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'Ah, the cheat, the cheat,' said Woland, shaking his head. 'Each time
his game is in a hopeless situation, he starts addling your pate like the
crudest mountebank on a street corner. Sit down at once and stop slinging
this verbal muck.'
`I shall sit down,' replied the cat, sitting down, 'but I shall enter
an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal
muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but
rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be
appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, [4]
and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.
'Your king is in check,' said Woland.
Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the
chessboard through his opera glasses.
'And so, Donna,' Woland addressed Margarita, `I present to you my
retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth. Azazello and
Koroviev you have already met. I present to you my maidservant, Hella:
efficient, quick, and there is no service she cannot render.'
The beautiful Hella was smiling as she turned her green-tinged eyes to
Margarita, without ceasing to dip into the ointment and apply it to Woland's
knee.
'Well, that's the lot,' Woland concluded, wincing as Hella pressed
especially hard on his knee. 'A small, mixed and guileless company, as you
see.' He fell silent and began to spin the globe in front of him, which was
so artfully made that the blue oceans moved on it and the cap at the pole
lay like a real cap of ice and snow.
On the chessboard, meanwhile, confusion was setting in. A thoroughly
upset king in a white mantle was shuffling on his square, desperately
raising his arms. Three white pawn-mercenaries with halberds gazed in
perplexity at the bishop brandishing his crozier and pointing forward to
where, on two adjacent squares, white and black, Woland's black horsemen
could be seen on two fiery chargers pawing the squares with their hoofs.
Margarita was extremely interested and struck by the fact that the
chessmen were alive.
The cat, taking the opera glasses from his eyes, prodded his king
lightly in the back. The king covered his face with his hands in despair.
'Things aren't so great, my dear Behemoth,' Koroviev said quietly in a
venomous voice.
`The situation is serious but by no means hopeless,' Behemoth
responded. 'What's more, I'm quite certain of final victory. Once I've
analysed the situation properly.'
He set about this analysing in a rather strange manner - namely, by
winking and making all sorts of faces at his king. 'Nothing helps,' observed
Koroviev.
'Aie!' cried Behemoth, `the parrots have flown away, just as I
predicted!'
Indeed, from somewhere far away came the noise of many wings. Koroviev
and Azazello rushed out of the room.
`Devil take you with your ball amusements!' Woland grunted without
tearing his eyes from his globe.
As soon as Koroviev and Azazello disappeared Behemoth's winking took on
greater dimensions. The white king finally understood what was wanted of
him. He suddenly pulled off his mantle, dropped it on the square, and ran
off the board. The bishop covered himself with the abandoned royal garb and
took the king's place. Koroviev and Azazello came back.
'Lies, as usual,' grumbled Azazello, with a sidelong glance at
Behemoth.
'I thought I heard it,' replied the cat.
'Well, is this going to continue for long?' asked Woland. 'Your king is
in check.'
'I must have heard wrong, my master,' replied the cat. 'My king is not
and cannot be in check.' 'I repeat, your king is in check!'
`Messire,' the cat responded in a falsely alarmed voice, 'you are
overtired. My king is not in check.'
The king is on square G-5,' said Woland, without looking at the board.
'Messire, I'm horrified!' howled the cat, showing horror on his mug.
There is no king on that square!'
`What's that?' Woland asked in perplexity and began looking at the
board, where the bishop standing on the king's square kept turning away and
hiding behind his hand.
'Ah, you scoundrel,' Woland said pensively.
'Messire! Again I appeal to logic!' the cat began, pressing his paws to
his chest. 'If a player announces that the king is in check, and meanwhile
there's no trace of the king on the board, the check must be recognized as
invalid!'
'Do you give up or not?' Woland cried in a terrible voice.
`Let me think it over,' the cat replied humbly, resting his elbows on
the table, putting his paws over his ears, and beginning to think. He
thought for a long time and finally said: 'I give up.'
The obstinate beast should be killed,' whispered Azazello.
'Yes, I give up,' said the cat, `but I do so only because I am unable
to play in an atmosphere of persecution on the part of the envious!' He
stood up and the chessmen climbed into their box.
'Hella, it's time,' said Woland, and Hella disappeared from the room.
'My leg hurts, and now this ball ...' he continued.
'Allow me,' Margarita quietly asked.
Woland looked at her intently and moved his knee towards her.
The liquid, hot as lava, burned her hands, but Margarita, without
wincing, and trying not to cause any pain, rubbed it into his knee.
'My attendants insist it's rheumatism,' Woland was saying, not taking
his eyes off Margarita, 'but I strongly suspect that this pain in my knee
was left me as a souvenir by a charming witch with whom I was closely
acquainted in the year 1571, on Mount Brocken, [5] on the Devil's Podium.'
'Ah, can that be so!' said Margarita.
'Nonsense! In another three hundred years it will all go away! I've
been recommended a host of medications, but I keep to my granny's old ways.
Amazing herbs she left me, my grandma, that vile old thing! Incidentally,
tell me, are you suffering from anything? Perhaps you have some sort of
sorrow or soul-poisoning anguish?'
'No, Messire, none of that,' replied the clever Margarita, 'and now
that I'm here with you, I feel myself quite well.'
'Blood is a great thing ...' Woland said gaily, with no obvious point,
and added: 'I see you're interested in my globe.'
'Oh, yes, I've never seen anything like it.'
`It's a nice little object. Frankly speaking, I don't enjoy listening
to the news on the radio. It's always reported by some girls who pronounce
the names of places inarticulately. Besides, every third one has some slight
speech defect, as if they're chosen on purpose. My globe is much more
convenient, especially since I need a precise knowledge of events. For
instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the ocean?
Look, it's filling with fire. A war has started there. If you look closer,
you'll see the details.'
Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw the little square of land
spread out, get painted in many colours, and turn as it were into a relief
map. And then she saw the little ribbon of a river, and some village near
it. A little house the size of a pea grew and became the size of a matchbox.
Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of this house flew up along with a
cloud of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of
the little two-storey box except a small heap with black smoke pouring from
it.
Bringing her eye still closer, Margarita made out a small female figure
lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool of blood, a little child
with outstretched arms.
'That's it,' Woland said, smiling, 'he had no time to sin. Abaddon's
[6] work is impeccable.'
'I wouldn't want to be on the side that this Abaddon is against,' said
Margarita. 'Whose side is he on?'
The longer I talk with you,' Woland responded amiably, 'the more I'm
convinced that you are very intelligent. I'll set you at ease. He is of a
rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides of the fight.
Owing to that, the results are always the same for both sides. Abaddon!'
Woland called in a low voice, and here there emerged from the wall the
figure of some gaunt man in dark glasses. These glasses produced such a
strong impression on Margarita that she cried out softly and hid her face in
Woland's leg. 'Ah, stop it!' cried Woland. `Modern people are so nervous!'
He swung and slapped Margarita on the back so that a ringing went
through her whole body. 'Don't you see he's got his glasses on? Besides,
there has never yet been, and never will be, an occasion when Abaddon
appears before someone prematurely. And, finally, I'm here. You are my
guest! I simply wanted to show him to you.'
Abaddon stood motionless.
'And is it possible for him to take off his glasses for a second?'
Margarita asked, pressing herself to Woland and shuddering, but now
from curiosity.
'Ah, no, that's impossible,' Woland replied seriously and waved his
hand at Abaddon, and he was no more. "What do you wish to say, Azazello?'
'Messire,' replied Azazello, 'allow me to say - we've got two strangers
here: a beauty who is whimpering and pleading to be allowed to stay with her
lady, and with her, begging your pardon, there is also her hog.'
'Strange behaviour for a beauty!' observed Woland.
'It's Natasha, Natasha!' exclaimed Margarita.
'Well, let her stay with her lady. And the hog - to the cooks.'
`To slaughter him?' Margarita cried fearfully. `For pity's sake,
Messire, it's Nikolai Ivanovich, the ground-floor tenant. It's a
misunderstanding, you see, she daubed him with the cream...'
'But wait,' said Woland, 'why the devil would anyone slaughter him? Let
him stay with the cooks, that's all. You must agree, I cannot let him into
the ballroom.'
'No, really...' Azazello added and announced: `Midnight is approaching,
Messire.'
'Ah, very good.' Woland turned to Margarita: 'And so, if you please...
I thank you beforehand. Don't become flustered and don't be afraid of
anything. Drink nothing but water, otherwise you'll get groggy and it will
be hard for you. It's time!'
Margarita got up from the rug, and then Koroviev appeared in the
doorway.
Midnight was approaching; they had to hurry. Margarita dimly perceived
her surroundings. Candles and a jewelled pool remained in her memory. As she
stood in the bottom of this pool, Hella, with the assistance of Natasha,
doused her with some hot, thick and red liquid. Margarita felt a salty taste
on her lips and realized that she was being washed in blood. The bloody
mantle was changed for another - thick, transparent, pinkish - and
Margarita's head began to spin from rose oil. Then Margarita was laid on a
crystal couch and rubbed with some big green leaves until she shone.
Here the cat burst in and started to help. He squatted down at
Margarita's feet and began rubbing up her soles with the air of someone
shining shoes in the street.
Margarita does not remember who stitched slippers for her from pale
rose petals or how these slippers got fastened by themselves with golden
clasps. Some force snatched Margarita up and put her before a mirror, and a
royal diamond crown gleamed in her hair. Koroviev appeared from somewhere
and hung a heavy, oval-framed picture of a black poodle by a heavy chain on
Margarita's breast. This adornment was extremely burdensome to the queen.
