CHAPTER 11. Ivan Splits in Two

     The woods  on the  opposite bank of the river,  still lit up by the May
sun an hour earlier, turned dull, smeary, and dissolved.
     Water  fell down  in  a solid sheet  outside  the  window. In the  sky,
threads flashed every moment, the sky kept  bursting open, and the patient's
room was flooded with a tremulous, frightening light.
     Ivan quietly  wept, sitting on his  bed  and looking  out at  the muddy
river boiling with bubbles. At every clap of thunder, he cried out pitifully
and buried his face  in  his hands. Pages covered  with  Ivan's writing  lay
about  on the floor. They had been blown down by the wind that flew into the
room before the storm began.
     The poet's  attempts  to  write a  statement  concerning  the  terrible
consultant  had gone nowhere. As  soon as he got the  pencil  stub and paper
from  the fat attendant, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna,  he rubbed his
hands in  a business-like  way and  hastily  settled himself at  the  little
table. The beginning came out quite glibly.
     To the police.  From  Massolit  member  Ivan  Nikolaevich  Homeless.  A
statement.  Yesterday evening  I  came  to  the Patriarch's Ponds  with  the
deceased M. A. Berlioz...'
     And  right  there the  poet  got  confused, mainly  owing  to the  word
'deceased'. Some nonsensicality emerged at once: what's this - came with the
deceased? The deceased  don't  go  anywhere!  Really, for all  he knew, they
might take him for a madman!
     Having  reflected thus, Ivan Nikolaevich began to correct what  he  had
written. What came out this time was: '...  with M. A. Berlioz, subsequently
deceased  ...' This  did  not  satisfy the  author either.  He  had to  have
recourse to a third redaction, which proved still worse than  the first two:
'Berlioz, who  fell under the  tram-car...'  - and  that namesake  composer,
unknown to  anyone, was also  dangling  here, so  he had to put in: 'not the
composer...'
     After suffering over these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed  it all  out and
decided to begin right off with something  very strong,  in order to attract
the  reader's attention  at  once,  so  he wrote that  a  cat  had got on  a
tram-car, and  then went back to the episode with the severed head. The head
and the consultant's prediction led  him  to the thought of  Pontius Pilate,
and for  greater conviction  Ivan  decided to tell  the  whole story  of the
procurator in full, from the  moment he walked out  in  his white cloak with
blood-red lining to the colonnade of Herod's palace.
     Ivan worked assiduously,  crossing out what  he had written, putting in
new words, and even attempted to draw Pontius Pilate and then a cat standing
on  its hind legs. But the  drawings did not help, and the further it  went,
the more confusing and incomprehensible the poet's statement became.
     By the time the frightening  cloud with smoking edges appeared from far
off and covered the woods, and the wind began to blow, Ivan felt that he was
strengthless, that he would  never be able to manage with the statement, and
he would not pick up the scattered pages, and he wept quietly and bitterly.
     The good-natured nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna visited the poet during the
storm, became alarmed  on seeing him weeping, closed the  blinds so that the
lightning would  not frighten  the patient, picked up  the  pages  from  the
floor, and ran with them for the doctor.
     He came, gave  Ivan  an injection in the  arm, and  assured him that he
would  not weep any  more, that  everything would pass now, everything would
change, everything would be forgotten.
     The  doctor proved  right.  Soon  the woods across the river  became as
before. It was outlined to the last tree under the sky, which cleared to its
former perfect blue,  and the  river grew  calm.  Anguish had begun to leave
Ivan  right after the  injection, and now the  poet lay calmly and looked at
the rainbow that stretched across the sky.
     So it went  till  evening, and  he did not even  notice how the rainbow
melted away, how the sky saddened and faded, how the woods turned black.
     Having drunk some hot milk, Ivan  lay  down again and marvelled himself
at how  changed his thinking was. The accursed, demonic cat somehow softened
in  his  memory,  the  severed  head did not  frighten him  any  more,  and,
abandoning all thought of  it, Ivan  began to reflect that,  essentially, it
was not so bad in the clinic, that Stravinsky was  a clever man and a famous
one,  and it was  quite pleasant to deal with him. Besides,  the evening air
was sweet and fresh after the storm.
     The house of sorrow was falling  asleep. In quiet corridors the frosted
white lights went out, and in their  place, according  to regulations, faint
blue night-lights  were lit, and  the careful steps of attendants were heard
more and more rarely on the rubber matting of the corridor outside the door.
     Now Ivan lay in  sweet languor, glancing  at the  lamp under its shade,
shedding a softened light  from the ceiling, then  at the moon rising behind
the black woods, and conversed with himself.
     'Why, actually, did I  get so  excited  about  Berlioz falling  under a
tram-car?' the poet reasoned. `In the  final analysis, let him sink! What am
I, in fact, his chum or in-law? If  we air the  question properly,  it turns
out that, in essence, I really did not even know the deceased. What, indeed,
did I know about him? Nothing except that he was bald and terribly eloquent.
And furthermore, citizens,' Ivan continued his speech, addressing someone or
other,  `let's  sort this out:  why,  tell  me,  did  I  get furious at this
mysterious consultant, magician and professor with the black and empty eye?
     Why all this absurd chase after him in underpants  and with a candle in
my hand, and then those wild shenanigans in the restaurant?'
     'Uh-uh-uh!'  the  former Ivan suddenly said sternly  somewhere,  either
inside  or  over his  ear,  to the new  Ivan. `He  did  know beforehand that
Berlioz's head would be cut off, didn't he? How could I not get excited?'
     'What are we talking about, comrades?' the  new  Ivan  objected  to the
old,  former  Ivan. That things  are not quite proper here, even a child can
understand. He's a one-hundred-per-cent outstanding and mysterious person!
     But  that's   the  most  interesting  thing!  The  man  was  personally
acquainted with Pontius  Pilate,  what could be more interesting  than that?
And,  instead of raising a stupid rumpus at the Ponds, wouldn't it have been
more  intelligent to  question him politely  about what happened  further on
with Pilate  and his  prisoner Ha-Nozri?  And I started devil knows  what! A
major occurrence, really - a magazine editor gets run over! And so, what, is
the magazine going to shut down for that? Well,  what  can be done about it?
Man is mortal and, as has  rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal. Well, may
he rest in peace! Well, so  there'll be another editor, and maybe even  more
eloquent than the previous one!'
     After  dozing  for   a  while,  the   new   Ivan  asked  the  old  Ivan
sarcastically:
     'And what does it make me, in that case?'
     'A fool!' a bass voice said distinctly somewhere, a voice not belonging
to either of the Ivans and extremely like the bass of the consultant.
     Ivan,  for  some  reason  not offended  by  the  word 'fool', but  even
pleasantly  surprised at  it,  smiled and  drowsily  grew quiet.  Sleep  was
stealing  over  Ivan,  and  he  was  already picturing  a palm tree  on  its
elephant's leg, and a cat passing by - not scary, but merry - and, in short,
sleep was  just about  to  come  over  Ivan,  when the grille suddenly moved
noiselessly aside,  and a mysterious figure appeared on  the balcony, hiding
from the moonlight, and shook its finger at Ivan.
     Not frightened in the least,  Ivan sat up in bed and saw that there was
a  man on the  balcony.  And  this  man,  pressing a  finger  to  his  lips,
whispered:
     'Shhh! ...'