فصل 19

PART TWO

XIX

Margarita

FOLLOW me, reader! Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love? May the liar have his despicable tongue cut out!

Follow me, my reader, and only me, and I’ll show you that kind of love!

No! The Master was mistaken that night in the hospital when, just after midnight, he told Ivan bitterly that she had forgotten him. That could never be. Of course she hadn’t forgotten him.

First, let me tell you the secret the Master didn’t want to tell Ivan. His beloved’s name was Margarita Nikolayevna. Everything the Master said about her to the poor poet was absolutely true. His description of his beloved was accurate. She was beautiful and intelligent. And one more thing: it can be said with assurance that many women would have given anything to trade places with Margarita Nikolayevna. The childless, thirty-year-old Margarita was married to an outstanding specialist who had made an extremely important discovery of national significance. Her husband was young, handsome, kind, honest, and adored his wife. Margarita Nikolayevna and her husband occupied the entire upper floor of a beautiful house in a garden on one of the small streets near the Arbat. An enchanting spot! Anyone who wishes to can take a look at the garden and see for himself. Let him ask me and I’ll give him the address and show him the way—the house is still standing to this very day.

Margarita Nikolayevna had plenty of money. Margarita Nikolayevna could buy anything that took her fancy. Her husband’s circle of friends included some interesting people. Margarita Nikolayevna never touched a primus stove. Margarita Nikolayevna was ignorant of the horrors of life in a communal apartment. In a word … was she happy? Not for a minute! She hadn’t been happy since marrying at age nineteen and going to live in her husband’s house. Gods, my gods! What did this woman want? What did this woman want, whose eyes always burned with an incomprehensible fire? This witch with a slight squint in one eye, who adorned herself with mimosa in springtime—what did she want? I do not know. I have no idea. Evidently, she spoke the truth when she said it was the Master she needed and not the Gothic-style house, the private garden, or the money. She loved him, she was telling the truth.

Even I, a truthful narrator, but a detached observer nonetheless, feel my heart contract when I think of what Margarita went through the next day when she came to the Master’s house and found that he was no longer there. Fortunately, she had not as yet had a talk with her husband, who had not come home when he was supposed to. She did everything she could to find out what had happened to the Master and, of course, had no success whatsoever. She then went back to her house and resumed her former life.

But as soon as the dirty snow disappeared from the sidewalks and pavements, as soon as the damp, restless wind of spring tugged at the fortochka, Margarita Nikolayevna began to feel even more miserable than she had during the winter. She often cried in secret, long and bitter tears. She didn’t know whether the man she loved was alive or dead. And as the despairing days passed, the thought came to her more and more, especially at twilight, that she was tied to a dead man.

She should either forget him or die herself. It was really impossible to go on with the life she was living. Impossible! Forget him, no matter what it cost—forget him! But he could not be forgotten, that was the trouble.

“Yes, yes, yes, I made the very same mistake!” Margarita would say as she sat by the stove and stared at the fire which had been lit in memory of the fire that burned when he was writing Pontius Pilate. “Why did I leave him that night? Why? I must have been crazy! I came back the next day, just as I said I would, but it was already too late. Yes, like poor Levi Matvei, I came back too late!” All of this was absurd of course, since how would her staying with the Master that night have made things any different? Could she really have saved him? “Nonsense!” we would have exclaimed, but not in front of a woman who has been driven to despair.

Margarita Nikolayevna lived in this kind of torment throughout the winter and into the spring. On that same day when there was all the commotion caused by the black magician’s appearance in Moscow, on Friday, when Berlioz’s uncle was sent packing back to Kiev, when the bookkeeper was arrested, and when many other grotesque and baffling things took place, Margarita woke up around noontime in her bedroom, which had a bay window looking out on the tower of the house.

Upon awakening Margarita did not burst into tears as she often did, because she woke up with a premonition that on that day something was finally going to happen. Once she sensed this premonition she nurtured it, wanting it to take root in her soul, and fearing that it would leave her.

