Chapter summary
At half past one in the morning, in the psychiatric clinic on the outskirts of Moscow, a duty doctor with a pointed goatee (see Stravinsky's clinic) questions Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny, whom the poet Riukhin brought in tied up and who, according to him, may be suffering from delirium tremens. Ivan calls Riukhin a traitor and a kulak (a prosperous peasant, the type persecuted under the Soviet regime) disguised as a proletarian, says he is a sane man dragged by force into a madhouse, and says he is chasing a consultant who knew in advance that Berlioz would die under a tram, who has ties to impure forces, and who spoke in person with Pontius Pilate. He explains the candle and the icon by saying that it was the icon that frightened everyone most. He calls the police and demands five motorcycles with machine guns; when prevented from leaving, he tries to climb out through the window and is subdued by the orderlies and sedated with an injection. Before falling asleep, he says that what interests him most now is Pilate. The doctor orders him bathed and taken to room 117, and says softly to Riukhin that the case is schizophrenia, with alcoholism on top.
Riukhin returns by truck to Moscow at dawn, gripped by the idea that what torments him in Ivan's insults is not their coarseness but the truth they contain. On the way, he concludes that glory will never come to him, because his poems are bad and he does not believe a word he writes; soon after, standing before the statue of Pushkin, he attributes the other poet's glory to luck. At the Griboyedov House, where the manager Archibald Archibaldovich feigns sympathy for Ivan's fate, he asks for vodka and drinks alone until the day breaks.
Analysis
The doctor asks about the icon and the candle, and Ivan explains that it was the icon that frightened everyone most; then he says that the consultant is linked to impure forces. Each sincere answer confirms the diagnosis the doctor already had. The more Ivan insists on the truth, the more it turns into a symptom, because the listener's question is about signs, not about what was said.
Motor and verbal excitement... deluded interpretations... a complex case, it seems... Schizophrenia, one must suppose. And, on top of that, alcoholism...
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