http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/BULGAKOW/master_engl.txt
' D'you know, Ivan, the heat
nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw something like a hallucination
. . . ' He tried to smile but his eyes were still blinking with fear and his
hands trembled. However he gradually calmed down, flapped his handkerchief
and with a brave enough ' Well, now. . . ' carried on the conversation that
had been interrupted by their drink of apricot juice.
They had been talking, it seemed, about Jesus Christ. The fact was that
the editor had commissioned the poet to write a long anti-religious poem for
one of the regular issues of his magazine. Ivan Nikolayich had written this
poem in record time, but unfortunately the editor did not care for it at
all. Bezdomny had drawn the chief figure in his poem, Jesus, in very black
colours, yet in the editor's opinion the whole poem had to be written again.
And now he was reading Bezdomny a lecture on Jesus in order to stress the
poet's fundamental error.
It was hard to say exactly what had made Bezdomny write as he
had--whether it was his great talent for graphic description or complete
ignorance of the subject he was writing on, but his Jesus had come out,
well, completely alive, a Jesus who had really existed, although admittedly
a Jesus who had every possible fault.
Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet that the main object was
not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, but that as a person Jesus
had never existed at all and that all the stories about him were mere
invention, pure myth.
The editor was a well-read man and able to make skilful reference to
the ancient historians, such as the famous Philo of Alexandria and the
brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom mentioned a word of
Jesus' existence. With a display of solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich
informed the poet that incidentally, the passage in Chapter 44 of the
fifteenth book of Tacitus' Annals, where he describes the execution of
Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery.
The poet, for whom everything the editor was saying was a novelty,
listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing him with his bold
green eyes, occasionally hiccuping and cursing the apricot juice under his
breath.
'There is not one oriental religion,' said Berlioz, ' in which an
immaculate virgin does not bring a god into the world. And the Christians,
lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In
fact he never lived at all. That's where the stress has got to lie.
Berlioz's high tenor resounded along the empty avenue and as Mikhail
Alexandrovich picked his way round the sort of historical pitfalls that can
only be negotiated safely by a highly educated man, the poet learned more
and more useful and instructive facts about the Egyptian god Osiris, son of
Earth and Heaven, about the Phoenician god Thammuz, about Marduk and even
about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, who had once been held in
great veneration by the Aztecs of Mexico. At the very moment when Mikhail
Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to model figurines of
Vitzli-Putzli out of dough-- the first man appeared in the avenue.
'Look here, Misha,' whispered the poet when he had drawn Berlioz
aside. ' He's not just a foreign tourist, he's a spy. He's a Russian emigre
and he's trying to catch us out. Ask him for his papers and then he'll go
away . . .'
'Do you think we should? ' whispered Berlioz anxiously, thinking to
himself--' He's right, of course . . .'
'Mark my words,' the poet whispered to him. ' He's pretending to be an
idiot so that he can trap us with some compromising question. You can hear
how he speaks Russian,' said the poet, glancing sideways and watching to see
that the stranger was not eavesdropping. ' Come on, let's arrest him and
then we'll get rid of him.'
The poet led Berlioz by the arm back to the bench.
Black Magic Revealed
'And now, ladies and gentlemen,' said Bengalsky, smiling his boyish
smile, ' you are about to see . . .' Here Bengalsky broke off and started
again in a completely different tone of voice : ' I see that our audience
has increased in numbers since the interval. Half Moscow seems to be here
tonight! D'you know, I met a friend of mine the other day and I said to him
: " Why didn't you come and see our show? Half the town was there last
night." And he said : " I live in the other half! " ' Bengalsky paused for
the laugh, but none came so he went on : ' Well, as I was saying, you are
about to see a very famous artiste from abroad, M'sieur Woland, with a
session of black magic. Of course we know, don't we . . .' Bengalsky smiled
confidentially, ' that there's no such thing really. It's all
superstition--or rather Maestro Woland is a past master of the art of
conjuring, as you will see from the most interesting part of his act in
which he reveals the mysteries of his technique. And now, ladies and
gentlemen, since none of us can bear the suspense any longer, I give you . .
. Monsieur Woland! . . .'
Having said his feeble piece, Bengalsky put his hands palm to palm and
raised them in a gesture of welcome towards the gap in the curtain, which
then rose with a soft rustle.
