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

“Like Pontius Pilate!” it occurred to Ivan.

Yes, this was undoubtedly the senior man. He sat down on a stool, while everyone else remained standing.

“Dr Stravinsky,” the man who had sat down introduced himself to Ivan, and gave him an amicable look.

“Here, Alexander Nikolayevich,” said someone with a neat little beard in a low voice, and handed the senior man Ivan’s sheet of paper, completely covered in writing.

“They’ve cobbled together a whole case[216 - to cobble a case – «сшить» дело]!” thought Ivan.

'And he speaks in Latin, like Pilate.” thought Ivan sadly. Just then one word made him start, and it was the word “schizophrenia” – already uttered, alas, on the previous day by the accursed foreigner at Patriarch’s Ponds, and repeated here today by Professor Stravinsky.

“And he knew that too!” thought Ivan in alarm.

The senior man had evidently made it a rule to agree with everything and be pleased at everything his entourage might say to him, and to express this with the words “super, super.”

“Super!” said Stravinsky, returning the sheet to somebody, and he turned to Ivan: “You’re a poet?”

“I am,” Ivan replied gloomily, and for the first time suddenly felt an inexplicable kind of revulsion for poetry, and what came to mind straight away of his own verse seemed for some reason unpleasant.

Wrinkling up his face, he in his turn asked Stravinsky:

“Are you a professor?”

To this Stravinsky inclined his head with obliging courtesy.

“And are you the senior man here?” continued Ivan.

Stravinsky bowed to this too.

“I need to talk to you,” said Ivan Nikolayevich meaningfully.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Stravinsky responded.

“The thing is this,” began Ivan, sensing that his moment had come, “they’ve dressed me up as a madman and no one wants to listen to me!”

“Oh no, we’ll hear you out very attentively,” said Stravinsky seriously and reassuringly, “and on no account will we allow you to be dressed up as a madman.

“Well, listen then: yesterday evening at Patriarch’s Ponds I met a mysterious person, possibly a foreigner, who knew in advance about Berlioz’s death and had personally seen Pontius Pilate.