kurolesov... However, Nikanor Ivanovich dreamed all this.

So, maybe Aloysius Mogarych was not there? Oh no! This one not only existed, but still exists, and precisely in the position that Rimsky refused - as the findirector of the Variety Show. Aloysius was extremely enterprising. Two weeks later he was already living in a beautiful room on Bryusov Lane, and a few months later he was already sitting in Rimsky’s office. Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company that “it’s as if he’s never met such a bastard as Aloysius and that it’s as if he expects everything from this Aloysius.”

“The incidents truthfully described in this book dragged on and faded from memory. But not everyone, but not everyone!” Every year, on the spring full moon in the evening, a man of about thirty appears on the Patriarch's Ponds. This is an employee of the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev. He always sits on that very bench... Ivan Nikolaevich knows everything, he knows and understands everything. He knows that in his youth he became a victim of criminal hypnotists, was treated and recovered. But as soon as the full moon approaches, he becomes restless, nervous, loses appetite and sleep. Sitting on a bench, he talks to himself, smokes... then goes into the Arbat alleys, to the grate, behind which is a lush garden and a Gothic mansion. He always sees the same thing: an elderly and respectable man sitting on a bench with a beard, wearing pince-nez, with slightly pig-like features, with eyes directed to the moon.

The professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and hurries him to bed. She knows that at dawn Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up with a painful cry, begin to cry and rush about. After the injection, he will sleep with a happy face... He sees a noseless executioner who is stabbing Gestas tied to a post in the heart... After the injection, everything changes: a wide lunar road stretches from the bed to the window, and a man in a white cloak climbs onto this road with a bloody lining. On the way to the moon, a young man in a torn tunic walks next to him... Behind them is a giant dog. The people walking are talking and arguing about something. The man in the cloak says: “Gods, gods! What a vulgar execution! But tell me, she didn’t exist, tell me, she didn’t exist?” And the companion replies: “Well, of course it didn’t happen, it was just your imagination.” The lunar path boils, the lunar river overflows, a woman of exorbitant beauty forms in the stream and leads a fearfully looking man out by the hand. This is number one hundred and eighteen, Ivan's night guest. Ivan Nikolaevich holds out his hands: “So, this is how it ended?” and hears the answer: “That’s the end of it, my student.” The woman approaches Ivan: “It’s all over and everything is ending... And I’ll kiss you on the forehead, and everything will be as it should be.”

She goes with her companion to the moon, a lunar flood begins in the room, the light swings... That's when Ivan sleeps with a happy face. “The next morning he wakes up silent, but completely calm and healthy. His punctured memory subsides, and until the next full moon no one will disturb the professor: neither the noseless killer Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the horseman Pontius Pilate.”

70 years ago, on February 13, 1940, Mikhail Bulgakov finished the novel “The Master and Margarita.”

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote his novel “The Master and Margarita” for a total of 12 years. The idea for the book took shape gradually. Bulgakov himself dated the start of work on the novel in different manuscripts as either 1928 or 1929.

It is known that the writer came up with the idea for the novel in 1928, and in 1929 Bulgakov began the novel “The Master and Margarita” (which did not yet have this title).

After Bulgakov's death, eight editions of the novel remained in his archive.

In the first edition, the novel “The Master and Margarita” had variant titles: “The Black Magician”, “The Engineer’s Hoof”, “Juggler with a Hoof”, “Son of V”, “Tour”.

On March 18, 1930, after receiving news of the ban on the play “The Cabal of the Holy One,” the first edition of the novel, up to the 15th chapter, was destroyed by the author himself.

The second edition of "The Master and Margarita", created until 1936, had the subtitle "Fantastic Novel" and variant titles "Great Chancellor", "Satan", "Here I Am", "Hat with a Feather", "Black Theologian", " He Appeared", "The Foreigner's Horseshoe", "He Appeared", "The Advent", "The Black Magician" and "The Consultant's Hoof".

In the second edition of the novel, Margarita and the Master already appeared, and Woland acquired his own retinue.

The third edition of the novel, begun in the second half of 1936 or 1937, was initially called “The Prince of Darkness.” In 1937, returning once again to the beginning of the novel, the author first wrote on the title page the title “The Master and Margarita,” which became final, set the dates 1928–1937 and never stopped working on it.

In May - June 1938, the full text of the novel was reprinted for the first time; the author's editing continued almost until the writer's death. In 1939, important changes were made to the end of the novel and an epilogue was added. But then the terminally ill Bulgakov dictated amendments to the text to his wife, Elena Sergeevna. The extensiveness of insertions and amendments in the first part and at the beginning of the second suggests that no less work was to be done further, but the author did not have time to complete it. Bulgakov stopped working on the novel on February 13, 1940, less than four weeks before his death.

Rated the book

Why I hate these “MiM” of yours: a few observations from a bore who has not joined the main book cult of the country

1) Bulgakov happened to experience an amazing era: the 1920s - the time of Babel, Vaginov, Olesha, Alexei Tolstoy, Ilf and Petrov, Kataev - were almost the most interesting in the history of Russian literature. Bulgakov knew how to learn, knew how to imitate - and his texts abundantly present the findings of his more talented contemporaries. For example, the first chapter of “MiM” is a mirror image of the first chapter of “Julio Jurenito.” For both Bulgakov and Erenburg, a meeting with a mysterious stranger of a demonic breed turns into a conversation about meaning, God and the predetermination of fate, compare “But here’s the question that worries me: if There is no God, then, the question arises, who controls human life and all order on earth in general?” and “But does anything even exist?... But is all this based on something? Is anyone controlling this Spaniard? Does he have any meaning?..”. However, Ehrenburg’s caustic and observant book has only 19 readers on Livelib! But without Jurenito, perhaps there would have been no Woland.

2) Usually the Master and the Homeless are contrasted: the first is a genius, and the second is mediocre. This conclusion is based on the fact that the Master “terribly dislikes” Bezdomny’s poems (although he has not read and does not intend to read) and Bezdomny, being in a clearly inadequate state, recognizes his poems as “monstrous.” But meanwhile, the text of the novel itself proves the opposite. The homeless man is undoubtedly a talented poet, because “his Jesus turned out to be, well, completely alive.” Creating a full-blooded character is already worth a lot. The Master’s Jesus did not work out: his Yeshua is a dull and dull image, a leafy likeness of the Gospel Christ, the complexity of whose appearance Bulgakov, the grandson of a priest and the son of a theologian, understood very well. For me, the storyline of Bezdomny is the story of a talent that was trampled in passing - and the reader did not even notice, carried away by the demonic antics of Koroviev-Fagot; The homeless man is the only one who evokes my true sympathy.

3) I am surprised that most readers take at face value absolutely everything that is said in one way or another in the novel. For example, Woland’s remark “...never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They themselves will offer and give everything!” is perceived with extreme seriousness, as if it were voiced not by the father of lies, but by an Old Testament prophet, whose commandments must be followed unquestioningly and literally. And some even consider Woland to be a kind of reasoner, whose opinion a priori coincides with the opinion of the author.
UPD: Woland’s other lie is also taken seriously - that people do not change, modern people are the same as the old ones, “the housing issue only spoiled them.” But it is obvious to anyone who is interested in history that with the passage of time, categories of thinking, ideas about beauty and morality, the meanings of the most basic words and concepts, and patterns of behavior change significantly. The devil's picture of the world is a simplified picture of the world.

4) Moreover, what is most often overlooked is the fact that the narrator in “MiM” is a mocking and cynical type, whose words and assessments should be perceived rather in an ironic manner. For example, the famous words “Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in the world? May the liar cut out his vile tongue! Follow me, my reader, and only me, and I will show you such love! " precede the story of a very specific relationship: Margarita lives supported by an unloved person and, having met the Master, is, to put it mildly, in no hurry to leave a beautiful apartment with furniture and a maid ("true, faithful, eternal love" is good!); then, having lost her lover, she regrets that she rejected the potential gentleman: “Why, exactly, did I drive this man away? I’m bored, but there’s nothing wrong with this womanizer.” But the reader continues to fashion a holy ideal out of a calculating kept woman, without thinking that if these two had “true, faithful, eternal love,” they would have been granted not only “peace.”

As you can understand from what was written above, I do not like the naive and enthusiastic perception of “MiM” that has taken root among the masses. This book is not “The Gospel of Michael” at all, but a game full of deliberate deceptions and omissions. And I am offended that in the wave of enthusiasm for this unfinished and secondary novel, so many first-class books were forgotten, guilty only of the fact that they were written in Soviet times. Therefore, if after my post someone has a desire to read the same “Julio Jurenito” or “Fire Angel”, I will be very glad.

Rated the book

It would be trivial to say that The Master and Margarita is a mysterious novel. I've been talking about this in lectures for over 15 years. But here’s what’s surprising: when there’s turmoil in my soul, when I’m feeling bad, I open any page of the novel at random and end up exactly on the one where the answer is given to me, and my mood improves, and it becomes so good, and I laugh and cry from the realization that Bulgakov and his novel are part of my life, part of my existence. The book is always nearby - just reach out, there are so many bookmarks, so many notes! No, I don’t believe those people who say that I didn’t like the novel - it simply did not open up to the consciousness and understanding of this reader. You need to grow up to read a novel! I remember the incident when I met with my favorite professor, microbiologist Yuri Ivanovich Sorokin, and he told me with such enthusiasm how his son Arkady and his friends spent the entire night rewriting the samizdat pages of the novel “The Master and Margarita.” This was in 1979. Then I modestly remained silent and did not say that I, too, had read the novel in a samizdat version. Years have passed. Now I have 4 editions of the novel, and I am proud of it, I am proud that my colleagues come to my lectures, write them down, take notes, and the members of the certification commission (honorable ladies) cried when I told the love story of the Master and Margarita! This novel is undoubtedly sent to us by God!

Rated the book

A strange illness happened to me: everything that I don’t dare to re-read takes on a completely different meaning, often completely opposite to the original one. The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Anna Karenina...And this syndrome reached the Master and Margarita. I read it in the summer, and I was left with the feeling that I had been punched in the stomach. I thought: stress - I’ll re-read it later. And I just finished re-reading it just the other day. No, then - in the summer - it didn’t seem to me. That's right.
I'll try to tell you. In my youth, for me this was, perhaps, one of the most intimate novels about ideal love, about the fate of the Master with an unconditional parallel with the fate of Bulgakov and Elena. A novel about people, about what is important to them. Well, for example, cowardice is the most terrible vice; We speak different languages, as always, but the things we talk about do not change; Everyone decorates himself as best he can. And so on. I couldn’t talk about this novel with anyone for a very long time: it was too intimate, it touched my soul too much. From the words I want Frida to stop giving her a handkerchief, I just started crying. This went on for a very long time.
And so I re-read the novel, having, in principle, experienced a lot in my life: losses, and gains, and joy, and grief, and disappointment, and love, and passion - in general, I became an adult. :)
And I came to the conclusion that it was a dying affair. And no matter how much they tell me that he is the result of Bulgakov’s entire work, it is not true. This is a novel by a dying man wondering where he will go after death. And will he end up somewhere at all? Is there a place where they end up after death? It’s like a person is looking into a large mirror and trying to find the answer to how he lived and what he deserves: punishment or reward. Each line in the novel is a reflection of precisely this state of search and answers to this, in principle, one and only question. Reflection of Woland, Pilate and reality. And all this flashes through the Master, as if in a kaleidoscope. Another interesting thought came to my mind. Everyone tends to associate the Master and Yeshua. Well, not everyone, but the majority. But! Master = Pilate. Yeshua = the Master's conscience. That's exactly how I saw it. And the Master’s novel about Pilate is essentially a conversation with one’s conscience. That’s why it was not finished. That’s why the manuscripts don’t burn—it’s so difficult to look at and talk to one’s conscience. Almost deadly. The feeling of Dostoevsky from these chapters is simply amazing. Therefore, I consider it incorrect to say that these are chapters on Christian humility and so on. Nothing of the kind. Bulgakov is a wise author and he took the most characteristic character for a conversation with conscience - Pilate, who betrayed his soul. A stunningly common example. After all, a person is not a static substance, but a moving one. Through these characters he tried to understand himself. And, probably, a clash of conscience with the truth, with a reality in which there is more evil, in which one must very often step over it. After all, the burning of a manuscript by the Master is also a kind of “crucifixion” of conscience, as in the story of Yeshua and Pilate, like the scene of Satan’s ball. After all, there Margarita acts as the author/Bulgakov. And also scenes with the crucifixion of conscience: "" and I want Frida to stop giving her a handkerchief." And all the characters: the Master, Yeshua, Woland, Pilate, Margarita - these are all parts of the mosaic named M.A. Bulgakov. Such polyphony of one person. The entire novel is essentially a conversation between Bulgakov and himself. And mostly about your own conscience.
Further, I didn’t see any love in the novel... Absolutely. Passion. Desire. Worship of talent, but not love between a man and a woman. Margarita did not love the Master himself. She was captivated by his talent. She never combined the male Master and the Master Creator into one image. True love is bright and creative; it will never lead lovers into darkness.

Michael Bulgakov

Master and Margarita

Moscow 1984

The text is printed in the last lifetime edition (the manuscripts are stored in the manuscript department of the State Library of the USSR named after V.I. Lenin), as well as with corrections and additions made under the dictation of the writer by his wife, E.S. Bulgakova.

PART ONE

...So who are you, finally?

- I am part of that force,

what he always wants

evil and always does good.

Goethe. "Faust"

Never talk to strangers

One day in the spring, at an hour of unprecedentedly hot sunset, two citizens appeared in Moscow, on the Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them, dressed in a gray summer pair, was short, well-fed, bald, carried his decent hat like a pie in his hand, and on his well-shaven face were glasses of supernatural size in black horn-rimmed frames. The second, a broad-shouldered, reddish, curly-haired young man in a checkered cap pulled back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, chewy white trousers and black slippers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, chairman of the board of one of the largest Moscow literary associations, abbreviated as MASSOLIT, and editor of a thick art magazine, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, writing under the pseudonym Bezdomny.

Finding themselves in the shade of slightly green linden trees, the writers first rushed to the colorfully painted booth with the inscription “Beer and water.”

Yes, the first strangeness of this terrible May evening should be noted. Not only at the booth, but in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person. At that hour, when, it seemed, there was no strength to breathe, when the sun, having heated Moscow, fell in a dry fog somewhere beyond the Garden Ring, no one came under the linden trees, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty.

“Give me Narzan,” Berlioz asked.

“Narzan is gone,” answered the woman in the booth, and for some reason she was offended.

“The beer will be delivered in the evening,” the woman answered.

- What is there? asked Berlioz.

“Apricot, only warm,” the woman said.

- Well, come on, come on, come on!..

The apricot gave off a rich yellow foam, and the air smelled like a barbershop. Having drunk, the writers immediately began to hiccup, paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond and with their backs to Bronnaya.

Here a second strange thing happened, concerning only Berlioz. He suddenly stopped hiccupping, his heart pounded and for a moment sank somewhere, then returned, but with a dull needle stuck in it. In addition, Berlioz was gripped by an unreasonable, but so strong fear that he wanted to immediately flee from the Patriarch's without looking back. Berlioz looked around sadly, not understanding what frightened him. He turned pale, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and thought: “What’s wrong with me? This never happened... my heart is racing... I'm overtired. Perhaps it’s time to throw everything to hell and go to Kislovodsk...”

And then the sultry air thickened in front of him, and from this air a transparent citizen of a strange appearance was woven. On his small head is a jockey cap, a checkered, short, airy jacket... The citizen is a fathom tall, but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin, and his face, please note, is mocking.

Berlioz's life developed in such a way that he was not accustomed to unusual phenomena. Turning even paler, he widened his eyes and thought in confusion: “This can’t be!..”

But this, alas, was there, and the long citizen, through which one could see, swayed in front of him, both left and right, without touching the ground.

Here horror took over Berlioz so much that he closed his eyes. And when he opened them, he saw that it was all over, the haze dissolved, the checkered one disappeared, and at the same time the blunt needle jumped out of his heart.

- Fucking hell! - exclaimed the editor, - you know, Ivan, I almost had a stroke from the heat just now! There was even something like a hallucination,” he tried to grin, but his eyes were still jumping with anxiety, and his hands were shaking.

However, he gradually calmed down, fanned himself with a handkerchief and, saying quite cheerfully: “Well, so...”, he began his speech, interrupted by drinking apricot.

This speech, as they later learned, was about Jesus Christ. The fact is that the editor ordered the poet to write a large anti-religious poem for the next book of the magazine. Ivan Nikolaevich composed this poem in a very short time, but, unfortunately, it did not satisfy the editor at all. Bezdomny outlined the main character of his poem, that is, Jesus, in very black colors, and nevertheless, in the opinion of the editor, the entire poem had to be written anew. And now the editor was giving the poet something like a lecture about Jesus in order to highlight the poet’s main mistake. It is difficult to say what exactly let Ivan Nikolayevich down - whether it was the graphic power of his talent or complete unfamiliarity with the issue on which he was going to write - but Jesus in his portrayal turned out to be completely like a living, although not an attractive character. Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing is not what Jesus was like, whether he was bad or good, but that this Jesus, as a person, did not exist in the world at all and that all the stories about him are simple inventions, the most common myth.

It should be noted that the editor was a well-read man and very skillfully pointed in his speech to ancient historians, for example, the famous Philo of Alexandria, the brilliantly educated Josephus, who never mentioned the existence of Jesus. Revealing solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich informed the poet, among other things, that the place in the 15th book, in the 44th chapter of the famous Tacitus “Annals”, which talks about the execution of Jesus, is nothing more than a later fake insert.

The poet, for whom everything reported by the editor was news, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his lively green eyes on him, and only hiccupped occasionally, cursing the apricot water in a whisper.

“There is not a single Eastern religion,” said Berlioz, “in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin would not give birth to a god.” And the Christians, without inventing anything new, created their own Jesus in the same way, who in fact was never alive. This is what you need to focus on...

Berlioz's high tenor resounded in the deserted alley, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich climbed into the jungle, into which only a very educated person can climb without risking breaking his neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris , the benevolent god and son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Fammuz, and about Marduk, and even about the lesser-known formidable god Vitzliputzli, who was once highly revered by the Aztecs in Mexico.

And just at the time when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet about how the Aztecs sculpted a figurine of Vitzliputzli from dough, the first man appeared in the alley.

Subsequently, when, frankly speaking, it was too late, various institutions presented their reports describing this person. Comparing them cannot but cause amazement. So, in the first of them it is said that this man was short, had gold teeth and limped on his right leg. In the second - that the man was enormous in stature, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. The third laconically reports that the person had no special signs.

