The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Suddenly at this point a clock struck twice.

“Oho-ho!” exclaimed Ivan, and rose from the couch. “Two o’clock, and I’m wasting time with you! I’m sorry, where’s the telephone?”

“Let him get to the telephone,” the doctor commanded the orderlies.

Ivan grasped the receiver, and at the same time the woman quietly asked Ryukhin:

“Is he married?”

“Single,” replied Ryukhin fearfully.

“A union member?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the police?” Ivan shouted into the receiver. “Is that the police? Comrade duty officer, make arrangements immediately for five motorcycles with machine guns to be sent out to capture a foreign consultant. What? Come and pick me up, I’ll go with you myself… It’s the poet Bezdomny speaking from the madhouse… What’s your address?” Bezdomny asked the doctor in a whisper, covering the receiver with his palm, and then he again shouted into the receiver: “Are you listening? Hello!. Disgraceful!” Ivan suddenly wailed, and he flung the receiver against the wall. Then he turned to the doctor, reached out his hand to him, said drily “Goodbye” and prepared to leave.

“Pardon me, and where is it you mean to go?” began the doctor, peering into Ivan’s eyes. “In the middle of the night, in your underwear. You don’t feel well, stay here with us!”

“Now let me pass,” said Ivan to the orderlies, who had closed ranks by the doors. “Will you let me go or not?” cried the poet in a terrible voice.

Ryukhin started trembling, but the woman pressed a button in the desk, and a shiny little box and a sealed ampoule sprang out onto its glass surface.

“So that’s the way it is?!” pronounced Ivan, looking around with a wild, trapped air. “Well, all right then! Farewell!” and he flung himself head first into the curtain over the window.

There was quite a heavy crash, but the glass behind the curtain did not so much as crack, and a moment later Ivan Nikolayevich began struggling in the arms of the orderlies. He wheezed, tried to bite them, shouted:

“So that’s the sort of glass you’ve got yourselves!.. Let me go!.. Let me go!”

A syringe gleamed in the doctor’s hands; with a single yank the woman ripped the tattered sleeve of the tolstovka apart and seized hold of the arm with unfeminine strength. There was a sudden smell of ether – Ivan weakened in the arms of four people, and the dextrous doctor made use of that moment to sink the needle into Ivan’s arm. They held on to Ivan for a few more seconds and then lowered him onto the couch.

“Bandits!” Ivan cried, and leapt up from the couch, but he was set upon again. As soon as he was released, he made to leap up again, but this time he sat back down by himself. He was silent for a while, looking around in a wild sort of way, then unexpectedly yawned, then smiled maliciously.

“Locked me up[183 - to lock somebody up – заточить, закрыть] after all,” he said, then yawned once more, unexpectedly lay down, put his head on a cushion and his fist under his cheek, like a child, and began mumbling in a now sleepy voice, without malice: “Well, jolly good too. and you’ll pay for everything yourselves. I’ve warned you, now it’s up to you!. What I’m most interested in now is Pontius Pilate. Pilate.” – here he closed his eyes.

“Bath, private room 117, and set a guard on him,” the doctor ordered, putting on his spectacles. At this point Ryukhin again gave a start: the white doors opened noiselessly, into sight beyond them came a corridor lit by blue night lights. A bed on rubber wheels rolled in from the corridor, and the now quiet Ivan was transferred onto it; he rode into the corridor, and the doors closed up behind him.

“Doctor,” asked the shaken Ryukhin in a whisper, “he really is ill, then?”

“Oh yes,” replied the doctor.

“And what is it that’s wrong with him?” asked Ryukhin timidly.

The tired doctor looked at Ryukhin and answered limply:

“Motive and vocal excitement… delirious interpretations… evidently a complex case. Schizophrenia, one must assume. And add to that alcoholism.”

Ryukhin understood nothing of the doctor’s words, except that Ivan Nikolayevich was clearly in quite a bad way; he sighed and asked:

“And what was that he kept on saying about some consultant?”

“He probably saw somebody his disturbed imagination found striking. Or perhaps he’s been hallucinating.”

A few minutes later the truck was carrying Ryukhin away to Moscow. It was getting light, and the light of the street lamps that had not yet been extinguished on the highway was unnecessary now and unpleasant. The driver was angry about the night having been lost; he sped the vehicle on for all he was worth, and it skidded on the bends[184 - to skid on the bends – заносить на поворотах].

