The Master and Margarita

CHAPTER 19 Margarita

Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!

Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!

No! The master was mistaken when with bitterness he told Ivanushka in the hospital, at that hour when the night was falling past midnight, that she had forgotten him. That could not be. She had, of course, not forgotten him.

First of all let us reveal the secret which the master did not wish to reveal to Ivanushka. His beloved’s name was Margarita[108] Nikolaevna. Everything the master told the poor poet about her was the exact truth. He described his beloved correctly. She was beautiful and intelligent. To that one more thing must be added: it can be said with certainty that many women would have given anything to exchange their lives for the life of Margarita Nikolaevna. The childless thirty-year-old Margarita was the wife of a very prominent specialist, who, moreover, had made a very important discovery of state significance. Her husband was young, handsome, kind, honest, and adored his wife. The two of them, Margarita and her husband, occupied the entire top floor of a magnificent house in a garden on one of the lanes near the Arbat. A charming place! Anyone can be convinced of it who wishes to visit this garden. Let them inquire of me, and I will give them the address, show them the way - the house stands untouched to this day.

Margarita Nikolaevna was not in need of money. Margarita Nikolaevna could buy whatever she liked. Among her husband’s acquaintances there were some interesting people. Margarita Nikolaevna had never touched a primus stove. Margarita Nikolaevna knew nothing of the horrors of life in a communal apartment. In short ... she was happy? Not for one minute! Never, since the age of nineteen, when she had married and wound up in this house, had she known any happiness. Gods, my gods! What, then, did this woman need?! What did this woman need, in whose eyes there always burned some enigmatic little fire? What did she need, this witch with a slight cast in one eye, who had adorned herself with mimosa that time in the spring? I do not know. I have no idea. Obviously she was telling the truth, she needed him, the master, and not at all some Gothic mansion, not a private garden, not money. She loved him, she was telling the truth.

Even I, the truthful narrator, though an outsider, feel my heart wrung at the thought of what Margarita endured when she came to the master’s little house the next day (fortunately before she had time to talk with her husband, who had not come back at the appointed time) and discovered that the master was no longer there. She did everything to find out something about him, and, of course, found out nothing. Then she went back to her house and began living in her former place.

But as soon as the dirty snow disappeared from the sidewalks and streets, as soon as the slightly rotten, disquieting spring breeze wafted through the window, Margarita Nikolaevna began to grieve more than in winter. She often wept in secret, a long and bitter weeping. She did not know who it was she loved: a living man or a dead one? And the longer the desperate days went on, the more often, especially at twilight, did the thought come to her that she was bound to a dead man.

She had either to forget him or to die herself. It was impossible to drag on with such a life. Impossible! Forget him, whatever the cost — forget him! But he would not be forgotten, that was the trouble.

‘Yes, yes, yes, the very same mistake!’ Margarita said, sitting by the stove and gazing into the fire lit in memory of the fire that had burned while he was writing Pontius Pilate. ‘Why did I leave him that night? Why? It was madness! I came back the next day, honestly, as I’d promised, but it was too late. Yes, like the unfortunate Matthew Levi, I came back too late!’

All these words were, of course, absurd, because what, in fact, would it have changed if she had stayed with the master that night? Would she have saved him? ‘Ridiculous! ...’ we might exclaim, but we shall not do so before a woman driven to despair.

On that same day when all sorts of absurd turmoil took place, provoked by the appearance of the black magician in Moscow, on the Friday when Berlioz’s uncle was chased back to Kiev, when the bookkeeper was arrested and a host of other quite stupid and incomprehensible things took place — Margarita woke up at around noon in her bedroom with bay windows in the tower of the house.

On awakening, Margarita did not weep, as she often did, because she awoke with a presentiment that today something was finally going to happen. Having felt this presentiment, she began to warm it and nurture it in her soul, for fear it might abandon her.

‘I believe!’ Margarita whispered solemnly. ‘I believe! Something will happen! It cannot not happen, because for what, indeed, has lifelong torment been sent to me? I admit that I lied and deceived and lived a secret life, hidden from people, but all the same the punishment for it cannot be so cruel ... Something is bound to happen, because it cannot be that anything will go on for ever. And besides, my dream was prophetic, I’ll swear it was ...’

So Margarita Nikolaevna whispered, looking at the crimson curtains as they filled with sun, dressing anxiously, combing her short curled hair in front of the triple mirror.

The dream that Margarita had dreamed that night was indeed unusual. The thing was that during her winter sufferings she had never seen the master in her dreams. He released her for the night, and she suffered only in the daylight hours. But now she had dreamed of him.

The dream was of a place unknown to Margarita — hopeless, dismal, under the sullen sky of early spring. In the dream there was this ragged, fleeting, grey sky, and under it a noiseless flock of rooks. Some gnarled little bridge, and under it a muddy spring runlet. Joyless, destitute, half-naked trees. A lone aspen, and further on, among the trees, beyond some vegetable patch, a little log structure - a separate kitchen, a bathhouse, devil knows what it was! Everything around somehow lifeless and so dismal that one just longed to hang oneself from that aspen by the bridge. Not a puff of breeze, not a movement of the clouds, and not a living soul. What a hellish place for a living man!

And then, imagine, the door of this log structure is thrown open, and he appears. Rather far away, but clearly visible. He is in tatters, it is impossible to make out what he is wearing. Unshaven, hair dishevelled. Sick, anxious eyes. He beckons with his hand, calling her. Gasping in the lifeless air, Margarita ran to him over the tussocks, and at that moment she woke up.

‘This dream means only one of two things,’ Margarita Nikolaevna reasoned with herself. ‘If he’s dead and beckoned to me, it means he has come for me, and I will die soon. And that’s very good - because then my suffering will soon end. Or else he’s alive, and then the dream can only mean one thing, that he’s reminding me of himself! He wants to say that we will see each other again ... Yes, we will see each other very soon!’

Still in the same agitated state, Margarita got dressed and began impressing it upon herself that, essentially, everything was turning out very luckily, and one must know how to catch such lucky moments and take advantage of them. Her husband had gone on a business trip for a whole three days. During those three days she was at her own disposal, and no one could prevent her from thinking what she liked or dreaming what she liked. All five rooms on the top floor of the house, all of this apartment which in Moscow would be the envy of tens of thousands of people, was entirely at her disposal.

However, being granted freedom for a whole three days, Margarita chose from all this luxurious apartment what was far from the best place. After having tea, she went to a dark, windowless room where suitcases and all sorts of old stuff were kept in two large wardrobes. Squatting down, she opened the bottom drawer of the first of them and took from under a pile of silk scraps the only precious thing she had in life. Margarita held in her hands an old brown leather album which contained a photographic portrait of the master, a bank savings book with a deposit of ten thousand roubles in his name, the petals of a dried rose pressed between sheets of tissue paper, and part of a full-sized notebook covered with typescript and with a charred bottom edge.

Going back to her bedroom with these riches, Margarita Nikolaevna set the photograph up on the triple mirror and sat for about an hour holding the fire-damaged book on her knees, leafing through it and rereading that which, after the burning, had neither beginning nor end: ‘... The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the dread Antonia Tower[109] disappeared, the abyss descended from the sky and flooded the winged gods over the hippodrome, the Hasmonaean Palace[110] with its loopholes, the bazaars, caravanserais, lanes, pools ... Yershalaim - the great city - vanished as if it had never existed in the world...’

Margarita wanted to read further, but further there was nothing except an irregular, charred fringe.

Wiping her tears, Margarita Nikolaevna abandoned the notebook, rested her elbows on the dressing table and, reflected in the mirror, sat for a long time without taking her eyes from the photograph. Then the tears dried up. Margarita neatly folded her possessions, and a few minutes later they were again buried under silk rags, and the lock clicked shut in the dark room.

Margarita Nikolaevna was putting her coat on in the front hall in order to go for a walk. The beautiful Natasha, her housemaid, asked what to prepare for the main course, and, receiving the reply that it made no difference, got into conversation with her mistress for her own amusement, and began telling her God knows what, something about how yesterday in the theatre a conjurer began performing such tricks that everybody gasped, gave away two flacons of foreign perfume and a pair of stockings free to everybody, and then, when the seance ended, the audience came outside and — bang — everybody turned out to be naked! Margarita Nikolaevna dropped on to the chair in front of the hall mirror and burst out laughing.

‘Natasha! You ought to be ashamed,’ Margarita Nikolaevna said, ‘you, a literate, intelligent girl ... they tell devil knows what lies in the queues, and you go repeating them!’

Natasha flushed deeply and objected with great ardour that, no, they weren’t lying, and that she herself had personally seen today, in a grocer’s on the Arbat, one citizeness who came into the shop wearing shoes, but as she was paying at the cash register, the shoes disappeared from her feet, and she was left in just her stockings. Eyes popping out, and a hole in her heel! And the shoes were magic ones from that same seance.

‘And she left like that?’

‘And she left like that!’ Natasha cried, blushing still more from not being believed. ‘And yesterday, Margarita Nikolaevna, the police arrested around a hundred people in the evening. Women from this seance were running down Tverskaya in nothing but their bloomers.’

‘Well, of course, it’s Darya who told you that,’ said Margarita Nikolaevna. ‘I noticed long ago that she’s a terrible liar.’

The funny conversation ended with a pleasant surprise for Natasha. Margarita Nikolaevna went to the bedroom and came back holding a pair of stockings and a flacon of eau-de-cologne. Telling Natasha that she, too, wanted to perform a trick, Margarita Nikolaevna gave her both the stockings and the bottle, and said her only request was that she not run around on Tverskaya in nothing but stockings and that she not listen to Darya. Having kissed each other, mistress and housemaid parted.

Leaning against the comfortable soft back of the trolley-bus seat, Margarita Nikolaevna rode down the Arbat, now thinking her own thoughts, now listening to the whispers of two citizens sitting in front of her.

They were exchanging whispers about some nonsense, looking around warily from time to time to make sure no one was listening. The hefty, beefy one with pert, piggish eyes, sitting by the window, was quietly telling his small neighbour that the coffin had to be covered with a black cloth ...

‘It can’t be!’ the small one whispered, amazed. ‘This is something unheard-of! ... And what has Zheldybin done?’

Amidst the steady humming of the trolley-bus, words came from the window:

‘Criminal investigation ... scandal ... well, outright mysticism! ...’

From these fragmentary scraps, Margarita Nikolaevna somehow put together something coherent. The citizens were whispering about some dead person (they did not name him) whose head had been stolen from the coffin that morning ... This was the reason why Zheldybin was now so worried. And the two who were whispering on the trolley-bus also had some connection with the robbed dead man.

‘Will we have time to stop for flowers?’ the small one worried. ‘The cremation is at two, you say?’

Margarita Nikolaevna finally got tired of listening to this mysterious palaver about a head stolen from a coffin, and she was glad it was time for her to get off.

A few minutes later Margarita Nikolaevna was sitting on one of the benches under the Kremlin wall, settling herself in such a way that she could see the Manège.[111]

Margarita squinted in the bright sunlight, remembered her last night’s dream, remembered how, exactly a year ago to the day and the hour, she had sat next to him on this same bench. And in just the same way as then, her black handbag lay beside her on the bench. He was not beside her this day, but Margarita Nikolaevna mentally conversed with him all the same: ‘If you’ve been exiled, why don’t you send me word of yourself? People do send word. Have you stopped loving me? No, for some reason I don’t believe that. It means you were exiled and died ... Release me, then, I beg you, give me freedom to live, finally, to breathe the air! ...’ Margarita Nikolaevna answered for him herself: ‘You are free ... am I holding you?’ Then she objected to him: ‘No, what kind of answer is that? No, go from my memory, then I’ll be free...’

People walked past Margarita Nikolaevna. Some man gave the well-dressed woman a sidelong glance, attracted by her beauty and her solitude. He coughed and sat down at the end of the same bench that Margarita Nikolaevna was sitting on. Plucking up his courage, he began:

‘Definitely nice weather today ...’

But Margarita gave him such a dark look that he got up and left.

‘There, for example,’ Margarita said mentally to him who possessed her. ‘Why, in fact, did I chase that man away? I’m bored, and there’s nothing bad about this Lovelace, unless it’s the stupid word “definitely” ... Why am I sitting alone under the wall like an owl? Why am I excluded from life?’

She became thoroughly sad and downcast. But here suddenly the same morning wave of expectation and excitement pushed at her chest. ‘Yes, it will happen!’ The wave pushed her a second time, and now she realized that it was a wave of sound. Through the noise of the city there came ever more distinctly the approaching beat of a drum and the sounds of slightly off-key trumpets.

The first to appear was a mounted policeman riding slowly past the garden fence, with three more following on foot. Then a slowly rolling truck with the musicians. After that, a new, open hearse moving slowly, a coffin on it all covered with wreaths, and at the comers of the platform four standing persons — three men and one woman.

Even from a distance, Margarita discerned that the faces of the people standing on the hearse, accompanying the deceased on his last journey, were somehow strangely bewildered. This was particularly noticeable with regard to the citizeness who stood at the left rear corner of the hearse. This citizeness’s fat cheeks were as if pushed out still more from inside by some piquant secret, her puffy little eyes glinted with an ambiguous fire. It seemed that just a little longer and the citizeness, unable to help herself, would wink at the deceased and say: ‘Have you ever seen the like? Outright mysticism! ...’ The same bewildered faces showed on those in the cortege, who, numbering three hundred or near it, slowly walked behind the hearse.

Margarita followed the procession with her eyes, listening to the dismal Turkish drum fading in the distance, producing one and the same ‘boom, boom, boom’, and thought: ‘What a strange funeral ... and what anguish from that “boom”! Ah, truly, I’d pawn my soul to the devil just to find out whether he’s alive or not ... It would be interesting to know who they’re burying.’

‘Berlioz, Mikhail Alexandrovich,’ a slightly nasal male voice came from beside her, ‘chairman of Massolit.’

The surprised Margarita Nikolaevna turned and saw a citizen on her bench, who had apparently sat down there noiselessly while Margarita was watching the procession and, it must be assumed, absent-mindedly asked her last question aloud.

The procession meanwhile was slowing down, probably delayed by traffic lights ahead.

‘Yes,’ the unknown citizen went on, ‘they’re in a surprising mood. They’re accompanying the deceased and thinking only about what happened to his head.’

‘What head?’ asked Margarita, studying her unexpected neighbour. This neighbour turned out to be short of stature, a fiery redhead with a fang, in a starched shirt, a good-quality striped suit, patent leather shoes, and with a bowler hat on his head. His tie was brightly coloured. The surprising thing was that from the pocket where men usually carry a handkerchief or a fountain pen, this gentleman had a gnawed chicken bone sticking out.

‘You see,’ the redhead explained, ‘this morning in the hall of Griboedov’s, the deceased’s head was filched from the coffin.’

‘How can that be?’ Margarita asked involuntarily, remembering at the same time the whispering on the trolley-bus.

‘Devil knows how!’ the redhead replied casually. ‘I suppose, however, that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask Behemoth about it. It was an awfully deft snatch! Such a scandal! ... And, above all, it’s incomprehensible — who needs this head and for what!’

Occupied though Margarita Nikolaevna was with her own thoughts, she was struck all the same by the unknown citizen’s strange twaddle.

‘Excuse me!’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘What Berlioz? The one that today’s newspapers ...’

‘The same, the same ...’

‘So it means that those are writers following the coffin!’ Margarita asked, and suddenly bared her teeth.

‘Well, naturally they are!’

‘And do you know them by sight?’

‘All of them to a man,’ the redhead replied.

‘Tell me,’ Margarita began to say, and her voice became hollow, ‘is the critic Latunsky among them?’

‘How could he not be?’ the redhead replied. ‘He’s there at the end of the fourth row.’

‘The blond one?’ Margarita asked, narrowing her eyes.

‘Ash-coloured ... See, he’s raising his eyes to heaven.’

‘Looking like a parson?’

‘That’s him!’

Margarita asked nothing more, peering at Latunsky.

‘And I can see,’ the redhead said, smiling, ‘that you hate this Latunsky!’

‘There are some others I hate,’ Margarita answered through her teeth, ‘but it’s not interesting to talk about it.’

The procession moved on just then, with mostly empty automobiles following the people on foot.

‘Oh, well, of course there’s nothing interesting in it, Margarita Nikolaevna!’

Margarita was surprised.

‘Do you know me?’

In place of an answer, the redhead took off his bowler hat and held it out.

‘A perfect bandit’s mug!’ thought Margarita, studying her street interlocutor.

‘Well, I don’t know you,’ Margarita said drily.

‘Where could you know me from? But all the same I’ve been sent to you on a little business.’

Margarita turned pale and recoiled.

‘You ought to have begun with that straight off,’ she said, ‘instead of pouring out devil knows what about some severed head! You want to arrest me?’

‘Nothing of the kind!’ the redhead exclaimed. ‘What is it — you start a conversation, and right away it’s got to be an arrest! I simply have business with you.’

‘I don’t understand, what business?’

The redhead looked around and said mysteriously:

‘I’ve been sent to invite you for a visit this evening.’

‘What are you raving about, what visit?’

‘To a very distinguished foreigner,’ the redhead said significantly, narrowing one eye.

Margarita became very angry.

‘A new breed has appeared — a street pander!’ she said, getting up to leave.

‘Thanks a lot for such errands!’ the redhead exclaimed grudgingly, and he muttered ‘Fool!’ to Margarita Nikolaevna’s back.

‘Scoundrel!’ she replied, turning, and straight away heard the redhead’s voice behind her:

‘The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the dread Antonia Tower disappeared ... Yershalaim — the great city — vanished as if it had never existed in the world ... So you, too, can just vanish away along with your burnt notebook and dried-up rose! Sit here on the bench alone and entreat him to set you free, to let you breathe the air, to go from your memory!’

Her face white, Margarita came back to the bench. The redhead was looking at her, narrowing his eyes.

‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Margarita began quietly. ‘It’s possible to find out about the pages ... get in, snoop around ... You bribed Natasha, right? But how could you find out my thoughts?’ She scowled painfully and added: ‘Tell me, who are you? From which institution?’

‘What a bore ...’ the redhead muttered and then said aloud, ‘I beg your pardon, didn’t I tell you that I’m not from any institution? Sit down, please.’

Margarita obeyed unquestioningly, but even so, as she was sitting down, she asked once more:

‘Who are you?’

‘Well, all right, my name is Azazello, but anyhow that tells you nothing.’

‘And you won’t tell me how you found out about the pages and about my thoughts?’

‘No, I won’t,‘ Azazello replied drily.

‘But do you know anything about him?’ Margarita whispered imploringly.

‘Well, suppose I do.’

‘I implore you, tell me only one thing ... is he alive? ... Don’t torment me!’

‘Well, he’s alive, he’s alive,’ Azazello responded reluctantly.

‘Oh, God! ... ’

‘Please, no excitements and exclamations,’ Azazello said, frowning.

‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ the now obedient Margarita murmured, ‘of course, I got angry with you. But, you must agree, when a woman is invited in the street to pay a visit somewhere ... I have no prejudices, I assure you,’ Margarita smiled joylessly, ‘but I never see any foreigners, I have no wish to associate with them ... and, besides, my husband ... my drama is that I’m living with someone I don’t love ... but I consider it an unworthy thing to spoil his life ... I’ve never seen anything but kindness from him ...’

Azazello heard out this incoherent speech with visible boredom and said sternly:

‘I beg you to be silent for a moment.’

Margarita obediently fell silent.

‘The foreigner to whom I’m inviting you is not dangerous at all. And not a single soul will know of this visit. That I can guarantee you.’

‘And what does he need me for?’ Margarita asked insinuatingly.

‘You’ll find that out later.’

‘I understand ... I must give myself to him,’ Margarita said pensively.

To which Azazello grunted somehow haughtily and replied thus:

‘Any woman in the world, I can assure you, would dream of just that,’ Azazello’s mug twisted with a little laugh, ‘but I must disappoint you, it won’t happen.’

‘What kind of foreigner is that?!’ Margarita exclaimed in bewilderment, so loudly that people passing by turned to look at her. ‘And what interest do I have in going to him?’

Azazello leaned towards her and whispered meaningfully:

‘Well, a very great interest ... you’d better use the opportunity ...’

‘What?’ exclaimed Margarita, and her eyes grew round. ‘If I understand you rightly, you’re hinting that I may find out about him there?’

Azazello silently nodded.

‘I’ll go!’ Margarita exclaimed with force and seized Azazello by the hand. ‘I’ll go wherever you like!’

Azazello, with a sigh of relief, leaned against the back of the bench, covering up the name ‘Niura’ carved on it in big letters, and saying ironically:

‘Difficult folk, these women!’ he put his hands in his pockets and stretched his legs way out. ‘Why, for instance, was I sent on this business? Behemoth should have gone, he’s a charmer...’

Margarita said, with a crooked and bitter smile:

‘Stop mystifying me and tormenting me with your riddles. I’m an unhappy person, and you’re taking advantage of it ... I’m getting myself into some strange story, but I swear, it’s only because you lured me with words about him! My head’s spinning from all these puzzlements ...’

‘No dramas, no dramas,’ Azazello returned, making faces, ‘you must also put yourself in my position. To give some administrator a pasting, or chuck an uncle out of the house, or gun somebody down, or any other trifle of the sort — that’s right in my line. But talking with a woman in love, no thanks! ... It’s half an hour now that I’ve been wangling you into it ... So you’ll go?’

‘I will,’ Margarita Nikolaevna answered simply.

‘Be so good as to accept this, then,’ said Azazello, and, pulling a round little golden box from his pocket, he offered it to Margarita with the words: ‘Hide it now, the passers-by are looking. It’ll come in useful, Margarita Nikolaevna, you’ve aged a lot from grief in the last half-year.’ Margarita flushed but said nothing, and Azazello went on: ‘Tonight, at exactly half past nine, be so good as to take off all your clothes and rub your face and your whole body with this ointment. Then do whatever you like, only don’t go far from the telephone. At ten I’ll call you and tell you all you need to know. You won’t have to worry about a thing, you’ll be delivered where you need to go and won’t be put to any trouble. Understood?’

Margarita was silent for a moment, then replied:

‘Understood. This thing is pure gold, you can tell by the weight. So, then, I understand perfectly well that I’m being bribed and drawn into some shady story for which I’m going to pay dearly ...’

‘What is all this?’ Azazello almost hissed. ‘You’re at it again?’

‘No, wait!’

‘Give me back the cream!’

Margarita clutched the box more tightly in her hand and said:

‘No, wait! ... I know what I’m getting into. But I’m getting into it on account of him, because I have no more hope for anything in this world. But I want to tell you that if you’re going to ruin me, you’ll be ashamed! Yes, ashamed! I’m perishing on account of love!’ — and striking herself on the breast, Margarita glanced at the sun.

‘Give it back!’ Azazello cried angrily. ‘Give it back and devil take the whole thing. Let them send Behemoth!’

‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Margarita, shocking the passers-by. ‘I agree to everything, I agree to perform this comedy of rubbing in the ointment, agree to go to the devil and beyond! I won’t give it back!’

‘Hah!’ Azazello suddenly shouted and, goggling his eyes at the garden fence, began pointing off somewhere with his finger.

Margarita turned to where Azazello was pointing, but found nothing special there. Then she turned back to Azazello, wishing to get an explanation of this absurd ‘Hah!’ but there was no one to give an explanation: Margarita Nikolaevna’s mysterious interlocutor had disappeared.

Margarita quickly thrust her hand into her handbag, where she had put the box before this shouting, and made sure it was there. Then, without reflecting on anything, Margarita hurriedly ran out of the Alexandrovsky Garden.

CHAPTER 20
Azazello’s Cream

The moon in the clear evening sky hung full, visible through the maple branches. Lindens and acacias drew an intricate pattern of spots on the ground in the garden. The triple bay window, open but covered by a curtain, was lit with a furious electric light. In Margarita Nikolaevna’s bedroom all the lamps were burning, illuminating the total disorder in the room.

On the blanket on the bed lay shifts, stockings and underwear. Crumpled underwear was also simply lying about on the floor next to a box of cigarettes crushed in the excitement. Shoes stood on the night table next to an unfinished cup of coffee and an ashtray in which a butt was smoking. A black evening dress hung over the back of a chair. The room smelled of perfume. Besides that, the smell of a red-hot iron was coming from somewhere.

Margarita Nikolaevna sat in front of the pier-glass, with just a bathrobe thrown over her naked body, and in black suede shoes. A gold bracelet with a watch lay in front of Margarita Nikolaevna, beside the box she had received from Azazello, and Margarita did not take her eyes from its face.

At times it began to seem to her that the watch was broken and the hands were not moving. But they were moving, though very slowly, as if sticking, and at last the big hand fell on the twenty-ninth minute past nine. Margarita’s heart gave a terrible thump, so that she could not even take hold of the box right away. Having mastered herself, Margarita opened it and saw in the box a rich, yellowish cream. It seemed to her that it smelled of swamp slime. With the tip of her finger, Margarita put a small dab of the cream on her palm, the smell of swamp grass and forest grew stronger, and then she began rubbing the cream into her forehead and cheeks with her palm.

The cream spread easily and, as it seemed to Margarita, evaporated at once. Having rubbed several times, Margarita glanced into the mirror and dropped the box right on her watch crystal, which became covered with cracks. Margarita closed her eyes, then glanced once again and burst into stormy laughter.

Her eyebrows, plucked to a thread with tweezers, thickened and lay in even black arches over her greening eyes. The thin vertical crease cutting the bridge of her nose, which had appeared back then, in October, when the master vanished, disappeared without a trace. So did the yellowish shadows at her temples and the two barely noticeable little webs of wrinkles at the outer comers of her eyes. The skin of her cheeks filled out with an even pink colour, her forehead became white and clear, and the hairdresser’s waves in her hair came undone.

From the mirror a naturally curly, black-haired woman of about twenty was looking at the thirty-year-old Margarita, baring her teeth and shaking with laughter.

Having laughed her fill, Margarita jumped out of her bathrobe with a single leap, dipped freely into the light, rich cream, and with vigorous strokes began rubbing it into the skin of her body. It at once turned pink and tingly. That instant, as if a needle had been snatched from her brain, the ache she had felt in her temple all evening after the meeting in the Alexandrovsky Garden subsided, her leg and arm muscles grew stronger, and then Margarita’s body became weightless.

She sprang up and hung in the air just above the rug, then was slowly pulled down and descended.

‘What a cream! What a cream!’ cried Margarita, throwing herself into an armchair.

The rubbings changed her not only externally. Now joy was boiling up in her, in all of her, in every particle of her body, which felt to her like bubbles prickling her body all over. Margarita felt herself free, free of everything. Besides, she understood with perfect clarity that what was happening was precisely what her presentiment had been telling her in the morning, and that she was leaving her house and her former life for ever. But, even so, a thought split off from this former life about the need of fulfilling just one last duty before the start of something new, extraordinary, which was pulling her upwards into the air. And, naked as she was, she ran from her bedroom, flying up in the air time and again, to her husband’s study, and, turning on the light, rushed to the desk. On a page torn from a notebook, she pencilled a note quickly and in big letters, without any corrections:

With a completely unburdened soul, Margarita came flying into the bedroom, and after her ran Natasha, loaded down with things. At once all these things - a wooden hanger with a dress, lace shawls, dark blue satin shoes on shoe-trees and a belt — all of it spilled on the floor, and Natasha clasped her freed hands.

‘What, nice?’ Margarita Nikolaevna cried loudly in a hoarse voice.

‘How can it be?’ Natasha whispered, backing away. ‘How did you do it, Margarita Nikolaevna.’

‘It’s the cream! The cream, the cream!’ answered Margarita, pointing to the glittering golden box and turning around in front of the mirror.

Natasha, forgetting the wrinkled dress lying on the floor, ran up to the pier-glass and fixed her greedy, lit-up eyes on the remainder of the cream. Her lips were whispering something. She again turned to Margarita and said with a sort of awe:

‘And, oh, the skin! The skin! Margarita Nikolaevna, your skin is glowing!’ But she came to her senses, ran to the dress, picked it up and began shaking it out.

‘Leave it! Leave it!’ Margarita shouted to her. ‘Devil take it! Leave it all! Or, no, keep it as a souvenir. As a souvenir, I tell you. Take everything in the room!’

As if half-witted, the motionless Natasha looked at Margarita for some time, then hung on her neck, kissing her and crying out:

‘Satin! Glowing! Satin! And the eyebrows, the eyebrows!’

‘Take all these rags, take the perfume, drag it to your trunk, hide it,’ cried Margarita, ‘but don’t take any valuables, they’ll accuse you of stealing.’

Natasha grabbed and bundled up whatever came to her hand — dresses, shoes, stockings, underwear - and ran out of the bedroom.

Just then from somewhere at the other end of the lane a thundering, virtuoso waltz burst and flew out an open window, and the chugging of a car driving up to the gate was heard.

‘Azazello will call now!’ exclaimed Margarita, listening to the waltz spilling into the lane. ‘He’ll call! And the foreigner’s not dangerous, yes, I understand now that he’s not dangerous!’

There was the noise of a car driving away from the front gate. The garden gate banged, and steps were heard on the tiles of the path.

‘It’s Nikolai Ivanovich, I recognize his footsteps,’ thought Margarita. ‘I must do something funny and interesting in farewell.’

Margarita tore the curtain open and sat sideways on the window-sill, her arms around her knees. Moonlight licked her from the right side. Margarita raised her head towards the moon and made a pensive and poetic face. The steps tapped twice more, and then suddenly - silence. After admiring the moon a little longer, sighing for the sake of propriety, Margarita turned her head to the garden and indeed saw Nikolai Ivanovich, who lived on the bottom floor of the same house. Moonlight poured down brightly on Nikolai Ivanovich. He was sitting on a bench, and there was every indication that he had sunk on to it suddenly. The pince-nez on his face was somehow askew, and he was clutching his briefcase in his hands.

‘Ah, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich,’ Margarita said in a melancholy voice. ‘Good evening! Coming back from a meeting?’

Nikolai Ivanovich made no reply to that.

‘And I,’ Margarita went on, leaning further out into the garden, ‘am sitting alone, as you see, bored, looking at the moon and listening to the waltz...’

Margarita passed her left hand over her temple, straightening a strand of hair, then said crossly:

‘That is impolite, Nikolai Ivanovich! I’m still a woman after all! It’s boorish not to reply when someone is talking to you.’

Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in the moonlight to the last button on his grey waistcoat, to the last hair of his blond, wedge-shaped beard, suddenly smiled a wild smile, rose from the bench, and, apparently beside himself with embarrassment, instead of taking off his hat, waved his briefcase to the side and bent his knees as if about to break into a squatting dance.

‘Ah, what a boring type you are, Nikolai Ivanovich!’ Margarita went on. ‘Generally, I’m so sick of you all that I can’t even tell you, and I’m so happy to be parting with you! Well, go to the devil’s dam!’

Just then, behind Margarita’s back in the bedroom, the telephone exploded. Margarita tore from the window-sill and, forgetting Nikolai Ivanovich, snatched the receiver.

‘Azazello speaking,’ came from the receiver.

‘Dear, dear Azazello!’ cried Margarita.

‘It’s time. Take off,’ Azazello spoke into the receiver, and it could be heard in his tone that he liked Margarita’s sincere and joyful impulse. ‘When you fly over the gate, shout “Invisible!” Then fly over the city a little, to get used to it, and after that head south, out of the city, and straight for the river. You’re expected!’

Margarita hung up, and here something in the next room hobbled woodenly and started beating on the door. Margarita flung it open and a sweeping broom, bristles up, flew dancing into the bedroom. It drummed on the floor with its end, kicking and straining towards the window. Margarita squealed with delight and jumped astride the broom. Only now did the thought flash in the rider that amidst all this fracas she had forgotten to get dressed. She galloped over to the bed and grabbed the first thing she found, some light blue shift. Waving it like a banner, she flew out the window. And the waltz over the garden struck up louder.

From the window Margarita slipped down and saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the bench. He seemed to have frozen to it and listened completely dumbfounded to the shouting and crashing coming from the lighted bedroom of the upstairs tenants.

‘Farewell, Nikolai Ivanovich!’ cried Margarita, capering in front of Nikolai Ivanovich.

He gasped and crawled along the bench, pawing it with his hands and knocking down his briefcase.

‘Farewell for ever! I’m flying away!’ Margarita shouted above the waltz. Here she realized that she did not need any shift, and with a sinister guffaw threw it over Nikolai Ivanovich’s head. The blinded Nikolai Ivanovich crashed from the bench on to the bricks of the path.

Margarita turned to take a last look at the house where she had suffered for so long, and saw in the blazing window Natasha’s face distorted with amazement.

‘Farewell, Natasha!’ Margarita cried and reared up on the broom. ‘Invisible! Invisible!’ she cried still louder, and, flying over the front gates, between the maple branches, which lashed at her face, she flew out into the lane. And after her flew the completely insane waltz.

CHAPTER 21 Flight

Invisible and free! Invisible and free! ... After flying down her own lane, Margarita got into another that crossed the first at right angles. This patched up, darned, crooked and long lane, with the lopsided door of a kerosene shop where they sold paraffin by the cup and liquid against parasites in flacons, she cut across in an instant, and here she realized that, even while completely free and invisible, she still had to be at least somewhat reasonable in her pleasure. Having slowed down only by some miracle, she just missed smashing herself to death against an old lopsided street light at the corner. Dodging it, Margarita clutched the broom tighter and flew more slowly, studying the electric wires and the street signs hanging across the sidewalk.

The third lane led straight to the Arbat. Here Margarita became fully accustomed to controlling the broom, realized that it obeyed the slightest touch of her hands and legs, and that, flying over the city, she had to be very attentive and not act up too much. Besides, in the lane it had already become abundantly clear that passers-by did not see the lady flier. No one threw his head back, shouted ‘Look! look!’ or dashed aside, no one shrieked, swooned or guffawed with wild laughter.

Margarita flew noiselessly, very slowly, and not high up, approximately on second-floor level. But even with this slow flying, just at the entrance to the dazzlingly lit Arbat she misjudged slightly and struck her shoulder against some illuminated disc with an arrow on it. This angered Margarita. She reined in the obedient broom, flew a little aside, and then, suddenly hurling herself at the disc with the butt of the broom, smashed it to smithereens. Bits of glass rained down with a crash, passers-by shied away, a whistle came from somewhere, and Margarita, having accomplished this unnecessary act, burst out laughing.

‘On the Arbat I must be more careful,’ thought Margarita, ‘everything’s in such a snarl here, you can’t figure it out.’ She began dodging between the wires. Beneath Margarita floated the roofs of buses, trams and cars, and along the sidewalks, as it seemed to Margarita from above, floated rivers of caps. From these rivers little streams branched off and flowed into the flaming maws of night-time shops.

‘Eh, what a mess!’ Margarita thought angrily. ‘You can’t even turn around here.’

She crossed the Arbat, rose higher, to fourth-floor level, and, past the dazzlingly bright tubes on the theatre building at the comer, floated into a narrow lane with tall buildings. All the windows in them were open, and everywhere radio music came from the windows. Out of curiosity, Margarita peeked into one of them. She saw a kitchen. Two primuses were roaring on the range, and next to them stood two women with spoons in their hands, squabbling.

‘You should turn the toilet light off after you, that’s what I’m telling you, Pelageya Petrovna,’ said the woman before whom there was a pot with some sort of eatables steaming in it, ‘or else we’ll apply to have you evicted.’

‘You’re a good one yourself,’ the other woman answered.

‘You’re both good ones,’ Margarita said loudly, clambering over the window-sill into the kitchen.

The two quarrelling women turned towards the voice and froze with their dirty spoons in their hands. Margarita carefully reached out between them, turned the knobs of both primuses, and extinguished them. The women gasped and opened their mouths. But Margarita was already bored with the kitchen and flew out into the lane.

Her attention was attracted by the magnificent hulk of an eight-storeyed, obviously just-constructed building at the end of it. Margarita dropped down and, alighting, saw that the façade of the building was covered in black marble, that the doors were wide, that behind their glass could be glimpsed a doorman’s buttons and peaked cap with gold braid, and that over the door there was a gold inscription: ‘Dramlit House’.

Margarita squinted at the inscription, trying to figure out what the word ‘Dramlit’ might mean. Taking her broom under her arm, Margarita walked into the lobby, shoving the surprised doorman with the door, and saw on the wall beside the elevator a huge black board and on it, written in white letters, apartment numbers and tenants’ names. The heading ’House of Dramatists and Literary Workers’ above the list provoked a suppressed predatory scream in Margarita. Rising in the air, she greedily began to read the last names: Khustov, Dvubratsky, Quant, Beskudnikov, Latunsky ...

‘Latunsky!’ shrieked Margarita. ‘Latunsky! Why, he’s the one ... he’s the one who ruined the master!’

The doorman at the entrance, even hopping with astonishment, his eyes rolled out, gazed at the black board, trying to understand the marvel: why was the list of tenants suddenly shrieking?

But by that time Margarita was already going impetuously up the stairs, repeating in some sort of rapture:

‘Latunsky eighty-four ... Latunsky eighty-four ...’

Here to the left - 82, to the right - 83, further up, to the left - 84! Here! And the name plate - ‘O. Latunsky’.

Margarita jumped off the broom, and her hot soles felt the pleasant coolness of the stone landing. Margarita rang once, twice. But no one opened. Margarita began to push the button harder and could hear the jangling it set off in Latunsky’s apartment. Yes, to his dying day the inhabitant of apartment no. 84 on the eighth floor should be grateful to the late Berlioz, chairman of Massolit, for having fallen under a tram-car, and that the memorial gathering had been appointed precisely for that evening. The critic Latunsky was born under a lucky star — it saved him from meeting Margarita, who that Friday became a witch.

No one opened the door. Then Margarita raced down at full swing, counting the floors, reached the bottom, burst out the door and, looking up, counted and checked the floors from outside, guessing which precisely were the windows of Latunsky’s apartment. Undoubtedly they were the five dark windows at the comer of the building on the eighth floor. Convinced of it, Margarita rose into the air and in a few seconds was stepping through an open window into an unlit room, where only a narrow path from the moon shone silver. Margarita ran down it, felt for the switch. A moment later the whole apartment was lit up. The broom stood in a comer. After making sure that no one was home, Margarita opened the door to the stairs and checked whether the name plate was there. The name plate was in place. Margarita was where she wanted to be.

Yes, they say that to this day the critic Latunsky turns pale remembering that terrible evening, and to this day he utters the name of Berlioz with veneration. It is totally unknown what dark and vile criminal job would have marked this evening - returning from the kitchen, Margarita had a heavy hammer in her hands.

Naked and invisible, the lady flier tried to control and talk sense into herself; her hands trembled with impatience. Taking careful aim, Margarita struck at the keys of the grand piano, and a first plaintive wail passed all through the apartment. Becker’s drawing-room instrument, not guilty of anything, cried out frenziedly. Its keys caved in, ivory veneer flew in all directions. The instrument howled, wailed, rasped and jangled. With the noise of a pistol shot, the polished upper soundboard split under a hammer blow. Breathing hard, Margarita tore and mangled the strings with the hammer. Finally getting tired, she left off and flopped into an armchair to catch her breath.

Water was roaring terribly in the bathroom, and in the kitchen as well. ‘Seems it’s already overflowing on the floor ...’ Margarita thought, and added aloud:

‘No point sitting around, however.’

The stream was already running from the kitchen into the corridor. Splashing barefoot through the water, Margarita carried buckets of water from the kitchen to the critic’s study and emptied them into his desk drawers. Then, after smashing the door of the bookcase in the same study with her hammer, she rushed to the bedroom. Shattering the mirror on the wardrobe, she took out the critic’s dress suit and drowned it in the tub. A large bottle of ink, picked up in the study, she poured over the luxuriously plumped-up double bed.

The devastation she wrought afforded her a burning pleasure, and yet it seemed to her all the while that the results came out somehow meagre. Therefore she started doing whatever came along. She smashed pots of ficus in the room with the grand piano. Before finishing that, she went back to the bedroom, slashed the sheets with a kitchen knife, and broke the glass on the framed photographs. She felt no fatigue, only the sweat poured from her in streams.