“I believe!” Margarita whispered solemnly, “I believe! Something’s going to happen! It can’t help but happen because why, in fact, have I been made to suffer for life? I admit that I’ve cheated and lied and lived a secret life hidden from everyone, but even that doesn’t deserve such cruel punishment. Something is bound to happen because nothing lasts forever. And besides, the dream I had was prophetic, I swear it was.” This is what Margarita Nikolayevna whispered to herself as she gazed at the crimson shades suffused with sunlight, nervously got dressed, and combed her short curly hair before the triple mirror of her vanity table.

Margarita’s dream that night had truly been unusual. The fact was that she had not dreamed about the Master during that whole agonizing winter. At night he would leave her, and it was only during that daytime that she suffered. But now she had dreamed about him.

Margarita had dreamed about an unfamiliar locale—a bleak and dismal place, under an overcast, early-spring sky. Beneath a cover of patchy clouds there was a flock of noiseless rooks. A rough bridge crossed a turbid, swollen stream. Dismal, scrubby, half-bare trees. A lone aspen, and beyond that, amidst trees and past a vegetable garden, was a log hut that could have been an outside kitchen, a bathhouse, or the devil knows what. The whole setting was so dead and dismal that it made you want to hang yourself on the aspen by the bridge. Not a breath of wind, not a cloud moving, not a living soul. A hellish place for a living being!

And then, imagine, the door of the log hut opened and there he was. Quite far away, but clearly visible. He looked tattered and you couldn’t tell what he was wearing. His hair was disheveled, he was unshaven. His eyes looked pained and anxious. He was beckoning to her with his hand, calling to her. Choking in the dead air, Margarita started running to him over the furrowed ground, and then she woke up.

“The dream can mean only one of two things,” Margarita Nikolayevna reflected. “If he’s dead and was beckoning to me, that means he’s come for me, and I shall die soon. That’s very good, because my suffering will then end. Or, if he’s alive, then the dream can only mean that he’s reminding me of his existence! He wants to tell me that we’ll see each other again. Yes, we’ll see each other very soon.” Still excited, Margarita got dressed and tried to convince herself that, in essence, everything was turning out well, and that one had to know how to seize such opportunities and take advantage of them. Her husband had gone away on a business trip for three whole days. She had three whole days to herself, and nobody could stop her from thinking and day-dreaming about whatever she pleased. She had the whole apartment to herself, five rooms on the upper floor of a private house that would be the envy of thousands of Muscovites.

However, despite having the run of the house for three whole days, Margarita chose far from the best spot in that luxurious apartment. After drinking some tea, she went off to the dark, windowless room where the luggage was kept and where there were two large bureaus filled with various old odds and ends. She squatted down in front of the first bureau and opened the bottom drawer. From beneath a pile of silk scraps she took out the one possession she valued most in life: an old brown leather album which contained a photograph of the Master, a savings book with ten thousand deposited in his name, dried rose petals pressed in tissue paper, and part of a typewritten manuscript that was singed at the bottom.

Returning to her bedroom with these treasures, Margarita Nikolayevna set the picture against her triple mirror and sat in front of it for an hour or so, holding the fire-damaged manuscript on her knees, as she leafed through and reread what, after the fire, had neither a beginning nor an end, “ …The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator. The hanging bridges which connected the temple with the fearsome Antonia Tower had disappeared, and an abyss descended from the sky, covering the winged gods above the hippodrome, the Hasmonaean palace and its embrasures, the bazaars, the caravanseries, alleys, and pools … Yershalaim—the great city—vanished as if it had never existed …” Margarita wanted to read more, but there was nothing more except the charred and tattered fringe.

Wiping away her tears, Margarita Nikolayevna put down the manuscript and leaned her elbows on the vanity table. She sat there in front of the mirror for a long time, not taking her eyes off the Master’s picture. Then her tears dried. Margarita put all the things together neatly, and minutes later they were back in their hiding place beneath the silk rags, and the lock on the door to the dark room locked shut.

