The poet, for whom everything the editor was telling him was new, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his pert green eyes on him, and merely hiccuped from time to time, cursing the apricot soda under his breath.
‘There’s not a single Eastern religion,’ Berlioz was saying, ‘in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin did not give birth to a god. And in just the same way, without inventing anything new, the Christians created their Jesus, who in fact never lived. It’s on this that the main emphasis should be placed ...’
Berlioz’s high tenor rang out in the deserted walk, and as Mikhail Alexandrovich went deeper into the maze, which only a highly educated man can go into without risking a broken neck, the poet learned more and more interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris,[10] a benevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god Tammuz,[11] and about Marduk,[12] and even about a lesser known, terrible god, Vitzliputzli,[13] once greatly venerated by the Aztecs in Mexico. And just at the moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to fashion figurines of Vitzliputzli out of dough — the first man appeared in the walk.
Afterwards, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, various institutions presented reports describing this man. A comparison of them cannot but cause amazement. Thus, the first of them said that the man was short, had gold teeth, and limped on his right leg. The second, that the man was enormously tall, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. The third laconically averred that the man had no distinguishing marks. It must be acknowledged that none of these reports is of any value.
First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg, and was neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle’s head.[14] He looked to be a little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left — for some reason — green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner.[15]
Having passed by the bench on which the editor and the poet were placed, the foreigner gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends.
‘A German...’ thought Berlioz. ‘An Englishman ...’ thought Homeless. ‘My, he must be hot in those gloves.’
And the foreigner gazed around at the tall buildings that rectangularly framed the pond, making it obvious that he was seeing the place for the first time and that it interested him. He rested his glance on the upper floors, where the glass dazzlingly reflected the broken-up sun which was for ever departing from Mikhail Alexandrovich, then shifted it lower down to where the windows were beginning to darken before evening, smiled condescendingly at something, narrowed his eyes, put his hands on the knob and his chin on his hands.
‘For instance, Ivan,’ Berlioz was saying, ‘you portrayed the birth of Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is that a whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus, like, say, the Phoenician Adonis,[16] the Phrygian Attis,[17] the Persian Mithras.[18] And, to put it briefly, not one of them was born or ever existed, Jesus included, and what’s necessary is that, instead of portraying his birth or, suppose, the coming of the Magi,[19] you portray the absurd rumours of their coming. Otherwise it follows from your story that he really was born! ...’
Here Homeless made an attempt to stop his painful hiccuping by holding his breath, which caused him to hiccup more painfully and loudly, and at that same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreigner suddenly got up and walked towards the writers. They looked at him in surprise.
‘Excuse me, please,’ the approaching man began speaking, with a foreign accent but without distorting the words, ‘if, not being your acquaintance, I allow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that ...’
Here he politely took off his beret, and the friends had nothing left but to stand up and make their bows.
‘No, rather a Frenchman ...’ thought Berlioz.
‘A Pole? ...’ thought Homeless.
It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him — that is, not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever.
‘May I sit down?’ the foreigner asked politely, and the friends somehow involuntarily moved apart; the foreigner adroitly sat down between them and at once entered into the conversation:
‘Unless I heard wrong, you were pleased to say that Jesus never existed?’ the foreigner asked, turning his green left eye to Berlioz.
‘No, you did not hear wrong,’ Berlioz replied courteously, ‘that is precisely what I was saying.’
‘Ah, how interesting!’ exclaimed the foreigner.
‘What the devil does he want?’ thought Homeless, frowning.
‘And you were agreeing with your interlocutor?’ inquired the stranger, turning to Homeless on his right.
‘A hundred per cent!’ confirmed the man, who was fond of whimsical and figurative expressions.
‘Amazing!’ exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, casting a thievish glance around and muffling his low voice for some reason, he said: ‘Forgive my importunity, but, as I understand, along with everything else, you also do not believe in God?’ He made frightened eyes and added: ‘I swear I won’t tell anyone!’
‘No, we don’t believe in God,’ Berlioz replied, smiling slightly at the foreign tourist’s fright, ‘but we can speak of it quite freely.’
The foreigner sat back on the bench and asked, even with a slight shriek of curiosity:
‘You are — atheists?!’
‘Yes, we’re atheists,’ Berlioz smilingly replied, and Homeless thought, getting angry: ‘Latched on to us, the foreign goose!’
‘Oh, how lovely!’ the astonishing foreigner cried out and began swivelling his head, looking from one writer to the other.
‘In our country atheism does not surprise anyone,’ Berlioz said with diplomatic politeness. ‘The majority of our population consciously and long ago ceased believing in the fairy tales about God.’
Here the foreigner pulled the following stunt: he got up and shook the amazed editor’s hand, accompanying it with these words:
‘Allow me to thank you with all my heart!’
‘What are you thanking him for?’ Homeless inquired, blinking.
‘For some very important information, which is of great interest to me as a traveller,’ the outlandish fellow explained, raising his finger significantly.
The important information apparently had indeed produced a strong impression on the traveller, because he passed his frightened glance over the buildings, as if afraid of seeing an atheist in every window.
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