LITMIR.BIZ

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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 petty kulak in his psychology,” began Ivan Nikolayevich, who was evidently impatient to denounce Ryukhin, “and a petty kulak, what’s more, carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his dreary physiognomy and compare it with that sonorous verse he composed for the first of the month! Hee-hee-hee… ‘Soar up!’ and ‘Soar forth!’… but you take a look inside him – what’s he thinking there. it’ll make you gasp!” And Ivan Nikolayevich broke into sinister laughter.

      Ryukhin was breathing heavily, was red, and was thinking of only one thing – that he had warmed a snake at his breast, that he had shown concern for someone who had turned out to be, when tested, a spiteful enemy. And the main thing was, nothing could be done about it either: you couldn’t trade insults with a madman, could you?!

      “And why precisely have you been delivered to us?” asked the doctor, after attentively hearing out Bezdomny’s denunciations.

      “The devil take them, the stupid oafs! Seized me, tied me up with rags of some sort and dragged me out here in a truck!”

      “Permit me to ask you why you arrived at the restaurant in just your underwear?”

      “There’s nothing surprising in that,” replied Ivan. “I went to the Moscow River to bathe, and well, I had my clobber nicked, and this trash was left! I couldn’t go around Moscow naked, could I? I put on what there was, because I was hurrying to Griboyedov’s restaurant.”

      The doctor looked enquiringly at Ryukhin, and the latter mumbled sullenly:

      “That’s what the restaurant’s called.”

      “Aha,” said the doctor, “and why were you hurrying so? Some business meeting or other?”

      “I’m trying to catch a consultant,” Ivan Nikolayevich replied, and looked around anxiously.

      “What consultant?”

      “Do you know Berlioz?” asked Ivan meaningfully.

      “That’s… the composer?”[178]

      Ivan became upset.

      “What composer? Ah yes. Of course not! The composer just shares Misha Berlioz’s name.”

      Ryukhin did not want to say anything, but he had to explain:

      “Berlioz, the secretary of MASSOLIT, was run over by a tram this evening at Patriarch’s.”

      “Don’t make things up[179] – you don’t know anything!” Ivan grew angry with Ryukhin. “It was me, not you, that was there when it happened! He deliberately set him up to go under the tram!”

      “Pushed him?”

      “What’s ‘pushed’ got to do with it?” exclaimed Ivan, getting angry at the general slow-wittedness. “Someone like that doesn’t even need to push! He can get up to such tricks, just you watch out! He knew in advance that Berlioz was going to go under the tram!”

      “And did anyone other than you see this consultant?” “That’s precisely the trouble: it was only Berlioz and me.” “Right. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?” Here the doctor turned and threw a glance at a woman in a white coat sitting to one side at a desk. She pulled out a sheet of paper and began filling in the empty spaces in its columns.

      “Here’s what measures. I picked up a candle in the kitchen…”

      “This one here?” asked the doctor, indicating the broken candle lying beside an icon on the desk in front of the woman.

      “That very one, and.”

      “And why the icon?”

      “Well, yes, the icon.” Ivan blushed, “it was the icon that frightened them more than anything” – and he again jabbed his finger in Ryukhin’s direction – “but the thing is that he, the consultant, he. let’s talk plainly. he’s in cahoots with[180] unclean spirits. and it won’t be so simple to catch him.”

      The orderlies stood to attention for some reason and did not take their eyes off Ivan.

      “Yes,” continued Ivan, “he’s in cahoots! That’s an incontrovertible fact[181]. He’s spoken personally with Pontius Pilate. And there’s no reason to look at me like that! I’m telling the truth! He saw everything – the balcony, the palms. In short, he was with Pontius Pilate, I can vouch for it[182].”

      “Well then, well then.”

      “Well, and so I pinned the icon on my chest and ran off…”

      Suddenly at this point a clock struck twice.

      “Oho-ho!”

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