In a quarter of an hour an extremely astounded public, not only in the restaurant but on the boulevard itself and in the windows of houses looking on to the restaurant garden, saw Pantelei, the doorman, a policeman, a waiter and the poet Riukhin carry through the gates of Griboedov’s a young man swaddled like a doll, dissolved in tears, who spat, aiming precisely at Riukhin, and shouted for all the boulevard to hear:
‘You bastard! ... You bastard! ...’
A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins, shouted:
‘Have a run for your money! I’ve taken ’em to the psychics before!’
Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov’s the unfortunate Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin.
CHAPTER 6
Schizophrenia, as was Said
It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there. The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been tied up lay in a pile on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich’s arms and legs were free.
Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said timidly:
‘Hello, Doctor.’
The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor’s entrance.
‘Here, Doctor,’ Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, ‘is the renowned poet Ivan Homeless ... well, you see ... we’re afraid it might be delirium tremens ...’
‘Was he drinking hard?’ the doctor said through his teeth.
‘No, he drank, but not really so ...’
‘Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking dogs?’
‘No,’ Riukhin replied with a shudder, ‘I saw him yesterday and this morning ... he was perfectly well.’
‘And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?’
‘No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way...’
‘Aha, aha,’ the doctor said with great satisfaction, ‘and why the scratches? Did he have a fight?’
‘He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody ... and then somebody else ...’
‘So, so, so,’ the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: ‘Hello there!’
‘Greetings, saboteur!’[68] Ivan replied spitefully and loudly.
Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan:
‘How old are you?’
‘You can all go to the devil!’ Ivan shouted rudely and turned away.
‘But why are you angry? Did I say anything unpleasant to you?’
‘I’m twenty-three years old,’ Ivan began excitedly, ‘and I’ll file a complaint against you all. And particularly against you, louse!’ he adverted separately to Riukhin.
‘And what do you want to complain about?’
‘About the fact that I, a healthy man, was seized and dragged by force to a madhouse!’ Ivan replied wrathfully.
Here Riukhin looked closely at Ivan and went cold: there was decidedly no insanity in the man’s eyes. No longer dull as they had been at Griboedov’s, they were now clear as ever.
‘Good God!’ Riukhin thought fearfully. ‘So he’s really normal! What nonsense! Why, in fact, did we drag him here? He’s normal, normal, only his mug got scratched ...’
‘You are,’ the doctor began calmly, sitting down on a white stool with a shiny foot, ‘not in a madhouse, but in a clinic, where no one will keep you if it’s not necessary.’
Ivan Nikolaevich glanced at him mistrustfully out of the comer of his eye, but still grumbled:
‘Thank the Lord! One normal man has finally turned up among the idiots, of whom the first is that giftless goof Sashka!’
‘Who is this giftless Sashka?’ the doctor inquired.
‘This one here - Riukhin,’ Ivan replied, jabbing his dirty finger in Riukhin’s direction.
The latter flushed with indignation. ‘That’s the thanks I get,’ he thought bitterly, ‘for showing concern for him! What trash, really!’
‘Psychologically, a typical little kulak,’[69] Ivan Nikolaevich began, evidently from an irresistible urge to denounce Riukhin, ‘and, what’s more, a little kulak carefully disguising himself as a proletarian. Look at his lenten physiognomy, and compare it with those resounding verses he wrote for the First of May[70] — heh, heh, heh ... “Soaring up!” and “Soaring down!!” But if you could look inside him and see what he thinks ... you’d gasp!’ And Ivan Nikolaevich burst into sinister laughter.
Riukhin was breathing heavily, turned red, and thought of just one thing, that he had warmed a serpent on his breast, that he had shown concern for a man who turned out to be a vicious enemy. And, above all, there was nothing to be done: there’s no arguing with the mentally ill!
‘And why, actually, were you brought here?’ the doctor asked, after listening attentively to Homeless’s denunciations.
‘Devil take them, the numskulls! They seized me, tied me up with some rags, and dragged me away in a truck!’
‘May I ask why you came to the restaurant in just your underwear?’
‘There’s nothing surprising about that,’ Ivan replied. ‘I went for a swim in the Moscow River, so they filched my clothes and left me this trash! I couldn’t very well walk around Moscow naked! I put it on because I was hurrying to Griboedov’s restaurant.’
The doctor glanced questioningly at Riukhin, who muttered glumly:
‘The name of the restaurant.’
‘Aha,’ said the doctor, ‘and why were you in such a hurry? Some business meeting?’
‘I’m trying to catch the consultant,’ Ivan Nikolaevich said and looked around anxiously.
‘What consultant?’
‘Do you know Berlioz?’ Ivan asked significantly.
‘The ... composer?’
Ivan got upset.
‘What composer? Ah, yes ... Ah, no. The composer has the same name as Misha Berlioz.’
Riukhin had no wish to say anything, but was forced to explain:
‘The secretary of Massolit, Berlioz, was run over by a tram-car tonight at the Patriarch’s Ponds.’
‘Don’t blab about what you don’t know!’ Ivan got angry with Riukhin. ‘I was there, not you! He got him under the tram-car on purpose!’
‘Pushed him?’
‘“Pushed him”, nothing!’ Ivan exclaimed, angered by the general obtuseness. ‘His kind don’t need to push! He can perform such stunts - hold on to your hat! He knew beforehand that Berlioz would get under the tram-car!’
‘And did anyone besides you see this consultant?’
‘That’s the trouble, it was just Berlioz and I.’
‘So. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?’ Here the doctor turned and sent a glance towards a woman in a white coat, who was sitting at a table to one side. She took out a sheet of paper and began filling in the blank spaces in its columns.
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