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'Latunsky!' shrieked Margarita. 'Latunsky! Why, he's the one ...' he's
the one who ruined the master!'
The doorman at the entrance, even hopping with astonishment, his eyes
rolled out, gazed at the black board, trying to understand the marvel: why
was the list of tenants suddenly shrieking?
But by that time Margarita was already going impetuously up the stairs,
repeating in some sort of rapture:
'Latunsky eighty-four... Latunsky eighty-four...'
Here to the left - 82, to the right - 85, further up, to the left - 84!
Here! And the name plate - '0. Latunsky'.
Margarita jumped off the broom, and her hot soles felt the pleasant
coolness of the stone landing. Margarita rang once, twice. But no one
opened. Margarita began to push the button harder and could hear the
jangling it set off in Latunsky's apartment. Yes, to his dying day the
inhabitant of apartment no.84 on the eighth floor should be grateful to the
late Berlioz, chairman of Massolit, for having fallen under a tram-car, and
that the memorial gathering had been appointed precisely for that evening.
The critic Latunsky was born under a lucky star - it saved him from
meeting Margarita, who that Friday became a witch.
No one opened the door. Then Margarita raced down at full swing,
counting the floors, reached the bottom, burst out the door and, looking up,
counted and checked the floors from outside, guessing which precisely were
the windows of Latunsky's apartment. Undoubtedly they were the five dark
windows at the corner of the building on the eighth floor. Convinced of it,
Margarita rose into the air and in a few seconds was stepping through an
open window into an unlit room, where only a narrow path from the moon shone
silver. Margarita ran down it, felt for the switch. A moment later the whole
apartment was lit up. The broom stood in a corner. After making sure that no
one was home, Margarita opened the door to the stairs and checked whether
the name plate was there. The name plate was in place. Margarita was where
she wanted to be.
Yes, they say that to this day the critic Latunsky rums pale
remembering that terrible evening, and to this day he utters the name of
Berlioz with veneration. It is totally unknown what dark and vile criminal
job would have marked this evening - returning from the kitchen, Margarita
had a heavy hammer in her hands.
Naked and invisible, the lady flier tried to control and talk sense
into herself; her hands trembled with impatience. Taking careful aim,
Margarita struck at the keys of the grand piano, and a first plaintive wail
passed all through the apartment. Becker's drawing-room instrument, not
guilty of anything, cried out frenziedly. Its keys caved in, ivory veneer
flew in all directions. The instrument howled, wailed, rasped and jangled.
With the noise of a pistol shot, the polished upper soundboard split
under a hammer blow. Breathing hard, Margarita tore and mangled the strings
with the hammer. Finally getting tired, she left off and flopped into an
armchair to catch her breath.
Water was roaring terribly in the bathroom, and in the kitchen as well.
'Seems it's already overflowing on the floor...' Margarita thought, and
added aloud:
'No point sitting around, however.'
The stream was already running from the kitchen into the corridor.
Splashing barefoot through the water, Margarita carried buckets of
water from the kitchen to the critic's study and emptied them into his desk
drawers. Then, after smashing the door of the bookcase in the same study
with her hammer, she rushed to the bedroom. Shattering the mirror on the
wardrobe, she took out the critic's dress suit and drowned it in the tub. A
large bottle of ink, picked up in the study, she poured over the luxuriously
plumped-up double bed.
The devastation she wrought afforded her a burning pleasure, and yet it
seemed to her all the while that the results came out somehow meagre.
Therefore she started doing whatever came along. She smashed pots of
ficus in the room with the grand piano. Before finishing that, she went back
to the bedroom, slashed the sheets with a kitchen knife, and broke the glass
on the framed photographs. She felt no fatigue, only the sweat poured from
her in streams.
Just then, in apartment no.82, below Latunsky's apartment, the
housekeeper of the dramatist Quant was having tea in the kitchen, perplexed
by the clatter, running and jangling coming from above. Raising her head
towards the ceiling, she suddenly saw it changing colour before her eyes
from white to some deathly blue. The spot was widening right in front of her
and drops suddenly swelled out on it. For about two minutes the housekeeper
sat marvelling at this phenomenon, until finally a real rain began to fall
from the ceiling, drumming on the floor. Here she jumped up, put a bowl
under the stream, which did not help at all, because the rain expanded and
began pouring down on the gas stove and the table with dishes. Then, crying
out, Quant's housekeeper ran from the apartment to the stairs and at once
the bell started ringing in Latunsky's apartment.
Well, they're ringing ... Time to be off,' said Margarita. She sat on
the broom, listening to the female voice shouting through the keyhole:
'Open up, open up! Dusya, open the door! Is your water overflowing, or
what? We're being flooded!'
Margarita rose up about a metre and hit the chandelier. Two bulbs
popped and pendants flew in all directions. The shouting through the keyhole
stopped, stomping was heard on the stairs. Margarita floated through the
window, found herself outside it, swung lightly and hit the glass with the
hammer. The pane sobbed, and splinters went cascading down the marble-faced
wall. Margarita flew to the next window. Far below, people began running
about on the sidewalk, one of the two cars parked by the entrance honked and
drove off. Having finished with Latunsky's windows, Margarita floated to the
neighbour's apartment. The blows became more frequent, the lane was filled
with crashing and jingling. The doorman ran out of the main entrance, looked
up, hesitated a moment, evidently not grasping at first what he ought to
undertake, put the whistle to his lips, and started whistling furiously. To
the sound of this whistle, Margarita, with particular passion, demolished
the last window on the eighth floor, dropped down to the seventh, and
started smashing the windows there.
Weary of his prolonged idleness behind the glass doors of the entrance,
the doorman put his whole soul into his whistling, following Margarita
precisely as if he were her accompanist. In the pauses as she flew from
window to window, he would draw his breath, and at each of Margarita's
strokes, he would puff out his cheeks and dissolve in whistling, drilling
the night air right up to the sky.
His efforts, combined with the efforts of the infuriated Margarita,
yielded great results. There was panic in the house. Those windows left
intact were flung open, people's heads appeared in them and hid at once,
while the open windows, on the contrary, were being closed. In the buildings
across the street, against the lighted background of windows, there appeared
the dark silhouettes of people trying to understand why the windows in the
new Dramlit building were bursting for no reason at all.
In the lane people ran to Dramlit House, and inside, on all the
stairways, there was the stamping of people rushing about with no reason or
sense. Quant's housekeeper shouted to those running up the stairs that they
were being flooded, and she was soon joined by Khustov's housekeeper from
apartment no.80, located just below Quant's apartment. At Khustov's it was
pouring from the ceiling in both the kitchen and the toilet. Finally, in
Quant's kitchen a huge slab of plaster fell from the ceiling, breaking all
the dirty dishes, after which came a real downpour, the water gushing from
the grid of wet, hanging lath as if from a bucket. Then on the steps of the
main entrance shouting began.
Flying past the penultimate window of the fourth floor, Margarita
peeked in and saw a man who in panic had pulled on a gas mask. Hitting his
window with the hammer, Margarita scared him off, and he disappeared from
the room.
And unexpectedly the wild havoc ceased. Slipping down to the third
floor, Margarita peeked into the end window, covered by a thin, dark little
curtain. In the room a little lamp was burning weakly under a shade. In a
small bed with net sides sat a boy of about four, listening timorously.
There were no grown-ups in the room, evidently they had all run out of
the apartment.
They're breaking the windows,' the boy said and called: 'Mama!'
No one answered, and then he said:
'Mama, I'm afraid.'
Margarita drew the little curtain aside and flew in.
'I'm afraid,' the boy repeated, and trembled.
'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, little one,' said Margarita, trying
to soften her criminal voice, grown husky from the wind. 'It's some boys
breaking windows.'
'With a slingshot?' the boy asked, ceasing to tremble.
With a slingshot, with a slingshot,' Margarita confirmed, 'and you go
to sleep.'
'It's Sitnik,' said the boy, "he's got a slingshot.'
Well, of course it's he!'
The boy looked slyly somewhere to the side and asked:
'And where are you, ma'am?'
'I'm nowhere,' answered Margarita, 'I'm your dream.'
'I thought so,' said the boy.
'Lie down now,' Margarita ordered, 'put your hand under your cheek, and
I'll go on being your dream.'
'Well, be my dream, then,' the boy agreed, and at once lay down and put
his hand under his cheek.
'I'll tell you a story,' Margarita began, and placed her hot hand on
his cropped head. `Once there was a certain lady... And she had no children,
and generally no happiness either. And so first she cried for a long time,
and then she became wicked...' Margarita fell silent and took away her hand
- the boy was asleep.
Margarita quietly placed the hammer on the window-sill and flew out the
window. There was turmoil by the building. On the asphalt pavement strewn
with broken glass, people were running and shouting something. Policemen
were already flashing among them. Suddenly a bell rang, and a red
fire-engine with a ladder drove into the lane from the Arbat.
But what followed no longer interested Margarita. Taking aim, so as not
to brush against any wires, she clutched her broom more tightly and in a
moment was high above the ill-fated house. The lane beneath her went askew
and plunged away. In place of it a mass of roofs appeared under Margarita's
feet, criss-crossed at various angles by shining paths. It all unexpectedly
went off to one side, and the strings of lights smeared and merged.
