small in stature[30], had gold teeth and limped on his right leg. In the second the person was enormous in stature[31], had platinum crowns and limped on his left leg. The third states laconically that the person had no distinguishing features.
It has to be acknowledged that not one of those reports is of any use whatsoever.
First of all: the person described did not limp on either leg, and was neither small nor enormous in stature, but simply tall. As far as his teeth are concerned, on the left side he had platinum crowns, and on the right gold ones. He wore an expensive grey suit and foreign shoes the same colour as the suit. He had his grey beret cocked jauntily over one ear, and under his arm he carried a walking stick with a black handle in the shape of a poodle’s head. To look at, he was about forty plus. Mouth a bit crooked. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. The right eye black, the left for some reason green. Eyebrows black, but one higher than the other. In short – a foreigner.
After passing the bench on which the editor and the poet were located, the foreigner cast a sidelong glance at them, stopped, and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends.
"German…" thought Berlioz.
"English…" thought Bezdomny. "And look at that – he’s not too hot to be wearing gloves."
But the foreigner cast his eye over the square of tall buildings bordering the pond, and it became apparent that he was seeing this place for the first time, and that it had grabbed his interest.
He arrested his gaze on the top storeys, in whose window panes there were dazzling reflections of the broken sunlight that was leaving Mikhail Alexandrovich for ever, then he moved it down to where the window panes had started darkening, as they do towards evening; he grinned condescendingly about something, screwed up his eyes, put his hands on the handle of the walking stick and placed his chin on his hands.
“Ivan,” said Berlioz, “your depiction of, for example, the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, was very good and satirical, but the real point is that a whole series of sons of god had already been born before Jesus – like, let’s say, the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the Persian Mithras. To put it briefly, not one of them was ever born and none of them existed, including Jesus too, and it’s essential that, instead of depicting the birth or, let’s suppose, the visit of the Magi, you should depict the absurd rumours about that visit. Otherwise, according to your narrative, it turns out that he was actually born!”
At this point Bezdomny made an attempt to stop the hiccups that had him in agony and held his breath, and as a result he emitted a louder and more agonizing hiccup, and at that same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreigner suddenly rose and headed towards the writers.
They looked at him in surprise.
“Excuse me, please,” he began on coming up, with a foreign accent, but without garbling the words, “if I permit myself, without being acquainted… but the topic of your learned conversation is so interesting that.”
Here he politely removed his beret, and nothing remained for the friends but to half-stand and exchange bows[32].
“No, more likely French…” thought Berlioz.
“Polish?.” thought Bezdomny.
It is essential to add that from his very first words the foreigner made an abominable impression on the poet, yet was found by Berlioz rather to be pleasant – that is, not exactly pleasant, but. how can one put it. interesting, perhaps.
“May I take a seat?” asked the foreigner politely, and the friends, involuntarily somehow, moved apart; the foreigner settled in neatly between them and immediately entered the conversation.
“If I heard correctly, you were so good as to say there was never any Jesus on earth?” asked the foreigner, turning his green left eye towards Berlioz.
“Yes, you heard correctly,” replied Berlioz courteously, “that is precisely what I was saying.”
“Ah, how interesting!” exclaimed the foreigner.
“But what the devil does he want?” thought Bezdomny, and frowned.
“And were you in agreement with your companion?” enquired the stranger, turning to the right towards Bezdomny.
“The full hundred per cent!” confirmed the latter, who loved to express himself in a mannered and ornate fashion.
'Astonishing!” exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, looking around furtively for some reason and lowering his deep voice, he said: “Forgive my persistence, but my understanding was that, apart from anything else, you don’t believe in God either?” He made frightened eyes and added: “I swear I won’t tell anyone.”
“No, we don’t believe in God,” replied Berlioz, with a faint smile at the fright of the foreign tourist, “but it can be spoken about completely freely.”
The foreigner reclined against the back of the bench and asked, even emitting a little squeal of curiosity[33]:
“Are you atheists?”
“Yes, we’re atheists,” replied Berlioz, smiling, while Bezdomny thought angrily: “This foreign goose is being a real nuisance!”
“Oh, how charming!” the amazing foreigner cried, and he began twisting his head, looking first at one man of letters, then at the other.
“In our country atheism surprises no one,” said Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. “The majority of our population ceased consciously and long ago to believe in fairy tales about God.”
At this point the foreigner wheeled out the following trick: he stood up and shook the astonished editor’s hand, at the same time pronouncing these words:
“Permit me to thank you from the bottom of my heart!”
“And what is it you’re thanking him for?” enquired Bezdomny, blinking.
“For a very important piece of information, which is extremely interesting to me as a traveller,” the eccentric foreigner elucidated, raising a finger most meaningfully.
Evidently the important piece of information really had made a powerful impression on the traveller, because he looked round in alarm at the buildings, as though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
“No, he’s not English…" thought Berlioz, while Bezdomny thought: “Wherever did he get so good at speaking Russian, that’s what I wonder!” and frowned again.
“But permit me to ask you,” began the foreign guest after an anxious hesitation, “what’s to be done about the proofs of God’s existence, of which there are, as is well known, exactly five?”
“Alas!” replied Berlioz with regret. “Not one of those proofs is worth a thing, and mankind gave them up as a bad job long ago. You must agree, after all, that in the sphere of reason there can be no proof of the existence of God.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed the foreigner. “Bravo! You’ve repeated in its entirety that restless old man Immanuel’s idea on that score.[34]But here’s a curious thing: he completely demolished all five proofs, and then, as though in mockery of himself, constructed his own sixth proof!”
"Kant’s proof,” objected the educated editor with a thin smile, "is also unconvincing.[35] And not for nothing did Schiller[36][37] say that the Kantian arguments on the question could satisfy only slaves, while Strauss[38][39] simply laughed at that proof.”
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?”
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