The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

”

Berlioz spoke, yet at the same time he was thinking: "But all the same, who on earth is he? And why is it he speaks Russian so well?”

"This Kant should be taken and sent to Solovki[40 - Solovki: The popular name for the prison camp established at the Solovetsky Monastery on an island in the White Sea. (Комментарий Р?. Беспалова)] for two or three years for such proofs!” Ivan Nikolayevich blurted out[41 - to blur out – сболтнуть, «ляпнуть»] quite unexpectedly.

"Ivan!” whispered Berlioz, embarrassed.

But not only did the proposal to send Kant to Solovki not shock the foreigner, it even sent him into raptures[42 - to send somebody into raptures – приводить к.-л. в восторг].

"Precisely, precisely,” he cried, and a twinkle appeared in his green left eye, which was turned towards Berlioz, "that’s the very place for him! I said to him then over breakfast, you know: �As you please, Professor, but you’ve come up with something incoherent! It may indeed be clever, but it’s dreadfully unintelligible.

Berlioz opened his eyes wide. "Over breakfast… to Kant?… What nonsense is this he’s talking?” he thought.

"But,” the foreigner continued, with no embarrassment at Berlioz’s astonishment and turning to the poet, "sending him to Solovki is impossible for the reason that he’s already been in parts considerably more distant than Solovki for over a hundred years, and there’s no possible way of extracting him from there, I can assure you!”

“That’s a pity!” responded the quarrelsome poet.

“I think it’s a pity too,” confirmed the stranger, with a twinkle in his eye[44 - with a twinkle in one’s eye – сверкнув глазом], and continued: “But this is the question that’s troubling me: if there’s no God, then who, one wonders, is directing human life and all order on earth in general?”

“Man himself is directing it,” Bezdomny hastened to reply angrily to this, to be honest, not very clear question.

“I’m sorry,” responded the stranger mildly. “In order to be directing things, it is necessary, for all that, to have a definite plan for a certain, at least reasonably respectable, period of time.