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        "data": "Chapter 1\n\nNEVER TALK TO STRANGERS\nOnce on a sweltering hot evening in spring, two gentlemen appeared at the Patriarch's Ponds in Moscow. The first wore a gray summer suit, he was short, well fed, bald, and held his respectable-looking fedora hat delicately in one hand. On his cleanly shaven face he had found room for a pair of huge black horn-rimmed glasses. The second - a muscular young man - had a mess of red hair and a checkered cap shoved back from his forehead, he wore a cowboy shirt, creased white pants and black shoes.\n\nThe first was none other than Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz, chairman of the board of one of Moscow's largest literary associations - MASSOLIT for short - and editor of a copious literary journal. His young friend was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyryov, known under the pen name Bezdomny - \"Homeless\".\n\nReaching a shady spot under the young leaves of a group of linden trees, both writers made straight for a gaudy little booth with a sign reading: \"Beer and soft drinks\".\n\nBut here we must note the first strange thing about this terrible May evening. There was not a living soul to be seen - neither by the booth itself, nor on the tree-lined walk along Little Bronnaya Street. All day long the sun had scorched the city, until it finally went off to sulk somewhere in a dry haze beyond the Sadovoe Ring. You'd think people would be gasping for a breath of fresh air - but no one came to walk in the shade under the lindens or to sit on the benches. The park was empty.\n\n- I'll have a Narzan, - said Berlioz.\n\n- We're all out of Narzan, - replied the woman in the booth, who was somehow offended by his request.\n\n- How about beer? - inquired the poet hoarsely.\n\n- They're bringing beer this evening, - answered the woman.\n\n- So what do you have? - asked Berlioz.\n\n- Apricot juice. But it's warm, - said the woman.\n\n- Let's have it, let's have it!...\n\nThe apricot juice gave off a thick, yellowish foam and made the air smell like a hairdresser's. The two patrons of literature swallowed the liquid, immediately got the hiccups, paid the saleswoman and went off to sit on a bench facing the pond with its back to Bronnaya.\n\nAnd now the second strange thing happened, which concerned only Berlioz. His hiccups stopped, his heart gave a sudden leap, dropped out of reach for a moment, then returned with a blunt needle throbbing in it. Berlioz was paralyzed by fear. There was nothing to be afraid of, but all he wanted to do was get up and dash away from Patriarch's Ponds as fast as his legs could carry him. Berlioz looked around in anguish, but without understanding what was happening to him. His face paled. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and thought to himself: \"What's going on? This has never... my heart's playing tricks on me... I've been working too hard. Maybe I should just let the devil take it all and catch the first train to Kislovodsk...\"\n\nJust then the burning air thickened in front of him, and out of it protruded a transparent personage with the most amazing appearance. A tiny head in a jockey cap, a short-tailed, checkered jacket of air... The person was about seven feet tall, narrow-breasted, unnaturally thin, and with the looks, believe me, of an altogether shameless rogue.\n\nLife had left Berlioz quite unprepared for unusual events of this kind. He turned even paler, opened his eyes wide and heard his mind chatter frantically: \"It's not real!...\"\n\nBut alas, that is exactly what it was, and the tall, transparent person continued to sway gently in front of him, not only to one side, but to the other side as well, without even having the common decency to keep his feet on the ground.\n\nBerlioz had by now reached such a peak of terror that he closed his eyes. When he reopened them it was all over, the mirage had evaporated, the man in checkers was gone, and at the same moment he felt the dull needle slip from his heart.\n\n- The devil! - exclaimed the editor, - you know Ivan, just now I almost had a heart attack from this heat! I even had some kind of hallucination, - he tried to smile, but his eyes were still shot through with alarm and his hands trembled.\n\nBut as he calmed down, fanning himself with his handkerchief, he proceeded rather bravely: \"Well, as I was saying\u2026\" - and continued the speech interrupted by the apricot drink.