Margarita Nikolayevna was putting her coat on in the front hall, getting ready to go out for a walk. The beautiful Natasha, her maid, asked her what she wanted for dinner, and when she said she didn’t care, for amusement, Natasha began a casual conversation with her mistress, and started relating God knows what, something about a magician at the theater yesterday who had performed astounding tricks, handing out free bottles of imported perfume and stockings, and then how, after the show, when everyone was out on the street, abracadabra—they were all naked! Margarita Nikolayevna collapsed on the chair beneath the hall mirror and burst out laughing.

“Natasha! Shame on you,” said Margarita, “a girl like you who knows how to read; people in lines make up the devil knows what, and here you go repeating it!” Natasha blushed a deep red and protested heatedly that nothing was made up, and that she herself had been in a food store on the Arbat today and had seen a woman come in wearing shoes, but when she went to pay the cashier, her shoes disappeared off her feet and she was left standing in her stockings. Her eyes popped, there was a hole in her heel! And the shoes were the magic ones she had gotten at the show.

“And she left just like that?”

“Just like that!” cried Natasha, blushing even deeper because she wasn’t being believed. “And last night, Margarita Nikolayevna, the police picked up about a hundred people. Women who had been at the show were running down Tverskaya in nothing but their drawers.” “Well, naturally you got all this from Darya,” said Margarita Nikolayevna. “I’ve known for a long time that she’s a terrible liar.” The amusing conversation ended in a pleasant surprise for Natasha. Margarita Nikolayevna went into her bedroom and came out with a pair of stockings and a bottle of cologne. Saying that she wanted to do a trick too, she gave them to Natasha and asked only one thing in return: that she not run down Tverskaya in just her stockings, and that she not listen to Darya. Mistress and maid then kissed and parted.

Settling back against the soft, comfortable seat of the trolleybus, Margarita rode along the Arbat, thinking about her own affairs and eavesdropping on the hushed conversation of the two men sitting in front of her.

They were whispering some sort of gibberish to each other, turning around now and then, in fear of being overheard. The robust, beefy fellow with sharp piglike eyes, sitting by the window, was softly telling the little man next to him that they had had to cover the coffin with a black cloth … “Impossible!” the little one whispered in astonishment. “That’s preposterous … So what did Zheldybin do?” Along with the steady drone of the bus, came words from the window, “Criminal investigation … scandal … complete bafflement!” Margarita Nikolayevna managed to make some sense out of these disconnected bits of conversation. They were whispering about how the head of some corpse—whose, they didn’t say—had been stolen out of its coffin that very morning! And that was why the man named Zheldybin was in such a state. The two men whispering also seemed to have some connection with the vandalized corpse.

“Will we have time to buy flowers?” worried the little one. “Didn’t you say the cremation was at two?” In the end Margarita Nikolayevna got fed up listening to the mysterious prattle about a stolen head, and she was glad when it was time for her to get off.

Minutes later Margarita Nikolayevna was sitting on one of the benches beneath the Kremlin wall, having positioned herself so that she had view of the Manège.

Margarita squinted in the bright sunlight, recalled her dream of the previous night, and recalled that exactly one year before, on the same day and at the same time, she had been sitting with him on this same bench. And her black bag was lying beside her on the bench, just as it had then. Although he wasn’t with her now, Margarita Nikolayevna was talking to him in her thoughts: “If you’ve been exiled, why haven’t you let me know? People do manage to let others know. Have you fallen out of love with me? No, somehow I can’t believe that. That means you were exiled and died … Then I beg you, release me, give me the freedom to live and breathe.” Margarita Nikolayevna answered for him: “You are free … Am I stopping you?” Then she protested, “What kind of an answer is that? No, make me forget you, then I’ll be free.” People walked past Margarita Nikolayevna. A man gave the well-dressed woman a sidelong glance, attracted by her beauty and the fact that she was alone. He coughed and sat down at the end of the bench where Margarita Nikolayevna was sitting, and after gathering up his courage, said, “Decidedly beautiful weather today …” But Margarita gave him such a glowering look that he got up and left.

