فصل 32

XXXII

Absolution and Eternal Refuge

GODS, my gods! How sad the earth is at eventide! How mysterious are the mists over the swamps. Anyone who has wandered in these mists, who has suffered a great deal before death, or flown above the earth, bearing a burden beyond his strength knows this. Someone who is exhausted knows this. And without regret he forsakes the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and sinks into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone … Even the magical black horses had tired and were carrying their riders slowly, and the inevitable night was beginning to catch up with them. Sensing the night was beginning to catch up with them. Sensing the night at his back, even the irrepressible Behemoth had fallen silent and was flying along, serious and silent, his claws dug into his saddle, his tail fluffed out behind him.

Night began covering the forests and meadows with its black kerchief. The night ignited sad little lights somewhere far below, alien lights that were no longer of any interest or use either to Margarita or the Master. Night overtook the cavalcade, spreading over them from above and scattering white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.

Night was thickening, flying alongside the riders, grabbing at their cloaks and pulling them off, unmasking all illusions. And whenever Margarita, buffeted by the cool breeze, opened her eyes, she saw the changes that were taking place in the appearances of all who were flying to their destination. And when the crimson full moon rose up to meet them from behind the edge of the forest, all illusions vanished and the magical, mutable clothing fell into the swamp and drowned in the mist.

Korovyov-Fagot, the self-titled interpreter for the mysterious consultant who never required any interpretation, was hardly recognizable now in the figure who was flying beside Woland, to the right of the Master’s beloved. In place of the fellow who had left Sparrow Hills in a torn circus outfit under the name of Korovyov-Fagot, there now galloped, his gold reins clinking softly, a dark-violet knight with an extremely somber face that never smiled. He flew along beside Woland with his chin on his chest, not looking at the moon and taking no interest in the earth below, but, rather, completely immersed in his own thoughts.

“Why is he so changed?” Margarita softly asked Woland to the whistling of the wind.

“That knight once made a joke that fell flat,” replied Woland, turning his quietly smoldering eye toward Margarita. “While conversing about darkness and light he made up a pun that was not entirely satisfactory. And after that, he was forced to work a bit longer and harder at making his jokes than he imagined. But tonight is the kind of night when accounts are settled. The knight has paid his bill and closed his account!” Night had also torn off Behemoth’s fluffy tail, stripped him of his fur and scattered clumps of it over the swamps. The one who had been the cat who amused the Prince of Darkness turned out to be a lean youth, a demon-page, the best jester the world has ever known. Now he too had fallen silent and was flying noiselessly, his young face raised to the light flowing from the moon.

Over to the side of the rest, the steel of his armor gleaming, flew Azazello. The moon had transformed his face as well. The absurd ugly fang was gone, and the blind eye turned out to have been fake. Both Azazello’s eyes were alike, empty and black, and his face was cold and white. Azazello was now flying in his true aspect, as the demon of the waterless desert, the demon-killer.

Margarita could not see herself, but she could certainly see how the Master had changed. His hair looked white in the moonlight and was gathered behind him in a queue that flew in the wind. Whenever the wind blew the Master’s cloak away from his legs, Margarita could see the stars flickering on the spurs of his jackboots. Like the demon-youth, the Master flew with his eyes fixed on the moon, but he was smiling at it as if it were someone he knew and loved, and he was mumbling to himself, a habit acquired in Room 118.

And finally, Woland too was flying in his true aspect. Margarita could not have said what his horse’s reins were made of and thought they might have been moonbeam chains, and his horse—just a clump of darkness, and the horse’s mane—a cloud, and the rider’s spurs—the white specks of stars.

They flew in silence like that for a long time until the landscape below began to change. The mournful forests drowned in the darkness of the earth, taking with them the dull blades of the rivers. Down below boulders appeared, and began giving off reflections, and in between the boulders were gaps of blackness where the moonlight could not penetrate.

Woland set his horse down on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and then the riders went forward at a walk, listening to the clop of their horses’ hooves on the stones and pieces of flint. The moon flooded the area with a bright green light, and in the deserted expanse Margarita could make out an armchair and in it the white figure of a seated man. The seated figure appeared to be either deaf or too sunk in thought. He did not hear the ground trembling under the weight of the horses, nor was he disturbed by the approaching riders.

The moon was a great help to Margarita, it gave better light than the most powerful electric street lamp, and Margarita saw that the seated figure, whose eyes seemed blind, was spasmodically rubbing his hands and gazing with unseeing eyes at the disk of the moon. Now Margarita could see that next to the heavy stone chair, which seemed to sparkle in the moonlight, there lay a huge dark dog with pointed ears who, like his master, was gazing anxiously at the moon. At the feet of the seated figure were shards of a broken jug and a blackish-red puddle that would never dry up.

The riders stopped their horses.

“They have read your novel,” began Woland, turning to the Master, “and they said only one thing, that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So I wanted to show you your hero. He has been sitting here for about two thousand years, sleeping, but, when the moon is full, he is tormented, as you see, by insomnia. And it torments not only him, but his faithful guardian, the dog. If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it. The only thing that brave creature ever feared was thunderstorms. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.” “What is he saying?” asked Margarita, and her utterly tranquil face was covered by a veil of compassion.

