The Poet

T precisely the time when Styopa lost consciousness in Yalta, that is to say, around 11: 30 a.m., Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny regained it as he awakened from a long, deep sleep. He spent some time trying to figure out how he had ended up in this unfamiliar room with white walls, an amazing night table made out of bright metal, and a white window shade that was keeping out the sun.

Ivan shook his head, realized that it did not ache any more, and remembered that he was in a hospital. This, in turn, brought back the memory of Berlioz's death, but today Ivan was not as strongly affected by it. After a good night's sleep, Ivan Nikolayevich was calmer and had begun to think more dearly. He lay motionless for a while on his immaculate, soft, comfortable spring-cushioned bed, and then noticed the bell button by his side. Due to his habit of touching things on impulse, Ivan pressed it He expected to hear something ring or to have someone appear after he pressed the button, but something quite different happened.

At the foot of Ivan's bed a frosted-glass cylinder lit up that said, " DRINK." After staying put for a while the cylinder began to turn until the word " NURSE" appeared. It goes without saying that the ingenious cylinder made quite an impression on Ivan. The word " NURSE" was replaced by " CALL THE DOCTOR."

" Hmm..." murmured Ivan, not knowing what eke to do with the cylinder. But then he had a stroke of luck: he pressed the button a second time at the word " DOCTOR'S ASSISTANT." The cylinder rang softly in reply, stopped, and then went blank. A stout kind-looking woman in a clean white robe came into the room and said to Ivan, " Good morning! "

Ivan did not answer because he considered the greeting inappropriate under the circumstances. They had, in fact, put a perfectly sane man in the hospital, and yet were still pretending that it was the right thing to dol

The Master and Margarita

Meanwhile, without changing her kindly expression, the woman pressed the button once to raise the shade, and the sun streamed into the room through a light, widely spaced grille that extended down to the very floor. Beyond the grille there was a balcony, and beyond that, the banks of a winding river with a cheery pine forest on its opposite shore.

" Time for your bath, " said the woman invitingly, and beneath her hands, the interior wall moved aside, revealing a bath compartment and a splendidly equipped bathroom and lavatory.

Although Ivan had resolved not to talk to the woman, he broke down when he saw the water rushing into the bathtub from the gleaming tap, and said ironically, " My, my! Just like at the Metropole! "

" Oh, no, " answered the woman with pride, " much better. Even abroad you can't find equipment like this. Doctors and scientists come here especially to inspect our clinic. We have foreign visitors here every day."

When he heard the words " foreign visitor" Ivan immediately recalled the consultant from the day before. His mood darkened and he scowled and said, " Foreign visitors... How impressed you all are with foreign visitors! But they come in many different varieties. Take the one I met yesterday, for example, he was a real charmer! "

He was on the verge of telling the woman about Pontius Pilate, but he restrained himself when he realized that it wouldn't mean anything to her, and she wouldn't be able to help him anyway.

After his bath, Ivan Nikolayevich was given everything a man needs after a bath: a freshly ironed shirt, long underwear, socks. But that wasn't all: after opening the closet, the woman pointed inside and asked, " What would you like to wear—a bathrobe or pajamas? "

Since he had been attached to his new abode by force, Ivan nearly clasped his hands in dismay at the woman's free-and-easy attitude, and he pointed silently to a pair of red flannel pajamas.

After that Ivan Nikolayevich was led down an empty and soundless corridor into an office of immense proportions. Having made up his mind to respond to everything in this marvelously appointed building with irony, Ivan mentally christened the office the " factory-kitchen."

And with good reason. It had cupboards and glass cabinets with shiny nickel-plated instruments, there were chairs of unusually complex construction, potbellied lamps with gleaming shades, a multitude of vials and gas burners and electric wires and gadgets that would mystify absolutely anyone.

In the office Ivan was attended to by three people—two women and one man, all wearing white. First, Ivan was led over to a small table in the corner with the obvious intent of getting some information out of him.

Ivan began to consider his situation. He had three choices. The first choice was especially tempting: he could lunge at the lamps and the intricate gadgets and smash them all to hell, and thus protest their holding him for no reason. But the Ivan of today was dramatically different

The Duel Between the Professor and the Poet 73

from the Ivan of yesterday, and this first choice seemed dubious to him: it might even strengthen their conviction that he was a raving lunatic. And so, Ivan rejected this first choice and considered the second: give an immediate account of the consultant and Pontius Pilate. However, yesterday's experience had shown that people either did not believe this story or they distorted its meaning. And so Ivan decided against the second choice and opted for the third: seek refuge in proud silence.

As it turned out, however, this was not fully possible since, willy-nilly, he ended up answering, albeit curtly and sulkily, a whole series of questions. Ivan was questioned about absolutely everything relating to his past life, including such things as his scarlet fever fifteen years ago. After filling up a whole page on Ivan, they turned it over, and the woman in white proceeded to questions about Ivan's relatives. It was a lengthy business: who died, when and how, did the deceased drink or have venereal diseases, and all that sort of thing. They concluded by asking for an account of what had happened yesterday at Patriarch's Ponds, but they did not badger him, nor did they show any surprise at what he said about Pontius Pilate.

At this point the woman turned Ivan over to the man, and he took Ivan through another kind of exam altogether and asked him no questions at all. He took Ivan's temperature, measured his pulse, and looked into his eyes with some sort of light. Then another woman came to assist the man, and they injected something, painlessly, into Ivan's back, made tracings on his chest with the handle of a small mallet, tapped his knees, so that his legs jerked up, pricked his finger and took some blood, stuck a needle into the crook of his arm, and put rubber bracelets on his arms...

Ivan just smiled bitterly to himself and reflected on the stupidity and grotesqueness of it all. Imagine! He had just wanted to warn everybody about how dangerous the foreign consultant was, and try to catch him, and the only thing he had accomplished was to end up in some mysterious office where he had to tell a lot of rubbish about his Uncle Fyodor, who had been a chronic drunk in Vologda. Intolerable stupidity!