set fire to a pile of old newspapers on the divan, then the manuscript and
the curtains.
The master, intoxicated in advance by the thought of the ride to come,
threw a book from the bookcase on to the table, thrust its leaves into the
burning tablecloth and the book burst merrily into flame. ' Burn away, past!
'
'Burn, suffering! ' cried Margarita.
Crimson pillars of fire were swaying all over the room, when the three
ran out of the smoking door, up the stone steps and out into the courtyard.
The first thing they saw was the landlord's cook sitting on the ground
surrounded by potato peelings and bunches of onions. Her position was hardly
surprising--three black horses were standing in the yard, snorting,
quivering and kicking up the ground in fountains. Margarita mounted the
first, then Azazello and the master last. Groaning, the cook was about to
raise her hand to make the sign of the cross when Azazello shouted
threateningly from the saddle :
'If you do, I'll cut off your arm! ' He whistled and the horses,
smashing the branches of the lime tree, whinnied and plunged upwards into a
low black cloud. From below came the cook's faint, pathetic cry :
'Fire . . .'
The horses were already galloping over the roofs of Moscow.
'I want to say goodbye to someone,' shouted the master to Azazello,
who was cantering along in front of him. Thunder drowned the end of the
master's sentence. Azazello nodded and urged his horse into a gallop. A
cloud was rushing towards them, though it had not yet begun to spatter rain.
They flew over the boulevard, watching as the little figures ran in all
directions to shelter from the rain. The first drops were falling. They flew
over a pillar of smoke--all that was left of Griboyedov. On they flew over
the city in the gathering darkness. Lightning flashed above them. Then the
roofs changed to treetops. Only then did the rain begin to lash them and
turned them into three great bubbles in the midst of endless water.
Margarita was already used to the sensation of flight, but the master
was not and he was amazed how quickly they reached their destination, where
he wished to say goodbye to the only other person who meant anything to him.
Through the veil of rain he immediately recognised Stravinsky's clinic, the
river and the pine-forest on the far bank that he had stared at for so long.
They landed among a clump of trees in a meadow not far from the clinic.
'I'll wait for you here,' shouted Azazello, folding his arms. For a
moment he was lit up by a flash of lightning then vanished again in the grey
pall. ' You can say goodbye, but hurry!'
The master and Margarita dismounted and flew, like watery shadows,
through the clinic garden. A moment later the master was pushing aside the
balcony grille of No. 117 with a practised hand. Margarita followed him.
They walked into Ivan's room, invisible and unnoticed, as the storm howled
and thundered. The master stopped by the bed.
Ivan was lying motionless, as he had been when he had first watched the
storm from his enforced rest-home. This time, however, he was not crying.
After staring for a while at the dark shape that entered his room from the
balcony, he sat up, stretched out his arms and said joyfully :
'Oh, it's you! I've been waiting for you! It's you, my neighbour!'
To this the master answered :
Yes, it's me, but I'm afraid I shan't be your neighbour any longer. I
am flying away for ever and I've only come to say goodbye.'
'I knew, I guessed,' replied Ivan quietly, then asked :
'Did you meet him? '
'Yes,' said the master, ' I have come to say goodbye to you because
you're the only person I have been able to talk to in these last days.'
Ivan beamed and said :
'I'm so glad you came. You see, I 'm going to keep my word, I shan't
write any more stupid poetry. Something else interests me now--' Ivan smiled
and stared crazily past the figure of the master--' I want to write
something quite different. I have come to understand a lot of things since
I've been lying here.'
The master grew excited at this and said as he sat down on the edge of
Ivan's bed:
'That's good, that's good. You must write the sequel to it.'
Ivan's eyes sparkled.
'But won't you be writing it?' Then he looked down and added
thoughtfully : ' Oh, yes, of course . . . what am I saying.' Ivan stared at
the ground, frightened.
'No,' said the master, and his voice seemed to Ivan unfamiliar and
hollow. ' I won't write about him any more. I shall be busy with other
things.'
The roar of the storm was pierced by a distant whistle.
'Do you hear? ' asked the master.
'The noise of the storm . . .'
'No, they're calling me, it's time for me to go,' explained the master
and got up from the bed.
'Wait! One more thing,' begged Ivan. ' Did you find her? Had she been
faithful to you? '
'Here she is,' replied the master, pointing to the wall. The dark
figure of Margarita materialised from the wall and moved over to the bed.
She looked at the young man in the bed and her eyes filled with sorrow.
'Poor, poor boy . . .' she whispered silently, and bent over the bed.
'How beautiful she is,' said Ivan, without envy but sadly and
touchingly. ' Everything has worked out wonderfully for you, you lucky
fellow. And here am I, sick . . .' He thought for a moment, then added
thoughtfully : ' Or perhaps I'm not so sick after all . . .'
'That's right,' whispered Margarita, bending right down to Ivan. '
I'll kiss you and everything will be as it should be ... believe me, I know
. . .'
Ivan put his arms round her neck and she kissed him.
'Farewell, disciple,' said the master gently and began to melt into
the air. He vanished, Margarita with him. The grille closed.
Ivan felt uneasy. He sat up in bed, gazing round anxiously, groaned,
talked to himself, got up. The storm was raging with increasing violence and
it was obviously upsetting him. It upset him so much that his hearing,
lulled by the permanent silence, caught the sound of anxious footsteps,
murmured voices outside his door. Trembling, he called out irritably :
'Praskovya Fyodorovna!'
As the nurse came into the room, she gave Ivan a -worried, enquiring
look:
'What's the matter? ' she asked. ' Is the storm frightening you? Don't
worry--I'll bring you something in a moment . . . I'll call the doctor right
away . . .'
'No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, you needn't call the doctor,' said Ivan,
staring anxiously not at her but at the wall, ' there's nothing particularly
wrong with me. I'm in my right mind now, don't be afraid. But you might tell
me,' asked Ivan confidentially, ' what has just happened next door in No.
118? '
'In 118? ' Praskovya Fyodorovna repeated hesitantly. Her eyes flickered
in embarrassment. ' Nothing has happened there.' But her voice betrayed her.
Ivan noticed this at once and said:
'Oh, Praskovya Fyodorovna! You're such a truthful person . . . Are you
afraid I'll get violent? No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, I won't. You had better
tell me, you see I can sense it all through that wall.'
'Your neighbour has just died,' whispered Praskovya Fyodorovna, unable
to overcome her natural truthfulness and goodness, and she gave a frightened
glance at Ivan, who was suddenly clothed in lightning. But nothing terrible
happened. He only raised his finger and said :
'I knew it! I am telling you, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that another
person has just died in Moscow too. I even know who ' --here Ivan smiled
mysteriously--' it is a woman!'
The storm had passed and a rainbow had arched itself across the sky,
its foot in the Moscow River. On top of a hill between two clumps of trees
could be seen three dark silhouettes. Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth sat
mounted on black horses, looking at the city spread out beyond the river
with fragments of sun glittering from thousands of west-facing windows, and
at the onion domes of the Novodevichy monastery.
There was a rustling in the air and Azazello, followed in a black
cavalcade by the master and Margarita, landed by the group of waiting
figures.
'I'm afraid we had to frighten you a little, Margarita Nikolay-evna,
and you, master,' said Woland after a pause. ' But I don't think you will
have cause to complain to me about it or regret it. Now,' he turned to the
master, ' say goodbye to this city. It's time for us to go.' Woland pointed
his hand in its black gauntlet to where countless glass suns glittered
beyond the river, where above those suns the city exhaled the haze, smoke
and steam of the day.
The master leaped from his saddle, left his companions and ran to the
hillside, black cloak flapping over the ground behind him. He looked at the
city. For the first few moments a tremor of sadness crept over his heart,
but it soon changed to a delicious excitement, the gypsy's thrill of the
open road.
'For ever ... I must think what that means,' whispered the master, and
locked his dry, cracked lips. He began to listen to what was happening in
his heart. His excitement, it seemed to him, had given way to a profound and
grievous sense of hurt. But it was only momentary and gave place to one of
proud indifference and finally to a presentiment of eternal peace.
The party of riders waited for the master in silence. They watched the
tall, black figure on the hillside gesticulate, then raise his head as
though trying to cast his glance over the whole city and to look beyond its
edge ; then he hung his head as if he were studying the sparse, trampled
grass under his feet.
Behemoth, who was getting bored, broke the silence :
'Please, man maitre,' he said, ' let me give a farewell whistle-call.'
'You might frighten the lady,' replied Woland, ' besides, don't forget
that you have done enough fooling about for one visit. Behave yourself now.'
'Oh no, messire,' cried Margarita, sitting her mount like an Amazon,
one arm akimbo, her long black train reaching to the ground. ' Please let
him whistle. I feel sad at the thought of the journey. It's quite a natural
feeling, even when you know it will end in happiness. If you won't let him
make us laugh, I shall cry, and the journey will be ruined before we start.'
Woland nodded to Behemoth. Delighted, the cat leaped to the ground, out
its paws in its mouth, filled its cheeks and whistled.
Margarita's ears sang. Her horse roared, twigs snapped off nearby
trees, a flock of rooks and crows flew up, a cloud of dust billowed towards
the river and several passengers on a river steamer below had their hats
blown off.
The whistle-blast made the master flinch; he did not turn round, but
began gesticulating even more violently, raising his fist skywards as though
threatening the city. Behemoth looked proudly round.
'You whistled, I grant you,' said Koroviev condescendingly. ' But
frankly it was a very mediocre whistle.'
'I'm not a choirmaster, though,' said Behemoth with dignity, puffing
out his chest and suddenly winking at Margarita.
'Let me have a try, just for old time's sake,' said Koroviev. He
rubbed his hands and blew on his fingers.
'Very well,' said Woland sternly, ' but without endangering life or
limb, please.'
'Purely for fun, I promise you, messire,' Koroviev assured him, hand
on heart. He suddenly straightened up, seemed to stretch as though he were
made of rubber, waved the fingers of his right hand, wound himself up like a
spring and then, suddenly uncoiling, he whistled.
Margarita did not hear this whistle, but she felt it, as she and her
horse were picked up and thrown twenty yards sideways. Beside her the bark
was ripped off an oak tree and cracks opened in the ground as far as the
river. The water in it boiled and heaved and a river steamer, with all its
passengers unharmed, was grounded on the far bank by the blast. A jackdaw,
killed by Faggot's whistle, fell at the feet of Margarita's snorting horse.
This time the master was thoroughly frightened and ran back to his
waiting companions.
'Well,' said Woland to him from the saddle, ' have you made your
farewell?'