Margarita made one more spurt and the whole mass of roofs fell through
the earth, and in place of it a lake of quivering electric lights appeared
below, and this lake suddenly rose up vertically and then appeared over
Margarita's head, while the moon flashed under her feet. Realizing that she
had flipped over, Margarita resumed a normal position and, glancing back,
saw that there was no longer any lake, and that there behind her only a pink
glow remained on the horizon. That, too, disappeared a second later, and
Margarita saw that she was alone with the moon flying above and to the left
of her. Margarita's hair had long been standing up in a shock, and the
whistling moonlight bathed her body. Seeing two rows of widespread lights
merge into two unbroken fiery lines, seeing how quickly they vanished behind
her, Margarita realized that she was flying at an enormous speed and was
amazed that she was not out of breath.
After a few seconds, a new glow of electric lights flared up far below
in the earthly blackness and hurtled under the flying woman's feet, but
immediately spun away like a whirligig and fell into the earth. A few
seconds later - exactly the same phenomenon.
'Towns! Towns!' cried Margarita.
Two or three times after that she saw dully gleaming sabres lying in
open black sheaths below her and realized that these were rivers.
Turning her head up and to the left, the flying woman admired the way
the moon madly raced back over her towards Moscow, and at the same time
strangely stayed in its place, so that there could be clearly seen on it
something mysterious, dark - a dragon, or a little humpbacked horse, its
sharp muzzle turned to the abandoned city.
Here the thought came to Margarita that, in fact, there was no need for
her to drive her broom so furiously, that she was depriving herself of the
opportunity of seeing anything properly, of revelling properly in her own
flight. Something told her that she would be waited for in the place she was
flying to, and that there was no need for her to become bored with this
insane speed and height.
Margarita turned the broom's bristles forward, so that its tail rose
up, and, slowing way down, headed right for the earth. This downward glide,
as on an airy sled, gave her the greatest pleasure. The earth rose to meet
her, and in its hitherto formless black density the charms and secrets of
the earth on a moonlit night revealed themselves. The earth was coming to
her, and Margarita was already enveloped in the scent of greening forests.
Margarita was flying just above the mists of a dewy meadow, then over a
pond. Under Margarita sang a chorus of frogs, and from somewhere far away,
stirring her heart deeply for some reason, came the noise of a train. Soon
Margarita saw it. It was crawling slowly along like a caterpillar, spraying
sparks into the air. Going ahead of it, Margarita passed over yet another
watery mirror, in which a second moon floated under her feet, dropped down
lower still and went on, her feet nearly touching the tops of the huge
pines.
A heavy noise of ripping air came from behind and began to overtake
Margarita. To this noise of something flying like a cannon ball a woman's
guffaw was gradually added, audible for many miles around. Margarita looked
back and saw some complex dark object catching up with her. As it drew
nearer to Margarita, it became more distinct - a mounted flying person could
be seen. And finally it became quite distinct: slowing down, Natasha came
abreast of Margarita.
Completely naked, her dishevelled hair flying in the air, she flew
astride a fat hog, who was clutching a briefcase in his front hoofs, while
his hind hoofs desperately threshed the air. Occasionally gleaming in the
moonlight, then fading, the pince-nez that had fallen off his nose flew
beside the hog on a string, and the hog's hat kept sliding down over his
eyes. Taking a close look, Margarita recognized the hog as Nikolai
Ivanovich, and then her laughter rang out over the forest, mingled with the
laughter of Natasha.
'Natashka!' Margarita shouted piercingly. 'You rubbed yourself with the
cream?'
'Darling!!' Natasha replied, awakening the sleeping pine forest with
her shout. 'My French queen, I smeared it on him, too, on his bald head!'
'Princess!' the hog shouted tearfully, galloping along with his rider.
'Darling! Margarita Nikolaevna!' cried Natasha, riding beside
Margarita, `I confess, I took the cream! We, too, want to live and fly!
Forgive me, my sovereign lady, I won't go back, not for anything! Ah,
it's good, Margarita Nikolaevna! ... He propositioned me,' Natasha began
jabbing her finger into the neck of the abashedly huffing hog,
'propositioned me! What was it you called me, eh?' she shouted, leaning
towards the hog's ear.
'Goddess!' howled the hog, 'I can't fly so fast! I may lose important
papers, Natalya Prokofyevna, I protest!'
'Ah, devil take you and your papers!' Natasha shouted with a brazen
guffaw.
'Please, Natalya Prokofyevna, someone may hear us!' the hog yelled
imploringly.
Flying beside Margarita, Natasha laughingly told her what happened in
the house after Margarita Nikolaevna flew off over the gates.
Natasha confessed that, without ever touching any of the things she had
been given, she threw off her clothes, rushed to the cream, and immediately
smeared herself with it. The same thing happened with her as with her
mistress. Just as Natasha, laughing with joy, was revelling in her own
magical beauty before the mirror, the door opened and Nikolai Ivanovich
appeared before her. He was agitated; in his hands he was holding Margarita
Nikolaevna's shift and his own hat and briefcase. Seeing Natasha, Nikolai
Ivanovich was dumbfounded. Getting some control of himself, all red as a
lobster, he announced that he felt it was his duty to pick up the little
shift and bring it personally...
The things he said, the blackguard!' Natasha shrieked and laughed. The
things he said, the things he tempted me to do! The money he promised! He
said Klavdia Petrovna would never learn of it. Well, speak, am I lying?'
Natasha shouted to the hog, who only turned his muzzle away abashedly.
In the bedroom, carried away with her own mischief, Natasha dabbed some
cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and was herself struck dumb with astonishment.
The respectable ground-floor tenant's face shrank to a pig's snout, and
his hands and feet acquired little hoofs. Looking at himself in the mirror,
Nikolai Ivanovich let out a wild and desperate howl, but it was already too
late. A few seconds later, saddled up, he was flying out of Moscow to devil
knows where, sobbing with grief.
`I demand that my normal appearance be restored to me!' the hog
suddenly grunted hoarsely, somewhere between frenzy and supplication. 'I'm
not going to fly to any illegal gathering! Margarita Nikolaevna, it's your
duty to call your housekeeper to order!'
'Ah, so now I'm a housekeeper? A housekeeper?' Natasha cried, pinching
the hog's ear. 'And I used to be a goddess? What was it you called me?'
'Venus!' the hog replied tearfully, as he flew over a brook bubbling
between stones, his little hoofs brushing the hazel bushes.
'Venus! Venus!' Natasha cried triumphantly, one hand on her hip, the
other stretched out towards the moon. 'Margarita! Queen! Intercede for me so
that I can stay a witch! They'll do anything for you, you have been granted
power!'
And Margarita responded:
'All right, I promise.'
Thank you!' exclaimed Natasha, and suddenly she cried out sharply and
somehow longingly: 'Hey! Hey! Faster! Faster! Come on, speed it up''
She dug her heels into the hog's sides, which had grown thinner during
this insane ride, and he tore on, so that the air ripped open again, and a
moment later Natasha could be seen only as a black speck in the distance,
then vanished completely, and the noise of her flight melted away.
Margarita flew as slowly as before through the deserted and unfamiliar
place, over hills strewn with occasional boulders among huge, widely spaced
pines. Margarita now flew not over the tops of the pines but between their
trunks, silvered on one side by the moon.
The light shadow of the flying woman glided over the ground ahead, the
moon shining now on Margarita's back.
Margarita sensed the proximity of water, and guessed that her goal was
near. The pines parted and Margarita rode slowly through the air up to a
chalk cliff. Beyond this cliff, down in the shadows, lay a river. Mist hung
clinging to the bushes on the cliff, but the opposite bank was flat and low.
On it, under a solitary group of spreading trees, the light of a
bonfire flickered and some small figures could be seen moving about. It
seemed to Margarita that some nagging, merry little tune was coming from
there.
Further off, as far as the eye could see, there was no sign of
habitation or people on the silvered plain.
Margarita leaped off the cliff and quickly descended to the water. The
water enticed her after her airy race. Casting the broom aside, she ran and
threw herself head first into the water. Her light body pierced the water's
surface like an arrow, and the column of water thrown up almost reached the
moon. The water turned out to be warm as in a bathhouse, and, emerging from
the depths, Margarita swam her fill in the total solitude of night in this
river.
There was no one near Margarita, but a little further away, behind the
bushes, splashing and grunting could be heard - someone was also having a
swim there.
Margarita ran out on to the bank. Her body was on fire after the swim.
She felt no fatigue, and was joyfully capering about on the moist
grass.
Suddenly she stopped dancing and pricked up her ears. The grunting came
closer, and from behind the willow bushes some naked fat man emerged, with a
black silk top hat pushed back on his head. His feet were covered with slimy
mud, which made it seem that the swimmer was wearing black shoes. Judging by
his huffing and hiccuping, he was properly drunk, as was confirmed,
incidentally, by the fact that the river suddenly began to smell of cognac.
Seeing Margarita, the fat man peered at her and then shouted joyfully:
`What's this? Who is it I see? Claudine, it's you, the ungrieving
widow! You're here, too?' and he came at her with his greetings. Margarita
stepped back and replied with dignity:
'Go to the devil! What sort of Claudine am I to you? Watch out who
you're talking to,' and, after a moment's reflection, she added to her words
a long, unprintable oath. All this had a sobering effect on the light-minded
fat man.
'Ah!' he exclaimed softly and gave a start, `magnanimously forgive me,
bright Queen Margot! I mistook you for someone else. The cognac's to blame,
curse it!' The fat man lowered himself to one knee, holding the top hat far
out, made a bow, and started to prattle, mixing Russian phrases with French,
some nonsense about the bloody wedding of his friend Guessard in Paris, and
about the cognac, and about being mortified by his sad mistake.
