Chapter summary
Berlioz, magazine editor and chairman of the council of the Massolit literary association, and the young poet Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny arrive, on a hot May evening, at a deserted alley at Patriarch's Ponds and drink warm apricot soda, the only drink the kiosk has. Berlioz feels a stab in his heart and a fear without cause, sees in the air a thin, transparent citizen in a checkered jacket, and attributes the vision to the heat. The two resume the conversation: Berlioz commissioned from Ivan an anti-religious poem, but the poet painted a Jesus with negative traits, when the right thing, for the editor, is to deny that Jesus ever existed, and for that he cites Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, historians who never mentioned him.
A foreigner with mismatched eyes, one green and one black, sits down beside them and strikes up a conversation, posing as a meek and frightened tourist: he asks whether the two are atheists and thanks them heartily for the information. He says that Kant, after destroying the five proofs of God's existence, created a sixth, and that he had breakfast with him. He then asks who manages human life, if God does not exist. Ivan answers that it is the human being himself, and the foreigner retorts that governing requires a plan with deadlines and that no one can guarantee even tomorrow. He claims that man is sometimes "mortal suddenly" and, when Berlioz cites a brick that might fall on anyone's head, insists that Berlioz will die another way: they are going to cut off his head, and the one who will do it is a Russian woman, a komsomolka, that is, a young member of the Communist Youth. He adds that the Massolit meeting scheduled for that night will not take place, because a certain Annushka has already bought and already spilled the sunflower oil.
Ivan asks whether the man has ever been in a sanatorium for the mentally ill, and the foreigner laughs and answers that he has been several times. Ivan whispers to Berlioz that he is a spy, a disguised Russian émigré, but the foreigner shows a business card, a passport, and an invitation to come to Moscow as a consultant, and Ivan can make out on the card only the word "professor" and the initial W. Asked about his specialty, he answers that it is black magic and that he was called to decipher manuscripts of the necromancer Gerbert d'Aurillac, from the tenth century, discovered in the state library. At the end of the chapter, he calls the two closer and whispers "Know that Jesus existed," and begins to narrate, as one who was there, the morning of the fourteenth day of Nisan when Pontius Pilate came out onto the colonnade of Herod's palace.
Analysis
The foreigner joins the conversation, asking leave and posing as a meek, frightened tourist: he asks whether they heard well that Jesus did not exist, whether the two are atheists, and thanks them heartily for the information. Each courteous, erudite answer from Berlioz gives him the next subject, and he only asks questions, which keeps the two talking until the question that interests him: who manages human life.
Ivan's answer, that man himself manages his life, is the thesis the whole scene will dismantle: the novel does not refute the atheism of the two with an argument; it refutes it with a fact that happens.
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