خاتمه

Epilogue

BUT still, what happened next in Moscow after that Saturday evening at sunset when Woland and his retinue left the capital and disappeared from Sparrow Hills?

It’s pointless to speak of the preposterous rumors that buzzed loudly and long throughout the city and spread quickly to the most distant and remote parts of the provinces. It’s even sickening to repeat them.

The writer of these truthful lines has himself heard, while on a train to Feodosiya, a story about how in Moscow two thousand people walked out of a theater naked in the literal sense of the word and then went home in taxis in the same state.

Whispers of an “evil power” were heard in lines at dairy shops, in streetcars, stores, apartments, kitchens, suburban and long-distance trains, at stations large and small, in dachas, and on beaches.

Needless to say, truly mature and cultured people did not tell these stories about an evil power’s visit to the capital. In fact, they even made fun of them and tried to talk sense into those who told them. Nevertheless, facts are facts, as they say, and cannot simply be dismissed without explanation: somebody had visited the capital. The charred cinders of Griboyedov alone, and many other things besides, confirmed that.

Cultured people shared the point of view of the investigating team: it was the work of a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists magnificently skilled in their art.

Both inside Moscow and beyond, prompt and energetic steps were, of course, taken to insure their capture, but, most regrettably, produced no results. The man who called himself Woland vanished along with his henchmen and never again returned to Moscow nor did he ever show himself or make an appearance anywhere else. Quite naturally there was speculation that he had escaped abroad, but he never showed up there either.

The investigation of his case went on for a long time. Say what you will, it was certainly a hellish one! Apart from the four buildings burned to ashes and the hundreds of people driven insane, there were also fatalities. Two were known for sure: Berlioz and that unfortunate civil servant in the Moscow Bureau of Sightseeing for Foreigners, the former Baron Maigel. Those two had certainly been killed. The charred bones of the latter had been discovered in apartment No. 50 on Sadovaya Street after the fire had been put out. Yes, there had been victims, and that called for an investigation.

But there were other victims as well, even after Woland had left the capital, and, sad to say, they were black cats.

A hundred or so of these peaceful animals, useful and devoted to man, were shot or otherwise destroyed in various parts of the country. More than a dozen of them, some in extremely mangled condition, were delivered to police stations in various cities. For example, a citizen in Armavir brought in one such innocent creature with its front paws tied up.

The man had caught the cat just as the animal was looking furtive (So what can be done if that’s the way cats look? It’s not because they’re guilty, but because they fear that creatures stronger than they—dogs or people—will harm them in some way. And that’s not hard to do, but it’s nothing to be proud of, I assure you. No, not at all!) and, yes, wearing such a furtive look, the cat was about to bound into a burdock patch for some reason.

As the citizen pounced on the cat and tore off his tie in order to tie him up, he venomously and menacingly muttered, “Gottcha! So, mister hypnotist, you’ve decided to pay us a little visit in Armavir, have you? Well, we’re not afraid of you here. And don’t pretend to be mute. We already know what a fine fellow you are!” The citizen took the cat to the police station, dragging the poor creature by its front paws, which had been tied together with a green necktie, and giving it little kicks so it would walk on its hind legs.

“Cut it out,” shouted the citizen, as boys followed him hooting, “stop playing the fool! It won’t work! Walk like everyone else!”

The black cat merely rolled its martyred eyes. Deprived by nature of the gift of speech, it had no way to defend itself. For its salvation the poor beast was indebted, first of all, to the police, and secondly to its mistress, a respected elderly widow. Once the cat was at the station, the policeman could see that the citizen who had brought it in reeked of alcohol, which immediately cast doubt on his testimony. Meanwhile, the widow, after learning from her neighbors that her cat had been hauled off, ran to the police station and managed to get there in time. She gave the cat the most flattering recommendation, explained that she had known it for five years, ever since it was a kitten, vouched for it as much as for herself, and proved that it had never been implicated in any misconduct and had never been to Moscow. It had been born and raised in Armavir, and had learned to catch mice there.

The cat was untied and returned to its owner, after, it’s true, having gotten a taste of trouble first hand—a practical lesson in the meaning of mistaken identity and slander.

Besides the cats, there were a few people who suffered some minor unpleasantness. Several arrests were made. Among those held briefly in custody were: citizens Volman and Volper in Leningrad; three Volodins in Saratov, Kiev, and Kharkov; a Volokh in Kazan; and in Penza, no one knows why, a doctoral candidate in chemistry named Vetchinkevich. True, he was enormously tall, dark-haired, and swarthy.