'Yes, I have,' said the master and boldly returned Woland's stare.
Then like the blast of a trumpet the terrible voice of Woland rang out
over the hills :
'It is time!'
As an echo came a piercing laugh and a whistle from Behemoth. The
horses leaped into the air and the riders rose with them as they galloped
upwards. Margarita could feel her fierce horse biting and tugging at the
bit. Woland's cloak billowed out over the heads of the cavalcade and as
evening drew on, his cloak began to cover the whole vault of the sky. When
the black veil blew aside for a moment, Margarita turned round in flight and
saw that not only the many-coloured towers but the whole city had long
vanished from sight, swallowed by the earth, leaving only mist and smoke
where it had been.
How sad, ye gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the
mists over the swamps. You will know it when vou have wandered astray in
those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have
walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when
you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists, its
swamps and its rivers ; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a
light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.
The magic black horses were growing tired, carrying their riders more
slowly as inexorable night began to overtake them. Sensing it behind him
even the irrepressible Behemoth was hushed, and digging his claws into the
saddle he flew on in silence, his tail streaming behind him.
Night laid its black cloth over forest and meadow, night lit a
scattering of sad little lights far away below, lights that for Margarita
and the master were now meaningless and alien. Night overtook the cavalcade,
spread itself over them from above and began to seed the lowering sky with
white specks of stars.
Night thickened, flew alongside, seized the riders' cloaks and pulling
them from their shoulders, unmasked their disguises. When Margarita opened
her eyes in the freshening wind she saw the features of all the galloping
riders change, and when a full, purple moon rose towards them over the edge
of a forest, all deception vanished and fell away into the marsh beneath as
their magical, trumpery clothing faded into the mist.
It would have been hard now to recognise Koroviev-Faggot, self-styled
interpreter to the mysterious professor who needed none, in the figure who
now rode immediately alongside Woland at Margarita's right hand. In place of
the person who had left Sparrow Hills in shabby circus clothes under the
name of Koroviev-Faggot, there now galloped, the gold chain of his bridle
chinking softly, a knight clad in dark violet with a grim and unsmiling
face. He leaned his chin on his chest, looked neither at the moon nor the
earth, thinking his own thoughts as he flew along beside Woland.
'Why has he changed so? ' Margarita asked Woland above the hiss of the
wind.
'That knight once made an ill-timed joke,' replied Woland, turning his
fiery eye on Margarita. ' Once when we were talking of darkness and light he
made a somewhat unfortunate pun. As a penance he was condemned to spend
rather more rime as a practical joker than he had bargained for. But tonight
is one of those moments when accounts are settled. Our knight has paid his
score and the account is closed.'
Night stripped away, too. Behemoth's fluffy tail and his fur and
scattered it in handfuls. The creature who had been the pet of the prince of
darkness was revealed as a slim youth, a page-demon, the greatest jester
that there has ever been. He too was now silent and flew without a sound,
holding up Us young face towards the light that poured from the moon.
On the flank, gleaming in steel armour, rode Azazello, his face
transformed by the moon. Gone was the idiotic wall eye, gone was his false
squint. Both Azazello's eyes were alike, empty and black, his face white and
cold. Azazello was now in his real guise, the demon of the waterless desert,
the murderer-demon.
Margarita could not see herself but she could see the change that had
come ove the master. His hair had whitened in the moonlight and had gathered
behind him into a mane that flew in the wind. Whenever the wind blew the
master's cloak away from his legs, Margarita could see the spurs that winked
at the heels of his jackboots. Like the page-demon the master rode staring
at the moon, though smiling at it as though it were a dear, familiar friend,
and--a habit acquired in room No. 118-- talking to himself.
Woland, too, rode in his true aspect. Margarita could not say what the
reins of his horse were made of; she thought that they might be strings of
moonlight and the horse itself only a blob of darkness, its mane a cloud and
its rider's spurs glinting stars.
They rode for long in silence until the country beneath began to
change. The grim forests slipped away into the gloom below, drawing with
them the dull curved blades of rivers. The moonlight was now reflected from
scattered boulders with dark gulleys between them.
Woland reined in his horse on the flat, grim top of a hill and the
riders followed him at a walk, hearing the crunch of flints and pebbles
under the horses' shoes. The moon flooded the ground with a harsh green
light and soon Margarita noticed on the bare expanse a chair, with the vague
figure of a man seated on it, apparently deaf or lost in thought. He seemed
not to hear the stony ground shuddering beneath the weight of the horses and
he remained unmoved as the riders approached.
In the brilliant moonlight, brighter than an arc-light, Margarita could
see the seemingly blind man wringing his hands and staring at the moon with
unseeing eyes. Then she saw that beside the massive stone chair, which
sparkled fitfully in the moonlight, there lay a huge, grey dog with pointed
ears, gazing like his master, at the moon. At the man's feet were the
fragments of a jug and a reddish-black pool of liquid. The riders halted.
'We have read your novel,' said Woland, turning to the master,' and we
can only say that unfortunately it is not finished. I would like to show you
your hero. He has been sitting here and sleeping for nearly two thousand
years, but when the full moon comes he is tortured, as you see, with
insomnia. It plagues not only him, but his faithful guardian, his dog. If it
is true that cowardice is the worst sin of all, then the dog at least is not
guilty of it. The only thing that frightened this brave animal was a
thunderstorm. But one who loves must share the fate of his loved one.' '
What is he saying?' asked Margarita, and her calm face was veiled with
compassion.
'He always says ' said Woland, ' the same thing. He is saying that
there is no peace for him by moonlight and that his duty is a hard one. He
says it always, whether he is asleep or awake, and he always sees the same
thing--a path of moonlight. He longs to walk along it and talk to his
prisoner, Ha-Notsri, because he claims he had more to say to him on that
distant fourteenth day of Nisan. But he never succeeds in reaching that path
and no one ever comes near him. So it is not surprising that he talks to
himself. For an occasional change he adds that most of all he detests his
immortality and his incredible fame. He claims that he would gladly change
places with that vagrant, Matthew the Levite.'
'Twenty-four thousand moons in penance for one moon long ago, isn't
that too much? ' asked Margarita.
'Are you going to repeat the business with Frieda again?' said Woland.
' But you needn't distress yourself, Margarita. All will be as it should ;
that is how the world is made.'
'Let him go! ' Margarita suddenly shouted in a piercing voice, as she
had shouted when she was a witch. Her cry shattered a rock in the
mountainside, sending it bouncing down into the abyss with a deafening
crash, but Margarita could not tell if it was the falling rock or the sound
of satanic laughter. Whether it was or not, Woland laughed and said to
Margarita :
'Shouting at the mountains will do no good. Landslides are common here
and he is used to them by now. There is no need for you to plead for him,
Margarita, because his cause has already been pleaded by the man he longs to
join.' Woland turned round to the master and went on: ' Now is your chance
to complete your novel with a single sentence.'
The master seemed to be expecting this while he had been standing
motionless, watching the seated Procurator. He cupped his hands to a trumpet
and shouted with such force that the echo sprang back at him from the bare,
treeless hills :
'You are free! Free! He is waiting for you!'
The mountains turned the master's voice to thunder and the thunder
destroyed them. The grim cliffsides crumbled and fell. Only the platform
with the stone chair remained. Above the black abyss into which the
mountains had vanished glowed a great city topped by glittering idols above
a garden overgrown with the luxuriance of two thousand years. Into the
garden stretched the Procurator's long-awaited path of moonlight and the
first to bound along it was the dog with pointed ears. The man in the white
cloak with the blood-red lining rose from his chair and shouted something in
a hoarse, uneven voice. It was impossible to tell if he was laughing or
crying, or what he was shouting. He could only be seen hurrying along the
moonlight path after his faithful watchdog.
'Am I to follow him? ' the master enquired uneasily, with a touch on
his reins.
'No,' answered Woland, ' why try to pursue what is completed? '
'That way, then?' asked the master, turning and pointing back to where
rose the city they had just left, with its onion-domed monasteries,
fragmented sunlight reflected in its windows.
'No, not that way either,' replied Woland, his voice rolling down the
hillsides like a dense torrent. ' You are a romantic, master! Your novel has
been read by the man that your hero Pilate, whom you have just released, so
longs to see.' Here Woland turned to Margarita : ' Margarita Nikolayevna! I
am convinced that you have done your utmost to devise the best possible
future for the master, but believe me, what I am offering you and what
Yeshua has begged to be given to you is even better! Let us leave them alone
with each other,' said Woland, leaning out of his saddle towards the master
and pointing to the departing Procurator. ' Let's not disturb them. Who
knows, perhaps they may agree on something.'
At this Woland waved his hand towards Jerusalem, which vanished.
'And there too,' Woland pointed backwards. ' What good is your little
basement now? ' The reflected sun faded from the windows. ' Why go back? '
Woland continued, quietly and persuasively. ' 0 thrice romantic master,
wouldn't you like to stroll under the cherry blossom with your l.ove in the
daytime and listen to Schubert in the evening? Won't you enjoy writing by
candlelight with a goose quill? Don't you want, like Faust, to sit over a
retort in the hope of fashioning a new homunculus? That's where you must
go--where a house and an old servant are already waiting for you and the
candle;s are lit--although they are soon to be put out because you will
arrive at dawn. That is your way, master, that way! Farewell--I must go!'
'Farewell! ' cried Margarita and the master together. Then the black
Woland, taking none of the paths, dived into the abyss, followed with a roar
by his retinue. The mountains, the platform, the moonbeam pathway,
Jerusalem--all were gone. The black horses, too, had vanished. The master
and Margarita saw the promised dawn, which rose in instant succession to the
midnight moon. In the first rays of the morning the master and his beloved
crossed a little moss-grown stone bridge. They left the stream behind them
and followed a sandy path.
'Listen to the silence,' said Margarita to tlhe master, the sand
rustling under her bare feet. ' Listen to the silence and enjoy it. Here is
the peace that you never knew in your lifetime. Look, there is your home for
eternity, which is your reward. I can already see a Venetian window and a
cllimbing vine which grows right up to the roof. It's your home, your home
for ever. In the evenings people will come to see you--people who interest
you, people who will never upset you. They will play to you and sing to you
and you will see how beautiful the room is by candlelight. You shall go to
sleep with your dirty old cap on, you shall go to sleep with a smile on your
lips. Sleep will give you strength and make you wise. And you can never send
me away-- I shall watch over your sleep.'