“That’s what I mean,” said Margarita in her head to the man who possessed her. “Why, really, did I chase that man away? I’m bored, and there was nothing wrong with that Lovelace except, perhaps, for his stupid ‘decidedly.’ Why am I sitting here alone beneath the wall, like an owl? Why am I cut off from life?” She became totally sad and depressed. But suddenly that morning’s wave of expectation and excitement hit her in the chest. “Yes, something is going to happen!” The wave hit her again, and then she realized it was a wave of sound. The beating of drums and the blaring of trumpets, slightly off-key, could be heard with ever-increasing clarity through the din of the city.

Leading the procession that was passing the park railing was a mounted policeman, followed by three men on foot. Next came the musicians on a slow-moving truck. After that, a brand-new open hearse carrying a wreath-covered coffin and four people—three men and a woman—each of whom was standing on a corner of the platform.

Even from a distance Margarita could tell that the faces of those standing in the hearse accompanying the deceased on his last journey looked strangely perplexed. This was especially true of the woman standing in the left rear corner of the vehicle. Her plump cheeks seemed to be bursting with some kind of juicy secret, and there was an ambiguous sparkle in her puffy little eyes. It seemed as if she couldn’t contain herself and was about to wink at the deceased and say, “Have you ever seen anything like it? A real mystery!” Similarly perplexed faces could be seen on the three hundred or so mourners walking slowly behind the hearse.

Margarita watched the procession as it passed, listening to the fading sounds of the mournful bass drum, beating out its ever-constant “boom, boom, boom.” “What an odd funeral,” she thought. “And how depressing that ‘boom’ is! Ah, really I’d sell my soul to the devil if I could only find out if he’s still alive or not! Who, I wonder, are those amazed-looking people burying?” “Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz,” said a somewhat nasal masculine voice beside her, “the chairman of MASSOLIT.” Surprised, Margarita Nikolayevna turned and saw a man at the other end of the bench who must have sat down noiselessly when she was preoccupied with the procession and, presumably, had asked her last question out loud, without knowing it.

Meanwhile the procession had come to a halt, probably because of the traffic lights up ahead.

“Yes,” the stranger continued, “their mood is amazing. They’re taking someone to be buried and all they can think about is what happened to his head!” “What head?” asked Margarita, peering at her unexpected neighbor, who turned out to be a short man with fiery red hair and a fang, who was wearing a starched shirt, a fine striped suit, patent-leather shoes, and a bowler hat. His tie was flashy. But the most astonishing thing of all was that sticking out of his breast pocket, where most men carry a handkerchief or a pen, there was a well-gnawed chicken bone.

“Well, you see,” the redhead explained, “this morning at Griboyedov the dead man’s head was removed from his coffin.” “But how can that be?” Margarita asked involuntarily, recalling the whispers she had overheard on the bus.

“The devil knows how!” the redhead replied casually. “But if you ask me, it might be worth asking Behemoth about that. A terribly clever theft it was too. Caused an unbelievable scandal! And what’s more, no one knows who would need the head, or why!” However preoccupied Margarita Nikolayevna was with her own concerns, she was nonetheless struck by the stranger’s bizarre chatter.

“But wait a minute!” she blurted out. “Which Berlioz? Was it the one in today’s paper who …”

“Precisely so, precisely so …”

“So, does that mean that the mourners are writers?” asked Margarita, suddenly baring her teeth.

“Yes, naturally!”

“And do you know who they are by sight?”

“Every last one,” replied the redhead.

“Tell me,” said Margarita, her voice becoming hollow. “Is the critic Latunsky among them by any chance?” “How could he not be?” answered the redhead. “There he is over there, fourth row from the end.”