\n\nIt later emerged that he had been speaking of Jesus Christ. The fact was that the editor had ordered a long antireligious poem from the poet for the next edition of his journal. Ivan Nikolaevich had finished the poem on time, but unfortunately the editor wasn't happy with it at all. Bezdomny had portrayed his chief protagonist - Jesus - in the darkest of colors, nevertheless, the editor insisted that the poem would have to be redone from scratch. Now the editor was delivering a kind of lecture about Jesus, to explain the poet's fundamental mistake. It's hard to say exactly what had gotten Ivan Nikolaevich off on the wrong track - the sheer vitality of his descriptive talent or his total ignorance of the subject matter he proposed to describe, - but somehow his Jesus came alive, though his personality, it is true, was hardly attractive. Now Berlioz was trying to demonstrate that the important point wasn't what kind of person Jesus had been, good, bad or indifferent, but that Jesus, as a person, had never existed at all in this world, and that all the stories about him were pure fantasy - nothing but myth.\n\nWe should remind the reader that the editor was a well-read man and thoroughly at home with the ancient historians, to whom he referred with verve and ease - the famous Philon of Alexandria, for example, or the brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom had ever written a word about the existence of Jesus. With a convincing show of erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich informed the poet, among other things, that the passage in Book 15, Chapter 44 of the famous \"Annals\" of Tacitus, which recounts the execution of Jesus, is in fact nothing but a latter-day forgery.\n\nThe poet, who was ignorant of everything Mikhail Andreevich told him, focused his alert, green eyes on the editor and listened attentively, with only an occasional hiccup, followed by whispered oaths at the apricot juice.\n\n- That's how it is in all the Eastern religions, - Berlioz said, - there's a virgin mother who gives birth to God - it's perfectly normal. The Christians couldn't think of anything better, so that's how they imagined their Jesus, who in fact never existed at all. You see, this is what you've got to get across to the reader...\n\nAs his light tenor spread through the park and Mikhail Alexandrovich penetrated deeper into a wilderness, which only the most learned of men can enter without risking their necks, the poet was acquainted with an increasing number of interesting and useful facts about the Egyptian Osiris - God of blessings and son of Heaven and Earth, Fammuz - God of the Phoeniceans, Marduk, and even the less-renowned terrible God Vitsliputsli, who was once held in high esteem by the Mexican Aztecs.\n\nJust then, as Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to stick together figurines of dough depicting the God Vitsliputsli, the first man appeared in the park.\n\nAfterwards, when it was frankly too late, various institutions compared their reports describing this man. The differences between them cannot fail to astonish us. Thus, the first asserts that the man was short, had gold teeth and limped on his right foot. According to the second he was a giant with platinum fillings and a limp on his left foot. The third confirms laconically that the man had no distinguishing features at all.\n\nIt must be conceded that every one of these reports is worthless.\n\nFirst of all, the subject limped on neither foot, was neither gigantic nor short, but simply tall. As for his teeth, they were gold on the left side, platinum on the right. He dressed in an expensive gray suit with matching shoes of foreign make, wore a gray cap mischievously pulled down over one ear, and cradled a walking-stick with the head of a black poodle in his arm. To judge by his looks, he might have been just past forty. Mouth slightly crooked. Clean shave. Hair dark. Right eye black, left eye - for some reason - green. Black eyebrows, one raised higher than the other. In short - a foreigner.\n\nPassing the bench with the editor and poet, the foreigner leaned toward them, stopped and abruptly seated himself on the neighboring bench, two steps away.\n\n\"German\", - thought Berlioz\n\n\"Englishman, - thought Bezdomny, - God, he must be hot in those gloves\".\n\nThe foreigner let his gaze travel slowly around the square formed by the tall buildings enclosing the pond. It was obvious that he was seeing this place for the first time, and that it fascinated him.