Just then, in apartment no. 82, below Latunsky’s apartment, the housekeeper of the dramatist Quant was having tea in the kitchen, perplexed by the clatter, running and jangling coming from above. Raising her head towards the ceiling, she suddenly saw it changing colour before her eyes from white to some deathly blue. The spot was widening right in front of her and drops suddenly swelled out on it. For about two minutes the housekeeper sat marvelling at this phenomenon, until finally a real rain began to fall from the ceiling, drumming on the floor. Here she jumped up, put a bowl under the stream, which did not help at all, because the rain expanded and began pouring down on the gas stove and the table with dishes. Then, crying out, Quant’s housekeeper ran from the apartment to the stairs and at once the bell started ringing in Latunsky’s apartment.

‘Well, they’re ringing ... Time to be off,’ said Margarita. She sat on the broom, listening to the female voice shouting through the keyhole:

‘Open up, open up! Dusya, open the door! Is your water overflowing, or what? We’re being flooded!’

Margarita rose up about a metre and hit the chandelier. Two bulbs popped and pendants flew in all directions. The shouting through the keyhole stopped, stomping was heard on the stairs. Margarita floated through the window, found herself outside it, swung lightly and hit the glass with the hammer. The pane sobbed, and splinters went cascading down the marble-faced wall. Margarita flew to the next window. Far below, people began running about on the sidewalk, one of the two cars parked by the entrance honked and drove off. Having finished with Latunsky’s windows, Margarita floated to the neighbour’s apartment. The blows became more frequent, the lane was filled with crashing and jingling. The doorman ran out of the main entrance, looked up, hesitated a moment, evidently not grasping at first what he ought to undertake, put the whistle to his lips, and started whistling furiously. To the sound of this whistle, Margarita, with particular passion, demolished the last window on the eighth floor, dropped down to the seventh, and started smashing the windows there.

Weary of his prolonged idleness behind the glass doors of the entrance, the doorman put his whole soul into his whistling, following Margarita precisely as if he were her accompanist. In the pauses as she flew from window to window, he would draw his breath, and at each of Margarita’s strokes, he would puff out his cheeks and dissolve in whistling, drilling the night air right up to the sky.

His efforts, combined with the efforts of the infuriated Margarita, yielded great results. There was panic in the house. Those windows left intact were flung open, people’s heads appeared in them and hid at once, while the open windows, on the contrary, were being closed. In the buildings across the street, against the lighted background of windows, there appeared the dark silhouettes of people trying to understand why the windows in the new Dramlit building were bursting for no reason at all.

In the lane people ran to Dramlit House, and inside, on all the stairways, there was the stamping of people rushing about with no reason or sense. Quant’s housekeeper shouted to those running up the stairs that they were being flooded, and she was soon joined by Khustov’s housekeeper from apartment no. 80, located just below Quant’s apartment At Khustov’s it was pouring from the ceiling in both the kitchen and the toilet. Finally, in Quant’s kitchen a huge slab of plaster fell from the ceiling, breaking all the dirty dishes, after which came a real downpour, the water gushing from the grid of wet, hanging lath as if from a bucket. Then on the steps of the main entrance shouting began.

Flying past the penultimate window of the fourth floor, Margarita peeked in and saw a man who in panic had pulled on a gas mask. Hitting his window with the hammer, Margarita scared him off, and he disappeared from the room.

And unexpectedly the wild havoc ceased. Slipping down to the third floor, Margarita peeked into the end window, covered by a thin, dark little curtain. In the room a little lamp was burning weakly under a shade. In a small bed with net sides sat a boy of about four, listening timorously. There were no grown-ups in the room, evidently they had all run out of the apartment.

‘They’re breaking the windows,’ the boy said and called: ‘Mama!’

No one answered, and then he said:

‘Mama, I’m afraid.’

Margarita drew the little curtain aside and flew in.

‘I’m afraid,’ the boy repeated, and trembled.

‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, little one,’ said Margarita, trying to soften her criminal voice, grown husky from the wind. ‘It’s some boys breaking windows.’

‘With a slingshot?’ the boy asked, ceasing to tremble.

‘With a slingshot, with a slingshot,’ Margarita confirmed, ‘and you go to sleep.’

‘It’s Sitnik,’ said the boy, ‘he’s got a slingshot.’

‘Well, of course it’s he!’

The boy looked slyly somewhere to the side and asked:

‘And where are you, ma’am?’

‘I’m nowhere,’ answered Margarita, ‘I’m your dream.’

‘I thought so,’ said the boy.

‘Lie down now,’ Margarita ordered, ‘put your hand under your cheek, and I’ll go on being your dream.’

‘Well, be my dream, then,’ the boy agreed, and at once lay down and put his hand under his cheek.

‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Margarita began, and placed her hot hand on his cropped head. ‘Once there was a certain lady ... And she had no children, and generally no happiness either. And so first she cried for a long time, and then she became wicked ...’ Margarita fell silent and took away her hand - the boy was asleep.

Margarita quietly placed the hammer on the window-sill and flew out the window. There was turmoil by the building. On the asphalt pavement strewn with broken glass, people were running and shouting something. Policemen were already flashing among them. Suddenly a bell rang, and a red fire-engine with a ladder drove into the lane from the Arbat.

But what followed no longer interested Margarita. Taking aim, so as not to brush against any wires, she clutched her broom more tightly and in a moment was high above the ill-fated house. The lane beneath her went askew and plunged away. In place of it a mass of roofs appeared under Margarita’s feet, criss-crossed at various angles by shining paths. It all unexpectedly went off to one side, and the strings of lights smeared and merged.

Margarita made one more spurt and the whole mass of roofs fell through the earth, and in place of it a lake of quivering electric lights appeared below, and this lake suddenly rose up vertically and then appeared over Margarita’s head, while the moon flashed under her feet. Realizing that she had flipped over, Margarita resumed a normal position and, glancing back, saw that there was no longer any lake, and that there behind her only a pink glow remained on the horizon. That, too, disappeared a second later, and Margarita saw that she was alone with the moon flying above and to the left of her. Margarita’s hair had long been standing up in a shock, and the whistling moonlight bathed her body. Seeing two rows of widespread lights merge into two unbroken fiery lines, seeing how quickly they vanished behind her, Margarita realized that she was flying at an enormous speed and was amazed that she was not out of breath.

After a few seconds, a new glow of electric lights flared up far below in the earthly blackness and hurtled under the flying woman’s feet, but immediately spun away like a whirligig and fell into the earth. A few seconds later — exactly the same phenomenon.

‘Towns! Towns!’ cried Margarita.

Two or three times after that she saw dully gleaming sabres lying in open black sheaths below her and realized that these were rivers.

Turning her head up and to the left, the flying woman admired the way the moon madly raced back over her towards Moscow, and at the same time strangely stayed in its place, so that there could be clearly seen on it something mysterious, dark — a dragon, or a little humpbacked horse, its sharp muzzle turned to the abandoned city.

Here the thought came to Margarita that, in fact, there was no need for her to drive her broom so furiously, that she was depriving herself of the opportunity of seeing anything properly, of revelling properly in her own flight. Something told her that she would be waited for in the place she was flying to, and that there was no need for her to become bored with this insane speed and height.

Margarita turned the broom’s bristles forward, so that its tail rose up, and, slowing way down, headed right for the earth. This downward glide, as on an airy sled, gave her the greatest pleasure. The earth rose to meet her, and in its hitherto formless black density the charms and secrets of the earth on a moonlit night revealed themselves. The earth was coming to her, and Margarita was already enveloped in the scent of greening forests. Margarita was flying just above the mists of a dewy meadow, then over a pond. Under Margarita sang a chorus of frogs, and from somewhere far away, stirring her heart deeply for some reason, came the noise of a train. Soon Margarita saw it. It was crawling slowly along like a caterpillar, spraying sparks into the air. Going ahead of it, Margarita passed over yet another watery mirror, in which a second moon floated under her feet, dropped down lower still and went on, her feet nearly touching the tops of the huge pines.

A heavy noise of ripping air came from behind and began to overtake Margarita. To this noise of something flying like a cannon ball a woman’s guffaw was gradually added, audible for many miles around. Margarita looked back and saw some complex dark object catching up with her. As it drew nearer to Margarita, it became more distinct — a mounted flying person could be seen. And finally it became quite distinct: slowing down, Natasha came abreast of Margarita.

Completely naked, her dishevelled hair flying in the air, she flew astride a fat hog, who was clutching a briefcase in his front hoofs, while his hind hoofs desperately threshed the air. Occasionally gleaming in the moonlight, then fading, the pince-nez that had fallen off his nose flew beside the hog on a string, and the hog’s hat kept sliding down over his eyes. Taking a close look, Margarita recognized the hog as Nikolai Ivanovich, and then her laughter rang out over the forest, mingled with the laughter of Natasha.

‘Natashka!’ Margarita shouted piercingly. ‘You rubbed yourself with the cream?’

‘Darling!!’ Natasha replied, awakening the sleeping pine forest with her shout. ‘My French queen, I smeared it on him, too, on his bald head!’

‘Princess!’ the hog shouted tearfully, galloping along with his rider.

‘Darling! Margarita Nikolaevna!’ cried Natasha, riding beside Margarita, ‘I confess, I took the cream! We, too, want to live and fly! Forgive me, my sovereign lady, I won’t go back, not for anything! Ah, it’s good, Margarita Nikolaevna! ... He propositioned me,’ Natasha began jabbing her finger into the neck of the abashedly huffing hog, ‘propositioned me! What was it you called me, eh?’ she shouted, leaning towards the hog’s ear.

‘Goddess!’ howled the hog, ‘I can’t fly so fast! I may lose important papers, Natalya Prokofyevna, I protest!’

‘Ah, devil take you and your papers!’ Natasha shouted with a brazen guffaw.

‘Please, Natalya Prokofyevna, someone may hear us!’ the hog yelled imploringly.

Flying beside Margarita, Natasha laughingly told her what happened in the house after Margarita Nikolaevna flew off over the gates.

Natasha confessed that, without ever touching any of the things she had been given, she threw off her clothes, rushed to the cream, and immediately smeared herself with it. The same thing happened with her as with her mistress. Just as Natasha, laughing with joy, was revelling in her own magical beauty before the mirror, the door opened and Nikolai Ivanovich appeared before her. He was agitated; in his hands he was holding Margarita Nikolaevna’s shift and his own hat and briefcase. Seeing Natasha, Nikolai Ivanovich was dumbfounded. Getting some control of himself, all red as a lobster, he announced that he felt it was his duty to pick up the little shift and bring it personally ...

‘The things he said, the blackguard!’ Natasha shrieked and laughed. ‘The things he said, the things he tempted me to do! The money he promised! He said Klavdia Petrovna would never learn of it. Well, speak, am I lying?’ Natasha shouted to the hog, who only turned his muzzle away abashedly.

In the bedroom, carried away with her own mischief, Natasha dabbed some cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and was herself struck dumb with astonishment. The respectable ground-floor tenant’s face shrank to a pig’s snout, and his hands and feet acquired little hoofs. Looking at himself in the mirror, Nikolai Ivanovich let out a wild and desperate howl, but it was already too late. A few seconds later, saddled up, he was flying out of Moscow to devil knows where, sobbing with grief.

‘I demand that my normal appearance be restored to me!’ the hog suddenly grunted hoarsely, somewhere between frenzy and supplication. ‘I’m not going to fly to any illegal gathering! Margarita Nikolaevna, it’s your duty to call your housekeeper to order!’

‘Ah, so now I’m a housekeeper? A housekeeper?’ Natasha cried, pinching the hog’s ear. ‘And I used to be a goddess? What was it you called me?’

‘Venus!’ the hog replied tearfully, as he flew over a brook bubbling between stones, his little hoofs brushing the hazel bushes.

‘Venus! Venus!’ Natasha cried triumphantly, one hand on her hip, the other stretched out towards the moon. ‘Margarita! Queen! Intercede for me so that I can stay a witch! They’ll do anything for you, you have been granted power!’

And Margarita responded:

‘All right, I promise.’

‘Thank you!’ exclaimed Natasha, and suddenly she cried out sharply and somehow longingly: ‘Hey! Hey! Faster! Faster! Come on, speed it up!’

She dug her heels into the hog’s sides, which had grown thinner during this insane ride, and he tore on, so that the air ripped open again, and a moment later Natasha could be seen only as a black speck in the distance, then vanished completely, and the noise of her flight melted away.

Margarita flew as slowly as before through the deserted and unfamiliar place, over hills strewn with occasional boulders among huge, widely spaced pines. Margarita now flew not over the tops of the pines but between their trunks, silvered on one side by the moon. The light shadow of the flying woman glided over the ground ahead, the moon shining now on Margarita’s back.

Margarita sensed the proximity of water, and guessed that her goal was near. The pines parted and Margarita rode slowly through the air up to a chalk cliff. Beyond this cliff, down in the shadows, lay a river. Mist hung clinging to the bushes on the cliff, but the opposite bank was flat and low. On it, under a solitary group of spreading trees, the light of a bonfire flickered and some small figures could be seen moving about. It seemed to Margarita that some nagging, merry little tune was coming from there. Further off, as far as the eye could see, there was no sign of habitation or people on the silvered plain.

Margarita leaped off the cliff and quickly descended to the water. The water enticed her after her airy race. Casting the broom aside, she ran and threw herself head first into the water. Her light body pierced the water’s surface like an arrow, and the column of water thrown up almost reached the moon. The water turned out to be warm as in a bathhouse, and, emerging from the depths, Margarita swam her fill in the total solitude of night in this river.

There was no one near Margarita, but a little further away, behind the bushes, splashing and grunting could be heard — someone was also having a swim there.

Margarita ran out on to the bank. Her body was on fire after the swim. She felt no fatigue, and was joyfully capering about on the moist grass.

Suddenly she stopped dancing and pricked up her ears. The grunting came closer, and from behind the willow bushes some naked fat man emerged, with a black silk top hat pushed back on his head. His feet were covered with slimy mud, which made it seem that the swimmer was wearing black shoes. Judging by his huffing and hiccuping, he was properly drunk, as was confirmed, incidentally, by the fact that the river suddenly began to smell of cognac.

Seeing Margarita, the fat man peered at her and then shouted joyfully:

‘What’s this? Who is it I see? Claudine, it’s you, the ungrieving widow! You’re here, too?’ and he came at her with his greetings.

Margarita stepped back and replied with dignity:

‘Go to the devil! What sort of Claudine am I to you? Watch out who you’re talking to,’ and, after a moment’s reflection, she added to her words a long, unprintable oath. All this had a sobering effect on the light-minded fat man.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed softly and gave a start, ‘magnanimously forgive me, bright Queen Margot! I mistook you for someone else. The cognac’s to blame, curse it!’ The fat man lowered himself to one knee, holding the top hat far out, made a bow, and started to prattle, mixing Russian phrases with French, some nonsense about the bloody wedding of his friend Guessard in Paris, and about the cognac, and about being mortified by his sad mistake.

‘Why don’t you put your trousers on, you son of a bitch,’ Margarita said, softening.

The fat man grinned joyfully, seeing that Margarita was not angry, and rapturously declared that he found himself without trousers at the given moment only because in his absent-mindedness he had left them on the Yenisey River, where he had been swimming just before, but that he would presently fly there, since it was close at hand, and then, entrusting himself to her favour and patronage, he began to back away and went on backing away until he slipped and fell backwards into the water. But even as he fell, he kept on his face, framed in small side-whiskers, a smile of rapture and devotion.

Here Margarita gave a piercing whistle and, mounting the broom that flew up to her, crossed to the opposite bank of the river. The shadow of the chalk mountain did not reach that far, and the whole bank was flooded with moonlight.

As soon as Margarita touched the moist grass, the music under the pussy willows struck up louder, and a sheaf of sparks flew up more merrily from the bonfire. Under the pussy-willow branches, strewn with tender, fluffy catkins, visible in the moonlight, sat two rows of fat-faced frogs, puffing up as if they were made of rubber, playing a bravura march on wooden pipes. Glowing marsh-lights hung on willow twigs in front of the musicians, lighting up the music; the restless light of the bonfire danced on the frogs’ faces.

The march was being played in honour of Margarita. She was given a most solemn reception. Transparent naiads stopped their round dance over the river and waved weeds at Margarita, and their far-audible greetings moaned across the deserted, greenish bank. Naked witches, jumping from behind the pussy willows, formed a line and began curtseying and making courtly bows. Someone goat-legged flew up and bent to her hand, spread silk on the grass, inquired whether the queen had had a good swim, and invited her to lie down and rest.

Margarita did just that. The goat-legged one offered her a glass of champagne, she drank it, and her heart became warm at once. Having inquired about Natasha’s whereabouts, she received the reply that Natasha had already taken her swim and had flown ahead to Moscow on her hog, to warn them that Margarita would soon arrive and to help prepare her attire.

Margarita’s short stay under the pussy willows was marked by one episode: there was a whistling in the air, and a black body, obviously missing its mark, dropped into the water. A few moments later there stood before Margarita that same fat side-whiskerist who had so unsuccessfully introduced himself on the other bank. He had apparently managed to get to the Yenisey and back, for he was in full evening dress, though wet from head to foot. The cognac had done him another bad turn: as he came down, he landed in the water after all. But he did not lose his smile even on this lamentable occasion, and the laughing Margarita admitted him to her hand.

Then they all started getting ready. The naiads finished their dance in the moonlight and melted into it. The goat-legged one deferentially inquired of Margarita how she had come to the river. On learning that she had come riding on a broom, he said:

‘Oh, but why, it’s so inconvenient!’ He instantly slapped together some dubious-looking telephone from two twigs, and demanded of someone that a car be sent that very minute, which, that same minute, was actually done. An open, light sorrel car came down on the island, only in the driver’s seat there sat no ordinary-looking driver, but a black, long-beaked rook in an oilcloth cap and gauntlets. The little island was becoming deserted. The witches flew off, melting into the moon-blaze. The bonfire was dying down, and the coals were covering over with hoary ash.

The goat-legged one helped Margarita in, and she sank on to the wide back seat of the sorrel car. The car roared, sprang up, and climbed almost to the moon; the island vanished, the river vanished, Margarita was racing to Moscow.

CHAPTER 22 By Candlelight

The steady humming of the car, flying high above the earth, lulled Margarita, and the moonlight warmed her pleasantly. Closing her eyes, she offered her face to the wind and thought with a certain sadness about the unknown river bank she had left behind, which she sensed she would never see again. After all the sorceries and wonders of that evening, she could already guess precisely whom she was being taken to visit, but that did not frighten her. The hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness made her fearless. However, she was not to dream of this happiness for long in the car. Either the rook knew his job well, or the car was a good one, but Margarita soon opened her eyes and saw beneath her not the forest darkness, but a quivering sea of Moscow lights. The black bird-driver unscrewed the right front wheel in flight, then landed the car in some completely deserted cemetery in the Dorogomilovo area.

Having deposited the unquestioning Margarita by one of the graves along with her broom, the rook started the car, aiming it straight into the ravine beyond the cemetery. It tumbled noisily into it and there perished. The rook saluted deferentially, mounted the wheel, and flew off.

A black cloak appeared at once from behind one of the tombstones. A fang flashed in the moonlight, and Margarita recognized Azazello. He gestured to Margarita, inviting her to get on the broom, jumped on to a long rapier himself, they both whirled up and in a few seconds, unnoticed by anyone, landed near no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street.

When the companions passed through the gateway, carrying the broom and rapier under their arms, Margarita noticed a man languishing there in a cap and high boots, probably waiting for someone. Light though Azazello’s and Margarita’s footsteps were, the solitary man heard them and twitched uneasily, not understanding who had produced them.

By the sixth entrance they met a second man looking surprisingly like the first. And again the same story repeated itself. Footsteps ... the man turned and frowned uneasily. And when the door opened and closed, he dashed after the invisible enterers, peeked into the front hall, but of course saw nothing.

A third man, the exact copy of the second, and therefore also of the first, stood watch on the third-floor landing. He smoked strong cigarettes, and Margarita had a fit of coughing as she walked past him. The smoker, as if pricked with a pin, jumped up from the bench he was sitting on, began turning around uneasily, went to the banister, looked down. Margarita and her companion were by that time already at the door of apartment no. 50. They did not ring the bell. Azazello noiselessly opened the door with his own key.

The first thing that struck Margarita was the darkness in which she found herself. It was as dark as underground, so that she involuntarily clutched at Azazello’s cloak for fear of stumbling. But then, from far away and above, the light of some little lamp flickered and began to approach. Azazello took the broom from under Margarita’s arm as they walked, and it disappeared without a sound in the darkness.

Here they started climbing some wide steps, and Margarita began to think there would be no end to them. She was struck that the front hall of an ordinary Moscow apartment could contain this extraordinary invisible, yet quite palpable, endless stairway. But the climb ended, and Margarita realized that she was on a landing. The light came right up to them, and Margarita saw in this light the face of a man, long and black, holding a little lamp in his hand. Those who in recent days had been so unfortunate as to cross paths with him, would certainly have recognized him even by the faint tongue of flame from the lamp. It was Koroviev, alias Fagott.

True, Koroviev’s appearance was quite changed. The flickering light was reflected not in the cracked pince-nez, which it had long been time to throw in the trash, but in a monocle, which, true, was also cracked. The little moustache on his insolent face was twirled up and waxed, and Koroviev’s blackness was quite simply explained — he was in formal attire. Only his chest was white.

The magician, choirmaster, sorcerer, interpreter - devil knows what he really was — Koroviev, in short, made his bows and, with a broad sweep of the lamp in the air, invited Margarita to follow him. Azazello disappeared.

‘An amazingly strange evening,’ thought Margarita, ‘I expected anything but this. Has their electricity gone off, or what? But the most striking thing is the size of the place ... How could it all be squeezed into a Moscow apartment? There’s simply no way it could be! ...’

However little light Koroviev’s lamp gave out, Margarita realized that she was in an absolutely enormous hall, with a colonnade besides, dark and on first impression endless. Koroviev stopped by some sort of little settee, placed his lamp on some sort of post, gestured for Margarita to sit down, and settled himself beside her in a picturesque attitude, leaning his elbow on the post.

‘Allow me to introduce myself to you,’ creaked Koroviev, ‘Koroviev. You are surprised there’s no light? Economy, so you think, of course? Unh-unh! May the first executioner to come along, even one of those who later this evening will have the honour of kissing your knee, lop my head off on this very post if it’s so! Messire simply doesn’t like electric light, and we’ll save it for the very last moment. And then, believe me, there’ll be no lack of it. Perhaps it would even be better to have less.’

Margarita liked Koroviev, and his rattling chatter had a soothing effect on her.

‘No,’ replied Margarita, ‘most of all I’m struck that there’s room for all this.’ She made a gesture with her hand, emphasizing the enormousness of the hall.

Koroviev grinned sweetly, which made the shadows stir in the folds of his nose.

‘The most uncomplicated thing of all!’ he replied. ‘For someone well acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to expand space to the desired proportions. I’ll say more, respected lady — to devil knows what proportions! I, however,’ Koroviev went on chattering, ‘have known people who had no idea, not only of the fifth dimension, but generally of anything at all, and who nevertheless performed absolute wonders in expanding their space. Thus, for instance, one city-dweller, as I’ve been told, having obtained a three-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, transformed it instantly, without any fifth dimension or other things that addle the brain, into a four-room apartment by dividing one room in half with a partition.

‘He forthwith exchanged that one for two separate apartments in different parts of Moscow: one of three rooms, the other of two. You must agree that that makes five. The three-room one he exchanged for two separate ones, each of two rooms, and became the owner, as you can see for yourself, of six rooms — true, scattered in total disorder all over Moscow. He was just getting ready to perform his last and most brilliant leap, by advertising in the newspapers that he wanted to exchange six rooms in different parts of Moscow for one five-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, when his activity ceased for reasons independent of him. He probably also has some sort of room now, only I venture to assure you it is not in Moscow. A real slicker, you see, ma’am, and you keep talking about the fifth dimension!’

Though she had never talked about the fifth dimension, and it was Koroviev himself who kept talking about it, Margarita laughed gaily, hearing the story of the adventures of the apartment slicker. Koroviev went on:

‘But to business, to business, Margarita Nikolaevna. You’re quite an intelligent woman, and of course have already guessed who our host is.’

Margarita’s heart thumped, and she nodded.

‘Well, and so, ma’am,’ Koroviev said, ‘and so, we’re enemies of any sort of reticence and mysteriousness. Messire gives one ball annually. It is called the spring ball of the full moon, or the ball of the hundred kings. Such a crowd! ...’ here Koroviev held his cheek as if he had a toothache. ’However, I hope you’ll be convinced of it yourself. Now, Messire is a bachelor, as you yourself, of course, understand. Yet a hostess is needed,‘ Koroviev spread his arms, ‘without a hostess, you must agree ...’

Margarita listened to Koroviev, trying not to miss a single word; she felt cold under her heart, the hope of happiness made her head spin.

‘The tradition has been established,’ Koroviev said further, ‘that the hostess of the ball must without fail be named Margarita, first, and second, she must be a native of the place. And we, you will kindly note, are travelling and at the present moment are in Moscow. We found one hundred and twenty-one Margaritas in Moscow, and, would you believe it,’ here Koroviev slapped himself on the thigh with despair, ‘not one of them was suitable! And, at last, by a happy fate ...’

Koroviev grinned expressively, inclining his body, and again Margarita’s heart went cold.

‘In short!’ Koroviev cried out. ‘Quite shortly: you won’t refuse to take this responsibility upon yourself?’

‘I won’t refuse!’ Margarita replied firmly.

‘Done!’ said Koroviev and, raising the little lamp, added: ‘Please follow me.’

They walked between the columns and finally came to another hall, in which for some reason there was a strong smell of lemons, where some rustlings were heard and something brushed against Margarita’s head. She gave a start.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ Koroviev reassured her sweetly, taking Margarita under the arm, ‘it’s Behemoth’s contrivances for the ball, that’s all. And generally I will allow myself the boldness of advising you, Margarita Nikolaevna, never to be afraid of anything. It is unreasonable. The ball will be a magnificent one, I will not conceal it from you. We will see persons the scope of whose power in their own time was extremely great. But, really, once you think how microscopically small their possibilities were compared to those of him to whose retinue I have the honour of belonging, it seems ridiculous, and even, I would say, sad ... And, besides, you are of royal blood yourself.’

‘Why of royal blood?’ Margarita whispered fearfully, pressing herself to Koroviev.

‘Ah, my Queen,’ Koroviev rattled on playfully, ‘questions of blood are the most complicated questions in the world! And if we were to question certain great-grandmothers, especially those who enjoyed a reputation as shrinking violets, the most astonishing secrets would be uncovered, my respected Margarita Nikolaevna! I would not be sinning in the least if, in speaking of that, I should make reference to a whimsically shuffled pack of cards. There are things in which neither barriers of rank nor even the borders between countries have any validity whatsoever. A hint: one of the French queens who lived in the sixteenth century would, one must suppose, be very amazed if someone told her that after all these years I would be leading her lovely great-great-great-granddaughter on my arm through the ballrooms of Moscow. But we’ve arrived!’

Here Koroviev blew out his lamp and it vanished from his hands, and Margarita saw lying on the floor in front of her a streak of light under some dark door. And on this door Koroviev softly knocked. Here Margarita became so agitated that her teeth chattered and a chill ran down her spine.

The door opened. The room turned out to be very small. Margarita saw a wide oak bed with dirty, rumpled and bunched-up sheets and pillows. Before the bed was an oak table with carved legs, on which stood a candelabrum with sockets in the form of a bird’s claws. In these seven golden claws[112] burned thick wax candles. Besides that, there was on the table a large chessboard with pieces of extraordinarily artful workmanship. A little low bench stood on a small, shabby rug. There was yet another table with some golden bowl and another candelabrum with branches in the form of snakes. The room smelled of sulphur and pitch. Shadows from the lights criss-crossed on the floor.

Among those present Margarita immediately recognized Azazello, now dressed in a tailcoat and standing at the head of the bed. The dressed-up Azazello no longer resembled that bandit in whose form he had appeared to Margarita in the Alexandrovsky Garden, and his bow to Margarita was very gallant.

A naked witch, that same Hella who had so embarrassed the respectable barman of the Variety, and - alas — the same who had so fortunately been scared off by the cock on the night of the notorious seance, sat on a rug on the floor by the bed, stirring something in a pot which gave off a sulphurous steam.

Besides these, there was also a huge black tom-cat in the room, sitting on a high tabouret before the chess table, holding a chess knight in his right paw.

Hella rose and bowed to Margarita. The cat, jumping off the tabouret, did likewise. Scraping with his right hind paw, he dropped the knight and crawled under the bed after it.

Margarita, sinking with fear, nevertheless made all this out by the perfidious candlelight. Her eyes were drawn to the bed, on which sat he whom, still quite recently, at the Patriarch’s Ponds, poor Ivan had tried to convince that the devil does not exist. It was this non-existent one who was sitting on the bed.

Two eyes were fixed on Margarita’s face. The right one with a golden spark at its bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of his soul, and the left one empty and black, like the narrow eye of a needle, like the entrance to the bottomless well of all darkness and shadow. Woland’s face was twisted to one side, the right corner of the mouth drawn down, the high, bald forehead scored by deep wrinkles running parallel to the sharp eyebrows. The skin of Woland’s face was as if burned for all eternity by the sun.

Woland, broadly sprawled on the bed, was wearing nothing but a long nightshirt, dirty and patched on the left shoulder. One bare leg was tucked under him, the other was stretched out on the little bench. It was the knee of this dark leg that Hella was rubbing with some smoking ointment.

Margarita also made out on Woland’s bared, hairless chest a beetle artfully carved[113] from dark stone, on a gold chain and with some inscriptions on its back. Beside Woland, on a heavy stand, stood a strange globe, as if alive, lit on one side by the sun.

The silence lasted a few seconds. ‘He’s studying me,’ thought Margarita, and with an effort of will she tried to control the trembling in her legs.

At last Woland began to speak, smiling, which made his sparkling eye as if to flare up.

‘Greetings to you, Queen, and I beg you to excuse my homely attire.’

The voice of Woland was so low that on some syllables it drew out into a wheeze.

Woland took a long sword from the sheets, leaned down, poked it under the bed, and said:

‘Out with you! The game is cancelled. The guest has arrived.’

‘By no means,’ Koroviev anxiously piped, prompter-like, at Margarita’s ear.

‘By no means ...’ began Margarita.

‘Messire ...’ Koroviev breathed into her ear.

‘By no means, Messire,’ Margarita replied softly but distinctly, gaining control over herself, and she added with a smile: ‘I beg you not to interrupt your game. I imagine the chess journals would pay good money for the chance to publish it.’

Azazello gave a low but approving grunt, and Woland, looking intently at Margarita, observed as if to himself:

‘Yes, Koroviev is right. How whimsically the deck has been shuffled! Blood!’

He reached out and beckoned Margarita to him with his hand. She went up, not feeling the floor under her bare feet. Woland placed his hand, heavy as if made of stone and at the same time hot as fire, on Margarita’s shoulder, pulled her towards him, and sat her on the bed by his side.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘since you are so charmingly courteous - and I expected nothing else - let us not stand on ceremony.’ He again leaned over the side of the bed and cried: ‘How long will this circus under the bed continue? Come out, you confounded Hans!’[114]

‘I can’t find my knight,’ the cat responded from under the bed in a muffled and false voice, ‘it’s ridden off somewhere, and I keep getting some frog instead.’

‘You don’t imagine you’re at some fairground, do you?’ asked Woland, pretending to be angry. ‘There’s no frog under the bed! Leave these cheap tricks for the Variety. If you don’t appear at once, well consider that you’ve forfeited, you damned deserter!’

‘Not for anything, Messire!’ yelled the cat, and he got out from under the bed that same second, holding the knight in his paw.

‘Allow me to present...’ Woland began and interrupted himself: ‘No, I simply cannot look at this buffoon. See what he’s turned himself into under the bed!’

Standing on his hind legs, the dust-covered cat was meanwhile making his bows to Margarita. There was now a white bow-tie on the cat’s neck, and a pair of ladies’ mother-of-pearl opera glasses hung from a strap on his neck. What’s more, the cat’s whiskers were gilded.

‘Well, what’s all this now?’ exclaimed Woland. ‘Why have you gilded your whiskers? And what the devil do you need the bow-tie for, when you’re not even wearing trousers?’

‘A cat is not supposed to wear trousers, Messire,’ the cat replied with great dignity. ‘You’re not going to tell me to wear boots, too, are you? Puss-in-Boots exists only in fairy tales, Messire. But have you ever seen anyone at a ball without a bow-tie? I do not intend to put myself in a ridiculous situation and risk being chucked out! Everyone adorns himself with what he can. You may consider what I’ve said as referring to the opera glasses as well, Messire!’

‘But the whiskers? ...’

‘I don’t understand,’ the cat retorted drily. ‘Why could Azazello and Koroviev put white powder on themselves as they were shaving today, and how is that better than gold? I powdered my whiskers, that’s all! If I’d shaved myself, it would be a different matter! A shaved cat - now, that is indeed an outrage, I’m prepared to. admit it a thousand times over. But generally,’ here the cat’s voice quavered touchily, ‘I see I am being made the object of a certain captiousness, and I see that a serious problem stands before me — am I to attend the ball? What have you to say about that, Messire?’

And the cat got so puffed up with offence that it seemed he would burst in another second.

‘Ah, the cheat, the cheat,’ said Woland, shaking his head. ‘Each time his game is in a hopeless situation, he starts addling your pate like the crudest mountebank on a street comer. Sit down at once and stop slinging this verbal muck.’

‘I shall sit down,’ replied the cat, sitting down, ‘but I shall enter an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella,[115] and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.’

‘Your king is in check,’ said Woland.

‘Very well, very well,’ responded the cat, and he began studying the chessboard through his opera glasses.

‘And so, donna,’ Woland addressed Margarita, ‘I present to you my retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth. Azazello and Koroviev you have already met. I present to you my maid-servant, Hella: efficient, quick, and there is no service she cannot render.’

The beautiful Hella was smiling as she turned her green-tinged eyes to Margarita, without ceasing to dip into the ointment and apply it to Woland’s knee.

‘Well, that’s the lot,’ Woland concluded, wincing as Hella pressed especially hard on his knee. ‘A small, mixed and guileless company, as you see.’ He fell silent and began to spin the globe in front of him, which was so artfully made that the blue oceans moved on it and the cap at the pole lay like a real cap of ice and snow.

On the chessboard, meanwhile, confusion was setting in. A thoroughly upset king in a white mantle was shuffling on his square, desperately raising his arms. Three white pawn-mercenaries with halberds gazed in perplexity at the bishop brandishing his crozier and pointing forward to where, on two adjacent squares, white and black, Woland’s black horsemen could be seen on two fiery chargers pawing the squares with their hoofs.

Margarita was extremely interested and struck by the fact that the chessmen were alive.

The cat, taking the opera glasses from his eyes, prodded his king lightly in the back. The king covered his face with his hands in despair.

‘Things aren’t so great, my dear Behemoth,’ Koroviev said quietly in a venomous voice.

‘The situation is serious but by no means hopeless,’ Behemoth responded. ‘What’s more, I’m quite certain of final victory. Once I’ve analysed the situation properly.’

He set about this analysing in a rather strange manner — namely, by winking and making all sorts of faces at his king.

‘Nothing helps,’ observed Koroviev.

‘Aie!’ cried Behemoth, ‘the parrots have flown away, just as I predicted!’

Indeed, from somewhere far away came the noise of many wings. Koroviev and Azazello rushed out of the room.

‘Devil take you with your ball amusements!’ Woland grunted without tearing his eyes from his globe.

As soon as Koroviev and Azazello disappeared, Behemoth’s winking took on greater dimensions. The white king finally understood what was wanted of him. He suddenly pulled off his mantle, dropped it on the square, and ran off the board. The bishop covered himself with the abandoned royal garb and took the king’s place.

Koroviev and Azazello came back.

‘Lies, as usual,’ grumbled Azazello, with a sidelong glance at Behemoth.

‘I thought I heard it,’ replied the cat.

‘Well, is this going to continue for long?’ asked Woland. ‘Your king is in check.’

‘I must have heard wrong, my master,’ replied the cat. ‘My king is not and cannot be in check.’

‘I repeat, your king is in check!’

‘Messire,’ the cat responded in a falsely alarmed voice, ‘you are overtired. My king is not in check.’

‘The king is on square G-2,’ said Woland, without looking at the board.

‘Messire, I’m horrified!’ howled the cat, showing horror on his mug. ‘There is no king on that square!’

‘What’s that?’ Woland asked in perplexity and began looking at the board, where the bishop standing on the king’s square kept turning away and hiding behind his hand.

‘Ah, you scoundrel,’ Woland said pensively.

‘Messire! Again I appeal to logic!’ the cat began, pressing his paws to his chest. ‘If a player announces that the king is in check, and meanwhile there’s no trace of the king on the board, the check must be recognized as invalid!’

‘Do you give up or not?’ Woland cried in a terrible voice.

‘Let me think it over,’ the cat replied humbly, resting his elbows on the table, putting his paws over his ears, and beginning to think. He thought for a long time and finally said: ‘I give up.’

‘The obstinate beast should be killed,’ whispered Azazello.

‘Yes, I give up,’ said the cat, ‘but I do so only because I am unable to play in an atmosphere of persecution on the part of the envious!’ He stood up and the chessmen climbed into their box.

‘Hella, it’s time,’ said Woland, and Hella disappeared from the room. ‘My leg hurts, and now this ball ...’ he continued.

‘Allow me,’ Margarita quietly asked.

Woland looked at her intently and moved his knee towards her.

The liquid, hot as lava, burned her hands, but Margarita, without wincing, and trying not to cause any pain, rubbed it into his knee.

‘My attendants insist it’s rheumatism,’ Woland was saying, not taking his eyes off Margarita, ‘but I strongly suspect that this pain in my knee was left me as a souvenir by a charming witch with whom I was closely acquainted in the year 1571, on Mount Brocken,[116] on the Devil’s Podium.’

‘Ah, can that be so!’ said Margarita.

‘Nonsense! In another three hundred years it will all go away! I’ve been recommended a host of medications, but I keep to my granny’s old ways. Amazing herbs she left me, my grandam, that vile old thing! Incidentally, tell me, are you suffering from anything? Perhaps you have some sort of sorrow or soul-poisoning anguish?’

‘No, Messire, none of that,’ replied the clever Margarita, ‘and now that I’m here with you, I feel myself quite well.’

‘Blood is a great thing ...’ Woland said gaily, with no obvious point, and added: ‘I see you’re interested in my globe.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘It’s a nice little object. Frankly speaking, I don’t enjoy listening to the news on the radio. It’s always reported by some girls who pronounce the names of places inarticulately. Besides, every third one has some slight speech defect, as if they’re chosen on purpose. My globe is much more convenient, especially since I need a precise knowledge of events. For instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the ocean? Look, it’s filling with fire. A war has started there. If you look closer, you’ll see the details.’

Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw the little square of land spread out, get painted in many colours, and turn as it were into a relief map. And then she saw the little ribbon of a river, and some village near it. A little house the size of a pea grew and became the size of a matchbox. Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of this house flew up along with a cloud of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of the little two-storey box except a small heap with black smoke pouring from it. Bringing her eye still closer, Margarita made out a small female figure lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool of blood, a little child with outstretched arms.

‘That’s it,’ Woland said, smiling, ‘he had no time to sin. Abaddon’s[117] work is impeccable.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be on the side that this Abaddon is against,’ said Margarita. ‘Whose side is he on?’

‘The longer I talk with you,’ Woland responded amiably, ‘the more I’m convinced that you are very intelligent. I’ll set you at ease. He is of a rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides of the fight. Owing to that, the results are always the same for both sides. Abaddon!’ Woland called in a low voice, and here there emerged from the wall the figure of some gaunt man in dark glasses. These glasses produced such a strong impression on Margarita that she cried out softly and hid her face in Woland’s leg. ‘Ah, stop it!’ cried Woland. ‘Modern people are so nervous!’ He swung and slapped Margarita on the back so that a ringing went through her whole body. ‘Don’t you see he’s got his glasses on? Besides, there has never yet been, and never will be, an occasion when Abaddon appears before someone prematurely. And, finally, I’m here. You are my guest! I simply wanted to show him to you.’

Abaddon stood motionless.