So said Margarita as she walked with the master towards their
everlasting home. Margarita's words seemed to him to flow like the
whispering stream behind them, and the master's memory, his accursed,
needling memory, began to fade. He had been freed, just as he had set free
the character he had created. His hero had now vanished irretrievably into
the abyss; on the night of Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, pardon had
been granted to the astrologer's son, fifth Procurator of Judaea, the cruel
Pontius Pilate.
Epilogue
But what happened in Moscow after sunset on that Saturday evening when
Woland and his followers left the capital and vanished from Sparrow Hills?
There is no need to mention the flood of incredible rumours which
buzzed round Moscow for long afterwards and even spread to the dimmest and
most distant reaches of the provinces. The rumours are, in any case, too
nauseating to repeat.
On a train journey to Theodosia, the honest narrator himself heard a
story of how in Moscow two thousand people had rushed literally naked out of
a theatre and were driven home in taxis.
The whispered words ' evil spirits ' could be heard in milk queues and
tram queues, in shops, flats and kitchens, in commuter trains and
long-distance expresses, on stations and halts, in weekend cottages and on
beaches.
Educated and cultured people, of course, took no part in all this
gossip about evil spirits descending on Moscow, and even laughed at those
who did, and tried to bring them to reason. But facts, as they say, are
facts and they could not be brushed aside without some explanation : someone
had come to Moscow. The few charred cinders which were all that was left of
Griboyedov, and much more besides, were eloquent proof of it.
Cultured people took the viewpoint of the police : a gang of
brilliantly skilful hypnotists and ventriloquists had been at work.
Immediate and energetic steps; to arrest them in Moscow and beyond were
naturally taken but unfortunately without the least result. The man calling
himself Woland and all his followers had vanished from Moscow never to
return there or anywhere else. He was ot course suspected of having escaped
abroad, but there was no sign of his being there either.
The investigation of his case lasted for a long time. It was certainly
one of the strangest on record. Besides four gutted buildings and hundreds
of people driven out of their minds, several people had been killed. At
least, two of them were definitely known to have been killed--Berlioz, and
that wretched guide to the sights of Moscow, ex-baron Maigel. His charred
bones were found in flat No. 50 after the fire had been put out. Violence
had been done and violence could not go unchecked.
But there were other victims who suffered as a result of Woland's stay
in Moscow and these were, sad to say, black cats.
A good hundred of these peaceful, devoted and useful animals were shot
or otherwise destroyed in various parts of the country. Thirty-odd cats,
some in a cruelly mutilated condition, were handed in to police stations in
various towns. In Armavir, for instance, one of these innocent creatures was
brought to the police station with its forelegs tied up.
The man had ambushed the cat just as the animal, wearing a very furtive
expression (how can cats help looking furtive? It is not because they are
depraved but because they are afraid of being hurt by creatures stronger
than they are, such as dogs and people. It is easy enough to hurt them but
it is not something that anyone need be proud of)--well, with this furtive
look the cat was just about to jump into some bushes.
Pouncing on the cat and pulling off his tie to pinion it, the man
snarled threateningly:
'Aha! So you've decided to come to Armavir, have you, you hypnotist?
No good pretending to be dumb! We know all about you!'
The man took the cat to the police station, dragging the wretched beast
along by its front legs, which were bound with a green tie so that it was
forced to walk on its hind legs.
'Stop playing the fool! ' shouted the man, surrounded by a crowd of
hooting boys, ' No good trying that trick--walk properly! '
The black cat could only suffer in silence. Deprived by nature of the
gift of speech, it had no means of justifying itself. The poor creature owed
its salvation largely to the police and to its mistress, an old widow. As
soon as the cat was delivered to the police station it was found that the
man smelled violently of spirits, which made him a dubious witness.
Meanwhile the old woman, hearing from her neighbour that her cat had been
abducted, ran to the police station and arrived in time. She gave the cat a
glowing reference, saying that she had had it for five years, since it was a
kitten in fact, would vouch for it as she would for herself, proved that it
had not been caught in any mischief and had never been to Moscow. It had
been born in Armavir, had grown up there and learned to catch mice there.
The cat was untied and returned to its owner, though having learned by
bitter experience the consequences of error and slander.
A few other people besides cats suffered minor inconvenience. Several
arrests were made. Among those arrested for a short time were--in Leningrad
one man called Wollman and one called Wolper, three Woldemars in Saratov,
Kiev and Kharkhov, a Wallach in Kazan, and for some obscure reason a chemist
in Penza by the name of Vetchinkevich. He was, it is true, a very tall man
with a dark complexion and black hair.
Apart from that nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two Karavaevs were
picked up in various places. One man was taken off the Sebastopol train in
handcuffs at Belgorod station for having tried to amuse his
fellow-passengers with card tricks.
One lunchtime at Yaroslavl a man walked into a restaurant carrying a
Primus, which he had just had repaired. As soon as they caught sight of him
the two cloak-room attendants abandoned their post and ran, followed by all
the customers and staff. Afterwards the cashier found that all her day's
takings had been stolen.
There was more, much more than anyone can remember. A shock-wave of
disquiet ran through the country.
It cannot be said too often that the police did an admirable job, given
the circumstances. Everything possible was done, not only to catch the
criminals but to provide explanations for what they had done. A reason was
found for everything and one must admit that the explanations were
undeniably sensible.
Spokesmen for the police and a number of experienced psychiatrists
established that the members of the gang, or perhaps one of them (suspicion
fell chiefly on Koroviev) were hypnotists of incredible skill, capable of
appearing to be in two or more places at once. Furthermore, they were
frequently able to persuade people that things or people were where they
weren't, or, vice-versa, they could remove objects or people from someone's
field of vision that were really there all the time.
In the light of this information everything was explicable, even the
extraordinary incident of the bullet-proof cat in flat No. 50. There had, of
course, been no cat on the chandelier, no one had fired back at the
detectives ; they had been firing at nothing while Koroviev, who had made
them believe that there was a cat going berserk on the chandelier, had
obviously been standing behind the detectives' backs and deploying his
colossal though criminally misused powers of suggestion. It was he, of
course, who had poured paraffin all over the room and set fire to it.
Stepa Likhodeyev, of course, had never been to Yalta at all (a trick
like that was beyond even Koroviev) and had sent no telegram from Yalta.
After fainting in the doorway of his bedroom, frightened by Koroviev's trick
of producing a cat eating a pickled mushroom on a fork, he had lain there
until Koroviev had rammed a sheepskin hat on his head and sent him to Moscow
airport, suggesting to the reception committee of detectives that Stepa was
really climbing out of an aeroplane that had flown from Sebastopol.
It is true that the Yalta police claimed to have seen Stepa and to have
sent telegrams about him to Moscow, but not a single copy of these telegrams
was to be found, which led to the sad but incontrovertible conclusion that
the band of hypnotists had the power of hypnotising people at vast distances
and then not only individuals but whole groups.
This being the case the criminals were obviously capable of sending
even the sanest people mad, so that trivia like packs of cards in a man's
pocket or vanishing ladies' dresses or a beret that turned into a cat and
suchlike were scarcely worth mentioning. Tricks like that could be done by
any mediocre hypnotist on any stage, including the old dodge of wrenching
off the compere's head. The talking cat was child's play, too. To show
people a talking cat one only had to know the first principles of
ventriloquy, and clearly Koroviev's abilities went far beyond basic
principles.
No, packs of cards and false letters in Nikanor Ivanovich's briefcase
were mere trifles. It was he, Koroviev, who had pushed Berlioz to certain
death under the tramcar. It was he who had driven the wretched poet Ivan
Bezdomny out of his mind, he who had given him nightmares about ancient
Jerusalem and parched, sun-baked Mount Golgotha with the three crucified
men. It was he and his gang who had spirited Margarita Niko-layevna and her
maid away from Moscow. The police, incidentally, paid special attention to
this aspect of the case, trying to discover whether these women had been
kidnapped by this gang of murderers and arsonists or whether they had
voluntarily run away with the criminals. Basing their findings on the
ridiculous and confused evidence provided by Nikolai Ivanovich, taking into
account the insane note that Margarita Nikolayevna had left for her husband
to say that she was becoming a witch, and considering the fact that Natasha
had vanished leaving all her movables at home, the investigators came to the
conclusion that both maid and mistress had been hypnotised like so many
others and then kidnapped by the gang. There was always, of course, the
likely consideration that the crooks had been attracted by two such pretty
women.
However, one thing baffled the police completely--what could have been
the gang's motive for abducting a mental patient, who called himself the
master, from a psychiatric clinic? This completely eluded them, as did the
abducted patient's real name. He was therefore filed away for ever under the
pseudonym of 'No. 118, Block i.'
Thus nearly everything was explained away and the investigation, as all
good things must, came to an end.
Years passed and people began to forget about Woland, Koroviev and the
rest. Many things changed in the lives of those who had suffered at the
hands of Woland and his associates, and however minor these changes may have
been they are still worth following up.
George Bengalsky, for example, after three months in hospital,
recovered and was sent home, but he had to give up his job at the Variety at
the busiest time of the season, when the public was storming the theatre for
tickets : the memory of the black magic and its revelations was too
unbearable. Bengalsky gave up the Variety because he realised that he could
not stand the agony of standing up in front of two thousand people every
evening, being inevitably recognised and endlessly subjected to jeering
questions about how he preferred to be--with or without his head? Apart from
that the compere had lost a lot of the cheerfulness which is essential in
his job. He developed a nasty, compulsive habit of falling into a depression
every spring at the full moon, of suddenly grabbing his neck, staring round
in terror and bursting into tears. These attacks did not last for long, but
nevertheless since he did have them he could hardly go on doing his old job,
and the compere retired and began living on his savings which, by his modest
reckoning, were enough to keep him for fifty years.
He left and never again saw Varenukha, who had acquired universal love
and popularity for his incredible charm and politeness, remarkable even for
a theatre manager. The free-ticket hounds, for instance, regarded him as
their patron saint. At whatever hour they rang the Variety, through the
receiver would always come his soft, sad: ' Hello,' and if the caller asked
for Varenukha to be brought to the telephone the same voice hastened to
reply : ' Speaking--at your service.' But how Ivan Savyelich had suffered
for his politeness!
You can no longer speak to Stepa Likhodeyev if you telephone the
Variety. Immediately after his week's stay in hospital, Stepa was
transferred to Rostov where he was made the manager of a large delicatessen
store. There are rumours that he never touches port these days, that he only
drinks vodka distilled from blackcurrants and is much healthier for it. They
say, too, that he is very silent these days and avoids women.
