1. Never Talk to Strangers

     At the sunset  hour of one warm spring day two  men were  to be seen at
Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them--aged about forty, dressed in a greyish
summer  suit--was  short,  dark-haired,  well-fed  and bald.  He carried his
decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly shaven face was embellished
by  black hornrimmed spectacles of  preternatural  dimensions. The other,  a
broad-shouldered young  man with  curly reddish hair  and a check cap pushed
back  to the nape of  his neck,  was  wearing a tartan  shirt,  chewed white
trousers and black sneakers.
     The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich  Berlioz, editor of
a  highbrow literary magazine  and chairman of the management cofnmittee  of
one of the  biggest Moscow  literary  clubs, known by  its  abbreviation  as
massolit; his  young companion  was  the  poet Ivan  Nikolayich Poniryov who
wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny.
     Reaching  the shade  of the budding lime  trees,  the two writers  went
straight to a gaily-painted kiosk labelled'Beer and Minerals'.
     There was an oddness about  that  terrible day in  May  which  is worth
recording  : not  only at  the  kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to
Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of
the  day  when people  feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a
dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard--yet no one had
come  out for a walk under the limes,  no one  was  sitting  on a bench, the
avenue was empty.
     'A glass of lemonade, please,'said Berlioz.
     'There isn't any,'replied the woman  in the kiosk. For some reason  the
request seemed to offend her.
     'Got any beer?' enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
     'Beer's being delivered later this evening' said the woman.
     'Well what have you got?' asked Berlioz.
     'Apricot juice, only it's warm' was the answer.
     'All right, let's have some.'
     The apricot juice produced a rich  yellow froth, making the  air  smell
like a hairdresser's. After drinking it the two writers immediately began to
hiccup.  They paid and  sat down on a bench facing  the pond, their backs to
Bronnaya  Street.Then occurred  the second oddness,  which  affected Berlioz
alone.  He suddenly stopped  hiccuping, his heart  thumped and for  a moment
vanished, then  returned  but  with  a  blunt  needle sticking  into it.  In
addition  Berlioz was seized  by a  fear that was groundless but so powerful
that he had an immediate impulse  to run away from Patriarch's Ponds without
looking back.
     Berlioz gazed  miserably  about him, unable  to say what had frightened
him.  He went pale,  wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and thought: '
What's  the  matter with me?  This has never happened  before. Heart playing
tricks . . .  I'm overstrained ... I think it's time  to chuck everything up
and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk. . . .'
     Just then the sultry air coagulated and wove itself into the shape of a
man--a  transparent man of the strangest appearance. On his small head was a
jockey-cap and he wore a short check bum-freezer made of  air.  The man  was
seven feet tall but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin and with a face
made for derision.
     Berlioz's life  was  so arranged that he  was not  accustomed to seeing
unusual  phenomena. Paling even more, he stared and thought in consternation
: ' It can't be!'
     But alas it was,  and the tall, transparent gentleman was  swaying from
left to right in front of him without touching the ground.
     Berlioz was so overcome with  horror  that  he shut  his eyes.  When he
opened them he saw  that  it was  all  over, the  mirage  had dissolved, the
chequered  figure  had  vanished and  the  blunt needle  had  simultaneously
removed itself from his heart.
     'The  devil! '  exclaimed the  editor.  ' D'you  know, Ivan,  the heat
nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw something like a hallucination
. . . ' He tried to smile but his eyes were still blinking with fear and his
hands trembled.  However he gradually calmed  down, flapped his handkerchief
and with a brave enough ' Well, now. .  . ' carried on the conversation that
had been interrupted by their drink of apricot juice.
     They had been talking, it seemed, about Jesus Christ. The fact was that
the editor had commissioned the poet to write a long anti-religious poem for
one of the regular issues of  his magazine. Ivan Nikolayich had written this
poem in record  time, but unfortunately the editor did not  care for  it  at
all.  Bezdomny had drawn the chief figure in  his poem, Jesus, in very black
colours, yet in the editor's opinion the whole poem had to be written again.