‘And is it possible for him to take off his glasses for a second?’ Margarita asked, pressing herself to Woland and shuddering, but now from curiosity.

‘Ah, no, that’s impossible,’ Woland replied seriously and waved his hand at Abaddon, and he was no more. ‘What do you wish to say, Azazello?’

‘Messire,’ replied Azazello, ‘allow me to say - we’ve got two strangers here: a beauty who is whimpering and pleading to be allowed to stay with her lady, and with her, begging your pardon, there is also her hog.’

‘Strange behaviour for a beauty!’ observed Woland.

‘It’s Natasha, Natasha!’ exclaimed Margarita.

‘Well, let her stay with her lady. And the hog - to the cooks.’

‘To slaughter him?’ Margarita cried fearfully. ‘For pity’s sake, Messire, it’s Nikolai Ivanovich, the ground-floor tenant. It’s a misunderstanding, you see, she daubed him with the cream ...’

‘But wait,’ said Woland, ‘why the devil would anyone slaughter him? Let him stay with the cooks, that’s all. You must agree, I cannot let him into the ballroom.’

‘No, really ...’ Azazello added and announced: ‘Midnight is approaching, Messire.’

‘Ah, very good.’ Woland turned to Margarita: ‘And so, if you please ... I thank you beforehand. Don’t become flustered and don’t be afraid of anything. Drink nothing but water, otherwise you’ll get groggy and it will be hard for you. It’s time!’

Margarita got up from the rug, and then Koroviev appeared in the doorway.

CHAPTER 23 The Great Ball at Satan’s

Midnight was approaching; they had to hurry. Margarita dimly perceived her surroundings. Candles and a jewelled pool remained in her memory. As she stood in the bottom of this pool, Hella, with the assistance of Natasha, doused her with some hot, thick and red liquid. Margarita felt a salty taste on her lips and realized that she was being washed in blood. The bloody mantle was changed for another — thick, transparent, pinkish - and Margarita’s head began to spin from rose oil. Then Margarita was laid on a crystal couch and rubbed with some big green leaves until she shone.

Here the cat burst in and started to help. He squatted down at Margarita’s feet and began rubbing up her soles with the air of someone shining shoes in the street.

Margarita does not remember who stitched slippers for her from pale rose petals or how these slippers got fastened by themselves with golden clasps. Some force snatched Margarita up and put her before a mirror, and a royal diamond crown gleamed in her hair. Koroviev appeared from somewhere and hung a heavy, oval-framed picture of a black poodle by a heavy chain on Margarita’s breast. This adornment was extremely burdensome to the queen. The chain at once began to chafe her neck, the picture pulled her down. But something compensated Margarita for the inconveniences that the chain with the black poodle caused her, and this was the deference with which Koroviev and Behemoth began to treat her.

‘Never mind, never mind, never mind!’ muttered Koroviev at the door of the room with the pool. ‘No help for it, you must, must, must ... Allow me, Queen, to give you a last piece of advice. Among the guests there will be different sorts, oh, very different, but no one, Queen Margot, should be shown any preference! Even if you don’t like someone ... I understand that you will not, of course, show it on your face - no, no, it’s unthinkable! He’ll notice it, he’ll notice it instantly! You must love him, love him, Queen! The mistress of the ball will be rewarded a hundredfold for that. And also - don’t ignore anyone! At least a little smile, if there’s no time to drop a word, at least a tiny turn of the head! Anything you like, but not inattention, they’ll sicken from that...’

Here Margarita, accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped out of the room with the pool into total darkness.

‘I, I,’ whispered the cat, ‘I give the signal!’

‘Go ahead!’ Koroviev replied from the darkness.

‘The ball!!!’ shrieked the cat piercingly, and just then Margarita cried out and shut her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her all at once in the form of light, and, with it, of sound and smell. Taken under the arm by Koroviev, Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest. Red-breasted, green-tailed parrots fluttered from liana to liana and cried out deafeningly: ’Delighted!‘ But the forest soon ended, and its bathhouse stuffiness changed at once to the coolness of a ballroom with columns of some yellowish, sparkling stone. This ballroom, just like the forest, was completely empty, except for some naked negroes with silver bands on their heads who were standing by the columns. Their faces turned a dirty brown from excitement when Margarita flew into the ballroom with her retinue, in which Azazello showed up from somewhere. Here Koroviev let go of Margarita’s arm and whispered:

‘Straight to the tulips.’

A low wall of white tulips had grown up in front of Margarita, and beyond it she saw numberless lamps under little shades and behind them the white chests and black shoulders of tailcoaters. Then Margarita understood where the sound of the ball was coming from. The roar of trumpets crashed down on her, and the soaring of violins that burst from under it doused her body as if with blood. The orchestra of about a hundred and fifty men was playing a polonaise.

The tailcoated man hovering over the orchestra paled on seeing Margarita, smiled, and suddenly, with a sweep of his arms, got the whole orchestra to its feet. Not interrupting the music for a moment, the orchestra, standing, doused Margarita with sound. The man over the orchestra turned from it and bowed deeply, spreading his arms wide, and Margarita, smiling, waved her hand to him.

‘No, not enough, not enough,’ whispered Koroviev, ‘he won’t sleep all night. Call out to him: “Greetings to you, waltz king!” ’[118]

Margarita cried it out, and marvelled that her voice, full as a bell, was heard over the howling of the orchestra. The man started with happiness and put his left hand to his chest, while the right went on brandishing a white baton at the orchestra.

‘Not enough, not enough,’ whispered Koroviev, ‘look to the left, to the first violins, and nod so that each one thinks you’ve recognized him individually. There are only world celebrities here. Nod to that one ... at the first stand, that’s Vieuxtemps![119] ... There, very good ... Now, onward!’

‘Who is the conductor?’ Margarita asked, flying off.

‘Johann Strauss!’ cried the cat. ‘And they can hang me from a liana in a tropical forest if such an orchestra ever played at any ball! I invited them! And, note, not one got sick or declined!’

In the next room there were no columns. Instead there stood walls of red, pink and milk-white roses on one side, and on the other a wall of Japanese double camellias. Between these walls fountains spurted up, hissing, and bubbly champagne seethed in three pools, the first of which was transparent violet, the second ruby, the third crystal. Next to them negroes in scarlet headbands dashed about, filling flat cups from the pools with silver dippers. The pink wall had a gap in it, where a man in a red swallowtail coat was flailing away on a platform. Before him thundered an unbearably loud jazz band. As soon as the conductor saw Margarita, he bent before her so that his hands touched the floor, then straightened up and cried piercingly:

‘Hallelujah!’

He slapped himself on the knee - one! - then criss-cross on the other knee — two! - then snatched a cymbal from the hands of the end musician and banged it on a column.

As she flew off, Margarita saw only that the virtuoso jazzman, fighting against the polonaise blowing in Margarita’s back, was beating his jazzmen on the heads with the cymbal while they cowered in comic fright.

Finally they flew out on to the landing where, as Margarita realized, she had been met in the dark by Koroviev with his little lamp. Now on this landing the light pouring from clusters of crystal grapes blinded the eye. Margarita was put in place, and under her left arm she found a low amethyst column.

‘You may rest your arm on it if it becomes too difficult,’ Koroviev whispered.

Some black man threw a pillow under Margarita’s feet embroidered 263 with a golden poodle, and she, obedient to someone’s hands, bent her right leg at the knee and placed her foot on it.

Margarita tried to look around. Koroviev and Azazello stood beside her in formal poses. Next to Azazello stood another three young men, vaguely reminding Margarita of Abaddon. It blew cold in her back. Looking there, Margarita saw bubbly wine spurt from the marble wall behind her and pour into a pool of ice. At her left foot she felt something warm and furry. It was Behemoth.

Margarita was high up, and a grandiose stairway covered with carpet descended from her feet. Below, so far away that it was as if Margarita were looking the wrong way through binoculars, she saw a vast front hall with an absolutely enormous fireplace, into the cold and black maw of which a five-ton truck could easily have driven. The front hall and stairway, so flooded with light that it hurt the eyes, were empty. The sound of trumpets now came to Margarita from far away. Thus they stood motionless for about a minute.

‘But where are the guests?’ Margarita asked Koroviev.

‘They’ll come, Queen, they’ll come, they’ll come soon enough. There’ll be no lack of them. And, really, I’d rather go and chop wood than receive them here on the landing.’

‘Chop wood — hahl’ picked up the garrulous cat. ‘I’d rather work as a tram conductor, and there’s no worse job in the world than that!’

‘Everything must be made ready in advance, Queen,’ explained Koroviev, his eye gleaming through the broken monocle. ‘There’s nothing more loathsome than when the first guest to arrive languishes, not knowing what to do, and his lawful beldame nags at him in a whisper for having come before everybody else. Such balls should be thrown in the trash, Queen.’

‘Definitely in the trash,’ confirmed the cat.

‘No more than ten seconds till midnight,’ said Koroviev. ‘It’ll start presently.’

Those ten seconds seemed extremely long to Margarita. Obviously they had already passed and precisely nothing had happened. But here something suddenly crashed downstairs in the huge fireplace, and from it leaped a gallows with some half-decayed remains dangling from it. The remains fell from the rope, struck the floor, and from it leaped a handsome dark-haired man in a tailcoat and patent leather shoes. A half-rotten little coffin ran out of the fireplace, its lid fell off, and another remains tumbled out of it. The handsome man gallantly leaped over to it and offered it his bent arm. The second remains put itself together into a fidgety woman in black shoes, with black feathers on her head, and then the man and the woman both hastened up the stairs.

‘The first!’ exclaimed Koroviev. ‘Monsieur Jacques[120] and his spouse. I commend to you, Queen, one of the most interesting of men. A confirmed counterfeiter, a traitor to his government, but a rather good alchemist. Famous,’ Koroviev whispered in Margarita’s ear, ‘for having poisoned a king’s mistress. That doesn’t happen to everyone! Look how handsome he is!’

The pale Margarita, her mouth open, watched as both gallows and coffin disappeared into some side passage in the front hall.

‘Delighted!’ the cat yelled right into the face of Monsieur Jacques as he came up the stairs.

At that moment a headless skeleton with a torn-off arm emerged from the fireplace, struck the ground, and turned into a man in a tailcoat.

Monsieur Jacques’s spouse was already going on one knee before Margarita and, pale with excitement, was kissing Margarita’s foot.

‘Queen ...’ Monsieur Jacques’s spouse murmured.

‘The queen is delighted!’ cried Koroviev.

‘Queen ...’ the handsome Monsieur Jacques said quietly.

‘We’re delighted,’ howled the cat.

The young men, Azazello’s companions, smiling lifeless but affable smiles, were already shouldering Monsieur Jacques and his spouse to one side, towards the cups of champagne that the negroes were holding. The single man in the tailcoat was coming up the stairs at a run.

‘Earl Robert,’[121] Koroviev whispered to Margarita, ‘interesting as ever. Note how funny, Queen: the reverse case, this one was a queen’s lover and poisoned his wife.’

‘We’re very glad, Earl,’ cried Behemoth.

Out of the fireplace, bursting open and falling apart, three coffins tumbled one after another, then came someone in a black mantle, whom the next one to run out of the black maw stabbed in the back with a knife. A stifled cry was heard from below. An almost entirely decomposed corpse ran out of the fireplace. Margarita shut her eyes, and someone’s hand held a flacon of smelling salts to her nose. Margarita thought the hand was Natasha’s.

The stairway began to fill up. Now on each step there were tailcoaters, looking quite alike from afar, and naked women with them, who differed from each other only in the colour of their shoes and of the feathers on their heads.

Coming towards Margarita, hobbling, a strange wooden boot on her left foot, was a lady with nunnishly lowered eyes, thin and modest, and with a wide green band around her neck for some reason.

‘Who is this ... green one?’ Margarita asked mechanically.

‘A most charming and respectable lady,’ whispered Koroviev, ‘I commend her to you: Madame Tofana.[122] Extremely popular among young, lovely Neapolitans, as well as the ladies of Palermo, especially those of them who had grown weary of their husbands. It does happen, Queen, that one grows weary of one’s husband ...’

‘Yes,’ Margarita replied in a hollow voice, smiling at the same time to two tailcoaters who bent before her one after the other, kissing her knee and hand.

‘And so,’ Koroviev managed to whisper to Margarita and at the same time to cry out to someone: ‘Duke! A glass of champagne? I’m delighted! ... Yes, so then, Madame Tofana entered into the situation of these poor women and sold them some sort of water in little vials. The wife poured this water into her spouse’s soup, he ate it, thanked her for being so nice, and felt perfectly well. True, a few hours later he would begin to get very thirsty, then go to bed, and a day later the lovely Neapolitan who had fed her husband soup would be free as the spring breeze.’

‘But what’s that on her foot?’ asked Margarita, tirelessly offering her hand to the guests who came ahead of the hobbling Madame Tofana. ‘And why that green band? A withered neck?’

‘Delighted, Prince!’ cried Koroviev, and at the same time whispered to Margarita: ‘A beautiful neck, but an unpleasantness happened to her in prison. What she has on her foot, Queen, is a Spanish boot,[123] and the band is explained this way: when the prison guards learned that some five hundred ill-chosen husbands had departed Naples and Palermo for ever, in the heat of the moment they strangled Madame Tofana in prison.’

‘How happy I am, O kindest Queen, that the high honour has fallen to me ...’ Tofana whispered nunnishly, trying to lower herself to one knee — the Spanish boot hindered her. Koroviev and Behemoth helped her up.

‘I’m very glad,’ Margarita answered her, at the same time offering her hand to others.

Now a steady stream was coming up the stairs from below. Margarita could no longer see what was going on in the front hall. She mechanically raised and lowered her hand and smiled uniformly to the guests. There was a hum in the air on the landing; from the ballrooms Margarita had left, music could be heard, like the sea.

‘But this one is a boring woman,’ Koroviev no longer whispered, but spoke aloud, knowing that in the hubbub of voices no one would hear him. ‘She adores balls, and keeps dreaming of complaining about her handkerchief.’

Margarita’s glance picked out among those coming up the woman at whom Koroviev was pointing. She was young, about twenty, of remarkably beautiful figure, but with somehow restless and importunate eyes.

‘What handkerchief?’ asked Margarita.

‘She has a chambermaid assigned to her,’ explained Koroviev, ‘who for thirty years has been putting a handkerchief on her night table during the night. She wakes up and the handkerchief is there. She’s tried burning it in the stove and drowning it in the river, but nothing helps.’

‘What handkerchief?’ whispered Margarita, raising and lowering her arm.

‘A blue-bordered one. The thing is that when she worked in a café, the owner once invited her to the pantry, and nine months later she gave birth to a boy, took him to the forest, stuffed the handkerchief into his mouth, and then buried the boy in the ground. At the trial she said she had no way of feeding the child.’

‘And where is the owner of the café?’ asked Margarita.

‘Queen,’ the cat suddenly creaked from below, ‘what, may I ask, does the owner have to do with it? It wasn’t he who smothered the infant in the forest!’

Margarita, without ceasing to smile and proffer her right hand, dug the sharp nails of the left into Behemoth’s ear and whispered to him:

‘If you, scum, allow yourself to interfere in the conversation again ...’

Behemoth squeaked in a not very ball-like fashion and rasped:

‘Queen ... the ear will get swollen ... why spoil the ball with a swollen ear? ... I was speaking legally, from the legal point of view ... I say no more, I say no more. Consider me not a cat but a post, only let go of my ear!’

Margarita released his ear, and the importunate, gloomy eyes were before her.

‘I am happy, Queen-hostess, to be invited to the great ball of the full moon!’

‘And I am glad to see you,’ Margarita answered her, ‘very glad. Do you like champagne?’

‘What are you doing, Queen?!’ Koroviev cried desperately but soundlessly in Margarita’s ear. ‘There’ll be a traffic jam!’

‘Yes, I do,’ the woman said imploringly, and suddenly began repeating mechanically: ‘Frieda,[124] Frieda, Frieda! My name is Frieda, Queen!’

‘Get drunk tonight, Frieda, and don’t think about anything,’ said Margarita.

Frieda reached out both arms to Margarita, but Koroviev and Behemoth very adroitly took her under the arms and she blended into the crowd.

Now people were coming in a solid wall from below, as if storming the landing where Margarita stood. Naked women’s bodies came up between tailcoated men. Their swarthy, white, coffee-bean-coloured, and altogether black bodies floated towards Margarita. In their hair - red, black, chestnut, light as flax - precious stones glittered and danced, spraying sparkles into the flood of light. And as if someone had sprinkled the storming column of men with droplets of light, diamond studs sprayed light from their chests. Every second now Margarita felt lips touch her knee, every second she held out her hand to be kissed, her face was contracted into a fixed mask of greeting.

‘I’m delighted,’ Koroviev sang monotonously, ‘we’re delighted ... the queen is delighted ...’

‘The queen is delighted ...’ Azazello echoed nasally behind her back.

‘I’m delighted!’ the cat kept exclaiming.

‘The marquise..,’[125] muttered Koroviev, ‘poisoned her father, two brothers and two sisters for the inheritance ... The queen is delighted! ... Madame Minkin ...[126] Ah, what a beauty! A bit nervous. Why burn the maid’s face with the curling-irons? Of course, in such conditions one gets stabbed ... The queen is delighted! ... Queen, one second of attention! The emperor Rudolf[127] — sorcerer and alchemist ... Another alchemist - got hanged ... Ah, here she is! Ah, what a wonderful brothel she ran in Strasbourg! ... We’re delighted! ... A Moscow dressmaker,[128] we all love her for her inexhaustible fantasy ... She kept a shop and invented a terribly funny trick: drilled two round holes in the wall ...’

‘And the ladies didn’t know?’ asked Margarita.

‘Every one of them knew, Queen,’ answered Koroviev. ‘Delighted! ... This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel...’

A river came streaming from below, and there was no end to this river in sight. Its source - the enormous fireplace - continued to feed it. Thus one hour passed and a second commenced. Here Margarita began to notice that her chain had become heavier than before. Something strange also happened with her arm. Now, before raising it, Margarita had to wince. Koroviev’s interesting observations ceased to amuse Margarita. Slant-eyed Mongolian faces, white faces and black became undifferentiated to her, they merged at times, and the air between them would for some reason begin to tremble and flow. A sharp pain, as if from a needle, suddenly pierced Margarita’s right arm, and, clenching her teeth, she rested her elbow on the post. Some rustling, as if from wings against the walls, was now coming from the ballroom, and it was clear that unprecedented hordes of guests were dancing there, and it seemed to Margarita that even the massive marble, mosaic and crystal floors of this prodigious room were pulsing rhythmically.

Neither Gaius Caesar Caligula[129] nor Messalina[130] interested Margarita any longer, nor did any of the kings, dukes, cavaliers, suicides, poisoners, gallowsbirds, procuresses, prison guards and sharpers, executioners, informers, traitors, madmen, sleuths, seducers. All their names became jumbled in her head, the faces stuck together into one huge pancake, and only a single face lodged itself painfully in her memory — the face, framed in a truly fiery beard, of Maliuta Skuratov.[131] Margarita’s legs kept giving way, she was afraid of bursting into tears at any moment. The worst suffering was caused by her right knee, which was being kissed. It became swollen, the skin turned blue, even though Natasha’s hand appeared by this knee several times with a sponge, wiping it with something fragrant. At the end of the third hour, Margarita glanced down with completely desperate eyes and gave a joyful start — the stream of guests was thinning out.

‘Balls always assemble according to the same laws, Queen,’ whispered Koroviev. ‘Presently the wave will begin to subside. I swear we’re enduring the final minutes. Here’s the group of revellers from Brocken, they always come last. Yes, here they are. Two drunken vampires ... that’s all? Ah, no, here’s one more ... no, two!’[130]

The last two guests were coming up the stairs!

‘It’s some new one,’ Koroviev was saying, squinting through his lens. ‘Ah, yes, yes. Azazello visited him once and, over the cognac, whispered some advice to him on how to get rid of a certain man whose exposures he was extremely afraid of. And so he told an acquaintance who was dependent on him to spray the walls of the office with poison...’

‘What’s his name?’ asked Margarita.

‘Ah, really, I myself don’t know yet,’ Koroviev replied, ‘well have to ask Azazello.’

‘And who is with him?’

‘Why, that same efficient subordinate of his. Delighted!’ cried Koroviev to the last two.

The stairway was empty. They waited a little longer as a precaution. But no one else came from the fireplace.

A second later, without knowing how it happened, Margarita found herself in the same room with the pool, and there, bursting into tears at once from the pain in her arm and leg, she collapsed right on the floor. But Hella and Natasha, comforting her, again drew her under the bloody shower, again massaged her body, and Margarita revived.

‘There’s more, there’s more, Queen Margot,’ whispered Koroviev, appearing beside her. ‘You must fly around the rooms, so that the honourable guests don’t feel they’ve been abandoned.’

And once more Margarita flew out of the room with the pool. On the stage behind the tulips, where the waltz king’s orchestra had been playing, there now raged an ape jazz band. A huge gorilla with shaggy side-whiskers, a trumpet in his hand, capering heavily, was doing the conducting. Orang-utans sat in a row blowing on shiny trumpets. Perched on their shoulders were merry chimpanzees with concertinas. Two hamadryads with manes like lions played grand pianos, but these grand pianos were not heard amidst the thundering, squeaking and booming of saxophones, fiddles and drums in the paws of gibbons, mandrills and marmosets. On the mirror floor a countless number of couples, as if merged, amazing in the deftness and cleanness of their movements, all turning in the same direction, swept on like a wall threatening to clear away everything in its path. Live satin butterflies bobbed above the heads of the dancing hordes, flowers poured down from the ceiling. In the capitals of the columns, each time the electricity went off, myriads of fireflies lit up, and marsh-lights floated in the air.

Then Margarita found herself in a room with a pool of monstrous size bordered by a colonnade. A giant black Neptune spouted a wide pink stream from his maw. A stupefying smell of champagne rose from the pool. Here unconstrained merriment held sway. Ladies, laughing, gave their handbags to their cavaliers or the negroes who rushed about with towels in their hands, and with a cry dived swallow-like into the pool. Foamy columns shot up. The crystal bottom of the pool shone with light from below that broke through the density of the wine, and in it the silvery swimming bodies could be seen. The ladies got out of the pool completely drunk. Loud laughter resounded under the columns, booming like the jazz band.

All that was remembered from this turmoil was the completely drunken face of a woman with senseless and, even in their senselessness, imploring eyes, and only one name — Frieda — was recalled.

Margarita’s head began to spin from the smell of the wine, and she was about to leave when the cat arranged a number in the pool that detained her. Behemoth performed some magic by Neptune’s maw, and at once the billowing mass of champagne, hissing and gurgling, left the pool, and Neptune began spewing out a stream neither glittering nor foaming but of a dark-yellow colour. The ladies - shrieking and screaming ‘Cognac!’ - rushed from the pool-side and hid behind the columns. In a few seconds the pool was filled, and the cat, turning three times in the air, dropped into the heaving cognac. He crawled out, spluttering, his bow-tie limp, the gilding on his whiskers gone, along with the opera glasses. Only one woman dared to follow Behemoth’s example - that same frolicsome dressmaker, with her cavalier, an unknown young mulatto. The two threw themselves into the cognac, but here Koroviev took Margarita under the arm and they left the bathers.

It seemed to Margarita that she flew somewhere, where she saw mountains of oysters in huge stone basins. Then she flew over a glass floor with infernal furnaces burning under it and devilish white cooks darting among them. Then somewhere, already ceasing to comprehend anything, she saw dark cellars where some sort of lamps burned, where girls served meat sizzling on red-hot coals, where her health was drunk from big mugs. Then she saw polar bears playing concertinas and dancing the Kamarinsky[133] on a platform. A salamander-conjurer[134] who did not burn in the fireplace ... And for the second time her strength began to ebb.

‘One last appearance,’ Koroviev whispered to her anxiously, ‘and then we’re free!’

Accompanied by Koroviev, she again found herself in the ballroom, but now there was no dancing in it, and the guests in a numberless throng pressed back between the columns, leaving the middle of the room open. Margarita did not remember who helped her to get up on the dais that appeared in the middle of this open space in the room. When she was up on it, to her own amazement, she heard a clock strike midnight somewhere, though by her reckoning it was long past. At the last stroke of the clock, which came from no one knew where, silence fell on the crowd of guests.

Then Margarita saw Woland again. He walked in surrounded by Abaddon, Azazello and several others who resembled Abaddon - dark-haired and young. Now Margarita saw that opposite her dais another had been prepared for Woland. But he did not make use of it. What struck Margarita was that Woland came out for this last great appearance at the ball looking just the same as he had looked in the bedroom. The same dirty, patched shirt[135] hung on his shoulders, his feet were in worn-out bedroom slippers. Woland had a sword, but he used this bare sword as a cane, leaning on it.

Limping, Woland stopped at his dais, and immediately Azazello was before him with a platter in his hands, and on this platter Margarita saw a man’s severed head with the front teeth knocked out. Total silence continued to reign, broken only once by the far-off sound, inexplicable under the circumstances, of a doorbell, coming as if from the front hall.

‘Mikhail Alexandrovich,’ Woland addressed the head in a low voice, and then the slain man’s eyelids rose, and on the dead face Margarita saw, with a shudder, living eyes filled with thought and suffering.

‘Everything came to pass, did it not?’ Woland went on, looking into the head’s eyes. ‘The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a fact. And fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows, and not in this already accomplished fact. You have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. I have the pleasure of informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever. However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one which holds that it will be given to each according to his faith.[136] Let it come true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!’

Woland raised his sword. Straight away the flesh of the head turned dark and shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon Margarita saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes, pearl teeth and a golden foot. The lid opened on a hinge.

‘Right this second, Messire,’ said Koroviev, noticing Woland’s questioning look, ‘hell appear before you. In this sepulchral silence I can hear the creaking of his patent leather shoes and the clink of the goblet he has just set down on the table, having drunk champagne for the last time in his life. Here he is.’

A solitary new guest was entering the room, heading towards Woland. Outwardly he did not differ in any way from the numerous other male guests, except for one thing: this guest was literally reeling with agitation, which could be seen even from afar. Flushed spots burned on his cheeks, and his eyes darted about in total alarm. The guest was dumbstruck, and that was perfectly natural: he was astounded by everything, and above all, of course, by Woland’s attire.

However, the guest was met with the utmost kindness.

‘Ah, my dearest Baron Meigel,’ Woland, smiling affably, addressed the guest, whose eyes were popping out of his head. ‘I’m happy to commend to you,’ Woland turned to the other guests, ‘the most esteemed Baron Meigel, an employee of the Spectacles Commission, in charge of acquainting foreigners with places of interest in the capital.’

Here Margarita froze, because she recognized this Meigel. She had come across him several times in Moscow theatres and restaurants. ‘Excuse me ...’ thought Margarita, ‘but that means - what - that he’s also dead? ...’ But the matter straight away clarified itself.

‘The dear baron,’ Woland went on, smiling joyfully, ‘was so charming that, having learned of my arrival in Moscow, he rang me up at once, offering his services along the line of his expertise, that is, acquainting people with places of interest. It goes without saying that I was happy to invite him here.’

Just then Margarita saw Azazello hand the platter with the skull to Koroviev.

‘Ah, yes, incidentally, Baron,’ Woland said, suddenly lowering his voice intimately, ‘rumours have spread about your extreme curiosity. They say that, combined with your no less developed talkativeness, it was beginning to attract general attention. What’s more, wicked tongues have already dropped the word - a stool-pigeon and a spy. And, what’s still more, it is hinted that this will bring you to a sorry end in no more than a month. And so, in order to deliver you from this painful anticipation, we have decided to come to your aid, taking advantage of the fact that you invited yourself here precisely with the purpose of eavesdropping and spying out whatever you can.’

The baron turned paler than Abaddon, who was exceptionally pale by nature, and then something strange took place. Abaddon stood in front of the baron and took off his glasses for a second. At the same moment something flashed fire in Azazello’s hand, something clapped softly, the baron began to fall backwards, crimson blood spurted from his chest and poured down his starched shirt and waistcoat. Koroviev put the cup to the spurt and handed the full cup to Woland. The baron’s lifeless body was by that time already on the floor.

‘I drink your health, ladies and gentlemen,’ Woland said quietly and, raising the cup, touched it to his lips.

Then a metamorphosis occurred. The patched shirt and worn slippers disappeared. Woland was in some sort of black chlamys with a steel sword on his hip. He quickly approached Margarita, offered her the cup, and said imperiously:

‘Drink!’

Margarita became dizzy, she swayed, but the cup was already at her lips, and voices, she could not make out whose, whispered in both her ears:

‘Don’t be afraid, Queen ... Don’t be afraid, Queen, the blood has long since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already growing.’

Margarita, without opening her eyes, took a gulp, and a sweet current ran through her veins, a ringing began in her ears. It seemed to her that cocks were crowing deafeningly, that somewhere a march was being played. The crowds of guests began to lose their shape: tailcoaters and women fell to dust. Decay enveloped the room before Margarita’s eyes, a sepulchral smell flowed over it. The columns fell apart, the fires went out, everything shrank, there were no more fountains, no camellias, no tulips. And there was simply this: the modest living room of the jeweller’s widow, and a strip of light falling from a slightly opened door. And Margarita went through this slightly opened door.

CHAPTER 24 The Extraction of the Master

In Woland’s bedroom everything turned out to be as it had been before the ball. Woland was sitting on the bed in his nightshirt, only Hella was no longer rubbing his leg, but was setting out supper on the table on which they had been playing chess. Koroviev and Azazello, having removed their tailcoats, were sitting at the table, and next to them, of course, was the cat, who refused to part with his bow-tie, though it had turned into an utterly filthy rag. Margarita, swaying, came up to the table and leaned on it. Then Woland beckoned her to him like the other time and indicated that she should sit down beside him.

‘Well, did they wear you out very much?’ asked Woland.

‘Oh, no, Messire,’ Margarita answered, but barely audibly.

‘Nobless obleege,’ the cat observed and poured some transparent liquid into a goblet for Margarita.

‘Is that vodka?’ Margarita asked weakly.

The cat jumped up on his chair in resentment.

‘Good heavens, Queen,’ he croaked, ‘would I allow myself to pour vodka for a lady? It’s pure alcohol!’

Margarita smiled and made an attempt to push the glass away.

‘Drink boldly,’ said Woland, and Margarita took the glass in her hand at once.

‘Hella, sit down,’ Woland ordered and explained to Margarita: ‘The night of the full moon is a festive night, and I have supper in the small company of my retinue and servants. And so, how do you feel? How did this tiring ball go?’

‘Stupendous!’ rattled Koroviev. ‘Everybody’s enchanted, infatuated, crushed! So much tact, so much skill, charm, and loveliness!’

Woland silently raised his glass and clinked with Margarita. Margarita drank obediently, thinking that this alcohol would be the end of her. But nothing bad happened. A living warmth flowed into her stomach, something struck her softly on the nape, her strength came back, as if she had got up after a long, refreshing sleep, with a wolfish appetite besides. And on recalling that she had eaten nothing since the previous morning, it flared up still more ... She greedily began gulping down caviar.

Behemoth cut a slice of pineapple, salted it, peppered it, ate it, and then tossed off a second glass of alcohol so dashingly that everyone applauded.

After Margarita’s second glass, the candles in the candelabra flared up more brightly, and the flame increased in the fireplace. Margarita did not feel drunk at all. Biting the meat with her white teeth, Margarita savoured the juice that ran from it, at the same time watching Behemoth spread mustard on an oyster.

‘Why don’t you put some grapes on top?’ Hella said quietly, nudging the cat in the ribs.

‘I beg you not to teach me,’ replied Behemoth, ‘I have sat at table, don’t worry, that I have!’

‘Ah, how nice it is to have supper like this, by the fireside, simply,’ Koroviev clattered, ‘in a small circle ...’

‘No, Fagott,’ objected the cat, ‘a ball has its own charm, and scope.’

‘There’s no charm in it, or scope either, and those idiotic bears and tigers in the bar almost gave me migraine with their roaring,‘ said Woland.

‘I obey, Messire,’ said the cat, ‘if you find no scope, I will immediately begin to hold the same opinion.’

‘Watch yourself!’ Woland said to that.

‘I was joking,’ the cat said humbly, ‘and as far as the tigers are concerned, I’ll order them roasted.’

‘One can’t eat tiger,’ said Hella.

‘You think not? Then I beg you to listen,’ responded the cat, and, narrowing his eyes with pleasure, he told how he had once wandered in the wilderness for nineteen days,[137] and the only thing he had to eat was the meat of a tiger he had killed. They all listened to this entertaining narrative with interest, and when Behemoth finished, exclaimed in chorus:

‘Bunk!’

‘And the most interesting thing about this bunk,’ said Woland, ‘is that it’s bunk from first word to last.’

‘Ah, bunk is it?’ exclaimed the cat, and they all thought he would start protesting, but he only said quietly: ‘History will judge.’

‘And tell me,’ Margot, revived after the vodka, addressed Azazello, ‘did you shoot him, this former baron?’

‘Naturally,’ answered Azazello, ‘how could I not shoot him? He absolutely had to be shot.’

‘I got so excited!’ exclaimed Margarita, ‘it happened so unexpectedly!’

‘There was nothing unexpected in it,’ Azazello objected, but Koroviev started wailing and whining.

‘How not get excited? I myself was quaking in my boots! Bang! Hup! Baron on his back!’

‘I nearly had hysterics,’ the cat added, licking the caviar spoon.

‘Here’s what I don’t understand,’ Margarita said, and golden sparks from the crystal glittered in her eyes. ‘Can it be that the music and the noise of this ball generally weren’t heard outside?’

‘Of course they weren’t, Queen,’ explained Koroviev. ‘It has to be done so that nothing is heard. It has to be done carefully.’

‘Well, yes, yes ... But the thing is that that man on the stairs ... when Azazello and I passed by ... and the other one by the entrance ... I think he was watching your apartment...’

‘Right, right!’ cried Koroviev, ‘right, dear Margarita Nikolaevna! You confirm my suspicions! Yes, he was watching the apartment! I myself first took him for an absent-minded assistant professor or a lover languishing on the stairs. But no, no! Something kept gnawing at my heart! Ah, he was watching the apartment! And the other one by the entrance, too! And the same for the one in the gateway!’

‘But, it’s interesting, what if they come to arrest you?’ Margarita asked.

‘They’re sure to come, charming Queen, they’re sure to!’ replied Koroviev, ‘my heart tells me they’ll come. Not now, of course, but in due time they’ll certainly come. But I don’t suppose it will be very interesting.’

‘Ah, I got so excited when that baron fell!’ said Margarita, evidently still reliving the murder, which was the first she had seen in her life. ‘You must be a very good shot?’

‘Passable,’ replied Azazello.

‘From how many paces?’ Margarita asked Azazello a not entirely clear question.

‘Depends on what,’ Azazello replied reasonably. ‘It’s one thing to hit the critic Latunsky’s window with a hammer, and quite another thing to hit him in the heart.’

‘In the heart!’ exclaimed Margarita, for some reason putting her hand to her own heart. ‘In the heart!’ she repeated in a hollow voice.

‘Who is this critic Latunsky?’ asked Woland, narrowing his eyes at Margarita.

Azazello, Koroviev and Behemoth dropped their eyes somehow abashedly, and Margarita answered, blushing.

‘There is this certain critic. I destroyed his whole apartment tonight.’

‘Just look at you! But what for? ...’

‘You see, Messire,’ Margarita explained, ‘he ruined a certain master.’

‘But why go to such trouble yourself?’ asked Woland.

‘Allow me, Messire!’ the cat cried out joyfully, jumping up.

‘You sit down,’ Azazello grunted, standing up. ‘I’ll go myself right now...’

‘No!’ exclaimed Margarita. ‘No, I beg you, Messire, there’s no need for that!’

‘As you wish, as you wish,’ Woland replied, and Azazello sat down in his place.

‘So, where were we, precious Queen Margot?’ said Koroviev. ‘Ah, yes, the heart ... He does hit the heart,’ Koroviev pointed his long finger in Azazello’s direction, ‘as you choose - any auricle of the heart, or any ventricle.’

Margarita did not understand at first, and when she did, she exclaimed in surprise:

‘But they’re covered up!’

‘My dear,’ clattered Koroviev, ‘that’s the point, that they’re covered up! That’s the whole salt of it! Anyone can hit an uncovered object!’

Koroviev took a seven of spades from the desk drawer, offered it to Margarita, and asked her to mark one of the pips with her fingernail. Margarita marked the one in the upper right-hand comer. Hella hid the card under a pillow, crying:

‘Ready!’

Azazello, who was sitting with his back to the pillow, drew a black automatic from the pocket of his tailcoat trousers, put the muzzle over his shoulder, and, without turning towards the bed, fired, provoking a merry fright in Margarita. The seven was taken from under the bullet-pierced pillow. The pip marked by Margarita had a hole in it.

‘I wouldn’t want to meet you when you’re carrying a gun,’ Margarita said, casting coquettish glances at Azazello. She had a passion for anyone who did something top-notch.

‘Precious Queen,’ squeaked Koroviev, ‘I wouldn’t advise anyone to meet him, even if he’s not carrying a gun! I give you my word of honour as an ex-choirmaster and precentor that no one would congratulate the one doing the meeting.’

The cat sat scowling throughout the shooting trial, and suddenly announced:

‘I undertake to beat the record with the seven.’

Azazello growled out something in reply to that. But the cat was stubborn, and demanded not one but two guns. Azazello took a second gun from the second back pocket of his trousers and, twisting his mouth disdainfully, handed it to the braggart together with the first. Two pips were marked on the seven. The cat made lengthy preparations, turning his back to the pillow. Margarita sat with her fingers in her ears and looked at the owl dozing on the mantelpiece. The cat fired both guns, after which Hella shrieked at once, the owl fell dead from the mantelpiece, and the smashed clock stopped. Hella, whose hand was all bloody, clutched at the cat’s fur with a howl, and he clutched her hair in retaliation, and the two got tangled into a ball and rolled on the floor. One of the goblets fell from the table and broke.

‘Pull this rabid hellion off me!’ wailed the cat, fighting off Hella, who was sitting astride him. The combatants were separated, and Koroviev blew on Hella’s bullet-pierced finger and it mended.

‘I can’t shoot when someone’s talking at my elbow!’ shouted Behemoth, trying to stick in place a huge clump of fur pulled from his back.

‘I’ll bet,’ said Woland, smiling to Margarita, ‘that he did this stunt on purpose. He’s not a bad shot.’

Hella and the cat made peace and, as a sign of their reconciliation, exchanged kisses. The card was taken from under the pillow and checked. Not a single pip had been hit, except for the one shot through by Azazello.

‘That can’t be,’ insisted the cat, holding the card up to the light of the candelabra.

The merry supper went on. The candles guttered in the candelabra, the dry, fragrant warmth of the fireplace spread waves over the room. After eating, Margarita was enveloped in a feeling of bliss. She watched the blue-grey smoke-rings from Azazello’s cigar float into the fireplace, while the cat caught them on the tip of a sword. She did not want to go anywhere, though according to her reckoning it was already late. By all tokens, it was getting on towards six in the morning. Taking advantage of a pause, Margarita turned to Woland and said timidly:

‘I suppose it’s time for me ... it’s late ...’

‘What’s your hurry?’ asked Woland, politely but a bit drily. The rest kept silent, pretending to be occupied with the smoke-rings.

‘Yes, it’s time,’ Margarita repeated, quite embarrassed by it, and looked around as if searching for some cape or cloak. She was suddenly embarrassed by her nakedness. She got up from the table. Woland silently took his worn-out and greasy dressing-gown from the bed, and Koroviev threw it over Margarita’s shoulders.

‘I thank you, Messire,’ Margarita said barely audibly, and looked questioningly at Woland. In reply, he smiled at her courteously and indifferently. Black anguish somehow surged up all at once in Margarita’s heart. She felt herself deceived. No rewards would be offered her for all her services at the ball, apparently, just as no one was detaining her. And yet it was perfectly clear to her that she had nowhere to go. The fleeting thought of having to return to her house provoked an inward burst of despair in her. Should she ask, as Azazello had temptingly advised in the Alexandrovsky Garden? ‘No, not for anything!’ she said to herself.

