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

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СКАЧАТЬ doorman with his eyes, “but it’s not all one to the police! A man in his underwear can proceed through the streets of Moscow only in one instance: if he’s going under police escort, and only to one place – the police station! And you, if you’re a doorman, ought to know that when you see such a man, you ought to begin whistling without a moment’s delay. Can you hear? Can you hear what’s happening on the veranda?”

      At this point the doorman, beside himself, caught the sounds of some sort of rumbling, the crashing of crockery and women’s cries coming from the veranda.

      “Well, and what am I to do with you for this?” the filibuster asked.

      The skin on the doorman’s face assumed a typhoid hue, and his eyes were benumbed. He imagined that the black hair, now combed into a parting, had been covered in fiery silk. The dicky and tails[173] had disappeared, and, tucked into a belt, the handle of a pistol had appeared. The doorman pictured himself hanged from the foretop yardarm. With his own eyes he saw his own tongue poking out and his lifeless head fallen onto his shoulder, and he even heard the splashing of the waves over the ship’s side. The doorman’s knees sagged. But here the filibuster took pity on him and extinguished his sharp gaze.

      “Watch out, Nikolai! This is the last time. We don’t need such doormen in the restaurant at any price. Go and get a job as a watchman in a church.” Having said this, the commander gave precise, clear, rapid commands: “Pantelei from the pantry. Policeman. Charge sheet. Vehicle. Psychiatric hospital.” And added: “Whistle!”

      A quarter of an hour later an extremely astonished audience, not only in the restaurant, but on the boulevard itself as well, and in the windows of the houses looking out onto the garden of the restaurant, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Ryukhin carrying out of Griboyedov’s gates a young man swaddled like a doll[174] who, in floods of tears, was spitting, attempting to hit specifically Ryukhin, and shouting for the entire boulevard to hear:

      “Bastard!.. Bastard!”

      The driver of a goods vehicle with an angry face was starting up his engine. Alongside, a cab driver was geeing up his horse, hitting it across the crupper with his lilac reins and shouting:

      “Come and use the racehorse! I’ve taken people to the mental hospital before!”

      All around the crowd was buzzing, discussing the unprecedented occurrence. In short, there was a vile, foul, seductive, swinish, scandalous scene, which ended only when the truck carried off from the gates of Griboyedov the unfortunate Ivan Nikolayevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Ryukhin.

      6. Schizophrenia, Just as Had Been Said

      When a man with a little pointed beard, robed in a white coat, came out into the waiting room of the renowned psychiatric clinic recently completed on a river bank outside Moscow, it was half-past one in the morning. Three hospital orderlies had their eyes glued to Ivan Nikolayevich, who was sitting on a couch. Here too was the extremely agitated poet Ryukhin. The towels with which Ivan Nikolayevich had been bound lay in a heap on the same couch. Ivan Nikolayevich’s hands and feet were free.

      On seeing the man who had come in, Ryukhin paled, gave a cough and said timidly[175]:

      “Hello, Doctor.”

      The doctor bowed to Ryukhin, yet, while bowing, looked not at him, but at Ivan Nikolayevich. The latter sat completely motionless with an angry face, with knitted brows, and did not even stir at the entrance of the doctor.

      “Here, Doctor,” began Ryukhin, for some reason in a mysterious whisper, glancing round fearfully at Ivan Nikolayevich, “is the well-known poet Ivan Bezdomny… and you see… we’re afraid it might be delirium tremens.”

      “Has he been drinking heavily?” asked the doctor through his teeth.

      “No, he used to have a drink, but not so much that.”

      “Has he been trying to catch cockroaches, rats, little devils or scurrying dogs?”

      “No,” replied Ryukhin with a start, “I saw him yesterday and this morning. He was perfectly well…”

      “And why is he wearing long johns? Did you take him from his bed?”

      “He came to the restaurant looking like that, Doctor…”

      “Aha, aha,” said the doctor, highly satisfied, “and why the cuts? Has he been fighting with anyone?”

      “He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit someone. and then someone else too.”

      “Right, right, right,” said the doctor and, turning to Ivan, added: “Hello!”

      “Hi there, wrecker!” replied Ivan, maliciously and loudly.

      Ryukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the polite doctor. But the latter was not in the least offended, and with his customary deft gesture he took off his spectacles; lifting the tail of his coat, he put them away in the back pocket of his trousers, and then he asked Ivan:

      “How old are you?”

      “Honestly, you can all leave me alone and go to the devil!” Ivan cried rudely, and turned away.

      “Why ever are you getting angry? Have I said anything unpleasant to you?”

      “I’m twenty-three,” Ivan began excitedly, “and I shall be putting in a complaint about you all. And about you especially, you worm!” he addressed himself to Ryukhin individually.

      “And what is it you want to complain about[176]?”

      “The fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged here to the madhouse by force!” replied Ivan in fury.

      Here Ryukhin peered closely at Ivan and turned cold: there was definitely no madness in his eyes. From being lacklustre, as they had been at Griboyedov, they had turned into the former clear ones.

      “Good gracious!” thought Ryukhin in fright. “Is he actually sane? What nonsense this is! Why ever, indeed, did we drag him here? He’s sane, sane, only his face is all scratched…”

      “You are not,” began the doctor calmly, sitting down on a white stool with a shiny leg, “in the madhouse, but in a clinic, where nobody will think of detaining you if there is no need for it.”

      Ivan Nikolayevich gave him a mistrustful sidelong look, but muttered nevertheless:

      “The Lord be praised! One sane man has at last come to light among the idiots, the foremost of whom is that talentless dunderhead Sashka!”

      “Who’s this talentless Sashka?” enquired the doctor.

      “There he is, Ryukhin!” Ivan replied, and jabbed a dirty finger in Ryukhin’s direction.

      The latter flared up[177] in indignation.

      “That’s what he gives me instead of a thank you!” he thought bitterly. “For my having shown some concern for him! He really is a scumbag!”

      “A typical СКАЧАТЬ