In addition to the above, nine Korovins, four Korovkins, and a pair of Karavayevs were caught in various locales.

At the station in Belgorod a certain citizen was taken off the Sevastopol train in handcuffs. This citizen had taken it into his head to entertain his fellow passengers with card tricks.

In Yaroslavi a man appeared in a restaurant just at dinner time carrying a primus stove which he had just retrieved from a repair shop. When the two doormen on duty spotted him in the cloakroom, they took off and ran out of the restaurant, with all the patrons and staff following at their heels. During this, all the cashier’s receipts mysteriously disappeared.

A lot of other things happened, but one can’t remember everything. There was great intellectual ferment.

Again and again one must give the investigators their due. Everything was done not only to catch the criminals, but to explain all their actions as well. And they were all explained, and one can’t but concede that the explanations were both reasonable and irrefutable.

Investigation spokesmen and experienced psychiatrists established that the criminal gang members, or perhaps one in particular (suspicion fell chiefly on Korovyov) were hypnotists with unprecedented powers, capable of appearing not where they actually were, but in illusory, displaced locations. In addition, they could easily convince whoever came in contact with them that certain objects or people were present in places where really they were not, and conversely, they could remove from sight those objects or people that actually were in sight.

In the light of such explanations, everything became absolutely clear, even that which had disturbed the citizens the most, namely, the seemingly inexplicable invulnerability of the cat who had been riddled with bullets in apartment No. 50 during the attempt to take him into custody.

There had, of course, been no cat on the chandelier, and no one had even thought of returning his fire. They had been shooting into the air, while Korovyov, who had duped them into thinking that a cat was raising hell on the chandelier, could easily have been positioned behind those who were shooting, showing off and revelling in his own tremendous, if criminally misapplied, powers of suggestion. And it was he, of course, who had poured the kerosene around the apartment and set fire to it.

Styopa Likhodeyev had naturally not flown to Yalta (even Korovyov couldn’t have pulled off a stunt like that), nor had he sent any telegrams from there. After being tricked by Korovyov into seeing a cat with a pickled mushroom on his fork and fainting with fright as a result, Styopa had lain unconscious in the jeweller’s window’s apartment until Korovyov, making a fool of him once again, had yanked a felt hat over his head and sent him off to the Moscow airport, having previously convinced CID members that Styopa would get off the airplane arriving from Sevastopol.

True, the Yalta CID maintained that they had taken the barefoot Styopa into custody and had sent telegrams about him to Moscow, but not one copy of those telegrams was ever found in the files, which led to the sad, but utterly unshakable conclusion that the band of hypnotists was able to practice long-distance hypnosis and not just on individuals, but on whole groups of people at one time. This being the case, the criminals were able to drive the most mentally stable people out of their minds.

Why bother mentioning, therefore, such things as the deck of cards that turned up in the pocket of some stranger in the audience, the ladies’ clothing that vanished, or the meowing beret and other such things! Any professional hypnotist of average ability can perform tricks like that on any stage, and that includes the simple trick of tearing off the emcee’s head. The talking cat was also downright nonsense. All you need to get such a cat to perform is an elementary knowledge of ventriloquism, and no one could seriously doubt that Korovyov’s skills went far beyond the basics.

No, the decks of cards or the forged letters in Nikanor Ivanovich’s briefcase were not the issue. Those were mere trifles! And it was he, Korovyov, who had pushed Berlioz to certain death under the streetcar. It was he who had driven the poor poet, Ivan Bezdomny, out of his mind, he who had made him imagine things and have tormenting dreams about ancient Yershalaim and about sun-scorched arid Bald Mountain with its three men hanged on posts. It was he and his gang who had made Margarita Nikolayevna and her maid, the beautiful Natasha, disappear from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigators had given this matter special attention. They had to determine whether the women had been abducted by the gang of murderers and arsonists or whether they had run off with the criminal band of their own free will. Based on the absurd and muddled testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich and taking into account the bizarre and insane note Margarita Nikolayevna had left her husband, in which she said she had gone off to be a witch, and considering the fact that Natasha had disappeared without taking any of her things, the investigators concluded that mistress and maid had both been hypnotized, along with so many others, and abducted by the gang while in that state. The quite likely possibility also arose that the criminals had been attracted by the women’s beauty.