Stepan Bogdanovich's removal from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the
joy he had dreamed of for so many years. After hospital and a cure at
Kislovodsk, the treasurer, now an old, old man with a shaking head, tendered
his resignation. It was Rimsky's wife who brought his letter of resignation
to the theatre : Grigory Danilovich himself could not find the strength,
even in daytime, to revisit the building where he had seen the moonlit
windowpane rattling and the long arm reaching down to grasp the catch.
Having retired from the Variety, Rimsky got a job at the children's
marionette theatre on the far side of the Moscow River. Here he never even
had to deal with Arkady Apollonich Sempleyarov on the subject of acoustics,
because he in turn had been transferred to Bryansk and put in charge of a
mushroom-canning plant. Now Muscovites eat his salted chanterelles and his
pickled button-mushrooms and they are so delicious that everybody is
delighted with Arkady Apollonich's change of job. It is all so long ago now
that there is no harm in saying that Arkady Appollonich never had much
success at improving the acoustics of Moscow's theatres anyway, and the
situation is much the same today.
Apart from Arkady Apollonich, several other people have given up the
theatre for good, among them Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, even though his only
link with the theatre was a fondness for free tickets. Nowadays Nikanor
Ivanovich not only refuses to accept free tickets : he wouldn't set foot
inside a theatre if you paid him and he even turns pale if the subject crops
up in conversation. More than the theatre he now loathes both Pushkin and
that gifted artiste, Savva Potapovich Kurolesov;
in fact he detests that actor to such a degree that last year, catching
sight of a black-bordered announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovicb
had been struck down in the prime of life by a heart attack, Nikanor
Ivanovich turned such a violent shade of purple that he almost joined Savva
Potapovich, and he roared:
'Serve him right! '
What is more, the actor's death stirred so many painful memories for
Nikanor Ivanovich that he went out and, with the full moon for company, got
blind drunk. With every glass that he drank the row of hated figures
lengthened in front of him-- there stood Sergei Gerardovich Dunchill, there
stood the beautiful Ida Herkulanovna, there stood the red-bearded man and
his herd of fearsome geese.
And what happened to them? Nothing. Nothing could ever happen to them
because they never existed, just as the compere, the theatre itself, the
miserly old aunt hoarding currency in her cellar and the rude cooks never
existed either. Nikanor Ivanovich had dreamed it all under the evil
influence of the beastly Koroviev. The only real person in his dream was
Sawa Potapovich the actor, who got involved merely because Ivanor Ivanovich
had so often heard him on the radio. Unlike all the others, he was real.
So perhaps Aloysius Mogarych did not exist either? Far from it.
Aloysius Mogarych is still with us, in the very job that Rimsky gave
up--treasurer of the Variety Theatre.
About twenty-four hours after his call on Woland, Aloysius had regained
consciousness in a train somewhere near Vyatka. Finding that he had
absentmindedly left Moscow without his trousers but had somehow brought his
landlord's rent-book with him, Aloysius had given the conductor a colossal
tip, borrowed a pair of filthy old trousers from him and turned back to
Moscow from Vyatka. But he failed to find his landlord's house. The ancient
pile had been burnt to the ground. Aloysius, however, was extremely
ingenious. Within a fortnight he had moved into an excellent room in Bryusov
Street and a few months later he was installed in Rimsky's office. Just as
Rimsky had suffered under Stepa, Varenukha's life was now made a misery by
Aloysius. Ivan Savyelich's one and only wish is for Aloysius to be removed
as far away from the Variety as possible because, as Varenukha sometimes
whispers among his close friends, ' he has never met such a swine in his
life as that Aloysius and he wouldn't be surprised at anything Aloysius
might do '.
The house manager is perhaps biased. Aloysius is not known to have done
anything suspicious--indeed he does not appear to have done anything at all,
except of course to appoint another barman in place of Sokov. Andrei Fokich
died of cancer of the liver nine months after Woland's visit to Moscow. . .
.
More years passed and the events described in this truthful account
have faded from most people's memories--with a few exceptions.
Every year, at the approach of the vernal full moon, a man of about
thirty or a little more can be seen walking towards the lime trees of
Patriarch's Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is
Professor Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov of the Institute of History and
Philosophy.
When he reaches the lime trees he always sits down on the same bench on
which he sat that evening when Berlioz, now long forgotten by everybody, saw
the moon shatter to fragments for the last time in his life. Now that moon,
whole and in one piece, white in the early evening and later golden with its
outline of a dragon-horse, floats over the erstwhile poet Ivan Nikolayich
while seeming to stand still.
Ivan Nikolayich now knows and understands everything. He knows that as
a young man he fell victim to some crooked hypnotists, went to hospital and
was cured. But he knows that there is still something that is beyond his
control. He cannot control what happens at the springtime full moon. As soon
as it draws near, as soon as that heavenly body begins to reach that
fullness it once had when it hung in the sky high above the two
seven-branched candlesticks, Ivan Nikolayich grows uneasy and irritable,
loses his appetite, cannot sleep and waits for the moon to wax. When full
moon comes nothing can keep Ivan Nikolayich at home. Towards evening he
leaves home and goes to Patriarch's Ponds.
As he sits on the bench Ivan Nikolayich openly talks to himself,
smokes, peers at the moon or at the familiar turnstile.
Ivan Nikolayich spends an hour or two there, then gets up and walks,
always following the same route, across Spiridonovka Street with unseeing
eyes towards the side-streets near the Arbat.
He passes an oil-shop, turns by a crooked old gas lamp and creeps up to
some railings through which he can see a garden that is splendid, though not
yet in flower, and in it--lit on one side by moonlight, dark on the other,
with an attic that has a triple-casement window--a house in the Gothic
style.
The professor never knows what draws him to those railings or who lives
in that house, but he knows that it is useless to fight his instinct at full
moon. He knows, too, that in the garden beyond the railings he will
inevitably see the same thing every time.
He sees a stout, elderly man sitting on a bench, a man with a beard, a
pince-nez and very, very slightly piggish features. Ivan Nikolayich always
finds that tenant of the Gothic house in the same dreamy attitude, his gaze
turned towards the moon. Ivan Nikolayich knows that having stared at the
moon the seated man will turn and look hard at the attic windows, as though
expecting them to be flung open and something unusual to appear on the
windowsill.
The rest, too, Ivan Nikolayich knows by heart. At this point he has to
duck down behind the railings, because the man on the bench begins to twist
his head anxiously, his wandering eyes seeking something in the air. He
smiles in triumph, then suddenly clasps his hands in delicious agony and
mutters quite distinctly:
'Venus! Venus! Oh, what a fool I was . . .!'
'Oh God,' Ivan Nikolayich starts to whisper as he hides behind the
railings with his burning gaze fixed on the mysterious stranger. ' Another
victim of the moon . . . Another one like me . . .'
And the man goes on talking :
'Oh, what a fool I was! Why, why didn't I fly away with her? What was
I afraid of, stupid old ass that I am? I had to ask for that document! . . .
Well, you must just put up with it, you old cretin!' So it goes on until a
window opens on the dark side of the house, something white appears in it
and an unpleasant female voice rings out:
'Where are you, Nikolai Ivanovich? What the hell are you doing out
there? Do you want to catch malaria? Come and drink your tea! '
At this the man blinks and says in a lying voice :
'I'm just having a breath of fresh air, my dear! The air out here is
so nice! '
Then he gets up from his bench, furtively shakes his fist at the window
which has just closed and stumps indoors.
'He's lying, he's lying! Oh God, how he's lying! ' mumbles Ivan
Nikolayich as he walks from the railings. ' He doesn't come down to the
garden for the fresh air--he sees something in that springtime sky,
something high above the garden! What wouldn't I give to find out his
secret, to know who the Venus is that he lost and now tries vainly to catch
by waving his arms in the air.'
The professor returns home a sick man. His wife pretends not to notice
it and hurries him into bed, but she stays up and sits by the lamp with a
book, watching the sleeping man with a bitter look. She knows that at dawn
Ivan Nikolayich will wake up with an agonised cry, will start to weep and
rave. That is why she keeps in front of her on the tablecloth a hypodermic
syringe ready in a dish of spirit and an ampoule of liquid the colour of
strong tea.
Later the poor woman is free to go to sleep without misgiving. After
his injection Ivan Nikolayich will sleep until morning with a calm
expression and he will dream, unknown to her, dreams that are sublimely
happy.
It is always the same thing that wakens the scholar and wrings that
pitiful cry from him. He sees a strange, noseless executioner who, jumping
up and uttering a grunt as he does so, pierces the heart of the maddened
Hestas, lashed to a gibbet. But what makes the dream so horrible is not so
much the executioner as the lurid, unnatural light that comes from a cloud,
seething and drenching the earth, of the kind that only accompanies natural
disasters.
After his injection the sleeper's vision changes. From the bed to the
moon stretches a broad path of moonlight and up it is climbing a man in a
white cloak with a blood-red lining. Beside him walks a young man in a torn
chiton and with a disfigured face. The two are talking heatedly, arguing,
trying to agree about something.
'Ye gods! ' says the man in the cloak, turning his proud face to his
companion. ' What a disgusting method of execution! But please, tell
me,'--here the pride in his face turns to supplication--' it did not take
place, did it? I beg you--tell me that it never took place? '
'No, of course it never took place,' answers his companion in a husky
voice. ' It was merely your imagination.'
'Can you swear to that? ' begged the man in the cloak.
'I swear it! ' answers his companion, his eyes smiling.
'That is all I need to know! ' gasps the man in the cloak as he
strides on towards the moon, beckoning his companion on. Behind them walks a
magnificently calm, gigantic dog with pointed ears.
Then the moonbeam begins to shake, a river of moonlight floods out of
it and pours in all directions. From the flood materialises a woman of
incomparable beauty and leads towards Ivan a man with a stubble-grown face,
gazing fearfully round him. Ivan Nikolayich recognises him at once. It is
No. 118, his nocturnal visitor. In his dream Ivan stretches out his arms
towards him and asks greedily :
'So was that how it ended? '
'That is how it ended, disciple,' replies No. 118 as the woman
approaches Ivan and says :
'Of course. It has ended ; and everything has an end . . . I'll kiss
you on the forehead and everything will be as it should be . . .'
She leans over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead and Ivan strains
towards her to look into her eyes, but she draws back, draws back and walks
away towards the moon with her companion. . . .
Then the moon goes mad, deluges Ivan with streams of light, sprays
light everywhere, a moonlight flood invades the room, the light sways,
rises, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan sleeps with a look of happiness
on his face.
In the morning he wakes silent, but quite calm and well. His bruised
memory has subsided again and until the next full moon no one will trouble
the professor--neither the noseless man who killed Hestas nor the cruel
Procurator of Judaea, fifth in that office, the knight Pontius Pilate.
the curtains.
