Last night, I watched a hallucinatory documentary, of perhaps questionable accuracy, on Mikhail Bulgakov and the circumstances that fed the writing of The Master and Margarita: oh, you know, just Koba the Dread purging everyone while occasionally calling a comrade at home and granting some weird bit of mercy, atop terrible wartime experiences and a morphine addiction, nothing to see here … watching that while sitting up in bed might earn one a very poor sleep. The fever and sweats: autoimmune. The dreams: Stalinist purges and Azazel. Yeah, Azazel. On a train platform at one point. Smug bastard he was, too. Feathers beneath his clothes. I expected goat hair. No: feathers.

Filthy feathers.

And two plus two equalled five.