We have to admit that none of these reports are any good.

First of all: the person described did not limp on any of his legs, and he was neither short nor huge, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold ones on the right. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and foreign-made shoes that matched the color of the suit. He cocked his gray beret jauntily over his ear and carried a cane with a black knob in the shape of a poodle's head under his arm. He looks to be over forty years old. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaven clean. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other. In a word - a foreigner.

Passing by the bench on which the editor and the poet sat, the foreigner glanced sideways at them, stopped and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from his friends.

“German,” thought Berlioz.

“The Englishman,” thought Bezdomny, “look, he’s not hot in his gloves.”

And the foreigner looked around at the tall houses bordering the pond in a square, and it became noticeable that he was seeing this place for the first time and that it interested him.

He fixed his gaze on the upper floors, dazzlingly reflecting in the glass the broken sun that was leaving Mikhail Alexandrovich forever, then he moved it downstairs, where the glass began to darken in the late afternoon, smiled condescendingly at something, squinted, put his hands on the knob, and his chin on his hands.

“You, Ivan,” said Berlioz, “very well and satirically depicted, for example, the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the point is that even before Jesus a number of sons of God were born, like, say, the Phrygian Attis, in short speaking, not one of them was born and there was no one, including Jesus, and it is necessary that instead of the birth and, say, the arrival of the Magi, you describe the absurd rumors about this birth... Otherwise, it turns out from your story that he really born!..

Here Bezdomny made an attempt to stop the hiccups that were tormenting him, holding his breath, which made the hiccups more painful and louder, and at the same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreigner suddenly stood up and headed towards the writers.

They looked at him in surprise.

“Excuse me, please,” the man who approached spoke with a foreign accent, but without distorting the words, “that I, not being familiar, allow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that...

Here he politely took off his beret, and the friends had no choice but to rise and bow.

“No, rather a Frenchman...” thought Berlioz.

“A Pole?..” thought Bezdomny.

It must be added that from the very first words the foreigner made a disgusting impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked it, that is, not that he liked it, but ... how to put it ... interested, or something.

- May I sit down? – the foreigner politely asked, and the friends somehow involuntarily moved apart; the foreigner deftly sat down between them and immediately entered into conversation.

– If I heard correctly, did you deign to say that Jesus was not in the world? – asked the foreigner, turning his left green eye to Berlioz.

“No, you heard right,” Berlioz answered politely, “that’s exactly what I said.”

- Oh, how interesting! - exclaimed the foreigner.

“What the hell does he want?” - thought Homeless and frowned.

– Did you agree with your interlocutor? – the unknown person inquired, turning to the right to Bezdomny.

- One hundred percent! – he confirmed, loving to express himself pretentiously and figuratively.

- Amazing! - exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, for some reason, looking around furtively and muffling his low voice, he said: - Forgive my intrusiveness, but I understand that, among other things, you also do not believe in God? - He made frightened eyes and added: - I swear, I won’t tell anyone.

“Yes, we don’t believe in God,” Berlioz answered, smiling slightly at the foreign tourist’s fright. “But we can talk about this completely freely.”

The foreigner leaned back on the bench and asked, even squealing with curiosity:

– Are you atheists?!

“Yes, we are atheists,” Berlioz answered smiling, and Bezdomny thought, angry: “Here he is, a foreign goose!”

- Oh, how lovely! - cried the amazing foreigner and turned his head, looking first at one writer and then at another.

“In our country, atheism does not surprise anyone,” Berlioz said diplomatically politely, “the majority of our population consciously and long ago stopped believing fairy tales about God.”

Then the foreigner pulled off this trick: he stood up and shook the amazed editor’s hand, while uttering the words:

- Let me thank you from the bottom of my heart!

-What are you thanking him for? - Bezdomny inquired, blinking.

“For very important information, which is extremely interesting to me, as a traveler,” the foreign eccentric explained, raising his finger meaningfully.

The important information, apparently, really made a strong impression on the traveler, because he fearfully looked around the houses, as if afraid to see an atheist in each window.

“No, he’s not English...” thought Berlioz, and Bezdomny thought: “Where did he get so good at speaking Russian, that’s what’s interesting!” – and frowned again.

“But, let me ask you,” the foreign guest asked after anxious thought, “what to do with the evidence of the existence of God, of which, as we know, there are exactly five?”

- Alas! - Berlioz answered with regret, - none of this evidence is worth anything, and humanity has long since put it in the archives. After all, you must agree that in the realm of reason there can be no proof of the existence of God.

- Bravo! - cried the foreigner, - bravo! You completely repeated the thought of the restless old man Immanuel on this matter. But here’s the funny thing: he completely destroyed all five proofs, and then, as if to mock himself, he constructed his own sixth proof!

“Kant’s proof,” the educated editor objected with a subtle smile, “is also unconvincing.” And it was not for nothing that Schiller said that Kant’s reasoning on this issue could satisfy only slaves, and Strauss simply laughed at this evidence.

Berlioz spoke, and at that time he himself thought: “But, still, who is he? And why does he speak Russian so well?”

- Take this Kant, but for such evidence he will be sent to Solovki for three years! – Ivan Nikolaevich boomed completely unexpectedly.

- Ivan! – Berlioz whispered, embarrassed.

But the proposal to send Kant to Solovki not only did not strike the foreigner, but even delighted him.

“Exactly, exactly,” he shouted, and his left green eye, facing Berlioz, sparkled, “he belongs there!” After all, I told him then at breakfast: “You, professor, it’s your choice, you came up with something awkward! It may be smart, but it’s painfully incomprehensible. They will make fun of you."

Berlioz's eyes widened. “At breakfast... Cantu?.. What is he weaving?” - he thought.

“But,” continued the foreigner, not embarrassed by Berlioz’s amazement and turning to the poet, “it is impossible to send him to Solovki for the reason that he has been in places much more remote than Solovki for over a hundred years, and there is no way to extract him from there.” , trust me!

- It's a pity! - responded the bully poet.

- And I'm sorry! - confirmed the unknown person, his eyes sparkling, and continued: - But this is the question that worries me: if there is no God, then, one wonders, who controls human life and the entire order on earth in general?

“It’s the man himself who controls,” Bezdomny hastened to angrily answer this, admittedly, not very clear question.

“Sorry,” the unknown person responded softly, “in order to manage, you need, after all, to have an accurate plan for some, at least somewhat decent, period.” Let me ask you, how can a person manage if he is not only deprived of the opportunity to draw up any plan for at least a ridiculously short period of time, well, say, a thousand years, but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And, in fact,” here the unknown person turned to Berlioz, “imagine that you, for example, begin to manage, dispose of others and yourself, in general, so to speak, get a taste for it, and suddenly you... cough... cough... lung sarcoma ... - here the foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the thought of lung sarcoma gave him pleasure, - yes, sarcoma, - he repeated the sonorous word, squinting like a cat, - and now your management is over! You are no longer interested in anyone's fate except your own. Your relatives begin to lie to you, you, sensing something is wrong, rush to learned doctors, then to charlatans, and sometimes even to fortune-tellers. Both the first and second, and the third are completely meaningless, you yourself understand. And it all ends tragically: the one who until recently believed that he was in control of something suddenly finds himself lying motionless in a wooden box, and those around him, realizing that the person lying there is no longer of any use, burn him in the oven. And it can be even worse: a person has just decided to go to Kislovodsk,” here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz, “a seemingly trivial matter, but he cannot do this either, because for some unknown reason he suddenly slips and gets hit by a tram! Are you really going to say that he controlled himself this way? Isn’t it more correct to think that someone completely different dealt with him? – and here the stranger laughed with a strange laugh.

Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about sarcoma and the tram, and some disturbing thoughts began to torment him. “He is not a foreigner! He is not a foreigner! - he thought, “he is a strange character... But excuse me, who is he?”

– You want to smoke, as I see? - the unknown person unexpectedly turned to Homeless, - which ones do you prefer?

- Do you have different ones, or what? - the poet, who had run out of cigarettes, asked gloomily.

– Which ones do you prefer? – the unknown person repeated.

“Well, “Our brand,” Homeless answered angrily.

The stranger immediately pulled out a cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to Homeless:

- “Our brand.”

Both the editor and the poet were not so much struck by the fact that “Our Brand” was found in the cigarette case, but by the cigarette case itself. It was enormous in size, made of red gold, and on its lid, when opened, a diamond triangle sparkled with blue and white fire.

Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: “No, a foreigner!”, and Bezdomny: “Damn him! A?"

The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit a cigarette, but Berlioz, a non-smoker, refused.

“It will be necessary to object to him like this,” Berlioz decided, “yes, man is mortal, no one argues against this. But the fact is that...”

However, he did not have time to utter these words when the foreigner spoke:

– Yes, man is mortal, but that would not be so bad. The bad thing is that he is sometimes suddenly mortal, that's the trick! And he can’t say at all what he will do this evening.

“Some kind of ridiculous formulation of the question...” Berlioz thought and objected:

- Well, there is an exaggeration here. I know this evening more or less accurately. It goes without saying that if a brick falls on my head on Bronnaya...

“A brick for no reason at all,” the unknown man interrupted impressively, “will never fall on anyone’s head.” In particular, I assure you, he does not threaten you in any way. You will die a different death.

- Maybe you know which one? - Berlioz inquired with completely natural irony, getting involved in some truly ridiculous conversation, - and will you tell me?

“Willingly,” responded the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down, as if he was going to sew him a suit, muttered through his teeth something like: “One, two... Mercury in the second house... the moon is gone... six is ​​misfortune... evening is seven...” and announced loudly and joyfully: Your head will be cut off!

The homeless man stared wildly and angrily at the cheeky stranger, and Berlioz asked with a wry smile:

– Who exactly? Enemies? Interventionists?

“No,” the interlocutor answered, “a Russian woman, a Komsomol member.”

“Hm...” Berlioz mumbled, irritated by the stranger’s joke, “well, this, excuse me, is unlikely.”

“I beg your pardon,” answered the foreigner, “but that’s how it is.” Yes, I would like to ask you, what will you do tonight if it's not a secret?

- There is no secret. Now I will go to my place on Sadovaya, and then at ten o’clock in the evening there will be a meeting at MASSOLIT, and I will chair it.

“No, this can’t possibly be,” the foreigner objected firmly.

- Why?

“Because,” the foreigner answered and looked with narrowed eyes at the sky, where, anticipating the evening coolness, black birds were silently drawing, “Annushka has already bought sunflower oil, and not only bought it, but even bottled it.” So the meeting will not take place.

Here, as is quite understandable, there was silence under the linden trees.

“Excuse me,” Berlioz spoke after a pause, looking at the foreigner chattering nonsense, “what does sunflower oil have to do with it... and who is Annushka?”

“Sunflower oil has something to do with it,” Bezdomny suddenly spoke, apparently deciding to declare war on his uninvited interlocutor, “have you, citizen, ever been to a mental hospital?”

“Ivan!..” Mikhail Alexandrovich quietly exclaimed.

But the foreigner was not at all offended and laughed joyfully.

- Happened, happened more than once! - he cried, laughing, but without taking his unlaughing eyes off the poet, - where have I been! It’s just a pity that I didn’t bother to ask the professor what schizophrenia is. So you yourself find out from him, Ivan Nikolaevich!

- How do you know my name?

- For mercy’s sake, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn’t know you? - here the foreigner pulled yesterday’s issue of Literary Newspaper out of his pocket, and Ivan Nikolaevich saw his image on the first page, and under it his own poems. But yesterday, the joyful proof of fame and popularity, this time did not please the poet at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his face darkened, “can you wait a minute?” I want to say a few words to my friend.

- Oh, with pleasure! - exclaimed the unknown person, - it’s so nice here under the linden trees, and by the way, I’m not in a hurry.

“Here’s what, Misha,” the poet whispered, pulling Berlioz aside, “he’s not a foreign tourist, but a spy.” This is a Russian emigrant who moved to us. Ask him for documents, otherwise he will leave...

- You think? - Berlioz whispered alarmedly, and he himself thought: “But he’s right!”

“Believe me,” the poet hissed in his ear, “he’s pretending to be a fool in order to ask something out.” You hear him speaking in Russian,” the poet spoke and looked askance, making sure that the unknown person did not run away, “let’s go, we’ll detain him, otherwise he’ll leave...

And the poet pulled Berlioz by the hand to the bench.

The stranger did not sit, but stood next to her, holding in his hands some book in a dark gray cover, a thick envelope of good paper and a business card.

- Forgive me that in the heat of our argument I forgot to introduce myself to you. Here is my card, passport and invitation to come to Moscow for a consultation,” the unknown man said gravely, looking shrewdly at both writers.

They were embarrassed. “Damn, I heard everything,” Berlioz thought and with a polite gesture showed that there was no need to present documents. While the foreigner was handing them to the editor, the poet managed to see on the card the word “professor” printed in foreign letters and the initial letter of the surname - a double “B”.

“Very nice,” meanwhile, the editor muttered embarrassedly, and the foreigner hid the documents in his pocket.

Relations were thus restored, and all three sat down on the bench again.

– Are you invited to us as a consultant, professor? asked Berlioz.

- Yes, a consultant.

- Are you German? - asked Homeless.

“Me?..” the professor asked and suddenly became thoughtful. “Yes, perhaps a German...” he said.

“You speak Russian very well,” noted Bezdomny.

“Oh, I’m generally a polyglot and I know a very large number of languages,” the professor answered.

– What is your specialty? - Berlioz inquired.

– I am a specialist in black magic.

"On you!" – Mikhail Aleksandrovich’s head rang.

– And... and you were invited to join us in this specialty? – he asked stutteringly.

“Yes, that’s why they invited me,” the professor confirmed and explained: “Authentic manuscripts of the warlock Herbert of Avrilak, from the tenth century, were discovered here in the state library, and so it is required that I sort them out.” I am the only specialist in the world.

- Ahh! Are you a historian? – Berlioz asked with great relief and respect.

And again both the editor and the poet were extremely surprised, and the professor beckoned both to him and, when they leaned towards him, whispered:

– Keep in mind that Jesus existed.

“You see, professor,” Berlioz responded with a forced smile, “we respect your great knowledge, but we ourselves hold a different point of view on this issue.”

– You don’t need any points of view! - answered the strange professor, - he simply existed, and nothing more.

“But some kind of proof is required...” Berlioz began.

“And no proof is required,” the professor answered and spoke quietly, and for some reason his accent disappeared: “It’s simple: in a white cloak...”

Pontius Pilate

In a white cloak with a bloody lining and a shuffling cavalry gait, early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, came out into the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.

More than anything else, the procurator hated the smell of rose oil, and everything now foreshadowed a bad day, since this smell began to haunt the procurator from dawn. It seemed to the procurator that the cypresses and palm trees in the garden emitted a pink smell, that a cursed pink stream was mixed with the smell of leather and the convoy. From the wings in the rear of the palace, where the first cohort of the twelfth lightning legion, which had arrived with the procurator in Yershalaim, was stationed, smoke drifted into the colonnade through the upper platform of the garden, and the same greasy smoke was mixed with the bitter smoke, which indicated that the cooks in the centuries had begun to prepare dinner. pink spirit. Oh gods, gods, why are you punishing me?

“Yes, no doubt! It’s her, her again, the invincible, terrible disease of hemicrania, which makes half of your head hurt. There is no remedy for it, there is no salvation. I’ll try not to move my head.”

A chair had already been prepared on the mosaic floor by the fountain, and the procurator, without looking at anyone, sat down in it and extended his hand to the side.

The secretary respectfully placed a piece of parchment into this hand. Unable to resist a painful grimace, the procurator glanced sideways at what was written, returned the parchment to the secretary and said with difficulty:

– A suspect from Galilee? Did they send the matter to the tetrarch?

“Yes, procurator,” answered the secretary.

- What is he?

“He refused to give an opinion on the case and sent the death sentence to the Sanhedrin for your approval,” the secretary explained.

The procurator twitched his cheek and said quietly:

- Bring the accused.

And immediately, from the garden platform under the columns to the balcony, two legionnaires brought in a man of about twenty-seven and placed him in front of the procurator’s chair. This man was dressed in an old and torn blue chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage with a strap around his forehead, and his hands were tied behind his back. The man had a large bruise under his left eye and an abrasion with dried blood in the corner of his mouth. The man brought in looked at the procurator with anxious curiosity.

He paused, then quietly asked in Aramaic:

- So it was you who persuaded the people to destroy the Yershalaim Temple?

At the same time, the procurator sat as if made of stone, and only his lips moved slightly when pronouncing the words. The procurator was like a stone, because he was afraid to shake his head, blazing with hellish pain.

The man with his hands tied leaned forward a little and began to speak:

- A kind person! Trust me…

But the procurator, still not moving and not raising his voice at all, immediately interrupted him:

– Are you calling me a kind person? You're wrong. In Yershalaim, everyone whispers about me that I am a ferocious monster, and this is absolutely true,” and he added just as monotonously: “Centurion Rat-Slayer to me.”

It seemed to everyone that it had darkened on the balcony when the centurion, commander of the special centurion, Mark, nicknamed the Rat Slayer, appeared before the procurator.

Rat Slayer was a head taller than the tallest soldier in the legion and so broad in the shoulders that he completely blocked out the still low sun.

The procurator addressed the centurion in Latin:

- The criminal calls me “a good man.” Take him out of here for a minute, explain to him how to talk to me. But don't maim.

And everyone, except the motionless procurator, followed Mark the Ratboy, who waved his hand to the arrested man, indicating that he should follow him.

In general, everyone followed the rat-slayer with their eyes, wherever he appeared, because of his height, and those who saw him for the first time, because of the fact that the centurion’s face was disfigured: his nose had once been broken by a blow from a German club.

Mark's heavy boots tapped on the mosaic, the bound man followed him silently, complete silence fell in the colonnade, and one could hear pigeons cooing in the garden area near the balcony, and the water sang an intricate, pleasant song in the fountain.

The procurator wanted to get up, put his temple under the stream and freeze like that. But he knew that this would not help him either.

Taking the arrested man out from under the columns into the garden. The Ratcatcher took a whip from the hands of the legionnaire standing at the foot of the bronze statue and, swinging slightly, hit the arrested man on the shoulders. The centurion's movement was careless and easy, but the bound one instantly fell to the ground, as if his legs had been cut off, choked on air, the color ran away from his face and his eyes became meaningless. Mark, with one left hand, easily, like an empty sack, lifted the fallen man into the air, put him on his feet and spoke nasally, poorly pronouncing Aramaic words:

– Call the Roman procurator hegemon. No other words to say. Stand still. Do you understand me or should I hit you?