\n\nHis eyes were arrested at the level of the top-story windows, from which the broken sun reflected down on them one last time before departing from Mikhail Alexandrovich forever. Then he looked further down, where the panes were already darkening with the onset of evening. Something gave rise to an aloof smile. He screwed up his eyes, folded his hands on the head of his cane, and rested his chin on them.\n\n- You see, Ivan, - said Berlioz, - you've done an excellent satire, let's say, of the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, but the point is that way before Jesus there was a whole list of Sons of God like the Phrygian Attis, none of whom were ever born or ever lived, and with Jesus it's the same story, so you simply must not go on describing his birth and the three kings and so on. Instead you should describe the absurd rumors of his birth... Otherwise your story will end up giving the impression that he was actually born!...\n\nBezdomny now made an attempt to stop the hiccups that were tormenting him by holding his breath, but the only result was an even louder and more painful hiccup. At this Berlioz broke off his speech, because the foreigner suddenly got up and approached the two authors.\n\nThey looked at him in surprise.\n\n- Excuse me, please, - the man said, with a foreign accent, but understandably enough, - that I, not being acquainted, permit myself... but the subject of your learned conversation was so intriguing, that...\n\nHe politely lifted his cap, and the friends had no choice but to rise from their seats and greet him.\n\n\"No, I guess he's French...\" - thought Berlioz.\n\n\"Polish?..\" - thought Bezdomny.\n\nWe must add that the foreigner's first words made an altogether distasteful impression on the poet, while Berlioz rather liked him, or not exactly liked him... well, how should one put it... found him interesting or something like that.\n\n- Would you permit me to sit with you? - the foreigner asked politely, and somehow, mechanically, the companions moved apart; the foreigner quickly seated himself between them and entered directly into their conversation.\n\n- You were, if I am not mistaken, just saying that Jesus never existed? - asked the foreigner, focusing his left eye, the green one, on Berlioz.\n\n- You're quite right, - Berlioz answered pleasantly, - that's exactly what I was saying.\n\n- Oh, how interesting! - the foreigner exclaimed.\n\n\"What the devil does he want?\" - thought Bezdomny and knit his brows.\n\n- And did you agree with your companion? - inquired the stranger, turning right to face Bezdomny.\n\n- To the hilt! - confirmed the poet, who loved pretentious figures of speech.\n\n- Amazing! - exclaimed their uninvited partner, looking furtively around, and for some reason or other lowering his voice: - Excuse me for intruding, but am I correct in assuming that you, quite aside from everything else, do not believe in God? - He opened his eyes wide with fear as he added: - I promise not to tell a soul.\n\n- You're quite right, we don't believe in God, - Berlioz answered, smiling faintly at the tourist's fear, - but you may speak quite openly about that.\n\nThe foreigner leaned back on the bench and asked, with a voice so full of curiosity that it almost squeaked:\n\n- You're atheists?!\n\n- Yes, we're atheists, - answered Berlioz, with a smile, while Bezdomny angrily thought to himself: \"Now we're stuck with the foreign goose!\"\n\n- Oh how splendid! - exclaimed the extraordinary foreigner, and wagged his head, looking from one author to the other.\n\n- In our country nobody is surprised by atheism, - Berlioz diplomatically explained, - the great majority of the population consciously stopped believing the fairytales about God a long time ago.\n\nAt this the foreigner pulled off quite a trick: he rose to his feet, gripped the astonished editor by the hand and proclaimed:\n\n- Permit me to express my heartfelt thanks!\n\n- What are you thanking him for? - inquired Bezdomny, his eyes twitching with surprise.\n\n- For a very crucial piece of information, which for me, as a traveler, is of the greatest value, - explained the eccentric foreigner, waving his finger ambiguously.\n\nThe important information seemed quite honestly to have made a deep impression on the foreigner, because he looked fearfully around at the houses again, as if he expected an atheist to pop out of every window.\n\n\"No, he's not English...