The chain at once began to chafe her neck, the picture pulled her down. But
something compensated Margarita for the inconveniences that the chain with
the black poodle caused her, and this was the deference with which Koroviev
and Behemoth began to treat her.
'Never mind, never mind, never mind!' muttered Koroviev at the door of
the room with the pool. 'No help for it, you must, must, must... Allow me,
Queen, to give you a last piece of advice. Among the guests there will be
different sorts, oh, very different, but no one, Queen Margot, should be
shown any preference! Even if you don't like someone ... I understand that
you will not, of course, show it on your face - no, no, it's unthinkable!
He'll notice it, he'll notice it instantly! You must love him, love
him, Queen! The mistress of the ball will be rewarded a hundredfold for
that. And also - don't ignore anyone! At least a little smile, if there's no
time to drop a word, at least a tiny turn of the head! Anything you like,
but not inattention, they'll sicken from that ...'
Here Margarita, accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped out of
the room with the pool into total darkness.
'I, I,' whispered the cat, 'I give the signal!'
'Go ahead!' Koroviev replied from the darkness.
The ball!!!' shrieked the cat piercingly, and just then Margarita cried
out and shut her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her all at once in
the form of light, and, with it, of sound and smell. Taken under the arm by
Koroviev, Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest. Red-breasted,
green-tailed parrots fluttered from liana to liana and cried out
deafeningly: 'Delighted!' But the forest soon ended, and its bathhouse
stuffiness changed at once to the coolness of a ballroom with columns of
some yellowish, sparkling stone. This ballroom, just like the forest, was
completely empty, except for some naked negroes with silver bands on their
heads who were standing by the columns. Their faces turned a dirty brown
from excitement when Margarita flew into the ballroom with her retinue, in
which Azazello showed up from somewhere. Here Koroviev let go of Margarita's
arm and whispered:
'Straight to the tulips.'
A low wall of white tulips had grown up in front of Margarita, and
beyond it she saw numberless lamps under little shades and behind them the
white chests and black shoulders of tailcoaters. Then Margarita understood
where the sound of the ball was coming from. The roar of trumpets crashed
down on her, and the soaring of violins that burst from under it doused her
body as if with blood. The orchestra of about a hundred and fifty men was
playing a polonaise.
The tailcoated man hovering over the orchestra paled on seeing
Margarita, smiled, and suddenly, with a sweep of his arms, got the whole
orchestra to its feet. Not interrupting the music for a moment, the
orchestra, standing, doused Margarita with sound. The man over the orchestra
turned from it and bowed deeply, spreading his arms wide, and Margarita,
smiling, waved her hand to him.
'No, not enough, not enough,' whispered Koroviev, 'he won't sleep all
night. Call out to him: "Greetings to you, waltz king! [1]'
Margarita cried it out, and marvelled that her voice, full as a bell,
was heard over the howling of the orchestra. The man started with happiness
and put his left hand to his chest, while the right went on brandishing a
white baton at the orchestra.
'Not enough, not enough,' whispered Koroviev, 'look to the left, to the
first violins, and nod so that each one thinks you've recognized him
individually. There are only world celebrities here. Nod to that one ... at
the first stand, that's Vieuxtemps! [2] ... There, very good... Now,
onward!'
'Who is the conductor?' Margarita asked, flying off.
'Johann Strauss!' cried the cat. 'And they can hang me from a liana in
a tropical forest if such an orchestra ever played at any ball! I invited
them! And, note, not one got sick or declined!'
In the next room there were no columns. Instead there stood walls of
red, pink and milk-white roses on one side, and on the other a wall of
Japanese double camellias. Between these walls fountains spurted up,
hissing, and bubbly champagne seethed in three pools, the first of which was
transparent violet, the second ruby, the third crystal. Next to them negroes
in scarlet headbands dashed about, filling flat cups from the pools with
silver dippers. The pink wall had a gap in it, where a man in a red
swallowtail coat was flailing away on a platform. Before him thundered an
unbearably loud jazz band. As soon as the conductor saw Margarita, he bent
before her so that his hands touched the floor, then straightened up and
cried piercingly:
'Hallelujah!'
He slapped himself on the knee - one! - then criss-cross on the other
knee - two! - then snatched a cymbal from the hands of the end musician and
banged it on a column.
As she flew off, Margarita saw only that the virtuoso jazzman, fighting
against the polonaise blowing in Margarita's back, was beating his jazzmen
on the heads with the cymbal while they cowered in comic fright.
Finally they flew out on to the landing where, as Margarita realized,
she had been met in the dark by Koroviev with his little lamp. Now on this
landing the light pouring from clusters of crystal grapes blinded the eye.
Margarita was put in place, and under her left arm she found a low
amethyst column.
'You may rest your arm on it if it becomes too difficult,' Koroviev
whispered.
Some black man threw a pillow under Margarita's feet embroidered with a
golden poodle, and she, obedient to someone's hands, bent her right leg at
the knee and placed her foot on it.
Margarita tried to look around. Koroviev and Azazello stood beside her
in formal poses. Next to Azazello stood another three young men, vaguely
reminding Margarita of Abaddon. It blew cold in her back. Looking there,
Margarita saw bubbly wine spurt from the marble wall behind her and pour
into a pool of ice. At her left foot she felt something warm and furry. It
was Behemoth.
Margarita was high up, and a grandiose stairway covered with carpet
descended from her feet. Below, so far away that it was as if Margarita were
looking the wrong way through binoculars, she saw a vast front hall with an
absolutely enormous fireplace, into the cold and black maw of which a
five-ton truck could easily have driven. The front hall and stairway, so
flooded with light that it hurt the eyes, were empty. The sound of trumpets
now came to Margarita from far away. Thus they stood motionless for about a
minute.
'But where are the guests?' Margarita asked Koroviev.
'They'll come, Queen, they'll come, they'll come soon enough. There'll
be no lack of them. And, really, I'd rather go and chop wood than receive
them here on the landing.'
'Chop wood - hah!' picked up the garrulous cat. 'I'd rather work as a
tram conductor, and there's no worse job in the world than that!'
`Everything must be made ready in advance, Queen,' explained Koroviev,
his eye gleaming through the broken monocle. "There's nothing more loathsome
than when the first guest to arrive languishes, not knowing what to do, and
his lawful beldame nags at him in a whisper for having come before everybody
else. Such balls should be thrown in the trash, Queen.'
'Definitely in the trash,' confirmed the cat.
'No more than ten seconds till midnight,' said Koroviev. "It'll start
presently.'
Those ten seconds seemed extremely long to Margarita. Obviously they
had already passed and precisely nothing had happened. But here something
suddenly crashed downstairs in the huge fireplace, and from it leaped a
gallows with some half-decayed remains dangling from it. The remains fell
from the rope, struck the floor, and from it leaped a handsome dark-haired
man in a tailcoat and patent leather shoes. A half-rotten little coffin ran
out of the fireplace, its lid fell off, and another remains tumbled out of
it. The handsome man gallantly leaped over to it and offered it his bent
arm. The second remains put itself together into a fidgety woman in black
shoes, with black feathers on her head, and then the man and the woman both
hastened up the stairs.
The first!' exclaimed Koroviev. 'Monsieur Jacques [3] and his spouse. I
commend to you, Queen, one of the most interesting of men. A confirmed
counterfeiter, a traitor to his government, but a rather good alchemist.
Famous,' Koroviev whispered in Margarita's ear, 'for having poisoned a
king's mistress. That doesn't happen to everyone! Look how handsome he is!'
The pale Margarita, her mouth open, watched as both gallows and coffin
disappeared into some side passage in the front hall.
'Delighted!' the cat yelled right into the face of Monsieur Jacques as
he came up the stairs.
At that moment a headless skeleton with a torn-off arm emerged from the
fireplace, struck the ground, and turned into a man in a tailcoat.
Monsieur Jacques's spouse was already going on one knee before
Margarita and, pale with excitement, was kissing Margarita's foot.
`Queen...' Monsieur Jacques's spouse murmured.
The queen is delighted!' cried Koroviev.
`Queen...' the handsome Monsieur Jacques said quietly.
We're delighted,' howled the cat.
The young men, Azazello's companions, smiling lifeless but affable
smiles, were already shouldering Monsieur Jacques and his spouse to one
side, towards the cups of champagne that the negroes were holding. The
single man in the tailcoat was coming up the stairs at a run.
'Earl Robert,'[4] Koroviev whispered to Margarita, 'interesting as
ever. Note how funny, Queen: the reverse case, this one was a queen's lover
and poisoned his wife. 'We're very glad, Earl,' cried Behemoth.
Out of the fireplace, bursting open and falling apart, three coffins
tumbled one after another, then came someone in a black mantle, whom the
next one to run out of the black maw stabbed in the back with a knife. A
stifled cry was heard from below. An almost entirely decomposed corpse ran
out of the fireplace. Margarita shut her eyes, and someone's hand held a
flacon of smelling salts to her nose. Margarita thought the hand was
Natasha's.
The stairway began to fill up. Now on each step there were tailcoaters,
looking quite alike from afar, and naked women with them, who differed from
each other only in the colour of their shoes and of the feathers on their
heads.
Coming towards Margarita, hobbling, a strange wooden boot on her left
foot, was a lady with nunnishly lowered eyes, thin and modest, and with a
wide green band around her neck for some reason.