However, the motive behind the gang’s abduction of a mental patient calling himself the Master from a psychiatric clinic still remained a mystery for the investigators. They could not find an explanation for that, nor could they learn the name of the abducted patient. Thus he vanished into the files under the lifeless tag, “No. 118 from Block One.” And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to an end, just as, in general, all things do.

Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget about Woland, Korovyov, and the others. Many changes took place in the lives of the victims of Woland and his associates, and however petty and insignificant those changes may have been, they still deserve mention.

George Bengalsky, for example, recovered and went home after a three-month stay in the hospital, but he was forced to give up his job at the Variety Theater, and at the most hectic time when the public rushed the theater for tickets—memories of black magic and its exposés were still too fresh in his mind. Bengalsky gave up the Variety because he realized that to appear every evening before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly subjected to snide questions about whether he preferred having his head on or off—was too painful for him.

Yes, and besides that, the emcee had lost a sizable portion of the cheerfulness necessary for his line of work. He was left with the unpleasant and burdensome habit of falling into a state of anxiety every spring during the full moon, when he would suddenly grab at his neck, look around fearfully, and weep. Although these attacks passed quickly, they made it impossible for him to work at his former job, so he went into retirement and began living on his savings, which, according to his modest calculations, would last him for fifteen years.

He left and never again saw Varenukha, who had won universal popularity and affection for his incredibly polite and considerate attitude toward others, rare even among theater managers. Recipients of complimentary passes, for example, regarded him as a father-benefactor. Whoever called the Variety Theater at whatever time of day or night was always greeted by a soft but sad voice that said, “How can I help you?”—and when Varenukha was called to the phone that same voice would readily reply, “I’m at your service.” But Ivan Savelyevich’s courteousness has brought him suffering!

Styopa Likhodeyev no longer has to talk on the phone at the Variety. After being discharged from the clinic where he spent eight days, Styopa was transferred to Rostov, where he was appointed manager of a large specialty foods store. Rumor has it that he has sworn off port completely and drinks only vodka steeped in black currants, which has greatly improved his health. They say that he has become taciturn and avoids women.

Stepan Bogdanovich’s removal from the Variety did not give Rimsky the joy he so fervently dreamed of for so long. After a spell in a clinic and a rest cure at Kislovodsk, the aged and decrepit financial director with the shaking head put in for retirement from the Variety. Interestingly, it was his wife who turned in his retirement application to the theater. Even in daylight, Grigory Danilovich did not have the strength to be in the same building where he had seen the cracked windowpane flooded with moonlight and the long arm feeling its way along the lower latch.

After retiring from the Variety, the financial director joined the children’s puppet theater in Zamoskvorechye. There he was no longer forced to deal with the esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov in regard to acoustical matters. The latter had been speedily transferred to Bryansk and made the head of a mushroom-processing plant. Now Muscovites eat his salted saffron milkcaps and marinated white mushrooms, praise them to the skies, and could not be more delighted about his transfer. What’s past is past, and it can now be said that Arkady Apollonovich’s performance in acoustics was never really a success, and no matter how hard he tried to make improvements in acoustics, they still remained the same.

Besides Arkady Apollonovich, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi should be included among those who severed their ties with the theater, although the only connection between Nikanor Ivanovich and the theater was his fondness for free passes. Not only does Nikanor Ivanovich not attend the theater either with a paid ticket or a free pass, his face actually changes whenever the theater is even mentioned. Besides the theater, his hatred for the poet Pushkin and for the gifted actor Savva Potapovich Kurolesov has increased rather than diminished. He hates the latter so much that last year when he saw a black-bordered announcement in the paper to the effect that Savva Potapovich had died of a stroke at the height of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich got so red in the face that he almost followed in Savva Potapovich’s footsteps, and then he let out a roar, “Serves him right!” That same evening, moreover, Nikanor Ivanovich, for whom the popular actor’s death brought such a flood of painful memories, went all by himself, with only the full moon over Sadovaya Street for company, and got roaring drunk. With each glass he drank, the accursed list of people he detested grew longer and longer, and on it were Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil, the beautiful Ida Gerkulanovna, the red-haired owner of the fighting geese, and the outspoken Nikolai Kanavkin.