The master, intoxicated in advance by the thought of the ride to come,
threw a book from the bookcase on to the table, thrust its leaves into the
burning tablecloth and the book burst merrily into flame. ' Burn away, past!
'
'Burn, suffering! ' cried Margarita.
Crimson pillars of fire were swaying all over the room, when the three
ran out of the smoking door, up the stone steps and out into the courtyard.
The first thing they saw was the landlord's cook sitting on the ground
surrounded by potato peelings and bunches of onions. Her position was hardly
surprising--three black horses were standing in the yard, snorting,
quivering and kicking up the ground in fountains. Margarita mounted the
first, then Azazello and the master last. Groaning, the cook was about to
raise her hand to make the sign of the cross when Azazello shouted
threateningly from the saddle :
'If you do, I'll cut off your arm! ' He whistled and the horses,
smashing the branches of the lime tree, whinnied and plunged upwards into a
low black cloud. From below came the cook's faint, pathetic cry :
'Fire . . .'
The horses were already galloping over the roofs of Moscow.
'I want to say goodbye to someone,' shouted the master to Azazello,
who was cantering along in front of him. Thunder drowned the end of the
master's sentence. Azazello nodded and urged his horse into a gallop. A
cloud was rushing towards them, though it had not yet begun to spatter rain.
They flew over the boulevard, watching as the little figures ran in all
directions to shelter from the rain. The first drops were falling. They flew
over a pillar of smoke--all that was left of Griboyedov. On they flew over
the city in the gathering darkness. Lightning flashed above them. Then the
roofs changed to treetops. Only then did the rain begin to lash them and
turned them into three great bubbles in the midst of endless water.
Margarita was already used to the sensation of flight, but the master
was not and he was amazed how quickly they reached their destination, where
he wished to say goodbye to the only other person who meant anything to him.
Through the veil of rain he immediately recognised Stravinsky's clinic, the
river and the pine-forest on the far bank that he had stared at for so long.
They landed among a clump of trees in a meadow not far from the clinic.
'I'll wait for you here,' shouted Azazello, folding his arms. For a
moment he was lit up by a flash of lightning then vanished again in the grey
pall. ' You can say goodbye, but hurry!'
The master and Margarita dismounted and flew, like watery shadows,
through the clinic garden. A moment later the master was pushing aside the
balcony grille of No. 117 with a practised hand. Margarita followed him.
They walked into Ivan's room, invisible and unnoticed, as the storm howled
and thundered. The master stopped by the bed.
Ivan was lying motionless, as he had been when he had first watched the
storm from his enforced rest-home. This time, however, he was not crying.
After staring for a while at the dark shape that entered his room from the
balcony, he sat up, stretched out his arms and said joyfully :
'Oh, it's you! I've been waiting for you! It's you, my neighbour!'
To this the master answered :
Yes, it's me, but I'm afraid I shan't be your neighbour any longer. I
am flying away for ever and I've only come to say goodbye.'
'I knew, I guessed,' replied Ivan quietly, then asked :
'Did you meet him? '
'Yes,' said the master, ' I have come to say goodbye to you because
you're the only person I have been able to talk to in these last days.'
Ivan beamed and said :
'I'm so glad you came. You see, I 'm going to keep my word, I shan't
write any more stupid poetry. Something else interests me now--' Ivan smiled
and stared crazily past the figure of the master--' I want to write
something quite different. I have come to understand a lot of things since
I've been lying here.'
The master grew excited at this and said as he sat down on the edge of
Ivan's bed:
'That's good, that's good. You must write the sequel to it.'
Ivan's eyes sparkled.
'But won't you be writing it?' Then he looked down and added
thoughtfully : ' Oh, yes, of course . . . what am I saying.' Ivan stared at
the ground, frightened.
'No,' said the master, and his voice seemed to Ivan unfamiliar and
hollow. ' I won't write about him any more. I shall be busy with other
things.'
The roar of the storm was pierced by a distant whistle.
'Do you hear? ' asked the master.
'The noise of the storm . . .'
'No, they're calling me, it's time for me to go,' explained the master
and got up from the bed.
'Wait! One more thing,' begged Ivan. ' Did you find her? Had she been
faithful to you? '
'Here she is,' replied the master, pointing to the wall. The dark
figure of Margarita materialised from the wall and moved over to the bed.
She looked at the young man in the bed and her eyes filled with sorrow.
'Poor, poor boy . . .' she whispered silently, and bent over the bed.
'How beautiful she is,' said Ivan, without envy but sadly and
touchingly. ' Everything has worked out wonderfully for you, you lucky
fellow. And here am I, sick . . .' He thought for a moment, then added
thoughtfully : ' Or perhaps I'm not so sick after all . . .'
'That's right,' whispered Margarita, bending right down to Ivan. '
I'll kiss you and everything will be as it should be ... believe me, I know
. . .'
Ivan put his arms round her neck and she kissed him.
'Farewell, disciple,' said the master gently and began to melt into
the air. He vanished, Margarita with him. The grille closed.
Ivan felt uneasy. He sat up in bed, gazing round anxiously, groaned,
talked to himself, got up. The storm was raging with increasing violence and
it was obviously upsetting him. It upset him so much that his hearing,
lulled by the permanent silence, caught the sound of anxious footsteps,
murmured voices outside his door. Trembling, he called out irritably :
'Praskovya Fyodorovna!'
As the nurse came into the room, she gave Ivan a -worried, enquiring
look:
'What's the matter? ' she asked. ' Is the storm frightening you? Don't
worry--I'll bring you something in a moment . . . I'll call the doctor right
away . . .'
'No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, you needn't call the doctor,' said Ivan,
staring anxiously not at her but at the wall, ' there's nothing particularly
wrong with me. I'm in my right mind now, don't be afraid. But you might tell
me,' asked Ivan confidentially, ' what has just happened next door in No.
118? '
'In 118? ' Praskovya Fyodorovna repeated hesitantly. Her eyes flickered
in embarrassment. ' Nothing has happened there.' But her voice betrayed her.
Ivan noticed this at once and said:
'Oh, Praskovya Fyodorovna! You're such a truthful person . . . Are you
afraid I'll get violent? No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, I won't. You had better
tell me, you see I can sense it all through that wall.'
'Your neighbour has just died,' whispered Praskovya Fyodorovna, unable
to overcome her natural truthfulness and goodness, and she gave a frightened
glance at Ivan, who was suddenly clothed in lightning. But nothing terrible
happened. He only raised his finger and said :
'I knew it! I am telling you, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that another
person has just died in Moscow too. I even know who ' --here Ivan smiled
mysteriously--' it is a woman!'
The storm had passed and a rainbow had arched itself across the sky,
its foot in the Moscow River. On top of a hill between two clumps of trees
could be seen three dark silhouettes. Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth sat
mounted on black horses, looking at the city spread out beyond the river
with fragments of sun glittering from thousands of west-facing windows, and
at the onion domes of the Novodevichy monastery.
There was a rustling in the air and Azazello, followed in a black
cavalcade by the master and Margarita, landed by the group of waiting
figures.
'I'm afraid we had to frighten you a little, Margarita Nikolay-evna,
and you, master,' said Woland after a pause. ' But I don't think you will
have cause to complain to me about it or regret it. Now,' he turned to the
master, ' say goodbye to this city. It's time for us to go.' Woland pointed
his hand in its black gauntlet to where countless glass suns glittered
beyond the river, where above those suns the city exhaled the haze, smoke
and steam of the day.
The master leaped from his saddle, left his companions and ran to the
hillside, black cloak flapping over the ground behind him. He looked at the
city. For the first few moments a tremor of sadness crept over his heart,
but it soon changed to a delicious excitement, the gypsy's thrill of the
open road.
'For ever ... I must think what that means,' whispered the master, and
locked his dry, cracked lips. He began to listen to what was happening in
his heart. His excitement, it seemed to him, had given way to a profound and
grievous sense of hurt. But it was only momentary and gave place to one of
proud indifference and finally to a presentiment of eternal peace.
The party of riders waited for the master in silence. They watched the
tall, black figure on the hillside gesticulate, then raise his head as
though trying to cast his glance over the whole city and to look beyond its
edge ; then he hung his head as if he were studying the sparse, trampled
grass under his feet.
Behemoth, who was getting bored, broke the silence :
'Please, man maitre,' he said, ' let me give a farewell whistle-call.'
'You might frighten the lady,' replied Woland, ' besides, don't forget
that you have done enough fooling about for one visit. Behave yourself now.'
'Oh no, messire,' cried Margarita, sitting her mount like an Amazon,
one arm akimbo, her long black train reaching to the ground. ' Please let
him whistle. I feel sad at the thought of the journey. It's quite a natural
feeling, even when you know it will end in happiness. If you won't let him
make us laugh, I shall cry, and the journey will be ruined before we start.'
Woland nodded to Behemoth. Delighted, the cat leaped to the ground, out
its paws in its mouth, filled its cheeks and whistled.
Margarita's ears sang. Her horse roared, twigs snapped off nearby
trees, a flock of rooks and crows flew up, a cloud of dust billowed towards
the river and several passengers on a river steamer below had their hats
blown off.
The whistle-blast made the master flinch; he did not turn round, but
began gesticulating even more violently, raising his fist skywards as though
threatening the city. Behemoth looked proudly round.
'You whistled, I grant you,' said Koroviev condescendingly. ' But
frankly it was a very mediocre whistle.'
'I'm not a choirmaster, though,' said Behemoth with dignity, puffing
out his chest and suddenly winking at Margarita.
'Let me have a try, just for old time's sake,' said Koroviev. He
rubbed his hands and blew on his fingers.
'Very well,' said Woland sternly, ' but without endangering life or
limb, please.'
'Purely for fun, I promise you, messire,' Koroviev assured him, hand
on heart. He suddenly straightened up, seemed to stretch as though he were
made of rubber, waved the fingers of his right hand, wound himself up like a
spring and then, suddenly uncoiling, he whistled.
Margarita did not hear this whistle, but she felt it, as she and her
horse were picked up and thrown twenty yards sideways. Beside her the bark
was ripped off an oak tree and cracks opened in the ground as far as the
river. The water in it boiled and heaved and a river steamer, with all its
passengers unharmed, was grounded on the far bank by the blast. A jackdaw,
killed by Faggot's whistle, fell at the feet of Margarita's snorting horse.
This time the master was thoroughly frightened and ran back to his
waiting companions.
'Well,' said Woland to him from the saddle, ' have you made your
farewell?'
'Yes, I have,' said the master and boldly returned Woland's stare.