`Why don't you put your trousers on, you son of a bitch,' Margarita
said, softening.
The fat man grinned joyfully, seeing that Margarita was not angry, and
rapturously declared that he found himself without trousers at the given
moment only because in his absent-mindedness he had left them on the Yenisey
River, where he had been swimming just before, but that he would presently
fly there, since it was close at hand, and then, entrusting himself to her
favour and patronage, he began to back away and went on backing away until
he slipped and fell backwards into the water. But even as he fell, he kept
on his face, framed in small side-whiskers, a smile of rapture and devotion.
Here Margarita gave a piercing whistle and, mounting the broom that
flew up to her, crossed to the opposite bank of the fiver. The shadow of the
chalk mountain did not reach that far, and the whole bank was flooded with
moonlight.
As soon as Margarita touched the moist grass, the music under the pussy
willows struck up louder, and a sheaf of sparks flew up more merrily from
the bonfire. Under the pussy-willow branches, strewn with tender, fluffy
catkins, visible in the moonlight, sat two rows of fat-faced frogs, puffing
up as if they were made of rubber, playing a bravura march on wooden pipes.
Glowing marsh-lights hung on willow twigs in front of the musicians,
lighting up the music; the restless light of the bonfire danced on the
frogs' faces.
The march was being played in honour of Margarita. She was given a most
solemn reception. Transparent naiads stopped their round dance over the
river and waved weeds at Margarita, and their far-audible greetings moaned
across the deserted, greenish bank. Naked witches, jumping from behind the
pussy willows, formed a line and began curtseying and making courtly bows.
Someone goat-legged flew up and bent to her hand, spread silk on the
grass, inquired whether the queen had had a good swim, and invited her to
lie down and rest.
Margarita did just that. The goat-legged one offered her a glass of
champagne, she drank it, and her heart became warm at once. Having inquired
about Natasha's whereabouts, she received the reply that Natasha had already
taken her swim and had flown ahead to Moscow on her hog, to warn them that
Margarita would soon arrive and to help prepare her attire.
Margarita's short stay under the pussy willows was marked by one
episode: there was a whistling in the air, and a black body, obviously
missing its mark, dropped into the water. A few moments later there stood
before Margarita that same fat side-whiskerist who had so unsuccessfully
introduced himself on the other bank. He had apparently managed to get to
the Yenisey and back, for he was in full evening dress, though wet from head
to foot. The cognac had done him another bad turn: as he came down, he
landed in the water after all. But he did not lose his smile even on this
lamentable occasion, and the laughing Margarita admitted him to her hand.
Then they all started getting ready. The naiads finished their dance in
the moonlight and melted into it. The goat-legged one deferentially inquired
of Margarita how she had come to me river. On learning that she had come
riding on a broom, he said:
'Oh, but why, it's so inconvenient!' He instantly slapped together some
dubious-looking telephone from two twigs, and demanded of someone that a car
be sent that very minute, which, that same minute, was actually done. An
open, light sorrel car came down on the island, only in the driver's seat
there sat no ordinary-looking driver, but a black, long-beaked rook in an
oilcloth cap and gauntlets. The little island was becoming deserted. The
witches flew off, melting into the moon-blaze. The bonfire was dying down,
and the coals were covering over with hoary ash.
The goat-legged one helped Margarita in, and she sank on to the wide
back seat of the sorrel car. The car roared, sprang up, and climbed almost
to the moon; the island vanished, the river vanished, Margarita was racing
to Moscow.
The steady humming of the car, flying high above the earth, lulled
Margarita, and the moonlight warmed her pleasantly. Closing her eyes, she
offered her face to the wind and thought with a certain sadness about the
unknown river bank she had left behind, which she sensed she would never see
again. After all the sorceries and wonders of that evening, she could
already guess precisely whom she was being taken to visit, but that did not
frighten her. The hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness
made her fearless. However, she was not to dream of this happiness for long
in the car. Either the rook knew his job well, or the car was a good one,
but Margarita soon opened her eyes and saw beneath her not the forest
darkness, but a quivering sea of Moscow lights. The black bird-driver
unscrewed the right front wheel in flight, then landed the car in some
completely deserted cemetery in the Dorogomilovo area.
Having deposited the unquestioning Margarita by one of the graves along
with her broom, the rook started the car, aiming it straight into the ravine
beyond the cemetery. It tumbled noisily into it and there perished. The rook
saluted deferentially, mounted the wheel, and flew off.
A black cloak appeared at once from behind one of the tombstones. A
fang flashed in the moonlight, and Margarita recognized Azazello. He
gestured to Margarita, inviting her to get on the broom, jumped on to a long
rapier himself, they both whirled up and in a few seconds, unnoticed by
anyone, landed near no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street.
When the companions passed through the gateway, carrying the broom and
rapier under their arms, Margarita noticed a man languishing there in a cap
and high boots, probably waiting for someone. Light though Azazello's and
Margarita's footsteps were, the solitary man heard them and twitched
uneasily, not understanding who had produced them.
By the sixth entrance they met a second man looking surprisingly like
the first. And again the same story repeated itself. Footsteps ... the man
turned and frowned uneasily. And when the door opened and closed, he dashed
after the invisible enterers, peeked into the front hall, but of course saw
nothing.
A third man, the exact copy of the second, and therefore also of the
first, stood watch on the third-floor landing. He smoked strong cigarettes,
and Margarita had a fit of coughing as she walked past him. The smoker, as
if pricked with a pin, jumped up from the bench he was sitting on, began
turning around uneasily, went to the banister, looked down. Margarita and
her companion were by that time already at the door of apartment no.50. They
did not ring the bell. Azazello noiselessly opened the door with his own
key.
The first thing that struck Margarita was the darkness in which she
found herself. It was as dark as underground, so that she involuntarily
clutched at Azazello's cloak for fear of stumbling. But then, from far away
and above, the light of some little lamp flickered and began to approach.
Azazello took the broom from under Margarita's arm as they walked, and
it disappeared without a sound in the darkness.
Here they started climbing some wide steps, and Margarita began to
think there would be no end to them. She was struck that the front hall of
an ordinary Moscow apartment could contain this extraordinary invisible, yet
quite palpable, endless stairway. But the climb ended, and Margarita
realized that she was on a landing. The light came right up to them, and
Margarita saw in this light the face of a man, long and black, holding a
little lamp in his hand. Those who in recent days had been so unfortunate as
to cross paths with him, would certainly have recognized him even by the
faint tongue of flame from the lamp. It was Koroviev, alias Fagott.
True, Koroviev's appearance was quite changed. The flickering light was
reflected not in the cracked pince-nez, which it had long been time to throw
in the trash, but in a monocle, which, true, was also cracked. The little
moustache on his insolent face was twirled up and waxed, and Koroviev's
blackness was quite simply explained - he was in formal attire. Only his
chest was white.
The magician, choirmaster, sorcerer, interpreter - devil knows what he
really was - Koroviev, in short, made his bows and, with a broad sweep of
the lamp in the air, invited Margarita to follow him. Azazello disappeared.
'An amazingly strange evening,' thought Margarita, 'I expected anything
but this. Has their electricity gone off, or what? But the most striking
thing is the size of the place... How could it all be squeezed into a Moscow
apartment? There's simply no way it could be! ...'
However little light Koroviev's lamp gave out, Margarita realized that
she was in an absolutely enormous hall, with a colonnade besides, dark and
on first impression endless. Koroviev stopped by some sort of little settee,
placed his lamp on some sort of post, gestured for Margarita to sit down,
and settled himself beside her in a picturesque attitude, leaning his elbow
on the post.
'Allow me to introduce myself to you,' creaked Koroviev, 'Koroviev. You
are surprised there's no light? Economy, so you think, of course? Unh-unh!
May the first executioner to come along, even one of those who later this
evening will have the honour of kissing your knee, lop my head off on this
very post if it's so! Messire simply doesn't like electric light, and we'll
save it for the very last moment. And then, believe me, there'll be no lack
of it. Perhaps it would even be better to have less.'
Margarita liked Koroviev, and his rattling chatter had a soothing
effect on her.
'No,' replied Margarita, 'most of all I'm struck that there's room for
all this.' She made a gesture with her hand, emphasizing the enormousness of
the hall.
Koroviev grinned sweetly, which made the shadows stir in the folds of
his nose.
`The most uncomplicated thing of all!' he replied. 'For someone well
acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to expand space to the
desired proportions. I'll say more, respected lady - to devil knows what
proportions! I, however,' Koroviev went on chattering, "have known people
who had no idea, not only of the fifth dimension, but generally of anything
at all, and who nevertheless performed absolute wonders in expanding their
space. Thus, for instance, one city-dweller, as I've been told, having
obtained a three-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, transformed it instantly,
without any fifth dimension or other things that addle the brain, into a
four-room apartment by dividing one room in half with a partition.
`He forthwith exchanged that one for two separate apartments in
different parts of Moscow: one of three rooms, the other of two. You must
agree that that makes five. The three-room one he exchanged for two separate
ones, each of two rooms, and became the owner, as you can see for yourself,
of six rooms - true, scattered in total disorder all over Moscow. He was
just getting ready to perform his last and most brilliant leap, by
advertising in the newspapers that he wanted to exchange six rooms in
different parts of Moscow for one five-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, when
his activity ceased for reasons independent of him. He probably also has
some sort of room now, only I venture to assure you it is not in Moscow. A
real slicker, you see, ma'am, and you keep talking about the fifth
dimension!'