And now the forest had fallen away, been left somewhere behind, and the river had gone off to the side somewhere, and all kinds of different things came hurrying along to meet the truck: fences of some kind with sentry boxes and palettes of firewood, great high poles and masts of some sort with threaded coils on the masts, piles of ballast, earth covered with the lines of channels – in short, there was the sense that here it was at any moment, Moscow, right here, around this bend, and in a minute it would be upon you and envelop you.

Ryukhin was shaken and tossed about; the stump of some sort on which he was sitting was continually trying to slide out from under him. The restaurant’s towels, thrown in by the policeman and Pantelei, who had left earlier by trolleybus, shifted all over the truck. Ryukhin started to try and gather them together, but for some reason maliciously hissing: “Oh, they can go to the devil! Really, what am I fiddling around for like an idiot?” – he kicked them away and stopped looking at them.

The mood of the man as he rode was terrible. It was becoming clear that the visit to the mental asylum had left the most painful mark upon him. Ryukhin tried to understand what was tormenting him. The corridor with the blue lights that had stuck in his mind? The thought that there was no worse misfortune in the world than the loss of one’s reason? Yes, yes, that too, of course. Yet that was just a general thought, after all. But there was something else. Whatever was it? The insult, that’s what. Yes, yes, the insulting words thrown right in his face by Bezdomny. And the trouble was not that they were insulting, but that there was truth in them.

The poet no longer looked from side to side, but, staring at the dirty, shaking floor, began muttering something, whining, gnawing away at himself.

Yes, the poetry… He was thirty-two. What, indeed, lay in the future? In the future too he would compose a few poems a year. Into old age? Yes, into old age. And what would those poems bring him? Fame? “What nonsense! Don’t deceive yourself, at least. Fame will never come to someone who composes bad poetry. Why is it bad? It was true, true, what he said!” Ryukhin addressed himself pitilessly. “I don’t believe in a thing of what I write!”

Poisoned by the explosion of neurasthenia, the poet lurched, and the floor beneath him stopped shaking. Ryukhin raised his head and saw that he had already been in Moscow for a long time and, in addition, that the dawn was over Moscow, that the cloud was lit up from beneath with gold, that his truck was at a standstill, held up in a column of other vehicles at the turn onto a boulevard, and that ever so close to him stood a metal man on a pedestal,[185 - metal man on a pedestal: The monument to Alexander Pushkin by A. M. Opekushin (1838–1923), officially unveiled in 1880. (Комментарий И. Беспалова)] his head slightly inclined, looking dispassionately at the boulevard.

Some strange thoughts surged into the head of the sick poet. “There’s an example of real luck…” At this point Ryukhin stood up straight on the back of the truck and raised his hand, for some reason attacking the cast-iron man who was harming no one. “Whatever step he took in life, whatever happened to him, everything was to his advantage, everything worked towards his fame! But what did he do? I don’t get it. Is there something special about those words: ‘Stormy darkness’?[186 - Stormy darkness: The opening words of Pushkin’s poem of 1825 ‘A Winter’s Evening’. (Комментарий И. Беспалова)] I don’t understand! He was lucky, lucky!” Ryukhin suddenly concluded venomously, and felt that the truck beneath him had stirred. “That White Guard[187 - White Guard – белогвардеец] – he shot, he shot at him, smashed his hip to pieces and guaranteed his immortality.”[188 - White Guard… immortality: Pushkin died following a duel in January 1837 with Georges d’Anthès (1812-95), whose social position as the adopted son of an ambassador made him the pre-revolutionary equivalent of an anti-Bolshevik White Guard. (Комментарий И. Беспалова)]

The column moved off. In no more than two minutes the poet, who was quite unwell and had even aged, was stepping onto Griboyedov’s veranda. It had already emptied. A party of some sort was finishing its drinks in a corner, and in its midst the familiar master of ceremonies was bustling about[189 - to bustle about – суетиться] in his embroidered Asian skullcap[190 - Asian skullcap – тюбетейка] and with a glass of Abrau[191 - Abrau: Abrau Durso is a North Caucasian sparkling wine. (Комментарий И. Беспалова)] in his hand.