“The blond one?” asked Margarita, squinting.

“Ash-blond … See, he’s got his eyes raised up to heaven.”

“The one who looks like a Catholic priest?”

“That’s him!”

Studying Latunsky, Margarita asked no more questions.

“And you, I can see,” said the redhead, smiling, “hate this Latunsky.”

“I also hate a few others,” answered Margarita through her teeth. “But it’s not worth talking about.” By now the procession had moved on; a line of mostly empty cars stretched out behind the marchers.

“If you say so, Margarita Nikolayevna!”

Margarita was astounded, “Do you know me?”

In place of an answer, the redhead swept the bowler off his head and held it in his outstretched hand.

“Looks like a real thug!” thought Margarita, examining her sidewalk interlocutor.

“But I don’t know you,” said Margarita dryly.

“How could you know me? But I’ve been sent to see you regarding a certain small matter.”

Margarita turned pale and recoiled.

“You should have said that right away,” she began, “instead of spouting the devil knows what about a severed head! Have you come to arrest me?” “Not at all,” exclaimed the redhead. “What is this: as soon as you start talking they think you’re going to arrest them! I simply have some business to discuss with you.” “I don’t understand at all. What business?”

The redhead looked around and said mysteriously, “I’ve been sent to give you an invitation for this evening.” “Are you raving? An invitation from whom?”

“A certain distinguished foreigner,” said the redhead, narrowing his eyes meaningfully.

Margarita got furious.

“A new breed has appeared: street pimps,” she said, getting up to leave.

“That’s the thanks I get for taking on assignments like this!” exclaimed the redhead, taking offense, and as Margarita turned to leave, he growled after her, “Fool!” “Scoundrel!” she retorted, and as she turned, she heard the redhead’s voice behind her, “’The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator. The hanging bridges which connected the temple with the fearsome Antonia Tower had disappeared … Yershalaim—the great city—vanished as if it had never existed …’ And you can vanish too, along with your charred manuscript and your dried rose! Sit here on the bench alone, and beg him to set you free so you can breathe and be allowed to forget him!” Margarita’s face blanched, and she turned back to the bench. The redhead looked at her with tightly narrowed eyes.

“I don’t understand any of this,” said Margarita Nikolayevna softly. “You could have found out about the burnt pages … broken into my house and spied on me … Did you pay off Natasha, is that it? But how could you know my thoughts?” She wrinkled her brow, looking agonized, and added, “Tell me, who are you? What department are you from?” “What a bore this is,” grumbled the redhead and said in a louder voice, “Excuse me, but I already told you I’m not from any department! Please, sit down.” Margarita obeyed without a fuss, but as she sat down, she asked again, “Who are you?”

“Well, if you must know, my name is Azazello, but that won’t mean anything to you anyway.”

“But won’t you tell me how you knew about those pages and about my thoughts?”

“No, I won’t,” was Azazello’s dry reply.

“But do you know anything about him?” whispered Margarita imploringly.

“Well, let’s say I do.”

“I beg you, just tell me one thing, is he alive? Don’t torment me.”

“Yes, he’s alive, he’s alive,” Azazello replied unwillingly.

“My God!”

“Please, no fits and no screams,” said Azazello with a frown.

“I’m sorry, forgive me,” mumbled the now-compliant Margarita. “It’s true, I got angry at you. You will admit, though, that when someone on the street invites a woman to go somewhere … I’m not prejudiced, I assure you,” Margarita let out a mirthless laugh, “but I never see any foreigners, I have no desire to socialize with them … and besides, my husband … My tragedy is that I live with someone I don’t love, but it would be ignoble of me to ruin his life. He’s never shown me anything but kindness …” Azazello listened to her disconnected speech with obvious boredom and said sternly, “Please be quiet for a minute.” Margarita fell into submissive silence.

“My invitation is from a foreigner who is perfectly safe. And not a soul will know about your visit. I can promise you that.” “But what does he need me for?” Margarita asked insinuatingly.