Though she had never talked about the fifth dimension, and it was
Koroviev himself who kept talking about it, Margarita laughed gaily, hearing
the story of the adventures of the apartment slicker. Koroviev went on:
'But to business, to business, Margarita Nikolaevna. You're quite an
intelligent woman, and of course have already guessed who our host is.'
Margarita's heart thumped, and she nodded.
Well, and so, ma'am,' Koroviev said, 'and so, we're enemies of any sort
of reticence and mysteriousness. Messire gives one ball annually. It is
called the spring ball of the full moon, or the ball of the hundred kings.
Such a crowd! ...' here Koroviev held his cheek as if he had a
toothache.
'However, I hope you'll be convinced of it yourself. Now, Messire is a
bachelor, as you yourself, of course, understand. Yet a hostess is needed,'
Koroviev spread his arms, 'without a hostess, you must agree ...'
Margarita listened to Koroviev, trying not to miss a single word; she
felt cold under her heart, the hope of happiness made her head spin.
'The tradition has been established,' Koroviev said further, 'that the
hostess of the ball must without fail be named Margarita, first, and second,
she must be a native of the place. And we, you will kindly note, are
travelling and at the present moment are in Moscow. We found one hundred and
twenty-one Margaritas in Moscow, and, would you believe it,' here Koroviev
slapped himself on the thigh with despair, 'not one of them was suitable!
And, at last, by a happy fate ...'
Koroviev grinned expressively, inclining his body, and again
Margarita's heart went cold.
'In short!' Koroviev cried out 'Quite shortly: you won't refuse to take
this responsibility upon yourself?'
'I won't refuse!' Margarita replied firmly.
'Done!' said Koroviev and, raising the little lamp, added: Please
follow me.'
They walked between the columns and finally came to another hall, in
which for some reason there was a strong smell of lemons, where some
rustlings were heard and something brushed against Margarita's head. She
gave a start.
'Don't be frightened,' Koroviev reassured her sweetly, taking Margarita
under the arm, 'it's Behemoth's contrivances for the ball, that's all. And
generally I will allow myself the boldness of advising you, Margarita
Nikolaevna, never to be afraid of anything. It is unreasonable. The ball
will be a magnificent one, I will not conceal it from you. We will see
persons the scope of whose power in their own time was extremely great. But,
really, once you think how microscopically small their possibilities were
compared to those of him to whose retinue I have the honour of belonging, it
seems ridiculous, and even, I would say, sad ... And, besides, you are of
royal blood yourself.'
'Why of royal blood?' Margarita whispered fearfully, pressing herself
to Koroviev.
'Ah, my Queen,' Koroviev rattled on playfully, 'questions of blood are
the most complicated questions in the world! And if we were to question
certain great-grandmothers, especially those who enjoyed a reputation as
shrinking violets, the most astonishing secrets would be uncovered, my
respected Margarita Nikolaevna! I would not be sinning in the least if, in
speaking of that, I should make reference to a whimsically shuffled pack of
cards. There are things in which neither barriers of rank nor even the
borders between countries have any validity whatsoever. A hint: one of the
French queens who lived in the sixteenth century would, one must suppose, be
very amazed if someone told her that after all these years I would be
leading her lovely great-great-great-granddaughter on my arm through the
ballrooms of Moscow. But we've arrived!'
Here Koroviev blew out his lamp and it vanished from his hands, and
Margarita saw lying on the floor in front of her a streak of light under
some dark door. And on this door Koroviev softly knocked. Here Margarita
became so agitated that her teeth chattered and a chill ran down her spine.
The door opened. The room turned out to be very small. Margarita saw a
wide oak bed with dirty, rumpled and bunched-up sheets and pillows. Before
the bed was an oak table with carved legs, on which stood a candelabrum with
sockets in the form of a bird's claws. In these seven golden claws' burned
thick wax candles. Besides that, there was on the table a large chessboard
with pieces of extraordinarily artful workmanship. A little low bench stood
on a small, shabby rug. There was yet another table with some golden bowl
and another candelabrum with branches in the form of snakes. The room
smelled of sulphur and pitch. Shadows from the lights criss-crossed on the
floor.
Among those present Margarita immediately recognized Azazello, now
dressed in a tailcoat and standing at the head of the bed. The dressed-up
Azazello no longer resembled that bandit in whose form he had appeared to
Margarita in the Alexandrovsky Garden, and his bow to Margarita was very
gallant.
A naked witch, that same Hella who had so embarrassed the respectable
barman of the Variety, and - alas - the same who had so fortunately been
scared off by the cock on the night of the notorious sng a chess knight in his
right paw.
Hella rose and bowed to Margarita. The cat, jumping off the tabouret,
did likewise. Scraping with his right hind paw, he dropped the knight and
crawled under the bed after it.
Margarita, sinking with fear, nevertheless made all this out by the
perfidious candlelight. Her eyes were drawn to the bed, on which sat he
whom, still quite recently, at the Patriarch's Ponds, poor Ivan had tried to
convince that the devil does not exist. It was this non-existent one who was
sitting on the bed.
Two eyes were fixed on Margarita's face. The right one with a golden
spark at its bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of his soul, and the left
one empty and black, like the narrow eye of a needle, like the entrance to
the bottomless well of all darkness and shadow. Woland's face was twisted to
one side, the right corner of the mouth drawn down, the high, bald forehead
scored by deep wrinkles running parallel to the sharp eyebrows. The skin of
Woland's face was as if burned for all eternity by the sun.
Woland, broadly sprawled on the bed, was wearing nothing but a long
nightshirt, dirty and patched on the left shoulder. One bare leg was tucked
under him, the other was stretched out on the little bench. It was the knee
of this dark leg that Hella was rubbing with some smoking ointment.
Margarita also made out on Woland's bared, hairless chest a beetle
artfully carved [2] from dark stone, on a gold chain and with some
inscriptions on its back. Beside Woland, on a heavy stand, stood a strange
globe, as if alive, lit on one side by the sun.
The silence lasted a few seconds. 'He's studying me,' thought
Margarita, and with an effort of will she tried to control the trembling in
her legs.
At last Woland began to speak, smiling, which made his sparkling eye as
if to flare up.
'Greetings to you, Queen, and I beg you to excuse my homely attire.'
The voice of Woland was so low that on some syllables it drew out into
a wheeze.
Woland took a long sword from the sheets, leaned down, poked it under
the bed, and said:
'Out with you! The game is cancelled. The guest has arrived.'
'By no means,' Koroviev anxiously piped, prompter-like, at Margarita's
ear.
'By no means ...' began Margarita.
'Messire ...' Koroviev breathed into her ear.
`By no means, Messire,' Margarita replied softly but distinctly,
gaining control over herself, and she added with a smile: `I beg you not to
interrupt your game. I imagine the chess journals would pay good money for
the chance to publish it.'
Azazello gave a low but approving grunt, and Woland, looking intently
at Margarita, observed as if to himself:
'Yes, Koroviev is right. How whimsically the deck has been shuffled!
Blood!'
He reached out and beckoned Margarita to him with his hand. She went
up, not feeling the floor under her bare feet. Woland placed his hand, heavy
as if made of stone and at the same time hot as fire, on Margarita's
shoulder, pulled her towards him, and sat her on the bed by his side.
`Well,' he said, `since you are so charmingly courteous - and I
expected nothing else - let us not stand on ceremony.' He again leaned over
the side of the bed and cried: 'How long will this circus under the bed
continue? Come out, you confounded Hans!'[3]
'I can't find my knight,' the cat responded from under the bed in a
muffled and false voice, 'it's ridden off somewhere, and I keep getting some
frog instead.'
`You don't imagine you're at some fairground, do you?' asked Woland,
pretending to be angry. 'There's no frog under the bed! Leave these cheap
tricks for the Variety. If you don't appear at once, we'll consider that
you've forfeited, you damned deserter!'
'Not for anything, Messire!' yelled the cat, and he got out from under
the bed that same second, holding the knight in his paw.
'Allow me to present ...' Woland began and interrupted himself: 'No, I
simply cannot look at this buffoon. See what he's turned himself into under
the bed!'
Standing on his hind legs, the dust-covered cat was meanwhile making
his bows to Margarita. There was now a white bow-tie on the cat's neck, and
a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl opera glasses hung from a strap on his
neck. What's more, the cat's whiskers were gilded.
'Well, what's all this now?' exclaimed Woland. `Why have you gilded
your whiskers? And what the devil do you need the bow-tie for, when you're
not even wearing trousers?'
'A cat is not supposed to wear trousers, Messire,' the cat replied with
great dignity. 'You're not going to tell me to wear boots, too, are you?
Puss-in-Boots exists only in fairy tales, Messire. But have you ever seen
anyone at a ball without a bow-tie? I do not intend to put myself in a
ridiculous situation and risk being chucked out! Everyone adorns himself
with what he can. You may consider what I've said as referring to the opera
glasses as well, Messire!'
'But the whiskers? ...'
'I don't understand,' the cat retorted drily. 'Why could Azazello and
Koroviev put white powder on themselves as they were shaving today, and how
is that better than gold? I powdered my whiskers, that's all! If I'd shaved
myself, it would be a different matter! A shaved cat - now, that is indeed
an outrage, I'm prepared to admit it a thousand times over. But generally,'
here the cat's voice quavered touchily, 'I see I am being made the object of
a certain captiousness, and I see that a serious problem stands before me -
am I to attend the ball? What have you to say about that, Messire?'