Ryukhin, laden with towels, was greeted cordially by Archibald Archibaldovich and immediately relieved of the accursed rags. Had Ryukhin not been so tormented at the clinic and on the truck, he would probably have taken pleasure in recounting how everything had been at the hospital and in embellishing the account with invented details. But now he had other things on his mind, and no matter how unobservant Ryukhin was, now, after the torture in the truck, he scrutinized the pirate acutely for the first time and realized that, though he might ask questions about Bezdomny and even exclaim “oh dear me!”, he was in actual fact completely indifferent to Bezdomny’s fate and did not pity him in the least. “Good for him too! Quite right too!” thought Ryukhin with cynical, selfdestructive malice, and, cutting his account of schizophrenia short, he asked:

“Archibald Archibaldovich, could I have a drop of vodka?” The pirate pulled a sympathetic face and whispered:

“I understand… this very minute…” and waved to a waiter.

A quarter of an hour later, Ryukhin was sitting in total solitude, hunched over some fish and drinking one glass after another, understanding and admitting that it was no longer possible to rectify anything in his life: it was possible only to forget.

The poet had used up his night while others had feasted, and now he understood that it could not be returned to him. He only had to raise his head from the lamp up to the sky to realize that the night was irrevocably lost. The waiters were hurrying, tearing the tablecloths from the tables. The tomcats darting up and down beside the veranda had the look of morning. Inexorably the day was falling upon the poet.

7. A Bad Apartment

If next morning someone had said this to Styopa Likhodeyev: “Styopa! You’ll be shot if you don’t get up this very minute!” – Styopa would have replied in a languid, scarcely audible voice: “Shoot me, do with me what you will, but I shan’t get up.”

It seemed to him that he couldn’t open his eyes, let alone get up, because he only had to do so for lightning to flash and his head to be smashed to pieces at once. Inside that head a heavy bell was booming, brown spots with fiery green rims were swimming by between his eyeballs and his closed eyelids, and to crown it all, he felt nauseous, and it seemed, moreover, that this nausea was linked with the sounds of some importunate gramophone.

Styopa tried to call something to mind[192 - to call something to mind – вызывать в памяти], but there was only one thing that would come: that yesterday, there was no knowing where, he had apparently been standing with a napkin in his hand and trying to kiss some lady or other, while promising her that next day, and precisely at noon, he would pay her a visit. The lady had been declining this, saying: “No, no, I shan’t be at home!” – but Styopa had stubbornly insisted on having it his way[193 - to have it one's way – настаивать]: “Well, I shall just go and turn up!”

Styopa had absolutely no idea who the lady had been, or what time it was now, or what day of what month – and worst of all, he could not understand where he was. He attempted to elucidate this last point at least, and to do so he unstuck the glued-up lids of his left eye. In the semi-darkness there was something shining dimly. Styopa finally recognized a cheval glass, and realized he was lying on his back on his bed – that is, on the former jeweller’s wife’s bed – in his bedroom. At this point he received such a blow on the head that he closed his eye and began groaning.

Let us explain ourselves: Styopa Likhodeyev, the Director of the Variety Theatre, had come round in the morning at home, in the very apartment he had shared with the late Berlioz, in a large six-storey building shaped like the letter pokoi[194 - pokoi: This refers to the letter that in Russian script looks like this: П. Pokoi can also mean “peace, quiet”. (Комментарий И. Беспалова)] on Sadovaya Street.

It should be said that this apartment – No. 50 – had already long enjoyed if not a bad, then in any event a strange reputation. Just two years before, its owner had been the widow of the jeweller De Fougeré. Anna Franzevna de Fougeré, a respectable and very businesslike fifty-year-old lady, had rented out three of her five rooms to lodgers: one whose name seems to have been Belomut and another with a name that has been lost.

And then, two years before, inexplicable things had started happening in the apartment: people had begun disappearing from this apartment without trace.

One day, on a holiday, a policeman appeared at the apartment, summoned the second lodger (whose name has been lost) into the entrance hall and said that the latter was requested to drop into the police station for a moment to sign for something. The lodger asked Anfisa, Anna Franzevna’s devoted and longtime maid, to say, in the event of anybody phoning him, that he would be back in ten minutes, and off he went with the correctly behaved policeman in white gloves. But not only did he not come back in ten minutes, he never came back at all. Most surprising of all is the fact that the policeman evidently disappeared along with him as well.