The arrested man staggered, but controlled himself, the color returned, he took a breath and answered hoarsely:

- I understood you. Do not hit me.

A minute later he again stood in front of the procurator.

- My? - the arrested person hastily responded, expressing with all his being his readiness to answer intelligently and not cause further anger.

The procurator said quietly:

- Mine - I know. Don't pretend to be more stupid than you are. Your.

“Yeshua,” the prisoner hastily answered.

- Do you have a nickname?

- Ga-Nozri.

- Where you're from?

“From the city of Gamala,” answered the prisoner, indicating with his head that there, somewhere far away, to the right of him, in the north, there was the city of Gamala.

-Who are you by blood?

“I don’t know for sure,” the arrested man answered briskly, “I don’t remember my parents.” They told me that my father was Syrian...

– Where do you live permanently?

“I don’t have a permanent home,” the prisoner answered shyly, “I travel from city to city.”

“This can be expressed briefly, in one word - a tramp,” said the procurator and asked: “Do you have any relatives?”

- There is no one. I'm alone in the world.

- Do you know how to read and write?

– Do you know any language other than Aramaic?

- I know. Greek.

The swollen eyelid lifted, the eye, covered with a haze of suffering, stared at the arrested man. The other eye remained closed.

Pilate spoke in Greek:

– So you were going to destroy the temple building and called on the people to do this?

Here the prisoner perked up again, his eyes stopped expressing fear, and he spoke in Greek:

“I, dear...” here horror flashed in the eyes of the prisoner because he almost misspoke, “I, the hegemon, never in my life intended to destroy the temple building and did not persuade anyone to do this senseless action.”

Surprise was expressed on the face of the secretary, hunched over the low table and recording the testimony. He raised his head, but immediately bowed it again to the parchment.

– Many different people flock to this city for the holiday. There are magicians, astrologers, soothsayers and murderers among them,” the procurator said monotonously, “and there are also liars.” For example, you are a liar. It is clearly written down: he persuaded to destroy the temple. This is what people testify.

“These good people,” the prisoner spoke and hastily added: “Hegemon,” he continued: “they didn’t learn anything and they all confused what I said.” In general, I am beginning to fear that this confusion will continue for a very long time. And all because he writes me down incorrectly.

There was silence. Now both sick eyes looked heavily at the prisoner.

“I repeat to you, but for the last time: stop pretending to be crazy, robber,” Pilate said softly and monotonously, “there is not much recorded against you, but what is written down is enough to hang you.”

“No, no, hegemon,” the arrested man spoke, straining all over in the desire to convince, “he walks and walks alone with a goat’s parchment and writes continuously.” But one day I looked into this parchment and was horrified. I said absolutely nothing of what was written there. I begged him: burn your parchment for God’s sake! But he snatched it from my hands and ran away.

- Who it? – Pilate asked disgustedly and touched his temple with his hand.

“Matthew Levi,” the prisoner readily explained, “he was a tax collector, and I met him for the first time on the road in Bethphage, where the fig garden overlooks the corner, and I got into conversation with him. Initially, he treated me with hostility and even insulted me, that is, he thought that he was insulting me by calling me a dog,” here the prisoner grinned, “I personally don’t see anything bad in this beast to be offended by this word...

The secretary stopped taking notes and secretly cast a surprised glance, not at the arrested person, but at the procurator.

“...however, after listening to me, he began to soften,” Yeshua continued, “finally threw money on the road and said that he would travel with me...”

Pilate grinned with one cheek, baring his yellow teeth, and said, turning his whole body to the secretary:

- Oh, the city of Yershalaim! There's just so much you can't hear in it. The tax collector, you hear, threw money on the road!

Not knowing how to respond to this, the secretary considered it necessary to repeat Pilate’s smile.

Still grinning, the procurator looked at the arrested man, then at the sun, steadily rising above the equestrian statues of the hippodrome, which lay far below to the right, and suddenly, in some kind of sickening torment, he thought that the easiest thing would be to expel this strange robber from the balcony, saying only two words: “Hang him.” Drive out the convoy too, leave the colonnade inside the palace, order the room to be darkened, lie down on the bed, demand cold water, call the dog Bang in a plaintive voice, and complain to her about hemicrania. And the thought of poison suddenly flashed seductively in the procurator’s sick head.

He looked with dull eyes at the prisoner and was silent for some time, painfully remembering why in the morning merciless Yershalaim sun a prisoner with a face disfigured by beatings was standing in front of him, and what unnecessary questions he would have to ask.

“Yes, Levi Matvey,” a high, tormenting voice came to him.

– But what did you say about the temple to the crowd at the market?

“I, the hegemon, said that the temple of the old faith would collapse and a new temple of truth would be created. I said it this way to make it clearer.

- Why did you, tramp, confuse people at the market by talking about the truth about which you have no idea? What is truth?

And then the procurator thought: “Oh, my gods! I’m asking him about something unnecessary at the trial... My mind no longer serves me...” And again he imagined a bowl with a dark liquid. “I’ll poison you, I’ll poison you!”

“The truth, first of all, is that you have a headache, and it hurts so much that you are cowardly thinking about death.” Not only are you unable to speak to me, but it is difficult for you to even look at me. And now I am unwittingly your executioner, which saddens me. You can’t even think about anything and dream only that your dog, apparently the only creature to which you are attached, will come. But your torment will now end, your headache will go away.

The secretary stared at the prisoner and did not finish the words.

Pilate raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun was already standing quite high above the hippodrome, that the ray had made its way into the colonnade and was creeping towards Yeshua’s worn sandals, that he was avoiding the sun.

Here the procurator rose from his chair, clasped his head in his hands, and horror was expressed on his yellowish, shaved face. But he immediately suppressed it with his will and sank back into the chair.

Meanwhile, the prisoner continued his speech, but the secretary did not write down anything else, but only, stretching his neck like a goose, tried not to utter a single word.

“Well, it’s all over,” said the arrested man, looking benevolently at Pilate, “and I’m extremely happy about it.” I would advise you, hegemon, to leave the palace for a while and take a walk somewhere in the surrounding area, or at least in the gardens on the Mount of Olives. The thunderstorm will begin,” the prisoner turned and squinted into the sun, “later, in the evening.” A walk would be of great benefit to you, and I would gladly accompany you. Some new thoughts have come to my mind that might, I think, seem interesting to you, and I would be happy to share them with you, especially since you seem to be a very smart person.

The secretary turned deathly pale and dropped the scroll to the floor.

“The trouble is,” continued the bound man, unstoppable by anyone, “that you are too closed and have completely lost faith in people.” You can’t, you see, put all your affection into a dog. Your life is meager, hegemon,” and here the speaker allowed himself to smile.

The secretary was now thinking about only one thing: whether to believe his ears or not. I had to believe. Then he tried to imagine exactly what bizarre form the anger of the hot-tempered procurator would take at this unheard-of insolence of the arrested person. And the secretary could not imagine this, although he knew the procurator well.

- Untie his hands.

One of the escort legionnaires struck his spear, handed it to another, walked up and removed the ropes from the prisoner. The secretary picked up the scroll and decided not to write anything down and not be surprised by anything for now.

“Confess,” Pilate asked quietly in Greek, “are you a great doctor?”

“No, procurator, I’m not a doctor,” answered the prisoner, rubbing his crumpled and swollen purple hand with pleasure.

Cool, from under his brows Pilate gazed at the prisoner, and in these eyes there was no longer any dullness, familiar sparks appeared in them.

“I didn’t ask you,” said Pilate, “perhaps you know Latin?”

“Yes, I know,” answered the prisoner.

Color appeared on Pilate's yellowish cheeks, and he asked in Latin:

- How did you know that I wanted to call the dog?

“It’s very simple,” the prisoner answered in Latin, “you moved your hand through the air,” the prisoner repeated Pilate’s gesture, “as if you wanted to stroke it, and your lips...”

“Yes,” said Pilate.

There was silence, then Pilate asked a question in Greek:

- So, are you a doctor?

“No, no,” the prisoner answered briskly, “believe me, I’m not a doctor.”

- OK then. If you want to keep it a secret, keep it. This is not directly related to the matter. So you claim that you did not call for destroying... or setting fire, or in any other way destroying the temple?

– I, the hegemon, did not call anyone to such actions, I repeat. Do I look like a retard?

“Oh yes, you don’t look like a weak-minded person,” the procurator answered quietly and smiled some kind of terrible smile, “so swear that this didn’t happen.”

“What do you want me to swear to?” – he asked, very animated, untied.

“Well, at least with your life,” answered the procurator, “it’s time to swear by it, since it hangs by a thread, know this!”

“Don’t you think you’ve hung her up, hegemon?” - asked the prisoner, - if this is so, you are very mistaken.

Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth:

- I can cut this hair.

“And you’re wrong about that,” the prisoner objected, smiling brightly and shielding himself from the sun with his hand, “will you agree that only the one who hung it can probably cut a hair?”

“Well, well,” said Pilate, smiling, “now I have no doubt that the idle onlookers in Yershalaim followed on your heels.” I don’t know who hung your tongue, but it’s hung well. By the way, tell me: is it true that you appeared in Yershalaim through the Susa Gate riding on a donkey, accompanied by a crowd of rabble who shouted greetings to you as if to some prophet? – here the procurator pointed to a scroll of parchment.

The prisoner looked at the procurator in bewilderment.

“I don’t even have a donkey, hegemon,” he said. “I came to Yershalaim exactly through the Susa Gate, but on foot, accompanied by only Levi Matthew, and no one shouted anything to me, since no one knew me in Yershalaim then.

“Do you know such people,” Pilate continued, without taking his eyes off the prisoner, “a certain Dismas, another Gestas and a third Bar-Rabban?”

“I don’t know these good people,” answered the prisoner.

- Is it true?

- Is it true.

– Now tell me, why do you always use the words “good people”? Is that what you call everyone?

“All of them,” answered the prisoner, “there are no evil people in the world.”

“This is the first time I’ve heard about this,” said Pilate, grinning, “but maybe I don’t know life well!” You don’t have to write down any further,” he turned to the secretary, although he didn’t write anything down anyway, and continued to say to the prisoner: “Did you read about this in any of the Greek books?”

- No, I came to this with my mind.

- And you preach this?

- But, for example, the centurion Mark, they called him Rat Slayer, is he kind?

“Yes,” answered the prisoner, “he is, indeed, an unhappy man.” Since good people disfigured him, he has become cruel and callous. It would be interesting to know who crippled him.

“I can readily report this,” Pilate responded, “for I witnessed it.” Good people rushed at him like dogs at a bear. The Germans grabbed his neck, arms, and legs. The infantry maniple fell into the bag, and if the cavalry tour had not cut in from the flank, and I commanded it, you, philosopher, would not have had to talk to the Rat-Slayer. This was in the battle of Idistavizo, in the Valley of the Maidens.

“If I could talk to him,” the prisoner suddenly said dreamily, “I’m sure he would change dramatically.”

“I believe,” Pilate responded, “that you would bring little joy to the legate of the legion if you decided to talk to any of his officers or soldiers.” However, this will not happen, fortunately for everyone, and I will be the first to take care of this.

At this time, a swallow quickly flew into the colonnade, made a circle under the golden ceiling, descended, almost touched the face of the copper statue in the niche with its sharp wing and disappeared behind the capital of the column. Perhaps the idea came to her to build a nest there.

During her flight, a formula developed in the now bright and light head of the procurator. It was like this: the hegemon looked into the case of the wandering philosopher Yeshua, nicknamed Ga-Notsri, and did not find any corpus delicti in it. In particular, I did not find the slightest connection between the actions of Yeshua and the unrest that occurred in Yershalaim recently. The wandering philosopher turned out to be mentally ill. As a result, the procurator does not approve the death sentence of Ha-Nozri, passed by the Small Sanhedrin. But due to the fact that Ha-Notsri’s crazy, utopian speeches could be the cause of unrest in Yershalaim, the procurator removes Yeshua from Yershalaim and subjects him to imprisonment in Caesarea Stratonova on the Mediterranean Sea, that is, exactly where the procurator’s residence is.

All that remained was to dictate this to the secretary.

The swallow's wings snorted just above the hegemon's head, the bird darted towards the bowl of the fountain and flew out into freedom. The procurator looked up at the prisoner and saw that a column of dust had caught fire near him.

– Everything about him? – Pilate asked the secretary.

“No, unfortunately,” the secretary unexpectedly answered and handed Pilate another piece of parchment.

-What else is there? – Pilate asked and frowned.

Having read what was submitted, his face changed even more. Whether the dark blood rushed to his neck and face or something else happened, but his skin lost its yellowness, turned brown, and his eyes seemed to have sunk.

Again, the culprit was probably the blood rushing to his temples and pounding through them, only something happened to the procurator’s vision. So, it seemed to him that the prisoner’s head floated away somewhere, and another one appeared in its place. On this bald head sat a thin-toothed golden crown; there was a round ulcer on the forehead, corroding the skin and covered with ointment; a sunken, toothless mouth with a drooping, capricious lower lip. It seemed to Pilate that the pink columns of the balcony and the roofs of Yershalaim in the distance, below the garden, disappeared, and everything around was drowned in the dense greenery of the Caprean gardens. And something strange happened to my hearing, as if in the distance trumpets were playing quietly and menacingly, and a nasal voice was very clearly heard, arrogantly drawing the words: “The law on lese majeste...”

Thoughts rushed through, short, incoherent and extraordinary: “Dead!”, then: “Dead!..” And some completely ridiculous one among them about someone who must certainly be - and with whom?! – immortality, and for some reason immortality caused unbearable melancholy.

Pilate tensed, expelled the vision, returned his gaze to the balcony, and again the eyes of the prisoner appeared before him.

“Listen, Ha-Nozri,” the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow strangely: the procurator’s face was menacing, but his eyes were alarming, “have you ever said anything about the great Caesar?” Answer! Did you say?.. Or… didn’t… say? “Pilate drew out the word “not” a little longer than is appropriate in court, and sent Yeshua in his gaze some thought that he seemed to want to instill in the prisoner.

“It’s easy and pleasant to tell the truth,” the prisoner remarked.

“I don’t need to know,” Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, “whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant for you to tell the truth.” But you'll have to say it. But when speaking, weigh every word if you do not want not only inevitable, but also painful death.

No one knows what happened to the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise his hand, as if shielding himself from a ray of sunlight, and behind this hand, as if behind a shield, he sent the prisoner some kind of suggestive glance.

“So,” he said, “answer, do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, and what exactly did you tell him, if anything, about Caesar?”

“It was like this,” the prisoner eagerly began to tell, “the day before yesterday in the evening I met a young man near the temple who called himself Judas from the city of Kiriath.” He invited me to his house in the Lower City and treated me...

- A kind person? – asked Pilate, and the devil’s fire sparkled in his eyes.

“A very kind and inquisitive person,” confirmed the prisoner, “he expressed the greatest interest in my thoughts, received me very cordially...

“I lit the lamps...” Pilate said through his teeth in the tone of the prisoner, and his eyes flickered as he did so.

“Yes,” Yeshua continued, a little surprised at the procurator’s knowledge, “asked me to express my view of state power.” He was extremely interested in this question.

- And what did you say? - asked Pilate, - or will you answer that you forgot what you said? – but there was already hopelessness in Pilate’s tone.

“Among other things, I said,” said the prisoner, “that all power is violence against people and that the time will come when there will be no power of either the Caesars or any other power.” Man will move into the kingdom of truth and justice, where no power will be needed at all.

The secretary, trying not to utter a word, quickly scribbled words on the parchment.

“There has never been, is not, and never will be a greater and more beautiful power for people than the power of Emperor Tiberius!” – Pilate’s torn and sick voice grew.

For some reason the procurator looked at the secretary and the convoy with hatred.

The convoy raised their spears and, rhythmically knocking their shod swords, walked out from the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed the convoy.

The silence on the balcony was broken for some time only by the song of the water in the fountain. Pilate saw how the water plate swelled above the tube, how its edges broke off, how it fell in streams.

The prisoner spoke first:

“I see that some kind of disaster is happening because I spoke with this young man from Kiriath.” I, the hegemon, have a presentiment that misfortune will happen to him, and I feel very sorry for him.

“I think,” the procurator answered with a strange smile, “that there is someone else in the world whom you should pity more than Judas of Kiriath, and who will have much worse than Judas!” So, Mark the Ratboy, a cold and convinced executioner, people who, as I see,” the procurator pointed to the disfigured face of Yeshua, “beat you for your sermons, the robbers Dismas and Gestas, who killed four soldiers with their associates, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas - are they all good people?

“Yes,” answered the prisoner.

– And will the kingdom of truth come?

“It will come, hegemon,” Yeshua answered with conviction.

- It will never come! - Pilate suddenly shouted in such a terrible voice that Yeshua recoiled. So many years ago, in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate shouted to his horsemen the words: “Cut them down! Slash them! The Giant Rat Slayer has been caught!” He even raised his voice, strained by commands, calling out the words so that they could be heard in the garden: “Criminal!” Criminal! Criminal!

– Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?

“There is only one God,” Yeshua answered, “I believe in him.”

- So pray to him! Pray harder! However,” here Pilate’s voice sank, “this will not help.” No wife? - For some reason, Pilate asked sadly, not understanding what was happening to him.

- No, I am alone.

“Hateful city,” the procurator suddenly muttered for some reason and shrugged his shoulders, as if he were cold, and rubbed his hands, as if washing them, “if you had been stabbed to death before your meeting with Judas of Kiriath, really, it would have been better.”

“Would you let me go, hegemon,” the prisoner suddenly asked, and his voice became alarmed, “I see that they want to kill me.”

Pilate’s face was distorted with a spasm, he turned to Yeshua the inflamed, red-veined whites of his eyes and said:

“Do you think, unfortunate one, that the Roman procurator will release the man who said what you said?” Oh gods, gods! Or do you think I'm ready to take your place? I don’t share your thoughts! And listen to me: if from now on you utter even one word, speak to anyone, beware of me! I repeat to you: beware.

- Hegemon...

- Be silent! - Pilate cried and with a wild gaze followed the swallow, which again fluttered onto the balcony. - To me! - Pilate shouted.

And when the secretary and the convoy returned to their places, Pilate announced that he approved the death sentence pronounced in the meeting of the Small Sanhedrin to the criminal Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the secretary wrote down what Pilate said.

A minute later, Mark the Ratboy stood in front of the procurator. The procurator ordered him to hand over the criminal to the head of the secret service and at the same time convey to him the procurator’s order that Yeshua Ha-Nozri be separated from other convicts, and also that the secret service team be prohibited from doing anything under pain of grave punishment talk to Yeshua or answer any of his questions.