The entry of the magician with his tall assistant and his cat, who
trotted on stage on his hind legs, pleased the audience greatly. ' Armchair,
please,' said Woland quietly and instantly an armchair appeared on stage
from nowhere. The magician sat down. ' Tell me, my dear Faggot,' Woland
enquired of the check-clad buffoon, who apparently had another name besides
' Koroviev,':
'do you find the people of Moscow much changed? ' The magician nodded
towards the audience, still silent with astonishment at seeing an armchair
materialise from nowhere.
'I do, messire,' replied Faggot-Koroviev in a low voice.
'You are right. The Muscovites have changed considerably . . .
outwardly, I mean ... as, too, has the city itself. . . Not just the
clothes, but now they have all these . . . what d'you call 'em . . .
tramways, cars . . .'
'Buses,' prompted Faggot respectfully.
The audience listened intently to this conversation, assuming it to be
the prelude to some magic tricks.
'We have just seen, ladies and gentlemen, a case of so-called mass
hypnosis. A purely scientific experiment, demonstrating better than anything
else that there is nothing supernatural about magic. We shall ask Maestro
Woland to show us how he did that experiment. You will now see, ladies and
gentlemen, how those apparent banknotes will vanish as suddenly as they
appeared.'
He began to clap, but he was alone. A confident smile appeared on his
face, but the look in his eyes was one of entreaty.
The audience did not care for Bengalsky's speech. Faggot broke the
silence :
'And that was a case of so-called fiddlesticks,' he declared in a loud
goatish bray. ' The banknotes, ladies and gentlemen, are real.'
'Bravo! ' abruptly roared a bass from high up in the gallery.
'This man,' Faggot pointed at Bengalsky, ' is starting to bore me. He
sticks his nose in everywhere without being asked and ruins the whole act.
What shall we do with him? '
'Cut off his head! ' said a stern voice.
'What did you say, sir? ' was Faggot's instant response to this savage
proposal. ' Cut off his head? That's an idea! Behemoth! ' he shouted to the
cat. ' Do your stuff! Eins, zvei, drei!! '
Then the most incredible thing happened. The cat's fur stood on end and
it uttered a harrowing ' miaaow! ' It crouched, then leaped like a panther
straight for Bengalsky's chest and from there to his head. Growling, the cat
dug its claws into the compere's glossy hair and with a wild screech it
twisted the head clean off the neck in two turns. Two and a half thousand
people screamed as one. Fountains of blood from the severed arteries in the
neck spurted up and drenched the man's shirtfront and tails. The headless
body waved its legs stupidly and sat on the ground. Hysterical shrieks rang
out through the auditorium. The cat handed the head to Faggot who picked it
up by the hair and showed it to the audience. The head moaned desperately :
'Fetch a doctor!'
'Will you go on talking so much rubbish?' said Faggot threateningly to
the weeping head.
'No, I promise I won't! ' croaked the head. ' For God's sake stop
torturing him! ' a woman's voice from a box suddenly rang out above the
turmoil and the magician turned towards the sound.
'Well, ladies and gentlemen, shall we forgive him? ' asked Faggot,
turning to the audience.
'Yes, forgive him, forgive him! ' The cries came at first from a few
individual voices, mostly women, then merged into a chorus with the men.
'What is your command, messire? ' Faggot asked the masked professor.
'Well, now,' replied the magician reflectively. ' They're people like
any others. They're over-fond of money, but then they always were . . .
Humankind loves money, no matter if it's made of leather, paper, bronze or
gold. They're thoughtless, of course . . . but then they sometimes feel
compassion too .... they're ordinary people, in fact they remind me very
much of their predecessors, except that the housing shortage has soured them
. . .' And he shouted the order : ' Put back his head.'
Taking careful aim the cat popped the head back on its neck, where it
sat as neatly as if head and body had never been parted. Most amazing of
all--there was not even a scar on the neck. The cat wiped the tailcoat and
shirtfront with its paw and every trace of blood vanished. Faggot lifted the
seated Bengalsky to his feet, shoved a bundle of money into his coat pocket
and led him off stage, saying :
'Go on--off you go, it's more fun without you!'
Gazing round in a daze and staggering, the compere got no further than
the fire-brigade post and collapsed. He cried miserably:
'My head, my head . . .'
Among those who rushed to help him was Rimsky. The compere was weeping,
snatching at something in the air and mumbling :
'Give me back my head, my head . . . You can have my flat, you can
have all my pictures, only give me back my head . . .! '
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