CHAPTER 13 - The Hero Enters
Late at night, a clean‑shaven, dark‑haired man of about thirty‑eight slips through the balcony grille of Ivan’s ward after stealing a bunch of keys from Praskovya Fyodorovna. He sits in the armchair, whispers, and asks Ivan whether he is violent. After a terse exchange about poetry (Ivan calls himself “Homeless”), the visitor explains that he obtained the keys a month earlier, uses them to get onto the common balcony, and can leave the ward whenever he wishes, though he claims he has nowhere to go.
The patient tells Ivan that a new “fat man with a purple physiognomy” has arrived in room 119, muttering about currency and unclean powers. He then probes Ivan about his own story, prompting Ivan to recount his night at Patriarch’s Ponds. The visitor reveals that Ivan’s strange companion there was Satan, confirming Ivan’s earlier suspicions.
The visitor begins a long monologue about his own life. He was a museum historian and translator, fluent in five foreign languages, who won a hundred thousand roubles from a state bond. He bought two basement rooms near the Arbat, furnishing them with a sofa, a lamp, a stove, and many books, and wrote a novel about Pontius Pilate, intending the final line to be “the fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.” He describes his lover – a woman in a black spring coat who carried repulsive yellow flowers – their secret meetings in the basement, their passionate encounter, and the promise that she would become his “secret wife.” He tells how he submitted the manuscript to an editor; the editorial secretary (Lapshennikova) returned it, saying the publisher would not print it for two years. Critics Latunsky, Ariman, and Mstislav Lavrovich wrote hostile articles, mocking his work and labeling it “Pilatism.” The barrage of criticism plunged him into melancholy, fear of darkness, and vivid visions of a cold octopus clutching his heart.
In a desperate act, he burned the manuscript and notebooks in the stove, tearing pages apart with a poker. As the flames rose, a woman (the same lover) burst in, rescued him, and helped him extinguish the fire. She tended his wounds, offered wine, and declared she would stay with him. Their conversation ends with a promise that she will return in the morning, after which the scene fades.
The visitor then produces a greasy black cap embroidered with a yellow “M,” declares himself a “master,” and renounces his name, saying he has given up everything in life. He explains that he is now in the clinic because his own encounter with Pontius Pilate has brought him here, having written the novel a year earlier.
He asks Ivan whether he knows what happened to Yeshua and Pilate; Ivan prods him, but the visitor twitches, admits he cannot recall the “seventh proof” without trembling, and ends the conversation. He slips back onto the balcony, closes the grille, and disappears, while soft footsteps and hallway voices echo in the corridor. The chapter ends with the guest’s final whisper that the night is restless, and Ivan hearing a distant knock after the woman’s departure.