At a sign from Mark, a convoy closed around Yeshua and led him out of the balcony.

Then a slender, light-bearded handsome man with lion muzzles sparkling on his chest, with eagle feathers on the crest of his helmet, with gold plaques on the sword belt, in shoes laced to the knees with a triple sole, and in a scarlet cloak thrown over his left shoulder, appeared before the procurator. This was the legate commander of the legion. His procurator asked where the Sebastian cohort was now. The legate reported that the Sebastians were holding a cordon in the square in front of the hippodrome, where the verdict on the criminals would be announced to the people.

Then the procurator ordered the legate to select two centuries from the Roman cohort. One of them, under the command of Ratboy, will have to escort criminals, carts with execution equipment and executioners when departing for Bald Mountain, and upon arrival at it, enter the upper cordon. The other should be immediately sent to Bald Mountain and begin the cordon immediately. For the same purpose, that is, to protect the Mountain, the procurator asked the legate to send an auxiliary cavalry regiment - the Syrian alu.

When the legate left the balcony, the procurator ordered the secretary to invite the president of the Sanhedrin, two of his members and the head of the temple guard of Yershalaim to the palace, but added that he asked to arrange it so that before the meeting with all these people he could speak with the president earlier and in private.

The orders of the procurator were carried out quickly and accurately, and the sun, which was burning Yershalaim with some extraordinary fury these days, had not yet had time to approach its highest point when on the upper terrace of the garden, near two marble white lions guarding the stairs, the procurator and the acting The duties of the President of the Sanhedrin are the Jewish High Priest Joseph Caiaphas.

It was quiet in the garden. But, emerging from under the colonnade onto the sun-filled upper square of the garden with palm trees on monstrous elephant legs, the square from which the whole of Yershalaim, which he hated, unfolded before the procurator with hanging bridges, fortresses and - most importantly - a block of marble with gold that defies any description dragon scales instead of a roof - the Yershalaim Temple - the procurator's keen hearing caught far and below, where a stone wall separated the lower terraces of the palace garden from the city square, a low grumbling, above which weak, thin moans or screams soared from time to time.

The procurator realized that a countless crowd of Yershalaim residents, agitated by the latest riots, had already gathered in the square, that this crowd was impatiently awaiting the verdict, and that restless water sellers were shouting in it.

The procurator began by inviting the high priest to the balcony in order to hide from the merciless heat, but Caiaphas politely apologized and explained that he could not do this. Pilate pulled his hood over his slightly balding head and began a conversation. This conversation was conducted in Greek.

Pilate said that he had examined the case of Yeshua Ha-Nozri and approved the death sentence.

Thus, three robbers are sentenced to death, which is to be carried out today: Dismas, Gestas, Bar-Rabban and, in addition, this Yeshua Ha-Nozri. The first two, who decided to incite the people to revolt against Caesar, were taken in battle by the Roman authorities, are listed as the procurator, and, therefore, will not be discussed here. The latter, Var-Rabban and Ha-Notsri, were captured by the local authorities and condemned by the Sanhedrin. According to the law, according to custom, one of these two criminals will have to be released in honor of the great Easter holiday coming today.

So, the procurator wants to know which of the two criminals the Sanhedrin intends to release: Bar-Rabban or Ga-Nozri? Caiaphas bowed his head as a sign that the question was clear to him and answered:

– The Sanhedrin asks to release Bar-Rabban.

The procurator knew well that this was exactly how the high priest would answer him, but his task was to show that such an answer caused him amazement.

Pilate did this with great skill. The eyebrows on his arrogant face rose, the procurator looked straight into the eyes of the high priest with amazement.

“I admit, this answer surprised me,” the procurator spoke softly, “I’m afraid there is a misunderstanding here.”

Pilate explained. The Roman government in no way encroaches on the rights of the spiritual local authorities, the high priest knows this well, but in this case there is a clear mistake. And the Roman authorities are, of course, interested in correcting this mistake.

In fact: the crimes of Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri are completely incomparable in severity. If the second, clearly a crazy person, is guilty of uttering absurd speeches that confused the people in Yershalaim and some other places, then the first is burdened much more significantly. Not only did he allow himself to directly call for rebellion, but he also killed the guard while trying to take him. Var-Rabban is much more dangerous than Ha-Nozri.

In view of all of the above, the procurator asks the high priest to reconsider the decision and leave at liberty the one of the two convicts who is less harmful, and this, without a doubt, is Ha-Nozri. So?

Caiaphas looked Pilate straight in the eye and said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had carefully examined the case and was reporting for the second time that it intended to release Bar-Rabban.

- How? Even after my petition? The petitions of the one in whose person the Roman power speaks? High Priest, repeat a third time.

“And for the third time we announce that we are freeing Bar-Rabban,” Kaifa said quietly.

It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about. Ha-Notsri was leaving forever, and there was no one to cure the terrible, evil pains of the procurator; there is no remedy for them except death. But this was not the thought that struck Pilate now. The same incomprehensible melancholy that had already come on the balcony permeated his entire being. He immediately tried to explain it, and the explanation was strange: it seemed vague to the procurator that he had not finished speaking to the convict about something, or perhaps he had not heard something out.

Pilate drove away this thought, and it flew away in an instant, just as it had arrived. She flew away, and the melancholy remained unexplained, because it could not be explained by some other short thought that flashed like lightning and immediately went out: “Immortality... immortality has come...” Whose immortality has come? The procurator did not understand this, but the thought of this mysterious immortality made him feel cold in the sun.

“Okay,” said Pilate, “so be it.”

Then he looked around, looked around the world visible to him and was surprised at the change that had taken place. The bush, burdened with roses, disappeared, the cypress trees bordering the upper terrace, and the pomegranate tree, and the white statue in the greenery, and the greenery itself, disappeared. Instead, just some kind of crimson thicket floated, algae swayed in it and moved somewhere, and Pilate himself moved with them. Now he was carried away, suffocating and burning, by the most terrible anger, the anger of powerlessness.

“I’m cramped,” said Pilate, “I’m cramped!”

With a cold, wet hand, he tore the buckle from the collar of his cloak, and it fell onto the sand.

“It’s stuffy today, there’s a thunderstorm somewhere,” Kaifa responded, not taking his eyes off the procurator’s reddened face and foreseeing all the torment that was still to come. “Oh, what a terrible month of Nisan this year!”

The high priest's dark eyes flashed, and, no worse than the procurator had earlier, he expressed surprise on his face.

– What do I hear, procurator? - Caiaphas answered proudly and calmly, “are you threatening me after the verdict was passed, approved by you yourself?” Could it be? We are accustomed to the fact that the Roman procurator chooses his words before saying anything. Wouldn't anyone hear us, hegemon?

Pilate looked at the high priest with dead eyes and, baring his teeth, feigned a smile.

- What are you talking about, high priest! Who can hear us here now? Do I look like the young wandering holy fool who is being executed today? Am I a boy, Caiaphas? I know what I'm saying and where I'm saying it. The garden is cordoned off, the palace is cordoned off, so that not even a mouse can get through any crevice! Yes, not only a mouse, not even this one, what’s his name… from the city of Kiriath, will not penetrate. By the way, do you know someone like that, High Priest? Yes... if someone like that got in here, he would bitterly feel sorry for himself, of course you will believe me on that? So know that from now on, high priest, you will have no peace! Neither you nor your people,” and Pilate pointed into the distance to the right, to where the temple was burning in the heights, “I’m telling you this—Pilate of Pontus, horseman of the Golden Spear!”

- I know I know! - Black-bearded Caiaphas answered fearlessly, and his eyes sparkled. He raised his hand to heaven and continued: “The Jewish people know that you hate them with fierce hatred and you will cause them a lot of torment, but you will not destroy them at all!” God will protect him! He will hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear us, he will protect us from the destroyer Pilate!

- Oh no! - Pilate exclaimed, and with every word it became easier and easier for him: there was no need to pretend anymore. There was no need to choose words. “You have complained too much to Caesar about me, and now my time has come, Caiaphas!” Now the news will fly from me, and not to the governor in Antioch and not to Rome, but directly to Caprea, the emperor himself, the news about how you are hiding notorious rebels in Yershalaim from death. And then I will not water Yershalaim with water from Solomon’s Pond, as I wanted for your benefit! No, not water! Remember how, because of you, I had to remove shields with the emperor’s monograms from the walls, move troops, I had, you see, to come myself and see what’s going on here! Remember my word, high priest. You will see more than one cohort in Yershalaim, no! The entire Fulminata legion will come under the city walls, the Arab cavalry will approach, then you will hear bitter weeping and lamentations. You will remember then the saved Bar-Rabban and you will regret that you sent the philosopher to his death with his peaceful preaching!

The high priest's face was covered with spots, his eyes were burning. He, like a procurator, smiled, grinning, and answered:

– Do you, procurator, believe what you are saying now? No, you don't! The seducer of the people brought us no peace, no peace, to Yershalaim, and you, horseman, understand this very well. You wanted to release him so that he would confuse the people, outrage the faith and bring the people under the Roman swords! But I, the High Priest of the Jews, while I am alive, will not allow my faith to be mocked and will protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate? - And then Kaifa raised his hand menacingly: - Listen, procurator!

Caiaphas fell silent, and the procurator again heard, as it were, the sound of the sea rolling up to the very walls of the garden of Herod the Great. This noise rose from below to the feet and into the face of the procurator. And behind him, there, behind the wings of the palace, alarming trumpet signals, the heavy crunch of hundreds of legs, iron clanking were heard - then the procurator realized that the Roman infantry was already leaving, according to his order, rushing to the death parade, terrible for rebels and robbers.

– Do you hear, procurator? “- the high priest repeated quietly, “are you really going to tell me that all this,” here the high priest raised both hands, and the dark hood fell from Kaifa’s head, “was caused by the pathetic robber Bar-Rabban?”

The procurator wiped his wet, cold forehead with the back of his hand, looked at the ground, then, squinting at the sky, saw that the hot ball was almost above his head, and the shadow of Caiaphas had completely shrunk near the lion’s tail, and said quietly and indifferently:

- It's getting close to noon. We got carried away by the conversation, but meanwhile we must continue.

Having apologized to the high priest in elegant terms, he asked him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia tree and wait while he called the remaining persons needed for the last brief meeting and gave another order related to the execution.

Caiaphas bowed politely, putting his hand to his heart, and remained in the garden, while Pilate returned to the balcony. There, he ordered the secretary who was waiting for him to invite into the garden the legate of the legion, the tribune of the cohort, as well as two members of the Sanhedrin and the head of the temple guard, who were waiting to be called on the next lower terrace of the garden in a round gazebo with a fountain. To this Pilate added that he would immediately go out himself, and withdrew into the palace.

While the secretary was convening the meeting, the procurator, in a room shaded from the sun by dark curtains, had a meeting with some man, whose face was half covered by a hood, although the rays of the sun in the room could not disturb him. This meeting was extremely short. The procurator quietly said a few words to the man, after which he left, and Pilate walked through the colonnade into the garden.

There, in the presence of everyone he wanted to see, the procurator solemnly and dryly confirmed that he approved the death sentence of Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and officially inquired from the members of the Sanhedrin about which of the criminals he wanted to leave alive. Having received the answer that it was Bar-Rabban, the procurator said:

“Very good,” and ordered the secretary to immediately enter this into the protocol, squeezed the buckle picked up from the sand by the secretary in his hand and solemnly said: “It’s time!”

Here all those present set off down a wide marble staircase between the walls of roses, exuding an intoxicating aroma, descending lower and lower to the palace wall, to the gate opening onto a large, smoothly paved square, at the end of which the columns and statues of the Yershalaim lists could be seen.

As soon as the group, having left the garden to the square, climbed onto the vast stone platform that reigned over the square, Pilate, looking around through narrowed eyelids, figured out the situation. The space that he had just passed, that is, the space from the palace wall to the platform, was empty, but in front of him Pilate no longer saw the square - it was eaten up by the crowd. It would have flooded both the platform itself and that cleared space, if the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate’s left hand and soldiers of the Iturean auxiliary cohort on the right had not held it.

So, Pilate climbed onto the platform, mechanically clutching the unnecessary buckle in his fist and squinting. The procurator squinted not because the sun was burning his eyes, no! For some reason he did not want to see a group of convicts who, as he knew very well, were now being led onto the platform after him.

As soon as a white cloak with crimson lining appeared high on a stone cliff above the edge of the human sea, a sound wave hit the blind Pilate’s ears: “Gaaaaa...” It began quietly, originating somewhere in the distance near the hippodrome, then became thunderous and After holding on for a few seconds, it began to subside. “They saw me,” thought the procurator. The wave did not reach its lowest point and suddenly began to grow again and, swaying, rose higher than the first, and on the second wave, like foam boiling on a sea wall, a whistle and individual female moans, audible through the thunder, boiled up. “It was them who were brought onto the platform...” Pilate thought, “and the groans were because they crushed several women when the crowd moved forward.”

He waited for some time, knowing that no force could silence the crowd until it exhaled everything that had accumulated inside it and fell silent itself.

And when this moment came, the procurator threw his right hand up, and the last noise was blown away from the crowd.

Then Pilate drew as much hot air as he could into his chest and shouted, and his broken voice carried over thousands of heads:

- In the name of Caesar the Emperor!

Then an iron, chopped scream hit his ears several times - in the cohorts, throwing up their spears and badges, the soldiers shouted terribly:

- Long live Caesar!

Pilate raised his head and buried it directly in the sun. A green fire flashed under his eyelids, it set his brain on fire, and hoarse Aramaic words flew over the crowd:

– Four criminals arrested in Yershalaim for murder, incitement to rebellion and insulting the laws and faith, were sentenced to a shameful execution - hanging from poles! And this execution will now take place on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are Dismas, Gestas, Var-Rabban and Ha-Notsri. Here they are in front of you!

Pilate pointed to the right with his hand, not seeing any criminals, but knowing that they were there, in the place where they needed to be.

The crowd responded with a long roar of surprise or relief. When it went out, Pilate continued:

- But only three of them will be executed, for, according to law and custom, in honor of the Easter holiday, one of the condemned, at the choice of the Small Sanhedrin and according to the approval of the Roman authorities, the magnanimous Caesar Emperor returns his despicable life!

Pilate shouted out words and at the same time listened as the roar was replaced by great silence. Now neither a sigh nor a rustle reached his ears, and there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate that everything around him had completely disappeared. The city he hated has died, and only he stands, burned by sheer rays, with his face to the sky. Pilate remained silent for a while longer, and then began shouting:

- The name of the one who will now be released in front of you...

He made another pause, holding the name, checking that he had said everything, because he knew that the dead city would rise again after pronouncing the name of the lucky one and no further words could be heard.

"All? - Pilate silently whispered to himself, - that’s it. Name!"

And, rolling the letter “r” over the silent city, he shouted:

- Var-Rabban!

Then it seemed to him that the sun, ringing, burst above him and filled his ears with fire. In this fire roars, squeals, groans, laughter and whistles raged.

Pilate turned and walked along the bridge back to the steps, looking at nothing but the multi-colored checkers of the flooring under his feet, so as not to stumble. He knew that now, behind him, bronze coins and dates were flying like a hail onto the platform, that in the howling crowd, people, crushing each other, were climbing on each other’s shoulders to see with their own eyes a miracle - how a man who had already been in the hands of death escaped from these hands! How the legionnaires remove the ropes from him, involuntarily causing him searing pain in his arms, dislocated during interrogation, how he, wincing and groaning, still smiles a meaningless, crazy smile.

He knew that at the same time a convoy was leading three men with their hands tied to the side steps to take them out onto the road leading west, outside the city, to Bald Mountain. Only when he found himself behind the platform, in the rear, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was now safe - he could no longer see the condemned.

The groaning of the crowd, which was beginning to subside, was now mingled with the piercing cries of the heralds, who repeated, some in Aramaic, others in Greek, everything that the procurator had shouted from the platform. In addition, the sound of a horse's trumpet and a trumpet, which briefly and cheerfully shouted something, reached the ear. These sounds were answered by the drilling whistle of boys from the roofs of the houses of the street leading from the market to the hippodrome square, and the shouts of “Beware!”

The soldier, standing alone in the cleared space of the square with a badge in his hand, waved it anxiously, and then the procurator, the legate of the legion, the secretary and the convoy stopped.

The cavalry ala, picking up an ever wider trot, flew out into the square to cross it to the side, bypassing the crowd of people, and along the alley under the stone wall along which the grapes lay, galloping along the shortest road to Bald Mountain.

Flying at a trot, small as a boy, dark as a mulatto, the commander of the ala - a Syrian, equaled Pilate, shouted something subtly and grabbed a sword from its sheath. The angry black, wet horse shied away and reared up. Throwing his sword into its sheath, the commander hit the horse on the neck with his whip, straightened it out and galloped into the alley, breaking into a gallop. Behind him, horsemen flew three in a row in a cloud of dust, the tips of light bamboo lances jumped, faces that seemed especially dark under white turbans with cheerfully bared, sparkling teeth rushed past the procurator.

Raising dust to the sky, the ala burst into the alley, and the last to gallop past Pilate was a soldier with a pipe blazing in the sun behind his back.

Shielding himself from the dust with his hand and wrinkling his face with displeasure, Pilate moved on, rushing to the gates of the palace garden, followed by the legate, secretary and convoy.

It was about ten o'clock in the morning.

Seventh proof

“Yes, it was about ten o’clock in the morning, venerable Ivan Nikolaevich,” said the professor.

The poet ran his hand over his face, like a man who had just woken up, and saw that it was evening at the Patriarch’s.

The water in the pond turned black, and a light boat was already gliding along it, and the splash of an oar and the laughter of some citizen in the boat could be heard. The public appeared on the benches in the alleys, but again on all three sides of the square, except the one where our interlocutors were.

The sky over Moscow seemed to have faded, and the full moon was quite clearly visible in the heights, but not yet golden, but white. It became much easier to breathe, and the voices under the linden trees sounded softer, more evening-like.

“How come I didn’t notice that he managed to weave a whole story?..” thought Bezdomny in amazement, “after all, it’s already evening!” Or maybe it wasn’t him who said it, but I just fell asleep and dreamed it all?”

But we must assume that it was the professor who was telling the story, otherwise we will have to assume that Berlioz also dreamed the same thing, because he said, carefully peering into the foreigner’s face:

– Your story is extremely interesting, professor, although it does not at all coincide with the gospel stories.

“For mercy,” the professor responded with a condescending grin, “anyone, you should know that absolutely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually happened, and if we start referring to the Gospels as historical source... - he grinned again, and Berlioz stopped short, because he literally said the same thing to Bezdomny, walking with him along Bronnaya to the Patriarch’s Ponds.