‘Goodbye, Messire,’ she said aloud, and thought, ‘I must just get out of here, and then I’ll go to the river and drown myself.’

‘Sit down now,’ Woland suddenly said imperiously.

Margarita changed countenance and sat down.

‘Perhaps you want to say something before you leave?’

‘No, nothing, Messire,’ Margarita answered proudly, ‘except that if you still need me, I’m willing and ready to do anything you wish. I’m not tired in the least, and I had a very good time at the ball. So that if it were still going on, I would again offer my knee for thousands of gallowsbirds and murderers to kiss.’ Margarita looked at Woland as if through a veil, her eyes filling with tears.

‘True! You’re perfectly right!’ Woland cried resoundingly and terribly. ‘That’s the way!’

‘That’s the way!’ Woland’s retinue repeated like an echo.

‘We’ve been testing you,’ said Woland. ‘Never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They’ll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves. Sit down, proud woman,’ Woland tore the heavy dressing-gown from Margarita and again she found herself sitting next to him on the bed. ‘And so, Margot,’ Woland went on, softening his voice, ‘what do you want for having been my hostess tonight? What do you wish for having spent the ball naked? What price do you put on your knee? What are your losses from my guests, whom you just called gallowsbirds? Speak! And speak now without constraint, for it is I who offer.’

Margarita’s heart began to pound, she sighed heavily, started pondering something.

‘Well, come, be braver!’ Woland encouraged her. ‘Rouse your fantasy, spur it on! Merely being present at the scene of the murder of that inveterate blackguard of a baron is worth a reward, particularly if the person is a woman. Well, then?’

Margarita’s breath was taken away, and she was about to utter the cherished words prepared in her soul, when she suddenly turned pale, opened her mouth and stared: ‘Frieda! ... Frieda, Frieda!’ someone’s importunate, imploring voice cried in her ears, ‘my name is Frieda!’ And Margarita, stumbling over the words, began to speak:

‘So, that means ... I can ask ... for one thing?’

‘Demand, demand, my donna,’ Woland replied, smiling knowingly, ‘you may demand one thing.’

Ah, how adroitly and distinctly Woland, repeating Margarita’s words, underscored that ‘one thing’!

Margarita sighed again and said:

‘I want them to stop giving Frieda that handkerchief with which she smothered her baby.’

The cat raised his eyes to heaven and sighed noisily, but said nothing, perhaps remembering how his ear had already suffered.

‘In view of the fact,’ said Woland, grinning, ‘that the possibility of your having been bribed by that fool Frieda is, of course, entirely excluded - being incompatible with your royal dignity - I simply don’t know what to do. One thing remains, perhaps: to procure some rags and stuff them in all the cracks of my bedroom.’

‘What are you talking about, Messire?’ Margarita was amazed, hearing these indeed incomprehensible words.

‘I agree with you completely, Messire,’ the cat mixed into the conversation, ‘precisely with rags!’ And the cat vexedly struck the table with his paw.

‘I am talking about mercy,’ Woland explained his words, not taking his fiery eye off Margarita. ‘It sometimes creeps, quite unexpectedly and perfidiously, through the narrowest cracks. And so I am talking about rags ...

‘And I’m talking about the same thing!’ the cat exclaimed, and drew back from Margarita just in case, raising his paws to protect his sharp ears, covered with a pink cream.

‘Get out,’ said Woland.

‘I haven’t had coffee yet,’ replied the cat, ‘how can I leave? Can it be, Messire, that on a festive night the guests are divided into two sorts? One of the first, and the other, as that sad skinflint of a barman put it, of second freshness?’

‘Quiet,’ ordered Woland, and, turning to Margarita, he asked: ‘You are, by all tokens, a person of exceptional kindness? A highly moral person?’

‘No,’ Margarita replied emphatically, ‘I know that one can only speak frankly with you, and so I will tell you frankly: I am a light-minded person. I asked you for Frieda only because I was careless enough to give her firm hope. She’s waiting, Messire, she believes in my power. And if she’s left disappointed, I’ll be in a terrible position. I’ll have no peace in my life. There’s no help for it, it just happened.’

‘Ah,’ said Woland, ‘that’s understandable.’

‘Will you do it?’ Margarita asked quietly.

‘By no means,’ answered Woland. ‘The thing is, dear Queen, that a little confusion has taken place here. Each department must look after its own affairs. I don’t deny our possibilities are rather great, they’re much greater than some not very keen people may think ...’

‘Yes, a whole lot greater,’ the cat, obviously proud of these possibilities, put in, unable to restrain himself.

‘Quiet, devil take you!’ Woland said to him, and went on addressing Margarita: ‘But there is simply no sense in doing what ought to be done by another - as I just put it — department. And so, I will not do it, but you will do it yourself.’

‘And will it be done at my word?’

Azazello gave Margarita an ironic look out of the corner of his blind eye, shook his red head imperceptibly, and snorted.

‘Just do it, what a pain!’ Woland muttered and, turning the globe, began peering into some detail on it, evidently also occupied with something else during his conversation with Margarita.

‘So, Frieda ...’ prompted Koroviev.

‘Frieda!’ Margarita cried piercingly.

The door flew open and a dishevelled, naked woman, now showing no signs of drunkenness, ran into the room with frenzied eyes and stretched her arms out to Margarita, who said majestically:

‘You are forgiven. The handkerchief will no longer be brought to you.’

Frieda’s scream rang out, she fell face down on the floor and prostrated in a cross before Margarita. Woland waved his hand and Frieda vanished from sight.

‘Thank you, and farewell,’ Margarita said, getting up.

‘Well, Behemoth,’ began Woland, ‘let’s not take advantage of the action of an impractical person on a festive night.’ He turned to Margarita: ‘And so, that does not count, I did nothing. What do you want for yourself?’

Silence ensued, interrupted by Koroviev, who started whispering in Margarita’s ear:

‘Diamond donna, this time I advise you to be more reasonable! Or else fortune may slip away.’

‘I want my beloved master to be returned to me right now, this second,’ said Margarita, and her face was contorted by a spasm.

Here a wind burst into the room, so that the flames of the candles in the candelabra were flattened, the heavy curtain on the window moved aside, the window opened wide and revealed far away on high a full, not morning but midnight moon. A greenish kerchief of night light fell from the window-sill to the floor, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s night visitor, who called himself a master. He was in his hospital clothes — robe, slippers and the black cap, with which he never parted. His unshaven face twitched in a grimace, he glanced sidelong with a crazy timorousness at the lights of the candles, and the torrent of moonlight seethed around him.

Margarita recognized him at once, gave a moan, clasped her hands, and ran to him. She kissed him on the forehead, on the lips, pressed herself to his stubbly cheek, and her long held-back tears now streamed down her face. She uttered only one word, repeating it senselessly:

‘You... you ... you ...’

The master held her away from him and said in a hollow voice:

‘Don’t weep, Margot, don’t torment me, I’m gravely ill.’ He grasped the window-sill with his hand, as if he were about to jump on to it and flee, and, peering at those sitting there, cried: ‘I’m afraid, Margot! My hallucinations are beginning again ...’

Sobs stifled Margarita, she whispered, choking on the words:

‘No, no, no ... don’t be afraid of anything ... I’m with you ... I’m with you ...’

Koroviev deftly and inconspicuously pushed a chair towards the master, and he sank into it, while Margarita threw herself on her knees, pressed herself to the sick man’s side, and so grew quiet. In her agitation she had not noticed that her nakedness was somehow suddenly over, that she was now wearing a black silk cloak. The sick man hung his head and began looking down with gloomy, sick eyes.

‘Yes,’ Woland began after a silence, ‘they did a good job on him.’ He ordered Koroviev: ‘Knight, give this man something to drink.’

Margarita begged the master in a trembling voice:

‘Drink, drink! You’re afraid? No, no, believe me, they’ll help you!’

The sick man took the glass and drank what was in it, but his hand twitched and the lowered glass smashed at his feet.

‘It’s good luck, good luck!’ Koroviev whispered to Margarita. ‘Look, he’s already coming to himself.’

Indeed, the sick man’s gaze was no longer so wild and troubled.

‘But is it you, Margot?’ asked the moonlit guest.

‘Don’t doubt, it’s I,’ replied Margarita.

‘More!’ ordered Woland.

After the master emptied the second glass, his eyes became alive and intelligent.

‘Well, there, that’s something else again,’ said Woland, narrowing his eyes. ‘Now let’s talk. Who are you?’

‘I’m nobody now,’ the master replied, and a smile twisted his mouth.

‘Where have you just come from?’

‘From the house of sorrows. I am mentally ill,’ replied the visitor.

These words Margarita could not bear, and she began to weep again. Then she wiped her eyes and cried out: ‘Terrible words! Terrible words! He’s a master, Messire, I’m letting you know that! Cure him, he’s worth it!’

‘Do you know with whom you are presently speaking?’ Woland asked the visitor. ‘On whom you have come calling?’

‘I do,’ replied the master, ‘my neighbour in the madhouse was that boy, Ivan Homeless. He told me about you.’

‘Ah, yes, yes,’ Woland responded, ‘I had the pleasure of meeting that young man at the Patriarch’s Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don’t exist. But you do believe that it is really I?’

‘I must believe,’ said the visitor, ‘though, of course, it would be much more comforting to consider you the product of a hallucination. Forgive me,’ the master added, catching himself.

‘Well, so, if it’s more comforting, consider me that,’ Woland replied courteously.

‘No, no!’ Margarita said, frightened, shaking the master by the shoulder. ‘Come to your senses! It’s really he before you!’

The cat intruded here as well.

‘And I really look like a hallucination. Note my profile in the moonlight.’ The cat got into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to add something else, but on being asked to keep silent, replied: ‘Very well, very well, I’m prepared to be silent. I’ll be a silent hallucination,’ and fell silent.

‘But tell me, why does Margarita call you a master?’ asked Woland.

The man smiled and said:

‘That is an excusable weakness. She has too high an opinion of a novel I wrote.’

‘What is this novel about?’

‘It is a novel about Pontius Pilate.’

Here again the tongues of the candles swayed and leaped, the dishes on the table clattered, Woland burst into thunderous laughter, but neither frightened nor surprised anyone. Behemoth applauded for some reason.

‘About what? About what? About whom?’ said Woland, ceasing to laugh. ‘And that — now? It’s stupendous! Couldn’t you have found some other subject? Let me see it.’ Woland held out his hand, palm up.

‘Unfortunately, I cannot do that,’ replied the master, ‘because I burned it in the stove.’

‘Forgive me, but I don’t believe you,’ Woland replied, ‘that cannot be: manuscripts don’t burn.’[138] He turned to Behemoth and said, ‘Come on, Behemoth, let’s have the novel.’

The cat instantly jumped off the chair, and everyone saw that he had been sitting on a thick stack of manuscripts. With a bow, the cat gave the top copy to Woland. Margarita trembled and cried out, again shaken to the point of tears:

‘It’s here, the manuscript! It’s here!’

She dashed to Woland and added in admiration:

‘All-powerful! All-powerful!’

Woland took the manuscript that had been handed to him, turned it over, laid it aside, and silently, without smiling, stared at the master. But he, for some unknown reason, lapsed into anxiety and uneasiness, got up from the chair, wrung his hands, and, quivering as he addressed the distant moon, began to murmur:

‘And at night, by moonlight, I have no peace ... Why am I being troubled? Oh, gods, gods ...’

Margarita clutched at the hospital robe, pressing herself to him, and began to murmur herself in anguish and tears:

‘Oh, God, why doesn’t the medicine help you?’

‘It’s nothing, nothing, nothing,’ whispered Koroviev, twisting about the master, ‘nothing, nothing... One more little glass, I’ll keep you company...’

And the little glass winked and gleamed in the moonlight, and this little glass helped. The master was put back in his place, and the sick man’s face assumed a calm expression.

‘Well, it’s all clear now,’ said Woland, tapping the manuscript with a long finger.

‘Perfectly clear,’ confirmed the cat, forgetting his promise to be a silent hallucination. ‘Now the main line of this opus is thoroughly clear to me. What do you say, Azazello?’ he turned to the silent Azazello.

‘I say,’ the other twanged, ‘that it would be a good thing to drown you.’

‘Have mercy, Azazello,’ the cat replied to him, ‘and don’t suggest the idea to my sovereign. Believe me, every night I’d come to you in the same moonlight garb as the poor master, and nod and beckon to you to follow me. How would that be, Azazello?’

‘Well, Margarita,’ Woland again entered the conversation, ‘tell me everything you need.’

Margarita’s eyes lit up, and she said imploringly to Woland:

‘Allow me to whisper something to him.’

Woland nodded his head, and Margarita, leaning to the master’s ear, whispered something to him. They heard him answer her.

‘No, it’s too late. I want nothing more in my life, except to see you. But again I advise you to leave me, or you’ll perish with me.’

‘No, I won’t leave you,’ Margarita answered and turned to Woland: ‘I ask that we be returned to the basement in the lane off the Arbat, and that the lamp be burning, and that everything be as it was.’

Here the master laughed and, embracing Margarita’s long-since-uncurled head, said:

‘Ah, don’t listen to the poor woman, Messire! Someone else has long been living in the basement, and generally it never happens that anything goes back to what it used to be.’ He put his cheek to his friend’s head, embraced Margarita, and began muttering : ‘My poor one ... my poor one ...’

‘Never happens, you say?’ said Woland. ‘That’s true. But we shall try.’ And he called out: ‘Azazello!’

At once there dropped from the ceiling on to the floor a bewildered and nearly delirious citizen in nothing but his underwear, though with a suitcase in his hand for some reason and wearing a cap. This man trembled with fear and kept cowering.

‘Mogarych?’ Azazello asked of the one fallen from the sky.

‘Aloisy Mogarych,’[139] the man answered, shivering.

‘Was it you who, after reading Latunsky’s article about this man’s novel, wrote a denunciation saying that he kept illegal literature?’ asked Azazello.

The newly arrived citizen turned blue and dissolved in tears of repentance.

‘You wanted to move into his rooms?’ Azazello twanged as soulfully as he could.

The hissing of an infuriated cat was heard in the room, and Margarita, with a howl of ‘Know a witch when you see one!’, sank her nails into Aloisy Mogarych’s face.

A commotion ensued.

‘What are you doing?’ the master cried painfully. ‘Margot, don’t disgrace yourself!’

‘I protest! It’s not a disgrace!’ shouted the cat.

Koroviev pulled Margarita away.

‘I put in a bathroom ...’ the bloodied Mogarych cried, his teeth chattering, and, terrified, he began pouring out some balderdash, ‘the whitewashing alone ... the vitriol...’

‘Well, it’s nice that you put in a bathroom,’ Azazello said approvingly, ‘he needs to take baths.’ And he yelled: ‘Out!’

Then Mogarych was turned upside down and left Woland’s bedroom through the open window.

The master goggled his eyes, whispering:

‘Now that’s maybe even neater than what Ivan described!’ Thoroughly struck, he looked around and finally said to the cat: ‘But, forgive me, was it you ... was it you, sir ...’ he faltered, not knowing how to address a cat, ‘are you that same cat, sir, who got on the tram?’

‘I am,’ the flattered cat confirmed and added: ‘It’s pleasing to hear you address a cat so politely. For some reason, cats are usually addressed familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderchaft[140] with anyone.’

‘It seems to me that you’re not so much a cat ...’ the master replied hesitantly. ‘Anyway, they’ll find me missing at the hospital,’ he added timidly to Woland.

‘Well, how are they going to find you missing?’ Koroviev soothed him, and some papers and ledgers turned up in his hands. ‘By your medical records?’

‘Yes...’

Koroviev flung the medical records into the fireplace.

‘No papers, no person,’ Koroviev said with satisfaction. ‘And this is your landlord’s house register?’

‘Y-yes ...’

‘Who is registered in it? Aloisy Mogarych?’ Koroviev blew on the page of the house register. ‘Hup, two! He’s not there, and, I beg you to notice, never has been. And if this landlord gets surprised, tell him he dreamed Aloisy up! Mogarych? What Mogarych? There was never any Mogarych!’ Here the loose-leafed book evaporated from Koroviev’s hands. ‘And there it is, already back in the landlord’s desk.’

‘What you say is true,’ the master observed, struck by the neatness of Koroviev’s work, ‘that if there are no papers, there’s no person. I have no papers, so there’s precisely no me.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Koroviev exclaimed, ‘but that precisely is a hallucination, your papers are right here.’ And Koroviev handed the master his papers. Then he rolled up his eyes and whispered sweetly to Margarita: ‘And here is your property, Margarita Nikolaevna,’ and Koroviev handed Margarita the notebook with charred edges, the dried rose, the photograph, and, with particular care, the savings book. ‘Ten thousand, as you kindly deposited, Margarita Nikolaevna. We don’t need what belongs to others.’

‘Sooner let my paws wither than touch what belongs to others,’ the cat exclaimed, all puffed up, dancing on the suitcase to stamp down all the copies of the ill-fated novel.

‘And your little papers as well,’ Koroviev continued, handing Margarita her papers and then turning to report deferentially to Woland: ‘That’s all, Messire!’

‘No, not all,’ replied Woland, tearing himself away from the globe. ‘What, dear donna, will you order me to do with your retinue? I personally don’t need them.’

Here the naked Natasha ran through the open door, clasped her hands, and cried out to Margarita:

‘Be happy, Margarita Nikolaevna!’ She nodded to the master and again turned to Margarita: ‘I knew all about where you used to go.’

‘Domestics know everything,’ observed the cat, raising a paw significantly. ‘It’s a mistake to think they’re blind.’

‘What do you want, Natasha?’ asked Margarita. ‘Go back to the house.’

‘Darling Margarita Nikolaevna,’ Natasha began imploringly and knelt down, ‘ask them’ - she cast a sidelong glance at Woland - ’to let me stay a witch. I don’t want any more of that house! I won’t marry an engineer or a technician! Yesterday at the ball Monsieur Jacques proposed to me.‘ Natasha opened her fist and showed some gold coins.

Margarita turned a questioning look to Woland. He nodded. Then Natasha threw herself on Margarita’s neck, gave her a smacking kiss, and with a victorious cry flew out the window.

In Natasha’s place Nikolai Ivanovich now stood. He had regained his former human shape, but was extremely glum and perhaps even annoyed.

‘This is someone I shall dismiss with special pleasure,’ said Woland, looking at Nikolai Ivanovich with disgust, ‘with exceptional pleasure, so superfluous he is here.’

‘I earnestly beg that you issue me a certificate,’ Nikolai Ivanovich began with great insistence, but looking around wildly, ‘as to where I spent last night.’

‘For what purpose?’ the cat asked sternly.

‘For the purpose of presenting it to the police and to my wife,’ Nikolai Ivanovich said firmly.

‘We normally don’t issue certificates,’ the cat replied, frowning, ‘but, very well, for you we’ll make an exception.’

And before Nikolai Ivanovich had time to gather his wits, the naked Hella was sitting at a typewriter and the cat was dictating to her.

‘It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the said night at Satan’s ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a means of transportation ... make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis put “hog”. Signed - Behemoth.’

‘And the date?’ squeaked Nikolai Ivanovich.

‘We don’t put dates, with a date the document becomes invalid,’ responded the cat, setting his scrawl to it. Then he got himself a stamp from somewhere, breathed on it according to all the rules, stamped the word ‘payed’ on the paper, and handed it to Nikolai Ivanovich. After which Nikolai Ivanovich disappeared without a trace, and in his place appeared a new, unexpected guest.

‘And who is this one?’ Woland asked squeamishly, shielding himself from the candlelight with his hand.

Varenukha hung his head, sighed, and said softly:

‘Let me go back, I can’t be a vampire. I almost did Rimsky in that time with Hella. And I’m not bloodthirsty. Let me go!’

‘What is all this raving!’ Woland said with a wince. ‘Which Rimsky? What is this nonsense?’

‘Kindly do not worry, Messire,’ responded Azazello, and he turned to Varenukha: ‘Mustn’t be rude on the telephone. Mustn’t tell lies on the telephone. Understand? Will you do it again?’

Everything went giddy with joy in Varenukha’s head, his face beamed, and, not knowing what he was saying, he began to murmur:

‘Verily... that is, I mean to say ... Your ma ... right after dinner ...’ Varenukha pressed his hands to his chest, looking beseechingly at Azazello.

‘All right. Home with you!’ the latter said, and Varenukha dissolved.

‘Now all of you leave me alone with them,’ ordered Woland, pointing to the master and Margarita.

Woland’s order was obeyed instantly. After some silence, Woland said to the master:

‘So it’s back to the Arbat basement? And who is going to write? And the dreams, the inspiration?’

‘I have no more dreams, or inspiration either,’ replied the master. ‘No one around me interests me, except her.’ He again put his hand on Margarita’s head. ‘I’m broken, I’m bored, and I want to be in the basement.’

‘And your novel? Pilate?’

‘It’s hateful to me, this novel,’ replied the master, ‘I went through too much because of it.’

‘I implore you,’ Margarita begged plaintively, ‘don’t talk like that. Why do you torment me? You know I put my whole life into this work.’ Turning to Woland, Margarita also added: ‘Don’t listen to him, Messire, he’s too worn out.’

‘But you must write about something,’ said Woland. ‘If you’ve exhausted the procurator, well, then why not start portraying, say, this Aloisy...’

The master smiled.

‘Lapshennikova wouldn’t publish that, and, besides, it’s not interesting.’

‘And what are you going to live on? You’ll have a beggarly existence.’

‘Willingly, willingly,’ replied the master, drawing Margarita to him. He put his arm around her shoulders and added: ‘She’ll see reason, she’ll leave me ...’

‘I doubt that,’ Woland said through his teeth and went on: ‘And so, the man who wrote the story of Pontius Pilate goes to the basement with the intention of settling by the lamp and leading a beggarly existence?’

Margarita separated herself from the master and began speaking very ardently:

‘I did all I could. I whispered the most tempting thing to him. And he refused.’

‘I know what you whispered to him,’ Woland retorted, ‘but it is not the most tempting thing. And to you I say,’ he turned, smiling, to the master, ‘that your novel will still bring you surprises.’

That’s very sad,‘ replied the master.

‘No, no, it’s not sad,’ said Woland, ‘nothing terrible. Well, Margarita Nikolaevna, it has all been done. Do you have any claims against me?’

‘How can you, oh, how can you, Messire! ...’

‘Then take this from me as a memento,’ said Woland, and he drew from under the pillow a small golden horseshoe studded with diamonds.

‘No, no, no, why on earth!’

‘You want to argue with me?’ Woland said, smiling.

Since Margarita had no pockets in her cloak, she put the horseshoe in a napkin and tied it into a knot. Here something amazed her. She looked at the window through which the moon was shining and said:

‘And here’s something I don’t understand ... How is it midnight, midnight, when it should have been morning long ago?’

‘It’s nice to prolong the festive night a little,’ replied Woland. ‘Well, I wish you happiness!’

Margarita prayerfully reached out both hands to Woland, but did not dare approach him and softly exclaimed:

‘Farewell! Farewell!’

‘Goodbye,’ said Woland.

And, Margarita in the black cloak, the master in the hospital robe, they walked out to the corridor of the jeweller’s wife’s apartment, where a candle was burning and Woland’s retinue was waiting for them. When they left the corridor, Hella was carrying the suitcase containing the novel and Margarita Nikolaevna’s few possessions, and the cat was helping Hella.

At the door of the apartment, Koroviev made his bows and disappeared, while the rest went to accompany them downstairs. The stairway was empty. As they passed the third-floor landing, something thudded softly, but no one paid any attention to it. Just at the exit from the sixth stairway, Azazello blew upwards, and as soon as they came out to the courtyard, where the moonlight did not reach, they saw a man in a cap and boots asleep, and obviously dead asleep, on the doorstep, as well as a big black car by the entrance with its lights turned off. Through the windshield could be dimly seen the silhouette of a rook.

They were just about to get in when Margarita cried softly in despair:

‘Oh, God, I’ve lost the horseshoe!’

‘Get into the car,’ said Azazello, ‘and wait for me. I’ll be right back, I only have to see what’s happened.’ And he went back in.

What had happened was the following: shortly before Margarita and the master left with their escort, a little dried-up woman carrying a can and a bag came out of apartment no. 48, which was located just under the jeweller’s wife’s apartment. This was that same Annushka who on Wednesday, to Berlioz’s misfortune, had spilled sunflower oil by the turnstile.

No one knew, and probably no one will ever know, what this woman did in Moscow or how she maintained her existence. The only thing known about her is that she could be seen every day either with the can, or with bag and can together, in the kerosene shop, or in the market, or under the gateway, or on the stairs, but most often in the kitchen of apartment no. 48, of which this Annushka was one of the tenants. Besides that and above all it was known that wherever she was or wherever she appeared, a scandal would at once break out, and, besides, that she bore the nickname of ‘the Plague’.

Annushka the Plague always got up very early for some reason, and today something got her up in the wee hours, just past midnight. The key turned in the door, Annushka’s nose stuck out of it, then the whole of her stuck out, she slammed the door behind her, and was about to set off somewhere when a door banged on the landing above, someone hurtled down the stairs and, bumping into Annushka, flung her aside so that she struck the back of her head against the wall.

‘Where’s the devil taking you in nothing but your underpants?’ Annushka shrieked, clutching her head.

The man in nothing but his underwear, carrying a suitcase and wearing a cap, his eyes shut, answered Annushka in a wild, sleepy voice:

‘The boiler ... the vitriol ... the cost of the whitewashing alone ...’ And, bursting into tears, he barked: ‘Out!’

Here he dashed, not further down, but back up to where the window had been broken by the economist’s foot, and out this window he flew, legs up, into the courtyard. Annushka even forgot about her head, gasped, and rushed to the window herself. She lay down on her stomach on the landing and stuck her head into the yard, expecting to see the man with the suitcase smashed to death on the asphalt, lit up by the courtyard lantern. But on the asphalt courtyard there was precisely nothing.

It only remained to suppose that a sleepy and strange person had flown out of the house like a bird, leaving not a trace behind him. Annushka crossed herself and thought: ‘Yes, indeed, a nice little apartment, that number fifty! It’s not for nothing people say ... Oh, a nice little apartment!’

Before she had time to think it through, the door upstairs slammed again, and a second someone came running down. Annushka pressed herself to the wall and saw a rather respectable citizen with a little beard, but, as it seemed to Annushka, with a slightly piggish face, dart past her and, like the first one, leave the house through the window, again without ever thinking of smashing himself on the asphalt. Annushka had already forgotten the purpose of her outing and stayed on the stairway, crossing herself, gasping, and talking to herself.

A third one, without a little beard, with a round, clean-shaven face, in a Tolstoy blouse, came running down a short while later and fluttered out the window in just the same way.

To Annushka’s credit it must be said that she was inquisitive and decided to wait and see whether any new miracles would occur. The door above was opened again, and now a whole company started down, not at a run, but normally, as everybody walks. Annushka darted away from the window, went to her own door, opened it in a trice, hid behind it, and her eye, frenzied with curiosity, glittered in the chink she left for herself.

Someone, possibly sick or possibly not, but strange, pale, with a stubbly beard, in a black cap and some sort of robe, walked down with unsteady steps. He was led carefully under the arm by a lady in a black cassock, as it seemed to Annushka in the darkness. The lady was possibly barefoot, possibly wearing some sort of transparent, obviously imported, shoes that were torn to shreds. Pah! Shoes my eye! ... The lady is naked! Yes, the cassock has been thrown right over her naked body! ... ‘A nice little apartment! ...’ Everything in Annushka’s soul sang in anticipation of what she was going to tell the neighbours the next day.

The strangely dressed lady was followed by a completely naked one carrying a suitcase, and next to the suitcase a huge black cat was knocking about. Annushka almost squeaked something out loud, rubbing her eyes.

Bringing up the rear of the procession was a short, limping foreigner, blind in one eye, without a jacket, in a white formal waistcoat and tie. This whole company marched downstairs past Annushka. Here something thudded on the landing.

As the steps died away, Annushka slipped like a snake from behind the door, put the can down by the wall, dropped to the floor on her stomach, and began feeling around. Her hands came upon a napkin with something heavy in it. Annushka’s eyes started out of her head when she unwrapped the package. Annushka kept bringing the precious thing right up to her eyes, and these eyes burned with a perfectly wolfish fire. A whirlwind formed in Annushka’s head:

‘I see nothing, I know nothing! ... To my nephew? Or cut it in pieces? ... I could pick the stones out, and then one by one: one to Petrovka, another to Smolensky ... And - I see nothing, I know nothing!’

Annushka hid the found object in her bosom, grabbed the can, and was about to slip back into her apartment, postponing her trip to town, when that same one with the white chest, without a jacket, emerged before her from devil knows where and quietly whispered:

‘Give me the horseshoe and napkin!’

‘What napkin horseshoe?’ Annushka asked, shamming very artfully. ‘I don’t know about any napkins. Are you drunk, citizen, or what?’

With fingers as hard as the handrails of a bus, and as cold, the white-chested one, without another word, squeezed Annushka’s throat so that he completely stopped all access of air to her chest. The can dropped from Annushka’s hand on to the floor. After keeping Annushka without air for some time, the jacketless foreigner removed his fingers from her throat. Gulping air, Annushka smiled.

‘Ah, the little horseshoe?’ she said. ‘This very second! So it’s your little horseshoe? And I see it lying there in a napkin, I pick it up so that no one takes it, and then just try finding it!’

Having received the little horseshoe and napkin, the foreigner started bowing and scraping before Annushka, shook her hand firmly, and thanked her warmly, with the strongest of foreign accents, in the following terms:

‘I am deeply grateful to you, ma’am. This little horseshoe is dear to me as a memento. And, for having preserved it, allow me to give you two hundred roubles.’ And he took the money from his waistcoat pocket at once and handed it to Annushka.

She, smiling desperately, could only keep exclaiming:

‘Ah, I humbly thank you! Merci! Merci!’

The generous foreigner cleared a whole flight of stairs in one leap, but, before decamping definitively, shouted from below, now without any accent:

‘You old witch, if you ever pick up somebody else’s stuff again, take it to the police, don’t hide it in your bosom!’

Feeling a ringing and commotion in her head from all these events on the stairs, Annushka went on shouting for some time by inertia:

‘Merci! Merci! Merci! ...’ But the foreigner was long gone.

And so was the car in the courtyard. Having returned Woland’s gift to Margarita, Azazello said goodbye to her and asked if she was comfortably seated, Hella exchanged smacking kisses with Margarita, the cat kissed her hand, everyone waved to the master, who collapsed lifelessly and motionlessly in the corner of the seat, waved to the rook, and at once melted into air, considering it unnecessary to take the trouble of climbing the stairs. The rook turned the lights on and rolled out through the gates, past the man lying dead asleep under the archway. And the lights of the big black car disappeared among the other lights on sleepless and noisy Sadovaya.

An hour later, in the basement of the small house in the lane off the Arbat, in the front room, where everything was the same as it had been before that terrible autumn night last year, at the table covered with a velvet tablecloth, under the shaded lamp, near which stood a little vase of lilies of the valley, Margarita sat and wept quietly from the shock she had experienced and from happiness. The notebook disfigured by fire lay before her, and next to it rose a pile of intact notebooks. The little house was silent. On a sofa in the small adjoining room, covered with the hospital robe, the master lay in a deep sleep. His even breathing was noiseless.

Having wept her fill, Margarita went to the intact notebooks and found the place she had been rereading before she met Azazello under the Kremlin wall. Margarita did not want to sleep. She caressed the manuscript tenderly, as one caresses a favourite cat, and kept turning it in her hands, examining it from all sides, now pausing at the title page, now opening to the end. A terrible thought suddenly swept over her, that this was all sorcery, that the notebooks would presently disappear from sight, and she would be in her bedroom in the old house, and that on waking up she would have to go and drown herself. But this was her last terrible thought, an echo of the long suffering she had lived through. Nothing disappeared, the all-powerful Woland really was all powerful, and as long as she liked, even till dawn itself, Margarita could rustle the pages of the notebooks, gaze at them, kiss them, and read over the words:

‘The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator ...’ Yes, the darkness ...

CHAPTER 25 How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath

The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the dread Antonia Tower disappeared, the abyss descended from the sky and flooded the winged gods over the hippodrome, the Hasmonaean Palace with its loopholes, the bazaars, caravanserais, lanes, pools ... Yershalaim - the great city — vanished as if it had never existed in the world. Everything was devoured by the darkness, which frightened every living thing in Yershalaim and round about. The strange cloud was swept from seaward towards the end of the day, the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan.

It was already heaving its belly over Bald Skull, where the executioners hastily stabbed the condemned men, it heaved itself over the temple of Yershalaim, crept in smoky streams down the temple hill, and flooded the Lower City. It poured through windows and drove people from the crooked streets into the houses. It was in no hurry to yield up its moisture and gave off only light. Each time the black smoky brew was ripped by fire, the great bulk of the temple with its glittering scaly roof flew up out of the pitch darkness. But the fire would instantly go out, and the temple would sink into the dark abyss. Time and again it grew out of it and fell back, and each time its collapse was accompanied by the thunder of catastrophe.

Other tremulous glimmers called out of the abyss the palace of Herod the Great, standing opposite the temple on the western hill, and its dread, eyeless golden statues flew up into the black sky, stretching their arms out to it. But again the heavenly fire would hide, and heavy claps of thunder would drive the golden idols into the darkness.

The downpour burst unexpectedly, and then the storm turned into a hurricane. In the very place where the procurator and the high priest had had their talk around noon, by the marble bench in the garden, with the sound of a cannon shot, a cypress snapped like a reed. Along with the watery spray and hail, broken-off roses, magnolia leaves, small twigs and sand were swept on to the balcony under the columns. The hurricane racked the garden.

At that time there was only one man under the columns, and that man was the procurator.

Now he was not sitting in the chair but lying on a couch by a small, low table set with food and jugs of wine. Another couch, empty, stood on the other side of the table. By the procurator’s feet spread an unwiped red puddle, as if of blood, with pieces of a broken jug. The servant who was setting the table for the procurator before the storm became disconcerted for some reason under his gaze, grew alarmed at having displeased him in some way, and the procurator, getting angry with him, smashed the jug on the mosaic floor, saying:

‘Why don’t you look me in the face when you serve me? Have you stolen something?’

The African’s black face turned grey, mortal fear showed in his eyes, he trembled and almost broke a second jug, but the procurator’s wrath flew away as quickly as it had flown in. The African rushed to remove the pieces and wipe up the puddle, but the procurator waved his hand and the slave ran away. The puddle remained.

Now, during the hurricane, the African was hiding near a niche in which stood the statue of a white, naked woman with a drooping head, afraid of appearing before the procurator’s eyes at the wrong time, and at the same time fearing to miss the moment when the procurator might call for him.

Lying on the couch in the storm’s twilight, the procurator poured wine into the cup himself, drank it in long draughts, occasionally touched the bread, crumbled it, swallowed small pieces, sucked out an oyster from time to time, chewed a lemon, and drank again.

Had it not been for the roaring of the water, had it not been for the thunderclaps that seemed to threaten to lay flat the roof of the palace, had it not been for the rattle of hail hammering on the steps of the balcony, one might have heard that the procurator was muttering something, talking to himself. And if the unsteady glimmering of the heavenly fire had turned into a constant light, an observer would have been able to see that the procurator’s face, with eyes inflamed by recent insomnia and wine, showed impatience, that the procurator was not only looking at the two white roses drowned in the red puddle, but constantly turned his face towards the garden, meeting the watery spray and sand, that he was waiting for someone, impatiently waiting.

Time passed, and the veil of water before the procurator’s eyes began to thin. Furious as it was, the hurricane was weakening. Branches no longer cracked and fell. The thunderclaps and flashes came less frequently. It was no longer a violet coverlet trimmed with white, but an ordinary, grey rear-guard cloud that floated over Yershalaim. The storm was being swept towards the Dead Sea.

Now it was possible to hear separately the noise of the rain and the noise of water rushing along the gutters and also straight down the steps of that stairway upon which the procurator had walked in the afternoon to announce the sentence in the square. And finally the hitherto drowned-out fountain made itself heard. It was growing lighter. Blue windows appeared in the grey veil fleeing eastward.

Here, from far off, breaking through the patter of the now quite weakened rainfall, there came to the procurator’s ears a weak sound of trumpets and the tapping of several hundred hoofs. Hearing this, the procurator stirred, and his face livened up. The ala was coming back from Bald Mountain. Judging by the sound, it was passing through the same square where the sentence had been announced.

At last the procurator heard the long-awaited footsteps and a slapping on the stairs leading to the upper terrace of the garden, just in front of the balcony. The procurator stretched his neck and his eyes glinted with an expression of joy.

Between the two marble lions there appeared first a hooded head, then a completely drenched man with his cloak clinging to his body. It was the same man who had exchanged whispers with the procurator in a darkened room of the palace before the sentencing, and who during the execution had sat on a three-legged stool playing with a twig.

Heedless of puddles, the man in the hood crossed the garden terrace, stepped on to the mosaic floor of the balcony, and, raising his arm, said in a high, pleasant voice:

‘Health and joy to the procurator!’ The visitor spoke in Latin.

‘Gods!’ exclaimed Pilate. ‘There’s not a dry stitch on you! What a hurricane! Eh? I beg you to go inside immediately. Do me a favour and change your clothes.’

The visitor threw back his hood, revealing a completely wet head with hair plastered to the forehead, and, showing a polite smile on his clean-shaven face, began refusing to change, insisting that a little rain would not hurt him.

‘I won’t hear of it,’ Pilate replied and clapped his hands. With that he called out the servants who were hiding from him, and told them to take care of the visitor and then serve the hot course immediately.

The procurator’s visitor required very little time to dry his hair, change his clothes and shoes, and generally put himself in order, and he soon appeared on the balcony in dry sandals, a dry crimson military cloak, and with slicked-down hair.

Just then the sun returned to Yershalaim, and, before going to drown in the Mediterranean Sea, sent farewell rays to the city hated by the procurator and gilded the steps of the balcony. The fountain revived completely and sang away with all its might, doves came out on the sand, cooing, hopping over broken branches, pecking at something in the wet sand. The red puddle was wiped up, the broken pieces were removed, meat steamed on the table.

‘I wait to hear the procurator’s orders,’ said the visitor, approaching the table.

‘But you won’t hear anything until you sit down and drink some wine,’ Pilate replied courteously and pointed to the other couch.

The visitor reclined, a servant poured some thick red wine into his cup. Another servant, leaning cautiously over Pilate’s shoulder, filled the procurator’s cup. After that, he motioned for the two servants to withdraw.

While the visitor drank and ate, Pilate, sipping his wine, kept glancing with narrowed eyes at his guest. The man who had come to Pilate was middle-aged, with a very pleasant, rounded and neat face and a fleshy mouth. His hair was of some indeterminate colour. Now, as it dried, it became lighter. It would be difficult to establish the man’s nationality. The chief determinant of his face was perhaps its good-natured expression, which, however, was not in accord with his eyes, or, rather, not his eyes but the visitor’s way of looking at his interlocutor. Ordinarily he kept his small eyes under his lowered, somewhat strange, as if slightly swollen eyelids. Then the slits of these eyes shone with an unspiteful slyness. It must be supposed that the procurator’s guest had a propensity for humour. But occasionally, driving this glittering humour from the slits entirely, the procurator’s present guest would open his eyelids wide and look at his interlocutor suddenly and point-blank, as if with the purpose of rapidly scrutinizing some inconspicuous spot on his interlocutor’s nose. This lasted only an instant, after which the eyelids would lower again, the slits would narrow, and once again they would begin to shine with good-naturedness and sly intelligence.

The visitor did not decline a second cup of wine, swallowed a few oysters with obvious pleasure, tried some steamed vegetables, ate a piece of meat. Having eaten his fill, he praised the wine:

‘An excellent vintage, Procurator, but it is not Falerno?’[141]

‘Caecuba,[142] thirty years old,’ the procurator replied courteously.

The guest put his hand to his heart, declined to eat more, declared that he was full. Then Pilate filled his own cup, and the guest did the same. Both diners poured some wine from their cups on to the meat platter, and the procurator, raising his cup, said loudly:

‘For us, for thee, Caesar, father of the Romans, best and dearest of men! ...’

