Гипероглавление:
CHAPTER 1. Never Talk with Strangers
CHAPTER 2. Pontius Pilate
CHAPTER 3. The Seventh Proof
CHAPTER 4. The Chase
CHAPTER 5. There were Doings at Griboedov`s
CHAPTER 6. Schizophrenia, as was Said
CHAPTER 7. A Naughty Apartment
CHAPTER 8. The Combat between the Professor and the Poet
CHAPTER 9. Koroviev`s Stunts
CHAPTER 10. News From Yalta
CHAPTER 11. Ivan Splits in Two
CHAPTER 12. Black Magic and Its Exposure
CHAPTER 13. The Hero Enters

---

CHAPTER 1. Never Talk with Strangers

     At  the hour  of the hot  spring sunset two citizens  appeared  at  the

Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately  forty years old, dressed in a

grey summer  suit,  was  short,  dark-haired, plump,  bald, and  carried his

respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned  with

black   horn-rimmed   glasses   of   a  supernatural   size.  The  other,  a

broad-shouldered young  man  with  tousled reddish hair, his  checkered  cap

cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers

and black sneakers.

     The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, [2] editor

of a  fat literary  journal and chairman  of  the board  of one of the major

Moscow  literary associations, called Massolit [3]  for short, and his young

companion  was the poet  Ivan  Nikolayevich  Ponyrev,  who wrote  under  the

pseudonym of Homeless. [4]

     Once  in the shade  of the barely greening lindens,  the writers dashed

first  thing to a  brightly  painted stand with  the  sign: `Beer  and  Soft

Drinks.'

     Ah, yes,  note  must be made of the first  oddity of this  dreadful May

evening. There was not a single person  to be seen, not  only  by the stand,

but also along the whole walk parallel  to  Malaya Bronnaya Street.  At that

hour when  it  seemed no longer possible to breathe,  when the  sun,  having

scorched Moscow, was  collapsing  in a dry  haze somewhere  beyond  Sadovoye

Ring, no one  came  under the lindens, no one sat  on  a bench, the walk was

empty.

     'Give us seltzer,' Berlioz asked.

     'There is no seltzer,' the woman in the stand said, and for some reason

became offended.

     'Is there beer?' Homeless inquired in a rasping voice.

     `Beer'll be delivered towards evening,' the woman replied.

     'Then what is there?' asked Berlioz.

     'Apricot soda, only warm,' said the woman.

     'Well, let's have it, let's have it! ...'

     The soda produced an abundance of  yellow foam, and  the air  began  to

smell  of a barber-shop.  Having  finished drinking, the writers immediately

started to hiccup, paid, and sat down  on a bench face to the pond and  back

to Bronnaya.

     Here the second oddity  occurred, touching  Berlioz alone.  He suddenly

stopped hiccupping, his heart gave a thump and dropped away somewhere for an

instant, then came back, but with a blunt needle lodged in it. Besides that,

Berlioz  was  gripped by fear, groundless,  yet so strong that  he wanted to

flee the Ponds at once without looking back.

     Berlioz looked around in anguish, not understanding what had frightened

him. He paled, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, thought:

     "What's the matter with me? This has never happened  before. My heart's

acting up... I'm overworked... Maybe it's  time to send it all to  the devil

and go to Kislovodsk...'[5]

     And  here  the sweltering air thickened  before him, and  a transparent

citizen  of the  strangest  appearance  wove  himself  out  of it. A  peaked

jockey's cap on his little head, a short checkered jacket also made of air.

     ...  A  citizen  seven  feet  tall,  but   narrow  in  the   shoulders,

unbelievably thin, and, kindly note, with a jeering physiognomy.

     The life of Berlioz had taken such a course that he was unaccustomed to

extraordinary phenomena.  Turning  paler  still,  he goggled  his  eyes  and

thought in consternation:

     'This can't be! ...'

     But, alas, it was, and the long, see-through citizen was swaying before

him to the left and to the right without touching the ground.

     Here terror took such possession of Berlioz that he shut his eyes. When

he opened  them again, he  saw that  it  was  all  over,  the  phantasm  had

dissolved,  the checkered  one  had vanished, and with that the blunt needle

had popped out of his heart.

     'Pah,  the devil!' exclaimed the editor. 'You  know, Ivan, I nearly had

heat stroke  just now! There  was even something like a hallucination...' He

attempted  to  smile,  but  alarm  still  jumped in  his eyes  and his hands

trembled.  However,  he  gradually  calmed  down,  fanned  himself with  his

handkerchief and, having  said rather cheerfully: 'Well, and  so...' went on

with the conversation interrupted by their soda-drinking.

     This conversation, as was learned afterwards, was about Jesus Christ.