“That’s true,” Berlioz noted, “but I’m afraid that no one can confirm that what you told us actually happened.”

- Oh no! Can anyone confirm this? - Starting to speak in broken language, the professor answered extremely confidently and unexpectedly mysteriously beckoned both friends closer to him.

They leaned towards him on both sides, and he said, but without any accent, which, God knows why, was disappearing and appearing:

“The thing is...” here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke in a whisper, “that I was personally present at all this.” And I was on the balcony of Pontius Pilate, and in the garden when he was talking to Caiaphas, and on the platform, but only secretly, incognito, so to speak, so I ask you - not a word to anyone and a complete secret!.. Shh!

There was silence, and Berlioz turned pale.

– You... how long have you been in Moscow? – he asked in a trembling voice.

“And I just arrived in Moscow this very minute,” the professor answered in confusion, and only then did his friends think of looking into his eyes properly and were convinced that the left one, green, was completely insane, and the right one was empty, black and dead. .

“Now everything has been explained to you! - Berlioz thought in confusion, - a crazy German has arrived or has just gone crazy on the Patriarchs. That's the story!"

Yes, indeed, everything was explained: the strangest breakfast with the late philosopher Kant, and the stupid speeches about sunflower oil and Annushka, and the predictions that his head would be cut off, and everything else - the professor was crazy.

Berlioz immediately realized what should be done. Leaning back on the bench, he blinked at Bezdomny behind the professor’s back, so as not to contradict him, but the confused poet did not understand these signals.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Berlioz said excitedly, “however, all this is possible!” It’s even very possible, Pontius Pilate, and a balcony, and the like... Did you come alone or with your wife?

“Alone, alone, I’m always alone,” the professor answered bitterly.

– Where are your things, professor? - Berlioz asked insinuatingly, - in the Metropol? Where are you staying?

- I? “Nowhere,” answered the crazy German, his green eye sadly and wildly wandering around the Patriarch’s Ponds.

- How? And... where will you live?

“In your apartment,” the crazy man suddenly answered cheekily and winked.

“I... I’m very glad,” Berlioz muttered, “but, really, it will be uncomfortable for you with me... And the Metropol has wonderful rooms, it’s a first-class hotel...”

- Is there no devil either? – the patient suddenly cheerfully asked Ivan Nikolaevich.

- And the devil...

- Don't contradict! – Berlioz whispered with only his lips, falling behind the professor and grimacing.

- There is no devil! - Confused by all this nonsense, Ivan Nikolaevich cried out, not what was needed, - this is the punishment! Stop freaking out.

Then the madman laughed so hard that a sparrow flew out of the linden tree above the heads of those sitting.

“Well, this is positively interesting,” said the professor, shaking with laughter, “what do you have, no matter what you’re missing, you don’t have anything!” - He stopped laughing suddenly and, which is quite understandable in case of mental illness, after laughing he fell into the other extreme - he became irritated and shouted sternly: - So, then, it’s not?

“Calm down, calm down, calm down, professor,” Berlioz muttered, fearing to worry the patient, “you sit here for a minute with Comrade Bezdomny, and I’ll just run to the corner, ring the phone, and then we’ll take you wherever you want.” After all, you don’t know the city...

Berlioz’s plan should be recognized as correct: he had to run to the nearest pay phone and inform the foreigners’ bureau that, they say, a consultant visiting from abroad was sitting on the Patriarch’s Ponds in a clearly abnormal state. So, it is necessary to take action, otherwise it turns out to be some kind of unpleasant nonsense.

- Should I call? Well, call me,” the patient sadly agreed and suddenly passionately asked: “But I beg you before leaving, at least believe that the devil exists!” I don't ask you for more. Keep in mind that there is a seventh proof of this, and the most reliable! And it will now be presented to you.

“Okay, okay,” Berlioz said falsely affectionately and, winking at the upset poet, who was not at all happy with the idea of ​​guarding the crazy German, he rushed to the exit from the Patriarch’s, which is located on the corner of Bronnaya and Ermolaevsky Lane.

And the professor immediately seemed to recover and brighten up.

- Mikhail Alexandrovich! - he shouted after Berlioz.

He shuddered, turned around, but calmed himself with the thought that his name and patronymic were also known to the professor from some newspapers. And the professor shouted, clasping his hands like a megaphone:

“Would you please order me to give a telegram to your uncle in Kyiv now?”

And again Berlioz shuddered. How does a madman know about the existence of the Kyiv uncle? After all, probably nothing is said about this in any newspapers. Hey, hey, isn't Homeless right? How are these fake documents? Oh, what a strange fellow. Call, call! Call now! It will be explained quickly!

And, without listening to anything else, Berlioz ran on.

Here, at the very exit to Bronnaya, exactly the same citizen who had emerged from the greasy heat in the light of the sun stood up from the bench to meet the editor. Only now he was no longer airy, but ordinary, carnal, and in the beginning twilight Berlioz clearly saw that he had whiskers like chicken feathers, small, ironic and half-drunk eyes, and checkered trousers, pulled up so much that dirty white socks were visible.

Mikhail Alexandrovich just backed away, but consoled himself with the thought that this was a stupid coincidence and that there was no time to think about it at all now.

– Are you looking for a turnstile, citizen? – the checkered guy inquired in a cracked tenor, “come here!” Straight ahead and you'll get out where you need to go. You would be charged for ordering a quarter liter... to get better... to the former regent! – grimacing, the subject took off his jockey cap with a backhand.

Berlioz did not listen to the beggar and the regent's talk, he ran up to the turnstile and grabbed it with his hand. Having turned it, he was about to step onto the rails when red and white light splashed in his face: the inscription “Beware of the tram!” lit up in the glass box.

Immediately this tram flew up, turning along the newly laid line from Ermolaevsky to Bronnaya. Turning and going straight, it suddenly lit up from the inside with electricity, howled and charged.

The cautious Berlioz, although standing safely, decided to return to the slingshot, moved his hand to the turntable, and took a step back. And immediately his hand slipped and fell off, his leg moved uncontrollably, as if on ice, along the cobblestones that sloped down to the rails, his other leg was thrown up, and Berlioz was thrown onto the rails.

Trying to grab onto something, Berlioz fell backward, lightly hitting the back of his head on a cobblestone, and managed to see in the heights, but to the right or left - he no longer knew - a gilded moon. He managed to turn on his side, with a frantic movement at the same moment pulling his legs to his stomach, and, turning, he saw the face of a female carriage driver, completely white with horror, rushing towards him with uncontrollable force and her scarlet bandage. Berlioz did not scream, but around him the whole street screamed in desperate female voices. The counselor pulled the electric brake, the carriage sat nose-first into the ground, then instantly jumped, and glass flew out of the windows with a roar and ringing. Here, in Berlioz’s brain, someone desperately shouted: “Really?..” Once again, and for the last time, the moon flashed, but already falling into pieces, and then it became dark.

The tram covered Berlioz, and a round dark object was thrown out onto the cobblestone slope under the bars of the Patriarch's Alley. Having rolled down this slope, he jumped on the cobblestones of Bronnaya.

It was Berlioz's severed head.

The hysterical screams of women subsided, the police whistles were drilled, two ambulances took away: one - a decapitated body and a severed head to the morgue, the other - a beautiful counselor wounded by fragments of glass, janitors in white aprons removed the glass fragments and covered the bloody puddles with sand, and Ivan Nikolaevich fell onto the bench, before reaching the turnstile, he remained on it.

Several times he tried to get up, but his legs would not obey him - something like paralysis happened to Bezdomny.

The poet rushed to run to the turnstile as soon as he heard the first scream, and saw his head jump on the pavement. This made him so mad that, falling on the bench, he bit his hand until it bled. He, of course, forgot about the crazy German and tried to understand only one thing: how could it be that one minute he was talking to Berlioz, and a minute later - his head...

Excited people ran past the poet along the alley, exclaiming something, but Ivan Nikolaevich did not perceive their words.

However, unexpectedly two women collided near him, and one of them, pointed-nosed and bare-haired, shouted right over the poet’s ear to the other woman like this:

- Annushka, our Annushka! From the garden! This is her job! She took a liter of sunflower oil from the grocery store and smashed it on a turntable! She ruined her whole skirt... She was swearing and swearing! And he, poor thing, therefore slipped and went onto the rails...

Of all the things the woman shouted, one word clung to Ivan Nikolevich’s upset brain: “Annushka”...

“Annushka... Annushka?..” muttered the poet, looking around anxiously, “excuse me, excuse me...

The words “sunflower oil” were attached to the word “Annushka”, and then for some reason “Pontius Pilate”. The poet rejected Pilate and began to knit a chain, starting with the word “Annushka.” And this chain connected very quickly and immediately led to the crazy professor.

Guilty! But he said that the meeting would not take place because Annushka spilled oil. And, please, it will not happen! This is not enough: he directly said that a woman would cut off Berlioz’s head?! Yes Yes Yes! After all, the counselor was a woman?! What is it? A?

There was not even a grain of doubt left that the mysterious consultant knew exactly in advance the whole picture of Berlioz’s terrible death. Here two thoughts pierced the poet’s brain. First: “He’s not crazy at all! All this is nonsense!”, and the second: “Didn’t he set it up himself?!”

But, let me ask, how?!

- Eh, no! We will find out!

Having made a great effort, Ivan Nikolaevich rose from the bench and rushed back to where he was talking with the professor. And it turned out that, fortunately, he had not left yet.

The lanterns had already been lit on Bronnaya, and the golden moon was shining above the Patriarchs, and in the moonlight, always deceptive, it seemed to Ivan Nikolaevich that he was standing, holding under his arm not a cane, but a sword.

The retired regent-regent sat in the very place where Ivan Nikolaevich himself had recently sat. Now the regent put on his nose a clearly unnecessary pince-nez, in which one glass was missing at all, and the other was cracked. This made the checkered citizen even nastier than he was when he showed Berlioz the way to the rails.

With a cold heart, Ivan approached the professor and, looking into his face, was convinced that there were no signs of madness and there never were.

- Confess who you are? – Ivan asked dully.

The foreigner frowned, looked as if he was seeing the poet for the first time, and answered with hostility:

- Don’t understand... speak Russian...

- They do not understand! – the regent got involved from the bench, although no one asked him to explain the foreigner’s words.

- Don't pretend! - Ivan said menacingly and felt a chill in the pit of his stomach, - you just spoke excellent Russian. You are not German and not a professor! You are a murderer and a spy! Documentation! – Ivan shouted furiously.

The mysterious professor twisted his already crooked mouth in disgust and shrugged his shoulders.

- Citizen! - the vile regent interrupted again, - why are you worrying about the foreign tourist? You will be held accountable for this! - and the suspicious professor made an arrogant face, turned and walked away from Ivan.

Ivan felt that he was lost. Gasping, he turned to the regent:

- Hey, citizen, help detain the criminal! You must do this!

The regent became extremely animated, jumped up and shouted:

-Where is your criminal? Where is he? Foreign criminal? – the regent’s eyes sparkled joyfully, – this one? If he is a criminal, then his first duty should be to shout: “Guard!” Otherwise he will leave. Come on, let's get together! Together! – and then the regent opened his mouth.

Confused, Ivan listened to the joker-regent and shouted “guard!”, but the regent fooled him and did not shout anything.

Ivan's lonely, hoarse cry did not bring good results. Two girls shied away from him, and he heard the word “drunk.”

- Oh, so you’re at the same time with him? - Ivan shouted, falling into anger, - what are you doing, mocking me? Let me go!

Ivan rushed to the right, and the regent also to the right! Ivan goes to the left, and that bastard goes there too.

– Are you getting in your way on purpose? - the beast, Ivan shouted, - I will betray you into the hands of the police!

Ivan tried to grab the villain by the sleeve, but missed and caught absolutely nothing. The regent seemed to disappear into thin air.

Ivan gasped, looked into the distance and saw the hated unknown. He was already at the exit to Patriarchal Lane, and not alone. The more than dubious regent managed to join him. But that’s not all: the third in this company turned out to be a cat who had come from nowhere, huge, like a hog, black, like soot or a rook, and with a desperate cavalry mustache. The troika moved to the Patriarch's, and the cat started on its hind legs.

Ivan rushed after the villains and immediately became convinced that it would be very difficult to catch up with them.

The trio instantly rushed along the alley and ended up on Spiridonovka. No matter how much Ivan quickened his pace, the distance between the pursued and him did not decrease in the least. And before the poet had time to come to his senses, after the quiet Spiridonovka he found himself at the Nikitsky Gate, where his situation worsened. There was already a crowd, Ivan bumped into one of the passers-by and was cursed at. The villainous gang also decided to use their favorite bandit technique here - to leave in all directions.

With great dexterity, the regent, on the move, screwed himself into a bus flying towards Arbat Square and slipped away. Having lost one of the pursued men, Ivan focused his attention on the cat and saw how this strange cat approached the footboard of motor car “A” standing at a stop, brazenly pushed aside the squealing woman, clung to the handrail and even attempted to slip the conductor a ten-kopeck piece through the open door for the occasion. stuffy window.

The behavior of the cat so struck Ivan that he froze motionless at the grocery store on the corner and was again, but much stronger, struck by the behavior of the conductor. As soon as she saw the cat climbing onto the tram, she screamed with anger that even made her shake:

- Cats are not allowed! No cats allowed! Shoot! Get down, otherwise I'll call the police!

Neither the conductor nor the passengers were struck by the very essence of the matter: not that the cat was getting into the tram, which would have been half the problem, but that he was going to pay!

The cat turned out to be not only solvent, but also a disciplined animal. At the first shout from the conductor, he stopped advancing, got off the step and sat down at the stop, rubbing his mustache with a dime. But as soon as the conductress pulled the rope and the tram started moving, the cat acted like anyone who is expelled from the tram, but who still needs to go. Having let all three carriages pass by, the cat jumped onto the rear arch of the last one, grabbed some intestine coming out of the wall with its paw, and drove off, thus saving a dime.

Having become preoccupied with the vile cat, Ivan almost lost the most important of the three - the professor. But, fortunately, he did not have time to escape. Ivan saw a gray beret in the thicket at the beginning of Bolshaya Nikitskaya, or Herzen. In the blink of an eye, Ivan himself was there. However, there was no luck. The poet quickened his pace and began to run at a trot, pushing passers-by, and did not come an inch closer to the professor.

No matter how upset Ivan was, he was still amazed by the supernatural speed with which the chase took place. And twenty seconds had not passed before, after leaving the Nikitsky Gate, Ivan Nikolaevich was already blinded by the lights on Arbat Square. A few more seconds, and here was some dark alley with rickety sidewalks, where Ivan Nikolaevich fell and broke his knee. Again the illuminated highway - Kropotkin Street, then an alley, then Ostozhenka and another alley, dull, ugly and poorly lit. And it was here that Ivan Nikolaevich finally lost the one he needed so much. The professor has disappeared.

Ivan Nikolayevich was embarrassed, but not for long, because he suddenly realized that the professor must certainly end up in house number 13 and definitely in apartment 47.

Having burst into the entrance, Ivan Nikolaevich flew up to the second floor, immediately found this apartment and called impatiently. He didn’t have to wait long: a girl about five years old opened the door for Ivan and, without inquiring about anything from the newcomer, immediately went off somewhere.

In the huge, extremely neglected front room, dimly lit by a tiny coal lamp under a high ceiling black with dirt, a bicycle without tires hung on the wall, there was a huge chest upholstered in iron, and on the shelf above the hanger lay a winter hat, and its long ears hung down . Behind one of the doors, a booming male voice on the radio was angrily shouting something in verse.

Ivan Nikolayevich was not at all confused in the unfamiliar surroundings and rushed straight into the corridor, reasoning like this: “He, of course, hid in the bathroom.” It was dark in the corridor. Poking at the walls, Ivan saw a faint strip of light below the door, felt for the handle and slightly pulled it. The hook bounced off, and Ivan ended up in the bathroom and thought that he was lucky.

However, we were not as lucky as we should have been! Ivan smelled damp, warm, and, in the light of the coals smoldering in the pump, he saw large troughs hanging on the wall, and a bathtub, all covered in black terrible stains from broken enamel. So, in this bathtub stood a naked citizen, covered in soap and with a washcloth in her hands. She squinted myopically at Ivan as he burst in and, obviously having taken in the hellish lighting, said quietly and cheerfully:

- Kiryushka! Stop talking! Are you crazy?.. Fyodor Ivanovich will be back soon. Get out of here now! – and waved a washcloth at Ivan.

There was a misunderstanding, and Ivan Nikolaevich was, of course, to blame for it. But he didn’t want to admit it and, exclaiming reproachfully: “Oh, the libertine!..” - for some reason he immediately found himself in the kitchen. There was no one in it, and about a dozen extinct Primus stoves stood silently on the stove in the twilight. One moonbeam, filtering through a dusty window that had not been wiped for years, sparingly illuminated the corner where a forgotten icon hung in the dust and cobwebs, from behind the case of which the ends of two wedding candles protruded. Under the large icon hung pinned a small one - a paper one.

No one knows what thought possessed Ivan, but just before running out the back door, he appropriated one of these candles, as well as a paper icon. Together with these objects, he left the unknown apartment, muttering something, embarrassed at the thought of what he had just experienced in the bathroom, involuntarily trying to guess who this impudent Kiryushka was and whether the disgusting hat with earflaps belonged to him.

In a deserted, cheerless alley, the poet looked around, looking for the fugitive, but he was nowhere to be found. Then Ivan said firmly to himself:

- Well, of course, it’s on the Moscow River! Forward!

One should, perhaps, ask Ivan Nikolaevich why he believes that the professor is on the Moscow River, and not somewhere else. The trouble is that there was no one to ask. The disgusting alley was completely empty.

In a very short time one could see Ivan Nikolaevich on the granite steps of the Moscow River Amphitheater.

Having taken off his clothes, Ivan entrusted them to some pleasant bearded man who was smoking a rolled-up cigarette next to a torn white sweatshirt and unlaced, worn-out shoes. Waving his arms to cool down, Ivan plunged into the water like a swallow. His breath was taken away, the water was so cold, and even the thought flashed through him that he might not be able to jump to the surface. However, he managed to jump out, and, puffing and snorting, with his eyes round in horror, Ivan Nikolaevich began to swim in the oil-smelling black water between the broken zigzags of shore lamps.