Well, so what happened to all of them? Mercy me! Absolutely nothing happened to them, nor could it have since they never existed in reality, just as the likable emcee never existed, nor the theater itself, nor the old skin-flint aunt, Porokhovnikova, who let foreign currency rot in her cellar, nor, of course, did the gold trumpets and the insolent cooks. Nikanor Ivanovich had just dreamed it all under the influence of that rogue Korovyov. The only living person in the dream had been Savva Potapovich, the actor, and he had gotten into the dream just because he had been on the radio so much that he stuck in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory. He did exist, but the others did not.

So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! Not only did he exist, he does still, and in the very job that Rimsky left, that of financial director of the Variety Theater.

About twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland, Aloisy came to his senses in a train somewhere near Vyatka and decided that he had left Moscow in a daze for some reason and thus had forgotten to put on his trousers, but what he couldn’t understand was why he had stolen the private-home-builder’s tenants book, which was of absolutely no use to him. He paid the conductor a colossal sum of money for a greasy old pair of trousers, and turned back at Vyatka. But, alas, he could not find the private-home-builder’s house. The dilapidated old wreck had been burned to the ground. Aloisy, however, was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was settled in a splendid room on Bryusov Lane and a few months after that, he was sitting in Rimsky’s office. And just as Rimsky was once tormented by Styopa, so Varenukha is now harassed by Aloisy. Ivan Savelyevich has only one dream, namely, that Aloisy be removed to someplace far from the Variety and out of sight, because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers to close friends, he has “never in his life met such a bastard as that Aloisy, who is capable of absolutely anything.” But the manager may be prejudiced. Aloisy doesn’t seem to be involved in any shady business, or in any business at all for that matter, not counting, of course, his appointing a new bartender to replace Sokov. Andrei Fokich died of cancer of the liver in the First Clinic of Moscow University Hospital about nine months after Woland’s appearance in Moscow … Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in this book dragged on for a while and were then forgotten. But not by everyone, not by everyone!

Every year, as the spring holiday moon turns full, a man appears toward evening beneath the lindens at Patriarch’s Ponds. He is a man of about thirty or so, reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed. He is a fellow of the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyryov.

When he gets to the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench he was sitting on that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by everyone, saw the moon, shattering into pieces, for the last time in his life.

The now whole moon, white at the beginning of the evening, and then golden, with a dark dragon-horse imprinted on its face, floats above the former poet, Ivan Nikolayevich, while at the same time staying in one place overhead.

Everything is clear to Ivan Nikolayevich, he knows and understands everything. He knows that in his youth he was the victim of hypnotist-criminals and that he had to go in for treatment and was cured. But he also knows that there are things he cannot cope with. For example, he cannot cope with the spring full moon. As soon as it draws near, as soon as the heavenly body begins to expand and to fill with gold just as it did long ago when it towered over the two five-branched candelabra, Ivan Nikolayevich becomes restless, anxious, loses his appetite, has trouble sleeping, and waits for the moon to ripen. And when the full moon comes, nothing can keep Ivan Nikolayevich at home. Toward evening he goes out and walks to Patriarch’s Ponds.

Sitting on his bench, Ivan Nikolayevich openly talks to himself, smokes, and squints alternately at the moon and at the turnstile he remembers so well.

Ivan Nikolayevich spends an hour or two like that. Then he gets up, and walking with vacant, unseeing eyes, always taking the same route via Spiridonovka, heads for the side streets around the Arbat.

He walks past the oil shop, turns at the corner with the rickety old gas lamp, and creeps over to the fence beyond which he sees a luxuriant garden not yet in bloom and a gothic-style house, colored by the moonlight on one side, where the bay window with the triple casements juts out, and dark on the other.

The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in the house, but he does know that he cannot resist his impulses during the full moon. He also knows that in the garden beyond the fence he will invariably see the same thing.

He sees a respectable-looking, middle-aged man with a beard and a pince-nez and slightly piggish features sitting on a bench. He is a resident of the gothic house and Ivan Nikolayevich always finds him in the same dreamy pose, his gaze directed at the moon. Ivan Nikolayevich knows that after admiring the moon, the man on the bench will turn his gaze to the bay window and stare at it as if he expects it to burst open any minute and have something unusual appear on the windowsill.