     The thing was that  the editor had commissioned  from  the poet a  long

anti-religious poem for the next issue of his journal.  Ivan Nikolaevich had

written this poem, and in  a  very short time, but unfortunately the  editor

was not  at all satisfied with it. Homeless had portrayed the main character

of his poem - that is,  Jesus - in very dark colours,  but nevertheless  the

whole  poem, in  the editor's opinion, had to be  written over again. And so

the editor was now giving the poet something of a lecture on Jesus, with the

aim of underscoring the poet's essential error.

     It is  hard  to say what precisely had let Ivan  Nikolaevich down - the

descriptive powers of his talent or a total unfamiliarity with  the question

he was writing  about - but his Jesus came out,  well, completely alive, the

once-existing  Jesus, though,  true,  a Jesus  furnished  with  all negative

features.

     Now, Berlioz wanted to prove to  the poet that the main thing  was  not

how  Jesus was,  good or bad, but that this same Jesus,  as a person, simply

never existed in the world, and all the stories about him were mere fiction,

the most ordinary mythology.

     It  must be noted  that  the  editor  was a well-read  man  and in  his

conversation very  skillfully pointed  to ancient historians - for instance,

the  famous  Philo  of Alexandria  [6]  and the brilliantly educated Flavius

Josephus [7]  -  who  never  said  a word  about  the  existence  of  Jesus.

Displaying a solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich also informed  the poet,

among  other things,  that the  passage in  the  fifteenth book of Tacitus's

famous Annals  [8], the forty-fourth chapter, where mention is made  of  the

execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later spurious interpolation.

     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 hiccupped 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, [9] a  benevolent

god  and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the  Phoenician god  Tammoz,

[10] and about Marduk, [11]  and even about  a lesser known,  terrible  god,

Vitzliputzli,'[12] 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 Vitzli-putzli  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. [13] 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. [14]

     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 eves,  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, [15]  the Phrygian Atris,  [16] the Persian Mithras. [17]

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,'[18]  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 hiccupping 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

swiveling 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 fairytales 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  traveler,'  the  outlandish  fellow  explained,  raising  his  finger

significantly.

     The important  information  apparendy  had  indeed  produced  a  strong

impression on the traveler, because he passed his frightened glance over the

buildings, as if afraid of seeing an atheist in every window.

     'No, he's not an Englishman ...' thought Berlioz, and Homeless thought:

     'Where'd  he  pick up  his Russian, that's the  interesting thing!' and

frowned again.

     'But, allow  me  to  ask  you,'  the foreign  visitor  spoke after some

anxious reflection, 'what,  then,  about the proofs of  God's existence,  of

which, as is known, there are exactly five?'

     'Alas!' Berlioz said with regret. 'Not  one  of these proofs  is  worth

anything,  and  mankind  shelved them  long  ago. You must agree that in the

realm of reason there can be no proof of God's existence.'

     'Bravo!'  cried the  foreigner.  'Bravo!  You  have perfectly  repeated

restless old Immanuel's [19] thought in this  regard. But  here's the hitch:

he  roundly  demolished  all five proofs, and then, as if  mocking  himself,

constructed a sixth of his own.'

     'Kant's  proof,'  the learned editor objected with a subtle  smile, 'is

equally unconvincing.  Not  for nothing did  Schiller say that  the  Kantian

reasoning  on  this  question  can satisfy only  slaves  and Strauss  simply

laughed at this proof.' Berlioz spoke, thinking all the while: 'But, anyhow,

who is he? And why does he speak Russian so well?'

     They  ought to take  this Kant  and  give him a  three-year  stretch in

Solovki [22] for such proofs!' Ivan Nikolaevich plumped quite unexpectedly.

     'Ivan!' Berlioz whispered, embarrassed.

     But  the suggestion of  sending Kant to Solovki not  only did not shock

the foreigner, but even sent him into raptures.

     'Precisely, precisely,'  he  cried, and his green  left eye, turned  to

Berlioz,  flashed. 'Just the place  for him! Didn't I  tell him that time at

breakfast?

     "As you  will,  Professor,  but  what  you've  thought  up doesn't hang

together. It's clever, maybe, but mighty unclear. You'll be laughed at."'

     Berlioz goggled his eyes. 'At  breakfast... to Kant? ... What  is  this

drivel?' he thought.

     'But,' the outlander went on, unembarrassed by  Berlioz's amazement and

addressing the  poet,  'sending him to Solovki is unfeasible, for the simple

reason  that he  has  been abiding for over  a  hundred  years now in places

considerably more remote than Solovki, and to  extract him from  there is in

no way possible, I assure you.'

     'Too bad!' the feisty poet responded.

     'Yes, too bad!' the stranger agreed, his eye flashing, and went on:

     'But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then,

one may  ask,  who governs human  life and, in  general, the  whole order of

things on earth?'