Then like the blast of a trumpet the terrible voice of Woland rang out
over the hills :
'It is time!'
As an echo came a piercing laugh and a whistle from Behemoth. The
horses leaped into the air and the riders rose with them as they galloped
upwards. Margarita could feel her fierce horse biting and tugging at the
bit. Woland's cloak billowed out over the heads of the cavalcade and as
evening drew on, his cloak began to cover the whole vault of the sky. When
the black veil blew aside for a moment, Margarita turned round in flight and
saw that not only the many-coloured towers but the whole city had long
vanished from sight, swallowed by the earth, leaving only mist and smoke
where it had been.
How sad, ye gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the
mists over the swamps. You will know it when vou have wandered astray in
those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have
walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when
you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists, its
swamps and its rivers ; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a
light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.
The magic black horses were growing tired, carrying their riders more
slowly as inexorable night began to overtake them. Sensing it behind him
even the irrepressible Behemoth was hushed, and digging his claws into the
saddle he flew on in silence, his tail streaming behind him.
Night laid its black cloth over forest and meadow, night lit a
scattering of sad little lights far away below, lights that for Margarita
and the master were now meaningless and alien. Night overtook the cavalcade,
spread itself over them from above and began to seed the lowering sky with
white specks of stars.
Night thickened, flew alongside, seized the riders' cloaks and pulling
them from their shoulders, unmasked their disguises. When Margarita opened
her eyes in the freshening wind she saw the features of all the galloping
riders change, and when a full, purple moon rose towards them over the edge
of a forest, all deception vanished and fell away into the marsh beneath as
their magical, trumpery clothing faded into the mist.
It would have been hard now to recognise Koroviev-Faggot, self-styled
interpreter to the mysterious professor who needed none, in the figure who
now rode immediately alongside Woland at Margarita's right hand. In place of
the person who had left Sparrow Hills in shabby circus clothes under the
name of Koroviev-Faggot, there now galloped, the gold chain of his bridle
chinking softly, a knight clad in dark violet with a grim and unsmiling
face. He leaned his chin on his chest, looked neither at the moon nor the
earth, thinking his own thoughts as he flew along beside Woland.
'Why has he changed so? ' Margarita asked Woland above the hiss of the
wind.
'That knight once made an ill-timed joke,' replied Woland, turning his
fiery eye on Margarita. ' Once when we were talking of darkness and light he
made a somewhat unfortunate pun. As a penance he was condemned to spend
rather more rime as a practical joker than he had bargained for. But tonight
is one of those moments when accounts are settled. Our knight has paid his
score and the account is closed.'
Night stripped away, too. Behemoth's fluffy tail and his fur and
scattered it in handfuls. The creature who had been the pet of the prince of
darkness was revealed as a slim youth, a page-demon, the greatest jester
that there has ever been. He too was now silent and flew without a sound,
holding up Us young face towards the light that poured from the moon.
On the flank, gleaming in steel armour, rode Azazello, his face
transformed by the moon. Gone was the idiotic wall eye, gone was his false
squint. Both Azazello's eyes were alike, empty and black, his face white and
cold. Azazello was now in his real guise, the demon of the waterless desert,
the murderer-demon.
Margarita could not see herself but she could see the change that had
come ove the master. His hair had whitened in the moonlight and had gathered
behind him into a mane that flew in the wind. Whenever the wind blew the
master's cloak away from his legs, Margarita could see the spurs that winked
at the heels of his jackboots. Like the page-demon the master rode staring
at the moon, though smiling at it as though it were a dear, familiar friend,
and--a habit acquired in room No. 118-- talking to himself.
Woland, too, rode in his true aspect. Margarita could not say what the
reins of his horse were made of; she thought that they might be strings of
moonlight and the horse itself only a blob of darkness, its mane a cloud and
its rider's spurs glinting stars.
They rode for long in silence until the country beneath began to
change. The grim forests slipped away into the gloom below, drawing with
them the dull curved blades of rivers. The moonlight was now reflected from
scattered boulders with dark gulleys between them.
Woland reined in his horse on the flat, grim top of a hill and the
riders followed him at a walk, hearing the crunch of flints and pebbles
under the horses' shoes. The moon flooded the ground with a harsh green
light and soon Margarita noticed on the bare expanse a chair, with the vague
figure of a man seated on it, apparently deaf or lost in thought. He seemed
not to hear the stony ground shuddering beneath the weight of the horses and
he remained unmoved as the riders approached.
In the brilliant moonlight, brighter than an arc-light, Margarita could
see the seemingly blind man wringing his hands and staring at the moon with
unseeing eyes. Then she saw that beside the massive stone chair, which
sparkled fitfully in the moonlight, there lay a huge, grey dog with pointed
ears, gazing like his master, at the moon. At the man's feet were the
fragments of a jug and a reddish-black pool of liquid. The riders halted.
'We have read your novel,' said Woland, turning to the master,' and we
can only say that unfortunately it is not finished. I would like to show you
your hero. He has been sitting here and sleeping for nearly two thousand
years, but when the full moon comes he is tortured, as you see, with
insomnia. It plagues not only him, but his faithful guardian, his dog. If it
is true that cowardice is the worst sin of all, then the dog at least is not
guilty of it. The only thing that frightened this brave animal was a
thunderstorm. But one who loves must share the fate of his loved one.' '
What is he saying?' asked Margarita, and her calm face was veiled with
compassion.
'He always says ' said Woland, ' the same thing. He is saying that
there is no peace for him by moonlight and that his duty is a hard one. He
says it always, whether he is asleep or awake, and he always sees the same
thing--a path of moonlight. He longs to walk along it and talk to his
prisoner, Ha-Notsri, because he claims he had more to say to him on that
distant fourteenth day of Nisan. But he never succeeds in reaching that path
and no one ever comes near him. So it is not surprising that he talks to
himself. For an occasional change he adds that most of all he detests his
immortality and his incredible fame. He claims that he would gladly change
places with that vagrant, Matthew the Levite.'
'Twenty-four thousand moons in penance for one moon long ago, isn't
that too much? ' asked Margarita.
'Are you going to repeat the business with Frieda again?' said Woland.
' But you needn't distress yourself, Margarita. All will be as it should ;
that is how the world is made.'
'Let him go! ' Margarita suddenly shouted in a piercing voice, as she
had shouted when she was a witch. Her cry shattered a rock in the
mountainside, sending it bouncing down into the abyss with a deafening
crash, but Margarita could not tell if it was the falling rock or the sound
of satanic laughter. Whether it was or not, Woland laughed and said to
Margarita :
'Shouting at the mountains will do no good. Landslides are common here
and he is used to them by now. There is no need for you to plead for him,
Margarita, because his cause has already been pleaded by the man he longs to
join.' Woland turned round to the master and went on: ' Now is your chance
to complete your novel with a single sentence.'
The master seemed to be expecting this while he had been standing
motionless, watching the seated Procurator. He cupped his hands to a trumpet
and shouted with such force that the echo sprang back at him from the bare,
treeless hills :
'You are free! Free! He is waiting for you!'
The mountains turned the master's voice to thunder and the thunder
destroyed them. The grim cliffsides crumbled and fell. Only the platform
with the stone chair remained. Above the black abyss into which the
mountains had vanished glowed a great city topped by glittering idols above
a garden overgrown with the luxuriance of two thousand years. Into the
garden stretched the Procurator's long-awaited path of moonlight and the
first to bound along it was the dog with pointed ears. The man in the white
cloak with the blood-red lining rose from his chair and shouted something in
a hoarse, uneven voice. It was impossible to tell if he was laughing or
crying, or what he was shouting. He could only be seen hurrying along the
moonlight path after his faithful watchdog.
'Am I to follow him? ' the master enquired uneasily, with a touch on
his reins.
'No,' answered Woland, ' why try to pursue what is completed? '
'That way, then?' asked the master, turning and pointing back to where
rose the city they had just left, with its onion-domed monasteries,
fragmented sunlight reflected in its windows.
'No, not that way either,' replied Woland, his voice rolling down the
hillsides like a dense torrent. ' You are a romantic, master! Your novel has
been read by the man that your hero Pilate, whom you have just released, so
longs to see.' Here Woland turned to Margarita : ' Margarita Nikolayevna! I
am convinced that you have done your utmost to devise the best possible
future for the master, but believe me, what I am offering you and what
Yeshua has begged to be given to you is even better! Let us leave them alone
with each other,' said Woland, leaning out of his saddle towards the master
and pointing to the departing Procurator. ' Let's not disturb them. Who
knows, perhaps they may agree on something.'
At this Woland waved his hand towards Jerusalem, which vanished.
'And there too,' Woland pointed backwards. ' What good is your little
basement now? ' The reflected sun faded from the windows. ' Why go back? '
Woland continued, quietly and persuasively. ' 0 thrice romantic master,
wouldn't you like to stroll under the cherry blossom with your l.ove in the
daytime and listen to Schubert in the evening? Won't you enjoy writing by
candlelight with a goose quill? Don't you want, like Faust, to sit over a
retort in the hope of fashioning a new homunculus? That's where you must
go--where a house and an old servant are already waiting for you and the
candle;s are lit--although they are soon to be put out because you will
arrive at dawn. That is your way, master, that way! Farewell--I must go!'
'Farewell! ' cried Margarita and the master together. Then the black
Woland, taking none of the paths, dived into the abyss, followed with a roar
by his retinue. The mountains, the platform, the moonbeam pathway,
Jerusalem--all were gone. The black horses, too, had vanished. The master
and Margarita saw the promised dawn, which rose in instant succession to the
midnight moon. In the first rays of the morning the master and his beloved
crossed a little moss-grown stone bridge. They left the stream behind them
and followed a sandy path.
'Listen to the silence,' said Margarita to tlhe master, the sand
rustling under her bare feet. ' Listen to the silence and enjoy it. Here is
the peace that you never knew in your lifetime. Look, there is your home for
eternity, which is your reward. I can already see a Venetian window and a
cllimbing vine which grows right up to the roof. It's your home, your home
for ever. In the evenings people will come to see you--people who interest
you, people who will never upset you. They will play to you and sing to you
and you will see how beautiful the room is by candlelight. You shall go to
sleep with your dirty old cap on, you shall go to sleep with a smile on your
lips. Sleep will give you strength and make you wise. And you can never send
me away-- I shall watch over your sleep.'
So said Margarita as she walked with the master towards their
everlasting home. Margarita's words seemed to him to flow like the
whispering stream behind them, and the master's memory, his accursed,
needling memory, began to fade. He had been freed, just as he had set free
the character he had created. His hero had now vanished irretrievably into
the abyss; on the night of Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, pardon had
been granted to the astrologer's son, fifth Procurator of Judaea, the cruel
Pontius Pilate.