\" - thought Berlioz, and Bezdomny thought to himself: \"Where did he learn to speak Russian like that - now that's an interesting question!\" - and knit his brows again.\n\n- But permit me to ask, - recommenced their foreign guest after a troubled pause, - what about the proofs of God's existence, of which, you know, there are no less than five.\n\n- I'm sorry! - answered Berlioz regretfully, - every one of the proofs is worthless, and humanity has committed them to the dustbin long ago. For you agree, don't you, that in a rational world there can be no valid proof of the existence of God.\n\n- Bravo! - cried the foreigner, - bravo! You support restless old Immanuel's views on the subject completely. But here's a curious fact: after polishing off all five proofs, he continued, as if to mock his own efforts, to construct his very own proof, as a sixth.\n\n- Kant's proof, - objected the learned editor, smiling indulgently, - is hardly convincing either. Schiller was quite right that Kant's reflections can satisfy no one but a slave, and Strauss simply laughed at his proof.\n\nAs Berlioz spoke, he kept thinking to himself: \"All this is nice and dandy, but who is he anyway? And how come he speaks such good Russian?\"\n\n- Someone should send that guy Kant to Solovk\u00ed to cool off a few years for a proof like that! - Ivan Nikolaevich blurted out unexpectedly.\n\n- Ivan! - whispered Berlioz, blushing.\n\nBut the foreigner was not only struck by the suggestion of sending Kant to Solovk\u00ed, he was enthusiastic.\n\n- Yes, yes, - he cried, and his green, left eye glittered at Berlioz, - that's the place for him! That's what I told him at the breakfast-table that time: \"Professor, do as you like, but this thing you've dreamed up is a mess! It may be smart, but it's too goddamn difficult. People are going to laugh at you\".\n\nBerlioz opened his eyes wide. \"At the breakfast-table... To Kant?... What's he babbling?\" - he thought.\n\n- But, - the foreigner continued, unperturbed by Berlioz's surprise and directing his attention at the poet, - it's quite impossible to send him to Solovk\u00ed now, since it's already more than a hundred years since he was conveyed to points much further off than Solovk\u00ed, and retrieving him from there, I assure you, is quite out of the question.\n\n- What a shame! - replied the provocative poet.\n\n- Yes, isn't it! - agreed the stranger, his eyes glittering, and continued: - But there's another question bothering me: if there is no God, we must ask ourselves who directs the life of humanity and the entire order of existence on earth.\n\n- Man himself directs it, - Bezdomny hurriedly snapped back at this, it must be admitted, rather vague question.\n\n- Pardon me, - replied the stranger softly, - but in order to direct, one must somehow or other have an exact plan encompassing a more or less respectable span of time. Please tell me how man can direct anything at all, when he's not only unable to put together a plan for the utterly insignificant period of, say, one thousand years, but he can't even keep track of what will happen to himself tomorrow? Very well, - the stranger turned to Berlioz, - let's say you, for instance, start directing, you organize yourself and others, on the whole, you're getting the feel of it, then suddenly... heh... heh... a light case of sarcoma... - the foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the idea of a light sarcoma made him think of something nice, - indeed, sarcoma, - he repeated the resonating syllables with eyes closed, like a cat, - your directorship is ended! The only fate you're interested in now is your own. Your family starts lying to you; sensing that something's amiss you drag yourself off first to scientific doctors, then to quacks, maybe even to old wives in the end. All the time you know perfectly well that the first is just as senseless as the second or the third. The story ends tragically: Just a while ago you thought you were directing something, now all at once you're lying motionless in a wooden casket, and the surrounding public, quickly grasping that there is nothing sensible at all to be gotten out of the person lying there, sets fire to him in an oven. But even worse things happen: Someone decides to go to Kislovodsk, - the foreigner barely winked at Berlioz, - that's not a problem, you might say, but even that is beyond him, because suddenly, for no apparent reason, a trolley skids and runs him down! Now don't tell me he directed that himself? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to suspect that someone else directed him? - the stranger laughed peculiarly.