Ivan did not get upset, as he had promised, but even so he was greatly astounded.
‘That can’t be! He doesn’t exist!’
‘Good heavens! Anyone else might say that, but not you. You were apparently one of his first victims. You’re sitting, as you yourself understand, in a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying he doesn’t exist. Really, it’s strange!’
Thrown off, Ivan fell silent.
‘As soon as you started describing him,’ the guest went on, ‘I began to realize who it was that you had the pleasure of talking with yesterday. And, really, I’m surprised at Berlioz! Now you, of course, are a virginal person,’ here the guest apologized again, ‘but that one, from what I’ve heard about him, had after all read at least something! The very first things this professor said dispelled all my doubts. One can’t fail to recognize him, my friend! Though you … again I must apologize, but I’m not mistaken, you are an ignorant man?’
‘Indisputably,’ the unrecognizable Ivan agreed.
‘Well, so … even the face, as you described it, the different eyes, the eyebrows! … Forgive me, however, perhaps you’ve never even heard the opera Faust?’
Ivan became terribly embarrassed for some reason and, his face aflame, began mumbling something about some trip to a sanatorium … to Yalta …
‘Well, so, so … hardly surprising! But Berlioz, I repeat, astounds me … He’s not only a well-read man but also a very shrewd one. Though I must say in his defence that Woland is, of course, capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of an even shrewder man.’
‘What?!’ Ivan cried out in his turn.
‘Hush!’
Ivan slapped himself roundly on the forehead with his palm and rasped:
‘I see, I see. He had the letter “W” on his visiting card. Ai-yai-yai, what a thing!’ He lapsed into a bewildered silence for some time, peering at the moon floating outside the grille, and then spoke: ‘So that means he might actually have been at Pontius Pilate’s? He was already born then? And they call me a madman!’ Ivan added indignantly, pointing to the door.
A bitter wrinkle appeared on the guest’s lips.
‘Let’s look the truth in the eye.’ And the guest turned his face towards the nocturnal luminary racing through a cloud. ‘You and I are both madmen, there’s no denying that! You see, he shocked you – and you came unhinged, since you evidently had the ground prepared for it. But what you describe undoubtedly took place in reality. But it’s so extraordinary that even Stravinsky, a psychiatrist of genius, did not, of course, believe you. Did he examine you?’ (Ivan nodded.) ‘Your interlocutor was at Pilate’s, and had breakfast with Kant, and now he’s visiting Moscow.‘
‘But he’ll be up to devil knows what here! Oughtn’t we to catch him somehow?’ the former, not yet definitively quashed Ivan still raised his head, though without much confidence, in the new Ivan.
‘You’ve already tried, and that will do for you,’ the guest replied ironically. ‘I don’t advise others to try either. And as for being up to something, rest assured, he will be! Ah, ah! But how annoying that it was you who met him and not I. Though it’s all burned up, and the coals have gone to ashes, still, I swear, for that meeting I’d give Praskovya Fyodorovna’s bunch of keys, for I have nothing else to give. I’m destitute.’
‘But what do you need him for?’
The guest paused ruefully for a long time and twitched, but finally spoke:
‘You see, it’s such a strange story, I’m sitting here for the same reason you are – namely, on account of Pontius Pilate.’ Here the guest looked around fearfully and said: ‘The thing is that a year ago I wrote a novel about Pilate.’
‘You’re a writer?’ the poet asked with interest.
The guest’s face darkened and he threatened Ivan with his fist, then said:
‘I am a master.’ He grew stem and took from the pocket of his dressing-gown a completely greasy black cap with the letter ‘M’ embroidered on it in yellow silk. He put this cap on and showed himself to Ivan both in profile and full face, to prove that he was a master. ’She sewed it for me with her own hands,‘ he added mysteriously.
‘And what is your name?’
‘I no longer have a name,’ the strange guest answered with gloomy disdain. ‘I renounced it, as I generally did everything in life. Let’s forget it.’
Then at least tell me about the novel,‘ Ivan asked delicately.
‘If you please, sir. My life, it must be said, has taken a not very ordinary course,’ the guest began.
