And closed to the general public, but also because it served better-quality food than any restaurant in Moscow and at reasonable, by no means prohibitive, prices as well.

This explains why the author of these most truthful lines found nothing surprising in the following exchange which he once overheard at Griboyedov's wrought-iron fence:

" Where will you be dining today, Amvrosy? "

" Why, what a question! Here, of course, my dear Foka! Archibald Archibaldovich let me in on a secret: the à la carte special today is perch au naturel, a real virtuoso dish! "

" You know how to live, Amvrosy! " sighed Foka, a skinny and unkempt fellow with a carbuncle on his neck, to Amvrosy, a pudgy-cheeked, rosy-lipped, golden-haired giant of a poet.

" I don't have any special talents, " retorted Amvrosy, " just an ordinary desire to live like a human being. Now you'll say, Foka, that you can get perch at the Coliseum. But a serving there costs 13 rubles, 15 kopecks, and here it's only 5, 50! Besides, at the Coliseum the perch is three days old, not to mention the fact that at the Coliseum there's no guarantee you won't get smacked in the kisser with a bunch of grapes by the first young scamp who bursts in from Theater Passage. No, Foka, I'm categorically opposed to the Coliseum, " boomed the gourmet Amvrosy for the benefit of the whole boulevard. " Don't try to change my mind! "

" I'm not trying to, Amvrosy, " squeaked Foka. " One can also dine at home."

" Thank you, no, " trumpeted Amvrosy, " I can just imagine your wife, trying to cook perch au naturel in the frying pan of your communal kitchen! Ha-ha-ha! Au revoir, Foka! " And, humming a tune, Amvrosy headed for the canopied veranda.

Ha-ha-ha... Yes, those were the days! Oldtime residents of Moscow still remember the famous Griboyedov! As for the perch au naturel, that was nothing, my dear Amvrosy! What about the sterlet, the sterlet in a silver pan, the sterlet filets layered with crayfish and fresh caviar? And the eggs en cocotte with mushroom puree? And didn't you like the filet of thrush? With truffles? The quail á la gé noise? Ten rubles fifty! And the jazz, and the gracious service! And in July, when the whole family's away at the dacha and pressing literary matters keep you in the city—out on the veranda in the shades of twisting grapevines, a bowl of soup print-anier sitting in a sunspot on the most immaculate tablecloth imaginable? Do you remember, Amvrosy? Well, why ask! I can see by your lips that you do remember. So much for the whitefish and perch! What about the snipe, great snipe, jacksnipe, woodcock in season, quail, and sandpipers? The Narzan water fizzing in your throat?! But enough, your eyes, dear reader, are becoming glazed! Follow me!

At 10: 30 p.m., on the evening when Berlioz was killed at Patriarch's

48 The Master and Margarita

Ponds, the lights were on in only one of the upper rooms at Gribo-yedov, where the twelve writers who had been summoned to a meeting languished, as they waited for Mikhail Alexandrovich to arrive.

They were sitting on chairs, tables, and even on both windowsills of the MASSOLIT administration room and were suffering intensely from the stifling heat. Not a breath of fresh air came through the open windows. All the heat that had accumulated on Moscow's pavement during the day was being released, and it was clear that the night would bring no relief. The smell of onions wafted up from the basement of the aunt's house, where the restaurant kitchen was, and everyone was thirsty, edgy, and irritable.

The fiction writer Beskudnikov—a quiet, neatly dressed man with keen, yet unfocused eyes-took out his watch. The hour hand was creeping towards eleven. Beskudnikov tapped his finger on the dial, and showed it to his neighbor, the poet Dvubratsky, who was sitting at the table and shuffling his yellow rubber-soled shoes out of boredom.

" Well, really, " muttered Dvubratsky.

" The lad must have gotten held up on the Klyazma, " said the thick-voiced Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, an orphan from a Moscow merchant family, who had become a writer and turned out naval battle stories under the pen name " Bosun George."

" If I may! " boldly began Zagrivov, an author of popular sketches. " I too would rather be sipping tea on the balcony than stewing around here. Wasn't the meeting called for ten? "

" It's nice on the Klyazma now, " said Bosun George, egging everyone on because she knew the writers* colony in Perelygino on the Klyazma was a universal sore spot. " The nightingales are probably singing by now. Somehow I always work better in the country, especially in spring."

" For three years now I've been paying in money, so I can send my wife to that paradise for her Grave's disease, but so far it's no go, " said the novelist Hieronymus Poprikhin venomously and bitterly.

" It's just the luck of the draw, " rang out the critic Ababkov from the windowsill.

Joy blazed in Bosun George's little eyes, and softening her heavy contralto she said, " No need for envy, comrades. There are twenty-two dachas in all, and only seven more are being built, and there are 3, 000 of us in MASSOLIT."

" 3, 111, " interjected someone from the corner.

" Well, there you have it, " continued the Bosun, " what's to be done? It's natural that the most talented people got dachas..."

" The generals! " cut in the dramatist Glukharyov, joining the fray.