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gave way and  Berlioz was thrown across the  track. Grabbing wildly, Berlioz
fell  prone. He struck his head violently on the cobblestones and the gilded
moon flashed hazily across his vision. He just had time to turn on his back,
drawing his legs up to his stomach with a frenzied movement and as he turned
over  he saw the woman tram-driver's face, white with horror above  her  red
necktie, as she bore down on him with irresistible  force and speed. Berlioz
made no sound, but all round  him the street rang with the desperate shrieks
of  women's voices. The driver grabbed the electric  brake, the  car pitched
forward, jumped  the rails and with a tinkling crash the glass broke  in all
its  windows. At this moment Berlioz heard a despairing voice: ' Oh, no  . .
.! ' Once more and for the last time the moon flashed before his eyes but it
split into fragments and then went black.
     Berlioz vanished from sight under the tramcar and a round,  dark object
rolled  across  the  cobbles,  over  the  kerbstone and  bounced  along  the
pavement.
     It was a severed head.


4. The Pursuit



     The women's hysterical  shrieks and the sound,  of police whistles died
away. Two ambulances drove on, one bearing the body and the decapitated head
to the morgue, the other carrying  the  beautiful  tram-driver  who had been
wounded by slivers of glass. Street  sweepers in white overalls swept up the
broken glass and poare'd sand on the pools of  blood. Ivan  Nikolayich,  who
had failed to reach the turnstile in time, collapsed on a bench and remained
there. Several times he tried to ge:t up, but his legs refuse d to obey him,
stricken by a kind of paralysis.
     The  moment he had heard the first cry the  poet had rushed towards the
turnstile and seen the head bouncing on the pavement. The sight unnerved him
so much that he bit his hand until it drew blood. He had naturally forgotten

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