The Master and Margarita (35 page)

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 séance 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 séance.

“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 séance 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 Manege.[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 sacking 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 reluctandy.

“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...”