'Who is this ... green one?' Margarita asked mechanically.
'A most charming and respectable lady,' whispered Koroviev, 'I commend
her to you: Madame Tofana. [5] Extremely popular among young, lovely
Neapolitans, as well as the ladies of Palermo, especially those of them who
had grown weary of their husbands. It does happen, Queen, that one grows
weary of one's husband...'
'Yes,' Margarita replied in a hollow voice, smiling at the same time to
two tailcoaters who bent before her one after the other, kissing her knee
and hand.
'And so,' Koroviev managed to whisper to Margarita and at the same time
to cry out to someone: 'Duke! A glass of champagne? I'm delighted! ...
Yes, so then, Madame Tofana entered into the situation of these poor
women and sold them some sort of water in little vials. The wife poured this
water into her spouse's soup, he ate it, thanked her for being so nice, and
felt perfectly well. True, a few hours later he would begin to get very
thirsty, then go to bed, and a day later the lovely Neapolitan who had fed
her husband soup would be free as the spring breeze.'
'But what's that on her foot?' asked Margarita, tirelessly offering her
hand to the guests who came ahead of the hobbling Madame Tofana. 'And why
that green band? A withered neck?'
'Delighted, Prince!' cried Koroviev, and at the same time whispered to
Margarita: `A beautiful neck, but an unpleasantness happened to her in
prison. What she has on her foot, Queen, is a Spanish boot, [6] and the band
is explained this way: when the prison guards learned that some five hundred
ill-chosen husbands had departed Naples and Palermo for ever, in the heat of
the moment they strangled Madame Tofana in prison.'
'How happy I am, kindest Queen, that the high honour has fallen to
me...' Tofana whispered nunnishly, trying to lower herself to one knee - the
Spanish boot hindered her. Koroviev and Behemoth helped her up.
'I'm very glad,' Margarita answered her, at the same time offering her
hand to others.
Now a steady stream was coming up the stairs from below. Margarita
could no longer see what was going on in the front hall. She mechanically
raised and lowered her hand and smiled uniformly to the guests. There was a
hum in the air on the landing; from the ballrooms Margarita had left, music
could be heard, like the sea.
`But this one is a boring woman,' Koroviev no longer whispered, but
spoke aloud, knowing that in the hubbub of voices no one would hear him.
'She adores balls, and keeps dreaming of complaining about her
handkerchief.'
Margarita's glance picked out among those coming up the woman at whom
Koroviev was pointing. She was young, about twenty, of remarkably beautiful
figure, but with somehow restless and importunate eyes.
'What handkerchief?' asked Margarita.
`She has a chambermaid assigned to her,' explained Koroviev, 'who for
thirty years has been putting a handkerchief on her night table during the
night. She wakes up and the handkerchief is there. She's tried burning it in
the stove and drowning it in the river, but nothing helps.'
'What handkerchief?' whispered Margarita, raising and lowering her arm.
'A blue-bordered one. The thing is that when she worked in a cafe, the
owner once invited her to the pantry, and nine months later she gave birth
to a boy, took him to the forest, stuffed the handkerchief into his mouth,
and then buried the boy in the ground. At the trial she said she had no way
of feeding the child.'
`And where is the owner of the cafe?' asked Margarita. `Queen,' the cat
suddenly creaked from below, 'what, may I ask, does the owner have to do
with it? It wasn't he who smothered the infant in the forest!'
Margarita, without ceasing to smile and proffer her right hand, dug the
sharp nails of the left into Behemoth's ear and whispered to him:
`If you, scum, allow yourself to interfere in the conversation
again...'
Behemoth squeaked in a not very ball-like fashion and rasped:
'Queen ... the ear will get swollen ... why spoil the ball with a
swollen ear? ... I was speaking legally, from the legal point of view ... I
say no more, I say no more. Consider me not a cat but a post, only let go of
my ear!'
Margarita released his ear, and the importunate, gloomy eyes were
before her.
'I am happy, Queen-hostess, to be invited to the great ball of the full
moon!'
'And I am glad to see you,' Margarita answered her, 'very glad. Do you
like champagne?'
`What are you doing, Queen?!' Koroviev cried desperately but
soundlessly in Margarita's ear. There'll be a traffic jam!'
'Yes, I do,' the woman said imploringly, and suddenly began repeating
mechanically: 'Frieda, [7] Frieda, Frieda! My name is Frieda, Queen!'
'Get drunk tonight, Frieda, and don't think about anything,' said
Margarita.
Frieda reached out both arms to Margarita, but Koroviev and Behemoth
very adroitly took her under the arms and she blended into the crowd.
Now people were coming in a solid wall from below, as if storming the
landing where Margarita stood. Naked women's bodies came up between
tailcoated men. Their swarthy, white, coffee-bean-coloured, and altogether
black bodies floated towards Margarita. In their hair - red, black,
chestnut, light as flax - precious stones glittered and danced, spraying
sparkles into the flood of light. And as if someone had sprinkled the
storming column of men with droplets of light, diamond studs sprayed light
from their chests. Every second now Margarita felt lips touch her knee,
every second she held out her hand to be kissed, her face was contracted
into a fixed mask of greeting.
'I'm delighted,' Koroviev sang monotonously, 'we're delighted ... the
queen is delighted ...'
The queen is delighted...' Azazello echoed nasally behind her back.
'I'm delighted!' the cat kept exclaiming.
The marquise ...'[8] muttered Koroviev, `poisoned her father, two
brothers and two sisters for the inheritance ... The queen is delighted! ...
Madame Minkin ...[9] Ah, what a beauty! A bit nervous. Why bum the maid's
face with the curling-irons? Of course, in such conditions one gets
stabbed... The queen is delighted! ... Queen, one second of attention! The
emperor Rudolf [10] - sorcerer and alchemist... Another alchemist - got
hanged ... Ah, here she is! Ah, what a wonderful brothel she ran in
Strasbourg! ... We're delighted! ... A Moscow dressmaker," we all love her
for her inexhaustible fantasy ... She kept a shop and invented a terribly
funny trick: drilled two round holes in the wall ...'
'And the ladies didn't know?' asked Margarita.
'Every one of them knew, Queen,' answered Koroviev. 'Delighted! ...
This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange
qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he
went and sold her to a brothel...'
A river came streaming from below, and there was no end to this river
in sight. Its source - the enormous fireplace - continued to feed it. Thus
one hour passed and a second commenced. Here Margarita began to notice that
her chain had become heavier than before. Something strange also happened
with her arm. Now, before raising it, Margarita had to wince. Koroviev's
interesting observations ceased to amuse Margarita. Slant-eyed Mongolian
faces, white faces and black became undifferentiated to her, they merged at
times, and the air between them would for some reason begin to tremble and
flow. A sharp pain, as if from a needle, suddenly pierced Margarita's right
arm, and, clenching her teeth, she rested her elbow on the post. Some
rustling, as if from wings against the walls, was now coming from the
ballroom, and it was clear that unprecedented hordes of guests were dancing
there, and it seemed to Margarita that even the massive marble, mosaic and
crystal floors of this prodigious room were pulsing rhythmically.
Neither Gaius Caesar Caligula [12] nor Messalina" interested Margarita
any longer, nor did any of the kings, dukes, cavaliers, suicides, poisoners,
gallowsbirds, procuresses, prison guards and sharpers, executioners,
informers, traitors, madmen, sleuths, seducers. All their names became
jumbled in her head, the faces stuck together into one huge pancake, and
only a single face lodged itself painfully in her memory - the face, framed
in a truly fiery beard, of Maliuta Skuratov. [14]
Margarita's legs kept giving way, she was afraid of bursting into tears
at any moment. The worst suffering was caused by her right knee, which was
being kissed. It became swollen, the skin turned blue, even though Natasha's
hand appeared by this knee several times with a sponge, wiping it with
something fragrant. At the end of the third hour, Margarita glanced down
with completely desperate eyes and gave a joyful start - the stream of
guests was thinning out.
'Balls always assemble according to the same laws, Queen,' whispered
Koroviev. 'Presently the wave will begin to subside. I swear we're enduring
the final minutes. Here's the group of revellers from Brocken, they always
come last. Yes, here they are. Two drunken vampires ... that's all? Ah, no,
here's one more ... no, two!'[15]
The last two guests were coming up the stairs!
'It's some new one,' Koroviev was saying, squinting through his lens.
'Ah, yes, yes. Azazello visited him once and, over the cognac,
whispered some advice to him on how to get rid of a certain man whose
exposures he was extremely afraid of. And so he told an acquaintance who was
dependent on him to spray the walls of the office with poison ...'
'What's his name?' asked Margarita.
'Ah, really, I myself don't know yet,' Koroviev replied, 'we'11 have to
ask Azazello.'
'And who is with him?'
'Why, that same efficient subordinate of his. Delighted!' cried
Koroviev to the last two.
The stairway was empty. They waited a little longer as a precaution.
But no one else came from the fireplace.
A second later, without knowing how it happened, Margarita found
herself in the same room with the pool, and there, bursting into tears at
once from the pain in her arm and leg, she collapsed right on the floor. But
Hella and Natasha, comforting her, again drew her under the bloody shower,
again massaged her body, and Margarita revived.
"There's more, there's more, Queen Margot,' whispered Koroviev,
appearing beside her. 'You must fly around the rooms, so that the honourable
guests don't feel they've been abandoned.'