And the cat got so puffed up with offence that it seemed he would burst
in another second.
the one who ruined the master!'
The doorman at the entrance, even hopping with astonishment, his eyes
rolled out, gazed at the black board, trying to understand the marvel: why
was the list of tenants suddenly shrieking?
But by that time Margarita was already going impetuously up the stairs,
repeating in some sort of rapture:
'Latunsky eighty-four... Latunsky eighty-four...'
Here to the left - 82, to the right - 85, further up, to the left - 84!
Here! And the name plate - '0. Latunsky'.
Margarita jumped off the broom, and her hot soles felt the pleasant
coolness of the stone landing. Margarita rang once, twice. But no one
opened. Margarita began to push the button harder and could hear the
jangling it set off in Latunsky's apartment. Yes, to his dying day the
inhabitant of apartment no.84 on the eighth floor should be grateful to the
late Berlioz, chairman of Massolit, for having fallen under a tram-car, and
that the memorial gathering had been appointed precisely for that evening.
The critic Latunsky was born under a lucky star - it saved him from
meeting Margarita, who that Friday became a witch.
No one opened the door. Then Margarita raced down at full swing,
counting the floors, reached the bottom, burst out the door and, looking up,
counted and checked the floors from outside, guessing which precisely were
the windows of Latunsky's apartment. Undoubtedly they were the five dark
windows at the corner of the building on the eighth floor. Convinced of it,
Margarita rose into the air and in a few seconds was stepping through an
open window into an unlit room, where only a narrow path from the moon shone
silver. Margarita ran down it, felt for the switch. A moment later the whole
apartment was lit up. The broom stood in a corner. After making sure that no
one was home, Margarita opened the door to the stairs and checked whether
the name plate was there. The name plate was in place. Margarita was where
she wanted to be.
Yes, they say that to this day the critic Latunsky rums pale
remembering that terrible evening, and to this day he utters the name of
Berlioz with veneration. It is totally unknown what dark and vile criminal
job would have marked this evening - returning from the kitchen, Margarita
had a heavy hammer in her hands.
Naked and invisible, the lady flier tried to control and talk sense
into herself; her hands trembled with impatience. Taking careful aim,
Margarita struck at the keys of the grand piano, and a first plaintive wail
passed all through the apartment. Becker's drawing-room instrument, not
guilty of anything, cried out frenziedly. Its keys caved in, ivory veneer
flew in all directions. The instrument howled, wailed, rasped and jangled.
With the noise of a pistol shot, the polished upper soundboard split
under a hammer blow. Breathing hard, Margarita tore and mangled the strings
with the hammer. Finally getting tired, she left off and flopped into an
armchair to catch her breath.
Water was roaring terribly in the bathroom, and in the kitchen as well.
'Seems it's already overflowing on the floor...' Margarita thought, and
added aloud:
'No point sitting around, however.'
The stream was already running from the kitchen into the corridor.
Splashing barefoot through the water, Margarita carried buckets of
water from the kitchen to the critic's study and emptied them into his desk
drawers. Then, after smashing the door of the bookcase in the same study
with her hammer, she rushed to the bedroom. Shattering the mirror on the
wardrobe, she took out the critic's dress suit and drowned it in the tub. A
large bottle of ink, picked up in the study, she poured over the luxuriously
plumped-up double bed.
The devastation she wrought afforded her a burning pleasure, and yet it
seemed to her all the while that the results came out somehow meagre.
Therefore she started doing whatever came along. She smashed pots of
ficus in the room with the grand piano. Before finishing that, she went back
to the bedroom, slashed the sheets with a kitchen knife, and broke the glass
on the framed photographs. She felt no fatigue, only the sweat poured from
her in streams.
Just then, in apartment no.82, below Latunsky's apartment, the
housekeeper of the dramatist Quant was having tea in the kitchen, perplexed
by the clatter, running and jangling coming from above. Raising her head
towards the ceiling, she suddenly saw it changing colour before her eyes
from white to some deathly blue. The spot was widening right in front of her
and drops suddenly swelled out on it. For about two minutes the housekeeper
sat marvelling at this phenomenon, until finally a real rain began to fall
from the ceiling, drumming on the floor. Here she jumped up, put a bowl
under the stream, which did not help at all, because the rain expanded and
began pouring down on the gas stove and the table with dishes. Then, crying
out, Quant's housekeeper ran from the apartment to the stairs and at once
the bell started ringing in Latunsky's apartment.
Well, they're ringing ... Time to be off,' said Margarita. She sat on
the broom, listening to the female voice shouting through the keyhole:
'Open up, open up! Dusya, open the door! Is your water overflowing, or
what? We're being flooded!'
Margarita rose up about a metre and hit the chandelier. Two bulbs
popped and pendants flew in all directions. The shouting through the keyhole
stopped, stomping was heard on the stairs. Margarita floated through the
window, found herself outside it, swung lightly and hit the glass with the
hammer. The pane sobbed, and splinters went cascading down the marble-faced
wall. Margarita flew to the next window. Far below, people began running
about on the sidewalk, one of the two cars parked by the entrance honked and
drove off. Having finished with Latunsky's windows, Margarita floated to the
neighbour's apartment. The blows became more frequent, the lane was filled
with crashing and jingling. The doorman ran out of the main entrance, looked
up, hesitated a moment, evidently not grasping at first what he ought to
undertake, put the whistle to his lips, and started whistling furiously. To
the sound of this whistle, Margarita, with particular passion, demolished
the last window on the eighth floor, dropped down to the seventh, and
started smashing the windows there.
Weary of his prolonged idleness behind the glass doors of the entrance,
the doorman put his whole soul into his whistling, following Margarita
precisely as if he were her accompanist. In the pauses as she flew from
window to window, he would draw his breath, and at each of Margarita's
strokes, he would puff out his cheeks and dissolve in whistling, drilling
the night air right up to the sky.
His efforts, combined with the efforts of the infuriated Margarita,
yielded great results. There was panic in the house. Those windows left
intact were flung open, people's heads appeared in them and hid at once,
while the open windows, on the contrary, were being closed. In the buildings
across the street, against the lighted background of windows, there appeared
the dark silhouettes of people trying to understand why the windows in the
new Dramlit building were bursting for no reason at all.
In the lane people ran to Dramlit House, and inside, on all the
stairways, there was the stamping of people rushing about with no reason or
sense. Quant's housekeeper shouted to those running up the stairs that they
were being flooded, and she was soon joined by Khustov's housekeeper from
apartment no.80, located just below Quant's apartment. At Khustov's it was
pouring from the ceiling in both the kitchen and the toilet. Finally, in
Quant's kitchen a huge slab of plaster fell from the ceiling, breaking all
the dirty dishes, after which came a real downpour, the water gushing from
the grid of wet, hanging lath as if from a bucket. Then on the steps of the
main entrance shouting began.
Flying past the penultimate window of the fourth floor, Margarita
peeked in and saw a man who in panic had pulled on a gas mask. Hitting his
window with the hammer, Margarita scared him off, and he disappeared from
the room.
And unexpectedly the wild havoc ceased. Slipping down to the third
floor, Margarita peeked into the end window, covered by a thin, dark little
curtain. In the room a little lamp was burning weakly under a shade. In a
small bed with net sides sat a boy of about four, listening timorously.
There were no grown-ups in the room, evidently they had all run out of
the apartment.
They're breaking the windows,' the boy said and called: 'Mama!'
No one answered, and then he said:
'Mama, I'm afraid.'
Margarita drew the little curtain aside and flew in.
'I'm afraid,' the boy repeated, and trembled.
'Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, little one,' said Margarita, trying
to soften her criminal voice, grown husky from the wind. 'It's some boys
breaking windows.'
'With a slingshot?' the boy asked, ceasing to tremble.
With a slingshot, with a slingshot,' Margarita confirmed, 'and you go
to sleep.'
'It's Sitnik,' said the boy, "he's got a slingshot.'
Well, of course it's he!'
The boy looked slyly somewhere to the side and asked:
'And where are you, ma'am?'
'I'm nowhere,' answered Margarita, 'I'm your dream.'
'I thought so,' said the boy.
'Lie down now,' Margarita ordered, 'put your hand under your cheek, and
I'll go on being your dream.'
'Well, be my dream, then,' the boy agreed, and at once lay down and put
his hand under his cheek.
'I'll tell you a story,' Margarita began, and placed her hot hand on
his cropped head. `Once there was a certain lady... And she had no children,
and generally no happiness either. And so first she cried for a long time,
and then she became wicked...' Margarita fell silent and took away her hand
- the boy was asleep.
Margarita quietly placed the hammer on the window-sill and flew out the
window. There was turmoil by the building. On the asphalt pavement strewn
with broken glass, people were running and shouting something. Policemen
were already flashing among them. Suddenly a bell rang, and a red
fire-engine with a ladder drove into the lane from the Arbat.
But what followed no longer interested Margarita. Taking aim, so as not
to brush against any wires, she clutched her broom more tightly and in a
moment was high above the ill-fated house. The lane beneath her went askew
and plunged away. In place of it a mass of roofs appeared under Margarita's
feet, criss-crossed at various angles by shining paths. It all unexpectedly
went off to one side, and the strings of lights smeared and merged.
