1

Never Talk to Strangers

At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriach's Ponds. The first of them -- aged about forty, dressed in a greyish summer suit -- was short, dark-haired, well-fed and bald. He carried his decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly shaven face was embellished by black horn-rimmed spectacles of preter-natural dimensions. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with curly reddish hair and check cap pushed back to the nape of his neck, was wearing a tartan shirt, chewed white trousers and black sneakers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of a highbrow literary magazine and chairman of the management committee of one of the biggest Moscow literary clubs, known by its abbreviation as MASSOLIT; his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov who wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny.

Reaching the shade of an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth recording: not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard -- yet no one had come out for a walk under the lines, no one was sitting on a bench, the avenue was empty.

'A glass of lemonade, please' said Berlioz.
'There isn't any.' replied the woman in the kiosk. For some reason the request seemed to offend her.
'Got any Beer?' enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
'Beer's being delivered later this evening,' said the woman.
'Well what have you got?' asked Berlioz.
'Apricot juice, only it's warm.' was the answer.
'All right, let's have some.'

The apricot juice produced a rich yellow froth, making the air smell like a hairdresser's. After drinking it the two writers immediately began to hiccup. They paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond, their backs to Bronnaya Street.

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