But the suggestion that Kant be sent to Solovki not only failed to shock the foreigner, it positively delighted him.

" Precisely so, precisely so, " he cried, and his green left eye, which was focused on Berlioz, sparkled. " That's the very place for him! As I told him that time at breakfast, 'As you please, professor, but you've contrived something totally absurd! True, it may be clever, but it's totally incomprehensible. People will laugh at you.'"

Berlioz's eyes popped. " At breakfast... with Kant? What kind of nonsense is this? " he thought.

" However, " continued the foreigner, unflustered by Berlioz's astonishment and turning to the poet, " he can't be sent to Solovki for the simple reason that for more than a hundred years now he's been somewhere far more remote than Solovki, and there's no way of getting him out of there, I assure you! "

" Too bad! " responded the poet-bully.

" I couldn't agree more! " concurred the stranger, his eye agleam, and he continued, " But this is what disturbs me: if there is no God, then, the question is, who is in control of man's life and the whole order of things on earth? "

" Man himself is in control, " was Bezdomny's quick and angry reply to what was, admittedly, a not very clear question.

" I'm sorry, " replied the stranger in a soft voice, " but in order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day? And, indeed, " here the stranger turned to Berlioz, " suppose you were to start controlling others and yourself, and just as you developed a

Never Talk to Strange«9

taste for it, so to speak, you suddenly went and... well... got lung cancer..." —at which point the foreigner chuckled merrily, as if the thought of lung cancer brought him pleasure. " Yes, cancer, " he repeated, narrowing his eyes like a cat as he savored the sonorous word, " and there goes your control! No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own. Your relatives start lying to you. You, sensing that something is wrong, run to learned physicians, then to quacks, and maybe even to fortune-tellers in the end. And going to any of them is pointless, as you well know. And it all ends tragically: that same fellow who not so long ago supposed that he was in control of something ends up lying stiff in a wooden box, and those present, realizing that he is no longer good for anything, cremate him in an oven. Why, even worse things can happen: a fellow will have just decided to make a trip to Kislovodsk, " —here the foreigner narrowed his eyes at Berlioz, " a trivial matter, it would seem, but he can't even accomplish that because for some unknown reason he goes and slips and falls under a streetcar! Would you really say that that's an example of his control over himself? Wouldn't it be more correct to say that someone other than himself is in control? " — and at this point the stranger laughed a strange sort of laugh.

Berlioz listened with rapt attention to the unpleasant story about cancer and the streetcar, and uneasy thoughts began to trouble him. " He's no foreigner... he's no foreigner..." he thought, " He's a real oddball... but who exactly is he? "

" You'd like a smoke, wouldn't you? " said the stranger unexpectedly turning to Bezdomny. " Which brand do you prefer? "

" You have assorted brands, is that it? " glumly inquired the poet, who had run out of cigarettes.

" Which do you prefer? " repeated the stranger.

" Well, how about 'Our Brand, '" was Bezdomny's sneering reply.

The stranger immediately pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket and offered it to Bezdomny: " 'Our Brand.*"

Both the editor and the poet were astonished not so much by the fact that the case did contain " Our Brand, " but, rather, by the cigarette case itself. It was enormous, made of pure gold, and as it was being opened, the blue and white fire of a diamond triangle sparkled on its cover.

The writers had different thoughts at this point. Berlioz thought, " No, he's definitely a foreigner! " and Bezdomny thought, " Oh, to hell with him! "