And once more Margarita flew out of the room with the pool. On the
stage behind the tulips, where the waltz king's orchestra had been playing,
there now raged an ape jazz band. A huge gorilla with shaggy side-whiskers,
a trumpet in his hand, capering heavily, was doing the conducting.
Orang-utans sat in a row blowing on shiny trumpets. Perched on their
shoulders were merry chimpanzees with concertinas.
Two hamadryads with manes like lions played grand pianos, but these
grand pianos were not heard amidst the thundering, squeaking and booming of
saxophones, fiddles and drums in the paws of gibbons, mandrills and
marmosets. On the mirror floor a countless number of couples, as if merged,
amazing in the deftness and cleanness of their movements, all turning in the
same direction, swept on like a wall threatening to clear away everything in
its path. Live satin butterflies bobbed above the heads of the dancing
hordes, flowers poured down from the ceiling. In the capitals of the
columns, each time the electricity went off, myriads of fireflies lit up,
and marsh-lights floated in the air.
Then Margarita found herself in a room with a pool of monstrous size
bordered by a colonnade. A giant black Neptune spouted a wide pink stream
from his maw. A stupefying smell of champagne rose from the pool. Here
unconstrained merriment held sway. Ladies, laughing, gave their handbags to
their cavaliers or the negroes who rushed about with towels in their hands,
and with a cry dived swallow-like into the pool. Foamy columns shot up. The
crystal bottom of the pool shone with light from below that broke through
the density of the wine, and in it the silvery swimming bodies could be
seen. The ladies got out of the pool completely drunk. Loud laughter
resounded under the columns, booming like the jazz band.
All that was remembered from this turmoil was the completely drunken
face of a woman with senseless and, even in their senselessness, imploring
eyes, and only one name - Frieda - was recalled.
Margarita's head began to spin from the smell of the wine, and she was
about to leave when the cat arranged a number in the pool that detained her.
Behemoth performed some magic by Neptune's maw, and at once the
billowing mass of champagne, hissing and gurgling, left the pool, and
Neptune began spewing out a stream neither glittering nor foaming but of a
dark-yellow colour. The ladies - shrieking and screaming 'Cognac!' - rushed
from the pool-side and hid behind the columns. In a few seconds the pool was
filled, and the cat, turning three times in the air, dropped into the
heaving cognac. He crawled out, spluttering, his bow-tie limp, the gilding
on his whiskers gone, along with the opera glasses. Only one woman dared to
follow Behemoth's example - that same frolicsome dressmaker, with her
cavalier, an unknown young mulatto. The two threw themselves into the
cognac, but here Koroviev took Margarita under the arm and they left the
bathers.
It seemed to Margarita that she flew somewhere, where she saw mountains
of oysters in huge stone basins. Then she flew over a glass floor with
infernal furnaces burning under it and devilish white cooks darting among
them. Then somewhere, already ceasing to comprehend anything, she saw dark
cellars where some sort of lamps burned, where girls served meat sizzling on
red-hot coals, where her health was drunk from big mugs. Then she saw polar
bears playing concertinas and dancing the Kamarinsky [16] on a platform. A
salamander-conjurer [17] who did not burn in the fireplace ... And for the
second time her strength began to ebb.
'One last appearance,' Koroviev whispered to her anxiously, `and then
we're free!'
Accompanied by Koroviev, she again found herself in the ballroom, but
now there was no dancing in it, and the guests in a numberless throng
pressed back between the columns, leaving the middle of the room open.
Margarita did not remember who helped her to get up on the dais that
appeared in the middle of this open space in the room. When she was up on
it, to her own amazement, she heard a clock strike midnight somewhere,
though by her reckoning it was long past. At the last stroke of the clock,
which came from no one knew where, silence fell on the crowd of guests.
Then Margarita saw Woland again. He walked in surrounded by Abaddon,
Azazello and several others who resembled Abaddon - dark-haired and young.
Now Margarita saw that opposite her dais another had been prepared for
Woland. But he did not make use of it. What struck Margarita was that Woland
came out for this last great appearance at the ball looking just the same as
he had looked in the bedroom. The same dirty, patched shirt [18] hung on his
shoulders, his feet were in worn-out bedroom slippers. Woland had a sword,
but he used this bare sword as a cane, leaning on it.
Limping, Woland stopped at his dais, and immediately Azazello was
before him with a platter in his hands, and on this platter Margarita saw a
man's severed head with the front teeth knocked out. Total silence continued
to reign, broken only once by the far-off sound, inexplicable under the
circumstances, of a doorbell, coming as if from the front hall.
"Mikhail Alexandrovich,' Woland addressed the head in a low voice, and
then the slain man's eyelids rose, and on the dead face Margarita saw, with
a shudder, living eyes filled with thought and suffering.
'Everything came to pass, did it not?' Woland went on, looking into the
head's eyes. "The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take
place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a fact. And fact is the
most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows,
and not in this already accomplished fact. You have always been an ardent
preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in
a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. I have the pleasure of
informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of
quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever.
However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one which
holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. [19] Let it come
true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be
transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!'
Woland raised his sword. Straight away the flesh of the head turned
dark and shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon
Margarita saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes, pearl
teeth and a golden foot. The lid opened on a hinge.
`Right this second, Messire,' said Koroviev, noticing Woland's
questioning look, 'he'll appear before you. In this sepulchral silence I can
hear the creaking of his patent leather shoes and the clink of the goblet he
has just set down on the table, having drunk champagne for the last time in
his life. Here he is.'
A solitary new guest was entering the room, heading towards Woland.
Outwardly he did not differ in any way from the numerous other male
guests, except for one thing: this guest was literally reeling with
agitation, which could be seen even from afar. Flushed spots burned on his
cheeks, and his eyes darted about in total alarm. The guest was dumbstruck,
and that was perfectly natural: he was astounded by everything, and above
all, of course, by Woland's attire.
However, the guest was met with the utmost kindness.
'Ah, my dearest Baron Meigel,' Woland, smiling affably, addressed the
guest, whose eyes were popping out of his head. `I'm happy to commend to
you,' Woland turned to the other guests, 'the most esteemed Baron Meigel, an
employee of the Spectacles Commission, in charge of acquainting foreigners
with places of interest in the capital.'
Here Margarita froze, because she recognized this Meigel. She had come
across him several times in Moscow theatres and restaurants. 'Excuse me ...'
thought Margarita, 'but that means - what - that he's also dead? ...'
But the matter straight away clarified itself.
'The dear baron,' Woland went on, smiling joyfully, 'was so charming
that, having learned of my arrival in Moscow, he rang me up at once,
offering his services along the line of his expertise, that is, acquainting
people with places of interest. It goes without saying that I was happy to
invite him here.'
Just then Margarita saw Azazello hand the platter with the skull to
Koroviev.
'Ah, yes, incidentally, Baron,' Woland said, suddenly lowering his
voice intimately, 'rumours have spread about your extreme curiosity. They
say that, combined with your no less developed talkativeness, it was
beginning to attract general attention. What's more, wicked tongues have
already dropped the word - a stool-pigeon and a spy. And, what's still more,
it is hinted that this will bring you to a sorry end in no more than a
month. And so, in order to deliver you from this painful anticipation, we
have decided to come to your aid, taking advantage of the fact that you
invited yourself here precisely with the purpose of eavesdropping and spying
out whatever you can.'
The baron turned paler than Abaddon, who was exceptionally pale by
nature, and then something strange took place. Abaddon stood in front of the
baron and took off his glasses for a second. At the same moment something
flashed fire in Azazello's hand, something clapped softly, the baron began
to fall backwards, crimson blood spurted from his chest and poured down his
starched shirt and waistcoat. Koroviev put the cup to the spurt and handed
the full cup to Woland. The baron's lifeless body was by that time already
on the floor.
'I drink your health, ladies and gentlemen,' Woland said quietly and,
raising the cup, touched it to his lips.
Then a metamorphosis occurred. The patched shirt and worn slippers
disappeared. Woland was in some sort of black chlamys with a steel sword on
his hip. He quickly approached Margarita, offered her the cup, and said
imperiously:
'Drink!'
Margarita became dizzy, she swayed, but the cup was already at her
lips, and voices, she could not make out whose, whispered in both her ears:
'Don't be afraid, Queen ... don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long
since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already
growing.'
Margarita, without opening her eyes, took a gulp, and a sweet current
ran through her veins, a ringing began in her ears. It seemed to her that
cocks were crowing deafeningly, that somewhere a march was being played. The
crowds of guests began to lose their shape: tailcoaters and women fell to
dust. Decay enveloped the room before Margarita's eyes, a sepulchral smell
flowed over it. The columns fell apart, the fires went out, everything
shrank, there were no more fountains, no camellias, no tulips. And there was
simply this: the modest living room of the jeweller's widow, and a strip of
light falling from a slightly opened door. And Margarita went through this
slightly opened door.
In Woland's bedroom everything turned out to be as it had been before
the ball. Woland was sitting on the bed in his nightshirt, only Hella was no
longer rubbing his leg, but was setting out supper on the table on which
they had been playing chess. Koroviev and Azazello, having removed their
tailcoats, were sitting at the table, and next to them, of course, was the
cat, who refused to part with his bow-tie, though it had turned into an
utterly filthy rag. Margarita, swaying, came up to the table and leaned on
it. Then Woland beckoned her to him like the other time and indicated that
his game is in a hopeless situation, he starts addling your pate like the
crudest mountebank on a street corner. Sit down at once and stop slinging
this verbal muck.'