Margarita made one more spurt and the whole mass of roofs fell through
the earth, and in place of it a lake of quivering electric lights appeared
below, and this lake suddenly rose up vertically and then appeared over
Margarita's head, while the moon flashed under her feet. Realizing that she
had flipped over, Margarita resumed a normal position and, glancing back,
saw that there was no longer any lake, and that there behind her only a pink
glow remained on the horizon. That, too, disappeared a second later, and
Margarita saw that she was alone with the moon flying above and to the left
of her. Margarita's hair had long been standing up in a shock, and the
whistling moonlight bathed her body. Seeing two rows of widespread lights
merge into two unbroken fiery lines, seeing how quickly they vanished behind
her, Margarita realized that she was flying at an enormous speed and was
amazed that she was not out of breath.
After a few seconds, a new glow of electric lights flared up far below
in the earthly blackness and hurtled under the flying woman's feet, but
immediately spun away like a whirligig and fell into the earth. A few
seconds later - exactly the same phenomenon.
'Towns! Towns!' cried Margarita.
Two or three times after that she saw dully gleaming sabres lying in
open black sheaths below her and realized that these were rivers.
Turning her head up and to the left, the flying woman admired the way
the moon madly raced back over her towards Moscow, and at the same time
strangely stayed in its place, so that there could be clearly seen on it
something mysterious, dark - a dragon, or a little humpbacked horse, its
sharp muzzle turned to the abandoned city.
Here the thought came to Margarita that, in fact, there was no need for
her to drive her broom so furiously, that she was depriving herself of the
opportunity of seeing anything properly, of revelling properly in her own
flight. Something told her that she would be waited for in the place she was
flying to, and that there was no need for her to become bored with this
insane speed and height.
Margarita turned the broom's bristles forward, so that its tail rose
up, and, slowing way down, headed right for the earth. This downward glide,
as on an airy sled, gave her the greatest pleasure. The earth rose to meet
her, and in its hitherto formless black density the charms and secrets of
the earth on a moonlit night revealed themselves. The earth was coming to
her, and Margarita was already enveloped in the scent of greening forests.
Margarita was flying just above the mists of a dewy meadow, then over a
pond. Under Margarita sang a chorus of frogs, and from somewhere far away,
stirring her heart deeply for some reason, came the noise of a train. Soon
Margarita saw it. It was crawling slowly along like a caterpillar, spraying
sparks into the air. Going ahead of it, Margarita passed over yet another
watery mirror, in which a second moon floated under her feet, dropped down
lower still and went on, her feet nearly touching the tops of the huge
pines.
A heavy noise of ripping air came from behind and began to overtake
Margarita. To this noise of something flying like a cannon ball a woman's
guffaw was gradually added, audible for many miles around. Margarita looked
back and saw some complex dark object catching up with her. As it drew
nearer to Margarita, it became more distinct - a mounted flying person could
be seen. And finally it became quite distinct: slowing down, Natasha came
abreast of Margarita.
Completely naked, her dishevelled hair flying in the air, she flew
astride a fat hog, who was clutching a briefcase in his front hoofs, while
his hind hoofs desperately threshed the air. Occasionally gleaming in the
moonlight, then fading, the pince-nez that had fallen off his nose flew
beside the hog on a string, and the hog's hat kept sliding down over his
eyes. Taking a close look, Margarita recognized the hog as Nikolai
Ivanovich, and then her laughter rang out over the forest, mingled with the
laughter of Natasha.
'Natashka!' Margarita shouted piercingly. 'You rubbed yourself with the
cream?'
'Darling!!' Natasha replied, awakening the sleeping pine forest with
her shout. 'My French queen, I smeared it on him, too, on his bald head!'
'Princess!' the hog shouted tearfully, galloping along with his rider.
'Darling! Margarita Nikolaevna!' cried Natasha, riding beside
Margarita, `I confess, I took the cream! We, too, want to live and fly!
Forgive me, my sovereign lady, I won't go back, not for anything! Ah,
it's good, Margarita Nikolaevna! ... He propositioned me,' Natasha began
jabbing her finger into the neck of the abashedly huffing hog,
'propositioned me! What was it you called me, eh?' she shouted, leaning
towards the hog's ear.
'Goddess!' howled the hog, 'I can't fly so fast! I may lose important
papers, Natalya Prokofyevna, I protest!'
'Ah, devil take you and your papers!' Natasha shouted with a brazen
guffaw.
'Please, Natalya Prokofyevna, someone may hear us!' the hog yelled
imploringly.
Flying beside Margarita, Natasha laughingly told her what happened in
the house after Margarita Nikolaevna flew off over the gates.
Natasha confessed that, without ever touching any of the things she had
been given, she threw off her clothes, rushed to the cream, and immediately
smeared herself with it. The same thing happened with her as with her
mistress. Just as Natasha, laughing with joy, was revelling in her own
magical beauty before the mirror, the door opened and Nikolai Ivanovich
appeared before her. He was agitated; in his hands he was holding Margarita
Nikolaevna's shift and his own hat and briefcase. Seeing Natasha, Nikolai
Ivanovich was dumbfounded. Getting some control of himself, all red as a
lobster, he announced that he felt it was his duty to pick up the little
shift and bring it personally...
The things he said, the blackguard!' Natasha shrieked and laughed. The
things he said, the things he tempted me to do! The money he promised! He
said Klavdia Petrovna would never learn of it. Well, speak, am I lying?'
Natasha shouted to the hog, who only turned his muzzle away abashedly.
In the bedroom, carried away with her own mischief, Natasha dabbed some
cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and was herself struck dumb with astonishment.
The respectable ground-floor tenant's face shrank to a pig's snout, and
his hands and feet acquired little hoofs. Looking at himself in the mirror,
Nikolai Ivanovich let out a wild and desperate howl, but it was already too
late. A few seconds later, saddled up, he was flying out of Moscow to devil
knows where, sobbing with grief.
`I demand that my normal appearance be restored to me!' the hog
suddenly grunted hoarsely, somewhere between frenzy and supplication. 'I'm
not going to fly to any illegal gathering! Margarita Nikolaevna, it's your
duty to call your housekeeper to order!'
'Ah, so now I'm a housekeeper? A housekeeper?' Natasha cried, pinching
the hog's ear. 'And I used to be a goddess? What was it you called me?'
'Venus!' the hog replied tearfully, as he flew over a brook bubbling
between stones, his little hoofs brushing the hazel bushes.
'Venus! Venus!' Natasha cried triumphantly, one hand on her hip, the
other stretched out towards the moon. 'Margarita! Queen! Intercede for me so
that I can stay a witch! They'll do anything for you, you have been granted
power!'
And Margarita responded:
'All right, I promise.'
Thank you!' exclaimed Natasha, and suddenly she cried out sharply and
somehow longingly: 'Hey! Hey! Faster! Faster! Come on, speed it up''
She dug her heels into the hog's sides, which had grown thinner during
this insane ride, and he tore on, so that the air ripped open again, and a
moment later Natasha could be seen only as a black speck in the distance,
then vanished completely, and the noise of her flight melted away.
Margarita flew as slowly as before through the deserted and unfamiliar
place, over hills strewn with occasional boulders among huge, widely spaced
pines. Margarita now flew not over the tops of the pines but between their
trunks, silvered on one side by the moon.
The light shadow of the flying woman glided over the ground ahead, the
moon shining now on Margarita's back.
Margarita sensed the proximity of water, and guessed that her goal was
near. The pines parted and Margarita rode slowly through the air up to a
chalk cliff. Beyond this cliff, down in the shadows, lay a river. Mist hung
clinging to the bushes on the cliff, but the opposite bank was flat and low.
On it, under a solitary group of spreading trees, the light of a
bonfire flickered and some small figures could be seen moving about. It
seemed to Margarita that some nagging, merry little tune was coming from
there.
Further off, as far as the eye could see, there was no sign of
habitation or people on the silvered plain.
Margarita leaped off the cliff and quickly descended to the water. The
water enticed her after her airy race. Casting the broom aside, she ran and
threw herself head first into the water. Her light body pierced the water's
surface like an arrow, and the column of water thrown up almost reached the
moon. The water turned out to be warm as in a bathhouse, and, emerging from
the depths, Margarita swam her fill in the total solitude of night in this
river.
There was no one near Margarita, but a little further away, behind the
bushes, splashing and grunting could be heard - someone was also having a
swim there.
Margarita ran out on to the bank. Her body was on fire after the swim.
She felt no fatigue, and was joyfully capering about on the moist
grass.
Suddenly she stopped dancing and pricked up her ears. The grunting came
closer, and from behind the willow bushes some naked fat man emerged, with a
black silk top hat pushed back on his head. His feet were covered with slimy
mud, which made it seem that the swimmer was wearing black shoes. Judging by
his huffing and hiccuping, he was properly drunk, as was confirmed,
incidentally, by the fact that the river suddenly began to smell of cognac.
Seeing Margarita, the fat man peered at her and then shouted joyfully:
`What's this? Who is it I see? Claudine, it's you, the ungrieving
widow! You're here, too?' and he came at her with his greetings. Margarita
stepped back and replied with dignity:
'Go to the devil! What sort of Claudine am I to you? Watch out who
you're talking to,' and, after a moment's reflection, she added to her words
a long, unprintable oath. All this had a sobering effect on the light-minded
fat man.
'Ah!' he exclaimed softly and gave a start, `magnanimously forgive me,
bright Queen Margot! I mistook you for someone else. The cognac's to blame,
curse it!' The fat man lowered himself to one knee, holding the top hat far
out, made a bow, and started to prattle, mixing Russian phrases with French,
some nonsense about the bloody wedding of his friend Guessard in Paris, and
about the cognac, and about being mortified by his sad mistake.
