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woman... But I'm hoping that she's forgotten me..."

" But you may get well..." said Ivan timidly.

" I'm incurable, " the guest replied calmly. " When Stravinsky says that he'll bring me back to life, I don't believe him. He's humane and simply wants to comfort me. I don't deny, by the way, that I'm much better now. But where was I? Oh, yes, the ice and cold, the speeding streetcars. I knew that this clinic had already opened, and I set out for it on foot across the whole city. What madness! I would certainly have frozen to death when I got outside the city if a chance occurrence hadn't saved me. A truck had broken down about four kilometers outside the city, and I went over to speak to the driver. To my surprise, he took pity on me. He was on his way here, and he gave me a lift. The worst thing that happened to me was that I got frostbite on the toes of my left foot. But they fixed that. And this is my fourth month here. And, you know, I don't find it so bad here, not bad at all. One really shouldn't make big plans for oneself, dear neighbor. Take me, for example, I wanted to travel around the globe. Well, it turned out that wasn't meant to be. I can see only an insignificant little piece of it I don't think it's the best piece of it either, but, as I said, it's not so bad. Summer will be here soon, and the balcony will be covered with ivy, just as Praskovya Fyodorovna promises. Having her keys has given me new possibilities. There'll be a moon at night. Ah, it's gone! The air is fresher. It's getting on past midnight. It's time for me to go."

" Tell me, " asked Ivan, " what happened next to Yeshua and Pilate. Please, I want to know."

" Oh, no, no, " the guest answered, twitching painfully, " I can't think of my novel without a shudder. Your friend from Patriarch's Ponds could have done it better than I. Thanks for the conversation. Good-bye."

And before Ivan could realize what was happening, the window grille shut softly, and the guest was gone.

XIV

Praise Be to the Rooster

IS nerves couldn't take it, as they say, and Rimsky ran off to his office without waiting for the police to finish their report of what had happened. He sat at his desk and stared with swollen eyes at the magic ten-ruble bills that lay before him. The financial director was at his wit's end. A steady roar rose from the street as the public streamed out of the theater. The financial director's overly sensitive ears suddenly heard the sharp trill of a police whistle, which is hardly ever a good omen. When that sound was repeated and then accompanied by another more imperious and prolonged one, only then to be joined by loud cackles of laughter and hoots, the ñ nantí al director knew immediately that something scandalous and nasty had happened outside, and that, however much he wanted to brush it aside, it was intimately connected with the disgusting show put on by the black magician and his assistants. The quickwitted financial director was not mistaken.

No sooner had he looked out the window onto Sadovaya Street, than his face became distorted, and he said in a hiss rather than a whisper, " I knew it! "

In the bright light of the high-intensity streetlamps, he saw on the sidewalk below a woman wearing nothing but a chemise and violet drawers. True, there was a hat on her head and an umbrella in her hands.

Milling around the woman, who was completely distraught and alternately crouching down or trying to run away, was an excited crowd, cackling in a way that sent shivers down the director's spine. Hovering next to the woman was a man struggling to get out of his summer coat, who was so upset that he was unable to extricate his arm from the sleeve.

Cries and screams of laughter also came from another direction— from the motor entrance on the left, and when he turned to look, Grigory Danilovich saw another woman, this time in pink underwear. She jumped from the pavement to the sidewalk, in an effort to hide herself in the entranceway, but her way was barred by people streaming out of the theater. Victimized by her own frivolity and her mania for

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clothes, and deceived by Fagot and his vile company, the poor creature dreamed of only one thing: falling through the earth. A policeman was headed in her direction, drilling the air with his whistle, and behind the policeman came a pack of cheery young men wearing caps. They were the ones cackling and hooting.

A thin mustachioed cabbie drove up to the first naked woman and reined in his bony, broken-down nag with a flourish. The cabbie's whiskered face was plastered with a grin.