“He says,” Woland’s voice rang out, “the same thing over and over. That the moon gives him no peace and that he has a bad job. That is what he always says when he cannot sleep, and when he does sleep, he always sees the same thing—a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk on that path, and talk with the prisoner Ha-Notsri, because, as he keeps maintaining, he did not finish what he wanted to say long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason, he never does manage to walk on the path, and no one comes to see him. So there is nothing for him to do except talk to himself. Some variety is necessary, however, so when he talks about the moon, he frequently adds that he hates his immortality and unprecedented fame more than anything in the world. He maintains that he would gladly change places with the ragged wanderer, Levi Matvei.” “Twelve thousand moons for that one moon long ago, isn’t that too much?” asked Margarita.

“Is this that story with Frieda all over again?” said Woland. “But in this case, Margarita, you need not upset yourself. Everything will be made right, that is what the world is built on.”

“Let him go,” suddenly shouted Margarita piercingly, just as she had shouted when she was a witch, and her cry dislodged a boulder on the mountainside and sent it hurtling down the slopes into the abyss with a thunderous crash. But Margarita could not tell whether it was the crash of the boulder she heard or the thunder of satanic laughter. In any event, Woland was laughing as he looked at Margarita and said, “One must not shout when in the mountains. Anyway, he’s used to avalanches, and it won’t disturb him. You need not plead for him, Margarita, because the one he wants to talk with already has.” Woland again turned to the Master and said, “Well, then, now you can finish your novel with a single sentence!” The Master seemed to have been waiting for this as he stood motionless, looking at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands over his mouth like a megaphone and shouted so that the echo rebounded over the desolate and treeless mountains. “Free! Free! He is waiting for you!” The mountains transformed the Master’s voice into thunder, and the thunder destroyed them. The accursed rocky walls caved in. The only thing that remained was the summit with the stone chair. Above the black abyss, where the walls had vanished, blazed a vast city dominated by glittering idols that towered over a garden gone luxuriantly to seed during these thousands of moons. The path of moonlight long awaited by the procurator led right up to the garden, and the dog with the pointed ears was the first to rush out on it. The man in the white cloak with the blood-red lining got up from his chair and shouted something in a hoarse, broken voice. It was impossible to make out whether he was laughing or crying, or what he was shouting, but he could be seen running down the path of moonlight, after his faithful guardian.

“Is that where I’m to go?” asked the Master anxiously, touching his reins.

“No,” replied Woland. “Why pursue that which is already finished?”

“Does that mean back there then?” asked the Master, who turned and pointed back to where the city they had just left displayed itself with its gingerbread monastery towers and its sun broken to smithereens in the glass.

“Not there either,” replied Woland, and his voice thickened and began to flow over the cliffs. “Romantic Master! The one whom the hero you created and just released so yearned to see has read your novel.” Here Woland turned to Margarita and said, “Margarita Nikolayevna! It is impossible not to believe that you tried to devise the best possible future for the Master, but I assure you that what I am offering you, and what Yeshua has requested for you, is better still. Let the two of them be alone,” said Woland, leaning across his saddle over to the Master’s saddle and pointing toward the departed procurator. “Let’s not disturb them. Maybe they will come to some agreement.” Woland then waved his hand toward Yershalaim, and it was extinguished.

“And there too,” said Woland, pointing backward. “What would you do in your little basement?” The fragmented sun dimmed in the glass. “Why go back?” continued Woland in a firm and gentle voice. “O Master, thrice a romantic, wouldn’t you like to stroll with your beloved under the blossoming cherry trees by day and then listen to Schubert by night? Wouldn’t it be nice for you to write by candlelight with a quill pen? Wouldn’t you like to sit over a retort, like Faust, in the hope of creating a new homunculus? Go there! Go there! There where a house and an old servant already await you, where the candles are already burning, but will soon go out because you are about to meet the dawn. Take that road, Master, that one! Farewell! It is time for me to go.” “Farewell!” shouted Margarita and the Master in reply to Woland. Then the black Woland, forswearing all roads, plunged into the gap, and his retinue noisily rushed down after him. Nothing remained around them, not the cliffs, nor the summit, nor the path of moonlight, nor Yershalaim. The black horses vanished as well. The Master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began immediately, right after the midnight moon. In the radiance of the first rays of morning, the Master and his beloved were walking over a small, moss-covered stone bridge. They crossed the bridge. The stream was left behind by the true lovers, and they walked along a sandy path.

“Listen to the silence,” Margarita was saying to the Master, the sand crunching under her bare feet. “Listen and take pleasure in what you were not given in life—quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, which you’ve been given as a reward. I can see the Venetian window and the grape vine curling up to the roof. There is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings people you like will come to see you, people who interest you and who will not upset you. They will play for you, sing for you, and you will see how the room looks in candlelight. You will fall asleep with your grimy eternal cap on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep.” Thus spoke Margarita as she walked with the Master toward their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita’s words flowed like the stream they had left behind, flowed and whispered, and the Master’s anxious, needle-pricked memory began to fade. Someone was releasing the Master into freedom, as he himself had released the hero he created. That hero, who was absolved on Sunday morning, had departed into the abyss, never to return, the son of an astrologer-king, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.