When the wet Ivan danced up the steps to the place where his dress remained under the guard of the bearded man, it turned out that not only the second one had been stolen, but also the first one, that is, the bearded man himself. In the exact place where the pile of dresses was, there were striped long johns, a torn sweatshirt, a candle, an icon and a box of matches. Shaking his fist at someone in the distance in impotent anger, Ivan put on what had been left behind.

Then two considerations began to bother him: first, that the MASSOLIT certificate, with which he had never parted, had disappeared, and, second, would he be able to walk unhindered through Moscow in this form? Still in long johns... True, who cares, but still there wouldn’t have been any quibbles or delays.

Ivan tore off the buttons from the underpants where they fastened at the ankle, hoping that perhaps in this form they would pass for summer trousers, took the icon, a candle and matches and set off, saying to himself:

- To Griboyedov! Without a doubt, he is there.

The city was already alive with evening life. Trucks flew by in the dust, rattling their chains, on the platforms of which, on sacks, some men were lying with their bellies up. All the windows were open. In each of these windows there was a fire burning under an orange lampshade, and from all the windows, from all the doors, from all the gateways, from the roofs and attics, from the basements and courtyards, the hoarse roar of the polonaise from the opera “Eugene Onegin” burst out.

Ivan Nikolaevich’s fears were completely justified: passers-by paid attention to him and turned around. As a result, he decided to leave the big streets and make his way through the alleys, where people are not so annoying, where there is less chance of pestering a barefoot man, harassing him with questions about his underpants, which stubbornly refused to become like trousers.

Ivan did so and delved into the mysterious network of Arbat alleys and began to make his way under the walls, fearfully side-eying, looking around every minute, at times hiding in the entrances and avoiding intersections with traffic lights, the luxurious doors of embassy mansions.

And throughout his difficult journey, for some reason he was tormented inexpressibly by the omnipresent orchestra, to the accompaniment of which a heavy bass sang about his love for Tatyana.

There was a case in Griboedov

The ancient two-story cream-colored house was located on the boulevard ring in the depths of a sparse garden, separated from the sidewalk of the ring by a carved cast-iron lattice. A small area in front of the house was paved, and in winter there was a snowdrift with a shovel on it, and in summer it turned into a magnificent section of a summer restaurant under a canvas awning.

The house was called “Griboedov’s house” on the grounds that it was once owned by the aunt of the writer, Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov. Well, whether she owned it or not, we don’t know. I even remember that, it seems, Griboyedov did not have any aunt-landowner... However, that was the name of the house. Moreover, one Moscow liar said that supposedly on the second floor, in a round hall with columns, the famous writer read excerpts from “Woe from Wit” to this very aunt, who was reclining on the sofa, but by the way, who knows, maybe I read it, it doesn’t matter!

And the important thing is that this house was currently owned by the same MASSOLIT, headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at the Patriarch’s Ponds.

With the light hand of the MASSOLIT members, no one called the house “Griboedov’s house,” but everyone simply said “Griboyedov”: “Yesterday I spent two hours hanging around at Griboedov’s,” “So how?” - “I got to Yalta for a month.” - "Well done!". Or: “Go to Berlioz, he is receiving from four to five today in Griboedov...” And so on.

MASSOLIT is located in Griboedov in such a way that it couldn’t be better or more comfortable. Anyone entering Griboyedov's, first of all, involuntarily became familiar with the notices of various sports clubs and with group, as well as individual photographs of MASSOLIT members, with which (photographs) the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor were hung.

On the doors of the very first room on this top floor one could see a large inscription “Fish and dacha section”, and there was also a picture of a crucian carp caught on a hook.

Something not entirely clear was written on the door of room No. 2: “One-day creative trip. Contact M.V. Podlozhnaya.”

The next door bore a brief but completely incomprehensible inscription: “Perelygino.” Then a random visitor to Griboedov’s eyes began to run wild from the inscriptions that were colorful on his aunt’s walnut doors: “Registration in the queue for paper at Poklevkina’s,” “Cash desk,” “Personal calculations of sketchists” ...

Having cut through the longest queue, which began already downstairs in the Swiss one, one could see the inscription on the door, into which people were banging every second: “Housing problem.”

Behind the housing issue, a luxurious poster was revealed, on which a rock was depicted, and along its ridge a horseman was riding in a burqa and with a rifle over his shoulders. Below there are palm trees and a balcony, on the balcony there is a sitting young man with a tuft, looking somewhere up with very, very lively eyes and holding a pen in his hand. Signature: “Full-length sabbaticals from two weeks (short story) to one year (novel, trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe, Tsikhidziri, Makhinjauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).” There was also a queue at this door, but not excessive, about one and a half hundred people.

Then followed, obeying the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the Griboyedov House, - “The Board of MASSOLIT”, “Cash Offices No. 2, 3, 4, 5”, “Editorial Board”, “Chairman of MASSOLIT”, “Billiard Room”, various auxiliary institutions, and finally , the same hall with a colonnade where the aunt enjoyed the comedy of her brilliant nephew.

Every visitor, unless he was, of course, a complete idiot, when he got to Griboedov, immediately realized how good life was for the lucky members of MASSOLIT, and black envy immediately began to torment him. And immediately he turned bitter reproaches to heaven for not rewarding him with literary talent at birth, without which, naturally, there was no point in dreaming of acquiring a MASSOLIT membership card, brown, smelling of expensive leather, with a wide gold border, known to all Moscow with a ticket.

Who will say anything in defense of envy? This is a feeling of a crappy category, but you still have to put yourself in the position of a visitor. After all, what he saw on the top floor was not all, and far from all. The entire lower floor of my aunt's house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant! In fairness, he was considered the best in Moscow. And not only because it was located in two large halls with vaulted ceilings, painted with purple horses with Assyrian manes, not only because on each table there was a lamp covered with a shawl, not only because the first person who came across could not get there with streets, and also because Griboyedov beat any restaurant in Moscow as he wanted with the quality of his provisions, and that this provision was sold at the most reasonable, by no means burdensome price.

Therefore, there is nothing surprising in such a conversation, which the author of these most truthful lines once heard at Griboyedov’s cast-iron grate:

– Where are you having dinner today, Ambrose?

- What kind of question is there, of course, here, dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there will be portioned pike perch a naturel. Virtuoso thing!

– You know how to live, Ambrose! - with a sigh, the skinny, neglected Fok, with a carbuncle on his neck, answered the ruddy-lipped giant, golden-haired, puffy-cheeked Ambrose the poet.

“I don’t have any special skills,” objected Ambrose, “but an ordinary desire to live like a human being.” Are you saying, Foka, that pike perch can also be found at the Colosseum. But at the Colosseum a portion of pike perch costs thirteen rubles and fifteen kopecks, and here it costs five fifty! In addition, in the “Colosseum” the pike perch are third-day, and, besides, you still have no guarantee that you will not get a grape brush in the face in the “Coliseum” from the first young man who bursts in from the theater passage. No, I am categorically against the “Colosseum,” the grocery store Ambrose thundered throughout the boulevard. – Don’t persuade me, Foka!

“I’m not trying to persuade you, Ambrose,” Foka squeaked. - You can have dinner at home.

“Humble servant,” trumpeted Ambrose, “I can imagine your wife trying to make portioned pike perch a naturel in a saucepan in the common kitchen of the house!” Gi-gi-gi!.. Orevoir, Foka! – and, humming, Ambrose rushed to the veranda under the awning.

Eh-ho-ho... Yes, it was, it was!.. Moscow old-timers remember the famous Griboyedov! What boiled portioned pike perch! It's cheap, dear Ambrose! What about sterlet, sterlet in a silver saucepan, sterlet in pieces, topped with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? What about cocotte eggs with champignon puree in cups? Didn't you like blackbird fillets? With truffles? Genoese quail? Ten and a half! Yes jazz, yes polite service! And in July, when the whole family is at the dacha, and urgent literary matters keep you in the city, - on the veranda, in the shade of climbing grapes, in a golden spot on a clean tablecloth, a plate of soup-prentanière? Remember, Ambrose? Well, why ask! I see from your lips that you remember. What are your little tits, pike perch! What about great snipes, woodcocks, snipes, woodcocks in season, quails, waders? Narzan hissing in the throat?! But enough, you're getting distracted, reader! Behind me!..

At half past ten o'clock that evening when Berlioz died at the Patriarch's, only one room was lit upstairs in Griboedov, and twelve writers languished in it, gathered for a meeting and waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Those sitting on chairs, and on tables, and even on two window sills in the MASSOLIT board room seriously suffered from stuffiness. Not a single fresh stream penetrated the open windows. Moscow was giving off the heat accumulated during the day in the asphalt, and it was clear that the night would not bring relief. There was a smell of onions from the basement of my aunt’s house, where the restaurant kitchen worked, and everyone was thirsty, everyone was nervous and angry.

The novelist Beskudnikov, a quiet, decently dressed man with attentive and at the same time elusive eyes, took out his watch. The needle was creeping towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the dial with his finger and showed it to his neighbor, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting on the table and dangling his feet, shod in yellow rubber shoes, in melancholy.

“However,” Dvubratsky grumbled.

“The boy is probably stuck on the Klyazma,” said Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, a Moscow merchant orphan who became a writer and writes battle sea stories under the pseudonym “Navigator Georges,” in a thick voice.

“And now it’s good on the Klyazma,” navigator Georges urged those present, knowing that the literary dacha village of Perelygino on the Klyazma is a common sore spot. - Now the nightingales are probably singing. I always somehow work better outside the city, especially in the spring.

“This is the third year I’ve been contributing money to send my wife, who is sick with Graves’ disease, to this paradise, but for some reason I can’t see anything in the waves,” said the short story writer Hieronymus Poprikhin venomously and bitterly.

“It depends on how lucky anyone is,” the critic Ababkov boomed from the windowsill.

Joy lit up in the little eyes of Navigator Georges, and she said, softening her contralto:

- There is no need, comrades, to envy. There are only twenty-two dachas, and only seven more are being built, but there are three thousand of us in MASSOLIT.

“Three thousand one hundred and eleven people,” someone interjected from the corner.

“Well, you see,” said the Navigator, “what should we do?” Naturally, the most talented of us got the dachas...

- Generals! – screenwriter Glukharev crashed straight into the squabble.

Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, left the room.

“Alone in five rooms in Perelygin,” Glukharev said after him.

“Lavrovich is alone at six,” Deniskin cried, “and the dining room is paneled in oak!”

“Eh, that’s not the point now,” Ababkov boomed, “but the fact that it’s half past eleven.”

The noise began, something like a riot was brewing. They started calling the hated Perelygino, ended up at the wrong dacha, Lavrovich’s, found out that Lavrovich had gone to the river, and were completely upset about it. At random they called the Commission of Fine Literature at extension No. 930 and, of course, found no one there.

- He could have called! - Deniskin, Glukharev and Kvant shouted.

Oh, they shouted in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a huge hall, illuminated by thousand-candle lamps, on three zinc tables lay what had recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.

On the first there is a naked body covered in dried blood with a broken arm and a crushed chest, on the other there is a head with knocked out front teeth, with dim open eyes that were not frightened by the harshest light, and on the third there is a pile of crusty rags.

Standing near the beheaded man were: a professor of forensic medicine, a pathologist and his dissector, representatives of the investigation, and Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz’s deputy at MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin, called by telephone from his sick wife.

The car picked up Zheldybin and, first of all, together with the investigation, took him (it was around midnight) to the apartment of the murdered man, where his papers were sealed, and then everyone went to the morgue.

Now those standing at the remains of the deceased were conferring on how best to do it: should they sew the severed head to the neck or display the body in the Griboyedov Hall, simply covering the deceased tightly up to the chin with a black scarf?

Yes, Mikhail Aleksandrovich could not call anywhere, and it was completely in vain that Deniskin, Glukharev and Kvant and Beskudnikov were indignant and shouted. At exactly midnight, all twelve writers left the top floor and went down to the restaurant. Here again they spoke an unkind word about Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally, were already occupied, and they had to stay for dinner in these beautiful but stuffy rooms.

And exactly at midnight in the first of them something crashed, rang, fell, and jumped. And immediately a thin male voice desperately shouted to the music: “Hallelujah!!” This was hit by the famous Griboedov jazz. The faces covered with perspiration seemed to glow, it seemed as if the horses painted on the ceiling had come to life, the lamps seemed to turn up the light, and suddenly, as if breaking free, both halls danced, and behind them the veranda danced.

Glukharev danced with the poetess Tamara Crescent, Kvant danced, Zhukolov the novelist danced with some film actress in a yellow dress. They danced: Dragunsky, Cherdakchi, little Deniskin with the gigantic Navigator George, the beautiful architect Semeikina-Gall danced, tightly grabbed by an unknown person in white matting trousers. Their own and invited guests, Moscow and visitors, danced, the writer Johann from Kronstadt, some Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, it seems, a director, with purple lichen all over his cheek, the most prominent representatives of the poetic subsection of MASSOLIT danced, that is, Pavianov, Bogokhulsky, Sladky, Shpichkin and Adelfina Buzdyak, young people of unknown professions danced in bob haircuts, with shoulders padded with cotton wool, a very elderly man with a beard with a green onion feather stuck in it danced, an elderly girl, fed up with anemia, in a crumpled orange silk dress danced with him.

Swimming with sweat, the waiters carried steamed mugs of beer over their heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: “Guilty, citizen!” Somewhere in the loudspeaker a voice commanded: “Karsky time!” Zubrik two! Gospodar flasks!!” The thin voice no longer sang, but howled: “Hallelujah!” The clatter of golden plates in jazz sometimes covered the clatter of dishes, which the dishwashers lowered down an inclined plane into the kitchen. In a word, hell.

And at midnight there was a vision in hell. A handsome black-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, wearing a tailcoat, came out onto the veranda and looked around his possessions with a royal gaze. They said, the mystics said, that there was a time when the handsome man did not wear a tailcoat, but was girded with a wide leather belt, from which the handles of pistols protruded, and his raven-wing hair was tied with scarlet silk, and sailed in the Caribbean Sea under his command of the brig under black coffin flag with Adam's head.

But no, no! Seductive mystics lie, there are no Caribbean seas in the world, and desperate filibusters do not sail in them, and there is no corvette chasing them, and there is no cannon smoke spreading over the waves. There is nothing, and nothing ever happened! There is a stunted linden tree, there is a cast-iron grate and behind it a boulevard... And the ice is melting in a vase, and at the next table you can see someone’s bloodshot bull’s eyes, and it’s scary, scary... Oh gods, my gods, I’m poisoning, poisoning!..

And suddenly the word fluttered up at the table: “Berlioz!!” Suddenly the jazz fell apart and fell silent, as if someone had slammed their fist on it. “What, what, what, what?!” - “Berlioz!!!” And let's jump up, let's jump up.

Yes, a wave of grief surged at the terrible news about Mikhail Alexandrovich. Someone was fussing, shouting that it was necessary right now, right there, without leaving the spot, to compose some kind of collective telegram and send it immediately.

But what telegram, we ask, and where? And why send it? In fact, where? And what is the need for any kind of telegram to someone whose flattened back of the head is now being squeezed in the rubber hands of the dissector, whose neck is now being stabbed by the professor with crooked needles? He died, and he doesn’t need any telegram. It's all over, let's not load the telegraph anymore.

Yes, he died, he died... But we are alive!

Yes, a wave of grief surged up, but it held on, held on and began to subside, and someone had already returned to their table and - first secretly, and then openly - drank vodka and had a snack. In fact, don’t chicken cutlets de voile go to waste? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich? The fact that we will remain hungry? But we are alive!

Naturally, the piano was locked, the jazz sold out, several journalists went to their editorial offices to write obituaries. It became known that Zheldybin had arrived from the morgue. He placed himself in the deceased’s office upstairs, and a rumor immediately spread that he would be replacing Berlioz. Zheldybin summoned all twelve members of the board from the restaurant, and in an urgent meeting that began in Berlioz’s office, they began to discuss urgent issues about the decoration of the columned Griboyedov Hall, about transporting the body from the morgue to this hall, about opening access to it, and other things related to unfortunate event.

And the restaurant began to live its usual night life and would have lived it until closing, that is, until four o’clock in the morning, if something had not happened that was completely out of the ordinary and struck the restaurant guests much more than the news of Berlioz’s death.

The first to worry were the reckless drivers who were on duty at the gates of the Griboedov house. One of them could be heard, standing up on the box, shouting:

- Ty! Just look!

Then, out of nowhere, a light flashed at the cast-iron grate and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the tables began to rise and peer and saw that a white ghost was walking towards the restaurant along with the light. When it approached the trellis itself, everyone seemed stiff at the tables with pieces of sterlet on their forks and their eyes wide. The doorman, who at that moment came out of the door of the restaurant hanger into the courtyard to smoke, trampled on his cigarette and moved towards the ghost with the obvious purpose of blocking his access to the restaurant, but for some reason he did not do this and stopped, smiling stupidly.

And the ghost, passing through the hole in the trellis, unhinderedly entered the veranda. Then everyone saw that this was not a ghost at all, but Ivan Nikolaevich Bezdomny, a famous poet.

He was barefoot, wearing a torn whitish sweatshirt, to which a paper icon with a faded image of an unknown saint was pinned to the chest with a safety pin, and wearing striped white underpants. Ivan Nikolaevich carried a lit wedding candle in his hand. Ivan Nikolaevich’s right cheek was freshly torn. It is difficult to even measure the depth of the silence that reigned on the veranda. One of the waiters could be seen leaking beer from a mug that was tilted to one side onto the floor.

The poet raised the candle above his head and said loudly:

- Hello, friends! - after which he looked under the nearest table and exclaimed sadly: - No, he’s not here!

- It's done. Delirium tremens.

And the second, female, frightened, uttered the words:

“How did the police let him through the streets like that?”

Ivan Nikolaevich heard this and responded:

“They wanted to detain me twice, in the tablecloth and here on Bronnaya, but I swung over the fence and, you see, tore my cheek!” - here Ivan Nikolaevich raised a candle and cried out: - Brothers in literature! (His hoarse voice strengthened and became hot.) Listen to me, everyone! He has appeared! Catch him immediately, otherwise he will do untold mischief!

- What? What? What did he say? Who showed up? – voices came from all sides.

- Consultant! - Ivan answered, - and this consultant has now killed Misha Berlioz in the Patriarchal.

Here, from the inner hall, people poured onto the veranda, and a crowd moved around Ivanov’s fire.

“Guilty, guilty, tell me more precisely,” a quiet and polite voice was heard over Ivan’s ear, “tell me, how did you kill?” Who killed?

– Foreign consultant, professor and spy! – Ivan responded, looking around.

– What’s his last name? - they asked quietly in his ear.