Ivan Nikolayevich knows what will happen next by heart. Here he has to crouch down lower behind the fence, because the man on the bench will start whirling his head, trying to catch something in the air with his wandering eyes, will smile ecstatically, and then in a kind of sweet anguish, will suddenly clasp his hands and murmur plainly and rather loudly, “Venus! Venus! … Oh, what a fool I was! …” “Gods, gods!” Ivan Nikolayevich will start whispering from his hiding place behind the fence, his inflamed eyes still fastened on the mysterious stranger, “there’s another victim of the moon … Yes, another one like me.” And the man on the bench will continue murmuring, “Oh, what a fool I was! Why, why didn’t I fly away with her? What was I afraid of, old ass that I am! I got a certificate! So you can suffer now, you old idiot!” And so it will continue until a window bangs open in the dark part of the house, something whitish appears, and an unpleasant female voice calls out, “Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What kind of craziness is this? Do you want to catch malaria? Come have your tea!” The man on the bench will, of course, then come to his senses and reply in a false tone, “Air, my darling, I just wanted a breath of air! The air is very pleasant out here!”

Then he gets up from the bench, shakes his fist furtively at the downstairs window as it closes, and drags himself into the house.

“He’s lying, he’s lying! Oh gods, how he’s lying!” mumbles Ivan Nikolayevich as he moves away from the fence. “It’s not the air that lures him into the garden at all, it’s something he sees on the moon and in the garden, when the spring moon is full, high up above. Oh, what I’d give to learn his secret, to find out who the Venus is that he lost and now tries to catch by waving his arms pointlessly in the air!” And the professor returns home utterly ill. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and hurries him off to bed. But she herself stays up and sits by the lamp with a book, gazing at him with bitter eyes as he sleeps. She knows that at dawn Ivan Nikolayevich will wake up with a tortured scream, and that he will start crying and toss about. That is why she keeps a hypodermic syringe soaking in alcohol on the cloth beneath the lamp in front of her, and an ampule filled with something the color of strong tea.

Tied to a gravely ill man, the poor woman will then be free and can go to sleep without any misgivings. After his injection, Ivan Nikolayevich will sleep until morning, and he will look happy as he dreams rapturous and happy dreams she knows nothing about.

It is always the same thing that causes the scholar to wake up on the night of the full moon and to let out a pitiful scream. He sees an unnatural, noseless executioner leap up with a hoot and put a spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and has lost his reason. But the most terrifying thing in the dream is not so much the executioner as the unnatural light coming from the stormcloud that is seething and pressing down on the earth, such as only happens during world catastrophes.

After the injection everything the sleeper sees changes. A broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window and heading up this path is a man in a white cloak with a blood-red lining who is walking toward the moon. Walking beside him is a young man in a torn chiton with a disfigured face. The two of them are engaged in heated conversation, arguing about something, and trying to reach some kind of agreement.

“Gods, gods!” says the man in the cloak as he turns his haughty face to his companion, “What a vulgar and banal execution! But please,” here his face turns from being haughty to imploring, “tell me it didn’t really happen! I beg you, tell me, it didn’t happen, did it?” “Of course it didn’t happen,” answers his companion in a hoarse voice, “you only imagined it.”

“And you can swear to that?” asks the man in the cloak in an ingratiating way.

“I can!” replies his companion, his eyes smiling for some reason.

“I don’t need anything else!” cries out the man in the cloak in a broken voice, as he ascends higher and higher toward the moon, taking his companion with him. Walking behind them, calm and majestic, is a huge dog with pointed ears.

Then the path of moonlight starts frothing, and a river of moonlight gushes forth and spreads out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances and romps. Then a woman of matchless beauty emerges from the stream and walks toward Ivan, leading a man by the hand who has an overgrown beard and is looking about fearfully. Ivan Nikolayevich recognizes him immediately. He is No. 118, his night visitor. In his sleep Ivan stretches his arms out to him and asks avidly, “So that was how it ended?” “Yes, it was, my disciple,” replies No. 118, and the woman comes over to Ivan and says, “Of course. Everything ended and everything ends … And I’m going to kiss you on the forehead, and everything will work out as it should.” She leans over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan stretches toward her and stares into her eyes, but she draws back, draws back and walks off with her companion toward the moon …

Then the moon goes on a rampage, it hurls streams of light directly at Ivan, sprays light in all directions, a moonlight flood begins to inundate the room, the light sways, rises higher, and drowns the bed. Only then does Ivan Nikolayevich sleep with a look of happiness on his face.

The next morning he wakes up silent, but completely calm and well. His ravaged memory quiets down, and no one will trouble the professor until the next full moon: neither the noseless murderer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.

1929–1940