`I shall sit down,' replied the cat, sitting down, 'but I shall enter
an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal
muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but
rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be
appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, [4]
and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.
'Your king is in check,' said Woland.
Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the
chessboard through his opera glasses.
'And so, Donna,' Woland addressed Margarita, `I present to you my
retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth. Azazello and
Koroviev you have already met. I present to you my maidservant, Hella:
efficient, quick, and there is no service she cannot render.'
The beautiful Hella was smiling as she turned her green-tinged eyes to
Margarita, without ceasing to dip into the ointment and apply it to Woland's
knee.
'Well, that's the lot,' Woland concluded, wincing as Hella pressed
especially hard on his knee. 'A small, mixed and guileless company, as you
see.' He fell silent and began to spin the globe in front of him, which was
so artfully made that the blue oceans moved on it and the cap at the pole
lay like a real cap of ice and snow.
On the chessboard, meanwhile, confusion was setting in. A thoroughly
upset king in a white mantle was shuffling on his square, desperately
raising his arms. Three white pawn-mercenaries with halberds gazed in
perplexity at the bishop brandishing his crozier and pointing forward to
where, on two adjacent squares, white and black, Woland's black horsemen
could be seen on two fiery chargers pawing the squares with their hoofs.
Margarita was extremely interested and struck by the fact that the
chessmen were alive.
The cat, taking the opera glasses from his eyes, prodded his king
lightly in the back. The king covered his face with his hands in despair.
'Things aren't so great, my dear Behemoth,' Koroviev said quietly in a
venomous voice.
`The situation is serious but by no means hopeless,' Behemoth
responded. 'What's more, I'm quite certain of final victory. Once I've
analysed the situation properly.'
He set about this analysing in a rather strange manner - namely, by
winking and making all sorts of faces at his king. 'Nothing helps,' observed
Koroviev.
'Aie!' cried Behemoth, `the parrots have flown away, just as I
predicted!'
Indeed, from somewhere far away came the noise of many wings. Koroviev
and Azazello rushed out of the room.
`Devil take you with your ball amusements!' Woland grunted without
tearing his eyes from his globe.
As soon as Koroviev and Azazello disappeared Behemoth's winking took on
greater dimensions. The white king finally understood what was wanted of
him. He suddenly pulled off his mantle, dropped it on the square, and ran
off the board. The bishop covered himself with the abandoned royal garb and
took the king's place. Koroviev and Azazello came back.
'Lies, as usual,' grumbled Azazello, with a sidelong glance at
Behemoth.
'I thought I heard it,' replied the cat.
'Well, is this going to continue for long?' asked Woland. 'Your king is
in check.'
'I must have heard wrong, my master,' replied the cat. 'My king is not
and cannot be in check.' 'I repeat, your king is in check!'
`Messire,' the cat responded in a falsely alarmed voice, 'you are
overtired. My king is not in check.'
The king is on square G-5,' said Woland, without looking at the board.
'Messire, I'm horrified!' howled the cat, showing horror on his mug.
There is no king on that square!'
`What's that?' Woland asked in perplexity and began looking at the
board, where the bishop standing on the king's square kept turning away and
hiding behind his hand.
'Ah, you scoundrel,' Woland said pensively.
'Messire! Again I appeal to logic!' the cat began, pressing his paws to
his chest. 'If a player announces that the king is in check, and meanwhile
there's no trace of the king on the board, the check must be recognized as
invalid!'
'Do you give up or not?' Woland cried in a terrible voice.
`Let me think it over,' the cat replied humbly, resting his elbows on
the table, putting his paws over his ears, and beginning to think. He
thought for a long time and finally said: 'I give up.'
The obstinate beast should be killed,' whispered Azazello.
'Yes, I give up,' said the cat, `but I do so only because I am unable
to play in an atmosphere of persecution on the part of the envious!' He
stood up and the chessmen climbed into their box.
'Hella, it's time,' said Woland, and Hella disappeared from the room.
'My leg hurts, and now this ball ...' he continued.
'Allow me,' Margarita quietly asked.
Woland looked at her intently and moved his knee towards her.
The liquid, hot as lava, burned her hands, but Margarita, without
wincing, and trying not to cause any pain, rubbed it into his knee.
'My attendants insist it's rheumatism,' Woland was saying, not taking
his eyes off Margarita, 'but I strongly suspect that this pain in my knee
was left me as a souvenir by a charming witch with whom I was closely
acquainted in the year 1571, on Mount Brocken, [5] on the Devil's Podium.'
'Ah, can that be so!' said Margarita.
'Nonsense! In another three hundred years it will all go away! I've
been recommended a host of medications, but I keep to my granny's old ways.
Amazing herbs she left me, my grandma, that vile old thing! Incidentally,
tell me, are you suffering from anything? Perhaps you have some sort of
sorrow or soul-poisoning anguish?'
'No, Messire, none of that,' replied the clever Margarita, 'and now
that I'm here with you, I feel myself quite well.'
'Blood is a great thing ...' Woland said gaily, with no obvious point,
and added: 'I see you're interested in my globe.'
'Oh, yes, I've never seen anything like it.'
`It's a nice little object. Frankly speaking, I don't enjoy listening
to the news on the radio. It's always reported by some girls who pronounce
the names of places inarticulately. Besides, every third one has some slight
speech defect, as if they're chosen on purpose. My globe is much more
convenient, especially since I need a precise knowledge of events. For
instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the ocean?
Look, it's filling with fire. A war has started there. If you look closer,
you'll see the details.'
Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw the little square of land
spread out, get painted in many colours, and turn as it were into a relief
map. And then she saw the little ribbon of a river, and some village near
it. A little house the size of a pea grew and became the size of a matchbox.
Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of this house flew up along with a
cloud of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of
the little two-storey box except a small heap with black smoke pouring from
it.
Bringing her eye still closer, Margarita made out a small female figure
lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool of blood, a little child
with outstretched arms.
'That's it,' Woland said, smiling, 'he had no time to sin. Abaddon's
[6] work is impeccable.'
'I wouldn't want to be on the side that this Abaddon is against,' said
Margarita. 'Whose side is he on?'
The longer I talk with you,' Woland responded amiably, 'the more I'm
convinced that you are very intelligent. I'll set you at ease. He is of a
rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides of the fight.
Owing to that, the results are always the same for both sides. Abaddon!'
Woland called in a low voice, and here there emerged from the wall the
figure of some gaunt man in dark glasses. These glasses produced such a
strong impression on Margarita that she cried out softly and hid her face in
Woland's leg. 'Ah, stop it!' cried Woland. `Modern people are so nervous!'
He swung and slapped Margarita on the back so that a ringing went
through her whole body. 'Don't you see he's got his glasses on? Besides,
there has never yet been, and never will be, an occasion when Abaddon
appears before someone prematurely. And, finally, I'm here. You are my
guest! I simply wanted to show him to you.'
Abaddon stood motionless.
'And is it possible for him to take off his glasses for a second?'
Margarita asked, pressing herself to Woland and shuddering, but now
from curiosity.
'Ah, no, that's impossible,' Woland replied seriously and waved his
hand at Abaddon, and he was no more. "What do you wish to say, Azazello?'
'Messire,' replied Azazello, 'allow me to say - we've got two strangers
here: a beauty who is whimpering and pleading to be allowed to stay with her
lady, and with her, begging your pardon, there is also her hog.'
'Strange behaviour for a beauty!' observed Woland.
'It's Natasha, Natasha!' exclaimed Margarita.
'Well, let her stay with her lady. And the hog - to the cooks.'
`To slaughter him?' Margarita cried fearfully. `For pity's sake,
Messire, it's Nikolai Ivanovich, the ground-floor tenant. It's a
misunderstanding, you see, she daubed him with the cream...'
'But wait,' said Woland, 'why the devil would anyone slaughter him? Let
him stay with the cooks, that's all. You must agree, I cannot let him into
the ballroom.'
'No, really...' Azazello added and announced: `Midnight is approaching,
Messire.'
'Ah, very good.' Woland turned to Margarita: 'And so, if you please...
I thank you beforehand. Don't become flustered and don't be afraid of
anything. Drink nothing but water, otherwise you'll get groggy and it will
be hard for you. It's time!'
Margarita got up from the rug, and then Koroviev appeared in the
doorway.
Midnight was approaching; they had to hurry. Margarita dimly perceived
her surroundings. Candles and a jewelled pool remained in her memory. As she
stood in the bottom of this pool, Hella, with the assistance of Natasha,
doused her with some hot, thick and red liquid. Margarita felt a salty taste
on her lips and realized that she was being washed in blood. The bloody
mantle was changed for another - thick, transparent, pinkish - and
Margarita's head began to spin from rose oil. Then Margarita was laid on a
crystal couch and rubbed with some big green leaves until she shone.
Here the cat burst in and started to help. He squatted down at
Margarita's feet and began rubbing up her soles with the air of someone
shining shoes in the street.
Margarita does not remember who stitched slippers for her from pale
rose petals or how these slippers got fastened by themselves with golden
clasps. Some force snatched Margarita up and put her before a mirror, and a
royal diamond crown gleamed in her hair. Koroviev appeared from somewhere
and hung a heavy, oval-framed picture of a black poodle by a heavy chain on
Margarita's breast. This adornment was extremely burdensome to the queen.
