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

Gasping for breath, he turned to the precentor:

“Hey, Citizen, help me detain a criminal! It’s your duty to do it!”

The precentor became extremely animated, leapt up[136 - to leap up – резко вскакивать] and started yelling:

“What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal?” The precentor’s little eyes began to sparkle. “This one? If he’s a criminal, then one’s first duty should be to shout �Help!’ Otherwise he’ll get away. Come on, let’s do it together! Both at once!” And here the precentor spread his jaws wide open.

The bewildered Ivan obeyed the joker of a precentor and shouted “Help!” but the precentor had duped him and did not shout anything.

Ivan’s lone, hoarse cry brought no good results. Two young women of some sort shied away from him, and he heard the word “Drunk!”

“Ah, so you’re in league with him?” shouted Ivan, flying into a rage. “What are you doing, making fun of me? Let me pass!”

Ivan threw himself to the right, and the precentor… went to the right as well! Ivan.

to the left, and that swine went the same way too!

“Are you getting under my feet deliberately?” cried Ivan, going wild. “I’ll put you in the hands of the police too!”

Ivan made an attempt to grab the good-for-nothing[137 - the good-for-nothing – негодяй] by the sleeve, but missed and caught hold of precisely nothing. The precentor had vanished into thin air.

Ivan gasped, looked into the distance and caught sight of the hateful stranger.

He was already at the exit into Patriarch’s Lane – and, moreover, was not alone. The more than dubious precentor had managed to join him. But there was more: the third figure in the group turned out to be a tomcat that had appeared from out of the blue, huge as a hog, black as soot or as a rook, and with the dashing whiskers of a cavalryman. The trio moved out into Patriarch’s Lane with the cat setting off on its hind legs.

Ivan hurried after the villains and immediately realized it would be very hard to catch up with[138 - to catch up with – догонять] them.

In an instant the trio had slipped down the lane and come out on Spiridonovka. However much Ivan increased his pace, the distance between him and his quarry did not decrease in the slightest. And the poet had not managed to collect himself before, after quiet Spiridonovka, he found himself at the Nikitsky Gates, where his situation worsened.