The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Михаил Булгаков

person you came across in the street, but also because Griboyedov could beat any restaurant in Moscow at will with the quality of its provisions, and because those provisions were served at the most reasonable, by no means burdensome prices.

      Thus there is nothing surprising in a conversation such as this, for example, which was once heard by the author of these most truthful lines beside the cast-iron railings of Griboyedov:

      “Where are you dining today, Amvrosy?”

      “What a question! Here of course, dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich whispered to me today that there’s going to be portions of pikeperch au naturel[157]. The work of a virtuoso!”

      “You really know how to live, Amvrosy!” sighed Foka, emaciated, run-down and with a carbuncle on his neck, in reply to the rosy-lipped giant, the golden-haired, plump-cheeked poet Amvrosy.

      “I don’t have any particular know-how,” Amvrosy objected, “just an ordinary desire to live like a human being. What you mean to say, Foka, is that you can come across pikeperch at the Coliseum too. But at the Coliseum a portion of pikeperch costs thirteen roubles fifteen copecks, whereas here it’s five fifty! Apart from that, at the Coliseum the pikeperch is three days old, and apart from that, you have no guarantee either that at The Coliseum you won’t get a bunch of grapes in the face from the first young man that comes bursting in from Teatralny Passage. No, I’m categorically against the Coliseum!” the gourmet Amvrosy thundered for the whole boulevard to hear. “Don’t try and persuade me, Foka!”

      “I’m not trying to persuade you, Amvrosy,” squealed Foka. “We can have dinner at home.”

      “Your humble servant,” trumpeted Amvrosy. “I can imagine your wife attempting to construct portions of pikeperch au naturel in a little saucepan in the communal kitchen at home. Tee-hee-hee!.. Au revoir[158], Foka!” And, humming away, Amvrosy headed towards the veranda beneath the awning.

      Oh-ho-ho… Yes, it was so, it was so! Long-time residents of Moscow remember the renowned Griboyedov! Never mind boiled portions of pikeperch! That’s cheap stuff, dear Amvrosy! What about the sterlet, sterlet in a silver saucepan, pieces of sterlet interlaid with crayfish necks and fresh caviar? What about eggs en cocotte[159] with champignon purée in little bowls? And did you like the little fillets of thrush? With truffles? The quail Genoese style? Nine roubles fifty! And the jazz band, and the polite service! And in July, when the whole family is at the dacha and urgent literary matters are keeping you in town – on the veranda, in the shade of the climbing vine, a patch of gold on the cleanest of tablecloths, is a bowl of soup printanier[160]? Remember, Amvrosy? But why ask! I can see by your lips you remember. Never mind your white salmon, your pikeperch! What about the snipe, the great snipe, the common snipe, the woodcock according to season, the quail, the sandpipers? The Narzan that fizzed in your throat?! But that’s enough: you’re being distracted, Reader! Follow me!.

      At half-past ten on the evening when Berlioz was killed at Patriarch’s, only one upstairs room in Griboyedov was lit, and in it languished the twelve writers who had gathered for their meeting and were waiting for Mikhail Alexandrovich.

      Those sitting on the chairs, and on the tables, and even on the two window sills in MASSOLIT’s boardroom were suffering dreadfully from the stifling heat. Not a single breath of fresh air was penetrating through the open windows. Moscow was emitting the heat accumulated in the asphalt during the course of the day, and it was clear that the night would bring no relief. There was a smell of onions from the basement of auntie’s house where the restaurant’s kitchen was at work, and everyone wanted a drink – everyone was on edge[161] and getting angry.

      The belletrist Beskudnikov – a quiet, respectably dressed man with attentive and at the same time elusive eyes – took out his watch. The hand was crawling towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped the face with his finger and showed it to his neighbour, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting on a table, and out of boredom swinging his feet, shod in yellow rubber-soled shoes.

      “Really,” grumbled Dvubratsky.

      “The guy probably got stuck on the Klyazma,” responded the rich voice of Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, a Moscow merchant’s orphan who had become a writer composing maritime battle stories under the pseudonym “Navigator George”.

      “Forgive me!” the author of popular sketches Zagrivov began boldly. “I’d be happy to be drinking some tea on a balcony myself just now, instead of stewing in here. The meeting was arranged for ten, wasn’t it?”

      “It’s nice on the Klyazma now,” Navigator George egged the company on, knowing that the literary dacha village of Perelygino on the River Klyazma was a shared sore point. “The nightingales are probably already singing. My work always goes better out of town somehow, especially in the spring.”

      “I’m in my third year of paying in money to send my wife and her Basedow’s disease[162][163] to that paradise, but there doesn’t seem to be anything visible on the horizon,” said the novelist Ieronym Poprikhin with venom and bitterness.

      “It’s just a matter of who gets lucky,” droned the critic Ababkov from the window sill.

      Navigator George’s little eyes lit up with joy, and, softening her contralto, she said:

      “You mustn’t be envious, Comrades. There are only twenty-two dachas, and there are only seven more being built, and there are three thousand of us in MASSOLIT”

      “Three thousand one hundred and eleven,” someone put in from the corner.

      “Well, you see,” continued the Navigator, “what’s to be done? It’s natural that the dachas were given to the most talented among us…”

      “The generals!” the scriptwriter Glukharev butted into the squabble bluntly.

      Beskudnikov left the room with an artificial yawn.

      “Alone in five rooms in Perelygino,” said Glukharev in his wake.

      “Lavrovich is alone in six,” cried Deniskin, “and the dining room’s panelled in oak.”

      “Oh, that isn’t the point at the moment,” droned Ababkov, “the point is that it’s half-past eleven.”

      A din started up – something akin to a revolt was brewing. They began ringing the hateful Perelygino, got through to the wrong dacha, to Lavrovich, learnt that Lavrovich had gone off to the river, and were thoroughly put out by that. Off the tops of their heads they rang the Commission for Belles-Lettres[164] plus the extension 930, and, of course, found nobody there.

      “He could have telephoned!” cried Deniskin, Glukharev and Kvant.

      Ah, they cried unjustly: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not have telephoned anywhere. Far, far from Griboyedov, in a huge hall lit by thousand-candle bulbs, on three zinc tables there lay what had until only recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich.

      On the first was his naked body, covered in dried blood, with a broken arm and a crushed ribcage, on the second was his head, with the front teeth knocked out and with dulled, open eyes, unperturbed by the extremely harsh light, and on the third was a heap of stiffened rags.

      Alongside the decapitated man stood a professor of forensic medicine, a pathological anatomist and his prosector, representatives of the investigation team, and Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz’s deputy at MASSOLIT, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone away from his sick wife.

      A car had called for Zheldybin and, as a first priority, he had been taken, along with the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man’s apartment, where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, and only then had they all come to the morgue.

      And now the men standing beside the

157

au naturel – (фр.) в натуральном виде, без приправ

158

Au revoir – (фр.) До свидания

159

en cocotte – (фр.) яйца-кокотт

160

printanier – (фр.) суп-прентаньер

161

to be on edge – быть на пределе, нервничать

162

Basedow’s disease – Базедова болезнь

163

Basedow's disease: a thyroid disorder also known as Graves’s disease. (Комментарий И. Беспалова)

164

Commission for Belles-Lettres – Комиссия изящной словесности