The chain at once began to chafe her neck, the picture pulled her down. But
something compensated Margarita for the inconveniences that the chain with
the black poodle caused her, and this was the deference with which Koroviev
and Behemoth began to treat her.
'Never mind, never mind, never mind!' muttered Koroviev at the door of
the room with the pool. 'No help for it, you must, must, must... Allow me,
Queen, to give you a last piece of advice. Among the guests there will be
different sorts, oh, very different, but no one, Queen Margot, should be
shown any preference! Even if you don't like someone ... I understand that
you will not, of course, show it on your face - no, no, it's unthinkable!
He'll notice it, he'll notice it instantly! You must love him, love
him, Queen! The mistress of the ball will be rewarded a hundredfold for
that. And also - don't ignore anyone! At least a little smile, if there's no
time to drop a word, at least a tiny turn of the head! Anything you like,
but not inattention, they'll sicken from that ...'
Here Margarita, accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped out of
the room with the pool into total darkness.
'I, I,' whispered the cat, 'I give the signal!'
'Go ahead!' Koroviev replied from the darkness.
The ball!!!' shrieked the cat piercingly, and just then Margarita cried
out and shut her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her all at once in
the form of light, and, with it, of sound and smell. Taken under the arm by
Koroviev, Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest. Red-breasted,
green-tailed parrots fluttered from liana to liana and cried out
deafeningly: 'Delighted!' But the forest soon ended, and its bathhouse
stuffiness changed at once to the coolness of a ballroom with columns of
some yellowish, sparkling stone. This ballroom, just like the forest, was
completely empty, except for some naked negroes with silver bands on their
heads who were standing by the columns. Their faces turned a dirty brown
from excitement when Margarita flew into the ballroom with her retinue, in
which Azazello showed up from somewhere. Here Koroviev let go of Margarita's
arm and whispered:
'Straight to the tulips.'
A low wall of white tulips had grown up in front of Margarita, and
beyond it she saw numberless lamps under little shades and behind them the
white chests and black shoulders of tailcoaters. Then Margarita understood
where the sound of the ball was coming from. The roar of trumpets crashed
down on her, and the soaring of violins that burst from under it doused her
body as if with blood. The orchestra of about a hundred and fifty men was
playing a polonaise.
The tailcoated man hovering over the orchestra paled on seeing
Margarita, smiled, and suddenly, with a sweep of his arms, got the whole
orchestra to its feet. Not interrupting the music for a moment, the
orchestra, standing, doused Margarita with sound. The man over the orchestra
turned from it and bowed deeply, spreading his arms wide, and Margarita,
smiling, waved her hand to him.
'No, not enough, not enough,' whispered Koroviev, 'he won't sleep all
night. Call out to him: "Greetings to you, waltz king! [1]'
Margarita cried it out, and marvelled that her voice, full as a bell,
was heard over the howling of the orchestra. The man started with happiness
and put his left hand to his chest, while the right went on brandishing a
white baton at the orchestra.
'Not enough, not enough,' whispered Koroviev, 'look to the left, to the
first violins, and nod so that each one thinks you've recognized him
individually. There are only world celebrities here. Nod to that one ... at
the first stand, that's Vieuxtemps! [2] ... There, very good... Now,
onward!'
'Who is the conductor?' Margarita asked, flying off.
'Johann Strauss!' cried the cat. 'And they can hang me from a liana in
a tropical forest if such an orchestra ever played at any ball! I invited
them! And, note, not one got sick or declined!'
In the next room there were no columns. Instead there stood walls of
red, pink and milk-white roses on one side, and on the other a wall of
Japanese double camellias. Between these walls fountains spurted up,
hissing, and bubbly champagne seethed in three pools, the first of which was
transparent violet, the second ruby, the third crystal. Next to them negroes
in scarlet headbands dashed about, filling flat cups from the pools with
silver dippers. The pink wall had a gap in it, where a man in a red
swallowtail coat was flailing away on a platform. Before him thundered an
unbearably loud jazz band. As soon as the conductor saw Margarita, he bent
before her so that his hands touched the floor, then straightened up and
cried piercingly:
'Hallelujah!'
He slapped himself on the knee - one! - then criss-cross on the other
knee - two! - then snatched a cymbal from the hands of the end musician and
banged it on a column.
As she flew off, Margarita saw only that the virtuoso jazzman, fighting
against the polonaise blowing in Margarita's back, was beating his jazzmen
on the heads with the cymbal while they cowered in comic fright.
Finally they flew out on to the landing where, as Margarita realized,
she had been met in the dark by Koroviev with his little lamp. Now on this
landing the light pouring from clusters of crystal grapes blinded the eye.
Margarita was put in place, and under her left arm she found a low
amethyst column.
'You may rest your arm on it if it becomes too difficult,' Koroviev
whispered.
Some black man threw a pillow under Margarita's feet embroidered with a
golden poodle, and she, obedient to someone's hands, bent her right leg at
the knee and placed her foot on it.
Margarita tried to look around. Koroviev and Azazello stood beside her
in formal poses. Next to Azazello stood another three young men, vaguely
reminding Margarita of Abaddon. It blew cold in her back. Looking there,
Margarita saw bubbly wine spurt from the marble wall behind her and pour
into a pool of ice. At her left foot she felt something warm and furry. It
was Behemoth.
Margarita was high up, and a grandiose stairway covered with carpet
descended from her feet. Below, so far away that it was as if Margarita were
looking the wrong way through binoculars, she saw a vast front hall with an
absolutely enormous fireplace, into the cold and black maw of which a
five-ton truck could easily have driven. The front hall and stairway, so
flooded with light that it hurt the eyes, were empty. The sound of trumpets
now came to Margarita from far away. Thus they stood motionless for about a
minute.
'But where are the guests?' Margarita asked Koroviev.
'They'll come, Queen, they'll come, they'll come soon enough. There'll
be no lack of them. And, really, I'd rather go and chop wood than receive
them here on the landing.'
'Chop wood - hah!' picked up the garrulous cat. 'I'd rather work as a
tram conductor, and there's no worse job in the world than that!'
`Everything must be made ready in advance, Queen,' explained Koroviev,
his eye gleaming through the broken monocle. "There's nothing more loathsome
than when the first guest to arrive languishes, not knowing what to do, and
his lawful beldame nags at him in a whisper for having come before everybody
else. Such balls should be thrown in the trash, Queen.'
'Definitely in the trash,' confirmed the cat.
'No more than ten seconds till midnight,' said Koroviev. "It'll start
presently.'
Those ten seconds seemed extremely long to Margarita. Obviously they
had already passed and precisely nothing had happened. But here something
suddenly crashed downstairs in the huge fireplace, and from it leaped a
gallows with some half-decayed remains dangling from it. The remains fell
from the rope, struck the floor, and from it leaped a handsome dark-haired
man in a tailcoat and patent leather shoes. A half-rotten little coffin ran
out of the fireplace, its lid fell off, and another remains tumbled out of
it. The handsome man gallantly leaped over to it and offered it his bent
arm. The second remains put itself together into a fidgety woman in black
shoes, with black feathers on her head, and then the man and the woman both
hastened up the stairs.
The first!' exclaimed Koroviev. 'Monsieur Jacques [3] and his spouse. I
commend to you, Queen, one of the most interesting of men. A confirmed
counterfeiter, a traitor to his government, but a rather good alchemist.
Famous,' Koroviev whispered in Margarita's ear, 'for having poisoned a
king's mistress. That doesn't happen to everyone! Look how handsome he is!'
The pale Margarita, her mouth open, watched as both gallows and coffin
disappeared into some side passage in the front hall.
'Delighted!' the cat yelled right into the face of Monsieur Jacques as
he came up the stairs.
At that moment a headless skeleton with a torn-off arm emerged from the
fireplace, struck the ground, and turned into a man in a tailcoat.
Monsieur Jacques's spouse was already going on one knee before
Margarita and, pale with excitement, was kissing Margarita's foot.
`Queen...' Monsieur Jacques's spouse murmured.
The queen is delighted!' cried Koroviev.
`Queen...' the handsome Monsieur Jacques said quietly.
We're delighted,' howled the cat.
The young men, Azazello's companions, smiling lifeless but affable
smiles, were already shouldering Monsieur Jacques and his spouse to one
side, towards the cups of champagne that the negroes were holding. The
single man in the tailcoat was coming up the stairs at a run.
'Earl Robert,'[4] Koroviev whispered to Margarita, 'interesting as
ever. Note how funny, Queen: the reverse case, this one was a queen's lover
and poisoned his wife. 'We're very glad, Earl,' cried Behemoth.
Out of the fireplace, bursting open and falling apart, three coffins
tumbled one after another, then came someone in a black mantle, whom the
next one to run out of the black maw stabbed in the back with a knife. A
stifled cry was heard from below. An almost entirely decomposed corpse ran
out of the fireplace. Margarita shut her eyes, and someone's hand held a
flacon of smelling salts to her nose. Margarita thought the hand was
Natasha's.
The stairway began to fill up. Now on each step there were tailcoaters,
looking quite alike from afar, and naked women with them, who differed from
each other only in the colour of their shoes and of the feathers on their
heads.
Coming towards Margarita, hobbling, a strange wooden boot on her left
foot, was a lady with nunnishly lowered eyes, thin and modest, and with a
wide green band around her neck for some reason.
