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

”

The doctor looked enquiringly at Ryukhin, and the latter mumbled sullenly:

“That’s what the restaurant’s called.”

“Aha,” said the doctor, “and why were you hurrying so? Some business meeting or other?”

“I’m trying to catch a consultant,” Ivan Nikolayevich replied, and looked around anxiously.

“What consultant?”

“Do you know Berlioz?” asked Ivan meaningfully.

“That’s… the composer?”[178 - the composer: Hector Berlioz (1803-69), among whose works are several that are thematically connected with The Master and Margarita, notably The Damnation of Faust (1846).

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Ivan became upset.

“What composer? Ah yes. Of course not! The composer just shares Misha Berlioz’s name.”

Ryukhin did not want to say anything, but he had to explain:

“Berlioz, the secretary of MASSOLIT, was run over by a tram this evening at Patriarch’s.”

“Don’t make things up[179 - to make things up – врать; перевирать факты] – you don’t know anything!” Ivan grew angry with Ryukhin.

“It was me, not you, that was there when it happened! He deliberately set him up to go under the tram!”

“Pushed him?”

“What’s �pushed’ got to do with it?” exclaimed Ivan, getting angry at the general slow-wittedness. “Someone like that doesn’t even need to push! He can get up to such tricks, just you watch out! He knew in advance that Berlioz was going to go under the tram!”

“And did anyone other than you see this consultant?” “That’s precisely the trouble: it was only Berlioz and me.

” “Right. And what measures did you take to catch this murderer?” Here the doctor turned and threw a glance at a woman in a white coat sitting to one side at a desk. She pulled out a sheet of paper and began filling in the empty spaces in its columns.

“Here’s what measures. I picked up a candle in the kitchen…”

“This one here?” asked the doctor, indicating the broken candle lying beside an icon on the desk in front of the woman.

“That very one, and.”

“And why the icon?”

“Well, yes, the icon.” Ivan blushed, “it was the icon that frightened them more than anything” – and he again jabbed his finger in Ryukhin’s direction – “but the thing is that he, the consultant, he. let’s talk plainly. he’s in cahoots with[180 - to be in cahoots with – водиться, знаться с к.