And  now he was reading Bezdomny a lecture on Jesus in  order  to stress the
poet's fundamental error.
     It  was  hard  to  say  exactly what  had  made  Bezdomny  write as  he
had--whether  it was  his  great talent  for graphic description or complete
ignorance  of  the  subject he was writing on, but  his Jesus had come  out,
well,  completely alive, a Jesus who had really existed, although admittedly
a Jesus who had every possible fault.
     Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet  that  the main object  was
not who Jesus was, whether  he was bad  or good, but that as a  person Jesus
had never existed  at  all  and  that all the  stories  about  him were mere
invention, pure myth.
     The editor  was a well-read man and  able to make  skilful reference to
the  ancient historians,  such as  the  famous Philo  of Alexandria  and the
brilliantly educated Josephus  Flavius, neither of  whom mentioned a word of
Jesus' existence. With a display  of solid erudition, Mikhail  Alexandrovich
informed  the  poet  that  incidentally,  the passage  in Chapter  44 of the
fifteenth book of  Tacitus'  Annals, where  he  describes the  execution  of
Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery.
     The poet, for  whom everything  the  editor was  saying was  a novelty,
listened attentively  to  Mikhail  Alexandrovich, fixing him with  his  bold
green eyes, occasionally hiccuping  and cursing the apricot juice under  his
breath.
     'There  is  not one oriental  religion,' said Berlioz, '  in which an
immaculate  virgin does not  bring a god into the world. And the Christians,
lacking any originality,  invented their  Jesus in exactly  the same way. In
fact he never lived at all. That's where the stress has got to lie.
     Berlioz's high tenor  resounded along the empty  avenue and  as Mikhail
Alexandrovich picked his way round the  sort of historical pitfalls that can
only  be negotiated safely by a  highly educated man, the poet learned  more
and more useful and instructive facts about the Egyptian god Osiris,  son of
Earth  and  Heaven, about the  Phoenician god Thammuz, about Marduk and even
about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, who  had once been held  in
great  veneration by  the Aztecs of Mexico. At  the very moment when Mikhail
Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to model figurines of
Vitzli-Putzli out of dough-- the first man appeared in the avenue.
     Afterwards, when  it  was frankly  too late,  various  bodies collected
their  data and issued descriptions of this  man.  As to his  teeth, he haid
platinum crowns on his  left side and gold  ones on  his tight.  He wore  an
expensive  grey suit and foreign  shoes  of the same colour as his suit. His
grey beret  was stuck jauntily over one ear and  under his arm  he carried a
walking-stick  with a  knob in the shape  of  a  poodle's  head.  He  looked
slightly over forty. Crooked sort of mouth. Clean-shav-n.  Dark  hair. Right
eye  black, left ieye for some reason green. Eyebrows black,  but one higher
than the other. In short--a foreigner.
     As  he  passed  the bench occupied  by  the  editor  and the poet,  the
foreigner gave them a sidelong  glance, stopped and suddenly sat down on the
next bench a couple of paces away from the two friends.
     'A German,'' thought Berlioz. ' An Englishman. ...' thought  Bezdomny.
' Phew, he must be hot in those gloves!'
     The  stranger glanced  round the tall houses that formed a square round
the  pond, from which it  was obvious  that he seeing this  locality for the
first time and that it interested him. His gaze halted on the upper storeys,
whose  panes threw  back a  blinding, fragmented reflection of the sun which
was setting on Mikhail Alexandrovich for  ever ; he then looked downwards to
where the windows were turning darker in the early evening  twilight, smiled
patronisingly at  something, frowned,  placed his hands  on the knob  of his
cane and laid his chin on his hands.