… A historian by education, he had worked until two years ago at one of the Moscow museums, and, besides that, had also done translations.
‘From what languages?’ Ivan interrupted curiously.
‘I know five languages besides my own,’ replied the guest, ‘English, French, German, Latin and Greek. Well, I can also read Italian a little.’
‘Oh, my!’ Ivan whispered enviously.
… The historian had lived solitarily, had no family anywhere and almost no acquaintances in Moscow. And, just think, one day he won a hundred thousand roubles.
‘Imagine my astonishment,’ the guest in the black cap whispered, ‘when I put my hand in the basket of dirty laundry and, lo and behold, it had the same number as in the newspaper. A state bond,’1 he explained, ‘they gave it to me at the museum.’
… Having won a hundred thousand roubles, Ivan’s mysterious guest acted thus: bought books, gave up his room on Myasnitskaya …
‘Ohh, that accursed hole! …’ he growled.
… and rented from a builder, in a lane near the Arbat, two rooms in the basement of a little house in the garden. He left his work at the museum and began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate.
‘Ah, that was a golden age!’ the narrator whispered, his eyes shining. ‘A completely private little apartment, plus a front hall with a sink in it,’ he underscored for some reason with special pride, ‘little windows just level with the paved walk leading from the gate. Opposite, only four steps away, near the fence, lilacs, a linden and a maple.
Ah, ah, ah! In winter it was very seldom that I saw someone’s black feet through my window and heard the snow crunching under them. And in my stove a fire was eternally blazing! But suddenly spring came and through the dim glass I saw lilac bushes, naked at first, then dressing themselves up in green. And it was then, last spring, that something happened far more delightful than getting a hundred thousand roubles. And that, you must agree, is a huge sum of money!’
That’s true,‘ acknowledged the attentively listening Ivan.
‘I opened my little windows and sat in the second, quite minuscule room.’ The guest began measuring with his arms: ‘Here’s the sofa, and another sofa opposite, and a little table between them, with a beautiful night lamp on it, and books nearer the window, and here a small writing table, and in the first room – a huge room, one hundred and fifty square feet! — books, books and the stove. Ah, what furnishings I had! The extraordinary smell of the lilacs! And my head was getting light with fatigue, and Pilate was flying to the end …’
‘White mantle, red lining! I understand!’ Ivan exclaimed.
‘Precisely so! Pilate was flying to the end, to the end, and I already knew that the last words of the novel would be: “… the fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate”. Well, naturally, I used to go out for a walk. A hundred thousand is a huge sum, and I had an excellent suit. Or I’d go and have dinner in some cheap restaurant. There was a wonderful restaurant on the Arbat, I don’t know whether it exists now.’ Here the guest’s eyes opened wide, and he went on whispering, gazing at the moon: ‘She was carrying repulsive, alarming yellow flowers in her hand. Devil knows what they’re called, but for some reason they’re the first to appear in Moscow.
And these flowers stood out clearly against her black spring coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! Not a nice colour. She turned down a lane from Tverskaya and then looked back. Well, you know Tverskaya!
Thousands of people were walking along Tverskaya, but I can assure you that she saw me alone, and looked not really alarmed, but even as if in pain. And I was struck not so much by her beauty as by an extraordinary loneliness in her eyes, such as no one had ever seen before! Obeying this yellow sign, I also turned down the lane and followed her.
We walked along the crooked, boring lane silently, I on one side, she on the other. And, imagine, there was not a soul in the lane. I was suffering, because it seemed to me that it was necessary to speak to her, and I worried that I wouldn’t utter a single word, and she would leave, and I’d never see her again. And, imagine, suddenly she began to speak:
‘ “Do you like my flowers?”
‘I remember clearly the sound of her voice; rather low, slightly husky, and, stupid as it is, it seemed that the echo resounded in the lane and bounced off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed to her side and, coming up to her, answered:
‘“No!”
‘She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, understood that all my life I had loved precisely this woman! Quite a thing, eh? Of course, you’ll say I’m mad?’
‘I won’t say anything,’ Ivan exclaimed, and added: ‘I beg you, go on!’
And the guest continued.
‘Yes, she looked at me in surprise, and then,