After this they finished the wine, and the Africans removed the food from the table, leaving the fruit and the jugs. Again the procurator motioned for the servants to withdraw and remained alone with his guest under the colonnade.

‘And so,’ Pilate began in a low voice, ‘what can you tell me about the mood of this city?’

He inadvertently turned his eyes to where the colonnades and flat roofs below, beyond the terraces of the garden, were drying out, gilded by the last rays.

‘I believe, Procurator,’ the guest replied, ‘that the mood of Yershalaim is now satisfactory.’

‘So it can be guaranteed that there is no threat of further disorders?’

‘Only one thing can be guaranteed in this world,’ the guest replied, glancing tenderly at the procurator, ‘the power of great Caesar.’

‘May the gods grant him long life!’ Pilate picked up at once, ‘and universal peace!’ He paused and then continued: ‘So you believe the troops can now be withdrawn?’

‘I believe that the cohort of the Lightning legion can go,’ the guest replied and added: ‘It would be good if it paraded through the city in farewell.’

‘A very good thought,’ the procurator approved, ‘I will dismiss it the day after tomorrow, and go myself, and — I swear to you by the feast of the twelve gods,[143] by the lares[144] I swear - I’d give a lot to be able to do so today!’

‘The procurator doesn’t like Yershalaim?’ the guest asked good-naturedly.

‘Good heavens,’ the procurator exclaimed, smiling, ‘there’s no more hopeless place on earth. I’m not even speaking of natural conditions — I get sick every time I have to come here - but that’s only half the trouble! ... But these feasts! ... Magicians, sorcerers, wizards, these flocks of pilgrims! ... Fanatics, fanatics! ... Just take this messiah[145] they suddenly started expecting this year! Every moment you think you’re about to witness the most unpleasant bloodshed ... The shifting of troops all the time, reading denunciations and calumnies, half of which, moreover, are written against yourself! You must agree, it’s boring. Oh, if it weren’t for the imperial service!’

‘Yes, the feasts are hard here,’ agreed the guest.

‘I wish with all my heart that they should be over soon,’ Pilate added energetically. ‘I will finally have the possibility of going back to Caesarea. Believe me, this delirious construction of Herod’s’ — the procurator waved his arm along the colonnade, to make clear that he was speaking of the palace — ‘positively drives me out of my mind! I cannot spend my nights in it. The world has never known a stranger architecture! ... Well, but let’s get back to business. First of all, this cursed Bar-Rabban — you’re not worried about him?’

And here the guest sent his peculiar glance at the procurator’s cheek. But the latter, frowning squeamishly, gazed into the distance with bored eyes, contemplating the part of the city that lay at his feet and was fading into the twilight. The guest’s eyes also faded, and his eyelids lowered.

‘It may be supposed that Bar has now become as harmless as a lamb,’ the guest began to say, and wrinkles appeared on his round face. ‘It would be awkward for him to rebel now.’

‘Too famous?’ Pilate asked with a smirk.

‘The procurator has subtly understood the problem, as always.’

‘But in any case,’ the procurator observed with concern, and the thin, long finger with the black stone of its ring was raised, ‘there must be...’

‘Oh, the procurator can be certain that as long as I am in Judea, Bar will not take a step without having someone on his heels.’

‘Now I am at peace — as I always am, incidentally, when you are here.’

‘The procurator is too kind!’

‘And now I ask you to tell me about the execution,’ said the procurator.

‘What precisely interests the procurator?’

‘Were there any attempts on the part of the crowd to display rebelliousness? That is the main thing, of course.’

‘None,’ replied the guest.

‘Very good. Did you personally establish that death took place?’

‘The procurator may be certain of it.’

‘And tell me ... were they given the drink before being hung on the posts?’[146]

‘Yes. But he,’ here the guest closed his eyes, ‘refused to drink it.’

‘Who, precisely?’ asked Pilate.

‘Forgive me, Hegemon!’ the guest exclaimed. ‘Did I not name him? Ha-Nozri!’

‘Madman!’ said Pilate, grimacing for some reason. A little nerve began to twitch under his left eye. ‘To die of sunburn! Why refuse what is offered by law! In what terms did he refuse it?’

‘He said,’ the guest answered, again closing his eyes, ‘that he was grateful and laid no blame for the taking of his life.’

‘On whom?’ Pilate asked in a hollow voice.

‘That he did not say, Hegemon ...’

‘Did he try to preach anything in the soldiers’ presence?’

‘No, Hegemon, he was not loquacious this time. The only thing he said was that among human vices he considered cowardice one of the first.’[147]

‘This was said with regard to what?’ the guest heard a suddenly cracked voice.

‘That was impossible to understand. He generally behaved himself strangely — as always, however.’

‘What was this strangeness?’

‘He kept trying to peer into the eyes of one or another of those around him, and kept smiling some sort of lost smile.’

‘Nothing else?’ asked the hoarse voice.

‘Nothing else.’

The procurator knocked against the cup as he poured himself some wine. After draining it to the very bottom, he spoke:

‘The matter consists in the following: though we have been unable — so far at least - to discover any admirers or followers of his, it is none the less impossible to guarantee that there are none.’

The guest listened attentively, inclining his head.

‘And so, to avoid surprises of any sort,’ the procurator continued, ‘I ask you to remove the bodies of all three executed men from the face of the earth, immediately and without any noise, and to bury them in secrecy and silence, so that not another word or whisper is heard of them.’

‘Understood, Hegemon,’ replied the guest, and he got up, saying: ‘In view of the complexity and responsibility of the matter, allow me to go immediately.’

‘No, sit down again,’ said Pilate, stopping his guest with a gesture, ‘there are two more questions. First, your enormous merits in this most difficult job at the post of head of the secret service for the procurator of Judea give me the pleasant opportunity of reporting them to Rome.’

Here the guest’s face turned pink, he rose and bowed to the procurator, saying:

‘I merely fulfil my duty in the imperial service.’

‘But I wanted to ask you,’ the hegemon continued, ‘in case you’re offered a transfer elsewhere with a raise — to decline it and remain here. I wouldn’t want to part with you for anything. Let them reward you in some other way.’

‘I am happy to serve under your command, Hegemon.’

‘That pleases me very much. And so, the second question. It concerns this ... what’s his name ... Judas of Kiriath.’

Here the guest sent the procurator his glance, and at once, as was his custom, extinguished it.

‘They say,’ the procurator continued, lowering his voice, ‘that he supposedly got some money for receiving this madman so cordially?’

‘Will get,’ the head of the secret service quietly corrected Pilate.

‘And is it a large sum?’

‘That no one can say, Hegemon.’

‘Not even you?’ said the hegemon, expressing praise by his amazement.

‘Alas, not even I,’ the guest calmly replied. ‘But he will get the money this evening, that I do know. He is to be summoned tonight to the palace of Kaifa.’

‘Ah, that greedy old man of Kiriath!’ the procurator observed, smiling. ‘He is an old man, isn’t he?’

‘The procurator is never mistaken, but he is mistaken this time,’ the guest replied courteously, ‘the man from Kiriath is a young man.’

‘You don’t say! Can you describe his character for me? A fanatic?’

‘Oh, no, Procurator.’

‘So. And anything else?’

‘Very handsome.’

‘What else? He has some passion, perhaps?’

‘It is difficult to have such precise knowledge about everyone in this huge city, Procurator ...’

‘Ah, no, no, Aphranius! Don’t play down your merits.’

‘He has one passion, Procurator.’ The guest made a tiny pause. ‘A passion for money.’

‘And what is his occupation?’

Aphranius raised his eyes, thought, and replied:

‘He works in the money-changing shop of one of his relatives.’

‘Ah, so, so, so, so.’ Here the procurator fell silent, looked around to be sure there was no one on the balcony, and then said quietly: ‘The thing is this — I have just received information that he is going to be killed tonight.’

This time the guest not only cast his glance at the procurator, but even held it briefly, and after that replied:

‘You spoke too flatteringly of me, Procurator. In my opinion, I do not deserve your report. This information I do not have.’

‘You deserve the highest reward,’ the procurator replied. ‘But there is such information.’

‘May I be so bold as to ask who supplied it?’

‘Permit me not to say for the time being, the more so as it is accidental, obscure and uncertain. But it is my duty to foresee everything. That is my job, and most of all I must trust my presentiment, for it has never yet deceived me. The information is that one of Ha-Nozri’s secret friends, indignant at this money-changer’s monstrous betrayal, is plotting with his accomplices to kill him tonight, and to foist the money paid for the betrayal on the high priest, with a note: “I return the cursed money.”’ The head of the secret service cast no more of his unexpected glances at the hegemon, but went on listening to him, narrowing his eyes, as Pilate went on:

‘Imagine, is it going to be pleasant for the high priest to receive such a gift on the night of the feast?’

‘Not only not pleasant,’ the guest replied, smiling, ‘but I believe, Procurator, that it will cause a very great scandal.’

‘I am of the same opinion myself. And therefore I ask you to occupy yourself with this matter - that is, to take all measures to protect Judas of Kiriath.’

‘The hegemon’s order will be carried out,‘ said Aphranius, ‘but I must reassure the hegemon: the evil-doers’ plot is very hard to bring off. Only think,’ the guest looked over his shoulder as he spoke and went on, ‘to track the man down, to kill him, and besides that to find out how much he got, and manage to return the money to Kaifa, and all that in one night? Tonight?’

‘And none the less he will be killed tonight,’ Pilate stubbornly repeated. ‘I have a presentiment, I tell you! Never once has it deceived me.’ Here a spasm passed over the procurator’s face, and he rubbed his hands briskly.

‘Understood,’ the guest obediently replied, stood up, straightened out, and suddenly asked sternly: ‘So they will kill him, Hegemon?’

‘Yes,’ answered Pilate, ‘and all hope lies in your efficiency alone, which amazes everyone.’

The guest adjusted the heavy belt under his cloak and said:

‘I salute you and wish you health and joy!’

‘Ah, yes,’ Pilate exclaimed softly, ‘I completely forgot! I owe you something! ...’

The guest was amazed.

‘Really, Procurator, you owe me nothing.’

‘But of course! As I was riding into Yershalaim, remember, the crowd of beggars ... I wanted to throw them some money, but I didn’t have any, and so I took it from you.’

‘Oh, Procurator, it was a trifle!’

‘One ought to remember trifles, too.’ Here Pilate turned, picked up the cloak that lay on the chair behind him, took a leather bag from under it, and handed it to the guest. The man bowed, accepting it, and put the bag under his cloak.

‘I expect a report on the burial,’ said Pilate, ‘and also on the matter to do with Judas of Kiriath, this same night, do you hear, Aphranius, this night. The convoy will have orders to awaken me the moment you appear. I’ll be expecting you.’

‘I salute you,’ the head of the secret service said and, turning, left the balcony. One could hear the wet sand crunch under his feet, then the stamp of his boots on the marble between the lions, then his legs were cut off, then his body, and finally the hood also disappeared. Only here did the procurator notice that the sun was gone and twilight had come.

CHAPTER 26 The Burial

And perhaps it was the twilight that caused such a sharp change in the procurator’s appearance. He aged, grew hunched as if before one’s eyes, and, besides that, became alarmed. Once he looked around and gave a start for some reason, casting an eye on the empty chair with the cloak thrown over its back. The night of the feast was approaching, the evening shadows played their game, and the tired procurator probably imagined that someone was sitting in the empty chair. Yielding to his faint-heartedness and ruffling the cloak, the procurator let it drop and began rushing about the balcony, now rubbing his hands, now rushing to the table and seizing the cup, now stopping and staring senselessly at the mosaics of the floor, as if trying to read something written there ...

It was the second time in the same day that anguish came over him. Rubbing his temple, where only a dull, slightly aching reminder of the morning’s infernal pain lingered, the procurator strained to understand what the reason for his soul’s torments was. And he quickly understood it, but attempted to deceive himself. It was clear to him that that afternoon he had lost something irretrievably, and that he now wanted to make up for the loss by some petty, worthless and, above all, belated actions. The deceiving of himself consisted in the procurator’s trying to convince himself that these actions, now, this evening, were no less important than the morning’s sentence. But in this the procurator succeeded very poorly.

At one of his turns, he stopped abruptly and whistled. In response to this whistle, a low barking resounded in the twilight, and a gigantic sharp-eared dog with a grey pelt and a gold-studded collar sprang from the garden on to the balcony.

‘Banga, Banga,’ the procurator cried weakly.

The dog rose on his hind legs, placed his front paws on his master’s shoulders, nearly knocking him to the floor, and licked his cheek. The procurator sat down in the armchair. Banga, his tongue hanging out, panting heavily, lay down at his master’s feet, and the joy in the dog’s eyes meant that the storm was over, the only thing in the world that the fearless dog was afraid of, and also that he was again there, next to the man whom he loved, respected, and considered the most powerful man in the world, the ruler of all men, thanks to whom the dog considered himself a privileged, lofty and special being. Lying down at his master’s feet without even looking at him, but looking into the dusky garden, the dog nevertheless realized at once that trouble had befallen his master. He therefore changed his position, got up, came from the side and placed his front paws and head on the procurator’s knees, smearing the bottom of his cloak with wet sand. Banga’s actions were probably meant to signify that he comforted his master and was ready to meet misfortune with him. He also attempted to express this with his eyes, casting sidelong glances at his master, and with his alert, pricked-up ears. Thus the two of them, the dog and man who loved each other, met the night of the feast on the balcony.

Just then the procurator’s guest was in the midst of a great bustle. After leaving the upper terrace of the garden before the balcony, he went down the stairs to the next terrace of the garden, turned right and came to the barracks which stood on the palace grounds. In these barracks the two centuries that had come with the procurator for the feast in Yershalaim were quartered, as was the procurator’s secret guard, which was under the command of this very guest. The guest did not spend much time in the barracks, no more than ten minutes, but at the end of these ten minutes, three carts drove out of the barracks yard loaded with entrenching tools and a barrel of water. The carts were escorted by fifteen mounted men in grey cloaks. Under their escort the carts left the palace grounds by the rear gate, turned west, drove through gates in the city wall, and followed a path first to the Bethlehem road, then down this road to the north, came to the intersection by the Hebron gate, and then moved down the Jaffa road, along which the procession had gone during the day with the men condemned to death. By that time it was already dark, and the moon appeared on the horizon.

Soon after the departure of the carts with their escorting detachment, the procurator’s guest also left the palace grounds on horseback, having changed into a dark, worn chiton. The guest went not out of the city but into it. Some time later he could be seen approaching the Antonia Fortress, located to the north and in the vicinity of the great temple. The guest did not spend much time in the fortress either, and then his tracks turned up in the Lower City, in its crooked and tangled streets. Here the guest now came riding a mule.

Knowing the city well, the guest easily found the street he wanted. It was called Greek Street, because there were several Greek shops on it, among them one that sold carpets. Precisely by this shop, the guest stopped his mule, dismounted, and tied it to the ring by the gate. The shop was closed by then. The guest walked through the little gate beside the entrance to the shop and found himself in a small square courtyard surrounded on three sides by sheds. Turning a comer inside the yard, the guest came to the stone terrace of a house all twined with ivy and looked around. Both the little house and the sheds were dark, no lamps were lit yet. The guest called softly:

‘Niza!’

At this call a door creaked, and in the evening twilight a young woman without a veil appeared on the terrace. She leaned over the railing, peering anxiously, wishing to know who had come. Recognizing the visitor, she smiled amiably to him, nodded her head, waved her hand.

‘Are you alone?’ Aphranius asked softly in Greek.

‘Yes,’ the woman on the terrace whispered, ‘my husband left for Caesarea in the morning.’ Here the woman looked back at the door and added in a whisper: ‘But the serving-woman is at home.’ Here she made a gesture meaning ‘Come in’.

Aphranius looked around and went up the stone steps. After which both he and the woman disappeared into the house. With this woman Aphranius spent very little time, certainly no more than five minutes. After which he left the house and the terrace, pulled the hood down lower on his eyes, and went out to the street. Just then the lamps were being lit in the houses, the pre-festive tumult was still considerable, and Aphranius on his mule lost himself in the stream of riders and passers-by. His subsequent route is not known to anyone.

The woman Aphranius called ‘Niza’, left alone, began changing her clothes, and was hurrying greatly. But difficult though it was for her to find the things she needed in the dark room, she did not light a lamp or call the serving-woman. Only after she was ready and her head was covered by a dark veil did the sound of her voice break the silence in the little house:

‘If anyone asks for me, say I went to visit Enanta.’

The old serving-woman’s grumbling was heard in the darkness:

‘Enanta? Ah, this Enanta! Didn’t your husband forbid you to visit her? She’s a procuress, your Enanta! Wait till I tell your husband...’

‘Well, well, be quiet,’ Niza replied and, like a shadow, slipped out of the house. Niza’s sandals pattered over the stone flags of the yard. The serving-woman, grumbling, shut the door to the terrace. Niza left her house.

Just at that time, from another lane in the Lower City, a twisting lane that ran down from ledge to ledge to one of the city pools, from the gates of an unsightly house with a blank wall looking on to the lane and windows on the courtyard, came a young man with a neatly trimmed beard, wearing a white kefia falling to his shoulders, a new pale blue festive tallith with tassels at the bottom, and creaking new sandals. The handsome, aquiline-nosed young fellow, all dressed up for the great feast, walked briskly, getting ahead of passers-by hurrying home for the solemn meal, and watched as one window after another lit up. The young man took the street leading past the bazaar to the palace of the high priest Kaifa, located at the foot of the temple hill.

Some time later he could be seen entering the gates of Kaifa’s courtyard. And a bit later still, leaving the same courtyard.

After visiting the palace, where the lamps and torches already blazed, and where the festive bustle had already begun, the young man started walking still more briskly, still more joyfully, hastening back to the Lower City. At the comer where the street flowed into the market-place, amidst the seething and tumult, he was overtaken by a slight woman, walking with a dancer’s gait, in a black veil that came down over her eyes. As she overtook the handsome young man, this woman raised her veil for a moment, cast a glance in the young man’s direction, yet not only did not slow her pace, but quickened it, as if trying to escape from the one she had overtaken.

The young man not only noticed this woman, no, he also recognized her, and, having recognized her, gave a start, halted, looking perplexedly into her back, and at once set out after her. Almost knocking over some passer-by carrying a jug, the young man caught up with the woman, and, breathing heavily with agitation, called out to her:

‘Niza!’

The woman turned, narrowed her eyes, her face showing cold vexation, and replied drily in Greek:

‘Ah, it’s you, Judas? I didn’t recognize you at once. That’s good, though. With us, if someone’s not recognized, it’s a sign he’ll get rich...’

So agitated that his heart started leaping like a bird under a black cloth, Judas asked in a faltering whisper, for fear passers-by might overhear:

‘Where are you going, Niza?’

‘And what do you want to know that for?’ replied Niza, slowing her pace and looking haughtily at Judas.

Then some sort of childish intonations began to sound in Judas’s voice, he whispered in bewilderment:

‘But why? ... We had it all arranged ... I wanted to come to you, you said you’d be home all evening ...’

‘Ah, no, no,’ answered Niza, and she pouted her lower lip capriciously, which made it seem to Judas that her face, the most beautiful face he had ever seen in his life, became still more beautiful. ‘I was bored. You’re having a feast, and what am I supposed to do? Sit and listen to you sighing on the terrace? And be afraid, on top of it, that the serving-woman will tell him about it? No, no, I decided to go out of town and listen to the nightingales.’

‘How, out of town?’ the bewildered Judas asked. ‘Alone?’

‘Of course, alone,’ answered Niza.

‘Let me accompany you,’ Judas asked breathlessly. His mind clouded, he forgot everything in the world and looked with imploring eyes into the blue eyes of Niza, which now seemed black.

Niza said nothing and quickened her pace.

‘Why are you silent, Niza?’ Judas said pitifully, adjusting his pace to hers.

‘Won’t I be bored with you?’ Niza suddenly asked and stopped. Here Judas’s thoughts became totally confused.

‘Well, all right,’ Niza finally softened, ‘come along.’

‘But where, where?’

‘Wait ... let’s go into this yard and arrange it, otherwise I’m afraid some acquaintance will see me and then they’ll tell my husband I was out with my lover.’

And here Niza and Judas were no longer in the bazaar, they were whispering under the gateway of some yard.

‘Go to the olive estate,’ Niza whispered, pulling the veil over her eyes and turning away from a man who was coming through the gateway with a bucket, ‘to Gethsemane, beyond the Kedron, understand?’

‘Yes, yes, yes ...’

‘I’ll go ahead,’ Niza continued, ‘but don’t follow on my heels. Keep separate from me. I’ll go ahead ... When you cross the stream ... you know where the grotto is?’

‘I know, I know ...’

‘Go up past the olive press and turn to the grotto. I’ll be there. Only don’t you dare come after me at once, be patient, wait here,’ and with these words Niza walked out the gateway as though she had never spoken with Judas.

Judas stood for some time alone, trying to collect his scattering thoughts. Among them was the thought of how he was going to explain his absence from the festal family meal. Judas stood thinking up some lie, but in his agitation was unable to think through or prepare anything properly, and slowly walked out the gateway.

Now he changed his route, he was no longer heading towards the Lower City, but turned back to Kaifa’s palace. The feast had already entered the city. In the windows around Judas, not only were lights shining, but hymns of praise were heard. On the pavement, belated passers-by urged their donkeys on, whipping them up, shouting at them. Judas’s legs carried him by themselves, and he did not notice how the terrible, mossy Antonia Towers flew past him, he did not hear the roar of trumpets in the fortress, did not pay attention to the mounted Roman patrol and its torch that flooded his path with an alarming light.

Turning after he passed the tower, Judas saw that in the terrible height above the temple two gigantic five-branched candlesticks blazed. But even these Judas made out vaguely. It seemed to him that ten lamps of an unprecedented size lit up over Yershalaim, competing with the light of the single lamp that was rising ever higher over Yershalaim - the moon.

Now Judas could not be bothered with anything, he headed for the Gethsemane gate, he wanted to leave the city quickly. At times it seemed to him that before him, among the backs and faces of passers-by, the dancing little figure flashed, leading him after her. But this was an illusion. Judas realized that Niza was significantly ahead of him. Judas rushed past the money-changing shops and finally got to the Gethsemane gate. There, burning with impatience, he was still forced to wait. Camels were coming into the city, and after them rode a Syrian military patrol, which Judas cursed mentally ...

But all things come to an end. The impatient Judas was already beyond the city wall. To the left of him Judas saw a small cemetery, next to it several striped pilgrims’ tents. Crossing the dusty road flooded with moonlight, Judas headed for the stream of the Kedron with the intention of wading across it. The water babbled quietly under Judas’s feet. Jumping from stone to stone, he finally came out on the Gethsemane bank opposite and saw with great joy that here the road below the gardens was empty. The half-ruined gates of the olive estate could already be seen not far away.

After the stuffy city, Judas was struck by the stupefying smell of the spring night. From the garden a wave of myrtle and acacia from the Gethsemane glades poured over the fence.

No one was guarding the gateway, there was no one in it, and a few minutes later Judas was already running under the mysterious shade of the enormous, spreading olive trees. The road went uphill. Judas ascended, breathing heavily, at times emerging from the darkness on to patterned carpets of moonlight, which reminded him of the carpets he had seen in the shop of Niza’s jealous husband.

A short time later there flashed at Judas’s left hand, in a clearing, an alive press with a heavy stone wheel and a pile of barrels. There was no one in the garden, work had ended at sunset, and now over Judas choirs of nightingales pealed and trilled.

Judas’s goal was near. He knew that on his right in the darkness he would presently begin to hear the soft whisper of water falling in the grotto. And so it happened, he heard it. It was getting cooler. Then he slowed his pace and called softly:

‘Niza!’

But instead of Niza, a stocky male figure, detaching itself from a thick olive trunk, leaped out on the road, and something gleamed in its hand and at once went out. With a weak cry, Judas rushed back, but a second man barred his way.

The first man, in front of him, asked Judas:

‘How much did you just get? Speak, if you want to save your life!’

Hope flared up in Judas’s heart, and he cried out desperately:

‘Thirty tetradrachmas![148] Thirty tetradrachmas! I have it all with me! Here’s the money! Take it, but grant me my life!’

The man in front instantly snatched the purse from Judas’s hands. And at the same instant a knife flew up behind Judas’s back and struck the lover under the shoulder-blade. Judas was flung forward and thrust out his hands with clawed fingers into the air. The front man caught Judas on his knife and buried it up to the hilt in Judas’s heart.

‘Ni... za ...’ Judas said, not in his own high and clear young voice, but in a low and reproachful one, and uttered not another sound. His body struck the earth so hard that it hummed.

Then a third figure appeared on the road. This third one wore a cloak with a hood.

‘Don’t linger,’ he ordered. The killers quickly wrapped the purse together with a note handed to them by the third man in a piece of hide and criss-crossed it with twine. The second put the bundle into his bosom, and then the two killers plunged off the roadsides and the darkness between the olive trees ate them. The third squatted down by the murdered man and looked at his face. In the darkness it appeared white as chalk to the gazing man and somehow spiritually beautiful.

A few seconds later there was not a living man on the road. The lifeless body lay with outstretched arms. The left foot was in a spot of moonlight, so that each strap of the sandal could be seen distinctly. The whole garden of Gethsemane was just then pealing with the song of nightingales.

Where the two who had stabbed Judas went, no one knows, but the route of the third man in the hood is known. Leaving the road, he headed into the thick of the olive trees, making his way south. He climbed over the garden fence far from the main gate, in the southern corner, where the upper stones of the masonry had fallen out. Soon he was on the bank of the Kedron. Then he entered the water and for some time made his way in it, until he saw ahead the silhouettes of two horses and a man beside them. The horses were also standing in the stream. The water flowed, washing their hoofs. The horse-handler mounted one of the horses, the man in the hood jumped on to the other, and the two slowly walked in the stream, and one could hear the pebbles crunching under the horses’ hoofs. Then the riders left the water, came out on the Yershalaim bank, and rode slowly under the city wall. Here the horse-handler separated himself, galloped ahead, and disappeared from view, while the man in the hood stopped his horse, dismounted on the deserted road, removed his cloak, turned it inside out, took from under the cloak a flat helmet without plumes and put it on. Now it was a man in a military chlamys with a short sword at his hip who jumped on to the horse. He touched the reins and the fiery cavalry horse set off at a trot, jolting its rider. It was not a long way — the rider was approaching the southern gate of Yershalaim.

Under the arch of the gateway the restless flame of torches danced and leaped. The soldiers on guard from the second century of the Lightning legion sat on stone benches playing dice. Seeing a military man ride in, the soldiers jumped up, the man waved his hand to them and rode on into the city.

The city was flooded with festive lights. The flames of lamps played in all the windows, and from everywhere, merging into one dissonant chorus, came hymns of praise. Occasionally glancing into windows that looked on to the street, the rider could see people at tables set with roast kid and cups of wine amidst dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling some quiet song, the rider made his way at an unhurried trot through the deserted streets of the Lower City, heading for the Antonia Tower, glancing occasionally at the five-branched candlesticks, such as the world had never seen, blazing above the temple, or at the moon that hung still higher than the five-branched candlesticks.

The palace of Herod the Great took no part in the solemnities of the Passover night. In the auxiliary quarters of the palace, facing to the south, where the officers of the Roman cohort and the legate of the legion were stationed, lights burned and there was a feeling of some movement and life. But the front part, the formal part, which housed the sole and involuntary occupant of the palace - the procurator — all of it, with its columns and golden statues, was as if blind under the brightest moon. Here, inside the palace, darkness and silence reigned.

And the procurator, as he had told Aphranius, would not go inside. He ordered his bed made up on the balcony, there where he had dined and where he had conducted the interrogation in the morning. The procurator lay on the made-up couch, but sleep would not come to him. The bare moon hung high in the clear sky, and the procurator did not take his eyes off it for several hours.

Approximately at midnight, sleep finally took pity on the hegemon. With a spasmodic yawn, the procurator unfastened and threw off his cloak, removed the belt girded over his shirt, with a broad steel knife in a sheath, placed it on the chair by his couch, took off his sandals, and stretched out. Banga got on the bed at once and lay down next to him, head to head, and the procurator, placing his hand on the dog’s neck, finally closed his eyes. Only then did the dog also fall asleep.

The couch was in semi-darkness, shielded from the moon by a column, but a ribbon of moonlight stretched from the porch steps to the bed. And once the procurator lost connection with what surrounded him in reality, he immediately set out on the shining road and went up it straight towards the moon. He even burst out laughing in his sleep from happiness, so wonderful and inimitable did everything come to be on the transparent, pale blue road. He walked in the company of Banga, and beside him walked the wandering philosopher. They were arguing about something very complex and important, and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and endless. It went without saying that today’s execution proved to be a sheer misunderstanding: here this philosopher, who had thought up such an incredibly absurd thing as that all men are good, was walking beside him, therefore he was alive. And, of course, it would be terrible even to think that one could execute such a man. There had been no execution! No execution! That was the loveliness of this journey up the stairway of the moon.

There was as much free time as they needed, and the storm would come only towards evening, and cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices. Thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!

He, for example, the present procurator of Judea and former tribune of a legion, had been no coward that time, in the Valley of the Virgins, when the fierce Germani had almost torn Ratslayer the Giant to pieces. But, good heavens, philosopher! How can you, with your intelligence, allow yourself to think that, for the sake of a man who has committed a crime against Caesar, the procurator of Judea would ruin his career?

‘Yes, yes ...’ Pilate moaned and sobbed in his sleep. Of course he would. In the morning he still would not, but now, at night, after weighing everything, he would agree to ruin it. He would do everything to save the decidedly innocent, mad dreamer and healer from execution!

‘Now we shall always be together,’[149] said the ragged wandering philosopher in his dream, who for some unknown reason had crossed paths with the equestrian of the golden spear. ‘Where there’s one of us, straight away there will be the other! Whenever I am remembered, you will at once be remembered, too! I, the foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you, the son of an astrologer-king and a miller’s daughter, the beautiful Pila.’[150]

‘Yes, and don’t you forget to remember me, the astrologer’s son,’ Pilate asked in his dream. And securing in his dream a nod from the En-Sarid[??] beggar who was walking beside him, the cruel procurator of Judea wept and laughed from joy in his dream.

This was all very good, but the more terrible was the hegemon’s awakening. Banga growled at the moon, and the pale-blue road, slippery as though smoothed with oil, fell away before the procurator. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he remembered was that the execution had been. The first thing the procurator did was to clutch Banga’s collar with a habitual gesture, then with sick eyes he began searching for the moon and saw that it had moved slightly to the side and turned silvery. Its light was being interfered with by an unpleasant, restless light playing on the balcony right before his eyes. A torch blazed and smoked in the hand of the centurion Ratslayer. The holder of it glanced sidelong with fear and spite at the dangerous beast preparing itself to leap.

‘Stay, Banga,’ the procurator said in a sick voice and coughed. Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he went on: ‘Even at night, even by moonlight, I have no peace! ... Oh, gods! ... Yours is also a bad job, Mark. You cripple soldiers ...’

Mark gazed at the procurator in great amazement, and the man recollected himself. To smooth over the unwarranted words, spoken while not quite awake, the procurator said:

‘Don’t be offended, centurion. My position, I repeat, is still worse. What do you want?’

‘The head of the secret guard is waiting to see you,’ Mark reported calmly.

‘Call him, call him,’ the procurator ordered, clearing his throat with a cough, and he began feeling for his sandals with his bare feet. The flame played on the columns, the centurion’s caligae tramped across the mosaics. The centurion went out to the garden.

‘Even by moonlight I have no peace,’ the procurator said to himself, grinding his teeth.

Instead of the centurion, a man in a hood appeared on the balcony.

‘Stay, Banga,’ the procurator said quietly and pressed the back of the dog’s head.

Before beginning to speak, Aphranius, as was his custom, looked around and stepped into the shadow, and having made sure that, besides Banga, there were no extra persons on the balcony, he said quietly:

‘I ask to be tried, Procurator. You turned out to be right. I was unable to protect Judas of Kiriath, he has been stabbed to death. I ask to be tried and retired.’

It seemed to Aphranius that four eyes were looking at him — a dog’s and a wolf’s.

Aphranius took from under his chlamys a purse stiff with blood, sealed with two seals.

‘This is the bag of money the killers left at the high priest’s house. The blood on this bag is the blood of Judas of Kiriath.’

‘How much is there, I wonder?’ asked Pilate, bending over the bag.

‘Thirty tetradrachmas.’

The procurator grinned and said:

‘Not much.’

Aphranius was silent.

‘Where is the murdered man?’

‘That I do not know,’ the visitor, who never parted with his hood, said with calm dignity. ‘We will begin a search in the morning.’

The procurator started, abandoning a sandal strap that refused to be fastened.

‘But you do know for certain that he was killed?’

To this the procurator received a dry response:

‘I have been working in Judea for fifteen years, Procurator. I began my service under Valerius Gratus.[152] I do not have to see the corpse in order to say that a man has been killed, and so I report to you that the one who was called Judas of Kiriath was stabbed to death several hours ago.’

‘Forgive me, Aphranius,’ answered Pilate, ‘I’m not properly awake yet, that’s why I said it. I sleep badly,’ the procurator grinned, ‘I keep seeing a moonbeam in my sleep. Quite funny, imagine, it’s as if I’m walking along this moonbeam ... And so, I would like to know your thoughts on this matter. Where are you going to look for him? Sit down, head of the secret service.’

Aphranius bowed, moved the chair closer to the bed, and sat down, clanking his sword.

‘I am going to look for him not far from the oil press in the garden of Gethsemane.’

‘So, so. And why there, precisely?’

‘As I figure it, Hegemon, Judas was not killed in Yershalaim itself, nor anywhere very far from it, he was killed near Yershalaim.’

‘I regard you as one of the outstanding experts in your business. I don’t know how things are in Rome, but in the colonies you have no equal ... But, explain to me, why are you going to look for him precisely there?’

‘I will by no means admit the notion,’ Aphranius spoke in a low voice, ‘of Judas letting himself be caught by any suspicious people within city limits. It’s impossible to put a knife into a man secretly in the street. That means he was lured to a basement somewhere. But the service has already searched for him in the Lower City and undoubtedly would have found him. He is not in the city, I can guarantee that. If he was killed far from the city, this packet of money could not have been dropped off so quickly. He was killed near the city. They managed to lure him out of the city.’

‘I cannot conceive how that could have been done!’

‘Yes, Procurator, that is the most difficult question in the whole affair, and I don’t even know if I will succeed in resolving it.’

‘It is indeed mysterious! A believer, on the eve of the feast, goes out of the city for some unknown reason, leaving the Passover meal, and perishes there. Who could have lured him, and how? Could it have been done by a woman?’ the procurator asked on a sudden inspiration.

Aphranius replied calmly and weightily:

‘By no means, Procurator. That possibility is utterly excluded. One must reason logically. Who was interested in Judas’s death. Some wandering dreamers, some circle in which, first of all, there weren’t any women. To marry, Procurator, one needs money. To bring a person into the world, one needs the same. But to put a knife into a man with the help of a woman, one needs very big money, and no vagabond has got it. There was no woman in this affair, Procurator. Moreover, I will say that such an interpretation of the murder can only throw us off the track, hinder the investigation, and confuse me.’

‘Ah, yes! I forgot to ask,’ the procurator rubbed his forehead, ‘how did they manage to foist the money on Kaifa?’

‘You see, Procurator ... that is not especially complicated. The avengers came from behind Kaifa’s palace, where the lane is higher than the yard. They threw the packet over the fence.’

‘With a note?’

‘Yes, exactly as you suspected, Procurator.’

‘I see that you are perfectly right, Aphranius,’ said Pilate, ‘and I merely allowed myself to express a supposition.’

‘Alas, it is erroneous, Procurator.’

‘But what is it, then, what is it?’ exclaimed the procurator, peering into Aphranius’s face with greedy curiosity.

‘I suppose it’s money again.’

‘An excellent thought! But who could have offered him money at night, outside the city, and for what?’

‘Oh, no, Procurator, it’s not that. I have only one supposition, and if it is wrong, I may not find any other explanations.’ Aphranius leaned closer to the procurator and finished in a whisper: ‘Judas wanted to hide his money in a secluded place known only to himself.’

‘A very subtle explanation. That, apparently, is how things were. Now I understand you: he was lured out not by others, but by his own purpose. Yes, yes, that’s so.’

‘So. Judas was mistrustful, he was hiding the money from others.’

‘Yes, in Gethsemane, you said ... And why you intend to look for him precisely there — that, I confess, I do not understand.’

‘Oh, Procurator, that is the simplest thing of all. No one would hide money on the roads, in open and empty places. Judas was neither on the road to Hebron, nor on the road to Bethany. He had to be in a protected, secluded place with trees. It’s as simple as that. And except for Gethsemane, there are no such places near Yershalaim. He couldn’t have gone far.’

‘You have utterly convinced me. And so, what are we to do now?’

‘I will immediately start a search for the murderers who tracked Judas out of the city, and I myself, meanwhile, as I have already reported to you, will stand trial.’

‘What for?’

‘My guards lost him in the bazaar last evening, after he left Kaifa’s palace. How it happened, I cannot comprehend. It has never happened before in my life. He was put under surveillance just after our conversation. But in the neighbourhood of the bazaar he doubled back somewhere, and made such a strange loop that he escaped without a trace.’

‘So. I declare to you that I do not consider it necessary to try you. You did all you could, and no one in the world’ — here the procurator smiled — ‘could do more than you! Penalize the sleuths who lost Judas. But here, too, I warn you, I would not want it to be anything of a severe sort. In the last analysis, we did everything to take care of the blackguard!’

‘Yes, although ...’ Here Aphranius tore the seal off the packet and showed its contents to Pilate.

‘Good heavens, what are you doing, Aphranius, those must be temple seals!’

‘The procurator needn’t trouble himself with that question,’ Aphranius replied, closing the packet.

‘Can it be that you have all the seals?’ Pilate asked, laughing.

‘It couldn’t be otherwise, Procurator,’ Aphranius replied very sternly, not laughing at all.

‘I can imagine the effect at Kaifa’s!’

‘Yes, Procurator, it caused great agitation. They summoned me immediately.’

Even in the semi-darkness one could see how Pilate’s eyes flashed.

‘That’s interesting, interesting ...’

‘I venture to disagree, Procurator, it was not interesting. A most boring and tiresome business. To my question whether anyone had been paid money in Kaifa’s palace, I was told categorically that there had been nothing of the sort.’

‘Ah, yes? Well, so, if no one was paid, no one was paid. It will be that much harder to find the killers.’

‘Absolutely right, Procurator.’

‘It suddenly occurs to me, Aphranius: might he not have killed himself?’[153]

‘Oh, no, Procurator,’ Aphranius replied, even leaning back in his chair from astonishment, ‘excuse me, but that is entirely unlikely!’

‘Ah, everything is likely in this city. I’m ready to bet that in a very short time rumours of it will spread all over the city.’

Here Aphranius again darted his look at the procurator, thought for a moment, and replied:

‘That may be, Procurator.’

The procurator was obviously still unable to part with this question of the killing of the man from Kiriath, though everything was already clear, and he said even with a sort of reverie:

‘But I’d like to have seen how they killed him.’

‘He was killed with great art, Procurator,’ Aphranius replied, glancing somewhat ironically at the procurator.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Kindly pay attention to the bag, Procurator,’ Aphranius replied. ‘I guarantee you that Judas’s blood gushed out in a stream. I’ve seen murdered people in my time, Procurator.’

‘So, of course, he won’t rise?’

‘No, Procurator, he will rise,’ replied Aphranius, smiling philosophically, ‘when the trumpet of the messiah they’re expecting here sounds over him. But before then he won’t rise.’

‘Enough, Aphranius, the question is clear. Let’s go on to the burial.’

‘The executed men have been buried, Procurator.’

‘Oh, Aphranius, it would be a crime to try you. You’re deserving of the highest reward. How was it?’

Aphranius began to tell about it: while he himself was occupied with Judas’s affair, a detachment of the secret guard, under the direction of his assistant, arrived at the hill as evening came. One of the bodies was not found on the hilltop. Pilate gave a start and said hoarsely:

‘Ah, how did I not foresee it! ...’