     'Man governs  it himself,'  Homeless angrily hastened to reply  to this

admittedly  none-too-clear  question.  `Pardon  me,'  the stranger responded

gently, 'but in  order to  govern, one needs,  after  all, to have a precise

plan for certain, at least somewhat  decent, length of time. Allow me to ask

you, then, how man can govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity

of making a plan for at least  some ridiculously short period - well, say, a

thousand years - but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?

     `And in fact,' here the  stranger turned to Berlioz, 'imagine that you,

for  instance,  start  governing,  giving  orders to  others  and  yourself,

generally, so  to  speak, acquire  a taste for  it,  and  suddenly  you  get

...hem... hem ...  lung cancer...' -  here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and

if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure -  'yes, cancer' - narrowing

his eyes like a cat, he  repeated the sonorous word - 'and so your governing

is over!

     'You are no longer  interested  in anyone's fate  but  your  own.  Your

family starts lying to  you. Feeling  that something is  wrong,  you rush to

learned  doctors, then  to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well.

Like the first,  so  the second and third are  completely senseless, as  you

understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still  recently thought he

was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box,

and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good

for anything, burn him in an oven.

     'And sometimes  it's  worse still: the man  has just decided  to go  to

Kislovodsk' - here the foreigner squinted  at Berlioz - 'a trifling  matter,

it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows

why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who

governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was

governed by someone else  entirely?' And here  the unknown man  burst into a

strange little laugh.

     Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about the

cancer and the tram-car, and certain alarming thoughts began to torment him.

     'He's  not a foreigner... He's not  a foreigner...' he thought, 'he's a

most peculiar specimen ... but, excuse me, who is he then? ...'

     You'd  like  to   smoke,  I  see?'  the  stranger   addressed  Homeless

unexpectedly. "Which kind do you prefer?'

     'What,  have you got several?' the poet, who had run out of cigarettes,

asked glumly.

     'Which do you prefer?' the stranger repeated.

     'Okay - Our Brand,' Homeless replied spitefully.

     The unknown  man immediately took  a cigarette case from his pocket and

offered it to Homeless:

     'Our Brand...'

     Editor and poet were both struck,  not so  much by  Our Brand precisely

turning up in the cigarette case, as by the cigarette case itself. It was of

huge size, made  of  pure gold, and, as it was  opened,  a  diamond triangle

flashed white and blue fire on its lid.

     Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: 'No, a foreigner!',  and

Homeless: 'Well, devil take him, eh! ...'

     The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit up, but the non-smoker

Berlioz declined.

     'I  must counter  him like this,' Berlioz decided, 'yes, man is mortal,

no one disputes that. But the thing is...'

     However, before he managed to utter these words, the foreigner spoke:

     'Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst

of it  is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's  the trick!  And

generally he's unable to say what he's going to do this same evening.'

     `What an absurd  way  of putting the question ...' Berlioz  thought and

objected:

     'Well, there's  some exaggeration here. About  this same  evening I  do

know more or less certainly. It goes without saying, if a brick  should fall

on my head on Bronnaya. . '

     'No  brick,' the  stranger interrupted  imposingly, `will ever fall  on

anyone's head just out of  the blue.  In this particular case, I assure you,

you are not in danger of that at all. You will die a different death.'

     'Maybe  you know  what kind precisely?' Berlioz inquired with perfectly

natural irony, getting drawn into an  utterly absurd conversation. 'And will

tell me?'

     'Willingly,' the unknown  man responded. He looked Berlioz up  and down

as if he were going to make him a suit, muttered through his teeth something

like: 'One,  two  ... Mercury in the  second house  ...  moon gone ... six -

disaster... evening - seven...' then announced loudly and joyfully:

     'Your head will be cut off!'

     Homeless goggled his  eyes wildly  and  spitefully  at  the  insouciant

stranger, and Berlioz asked, grinning crookedly:

     'By whom precisely? Enemies? Interventionists?'[23]

     'No,' replied his interlocutor,  'by a Russian woman,  a Komsomol  [24]

girl.'

     `Hm...'  Berlioz mumbled, vexed at the  stranger's  little joke, `well,

excuse me, but that's not very likely.'

     'And I beg  you to excuse me,' the foreigner replied, 'but it's so. Ah,

yes, I wanted  to ask you,  what are you going to do tonight, if  it's not a

secret?'

     `It's not a secret. Right now  I'll stop by my place  on  Sadovaya, and

then  at ten  this evening there will be a meeting at  Massolit, and  I will

chair it.'

     'No, that simply cannot be,' the foreigner objected firmly.

     'Why not?'

     `Because,' the  foreigner replied  and, narrowing his eyes, looked into

the  sky,  where, anticipating  the cool of the  evening,  black  birds were

tracing noiselessly, 'Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has

not only bought it, but has already spilled it. So the meeting will not take

place.'

     Here, quite understandably, silence fell under the lindens.