\n\nBerlioz followed the unpleasant story of the sarcoma and the trolley with rapt attention, and uneasy thoughts started to distress him. 'He's not a foreigner! He's not a foreigner! - he said to himself, - he's a very unusual character... but who is he, anyway?\u201d\n\n- You would like a cigarette, I see? - the stranger observed suddenly to Bezdomny, - what brand do you prefer?\n\n- You mean you've got several? - asked the poet darkly. He had run out.\n\n- Which do you prefer? - repeated the stranger.\n\n- Well then, Nasha Marka, - Bezdomny blurted out, angrily.\n\nThe stranger flipped a cigarette case from his pocket and handed it to Bezdomny:\n\n- Nasha Marka.\n\nWhat surprised the editor and poet was not so much the fact that the case contained Nasha Marka, as the cigarette case itself. It was very bulky, made of pure gold, and when you opened the lid it flashed with the blue and white fire of a triangle of diamonds.\n\nThe two literary gentlemen reacted differently to this. Berlioz: 'No, he's not a foreigner\u201d, Bezdomny: 'The devil take him, ah?\u201d\n\nThe poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit up, while Berlioz, who was not a smoker, declined.\n\n'I'll have to answer him like this, - Berlioz thought to himself, - true, man is mortal, no-one denies that. However, the fact is, that...\u201d\n\nBut before he had time to pronounce these words, the stranger continued:\n\n- True, man is mortal, but that is itself only half the evil. The trouble is that man is sometimes suddenly mortal, that's the tricky part! Basically, he can never say what will happen to him this evening.\n\n'What an idiotic way of putting it...\u201d thought Berlioz, and objected:\n\n- Certainly, that is an exaggeration. I know more or less exactly what will happen this evening. Of course, if a brick falls on my head on Bronnaya...\n\n- Bricks are out of the question, - the stranger broke him off sharply, - not a single brick will ever fall on anybody's head. Under no circumstances, I assure you, does this constitute a threat. You will die a different death.\n\n- And perhaps you know just which? - inquired Berlioz with the most natural irony, he had clearly been drawn into some kind of absurd conversation, - and can tell me?\n\n- Certainly, - responded the stranger. He measured Berlioz with his gaze, as if he were sewing him a suit, and mumbled through his teeth, something like: 'One, two... Mercury in the second house... the moon is down... six - misfortune... evening - seven...\u201d - then he loudly and delightedly proclaimed: - You'll have your head cut off!\u201d\n\nBezdomny stared at the stranger, who was obviously enjoying himself, wild-eyed and angry, and Berlioz, with a crooked smirk, asked:\n\n- By whom exactly? Enemies? Foreign aggressors?\n\n- No, - answered his companion, - by a Russian woman, a Komsomolka.\n\n- Hm... - muttered Berlioz, the stranger's joke irritated him, - I'm sorry, but that seems extremely unlikely.\n\n- I'm sorry too, - answered the foreigner, - but that's how it is. Oh yes, I wanted to ask you, what are you doing this evening, if it's not a secret?\n\n- Why should it be a secret? In a little while, I'll be going home to my place on Sadovaya, then, at ten o'clock this evening, there is a meeting at MASSOLIT, which I will chair.\n\n- That's completely out of the question, - the foreigner objected firmly.\n\n- May I ask why?\n\n- Because, - answered the foreigner, staring through half-closed eyes at the sky, against which black birds, anticipating the evening cool, were silently silhouetted, - because Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, not only has she paid for it, she's already poured it up. So there will be no meeting.\n\nAt this, as one might expect, there was silence under the lindens.\n\n- Excuse me, - said Berlioz after a pause, with a glance at the senselessly prattling foreigner, - but why sunflower oil... and who is Annushka?\n\n- I'll tell you why sunflower oil, - said Bezdomny suddenly, he had clearly made up his mind to declare war on their unknown companion, - you haven't by any chance, sir, spent time in a mental institution?\n\n- Ivan!... - Mikhail Aleksandrovich exclaimed under his breath.\n\nBut the foreigner was not the least offended and laughed merrily.\n\n- Yes, certainly, many times! - he exclaimed, laughing, but without moving his unblinking eyes from the poet, - I've spent time in the strangest places! It's just a shame I never found time to ask the professor what schizophrenia is. So you'll have to ask him yourself, Ivan Nikolaevich!