     'You  see,  Ivan,'  said Berlioz,' you  have  written  a  marvellously
satirical description  of the  birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the whole
joke lies in the fact  that there had already been a whole series of sons of
God before Jesus, such as  the  Phoenician Adonis, the  Phrygian Attis,  the
Persian Mithras. Of course  not one of these ever  existed, including Jesus,
and instead  of the  nativity or the  arrival of the  Magi  you should  have
described the absurd  rumours about  their  arrival.  But  according to your
story the nativity really took place! '
     Here Bezdomny made an effort to stop his torturing hiccups and held his
breath, but it only  made  him hiccup more  loudly and  painfully.  At  that
moment Berlioz interrupted his  speech because  the foreigner suddenly  rose
and approached the two writers. They stared at him in astonishment.
     'Excuse me, please,' said the stranger with a foreign accent, although
in correct Russian, ' for permitting  myself, without  an introduction . . .
but the subject of your learned conversation was so interesting that. . .'
     Here  he  politely took  off his  beret  and  the two  friends  had  no
alternative but to rise and bow.
     'No, probably a Frenchman.. . .' thought Berlioz.
     'A Pole,' thought Bezdomny.
     I  should add that the poet had found the stranger repulsive from first
sight, although Berlioz  had  liked the look  of him, or rather not  exactly
liked him but, well. . . been interested by him.
     'May  I join you? '  enquired  the foreigner politely, and as the two
friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitly placed himself 'between
them and at once joined the conversation. ' If I am not  mistaken,  you were
saying that Jesus never existed, were you not? ' he asked, turning his green
left eye on Berlioz.
     'No, you were not  mistaken,' replied  Berlioz  courteously. '  I did
indeed say that.'
     'Ah, how interesting! ' exclaimed the foreigner.
     'What the hell does he want?' thought Bezdomny and frowned.
     'And  do you  agree with your friend?  '  enquired  the  unknown man,
turning to Bezdomny on his right.
     'A hundred per cent! ' affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious
numerical expressions.
     'Astounding!  '  cried  their unbidden companion.  Glancing  furtively
round and lowering  his voice he said : ' Forgive me for being so rude,  but
am  I right in thinking that you do not believe in  God  either? ' He gave a
horrified look and said: ' I swear not to tell anyone! '
     'Yes, neither of us believes in  God,' answered Berlioz  with a  faint
smile at this foreign  tourist's apprehension.  '  But we can  talk about it
with absolute freedom.'
     The foreigner leaned against the backrest of the bench  and asked, in a
voice positively squeaking with curiosity :
     'Are you . . . atheists? '
     'Yes, we're atheists,' replied Berlioz, smiling, and Bezdomny  thought
angrily : ' Trying to pick an argument, damn foreigner! '
     'Oh, how delightful!' exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swivelled
his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn.
     'In our  country  there's nothing  surprising  about  atheism,'  said
Berlioz  with  diplomatic  politeness.  ' Most of us have long ago and quite
consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God.'
     At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thing--he stood up and shook
the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so :
     'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!'
     'What are you thanking him for? ' asked Bezdomny, blinking.
     'For  some very  valuable  information, which as  a traveller  I find
extremely interesting,' said the eccentric foreigner, raising his forefinger
meaningfully.
     This  valuable  piece of  information had  obviously  made  a  powerful
impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as
though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
     'No,  he's  not an Englishman,' thought Berlioz. Bezdomny thought:  '
What  I'd like to know is--where did he manage to pick up such good Russian?
' and frowned again.
     'But might I  enquire,'  began  the  visitor  from  abroad  after some
worried reflection, ' how you  account  for the proofs of  the existence  of
God, of which there are, as you know, five? '
     'Alas!  ' replied Berlioz  regretfully. ' Not one of  these  proofs is
valid, and mankind has long since  relegated them to the  archives. You must
agree that rationally there can be no proof of the existence of God.'
     'Bravo!' exclaimed the  stranger. ' Bravo! You have  exactly  repeated
the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here's the oddity of
it: he completely demolished all five proofs and  then, as though  to deride
his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own.'
