...and so, who are
you, after all?
—I am part of the power
which forever wills evil
and forever works good.
Goethe's Faust
Part One
I
———————
Never Talk to Strangers
One hot spring evening, just as the sun was going down, two men appeared at Patriarch's Ponds. One of them—fortyish, wearing a gray summer suit—was short, dark-haired, bald on top, paunchy, and held his proper fedora in his hand; black horn-rimmed glasses of supernatural proportions adorned his well-shaven face. The other one—a broad-shouldered, reddish-haired, shaggy young man with a checked cap [bad word] on the back of his head—was wearing a cowboy shirt, [bad word] white trousers, and black sneakers.
The first man was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of a literary magazine and chairman of the board of one of Moscow's largest literary associations, known by its acronym, MAS­SOLIT, and his [bad word] was the poet Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyryov, who wrote under the pen name Bezdomny.
After reaching the shade of the newly budding linden trees, the writ­ers made a beeline for the colorfully painted refreshment stand bearing the sign: BEER AND COLD DRINKS.
And here it is worth noting the first strange thing about that terrible May evening. Absolutely no one was to be seen, not only by the refresh­ment stand, but all along the tree-lined path that ran parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street. At a time when no one, it seemed, had the strength to breathe, when the sun had left Moscow scorched to a crisp and was col­lapsing in a dry haze somewhere behind the Sadovoye Ring, no one came out to walk under the lindens, or to sit down on a bench, and the path was deserted.
"Give me some Narzan water," said Berlioz.
"There isn't any," replied the woman at the refreshment stand, tak­ing umbrage for some reason.
"Got any beer?" inquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
"The beer will be delivered later," the woman answered.
"So what have you got?" asked Berlioz.
"Apricot juice, only it's warm," said the woman.
"Well, give us that then!..."
The apricot juice generated an abundance of yellow foam, and the air started smelling like a barbershop. The writers drank it down and immediately began hiccuping, paid their money, and went over and sat down on a bench facing the pond, with their backs to Bronnaya Street.
Here the second strange thing happened, which affected Berlioz alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart pounded and stopped beating for a second, then started up again, but with a blunt needle lodged inside it. Besides that, Berlioz was seized with a groundless fear so intense that he wanted [bad word] away from Patriarch's Ponds that very minute without looking back.
Berlioz looked around miserably, not knowing what had frightened him. He turned pale, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and thought, "What's wrong with me? This has never happened before... my heart's playing tricks on me... I'm overtired. Maybe it's time to throw everything to the devil and go off to Kislovodsk..."
And then the hot air congealed in front of him, and out of it materi­alized a transparent man of most bizarre appearance. small head with a jockey cap, a skimpy little checked jacket that was made out of air... The man was seven feet tall, but very narrow in the shoulders, incredi­bly thin, and his face, please note, had a jeering look about it.
Berlioz's life was so arranged that he was unaccustomed to unusual happenings. He turned even paler, opened his eyes wide, and in a state of confusion thought, "This can't be!..."
But, alas, it was, and the tall transparent man swayed from left to right in front of him, without touching the ground.
At this point Berlioz was so [bad word] with terror that he shut his eyes. And when he opened them, he saw that it was all over, the mirage had evaporated, the man in checks had vanished, and the blunt needle had dislod