Epilogue
But what happened in Moscow after sunset on that Saturday evening when
Woland and his followers left the capital and vanished from Sparrow Hills?
There is no need to mention the flood of incredible rumours which
buzzed round Moscow for long afterwards and even spread to the dimmest and
most distant reaches of the provinces. The rumours are, in any case, too
nauseating to repeat.
On a train journey to Theodosia, the honest narrator himself heard a
story of how in Moscow two thousand people had rushed literally naked out of
a theatre and were driven home in taxis.
The whispered words ' evil spirits ' could be heard in milk queues and
tram queues, in shops, flats and kitchens, in commuter trains and
long-distance expresses, on stations and halts, in weekend cottages and on
beaches.
Educated and cultured people, of course, took no part in all this
gossip about evil spirits descending on Moscow, and even laughed at those
who did, and tried to bring them to reason. But facts, as they say, are
facts and they could not be brushed aside without some explanation : someone
had come to Moscow. The few charred cinders which were all that was left of
Griboyedov, and much more besides, were eloquent proof of it.
Cultured people took the viewpoint of the police : a gang of
brilliantly skilful hypnotists and ventriloquists had been at work.
Immediate and energetic steps; to arrest them in Moscow and beyond were
naturally taken but unfortunately without the least result. The man calling
himself Woland and all his followers had vanished from Moscow never to
return there or anywhere else. He was ot course suspected of having escaped
abroad, but there was no sign of his being there either.
The investigation of his case lasted for a long time. It was certainly
one of the strangest on record. Besides four gutted buildings and hundreds
of people driven out of their minds, several people had been killed. At
least, two of them were definitely known to have been killed--Berlioz, and
that wretched guide to the sights of Moscow, ex-baron Maigel. His charred
bones were found in flat No. 50 after the fire had been put out. Violence
had been done and violence could not go unchecked.
But there were other victims who suffered as a result of Woland's stay
in Moscow and these were, sad to say, black cats.
A good hundred of these peaceful, devoted and useful animals were shot
or otherwise destroyed in various parts of the country. Thirty-odd cats,
some in a cruelly mutilated condition, were handed in to police stations in
various towns. In Armavir, for instance, one of these innocent creatures was
brought to the police station with its forelegs tied up.
The man had ambushed the cat just as the animal, wearing a very furtive
expression (how can cats help looking furtive? It is not because they are
depraved but because they are afraid of being hurt by creatures stronger
than they are, such as dogs and people. It is easy enough to hurt them but
it is not something that anyone need be proud of)--well, with this furtive
look the cat was just about to jump into some bushes.
Pouncing on the cat and pulling off his tie to pinion it, the man
snarled threateningly:
'Aha! So you've decided to come to Armavir, have you, you hypnotist?
No good pretending to be dumb! We know all about you!'
The man took the cat to the police station, dragging the wretched beast
along by its front legs, which were bound with a green tie so that it was
forced to walk on its hind legs.
'Stop playing the fool! ' shouted the man, surrounded by a crowd of
hooting boys, ' No good trying that trick--walk properly! '
The black cat could only suffer in silence. Deprived by nature of the
gift of speech, it had no means of justifying itself. The poor creature owed
its salvation largely to the police and to its mistress, an old widow. As
soon as the cat was delivered to the police station it was found that the
man smelled violently of spirits, which made him a dubious witness.
Meanwhile the old woman, hearing from her neighbour that her cat had been
abducted, ran to the police station and arrived in time. She gave the cat a
glowing reference, saying that she had had it for five years, since it was a
kitten in fact, would vouch for it as she would for herself, proved that it
had not been caught in any mischief and had never been to Moscow. It had
been born in Armavir, had grown up there and learned to catch mice there.
The cat was untied and returned to its owner, though having learned by
bitter experience the consequences of error and slander.
A few other people besides cats suffered minor inconvenience. Several
arrests were made. Among those arrested for a short time were--in Leningrad
one man called Wollman and one called Wolper, three Woldemars in Saratov,
Kiev and Kharkhov, a Wallach in Kazan, and for some obscure reason a chemist
in Penza by the name of Vetchinkevich. He was, it is true, a very tall man
with a dark complexion and black hair.
Apart from that nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two Karavaevs were
picked up in various places. One man was taken off the Sebastopol train in
handcuffs at Belgorod station for having tried to amuse his
fellow-passengers with card tricks.
One lunchtime at Yaroslavl a man walked into a restaurant carrying a
Primus, which he had just had repaired. As soon as they caught sight of him
the two cloak-room attendants abandoned their post and ran, followed by all
the customers and staff. Afterwards the cashier found that all her day's
takings had been stolen.
There was more, much more than anyone can remember. A shock-wave of
disquiet ran through the country.
It cannot be said too often that the police did an admirable job, given
the circumstances. Everything possible was done, not only to catch the
criminals but to provide explanations for what they had done. A reason was
found for everything and one must admit that the explanations were
undeniably sensible.
Spokesmen for the police and a number of experienced psychiatrists
established that the members of the gang, or perhaps one of them (suspicion
fell chiefly on Koroviev) were hypnotists of incredible skill, capable of
appearing to be in two or more places at once. Furthermore, they were
frequently able to persuade people that things or people were where they
weren't, or, vice-versa, they could remove objects or people from someone's
field of vision that were really there all the time.
In the light of this information everything was explicable, even the
extraordinary incident of the bullet-proof cat in flat No. 50. There had, of
course, been no cat on the chandelier, no one had fired back at the
detectives ; they had been firing at nothing while Koroviev, who had made
them believe that there was a cat going berserk on the chandelier, had
obviously been standing behind the detectives' backs and deploying his
colossal though criminally misused powers of suggestion. It was he, of
course, who had poured paraffin all over the room and set fire to it.
Stepa Likhodeyev, of course, had never been to Yalta at all (a trick
like that was beyond even Koroviev) and had sent no telegram from Yalta.
After fainting in the doorway of his bedroom, frightened by Koroviev's trick
of producing a cat eating a pickled mushroom on a fork, he had lain there
until Koroviev had rammed a sheepskin hat on his head and sent him to Moscow
airport, suggesting to the reception committee of detectives that Stepa was
really climbing out of an aeroplane that had flown from Sebastopol.
It is true that the Yalta police claimed to have seen Stepa and to have
sent telegrams about him to Moscow, but not a single copy of these telegrams
was to be found, which led to the sad but incontrovertible conclusion that
the band of hypnotists had the power of hypnotising people at vast distances
and then not only individuals but whole groups.
This being the case the criminals were obviously capable of sending
even the sanest people mad, so that trivia like packs of cards in a man's
pocket or vanishing ladies' dresses or a beret that turned into a cat and
suchlike were scarcely worth mentioning. Tricks like that could be done by
any mediocre hypnotist on any stage, including the old dodge of wrenching
off the compere's head. The talking cat was child's play, too. To show
people a talking cat one only had to know the first principles of
ventriloquy, and clearly Koroviev's abilities went far beyond basic
principles.
No, packs of cards and false letters in Nikanor Ivanovich's briefcase
were mere trifles. It was he, Koroviev, who had pushed Berlioz to certain
death under the tramcar. It was he who had driven the wretched poet Ivan
Bezdomny out of his mind, he who had given him nightmares about ancient
Jerusalem and parched, sun-baked Mount Golgotha with the three crucified
men. It was he and his gang who had spirited Margarita Niko-layevna and her
maid away from Moscow. The police, incidentally, paid special attention to
this aspect of the case, trying to discover whether these women had been
kidnapped by this gang of murderers and arsonists or whether they had
voluntarily run away with the criminals. Basing their findings on the
ridiculous and confused evidence provided by Nikolai Ivanovich, taking into
account the insane note that Margarita Nikolayevna had left for her husband
to say that she was becoming a witch, and considering the fact that Natasha
had vanished leaving all her movables at home, the investigators came to the
conclusion that both maid and mistress had been hypnotised like so many
others and then kidnapped by the gang. There was always, of course, the
likely consideration that the crooks had been attracted by two such pretty
women.
However, one thing baffled the police completely--what could have been
the gang's motive for abducting a mental patient, who called himself the
master, from a psychiatric clinic? This completely eluded them, as did the
abducted patient's real name. He was therefore filed away for ever under the
pseudonym of 'No. 118, Block i.'
Thus nearly everything was explained away and the investigation, as all
good things must, came to an end.
Years passed and people began to forget about Woland, Koroviev and the
rest. Many things changed in the lives of those who had suffered at the
hands of Woland and his associates, and however minor these changes may have
been they are still worth following up.
George Bengalsky, for example, after three months in hospital,
recovered and was sent home, but he had to give up his job at the Variety at
the busiest time of the season, when the public was storming the theatre for
tickets : the memory of the black magic and its revelations was too
unbearable. Bengalsky gave up the Variety because he realised that he could
not stand the agony of standing up in front of two thousand people every
evening, being inevitably recognised and endlessly subjected to jeering
questions about how he preferred to be--with or without his head? Apart from
that the compere had lost a lot of the cheerfulness which is essential in
his job. He developed a nasty, compulsive habit of falling into a depression
every spring at the full moon, of suddenly grabbing his neck, staring round
in terror and bursting into tears. These attacks did not last for long, but
nevertheless since he did have them he could hardly go on doing his old job,
and the compere retired and began living on his savings which, by his modest
reckoning, were enough to keep him for fifty years.
He left and never again saw Varenukha, who had acquired universal love
and popularity for his incredible charm and politeness, remarkable even for
a theatre manager. The free-ticket hounds, for instance, regarded him as
their patron saint. At whatever hour they rang the Variety, through the
receiver would always come his soft, sad: ' Hello,' and if the caller asked
for Varenukha to be brought to the telephone the same voice hastened to
reply : ' Speaking--at your service.' But how Ivan Savyelich had suffered
for his politeness!
You can no longer speak to Stepa Likhodeyev if you telephone the
Variety. Immediately after his week's stay in hospital, Stepa was
transferred to Rostov where he was made the manager of a large delicatessen
store. There are rumours that he never touches port these days, that he only
drinks vodka distilled from blackcurrants and is much healthier for it. They
say, too, that he is very silent these days and avoids women.
Stepan Bogdanovich's removal from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the
joy he had dreamed of for so many years. After hospital and a cure at
Kislovodsk, the treasurer, now an old, old man with a shaking head, tendered
his resignation. It was Rimsky's wife who brought his letter of resignation
to the theatre : Grigory Danilovich himself could not find the strength,
even in daytime, to revisit the building where he had seen the moonlit
windowpane rattling and the long arm reaching down to grasp the catch.