`Why don't you put your trousers on, you son of a bitch,' Margarita
said, softening.
The fat man grinned joyfully, seeing that Margarita was not angry, and
rapturously declared that he found himself without trousers at the given
moment only because in his absent-mindedness he had left them on the Yenisey
River, where he had been swimming just before, but that he would presently
fly there, since it was close at hand, and then, entrusting himself to her
favour and patronage, he began to back away and went on backing away until
he slipped and fell backwards into the water. But even as he fell, he kept
on his face, framed in small side-whiskers, a smile of rapture and devotion.
Here Margarita gave a piercing whistle and, mounting the broom that
flew up to her, crossed to the opposite bank of the fiver. The shadow of the
chalk mountain did not reach that far, and the whole bank was flooded with
moonlight.
As soon as Margarita touched the moist grass, the music under the pussy
willows struck up louder, and a sheaf of sparks flew up more merrily from
the bonfire. Under the pussy-willow branches, strewn with tender, fluffy
catkins, visible in the moonlight, sat two rows of fat-faced frogs, puffing
up as if they were made of rubber, playing a bravura march on wooden pipes.
Glowing marsh-lights hung on willow twigs in front of the musicians,
lighting up the music; the restless light of the bonfire danced on the
frogs' faces.
The march was being played in honour of Margarita. She was given a most
solemn reception. Transparent naiads stopped their round dance over the
river and waved weeds at Margarita, and their far-audible greetings moaned
across the deserted, greenish bank. Naked witches, jumping from behind the
pussy willows, formed a line and began curtseying and making courtly bows.
Someone goat-legged flew up and bent to her hand, spread silk on the
grass, inquired whether the queen had had a good swim, and invited her to
lie down and rest.
Margarita did just that. The goat-legged one offered her a glass of
champagne, she drank it, and her heart became warm at once. Having inquired
about Natasha's whereabouts, she received the reply that Natasha had already
taken her swim and had flown ahead to Moscow on her hog, to warn them that
Margarita would soon arrive and to help prepare her attire.
Margarita's short stay under the pussy willows was marked by one
episode: there was a whistling in the air, and a black body, obviously
missing its mark, dropped into the water. A few moments later there stood
before Margarita that same fat side-whiskerist who had so unsuccessfully
introduced himself on the other bank. He had apparently managed to get to
the Yenisey and back, for he was in full evening dress, though wet from head
to foot. The cognac had done him another bad turn: as he came down, he
landed in the water after all. But he did not lose his smile even on this
lamentable occasion, and the laughing Margarita admitted him to her hand.
Then they all started getting ready. The naiads finished their dance in
the moonlight and melted into it. The goat-legged one deferentially inquired
of Margarita how she had come to me river. On learning that she had come
riding on a broom, he said:
'Oh, but why, it's so inconvenient!' He instantly slapped together some
dubious-looking telephone from two twigs, and demanded of someone that a car
be sent that very minute, which, that same minute, was actually done. An
open, light sorrel car came down on the island, only in the driver's seat
there sat no ordinary-looking driver, but a black, long-beaked rook in an
oilcloth cap and gauntlets. The little island was becoming deserted. The
witches flew off, melting into the moon-blaze. The bonfire was dying down,
and the coals were covering over with hoary ash.
The goat-legged one helped Margarita in, and she sank on to the wide
back seat of the sorrel car. The car roared, sprang up, and climbed almost
to the moon; the island vanished, the river vanished, Margarita was racing
to Moscow.
The steady humming of the car, flying high above the earth, lulled
Margarita, and the moonlight warmed her pleasantly. Closing her eyes, she
offered her face to the wind and thought with a certain sadness about the
unknown river bank she had left behind, which she sensed she would never see
again. After all the sorceries and wonders of that evening, she could
already guess precisely whom she was being taken to visit, but that did not
frighten her. The hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness
made her fearless. However, she was not to dream of this happiness for long
in the car. Either the rook knew his job well, or the car was a good one,
but Margarita soon opened her eyes and saw beneath her not the forest
darkness, but a quivering sea of Moscow lights. The black bird-driver
unscrewed the right front wheel in flight, then landed the car in some
completely deserted cemetery in the Dorogomilovo area.
Having deposited the unquestioning Margarita by one of the graves along
with her broom, the rook started the car, aiming it straight into the ravine
beyond the cemetery. It tumbled noisily into it and there perished. The rook
saluted deferentially, mounted the wheel, and flew off.
A black cloak appeared at once from behind one of the tombstones. A
fang flashed in the moonlight, and Margarita recognized Azazello. He
gestured to Margarita, inviting her to get on the broom, jumped on to a long
rapier himself, they both whirled up and in a few seconds, unnoticed by
anyone, landed near no. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street.
When the companions passed through the gateway, carrying the broom and
rapier under their arms, Margarita noticed a man languishing there in a cap
and high boots, probably waiting for someone. Light though Azazello's and
Margarita's footsteps were, the solitary man heard them and twitched
uneasily, not understanding who had produced them.
By the sixth entrance they met a second man looking surprisingly like
the first. And again the same story repeated itself. Footsteps ... the man
turned and frowned uneasily. And when the door opened and closed, he dashed
after the invisible enterers, peeked into the front hall, but of course saw
nothing.
A third man, the exact copy of the second, and therefore also of the
first, stood watch on the third-floor landing. He smoked strong cigarettes,
and Margarita had a fit of coughing as she walked past him. The smoker, as
if pricked with a pin, jumped up from the bench he was sitting on, began
turning around uneasily, went to the banister, looked down. Margarita and
her companion were by that time already at the door of apartment no.50. They
did not ring the bell. Azazello noiselessly opened the door with his own
key.
The first thing that struck Margarita was the darkness in which she
found herself. It was as dark as underground, so that she involuntarily
clutched at Azazello's cloak for fear of stumbling. But then, from far away
and above, the light of some little lamp flickered and began to approach.
Azazello took the broom from under Margarita's arm as they walked, and
it disappeared without a sound in the darkness.
Here they started climbing some wide steps, and Margarita began to
think there would be no end to them. She was struck that the front hall of
an ordinary Moscow apartment could contain this extraordinary invisible, yet
quite palpable, endless stairway. But the climb ended, and Margarita
realized that she was on a landing. The light came right up to them, and
Margarita saw in this light the face of a man, long and black, holding a
little lamp in his hand. Those who in recent days had been so unfortunate as
to cross paths with him, would certainly have recognized him even by the
faint tongue of flame from the lamp. It was Koroviev, alias Fagott.
True, Koroviev's appearance was quite changed. The flickering light was
reflected not in the cracked pince-nez, which it had long been time to throw
in the trash, but in a monocle, which, true, was also cracked. The little
moustache on his insolent face was twirled up and waxed, and Koroviev's
blackness was quite simply explained - he was in formal attire. Only his
chest was white.
The magician, choirmaster, sorcerer, interpreter - devil knows what he
really was - Koroviev, in short, made his bows and, with a broad sweep of
the lamp in the air, invited Margarita to follow him. Azazello disappeared.
'An amazingly strange evening,' thought Margarita, 'I expected anything
but this. Has their electricity gone off, or what? But the most striking
thing is the size of the place... How could it all be squeezed into a Moscow
apartment? There's simply no way it could be! ...'
However little light Koroviev's lamp gave out, Margarita realized that
she was in an absolutely enormous hall, with a colonnade besides, dark and
on first impression endless. Koroviev stopped by some sort of little settee,
placed his lamp on some sort of post, gestured for Margarita to sit down,
and settled himself beside her in a picturesque attitude, leaning his elbow
on the post.
'Allow me to introduce myself to you,' creaked Koroviev, 'Koroviev. You
are surprised there's no light? Economy, so you think, of course? Unh-unh!
May the first executioner to come along, even one of those who later this
evening will have the honour of kissing your knee, lop my head off on this
very post if it's so! Messire simply doesn't like electric light, and we'll
save it for the very last moment. And then, believe me, there'll be no lack
of it. Perhaps it would even be better to have less.'
Margarita liked Koroviev, and his rattling chatter had a soothing
effect on her.
'No,' replied Margarita, 'most of all I'm struck that there's room for
all this.' She made a gesture with her hand, emphasizing the enormousness of
the hall.
Koroviev grinned sweetly, which made the shadows stir in the folds of
his nose.
`The most uncomplicated thing of all!' he replied. 'For someone well
acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to expand space to the
desired proportions. I'll say more, respected lady - to devil knows what
proportions! I, however,' Koroviev went on chattering, "have known people
who had no idea, not only of the fifth dimension, but generally of anything
at all, and who nevertheless performed absolute wonders in expanding their
space. Thus, for instance, one city-dweller, as I've been told, having
obtained a three-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, transformed it instantly,
without any fifth dimension or other things that addle the brain, into a
four-room apartment by dividing one room in half with a partition.
`He forthwith exchanged that one for two separate apartments in
different parts of Moscow: one of three rooms, the other of two. You must
agree that that makes five. The three-room one he exchanged for two separate
ones, each of two rooms, and became the owner, as you can see for yourself,
of six rooms - true, scattered in total disorder all over Moscow. He was
just getting ready to perform his last and most brilliant leap, by
advertising in the newspapers that he wanted to exchange six rooms in
different parts of Moscow for one five-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, when
his activity ceased for reasons independent of him. He probably also has
some sort of room now, only I venture to assure you it is not in Moscow. A
real slicker, you see, ma'am, and you keep talking about the fifth
dimension!'