     'Kant's  proof,' objected the  learned editor with  a thin smile, ' is
also unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that Kant's reasoning on
this question would only satisfy slaves, and Strauss  simply  laughed at his
proof.'
     As Berlioz  spoke he thought to himself: '  But who on earth is he? And
how does he speak such good Russian? '
     'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for
that " proof " of his! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly.
     'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed.
     But the  suggestion to pack  Kant off  to an asylum  not  only  did not
surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. ' Exactly,  exactly! '  he
cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered.  ' That's exactly
the place for  him! I  said to him  myself that morning at breakfast:  "  If
you'll  forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may  be clever but
it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad." '
     Berlioz's eyes bulged. ' At breakfast ... to Kant? What  is he rambling
about? ' he thought.
     'But,' went on  the foreigner, unperturbed by  Berlioz's amazement and
turning  to the  poet,  ' sending him to Solovki  is  out  of the  question,
because for over  a hundred  years  now he has been somewhere far  away from
Solovki and I assure you that it is totally impossible to bring him back.'
     'What a pity!' said the impetuous poet.
     'It is a pity,' agreed the unknown man with  a  glint in his eye,  and
went on: ' But this is the  question that disturbs me--if there  is  no God,
then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order? '
     'Man  rules  himself,'  said  Bezdomny angrily in answer  to  such  an
obviously absurd question.
     'I  beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one
must have a precise  plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow
me  to  enquire  how man can control  his own affairs  when  he is not  only
incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a
thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow? '
     'In  fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ' imagine what  would
happen if you, for  instance, were to  start organising others and yourself,
and  you developed a taste for it--then  suddenly you got. .  . he, he ... a
slight heart attack . . . ' at this  the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though
the  thought of  a heart attack  gave him pleasure. .  .  .  ' Yes, a  heart
attack,' he repeated the word sonorously,  grinning like a cat, ' and that's
the end of you as an organiser!  No one's fate except your own interests you
any  longer.  Your relations  start lying to you. Sensing that  something is
amiss you rush  to a specialist, then to  a charlatan, and even perhaps to a
fortune-teller. Each  of  them  is as  useless  as  the other, as  you  know
perfectly well. And it all ends in  tragedy: the man who thought  he  was in
charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and
his fellow  men, realising that there  is  no more sense  to be  had of him,
incinerate him.
     'Sometimes  it  can  be  even  worse  :  a   man  decides  to  go  to
Kislovodsk,'--here the stranger stared  at Berlioz--'  a trivial matter  you
may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and
falls under a  tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that
himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different
was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter.
     Berlioz had been  following the unpleasant story about the heart attack
and the tram  with great attention and some uncomfortable thoughts had begun
to worry  him.  '  He's  not a foreigner  .  . . he's  not  a foreigner,' he
thought, ' he's a very peculiar character . . . but I ask you, who  is he? .
. . '
     'I see you'd like to smoke,'  said the stranger unexpectedly,  turning
to Bezdomny, ' what sort do you prefer? '
     'Do you mean  you've got different sorts? ' glumly asked the poet, who
had run out of cigarettes.
     'Which do you prefer? ' repeated the mysterious stranger.
     'Well, then " Our Brand ",' replied Bezdomny, irritated.
     The unknown man immediately pulled  a cigarette case out of  his pocket
and offered it to Bezdomny.
      " Our Brand " . . .'
     The editor and the poet were not so much surprised by the fact that the
cigarette  case actually contained  ' Our  Brand' as  by the cigarette  case
itself. It was of enormous dimensions, made of  solid gold and on the inside
of the cover a triangle of diamonds flashed with blue and white fire.
     Their  reactions  were  different.  Berlioz  thought:  '  No,  he's   a
foreigner.' Bezdomny thought: ' What the hell is he . . .? '
     The  poet and  the owner  of the case lit their cigarettes and Berlioz,
who did not smoke, refused.
