CHAPTER 5 - There were Doings at Griboedov’s
At Griboedov’s—a two‑storey cream‑coloured house on the ring boulevard, now the headquarters of the literary collective Massolit—writers gather on the second floor for a scheduled meeting. The room is stifling, the windows offer no breeze, and the twelve members (including Beskudnikov, Dvubratsky, Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, Zagrivov, Bos’n George, Ieronym Poprikhin, Ababkov, Glukharev, Deniskin, Quant, and others) wait for Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, who never appears because he has been killed earlier that night. Their watch shows it is half‑past ten; they discuss Perelygino dachas, envy, and their lack of a venue, while increasingly agitated.
The writers eventually leave the upstairs room at midnight and descend to the ground‑floor restaurant, which occupies two grand arches‑ceilinged halls. The jazz band begins playing “Hallelujah”; dancers flood the veranda, the banquet hall, and the second hall. Waiters haul mugs of beer; a megaphone announces food specials. The atmosphere is raucous, drunken, and sweaty.
Suddenly a light flashes past the cast‑iron fence, and a white, candle‑holding figure steps onto the veranda. The figure is Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, a barefoot, tattered‑blouse poet with a paper icon of an unknown saint pinned to his chest. He raises a lit wedding candle and loudly proclaims “Hail, friends!” He then announces that “the consultant” has killed “Misha Berlioz” and that the consultant’s name starts with the letter “W”. He frantically mutters possible surnames (Wu, Wagner, Winter, Wolf, etc.), demanding the police be dispatched with machine‑guns to capture the mysterious man, a checkered‑eyed accomplice, and a black cat.
A calm, horn‑rimmed‑glasses man (a “guest speaker”) attempts to soothe Ivan, urging him to rest, but Ivan attacks him, striking the man’s ear with the candle. Chaos erupts: dishes clatter, women scream, waiters bind Ivan with napkins, and a pirate‑styled doorman (the “commander of the brig”) argues with the actual doorman about letting a man in his underwear enter. The pirate scolds the doorman for failing to blow a whistle, then orders the police, a car, and a psychiatric clinic to be called. He also orders the doorman to fetch “Pantelei from the snack bar”.
In the ensuing pandemonium, a truck appears. The driver, a hostile coachman, along with the doorman Pantelei, a policeman, and the waiter Riukhin, drag the still‑candle‑holding Ivan, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin away from the veranda. The crowd watches as the truck departs, ending the bizarre episode. The restaurant eventually settles back into its usual nocturnal routine, while the writers, still unsettled, contemplate the death of Berlioz and the strange appearance of the poet.