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

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СКАЧАТЬ a step onto the rails when red and white lights sprayed into his face: in the glass box the inscription “Beware of the tram!” lit up.

      And the tram did come rushing up straight away, turning on the newly laid line from Yermolayevsky into Bronnaya. Having rounded the bend and come out onto the straight, it suddenly lit up with electricity inside, howled and picked up speed.

      The cautious Berlioz, although he was safe where he was standing, decided to go back behind the turnpike; he changed the position of his hand on the revolving part and took a step backwards. And immediately his hand abruptly slipped and came away; his foot, as though on ice, travelled uncontrollably across the cobbles sloping down[127] towards the rails; the other foot flew up into the air, and Berlioz was thrown out onto the rails.

      Trying to catch hold of something[128], Berlioz fell onto his back, striking his head a light blow on the cobbles, and he had time to see, high up – but whether to the right or to the left he could no longer comprehend – the gilt moon. He had time to turn onto his side, at the same instant drawing his legs up with a violent movement towards his stomach, and, having turned, he made out the face of the female tram driver – completely white with horror and hurtling towards him with unstoppable power – and her scarlet armband. Berlioz did not cry out, but around him the entire street began screaming in despairing women’s voices. The driver tugged at the electric brake; the nose of the carriage went down onto the ground, and then, an instant afterwards, bounced up[129], and with a crashing and a ringing the panes flew out of the windows. At this point someone in Berlioz’s brain cried out despairingly: “Surely not?” One more time, and for the last time, there was a glimpse of the moon, but already it was falling to pieces, and then it became dark.

      The tram covered Berlioz, and a round, dark object was thrown out under the railings of Patriarch’s avenue onto the cobbled, sloping verge[130]. Rolling down off the slope, it started bouncing along the cobblestones of Bronnaya.

      It was Berlioz’s severed head.

      4. The Pursuit

      The women’s hysterical cries had died away; police whistles had finished their drilling, one ambulance had taken the headless body and the severed head to the morgue, another had taken away the beautiful driver, wounded by splinters of glass; yardmen in white aprons had cleared up the splinters of glass and scattered sand on the puddles of blood; but Ivan Nikolayevich remained there on a bench, just as he had fallen onto it without ever having reached the turnstile.

      He had tried to get up several times, but his legs would not obey – Bezdomny had suffered something in the nature of paralysis.

      The poet had rushed off[131] towards the turnstile as soon as he had heard the first shriek, and had seen the head bouncing on the roadway. This had made him lose his senses to such a degree that, falling onto a bench, he had bitten his hand and drawn blood. He had, of course, forgotten about the mad German and was trying to understand just one thing: how it could possibly be that he had just been there, talking with Berlioz, and a minute later… the head…

      Agitated people were running along the avenue past the poet, exclaiming something, but Ivan Nikolayevich did not take their words in[132].

      However, two women unexpectedly bumped into each other beside him, and one of them, sharp-nosed and bare-headed, shouted to the other woman right in the poet’s ear:

      “Annushka, our Annushka! From Sadovaya! It’s her doing! She bought some sunflower oil at the grocer’s, and she went and smashed a litre bottle on the revolving bit of the turnstile! Made a mess all over her skirt. She was really cursing, she was! And he must have slipped, poor thing, and gone over onto the rails.”

      Of everything that the woman shouted out, one word took a hold on Ivan Nikolayevich’s deranged mind[133]: “Annushka…”

      ''Annushka… Annushka?” mumbled the poet, gazing around uneasily. “Permit me, permit me.”

      To the word “Annushka” became attached the words “sunflower oil”, and then for some reason “Pontius Pilate”. The poet rejected Pilate and began linking together a chain, beginning with the word “Annushka”. And that chain linked up very quickly, and led at once to the mad Professor.

      I’m sorry! I mean, he said the meeting wouldn’t take place because Annushka had spilt the oil. And, if you’d be so kind, it would not take place! And that’s not all: didn’t he say straight out that a woman would cut off Berlioz’s head?! Yes, yes, yes! And the driver was, after all, a woman! What on earth is all this? Eh?

      Not even a grain of doubt remained that the mysterious consultant had definitely known in advance the whole picture of Berlioz’s terrible death. At this point two thoughts penetrated the poet’s brain. The first: “He’s far from mad! That’s all nonsense!” And the second: “Did he perhaps arrange it all himself?!”

      But permit me to ask how?!

      “Oh no! That we shall find out!”

      Making a great effort with himself, Ivan Nikolayevich rose from the bench and rushed back to where he had been talking with the Professor. And it turned out that, fortunately, the latter had not yet left.

      On Bronnaya the street lamps had already lit up, and above Patriarch’s the golden moon was shining, and in the always deceptive moonlight it seemed to Ivan Nikolayevich that the man was standing there holding not a cane under his arm, but a rapier.

      The retired precentor-cum-trickster was sitting in the very spot where Ivan Nikolayevich had himself just recently been sitting. Now the precentor fastened onto his nose an obviously unnecessary pince-nez, which had one lens missing completely and the other cracked. This made the citizen in checks even more repulsive than he had been when showing Berlioz the way to the rails.

      With his heart turning cold, Ivan approached the Professor and, looking into his face, satisfied himself that there were not, and had not been, any signs of madness in that face at all.

      “Confess, who are you?” asked Ivan in a muffled voice[134].

      The foreigner knitted his brows, gave a look as if he were seeing the poet for the first time and replied with hostility:

      “No understand… no speak Russian…”

      “The gentleman doesn’t understand!” the precentor chimed in from the bench, though nobody had actually asked him to explain the foreigner’s words.

      “Stop pretending!” Ivan said sternly, and felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. “You were speaking excellent Russian just now. You’re not a German or a professor! You’re a murderer and a spy! Your papers!” Ivan cried fiercely.

      The enigmatic Professor twisted in disgust a mouth that was twisted enough already and shrugged his shoulders.

      “Citizen!” the loathsome precentor butted in[135] again. “What are you doing, disturbing a foreign tourist? You’ll be called to account most severely for this!” And the suspicious Professor pulled a haughty face, turned and started to walk away from Ivan.

      Ivan sensed he was losing his self-control. СКАЧАТЬ