Chapter summary
During a storm, Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny gives up writing the denunciation to the police (the first versions stall on how to speak of Berlioz as "the deceased," as if he were still the subject of a sentence; then he adds the cat, the head and the Pilate story, and the more he writes, the more confused the denunciation becomes) and weeps among the sheets scattered on the floor. The doctor gives him an injection in the arm and, once the storm passes, he calms down. At night, lying in bed, he holds a debate with himself aloud, torn between the Ivan of yesterday, who wants to capture the consultant, and a new Ivan, more cynical, for whom the death of an editor changes nothing in the world. When the new Ivan asks the old one, with scorn, "who am I in this case?", the one who answers is neither of the two.
Analysis
Ivan sits down to write the denunciation because Stravinsky gave him that task, and the denunciation falls apart before the storm: the first versions stumble over calling the late man "the deceased" when he saw him die, and the rest, the cat, the head, Pilate, makes the account more and more confused; by the time the cloud arrives, he no longer has the strength. After the injection, the debate between the Ivan who wants to capture the consultant and the one who finds that useless shows the wearing down of his own conviction, which cannot sustain itself alone.
An idiot!
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