The Master and Margarita. ass that I ami I got a certificatel So you can sutler now, you old idiot!

ass that I ami I got a certificatel So you can sutler now, you old idiot! "

And so it will continue until a window bangs open in the dark part of the house, something whitish appears, and an unpleasant female voice calk out, " Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What kind of craziness is this? Do you want to catch malaria? Come have your tea! "

The man on the bench will, of course, then come to his senses and reply in a false tone, " Air, my darling, I just wanted a breath of air! The air is very pleasant out herel"

Then he gets up from the bench, shakes his Gst furtively at the downstairs window as it closes, and drags himself into the house.

" He's lying, he's lying! Oh gods, how he's lying! " mumbles Ivan Nikolayevich as he moves away from the fence. " It's not the air that lures him into the garden at all, it's something he sees on the moon and in the garden, when the spring moon is full, high up above. Oh, what I'd give to learn his secret, to find out who the Venus is that he lost and now tries to catch by waving his arms pointlessly in the air! "

And the professor returns home utterly 01. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and hurries him off to bed. But she herself stays up and sits by the lamp with a book, gazing at him with bitter eyes as he sleeps. She knows that at dawn Ivan Nikolayevich will wake up with a tortured scream, and that he will start crying and toss about. That is why she keeps a hypodermic syringe soaking in alcohol on the cloth beneath the lamp in front of her, and an ampule filled with something the color of strong tea.

Tied to a gravely ill man, the poor woman will then be free and can go to sleep without any misgivings. After his injection, Ivan Nikolayevich will sleep until morning, and he will look happy as he dreams rapturous and happy dreams she knows nothing about

It is always the same thing that causes the scholar to wake up on the night of the full moon and to let out a pitiful scream. He sees an unnatural, noseless executioner leap up with a hoot and put a spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and has lost his reason. But the most terrifying thing in the dream is not so much the executioner as the unnatural light coming from the stormcloud that is seething and pressing down on the earth, such as only happens during world catastrophes.

After the injection everything the sleeper sees changes. A broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window and heading up this path is a man in a white cloak with a blood-red lining who is walking toward the moon. Walking beside him is a young man in a torn chiton with a disfigured face. The two of them are engaged in heated conversation, arguing about something, and trying to reach some kind of agreement.

" Gods, godsl" says the man in the cloak as he turns his haughty face to his companion, " What a vulgar and banal execution! But please, " here his face turns from being naughty to imploring, " tell me it didn't really happen! I beg you, tell me, it didn't happen, did it? "

Epilogué 335

She leans over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan stretches toward her and stares into her eyes, but she draws back, draws back and walks off with her companion toward the moon...

Then the moon goes on a rampage, it hurls streams of light directly at Ivan, sprays light in all directions, a moonlight flood begins to inundate the room, the light sways, rises higher, and drowns the bed. Only then does Ivan Nikolayevich sleep with a look of happiness on his face.

The next morning he wakes up silent, but completely calm and well. His ravaged memory quiets down, and no one will trouble the professor until the next full moon: neither the noseless murderer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.