‘No need to worry, Procurator,’ said Aphranius, and he went on with his narrative: ‘The bodies of Dysmas and Gestas, their eyes pecked out by carrion birds, were taken up, and they immediately rushed in search of the third body. It was discovered in a very short time. A certain man ...’

‘Matthew Levi,’ said Pilate, not questioningly, but rather affirmatively.

‘Yes, Procurator ... Matthew Levi was hiding in a cave on the northern slope of Bald Skull, waiting for darkness. The naked body of Yeshua Ha-Nozri was with him. When the guards entered the cave with a torch, Levi fell into despair and wrath. He shouted about having committed no crime, and about every man’s right by law to bury an executed criminal if he so desires. Matthew Levi said he did not want to part with the body. He was agitated, cried out something incoherent, now begging, now threatening and cursing ...’

‘Did they have to arrest him?’ Pilate asked glumly.

‘No, Procurator, no,’ Aphranius replied very soothingly, ‘they managed to quiet the impudent madman, explaining to him that the body would be buried. Levi, having grasped what was being said to him, calmed down, but announced that he would not leave and wished to take part in the burial. He said he would not leave even if they started to kill him, and even offered for that purpose a bread knife he had with him.’

‘Was he chased away?’ Pilate asked in a stifled voice.

‘No, Procurator, no. My assistant allowed him to take part in the burial.’

‘Which of your assistants was in charge of it?’ asked Pilate.

‘Tolmai,’ Aphranius answered and added in alarm: ‘Perhaps he made a mistake?’

‘Go on,’ answered Pilate, ‘there was no mistake. Generally, I am beginning to feel a bit at a loss, Aphranius, I am apparently dealing with a man who never makes mistakes. That man is you.’

‘Matthew Levi was taken in the cart with the bodies of the executed men, and in about two hours they reached a solitary ravine north of Yershalaim. There the detachment, working in shifts, dug a deep hole within an hour and buried all three executed men in it.’

‘Naked?’

‘No, Procurator, the detachment brought chitons with them for that purpose. They put rings on the buried men’s fingers. Yeshua’s with one notch, Dysmas’s with two, and Gestas’s with three. The hole has been covered over and heaped with stones. The landmark is known to Tolmai.’

‘Ah, if only I had foreseen it!’ Pilate spoke, wincing. ‘I needed to see this Matthew Levi ...’

‘He is here, Procurator.’

Pilate, his eyes wide open, stared at Aphranius for some time, and then said:

‘I thank you for everything that has been done in this affair. I ask you to send Tolmai to me tomorrow, and to tell him beforehand that I am pleased with him. And you, Aphranius,’ here the procurator took a seal ring from the pouch of the belt lying on the table and gave it to the head of the secret service, ‘I beg you to accept this as a memento.’

Aphranius bowed and said:

‘A great honour, Procurator.’

‘I request that the detachment that performed the burial be given rewards. The sleuths who let Judas slip — a reprimand. Have Matthew Levi sent to me right now. I must have the details on Yeshua’s case.’

‘Understood, Procurator,’ Aphranius replied and began retreating and bowing, while the procurator clapped his hands and shouted:

‘To me, here! A lamp to the colonnade!’

Aphranius was going out to the garden when lights began to flash in the hands of servants behind Pilate’s back. Three lamps appeared on the table before the procurator, and the moonlit night at once retreated to the garden, as if Aphranius had led it away with him. In place of Aphranius, an unknown man, small and skinny, stepped on to the balcony beside the gigantic centurion. The latter, catching the procurator’s eye, withdrew to the garden at once and there disappeared.

The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one has been thinking, and who finally appears.

The newcomer, a man of about forty, was black-haired, ragged, covered with caked mud, and looked wolf-like from under his knitted brows. In short, he was very unsightly, and rather resembled a city beggar, of whom there were many hanging about on the porches of the temple or in the bazaars of the noisy and dirty Lower City.

The silence continued for a long time, and was broken by the strange behaviour of the man brought to Pilate. His countenance changed, he swayed, and if he had not grasped the edge of the table with his dirty hand, he would have fallen.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Pilate asked him.

‘Nothing,’ answered Matthew Levi, and he made a movement as if he were swallowing something. His skinny, bare, grey neck swelled out and then slackened again.

‘What’s wrong, answer me,’ Pilate repeated.

‘I’m tired,’ Levi answered and looked sullenly at the floor.

‘Sit down,’ said Pilate, pointing to the armchair.

Levi looked at the procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the armchair, gave a timorous sidelong glance at the gilded armrests, and sat down not in the chair but beside it on the floor.

‘Explain to me, why did you not sit in the chair?’ asked Pilate.

‘I’m dirty, I’d soil it,’ said Levi, looking at the ground.

‘You’ll presently be given something to eat.’

‘I don’t want to eat,’ answered Levi.

‘Why lie?’ Pilate asked quietly. ‘You haven’t eaten for the whole day, and maybe even longer. Very well, don’t eat. I’ve summoned you so that you could show me the knife you had with you.’

‘The soldiers took it from me when they brought me here,’ Levi replied and added sullenly: ‘You must give it back to me, I have to return it to its owner, I stole it.’

‘What for?’

‘To cut the ropes,’ answered Levi.

‘Mark!’ cried the procurator, and the centurion stepped in under the columns. ‘Give me his knife.’

The centurion took a dirty bread knife from one of the two cases on his belt, handed it to the procurator, and withdrew.

‘Who did you take the knife from?’

‘From the bakery by the Hebron gate, just as you enter the city, on the left.’

Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried the sharpness of the edge with his finger, and said:

‘Concerning the knife you needn’t worry, the knife will be returned to the shop. But now I want a second thing — show me the charta you carry with you, on which Yeshua’s words are written down.’

Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an inimical smile that his face became completely ugly.

‘You want to take away the last thing?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t say “give me”,’ answered Pilate, ‘I said “show me”.’

Levi fumbled in his bosom and produced a parchment scroll. Pilate took it, unrolled it, spread it out between the lights, and, squinting, began to study the barely legible ink marks. It was difficult to understand these crabbed lines, and Pilate kept wincing and leaning right to the parchment, running his finger over the lines. He did manage to make out that the writing represented an incoherent chain of certain utterances, certain dates, household records, and poetic fragments. Some of it Pilate could read: ‘... there is no death ... yesterday we ate sweet spring baccuroth ...’[154]

Grimacing with the effort, Pilate squinted as he read: ‘... we shall see the pure river of the water of life[155] ... mankind shall look at the sun through transparent crystal ...’ Here Pilate gave a start. In the last lines of the parchment he made out the words: ‘... greater vice ... cowardice...’

Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to Levi.

‘Take it,’ he said and, after a pause, added: ‘You’re a bookish man, I see, and there’s no need for you to go around alone, in beggar’s clothing, without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you will be fed and clothed.’

Levi stood up and replied:

‘No, I don’t want to.’

‘Why?’ the procurator asked, his face darkening. ‘Am I disagreeable to you? ... Are you afraid of me?’

The same bad smile distorted Levi’s face, and he said:

‘No, because you’ll be afraid of me. It won’t be very easy for you to look me in the face now that you’ve killed him.’

‘Quiet,’ replied Pilate. ‘Take some money.’

Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on:

‘I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said he did not blame anyone.’ Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate’s face was twitching. ‘And he himself would surely have taken something. You are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?’

Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and, gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him:

‘Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted to tell you that, so you’d know there will be more blood.’

‘I, too, know there will be more of it,’ replied Pilate, ‘you haven’t surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?’

‘You I won’t manage to kill,’ replied Levi, baring his teeth and smiling, ‘I’m not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I’ll kill Judas of Kiriath, I’ll devote the rest of my life to it.’

Here pleasure showed in the procurator’s eyes, and beckoning Matthew Levi to come closer, he said:

‘You won’t manage to do it, don’t trouble yourself. Judas has already been killed this night.’

Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out:

‘Who did it?’

‘Don’t be jealous,’ Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his hands, ‘I’m afraid he had other admirers besides you.’

‘Who did it?’ Levi repeated in a whisper.

Pilate answered him:

‘I did it.’

Levi opened his mouth and stared at the procurator, who said quietly:

‘It is, of course, not much to have done, but all the same I did it.’ And he added: ‘Well, and now will you take something?’

Levi considered, relented, and finally said:

‘Have them give me a piece of clean parchment.’

An hour went by. Levi was not in the palace. Now the silence of the dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries’ footsteps in the garden. The moon was quickly losing its colour, one could see at the other edge of the sky the whitish dot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out long, long ago. The procurator lay on the couch. Putting his hand under his cheek, he slept and breathed soundlessly. Beside him slept Banga.

Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.

CHAPTER 27 The End of Apartment No. 50

When Margarita came to the last words of the chapter — ‘... Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate’ — it was morning.

Sparrows could be heard in the branches of the willows and lindens in the little garden, conducting a merry, excited morning conversation.

Margarita got up from the armchair, stretched, and only then felt how broken her body was and how much she wanted to sleep. It is interesting to note that Margarita’s soul was in perfect order. Her thoughts were not scattered, she was quite unshaken by having spent the night supernaturally. She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan’s ball, or that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything was as if it ought to have been so.

She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old, torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder’s whole little house was silent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.

But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness, cutting through the light of the rising sun.

The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case, and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.

Essentially speaking, the matter had already become clear on the previous day, Friday, when the Variety had had to be closed, owing to the disappearance of its administration and all sorts of outrages which had taken place during the notorious seance of black magic the day before. But the thing was that more and more new material kept arriving all the time and incessantly on the sleepless floor.

Now the investigators of this strange case, which smacked of obvious devilry, with an admixture of some hypnotic tricks and distinct criminality, had to shape into one lump all the many-sided and tangled events that had taken place in various parts of Moscow.

The first to visit the sleepless, electrically lit-up floor was Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission.

After dinner on Friday, in his apartment located in a house by the Kamenny Bridge, the telephone rang and a male voice asked for Arkady Apollonovich. Arkady Apollonovich’s wife, who picked up the phone, replied sullenly that Arkady Apollonovich was unwell, had retired for the night, and could not come to the phone. However, Arkady Apollonovich came to the phone all the same. To the question of where Arkady Apollonovich was being called from, the voice in the telephone had said very briefly where it was from.

‘This second ... at once ... this minute ...’ babbled the ordinarily very haughty wife of the chairman of the Acoustics Commission, and she flew to the bedroom like an arrow to rouse Arkady Apollonovich from his bed, where he lay experiencing the torments of hell at the recollection of yesterday’s seance and the night’s scandal, followed by the expulsion of his Saratov niece from the apartment.

Not in a second, true, yet not in a minute either, but in a quarter of a minute, Arkady Apollonovich, with one slipper on his left foot, in nothing but his underwear, was already at the phone, babbling into it:

‘Yes, it’s me ... I’m listening, I’m listening ...’

His wife, forgetting for these moments all the loathsome crimes against fidelity in which the unfortunate Arkady Apollonovich had been exposed, kept sticking herself out the door to the corridor with a frightened face, poking a slipper at the air and whispering:

‘Put the slipper on, the slipper ... you’ll catch cold ...’ At which Arkady Apollonovich, waving his wife away with his bare foot and making savage eyes at her, muttered into the telephone:

‘Yes, yes, yes, surely ... I understand ... I’ll leave at once ...’

Arkady Apollonovich spent the whole evening on that same floor where the investigation was being conducted.

It was a difficult conversation, a most unpleasant conversation, for he had to tell with complete sincerity not only about this obnoxious seance and the fight in the box, but along with that — as was indeed necessary - also about Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, and about the Saratov niece, and about much else, the telling of which caused Arkady Apollonovich inexpressible torments.

Needless to say, the testimony of Arkady Apollonovich, an intelligent and cultivated man, who had been a witness to the outrageous seance, a sensible and qualified witness, who gave an excellent description of the mysterious masked magician himself and of his two scoundrelly assistants, a witness who remembered perfectly well that the magician’s name was indeed Woland, advanced the investigation considerably. And the juxtaposition of Arkady Apollonovich’s testimony with the testimony of others — among whom were some ladies who had suffered after the seance (the one in violet underwear who had shocked Rimsky and, alas, many others), and the messenger Karpov, who had been sent to apartment no. 50 on Sadovaya Street — at once essentially established the place where the culprit in all these adventures was to be sought.

Apartment no. 50 was visited, and not just once, and not only was it looked over with extreme thoroughness, but the walls were also tapped and the fireplace flues checked, in search of hiding places. However, none of these measures yielded any results, and no one was discovered in the apartment during any of these visits, though it was perfectly clear that there was someone in the apartment, despite the fact that all persons who in one way or another were supposed to be in charge of foreign artistes coming to Moscow decidedly and categorically insisted that there was not and could not be any black magician Woland in Moscow.

He had decidedly not registered anywhere on arrival, had not shown anyone his passport or other papers, contracts, or agreements, and no one had heard anything about him! Kitaitsev, head of the programme department of the Spectacles Commission, swore to God that the vanished Styopa Likhodeev had never sent him any performance programme of any Woland for approval and had never telephoned him about the arrival of such a Woland. So that he, Kitaitsev, utterly failed to see and understand how Styopa could have allowed such a seance in the Variety. And when told that Arkady Apollonovich had seen this magician at the seance with his own eyes, Kitaitsev only spread his arms and raised his eyes to heaven. And from Kitaitsev’s eyes alone one could see and say confidently that he was as pure as crystal.

That same Prokhor Petrovich, chairman of the main Spectacles Commission ...

Incidentally, he returned to his suit immediately after the police came into his office, to the ecstatic joy of Anna Richardovna and the great perplexity of the needlessly troubled police.

Also, incidentally, having returned to his place, into his grey striped suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully approved of all the resolutions the suit had written during his short-term absence.

... So, then, this same Prokhor Petrovich knew decidedly nothing about any Woland.

Whether you will or no, something preposterous was coming out: thousands of spectators, the whole staff of the Variety, and finally Sempleyarov, Arkady Apollonovich, a most educated man, had seen this magician, as well as his thrice-cursed assistants, and yet it was absolutely impossible to find him anywhere. What was it, may I ask, had he fallen through the ground right after his disgusting seance, or, as some affirm, had he not come to Moscow at all? But if the first is allowed, then undoubtedly, in falling through, he had taken along the entire top administration of the Variety, and if the second, then would it not mean that the administration of the luckless theatre itself, after first committing some vileness (only recall the broken window in the study and the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds!), had disappeared from Moscow without a trace?

We must do justice to the one who headed the investigation. The vanished Rimsky was found with amazing speed. One had only to put together the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds at the cab stand by the movie theatre with certain given times, such as when the seance ended, and precisely when Rimsky could have disappeared, and then immediately send a telegram to Leningrad. An hour later (towards evening on Friday) came the reply that Rimsky had been discovered in number four-twelve on the fourth floor of the Hotel Astoria, next to the room in which the repertory manager of one of the Moscow theatres, then on tour in Leningrad, was staying — that same room which, as is known, had gilded grey-blue furniture and a wonderful bathroom.[156]

Discovered hiding in the wardrobe of number four-twelve of the Astoria, Rimsky was questioned right there in Leningrad. After which a telegram came to Moscow reporting that findirector Rimsky was in an unanswerable state, that he could not or did not wish to give sensible replies to questions and begged only to be hidden in a bulletproof room and provided with an armed guard.

A telegram from Moscow ordered that Rimsky be delivered to Moscow under guard, as a result of which Rimsky departed Friday evening, under said guard, on the evening train.

Towards evening on that same Friday, Likhodeev’s trail was also found. Telegrams of inquiry about Likhodeev were sent to all cities, and from Yalta came the reply that Likhodeev had been in Yalta but had left on a plane for Moscow.

The only one whose trail they failed to pick up was Varenukha. The famous theatre administrator known to decidedly all of Moscow had vanished into thin air.

In the meantime, there was some bother with things happening in other parts of Moscow, outside the Variety Theatre. It was necessary to explain the extraordinary case of the staff all singing ‘Glorious Sea’ (incidentally, Professor Stravinsky managed to put them right within two hours, by means of some subcutaneous injections), of persons presenting other persons or institutions with devil knows what in the guise of money, and also of persons who had suffered from such presentations.

As goes without saying, the most unpleasant, the most scandalous and insoluble of all these cases was the case of the theft of the head of the deceased writer Berlioz right from the coffin in the hall of Griboedov’s, carried out in broad daylight.

Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case scattered all over Moscow.

One of the investigators arrived at Professor Stravinsky’s clinic and first of all asked to be shown a list of the persons who had checked in to the clinic over the past three days. Thus they discovered Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy and the unfortunate master of ceremonies whose head had been torn off. However, little attention was paid to them. By now it was easy to establish that these two had fallen victim to the same gang, headed by that mysterious magician. But to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless the investigator paid great attention.

The door of Ivanushka’s room no. 117 opened towards evening on Friday, and into the room came a young, round-faced, calm and mild-mannered man, who looked quite unlike an investigator and yet was one of the best in Moscow. He saw lying on the bed a pale and pinched young man, in whose eyes one could read a lack of interest in what went on around him, whose eyes looked now somewhere into the distance, over his surroundings, now into the young man himself. The investigator gently introduced himself and said he had stopped at Ivan Nikolaevich’s to talk over the events at the Patriarch’s Ponds two days ago.

Oh, how triumphant Ivan would have been if the investigator had come to him earlier — say, on Wednesday night, when Ivan had striven so violently and passionately to make his story about the Patriarch’s Ponds heard! Now his dream of helping to catch the consultant had come true, there was no longer any need to run after anyone, they had come to him on their own, precisely to hear his story about what had happened on Wednesday evening.

But, alas, Ivanushka had changed completely in the time that had passed since the moment of Berlioz’s death: he was ready to answer all of the investigator’s questions willingly and politely, but indifference could be sensed both in Ivan’s eyes and in his intonation. The poet was no longer concerned with Berlioz’s fate.

Before the investigator’s arrival, Ivanushka lay dozing, and certain visions passed before him. Thus, he saw a city, strange, incomprehensible, non-existent, with marble masses, eroded colonnades, roofs gleaming in the sun, with the black, gloomy and merciless Antonia Tower, with the palace on the western hill sunk almost up to its rooftops in the tropical greenery of the garden, with bronze statues blazing in the sunset above this greenery, and he saw armour-clad Roman centuries moving along under the walls of the ancient city.

As he dozed, there appeared before Ivan a man, motionless in an armchair, clean-shaven, with a harried yellow face, a man in a white mantle with red lining, gazing hatefully into the luxurious and alien garden. Ivan also saw a treeless yellow hill with empty cross-barred posts.

And what had happened at the Patriarch’s Ponds no longer interested the poet Ivan Homeless.

‘Tell me, Ivan Nikolaevich, how far were you from the turnstile yourself when Berlioz slipped under the tram-car?’

A barely noticeable, indifferent smile touched Ivan’s lips for some reason, and he replied:

‘I was far away.’

‘And the checkered one was right by the turnstile?’

‘No, he was sitting on a little bench nearby.’

‘You clearly recall that he did not go up to the turnstile at the moment when Berlioz fell?’

‘I recall. He didn’t go up to it. He sat sprawled on the bench.’

These questions were the investigator’s last. After them he got up, gave Ivanushka his hand, wished him a speedy recovery, and expressed the hope that he would soon be reading his poetry again.

‘No,’ Ivan quietly replied, ‘I won’t write any more poetry.’

The investigator smiled politely, allowed himself to express his certainty that, while the poet was presently in a state of some depression, it would soon pass.

‘No,’ Ivan responded, looking not at the investigator but into the distance, at the fading sky, ‘it will never pass. The poems I used to write were bad poems, and now I understand it.’

The investigator left Ivanushka, having obtained some quite important material. Following the thread of events from the end to the beginning, they finally succeeded in reaching the source from which all the events had come. The investigator had no doubt that these events began with the murder at the Patriarch’s Ponds. Of course, neither Ivanushka nor this checkered one had pushed the unfortunate chairman of Massolit under the tram-car; physically, so to speak, no one had contributed to his falling under the wheels. But the investigator was convinced that Berlioz had thrown himself under the tram-car (or tumbled under it) while hypnotized.

Yes, there was already a lot of material, and it was known who had to be caught and where. But the thing was that it proved in no way possible to catch anyone. We must repeat, there undoubtedly was someone in the thrice-cursed apartment no. 50. Occasionally the apartment answered telephone calls, now in a rattling, now in a nasal voice, occasionally one of its windows was opened, what’s more, the sounds of a gramophone came from it. And yet each time it was visited, decidedly no one was found there. And it had already been visited more than once and at different times of day. And not only that, but they had gone through it with a net, checking every comer. The apartment had long been under suspicion. Guards were placed not just at the way to the courtyard through the gates, but at the back entrance as well. Not only that, but guards were placed on the roof by the chimneys. Yes, apartment no. 50 was acting up, and it was impossible to do anything about it.

So the thing dragged on until midnight on Friday, when Baron Meigel, dressed in evening clothes and patent-leather shoes, solemnly proceeded into apartment no. 50 in the quality of a guest. One could hear the baron being let in to the apartment. Exactly ten minutes later, without any ringing of bells, the apartment was visited, yet not only were the hosts not found in it, but, which was something quite bizarre, no signs of Baron Meigel were found in it either.

And so, as was said, the thing dragged on in this fashion until dawn on Saturday. Here new and very interesting data were added. A six-place passenger plane, coming from the Crimea, landed at the Moscow airport. Among the other passengers, one strange passenger got out of it. This was a young citizen, wildly overgrown with stubble, unwashed for three days, with inflamed and frightened eyes, carrying no luggage and dressed somewhat whimsically. The citizen was wearing a tall sheepskin hat, a Georgian felt cape over a nightshirt, and new, just-purchased, blue leather bedroom slippers. As soon as he separated from the ladder by which they descended from the plane, he was approached. This citizen had been expected, and in a little while the unforgettable director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev, was standing before the investigators. He threw in some new data. It now became clear that Woland had penetrated the Variety in the guise of an artiste, having hypnotized Styopa Likhodeev, and had then contrived to fling this same Styopa out of Moscow and God knows how many miles away. The material was thus augmented, yet that did not make things easier, but perhaps even a bit harder, because it was becoming obvious that to lay hold of a person who could perform such stunts as the one of which Stepan Bogdanovich had been the victim would not be so easy. Incidentally, Likhodeev, at his own request, was confined in a secure cell, and next before the investigators stood Varenukha, just arrested in his own apartment, to which he had returned after a blank disappearance of almost two days.

Despite the promise he had given Azazello not to lie any more, the administrator began precisely with a lie. Though, by the way, he cannot be judged very harshly for it. Azazello had forbidden him to lie and be rude on the telephone, but in the present case the administrator spoke without the assistance of this apparatus. His eyes wandering, Ivan Savelyevich declared that on Thursday afternoon he had got drunk in his office at the Variety, all by himself, after which he went somewhere, but where he did not remember, drank starka[157] somewhere, but where he did not remember, lay about somewhere under a fence, but where he again did not remember. Only after the administrator was told that with his behaviour, stupid and senseless, he was hindering the investigation of an important case and would of course have to answer for it, did Varenukha burst into sobs and whisper in a trembling voice, looking around him, that he had lied solely out of fear, apprehensive of the revenge of Woland’s gang, into whose hands he had already fallen, and that he begged, implored and yearned to be locked up in a bulletproof cell.

‘Pah, the devil! Really, them and their bulletproof cells!’ grumbled one of the investigators.

‘They’ve been badly frightened by those scoundrels,’ said the investigator who had visited Ivanushka.

They calmed Varenukha down the best they could, said they would protect him without any cell, and here it was learned that he had not drunk any starka under a fence, and that he had been beaten by two, one red-haired and with a fang, the other fat ...

‘Ah, resembling a cat?’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ whispered the administrator, sinking with fear and looking around him every second, coming out with further details of how he had existed for some two days in apartment no. 50 in the quality of a tip-off vampire, who had all but caused the death of the findirector Rimsky ...

Just then Rimsky, brought on the Leningrad train, was being led in. However, this mentally disturbed, grey-haired old man, trembling with fear, in whom it was very difficult to recognize the former findirector, would not tell the truth for anything, and proved to be very stubborn in this respect. Rimsky insisted that he had not seen any Hella in his office window at night, nor any Varenukha, but had simply felt bad and in a state of unconsciousness had left for Leningrad. Needless to say, the ailing findirector concluded his testimony with a request that he be confined to a bulletproof cell.

Annushka was arrested just as she made an attempt to hand a ten-dollar bill to the cashier of a department store on the Arbat. Annushka’s story about people flying out the window of the house on Sadovaya and about the little horseshoe which Annushka, in her own words, had picked up in order to present it to the police, was listened to attentively.

‘The horseshoe was really made of gold and diamonds?’ Annushka was asked.

‘As if I don’t know diamonds,’ replied Annushka.

‘But he gave you ten-rouble bills, you say?’

‘As if I don’t know ten-rouble bills,’ replied Annushka.

‘Well, and when did they turn into dollars?’

‘I don’t know anything about any dollars, I never saw any dollars!’ Annushka replied shrilly. ‘I’m in my rights! I got recompensed, I was buying cloth with it,’ and she went off into some balderdash about not being answerable for the house management that allowed unclean powers on to the fifth floor, making life unbearable.

Here the investigator waved at Annushka with his pen, because everyone was properly sick of her, and wrote a pass for her to get out on a green slip of paper, after which, to everyone’s pleasure, Annushka disappeared from the building.

Then there followed one after another a whole series of people, Nikolai Ivanovich among them, just arrested owing solely to the foolishness of his jealous wife, who towards morning had informed the police that her husband had vanished. Nikolai Ivanovich did not surprise the investigators very much when he laid on the table the clownish certificate of his having spent the time at Satan’s ball. In his stories of how he had carried Margarita Nikolaevna’s naked housekeeper on his back through the air, somewhere to hell and beyond, for a swim in a river, and of the preceding appearance of the bare Margarita Nikolaevna in the window, Nikolai Ivanovich departed somewhat from the truth. Thus, for instance, he did not consider it necessary to mention that he had arrived in the bedroom with the discarded shift in his hands, or that he had called Natasha ‘Venus’. From his words it looked as if Natasha had flown out the window, got astride him, and dragged him away from Moscow ...

‘Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit,’ Nikolai Ivanovich said, and finished his tale with a request that not a word of it be told to his wife. Which was promised him.

The testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich provided an opportunity for establishing that Margarita Nikolaevna as well as her housekeeper Natasha had vanished without a trace. Measures were taken to find them.

Thus every second of Saturday morning was marked by the unrelenting investigation. In the city during that time, completely impossible rumours emerged and floated about, in which a tiny portion of truth was embellished with the most luxuriant lies. It was said that there had been a seance at the Variety after which all two thousand spectators ran out to the street in their birthday suits, that a press for making counterfeit money of a magic sort had been nabbed on Sadovaya Street, that some gang had kidnapped five managers from the entertainment sector, but the police had immediately found them all, and many other things that one does not even wish to repeat.

Meanwhile it was getting on towards dinner time, and then, in the place where the investigation was being conducted, the telephone rang. From Sadovaya came a report that the accursed apartment was again showing signs of life. It was said that its windows had been opened from inside, that sounds of a piano and singing were coming from it, and that a black cat had been seen in a window, sitting on the sill and basking in the sun.

At around four o’clock on that hot day, a big company of men in civilian clothes got out of three cars a short distance from no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street. Here the big group divided into two small ones, the first going under the gateway of the house and across the courtyard directly to the sixth entrance, while the second opened the normally boarded-up little door leading to the back entrance, and both started up separate stairways to apartment no. 50.

Just then Koroviev and Azazello — Koroviev in his usual outfit and not the festive tailcoat — were sitting in the dining room of the apartment finishing breakfast. Woland, as was his wont, was in the bedroom, and where the cat was nobody knew. But judging by the clatter of dishes coming from the kitchen, it could be supposed that Behemoth was precisely there, playing the fool, as was his wont.

‘And what are those footsteps on the stairs?’ asked Koroviev, toying with the little spoon in his cup of black coffee.

‘That’s them coming to arrest us,’ Azazello replied and drank off a glass of cognac.

‘Ahh ... well, well ...’ Koroviev replied to that.

The ones going up the front stairway were already on the third-floor landing. There a couple of plumbers were pottering over the harmonica of the steam heating. The newcomers exchanged significant glances with the plumbers.

‘They’re all at home,’ whispered one of the plumbers, tapping a pipe with his hammer.

Then the one walking at the head openly took a black Mauser from under his coat, and another beside him took out the skeleton keys. Generally, those going to apartment no. 50 were properly equipped. Two of them had fine, easily unfolded silk nets in their pockets. Another of them had a lasso, another had gauze masks and ampoules of chloroform.

In a second the front door to apartment no. 50 was open and all the visitors were in the front hall, while the slamming of the door in the kitchen at the same moment indicated the timely arrival of the second group from the back stairs.

This time there was, if not complete, at least some sort of success. The men instantly dispersed through all the rooms and found no one anywhere, but instead on the table of the dining room they discovered the remains of an apparently just-abandoned breakfast, and in the living room, on the mantelpiece, beside a crystal pitcher, sat an enormous black cat. He was holding a primus in his paws.

Those who entered the living room contemplated this cat for quite a long time in total silence.

‘Hm, yes ... that’s quite something ...’ one of the men whispered.

‘Ain’t misbehaving, ain’t bothering anybody, just reparating my primus,’ said the cat with an unfriendly scowl, ‘and I also consider it my duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient and inviolable animal.’

‘Exceptionally neat job,’ whispered one of the men, and another said loudly and distinctly:

‘Well, come right in, you inviolable, ventriloquous cat!’

The net unfolded and soared upwards, but the man who cast it, to everyone’s utter astonishment, missed and only caught the pitcher, which straight away smashed ringingly.

‘You lose!’ bawled the cat. ‘Hurrah!’ and here, setting the primus aside, he snatched a Browning from behind his back. In a trice he aimed it at the man standing closest, but before the cat had time to shoot, fire blazed in the man’s hand, and at the blast of the Mauser the cat plopped head first from the mantelpiece on to the floor, dropping the Browning and letting go of the primus.

‘It’s all over,’ the cat said in a weak voice, sprawled languidly in a pool of blood, ‘step back from me for a second, let me say farewell to the earth. Oh, my friend Azazello,’ moaned the cat, bleeding profusely, ‘where are you?’ The cat rolled his fading eyes in the direction of the dining-room door. ‘You did not come to my aid in the moment of unequal battle, you abandoned poor Behemoth, exchanging him for a glass of — admittedly very good — cognac! Well, so, let my death be on your conscience, and I bequeath you my Browning...’

‘The net, the net, the net...’ was anxiously whispered around the cat. But the net, devil knows why, got caught in someone’s pocket and refused to come out.

‘The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat,’ said the cat, ‘is a swig of benzene.’ And taking advantage of the confusion, he bent to the round opening in the primus and had a good drink of benzene. The blood at once stopped flowing from under his left front leg. The cat jumped up, alive and cheerful, seized the primus under his paw, shot back on to the mantelpiece with it, and from there, shredding the wallpaper, climbed the wall and some two seconds later was high above the visitors and sitting on a metal curtain rod.

Hands instantly clutched the curtain and tore it off together with the rod, causing sunlight to flood the shaded room. But neither the fraudulently recovered cat nor the primus fell down. The cat, without parting with his primus, managed to shoot through the air and land on the chandelier hanging in the middle of the room.

‘A stepladder!’ came from below.

‘I challenge you to a duel!’ bawled the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier, and the Browning was again in his paw, and the primus was lodged among the branches of the chandelier. The cat took aim and, flying like a pendulum over the heads of the visitors, opened fire on them. The din shook the apartment. Crystal shivers poured down from the chandelier, the mantelpiece mirror was cracked into stars, plaster dust flew, spent cartridges bounced over the floor, window-panes shattered, benzene spouted from the bullet-pierced primus. Now there was no question of taking the cat alive, and the visitors fiercely and accurately returned his fire from the Mausers, aiming at his head, stomach, chest and back. The shooting caused panic on the asphalt courtyard.

But this shooting did not last long and began to die down of itself. The thing was that it caused no harm either to the cat or to the visitors. Not only was no one killed, but no one was even wounded. Everyone, including the cat, remained totally unharmed. One of the visitors, to verify it definitively, sent some five bullets at the confounded animal’s head, while the cat smartly responded with a full clip, but it was the same — no effect was produced on anybody. The cat swayed on the chandelier, which swung less and less, blowing into the muzzle of his Browning and spitting on his paw for some reason.

The faces of those standing silently below acquired an expression of utter bewilderment. This was the only case, or one of the only cases, when shooting proved to be entirely inefficacious. One might allow, of course, that the cat’s Browning was some sort of toy, but one could by no means say the same of the visitors’ Mausers. The cat’s very first wound — there obviously could not be the slightest doubt of it — was nothing but a trick and a swinish sham, as was the drinking of the benzene.

One more attempt was made to get hold of the cat. The lasso was thrown, it caught on one of the candles, the chandelier fell down. The crash seemed to shake the whole structure of the house, but it was no use. Those present were showered with splinters, and the cat flew through the air over them and settled high under the ceiling on the upper part of the mantelpiece mirror’s gilded frame. He had no intention of escaping anywhere, but, on the contrary, while sitting in relative safety, even started another speech:

‘I utterly fail to comprehend,’ he held forth from on high, ‘the reasons for such harsh treatment of me ...’

And here at its very beginning this speech was interrupted by a heavy, low voice coming from no one knew where:

‘What’s going on in the apartment? They prevent me from working ...’

Another voice, unpleasant and nasal, responded:

‘Well, it’s Behemoth, of course, devil take him!’

A third, rattling voice said:

‘Messire! It’s Saturday. The sun is setting. Time to go.’

‘Excuse me, I can’t talk any more,’ the cat said from the mirror, ‘time to go.’ He hurled his Browning and knocked out both panes in the window. Then he splashed down some benzene, and this benzene caught fire by itself, throwing a wave of flame up to the very ceiling.

Things caught fire somehow unusually quickly and violently, as does not happen even with benzene. The wallpaper at once began to smoke, the torn-down curtain started burning on the floor, and the frames of the broken windows began to smoulder. The cat crouched, miaowed, shot from the mirror to the window-sill, and disappeared through it together with his primus. Shots rang out outside. A man sitting on the iron fire-escape at the level of the jeweller’s wife’s windows fired at the cat as he flew from one window-sill to another, making for the corner drainpipe of the house which, as has been said, was built in the form of a ‘U’. By way of this pipe, the cat climbed up to the roof. There, unfortunately also without any result, he was shot at by the sentries guarding the chimneys, and the cat cleared off into the setting sun that was flooding the city.

Just then in the apartment the parquet blazed up under the visitors’ feet, and in that fire, on the same spot where the cat had sprawled with his sham wound, there appeared, growing more and more dense, the corpse of the former Baron Meigel with upthrust chin and glassy eyes. To get him out was no longer possible.

Leaping over the burning squares of parquet, slapping themselves on their smoking chests and shoulders, those who were in the living room retreated to the study and front hall. Those who were in the dining room and bedroom ran out through the corridor. Those in the kitchen also came running and rushed into the front hall. The living room was already filled with fire and smoke. Someone managed, in flight, to dial the number of the fire department and shout briefly into the receiver:

‘Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis! ...’

To stay longer was impossible. Flames gushed out into the front hall. Breathing became difficult.

As soon as the first little spurts of smoke pushed through the broken windows of the enchanted apartment, desperate human cries arose in the courtyard:

‘Fire! Fire! We’re burning!’

In various apartments of the house, people began shouting into telephones:

‘Sadovaya! Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis!’

Just then, as the heart-quailing bells were heard on Sadovaya, ringing from long red engines racing quickly from all parts of the city, the people rushing about the yard saw how, along with the smoke, there flew out of the fifth-storey window three dark, apparently male silhouettes and one silhouette of a naked woman.

CHAPTER 28 The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth

Whether these silhouettes were there, or were only imagined by the fear-struck tenants of the ill-fated house on Sadovaya, is, of course, impossible to say precisely. If they were there, where they set out for is also known to no one. Nor can we-say where they separated, but we do know that approximately a quarter of an hour after the fire started on Sadovaya, there appeared by the mirrored doors of a currency store[158] on the Smolensky market-place a long citizen in a checkered suit, and with him a big black cat.

Deftly slithering between the passers-by, the citizen opened the outer door of the shop. But here a small, bony and extremely ill-disposed doorman barred his way and said irritably:

‘No cats allowed!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ rattled the long one, putting his gnarled hand to his ear as if he were hard of hearing, ‘no cats, you say? And where do you see any cats?’

The doorman goggled his eyes, and well he might: there was no cat at the citizen’s feet now, but instead, from behind his shoulder, a fat fellow in a tattered cap, whose mug indeed somewhat resembled a cat’s, stuck out, straining to get into the store. There was a primus in the fat fellow’s hands.

The misanthropic doorman for some reason disliked this pair of customers.

‘We only accept currency,’ he croaked, gazing vexedly from under his shaggy, as if moth-eaten, grizzled eyebrows.

‘My dear man,’ rattled the long one, flashing his eye through the broken pince-nez, ‘how do you know I don’t have any? Are you judging by my clothes? Never do so, my most precious custodian! You may make a mistake, and a big one at that. At least read the story of the famous caliph Harun al-Rashid[159] over again. But in the present case, casting that story aside temporarily, I want to tell you that I am going to make a complaint about you to the manager and tell him such tales about you that you may have to surrender your post between the shining mirrored doors.’

‘Maybe I’ve got a whole primus full of currency,’ the cat-like fat fellow, who was simply shoving his way into the store, vehemently butted into the conversation.

Behind them the public was already pushing and getting angry. Looking at the prodigious pair with hatred and suspicion, the doorman stepped aside, and our acquaintances, Koroviev and Behemoth, found themselves in the store. Here they first of all looked around, and then, in a ringing voice heard decidedly in every comer, Koroviev announced:

‘A wonderful store! A very, very fine store!’

The public turned away from the counters and for some reason looked at the speaker in amazement, though he had all grounds for praising the store.

Hundreds of bolts of cotton in the richest assortment of colours could be seen in the pigeon-holes of the shelves. Next to them were piled calicoes, and chiffons, and flannels for suits. In receding perspective endless stacks of shoeboxes could be seen, and several citizenesses sat on little low chairs, one foot shod in an old, worn-out shoe, the other in a shiny new pump, which they stamped on the carpet with a preoccupied air. Somewhere in the depths, around a comer, gramophones sang and played music.

But, bypassing all these enchantments, Koroviev and Behemoth made straight for the junction of the grocery and confectionery departments. Here there was plenty of room, no citizenesses in scarves and little berets were pushing against the counters, as in the fabric department.

A short, perfectly square man with blue shaven jowls, horn-rimmed glasses, a brand-new hat, not crumpled and with no sweat stains on the band, in a lilac coat and orange kid gloves, stood by the counter grunting something peremptorily. A sales clerk in a clean white smock and a blue hat was waiting on the lilac client. With the sharpest of knives, much like the knife stolen by Matthew Levi, he was removing from a weeping, plump pink salmon its snake-like, silvery skin.

‘This department is splendid, too,’ Koroviev solemnly acknowledged, ‘and the foreigner is a likeable fellow,’ he benevolently pointed his finger at the lilac back.

‘No, Fagott, no,’ Behemoth replied pensively, ‘you’re mistaken, my friend: the lilac gentleman’s face lacks something, in my opinion.’

The lilac back twitched, but probably by chance, for the foreigner was surely unable to understand what Koroviev and his companion were saying in Russian.

‘Is good?’ the lilac purchaser asked sternly.

‘Top-notch!’ replied the sales clerk, cockily slipping the edge of the knife under the skin.

‘Good I like, bad I don’t,’ the foreigner said sternly.

‘Right you are!’ the sales clerk rapturously replied.

Here our acquaintances walked away from the foreigner and his salmon to the end of the confectionery counter.

‘It’s hot today,’ Koroviev addressed a young, red-cheeked salesgirl and received no reply to his words. ‘How much are the mandarins?’ Koroviev then inquired of her.

‘Fifteen kopecks a pound,’ replied the salesgirl.

‘Everything’s so pricey,’ Koroviev observed with a sigh, ‘hm ... hm ...’ He thought a little longer and then invited his companion: ‘Eat up, Behemoth.’