     'I shall refute his argument by saying' Berlioz decided to  himself, '
that of course man  is mortal, no one will argue with that.  But the fact is
that . . .'
     However he was  not able  to  pronounce  the words before the  stranger
spoke:
     'Of course man is mortal, but that's only half the problem. The trouble
is that mortality sometimes comes to him so suddenly! And he cannot even say
what he will be doing this evening.'
     'What  a  stupid way of putting the question.  '  thought  Berlioz and
objected :
     'Now there you exaggerate. I know more or less exactly  what I'm going
to be doing this evening. Provided of course that a brick doesn't fall on my
head in the street. . .'
     'A  brick is  neither  here  nor  there,'  the  stranger  interrupted
persuasively. ' A  brick  never falls on anyone's head. You in particular, I
assure you, are in no danger from that. Your death will be different.'
     'Perhaps you  know exactly how I am going to die? '  enquired  Berlioz
with  understandable sarcasm at the ridiculous  turn  that the  conversation
seemed to be taking. ' Would you like to tell me?'
     'Certainly,' rejoined  the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down as
though he were  measuring  him for  a suit and  muttered  through  his teeth
something that sounded like : ' One, two . . . Mercury in the second house .
. . the moon waning . . . six-- accident . . .  evening--seven . . . '  then
announced loudly and cheerfully : ' Your 'head will be cut off!'
     Bezdomny turned to the stranger with a wild, furious stare and  Berlioz
asked with a sardonic grin :
     'By whom? Enemies? Foreign spies? '
     'No,' replied their companion, ' by  a Russian woman, a member of the
Komsomol.'
     'Hm,' grunted Berlioz, upset by the foreigner's little  joke. ' That,
if you don'c mind my saying so, is most improbable.'
     'I beg your pardon,' replied the foreigner, ' but it is so.  Oh yes, I
was going to ask you--what are you doing this evening, if it's not a secret?
'
     'It's no secret.  From here I'm  going  home, and then at ten o'clock
this evening there's a meeting at the massolit and I shall be in the chair.'
     'No, that is absolutely impossible,' said the stranger firmly.
     'Why?'
     'Because,' replied  the foreigner and  frowned  up at  the sky  where,
sensing the oncoming cool of the evening, the  birds were flying to roost, '
Anna has already  bought  the sunflower-seed oil, in fact she has  not  only
bought it, but has already spilled it. So that meeting will not take place.'
     With this,  as  one might imagine, there was silence  beneath  the lime
trees.
     'Excuse  me,'  said  Berlioz  after a  pause  with  a  glance  at  the
stranger's jaunty beret, ' but what on  earth has  sunflower-seed oil got to
do with it... and who is Anna? '
     'I'll tell you what sunflower-seed  oil's  got  to  do  with it,' said
Bezdomny  suddenly,  having  obviously  decided  to  declare  war  on  their
uninvited  companion. ' Have you, citizen, ever had to spend  any time in  a
mental hospital? '
     'Ivan! ' hissed Mikhail Alexandrovich.
     But  the stranger was not  in the least offended  and  gave a  cheerful
laugh. '  Yes, I have, I have,  and more than once! ' he exclaimed laughing,
though the  stare that he  gave the poet  was  mirthless. ' Where haven't  I
been! My only regret is that I didn't stay  long enough to ask the professor
what  schizophrenia  was.  But  you  are  going  to find that  out  from him
yourself, Ivan Nikolayich!'
     'How do you know my name? '
     'My  dear  fellow, who doesn't  know you?  '  With this the  foreigner
pulled the previous day's  issue of  The Literary Gazette  out of his pocket
and Ivan Nikolayich saw his own  picture on the front page above some of his
own verse. Suddenly what had delighted  him  yesterday  as proof of his fame
and popularity no longer gave the poet any pleasure at all.
