New Characters
Riukhin: A poet who helps bring Ivan into the psychiatric clinic.

Zheldybin: Berlioz’s assistant, who receives and spreads the news of Berlioz’s death.

Doctor (also known as Dr. Stravinsky): The head doctor of the Moscow psychiatric clinic.

Summary
Griboedov’s, a restaurant on the ground floor of The House of Griboedov, is known as the best restaurant in Moscow. The house serves as a club for Massolit, a Moscow literary organization. The club itself is very cozy and plush, but the restaurant, with its reasonable prices and superb menu, is the club’s greatest feature. On this night, 12 writers have gathered for the meeting Berlioz would be attending if he were not dead. It is nearing 11:00 P.M., and the impatient writers, who had expected the meeting to start at 10 o’clock, grumble impatiently before going down to the restaurant at midnight. Meanwhile, Berlioz’s assistant, Zheldybin, is given the news of Berlioz’s death and goes to visit the head and body laid out on two separate tables.

At midnight, “a handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard” who looks like a Caribbean pirate enters the restaurant. The news of Berlioz’s death spreads through Griboedov’s at the same time, and shortly thereafter Ivan runs onto the restaurant’s veranda. Ivan, carrying the candle and with the icon pinned to the breast of his blouse, starts looking for the professor and reveals that the professor has killed Berlioz. However, no one believes this story and the diners, concluding he is insane, capture Ivan. The pirate dismisses the restaurant’s doorman for letting Ivan in, and Ivan is carried to a truck, which will take him to a psychiatric clinic located on the banks of a river outside of Moscow.

At 1:30 A.M., a doctor arrives in the examining room to meet Ivan. The poet Riukhin, who had helped carry Ivan into the truck, tells the doctor what Ivan has done. Ivan, though, complains that he’s been mistreated and is perfectly sane, adding a denunciation of Riukhin as “a typical little kulak.” The doctor and Riukhin listen to Ivan narrate the encounter with the professor before Ivan is manhandled by some orderlies. The doctor, suspecting Ivan has schizophrenia, orders Ivan to be put in room 117 and assigned a nurse. The truck takes Riukhin back to Moscow, and a disconsolate Riukhin returns to Griboedov’s to drink vodka by himself.

Analysis
The pleasures provided at Griboedov’s, the home of Massolit, are a sample of the privileges available to artists who comply with the Soviet authorities. However, the disgruntlement among those waiting for Berlioz indicates that not all Massolit members are equal, and the Soviet ideal of a classless society has not been realized. The refusal to take Ivan’s story seriously is not surprising, but it recalls the earlier statement that Berlioz was not used to seeing extraordinary phenomena. It seems either Communism or literary success has dulled the Massolit members’ sense of the unusual and inexplicable.

So the only apparent option is to remove Ivan to the psychiatric clinic on the outskirts of Moscow, where he can be treated in isolation. Ivan’s statement that the icon scared the professor and his comrades hints that the professor may be demonic, but even Ivan isn’t able to consider that possibility. Riukhin, who briefly wonders if Ivan is really quite sane and questions the value of his own poems, weakens and rapidly ages, but he dismisses his trembling and concern for Ivan and instead drinks vodka and forgets his problems. This is in contrast to Ivan, who is shunned by Massolit and must still face his problems alone in the clinic.