The fat fellow put his primus under his arm, laid hold of the top mandarin on the pyramid, straight away gobbled it up skin and all, and began on a second.

The salesgirl was overcome with mortal terror.

‘You’re out of your mind!’ she shouted, losing her colour. ‘Give me the receipt! The receipt!’ and she dropped the confectionery tongs.

‘My darling, my dearest, my beauty,’ Koroviev rasped, leaning over the counter and winking at the salesgirl, ‘we’re out of currency today ... what can we do? But I swear to you, by next time, and no later than Monday, we’ll pay it all in pure cash! We’re from near by, on Sadovaya, where they’re having the fire ...’

Behemoth, after swallowing a third mandarin, put his paw into a clever construction of chocolate bars, pulled out the bottom one, which of course made the whole thing collapse, and swallowed it together with its gold wrapper.

The sales clerks behind the fish counter stood as if petrified, their knives in their hands, the lilac foreigner swung around to the robbers, and here it turned out that Behemoth was mistaken: there was nothing lacking in the lilac one’s face, but, on the contrary, rather some superfluity of hanging jowls and furtive eyes.

Turning completely yellow, the salesgirl anxiously cried for the whole store to hear:

‘Palosich![160] Palosich!’

The public from the fabric department came thronging at this cry, while Behemoth, stepping away from the confectionery temptations, thrust his paw into a barrel labelled ‘Choice Kerch Herring’,[161] pulled out a couple of herring, and swallowed them, spitting out the tails.

‘Palosich!’ the desperate cry came again from behind the confectionery counter, and from behind the fish counter a sales clerk with a goatee barked:

‘What’s this you’re up to, vermin?’

Pavel Yosifovich was already hastening to the scene of the action. He was an imposing man in a clean white smock, like a surgeon, with a pencil sticking out of the pocket. Pavel Yosifovich was obviously an experienced man. Seeing the tail of the third herring in Behemoth’s mouth, he instantly assessed the situation, understood decidedly everything, and, without getting into any arguments with the insolent louts, waved his arm into the distance, commanding:

‘Whistle!’

The doorman flew from the mirrored door out to the comer of the Smolensky market-place and dissolved in a sinister whistling. The public began to surround the blackguards, and then Koroviev stepped into the affair.

‘Citizens!’ he called out in a high, vibrating voice, ‘what’s going on here? Eh? Allow me to ask you that! The poor man’ — Koroviev let some tremor into his voice and pointed to Behemoth, who immediately concocted a woeful physiognomy — ‘the poor man spends all day reparating primuses. He got hungry ... and where’s he going to get currency?’

To this Pavel Yosifovich, usually restrained and calm, shouted sternly:

‘You just stop that!’ and waved into the distance, impatiently now. Then the trills by the door resounded more merrily.

But Koroviev, unabashed by Pavel Yosifovich’s pronouncement, went on:

‘Where? — I ask you all this question! He’s languishing with hunger and thirst, he’s hot. So the hapless fellow took and sampled a mandarin. And the total worth of that mandarin is three kopecks. And here they go whistling like spring nightingales in the woods, bothering the police, tearing them away from their business. But he’s allowed, eh?’ and here Koroviev pointed to the lilac fat man, which caused the strongest alarm to appear on his face. ‘Who is he? Eh? Where did he come from? And why? Couldn’t we do without him? Did we invite him, or what? Of course,’ the ex-choirmaster bawled at the top of his lungs, twisting his mouth sarcastically, ‘just look at him, in his smart lilac suit, all swollen with salmon, all stuffed with currency — and us, what about the likes of us?! ... I’m bitter! Bitter, bitter!’[162] Koroviev wailed, like the best man at an old-fashioned wedding.

This whole stupid, tactless, and probably politically harmful speech made Pavel Yosifovich shake with wrath, but, strange as it may seem, one could see by the eyes of the crowding public that it provoked sympathy in a great many people. And when Behemoth, putting a torn, dirty sleeve to his eyes, exclaimed tragically:

‘Thank you, my faithful friend, you stood up for the sufferer!’ - a miracle occurred. A most decent, quiet little old man, poorly but cleanly dressed, a little old man buying three macaroons in the confectionery department, was suddenly transformed. His eyes flashed with bellicose fire, he turned purple, hurled the little bag of macaroons on the floor, and shouted ‘True!’ in a child’s high voice. Then he snatched up a tray, throwing from it the remains of the chocolate Eiffel Tower demolished by Behemoth, brandished it, tore the foreigner’s hat off with his left hand, and with his right swung and struck the foreigner flat on his bald head with the tray. There was a roll as of the noise one hears when sheets of metal are thrown down from a truck. The fat man, turning white, fell backwards and sat in the barrel of Kerch herring, spouting a fountain of brine from it. Straight away a second miracle occurred. The lilac one, having fallen into the barrel, shouted in pure Russian, with no trace of any accent:

‘Murder! Police! The bandits are murdering me!’ evidently having mastered, owing to the shock, this language hitherto unknown to him.

Then the doorman’s whistling ceased, and amid the crowds of agitated shoppers two military helmets could be glimpsed approaching. But the perfidious Behemoth doused the confectionery counter with benzene from his primus, as one douses a bench in a bathhouse with a tub of water, and it blazed up of itself. The flame spurted upwards and ran along the counter, devouring the beautiful paper ribbons on the fruit baskets. The salesgirls dashed shrieking from behind the counters, and as soon as they came from behind them, the linen curtains on the windows blazed up and the benzene on the floor ignited.

The public, at once raising a desperate cry, shrank back from the confectionery department, running down the no longer needed Pavel Yosifovich, and from behind the fish counter the sales clerks with their whetted knives trotted in single file towards the door of the rear exit.

The lilac citizen, having extracted himself from the barrel, thoroughly drenched with herring juice, heaved himself over the salmon on the counter and followed after them. The glass of the mirrored front doors clattered and spilled down, pushed out by fleeing people, while the two blackguards, Koroviev and the glutton Behemoth, got lost somewhere, but where - it was impossible to grasp. Only afterwards did eyewitnesses who had been present at the starting of the fire in the currency store in Smolensky market-place tell how the two hooligans supposedly flew up to the ceiling and there popped like children’s balloons. It is doubtful, of course, that things happened that way, but what we don’t know, we don’t know.

But we do know that exactly one minute after the happening in Smolensky market-place, Behemoth and Koroviev both turned up on the sidewalk of the boulevard just by the house of Griboedov’s aunt. Koroviev stood by the fence and spoke:

‘Hah! This is the writers’ house! You know, Behemoth, I’ve heard many good and flattering things about this house. Pay attention to this house, my friend. It’s pleasant to think how under this roof no end of talents are being sheltered and nurtured.’

‘Like pineapples in a greenhouse,’ said Behemoth and, the better to admire the cream-coloured building with columns, he climbed the concrete footing of the cast-iron fence.

‘Perfectly correct,’ Koroviev agreed with his inseparable companion, ‘and a sweet awe creeps into one’s heart at the thought that in this house there is now ripening the future author of a Don Quixote or a Faust, or, devil take me, a Dead Souls![163] Eh?’

‘Frightful to think of,’ agreed Behemoth.

‘Yes,’ Koroviev went on, ‘one can expect astonishing things from the hotbeds of this house, which has united under its roof several thousand zealots resolved to devote their lives to the service of Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Thalia.[164] You can imagine the noise that will arise when one of them, for starters, offers the reading public The Inspector General[165] or, if worse comes to worst, Evgeny Onegin.’[166]

‘Quite easily,’ Behemoth again agreed.

‘Yes,’ Koroviev went on, anxiously raising his finger, ‘but! ... But, I say, and I repeat this but! ... Only if these tender hothouse plants are not attacked by some micro-organism that gnaws at their roots so that they rot! And it does happen with pineapples! Oh, my, does it!’

‘Incidentally,’ inquired Behemoth, putting his round head through an opening in the fence, ‘what are they doing on the veranda?’

‘Having dinner,’ explained Koroviev, ‘and to that I will add, my dear, that the restaurant here is inexpensive and not bad at all. And, by the way, like any tourist before continuing his trip, I feel a desire to have a bite and drink a big, ice-cold mug of beer.’

‘Me, too,’ replied Behemoth, and the two blackguards marched down the asphalt path under the lindens straight to the veranda of the unsuspecting restaurant.

A pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a nib sat on a Viennese chair at the comer entrance to the veranda, where amid the greenery of the trellis an opening for the entrance had been made. In front of her on a simple kitchen table lay a fat book of the ledger variety, in which the citizeness, for unknown reasons, wrote down all those who entered the restaurant. It was precisely this citizeness who stopped Koroviev and Behemoth.

‘Your identification cards?’ She was gazing in amazement at Koroviev’s pince-nez, and also at Behemoth’s primus and Behemoth’s torn elbow.

‘A thousand pardons, but what identification cards?’ asked Koroviev in surprise.

‘You’re writers?’ the citizeness asked in her turn.

‘Unquestionably,’ Koroviev answered with dignity.

‘Your identification cards?’ the citizeness repeated.

‘My sweetie ...’ Koroviev began tenderly.

‘I’m no sweetie,’ interrupted the citizeness.

‘More’s the pity,’ Koroviev said disappointedly and went on: ‘Well, so, if you don’t want to be a sweetie, which would be quite pleasant, you don’t have to be. So, then, to convince yourself that Dostoevsky was a writer, do you have to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from any one of his novels and you’ll be convinced, without any identification card, that you’re dealing with a writer. And I don’t think he even had any identification card! What do you think?’ Koroviev turned to Behemoth.

‘I’ll bet he didn’t,‘ replied Behemoth, setting the primus down on the table beside the ledger and wiping the sweat from his sooty forehead with his hand.

‘You’re not Dostoevsky,’ said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev.

‘Well, who knows, who knows,’ he replied.

‘Dostoevsky’s dead,’ said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.

‘I protest!’ Behemoth exclaimed hotly. ‘Dostoevsky is immortal!’

‘Your identification cards, citizens,’ said the citizeness.

‘Good gracious, this is getting to be ridiculous!’ Koroviev would not give in. ‘A writer is defined not by any identity card, but by what he writes. How do you know what plots are swarming in my head? Or in this head?’ and he pointed at Behemoth’s head, from which the latter at once removed the cap, as if to let the citizeness examine it better.

‘Step aside, citizens,’ she said, nervously now.

Koroviev and Behemoth stepped aside and let pass some writer in a grey suit with a tie-less, summer white shirt, the collar of which lay wide open on the lapels of his jacket, and with a newspaper under his arm. The writer nodded affably to the citizeness, in passing put some flourish in the proffered ledger, and proceeded to the veranda.

‘Alas, not to us, not to us,’ Koroviev began sadly, ‘but to him will go that ice-cold mug of beer, which you and I, poor wanderers, so dreamed of together. Our position is woeful and difficult, and I don’t know what to do.’

Behemoth only spread his arms bitterly and put his cap on his round head, covered with thick hair very much resembling a cat’s fur.

And at that moment a low but peremptory voice sounded over the head of the citizeness:

‘Let them pass, Sofya Pavlovna.’[167]

The citizeness with the ledger was amazed. Amidst the greenery of the trellis appeared the white tailcoated chest and wedge-shaped beard of the freebooter. He was looking affably at the two dubious ragamuffins and, moreover, even making inviting gestures to them. Archibald Archibaldovich’s authority was something seriously felt in the restaurant under his management, and Sofya Pavlovna obediently asked Koroviev:

‘What is your name?’

‘Panaev,’[168] he answered courteously. The citizeness wrote this name down and raised a questioning glance to Behemoth.

‘Skabichevsky,’[169] the latter squeaked, for some reason pointing to his primus. Sofya Pavlovna wrote this down, too, and pushed the book towards the visitors for them to sign. Koroviev wrote ‘Skabichevsky’ next to the name ’Panaev‘, and Behemoth wrote ’Panaev’ next to ‘Skabichevsky’.

Archibald Archibaldovich, to the utter amazement of Sofya Pavlovna, smiled seductively, and led the guests to the best table, at the opposite end of the veranda, where the deepest shade lay, a table next to which the sun played merrily through one of the gaps in the trellis greenery, while Sofya Pavlovna, blinking with amazement, studied for a long time the strange entry made in the book by the unexpected visitors.

Archibald Archibaldovich surprised the waiters no less than he had Sofya Pavlovna. He personally drew a chair back from the table, inviting Koroviev to sit down, winked to one, whispered something to the other, and the two waiters began bustling around the new guests, one of whom set his primus down on the floor next to his scuffed shoe.

The old yellow-stained tablecloth immediately disappeared from the table, another shot up into the air, crackling with starch, white as a Bedouin’s burnous, and Archibald Archibaldovich was already whispering softly but very significantly, bending right to Koroviev’s ear.

‘What may I treat you to? I have a special little balyk[170] here ... bagged at the architects’ congress ...’

‘Oh ... just give us a bite of something ... eh? ...’ Koroviev mumbled good-naturedly, sprawling on the chair.

‘I understand...’ Archibald Archibaldovich replied meaningfully, closing his eyes.

Seeing the way the chief of the restaurant treated the rather dubious visitors, the waiters laid aside their suspicions and got seriously down to business. One was already offering a match to Behemoth, who had taken a butt from his pocket and put it in his mouth, the other raced up clinking with green glass and at their places arranged goblets, tumblers, and those thin-walled glasses from which it is so nice to drink seltzer under the awning ... no, skipping ahead, let us say: it used to be so nice to drink seltzer under the awning of the unforgettable Griboedov veranda.

‘I might recommend a little fillet of hazel-grouse,’ Archibald Archibaldovich murmured musically. The guest in the cracked pince-nez fully approved the commander of the brig’s suggestions and gazed at him benevolently through the useless bit of glass.

The fiction writer Petrakov-Sukhovey, dining at the next table with his wife, who was finishing a pork chop, noticed with the keenness of observation proper to all writers the wooing of Archibald Archibaldovich, and was quite, quite surprised. And his wife, a very respectable lady, even simply became jealous of Koroviev over the pirate, and even rapped with her teaspoon, as if to say: why are we kept waiting? ... It’s time the ice cream was served. What’s the matter? ...

However, after sending Mrs Petrakov a seductive smile, Archibald Archibaldovich dispatched a waiter to her, but did not leave his dear guests himself. Ah, how intelligent Archibald Archibaldovich was! And his powers of observation were perhaps no less keen than those of the writers themselves! Archibald Archibaldovich knew about the seance at the Variety, and about many other events of those days; he had heard, but, unlike the others, had not closed his ears to, the word ‘checkered’ and the word ‘cat’. Archibald Archibaldovich guessed at once who his visitors were. And, having guessed, naturally did not start quarrelling with them. And that Sofya Pavlovna was a good one! To come up with such a thing — barring the way to the veranda for those two! Though what could you expect of her! ...

Haughtily poking her little spoon into the slushy ice cream, Mrs Petrakov, with displeased eyes, watched the table in front of the two motley buffoons become overgrown with dainties as if by magic. Shiny clean lettuce leaves were already sticking from a bowl of fresh caviar ... an instant later a sweating silver bucket appeared, brought especially on a separate little table ...

Only when convinced that everything had been done impeccably, only when there came flying in the waiter’s hands a covered pan with something gurgling in it, did Archibald Archibaldovich allow himself to leave the two mysterious visitors, and that after having first whispered to them:

‘Excuse me! One moment! I’ll see to the fillets personally!’

He flew away from the table and disappeared into an inner passage of the restaurant. If any observer had been able to follow the further actions of Archibald Archibaldovich, they would undoubtedly have seemed somewhat mysterious to him.

The chief did not go to the kitchen to supervise the fillets at all, but went to the restaurant pantry. He opened it with his own key, locked himself inside, took two hefty balyks from the icebox, carefully, so as not to soil his cuffs, wrapped them in newspaper, tied them neatly with string, and set them aside. Then he made sure that his hat and silk-lined summer coat were in place in the next room, and only after that proceeded to the kitchen, where the chef was carefully boning the fillets the pirate had promised his visitors.

It must be said that there was nothing strange or incomprehensible in any of Archibald Archibaldovich’s actions, and that they could seem strange only to a superficial observer. Archibald Archibaldovich’s behaviour was the perfectly logical result of all that had gone before. A knowledge of the latest events, and above all Archibald Archibaldovich’s phenomenal intuition, told the chief of the Griboedov restaurant that his two visitors’ dinner, while abundant and sumptuous, would be of extremely short duration. And his intuition, which had never yet deceived the former freebooter, did not let him down this time either.

Just as Koroviev and Behemoth were clinking their second glasses of wonderful, cold, double-distilled Moskovskaya vodka, the sweaty and excited chronicler Boba Kandalupsky, famous in Moscow for his astounding omniscience, appeared on the veranda and at once sat down with the Petrakovs. Placing his bulging briefcase on the table, Boba immediately put his lips to Petrakov’s ear and whispered some very tempting things into it. Madame Petrakov, burning with curiosity, also put her ear to Boba’s plump, greasy lips. And he, with an occasional furtive look around, went on whispering and whispering, and one could make out separate words, such as:

‘I swear to you! On Sadovaya, on Sadovaya! ...’ Boba lowered his voice still more, ‘bullets have no effect! ... bullets ... bullets ... benzene ... fire ... bullets ...’

‘It’s the liars that spread these vile rumours,’ Madame Petrakov boomed in a contralto voice, somewhat louder in her indignation than Boba would have liked, ‘they’re the ones who ought to be explained! Well, never mind, that’s how it will be, they’ll be called to order! Such pernicious lies!’

‘Why lies, Antonida Porfirievna!’ exclaimed Boba, upset by the disbelief of the writer’s wife, and again began spinning: ‘I tell you, bullets have no effect! ... And then the fire ... they went up in the air ... in the air!’ Boba went on hissing, not suspecting that those he was talking about were sitting next to him, delighting in his yarn.

However, this delight soon ceased: from an inner passage of the restaurant three men, their waists drawn in tightly by belts, wearing leggings and holding revolvers in their hands, strode precipitously on to the veranda. The one in front cried ringingly and terribly:

‘Don’t move!’ And at once all three opened fire on the veranda, aiming at the heads of Koroviev and Behemoth. The two objects of the shooting instantly melted into air, and a pillar of fire spurted from the primus directly on to the tent roof. It was as if a gaping maw with black edges appeared in the tent and began spreading in all directions. The fire leaping through it rose up to the roof of Griboedov House. Folders full of papers lying on the window-sill of the editorial office on the second floor suddenly blazed up, followed by the curtains, and now the fire, howling as if someone were blowing on it, went on in pillars to the interior of the aunt’s house.

A few seconds later, down the asphalt paths leading to the cast-iron fence on the boulevard, whence Ivanushka, the first herald of the disaster, understood by no one, had come on Wednesday evening, various writers, Sofya Pavlovna, Boba, Petrakov’s wife and Petrakov, now went running, leaving their dinners unfinished.

Having stepped out through a side entrance beforehand, not fleeing or hurrying anywhere, like a captain who must be the last to leave his burning brig, Archibald Archibaldovich stood calmly in his summer coat with silk lining, the two balyk logs under his arm.

CHAPTER 29 The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided

At sunset, high over the city, on the stone terrace of one of the most beautiful houses in Moscow, a house built about a hundred and fifty years ago, there were two: Woland and Azazello. They could not be seen from the street below, because they were hidden from unwanted eyes by a balustrade with plaster vases and plaster flowers. But they could see the city almost to its very edges.

Woland was sitting on a folding stool, dressed in his black soutane. His long and broad sword was stuck vertically into a crack between two flags of the terrace so as to make a sundial. The shadow of the sword lengthened slowly and steadily, creeping towards the black shoes on Satan’s feet. Resting his sharp chin on his fist, hunched on the stool with one leg drawn under him, Woland stared fixedly[171 at the endless collection of palaces, gigantic buildings and little hovels destined to be pulled down.

Azazello, having parted with his modem attire — that is, jacket, bowler hat and patent-leather shoes — and dressed, like Woland, in black, stood motionless not far from his sovereign, like him with his eyes fixed on the city.

Woland began to speak:

‘Such an interesting city, is it not?’

Azazello stirred and replied respectfully:

‘I like Rome better, Messire.’

‘Yes, it’s a matter of taste,’ replied Woland.

After a while, his voice resounded again:

‘And what is that smoke there on the boulevard?’

‘That is Griboedov’s burning,’ replied Azazello.

‘It must be supposed that that inseparable pair, Koroviev and Behemoth, stopped by there?’

‘Of that there can be no doubt, Messire.’

Again silence fell, and the two on the terrace gazed at the fragmented, dazzling sunlight in the upper-floor windows of the huge buildings facing west. Woland’s eye burned like one of those windows, though Woland had his back to the sunset.

But here something made Woland turn his attention to the round tower behind him on the roof. From its wall stepped a tattered, clay-covered, sullen man in a chiton, in home-made sandals, black-bearded.

‘Hah!’ exclaimed Woland, looking mockingly at the newcomer. ‘Least of all would I expect you here! What have you come with, uninvited guest?’

‘I have come to see you, spirit of evil and sovereign of shadows,’ the newcomer replied, glowering inimically at Woland.

‘If you’ve come to see me, why didn’t you wish me a good evening, former tax collector?’ Woland said sternly.

‘Because I don’t wish you a good anything,’ the newcomer replied insolently.

‘But you’ll have to reconcile yourself to that,’ Woland objected, and a grin twisted his mouth. ‘You no sooner appear on the roof than you produce an absurdity, and I’ll tell you what it is — it’s your intonation. You uttered your words as if you don’t acknowledge shadows, or evil either. Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? Shadows are cast by objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. Trees and living beings also have shadows. Do you want to skin the whole earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your fantasy of enjoying bare light? You’re a fool.’

‘I won’t argue with you, old sophist,’ replied Matthew Levi.

‘You also cannot argue with me, for the reason I’ve already mentioned: you’re a fool,’ Woland replied and asked: ‘Well, make it short, don’t weary me, why have you appeared?’

‘He sent me.’

‘What did he tell you to say, slave?’

‘I’m not a slave,’ Matthew Levi replied, growing ever angrier, ‘I’m his disciple.’

‘You and I speak different languages, as usual,’ responded Woland, ‘but the things we say don’t change for all that. And so? ...’

‘He has read the master’s work,’ said Matthew Levi, ‘and asks you to take the master with you and reward him with peace. Is that hard for you to do, spirit of evil?’

‘Nothing is hard for me to do,’ answered Woland, ‘you know that very well.’ He paused and added: ‘But why don’t you take him with you into the light?’

‘He does not deserve the light, he deserves peace,’ Levi said in a sorrowful voice.

‘Tell him it will be done,’ Woland replied and added, his eye flashing: ‘And leave me immediately.’

‘He asks that she who loved him and suffered because of him also be taken with him,’ Levi addressed Woland pleadingly for the first time.

‘We would never have thought of it without you. Go.’

Matthew Levi disappeared after that, and Woland called Azazello and ordered him:

‘Fly to them and arrange it all.’

Azazello left the terrace, and Woland remained alone.

But his solitude did not last. Over the flags of the terrace came the sound of footsteps and animated voices, and before Woland stood Koroviev and Behemoth. But now the fat fellow had no primus with him, but was loaded with other things. Thus, under his arm he had a small landscape in a gold frame, from one hand hung a half-burnt cook’s smock, and in the other he held a whole salmon with skin and tail. Koroviev and Behemoth reeked of fire, Behemoth’s mug was all sooty and his cap was badly burnt.

‘Greetings, Messire!’ cried the irrepressible pair, and Behemoth waved the salmon.

‘A fine sight,’ said Woland.

‘Imagine, Messire!’ Behemoth cried excitedly and joyfully, ‘I was taken for a looter!’

‘Judging by the things you’ve brought,’ Woland replied, glancing at the landscape, ‘you are a looter!’

‘Believe me, Messire ...’ Behemoth began in a soulful voice.

‘No, I don’t,‘Woland replied curtly.

‘Messire, I swear, I made heroic efforts to save everything I could, and this is all I was able to rescue.’

‘You’d better tell me, why did Griboedov’s catch fire?’ asked Woland.

Both Koroviev and Behemoth spread their arms, raised their eyes to heaven, and Behemoth cried out:

‘I can’t conceive why! We were sitting there peacefully, perfectly quiet, having a bite to eat ...’

‘And suddenly - bang, bang!’ Koroviev picked up, ‘gunshots! Crazed with fear, Behemoth and I ran out to the boulevard, our pursuers followed, we rushed to Timiriazev! ...’[172]

‘But the sense of duty,’ Behemoth put in, ‘overcame our shameful fear and we went back.’

‘Ah, you went back?’ said Woland. ‘Well, then of course the building was reduced to ashes.’

‘To ashes!’ Koroviev ruefully confirmed, ‘that is, Messire, literally to ashes, as you were pleased to put it so aptly. Nothing but embers!’

‘I hastened,’ Behemoth narrated, ‘to the meeting room, the one with the columns, Messire, hoping to bring out something valuable. Ah, Messire, my wife, if only I had one, was twenty times in danger of being left a widow! But happily, Messire, I’m not married, and, let me tell you, I’m really happy that I’m not. Ah, Messire, how can one trade a bachelor’s freedom for the burdensome yoke ...’

‘Again some gibberish gets going,’ observed Woland.

‘I hear and continue,’ the cat replied. ‘Yes, sir, this landscape here! It was impossible to bring anything more out of the meeting room, the flames were beating in my face. I ran to the pantry and rescued the salmon. I ran to the kitchen and rescued the smock. I think, Messire, that I did everything I could, and I don’t understand how to explain the sceptical expression on your face.’

‘And what did Koroviev do while you were looting?’ asked Woland.

‘I was helping the firemen, Messire,’ replied Koroviev, pointing to his torn trousers.

‘Ah, if so, then of course a new building will have to be built.’

‘It will be built, Messire,’ Koroviev responded, ‘I venture to assure you of that.’

‘Well, so it remains for us to wish that it be better than the old one,’ observed Woland.

‘It will be, Messire,’ said Koroviev.

‘You can believe me,’ the cat added, ‘I’m a regular prophet.’

‘In any case, we’re here, Messire,’ Koroviev reported, ‘and await your orders.’

Woland got up from his stool, went over to the balustrade, and alone, silently, his back turned to his retinue, gazed into the distance for a long time. Then he stepped away from the edge, lowered himself on to his stool, and said:

‘There will be no orders, you have fulfilled all you could, and for the moment I no longer need your services. You may rest. Right now a storm is coming, the last storm, it will complete all that needs completing, and we’ll be on our way.’

‘Very well, Messire,’ the two buffoons replied and disappeared somewhere behind the round central tower, which stood in the middle of the terrace.

The storm of which Woland had spoken was already gathering on the horizon. A black cloud rose in the west and cut off half the sun. Then it covered it entirely. The air became cool on the terrace. A little later it turned dark.

This darkness which came from the west covered the vast city. Bridges and palaces disappeared. Everything vanished as if it had never existed in the world. One fiery thread ran across the whole sky. Then a thunderclap shook the city. It was repeated, and the storm began. Woland could no longer be seen in its gloom.

CHAPTER 30 It’s Time! It’s Time!

‘You know,’ said Margarita, ‘just as you fell asleep last night, I was reading about the darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea ... and those idols, ah, the golden idols! For some reason they never leave me in peace. I think it’s going to rain now, too. Do you feel how cool it’s getting?’

‘That’s all well and good,’ replied the master, smoking and breaking up the smoke with his hand, ‘and as for the idols, God be with them ... but what will happen further on is decidedly unclear!’

This conversation occurred at sunset, just at the moment when Matthew Levi came to Woland on the terrace. The basement window was open, and if anyone had looked through it, he would have been astonished at how strange the talkers looked. Margarita had a black cloak thrown directly over her naked body, and the master was in his hospital underwear. The reason for this was that Margarita had decidedly nothing to put on, because all her clothes had stayed in her house, and though this house was very near by, there was, of course, no question of going there to take her clothes. And the master, whose clothes were all found in the wardrobe as if he had never gone anywhere, simply did not want to get dressed, developing before Margarita the thought that some perfect nonsense was about to begin at any moment. True, he was clean-shaven for the first time since that autumn night (in the clinic his beard had been cut with clippers).

The room also had a strange look, and it was very hard to make anything out in its chaos. Manuscripts were lying on the rug, and on the sofa as well. A book sat humpbacked on an armchair. And dinner was set out on the round table, with several bottles standing among the dishes of food. Where all this food and drink came from was known neither to Margarita nor to the master. On waking up they found everything already on the table.

Having slept until sunset Saturday, the master and his friend felt themselves thoroughly fortified, and only one thing told of the previous day’s adventure — both had a slight ache in the left temple. But with regard to their minds, there were great changes in both of them, as anyone would have been convinced who was able to eavesdrop on the conversation in the basement. But there was decidedly no one to eavesdrop. That little courtyard was good precisely for being always empty. With each day the greening lindens and the ivy outside the window exuded an ever stronger smell of spring, and the rising breeze carried it into the basement.

‘Pah, the devil!’ exclaimed the master unexpectedly. ‘But, just think, it’s ...’ he put out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and pressed his head with his hands. ‘No, listen, you’re an intelligent person and have never been crazy ... are you seriously convinced that we were at Satan’s yesterday?’

‘Quite seriously,’ Margarita replied.

‘Of course, of course,’ the master said ironically, ‘so now instead of one madman there are two - husband and wife!’ He raised his hands to heaven and cried: ‘No, the devil knows what this is! The devil, the devil ...’

Instead of answering, Margarita collapsed on the sofa, burst out laughing, waved her bare legs, and only then cried out:

‘Aie, I can’t ... I can’t! You should see what you look like! ...’

Having finished laughing, while the master bashfully pulled up his hospital drawers, Margarita became serious.

‘You unwittingly spoke the truth just now,’ she began, ‘the devil knows what it is, and the devil, believe me, will arrange everything!’ Her eyes suddenly flashed, she jumped up and began dancing on the spot, crying out: ‘How happy I am, how happy I am, how happy I am that I struck a bargain with him! Oh, Satan, Satan! ... You’ll have to live with a witch, my dear!’ Then she rushed to the master, put her arms around his neck, and began kissing his lips, his nose, his cheeks. Strands of unkempt black hair leaped at the master, and his cheeks and forehead burned under the kisses.

‘And you’ve really come to resemble a witch.’

‘And I don’t deny it,’ answered Margarita, ‘I’m a witch and I’m very glad of it.’

‘Well, all right,’ said the master, ‘so you’re a witch, very nice, splendid! And I’ve been stolen from the hospital ... also very nice! I’ve been brought here, let’s grant that, too. Let’s even suppose that we won’t be missed ... But tell me, by all that’s holy, how and on what are we going to live? My concern is for you when I say that, believe me!’

At that moment round-toed shoes and the lower part of a pair of pinstriped trousers appeared in the window. Then the trousers bent at the knee and somebody’s hefty backside blocked the daylight.

‘Aloisy, are you home?’ asked a voice somewhere up above the trousers, outside the window.

‘There, it’s beginning,’ said the master.

‘Aloisy?’ asked Margarita, going closer to the window. ‘He was arrested yesterday. Who’s asking for him? What’s your name?’

That instant the knees and backside vanished, there came the bang of the gate, after which everything returned to normal. Margarita collapsed on the sofa and laughed so that tears poured from her eyes. But when she calmed down, her countenance changed greatly, she began speaking seriously, and as she spoke she slipped down from the couch, crept over to the master’s knees, and, looking into his eyes, began to caress his head.

‘How you’ve suffered, how you’ve suffered, my poor one! I’m the only one who knows it. Look, you’ve got white threads in your hair, and an eternal crease by your lips! My only one, my dearest, don’t think about anything! You’ve had to think too much, and now I’ll think for you. And I promise you, I promise, that everything will be dazzlingly well!’

‘I’m not afraid of anything, Margot,’ the master suddenly answered her and raised his head, and he seemed to her the same as he had been when he was inventing that which he had never seen, but of which he knew for certain that it had been, ‘not afraid, because I’ve already experienced it all. They tried too hard to frighten me, and cannot frighten me with anything any more. But I pity you, Margot, that’s the trick, that’s why I keep saying it over and over. Come to your senses! Why do you have to ruin your life with a sick man and a beggar? Go back! I pity you, that’s why I say it.’

‘Oh, you, you ...’ Margarita whispered, shaking her dishevelled head, ‘oh, you faithless, unfortunate man! ... Because of you I spent the whole night yesterday shivering and naked. I lost my nature and replaced it with a new one, I spent several months sitting in a dark closet thinking about one thing, about the storm over Yershalaim, I cried my eyes out, and now, when happiness has befallen us, you drive me away! Well, then I’ll go, I’ll go, but you should know that you are a cruel man! They’ve devastated your soul!’

Bitter tenderness rose up in the master’s heart, and, without knowing why, he began to weep, burying his face in Margarita’s hair. Weeping herself, she whispered to him, and her fingers trembled on the master’s temples.

‘Yes, threads, threads ... before my eyes your head is getting covered with snow ... ah, my much-suffering head! Look what eyes you’ve got! There’s a desert in them ... and the shoulders, the shoulders with their burden ... crippled, crippled ...’ Margarita’s speech was becoming incoherent, Margarita was shaking with tears.

Then the master wiped his eyes, raised Margarita from her knees, got up himself and said firmly:

‘Enough. You’ve shamed me. Never again will I yield to faint-heartedness, or come back to this question, be reassured. I know that we’re both the victims of our mental illness, which you perhaps got from me ... Well, so we’ll bear it together.’

Margarita put her lips close to the master’s ear and whispered:

‘I swear to you by your life, I swear by the astrologer’s son whom you guessed, that all will be well!’

‘Fine, fine,’ responded the master, and he added, laughing: ‘Of course, when people have been robbed of everything, like you and me, they seek salvation from other-worldly powers! Well, so, I agree to seek there.’

‘Well, there, there, now you’re your old self, you’re laughing,’ replied Margarita, ‘and devil take you with your learned words. Other-worldly or not other-worldly, isn’t it all the same? I want to eat!’ And she dragged the master to the table by the hand.

‘I’m not sure this food isn’t about to fall through the floor or fly out the window,’ he said, now completely calm.

‘It won’t fly out.’

And just then a nasal voice came through the window:

‘Peace be unto you.’[173]

The master gave a start, but Margarita, already accustomed to the extraordinary, exclaimed:

‘Why, it’s Azazello! Ah, how nice, how good!’ and, whispering to the master: ‘You see, you see, we’re not abandoned!’ - she rushed to open the door.

‘Cover yourself at least,’ the master called after her.

‘Spit on it,’ answered Margarita, already in the corridor.

And there was Azazello bowing, greeting the master, and flashing his blind eye, while Margarita exclaimed:

‘Ah, how glad I am! I’ve never been so glad in my life! But forgive me, Azazello, for being naked!’

Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not only naked women, but even women with their skin flayed clean off, and willingly sat down at the table, having first placed some package wrapped in dark brocade in the comer by the stove.

Margarita poured Azazello some cognac, and he willingly drank it. The master, not taking his eyes off him, quietly pinched his own left hand under the table. But the pinches did not help. Azazello did not melt into air, and, to tell the truth, there was no need for that. There was nothing terrible in the short, reddish-haired man, unless it was his eye with albugo, but that occurs even without sorcery, or unless his clothes were not quite ordinary - some sort of cassock or cloak — but again, strictly considered, that also happens. He drank his cognac adroitly, too, as all good people do, by the glassful and without nibbling. From this same cognac the master’s head became giddy, and he began to think:

‘No, Margarita’s right ... Of course, this is the devil’s messenger sitting before me. No more than two nights ago, I myself tried to prove to Ivan that it was precisely Satan whom he had met at the Patriarch’s Ponds, and now for some reason I got scared of the thought and started babbling something about hypnotists and hallucinations ... Devil there’s any hypnotists in it! ...’

He began looking at Azazello more closely and became convinced that there was some constraint in his eyes, some thought that he would not reveal before its time. ‘This is not just a visit, he’s come on some errand,’ thought the master.

His powers of observation did not deceive him. After drinking a third glass of cognac, which produced no effect in Azazello, the visitor spoke thus:

‘A cosy little basement, devil take me! Only one question arises - what is there to do in this little basement?’

‘That’s just what I was saying,’ the master answered, laughing.

‘Why do you trouble me, Azazello?’ asked Margarita. ‘We’ll live somehow or other!’

‘Please, please!’ cried Azazello, ‘I never even thought of troubling you. I say the same thing - somehow or other! Ah, yes! I almost forgot ... Messire sends his regards and has also asked me to tell you that he invites you to go on a little excursion with him - if you wish, of course. What do you say to that?’

Margarita nudged the master under the table with her leg.

‘With great pleasure,’ replied the master, studying Azazello, who continued:

‘We hope that Margarita Nikolaevna will also not decline the invitation?’

‘I certainly will not,’ said Margarita, and again her leg brushed against the master’s.

‘A wonderful thing!’ exclaimed Azazello. ‘I like that! One, two, and it’s done! Not like that time in the Alexandrovsky Garden!’

‘Ah, don’t remind me, Azazello, I was stupid then. And anyhow you mustn’t blame me too severely for it — you don’t meet unclean powers every day!’

‘That you don’t!’ agreed Azazello. ‘Wouldn’t it be pleasant if it was every day!’

‘I like quickness myself,’ Margarita said excitedly, ‘I like quickness and nakedness ... Like from a Mauser — bang! Ah, how he shoots!’ Margarita cried, turning to the master. ‘A seven under the pillow — any pip you like! ...’ Margarita was getting drunk, and it made her eyes blaze.

‘And again I forgot!’ cried Azazello, slapping himself on the forehead. ‘I’m quite frazzled! Messire sends you a present,’ here he adverted precisely to the master, ‘a bottle of wine. I beg you to note that it’s the same wine the procurator of Judea drank. Falemian wine.’

It was perfectly natural that such a rarity should arouse great attention in both Margarita and the master. Azazello drew from the piece of dark coffin brocade a completely mouldy jug. The wine was sniffed, poured into glasses, held up to the light in the window, which was disappearing before the storm.

‘To Woland’s health!’ exclaimed Margarita, raising her glass.

All three put their glasses to their lips and took big gulps. At once the pre-storm light began to fade in the master’s eyes, his breath failed him, and he felt the end coming. He could still see the deathly pale Margarita, helplessly reaching her arms out to him, drop her head to the table and then slide down on the floor.

‘Poisoner...’ the master managed to cry out. He wanted to snatch the knife from the table and strike Azazello with it, but his hand slid strengthlessly from the tablecloth, everything around the master in the basement took on a black colour and then vanished altogether. He fell backwards and in falling cut the skin of his temple on the comer of his desk.

When the poisoned ones lay still, Azazello began to act. First of all, he rushed out of the window and a few instants later was in the house where Margarita Nikolaevna lived. The ever precise and accurate Azazello wanted to make sure that everything was carried out properly. And everything turned out to be in perfect order. Azazello saw a gloomy woman, who was waiting for her husband’s return, come out of her bedroom, suddenly turn pale, clutch her heart, and cry helplessly:

‘Natasha ... somebody ... come ...’ and fall to the floor in the living room before reaching the study.

‘Everything’s in order,’ said Azazello. A moment later he was beside the fallen lovers. Margarita lay with her face against the little rug. With his iron hands, Azazello turned her over like a doll, face to him, and peered at her. The face of the poisoned woman was changing before his eyes. Even in the gathering dusk of the storm, one could see the temporary witch’s cast in her eyes and the cruelty and violence of her features disappear. The face of the dead woman brightened and finally softened, and the look of her bared teeth was no longer predatory but simply that of a suffering woman. Then Azazello unclenched her white teeth and poured into her mouth several drops of the same wine with which he had poisoned her. Margarita sighed, began to rise without Azazello’s help, sat up and asked weakly:

‘Why, Azazello, why? What have you done to me?’

She saw the outstretched master, shuddered, and whispered:

‘I didn’t expect this ... murderer!’

‘Oh, no, no,’ answered Azazello, ‘he’ll rise presently. Ah, why are you so nervous?’

Margarita believed him at once, so convincing was the red-headed demon’s voice. She jumped up, strong and alive, and helped to give the outstretched man a drink of wine. Opening his eyes, he gave a dark look and with hatred repeated his last word:

‘Poisoner ...’

