After which, from God knows where, a little light flashed by the cast-iron fence and began to approach the veranda. Those sitting at the tables began to get up and peer at it, and saw that along with the little light a white ghost was marching towards the restaurant. When it came right up to the trellis, everybody sat as if frozen at their tables, chunks of sterlet on their forks, eyes popping. The doorman, who at that moment had stepped out of the restaurant coat room to have a smoke in the yard, stamped out his cigarette and made for the ghost with the obvious intention of barring its way into the restaurant, but for some reason did not do so, and stopped, smiling stupidly.
And the ghost, passing through an opening in the trellis, stepped unhindered on to the veranda. Here everyone saw that it was no ghost at all, but Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, the much-renowned poet.
He was barefoot, in a torn, whitish Tolstoy blouse, with a paper icon bearing the image of an unknown saint pinned to the breast of it with a safety pin, and was wearing striped white drawers. In his hand Ivan Nikolaevich carried a lighted wedding candle. Ivan Nikolaevich’s right cheek was freshly scratched. It would even be difficult to plumb the depths of the silence that reigned on the veranda. Beer could be seen running down on to the floor from a mug tilted in one waiter’s hand.
The poet raised the candle over his head and said loudly:
‘Hail, friends!’ After which he peeked under the nearest table and exclaimed ruefully: ‘No, he’s not there!’
Two voices were heard. A basso said pitilessly:
“That’s it. Delirium tremens.‘
And the second, a woman‘s, frightened, uttered the words:
‘How could the police let him walk the streets like that?’
This Ivan Nikolaevich heard, and replied:
‘They tried to detain me twice, in Skaterny and here on Bronnaya, but I hopped over the fence and, as you can see, cut my cheek!’ Here Ivan Nikolaevich raised the candle and cried out: ‘Brethren in literature!’ (His hoarse voice grew stronger and more fervent.) ‘Listen to me everyone! He has appeared. Catch him immediately, otherwise he’ll do untold harm!’
‘What? What? What did he say? Who has appeared?’ voices came from all sides.
‘The consultant,’ Ivan replied, ‘and this consultant just killed Misha Berlioz at the Patriarch’s Ponds.’
Here people came flocking to the veranda from the inner rooms, a crowd gathered around Ivan’s flame.
‘Excuse me, excuse me, be more precise,’ a soft and polite voice said over Ivan Nikolaevich’s ear, ‘tell me, what do you mean “killed”? Who killed?’
‘A foreign consultant, a professor, and a spy,’ Ivan said, looking around.
‘And what is his name?’ came softly to Ivan’s ear.
‘That’s just it - his name!’ Ivan cried in anguish. ‘If only I knew his name! I didn’t make out his name on his visiting card ... I only remember the first letter, “W”, his name begins with “W”! What last name begins with “W”?’ Ivan asked himself, clutching his forehead, and suddenly started muttering: ‘Wi, we, wa ... Wu ... Wo ... Washner? Wagner? Weiner? Wegner? Winter?’ The hair on Ivan’s head began to crawl with the tension.
‘Wolf?’ some woman cried pitifully.
Ivan became angry.
‘Fool!’ he cried, seeking the woman with his eyes. ‘What has Wolf got to do with it? Wolf’s not to blame for anything! Wo, wa ... No, I’ll never remember this way! Here’s what, citizens: call the police at once, let them send out five motor cycles with machine-guns to catch the professor. And don’t forget to tell them that there are two others with him: a long checkered one, cracked pince-nez, and a cat, black and fat ... And meanwhile I’ll search Griboedov’s, I sense that he’s here!‘
Ivan became anxious, pushed away the people around him, started waving the candle, pouring wax on himself, and looking under the tables. Here someone said: ‘Call a doctor!’ and someone’s benign, fleshy face, clean shaven and well nourished, in horn-rimmed glasses, appeared before Ivan.
‘Comrade Homeless,’ the face began in a guest speaker’s voice, ‘calm down! You’re upset at the death of our beloved Mikhail Alexandrovich ... no, say just Misha Berlioz. We all understand that perfectly well. You need rest. The comrades will take you home to bed right now, you’ll forget ...’
‘You,’ Ivan interrupted, baring his teeth, ‘but don’t you understand that the professor has to be caught? And you come at me with your foolishness! Cretin!’
‘Pardon me, Comrade Homeless!...’ the face replied, blushing, retreating, and already repentant at having got mixed up in this affair.
‘No, anyone else, but you I will not pardon,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said with quiet hatred.
A spasm distorted his face, he quickly shifted the candle from his right hand to his left, swung roundly and hit the compassionate face on the ear.
Here it occurred to them to fall upon Ivan — and so they did. The candle went out, and the glasses that had fallen from the face were instantly trampled. Ivan let out a terrible war cry, heard, to the temptation of all, even on the boulevard, and set about defending himself. Dishes fell clattering from the tables, women screamed.
All the while the waiters were tying up the poet with napkins, a conversation was going on in the coat room between the commander of the brig and the doorman.
‘Didn’t you see he was in his underpants?’ the pirate inquired coldly.
‘But, Archibald Archibaldovich,’ the doorman replied, cowering, ‘how could I not let him in, if he’s a member of Massolit?’
‘Didn’t you see he was in his underpants?’ the pirate repeated.
‘Pardon me, Archibald Archibaldovich,’ the doorman said, turning purple, ‘but what could I do? I understand,