'Who is this ... green one?' Margarita asked mechanically.
'A most charming and respectable lady,' whispered Koroviev, 'I commend
her to you: Madame Tofana. [5] Extremely popular among young, lovely
Neapolitans, as well as the ladies of Palermo, especially those of them who
had grown weary of their husbands. It does happen, Queen, that one grows
weary of one's husband...'
'Yes,' Margarita replied in a hollow voice, smiling at the same time to
two tailcoaters who bent before her one after the other, kissing her knee
and hand.
'And so,' Koroviev managed to whisper to Margarita and at the same time
to cry out to someone: 'Duke! A glass of champagne? I'm delighted! ...
Yes, so then, Madame Tofana entered into the situation of these poor
women and sold them some sort of water in little vials. The wife poured this
water into her spouse's soup, he ate it, thanked her for being so nice, and
felt perfectly well. True, a few hours later he would begin to get very
thirsty, then go to bed, and a day later the lovely Neapolitan who had fed
her husband soup would be free as the spring breeze.'
'But what's that on her foot?' asked Margarita, tirelessly offering her
hand to the guests who came ahead of the hobbling Madame Tofana. 'And why
that green band? A withered neck?'
'Delighted, Prince!' cried Koroviev, and at the same time whispered to
Margarita: `A beautiful neck, but an unpleasantness happened to her in
prison. What she has on her foot, Queen, is a Spanish boot, [6] and the band
is explained this way: when the prison guards learned that some five hundred
ill-chosen husbands had departed Naples and Palermo for ever, in the heat of
the moment they strangled Madame Tofana in prison.'
'How happy I am, kindest Queen, that the high honour has fallen to
me...' Tofana whispered nunnishly, trying to lower herself to one knee - the
Spanish boot hindered her. Koroviev and Behemoth helped her up.
'I'm very glad,' Margarita answered her, at the same time offering her
hand to others.
Now a steady stream was coming up the stairs from below. Margarita
could no longer see what was going on in the front hall. She mechanically
raised and lowered her hand and smiled uniformly to the guests. There was a
hum in the air on the landing; from the ballrooms Margarita had left, music
could be heard, like the sea.
`But this one is a boring woman,' Koroviev no longer whispered, but
spoke aloud, knowing that in the hubbub of voices no one would hear him.
'She adores balls, and keeps dreaming of complaining about her
handkerchief.'
Margarita's glance picked out among those coming up the woman at whom
Koroviev was pointing. She was young, about twenty, of remarkably beautiful
figure, but with somehow restless and importunate eyes.
'What handkerchief?' asked Margarita.
`She has a chambermaid assigned to her,' explained Koroviev, 'who for
thirty years has been putting a handkerchief on her night table during the
night. She wakes up and the handkerchief is there. She's tried burning it in
the stove and drowning it in the river, but nothing helps.'
'What handkerchief?' whispered Margarita, raising and lowering her arm.
'A blue-bordered one. The thing is that when she worked in a cafe, the
owner once invited her to the pantry, and nine months later she gave birth
to a boy, took him to the forest, stuffed the handkerchief into his mouth,
and then buried the boy in the ground. At the trial she said she had no way
of feeding the child.'
`And where is the owner of the cafe?' asked Margarita. `Queen,' the cat
suddenly creaked from below, 'what, may I ask, does the owner have to do
with it? It wasn't he who smothered the infant in the forest!'
Margarita, without ceasing to smile and proffer her right hand, dug the
sharp nails of the left into Behemoth's ear and whispered to him:
`If you, scum, allow yourself to interfere in the conversation
again...'
Behemoth squeaked in a not very ball-like fashion and rasped:
'Queen ... the ear will get swollen ... why spoil the ball with a
swollen ear? ... I was speaking legally, from the legal point of view ... I
say no more, I say no more. Consider me not a cat but a post, only let go of
my ear!'
Margarita released his ear, and the importunate, gloomy eyes were
before her.
'I am happy, Queen-hostess, to be invited to the great ball of the full
moon!'
'And I am glad to see you,' Margarita answered her, 'very glad. Do you
like champagne?'
`What are you doing, Queen?!' Koroviev cried desperately but
soundlessly in Margarita's ear. There'll be a traffic jam!'
'Yes, I do,' the woman said imploringly, and suddenly began repeating
mechanically: 'Frieda, [7] Frieda, Frieda! My name is Frieda, Queen!'
'Get drunk tonight, Frieda, and don't think about anything,' said
Margarita.
Frieda reached out both arms to Margarita, but Koroviev and Behemoth
very adroitly took her under the arms and she blended into the crowd.
Now people were coming in a solid wall from below, as if storming the
landing where Margarita stood. Naked women's bodies came up between
tailcoated men. Their swarthy, white, coffee-bean-coloured, and altogether
black bodies floated towards Margarita. In their hair - red, black,
chestnut, light as flax - precious stones glittered and danced, spraying
sparkles into the flood of light. And as if someone had sprinkled the
storming column of men with droplets of light, diamond studs sprayed light
from their chests. Every second now Margarita felt lips touch her knee,
every second she held out her hand to be kissed, her face was contracted
into a fixed mask of greeting.
'I'm delighted,' Koroviev sang monotonously, 'we're delighted ... the
queen is delighted ...'
The queen is delighted...' Azazello echoed nasally behind her back.
'I'm delighted!' the cat kept exclaiming.
The marquise ...'[8] muttered Koroviev, `poisoned her father, two
brothers and two sisters for the inheritance ... The queen is delighted! ...
Madame Minkin ...[9] Ah, what a beauty! A bit nervous. Why bum the maid's
face with the curling-irons? Of course, in such conditions one gets
stabbed... The queen is delighted! ... Queen, one second of attention! The
emperor Rudolf [10] - sorcerer and alchemist... Another alchemist - got
hanged ... Ah, here she is! Ah, what a wonderful brothel she ran in
Strasbourg! ... We're delighted! ... A Moscow dressmaker," we all love her
for her inexhaustible fantasy ... She kept a shop and invented a terribly
funny trick: drilled two round holes in the wall ...'
'And the ladies didn't know?' asked Margarita.
'Every one of them knew, Queen,' answered Koroviev. 'Delighted! ...
This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange
qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he
went and sold her to a brothel...'
A river came streaming from below, and there was no end to this river
in sight. Its source - the enormous fireplace - continued to feed it. Thus
one hour passed and a second commenced. Here Margarita began to notice that
her chain had become heavier than before. Something strange also happened
with her arm. Now, before raising it, Margarita had to wince. Koroviev's
interesting observations ceased to amuse Margarita. Slant-eyed Mongolian
faces, white faces and black became undifferentiated to her, they merged at
times, and the air between them would for some reason begin to tremble and
flow. A sharp pain, as if from a needle, suddenly pierced Margarita's right
arm, and, clenching her teeth, she rested her elbow on the post. Some
rustling, as if from wings against the walls, was now coming from the
ballroom, and it was clear that unprecedented hordes of guests were dancing
there, and it seemed to Margarita that even the massive marble, mosaic and
crystal floors of this prodigious room were pulsing rhythmically.
Neither Gaius Caesar Caligula [12] nor Messalina" interested Margarita
any longer, nor did any of the kings, dukes, cavaliers, suicides, poisoners,
gallowsbirds, procuresses, prison guards and sharpers, executioners,
informers, traitors, madmen, sleuths, seducers. All their names became
jumbled in her head, the faces stuck together into one huge pancake, and
only a single face lodged itself painfully in her memory - the face, framed
in a truly fiery beard, of Maliuta Skuratov. [14]
Margarita's legs kept giving way, she was afraid of bursting into tears
at any moment. The worst suffering was caused by her right knee, which was
being kissed. It became swollen, the skin turned blue, even though Natasha's
hand appeared by this knee several times with a sponge, wiping it with
something fragrant. At the end of the third hour, Margarita glanced down
with completely desperate eyes and gave a joyful start - the stream of
guests was thinning out.
'Balls always assemble according to the same laws, Queen,' whispered
Koroviev. 'Presently the wave will begin to subside. I swear we're enduring
the final minutes. Here's the group of revellers from Brocken, they always
come last. Yes, here they are. Two drunken vampires ... that's all? Ah, no,
here's one more ... no, two!'[15]
The last two guests were coming up the stairs!
'It's some new one,' Koroviev was saying, squinting through his lens.
'Ah, yes, yes. Azazello visited him once and, over the cognac,
whispered some advice to him on how to get rid of a certain man whose
exposures he was extremely afraid of. And so he told an acquaintance who was
dependent on him to spray the walls of the office with poison ...'
'What's his name?' asked Margarita.
'Ah, really, I myself don't know yet,' Koroviev replied, 'we'11 have to
ask Azazello.'
'And who is with him?'
'Why, that same efficient subordinate of his. Delighted!' cried
Koroviev to the last two.
The stairway was empty. They waited a little longer as a precaution.
But no one else came from the fireplace.
A second later, without knowing how it happened, Margarita found
herself in the same room with the pool, and there, bursting into tears at
once from the pain in her arm and leg, she collapsed right on the floor. But
Hella and Natasha, comforting her, again drew her under the bloody shower,
again massaged her body, and Margarita revived.
"There's more, there's more, Queen Margot,' whispered Koroviev,
appearing beside her. 'You must fly around the rooms, so that the honourable
guests don't feel they've been abandoned.'
