"Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

enormous Bos'n George, the beautiful Semeikina-Gall, an architect, danced in
the tight embrace of a stranger in white canvas trousers. Locals and invited
guests danced, Muscovites and out-of-towners, the writer Johann from
Kronstadt, a certain Vitya Kuftik from Rostov, apparendy a stage director,
with a purple spot all over his cheek, the most eminent representatives of
the poetry section of Massolit danced - that is, Baboonov, Blasphemsky,
Sweetkin, Smatchstik and Addphina Buzdyak -- young men of unknown
profession, in crew cuts, with cotton-padded shoulders, danced, someone very
elderly danced, a shred of green onion stuck in his beard, and with him
danced a sickly, anaemia-consumed girl in a wrinkled orange silk dress.
Streaming with sweat, waiters carried sweating mugs of beer over their
heads, shouting hoarsely and with hatred: 'Excuse me, citizen!' Somewhere
through a megaphone a voice commanded: 'One Karsky shashlik! Two Zubrovkas!
Home-style tripe!' The high voice no longer sang, but howled 'Hallelujah!'
The clashing of golden cymbals in the band sometimes even drowned out the
clashing of dishes which the dishwashers sent down a sloping chute to the
kitchen. In short - hell.
And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed
man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped on to the veranda and
cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to
say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a
wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his raven hair was
tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean
under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean
Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters sail them, no corvette chases
after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and
there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the
cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it ... And the ice is melting in
the bowl, and at the next table you see someone's bloodshot, bovine eyes,
and you're afraid, afraid . . . Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!
.. .
And suddenly a word fluttered up from some table: 'Berlioz!!' The jazz
broke up and fell silent, as if someone had hit it with a fist. 'What, what,
what, what?!!' 'Berlioz!!!' And they began jumping up, exclaiming...
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up at the terrible news about Mikhail
Alexandrovich. Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once,
straight away, without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram
and send it off immediately.
But what telegram, may we ask, and where? And why send it? And where,
indeed? And what possible need for any telegram does someone have whose
flattened pate is now clutched in the dissector's rubber hands, whose neck
the professor is now piercing with curved needles? He's dead, and has no
need of any telegrams. It's all over, let's not burden the telegraph wires
any more.
Yes, he's dead, dead . . . But, as for us, we're alive!
Yes, a wave of grief billowed up, held out for a while, but then began
to subside, and somebody went back to his table and -- sneakily at first,
then openly - drank a little vodka and ate a bite. And, really, can one let
chicken cutlets de volatile perish? How can we help Mikhail Alexandrovich?