- That's a surname! - Ivan shouted in anguish, - if only I knew the name! I didn’t see the last name on the business card... I only remember the first letter “Ve”, the last name starts with “Ve”! What is this surname starting with “Ve”? - Ivan asked himself, clutching his forehead with his hand, and suddenly muttered: “Ve, ve, ve!” Wa... Wo... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter? – the hair on Ivan’s head began to move from tension.

- Wulf? – some woman cried out pitifully.

Ivan got angry.

- Stupid! – he shouted, looking for the screamer with his eyes. – What does Wulf have to do with it? Wulf is not to blame for anything! Whoa, whoa... No! I don’t remember! Well, here's what, citizens: call the police now, so they can send five motorcycles with machine guns to catch the professor. Don’t forget to say that there are two more with him: some long, checkered one... the pince-nez is cracked... and a black, fat cat. In the meantime, I’ll search Griboedov... I sense that he’s here!

Ivan became restless, pushed those around him, began waving the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Then the word was heard: “Doctors!” - and someone’s tender, fleshy face, shaved and well-fed, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, appeared in front of Ivan.

“Comrade Bezdomny,” this face spoke in a jubilee voice, “calm down!” You are upset by the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich... no, just Misha Berlioz. We all understand this very well. You need peace. Now your comrades will take you to bed, and you will forget...

“Do you,” Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, “do you understand that we need to catch the professor?” And you come at me with your nonsense! Cretin!

“Comrade Bezdomny, have mercy,” answered the face, blushing, backing away and already repenting that he had gotten involved in this matter.

“No, I won’t have mercy on anyone, but you,” Ivan Nikolaevich said with quiet hatred.

A spasm distorted his face, he quickly transferred the candle from his right hand to his left, swung it wide and hit the sympathetic face in the ear.

Then they decided to rush at Ivan - and rushed. The candle went out, and the glasses, which had come off his face, were instantly trampled upon. Ivan let out a terrible battle cry, audible to the general temptation even on the boulevard, and began to defend himself. Dishes clattered as they fell from the tables, and women screamed.

While the waiters were tying the poet up with towels, a conversation was going on in the locker room between the brig commander and the porter.

– Did you see that he was wearing underpants? – the pirate asked coldly.

“But, Archibald Archibaldovich,” answered the doorman, cowardly, “how can I not allow them in if they are a member of MASSOLIT?”

– Did you see that he was wearing underpants? - the pirate repeated.

“For mercy’s sake, Archibald Archibaldovich,” said the doorman, turning purple, “what can I do?” I understand that the ladies are sitting on the veranda.

“The ladies have nothing to do with it, the ladies don’t care,” answered the pirate, literally burning the doorman with his eyes, “but the police don’t care!” A person in underwear can walk along the streets of Moscow only in one case, if he is accompanied by the police, and only in one place - to the police station! And you, if you are a doorman, should know that when you see such a person, you should, without hesitating for a second, start whistling. Can you hear?

The maddened doorman heard hooting, breaking dishes and women's screams from the veranda.

- Well, what can I do with you for this? – asked the filibuster.

The skin on the doorman's face took on a typhoid hue, and his eyes became deadened. It seemed to him that his black hair, now parted in the middle, was covered with fiery silk. The plastron and tailcoat disappeared, and the handle of a pistol appeared behind the belt. The porter imagined himself hanged from the fore-yard yard. With his own eyes he saw his own protruding tongue and his lifeless head falling on his shoulder, and even heard the splash of a wave overboard. The doorman's knees buckled. But then the filibuster took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.

A quarter of an hour later, the extremely amazed public, not only in the restaurant, but also on the boulevard itself and in the windows of the houses overlooking the restaurant’s garden, saw how from the Griboedov gate Panteley, the doorman, the policeman, the waiter and the poet Ryukhin carried out a young man swaddled like a doll , who, bursting into tears, spat, trying to hit Ryukhin, choked on his tears and shouted:

- Bastard!

The driver of the truck with an angry face started the engine. Nearby, a reckless driver was whipping up a horse, beating it on the croup with lilac reins, and shouting:

- But on the treadmill! I took him to the mental hospital!

The crowd was buzzing all around, discussing the unprecedented incident; in a word, there was an ugly, vile, seductive, swine scandal, which ended only when the truck carried away the unfortunate Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin from the Griboedov gate.

Schizophrenia, as stated

When a man with a pointed beard and dressed in a white coat entered the waiting room of the famous psychiatric clinic, recently built near Moscow on the river bank, it was half past two in the morning. Three orderlies did not take their eyes off Ivan Nikolaevich, sitting on the sofa. The extremely excited poet Ryukhin was also there. The towels with which Ivan Nikolaevich was tied lay in a pile on the same sofa. Ivan Nikolaevich's arms and legs were free.

Seeing the newcomer, Ryukhin turned pale, coughed and timidly said:

- Hello, Doctor.

The doctor bowed to Riukhin, but as he bowed, he looked not at him, but at Ivan Nikolaevich.

He sat completely motionless, with an angry face, knitted eyebrows, and did not even move when the doctor entered.

“Here, doctor,” Riukhin spoke for some reason in a mysterious whisper, fearfully looking back at Ivan Nikolayevich, “the famous poet Ivan Bezdomny... you see... we’re afraid it’s delirium tremens...

-Did you drink heavily? – the doctor asked through gritted teeth.

- No, I drank, but not so much that...

– Have you caught cockroaches, rats, devils or scurrying dogs?

“No,” answered Ryukhin, shuddering, “I saw him yesterday and this morning.” He was completely healthy...

- Why in long johns? Did you take it from the bed?

- He, the doctor, came to the restaurant looking like this...

“Yeah, yeah,” the doctor said very satisfied, “why the abrasions?” Did you fight with anyone?

- He fell from the fence, and then hit someone in the restaurant... And someone else...

- Hello, pest! – Ivan answered angrily and loudly.

Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the polite doctor. But he was not at all offended, and with his usual, deft gesture, he took off his glasses, lifted the hem of his robe, hid them in the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:

- How old are you?

- Get all of you to hell from me, really! – Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.

- Why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?

“I’m twenty-three years old,” Ivan spoke excitedly, “and I’ll file a complaint against all of you.” And especially for you, you nit! – he treated Ryukhin separately.

– What do you want to complain about?

“The fact that I, a healthy person, was seized and forcibly dragged into a madhouse!” – Ivan answered in anger.

Here Ryukhin peered at Ivan and grew cold: there was absolutely no madness in his eyes. From cloudy, as they were in Griboedov, they turned into the same clear ones.

“Fathers! - Riukhin thought in fear, - is he really normal? What nonsense! Why did we really bring him here? Normal, normal, only the face is scratched..."

“You are,” the doctor spoke calmly, sitting down on a white stool on a shiny leg, “not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will detain you if there is no need for it.”

Ivan Nikolaevich glanced sideways in disbelief, but still muttered:

- Thank God! Finally, there was at least one normal person among the idiots, the first of whom was the dunce and mediocrity Sashka!

-Who is this Sashka the mediocrity? – the doctor inquired.

- And here he is, Ryukhin! - Ivan answered and pointed a dirty finger in the direction of Ryukhin.

He flushed with indignation.

“This is him instead of thanking me! - he thought bitterly, - because I took part in it! This is truly rubbish!”

“A typical kulak in his psychology,” said Ivan Nikolaevich, who was obviously impatient to denounce Ryukhin, “and, moreover, a kulak carefully masquerading as a proletarian.” Look at his Lenten face and compare it with those sonorous poems that he composed for the first day! Heh heh heh... "Soar up!" yes, “unwind!”... And you look inside him - what is he thinking there... you will gasp! – and Ivan Nikolaevich laughed ominously.

Ryukhin was breathing heavily, was red in the face, and was thinking only about one thing: that he had warmed a snake on his chest, that he had taken part in someone who turned out to be an evil enemy. And most importantly, nothing could be done: why not quarrel with a mentally ill person?!

– Why were you actually brought to us? – the doctor asked, having listened carefully to Homeless’s denunciations.

- Damn them, idiots! They grabbed me, tied me up with some rags and dragged me in a truck!

– Let me ask you, why did you come to the restaurant in your underwear?

“There’s nothing surprising here,” Ivan answered, “I went for a swim in the Moscow River, and they took away my clothes, but left this rubbish!” Should I not walk around Moscow naked? I put on what I had because I was hurrying to Griboedov’s restaurant.

The doctor looked questioningly at Ryukhin, and he muttered gloomily:

– That’s the name of the restaurant.

“Yeah,” said the doctor, “why were you in such a hurry?” Some kind of business date?

“I’m hunting for a consultant,” Ivan Nikolaevich answered and looked around anxiously.

– Which consultant?

– Do you know Berlioz? – Ivan asked meaningfully.

– Is this... a composer?

Ivan was upset.

-Who is the composer? Oh yes, yes no! The composer is the namesake of Misha Berlioz!

Ryukhin didn’t want to say anything, but he had to explain.

– MASSOLIT secretary Berlioz was run over by a tram on Patriarch’s Street this evening.

– Don’t lie about what you don’t know! - Ivan got angry with Ryukhin, - I, not you, was at it! He purposely placed it under the tram!

- Pushed?

- What does “pushed” have to do with it? - Ivan exclaimed, angry at the general stupidity, - there’s no need to push someone like that! He can do such things, just hold on! He knew in advance that Berlioz would get hit by a tram!

– Has anyone besides you seen this consultant?

“That’s the trouble, it’s only me and Berlioz.”

- So. What measures did you take to catch this killer? – here the doctor turned and glanced at a woman in a white coat sitting at the table to the side. She took out a sheet of paper and began to fill in the empty spaces in its columns.

- These are the measures. I took a candle from the kitchen...

- This one? – the doctor asked, pointing to a broken candle lying on the table next to the icon in front of the woman.

- This one, and...

– Why the icon?

“Well, yes, the icon...” Ivan blushed, “it was the icon that scared me the most,” he again pointed his finger at Ryukhin, “but the fact is that he, the consultant, he, let’s put it bluntly... knows evil spirits...” and you can't catch him like that.

For some reason, the orderlies stretched out their arms at their sides and did not take their eyes off Ivan.

“Yes, sir,” continued Ivan, “I know!” This is an irrevocable fact. He personally spoke with Pontius Pilate. There's no point in looking at me like that! I'm telling you right! I saw everything - the balcony and the palm trees. In a word, he was with Pontius Pilate, I vouch for that.

- Well, well, well...

- Well, so, I pinned the icon on my chest and ran...

Suddenly the clock struck twice.

- Hey-hey! - Ivan exclaimed and got up from the sofa, - two hours, and I’m wasting time with you! I'm sorry, where's the phone?

“Let me go to the phone,” the doctor ordered the orderlies.

Ivan grabbed the receiver, and at that time the woman quietly asked Ryukhin:

- Is he married?

“Single,” Ryukhin answered fearfully.

- Member of the trade union?

- Police? - Ivan shouted into the phone, - police? Comrade on duty, order now that five motorcycles with machine guns be sent to capture the foreign consultant. What? Come pick me up, I'll go with you myself... Says the poet Homeless from a madhouse... What's your address? - Homeless asked the doctor in a whisper, covering the receiver with his palm, - and then shouted into the phone again: - Are you listening? Hello!.. Disgrace! – Ivan suddenly screamed and threw the phone at the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, extended his hand, said dryly “goodbye” and got ready to leave.

- For mercy's sake, where do you want to go? - the doctor spoke, peering into Ivan’s eyes, - late at night, in his underwear... You don’t feel well, stay with us!

“Let me in,” Ivan said to the orderlies who had closed in on the door. -Will you let me in or not? – the poet shouted in a terrible voice.

Ryukhin trembled, and the woman pressed a button in the table, and a shiny box and a sealed ampoule jumped out onto its glass surface.

- Ah well?! - Ivan said, looking around wildly and hauntedly, - well, okay! Goodbye... - and he threw himself head first into the window curtain. There was a blow, but the unbreakable glass behind the curtain withstood it, and a moment later Ivan began to thrash in the hands of the orderlies. He wheezed, tried to bite, shouted:

- So these are the pieces of glass you have!.. Let them go! Let me go, I say!

The syringe flashed in the doctor’s hands; with one stroke, the woman tore open the threadbare sleeve of her sweatshirt and grabbed her hand with unfeminine strength. It smelled like ether. Ivan weakened in the hands of four people, and the clever doctor took advantage of this moment and inserted a needle into Ivan’s arm. Ivan was held for a few more seconds and then lowered onto the sofa.

- Bandits! - Ivan shouted and jumped up from the sofa, but was placed on him again. As soon as they let him go, he started to jump up again, but he sat back down on his own. He paused, looking around wildly, then unexpectedly yawned, then smiled with malice.

“They imprisoned me after all,” he said, yawned again, suddenly lay down, put his head on the pillow, a childish fist under his cheek, muttered in a sleepy voice, without malice: “Well, very good... You yourself will pay for everything.” I warned you, but do as you wish! What interests me most now is Pontius Pilate... Pilate... - here he closed his eyes.

“Bath, one hundred and seventeenth separate and post to him,” the doctor ordered, putting on glasses. Here Ryukhin shuddered again: white doors opened silently, behind them a corridor became visible, illuminated by blue night lamps. A couch rolled out from the corridor on rubber wheels, the quiet Ivan was shifted onto it, and he went into the corridor, and the doors closed behind him.

“Doctor,” asked the shocked Ryukhin in a whisper, “does that mean he’s really sick?”

“Oh yes,” answered the doctor.

-What’s wrong with him? – Ryukhin asked timidly.

The tired doctor looked at Ryukhin and answered listlessly:

– Motor and speech excitation... Delusional interpretations... The case is apparently complex... Schizophrenia, one must assume. And then there's alcoholism...

Ryukhin did not understand anything from the doctor’s words, except that Ivan Nikolayevich’s affairs were apparently rather bad, he sighed and asked:

– What is he all about talking about some consultant?

– He probably saw someone who struck his frustrated imagination. Or maybe he was hallucinating...

A few minutes later the truck carried Ryukhin to Moscow. It was getting light, and the light of the streetlights that had not yet been extinguished was no longer necessary and unpleasant. The driver was angry that the night was wasted, he drove the car as hard as he could, and it skidded on turns.

So the forest fell off, remained somewhere behind, and the river went somewhere to the side, all sorts of things rained down towards the truck: some fences with guard boxes and stacks of firewood, tall poles and some masts, and on the masts strung coils , piles of rubble, land striped with canals - in a word, it was felt that it, Moscow, was right there, just around the corner, and would now fall and engulf.

Ryukhin was shaken and tossed around; some stump on which he was placed kept trying to slip out from under him. Restaurant towels, thrown by the policeman and Pantelei who had left earlier in the trolleybus, were traveling all over the platform. Ryukhin tried to collect them, but for some reason hissed with anger: “To hell with them! Am I really twirling around like a fool?..” - he kicked them away and stopped looking at them.

The traveler was in a terrible mood. It became clear that the visit to the house of grief left a very difficult mark on him. Ryukhin tried to understand what was tormenting him. A corridor with blue lamps stuck to memory? The idea that there is no worse misfortune in the world than the deprivation of reason? Yes, yes, of course, that too. But this is, after all, a general idea. But there is something else. What is this? Resentment, that's what. Yes, yes, hurtful words thrown straight into the face of the Homeless. And the grief is not that they are offensive, but that they contain the truth.

The poet no longer looked around, but, staring at the dirty, shaking floor, began to mutter something, whine, gnawing at himself.

Yes, poetry... He is thirty-two years old! Really, what's next? - And he will continue to compose several poems a year. - Until old age? - Yes, until old age. - What will these poems bring him? Fame? “What nonsense! Don't at least deceive yourself. Fame will never come to someone who writes bad poetry. Why are they bad? He told the truth, he told the truth! - Ryukhin mercilessly turned to himself, “I don’t believe in anything I write!..”

Poisoned by an explosion of neurasthenia, the poet swayed, and the floor beneath him stopped shaking. Ryukhin raised his head and saw that they were already in Moscow and, moreover, that it was dawn over Moscow, that the cloud was illuminated in gold, that his truck was standing, stuck in a column of other cars at the turn onto the boulevard, and that not far from it there was a metal the man tilts his head slightly and looks indifferently at the boulevard.

Some strange thoughts rushed into the head of the ill poet. “This is an example of real luck...” here Ryukhin stood up to his full height on the truck platform and raised his hand, attacking for some reason the cast-iron man who was not touching anyone, “no matter what step he took in life, no matter what happened to him, everything went well.” to his benefit, everything turned to his glory! But what did he do? I don’t understand... Is there anything special in these words: “Storm with darkness…”? I don’t understand!.. Lucky, lucky! - Ryukhin suddenly concluded venomously and felt that the truck moved under him, - this White Guard shot, shot at him and crushed his thigh and ensured immortality ... "

The column started moving. The completely ill and even aged poet entered Griboyedov’s veranda no more than two minutes later. It's already empty. In the corner, some company was finishing their drink, and in the center of it, a familiar entertainer in a skullcap and with a glass of Abrau in his hand was bustling around.

Ryukhin, burdened with towels, was greeted very warmly by Archibald Archibaldovich and was immediately relieved of the damned rags. If Ryukhin had not been so tormented in the clinic and on the truck, he would probably have enjoyed talking about how everything was in the hospital, and decorating this story with fictitious details. But now he had no time for that, and besides, no matter how observant Ryukhin was, now, after the torture in the truck, for the first time he sharply peered into the pirate’s face and realized that although he was asking questions about Bezdomny and even exclaiming “Oh -yay-yay!”, but, in fact, he is completely indifferent to the fate of Homeless and does not feel sorry for him at all. “And well done! And rightly so!” - Riukhin thought with cynical, self-destructive anger and, breaking off the story about schizophrenia, asked:

- Archibald Archibaldovich, I would like some vodka...

The pirate made a sympathetic face and whispered:

“I understand... this minute...” and waved to the waiter.

A quarter of an hour later, Ryukhin, all alone, sat huddled over the fish, drinking glass after glass, understanding and admitting that nothing in his life could be corrected, but only forgotten.

The poet spent his night while others were feasting, and now he understood that it could not be returned. One had only to raise his head from the lamp up to the sky to understand that the night was gone forever. The waiters, in a hurry, tore the tablecloths off the tables. The cats scurrying around the veranda had a morning look. The day was falling uncontrollably on the poet.

Not a good apartment

If the next morning they had told Styopa Likhodeev like this: “Styopa! They’ll shoot you if you don’t get up this minute!” - Styopa would answer in a languid, barely audible voice: “Shoot me, do what you want with me, but I won’t get up.”