     `Forgive   me,'  Berlioz  spoke   after  a  pause,   glancing   at  the

drivel-spouting foreigner, 'but what has sunflower oil got to do with it ...

and which Annushka?'

     'Sunflower  oil has got this  to do with it,'  Homeless suddenly spoke,

obviously deciding to declare war on the uninvited  interlocutor.  'Have you

ever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill?'

     'Ivan! ...' Mikhail Alexandrovich  exclaimed quietly. But the foreigner

was not a bit offended and burst into the merriest laughter.

     'I  have,  I  have, and  more than once!'  he cried  out, laughing, but

without taking his unlaughing eye  off the poet. 'Where haven't I been! Only

it's too bad  I didn't get around to asking the professor what schizophrenia

is. So you will have to find that out from him yourself, Ivan Nikolaevich!'

     'How do you know my name?'

     'Gracious, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn't know you?' Here  the foreigner

took out of his pocket the previous day's issue of the Literary Gazette, and

Ivan Nikolaevich saw his own picture on the very first page and under it his

very  own verses.  But the proof of fame and popularity, which yesterday had

delighted the poet, this time did not delight him a bit.

     'Excuse me,' he said, and his face darkened, 'could you wait one little

moment? I want to say a couple of words to my friend.'

     'Oh, with pleasure!' exclaimed  the stranger. 'It's so nice here  under

the lindens, and, by the way, I'm not in any hurry.'

     'Listen here, Misha,' the poet whispered,  drawing Berlioz aside, 'he's

no foreign tourist, he's a spy. A Russian emigre [25] who has  crossed  back

over. Ask for his papers before he gets away...'

     'YOU  think so?' Berlioz whispered  worriedly, and thought: 'Why,  he's

right...'

     'Believe me,' the poet rasped  into his ear, `he's pretending to  be  a

fool  in order  to find  out something or  other. Just hear  how  he  speaks

Russian.'  As  he  spoke, the poet  kept glancing sideways, to make sure the

stranger did not escape. 'Let's go and detain him, or he'll get away...'

     And the poet pulled Berlioz back to the bench by the arm.

     The unknown man was not sitting, but was  standing near it,  holding in

his hands some booklet in a  dark-grey binding, a  sturdy  envelope  made of

good paper, and a visiting card.

     `Excuse  me for  having forgotten,  in  the  heat of  our  dispute,  to

introduce myself. Here is my card, my passport, and an invitation to come to

Moscow for a consultation,' the stranger said weightily, giving both writers

a penetrating glance.

     They  were  embarrassed. 'The devil,  he  heard everything...'  Berlioz

thought, and with a polite gesture indicated that there was  no need to show

papers. While the foreigner was pushing them at the editor, the poet managed

to make out the word  `Professor' printed  in foreign type on  the card, and

the initial letter of the last name - a double 'V' - 'W'.

     `My pleasure,' the editor meanwhile muttered in embarrassment, and  the

foreigner put the papers back in his pocket.

     Relations  were thus restored,  and  all  three sat  down on the  bench

again.

     'You've been invited here as a consultant, Professor?' asked Berlioz.

     'Yes, as a consultant.'

     "You're German?' Homeless inquired.

     'I?  ...' the professor repeated  and suddenly fell to thinking.  'Yes,

perhaps I am German ...' he said.

     'YOU speak real good Russian,' Homeless observed.

     'Oh, I'm  generally a polyglot and know  a great number  of languages,'

the professor replied.

     'And what is your field?' Berlioz inquired.

     'I am a specialist in black magic.'

     There he goes!...' struck in Mikhail Alexandrovich's head.

     'And  ... and you've been  invited here  in that  capacity?'  he asked,

stammering.

     'Yes, in that capacity,' the professor confirmed, and  explained: 'In a

state  library  here  some  original  manuscripts   of   the   tenth-century

necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac [26] have been found. So it is necessary for

me to sort them out. I am the only specialist in the world.'

     'Aha! You're a historian?' Berlioz asked with great relief and respect.

     'I am a  historian,' the scholar confirmed,  and added with no rhyme or

reason: This evening there will be an interesting story at the Ponds!'

     Once again editor and  poet were extremely surprised, but the professor

beckoned them both to him, and when they leaned towards him, whispered:

     'Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.'

     `You  see.  Professor,' Berlioz  responded  with  a  forced  smile, `we

respect  your  great learning, but on this question we hold  to  a different

point of view.'

     `There's  no  need  for any  points of  view,'  the  strange  professor

replied, 'he simply existed, that's all.'

     'But there's need for some proof...' Berlioz began.

     "There's no need  for  any proofs,' replied the professor, and he began

to  speak softly,  while his accent  for some reason  disappeared: 'It's all

very simple: In a white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait

of a cavalryman, early in the  morning of  the fourteenth  day of the spring

month of Nissan...'[27]