Though she had never talked about the fifth dimension, and it was
Koroviev himself who kept talking about it, Margarita laughed gaily, hearing
the story of the adventures of the apartment slicker. Koroviev went on:
'But to business, to business, Margarita Nikolaevna. You're quite an
intelligent woman, and of course have already guessed who our host is.'
Margarita's heart thumped, and she nodded.
Well, and so, ma'am,' Koroviev said, 'and so, we're enemies of any sort
of reticence and mysteriousness. Messire gives one ball annually. It is
called the spring ball of the full moon, or the ball of the hundred kings.
Such a crowd! ...' here Koroviev held his cheek as if he had a
toothache.
'However, I hope you'll be convinced of it yourself. Now, Messire is a
bachelor, as you yourself, of course, understand. Yet a hostess is needed,'
Koroviev spread his arms, 'without a hostess, you must agree ...'
Margarita listened to Koroviev, trying not to miss a single word; she
felt cold under her heart, the hope of happiness made her head spin.
'The tradition has been established,' Koroviev said further, 'that the
hostess of the ball must without fail be named Margarita, first, and second,
she must be a native of the place. And we, you will kindly note, are
travelling and at the present moment are in Moscow. We found one hundred and
twenty-one Margaritas in Moscow, and, would you believe it,' here Koroviev
slapped himself on the thigh with despair, 'not one of them was suitable!
And, at last, by a happy fate ...'
Koroviev grinned expressively, inclining his body, and again
Margarita's heart went cold.
'In short!' Koroviev cried out 'Quite shortly: you won't refuse to take
this responsibility upon yourself?'
'I won't refuse!' Margarita replied firmly.
'Done!' said Koroviev and, raising the little lamp, added: Please
follow me.'
They walked between the columns and finally came to another hall, in
which for some reason there was a strong smell of lemons, where some
rustlings were heard and something brushed against Margarita's head. She
gave a start.
'Don't be frightened,' Koroviev reassured her sweetly, taking Margarita
under the arm, 'it's Behemoth's contrivances for the ball, that's all. And
generally I will allow myself the boldness of advising you, Margarita
Nikolaevna, never to be afraid of anything. It is unreasonable. The ball
will be a magnificent one, I will not conceal it from you. We will see
persons the scope of whose power in their own time was extremely great. But,
really, once you think how microscopically small their possibilities were
compared to those of him to whose retinue I have the honour of belonging, it
seems ridiculous, and even, I would say, sad ... And, besides, you are of
royal blood yourself.'
'Why of royal blood?' Margarita whispered fearfully, pressing herself
to Koroviev.
'Ah, my Queen,' Koroviev rattled on playfully, 'questions of blood are
the most complicated questions in the world! And if we were to question
certain great-grandmothers, especially those who enjoyed a reputation as
shrinking violets, the most astonishing secrets would be uncovered, my
respected Margarita Nikolaevna! I would not be sinning in the least if, in
speaking of that, I should make reference to a whimsically shuffled pack of
cards. There are things in which neither barriers of rank nor even the
borders between countries have any validity whatsoever. A hint: one of the
French queens who lived in the sixteenth century would, one must suppose, be
very amazed if someone told her that after all these years I would be
leading her lovely great-great-great-granddaughter on my arm through the
ballrooms of Moscow. But we've arrived!'
Here Koroviev blew out his lamp and it vanished from his hands, and
Margarita saw lying on the floor in front of her a streak of light under
some dark door. And on this door Koroviev softly knocked. Here Margarita
became so agitated that her teeth chattered and a chill ran down her spine.
The door opened. The room turned out to be very small. Margarita saw a
wide oak bed with dirty, rumpled and bunched-up sheets and pillows. Before
the bed was an oak table with carved legs, on which stood a candelabrum with
sockets in the form of a bird's claws. In these seven golden claws' burned
thick wax candles. Besides that, there was on the table a large chessboard
with pieces of extraordinarily artful workmanship. A little low bench stood
on a small, shabby rug. There was yet another table with some golden bowl
and another candelabrum with branches in the form of snakes. The room
smelled of sulphur and pitch. Shadows from the lights criss-crossed on the
floor.
Among those present Margarita immediately recognized Azazello, now
dressed in a tailcoat and standing at the head of the bed. The dressed-up
Azazello no longer resembled that bandit in whose form he had appeared to
Margarita in the Alexandrovsky Garden, and his bow to Margarita was very
gallant.
A naked witch, that same Hella who had so embarrassed the respectable
barman of the Variety, and - alas - the same who had so fortunately been
scared off by the cock on the night of the notorious sng a chess knight in his
right paw.
Hella rose and bowed to Margarita. The cat, jumping off the tabouret,
did likewise. Scraping with his right hind paw, he dropped the knight and
crawled under the bed after it.
Margarita, sinking with fear, nevertheless made all this out by the
perfidious candlelight. Her eyes were drawn to the bed, on which sat he
whom, still quite recently, at the Patriarch's Ponds, poor Ivan had tried to
convince that the devil does not exist. It was this non-existent one who was
sitting on the bed.
Two eyes were fixed on Margarita's face. The right one with a golden
spark at its bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of his soul, and the left
one empty and black, like the narrow eye of a needle, like the entrance to
the bottomless well of all darkness and shadow. Woland's face was twisted to
one side, the right corner of the mouth drawn down, the high, bald forehead
scored by deep wrinkles running parallel to the sharp eyebrows. The skin of
Woland's face was as if burned for all eternity by the sun.
Woland, broadly sprawled on the bed, was wearing nothing but a long
nightshirt, dirty and patched on the left shoulder. One bare leg was tucked
under him, the other was stretched out on the little bench. It was the knee
of this dark leg that Hella was rubbing with some smoking ointment.
Margarita also made out on Woland's bared, hairless chest a beetle
artfully carved [2] from dark stone, on a gold chain and with some
inscriptions on its back. Beside Woland, on a heavy stand, stood a strange
globe, as if alive, lit on one side by the sun.
The silence lasted a few seconds. 'He's studying me,' thought
Margarita, and with an effort of will she tried to control the trembling in
her legs.
At last Woland began to speak, smiling, which made his sparkling eye as
if to flare up.
'Greetings to you, Queen, and I beg you to excuse my homely attire.'
The voice of Woland was so low that on some syllables it drew out into
a wheeze.
Woland took a long sword from the sheets, leaned down, poked it under
the bed, and said:
'Out with you! The game is cancelled. The guest has arrived.'
'By no means,' Koroviev anxiously piped, prompter-like, at Margarita's
ear.
'By no means ...' began Margarita.
'Messire ...' Koroviev breathed into her ear.
`By no means, Messire,' Margarita replied softly but distinctly,
gaining control over herself, and she added with a smile: `I beg you not to
interrupt your game. I imagine the chess journals would pay good money for
the chance to publish it.'
Azazello gave a low but approving grunt, and Woland, looking intently
at Margarita, observed as if to himself:
'Yes, Koroviev is right. How whimsically the deck has been shuffled!
Blood!'
He reached out and beckoned Margarita to him with his hand. She went
up, not feeling the floor under her bare feet. Woland placed his hand, heavy
as if made of stone and at the same time hot as fire, on Margarita's
shoulder, pulled her towards him, and sat her on the bed by his side.
`Well,' he said, `since you are so charmingly courteous - and I
expected nothing else - let us not stand on ceremony.' He again leaned over
the side of the bed and cried: 'How long will this circus under the bed
continue? Come out, you confounded Hans!'[3]
'I can't find my knight,' the cat responded from under the bed in a
muffled and false voice, 'it's ridden off somewhere, and I keep getting some
frog instead.'
`You don't imagine you're at some fairground, do you?' asked Woland,
pretending to be angry. 'There's no frog under the bed! Leave these cheap
tricks for the Variety. If you don't appear at once, we'll consider that
you've forfeited, you damned deserter!'
'Not for anything, Messire!' yelled the cat, and he got out from under
the bed that same second, holding the knight in his paw.
'Allow me to present ...' Woland began and interrupted himself: 'No, I
simply cannot look at this buffoon. See what he's turned himself into under
the bed!'
Standing on his hind legs, the dust-covered cat was meanwhile making
his bows to Margarita. There was now a white bow-tie on the cat's neck, and
a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl opera glasses hung from a strap on his
neck. What's more, the cat's whiskers were gilded.
'Well, what's all this now?' exclaimed Woland. `Why have you gilded
your whiskers? And what the devil do you need the bow-tie for, when you're
not even wearing trousers?'
'A cat is not supposed to wear trousers, Messire,' the cat replied with
great dignity. 'You're not going to tell me to wear boots, too, are you?
Puss-in-Boots exists only in fairy tales, Messire. But have you ever seen
anyone at a ball without a bow-tie? I do not intend to put myself in a
ridiculous situation and risk being chucked out! Everyone adorns himself
with what he can. You may consider what I've said as referring to the opera
glasses as well, Messire!'
'But the whiskers? ...'
'I don't understand,' the cat retorted drily. 'Why could Azazello and
Koroviev put white powder on themselves as they were shaving today, and how
is that better than gold? I powdered my whiskers, that's all! If I'd shaved
myself, it would be a different matter! A shaved cat - now, that is indeed
an outrage, I'm prepared to admit it a thousand times over. But generally,'
here the cat's voice quavered touchily, 'I see I am being made the object of
a certain captiousness, and I see that a serious problem stands before me -
am I to attend the ball? What have you to say about that, Messire?'
And the cat got so puffed up with offence that it seemed he would burst
in another second.