At the fading sunset over Patriarch’s Ponds, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, a forty‑year‑old editor in a grey summer suit, and his young poet companion Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev (who writes under the name Homeless) arrive alone. They purchase warm apricot soda from an empty stand, drink, and begin hiccuping. After finishing, Berlioz feels a sudden, inexplicable terror; his heart seems pierced by an invisible needle until a translucent, seven‑foot‑tall citizen in a peaked jockey’s cap appears, sways, then vanishes, removing the needle. Shaken, Berlioz attributes the episode to overwork and considers a health retreat.

The two settle on a bench and discuss a freshly commissioned anti‑religious poem about Jesus that Berlioz finds unsatisfactory. Berlioz lectures Homeless, citing Philo of Alexandria, Flavius Josephus, and a spurious passage in Tacitus to argue that Jesus never existed. He expands the argument with references to Osiris, Tammuz, Marduk, and the Aztec deity Vitzliputzli.

While they converse, a mysterious stranger passes. He is described as tall, with gold crowns on his right teeth and platinum on his left, wearing an expensive grey suit, a rakishly tilted grey beret, and carrying a stick topped with a black poodle head. His eyes are mismatched (right black, left green). He sits on a nearby bench, observes the surroundings, and soon engages the men. After a brief hesitation, he asks politely to join their discussion, confirming that they deny God’s existence. He declares himself a French‑German‑Polish‑type foreigner, a polyglot, and introduces himself as a professor, specialist in black magic, and historian summoned to sort ten‑century necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac manuscripts.

The stranger produces a massive golden cigarette case with a diamond‑triangular lid, offers Homeless a cigarette, and then launches an absurd philosophical exchange about proofs of God, citing Kant, Schiller, and Strauss, and fabricates a sixth “proof”. He predicts Berlioz’s death at the hands of a Komsomol girl, claims the evening’s Massolit meeting will be canceled because a woman named Annushka spilled sunflower oil, and mocks their atheism. He repeatedly asks what governs humanity without God, prompting heated replies.

He then shows his business card, passport, and an invitation to Moscow as a consultant, confirming his role as a historian and black‑magic expert. He insists Jesus did exist, contradicting the editors, and ends with an ominous recitation of a cryptic astrological forecast that Berlioz’s head will be cut off. The chapter closes with the three men bewildered, the foreigner smiling, and the atmosphere heavy with suspicion and philosophical tension.