Let alone get up - it seemed to him that he could not open his eyes, because if he did so, lightning would flash and his head would immediately be blown to pieces. A heavy bell was humming in this head, brown spots with a fiery green rim floated between the eyeballs and closed eyelids, and to top it all off, I felt sick, and this nausea seemed to be connected with the sounds of some annoying gramophone.

Styopa tried to remember something, but he remembered only one thing - that, it seems, yesterday and in an unknown place he stood with a napkin in his hand and tried to kiss some lady, and promised her that the next day, and exactly at noon, he would come to to visit her. The lady refused this, saying: “No, no, I won’t be at home!” - and Styopa stubbornly insisted on his own: “But I’ll take it and come!”

Styopa absolutely did not know what lady it was, what time it was, what date, what month, and, worst of all, he could not understand where he was. He tried to find out at least the latter and to do this he opened the stuck together eyelids of his left eye. In the semi-darkness something glowed dimly. Styopa finally recognized the dressing table and realized that he was lying supine on his bed, that is, on the former jeweler's bed, in the bedroom. Then it hit him in the head so much that he closed his eye and groaned.

Let's explain: Styopa Likhodeev, director of the Variety Theater, woke up in the morning in the very apartment that he occupied in half with the late Berlioz, in a large six-story building, quietly located on Garden Street.

It must be said that this apartment - No. 50 - has long enjoyed, if not a bad, then at least a strange reputation. Until two years ago, its owner was the widow of the jeweler de Fougere. Anna Frantsevna de Fougere, a fifty-year-old respectable and very businesslike lady, rented out three of the five rooms to tenants: one whose surname was, it seems, Belomut, and another with a lost surname.

And then two years ago, inexplicable incidents began in the apartment: people began to disappear from this apartment without a trace.

One day on a weekend, a policeman came to the apartment, called the second tenant (whose last name has been lost) into the hallway and said that he was asked to come into the police station for a moment to sign for something. The tenant ordered Anfisa, Anna Frantsevna’s devoted and long-time domestic worker, to say if he received a call that he would return in ten minutes, and left with a polite policeman in white gloves. But not only did he not return ten minutes later, he never returned at all. The most surprising thing is that, obviously, the policeman disappeared with him.

Pious, or, more frankly, superstitious, Anfisa bluntly told the very upset Anna Frantsevna that this was witchcraft and that she knew very well who had taken both the tenant and the policeman, but by nightfall she did not want to talk. Well, as you know, witchcraft has only to begin, and then nothing can stop it. The second tenant disappeared, I remember, on Monday, and on Wednesday Belomut seemed to disappear into the ground, but, however, under different circumstances. In the morning, as usual, a car came to pick him up to take him to work, and drove him away, but did not bring anyone back and never returned.

Madame Belomut's grief and horror defy description. But, alas, both were short-lived. That same night, having returned with Anfisa from the dacha, to which Anna Frantsevna had for some reason hastily gone, she no longer found citizen Belomut in the apartment. But this is not enough: the doors of both rooms occupied by the Belomut spouses turned out to be sealed.

Two days passed somehow. On the third day, Anna Frantsevna, who had been suffering from insomnia all this time, again hurriedly left for the dacha... Needless to say, she did not return!

Anfisa, who was left alone, cried to her heart's content and went to bed at two o'clock in the morning. What happened to her next is unknown, but residents of other apartments said that in No. 50 some knocks were heard all night and that electric lights were burning in the windows until the morning. In the morning it turned out that Anfisa was gone too!

For a long time, all sorts of legends were told in the house about the disappeared and about the cursed apartment, such as, for example, that this dry and pious Anfisa allegedly carried twenty-five large diamonds belonging to Anna Frantsevna on her withered chest in a suede bag. It’s as if in the woodshed at the very dacha where Anna Frantsevna was hastily going, some untold treasures in the form of the same diamonds, as well as gold money of the royal mintage, were discovered by themselves... And so on in the same way. Well, what we don’t know, we can’t vouch for.

Be that as it may, the apartment stood empty and sealed for only a week, and then the late Berlioz and his wife and this same Styopa also moved in with his wife. It is quite natural that as soon as they got into the damned apartment, God knows what began to happen to them. Namely, within one month both spouses disappeared. But these are not without a trace. It was said about Berlioz’s wife that she was supposedly seen in Kharkov with some choreographer, and Styopa’s wife allegedly showed up at Bozhedomka, where, as they said, the director of the Variety Show, using his countless acquaintances, managed to get her a room, but with one condition: she was not in spirit on Sadovaya Street...

So, Styopa groaned. He wanted to call the housekeeper Grunya and demand her pyramidon, but still managed to realize that this was nonsense... That Grunya, of course, didn’t have any pyramidon. I tried to call Berlioz for help, moaned twice: “Misha... Misha...”, but, as you understand, he received no answer. There was complete silence in the apartment.

After wiggling his toes, Styopa realized that he was wearing socks, and with a shaking hand he ran over his thigh to determine whether he was wearing trousers or not, but he couldn’t tell.

Finally, seeing that he was abandoned and alone, that there was no one to help him, he decided to rise, no matter what inhuman efforts it might cost.

Styopa opened his glued eyelids and saw that reflected in the dressing table in the form of a man with hair sticking out in different directions, with a swollen face covered with black stubble, with swollen eyes, in a dirty shirt with a collar and tie, in long johns and socks.

This is how he saw himself in the dressing table, and next to the mirror he saw an unknown man dressed in black and wearing a black beret.

Styopa sat down on the bed and stared as long as he could with his bloodshot eyes at the unknown man.

This unknown person broke the silence by uttering the following words in a low, heavy voice and with a foreign accent:

– Good afternoon, handsome Stepan Bogdanovich!

There was a pause, after which, making a terrible effort on himself, Styopa said:

-What do you want? – and he himself was surprised not to recognize his own voice. He pronounced the word “what” in a treble, “you” in a bass, and “anything” didn’t work out for him at all.

The stranger smiled friendly, took out a large gold watch with a diamond triangle on the cover, rang eleven times and said:

- Eleven! And it’s exactly one hour since I’ve been waiting for you to wake up, for you appointed me to be with you at ten. Here I am!

Styopa felt his trousers on the chair next to the bed and whispered:

“Excuse me...” he put them on and asked hoarsely: “Please tell me your last name?”

It was difficult for him to speak. With every word, someone stuck a needle into his brain, causing hellish pain.

- How? Have you forgotten my last name? – here the unknown person smiled.

“Sorry...” Styopa wheezed, feeling that the hangover was giving him a new symptom: it seemed to him that the floor near the bed had gone somewhere and that this very minute he would fly headfirst to hell into the underworld.

“Dear Stepan Bogdanovich,” the visitor began, smiling shrewdly, “no pyramidon will help you.” Follow the old wise rule - treat like with like. The only thing that will bring you back to life is two glasses of vodka with a spicy and hot snack.

Styopa was a cunning man and, no matter how sick he was, he realized that since he was caught in this form, he needed to confess everything.

“To be honest…” he began, barely moving his tongue, “yesterday I was a little...

- Not a word more! – the visitor answered and drove away with the chair to the side.

Styopa, wide-eyed, saw that a tray was served on a small table, on which there was sliced ​​white bread, pressed caviar in a vase, pickled white mushrooms on a plate, something in a saucepan and, finally, vodka in a voluminous jewelry decanter. Styopa was especially struck by the fact that the decanter was fogging up from the cold. However, this was understandable - he was placed in a gargle filled with ice. It was covered, in a word, cleanly and skillfully.

The stranger did not allow Stepa's amazement to develop to the point of painfulness and deftly poured him half a shot of vodka.

- And you? – Styopa squeaked.

- With pleasure!

With a jumping hand, Styopa brought the glass to his lips, and the stranger swallowed the contents of his glass in one breath. Chewing a piece of caviar, Styopa squeezed out the words:

- What about you... have a snack?

“Thank you, I never have a snack,” the stranger answered and poured a second glass. We opened the pan and it contained sausages in tomato sauce.

And then the damned greenery before his eyes melted, words began to be spoken, and, most importantly, Styopa remembered something. Namely, what happened yesterday was at Skhodnya, at the dacha of the sketch author Khustov, where this Khustov took Styopa in a taxi. I even remembered how they hired this taxi from Metropol, and there was also some actor, not an actor... with a gramophone in his suitcase. Yes, yes, yes, it was in the country! I also remember the dogs howling from this gramophone. But the lady whom Styopa wanted to kiss remained unclear... God knows who she is... it seems she works in the radio, but maybe not.

Yesterday was thus gradually becoming clearer, but Styopa was now much more interested in today and, in particular, the appearance of an unknown person in the bedroom, and even with a snack and vodka. This is what it would be nice to explain!

- Well, now, I hope you remember my last name?

But Styopa only smiled bashfully and spread his hands.

- However! I feel like you drank port after the vodka! For mercy's sake, is it really possible to do this!

“I want to ask you to keep this between us,” said Styopa ingratiatingly.

- Oh, of course, of course! But, of course, I can’t vouch for Khustov.

– Do you really know Khustov?

– Yesterday in your office I saw this individual briefly, but one quick glance at his face is enough to understand that he is a bastard, a troublemaker, an opportunist and a sycophant.

“Exactly!” – thought Styopa, amazed at such a true, precise and concise definition of Khustov.

Yes, yesterday was put together from pieces, but still the anxiety did not leave the director of the Variety Show. The fact is that in this yesterday there was a huge black hole. Styopa did not see this very stranger in a beret in his office yesterday.

“Professor of black magic Woland,” the visitor said weightily, seeing Styopa’s difficulties, and told everything in order.

Yesterday afternoon he arrived from abroad in Moscow, immediately came to Styopa and offered his tour to the Variety Show. Styopa called the Moscow Regional Entertainment Commission and agreed on this issue (Styopa turned pale and blinked his eyes), signed a contract with Professor Woland for seven performances (Styopa opened his mouth), agreed that Woland would come to him to clarify the details at ten o’clock in the morning today... Here Woland has come!

Having arrived, he was met by the housekeeper Grunya, who explained that she herself had just arrived, that she was visiting, that Berlioz was not at home, and that if the visitor wanted to see Stepan Bogdanovich, then he should go to his bedroom himself. Stepan Bogdanovich is sleeping so soundly that she cannot wake him up. Seeing the state of Stepan Bogdanovich, the artist sent Grunya to the nearest grocery store for vodka and snacks, to the pharmacy for ice and...

- Oh, what nonsense! – the guest exclaimed and didn’t want to listen to anything else.

So, vodka and snacks became clear, and yet it was a pity to look at Styopa: he absolutely did not remember anything about the contract and, for the life of him, did not see this Woland yesterday. Yes, Khustov was there, but Woland was not.

“Let me look at the contract,” Styopa asked quietly.

- Please please…

Styopa looked at the paper and froze. Everything was in place. First of all, Stepin’s own dashing signature! There is an oblique inscription on the side by the hand of the financial director Rimsky with permission to give ten thousand rubles to the artist Woland in exchange for the thirty-five thousand rubles due to him for seven performances. Moreover: here is Woland’s receipt stating that he has already received these ten thousand!

"What is it?!" - thought the unfortunate Styopa, and his head began to spin. Ominous memory lapses are beginning?! But, of course, after the contract was presented, further expressions of surprise would be simply indecent. Styopa asked the guest for permission to leave for a minute and, still in his socks, ran into the hallway to the telephone. On the way, he shouted in the direction of the kitchen:

But no one responded. Then he looked at the door to Berlioz’s office, which was next to the hallway, and then, as they say, he was dumbfounded. On the door handle he saw a huge wax seal on a rope. "Hello! – someone barked in Styopa’s head. “This was still missing!” And then Styopa’s thoughts ran along the double rail track, but, as always happens during a disaster, in one direction and generally God knows where. It’s hard to even convey the porridge in Styopa’s head. Here's the devilry with a black beret, cold vodka and an incredible contract - and then on top of all this, wouldn't you say, a stamp on the door! That is, whoever you want to tell that Berlioz did something, he won’t believe it, hey, he won’t believe it! However, the seal, here it is! Yes, sir...

And then some very unpleasant thoughts began to swirl in Styopa’s brain about an article that, as luck would have it, he had recently foisted on Mikhail Alexandrovich for publication in a magazine. And the article, between you and me, is stupid! And worthless, and the money is small...

Immediately after the memory of the article came the memory of some dubious conversation that took place, as I remember, on the twenty-fourth of April in the evening right there, in the dining room, when Styopa was having dinner with Mikhail Alexandrovich. That is, of course, in the full sense of the word this conversation cannot be called dubious (Styopa would not have agreed to such a conversation), but it was a conversation on some unnecessary topic. It would be completely free, citizens, not to start it. Before the press, there is no doubt, this conversation could have been considered a complete trifle, but after the press...

“Ah, Berlioz, Berlioz! – Styopa began to boil in his head. “It doesn’t go into my head!”

But there was no need to grieve for long, and Styopa dialed the number in the office of the financial director of Variety Rimsky. Styopa's position was delicate: firstly, the foreigner could be offended that Styopa was checking him after the contract was shown, and it was extremely difficult to talk to the financial director. In fact, you can’t ask him like this: “Tell me, did I sign a contract for thirty-five thousand rubles yesterday with the professor of black magic?” It's no good asking!

- Yes! – Rimsky’s sharp, unpleasant voice was heard in the receiver.

“Hello, Grigory Danilovich,” Styopa spoke quietly, “this is Likhodeev.” Here’s the thing... um... um... this... uh... artist Woland is sitting with me... So... I wanted to ask, how about tonight?..

- Oh, a black magician? - Rimsky responded on the phone, - the posters will be coming soon.

-Will you come soon? – asked Rimsky.

“In half an hour,” Styopa answered and, hanging up, he clutched his hot head in his hands. Oh, what a nasty thing it turned out to be! What is it with memory, citizens? A?

However, it was inconvenient to stay longer in the hallway, and Styopa immediately made a plan: to hide his incredible forgetfulness by all means, and now the first duty was to slyly ask the foreigner what he actually intended to show today in the Variety Show entrusted to Styopa?

Then Styopa turned from the apparatus and in the mirror located in the hallway, which had not been wiped for a long time by the lazy Grunya, he clearly saw some strange subject - long as a pole, and wearing pince-nez (oh, if only Ivan Nikolaevich were here! He would recognize this subject straightaway!). And it was reflected and immediately disappeared. Styopa, in alarm, looked deeper into the hallway, and was rocked a second time, for a very large black cat passed in the mirror and also disappeared.

Styopa’s heart sank and he staggered.

"What is it? - he thought, - am I going crazy? Where do these reflections come from?!” - He looked into the hallway and shouted in fear:

- Grunya! What kind of cat is hanging around here? Where is he from? And who else is with him??

“Don’t worry, Stepan Bogdanovich,” responded the voice, not of Grunin, but of a guest from the bedroom, “this cat is mine.” Do not be nervous. But Grunya is gone, I sent her to Voronezh, to her homeland, because she complained that you haven’t given her vacation for a long time.

These words were so unexpected and absurd that Styopa decided that he had misheard. In complete confusion, he trotted into the bedroom and froze on the threshold. His hair moved, and a scattering of fine sweat appeared on his forehead.

The guest was no longer alone in the bedroom, but in company. In the second chair sat the same guy who had imagined himself in the hall. Now he was clearly visible: a feathery mustache, a piece of pince-nez glittering, but no other piece of glass. But there were even worse things in the bedroom: a third person was lounging on the jeweler’s pouffe in a cheeky pose, namely, an eerie-sized black cat with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had managed to pry a pickled mushroom, in the other.

The light, already weak in the bedroom, began to fade completely in Styopa’s eyes. “This is how they go crazy!” - he thought and grabbed the ceiling.

– I see you are a little surprised, dear Stepan Bogdanovich? - Woland inquired of Styopa, who was chattering his teeth, - and yet there is nothing to be surprised at. This is my retinue.

Then the cat drank vodka, and Styopa’s hand crawled down along the ceiling.

“And this retinue requires space,” Woland continued, “so some of us are superfluous here in the apartment.” And it seems to me that this extra one is you!

- They, they! - the long checkered one sang in a goat's voice, speaking in the plural about Styopa, - in general, they've been terribly piggy lately. They get drunk, have relationships with women, using their position, don’t do a damn thing, and they can’t do anything, because they don’t understand anything about what they are entrusted with. The bosses are being bullied!

– He’s driving a government-issued car in vain! – the cat also lied, chewing a mushroom.

And then the fourth and last phenomenon happened in the apartment, when Styopa, who had already completely slid to the floor, scratched the ceiling with his weakened hand.

A small, but unusually broad-shouldered man with a bowler hat on his head and a fang sticking out of his mouth, disfiguring his already unprecedentedly vile face, came straight out of the mirror of the dressing table. And at the same time still fiery red.

“I,” this new one entered the conversation, “I don’t understand at all how he got into the director,” the red-haired man nasaled more and more, “he’s the same director as I am a bishop!”

“You don’t look like a bishop, Azazello,” the cat remarked, putting sausages on his plate.

“That’s what I’m saying,” the red-haired man said, and, turning to Woland, added respectfully: “Do you allow me, sir, to throw him the hell out of Moscow?”

- Shoot!! – the cat suddenly barked, raising his fur.

And then the bedroom spun around Styopa, and he hit his head on the ceiling and, losing consciousness, thought: “I’m dying...”

But he didn't die. Opening his eyes slightly, he saw himself sitting on something stone. Something was making noise around him. When he properly opened his eyes, he saw that the sea was roaring, and what was even more, a wave was rocking at his very feet, and that, in short, he was sitting at the very end of the pier, and that beneath him was the blue sparkling sea , and behind is a beautiful city on the mountains.

Not knowing what to do in such cases, Styopa rose to his shaking legs and walked along the pier to the shore.

End of free trial.

The novel by M. A. Bulgakov is a masterpiece of world and domestic literature. This work remained unfinished, which gives each reader the opportunity to come up with his own ending, to some extent feeling like a real writer.

PART ONE

Chapter 1 Never talk to strangers

The next topic of conversation between Ivan Bezdomny and Mikhail Berlioz was Jesus Christ. They argued heatedly, which attracted the attention of a stranger who decided to have the audacity to interfere in their dialogue. The man resembled a foreigner in both appearance and speech.

Ivan's work was an anti-religious poem. Woland (the name of the stranger, who is also the devil himself) tried to prove the opposite to them, assuring them that Christ exists, but the men remained adamant in their convictions.

Then the foreigner, as evidence, warns Berlioz that he will die from sunflower oil spilled on the tram rails. The tram will be driven by a girl in a red headscarf. She will cut off his head before she can slow down.