‘Ah, insults are the usual reward for a good job!’ replied Azazello. ‘Are you blind? Well, quickly recover your sight!’

Here the master rose, looked around with alive and bright eyes, and asked:

‘What does this new thing mean?’

‘It means,’ replied Azazello, ‘that it’s time for us to go. The storm is already thundering, do you hear? It’s getting dark. The steeds are pawing the ground, your little garden is shuddering. Say farewell, quickly say farewell to your little basement.’

‘Ah, I understand ...’ the master said, glancing around, ‘you’ve killed us, we’re dead. Oh, how intelligent that is! And how timely! Now I understand everything.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ replied Azazello, ‘is it you I hear talking? Your friend calls you a master, you can think, so how can you be dead? Is it necessary, in order to consider yourself alive, to sit in a basement and dress yourself in a shirt and hospital drawers? It’s ridiculous! ...’

‘I understand everything you’re saying,’ the master cried out, ‘don’t go on! You’re a thousand times right!’

‘Great Woland!’ Margarita began to echo him. ‘Great Woland! He thought it out much better than I did! But the novel, the novel,’ she shouted to the master, ‘take the novel with you wherever you fly!’

‘No need,’ replied the master, ‘I remember it by heart.’

‘But you won’t ... you won’t forget a single word of it?’ Margarita asked, pressing herself to her lover and wiping the blood from his cut temple.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll never forget anything now,’ he replied.

‘Fire, then!’ cried Azazello. ‘Fire, with which all began and with which we end it all.’

‘Fire!’ Margarita cried terribly. The little basement window banged, the curtain was beaten aside by the wind. The sky thundered merrily and briefly. Azazello thrust his clawed hand into the stove, pulled out a smoking brand, and set fire to the tablecloth. Then he set fire to the stack of old newspapers on the sofa, and next to the manuscripts and the window curtain.

The master, already drunk with the impending ride, flung some book from the shelf on to the table, ruffled its pages in the flame of the tablecloth, and the book blazed up merrily.

‘Burn, burn, former life!’

‘Burn, suffering!’ cried Margarita.

The room was already swaying in crimson pillars, and along with the smoke the three ran out of the door, went up the stone steps, and came to the yard. The first thing they saw there was the landlord’s cook sitting on the ground. Beside her lay spilled potatoes and several bunches of onions. The cook’s state was comprehensible. Three black steeds snorted by the shed, twitching, sending up fountains of earth. Margarita mounted first, then Azazello, and last the master. The cook moaned and wanted to raise her hand to make the sign of the cross, but Azazello shouted menacingly from the saddle:

‘I’ll cut your hand off!’ He whistled, and the steeds, breaking through the linden branches, soared up and pierced the low black cloud. Smoke poured at once from the basement window. From below came the weak, pitiful cry of the cook:

‘We’re on fire ...’

The steeds were already racing over the rooftops of Moscow.

‘I want to bid farewell to the city,’ the master cried to Azazello, who rode at their head. Thunder ate up the end of the master’s phrase. Azazello nodded and sent his horse into a gallop. The dark cloud flew precipitously to meet the fliers, but as yet gave not a sprinkle of rain.

They flew over the boulevards, they saw little figures of people scatter, running for shelter from the rain. The first drops were falling. They flew over smoke - all that remained of Griboedov House. They flew over the city which was already being flooded by darkness. Over them lightning flashed. Soon the roofs gave place to greenery. Only then did the rain pour down, transforming the fliers into three huge bubbles in the water.

Margarita was already familiar with the sensation of flight, but the master was not, and he marvelled at how quickly they reached their goal, the one to whom he wished to bid farewell, because he had no one else to bid farewell to. He immediately recognized through the veil of rain the building of Stravinsky’s clinic, the river, and the pine woods on the other bank, which he had studied so well. They came down in the clearing of a copse not far from the clinic.

‘I’ll wait for you here,’ cried Azazello, his hands to his mouth, now lit up by lightning, now disappearing behind the grey veil. ‘Say your farewells, but be quick!’

The master and Margarita jumped from their saddles and flew, flickering like watery shadows, through the clinic garden. A moment later the master, with an accustomed hand, was pushing aside the balcony grille of room no. 117. Margarita followed after him. They stepped into Ivanushka’s room, unseen and unnoticed in the rumbling and howling of the storm. The master stopped by the bed.

Ivanushka lay motionless, as before, when for the first time he had watched a storm in the house of his repose. But he was not weeping as he had been then. Once he had taken a good look at the dark silhouette that burst into his room from the balcony, he raised himself, held out his hands, and said joyfully:

‘Ah, it’s you! And I kept waiting and waiting for you! And here you are, my neighbour!’

To this the master replied:

‘I’m here, but unfortunately I cannot be your neighbour any longer. I’m flying away for ever, and I’ve come to you only to say farewell.’

‘I knew that, I guessed it,’ Ivan replied quietly and asked: ‘You met him?’

‘Yes,’ said the master. ‘I’ve come to say farewell to you, because you are the only person I’ve talked with lately.’

Ivanushka brightened up and said:

‘It’s good that you stopped off here. I’ll keep my word, I won’t write any more poems. I’m interested in something else now,’ Ivanushka smiled and with mad eyes looked somewhere past the master. ‘I want to write something else. You know, while I lay here, a lot became clear to me.’

The master was excited by these words and, sitting on the edge of Ivanushka’s bed, said:

‘Ah, but that’s good, that’s good. You’ll write a sequel about him.’

Ivanushka’s eyes lit up.

‘But won’t you do that yourself?’ Here he hung his head and added pensively: ‘Ah, yes ... what am I asking?’ Ivanushka looked sidelong at the floor, his eyes fearful.

‘Yes,’ said the master, and his voice seemed unfamiliar and hollow to Ivanushka, ‘I won’t write about him any more now. I’ll be occupied with other things.’

A distant whistle cut through the noise of the storm.

‘Do you hear?’ asked the master.

‘The noise of the storm ...’

‘No, I’m being called, it’s time for me to go,’ explained the master, and he got up from the bed.

‘Wait! One word more,’ begged Ivan. ‘Did you find her? Did she remain faithful to you?’

‘Here she is,’ the master replied and pointed to the wall. The dark Margarita separated from the white wall and came up to the bed. She looked at the young man lying there and sorrow could be read in her eyes.

‘Poor boy, poor boy ...’ Margarita whispered soundlessly and bent down to the bed.

‘She’s so beautiful,’ Ivan said, without envy, but sadly, and with a certain quiet tenderness. ‘Look how well everything has turned out for you. But not so for me.’ Here he thought a little and added thoughtfully: ‘Or else maybe it is so ...’

‘It is so, it is so,’ whispered Margarita, and she bent closer to him. ‘I’m going to kiss you now, and everything will be as it should be with you ... believe me in that, I’ve seen everything, I know everything ...’ The young man put his arms around her neck and she kissed him.

‘Farewell, disciple,’ the master said barely audibly and began melting into air. He disappeared, and Margarita disappeared with him. The balcony grille was closed.

Ivanushka fell into anxiety. He sat up in bed, looked around uneasily, even moaned, began talking to himself, got up. The storm raged more and more, and evidently stirred up his soul. He was also upset by the troubling footsteps and muted voices that his ear, accustomed to the constant silence, heard outside the door. He called out, now nervous and trembling:

‘Praskovya Fyodorovna!’

Praskovya Fyodorovna was already coming into the room, looking at Ivanushka questioningly and uneasily.

‘What? What is it?’ she asked. ‘The storm upsets you? Never mind, never mind ... we’ll help you now ... I’ll call the doctor now ...’

‘No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, you needn’t call the doctor,’ said Ivanushka, looking anxiously not at Praskovya Fyodorovna but into the wall. ‘There’s nothing especially the matter with me. I can sort things out now, don’t worry. But you’d better tell me,’ Ivan begged soulfully, ‘what just happened in room one-eighteen?’

‘Eighteen?’ Praskovya Fyodorovna repeated, and her eyes became furtive. ‘Why, nothing happened there.’ But her voice was false, Ivanushka noticed it at once and said:

‘Eh, Praskovya Fyodorovna! You’re such a truthful person ... You think I’ll get violent? No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that won’t happen. You’d better speak directly, for I can feel everything through the wall.’

‘Your neighbour has just passed away,’ whispered Praskovya Fyodorovna, unable to overcome her truthfulness and kindness, and, all clothed in a flash of lightning, she looked fearfully at Ivanushka. But nothing terrible happened to Ivanushka. He only raised his finger significantly and said:

‘I knew it! I assure you, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that yet another person has just passed away in the city. I even know who,’ here Ivanushka smiled mysteriously. ‘It’s a woman!’

CHAPTER 31 On Sparrow Hills[174]

The storm was swept away without a trace, and a multicoloured rainbow, its arch thrown across all of Moscow, stood in the sky, drinking water from the Moscow River. High up, on a hill between two copses, three dark silhouettes could be seen. Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth sat in the saddle on three black horses, looking at the city spread out beyond the river, with the fragmented sun glittering in thousands of windows facing west, and at the gingerbread towers of the Devichy Convent.[175]

There was a noise in the air, and Azazello, who had the master and Margarita flying in the black tail of his cloak, alighted with them beside the waiting group.

‘We had to trouble you a little, Margarita Nikolaevna and master,’ Woland began after some silence, ‘but you won’t grudge me that. I don’t think you will regret it. So, then,’ he addressed the master alone, ‘bid farewell to the city. It’s time for us to go,’ Woland pointed with his black-gauntleted hand to where numberless suns melted the glass beyond the river, to where, above these suns, stood the mist, smoke and steam of the city scorched all day.

The master threw himself out of the saddle, left the mounted ones, and ran to the edge of the hillside. The black cloak dragged on the ground behind him. The master began to look at the city. In the first moments a wringing sadness crept over his heart, but it very quickly gave way to a sweetish anxiety, a wondering gypsy excitement.

‘For ever! ... That needs to be grasped,’ the master whispered and licked his dry, cracked lips. He began to heed and take precise note of everything that went on in his soul. His excitement turned, as it seemed to him, into a feeling of deep and grievous offence. But it was unstable, vanished, and gave way for some reason to a haughty indifference, and that to a foretaste of enduring peace.

The group of riders waited silently for the master. The group of riders watched the black, long figure on the edge of the hillside gesticulate, now raising his head, as if trying to reach across the whole city with his eyes, to peer beyond its limits, now hanging his head down, as if studying the trampled, meagre grass under his feet.

The silence was broken by the bored Behemoth.

‘Allow me, maitre,’ he began, ‘to give a farewell whistle before the ride.’

‘You may frighten the lady,’ Woland answered, ‘and, besides, don’t forget that all your outrages today are now at an end.’

‘Ah, no, no, Messire,’ responded Margarita, who sat side-saddle, arms akimbo, the sharp comer of her train hanging to the ground, ‘allow him, let him whistle. I’m overcome with sadness before the long journey. Isn’t it true, Messire, it’s quite natural even when a person knows that happiness is waiting at the end of the road? Let him make us laugh, or I’m afraid it will end in tears, and everything will be spoiled before the journey!’

Woland nodded to Behemoth, who became all animated, jumped down from the saddle, put his fingers in his mouth, puffed out his cheeks, and whistled. Margarita’s ears rang. Her horse reared, in the copse dry twigs rained down from the trees, a whole flock of crows and sparrows flew up, a pillar of dust went sweeping down to the river, and, as an excursion boat was passing the pier, one could see several of the passengers’ caps blow off into the water.

The whistle made the master start, yet he did not turn, but began gesticulating still more anxiously, raising his hand to the sky as if threatening the city. Behemoth gazed around proudly.

‘That was whistled, I don’t argue,’ Koroviev observed condescendingly, ‘whistled indeed, but, to be impartial, whistled rather middlingly.’

‘I’m not a choirmaster,’ Behemoth replied with dignity, puffing up, and he winked unexpectedly at Margarita.

‘Give us a try, for old times’ sake,’ Koroviev said, rubbed his hand, and breathed on his fingers.

‘Watch out, watch out,’ came the stem voice of Woland on his horse, ‘no inflicting of injuries.’

‘Messire, believe me,’ Koroviev responded, placing his hand on his heart, ‘in fun, merely in fun ...’ Here he suddenly stretched himself upwards, as if he were made of rubber, formed the fingers of his right hand into some clever arrangement, twisted himself up like a screw, and then, suddenly unwinding, whistled.

This whistle Margarita did not hear, but she saw it in the moment when she, together with her fiery steed, was thrown some twenty yards away. An oak tree beside her was torn up by the roots, and the ground was covered with cracks all the way to the river. A huge slab of the bank, together with the pier and the restaurant, sagged into the river. The water boiled, shot up, and the entire excursion boat with its perfectly unharmed passengers was washed on to the low bank opposite. A jackdaw, killed by Fagott’s whistle, was flung at the feet of Margarita’s snorting steed.

The master was startled by this whistle. He clutched his head and ran back to the group of waiting companions.

‘Well, then,’ Woland addressed him from the height of his steed, ‘is your farewell completed?’

‘Yes, it’s completed,’ the master replied and, having calmed down, looked directly and boldly into Woland’s face.

And then over the hills like a trumpet blast rolled Woland’s terrible voice:

‘It’s time!!’ — and with it the sharp whistle and guffaw of Behemoth.

The steeds tore off, and the riders rose into the air and galloped. Margarita felt her furious steed champing and straining at the bit. Woland’s cloak billowed over the heads of the cavalcade; the cloak began to cover the evening sky. When the black shroud was momentarily blown aside, Margarita looked back as she rode and saw that there not only were no multicoloured towers behind them, but the city itself had long been gone. It was as if it had fallen through the earth - only mist and smoke were left ...

CHAPTER 32 Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge

Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.

The magical black horses also became tired and carried their riders slowly, and ineluctable night began to overtake them. Sensing it at his back, even the irrepressible Behemoth quieted down and, his claws sunk into the saddle, flew silent and serious, puffing up his tail.

Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit melancholy little lights somewhere far below - now no longer interesting and necessary either for Margarita or for the master — alien lights. Night was outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.

Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders’ cloaks and, tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when, from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising to meet them, all deceptions vanished, fell into the swamp, the unstable magic garments drowned in the mists.

Hardly recognizable as Koroviev-Fagott, the self-appointed interpreter to the mysterious consultant who needed no interpreting, was he who now flew just beside Woland, to the right of the master’s friend. In place of him who had left Sparrow Hills in a ragged circus costume under the name of Koroviev-Fagott, there now rode, softly clinking the golden chains of the bridle, a dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and never-smiling face. He rested his chin on his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not interested in the earth, he was thinking something of his own, flying beside Woland.

‘Why has he changed so?’ Margarita quietly asked Woland to the whistling of the wind.

‘This knight once made an unfortunate joke,’ replied Woland, turning his face with its quietly burning eye to Margarita. ‘The pun he thought up, in a discussion about light and darkness, was not altogether good. And after that the knight had to go on joking a bit more and longer than he supposed. But this is one of the nights when accounts are settled. The knight has paid up and closed his account.’

Night also tore off Behemoth’s fluffy tail, pulled off his fur and scattered it in tufts over the swamps. He who had been a cat, entertaining the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a slim youth, a demon-page, the best jester the world has ever seen. Now he, too, grew quiet and flew noiselessly, setting his young face towards the light that streamed from the moon.

At the far side, the steel of his armour glittering, flew Azazello. The moon also changed his face. The absurd, ugly fang disappeared without a trace, and the albugo on his eye proved false. Azazello’s eyes were both the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello flew in his true form, as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.

Margarita could not see herself, but she saw very well how the master had changed. His hair was now white in the moonlight and gathered behind in a braid, and it flew on the wind. When the wind blew the cloak away from the master’s legs, Margarita saw the stars of spurs on his jackboots, now going out, now lighting up. Like the demon-youth, the master flew with his eyes fixed on the moon, yet smiling to it, as to a close and beloved friend, and, from a habit acquired in room no. 118, murmuring something to himself.

And, finally, Woland also flew in his true image. Margarita could not have said what his horse’s bridle was made of, but thought it might be chains of moonlight, and the horse itself was a mass of darkness, and the horse’s mane a storm cloud, and the rider’s spurs the white flecks of stars.

Thus they flew in silence for a long time, until the place itself began to change below them. The melancholy forests drowned in earthly darkness and drew with them the dim blades of the rivers. Boulders appeared and began to gleam below, with black gaps between them where the moonlight did not penetrate.

Woland reined in his horse on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and the riders then proceeded at a walk, listening to the crunch of flint and stone under the horses’ shoes. Moonlight flooded the platform greenly and brightly, and soon Margarita made out an armchair in this deserted place and in it the white figure of a seated man. Possibly the seated man was deaf, or else too sunk in his own thoughts. He did not hear the stony earth shudder under the horses’ weight, and the riders approached him without disturbing him.

The moon helped Margarita well, it shone better than the best electric lantern, and Margarita saw that the seated man, whose eyes seemed blind, rubbed his hands fitfully, and peered with those same unseeing eyes at the disc of the moon. Now Margarita saw that beside the heavy stone chair, on which sparks glittered in the moonlight, lay a dark, huge, sharp-eared dog, and, like its master, it gazed anxiously at the moon. Pieces of a broken jug were scattered by the seated man’s feet and an undrying black-red puddle spread there.

The riders stopped their horses.

‘Your novel has been read,’ Woland began, turning to the master, ‘and the only thing said about it was that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So, then, I wanted to show you your hero. For about two thousand years he has been sitting on this platform and sleeping, but when the full moon comes, as you see, he is tormented by insomnia. It torments not only him, but also his faithful guardian, the dog. If it is true that cowardice is the most grievous vice, then the dog at least is not guilty of it. Storms were the only thing the brave dog feared. Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.’

‘What is he saying?’ asked Margarita, and her perfectly calm face clouded over with compassion.

‘He says one and the same thing,’ Woland replied. ‘He says that even the moon gives him no peace, and that his is a bad job. That is what he always says when he is not asleep, and when he sleeps, he dreams one and the same thing: there is a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk down it and talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because, as he insists, he never finished what he was saying that time, long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason he never manages to get on to this path, and no one comes to him. Then there’s no help for it, he must talk to himself. However, one does need some diversity, and to his talk about the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates his immortality and his unheard-of fame. He maintains that he would willingly exchange his lot for that of the ragged tramp Matthew Levi.’

‘Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn’t that too much?’ asked Margarita.

‘Repeating the story with Frieda?’ said Woland. ‘But don’t trouble yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.’

‘Let him go!’ Margarita suddenly cried piercingly, as she had cried once as a witch, and at this cry a stone fell somewhere in the mountains and tumbled down the ledges into the abyss, filling the mountains with rumbling. But Margarita could not have said whether it was the rumbling of its fall or the rumbling of satanic laughter. In any case, Woland was laughing as he glanced at Margarita and said:

‘Don’t shout in the mountains, he’s accustomed to avalanches anyway, and it won’t rouse him. You don’t need to ask for him, Margarita, because the one he so yearns to talk with has already asked for him.’ Here Woland turned to the master and said: ‘Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase!’

The master seemed to have been expecting this, as he stood motionless and looked at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands to his mouth and cried out so that the echo leaped over the unpeopled and unforested mountains:

‘You’re free! You’re free! He’s waiting for you!’

The mountains turned the master’s voice to thunder, and by this same thunder they were destroyed. The accursed rocky walls collapsed. Only the platform with the stone armchair remained. Over the black abyss into which the walls had gone, a boundless city lit up, dominated by gleaming idols above a garden grown luxuriously over many thousands of moons. The path of moonlight so long awaited by the procurator stretched right to this garden, and the first to rush down it was the sharp-eared dog. The man in the white cloak with blood-red lining rose from the armchair and shouted something in a hoarse, cracked voice. It was impossible to tell whether he was weeping or laughing, or what he shouted. It could only be seen that, following his faithful guardian, he, too, rushed headlong down the path of moonlight.

‘I’m to follow him there?’ the master asked anxiously, holding the bridle.

‘No,’ replied Woland, ‘why run after what is already finished?’

‘There, then?’ the master asked, turning and pointing back, where the recently abandoned city with the gingerbread towers of its convent, with the sun broken to smithereens in its windows, now wove itself behind them.

‘Not there, either,’ replied Woland, and his voice thickened and flowed over the rocks. ‘Romantic master! He, whom the hero you invented and have just set free so yearns to see, has read your novel.’ Here Woland turned to Margarita: ‘Margarita Nikolaevna! It is impossible not to believe that you have tried to think up the best future for the master, but, really, what I am offering you, and what Yeshua has asked for you, is better still! Leave them to each other,’ Woland said, leaning towards the master’s saddle from his own, pointing to where the procurator had gone, ‘let’s not interfere with them. And maybe they’ll still arrive at something.’ Here Woland waved his arm in the direction of Yershalaim, and it went out.

‘And there, too,’ Woland pointed behind them, ‘what are you going to do in the little basement?’ Here the sun broken up in the glass went out. ‘Why?’ Woland went on persuasively and gently, ‘oh, thrice-romantic master, can it be that you don’t want to go strolling with your friend in the daytime under cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening listen to Schubert’s music? Can it be that you won’t like writing with a goose quill by candlelight? Can it be that you don’t want to sit over a retort like Faust, in hopes that you’ll succeed in forming a new homunculus? There! There! The house and the old servant are already waiting for you, the candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will immediately meet the dawn. Down this path, master, this one! Farewell! It’s time for me to go!’

‘Farewell!’ Margarita and the master answered Woland in one cry. Then the black Woland, heedless of any road, threw himself into a gap, and his retinue noisily hurtled down after him. There were no rocks, no platform, no path of moonlight, no Yershalaim around. The black steeds also vanished. The master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began straight away, immediately after the midnight moon. The master walked with his friend in the brilliance of the first rays of morning over a mossy little stone bridge. They crossed it. The faithful lovers left the stream behind and walked down the sandy path.

‘Listen to the stillness,’ Margarita said to the master, and the sand rustled under her bare feet, ‘listen and enjoy what you were not given in life — peace. Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which you have been given as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the twisting vine, it climbs right up to the roof. Here is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings you will be visited by those you love, those who interest you and who will never trouble you. They will play for you, they will sing for you, you will see what light is in the room when the candles are burning. You will fall asleep, having put on your greasy and eternal nightcap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you will no longer be able to drive me away. I will watch over your sleep.’

Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the master to their eternal home, and it seemed to the master that Margarita’s words flowed in the same way as the stream they had left behind flowed and whispered, and the master’s memory, the master’s anxious, needled memory began to fade. Someone was setting the master free, as he himself had just set free the hero he had created. This hero had gone into the abyss, gone irrevocably, the son of the astrologer-king, forgiven on the eve of Sunday, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.

Epilogue

But all the same — what happened later in Moscow, after that Saturday evening when Woland left the capital, having disappeared from Sparrow Hills at sunset with his retinue?

Of the fact that, for a long time, a dense hum of the most incredible rumours went all over the capital and very quickly spread to remote and forsaken provincial places as well, nothing need be said. It is even nauseating to repeat such rumours.

The writer of these truthful lines himself, personally, on a trip to Feodosiya, heard a story on the train about two thousand persons in Moscow coming out of a theatre stark-naked in the literal sense of the word and in that fashion returning home in taxi-cabs.

The whisper ‘unclean powers’ was heard in queues waiting at dairy stores, in tram-cars, shops, apartments, kitchens, on trains both suburban and long-distance, in stations big and small, at summer resorts and on beaches.

The most developed and cultured people, to be sure, took no part in this tale-telling about the unclean powers that had visited Moscow, even laughed at them and tried to bring the tellers to reason. But all the same a fact, as they say, is a fact, and to brush it aside without explanations is simply impossible: someone had visited the capital. The nice little cinders left over from Griboedov’s, and many other things as well, confirmed that only too eloquently.

Cultured people adopted the view of the investigation: it had been the work of a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists with a superb command of their art.

Measures for catching them, in Moscow as well as outside it, were of course immediately and energetically taken, but, most regrettably, produced no results. The one calling himself Woland disappeared with all his company and neither returned to Moscow nor appeared anywhere else, and did not manifest himself in any way. Quite naturally, the suggestion emerged that he had fled abroad, but there, too, he gave no signs of himself.

The investigation of his case continued for a long time. Because, in truth, it was a monstrous case! Not to mention four burned-down buildings and hundreds of people driven mad, there had been murders. Of two this could be said with certainty: of Berlioz, and of that ill-fated employee of the bureau for acquainting foreigners with places of interest in Moscow, the former Baron Meigel. They had been murdered. The charred bones of the latter were discovered in apartment no. 50 on Sadovaya Street after the fire was put out. Yes, there were victims, and these victims called for investigation.

But there were other victims as well, even after Woland left the capital, and these victims, sadly enough, were black cats.

Approximately a hundred of these peaceful and useful animals, devoted to mankind, were shot or otherwise exterminated in various parts of the country. About a dozen cats, some badly disfigured, were delivered to police stations in various cities. For instance, in Armavir one of these perfectly guiltless beasts was brought to the police by some citizen with its front paws tied.

This cat had been ambushed by the citizen at the very moment when the animal, with a thievish look (how can it be helped if cats have this look? It is not because they are depraved, but because they are afraid lest some beings stronger than themselves — dogs or people — cause them some harm or offence. Both are very easy to do, but I assure you there is no credit in doing so, no, none at all!), so, then, with a thievish look the cat was for some reason about to dash into the burdock.

Falling upon the cat and tearing his necktie off to bind it, the citizen muttered venomously and threateningly:

‘Aha! So now you’ve been so good as to come to our Armavir, mister hypnotist? Well, we’re not afraid of you here. Don’t pretend to be dumb! We know what kind of goose you are!’

The citizen brought the cat to the police, dragging the poor beast by its front paws, bound with a green necktie, giving it little kicks to make the cat walk not otherwise than on its hind legs.

‘You quit that,’ cried the citizen, accompanied by whistling boys, ‘quit playing the fool! It won’t do! Kindly walk like everybody else!’

The black cat only rolled its martyred eyes. Being deprived by nature of the gift of speech, it could not vindicate itself in any way. The poor beast owed its salvation first of all to the police, and then to its owner — a venerable old widow. As soon as the cat was delivered to the police station, it was realized that the citizen smelled rather strongly of alcohol, as a result of which his evidence was at once subject to doubt. And the little old lady, having meanwhile learned from neighbours that her cat had been hauled in, rushed to the station and arrived in the nick of time. She gave the most flattering references for the cat, explained that she had known it for five years, since it was a kitten, that she vouched for it as for her own self, and proved that it had never been known to do anything bad and had never been to Moscow. As it had been born in Armavir, so there it had grown up and learned the catching of mice.

The cat was untied and returned to its owner, having tasted grief, it’s true, and having learned by experience the meaning of error and slander.

Besides cats, some minor unpleasantnesses befell certain persons. Detained for a short time were: in Leningrad, the citizens Wolman and Wolper; in Saratov, Kiev and Kharkov, three Volodins; in Kazan, one Volokh; and in Penza — this for totally unknown reasons - doctor of chemical sciences Vetchinkevich. True, he was enormously tall, very swarthy and dark-haired.

In various places, besides that, nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two Karavaevs were caught.

A certain citizen was taken off the Sebastopol train and bound at the Belgorod station. This citizen had decided to entertain his fellow passengers with card tricks.

In Yaroslavl, a citizen came to a restaurant at lunch-time carrying a primus which he had just picked up from being repaired. The moment they saw him, the two doormen abandoned their posts in the coatroom and fled, and after them fled all the restaurant’s customers and personnel. With that, in some inexplicable fashion, the girl at the cash register had all the money disappear on her.

There was much else, but one cannot remember everything.

Again and again justice must be done to the investigation. Every attempt was made not only to catch the criminals, but to explain all their mischief. And it all was explained, and these explanations cannot but be acknowledged as sensible and irrefutable.

Representatives of the investigation and experienced psychiatrists established that members of the criminal gang, or one of them perhaps (suspicion fell mainly on Koroviev), were hypnotists of unprecedented power, who could show themselves not in the place where they actually were, but in imaginary, shifted positions. Along with that, they could freely suggest to those they encountered that certain things or people were where they actually were not, and, contrariwise, could remove from the field of vision things or people that were in fact to be found within that field of vision.

In the light of such explanations, decidedly everything was clear, even what the citizens found most troublesome, the apparently quite inexplicable invulnerability of the cat, shot at in apartment no. 50 during the attempt to put him under arrest.

There had been no cat on the chandelier, naturally, nor had anyone even thought of returning their fire, the shooters had been aiming at an empty spot, while Koroviev, having suggested that the cat was acting up on the chandelier, was free to stand behind the shooters’ backs, mugging and enjoying his enormous, albeit criminally employed, capacity for suggestion. It was he, of course, who had set fire to the apartment by spilling the benzene.

Styopa Likhodeev had, of course, never gone to any Yalta (such a stunt was beyond even Koroviev’s powers), nor had he sent any telegrams from there. After fainting in the jeweller’s wife’s apartment, frightened by a trick of Koroviev’s, who had shown him a cat holding a pickled mushroom on a fork, he lay there until Koroviev, jeering at him, capped him with a shaggy felt hat and sent him to the Moscow airport, having first suggested to the representatives of the investigation who went to meet Styopa that Styopa would be getting off the plane from Sebastopol.

True, the criminal investigation department in Yalta maintained that they had received the barefoot Styopa, and had sent telegrams concerning Styopa to Moscow, but no copies of these telegrams were found in the files, from which the sad but absolutely invincible conclusion was drawn that the hypnotizing gang was able to hypnotize at an enormous distance, and not only individual persons but even whole groups of them.

Under these circumstances, the criminals were able to drive people of the most sturdy psychic make-up out of their minds. To say nothing of such trifles as the pack of cards in the pocket of someone in the stalls, the women’s disappearing dresses, or the miaowing beret, or other things of that sort! Such stunts can be pulled by any professional hypnotist of average ability on any stage, including the uncomplicated trick of tearing the head off the master of ceremonies. The talking cat was also sheer nonsense. To present people with such a cat, it is enough to have a command of the basic principles of ventriloquism, and scarcely anyone will doubt that Koroviev’s art went significantly beyond those principles.

Yes, the point here lay not at all in packs of cards, or the false letters in Nikanor Ivanovich’s briefcase! These were all trifles! It was he, Koroviev, who had sent Berlioz to certain death under the tram-car. It was he who had driven the poor poet Ivan Homeless crazy, he who had made him have visions, see ancient Yershalaim in tormenting dreams, and sun-scorched, waterless Bald Mountain with three men hanging on posts. It was he and his gang who had made Margarita Nikolaevna and her housekeeper Natasha disappear from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigation considered this matter with special attention. It had to find out if the two women had been abducted by the gang of murderers and arsonists or had fled voluntarily with the criminal company. On the basis of the absurd and incoherent evidence of Nikolai Ivanovich, and considering the strange and insane note Margarita Nikolaevna had left for her husband, the note in which she wrote that she had gone off to become a witch, as well as the circumstance that Natasha had disappeared leaving all her clothes behind, the investigation concluded that both mistress and housekeeper, like many others, had been hypnotized, and had thus been abducted by the band. There also emerged the probably quite correct thought that the criminals had been attracted by the beauty of the two women.

Yet what remained completely unclear to the investigation was the gang’s motive in abducting the mental patient who called himself the master from the psychiatric clinic. This they never succeeded in establishing, nor did they succeed in obtaining the abducted man’s last name. Thus he vanished for ever under the dead alias of number one-eighteen from the first building.

And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to an end, as everything generally comes to an end.

Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget Woland, Koroviev and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who suffered from Woland and his company, and however trifling and insignificant those changes are, they still ought to be noted.

Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety, and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets: the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious. Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without his head, was much too painful.

And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the master of ceremonies retired and started living on his savings, which, by his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years.

He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance, never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice: ‘May I help you?’ And to the request that Varenukha be called to the phone, the same voice hastens to answer: ‘At your service.’ And, oh, how Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness!

Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety. Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days, Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly improved his health. They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from women.

The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head wagging, the findirector submitted a request to be dismissed from the Variety. The interesting thing was that this request was brought to the Variety by Rimsky’s wife. Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its way to the lower latch.

Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children’s marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to run into the much esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov on matters of acoustics. The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady Apollonovich’s relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as they had been, so they remained, no matter how he tried to improve them.

Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation. Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Sawa Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovich had suffered a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple that he almost followed after Sawa Potapovich, and bellowed: ‘Serves him right!’ Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai.

Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed, nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova, who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The only living person to fly into this dream was precisely Savva Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory owing to his frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not.

So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! He not only existed, but he exists even now and precisely in the post given up by Rimsky, that is, the post of findirector of the Variety.

Coming to his senses about twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland, on a train somewhere near Vyatka, Aloisy realized that, having for some reason left Moscow in a darkened state of mind, he had forgotten to put on his trousers, but instead had stolen, with an unknown purpose, the completely useless household register of the builder. Paying a colossal sum of money to the conductor, Aloisy acquired from him an old and greasy pair of pants, and in Vyatka he turned back. But, alas, he did not find the builder’s little house. The decrepit trash had been licked clean away by a fire. But Aloisy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was living in a splendid room on Briusovsky Lane, and a few months later he was sitting in Rimsky’s office. And as Rimsky had once suffered because of Styopa, so now Varenukha was tormented because of Aloisy. Ivan Savelyevich’s only dream is that this Aloisy should be removed somewhere out of sight, because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, he supposedly has never in his life met ‘such scum as this Aloisy’, and he supposedly expects anything you like from this Aloisy.

However, the administrator is perhaps prejudiced. Aloisy has not been known for any shady business, or for any business at all, unless of course we count his appointing someone else to replace the barman Sokov. For Andrei Fokich died of liver cancer in the clinic of the First MSU some ten months after Woland’s appearance in Moscow.

Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in this book have healed over and faded from memory. But not for everyone, not for everyone.

Each year, with the festal spring full moon,[176] a man of about thirty or thirty-odd appears towards evening under the lindens at the Patriarch’s Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev.

Coming under the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench on which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon breaking to pieces for the last time in his life. Whole now, white at the start of the evening, then gold with a dark horse-dragon, it floats over the former poet Ivan Nikolaevich and at the same time stays in place at its height.

Ivan Nikolaevich is aware of everything, he knows and understands everything. He knows that as a young man he fell victim to criminal hypnotists and was afterwards treated and cured. But he also knows that there are things he cannot manage. He cannot manage this spring full moon. As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary that once hung higher than the two five-branched candlesticks begins to swell and fill with gold, Ivan Nikolaevich becomes anxious, nervous, he loses appetite and sleep, waiting till the moon ripens. And when the full moon comes, nothing can keep Ivan Nikolaevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to the Patriarch’s Ponds.

Sitting on the bench, Ivan Nikolaevich openly talks to himself, smokes, squints now at the moon, now at the memorable turnstile.

Ivan Nikolaevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he leaves his place and, always following the same itinerary, goes with empty and unseeing eyes through Spiridonovka to the lanes of the Arbat.

He passes the kerosene shop, turns by a lopsided old gaslight, and steals up to a fence, behind which he sees a luxuriant, though as yet unclothed, garden, and in it a Gothic mansion, moon-washed on the side with the triple bay window and dark on the other.

The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in the mansion, but he does know that there is no fighting with himself on the night of the full moon. Besides, he knows that he will inevitably see one and the same thing in the garden behind the fence.

He will see an elderly and respectable man with a little beard, wearing a pince-nez, and with slightly piggish features, sitting on a bench. Ivan Nikolaevich always finds this resident of the mansion in one and the same dreamy pose, his eyes turned towards the moon. It is known to Ivan Nikolaevich that, after admiring the moon, the seated man will unfailingly turn his gaze to the bay windows and fix it on them, as if expecting that they would presently be flung open and something extraordinary would appear on the window-sill. The whole sequel Ivan Nikolaevich knows by heart. Here he must bury himself deeper behind the fence, for presently the seated man will begin to turn his head restlessly, to snatch at something in the air with a wandering gaze, to smile rapturously, and then he will suddenly clasp his hands in a sort of sweet anguish, and then he will murmur simply and rather loudly:

‘Venus! Venus! ... Ah, fool that I am! ...’

‘Gods, gods!’ Ivan Nikolaevich will begin to whisper, hiding behind the fence and never taking his kindling eyes off the mysterious stranger. ‘Here is one more of the moon’s victims ... Yes, one more victim, like me ...’

And the seated man will go on talking:

‘Ah, fool that I am! Why, why didn’t I fly off with her? What were you afraid of, old ass? Got yourself a certificate! Ah, suffer now, you old cretin! ...’

It will go on like this until a window in the dark part of the mansion bangs, something whitish appears in it, and an unpleasant female voice rings out:

‘Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What is this fantasy? Want to catch malaria? Come and have tea!’

Here, of course, the seated man will recover his senses and reply in a lying voice:

‘I wanted a breath of air, a breath of air, dearest! The air is so nice! ...’

And here he will get up from the bench, shake his fist on the sly at the closing ground-floor window, and trudge back to the house.

‘Lying, he’s lying! Oh, gods, how he’s lying!’ Ivan Nikolaevich mutters as he leaves the fence. ‘It’s not the air that draws him to the garden, he sees something at the time of this spring full moon, in the garden, up there! Ah, I’d pay dearly to penetrate his mystery, to know who this Venus is that he’s lost and now fruitlessly feels for in the air, trying to catch her! ...’

And the professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and urges him to go to bed. But she herself does not go to bed and sits by the lamp with a book, looking with grieving eyes at the sleeper. She knows that Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up at dawn with a painful cry, will begin to weep and thrash. Therefore there lies before her, prepared ahead of time, on the tablecloth, under the lamp, a syringe in alcohol and an ampoule of liquid the colour of dark tea.

The poor woman, tied to a gravely ill man, is now free and can sleep without apprehensions. After the injection, Ivan Nikolaevich will sleep till morning with a blissful face, having sublime and blissful dreams unknown to her.

It is always one and the same thing that awakens the scholar and draws pitiful cries from him on the night of the full moon. He sees some unnatural, noseless executioner who, leaping up and hooting somehow with his voice, sticks his spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and has gone insane. But it is not the executioner who is frightening so much as the unnatural lighting in this dream, caused by some dark cloud boiling and heaving itself upon the earth, as happens only during world catastrophes.

After the injection, everything changes before the sleeping man. A broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window, and a man in a white cloak with blood-red lining gets on to this path and begins to walk towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a disfigured face. The walkers talk heatedly about something, they argue, they want to reach some understanding.

‘Gods, gods!’ says that man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to his companion. ‘Such a banal execution! But, please,’ here the face turns from haughty to imploring, ‘tell me it never happened! I implore you, tell me, it never happened?’

‘Well, of course it never happened,’ his companion replies in a hoarse voice, ‘you imagined it.’

‘And you can swear it to me?’ the man in the cloak asks ingratiatingly.

‘I swear it!’ replies his companion, and his eyes smile for some reason.

‘I need nothing more!’ the man in the cloak exclaims in a husky voice and goes ever higher towards the moon, drawing his companion along. Behind them a gigantic, sharp-eared dog walks calmly and majestically.

Then the moonbeam boils up, a river of moonlight begins to gush from it and pours out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances and frolics. Then a woman of boundless beauty forms herself in the stream, and by the hand she leads out to Ivan a man overgrown with beard who glances around fearfully. Ivan Nikolaevich recognizes him at once. It is number one-eighteen, his nocturnal guest. In his dream Ivan Nikolaevich reaches his arms out to him and asks greedily:

‘So it ended with that?’

‘It ended with that, my disciple,’ answers number one-eighteen, and then the woman comes up to Ivan and says:

‘Of course, with that. Everything has ended, and everything ends ... And I will kiss you on the forehead, and everything with you will be as it should be ...’

She bends over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan reaches out to her and peers into her eyes, but she retreats, retreats, and together with her companion goes towards the moon ...

Then the moon begins to rage, it pours streams of light down right on Ivan, it sprays light in all directions, a flood of moonlight engulfs the room, the light heaves, rises higher, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan Nikolaevich sleeps with a blissful face.

The next morning he wakes up silent but perfectly calm and well. His needled memory grows quiet, and until the next full moon no one will trouble the professor — neither the noseless killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.