you know, using fists ... No, you should give that up, and for good.’
Having thus reprimanded Ivan, the guest inquired:
‘Your profession?’
‘Poet,’ Ivan confessed, reluctantly for some reason.
The visitor became upset.
‘Ah, just my luck!’ he exclaimed, but at once reconsidered, apologized, and asked: ‘And what is your name?’
‘Homeless.’
‘Oh-oh ...’ the guest said, wincing.
‘What, you mean you dislike my poetry?’ Ivan asked with curiosity.
‘I dislike it terribly.’
‘And what have you read.’
‘I’ve never read any of your poetry!’ the visitor exclaimed nervously.
Then how can you say that?‘
‘Well, what of it?’ the guest replied. ‘As if I haven’t read others. Or else ... maybe there’s some miracle? Very well, I’m ready to take it on faith. Is your poetry good? You tell me yourself.’
‘Monstrous!’ Ivan suddenly spoke boldly and frankly.
‘Don’t write any more!’ the visitor asked beseechingly.
‘I promise and I swear!’ Ivan said solemnly.
The oath was sealed with a handshake, and here soft footsteps and voices were heard in the corridor.
‘Shh!’ the guest whispered and, jumping out to the balcony, closed the grille behind him.
Praskovya Fyodorovna peeked in, asked Ivan how he was feeling and whether he wished to sleep in the dark or with a light. Ivan asked her to leave the light on, and Praskovya Fyodorovna withdrew, wishing the patient a good night. And when everything was quiet, the guest came back again.
He informed Ivan in a whisper that there was a new arrival in room 119 — some fat man with a purple physiognomy, who kept muttering something about currency in the ventilation and swearing that unclean powers were living in their place on Sadovaya.
‘He curses Pushkin up and down and keeps shouting: “Kurolesov, encore, encore!”’ the guest said, twitching nervously. Having calmed himself, he sat down, said: ‘Anyway, God help him,’ and continued his conversation with Ivan: ‘So, how did you wind up here?’
‘On account of Pontius Pilate,’ Ivan replied, casting a glum look at the floor.
‘What?!’ the guest cried, forgetting all caution, and clapped his hand over his own mouth. ‘A staggering coincidence! Tell me about it, I beg you, I beg you!’
Feeling trust in the unknown man for some reason, Ivan began, falteringly and timorously at first, then more boldly, to tell about the previous day’s story at the Patriarch’s Ponds. Yes, it was a grateful listener that Ivan Nikolaevich acquired in the person of the mysterious stealer of keys! The guest did not take Ivan for a madman, he showed great interest in what he was being told, and, as the story developed, finally became ecstatic. Time and again he interrupted Ivan with exclamations:
‘Well, well, go on, go on, I beg you! Only, in the name of all that’s holy, don’t leave anything out!’
Ivan left nothing out in any case, it was easier for him to tell it that way, and he gradually reached the moment when Pontius Pilate, in a white mantle with blood-red lining, came out to the balcony.
Then the visitor put his hands together prayerfully and whispered:
‘Oh, how I guessed! How I guessed it all!’
The listener accompanied the description of Berlioz’s terrible death with an enigmatic remark, while his eyes flashed with spite:
‘I only regret that it wasn’t the critic Latunsky or the writer Mstislav Lavrovich instead of this Berlioz!’, and he cried out frenziedly but soundlessly: ‘Go on!’
The cat handing money to the woman conductor amused the guest exceedingly, and he choked with quiet laughter watching as Ivan, excited by the success of his narration, quietly hopped on bent legs, portraying the cat holding the coin up next to his whiskers.
‘And so,’ Ivan concluded, growing sad and melancholy after telling about the events at Griboedov‘s, ’I wound up here.‘
The guest sympathetically placed a hand on the poor poet’s shoulder and spoke thus:
‘Unlucky poet! But you yourself, dear heart, are to blame for it all. You oughtn’t to have behaved so casually and even impertinently with him. So you’ve paid for it. And you must still say thank you that you got off comparatively cheaply.’
‘But who is he, finally?’ Ivan asked, shaking his fists in agitation.
The guest peered at Ivan and answered with a question:
‘You’re not going to get upset? We’re all unreliable here ... There won’t be any calling for the doctor, injections, or other fuss?’
‘No, no!’ Ivan exclaimed. Tell me, who is he?‘