Having retired from the Variety, Rimsky got a job at the children's
marionette theatre on the far side of the Moscow River. Here he never even
had to deal with Arkady Apollonich Sempleyarov on the subject of acoustics,
because he in turn had been transferred to Bryansk and put in charge of a
mushroom-canning plant. Now Muscovites eat his salted chanterelles and his
pickled button-mushrooms and they are so delicious that everybody is
delighted with Arkady Apollonich's change of job. It is all so long ago now
that there is no harm in saying that Arkady Appollonich never had much
success at improving the acoustics of Moscow's theatres anyway, and the
situation is much the same today.
Apart from Arkady Apollonich, several other people have given up the
theatre for good, among them Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, even though his only
link with the theatre was a fondness for free tickets. Nowadays Nikanor
Ivanovich not only refuses to accept free tickets : he wouldn't set foot
inside a theatre if you paid him and he even turns pale if the subject crops
up in conversation. More than the theatre he now loathes both Pushkin and
that gifted artiste, Savva Potapovich Kurolesov;
in fact he detests that actor to such a degree that last year, catching
sight of a black-bordered announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovicb
had been struck down in the prime of life by a heart attack, Nikanor
Ivanovich turned such a violent shade of purple that he almost joined Savva
Potapovich, and he roared:
'Serve him right! '
What is more, the actor's death stirred so many painful memories for
Nikanor Ivanovich that he went out and, with the full moon for company, got
blind drunk. With every glass that he drank the row of hated figures
lengthened in front of him-- there stood Sergei Gerardovich Dunchill, there
stood the beautiful Ida Herkulanovna, there stood the red-bearded man and
his herd of fearsome geese.
And what happened to them? Nothing. Nothing could ever happen to them
because they never existed, just as the compere, the theatre itself, the
miserly old aunt hoarding currency in her cellar and the rude cooks never
existed either. Nikanor Ivanovich had dreamed it all under the evil
influence of the beastly Koroviev. The only real person in his dream was
Sawa Potapovich the actor, who got involved merely because Ivanor Ivanovich
had so often heard him on the radio. Unlike all the others, he was real.
So perhaps Aloysius Mogarych did not exist either? Far from it.
Aloysius Mogarych is still with us, in the very job that Rimsky gave
up--treasurer of the Variety Theatre.
About twenty-four hours after his call on Woland, Aloysius had regained
consciousness in a train somewhere near Vyatka. Finding that he had
absentmindedly left Moscow without his trousers but had somehow brought his
landlord's rent-book with him, Aloysius had given the conductor a colossal
tip, borrowed a pair of filthy old trousers from him and turned back to
Moscow from Vyatka. But he failed to find his landlord's house. The ancient
pile had been burnt to the ground. Aloysius, however, was extremely
ingenious. Within a fortnight he had moved into an excellent room in Bryusov
Street and a few months later he was installed in Rimsky's office. Just as
Rimsky had suffered under Stepa, Varenukha's life was now made a misery by
Aloysius. Ivan Savyelich's one and only wish is for Aloysius to be removed
as far away from the Variety as possible because, as Varenukha sometimes
whispers among his close friends, ' he has never met such a swine in his
life as that Aloysius and he wouldn't be surprised at anything Aloysius
might do '.
The house manager is perhaps biased. Aloysius is not known to have done
anything suspicious--indeed he does not appear to have done anything at all,
except of course to appoint another barman in place of Sokov. Andrei Fokich
died of cancer of the liver nine months after Woland's visit to Moscow. . .
.
More years passed and the events described in this truthful account
have faded from most people's memories--with a few exceptions.
Every year, at the approach of the vernal full moon, a man of about
thirty or a little more can be seen walking towards the lime trees of
Patriarch's Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is
Professor Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov of the Institute of History and
Philosophy.
When he reaches the lime trees he always sits down on the same bench on
which he sat that evening when Berlioz, now long forgotten by everybody, saw
the moon shatter to fragments for the last time in his life. Now that moon,
whole and in one piece, white in the early evening and later golden with its
outline of a dragon-horse, floats over the erstwhile poet Ivan Nikolayich
while seeming to stand still.
Ivan Nikolayich now knows and understands everything. He knows that as
a young man he fell victim to some crooked hypnotists, went to hospital and
was cured. But he knows that there is still something that is beyond his
control. He cannot control what happens at the springtime full moon. As soon
as it draws near, as soon as that heavenly body begins to reach that
fullness it once had when it hung in the sky high above the two
seven-branched candlesticks, Ivan Nikolayich grows uneasy and irritable,
loses his appetite, cannot sleep and waits for the moon to wax. When full
moon comes nothing can keep Ivan Nikolayich at home. Towards evening he
leaves home and goes to Patriarch's Ponds.
As he sits on the bench Ivan Nikolayich openly talks to himself,
smokes, peers at the moon or at the familiar turnstile.
Ivan Nikolayich spends an hour or two there, then gets up and walks,
always following the same route, across Spiridonovka Street with unseeing
eyes towards the side-streets near the Arbat.
He passes an oil-shop, turns by a crooked old gas lamp and creeps up to
some railings through which he can see a garden that is splendid, though not
yet in flower, and in it--lit on one side by moonlight, dark on the other,
with an attic that has a triple-casement window--a house in the Gothic
style.
The professor never knows what draws him to those railings or who lives
in that house, but he knows that it is useless to fight his instinct at full
moon. He knows, too, that in the garden beyond the railings he will
inevitably see the same thing every time.
He sees a stout, elderly man sitting on a bench, a man with a beard, a
pince-nez and very, very slightly piggish features. Ivan Nikolayich always
finds that tenant of the Gothic house in the same dreamy attitude, his gaze
turned towards the moon. Ivan Nikolayich knows that having stared at the
moon the seated man will turn and look hard at the attic windows, as though
expecting them to be flung open and something unusual to appear on the
windowsill.
The rest, too, Ivan Nikolayich knows by heart. At this point he has to
duck down behind the railings, because the man on the bench begins to twist
his head anxiously, his wandering eyes seeking something in the air. He
smiles in triumph, then suddenly clasps his hands in delicious agony and
mutters quite distinctly:
'Venus! Venus! Oh, what a fool I was . . .!'
'Oh God,' Ivan Nikolayich starts to whisper as he hides behind the
railings with his burning gaze fixed on the mysterious stranger. ' Another
victim of the moon . . . Another one like me . . .'
And the man goes on talking :
'Oh, what a fool I was! Why, why didn't I fly away with her? What was
I afraid of, stupid old ass that I am? I had to ask for that document! . . .
Well, you must just put up with it, you old cretin!' So it goes on until a
window opens on the dark side of the house, something white appears in it
and an unpleasant female voice rings out:
'Where are you, Nikolai Ivanovich? What the hell are you doing out
there? Do you want to catch malaria? Come and drink your tea! '
At this the man blinks and says in a lying voice :
'I'm just having a breath of fresh air, my dear! The air out here is
so nice! '
Then he gets up from his bench, furtively shakes his fist at the window
which has just closed and stumps indoors.
'He's lying, he's lying! Oh God, how he's lying! ' mumbles Ivan
Nikolayich as he walks from the railings. ' He doesn't come down to the
garden for the fresh air--he sees something in that springtime sky,
something high above the garden! What wouldn't I give to find out his
secret, to know who the Venus is that he lost and now tries vainly to catch
by waving his arms in the air.'
The professor returns home a sick man. His wife pretends not to notice
it and hurries him into bed, but she stays up and sits by the lamp with a
book, watching the sleeping man with a bitter look. She knows that at dawn
Ivan Nikolayich will wake up with an agonised cry, will start to weep and
rave. That is why she keeps in front of her on the tablecloth a hypodermic
syringe ready in a dish of spirit and an ampoule of liquid the colour of
strong tea.
Later the poor woman is free to go to sleep without misgiving. After
his injection Ivan Nikolayich will sleep until morning with a calm
expression and he will dream, unknown to her, dreams that are sublimely
happy.
It is always the same thing that wakens the scholar and wrings that
pitiful cry from him. He sees a strange, noseless executioner who, jumping
up and uttering a grunt as he does so, pierces the heart of the maddened
Hestas, lashed to a gibbet. But what makes the dream so horrible is not so
much the executioner as the lurid, unnatural light that comes from a cloud,
seething and drenching the earth, of the kind that only accompanies natural
disasters.
After his injection the sleeper's vision changes. From the bed to the
moon stretches a broad path of moonlight and up it is climbing a man in a
white cloak with a blood-red lining. Beside him walks a young man in a torn
chiton and with a disfigured face. The two are talking heatedly, arguing,
trying to agree about something.
'Ye gods! ' says the man in the cloak, turning his proud face to his
companion. ' What a disgusting method of execution! But please, tell
me,'--here the pride in his face turns to supplication--' it did not take
place, did it? I beg you--tell me that it never took place? '
'No, of course it never took place,' answers his companion in a husky
voice. ' It was merely your imagination.'
'Can you swear to that? ' begged the man in the cloak.
'I swear it! ' answers his companion, his eyes smiling.
'That is all I need to know! ' gasps the man in the cloak as he
strides on towards the moon, beckoning his companion on. Behind them walks a
magnificently calm, gigantic dog with pointed ears.
Then the moonbeam begins to shake, a river of moonlight floods out of
it and pours in all directions. From the flood materialises a woman of
incomparable beauty and leads towards Ivan a man with a stubble-grown face,
gazing fearfully round him. Ivan Nikolayich recognises him at once. It is
No. 118, his nocturnal visitor. In his dream Ivan stretches out his arms
towards him and asks greedily :
'So was that how it ended? '
'That is how it ended, disciple,' replies No. 118 as the woman
approaches Ivan and says :
'Of course. It has ended ; and everything has an end . . . I'll kiss
you on the forehead and everything will be as it should be . . .'
She leans over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead and Ivan strains
towards her to look into her eyes, but she draws back, draws back and walks
away towards the moon with her companion. . . .
Then the moon goes mad, deluges Ivan with streams of light, sprays
light everywhere, a moonlight flood invades the room, the light sways,
rises, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan sleeps with a look of happiness
on his face.
In the morning he wakes silent, but quite calm and well. His bruised
memory has subsided again and until the next full moon no one will trouble
the professor--neither the noseless man who killed Hestas nor the cruel
Procurator of Judaea, fifth in that office, the knight Pontius Pilate.