“You’ll find that out later.”

“I see … I’m supposed to sleep with him,” said Margarita reflectively.

Azazello gave a haughty smirk and replied, “That would, I can assure you, be the answer to any woman’s dream,” a chuckle distorted Azazello’s face, “but I must disappoint you, that won’t happen.” “But who is this foreigner?!” Margarita cried out loudly in exasperation, causing passersby to turn their heads. “And why should I have any interest in seeing him?” Azazello leaned over to her and whispered in a gravely significant way, “A great interest indeed … You’ll have the opportunity to …” “To do what?” exclaimed Margarita, her eyes widening. “Am I right, are you suggesting that I can get news of him there?” Azazello nodded silently.

“Then I’ll go!” Margarita exclaimed with vigor, seizing Azazello by the arm. “I’ll go anywhere you want!” Heaving a sigh of relief, Azazello leaned back against the bench, which had the name “Nyura” carved in large letters on it, and observed ironically, “A troublesome race, these women!” He buried his hands in his pockets and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Why did they send me on this job? Behemoth should have gone, he’s the one with the charm …” With a bitterly sad smile, Margarita said, “Stop trying to mystify and torment me with your riddles … I’m an unhappy person, and you’re taking advantage of that. I may be getting involved in something strange, but if I am, I swear it’s only because you lured me with your talk of him! My head is spinning from all these things I don’t understand …” “No scenes, no scenes,” retorted Azazello with a grimace. “You should put yourself in my position. Smacking some bureaucrat in the puss, booting out some old geezer, shooting someone, or anything along those lines, that’s my real specialty, but talking with a woman in love—no thanks. I’ve been trying to talk you into this for half an hour now. So will you go?” “I’ll go,” was Margarita Nikolayevna’s simple reply.

“Then be so kind as to take this,” said Azazello, who pulled a round gold jar out of his pocket, and handed it to Margarita, saying, “Hide it, or people will see. It’ll do you good, Margarita Nikolayevna, your grief has really aged you in the past six months.” Margarita flared up but said nothing, and Azazello continued, “Tonight, at exactly nine-thirty, be so kind as to take off your clothes and spread this ointment over your face and your whole body. Then you can do as you like, but don’t leave the phone. I’ll call you at ten and tell you everything you need to know. You don’t have to worry about anything, you’ll be taken where you have to go, and you won’t be caused any upset. Understood?” After a short silence, Margarita replied, “Understood. This thing is pure gold, I can tell by the weight. Well, what of it, I know perfectly well that I’m being bribed and lured into some shady business, for which I’ll have to pay a high price.” “What is this,” said Azazello, practically hissing, “are you starting in again?”

“No, wait!”

“Give me back the cream!”

Margarita clutched the jar tighter and continued, “No, wait … I know what I’m getting myself in for. But I’ll do anything for his sake, because there’s no hope left for me in this world. But if you destroy me, you’ll be sorry! Yes, you will! Because I’ll be dying for love!”—and, pounding her chest, Margarita gazed at the sun.

“Give it back,” Azazello yelled angrily. “Give it back, and to hell with everything! Let them send Behemoth!” “Oh, no!” exclaimed Margarita, to the astonishment of passersby, “I agree to everything, I agree to play out this whole comedy with the cream, I agree to go to the devil and back! I won’t give it back!” “Bah!” Azazello howled suddenly. His eyes bulging, he began pointing at something over toward the park railing.

Margarita turned to where Azazello was pointing, but didn’t notice anything in particular. Then she turned back to him, expecting an explanation for that absurd “Bah!”—but there was no one there to provide it: Margarita Nikolayevna’s mysterious interlocutor had vanished.

Margarita quickly thrust her hand into her bag, where, prior to Azazello’s howl, she had hidden the jar, and assured herself that it was still there. Then, without further reflection, she ran hurriedly out of Alexandrovsky Park.