     'I beg your pardon,' he said,  his face darkening. ' Would  you excuse
us for a minute? I should like a word or two with my friend.'
     'Oh, with  pleasure!  ' exclaimed  the stranger. ' It's so delightful
sitting here under the trees and I'm  not in a hurry to  go anywhere,  as it
happens.'
     'Look  here, Misha,'  whispered the  poet  when he had drawn  Berlioz
aside.  ' He's not just a foreign tourist, he's a spy. He's a Russian emigre
and he's trying to catch  us  out. Ask him for his papers  and then he'll go
away . . .'
     'Do you  think  we should? ' whispered Berlioz anxiously,  thinking to
himself--' He's right, of course . . .'
     'Mark my words,' the poet whispered to him. ' He's pretending to be an
idiot so that he can trap us with some  compromising  question. You can hear
how he speaks Russian,' said the poet, glancing sideways and watching to see
that the stranger was  not eavesdropping. '  Come on,  let's arrest  him and
then we'll get rid of him.'
     The poet led Berlioz by the arm back to the bench.
     The unknown  man  was no longer sitting on it  but standing  beside it,
holding a booklet in a dark grey binding, a fat envelope made of good  paper
and a visiting card.
     'Forgive  me, but in  the  heat of our argument I forgot  to introduce
myself.  Here is my  card, my passport and  a letter inviting  me to come to
Moscow for consultations,' said the stranger gravely, giving both writers  a
piercing stare.
     The  two men were embarrassed. ' Hell, he overheard us .  . . ' thought
Berlioz, indicating with a polite gesture that  there  was no need  for this
show of documents. Whilst the stranger was  offering them to the editor, the
poet managed to catch sight of the visiting card. On it in foreign lettering
was the word '  Professor ' and  the initial letter of a surname which began
with a'W'.
     'Delighted,' muttered  the  editor awkwardly as  the foreigner put his
papers  back into his pocket. Good relations having been re-established, all
three sat down again on the bench.
     'So you've been invited here as a consultant, have  you,  professor? '
asked Berlioz.
     'Yes, I have.'
     'Are you German? ' enquired Bezdomny.
     'I? '  rejoined  the professor and  thought for  a  moment.  ' Yes, I
suppose I am German. . . . ' he said.
     'You speak excellent Russian,' remarked Bezdomny.
     'Oh, I'm something of a polyglot. I know a great number of languages,'
replied the professor.
     'And what is your particular field of work? ' asked Berlioz.
     'I specialise in black magic.'
     'Like hell you do! . . . ' thought Mikhail Alexandrovich.
     'And ... and you've been  invited here to give advice  on  that? ' he
asked with a gulp.
     'Yes,'  the professor  assured him, and went  on : ' Apparently  your
National   Library   has  unearthed   some   original  manuscripts  of   the
ninth-century necromancer  Herbert Aurilachs. I  have been asked to decipher
them. I am the only specialist in the world.'
     'Aha! So you're a historian? ' asked Berlioz in a tone of considerable
relief and respect.
     ' Yes,   I   am  a   historian,'   adding  with  apparently  complete
inconsequence, ' this evening a  historic event is going to take place  here
at Patriarch's Ponds.'
     Again  the editor and the poet showed signs of utter amazement, but the
professor beckoned to them and when both had bent their heads towards him he
whispered :
     'Jesus did exist, you know.'
     'Look, professor,'  said  Berlioz, with  a forced smile,  ' With  all
respect to you as a scholar we take a different attitude on that point.'
     'It's  not a question  of having  an attitude,' replied  the  strange
professor. ' He existed, that's all there is to it.'
     'But one must have some proof. . . . ' began Berlioz.
     'There's  no need  for any  proof,' answered  the professor. In a  low
voice, his foreign accent vanishing altogether, he began :
     'It's  very  simple--early in  the morning on the  fourteenth  of  the
spring month of  Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate,  in a white
cloak lined with blood-red...