And once more Margarita flew out of the room with the pool. On the
stage behind the tulips, where the waltz king's orchestra had been playing,
there now raged an ape jazz band. A huge gorilla with shaggy side-whiskers,
a trumpet in his hand, capering heavily, was doing the conducting.
Orang-utans sat in a row blowing on shiny trumpets. Perched on their
shoulders were merry chimpanzees with concertinas.
Two hamadryads with manes like lions played grand pianos, but these
grand pianos were not heard amidst the thundering, squeaking and booming of
saxophones, fiddles and drums in the paws of gibbons, mandrills and
marmosets. On the mirror floor a countless number of couples, as if merged,
amazing in the deftness and cleanness of their movements, all turning in the
same direction, swept on like a wall threatening to clear away everything in
its path. Live satin butterflies bobbed above the heads of the dancing
hordes, flowers poured down from the ceiling. In the capitals of the
columns, each time the electricity went off, myriads of fireflies lit up,
and marsh-lights floated in the air.
Then Margarita found herself in a room with a pool of monstrous size
bordered by a colonnade. A giant black Neptune spouted a wide pink stream
from his maw. A stupefying smell of champagne rose from the pool. Here
unconstrained merriment held sway. Ladies, laughing, gave their handbags to
their cavaliers or the negroes who rushed about with towels in their hands,
and with a cry dived swallow-like into the pool. Foamy columns shot up. The
crystal bottom of the pool shone with light from below that broke through
the density of the wine, and in it the silvery swimming bodies could be
seen. The ladies got out of the pool completely drunk. Loud laughter
resounded under the columns, booming like the jazz band.
All that was remembered from this turmoil was the completely drunken
face of a woman with senseless and, even in their senselessness, imploring
eyes, and only one name - Frieda - was recalled.
Margarita's head began to spin from the smell of the wine, and she was
about to leave when the cat arranged a number in the pool that detained her.
Behemoth performed some magic by Neptune's maw, and at once the
billowing mass of champagne, hissing and gurgling, left the pool, and
Neptune began spewing out a stream neither glittering nor foaming but of a
dark-yellow colour. The ladies - shrieking and screaming 'Cognac!' - rushed
from the pool-side and hid behind the columns. In a few seconds the pool was
filled, and the cat, turning three times in the air, dropped into the
heaving cognac. He crawled out, spluttering, his bow-tie limp, the gilding
on his whiskers gone, along with the opera glasses. Only one woman dared to
follow Behemoth's example - that same frolicsome dressmaker, with her
cavalier, an unknown young mulatto. The two threw themselves into the
cognac, but here Koroviev took Margarita under the arm and they left the
bathers.
It seemed to Margarita that she flew somewhere, where she saw mountains
of oysters in huge stone basins. Then she flew over a glass floor with
infernal furnaces burning under it and devilish white cooks darting among
them. Then somewhere, already ceasing to comprehend anything, she saw dark
cellars where some sort of lamps burned, where girls served meat sizzling on
red-hot coals, where her health was drunk from big mugs. Then she saw polar
bears playing concertinas and dancing the Kamarinsky [16] on a platform. A
salamander-conjurer [17] who did not burn in the fireplace ... And for the
second time her strength began to ebb.
'One last appearance,' Koroviev whispered to her anxiously, `and then
we're free!'
Accompanied by Koroviev, she again found herself in the ballroom, but
now there was no dancing in it, and the guests in a numberless throng
pressed back between the columns, leaving the middle of the room open.
Margarita did not remember who helped her to get up on the dais that
appeared in the middle of this open space in the room. When she was up on
it, to her own amazement, she heard a clock strike midnight somewhere,
though by her reckoning it was long past. At the last stroke of the clock,
which came from no one knew where, silence fell on the crowd of guests.
Then Margarita saw Woland again. He walked in surrounded by Abaddon,
Azazello and several others who resembled Abaddon - dark-haired and young.
Now Margarita saw that opposite her dais another had been prepared for
Woland. But he did not make use of it. What struck Margarita was that Woland
came out for this last great appearance at the ball looking just the same as
he had looked in the bedroom. The same dirty, patched shirt [18] hung on his
shoulders, his feet were in worn-out bedroom slippers. Woland had a sword,
but he used this bare sword as a cane, leaning on it.
Limping, Woland stopped at his dais, and immediately Azazello was
before him with a platter in his hands, and on this platter Margarita saw a
man's severed head with the front teeth knocked out. Total silence continued
to reign, broken only once by the far-off sound, inexplicable under the
circumstances, of a doorbell, coming as if from the front hall.
"Mikhail Alexandrovich,' Woland addressed the head in a low voice, and
then the slain man's eyelids rose, and on the dead face Margarita saw, with
a shudder, living eyes filled with thought and suffering.
'Everything came to pass, did it not?' Woland went on, looking into the
head's eyes. "The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take
place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a fact. And fact is the
most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows,
and not in this already accomplished fact. You have always been an ardent
preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in
a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. I have the pleasure of
informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of
quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever.
However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one which
holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. [19] Let it come
true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be
transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!'
Woland raised his sword. Straight away the flesh of the head turned
dark and shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon
Margarita saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes, pearl
teeth and a golden foot. The lid opened on a hinge.
`Right this second, Messire,' said Koroviev, noticing Woland's
questioning look, 'he'll appear before you. In this sepulchral silence I can
hear the creaking of his patent leather shoes and the clink of the goblet he
has just set down on the table, having drunk champagne for the last time in
his life. Here he is.'
A solitary new guest was entering the room, heading towards Woland.
Outwardly he did not differ in any way from the numerous other male
guests, except for one thing: this guest was literally reeling with
agitation, which could be seen even from afar. Flushed spots burned on his
cheeks, and his eyes darted about in total alarm. The guest was dumbstruck,
and that was perfectly natural: he was astounded by everything, and above
all, of course, by Woland's attire.
However, the guest was met with the utmost kindness.
'Ah, my dearest Baron Meigel,' Woland, smiling affably, addressed the
guest, whose eyes were popping out of his head. `I'm happy to commend to
you,' Woland turned to the other guests, 'the most esteemed Baron Meigel, an
employee of the Spectacles Commission, in charge of acquainting foreigners
with places of interest in the capital.'
Here Margarita froze, because she recognized this Meigel. She had come
across him several times in Moscow theatres and restaurants. 'Excuse me ...'
thought Margarita, 'but that means - what - that he's also dead? ...'
But the matter straight away clarified itself.
'The dear baron,' Woland went on, smiling joyfully, 'was so charming
that, having learned of my arrival in Moscow, he rang me up at once,
offering his services along the line of his expertise, that is, acquainting
people with places of interest. It goes without saying that I was happy to
invite him here.'
Just then Margarita saw Azazello hand the platter with the skull to
Koroviev.
'Ah, yes, incidentally, Baron,' Woland said, suddenly lowering his
voice intimately, 'rumours have spread about your extreme curiosity. They
say that, combined with your no less developed talkativeness, it was
beginning to attract general attention. What's more, wicked tongues have
already dropped the word - a stool-pigeon and a spy. And, what's still more,
it is hinted that this will bring you to a sorry end in no more than a
month. And so, in order to deliver you from this painful anticipation, we
have decided to come to your aid, taking advantage of the fact that you
invited yourself here precisely with the purpose of eavesdropping and spying
out whatever you can.'
The baron turned paler than Abaddon, who was exceptionally pale by
nature, and then something strange took place. Abaddon stood in front of the
baron and took off his glasses for a second. At the same moment something
flashed fire in Azazello's hand, something clapped softly, the baron began
to fall backwards, crimson blood spurted from his chest and poured down his
starched shirt and waistcoat. Koroviev put the cup to the spurt and handed
the full cup to Woland. The baron's lifeless body was by that time already
on the floor.
'I drink your health, ladies and gentlemen,' Woland said quietly and,
raising the cup, touched it to his lips.
Then a metamorphosis occurred. The patched shirt and worn slippers
disappeared. Woland was in some sort of black chlamys with a steel sword on
his hip. He quickly approached Margarita, offered her the cup, and said
imperiously:
'Drink!'
Margarita became dizzy, she swayed, but the cup was already at her
lips, and voices, she could not make out whose, whispered in both her ears:
'Don't be afraid, Queen ... don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long
since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already
growing.'
Margarita, without opening her eyes, took a gulp, and a sweet current
ran through her veins, a ringing began in her ears. It seemed to her that
cocks were crowing deafeningly, that somewhere a march was being played. The
crowds of guests began to lose their shape: tailcoaters and women fell to
dust. Decay enveloped the room before Margarita's eyes, a sepulchral smell
flowed over it. The columns fell apart, the fires went out, everything
shrank, there were no more fountains, no camellias, no tulips. And there was
simply this: the modest living room of the jeweller's widow, and a strip of
light falling from a slightly opened door. And Margarita went through this
slightly opened door.
In Woland's bedroom everything turned out to be as it had been before
the ball. Woland was sitting on the bed in his nightshirt, only Hella was no
longer rubbing his leg, but was setting out supper on the table on which
they had been playing chess. Koroviev and Azazello, having removed their
tailcoats, were sitting at the table, and next to them, of course, was the
cat, who refused to part with his bow-tie, though it had turned into an
utterly filthy rag. Margarita, swaying, came up to the table and leaned on
it. Then Woland beckoned her to him like the other time and indicated that