\n\n- How do you know my name?\n\n- But Ivan Nikolaevich, doesn't everyone know you? - the foreigner extracted a copy of yesterday's Literaturnaya Gazeta from his pocket, and right there on the front page Ivan Nikolaevich could see his own portrait with his poetry underneath. The poet, who had only yesterday been filled with delight at this proof of his fame and popularity, was not the least bit delighted now.\n\n- I apologize, - he said, his face darkening, - could you excuse us for a moment? I want to say a few words to my friend.\n\n- Why certainly! - the foreigner exclaimed, - it's very pleasant here under the lindens, and, come to think of it, I am in no rush at all.\n\n- Listen, Misha, - whispered the poet, who had pulled Berlioz to one side, - he's not a foreign tourist, he's a spy. He's a Russian emigrant, who has wended his way back home to us. Demand to see his documents, or he'll slip off...\n\n- Do you think so? - asked Berlioz nervously, and thought to himself: 'I bet he's right!\u201d\n\n- Believe me, - the poet whispered in his ear, - he's just acting stupid to fool us to answer his questions. Notice how good his Russian is, - the poet said, looking askance at the stranger so he wouldn't run away, - come, let's detain him, or he'll slip off...\n\nThe poet pulled Berlioz by the hand back to the bench.\n\nThe stranger, no longer seated on the bench, was standing beside it, holding some kind of booklet with dark gray binding, a thick envelope of good paper and a business card.\n\n- Pardon me, but in the heat of our discussion I completely forgot to introduce myself. Here is my card, my passport and my invitation to come to Moscow for consultations, - said the stranger ceremoniously, peering intently at the two patrons of literature.\n\nThey were quite taken aback. 'The devil, he heard it all...\u201d - thought Berlioz who made it clear with a polite gesture that it would be unnecessary to inspect the documents. While the foreigner was holding them out to the editor, the poet just had time to read the word 'professor\u201d printed in foreign letters on the card, and the first letter of a surname - 'W\u201d.\n\n- Very pleasant to meet you, - mumbled the editor confusedly, the foreigner returned his papers to his pocket.\n\nNormal relations thus restored, all three returned to their places on the bench.\n\n- So you're invited here as a consultant, professor? - asked Berlioz.\n\n- Yes, as a consultant.\n\n- Are you German? - Bezdomny inquired.\n\n- Me?... - echoed the professor, suddenly falling into thought. - Yes, I suppose, I'm German... - he said.\n\n- You speak excellent Russian, - remarked Bezdomny.\n\n- Ah yes, really I am rather a polyglot and know a very great number of languages, - replied the professor.\n\n- And what is your specialization? - inquired Berlioz.\n\n- I specialize in black magic.\n\n'Well I'll be damned!..\u201d - echoed through Mikhail Aleksandrovich's head.\n\n- And... you were invited here on account of this specialization? - he stammered.\n\n- That's why they invited me, - repeated the professor and explained: - Here at the state library they've discovered original tenth-century manuscripts by the necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac. Now they want me to decipher them. I'm the only specialist in the world.\n\n- Ah! You're a historian? - asked Berlioz with great relief and respect.\n\n- I'm a historian, - the scholar confirmed, and continued, without rhyme or reason: - This evening at Patriarch's Ponds there'll be an interesting story!\n\nAgain, both the editor and the poet were quite taken aback, but the professor beckoned them toward him, and when they bent close, he whispered:\n\n- Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.\n\n- Well, you see, professor, - replied Berlioz with a forced smile, - with all due respect for your great knowledge, we permit ourselves in this case to hold a different point of view.\n\n- Points of view won't change a thing! - answered the strange professor, - he just existed, that's all.\n\n- But surely, we should demand some kind of proof... - commenced Berlioz.\n\n- Proofs won't change a thing either, - answered the professor, who started speaking softly and at the same time, for some reason, his accent disappeared: - It's all very simple: in a white cape...\n\n",
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